Omar Shagaleh/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images(ISTANBUL, Turkey) -- A Saudi official has told ABC News that Jamal Khashoggi was killed when he was "placed in a chokehold position" to prevent him from leaving the country's consulate in Turkey and calling for help.



The evolving explanation comes 19 days after Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who had been critical of his country's current government, disappeared on Oct. 2 after going into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.



Once Khashoggi was reported missing, the Saudi government initially said Khashoggi had come out of the consulate the same day, and denied any involvement in his disappearance.



Two weeks later, on Friday, the country's public prosecutor said an initial investigation revealed that discussions between Khashoggi and the individuals who met with him at the consulate led to an argument and a fist fight, which resulted in the journalist's death, according to the Arabic report in the Saudi Press Agency.



The Saudi official on Sunday told ABC News that Khashoggis body was given to a "local cooperator" in Istanbul for disposal. "Investigation into this continues," the official said.



The whereabouts of Khashoggi's body remain unknown.



Fifteen Saudis, members of the team sent to Turkey to meet with Khashoggi in the consulate in Istanbul, are among those who have been detained by the Saudi public prosecutor, according to the official.



"All the 15 team members are among those detained," the official said. "I don't have the names at this time."



The official also told ABC News that five Saudi intelligence chiefs, who were relieved of their duties in connection to Khashoggi's death, are not currently suspects in the investigation, even though they were "part of the chain of command of the operation" and that "the operational orders ... were written in such a way as to contribute to the series of events that led to the tragic death."



Turkish officials have claimed that a team of 15 Saudi men, including one who was identified by the press as an autopsy doctor, flew to Turkey specifically to kill Khashoggi at the consulate.



The Trump administration has strongly denied a claim that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was played an audio recording and provided a transcript of Khashoggi's killing.



Eighteen Saudi citizens were detained by the Saudi government in connection with Khashoggi's killing, according to Saudi Arabia's state-run news agency.



Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists, have called for the U.N. to investigate Khashoggis death.



After speaking with Saudi Arabia's King Salman, President Trump suggested that Khashoggi was targeted by "rogue killers." Earlier this week, Trump said that there would be "severe consequences" if it is found that the Saudis murdered Khashoggi, and on Friday the president said that Saudis announcement that it had suspects in custody was "a good first step."



U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and several international business leaders, have pulled out of a major investment forum in Saudi Arabia scheduled to begin next week called the Future Investment Initiative.



Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia in 2017, and had recently been living in the U.S. where he served as an opinion columnist for The Washington Post newspaper, writing critically of the Saudi royal family and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and warning of efforts to stifle the free press in the Middle East.



Khashoggis final column in for the newspaper, published Oct. 17 was titled: "What the Arab world needs most is free expression."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.Mohammad Khatim is back in jail after appealing to Bahrains Prime Minister, Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, to look into his case.



AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Mohammad Khatim is back in jail after appealing to Bahrains Prime Minister, Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, to look into his case.



The father of four, who is demanding to be returned to his job at Bahrains Ministry of Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning, staged another peaceful protest on Monday.



He merely held up a handwritten sign asking to be given audience before the premier.



Khatim was arrested several times in recent months for staging similar protests.



He alleges that he was wrongfully terminated from the ministry following a 2013 arrest, pointing to Manamas discriminatory employment practices that target Bahrains Shiite majority.





/257Fomrer Navy Cmdr. Troy Amundson (U.S. Navy photo)A former U.S. Navy commander was sentenced to 30 months in prison Friday for taking bribes from a Singapore-based defense contractor in exchange for sensitive information about ship movements and port calls.

Troy Amundson, 51, of Ramsey, Minnesota pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery.

He conspired with Leonard Glenn Francis and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA). The company provided port services to Navy ships across Asia.

A federal judge in San Diego also ordered Amundson to pay a $10,000 fine and about $21,000 in restitution.

Fom 2005 to 2013, Amundson coordinated the U.S. Navys joint military exercises with its foreign navy counterparts.

While in that post, he took dinners, drinks, and the services of prostitutes from Francis, also known as Fat Leonard.

In return, he gave Francis information about U.S. Navy ship schedules. And he took other actions in favor of GDMA and in violation of his official duties, the DOJ said.

Amundson admitted that after being interviewed by federal criminal investigators in October 2013, he deleted email correspondence with Francis.

Francis, 54, was arrested in San Diego in 2013 and charged with bribery and fraud.

He pleaded guilty in 2015 to directing a decade-long conspiracy involving scores of U.S. Navy officials. In exchange for millions of dollars in bribes, the officials helped Francis win Navy contracts and overcharge for his companys services.

Francis is waiting to be sentenced.

So far, 33 defendants  many of them from the top ranks of the Navys Pacific command  have been charged in the massive corruption scandal.

Twenty-one have pleaded guilty.

____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.Now enforcement of the GDPR is upon us  and early indicators are that GDPR compliance is a matter EU privacy regulators will take seriously. Compliance officers should do the same.

First are two recent enforcement actions that suggest privacy regulators have an appetite to pursue exactly the poor data governance practices the GDPR was meant to address.

In Britain, privacy regulators announced intentions to fine Facebook 500,000 ($650,000) for sharing user data with Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct firm embroiled in questions about Russian meddling in U.S. and European elections.

In the Netherlands, regulators fined a Dutch bank $62,000 for its failure to respond in a timely fashion to a customers request to see data.

Granted, the misconduct in both instances happened before the GDPR went into effect. Facebooks work with Cambridge Analytica happened in 2014; the Dutch bank dragged its feet in 2016. But that 500,000 fine is the maximum allowed under British law for data governance failures at that time, and the right of access at issue with the Dutch bank is a core principle of the GDPR.

The lesson for compliance officers is that regulators already had a willingness to enforce data mismanagement practices the GDPR is intended to prevent  and the GDPR now gives regulators and EU citizens a much more powerful platform to press their cases.

Along those lines, we also have early statistics on the number of consumer complaints since the GDPR went into effect in May. According to the British law firm Cordery, the United Kingdom had more than 1,100 complaints in the first month of the GDPR era; the Netherlands had 600 within the first two weeks. Other countries seem to be reporting similar numbers, of several hundred to more than 1,000 complaints. (The United Kingdom leads the pack so far.)

Tellingly, many complaints are coming specifically to the data regulator of Ireland  home to the European operations for many U.S. tech companies, such as Facebook and Microsoft. That suggests that privacy activists know where to strike (Ireland) if they want to push for sanctions against large tech companies with vast troves of data on EU citizens.

Three Early Implications. First, GDPR enforcement risk is real, especially consumer-facing businesses with a high amount of reputation risk entwined in their data collection and usage practices.

Even if privacy regulators ease into enforcement (and so far, many are), privacy activists can still file complaints with regulators themselves. Those complaints lead to investigations, and investigations cost a company money. And the complaints in Ireland suggest that activists want to pursue big players in data collection, which risks big fines for those unprepared.

Second, procedures matter. The Dutch bank mentioned above either didnt have, or didnt follow, a procedure to let its customer see his personal data. More cases like this will arise, where EU citizens exercise their data subject rights  their right to view data, the right to correct erroneous data, the right to be forgotten. Companies must uphold those rights to comply with the GDPR.

One crucial question is how to craft procedures that fulfill those rights as efficiently as possible. Manual procedures are slow and expensive. Automated procedures, meanwhile, risk bad outcomes if an organization gives the wrong answer: say, an incomplete inventory of personal data, or disclosure of data that should be kept confidential.

So even if data collection policies are well-written, compliance, IT, and other corporate departments still have lots of legwork to develop procedures that: (a) work, (b) dont disrupt other business processes to an unnecessary degree, and (c) are appropriate given the volume of data requests an organization receives and the other data retention requirements it has.

Third, given the need for effective procedures, consider whether your technology to achieve GDPR compliance is up to the task. Compliance will require a huge amount of risk assessment (particularly of third parties), compliance gap analysis, and remediation work to close those gaps. Third-party automation tools can be utilized to help compliance departments automate processes and manage data efficiently.

Can all that work succeed? Perhaps compliance officers can take heart from one other recent item.

In early September, British Airways disclosed that hackers had stolen personal and financial data from 380,000 customers in a breach that happened from August 21 to September 5. Its too early to know how privacy regulators might respond to that breach, but BA did alert all affected customers and the public by September 7  within the 72-hour breach notification window required by the GDPR.

Thats one successful step in GDPR compliance, even if many more still remain.

______

Eric Lochner, pictured above, @ELochner1 is the President and CEO of global intelligence and software firm Steele Compliance Solutions, Inc. | @SteeleGlobal. Steele provides comprehensive third-party due diligence, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that help organizations comply with regulatory third-party compliance requirements, and engaging compliance training. Eric has more than two decades of experience building successful global technology companies.



Please download Steeles whitepaper, Is Effective Due Diligence Possible Under GDPR?, to learn more.MINSTER USAMATE'S OPENING ADDRESS AT THE COMMONWEALTH CLIMATE RESILIENCE NETWORK CONFERENCE





 Dr Joanna Newman, Chief Executive & Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities Representatives from the West Indies (UWI) Representatives from the UK, New Zealand, Australia, India The Vice Chancellor of Fiji National University The Deans of the Colleges at Fiji National University Representatives from Fiji National University Representatives from The University of the South Pacific The Pacific Community (SPC) Representatives from the local Ministries Representatives from Fiji Higher Education Commission (FHEC)Bula Vinaka and a very good morning to you all!A very special welcome to the Representatives from the Association of Commonwealth of Universities (ACU) office in London, and the representatives from the University of the West Indies.I acknowledge the global significance of Climate Change and on-going efforts at mitigation.I congratulate the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Fiji National University, The University of the South Pacific and The University of the West Indies for taking the initiative to form the Commonwealth Climate Resilience Network for collaborative work.Note the origins of the network in the deliberations of the Commonwealth Education Conference hosted by Fiji in April, 2018.I understand that this workshop is formulated to discuss and shape the focus of the proposed network, what its functions would be, and how they would contribute to its operationalisation.All of us here recognise the challenges posed by climate change. -- include impact on, for example, health, infrastructure, human settlements and food systems.In some circumstances the challenge will involve moving and relocation of communities and the potential for conflict with security implications.The Global response to climate change has been pervasive and articulated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) through the Paris Agreement, 2016 and the Convention of Parties (COPs).The Paris Agreements central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.Additionally, the agreement aims to increase the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change, and at making finance flows consistent with a low GHG emissions and climate-resilient pathway For small islands, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report projects a medium risk of loss of livelihoods, coastal settlements, infrastructure, ecosystem services and economic stability, in the near term (2030 - 2040), and a very high risk in the long term (2080 - 2100). More generally, it projects reduced biodiversity, fisheries abundance and coastal protection by coral reefs, and coastal inundation and habitat loss due to sea level rise, extreme events, changes in precipitation, and reduce[d] ecological resilience, with high risk in the near term and very high risk in the long term. Major climate-related security concerns for the Pacific Islands include: access to fresh water (due to changes in rainfall patterns and salt water intrusion); local food supply (damage to coral reefs, declining fisheries, and impacts on agriculture); and infrastructure damage (through rising sea levels, other flooding, band storm damage). Potential second-order consequences include economic loss from these events, declining revenues from tourism, and emigration to escape the situation especially from atoll islands subject to inundation from sea level rise. For some Island nations consisting entirely of low-lying atolls, including Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, rising sea levels comprise an existential threat. These anticipated climate change impacts interact with other global trends, such as population growth, water and air pollution, and increasing demands for natural resources, such as tuna, from developing nations. With real chances of some nations becoming climate refugees forced out of ancestral lands. For example, our Neighbours Kiribati, Tuvalu. In Kiribati, the government has purchased land on Fiji to ensure it has food security as its arable land comes under threat from climate change. Fiji has promised to relocate Kiribati residents if their country becomes submerge In Fiji, villages need to move due to climate change. Tropical cyclones are predicted to increase in intensity in the region. In February 2016, Fiji was struck by the most powerful tropical cyclone to ever hit the country. Cyclone Winston killed 44 Fijians and caused more than $1bn worth of damage. With nearly one-third of all Fijians currently living in areas prone to these environmental disasters, the government announced last November that 43 villages would need to move to higher ground. Recent National Consultation on relocation. An Integrated Vulnerability Assessment (IVA) and community relocation consultations was carried out in each of the 14 villages on Koro Island from the 8th to the 17th of June, 2016. The assessment was initiated upon a request by the Fiji Climate Change Division (CCD) to the University of the South Pacifics (USP) Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PACE-SD) to inform government on how to support 13 villages on Koro Island, relocate or retreat inland to a safer place of settlement following TC Winston. Adopting a holistic and integrated approach to community relocation, the overall aim of the IVA was to assess community resilience of villages on Koro Island to climate change and natural disasters. This threat will continue and perhaps for many centuries to come as the effects of climate change combined with the El Nino events and other known natural occurrences such as hurricanes to produce adverse effects.o These effects would include climate sensitive diseases that are related to child mortality such as malaria, diarrhoea, measles, respiratory illness and malnutrition.o We already grappling with sea level rise and its effects on fertile agricultural land. The additional threat of climate change will undermine development gains and thwart efforts at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.o In small island states and developing countries, where tourism is a major economic activity, any significant reduction in tourist arrivals will have serious employment impacts and generate further poverty. The Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) of the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) represents one of the regional efforts in addressing the critical issues of adaptation and mitigation.o Since it began in 2009 the Programme has been laying the groundwork for more resilient Pacific communities that are better able to cope with climate variability today and climate change tomorrow.o The overall goal of the programme is to reduce vulnerability and to increase adaptive capacity to the adverse effects of climate change in the key development sectors identified by participating countries, namely coastal zone management, food security and food production, and water resources managementFijis response has not only been about Fiji and the Pacific, but about the world as a whole.This is seen in Fijis Presidency of COP23. The strident and emphatic call for action by our Prime Minister with full support from all sectors of the country. Organizations such as Energy Fiji Limited, is continuing to grow its renewable energy portfolio, investing in hydro dams and in the near future in large scale solar farms. Manufacturers and tourism operators are installing solar rooftop panels. For example, the Coca-Cola factory now operates a 1.1 Mega Watt solar rooftop system; the largest privately-funded solar grid in the South Pacific. Also companies such as Mark One apparel, the Denarau Marina and the Radisson Blu Resort on Denarau Island, lead the charge among private sector operators in lowering their own emissions. Another great example of private sector investment is the development of the Nabou Biomass Power Plant outside Sigatoka that uses biomass for clean energy generation. Fiji has remained strident in its call for global action especially as the Pacific stands to bear the brunt of climate related disasters.The recent national consultation on the National Adaptation Plan underscores this effort.The key aspect of the plan is to make climate change a whole of government business with a call to all sectors to mainstream climate change adaptation.I want to acknowledge at this stage the good work being done at USP and FNU on the area of climate change.I urge you to maintain this and to strengthen this.I need to emphasize also the need to develop disaster Management strategies for both Universities and to assist communities.Both Universities would need to engage with all sectors and especially communities.I wish the participants and conference facilitators well for the remaining day of the conference.Vinaka vaka levu, Dhayavaad, Thank youAnanda Impact Ventures, a Munich, Germany-based impact venture capital firm, closed its third fund, at 50m.

Funders included entrepreneurs, family offices and institutional investors such as the European Investment Fund (EIF), Big Society Capital (BSC).

Led by founder and managing partners Florian Erber and Johannes Weber, Ananda Impact Ventures is a venture capital firm with a pan-European focus investing in technology-based, innovative impact startups creating solutions to pressing social challenges.

The new fund will invest in around 20 European impact enterprises in Anandas proven sectors.

The first five investments are already lined up with:

 Careship,

 Talea,

 HomeTouch,

 MobileJob, and

 Raremark.

The firm, which manages 80m in three funds, had already invested in active portfolio companies including:

 Auticon (IT consulting by people in the autism spectrum),

 IESO Digital Health (online psychotherapy) and

 Company Bike Solutions (e-bike leasing programs for corporates).

Exits included Kinderzentren Kunterbunt, which was sold to German publisher Klett.

Ananda also operates an office in London, led by Partner Lennart Hergel.

The team also includes:

 Bernd Klosterkemper, Partner

 Aline Vedder, Investment Manager

 Zoe Peden, Investment Manager

 Felix Ferstl, Associate

 Mike Kennedy, Venture Partner

 Beatrix Wiedemann, Backoffice & Marketing, and

 Katrin Lech, Team Assistant.

The funds advisory board include:

 Dr Christian Saller,

 Dr Thomas Jetter,

 Prof. Dr. Arne Kroger, and

 Diana Meyel.

FinSMEs

22/10/2018Ventrica, a Southend-on-Sea UK-based outsourced contact centre, raised 9m in funding.

Mobeus Equity Partners made the investment. In conjunction with it, Mobeus Partner Ashley Broomberg worked with Danielle Garland who sourced and led the transaction on behalf of Mobeus. Guy Blackburn, Mobeus Portfolio Director, has joined the board to support Ventrica.

The company intends to use the funds to expand its presence in the UK and Europe to support its multi-lingual client base that serve customers across global markets.

Founded in 2010 by Dino Forte, Ventrica provides intelligent, multi-lingual and omni-channel outsourced customer contact services to a range of global blue-chip brands.

The company works closely with its clients, leveraging its people, technology (including support for Artificial Intelligence and Automation), training and resourcing expertise to provide its services, across multiple channels, supporting their brand and their values.

It currently employs over 350 staff, aiming to grow to 600 this year.

FinSMEs

22/10/2018Ayatollah Khameneithe Leader of the Islamic Revolutionheld his Dars-e Kharej Fiqh lecture on Monday, October 15, 2018-- wherein his eminence elaborated on a letter by Imam Ali that contains recommendations for the authorities.



AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Ayatollah Khameneithe Leader of the Islamic Revolutionheld his Dars-e Kharej Fiqh lecture on Monday, October 15, 2018-- wherein his eminence elaborated on a letter by Imam Ali that contains recommendations for the authorities.



Ayatollah Khameneithe Leader of the Islamic Revolutionopened his Dars-e Kharej Fiqh lecture on Monday, October 15, 2018, by elaborating on a letter by Imam Ali (a.s.) addressing the officials and military commanders (letter 50; Nahjul Balagha). He mentioned some of the responsibilities of the officials and commanders as explained by Imam Ali (a.s.) and regarded this letter as a code of conduct for all individuals with managerial roles within an Islamic establishment.



Then, referring to some excerpts from the letter, he maintained: In the logic of the Alawi governance [Imam Alis manner of governing], if someonedue to the responsibility they are givenreaches a certain social position or privilege, their position should not influence the way they treat the people, distancing them from the rest of the people.



Ayatollah Khamenei added: The officials of the Islamic establishment must know that being grateful to God for having been granted the position requires getting closer to the people, interacting with them, and being kinder and more caring towards them.



The leader of the Revolution raised another excerpt from the letter that addresses transparency of the officials by stating: Beware, your rights upon me is that I should not keep anything secret from you except during wars.



Elaborating on this sentence from Imam Alis letter, he asserted: This is an extremely important point. Transparencywhich is insisted on todayalready exists in the words of Imam Ali (a.s.). Some individuals are into the habit of crediting the West for any good quality that exists in the Islamic society. One is appalled by the extent of their low-mindedness of these individuals. Some say that values such as caring for the people, being attentive to their votes, and promoting the well-being of the people are [qualities] transferred to us from the West. When you do not refer to Islamic resources when you do not study the words of Imam Ali (a.s.) and the honorable Prophet of Islam (pbuh), you are not familiar with them, and so you refer to the West. Some say that transparency is something we learned from the West. This is not true; because, Imam Ali (a.s.) teaches about transparency. He says: Your right upon me--that is, the right you have and I need to observe it-- is that I should not keep anything secret from you except during wars when we face an enemy. During wars, we cannot share all the words, because if you can learn about it, the enemy will also be able to learn about it. So in the matters of war, including military war, security issues, defense and foreign affairs, we should not be transparent. Nevertheless, in other affairs, general matters of the people, I should not hide from you anything as secrets.



The leader of the revolution stressed: Except in military, security and foreign affairs when we deal with the enemies, the officials must be transparent and should not keep any secret from the people.



/257Yemeni army and popular forces foiled Saudis' attack around Najran, southern Saudi Arabia and killed a number of Saudi forces on Saturday night.



AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Yemeni army and popular forces foiled Saudis' attack around Najran, southern Saudi Arabia and killed a number of Saudi forces on Saturday night.



According to Yemeni TV Channel Al-Masirah, the operation was foiled in al-Souh region.



A number of Saudi mercenaries are reported to be killed or injured.



Yemeni forces also targeted Saudis' positions in Jizan with 'Zelzal-1' missile.



Earlier, Yemeni drones targeted Emirati forces positions in western coast of Al-Hudaydah on Saturday.



On Saturday, President of the Revolutionary Committee of Yemen Mohammed-Ali al-Houthi urged forming independent fact-finding committees to look into Saudi crimes against Yemen like that of Jamal Khashoggi.



The 59-year-old Saudi investigative journalist, who had left the country since Bin Salman was named Crown Prince and moved to the US, vanished on October second after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to collect documents for his forthcoming marriage.



Some unofficial news sources say Saudi security agents have tortured and brutally murdered the prominent journalist inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, cutting his body into pieces.



The government of Saudi Arabia has given some explanantion about the murder of Khashoggi but almost nobody has been convinced and many has asked that a fact-finding committee be set up to probe into the case.



Saudi Arabia and its regional allies attacked Yemen in March 2015 to bring back to power the deposed president of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.



The aggressors have committed horrible war crimes against Yemeni civilians during the past three years.





/257 18  1307   ,  ,  ,        120        ,      .    ,  ,    170 ,       -  ,   64 .        ...The commitment is expressed in a joint statement issued by Vietnams Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh and European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Cecilia Malmstrom following their meeting on October 19 in Brussels on the sidelines of the 12th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit (ASEM 12).

The Vietnamese Government and the European Commission (EC) have pledged to carry out the EVFTA and the IPA in a timely and effective manner (Source: VNA)



The statement said the Vietnamese Government is preparing plans to fulfill obligations under the free trade agreements while the EC stands ready to support the necessary reforms and adjustments through technical assistance.

Both sides acknowledged the relevance of the trade and sustainable development chapter of the FTA and agreed to jointly promote initiatives in this field, including the ratification of the outstanding fundamental ILO conventions.

At their meeting, both sides spoke highly of the efforts and advancement made after completing the legal review process for the two free trade pacts last summer. The Vietnamese minister lauded the European Commission for its approval and submission of the deals to the European Council for approval on October 17th./.Jade Raymond has departed Electronic Arts, leaving behind the Canadian studio EA Motive she founded in 2015.

EA Motive will continue to operate, but will now do so under the leadership of Samantha Ryan. Ryan notably already heads up multiple studios for EAs North American operations, including EA Mobile, BioWare, and Maxis.

According to a statement from EA's head of communications John Reseburg obtained by VentureBeat, Raymonds departure seems to follow EAs decision to bring Motive under Ryans control.

EA Studios is focused on bringing more creative new games and content to players. Laura Miele and her team have taken several steps internally to better support our game makers in this pursuit, such as expanding Samantha Ryans portfolio to lead additional studios, including Motive, said Reseburg.

With this change, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Electronic Arts, he added.In her time with us, Jade helped to build great teams, and our projects underway at Motive and other studios continue unchanged. Were appreciative of all of her efforts, and we wish Jade all the best as she moves on to her next adventure. We are driving greater creativity into everything we do across EA Studios, and well look forward to sharing more in the months to come.

Raymond herself was at the helm of the unnamed Star Wars project picked up from the now-shuttered Visceral Games studio. Before her time at EA, Raymond spent several years at Ubisoft and served as a producer on the original Assassins Creed, and later as executive producer on Assassins Creed II, Assassins Creed: Bloodlines, the original Watch Dogs game, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist.On The Water: Rowing on the St. CharlesUnited Nations in Bonn : Sustainability takes centre stage at UN Day

Staff give information about UN Volunteers, the United Nations voluntary programme based in Bonn. Foto: Susanne Wachter

Bonn United Nations Day was celebrated in Bonn on Saturday. The festival in the Marktplatz focussed on sustainability.

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The location for the United Nations public festival could not have been better chosen. Consumption and sustainability collided at Bonns Marktplatz on Saturday. And the latter was what UN Day was all about. In 2015, the 17 targets agreed to by the international community were adopted in Agenda 2030. They relate to fighting poverty, to high quality education, to health and well-being, to peace, justice and strong institutions and also to climate protection and sustainable cities and communities.

Wheels of fortune with quiz characters, memories, films, interactive question and answer games all served to call to mind these goals. Many visitors came to the Marktplatz especially. Karen Beuke is very interested in sustainability for professional reasons. At the NRW State Network stand Education for sustainable development, the waste advisor from the Euskirchen district and her husband paused curiously. Beuke found a microscope and took a look at the Petri dish underneath containing sand from the Rhine. She was astonished to discover that minute plastic particles, which are not visible to the naked eye, could be seen between the fine grains.

On a pinboard at the City of Bonn stand, visitors wrote down what they want in terms of sustainable goals in their city. Using empty buildings was on one note, for every tree cut down, planting a new one, on another, or finally decent cycle paths.

A lot of interest was also shown in the UN Refugee Aids refugee tent, set up at the edge of the square. The entry flap was rolled up and in the middle a mosquito net hung from the ceiling and warm blankets, cooking utensils and pots were round the edge. There were photos of refugee camps at the entrance to the tent. The two staff members, Bettina Kroll and Damaris Odenbach, talked to curious passersby and answered questions.

Everyone is coming, children, young people but also older people, who tell us how they were once displaced, says Odenbach. It is important to remember at an event like this, how many people are displaced and how you can support UN Refugee Aid with a small donation. This is how the Refugee Housing project is being financed, which offers people a solid roof over their heads and a little more privacy than a tent.People celebrate the Thadingyut Festival in Yangon, Myanmar, Oct. 21, 2018. The festival of Thadingyut normally falls on the seventh month of the Myanmar calendar year and it usually marks the end of the rainy season. (Xinhua/U Aung)

2

1

[ Editor: WPY ]BERLIN, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Germany will not sell arms to Saudi Arabia while the case of the death of Jamal Khashoggi remains unclear, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.

Merkel made the remarks at a press conference after a campaign for her party in a regional election, repeating her condemnation of Khashoggi's killing, which took place inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as Riyadh admitted.

"Firstly, we condemn this act in the strongest terms. Secondly, there is an urgent need to further clarify what happened by the Saudi authorities. We are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible should be held to account," said Merkel.

"As far as arms exports are concerned, those can't take place in the current circumstances," the chancellor added.

Saudi Arabia is the second largest customer in the German defense industry just after Algeria so far this year: until September, the German federal government granted export licenses worth 416.4 million euros to Saudi Arabia.

Merkel and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Saturday issued a statement, condemning the death of Saudi journalist Khashoggi with utmost sharpness, calling for transparency from Saudi Arabia in light of the circumstances of the death and the background. (1 euro = 1.15 U.S. dollars)

[ Editor: WPY ]VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Centenera Mining Corporation (Centenera or the Company) - (TSXV: CT, OTCQB: CTMIF) announces that it has entered into a property option agreement (the Agreement) with Yamana Gold Inc. (Yamana), whereby Yamana, through a subsidiary, has been granted an option (the Option) to acquire an initial 70% interest in the Companys Organullo Gold Project (the Project or Organullo). Organullo is located in Salta Province, northwestern Argentina.



Organullo is a gold exploration project that is currently 100%-owned by Centenera. The Project has the potential to host a large, bulk-tonnage gold deposit, however, significant drilling is required in order to fully investigate that potential, stated Keith Henderson, the Companys President & CEO. Under the terms of the Agreement, the related expenditures will be funded solely by Yamana, potentially shielding Centenera shareholders from future dilution, while allowing them to maintain a minority interest in the Project.

Organullo Option Terms

Under the terms of the Agreement, Yamana may exercise the Option by the (i) preparation and delivery of a Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101) that reports an aggregate Measured and Indicated Mineral Resource of a minimum of 1,000,000 gold-equivalent ounces^ by the 6th anniversary of the effective date of the Agreement; (ii) completion of property-related expenditures of at least US $5,000,000 in the aggregate; and (iii) cash payments of US $1,250,000 in the aggregate, as follows:

Date US$ Cash

Payments US$ Expenditure

Commitments NI 43-101 Report On Signing of Agreement $100,000 (paid) First Anniversary $100,000 Second Anniversary $150,000 $1,250,000 Third Anniversary $200,000 Fourth Anniversary $200,000 $3,750,000 Exercise of Option $500,000 Pre-Feasibility Study Total $1,250,000 $5,000,000

Yamana shall be responsible for funding all exploration expenditures incurred during the Option period. Upon the exercise of the Option, Yamana and Centenera shall be deemed to have formed a joint venture (the Joint Venture) with the initial Joint Venture interests being 70% as to Yamana and 30% as to Centenera; provided that prior to or concurrently with the exercise of the Option, Yamana shall have a top-up right (the Top-up Right) to acquire an additional 5% interest in the Project (being 75% in aggregate) by making a cash payment to Centenera equal to US $3.00 per gold equivalent ounce of Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources reported in the PFS.

Yamana and Centenera shall each fund exploration and/or development work programs in proportion to their Joint Venture ownership percentage; provided that if either party contributes less than its proportionate interest to a work program, that party's interest in the Joint Venture shall be adjusted in accordance with the party's contribution. If as a result, such party dilutes their interest to 10% or less, the diluted partys ownership interest shall automatically convert to a 2% net smelter returns (NSR) royalty. The non-diluting party may repurchase 1% of the NSR royalty within 30 days of a production decision being made on the Project for US$5,000,000.

^ Gold equivalent ounces means (i) the number of gold ounces defined as a Measured Mineral Resource, an Indicated Mineral Resource plus (ii) the number of ounces of silver defined as a Measured Mineral Resource, an Indicated Mineral Resource expressed as equivalent ounces of gold, calculated at a ratio of 66:1 (all terms as defined in NI 43-101).

About Organullo

The Organullo gold project is a relatively advanced exploration project and has been explored in the past by several companies including Triton Mining Corp., Northern Orion Explorations Ltd., Newmont Mining, and Cardero Resource Corp. The Project has 43 historical drill holes totalling 8,174 metres of diamond and reverse circulation drilling. A report entitled, Organullo Exploration Targets & Pit Optimization, dated June 6, 2012, was authored by Robin Rankin of GeoRes, Australia and the work resulted in (i) potential exploration target tonnages and (ii) potential exploration target grades of gold at the Organullo property, which were reported at lower and upper ranges (see Table 1 below). This work is described in a NI 43-101 Technical Report, entitled 2015 Technical Report on the Organullo Project, dated April 17, 2015, and authored by Equity Exploration Consultants Ltd. The Project requires additional drilling to fully define mineralization in the area of historical drilling and to fully test the exploration potential of the project.

Table 1: Estimation of Target Tonnage and Grade at Organullo

Target

Range Base Case

Gold Cut-Off g/t Tonnage

(x 000) Gold

Grade

g/t Gold

Ounces

(x 000) Lower 0.5 19,800 0.94 600 Upper 0.5 31,600 0.92 940

Estimation of target tonnage and grade was determined using two common strike and dip directions, each characteristic of a specific exploration target area. Block models were built for two target areas. Block sizes were defined to emphasise the narrow vein orientation and gold grades were estimated into each models blocks using parameters adapted to the common vein direction in each area. Raw drill hole data was composited to 2.0 metres downhole. No limits were applied to either input data or output estimates and the estimation scan distances of up to 100 metres in the plane of the veins was adequate to fill the blocks between drill holes and extended was unconstrained by geology. Block estimation was done using an inverse distance squared algorithm. Following this evidence, increasing the scan distances by simple multiples produced reasonable figures for ranges of exploration targets. Scan distances of 200 metres and 300 metres were used for lower and upper ranges of exploration targets.

It should be noted that these potential exploration target quantities and grades are conceptual in nature, that insufficient exploration and geological modelling has been done to define a mineral resource, and that it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the delineation of a mineral resource.

About Centenera

Centenera is a mineral resource company trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol CT and on the OTCQB exchange under the symbol CTMIF. The Company is focused 100% on mineral resource assets in Argentina, including gold, silver, copper-gold and lithium assets. Centeneras assets are located in Salta, San Juan and Santa Cruz Provinces, which are widely recognized as being favourable jurisdictions for mining and exploration.

About Yamana

Yamana is a Canadian-based gold producer with significant gold production, gold development stage properties, exploration properties, and land positions throughout the Americas including Canada, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. Yamana plans to continue to build on this base through existing operating mine expansions, throughput increases, development of new mines, the advancement of its exploration properties and, at times, by targeting other gold consolidation opportunities with a primary focus in the Americas.

Qualified Person

Keith J. Henderson, P.Geo., is the Companys qualified person as defined by NI 43-101 and has reviewed the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for portions of this news release. He has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Henderson is not independent of the Company, as he is an employee of the Company and holds securities of the Company.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors of

CENTENERA MINING CORPORATION

Keith Henderson

President & CEO

For further details on the Company readers are referred to the Company's web site ( www.centeneramining.com ) and its Canadian regulatory filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com .

For further information, please contact:

Keith Henderson

Phone: 604-638-3456

E-mail: info@centeneramining.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 news release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities legislation, including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, statements regarding the exercise of the Option, the formation of the Joint Venture, the exercise of the Top-up Right, the conversion of a party's interest to an NSR royalty and the anticipated business plans and timing of future activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Often, but not always, forward looking information can be identified by words such as "pro forma", "plans", "expects", "may", "should", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "potential" or variations of such words including negative variations thereof, and phrases that refer to certain actions, events or results that may, could, would, might or will occur or be taken or achieved. In making the forward-looking statements in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including without limitation, that market fundamentals will result in sustained precious metals demand and prices, the receipt of any necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in connection with the future development of the Companys Argentine projects in a timely manner, the availability of financing on suitable terms for the development, construction and continued operation of the Company projects, and the Companys ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws.

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors include, among others, operating and technical difficulties in connection with mineral exploration and development and mine development activities at the Project, estimation or realization of mineral reserves and mineral resources, the timing and amount of estimated future production, costs of production, capital expenditures, the costs and timing of the development of new deposits, the availability of a sufficient supply of water and other materials, requirements for additional capital, future prices of precious metals and copper, changes in general economic conditions, changes in the financial markets and in the demand and market price for commodities, possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates, possible failures of plants, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated, accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry, delays or the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required, including TSX Venture Exchange acceptance of any current or future property acquisitions or dispositions, financing or other planned activities, changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting mining operations, hedging practices, currency fluctuations, title disputes or claims limitations on insurance coverage and the timing and possible outcome of pending litigation, environmental issues and liabilities, risks related to joint venture operations, and risks related to the integration of acquisitions, as well as those factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's latest Management Discussion and Analysis and other filings of the Company with the Canadian Securities Authorities, copies of which can be found under the Company's profile on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements. Except as otherwise required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking information in this news release or incorporated by reference herein.GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Meritage Hospitality Group, Inc. (OTCQX: MHGU), one of the nations premier restaurant operators and developers, today announced that on Friday October 19, 2018 the National Economic Council of the Bahamas approved a proposal submitted by Disney Cruise Line Island Development Ltd. to acquire and develop property owned in partnership between the Company and The Related Group.



The Company through an investment partnership managed by The Related Group owns 765 acres of fee property, known as Lighthouse Point, on the island of Eleuthera, Bahamas. The partnership has entered into a confidential agreement to sell a majority of its 765-acre peninsula to Disney, subject to Government approvals as customary in the Bahamas. Disney has previously reported that it is prepared to invest up to $400 million in the property for the development of a cruise ship port facility, in conjunction with plans to double the capacity of Disney Cruise Lines in the next five years.

Few organizations in the world possess the financial resources, development expertise, global track record of preserving the natural environmental and the ability to showcase cultural heritage like Disney, stated Robert Schermer CEO. We are proud of the association and confident that Disney will be a world-class steward of Lighthouse Point, creating a transformational economic opportunity for many deserving people of South Eleuthera, added Schermer.

Proceeds from the pending transaction will be used for general corporate purposes including; new restaurant development, acquisitions, dividend distributions and stock buy-backs.

The Company reported record sales and EBITDA in the first nine months of the year and believes solid growth will continue through 2018 and 2019, driven by new restaurant development, reimaged locations and acquisitions.

The Company 2018 Full-Year Outlook: Solid Growth Ahead

Sales growth of +40% to 50%

Income from Operations growth of +55% to 65%

Net Earnings growth of +40% to 50%

EBITDA growth of +40% to 50%

Common stock dividend growth +50% to 100%

Meritage continues to distinguish itself as a leader and innovator in the quick service restaurant segment, striving for best in class results through a performance based culture committed to operational excellence, strategic acquisitions and real estate development.



About Meritage

Meritage Hospitality Group is one of the nations premier restaurant operators, with 311 restaurants in operation located in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Meritage is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, operating with a workforce of approximately 10,000 employees. The Company has approximately 6.2 million (basic) common shares outstanding. The Companys public filings can be viewed at www.otcmarkets.com , under the stock symbol MHGU, or the Companys website www.meritagehospitality.com .Governments around the nation are working to design the best vaccine policies that keep both their employees and their residents safe. Although the latest data shows a variety of polarizing perspectives, there are clear emerging best practices that leading governments are following to put trust first: creating policies that are flexible and provide a range of options, and being in tune with the needs and sentiments of their employees so that they are able to be dynamic and accommodate the rapidly changing situation.Marijuana sales in Colorado exceeded $1 billion as of August of this year, with tax revenue from those sales coming in at $200 million, according to a report from the Colorado Department of Revenue and its Marijuana Enforcement Division.Its the earliest point in any of the four years Colorado has had legal recreational marijuana that combined medical and rec sales have cracked the billion-dollar mark.Total combined recreational and medical marijuana sales through August hit $1,022,245,511, according to the MED, setting the state on a trajectory to break last years record of more than $1.5 billion in sales.State officials highlighted the industrys growth in a news release Thursday. The release also shared findings from the Marijuana Enforcement Divisions 2018 Mid-Year Update, released Sept. 10.The products brought to this years fair by the delegation of Vietnam are very diverse, including honey, cashew nuts, pepper, vegetables, rice and rice products.

Attending the fair, Vietnamese businesses not only present products, but also connect with European food and beverage distributors.

At this years fair, the delegation of Vietnamese enterprises will especially focus on introducing organic products. The delegation also includes many enterprises interested in exporting organic products.

The Sial Paris International Food Fair 2018 is the world's leading gathering of more than 7,000 businesses from 109 countries active in the food industry. The event was organised at the Paris Nord Villepinte, in Paris. The fair attracts 155,000 visitors per year from nearly 200 countries around the world.

The fair offers a great opportunity for Vietnamese businesses to introduce their products to food distributors, companies and businesses operating in the hospitality industry around the world and promote Vietnam food industry in general.RATING D-HELD R-HELD I-HELD TOTAL Lean Republican 0 4 1 5 Tossup 0 8 0 8 Lean Democratic 5 2 0 7 Total 5 14 1 20

Shifts Toward Democrats

Competitive Republican-Held Seats

Other Competitive Democratic-Held Seats

Competitive Independent-Held Seats

The polls for congressional races are inducing uncertainty about how much of a blue wave there will be on Election Day. But in the gubernatorial races, the Democrats midterm outlook has improved significantly.Since our last handicapping in mid-September , one incumbent governor has ended his reelection campaign and nine of the nations 36 races for governor have shifted -- all of them in the Democrats' direction.The nine seats moving in Democrats' favor are in Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and South Dakota.Overall, the GOP currently holds a 33-16 edge in gubernatorial offices and therefore has more seats to defend this year -- 26 to the Democrats' nine.In a neutral political environment, Democrats should be able to flip perhaps three governorships. But for the first time since 2006, the GOP will control the White House and Congress during a midterm election -- a balance of power that historically helps the party without the presidency.If the political winds continue to blow in the Democrats' favor, the partys net gain could range from seven to 10 seats. The higher end of that prediction represents an increase of a couple seats since our estimate in September and would give Democrats a slim majority among governors.Our ratings, which are based on polls and conversations with political experts in the states as well as national party strategists, are broken into seven categories: safe Republican, likely Republican, lean Republican, tossup, lean Democratic, likely Democratic and safe Democratic.Currently, we rate 20 of the 36 races in November -- more than half -- as being competitive, meaning that they are either tossups or leaning to one party or the other.The biggest change this month is that there are no longer any Democratic-held seats in the tossup category (or, for that matter, any Democratic-held seats leaning toward the Republicans).By contrast, the Republicans hold 10 seats that are now either in the tossup category or leaning in the Democrats direction.And the Democratic tilt could grow even stronger by the eve of the election. Its conceivable that as many as a half-dozen seats currently rated as lean Democratic could shift to likely Democratic in the coming weeks.As has been the case for the entire election cycle, Republicans have more seats at risk. The GOP currently holds 15 of the 20 competitive seats, compared to just five for the Democrats. In Alaska, the nations only independent governor, Bill Walker, abruptly announced last week that he is ending his reelection bid. He threw his support behind his Democratic opponent, but the race still leans Republican.Those 20 competitive seats include eight tossups -- all in states that currently have Republican governors: Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin.Two GOP-held seats currently lean Democratic (Michigan and New Mexico) while one rates likely Democratic (Illinois).Here's the current breakdown of competitive races:For an interactive version of our ratings map, click here . Below the map is the latest analysis of the most competitive races this cycle.Were shifting two seats from likely Republican to lean Republican:andFor much of the cycle, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu seemed destined for an easy reelection. But in a late September poll by the American Research Group, Sununu was up by just five points over Democratic former state Sen. Molly Kelly. Combine that with New Hampshires reputation as a swing state, and the Democratic political environment, and you have a newly lean Republican race.South Dakotas gubernatorial race remains the shocker of the cycle: In this solidly red state, Democratic state Sen. Billie Sutton is neck and neck with Republican U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, even leading in one late September poll by a Democratic firm. We still think the GOP will pull this out -- the state hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 1974 -- but the race has been a whole lot tighter than expected.Meanwhile, two seats shift from lean Republican to tossup:andIn Georgia's open-seat contest, Democrat Stacey Abrams, the states former house minority leader, faces Republican Brian Kemp, the secretary of state. The race presents voters with a sharp ideological contrast. While history suggests that Republicans should have the edge, Abrams' history-making nomination as an African-American woman has attracted national attention and could energize minority voters in greater numbers than before. However, the states controversial exact match law has put more than 53,000 voter registrations on hold -- most of them filed by minorities. Five recent polls have had the candidates either even or with leads of no more than two points.In Kansas, the controversial tenure of former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback gave Democrats hope of winning usually Republican Kansas. Adding to their optimism is the fact that GOP nominee Kris Kobach, the secretary of state, is too conservative even for many Kansas Republicans. But surveys show independent candidate Greg Orman pulling a steady 9 percent to 10 percent of the vote, leaving Kobach and his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Laura Kelly, neck and neck. Unless Orman fades down the stretch, Kobach and Kelly will battle it out in one of the nations closest gubernatorial contests.Three states move from tossup to lean Democratic:andIn Colorados open-seat race, deep-pocketed Democrat U.S. Rep. Jared Polis has opened up October leads in the high single digits against Republican State Treasurer Walker Stapleton.In Connecticut, Democrat Ned Lamont is leading Republican Bob Stefanowski by margins in the high single digits, easing Democratic concerns that outgoing Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy poisoned their chances after persistent economic and fiscal challenges for the traditionally blue state.And in Rhode Island, Gov. Gina Raimondo has solidified support since the primary. Raimondo faces a rematch against Republican Mayor Allan Fung, her 2014 opponent, but an independent candidate is in the race, and hes more of a danger to Fung. The independent candidate is Joe Trillo, who ran President Donald Trump's campaign in the state in 2016. Recent polls have had Raimondo up in the high single digits to low double digits.One state moves from a competitive rating to a non-competitive rating --, which shifts from lean Democratic to likely Democratic.Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner is the most endangered incumbent in either party as he faces billionaire Democrat J.B. Pritzker. October polls have showed Pritzker ahead by between 16 and 22 points.Andmoves from likely Democratic to safe Democratic.Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced restiveness within his partys left flank, but by now he has all but sealed up a third term over Republican nominee Marc Molinaro, a county executive. October polls have had Cuomo leading by between 18 and 23 points.andremain in the lean Republican category.Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has performed strongly in what was initially pegged as a tough reelection contest. Ducey has generally outpaced his Democratic rival, David Garcia, by double-digit margins. However, two recent polls suggest a modest improvement for Garcia. Ducey remains a clear favorite, but the narrower margins in the late polls suggest this race is not yet destined for the likely Republican category yet.In Oklahoma, the Democrats are still in the hunt, despite the states bright red tinge, partly because of voter dissatisfaction with Republican Gov. Mary Fallin, whose approval rating has fallen as low as 19 percent this year. Republican businessman Kevin Stitt faces former state Attorney General Drew Edmondson, a Democrat. Recent polls have Stitt with a four- to six-point edge.Meanwhile, six Republican-held governorships remain in the tossup category:andIn Florida, Trump-aligned Republican Ron DeSantis has trailed Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum consistently -- albeit narrowly -- since the August primaries. Hurricane Michael is a wild card. It hit blue Tallahassee hard, but parts of the red Panhandle even harder, possibly scrambling turnout. Most recent marquee contests in Florida have been narrowly decided. This one should be no different.Iowa, like other midwestern states, has swung back toward the Democrats this year after turning strongly Republican in 2016. A pair of September polls had Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds trailing Democratic businessman Fred Hubbell by two and five points. The race could go either way.In Maine, where polarizing Republican Gov. Paul LePage is leaving office, Republican Shawn Moody faces Democrat Attorney General Janet Mills. However, two center-left candidates are running as independents, potentially draining votes from Mills. The head-to-head matchup between Moody and Mills has been close for much of the campaign, but two mid-October polls found Mills up by eight points. Until theres additional evidence that Mills has pulled away, were keeping this in tossup.Nevada -- one of the nations closest and trickiest-to-poll states -- has a close tight race between Republican Adam Laxalt, the attorney general, and Democrat Steve Sisolak, a county commissioner. Four polls in October have shown the race anywhere between Sisolak by four to Laxalt by four. The results will depend heavily on whether Democrats can energize their vaunted turnout machine, particularly Hispanic voters in the state.In Ohio, Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine has had small but consistent leads in most polls, but Democrat Richard Cordray, the former head of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has sometimes broken through with a small lead of his own. Observers in the state call the race dead even.And in Wisconsin, Republican Gov. Scott Walker is finding his quest for a third term his hardest race yet. Democrat Tony Evers, the states superintendent of schools, has led in most, though not all, polls since the summer.Finally, two Republican-held seats remain in the lean Democratic category:andIn Michigan, Democratic nominee Gretchen Whitmer has consistently led Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette in polls by between eight and 12 points. The winner would succeed retiring Republican Rick Snyder, who became closely associated with the Flint water crisis.And in New Mexico, Democrat U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham has been outpolling her Republican colleague in Congress, Steve Pearce, by margins in the mid-single digits. The winner would succeed Republican Gov. Susana Martinez.Two Democratic-held seats remain in the lean Democratic category:andIn Minnesota, Democrat U.S. Rep. Tim Walz has consistently led Republican Jeff Johnson, a county commissioner, by margins in the high single digits. A mid-October Marist poll found an even bigger edge for Walz. The winner would succeed outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton.Finally, in a surprise, Oregons contest remains competitive this late in the cycle. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Kate Brown faces a spirited challenge by Republican state Rep. Knute Buehler. We still think the Democrats will pull out a victory in this solidly blue state, but the contest is close enough to keep it in the competitive category.has played host to one of the wildest races of the cycle.Walker, an independent, won office in 2014 after he joined forces with a Democratic running mate and defeated then-Republican Gov. Sean Parnell. But his long odds of reelection lengthened when former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich entered the race as a Democrat, splitting the center-left vote.Republican Mike Dunleavy, a well-funded education administrator and former state legislator, outpaced Walker and Begich by 15 to 20 points in recent polls.Then two and a half weeks before Election Day, Walker quit the race and endorsed Begich. This is still a red state, and there isnt much time for Begich to consolidate Walkers support, so were leaving this race at lean Republican.Solving the Shortage

The Training Gap

Local election officials are dealing with a myriad of issues ahead of Novembers contentious midterms, not least of which is securing systems from malicious actors. One lesser-known problem that continues to concern them is the national shortage of poll workers.They greet you at the plastic folding table set up in your neighborhoods library, church or fire station, asking you for your name, address and, depending on your state, photo ID before handing you a ballot or directing you to a voting machine. More than just glorified receptionists, these underpaid few are really the gatekeepers to democracy.Poll workers can be the difference between a smooth election and long lines, mass confusion and miscounted ballots. But poll workers are older, less prepared and becoming scarcer.In its 2016 biennial survey, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that two-thirds of jurisdictions had a hard time recruiting enough poll workers on Election Day, compared to fewer than half of officials in 2008 and 2012.The shortage is a matter of recruitment and retention, said Aerion Abney, the Pennsylvania state director for All Voting is Local, a project of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Leadership Conference Education Fund.I recognize that being a poll worker is not the most glamorous job, Abney said. People might not even be aware of it. Being a poll worker is an underappreciated job, but they provide a critical service to the public. We want to make sure people know this is an opportunity that exists.All Voting is Local organizers claim it is the first multistate effort to recruit poll workers. The project launched its online campaign last month, while also targeting Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin through billboard, digital newspaper, radio and social media ads.Organizers want to make sure poll workers reflect the communities in which they serve to make voters feel more welcome, focusing especially on people of color and younger people.Poll workers tend to be middle-aged or elderly. Indeed, 56 percent of poll workers in 2016 were 61 and older, according to the Election Assistance Commission survey. Younger people often have work or school conflicts, Abney said.He has traveled around Pennsylvania, showing up at community events and local election offices to spread the word of their initiative. After all, he tells people, its an opportunity to be civically engaged and get paid. There is no set salary for poll workers statewide, but poll workers in Allegheny County, for example, earn between $115 and $140 a day.The groups efforts seem to be working. Nationally, organizers have recruited more than 2,400 people  924 of whom live in Pennsylvania, where organizers have spent more time because needs are more acute.Cherie DeBrest was ready to sign up to be a poll worker in Pennsylvania. For 18 years, she worked with parents and caregivers as a social worker at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, guiding them through the obstacles of medical care. Over the last three presidential elections, DeBrest, 49, led voter registration drives at the hospital, registering staff and the family members of patients whenever she could.Until this election, though, she never sought to become a poll worker on Election Day. For years, shes noticed poll workers were much older than her. Who, other than retirees, has the time to take off work on a Tuesday, she thought. But when she saw the city was looking for new poll workers, she figured it was time to act. I was already thinking about it, she said. Theres no time like the present, so I got on the website and signed up.Counties and states have tried to recruit new poll workers for years. Local election officials are even targeting high schoolers for the job.After Hamilton County, Ohio, implemented electronic poll books in 2015, county officials partnered with local pizza chain LaRosas to hold a countywide competition to see which high school could contribute the most poll workers. The winning school gets a pizza party, and students who serve earn $181.50 for the day.The benefits of younger poll workers are undeniable, said Sherry Poland, the director of elections in Hamilton County, Ohio. They bring enthusiasm, energy and a familiarity and comfort with technology like electronic poll books and optical ballot scanners, she said. They also are more likely to remain poll workers for future elections.It sparks an interest in voting and civic engagement at an early age that might last a lifetime, Poland said.Hamilton County had only four high school poll workers in 2012, Poland said. In 2016 it had 367  14 percent of the countys poll workers that year, she added.In 2016, Ohio, California, Delaware and Michigan were the only states where more than 10 percent of poll workers were 25 or younger, according to the Election Assistance Commission. (Washington, D.C. also beat the 10 percent standard, which was the national average.) A quarter of poll workers in California were 25 and younger.Hamilton County, however, still struggles to get enough poll workers for elections, following the national trend, Poland said. Its an extremely long day, she said, and getting people to commit to a four-hour training class, a two-hour precinct set-up, and a 15-hour Election Day is difficult.More than half of states allow students over 16 or 17 years old to serve as poll workers, according to the Election Assistance Commission.In 2013, President Barack Obama ordered a review of election procedures after the 2012 presidential election was plagued with long lines. One of the signal weaknesses of the U.S. election system, a national commission found, was the absence of a dependable, well-trained corps of poll workers.The primary causes of the problem, according to a 2014 report from New York-based think tank Demos, are a lack of uniform training before Election Day, disparate wages, and little recruitment among public employees and high school and college students.The study found that only 30 states require that all poll workers receive training. Good poll workers boost voters confidence in elections, according to a poll of 2016 voters from nonprofit Democracy Fund. Jurisdictions across the country need to find creative solutions to recruit and train new poll workers, the foundation said.In some places, thats already happening. Employees of Maricopa County, Arizona, for example, can serve as election workers without taking personal time off. Franklin County, Ohio, recruits new poll workers from local businesses, while Brevard County, Florida, has invited 1,700 poll workers since 2012 to receive additional, hands-on training before Election Day.In certain states, nonvoters, many of whom speak a foreign language, also can serve as poll workers. Since 2013, lawful permanent residents in California have been able to serve as poll workers, and many may be able to help the over 2.6 million eligible voters in the state who arent fully proficient in English, according to Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles.At least 24 percent of Los Angeles Countys poll workers are required to be bilingual in one of 16 languages, according to the Orange County Register.In February, Gwinnett County, Georgia, held recruitment events in the Atlanta area to try to find 350 Spanish-speaking poll workers.When DeBrest went into her training last week, she had plenty of questions and was ready to learn as much as she could before Election Day. She wants to be ready if a voting machine malfunctions, a voter needs language assistance, or a person with a disability has an access problem.Shes also recruited some of the hospitals language interpreters to help at some of Philadelphias precincts. The two Spanish speakers and one Arabic speaker she brought on may not have the right to vote as noncitizens, she said, but they can still assist in the electoral process in a meaningful way.She hopes her friends and colleagues at the childrens hospital will join her as poll workers in future elections.Im passionate about putting my words into action and bringing people with me, she said. Hopefully, when they see that I followed through on everything I was preaching about voter engagement, they will feel motivated to do the same.Alaska Gov. Bill Walker announced Friday he is dropping his bid for re-election, and threw support to Democrat Mark Begich over Republican Mike Dunleavy.Walker, elected as an independent, made the surprise announcement at the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention, three days after former Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott abruptly stepped down from both his office and the re-election campaign over unspecified "inappropriate comments" he made to a woman.With less than three weeks until Election Day and with more than 23,000 absentee ballots already mailed to voters, Walker's decision to step away from his campaign marks a significant, last-minute change in the battle to become Alaska's next governor.The three-way race has now become a two-way fight between Begich, a former U.S. senator, and Dunleavy, a former state senator. How this complicates voting is not yet completely clear. Some Alaskans have already sent in their voted ballots.Walker, the only governor in America currently in office who wasn't elected as a Republican or Democrat, had been scheduled to attend a candidate forum at the AFN convention Friday afternoon with his competitors Begich and Dunleavy.Instead, he went on the stage at the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center -- before the forum started -- and told a crowd of hundreds from across the state: "Every decision I have made as your governor, I have made on the basis of what I believe is best for Alaska. With that said, effective today, I am suspending my campaign for the re-election as governor."There were gasps and shouts from the audience.An emotional Walker, in a blue kuspuk, said that with only 18 days until the election, "it has become clear, we cannot win a three-way race." This week, he said, he talked to "many, many, many Alaskans" about who had a better chance of competing against Dunleavy."The determination was made that, at this point, Begich has the better odds," Walker said.Both Begich and Dunleavy were in the crowd watching, along with their families and campaign staff.Dunleavy watched the speech intently, leaned forward, showing no reaction. He stood during a standing ovation when Walker introduced his wife, First Lady Donna Walker. He remained seated at the end of the speech as the crowd gave Walker an ovation.Soon after Walker's announcement, Dunleavy told the Daily News that he will still win the election."That's the goal. That's the plan," he said. "I'm still trying to take all this in. This is news to me."His team plans to forge ahead, he said."We didn't know the lieutenant governor was gonna to drop out, we didn't know the governor was gonna drop out," Dunleavy said. "We don't know what's gonna happen over the next 18 days."Friday night, Dunleavy's campaign sent out an emailed statement criticizing Walker's announcement."Governor Walker could have chosen a dignified, graceful exit to his campaign," Dunleavy campaign manager Brett Huber said in the statement. "Instead, he opted to bow out with a bitter, partisan attack on Mike Dunleavy. It's too bad -- Alaskans deserve better."Ballots already sentWalker, a Republican-turned-independent, was elected in 2014 on a so-called unity ticket with Mallott, a Democrat, and defeated incumbent Republican Sean Parnell.Walker entered office facing low oil prices and multi-million dollar budget shortfalls. Some voters never forgave him for pushing for an income tax -- Alaska has no statewide tax -- and pushing a spending plan that led to smaller annual Permanent Fund dividend checks.Election Day is Nov. 6 and early voting starts Monday. The Walker-Mallott ticket will remain on the ballots, which have already been certified and printed, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.More than that: The division has already sent out more than 23,000 absentee ballots, and Alaskans have voted and returned just over 3,000 of them, according to the division.It's unclear what Walker's withdrawal from the race means for the election process.Samantha Miller, division spokeswoman, said she did not yet have information Friday about the implications of Walker's dropping out on voting, including what it means for Alaskans who may have already sent in their absentee ballots and voted for the Walker-Mallott ticket."We're still processing through everything and we'll have more information available on Monday," she saidDescription

GIS 22 October, 2018: Mauritius is a model of peace not just for the region but for the whole world.

This statement was made on Friday 19 October 2018 by the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion, Reverend Joshiah Idowu Fearon after paying a courtesy call on the Prime Minister, Minister of Home Affairs, External Communications and National Development Unit, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, at the New Treasury Building in Port Louis.

Reverand Fearon highlighted that his meeting with Prime Minister Jugnauth was cordial and discussions focused on youth, unemployment and the drug scourge amongst others.

The General Secretary of the Anglican Communion Reverand Fearon from Nigeria was accompanied by the Bishop of Mauritius, the Right Reverend Ian Ernest.54% of companies are worried that they might outgrow their current security solutions, putting them at greater risk.  Threat Stack, 2018

91% of company leaders believe that development teams are introducing new risks to their organization.  Threat Stack, 2018

Cloud computing is more than a decade old, but cloud security, compliance, and even definitions of the technology components, are changing rapidly.As cloud adoption surges almost everywhere, some governments are even moving from a cloud-first policy to a cloud-only policy with a few rare exceptions.Others are still trying to grasp the scope of technology change and keep up with understand what their employees and contractors are doing online. What software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps are being used by staff? How are users opening up security holes in the cloud? Where is data being stored? How are protections working? Can you know any of this information for sure at any given moment?Last year, I provided these seven tips for securely moving your data to the cloud , which included some basic definitions. In this blog, I want to dive deeper into cloud security trends and offer steps to consider. According to Geekwire and Gartner , cloud computing will be a $186.4 billion market this year, growing to over $302 billion by 2021. In 2018, cloud computing  which for the purposes of this discussion includes all the SaaS, infrastructure, platform, and software  will be a $186.4 billion market, Gartner predicted . Thats a 21 percent jump compared to $153.5 billion in 2017, led by cloud infrastructure services like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, which should grow 35 percent in 2018 to $40.8 billion. And as far as government is concerned , the cloud market is set to grow to $49.2 billion by 2023. Gartner sees double digit growth in cloud adoption, with spending forecast to grow on average 17.1 percent per year through 2021. The key to successfully implementing cloud in government is accounting for the unique technical, organizational, procedural and regulatory issues of individual organizations, says Neville Cannon, research director at Gartner.Government private cloud is the new legacy, says Cannon.TechRepublic recently highlighted that in a recent industry survey that technology and security leaders are focusing more on cloud security.Why? Only 41% of respondent infrastructure remain on-premises, the release said. Businesses are increasingly migrating to alternate infrastructure options like IaaS (25%), PaaS (17%), and containers (10%).Over the past six months I have interviewed many public-sector CIOs, CISOs as well as private-sector technology leaders, and they have all highlighted the importance of new cloud architectures. It seems that everyone has a special emphasis on cloud security efforts. For example: Arizona CISO Mike Lettman : We developed a process to identify risk with our cloud vendors. We are a cloud-first state, and I was told we are the state with the most significant presence in Amazon. I had no idea how our cloud vendors were protecting our data. At the time we had measurements from CSA (Cloud Security Alliance) which was mainly subjective, to FedRAMP (federal govs cloud framework) which required vendors to go through a lengthy, expensive process to get certified. We desired something in between. Some needed a way to determine issues and risk. So we developed the AZRamp process for cloud vendors. New Jersey CISO Michael Geraghty : The Statewide Information Security Manual (SISM) was one of the first projects we took on.  Its an interconnected series of policies and standards that has been derived from applicable laws; industry best practices including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure; the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Top 20 Critical Security Controls; the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM); lessons learned; and other New Jersey state government business and technology-related considerations. Tenable CEO Amit Yoran : Companies like Tenable are developing solutions to better evaluate companies cyber exposure, manage the elastic attack surface and further cloud security. Organizations are now understanding the value of continuous monitoring and are looking for tools to better mitigate cyber risk. I have also highlighted the federal governments FedRAMP program going back several years as well as the need for contractors to address security compliance deadlines . Recent updates from FCW on these security compliance needs for government are also helpful.Today, the FedRAMP program is the must do list for federal agencies and is becoming a core need for many state and local governments that are custodians of federal data. FedRAMP simplifies security for the digital age by providing a standardized approach to security for the cloud.For most leading governments, even those not requiring FedRAMP certification for applications or hosting of data, many organizations are implementing Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions.Gartner defines CASB as: An on-premises or cloud-based security policy enforcement point that is placed between cloud service consumers and cloud service providers to combine and interject enterprise security policies as cloud-based resources are accessed. Organizations are increasingly turning to CASB vendors to address cloud service risks, enforce security policies, and comply with regulations, even when cloud services are beyond their perimeter and out of their direct control.  CASB offers four main functions : Discover which cloud applications are used across the business, secure data, protect against threats, and ensure compliance with corporate policies.  According to Netskope , a leading cloud security solution provider recommended by Gartner: By 2020, 60 percent of large enterprises will use a cloud access security broker.I recently asked Sanjay Beri, who is the CEO of Netskope, to provide more insight on where cloud security is heading next. Here is that brief interview.I would start with a need for increased infrastructure as a service (IaaS) governance. With IaaS misconfigurations and inadvertent sensitive data storage exposure causing some of the biggest breaches dominating the news in the past year, businesses are increasingly focusing on increasing governance to prevent data loss. Demand for continuous security assessment and monitoring, effective data loss prevention, and malware and threat protection are at an all-time high. Customers increasingly expect vendors to offer these capabilities.Second, the use of the cloud for cyberattacks. Between malware, ransomware, crypto-jacking, and other malicious activity, hackers are nearly untethered in terms of available attack vectors for infiltrating the cloud environment. This trend will get worse before it gets better.Third, accounting for the mobile workforce. To stay competitive, businesses need to find security solutions that do not significantly impact or limit user experience. Security practitioners are increasingly choosing solutions that give immense insight into and real-time protection of cloud activity without banning critical employee tools.As cloud adoption expands and demands for shareable data increases, security teams need to keep a close eye on the many channels being used to communicate and share data. Rather than blocking use of those channels, which often impacts employee productivity and flexibility, security leaders need to have the right guardrails in place to ensure employees arent intentionally or inadvertently exposing the data to the outside world, and in turn exposing the company to costly vulnerabilities.Over the past few years, I frequently highlight the need for state and local governments to follow the lead of their federal counterparts and offer more bug bounties as well as establish coordinated vulnerability disclosure programs . Now, that bug bounty trend is starting to take-off in a variety of ways, as more and more vulnerabilities are being found in online services offered by governments.In much the same way, I see the growing need for improvements in cloud security for public sector enterprises as more data is moved into the cloud in various forms. Some state and local governments have implemented a CASB solution, but I see this percentage growing fast in the next two years.Beyond just a one-time discovery of enterprise cyber-risk, new CASB tools from companies like Netskope provide a constant view of cyberthreats from various channels in an ongoing, even real-time, manner.As CIOs and CTOs move more and more data out of government-owned data centers and into shared cloud infrastructure and services, security teams need this new viewpoint in a much more granular level at the same time.Therefore, as we head into the 2020s, I have no doubt that more and more public-sector security teams will implement CASB solutions to address cloud computer security.My advice: Start planning for cloud security management tools now and research CASB solutions to help achieve the best results.There has over these past many years been climate change deniers who have changed their "tone" just a wee bit. Even President Trump in theinterview spoke to the changing climate conditions and their impacts.This is a significant tipping point in the debate over climate change. The deniers are now saying temperatures are rising, but the cause is not known. Ah, this last piece is what they are holding onto to escape taking any action on carbon or fossil fuels. Now we are in the realm of "climate variability" that has always been at work, the Wisconsin Glacier for instance. Here today, gone tomorrow, back again someday  maybe.We don't really know the cause of the warming climate, "some people" say it is not attributable to humans, yada, yada ...Then there is this story,which highlights the impacts to our military forces from just one storm hitting an airbase. As for why the F-22s were not flown out of harm's way, I agree with one of the people commenting, that it was likely maintenance and parts issues. The airbase is in the continental USA, so their priority for parts is lower than that of forward-deployed forces/aircraft. Your location and mission determine your ability to get spare parts. Also, did you know with the booming economy and airlines, many military flight technicians have been bailing out of the active-duty forces to take civilian jobs. Likely, all the baby boomer mechanics are retiring also.Lastly, in another interview National Guard Commanding General, Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel , who is quoted in the above article unwilling to attribute warmer temperatures to human activities, highlights the issue of non-science-based policy-making. When senior leaders waffle, their subordinates also waffle. Thus we have a series of wafflers who are in charge. Never a good thing when you are looking to have decisions make on allocating money and priorities. Prompt, effective decision-making that takes advantage of the time still available -- which ends up being the casualty.Claire Rubin shared the first link above.(TNS)  The FBI's Heart of America Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, where a cadre of examiners impart their crime-fighting expertise, is littered with the remnants of hard drives, cellphones, circuit boards and everything else in the bulging array of electronic devices that record data.Here, the seemingly infinite chains of 1s and 0s that coalesce to form data are mined for secrets that prosecutors will use to influence jurors.Their services are needed now more than ever, as the technology that enriches the lives of everyday Americans provides information about where people are, what they are doing, and what their motivations may be. In addition to computers, phones and tablets, your car, lights, TV, thermostat, appliances and voice-controlled smart speakers can be harvested to reveal your every move and intention."The majority of our cases are things that are with us all the time, and there's so much evidence to be gained because of the fact that it's with you all the time," said Sarah Lucas, the lab director and a supervisory special agent with the FBI. "There are people that are connected all the time. I struggle to think of a crime that wouldn't have a digital component."For 15 years, the Kansas City lab  one of 17 in the FBI's arsenal  has united officers selected by local agencies in Kansas and Missouri to serve on the front lines of a cyber battle with criminals. By assigning an employee to the unit, the local agency gets unlimited access to an immense collection of tools, software and expertise. The FBI trains and certifies the examiners to glean and parse data, or make audio and video easier to hear and see.This is where they discovered the metadata that BTK  Wichita's notorious serial killer  unwittingly abandoned on a floppy disk, leading authorities to Dennis Rader's church. Examiners here discovered and dissected chatroom comments that Melvern, Kan., resident Lisa Montgomery exchanged with Bobbie Jo Stinnett before Montgomery traveled to Skidmore, Mo., to murder Stinnett and rip the unborn child from her victim's womb.Darrin Jones, special agent in charge of the Kansas City division of the FBI, said the goal is to build a cadre of extraordinarily professional and competent digital examiners.If someone embezzles money, he said, the culprit may have been thinking about how to do it. He may have a co-conspirator. They develop a plan. They create a document on how to do it, which might reside on a computer, a phone or in the cloud.That's where the digital examiners come in."They have to have the expertise to take the stand and tell a jury how did that document get there, who created it, when was that document edited and by whom," Jones said. "Was that document transmitted? Where? What was the mechanism? Because as you can imagine, everyone's entitled to a robust defense. Great defense attorneys are going to challenge at every step of the way, as they should, this evidence."Examiners at the lab have access to special tools in different rooms to meet specific needs. They can place a phone in a box that blocks electromagnetic waves  so you can't erase, alter or access it remotely  while they make an identical copy of its data. This is one of the few labs that has software capable of cracking iPhone encryption, which can take between 2 seconds and 29 years, depending on your password.A powerful microscope and hair-thin soldering iron are used to retrieve data from damaged goods. Earlier this year, the lab's services were called into action when a woman's body was discovered after two months in the Platte River. Examiners were able to access data from her waterlogged phone and conclude there was no foul play.In the evidence room, rows of shelves are filled with devices sealed in pink plastic bags. On average, the turnaround time for reviewing evidence is 90 days. For more serious, time-sensitive crimes, the volume of staff and a mobile unit allow for immediate results."We'll go out on scene at 11 at night and make sure we do everything on site so then we're doing it within an hour," Lucas said. "We have other things that come in and it's a priority  'I need this because I have trial in a week.' We'll prioritize those things and make sure they get in."The lab can deploy a blue van with a massive server rack and all the tools needed to process, harvest and review data on location.Scott Slifer, the lab's deputy director and a forensic examiner with the Lawrence Police Department, said the FBI partnership gives officers from smaller agencies an opportunity to work on high-profile cases.When Terry Loewen landed on the FBI's radar by advocating for violent jihad on Facebook, Slifer helped answer questions for investigators. They knew the avionics technician wanted to bomb the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, but what else was he thinking about? How was he radicalized?"It was an absolutely fascinating computer exam," Slifer said. "You could see it on his computer  the internet history, the books that he read, the things that he was interested in. How does an American end up where he was?"Shawnee County Sheriff Herman Jones said having Cpl. Thad Winkelman at the FBI lab, where he was first assigned in 2005, gives his agency "first-line access to the latest forensic techniques and equipment." Winkelman, who is certified to work on computers, cellphones, video, audio and vehicle infotainment systems, also serves as a local instructor.Marc Rogers, a professor at Purdue Polytechnic Institute who trains lab technicians and helped set up the FBI lab in Louisville, Ky., said there is "a wicked demand" for those who have computer forensic skills. Bad guys don't have to worry about whether they are using court-certified processes when they deploy technology for nefarious means, leaving law enforcement "a couple of steps behind," Rogers said.Part of the challenge is the "internet of things," a phrase that refers to the volume of devices that communicate with each other. There is too much data now, Rogers said, to review it all.A benefit to having that data  from the police perspective  is how it can be used to scrutinize a suspect's alibi. Darrin Jones, the special agent in charge, said GPS signals may show your car was at the scene of the crime as the crime was being committed and that your phone was connected to the car's Bluetooth system. Your home's motion-detection lights didn't come on, you weren't watching Netflix, and the thermostat was in sleep mode because there was no activity in the house."We get paid to think in a bad way, or to be a little paranoid," Jones said. "I actually have to have people think about how the refrigerator could be used to commit a crime. What could the furnace tell me about activity that may have happened in that house?"United States GP 2018

Saturday Press Conference

Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel, United States GP 2018  RV Press

DRIVERS

1 - Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

2 - Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

3 - Kimi RAIKKONEN (Ferrari)

TRACK INTERVIEWS

(Conducted by Martin Brundle)

Q: Congratulations Lewis, another pole position. Take us through the lap. That was an important one wasnt it?

Lewis HAMILTON: That was very important. How are you guys doing? You good? That was close. These guys have I didnt know how close it was going to be once we got to qualifying, but once we got to the last run I knew it was quite edgy between us and that it was going to require solid laps. The first one was decent, but not good enough, and the second one was just that little better and enabled me to pull that out. You know there have been some races where Ive not actually done a better time and Ive had to bail out of the second lap, so I was very, very adamant that today I was going to do a better second lap, so Im very happy with that.

Q: Just spitting rain a little bit, but any troubles out on track?

Hamilton: No, the track has been incredible. It started out very, very green and slippery in practice three and then once we got into qualifying it was just rubbering in and it was getting faster and faster every session. The wind direction: there is a beautiful headwind going into the Esses. The Esses are just incredible; its little bit like Maggots and Becketts. And also, theres such a big crowd here. We did a fan signing earlier and Ive never seen the fans so hyped before, so its great, but big thank you to the team and everyone here.

Q: Just very briefly: the supersofts - you had to do an extra lap, so your start tyres, are they OK?

Hamilton: Well see tomorrow. But the Ferraris are obviously really quick so I just hope for better weather for everyone thats in the grandstands watching and I hope that its an exciting race tomorrow.

Q: Thank you. Where is Sebastian? Sebastian, great lap, P2, through your Friday pain youll start P5 of course. Take us through your qualifying session?

Sebastian VETTEL: It was pretty close obviously. Its always a bit of a shame when you miss out on just that little time. I think with six hundredths you can always debate you had them somewhere in you. But I was pretty happy with the laps I had. I think it was quite tricky to get everything together. Obviously its been dry today and better for us, but the wind was quite tricky for us but its the same for everyone. Yeah, pretty happy. I think given the last couple of weeks that we had, pretty happy that we are back in range.

Q: Yeah, Ferrari are back on form arent they it seems; youve found your pace again?

Vettel: Yeah, it seems that we are, obviously not in the wet but in the dry it seems that we are better off and I think today has been surprisingly close. I dont think we expected it to be that close, so thats good.

Q: So, some work to do in the race from P5?

Vettel: Yeah, Im used to it, so I know how to do it now.

Q: Kimi, happy 39th birthday during the week, still plenty of speed there isnt there?

Kimi RAIKKONEN: Yeah, a little bit too slow, but I can deal with it. No, its been a pretty positive day and for sure I think we got pretty close. Its far from ideal but I feel good with the car. Well try tomorrow; its going to be a long race, and nobody really knows how the tyre will survive, because of yesterdays rain, so it will be interesting.

Q: And of course you will start on the ultrasofts, unlike people around you?

Raikkonen: Yeah, not much to lose, so well try to make a good start and go from there and see what we can do. I think it should be OK.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Lewis, your third pole position here at COTA - but an extremely tight battle with all three of you covered by less than a tenth of a second. Just how intense was that fight out there for you today?

Hamilton: Clearly very intense. Naturally, going into qualifying, really wasnt sure what to expect - because basically, obviously, we were driving in the wet yesterday. And today, in practice, the Ferraris looked like theyd made some improvements, obviously. Theyve brought an upgrade of some sort and looks like they may have taken it off. But otherwise, anyways, we were very, very close. So, I knew it was going to take perfection and very, very neat laps to outpace them. I think James had told me, our strategist had told us it was very, very close between us all so give it everything. And I think Q1 and Q2 was fairly straightforward for us - but then once we got to Q3 it was just really about maximising, making sure on the track at the right time and not leaving a millesecond on the track. The first lap was good but obviously quite close between us all. I knew, being that I was less than a tenth, I think it was, ahead, I knew that the next lap, these guys would improve also. So, there was no room for error. And considering theres been some qualifying Q3s in the past races where Ive had to bail out of the second one because it wasnt good enough, so I was very, very strict with myself today. I was like today, you have to make sure you pull through on that second lap, which Im so grateful I did. Nonetheless, the team have done really great job this weekend. I think the approach for us has been very sturdy and weve not been getting ahead of ourselves. We knew that this weekend it was going to be close, and that we have to do the same due diligence and same work effort and workload as before, and yeah, this a great result. Im so happy. It was a different feeling today, coming in. I dont know why. I dont know if I slept longer or not. I was in a different headspace going into qualifying, which is weird but it was a good one.

Q: Sebastian, Lewis is talking about how fine the margins were today. Do you feel that gap was out there anywhere, or can you not pinpoint where the gap is between the two of you?

Vettel: I think if its less than a tenth, you always think probably there was a little bit left but I was pretty happy with the laps I had, to be honest and I think overall its been a positive surprise, I guess for both of us, to see how competitive weve been today, given how far weve been behind the last events. So, I think theres probably more positives - but yeah, if youre that close, you want to be ahead, not behind.

Q: Kimi, similar question to Sebastian really, with the gaps so close. Were you happy with your run, or do you feel you left anything out there?

Raikkonen: I think if you do a few more tries then for sure that amount you can improve. Its just a very small difference somewhere, and you could be suddenly that much quicker - but this is what we got today. I think the last run was pretty good but the previous had very little grip, so then I was surprised how much on the last run I had, so obviously, when you have a bit more consistent grip its more easy to know how much you can actually push - but yeah, it was OK.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Scott Mitchell - Autosport) Question for Sebastian. You talked about it being a positive surprise after the last few races. Why do you think youve been able to make that step? Is it an understanding of what happened before? Do you think maybe the cooler conditions helped? And is there in any way an element of frustration to be so close to pole and obviously know that youve got the three-place penalty applied?

Vettel: Well, I cant change that now. Obviously, it is what it is. We went back with our car quite a long way, and it seems to work better that way.

Q: (Peter Windsor) Lewis, congratulations. You used the word perfection there. Im interesting to know from your perspective whether that was the perfect lap? I dont think you were purple in [sector] one but I wonder if that was a function of perfectly using the tyres for the lap?

Hamilton: No, it wasnt a perfect lap. You know I never talk about perfect laps. Naturally, I think thats what were all striving to achieve but its just theres so many parameters out there. You get out there and theres different gusts of wind every time you hit a corner. Tyre temperature differences. You know. A different heartbeat on the different bumps. Theres so many different variables and youre really just on your tippy-toes the whole way, trying to catch it and grab it and utilise the grip. But anyway, for me, no, I think the first section, for some reason theyre particularly quick there. I think some of that was probably in Turn One, mostly. They generally have a car thats better in corners like that. But then the rest of the lap was good. There was no mistakes. The first lap was quite good - but there was a little bit of time loss I think maybe, in the exit of in a couple of corners. Turn 11, Turn 12. Maybe 13 and a little bit in 20 - but that second one, I was obviously able to capitalise and make sure I didnt drop the ball. So, I mean, it was a good lap but for me the highest one I have still is Singapore. But, I tell you, this track is incredible this year. Its taken another step for us. That first section, were flat-out through Turn Two - which is easy - then Three, Four, Five, all the way into Six, and youre pretty much flat all the way into Six and halfway through Six. So the G-Force that youre pulling through there is incredible. And then you dont really have much of a lift, or much of a lift for Seven. And then youre braking down, and because theres a headwind coming from Turn 11, which hits you dead on into Eight, the cars hooked-up through there and its really fantastic to drive. So I really enjoyed todays lap.

Q: (Christian Menath) Looked like in Q2 with the Supersoft tyres, Ferrari had the upper hand. Lewis, are you concerned by that and Sebastian and Kimi, do you see your biggest chance in that?

Hamilton: Im not really sure where all the time was. They were obviously very quick. I dont think it was as big as that. What did Kimi have? It was just Sebastian, wasnt it, so it was about four tenths? Well, I just think it shows I mean this weekend, were pretty much on a par performance-wise, I think. As you can see in qualifying, that was the max for all of us and as Kimi said, we could go around and do some improvements, more improvements everywhere but were pretty much dicing around the same kind of performance which, as Seb said, theyve gone back on some of their potential updates and the car is better in the sweet spot and for us, weve not brought updates here so were on max downforce level here. I think thats how it is for us all. I think thats great to see us so close and still Im hopeful for the future to have more teams, more qualifyings like that, that are closer, but with more cars involved, thats got to be the ultimate goal for Formula One.

Q: Sebastian, do you think youve got an advantage on the supersoft tyre?

Vettel: No, I think he probably had a bad lap, I dont know.

Hamilton: Me? No, it was a good lap. I dont really do bad laps too often.

Vettel: Yeah, so if thats the case, I will take it and we are half a second faster tomorrow on the supersofts. Thank you.

Q: And Kimi, youll be starting on the ultrasoft. Do you think the supersoft holds an advantage or are you confident?

Raikkonen: I have what I have and Im happy about it so we will see how it works out tomorrow. Its a bit impossible to say.

Q: (Peter Windsor) Lewis, when Max had his problem, did you then have to change the way you used any kerbs at all, did it affect the way you were thinking in terms of kerb strike after Verstappens problem? You were told on the radio that hed hit a kerb

Hamilton: The team were a little bit more nervous about it. I hadnt hit the kerb where he had his Max likes to use a lot of the track as you know from history here so but there are those big sausage kerbs at the back which yeah, I dont know how he damaged the car there but I wasnt going over that area. I think there was another corner out of the exit of the last corner where there are those bumps also which I might have just clipped the edge of them but it wasnt really a problem but no, naturally the team were just alerting me to an issue that someone else has had so you can avoid it. But it didnt really come into my driver thoughts because I wasnt driving on those areas anyway.

Q: Sebastian, were you told of Maxs problem and did that affect anything, the way you attacked the lap?

Vettel: Not really, but I saw it on TV and then yeah, of course, you take action, you dont want to damage the car so I tried not to go there too much.The Vietnamese firms are introducing their handicrafts and household utensils made of natural materials such as rattan, bamboo, timber, rush, jute, water hyacinth, clay, and shells to international consumers. These are environmentally-friendly products that are suitable for the current global consumption trends.

Nguyen Duy Kien, Deputy Consul-General in charge of Economic-Commercial Affairs at the Consulate General of Vietnam in Hong Kong (China) and Macau (China), said that the Mega Show is Asias largest-scale prestigious trade fair for gifts, home appliances, and toys.

It is also the most direct channel for Vietnamese businesses to introduce their products to international buyers, thus helping to boost Vietnams exports, he added.

Kien said many Vietnamese enterprises have signed big export contracts at the event, noting that after attending the Mega Show Hong Kong (China) 2017, a large number of Vietnamese businesses signed contracts with foreign partners for supplying goods for the whole year.

At this years event, the booths of Vietnamese enterprises have continued to attract the attention of many visitors. Vietnamese businesses hoped they will be able to reach new records in exporting handicraft items after the event.

The organisers said the Mega Show Hong Kong (China) 2018 drew the participation of 4,100 businesses from over 30 countries and territories, with 5,300 booths. This years event is expected to lure some 55,000 visitors, higher than the figure of 52,000 in 2017.News

Family works as a compass to guide Sharjahs development

The second edition of the Child Safety Forum, organised by the Child Safety Department (CSD), an affiliate of the Supreme Council for Family Affairs in Sharjah (SCFA), opened on Wednesday morning with Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher Bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, Chairperson of SCFA, asserting that the family is the compass guiding Sharjahs journey of development and the driving force that led us to provide the best social services with the child at the core of our programmes and initiatives.





Haiti - FLASH : The Interior Ministry shocked condemns and denounces





In a note, the Ministry of the Interior and Local Authorities "is shocked at the images of a video circulating showing without dignity, the corpses of young citizens mistreated thrown in a garbage truck."



The Ministry has many concerns, knowing that there are people who broadcast these images on social networks, without any fear or respect for corpses, nor for the lives of people in general.



"The Ministry strongly condemns the actions of individuals and groups in society who want to make believe these images as abuses committed by the police on the population, which is FALSE.



The Ministry denounces these dishonest political actions, intended to sow instability throughout the country, on the basis of false information, to put the peaceful citizens angry, so that they join them. This type of conspiracy, is one of the various attacks made by these groups for some time to cause problems to the power in place.



The Ministry is asking State authorities without delay to explain this case and asks the population to remain calm and not to get involved in these political manipulations."



HL/ HaitiLibre





















Haiti - Politic : Appointment of 2 new personalities with rank of Minister





After the appointment last September of 3 Secretaries General with rank of Minister https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25560-haiti-flash-haiti-has-a-minister-in-charge-of-patriotism.html Patrick Sully Joseph, Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister in charge of Electoral Matters; Stephanie Auguste, Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister in charge of Human Rights and the fight against Extreme Poverty and Guy Francois Junior, Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister in charge of Citizenship and Patriotism.



In the official journal "Le Moniteur" N 183 dated Monday, October 22, President Jovenel Moise signed and published two new decrees appointing two citizens with rank of Minister.



The first appointing the citizen Jean Hilbert Lebrun as General Secretary of the Presidency, with the rank of Minister



The second nominating citizen Nahomme Dorvil as Director of Cabinet of the President of the Republic with the rank of Minister



To which must be added the 3 already appointed General Secretaries with rank of Minsiter Hugues Joseph Secretary General of the Primature, Yves Germain Joseph Secretary General of the Presidency, Renald Luberice Secretary of the Council of Ministers and more recently Jimmy Albert Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister (Ordered 19 September 2018).



Total 6 persons with Minister Rank 3 with Minister Delegate rank.



HL/ S/ HaitiLibre





















Haiti - DR : Seizure of more than 100kg of marijuana from Port-au-Prince





On Saturday, following the work of the Dominican intelligence services, members of the specialized body of border security (CESFRONT) seized in Cabo Rojo on the south coast in the Pedernales Province, 23 marijuana bullets for a total of 229 pounds (103.8 kg) which were concealed in a cache of a truck carrying clothing from Port-au-Prince.



Three people who were transporting this merchandise, were arrested during this seizure and identified as Juan Herasme, Michael Cuevas and Jessi Reyes. The CESFRONT leader, Colonel Jose Manuel Duran Infante handed over the drugs and the 3 detainees to the National Directorate of Drug Control (DNCD).



Recall that in recent months, the CESFRONT and the Dominican army have harsh blows drug traffickers and smugglers of goods from Haiti, dismantling more than 10 mafia gangs.



See also :

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-25644-icihaiti-dr-seizure-of-23-tons-of-smuggled-garlic-from-haiti.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-19097-icihaiti-dr-seizure-of-104-kg-of-narcotics-from-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17849-haiti-security-over-230-kg-of-narcotic-from-haiti-seized-in-dr.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16698-haiti-dominican-republic-drug-seizure-at-the-border.html



SL/ HaitiLibre

















Ministers

Learn about the ministers of the Health portfolio, including who they are, what they are responsible for and what they do.(HedgeCo.Net) a Federal Court Judge in Boston, Massachusetts, has sentenced Ross McLellan, a former State Street Corp. executive, to 18 months in prison for his role in a scheme to defraud customers of State Streets Transition Management line of business. McLellan was found guilty of applying hidden commissions to billions of dollars of securities trades for these customers.

The criminal conviction is based on substantially the same conduct alleged in a parallel enforcement action brought by the SEC. The SECs complaint against McLellan, which was filed on May 13, 2016 in federal court in Boston, charges McLellan with violating the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and aiding and abetting violations of the antifraud provisions of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder by others at State Street. The SECs litigation is ongoing.Malste is referring to remarks made recently by Petteri Orpo (NCP), the Minister of Finance. Orpo on Saturday viewed that the key to breaking through the gridlock over the much-criticised legislative proposal could be to apply provisions on local bargaining in the working hours act also to non-unionised businesses.

Antti Malste, the head of labour market affairs at Trade Union Pro, says there is already a solution to the long-running dispute between trade unions and the government over what the former have branded the lay-off law.

The minister of finance seems to have forgotten that theres already an agreement on promoting local bargaining that was supported by the government. And the National Coalition. The proposal fell through due to opposition from the Federation of Finnish Enterprises. So, theres already a solution to the dispute, Malste pointed out on Twitter.

The legislation currently stipulates that non-unionised businesses can only agree locally on flexibilities to regular working hours.

The Federation of Finnish Enterprises has demanded that the right be expanded, arguing that the practice should be the same regardless of whether the business or employees are unionised. Trade unions have interpreted the demands as an attempt to crumble the universally binding nature of collective bargaining agreements.

Orpo on Saturday assured the government is ready to return to the negotiating table with labour market organisations.

Allowing non-unionised businesses to apply the provisions laid out in the working hours act is more important business owners than the controversial lay-off law. Im sure the government is ready to return to this if the willingness is there, he commented.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Source: Uusi SuomiThe performance will be staged under a cooperative agreement between the Ho Chi Minh City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) and the Goethe Institute in Vietnam.

The opera will be held under the baton of conductor Tran Nhat Minh and arranged by European theatre director David Hermann, who was previously responsible for the arrangement of Mozarts Die Zauberflote (The magic flute) and the recent Die Freischutz (The marksman) for the HBSO.

The songs will be sung in German while the dialogue of the play will be in Vietnamese. The costumes were designed by widely admired fashion designer Quynh Paris.

The Opera The Bat was officially launched for the first time in Vienna in 1874, becoming one of the most popular operas in the world.

Previously, the opera was introduced to Ho Chi Minh City audiences in August last year and it received great applause from concert goers.Enterprises are only ramping up their attack against trade unions, he declared in an interview on YLE TV1 on Monday. Theyve thereby announced their participation in [the dispute].

The Federation of Finnish Enterprises has become precisely the kind of extra-parliamentary power that it has accused trade unions of being during their ongoing dispute with the government, states Riku Aalto, the chairperson of the Finnish Industrial Union.

The Federation of Finnish Enterprises on Friday encouraged non-unionised businesses to stop charging union dues from their employees in response to yet another series of industrial actions announced by trade unions. The Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sector (JHL) began a two-day strike on Monday, while the Finnish Industrial Union will launch a three-day strike on Thursday.

Jyrki Makynen, the chairperson of the Federation of Finnish Enterprises, stated to the public broadcasting company that the protests staged by trade unions are disproportionate to the issue at hand: a government proposal to ease laying off for small businesses.

Why would we raise funds for trade unions while theyre acting against us employers and the decisions of the Parliament, he explained.

Aalto argued that the strike is not about influence or a power struggle but simply about the unwillingness of trade unions to accept even minor revisions to employee protection against unilateral termination.

Both Aalto and Makynen also expressed their hope that the dispute is resolved sooner rather than later.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Source: Uusi SuomiCountry

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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During the week-long tour, the PM conducted nearly 70 multilateral and bilateral activities within the framework of the ASEM 12 and P4G Summit, held a working session with the European Commission and visited Austria, Belgium and Denmark.

At the 12th ASEM in Belgium, the PM made a speech at a plenary session themed Reinforcing the Multilateral System: Advancing the ASEM Partnership on Global Issues.

At the ASEM Leaders retreat discussing regional and global issues, the Government leader stressed that Vietnam and ASEAN member states are working closely with the international community, including ASEM member states, to maintain peace, stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation and overflight, and free trade in the East Sea which connects Asian, European and global trade.

On the sidelines of the summit, PM Phuc held 12 bilateral meetings with heads of state and country leaders, including the Mongolian President, Chinese Premier, Prime Ministers of Norway, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, Russia, Egypt and the UK to discuss ways to boost bilateral ties and deal with specific issues.

Ahead of the ASEM 12, PM Phuc and his Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg were invited to deliver speeches at the 12th Asia  Europe Business Forum, the first official event of the summit.

During the ASEM 12, under the witness of the PM, representatives from Vietnam and the EU signed the Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade Voluntary Partnership Agreement (FLEGT-VPA), laying a foundation for dealing with illegal logging and promoting legal timber trade.

Attending the first P4G Summit in Denmark, the PM conveyed a strong message of the importance of strengthening global cooperation in achieving global green growth goals till 2030.

Vietnam will foster close coordination within 4PG framework in the near future in order to successfully promote sustainable development initiatives via the implementation of the Green Growth Strategy in Vietnam and across the world, he said.

The leader also held talks with his Austrian, Belgian and Danish counterparts and EU President to make new strides in bilateral ties.As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content.

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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.Matt Gutman/ABC News(TAPACHULA, Mexico) -- A caravan of thousands of footsore Central American migrants who say they are seeking refuge from violence in their countries was moving north Sunday under the close watch of an army of Mexican federal police in riot gear.



Mexican officials said federal police were staying in front of the caravan, which stretched about two miles and comprised mostly of people from Honduras and Guatemala many of whom say they are determined to reach the U.S. border 1,700 miles away.



Those officers, transported in a convoy of tour buses and reinforced with riot police from across the country, have announced they will not let the migrants pass a small town near the border.



"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing [the border]," President Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!"

The phalanx of police, supported by Mexican military Blackhawk helicopters overhead, was bracing for a repeat of the violent clashes that occurred on Friday when the caravan stormed and overran a crossing at the Suchiate River at the border of Guatemala and Mexico. Members of the caravan crossed into Mexico illegally by either forcing their way through a border fence or jumping into the river and swimming to the Mexico side.



"Donald Trump, we don't want to cause you any problem, we just want to get a job. Help us," one young migrant told ABC News as he and hundreds of others walked along a road near Tapachula, Mexico.



Among the thousands of migrants are families. Fathers and mothers carrying sweating children on their shoulders, shielding them from the ferocious sun with blankets or their hands. ABC News saw at least one toddler splayed out on the highway sleeping, his father too tired to go on.



Most were carrying small backpacks and plastic bags. They moved forward on battered shoes, some were barefoot.



In a series of tweets last week, President Donald Trump threatened to call up the U.S. military and close our SOUTHERN BORDER if Mexico doesnt do anything to stop the flow of migrants.



In late April and early May, a much smaller migrant caravan made it all the way to the U.S.-Mexico border, but only a handful of the asylum seekers were processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Trump was critical of the caravan and in a series of tweets slammed "Democrat-inspired laws on sanctuary cities" for encouraging such disparate activities.



"Are you watching that mess that's going on right now with the caravan coming up? Are you watching this and our laws are so weak, they're, so pathetic?" Trump said at a rally on April 28 in Michigan.



Trump continued on Sunday to blame Democrats.



"The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party," the president tweeted on Sunday. "Change the immigration laws NOW!"



Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement Sunday morning that she and other U.S. officials are monitoring the caravan's progress and are concerned about criminals infiltrating the group.



While we closely monitor the caravan crisis, we must remain mindful of the transnational criminal organizations and other criminals that prey on the vulnerabilities of those undertaking the irregular migration journey," Nielsen said in her statement.



"We shall work with our partners in the region to investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all who seek to encourage and profit from irregular migration," Nielsen said. "We fully support the efforts of Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, as they seek to address this critical situation and ensure a safer and more secure region."



Most of the migrants ABC News spoke to say they want to march all the way to the United States.



Maria Juaqina, 19, was toting her toddler. She says she has family in Los Angeles, and that only God can open the doors.



Mexico says it's willing to open its doors, temporarily. Mexican police officials used bullhorns Sunday to warn the migrants they were illegally proceeding north. The migrants were advised to apply for asylum in order to get temporary status to legally stay in Mexico.



"You cannot go all around the country like this," the officials on bullhorns shouted at the movable mass of humanity. "You can go to immigration camps or shelters, so we can establish your cases."



Mexican asylum status grants migrants a 45-day stay.



Many in the caravan told ABC News that they feared being deported if they voluntarily went to a shelter or immigration camp. Some were demanding proof that they will not be returned home.



The Mexican Interior Ministry said on Saturday that 640 Honduran migrants have requested refuge in Mexico.



The ministry also said that priority would be given to "164 women, some of them in advanced stage of pregnancy; 104 girls, boys and teenagers, who are from 3 months old to 17 years old; as well as older adults who have varying degrees of disability. This group includes a minor who traveled alone."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.During the visit, PM Phuc held talks with his host and had a meeting with Queen Margrethe II. Together with other heads of state and government, he attended and addressed the first Green Growth and the Global Goals (P4G) Summit initiated by PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen.

The two PMs took note of the vigorous and comprehensive development in the bilateral relationship, and agreed to look for chances to further promote it in the time to come.

They expressed satisfaction at the rapid growth of the bilateral economic relations between the two countries, and reaffirmed their determination to further push up the promotion of bilateral trade and investment. The two sides agreed to jointly study the possibility of cooperation in the fields of Denmarks current strengths which can meet Vietnams goals of modernisation and becoming a high middle-income nation in 2035. They expressed their support for the early signing and ratification of the EU  Vietnam Free Trade Agreement and the Vietnam  EU investment protection agreement.

The two sides highly valued Denmarks cooperation and development assistance contributed to the success in Vietnams development as well as growth in economic relation. They also committed to the more dynamic, intensive and extensive cooperation, especially in the fields of green growth, renewable energy, water, environment and food safety.

The two PMs noted the positive developments in the current energy partnership.

PM Phuc congratulated PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen and the Danish government on the successful holding of the P4G summit, and welcomed Denmarks commitment in bringing into full play the strong potential of the P4G initiative.

The two sides expressed support for the partnership between companies and research institutes of the two countries, and agreed to facilitate the establishment and operation of enterprises of the two countries in the other market.

The two PMs welcomed the continuation of the bilateral cooperation in education and vocational training. They also took note of the increasing people-to-people exchanges in the cultural and socio-economic fields between the two countries.

Denmark reaffirmed the wish to support Vietnams agriculture, aquaculture and animal husbandry.

The two PMs expressed their support to the current common efforts aimed at preventing and controlling the challenges the poor-exercise lifestyle is posing to the population and healthcare system in the whole world.

They stressed the importance of bilateral cooperation at multilateral forums, especially the United Nations.

PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen highly valued Vietnams increasingly positive role in the international arena.

The two PMs agreed to cooperate towards strengthening the regional links between Asia and Europe.

They expressed their support to efforts aimed at pushing up peace, stability, cooperation and friendship in Southeast Asia. The two sides affirmed the importance of ensuring the freedom, rights and obligations enshrined in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982), especially the maritime and aviation freedom in the East Sea, and called on the sides concerned to solve the disputes by peaceful means in line with international law, including the UNCLOS 1982, to refrain from unilateral actions that can escalate tensions, and to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and soon finalise a practical, effective and comprehensive Code of Conduct (COC).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.Cyprus PIO: Turkish Cypriot and Turkish Media Review, 18-10-22 Cyprus Press and Information Office: Turkish Cypriot Press Review Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office Server at <http://www.pio.gov.cy/> Turkish Cypriot and Turkish Media Review-20-22.07.18 No. 203/18 20-22.10.18 [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [A] Turkish Cypriot Press [01] Akinci says that the Deryneia and Apliki crossing points will open in the middle of November [02] Burcu issues statement [03] Erdogan: Greek Cypriot side explorations in the Eastern Mediterranean are doomed to fail [04] Nami-Donmez hold a press conference [05] Ozersay-Mavroyiannis meet [06] Ozersay: "Morfou is exploited politically" [07] Samani speaks on negotiations process [08] Arikli: "Those who attack Cavusoglu are Turkey's enemies" [09] Confiscation against Havadis is seen as an effort to silence the press [10] Denktas on "loose federation" and the economic crisis [11] "International CEO Forum 2018" in occupied Kyrenia [B] Turkish Press [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Ozersay: Only aim of Turkish Cypriots is to protect their rights [02] Erdogan, Trump hold phone conversation on Khashoggi [03] Erdogan vows broadening rights, freedoms [04] Giant refinery opens in Turkey's Izmir for $6.3 bln investment [A] Turkish Cypriot Press [01] Akinci says that the Deryneia and Apliki crossing points will open in the middle of November Turkish Cypriot daily K?br?s newspaper (22.10.18) reports that Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci has said that during the meeting he will hold on 26 October with President Anastasiades they will discuss the future of the island and determine a date for the opening of the Deryneia and Apliki crossing points. Addressing a festival in occupied Ampelikou village, Akinci argued the following as regards his meeting with President Anastasiades: "I believe that we will determine a date with Anastasiades, which will not be very far away, and if we need to be more specific, around the middle of November, regarding the opening of the gates. I wish for this to seriously contribute not only to Lefka, but the villages bound to its region. []" Referring to the Cyprus negotiations, Akinci argued that "the entire world knows now that we have not the luxury of wasting any more time at the junction which we have come". Noting that his view that open-ended negotiations' period has ended was included in the UNSG's report even in an indirect manner, Akinci claimed: "Therefore, there could be result oriented processes which will not be open-ended and will be completed within a reasonable period of time. 'The period of open-ended processes which are not result oriented belongs to the past'. This is what the report says. We have exhibited a decisive stance within a framework which is in harmony with this mentality and without abandoning the understanding for a solution, without throwing the agreements reached until today into the garbage. Of course, we will continue this decisive stance from now on as well". Referring to the same statements, illegal Bayrak television (22.10.18, http://www.brtk.net/akinciderinya-ve-aplic-kapilari-onumuzdeki-ay-acilabilir/) reports on its website that Akinci touched upon the "loose federation" and said that he will listen "with an open mind" to what President Anastasiades has to say. He noted that the Turkish side has all along supported "a structure of two states" and that "the powers of the founding states should be at an adequate level". He argued: "If a partnership state will be established in Cyprus, the common powers should be commonly used, that is in other words, the decisions should be taken with the participation of both sides. If these are respected, there is nothing which could not be agreed". (I/Ts.) [02] Burcu issues statement Illegal Bayrak (20.10.18 http://www.brtk.net/?english posts=baris-burcu-issues-statement) broadcast that Bar?s Burcu, the spokesman of the Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, evaluated the latest developments that have taken place on the Cyprus problem. In his statement Burcu said that the Cyprus report presented by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was compatible to a great extend with the views put forward at the negotiating table by the Turkish Cypriot side under the leadership of Ak?nc?. He said that Akinci's managing the Cyprus negotiations process with his sincere, determined and consistent stance had been effective. Also making a statement regarding a loose federation, Burcu said that the Turkish Cypriot side had no intention of displaying a fundamentalist or hard line stance against discussions taking place on new or creative ideas. He said that up until now the Turkish Cypriot side has always said that they are open to discussions regarding further developing the agreements that have been reached at the negotiations. "New ideas should not be aimed at removing the federation formula that all sides have agreed on and accepted as its founding principles. Discussions should aim at further developing and strengthen these ideas" said Burcu. Referring to the issue of new border crossings opening on the island, Burcu said that Akinci had put forward a strong political will for two new crossing points to be opened between the two sides and had worked so that the crossing points could be prepared. Saying that the Turkish Cypriot side had prepared the border crossings to be opened, he said that Ak?nc? would be coming together with President Nicos Anastasiadis on the 26th of October and they hoped that after discussions on the Deryneia and Aplki gates have been completed they will be able to announce the opening date for the gates. "Ak?nc? also hopes to talk to Mr. Anastasiadis about his concept of a loose federation" said Burcu. "During the talks up until now discussions regarding the power of a possible federal structure were determined and all other powers apart from this were given to the constituent states" he said and added that in the federal powers that were decided, the participation of the Turkish Cypriots was a fundamental principle. "This is what we cannot digest. This is an undisputable truth. In the decisions that were made, the Turkish Cypriot people had political equality and active participation in the decision making process. Something apart from this situation cannot be accepted" said Burcu. [03] Erdogan: Greek Cypriot side explorations in the Eastern Mediterranean are doomed to fail Illergal Bayrak (22.10.18http://www.brtk.net/?english posts=hydrocarbon-resources) Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan made a statement regarding the natural resources surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and referring to the actions of the Republic of Cyprus stated the following: "We are saddened by their unilateral hydrocarbon explorations in the Eastern Mediterranean that are doomed to fail." Erdogan said that Turkey continues to respond firmly to "impositions" in the Eastern Mediterranean. He said that Turkey will continue to respond to these sorts of imposition both in the field and diplomatically. "Everyone will see and understand in the end that these attempts that continue to disregard our country and our brotherhood will end in failure" said the Turkish President. [04] Nami-Donmez hold a press conference Illegal Bayrak (20.10.18 http://www.brtk.net/?english posts=nami-donmez-hold-press-conference) broadcast that Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Donmez has announced that the Barbaros Hayreddin Pasa Seismic Research vessel will continue with its "duties" in the Mediterranean. In a joint press conference with the "minister of economy and energy" Ozdil Nami who was in Izmir, the Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Donmez criticised the what he called "unilateral efforts being carried out by the Greek Cypriots administration on the island's natural resources" by saying that it is possible to accept these efforts as an agreement had not been reached yet sharing the island's natural resources. Saying that for years a variety of collaboration have been carried out between the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Turkey", the Turkish Minister said that projects that would protect the island's security of supply were gaining momentum. On his part Nami said that Turkey would always support and protect the interest of the "TRNC". Explaining that close cooperation between Turkey and the "TRNC" would continue in the energy field, Nami said: "Steps are also being taken to protect the interests of the Turkish Cypriot people offshore the island as well". "We have always extended our hand of friendship but the Greek Cypriot side has always preferred to take unilateral steps. Therefore we will continue to take steps to protect our interests" said Nami. [05] Ozersay-Mavroyiannis meet Illegal Bayrak (20.10.18 http://www.brtk.net/?english posts=ozersay-mavroyannis-meet) broadcast that "deputy prime minister foreign minister" Kudret Ozersay held an unofficial meeting with the Greek Cypriot negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis in Limassol. In a statement he made via his social media account, Ozersay said that he had met with the Greek Cypriot negotiator in New York and this time met with him in Limassol to discuss different issues and exchange views. "In Cyprus for the past 50 years we have been negotiating what is going to happen in the future and carrying out theoretical discussions and therefore we have not been able to live in the now. We have been passing on the opportunities to understand one another. I give great importance to carrying out direct dialogue without proving anything to the United Nations or any other international actors" said Ozersay via his social media statement. [06] Ozersay: "Morfou is exploited politically" Illegal Bayrak (22.10.18) broadcast that "foreign minister" Kudret Ozersay claimed that "Morfou has been politically exploited both in the south and the north within the context of the Cyprus problem". Ozersay's words came during a meeting organised by his Peoples' Party in occupied Morfou. Also present at the meeting was the HP Secretary General Yenal Senin, the "minister of public works and communication" Tolga Atakan, the "minister of interior" Aysegul Baybars , "deputies" from the party as well as other party officials. Speaking during the meeting, Ozersay said that political parties had used Morfou for political reasons. "My view on the issue is that the more we discuss whether or not Morfou will be given away as a concession the further we drag ourselves down. We don't need to discuss this issue for another 50 years and waste our lives. To discuss such an issue in the absence of a negotiations process will only harm us and encourage uncertainty. Opportunity should not be given for this issue to be exploited politically" he said. Also touching upon the negotiations, the HP leader said that the issue of maps was one of the sub-chapters in the talks. "It would be wrong and inappropriate to discuss maps, particularly when both sides withdrew from the table the maps they had presented in the last negotiation process which had collapsed. If we insist on this issue no progress can be achieved" he said. Ozersay added that it would be wrong to use this issue for propaganda purposes. "What needs to be done is to further develop and strengthen Morfou" he argued. [07] Samani speaks on negotiations process Illegal Bayrak (22.10.18) broadcast that Meltem Onurkan Samani, the "special advisor for history and political affairs" of the Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci has said that Ak?nc?'s determined and sincere stance towards reaching a settlement was the reason for the end of the approach for open-ended and fruitless negotiations processes. Speaking on BRT, Samani said that "the 5 party conference which had convened as a result of Ak?nc?'s efforts had forced the Greek Cypriot side to truly face the facts of the settlement which was being negotiated at the table". "This was made official with the Secretary General's latest report. For the first time in the history of the negotiations process, a UN report stated that an open-ended process was no longer supported" she said. Stating that Akinci will be seeking clarification from President Anastasiades about his latest ideas and proposals, Samani said: "I don't think there will be any problems if he (Anastasiades) has ideas that could be useful, especially if he is saying that some powers or authorities should reside with the constituent states. However if this approach is aimed at removing the Turkish Cypriots from the process of the active participation in the decision making process in the new partnership state, then it is out of the question for us to accept this. She also said that the upcoming meeting between the two leaders will reveal the true intentions of the Greek Cypriot side. "If the Greek Cypriot leader intends to start a new open ended process, to resume unilateral hydrocarbon exploration and to continue the status quo, then all will be revealed at the leaders upcoming meeting." [08] Arikli: "Those who attack Cavusoglu are Turkey's enemies" Under the above title, Turkish Cypriot daily Star Kibris newspaper (22.10.18) reports that Erhan Arikli, leader of the Revival Party (YDP), argued that Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is subjected to a systematic attack in the "TRNC", adding that those who attack him are Turkey's enemies and some people who support them are "TRNC's officials". In a written statement, Arikli said that since the establishment of YDP, they have been saying that the thesis of federation has been a dead end and that the time for a plan B has come. He further argued: "Now, Turkey says new things, the Greek Cypriot leader Anastasiades says new things, even the UN Secretary-General in his report said that new things should be said. But some circles, who say that they are speaking on behalf of the Turkish Cypriot people, still insist singing the old songs. In that case, this people will leave them in the past and continues on its way. These people cannot tolerate meaningless negotiations for another 50 years. I thank personally and on behalf of my party Mr Cavusoglu, who has expressed this clearly and made it Turkey's official thesis". (DPs) [09] Confiscation against Havadis is seen as an effort to silence the press Turkish Cypriot daily Yeni Duzen newspaper (20.10.18) reported that "executive officers" visited Havadis newspaper's offices on Friday and confiscated the paper's belongings, because it did not pay compensation to K?br?s newspaper's former administrator Bilge Nevzat, as the "court" had ordered. The "officers" confiscated the paper's furnishings and attempted to take its computers as well. Havadis had published statements about Nevzat made in Turkey by Neriman Nadir, the spouse of K?br?s newspaper's owner Asil Nadir. Nevzat had filed a "lawsuit" against Havadis in March 2015. The paper appealed against the "decision" providing for payment of compensation to Nevzat. The confiscation took place before the "decision" as regards Havadis "appeal" to be taken. The chairmen of Turkish Cypriot journalists' union and press employees' trade union, Sami Ozuslu and Ali Kismir respectively stated that they will use any kind of "legal and organizational power" against the silencing of the press and the violation of the freedom of the press. In a joint written statement, Ozuslu and Kismir expressed their concern about "the planned attacks" carried out against the press by various circles recently. They described the confiscation against Havadis as a "frightening incident" and argued that the attempt to confiscate the paper's computers violates "article 29" of their "constitution", which provides for protection of the instruments of the press. (I/Ts.) [10] Denktas on "loose federation" and the economic crisis Turkish Cypriot daily Kibrisli newspaper (22.10.18) reports that Serdar Denktas, self-styled minister of finance, speaking at his party event at occupied village Elia, referred also to the proposal of President Anastasiades on "loose federation". He noted that they have been defending this for years now and claimed: "You should know that there is no intention for solution in the Greek Cypriot side. () they want to save time by resuming a negotiation process. No need to play such a game." Referring also to the economic crisis and the difficult times that they are all going through, Denktas said that the "public sector" will receive a 22.5% increase in salaries in January next year. Noting that everyone was experiencing the consequence of the economic crisis, he added that "the treasury was feeling the impact of the crisis considerably". Explaining that he had told trade union representatives during a meeting held recently that they would not be able to reflect the rise in the cost of living for October, November and December in the salaries, Denktas said they are preparing the "state budget" accordingly. He added: "However still, we will be raising the salaries of the public sector, pensioners and those who receive social welfare benefits by 22.5% as of January". Stating that they are trying to get over this difficult time through their own means, he criticized the approach of civil society organizations and the trade unions. He further argued: "There is a big reaction from the trade unions and the civil society organizations. That's why I've recently said that they were the biggest supporters of the status quo and my assessment was not wrong. They want the continuation of the current situation. There are some among them who argue that I should ask for more money from Turkey when I tell them that we cannot give more, our funds are limited. When we ask for more, then they tell us that they don't want Turkey's money or influence. Unfortunately there are such organizations. I treat everyone equally and I meet with all of them. I believe our future is bright. We will see better days". (DPs) [11] "International CEO Forum 2018" in occupied Kyrenia Turkish Cypriot daily Star Kibris newspaper (22.10.18) reports that the "International CEO Forum 2018", will be held under the auspices of the World Federation of DFIs (Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific) and the "TRNC Development bank" in the occupied Kyrenia, between October23-25, 2018. According to the paper, the theme of this year's conference is "DFIs and the Green Economy". More than a hundred CEO and Directors from 40 countries will take part in the Forum. (DPs) [B] Turkish Press [01] Ozersay: Only aim of Turkish Cypriots is to protect their rights Turkish Daily Sabah (22.10.18) publishes the following interview of the "foreign minister Kudret Ozersay. The interview is as follows: "Kudret Ozersay asserted the importance of evaluating the root cause of the dispute over Cyprus, which has continued for decades without a solution. Turkish Cypriots never sought to escalate tensions and conflict but only tried to protect their rights, which is why they should not be expected to be mere spectators during the resolution process, Ozersay said. Turkish Cypriots are only trying to protect their rights, Kudret Ozersay [] said, referring to conflict resolution process within the Mediterranean island of Cyprus that has been continuing for decades now. Speaking to Daily Sabah, Ozersay asserted that the Turkish Cypriots never sought to escalate tensions and conflict but no one should expect them to be a mere spectator while the Greek Cypriots realize defense and military cooperation with countries such as the U.S., Egypt and Israel. He added that the Turkish Cypriots are taking their own countermeasures with the aim of deterring other countries from trying to take advantage of them. "Now, they're trying to make the U.S. side with them via military cooperation. What we have issues with is that they're claiming Turkey is a threat to them in the Eastern Mediterranean due to the dispute in maritime jurisdiction. They allege that they're trying to thwart this so-called threat," Ozersay said. Deeming these claims as baseless, he affirmed that Turkish Cypriots are only trying to protect their rights and will not allow any kind of fait accompli. In terms of maritime jurisdiction and the natural gas reserves found in the Eastern Mediterranean, Ozersay said that international powers acknowledge that these resources also belong to Turkish Cypriots. Regarding the disputed sea territories, Ozersay explained that they have a slightly different approach than Turkey. Affirming that Turkish Cypriots are willing to cooperate with Greek Cypriots over disputed territories, he stated that Turkey does not allow any action to be taken in territories it has claims to. "Turkey won't allow vessels that are there for excavations; Turkey either won't allow them access or force them to leave. This is done by deterring these vessels. In this respect, our policies are similar with a few minor divergences. These policies shouldn't be confused with each other. There are territories on the south of the island where Turkey doesn't have stake. We'll hold excavations there as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus together with Turkish Petroleum," he added. Last week, the Turkish Navy stopped a Greek frigate from harassing a Turkish research ship in the Eastern Mediterranean. The seismic and drilling vessel Barbaros Hayrettin Pasa was carrying out research activity, as had been previously announced, on the Turkish continental shelf of the Guzelyurt Research Coast off the Republic of Northern Cyprus. Turkey has consistently contested the Greek Cypriot administration's unilateral drilling activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, saying Turkish Cypriots also have rights to their sources around the area. Earlier this month, Ankara voiced criticism against the move of the Greek Cypriot administration in the Eastern Mediterranean, inviting energy giants to bid for a license to explore in the area designated as Block 7, one of the blocks located in the unilaterally declared Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Turkish Foreign Ministry stated previously that the move disregarded the inalienable natural resource rights of Turkish Cypriots, the co-owners of the island. [] Speaking on the current state of affairs between the TRNC and Greek Cypriot administration, Ozersay expressed that negotiations have been interrupted. He touched upon the United Nations report which underscores certain conditions for the reiteration of negotiations, deeming it realistic but lacking in certain aspects. "The report states that both parties should discuss whether they have a common ideas and vision regarding the future of Cyprus. Similarly, the U.N. says both administrations should agree on the definition of a rapprochement before initiating negotiations. I believe this is a realistic approach. Moreover, the report suggests that both parties should also determine how the negotiations will go on. In short, it should be mutually agreed what is being negotiated and how it will be negotiated. However, the report lacks in terms of the root cause of the disaccord; there is an ethnic disaccord we can talk about," he said. Stressing on the importance of addressing the root cause, Ozersay stated that it should be researched thoroughly and indicated that the U.N report did not have any evaluations about the said root cause. He stated that the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tasked his representative to uncover the root cause of the issue and whether a common vision exists between the two parties in Cyprus. In this respect, he indicated that the root cause was not included in the report for various reasons such as not to discuss the issue at the U.N. Security Council, not to take a risk or the secretary-general not willing to risk his own reputation on this matter. Ozersay underscored that they have been negotiating with the Greek Cypriot administration to form a federal structure for almost 50 years. "Federal partnership means having equal access to administration, political power and wealth. This requires both a constitution and a federal understanding which is ready to share. In 2004, during Annan's term, the U.N. prepared a report which was not ratified by the Security Council. Nevertheless, this doesn't make what the report states incorrect. In the secretary-general's report, it's stated that the Greek Cypriots aren't ready to share the administration and wealth with the Turkish Cypriots after the referendum. For this reason, if we're to discuss federal partnership and focus on federal partnership in negotiations, we need the Greek Cypriots to shift their mindset toward a more participative state, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also stated," he said. Ozersay also talked about the loose federation proposition by the Greek Cypriots. According to him, this proposition foresees a smaller government in terms of authority while clearly indicating that the Turkish Cypriots will have the lesser role in administration and wealth as the Greek Cypriots are not ready to share power equally. "They expect us to make concessions in terms of political equality, active participation, decision making and representation. In return, they want to share the authority in a different way. This approach is something we're accustomed to for almost 50 years; they're talking about federal partnership while clearly expressing that they don't want to share the authority with the loose federation proposition," he said. Ozersay asserted that a different and creative kind of a federation model could be discussed if the political and sociological basis for it was there. Deeming the loose federation proposition as an uncreative approach, Ozersay signified that its implementation would perpetuate the vicious circle even though it may acknowledge the root cause and the Greek Cypriots unwillingness to share the power. He urged that this matter should be discussed with sincerity while adding that both parties should agree on the methodology, schedule and consequences of the negotiations. "Regardless of a paradigm shift, the Greek Cypriots should ask themselves whether they are ready to share the administration and wealth with us, which is an indispensable component of federal partnership," he said. Ozersay stressed that the Greek Cypriot administration has been ruling the island like a unitary state without any concession or compromise, with certain exceptions, due to its EU membership after 2004. "For this reason, the negotiations for federal partnership are mostly rendered hypothetical and conjectural. This is the situation. I don't believe the Greek Cypriots have internalized the idea that, despite the difference in their populations, Turkish Cypriots are their equals politically," he continued. Asserting that the Turkish Cypriots never sought to escalate tensions and conflict, Ozersay stated that no one should expect them to be a mere spectator while the Greek Cypriots realize defense and military cooperation with countries such as the U.S., Egypt and Israel. He signified that the Turkish Cypriots are taking their own countermeasures with the aim to deter. "I have met with Turkey's minister of defense three times within a month or two. I can say that these meetings were productive; we have a similar understanding. Greek Cypriots are allowing other countries to use their military bases in the region. Through this, they are trying to make France and Italy side with them. They have tried the same with Russia in the past by buying S-300s and deploying them in Cyprus. Now, they're trying to make the U.S. side with them via military cooperation. What we have issues with is that they're claiming Turkey is a threat to them in the Eastern Mediterranean due to the dispute in maritime jurisdiction. They allege that they're trying to thwart this so-called threat." Deeming these claims as baseless, he affirmed that Turkish Cypriots are only trying to protect their rights and will not allow any kind of fait accompli. In terms of maritime jurisdiction and the natural gas reserve found in the Eastern Mediterranean, Ozersay asserted international powers acknowledge that these resources also belong to Turkish Cypriots. "Let's say we have a glass of water there. After saying that this glass of water belongs to the two of us, you're deciding whether this water should stay in the glass or in a plastic cup, whether this water would be consumed cold or hot, or how much of it will be consumed and preserved without asking. It's contradictory. If these natural resources belong to the two of us, together we need to agree on the administrative processes, how it should be extracted and which international powers will extract them. Yet, you decide which company should extract it by itself, decide the share of the company, through which route should the resource be transferred and with an FLNG [floating liquefied natural gas] platform or a pipeline. This is a matter which concerns the political, economic and strategic future of Cyprus. If you're so willing to resolve the Cyprus issue, you shouldn't decide on all these matters by yourself." Ozersay stated that Turkish Cypriots are open to negotiations on these matters and ready to cooperate, if the Greek Cypriots are open and ready as well. "However, if you're not ready, we will make our own deals. We reached an agreement with Turkey regarding the delimitation of continental shelf as you've done with other countries. We have licensed Turkish Petroleum as you've licensed Total, Eni and ExxonMobil. We're realizing seismic explorations just like you. Now, you're saying that you will excavate, so will we. This is valid for all territories belonging to the Turkish Cypriots," he asserted. Regarding disputed sea territories, Ozersay affirmed that Turkish Cypriots are willing to cooperate with Greek Cypriots disputed territories and also he stated that Turkey does not allow any action to be taken in territories it has claims to. "Turkey won't allow vessels that are there for excavations; Turkey either won't allow them access or forces them to leave. This is done by deterring these vessels. In this respect, our policies are similar with a few minor divergences. These policies shouldn't be confused with each other. There are territories on the south of the island where Turkey doesn't have stake. We'll hold excavations there as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus together with Turkish Petroleum," he added. Ozersay stressed that the TRNC's foreign policy is closely tied with the Cyprus issue while it is not limited to it. "I'm 45 years old; since my birth, I'm entangled in this issue. This issue is older than me. For instance, I've been in negotiations with three U.N. secretary-generals, four Greek Cypriot leaders and three TRNC presidents. In terms of our legitimate rights and interests, we've an overlapping foreign policy with Turkey; we always signify this fact. However, there's more to our foreign policy. Firstly, we want to eliminate Turkish Cypriots' international isolation. Secondly, we want to increase TRNC's international visibility by joining all possible platforms to express Turkish Cypriots' expectations, outlooks, sensibilities and demands along with participating in issues the world faces. This is what our foreign policy seeks. For instance, we want to contribute to the counterterrorism efforts and cooperate in finding refugees shelter, help them safely reach secure destinations. We're cooperating with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for some refugees who left Syria," he s aid. Asserting that not being recognized by other countries is not an excuse to shy away from global issues such as the refugee crisis, Ozersay expressed the TRNC's willingness to contribute and cooperate. He affirmed that they do not allow criminals who have committed a crime in another country to settle in the TRNC. "If a criminal who has committed a crime in their own country escapes and tries to relocate in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, we won't allow it. The TRNC isn't a 'safe haven' for criminals; we are always ready to cooperate in these matters. These countries may not have extradition agreements with us as they don't recognize our sovereignty; however, both the police and intelligence services have become more open to cooperate with us recently. In return, we're proving that we're a trustworthy partner by extraditing people who have committed crimes and are sought by Interpol," he said. Talking about the TRNC's relations with Turkey, he stated that the two parties are close and direct. "I visit Ankara as TRNC's Foreign Minister. Similarly, Mr. Cavusoglu visits Lefkosa. We come together with him in New York from time to time. I also meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I have recently met with the vice president along with Dr. Ibrahim Kal?n. Therefore, it's our priority to have direct and active relations at the highest level with Turkey instead of complaining about issues on the media to send a message," he said. Regarding the deadlock in Cyprus that has been ongoing for 50 years, Ozersay stressed that rapprochement is possible if all parties agree on a resolution. He asserted that they are against the usage of force for the resolution of the issue. "We have been putting effort to find an extensive resolution. We'll surely have a positive outlook on the matter; however, what we should do is to seek cooperation with all parties, including Greek Cypriots, in a peaceful manner. We have to have a modern and civil approach. Yet, first we have to create a TRNC which serves its people in the best way possible, making them feel good to be a part of it. I believe when the TRNC becomes a better state in terms of economy and administration, this negative atmosphere will disperse even if the desired rapprochement fails. Societal morale could only be consolidated with a well-functioning state," he said. Ozersay also signified the importance of the TRNC's visibility in the international community. He expressed that he has met with the U.N. secretary-general along with foreign diplomats during his visit to New York. "We're an observer of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). I've made a speech at their meeting. We're an observer of the Economic Cooperation Organization. We're there to express who we are, what we want and what our position is in global issues. We're the modern, open-minded Turkish Cypriots. Explaining our position through TRNC institutions, being in contact and cooperation with everyone is our ideal foreign policy," he continued. Lastly, Ozersay asserted that Turkish Cypriots have reasonable demands such as securing the future of the island. In this respect, he stated that Republic of Turkey is the TRNC's most important strategic partner and stalwart ally." [02] Erdogan, Trump hold phone conversation on Khashoggi Turkish Hurriyet Daily News (22.10.18 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-trump-hold-phone-conversation-on-khashoggi-138130) reports that Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the U.S. President Donald Trump have held a phone conversation on slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkey's presidential press office said early Oct. 22. According to a statement by the presidential press office, Erdogan and Trump agreed on the Khashoggi case need to be cleared up with all aspects. President Erdogan earlier on Oct. 21 said that he will make a statement on the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Oct. 23 during his party's group meeting at the parliament. Erdogan on Oct. 21 vowed to reveal within days the "naked truth" over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as Riyadh said it did not know the whereabouts of his body and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been unaware of any operation to murder him. The Turkish leader's statement came the day after Saudi authorities conceded Khashoggi had been killed inside their diplomatic compound in Istanbul. "We are looking for justice here and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth," Erdogan told a rally in Istanbul. The sources also said that two leaders' phone conversation included pastor Andrew Brunson, cooperation in fight against terrorism and the roadmap on Syria's Manbij. [03] Erdogan vows broadening rights, freedoms Turkish Hurriyet Daily News (22.10.18 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-vows-broadening-rights-freedoms-138114) reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed continued efforts to expand rights and freedoms and to improve democracy in the country amid Turkey's efforts to mend ties with the European Union and European countries. "We will continue to work on expanding rights and freedoms, as well as improving democracy, although some people have made a habit of distorting the reality," Erdogan said at an opening ceremony for the Turkey Youth Foundation (TUGVA) headquarters in Istanbul on Oct. 21. Under his leadership over the last 16 years, the AKP government has never intervened with people's lifestyles and has not narrowed the freedoms of any ethnic or religious group, Erdogan said. "Those who are disturbed by Turkey's last 16 years are the ones who have lost their privileged status," he said. Erdogan's remarks came as Turkey has recently engaged in a new diplomatic campaign to mend ties with the EU by pledging new promises in regards to boosting democracy. Turkey had convened the Reform Action Group last month after a three-year break and signaled its readiness to revive stalled accession talks. The EU, however, wants to see concrete actions in the fields of freedom of expression and rule of law along with political statements. "Terror organizations and their supporters are also the ones who have lost their grounds in the last 16 years," he said, stressing that Turkey was on the eve of a new era. Erdogan condemns ethnic discrimination in Diyarbak?r visitErdogan condemns ethnic discrimination in Diyarbak?r visit "The name of this era is the Era of Resurrection. It is when the idea of a great Turkey will again be put in practice. This is of course also related with our geography but it is never about expansionism," Erdogan said. Turkey's main objective is to defend a global system where all the oppressed and sufferers will live in comfort, peace and safety in the world, the president said, highlighting this as Turkey's main principle with regard to the ongoing turmoil in Syria as well. "Look at what the head of the main opposition said in the United Kingdom yesterday [Oct. 20]. 'We will send all Syrians back to their country when we come to power.' Does this person have anything related to humanity? Only an inhumane person would say this," he said. In an address to the Oxford Union over the weekend, Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal K?l?cdaroglu called on all countries to cooperate in bringing peace to Syria. "Syria and its roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, need to be reconstructed. All this must be done and the EU has to lend support to this end. Only after that we will send Syrians back to their home. We are not going to send them in the middle of a war but to a country where they can live humanly. Developed countries and Turkey have a responsibility for the reconstruction of Syria. We have embraced and sheltered four million Syrians who had not been accepted by any European nation," K?l?cdaroglu said. [04] Giant refinery opens in Turkey's Izmir for $6.3 bln investment Turkish Hurriyet Daily News (22.10.18 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/giant-refinery-opens-in-turkeys-izmir-for-6-3-bln-investment-138078) reports that the first new oil refinery to be built in Turkey in 30 years has opened in the Aegean city of Izmir by Azeri oil company SOCAR in a ceremony attended by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev. The $6.3 billion Star Refinery will help cut Turkey's dependence on imported refined oil products. It will also boost Turkish refining capacity by 30 %. "In opening Star Refinery, Turkey and Azerbaijan will take brotherly strategic ties to the next level," Erdogan said during his speech, adding that this refinery was "the largest greenfield investment in Turkey of the last 30 years." "This refinery will enable Turkey to make $1.5 billion savings on an annual basis," he noted, adding that more than 1,100 jobs would be created at the refinery. Aliyev said bilateral relations between the countries have been at the highest level, adding that this was quite normal for people who have been together for centuries. He also noted Turkey and Azerbaijan showed a strong political will in drawing an energy and transportation map of Eurasia. "Our signatures take place under these maps, which require big investments," Aliyev said, signaling new investments together with Turkey. The refinery, which started construction in 2011, is located near the campus of one of Turkey's top-ranking industrial enterprises, a container port and the country's leading petrochemical company PETKIM, owned by SOCAR. Turkey's total refining capacity will go up by 33 % to reach 40 million tons per year after Star Refinery becomes fully operational, according to officials. The plant on Turkey's Aegean coast would have the capacity to process about 10 million tons per year (200,000 barrels per day) of crude. The plant is expected to produce 1.6 million tons of naphtha and 420,000 tons of xylenes. It will also produce about 4.8 million tons of diesel, alongside jet fuel, petroleum coke, reformate, sulphur and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Turkey produces a surplus of gasoline but relies on imports of diesel, with consumption of the fuel growing by about 7 % a year and is expected to reach 25 million tons in 2019. Tupras, Turkey's only refining firm, has four plants across the country with combined processing capacity of 28 million tons (560,000 bpd). TURKISH AFFAIRS SECTION (CS/AM) Cyprus Press and Information Office: Turkish Cypriot Press Review Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleThe Humane Society of the United States is a public charity that does not endorse candidates for public office. While the Humane Society Legislative Fund, which is a 501(c)(4) organization, did endorse Brian Fitzpatrick, HSUS did not. HSUS does not control or direct any election related activities of the Humane Society Legislative Fund. Were a public charity that does not ever endorse candidates for public office. Any representations that a candidate is supported or opposed by the Humane Society of the United States are false. Any use of the organizations name or logo in an election for public office is made without our authorization.The students were asked a number of questions about what they'd like to do in the future, and the treasurer has a program to help them get there.

Treasurer Goldberg Pushes College Savings Program To Reid Students



Treasurer Deborah Goldberg's program is eyed to help people save for college. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Nearly all of Reid Middle School's eighth graders could raise their hand when asked if they remember being in fourth grade.

"That was not that long ago and yet here you are, 8th graders," Superintendent Jason McCandless said to the class on Friday.

"Four years from today, you will be about 100 days away from graduating from high school. Four years from that, you will be looking at being 22, 23 years old.

The work that every single person in this school does is to make sure that you are the person that you want to be, doing the things you want to do when you are 22, 32, 52, 72, 92 for those of you that live right."

State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg was sitting on the stage in the North Street auditorium, joined by representatives from the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, the non-profit Inversant, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Mayor Linda Tyer, and City Councilor Melissa Mazzeo. A group of McCandless described as "high powered people" who came across the state in some cases just for the students.

Together the group pushed the SoarMA program , a pilot program in which Pittsfield is just one of five communities in the state involved. The program helps families save for college.

"We help your families save and understand what they need to do to help you," Goldberg said.

The program was developed in which the state will contribute to seeded 529 accounts begun by families in the state's Gateway Cities for college or trade programs. Funded through a public-private partnership, the statewide start an account of $50 and match a family's savings up to $400. Meanwhile, state officials will provide workshops and training to help parents prepare for college.

"What this is about is we are going to give you money," Goldberg said. "This is not a scam... We are going to give what we call a seeded college savings account."

Goldberg said "debt kills people" and the hope of this program is to help parents provide for the best future for their children without taking on so much debt.

"We don't believe in putting parents down because they don't know something. We don't believe in putting parents down because of tough times and they may not have answers to these questions," said Charles Desmond, chief executive officer of Inversant.



Mayor Linda Tyer spoke of having economic independence. The program is being particularly aimed at the Gateway Cities because those tend to have lower incomes and the cost of college becomes a barrier. Desmond said that on average a person with a college degree will make $1 million more in the course of their lifetime than someone with just a high school diploma. He said each and every student is capable of achieving major things, but that's only possible if they can "push your self to the limits of your potential."

"Everything is possible from here if you think well about your education. You'll have more choices and opportunity," Principal Linda Whitacre said.

To do so, means to start planning now, according to McCandless. Tyer said education, either trade school or college, becomes the key to "economic independence."

"In order for you to have economic independence, to be able to afford a car, a house, clothes, cell phones, you've got to have a good job. The best way to have a good job is to do really well in school," Tyer said.

The treasurer was the city first to cut the ribbon on the brand new Taconic High School. But that is only a piece to the education puzzle. She then went to present at Reid because she knows that after those students graduate from Taconic, there is still more to be done. And she wants Reid students thinking about that now.Adams has agreed to share use of the Nissan Rogue donated by Fallon Health with the Cheshire Council on Aging.

Adams Agrees to Share 'Fallon Car' With Cheshire COA

ADAMS, Mass.  Officials last week approved an agreement that will allow the Council on Aging to share its "Fallon car" with its counterpart in Cheshire.

COA Director Erica Girgenti said the Board of Selectmen's approval will allow her to approach the Cheshire Selectmen and finalize the memorandum.

"I've talked a little bit about the car but it continues to be a success," she said. "We've put 2,700 miles on the car since we got it. We've had it for 29 weeks now and if we've completed over 30 trips. So that's just about a trip every week, sometimes two."

Fallon Health, a nonprofit provider based in Worcester, donated a Nisson Rogue each to Adams and to the Council on Aging in Lee in March accompanied by $3,000 grants through Elder Services of Berkshire County. The sport utility vehicles were designed to expand access to services for senior citizens and others beyond the regular van routes.

Girgenti said Adams' car has been used for medical trips to Albany, N.Y., and Rhode Island, to transport a blind child and his family to special event in Northampton, and to take veterans to Baystate Medical Center and out-of-state facilities. Another nine scheduled trips were canceled because the client found other transportation.

"So it's been really great opportunity to help individual community members who truly don't have any other options, which is scary to think," she said. A dozen volunteers drive the car and are split evenly between Adams and Cheshire residents.

Cheshire will be charged for use of the SUV based on mileage and a $20 coordination fee. The drivers are volunteers but if a paid driver is required, Cheshire would also pick up those costs. Use of the car will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

"The town of Cheshire has earmarked money with the current budget to support this transportation program," Girgenti. In response to questions, she said if the board did not move forward with signing the memorandum, it would show Cheshire that Adams was not interested. "The car is Adams', it belongs to Adams, so we need to say, 'we would like to be able to provide this opportunity for your residents as well, and this is our first step in offering it.'"

Although it would primarily be the Fallon car, it is also possible that the COA van might be used in special circumstances, she said, because the Cheshire van only operates three days a week. In that case, a paid driver would be required and Cheshire would have to cover the cost.

Girgenti also noted that the $3,000 grant the town received can be used toward car expenses for both towns.

Eugene Gebarowski of Cheshire, a member of that town's COA and a volunteer driver, confirmed that his town had approved $1,500 in transportation costs at town meeting and has another $1,500 donated by Adams Community Bank.

Gebarowski said he could not speak on behalf of the Cheshire Board of Selectmen, however, the Cheshire COA is supportive of the agreement and he did not think there would be any obstacles.

"We haven't really been able to publicize it and push too much because we don't have an agreement between the two towns," he said.

Girgenti said more volunteer drivers would be appreciated because sometimes it takes five or six calls to reach a driver because people have busy lives. Volunteers would have to have a good driving record, pass a criminal background check and attend a training.

Savoy has also indicated interest in having access to the car, she said, but thought the agreement would look much different because the smaller town does not have a COA director. She asked that the board provide some help and guidance in that direction.

The Selectmen approved the memorandum with Cheshire unanimously.

"It's time Cheshire and Adams come together and this is a good first step," said Selectman Joseph Nowak. "What went on during the school really soured a lot of people."So said Permanent Deputy Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son of the prominent significance and outcomes of the Europe tour by PM Phuc from October 14-20.

In an interview granted to the media on the tour, Son said leaders of the countries and the EU had frank and practical exchanges of ideas with PM Phuc. They attached great importance to the relations with Vietnam and highly valued the countrys international and regional position and role. They also expressed their support for the settlement of the disputes in the East Sea by peaceful means on the basis of the international law, especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Son pointed out that Vietnam and the EU strived to push for the early signing, ratification and implementation of the EU  Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Investment Protection Agreement (IPA). The European Commissions adoption of a decision to submit the EVFTA right during the tour is a timely decision that meets the current requirement and the two sides interest, Son stressed.

Concerning the prominent outcomes and significance of the 12th Asia  Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit, Deputy FM Son said the statement of the chairman of the summit sent out a strong message on the determination of the ASEM members to strengthen the Asia  Europe relations in coping with the global challenges and working out orientations to raise the ASEM cooperation in the time to come.

First, it is necessary to bring into full play the pioneer role that pushes up the multilateral cooperation and international order on the basis of the law, with the United Nations playing the central role.

Secondly, efforts should be made to accelerate the links into a cooperation orientation of ASEM.

Thirdly, commitments have been affirmed for the maintenance of peace, stability, security, maritime safety, maritime and aviation freedom on the basis of respect to all the basic principles of the international law. The members stressed the importance of the peaceful settlement of the disputes in line with the international law, especially the UN Charters and the UNCLOS, refraining from the use or the threat to use force or unilateral actions that run counter to the UNCLOS, and carrying out measures to build trust and practicing self-restraint. The meeting supported the important contributions by ASEAN to peace, security, stability and prosperity in Asia  Pacific and the world over, as well as ASEANs role in the regional structure. The success of the 12th ASEM summit continues to affirm the practicality, dynamic development and position of ASEM that create new driving forces for the partnership and connection between Asia and Europe.

As a founding member of ASEM and P4G Summit, Vietnam contributed to their common success. At ASEM 12, PM Phuc was one of the eight leaders of 53 ASEM member states invited to make a keynote speech and deliver an important speech at the 16th Asia-Europe Business Meeting (AEBM 16).

Member states spoke highly of Vietnams practical proposals to lift Asia-Europe partnership in the third decade, especially upholding ASEMs vanguard role in promoting multilateral cooperation and coping with global challenges, stepping up inclusive socio-economic development, and connecting innovation and ASEM human resources development centres, as well as female entrepreneurs.

In order to effectively cope with climate change, Vietnam urged developed nations to help developing ones access finance and technological transfer, and invest in clean energy. At the same time, ASEM needs to contribute to common efforts to reduce the release of plastic waste into oceans, sustainable trans-border water resources management and promote collaboration between the Mekong and Danube Sub-regions.

Vietnam also received support for two proposals on developing ASEM cooperation in inclusive socio-economic development and promotion of digital economy amid the fourth Industrial Revolution.

Member states welcomed Vietnams suggestion on promoting dialogue and cooperation to maintain peace, security and stability in Southeast Asia, including the East Sea. Participants at the AEBM 16 lauded Vietnams proposal to hold regular dialogues to promote ASEM Economic Ministers Meeting and dialogues between economic ministers and business community.

At the P4G Summit held for the first time under the chair of Danish PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Vietnamese PM highlighted the importance of strengthening global efforts in response to climate change, affirming that Vietnam will work closely with the forums member governments to realise global green growth goals 2030, stay ready to launch initiatives on public-private partnership in green growth, especially in energy and renewable energy saving, agriculture and water resources, smart urban development.

The leader shared Vietnams experience in achieving the forums common goals, including the establishment of the P4G national forum.

Vietnam urged ministries, agencies, local authorities and businesses to join initiatives on plastic waste management and promotion of waste classification, as well as build a joint financial model in water supply and drainage in Vietnam.

On the occasion, PM Phuc held nearly 20 official and sideline meetings with his counterparts from China, Russia, the UK, Norway, Spain, Finland, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy and Slovenia; Presidents of France and the Republic of Korea; and President of the European Commission.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh also met the President of the Cyprus Republic, the Swedish Foreign Minister and the Portuguese Secretary of State for European Affairs.



iciHaiti - Literature : 1st Edition of the Jacmel Book Fair





On October 31st, November 1st and 2nd, under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, Jacmel will host the First Edition of the International Book Fair (SILJ), an initiative of Pulucia editions.



Several publishers will erect their booth at the Rue du Commerce to serve lovers of books and of the reading. Other activities such as reading workshops, lecture-debates, talks with some authors and theatrical performances, among others, will be organized as part of this cultural event. More than twenty Haitian and foreign writers will attend this show according to Pierre Paul Ansion, the CEO of Pulucia editions.



The participation of the Ministry in this activity is in line with the new dynamics of the government team "Due to its mission and attributions, the Ministry is in the process of identifying organized sectors of the sector across the country in order to provide answers to operators, especially those involved in the fields of books and writing" said Jean Michel Lapin Guyler, Minister of Culture



In addition, Wilbens Thursday, Regional Coordinator of SILJ, explained that the Pulucia editions pursue two main objectives by initiating this book fair: to facilitate the access of young people in the South-East to books and reading and to promote the book , literary and scientific production in Haiti.



IH/ iciHaiti

















Representatives of journalists, media workers, broadcasters and newspapers from around the world took the case for action against impunity for crimes against journalists to the United Nations in New York today.

Representatives of journalists, media workers, broadcasters and newspapers from around the world took the case for action against impunity for crimes against journalists to the United Nations in New York today.

Meeting with state representatives from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America, IFJ leaders set out the case for a new UN Convention dedicated to the protection of media professionals.

This year 2 journalists have been killed every week on average and conviction rates for those who mastermind such killings remain almost non-existent.

International Human Rights expert Carmen Draghici told the meeting that as a result of the deliberate targeting of journalists and the systemic impact of attacks on media workers for citizens right to know there was a clear case for a dedicated instrument to tackle crimes against journalists.

The initiative  launched by the IFJ last year - also won the support of representatives of WAN-IFRA, the world association of newspaper owners, the European Broadcasting Union and UNI, a 20-million strong global trade union federation which represents media workers across the world.

Elena Perotti of WAN-IFRA thanked the IFJ for the initiative and said: Impunity continues to dominate, the statistics are shocking. It is vitally important we now see some action. For too long a lack of political will has been the biggest impediment.

Johannes Studinger, General Secretary of UNI-MEI told the meeting: Not a week goes by without us receiving reports of yet more attacks or repression against media workers. Unless there is action we fear that we will just keep talking about more and more attacks. We express our support for the IFJ initiative.

IFJ President Philippe Leruth said: A journalists murder simply because of his or her activity is a scandal, but a far bigger scandal is that 9 out of every 10 journalists' murders remain unpunished. The Khashoggi case, like all the others, illustrate that journalists are singled out as a target and as such they need dedicated protection".

IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: Today was an important first step towards securing enhanced protection for journalists and media professionals. We welcome the support and commitment from member states and our fellow professional organisations and will continue to build a broader coalition to deliver real action on impunity.

To add your organisation's name to support the Convention sign up hereReno Omokri, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) has called out Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammad for lying. The former presidential aide during former Goodluck Jonathans tenure as president, said lai Mohammad claimed that the international media was worried about the source of wealth of the presidential candidate of his party, Atiku Abubakar.

According to Omokri, they contacted the editor of Financial Times, and was told in writing that there was no such complains about Atikus wealth when they spoke with the Information Minister.

Omokri, speaking via twitter, called the Information Minister a liar, daring Mohammad to take him to court, saying his evidence is in writing.Some very influential stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress(APC) have begun to mobilise to pass a no-confidence vote in the leadership of Adams Oshiomhole, its national chairman.

These influential stakeholders, according to grapevine, have begun to mobilise against Oshiomholes leadership, because he failed to impose their preferred candidates on the party in the nomination process.

However, Oshiomhole, in a statement issued by by his Chief Press Secretary Simon Ebebgulem, in Abuja, on Sunday, alleged that some unnamed skateholders were trying to oust him out as national chairman. His statement was in response to Alhaji Mumakai Unagha, who aspired for the partys Presidential ticket , for saying the APC might not win the 2019 general elections with Adams Oshiomhole as national chairman was totally wrong.

See part of his statement

Comrade Oshiomhole did not become national chairman of the governing party to bring it down a notch from the pedestal of its 2015 electoral victory let alone to preside over its liquidation.

Rather, his single-minded goal, from the outset of his declaration of interest in the position, was to deploy his capacity in helping to strengthen and reposition the party as a truly supreme and disciplined political entity.

Although, it might appear fortuitous to some persons that he became national chairman at the threshold of the 2019 general election; the truth is that there is no accident in predestination.

We must appreciate the fact that it has pleased the Almighty God to place him in the saddle of APC leadership at this time for a purpose.

The purpose has begun to manifest in its vast flourish and ramifications: instilling discipline, ensuring party supremacy, promoting due process, dealing with impunity and executive arrogance wherever they manifest to undermine intra-party electoral processes in the states.

How Nigerians have reacted to Oshiomholes outcry

Adams Oshiomhole in August/September: Saraki must me removed as SP whether he like or not. Adams Oshiomhole in October: There is gang-up to remove me. Nigeria politics is like Soap Opera.  PHOENIX (SoloEz (@soezea) October 22, 2018

Influential stakeholders, according to the grapevine, have begun to mobilise to pass a no-confidence vote on my leadership, having failed to impose their preferred candidates on the party in the nomination process  Adam Oshiomhole

 pic.twitter.com/mYsMhHjYqD  Muhammed Alhassan. (@maikudi11) October 22, 2018

https://twitter.com/Sir_KB/status/1054315277616365568Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka of Adoration Ministry Enugu Nigeria, who was a strong supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari has taken a huge swipe at him at the Peoples Democratic party(PDP) presidential candidate.

According to Mbaka, who prophesied in that Buhari was going to emerge as Nigerias president in 2015 said Buhair is change, but former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is bureau de change. He lamented the rate at which money running into hundreds of millions exchanged hands at the party primaries whereas many Nigerians have nothing to eat.

He also queried the president for not surrounding himself with credible hands like Prof Charles Soludo, who would help him revamp the economy.

In his words:

So let the will of God be done in Nigeria. It is like what I have been saying Buhari change or you will be changed

What will it take you; change the Chief of Staff, change B, change C, change this and change that; even if it will take 20 Igbo men or 20 Yoruba men to change Nigeria; take all of them. Look at what (Chukwuma) Soludo did in the Central Bank; he has assured Nigeria and the whole world that there is nothing like bank collapse again.

An Igbo man did this, why cant Buhari take Soludo for the economic revival and revamping of Nigerias economy? And you are busy talking about corruption, playing game with the lives of Nigerians from the issue of Fulani herdsmen to Boko Haram to Jos killings.

You said somebody stole, what did he steal? Someday, they said the government has spent trillions of naira on social investment scheme and I want to know who are the people they were spending the money on; the Vice President said they are giving N10,000 to small scale businesses and I asked, is this how they will transform Nigeria? You give somebody N10,000 for business, what type of business will N10,000 start?

Somebody will have billions and want to take the one belonging to the public while hunger will be killing his people. Look at the type of money they shared during the primaries to the extent that they brought Bureau de Change.

They said Buhari is change, but Atiku is bureau de change. They were sharing the money in dollars and it was going out in millions of dollars in Nigeria where hunger is killing people; where you dont have food to eat. If they spend such monies to get ticket, how do you think that when they get into power they will rule, of course, they will first recover the money they have spent but the worst is that the money was not being shared to the poor,.

The Trying Triangle of Politics, Economy and Faith: Through the Eyes of the Needle, by Bishop Kukah There are some people that sold their land to pay for this form because of the promise they were made. I dont think these politicians were thinking of heaven that is why they are ready to kill anybody that stands on their way,.

If anybody is thinking that if Atiku becomes the President of Nigeria things will get better, who born you because for this country to be good it is easier for a carmel to pass through the eye of a needle than this country to be good,

There are no people that will develop this country that are not in Nigeria. We have people who will develop this nation; but our President left the same type of people who dont have the same type of vision around him and everything they do is in your head.

After you are removed, they will bring people that will flog you because you messed up the opportunities because you didnt listen to the word of God. You didnt listen to the man of God you have and you were disobeying him. The price of disobedience is disgrace.The Kaduna State Police Command on Friday said 55 people were killed in Thursdays communal crisis at Kasuwan Magani in Kajuru Local Government Area of the state.

The State Commissioner of Police, Ahmad Abdur-Rahman, who disclosed this at a press briefing in Kaduna, said that the police had arrested 22 suspects in connection with the mayhem.

The Kaduna State Government on Thursday declared a 24-hour curfew on the community following the violence.

Mr Abdur-Rahman said mobile and conventional policemen as well as a team of the state joint security Operation Yaki, dispatched to the town had restored normalcy in the area.

According to him, he has also visited the town and engaged youth leaders, traditional and religious leaders in the efforts to stop the crisis and prevent its spread

He noted that the timely imposition of curfew by the Kaduna State Government also helped to douse tension in the area.

The police chief assured that all perpetrators of the mayhem would be brought to book

Anybody that has a hand in this crisis must face the full wrath of law, we will not allow lawlessness; we remain committed to saving life and property of every citizens, he said.

He appealed to the public to continue to live in peace, and assist the command with useful information to track the perpetrators.

Also on Friday, residents of Kasuwan Magani were charged to shun violence and learn to live in peace.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai gave this admonition on Friday when he visited the community following violent clashes between rival youth groups there on Thursday.

Mr El-Rufai assured residents that the government will prosecute those responsible for the violence in their community.

The governor led a team of senior government officials to Kasuwan Magani around 4 p.m. and immediately received briefings from Mr Abdur-rahaman.

He thereafter moved around the town, accompanied by traditional and religious leaders.The Vietnamese pavilion attracted numerous visitors who were welcomed to taste the signature Vietnamese dish of nem cuon (spring roll) and enjoy Vietnamese coffee.

Themed Love Knows No Borders  to Hear the Love from the World, the bazaar was organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peoples Republic of China and the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation to raise funds for hearing-impaired children and poor people in Gansu province, China.

Addressing the event, Qian Wei, spouse of Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi thanked the foreign diplomats and international organisations for their enthusiastic support of the event.

Not only aiming at fundraising, the bazaar has been established as a venue for foreign communities in China to promote their land, people, handicraft products, culture and cuisine to international friends.

The event has also provided an opportunity for participating organisations to foster cultural exchanges and tighten solidarity and friendship with the host country.

All proceeds from the charity bazaar will be used for charity activities. According to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the 2017 event raised more than US$700,000.

Visitors invited to taste Vietnamese nem ran (fried spring rolls) at the event (Photo: VNA)Nothing is off the table

British businesses are weighing up the chances of a sudden increase in taxes in the budget statement due on October 29. Hammond has reportedly told Treasury officials that nothing is off the table in his search for an extra 26 billion ($34 billion) to fund the National Health Service (NHS), but he is considering a series of tax changes.

The chancellor pulled budget day forward in a bid to settle the nerves of financial markets as the UK enters the final days of Brexit negotiations, but the Treasury also has to find extra funds to achieve Prime Minister Theresa Mays promise to end austerity.

The options on the table include everything from dropping planned corporate tax cuts, levying a digital services tax (DST) and extending the VAT threshold to raising income tax thresholds and cutting tax relief on pensions.

The problem for Hammond is that the budget will have to satisfy opposing demands: the financial sector wants austerity to continue and taxes to remain low, while the electorate wants to see the pressure on public services being eased-up.

The list of options is wide open, the tax director said. So, the usual attempts to forecast the budget based on conference speeches is likely to be off the mark, he added, referring to the political party conferences that have taken place over the UK over the past month.

Dropping the corporate tax cuts

The UK is set to cut its corporate tax rate to 17% in 2020, but there has been consistent talk of this policy being too costly to uphold. The UK tax base shrinking and there is less support among businesses for the tax cuts.

Tax experts have also expressed doubts over the need for more cuts. Bill Dodwell, senior advisor at the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS), has long argued for dropping the 17% tax cut. It could save as much as 5 billion a year after 2021.

Removing the corporation tax cut to 17% and reinvesting some of that money in supporting business investment would still leave the UK as the most competitive G20 economy, whilst raising some much-needed cash, Dodwell said.

Investing in better tax relief for intangible assets, where the UK has the least generous regime in the EU, would make sense to boost investment in the high-tech economy, he said.

Nevertheless, the British government remains officially committed to the 17% rate  for now. May reaffirmed this commitment to ever-lower corporate taxes in a speech in New York on September 25.

Whatever your business, investing in a post-Brexit Britain will give you the lowest rate of corporation tax in the 20, May told business leaders.

Giles Parsons, who was a tax director at Caterpillar for 20 years, told ITR that the chancellor may prefer to not to show his hand on corporate tax in the upcoming budget.

It would not look good to announce that it will not go ahead this month, and then implement it immediately next year, so maybe it will stay, Parsons said. But there could be some base broadening to raise more tax and be seen to address the low level of effective taxes highlighted in the media.

If the UK does abandon its lower tax rate, the country might become one of the few exceptions to the worldwide trend of falling rates.

Creating a digital tax

The UK could join the growing list of countries taking unilateral action on tech multinationals. The idea of an Amazon tax has made headlines this year, and the chancellor talked up the possibility of such a measure at the Conservative Party conference.

The best way to tax international companies is through international agreements but the time for talking is coming to an end and the stalling has to stop, Hammond told conference attendees. If we cannot reach agreement , the UK will go it alone with a digital services tax.

Mel Stride, financial secretary to the treasury , has also stated similar action to The Guardian in August. We have a strong preference for moving multilaterally, but in the event that that doesnt move fast enough for us then this is something we could consider doing unilaterally, or perhaps with a smaller group of other tax authorities, he said.

Heather Self, partner at Blick Rothenberg, suggested such a tax proposal would be unworkable and that the OECD is the best policy forum for dealing with digital tax.

Any attempt to levy a new tax on major digital businesses will be fraught with difficulty, Self said . The chancellor should resist the political pressure and continue to work on an international basis to achieve longer-lasting solutions.

The chancellor has his work cut out to retain the confidence of businesses in the lead up to Brexit, she added. [Hammond] needs to keep a steady hand on the tiller and not spring any surprises which could further damage key relationships.

At the same time, there are good reasons to doubt that the Treasury would opt for such a dramatic policy change any time soon. It would be a change on the scale of the diverted profits tax (DPT) with a vast ripple effect for the British economy.

While the UK is taking a lead role in the Task Force on the Digital Economy, taking immediate unilateral action would be a bit surprising, Parsons said. But the DPT was announced during the BEPS project, so there is a precedent.

I expect there to be continued commitment to an international solution, but perhaps an additional commitment to unilateral action in 2020 if the OECD does not reach a consensus, he added.

Reforming VAT

The UK may be overdue reforming its VAT threshold to bring its regime in line with global standards. The country has the highest VAT threshold in the European Union, where the minimum threshold is at 10,000 ($11,560) and the average is 22,000.

This leaves a steep cliff-edge for British companies. Many businesses try to find creative ways to lower turnover in a bid to avoid VAT.

The OTS has estimated that the UK could increase tax revenue by as much as 2 billion a year if the VAT threshold was reduced from 85,000 to 43,000. However, even some of its advocates are sceptical it will happen any time soon because it would affect at least one million self-employed businesses.

This option also has its drawbacks.

A low threshold encourages fraud via splitting sales invoices between VAT registrations, Richard Asquith, global VP of indirect tax at Avalara, told ITR. And politically it would be a negative as it drags a lot of core Conservative supporting sole traders into the tax net.

At the same time, many tax professionals are calling for the Treasury to limit the potential damage of Brexit through VAT policy. A deferral on import VAT would go a long way to putting taxpayers at ease.

This would allow all importers to offset the import VAT currently paid up front at the point goods arrival in the UK, said Alan Pearce, partner at Blick Rothenberg.

It should apply to goods arriving from outside the EU and, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, on goods arriving from the EU, Pearce said. This would put the UK on the same footing as other EU countries, notably France and the Netherlands, who currently have a commercial advantage over the UK.

As sensible as it may be, some observers still find it unlikely that the government would undertake such a policy right now.

Confirmation on a future import VAT deferral would be good to see, and it would give some certainty, but as the bigger issue is customs and trade, and that depends on the EU, I expect the uncertainty to continue, Parsons said.

Cutting tax relief

One way to raise funds without an increase in headline rates is to reduce the amount of tax relief available to individuals and businesses. This might even allow the government to stick to the aim of making the UK the most competitive tax jurisdiction in the G20.

The capital gains tax threshold could be cut, thereby limiting entrepreneurs relief. The threshold stands at 10 million and a slight reduction would expand the reach of the capital gains rate.

However, this would go against the governments unequivocally pro-business agenda. A safer option for the Treasury may be to cut tax reliefs for pensions. This could save up to 38 billion a year, more than enough to fund the NHS.

The options are vast, but the political environment surrounding it make the decisions difficult. Not only is the Conservative Party divided over Brexit, its coalition partner, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has made it clear that it will veto the budget if its position on the Irish border isnt respected.

This situation may leave Hammond trying to rock the boat without really rocking it. A difficult task for a risk-averse chancellor in an increasingly unpredictable world.

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Share this articleRichard Murphy on stage

Tax justice campaigner Richard Murphy explained how countries can be both victims and perpetrators of tax competition. He echoed calls by the UN, IMF, World Bank and OECD for action on spillovers, saying that to be a success, efforts must be truly multilateral.

His opponent used examples of economies with harmonised tax systems to argue against regulation. Economist Arthur Laffer, who was the first American to enter China as the communist nation relaxed its isolationist policies in the 1970s, contrasted the fortunes of China pre-1970 with its fellow superpower, the US, which began cutting tax rates in earnest during the 1960s.

Yes

No

Don't know

&amp;amp;lt;a href="https://polldaddy.com/poll/10139459/"&amp;amp;gt;Would regulation of tax competition be positive?&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Richard Murphy

Would regulation of tax competition be positive?

Can we defeat tax competition? Ive been engaged in debate here and in many other arenas over the last 15 years asking this question. My answer is yes, I think we can, but no, we haven't succeeded as yet. And I think that's why this type of debate is so important.

The reason why we have to keep the tax competition as yet is that we haven't fully comprehended the scale of the problem and the way we should think about it holistically. Let me just put that in context. Tax competition, I think, is created and suffered by many jurisdictions simultaneously. In other words, they are the victims of tax competition and very many of them create tax competition simultaneously.

Tax competition is international, it is domestic between parts of the tax systems, and it's not just about corporation tax and taxes on mobile capital, it's about the interaction between many taxes. So, income tax against corporation tax and income tax against capital gains tax. Social security plays a part in this as well, all of which goes in combination to create the revenue of the state. It's more than that too.

We tend to think about tax competition as between tax systems, but of course it's about the politics of tax as well. Some states are very inclined to political tax competition and others are not. Some tax administrations are very effective in beating tax competition, some almost seem to go out of their way to encourage it.

Company and trust administrations around the world are particular creators of tax competition by providing the secrecy that lets so many people get away with tax abuse from behind that veil of secrecy that they create simply by not asking the right questions. We have to look so far at the effectiveness of international agreements. When so many of the BEPS outputs are still to be put into place and asked the question at the time about whether they'll really work.

So we need, if we are going to beat tax competition, to not be bilateral, which so many of the attempts today have been, but very definitely multilateral. And we not only have to think quantitatively about the amount of tax collected, but about the qualitative nature of the tax systems that we need.

Now, the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD combined to make a statement in February, saying that they wished to tackle tax spillovers. Now that's something I'm quite concerned with: It's a core focus of my work. Tax spillovers recognise the danger of tax competition: How one state can impact upon the wellbeing of another state and how one tax can impact another.

The difficulty with that commitment is that there is as yet no effective tax spillover regime in place. There is a quantitative method produced by the IMF, which some physical difficulties with econometrics  to be candid, the data doesnt withstand the analysis. So with a colleague, Andrew Baker, we are currently working on creating a tax spillover framework to be able to assess all these interactions between states to make sure that we can defeat tax competition.

Now, it's my belief that if we can actually get states to work together, we liberate states to make their own decisions. We liberate to make the decisions that they can present to the electorate [he shakes the cross-emblazoned napkin again] on the ballot box, about what taxes they really want.

They can uphold their belief in democracy, their right to the decide they can uphold the rule of law, and all those other things that I've already mentioned. And this is the way, by doing effective spillover analysis, to achieve this result. What would the outcome be? I believe that if we could prevent those spillovers, so if each nation state could reinforce its own right to decide on tax as it wished, then we would transform the stability of world markets, focus international business on their true goal of meeting customer needs in pursuit of long-term sustainable profit  which those pension funds I advise say that they are also keen to know about  and we would also generate the secure basis of financing that so many countries, including in particular the developing world, are in current expert need of. That is why the cost of defeating tax competition is worth paying.

Arthur Laffer

We are at a major disagreement. Do I think we can enforce tax harmonisation? Yes, I do, but it's not a world I wanted to live in, let me tell you.

Fortunately, the world we do live in is moving in the opposite direction. We [in the United States] have gone from I think the highest marginal tax rate  when [Harry] Truman was in office [1945-1953] it was 92.5%. We've dropped it now down to 37% [pre-Trump]. We had it as low as 28%. The corporate tax during the immediate post-war period was in the nineties, it's now down to much, much lower today, 21%. All of it [is] moving because of the marketplace pushing taxes there. If it had not been for the US doing its major tax reforms during the roaring twenties, [the] US would still be a tax rates that are extraordinarily high and very counterproductive.

I don't think the government has the wisdom to know what the right taxes are. And God knows that Europe doesn't have the electoral system where you can actually vote on specific taxes and whether you want tax harmonisation. I mean, China pre-1970 had tax harmonisation, and you can see what China looked like. It was because the rest of the world was open that China really opened up. I was the first American in modern times to go to China. I went in October of 1970 with George Shultz and John Ehrlichman and saw the opening of China. At that time in 1970, China had something like 97% of all production [going] through state-run enterprises. Today it's down to around 8%  thats a tax cut!

And look at the growth rates China's experienced. Look at what's happened with their currency competition. Look what's happening with their regulatory competition, with trade. Competition is really important, especially for governments and it gets them to behave correctly. Now, you had a problem in 1939 with a tax harmonisation that was being done in a very unpleasant way. Thats not the way to go. Venezuela today has tax harmonization. That's not what you want.

Without competing governments, none of these horrible situations would have been reversed. What you really need is to have taxes, and I'm going to use tax this year, but regulations, taxes, all of these have to be reasonable. Business is not your enemy. You want to have a tax system that businesses and people think is reasonable. Theyll pay their taxes then! But if businesses and individuals believe that taxes are unreasonable, theyll do all they can to get around it.

It has to be a partnership between businesses and governments and individuals to get a tax system that is efficient, reasonable and fair. But as long as you try to exploit or beat down or make them as your enemies, you're going to get tax evasion, avoidance, underground economies, offshore shifting, all of this stuff will occur. What you need is a reasonable tax code that the taxpayers believe is right, and a tax code that provides the requisite revenues for government to act in its proper function as referee not as a participant.

Richard Murphy

Arthur Laffer

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This is the third of a three-part series of articles. Part one can be viewed here and parttwo can be viewed here.

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Read our full Opinion Policies here. Updated on 10/7/2020A CBC News investigation has found that Apple often overcharges its customers for repairing their damaged MacBooks and iPhones when compared to a third-party repair store.

In an investigation carried out at an Apple Store in Toronto, the Apple Store employee quoted upwards of $1,200 for fixing a non-functional display on a MacBook.

This is a common issue with MacBooks and Apple is charging almost the price of a new MacBook for fixing it saying it would need to replace the logic board and the top case at the very minimum. Plus, if Apple feels the need to replace the display as well, that would add another $780 to the total repair cost.

The same MacBook was then fixed by Lous Rossmann, who runs a third-party computer repair store on First Avenue in Manhattan. As per his analysis, a pin which should have been connected to the backlight was not in contact leading to the issue. At the very maximum, he would have charged $150 to his customers provided they wanted him to replace the pin entirely.

If somebody wanted me to just bend the pin back, I wouldnt charge them for that, he said, adding that he would ask his customers for between $75 to $150 if they wanted to replace the pin entirely.

Apple declined to comment on the report but claimed that its customers are served best by its certified experts using genuine parts.

Apple does not honor repairs done by third-party shops so any repair conducted by an unauthorized store will lead to the warranty of the device being nullified.

As if this was not already enough, Apple is also making it difficult for third-party shops to carry out repairs. As noted by iFixits co-founder Kyle Wiens, Apple intentionally uses its own type of screws and glues batteries into its place to make repairs for third-party repair shops difficult.

Do you think Apple has overcharged you for conducting any kind of repair job on your iPhone or MacBook? Have you ever tried availing a third-party repair shop service for your faulty Apple?

[Via CBCApple still has a safe haven when it comes to smartphone ownership by teenagers in the United States, based on a semi-annual report.

Piper Jaffray conducts its study of smartphone ownership by teenagers on a semi-regular basis, but while the numbers have certainly changed from one poll to the next, the one consistent element is that the iPhone is still the go-to choice for teenagers in the United States, with the lineup remaining the dominant choice for that demographic.

According to the most recent study, which was published by Business Insider on Monday, 82% of respondents to the poll this time around said they owned some version of Apples iPhone. And looking beyond that, the same poll shows that 86% of U.S.-based teenagers (that responded to the poll) show that they plan on upgrading to an Apple iPhone at some point in the future. Compare that to the 10% of teenagers that said they plan on upgrading to an Android-based smartphone in the future (which is actually down from 11% from a poll taken earlier this year).

Overall, we view the survey data as a sign that Apples place as the dominant device brand among teens remains intact, Michael Olson and Yung Kim, the Piper Jaffray analysts, wrote.

As far as the Apple Watch is concerned, it finds itself in an interesting spot. U.S. teenagers say its their second choice when it comes to wearing a watch at all, with 17% saying its their favorite watch brand. But what takes up the majority of teenager focus when it comes to a watch? Rolex, apparently.

As far as this particular poll, 8,600 responses were surveyed, with the average age being 16.

Our Take

The iPhone dominance makes sense, especially just looking at the past polls. The most surprising element of this particular story is the fact that teenagers are more interested in Rolex watches, and are apparently wearing them, over the Apple Watch. Apparently Im old enough to remember when Rolex watches were only found on Wall Street guys and in music videos.

[via Business InsiderPhoto from CGTN

BEIJING, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping has encouraged private entrepreneurs to have firm confidence in development and work in a down-to-earth way to develop their businesses.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in a letter on Saturday in response to some private entrepreneurs having been awarded for their contributions in a poverty relief campaign.

In his letter, Xi spoke highly of the private entrepreneurs' devotion to the cause of fighting poverty.

"I'm delighted to see an increasing number of private entrepreneurs actively shouldering social responsibilities, eagerly devoting themselves to the arduous battle to eradicate poverty, and helping many impoverished people to live a better life," Xi said.

Over 60,000 private enterprises have taken part in the poverty relief campaign, named "10,000 enterprises assisting 10,000 villages," since it started in October 2015, with 100 of them being awarded earlier this month.

The awarded private entrepreneurs recently sent Xi a letter, reporting the experiences of participating in the campaign and expressing their determination to further contribute to poverty eradication.

In the responding letter, Xi said that private enterprises had been thriving and the private economy had been growing in size and strength in the reform and opening-up drive over the past 40 years.

The private economy plays a key role in promoting steady growth, innovation and employment as well as improving people's wellbeing, and has become an important driving force for social and economic development, he said.

The private economy's historic contributions are indelible and its position and functions should not be doubted, Xi said. "Any word or act to deny or weaken the private economy is wrong."

Supporting the development of private enterprises has been a consistent principle of the CPC Central Committee, which will be unwaveringly implemented, he stressed.

"I hope that private entrepreneurs will grasp the trend of the era, have firm confidence in development, innovate and create without being distracted, and work in a down-to-earth way in developing their businesses, to jointly create a better tomorrow for the private economy, and make greater contributions to realizing the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation," Xi said.We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to formChinese Premier Li Keqiang addresses the 12th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit in Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 19, 2018. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BRUSSELS, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- As economic globalization continues to lose momentum while protectionism and unilateralism rise, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's Eurasian trip has offered China's answer on how to steer the world economy out of difficulties through concerted efforts and cooperation.

Li's nine-day visit took him to Tajikistan, the Netherlands and Belgium, where the Chinese premier and leaders of Eurasian countries held in-depth talks, promising to enhance mutual trust and forge stronger partnerships.

Furthermore, Asia and Europe, two stabilizing forces of the world as well as two major economic blocs, were committed to upholding multilateralism and safeguarding the rules-based free trade system to maintain sustainable global growth.

JOINT VOICE ON FREE TRADE, MULTILATERALISM

Li's trip came at a time when openness and cooperation were challenged by isolationism and confrontation. In face of such trying times, a more connected Eurasia is badly needed than ever before.

Situated on the world's largest landmass which houses more than two-thirds of the world's population, Asia and Europe share common ground for free trade and multilateralism because of their geographical advantages and demand for further development.

When addressing the two-day 12th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit held in Brussels, Li said that under the complicated circumstances, Eurasia should stay committed to building an open world economy.

As the largest inter-governmental platform, the ASEM Summit has played a key role in expanding ties and cooperation among member countries and boosting regional communication and connectivity.

The hard-won momentum of the world economic recovery still calls for adherence to open development, the premier said, urging the two continents to resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system and consolidate the foundation for economic globalization and free trade.

Countries should continue to facilitate free trade and investment to provide opportunities for the global economy, he said.

In the joint communique of the 17th meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held in Dushanbe, the member states agreed to "consistently strengthening an open, inclusive, transparent, non-discriminatory and rule-based multilateral trading system, as well as preventing any unilateral protectionist measures in trade."

Li called on the SCO members to launch feasibility studies on establishing an SCO free trade area, a specific measure to fulfill their commitment to upgrading multilateral cooperation.

Claudia Vernott, founder and director of China-EU Association for Digital spoke highly of the joint commitment to building an open economy by way of wider cooperation and reforms of the WTO and existing global mechanisms.

"It is the responsibility of both Europe and China to join efforts to make sure that multilateralism could be sustained," Vernott said.

DEEPENING ALL-LEVEL COOPERATION

During the Chinese premier's visits, a joint and firm voice could be heard at bilateral and multilateral meetings calling to bolster pragmatic economic cooperation, with the signing of agreements in various fields.

When meeting with Li, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon expressed willingness to enhance cooperation with China in such areas as transportation, agriculture, energy and infrastructure construction as well as people-to-people exchanges.

Having already joined China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), people in Tajikistan as well as other countries along the land route are making strides towards a brighter future.

The stride is also made in China-Netherlands ties, as the two countries' pragmatic cooperation in such fields as trade and investment enjoys continuous growth.

Over 900 Dutch companies are doing business and investing in China and the number is growing, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said at the China-Netherlands Business Forum. Ahead of the event, enterprises of the two countries signed a series of agreements worth nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars.

More opportunities would be brought to Dutch companies along with the advancing of the BRI, the boom of China's new growth drivers and upgrading of the industrial structure, and its innovation-driven development strategy, Li noted.

On the sidelines of both the SCO prime ministers' meeting and the ASEM Summit, joint stance of fostering all-round cooperation was repeated at more than 10 bilateral meetings, which have testified the earnest efforts and faith from China and its partners.

CREATING CONNECTIVITY

Enjoying the natural privileges of the supercontinent, Asia and Europe should first and foremost promote infrastructure connectivity by building transportation and logistics networks.

In Li's remarks, countries involved need to enhance "soft connectivity" of systems, policies, rules and standards in order to invigorate elements such as capital, technology, services and data.

Boosting the geographic connectivity through projects like China's BRI offers great benefits to people living on the continent.

China's determination to broaden the network of BRI beneficiaries is strengthened as more and more people in participant countries live better because of economic growth and jobs, global competitiveness and trade as well as the flow of goods and services.

In his speech delivered at the ASEM Summit, Li expressed hope for the further alignment of the BRI with the development strategies of regional countries, as well as other connectivity blueprints like the Eurasian connectivity strategy proposed by the European Union.

China takes the Eurasian continent as the core of BRI construction, which originated from China but belongs to the whole world, Li said.

To cultivate connectivity between Asia and Europe, China has taken every chance to assure the world of its opening-up policy and willingness to cooperate and communicate.

"Past experience shows that development cannot be achieved behind d doors, and opening up is the right way forward," Li said when attending the SCO meeting.

China's firm attitude was valued by countries at the inter-governmental meetings, where they reaffirmed support for the BRI and advocated the establishment of a more open and mutually beneficial region.

Pierre-Yves Jeholet, vice-president of Belgium's Walloon government and minister of economy, hailed the Chinese premier's visit as an important one which strengthens both diplomatic relations and trade.

"I think diplomatic and trade relations go hand in hand," the official said, adding that "we must look to other countries and promote this connection" so that the projects can witness joint contribution and shared benefits.Sebelum Anda bermain, Anda perlu mengetahui apa yang Anda butuhkan untuk masuk ke dalam permainan roulette kasino online ini. Jika Anda sudah mendaftar di situs judi casino online dan sudah memberikan user ID, login terlebih dahulu dan pilih menu live casino yang tertera di situs judi tersebut. Pertama pilih dealer dan putuskan sendiri, lalu pilih meja atau kursi di dalam ruangan. Jika namanya tertera dan berwarna coklat, maka kursi tersebut sudah ditempati oleh pemain lain, dan pilihlah kursi kosong berwarna hitam.

Kasino Roulette adalah salah satu permainan paling populer di situs perjudian kasino. Jadi dalam permainan ini kamu harus menebak angka berapa yang akan keluar. Ada 36 nomor berbeda dalam permainan populer ini di mana sebuah bola kecil diputar dan dilemparkan ke dalam mesin roulette. Anda harus menebak dari mana bola kecil itu masuk dan di nomor berapa ia berhenti. Ada banyak jenis pilihan angka dari 0-36, dan mereka dihitung secara berbeda. Sebagai agen casino terpercaya, panduan permainan roulette ini juga memberikan informasi tentang jenis pilihan dan nama permainan roulette casino online sebagai berikut:

Jika Anda ingin bermain roulette di situs kasino online, caranya sangat sederhana. Anda dapat bermain di Kasino ION, Kasino Sbobet, dan Situs Kasino. Di bawah ini adalah artikel panduan bermain di mana Anda dapat mempelajari roulette langsung dan memainkannya di situs judi online mana pun.

tangkapan layar

Sebelum Anda bermain, Anda perlu mengetahui apa yang Anda butuhkan untuk masuk ke dalam permainan roulette kasino online ini. Jika Anda sudah mendaftar di situs judi casino online dan sudah memberikan user ID, login terlebih dahulu dan pilih menu live casino yang tertera di situs judi online tersebut. Pertama pilih dealer dan putuskan sendiri, lalu pilih meja atau kursi di dalam ruangan. Jika namanya tertera dan berwarna coklat, maka kursi tersebut sudah ditempati oleh pemain lain, dan pilihlah kursi kosong berwarna hitam.

Panduan Bermain Online Kasino Roulette

Kasino Roulette adalah salah satu permainan paling populer di situs perjudian kasino. Jadi dalam permainan ini kamu harus menebak angka berapa yang akan keluar. Ada 36 nomor berbeda dalam permainan populer ini di mana sebuah bola kecil diputar dan dilemparkan ke dalam mesin roulette. Anda harus menebak dari mana bola kecil itu masuk dan di nomor berapa ia berhenti. Ada banyak jenis pilihan angka dari 0-36, dan mereka dihitung secara berbeda. Sebagai agen casino terpercaya, panduan permainan roulette ini juga memberikan informasi tentang jenis pilihan dan nama permainan roulette casino online sebagai berikut:

1. Straight Up: Penempatan angka tunggal dari 0 hingga 36. Contoh perhitungan straight up adalah mengalikan taruhan dengan 35. Ini adalah jenis taruhan tertinggi dalam permainan roulette kasino, jadi 50 dikalikan dengan 35 memberi Anda 1750, mengapa jenis taruhan ini menghasilkan pengembalian yang begitu tinggi? Hal ini karena tidak mudah untuk memenangkan pilihan nomor dengan memilih hanya satu nomor dari banyak.

2. Taruhan split: Jenis taruhan yang ditempatkan pada dua angka atau di antara dua angka yang berbeda. Misalnya, menempatkan di sela-sela angka 9 dan 12 atau 13d dan 14 dihitung sebagai jenis taruhan split. Setiap nomor dapat ditempatkan dalam jenis ini selama nomor tersebut berdekatan dan persis seperti Gambar A dan B. Untuk taruhan ini, jika Anda memenangkan contoh dan mengalikannya dengan 850, Anda akan menerima jumlah taruhan yang dikalikan dengan 17. .

3. Taruhan jalanan: bertaruh dengan 3 angka ke bawah, misalnya 1,2,3 atau 10,11,12. Semua taruhan jalan akan menerima kemenangan dikalikan dengan 11. Misalnya, 50 dikalikan 550.

4. Taruhan sudut: Jenis taruhan di mana empat angka ditempatkan saling berhadapan, seperti 13,14,16,17 atau 19,20,22,23. Semua angka valid karena terdiri dari 4 angka yang diisi seperti kotak dan taruhan dikalikan 8 (misalnya 50 kali 800).

5. Taruhan baris: Atau, Anda dapat mengatakan bahwa ada 6 jenis taruhan yang terdiri dari 2 baris, tetapi 6 poin dengan 2 peregangan, seperti taruhan jalanan. Misalnya, jika Anda memilih angka 7 hingga 12 dan 13 hingga 18, taruhan 50 adalah 5 kali dan kemudian dikalikan dengan 250 kemenangan.

6. Kolom Inner Bet: Jenis taruhan vertikal dengan 12 poin berturut-turut, seperti kolom numerik 1,4,7,10,13,19,22,25,25,28,22,24,34 atau kolom lainnya. Dan jika dia memenangkan kolom, 50 taruhan digandakan dan 100 taruhan.

7. Lusin : Jenis taruhan menempatkan 12 angka tetapi menempatkannya pada kotak berbentuk seperti contoh Kolom A dengan angka 1 sampai 12 dan odds dengan kolom lain untuk dipilih dengan memilih 1 kotak pertama untuk Kolom A. Kalikan dengan 2, 50 taruhan 100.

8. Zero part : Cara bertaruh 0.1,2,3 sama persis seperti di gambar, karena berdekatan dengan angka 0, anda hanya bisa bertaruh 0.1,2,3. Menempatkan taruhan ini mengalikannya dengan 50. hingga 8.

9. Zero Corner: Bertaruh pada angka 0.1,2 atau 0.2,3 adalah dua pilihan karena Anda hanya bertaruh mendekati angka nol. Jenis taruhan ini dikalikan 11 jika taruhan menang.

10. Two Dozen: Jenis taruhan dengan hanya dua pilihan: 1-18 atau 19-36. Jika taruhan Anda adalah 50, itu dikalikan dengan 1 hingga 50 jika Anda menang.

11. Merah atau Hitam: Masukkan taruhan Anda dengan memilih Merah atau Hitam sebagai warna angka yang muncul saat taruhan 50.

12. Genap/Ganjil: Pilih angka yang menghasilkan jumlah jenis taruhan ganjil.Photo taken on Oct. 21, 2018 shows the train derailment site in Yilan County, southeast China's Taiwan. (Xinhua/Jin Liangkuai)

TAIPEI, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- At least 18 people died and another 164 injured as of 11 p.m. Sunday, after a passenger train derailed in Taiwan earlier in the afternoon, according to the island's railway authority.

The Puyuma Express No. 6432 bound for Taitung from Shulin Station with 366 passengers on board derailed at 4:50 p.m. at Xinma Station, Yilan County. Seventeen people were declared dead before being sent to hospital.

All eight cars of the express train derailed, with three of them overturned. The cause of the derailment is still under investigation.

The accident, the worst of Taiwan railways in more than three decades, happened on a popular line along the island's east coast. Train services in both directions have been halted.

One American citizen was injured while the rest are all from Taiwan, according to the local railway authority.

The injured passengers were rushed to four local hospitals for treatment.

The Puyuma Express has an operational maximum speed of 130 kph.Saudi Arabia's investment conference this week was until recently the hottest ticket in business and finance.

Now the program has been stripped of names and the list of speakers, once a who's who of global business, has been heavily revised.

Continents and regions Middle East Middle East and North Africa Saudi Arabia Banking, finance and investments Business, economy and trade Financial markets and investing Jamal Khashoggi Misc people Business figures Masayoshi Son Conferences and conventions Deserts Economy and economic indicators Environment and natural resources Landforms and ecosystems Riyadh World Economic Forum Business executives Labor and employment Workers and professionals

Most of the top global CEOs and finance officials who were due to participate in the Future Investment Initiative, dubbed "Davos in the desert," pulled out in the past 10 days following the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2.

The latest to drop out, after much soul-searching, was Siemens (SIEGY) CEO Joe Kaeser.

"Siemens has been a reliable partner to Saudi Arabia for decades ... But for now, the truth must be found and justice must be served," Kaeser said in a statement Monday.

Saudi Arabia had denied any knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi, but late on Friday admitted that the Washington Post columnist died inside the consulate. Members of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's inner circle have been blamed for his death.

Conference organizers say it will be business as usual when the event starts Tuesday. The website of the Future Investment Initiative promises that a detailed program for the three-day event will be "released shortly."

Bin Salman is due to host the conference. But if he attends, he'll be rubbing shoulders with a much less famous crowd than this time last year, when he used the conference to promote his Vision 2030 plan to wean Saudi Arabia's economy off oil.

Among the other A-list executives who have already pulled out are JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon, HSBC (HSBC) CEO John Flint, Blackrock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde are also skipping the event.

"The Khashoggi story has damaged the reputation of the kingdom and has increased political uncertainty," said Garbis Iradian, the chief economist for Middle East and North Africa at the Institute of International Finance. "[Businesses] may postpone or reduce doing business dealings in the kingdom and adopt a wait and see attitude," he added.

But the absence of top names won't put a halt to discussions about future business opportunities. Some companies are sending less senior executives. JPMorgan and HSBC are sending representatives, despite their CEOs pulling out. And the head of Morgan Stanley's (MS) international business, Franck Petitgas, is listed on the conference app as a speaker.

Others, such as Airbus (EADSF)  which has 1,000 employees in the kingdom  want to keep channels of communication open despite pulling top executives.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund - a sovereign wealth fund  will lead a delegation including more than 30 Russian entrepreneurs, executives and officials.

"We appreciate the constructive dialogue and are happy to share experiences, identify new joint projects and discuss promising areas for the development of comprehensive cooperation between a wide range of partners from Russia, Saudi Arabia and other countries," RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said in a statement on Friday.

Germany has decided to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but defense contractors from other countries, including the United States, will be at the conference. In an interview with CBS last week, President Donald Trump said that he didn't want to sanction Saudi Arabia because it could cost firms like Boeing (BA) and Raytheon (RTN) billions in arms deals and cost jobs.

Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy is listed as a speaker at the event.

Oil industry executives are also expected to attend. Total (TOT) CEO Patrick Pouyanne is on the speaker list. His company signed a deal earlier this month to start working on a $5 billion petrochemical complex in the kingdom.

But the kingdom's budding relationship with the global tech world is coming under intense pressure, and could be damaged.

At the conference a year ago, SoftBank (SFTBF) CEO Masayoshi Son sat alongside bin Salman as the prince announced plans for a $500 billion futuristic city, NEOM.

Son has also launched a $93 billion mega tech fund with nearly half the money coming from the Saudi government. It has already made big investments in dozens of startups such as WeWork and Slack. Son was already planning for a second such fund. Now, that looks unlikely to happen.

Son and the head of SoftBank's international business, Marcelo Claure, were listed as speakers at the Saudi conference until recently. Neither appear on the revised list. The company has stayed silent on whether they will attend.

The kingdom urgently needs to reverse a decline in foreign investment to diversify its economy and end what the crown prince once called an "addiction" to oil. Under Vision 2030, bin Salman wants to grow the private sector, boost tourism and reduce unemployment over the next decade.

The plan caught the imagination of many international players, including billionaire Richard Branson, who jumped on opportunities for two tourism projects and was in talks for a $1 billion investment in his space company.

But Branson was one of the first to suspend his links with Saudi Arabia following Khashoggi's disappearance, and he has questioned whether anyone in the West can continue to do business there.

Many international investors were convinced this time last year that Saudi Arabia was open for business. It will be a much harder sell this time around.UPDATE; At it's special meeting Tuesday, the Mason City City Council voted unanimously to terminate its downtown project agreement with G8 Development.

Previous story below

MASON CITY, Iowa  A special meeting of the City Council is scheduled to terminate the River City Renaissance agreement with G8 Development.

Mason City sent a notice of default to the San Diego-based developer on September 7 and gave them 45 days to provide prove G8 had financial backing for the multi-million dollar downtown project. City Administrator Aaron Burnett says G8 has not provided the requested documents but has replied with a letter calling Mason Citys conduct completely unacceptable.

The letter from G8 Developments attorney claims the company is not in default of its agreement with the city and that it has never had any sort of agreement with the Iowa Economic Development Authority, which is demanding proof of financial backing before providing any state funding for the Renaissance project.

The Mason City City Council is scheduled to meet Tuesday at 5 p.m. to vote on cancelling the agreement with G8 Development.

With so many roadblocks, we asked business owners if they are still interested and supportive of the project.

Angi Louscher co-owns Lucy & Olive, a home decor store that's been in business for a little over two years, not far from the project area, and was initially in favor of the development.

"Probably more stores like this would open up. I think we could get more stores put back in the mall, or do something different with the mall."

As for what's next in the project, she still remains supportive.

"I'm hoping that somehow we can figure out a way to make it happen and whether it's with the current investor or if it's with someone new. I don't think it would be anything but good for us."

City Administrator Aaron Burnett is wanting to keep moving forward with the development, saying it could have a huge economic impact on the local economy.

"That time to cure has run out, those 45 days within the default period. Now that the council has to move forward with the electing to terminate or not tomorrow at the council meeting."

Burnett adds that no other developer has been chosen yet, as the council had been committed to working with G8. Even with the delays, he's in support of the project.

"It's not to say that the project's merits aren't there. We still see the benefit of people coming to the community for conventions, coming for the arena, being able to listen to music at the pavilion, the hotel...all those developments are still positive for the community."KIMT News 3 - Each week leading up to the election we are featuring races on your ballot and making sure you are informed about where candidates stand on important issues. In this episode of Eye on Politics, we are featuring the race for Iowa's 4th Congressional District.

Currently US Representative Steve King represents this area that includes Cerro Gordo, Floyd, Hancock and Winnebago counties. An 8 term incumbent, King was first elected to congress in 2002. This election he is facing a challenge from democrat J.D. Scholten, a first time candidate for office with a background in legal work.

According to a new poll done by Emerson College, Steve King has a 10-point lead over Scholten with 16 percent of voters undecided. Because it's such a big part of our economy, issues in agriculture are a primary focus for these two candidates. Between tariffs and low commodity prices, farmers are up against a lot this season. For King, he says the main focus right now is getting a trade deal worked out with China and the new trade deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada is a big step in getting there.

It still leaves in place the tariffs on aluminum and steel which gives the president more leverage. So in the end we have to look at it and think this new agreement is a better agreement and it clears the decks so we can focus on other trade agreements particularly with China, says King.

Scholten agrees a trade deal with China is important but says there are other factors at play that are keeping farmers from profiting.

Even before these tariffs came about we had four consecutive years of low commodity prices, because of corporate consolidation within the ag industry. Farmers are being squeezed on the input and output side and those are things we need to be addressing as well. Tariffs are just part of the issue and without them farmers are going to have a tough year as is, says Scholten.

What's interesting is where their fundraising dollars are coming from. Right now Scholten has a huge cash advantage over King but of the money Scholten has raised only 8% comes from the 4th District.

King has raised twice as much in the district. To weigh in on this, here is our KIMT political analyst Dr. Eric Shoars.

For Scholten, the two biggest cities that are donating to him are San Francisco and New York. For Steve King it's Des Moines and Sioux City. So that tells us two things. The democrats are pouring a lot of money from outside Iowa into this race because they think they can win this seat and this seat is critical for democrats to win to win back the house, says Shoars.

Shoars says it also means there is strong support for King in the 4th District, which are the ones voting in this race on November 6th.

Debates on the local level continue to take place making it clear people want to hear from the candidates on their ballot in order to make an informed decision. Let's zero in on Ward 1 in Rochester where the city council seat is up for grabs. This race is between Patrick Keane and Heather Holmes. From sustainability issues to city codes, they answered questions from the community including what those who are unable to clear their sidewalks this winter because of age or finances are expected to do to avoid a fine.

There are some great services in Rochester. Rochester Family Services has a volunteer group that goes out; they have groups that go for sliding scale fees. This problem should not be resolved at the city level, there are services available, says Keane.

It is the responsibility of the homeowner. I think we have enough social services and hopefully enough good samaritans and neighbors who would assist, says Holmes.

So both agree this ordinance is not one they want to see changed. The winner of this seat replaces current councilman Ed Hruska.

Meanwhile local counties continue to prepare for Election Day. The Cerro Gordo County Auditor's Office recently conducted a public test of all of their election equipment to ensure every vote counts. It's required by law that counties do this prior to Election Day in Iowa and Minnesota. Interim Auditor Pat Wright says county officials will spend an entire day testing each machine.

We are going to run sample ballots through. We in the auditor's office predetermined what the results should be so we are hoping and guaranteeing that we have done this absolutely correct. It's for the voters to know that the equipment has been working and will be working on the day of election, says Wright.

To make sure your vote is secure, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon is announcing they will be working with Microsofts Defending Democracy program to harden election cybersecurity. Simon says, Outside forces are targeting our instruments of democracy and the stakes are especially high in Minnesota because the state is number one in voter turnout.

In addition to this, the state has made $7 million in grants to counties for equipment upgrades, worked with federal officials to conduct risk and vulnerability assessments of Minnesotas election systems and launched a protection system.

Meanwhile, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate paid a visit to Cerro Gordo County on Friday to talk about voter security.

We vote by paper ballot in Iowa and I think people need to keep that in mind. We don't vote on the internet so whenever they hear about hacking or some other manipulation happening in other places around the country they need to recognize in Iowa we don't do that, says Pate.

Pate also points out there are more provisions in place including anti-malware software, firewalls and other forms of censors.

Tune in for next weeks Eye on Politics at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday.MABEL, Minn. - Lewiston native Bryce Lange is renovating a former furniture store to become 'Lange's Grocers,' the first grocery store the Mabel community has had since 2012. Currently, the closest grocery store to Mabel is a little over seven miles away in Spring Grove.

"Grocery stores are vital to local economies and just local society in general. Its almost like a church outside of church. You know, you walk down an aisle and you see a friend," explains Lange. He's planning to hire local employees and sell local farmers' products. He's also hoping to allow buying-in-bulk options and a grocery delivery service.

Mayor James Wetsby tells KIMT the community has worked for a number of years to try to bring a chain grocery or convenience store to town but have always been turned down for their community's small size.

"Option-wise, there hasn't been much out there because the big people don't even want to look at you unless you're a population of 5,000 to 10,000 and we just don't have it here and we're a small community and we're just trying to survive," says Mayor Westby.

Lange's goal is to have the store operational by Thanksgiving, otherwise he hopes to have it open by the end of the year. If the shop outgrows it's current space, Lange says there's room to expand behind the building. He plans to eventually rent out the other half of the building to another local business.FOREST CITY, Iowa  A Forest City man is facing a second-degree burglary charge for allegedly entering a residence before being chased out by the person inside.

Ryan Marek is facing the felony charge in connection to an incident Thursday night in the 200 block of N. Clark St.

The victim said he chased a man out of his apartment and into the courthouse area, according to court documents. A second person contacted authorities after seeing a man hiding and running into a residence at 335 W. M. St. The victim was able to identify Marek, according to court documents, and Marek was arrested a short time later.ROCHESTER, Minn.  A man police are calling a violent offender was taken into custody Saturday after an incident that left police with injuries and without their body cameras.

Anthony Harris, 25, of Chicago, is facing two counts of fourth-degree assault and obstructing with force after an incident Saturday in the 1000 block of 3rd Ave. SE.

Police said Harris fled from Chicago, had cut off his ankle bracelet and had an active warrant out of Cook County for stealing a vehicle. Harris was also involved in a previous homicide, an assault and a robbery, police said.

Police said they found Harris in the passenger seat of a vehicle before 3 p.m. before police blocked the car from backing out and gave verbal commands that Harris allegedly didnt comply with.

Officers grabbed Harris out of the car before they began wrestling for several minutes in the street on 3rd Ave. Police said body cameras were knocked off in the struggle and a Taser was used to subdue Harris.

Officers suffered bruises, cuts and contusions during the incident.In this file photo taken on December 15, 2014 (FILES) In this file photo taken on December 15, 2014, general manager of Alarab TV, Jamal Khashoggi, looks on during a press conference in the Bahraini capital Manama. [Photo: Xinhua]

ISTANBUL, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that he will make statements about murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during his party's parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event in Istanbul, Erdogan stated that Turkey seeks justice and will reveal the "naked truth."

"Why did 15 people come here and why were 18 people arrested? I'm going to tell you in a very different way on Tuesday. We're going to go into detail," he said.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday admitted that Khashoggi was killed inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul and 18 people were arrested over their alleged connections to the killing as a result of an internal investigation into the case.

Turkey earlier said 15 Saudis who travelled to Istanbul were involved in Khashoggi's disappearance.

Turkish police and crime scene investigators conducted searches in the Saudi consulate, the residence of the Saudi consul general as well as a forest in Istanbul, trying to find the body of Khashoggi, who has been missing since entering the Saudi consulate on Oct. 2.Russia to react to U.S. moves after its withdrawal from INF Treaty: Russian MP

MOSCOW, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russia will respond to actual moves of the U.S. following its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) instead of the withdrawal itself, a Russian lawmaker said Sunday.

"We should respond not to the very fact of Washington's withdrawal from the treaty but to its practical steps when it is free to do whatever it wants," Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia's Federation Council upper parliament house, told Rossiya 24 television channel.

"As our president has said, Russia has all the military technical premises for that, its reaction will be rapid," he added.

On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement.

Earlier on Sunday, a number of Russian officials warned Washington against withdrawing from the treaty, saying such moves would be very dangerous.

The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

Moscow and Washington have been accusing each other of violating the arms control agreement in recent years amid increasing tension between the two countries.



By Dong Sun-hwa







Actor Jung Woo-sung said in a Podcast on Saturday that he does not mind suffering losses for supporting refugees, despite negative reactions from those opposed to asylum seekers coming to Korea.







"I have gained almost everything I need  if I lose something for taking justifiable actions, I will just let it go," he said.







The actor's Instagram was bombarded with malicious comments on June, after he posted a statement and a photo of Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Bangladesh on World Refugee Day.







The actor also commented, "Globally, some 68.5 million people are displaced, with 16.2 million people being forced to flee in 2017 alone." "Please stand #WithRefugees today in understanding and solidarity."







Jung, however, disclosed that he was not really concerned about the negative response.







"What fueled my worry was the fake information," said Jung. "People lacking information about asylum seekers could trust false information and it would demand time and energy to change their thoughts."







Jung made his debut in the film "The Fox with Nine Tails," in 1994, and has starred in a myriad of works including the movie "A Moment to Remember" in 2004 and the TV series "Athena: Goddess of War" in 2010.







He has been UNHCR National Goodwill Ambassador since 2014.

State lender vows legal battle against US auto giant



Korea Development Bank Chairman Lee Dong-gull bows at the beginning of a National Assembly audit of state-run banks at Industrial Bank of Korea headquarters in Seoul, Monday. Yonhap



By Lee Kyung-min

By Lee Kyung-min





Shinhan Financial Group will spend 20 trillion won ($17 billion) over the next decade to finance firms whose business models seek to promote sustainable, eco-friendly growth, it said Monday.







The move is part of its efforts to take the initiative in dealing with global warming amid a growing need to move toward a low-carbon economy.







The primary goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 20 percent less than the amount produced in 2012.







Under the slogan of "eco-transformation," firms seeking to establish business models using renewable energy and electric vehicles will be offered generous financing.







"The program will mostly help firms that recognize the need to clean the air and slow the pace of climate change," an official from the group said.







A group-wide effort will continue to obtain ISO 14000 environmental management standards that help organizations maintain environmentally conscious operations.







The group's affiliates including Shinhan Card and Shinhan Bank are advised to develop financial products whereby customers are encouraged to adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle.







The group will continue to seek cooperation with international environment-related organizations to boost partnerships and leadership.







The group's priorities include facilitating digitization, a substantial part of the eco-friendly initiative, under which workers are required to submit reports via the company's online intranet instead of printing out hard copies for their superiors.







The group plans to expand the advanced technology to customer services.







"Efforts to fight global warming are accelerating following the 2015 Paris Agreement, a critical initiative we are proud to be a part of. Shinhan will continue to invest in green, renewable energy projects, thereby promoting future-oriented, eco-friendly business in the long term," an official from the group said.







The Paris agreement reached within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change deals with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, starting in 2020.







By Nam Hyun-woo





Lee Jae-kwang, head of Ilsan Farming Association Corp., was named as this month's young entrepreneur in the rice industry by a government agriculture promoting arm, being recognized for his efforts in fresh rice branding and commercialization.







According to the Korea Agency of Education, Promotion and Information Service in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (EPIS), Monday, the agency has been awarding young entrepreneurs in the rice industry this year in a bid to promote rice consumption and introduce the industrial potential of the industry.







Lee, 31, is from a family that has been farming rice for three generations in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province. Along with his two friends, Lee introduced new rice varieties and rice snacks targeting young families.







Lee's rice brand is called "Baro the Mi," meaning rice milled directly after reaping. It is half-polished rice between brown rice and white rice, which has a balance between the taste of white rice and the nutrition of brown rice.







Baro the Mi is based on "High A Mi," a rice variety developed by the EPIS. It is containing lysine, an amino acid helping children to grow taller.







By packaging Baro the Mi in small 850 gram bottles, the brand targeted young families consuming less rice than the past.







Recently, Lee launched rice snack "Roasted Brown Rice Chip for My Kid."







"I hope the award helps improve the awareness of rice from Ilsan, and I will continue making efforts to produce quality rice and attractive rice snacks," Lee said.







Also Lee's company is running a field experience program target young mothers using "Raquaponics."







Raquaponics is a term referring to rice, aquaculture and hydroponics, where rice is grown in water containing excretions from aquatic animals, which live in the water cleaned by the rice.







"With Raquaponics, children can watch and learn about the circulation of water between fish and rice, as well as feeling closer to the rice we eat at home," an EPIS official said.









North Korea's official newspaper again ran an article on the escalating conflict between the United States and China on Monday, citing expert opinions critical of Washington.



The Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, said in a commentary that confrontations between Washington and Beijing, which were caused by the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on each other, have been spreading to various other areas.



The newspaper then said that U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's open criticism of China in his recent address and ensuing refutation from Beijing has further worsened the American-Chinese relationship.



In his address to the Hudson Institute on Oct. 4, Pence accused Beijing of "employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the U.S."



He also raised suspicion that China was trying to exert influence and interfere in the U.S. domestic policy and politics, and leveled criticism at Beijing's policy for the South China Sea and suppression of ethnic minorities.



China has responded sensitively and refuted Pence's remarks, raising fears that the China-U.S. conflict triggered by a trade war was escalating in many other areas.



The Rodong Sinmun then cited views of some experts who are critical of the U.S.



"Experts have raised concern about the escalation of the American-Chinese conflict and shared the view that America's capabilities to suppress China are limited and the trade dispute will certainly cause losses to itself," the newspaper said.



Noting Washington's recent indictment of a Chinese spy, the Pyongyang newspaper quoted experts as saying that the strategic confrontation and friction between China and the U.S. that originated from a trade dispute has spread to various areas, including politics, human rights and cyberspace.



The newspaper reported on Oct. 9 that the U.S. and Russia were escalating a conflict over Washington's plan to establish a military base in Poland.



In addition, the North Korean media have steadily carried reports on strategic U.S. conflicts with China and Russia.



Watchers speculate Pyongyang appears to be closely following Washington's relationship with Beijing and Moscow due to its potential impact on the North-U.S. denuclearization negotiations.



North Korea, China and Russia recently issued a joint statement calling on the U.S. to ease sanctions on Pyongyang in return for its denuclearization measures. (Yonhap)



Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) condemn the prosecution for delaying investigations on labor disputes in KB AutoTech and Yoosung Enterprise, at a press conference held in front of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, Seocho District, Seoul, in this July file photo. Yonhap





By Jung Da-min







North Korea's party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun ran a series of articles on South Korea's political situation in its Monday edition, suggesting social rights of the disadvantaged, including workers and disabled, are being neglected in the South. The articles cited South Korean media's recent reports.







Out of the six articles about South Korea in the newspaper's page for foreign affairs, one article highlighted a South Korean civic group's recent press conference that denounced Yoosung Enterprise for destroying trade unions.







The conflicts between the workers and the management started in 2011 when the company established a separate trade union to overcome workers' requests to reduce working hours. Although the Supreme Court sentenced a Chairman Yoo Shi-young to 14 months' jail last December, workers have continued to demand direct negotiations with management.







At another press conference in Monday morning in front of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, Seoul, the workers said Yoosung Enterprise's discrimination against workers, including wage reductions, was continuing.







The article in Rodong had been released a day earlier in the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).







Rodong's Monday edition also ran two other articles from KCNA  one from a Saturday report on an assault at a special education school for the disabled in Seoul; the other from a Wednesday report on the South's minor progressive Minjung Party's separate organization of "the poor," newly formed on Oct. 12 to fight for rights of underprivileged.







While North Korean media highlights the minor progressive party's recent activity suggesting the North's support for "anti-capitalism" campaigns in the South, they continued to slam the South's conservatives, especially the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP).







Rodong's Monday edition ran an editorial titled "Anti-unification groups' unedifying complaints" to condemn the LKP for disrupting the progress of the Panmunjeom Declaration that came after the April 27 inter-Korean summit.







Meanwhile, the newspaper also ran articles on the South's Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union's fight to be recognized as a legitimate organization, as well as on the South's organizations' "anti-U.S." rallies condemning the U.S. for infringing on the South's sovereignty by intervening in inter-Korean affairs.



By Kim Hyun-bin



The government is warning South Koreans to stay away from marijuana when visiting or studying abroad in Canada as it could result in criminal charges when re-entering the country.



The statements come as Canada recently legalized marijuana for recreational use and people over age 18 or 19 depending on the province are allowed to smoke and purchase the substance.



Canadians will be allowed to purchase pot via online or mail and even grow the plant.



However, the legalization only applies to Canadians and other nationalities there. South Koreans who are caught smoking the drug will be punished under their country's law.



Under the current law, marijuana is categorized as a drug along with dangerous narcotics and psychotomimetic agents.



Excluding certain verified medical officials, selling, possessing and transporting marijuana is punishable by law.



When caught in Korea, one can be sentenced to up to five years in prison or fined up to 50 million won ($44,000).



"If someone is caught smoking abroad or brings marijuana into the country, they will be punished the same way as if they were caught in the country," said Yoon Se-jin, chief of narcotics investigation at the Gyeonggi Southern Provincial Police Agency. "It doesn't matter if the incident occurred in another country that legalized the drug."



According to data released by the Korea Tourism Organization in May, 293,000 people departed for Canada last year, more than double the number in 2013, which was 144,000.



The Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Canada released a statement warning of the legal risks of marijuana as hundreds of thousands of Koreans are expected to visit Canada this year.



"Marijuana might be legal but if a Korean is caught purchasing or transporting the drug he or she will be punished, so people should be cautious to avoid the disadvantages of breaking the law," the embassy wrote via Twitter last week.



The police are planning to hold a briefing session for overseas Koreans and students of the legalities.



"We plan to cooperate with overseas Koreans and students to hold a briefing session after selecting the right time and place," the police said. "We plan to conduct briefings in Uruguay, which also legalized the drug."



Korean criminal law applies to citizens around the world, even in places where the activities are legal, including smoking marijuana as well as gambling.





By Jung Min-ho







Korean police have warned Korean residents in Canada not to smoke marijuana, saying those who ignore the warning could face criminal charges when they return to their home country.





Yoon Se-jin, head of the Narcotics Crime Investigation Division at Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency, warned earlier this week that smoking pot is treated as a serious offense here and Korean smokers, subject to the laws of their country, could face up to five years in prison.





"Weed smokers will be punished according to the Korean law, even if they did so in countries where smoking marijuana is legal. There won't be an exception," he said.





Last week, Canada became the second country to legalize weed for recreational use. Only Uruguay in South America did so earlier. (Despite its reputation for being open and liberal, the Netherlands has not legalized it fully.)





So Canada's move is drawing extensive attention from many countries that must figure out the legality of marijuana issues involving Canadians and their own citizens.





Korean police said they plan to hold briefing sessions in Canada and Uruguay to explain the risks of smoking marijuana to Korean residents.





According to Ministry of Foreign Affairs data, about 23,000 Koreans with student visas are living in Canada.

A total of 810 medical disputes involving foreign patients were registered with a local arbitration agency over the last six years, government data showed Monday.



According to the data by the Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Agency and submitted to the National Assembly, 247 cases were registered with the agency in 2017 by foreigners seeking assistance or consultation, up from 111 in 2013. A total of 125 cases were registered this year.



By nationality, 538 cases were registered by Chinese patients, accounting for 66.4 percent of the total, followed by 72 cases by Americans, 41 by Vietnamese and 22 by Mongolians, the data showed.



The data showed that 132 cases were made against plastic surgery, followed by 70 against orthopedics, 60 against obstetrics and 55 against dental clinics.



Experts and lawmakers have called on the government to provide wider support during dispute processes as part of a wide range of measures to enhance the safety and convenience for an increasing number of foreign tourists coming to South Korea for medical services.



"It is necessary to come up with measures, such as increasing the number of counselors or translators so that foreign patients can solve medical disputes with local medical institutions and hospitals," Rep. Choi Do-ja said.



According to separate data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, a total of 321,574 foreigners arrived here in 2017 to visit hospitals. The number of foreign patients has increased by an average of 11 percent on-year since 2009, when 60,201 foreigners visited South Korea. (Yonhap)



Still Alive in Hongdae



The best Halloween-themed punk show in Korea happens 10 p.m. this Saturday at DGBD near Hongik University in western Seoul. Entry is only 5,000 won for people with costumes. A costume contest has prizes from small businesses including Newsboy Burger Pub, Moderment Clothing and SHARP Ink.



When co-promoter Jeff Moses first came to Hongdae for Halloween in 2008, he was disappointed by the lack of celebration. "All the clubs had Halloween-themed flyers, but when I got to the shows, they were just normal shows. Nothing to do with Halloween at all," he said. "People in Korea didn't care about Halloween, so I said we needed to change that."



Bands include Whatever That Means, Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, 57, A'Z Bus, Rudy Guns and Andersen. Visit fb.com/wdikorea for more information.







Korea's extreme metal lecture



U.S. expats Ian Henderson and Michael O'Dwyer spent a couple years making "K-Pop Killers," a feature-length documentary film on Korea's metal scene. Henderson will discuss the "quixotic quest of these musical miscreants" in a lecture for the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch (RASKB).



"The saga of heavy metal in Korea is a strange one: starting as an illegal import under military dictatorship, to the rock explosion of the 1980s and 1990s, through its downfall in the wake of the K-pop juggernaut," Henderson says in the lecture intro.



The lecture is Oct. 30 at the second-floor lounge of Somerset Palace in downtown Seoul. All are welcome. Non-members pay 10,000 won and students pay 5,000 won. Visit raskb.com for more information.





Donor Portrait of Lady Wang of Taiyuan, cave 130 Mogao Grottoes, high Tang Dynasty 705-780 A.D.

The Buddhist gods, meditating in their sequestered shrines which peep out over the cliffs of Dunhuang, have witnessed the desert change over a millennium. Although this pivotal oasis along the ancient Silk Road may appear a small sandpile without any unique characteristics, for the trading and cultural exchanges of the East and the West, this couldn't be further from the truth.

Over 700 years ago, when Marco Polo first visited Dunhuang, a city surrounded by a myriad of Buddhist grottoes, he was spellbound by the fusion of thriving international trade and vibrant culture. In his well-known book The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian adventurer detailed the city as an international economic and cultural hub, for it created an unprecedented connection between the East and the West.

Centuries later, following the reinvigoration of the ancient Silk Road into the new Belt and Road Initiative, Dunhuang has once again caught the worlds attention. In February, scholars from China and Italy launched the first ever exhibition of Buddhist Art from Dunhuang in Polo's hometown of Venice, to commemorate the dust-laden trading and cultural exchanges between the two furthest reaches of the ancient Eurasian route.

The Mogao Caves. (Photo by Kou Jie/People' s Daily Online)

Dunhuang, a city that boasts openness and respect to other cultures, preserves its ancient allure in the modern era, as international cooperation and mutual understanding between countries are highly desirable today. These core values are imprinted in the history of Dunhuang, said Zhao Shengliang, Deputy Director of Dunhuang Academy.



By Lee Min-young







Song Yoo-geun, 21, a prodigy with an IQ of 187, will join the military in December to serve his 20-month military service. With all able-bodied South Korean men obliged to serve two years in the military, prodigies are no exception.





Song said in an interview with

that aired on Sunday that he would join the military on Dec. 24, Christmas Eve.







He is yet to obtain his doctorate after his paper was retracted because of plagiarism issues in 2015. He will try to complete his Ph.D. after he finishes his military service.







Back in 2005, Song made national headlines as he became the youngest university student in Korea, when he was admitted at the age of eight. Song was said to have understood Einstein's theory of relativity when he was only six.







He then became a Ph.D. student at the age of 17, publishing his thesis "Axisymmetric, Non-stationary Black Hole Magnetospheres: Revisited" in a renowned scientific journal ApJ.







However, his academic achievements seemed to go downhill when he was embroiled in a highly publicized plagiarism scandal. With his paper being retracted, Song failed to become the youngest South Korean to earn a Ph.D.







Song had to face pressure and contempt that came with the huge media attention.



He often said that during lectures he felt singled out from everyone else, putting him under great pressure.





Two employees were injured during an armed robbery at a community credit cooperative branch in a southeastern province, police said Monday.



The suspect, presumed to be male, stormed into the branch of the Korean Federation of Community Credit Cooperatives (KFCCC) in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, about 270 kilometers southeast of Seoul, at about 9:30 a.m.



The suspect brandished a sharp object and hurt the two staff members, and got away with about 20 million won ($17,640) in cash. Police said they are chasing the suspect. (Yonhap)







By Jung Min-ho







Two female U.S. army soldiers have been questioned for allegedly assaulting a Korean man and a police officer in Dongducheon, police said Monday.





According to Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency, a private, 20, from the U.S. Eighth Army and a private first class, 19, from the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division were questioned in the early hours of the day after allegedly kicking and punching a man, 58, and a police officer.





This came after an altercation between the soldiers and the man at around midnight. How the trouble started is still unclear.





Police said the soldiers refused to say anything and returned to their units later.





Police plan to summon them again for questioning after checking surveillance cameras in the area.



By Kang Seung-woo



The police's decision to disclose the personal information of a suspect in a recent atrocious murder is reigniting a years-long debate over how to balance the rights of the accused with the people's right to know.





Kim Seong-soo is escorted out of the Yangchoen Police Station in Seoul, Monday. / YonhapThe members of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party spread a large banner to protest alleged nepotism at public firms revealed during a recent government audit, during a rally in front of the National Assembly building, Sunday. / Yonhap



By Kim Jae-heun



Suspicions of nepotism are emerging at a growing number of public companies following the first allegation involving Seoul Metro, where more than 100 people given regular employment were found to be related to employees who had already been working there.



The government is considering investigating all public companies for recruitment corruption.



According to Rep. Jung You-sub of the Liberty Korea Party (LKP), Monday, the Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS) hired 1,203 temporary workers as permanent employees. And 25 of them have family ties with employees who had already worked there.



The Incheon International Airport Corp. is also embroiled in controversy, as 14 employees hired at six of its subcontractors were found to be relatives of workers at the corporation, according to Rep. Park Wan-su of the LKP.



At Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) KPS, a subsidiary of the KEPCO, 240 temporary workers were given permanent employment in April, and 11 of them were children of executives and staff members there, according to Rep. Jung.



Rep. Jang Seok-chun of the LKP added that KEPCO KPS has hired 40 people since 2014 who were children or siblings of current workers.



At Daejeon City Corp., seven people who were newly hired since May last year were children or siblings of the company's union members. Six of the seven were assigned to the same departments as their relatives, said Rep. Lee Che-ik of the LKP.



These public companies are denying any favors or irregularities in its hiring, saying those people landed the jobs through due process.



As the nepotism allegations are involving more and more public companies, the government said it is considering inspecting all public firms.



"We are currently investigating the companies where the allegations have emerged, and will consider how to conduct investigation into all the hundreds of public companies if we do," a government official said. "But it is not an easy task because confirming family ties involves access to private information of the workers."



Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon also said Friday that his ministry would consider inspecting nepotism allegations at the central government-affiliated public companies.



The accusation over nepotism started at Seoul Metro sparked during the National Assembly audit last week when Rep. Kim Sung-tae, floor leader of the LKP, revealed that the city-owned company promoted 1,285 temporary workers to permanent positions, and 108 of them were later found to be relatives of workers at the company.



Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said he would ask the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) to inspect the allegations soon.



Three opposition parties _ the LKP, the Bareunmirae Party and the Party for Democracy and Peace _ requested an inspection of recruitment irregularities at public firms on Monday.

By Kim Bo-eun



The South and North will hold generals' military talks Friday as a means to follow up the military agreement reached last month.



"The meeting will check on follow-up measures to the military agreement reached last month, look into drawing up and running an inter-Korean joint military committee as well as conducting a joint study on the mouth of the Han River for joint use," the defense ministry said Monday.



The meeting was arranged 11 days after the Koreas agreed at a high-level meeting Oct. 15 to hold a generals' meeting.



As part of implementing the military agreement, the Koreas last week completed the removing of landmines that were buried along the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), as a means to demilitarize the joint security area.



The South and North and the United Nations Command plan to finish withdrawing guard posts, troops and heavy weapons by Thursday.



The generals' military meeting will check up on progress on JSA demilitarization and plan for the next steps.



It will also look into the state of landmine removals for the joint excavation of war remains that is ongoing at Arrowhead Ridge in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province.



Moreover, the meeting will discuss drawing up and running an inter-Korean joint military committee. The committee will discuss issues such as halting "spy" activities of each side.



In addition, the meeting will address the joint study of the mouth of the Han River, with plans to finish the study by December this year. The study will be to make the mouth of the river waters for joint use.



Meanwhile, the Koreas and the United Nations Command (UNC) held their second trilateral meeting at the South's side of the truce village of Panmunjeon, Monday. The UNC oversees activities in the DMZ.



The meeting reviewed the landmine removal project in the JSA and discussed plans to withdraw guard posts and minimize personnel on border duty.



Their first meeting was held Oct. 16 at Panmunjeom.



Amid ongoing moves to remove hostilities and promote peace along the inter-Korean border, South Korea and the U.S. will hold a military committee meeting (MCM) in Washington this week, to discuss military preparedness amid the continued halting of military exercises.



The MCM will be held at the Pentagon, Thursday (local time). South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff head Park Han-ki will attend the meeting.



The allies will discuss follow-up measures to the delay of the annual Vigilant Ace air exercise, which was announced by the defense chiefs of South Korea and the U.S. at the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus in Singapore last week.



Earlier, the defense ministry in a statement said "(South Korea and the U.S.) will continue to discuss through the MCN and Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) various means to maintain defense posture so that there are no cracks in military preparedness."





By Kim Bo-eun



Denuclearization talks between North Korea and the U.S., which appear to be stalled, may affect scheduled inter-Korean events, analysts said Monday.



Working-level talks between U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun and the North's Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui have not yet begun. Instead, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he will be meeting his North Korean counterpart for senior-level talks soon.



In addition, the second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump is seen as likely to be held next year.



An earlier speculated blueprint of events was that Pyongyang and Washington could reach a big deal on initial denuclearization steps and corresponding measures, namely reaching a deal to end the 1950-53 Korean War this month, formally declaring the war over in November, and Seoul hosting the North Korean leader in December.



It has been President Moon Jae-in's plan for the war to be declared over within the year, as stated in the Panmunjeom Declaration reached between himself and Kim at their first summit in April.



However, a lack of progress in the denuclearization talks is casting a shadow over such prospects.



"It appears the U.S. and North Korea are failing to narrow their differences on the latter's reporting of its nuclear program," said Shin Beom-cheol, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. "This is why the working-level talks are failing to make progress and it is unlikely the second summit between Pyongyang and Washington will be held in the immediate future."



With regards to these concerns, Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said "We hope for the second summit between North Korea and the U.S. to be held without a setback. We are also hoping for Chairman Kim Jong-un's visit to Seoul to take place as planned."



Moon announced at his third summit with the North Korean leader in Pyongyang last month that Kim would be visiting Seoul within the year.



"The North Korean leader may visit as scheduled, backed by Cheong Wa Dae's stance that furthering inter-Korean relations helps bring progress in the denuclearization process, but this could create a risk of deteriorating relations between Seoul and Washington," Shin said.



A rift already appears to exist between South Korea and the U.S. in advancing inter-Korean projects amid slow progress in the denuclearization process. The South is planning to hold a groundbreaking ceremony to connect railways with the North in November or December; inter-Korean talks took place Monday to provide support in restoring forests in the North; and a process is underway to reduce hostilities and promote peace on the inter-Korean border.



Professor Koh Yu-hwan at Dongguk University said inter-Korean affairs that do not go against sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council will likely take place as planned.



"Of course, Kim Jong-un's visit to Seoul would take place in much better circumstances if there was some progress in denuclearization and a declaration ending the war was made," he said.



With regards to this matter, the Cheong Wa Dae spokesman said "It is our belief that if the end of war declaration is made before Chairman Kim's trip, his visit will be much more meaningful, and the Koreas will be able to have a deep dialogue and produce agreements accordingly."



By Kim Yoo-chul



A senior Cheong Wa Dae official denied reports that South Korea and the European Union failed to adopt any joint statements in last week's bilateral talks due to "differing thinking" over an assessment of the CVID concept.



"It's been said the lack of a joint statement after South Korea-EU summits was due to the EU's adherence to including the phrase "CVID" (complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization), and the opposition by South Korea. This was simply not true as CVID had been included in statements after President Moon Jae-in's summits with other European leaders during the President's trip there last week," he said on the condition of anonymity.



The response came after foreign media reports claimed the South Korean leader opposed the EU's request of including CVID or similar wording in a joint statement as President Moon thought including it would be a step "too far."



Moon had meetings with European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker and European Council head Donald Tusk early Saturday (KST) on the sidelines of Moon's participation in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). However, no joint statements have been made, which was "very unusual," said diplomatic sources.



"The lack of a joint statement was because of the EU's strong insistence on including wording to highlight the EU's hard-line stance of handling nuclear or nuclear-related issues as seen by Iran and Ukraine. This was thoughts we believe were against the best interests of the United States and Russia," said the official, who is directly involved with the issue.



Prior to the meetings, there were talks about a joint statement mentioning possible support for the Iranian nuclear deal and denouncing Russia's interventionism in Ukraine.



Another official from the presidential office said EU leaders conveyed the same message  CVID is the essence and core of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution.



"Seoul didn't see any friction with the EU and between leaders in Europe over a continued maintenance of CVID. The EU is one of the strongest backers supporting Seoul's North Korean policy," the official told The Korea Times.



President Moon raised the prospect of offering sanctions relief to North Korea during his summits with the leaders of France and U.K., who hold seats in the UNSC with the United States, China and Russia, to encourage Pyongyang to announce more concrete and detailed plans toward denuclearization.



British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron said North Korea had to apply "concrete steps" toward denuclearization, but didn't directly link sanctions relief to CVID.







By Park Ji-won







Three opposition parties plan to submit a joint proposal for a parliamentary investigation into illegal hiring practices at public firms under the Seoul Metropolitan Government.







"More allegations are being raised about irregularities in their hiring process and job succession since nepotism at Seoul Metro was reported," Rep. Kim Sung-tae, floor leader of the major opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP), said during a press conference held by Bareunmirae Party (BMP) floor leader Rep. Kim Kwan-young and Party for Democracy and Peace (PDP) floor leader Rep. Chang Byoung-wan, Monday.







"It is important to conduct an Assembly investigation into the hiring illegalities at public firms. In addition, corruption in private kindergartens needs a thorough investigation. We ask the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) to accept our request."







The opposition parties raised the allegations at the beginning of the National Assembly audit insisting public corporations, including Seoul Metro which is run by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, have provided hiring favors to relatives of current and former employees. Critics say the opposition forces are trying to politicize the issue to attract attention to them as they failed to do so during the audit.







The Assembly's standing committees are conducting a government audit on the performance of government agencies.







The Seoul city government said last week it is planning to request the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea (BAI) investigate the possible hiring illegalities in the government on Tuesday.







Rep. Hong Young-pyo, floor leader of the ruling DPK, meanwhile, refuted the opposition parties' allegation saying "don't exaggerate things that never existed."







Hong added, "It is demagoguery and a low-grade political attack taking no responsibility after disclosing (possibly false) information."



By Zahra Hussaini





Afghanistan has been seen as a nation of war and conflict for decades. It has suffered from civil war and ethnic tension for years and there is still an ongoing armed conflict where dozens of people are killed on a daily basis. Signs of war persist in the capital city, public buildings are heavily fortified and guards armed with automatic weapons seem to be everywhere.





Despite the obvious challenges, the country like any other nation on the earth, has its unique history, culture and beauty which shows a different aspect of the Afghan landscape.



Bamyan, the central region of Afghanistan, is the place where some of the most ancient carvings can be found, where the tallest Buddha statues in the world once stood, and it was just in 2001 when the statues were destroyed by the Taliban after being declared idols. An event that shocked the entire world!





Bamyan Province which is mostly mountainous with little agricultural land is the main tourist attraction of Afghanistan. Besides that, the province unlike many others is an abode of hope, peace and tranquility where people can freely move without fear of explosions or missiles hitting them.



Bamyan was named the cultural center of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) for 2015. The news spread hope across the province as it expected to attract more tourists. Despite the positive vibes and hopes for having more tourists, the number of international tourists decreased as compared to previous years and this was not what the Bamyan people had expected.





In recent years the UNESCO office planned the reconstruction of the Buddha statues but there has been no significant improvement so far. And it seems that the reconstruction process will require a long period. At the same time local people are not hopeful, claiming that it is impossible to rebuild the statues the way they were.



But In 2016 UNESCO announced the construction of the Bamyan Cultural Center, which was initiated by the generous financial support of the Korean government. And the news once again spread positive vibes.





The site is under construction and local people are extremely excited about it because the Bamyan Cultural Center will be more than a cultural hub, it is a major move to preserve the cultural and historical heritages of Bamyan and it has the potential to attract more national and international tourists which would have economic benefits for people living in the province.



Bamyan people have been oppressed during their entire history and less has been done to improve the living conditions of these people who are the poorest yet the most open-minded and positive people you can find in Afghanistan. The Bamyan Culture Center is a ray of hope for young Bamyans.





Korea has supported Afghanistan in many ways, various training centers funded by the Korean government are providing professional training for young Afghans to learn the necessary skills required in technical fields. Beside that a number of soybean factories have been established to assist poor families suffering from malnutrition.



But this time, the generous support for the Bamyan Cultural Center is widely appreciated by young Afghans and some people call it the "rebirth of Bamyan" as it can improve the overall image of Bamyan locally and internationally.





Korea has been actively funding various projects all over the world through its official humanitarian assistance and has played an important role besides other U.N. members to eliminate poverty and to achieve the U.N.'s sustainable goals.











Zahra Hussaini ( hussainyzahra@yahoo.com ) is a student at the University of Ulsan.The INF Treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union on December 8, 1987. (Photo/haiwainet.cn)

US President Donald Trump announced Saturday that his country is pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), citing Russian violations. In response, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that if the United States continues to withdraw unilaterally from agreements, then Russia will adopt a range of retaliatory measures, including military ones.

According to reports, Trump accused Russia of violating the agreement for many years and threatened to pull out, which would allow the United States to develop new weapons.

Russian media quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that it "would be a very dangerous step" if the United States exits from the agreement, slamming it as an attempt to achieve concessions through blackmail. Ryabkov said that the accusations seem to be aimed at concealing US violations. According to Russian media, the US missile defense system deployed in Eastern Europe to protect against a potential Iranian attack can be adapted to fire medium-range ballistic missiles at Russia.

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said that the United States has no reason to accuse Russia of violating the treaty, adding that all of the accusations against Russia are unsubstantiated. However, Ryabkov stressed, Russia will continue to insist on resolving any issues with the treaty through dialogue.

Earlier, Russian media quoted the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying that the true motive of the US withdrawal from the treaty is the US dream of a unipolar world. However, some analysts point out that pulling out of the treaty with Russia could worsen the arms race between the two countries.

Alexey Pushkov, who heads the Russian Federation Council's Temporary Commission on Information Policy and Communications, wrote on Twitter that if the United States does exit from the treaty, then "a powerful blow will be delivered to the whole system of strategic stability in the world."

Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia adopts a "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons, adding that the country would only tap its nuclear arsenal in response to an attack involving nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.

The INF Treaty, formally the "Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles," was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union on December 8, 1987. The treaty bans all short- and medium-range nuclear and non-nuclear missiles and was designed to reduce the risk of outbreak of nuclear war.

By Mark Peterson





Several years ago I wrote an article about how Korea treats its former presidents, and noted that once they leave office bad things happen to them, and in some cases, bad things happen that cause them to leave office.



I concluded that the way presidents are treated is as if they are eaten, in effect, and I used the term "presidential cannibalism." I thought that the way Korean society treats their former presidents is not unlike the way some insects and animals in nature eat their young, or their spouse. Cannibalism  eating one's own.



With the recent announcement that former President Lee Myung-bak was sentenced to prison, I thought, "Here we go again!"



Perhaps we need to take a moment to look at the history of how Korea treats its presidents, and maybe draw a few conclusions. Perhaps Korea needs to look at finishing their democracy by finding a way to honor past presidents instead of "eating" them.



Korea has achieved a marvelous standard of democratization. I often tell my students and public audiences that Korea is more democratic than America! My evidence? For one thing, look at how university presidents are selected: In the U.S., selections are made by the board of trustees.



A state school has a board, a private school has a board, a church-sponsored school has a board  the board makes the selection. But in Korea, presidents are elected from among the faculty by a vote of the faculty. That's unheard of among American universities.



So, Korea has clearly achieved a remarkable level of democratic practice  except in the area of past presidents. And this is unfortunate, for the past president usually lives on for years and can provide advice and counsel to his successors. It was Jimmy Carter as past-president who visited Kim Il-sung and defused the North Korea nuclear tension back in 1994; we forget that Bill Clinton was about to bomb the nuclear production plant at Yongbyon.



But unfortunately, Korea dishonors its past-presidents and leaves them symbolically on the garbage heap of history, rather than honor them for their years of service.



Some presidents deserve dishonor, but I hope Korea can find a better way  I hope Moon Jae-in doesn't run into the dishonoring process that almost all of his predecessors have faced. If Moon can survive, maybe there will be hope for all his successors.



Let's recap briefly the status of our former Korean presidents. Syngman Rhee was deposed after massive student demonstrations. He was old and delusional and perhaps, as some have said, it was all Yi Ki-bung's fault, his corrupt running mate, but nonetheless,



Rhee had to go. It was reported that he couldn't believe the people had turned on him. He wanted walk down the street as he left Cheong Wa Dae, and the people seeing the sad, old man (he was 85) would call out, "No, don't leave! Come back." But his advisors knew that would not happen and he was ushered out of the country against his will, and escorted to safety in Hawaii where he lived out his years (and died at age 90).



His successor, Park Chung-hee, was assassinated. His successor, Chun Doo-hwan, together with the next president, Roh Tae-woo, were incarcerated for crimes of financial mis-dealings as well as insurrection and the deaths in Gwangju.



Kim Young-sam was blamed for the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the mishandling of the economy and the depletion of gold and dollar reserves and is generally thought of as a failed president, although he was the first democratically elected president (although it can be argued that Roh's election was the first  I'll leave that debate up to you).



Kim Dae-jung was perhaps the only exception to the rule of "presidential cannibalism" in that he, rather than prosecuting his predecessors, pardoned them. He pardoned the men who, as presidents, persecuted him  Chun and Roh Tae-woo. He forgave them their misdeeds, released them from prison and met with them as past presidents. This was the only case of a president treating rivals with honor.



(Roh Tae-woo succeeded his same-party member, Chun, thus respected him as a past president; and Roh Moo-hyun succeed Kim as his same-party member, and thus respected him.)



But for a successor president who succeeded a rival, Kim Dae-jung was the only exception to the rule of "presidential cannibalism."



Roh Moo-hyun was accused of bribe-taking by his successor, Lee Myung-bak, and thus committed suicide by jumping off a rocky precipice overlooking his home village.



Lee was "safe" after being succeeded by Park Geun-hye, but now we see, that after Park's impeachment (read "cannibalism"), Lee has now been sentenced to prison.



That's my take on the way past-presidents are treated. But I've witnessed miraculous democratization in Korea over the last 53 years  let's hope that the next miracle will be the honorable treatment of those who have served as the president of the country. Hope.





Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.



By Robert Skidelsky





LONDON  The United Kingdom's "Remainers," who still hope to reverse Britain's decision to leave the European Union, have placarded British cities with a simple question: "Brexit  Is It Worth It?" Well, is it?







The answer given by economics is clear: certainly not. In terms of the costs and benefits of leaving, the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum was plainly irrational.







And yet economics also clearly shaped the decision. The Brexit propagandists brilliantly channeled palpable economic resentment, especially against immigration, into hostility toward the EU. But the resentment was against the home-grown damage inflicted on the British economy by its neglectful rulers.







As Will Hutton and Andrew Adonis accurately note in their recent book "Saving Britain," "Our problems are made in Britain; they can only be solved in Britain. Europe does not impede this mission "







But Hutton and Adonis miss Brexit's crucial non-economic dimension. They rightly recall the long and intimate relationship between Britain and the European continent. But Britain has never been part of a European state.







Although the European Union is very far from being the "superstate" of Margaret Thatcher's nightmare, its governmental aspirations lack legitimacy, not just in Britain, but among many of its members. Despite talk of European citizenship, politics remain obstinately national.







Britain's Leave campaign was a revolt against not only economic mismanagement, but also the pretension of supranational government. So Brexit's outcome may indicate how the dialectic between supranationalism and nationalism will play out in much of the rest of the world as well, where it is the stuff of current politics.







The Brexit endgame itself is far from clear. There are four possibilities.







One possibility is that Britain doesn't leave the EU after all. The organizers of a campaign for a "people's vote"  a second referendum on the final exit terms  believe that when people know the true cost of leaving, they will reverse the decision taken in 2016. A second vote could be triggered by the government's failure to win parliamentary approval of the divorce settlement it has agreed with the EU.







A second possibility is that Britain "crashes out" of the EU on March 29, 2019, with no divorce deal. In this case, forecasters paint a doomsday scenario of economic collapse, gridlock on roads and rail, shortages of food, medicine, and fuel: 1940 all over again (but not exactly Britain's finest hour).







British Prime Minister Theresa May's government is promoting a third possibility: half in, half out. Approved by the Cabinet in July at the prime minister's country house, the so-called Chequers plan proposes that when Britain leaves the EU, the two sides enter into a free-trade agreement covering goods and agricultural produce, but not services. The plan, devised by May's adviser Oliver Robbins, is a heroic attempt to solve the Irish border problem.







That problem arises from a commitment by both Britain and the Republic of Ireland to keep a "frictionless" border between the Republic of Ireland, which remains in the EU, and Northern Ireland, which, as part of the U.K., leaves it. But to maintain an open border in Ireland would mean creating a customs border between two parts of the U.K.







Hence the Chequers plan for a continuation of free trade in goods between Britain and the EU. Britain would make sure that goods entering Northern Ireland, but bound for the EU via the Republic of Ireland, paid their EU customs duties and conformed to EU health and safety standards.







The Brexiteers in May's Conservative Party oppose the Chequers plan, because it implies too much integration with the EU. And EU leaders don't like it, either, because Britain cannot be allowed to be in for some purposes and out for others.







The final possibility is another "half in, half out" scenario. Britain would leave the customs union, but remain in the European Economic Area, which includes the 28 members of the EU plus Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland. EEA countries, though free to set their own tariffs, follow nearly all of the EU rules and pay contributions to the EU budget. So the EEA option would be even more anathema to hard-line Brexiteers than the Chequers plan.







So what will happen? Most bets are on Britain formally leaving the EU in March 2019, but "temporarily" remaining in the customs union, giving it two or three years to negotiate the final divorce settlement. The Brexiteers will be enraged by such a "soft" exit, but it will probably be enough to ensure parliamentary approval. The referendum decision to leave the EU will be honored, but its harsh economic consequences will be postponed: a triumph of pragmatism over ideology.







If the Brexit trajectory turns out this way, it will be a good illustration of the double character  and function  of politics. John Maynard Keynes put the matter well: "Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking," he wrote in 1933. "But when the seats of power and authority have been attained there should be no more poetic license. On the contrary, we have to count the cost down to the penny which our rhetoric has despised."







Politicians exist to give voice to resentments bottled up by "unthinking" conservatism. They let loose feelings which we would be better off without, but whose suppression threatens political explosions. But it is also their job to ensure that such irruptions do not have extreme consequences.







From time to time, the balancing act breaks down, as it did in 1914, when the momentum of events overwhelmed belated attempts at compromise. It happened again in the 1930s, because fascism and communism were irredeemably extremist. But mostly politicians do their double job, which, in the last analysis, is to preserve domestic and international peace.







Thus, the Brexit compromise, if it happens, may be a moderately optimistic foretaste of the fate of populism in our century. The resurgence of economic nationalism which unites Brexit, Trumpism, and the European far right will not lead to the breakdown of trade, hot wars, dictatorship, or rapid de-globalization. Rather, it is a loud warning to the political center  one that may cause even the current crop of extremists to shrink from the consequences of their words.











Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University. Copyright belongs to Project Syndicate ( www.project-syndicate.org ).Minister Kim to set out measures for fair taxation



Economy and Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon has revealed a plan to draw up measures to make multinational tech giants pay their fair share of tax here in Korea. The plan was revealed during the National Assembly audit of the Ministry of Economy and Finance last Friday.



When asked by Rep. Park Young-sun of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) about tax avoidance by global IT firms, Minister Kim stressed the need to impose a "Google tax" on those companies.



He said, "The tax authorities are collecting value-added tax from multinational IT corporations. But it is difficult to get them to pay corporate tax." However, he admitted the authorities have so far done little about this.



As Kim pointed out, it is hard for the government to impose corporate tax on those tech giants because they provide services to domestic customers while their corporate entities are located abroad. This problem cannot be addressed without revising the tax code which allows the authorities to levy corporate tax on companies in accordance with their locations, not the place where their sales occur.



Therefore the government needs to change the tax code in order to lay the legal groundwork for the imposition of a Google tax. We urge policymakers and lawmakers to work closely together to hammer out a draft revision to the code. Members of the DPK must start a dialogue with opposition party legislators to discuss how to rewrite the related tax laws.



In addition, the Moon Jae-in administration should step up cooperation with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union in introducing a Google tax not only on the U.S. search engine giant, but also on other firms such as Apple and Facebook.



Yet, the imposition of such a tax faces many obstacles as only a few countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, collect this currently. The EU is in the process of discussing measures to tax Google and other global tech firms, which post sales of 50 million euros or more, equivalent to 3 percent of their total.



In fact, many countries around the world are considering similar measures to prevent global IT corporations from avoiding taxation. But they have to meet challenges because the United States is strongly against the Google tax. But for fair and just taxation, the world should not delay introducing it.



In Korea, the tax avoidance issue has already become serious. According to the National Tax Service, 45.7 percent of 10,152 foreign companies doing business here paid no corporate tax last year. Two out of 10 foreign firms reporting sales of more than 1 trillion won ($885 million) paid not a single penny.



In the case of Google, the U.S. tech behemoth is estimated to enjoy 4 trillion won to 5 trillion won in sales here annually. But it pays only 20 billion won or less in tax. In other words, the firm is avoiding tax by providing services to local customers from abroad. It is far from fair. That's why the tax authorities should not delay in introducing Korea's own Google tax.

Models introduce Samsung Electronics' new laptop Flash during a press conference in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics



By Baek Byung-yeul





Samsung Electronics' Flash laptop / Courtesy of Samsung ElectronicsLG Electronics' OLED screen on display. Yonhap





By Lee Min-young







LG Electronics is under fire in the U.S. over false advertisement claims initially raised by rival Samsung.







According to industry sources, the U.S. National Advertising Self-Regulatory Council has taken issue with LG Electronics' promotional material for its OLED televisions, for the expressions, "perfect black" and "infinite contrast."







The investigative body referred the matter to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Oct. 19.







The NAD said in a statement that the decision followed "LG's decision against complying with NAD recommendations regarding the 'perfect black' and 'infinite contrast' claims," adding that the South Korean tech giant claimed the expressions were accurate and had very strong evidence, citing a LG Electronics spokesman.







NAD refers false ad issue with LG to the FTC. Captured from NAD website





Earlier, the NAD recommended LG discontinue the claims that LG's Super UHD and OLED televisions provided "perfect black" and "infinite contrast" in their display. The recommendation is said to have followed a complaint from rival Samsung.







LG later submitted additional evidence for reconsideration, but the NAD refused.







NAD is a self-regulatory body within the industry where companies mostly comply, once they modify or delete claims in their ads that the body considers inappropriate.







LG Electronics said it would prove at the FTC trial that the advertisements were not an exaggeration.







This is not the first time for LG Electronics has feuded with the NAD over advertisement issues. In April, the NAD called into question LG's campaign called "Question of the Q," targeting Samsung's "QLED."



It said the advertisements were misleading and malicious, because Q was just marketing and there were no facts to support Samsung's QLED being the next innovation in television.

Volvo Trucks Korea Managing Director Kim Young-jae / Courtesy of Volvo Trucks Korea



By Nam Hyun-woo





MAN Truck & Bus Korea CEO Max Burger / Courtesy of MTBK

Imported trucks and other commercial vehicles' sales are mired in a downward spiral, as the domestic construction industry slows on a real estate market cooldown.



Also attributable is customers' growing doubts on the quality of imported trucks, as leading brands face compensation suits over alleged defects.



According to Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association (KAIDA), Monday, 271 commercial vehicles were registered to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in September, down 26.75 percent from a year earlier.



The downtrend is also apparent on a monthly basis. The September number is down from 367 in August and July, 399 in June, 358 in May, 421 in March and 486 in January.



All brands suffered declines in the number of new vehicles last month, but the top three companies  Volvo Trucks Korea, MAN Truck & Bus Korea and Daimler Trucks Korea  showed significant drops.



Volvo, which sold 174 vehicles in August, saw its sales dropping by 25.3 percent to 130 in September, No. 2 MAN suffered a 17.8 percent decline from 73 to 60, and No. 3 Daimler dropped 25 percent from 52 to 39 during the same period.



Following them, Scania and Iveco ended up selling 36 and six, respectively, last month.



"The primary reason for the lackluster sales seems to be the downturn of the construction industry," an official from an importer said. "Also attributable is the growing customer complaints against the top three firms."





Daimler Trucks Korea CEO Cho Kyu-sangVolunteers lay a water pipe underground in a Myanmar village in this 2017 file photo. K-water sent 34 volunteer workers to Vietnam Oct. 15 to improve the water supply of a remote village there. / Courtesy of K-water



By Park Jae-hyuk



K-water has recently upgraded the water supply system of a remote village in Vietnam, the state-run corporation said Monday.



Thirty-four volunteers consisting of K-water employees, university students and medical staff from Korea University Ansan Hospital paid a week-long visit to Son Lu in Quan Son District, Thanh Hoa Province, Oct. 15, to install water tanks, booster pumps, disinfection facilities and a remote monitoring system there.



They also laid a kilometer-long water pipe underground to supply water all over the village.



In addition to the water supply system, the volunteers installed water fountains and toilets there, as well as building an embankment to prevent flooding from a nearby river.



The medical staff gave free treatments for the residents and conducted hygiene education.



During their visit to the village, the volunteers opened physical education, science and art classes as well.



Son Lu, located southwest of Hanoi, is a poverty-stricken region where GDP per capita is $217.



Its residents had faced difficulties in controlling water quality and supplying water to remote areas, because they had no choice but to use wells or hoses connected to the nearby river for their water supply.



K-water expects the improvements in the village's water system will solve the area's water-related problems and raise the quality of life of the residents.



The public firm also said it used facilities made by small- and medium-sized enterprises in Korea, so as to introduce the nation's excellent technologies to the Southeast Asian country.



It hopes its recent work helps Korean firms expand their presences in the Vietnamese market.



"We want our recent social contribution activity to help the residents who have suffered water shortage," K-water CEO Lee Hak-soo said. "To solve water-related problems worldwide and foster the domestic industry, we will continue to push ahead with overseas activities that can introduce excellent technologies of Korean firms to other countries."



Based on its capability in water management, K-water has conducted overseas activities since 2006 to solve water-related problems worldwide.



The company has improved water systems in 32 villages in nine countries, including Vietnam, Myanmar, Nepal and East Timor.

Dairy needs political punch says Brokenshire

Former politician Robert Brokenshire says the dairy industry needs to be "stronger" in its negotiations with politicians and not be intimidated by government.Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday said the country opposes the US' move of withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, calling on the US to "look before leaping".

Hua Chunying, the spokesperson from the ministry, made this remark after US President Donald Trump accused Russia of not honoring the agreement and threatened to pull out.

Hua has highlighted the importance of the treaty, saying it plays an important role in easing international tensions, controlling the nuclear process, and protecting global security in the past and present.

It is wrong of the US to unilaterally pull out of a landmark Cold War-era treaty, and will leave numerous negative results, said Hua.

China hopes the US could value the hard-earned achievements and resolve the issue through negotiation and talk, she added.

The INF Treaty was signed by then US president Ronald Reagan and former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, in a bid to halt the proliferation of nuclear and conventional missiles.

The pact worked toward the elimination of short- and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.Freely accessible local news is vital. Please power our reporters and help keep us independent with a donation today.

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Halloween season is in full force and plenty of events -- a screening of Godzilla, the comedic Last Houdini Seance, Lucha VaVoom's Circo de Vampiros and a Sultry Sweet Burlesque -- to prime you for the big day. Also, El Cholo celebrates 95 years in business and an exhibition showcases Jim Carrey's political cartoons.

MONDAY, OCT. 22; 8 p.m.

Last Houdini Seance

The Three Clubs -- 1123 Vine St., Hollywood

This comedy show recreates Bess Houdini's final attempt, on Halloween 1936, to reach her husband Harry via a seance, 10 years after his death. Watch as Hollywood's upper crust, paranormal experts and lookie-loos gather at the Knickerbocker Hotel to contact Houdini's spirit. (Disclaimer: This is not a real seance.)

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

MONDAY, OCT. 22; 9 p.m.

Mads Tolling & Jacob Fischer: A Tribute to Svend Asmussen

123 Astronaut E S Onizuka St., Suite 301, Little Tokyo

Danish jazz violinist Tolling teams up with guitarist Fischer to pay a musical tribute to Danish jazz violin legend Asmussen, who passed away last year shortly before his 101st birthday. The concert features Scandinavian jazz tunes and songs from the great American songbook. Ages 21+.

COST: $15 - $20; MORE INFO

TUESDAY, OCT. 23

El Cholo Turns 95

All six El Cholo restaurants: Downtown L.A., Koreatown (Western Ave. - The Original), La Habra, Santa Monica, Anaheim Hills and Corona Del Mar

The beloved L.A. Mexican restaurant opened its doors in 1923 and to commemorate the occasion, El Cholo will offer its bestselling item -- the #1 combo plate (cheese enchilada, rolled beef taco, Spanish rice and refried beans) -- for 95 cents all day. Only one combo per guest allowed.

COST: 95 cents; MORE INFO



TUESDAY, OCT 23; 8 p.m.

Eric & Eddie Show

The Comedy Central Stage -- 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood

The comedy duo presents a 21st century Vaudeville act with two-person sketches, costume changes on stage, videos, musical comedy and stand-up. They tackle what they know best: the millennial experience.

COST: Free with RSVP; MORE INFO



TUESDAY, OCT. 23; 8:30 p.m.

Sonic Youth: 30 Years of Daydream Nation

The Regent Theater -- 448 S. Main St., downtown L.A.

The event pays tribute to the band's critically acclaimed sixth album, "Daydream Nation," released on Oct. 18, 1988, and added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2005. There's a film screening, followed by a Q&A with the band's bassist-guitarist-vocalist Kim Gordon, drummer Steve Shelley, filmmaker Lance Bangs and SY archivist Aaron Mullan. The event is all ages.

COST: $15 - $18; MORE INFO

TUESDAY, OCT. 23; 8 p.m.

Roger Daltrey in conversation with Judd Apatow

Aratani Theatre at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center -- 244 S. San Pedro St., Little Tokyo

The Who frontman discusses his new memoir, "Thanks a Lot Mr. Kibblewhite: My Story," with writer-director Apatow at this Live Talks L.A. event. Daltrey covers his rise from nothing to his journey with one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

COST: Tickets start at $45 (includes a copy of the book); MORE INFO

TUESDAY, OCT. 23; 7 - 10 p.m.

Sherry Tiki Luau & Pig Roast

Severance -- 7274 Melrose Ave., Fairfax

The new wine bar on Melrose Ave. hosts a whole pig roast with tiki-inspired fare from chef Weston Ludeke. Evan Charest creates sherry-based variations on classic tiki cocktails including the Mai Tai, Army Navy, Painkiller and Navy Grog. The food is served up as a three-course, family-style dinner with a la carte options and drinks (not included). Reservations suggested.

COST: $40; MORE INFO

Jim Carrey's political cartoons will be showcased in an exhibition at Maccarone Gallery, including 'Stage 4 America,' (2018). ( Jim Carrey, Courtesy the artist and Maccarone Gallery)

TUESDAY, OCT. 23 - SATURDAY, DEC. 1

IndigNation: Political Cartoons by Jim Carrey, 2016-2018

Maccarone Gallery -- 300 South Mission Rd., Boyle Heights

The gallery presents an exhibition of original political cartoon drawings made by Carrey over the past two years. The actor-comedian began sharing his frustrations with the current political climate via social media after Donald Trump was elected President in 2016.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 24 - TUESDAY, OCT. 30

Hilltop Live: Jammin' On The Hill

Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen -- 4427 W. Slauson Ave., Windsor Hills

All musicians, poets, vocalists and music lovers are invited to this open mic and jam session. Jams will be provided by local band CoolNasty.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Eddie Izzard speaks onstage during Politicon 2018 at Los Angeles Convention Center on October 21, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for Politicon )

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 24 - TUESDAY, OCT. 30

Eddie Izzard

Dynasty Typewriter at the Hayworth -- 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Westlake

The stand-up comic has a one-week residency with multiple sets at the intimate venue. He's creating and testing material for his new show. Tickets are scarce. Shows are 18+.

COST: $35; MORE INFO



WEDNESDAY, OCT. 24; 8 p.m.

The Biggest Show 2018

The Theatre at Ace Hotel -- 929 S. Broadway, downtown L.A.

Young Storytellers is an L.A. creative arts nonprofit tailored for public school students. They write scripted stories then watch their works live on stage. In its annual event, fifth graders penned the scripts that'll be performed by David Oyelowo, Olivia Munn, Whitney Cummings, Bobby Moynihan, Natasha Rothwell, Jake Johnson, Aparna Nancherla and The Sklar Brothers.

COST: $20 - $150; MORE INFO

Lucha VaVoom returns to The Mayan Theater for two Halloween shows this week. (Image: Timothy Norris)

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 24 - THURSDAY, OCT. 25; 8 p.m.

Circo de Vampiros

The Mayan Theater -- 1038 S Hill St., downtown L.A.

Lucha VaVoom returns for two special Halloween shows with Mexican masked wrestling, comedy and burlesque. The shows feature music by multimedia and performance artist Viktoria Modesta and are hosted by comedians Dana Gould and Jeff Davis. Ages 21+.

COST: $40 - $55; MORE INFO



THURSDAY, OCT. 25; 9:30 p.m.

Bachelor The Musical

UCBT Franklin -- 5919 Franklin Ave., Franklin Village

This musical parody of the reality TV dating show crams the key ingredients -- roses, tears and heartbreak -- into 30 minutes. Written by Richelle Meiss, directed by Ashley Ward and John Flynn and with music by Vince Orlandi and Sam Johnides, the show stars Derek Carley as The Bachelor and Rob Warner as Chris Harrison.

COST: $7; MORE INFO



THURSDAY, OCT. 25 - SUNDAY, OCT. 28

The Other Art Fair LA

Barker Hangar -- 3021 Airport Ave., Santa Monica

The online art gallery Saatchi Art presents the Westside debut of the fair, showcasing the work of 100 emerging artists. Special features and installations include Gary Baseman's "The Purr Room," described as a "meditative experience" that brings his artwork to life; Rosa "Bluestone Babe" Perr's hand poke tattoo designs; Heavy Gel's screen printing workshops; and "31 Women," a showcase of rising female artists.

COST: $13.50 - $60; MORE INFO



THURSDAY, OCT. 25; 7:30 p.m.

What We Do in the Shadows

Level -- 888 S Olive St., downtown L.A.

Rooftop Cinema Club screens one of our fave mockumentaries. Directed by Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok), who also stars alongside Jemaine Clement, Rhys Darby and Jonathan Brugh, the film follows vampires who are trying to keep up with the mundanities of modern life. They argue about dirty dishes and chores around the house, awkwardly try to get into nightclubs and -- shockingly -- have girlfriend problems.

COST: $17 - $24; MORE INFO



THURSDAY, OCT. 25; 8 p.m.

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Harvelle's Long Beach -- 201 E. Broadway, Long Beach

Sultry Sweet Burlesque mixes the sexy with the macabre at this show, which includes zombies, vampires, murderesses and mayhem. The artists are accompanied by an eight-piece orchestra, aerial performances and variety acts.

COST: FREE - $15 - $30; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, OCT. 25 - SUNDAY, NOV. 18

Solo Queens Fest 2

Bootleg Theater -- 2220 Beverly Blvd., Westlake

The festival celebrates the works of female-identifying (or non-binary) solo performers and creators. The selected mainstage shows include Amy Raasch's "The Animal Monologues," Bri Pruett's "Stellar" and Shaina Lynn's "Bayou Blues." The aforementioned performers will also teach a one-day workshop on their solo creation techniques. (No experience required to participate in the workshops.)

COST: Tickets/passes $15 - $100; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, OCT. 25; 7 p.m.

Godzilla

Japanese American National Museum -- 100 N Central Ave., Little Tokyo

The museum screens the granddaddy of Japanese monster movies -- the original version of Godzilla (aka Gojira) outside in the courtyard. Before the screening, check out the art exhibition, Kaiju vs Heroes: Mark Nagata's Journey through the World of Japanese Toys, which stays open until 8 p.m.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO



THURSDAY, OCT. 25; 8 p.m.

Rebecca Solnit in Conversation with Jon Christensen

Royce Hall at UCLA -- 10745 Dickson Ct., Westwood

The historian, activist, definer of "mansplaining" and author of such titles as "The Mother of All Questions," "Hope in the Dark" and "Men Explain Things to Me" chats about her new book of essays, "Call Them by Their True Names," which examines current political, cultural and social crises that often lead to violence.

COST: $29 - $59; MORE INFO



THURSDAY, OCT. 25 - SUNDAY, JAN. 6, 2019

Here

Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery -- 4800 Hollywood Blvd., East Hollywood

The group show examines L.A.'s changing boundaries -- physical, geographical and ephemeral -- along with conceptual ones. Featured artists include Heimir Bjorgulfsson, Sandra de la Loza, Gajin Fujita, Gloria Galvez, iris yirei hu, Annetta Kapon, Patrick Martinez, Jane C. Mi, Alison O'Daniel, Renee Petropoulos, Nancy Popp, Umar Rashid, Sandy Rodriguez, Anna Sew Hoy, Fran Siegel, Henry Taylor and Mario Ybarra Jr.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

How are you spending your week? Let us know on Twitter @christineziemba and @LeoHasACat.

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The L.A. School Police Department -- which patrols LAUSD campuses and parts of the surrounding areas -- is the largest force of its kind in the country. And it's taking enforcement actions against black students disproportionately, according to a new report from the Ralphe J. Bunche Center for African American Studies' Million Hoods Project.

From 2014 to 2017, 25 percent of the force's citations, arrests and diversions (for "minor" legal violations on school grounds) involved black students, according to UCLA researchers. That's despite the fact that LAUSD's student body is less than 10 percent black.

The racial disproportionality "disrupts opportunities to learn for black students," one of the researchers, Terry Allen, said in an email.

The project's finding wasn't surprising to 15-year-old Da'Ron George, who is black and used to attend Crenshaw High School. He said school police once took him out of his entrepreneurship class and searched him for pot, but didn't find any.

The incident affected his studies, said George.

"I practically missed the lesson [the teacher] was talking about, and I had to come back after school that same day and give up time after school just to get what he said," he said.

George said he still remembers noticing the number of officers around his old school.

"I don't know, it was just weird to see," he said. "Like they really gotta have that many police officers for us, like we're really animals or something."

(Courtesy Ralphe J. Bunche Center for African American Studies)

Another of the report's findings surprised researchers: One in four students arrested were either in elementary or middle school.

"I really thought this data would be full of high school students, and there were a number of high school students in there," said Isaac Bryan, public policy advisor at the Bunche Center and a member of the research team. "But to find that one in four was a child in middle school or younger, it was shocking."

Studying youth at school is especially important "because there's a lot of growing scholarship that any contact with the juvenile justice system increases the likelihood that you'll have contact with the adult penal system," Bryan said.

The school police's diversion program is for students ages 13-17 who commit "minor" legal violations on school grounds, according to the department. Those violations could include petty theft, vandalism or fighting, among other things.

Diversion uses a "non-punitive" enforcement model: The student, along with a counselor and the youth's parents or guardians, work up an "action plan" to improve behavior and academic performance.

From 2014-17, diversions accounted for 17 percent of the school police's enforcement actions.

The Los Angeles School Police Department, the largest force of its kind in the country, said it's still looking over the report, and sent a statement from Chief Steven Zipperman:

"Los Angeles Unified and the Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) welcomes the partnership of independent researchers to evaluate data pertaining to school and student safety. The recently published report from the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA - Million Dollar Hoods 'Policing our Students' - compiled four years of data provided by the LASPD. The report is currently being reviewed by our team. We will continue to utilize our reformed student-centered safety initiatives, and support the continued hard work performed by the men and women of the LASPD."

You can read the full report on Million Dollar Hoods' website.Many Korean Americans, especially the politically active, still resent a 2011 redistricting that split the geographically sprawling Korean community among council districts. The community was divided among non-Asian American candidates who fancied campaign contributions from Koreatown's banks, stores, clubs, restaurants and other prosperous businesses.

L.A. is well known for short memories, especially when it comes to an esoteric subject such as redrawing city council district lines. But among some Korean Americans the hard feelings remain and will be a force when the council engages in another once-a-decade reapportionment in 2021. Their memories go back a long way to the 1992 riot when business people and residents felt the city was too slow in protecting Koreatown from assault.

"We have to step up," City Councilman David Ryu told the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum at the Palm downtown Friday noon. "It's about equity. It's about opportunity." He spoke of "helping all those families get the opportunities I got."

Ryu beat city hall when he first ran for the city council in 2015 and defeated a candidate backed by the powerful council president, Herb Wesson. Wesson then welcomed the newcomer onto his team and rewarded him with speedy approval of street repair and other projects valuable to Ryu's constituents.

But getting there wasn't easy. His Fourth District, reaching from Sherman Oaks through Griffith Park to the Miracle Mile, is 80 per cent Caucasian.

In introducing Ryu to the Current Affairs Forum luncheon, Sergio Rascon, business manager of Laborers' Local 300, told a revealing story of how the councilman succeeded. In the primary election Ryu had asked Rascon for the endorsement of Local 300, a largely Latino labor union which wields considerable power with its endorsements and its grassroots workers. Rascon told him the local was endorsing someone else in the primary. When Ryu got into the runoff, he asked Rascon again. The union leader invited him to speak to the members. What should I say? asked Ryu. Tell them your story, replied Rascon.

His story resonated with the members, immigrants or children of immigrants who have come up the hard way. Ryu came to the United States with his family at the age of five. They were on food stamps and the family of six lived in a two-bedroom 700 square foot apartment. The union members had known that kind of life. They endorsed Ryu and played a major part in his victory.

For now Ryu is immersed in the many projects of his diverse district. But when the maneuvering over redistricting begins in 2021, expect Ryu to step up, as promised.Horton will return to The Times in December to lead the daily commentary section and encourage conversations around news, culture and ideas

The Los Angeles Times has named Sue Horton Op-Ed Editor, reporting to Nicholas Goldberg, editor of the editorial pages. Horton previously held the position in 2014 and will return to The Times in early December.

The op-ed section is where we bring together a curious and diverse group of columnists and contributors who offer ideas, commentary and analysis about timely and important issues, said Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine. Sue brings knowledge, experience and a discerning eye for talent to this most important role.

Sue is an extremely talented editor, a great colleague and mentor, and her versatility and energy will invigorate our op-ed pages, Goldberg said. Were delighted to have her back to help us find and publish smart, provocative, penetrating opinion pieces in print and online, and to find more ways to engage the larger community in these conversations.

Horton is currently a top news editor at Reuters, handling immigration coverage as well as stories about the Supreme Court, healthcare and the midterm elections. She was previously at The Times from 2001 to 2014 in a variety of roles, including Op-Ed Editor, Sunday Opinion Editor and Deputy Metro Editor. Before joining The Times, Horton served as editor-in-chief of the L.A. Weekly, was a professor at USCs Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, authored The Billionaire Boys Club and did investigative reporting for CBSs 60 Minutes.

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Its an exciting new era at the Los Angeles Times and Im thrilled to be a part of it, Horton said.Hollywood producers have been known to shell out big bucks for the right to adapt Stephen Kings books and stories into movies. But a group of Welsh teenagers managed to snap up the rights to Kings story Stationary Bike for the sum of $1.

Students at Blaenau Gwent Film Academy in Tredegar, Wales, were granted permission to produce a film based on the story by King, Mashable reports.

King has encouraged film students to adapt his stories with a section on his official website called Dollar Babies. The page lists 30 of Kings stories that are available for adaptation.

King started the program more than 40 years ago, he told the BBC. Around 1977 or so, when I started having some popular success, I saw a way to give back a little of the joy the movies had given me, the master of horror said.

Advertisement

One alumnus of the Dollar Babies program is Frank Darabont, who adapted Kings story The Woman in the Room into a short film in 1983. Darabont went on to direct two blockbuster movies based on works by King, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

Kevin Phillips, a teacher at Blaenau Gwent Film Academy, praised King for being excellent at supporting education establishments.

The screenplay was written by Alfie Evans, 16, and Cerys Cliff, 14. About 30 students will work on the project.

We pretty much e-mailed his secretary, Margaret, and she came back to us in 24 hours, and we told her what we wanted to do, that its not for profit, that our students would be making it, and she sent us a contract through which was signed by Stephen King himself, Phillips told Mashable.

The students hope to finish the short film by next spring and submit it to festivals, but theres one viewer they can definitely count on: King, who requested a DVD of the movie when its completed.Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section.

Im Business columnist David Lazarus, and heres a rundown of upcoming stories this week and the highlights of last week.

We learned Friday that Californias unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1% in September from 4.2% the previous month  the lowest rate in 42 years. Payrolls grew by 13,200 jobs, with the most gains coming in the business and professional services sector, leisure and hospitality, and government.

LOOKING AHEAD

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Beige Book: The Federal Reserve brings out its latest Beige Book on Wednesday. The goes-with-everything, eight-times-a-year economic report showed last month that while the overall U.S. economy expanded at a moderate pace, trade concerns and a lack of workers delayed some projects. There were also some signs of a deceleration in prices of goods and services.

Snap earnings: Snap Inc. reports its third-quarter earnings Thursday. In the second quarter, the company beat earnings expectations but reported that Snapchats daily active users shrank 1.5% to 188 million, down from 191 million in the previous quarter. The companys net loss was down 20% year over year.

Economic growth: The Commerce Department is expected to report Friday that the U.S. economy grew at about a 3.3% annual rate from July through September. The economy expanded at a 4.2% rate in the second quarter, the best since 2014.

New flicks: Hunter Killer features Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman, submarines, Russians and the possibility of World War III. Suspiria has Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton and the possibility that theres more to a German dance academy than meets the eye, such as, you know, witches. Take your pick.

THE AGENDA

Mondays Business section looks under the hood of the Tesla Model 3. Munro & Associates, a small firm that disassembles new cars piece by piece, concluded that the Model 3 costs about $2,000 more to produce than a similarly priced BMW i3 and may have additional cost problems in its assembly plant. Many of the problems stem from unconventional choices made by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.

STORY LINES

Here are some of the other stories that ran in the Times Business section in recent days that were continuing to follow:

Heavy spending: With less than a month before election day, labor unions and Walt Disney Co. have shelled out more than half of all contributions to campaigns that will decide the fates of a controversial living wage initiative and a majority of the seats on the Anaheim City Council. The unusually expensive campaigns  which have attracted $4.3 million in total contributions so far  are a reflection of the efforts that union leaders and the Burbank media giant are putting into gaining greater influence over local affairs.

Airport overhaul: American Airlines has kicked off its $1.6-billion overhaul at Los Angeles International Airport, one of a series of pricey LAX upgrades that will add gates, bigger bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows at the carriers terminals. A groundbreaking ceremony attended by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and American Airlines CEO Doug Parker initiated a 10-year construction project that represents the single largest airport investment in the history of the Fort Worth carrier.

MoviePass probe: MoviePass embattled parent company, Helios & Matheson Analytics, denied that it has misled investors, in response to a new investigation by the New York attorney generals office. New York Atty. Gen. Barbara Underwood has opened a probe into the owner of the money-losing cinema subscription service to see whether it misrepresented its finances to shareholders, the company acknowledged.

Not so fun: Riot Games casts itself as the kind of place where gamers dream of working. But allegations from current and former employees detailing a workplace soaked with sexism and harassment  and what they describe as the companys largely cosmetic response  have thrown those values into question, and Riot Games into crisis mode.

Netflix goes old school: Netflix is once again crashing the party to the chagrin of Hollywood studios, but this time in an old-school way  by acquiring billboards along the Sunset Strip. The digital streaming Goliath has quietly bought up prime billboard space along the mile-and-a-half-long section of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood that is among the most coveted advertising properties in the country.

WHAT WERE READING

And some recent stories from other publications that caught our eye:

Deceptive practices: ProPublica and WNYC roll out a hard-hitting investigation of President Trumps business practices. Its not pretty. Patterns of deceptive practices occurred in a dozen deals across the globe, as the business expanded into international projects, and the Trumps often participated. One common pattern, visible in more than half of those transactions, was a tendency to misstate key sales numbers.

Open the pod bay doors: The New York Times posted a package of stories looking at advances in artificial intelligence. As Israeli author and historian Yuval Noah Harari puts it: The economy is having to face ever-greater disruptions in the work force because of A.I. And in the long run, no element of the job market will be 100% safe from A.I. and automation.

The cooler one: Bill Gates shares his memories of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died last week, in a Wall Street Journal essay. Paul was cooler than I was. He was really into Jimi Hendrix, and I remember him playing Are You Experienced? for me. I wasnt experienced at much of anything back then, and Paul wanted to share this amazing music with me. Thats the kind of person he was.

Rental fashion: The New Yorker checks out a company called Rent the Runway, which could devastate high-end clothing sales. For $159 a month, a customer can keep up to four items at a time, rotating out any piece as often as she likes  By the end of this year, Rent the Runway will offer 15,000 styles by more than 500 designers, with a total inventory of 8,000 units.

A better way: Canada legalized recreational weed last week. As Bloomberg reports, Border Security Minister Bill Blair believes the newly legal market will allow authorities to better engage young people. The Just Say No and your brain in a frying pan  eggs in a frying pan  wasnt getting the message across, he says. We have created an opportunity to have far more effective conversations with our kids.

SPARE CHANGE

Salesforce Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Marc Benioff spoke recently about dealing with social inequality, homelessness and taxing the rich in a conversation at WIRED25 in San Francisco. Whats happening is just not right, he said. I love the idea of taxing billionaires. Heres the video.

For the latest money news, go to www.latimes.com/business. Mad props to Laurence Darmiento for helping put this thing together.

Until next time, Ill see you in the Business section.Uber Technologies Inc. said Cameron Poetzscher, a longtime executive in charge of corporate deals, has resigned. His departure, which follows allegations of sexual misconduct, leaves another vacancy in Ubers finance department as the ride-hailing company races toward an initial public offering targeted for the first half of next year.

Poetzscher, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, had been accused of misconduct at San Francisco-based Uber and was previously disciplined, the Wall Street Journal reported last month. He told the Journal that he had committed an error in judgment and expressed regret. The Journal reported his resignation earlier Monday.

Nelson Chai, the recently appointed chief financial officer, will immediately take over Poetzschers duties while the company searches for a replacement, said a spokesman, adding: We thank Cam for his four and half years of service to Uber.

Poetzscher played a key role in negotiating this years $9.3-billion deal with SoftBank Group Corp. That deal, completed in January, brought an influx of cash to the money-losing ride-hailing giant, made SoftBank its biggest investor and triggered a slate of governance reforms.

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Uber hired Chai, a former Merrill Lynch executive, in August to drive preparations for an IPO next year. Turnover has been high in the finance group, which leaves Chai with a staffing challenge.Wells Fargo & Co. will pay a $65-million penalty to New York state related to cross-selling practices that led employees to create millions of accounts without customer authorization.

The bank failed to disclose to investors that the success of its cross-selling  the pitching of additional financial products to existing clients  was built on sales practice misconduct at the bank, state Atty. Gen. Barbara Underwoods office said in a statement Monday.

The misconduct at Wells Fargo was widespread across the bank and at every level of management  impacting both customers and investors who were misled, Underwood said in the statement.

The settlement is the latest cost for Wells Fargo stemming from a consumer-banking scandal that erupted in September 2016 when the bank disclosed that it opened as many as 3.5 million accounts on behalf of customers who didnt want them. The practice was first reported by the Los Angeles Times in 2013.

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The San Francisco-based lender has faced elevated expenses over the last two years stemming from fines and legal costs. The settlement relates to product sales goals that were eliminated in 2016 after the scandal erupted.

Earlier this year, Wells Fargo settled with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for an unprecedented $1 billion over issues in auto lending and mortgages. It also reached a $480-million settlement with investors who accused the bank of securities fraud related to the scandal.

Wells Fargo still faces a bevy of other lawsuits and probes from federal, state and local government agencies on related matters. The Federal Reserve has placed a cap on the banks assets pending governance reforms.

We are pleased to reach this agreement, Wells Fargo said in a statement about the settlement with New York state. Wells Fargo did not admit liability, and we believe that putting this matter behind us is in the best interest of all of our stakeholders, including customers. The settlement costs have been previously accrued.

Wells Fargo said that its making strong progress in our work to rebuild trust, with the New York settlement representing another step forward.

Shares of Wells Fargo closed down 2.3% to $51.65 on Monday.

Times staff writer Laurence Darmiento contributed to this report.

UPDATES:

2:55 p.m.: This article was updated with Wells Fargos closing stock price.

This article was published at 12:15 p.m.Swiss watch brands have been interested in the possibilities of electronic authentication for around a decade. The first to embrace the possibilities of digital authentication was Rolex, who installed a system for ID verification of its personnel. It quickly became apparent, however, that the same technology used to identify people could also be used to identify watches. As a result, the first implementations of this technology for watches took the same form: a cryptographic key on a credit-card sized card. The first public application was announced at Baselworld in 2010. Hublot partnered with WISeKey, a Swiss cybersecurity company, to present an electronic guarantee. Each watch leaving the factory was accompanied by a chip card, with the chip being activated once the watch left the factory. Once the watch was sold by a retailer, a second interaction with the chip automatically activated the guarantee.

It may only have been 10 years ago, but the quote from Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey, at the time is telling: We needed a brand like Hublot, which is sensitive to technology, to develop such as system. The majority of brands present at Baselworld dont want anything to do with the internet!. Given Jean-Claude Bivers vision, it was hardly surprising that this card, supplied with its own reader, became the entry ticket for the Hublotista, a special club for Hublot owners which has amassed over a huge number of members over the past 10 years.

Other brands, like HYT, have since followed Hublots lead. But Bulgari took things a step further when it partnered with WISeKey in 2015. For the first time, the cryptographic chip and the NFC (near field communication) antenna were integrated into the watch itself as demonstrated in BaselWorld 2015. The Bulgari Diagono in magnesium thus replaced the credit card for access, not to the warranty, but to the Bulgari Vault, in which owners could store sensitive information in a data centre buried in a Swiss military bunker, somewhere in the Alps. In the meantime, WISeKey had acquired a company that made microchips and became the only company in the world with the capacity to offer both the microchip and the security embedded.

Bulgari Diagono Magnesium  Bulgari

The next big thing comes this year with the integration of blockchain technology for the first time. Working in partnership with all the members from the WISeAuthentic client ecosystem, such as Hublot, Bulgari and Favre-Leuba, WISeKey offers the first implementation of the distributed ledger principle to watch authentication. Wed have as well a digital certificate that is stored in a distributed ledger rather than just in the brands database, explains Carlos Moreira. In addition to reducing costs, the distributed ledger also makes the information potentially available to many different stakeholders, including third parties such as law enforcement agencies.

WISeKey makes two significant contributions to the partnership: first, it brings the identification that can be tied to the blockchain. On its own, the blockchain merely records individual transactions, whereas WISeKey adds the identification that allows a watch to be authenticated (e.g. to confirm that a watch was sold by an authorized retailer or that a person selling the watch is its legitimate owner according to the ledger). Second, and no less significant, is the fact that WISeKey is using a private blockchain, which can operate much faster than public implementations, which can only handle a small amount of transactions per second.

The perennial problem of counterfeit watches, coupled with the more recent focus on so-called flippers in the industry, makes such technology all the more relevant. Expect more brands to adopt it in the very near future.

WISeAuthentic combined with WISeAI connectors may substantially leverage the data collected by AI solutions such as the IBM Watson cognitive system that learns from, and infuses intelligence into the physical world. Watches manufacturers can use the power of Watson to build specialized, integrated solutions to predict and solve their business challenges.The nations electronic-scooter companies are facing more blowback as concerns rise about the devices safety  this time in the form of a class-action lawsuit.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday, accuses two of the largest e-scooter companies, Lime and Bird, as well as other e-scooter firms, of gross negligence and aiding and abetting assault.

Filed on behalf of eight initial plaintiffs, the lawsuit says the companies practices have contributed to injuries in multiple ways. By dumping scooters on public streets without an appropriate warning, the suit alleges, e-scooter companies acted negligently and should have known that their devices would become a dangerous public nuisance.

Three plaintiffs claim they were walking when e-scooter riders crashed into them from behind, resulting in severe injuries. The suit alleges that e-scooter companies knew their riders were injuring pedestrians and  by failing to stop the collisions from occurring  assisted and encouraged scooter riders as they committed assaults.

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Scooter start-ups Lime and Bird are said to seek more funding at higher valuations 

The suit also alleges that Bird and Lime scooters contain defective electronics and mechanical parts, as well as inadequate safety instructions for riders, and that the companies have a wanton disregard for the safety of others. The suit says the risks posed by the devices were known and/or knowable based on professional knowledge within the transportation community.

The suit makes numerous claims about scooters mechanical issues but does not provide concrete evidence for those claims.

The suit also names scooter manufacturers Xiaomi United States and Segway as defendants.

While acting under the guise of the commendable goals of furthering personal freedom and mobility and protecting the environment, the defendants, and each of them, are endangering the health, safety and welfare of riders, pedestrians and the general public, the suit alleges.

The suit also says that scores (if not hundreds) of riders and pedestrians and members of the public have suffered, are continuing to suffer and will to continue to suffer egregious and avoidable injuries and damage to their person and property.

A spokesperson for San Francisco-based Lime said the company is reviewing the complaint.

While we dont comment on pending litigation, safety has always been at the very core of everything we do at Lime  as is our mission of reducing cars from city streets and making them safer and greener for pedestrians, bike and scooter riders alike, the spokesperson said, adding that the company prides itself on taking proactive steps relating safety wherever we have a presence.

Fed-up locals are setting electric scooters on fire and burying them at sea 

Bird, based in Santa Monica, pointed out that the complaint has been brought against the entire e-scooter industry and said shared e-scooters have become an important transportation mode for hundreds of thousands of people in 100 cities worldwide.

We believe that the climate crisis and our car dependency demand a transportation mode shift, and clean energy vehicles like e-scooters are already replacing millions of short car trips, Bird said in a statement. There is no evidence that riding an e-scooter presents a greater level of danger to riders than riding a bike. Cars remain the greatest threat to commuters, killing over 40,000 people in the US yearly.

Spokespeople for Segway and Xiaomi United States did not respond to requests for comment.

Since their sudden arrival in recent months, e-scooters have been linked to an uptick in severe injuries around the country, according to emergency-room physicians. As the value and popularity of companies such as Bird and Lime have soared, a growing number of critics  including doctors, former riders and scooter mechanics  allege that e-scooter fleets are poorly maintained and prone to dangerous mechanical failures.

Two e-scooter riders  one in Dallas and one in the District of Columbia  have been involved in accidents that led to their deaths, authorities say.

The class-action suit adds a new category of people to the list of those fiercely opposed to the latest form of controversial transportation sweeping the nation: pedestrians.

Among the plaintiffs is David Petersen, a 62-year-old street performer known as Davy Rocks, who says he was struck by an e-scooter rider in June and severely injured.

Petersen said that he was dancing for onlookers near the Santa Monica Pier, clad in his trademark gladiator outfit, when a man on a Bird scooter hit him from behind. The man fled the scene, he said. He said that the force of the crash knocked him down, but that he managed to lessen the impact by catching himself with his right hand. Had he been an elderly person or a small child, he said, he could have been killed.

Petersen said he suffered a fractured arm and severed biceps. The injury caused him to miss weeks of work, and the muscle had to be surgically reattached using a cadaver graft, he said.

My arm is never going to be the same, not to mention the 5-inch-long scar its got now, he said, adding that his arm has lost rotation and feels stiff. If Bird is going to profit off the human meat grinder theyve created in Santa Monica, they should be held responsible for the suffering theyve caused.

Additionally, the lawsuit accuses Bird and Lime of multiple breaches of their warranties and alleges that their vehicles were not suitable for repeated use in public places.

Stating that the deployment of e-scooters is unlawful, the suit claims that each company should be prohibited from continuing to deploy scooters in California. Beyond seeking damages, the suit claims that scooter companies should be required to include adequate warnings and/or instructions to their apps and vehicles.

Catherine Lerer  a personal-injury lawyer from Santa Monica who, with lawyer Jeffrey Lee Costell, is representing the plaintiffs  said she has received more than 100 calls from people injured by scooters in recent months. Whether they involve riders or pedestrians, she said, the injuries are consistent: broken noses, legs, arms, wrists, hands and ribs, as well as head injuries and tears to anterior cruciate ligaments and rotator cuffs that require surgery.

We filed this class-action lawsuit against Bird and Lime and the manufacturers of their electric scooters to address the terrible injuries they have inflicted on their riders and pedestrians, and the continuing harm they are causing, Lerer said.

Holley writes for the Washington Post.During her 35-year career on television, Julia Louis-Dreyfus developed a reputation for fearlessness, with nothing being off limits.

She stayed true to that reputation on Sunday when she was honored with the the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center For the Performing Arts in Washington, allowing her recent battle with stage two breast cancer to became a source of comic material for the night.

Last year I was lucky enough to get an Emmy Award for my performance on Veep, which was an incredible thrill and it set some kind of a record for the most Emmys for doing something or other, and 12 hours later I was diagnosed with cancer  another hilarious turn of events, Louis-Dreyfus said in her speech when accepting the award. Im only half kidding, of course. Cancer isnt at all funny, but a big part of dealing with it has been finding the funny parts. The old cliche about laughter is the best medicine is true, which is good because thats what the current administration is trying to replace Obamacare with.

(She also made reference to politics with a pointed remark about recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh: When I was a kid, Kennedy Center did seem like a fancy-sounding name, she said. Now that I think about it, Kennedy Center could easily be another euphemism for Devils Triangle. You know, the famous drinking game.)

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Louis-Dreyfus friends and colleagues milked laughs from her recent medical challenge as well. In a recorded segment during the presentation, friend Larry David suggested that her illness was a well-crafted performance used to earn the Mark Twain Prize.

As long as Im here, I would like to mention to the Mark Twain committee that I did go to the doctor in the last week and they did some tests  Im waiting to hear the results, said the comic writer who worked with Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live. After some sincere remarks expressing his love for Louis-Dreyfus, he started coughing.

Louis-Dreyfus cast mates on Veep talked about their own fictitious maladies in a documentary-style short that at first appeared to be their reaction to the stars medical condition.

I actually had a full nervous breakdown right after the Emmys, said Timothy Simons, who plays deeply flawed Congressman Jonah Ryan on the show.

Frankly the publics attention was really on Julia, so when I had my stroke, I got no attention at all, said cast member Kevin Dunn.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Oct. 21.. (Owen Sweeney / Invision / Associated Press)

The moments of dark comedy may help diffuse any concerns the audience may have over Louis-Dreyfus health (she has returned to work on the final season of Veep and looked vibrant on stage and on the red carpet).

Most of the ceremony, which is set to air Nov. 19 on PBS, was a celebration of Louis-Dreyfus enduring and influential TV career. Her barrier-breaking roles as the hedonistic Elaine Benes on Seinfeld and the foul-mouthed narcissistic politician Selina Meyer on Veep are seen as milestones for the generation of comic actresses that followed her.

Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, the creators and stars of the Comedy Central series Broad City, credited Louis-Dreyfus for leading the charge for authentic and flawed women in comedy, giving their generation the inspiration and permission to be bold and weird. They said they loved Elaine Benes because she could hang out with the guys on Seinfeld but not change the way she was in order to please them.

Jacobson and Glazer were joined on stage by a dance troupe to perform a work based on the famed The Elaine Dance. It was a trademark move of Louis-Dreyfus character in which her movements  most notably her thumbs thrusting in the air  had no connection to the beat of whatever music is playing. Audience members were also asked to join in for the cameras.

Louis-Dreyfus, 57, was also praised by colleagues and friends  including Stephen Colbert, Bryan Cranston, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, and previous Mark Twain Prize recipient Tina Fey  on stage and in recorded interviews  for her charm and decency off camera. I was a starving actor and she kind of forced the writers to write more stuff for me so I could make some more money, said Steve Carell, who was cast in Louis-Dreyfus first post-Seinfeld series, Watching Ellie.

Jerry Seinfeld recalled how the casting of Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld was the result of a network note from NBC executives who believed the show needed a female character. He confessed that his role of playing Elaines ex-boyfriend who remained her pal was way, way beyond any acting ability he had. But he said there was little acting required on his part.

I just really, really liked Julia, Seinfeld said. I could not get enough of her. I never said or did anything inappropriate. But that whole time, nine years, I was not acting. I couldnt. I thought she was funny, charming, beautiful, intelligent, every single second I spent with her on stage and off. Bingo, no acting required. Speak the lines in the script. Three stupid guys, one incredible woman. Nine years, 180 episodes, syndication, DVD, piece of cake.

The hardest part, he said, was seeing her in roles on other shows in which she had relationships with other men after Seinfeld was over.

I suffered quite a bit of fake pain from this fake relationship, he said. But somewhere in the back of my mind these are things she was required to do if she was to receive the Mark Twain Prize.

Louis-Dreyfus husband, Brad Hall  with whom she started her career in the comedy clubs of Chicago  and her family looked on as she accepted the honor, but even they were not exempt from the barbs in her speech accepting the prize.

When youre a working mother, you really worry about the time spent away from your kid, she said. You try your best to be there as much as possible but the truth is that you miss stuff and you worry they are just going to get all screwed up and suffer all kinds of angst and neuroses when they grow up. And then you get the Mark Twain Prize and Ive got to say  its worth it.

Louis-Dreyfus is the sixth woman to earn the Mark Twain Prize, which was first given by the Kennedy Center in 1998. Other recipients include Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, Lorne Michaels, David Letterman, George Carlin, Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Tomlin and Eddie Murphy.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveBattaglioWith Elizabeth Warrens DNA test in the news and North Dakotas suddenly revised voter requirements threatening to disenfranchise indigenous citizens, it is not a bad time at all to welcome Native America, a four-part documentary on the people who got here first, beginning Tuesday on PBS. If not the deep and wide series the subject deserves  and let us hope one day will get  its always interesting, socially valuable and, all things considered, miraculously upbeat.

Its main points are that there were people living in the Americas for millenniums before Columbus entered without knocking from the east (around 100 million when he got here, though that number was soon to fall precipitously); that these people formed diverse and complex societies with a common reverence for nature, from which they do not see themselves as distinct; that their science, from astronomical observations to experimental agriculture, was also a form of worship; that tradition and storytelling were the keys to their survival in the face of oppression, slaughter and Christian missionary zeal; and that corn is king.

Narrated almost gingerly by Robbie Robertson, of the band the Band  his mother was Cayuga and Mohawk  each episode begins, At the intersection of modern scholarship and native knowledge is a new vision of America and the people who built it. The series, which is thematically rather than chronologically or geographically arranged, is constructed largely around scenes of anthropological and archaeological investigation on the one hand (some of it re-staged for the camera, clearly), and contemporary episodes depicting traditional ceremonies and practices on the other. Ancient ruins are digitally reconstructed; animated cartoons portray myths and legends.

Onondaga tribal elder Sid Hill reads a wampum shell-bead belt that commemorates the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy. (Providence Pictures)

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Youll see a city thats a calendar... You will hear of human sacrifice practiced just a hoot and a holler from modern-day St. Louis.

You will learn of the six directions (north, south, east, west, up and down) that define a sacred space, and the cities and spaces within cities built to align with them, and of the Florentine Codex, the 4,000-page encyclopedia of Aztec culture a Spanish priest assembled to aid conversion (know your heathen) but instead recorded the native experience of European invasion.

Youll see a city thats a calendar and a cliff wall converted, some 13,000 years ago, into an almanac. Youll visit a man-made cave, recently discovered 50 feet below the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, where the ceiling has been sprinkled with a glittery mineral to look like stars in the night sky, and go paddling in the dead of night with present-day Chumash off California. You will hear of human sacrifice practiced just a hoot and a holler from modern-day St. Louis, and how the horse transformed the Comanche and the Comanche the horse.

You will see people of the Andes make a suspension bridge entirely from grass, and how wampum beads are made from quahog shells and transformed into ceremonial belts  making strong structures from weak materials is a minor running theme  and hear the related historical legend of Hiawatha and Jikonhsaseh and the Great Peacemaker, and how the Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga and Onondaga came together democratically as the Haudenosaunee, the people of the longhouse, to put an end to war, and whose constitution inspired the one worked up centuries later by the United States.

And more.

Nearly 1,000 years after their ancestors first built this kiva, Hopi elders return to Chaco Canyons Pueblo Bonito to conduct a ceremony. (Providence Pictures)

There were people living in the Americas for millenniums before Columbus entered without knocking from the east.

For all its abundance, it is only a sliver. If Native America has a flaw, apart from the fact that its impossible to cover this territory in four hours, its that it spends perhaps a little too much of that time repeating itself. One gets an impression of economy, and of padding: Shots are used and reused  they are going to get their moneys worth out of those digital reconstructions and far-flung locations and those slow-motion glossy portrait shots  and material in one episode is covered again from an only slightly different angle in another. (This is possibly more obvious if, like a TV critic, you watch the four hours in one go.)

Native America means to be positive. The sins of the conquerors, in North, South and Central America alike, are barely mentioned, and almost beside the point: As the title says, this is Native America  Native Americas, really  the space staked out by Native Americans. Much of it is beautiful to behold  the series takes us to the American Northwest, Northeast, South, Midwest, Southwest and West Coast, to the jungles of Mexico and Brazil, in no particular order. You are bound to learn something new, or perhaps remember something important about the place you call home.

ALSO:

Native voices: Indian perspectives are focus of UCLA archives film fest

Evocative documentary The Seventh Fire personalizes daily struggles of Native Americans

PBS Kind Hearted Woman moves beyond a portrait of poverty

Review: Into the West: Feast for the eyes, famine for the ears

Its time to acknowledge the genocide of Californias Indians

The Trump agenda has Native American tribes feeling under siege

Native America

Where: KOCE

When: 9 p.m. Tuesday

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

Follow Robert Lloyd on Twitter @LATimesTVLloydRouge serves root-beer-braised pork cheek with white cheddar polenta, lemon gremolatta and quail egg during the last day of the L.A. Times The Taste OC on Oct. 21.

(Silvia Razgova / For The Times)Before O.J. Simpson, before Erik and Lyle Menendez, there was Joe Hunt.

Handsome and charismatic with a boyish charm, Hunt led the Billionaire Boys Club, a social and investment fraternity. Club members, clad in Armani suits and driving high-end BMWs, dined at Spago and partied with supermodels. The exclusive club, however, was a giant, high-stakes investment scam.

The whole scheme unraveled when investor Ron Levin vanished in 1984 after allegedly conning the club. His body would never be found, but a Santa Monica jury convicted Hunt in 1987 of murdering Levin.

Now, Hunt wants a chance to be released and is trying to persuade Gov. Jerry Brown to commute his sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

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Joe Hunt is seeking a commutation of his life sentence that would allow him to be released on parole. (Hunt family)

The question is whether this is the sincere act of a changed man or just another con job by a master manipulator, which is what prosecutors and law enforcement officials believe.

Joe doesnt deserve to be out of jail at all, said Leslie H. Zoeller, the Beverly Hills police detective who led the investigation into the Billionaire Boys Club. He is a borderline sociopath in my opinion.

Hunt faces an uphill battle, despite the criminal justice reform movement sweeping California.

Brown in recent months has commuted 18 life sentences, giving the inmates a chance at freedom. But he also has repeatedly rejected parole requests for high-profile killers, including members of the Manson family.

While Hunt is seeking a shot at freedom, he still maintains he didnt kill Levin.

Their whole case is: Joe Hunt was this manipulative guy who told people a lot of stuff for a fact. He manipulated other BBC members,  Hunt said.  And he said he killed Ron Levin, and therefore Ron Levin must be dead. If that is the case, there is no physical evidence.

Joe Hunt as photographed after his arrest in Beverly Hills. (Beverly Hills Police Department)

The irony of the situation isnt lost on me, said Hunt, who admits he was the consummate liar, drawing an analogy to the fable of the boy who cried wolf. If you are established as a liar when you tell the truth, youre perceived to be lying, and that is kind of your karma.

According to the governments star witness at trial, Hunt and his bodyguard forced Levin to sign a check for $1.5 million at his Peck Drive home in Beverly Hills. Dean Karny, Hunts closest confidant in the Billionaire Boys Club, testified that Hunt told him they handcuffed Levin and shoved him face down on the bed, where the bodyguard put a bullet in the back of his head.

Karny said Hunt told the story as he strolled through the Westside Pavilion mall, describing vividly Levins explosive gasp upon death and how they disfigured Levin with a shotgun  his brain jumped out of his skull and fell on his chest  before dumping his body in a remote part of Soledad Canyon.

The bodyguard and alleged triggerman in Levins killing, James Pittman, pleaded guilty to accessory to murder.

I did say I knocked off Ron Levin. I did say that to a group of guys at BBC, Hunt said. We were involved in various deceitful transactions with investors. And a company we took over, we took over on false pretenses. We were all making stuff up to look bigger than we were.

By 1984, despite the Billionaire Boys Clubs trappings of success and dreams of its members becoming more prominent than their wealthy parents, the group had lost nearly $1 million in bad investments. Thats when Levin, according to prosecutors, agreed to place $5 million in a brokerage house account and let Hunt trade it. They would split the profits 50-50.

Levin, however, conned the brokerage into believing he was a TV producer doing a documentary on commodities trading. He told the firm not to execute Hunts orders but said Hunt needed to believe his buys and sells were real decisions.

That con job, to the L.A. County district attorneys office, was a clear motive for Hunt. As one club member testified at trial, Hunt told nine members after Levin vanished: Dont worry. This was the perfect crime. Theyll never find the body.

From his prison phone, inmate No. D61863 quickly rattles off half a dozen names of people who claimed to have seen Levin after the con mans disappearance. Some testified at the trials.

Detectives never found Levin, but they did find what prosecutors called the recipe for murder, a chilling to-do list scrawled on pages from a yellow legal pad.

Joe was all talkative until I pulled out the seven pages of to-do list and put in front of him, Zoeller said. The detective asked Hunt, What can you tell me about this?

Closed blinds, scan for tape recorder, tape mouth, handcuff, put gloves on, explain situation, kill dog, reads the list. Hunt has long insisted that the list left at Levins duplex was designed to scare him.

If I did a wholesale capitulation, then I would be a perfect candidate for parole, Hunt said. Look, I am innocent. I am not going to lie about it.

Behind bars, Hunt teaches yoga and meditation. He has defused violence and helped start a project at Folsom State Prison to address how trauma in inmates past can lead to violent behavior. He worked closely with the prisons clergy, acting as a chapel clerk.

When authorities tried to increase a fellow inmates sentence by two years, citing a sentencing error, Hunt filed a petition that saw the sentence cut by two and a half years. That inmate was released last month.

Joseph Hunt made my ministry and work in prison worthwhile, Chaplain Dennis Merino wrote.

Zoeller, however, said he isnt surprised that Hunt hasnt lost any of his powers of persuasion after decades in prison.

He is living a lie, Zoeller said.

Hunt defended himself at trial for a second murder case. Those charges were dropped after jurors deadlocked on the allegation that he and others killed Hedayat Eslaminia, a wealthy Iranian-born businessman, in July 1984. That, Hunt says, was the trial at which jurors got to hear the truth about his activities.

Hunt is being assisted in his effort by his family. His younger sister and her husband are funding the FreeJoeHunt.com website and campaign.

They are trying to capitalize on a push by various criminal justice groups to end life without parole.

Others are highly skeptical Hunt is a candidate for this reappraisal.

Michele Hanisee, an L.A. County prosecutor and president of the countys Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys, said she is not surprised that Hunt is making a bid to commute his sentence. But she said Hunts continuing insistence on his innocence makes it hard for him to win over Brown.

The governors policy seems to be consistent with a philosophy of commuting sentences for those with exemplary behavior who show remorse, she said. It is really difficult to do that when you wont admit the crime.

Former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said that Hunt killed for greed and that his case was one of the highest-profile murder cases handled by the office in the 1980s.

It is a last-ditch effort to get a shot at walking out the door because he exhausted his appeals, Cooley said.

But Hunt insists hes a changed man and ready for rehabilitation.

I have left a lot of wreckage behind me because of the way I behaved in my early 20s, he said. I have tried to contribute to the welfare of my fellow human beings ever since.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Twitter: @lacrimesFederal officials are seeing a steep increase in families and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, and shelters in Tijuana report they are housing record numbers of migrants waiting their turn.

The number of people who are part of a family unit seeking legal entry into the United States through the San Diego ports of entry in fiscal year 2018 through August was up 139% compared to the same period in 2017. The number was 12,340, up from 5,167.

Customs and Border Protection statistics show a 31% increase in unaccompanied children during the same period. The majority of unaccompanied children come from Guatemala, while the families are overwhelmingly coming from Mexicos interior, the data show. Others come from Nigeria, Honduras and Pakistan.

Tijuanas shelters say they are strained from the number of mothers with children seeking asylum in the U.S. through the San Ysidro Port of Entry after the U.S. ended a policy of family separations at the border. Thousands are hunkering down in Tijuana shelters or in tents on the streets.

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Isaac Olvera runs the Salvation Army center for women and children in Colonia Libertad, where he says more than 2,000 people in Tijuana are waiting in limbo, a number hes never seen before.

Full. Full. Full, Olvera said in Spanish. The shelters for women and children are full. They are sick. They have nutritional problems. There isnt enough food. This is causing a lot of problems.

At a Salvation Army womens shelter, Maria de Carmen Rojas Cruz, 21, has waited in Tijuana for 15 days with her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, after a journey by train and on foot from Michoacan, Mexico.

I had to leave because there were ugly things happening there, she said. Rojas said she fled because drug cartels were stealing children from their mothers.

There was so much violence. I was so afraid I could not even be out in public with my kids because I feared they would be taken from me, she said. There was a very serious problem with children being stolen.

Rojas hopes for a better life in Chicago.

Im all alone, Rojas said. Its really difficult for me because I know that my aunt and uncle in Chicago can help me watch the kids while I find work, and they want to help me. But, practically, its so hard because of all that I have to do to get there.

Her voice trails off as her son tugs at her, trying to get her attention for a vitamin pack, just delivered by volunteers.

The situation is straining resources for those who serve Tijuanas homeless population and shelters for Mexican nationals who are deported from the United States back into their homeland.

At Padre Chava  another shelter in Tijuana  women from 19 countries sit around one table. Despite language barriers, their maternal glances and noises are understood as the laughter of their children making handstands reaches their table.

Many migrants come to Tijuana believing that asylum is a feasible way to cross the border into the U.S. when its actually not, said several immigration authorities in Mexico and the U.S.

In fact, their chances of being granted U.S. asylum are not good, and they will likely be returned to the country from which they fled.

The U.S. denies entry or deports migrants from Mexico and Central America  particularly Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras  at higher rates than other countries, such as India, China and countries in Africa. All have to meet a strict legal standard to claim asylum.

Typically, when non-Mexicans present themselves at U.S. ports of entry, theyve already been issued a temporary visa from the Mexican government that allows them to travel through the country for two weeks.

Currently, the office responsible for those visas is severely backlogged itself after being destroyed in the 2017 earthquake in Mexico City. Even though the visa gives migrants only two weeks, many have been waiting in Tijuana shelters for more than 40 days with no plans to leave the country until their number is called by U.S. officials.

Mexico does not plan to deport migrants back to their home country as they wait in Tijuana. When their number is approaching, U.S. immigration authorities alert the shelters to send the migrants to the border, according to those working at the shelters.

Theyve done a really good job of spreading them out all across the city this time so it doesnt look so much like a crisis like it did in 2016, says Alejandro Fonseca, a Salvation Army volunteer. But this is a crisis, and here comes another wave, he says, referring to a caravan of thousands of Honduran refugees reportedly making their way to Tijuana.

At the U.S.-Mexico border, asylum seekers submit to an initial screening by inspectors from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

If they clear that hurdle, they are turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to consider whether the individuals must be detained while their cases are reviewed by Department of Homeland Security and immigration courts.

Even for families who get over the first hurdle of an asylum application, which is a test of whether they have credible fear of living in their homeland, the legal process will be lengthy and difficult. People fleeing violent regions threatened by drug cartels dont necessarily qualify, according to immigration authorities. The asylum law requires extensive paper documentation and firsthand testimony showing well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality or membership of a particular social group.

Thousands who are unsuccessful face removal from the U.S.

For people staying in Tijuanas shelters this week, waiting their turn to be processed, like Rojas, the outlook is bleak.

Its so difficult, but all I can do is wait, she said.

Olvera worries for the moment that Tijuanas shelters can no longer accommodate any more women with children.

This is a dangerous city with organized crime, and its very dangerous for women with children to be alone on the street, he said.

Fry writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.A real estate investment firm has agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that it pressured Latino and mentally disabled tenants to leave its rent-controlled Koreatown buildings so it could raise the rents.

For the record: An earlier version of this article said four people who supported the plaintiffs in a video were not Latino. One of the four was Latino.

While denying they had done anything wrong, the Century City investment firm Optimus Properties LLC and several affiliated companies agreed to abide by fair housing laws to make physical repairs to the tenants apartments and to ensure that property managers and onsite managers receive fair-housing training.

In a novel form of relief worked out over days of negotiations, they agreed to reserve the next seven vacancies in its buildings for tenants receiving rent subsidies under the federal Section 8 program.

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Optimus also agreed to accept late rent payments from three disabled tenants who had received multiple eviction notices for delaying payment up to five days until they received their Social Security checks.

In a joint statement released Friday after U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson signed an order dismissing the case, the tenants attorneys said the defendants had made important commitments to ensure fair housing policies and practices are in place for its Koreatown apartment buildings.

Thomas H. Citron, lead counsel for the defendants, said, My clients are looking forward to continuing their commitment to fair housing practices, while implementing new policies to provide superior protections for residents.

Cornelia Martinez, with some neighborhood children. She and her partner, Freddy Velasquez, have lived in their one-bedroom apartment since 1999 with their two daughters. She says she was pressured to leave after the defendants purchased the building, according to a declaration. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Terms of the settlement prohibited either party from discussing the case further.

The settlement will provide about $52,000 each to 13 tenants. About $208,000 will go to Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and Step Up on Second, two agencies that advocated for the tenants and provided supportive services to some.

The remainder, about $173,000 in litigation costs and $1,442,000 in attorneys fees, will go to four law firms that worked on the case.

The 2016 lawsuit was filed on behalf of 15 tenants in five buildings by the pro bono law firm Public Counsel and the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates Inc.

In addition to Optimus, the lawsuit named five affiliated limited liability companies that are the registered owners of the buildings; Roxbury Ventures LLC, described as Optimus property management company; and Jerome Mickelson, currently listed on Optimus website as its executive vice president.

The settlement covers four buildings. In the nearly two years since the case was filed, three of the tenants dropped out, two of the buildings were sold and an additional tenant in a sixth building was added.

Hilda Deras has lived on South Magnolia Avenue since 1977. Like other tenants, she complained of receiving excessive rent hikes and numerous notices to enter her apartment and for eviction. I dont drive and I have access to the buses, the stores and laundromat, she says. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

The lawsuit alleged Optimus violated state and federal anti-discrimination and fair housing laws by pushing out undesirable tenants to facilitate rapid resale.

It characterized what the firms website referred to as its Koreatown strategy as a complex scheme in the rapidly gentrifying Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, to purchase buildings, displace the existing tenants, renovate vacated units, market the renovated units at much higher rents to young, childless, English-speaking professionals, and flip  the buildings at a massive profit.

At the time Optimus purchased them, it said, the buildings were occupied by significant numbers of Spanish-speaking Latino tenants, families with children, and people with mental disabilities.

In declarations filed with the court, tenants described receiving dozens of notices including requests to enter their apartments, complaints about their children and three-day notices to pay or vacate.

Some of the tenants alleged they received notices of rent increases exceeding the limit in rent-controlled buildings. Others received rent increases without the required prior approval of the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department.

Records compiled for the case showed that tenant Demetrius Allen, who has physical and mental disabilities, received 43 notices in the nearly 18 months between the time a defendant firms purchased his building and the lawsuit was filed in November 2016.

Demetrius Allen, a former homeless tenant who has physical and mental disabilities, received 43 notices from a defendants firm in an 18-month span. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

They included five utility cutoffs for renovations of other apartments, six pest control treatments, two showings of his apartment, 13 eviction warnings and one notice that his Section 8 subsidy would no longer be accepted.

Allen, 47, who routinely paid his rent on the fifth of the month but never missed, said the flood of notices, which he called his weekday anxieties, stopped after the lawsuit was filed.

In the settlement, Optimus agreed to accept his rent checks on the fifth of the month and to allow him to keep a service dog.

Pedro Ramos, who lives with his wife and two children in a studio apartment he has rented since 1997, said in his declaration that his original contract allowed him to pay rent up to the fifth of the month.

Pedro Ramos, who works in the garment industry, has lived in a studio apartment on South Normandie Avenue for more than 20 years, during which his rent has grown from $350 a month to $655.87. He and his wife have raised four children there. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Records filed with his declaration showed that in August 2016, Optimus management company notified him of a 5% increase to $652.25 and a warning that late fees would be charged after the first. Ramos said he asked for repairs to be made before he paid, but the manager never came to inspect his apartment. Instead an eviction case was filed in Superior Court.

After Public Counsel answered the case on Ramos behalf, it was dismissed.

Additional support for the case came in declarations and a video made by four tenants. One of the four was Latino, and none were disabled or party to the lawsuit.

They described hearing onsite managers say they had direction from Mickelson to clear out Mexicans and families to make the apartments more attractive to hipsters. All four said their buildings were mostly occupied by Latino families when they first rented them but most tenants are now single people.

Deepika Sharma, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said the tenants stuck with it over two years because they wanted to make a difference for other people as well as themselves.

We didnt just do this for their own benefit, but to make a point in this city of Los Angeles, she said.

Michael Prudhomme has lived in his apartment since 2008. He has a federal rent subsidy and receives in-home services from the California Department of Social Services for physical and mental disabilities. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

doug.smith@latimes.com

@LATDougAn Uber driver was listed in critical condition after being shot and crashing into another car, authorities said Monday.

Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department deputies were called to assist the California Highway Patrol with what was at first thought to be traffic collision call in the 2000 block of El Segundo Boulevard just before midnight. When they arrived, the Sheriffs Department said, they found a man in his 20s who had been shot it his upper torso.

The man hasnt been identified, the department said.

Authorities said two men were sitting in the back seat of the Uber vehicle when one or both of them shot the driver and exited the moving car. The men ran east on El Segundo Boulevard while the driver continued a short distance before crashing, they said.

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Officials havent confirmed whether the men were paying Uber customers.

Anyone with information on the incident can call the Sheriffs Department Century Station at (323) 568-4800.

alejandra.reyesvelarde@latimes.com

Twitter: @r_valejandraWhen the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges last week detailing a years-long effort by a Russian troll farm to sow division and discord in the U.S. political system, it was the first federal case alleging continued foreign interference in U.S. elections.

At the same time, American intelligence officials released a rare public statement asserting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence U.S. policy and voters in future elections.

The statement didnt provide details. That stood in contrast with the criminal charges, which provided a narrative of Russian activities. Previous criminal cases have also outlined Russian activities.

Here is a look at what is known about foreign efforts to interfere in U.S. elections:

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What is the U.S. worried about?

The U.S. has many concerns: ballot tampering, hacking into campaigns, open and covert attempts to sway voters.

Fridays announcement didnt suggest that electoral campaigns or systems were compromised. Instead, it spelled out foreign campaigns aimed at undermining confidence in democratic institutions.

The criminal charges detailed how a Russian troll farm created thousands of false social media profiles and email accounts that appeared to be from people inside the United States. Although social media companies are making an effort to combat fake accounts and bogus news stories ahead of the upcoming elections, advocates are concerned that it may not be enough to combat the foreign interference.

Is Russia meddling in U.S. elections?

The criminal complaint provided a clear picture of a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on social issues such as immigration and gun control.

Prosecutors said a Russian woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, worked for the same social media troll farm indicted earlier this year by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose office is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. The case largely mirrors the one brought by the special counsels office against three Russian companies, including the Internet Research Agency, and 13 Russians  including a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Court papers describe how the operatives in Fridays case would analyze U.S. news articles and decide how they would draft social media messages about those stories.

They also show how Russian trolls have stepped up their efforts with a better understanding of the U.S. political climate and messages that are no longer riddled with misspellings.

In 2016, Russian trolls were trying to help elect Republican Donald Trump and harm the campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton, while also sowing discord in America.

The latest charges allege that Russia is continuing to focus on the latter, instead of helping a particular candidate. According to the case, operatives often sent messages with diverging viewpoints about the same issue from different accounts.

What about Iran?

The Trump administration has accused Iran of all kinds of misconduct, including sponsoring terrorism and posing a threat to Middle Eastern nations.

But it hasnt released evidence to back up its claim that Iran is trying to sway U.S. elections.

The U.S. has previous accused Iranians of cyberattacks that appear unrelated to politics.

In March, the Justice Department announced that nine Iranians carried out a years-long cyberattack to steal secrets from American companies, universities and the government. Prosecutors said the hackers had worked at the behest of the Iranian government-sponsored Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Among the targets were employees at the Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the states of Indiana and Hawaii.

That case came about two years after the Justice Department indicted seven Iranian hackers for attacking dozens of banks and a small dam near New York City.

What is the threat from China?

Earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence charged that Russias attempts pale in comparison to covert and overt activities taken by China to interfere in next months midterm election. He accused China of trying to counter the administrations tough trade policies against Beijing.

While many details of Russias covert actions have been released, the accusations against China have been mostly about open activities such as advertising supplements and targeted tariffs. Unlike the accusations against Russia, no details about covert Chinese activities have been disclosed.

The vice president noted that a multi-page advertising supplement was inserted several weeks ago in the Des Moines Register in Iowa, a pivotal state in this years elections and the 2020 presidential election. The supplement, designed to look like news articles, cast our trade policies as reckless and harmful to Iowans, Pence said.

He also charged that China responded to Trumps trade policies with its own tariffs to inflict maximum political damage.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been high because of trade disputes, and Trump frequently criticizes China.

Are foreign threats having an effect?

That remains unclear.

Intelligence officials have emphasized that Americans should take steps to verify the information they read on social media and have called on technology companies to boost protections.

The national security agencies said they do not have evidence that voting systems have been disrupted or compromised in ways that could result in changing vote counts or hampering the ability to tally votes in the midterms, which are about two weeks away.

Some state and local governments have reported attempts to access their networks, which often include online voter registration databases, using tactics that are available to state and nonstate cyberactors, they said.

But so far, they said, state and local officials have been able to prevent access or quickly mitigate these attempts.For generations, families have come to Mexico Beach to soak up old-style Florida: the mom-and-pop seafood shacks, the dinky one-story motels and pastel bungalows, the retro ice cream parlor with claw machines and vintage arcade games.

But Hurricane Michael, which less than two weeks ago pummeled the tiny seaside town with 155-mph winds and demolished roughly three out of every four buildings, has left the community in an existential crisis. Nobody is sure what comes next.

Many residents and business owners, anticipating massive insurance shortfalls, have yet to decide whether to commit to the daunting challenge of rebuilding structures strong enough to withstand the next big storm.

About a third of the towns 1,200 full-time residents are senior citizens. Many homes were not covered by flood insurance. A vast swath of older ranch-style homes and commercial structures sat at ground level and did not meet the states current elevation and windstorm requirements.

Theyre gonna make you build so heavy duty, you cant afford to rebuild, said Charles Chuck Smith, 56, owner of the Gulf View Motel, a modest 1940s-era building that his parents bought in the mid-1980s.

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Now it is rubble. Wind, water and debris wrecked the concrete walls, gutting the kitschy rooms with tiny kitchenettes, sweeping away the queen beds with peach and turquoise bedspreads patterned with seashells.

Were not a rich community, and pretty soon were going to be priced out, he said. Were going to see million-dollar homes, Im pretty sure.

Mexico Beach was woefully unprepared for a Category 4 hurricane: While new structures across South Florida must be built to withstand winds of around 175 mph, buildings in this stretch of Floridas panhandle are required to sustain winds of only 130 mph. Older buildings are exempt.

(Los Angeles Times)

As residents began to grapple with insurance claims and apply for federal assistance, engineering experts and policymakers said current building codes should be tightened to make future homes more resilient. Some questioned whether, in an age of rising sea levels, it made any sense to rebuild so close to the beach.

The challenge is building stronger homes that can withstand higher wind speeds and greater storm surges  without destroying the towns family-friendly vibe and making it unaffordable for blue-collar workers and retirees.

Youre starting to see this concern about the haves and the have-nots when you talk about adapting to climate, said Craig Fugate, former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who lives in Gainesville, Fla. How do we build resiliency in communities without leaving behind the majority of the workforce?

Im afraid were going to run into a situation where only the wealthy can afford to rebuild and the people that work in the economy  the teachers, the nurses, the paramedics, firefighters, police officers, sheriffs deputies, people who work at the grocery store  may very well be priced out of their homes.

Rebecca Adkisson kisses her dog Bella outside her demolished home in Mexico Beach. (Mark Wallheiser / For The Times)

Mayor Al Cathey, 71, whose family has owned a hardware store here since 1974, is confident the majority of the towns residents will come back, pulled by their memories and nostalgia for a slower pace of life.

Many of the homes have been in families for generations. But some older residents, Cathey feared, would likely look at the devastation and give up.

Emotionally, everyone wants to stay, he said. The question is whats it going to take to build financially? And will we lose what we thought of us our charm? Its going to change the landscape of our community.

Hurricane Michael washed away the wooden pier where families hauled buckets of bait and fishing rods in the hope of catching pompano, Spanish mackerel and flounder. It gutted one of the towns biggest landmarks, the four-story El Governor Motel. It razed Tommy Ts, a beloved ice cream store founded in 1983, where kids lined up to order sno-cones and play Pac-Man and Galaga.

Its overwhelming, said Tammy Pullen, 51, who lives part-time in a town home behind Tommy Ts, as she climbed around splintered plywood and corrugated metal, looking for her possessions amid packs of Starburst candy, sunhats, scuba masks and quarters. Im just hoping we can clean it all up and it will be the little quaint place it was.

Stretching for about three miles along U.S. Route 98, Mexico Beach was never a brash tourist strip or fancy playground for the rich. There are no high-rises or big-box stores, no theme parks or mini malls, as in Panama City Beach, 30 miles west. The town does not have a traffic light, and the only chain restaurant is a Subway.

As other towns along the Florida coastline became more commercialized, city leaders here developed strict zoning rules that ban the construction of new residential buildings taller than 32 feet or commercial buildings above 48 feet.

Outside City Hall last week, a steady stream of residents filed under a shade tent to register with FEMA.

Wanda Walker, 84, arrived in a wheelchair with her son, David, to apply for federal assistance.

Wanda Walker talks with her son David Walker and a FEMA representative outside City Hall in Mexico Beach. Walker doesnt know when her home will be habitable again. (Mark Wallheiser / For The Times)

She moved to Mexico Beach from Michigan more than four decades ago to escape the cold weather and settled in a one-story home four blocks from the beach. Now she was staying with family in Tallahassee while sodden beds and carpet were pulled out of her house. The family had no idea when she could move back in.

This is a real bad devastation for her, said her son  whose Dixie Dandy grocery store one town over was also destroyed  as a FEMA worker asked questions and typed on a small computer.

Block after block, there were problems.

Mike Danner, 72, was not sure how he and his wife, Dana Schere, would rebuild after the storm surge warped the floor joists in their one-story stucco home and winds ripped a hole in their roof. They did not have flood insurance.

If water touched it, its not covered, his insurance adjuster said one day last week as he walked inside the damp, sand-strewn home, inspecting the water line. Above 6 to 9 inches up, youre covered.

Cellphone in hand, Danner stepped over a tree limb as he relayed the information to his wife, who had heart problems and was recuperating at a hotel about 80 miles away.

Dont worry about it, dear, he tried to reassure her.

But there were many other sources of anxiety. Danner said he has no savings, and he has yet to be called back to his mechanics job at the nearby Tyndall Air Force Base, which was pummeled in the storm.

Faith Bostick, 79, a retiree from Georgia who lived in Mexico Beach half the year, said her familys mobile home was a total loss. It had a large hole in its roof. As temporary residents, they were unlikely to get assistance from FEMA.

Faith Bostick, 79, walks through her severely damaged mobile home in Mexico Beach after Hurricane Michael devastated the area. The home is a total loss. (Mark Wallheiser / For The Times)

We could haul in a new one, she said. But will they allow new trailers in here?

If they couldnt afford to rebuild to current code, they would most likely haul the old trailer away and keep the land for their children and grandchildren.

For some residents, the future depended on their neighbors.

Though his one-story home made it through the storm with minor cosmetic damage, Rick Sanders, a 47-year-old firefighter from Thomasville, Ga., said he worried his neighbors on 6th Street would not be able to rebuild and developers would swoop in and put up condos.

This is our away family, he said as his next-door neighbor, Millie Wright, a retired human resources manager from Marietta, Ga., rested on his front porch. Her mobile home was destroyed.

We dont want to stay here if we lose all our neighbors, Sanders said.

Margie Daniel, 71, a retiree from LaGrange, Ga., who owned a two-story vacation condo  now gone  was uncertain if her neighbors would be committed to rebuilding the five-unit structure to more stringent building codes.

It may be much more expensive, she said. And what do we do if we dont all want to do the same thing?

With city infrastructure completely wiped out, Michael Scoggins, 61, co-owner and chef of Killer Seafood, a laid-back joint that served fish tacos and po boys, figured it would be years before he could reopen in town. He was scrambling to open a new restaurant in a vacant development seven miles east.

The plan is to have it running in three months, retaining his 10 employees and hiring 10 more.

It will be a positive symbol for the community, he said.

Other business owners feared it would be a while before tourists, their main customers, would return to Mexico Beach.

I dont know what to do, George Hunter, 55, the owner of the Shell Shack, said as he entered his ruined seafood store and gift shop last week and navigated a caved-in floor to salvage stacks of sodden green folders from a filing cabinet. This is all Ive ever known.

His business, founded by his parents in 1965, was unrecognizable. Hurricane Michael had torn up the old pine walls, ripped up the roof and tossed over ice chests, freezers and a cash register. The structured reeked of fish  3,600 pounds of spoiled shrimp, worth about $30,000 wholesale.

Hunter grew up manning the register, cleaning grouper and snapper, heading shrimp, and hoped to rebuild the family store. But he had no idea how much it would cost to build to current codes, and he fretted about the fate of his two sons, Zach and Nick, who were full-time employees.

Even if he could rebuild in the next year, he worried it would be several years before there would be enough motels and rentals for tourists, which made up 90% of his customer base.

How long is it going to take to come back? he said. Nobody can really tell you. Were in limbo.

Erin Crawson, inside her townhouse in Mexico Beach where a neighbors family Bible that washed in with the surge from Hurricane Michael lies on the counter. (Mark Wallheiser / For The Times)

jenny.jarvie@latimes.com

Twitter: @JennyJarvieTwo U.S. warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Monday, a show of military support for the self-ruled island of Taiwan by the Trump administration that is sure to worsen already-tense relations between Washington and Beijing.

The Antietam, a guided-missile cruiser, and the Curtis Wilbur, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed from the south to the north through the strait and were shadowed by multiple Chinese navy vessels at a safe distance, according to a U.S. official.

The 110-mile-wide waterway separating Taiwan from the mainland is an international passage, but it is a potential flashpoint if China ever sought to use force to take control of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province.

The ships transit though the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, said Lt. Rachel McMarr, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.

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Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that before the passage through the strait, the U.S. maintained coordination and contact with the appropriate nations, authorities and parties and that it was certainly not the intention to raise tensions or any kind of escalation across the Taiwan Strait.

The Trump administration has been more publicly supportive of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship than any administration in recent decades. In addition to Mondays operation, the Pentagon sent two warships through the strait in July. In past years, the U.S. usually sailed in the strait only once a year.

Abraham Denmark, who was the Pentagons deputy assistant secretary for East Asia during the Obama administration, said past U.S. transits were conducted quietly, to avoid provoking Beijing into making threatening moves against Taiwan.

To me the ultimate question is, Does this help Taiwan? Denmark said. I think its good to demonstrate continued U.S. commitment to Taiwan, but the question is, Does it need to be conducted so publicly?

The move is part of a pattern of mixed signals from the administration. It comes just four days after Defense Secretary James N. Mattis met with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe in Singapore in what Pentagon officials said was an effort to reestablish contacts between U.S. and Chinese military leaders after months of tit-for-tat quarrels.

That conciliatory Singapore meeting followed a slashing speech by Vice President Mike Pence this month outlining a more confrontational U.S. approach toward Beijing. On Sept. 30, a Chinese navy vessel nearly collided with a U.S. warship that was sailing in the South China Sea, in a challenge to Beijings disputed maritime claims there.

Beijing had no immediate reaction to the U.S. transit of the Taiwan Strait. China claims Taiwan as its own and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

The issue of U.S. support for Taiwan came up during Mattis talks with Wei, according to Randall Schriver, the assistant secretary for Asia at the Pentagon. Mattis reassured Wei that the United States had not altered the U.S. policy, Schriver said.

That policy, established when Washington and Beijing normalized relations in 1979, acknowledges that China claims Taiwan as part of its territory. But that policy also warns Beijing against trying to reclaim the island by force.

The U.S. does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and has no formal commitment to come to the islands defense if attacked. But under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. promised to maintain the military capacity to come to Taiwans aid, a policy meant to leave Beijing uncertain about how the U.S. would respond in case of a Chinese attack on the island.

By sending warships through the waterway so soon after the Mattis-Wei meeting, the Pentagon appeared to be sending a signal to Beijing that the United States would not back away from its long-standing security role in the region, even if it further damaged relations between the two nations.

For the U.S. to conduct two transits of the strait separated by only three months reflects American concern about a series of Chinese military drills around the island in April, officials said.

The Chinese maneuvers were apparently a response to the Trump administrations backing Taiwan more publicly than past administrations.

Last month, the U.S. approved a $330-million arms sale to Taiwan, a tangible sign of support for the government in Taipei. In another signal of the White Houses backing, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen toured NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston in August during a stopover from a trip to Central and South America.

It marked the first time a Taiwanese leader has been to an official U.S. government facility and was widely viewed as a sign of deepening ties between the United States and Taiwan  to the delight of many Taiwanese and the dismay of China.

Since Tsais independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party took power in 2016, Taiwans relations with China have deteriorated.

The Pentagon avoided a more provocative show of force in the strait by deciding against sending an aircraft carrier battle group. Not since 2007 has a U.S. aircraft carrier sailed through the strait on its way to home port in Japan, a route the Pentagon justified at the time as a safety move because of weather. Even so, China expressed grave concern over the passage.

david.cloud@latimes.com

Twitter: @davidcloudLATIn recent weeks, a grand jury in Washington has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and FBI technicians have pored over gigabytes of electronic messages as part of the special counsels quest to solve one burning mystery: Did longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone  or any other associate of the president  have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks plans to release hacked Democratic emails in 2016?

While outwardly quiet for the last month, Robert S. Mueller IIIs investigators have been aggressively pursuing leads behind the scenes about whether Stone was in communication with the online group, whose disclosures of emails believed to have been hacked by Russian operatives disrupted the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the special counsel probe.

Stone, who boasted during the race that he was in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said since that his past comments were exaggerated or misunderstood. Both he and WikiLeaks have adamantly denied they were in contact.

However, prosecutors are closely examining both public comments and alleged private assertions that Stone made in 2016 suggesting he had a way to reach Assange, the people said.

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Last month, Randy Credico, a onetime Stone friend, told the grand jury that the Trump loyalist confided during the 2016 campaign that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In a series of interviews with the Washington Post, Stone said his only connection to the group was through Credico, a liberal comedian who had hosted Assange on his New York radio program in 2016.

The special counsels prosecutors have also zeroed in on Stones relationship with conservative journalist and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, examining whether he served as a conduit between Stone and Assange, according to another person familiar with their interest. Corsi appeared before Muellers grand jury last month, and FBI agents have recently been seeking to interview Corsis associates, according to the person.

In addition, investigators have scrutinized Stones communications with Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks, according to people familiar with the probe.

One apparent line of inquiry: whether Stone lied to Congress about his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks during the presidential race, according to the people.

The question of whether Trump associates were in contact with WikiLeaks is at the heart of Muellers inquiry. According to charges filed by the special counsel in July, Russian military intelligence officers used an online persona called Guccifer 2.0 to distribute hacked Democratic emails through WikiLeaks. The Russian operatives also used Guccifer 2.0s Twitter account to send messages to Stone, who has said the exchanges were benign.

The online organization has said it had no contact with Stone. WikiLeaks & Assange have repeatedly confirmed that they have never communicated with Stone, the organization tweeted in March 2017.

Stone told the Post that Credico was my principal source regarding the allegedly hacked emails published by WikiLeaks, a claim Credico has denied. Stone added that one of his remarks in 2016 predicting that WikiLeaks was about to release information related to Clinton was informed by another journalists tip that he was forwarded by an associate.

Stone called Muellers investigation illegitimate and said the special counsel, who has interviewed at least seven of his associates, is trying to pressure him to flip on President Trump.

The special counsel pokes into every aspect of my social, family, personal, business and political life, seeking something  anything  he can use to pressure me, to silence me and to try to induce me to testify against my friend Donald Trump, Stone said in a recent videotaped fundraising appeal. This I will not do. When I say I wont roll on the president, what I mean is I will not be forced to make up lies to bring him down.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Questions about Stones possible connection to WikiLeaks were stoked by encouraging comments he made after the group released thousands of hacked emails from key Democratic figures, beginning on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in July 2016.

The following month, Stone began predicting that WikiLeaks would strike again before the election. In a widely reported speech to a Republican group in South Florida in early August 2016, Stone boasted: I actually have communicated with Assange.

Then, on Aug. 21, he tweeted: Trust me, it will soon [be] Podestas time in the barrel. Six weeks later, WikiLeaks began posting online emails stolen from the account of Hillary Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Stone now says his tweet was a reference to opposition research he got from Corsi about the business dealings of Podesta and his brother, Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta.

Two days after his Podesta tweet, Stone appeared on Credicos radio program. Credico asked whether an October surprise was coming and stated that Stone had been in touch and indirectly with Julian Assange, according to a clip obtained by CNN.

I dont want to intimate in any way that I control or have influence with Assange because I do not, Stone responded on the show. We have a mutual friend, somebody we both trust and therefore I am a recipient of pretty good information.

Stone now says he was referring to Credico. I certainly couldnt out Randy on his own radio show, but the person I refer to is of course him, he told the Post. He is in on the joke from the beginning.

As election day neared in 2016, Stone continued his predictions. On Sunday, Oct. 2, he tweeted: Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #WikiLeaks. When there was no release on Wednesday, Oct. 5, he tweeted: Libs thinking Assange will stand down are wishful thinking. Payload coming #Lockthemup.

Two days after Stones payload tweet, WikiLeaks published the first tranche of Podestas emails  and then dropped new batches nearly daily before the November vote.

When Stone came under scrutiny for his comments about WikiLeaks after the election, he said he had no advance knowledge of the hacking and was just conveying information he had received from Credico.

In a letter to the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017, Stone also identified Credico as his source on WikiLeaks, according to a person familiar with the communication.

Credico has repeatedly denied passing any information from WikiLeaks to Stone. Rather, he said he may have speculated about the groups tactics when he was with Stone. Credico has told allies that he believes Stone used him as a decoy to try to explain his claims of having a back channel to Assange.

Muellers efforts to unentangle the conflicting accounts of Stone and Credico are complicated by the fact that both men are voluble showmen. They became friends in the early 2000s through a shared interest in liberalizing New York drug laws, but have split bitterly amid scrutiny from the special counsel.

Stone said he believes Credico had sources connected to WikiLeaks and said Credico offered to get information from Assanges circle for him.

Two Stone associates, filmmaker David Lugo and attorney Tyler Nixon, also told the Post that Credico acknowledged in conversations last year that he was the source of material for Stones statements and tweets about WikiLeaks.

Nixon said he would be willing to testify before the grand jury about a dinner in which Credico fretted that his liberal friends would be displeased that he was a source for the arch-conservative Stone. Lugo provided the Post with text messages in which Credico said: I knew Rodger [sic] was going to name me sooner or later and so I told you that Im the so-called back Channel.

An attorney for Credico declined to comment on Lugo and Nixons claims.

For his part, Credico said he recalls that Stone claimed in a September 2016 conversation that he had a mystery WikiLeaks contact. Credico said that he wasnt sure at the time whether to believe him.

I remember saying, Roger, I thought you had a back channel, Credico said. He said something to the effect of, Yes, but I cant use him all the time. Credico relayed that account to the grand jury last month, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

Stone at first denied Credicos claim that he suggested having a conduit to reach WikiLeaks, calling his old friend a perjurer and saying hed relish the opportunity to confront Credico in court.

Later, Stone acknowledged to the Post that he obliquely told Credico in an email that he had a second source of WikiLeaks information besides the New York comedian.

He told the Post that person was not a direct conduit to WikiLeaks. He said he was referring to information another associate passed to him from a journalist who wrote in a July 2016 email that he had heard WikiLeaks would be releasing information related to the Clinton Foundation.

Stone has also said that he was getting information about the Clintons in 2016 from Corsi. He told the House Intelligence Committee that his Podesta tweet was based on a comprehensive, early August [2016] opposition research briefing from Corsi.

Corsi gave a similar account in a March 2017 Infowars column in which he named himself as Stones source for the Podesta tweet and confirmed Stones timeline, saying theyd had detailed conversations about Podesta from Aug. 14, 2016, through Aug. 31, 2016.

Mueller is now examining their exchanges.

Corsis attorney, David Gray, said in an interview last month that Corsi had been subpoenaed by the special counsel, who indicated he was interested in Corsis communications with Stone in 2016 and 2017. Gray declined to comment last week.

Stone said he first encountered Corsi around 2015, when the author was writing about presidential politics for World Net Daily, a conspiracy-theory-oriented website. Later, both contributed to Infowars, where Stone still hosts a program streamed live over the internet.

In an interview, Stone suggested that the special counsel may actually be interested in Corsis relationship with Trump.

Corsi was a leading proponent of birtherism, the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In 2011, he wrote the book Wheres the Birth Certificate?: The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President.

Around that time, Trump took up the conspiracy theory, questioning Obamas citizenship and demanding that he release his birth certificate.

Stone said that during a conversation with Trump in 2011, he said to me, Who is this guy, Jerome Corsi? Stone recalled.

Stone said he asked Trump why he was inquiring about Corsi.

Ive been talking to him, Stone recalled Trump saying.

Stone said that Corsi also met with Trump during the 2016 campaign. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow declined to comment.

Mueller, Stone added, may have been more interested in those meetings than anything to do with me.

The Washington Posts Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.When rain comes to Los Angeles, a certain kind of relief sets in. The land springs to life. The dust and grit and oil slick, accumulated over a summer of dry weather, gets washed away down storm drains. Everything gleams anew.

But this relief comes at a heavy cost. The stormwater that streams down our streets and into our creeks and rivers is heavily polluted. Oil, gasoline, industrial runoff, heavy metals and many tons of trash are carried by the rain, untreated, straight to our waterways and ocean. This pollution destroys ecosystems, kills wildlife and dirties our beaches. Not to mention that billions of gallons of much-needed fresh water drain out to sea.

In a few weeks the voters of Los Angeles County will have the opportunity to address this problem by supporting Measure W, also known as the Safe Clean Water Program. Its a parcel tax that, if passed, would begin to fund thousands of backlogged stormwater infrastructure projects that the county has had in the works for decades.

There are significant environmental, social and legal reasons for supporting Measure W. It also happens to be good for business.

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Measure W is a parcel tax that, if passed, would begin to fund thousands of backlogged stormwater infrastructure projects.

L.A. County and the surrounding region has for decades been required to comply with the Clean Water Act, which makes it illegal to allow stormwater pollution to flow into the ocean and other waterways. For decades, the county and its 88 cities have largely ignored the laws mandates, perhaps in hopes that the costs of compliance could be deferred.

As soon as 2020, L.A. County and its municipalities will face millions, if not billions, in fines for violating the Clean Water Act. These fines will be passed on to tax payers and businesses.

Measure W provides funding to help the county come into compliance.

Yes, it creates a new tax. But its far more sensible to pay this nominal tax now than it would be to send our money to regulators later. Moreover, the tax will pay for something we have to do anyway: clean our stormwater.

Thousands of businesses in L.A. County have already invested in stormwater treatment technologies to meet their obligations under the Clean Water Act, and their investments will be credited against the new tax. But three to four times as many businesses have done nothing, instead rolling the dice that non-enforcement will continue.

Measure W credits businesses that have made the right investments while finally bringing enforcement and fairness to a system that for too long has favored those who violate it.

Although the measure is concerned primarily with the control of stormwater pollution, many of the projects it would fund have the added benefits of improving stormwater capture and groundwater recharge. This would increase L.A. Countys sources of local water significantly, which in turn would reduce our pumping needs, thus lowering our electricity demands. The billions of gallons of rain that fall in L.A. County every year are one of our best untapped resources.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion 

Opponents of the measure have three main concerns, but each one is unwarranted. They say the funding it would provide is a blank check to the government without independent oversight. In fact, the measure calls for independent oversight of both the funding and all projects it would support  oversight that would be carried out at the local level by municipal, scientific, environmental and business leaders.

They also say the measure lacks a sunset provision. But the parcel tax would not escalate over time. A few decades from now, the funding will dwindle to support merely the ongoing operations and maintenance of the stormwater projects.

Finally, critics complain that the measure doesnt list the projects that would receive funding. But the county and each of the cities that would be affected have listed their priority stormwater projects publicly for decades.

Every time we pollute the ocean or our groundwater, we take out a loan that will be paid for by our children  not only with greater clean-up costs but greater health risks. For too many years, we have hoped against all evidence to the contrary that water scarcity, pollution and environmental decay will go away on its own. L.A. voters can turn this around by voting to support Measure W.

Peter Brooks is the vice president of a water technology firm in Los Angeles. He is a Fulbright Scholar and former director of the Harvard Water Federalism Initiative. William W. Funderburk, Jr. is the co-founder of Castellon & Funderburk, where he practices environmental and energy law. He served as vice president of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Board of Commissioners from 2013 to 2018.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or FacebookI sat in a small, sterile waiting room of the Adelanto immigrant detention center in the high desert northeast of Los Angeles last week, facing a little girl. She wore a purple dress and a floppy white bow clipped to her shiny brown hair. Her legs were too short to reach the ground.

Id come with a church group to visit detainees  to lend them an ear, offer cheer and perhaps put money on their phone cards. The little girl had come with her stepdad, a skinny white guy who works as a software engineer, to see her mom.

The girls mom came to the United States from El Salvador as a teen, the stepdad told me. She was educated and married here, in California. She lived with her daughter and husband in Long Beach until two months ago, when she was pulled over while driving, discovered to be undocumented and carted away.

Adelanto is the largest immigration detention center in California and the largest privately-run adult immigration detention center in the country. The facility can house nearly 2,000 people. It was in the news in late September, because the Department of Homeland Securitys Office of the Inspector General issued a management alert about it, flagging serious violations of Immigration and Customs Enforcements health and safety standards.

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Kids need their parents every day.

The report is a gory read, based on findings gathered during an unannounced visit that federal inspectors made to Adelanto in May. The inspectors found nooses fashioned from bedsheets hanging in 15 of the 20 cells they examined. They also reported that there had been one suicide and at least three suicide attempts by hanging at the center.

Adelanto sits at the end of a dirt road, far off any beaten path. Detainees are eligible for one hour-long visit per day, but the distance deters many. Despite Adelantos name, which means progress in Spanish, the wait once you arrive at the center can take hours.

The little girl and I sat looking at each other. I asked her age. She held up five fingers.

How many kids in her class? Ten fingers.

But sometimes, she said, folding down two fingers, this many are gone.

So how many is that? I asked.

She counted her fingers. Ten?

Eight! I said.

I showed her that game where you interlace your fingers, straighten two like a steeple, then flip your hands to show the people. We both tried the Vulcan salute. We balanced on one foot, then the other. She demonstrated a yoga pose shed learned in class; I did one, too.

By the time we were called, we were deep into a game of Sand and Snow, jumping from tan floor tiles to white ones. We passed through two security doors to greet the undocumented immigrants wed come to see.

Immigrant seemed the wrong word for my new friends mom, a perky 30-year-old with wavy hair and a huge smile. She swept up her little girl in an embrace.

It also seemed the wrong word for the woman Id come to visit, a mother of two little girls, both under the age of 7. She hadnt seen them in eight months.

A better word for these young women: parents.

As has been widely reported, our detention policies are creating de-facto orphans out of children from otherwise close-knit families. Of course, its one thing to read about all this in the news, quite another to meet these children in person.

The womens facility at Adelanto  long and low, practically windowless  sits next to a mens federal prison. Both are owned and operated by Geo Group, which receives taxpayer funding for the detainees it houses. Outside, the Geo flag, with its globe logo, whipped in the desert wind, next to California and American flags.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion 

You could hear the shouts of prisoners doing chin-ups and playing ball in the prison yard next door. The immigrants, not hardened criminals, have no recreational facilities, no skill-building classes.

After my hour-long visit, I got in my car for the two-hour drive home. I headed west, toward the ocean.

Back home, with my own son safely tucked into bed, I could not sleep. I couldnt stop thinking about what it would feel like: to see him just one hour a week, in a windowless group visiting room, before returning to a dorm-style prison.

We can and should support these parents and their now-parentless kids  by visiting, writing letters or offering legal help, spare rooms and games. Nonprofits like New Voice Immigration Assistance Service in Lynwood and Al Otro Lado in Los Angeles welcome volunteers.

But ultimately its not enough to play Sand and Snow for an hour on a Sunday. Kids need their parents every day.

Wendy Paris is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or FacebookRegistering new voters on college campuses requires some strategy. On our drives to UC Irvine, Santa Ana College, Cal State Fullerton and Fullerton Community College, among others, my fellow volunteers and I  mostly women, post career  pick each others brains. Our group, Swing Socal Left, has registered more than 4,000 new Democrat and Independent voters since the June 5 primary, in the hope that the midterm will flip the House and restore checks and balances to our government.

The first lesson in attracting new voters: Be lucky in your choice of location, and relentless. We coordinate and get our marching orders from Jason Berlin and Michael Tonetti, amazing regional field organizers for the California Democratic Party. Weve been ejected from some public spaces for soliciting, but registering voters isnt supposed to be prohibited. Courthouses offer high population, but the prospective registrants are distracted, upset. College quads are a high-traffic alternative. Weve learned that Fridays are not good days on campuses, and that tables arent effective  its better to roam and approach people.

No matter the location, you are going to run into those who can be persuaded and those who cant. Its shocking how many students who could vote arent registered, and its disheartening how many dont seem to care.

No thanks, Im good, they tell me. I want to say no one is good when theyre not voting, but I restrain myself. After a brushoff, theres a fine line between starting a conversation and saying something that ends one. The real trick is saying just enough to engage them: You may be good but your country wont be if you dont speak out.

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Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion

Sometimes we volunteers wear T-shirts or buttons that advertise our politics, the better to attract and register potential Democrats. We like attention-grabbing opening lines Do you want to change the world in 30 seconds? Saying the registration application takes two minutes conveys too much time. One minute sounds better, 60 seconds works best. But its not true.

One volunteer told a student it would take just 30 seconds, so the young lady decided to time it. In 30 seconds, they were still filling in the blanks, but the timer laughed and kept going.

I once approached a young woman who was on a college tour with her mom. I asked if she was registered to vote in the November election. Her mother replied for her, Well actually, I dont think that either party is any good. I was speechless. It wouldnt be the last time I was met with such injurious apathy.

I finally worked out a rejoinder: If your house is on fire, and the fire department arrives, would you tell them you didnt like the equipment they were using and to come back when they had something better? No, youd let them use their imperfect fire hoses. Well, the United States is on fire and the only way to put it out is to vote. The system isnt perfect, the parties are far from perfect, and years of non-participation are what got us where we are today.

A lot of young people say Im not into politics or My vote doesnt count. I remind them that recent elections have been won or lost by very thin margins. I remind them that not voting may actually be a vote for the other side of whatever they may be into. One young man told me he admired my passion. I hope it sticks with him and sends him to the polls on Nov. 6.

This is what makes my volunteering worthwhile: Many thank me for reminding them about the election. A few have taken seriously my lectures about how it is their responsibility to vote because a government that does reprehensible things is representing you whether you like it or not. Those conversations are so important.

Today is the deadline for registering to vote. Do it online at www.iwillvote.org or the county registrars website. You can also print out a registration form or pick one up at most government buildings and public libraries, fill it in and take it to the post office in time to get it postmarked today. And if you miss todays deadline, you can still register and vote conditionally (the county will verify your registration information before your vote counts) at the county elections office. In L.A., thats at 12400 Imperial Highway, Norwalk.

In our democracy, voting is the most powerful way to make change.

Iris Schneider, a former Times staff photographer, will spend Monday registering voters in Santa Clarita.

3:03 p.m. This article has been updated with the names of the regional field organizers for Los Angeles.To the editor: Last week, as he flew off to another campaign rally, President Trump finally conceded that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is probably dead. He even admitted that its sad.

At his campaign rally in Montana later that evening, Trump singled out Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte and praised him for his assault on a reporter: Any guy who can do a body slam, hes my candidate, hes my guy.

Does anyone believe that Trump thinks it is sad that a Washington Post columnist was allegedly tortured and dismembered, piece by piece, within the walls of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul? And all for 14 billion shekels of silver, dripping from the blood-stained hands of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman into the coffers of Trumps arms merchants.

The nation that was built on freedom is led by a craven and depraved president.

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John B. Ashbaugh, San Luis Obispo

..

To the editor: In my view, the excellent article analyzing Saudi Arabias relationship with the U.S. makes clear that not only is Trump explicitly saying that if you have large enough business deals with someone, you should protect those deals no matter what, but also that the particular deals being protected are worth only a fraction of what Trump claims.

Under Trump, the U.S. government has become low-rent crime syndicate. Its unbelievable.

Gary Stewart, Laguna Beach

..

To the editor: In 2001, American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded, and we rightfully called those responsible barbarians and terrorists.

Khashoggi, a journalist, was apparently kidnapped while in his own consulate and dismembered, and we called those believed to be responsible trusted allies and essential business partners.

Judith Maertz, Anaheim

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and FacebookAllies balk at Trump administration bid to block Chinese firm from cutting-edge telecom markets By David S. Cloud Britain and Germany are balking at the Trump administrations call for a ban on equipment from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, threatening a global U.S. campaign to thwart Chinas involvement in future mobile networks. Both countries are expected to limit Huawei and other Chinese companies from providing core components including routers. But other types of Chinese equipment for next-generation, high-speed communications could still be installed on British and German networks, officials and analysts say. The U.S. push to ban Huawei has provoked a global dispute in recent weeks, with senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, publicly urging NATO allies in Europe to exclude the company and warning that the United States might limit its military presence in countries that did not do so. Read More Facebook

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Confucius Institutes: Do they improve U.S.-China ties or harbor spies? By Don Lee Hanging red lanterns welcome visitors to the University of Marylands Confucius Institute, the oldest of about 100 Chinese language and cultural centers that have popped up over the last 15 years on American campuses, subsidized by millions of dollars from Chinas central government. But last fall, when four U.S. Senate investigators walked into the Confucius offices in Maryland and spent hours questioning staff, they werent looking for an educational exchange. The committee has been seeking detailed information from the university about the program, including contracts, email exchanges and financial arrangements that school administrators have kept under wraps since it started in 2004. American colleges once viewed these jointly funded institutes as an economical way to expand their language offerings  one that could also bring warmer ties with China and, importantly, an influx of Chinese international students paying full tuition. Read More Facebook

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Watch Live: White House holds surprise news briefing amid government shutdown Facebook

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U.S. policy toward China shifts from engagement to confrontation By David S. Cloud For decades, China had no closer American friend than Dianne Feinstein. As San Francisco mayor in the 1970s, she forged a sister-city relationship with Shanghai, the first between American and Chinese communities. As U.S. senator, she dined with Chinese leaders at Mao Tse-tungs old Beijing residence. And in the 1990s, she championed a trade policy change that opened a floodgate of Western investment into China. Today the Democratic senator sees China as a growing threat, joining a broad array of Trump administration officials, national security strategists and business executives who once favored engagement with Beijing and now advocate a confrontational approach instead. Read More Facebook

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Mnuchins attempt to calm markets backfires as Trump takes another shot at the Federal Reserve By Jim Puzzanghera An attempt by Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin to calm plunging financial markets backfired Monday, further rattling investors with new fears about whether major U.S. banks have enough cash on top of worries about interest rates, political instability in Washington and a slowing global economy. Adding to the volatile mix was a fresh attack on the Federal Reserve by President Trump, who declared that the central bank was the U.S. economys only problem and that it didnt have a feel for the market. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who cant score because he has no touch -- he cant putt! Trump said on Twitter. Read More Facebook

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He speaks to Democratic hearts. But is Beto ORourke a serious White House contender? By Mark Z. Barabak Hes a failed U.S. Senate candidate with an undistinguished congressional record who, for the moment, is a blazing-hot 2020 presidential prospect  despite the fact that he may not run and faces long odds if he does. Beto ORourke suggests the will-he-or-wont-he speculation is something he himself cant quite fathom. I think thats a great question, he responded in a Dallas Morning News interview when asked whether his unsuccessful November Senate bid merited a promotion to the White House. I ask that question myself. Read More Facebook

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Russian disinformation teams targeted Robert S. Mueller III, says report prepared for Senate By Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, Elizabeth Dwoskin Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. (Associated Press) Months after President Trump took office, Russias disinformation teams trained their sites on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there. The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram  which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal  claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with radical Islamic groups. Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday. Read more Timberg, Romm and Dwoskin report for the Washington Post. Facebook

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President Trump announces Mick Mulvaney as acting White House chief of staff By Associated Press President Trump says budget director Mick Mulvaney will serve as acting chief of staff, replacing John F. Kelly in the new year. I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2018 Facebook

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It aint over when its over: In Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere, losers seek to undermine election results By Mark Z. Barabak Democrat Gavin Newsom has yet to become California governor, but already a candidate for state Republican Party chairman is promoting a recall effort. In Michigan and Wisconsin, GOP lawmakers have rushed through legislation to thwart their incoming Democratic governors and hamper others in the opposing party from doing the jobs voters chose them to do. In Congress, GOP leaders have echoed President Trump and sought to undermine the legitimacy of Democrats strong midterm performance, raising unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and political malfeasance. Read More Facebook

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New CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger says she wont be a puppet of Mick Mulvaney By Jim Puzzanghera On her first full day leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraninger said she wont be a puppet of Mick Mulvaney, the controversial acting director whom she replaced in the powerful regulatory position. To underscore that point, the former White House aide said she would even reconsider a Mulvaney action that critics saw as a gratuitous jab at Democrats who championed the agencys creation: changing its name to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. Kraningers declaration during a meeting with reporters Tuesday addressed one of the main criticisms of her selection. She is considered a protege of Mulvaney, her boss at the White House Office of Management and Budget who has executed a dramatic, industry-friendly shift at the watchdog agency. Read More Facebook

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Trumps pick for chief of staff, Nick Ayers, out of running By Associated Press Nick Ayers, right, with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, at the funeral service for George H.W. Bush on Dec. 3. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Associated Press) President Trumps top pick to replace John F. Kelly as chief of staff, Nick Ayers, is no longer expected to fill that role. Thats according to a White House official who is not authorized to discuss the personnel issue by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Ayers is Vice President Mike Pences chief of staff. The official says that Trump and Ayers could not agree on Ayers length of service. The father of young children, Ayers had agreed to serve in an interim capacity though the spring, but Trump wanted a two-year commitment. The official says that Ayers will instead assist the president from outside the administration. Trump announced Saturday that Kelly would be departing the White House around the end of the year. Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause.  #Georgia  Nick Ayers (@nick_ayers) December 9, 2018 Facebook

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U.S. hiring slows to 155,000 jobs, unemployment rate holds at 3.7% By Jim Puzzanghera Job growth slowed significantly in November but still was solid, indicating the economy remains in good shape but not expanding so quickly that it will lead to sharply higher interest rates. U.S. employers added 155,000 jobs last month, well below analyst expectations and a steep decline from Octobers strong 237,000 figure, the Labor Department reported Friday. Still, monthly job gains are averaging 206,000 this year, the best since 2015. Even the slower pace of 170,000 over the last three months is close to last years average of 182,000 and well above the amount needed to keep up with population growth. Read More Facebook

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Trump is expected to pick State Department spokeswoman for U.N. ambassador By Associated Press Heather Nauert at a briefing at the State Department on Aug. 9, 2017. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) President Trump is expected to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Two administration officials confirmed Trumps plans. A Republican congressional aide said the president was expected to announce his decision by tweet on Friday morning. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly before Trumps announcement. Trump has previously said Nauert was under serious consideration to replace Nikki Haley, who announced in October that she would step down at the end of this year. Trump has been known to change course on staffing decisions in the past. Nauert was a reporter for Fox News Channel before she became State Department spokeswoman under former Secretary Rex Tillerson. Facebook

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Senate confirms new consumer financial protection chief: Kathy Kraninger, protege of industry-friendly Mick Mulvaney By Jim Puzzanghera The Senate, in a party-line vote Thursday, confirmed White House aide Kathy Kraninger to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and experts predicted a continuation of the industry-friendly shift it has taken since President Trump installed an acting director last year. Kraninger is a protege of acting director and White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, an outspoken critic of the agency that was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to prevent predatory lending and other abuses that led to it. Democrats and consumer advocates have denounced him for sharply departing from the aggressive watchdog role the bureau had pursued under its first director, Obama-appointee Richard Cordray, including scaling back enforcement and moving to reassess tough new rules on payday loans and narrow the definition of abusive practices by banks and other firms. Read More Facebook

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Shutdown postponed by two weeks under plan approved by Congress By Erik Wasson Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), shown at the Capitol on Tuesday, says President Trumps border wall is a waste of money. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) Congress passed a two-week stopgap spending bill that will delay the chance of a partial government shutdown until Dec. 22 as lawmakers and President Donald Trump negotiate over his demands to pay for a wall on the southern border. The House and Senate passed the measure Thursday without dissent, and Trump has indicated hell sign the bill before the current shutdown deadline of midnight Friday. Negotiations were delayed by memorial services this week for former President George H.W. Bush. The temporary measure gives Democrats and Republicans more time to find a resolution to their biggest hurdle: funding a wall on the U.S. Mexico border wall. Trump says he wants $5 billion for parts of a concrete wall on the southern border and is willing to shut down the government if he doesnt get it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has said Democrats will provide no more than $1.6 billion for border security, because the wall is a waste of money. The presidents demands for wall funding from Congress come after he said during the campaign that Mexico would pay for it. This week he said on Twitter that a $25 billion border wall would pay for itself in two months, without providing evidence. Most of the U.S. governments $1.2 trillion discretionary budget has been appropriated already by Congress for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Departments at a risk of a partial shutdown late this month include the departments of State, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security. Talks to resolve the differences have been on hold since a meeting among Trump, Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California originally slated for Dec. 4 was postponed due to Bush memorial events. The three are scheduled to meet on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama told reporters the rest of the seven-bill spending package being negotiated is basically done. Shelby in recent weeks had tried to broker a compromise in which Trumps $5 billion request would be split over two years, but Schumer has rejected that. Some Democrats have been willing to trade border wall funding for deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants. Pelosi ruled out such a deal in remarks to reporters Thursday. The stopgap government funding measure also would extend the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized coverage for homes in flood-prone areas, to Dec. 21. Facebook

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Bipartisan Senate group wants to formally blame Saudi crown prince for journalists killing By Karoun Demirjian Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires. (Associated Press) A bipartisan group of senators filed a resolution Wednesday condemning Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as responsible for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, directly challenging President Trump to do the same. This resolution -- without equivocation -- definitively states that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was complicit in the murder of Mr. [Jamal] Khashoggi and has been a wrecking ball to the region jeopardizing our national security interests on multiple fronts, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement accompanying the release of the resolution. It will be up to Saudi Arabia as to how to deal with this matter. But it is up to the United States to firmly stand for who we are and what we believe. The resolution put forward by Graham and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who are expected to lead the Judiciary Committee together next year, comes just one day after CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed leading senators about the details of the agencys assessment that Mohammed ordered and monitored the killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Senators emerged from that closed-door briefing furious not only with Saudi Arabia, but Trump as well for dismissing the heft of the CIAs findings. You have to be willfully blind not to come to the conclusion that this was orchestrated and organized by people under the command of MBS and that he was intricately involved in the demise of Mr. Khashoggi, Graham said following the briefing, referring to Mohammed by his initials. He added that Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, who briefed senators last week, were at best being good soldiers and at worst were in the pocket of Saudi Arabia for presenting the evidence of Mohammeds involvement as inconclusive. The release of the resolution condemning Mohammed also comes as the Senate is preparing to move ahead with debate on a resolution to curtail U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. Though the Yemen resolution does not directly address Khashoggis murder, its popularity is a sign of how strained the United States patience with Saudi Arabia is on multiple fronts, including its role in worsening the civilian cost of the war in Yemen, cited by the United Nations as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis. Last week, the Senate voted 63 to 37 to advance the Yemen resolution past an opening procedural hurdle. But Graham and Feinsteins resolution on the crown prince has the potential of drawing broader support, especially from Republicans, who are deeply divided about how fiercely to punish Saudi Arabia over Khashoggis killing. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has been an outspoken advocate for human rights and is seen as one of the more influential foreign policy voices in the GOP, did not vote for the Yemen resolution last week or sign on to a bipartisan measure last month to sanction Saudi officials and cease weapons transfers to the kingdom. But he is an original co-sponsor of the resolution condemning Mohammed over Khashoggis death. So is Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who represents the other end of the GOP spectrum in terms of recent Saudi-related votes and endorsements. Young was an initial co-sponsor of the bill Graham wrote with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to sanction Saudi officials deemed responsible for Khashoggis killing and stop the sale of anything but exclusively defensive weapons to the kingdom until it ceased hostilities in Yemen. Young also voted to advance the Yemen resolution  something Graham did as well, though Graham has signaled he will not be lending any similar support to the measure, fearing it may establish a precedent of invoking the War Powers Act too broadly. Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) are listed as original co-sponsors of the resolution condemning Mohammed, which also urges Saudi Arabia to negotiate with Houthi rebels to end the Yemen war, work out a political solution to its standoff with Qatar and release political prisoners. But how much sway the resolution has probably comes down to how forcefully the administration decides to heed it -- and thus far, Trump has not shown any interest in condemning the crown prince the way the senators hope he will. Demirjian reports for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Los Angeles County offices and U.S. Postal Service closed Wednesday in honor of George H.W. Bush By Brian Park The Honor Guard carries the casket of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush following his funeral on Dec. 5 in Washington, DC. (Doug Mills - Pool/Getty Images) The U.S. Postal Service will suspend regular mail delivery Wednesday, which President Trump has declared a national day of mourning in honor of former President George H.W. Bush. All retail postal outlets will be closed, and package delivery will be limited. In Los Angeles, all nonessential county departments, offices and libraries will be closed for the day, L.A. County officials said. The Los Angeles County Library said no overdue fines will be assessed for books, and due dates will be moved forward one week. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health offices also are closed Wednesday. The Sheriffs Department, Fire Department, clinics and hospitals will continue to operate, the county said. The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health clinics are being operated with reduced staffing, and the department asked patients to confirm or reschedule any appointments. All county courts and the disaster recovery centers for the Woolsey fire in Malibu and Agoura Hills will remain open. Larger federal government operations will be closed Wednesday. To honor the life and legacy of President Bush, the Postal Service will observe the National Day of Mourning. Learn how Postal operations will be affected. https://t.co/Mffch7bPCh pic.twitter.com/vG46BsIOpm  U.S. Postal Service (@USPS) December 4, 2018 L.A. County offices and libraries will be closed tomorrow (Dec 5) in observance of the #NationalDayOfMourning for President George H. W. Bush.



The Countys Disaster Recovery Centers in Malibu & Agoura Hills will remain open from 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. pic.twitter.com/Sv1J7GoJ7T  Los Angeles County (@CountyofLA) December 4, 2018 @LAPublicHealth offices will be closed tomorrow December 5 in observance of the national Day of Mourning for President George H. W. Bush. Essential Services including clinics and other services will remain open: https://t.co/tZGoGGHRlg pic.twitter.com/ypXsV6vlYY  LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) December 4, 2018 Facebook

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Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to skip 2020 White House race, sources say By Associated Press Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick speaks during an interview in Boston on Dec. 15, 2014. (Elise Amendola / Associated Press) Former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts will soon announce he wont launch a 2020 presidential campaign, according to three sources familiar with his plans. They did not say why the Democrat decided against a run. A formal announcement was delayed as the country observed a day of mourning for President George H.W. Bush, one source said. News of Patricks plans was first reported by Politico. Patrick, 62, served two terms as governor, from 2007 to 2015, was assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Clinton administration and since leaving the governors office has been a managing director for Bain Capital. Patrick traveled the country in support of Democratic candidates in the recent midterm election. Earlier this year, some of Patricks supporters and close advisors started the Reason to Believe political action committee, a grassroots organization dedicated to advancing a positive, progressive vision for our nation in 2018 and 2020. Reason to Believe PAC had been holding meetups across the country, including in early presidential primary states. While Patrick is opting against a 2020 run, dozens of Democrats are considering jumping in, including nearly a half-dozen members of the Senate, several House members, and other Massachusetts politicians. On Tuesday, Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels and a vocal critic of President Trump, said in a statement that he would run. Patrick had previously expressed some concerns about breaking through if he sought the nomination, telling David Axelrod, a former advisor to President Obama, that he wasnt sure he could stand out in such a large field. Its hard to see how you even get noticed in such a big, broad field without being shrill, sensational or a celebrity, and Im none of those things and Im never going to be any of those things, Patrick said in a September interview with Axelrod. Facebook

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Former Trump adviser Roger Stone invokes 5th Amendment right and wont testify before Senate Judiciary Committee By Associated Press Roger Stone in 2017. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) Roger Stone, an associate of President Trump, says he wont provide testimony or documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee. An attorney for Stone said in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committees top Democrat, that Stone was invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to produce documents or appear for an interview. Stone has been entangled in investigations by Congress and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III about whether Trump aides had advance knowledge of Democratic emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. Stone has not been charged and has said he had no knowledge of the timing or specifics of WikiLeaks plans. In the letter to Feinstein, Stone said the committees requests were far too overbroad, far too overreaching and far too wide-ranging. Facebook

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Watch live: Vice President Pence and lawmakers honor George H.W. Bush at the U.S. Capitol before he lies in state Facebook

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Rebuilding crumbling infrastructure has bipartisan support. But who gets to pay for it? By Jim Puzzanghera The grades for major U.S. infrastructure would give any parent indigestion if they were on a childs report card. Roads: D; bridges: C+; dams: D; ports: C+: railways: B; airports: D; schools: D+; public transit: D-. The nations overall grade: D+, which translates to being in fair to poor condition and mostly below standards with significant deterioration and a strong risk of failure, according to an evaluation last year by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Read More Facebook

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Trump calls former lawyer Michael Cohen a weak person who is lying By Associated Press President Trump says his former lawyer Michael Cohen is lying to get a reduced sentence. The president is reacting to Cohens guilty plea Thursday to lying to Congress about work he did on a Trump real estate project in Russia. During a surprise court hearing, Cohen admitted to lying in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen in his guilty plea said he made the false statements to be consistent with Trumps political message. Cohens lawyer says he continues to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs investigation into Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates. Facebook

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As California Republicans confront a congressional wipeout, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy faces a reckoning By Mark Z. Barabak When the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Kevin McCarthy trooped with other Republican lawmakers to a splashy Rose Garden celebration, smiling alongside President Trump as they celebrated the moment. As majority leader, McCarthy had helped round up the votes to narrowly pass the hard-fought legislation, convincing 13 other California Republicans to go along, even though several faced tough reelection fights. Fewer than half will be returning in January. Read More Facebook

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As California Republicans confront a congressional wipeout, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy faces a reckoning By Sarah D. Wire When the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Kevin McCarthy trooped with other Republican lawmakers to a splashy Rose Garden celebration, smiling alongside President Trump as they celebrated the moment. As majority leader, McCarthy had helped round up the votes to narrowly pass the hard-fought legislation, convincing 13 other California Republicans to go along, even though several faced tough reelection fights. Fewer than half will be returning in January. Read More Facebook

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Michael Cohen, President Trumps ex-lawyer, pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Trump real estate project in Russia By Associated Press Michael Cohen, President Trumps former personal lawyer, pursued a Russian real estate project on candidate Trumps behalf well into the 2016 campaign, he said Thursday while pleading guilty to lying to Congress. Cohen had previously said that the project was abandoned in January 2016, but he now admits he continued to pursue a deal and says he updated Trump and members of his family about the negotiations, according to a new court document. Read More Facebook

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James Comey says acting Atty. Gen. Whitaker may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer By John Wagner Acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker speaks at the Justice Department in Washington on Nov. 14. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) Former FBI Director James B. Comey apparently isnt too impressed with the mental prowess of President Trumps acting attorney general. Matthew Whitaker may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer, Comey said during a radio interview on Monday night in which he sized up the man Trump installed this month to replace ousted Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. Comey was asked by WGBH News in Boston if he thinks Whitaker could derail the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Whitaker has spoken critically of the probe, and Trump  as recently as Tuesday  continues to call it a witch hunt. I think its a worry, but to my mind not a serious worry, Comey said. The institution is too strong, and [Whitaker], frankly, is not strong enough to have that kind of impact. He may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer, but he can see his future and knows that if he acted in an extralegal way, he would go down in history for the wrong reasons, and Im sure he doesnt want that, added Comey, who was fired by Trump last year and later wrote a book that portrays the president as an ego-driven congenital liar. Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, was Sessions chief of staff before being picked by Trump to lead the Justice Department. Trump has called Whitaker a very smart man. Earlier this year, Trump called Comey an untruthful slime ball. Wagner writes for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Interior Department watchdog clears Zinke in investigation of Utah national monument By Juliet Eilperin Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, third from the left, and Gov. Jerry Brown tour fire damage in Paradise, Calif., on Nov. 14. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) The Interior Departments Office of Inspector General has cleared Secretary Ryan Zinke in a probe of whether he redrew boundaries of a national monument in Utah to aid the financial interests of a Republican state lawmaker and stalwart supporter of President Trump. In a Nov. 21 letter to Zinkes deputy, David Bernhardt, Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall wrote that her office found no evidence that the secretary or his aides changed the boundaries of Utahs Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in an effort to help former Utah state representative Mike Noel, who serves as executive director of the Kane County Water Conservancy District. Last December, Trump shrank the monument, first established by President Clinton in 1996, by 46% based on Zinkes recommendation. Noel owns 40 acres that had been surrounded by the monument, but now lies outside its boundaries. The new boundaries also would make it easier to construct the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline, which would deliver water to sites in Kane County that include Noels property. Earlier this year, the Interior Department had proposed selling off 120 acres of federal land from the former monument that lay adjacent to some of Noels land holdings, but later reversed the plan. We found no evidence that Noel influenced the DOIs proposed revisions to the [monuments] boundaries, that Zinke or other DOI staff involved in the project were aware of Noels financial interest in the revised boundaries, or that they gave Noel any preferential treatment in the resulting proposed boundaries, Kendall wrote. Neither the Interior Department nor the inspector generals office would release the actual investigative report. In the letter, Kendall writes that her office will provide the report to Congress no sooner than 31 days from Nov. 21, when it is provided it to Zinkes office. The Associated Press first reported the inspector generals conclusions Monday night, but did not provide details from the report itself. Noel emailed Zinke about the effort to alter Grand Staircase-Escalante, according to emails released by Interior under the Freedom of Informational Act. But those emails do not make references to Noels land holdings. Noel also pushed to rename a Utah highway in honor of Trump, but abandoned that effort in March after some of his fellow Republicans objected to the idea. Noel did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The inspector generals office still has at least two ongoing probes of the secretary, including one focused on his real estate dealings in Whitefish, Mont., and another regarding his decision to deny a permit to two Connecticut tribes who were hoping to jointly run a casino after MGM Resorts International lobbied against it. Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift welcomed the watchdogs conclusions. The report shows exactly what the secretarys office has known all along  that the monument boundaries were adjusted in accordance with all rules, regulations and laws, she said in an email. This report is also the latest example of opponents and special interest groups ginning up fake and misleading stories, only to be proven false after expensive and time consuming inquiries by the IGs office. But Kendalls spokeswoman, Nancy DiPaolo, defended the inquiry, even though she said the report has not been publicly released and we will not be speaking specifically about the matter at this time. The OIG opens investigations based on credible allegations and reports our findings objectively and independently, DiPaolo added. Any time or resources spent investigating conduct or activity that may be a violation of law, regulation or policy is a service to the public, Congress and the Department. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that he still intended to investigate the way Zinke and his colleague redrew the boundaries for Grand Staircase-Escalante and another Utah national monument, Bears Ears, next year. I have great respect for the inspector general, and I accept these findings, but Secretary Zinke should have known the people he listened to while destroying our national monuments had disqualifying conflicts of interest, he said. Should I chair the Natural Resources Committee in the next Congress, the process he and President Trump used to destroy Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will be front and center in our oversight and investigations efforts. We need to know why they ignored overwhelming public expressions of support for both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, why they ignored Native American tribes throughout their decision-making, and why they removed protections on parcels of land with known mineral deposits. Eilperin and Rein report for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Trump advisor Larry Kudlow says China must do more to end trade war By Jim Puzzanghera Larry Kudlow, President Trumps top economic advisor, said Tuesday that Chinas response to U.S. efforts to rework the two economic superpowers trade relationship has been extremely disappointing but the planned meeting this weekend between the nations leaders is an opportunity for a breakthrough. They have to do more. They must do more, Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters ahead of a Saturday dinner between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 Summit in Argentina. I think the president is exactly right  to show strong backbone when prior administrations did not, to break through these Chinese walls, Kudlow said. Theyre so resistant to change. We have to protect the country. We have to protect our technology, our inventiveness, our innovation. Read More Facebook

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Watch live: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds a media briefing amid tensions at the border By Los Angeles Times Staff Facebook

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Democrat TJ Cox grabs lead over Republican David Valadao in nations last remaining undecided House race By Maya Sweedler Democrat TJ Cox slipped past Republican incumbent David Valadao on Monday to take the lead in the countrys sole remaining undecided congressional race, positioning Democrats to pick up their seventh House seat in California and 40th nationwide. Cox, who trailed by nearly 4,400 votes on election night, has steadily gained as ballot counting continues nearly three weeks after the Nov. 6 election, a pattern consistent with the states recent voting history. On Monday, he pulled ahead by 438 votes after Kern County updated its results. Read More Facebook

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Former CIA director Michael Hayden hospitalized after suffering a stroke By Deanna Paul Then-CIA Director Michael Hayden testifies before a Senate committee in 2008. (Saul Loeb / Getty Images) Former CIA Director and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke, his family said Friday. He is receiving expert medical care for which the family is grateful, according to a statement issued by his namesake organization. The General and his family greatly appreciate the warm wishes and prayers of his friends, colleagues, and supporters. Hayden, 73, served as director of the CIA and National Security Agency during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. He retired from the CIA in 2009. Hayden has been a vocal critic of Donald Trumps campaign and presidency. Earlier this year, after Trump decided to revoke the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, Hayden was one of several former intelligence leaders who signed a statement in opposition. Criticizing the president for crossing a line, he quickly became one of the individuals whose security clearance Trump threatened to review. Deanna Paul writes for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Trump tells troops hes thankful for what hes done for the U.S. and rails against courts and migrants By Associated Press President Trump talks with troops via teleconference from his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thanksgiving. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) President Trump used his Thanksgiving Day call to troops deployed overseas to pat himself on the back and air grievances about the courts, trade and migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trumps call, made from his opulent private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., struck an unusually political tone as he spoke with members of all five branches of the military to wish them happy holidays. Its a disgrace, Trump said of judges who have blocked his attempts to overhaul U.S. immigration law, as he linked his efforts to secure the border with military missions overseas. Trump later threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines Mexico has lost control on its side. The call was a uniquely Trump blend of boasting, peppered questions and off-the-cuff observations as his comments veered from venting about slights to praising troops  You really are our heroes, he said  as club waiters worked to set Thanksgiving dinner tables on the outdoor terrace behind him. It was yet another show of how Trump has dramatically transformed the presidency, erasing the traditional divisions between domestic policy and military matters and efforts to keep the troops clear of politics. You probably see over the news whats happening on our southern border, Trump told one Air Force brigadier general stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, adding: I dont have to even ask you. I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who were letting in. Later, Trump asked a U.S. Coast Guard commander about trade, which he noted was a very big subject for him personally. Weve been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals, Trump told the commander, who sheepishly replied, Mr. President, from our perspective on the water  we dont see any issues in terms of trade right now. And throughout, Trump congratulated himself, telling the officers that the country is doing exceptionally well on his watch. I hope that youll take solace in knowing that all of the American families you hold so close to your heart are all doing well, he said. The nations doing well economically, better than anybody in the world. He later told reporters, Nobodys done more for the military than me. Indeed, asked what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving, Trump cited his great family as well as himself. I made a tremendous difference in this country, he said. Facebook

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Trump contradicts CIA assessment that Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi killing By Josh Dawsey | Washington Post (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) President Trump on Thursday contradicted the CIAs assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, insisting that the agency had feelings but did not firmly place blame for the death. Trump, in defiant remarks to reporters from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, defended his continued support for Mohammed in the face of a CIA assessment that the crown prince had ordered the killing. He denies it vehemently, Trump said. He said his own conclusion was that maybe he did, maybe he didnt. I hate the crime .... I hate the cover-up. I will tell you this: The crown prince hates it more than I do, Trump said. Asked who should be held accountable for the death of Khashoggi, who was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, Trump refused to place blame. Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a very, very vicious place, the president said. He also seemed to suggest that all U.S. allies were guilty of the same behavior, declaring that if the others were held to the standard that critics have held Saudi Arabia to in recent days, we wouldnt be able to have anyone for an ally. Trumps remarks came after he held a conference call with U.S. military officers overseas, during which he repeatedly praised his administration and sought to draw the officers into discussions of domestic policy. Facebook

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Former FBI Director James Comey gets subpoena from House Republicans By Bloomberg Former FBI Director James B. Comey said he has received a subpoena from House Republicans, according to a Twitter post on Thursday. Bloomberg News reported last week that Comey would be receiving a subpoena alongside former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch as part of continuing probes into their handling of investigations into Hillary Clinton and Russian election meddling, according to a top House Democrat. Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. Im still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a closed door thing because Ive seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Lets have a hearing and invite everyone to see.  James Comey (@Comey) November 22, 2018 Read More Facebook

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Republican David Valadaos lead slips to 447 votes over Democrat TJ Cox in still-undecided Central Valley House race By Mark Z. Barabak Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), right, finds himself in an increasingly harrowing cliffhanger against Democrat TJ Cox. (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) On election night, it looked like Rep. David Valadao had survived a close shave and was destined to return to Washington for his fourth term. But on Wednesday, when Fresno County announced its latest vote totals, the Hanford Republican found himself in an increasingly harrowing cliffhanger against Democrat TJ Cox, with his lead in the Central Valley district shrunken to 447 votes. Thousands remain to be counted. Valadao, a repeated Democratic target, finished election night with a lead of nearly 4,440 votes. Cox, an engineer and a business owner who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2006, has steadily gained ground in the 21st Congressional District ever since. The trend is consistent with historic patterns showing Republicans in California tend to vote early and Democrats later, meaning their mail ballots continue to stream in past election day. Under California law, ballots postmarked up to midnight on Nov. 6 will be counted. Democrats have already picked up six House seats in California. They ousted Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, Mimi Walters, Steve Knight and Jeff Denham and won the seats of retiring Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa. All six represented districts that backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. Valadao was the seventh California Republican in a district Clinton won, though his previous successes  he last won reelection by a 14-point margin  suggested his ouster was a longer shot for Democrats. If Cox prevails, it would give Democrats a 40-seat gain nationwide, far more than the 23 seats needed to take control when Congress reconvenes in January. Facebook

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Trump says no new punishments against Saudi Arabia in Jamal Khashoggi murder By Eli Stokols In this Oct. 25 photo, candles are lit in front of a photo of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (Lefteris Pitarakis) President Trump made it clear on Tuesday that he does not intend to punish Saudi Arabia or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident killed by Saudi officials in Turkey in October. In a remarkable statement replete with exclamation points, Trump cast doubt on the CIAs reported conclusions that it has a high degree of confidence that the crown prince ordered Khashoggis murder and sent his closest allies to Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul to carry it out. Read MoreThis article has been updated with staff. Facebook

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Sixteen House Democrats vow to oppose Nancy Pelosi as next speaker By Mike DeBonis | Washington Post House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) Sixteen House Democrats said Monday that they will vote to deny Rep. Nancy Pelosi another stint as House speaker, a show of defiance that puts her opponents on the cusp of forcing a seismic leadership shake-up as their party prepares to take the majority. Their pledge to oppose Pelosi (D-San Francisco), both in an internal caucus election and a Jan. 3 floor vote, delivered in a letter sent to Democratic colleagues, comes as Pelosi has marshaled a legion of supporters on and off Capitol Hill to make her case. But her opponents said Monday they are convinced it is time to select a new leader. We are thankful to Leader Pelosi for her years of service to our Country and to our Caucus, they wrote. However, we also recognize that in this recent election, Democrats ran on and won on a message of change. Pelosi has expressed complete confidence that she will retake the speakers gavel in January  eight years after she lost it following massive Republican gains in the 2010 midterms and 16 years after she was first elevated to the top Democratic leadership post in the House. Come on in, the waters fine, she said Friday about a potential leadership challenge. The signers might not be able to force Pelosi out themselves. The size of the Democratic majority remains in flux, but Democrats have already won 232 seats, according to the Associated Press, with five races still undecided. All those races have Republican incumbents, but the Democratic challenger is ahead in only one of them. If the leads hold in the uncalled races, Democrats would have won 233 seats, a 16-seat majority. That means Pelosi could lose as many as 15 Democratic votes when she stands for election as speaker on Jan. 3. Read More Facebook

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Democratic senators sue over Whitakers appointment as acting attorney general By Associated Press Acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker (Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images) Three Senate Democrats filed a lawsuit Monday arguing that Acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitakers appointment is unconstitutional and asking a federal judge to remove him. The suit, filed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, argues that Whitakers appointment violates the Constitution because he has not been confirmed by the Senate. Whitaker was chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and was elevated to the top job after Sessions was ousted by President Trump on Nov. 7. The Constitutions Appointments Clause requires that the Senate confirm all principal officials before they can serve in their office. The Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that said Whitakers appointment would not violate the clause because he is serving in an acting capacity. The opinion concluded that Whitaker, even without Senate confirmation, may serve in an acting capacity because he has been at the department for more than a year at a sufficiently senior pay level. President Trump is denying senators our constitutional obligation and opportunity to do our job: scrutinizing the nomination of our nations top law enforcement official, Blumenthal said in a statement. The reason is simple: Whitaker would never pass the advice and consent test. In selecting a so-called constitutional nobody and thwarting every senators constitutional duty, Trump leaves us no choice but to seek recourse through the courts. The lawsuit comes days after a Washington lawyer challenged Whitakers appointment in a pending Supreme Court case dealing with gun rights. The attorney, Thomas Goldstein, asked the high court to find that Whitakers appointment is unconstitutional and replace him with Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein, the second-ranking Justice Department official, has been confirmed by the Senate and had been overseeing special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation. Whitaker is now overseeing the investigation. The Justice Department issued a statement Monday defending Whitakers appointment as lawful and said it comports with the Appointments Clause, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and legal precedent. There are over 160 instances in American history in which non-Senate confirmed persons performed, on a temporary basis, the duties of a Senate-confirmed position, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. To suggest otherwise is to ignore centuries of practice and precedent. Facebook

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Gov. Rick Scott says Sen. Bill Nelson concedes Florida Senate race By Associated Press Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott speaks with his wife, Ann, by his side at an election watch party in Naples, Fla., on Nov. 7. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press) Floridas Republican Gov. Rick Scott says incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson called him to concede defeat in their extremely tight race. Scott issued a statement Sunday saying Nelson graciously conceded their Senate race shortly after the states recount ended. The final results show Scott defeated Nelson by just over 10,000 votes out of 8 million cast. Nelson is scheduled to release a videotaped statement later Sunday. The defeat ends Nelsons lengthy political career. The three-term incumbent was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000. Before that he served six terms in the U.S. House and as state treasurer and insurance commissioner for six years. Scott spent more than $60 million of his own money on ads that portrayed Nelson as out-of-touch and ineffective. Nelson responded by questioning Scotts ethics and saying he would be under the sway of President Trump. Facebook

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Orange County goes blue, as Democrats complete historic sweep of its seven congressional seats By Michael Finnegan Gil Cisneros defeated Republican Young Kim on Saturday in the last of Orange Countys undecided House races, giving Democrats a clean sweep of the states six most fiercely fought congressional contests and marking an epochal shift in a region long synonymous with political conservatism. With Cisneros victory, Democrats will constitute the entirety of Orange Countys seven-member congressional delegation, the first time since the 1930s that the birthplace of Richard Nixon, home of John Wayne and spiritual center of the Republican Party will have no GOP representative in the House. Sitting back in the 1960s, I would never have believed this would happen, said Stuart K. Spencer, a party strategist who spent more than half a century ushering Republicans, including President Reagan, into office. Read More Facebook

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Going, going ... with midterm wipeout, California Republican Party drifts closer to irrelevance By Michael Finnegan For a party in freefall the last two decades, California Republicans learned that its possible to plunge even further. The GOP not only lost every statewide office in the midterm election  again, in blowout fashion  but Democrats reestablished their supermajority in Sacramento, allowing them to legislate however they see fit After major defeats in Orange County and the Central Valley, two longtime strongholds, Republicans will have a significantly smaller footprint on Capitol Hill. (Democrats hold both Senate seats.) When the vote-counting is finished, the GOP may not even have enough lawmakers in Californias 53-member House delegation to field a nine-person softball team. Read More Facebook

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Congresswoman-elect Katie Porter says she will support Rep. Nancy Pelosi for speaker By Maya Sweedler Democratic Rep.-elect Katie Porter is congratulated by volunteers at her campaign headquarters in Irvine. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Congresswoman-elect Katie Porter said she plans to support Rep. Nancy Pelosis bid for speaker of the House and will make campaign finance reform her top priority when she enters the chamber in January. Im going to continue to have conversations, but so far I feel like Leader Pelosi is definitely making the things that were a priority to the families that elected me her priorities, including announcing her support for campaign finance reform and anti-corruption as HR1, Porter said in her first public appearance since being declared the winner in Californias 45th Congressional District on Thursday evening. It means a lot to me that she is a Californian. She understands our state, Porter added. When we talk about environmental protections, this is a person who understands as a Californian how fragile our environment is and whats at risk in things like drilling off our coasts. Porter, a law professor at UC Irvine, defeated two-term Republican Rep. Mimi Walters. The 45th District, covering inland Orange County, has never been represented by a Democrat. Porter became the third Democrat to claim a Republican-held seat in Orange County, following the victories of Harley Rouda in the 48th District and Mike Levin in the 49th. A fourth, Gil Cisneros, is running slightly ahead of his Republican opponent in the race for the open seat in the 39th District, which extends into Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Porter attributed the massive political shift in the county, for decades a conservative stronghold, to increased levels of political engagement. Folks here care about education, they care about the environment, they believe climate change is real, they want healthcare that protects preexisting conditions, they want a tax system that doesnt punish California, they want our schools and places of worship to be safe from gun violence, she said. Those are the issues we campaigned on, and to the extent that Donald Trump and Mimi Walters were on the wrong side of those issues, the voters have made clear what direction they want us to go. Porter was flying back from the East Coast when her race was called, she said. She turned on her phone to find 167 text messages from friends and supporters. Among them was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of Porters teachers in law school and with whom she has remained close. The pair spoke via FaceTime this morning, she said. Facebook

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Bitter battle for Senate seat in Florida goes to hand recount By Associated Press Employees look through damaged ballots during a recount Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press) Floridas acrimonious battle for the U.S. Senate headed Thursday to a legally required hand recount after an initial review by ballot-counting machines showed Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson separated by less than 13,000 votes. But the highly watched contest for governor between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum appeared to be over, with a machine recount showing DeSantis with a large enough advantage over Gillum to avoid a hand recount in that race. Gillum, who conceded the contest on election night only to retract his concession later, said in a statement that it is not over until every legally casted vote is counted. The recount so far has been fraught with problems. One large Democratic stronghold in South Florida was unable to finish its machine recount by the Thursday deadline due to machines breaking down. A federal judge rejected a request to extend the recount deadline. We gave a heroic effort, said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. If the county had three or four more hours, it would have made the deadline to recount ballots in the Senate race, she said. Meanwhile, election officials in another urban county in the Tampa Bay area decided against turning in the results of their machine recount, which came up with 846 fewer votes than originally counted. Media in South Florida reported that Broward County finished its machine recount but missed the deadline by a few minutes. Counties were ordered last weekend to do a machine recount of three statewide races because the margins were so tight. The next stage is a manual review of ballots that were not counted by machines to see whether there is a way to figure out voter intent. Scott called on Nelson to end the recount battle. Its time for Nelson to respect the will of the voters and graciously bring this process to an end rather than proceed with yet another count of the votes  which will yield the same result and bring more embarrassment to the state that we both love and have served, the governor said in a statement. The recount has triggered multiple lawsuits, many of them filed by Nelson and Democrats. The legal battles drew the ire of U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker, who slammed the state for repeatedly failing to anticipate election problems. He also said the state law on recounts appears to violate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided the presidency in 2000. We have been the laughingstock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this, Walker said during a morning hearing. Walker vented his anger at state lawmakers and Palm Beach County officials, saying they should have made sure they had enough equipment in place to handle this kind of a recount. But he said he could not extend the recount deadline because he did not know when Palm Beach County would finish its work. This court must be able to craft a remedy with knowledge that it will not prove futile, Walker wrote in his ruling turning down the request from Democrats. It cannot do so on this record. This court does not and will not fashion a remedy in the dark. The overarching problem was created by the Florida Legislature, which Walker said passed a recount law that appears to run afoul of the 2000 Bush vs. Gore decision by locking in procedures that do not allow for potential problems. A total of six election-related lawsuits are pending in federal court in Tallahassee as well at least one lawsuit filed in state court. Walker also ordered that voters be given until 5 p.m. Saturday to show a valid identification and fix their ballots if they have not been counted due to mismatched signatures. Republicans appealed the ruling, but an appeals court turned down the request. State officials testified that nearly 4,000 mailed-in ballots were set aside because local officials decided the signatures on the envelopes did not match the signatures on file. If those voters can prove their identity, their votes will be counted and included in final official returns due from each county by noon Sunday. Walker was asked by Democrats to require local officials to provide a list of people whose ballots were rejected. But the judge appointed by President Obama refused the request, calling it inappropriate. Under state law, a hand review is required with races that have a margin of 0.25 percentage points or less. A state website put the unofficial results showing Scott ahead of Nelson by 0.15 percentage points. The margin between DeSantis and Gillum was at 0.41 points. The margin between Scott and Nelson had not changed much in the last few days, conceded Marc Elias, an attorney working for Nelsons campaign. But he said that he expected the vote tally to shrink due to the hand recount and the ruling on signatures. The developments fueled frustrations among Democrats and Republicans alike. Democrats want state officials to do whatever it takes to make sure every eligible vote is counted. Republicans, including President Trump, have argued without evidence that voter fraud threatens to steal races from the GOP. Facebook

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Democrat Gil Cisneros pulls ahead of Republican Young Kim as more votes are tallied in Orange and San Bernardino counties By Michael Finnegan Congressional candidate Gil Cisneros (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) Democrat Gil Cisneros pulled ahead of Republican Young Kim in one of Californias undecided congressional races Thursday, an ominous sign for a GOP already reeling from its loss of four House seats in the state. In updated vote counts released by the registrars for Orange and San Bernardino counties, Kim fell 941 votes behind Cisneros in the contest to succeed Republican Rep. Ed Royce in Californias 39th Congressional District. The 39th straddles Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties. In another unresolved House race, Democrat Katie Porter pulled further ahead of Republican incumbent Mimi Walters in the 45th District, which includes Mission Viejo, Tustin, Irvine, Rancho Santa Margarita and Laguna Hills. Porter, a consumer attorney and UC Irvine law professor, is now 6,203 votes ahead. The Nov. 6 midterm election has been devastating to Republicans in California. If Cisneros and Porter win, the party will have lost six of its 14 House seats in the state, essentially a wipeout in every contest that both parties spent heavily to win. The three Republicans already bounced from Congress are Reps. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa, Steve Knight of Palmdale and Jeff Denham of Turlock in the San Joaquin Valley. Democrat Mike Levin won the seat of retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista in the fourth district flipped so far. Facebook

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Florida Senate race likely headed to second recount By Associated Press A Palm Beach County Sheriffs deputy walks past boxes of ballots before a recount on Nov. 15 in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee) Unofficial Florida election results show that the governors race seems to be settled after a machine recount but the U.S. Senate race is likely headed to a hand recount. Republican Ron DeSantis is virtually assured of winning the nationally watched governors race over Democrat Andrew Gillum. Florida finished a machine recount Thursday that showed Gillum without enough votes to force a manual recount. Unofficial results posted on a state website show the margin between U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott is still thin enough to trigger a second review. State law requires a hand recount of races with a margin of 0.25 percentage point or less. Counties have until Sunday to inspect the ballots that did not record a vote when put through the machines. Those ballots are re-examined to see whether the voter skipped the race or marked the ballot in a way that the machines cannot read but can be deciphered. The election will be certified Tuesday. Read More Facebook

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Pelosi says she has the votes to become the next House speaker By John Wagner Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference in Washington on Nov. 14. (Susan Walsh) House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi insisted Thursday that she has the votes to become the chambers speaker despite solid opposition from more than a dozen Democrats who want fresh leadership when the party takes control next year. I have overwhelming support in my caucus to be speaker of the House, the San Francisco lawmaker told reporters. I happen to think at this point, Im the best person for that. A vote within the Democratic caucus is scheduled for Nov. 28. The full House votes on Jan. 3 to elect a new speaker. During her remarks, Pelosi touted the size of the Democratic victory in the midterms, which she called almost a tsunami. With a few races still to be decided, Democrats are poised to pick up close to 40 seats in the chamber. Pelosi called that the biggest victory for the Democrats since 1974, when the Watergate babies came in. Pelosis comments come as she faces solid opposition from at least 17 Democrats, setting the stage for a battle over who will ascend to one of the most powerful positions in Washington. After a campaign in which some Democrats prevailed in competitive districts by promising to oppose her, a coalition of incumbents and newly elected members has denied her a smooth path to the speakership. The defections, if they stand, would leave Pelosi, who has led the Democrats for more than 15 years, several votes short of the 218 she would need when the full House votes for speaker Jan. 3. However, no Democrat has stepped forward to run against her for a job she held from 2007 through 2010. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) told reporters Wednesday that shes being encouraged to stand for speaker if Pelosi doesnt have the votes. In an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday, she said she has been overwhelmed by the support from many of her colleagues for her possible entry into the race for House speaker. Over the last 12 hours, Ive been overwhelmed by the amount of support Ive received, Fudge said, adding that there are probably closer to 30" Democrats who have privately signaled that they are willing to oppose Pelosi. Things could change rapidly, Fudge said. Fudge, 66, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said she is building a diverse coalition as she mulls a speaker run, talking with allies in the caucus, moderate Democrats and newly elected members. To this point, Pelosi has enjoyed the strong backing of the Congressional Black Caucus. On Thursday, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), one of its members, wrote a letter to colleagues praising her insight, fortitude and strategic thinking and urging support for her speakership bid. Former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., an African American who is contemplating a 2020 presidential bid, also voiced support for Pelosi, praising her in a tweet as an architect of the recent midterm success. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a leader of the resistance to Pelosi, said during an interview on CNN on Thursday that Fudge is the kind of new leader that we need in this party. Shes in touch with middle America. She understands what the American people want. Shes a next-generation leader that people will look to and say, Thats the future of our party, thats the future of our country, and thats exactly the kind of leader that I want to see as our next speaker. Wagner reports for the Washington Post. The Posts Robert Costa, Erica Werner, Mike DeBonis, Paul Kane and Elise Viebeck contributed to this report. Facebook

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GOP Rep. Jeff Denham concedes to Democrat Josh Harder in Central Valley race By Maya Sweedler Rep. Jeff Denham (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) Republican Rep. Jeff Denham has conceded to Democrat Josh Harder in the race to represent Californias 10th Congressional District in the San Joaquin Valley. It has been an absolute honor to serve our community and represent the Central Valley in Congress over the past eight years, the 51-year-old congressman said. The enormity of the responsibility was never lost on me. My wife Sonia and I look forward to starting the next chapter of our lives. Harder said he had spoken with Denham and the two were committed to a productive transition. Denham, an Air Force veteran, previously represented the region in the state Senate for eight years and founded a company specializing in plastic packaging used in agriculture. While a member of Congress, he sat on the Transportation and Infrastructure, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture committees. First-time candidate Harder was born and raised in the district. After graduating from Stanford University, he served as vice president of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Since moving back, he has been teaching at Modesto Junior College. Denhams House seat is one of four in California that Republicans lost in the Nov. 6 election, with two contests in Orange County still undecided as of Thursday morning. Jeff Denham called me this morning and we had a very productive conversation. I'm honored that I've been chosen to serve our community in Congress, and we're both looking forward to a productive transition that best serves the people of District 10.  Josh Harder (@JoshHarder) November 14, 2018 Facebook

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Democrat Katie Porter now nearly 3,800 votes ahead of GOP Rep. Mimi Walters By Maya Sweedler Rep. Mimi Walters thanks all of her supporters as she watches election results in Irvine on Nov. 7, 2018. (Alex Gallardo / Associated Press) Democrat Katie Porter opened a 3,797-vote lead Wednesday over Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in Orange Countys 45th Congressional District. In the neighboring 39th, Democrat Gil Cisneros has nearly tied the race against Republican Young Kim. Cisneros now trails Kim by a razor-thin margin of 122 votes. The 39th District straddles Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties; Wednesdays updated ballot counts came from the latter two. There are more than 202,000 ballots left to count in Orange County, which includes parts of seven congressional districts. The 45th is entirely in inland Orange County. In California, the ballots counted first tend to lean Republican and those tallied later skew Democratic. In the Central Valleys 21st Congressional District, Democratic challenger TJ Cox has pulled within 2 percentage points of Rep. David Valadao, who is serving his third term. The Associated Press had projected a win for Valadao on election night, but his 4,839-vote advantage has shrunk to 2,090. Back in CA-21, Valadao (R) wins a batch of ballots from his stronghold in Kings Co., but by a considerably smaller margin (14 points) than his previous ~30-point margin in the county. We're moving to Lean R from Likely R; today a bit scary for Valadao.https://t.co/WqJVUVkqGW  Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 15, 2018 A spokesman for Valadao told the Fresno Bee that the changes were expected and that [s]tatistically, David Valadao has won this race. Democrats in California have already flipped four House seats, defeating three Republican incumbents and claiming an open seat previously held by the GOP. Reps. Steve Knight of Palmdale, Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa and Jeff Denham of Turlock have already lost their races, and retiring Rep. Darrell Issas San Diego County seat was claimed by Democrat Mike Levin. Facebook

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Trump aide departs West Wing after rebuke from Melania Trump By Associated Press First Lady Melania Trump. (Alain Jocard / AFP-Getty Images) Deputy national security advisor Mira Ricardel is leaving the White House, one day after First Lady Melania Trumps office issued an extraordinary statement calling for her dismissal. No replacement was named. Aides said Ricardel clashed with the first ladys staff over her visit to Africa last month. Yet it is highly unusual for a first lady or her office to weigh in on personnel matters, especially the presidents national security staff. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Ricardel would have a new role in the administration. On Tuesday, Stephanie Grisham, the first ladys spokeswoman, released a statement saying, It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House. President Trumps White House has set records for administration turnover. Ricardel was the third person to hold the post under Trump. An ally of national security advisor John Bolton, Ricardel began her service in the Trump administration as associate director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, then moved to the Commerce Department last year. Bolton brought her into the West Wing shortly after taking the job in April. He is traveling in Asia this week alongside Vice President Mike Pence. Facebook

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Race for House Minority Leader is Kevin McCarthys to lose By Associated Press (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is running to take over next years shrunken caucus in closed-door elections that will set the tone for the new Congress. The race for minority leader is McCarthys to lose Wednesday. But the California Republican, who is an ally of President Trump, must fend off a challenge from conservative Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jordan is a leader of the House Freedom Caucus. The two encountered questions and finger-pointing during a private meeting with lawmakers Tuesday night as the GOP sorted through the midterm defeat that put Democrats in the majority next year. Elections Wednesday will also determine party leadership in the Senate. Voting for the biggest race, Nancy Pelosis bid to return as the Democrats nominee for speaker, is later this month. Read More Facebook

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Melania Trump calls for the firing of deputy national security advisor By Justin Sink First Lady Melania Trump arrives at the Chateau de Versailles outside Paris on Nov. 11. (Alain Jocard / AFP/Getty Images ) First Lady Melania Trumps office said she wants Mira Ricardel, the deputy national security advisor, ousted from the White House. It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House, Trumps spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement in response to a question about reports the first lady had sought Ricardels removal. Ricardel is the top deputy to national security advisor John Bolton. She drew the first ladys wrath after threatening to withhold National Security Council resources during Melania Trumps trip to Africa last month unless Ricardel was included in her entourage, one person familiar with the matter said. Grishams statement comes as several media outlets have reported that President Trump is considering a broader shakeup of his administration, including ousting Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Sink and Jacobs report for Bloomberg. Read More Facebook

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CNN sues Trump over the suspension of Jim Acostas White House press credentials By Jim Puzzanghera CNN said Tuesday that it is suing President Trump and other administration officials over the decision to suspend the White House press credentials of correspondent Jim Acosta after a conflict at a news conference last week. The suit, to be filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, escalates an ongoing battle between Trump and the cable news outlet that he frequently accuses of disseminating fake news for its aggressive coverage of him and his administration. The wrongful revocation of these credentials violates CNN and Acostas 1st Amendment rights of freedom of the press, and their 5th Amendment rights to due process, CNN said in a written statement. If left unchallenged, the actions of the White House would create a dangerous chilling effect for any journalist who covers our elected officials. Read More Facebook

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Maxine Waters to take aim at Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank as new head of House Financial Services Committee By Jim Puzzanghera Rep. Maxine Waters plans to zero in on two big banks  Wells Fargo & Co. and Deutsche Bank  when she becomes head of the powerful House Financial Services Committee. The Los Angeles congresswoman, now the committees top Democrat, is widely expected to gain the gavel after her party won control of the House in last weeks elections. While Waters has outlined a wide-ranging agenda, she said her focus on bank oversight will target two large institutions she has been tangling with for a while  including one, Deutsche Bank, that spills into her bitter feud with President Trump. With Trump in the White House, I know that our fight for Americas consumers and investors will continue to be challenging. But I am more than up to that fight, Waters wrote in a letter last week to her Democratic colleagues on the committee that was obtained by The Times. Read More Facebook

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Heres how a controversial voting system will decide a congressional race in Maine By Kurtis Lee For the first time in U.S. history, a controversial voting system known as ranked choice is being used to decide a federal election. Its happening in Maine, which adopted the system in 2016. Rather than marking a single candidate, each voter ranks them all, assigning a first-place vote, a second-place vote and so on down the ballot. Read More Facebook

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ACLU files suit to stop Trumps new asylum limits By Associated Press A group of Central American migrants march to the office of the U.N.'s humans rights body in Mexico City on Nov. 8. (Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press) The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a legal challenge to President Trumps order denying asylum to migrants if they cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco and argues the new rules are against the law. Attorney Lee Gelernt said the regulations will put families in danger. The suit seeks to declare the regulations invalid and wants a judge to stop the rules from going into effect while the litigation is pending. The new rules were spurred in part by caravans of Central American migrants slowly moving north on foot, but officials say they will apply to anyone caught crossing illegally. Officials say about 70,000 people who enter the country illegally claim asylum. The order invoked the same national security powers Trump used to push through his travel ban. Read More Facebook

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Trump on new acting AG: I dont know Matt Whitaker By Associated Press President Trump talks with reporters before departing for France on the South Lawn of the White House on Nov. 9. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) President Trump is moving to distance himself from Matthew Whitaker as he faces criticism over his choice for acting attorney general. Trump told reporters Friday that I dont know Matt Whitaker and said he didnt speak with Whitaker about special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation. Whitaker has made public comments critical of Muellers investigation, and critics have called on Whitaker to recuse himself from oversight of the inquiry. Under former Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, the investigation was overseen by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. Of the scrutiny Whitaker is facing, Trump said: Its a shame that no matter who I put in they go after. He also called Whitaker a very highly respected man. Whitaker was Sessions chief of staff before Trump made him Sessions interim replacement. Facebook

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg out of hospital after fall By Associated Press The Supreme Court says 85-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is home after being released from the hospital. She had been admitted for treatment and observation after fracturing three ribs in a fall. The court said Ginsburg was released Friday. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg says she is doing well and working from home. The court had previously said the justice fell in her office at the court on Wednesday evening and went to George Washington University Hospital in Washington early Thursday after experiencing discomfort overnight. Ginsburg broke two ribs in a fall in 2012. She had two prior bouts with cancer and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. Facebook

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Gun-control activist Lucy McBath defeats GOP Rep. Karen Handel in Georgia By Associated Press Lucy McBath speaks during a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Nov. 2 at Morehouse College in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) Democratic gun-control activist Lucy McBath has defeated Republican Rep. Karen Handel of Georgia in a suburban congressional district long considered safe for the GOP. Handel had to seek reelection after winning her seat last year in a close special election race against Democrat Jon Ossoff. McBath became an advocate for stricter gun laws after her son, Jordan Davis, was fatally shot at a Florida gas station in 2012 by a man angry over loud music the teenager and his friends were playing in a car. McBaths margin of victory was narrow enough for Handel to have requested a recount. The Associated Press declared McBath the winner Thursday after Handel conceded. Handel conceded in a statement Thursday morning, stating that after reviewing all of the election data, its clear she came up a bit short in Tuesdays vote. Handel congratulated McBath, offering good thoughts and much prayer for the journey that lies ahead for her. McBath, who is African American, declared victory Wednesday. Facebook

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized after fracturing 3 ribs in fall By Associated Press Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press) The Supreme Court says 85-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fractured three ribs in a fall in her office at the court and is in the hospital. The court says the justice went to George Washington University Hospital in Washington early Thursday after experiencing discomfort overnight. The court says the fall occurred Wednesday evening. Ginsburg was admitted to the hospital for treatment and observation after tests showed she fractured three ribs. Ginsburg broke two ribs in a fall in 2012. She has had two prior bouts with cancer and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. Facebook

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White House suspends press pass of CNNs Jim Acosta after heated exchange with Trump By Associated Press The White House on Wednesday suspended the press pass of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta after he and President Trump had a heated confrontation during a news conference. They began sparring after Acosta asked Trump about the caravan of migrants heading from Latin America to the southern U.S. border. When Acosta tried to follow up with another question, Trump said, Thats enough! and a female White House aide unsuccessfully tried to grab the microphone from Acosta. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement accusing Acosta of placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern, calling it absolutely unacceptable. The interaction between Acosta and the intern was brief, and Acosta appeared to brush her arm as she reached for the microphone and he tried to hold onto it. Pardon me, maam, he told her. Acosta tweeted that Sanders statement that he put his hands on the aide was a lie. CNN said in a statement that the White House revoked Acostas press pass in retaliation for his challenging questions Wednesday, and the network accused Sanders of lying about Acostas actions. This conduct is absolutely unacceptable. It is also completely disrespectful to the reporters colleagues not to allow them an opportunity to ask a question. President Trump has given the press more access than any President in history.  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 Contrary to CNNs assertions there is no greater demonstration of the Presidents support for a free press than the event he held today. Only they would attack the President for not supporting a free press in the midst of him taking 68 questions from 35 different reporters...  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 As a result of todays incident, the White House is suspending the hard pass of the reporter involved until further notice.  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 Sanders provided fraudulent accusations and cited an incident that never happened. This unprecedented decision is a threat to our democracy and the country deserves better, CNN said. Jim Acosta has our full support. Journalists assigned to cover the White House apply for passes that allow them daily access to press areas in the West Wing. White House staffers decide whether journalists are eligible, though the Secret Service determines whether their applications are approved. Facebook

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Trump spars with reporters at post-election news briefing, ordering several to sit down By Associated Press  President Trump assails CNNs Jim Acosta at a White House news conference. President Trump sparred with reporters at his post-election news conference, ordering several to sit down and telling another hes a rude, terrible person. He told another reporter hes not a fan of yours, either. The presidents mood turned sour Wednesday after reporters pressed him on why he referred to a migrant caravan making its way to the U.S. on foot through Mexico as an invasion. Trump ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric against the caravan in the final days of the midterm elections. Trump was also pressed on why his campaign aired an ad featuring a Mexican immigrant convicted of killing American police officers and linking the mans actions to the caravan. Several television networks pulled the ad after airing it or declined to air it at all. Facebook

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Im living one hour at a time at this point By Christine Mai-Duc Republican congressional candidate Young Kim and gubernatorial candidate John Cox campaign in Rowland Heights. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) Republican congressional candidate Young Kim greeted gubernatorial candidate John Coxs giant campaign bus, the words HELP IS ON THE WAY emblazoned across it, as it rolled into the parking lot outside her Rowland Heights field office. Standing beside Cox on Saturday, Kim predicted that a string of GOP victories Tuesday would start with voters repealing the gas tax hike. Can you imagine Gavin Newsom being our governor? Can you imagine Gil Cisneros being your representative? Kim asked the crowd, to loud boos and cries of Nooo! The former state assemblywoman who worked for retiring Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) is vying for his seat with Democrat Gil Cisneros. She led the crowd in chants of Enough is enough! and, though short-lived, Drain the swamp! Ive served you in Sacramento and Ive seen dysfunction personally, Kim continued. We cannot continue that route. She urged her supporters to stay and help make phone calls or walk neighborhoods. Lets get out there  the 72 hours is really critical. Its all going to come down to a few votes, it could be your vote, she said pointing to her left, then pivoting right, it could be your vote. So dont sit back and do nothing. Every night I go to sleep thinking, OK, how many more votes can I get or how many more people can I call tomorrow? Kim said. It can be physically exhausting but Im mentally, emotionally very energized. She listed off her events so far that day  and the next one she was heading to. Thats just what I can remember, she said. Im living one hour at a time at this point. Kims campaign invited press to two of her events on Saturday. After she was whisked away to her next event  a high tea fundraiser in Walnut, a couple dozen volunteers remained. John Freeman, a statewide field manager for the state Republican Party, tried to pump them up. This is the Super Bowl. Were not in an NFL stadium, were not getting paid millions of dollars, but you know what? Freeman said. Were walking on the field right now. This is that high-stakes-level game. Facebook

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Its going to be tough out there Democratic candidate Katie Porter speaks to volunteers in Mission Viejo. Jon Bauman, Bowzer from the band Sha Na Na, is in the background. (Victoria Kim / Los Angeles Times ) Judging from the cheers in the crowd, about half those assembled at Katie Porters campaign headquarters in Mission Viejo Sunday morning were old enough to remember 70s rock n roll star Bowzer from the band Sha Na Na. Jon Bauman, as Bowzer is known off stage, said it was her position on senior issues including retirement and social security that has him out supporting Porter over her opponent, incumbent Rep. Mimi Walters. I want you to make sure every phone is called and every door is knocked, he told the crowd of about 80 volunteers. There has never been a more important election. Both Bauman and his nephew, California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman, were interrupted by yells from Trump supporters coming from an adjoining hillside. We love Trump, the voice cried out. We love him too, he makes great fodder, the younger Bauman retorted, before introducing Porter. Porter, a UC Irvine law professor and first-time candidate, acknowledged the uphill battle some of her canvassers might face in this more conservative end of the long-red Orange County district. I know its going to be tough out there, she said, motioning to the hillside. But she said the attacks meant the other side viewed her campaign as a significant threat. This election is going to be close, she said. If we dont fight all the way to the finish line, until 8 oclock on Tuesday, this could slip away. Bowzer then took to a keyboard piano to lead the crowd in a reworded rendition of the song Good Night Sweetheart: Good night, Mimi Walters, he crooned. A woman in a black tank top, jeans and flip flops holding a cup of coffee later joined the crowd with her two sons, 17 and 14, the younger one wearing a Trump 2016 T-shirt. She declined to give her name, saying she was concerned about being attacked, but said she lived up the hill and said she had been the one yelling. She said she was encouraging her sons to talk to people on both sides and make up their own minds. We need to have a government that runs the way government teachers are telling kids its supposed to be run, said the woman, a retired registered dental assistant who voted early for Mimi Walters. Referring to Democrats, she said: Theyve had control over all these years and Californias gone to crap. Among those canvassing was Stacie Campbell, 37, who was at the launch with her husband Jerome and three children, the youngest of whom was 2 months old. Campbell, a Mission Viejo resident who runs a business, had never canvassed or volunteered for campaigns before, and her husband is a French citizen and unable to vote. She said they had been talking to their children  the older ones are 5 and 2  about the presidency and the government since Trumps election. Together, they worked on homemade Katie Porter lawn signs and put them up around town. This is the first time its felt like a big deal and there isnt a president up for election, she said. Because her city is a mix of conservatives and liberals  her next-door neighbor is an NRA-supporting Republican  she the race felt mThe last year has seen the enactment of a major tax cut, the first-ever summit between a U.S. president and the leader of North Korea, felony convictions and guilty pleas from two of the presidents former top aides and a bitterly fought battle over confirmation of a Supreme Court justice.

None fundamentally changed the overall race for control of Congress.

With the midterm now just over two weeks away, the election stands almost exactly as it did nine months ago, in mid-January: Democrats remain favored to win back a majority of the House, but havent decisively locked the contest down; Republicans remain favored to keep control of the Senate.

The uncanny stability, despite the years history-shaping headlines and furious controversies, testifies to the key political fact of our era: a deep and solidly entrenched partisan divide, made both wider and more intractable by the polarizing nature of the dramas central figure, President Trump.

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Trump took over politics with his surprising victory in 2016 and now, two years in, the country is going to vote about him a second time, said Mike Murphy, the longtime Republican strategist and critic of Trump who is the co-director of USCs Center for the Political Future.

The challenge for Trump is that this time, hes not matched up against Hillary Clinton. Instead, the election has been driven by two forces: Democrats deep anger toward Trump and what he stands for, coupled with the desire of a smaller, but crucial, bloc of swing voters to have Congress provide a check on a president whom many see as headstrong and risky.

The latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll of voters nationwide shows Democrats with a 55%-42% lead when likely voters were asked which partys candidate they would vote for in the Nov. 6 midterm election. The survey is the first of three weekly tracking polls of voter sentiment that USC and The Times plan to release between now and election day.

(Chris Keller / Los Angeles Times)

That 13-point Democratic advantage on the generic ballot  so called because it asks voters about party labels rather than specific candidates  is roughly similar to the findings of some other recent polls. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey released Sunday, for example, showed Democrats with a 9-point advantage, 50% to 41%.

The desire to vote against Trump runs especially strong among female voters, particularly college-educated white women and minority women.

Their distaste for the administration  anger in many cases  has created political battlegrounds in suburban districts that once reliably voted for Republicans from Orange County to northern New Jersey. Democrats have a strong chance of winning enough of those districts to give them the additional 23 seats they need to have a majority in the House.

Just over half of the likely female voters in the USC/L.A. Times poll, 51%, said they saw their vote as an expression of opposition to Trump, compared with 24% who said it would express support for Trump and 25% who said neither. Men divided almost evenly on that question, with 38% in opposition, 36% in support and 26% saying neither.

Just over 6 in 10 white women with college degrees and a similar share of minority women said they saw their vote as an expression of opposition to Trump.

The shifting politics of healthcare have also boosted Democratic candidates, who have relentlessly reminded voters of the Republican effort last year to repeal Obamacare, especially its politically popular protections for people with preexisting health problems.

Republicans have tried to blunt that attack by professing their own desire to protect those with health problems, but their previous votes have hurt  a sharp reversal from the elections of 2010 and 2014 when Republicans rallied their voters by campaigning against the healthcare law.

But the Democrats havent won over some voters they had hoped to convince. A big part of whats kept the Republicans afloat  and limited the potential Democratic gains  is the continued GOP majority among another group of women, whites without college degrees.

Only a third of those blue-collar white women said they saw their vote as expressing opposition to Trump. Four in 10 said they were voting in support of him, the poll found.

Related: See the results of the most recent USC/L.A. Times polls 

That support, coupled with the natural tendency of partisans to return to their corners as the election approaches, has improved Republican chances in conservative areas.

The impact can be seen in recent polls of key Senate races in Missouri, North Dakota and other states where Democratic incumbents are trying to hang on despite increasingly conservative electorates. The same dynamic has reduced Democratic hopes that their gains in the House could spread beyond the suburbs to more rural and blue-collar districts that Trump carried in 2016.

Democrats have, however, made gains across a crucial part of the country that played a big role in Trumps upset victory that year, Midwestern and mid-Atlantic industrial states.

Democratic candidates for governor seem all but certain to win in Michigan and Illinois and have close races in Ohio and Wisconsin. Across the region, Trump-backed Republicans appear to be failing in efforts to unseat Democratic senators in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania  the four states that sealed the presidents victory.

In those areas, Democrats benefit from an extra dose of enthusiasm on the part of their voters. Nationwide, Democrats appear at least as eager to vote as Republicans and, by some measures, more so. That could erase a major turnout advantage Republicans held in the last two midterm elections.

In the poll, voters who said they were likely to cast ballots for Democrats were slightly more likely than Republican voters to say they were following the election closely. And the Democratic edge over Republicans on the generic ballot was the same among likely voters as among all registered voters  a switch from the pattern of recent years in which Republicans did better among those most likely to vote.

It would be so unusual for a midterm election if the partys turnout equals that of Republicans, said Robert Shrum, the co-director of the USC Center for the Political Future. Achieving parity would be a major boost to Democratic chances, he said.

In the immediate aftermath of the hearings into now-Justice Brett M. Kavanaughs nomination to the Supreme Court, Republicans said the fight over the high court had energized their voters. Since then, polls around the country have given some indication of a boost in conservative areas, but also a post-Kavanaugh increase for Democrats in liberal precincts.

Overall, voters disapproved of Kavanaughs confirmation by 43% to 37%, the USC/L.A. Times poll found, with likely voters showing slightly more opposition, 50% to 37%.

Although women disapproved by a significantly larger margin than men, that difference more strongly reflects partisanship than gender, the poll found.

Women are more likely to be Democrats than are men. Factoring out that and other demographic data, party emerged as by far the biggest driver of peoples attitudes toward Kavanaugh, said Jill Darling, the surveys director.

Most voters said the confirmation battle would not have an effect on whether they would vote  voters seldom say that any individual event will affect their ballot. The two parties were roughly equal in the share that said Kavanaughs confirmation would increase their likelihood of voting.

Asked whether they believed Kavanaugh could be fair and impartial as a member of the court, voters split evenly and, again, along sharply partisan lines. More than 9 in 10 Republicans said he would be impartial, while nearly 9 in 10 Democrats said no.

Thats not a good result for the credibility of the court, Shrum said. Probably not since Bush v. Gore have you had people thinking this way, he added, referring to the controversial decision in 2000 that ended the election recount in Florida, handing George W. Bush the presidency.

This USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll was conducted Oct. 14 to 20 among 3,980 adult Americans, including 3,482 registered voters, of whom 2,284 were considered likely to vote. Respondents were drawn from a probability-based panel maintained by USCs Center for Economic and Social Research for its Understanding America Study. Responses were weighted to accurately reflect known demographics of the U.S. population. The margin of error is 2 percentage points in either direction. A full description of the methodology, poll questions and data and additional information about the poll are posted on the USC website.

Get the latest news from the nations capital on Essential Washington >> 

David.Lauter@latimes.com

For more on Politics and Policy, follow me @DavidLauterWhether its a wave or just a steady flow of voter sentiment, a new national tracking poll continues to forecast a rising tide for Democrats in their quest to reclaim control of the House.

USC/L.A. TIMES POLL: 55%-42% FOR DEMOCRATS

The latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times nationwide poll shows Democrats with a 55%-42% lead when likely voters were asked which partys candidate they would vote for in the Nov. 6 midterm election.

The survey is the first of three weekly tracking polls of voter sentiment that USC and The Times plan to release between now and election day.

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Its not hard to find whats driving much of that sentiment: strong feelings about President Trump. The desire to vote against him runs especially strong among female voters, particularly college-educated white women and minority women. Thats created new battlegrounds in suburban districts that once reliably voted Republican, from Orange County to northern New Jersey.

A slight majority of likely female voters in the USC/L.A. Times poll, 51%, said they saw their vote as an expression of opposition to Trump, compared with 24% who said it would express support for Trump and 25% who said neither. Men divided almost evenly on that question, with 38% in opposition, 36% in support and 26% saying neither.

Sign up for the Essential Politics newsletter 

DECISION CALIFORNIA

-- Republican Reps. Mimi Walters and Steve Knight are staunch allies of the president. But only Walters is getting hit on it in Democratic attack ads. Elsewhere, most are largely avoiding the topic of the president in a surge of television advertising in the final weeks of Californias most competitive campaigns.

-- Billionaire Tom Steyer is spending tens of millions of dollars this year trying to reach a group of voters that Democrats need to take back the House but so far has proven to be an unreliable voting bloc: young people.

-- With a quartet of California congressmen by his side, Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to speed up their environmental review of major water projects in the state and develop plans to change regulations that hamper water deliveries.

-- Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox toured Los Angeles skid row last week, home to a large homeless population, and likened the area to a third-world country.

-- The $40-million campaign for one of Californias traditional sleepy races, superintendent of public instruction, is a proxy war over the future of the states charter schools.

NATIONAL LIGHTNING ROUND

-- National security advisor John Bolton faces two days of high-tension talks in Moscow beginning Monday after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from a landmark nuclear weapons treaty.

-- Democrats have yet to win a House majority and San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosis return as speaker is by no means certain, but already she has one eye on the exits. I see myself as a transitional figure, Pelosi said in an interview with The Times.

-- With the departure of Nikki Haley, Trump says he hopes to select a new U.N. ambassador very quickly.

-- Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, the only independent governor in the country, said he could not win a three-way race and that voters deserve a choice other than Republican Mike Dunleavy.

TOUGH SLEDDING FOR GAS TAX REPEAL, RENT CONTROL EXPANSION

Californias most talked-about statewide ballot measures this fall share something else in common, too: They both are in danger of being rejected by voters.

The latest USC/Los Angeles Times poll shows skepticism about the effort to repeal the states new gas tax, Proposition 6, and the effort to remove existing limits on rent control, Proposition 10.

On the gas tax repeal, 41% of likely voters said they support Proposition 6 while 42% are in opposition and 17% remained undecided.

The rent control proposal, meanwhile, the poll found 41% of likely voters favor Proposition 10 with 38% opposed and 21% undecided.

Californias housing woes are at the heart of the rent control measure as well as several major laws enacted over the past year in Sacramento. But while researchers and politicians alike agree that the fundamental issue is a lack of homes, the poll found the public doesnt believe it.

Just 13% of eligible California voters believe that too little home building is a primary contributor to the states affordability issues. The answer ranked sixth among eight options offered in the poll; lack of rent control topped the list with 28%.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

-- Only hours remain before the official deadline to register to vote in California.

-- Strained by staffing shortages and major emergencies, the L.A. County Fire Department busted its overtime plan by tens of millions of dollars, inflating salaries for hundreds of firefighters and prompting a county audit.

-- Despite objections from cities and police chiefs, state officials on Friday declined to stop marijuana firms from making home deliveries across California, including in areas that have banned pot shops.

-- A federal appeals court appeared skeptical Friday about blocking the Trump administration from giving exemptions to nonprofit groups and others from the Affordable Care Acts contraceptive mandate.

-- A California official who enforced the states liquor laws in Koreatown schemed with a businessman to shake down karaoke bar owners as part of a brazen ploy that went on for years, federal prosecutors alleged Friday.

-- In Orange County, 24 Vietnamese Americans are running for office. Thirteen share the same last name.

LOGISTICS

Essential Politics is published Monday and Friday.

You can keep up with breaking news on our politics page throughout the day. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics?

Miss Fridays newsletter? Here you go.

Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox.Tom Steyer made his fortune as a hedge fund manager taking risky bets in volatile conditions. In this years high-stakes midterm election, the billionaire turned political activist is making another costly wager on one of the most historically unreliable groups of voters: young people.

Steyer, whose advocacy group NextGen America has pledged $33 million to engage young voters in 11 states  $3.5 million alone in California  insists that his is no quixotic venture. He and others believe that the only hope Democrats have of taking control of Congress is to inspire new and infrequent voters to cast ballots as a check on President Trump.

Steyer, 61, roamed the Cal State Fullerton campus recently  clipboard in hand, shirt sleeves rolled up. He approached 18-year-old Marina Lieu, who told the graying man in front of her that voting didnt interest her.

His head drooped. He heaved a sigh.

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Then he leaned in close and lowered his gravelly voice to a near-whisper. You can change this world, or it can be run by a bunch of arrogant, entitled, rich white old men.

Democrats, angling for the 23 seats they must net on Nov. 6 to take back the House, are pinning their hopes in part on young voters, and for good reason. Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, lean harder left than older generations. Theyre more racially diverse, less likely to approve of Trump, and are due to become the countrys largest bloc of eligible voters in a matter of months.

But they tend not to vote.

If the House stays Republican, I think well consider this year a failure, Steyer says.

If history is a guide, success is at best uncertain.

Voters aged 18 to 34 have cast ballots at lower rates than any other age group in every midterm election for the last 40 years, according to census data. Fewer than 1 in 4 young adults voted in 2014, the last midterm election.

Want to vote in the Nov. 6 elections? Heres how to register 

Young people are highly mobile, making them harder and more expensive to reach. For campaigns, Thats a pretty low return on investment, says Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, a Tufts University expert on the youth vote. Once that perception is settled, its really hard to change strategies around it.

Her research center has ranked the top 50 congressional districts where a surge in youth voters could make a difference in close races. Eight are in California.

The picture here has been even more grim. In 2014, only about 15% of Californias 1.8 million registered young voters bothered to turn out in November, according the California Civic Engagement Project.

Is that a problem or is that an opportunity? Steyer said in an interview. Its the most diverse group in American history, biggest group, most progressive...and they dont vote, so lets ignore them? Really?

Steyer is probably better known for his $40-million petition campaign to impeach Trump, which 6 million Americans have signed. He says he considers the youth vote problem an existential crisis akin to climate change, his signature issue. If you dont solve it, you dont have a democracy, he said.

NextGen has been on the ground in Californias most competitive congressional districts for months and has hired dozens of organizers, many of them students, to take on the Sisyphean task of convincing college-age adults that their voices matter.

Unlike the slick Rock the Vote campaigns or Taylor Swifts viral call-out on Instagram, NextGens efforts to boost participation are built on direct contact: peers reaching out in the quad or making appeals in classrooms. Steyer has organizers on more than 400 campuses nationwide; 20 are in California, where theyve registered more than 27,000 voters.

He bills it as the largest youth mobilization effort ever, and no group on either side of the aisle appears to be matching his efforts.

Related: See the results of the most recent USC Dornsife/L.A. Times polls 

Daniel Nieto, 18, right, helps Samantha Skidmore, 24, register to vote on the College of the Canyons campus. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Daniel Nieto, 18, is one of his foot soldiers. On a warm afternoon recently, Nieto stood outside the bookstore at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, a few miles down the road from GOP Rep. Steve Knights office, beckoning his classmates with free swag and voter registration forms.

When in doubt, fill it out, was his frequent refrain to students unsure if they were registered.

Nieto, who works part time as a NextGen fellow, says the apathy he sees from classmates is familiar. A lot of them have the same attitude that I used to have, and I can see they dont think anything affects them, Nieto said.

These days, he knows how to tailor his elevator pitch for democracy, pointing out the low number of congresswomen to female peers and talking about his struggle with tuition costs. If someone is in a hurry, he offers to walk them to class.

Jordan Stadler, 21, didnt need much convincing that day. She bypassed NextGens photo booth stocked with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump masks and put down her art portfolio to fill out a registration form.

A political science class she took taught her the importance of the midterm election. She plans to vote for the first time in November and favors Katie Hill, a millennial Democrat whos challenging Knight. She wants to send a message to politicians that things need to change.

Stadlers friends often tell her theres little point to voting. In a way, thats true because one single vote isnt really going to tip the balance to either side, Stadler said. But if a large group of us votes, I think that could make a difference.

There are indications that young people like Stadler are more tuned in this year.

In the most recent survey of young voters by Harvard Universitys Institute of Politics, 37% of those younger than 30 said theyd definitely be voting on Nov. 6, a jump from 2014, when just 23% said the same. An analysis by Democratic data firm TargetSmart suggested an uptick in young voter registration nationwide since this years school shooting in Parkland, Fla., launched a wave of youth protests demanding stricter gun laws.

In tight congressional contests, the sole focus of NextGens efforts in California, interest seems to be even higher.

A Times analysis of state voter data provided by Political Data Inc. shows that while voter turnout overall in the 2018 primary was up 50% over 2014 levels, turnout among youth aged 18 to 34 more than doubled. In the four Orange County congressional districts deemed some of the most competitive in the country, the figure tripled.

Statewide (All ages) Statewide (18-34) CA10 (18-34) CA25 (18-34) CA39 (18-34) CA45 (18-34) CA48 (18-34) CA49 (18-34) CA50 (18-34) 25.0% 7.9 8.8 5.6 6.5 7.7 7.6 7.5 7.4 2014 Primary 37.0% 18.1 17.8 15.6 22.4 23.5 25.0 24.2 18.3 2018 Primary Statewide (All ages) Statewide (18-34) CA10 (18-34) CA25 (18-34) CA39 (18-34) CA45 (18-34) CA48 (18-34) CA49 (18-34) CA50 (18-34) 37.0% 18.1 17.8 15.6 22.4 23.5 25.0 24.2 18.3 25.0% 7.9 8.8 5.6 6.5 7.7 7.6 7.5 7.4 Youth voter turnout spikes in key districts Data: abcdefg hijkl mnop qrstu vwxyz 1234 56789 Christine Mai-Duc / @latimesgraphics Source: Times reporting, Political Data, Inc. -->

Another NextGen fellow, 20-year-old Kennedy Wilson, spent 15 minutes in front of a criminal justice class at Cal State Fullerton.

A politicians entire job is to get reelected, Wilson told about 100 students. If they realize that our voting bloc really cared...they would have to listen to us.

She collected 30 voter registration cards.

While Wilson spoke, Miguel Santiago scrolled CNNs website on his laptop to read about competitive House and Senate races, and looked up the definition of toss-up, a term to describe contests that are virtually tied. He registered last year, on his 18th birthday.

When Trump was elected president, Santiago was too young to vote. It wasnt my choice, said Santiago, who lives in an immigrant-heavy neighborhood in GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabachers coastal Orange County district.

The oldest of six children, Santiago says he works about 40 hours a week at two jobs to help his family but makes time to prod his friends to register and vote, asking for screenshots as proof. Most of them arent interested.

NextGen America volunteer Jack Hurley, 74, helps students Genesis Ramirez, 18, left, Angela Trujillo, 19, and sister Enya Trujillo, 17, register to vote recently at the College of the Canyons campus in Santa Clarita. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

On the day he visited Cal State Fullerton, Steyer recited to any teen who would listen the number of days until the election  27  and in a bid to relate, added his childrens ages: 24, 26, 28 and 30.

Most brushed him off, claiming they were already registered. Steyer wasnt so naive as to believe them all.

Its a pain in the ass, he said of the work. Running a youth turnout program takes resources, personnel and training, he added, and even then some conversations can be profoundly unsatisfying. But thats the way it goes.

Still, he had planted the seeds for small victories he may not have been aware of.

Lieu, the skeptical student Steyer had approached, said later their encounter had stuck with her. She now plans to vote. Lieu said Steyer opened her eyes to how old, rich, white men were making decisions for her generation.

She was surprised to learn that Steyer himself was one of them.

Coverage of California politics 

Will California flip the House? The key races to watch 

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

For more on California politics, follow @cmaiduc.There is no seafarer, neither performed nor discussed, in The Seafarer, the title referencing an old Anglo-Saxon poem. But thats far from the strangest thing about the latest production at the Laguna Playhouse.

The show is a wee bit of Irish deviltry. Its often confusing but always entertaining with an exceptionally strong acting ensemble superbly directed by Michael Matthews, who helmed the brilliant End of the Rainbow at the playhouse just a couple of months ago.

In Conor McPhersons spooky drama, set in a village outside Dublin on Christmas Eve, a newly teetotaling Sharky (JD Cullum) has returned to his old homestead to care for his recently blinded (in a Dumpster-diving mishap) brother Richard (John Vickery in a bravura performance).

Soon a pair of old shipmates, Ivan and Nicky (Michael A. Shepperd and John Colella), arrive along with a nattily dressed stranger, Mr. Lockhart (Stephen Caffrey)  who is never referred to by his given first name  and they engage in a game of poker, played for extremely high stakes by two of the fellows. Comedy and terror intermingle in a powerful presentation.

Cullums Sharky is the central figure but also the most enigmatic as he attempts to regulate the other hard-drinking characters. His, and the plays, secret comes to light just before intermission, heightening the suspense of the second act.

Vickerys sightless character is the most robust of the quintet, raging drunkenly against his ill fortune and reveling in his hold over his brother. Its the most cliched interpretation of the lot, yet by far the most engaging.

The neighborhood buddy, played by Shepperd, whose missing eyeglasses prove to be a pivotal point, also injects an energetic interpretation into the action. Colella scores as a volatile figure Sharky could well do without.

The plays key element is Mr. Lockhart, decked out in a three-piece suit in contrast to the others informal attire. Caffrey builds this character to a fever pitch as he plays an ominous game with the luckless Sharky.

Set designer Stephen Gifford has created an impressively weather-beaten, yet solid structure, which provides a staunch backdrop. Alex Jaegers costumes convey their own character splendidly, while the lighting designs of Tim Swiss further enrich the action.

The Seafarer, which met high acclaim a decade ago on Broadway, is rich in Irish color and swagger, withholding just enough to tantalize its audiences before its climactic thrust. Its a rousing rendition at the Laguna Playhouse.

Tom Titus reviews local theater.

IF YOU GO

What: The Seafarer

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach

When: Wednesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 7 :30, Sundays at 1 and 5:30 until Nov. 4

Cost: $55 - $85

Information: (949) 497-2787 or lagunaplayhouse.comHurricane Willa made landfall on Mexicos west coast Tuesday evening as a Category 3 hurricane, first slamming Isla Del Bosque, about 68 miles north of Mazatlan. Winds were estimated at 120 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported.

Hurricane warnings remained in effect Tuesday evening for resort towns from San Blas to Mazatlan. The storm had already hit a group of islands called Las Islas Marias.

More than 4,000 people had been evacuated ahead of the storm. No reports on damage yet.

Tropical storm warnings also remained Tuesday from Mazatlan and north to Tempehuaya Bay, and San Blas to Playa Perula as the storm moved northeast and inland. Officials had repeatedly warned of dangerous storm surge, rough surf, flash flooding and power outages.

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Southwest Airlines had already canceled Tuesday flights between Los Angeles, Houston and Oakland and Puerto Vallarta in anticipation of Willa, media reports said. The airline warned passengers that flights to and from Cabo San Lucas/Los Cabos airport (SJD) and Puerto Vallarta (PVR) airport may be disrupted, diverted or canceled through Friday.

Fliers who had planned to travel to or from either destination this week may change their tickets and travel within 14 days without paying change fees. Read Southwests travel advisory here.

American Airlines is allowing ticketed passengers traveling to or from Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan to change flights without paying a fee through Friday. Read Americans travel alert here.

Alaska Air will allow ticketed passenger heading to or from Puerto Vallarta to rebook travel through Nov. 1 without paying fees. Heres Alaska Airs alert.

Cruise ships also have been affected by Willa. The Norwegian Bliss, which left Los Angeles for a seven-night voyage to the Mexican Riviera, instead will call on San Francisco on Monday, San Diego on Wednesday and Ensenada on Thursday, Cruise Critic reported Sunday.

Holland America on its Twitter feed said the Eurodams sailing to Mexico that began Monday will instead now sail northward along the coast of California with calls in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico.

The cruise line also said that, given the itinerary changes, all guests will receive a future cruise credit and ship board credit, if they choose.

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel

UPDATES:

8:15 p.m.: This story was updated to report that Hurricane Willa made landfall Tuesday evening. Hurricane warnings remain in effect for key areas of the coast as the storm moves inland.

1:15 p.m.: This article was updated with Hurricane Willas Category 3 status and more airlines waiving change fees for passengers ticketed to fly to or from Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta.Nearly every other day for the last few years, volunteers from the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society chartered a yacht to search for Chinese white dolphins at the mouth of the Pearl River where it meets the South China Sea. The estuary was once a sanctuary for this endangered species until the constant burr of jackhammering and welding chased them away.

Where once mostly freighters and tugboats plied the placid waters, this westernmost fringe of the Hong Kong archipelago mushroomed over the last several years into a sprawling construction site at sea. The largest of the islands, Lantau, is now lined with cranes and rigs for a rash of infrastructure projects.

This week, the most awaited among them  the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which will be the worlds longest crossing of its kind  will open to traffic.

More than a decade in the making, this combination of an underwater tunnel, bridges and artificial islands spans the Pearl River Delta and stretches longer than 14 Golden Gate Bridges lined up end to end.

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However, what should be a celebrated feat in this Chinese metropolis built upon engineering marvels has turned controversial. Its much-delayed completion has resulted in significant cost overruns, and several workers were killed during its construction. The citys budding environmental movement decries the destruction of marine habitat and the pollution that the increased traffic will bring, while casting doubt on economic benefits trumpeted by government officials.

An even greater concern for some is that the bridge marks Beijings first concrete move to subsume Hong Kong into a regional integration plan with mainland China called the Greater Bay Area, which encompasses a cluster of cities with a population of more than 60 million people.

A section of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is seen Oct. 7 from Lantau Island in Hong Kong. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images)

Hong Kong is a former British colony of 7.4 million that was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a framework known as one country, two systems, whereby it maintains a semiautonomous status apart from the mainland. But that independence has been eroded in recent years, and many Hong Kongers view the sea link as a further leash to mainland China.

Zhuhai and Macau are adjoining areas on the mainland due west of Hong Kong. Both are significant tourist draws, with Macau now rivaling Las Vegas as an international gambling mecca.

That Chinas top leaders, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, are expected to preside over the ribbon-cutting for the bridge in Zhuhai on Tuesday only underscores the political significance of the project.

The government has projected that as many as 29,000 cars will traverse the sea link daily by 2030, although construction of another delta-spanning bridge less than 20 miles to the north in mainland China is underway.

Hong Kong taxpayers footed 60% of the total $20-billion bill, including more than $1 billion in cost overruns. Its not going to break even, said Albert Lai, a civil engineer who is an advocate for sustainable development.

Some experts argue that some of the benefits may be intangible.

This makes Hong Kong a lot more accessible for goods, passengers and trade, so this is a benefit from the economic perspective, said John Ap with the Institute for Tourism Studies in Macau. The bridge will help enhance Hong Kongs status as the regions hub.

The Macau and Zhuhai sections of the link were completed years ago. With the Hong Kong section being the laggard, workers such as Thapa Paul Denedick were under pressure to hurry.

They told us to work quickly, said Denedick, a scaffolder who worked 12-hour days, six days a week. I thought it was hard and scary because I was in the middle of the sea.

In March 2017, Denedick, along with two other workers, plunged into the ocean as their work platform collapsed.

I thought I was already dead, Denedick recalled, before he eventually unfastened his safety harness latched to the platform. His colleagues died.

All told, 20 deaths were reported throughout the project, making it the deadliest construction in the citys history.

Still in recovery from his injuries, Denedick recently moved to a newly developed town on Lantau with a clear view of the bridge, but he said he tries not to get a close look.

In addition to the new town, Lantau is already home to the Hong Kong International Airport, with a third runway under construction, a Disneyland resort and a marine park. With the sea bridge coming online, the government announced an ambitious plan to reclaim 4,200 acres of land and build more new towns for 1.1 million residents. The plan stoked a protest this month by those who see the development as unsustainable.

In Tai O, the last surviving fishing village on Lantaus western tip, retired fisherman Wong Ho gazed at the sea link, which lights up at dusk like a serpentine ribbon of blue lights.

More construction might be bad for the environment, but theres little I can worry about, Wong said. As far as I can tell, development is still king.

A Chinese white dolphin swims in waters off the coast of Hong Kong in 2012. (Laurent Fievet / AFP/Getty Images)

Other than the workers who died, perhaps the most tangible losers in the massive development are the Chinese white dolphins. The Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Societys census shows a sharp decline in their population during the five years of bridge and tunnel construction on the Hong Kong section  from 80 in 2012 to 47 in 2017. Hong Kong boasts the largest population along Chinas coastline of such dolphins, dubbed pandas of the sea.

The government set up the conservation zones only after construction has begun  thats too late, said Heyman Mak of the conservation society as she completed another excursion with zero sightings. These wild dolphins are now living more like caged animals.

Law is a special correspondent.U.S. national security advisor John Bolton arrived in Moscow on Monday to begin two days of talks on a spectrum of issues testing U.S.-Russia relations. But one in particular has come to dominate Moscows attention: President Trumps intention  announced at a campaign rally Saturday  to withdraw from a landmark Cold War nuclear arms treaty.

Bolton met with his counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday and is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. These meetings are expected to explore the fate of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a cornerstone of Cold War disarmament.

The treaty itself has a procedure outlined within it that provides for the possible withdrawal from this treaty, Lavrov said at an unrelated news conference in Moscow, but this procedure has not yet been activated. Lavrov added that it is possible Trump and Bolton are simply threatening withdrawal in an effort to alter the terms of the treaty.

Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the treaty bans an entire class of ground-launched short- and medium-range missiles. Trump accused Russia of violating the treaty. He pledged to withdraw and develop similar weapons. The announcement roiled American allies in Europe, where such weapons were heavily deployed during the Cold War nuclear standoff.

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Boltons meeting with Patrushev lasted five hours and covered a range of issues that have divided the countries  nuclear arms control, Ukraine and Syria, according to a statement from Russias Security Council, published in the Russian state media. The statement said that Patrushev reiterated Russian support for the treaty and warned that withdrawal would harm global security.

The two national security advisors also discussed the fate of another U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control agreement, the Obama-era New START treaty, which places limitations on intercontinental strategic nuclear weapons. That treaty will expire in 2021, and the two sides discussed the possibility of extending it to 2026, the statement said.

U.S. national security advisor John Boltons convoy arrives at a meeting with Russias foreign minister in central Moscow on Monday. (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP/Getty Images)

In Europe, reaction to Trumps threat was somber.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in a statement Monday recognized concerns about Russian adherence to the nuclear arms treaty, but said that the U.S. announcement was regrettable and poses difficult questions for us and for Europe. The treaty has been a fundamental pillar of European security for 30 years, and is regarded as a critical safeguard.

French President Emmanuel Macron called Trump on Sunday and underlined the importance of this treaty, especially with regards to European security and our strategic stability, according to a statement released by his office. Similar concerns were voiced Monday by European Union spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic, who credited the treaty with ending the Cold War.

While we expect the Russian Federation to address serious concerns regarding its compliance with the INF Treaty in a substantial and transparent way, Kocijancic said, we also expect the U.S. to consider the consequences of its possible withdrawal from the INF on its own security, on the security of its allies and of the whole world. The world doesnt need a new arms race.

Accusations that Moscow was violating the treaty were first raised in 2014 by the Obama administration. In 2017, an accusation of noncompliance was leveled with greater detail, focusing on the Russian 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Putin is eager to hear Boltons explanation for Washingtons current position.

Moscow has repeatedly denied that the missile operates in the ranges forbidden by the treaty and has accused the United States of its own violations. Moscows claim focuses on the U.S. Mk-41 launch system, which has been stationed in Eastern Europe and can fire a variety of weapons, including missile interceptors. Russia claims they can also launch intermediate-range missiles.

The Russian focus on U.S. missile defenses in Eastern Europe comes as no surprise. Russia has been looking for a way to pressure the United States into opening discussions on arms control since President George W. Bush announced his intention in 2001 to unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limited such defenses.

Peskov said that Russia will take steps to restore the military balance in the region if the United States moves forward with scrapping the nuclear arms treaty. Stuck in the middle, Germany, France and the European Union have all called on the two sides to engage in serious discussions on resolving their disputes and salvage the treaty. China, too, warned that ending the treaty would undermine global security.

But the two sides are unlikely to find a compromise, says Michael Kofman, an expert in the Russian military at the CNA think tank in Virginia. The treaty always favored the U.S., Kofman says, which was able to stockpile large quantities of intermediate-range cruise missiles at sea or in the air, while denying Russia the ability to base similar systems on land.

The world doesnt need a new arms race. Maja Kocijancic, European Union spokeswoman

Moscow likely had this disparity in mind when it began to test the missile that spooked Washington, and it is unlikely to give it up. If the two sides cannot come to some kind of agreement on how to save the treaty, then Russia will be free to deploy the banned missile systems as it pleases while the United States takes a hit to its global reputation for abandoning the treaty.

Moreover, Russia has a head start in this potential arms race. It would take years, if not decades, for the United States to develop similar weapons, assuming Congress even chooses to fund them. And even then, the United States would need permission from European allies  who for 30 years have rejoiced in their absence  to deploy them in range of Russia.

The reality is that the U.S. has little need of such a capability, Kofman says, and there is much greater value in constraining Russia than in seeking to deploy similar weapons to counter Moscows capabilities. However, the treaty is dead and there was no choice of getting Moscow back into compliance, so the U.S. is faced only with unenviable courses of action.

Bodner is a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.A caravan of immigrants continued its march north into Mexico on Monday, even as President Trump criticized the Mexican government and threatened to cut off aid to three Central American nations for allowing their people to leave.

The caravan has swelled to several thousand people, most of them from Honduras, and has provided Trump with an issue certain to rally his Republican base around the need for tighter immigration enforcement. But the northward-bound immigrants expressed little awareness of U.S. politics, and insisted that they were only trying to escape violence, corruption and poverty.

(Los Angeles Times)

This is nothing against President Trump, said Jose Rodriguez, 29. We respect President Trump. This is about us Hondurans and the impossible lives we face, with violence and poverty, and the chance for a better life in the United States.

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Trump warned on Twitter that the U.S. will begin cutting off, or substantially reducing aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for failing to prevent the caravan from heading north.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

He also scorned Mexico, which has allowed thousands of immigrants to illegally enter its territory in recent days and now appears to be allowing them to march en masse toward the U.S. border. Trump said Monday that he has alerted the U.S. military and U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the caravan represents a national emergency.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Members of the caravan spent Sunday night curled up in the central plaza, parks and other sites in the subtropical city of Tapachula. Shortly before noon Monday, in humid, 90-degree heat, most of the group set out on foot to reach the town of Huixtla, another 25 miles north.

Men at the front, women and children to the rear, shouted an organizer with a megaphone.

A few hours later, the caravan endured its first confirmed fatality, when a young man was hit and killed by a vehicle on a four-lane highway about 10 miles north of Tapachula.

Fatigued after so many days of travel, many caravaners had begun jumping into passing pickup trucks and grabbing onto the backs of semi-trailers.

The victim was not immediately identified, but he looked to be about 21 years old. His body lay on the road in the bright sun, covered with a white sheet patterned with flowers. His bloodied baseball cap was next to him and his right shoe was missing, revealing a black sock full of holes.

A group of stunned caravan members stared in shock.

He was like all of us, someone seeking a better life for himself and his family, said a shaken Edin Mata, 21. He could have been me or my brother.

Mata said he was deported from Florida six months ago after living in the U.S. for three years.

Of course I want to go back  at least in the United States one can make a life, earn well, be safe. Thats what we all want, he said. He pointed at the dead man sprawled on the highway. Thats what he wanted.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun began to dip in the west, caravaners stopped along the road, clearly exhausted, about 12 miles short of Huixtla. Many families threw blankets outside a Mexican immigration office at a checkpoint on the Pan American Highway. No Mexican authorities were checking documents at the checkpoint, which was closed.

We are tired, it has been a long trip, especially with the children, but they seem to be holding up, said Keila Montoya, 33, who had traveled overland from Honduras with three children, ages 1 to 10.

The specter of masses of poor immigrants streaming into developed nations in the West has long been a potent image in anti-immigrant circles. French author Jean Raspails 1973 fantasy novel, The Camp of the Saints, imagines masses of people from the Indian subcontinent overwhelming Western Europe while liberals look on and allow it to happen. The blatantly racist novel is seen by some who favor strict immigration policy as prescient.

Trump has stoked fears about the caravan at several rallies across the country in recent days.

It looks like the people are walking right through the middle of Mexico, Trump said Monday at an event in Texas in support of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

Of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Trump said: Theyre paid a lot of money every year, we give them foreign aid, and they did nothing for us. Nothing.

The president claimed on Twitter that the caravan includes criminals as well as unknown Middle Easterners, although there is no evidence to support that.

A State Department spokesperson, speaking on background, suggested that there were political motives behind the caravan, saying, This caravan did not form spontaneously.

We understand there are reports that Honduran opposition parties played a key role in the organization of the caravan, the official said. We are concerned the individuals in this caravan have been lured by migrant smugglers to make this journey, and may be exploited at great risk to themselves and their families.

But many said theyve left Honduras simply because life there has gotten harder in recent years.

Like neighboring El Salvador, Honduras is one of the deadliest places in the world that isnt a war zone, with homicide rates many times those in the United States.

Corruption is endemic  members of the countrys political class have been caught protecting drug traffickers  and the rule of law is nearly nonexistent, with the vast majority of crimes resulting in impunity.

It is impossible to live with such instability, said caravan member Jose Antonio Lopez, 36. He once ran a small grocery store in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, but he couldnt make a living, he said, because gang members constantly demanded extortion payments.

One group comes one day and makes you pay, and the next day another group demands money, Lopez said. If you dont pay, they kill you and your family. They have no qualms about it.

Ive never been to the United States but everyone says you can lead a decent life there, said Selvin Morales, 28, who made about $200 a month as a construction worker in Honduras.

In fiscal years 2016 and 2017, Congress allocated a total of $432 million in assistance for Guatemala, $391 million for Honduras and $302 for El Salvador, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank that tracks spending.

Programs related to security and the judicial sector received the greatest amount of funding  about $500 million. Programs related to good governance, transparency, and human rights received just 15% of the total  about $195 million  according to WOLA.

It was unclear whether Trump would be able to follow through on his threats to cut aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. While U.S. presidents have significant foreign policy powers as a general matter, foreign aid is provided by law enacted by Congress and would have to be changed by law.

Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Monday that he would work to ensure that Trump does not act without congressional approval.

Fortunately, Congress  not the president  has the power of the purse, Engel said in a statement. My colleagues and I will not stand idly by as this administration ignores congressional intent.

Last week, Trump threatened to scrap a pending free trade agreement if Mexico did not stop the caravan.

Under pressure from one of his countrys most important economic allies, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has said repeatedly that no migrants will be allowed to enter the country in an irregular manner.

But the large number of caravan members marching through Mexico on Monday suggested that many thousands had. Gerardo Hernandez, head of the civil protection agency in the municipality of Suchiate, Chiapas, said that at least 7,233 immigrants who crossed illegally had been registered at a shelter in Ciudad Hidalgo, a Mexican town on the border with Guatemala.

When the caravan started marching on Sunday, large groups of police officers clad in riot gear blocked the road several times, but then retreated.

While the large group making its way through Mexico captured international attention, another caravan of migrants from Honduras was heading north. At least 1,000 have crossed into Guatemala in recent days, heading for the Guatemala-Mexico border.

Immigrants have turned to caravans in recent years for many reasons. The caravans are free  compared to the $7,000 often charged by smugglers  and there is safety in numbers from the risks of the migrant trail.

Robberies, rapes and assaults  by smugglers, cartel members and law enforcement  are common. In one incident in 2010, 72 kidnapped migrants were killed by a cartel in northern Mexico.

McDonnell reported from Tapachula and Linthicum from Morelia, Mexico. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

Twitter: @katelinthicum,

@PmcdonnellLAT

UPDATES:

5:50 p.m.: This article has been updated with caravan moving farther north, more quotes from immigrants, background on aid to Central America, other details.

10:05 a.m.: This article has been updated with a description from Tapachula, quotes from migrants, and background.

This article was originally published at 9:15 a.m.National security advisor John Bolton faces two days of high-tension talks in Moscow beginning Monday after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from a landmark nuclear weapons treaty.

Trumps announcement that the United States would leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty brought sharp criticism Sunday from Russian officials and from former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who signed the treaty in 1987 with President Reagan.

Trump said Russia has violated terms of the treaty that prohibit the U.S. and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying ground-launched nuclear cruise missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles.

Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it has produced and tested such a missile.

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Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as telling state news agency Tass that leaving the treaty would be a very dangerous step.

It would cause the most serious condemnation from all members of the international community who are committed to security and stability, he said.

Konstatin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russias upper house of parliament, said on Facebook that a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would mean mankind is facing full chaos in the nuclear weapons sphere.

Washingtons desire to turn back politics cannot be supported. Not only Russia, but also all who cherish the world, especially a world without nuclear weapons, must declare this, Gorbachev was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency.

Western reaction was mixed.

British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said the U.K. stands absolutely resolute with Washington on the issue and called on the Kremlin to get its house in order, according to the Financial Times.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that Trumps announcement raises difficult questions for us and Europe, but noted that Russia hasnt cleared up allegations of violating the treaty.

The Kremlin hasnt directly commented on Trumps statement, but spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday that after the last statements, explanations of the American side will be required. Bolton and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Tuesday. On Monday, Bolton meets with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Sen. Bob Corker, a member of Trumps Republican Party, warned that withdrawing from the INF could lead to undoing other arms treaties. But he suggested that Trumps statement could be aimed at pressuring Moscow rather than a firm determination to leave the treaty.

Maybe this is just a move to say, look ... if you dont straighten up were moving out of this, he said Sunday on CNN. And I hope thats the case.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pointed the finger at Bolton, saying on Fox News that he is likely the one advising Trump to withdraw and I dont think he recognizes the important achievement of Reagan and Gorbachev on this.

The prospect of withdrawing from the INF adds to the substantial tensions between Washington and Moscow, including allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and sanctions imposed over Russias involvement in the eastern Ukraine conflict.

On Friday, the U.S. announced criminal charges against a Russian for alleged attempts to influence next months midterm elections.

The treaty helps protect the security of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Far East, but has constrained the U.S. from developing new weapons.

The U.S. will begin developing them unless Russia and China agree not to possess or develop the weapons, Trump said. China isnt a party to the pact.

Well have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say lets really get smart and lets none of us develop those weapons, but if Russias doing it and if Chinas doing it, and were adhering to the agreement, thats unacceptable, he said.

Trump didnt provide details about violations. But in 2017, White House national security officials said Russia had deployed a cruise missile in violation of the treaty. Earlier, the Obama administration accused the Russians of violating the pact by developing and testing a prohibited cruise missile.

Russia has repeatedly denied that it has violated the treaty and has accused the U.S. of not being in compliance.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis has previously suggested that a Trump administration proposal to add a sea-launched cruise missile to Washingtons nuclear arsenal could provide the U.S. with leverage to try to persuade Russia to come back in line on the arms treaty.

Russias Foreign Ministry said in February that the country would consider using nuclear weapons only in response to an attack involving nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or in response to a non-nuclear assault that endangered the survival of the Russian nation.

Trumps decision could prove controversial with European allies and others who see value in the treaty, said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who focuses on nuclear arms control.

Once the United States withdraws from the treaty, there is no reason for Russia to even pretend it is observing the limits, he wrote in a post on the organizations website. Moscow will be free to deploy the 9M729 cruise missile, and an intermediate-range ballistic missile if it wants, without any restraint.

In the past, the Obama administration worked to persuade Moscow to respect the INF treaty, but made little progress.

If they get smart and if others get smart and they say lets not develop these horrible nuclear weapons, I would be extremely happy with that, but as long as somebodys violating the agreement, were not going to be the only ones to adhere to it, Trump said.In a decision handed down on January 16 2018, the German Federal Patent Court confirmed that an opposition against a trade mark can be based on a company name (28 W (pat) 7/16 - eberth/EBERTH).

In 2013, the applicant filed for registration of the device mark EBERTH claiming protection for machines in Class 7. An opposition against this trade mark was filed based on the opponent's company name Eberth. As evidence for the existence of this right, the opponent submitted a business letter from the year 1990, an offer letter from 1992, an order confirmation from 2007 as well as invoices from 2005 to 2015, all referring to either eberth group, www.eberth.com and/or eberth MASCHINEN- UND ANLAGENBAU. The Court found that these documents were suitable to evidence the use and therefore existence of the prior company name eberth in Germany in connection with the production and sale of transportation and packaging apparatus and installations before the application date of the contested mark. The Court therefore upheld the opposition. The Court confirmed that rights to a company name may not only be invoked against another company name but also against use (and registration) of a sign as trade mark, because a trade mark designates the commercial origin of a product of a specific undertaking and therefore, indirectly, also designates the company behind the product.

This decision is in line with the German Trade Mark Act and recent case law. It is therefore not surprising, but it does emphasise the importance of rights for a company name or other business names. Such rights are often ignored or considered to be of minor effectiveness. For example, unlike a national German trade mark, a company name is not automatically protected in the whole territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Also, rather than simply referring to a registered list of goods and services of a trade mark, it may be more difficult to provide evidence for exactly which goods and services a company name has been used. However, if done correctly, such rights to a company name can be a very effective way of enforcing a company's rights against third parties. For example, the required level of distinctiveness for a company name is lower than that required for a trade mark. Also, single elements of a company name like eberth may be protected even when embedded in a longer name like eberth MASCHINEN- UND ANLAGENBAU. Thus, where appropriate, owners of a company name may wish to consider the possibility of enforcing such rights against third parties, even where trade marks are concerned, rather than other company name rights.

Susanna Heurung

Elisenhof, Elisenstr. 3

80335 Munich, Germany

Tel: +49 89 747 266 0

Fax: +49 89 776 424

info@maiwald.eu

www.maiwald.eu

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Share this articleSeveral years ago, a company registered a trade mark no 616808 on application no 2015721705 with priority of June 14 2015 for services in Class 41.

The image contained a stylised picture of a lion under which there was a wavy ribbon with the inscription DOCENDO DISCIMUS.

The owner of international registration no 1198888 valid in Russia in respect of the same services in Class 41 appealed against the registration no 616808. The trade mark of the appellant is also a combined designation including a stylised picture of a shield with an image of a lion. The shield is inserted into a circle resembling a fastened belt with the inscription KINGS COLLEGE. A stylised picture of a crown is located above the whole image while under it there is a wavy ribbon with the word elements HONESTY FAITH COURAGE.

The owner of the contested trade mark, in response to the appeal, argued that the picture of the lion is not decisive when comparing both trade marks because the image of the lion has lost distinctiveness resulting in a number of trade marks which have been registered with the image: nos 917640, 1217015, 1167712, 393919.

Despite this, the Chamber of Patent Disputes upheld the appeal and cancelled registration no 616808. Why did it do this?

The designations under comparison include word elements different in their pronunciation: DOCENDO DISCIMUS,KINGS COLLEGE and HONESTY FAITH COURAGE respectively. On the other hand, the compared designations should be recognised as similar due to the overall visual impression they create; they include similar compositions laid out in the same graphic manner.

In the first place, stylised pictures of lions placed in the central part of the designation strike the eye. The lions are practically the same. They stand on their hind paws and are pictured in profile. The designations include lions in the same location standing against the background of a shield placed in a circle. Ribbons curved at their ends occupy the same position and both include word elements.

As a result of the above, and considering that most of the essential individual pictorial elements in the designations are similar, the Chamber of Patent Disputes came to the conclusion that they are similar despite their insignificant differences.

The owner of the disputed trade mark argued that the image of the lion should not be decisive when comparing the designations because the image had lost its distinctiveness. The Chamber dismissed this argument and stated that other cited trade marks include images of lions that are different from those in the compared designations.

Both trade marks were registered in relation to Class 41 and the owner of trade mark no 616808 did not dispute this.

There were also arguments regarding relevant trade marks and court judgments outside Russia. However, these arguments were dismissed as irrelevant.



Vladimir Biriulin

Gorodissky & Partners

Russia 129010, Moscow

B. Spasskaya Str

25, stroenie 3

Tel: +7 495 937 6116 / 6109

Fax: +7 495 937 6104 / 6123

pat@gorodissky.ru

www.gorodissky.com

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Share this article100 years ago, the world was shaken by the October Revolution. We rightly celebrate this heroic act as the first instance of workers power in history. But how exactly did the Bolsheviks and the working class exercise a power never-before wielded by the proletariat? What problems did they face  economic, administrative, political and military, from within and outside Russia  and how did they meet them? Derek Gunby provides an analysis and balance sheet of 1918: the first year of the Russian Revolution.

1918 proved to be one of the most tumultuous and violent years the world had ever seen. Not only were vast armies from all countries and continents fighting a gruesome World War but also the victorious Russian Revolution of October 1917 was facing a huge wave of internationally financed armies, Russian and Foreign, dedicated to its overthrow. By the end of the year the World War was over. The Bolshevik-led workers and peasants government of Russia had withstood all possible trials to secure a vital foothold for the revolution and begin the long task of defeating all the elements of armed counter-revolution. Much remained to be done and it wasnt until 1921 that Soviet power had been fully consolidated in all of Russia. This article traces the key events and identifies the main challenges facing the revolution in 1918, the decisive role of the Bolshevik Party and its leaders and the lessons that remain for us today.

The Bolshevik-led workers and peasants government of Russia withstood all possible trials to secure the revolution / Image: public domain

A revolution involves a tremendous clash of class interests, as has happened at various junctures throughout human history, such as the English Revolution of 1642, the French Revolution of 1789, the Paris Commune of 1871 and then the Russian Revolutions of 1917. These are rare events that are important to understand for all those interested in human affairs, but especially Marxist revolutionaries who seek to change the world bourgeois order to a working class order that will pave the way for a classless society.

Revolutions are the highest expression of historical change. They mark a qualitative change in the development of human society. During such revolutions the masses enter into direct political action. In the normal course of events politics is conducted by relatively small numbers of people representing class interests. But, in a major revolution, such as occurred in Russia in 1917, large numbers of ordinary people throw off such inhibitions and directly participate to achieve a transfer of power. However, it also requires a conscious and clear-headed political agency with a political programme to channel and direct this creative energy to transform society.

As revolutionaries, our aim is to be a part of that critical political agency. We need to arm ourselves with past experiences to guide future action. We need to understand the processes that occur during a revolutionary period. These lessons cannot be applied mechanically but must be refracted through the prisms of subsequent history and our current experience. Nothing is ever repeated exactly. We take from the past and test its relevance and application today to see how this may offer some guidance as to how to adapt effectively to our own age.

Russia at the end of 1917

The Russian Empire at the end of 1917 was a huge conglomeration of nationalities and ethnic groups covering millions of square miles from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Baltic and Black seas in the west. With a population of over 178 million people it was overwhelmingly a rural and agrarian society. Eighty percent of the population was composed of peasants living for the most part in scattered villages with poor communications between them. To the Russian peasants, the village and surrounding fields was, for all practical purposes, their world. Whilst in 1861 the peasants had been freed from serfdom, the legislation doing so had failed to modernise and develop agriculture and the conditions of the peasants still lagged way behind most other comparable European countries.

Russia in 1918 was mostly a rural and agrarian society / Image: public domain

Industry was concentrated in a few areas such as St. Petersburg and Moscow, with oil production in Baku in the south and coal mining in the Ukraines Donets Basin. A great proportion of the industrial capital was owned by foreign interests especially in St Petersburg, and the national capitalist class was both weak and divided, with much of it heavily dependent on the state. Some of its factories were very modern and even by world standards extremely large, especially in the capital St. Petersburg. This created a relatively compact and concentrated working class, much of it recruited relatively recently from the villages.

Nationalities

The Russian Empire consisted of a large number of different nations that had, over the years, been conquered and suppressed by the Russian Tsarist state. These comprised, among others, the Baltic States, Poland, Finland, the Ukraine, the various Caucasus States such as Georgia, Belorussia, Bessarabia, and a number of Asian States such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and others. Nationalism was, therefore, a potent force within Russia and something that required a response from all socialist parties.

This issue had provoked considerable debate in Marxist circles. It demanded creating federated socialist states on the basis of of international socialism in addition to the more immediate question of throwing off the yoke of Russian imperialism. Lenins approach was practical. He recognised, unlike Rosa Luxemburg, that in order for the working class to achieve victory in an empire of oppressed nationalities, they had to win over those masses, often peasants and other petty-bourgeois classes, by adopting the principle of the right of all nations to self-determination. Without this approach the task of the Socialist Revolution in Russia would have been impossible.

The Russian Orthodox Church

The power and wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church was considerable. But it was strongly linked to the Tsar and the old Imperialist order. Whilst it had held tremendous sway over the peasant masses, the experience of the First World War and the growing disapproval of the Tsar caused a significant loss of its authority. During the counter-revolution and civil war the Church unreservedly backed the reactionary forces, leading to an even greater weakening of loyalty from the masses. Its power, wealth and influence were considerably reduced by new Bolshevik government decrees confiscating Church land and privileges and restricting its operations and influence.

During the counter-revolution and civil war the Church unreservedly backed the reactionary forces, weakening the loyalty of the masses / Image: public domain

Classes and conditions in Russia in late 1917

Russia in late 1917 was clearly in crisis. The country had been involved in a devastating World War for three years. The soldiers were weary and rebellious, prone to mutiny, with many deserting and returning to their peasant homes. The Provisional Government that followed the February Revolution failed to tackle any of the acute issues of war, food or land and was plainly ineffective. The economy and general morale of the country was in tatters. The motor for change in Russia was the relatively small but powerful working class. They had organised themselves in Soviets that became a parallel power to the Government. The old governing structures of the State and local Dumas became the last redoubts of the bourgeois class, allied with some of the remnants of the old aristocracy.

The Provisional Government that followed the February Revolution failed to tackle any of the acute issues of war, food or land / Image: public domain

The bourgeois class  the bankers, capitalists, big business managers and senior civil servants  was small, though relatively wealthy and with access to resources. However, it lacked the weight and history of similar classes in Western Europe and the USA. The Russian bourgeois had been denied a full place in government due to the backward nature of the Russian state. Whilst they gained leading positions in the first Provisional Government after the February Revolution, they proved weak and ineffective. The vast peasantry was not homogenous but, rather, split into rich, middle and poor peasants with the poorest, often landless, by far the larger proportion. Most peasants were poorly represented in governing structures. Local administration remained in the hands of the large landowners and their supporters, including rural merchants and businessmen and kulaks (rich peasants).

The Red Guards

Armed workers militias, known as the Red Guards, had emerged at the time of the February 1917 Revolution, often in spontaneous form. Various factories and political parties sought to encourage and develop such units. The Bolsheviks were the most successful and ardent in promoting the idea of armed workers militias. There was a suppression of the Red Guards after the events of July 1917 but this was reversed in September in the face of the threat to the Provisional Government by General Kornilov, and the forces under his command, who were then threatening Petrograd. The Bolsheviks were entreated to assist the resistance and rapidly mobilised and armed 25,000 Red Guards. After that, the Red Guards remained a key feature of future struggles in all the major cities and at the moment of the October Revolution, numbered 200,000. After the revolution, the Red Guards performed the functions of the police and army until such times as new police and Red Army units were constituted, sometimes quite late into 1918.

After the revolution, the Red Guards performed the functions of the police and army until new police and Red Army units were constituted / Image: public domain

Political Parties and Leaders

By the autumn of 1917, the Bolsheviks had gained a majority following among the urban working class but had a minority position in the countryside. The Bolshevik Party had a number of strong distinguishing features that gave it a unique strength in the conditions of Russia in late 1917 and into the turmoil of 1918. They had a grounding in Marxist theory, especially dialectical thinking, which allowed them to analyse events from all angles and uncover the underlying forces that such events represented.

There was no culture of rigid and uniform thinking in the Bolshevik Party. In the heat of the revolution there were initially several splits and occasionally resignations and later re-joining. Lenin, outstanding as the most sober, the most realistic, the chief dialectician, and Trotsky, also a great dialectician, proved to be head and shoulders above all other Bolshevik leaders in their capacity to analyse events and urge decisive action. Within the Party there was a strong tradition of internal democracy and debate. Leaders were acknowledged but opposed if they were thought to be wrong. Conversely, leaders accepted decisions that went against them, even if continuing to oppose them in debate. This pertained even in the darkest hours and throughout 1918 and up to 1924, when Lenin died and Stalin took the reins and changed this key Party principle. Once Lenin arrived back in Russia in April 1917, the Party developed great elan and confidence, which they transmitted to the working class and spurred heroic efforts to protect and advance the revolution. The Bolsheviks embodied the aspirations of the most advanced layers of the working class and utilised their skills and energy. This convinced ever-widening layers of workers, soldiers and poor peasants of the value and aims of the Bolsheviks.

By the autumn of 1917, the Bolsheviks had gained a majority following among the urban working class but had a minority position in the countryside / Image: public domain

The Social Revolutionary Party (SR) was founded in 1902 and was a member of the Second International. The Party was an amalgam of various influences, including some Marxism and some of the ideas of the old populist and terrorist group the Narodniks, but were primarily a reformist party with a focus on land reform. Unlike the Bolsheviks, the SRs placed an emphasis on individual, rather than collective outcomes for successful land reform. It was essentially a peasant-based party and thus tended to vacillate between the classes in its positions, since the peasantry is composed of scattered and heterogeneous elements, some much richer than others. In 1917 it was the majority party of the countryside with strong support among ordinary soldiers, who were in the main of peasant origin. They played a major role in the formation and leadership of the Soviets, albeit in most cases playing second fiddle to the Mensheviks.

After the February 1917 revolution the SR Party became a major component of the new Provisional Government. As that Government moved to the right under the pressure of events and Kerensky took the reins of power, the left faction of the SRs, led by Maria Spiridonova, began to establish a separate position, more sympathetic to the Bolsheviks. At the Second Congress of Soviets in October 1917, when the Bolsheviks proclaimed the deposition of the Provisional government, the split within the SR Party became final. The Left SRs stayed at the Congress and were elected to the permanent Soviet Executive (initially refusing to join the Bolshevik government), while the Right SR Party and their Menshevik allies walked out. Later, the Left SR Party joined the Bolshevik government, obtaining three ministries. The Right SRs thereafter moved into opposition to the new Bolshevik-led government, eventually taking up arms and attempting uprisings and later linking with the reactionary White armies.

The Mensheviks were a socialist and Marxist party, but their Marxism was of a rigid and mechanistic form. Along with the Bolsheviks they had originally been part of the Russian Social Democratic Party. They split with the Bolsheviks over the definition of membership of the Party. But, in fact, the deeper cause for the difference between the two factions lay in the Menshevik belief that socialism could not be achieved in Russia due to its backward economic conditions, and that Russia would first have to experience a bourgeois democratic revolution and go through a capitalist stage of development before socialism was technically possible and before the working class could develop the necessary consciousness for a socialist revolution. Thus, the Mensheviks were opposed to the Bolshevik idea of the party and the pursuit of socialist revolution in Russia.

Their opposition to revolutionary Marxism led inexorably to a path of reformism and eventually, for most of them, opposition to the October Revolution. The Mensheviks gained a considerable following among the working class in the run up to the February Revolution and often held majorities in Soviets and a strong presence in local Dumas. But their support for the War and their participation in an increasingly unpopular Provisional Government saw their support melt away throughout 1917. Following the October Revolution they split between the majority right faction, led by Tsereteli, who favoured action against the Bolsheviks and the left faction, led by Martov, who tended to support the Reds in the civil war but refused to break completely with the right section. Many of the most militant Mensheviks joined the Bolsheviks.

The Anarchists were relatively small and unpredictable. At times supporting the Bolsheviks, at times opposing / Image: public domain

The Anarchists were relatively small and unpredictable. At times supporting the Bolsheviks, at times opposing. In the Spring of 1918 they were disarmed following attempts to stage an uprising within Russia. Initially the Anarchists were principally urban and drawn from the ranks of the intellectual and other petty-bourgeois elements, but in the Ukraine anarchist bands of guerrillas rested on the peasantry. There they eventually coalesced into a large force under Makhno, who fought all-comers, mainly the Germans, but later also the Whites and eventually the Reds.

The Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets), formed in 1905, was the main bourgeois party, representing capitalist interests. They were broadly liberal, favouring a constitutional monarchy and bourgeois democracy. Following the February Revolution they held five portfolios in the first Provisional Government, including that of Prime Minister (Prince Lvov) and Foreign Minister (Miliukov). Their position steadily eroded as opposition mounted to the Provisional Governments War Policy. Following the October Revolution they called for the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime and supported counter-revolution. As a consequence they were banned in December 1917.

Consolidating gains, October to December 1917

It is not the task of this article to go into any detail of the seizure of power in October 1917. Leon Trotsky has brilliantly captured this event in his History of the Russian Revolution, John Reed in Ten Days that Shook the World and many other pieces, including recent articles from In Defence of Marxism. The fact of the matter is that the resounding slogan of the Bolshevik Party, "All Power to the Soviets! received an immediate and overwhelming endorsement from the soldiers and working class in virtually every town and city throughout the Russian Empire.

In fact, in Tallin, Estonia the Soviet seized power two days before the revolution in Petrograd, and on the day of that insurrection, successful transfers of power were also achieved in Minsk, Novorod, Ivanovo-Voznesensk and Tartu. Within eight days of the declaration of a new workers state, a further 21 towns and cities had achieved Soviet-led power. Resistance from either the Provisional Government forces or from hostile class forces was, initially, universally weak.

The exception to this was Moscow, where poor planning and preparation by the Bolsheviks and the local Soviet, coupled with a strong resistance from armed Kadets, meant that taking power involved some serious fighting over six days, leading to the loss of some 400 lives. But, by the end of 1917, most of the provincial areas of Russia had declared for Soviet power, usually under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. However, the separate nationalities in the Ukraine, the Baltic States and areas of southern Russia around the Don and in the Caucasus Region proved more resistant to socialist revolution and these were to be acute zones of struggle for years to come.

The first steps of the counter-revolution

While the taking of power proved relatively easy, the counter-revolution soon commenced and various attempts were made to turn back the tide of socialist revolution. In Petrograd, the first, ill-fated attempt to thwart the revolution was undertaken by military cadets, known as Junkers (sons of the bourgeois and middle class), who mounted an armed struggle against the Bolsheviks. After a short conflict, the Red Guards easily disarmed them.

More problematic for the new state was the effort by Kerensky, the former head of the Provisional Government, to wrest back control of the capital by using elements of the Cossacks. Having fled Petrograd in disguise, Kerensky tried to galvanise the Imperial Army from the Northern Front headquarters at Psov. However, the Imperial Army was divided and only General Krasnov agreed to organise an expedition against Petrograd. He set off with 700 Cossacks, hoping others would join him on the way.

These forces, lacking morale and any sizeable infantry support, were defeated by Red Guards, recruited from the Petrograd factories, on the Pulkovo Heights, just a few kilometres from Petrograd. These events occurred only five days after the successful revolution in Petrograd. This marked the end of Kerenskys direct role in Russian events and he fled to Paris. Krasnov was arrested but later released and went on to participate in the civil war on the side of White Russian counter-revolution.

Laying the foundations for a new socialist order

Following the defeat of these first attempted coups, the new Bolshevik Government was given some breathing space and proceeded to lay down the foundations for a new, socialist system. Lenin drove the pace of change relentlessly. Only a few months prior to the October Revolution, Lenin had completed one of his outstanding works, State and Revolution. This spelled out with great clarity the Marxist view of the state as an instrument of class domination and the need for a successful proletarian revolution to transform the machinery and practice of the state into a vehicle of working-class rule.

Lenin knew that it was vital to establish the outlines of a new workers state immediately after taking power / Image: public domain

Lenin knew that it was vital to establish the outlines of a new workers state immediately after taking power. Part of his thinking was that the revolution was unlikely to succeed unless and until revolution broke out in one of the advanced capitalist countries. It was therefore imperative to lay down all the markers of a new order so as to establish a guide for the future. Decree after decree was promulgated. By the end of 1917, just over nine weeks after the successful seizure of power, 25 major decrees had been passed, covering such issues as peace, land, the press, civic rights, abolition of estates and titles, right of recall of elected representatives, the judicial system, internal security, economic planning, workers control in industry, unemployment insurance, nationalisation of the banks, civil marriage and so on. Many more decrees followed in 1918. In December, the government established the Economic Planning Council to direct production and distribution.

Resistance to revolutionary change: the old classes and the reformist parties

Efforts to establish the new order were carried on amidst the mounting fury of the old order, frantically scrabbling to get a purchase on the situation. Unable, at this stage, to secure any military support against the new government, the old classes resorted to sabotage and non-compliance. Many of the higher-ranking civil servants refused to cooperate with the new powers unless forced at gunpoint.

The first Council of Peoples Commissars, established in late October 1917, comprised solely Bolshevik Ministers. The Left-SR Party was invited to take some government posts but refused on the grounds that they wanted a government that included all parties represented in the Soviets. This demand was taken up by the Right-SR Party and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks could not agree to this, as some parties were continuing to oppose the revolution and seek the overthrow of the government.

The Mensheviks used their dominant position in the Railway Workers Union Executive Committee to pressure the Bolshevik government to accede to the demands for a broad Coalition Government. This was no idle threat, as the railways were key to transport and the movement of arms, goods and other vital necessities. Moreover, they used this muscle to sabotage and disrupt the Bolshevik governments operations as much as they could. For instance, they refused to allow trains to send troops to assist the revolution in Moscow. They also sought to mobilise other trade unions against the Bolshevik government, many of whom had backward, bureaucratic structures led by Mensheviks.

12 Bolshevik members of the cabinet, including Zinoviev (pictured), argued for an all-socialist government in "broad coalition" / Image: public domain

While the majority of Bolshevik leaders rejected the idea of a broad coalition, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Nogin and Milyutin  all members of the Bolshevik Central Committee  supported this demand, going so far as to resign from the committee when they lost the vote on 14 November.

Shortly afterwards, five out of the 12 Bolshevik members of the cabinet, including three of the above, resigned their posts and published a manifesto calling for an all-socialist government. Lenin responded robustly. He pointed out that the Left-SRs had been offered places in the government and had declined, and that the purely Bolshevik government had been created and unanimously ratified by the Congress of Soviets. Lenin denounced Zinoviev and Kamenev as deserters and pointed out that they had behaved in a similar strike-breaking fashion before the uprising. In the end, the reformist parties had no support among the broad mass of workers, nor in the Soviets, and the idea of a broad coalition collapsed.

While this set the scene for future battles with the Right-SRs and Mensheviks, the Left-SRs, under pressure from a Peasants Congress in late November, agreed to participate in the Bolshevik government and fuse with the Soviet Executive Committee. By the end of 1917, the Left-SRs received three places in the cabinet.

The Constituent Assembly and the issue of democracy

Holding elections for a Russian Constituent Assembly had long been a key demand of all socialists, including the Bolsheviks. It was seen as a popular demand to challenge the power of the aristocratic and upper-bourgeois classes entrenched in Dumas (the parliaments and city councils that operated prior to the establishment of the Soviets).

The Provisional Government endorsed the demand after the February Revolution and eventually set the time for elections in late 1917. After the October Revolution, when power had passed to the Soviets, Lenin took the position that the elections should be postponed. He argued that an elected Constituent Assembly represented the highest level of democracy in a bourgeois republic, but once power had been won by the workers on the basis of all power to the soviets, this new proletarian democracy represented a higher level still.

While socialists subscribe to democratic processes and indeed demand ever-improved ways of representing the mass of people, the precise form of democracy is not set in stone but must be chosen on the basis that the rights and needs of the exploited are fully and constantly represented. The new workers democracy that emerged in revolutionary Russia was not some formal, bureaucratic, once-every-five-years type of system, but a living, breathing, everyday democracy, where delegates were regularly changed in response to new events and new opinions. The right of recall meant that 50 percent plus one of the electorate could recall their delegate at any time.

Lenin was also against holding Constituent Assembly elections on very practical grounds, arguing that to hold the elections on the basis of out-dated electoral rolls did not reflect the split in the SR Party that had led to effectively two parties  Left-SRs-and Right SRs  and therefore could not accurately reflect political reality at that time. Moreover, he argued there was a need to lower the voting age to 18 and to outlaw counter-revolutionaries who were determined to overthrow the soviet government by force. Without these changes, the election would favour the declining forces of Right-SRs and Kadets. But he was out-voted by the other Bolsheviks, the majority still clinging to a formal notion of democracy.

As Lenin had predicted, the Constituent Assembly in the conditions of late 1917 was at best an irrelevance / Image: public domain

In the event Lenin was absolutely correct. The elections were held before the revolution had been consolidated. The result was that the SRs were by far the largest party, with the Bolsheviks some way behind in second place. But the result also confirmed two further facts. The first was that the whole country was overwhelmingly left oriented. Moderate socialists, including the SRs, gained 62 percent of the vote; and the Bolsheviks, as revolutionary socialists, around 25 percent. The main bourgeois party, the Kadets, achieved less than 5 percent and the Mensheviks, once so powerful, were reduced to 3.3 percent; much of this vote concentrated in the Caucasus, and Georgia in particular.

While these results seemed to show a powerful position for the SRs, it needs to be borne in mind that the Left-SRs were scarcely on the ballot, due, as Lenin said, to out-dated rolls and candidates. Had the Left-SRs been properly represented there is little doubt the result would have looked very different.

In addition, the Bolsheviks won overwhelmingly in all the urban areas and their immediate periphery, and among many of the key soldier and navy units based in the north. Socialist Revolutionaries who dominated the Constituent Assembly represented the political confusion and indecision of the petty bourgeoisie in the towns and the millions of peasants who were relatively distant from the capital and industrial centres. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many peasants were fully behind Bolshevik policies without realising they were Bolshevik, and also thought Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders were German spies. This latter, insidious lie was widely spread by the bourgeois and Right-SR leaders and their press to confuse peasant voters.

As Lenin had predicted, the Constituent Assembly in the conditions of late 1917 was at best an irrelevance and at worst provided another basis for seeking to overthrow the Bolshevik government. He set out his view with great clarity in an article in Pravda in December 1917. The Theses on the Constituent Assembly hammered home in 19 points the basic arguments Lenin had advanced to the Bolsheviks prior to the elections. He was to take up the issue of bourgeois and proletarian democracy again in a polemic he wrote to counter Kautskys revisionist pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, at the end of 1918.

Delegates to the Constituent Assembly began to arrive in the capital in December. Tension was high as the counter-revolution was underway in the Ukarine under General Kaledin and steps were also afoot to start a White Army in the Don region. The Kadets support for an armed counter-revolution led by Kaledin led the government to ban the party and the arrest of some of its leaders.

The Constituent Assembly met in January 1918. The Right-SRs were aware of the opposition they faced from the Soviets and the Bolsheviks and tried to prepare a defence, with a Military Organisation and a Committee for the Defence of the Constituent Assembly. They also had a paper (The Grey Overcoat) and the support of two regiments, plus other soldiers recalled from the front. They also had a strong terrorist group. Their main supporters, the peasants, did not seem very concerned about the outcome as they had primarily seen the SR Party and the Constituent Assembly as a means of getting land, which had already by then been promised by the Bolshevik Government through an important decree.

A Right-SR terrorist group had infiltrated the headquarters of the Bolshevik Party and laid plans to kidnap or assassinate its key leaders, Lenin and Trotsky. The leadership called this off when it became apparent that the plan had been leaked. A right-wing demonstration was held on 5 January, attended by the ranks of the citys petty bourgeois: clerks, intellectuals and so on. They were easily dispersed. It was a sort of botched insurrection. The two regiments that originally supported the SR Party came over to the Bolsheviks.

It was against this tense background that the first and only meeting of the Assembly took place. Sverdlov, on behalf of the Soviet Executive Committee, seized the presiding officers bell, declared the meeting open and proceeded to propose a long resolution endorsing all the actions and decrees taken by the Soviet government so far. This was ignored by the Right-SR majority, which proceeded to the election of a president.

Chernov, of the Right-SR Party, achieved 244 votes, as against 153 for Marie Spiridonova, the Left-SR, whom the Bolsheviks supported. Speeches were then made to a background of boos and catcalls from the soldiers in the gallery. When the Assembly refused to discuss Sverdlovs motion, the Bolsheviks withdrew. The Assembly rambled on, passing three laws on land, a similar one to the Bolsheviks on peace (agreeing to the armistice) and finally proclaiming a democratic federative republic. At 5am, the Assembly was ordered to close, as the guards were tired. It dispersed, never to meet again, as the All-Russian Soviet Executive Committee dissolved the Assembly, saying that it served only as a cover for the overthrow of the Soviets. There was popular indifference to this move and the Assembly faded into history.

By the end of 1917, the October Revolution had managed to survive and defeat all the initial forces ranged against it. Moreover, the spirit and mood of the workers and soldiers still coursed with energy. The flames of the revolution, far from sputtering into darkness were burning brightly. But major obstacles to a lasting victory remained. One of the most pressing in the new year of 1918 was the matter of how best to end the war with Germany and the Central Powers.

Taking control of finance and the economy

The Banks were the first important industries to be nationalised.

The state bank refused to pay out money to the new government and the managers went on strike. Eventually, after threatening the officials, the government managed to retrieve 5m roubles. Private banks also refused to assist the new government, leading to their forcible seizure and opening of their vaults. At end of December 1917, all banks were nationalised and fused with the state bank. Withdrawals were limited to no more than 250 roubles per week.

Large houses were taken into public ownership and industrial enterprises that refused to abide by workers management were generally taken over. All gold held privately was confiscated by the state. In January, all payments of dividends and dealings in shares were made illegal. In February, all foreign debts were repudiated. Big industry was not immediately nationalised but certain individual concerns of strategic interest were, such as the electricity industry, the Putilov munitions factories and the Belgian Metal Company.

Wages and salaries became the main source of income for all. The government took steps to equalize these. To establish a precedent, the salary of the Peoples Commissars was made equal to the average of a skilled worker (500 roubles a month), with an additional 100 roubles per month for each dependant. Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Bolsheviks set a strong example of austere living.

Proletarian organisation

Victor Serge in his book, Year One of the Revolution, mentions that Lenin had urged that miracles of proletarian organisation must be achieved in order to overcome the many-headed resistance of the bourgeois class. Only in this way, especially in these early stages, could their resistance and opposition be overcome.

Lenin urged that miracles of proletarian organisation must be achieved in order to overcome the many-headed resistance of the bourgeois class / Image: public domain

In fact, in the months after the revolution, the policy of the Soviet government consisted principally in awakening, stimulating, sometimes guiding, but more usually simply endorsing the initiative of the masses. The Peoples Commissars were ordered, by decree, to work in close contact with the mass organisations of working men and women, the sailors and soldiers. Workers took initiatives in many diverse ways. Certain trade unions, for example, undertook to organise sections of industries. In many enterprises, offices as well as factories, employees found that they had to manage their places of work as their superiors had abandoned their positions. This was regularised in a decree legalising the intervention of workers in the management of industry and other workplaces. Workers control of industry and offices became widespread.

Some degree of planning and coordination, however, was vital and in December the government established the Supreme Economic Council. This body had the task of coordinating all the activities of local and central organs, which managed and controlled production and distribution. This was the beginning of a centralised planning system that would supplant the rule of the capitalist market.

The press

The Bolsheviks, in common with many socialists, had called for the freedom of the press under the restricted and repressive conditions of the old order. Certainly, it was the early intention of the Soviet government to allow general press freedom. In an early decree on the press, reference was made to the fact that some suppression of the bourgeois press had been undertaken in the immediate period of the revolution. The slogan freedom of the press concealed the fact that it was freedom for the propertied class, as they had taken hold of the lions share of the press to poison, unhindered, the minds and obscure the consciousness of the masses.

The decree went on to state:

As soon as the new (socialist) order has been consolidated all administrative pressure on the press will be terminated and it will be granted complete freedom within the bounds of legal responsibility, in keeping with a law that will be broadest and most progressive in this respect.

Meanwhile the Bolsheviks reserved the right to suppress publications that called for open resistance to the new Government, used slander or distorted facts. In fact, the bourgeois press was operating, relatively freely, as late as May 1918, despite the pressures on the regime. This press remained vicious and slanderous. As conditions deteriorated, press freedoms were curtailed for a number of bourgeois publications and some of the SR publications. This was extended as the civil war intensified and foreign armies intervened in the civil war.

Later in July 1918, the new Constitution of the Soviet Union stated in article 14:

In order to ensure genuine freedom of expression for the working people, the RSFSR abolishes the dependence of the press on capital, and places at the disposal of the working class and the poor peasantry all the technical and material requisites for the publication of newspaper, pamphlets, books and all other printed matter, and guarantees their unhindered circulation throughout the country.

State security and the Cheka

As Lenin had spelled out in State and Revolution, the state is at root an instrument of class rule that depends on force to ensure its survival. In the last analysis, this is achieved through having available armed bodies of men, such as the army, police and security forces, to ensure the will of the ruling class. The transfer of one class rule to another is a process of immense struggle that has always involved armed confrontation. The new workers state therefore had to have its own bodies of armed men.

The Bolsheviks established the Extraordinary Commission for Struggle against Sabotage and Counter-Revolution, otherwise known as the Cheka, and placed in charge the Bolshevik leader Dzerzhinsky / Image: public domain

These took time to establish. In the first instance, they took the form of workers militias, which became known as the Red Guards. They acted as both the shock troops of the revolution and the upholders of order within the towns. In terms of internal security, every state deploys its own specialist services. The Bolsheviks established the Extraordinary Commission for Struggle against Sabotage and Counter-Revolution, otherwise known as the Cheka, and placed in charge the Bolshevik leader Dzerzhinsky. In the early stages this organisation proved relatively mild and in the first few months of the revolution there were remarkably few executions or instances of draconian action. However, as the struggle with the reactionary and imperialist forces intensified, the Cheka accrued additional powers and met force with force, achieving a formidable reputation.

Social and cultural changes

Early soviet decrees highlighted the desire of the new order to radically transform social, cultural and religious norms. Central to this was the release of women from their position of legal subservience and oppression in law. In future, only civil weddings were to be recognised by the state and divorce was to be made freely available to either partner. Men and women were given full juridical equality. Children born out of wedlock were to be given the same rights as offspring of marriages. The criminal code that outlawed homosexual activity was abolished, making Russia among the first in the world to do so.

Early in 1918, a law was passed that separated the church from the state. It declared the right of any citizen to profess any religion or none. Religious oaths were abolished, as were church schools. Churches were not allowed to own property and all such property was declared the property of the people, with local and state authorities having the right to hand over buildings of worship to religious societies for free use.

Under Lunacharsky, radical artists were promoted and Russia's rich cultural heritage was made available to the masses / Image: public domain

In further efforts to align Russia with the modern world, it was agreed to end the use of the Justinian Calendar and, from February 1918, to adopt the Gregorian and West European calendar. This added 13 days to the year and the Revolution of 25 October was subsequently celebrated on 7 November. The Cyrillic script used in printing materials was also simplified.

The orator and somewhat maverick intellectual, the Bolshevik Lunacharsky, was appointed Commissar of Education. His brief also included protecting and advancing the cultural heritage of Russia. He proved a brilliant choice for this office. He was able to cajole and persuade reluctant teachers and academics to continue their teaching and research work under the new regime, despite many of them opposing the new direction. Under his leadership, a major programme to combat illiteracy was embarked upon and he proceeded to reform teaching procedures in a progressive libertarian spirit. New ideas, including Marxism, were introduced into curricula. His approach aroused considerable international interest.

He sought to popularise the arts, taking music, drama, literature and the visual arts to the masses. He was not afraid of the avant-garde and promoted the likes of Chagall and Tatlin to key academies, alongside the work of Eisenstein, the radical filmmaker.

Justice and administration

Justice systems also reflect class rule and so there was an early wholesale change to the Russian justice system. All the general judicial institutions were abolished. Justices of the Peace (JPs) were replaced with local courts represented by a permanent local judge, elected on the basis of direct, democratic suffrage, and two alternate assessors selected by local Soviets. Former JPs and judges were not disbarred from standing for the new posts. Similar changes were made to district and higher courts. Other detailed changes were made to court procedure.

Local government had been largely run by city and council dumas and these were effectively replaced by local and regional soviets. Other local committees and structures also became important, especially the various peasant committees and later the committees of the poor. Local co-operative structures also gained more power after the revolution, although these waned somewhat during the harsh exigencies of 1918 when increased central control was exerted in all aspects of administration.

In July 1918, the All-Russian Soviet agreed a new constitution for The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. This was arranged into the following main articles:

Declaration of rights of the labouring and exploited people. General provisions, which set down a number of key principles. Organisation of Soviet power. The right to vote. The budget. The coat of Arms and Flag.

This is an important document as it marked the formal and encoded establishment of a new workers state with all its key principles and operating mechanisms. Although, given the acute crises facing Russia at this time, it was not possible to fully implement all its aspects, it nevertheless marked a highpoint of the struggle to overcome the old capitalist state. It was amended and enlarged in 1924 to take account of the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other matters but its key principles remained, until amended by Stalin in 1936.

Peace and war

The Russian Revolution took place during World War One: war and peace were critical issues. The overthrow of the Tsar and the establishment of a democratic government in February 1917 were regarded by the Provisional Government, and by the SR and Menshevik majority in the Petrograd Soviet, as a justification for continuing the support of the war effort in the name of the defence of the revolution.

In practice, this meant defence of the bourgeoisie, since they were the class most empowered by the first Revolution in 1917. The Bolshevik Party insisted that war must end and peace must be achieved on the basis of no annexations or indemnities. Most Bolsheviks supported this. However, there were some in the party, notably Kamenev, who openly espoused the need for continuing the war on the basis of defending the revolution. Lenin opposed this position in his April Theses, recognising that the masses were desperate to see an end to war. He further argued that the position of revolutionary defencism within a bourgeois state was a confidence trick upon the workers and pandering to patriotism and jingoism. From April to October, the Bolsheviks maintained that a Bolshevik revolution, the ending of the war with a democratic peace and proletarian revolution in Europe, were all parts of a single process and in practice inseparable.

Internationalism and revolutionary war

The Bolshevik Party tradition was unreservedly internationalist in outlook. It believed that nationalism was part and parcel of the capitalist system and that wars were an inevitable consequence of that nationalism. They also took seriously the original Marxist international slogan, workers of the worlds unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. In addition, the Bolsheviks were also strongly of the view that a Russian socialist revolution could not be sustained without one or more advanced capitalist countries also becoming socialist and linking up with the Russian proletariat.

Lenin opposed a 'revolutionary war', but was in a minority within the party leadership / Image: public domain

Bolsheviks believed that the ending of capitalism and landlordism in Russia would raise the morale of workers and peasants and make them stronger than any opponent. This new class war would rouse the masses internationally. This position was crucial to understanding why the party adopted various positions over the peace negotiations and the issue of revolutionary war. After the establishment of a workers and peasants state Lenin was not, in principle, against waging a revolutionary war against the imperialist powers but, looking at concrete reality, he understood the masses did not want to fight, even for a workers state, at this stage. In any event, the fledgling state had insufficient resources to wage a war of any kind and by December 1917 was faced with civil war. Therefore, Lenin implacably opposed a revolutionary war at this stage. But a majority in the party leadership did not. This set the scene for a prolonged and, in the end, damaging struggle within the Bolshevik Party, which was only finally settled in March 1918.

The peace decree and the armistice with Germany

One of the very first decrees, issued a day after the October Revolution, by the new government was on peace. It called upon all belligerent countries to halt the war immediately on the basis of a just and democratic peace with no annexations or indemnities, and to allow all nations the right of self-determination on a free vote. At the same time, the decree abolished secret diplomacy, calling for open and transparent negotiations, and annulled all secret treaties agreed by the old regime, stating that such secret treaties would be published. Finally, the government called for an immediate armistice.

A temporary armistice between Russia, Germany and her allies was agreed on 2 December 1917 / Image: public domain

After initial negotiations between the Soviet delegation and those of Germany and her allies, an armistice was agreed on 2 December. It allowed 28 days before full peace negotiations took place. It was agreed to maintain current military positions, and further agreed that Germany would not send troops to the western front because of the armistice and would allow a degree of fraternisation between troops.

Trotsky, after some resistance on his part, was appointed Commissar for Foreign Affairs and would eventually lead all negotiations, which were to take place in Brest-Litovsk: a small town on the Russian-Polish border, now in Belarus.

Foreign policy, under Trotsky, comprised largely of appeals to workers and revolutionary groups throughout the world to organise a world revolution. He paid scant attention to the traditional role of a Foreign Secretary, saying, My job is to publish the treaties, issue some revolutionary proclamations and shut up shop. Former secret treaties were quickly published, ambassadors recalled and new ones sent out. Money was made available for international revolutionary organisations. Agitational newspapers were published, aimed at foreign workers and prisoners of war. For their part, foreign governments rebuffed Russian attempts to obtain friendly responses and all countries opposed any rapprochement with the Bolsheviks. However, there were contacts between Russia and foreign ambassadors and initially the allies hoped to persuade Russia to continue fighting Germany. When this failed, their opposition to Bolshevik Russia noticeably stepped up.

Negotiations at Brest-Litovsk and Bolshevik splits

Following the armistice agreement, negotiations re-started at Brest-Litovsk, with Joffe initially leading the Russian delegation. These discussions were inconclusive. The Soviet delegation put forward their positions on annexations and the rights of nationalities to enjoy political freedom and ending colonies. The Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria), led effectively by the German General Hoffman, played lip service to these demands as they had no intention of giving up Poland or those Baltic states under their control. Moreover, they now included in their delegation representatives of the Ukrainian Rada (a nationalist-led parliament), weakening the Soviet claim to represent all Russian territories. The Red offensive against the armed nationalists in Ukraine was only just underway.

Trotsky took over as leader of the Soviet delegation to the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 / Image: public domain

Trotsky took over as leader of the Soviet delegation in the New Year, and hoping that delaying tactics would work in their favour, used the negotiations as a platform for propaganda. There were definite signs of revolt among workers in Austria and Germany and among their soldiers and sailors. Strikes occurred in Austria in mid-January and later in the month there were serious strikes in Berlin, Hamburg, Danzig and Kiel. Eventually, the Central Powers sought to break the deadlock by stating their demands for the Soviets to cede all territory currently occupied by Germany in the North and to negotiate the southern boundaries with the Ukrainian Rada. Trotsky decided that he now needed to return to Petrograd to discuss with the leadership the best response. There then began a series of debates and votes. In the first meeting, 63 leading Bolsheviks debated the issue of peace. Lenin argued for taking peace at any price to secure the bridgehead of the revolution and wait for better times. Despite Lenins prestige, he got only 15 votes. 32 votes, mainly Moscow Bolsheviks led by Bukharin, were for a revolutionary war against Germany and her allies rather than accepting their terms. Trotsky took a third position of neither war nor peace but to continue to delay the proceedings as long as possible in the hope revolution would break out in Germany of Austria and if necessary declare peace unilaterally when pressed. He got 16 votes.

A few days later the Central Committee of the party met and Lenin again called for immediate peace. Only Stalin was clear in his support so Lenin agreed to Trotskys delaying position and this passed 12-1. Only two, Bukharin and Dzerzhinsky, supported pursuing a revolutionary war.

Trotsky returned to the negotiations later in January, but after spinning it out as long as possible he made a unilateral declaration to end the war. He then walked out of the talks. Seven days later the German High Command announced it was going to resume hostilities. The Bolshevik unilateral declaration of peace was intended as a signal to all workers and soldiers involved in the war to rise up and oppose their leaders and join the struggle. This did not occur and the Central Powers immediately renewed hostilities. Meeting little resistance, they quickly advanced on all fronts.

Meanwhile, the Bolshevik Central Committee was in almost continuous session. Lenin again called for seeking terms with the Germans, but got only 4 votes against 6, with Trotsky voting against. Lenin then posed the question: what if the German army advanced and there was no revolution in Germany and Austria? By 6-1, with 4 abstentions (Trotsky went over to Lenin) it was agreed that, in that event, peace should be made. But the Germans were already advancing. The issue was debated the following day. Despite some movements, the vote for Trotskys hesitation again carried 6-5. But by evening it was clear the German advance was strong and Russia was threatened. At this point Trotsky went over to Lenin and the Central Committee agreed to ask for peace negotiations by 7-5. Other party and Soviet bodies rapidly ratified this decision, although not without division, and a telegram was sent off agreeing to a renewal of the peace negotiations.

The final Brest-Litovsk Treaty and its ratification

However, Germany was in no hurry to accept and took full advantage of its position, advancing deep into the Ukraine and other areas. Eventually, the Germans came up with new, much harsher terms than before: Soviet withdrawal from Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland and the ceding of territory to Turkey in the south. The treaty also demanded Soviet recognition of the Ukrainian Nationalist Government or Rada. The implications of the Treaty for the economy of Soviet Russia were immense. They lost some of the most productive areas of Russia, especially in the Ukraine with its large assets in coal, industry and agriculture. In all they lost 40 percent of industrial capacity, 45 percent of fuel, 90 percent of sugar, 70 percent of the metal industry and 55 percent of wheat potential. The demand to withdraw the Red Guards from Finland led to a German-backed counter-revolution of considerable ferocity.

So harsh were these terms that many leading Bolsheviks, especially in the Moscow Region, again resisted acceptance and ratification. There followed another heated debate in the Bolshevik Central Committee. Lenin moved acceptance, this time saying he would resign if he didnt gain the vote. Trotsky opposed but, in the end, abstained, as did Dzerzhinsky, Joffe, and Krestinsky, giving Lenin a 7-4 majority. In early March, the Soviet Government signed the new terms of Brest-Litovsk. Full internal ratification had to go through various bodies and the debates raged on. At the Seventh Bolshevik Party Congress in March 1918, Trotsky again reiterated his opposition to accepting such harsh terms but declared he would not vote against Lenin. This was then carried by 28 votes to 9. At the all-Russian Central Executive Committee, after a speech by Lenin it was carried 116 votes to 84. On 16 March, the All Russian Congress of Soviets, after two days of stormy debate, ratified the governments decision by 784-262.

The Germans demanded Soviet withdrawal from Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland, ceding of territory to Turkey in the south and recognition of the Ukrainian Nationalist Government or Rada / Image: public domain

These details are recounted to illustrate the tradition of debate and internal democracy within the Bolshevik Party and Soviet Russia at this time. This tradition, although necessarily curbed in the acute conditions of Civil War later in 1918, nevertheless remained at the heart of the Bolshevik Party as long as Lenin and Trotsky remained at the helm. It is instructive, in view of the later cult of the personality around Stalin, that Lenin, despite his immense standing in the party and among the workers, was consistently opposed by many leading comrades throughout this process. When he was defeated he accepted it and fought on with unflinching argument in meetings and in writing.

In fact, a notable feature of Lenin throughout is that at every stage and moment of the Revolution he was not only driving the process in practice, with attention to every detail, but also writing articles, resolutions and even longer works. It is true that, in the final stages of the debates on Brest-Litovsk, Lenin threatened to resign if his views were not accepted, but this was after months of exhaustive debate and at a critical moment for the survival of the revolution. Lenin always considered it vital, at this stage of world developments, to keep the core of the revolution secure.

The left wing of the party, around Bukharin, openly stated that they were prepared for a split in the party and were willing to sacrifice the revolution on the altar of an international revolutionary war. Lenin considered this absurd posturing and wrote a biting critique in February 1918, called Strange and Monstrous. In this piece Lenin shows how the process of debate within the party was carried out. He vigorously defends the left-wings right to express its view:

It is quite natural that comrades who sharply disagree with the Central Committee over the question of a separate peace should sharply condemn the Central Committee and express their conviction that a split is inevitable. All that is the most legitimate right of party members, which is quite understandable.

But, he did not fail to condemn their reasoning as strange and monstrous, nor hesitate to call them out for revolutionary phrasemaking. Immediately after the conclusion of this drawn out process of Peace he wrote a substantial text on the broader issues it raised and called it, Left-Wing Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality. He was to return to this theme two years later in 1920 when he wrote Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.

Soviet foreign policy in 1918

Before returning to the immediate issues at home it is worth noting another issue that split the Bolsheviks at this stage and it again illustrates the division between the realists and what Lenin called a petty-bourgeois mentality. This occurred over the approach the Soviet Government should take in confronting the capitalist powers.

The left wing around Bukharin, stated that they were prepared for a split in the party over the question of revolutionary war / Image: public domain

The notion widely held at one time, that a workers government would have no truck with any capitalist power, proved untenable and unrealistic. The capitalist states were not a uniform bloc and divisions could be exploited. The leftists, led by Bukharin, refused to contemplate any deals with the capitalists. Lenin and Trotsky tended to operate on the pragmatic and realistic side, although, as we have seen, Trotsky sometimes took longer to reach the same conclusions as Lenin. Occasionally, it was the other way around, with Lenin acknowledging that Trotsky had been correct. In the Central Committee in February 1918, Trotsky argued in favour of accepting arms from any country, even capitalist ones, on the one condition that no political obligations were given to these countries in return. This was hotly debated and only carried 6-5 with Lenin not attending but supporting the proposal. In the end, this proposal was without effect because the vague offers of support from USA, Britain and France were predicated on keeping Russia in the war so as to keep Germany pinned down in the east. Once the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was finally signed the other imperialist powers declined Russia any assistance.

In the wake of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty a dual, inter-meshed foreign policy emerged: to promote world socialist revolution and defend the national security of the Soviet Republic. This would last as a consistent and integrated approach throughout the civil war and until the fight against the aggression of the allied powers finally ended in early 1921. Stalin later tried to portray a split between Lenin and Trotsky over the issue of world revolution or socialism in one country. In fact, this is entirely false and distorts the real split, which was between Lenin and the left communists that included Bukharin, Radek and Uritsky.

Lenin, like Trotsky, remained a powerful advocate of world revolution and indeed frequently said that it was the only hope for the long-term success of the Russian Revolution. Lenin said that if necessary he would be in favour of sacrificing the Russian Revolution for a German Revolution, if it occurred, which would be on a much higher level and would hasten world revolution. The difference between Lenin and Trotsky was essentially one of balance. Trotsky was slower than Lenin to realise that the German Revolution would take time to mature, over-estimating the prospects for revolution.

Early struggles on the periphery

The general headquarters of the Russian Army, a veritable citadel in a time of all-out war, was situated away from Moscow and Petrograd. Here the Bolsheviks were weak. The soldiers Committee of the Armies, which had been elected at the beginning of the February revolution, was controlled by the SRs and had a cosy relationship with the generals. Six days after the October Revolution, they decided to oppose the Bolsheviks and march on Petrograd. But the mood of the soldiers, who welcomed the revolution, prevented this. When Lenin then called on the soldiers to elect new delegates and organise for an armistice with Germany, the old army establishment was doomed. These elections were held on 18 November. Following these elections, General Dukhonin, the supreme army head, who had defied the Bolshevik Governments orders, was arrested and executed.

From October to March, the strong tide in favour of the Bolshevik-led Soviet Government had swept most urban and working-class areas of Russia. Even in the strongly nationalist areas of the Ukraine, parts of the Caucasus and the Don region, Red forces had been triumphant. Local soviets had sprung up everywhere. Most of the troops were with the Bolsheviks and the peasantry were broadly supportive as they saw their land needs being addressed. But from that point on the situation for the government became more and more difficult. The ending of the First World War proved a key factor in the west, as German troops occupied so much of the land that was highly productive for all parts of the economy. The Germans and their allies were keen to weaken Russia as far as possible and also to undermine Bolshevism by arming and encouraging nationalists and elements of the old order in Russia, principally the old Tsarist generals and officers, so that they could mount an effective counter-revolution. This, in effect, was the start of three years of brutal civil war.

Anti-Bolshevik, White forces in Russia, 1918 / Image: public domain

A number of generals and officers of the Imperial Army fled south to the Ukraine, where the Government was nationalistic and anti-Bolshevik. An Army of Volunteers, as the first White force was called, led by General Kornilov, gathered in the south, with more officers than men. Ukrainian nationalism, infused with certain elements of socialism, attempted a form of self-government under the old parliament, called the Rada. Eventually, struggles broke out between Bolshevik supporters in Kiev and the nationalists; the Reds took Kiev in January. Ukraine fell largely under Bolshevik control by February 1918.

After November there was a general strike in Finland. This was largely victorious but there was no revolutionary workers party prepared to take power. So, the workers took matters into their own hands and took power in Helsinki, driving out the bourgeois government. Still, the social democrat leaders failed to drive through a revolution and opted for radical but piecemeal change. The Russian Government passed a decree giving independence to Finland at the end of 1917. Momentum gathered in 1918 and by February a new constitution was established providing for an elected assembly every three years along with other highly advanced features.

The Finnish social democracy attempted the highest ever form of bourgeois democracy. But, in the circumstances, it was utopian and met with fierce armed reaction. The bourgeois launched a White terror, using a battalion of Finns in the German army. Red Guards and soviet supporters flocked to support the working class. Soviet forces had to withdraw under the terms of the Brest Litovsk Treaty. Vicious fighting then led to extreme white terror and the defeat of the Red forces. Up to a quarter of the proletariat were subsequently killed and murdered (100,000).

The Caucasus area was complex with many nationalities and conditions. This proved a difficult area for the pro-Bolshevik, revolutionary Red forces who were initially defeated by a combination of so-called socialist Georgians and reactionary Turks and Tartars.

In the Don region, another complex war occurred, involving several old imperial generals, complicated by divisions within the Cossacks population. The Cossack cavalry had traditionally been used by the Tsarist regime as a force for reaction. When the October Revolution, occurred the Don Cossack Council declared independence. General Kaledin welcomed former officers and some soldiers from the old imperial army and thus began the formation of a White army that was to play a lasting role in the ensuing civil war.

In December 1917, the Soviet government sent a Red Guard force to assert Soviet control. At this stage, the White forces were ill-equipped, poorly organised and unable to resist the Red forces. As a result, the Don Cossack Council agreed to yield to the Soviet forces, causing General Kaledin to commit suicide. The tide turned in May 1918 due to the German invasion in the west and the growth of the White forces under Generals Kornilov and Alekseev. The Cossack leadership rebelled against the Soviet administration and, with the improved White forces, armed and supplied by the French and British, were able to defeat most Red forces and resume control over large areas. In the process, there were many massacres and atrocities against Bolsheviks and the working class generally.

In Siberia and in the Central Asia regions Bolsheviks also achieved early success in the main centres, only to suffer reversals at a later stage.

The White Forces

The White movement and its armies were so-called because the colour white was associated with the Tsar. They represented the old defeated classes of the monarchy and the bourgeoisie. The movement, as such, did not have a strong social base. It drew in various elements dissatisfied with the Bolshevik regime, usually reactionary nationalist elements. Few wanted to see the Tsar restored, except the leaders and especially the army leaders, who became, in effect, petty dictators.

The Red Army, under Trotsky, achieved a strong, centralised leadership and had a clear purpose of defending the revolution / Image: public domain

In general, the White leadership was against separate national states and desired a return to a united empire. There was also a strong current of antisemitism within the White armies. Western sponsors expressed dismay at this, especially as the Bolsheviks had prohibited antisemitism and appeared more progressive. Winston Churchill personally warned General Denikin, whose forces effected pogroms against the Jews, that my task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies.

One of the abiding weaknesses of the White forces was their lack of unity. The leaders squabbled and there were many who joined the umbrella of the Whites simply because they opposed the Bolsheviks, rather than having a united vision of what they wanted. Ultimately, this played into the hands of the Red Army, which, under Trotsky's command, achieved a strong, centralised leadership, and, of course, always with the clear purpose of defending the revolution.

Backs against the wall

Whilst the broad mass of the working class continued to give their support to the Bolshevik Party, activists within the party were often split on crucial issues. The issue of whether or not to wage a revolutionary war against Germany and its forces of occupation proved one of the more divisive questions that very nearly led to a complete split in the party.

The division started in February, when the Moscow Region Committee took a left position and called for non-acceptance of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the heroic sacrifice of the Russian proletariat on the altar of internationalism. Lenin provided a powerful critique of this position, calling them Communists of misfortune and talking despair. By March this tendency had crystallised into an organised faction and were called Left Communists. They were led by Bukharin with the support of Radek and Uritsky, among others, and published a paper called the Kommunist. Several members of the faction were elected to the Central Committee but they refused to serve.

The two tendencies faced off at the 7th Party Congress in March 1918. Lenins position on peace was supported by Zinoviev, Smilga and Sverdlov. Trotsky also sided with Lenin but urged war in Ukraine against the German occupiers. Lenin, whilst not against such a move, argued for space and time to build up forces. It was at this Congress that the name Communist Party (Bolshevik) was adopted and it was agreed to review the Programme of the Party.

In April 1918 Lenin published The International Position of the Russian Soviet Republic and the Fundamental Tasks of the Socialist Revolution. In it, Lenin argued that at that time a brief respite existed when all efforts had to be made to tackle the issue of organising the new Soviet system in an administrative sense. This required honest accounting, no stealing and strict labour discipline. The most class-conscious workers must lead the drive to implement these slogans among the masses.

The aim was to establish a productive and efficient system that began to address the accumulated chaos of the war years and restore some order and benefits for people weary and close to despair. In the conclusion Lenin stated the situation clearly:

An extraordinarily difficult, complex and dangerous situation in international affairs; the necessity of manoeuvring and retreating; a period of waiting for new outbreaks of the revolution which is maturing in the west at a painfully slow pace; within the country a period of slow construction and ruthless tightening-up, of prolonged and persistent struggle waged by stern, proletarian discipline against the menacing element of petty-bourgeois laxity and anarchy: these in brief are the distinguishing features of the special stage of the socialist revolution in which we are now living.

Trotsky struck the same note in March when he gave a speech to a Party Conference. He emphasised the need for labour, discipline and order and urged that specialists be given a role in managing industry. In the same vein, he justified abandoning the principle of the election of officers in the Red Army, arguing that it was now a proletarian army and the need to challenge the Imperial officers through elections no longer applied. They needed the best, most-skilled and experienced to fill officer roles. The Left Communists published a critical response in their paper, Kommunist, which opposed the army reforms and at the same time called for the faster expropriation of capital and the cooperative organisation of production and distribution based on full workers control and management. Lenin replied in a series of articles in Pravda in May 1918, called Left Infantilism and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality.

Lenin replied to the Left Communists in a series of articles in Pravda in May 1918 called 'Left Infantilism and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality' / Image: public domain

The major debates that ensued through the Spring and Summer within the Party are important and instructive but require a more detailed analysis than can be offered here. Suffice it to say that, having lost the vote at the March Congress the Left Communists then lost their positions on the Supreme Council of National Economy and shortly afterward lost their control of the Moscow and Urals regional organisations. When the Soviet government, under different conditions, nationalised all large industrial enterprises in late June, many Left Communists considered this to be a correct economic policy and shifted their support back to Lenin. By the end of the summer, the Left Communists no longer existed as a distinct opposition group.

Political opposition outside Bolshevism

Efforts to overthrow the Bolshevik Government at home had not disappeared. In fact, in the harsh conditions of spring and summer 1918, when famine stalked the land, their efforts grew. Although the bourgeois parties, such as the Cadets and the Octobrists, had little support, there was lots of intrigue and rumour with foreign powers seeking to find suitable organisations to back. Several right-wing organisations and conspiracies were attempted. The Right or Moscow Centre (businessmen, landowners and conservative and liberal politicians) had a military department but was weak and disorganised. The National Centre, which split off from the Right Centre in June 1918, was a rallying point for the Cadet Party. Overall there was no real drive or unity between any of them and they were easily and, relatively leniently, dealt with by the Cheka.

The petty-bourgeois parties, which included the SRs of Left and Right, the Anarchists and the Mensheviks, did have a potential mass base given the weight of the peasantry in the country, and could have posed a serious problem for the Bolsheviks. But, as Lenin pointed out, the petty-bourgeois parties, like the class they represented, wavered and vacillated at every turn, becoming revolutionary one moment and, when things got difficult, siding with the bourgeoisie, or turning to terrorism. Not surprisingly the mass of peasants was largely uninterested.

The Right SR Party, lacking their base in the Constituent Assembly, had nowhere to go except an alliance with the White forces. This they did in a more and more overt fashion. In the spring of 1918 Savinkov, a veteran SR conspirator, helped to establish the Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom. It claimed to have 5,500 members, but they were scattered all over the country. Its objective was to overthrow Soviet power and establish a military dictatorship. They had financial support from several imperial powers, notably France. Several leading members were arrested in May 1918 and its planned actions were foiled. Savinkov and others remained at large and tried to organise armed uprisings in several towns in July 1918, but these were easily overcome and the organisation faded away. Savinkov and other Right SRs re-emerged in the short-lived Samara Government on the Volga (described in more detail below).

The All-Russian Soviet Executive had representatives of all parties that participated in local and regional Soviets. Thus it had left Mensheviks, Left SRs and others. But in June, as the struggle for survival became paramount it was agreed to expel all those parties who were instigating civil war against the Soviets. This was both logical and necessary. This removed Right SRs and Mensheviks and left only Left SRs and Bolsheviks.

The terrorist wing of the Right SR Party, the so-called Battle Organisation, had one last throw of the dice at the end of August 1918 when they sought to assassinate a number of leaders, including Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin was shot by Fanny Kaplan and was lucky not to have been killed. Although struck in his shoulder and neck he survived and recovered after the operation and a short convalescence. The plot to kill Trotsky failed when he altered his planned route to Kazan at the last moment. Uritsky, the President of the Petrograd Cheka, was less lucky and was killed.

The Left SR Party ostensibly represented the poor peasantry but in practice tended to base themselves on the middle peasantry. They had a significant position in the Soviets. They left the government over the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in March 1918 but continued to offer critical support to the Bolsheviks for a period.

At the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in early July 1918, the Left SRs had 353 delegates out of 1,164. Nothing illustrates the vacillating and intemperate nature of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries better than the debates at this Congress, where the Left SRs hysterically attacked the Bolsheviks for their determination to maintain discipline in the Red Army on the border with Ukraine. The Left SRs had been agitating amongst these units, inciting them to join guerrilla bands inside the Ukraine and attack the German occupiers. Calling for discipline, Trotsky asked for approval of an order to shoot those responsible for fomenting such division and adventurism. The Left SRs erupted with fury but were soundly defeated in the vote.

When Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka leader, confronted the Left SR Committee in Moscow they arrested him and proceeded to use Cheka forces they controlled to occupy key parts of Moscow. With this act, they effectively 'committed suicide' / Image: public domain

Later, one of their leaders, Maria Spiridonova, made wild accusations against the Bolsheviks and was calmly rebutted by Lenin. Then news arrived at the Congress that Left SR agents had infiltrated the German Ukraine headquarters and assassinated the German ambassador, Count Mirbach. When Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka leader, confronted the Left SR Committee in Moscow they arrested him and proceeded to use Cheka forces they controlled to occupy key parts of Moscow. In the event, they lacked any popular support and the rebellion was put down in a day. Arrests and some executions followed. As Victor Serge says in Year One of the Revolution, The Left SR Party had committed suicide.

Anarchist groups were also present in most towns, but many were self-styled and close to banditry. They had gained some support, generally fighting with the Reds in November. They had their own Black General Staff, and were armed. In the period after March, they assumed a more anti-Bolshevik position and moved to violence. However, disarming them proved easy as they had little broad support. Hundreds were arrested but most of those who were genuine anarchists by conviction were released and allowed to operate more or less freely with their organisations, press and clubs. The anarchist movement in the Ukraine led by Makhno is a different story and is dealt with in a later installment.

After the October Revolution, the Menshevik Party became a shadow of its former self and had split into left and right factions. The weakness of the Mensheviks is revealed in the elections for the Constituent Assembly, when they only managed 3 percent of the vote. However, they were relatively strong in the Caucusus region, where they had taken a strongly pro-nationalist line. They had a majority position in Georgia and from May 1918 led an independent government, under the general permission of the Germans, known as the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Nationally, most Mensheviks who had not joined the Bolsheviks increasingly sided with counter-revolutionaries. Martov and the left faction continued to operate in a more principled fashion but became increasingly hostile to the Bolsheviks.

The end of the Romanovs

A brief mention should be made of the denouement of the Tsar and his family, the Romanovs, which occurred in the summer of 1918.

In July 1918, Ekaterinburg (where the Romanovs were being held) was virtually encircled by White forces and the Urals Soviet decided to execute the Tsar and his family / Image: public domain

After February 1917, the Romanovs had been held in comparative ease at the imperial palace at Tsarskoe Syelo. But after the July 1917 days of upheaval, the Provisional Government decided to place the family deeper into Russia in the remote Siberian town of Tobolsk. After the October Revolution, the question of what to do with the Tsar and his family became a more burning topic, as they clearly provided a rallying call for the counter-revolutionary forces. After a White Army approached the Tobolsk in April 1918, the Bolsheviks moved the imperial family west to Ekaterinburg in the Urals. In July, Ekaterinburg was virtually encircled by White forces and the Urals Soviet decided to execute the family.

The economic crisis and feeding the urban population

Prior to Brest-Litovsk and the German occupation of Ukraine, the Russian economy was already in a poor state. The effects of years of war and then the upheaval of revolution meant that production and distribution were massively disrupted. Moreover, as in all belligerent countries, the economy had become heavily oriented to the needs of war and the millions of troops that were required. The loss of the valuable economic areas of Ukraine, Caucasus and later the Don region provoked a major crisis after March 1918.

The primary and immediate problem was the need to obtain sufficient grain to feed the people, especially in the urban areas. The harvest was still to come. People were hungry and desperate. Riots and uprisings over lack of bread were not uncommon. Lenin said at this time, To get bread, that is the basis of socialism today. This called for desperate measures. The first of these was the creation of the Food Commissariat with sweeping powers (decree of 27 May) to supply the population with objects of primary necessity. The Food Commissar was Tsurupa, and among his powers was the ability to remove local commissars, override local soviets and in certain circumstances institute court proceedings against disobedient representatives of local soviets.

What ensued was a battle between the consuming, needy provinces and the producing provinces that held surpluses of food, often hoarded. Special armed detachments, recruited predominantly from Bolshevik-supporting factories, were attached to local food committees in the producing districts. Wealthy peasants, known as kulaks, were those mainly responsible for hoarding grain and other food resources. On 11 June, the Soviet regime set up Committees of the Poor all over the country. These committees were empowered to distribute grain, products of prime necessity and agricultural machines and to cooperate with local food brigades in taking surplus grain away from kulaks and other richer peasants. Incentives were offered to the poorer peasants to participate in this process. There was provision to exclude from any expropriation the slightly better-off peasants who possessed just a few livestock and hired one or two labourers, as long as they were basically self-sufficient. This was reinforced in August 1918 when a letter was circulated to try to prevent the alienation of middle peasants.

Certainly, there were many excesses and ferocious battles. 26 peasant uprisings were recorded in July, 47 in August, and 26 in September. In some cases, old scores were settled. In some instances, bandits and thieves joined the committees; and in some, genuine local communists were driven out of important and potentially lucrative posts such as the collection of local taxes. But, the tactic of splitting the villages on class lines was broadly successful. In regions where there was much poverty among the peasants the actions against kulaks and others were more severe. In areas closer to the big cities, there was greater control and order.

At their height, the Committees of the Poor numbered tens of thousands and as a policy they prevented a complete breakdown of society. There was famine and great hunger but it would have been much worse without such drastic, organised intervention. By November 1918, the crisis was passing and the Committees of the Poor were dissolved and there were new elections for local soviets, which included the best representatives of the old Committees. The two bodies were in effect fused. On 8 November 1918 Lenin declared Soviet policy in the village would be:

To reach an agreement with the middle-class peasantry, not relaxing for a moment the struggle against the kulak and relying firmly only on the poor.

The impact of the continuing food shortages can be seen in the major loss of population suffered by the towns and cities where people moved to the countryside to find food. Petrograds population, for example, declined from 2.3m in November 1915 to 1.4m in July 1918.

Meeting the military threat: Trotskys role as head of the army

The first soldiers of the revolution were the Red Guards, largely recruited from the working-class and Bolshevik soldiers and sailors. But in order to bring order and unity, a stronger and larger force was necessary. In the first stages of the revolution, no conscription was possible. The Bolsheviks had pledged peace and the old army was disintegrating and going home.

A decree on 28 January 1918 laid down the basis for recruiting a voluntary Red Army. There was an Initial sign-up for three months, and a salary of 150 rubles a month, along with some privileges and exemptions for the family. More than 100,000 recruits signed up in the next two and half months but efficiency and quality were often very low. The troops were liable to be ill-disciplined, to endlessly debate orders and make impossible demands. In addition, some criminal elements joined. This early Red Army was capable of defeating poorly organised, internal dissidents but no match for the German Army in Ukraine, nor the emerging White armies.

The Supreme War Council was set up on 1 March 1918 and took over the organisation of the Red Army. On 5 March, Trotsky was appointed chair. In early April, Trotsky was also appointed Commissar of War. He got to work immediately, determined to create a disciplined armed forces, in sufficient numbers and led by competent officers, with good planning and organisation. In these aims, he met plenty of opposition both from within and outside the Bolshevik Party.

In April, Trotsky was appointed Commissar of War. He was determined to create a disciplined armed forces, in sufficient numbers and led by competent officers / Image: public domain

Trotskys immediate task as the new Commissar of War was to conjure a new army out of practically nothing. Of the Imperial Russian Army, only the division of Latvian Riflemen was useful and reliable, and thus retained. The remnants of Red forces opposing the Whites on the various fronts often acted as scattered bands of partisans with little control and discipline. Red forces generally were poorly trained, equipped and led. But Trotsky rapidly transformed the Red Army into a disciplined, effective fighting force comprising several Red armies fighting on multiple fronts.

Trotskys first pronouncements on military policy in March 1918 were directed primarily at the party and the Soviets and called for Work, discipline and order. He noted that, in its first assault on power, the Bolsheviks had necessarily been anti-militaristic and had pressed for democracy in the army, electing commanders and challenging orders etc. But the new situation required a new approach that would enable the workers to defeat the enemy. This meant accepting former Tsarist officers who pledged to assist the Soviet government. Not only were they skilled in leadership but also often possessed technical and military knowledge lacking in the largely working-class layers that formed the Red Guards.

However, many within the Bolshevik Party, especially the Left Communists, fiercely resisted Trotskys proposals. Stalin, and some of the established Red military leaders, also opposed these ideas. Lenin and a majority of party leaders understood the necessity of adopting Trotskys position. Indeed Lenin took Trotskys theme of discipline, order and utilising skills from the within the old classes and adopted it in a much wider social and economic context, supporting the use of managers, professional and technical experts in running factories and other vital parts of economic life. For Lenin, as with Trotsky, the politics of the moment dictated the course of action.

Lenin laid his plans before the All-Russian Soviet Executive in April and they agreed on proposals for military training, new disciplinary codes and utilising the skills and expertise of former Tsarist officers. On 22 April, the government set out the policies in a Decree. Under this policy, all workers and peasants who did not hire labour would receive 12 hours of training over an 8-week period every year. The practice of electing officers was abolished and refusing to obey orders became a punishable offence and capital punishment was reintroduced for the most serious breaches of discipline. In seeking to improve army organisation, Trotsky created provincial, county and township war commissariats responsible, among other things, for the general military training of the adult population.

Trotskys scheme for a new Red Army did not pass without serious opposition. In April 1918, when he laid his plans before the All-Russian Soviet Executive, he met with opposition from many quarters. His decision to recruit former army officers provoked much outrage from Mensheviks and Left SRs. Martov accused Trotsky of paving the way for a dictator. More seriously, there was opposition from within the Bolshevik Party. The Left Communists rejected the idea of a centralised standing army and saw the recruitment of former officers as a compromise with the old regime.

Although the partys Central Committee backed Trotskys plan it was not without misgivings and much behind-the-scenes complaining. Trotskys position on the issue of hiring former officers and specialists touched on a wider issue of relations with the old order. Trotsky and Lenin recognised the reality that the new state lacked skilled professionals, technicians and managers from among the working class. The choice was to ignore the resources available and build from scratch, or to employ such resources on behalf of the revolution and use such people to help train new generations.

However, utilising these elements, who were inevitably conservative in outlook and sceptical of the revolution, carried dangers. Some officers were White sympathisers and later defected. But, in the crisis situation of the summer of 1918, the young new state had little practical alternative. To help offset the bias or deviation of the officer corps, political commissars were attached to all the levels of command in a form of dual power. To prevent officers from sabotage or deserting to the Whites, a register was kept of the officers families to be held as possible hostages.

The first to volunteer from the old Imperial Army was General Bonch-Bruevich, who was made head of General Staff. Trotsky discussed with other officers and they came over later in April. At the same time, Trotsky always sought to appoint communists and revolutionaries as officers if they had proven to be effective and disciplined leaders in military combat. Nevertheless, eventually the majority of officers were from the old army, and by the end of 1918, 30,000 former officers of the Tsarist Army were serving in the Red Army. Some proved to be traitors or unreliable and Trotsky used serious disciplinary measures if they stepped out of line, including the death penalty and using the officers family as hostages.

As well as creating a strong and centralised army, Trotsky set about establishing improved administration, equipment and supplies. In the conditions of 1918, this was difficult but gradually began to have an impact. This was greatly aided by the fact that Trotskys Deputy at the Supreme War Council, directing its day to day activities, was the brilliant organiser Sklyansky, whom Trotsky described as the Carnot of the Russian Revolution (Lazare Carnot was dubbed the Organiser of the Victory in the French Revolutionary Wars following the French Revolution of 1793).

By mid-1918, efforts to re-organise and invigorate the Red Army were still on-going and meeting resistance / Image: public domain

Finally, Trotsky laid great store in developing intensive educational and propaganda programmes to instil into the new army conscripts a spirit of commitment and devotion to the cause of the revolution. Agitprop techniques in drama, poster art and other methods were an integral element in creating a determined mood in a fighting, disciplined Red Army.

Forging an effective army was one matter but Trotsky also succeeded in reorganising the whole supply and administrative apparatus; again, not without struggle. Once the scale and urgency of the situation was realised, he was able to convince the government of the need to ensure the army was properly equipped and armed. This took time, but the process was started as soon as he took over as amy supremo. It was also quickly realised that a volunteer army was going to be insufficient to build the army rapidly to the level needed. This became apparent by the summer of 1918 and measures of conscription were introduced for working class and peasants only. Before conscription, Trotsky made appeals, especially to the Petrograd and Moscow workers, to volunteer, and many did so. These layers formed the heart of the new army, as they were committed and had self-discipline.

In May 1918, the Soviet government resorted to partial mobilisation as a response to the crisis caused by the Czech Legion turning against the Bolsheviks. The country was still war-weary and most of the peasants could not be relied upon, so the order applied only to conscript workers in Moscow and Petrograd, plus some in the regions most affected, such as the Don and Kuban areas; 51 counties in Siberia; the Urals and in the Volga Provinces. In July, orders were made to force those from bourgeois backgrounds aged 18-45 to undertake hard and dirty, non-combative tasks on the home front. This was sometimes carried out harshly. The formerly well-to-do classes in towns and countryside were forbidden to bear arms. Eventually, the principle of mobilisation was extended to young workers and peasants throughout the country. In August 1918, the Red Army numbered 331,000. This increased to 550,000 by September and 800,000 by end of the year. In October Lenin, foreseeing the end of the First World War, called for an Army of 1 million.

By mid-1918, efforts to re-organise and invigorate the Red Army were still on-going and meeting resistance. Luckily, the White forces were also ill-organised and fractious, whilst the imperial powers were still locked into the First World War. The initial foreign interventions were all peripheral at Murmansk, Archangel and Vladivostok. In central Russia, the Bolsheviks were able to consolidate their power in comparative safety.

The Czech Legion and the deepening civil war

By the end of March, Germany and her allies had occupied all the areas ceded under the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. There was no certainty they would stop at the agreed treaty line. Feeling that Petrograd was threatened, the Soviet government was moved to Moscow. One fall-out of the peace agreement was the position of a Czech nationalist force, augmented by 30,000 Czech prisoners of war, that had fought with the Russian army. They were now trapped in Russia.

Masaryk, the Czech nationalist leader, wanted to deploy them in France, so as to gain allied support for an independent Czechoslovakia after the war. To that end, he ordered them to make their way across Russia by the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok for embarkation. Until this point, the relationship between Bolsheviks and the Czechs was reasonably good and there had been some collaboration against the advance of Germans into the Ukraine. But, despite an agreement on partial disarming and passage through Russia to the East, relations deteriorated. The more reactionary elements of the Czech leaders, urged on by Russian army officers who also served in the Czech army, led to resistance and a revolt by the Legion in May 1918. The British and French were only too eager to exploit Czech discontent to spark opposition to the Bolsheviks and thus establish new White fronts in the central and eastern areas of Russia. In this they succeeded. A plan by the Soviet Government to split the Czech forces as they made their way to the east led to tension, which boiled over in late May, and the Czech forces revolted, easily taking over several key towns along the Trans-Siberian railway. In many areas the Soviet power was weak and the Red forces lacked discipline and strong leadership.

In May, the Czech forces revolted, taking towns along the Trans-Siberian railway / Image: public domain

By June 1918, the French had moved from apparent neutrality to actively encouraging the Czech forces to stay and assist anti-Bolshevik elements. They saw the role of the Czechs to secure the Trans-Siberian railway in advance of a Japanese intervention from the East. By July, the Czech force had declared itself to be a new eastern front against Bolshevism. Resistance by Red forces in far eastern Siberia was stronger and the Czechs only managed to secure the areas around the railway near Vladivostok.

Two quasi-governments emerged following the success of the Czechs. The Western Siberian Commissariat announced its existence on 1 June. It derived its claim to authority from SRs who had been members of the Constituent Assembly. They declared for democracy, goods exchange and the re-establishment of the Constituent Assembly; and the autonomy of Siberia with its own flag. The general assessment of Siberia is that the peasants and workers were largely passive, not having the main concerns of war, hunger and so on of their western counterparts. They were not especially hostile to the Bolsheviks, but Bolshevism was weak in these territories. The initial Western Siberian Government, which had a radical tinge, was soon replaced by more conservative and reactionary elements and by July a purge and oppression of soviets and left elements began in the areas under its control.

The second quasi-government to emerge in the central/eastern region became known as the Samara Government, after a town in the Middle Volga where it was set up. Initially comprising SR Party activists it joined up with parts of the Czech Legion and rapidlyTed Sprague explains how the mighty Indonesian Communist Party was defeated and destroyed in 1965 by Suharto's forces of reaction, resulting in the murder of millions of communists and their sympathisers. This historical tragedy, the consequence of the political and theoretical errors of the Communist Party's Stalinist leadership, is rich with lessons for Marxists today.

In the dead of night on 30 September 1965, a small group of middle-rank officers quietly moved through the streets of Jakarta and kidnapped six army generals. The generals were brought to a swampy region on the outskirts of Jakarta, known as Lubang Buaya (Crocodile Hole), and executed, with their bodies dumped into wells. In the morning, the group of officers took over the national radio station. The nation was greeted by a radio broadcast from these officers who proclaimed themselves as the 30 September Movement (Gerakan 30 September or G30S), announcing that they had thwarted a planned coup by the six army generals and thereafter formed a revolutionary council.

Within the next few hours, Major General Suharto and his troops arrested these mutinous officers and put the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI, which the US State Department estimated had 2 million members at the time) at the centre of the G30S as a pretext to crush it. What happened next has come to define the national consciousness of the Indonesian people: the rise of Suharto and his New Order regime on top of the bones of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of PKI members and sympathisers.

On the day after the G30S, President Sukarno tried to downplay the significance of this event by saying that it was nothing more than a ripple in the wide ocean of the Indonesian Revolution. Unbeknownst to him, this ripple quickly turned into a wave that drenched the whole nation in blood and changed the course of not only Indonesian, but also world history.

The 30 September Movement was exploited as an excuse to liquidate the PKI / Image: public domain

It is impossible to understand the defeat of the PKI without looking at its history, for the partys defeat lies not in the genius of Suhartos manoeuvre and the brutality of the army, but in the PKIs policies of class struggle: or to be more precise, the lack thereof. The fall of the PKI was prepared not by its enemies, but by its leaders. The G30S was that trigger, but that was only a matter of necessity expressing itself through accident. As we shall see, even the road to this event was paved by the mistakes committed by the leadership of the PKI in the previous period.

Indonesia and the Cold War

At the height of the Cold War, the thought of Indonesia going communist kept many bourgeois strategists awake at night. The U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia in 1965, Marshall Green, opined that here was what is now the fourth largest nation in the world [by population] it was about to go communist, and almost did. [1]

A CIA report, prepared in early September 1965, made the case that Sukarnos Indonesia already acts in important respects like a Communist state and is more openly hostile to the U.S. than most Communist nations. [2] The report warned that the Indonesian government would become completely dominated by the PKI within two or three years, and that in the short term, Indonesias formal accession to communism would have a heavy impact on world politics. It would be seen as a major change in the international balance of political forces and would inject new life into the thesis that communism is the wave of the future. The defeat of the PKI was therefore not just a defeat for the forces of communism in Indonesia, but also for the whole worlds revolutionary movement.

Within the Domino Theory, Indonesia was considered to be the largest and most strategically placed piece in Southeast Asia. Its importance was highlighted by Richard Nixons speech in 1965, justifying the bombing of North Vietnam as a way to safeguard Indonesias immense mineral potential. Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense during the Vietnam War, wrote in his memoir that the demise of the PKI should have signalled the U.S. to de-escalate its military involvement in Vietnam. [3] George F. Kennan, the architect of the policy of containment of Soviet expansion, argued at Senate hearings on 10 February 1966 that there had been an enormous reverse in Indonesia: fewer dominoes now existed, and they seemed much less likely to fall. [4] But the Vietnam War had developed its own logic. As President Lyndon B. Johnson, who oversaw the escalation of the Vietnam War, himself admitted, I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw. [5]

The U.S. overplayed its hand in the Vietnam War and was alarmed at the idea of Indonesia (the fourth-most-populous nation on earth) "going communist" / Image: public domain

The Vietnam War had strayed from the Domino Theory and become more about preserving the image of the U.S. government, which could not be seen as losing a war it had invested so much into. In a memorandum, John McNaughton, assistant secretary of defence, said that US war aims in Vietnam were 70% to avoid a humiliating US defeat, 20% to keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands and only 10% to permit the people of SVN [South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life. [6] The U.S. overplayed its hand in the Vietnam War, and almost sparked a revolution at home as anti-war sentiment quickly acquired an increasingly radical tone.

Indonesia was also of importance to the new structure of post-war, global capitalism because of its abundance of natural resources. After the end of World War II, U.S. strategists developed a grand design, whereby Indonesia would be under Japans economic sphere of influence. Cheap access to Indonesias vast mineral and natural resources was expected to support Japans industrialisation, which the U.S. believed would be crucial to keep Japan safely in its camp and under its control. George Kennan, the arch-realist of the post-war U.S. empire, summed up U.S. policy of domination in Asia quite succinctly at a 1949 meeting of the Policy Planning Staff which he headed:

You have the terrific problem of how the Japanese are going to get along unless they re-open some sort of empire to the south [read Southeast Asia]... If we really in the Western world could work out controls... foolproof enough and cleverly enough exercised really to have power over what Japan imports in the way of oil and other things... we could have veto power over what she does. [7]

As can be gleaned from Indonesias export statistics post-1965, Japan became the main export destination of Indonesian products, from around 3-7 percent export share in 1958-1962 to around 50 percent in the 1970s and 80s. [8] It was also reflected in Japanese direct foreign investment in Indonesia, making up 33 percent of the cumulative total in the period of 1969-1984. [9] This in turn translated into the dependency of Indonesian capitalists on their Japanese overlords. What Emperor Hirohito could not accomplish militarily in 1942-1945 during Japans occupation of Indonesia had now been accomplished economically, though Japanese imperialism had to be content being under the thumb of U.S. imperialism, which had veto power of what she does.

Sukarno, the Bonapartist

The colonial revolutions that were sweeping the whole world after the end of World War II put a hold on the imperialist grand design of re-dividing the spoils of war. The Allied forces thought Indonesia would easily fall back into their laps after they defeated Japan, which wrested control of Indonesia from the Dutch in 1942. But they were faced with a mass uprising of the oppressed, whose national consciousness had been aroused. At the head of this nationalist movement were bourgeois nationalist leaders like Sukarno and Hatta, though we shall see later that reluctance, vacillation, and indecisiveness coloured their policy every step of the way.

With the physical annihilation of the PKI in 1927 by the Dutch colonial government (read The First Period of the Indonesian Communist Party: 1914-1926), the leadership of the national liberation struggle was occupied by the emerging national bourgeoisie. After a period of semi-reaction following the defeat of the PKI, the Indonesian nationalist movement gained momentum in 1942, when three-and-a-half centuries of Dutch colonisation were ended by the arrival of Japanese forces. But the type of nationalism that emerged was a bourgeois nationalism that was strictly controlled by Japan within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, with its slogan: Asia for the Asians. The Japanese took under their wing prominent nationalist leaders, amongst whom Sukarno and Hatta, in order to gain support from the Indonesian masses for their war machine and to help defend their conquered territories from the Allied forces. In the meantime, other leaders who showed pro-socialist leanings were ruthlessly crushed.

From early on, it was clear that Indonesias bourgeois nationalist leaders were ready to collaborate and bargain with this or that imperialist depending on the direction of the wind. The kind of nationalist leaders that were being groomed by the Japanese showed their true colours when the decisive moment came. Even after Japan surrendered unconditionally on 15 August 1945, Sukarno and Hatta were afraid to proclaim Indonesian independence without first consulting their defeated master. In essence, they did not have faith in the masses.

When confronted by a group of militant youth who were pressing them to proclaim Indonesian independence, Sukarno refused and replied:

Your handful is not enough against the armed might and total preparedness of the Japanese army. What can you show me? What is your actual strength? What are your security measures for our women and children? How do you propose to defend this freedom once you claim it? [10]

All these questions were answered decisively by the Indonesian masses in the next four years of their war for independence, which claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Indonesian fighters. The people were ready to fight for their freedom and proved willing and able to defend this freedom once they claimed it. But this war could have been shorter and less bloody had the people had a decisive leadership. Instead, they were led by individuals who were always unsure of themselves, thus trying at every step of the way to make concessions to the imperialists.

The incomplete national-democratic revolution resulted in an ongoing social crisis, which gave rise to the Bonapartist Sukarno / Image: public domain

At the end of the independence war, Sukarno had sold out the whole of Indonesia by agreeing to return all Dutch companies agricultural lands and mines, and pay war reparations to the sum of 4.3 billion guilders. Indonesia gained formal independence, but its economy was completely subordinated to imperialist interests. The national revolution was betrayed, but it had yet to lose its momentum. The incomplete tasks of the national-democratic revolution  the establishment of a democratic parliament, agrarian reform (especially crucial in a peasant-dominated country like Indonesia) and a fully sovereign nation-state  resulted in an ongoing social crisis, which opened the next chapter of Indonesian revolution. It is in this context that the Bonapartist Sukarno arose.

Bonapartism is a phenomenon that arises out of a social crisis, when the class struggle has been fought to a stalemate and neither of the contending classes is able to decisively take power and ensure stability. On the one hand, the proletariat has waged a mass revolutionary movement that shakes the whole society from top to bottom, but find itself unable to bring the movement to its final conclusion: the revolutionary conquest of power. On the other, the bourgeoisie is too weak to defeat the proletariat and bring order to a society ripped apart by intense class struggle. Under these conditions, the state can rise above society, appearing as an independent, national arbiter to bring about stability, although it is still a class state: in the service of one class against another. A Bonapartist regime then emerges, with a strongman at the top. Engels in his Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State explained the nature of Bonapartism:

Exceptional periods, however, occur when the warring classes are so nearly equal in forces that the state power, as apparent mediator, acquires for the moment a certain independence in relation to both. This applies to the absolute monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which balances the nobility and the bourgeoisie against one another; and to the Bonapartism of the First and particularly of the Second French Empire, which played off the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. The latest achievement in this line, in which ruler and ruled look equally comic, is the new German Empire of the Bismarckian nation; here the capitalists and the workers are balanced against one another and both of them fleeced for the benefit of the decayed Prussian cabbage Junkers. [11]

Such was the situation in Indonesia after the Second World War. While the Sukarno-Hatta government managed to beat back the revolutionary movement, marked by the annihilation of PKI forces in the 1948 Madiun affair and the following crackdown on all revolutionary opposition forces, the national bourgeoisie was too weak to establish a stable regime, precisely because of their betrayal of the national idependence revolution on 17 August 1945 and the subsequent war of independence from 1945 to 1949, a period known as the August Revolution. Constitutional crises followed one after another. Cabinets were put together only to be dismantled immediately. From 1949 to 1959, there were 10 different cabinets. It took six years after the end of the independence war for the government to hold an election, which was to be the only election under Sukarnos 20-year presidency from 1945-1965. The result was certainly not stability. No political party received more than a quarter of the votes  not even Sukarnos party: the Indonesian National Party. The uncertain situation resulted in a series of short-lived coalition governments. Ongoing political instability finally led Sukarno to scrap the 1950 Constitution, dissolving the Constitutional Assembly that had become rife with political deadlocks due to its inability to formulate a new constitution, and to declare in 1959 a regime of Guided Democracy. In the chaos of constitutional crisis, parliamentary deadlocks, and the constant coming and going of cabinets, an immovable pivot had to be designated around which everything revolved: a role filled by Sukarno.

The so-called Guided Democracy was an attempt by Sukarno to solve the political deadlocks and instability that was resulting from them. Blaming these deadlocks on the western values of liberalism and parliamentarism, that did not fit with the Indonesian character, Sukarno argued the solution lay in the so-called Indonesian values of musyawarah and mufakat (consensus building), under the guidance of village elders. Presidential power  and in general the executive power of the government  was strengthened at the expense of the parliament (the legislative power). Of course the village elder, in essence the Bonapartist, would be Sukarno himself. Sukarno even hinted that, under Guided Democracy, there would be no need for multiple political parties, but he was forced to retreat on that idea in the face of protests from the PKI and other mass political parties.

The so-called Guided Democracy was an attempt by Sukarno to solve the political deadlocks and instability that was resulting from them / Image: public domain

With Guided Democracy, the state was acquiring independence from the society, from the very class that it was based on: the bourgeoisie. Power concentrated not only in the person of Sukarno, but also in the bourgeois state as a whole. As observed by Rex Mortimer, a renowned historian of Indonesian communism:

Guided Democracy brought with it substantial augmentation of bureaucratic power... and produced a rapid and marked reversion to centralizing tendencies in government... The decline in the importance of the political parties as channels for the articulation and bargaining of social interests further enlarged the role of the bureaucracy; ceasing to be subject to any weighty outside pressures and controls, it arrogated to itself many of the political functions of interest representation and decision-making... [The Guided Democracy strengthened] pro-leadership sentiment which served the cause of the pamong pradja [aristocratic civil servants drawn from the priyayi or upper class], the administrative corps which combined with itself the cultural ethos of ancient Javanese aristocratic rule and the bureaucratic technique introduced by the Dutch... the pamong pradja now found its power confirmed and strengthened. [12]

Together with the Guided Democracy came Sukarnos Political Manifesto (Manipol), which laid down the general guidelines for the development of Indonesias economy and other spheres. The Political Manifesto was revolutionary-sounding on the surface, but in reality it was hollow. It proclaimed as its goal the establishment of a socialist society. But before this could be achieved, the country had to complete its national revolution. This was almost a carbon copy of the Stalinist two-stage theory, of which D.N. Aidit, the PKI chairman, approved wholeheartedly:

Both [politics and national defence] have to follow the general strategy of Indonesian Revolution that is outlined in Manipol, which says that today the Indonesian people have to complete their national democratic revolution as a foundation to then enter the second phase or stage of Indonesian Revolution that is socialistic. [13]

However, the Manipol turned out to be just another revolutionary phrase-mongering statement from Sukarno the Bonapartist, written in a vague-enough fashion to be accepted by everyone  including the anti-communist, pro-U.S. high command of the Indonesian armed forces  and could be interpreted however one wished. This ambiguous formulation and programme papered over the contradictions in society, only to prepare for a bigger conflagration: that of 1965. Mortimer highlights the vagueness of Manipol:

The generality of this program, and the vagueness of provisions relating to such contentious issues as the roles of foreign capital and private enterprise, ensured that it was acceptable to the varied groups associated with the regime. The rejection of liberalism in favor of an interventionist role by the state was clear; but there was still ample room for interpretations to fit the interest of all the parties and factions that, in the characteristic Sukarno fashion, had been involved in the formulation of the program and were therefore committed to whatever it should prove to mean in official terms. [14] [My emphasis]

Indeed, in the characteristic Sukarno fashion, he was balancing different social forces and antagonistic interests. In the last analysis, he sought to channel the revolutionary aspirations of the workers and peasants, mainly through a slew of bombastic statements and revolutionary-sounding policies, while at the same time placating the capitalists and the landlords by promising that nothing fundamental would be done to disturb their economic interests. Hence, his constant insistence that the revolution was not socialist in character, but only national  an idea that the PKI also espoused.

But a Bonapartist regime is a not a regime of stability. It is in essence a regime wrought with unsolvable contradictions. Even though Sukarno gained cult status  attaining an almost mythical status amongst the people  this mostly likely only deluded him, and also the PKI leaders, into believing that he had firm grip on the situation. In fact, he led a government of crisis. A resolution to the crisis had to be found: the victory of revolution or the victory of reaction. History demanded another Bonapartist leader who could bring a resolution in favour of reaction: to finish the job that Sukarno had started but was never quite able to finish. For this role, General Suharto stepped in: unlike his predecessor, a man of few words, but swift and decisive in action.

Popular front with the bourgeoisie

One part of the equation that allowed for Bonapartism to develop in Indonesia was the inability of the proletariat to bring the white-hot class struggle to its conclusion: dictatorship of the proletariat. The leadership of the PKI was largely responsible for this failure. Through its popular front with the bourgeoisie it had rendered the working class ill-equipped to win the revolution, and thus paved the way for the 1965 reaction.

The idea of the popular front  and with it the two-stage theory  is repeated in many of Aidits works. It was particularly elaborated in the PKIs main political perspective document, Indonesian Society and the Indonesian Revolution, which dictated the partys strategy and tactics until its demise in 1965. The document reads:

The Indonesian national bourgeoisie class remains extremely weak in political, economic and cultural affairs [It] displays two features. As a class that is also suppressed by imperialism and whose development is also stifled by feudalism, this class is anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, and in this respect it is one of the revolutionary forces. But on the other hand, this class does not have the courage fundamentally to fight imperialism and feudalism because economically and politically it is weak and it has class ties with imperialism and feudalism. The dual character of the national bourgeoisie is the reason why we have two sets of experiences with them, that is, at certain limits, this class can take part in the revolution against imperialism, against the compradors and against the landlords (for example during the August Revolution), but at other periods they trail behind the comprador bourgeoisie and become their ally in the counter-revolutionary camp (for example, during the Madiun Affair in 1948 and during the August Mass Arrest in 1951)... In such specific circumstances, the Indonesian proletariat must build unity with the national bourgeoisie and preserve this unity with all its strength... Because of the weakness of the Indonesian national bourgeoisie economically and politically, under certain historical circumstances, the national bourgeoisie which is by nature wavering, can vacillate and betray. In facing the wavering characteristics of the Indonesian national bourgeoisie attention should be paid to the fact that it is precisely because it is politically and economically weak that is not very difficult to pull this class to the left to make it stand firmly on the side of the revolution so long as the progressive forces are large and the tactics of the Communist Party correct. This means that the wavering nature of this class is not fatal, it is not insurmountable. But on the other hand, if the progressive forces are not large and the tactics of the Communist Party not correct, than this economically and politically weak national bourgeoisie can easily run to the right and become hostile to the revolution. [15]

There you have it. The national bourgeoisie are weak in political, economic and cultural affairs, have been suppressed by imperialism and stifled by feudalism and lack the courage fundamentally [!] to fight imperialism and feudalism, meaning they can vacillate and betray. To this we agree. Aidit was also correct to point to the reason why this class was weak and cowardly in nature: because economically and politically it is weak and it has class ties with imperialism and feudalism.

But from this correct appraisal of the fundamental nature of the national bourgeoisie, he somehow found a way to make an intellectual somersault to a wrong conclusion: that it was therefore the task of the Communist Party to build unity with the national bourgeoisie and preserve this unity with all its strength and pull this class to the left to make it stand firmly on the side of the revolution. According to this formulation: what was needed were correct tactics on the part of the Communist Party, which meant not scaring away the bourgeoisie with talk of socialism, class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat. In effect, this meant a policy of class collaboration and the subordination of class struggle to a national struggle. We are reminded of Plekhanov and the Mensheviks, who were chastising Lenin and the Bolsheviks for scaring away the liberals.

PKI chairman, D.N. Aidit's embrace of two-stage theory and popular frontism prepared the party for disaster / Image: public domain

Aidit then proceeded to list a number of historical events that showed the vacillation and betrayal of the national bourgeoisie, such as the Madiun Affair in 1948, when the Sukarno-Hatta government sent their army to crush the PKI for their opposition to the concessionist policy of Sukarno-Hatta to the Dutch. It was not just the PKI forces that were crushed by the armed forces. The government also made sure to crack down on other revolutionaries who fought valiantly against the Allied powers and also against nationalist leaders who sought to capitulate to the imperialist powers and return all Dutch assets, which practically meant subordinating Indonesia economically to the Dutch.

As if to cleanse the bourgeoisie of their sins, Aidit then tried to list the success stories of the national capitalists. But those success stories were few to begin with, and thus he was only able to list one: the August Revolution, in which the national capitalists took part. Aidit could not even say that the national bourgeoisie led the August 1945 independence movement. Furthermore, the national bourgeoisie had to be literally dragged into participation. Sukarno and Hatta had to be kidnapped and forced by a group of radical youth  mostly communists  to proclaim Indonesian independence. They were too afraid to proclaim even what had been become a fact: that Japan had been defeated and independence was there to be taken. Already, in another work, Aidit condemned the Indonesian bourgeoisie for their failure to lead the August 1945 Revolution:

The failure of the August 1945 Revolution shows that the Indonesian bourgeoisie were unable to lead the bourgeois democratic revolution in the era of imperialism, or the bourgeois democratic revolution of a new type. [16]

Thus, Aidit himself recognised that there had yet to be any historical precedence to back up his claim that there was such a thing as a progressive national bourgeoisie making up one of the revolutionary forces in Indonesia.

Precisely because the national bourgeoisie was weak and disorganised, vacillating and unsure of itself, it was prone to betrayal when it came to fulfilling what was supposed to be its historical task: the national democratic revolution. Their weakness did not mean they were easily pulled to the left as Aidit hoped, but all the readier to swing to reaction. The 1965 episode added to the list of times the national bourgeoisie found themselves in the counter-revolutionary camp. The PKI leaders had done everything they could to rally the workers and peasants to build unity with the national bourgeoisie and preserve this unity with all its strength and pull this class to the left to make it stand firmly on the side of the revolution. But the national bourgeoisie had always known that its class interests were diametrically opposed to those of the workers and peasants. PKI leaders remained steadfast in their loyalty to Sukarno, whom they saw as the personification of the progressive national bourgeoisie, but that class had abandoned Sukarno for another Bonapartist who could restore order and ensure the normal functioning of capitalism: General Suharto.

There was no progressive national bourgeoisie, and the Indonesian working class had to pay dearly for this lesson. The only revolutionary class that could complete the national democratic tasks was the working class in alliance with the peasantry. But the working class, in leading the national democratic revolution, could not stop there. It would be forced to begin solving tasks of the socialist revolution and in practice establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is contrary to what Aidit had in mind: that the task of the PKI was to form not a government of the dictatorship of the proletariat but a government of the dictatorship of the people. This government does not have to carry out socialist changes but democratic changes. [17] Aidit continued:

The task of our Party at the present stage of the revolution and in the future becomes clear. Our party has a dual task in leading the Indonesian revolution. Firstly, under the slogan Fulfill the demands of the August Revolution in their entirety, we carry out to their completion the task of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; secondly, after the first task has been carried out, we carry out to their completion the task of the revolution which is proletarian-socialist in nature. [18]

Such was the classic two-stage theory that had been handed down to the leadership of the PKI  and all other communist parties around the world  by their Stalinist overlords in the Kremlin. This theory tied the PKI hand and foot to the national bourgeoisie, whereby they put the class struggle to one side by subordinating it to the national struggle. The PKI refused to recognise the class struggle, but eventually the class struggle caught up with them, and did so violently.

A state with two aspects

In early 1963, Aidit came up with a novel theory in another attempt to fit reality into his scheme. In addition to the two types of capitalists  the progressive capitalists and the comprador or bureaucratic capitalists  he introduced another innovation, discovering that there are two types of people: the pro-people people, and the anti-people people:

In the political power of our country now there are not only compradores, bureaucratic capitalists, and landlords, but also people who are pro-people, who are supported by workers, peasants, democratic intellectuals, and other democrats. Thus, political power in our country has two aspects, that is a pro-peoples aspect and an anti-peoples aspect. [19]

These two types of people, in their dealing with the state, resulted in a state that will also have two aspects: the pro-people aspect and the anti-people aspect. In a lecture he gave in Beijing to Central Committee members of the Chinese Communist Party in September 1963, he elaborated this state-with-two-aspects idea:

The state power of the Republic of Indonesia is a contradiction between two opposing aspects: The first aspect is that which represents the interest of the people. The second aspect is that which represents the interests of the people's enemies. The first aspect is embodied in the progressive attitude and policy of President Sukarno which enjoys the support of the CPI [PKI] and other sections of the people. The second, aspect is embodied in the attitude and policy of the rightists and the diehards; they are the old established forces. Today the popular aspect has become the main aspect and plays a leading role in the state power of the Republic of Indonesia, meaning that it guides the course of the political development in the state power of the Republic of Indonesia... On the other hand, the anti-popular aspect has ceased to be the main aspect and no longer guides the course of development in the contradiction. However, it is still the dominant aspect... But in any case the state in the Republic of Indonesia as a whole, is now led by the forces which represent the interests of the people, or in other words it is led by the popular aspect. [20]

From such analysis, Aidit surmised, in a second lecture in Beijing, that the task of the PKI in regards to such a state is:

... to enable the popular aspect to grow increasingly strong and to take a dominant position and, on the other hand, to exclude from state power the forces which oppose the people. Such is the content of the people's demand for the reorganization (of the state organs), and for a Gotong Royong cabinet with NASAKOM as the fulcrum... Indonesia's revolutionary tasks are to set up state power, not of one class, one stratum or one political party, but of the whole people, the Gotong Royong state power. [21]

Therefore, according to Aidit:

...the important problem in Indonesia now is not to smash the state power as is the case in many other states, but to strengthen and consolidate the pro-peoples aspect... and to eliminate the anti-peoples aspect. [22]

This is truly a major and fatal departure from the Marxist theory of the state. The class content of a state is erased and replaced with a vague notion of people, the members of which are determined arbitrarily by the political expediency of Aidits class collaboration policy on any given day. As Engels explained in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, the state can only be an institution in service of the interests of the ruling class against the oppressed class. He wrote quite clearly about this:

As the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the state of the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the politically ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. The ancient state was, above all, the state of the slave-owners for holding down the slaves, just as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is the instrument for exploiting wage-labor by capital. [23]

Here we have Aidit conjuring up a non-class state that represents the whole people: the peoples state. However, Aidit would have been surprised to learn that such a peoples state was not a novel creation of his. The idea of a peoples state has festered in the working-class movement since its inception. At the height of the Russian Revolution, when the question of the state became concrete, Lenin took the time to reiterate again for his comrades the Marxist theory of the state in order to prepare the Bolsheviks and the working class for power. In his seminal work The State and Revolution, he attacked those who were playing around with the peoples state catchword as philistine:

The free peoples state was a programme demand and a catchword current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. This catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion... every state is a special force for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not free and not a peoples state. [24]

Aidit at the height of the Indonesian Revolution, fell backward on this question. He had definitely read Lenins works on the question of state, or at least was familiar with Lenins basic conception, as he took the opportunity to tell us that V.I. Lenin taught us, The state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another. However, he quoted Lenin just before going on with his anti-Leninist notion of a peoples state. We are entitled to question whether Aidit ever learned anything from Lenin. In fact, just like all Stalinists of his time who had vulgarised the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, his reference to Lenins State and Revolution was ritualistic, aimed at throwing dust into the eyes of the working class so that he could sneak in his philistine idea of the peoples state. This method of quoting the great teachers as a means to smuggle in alien class ideas was pioneered by Bernstein, developed further by Kautsky, and perfected to an art later by Stalin and his epigones. This episode also showed the theoretical bankruptcy of the Chinese Stalinists. The whole membership of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party did not say even one word when Aidit presented his idea of the non-class state.

Aidit paid lip-service to Lenin, while totally subverting his teachings on the state / Image: public domain

The Chinese Stalinists were not in a position to correct Aidit, having themselves already butchered the Marxist theory of the state by adopting their bloc-of-four-classes state conception. They found also difficult to explain why the Chinese state gave no sign of dying away many years after the Revolution, but quite the opposite. It is a fundamental part of Marxs and Lenins theory of the state that the workers state is a special kind of state which would begin to wither away, as the productive forces develop and the class antagonisms in society are overcome. However, under socialism with Chinese characteristics the bureaucratic machinery of the state, just like its counterpart in the Soviet Union, had grown into a hitherto unheard-of apparatus of compulsion with no intention of dying away.

The Chinese bureaucrats would quote Lenin in their defence, as he correctly said that only under communism  a society of superabundance run according to the principle from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs  would we reach a stateless society. But they argued that until then there would still be the need for a strong state as an organ to suppress the exploiters. At what stage would the state as an oppressing machine wither away was left to anyones guess. However, they neglected to mention that Lenin never left the question of what would happen to the workers state during the transitional period to a distant future. Here is what Lenin wrote:

During the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the state, is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state. It is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage-labourers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. Naturally, the exploiters are unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple machine, almost without a machine, without a special apparatus, by the simple organisation of the armed people. (Our emphasis)

These were Lenins clear thoughts on the role of the state in the transition from capitalism to communism. Instead of becoming a simpler machine, the Chinese state became a sophisticated all-encompassing state apparatus in defence of the privileges of the bureaucracy. Incidentally, we can now say that it was that same parasitic bureaucratic state that would become the principal motor force of capitalist restoration in China and, with very little modification, can now be described as a capitalist state (read: Chinas long march to capitalism).

Aidits lectures about the peoples state with pro-people and anti-people aspects were thus received with warm applause by the Chinese Stalinists. Aidit did not just stop at the idea of the peoples state. Once he began there, he was also forced to do away with any class terms in politics, hence the pro-people and anti-people aspects. Here the state was seen merely as a collection of individuals who could be grouped into two camps of opposing views, not as a historically established institution resulting from the class antagonism of society. This is simply a modification of the popular front strategy of allying with the progressive national bourgeoisie and other progressive forces (intellectuals, advanced aristocratic elements, patriotic elements, etc.). But Aidit took it a step further, expunging even class terms or concepts from the Stalinist class collaborationist policy of the popular front.

Aidit referred to the progressive policies and anti-imperialist stance of the Sukarno government as a manifestation of the pro-people aspect. Shallow impressionism substitutes for Marxist analysis of class struggle. In the midst of a revolutionary period, when the class struggle reaches a stalemate, a Bonapartist can emerge and pose as a power standing above society: an arbiter of the national interest. Such was the situation in Indonesia after 1945, with a series of revolutionary ebbs and flows, where the capitalists were not strong enough to complete the national democratic revolution and establish order for the normal functioning of capitalism because of the recurrent mass movement. Meanwhile, the mass movement was not strong enough to take power decisively into its hands.

In this situation arose the Bonapartist Sukarno, appearing as a father of the nation, calming his squabbling children. The situation required a figure like Sukarno: a charismatic individual with a penchant for dramatic flair, skilful in the art of persuasion and political dealing, principled enough to be seen as a strong figure, but also flexible enough to allow him to move between classes, balancing one against another. This fatally mistaken analysis by the PKI leadership would be paid for dearly by the Indonesian revolutionary workers and peasants, who looked to the powerful PKI for leadership in the revolution.

Marx once said that force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. He was referring to the employment of the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition.

This was done particularly through a system of colonial exploitation that led Marx to conclude that capital comes [into the world] dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt, [25] the former statement retains its general validity in a revolution that will overthrow capitalism. This naturally flows from the stubborn resistance of the status quo and its defenders to change.

However, it would be a great folly for any serious Marxist to preach to the masses that a socialist revolution has to be a bloody violent affair. The ruling class is always trying to frighten the workers by associating socialist revolution with violence and civil war. We should not behave like ultra-left sectarians who feel the need to assert their revolutionary credentials by displaying their enthusiasm for bloody revolution and the inevitability of violence. We insist that Marxists are in favour of a peaceful socialist transformation of society, which would be perfectly possible on condition that the leadership of the working class mobilises the full force of the working masses. We also explain to the masses that history has shown time and time again that no ruling class has ever surrendered their power without a fight. The responsibility for any possible violence therefore falls squarely on the shoulders of the ruling class and their state apparatus.

The working class has the right to defend its revolution and the subsequent gains it has won. In many cases we have in fact seen throughout history that the old power merely crumbles without a fight before the might of the working class, provided that the working class possesses a leadership that is decisive and resolute enough to carry the struggle to the end. In fact, the October Revolution was won with very minimal bloodshed because the Bolsheviks had prepared the workers for power through patient explanation of the slogan All power to the soviets. Violence only visited the Revolution later on the active instigation of the ruling class.

The slogan of All power to the soviets was not a call for a civil war. The imperialists and capitalists inflicted this on Russia / image: Yanachka

The slogan of All power to the soviets was not a call for a civil war. In his report to the Seventh All-Russian Conference in the Bolshevik Party in April 1917, Lenin said: To speak of civil war before people have come to realise the need for it is undoubtedly to fall into Blanquism. We are for civil war, but only civil war waged by a politically conscious class The government would like to see us make the first imprudent move toward revolutionary action, as this would be to its advantage. [26] Hence the slogan All power to the soviets aimed at educating the working class that power was already theirs to begin with in the form of the soviets, and that they only needed to be politically aware of this fact and wield it for their own class interests.

Numerous times the Bolsheviks had to reject accusations from the ruling class and their Menshevik-SR allies that they were out for blood. Here is how Lenin skillfully responded to such accusations:

You are lying, Mr. Minister, worthy member of the peoples freedom party. It is Mr. Guchkov who is preaching violence when he threatens to punish the soldiers for dismissing the authorities. It is Russkaya Volya, the riot-mongering newspaper of the riot-mongering republicans, a paper that is friendly to you, that preaches violence. Pravda and its followers do not preach violence. On the contrary, they declare most clearly, precisely, and definitely, that our main efforts should now be concentrated on explaining to the proletarian masses their proletarian problems, as distinguished from the petty bourgeoisie which has succumbed to chauvinist intoxication So long as you, capitalist gentlemen, who are in control of the army command, have not yet begun to use violence, it is our tactics, the tactics of all Pravdists and of all our Party, to fight for influence among the proletarian masses, to fight for influence among the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. [27]

Lenin put the responsibility of violence squarely where it belonged, on the shoulders of the capitalist gentlemen who were in control of the apparatus of violence, and the reformist SR-Mensheviks who, by their refusal to claim power that was already in their hands, rendered a violent conflict inevitable. Two subsequent episodesthe July Days where several hundred demonstrators were gunned down, and the Kornilov military coup that was defeated by the massesshowed clearly before the eyes of the masses who the real instigators of violence were. The working class learns from experience, and from these two episodes they became resolute in their conviction to overthrow capitalism through mass revolutionary actions.

Lenin put the responsibility of violence squarely on the shoulders of the capitalists and reformists / Image: public domain

Lenin, however, while explaining that the working class simply had to take the power, he never sowed any illusions amongst the proletariat about the peaceful nature of the ruling class. One only needs to compare this to Aidits conception of the peaceful road to socialism for Indonesia. In 1960, he said in an interview with a Western correspondent that the prospects for a peaceful transition to socialism, as laid down by Khrushchev at the Twentieth Soviet Party Congress, are the brightest and the opportunities most bountiful in two countries, namely, Cuba and Indonesia. [28] He elaborated this further in another interview in 1964:

When we complete the first stage of our revolution, which is now in progress, we can enter into friendly consultation [!] with other progressive elements in our society and, without an armed struggle, lead the country towards Socialist Revolution. After all, the national capitalists in our country are both weak and disorganised. At present, in our national democratic revolution, we are siding with them and fighting a common battle of expelling foreign economic domination from this soil. [29] (Our emphasis)

The reporter was shrewd enough to ask what would happen if the national capitalists developed a class character and opposed any kind of socialism. Aidit answered:

The chastening effect [of the present stage of the revolution] would maintain a kind of revolutionary pressure on Indonesias national capitalists There will be no armed struggle unless there is foreign armed intervention on the capitalists behalf and, when we successfully complete our present national democratic revolution, the chances of any foreign power interfering with Indonesias internal affairs will become extremely remote.

The difference between Lenin and Aidits so-called Leninist conception is stark. Aidit developed the idea of an a priori peaceful path to socialism in such a way that completely disarmed the working class, by placing their trust blindly in other progressive elements and the national capitalists. Lenin, on the other hand, argued that the Bolsheviks and the working class desired for peaceful transfer of power to the soviets as long as the Mensheviks and SRs, who were then at the heads of the soviets, were ready to do so. But he never harboured one iota of trust in the bourgeoisie, whom he constantly exposed as the side that was riot-mongering. Through consistent and persistent propaganda work, the Bolsheviks politically prepared the working class for a class independence policy of taking power.

Let us investigate the premises of Aidits peaceful road to socialism:

1) Socialism is a matter of friendly consultation with other progressive elements [read: national capitalists] in our society after the completion of the national democratic revolution.

What Aidit was telling us was that once capitalism had been fully established in Indonesia through the completion of the national democratic revolution, there would no longer be class struggle between the working class and the capitalists. The two classes which Marx and Engels had always maintained to be diametrically opposed to each other and to have irreconcilable interestswould now sit together like two civilised gentlemen to discuss how to reach socialism. Aidit would have made the French utopian socialists very proud.

The utopian socialists before Marx and Engels time believed that socialism was just a matter of convincing everyone, including the capitalists, of the superiority of socialism over capitalism. After all, in the Kingdom of Reason established by the French Revolution, Reason was believed to be the sole measurement of everything. Therefore friendly consultation with all sides using Reason was enough to reach socialism. But the French utopian socialists could be excused for their mistake, as history had yet to furnish them with the proletariat, and class conflict between the capitalists and the proletariat had yet to take a definite shape. Theirs was a mistake of being too ahead of their time. But things were very much different by the mid-20th century, when class conflicts had not only taken shape but also plunged the whole world into two global wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions.

Marx and Engels had from the beginning warned the workers of the reactionary characters of those who advocate the old ideas of utopian socialism today:

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape,  [the ideas of Utopian Socialism] lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these [Utopian Socialist] systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science. [30] (Our emphasis)

As such, Aidit and the leadership of the PKI had turned themselves into reactionary and conservative socialists. The bourgeoisie have a penchant and centuries-old-sharpened skills for tricking workers that it stands for democracy, that it is flying high the banner of Liberte, Egalite, et Fraternite, so that workers entertain the illusion that their interests could be served through some sort of mature friendly negotiation with the capitalists in a parliament. The task of any revolutionary is to lift this facade and expose the real nature of bourgeois democracy.

2) The national capitalists are weak and disorganised, and hence the road to socialism will be peaceful.

The Indonesian capitalists might be weak and disorganised, but that is only in relation to their ability and willingness to complete the tasks of the national democratic revolution: establishment of a democratic parliament; agrarian reform; independence from foreign imperialism. This is because they are indissolubly tied to foreign capital and landlordism by a thousand threads. Furthermore, the sight of the proletariat strikes fear in them, far more than being under the thumb of foreign capital. For that reason, when it comes to defending their class interests, profits, and ownership of the means of production, they will not be weak and disorganised.

The bourgeoisie has in its hands a statewhich in the last analysis is made up of armed bodies of men and womenbuilt specifically to maintain wage-labour exploitation by capital. This state was not by any means weak and disorganised. It had been used numerous times since its formal establishment on August 17, 1945 to crush the working class movement.

Immediately after independence, the Indonesian bourgeoisie sought compromise and rapprochement with the imperialists / Image: public domain

Immediately after independence, the nascent Indonesian bourgeoisie sought compromise and rapprochement with the imperialists. Sukarno and Hatta promised that all foreign assets would be returned, which in Indonesia meant all the main levers of economy would be under the control of foreign capital. This was not the vision of independence that the people had been fighting for. Meanwhile, independence had unleashed a social revolution with demands that had gone beyond the goal of formal sovereignty and sought to uproot all old structures of privilege. The people were demanding 100% independence, expropriating all foreign assets, which the Indonesian masses rightly saw as ill-gotten properties from 350 years of brutal colonial occupation. Complete expropriation of all Dutch and foreign assets would have meant the Indonesian revolution taking the first step toward socialism. This put the nascent bourgeoisie and their newly founded state at violent odds with the aspirations of the toiling masses. Troops were sent to hunt down and annihilate forces that opposed the government policy of conciliation with imperialism.

The Madiun affair in 1948, mentioned by Aidit above, was one of the flash points of this clash between the revolutionary wing and the conciliationist wing of the independence movement. After a series of clashes, manoeuvres, and provocations, on September 18, 1948, the city of Madiun fell into the hands of the PKI-led coalition quite unexpectedly. The Sukarno-Hatta government quickly capitalised on this episode as a pretext to crush the PKI. Speaking on the radio with his usual dramatic flair, Sukarno accused the PKI of treason and engaging in looting, robberies, kidnapping, mental terrorisation against the labourers, peasants, mobilizing criminal gangs to plunder and commit robbery intensively day and night. [31] He went on to give two choices to the people: follow the Musso-led PKI, or follow him.

The PKI fell into this provocation and prematurely called for a seizure of power. Musso in his reply to Sukarnos radio broadcast announced that Madiun was a signal to the whole people to wrest powers of the state into their own hands... The people of Indonesia were asked by Sukarno to choose Sukarno or Musso! The people should answer back: Sukarno-Hatta, the slaves of the Japanese and America! Traitors must die! [32] The government sent in their troops and crushed the PKI, not only in Madiun but all over Indonesia. A White Terror was unleashed. Thousands of PKI cadres were executed. The Madiun affair was also used by the government to crack down on all opposition, including Tan Malaka, who was captured and executed without trial in 1949. The Sukarno-Hatta government showed that the national capitalists were clearly not weak and disorganised in their brutality to crush the Communists.

The PKIs policy of supporting Sukarno was first formulated and implemented by Stalin in the 1920s in the form of the popular front in China / Image: public domain

Later on, Aidit, in his attempt to find the progressive national bourgeoisie in the person of Sukarno, tried to distance the latter from his responsibility in the Madiun affair. The massacre of communists in Madiun, according to Aidit, was wholly led by the comprador bourgeoisie, in the person of Hatta:

On September 19, 1948, President Sukarno gave a speech that called the people to band together [to] annihilate the rebels, [by] which he meant annihilating Communists and other progressive forces physically. I would say that the full responsibility of this was in the hands of Hatta, because Hatta was the Prime Minister at that time. But, because Hatta knew that his influence in the armed forces and other state apparatus was very small, especially amongst the people, then Hatta used Sukarnos mouth and borrowed Sukarnos authority to kill Amir Sjarifuddin and thousands of sons of Indonesia from Java. [33]

If Sukarnos voice and authority could be so easily used by the so-called comprador bourgeoisie, that said a lot about the reliability and independence of the so-called progressive bourgeoisie. The progressive bourgeoisie is therefore a left cover for the true nature of the bourgeoisie, which makes the former even more dangerous. Yet, here is what Sukarno himself had to say about the Madiun affair later in his autobiography, which is clearly at odds with Aidits wishful historical revisionism:

It was Sukarno who squashed the Communists in 1948. ... I was not about to let them or anyone else throw God out of my beloved country I sent in our crack Siliwangi army division. They did the rest. Within days the back of the rebellion was broken... Let nobody say Sukarno flinched in crushing the Communist uprising. [34]

The Indonesian Stalinists learned well from their mentors in Moscow. The PKIs policy of supporting Sukarno was first formulated and implemented by Stalin in the 1920s. While the Russian Stalinists found themselves inviting Chiang Kai-shek, the would-be Chinese reactionary dictator, to the great hall of the Comintern, lavishing him with praise just months before he soaked his hands in the blood of Shanghainese Communists, [35] the Indonesian Stalinists outdid even their mentors. They not only dutifully washed the blood of Madiun Communists from Sukarnos hands after the betrayal, but also placed the fate of the Indonesian revolution in those same hands. The student had truly become the master.

There is one little detail that is worth mentioning here from the above quote. Sukarno knew full well that the PKI never had a political programme of abolishing religion, nor do any communists for that matter. But he felt the need to accuse the PKI of wanting to [over]throw God and used this common red-baiting prejudice in Indonesia to attack the PKI. This fits perfectly with his role as a Bonapartist, a shrewd politician skillful in balancing antagonistic interests of various classes and social forces, until of course it all crumbled in 1965.

Aidits historical revisionism did not stop here. He had to establish the presence of the ever-elusive progressive national bourgeoisie as far back as 1945. After Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, both Sukarno and Hattawho in the past three years had obsequiously served the Japanese occupation forceswere infected with a paralysing fear of proclaiming Indonesian independence without consulting the Japanese beforehand. They were unsure of themselves, reflecting their class basis, and had to be kidnapped by a group of youth and pressured. A decade later, Aidit was recounting a different story: that it was now only Hatta who had opposed the immediate proclamation:

For the first time I would like to say that for a long time I have felt guilty for taking part in the movement to force Hatta [to] sign the 17 August 1945 Proclamation of Independence. Hatta since the beginning was stubbornly opposing the proclamation of the August Revolution. He fully hung the fate of Indonesian Independence on the mercy of Saiko Shikikan (Japanese High Army Command) that never arrived. [36]

3) The revolution would put some kind of pressure on the capitalists, taming them and rendering the transition to socialism peaceful.

The reporter for the Far Eastern Review magazine clearly had a better understanding of the class struggle than Aidit. He was insightful enough to ask Aidit what would happen should the national capitalists develop a class character and oppose any kind of socialism. To this, Aidit answered that the chastening effect [of the present revolution] would maintain a kind of revolutionary pressure on Indonesias national capitalists. He would soon find out that the revolution did not chasten the national capitalists. It did just the opposite. A mass revolutionary movement, as we saw in the period of 1955-1965, might deal a blow against the ruling class and disorient it momentarily, pressuring it to retreat and make some temporary concessions, but it would never quell its class instincts. Once the chastening effect of the revolution wore off, the bourgeoisie would hit back vengefully to make sure that the masses never dared to utter the word revolution again.

Aidits undying faith in the progressive national bourgeoisie led him to disaster / Image: Davidelit

What Aidit refused to understand is that a revolutionary period does not last forever, for the same reason that a society cannot be in the white heat of class struggle all the time. The toiling masses cannot be in a state of mobilisation day in and day out. They must see that the struggle will ultimately end in a fundamental change to their lives for the better. It was, in fact, truly amazing that the Indonesian masses remained in the throes of revolution for almost a decade. The tragedy was that their leadership could never lead them to the final conclusion of a revolution: the conquest of power. Thus, while it is true that a revolution might put pressure on the capitalists, forcing them to retreat, once the capitalists regroup and find their bearing, and once the revolution starts losing its momentum, the whole process will recoil violently.

Aidits undying faith in the progressive national bourgeoisie led him to theoretical twists and turns. In order not to scare away the bourgeoisie, he would have to convince not only them, but also himself and the whole working class of the peaceful path to socialism. Within a year of the above interview, an armed struggle did indeed erupt, but it proved to be a completely one-sided affair where the arms were concentrated in the hands of the ruling class, and the other side, the workers and peasants, were unarmed and unprepared, and were about to be led to the slaughterhouse in their millions without any resistance.

From the renunciation of mass revolutionary struggle for socialism, which had now been replaced by friendly consultation with the national bourgeoisie, it naturally flowed that the only acceptable method of struggle from the point of view of the PKI leaders was skilful political manoeuvring at the top.

Furthermore, since the working class, bound by their loyalty to the popular front with the national bourgeoisie, had been barred from taking power, their role had now been limited to attending mass rallies with all the fanfare involved.

The workers and peasants had been instructed not to take any direct actions that went beyond the national democratic revolution, which could be construed as striving for power and could scare away the national bourgeoisie. Mass actions such as strikes, factory occupations, land occupations, organisation of workers groups for self-defence, etc. were off limits.

Living through that period, anyone would have been amazed at the ability of the PKI to hold mass rallies of tens of thousands of people at will. But these mass rallies turned out to be paper tigers. They were more like large festivals, celebratory in nature. They were organised as a show of force to prop up the PKIs political manoeuvring at the top, not as a show of force for the working class to realise their own strength and ability to take power. Didnt the Second International also hold mass rallies of tens, if not hundreds of thousands?

Imagine the following scene. On 23 May 1965, at Indonesias largest stadium, the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, which could hold 110,000 people sitting, the PKI held its 45th anniversary celebration. The stadium was filled to capacity. Another 100,000 supporters who couldnt get into the stadium were milling about outside in the parking lot and nearby streets. Red flags and big billboards of Marx, Engels and Lenin lined the streets of Jakarta. It was truly a glorious sight to behold. Just three weeks earlier, in the same stadium, the PKI had celebrated May Day in a similar fashion. The ruling class looked upon these mass gatherings of communists with fear. But as events would prove later on, the ruling class could count on the PKI leaders, with their mistaken theories, to hold back the movement from taking power. This was confirmed when the PKI, with its million-strong membership, crumbled to dust without any resistance in the face of reaction.

Prior to 1965, the PKI could hold mass rallies of tens of thousands of people at will. But these mass rallies turned out to be paper tigers / Image: public domain

By 1965, the political atmosphere had reached boiling point. Everyone could feel that a final showdown was imminent. Revolution or counter-revolution was on the order of the day. Joesoef Isak, a prominent journalist close to the PKI, just two months before the G30S, was informed by the party through his source that something big was about to happen:

I was told that in just a little while the whole situation would change. I understood that there would be a massive movement. It would be the final blow. I kept bugging the party [meaning his briefer, Nursuhud, a Central Committee member], asking when? You said in just a little while, well, its been a week, a month, and still nothing has happened. I kept going after the party, asking when... The party told me, We will raise the revolutionary actions all the way up to their peak. We will lynch the capitalist bureaucrats and the counter-revolutionaries. I asked, how are you going to do that? Descend into the streets, that was the story told to me, descend into the streets. We are going to go directly into the offices of the ministers, the directors general of government departments, and grab them. We are going to take Chairul Saleh [Sukarnos third deputy prime minister] out and dunk him in the Ciliwung river. [37]

Thus, the whole question of a decisive moment in a revolution was answered with a light-minded call to descend into the streets and dunk officials in a river. But of course, Isak and the workers as a whole would learn very quickly that there would be no descending into the streets or dunking officials for a final blow against the ruling classes. There was actually no plan at all that involved the masses, hence such a hand-waving response. It would be the workers in their hundreds of thousands who would end up descending into concentration camps and having their bodies dunked in the rivers, so numerous that stories abound of how rivers in Java were clogged by the sheer number of corpses.

We cannot here help but be reminded of the revolutionary phrase-mongering of the leaders of the Second International. In the years before the outbreak of the First World War, resolutions and announcements against the impending imperialist war from the Second International and its many national sections filled the air, announcing that they would turn the imperialist war into a class war to overthrow their respective governments. The congress of the Second International at Basel in November 1912 passed a manifesto that proclaimed: In case a war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene for its speedy termination and to strive with all their power to utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule. This turned out to be hollow, holiday speechifying. At the moment of truth in 1914, the Second International capitulated to the patriotic chauvinistic pressure and opened the way for some of the worst bloodletting of the working class ever seen.

In fact, the reformist leaders of the Second International had abandoned any thought of revolution, of taking power, and thus had to cover their reformist cowardice with chest-thumping revolutionary phrases. The matter was not much different with the PKIs hollow, revolutionary phrase-mongering, used to cover their reformist politics and refusal to lead workers into taking power. At a decisive moment, when Aidit and co. caught wind of a right-wing military plot, instead of issuing an open call to the masses for a general strike and to the rank-and-file soldiers to disarm reactionary officers, they resorted to a conspiratorial palace revolution. Aidit mobilised his clandestine organisation, known as the Special Bureau, to kidnap and physically remove anti-communist generals.

The Special Bureau was the PKIs clandestine organisation responsible for infiltrating the military. Known in the party as the Military Section of the Organizational Department, it was tasked with recruiting military members, maintaining networks of sympathetic military officers, and gaining valuable intelligence from them. Due to its nature, the detailed workings of this unit and its members were known only to Aidit and a select few party members in the top leadership.

There was nothing wrong in principle in operating a clandestine unit. Manoeuvring and trickery are part of politics as we aim to stay ahead of our class enemy. However, there is a danger in such manoeuvring when it involves losing sight of the working class who are to be the main motor force of revolution. Leon Trotsky spoke of the use of trickery in the October Revolution:

Resorting to trickery in politics, all the more so in revolution, is always dangerous. You will most likely fail to dupe the enemy, but the masses who follow you may be duped instead. Our trickery proved 100 percent successful  not because it was an artful scheme devised by wily strategists seeking to avoid a civil war, but because it derived naturally from the disintegration of the conciliationist regime with its glaring contradictions. [38]

The October Revolution was a mass movement, not a conspiratorial coup as bourgeois historians would like us to believe. The Bolsheviks never hid their intention to lead the masses toward the revolutionary seizure of power, and openly prepared the masses toward that aim. But there was an element of manoeuvring in it as well, where the Bolsheviks tricked their enemies, the conciliationists, into the trap of soviet legality, and to synchronise the seizure of power with the opening of the Second Soviet Congress. But, Trotsky added: they [the conciliationists] yearned to be deceived and we provided them with ample opportunity to gratify their desire. In short, like Trotsky said above, the trickery was successful because it derived naturally from the disintegration of the conciliationist regime with its glaring contradictions.

On the other hand, the 30th September Movement that was set in motion by the Special Bureau was an artful scheme devised by wily strategists seeking to avoid a civil war, and precisely because of that it proved not only 100 percent unsuccessful but also fatally catastrophic. The leadership of the PKI was doing everything they could to postpone the seizure of power by the toiling masses, to postpone class struggle in the name of national struggle, to avoid a civil war. If the PKI had mobilised the masses to defeat the anti-communist forces in the army, it would have meant setting in motion a revolution that could have ended up in the revolutionary seizure of power by the working class, a prospect that did not fit the PKIs aim of propping up the government of Sukarno. As such, the mobilisation of the Special Bureau to precipitate the 30th September Movement was not a whimsical irresponsible decision of Aidit aloneas many would like us to believebut naturally flowed from the whole political programme of the PKI since the beginning.

The method of the Special Bureau was a logical conclusion of the PKI policy of gradually eliminating anti-people elements and introducing more pro-people elements into the state. Aidit and his Special Bureau team imagined that they could neutralise the counter-revolutionary threat simply by replacing anti-communist generals with ones who were more sympathetic to the PKI, or at least neutral. Revolution was seen from a very administrative point of view instead of as a struggle of living forces.

It is instructive to briefly look at the character of Sjam, the leader of the Special Bureau, the man Aidit trusted to carry out the 30th September Movement. According to one former high-level member of the PKI, Sjam never read books and barely read the party literature... [cannot] be bothered with theory... he operates by a simple principle: follow Aidit... Sjam was a classic apparatchik... [who] would have grasped Machiavelli better than Marx. [39] Furthermore, captured in 1967, knowing that the party he served was now in ruins, Sjam betrayed many of his former comrades to save his own skin. This arch-Machiavellian justified his cowardice and treacherous actions by saying, Each person has a right to defend his right to life. Hence, the fate of the Indonesian revolution was left in the hands of this philistine, ignorant, and cowardly apparatchik. And yet Sjam was just an accidental figure expressing the necessity, a catastrophic necessity prepared by decades of Stalinist vulgarization of Marxism. His philistinism, ignorance, and cowardice were merely the faithful reflection of Stalinist theories of two-stage-revolution and the bloc of four classes.

The massacre: a multigenerational trauma

The 1965 massacre in Indonesia registers itself as one of the bloodiest events in the modern history of humanity. From late 1965 to mid-1966, hundreds of thousands of people accused of being directly or indirectly affiliated to the party were rounded up by the army and its supported militias and massacred. Mass graves littered the country, particularly in the islands of Java and Bali. Estimates of the death toll range from 100,000 to two million, with a consensus amongst historians that it is probably closer to 500,000. But as Robert Cribb says in his study How many deaths? [40] this estimate of half a million comes solely from a sense of moderate judgment [that] has nothing to do with accuracy and everything to do with scholarly and personal respectability and that it is chosen because it seems to register serious concern without requiring outrage. But only outrage is fitting for such a bloody defeat of the working-class movement.

Lieutenant General Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, who led the annihilation operation (Operasi Penumpasan), was reported to have admitted that he oversaw the killing of three million PKI members. This number might be an exaggeration aimed at intimidating the people that the army is capable of committing an unheard-of atrocity against those who dare to defy them. But this figure is not without its merit. The Communist Party of Indonesia was a party of millions of members with deep roots in various layers of the toiling masses. Prior to its destruction it claimed three million members. It had under its wing many front groups of a mass character: Pemuda Rakyat (People's Youth) with 1.5 million members, SOBSI (Indonesian Centre of Workers' Organizations) with 3.8 million members (out of a total of seven million organized workers), the BTI (Peasants Front of Indonesia) with five million members, and Gerwani (Indonesian Women's Movement) with 750,000 members. [41] In short, about one in ten Indonesians was associated one way or another with the PKI, and to uproot this mass party and its influence, nothing short of a genocidal massacre was needed.

The 1965 massacre in Indonesia was one of the bloodiest events in modern history / Image: public domain

Furthermore, to destroy the largest communist party in the world outside China and the USSR required a certain brutality. The killing needed to inflict a national multi-generational trauma, to remind the working class that this was the price they would pay for daring to stand up and challenge capitalism. It was not just the number that would intimidate workers and peasants, but also the methods which were carefully chosen. Horrifying stories abound in many villages where these massacres happened: the piling of corpses onto rafts, the nailing of genitalia of male communists to shop fronts, beheadings, etc. The army and reactionary militias were particularly innovative in the act of killing when it came to the communists.

A news report in August 1966 by renowned Australian journalist and historian Frank Palmos, who was among the first foreigners in the world to witness the purge, had this to say about the killings:

At least 800,000 were killed in the area investigated. In the PKI triangle stronghold of Bojolali, Klaten and Solo, nearly one-third of the population is dead or missing. Farther east, in the 12-mile radius of Kediri, killing was abnormally high. Startling tolls took place in the residency of Banjumas, geographical centre of Java.

The news report continues:

Researchers added these points, believed to be contained in the various detailed but uncollated reports: Most of the killing was by militant youth groups, often appointed by military or village authorities. Youths were armed and encouraged by these authorities, and in the triangle area, were given drill and weapons training. Once the killing started, the youths were uncontrollable. Scores of champion killers were found. One boy interviewed killed 135, then lost count. Beheading was the most common form of killing, but for large scale executions shooting was normal. Killing was invariably late at night, far away from villages where the victims lived. Although thousands of women were killed, almost none were raped or abused before being put to death. [42]

The latter account about the absence of rape and sexual abuse of women victims was later discredited by testimonies of survivors. It has now been established beyond doubt that sexual violence was a reality for most of the women victims of the 1965-66 massacres, as much as it was used as a method of intimidation.

Another personal witness account by Robert Macklin, a journalist for the Australian newspaper The Age, provided a vivid detailed picture of the killings he and his wife witnessed in Denpasar, Bali:

The man's screaming and the gathering of a large crowd of school children from a nearby playing field attracted us to the army headquarters post. A Communist was being interrogated in Denpasar, the capital of Bali, Indonesia, on the ground floor verandah. We stood silently with the children as the man was bashed and dragged away We do not know how many Communists were killed but it is plain that Communism as a political force in Indonesia is at least temporarily finished. The way of its going was a brutal one. We saw four villages where every adult male had been killed. We saw trucks of villagers returning to the hills after making trips to the compound where they were given a ration of Communists to kill. We saw mass graves in each of which up to 10 Communist men and women had been packed after being stabbed to death. We saw literally hundreds of houses which had been burned to the ground. [43]

More accounts of gory violence have been documented since the fall of Suharto and they are not for the weak-hearted. The ruling class of all epochs have always been characterised by their vicious brutality against those who dare to defy them. The Roman Empire, after crushing the Spartacus slave uprising, had 6,000 slaves crucified along the 200-km Appian Way that connected Rome and Capua. The Paris Communards were executed by the thousands. Vae victis!Woe to the vanquished! The history of class societies is soaked in the blood of those ruled and defeated.

The crushing of the PKI was a massive victory for the forces of imperialism / Image: public domain

The crushing of the PKI and the accompanying massacre was a massive victory for the forces of imperialism, as the Indonesian revolution was at the forefront of a movement against U.S. imperialism. Indonesia was the biggest and most decisive domino piece in Southeast Asia. With the removal of the PKI, the threat of a communist tide in the region was greatly reduced. Time magazine reported it as the best news for the West in Asia for many years, while The New York Times offered the headline A glimmer of light in Asia. The Liberal Party Prime Minister of Australia at the time, Harold Holt, summed up the sentiment shared amongst world leaders when he addressed his colleagues at the River Club in New York in July 1966: With 500,000 to one million Communist sympathisers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place. [44]

The party paralysed

The PKI was never ready for revolution, and for exactly that reason it was not ready for a counter-revolution. It was completely paralysed in the face of reaction. The wave of violence against PKI members that swept the nation met no resistance at all, except in a few isolated PKI strongholds.

Seeing the collapse of the 30th September Movement, Aidit immediately left Jakarta and flew to Central Java where the party had the strongest base. But he did not give any order to the party as to what to do. He remained undergroundincommunicado until his arrest and summary execution two months laterand patiently waited for Sukarno to stabilise the situation, in accordance with the party programme of remaining under his guardianship. Once again, Aidit was afraid to call the masses to action to resist the army. He could have issued an order to the railway workers to halt trains carrying Suhartos troops; to mechanics to sabotage army jeeps, trucks, and tanks; to peasants to block roads to and from army barracks; to party members and workers to form self-defence militias and arm themselves; to sympathetic rank-and-file soldiers to turn their guns against their commanding officers. With such calls Suhartos troops would have melted away. But all this would have meant going onto an offensive, transcending the limits of national democratic revolution toward the dictatorship of the proletariat. It would have meant Trotskyism: a sin far greater than anything else in the eyes of Stalinists.

Other PKI leaders were also equally paralysed. Njoto and Lukmanmembers of the Politburomet with Sukarno at the cabinet meeting on 6 October. Sukarno urged the PKI to remain calm, that he wouldin his usual Bonapartist mannertake care of everything and protect the party from the army. This urging to remain calm meant that the PKI should not call the masses to resist the White Terror unleashed by Suhartos army. Njoto and Lukman, and the rest of the PKI leadership, were hoping that Sukarno would use his authority to rein in Suharto, but it turned out that the emperor had no clothes.

The PKI was never ready for revolution, and was not ready for a counter-revolution / Image: public domain

In fact, on the day previous to this cabinet meeting, the PKI Politburo had already issued a statement declaring its support for the guidelines laid down by Sukarno for solving the problem and called on all members and followers to help carry out the terms of the presidents message. [45] Thus, while the army and reactionary militias were rounding up the Communists, the PKI leadership instructed the masses to obey Sukarno, and the latter told the masses to remain calm, which effectively disarmed them. As a consequence, in the initial months, many Communists willingly turned themselves in to army installations and police stations, believing that Sukarno would protect them. They believed all the pronouncements from their leaders and Sukarno that the PKI as an institution had nothing to do with the 30th September Movement, and thus if they were innocent there was no reason to hide. They did not expect to be detained indefinitely, and were never to be heard from again.

One by one, PKI leaders went into hiding while still hoping that Sukarno would sort everything out like the great arbiter they believed him to be. The leadership was, for all intents and purposes, deactivated. The millions of people who followed the PKI could not hide and were left in confusion without any leadership. The following account by a PKI member and wife of a Central Committee functionary provides an illustrative example of how paralysed the party and their cadres were:

After September 30, we went on with our work for some days in the normal manner, but no one with whom we came in contact was able to inform us as to what happened or what we expected to do. As the atmosphere in Jakarta grew worse, we just sat at home and waited for instructions. My husband had been given no guidance about what to do in such an eventuality. We did not expect things to turn out so badly; we thought there would be a setback for the party but that eventually it would be sorted out by Sukarno. That is why the party disintegrated. There were no orders, and no one knew who to turn to or who to trust, since arrests had started and we knew there had been betrayals. ... [Party leaders] sent words to wait. [46]

And they waited and waited for some salvation, and the only thing that came was their turn to be slaughtered. If this was how a party functionary in Jakarta felt, one can only imagine the utter confusion amongst hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file members of the PKI in the regions and the millions of non-party workers and peasants who supported the PKI. They were fed with the illusion that eventually it would be sorted out by Sukarno, an illusion that bound them hand and foot ready to be delivered to Suharto the executioner.

At that same cabinet meeting, Sukarno proposed that all newspapers, including the PKIs Harian Rajat (Peoples Daily), should be allowed to resume publication. The military refused to permit this, and with that single act of defiance the army showed who really held power. Over the next two years we witness similar stories repeated again and again: Sukarno making bombastic statements from his presidential palace with his usual flair, making bold orders to restore his authority and undermine the army, and the army general staff simply refusing and strengthening their position every step of the way. There was nothing that The Supreme Commander of the National Armed Forces could do. In March 1967, he formally surrendered his power to Suharto, power that he had lost de facto immediately after G30S. Sukarno was simply kept as a titular president, long enough to lull and disarm the communists.

The heaviness of the defeat of the Indonesian proletariat lies not only in the fact of the brutality of the militarys bloodletting, but alsoand perhaps more importantlyin the paralysis and inability of its leadership, the PKI, to offer any resistance. The latters kowtowing to the national bourgeoisie had robbed the proletariat of its class vigilance and its fighting capacity. The mass rallies often displayed in years before the G30S turned out to be hollow and for show only.

Much has been said about the systematic, brainwashing propaganda machine and the terror the New Order launched that created todays deep-seated anti-communist sentiment that penetrated deeply into the psyche of the masses. But this was only possible because of the grave disappointment the masses had in the PKI, whose false policy literally led millions to the butchering house. The false policy of the leadership of the PKI was responsible for sullying the banner of communism in the eyes of the Indonesian toiling masses for generations, who had looked upon their leaders to lead them not to a bloody reaction, but to a victorious revolution.

Moving forward

A party tempers itself by learning from its mistakes. Even after committing a disastrous mistake, a party can still maintain its core cadres and rebuild its forces if it is capable of drawing all the necessary lessons and charting a new course to reorient itself in a new situation that it finds itself. But those are the two things that the PKI found itself wanting.

Sudisman, one of the main leaders of the PKI who managed to go underground before being captured in 1967, wrote a self-criticism document while in hiding. [11] The document identifies one of the main mistakes of the leadership of the PKI, him included, which is entrusting the fate of the Party and the revolutionary movement to the policy of President Sukarno. This is correct, but he still deemed to be absolutely correct the policy of forming a united front with the national bourgeoisie. Sudisman reiterated many times that the party still had to make continuous efforts to win the national bourgeoisie over to the side of the revolution. He imagined that it was possible for the proletariat to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie without undermining its own class independence. What he could not understand was that in order to win over the national bourgeoisie as an additional ally in the peoples democratic revolution the proletariat and its party would have to subordinate class struggle to the interests of the bourgeois class. You cannot have one without the other.

The only solution to the problems of Indonesian society lies in the struggle for the dictatorship of proletariat  or genuine workers democracy to express its true meaning  under a clean banner of class independence, drawing behind it the poor peasants. The workers have to be taught to never trust the bourgeoisie and keep their banners separate from those of their class enemies. Such is the necessary lesson that should have been drawn by the PKI, but alas Sudisman, as the only surviving senior Politburo member at that time, could not even see this.

By refusing to break with Sukarno, the PKI left themselves defenceless against Suharto / Image: public domain

Sudisman then turned to what he thought to be organisational weaknesses that allowed for this Right opportunism to take hold of the party: lack of critical attitude towards the leadership, the lack of courage to express a stand that was not in disagreement with the line followed by the leadership and lack of freedom to express the views and feelings of the cadres. But all of these were the natural conditions of a party educated and nurtured in the methods of Stalinism. Communist party leaders all over the world could not pretend to be blind to the fact that Stalin and Mao Zedong, whom they regarded as paragons of Marxism-Leninism, employed the crudest methods of expulsion, intimidation, and physical extermination to deal with anyone who dared to harbor critical attitudes against the infallible wisdom of the leadership. These methods are at odds with genuine Bolshevism, with the healthy internal democracy of the Party of Lenin and Trotsky, where sharp disagreements were debated openly, without fear of repercussions. Stalinist methods had been exported to every Communist Party around the world for decades, and served as a filter to select party leaders who would be uncritical yes-men and women, and utterly bureaucratic in the way they dealt with any disagreement. Sudisman was such a bureaucrat, who for decades had never even once raised any opposition to Aidit but then suddenly found that the party leadership had been committing errors in all fundamental questions. Such hindsight is truly cheap.

Sudisman now appealed for party democracy, to make the question of the principal means and the main form of struggle of the Indonesian revolution a problem which concerned the whole Party... [not just] a problem which concerned a few persons among the leadership and certain cadres in the Party. But party democracy is not a well of wisdom that can be drawn on at any moment. Neither is it a panacea that can be summoned at ones convenience to correct mistakes of the leadership. If the leaders are already embarking on an incorrect course, thus drawing behind them the whole party toward the same direction, it would be folly to expect that party democracy could somehow instantly correct the course. One would fall into crude democratism. A party can break from the mistakes of the old leadership only if it has inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres that can counterpose themselves to the old leadership. A new leadership cannot be improvised at will, but is a product of a drawn-out struggle inside the party, a result of a healthy party regime, which was precisely what was lacking in all the Stalinist parties.

The self-criticism document then charted a new course for the party, and it was an equally disastrous course that bore no connection at all with reality. Sudisman called on the party members to begin organising peasant armed struggle along the lines of the Maoist peasant army and to turn their attention to transform the backward Indonesian villages into great and consolidated military, political and cultural bastions of revolution, or soviet zones. In the usual zigzag manner, which was characteristic of all Stalinists, after burning their fingers with the opportunist policy of the peaceful road toward socialism the leadership now swung in the opposite direction and adopted the ultra-leftist madness of armed struggle of the peasants. Nothing of the sort ever materialised. Party organisations in the rural areas had already been smashed and rural populations were mobilised by the reaction to turn against the PKI. It was mainly in the rural areas where massacres of unheard-of brutality unfolded. The immediate task ahead should have been to retreat in good order, slowly reorganise underground party organizations that would open the possibilities of establishing legal and semi-legal work amongst the masses, and putting forward democratic slogans against the rising regime of military dictatorship (freedom of press, free elections, trade union legality, etc.) while maintaining working class independence and exposing the constitutional and democratic illusions of the petty-bourgeois reformists.

Sudisman also underestimated the extent of the reaction:

The military dictatorship of the Right-wing army generals which is now in power is also a paper tiger. In appearance they are powerful and terrifying. But in reality they are not so powerful, because they are not supported but, on the contrary, are opposed by the people.

The military had won decisively. With the blood of hundreds of thousands of Communist cadres on their hands they were a real tiger, not a paper tiger. Through their systematic propaganda machine, the army had mobilised a significant layer of the people against the PKI. A certain period of economic and political stabilisation was on the order of the day. Believing in the fantasy that the enemy was weak, Sudisman imagined that he could arouse the demoralised party members. He continued this fantasy by making the following absurd assertion:

From the strategic point of view, imperialism and all reactionaries are weak and consequently we must belittle them. By belittling the enemies strategically, we can build up the courage to fight them and the confidence to defeat them... The vicious and savage massacre and torture against the hundreds of thousands of Communists and democrats which they are still continuing today, will not be able to prevent the people and the Communists from rising up in resistance. On the contrary, all the brutalities and cruelties will certainly arouse the tit-for-tat resistance struggle of the people. (Our emphasis)

The massacre of hundreds of thousands of Communist cadres resulted in a multigenerational trauma, a historical shock to the consciousness of the people. It did not arouse the masses for a tit-for-tat resistance struggle but demoralised them for decades to come.

This self-criticism sealed the fate of the PKI as the revolutionary party of the proletariat. Instead of correcting its past mistakes, it piled up even more mistakes. It charted a new course  peasant armed struggle and the establishment of Soviet zones  that was at odds with reality. It underestimated the military dictatorship and the extent of the defeat suffered by the working class.

The young generation of Marxists in Indonesia today must be taught the lessons of 1965, i.e. the treacherous class-collaborationist policy of a united front with the bourgeoisie  or with the so-called progressive bourgeoisie as opposed to the reactionary or comprador bourgeoisie  that robbed the proletariat of its class independence and completely disarmed it, rendering it ill-equipped to lead a victorious revolution and opening the way to bloody reaction. This class-collaborationist policy comes in many forms and terms: revolutionary united front of all anti-imperialist and anti-feudal classes and groups, democratic peoples state, peoples democratic revolution, new-type bourgeois democratic revolution, but they serve the same purpose of undermining class struggle and subordinating the interests of the proletariat to those of the bourgeoisie. It is an expensive lesson paid dearly by the Indonesian working class, and we should honour their sacrifice  albeit a truly unnecessary sacrifice which was the result of a treacherous leadership  by investing the necessary time and resources to learn tOn a recent day in the Big Hole Valley, seven Minnesotans were part of a fall roundup, during which cattle are gathered and driven to lower country, where they over-winter.

DENNIS ANDERSON

http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-horsemen-answer-call-for-cattle-roundup-in-montana-mountains/498118171/The Main Street Program at the Montana Department of Commerce is excited to announce that Butte has been awarded a place in the National Partners in Preservation competition.

***

To vote and help preserve and restore these unique reminders of Buttes diverse history visit http://www.voteyourmainstreet.org/butte or text "MAINSTREET" to 52886 and vote each day through October 26.

***

Buttes Wah Chong Tai Mercantile and Mai Wah Noodle Parlor were nominated by Commerce and will compete with 19 other projects across the nation for a share of $2 million in American Express funding for preservation projects. Montanas only Partners in Preservation project this year, the Mai Wah and Wah Chong Tai buildings represent Buttes once thriving Chinatown of nearly 2,500 Asian residents, which is now maintained by the Mai Wah Society as a museum to honor and preserve the Chinese heritage in southwestern Montana.

From now through October 26, Montanans can vote every day for up to five historic preservation projects that they deem to be the best and most worthy of support. Top vote getters will receive up to $150,000 in funding to support a bricks and mortar project to preserve and restore historic buildings in their Main Street community.

"Projects like this are so important to downtown revitalization efforts in our Main Street communities across the state," Montana Department of Commerce Director Pam Haxby-Cote said. "So, lets get online and vote for this amazing historic preservation project."

Partners in Preservation is an initiative created by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express to engage the public in preserving and increasing awareness of Americas historic places and their role in sustaining local communities.

To vote and help preserve and restore these unique reminders of Buttes diverse history visit http://www.voteyourmainstreet.org/butte or text "MAINSTREET" to 52886 and vote each day through October 26.

http://commerce.mt.gov/News/PressReleases/butte-preservation-project-a-finalist-for-funding-and-needs-your-voteTechLink https://techlinkcenter.org/ which calls itself the U.S. militarys sole national "partnership intermediary" for technology transfers to private companies  helped Ripplinger, Shaw and their companies get launched. The organization does the same for dozens of companies across the nation.

Just in fiscal 2018, TechLink, based at Montana State University, facilitated 91 technology license agreements across the Department of Defense (DoD) , including 48 from the Air Force, 28 from the Navy and 15 from the Army.

By Thomas Gnau

https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/business/company-connects-military-inventions-private-business/vVPq8G3u19JTWUNcrZY3XP/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.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.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,Political class must sacrifice in the ...MERIDEN  One of the first officers assigned to Meridens community policing division, an architect of the citys housing policy, and a political pioneer were inducted into the Meriden Hall of Fame Sunday afternoon.

The organizations 42nd annual induction ceremony was held at the Augusta Curtis Cultural Center on East Main Street. Over 100 people attended to pay tribute to the civic careers of three city residents: Robert D. McNulty, 91, the former executive director of Meriden Housing Authority; Hector Cardona Sr., 64, a 31-year veteran of the Meriden Police Department; and Amelia Mustone, 90, who served in the Connecticut State Senate for 16 years.

I look forward to this every year, said Mayor Kevin Scarpati. These three individuals have made an impact on Meridens landscape and the people who have lived here all these years.

McNulty, save his years in the United States Navy in World War II and at the University of Niagara, spent his entire life in Meriden. His son Peter McNulty outlined his fathers lengthy career improving housing opportunities all across the city. He knew the people served by the housing authority by name and sought to deal with them with compassion and empathy, Peter McNulty said.

All of my efforts were to try to make Meriden a better place to live, Robert McNulty said after expressing his gratitude for the honor.

Marisol Chang, Cardonas daughter, spoke of her fathers availability to the community through his work with the police, his contributions to myriad civic organizations, and his leadership role in the Hispanic community. Everyone in town had his phone number and didn't hesitate to call upon him in their times of need.

In 1986, when the city began its community policing efforts, Cardona was assigned to the Mills Memorial Apartments at a time when the gang presence in the public housing complex was especially high. It was an assignment he welcomed. Cardona grew up in the Mills and recalled that his father was strict with him, something that benefited him throughout his own life and in his relationships with his own children.

In order for you to be good with people, you have to be good with yourself, Cardona said. I am the root of my family and if the root is not good the branches will not flourish.

Amelia Mustone was a trailblazer in the Connecticut Senate, serving from 1978 to 1994, and rising to a leadership role in an era when it was extraordinarily difficult for women to do so.

John Mustone, Amelias husband, spoke of her political career a series of choices  one door closes and another one opens was the theme of his remarks.

She relocated from Massachusetts to Meriden for his career. Neither anticipated that getting involved with the League of Women Voters would lead to Amelia eventually becoming the deputy majority leader in the Connecticut Senate. She had a reputation for being able to make tough decisions and elicit bipartisan support.

I began to see politics in a much larger scale, Amelia Mustone said.

Father James Manship, of St. Rose of Lima Church, noted in his closing benediction that it was fitting the ceremony take place in the Curtis Center, which was the citys first library.

These people are living volumes of great wisdom, of great stories, really concrete stories deep in the roots of Meriden, Manship said. We all have a continued responsibility to write the story of Meriden.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MERIDEN  The police department has welcomed four new officers.

Officer William Lourash served in the Army for six years and had two tours in Afghanistan. Officer Paola Garces was born and raised in Colombia. She has a college degree in general studies, and previously worked as a waitress, a real estate specialist, in construction and in nursing.

Officer John Johnson served in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves as an Air Transportation Specialist. Officer Julian Martino previously worked in landscaping and is in the process of finishing his college degree.

Officers will be required to complete two weeks of in-house training and at least 400 hours of field training.MERIDEN  The synagogue on East Main Street is for sale.

The Temple Bnai Abraham Synagogue, located across from City Hall at 127 E Main St., is listed on real estate websites with an asking price of $1.1 million.

Economic Development Director Juliet Burdelski said she toured the building with the listing agent a few months ago.

Its in nice shape and would be suitable for another religious or educational use, Burdelski said in an email.

Congregation president Jay Weiss did not return calls for comment this week. The listed broker also did not return a request for comment.

The two-story, 17,000-square-foot building was constructed in 1951, according to the temples website. The synagogue moved to East Main from its original building at 43 Cedar St.

The parcel includes 1.12 acres of land and has parking for about 50 cars, according to a presentation created by the realty company listing the property, Chozick Realty, Inc.

A listing for the building on the real estate website LoopNet.com states that the building would be best used as another religious facility, specialty school and/or community center.

The first floor of the temple includes private offices, secretarial offices, a sanctuary, large stage hall/cafeteria, one large commercial kitchen and one small kitchen, library/meeting room, storage rooms, bathrooms, gift shop & one classroom, according to the listing. The basement includes two restrooms, five classrooms, and a storage area.

The Masonic Temple, nearby on East Main Street, was sold earlier this year to a Taiwanese religious group for $425,000. The three-story building, with 20,250 square feet, was built in 1927.

mzabierek@record-journal.com

203-317-2279

Twitter: @MatthewZabierekThe states implementation of a federal law allowing disabled people and their families to start tax-deferred savings accounts is at an apparent impasse due to lack of funding.

The Achieving a Better Life Experience Act, passed in 2014, allowed states to establish their own programs for the disabled. Connecticuts legislature passed a law in 2015 making the state treasurer responsible for the program.

ABLE accounts, which function similarly to college fund accounts, allow families to save money for costs related to a disability without exceeding the $2,000 cap on assets required to remain eligible for government aid, including Social Security.

The law was primarily written so parents could make sure their adult children with disabilities would have savings. Money from the accounts can be used to pay for expenses, including education, housing, and transportation.

The state treasurers office said it entered negotiations last year with the state of Oregon, which has already established an ABLE Trust. The goal was for Connecticut to offer the program through Oregons existing platform.

But negotiations have proved difficult, the treasurers office says, because the legislature did not provide funding. The office estimates that $320,000 is necessary to start the ABLE Trust.

The Treasurer, as trustee of ABLE with a fiduciary responsibility to evaluate the programs investment options on behalf of Connecticut residents, was unable to hire staff or engage outside consultants, said a letter the treasurers office sent last month to a 20-member advisory committee. The lack of start-up funds meant the Treasurer would have to delegate her fiduciary duties to another state government...this is an untenable position...so, we are an impasse for now.

State Treasurer Denise Nappier said in a December 2017 letter to lawmakers that contract negotiations with Oregon were underway and she hoped to launch Connecticut's ABLE program in spring 2018.

Even though Connecticut has not formally established an ABLE Trust, Nappier said Connecticut residents are able to open ABLE accounts in programs sponsored by other states.

State Rep. Cathy Abercrombie, D-Meriden, who co-chairs of the legislatures Human Services Committee, said shes disappointed its taken this long for Connecticut to launch its own ABLE program. Connecticut is one of 11 states that has yet to establish an ABLE Trust.

Its something that we really need to enact now versus later. When we go door knocking, we hear from families all the time how important this is, Abercrombie said at a recent local forum on the ABLE Act. We know that families are very concerned about whats going to happen to their loved ones when theyre no longer here. And what this act does is it gives them the ability to put money away toward and it doesnt (affect) any of their Social Security.

Abercrombie is seeking re-election in the 83rd House District.

Roger Misbach, a Libertarian candidate running against Abercrombie, said he would like to see the ABLE accounts combined with similar savings accounts for other costs like education.

My first thought is, rather than create a whole new wheel, lets expand tax-free savings accounts to cover health, disabilities, college, elder care, Misbach said. We are just adding additional paperwork and bureaucracy to a bloated government,

Lou Arata, a Republican running against Abercrombie, couldnt be reached for comment.

The forum attended by Abercrombie was hosted by the Meriden Democratic Town Committee.

mzabierek@record-journal.com

203-317-2279

Twitter: @MatthewZabierekBy ANI

NEW DELHI: In what could bring respite to citizens, fuel prices witnessed deduction on Monday.

In Delhi, petrol price was slashed by 30 paise to retail at Rs. 81.34 per litre, while diesel is being sold 27 paise lower at Rs. 74.92 per litre on Monday.

Price of petrol has been reduced by 30 paise to retail at Rs 86.91 per litre, while diesel is being sold at Rs 78.54 per litre after a 28 paise cut in Mumbai.

Meanwhile, in the national capital, all 400 petrol pumps along with linked CNG dispensing units will remain shut from 6 am on Monday till 5 am on Tuesday in protest against Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government's refusal to reduce Value Added Tax (VAT) on diesel and petrol.

Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA), in a statement, said, "The central government had slashed the rate of petrol and diesel by Rs 2.50 per litre each on September 4. This was followed by a reduction of VAT by various states including neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh bringing relief to their residents. But Delhi government refused to reduce VAT on fuel both petrol and diesel resulting in fuel becoming more expensive than bordering Haryana and Uttar Pradesh."

The statement further read that the state government's refusal to reduce the price has led to a sharp decline in the sale of diesel and petrol in the national capital in this quarter.

"Due to the difference in prices, there has been a sharp drop of 50 percent to 60 percent in sale of diesel in Delhi and 25 percent in petrol in this quarter. On October 22 all the 400 pumps of Delhi will neither purchase nor sell Petrol, Diesel and CNG in protest for reduction of VAT on Petrol and Diesel in Delhi," DPDA said.

However, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal alleged that the strike was politically motivated and sponsored by the BJP. "Petrol pump owners have told us privately that this is a BJP-sponsored strike, actively supported by oil companies. In fact, the BJP has thrust it on petrol pump owners. People will give the BJP a befitting reply in the elections for continuously inconveniencing people through their dirty politics," Kejriwal tweeted.

In a bid to ease the crunch caused by soaring fuel prices, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had, on October 4, announced a reduction of Rs 2.50 per litre on both petrol and diesel prices after curbing excise duty on the commodity by Rs 1.50 per litre. He had also directed all state governments to slash rates.

The decision was backed by several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura, which reduced local sales tax or the VAT.By PTI

NEW DELHI: A high-level committee has recommended adoption of a United Nations model law along with some carve-outs for dealing with cross-border insolvency cases, an official release said Monday.

The Corporate Affairs Ministry said inclusion of cross-border insolvency chapter in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) would be a major step forward and would bring the law on par with that of matured jurisdictions.

The Insolvency Law Committee (ILC), chaired by Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas, on Monday submitted its report on the matter to Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley.

"The ILC has recommended the adoption of the UNCITRAL Model Law of Cross-Border Insolvency, 1997, as it provides for a comprehensive framework to deal with cross-border insolvency issues," the release said.

The panel has also suggested a few carve outs to ensure that there is no inconsistency between the domestic insolvency and the proposed cross-border insolvency frameworks.

According to the ministry, the advantages of the model law are the precedence given to domestic proceedings and protection of public interest.

"The other advantages include greater confidence generation among foreign investors, adequate flexibility for seamless integration with the domestic insolvency law and a robust mechanism for international cooperation," the ministry said in the release.

It said the necessity of having cross-border insolvency framework under the Code arises from the fact that many Indian companies have a global footprint and many foreign companies have presence in multiple countries, including India.

Although the proposed framework would enable in dealing with Indian companies having foreign assets and vice versa, it still does not provide for a framework for dealing with enterprise groups, which is still work in progress with UNCITRAL and other international bodies, the release noted.

Established in 1966, UNCITRAL is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly of the UN with the general mandate to further the progressive harmonisation and unification of the law of international trade, as per its website.

The UNCITRAL Model Law has been adopted in as many as 44 countries.

The model law deals with four major principles of cross-border insolvency, including direct access to foreign insolvency professionals and foreign creditors to participate in or commence domestic insolvency proceedings against a defaulting debtor.

Other key principles include recognition of foreign proceedings and provision of remedies, cooperation between domestic and foreign courts and domestic and foreign insolvency practitioners.

Another principle pertains to coordination between two or more concurrent insolvency proceedings in different countries.

The main proceeding is determined by the concept of Centre of Main Interest (COMI).

As per UNCITRAL, 'harmonisation' and 'unification' of the law of international trade refers to the process through which the law facilitating international commerce is created and adopted.

"Harmonisation may conceptually be thought of as the process through which domestic laws may be modified to enhance predictability in cross-border commercial transactions.

"Unification may be seen as the adoption by States of a common legal standard governing particular aspects of international business transactions," the website said.By Express News Service

BHUBANESWAR: All banks, when they offer a credit card, talk at length about reward points. Yet evidently, not everyone seems to be enjoying the rewards they have earned. While most of them are unaware of redeeming points that they have gained though every transaction made, some find it too complicated to figure out.

When it comes to flyer and hotel loyalty rewards, cardholders are missing out on a lot of advantages and, in some sense, real money, because they are not aware of the perks of the reward system, said Aurvind Lama, co-founder & director, Travelyaari.

But, if you understand the economics of reward points, you can subsidise your cost or even completely pay for your vacation through normal, everyday spending that you do anyway.

How reward points work?

Every time you use your credit card for a transaction, the card company earns an interchange fee from the merchant outlet, which vary from 1-2.5 per cent. Besides, it makes money from the annual fee from cardholders and interest earned on rolling over unpaid bills. They share a part of earnings with the cardholder in the form of reward points to encourage them to use it more frequently.

For every transaction of Rs 100-150, the cardholder earns one-two points on basic cards. This can be three-five for premium and super premium cards.

The higher the card variant, the more points you earn against the purchases made. For example, HDFC Solitaire card members earn up to three rewards points per Rs 150 spent and 50 per cent more reward points on dining and grocery spends, said a banker with HDFC.

How to redeem?

For starters, the value of one reward point does not equal one rupee. It is much less than that in most cases (20-30 paise).

You can redeem reward points at any partner merchant outlet or website. Some banks offer cards that are co-branded with travel companies and airline firms. The points earned can be redeemed across an array of categories on the travel portal, such as air travel, hotel booking, holiday packages. In this case, if you use the card to buy tickets of the partner airline, you get extra points and discounts.

According to Prem Suganth V T, business manager, Voonik, e-wallets give you the benefit of instant discount or cashback in the same purchase. In this case, the rewards are redeemed with the bank directly, where the points earned will be converted into voucher or coupon code to be applied in the next purchase. Once a customer completes a purchase, he will get an SMS or e-mail confirmation, he said.

You can also convert these points into air miles and buy tickets at a much lesser bill. If you are nearing expiry date or unsure of your reward points, its time to check now. You may have unknowingly saved accrued rewards for all these years and could be lucky to grab your next travel tickets for free.Aishik Chanda By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: Just after the end of Durga Puja festivities, political violence returned to West Bengal with Trinamool Congress and BJP leaders dead in separate incidents in Birbhum district of the state. A few hours after Khoyrasole block Trinamool Congress president Dipak Ghosh was hacked and shot at by miscreants while he was returning home at Khoyrasole in Birbhum district of West Bengal on Sunday, BJP booth-level worker Tapas Bagdi was found hanging by a tree at Darka village in Labhpur in Birbhum district of West Bengal on Sunday night.

Ghosh was admitted to a private hospital in Durgapur in critical condition and succumbed to his injuries on Monday evening. Tapas Bagdi's body has been sent for post-mortem. Police sources revealed that Tapas Bagdi could not return home for a few days due to political tensions in the village after Durga Puja and returned only on Sunday afternoon. However, he went out of his house on Sunday evening but did not return at night.

ALSO READ | Minor fire at Kolkata Puja carnival premises amid heightened security at Red road

The locals launched a manhunt for the Tapas Bagdi found his body hanging from a tree at a neighbouring forested area on Sunday night. Sources revealed that the victim had joined BJP just before the panchayat election. Low-level TMC-BJP clashes were witnessed in several villages in and around Darka village over the past few days. The recent hanging comes four months after two BJP workers were found hanging in Balarampur in Purulia district of West Bengal which sparked off a bitter Trinamool Congress-BJP feud involving national leaders of both the parties.

ALSO READ | Toll in Kolkata's Nagerbazar bomb blast rises to three

However, unlike Purulia hangings, no note or poster was found from the spot of Bagdi's hanging. The post-Durga Puja political violence has sparked off political tensions at the state level with BJP and TMC leaders accusing each other for the two deaths. While Birbhum district TMC president Anubrata Mondal has put the blame of Dipak Ghosh's murder on BJP and warned of 'not keeping quite', BJP denied any involvement in the incident.

On the other hand, while Mondal claimed that Bagdi had committed suicide, BJP district president Ramkrishna Roy said that the victim had no reasons to commit suicide and termed it as fallout of growing BJP influence in the district. State BJP president Dilip Ghosh demanded investigation by central agencies into the hanging ends.By Express News Service

BENGALURU: South Indian actress Sruthi Hariharan said she was being threatened by fans of actor Arjun Sarja and that her phone has been ringing off the hook. She also said that she had evidence for this as she still had threat messages from his fans. She was speaking at a press conference here on Sunday organised by Film Industry For Rights and Equality (FIRE). This comes after the actress accused her co-star Arjun of inappropriate and sexually coloured conduct during the shooting of the bi-lingual film Vismaya in 2016.

READ | #MeToo: Aishwarya stands up for dad Arjun

I have got threat calls from Sarja Fans Club. My phone has been constantly ringing. I have stopped picking up calls from unknown numbers but one name has been constantly coming up on Truecaller, one of Mr Sarjas fans, Sruthi told reporters here.

On why she was coming out after one-and-a-half-years of the alleged incident, she said, I did everything I could in my power at that time. I had informed the director that I wont be coming for rehearsals and will only come for the takes. She added, I did not have the courage then. Now I am emboldened by the #MeToo movement. People are coming out decades after the incidents. I took a year. Why dont we focus on the incident itself instead of probing why I have come out now? she questioned.

ALSO READ | Provide proof within 7 days: Film association tells Sruthi Hariharan

Narrating her ordeal further, she said, I didnt know how to react then. I had told my staff to take me to the caravan immediately after the scene. I was called to dinners and asked repeatedly inspite of saying a clear no. I was scared. What he did was unprofessional. I have worked with Darshan and Sudeep, among other male actors, and they have behaved with utmost respect, she said.

Four other women have come out anonymously naming Arjun Sarja. Legal steps are currently being taken and I will show the FlR to the media once it is filed. I have proof, but I have been advised legally not to talk about it, she said.

ALSO READ | #MeToo effect: Kannada film industry on FIRE, first to have plaints panel

On being questioned if she was scared about her future in the Kannada film industry, she said, I am not scared of not being cast in the Kannada film industry. I will definitely get roles in the future as well. You will see me in Kannada movies year after year.

Asked if she had received a defamation notice from Arjun, as he had told some sections of the media that he would send a legal notice, she said, Neither FIRE nor my manager have got any letter to this effect. This is not about the incident. Its a larger issue of abuse of power. Superstars should not take advantage of the position of power they are in.Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: As many as seven civilians were killed as an explosive went off when they were reportedly poking into the debris of a building that was damaged in an encounter with Jaish-e-Mohammad militants in south Kashmirs Kulgam district on Sunday. The blast happened after security forces had liquidated three Jaish men there.

With over 40 other locals injured, some of them severely, it was the highest civilian casualty in any anti-militancy operation by security forces in Kashmir so far.

People clearing debris from the

damaged house where militants

were hiding during an encounter

at Kulgam district on Sunday

| PTI

Elsewhere in the state, three soldiers were killed and another Army man critically injured in a possible attack by Pakistan armys Border Action Team (BAT) close to the Line of Control in the border district of Rajouri. The Army gunned down two militants in retaliatory fire, taking the days militancy-related toll in the state to 15.

In the Laroo area of Kulgam, it all began when the Army, CRPF and police conducted search operations to nab militants holed up there, in the wee hours of the day. Militants opened fire, and in the ensuing five-hour gunfight, three local Jaish militants were killed, a police official said. The building the militants were attacking from was completely damaged.

Two army men were also injured in the gunfight and evacuated to the Army hospital in Srinagar.

After the encounter, youth took to roads and clashed with security personnel while people in large numbers converged at the encounter site despite warnings from security forces.

As people were assessing the damage and dousing fire in the damaged house, a powerful explosion took place killing three civilians on the spot and injuring scores of locals. While people in critical condition were evacuated to Srinagar hospitals for specialised treatment, four of them later succumbed to their injuries.

Kulgam Deputy Commissioner Shamim Ahmad Wani said six of the dead civilians had been identified. Locals blamed the security personnel for the civilian deaths. Before leaving the encounter site, they did not defuse the explosive device, they argued.

In the Rajouri encounter, army men intercepted militants trying to sneak into the state. After an exchange of fire, they cordoned off the area and launched search and destroy operation. A fierce gunbattle ensued, and three soldiers and two militants were killed.

Separatist leaders Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik strongly condemned the civilian killings and called for a shutdown. They would hold a sit-in protest at Lal Chowk on Tuesday.By IANS

CHANDIGARH: While remaining underground, the organizer of the Dusshera event, where at least 59 people were crushed by a speeding train, on Monday released a video claiming he had taken all permissions, and that appeals were made to people standing on the tracks to vacate the area.

Saurabh Madaan Mithu, a close aide of Punjab cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and his wife Navjot Kaur, released a video on Monday from an undisclosed location claiming that he, his councillor mother and other organisers had nothing to do with the tragedy.

"We had taken all necessary permissions and ensured proper safety measures inside the ground where the Dusshera event was held. The people who gathered on the railway tracks were outside the ground. We made several appeals to them to vacate the tracks," Madaan claimed in a choked voice, seeking pardon.

ALSO READ | Amritsar train accident: 11 deceased were from Uttar Pradesh

He said the police and fire brigade were also present at the ground where the Ravan effigy was burnt on Friday evening around 7 pm.

Organizer of Dusshera event Saurabh Madan Mithoo releases video message,says ' Had taken all permissions,had alerted crowd atleast 10 times to not stand on tracks. I am extremely pained by the incident. Some ppl are trying to defame me' #Amritsartrainaccident (location: unknown) pic.twitter.com/viPXBws3P8  ANI (@ANI) October 22, 2018

However, video footage of the event showed one anchor, in the presence of Madaan and Navjot Kaur, boasting that over 5,000 people were standing on the tracks and even if 500 trains crossed the tracks, these people will not move.

Seconds later, the Jalandhar-Amritsar DMU (diesel multiple unit) came speeding down the tracks and crushed scores of people, leaving at least 59 dead and dozens injured.

The people standing on the tracks could not hear the hooter of the approaching train in the noise caused by the bursting crackers when the Ravan effigy was set on fire.

ALSO READ | Amritsar train accident: Case filed in Bihar court against Navjot Singh Sidhu's wife

There are allegations that Sidhu's wife, Madaan and other organisers fled the spot when the tragedy struck. They did not stay back to help the victims, including injured.

No case has been registered by the Punjab Police against the organisers of the event so far.

Despite that, Madaan and others continue to be underground while Sidhu has been on the offensive saying his wife and aides did nothing wrong and the blame for the accident was on the railway authorities.

Sidhu has questioned the railways for not holding a probe into the incident and giving a clean chit to the train driver and other staff for the lapses that led to the accident.

Calling the incident as a "massacre", the opposition Shiromani Akali Dal is demanding registration of a case of murder against Navjot Kaur, Madaan and other ruling Congress leaders who organised the Dusshera event.By PTI

NEW DELHI: The CBI Sunday tried to defend its Director Alok Verma following allegations of corruption levelled against him by his deputy Rakesh Asthana, booked by the agency on bribery charges last week, saying they are "false and malicious".

In his letters to the Cabinet Secretary and Central Vigilance Commission, Asthana had written about 10 cases of alleged corruption and irregularities against the CBI Director Alok Verma, levelling serious corruption charges in some of them.

One of the case pertained to Sathish Sana, a businessman facing probe in a corruption case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi in which Asthana had alleged on August 24 that Sana paid Rs two crore to Verma to get relief in the case.

Asthana had also alleged that Verma delayed his team's request to arrest Sana in the case.

The complaint was referred to Central Vigilance Commission by the Government which is looking into it.

Gujarat-cadre officer Asthana, currently number two in the CBI, has also cited instances of alleged irregularities and violation of rules and regulations against Verma.

In an unprecedented operation, the CBI registered an FIR against Asthana and his Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar, and two alleged middlemen Somesh Prasad and Manoj Prasad on the basis of a statement from Sana that bribe was paid to the middlemen to get relief in repeated questioning by the Asthana's Special Investigation Unit.

Asthana had alleged that he had moved a file for the arrest of Sana on September 20, 2018 which was held by the CBI Director Alok Verma and was later referred to Director of Prosecution who demanded the evidence file.

He had alleged that it was his team which opened a LookOut Circular (LOC) against Sana who was stopped at immigration and prevented from fleeing the country.

In a late night statement, CBI spokesperson said allegations that Director CBI was not aware of LOC issued against Satish Sana is incorrect.

"DCBI had seen and ratified the proposal to issue LOC on May 21, 2018," he said.

The spokesperson said contention that Director CBI made an attempt to stop Sana's arrest is false and malicious.

"The allegation has been made to deflect the charge of receipt of bribe money by CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana and the other public servant named in the FIR," he said.

READ HERE | CBI's case against its Special Director Rakesh Asthana hinges on call records, Whatsapp messages

The agency FIR is based on allegations levelled by Sana, who was facing CBI charges, before magistrate under section 164 of the CrPC.

The statement attached in the FIR does not make any mention of any direct meeting or call between Asthana and Sana or any direct and confirmed interaction between the two.

"Sana was called to the CBI for examination/inquiry on multiple occasions in October/November, 2017. During October/November, 2017, there were four instances in which notices were given to Sana. In order to get relief from frequent notices, Shri Sana approached one Manoj Prasad in Dubai in the month of December, 2017," the spokesperson said.

He claimed Rs 2.95 crores was paid to the public servants through Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad and Sana was able to obtain relief in the on-going investigation in the Moin Qureshi case.

Subsequently, there were no notices issued to him till mid of February, 2018, the spokesman said.

He said on February 19, 2018, again notice was issued to Sana who flew to Dubai and met Prasad.

"Subsequently, there were no notices issued till end of May/early June, 2018," he said.

The spokesperson claimed that a LOC was issued to prevent Sana's escape from the country on May 16 (by the team of Asthana which was probing the matter).

On the basis of LOC, Sana was stopped from going abroad by immigration office at Hyderabad on September 24 on the basis of the Look Out Circular.

"Subsequently, he was called by investigation officer on October 1, 2018 and again on October 3. Faced with continued harassment, Sana got his statement recorded with the Magistrate Court regarding the entire transaction," he said.

Sana also contacted Prasad to get relief from appearance due on October 9, which was promised by Manoj.

He had promised to obtain relief till 25th as requested by Sana, the spokesman said.

"This relief was obtained with the promise of payment of Rs 2 crore, of which, Rs 25 lakh was paid on October 10, 2018," he said.

Manoj was caught on 16th October when he came to India to get the remaining Rs 1.75 crore, the spokesperson alleged.

"On 20th, Sathish Sana once again recorded his statement with the concerned court corroborating the facts he mentioned in the complaint," he said.Ejaz Kaiser By

Express News Service

RAIPUR: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday intensified his partys election campaign in BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh where he assured loan waiver for farmers and a food processing plant in every district, if the opposition party wins the Assembly polls.

At the Kisan Hunker Rally in Raipur, Rahul cited the examples of Congress-ruled states of Punjab and Karnataka where loans of farmers were waived to reaffirmed his party's commitment in Chhattisgarh. "The loan waiver will just be a beginning. The Congress government will stand with the farmers to meet all their essential needs, be it related to agriculture, accessing the best of health treatment in government hospitals or the higher educational and professional courses in state-owned colleges and universities," he said.

ALSO READ | Rahul Gandhi won't be projected as PM face in 2019 Lok Sabha elections: Chidambaram

"The Congress government will waive off all farm loan within 10 days of coming to power. No, this is not a gift or consolation to you, but actually your right. You are the power of the nation."

Polling in Chhattisgarh will be held in two phases on November 12 and 20.

Rahul slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his remark that "India was a sleeping elephant and he woke it up", saying it was an insult to hardworking farmers, workers, youths, businessmen and others who contributed to nation's progress during last 70 years.

The Congress president promised that his government will have food processing plants where the farmers will not just get the right price of their produce, but also lakhs of local youths will find scope of employment.

"There has been immense corruption in Chhattisgarh during the 15 years. The land of tribals and farmers are being taken away without consultation. We brought the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Area Act, the Land Acquisition Act to safeguard the land rights of the farmers and tribals, but these laws are not being followed. The Congress will implement it again," he asserted.

Drawing the attention of the Congressmen, the Congress chief assured that only those candidates whom the party workers wants will be given the tickets to contest the polls. "There will be no parachute landing in the Chhattisgarh elections," he told the party cadres.

The BJP however dubbed Rahul's speech as 'political drama'. "When Congress was in power, why was Rahul not concerned about farmers, women and tribals?" asked BJP general secretary Saroj Pandey.Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: The controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, has kept Assam on the edge.



Forty-six local organisations, which called a statewide bandh on Tuesday in protest against the Centres move to pass the bill, are on a collision course with the state government after the latter allegedly started acting arbitrarily to thwart the bandh.



The bill seeks to grant citizenship to the persecuted non-Muslim immigrants of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who migrated to India till December 31, 2014. The local groups and organisations in Assam are, however, viewing it as a move by the Centre to dump Bangladeshi Hindus (read Bengali Hindu immigrants) in the state. They say Assam has already accepted the immigrants who migrated to the state before March 24, 1971 as per the historic Assam Accord which the All Assam Students Union had signed with the Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre in 1985 at the end of six-year-long Assam Agitation.

ALSO READ: Call to quash Citizenship Amendment Bill grows louder in Assam



According to the accord, the immigrants, irrespective of faith who migrated after March 24, 1971, are to be detected and deported. The local organisations fear if the Citizenship Bill is passed, it will encourage lakhs of Hindus to migrate from Bangladesh.



The Sarbananda Sonowal government has asked people not to participate in the bandh and warned that strict action will be taken against government employees bunking duties on the day. It has ordered that not only schools, colleges, courts or offices, shops and commercial establishments too must function normally or else, their trade licenses will be cancelled.



The government has directed the administration to take action against troublemakers. It directed the police to arrest bandh supporters if they demonstrate at any public place. The government has also warned that if any person is found involved in any sort of vandalism of public property, the cost of renovation will be recovered from the organisation which he or she belongs to.



The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), spearheading the protests against the Citizenship Bill, slammed the government for trying to muzzle the voice of people.



The Assamese groups and organisations have called the bandh against the Citizenship Bill, for it is a dangerous bill and the people of Assam stand opposed to it. If the controversial bill is passed, the locals will lose their political space besides identity, KMSS leader and RTI activist Akhil Gogoi told reporters.



He alleged that by trying to pass the bill, the Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre was trying to foment a communal flare-up between the Assamese and the Bengalis.By PTI

MANGALDOI: A retired school teacher has allegedly committed suicide in Mangaldoi district of Assam as his name did not appear in the updated draft National Register of Citizens (NRC), a senior district police official said on Monday.

Nirod Kumar Das, who used to practise as a lawyer after retirement, was found by his family members hanging in his room after he had returned from his morning walk Sunday, Superintendent of police Sreejith T. said.

In a note allegedly left behind by him, 74-year-old Das stated that he was taking the extreme step to "escape the humiliation of being marked as a foreigner after the NRC process," his family members said.

A police official at the local police station confirmed his death by hanging.

Also Read | NRC is India's problem, says Bangladesh foreign minister Mahmood Ali

All his family members, including wife, three daughters, their husbands and children as well as most of his relatives names were included in the NRC, they said.

Das was under distress since the exclusion of his name from the complete draft of the NRC, published on June 30 in the state, and more so when the local NRC processing centre gave him a document, about two months back, stating that his name had been put on hold as he had been marked a foreigner, his family members said.

In his note, Das blamed no one and listed five people whom he owed Rs 1,200 and asked his family to return the money to them, the family and police said.

The agitated family and local people had refused to allow police to take Das' body for post-mortem examination Sunday demanding that action be taken against the NRC processing centre for marking him a 'foreigner'.

They relented only after the district deputy commissioner and superintendent of police went to the lawyer's house and assured them of a probe to find out why Das' name was excluded and how he was marked as a 'foreigner'.

ALSO READ: Gorkhas not to be sent to foreigners tribunals, but not eligible for NRC: Home Ministry

After retirement at the end of his 34-year service as a teacher in a government school, Das had studied law and was practising as a lawyer in the district court at Mangaldoi near Kharupetia, his family said.

Meanwhile, the Bengali Students Federation has called a day-long Kharupetia bandh Monday to protest against the exclusion of Das' name from the NRC complete draft.

Markets, shops, educational institutions, private offices and banks remained closed, while vehicles were off the roads during the bandh, officials said.By PTI

NEW DELHI: India on Monday asked China to support the pending application in the UN to designate Pakistan-based JeM (Jaish-e-Mohammed) terror group leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, officials said.

It also asked Beijing not to give shelter to hardline ULFA leader Paresh Baruah on its soil, they said.

The two key issues were raised at the first India-China high level meeting on bilateral security cooperation which was co-chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Zhao Kezhi, State Councilor and Minister of Public Security, China, here.

"The key concerns of both the countries were flagged and both the sides assured each other full cooperation," an official, who was part of the Indian delegation, said.

The key Indian concerns are China's objection to the application to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Azhar as terrorist under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council, frequent visit of United Liberation Front Of Assam (ULFA) leader Paresh Baruah to China and smuggling of arms and narcotics to the Northeast, the official said.

A veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked the bid at the United Nations to list Azhar as global terrorist.

ALSO READ | Self-styled commander-in-chief ULFA Paresh Baruah regrets killing police officer

The official said that Chinese concerns included insurgency in Xinjiang by Uyghur extremists.

After two rounds of meetings, restricted talks between Singh and Zhao followed by delegation-level parleys, the home ministry said in a statement that the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest, including bilateral counter-terrorism cooperation, and welcomed increased security cooperation between India and China.

An agreement on security cooperation between the Home Ministry and China's Ministry of Public Security was also signed by the two ministers.

This was first ever India-China security cooperation pact.

"The agreement will further strengthen and consolidate discussions and cooperation in areas of counter-terrorism, organised crimes, drug control and other such relevant areas," the statement said.

Even though an MoU had ben signed by the two sides in the spheres of security years ago, it had lapsed a few years ago.

READ HERE | After backing JeM boss Masood Azhar at the UN, China now stalls red corner notice against Zakir Naik at the Interpol

The Monday's pact may lead to signing of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty in future, another official said.

Zhao Kezhi is on a bilateral visit to India from October 21 to 25 during which he will also travel to Mumbai.

The meeting comes just a year after a two-month-long border stand-off between the India Army and the China's People's Liberation Army at Doklam on the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held an informal summit in Wuhan, China, in April this year which helped repair bilateral ties.

The Chinese delegation also visited the headquarters of the CRPF, country's largest paramilitary force, where they were given a presentation about the functions of the force.Ramananda Sengupta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: India reacted sharply to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khans tweet that condemned the killings of civilians in Kashmir and demanded a dialogue in accordance with UN resolutions. The remarks made by Pakistans Prime Minister in his tweet today are deeply regrettable. Instead of making comments on Indias internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a statement.

Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours.

Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people.  Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) October 22, 2018

Pakistans deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world, it added.

ALSO READ | Pakistan PM Imran Khan calls for dialogue to resolve Kashmir issue

Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people, Khan had tweeted, hours after seven civilians were killed in South Kashmir on Sunday. What else do you expect from a stooge of the GHQ and the ISI? asked an Indian official wryly.By PTI

PITHORAGARH: The Indian Air Force (IAF) is planning to set up a firing range at Khalia Top, a popular tourist spot close to the India-China border near Munsiyari in this district of Uttarakhand.

It will be the first major strategic infrastructure project to come up on the Indian side close to the border after the India-China war of 1962, officials associated with the proposal said.

"The IAF needs a firing range in this area because of security reasons and Khalia Top near Munsiyari town fits the bill with its perfect altitude," Air Marshal Devender Singh Rawat said.

Located at a height of 12,500 feet which is the standard parameter set for firing ranges, Khalia Top is the ideal site for the project, he said.

Rawat had visited the spot recently along with a team of IAF officers to get the feedback of locals on the proposal.

The aerial distance between Khalia Top and the India-China border is around 41 km.

Khalia Top, a meadow around 7 km from Munsiyari town, is the main attraction for tourists visiting the town.

However, locals have opposed the proposed project as they feel an IAF firing range will destroy the popular tourist spot and render hundreds of local youths jobless besides harming the Himalayan flora and fauna.

The locals, who met Rawat, said Khalia Top is the only tourist attraction in Munsiyari town that attracts over 50,000 people every year.

"Khalia Top is not just a tourist attraction, but home to over two dozen rare Himalayan animal and bird species," Ram Darmashaktu, resident of Munsiyari town, said.

The locals also told the IAF team that the tourism industry in Munsiyari was providing employment to over 3,000 persons from 41 nearby villages.

The IAF officer, however, maintained that the project will not be harmful to the ecology as target practice with low-intensity dummy bombs, weighing only three kgs, will be carried out at the range for only two months (October-November) during the year.

Smoke emanating from these dummy bombs dissipates within seconds and will cause no harm to the ecology, the IAF team said.

"Only low-intensity dummy bombs are dropped during practice at such ranges that make noise like crackers and their smoke stays only up to five seconds. This practice of the Air Force will take place only during the months of October and November," Air Marshal Rawat said.

Sub Divisional Magistrate, Munsiyari, K N Goswami said the IAF's proposal and the opposition of locals is being forwarded to the state government for clearance.By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday unfurled the Tricolour at the Red Fort to mark the 75th anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Boses declaration of Azad Hind Government. The PM also inaugurated a renovated national police memorial and a new police museum and unveiled a plaque to mark the occasion. The plaque will be kept at barrack number 3 of the Red Fort, the place where members of the Azad Hind Fauj faced trial.

At the Red Fort, the PM, wearing the Azad Hind Fauj cap, took aim at the Congress for neglecting the contributions of Netaji and other stalwarts of Indias freedom movement, saying that several good sons of the country like Bose, Dr B R Ambedkar and Sardar Patel were forgotten to glorify one family.

Attacking the Nehru-Gandhi family without naming them, Modi said post-Independence, Indias policies were based on the British system as things were seen through British prism. Today I can definitively say that in the later decades of independent India, if the country had got the guidance of personalities like Subhas Babu, Sardar Patel, the conditions would vary greatly, he said.

The PM also announced a national award in Netajis name for police personnel for exemplary work in rescue and relief operations during times of disaster. The award would be presented on Netajis birth anniversary, January 23, every year.

Dedicating the police memorial to all the policemen who sacrificed their lives for the nation since Independence, Modi lashed out at previous UPA governments for their failure to build the memorial. October 21 is observed as Police Commemoration Day every year in the memory of the policemen killed at Hot Springs in Ladakh by the Chinese troops in 1959Mrime Minister also said that India never eyes anyone elses territory but will hit back with double the force if its sovereignty is ever challenged.

Listing his governments efforts towards providing the armed forces with better technology and latest weapons and the soldiers with better facilities, he said, We are heading towards building an army which was once envisioned by Netaji.Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: Abhijit Yadav, 22, the son of Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Parishad (Legislative Council) Chairman Ramesh Yadav, was found dead in mysterious circumstances at his residence here on Sunday morning.

The district police, smelling foul play, forcibly sent the body for post-mortem examination and the suspicion proved right when the autopsy report mentioned strangulation as the cause of death. There were injury marks on Abhijits head. Police said that on the basis of the post-mortem report, they were in the process of filing an FIR for murder against unidentified persons.

Ramesh Yadav, UP Legislative

Council Chairman

Abhijit, a BSc first year student, was Yadavs younger son from his second wife, Meera. His elder son, Abhishek, from his first wife, lives at their native village in Etah.

Ramesh Yadav, a Samajwadi Party MLC, was not in Lucknow when the incident took place. The police grew suspicious when the family insisted on cremating the body in the absence of Abhijits father and was not willing to send the body for autopsy.

The family members rushed the body for cremation, but were intercepted by the Hazaratganj police on their way to the cremation ground.

The police took the body to King Georges Medical University for autopsy. The post-mortem could be conducted only at the intervention of the highest police authority, revealed a senior officer.

According to police, Abhijit had gone out for some work on Saturday night. Next morning, his mother found him lying unconscious and unresponsive and she informed her elder son. Police said Meera Yadav told them Abhijit was a habitual alcoholic.

The police got the information about the incident when someone called the police control room, following which senior officers and a forensic team reached the spot.Kumar Vikram By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Over 90% beneficiaries under the governments ambitious Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) were given loans of less than Rs 50,000. This fact emerged from a scrutiny of the government data.

Under the scheme, loans up to Rs 10 lakh are provided to small entrepreneurs to set up micro units. However, a number of stakeholders, including traders associations, bank officials and policy experts,

TNIE spoke to said that an amount of Rs 50,000 or less could hardly help one in setting up or expanding a business.

Under PMMY, disburse loans under three categories Shishu (up to Rs 50,000), Kishore (Rs 50,000-Rs 5 lakh) and Tarun (Rs 5 lakh-Rs 10 lakh).

A break-up of the data disclosed that of the total 13.47 crore people who have availed of Mudra loans since its inception in 2015, 12.23 crore received the payouts under the Shishu category.

Over 1.04 crore people got loans under the Kishore category and only about 19 lakh people received the payouts under the Tarun category.

Asserting that granting loans of Rs 50,000 or less defeated the very purpose of the scheme, Rakesh Kumar, president of Federation of Sadar Bazar Traders Association in Delhi, said, Let alone a small enterprise, even a street vendor cant start a business with Rs 40,000-Rs 50,000 in any city. In Delhis Sadar Market, even a patriwala (roadside vendor) has items worth more than Rs 50,000.

Kumar said in many cases, people got loans with the help of middlemen and had to pay commissions. Many such people would not return the money to the banks, he said, explaining one of the possible reasons for a massive Rs 11,000 crore (approximately) of Mudra loans turning onto bad loans.

However, Anil Bhardwaj, Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises, had a different opinion. This is a loan for micro-financing and may help people in rural areas People can start tea selling or some similar business, he said.

Meanwhile, under a relentless Opposition attack on the issue of job creation, the government has planned a comprehensive study to assess the impact of PMMY on the outreach and access for micro-entrepreneurs. The study will cover about 1,00,000 PMMY borrowers.

The study will assess whether the scheme has led to any changes in the income/asset growth of the beneficiaries; in the business in terms of increase in turnover, income, employment etc.; recovery of assets hypothecated or mortgaged, among others.By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Central paramilitary forces are facing an acute shortage of staff. More than 61,000 posts of personnel are lying vacant in six paramilitary forces in the country, according to Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) data.

While the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has 18,460 vacancies, 10,738 posts are lying vacant in the Border Security Force (BSF). The Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) has the highest number of vacancies at 18,942. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has 5,786 posts lying vacant. There are 3,840 vacancies in the Assam Rifles and 3,812 in the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).

The vacancies arise due to retirement, resignation or death of personnel or creation of new posts and raising of new battalions. According to MHA, the vacancies are filled through various modes and is a continuous process, including direct recruitment, promotion and by deputation.

The combined strength of the paramilitary forces is around 10 lakh. The CRPF is primarily deployed for the assistance of state police forces in internal security, fighting militants in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, and in anti-Naxal operations.

The BSF guards the India-Pakistan and India-Bangladesh borders, while the SSB protects the borders with Nepal and Bhutan. The ITBP is deployed along the India-China border. The CISF guards the airports, nuclear and industrial installations, Delhi Metro etc. The Assam Rifles guards the Myanmar border.By Express News Service

BHOPAL: Liquor bottles in Assembly poll-bound Madhya Pradesh are appealing to tipplers to vote in large numbers on the polling day  November 28, 2018. For the last two days, licensed liquor vends in tribal-dominated Jhabua district (bordering dry state Gujarat) are selling liquor bottles bearing labels that contain an appeal to voters to exercise their franchise in large numbers.

On Friday and Saturday, several liquor vends in Jhabua district were found selling liquor bottles bearing an appeal in the Bhili tribal language to vote in large numbers.

Voting is necessary, press the EVM button to register your vote, read the yellow-blue labels on liquor and beer bottles. The labels also say the appeal has been issued by the district election officer of Jhabua.

Jhabua district has a predominantly Bhil population that mostly earns its livelihood by working in adjoining Gujarat.

But sensing that controversy could be triggered by the innovation to boost poll turnout in the district, the authorities decided to withdraw the innovation by Saturday evening.

The labels on the liquor bottles were part of various innovative initiatives under the Systematic Voters Education Electoral Participation Plan being undertaken by the ECI to educate and motivate voters to vote in large numbers. The labels and stickers, however, have now been withdrawn with immediate effect, said Jhabua district excise officer Abhishek Tiwari on Saturday evening.

Jhabua district collector Ashish Saxena added that the initiative had been planned as an experiment, but it had been shelved. Well now instead put similar stickers on the ration cards of the public distribution system (PDS) beneficiaries, said Saxena.

While officials in Jhabua district remained tight-lipped about the sudden change of heart pertaining to liquor bottles bearing appeals to vote, sources in Bhopal said that the initiative had been shelved on the directions of the Chief Electoral Officers office in the state capital.By PTI

PATNA: Leaders of the Grand Alliance in Bihar chose the state's first chief minister Sri Krishna Singh's birth anniversary function in Patna on Sunday to band together against the NDA, where RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav slammed the BJP-JD(U) government by likening it to "Rakshas Raj" (reign of the devil).

The Grand Alliance leaders - from the Congress, the RJD and the HAM(S) - vowed to uproot the NDA governments at the Centre and in the state.

They came down heavily on the two governments, alleging that both the dispensations failed on all fronts, especially in taming price rise, corruption and crime.

The Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee organised the function at S K Memorial hall.

RJD leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav slammed JD(U) chief and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, likening the state government to "Rakshas Raj" (reign of the devil).

"These people (NDA leaders) used to talk about 'Jungle Raj' (during the 15 years of Lalu-Rabri rule in Bihar). But there is 'Rakshas Raj' in Bihar today. State-sponsored crime is on the rise. This is the double-engine government of crime and corruption," Yadav said.

Taking a swipe at Bihar Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, who had termed Lalu Prasad's younger son as "rumour-monger", Tejashwi asked what has Bihar got from the Modi government in its four and a half years.

"When will the special category status be accorded to Bihar? BJP has cheated the people of the state as it has no concern for them," Tejashwi said, adding sarcastically that the BJP has more concern for Lalu Prasad's family. People should be wary of "back-stabbers", he said without naming anyone.

Former Bihar CM and HAM(S) chief Jitan Ram Manjhi demanded the Bharat Ratna for Sri Krishna Singh, the first chief minister of Bihar and powerful leader from the Bhumihar caste who occupied the post till his death in 1961.

Manjhi also sought 15 per cent reservation for upper castes by amending the Constitution.

The party's national general secretary and Bihar in-charge Shakti Sinh Gohil said, "We will fight together to uproot the NDA government and install Congress government at the Centre. We will come out with a blueprint for Bihar's overall development and will fulfil our commitment".

Former Union minister and Bihar Congress Campaign Committee chairman Akhilesh Prasad Singh announced that the party would soon hold a mega rally at the historic Gandhi Maidan in Patna to "send out a message".

Singh, a Rajya Sabha member, said it would be a "Parivartan rally" (rally for change), the date for which would be announced soon.

Singh, who has been organising birth anniversaries of Sri Krishna Singh for the past 15 years, said the Nitish Kumar government, which would complete 15 years of rule in Bihar, has ditched the upper castes as it did nothing for them, and even forgot to implement the recommendations of 'Sawarn Aayog' (commission for upper castes).

The Nitish Kumar government just used upper castes as its "vote bank", he said.

Celebration of Shri Krishna Singh's birth anniversary is seen as an attempt by the Congress to win back a section of the upper castes who have traditionally been its voters in the state but have gravitated towards the BJP recently.

Bihar Congress chief Madan Mohan Jha, former governor Nikhil Kumar, former Union minister Shakeel Ahmad, senior party leaders Vijay Shankar Dubey and other senior leaders spoke at the function.By PTI

SABARIMALA: The doors to Sabarimala temple closed Monday night, six days after opening for the first time since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on entry of women of menstruating age, but climbing the 18 "sacred steps" leading to the sanctum sanctorum proved a tall order for them.

Valiant attempts by around a dozen women, including activists and journalists in the 10-50 years age group to script history came to nought as frenzied devotees of Lord Ayyappa, the eternally celibate deity, heckled and hassled them and forced them to retreat.

Yet another woman in the "barred" age group made a futile attempt Monday to reach Sabarimala but was turned back by agitated protesters.

ALSO READ | Fake alarm of a woman entering shrine causes a flutter in Sabarimala

Bindu, a Dalit activist, who was proceeding to Pamba at the foothills of Sabarimala temple from where devotees undertake an arduous 5 km trek to the shrine, was given police protection at her request, officials said.

However, when the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus she was travelling on with police personnel was about to reach Pamba, a group of BJP workers and those opposing the entry of girls and women aged between 10 and 50 years into the temple, blocked the road and forced her to alight.

She was then escorted to safety in a police jeep, officials said.

'Melsanti' or the head priest and other priests stood on both sides of the idol of Lord Ayyappa and recited divine song "Harivarasanam" and began putting off the lamps in the sanctum sanctorum halfway down the rendition.

As the last line was sung, the doors were closed and locked, shutting out, at least for the time being, spirited women of menstruating age from offering prayers to the deity.

The iron gates to the shrine were opened on Wednesday and every day since then women of the "barred" age group made brave but futile attempts to enter the shrine.

Six women were prevented from entering the temple Sunday alone.

Kerala women's rights activist Rehana Fathima and Hyderabad journalist Kavitha Jakkal, wearing helmets and khaki, and surrounded by a police contingent, could manage to go up to Valiya Nadappandhal, the queue complex located a few metres away from the holy 'pathinettam padi', the 18 sacred steps, but not beyond.

READ HERE | Sabarimala row: Ready to wait, say young devotees

Several people, including journalists, were injured on Wednesday as police cracked down on protesters who were up in arms against Kerala's Left Front government for its decision to enforce the Supreme Court order.

Hindu fringe groups called a strike the next day and both the Congress, the main opposition party in Kerala, and the BJP, which is desperately seeking to expand its footprint in the state, lent support to the agitation.

Meanwhile, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages Sabarimala temple, is meeting on Tuesday to discuss how to make an intervention in the Supreme Court while protecting the "interest of devotees".

"The TDB has the legal responsibility to protect the interest of devotees. We also have to look at the rituals and customs of the temple. The board will make its intervention in Supreme Court without harming this," its chief A Padmakumar told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

READ HERE: Sabarimala issue: No-donation campaign hits Devaswom Boards hard

He said the meeting would decide the "nature" of the report to be submitted to the apex court.

The Supreme Court Monday said it would decide tomorrow as to when the petitions seeking a review of its Sabarimala verdict will be listed for hearing.

In all, 19 review petitions are pending before it for hearing.

The state's Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran welcomed the TDB's decision to approach the Supreme Court with a comprehensive report about the recent developments in Sabarimala.

"It's a good decision. The TDB's move is to bring to the notice of the Supreme Court the difficulties faced by the real devotees," Surendran said.

He conceded that the LDF government was caught between the "devil and the deep sea" while executing the apex court order.

READ HERE: Activist Rehana Fathima expelled from Muslim community

The Congress-led UDF has decided to hold a series of foot marches, vehicle rallies and meetings across the state to explain to people its stand on the issue and "expose" the ruling CPI(M) and BJP's "hidden agenda".

The temple will open briefly on November 5 evening for the next day's 'Chithira Attavisesham' to celebrate the birth anniversary of Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the last king of Travancore.

The doors of the shrine will open on November 17 for the three-month-long Mandalam Makaravilakku celebrations when lakhs of devotees from the country and abroad visit the place every year.

If the Supreme Court does not stay or overturn its own verdict by then, enforcing its historic order may prove to be a daunting task for the Kerala government.By Express News Service

BHOPAL: A Congress-backed middle-aged village sarpanch Najru Bheel was brutally murdered by a mob of over 20 men allegedly led by a ruling BJP leader Suraj Singh Baghel in Gandhwani police station area of tribal-dominated Dhar district on Sunday evening.

According to sub-divisional officer police (SDOP-Manawar) Anand Singh Vaskale, the incident happened in Bhutiapura village close to the sarpanch's house, when the Balwarikala village panchayat sarpanch Najru, aged around 40, was returning home on a motorcycle. Suddenly a mob of around 22 men attacked the sarpanch owing to which he fell from the motorbike. Subsequently, the men led by BJP leader Suraj Singh Baghel and his brother first attacked the sarpanch with stones and later shot multiple arrows into his body to ensure that he died on the spot.

The deceased sarpanch's son Gulab Singh alleged there was a long-standing feud between his father and BJP leader Suraj Singh, particularly owing to the BJP backed candidate's defeat in the sarpanch elections.

Three months back, the BJP leader's brother and supporters had stolen Najru's cow, owing to which there was an altercation between Najru and the BJP leader Suraj Singh Baghel. The matter was later resolved by a tribal panchayat, which had decided in favour of the village sarpanch Najru, owing to which the rivalry between the two had worsened.

Najru's killing is being seen as a major loss to the opposition Congress, as he was a key man of sitting Congress MLA from Gadhwani seat Umang Singhar, particularly owing to organizational skills. "A case of murder has been lodged against 22 men, including the prime accused Suraj Singh and raids are being conducted to arrest the accused," SDOP Manawar added.Indraneel Das By

All parties are waste, a pensive-looking taxi-man said. He seemed worried. All party same. His anxiety stems from the vacuum left behind by former chief ministers J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhis demise. His argument is not just based on the current political situation. Nor has it anything to do with the AIADMK or the DMK.

He is a common man who has lost faith in the political system. Rising fuel prices and the cost of commodities taking a sharp north curve have affected his daily life. Very soon I will be left repaying debts, he said  a common story of every middle and lower-middle class person living on EMIs and loans.

Add this to his list of worries  the dark dreary spectre of the Northeast monsoon looming in the horizon. No one knows what will hit  a cyclone, a flood or both. If it destroys lives this time, it would have the potential to unsettle the government. In the fragile political landscape, the vulnerability has increased, unlike in 2015. No wonder, the state is expediting flood mitigation programmes this time. Especially after the Kerala floods, the government is taking no chances. There is no room for error this monsoon.

With 12 per cent more rainfall this year, disaster management officials have been working overtime to contain the fallout so that it does not snowball into a sticky political issue ahead of the elections next year. Ostensibly so, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami released the State Disaster Management Perspective Plan 2018-2030 in August with 14 specific goals. After the Kerala floods, the Tamil Nadu government has identified 14 coastal and hilly districts as vulnerable to the Northeast monsoon that is expected to set in, within a day or two.

The state has identified 321 very highly vulnerable areas in these districts where water stagnation is expected to be above five feet. Kancheepuram, the Nilgiris, Chennai, Cuddalore, Tiruvallur, Kanyakumari and Nagapattinam are the districts most susceptible to floods.

In times of crisis, the chief minister has been proactive and has managed to find ways to tackle volatile situations (anti-Sterlite and green corridor issues to name a few). His administrative acumen will be tested once the monsoon sets in. In the end, it would all depend on how he weathers the storm, literally.

Haasans Congress bait

I am a great fan of Kamal Haasan, the actor. I have watched his iconic movie Pesum Padam (Pushpak) numerous times. It is etched in memory. The narrative is simple, comic black, politically incorrect and its easy to follow even if there are no words spoken. The neatly-packaged human waste was the scene stealer  and someone falling for the package not knowing whats inside was a gem. Haasan communicated vividly through his silence.

Years later, while taking the plunge into politics, Haasan has been breaking his silence, sometimes at the right time. At times, he lets his silence speak. His latest silence-breaker, however, smacked of mischief, too.

Though his words were laced with pre-conditions and ambiguity, the message to the Congress was straight  break alliance with the DMK and I can join you ahead of the general elections. What seems perplexing is his choice of the party. He is not going for any of the Dravidian parties. A strong espouser of the Dravidian identity, Haasan is trying to fish for the Congress, a party that hardly has any following, forget strong vote percentage. As expected, it sparked a debate. Is he trying to break the DMK-Congress alliance? Possibly so. Haasan did meet Congress president Rahul Gandhi in June.

However, for the Congress to break away from a strong DMK would perhaps not be wise. No matter how the DMK treats them (while sharing seats), the Dravidian party is its best option if the Congress wants some kind of mileage. From the DMKs perspective, snapping ties with the Congress could affect its chances, especially in places where the contest is expected to be tight.

For a party that is yet to contest elections, announcing pre-conditions may appear surprising. After all, Haasans Makkal Needhi Maiam is a new party that is yet to face elections and its vote share is unknown. So, is the Congress using Haasan to put pressure on the DMK to give it a decent share of seats? Only time will tell.

Indraneel Das

Resident Editor, Tamil Nadu

Email: indraneel.das@newindianexpress.comJyoti Punwani By

It was not caste, it was not class. It was not Hindu vs Muslim, nor was it migrant vs local.

This violent conflict was based on only one factorgender, undiluted by any other consideration.

At the centre of it were not adult women, often accused of having an axe to grind, but girls aged 10-14, unaware of what they had provoked and why. Speaking to a television channel, their voices were childlike and innocent.

Had the violence not resulted in some of them having to be referred to a hospital outside their village, the incident may not even have made news. Even after it did, no FIR was registered till the local MP intervened. And after that only one accused was arrested.

It took the Supreme Courts scathing observations on the incident to make the police arrest the remaining eight accused.

Have the accused got bail, though the charges included attempt to murder? Have the girls recovered? Are they back at school and safe?

No answers are forthcoming because the media seems to have forgotten the savage assault on 34 schoolgirls that took place earlier this month on the playground of a residential girls school in Bihars Supaul district. The assault included pulling out clumps of their hair and beating them with rods.

All this because they dared to manhandle some boys. Fed up of boys from the adjacent school writing obscene graffiti on their school walls, the girls confronted them. The boys response was to abuse them.

This led to the girls slapping them. In retaliation, the boys got their parentsmothers includedto beat up the girls. Had the girls not raised their hands against the boys, the incident would have remained unknown. Like theyve been doing all along, the girls could have continued to keep quietat the vulgar slogans on their school wall, at the lewd comments passed at them. After all, they have been complaining about such behaviour for a long time. Who cared?

Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas are meant for girls below the poverty line, as well as Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Muslim girls. Most of those assaulted are Mahadalits, at the bottom of the Scheduled Caste hierarchy. The fathers of most have migrated to other states for work; their mothers and grandparents eke out a humble existence in the village.

No one in authority loses sleep over girls from such backgrounds. The school didnt even have a guard.

Whats interesting is that the boys are not from some powerful caste as is mostly the case. They too belong to the same Mahadalit caste.

Which government school administrator cares about what such children are up to? As the DM said in a bemused tone to an indignant TV anchor: This is a natural phenomenon. Boys and girls fight. Parents sensitivities get hurt.

But for the girls, this wasnt a natural phenomenon. Their sensitivities were hurt, and hurt repeatedly. One can imagine their joy at being told to handle the boys themselves, after they informed the principal that they had caught the latter scribbling vulgar slogans on their school wall.

The DM was wrong about the parents reaction too. Parents do not come with weapons to take revenge on their sons classmates after routine fights among boys. This time, the audacity of girls raising their hands against their precious sons was too much to tolerate. That one act shook the foundations of their family structure. All traditional Indian families are based on the premise that fathers and sons rule.

No wonder the administration was reluctant to act. On TV, the DM stressed the fact that the girls had beaten up the boys. The police took pains to check school certificates to ensure no innocent was caught; they said on TV that they would first question the women named in the FIR, and only then arrest them.

Imagine policemen at the thana level being so considerate towards Dalits, specially those accused of assault!

But when the accusers are Dalit school girls, this too can happen. Not even the girls Mahadalit statusthe caste got this label from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who has implemented many welfare measures targeted only at Mahadalitscould ensure that their complaints were taken seriously. The chief ministers silence on the assault has been deafening.

Supaul is among Bihars three most backward districts. Its sex ratio, infant mortality, fertility, female literacy and female employment rates are abysmal, as are its economic indicators. A 2015-16 study of the district submitted to the National Commission for Women found that for parents, daughters safety was the main worry in sending them to school, and the main reason for marrying them off between the ages of 16-18. But 43 per cent of adolescent girls interviewed wanted to study further. Around 59 per cent of them valued education because it gave them a feeling of self-dependence.

It was this feeling that the girls were displaying when they manhandled their male abusers. Who will ensure that this sense of dignity remains intact after the physical and mental injuries they suffered? Will their families, who have spent beyond their means on their medical treatment, and who fear further retaliatory attacks, sustain this feeling in them? Will their teachers?

By keeping the spotlight on them, the media might be able to force the authorities to ensure this feeling of self-dependence never leaves them.

Jyoti Punwani

Freelance journalist based in Mumbai

Email: jyoti.punwani@gmail.comSri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe must have returned to Colombo after a three-day official visit to New Delhi with mixed feelings. Days before his visit, his government had reversed a decision to award a $300 million housing deal to China, and instead opted for a joint venture with an Indian company.

But the goodwill that decision may have bought in Delhideeply suspicious of Chinese developmental activity in the regiontook an unexpected beating last Tuesday, with reports that President Maithripala Sirisena had told his Cabinet that Indias RAW was plotting to assassinate him. The fact he also reportedly said that PM Narendra Modi may be unaware of the plot brought little cheer in Delhi. Wednesday morning saw a flurry of furious activity.

At 7.30 am, Sirisenas secretary told him that Indian High Commissioner Taranjit Singh Sandhu wanted to see him urgently, and had cancelled his departure to New Delhi that day to be on call for the Sri Lankan PMs arrival. When the two met, Sirisena insisted that some hostile Cabinet members had twisted his words; he then called Modi and they agreed that the friendship between the two countries should not be harmed by any mala fide elements in the Cabinet.

Wickremesinghes visit was on. But though official, it was low-key at best. His meeting with Congress leaders, including party president Rahul Gandhi, his mother Sonia and former PM Manmohan Singh, was so quietly organised that even some Sri Lankan officials didnt know about it till later.

During the official meeting with Modi on Saturday, concerns were raised over the slow implementation of Indian-aided projects in Sri Lanka, along with Tamil Nadus concerns over the arrest of Indian fishermen who strayed into Sri Lankan waters. But given that Wickremesinghe faces domestic economic and political challenges, instead of putting pressure on him, perhaps New Delhi should give him some breathing space and quietly offer to help when needed.By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: Seeking immediate justice to the victims of AgriGold scam, the BJP will organise five-day relay hunger strikes across the State from Monday. BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana said partys national general secretary Ram Madhav will inaugurate the hunger strike at Dharna Chowk in Vijayawada.

In a press release issued on Sunday, Lakshminarayana alleged that the TDP government had failed to protect the interests of 32 lakh AgriGold victims.

The TDP leaders are eyeing to purchase AgriGold properties for ow price during the auction. Even the Essel-Zee group, which had initially come forward to participate in the bidding, dropped its plans because of irregularities in Naidus government, Kanna said.S Trimurthulu By

Express News Service

KAKINADA: Are cardiologists in the State not interested in government service?

The question will pop in the minds of people if the situation in the cardiology department of the Kakinada Government General Hospital (KGGH) is any indication.

Though the department has a bed strength of 47, there is only one cardiologist, who divides his profession time between the King George Hospital (KGH) in Visakhapatnam and Kakinada GGH.

As there are no takers for the two assistant professor posts for the cardiology department, two doctors specialising in ophthalmology have been deputed as tutors to the department. The two doctors also carry out general check-up on outpatients of the cardiology wing.

The lone qualified cardiologist in the hospital, Dr. Venkatachalam, has also been given the additional charge of King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam as there is no cardiologist there.

His application to the government for transfer to Visakhapatnam, which is his native place, has received no response. Hence, he is shuttling between KGH in Vizag and Kakinada GGH.

According to hospital sources, the cardiologist is only available in the hospital on Tuesdays and Fridays and the remaining days, the burden falls on his two assistants from ophthalmology. What happens in the case of emergencies? Silence is the only answer.

Dondapati Mose, a 55-year old from Gondi village of Ainavilli mandal in East Godavari district, got admitted to the hospital with chest pain on October 15 and he is yet to see the cardiologist.

Only junior doctors have examined me so far and are monitoring the situation, he said. Same is the case with Pilla Chittamma, a 50-year-old woman from Kakinada, who was admitted to the hospital two days ago.

TNIE efforts to contact cardiologist Dr Venkatachalam for his comment on the situation proved futile.

M Raghavendra Rao, Superintendent of the KGGH, says that there is a need for full-time cardiologists and qualified assistant professors for the department, which receives 100-150 outpatients every day.

We have sent several representations to the Director of Medical Education for filling up the vacant posts. Hopefully, appointments will be made soon, he said.

When TNIE contacted, DME K Babji said they are ready to appoint immediately cardiologists if they are candidates interested to work at the hospital. We are making efforts to fill the eight cardiology posts for government hospitals in the State by next month. Hopefully, some cardiologist turns up for the KGGH.

When tried to find out the reason for the reluctance of cardiologists from joining government service, those in the know of things said low pay is the main reason.

A cardiologist in government teaching hospital gets a monthly salary of around 1 1 lakh, while in private and corporate hospitals, it is anywhere between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 4 lakh, they explained. It is not only a shortage of cardiologists, but even the ECG technicians and the required machines are also found to be in shortage. People in the know of things at the hospital say that the department needs a minimum 10 ECG machines and 30 ECG technicians, according to sources.By Online Desk

BSNL on Monday has begun its disciplinary procedures against activist Rehana Fathima, whose attempt to visit Sabarimala had triggered a controversy. She has been transferred to the Ravipuram branch in Kochi and more action will follow after the completion of an internal enquiry, BSNL officials said.

The Ernakulam-based model-activist, who was posted as a telephone mechanic in Kochi boat jetty branch of the government undertaking till recently, has now been given a post that involves zero relations with the public, media reports say.

The general manager is busy with official matters and is currently out of the town. Once he returns, a decision will be taken on the unit to which she will be transferred, said officers.

ALSO READ | SC to decide tomorrow date for hearing review petitions on Sabarimala verdict

The police had registered a case against Rehana on Sunday over her social media post, which allegedly hurt religious sentiments.

She was expelled from the Muslim community by the Kerala Muslim Jama'ath Council on Saturday for "hurting the sentiments of lakhs of Hindu devotees."

Her house had earlier been vandalised by alleged pro-Hindu men on Friday following her attempt to enter the hill shrine with Hyderabad-based journalist Kavitha Jakkala. Though the South police registered a case in this regard no arrests have been made.

Rehana had stirred up a controversy in March when she posted topless photos of herself with watermelons after a Kozhikode-based professor had compared women's breasts to watermelons.

The photos received both backlash and support until they were finally taken down by Facebook.

She was also part of the Kiss of Love campaign against moral policing in 2014, and was one of the first women to participate in the "Thrissur Pulikkali" in 2016.

"Pulikkali" is a traditional dance form performed by men dressed like tigers during the festival of Onam in Kerala.

(With ENS inputs)By Express News Service

BHUBANESWAR: The City is set to host a conclave on Capital Goods in Steel Sector: Manufacture in India on Tuesday.

Organised by the Ministry of Steel, the one-day event will have two panel discussions on Synergising global experience and domestic capital goods capability for the steel sector and Incentivising domestic capacity expansion.

The conclave is aimed at promoting domestic capacity and capability building besides manufacturing of capital goods in the steel sector. At least 20 MoUs have been planned to be inked by Indian Capital Goods manufacturers, foreign technology providers, foreign capital goods manufacturers, consultants and steel manufacturers. With the signing of the MoUs, imported capital goods worth over five billion USD will be manufactured in the country as part of Make-in-India drive in steel sector in next 12 years.

Foreign manufacturers from Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, China and Japan are expected to participate in the event.As per World Steel Association (WSA)s last eight month steel production figure, India has become the second largest steel producer in the world. Indian steel production has been growing at 6.7 per cent, achieving the highest growth among the major economies.

Union Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh, Minister for Commerce, Industry and Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister for Heavy Industry and Public Sector Enterprises Anant Gangaram Geethe and Minister of State for Steel Vishnu Deo Sai are slated to attend the conclave.By Express News Service

ROURKELA: Rise in deaths of elephants in the recent past has emerged as a cause of concern for forest officials in Sundargarh district.Whats more worrying for the Forest department is the death of three elephant calves over a span of two months due to infection. Sources said a male elephant calf, aged four years, died on Saturday inside the remote Kunjar forest of Sol range in Gurundia block of Bonai Forest Division (BFD). While autopsy report is awaited, it is suspected that the baby elephant, after being abandoned by its herd, died of bacterial infection. In the last two months, two other calves had died due to infection at Kelo and Kunjar forests of Jarda range of Gurundia in BFD.

Bonai Assistant Conservator of Forest (ACF) NSJP Singh said after the second death at Kunjar, they sought help of Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) which, based on pathological investigation, attributed the death to bacterial infection. He said before its death, the third calf had confined itself to a radius of 2 to 3 km, not taking food and was getting weak with similar symptoms. He said as a corrective measure, cattle of peripheral villages moving into adjacent forests would be immunised.

Regional Chief Conservator of Forest (RCCF) Lingaraj Otta said they are keeping a strict watch on the situation and analysing the possible reasons.Bijay Rout By

Express News Service

ANGUL: Death of a person at Tansi village, allegedly killed by tigress Sundari, which was translocated from Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh to Satkosia Tiger Reserve, sparked fresh turmoil in the region on Sunday with villagers engaging in a pitched battle with police and vandalising public property.

Tension prevailed in the area as villagers blocked the National Highway 55 with the dead body to protest the alleged human kill and demanding immediate shifting of the tigress out of the reserve.With protests threatening to go out of control, police resorted to lathicharge to disperse the agitators. But the villagers retaliated by heavy stone-pelting and also set a police bus and other vehicles on fire.

The police had to fire in the air to drive away the mob and restore normalcy. Several people including some policemen were injured in the incident.

According to sources, one 65-year-old Trinath Sahu had gone to the forest near the village, about 40 kms from Angul town, at around 6.30 am when Sundari, which was in the vicinity since Saturday evening, pounced on him and dragged him away. Some villagers, who were nearby, saw her killing Trinath and eating his body. As they shouted and rushed to the spot, the tigress sprang away leaving the body. A TV journalist and two villagers, who went near the tigress, were also reportedly attacked and injured.

The incident triggered protest by the villagers who attacked a forest tracking team and locked one ACF and two range officers in a house. Even after a police team led by SP M Mahapatra reached the village and tried to pacify the people, they did not release the forest officials.

As the stand-off between the villagers and the police team continued, the former took the body to the NH and staged a road blockade. We have been demanding the tigress to be shifted out of Satkosia Tiger Reserve but the district administration has turned it down stating that the tigress is not a threat to us. Now in front of us, the tigress killed and ate a man. We demand `50 lakh as compensation and shifting of the tigress, said Khirod Sahu, a villager.

Repeated calls to Additional Chief Conservator of Forests Sudarshan Panda and DFO V Kartik yielded no response. A forest official, however, described the incident as unfortunate. He said the villagers released the officials kept in captivity following intervention by forest officials. The secretary of Citizen Action Committee Bijay Mishra also demanded shifting of the tigress.

Chief Wildlife Warden Sambit Tripathy said the tranquilisation team constituted for such exisgencies has already proceeded to Satkosia for capturing the tigress. Further follow up action would be taken after due consultation with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Government of India and Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, he said and added that a compensation of `4 lakh has been sanctioned for the next of kin of the killed.

On September 12, Sundari had allegedly killed one Kailash Sai of Hatibari village which was, however, not confirmed by post-mortem report. The tigress had also reportedly killed three cattle after she was released into the wild from the enclosure on August 17.By Express News Service

MADURAI / NAGERCOIL: Two women died while six others were admitted with symptoms of swine flu. Meenakshi, a middle-aged woman who had tested positive for Swine Flu (H1N1), succumbed to the infection on Friday, while Veerammal (70), who was being treated at the special ward in Madurai Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH), died on Saturday night.

Confirming the deaths, the dean of Madurai Medical College, D Maruthupandian, said Veerammal was treated in the special ward but that she had tested negative for H1N1.

He also said that six persons, who had tested positive for H1N1, were being treated at a special isolated ward in the GRH and were out of danger. The special ward, which has a capacity of 10 beds, is being monitored by a separate team of doctors in two shifts.

Besides, additional nurses have been deputed to the ward and they work in three shifts, he said. The special ward is equipped with ventilator support devices. Adequate stock of antibiotics are available at the hospital, he explained.

Sexagenarian dies

A 60-year-old retired professor from Ramanpudhur here, who was tested positive for swine flu and had been receiving treatment at Kanniyakumari Government Medical College Hospital in Asaripallam for over a week, succumbed during the evening hours of Sunday.

Sources told Express that, Theresa Josephine Rani, the victim, was tested positive for swine flu by a private lab and administered treatment at a private hospital here for five days till October 12. However, she died on Sunday.

Pregnant woman dies of H1N1 in Puducherry

A 28-year-old woman, who was nine months pregnant, died of swine flu (H1N1) at the Jipmer hospital here on Sunday. She was one among the 39 cases of influenza reported across Puducherry. Sukanya from Koodapakkam was first admitted at the Rajiv Gandhi Women and Children Hospital and subsequently referred to JipmerBy Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The Congress party never claimed that democracy was in danger when Professor Varavara Rao was arrested in their tenure. The party is turning disruptive to the nation by taking opportunistic stances on issues of national interest, alleged BJP national general secretary Muralidhar Rao, speaking at an interactive session on Make in India v/s Break in India in the city on Sunday.

Whether it is Pakistans State-sponsored terrorism or our strained foreign relations with Bangladesh, across the years, the BJP has taken a unified stand on certain issues, the BJP leader argued.

Further criticising the campaign strategy that Congress adopted during the recently concluded Gujarat polls, Muralidhar said, In order to mobilise people, they are dividing Hindus in the name of caste and pitting them against each other.

Muralidhar also defended the phrase Congress-mukt Bharat, widely used by BJP in the recent times, claiming that it has contextual articulation and is not based on any noun or adjective.

Congress had attempted to create an Opposition-mukt Bharat when they were in power. We will make the people understand that Congress merely stands for corruption, dynastic rule, and caste-based politics, Rao stated.

Speaking on the allegations of a secret tie-up with the TRS mounting on the party, Muralidhar claimed that they were rumours being spread by the Opposition.By UNI

THIMPHU: Bhutan's latest election was fought on the domestic issues of corruption, rural poverty and income inequality, youth unemployment, external debt and criminal gangs; and the foreign and security policy issues were left out, as two of four competing parties the centre-left Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT) and Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) battled it out at the polls on Thursday.

The DNT, led by Lotay Tshering, a 50-year-old medical surgeon, won 30 of 47 national assembly seats.

The party, with Tshering as prime minister, will now form the government, taking over from the People's Democratic Party (PDP) that has been in power since 2013, said an analytical report in the South China Morning Post by Prof SD Muni, professor emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a former ambassador and special envoy, Bhutanese have sought change at each of the three elections since the introduction of democracy in 2008 first in the polls that year, then in 2013 and last week.

There is also a strong undercurrent in the Himalayan kingdom for reducing its dependence on traditional ally and neighbour India and broadening its external relations.

It has no diplomatic relations with China, which it shares a border with.

Last year, for 73 days between July and September, India and China had a military stand-off over the Doklam plateau claimed by China and Bhutan.

Five years ago, in the 2013 general election, the need to keep close relations with India became a critical and decisive election issue.

The People's Democratic Party (PDP) was trailing behind the then ruling DPT which was interested in settling the border issue with China and perhaps establishing diplomatic relations by almost 12 per cent of votes in the first round.

But an aggressive campaign based on India-related issues triggered by Indian companies raising the price of cooking gas on the eve of the elections helped the PDP to bridge the gap and defeat the DPT to become the government.

It is worth noting the swing in favour for the PDP would not have taken place without the blessings of Bhutan's King royalty has a big stake in letting democracy work in the country.

This year, the Election Commission of Bhutan was keen to avoid a repeat.

In imposing strict regulations, the commission penalised five candidates and their supporters for campaigning on sensitive issues related to neighbouring countries a violation of electoral norms and also fined campaigners who abused or criticised opposition party leaders.

Tshering and his party rallied voters on the slogan of "Narrowing the gap" in incomes.

He wants to diversify Bhutan's economy from its hydropower base which accounts for almost 80 per cent of the country's external debt to focus on developing industries and other employment generating sectors.

This will affect relations with India, the kingdom's biggest creditor and recipient of hydropower.

The possibility of Bhutan establishing formal diplomatic relations with China, which now accounts for one-third of its consumer imports, may also be explored under the new government.

As a precondition to this, Bhutan may have to settle its boundary with China, removing the possibility of Doklam-like stand-offs emerging again.

This may not be very easy.

India is directly involved in the tri-junctions of Bhutan's borders with China and therefore has to be on board.

In a meeting in Wuhan earlier this year, India and China also agreed to get their relationship back on track and pledged to improve military communication to avoid a repeat of last year's stand-off at the 3,500km shared border.

In light of both powers' post-Wuhan understanding, Bhutan can explore alternatives like leaving the tri-junctions unresolved while settling the remaining border issues and proceeding towards diplomatic relations with China.

This may increase India-China economic and diplomatic competition in Bhutan without eroding the substance of India-Bhutan relations.

Bhutan's fourth King Jigmey Singhe Wangchuk, the new ruling party and all other strategic stakeholders including the army, businesspeople and those living along the kingdom's southern border are acutely aware that India is an indispensable partner in their security and prosperity.

India has been accommodating of Bhutan's concerns and sensitivities as was evident in the revision of their 1949 friendship treaty that modernised bilateral ties.

There is no reason to believe India would not accept Bhutan's establishment of diplomatic relations with China in future if its core interests of preserving security, peace and a positive business climate are not disturbed.By UNI

TEL AVIV: Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Monday held a series of high-level interactions with officials of some of Israel's leading companies to explore investment opportunities and to assess the potential for collaboration in the state's infrastructural, agricultural and water management sectors.

The meetings laid the ground for strong collaborations between the two sides in some of Punjab's most vital areas of development, and gave a boost to the close economic and historical ties between Punjab and Israel.

At a meeting with officials of Tyros International Group Ltd, the Chief Minister discussed possibilities of investment by the Group in the areas of energy, water, affordable housing, construction schools and hospitals.

The officials briefed the Punjab delegation led by the Chief Minister on the work being done by the Group, which specialises in impact investments and projects, in India, where it has decided to open an FDI Fund dedicated for impact assessments as part of its future plans.

Capt Amarinder Singh discussed with the officials the investment that the Group could make in Punjab, which now offers immense potential for global investment and capital fund companies, given his government's strong focus on industrial and infrastructure development.

During his tour of NaanDanJain Irrigation farms, the Chief Minister lauded the work being done by the 80-year-old company which was recently acquired by a leading micro-irrigation based Indian company, in the field of precision agriculture and horticulture, in order to boost productivity.

He studied the latest technologies being used by the company on its farms to improve the quality and yield of various vegetables and fruits, including brinjal/eggplant avocado and citrus varieties.

He examined the potential for adopting the latest technologies used by the company to boost agricultural development in Punjab.

NaanDanJain is present in Punjab since 1993 through various completed and ongoing projects, including a Crop Diversification Farmfresh (Farm to Home) project for food and spice processing industries, as well as a Water Conservation Resource to Roots) project through a pilot in Kandi, where the company has established the world's largest standalone power micro irrigation systems for community and individuals.

The company is also working on the creation of alternate source of irrigation by utilisation of treated water from sewerage treatment plants and village ponds of Punjab, besides introduction of hydroponics and aeroponics technologies, especially for potato and seed production, as well as replacement of open canal system with HDPE pipes.

Capt Amarinder Singh underlined the need for further strengthening such technical collaborations to boost Punjab's infrastructural and economic development.

The two sides agreed to explore more avenues to create the necessary environment for greater cooperation and investment in key areas of Punjab's progress.

During the first day of his Israel trip, the Chief Minister also visited The Dan Region Wastewater Treatment Plant (Shafdan) and met officials of Mekorot, Israel's National Water Company.

The Shafdan is a complex inter-regional system that collects, treats and reclaims municipal wastewater in high density urban areas and industrial zones, and is the largest wastewater treatment plant in Israel.

It was constructed by Igudan Environmental Infrastructure in order to treat wastewater in the Dan Region, an urban area in Israel located along the country's Mediterranean coastline, and to recycle it into water that can be used for agricultural irrigation for all types of crops in Israel.

The treatment facility is operated by the Shafdan Unit of the Central District of the Mekorot Water Company, Ltd., which acts as a contract operator for the Association.

Capt Amarinder Singh was informed that the facility has been handling all of the wastewater from the Metropolitan Dan Region, amounting to about 120,000,000 mA per year, so that wastewater is not discharged into the Mediterranean Sea.

The treated wastewater is sent to the Negev Desert and contributes to its development.

More than 60 per cent of agriculture in the Negev is irrigated by Shafdan water.

The Chief Minister concluded his first day in Israel with presentations made by several reputed Israeli companies in the fields of Intelligence Generation and Analysis, Social Media Sentiment Analysis and Use of Technology in Police functioning.

These companies are world leaders in the Law Enforcement field and have been working with many International Intelligence agencies and police forces.

Capt Amarinder underlined the importance of adopting the latest technologies in the functioning of police & intelligence as a tool to prevent terrorist crime and for maintenance of peace and communal peace in the border state of Punjab.

Later, the Chief Minister was hosted at dinner by India's Ambassador to Israel, Pavan Kapoor.By UNI

TOKYO: Japanese organic chemist and marine biologist - Osamu Shimomura, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry is no more.

He was 90.

Japan Today reports that his alma mater Nagasaki University said on Monday that Shimomura passed away on Friday due to natural causes.

Shimomura and two American scientists had shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for the discovery and development of a jellyfish protein that later contributed to cancer studies.

Shimomura was born in northern Kyoto in 1928 and studied in Nagasaki, where he survived the August 9, 1945, US atomic bombing at age 16.

His high school education was cut short during World War II as he was mobilized to work at a munitions factory.

He eventually earned chemistry degree in 1951 from Nagasaki College of Pharmacy.

In 1960 he moved to Princeton University, where he isolated the protein in samples of thousands of jellyfish taken from the US West Coast, often with the help of his wife Akemi.

The protein known as Green Fluorescent Protein lets off a glow when it is illuminated with ultraviolet light and has become a key tool in studying biological processes in cells.

"Shimomura was based in the US, but had moved back to Nagasaki to be close to his relatives," Nagasaki University officials said.

The devastation from the atomic bomb that killed 70,000 in Nagasaki, left a lasting impression on Shimomura and he often mentioned his experience and called for nuclear weapons ban in his lectures later in life.By Associated Press

MEXICO: Newly formed Hurricane Willa rapidly gained force and grew into an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm in the Pacific off Mexico on Sunday, with a potential to make landfall on a western stretch of coast between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta in the coming days.

The US National Hurricane Center said the storm was "forecast to produce life-threatening storm surge, wind and rainfall over portions of southwestern and west-central Mexico beginning on Tuesday.

" A hurricane warning was posted for a stretch of shore between San Blas and Mazatlan, while a tropical storm warning was in effect from Playa Perula to San Blas and Mazatlan to Bahia Tempehuaya.

Hurricane force winds extended out 25 miles from the storm's core and tropical storm force winds were up to 90 miles out.

Willa was about 210 miles (340 kilometers) south-southwest of Cabo Corrientes late Sunday, with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph (230 kph).

It was moving to the north-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph), but a turn toward the north was likely during the night or Monday.

The hurricane center forecast 5 to 10 inches (12.5 to 25 centimeters) of rain across parts of western Jalisco, western Nayarit and southern Sinaloa states, with lesser amounts falling as it moves inland.

Meanwhile, a weakening Tropical Storm Vicente appeared to be a less potent threat farther south.

Forecasters said it was expected to weaken into a tropical depression on Monday night or early Tuesday while moving near Mexico's southern Pacific.

Its core was about 220 miles (355 kilometers) southeast of Acapulco with top sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph).

The hurricane center said it could produce 3 to 6 inches (7.5 to 15 centimeters) of rain in parts of Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco states.By Associated Press

JERUSALEM: In recent months, the Trump administration has repeatedly put off the release of its long-awaited Mideast peace plan. Now, the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents may put the plan into a deep freeze.

Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was meant to be the linchpin of the plan, providing key diplomatic cover to both Israelis and Palestinians. But with the Saudi prince's credibility facing serious questions following Khashoggi's death, President Donald Trump may soon have to rethink his Mideast strategy.

ALSO READ | Donald Trump believes Saudi explanation for Jamal Khashoggi's death, lawmakers sceptical

"It definitely complicates their plans to release their proposal, if indeed they have one," said Dan Shapiro, who served as President Barack Obama's ambassador to Israel.

Trump took office promising a new approach to peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians.

Criticizing decades of failure by his predecessors, he named a Mideast team headed by his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner. The team has deep ties to Israel and the West Bank settler movement.

The Trump administration notably refused to endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state, distancing itself from the two-state solution favored by the international community for more than two decades.

Instead, Kushner's team turned to the Saudis, hoping that the kingdom's deep pockets and prestige in the Arab world could somehow help bring the Israelis and Palestinians together.

Kushner struck up a special relationship with the crown prince, portraying him as a swashbuckling force, a leader who could help modernize a troubled region. Last year, Kushner paid a secret visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss his strategy for Israel and the Palestinians.

But long before the current crisis over Khashoggi's death, the peace plan ran into in trouble.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was invited to Saudi Arabia twice last year to talk to Prince Mohammed about the emerging American proposal.

Palestinian officials say that in briefings with the Saudis, Abbas raised objections after concluding the plan would fall far short of his goal of establishing an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Aides say Abbas believes the Americans want to keep him quiet by attracting large sums of money from Gulf Arab investors to develop the Palestinian economy. With the Palestinian front quiet, the United States could then proceed with the broader aim of creating an Israeli-Saudi alliance to serve as a regional counterweight to Iran.

In the meantime, his relations with the Americans have deteriorated. Abbas severed ties with the White House after the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December and then moved its embassy to the holy city. Relations worsened as the U.S. cut hundreds of millions of dollars of direct and indirect aid to the Palestinians.

ALSO READ | 'We don't know where the body is,' says Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Jamal Khashoggi

Amid this backdrop, Abbas has already said he will not accept the White House initiative, arguing that Trump is unfairly biased in favor of Israel.

At the same time, Prince Mohammed's credibility has taken a beating with a series of questionable decisions in recent months. He has pushed for an unsuccessful blockade of Qatar, led a bloody and unpopular war in neighboring Yemen and abruptly cut off ties with Canada after its foreign minister criticized Saudi Arabia.

Although the prince has not been directly implicated in the death of Khashoggi at a Saudi Consulate in Turkey, the slaying has raised further questions about his suitability to lead.

A U.S. official familiar with the peace effort said the team remains committed to its plan and does not expect the crisis surrounding the Khashoggi killing to affect it.

The official added, however, that the team has not yet discussed the matter since the Saudis confirmed Khashoggi's death over the weekend, and plans a discussion in the coming days. He said it remains unclear when the proposal will be made public. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.

Israel and the Palestinians, wary of antagonizing the Saudis, also have said little about Khashoggi's killing. Israel has not commented, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week boasted in speeches about improved behind-the-scenes ties with moderate Arab countries, an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia. Abbas, meanwhile, expressed his "absolute confidence" in the Saudis last week.

Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador, said that even if Trump agrees to work with the Saudis, the weakened Prince Mohammed is not in a position to "break taboos" and push the Palestinians into making concessions that are unpopular in the Arab world.

ALSO READ | Turkey vows to reveal 'truth' over Jamal Khashoggi death

And on the international stage, he said other actors, including the U.S. Congress and the Europeans, will have deep misgivings about engaging with the crown prince, who is known by his initials MBS.

"That Saudi partner needs to be predictable, needs to be reliable, needs to be responsible. What this incident tells us is that that's not the Saudi partner we have right now," he said. "None of them are likely to sit with MBS anytime soon to strategize on regional matters and he will be seen as a pariah."

Mkhaimer Abusada, a Palestinian analyst, said he thinks the Khashoggi killing will have a "huge effect" on the crown prince's own behavior as well.

"I think from now on, he is going to count his steps carefully and stop being that impulsive," he said. "The Palestinians will reject the U.S. peace plan when it's officially on the table and MBS will not be in any good position to wield any pressure on the Palestinians to accept it."By Associated Press

SEOUL: Military officers from the two Koreas and the US-led UN Command met again at the Koreas' border village Monday to examine an ongoing effort to disarm the area.

Demilitarising the Panmunjom village inside the Koreas' heavily fortified border was among many agreements the Koreas struck in September to lower military tensions between the rivals.

ALSO READ | Mongolia may join talks on Korean Peninsula denuclearization: Russia

Under the deals, troops from the Koreas began clearing mines from Panmunjom earlier this month before withdrawing weapons and guard posts there.

They eventually plan to have 35 unarmed personnel from each side guard the village.

Monday's trilateral talks are the second in kind in about a week.

Officially, the village is jointly overseen by North Korea and the UN Command, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The talks are to review the demining work and discussing future steps in the area, South Korea's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

As part of the September agreements, the two Koreas are removing mines from another frontline area where they plan their first-ever joint searches for the remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War.

The Koreas also plan to establish buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries, and a no-fly zone above the border.

General-level officers from the Koreas are to meet at Panmunjom on Friday to discuss more details about how to implement the tension-reduction deals, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.

Also Monday, officials from the Koreas separately met at their recently launched liaison office at the North Korean border town of Kaesong for talks on how to cooperate in forestry sectors.

Seoul's liberal government is pushing for greater engagement with North Korea, but US officials say such moves should be in tandem with global efforts to denuclearise North Korea.By UNI

NEW YORK: Indian-American Nikki Haley, the outgoing US Ambassador to the UN, has poked fun at President Donald Trump's inflated ego and his cultural ignorance, days after announcing that she would be leaving her position representing America at the world body.

ALSO READ | Donald Trump calls Nikki Haley 'extraordinary', says she will make a lot of money

Haley, 46, announced on October 9 that she was resigning from her UN post, effective at the end of the year.

She has since claimed that she has no ambitions to run for president in 2020.

Haley, during remarks at the 2018 Alfred Smith Dinner in New York, mocked the president for getting laughed at the UN General Assembly last month a spectacle that both she and the president said was intentional, New York Daily Times reported.

She started the speech with a joke about Trump's thin skin.

"Everyone in Washington called me with advice about this speech. They all said the same thing, do not under any circumstances make any jokes about the president. So, good night everybody," she said to laughter from the crowd.

She also joked about the president's ongoing feud with Senator Elizabeth Warren, who recently released the results of a DNA test that strongly supported the existence of Native American ancestry from six to 10 generations ago.

ALSO READ | Nikki Haley became a popular UN diplomat despite Trump policies

"The president called me this morning and gave me some good advice, he said if I get stuck for laughs just brag about his accomplishments. It really killed at the UN, I've got to tell you," Haley said on Thursday night.

The outgoing ambassador was recalling a moment during the president's UN speech when delegates laughed at him boasting that his administration had, in two years, "accomplished more than almost any in the history of our country".

After that joke, Haley then turned her attention to Warren, Trump has repeatedly mocked Warren with the nickname for Pocahontas for her having claimed previously that she has Native American ancestry.

"I get it, you wanted an Indian woman but Elizabeth Warren failed her DNA test," Haley said in New York.

She continued to poke fun at Trump's cultural ignorance, the report said.

"Actually, when the President found out that I was Indian-American he asked me if I was from the same tribe as Elizabeth Warren." The ambassador poked fun a Trump's response to the recent Bob Woodward book.

"The President got really mad at Bob Woodward's book," she said.

"The book compared him to a fifth grader. A lot of Democrats seized on that, until they realized that they got beaten by fifth grader."By PTI

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan would tell the Chinese leadership that his government wants a "significant shift" in the infrastructure projects under the controversy-hit China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in the country, according to a media report on Monday.

The USD 60 billion CPEC is the flagship venture of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at enhancing Beijing's influence around the world through China-funded infrastructure projects.

The CPEC is a planned network of roads, railways and energy projects linking China's resource-rich Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with Pakistan's strategic Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea.

Prime Minister Khan is to embark on his first visit to China on November 3 during which he is expected to call on President Xi as well as meet his counterpart Li Keqiang.

"During his meetings in the friendly country, Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of the CPEC," the Dawn newspaper reported, quoting unnamed sources as saying.

Under the previous government there was an emphasis on infrastructure schemes, but the current government of Khan wanted projects involving agriculture, job creation and foreign investment take centre stage, the report said.

Pakistan has already approached the International Monetary Fund for a bailout to stabilise the economy.

The US has said that the huge Chinese debt was responsible for the economic challenges in Pakistan, adding that it will review Islamabad's bailout plea to the IMF from all angles, including the country's debt position.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said that the US thinks that part of the reason for Pakistan's financial crisis is Chinese debt.

India has protested to Beijing over the CPEC as it traversed through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Cash-strapped Pakistan has already announced plans to cut a USD 8.2 billion railway project between the Karachi and Peshawar the biggest under the CPEC by about USD 2 billion to reduce the debt burden.

Meanwhile, the report also said that due to suspension of funding to CPEC's infrastructure projects, the National Highway Authority's road projects worth over Rs 1 trillion have been adversely affected.

Many projects in the energy sector have also been hit.

The affected projects include the 210km Dera Ismail Khan-Zhob road, the 110km Khuzdar-Basima road and a 136km portion of the Karakoram Highway.

In a recent meeting about his visit to China, Prime Minister Khan said that early implementation of the CPEC projects would help realise the true potential of the economic ties between the two countries.

He emphasised the need for early establishment of Special Economic Zones in various parts of the country and hoped these zones would help the local industry grow, creating huge employment opportunities for the youth, the report said.By PTI

TEL AVIV: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has arrived in Israel on a five-day visit to strengthen cooperation with the Jewish nation in key sectors like agriculture, horticulture and dairy.

Singh, accompanied by a delegation of officials, reached Israel Sunday evening.

Singh had postponed the visit in the wake of the Amritsar train accident in which 59 people were killed and 57 injured on Friday.

ALSO READ | Amritsar train accident: Punjab CM Amarinder Singh announces Rs 5 lakh aid to kin of deceased

Earlier, he was to leave for Israel in on October 19.

The decision to visit Israel was taken after the administration felt completely satisfied with the relief and rehabilitation measures being carried out for the victims of the Amritsar train tragedy, an official spokesman said in Chandigarh.

He will be visiting several facilities and institutions working in sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, dairy and wastewater management to tap opportunities that can address Punjab's requirements, and boost the state's internal security apparatus.

Ahead of his visit, the Punjab chief minister had said his government was keen to tap technological advancements on offer by the country.

On Tuesday, a seminar, "Investment Opportunities in Punjab" has been organised to attract investments in the state from Israel.

The Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) will be signing MoUs with the Tel Aviv University and the Galilee Institute for cooperation in the field of agriculture.

Another MoU will be signed in the field of water conservation by the visiting delegation.

Singh has emphasised that farmers in Punjab should diversify their crop pattern and get out of the paddy-wheat cycle, replicating the latest practices of drip irrigation and hydroponics in view of the depleting water table in the state.

During a meeting with an Israeli delegation ahead of his visit, he had evinced interest in adopting Israeli know-how to boost the dairy sector.

He had also expressed interest in visiting Israeli orchards and nurseries to secure first-hand knowledge of the technological advancements in hybrid production of plants.

Punjab is also seeking Israeli assistance in improving the quality of citrus fruits as the state is a leading producer of Kinnow and wants to go for mass plantation of sweet oranges, which finds a remunerative market.

The Singh-led delegation will be also given a presentation on Israeli expertise in the homeland security sector and will visit the academy of a leading Israeli security company during the trip.

Security officials from the state are said to have also made trips earlier to Israel to tap state-of-the-art technology and gain expertise in intelligence and homeland security to boost Punjab's security apparatus.

Singh is scheduled to call upon Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel and Minister of Energy and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz during his trip.

ALSO READ | Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh leaves for Israel 

He will be also visiting the cemetery of Indian soldiers who laid their lives during the War of Liberation of Haifa in 1918.

Haifa celebrated the centenary year of its liberation by Indian cavalry units in September paying warm tributes to the courage shown by them in what is considered by most of the War Historians as the "last great cavalry campaign in history".By UNI

MOSCOW: Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russia's possible response, to retaliate US's withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, will be to restore military balance.

"The breaking of the INF Treaty's provisions forces Russia to take measures on ensuring its own security," Peskov said, noting that in the future Washington would start directly developing the systems banned under the treaty, reported Russian News Agency TASS.

"If this system is developed, steps from other countries, and in this case of Russia, on restoring balance in this sphere are needed," he said adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated this many times.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty as Russia was allegedly violating the terms of the agreement.

Many including Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Berlin and Beijing raised concern over the decision, citing it as 'a dangerous move'.

The Kremlin spokesman stressed that the US is in violation of the treaty, while Russia remains committed to the document.

"President Putin on various occasions has rejected all accusations against Russia pertaining to violations of the INF Treaty," he added.

Russia has provided evidence at various levels that Washington eroded the basis and key provisions of the treaty by "installing anti-missiles, which can be both interceptors and also short and medium-range missiles, using combat drones, which are de facto nothing else than short and medium-range missiles."

"We absolutely disagree that Russia violates the INF Treaty."

"Russia was and remains committed to this treaty's provisions."

The procedure for withdrawing from the INF Treaty takes nearly half a year, and so this is an issue of "the day after tomorrow," the spokesman said, noting that the US plans to leave the treaty arouses serious concerns.

Meanwhile, London voiced support for the US, while NATO held Russia responsible for Trump's decision saying that "allies believe that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty."

The INF Treaty was signed between the Soviet Union and the United States on Dec 8, 1987 in Washington, DC and took effect on Jun 1, 1988.

The INF Treaty eliminated operational and non-operational medium range (1,000-5,500 kilometers) and shorter range (500-1,000 kilometers) ground-launched missiles.

In 2014, the United States accused Russia of developing a missile with an operational range of 500 to 5,500 km.

US media outlets reported that the missile was codenamed 9M729 (NATO reporting name: SSC-8).

Since then, the US has repeated this claim more than once.

Russia strongly dismissed it and struck back at the US with counterclaims that America had violated the deal.

Moscow accused Washington of developing missiles, which are tested at a range prohibited by the treaty and deploying missile defense elements, which may be used for launching short- and intermediate-range missiles.By UNI

NEW DELHI: The second overseas national war memorial for Indian soldiers will be inaugurated at Villers-Guislain in France on November 10 to commemorate all those who fought and lost their lives during the first World War in 1914-18.

The first national memorial was built in Belgium a decade ago. Vice President Venkaiah Naidu is expected to inaugurate the memorial.

ALSO READ | Artists claim bias against World War I Indian soldiers by British Army

The United Service Institution of India (USI), which is one of the oldest military think-tanks, has initiated the work with the help of the Indian Army and the government.

"The memorial has been erected at a small village named Villers Guislain. Dafadar Gobind Singh got the Victoria Award for fierce fighting at this battlefield only in December 1917. It is in this battle that the tank was used, " said USI Secretary Sqn Ldr RTS Chhina (Retd).

This memorial would also be distinguished as it will have the State Emblem of India.

The United Kingdom is also supporting the USI in this cause.

The objective of the centenary commemorations is three-fold --- to revive the memory of a forgotten legion and to honour its sacrifice, to build bridges with partner nations through acknowledgement of a shared past and to highlight the futility of war and the urgent need to work towards its eradication as a means of settling disputes among nations, said USI Director Lt Gen PK Singh (retd).

Indian Army contributed a large number of divisions and independent brigades to the European, Mediterranean and the Middle East theatres of war in World War I.

Over 1.5 million Indian troops served overseas, of whom over 70,000 died and another 67,000 were wounded.

The USI has also brought into the mainstream the descendants of those soldiers who fought and died during the war.

It has also got response from Pakistan, which formed a part of undivided India at the time of World Wars.

However, the Pakistan government did not take much of an interest in such activities.

During her visit to Paris in June, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had announced the construction of a war memorial in France.

The French government gave around 1000 meters of land at a token cost of Euro one.

They were of the view that a memorial should be created for those India soldiers who fought for liberating the parts of France.One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021George Edwards, 25, of Champaign was sentenced Friday to three years of probation after pleading guilty in November to possessing a stolen firearm when he was arrested after a July 9, 2018, traffic stop.Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.Its Canoes Were Used to Cross

the Channel, So It Halted Sales(Newser)  Mikhail Gorbachev is puzzled and alarmed by President Trump's plan to pull the US out of a treaty that is part of hisand Ronald Reagan'slegacy. The 87-year-old former Soviet leader told Russia's Interfax news agency Sunday that Trump's move to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was "very strange" and "not the work of a great mind," the New York Times reports. "Do they really not understand in Washington what this can lead to?" wondered Gorbachev, who signed the nuclear pact with Reagan in 1987. "All agreements aimed at nuclear disarmament and limiting nuclear weapons must be preserved, for the sake of preserving life on earth," he said.

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Congressional Republicans were split on the decision to withdraw from the pact, which bans the US and Russia from possessing or testing ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 300 miles to 3,400 miles, the AP reports. Sen. Rand Paul said it would be "a big, big mistake to flippantly get out of this historic agreement," while Sen. Bob Corker, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN that the move could be "something that's just a precursor to trying to get Russia to come into compliance" and he hopes "we're going to be able to figure out a way to stay within the treaty." Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox that the "Russians have been cheating," so he believes pullout is "absolutely the right move." (The Kremlin says the move is a "very dangerous step.")(Newser)  It was said to be a "near-suicide mission," and a previous attempt saw dozens of men killed and captured by the Nazis. But the "Operation Gunnerside" raid in World War II on a Norwegian plant making heavy watera hydrogen-filled substance that could eventually have been used by Germany to make atomic bombswas a successful one, led by 23-year-old Joachim Roenneberg, the youngest member of the five-man operation. The plant was blown up that day in February 1943, becoming what Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg calls "the most successful sabotage campaign on Norwegian soil during the war," per the New York Post. Tributes are once more being paid to Roenneberg as Norwegian officials on Sunday announced his death at age 99, Reuters reports.

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The raid on the Norsk Hydro plant, which was surrounded by guards, is one of legend that's since been the subject of books, movies, and a TV series. The team put together by a British espionage and sabotage agency parachuted onto a mountain near the plant, joined up with some commandos, skied their way to their target, and broke into the plant, where they blew up the heavy-water production line. Making the raid especially notable was that not a single gunshot was fired; in a 2014 documentary, Roenneberg said the attack went off "like a dream," per the AP. The team then fled on their skis, with Roenneberg escaping over the border to neutral Sweden. "He was one of our top insurgents during the war," Solberg posted on Facebook, adding to the NTB news agency, via Reuters: "He is one of our great heroes." (A Soviet officer may have saved the world from nuclear war.)(Newser)  A bit of good news after the catastrophic fire that ravaged Brazil's National Museum last month: One of the museum's most prized possessions has been mostly recovered. Museum director Alexander Kellner tells the AP that "Luzia," the oldest human fossil ever found in Latin America, was broken but that 80% of the skull pieces have been recovered. Luzia, so named in honor of "Lucy," the famous 3.2-million-year-old remains found in Africa, was discovered during a 1975 excavation outside Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and is among the oldest fossils anywhere in the Americas. The museum is confident the rest of the pieces can be found and reassembly can be attempted, the BBC reports.

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"They've suffered alterations, damage, but we're very optimistic at the find and all it represents," a professor at the museum tells AFP. The 12,000-year-old skull, believed to have belonged to a woman in her 20s, was one of about 20 million pieces inside the 200-year-old museum, Brazil's oldest scientific institution, reports the New York Times, which notes that some of those items are "irreplaceable to science." The museum contained the largest collection of historical artifacts in Latin America, and items including South American and Egyptian mummies may have been destroyed. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. (A professor ran into the burning building to retrieve artifacts.)(Newser)  Discount airline Ryanair is facing a backlash over its handling of a man who engaged in what a fellow passenger describes as a "disgusting" outburst of "racial slurs and foul language." Passenger video from the flight shows the man insulting, threatening, and racially abusing a 77-year-old black woman, apparently because she didn't get out of her aisle seat quickly when he wanted to get to his window seat, the BBC reports. He calls her an "ugly black bastard" and, after she speaks to him in a Jamaican accent, tells her: "Don't speak in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow." Flight attendants and the woman's daughter intervened and the woman was moved to a different seat, but the male passenger was allowed to remain in his seat for the Barcelona to London flight.

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Passenger David Lawrence, who filmed the incident, tells the Washington Post that he was shocked when the man remained on the flight. "I thought the flight attendant was going to call someone and escort the man off the flight," he says. "They moved the woman instead of moving him." The woman's daughter, who had taken her to Barcelona to raise her spirits on the first anniversary of her husband's death, says her mother moved slowly to let the man in because she has arthritis. "I know that if I was behaving like he was or any other black person, for that matter, police wouldve been called and we wouldve been kicked off of the flight," she tells the Huffington Post. Ryanair says it "will not tolerate" this kind of behavior and it has referred the incident to police. (Passengers in Chicago cheered when a man who ranted about foreigners was kicked off their flight.)(Newser)  A Swedish woman who blocked a man's deportation by refusing to sit down on a plane is being prosecuted for "crimes against the aviation law," authorities say. Elin Ersson, 21, was indicted Friday for refusing to take her seat on a Turkish Airlines flight from Gothenburg on July 23, the New York Times. The 50-year-old Afghan man whose deportation she had been trying to block was eventually taken off the plane, though he was later deported on a different flight. Ersson could face a fine and up to six months in jail for refusing the crew's requests to sit down, the Guardian reports, though her lawyer argues that she didn't break the law because she left the plane when the pilot told her to. (Britain's chess federation recently helped prevent the deportation of a 9-year-old prodigy.)(Newser)  Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of the best-known comedic actresses of her generation, and now she's been recognized with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor for a lifetime in comedy. She is the 21st person the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has honored with the award. Jerry Seinfeld, Stephen Colbert, and 2010 Mark Twain recipient Tina Fey were among those offering testimonials to her talent. Louis-Dreyfus accepted her award with an extended comedic bit and a few shots at new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The actress first drew laughs by repeatedly referencing her true life's ambition to be a respected dramatic actressstopping in mid-speech to deliver a monologue from Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice," the AP reports.

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The Seinfeld and Veep star is a graduate of the elite Holton-Arms school, alma mater of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a high school party. Louis-Dreyfus made a veiled but unmistakable reference to Ford's testimony, framing it around her performance at a high school presentation of the play "Serendipity." "I can remember every single aspect of that play that night, so much so that I would testify under oath about it," she said, to a round of laughter and applause. "But I can't remember who drove me there or who drove me home." (Last month, Louis-Dreyfus said it felt "fantastic" to be back at work after treatment for breast cancer.)(Newser)  Just two days earlier, the men from Miami had arrived in Playa Hermosa de Jaco for a bachelor party celebration. On Saturday, that Costa Rican celebration turned deadly for four of the party attendees during a river rafting expedition after several rafts flipped over on the Naranjo River; a local guide was also killed, the Miami Herald reports. The AP identifies the four US tourists as Ernesto Sierra, Sergio Lorenzo, Andres Dennis, and Jorge Caso, while the river guidewhose supervisor called him one of his most-skilled guides, per NBC Miamihas been named as Kevin Thompson Reid. CNN reports the deceased were between the ages of 25 and 35, per Costa Rican officials. The news was confirmed by the US Department of State, with spokeswoman Heather Nauert tweeting condolences, as well as thanks to Costa Rica "for their support in this tragedy."

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The four tourists had been part of a group of 14 who traveled to Costa Rica "to do something special for our friend before his wedding," per a GoFundMe. Authorities say rain had swelled the Naranjo River on rafting day, and there was a flood alert. A party attendee who set up the GoFundMe to pay for his friends' funeral costs says all three rafts they were in flipped after just a few minutes, tossing all 14 of them and their guides into the river. "All of us struggled to stay above water, swallowing lots of it on the way down as our bodies ricocheted against the rocks in the water while struggling to survive," the page notes. Those who survived were able to grab onto rocks or other objects. Further condolences were offered by Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado, who expressed his "deep dismay" in a Saturday night tweet. (A bachelor party went wrong at a casino.)(Newser)  Saudi Arabia has finally admitted Jamal Khashoggi is dead, but a new development adds to suspicion about the Saudis' "shifting narrative": surveillance tape showing a "body double," one of the 15 suspects in Khashoggi's death, coming out of the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul dressed in Khashoggi's clothes a few hours after the journalist went inside, reports CNN. A senior Turkish official identifies the man as Mustafa al-Madani, who, per CNN's timeline, entered the consulate just after 11am on Oct. 2, dressed in a blue-and-white checked shirt and dark pants, sans beard; Khashoggi entered the consulate shortly after 1pm. Then, about 3pm, Madani left the consulate through a back door, now with a beard and glasses resembling Khashoggi's, and wearing what seem to be Khashoggi's clothes (images here). Madani was still wearing the white-soled dark sneakers he arrived in.

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"Khashoggi's clothes were probably still warm when Madani put them on," a senior Turkish official says. "You don't need a body double for a rendition or an interrogation. This was a premeditated murder." In another, unverified development, a Turkish paper now claims Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman placed a call to Khashoggi at the consulate just before he was killed in an attempt to persuade him to return to Riyadh. Khashoggi reportedly refused, per News.com.au. The same Turkish paper reports a member of the crown prince's entourage placed four calls to the crown prince's secretary from the Saudi consul general's office in Istanbul right after Khashoggi was killed, per CBS News. Meanwhile, the Saudi Foreign Ministry says both the crown prince and King Salman called Khashoggi's oldest son to express condolences, NBC News reports. (Khashoggi's final Washington Post column.)(Newser)  Elon Musk thinks he can transform public transportation with speedy underground hyperloops, and he says the public will get its first real look at what he means in December. In a tweet, Musk said the first tunnel built by his Boring Company will open Dec. 10. This particular tunnel, however, is more of a demonstration tunnel than one designed to solve big traffic problems. The loop starts near SpaceX headquarters in the LA suburb of Hawthorne and runs under city streets for about two miles, reports Fortune. Musk said the company plans an opening celebration on the 10th, then public rides the following day.

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"Based on my understanding, those rides wont be for transportation but to help the public understand the tunnel boring and loop transportation technologies that they are developing," writes Fred Lambert at Electrek. Riders can expect to travel up to 155mph, according to Musk. CNET points out that the CEO often misses deadlines that he sets for his companies, noting that one person asked him if the December date was "real time or Elon time." His response: "I think real." (The city of Chicago will be watching the demonstration closely.)(Newser)  Look behind the judge presiding over the Circuit Court courtroom in Louisa County, Virginia, and you'll see a large portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. That's a problem according to a man set to be tried for murder in that very room. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports Darcel Nathaniel Murphy's lawyers last Monday filed a 12-page motion asking that his trial for the March 2016 shooting death of Kevin Robinson not take place in a room containing "images that could be interpreted as glorifying, memorializing, or otherwise endorsing the efforts of those who fought on behalf of the Confederate cause or its principles." Murphy is black, and Robinson's sister tells the Times-Dispatch that's beside the point. "We're all black," she says of her late brother and her family.

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"Whatever is in the courthouse, its been there; its not hurting anybody. We all recognize Virginia [was] a Confederate state," she continues, while sounding the alarm over the potential for the community to end up "in an uproar over my brother's murder. ... We don't want [that]." But Murphy's lawyers contend they're just trying to ensure "racial considerations do not play a role in the proceedings" as such portraiture could influence jurors and witnesses, and they point out there are smaller Confederate-related portraits present as well. CBS News reports Robinson's body was found under a blanket by a family member. Two additional men were charged with his murder, but only Murphy could face the death penalty if convicted. (Trump recently referenced Lee, and the media pounced on his comments.)(Newser)  United Flight 5277 took off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport at 2:45pm last Tuesday, heading to Chattanooga. More than halfway through the 71-minute flight, the pilot made an announcement: "We're going to turn and go back to O'Hare," one of the passengers recalls him saying to USA Today. Another passenger says the pilot explained that the 76-seat Embraer 175 aircraft was too big to land at Chattanooga, which didn't make sense to her since she'd taken Delta flights to the airport on the same type of plane. The regional flight, a United Express flight operated by SkyWest Airlines, is operated daily, but there had been a last-minute aircraft swap due to a mechanical issue. The Points Guy confirms Chattanooga can indeed handle that size aircraft. The real problem apparently involved ground crew equipment for that particular plane.

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The 50 passengers aboard were back in Chicago at 4:29pm, and ultimately switched to a 50-seat Bombardier CRJ 200the aircraft United typically uses for that flight. They ended up in Chattanooga more than three hours late; at some point after the plane had already turned around, they received a text alert from United saying that due to "unforeseen circumstances" and an "unusual situation," their flight would be delayed. A second text message explained that the Chattanooga airport was "unable to assist with ground operational requirements for your current aircraft type," and a SkyWest spokesperson says the Embraer was "just a different aircraft than typical for ground personnel there." Passengers were refunded and given a $300 voucher for a future flight, and perhaps more importantly, they were also given Cheez-Its upon landing back in Chicago. (The plane incident was far more disturbing.)(Newser)  Hurricane Willa grew into a potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm and swept toward Mexico's Pacific coast with winds of 160mph Monday, threatening a stretch of high-rise resort hotels, surfing beaches, and fishing villages, per the AP. The hurricane was expected to pass over or near the Islas Mariasa set of islands about 60 miles offshore that include a nature preserve and a federal prisonearly Tuesday, then blow ashore in the afternoon or the evening between the resort town of Mazatlan and San Blas, a distance of about 140 miles. Mazatlan, with a metropolitan-area population of about 500,000, is a popular vacation spot. It is closer to the US than most other Pacific resorts and home to a large number of American and Canadian expatriates.

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The governments of Sinaloa and Nayarit states ordered coastal region schools to close and began preparing emergency shelters. The hurricane's projected track also included Esquinapa, a town a few miles inland with almost 60,000 people in and around it. The US National Hurricane Center warned that Willa could bring 6 to 12 inches of rainwith up to 18 inches in some placesto parts of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Sinaloa states, with flash flooding and landslides possible in mountainous areas. (In the US, a reporter helped rescue a dog from floodwaters.)

(Read more hurricane stories.)(Newser)  Days after he shot and killed a Georgia police officer, suspect Tafahree Maynard was himself shot and killed by police after a three-day manhunt. Gwinnett County Police Department Officer Antwan Toney was called to investigate a suspicious vehicle Saturday afternoon near a middle school and was fatally shot while approaching the car. Police say Maynard, 18, is believed to have fired the shot; he was with Isaiah Pretlow, 19, at the time. Pretlow was arrested late Saturday night and charged with aggravated assault. Maynard was found hiding in a wooden shed Monday morning, about one mile from where Toney was shot, after police received a tip. Police say he was armed with a lawnmower blade and that he was shot and killed by police after he refused to obey their commands, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

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Toney, a California native, had just turned 30 days before his death, 11 Alive reports; he was just six days away from his third anniversary with the department when he was killed. "The people that worked with him on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community," Police Chief Butch Ayers said, per WSB-TV. It's not clear why shots were fired. An anonymous 911 caller reported people inside the vehicle were smoking pot; no words were exchanged before Toney, who was accompanied by another officer, was shot. Pretlow allegedly crashed the vehicle and then fled on foot. (The suspected South Carolina cop killer had boasted of his gun skills.)(Newser)  Nathan Carman's story is a weird one, and it just got weirder. The Vermont man was in July 2017 sued by his aunts to keep him from inheriting millions in the wake of the deaths of his maternal grandfather and motherwith his aunts accusing him of murdering that grandfather. Connecticut real estate developer John Chakalos, 87, was found with bullets in his head in 2013, and a lawyer for Carman on Monday aired what the Hartford Courant calls an "alternative theory" to a murder that, as this point, no one has been charged with: that "Mistress Y" was somehow involved. (It's a bit confusing, but the AP explains the court documents were filed in Rhode Island, not in connection with the sisters' suit, but as part of an insurance case involving the boat Carman's mother is assumed to have drowned on while on a mother-son fishing trip with Carman in 2016.)

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As for Mistress Y, Chakalos allegedly spent the weekend with the 25-year-old at a Connecticut casino and gave her $3,500 for breast surgery. But the key detail may be a 19-minute phone call she had with Chakalos on the night he was killed. She told police it was "sexual" in nature; Carman's lawyers says Chakalos interrupted the call to say goodbye to his grandson, who was leaving the home. The lawyer alleges "Mistress Y" knew about the cash Chakalos kept on hand in the home and that she could have masterminded a robbery or unknowingly caused one by telling someone about it. The lawyer is seeking to depose her. A lawyer for the three aunts had this reaction: "Nathans shameful attack on his grandfather today shows there is no depth to which he will not sink." Read more on Carman's mother's suspicious death in 2016 here. (Read more Nathan Carman stories.)(Newser)  Amy Schumer took the long way around to announce she's pregnant with husband Chris Fischer. The comedian and actress broke her baby news Monday on the Instagram stories of friend and journalist Jessica Yellin, the AP reports. Yellin, of the site NewsNotNoise.org, showed at the end of a list of Schumer's recommended congressional and gubernatorial candidates the line: "I'm pregnant-Amy Schumer." Schumer had teased the announcement on her own Instagram page, captioning a photo of hers and Fischer's heads atop Prince Harry's and Meghan Markle's bodies, "About to announce some exciting news on @jessicayellin insta page. Please follow her for up to the minute #newsnotnoise she breaks down whats really going on. She agreed to post a lil noise today for me! Follow her and VOTE!!"

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"We are 15 days out from the midterms and there is a lot going on," Yellin explained before going into Schumer's "lengthy" list of recommendations, per Bustle. "I wanted to share some news from our community. Maybe it's noise, but it's happy noise," Yellin continued. "These are the recommendations of Amy Schumer, one of the most consistent and early supporters of #NewsNotNoise. Now, read all the way to the bottom. You'll see there's some news down there. Congratulations, Amy." Schumer is known for her liberal politics: She was recently arrested protesting the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. The 37-year-old married Fischer, a chef, in February. (Here's why Schumer won't appear in any Super Bowl ads.)His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa chaired a working meeting, at the Gudaibiya Palace yesterday. The meeting was devoted to determining the governments future vision and devising the visions basic frameworks, in light of the workshops outcomes, and the policies and initiatives resulting from them, as well as the Fiscal Balance Programme. HRH Premier asserted that the governments priorities in the coming period are the sustainability of resources, maintaining economic growth, increasing Bahrains competitive potentials and ensuring the citizens access to the best and high-quality government services within a secure and stable atmosphere.

The Prime Minister also gave directives to ensure that the future strategy should be based on the principle of the Priorities of the Government are the Priorities of the Citizen.

HRH the Premier highlighted the advanced positions achieved by the government, and entitled Bahrain to reach leadership status at the Arab and international levels, as proved by international indicators, affirming that the governments major challenge would be to maintain the development achievements, in all their forms, and to build on the solid foundations it had developed in order meet the citizens needs.Bilateral trade relations between Bahrain and China received a shot in the arms yesterday with a high-level Chinese business delegation holding business-to-business (B2B) in the Kingdom. The meeting held at Bait Al Tijjar was spearheaded by the Secretary-General of the China Chamber of International Commerce, Yu Jianlong.

Leading Chinese business owners from sectors including energy and renewable energy, manufacturing, petrochemicals, constructions and infrastructure, real-estate, textile, and medical services took part in the discussions. Jianlong expressed keenness on invigorating investments, trade, and partnerships between members of both business communities particularly in light of the Chinese Belt and Road initiative and the Bahraini Economic Vision 2030 and the prospective business potentials they create.

He also stressed the importance of exchanging business delegations and taking part in trade fairs and exhibitions. Business-to-business meetings between the Chinese business representatives and their Bahraini counterparts held at the event shed the spotlight on various investment and partnership opportunities in the Kingdom.

BCCIs first vice-chairman Khalid Najibi and second vice-chairman Mohammed Al Kooheji highlighted to the Chinese delegates the benefits of investing in the Kingdom and the importance of its strategic location as a gate to the GCC markets. The meeting further underlined the vigorous level of trade between Bahrain and China and the potential to step-up trade and partnerships. Earlier, upon on their arrival in the Kingdom, the delegates were welcomed by Najibi and Al Kooheji.A man prosecuted last year in connection with the death of a Japanese woman in Vancouver was found guilty of murder on Friday, a Canadian court said.

William Schneider, 50, had admitted to stuffing the body of Natsumi Kogawa, then a 30-year-old student at a language school, into a suitcase in 2016 but denied the charges of murdering her, according to local media.

Kogawa, a native of Aomori Prefecture, went missing sometime after she was seen walking with Schneider on a surveillance video in downtown Vancouver on Sept 8, 2016.The head of a school that teaches the art of picking up women and a former student have been arrested on suspicion of rape, the fourth such case to emerge since an investigation began earlier this year, reports the Sankei Shimbun

On the morning of June 17, Taisuke Watanabe, the 42-year-old head of Real Nampa Academy, and Teruhisa Nishikawa, 21, are alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman, aged in her 20s, after forcing her to consume large quantities of alcohol at a residence in Osaka City.

Because the woman was rendered helpless by the alcohol, police accused the suspects of quasi-coerced intercourse. Watanabe, who is also the president of an IT-related company, denies the allegations. Meanwhile, Nishikawa, a fourth-year student at Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences, admits to the charges. aThe two of us forced her to drink,a the suspect was quoted by the Shinjuku Police Station.

Prior to the incident, the suspects called out to the woman on a road and escorted her to the residence to play darts. While playing, she was forced to consume between four and five cups of vodka, police said.

The arrest of Watanabe is his second. Police had previously accused him and another former student of the academy, Masaki Otaki, over the alleged rape of a second woman at a hotel in the Kabukicho red-light district of Tokyo in November of last year.

In an interview conducted with Watanabe prior to his arrest in September, TV Asahi quoted him as saying: aAlcohol is a helpful tool.a However, he denied making such a statement during the investigation by police.

In footage taken around the time of his arrest in September, Watanabe is shown raising the middle finger of his right hand toward a camera for TV Asahi as he attempts to cover his face with a bag.Dr Alex Bond, a Senior Curator of Birds at the Museum and co-author of the new study, says 'It is absolutely shocking.

'We've observed mice attacking Tristan albatross chicks, where the rodents will eat through the body wall near the rump of the bird while they are still alive. It can take up to four days for the chicks to die.'

No natural predators

Located some 2,800 kilometres from South Africa to the east and 3,200 kilometres from South America to the west, Gough Island is one of the most remote islands in the world.

This splendid isolation is an ideal nesting ground for a whole host of seabirds free from predators. It is currently home to some 22 species of seabirds and two species of landbirds that breed right across the rugged terrain.

These include rare species such as and the endangered Atlantic petrel and the critically endangered Tristan albatross. And there are also many endemic species on the island such as the Gough finch and the MacGillivray's prion, which means that they are found nowhere else in the world.

The mice, however, are not native to Gough Island. Introduced at some point in the mid-nineteenth century by passing boats, they have rapidly spread over the entire site as their population boomed.The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar has described the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaj...





The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar has described the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed as the High Priest of the All Progressives Congress cult of fake news. 





Abubakar said this in reaction to allegation by Mohammed that the international media organisations had questioned his emergence as the presidential candidate of the PDP.





A statement by Atikus Presidential Campaign Organisation insisted that Mohammed was an unreliable liar.





The statement said: The attention of the Atiku Presidential Campaign Organisation has been drawn to a sponsored news story on Vanguard newspapers of Saturday October 20, 2018, with the headline: 2019: International media query emergence of Atiku over suspicious source of wealth.





In the said report, not one international media was quoted. Rather, it was the notoriously dishonest All Progressives Congress minister of information, Lai Mohammed, who was quoted alleging that that was what the international media told him.





How anyone would take the word of a confirmed liar, as Lai Mohammed, for the Gospel truth is beyond us.





To show you how unreliable Lai Mohammed is, at the lecture in the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) with the topic, Nigerias National Unity: Towards Participation and Shared Values, which was his main reason for going to London, Lai Mohammed said: We do not need to do anything extra because we have delivered on all our promises and Nigerians are quite happy and satisfied with the government.









How the minister of information of a government that has turned Nigeria into the world headquarters for extreme poverty can say that is beyond imagination. Is Mr. Mohammed claiming that his party promised and delivered poverty and Nigerians are satisfied with this world record poverty?

If Lai Mohammed can lie openly at Chatham House in front of the international press and diplomatic corps, is it a big thing for him to lie about his accounts with the international media?





The true position of things is that ever since the emergence of His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party after the elective congress of the party on October 6-7, the international media has been agog with praise for Mr. Abubakar and hope for a new dawn in Nigeria.





Reuters praised Atiku as having long enjoyed support from the business elite in Nigerias commercial capital Lagos for his conservative-capitalist ideals. They went on to further give him kudos for his record in office by saying as vice president in a PDP administration from 1999-2007, (he) implemented a programme of liberalisation in areas including the telecoms sector.





The number one policy magazine in the world, The Economist, described His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, as a business-friendly candidate who will get Nigerias economy going.





Not one single international paper, magazine, TV station or website has had anything negative to say about the Waziri Adamawas emergence. That lie only exists in the fallacious imagination of Lai Mohammed.





On the contrary, international media and even reputable global financial institutions have predicted doom for Nigeria should Muhammadu Buhari be re-elected.





According to one of the worlds largest banks, HSBC, a second term for Mr Buhari however raises the risk of limited economic progress and further fiscal deterioration, prolonging the stagnation of his first term, particularly if there is no move towards completing reform of the exchange rate system or fiscal adjustments that diversify government revenues away from oil.





On its own part, The Economist wrote off the Buhari administration as a failure, saying: The 2019 elections will be a close contest between the ruling APC and the PDP. We expect the PDP presidential candidate to win.





Nigerians can no longer be hoodwinked by the Orwellian propaganda that is the signature of this administration.



Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State has appointed former General Manager of the State Waste Management Authority, LAWMA, Ola Oresanya, to assist the state design mode of operation for the Private Sector Partnership, PSP operators.The appointment of Oresanya as consultant came barely three days after the State House of Assembly terminated the contract of Visionscape Sanitation Solution and ordered PSP operators to resume operation across the state.Boulos partners Suzuki Japan on Clean up the world campaignIt will be recalled that Ambode terminated Oresanyas appointment three year ago, saying LAWMA needed fresh hands to pilot its affairs.A top official of the waste management agency disclosed yesterday that his appointment as consultant was based on the directive of Lagos State House of Assembly to the executive after terminating Visionscape contract.According to him, the appointment of Oresanya was also to assist the Government in directing activities of the PSP operators to quickly cart-away heap of refuse that had continuously dot Lagos landscape.He noted that the reason for the choice of Oresanya was because the successes enjoyed in waste collection in Lagos till 2015 was due to his efforts.Anambra APGA House of Assembly primaries: NANS stakeholders protest name substitutionThe source stressed that he understands the sector better and was involved in birth of PSP operation in the state.As part of his first assignment, another source hinted that he would meet with PSP operator next Tuesday (tomorrow) at the headquarters.He stated that the aim of the meeting was unknown but said could be centred on how best to get support of the PSP operators in order to remove the refuse and get waste collection sector back to formal state.The Arewa Youth Integrity Forum (AYIF) has frowned at the alliance between the Peoples Democratic Partys presidential candidate, Atik...





The Arewa Youth Integrity Forum (AYIF) has frowned at the alliance between the Peoples Democratic Partys presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar and former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode with leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu.





The youth group vowed to stop Atiku because his romance with Fani-Kayode and the pro-Biafra group leader would destabilize Nigeria.





Recall that Kanu, who went missing since September following the invasion of his house by troops of the Operation Python Dance, was spotted in Jerusalem, Israel praying at the Wailing Wall last week.

Few minutes after his reappearance, Fani-Kayode, a chieftain of the PDP took to his Twitter handle to announce that he spoke with Kanu and he had agreed to work with the PDP to oust President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.

Reacting to the development, Adamu Adamu, the National President of AYIF, said Atiku would lose the support of northern youths if he failed to distance himself from the union.





Adamu wondered why Atiku, who is eyeing the nations number one seat could get the support of an outlawed organisation like IPOB or its leader who has been declared wanted by the Nigerian security operatives.





According to him, AYIF has followed with concerns the reappearance of the wanted leader of the terrorist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu and the invitation to anarchy by one of those standing trial for corruption, Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK), who disclosed that Kanu has agreed to work for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the forthcoming elections.





We find it odd that Fani-Kayode, who had alleged a military abduction and assassination of Nnamdi Kanu did not deem it proper to apologise to Nigerians for his lies but simply pretended as if he never made such outlandish claims and switched to talking political alliance.





His lies about the Hausa/Fulani imperialists killing Kanu had placed the lives of persons of these ethnicities at risk while also pushing the entire country to the edge of a meltdown. His lack of remorse shows that it is something he will attempt again in no distant time.





AYIF further reminds Nigerians that prior to jumping bail, Kanu, with his followers, had consistently referred to Nigeria as a zoo and the citizens as animals that do not deserve to live. His inflammatory provocations got to a point where Nigerians were angered to a point of issuing quit notices against each other along ethnic lines even as Kanus IPOB continued to call for the disintegration of the country.





It, therefore, borders on insanity for the same Kanu to reappear today and be declaring to be part of the nations political process without first renouncing his separatist stance and demand for violence against Hausa/Fulani.





The hatred of the two men against Hausa/Fulani remains evident from the comments of their followers on online platforms and there is no proof they have tried to call their radicalized followers to order.





The alliance they are talking about is nothing but trying to create a publicly acceptable platform for their hate mongering. They have nothing good to offer Nigerians.





Ordinarily, the alliance between the duo do not bother us in the least since the leading candidates in the race for presidency are from the north; but we find it repulsive that men who have not properly proven themselves as being free of mental illness are jostling to take leading role in how Nigerians decide.





One of them is standing trial for treason and the other is on trial for capital corruption so they have the incentives to deliberately cause provocations that will destroy the country and ensure that Nigeria no longer exists as a country to conclude their trial.





We, therefore, warn the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar that he risks losing the support of Arewa if he associates his campaign with Femi Fani-Kayode and Nnamdi Kanu, who have both repeatedly declared their disdain and hatred for Nigerians from the northern parts of the country.





We find it abominable that Fani-Kayode, who sees Arewa as a plague and Kanu that sees us as animals can today be attempting to hitch a ride on Atiku Abubakars PDP ticket when they still hold steadfastly to their genocidal views against Hausa/Fulani. If they successfully hitch the ride they seek then we will rather mobilize for the person the PDP is seeking to unseat.





Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the PDP must immediately formally distance themselves from FFK and Kanu failing which AYIF will be compelled to mobilize other Arewa youth groups to express their displeasure with the PDP. The dissociation from this duo include restricting them from making any statement whatsoever on behalf of Alhaji Abubakar or the PDP presidential campaign. We do not envisage that the party has anything to lose because four years ago when Fani-Kayode was serving as PDP Chief media strategist his only strategy was to alleged that the then candidate Muhammadu Buhari will die but not only did he win the election but has remained alive.



The Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have accused the All Progressives Congress and the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, of spreading fake news.The PDP, therefore, asked the minister and the ruling APC to seek forgiveness from Nigerians for allegedly spreading fake news in the country.Specifically, the PDP in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja on Sunday, said that the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, should lead the government and his APC to do the needful, instead of the lame attempts at whitewashing the government and his party, even when Nigerians know that they are behind the escalation of fake news in Nigeria.He added, Nigerians are aware that the phenomenon of fake news exploded to the current frightening proportion in Nigeria due to the desperation of the APC, whose spokespersons deliberately promoted outright lies, hate speech, insults and threats of violence as tools to gain political power, during the run-up to the 2015 general elections.Ologbondiyan added that the APC and its officials literarily fouled the media space by deliberately entrenching falsehood, fabrications, uncouth language and abuses as acceptable modes of engagement, particularly in the social media.He said, The APC and the Buhari Federal Government misled and have been misleading the media and the public by stating outright lies, half-truths and fabrications in their statements and claims about governance, individuals and the opposition.Nigerians are witnesses to several false performance claims by the APC-led Federal Government including phoney political cum economic recovery and infrastructure development claims, which they project to be factual, even when the reality points to the contrary.Recently, the APC purveyed fake news in its declaration of President Buhari as the winner of APC presidential primary with fictitious 14.8 million votes, even when there was no contest and no ballot cast.The deliberate deployment of fake news by the APC in its attempt to smear the PDP and its members, ended up demarketing our country in the international arena and eroded the confidence the world had on our markets and business concerns, resulting in the current dearth of investments, collapse of businesses, job losses and drop in national productivity.He said that the APC should be remorseful and realise that its alleges use of fake news has devastated our economic, political and social development by triggering fear, public panic and uncertainty; disrupting production, distribution and marketing chains and weakening foreign and local investors confidence in our system.Atiku, on his part, alleged that Mohammed lied in his report that International media query his emergence as a presidential candidate over his suspicious source of wealth.He said that in the said report, not one international media was quoted by the minister.Rather, he said it was the minister who was quoted alleging that that was what the international media told him.The minister, while speaking in London, had claimed that some journalists had quarried the emergence of Atiku whose source of stupendous wealth could not be explained.But Atiku, in a statement from his media office in Abuja on Sunday, said there was no single reporter or media house quoted by the minister, adding that the claim by Mohammed was bogus.The Presidency on Sunday mocked the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar over his ambition to r...





The Presidency on Sunday mocked the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar over his ambition to rule Nigeria in 2019.





Buharis Personal Assistant on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie in a post on her Twitter page, said Atiku was not capable of ruling a Local Government Area, let alone Nigeria.





Onochie stated this while responding to a tweet by Atiku, advising his supporters on what to do to those against him ahead of forthcoming 2019 election.





The Waziri of Adamawa tweeted: For everyone who supports me, I ask you to conduct yourself respectfully, even with people who do not agree with you.





There will be insults, falsehoods, threats and innuendo. Ignore them and stay focused on the task of rebuilding Nigeria, he tweeted.





In response, Onochie wrote: Your symbolising corruption, greed and deception is legendary. You can only dream of returning our dear nation to the PDP elite who drained our treasury and left the poorest of us, worse off.





It would not happen. You are too unpatriotic to run a Local Govt Area, let alone, our nation.Gbenga Daniel, director-general of the campaign of Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2019 presid...





Gbenga Daniel, director-general of the campaign of Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2019 presidential poll, says the position of secretary to the government of the federation (SGF) will go to the south-west if Abubakar wins.





Daniel said this during an interactive session with reporters in Lagos on Sunday.





He said decisions on major offices were being given serious consideration, adding that no region will be marginalised.





We need to understand that the candidate has control over who becomes his running mate during the election and who becomes the SGF if he wins, he said.





The decisions on major offices are being given serious consideration and no zone or region will be marginalised.





The offices of senate president and speaker of the house of representative will be decided after the polls and based on what plays out in both houses.





Aside from major slots, I think what is paramount to the people of the south-west is restructuring of the country, which Atiku is very serious about.





So the issue for the south-west is not personality or slot issue per say because personalities come and go but restructuring Nigeria is significant and more symbolic than zoned offices.



Sani Mustapha Mohammed, the senator representing Niger south, has resigned from the All Progressives Congress (APC) in protest. Mo...

Sani Mustapha Mohammed, the senator representing Niger south, has resigned from the All Progressives Congress (APC) in protest.





Mohammed is said to be angered by the decision of the ruling party to drop his name from the list of candidates cleared for the 2019 general election.





Shehu Sani, the senator representing Kaduna central, also resigned from the party in protest on Saturday over the removal of his name from the final list.





Confirming his decision to leave the party, Mohammed said that he was leaving APC because of injustice.

He did not reveal the party he would be moving to, despite speculations that he would join the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).





All the three Niger senators  namely Mohammed, David Umar and senate spokesman, Aliyu Abdullahi  had been cleared in the list dated October 4, 2018 and signed by Adams Oshiomhole, the partys national chairman.





However, Mohammed was replaced with Muhammad Bima Enagi while the two others were cleared.





The primary elections ended in controversy.



President Muhammadu Buhari and his Republic of Benin counterpart, Patrice Talon, are scheduled to perform the official hand-over of th...





President Muhammadu Buhari and his Republic of Benin counterpart, Patrice Talon, are scheduled to perform the official hand-over of the new Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Border Posts at Seme-Krake and Neope-Akanu in Badagry on Tuesday.





In a statement yesterday, the Lagos State Government said all necessary arrangements to ensure a hitch-free unveiling ceremony had been concluded.





Buhari would be accompanied to the venue by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.





Already, all necessary security and logistic arrangements have been firmed up by the state government, in partnership with relevant federal government agencies.



The Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees in Ekiti State has suspended its five-week-old strike.The suspension of the strike followed part payments of their accumulated leave bonus by the state government.The union had on September 14 embarked upon on an indefinite strike for alleged negligence of workers welfare and unpaid salary arrears among others by he immediate past administration of Governor Ayodele FayoseThe workers were aggrieved that despite their goodwill to the administration, the state government failed to honour an agreement signed recently at the Joint Account Allocation Committee of September 4.But in a communique issued after an emergency State Executive Councils meeting in Ado-Ekiti, on Sunday, the NULGE expressed satisfaction with the response of the new Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi.The communique signed by states President, Mr. Bunmi Ajimoko, and Secretary, Mr. Aleru Suleiman, read, NULGE, Ekiti State, held an emergency meeting today, Sunday, 21st October, 2018, and resolved that since the money approved as part payment of 2016 leave bonus has dropped in various local government accounts and some staff members have started receiving alerts of the payment, the Union wishes to suspend over One-month-old strike action today.All members of the Union are hereby directed to resume full activities at their various local government councils and boards and commissions from this day.NULGE uses this medium to thank all her members for their patience, perseverance and solidarity during the course of our struggle.Finally, the Union wishes to appreciate the government of Dr. John Kayode Fayemi for his prompt intervention.The South-East Renewal Group (SERG) has reacted to the position of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IP...





The South-East Renewal Group (SERG) has reacted to the position of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) on the 2019 general elections.





The group said Kanus declaration that there will be no election in South eastern part of Nigeria, which he claimed to be Biafra territory, was a joke that shouldnt be taken seriously.





Kanu, on Sunday finally opened up, since he resurfaced in Jerusalem, Israel.





In a broadcast on Sunday evening, Kanu vowed not to return to the Federal High Court in Abuja, where he was standing trial before he left the country, describing Nigeria as a zoo.





In a broadcast via Radio Biafra, Kanu boasted, IPOB will liberate Biafra and we will not take part in any election until we get a referendum and this is not negotiable, we will achieve this by every necessary means, we thank Israel for all the contributions they made to IPOB.





Reacting to the controversial broadcast, Charles Mbani, National President of SERG in a statement on Monday, said it was most unfortunate that Kanu was back to cause trouble for people of South-East of Nigeria, who have spent the last one year re-building confidence with their neighbours in their bid to repair the damages caused by him and his IPOB members.





SERG declared that Nnamdi Kanu, and the faction of IPOB that he leads, do not speak for the Igbo as a people.





He said, His utterances are at variance with the belief of the people of the South-East Nigeria, who are cultured, have maximum regards for Nigerians of other ethnic stocks, believe in the unity of Nigeria while they continue to clamour for restructuring that will promote equity, respect constituted authority and institutions and will never descend low to the point of disparaging other human beings.





The annals have recorded it that Nnamdi Kanu is a coward, who incited promising Igbo youths to throw away their lives literarily and figuratively. He threw the entire South-East into confusion and pocketed the money raised from suffering Igbo masses only for him to escape when the people had erroneously thought he had something in stock for them.





It is the height of insult to the Igbo sensibility for him to think that putting up this charade from the Holy Land will fool Ndi Igbo another round. If he is broke and wants to use this latest performance to finance his drug addled life he should have a rethink and look for honest work to pay his own bills.





We strongly believe that his desperation for money has made him team up with those that are out to frustrate the Igbo agenda and interest. We say this because it is curious that Kanu had hidden for so long as a common criminal only for him to turn up at a time when the political fortunes of the South East are improving with the nomination of one of our own, Mr. Peter Obi as a Vice Presidential candidate in next years election.





SERG hereby categorically place Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB and any miscreant that buys into the poisonous ideology they promote that not only will election hold in the South-East but that people will also come out to exercise their voting rights without being molested.





Igbo will mobilize to ensure this chance is not lost, certainly not in this lifetime. On the other hand, at the end of the General Elections, which would hold everywhere in a united Nigeria, Kanu would have proven beyond doubt that he is a liar and an utter symbol of falsehood that is at best treated as a pariah.





SERG further stressed that Igbo youths should be warned by this development, adding that nothing to be gained from supporting terrorist and separatist ideologies as the only region to have allowed that in the country is today full of regrets.



The immediate past governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, was on Monday remanded in Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, custody, after his arraignment before a Lagos Federal High Court over an 11-count charge of conspiracy and money laundering.The former governor arrived at the court premises at about 8.30am, accompanied by EFCC officials and armed police officers.Also Femi Fani-Kayode, a former aviation minister and member of the Peoples Democratic Party, was also in court to show solidarity with Fayose.Im here to let people know that hes not alone, I know what hes going through because Ive been there before, Mr Fani-Kayode told journalists after the court sittin he said.Fani-Kayode said the Federal Government has subjected every member of the PDP to one form of persecution or another.The EFCC Counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo urged the court to take the plea of the defendant.The Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions Prosecutor Rotimi Oyedepo said that Fayose received 1.2 billion to fund his 2014 gubernatorial campaign in Ekiti State, a sum he ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act.EFCC said FAYOSE on or about 17th June, 2014 in Lagos, without going through the financial institution received cash payment in the sum of $5, 000, 000 (Five Million Dollars) from SENATOR MUSILIU OBANIKORO, the then Minister of State for Defence, which sum exceeded the amount authorised by law and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Sections 1 and 16 (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 16 (2) (b) of the same Act.They also said that on April, 7, 2015 in Lagos, did retain in his fixed deposit account No: 9013074033 with Zenith Bank Plc, the sum of N300, 000, 000.00 (Three Hundred Million Naira) which sum he ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.FAYOSE and his company SPOTLESS LIMITED was also said to have between June, 17, and August, 4, 2014 in Lagos, took control of an aggregate sum of N317, 000, 000.00 (Three Hundred and Seventeen Million Naira) by depositing same into the Zenith Bank Plcs Account No: 1010170969 belonging to SPOTLESS INVESTMENT LIMITED, a company controlled by him and members of his family which sum he reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.EFCC alleged that Fayose between June 26, 2014 and August 27, 2014 in Lagos, took control of an aggregate sum of N305, 760, 000.00 (Three Hundred and Five Million, Seven Hundred and Sixty Thousand Naira) in his Zenith Bank Account No: 1003126654 which sum he reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.The commission further stated that Fayose, between June, 18, 2014 and June 23, 2014, procured DE-PRIVATEER LIMITED and one ABIODUN AGBELE to retain in their Account No: 1013835889 domiciled with Zenith Bank Plc, Apapa branch, Lagos, an aggregate sum of N719, 490, 000.00 (Seven Hundred and Nineteen Million, Four Hundred and Ninety Thousand Naira) on his behalf, which sum formed parts of proceed of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18 (c) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.According to the commission, Fayose and SPOTLESS LIMITED on or about August, 4, 2014, did use the sum of N270, 000, 000.00 (Two Hundred and Seventy Million Naira) to acquire a property at Plot 1504, Yedsema Street, Maitama, Abuja from one RABI KUNDILI, which sum he reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.That you Mr Ayodele Fayose between November, 12, 2014 and August 20, 2015, did use an aggregate sum of N1, 151, 711, 573 (One Billion, One Hundred and Fifty One Million, Seven Hundred and Eleven Thousand, Five hundred and Seventy Three Naira) to acquire chalets 3 and 4, 6 and 9 of the property situate at Plot 100 Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island, Lagos in the name of JJ TECHNICAL SERVICE, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.The anti-graft commission further stated that the defendant had between April 23, 2015 and April 30, 2015, did use an aggregate sum of N200, 000, 000.00 (Two Hundred Million Naira) to acquire a property known as No. 44, Osun Crescent, Maitama, Abuja in the name of MOJI OLADEJI (your elder sister), which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.EFCC alleged that between April 23, 2015 and April 30, 2015, Fayose used an aggregate sum of N270, 000, 000.00 (Two Hundred and Seventy Million Naira) to acquire a property known as Plot 1504 Yedseram Street, Maitama, Abuja in the name of SPOTLESS INVESTMENT LIMITED, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.That you Mr Ayodele Fayose, on or about January 30, 2015, did procure STILL EARTH LIMITED to retain in its account with First City Monument Bank (FCMB), the sum of N132, 500, 000.00 (One Hundred and Thirty Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand Naira) for your benefit, which sum formed part of the proceeds of your unlawful activity, to wit: gratification which you received from SAMCHASE NIGERIA LIMITED and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18 (c) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.However the former governor pleaded not guilty to all the count charges.Subsequently, Oyedepo urged the court to remand the defendant in prison custody pending the determination of his bail application.But Fayose Counsel, Chief Kalu Agabi, SAN, urged the court to remand him in EFCC custody stating that the bail application has been filed.Justice Mojisola Olatoregun, however ordered that he should be remanded in the custody of the EFCC and adjourned till October 24 for hearing of his bail application.Ibrahim Magu, acting-chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has asked Nigerians to be vigilant in 2019. ...





Ibrahim Magu, acting-chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has asked Nigerians to be vigilant in 2019.





Speaking in Gombe state on Monday, the anti-graft czar said vigilance is important whether Nigerians vote for the current administration or change leadership.





He also appealed to every Nigerian to take ownership of the fight against corruption.





As we move closer to the general elections where Nigerians will vote for the present government or a new leadership to take control of governance, it is time that we all must be vigilant, he said.





We all must be careful as citizens to ensure that only people with proven records of integrity are elected into offices.





This is the right time to act to stem the tide of corruption as we approach the 2019 general election.





He, however, added that the anti-graft agency has recorded 172 convictions from January to date.





As I speak, EFCC has recorded over 172 convictions since the beginning of the year and we expect the figure to improve significantly before the end of 2018, Magu said.



Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has finally broken his silence, since he resurfaced in Jerusalem, I...





Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has finally broken his silence, since he resurfaced in Jerusalem, Israel.





In a broadcast on Sunday evening, Kanu vowed not to return to the Federal High Court in Abuja, where he was standing trial before he left the country.





The FG had charged him with treason but Binta Nyako, a judge of the Federal High court in Abuja, had granted him bail after 18 months in detention.





Kanu had flouted all the terms of the bail, before the military invaded his Abia residence on September 14, 2017.





In a broadcast via Radio Biafra, Kanu boasted: I promised the Zoo that I will be coming to Biafra and I came. I do not recognise the court of the Zoo. I want the people of the Middle Belt to rise and join IPOB.





IPOB Military intelligent evacuated me from my compound, when the Army of the Zoo attacked me. I am in Israel and the efficiency of MOSAD will be replicated in Biafra. We shall hunt everyone down to avenge the death of IPOB members.





The Governor of Abia State directed the assault on my father, who is a Monarch. I thank Donald Trump and the government of Israel, who stood by IPOB in our time of need. I thank Prof Ben Nwabueze who stood by me.





I want to send my solidarity to Ayo Fayose and assure him that Biafra will stand by him in this hour of need. We will have a special place for him in Biafra.





I thank all my sureties that stood by me. My unavailability was forced on me.





The Army of the Zoo killed my dog, Jack and few other people in my compound. I am sorry for what my sureties are passing through, but I want to assure them that they will have a special place in Biafra.





I shall not be honouring the Court. The notion that I jumped bail is a fallacy in Law. I did not jump bail. On the 14th of September, 2017, the terrorists of the Zoo came to kill me. They know if I go to court Nigeria will burn and I was forced to leave. I did not jump bail.





The Zoo called Nigeria cannot jail me. I will fight till the last day. Binta Nyanko court failed to ask the Nigerian Army why they invaded my home. Nigerian court is a Kangaroo court. I did not jump bail. I left because the court failed to protect me.





I am not a Nigerian. I already renounced Nigeria in 2015. I am a Biafran with British nationality. I cannot be tried by a court I do not recognise. I do not recognise Nigeria. I can only come to the court with UN supervision.





IPOB will liberate Biafra and we will not take part in any election, until we get a referendum and this is not negotiable. We will achieve this by every necessary means. We thank Isreal for all the contributions they made to IPOB.





I owe my survival to the State of Israel.





I decree that there is no longer South East or South South Nigeria. It shall be known as Biafra. Without referendum, nothing will happen in Nigeria. IPOB will not participate in any election and that position will never change.





IPOB is the largest mass movement in the whole world. We will not stop until Biafra is fully restored.





Chukwu Okike Abiama has assured me that Biafra shall come. All collaborators will feel the full weight of the anger of the Biafran people.



The police, Monday, fired teargas canisters at workers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) who are currently protesting against the resumption of office by the embattled Executive secretary, Professor Yusuf Usman.Workers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) protesting at the gate of the schemes headquarters as police stop themYusuf was, last week, suspended by the schemes governing board for allegedly inflating the schemes 2018 budget.In a press briefing last week, the board said it suspended Yusuf for fraudulently inflating the cost of biometric capturing machines attempting to illegally execute N30 billion in federal government bonds.superfluous arrogation of project vehicles among others.It had also accused Yusuf of embarking on travels in defiance to council directive.However, Yusuf had, last week, rejected his suspension by the board and had said that he would resume his normal duties today.But the workers, who come out earlier today, had blocked the entrance of the office in Abuja to prevent Yusuf from gaining access into the premises.However, Yusuf was able to gain entrance into the NHIS headquarters with the aid of some men of the police force who shot teargas canisters to disperse the protesting workers.Soon afterwards, heavy security personnel took over the premises, with some seen at the gate.Moreover, while the drama went on, some staff members loyal to the executive secretary succeeded in breaking the keys to the gate, thereby gaining access.As at the time of filing this report, the protest was still on.Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (ACC), has picked Rabiu Rufai as his running mate. Malcom ...





Rufai as his running mate. Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (ACC), has picked RabiuRufai as his running mate.





Malcom Fabiyi, director-general of the Sowore Campaign, announced this in a statement on Monday..





Rufai, a medical doctor and academic who hails from Jigawa state, was pioneer dean of the school of public health at the Federal University, Dutse from 2014 to 2015, the same period he also served as an honorary consultant physician at the federal medical centre in Birnin Kudu.





In his remarks, Sowore said he could not think of any one more qualified than Rufai as his running mate. The presidential candidate said Rufai would help reform the countrys health sector.





Health is Wealth  and in our government, Dr Rufai will be responsible for ensuring that Nigerians have access to affordable and world class healthcare and translating that to economic growth, he said.





He added that the health sector, which is part of their agenda, is a critical one which Rufai is most suitable to spearhead.





In our bid to work on Nigerias multifaceted challenges and proffer solutions that will create a true giant out of our nation, we have always believed that health care, population health and health economics, ranks alongside national security and power, as critical areas that a serious government must address. I can think of no one more qualified than Dr Rufai to spear head that aspect of our agenda.





Rufai studied at the Bayero University, Kano, and Leeds University, UK. His areas of expertise include maternal and child health services, and medical statistics.



The Supreme Court, on Monday, set-aside an interim order of the Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt, which gave the All Progressives Congress, APC, the nod to conduct its Ward, Local Government and State Congresses in Rivers State.The apex court, in a judgment that was delivered by Justice Centus Nweze, faulted the appellate court for issuing an order for the stay of execution of a Rivers State High Court order that barred the APC from going ahead with its planned congress, pending the determination of a suit before it.It noted that the high court had on the basis of a suit that was lodged by one Abdulahi Umar and 22 others, issued injunctive reliefs that expressesly forbade the APC from conducting congress in the state.According to the Supreme Court, Justice Chiwendu Nwogu of the high court gave the interim order of injunction on May 11, on a day that some hoodlums loyal to a faction of the APC, besieged the high court premises in Port Harcourt.It observed that despite the attack and the restraining order from the high court, which was further reaffirmed on May 13, the APC which was a Respondent in the matter, went ahead and conducted its Ward, Local Government and State congresses on May 19, 20 and 21.The apex court said it was baffled that the APC, in the most impundent manner, ran to the Court of Appeal to apply for stay of proceeding and execution of the high court order with respect to the suit marked PHC/78/2018.It observed that while the appellate court declined to stay proceedings of the high court, it however stayed the execution of the May 11 order by Justice Nwogu.Dissatisfied with the decision, Umar and 22 other litigants who dragged APC to court over their alleged exclusion from the primaries, took the case to the Supreme Court.They argued through their lawyer, Mr. Henry Bello, that the Court of Appeal engaged in judicial rascality by refusing to abide by Supreme Court decisions on the issue of stay of execution of valid court orders.The appellants told the apex court that the Port Harcourt Division of the Court of Appeal violated the principle of staris-decisis (judicial precedents) and accorded favourable ruling to the APC, even when it was in grave disobedience to two orders of the lower court.They prayed the apex court to set aside the order the Court of Appeal in respect of the case marked CA/PH/198/2018.Meantime, while acceding to the Appellants prayer, the Supreme Court, held that the appellate court should not to have vacated the injunctive order the Rivers state high court issued against the APC on the conduct of its congresses.Justice Nweze held that the action of the appellate court amounted to sacrilegious exercise of judicial discretion, saying it committed gross insurbodination, by refusing to abide by precedents already set by the Supreme Court.He said the appellate court was wrong when it judicially indulged the APC, even in the face of abundant evidence that the Party was in contempt of subsisting court orders.It is a very serious matter for any one to flout a positive order of a court and still approach the court for remedy.It is unfortunate and wrongful for the Court of Appeal to have entertained a party in contempt of a valid court order to the extent of granting judicial favour by way of staying of execution of an injunctive order when the party at the center of the dispute was in gross contempt of court, Justice Nweze held.Stressing that the Respondent acted in the most impundent manner, the Supreme Court held: The simple truth therefore is that when the Respondent applied for stay of execution, it was in gross abuse of a court order.The court guides its power jealously. Regrettably, the lower court condoled the Respondents conduct.The Supreme Court therefore granted an order setting aside the stay of execution order that the Court of Appeal granted to the APC on June 21.This appeal is allowed and the ruling of June 21 is hereby set-aside. That shall be the judgment of this court, Justice Nweze held.While concurring with the lead verdict, another member of the apex court panel, Justice Inyang Okoro, held that APCs disobedience to the high courts order made it ineligible for favourable judicial discretion from the appellate court.It will be recalled that the Rivers State High Court had in a ruling on May 30, nullified the Ward, Local Government and State congresses of the APC held on May 19, 20 and 21 respectively.Justice Chiwendu Nwogu maintained that the process that led to the emergence of Ojukaye Flag-Amachree as Rivers Chairman of APC, was fraudulent.He ordered the party to return to the status quo of May 11, pending the determination of the substantive suit.Subsequently, the court, on October 10, voided the nomination of Mr Tonye Cole as the gubernatorial flag-bearer of the APC in Rivers State.Justice Nwogu declared that Ward congresses of APC in Rivers State were illegal, sayin they were not conducted in line with the Partys guidelines and constitution.The police say they are not aware that some officers accompanied Usman Yusuf, executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Sch...





The police say they are not aware that some officers accompanied Usman Yusuf, executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), to office on Monday.





Yusuf was suspended by the NHIS governing board last week, but he had argued that his suspension was illegal and that he would resume office nonetheless.





He had said only President Muhammadu Buhari the power to suspend him.





On Monday, policemen numbering over 30 arrived at the NHIS office in the Utako area of Abuja, amid a lockdown by workers who attempted to prevent Yusuf from entering the premises.





After firing teargas at the protesting workers, the policemen aided Yusufs entry into his office.





When contacted, Jimoh Moshood, force spokesman, said he is not under obligation to speak on the issue.





He, however, failed to confirm if the force headquarters was aware of the development or not.





On his part Anjuguri Manzah, spokesman of the FCT police command, said he was not aware of the development





Please call me back later, he added over the phone.





WORKERS URGE BUHARI TO ACT





Meanwhile, the NHIS workers have condemned the executive secretarys conduct as well as that of the police.





They accused the police of breaking the law and called on President Muhammadu Buhari to act on the situation.





Razaq Omomeji, chairman of the workers union, said Yusuf must respond to the allegations of corruption levelled against him.





The council suspended him (Yusuf) and appointed someone to act in his capacity. But you see the police, they intervened; came here and was cocking gun and going against the law, he said over the phone.





So, obviously he is now more powerful than the council that suspended him.





He said the council cannot investigate him, that it is only the president. Must the president speak first before he is investigated? So, the president should act.



A coalition of the All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential candidates have insisted that the National Chairman of the All Progres...





A coalition of the All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential candidates have insisted that the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole must be removed now.





The coalition, in a statement described that former Edo State Governor as cancerous, accusing him of causing much of the crisis brewing in the party.





The presidential aspirants were reacting to Oshiomholes latest statement where he alleged a gang up against him by some influential persons in the party, singling out Alhaji Mumakai Unagha.





In the statement signed by Dr. SKC Ogbonnia and Alhaji (Barr.) Mumakai Unagham the coalition called on President Muhammadu Buhari to call an emergency meeting where vote of no confidence will be passed on Oshiomhole.





The statement continues, A fortnight ago, the Coalition of 2019 APC Presidential Aspirants called for the removal of the National Chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, for his role in the current crisis brewing in the party. Since then, a stream of party faithful from around the country have joined to register their support for the immediate ouster of the former union activist.





Unfortunately, however, instead of seeking peace and assuaging hurt feelings from the primaries, which left the party in deeper crisis, Oshiomhole has resorted to intimation, blackmail, and slander. If he is not using the name of President Muhammadu Buhari to blackmail governors serving under the platform of the party, Oshiomhole is busy throwing tantrums to aggrieved aspirants and other party stakeholders.









We also note with dismay that the chairman would stoop so low by using his latest outburst to denigrate the person of Alhaji Mumakai Unagha for the simple reason that the erstwhile presidential aspirant offered a dissenting opinion in a newspaper interview.





By all indications, Oshiomhole has become a visible cancerous tumor to our great party, and the earlier we cut the cancer off; the better for the party and Nigeria in general. The former union activist is attacking all cells and veins of the party.





By his press statement yesterday, October 21, 2018, he admitted a gang-up against him from across the country, whatever that means. But Oshiomhole ought to understand that a broad-based gang-up among party faithful and the stakeholders against the party chairman signifies a vote of no confidence.





We, the coalition of aspirants under the All Progressive Congress (APC), wish to state here that a majority of the party no longer believes in Oshiomholes leadership as the National Chairman of the party. Therefore, he has no option than to resign honourably.





We maintain that the party risks disgrace, losing woefully in 2019, should Adams Oshiomhole remain as the National Chairman of the party. For obvious reasons, the level of division in the party is a clear testimony that the party cannot survive except he is replaced.





Suffice to mention here that the chairman has not only projected APC as enemy of Nigerian Youths, he has also brought the party into disrepute with his frequent outbursts.





It is worthy of mention that we, the coalition of aspirants, are not against President Muhammadu Buhari nor fighting Adams Oshiomhole as a person, because he claims to be supporting Mr. President; we are simply for the greater of the party and Nigeria as a whole.





After wide consultations among party stakeholders, including governors, members of National Assembly, and youth groups, the Coalition of 2019 APC Aspirants resolved as follows:





President Buhari should use his good offices to occasion an emergency meeting of the partys National Executive Committee (NEC) to pass a vote of no confidence on Comrade Oshiomhole and relieve him of his position;





The NEC should appoint an acting chairman who has what it takes to unite the party and lead it to victory. (PDP had similar challenge before 2011 elections and decisively enthroned an acting chairman that guided the party to victory).





The NEC should appoint a committee to review cases where Oshiomhole imposed candidates and devise ways of refunding aspirants who paid for the exorbitant nomination fees but were denied of free and fair participation and election. There are many creative ways the ruling APC can raise funds besides apparent extorsion schemes introduced by the Oshiomhole administration;



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.Google's data editors have pinpointed 2018's top 10, most-searched Halloween costumes. The list ranges from DC Comics character Harley Quinn (rather of-the-moment per Margot Robbie's portrayal in Suicide Squad) and characters from the video game Fortnite to witches, unicorns, and pirates. Naturally, we paired each archetype with a runway counterpart, so you that can glean some high-fashion inspiration for your Hallochic look. See the complete list, below.

1. Fortnite Sacai spring 2017

It took several Google searches for us to fully understand what Fortnite is... Somewhere along the line a character from the video game dressed in military gear popped up, so we give you a Sacai-G.I. topped with a beret. Lift it with some platform heeled boots like Chitose Abe did and you've got yourself a next-level look.

2. Spider Man Gucci spring 2016

In an ideal, parallel universe, Peter Parker is a slightly androgynous, style maven that gives off major Gucci nerd-vibes. Take a page from Alessandro Michele's book and put a '70s spin on one of America's favorite superheroes.

3. Unicorn Thom Browne spring 2018

Looking for a couple's costume? Thom Browne suggests a hand operated, semi-transparent unicorn with a gilded horn and hooves. You may have to keep a third person on standby. We can't image it's easy to navigate a party in one of these.

4. Dinosaur Comme Des Garcons Homme Plus fall 2018

When in doubt, headdress it out. Earlier this year, Rei Kawakubo sent models wearing surmounting, stuffed dinosaur masks down the runway in a nod to childhood innocence. What better way to revive your inner kid than a giant T. Rex headpiece?

5. Witch Rick Owens spring 2019

Rick Owens' enchanting spring 2019 show ignited Paris (quite literally  there was a burring pyre in the middle of the set). We're not advocating that you carry a flaming torch around like Subah Koj, but her cutout dress-coat combo and conical fascinator make for an undoubtedly witchy ensemble.

Related | A Blazing Tower Anchored the Rick Owens Show

6. Harley Quinn Christian Cowan fall 2018

Margo Robbie's portrayal of Joker's accomplice Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad has fans fully invested in Quinn cosplay. With a powdered face and bold lip, Christian Cowan's metallic jacket and hot pants in fiery red are luxe trade-in for costume store version.

7. Superhero Isabel Marant spring 2017

Wonder Woman is without a doubt, fashion's favorite superhero (and by-far the most malleable when it comes to costumes). A shiny, red wrap skirt and draped blouse like these from Isabel Marant are the perfect cross between costume and party look.

8. Pirate Vivienne Westwood spring 2015

For an English rose's take on the pirate, Dame Vivienne Westwood suggests a tricorn hat and a nautical stripped dress. Add an eye patch, a stuffed parrot, and false sword for a kitschier rendition of Halloween's favorite seafaring raider.

9. Rabbit Thom Browne fall 2014

If White Rabbit from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was a regular at The Pool, Thom Browne would be his go-to suit maker. Stephen Jones' glen plaid mask, complete with pointy whiskers, turns the sweet bunny rabbit into a slightly sinister masquerade caricature.

10. Princess Rodarte spring 2019

Kate and Laura Mulleavy are masters of woodland nymph glamour. Engulf yourself in layers upon layers of frothy tulle and fasten fresh roses into your hair for a regal, fairy princess look like those from the duo's spring 2019 collection.

Photos via Imaxtree



Viral makeup artist Mimi Choi uses her graphic sleep paralysis as a source of inspiration for her optically illusive beauty treatments. She tells us of her competitive childhood that contributed to her anxiety and depression where she began to use art as an outlet. Now based in Vancouver, Choi went from preschool teacher to Internet sensation working with brands like Samsung and UNICEF. Using her face as a canvas to create mind-bending illusions, Choi developed her skills through trial and error  studying real objects to understand depth and dimension. Below, PAPER caught up with Choi to find out why she decided to switch career paths, her inspiration behind the illusory works she creates on faces, and the process for creating Uglyworldwide's Halloween digital cover look.

Who was Mimi Choi before you started getting into makeup? I grew up in Macau  a unique city on the south coast of China near Hong Kong. It was a Portuguese colony until 1999 and so it carries heavy European influences, including the brightly colored colonial buildings, painted tile walls, and mosaic streets. I feel that these diverse and contrasting aesthetics (Portuguese/Chinese and traditional/modern) contributed to the way I view art and allows me to gain inspiration from everything around me.



However, being raised in China also meant that my childhood was very academically focused, and I was subjected to an education system in which the students were ranked openly. I did well in school because I studied extremely hard and viewed myself as my biggest competition, but this came at a cost. I feel that this mindset contributed to issues that I would deal with later in life including my bouts of anxiety, depression, and sleep paralysis.

It was not until my family immigrated to Vancouver, Canada that I started to use art as an outlet and ultimately as a form of self-therapy. I studied science in university because I felt that it was the path that my parents expected of me. It was during these years that I suffered the greatest from anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, I would doodle and paint on my nails when I had free time as a way to escape. I had never felt truly happy until I decided to change career paths from a Montessori preschool instructor to a makeup artist. The first time that I picked up a brush and painted on someone's face gave me a feeling that I had never experienced before. Ever since I made the decision to pursue my passion, I've had fewer bouts of anxiety and have become a more open and positive person.

What sparked your interest in makeup? During university, I started experimenting with makeup and tried different looks as a form of self-expression. I received compliments and people started asking me to do their grad and bridal makeup despite the fact that I was never trained. When I started my career as a preschool teacher, I would paint intricate details on my nails to relieve stress when I returned home. While I love children, I felt suppressed in a way as I had to act and dress a certain way. One night, my mom asked if I could see myself as a preschool teacher for the rest of my life. When I told her "no," she suggested that I pursue something that I was passionate about. With that, I immediately quit my job and applied at a local makeup school at the age of 28. Within a few weeks, my instructors took notice of my work and the school began featuring my looks regularly. It wasn't until the first Halloween after enrolling in makeup school that I attempted my first illusion which was a cracked face look using 2 Kohl eyeliners. The look went viral on Instagram and Pinterest, and this positive reaction really motivated me to continue pursuing this genre.

Related | Our 10 Favorite Beauty Trends Right Now

Why optical illusion makeup?

I love the problem-solving aspect of painting illusions on my own face or on a model. I don't use Photoshop to alter my looks, so it is often challenging to figure out a way to make an illusion work on a body part using just makeup and paints. When a look turns out the way I had originally envisioned, it is truly a rewarding feeling. I also really enjoy seeing reactions in person and reading reactions online when a look successfully confuses them.

Did someone teach you or did you learn from trial and error?

I graduated from Blanche Macdonald  a local makeup and beauty school here in Vancouver, Canada. This is where I learned fundamental makeup skills. My illusion painting abilities were developed through self-exploration and trial and error. I study real objects constantly to learn about shadows, highlights, dimension, and depth. With each look I complete, I discover something new that I try to apply to future works.

"I experience vivid hallucinations which can be quite frightening. These have inspired some of my more iconic morbid works."

What inspires each look that you create? I gain inspiration from everything and anything around me. I find beauty in textures, shapes, sounds, and angles as these things evoke emotions within me which I try to convey in my art. As I travel more frequently for work now, I am exposed to new sensations and my mind is overflowing with ideas. I am also very much inspired by surreal artists like Dali, Escher, and Arcimboldo, and contemporary digital art which can be a challenge to recreate on a human face. One of my more unique sources of inspiration stems from my bouts of sleep paralysis, however, which is a condition in which my mind is awake, but my body is asleep. During these episodes, I experience vivid hallucinations which can be quite frightening. These have inspired some of my more iconic morbid works including the hole in the face, melting face, and sliced face looks.

How do you decide on creating specific looks, especially since they are all so different?

I'm a very spontaneous person and usually decide on a look the day of. On occasion, I will go through phases in which I paint a series of looks that are consistent to a certain theme, like my junk food and animal looks. However, these are few and far between. I usually don't plan out my looks on a face chart unless it is requested for a job  instead, I typically go off of what I have envisioned in my mind. I'm constantly inspired so I have tons of ideas stored on my phone and I find that nowadays it is difficult to make time to create looks for myself in between jobs.

About how long does each look take?

My looks can vary in length depending on the intricacy of it. On average I spend about 4 to 5 hours on a piece but have taken up to 7 hours to create my most detailed looks. In addition to the time I spend painting my face, it takes another few hours to photograph, record, edit, and caption my posts on Instagram.

Is it difficult to balance teaching other people, when each look is so personal to you? I teach people the techniques I use to achieve an impactful illusion, which often boils down to highlighting and shadowing. They can apply these skills to create their own creative looks or even on beauty looks if they wish. While I can't teach creativity, I try to instill confidence in my students which is required to step out of their comfort zones and to create their own trends. I share the challenges that I have faced as an emerging makeup artist and hope to be an example of someone who changed their path at a relatively late stage in life in order to pursue their passion.

What three products are crucial to every look you create?

Three products that I always carry with me in my kit include my Mimi Choi Illusion Palette by Mehron, Make Up For Ever Flash Case and Cozzette Infinite Eyeshadows. The versatility of these products allows me to paint and achieve whatever look I want.

Tell us about the look you created for Uglyworldwide's Halloween digital cover story. I painted my signature illusion mask look on Jazzelle with facial muscles beneath it. This look was inspired by the "mask" that people put on when they step outside of their homes every day to conceal the truth and rawness inside. I outlined and painted the mask on her face first and then added the muscle tissue using images of real flesh as reference. To give the illusion of the mask floating above the flesh, I highlighted the edges and added the appropriate shadows surrounding the mask. Lastly, I added gloss on the painted muscles to give the look of wetness and to add another dimension of realism.The New York Times reported a leak memo over the weekend detailing the Trump administration's consideration of a policy that would effectively end federal recognition and protection of trans, nonbinary and gender nonconforming identities.

Specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services seeks to change Title IX definitions of gender to only recognize male and female sex, "on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable." Practically speaking, this means gender would be defined as male or female based on genitalia recorded at birth, and any individual seeking to be identified as otherwise would require DNA testing.

The effects of such a policy would limit access to (or deny completely) health care, housing, other public services and protection from discrimination for over one million Americans. The untold implications of what it would mean for the government to strictly define gender based on genitalia and blood testing is simply unacceptable.

LGBTQ people and allies are already working together to protest this memo and prevent it from becoming a reality, rallying in outrage on social media and in person. Voices4 and Lambda Legal held a "Hell No to the Memo" rally last night in Washington Square Park with an array of speakers standing up for trans and GNC rights.

The rally was co-sponsored by Ackerman Institute Gender & Family Project, Anti-Violence Project, National Center for Transgender Equality, New York Transgender Advocacy Group, Transgender Law Center, National Trans Bar Association, Equality NY, GLAAD, Hetrick-Martin Institute, LeGaL, The LGBT Center and the Stonewall Democrats. Related | Here's How to Help Trans and GNC People Now

POSE FX's Indya Moore addressed the crowd, saying, "There is a spiritual war. It attacks our hearts, our souls and most importantly our bodies," adding, "We are at the mercy of someone's political opinion and that is not okay. It's never okay for the fundamental rights of human beings to be up for debate."

The speakers tended toward fighting hate with love, a common message in LGBTQ civil rights campaigns throughout the years that was no less present last night than in past decades. They also made it clear that the community and its allies will continue to fight fiercely for their human rights. "If a black girl like me can get out of the ghetto in Zimbabwe and refuse to be silenced then so can you," intersex advocate Tatenda Ngwaru said, while ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio said, "You can't erase people from the system with the law. We will fight in the courts and hold back the line, but the real transformative power is with you." See photos and more quotes from the rally below, and learn what practical steps you can take to prevent this memo from becoming law here:

"We must fight narcissism with humility." -Indya Moore

Photography by Hunter Abrams

Watered Down Domestic Violence Bill in Approval Stage Eight Years After Drafting in Iran

10/22/18

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

Hardliners Claim Bill Threatens Foundations of Iranian Families



"International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women"

by Iman Khaksar, Iranian daily Ghanoon



A heavily revised Bill for the Protection of Women Against Violence has been sent to the Iranian city of Qom for review by Shia scholars, according to Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar, who made the announcement on October 12, 2018.

Domestic violence is not mentioned by name in Iranian law; women can only attempt to address it by navigating through the country's Sharia (Islamic) legal system.

A female Iranian attorney told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) that the bill is the first of its kind and introduces an issue into Iranian law that was previously omitted, but it fails to meet UN standards for protecting women from violence in the home.

"The barriers for access to justice for women in Iran are so intense," said the attorney, who requested anonymity for security purposes. "For example, married Iranian women are legally obligated to live where their husbands want them to live. In situations involving domestic violence, they can only leave their homes if they can prove that their life or reputation is in danger."

"But proving that your life is in danger when your assailant is your husband and his words carry greater legal weight than your own is very difficult," said the attorney, who added that vulnerable Iranian women often don't speak out against violence in the home not only because of the lack of legal protections but also because of societal expectations that they keep family matters private.

"Clerics and hardline judicial officials have claimed this bill could endanger the foundations of Iranian families if women are allowed to make complaints about their husband over domestic violence, which they consider a small issue," she said.

According to a May 2017 study by a prominent, Iran-based charity that examined "Violence Against Women in Peripheral [disprivileged] Families," 32 percent of Iranian women in urban areas and 63 percent in rural areas have experienced some form of domestic violence. These numbers could be much higher given that victims of domestic violence are pressured to keep their experiences secret.

The UN recommends that legislation defining domestic violence should include physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence. But the bill has been strongly opposed by political hardliners and religious conservatives, who want to prevent domestic violence from being addressed through Iran's legal system.

"This bill was sent to the judiciary by the government and unfortunately it calls for imprisonment for dozens of situations," said Hojatoleslam Hadi Sadeghi, the deputy judiciary chief for cultural affairs, at a judicial conference in Tehran on June 27, 2018.

"If a woman sends her husband to prison, then the man will no longer be her husband and she will have to suffer the pain of divorce," he added.

The judiciary's assistant for legal affairs, Zabihollah Khodaian, had earlier complained in August 2017 that the bill puts men in prison for "mistakes."

"We should not be putting everyone in jail for making mistakes, including husbands and wives who get into fights," he added.

On the other hand, some female Iranian officials have emphasized the urgency of passing the bill.

In a September 2018 interview with Etemad newspaper, the reformist leader of the women's faction in Iran's Parliament, Farideh Oladghobad, urged the judiciary to present its final views on the bill so that lawmakers could begin the legislative process.

"The Bill for the Protection of Women Against Violence should be submitted to Parliament as soon as possible in order to defend women's human dignity in accordance with Articles 20 and 21 of the Constitution," Oladghobad said.

She added: "As mothers, women need peace and security in the family to be able to raise their children well. The family should be free from verbal and non-verbal violence. In addition, we are witnessing violence against women in public. We believe that women need security in order to conduct social affairs."

Long Drafting Process, Many Articles Removed

The bill, which has been a decade in the making, had half its articles removed before reaching the final approval stage.

Various drafts of the bill were conceived during the second term of the government of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013). In August 2010, Iranian media outlets reported that the Parliament and Interior Ministry were working separately on drafting bills against domestic violence.

In 2011, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called for women to be protected from domestic violence, creating an opening for the Center for Women and Family Affairs in the president's office to draft another bill.

By November 2012, the final draft of the bill had been revised six times and was not submitted to Parliament until 2015, after further revisions by the government of President Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021).

On September 14, 2017, Ashraf Geramizadegan, the director of the Center for Legal Research at the Office of the Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, said the bill had been sent to the judiciary for review, which is required before Parliament begins deliberating bills.

Most recently, in October 2018, the draft-with half of the original articles removed-was sent to Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani for his approval.

Larijani appears to be seeking the consent of Qom's religious leaders before giving the bill his approval before sending it to Parliament for deliberations.Four Teachers Detained in Iran and Several Others Summoned to Court After Peaceful Sit-In

10/22/18

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

Security Forces Hijack Teachers' Union Telegram Channel

Two teachers who participated in a peaceful sit-in for teachers' and education rights in Iran this week remain behind bars five days after they were arrested.

The Iranian Teachers' Trade Association (ITTA) reported on October 14 that the head of its secretariat, Mohammad Reza Ramezanzadeh, and a teacher, Mohammad Ghanbari, were arrested after the strike was launched on October 13, 2018.

Unnamed state forces also hijacked another union's Telegram channel.

"Following yesterday's successful sit-in, the channel belonging to the Teachers' Trade Organizations' Coordination Council (TTOCC) and the cloud space for the sit-in are no longer in the group's control because of the arrest of Mohammad Reza Ramezanzadeh," said the posting.

The post added that threatening messages against teachers had been posted on the channel since it had been hijacked.

In addition to Ramezanzadeh and Ghanbari, an unknown number of teachers have been summoned to Intelligence Ministry's offices in Tehran, Qazvin, Bojnourd, Saqqez, Marivan, Kermanshah and Aligoudarz, and have been ordered to appear on October 20 in court, a teachers' rights advocate based in Iran told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

"We only know that seven teachers have been summoned in Saqqez, but we don't know the exact numbers in the other cities. If the charges against them are serious, their names will be released," added the source who requested anonymity for security reasons.

On October 17, ITTA member Mohammad Saleh Shokri was arrested by Intelligence Ministry agents in Saqqez. He has not been charged and is being denied legal representation. He has also been denied visits from his family but was allowed to make a brief phone call to inform his family that he had been detained.

On October 11, Abbas Vahedian, a teacher and ITTA member, was arrested at his home in Mashhad on the eve of the sit-in strike by security agents who raided his house, confiscated his personal belongings and took him to an unknown location.

In Aligoudarz, Lorestan Province, Amin Azimi, also an ITTA member, was freed on October 16, two days after being arrested.

Teachers in several Iranian cities did not show up to class on October 13 to join a peaceful sit-in demanding a reformation of Iran's education system, which teachers argue is not meeting the needs of teachers or students.

Participants posted photos and videos on social media holding signs with their demands, including: the reinstatement of free schooling for all levels, salary increases, ending the imprisonment of teachers' rights activists and being allowed to strike and organize without the threat of arrest.

Some students at the universities of Tehran and Allah Tabataba'i boycotted classes and held sit-ins on October 14 expressing solidarity with the protesting teachers.

They held up signs with slogans including "classes are closed as long as teachers are behind bars."

Independent labor unions are not allowed to function in Iran, strikers are often fired and risk arrest, and labor leaders are consistently prosecuted under catchall national security charges and sentenced to long prison terms.

The following four prominent teachers' rights activists were in jail in Iran serving long prison sentences when the teachers' held their sit-in.

Esmail Abdi: A high school teacher and former ITTA secretary general, Abdi has been serving a six-year prison sentence since November 2016 in Evin Prison in Tehran for the charges of "propaganda against the state" and "collusion against national security."

Mahmoud Beheshti-Langroudi: A former ITTA spokesman, Beheshti-Langroudi's most recent imprisonment began in September 2017. He is serving multiple sentences for his peaceful trade union activities in Evin Prison.

Rouhollah Mardani: In June 2018, Mardani, a graduate student in Persian literature at the University of Tehran who had also worked as a teacher in the city of Nourabad in Lorestan Province, was sentenced by a preliminary court to six years in prison. He was also banned for two years from political and social activities and prohibited from leaving the country for two years. Mardani was imprisoned for taking part in peaceful protests on campus in late January 2018; the charges he was convicted of are unclear. He is in Evin Prison.

Mohammad Habibi: Arrested for peacefully advocating teachers' rights, Habibi was sentenced by a preliminary court in August 2018 to seven years in prison and 74 lashes. He was also banned for two years from political and social activities and prohibited from leaving the country for two years. Habibi was convicted of the following charges: "assembly and collusion against national security," "propaganda against the state" and "disturbing public order." He is in the Great Tehran Penitentiary.Iran's President Rouhani Introduces 4 New Ministers Ahead of Hard-Hitting U.S. Sanctions

10/22/18

Source: Radio Farda

President Hassan Rouhani nominated the new ministers of economy, industry, roads and labor in a letter to the Iranian Parliament on October 21. Rouhani named Farhad Dejpasand for the post of economy minister and Mohammad Shariatmadari for the position of labor minister, Mohammad Eslami for the Road Ministry and Reza Rahmani for the Idustry Ministry.

The changes in Rouhani's cabinet take place only two weeks before Iran faces the toughest economic sanctions that target its oil exports and international banking operations.



Rouhani had refused to reshuffle his cabinet for more than a year, while his critics, as well as many members of the parliament, kept calling on him to change his economic team in the cabinet in a bid to solve the country's economic crisis.



The parliament dismissed the economy and labor ministers last month, and Rouhani accepted the resignation of the ministers of industry and roads on October 20 after they wrote several letters offering to step down.



While three of the new nominees are low-key officials known to the press if not to the public, the new nominee for the Labor Ministry, Mohammad Shariatmadari, has been Rouhani's industry minister until October 20 and his performance was widely criticized by the parliament, the press, and the public.



In fact, Shariatmadari is likely to have resigned his post as industry minister because over 70 MPs have called for his impeachment. He refused to report to the parliament on October 9 to respond to MPs' questions about his problematic performance.



Shariatmadari needs to be vetted by the parliament for his new post. Although he won the highest number of votes of confidence in 2017 as industry minister, there is no guarantee that this would happen again as there have been several reports about major corruption cases linked to his ministry in the summer of 2018.



Farhad Dejpasand, the nominee for the post of minister of economy and finance, is an assistant professor at Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University. He is currently working as head of the research center at the plan and budget organization. He has also served as a deputy to the chairman of Iran's planning and budget organization.



Dejpasand has served as caretaker economy minister after the former minister's impeachment last month.



The nominee for the post of roads minister, Mohammad Eslami, studied civil engineering in the United States and has worked on several projects for military and civilian organizations in Iran as well as being a board member of companies affiliated with the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His performance has been praised repeatedly by Khamenei, and his top commanders, ISNA reported.



Rahmani, the nominee for the post of industry minister, has already served for a month as the caretaker minister. According to IRNA, he is a former deputy industry minister and has served as the chairman of the board of directors of the Iranian Copper Industries.



Rahmani has been a member of the parliament for 12 years and chaired the Industry and Mining Committee.



The change in the cabinet, while covering four of the key economic ministries, could be too late to save Iran's failing economy, as the country is facing its worst economic recession and is facing major foreign policy and economic problems.



On November 4, the United States is to re-introduce hard-hitting sanctions on Iran's oil exports and international banking operations. The new ministers of economy (and finance) and industry (and mining and trade), the officials to make key decisions on how to confront the impact of sanctions would have to spend a lot of time to restructure the ministries and review policies before they could take any effective practical measure. That is if they win the parliament's vote of confidence.The Central Bank is not to blame for the woes of the clients of gold investment company, Menzgold, said the Director of Business Operations of Dalex Finance, Mr. Joe Jackson. Investors have been warned repeatedly in the public domain by multiple agencies, but they would not heed the advice, Mr. Jackson noted.



He made these remarks on Saturday when he joined other panelists on TV3 news analysis show, New Day, to lend new perspectives to issues that made the news over the week.



According to him, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) had to step in because Menzgold kept insisting its operation was out of the jurisdiction of the Bank of Ghana (BOG), even when everything  including the returns being paid- raised critical questions.



He said Menzgolds operated in such a way that required the regular infusion of cash by new investors and as soon as the company was asked to stop taking on new clients and contracts, the returns to existing customers stopped. He maintained that the company was not asked to stop trading but simply asked to stop taking on new contracts and that was when the whole system came crumbling, Mr. Jackson added.



Now they have unilaterally decided not to pay any returns, that they will pay the principal after some time; it is scary. I am saying to everyone who has issues with the firm to take it to court for redress, he stressed.



On the subject of vigilantism, Mr. Jackson was quick to add his voice to the deafening call for the phenomenon to be tackled head-on and disbanded without further delay.



Vigilantism is a recipe for chaos and disaster and the two leading political parties must be condemned in equal measure for the stance they have taken on the issue, he said.



Commenting on the Free Senior High School policy, Mr. Jackson noted that the concept is good, implementation has nothing to do with accepting it as a good policy. Even the number of students we have now is the surest evidence that there are people coming to school now who wouldnt have had the chance. But the fact is that government shouldnt be absolving boarding fees.



He advocated for what he termed as deboardinisation of our schools. Why is government paying boarding fees because I chose to take my ward to a boarding school? He quizzed and added that  parents should be responsible for where their children stay and go to school.



He lauded the free feeding concept and added that a more conscious effort must equally be made to build more schools in the rural and peri-urban areas where they are most needed.

Source: Daily Graphic









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Featured VideoThe Women in Logistics and Transport - Ghana ( WILAT-Ghana ) which is the Women's wing of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport - Ghana ( CILT- Ghana) has honoured the First Lady Mrs Rebecca Akufo- Addo as the Role Model for Critical Logistics .



WILAT - Ghana explained critical logistics as rendering service to save lives and cited the establishment of the state - of- the art Mother and Baby unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi by Mrs Rebecca Akuffo Addo and her foundation (Rebecca Foundation) as a major example, in a citation for the first lady in Accra when CILT - Ghana visited the First Lady at her office.



WILAT- Ghana also commended the First Lady for her role in enhancing literacy and learning skills in children as well as improving environmental health and sanitation by greening public places.



WILAT-Ghana also presented mothers and children's sanitary items and exercise books to the Rebecca Foundation for distribution to disadvantaged mothers and children.



Mrs Dr Doreen Owusu- Fianku Chairperson of WILAT- Ghana said CILT- Ghana through WILAT- Ghana will collaborate with the Rebecca Foundation in its noble course especially in critical logistics aimed at empowering women and supporting babies as well as women in Logistics and Transport in general.



The President of CILT- Ghana Mr Ebow Hammond said CILT- Ghana is concerned about the low representation of women in the Logistics and Transport sector and encouraged more young women to develop interest in the sector .

Source: Emmanuel Akorl/Parliamentary Correspondent, Peace FM









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Featured VideoSierra Leone President, His Excellency Julius Maada Bio, would arrive in the country this morning for a two-day official visit.



The purpose of the visit is to strengthen and deepen the existing ties of friendship and co-operation between Ghana and Sierra Leone.



The visit is also intended to explore other areas of co-operation between the two countries which would inure to the benefit of both countries.



A statement released from the presidency over the weekend said President Maada Bio will call on President Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House on his arrival, where the two leaders will hold bilateral talks.



Aside from that, President Akufo-Addo will also host his Sierra Leonean counterpart to an official lunch, also at the Jubilee House.



The Sierra Leonean President, whilst in Ghana, is expected to meet his countrymen (Sierra Leoneans) resident in Ghana, and also undertake a number of visits to some institutions in the country.



He will leave Ghana for Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, on Tuesday, 23rd October, 2018.

Source: Daily Guide









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Featured VideoNPP National Youth Organizer, Nana Boakye has urged students of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) to remain calm and stop vandalizing properties on campus.



Nana Boakye has asked the students to heave a sigh of relief as the government is working to bring a lasting solution to the misunderstanding between the students and the University authorities.



Students at Katanga Hall of the KNUST, on Monday, October 22, 2018, embarked on a violent demonstration against the University authorities.



The students thronged the streets on campus in their numbers, clad in red and amidst the protest vandalized several properties including the office and car of the Vice Chancellor, Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso.



A misunderstanding between the students and the school's authorities resulted in the arrest of about 10 students, leading up to the demonstration.



The students are also protesting against a decision by the Vice Chancellor and the authorities to turn the all-male Katanga Hall into a mixed hall with females.



There were disturbing scenes on campus as the students destroyed and burned down some properties, ranging from cars to motorbikes.



Nana Boakye, popularly called Nana B, has hinted that the Vice Chancellor will soon become "history".



This is to assure them that the Vice Chancellor will be sanctioned accordingly to perhaps avoid Katanga Hall being mixed with females.



"I am very confident that Prof Obiri-Danso will soon be history. Very very soon," he posted.







Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Featured VideoVodafone Ghana has joined a number of corporate organisations sponsoring this year's Ghana Journalists Association Awards.



This year's event, which is its 23rd edition, provides a platform to celebrate brilliant and deserving journalists in various categories of reporting in the country.



The telecommunications company is sponsoring the ICT and Digital Journalist of the Year category; viewing it as a direct linkage to its core business of technology and telecommunications.



The year's event explores the theme, "State of Investigative Journalism - Boundaries of Privacy and Borders of Public Interest and will take place on October 27, 2018 at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra. Ghana's President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to be the Special Guest of Honour.



Commenting, Ebenezer Amankwah, Corporate Relations Manager at Vodafone Ghana said:



"The business we are in relies heavily on the work of the media in our storytelling efforts. They remain a very important part of what we do. We regard our partnership with the Ghana Journalists Association as an ongoing relationship that continues to yield benefits for both parties."



Vodafone donated a cheque for GHS10,000 for the journalist that will emerge the best in that category.

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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called on factions opposing the creation of the proposed Oti Region from the Volta Region, particularly chiefs, to do so with prudence, and not accuse government of seeking political or tribal divide.



The President noted that the process, in other parts of the country had been met with little or no foul cries, and expressed "dismay at the deliberate peddling of falsehood that has characterised the concerted campaign against the possible creation of Oti out of the Volta Region."



The President said this in a speech read on his behalf by Mr John Peter Amewu, Minister for Energy at the grand durbar of the 2018 Agotime Kente Festival of the chiefs and people of Agotime Kpetoe at Kpetoe in the Agotime Ziofe District of the Volta Region.



He referenced the 1956 Plebiscite, and the recent Scottish referendum to back the poll limits of the upcoming referendum on the new regions, and assured of his government's "strict" adherence to the Constitution throughout the whole process.



"I wish to plead with our esteemed chiefs, in particular, to be circumspect in the choice of language as they pursue their arguments. These are new territories for all of us, and the Constitutional requirement to create a new region is as high as has ever been demanded.



"For the avoidance of doubt let me state clearly that this exercise is not an NPP NDC exercise, indeed both NPP and NDC agreed on it. It is not an Akan versus Ewe exercise. We are sticking scrupulously to the dictates of the Constitution," he said.



He asked the people to consider the economic transformation the split would bring to the new regions, and also to always keep in mind the bond of common destiny.



"Whatever the outcome, we shall remain one nation, Ghana, with an intrinsically bound destiny, and we should never forget that," he said.



Meanwhile, Togbe Afede XIV, Agbogbomefia of Asogli and President of the National House of Chiefs addressing the Association of Ewe Chiefs in Ho, said it was not only disingenuous, but dangerous to cite wrong examples of Scotland, Eritrea, South Sudan, Trans Volta Togoland, and other distinct territories or countries in disregard to the 1992 Constitution for participation in the referendum in the creation of new regions.



He said the use of these examples is creating a dangerous precedent, with implications for the survival of our country. Will Ghana allow any part of the country to vote alone to decide their independence, as was done for Scotland, Eritrea, South Sudan, Trans Volta Togoland, etc



Togbe Afede chastised the Commission of Inquiry into the creation of new regions for not doing a good job, saying, it disregarded calls to extend hearing to other parts of affected regions, failed to specify issues to be determined by the referendum and the places, creating controversies.



the Commission was in haste to create new regions, but failed to do a thorough job, that would include specifying the issues to be determined. The concentration of its public hearings on the areas from which petitions were received, against all logic, betrayed an obsession to help fulfil a campaign promise, he stated.



He therefore reiterated the call on government to ensure that due process was followed in the creation of new regions for peace, unity and development.



The festival was on the theme: Attitudinal Change, the Panacea for our Future Development, and attracted tourists from across the globe.



President Akufo-Addo underscored the need to explore the dynamics of the kente weaving art and advised the weavers not to take the profession for granted.

Source: GNA









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Featured VideoThe President of the Republic, Nana Addo Akufo-Addo, has reiterated the commitment of Government to creating a safe and secure cyber society for the country.



Speaking at the 2018 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month event, on Monday, 22nd October, 2018, at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), President Akufo-Addo noted that whilst his Government is putting in place measures to digitise Ghanas economy, it is also mindful of the dark side of digitisation.



As we scale up e-connectivity, as part of governments digitalization agenda, we will, certainly, witness an upsurge of criminal activities, if we do not put in place precautionary measures to forestall such eventualities, he said.



With 10 million Ghanaians connected to the internet, of which 4.9 million are Facebook users alone, the impact of any cyberattack on the nations e-business platforms or on mobile telephony, he said, would impact negatively on businesses and on the lives of Ghanaians.



As a result, President Akufo-Addo noted that Government is increasing efforts at increasing public sensitisation, capacity building and investment in a fit-for-purpose cybersecurity infrastructure, to help make the countrys digital experience safe and secure.



As part of measures to make the countrys digital experience safe, the President, later on Monday, launched the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for the telecommunications sector to co-ordinate incident response within that sector.



Also, a Security Operations Centre (SOC) has been set up at the Bank of Ghana to facilitate cybersecurity incident monitoring and cyber threat information sharing amongst players in the financial sector, the President said.



He continued, The Bank of Ghana, working hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Communications and the Ghana Association of Bankers, will, this afternoon, launch a Cyber and Information Security Directive for the financial sector, in view of the persistent cyber-attacks targeted at this sector.



In pursuing international co-operation engagements, as part of addressing the menace of cybercrime, President Akufo-Addo revealed that Ghana has ratified the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (Malabo Convention), becoming the third country on the continent to do so.



I have signed the Convention on Cybercrime, known as the Budapest Convention, following Cabinet approval. I am hopeful that Parliament will ratify it in its forthcoming meeting, he said.



These two international treaties, the President stressed, will enhance Ghanas co-operation with other countries at the policy, technical and operational levels in dealing with cybersecurity incidents.



Whilst congratulating the Minister for Communications, Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, MP, and the members of the National Cyber Security Inter-Ministerial Advisory Council (NCSIAC), for the establishment of the National Cyber Security Centre, to co-ordinate cybersecurity activities in the country, he was also hopeful that the National Cyber Security Policy and Strategy (NCSPS), which is currently being revised, would be concluded before the end of the year.



The revision of the strategy, he stressed, is essential to addressing the current challenges, including funding issues for Ghanas national cybersecurity development.



A Safer Digital Ghana, the theme for this years event, the President noted, reflects the collective decision to secure Ghanas digital journey.



We must all contribute in making the digital experience truly safe for our country and region. Large-scale awareness programmes, such as this, to inform the general public and government officials to develop a cybersecurity culture, are necessary, and would always receive the support of my Government, President Akufo-Addo assured.









Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Featured VideoAfricas youngest billionaire Mohammed Dewji has been freed, 10 days after he was kidnapped by armed men in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.



The 43-year-old tycoon revealed that he was home safely in a tweet posted to his company METL Groups account.

I thank Allah that I have returned home safely. I thank all my fellow Tanzanians, and everyone around the world for their prayers. I thank the authorities of Tanzania, including the Police Force for working for my safe return.



The kidnappers reportedly freed the married father of three who made his fortune in textile manufacturing, flour milling, beverages and edible oils by dumping him in a field in the early hours of Saturday morning.

But it is not clear if ransom was paid. The freedom comes after the family of Tanzanian billionaire offered a 1bn Tanzania shilling ($440,000; 330,000) reward for information that would lead to his rescue. More than 20 people were arrested in connection with the abduction before he was released.





Source: The Independent









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President Akufo-Addo presenting the overall best cardet to Master Daniel Opoku Buadu (left), Senior Officer Cadet at the ceremony.

The government is prepared to set up a new military base at Enzulebu in the Western Region to protect the countrys oil resources there.



President Akufo-Addo made the announcement at the graduation parade of the Ghana Military Academy (GMA), Teshie, near Accra, where he commissioned 138 cadet officers into the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).



The parade, which featured cadets from the Regular Career Course 58 and Short Service Commission/Special Duty Course 56, had two foreign officers from Guinea.



In his speech, the president revealed that a contract has also been signed for the construction of a Forward Operating Base (FOB) at Enzulebu in the Western Region to protect our oil resources.



FOB is any secured forward operational level military position commonly a military base that is used to support strategic goals and tactical objectives.



A FOB may or may not contain an airfield, hospital, machine shop or other logistical facilities while the base may be used for an extended period of time.



They are traditionally supported by Main Operating Bases that are required to provide backup support to them while a FOB also improves reaction time to local areas as opposed to having all troops on the main operating base.



Meanwhile, in conjunction with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), the Ministry of Defence, has also ordered six patrol boats for the Ghana Navy to help in the protection of Ghanas maritime resources and its oil fields.



We have increased, since February 2017, the UN peacekeeping daily earned amount from $30 to $35, and consistently ensured that troops are paid at their operational areas rather than being paid here at home, he added.



Whilst acknowledging that there are still some issues to be addressed, President Akufo-Addo assured that other accommodation and equipment needs of the Ghana Armed Forces will be duly resolved to enhance efficiency and morale.



Commitment



President Akufo-Addo reiterated the commitment of his government to addressing the infrastructural challenges confronting the GAF, adding that the challenges of the Armed Forces would be resolved to boost its efficiency and morale of troops.



Apart from that, he also talked about plans to build state-of-the-art facilities to meet the needs of a 21st Century military.



That, he said, was because Ghana cannot achieve the kind of economy that would provide the Ghanaian people with a dignified standard of living without peace and security, saying you will be provided with the resources to carry out your mandate effectivelythis is the legacy I would want to bequeath to the Ghana Armed Forces.



To the newly-commissioned officers, President Akufo-Addo reminded them that they were joining a profession whose members had not only upheld its image but have and continue to ensure that the territorial integrity of the country is preserved to make it peaceful and stable.



Charge



He appealed to them to meet the expectations of Ghanaians in executing the onerous obligation placed on them, adding that they should be guided by the principles of service, devotion and sacrifice.



The president entreated them to discharge their duties professionally and diligently, and not use their position to antagonize the citizens whose sacrifices had made their training possible.



I entreat you all to put into practice the qualities of good leadership instilled in the Academylead exemplary lives and ensure the men under your command also do the same.



Second Lieutenant Daniel Boadu Opoku was adjudged the Best All Round Officer Cadet in the Regular Course 58.



He received the Sword of Honour from the president as his prize.







Source: Daily Guide









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Featured VideoThe Attorney-General (AG), Gloria Afua Akuffo, has described an application for judicial review filed by a former member of the Board of the Ghana Gas Company, Valerie Sawyerr, to quash the report on the audit of the accounts of the company by Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) as completely frivolous and grossly incompetent.

The former Deputy Chief of Staff under the erstwhile John Mahama filed the application at an Accra High Court.



She wants a declaration that the audit report, which implicated her and other former board member of Ghana National Gas Company Limited, was done in breach of her right to administrative justice and right to a fair hearing.



She is seeking an order of Certiorari for the forensic audit report by EOCO, which implicated other board members to be quashed by the court.



Ms Sawyerr also wants the court to stop the security agencies from inviting her for questioning since in her opinion such invitations are a form of harassment.



AG Fires Back



But the AG, in a response to the suit on behalf of EOCO, described the application as completely frivolous and borne out of an improper appreciation of the law regarding the various subject matters.



According to response signed by Deputy Attorney-General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, Ms Sawyerrs application could not pinpoint any adverse findings against her by EOCO or AGs Office.



Bizarrely, her application makes reference to a letter written by the Cabinet Committee responsible for the Coordination of Investigations/Forensic Audits.



Mr. Dame said its not a forensic audit report neither does it, in and of itself, make any adverse finding against the applicant.



The Deputy AG averred that Valerie Sawyerr, in her application, referred to the audit report on several occasions but she failed to present it to the court.



The court, without seeing the audit report in question, cannot quash same. The duty to file same is placed by the rules on the applicant before filing his application, Deputy AG averred.



Auditor-General



Mr. Dame also debunked claims by Ms Sawyerr that the audit was not commissioned by the Auditor-General.



The Deputy AG indicated that Ghana Gas Company Limited is a private company limited by liability owned by the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and therefore in accordance with the Constitution, specifically Article 187(2), and Section 11 of Act 584, Ghana Gas is not subject to the audit powers of the Auditor-General.



It is eminently clear that the accounts of the Ghana Gas Company Limited are not part of the public accounts over which the Auditor-General has power to audit, except that company has expressly permitted it to do so.



Hearing Invitation



Mr. Dame said claims by Valerie Sawyerr that she was not invited by the auditing firm for a hearing before making adverse findings against her are misplaced.



The Deputy AG averred that the auditing firm is not a judicial or quasi-judicial body; hence its not mandated to give the board members hearing before concluding its findings.



A person making an audit inquiry is not under a duty to adopt a procedure akin to judicial proceedings. He does not exercise a judicial discretion to be subject to the requirements of Article 23 of the Constitution. An auditor merely presents his opinion on the use of funds before him and submits a report for a further judicial or quasi-judicial inquiry to be done.



The documents presented by him will be the basis for an accusation and the person against whom suspicion is raised will then be questioned further by the relevant authorities. It is at the stage where the relevant authorities deny the person against whom suspicion is raised that an allegation of breach of fundamental human rights can be made, Mr. Dame indicated.



The auditors in question merely presented their opinion of the facts to the 2nd respondent (EOCO), upon the conclusion of the exercise. It is correct to say that the audit report in question did not form the basis for any punitive measures or sanctions to be inflicted on the applicant, Deputy AG added.



Mr Dame, therefore, prayed the court to dismiss the application which he described as grossly incompetent.



Background



A government sanctioned forensic audit revealed that the acquisition of helicopters worth over $100 million by Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC) caused financial loss to the state because the choppers were never utilized.



The four Z-9EH helicopters bought from China for surveillance by Ghana Gas during the previous Mahama administration at the total cost of $100 million ($25m each) was commissioned by then President John Mahama in September 2015.



According to the forensic audit report, The helicopters purchased from China National Aero Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC) have never been used for the purpose of its purchase, causing the state to lose $54,800,000.



It also said a loss of $5,958,366.76 was incurred because equipment for the helicopters were not delivered even though it was part of the contract price, while another loss of $300,000, being abnitio training cost not fully utilized for its intended purpose was caused, bringing the total to $61,058,366.76.



The report mentioned that Ghana Gas Board Chairman Prof. Kwesi Botchwey; Dr. George Sipa-AdjaYankey, who was the CEO of the state-owned company; Eric Yankah; Thomas Manu and Valerie Sawyerr, a former deputy Chief of Staff, should be held responsible.



According to the report, there were procurement irregularities, totalling GH76,802,760.39 against Memphis Metropolitan Limited (GH34,452,650.22) and Kingspok Company Limited (GH42,351,110.17) in the contract.

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Attempts by former President Mahama, to introduce the idea of rebranding the National Democratic Congress ahead of the 2020 elections, has been described by the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, as a deliberate move to usurp the powers of Jerry John Rawlings.



The Ashanti Regional Chairman of the NPP, Mr. Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, stated that former President Mahama knows he has failed to live up to the transparency, probity, and accountability ideology that defines the NDC and for this reason wants to expunge it from the party.



Under the leadership of former President Mahama, Chairman Wontumi explained that he changed the NDCs ideology into opacity, untrustworthiness and unaccountability; making him unfit to talk about rebranding the NDC for former President Rawlings.



If not stopped in his tracks now, Mr. Antwi-Boasiako who is well known as Chairman Wontumi, believes former President Mahama would infect the NDC with corruption. He asserted that during the tenure of former President Mahama he has demonstrated that he is incompetent and corrupt and could not be trusted when he talks about rebranding the NDC.



Chairman Wontumi stated that former President Mahama has no skill when it comes to restructuring and rebranding. Where was he when former President Rawlings and his wife established the party on the principles of transparency, probity, and accountability? He turned that ideology into opacity, untrustworthiness and unaccountability, Chairman Wontumi said.



In an address to supporters of the NDC at Nkoranza as part of his five-day campaign visit to the Brong-Ahafo Region, former President Mahama called on the branch executives to reach out to the masses and sell philosophies and ideologies upon which the NDC was founded as a social democratic party.



The former president appealed to various branch executives of the NDC to re-brand and make the party attractive by building better and cordial relationships with the electorate.



But Chairman Wontumi averred that John Mahama has a corrupt nature and failed to live up to transparency, probity, and accountability expectation.



I want to put on record that he doesnt want former President Rawlings to judge him by this mantra and for this reason, wants to induce members of the party with money so that they would rebrand the NDC and take hold of it, he said.



He continued that Rawlings must sit up and stop Mahama from introducing that idea of rebranding the NDC. The NDC is a party that he (Rawlings) and his wife have toiled to establish. Mahamas only contribution to the NDC, has been mammoth corruption. It is his nature to be incompetent and corrupt, Chairman Wontumi stated.

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Russian officials said Sunday that the U.S. statement on its intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) could be seen as "blackmail," warning that cancelling the treaty would be very dangerous.

Head of the Russian Federation Council's International Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev said that the INF Treaty stipulates a unilateral pullout is only possible under "exceptional circumstances" with their substantiation within six months.

"So far, no formal steps have been taken in this regard, which gives grounds to consider (U.S. President Donald) Trump's statement as an attempt of continuing blackmail rather than an accomplished act of law," Kosachev said on Facebook.

On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement.

Kosachev warned that Washington's possible withdrawal from the treaty might cause its Western allies to take the same path, which could trigger a war.

"The situation is critical, and the threats to peace are getting a particular shape," he said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said that the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty would be a very dangerous step, and condemned by the international community.

"Apparently, inability and unwillingness to come to terms with us on a sound foundation push certain forces in Washington to encourage the country's leadership to make a decision on a formal withdrawal from the treaty," he said.

Russia expects that U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who is arriving in Moscow on Sunday, will clarify Washington's stance on this matter, Ryabkov said.

The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

Moscow and Washington have been accusing each other of violating the arms control agreement in recent years amid increasing tensions between the two countries.Former President John Dramani Mahama has questioned what he said is the governments decision to sell fertilizers to cocoa farmer, though it is supposed to be given to them for free.



He said instead of helping to alleviate the hardship of cocoa farmers, the Akufo-Addo government is making them poorer through its policies and programmes.



Mr Mahama noted that under the administration of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), cocoa farmers were given free supply of fertilizers, aside the yearly increase in producer price of cocoa.



He however wondered why the current government would abandon the free supply of fertilizers to cocoa farmers and rather sell it to them, even though the fertilizer sacks are marked Not for Sale.



Mr Mahama made this known when he addressed separate meetings with NDC delegates at Jinijini, Berekum and Sampa, all in the Brong Ahafo Region on Saturday.



Citing the Gambia-Kyeremansu road in particular, Mr Mahama noted that the government has abandoned all the cocoa road projects which were started by his government in the Brong Ahafo



Region, emphasising that his government made a deliberate policy to construct major roads in cocoa-growing areas.



Mr Mahama therefore appealed to the government to start working on the abandoned cocoa roads to ease the haulage of cocoa as well as promote the speedy and efficient transportation of goods and services.



He told the delegates that Ghanaians are looking up to the NDC to take them out of the present economic hardship, and he is therefore calling for unity in the party to help the NDC win the 2020 elections.



Mr Mahama also promised to work hard to reduce the high cost of living as well as provide jobs, when elected.













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 Founding member of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) Dr. Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe has described the 19 year reign of ex President Jerry John Rawlings as a wasted time.



According to the firebrand politician, though the former President was at the helm of affairs of this country for a considerable length of time, nothing substantial was achieved during his rule.



Dr. Nhaho Nyaho Tamakloe who in an interview with Politics & Power Magazine stated that Ex President Rawlings whos the longest serving leader in the countrys history rather recorded the height of indiscipline and corruption during his tenure in office.



Look at the educational set up that Nkrumah placed and that to me transformed the country at that time. We are still trying to make it; Nkrumah was able to make it. The free education started from his time. What we are doing now is nothing new. And then the way he was able to put the secondary schools together, he built numerous secondary schools across the country, and thats what we are at the moment benefitting from. The establishment of a medical school, he went through all difficulties but he was able to put that together.



Now we have a medical school at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, we have one in the north now, we have one I think in Cape Coast so that tells you to run a nation you must have a vision, this is the way I look at it. I always say that the Malaysia example is something very striking to me. For a whole period of 19 years, nine good years during the rule of Jerry John Rawlings, I dont really see what this country benefited, I must say.

Asked whether Rawlings era was a wasted time? Dr Nyaho Tamakloe who was Ghanas Ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro responded:



To me, it was a wasted time because if he had been able to achieve what he wanted to do, he would have been the first person to really transform this country to

a higher level but nothing like that came. I mean, lets face it, nothing. His tenure, rather, brew indiscipline and the corruption that he wanted to clear at that

time, he was not able to do it. Its gone worse now. You know what is happening now? I mean corruption is everywhere, everywhere, its so pathetic.

Source: Kasapa FM









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 President of Sierra Leone, Julius Maada Bio, has expressed gratitude to the government of Ghana for supporting his countrys healthcare sector.



The Sierra Leone leader made the remarks when he addressed the press at the foyer of the Jubilee House together with President Akufo-Addo on Monday, 22 October 2018.



President Bio is on a two-day state visit to Ghana, his first since assuming office in May this year.



The two leaders, before addressing the press, held bilateral talks to discuss specific areas of cooperation.



A joint communique was subsequently issued. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, signed the Communique on behalf of Ghana and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Sierra Leone, Dr. Alie Kabba, signed on behalf of Sierra Leone.



The 14-paragraph communique was subsequently read by Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey.



It read in part as follows:



Both leaders reviewed the state of bilateral relations and observed that the current level of trade between the two countries was low and required new and additional measures to improve the volume of trade. They noted the need to strengthen commercial relations between the private sectors of the two countries and called for the facilitative role of the two Governments in bringing the private sectors together.



Both leaders reiterated the importance of education as a long-term development tool and recalled the implementation of the Free Senior High School programme in Ghana and the recently introduced Free Quality Education policy of the Government of Sierra Leone. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo assured President Julius Maada Bio of the Government of Ghanas commitment in sharing her experience and expertise on the Programme with the Government of Sierra Leone as it begins the implementation of the Free Quality Education policy for primary pupils and secondary students.



President Nana Akufo-Addo indicated that the Government of Ghana will carefully consider the request of the Government of Sierra Leone for technical assistance in the form of experts in the area of technical and vocational education training and will work with the Government of Sierra Leone on the modalities for implementing the request.



Both leaders noted the importance of quality health. President Julius Maada Bio expressed appreciation for the capacity development assistance that the Government of Ghana was providing, in collaboration with Medicins Sans Frontieres, for nurses from Sierra Leone who were undergoing top-up training in Ghana. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo indicated that Ghana was prepared to work with Sierra Leone to develop arrangements for an overseas medical personnel deployment programme to help the Government of Sierra Leone meet her health needs.



Both leaders stressed the importance of food security and discussed the Planting for Food and Jobs Programme in Ghana and the new commercial agriculture policy of the Government of Sierra Leone. The two leaders noted the need for national food security and the alignment of national food security strategies with the ECOWAS Regional Food Security Reserve, which is part of the Regional Agricultural Investment Programme.



The two leaders noted the importance of cooperation in the area of energy. H.E. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo indicated that Ghana would consider providing technical expertise to Sierra Leone in the Energy Sector.



Both leaders discussed the fisheries sector of the two countries and expressed the need for greater cooperation in the sector and as well as enhanced collaboration within international fora such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. The two leaders requested the Ministries of the two countries responsible for fisheries to forge stronger links of cooperation.



The two leaders recalled the General Cooperation Agreement signed between the two countries for the establishment of a Permanent Joint Commission for Cooperation and pledged to work towards the convening of the First Session of the Permanent Joint Commission for Cooperation as soon as possible, to enable the varied areas of cooperation between the two countries to be enhanced under a unified framework.



The two leaders discussed the African Continental Free Trade Area and noted its immense benefits on trade expansion, job creation and national welfare gains for all African countries. Both leaders expressed optimism about the operationalisation of the Agreement. The President of Sierra Leone indicated that the Government of Sierra Leone will soon complete the national ratification process and deposit her instrument of ratification with the African Union Commission. The two leaders affirmed their commitment to pursue the agenda of an Africa Beyond Aid.



The two leaders reviewed the state of peace and security in the Region and noted the need for holistic measures and concerted action in addressing threats to the peace and security of the Region. They emphasized the need to address the root causes of extremism and terrorist violence in the Region. They pledged the commitment of their two Governments in countering terrorism and extremism in the Region.



The two leaders reaffirmed the commitment of the two countries to cooperate at the level of ECOWAS, the African Union, the Commonwealth, and the United Nations and to deepen the shared values of democracy, good governance and respect for human rights.

Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured VideoThe head of a pro-life, anti-LGBTQ Christian organization in Iowa faces scrutiny this week after illegally burning LGBTQ-themed books taken from the taxpayer-funded Orange City Public Library in Orange City, Iowa. He streamed the burning on his organizations Facebook page.

The Book Burning

The Sioux City Journal originally reported on the book burning:

Paul Dorr, director of Ocheyedan-based Rescue the Perishing, a group that he describes in the video as a crisis center and pro-life, pro-family movement, said in an interview with the Journal Sunday that his protest was the result of his outrage at several things in Orange City and in the region. The events of OC Pride, a local LGBTQ festival, were, in essence, the straw that broke the camels back for Dorr.

Dorr burned the books as a response to the Ocean City Pride event held over the weekend.

The Sioux City Journal added:

Dorr cited, among other things, sexual education classes in schools (which he would only refer to as classroom sex talk, and which he would like to see eliminated in favor of a Biblical, marriage-based curriculum); some local churches reticence to combat homosexuality; and Northwestern College  which drew his ire partly when it staged a play that portrayed homosexuality in a not-unfavorable light  all as contributing factors to his protest. The video, which is more than 28 minutes long, consists mainly of Dorr talking about his displeasure with all things LGBTQ, as well as abortion and the sexual revolution of the 1970s, which he sees as a failing of his generation. Dorr appears particularly irate at the fact that LGBTQ books were read to children during OC Pride.

Orange City Library, you wont be peddling this one anymore! Dorr said at one point in the video as he threw a childrens book into fire. You should all be ashamed of yourselves and repent.

He added, This whole (book) is designed to get 12-to-13-year-old boys to start having homosexual sex together. I cant read you all of this stuff. It is so filthy, and so disgusting.

Noting the librarys response to having their books destroyed, The Sioux City Journal noted:

In all, four books were thrown into the fire: David Levithans Two Boys Kissing; Suzanne and Max Langs Families, Families, Families!; Gayle E. Pitmans This Day in June; and Christine Baldacchinos Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress. The Orange City Public Library said in a message that it is aware of Dorrs video, and that it will not be making any comments at this point.

Since Dorr did not legally own the books, the destruction of that property violated the law.

Calling the book burning deeply disturbing, ACLU of Iowa communications director Veronica Fowler declined to say whether her organization intends to take action against Dorr for destruction of taxpayer-funded LGBTQ library books.

Banned Books Week

Dorrs illicit actions not only follow the citys LGBTQ pride event, but come on the heel of national Banned Books Week (September 23 through 29, 2018).

According to the American Library Association, the organization that sponsors Banned Books Week, Americans should embrace and protect First Amendment free speech, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

While none of the books Door burned appear on the ACLU of Iowa list of books that have been challenged in Iowa libraries, they none the less matter as the books were chosen based on prejudice against sexual orientation and Dorrs attempt at censoring LGBTQ-themed material.

Reporting on Banned Book Week, Iowa publication The Gazette noted:

Nationally, the American Library Association reported 354 book challenges at libraries, schools and universities last year, which is up slightly from the previous year and no doubt only captures a portion of attempted censorship. You probably notice most of the challenged literature deals with content social conservatives might object to. That seems a bit ironic, considering some of my fellow conservatives also cry oppression at social media regulations or college campus speech restrictions. Both sides can recognize the stifling of free expression when it fits their narrative.

Though Dorr timed the book burning to coincide with OC Pride, evidence exists to indicate it had been considered for some time.

Consequences & Moving Forward

The Des Moines Register reported today:

Earlier this year, a petition circulated in Orange City demanded that books with any LGBTQ content be separated from other books and labeled as such. More than 340 people signed. The library later reorganized its books by subject rather than alphabetical order by an authors name. Three of the four books burned by Dorr were featured in that petition earlier this year. Those include Two Boys Kissing, a young adult novel by David Levithan; Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, a childrens book about a boy who likes to wear a tangerine dress, by Christine Baldacchino; and This Day In June, a picture book about a pride parade, by Gayle E. Pitman. The fourth book Dorr burned was Suzanne and Max Langs Families, Families, Families!, about non-traditional families.

They added:

Amanda Vazquez, the librarys director, said she learned of the video on Saturday. The library alerted the board and spoke with authorities to determine next steps, including possible legal action, Vazquez said. She declined to comment further. The Orange City Police Chief confirmed that parties were discussing legal action, but declined to comment further.

Heres the full video:



Peacock Panache readers:

Tim Peacock is the Managing Editor and founder of Peacock Panache and has worked as a civil rights advocate for over twenty years. During that time hes worn several hats including leading on campus LGBTQ advocacy in the University of Missouri campus system, interning with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, and volunteering at advocacy organizations. You can learn more about him at his personal website.

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We hope you enjoyed reading this article! If you would like to support our ongoing work, please consider buying us a cup of coffee. It's not much, but we don't do this for the money. We do, however, need caffeine to keep going some days!If you do donate, send us a message through our Contact Us page or via social media so we can thank you!Manitoba Progressive Conservative MLA Cliff Graydon poses in this undated handout photo. A Manitoba government backbencher who made inappropriate comments to female staff has been ousted from the Progressive Conservative caucus. Cliff Graydon will sit as an Independent in the legislature. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Manitoba GovernmentDUBAI, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States on Sunday kicked off a two-week military exercise, state news agency WAM reported.

"Iron Magic 19" is part of a series of joint military exercises throughout the year between the UAE armed forces and the armed forces of other countries, WAM said.

The exercise seeks to reinforce cooperation, joint actions and exchange of expertise in military areas, it added.

The manoeuver will contribute to "maximizing the combat capabilities and increasing coordination between the UAE and the U.S. armed forces," the report noted.

The bulk of UAE military hardware, such as F-16 fighter jets, Mirage jets and Apache Longbow attack helicopters, are mostly manufactured by western defense companies from the United States, Britain and France.

However, the UAE, a major oil supplier, has established a growing defense industry in recent years, mainly in armored vehicles and naval military equipment.African swine fever (ASF) has been detected in southern China for the first time, prompting fears that the virus is already widespread across the country, which is estimated to be home to half the worlds pig population.

In a second worrying development, the ASF virus has been detected in the luggage of a traveller from China at a Japanese airport.

Since ASF was detected in for the first time there in early August, China has reported more than 40 outbreaks of the highly contagious disease in 11 provinces and municipalities, culling an estimated 200,000 pigs.

Until recently the virus has been confined to the north and east of the country, but it has now spread for the first time to the countrys south, its major pork-consuming region, Reuters is reporting. Two new cases were reported in the southwestern province of Yunnan on Sunday, coming as China enters its peak pig production period ahead of the countrys most important festival, the New Year holiday in early February 2019.

The latest outbreaks were on two small farms in Zhaotong, a city in the northeast of Yunnan. On Monday, another outbreak was reported in eastern Zhejiang province.

Zhaotong is located almost 3,000 km (1,865 miles) from the city of Shenyang in the northeastern province of Liaoning where the first outbreak was reported in early August, the Reuters report said.

A total of 545 pigs had already died on the two farms in Zhaotong when the disease was confirmed. Almost 7,000 pigs in the 3-km (1.9 miles) area around the farms were due to be culled on Monday, the website of state media Yunnan Daily said.

The thing that we worried about the most has now happened. In the southwest, everyone eats pork, no matter what their income level is, said Feng Yonghui, chief analyst at industry portal Soozhu.com.

Pan Chenjun, a senior analyst at Rabobank is quoted as saying the virus is now basically, already everywhere. Now theres only some provinces that havent confirmed any cases but its very unlikely that they will be clean, he said.

The cases in the southwest could have a major impact on the pork market, analysts warned, as the region both produces and consumes the most pork in China. Sichuan province, which borders Yunnan, is Chinas biggest pig-farming region, slaughtering 69 million pigs in 2016, according to official data. The Guangxi region, also next to Yunnan, produced 33 million pigs in 2016 and has expanded output.

People in Sichuan eat 68 kg (150 pounds) of pork per person per year, according to research by Rabobank. That compares with just 20 kg in Shanxi province in northern China.

Infected sausages

Meanwhile, Japans farm ministry (MAFF) said Monday that sausages in the passengers luggage at New Chitose Airport, in Hokkaido, tested positive for the disease, according to Kyodo News. The virus has not yet been detected in Japan and this is the first recorded case of the virus being brought to the country from overseas.

The incident dates back to October 1 when the passenger arriving from Beijing was found to have about 1.5 kilograms of heat-processed, vacuum-packed sausages. Passengers are banned from bringing pork products into the country and the sausages were confiscated and later test positive for the virus. It is unclear whether the sausages contained pork produced in China, the ministry said.

Japan was one of the first countries to ban pork exports from China after the virus was discovered there in early August.

Get Our E-Newsletter - Pig World's best stories in your in-box twice a week See e-newsletter example Will be used in accordance with our Privacy PolicyMAKERERE  The Makerere rubbish pits have turned into a source of survival for two street children in Wandegeya.

Shakul Mukasa, 14 and a 10-year old only identified as Peter rely on the rubbish pits of Makerere to collect boxes and paper, which they sell to get the basics of life.

The two boys are commonly seen in the rubbish pits of Lumumba, Complex and Mitchell halls and dustbins around the different Colleges on campus.

The two youngsters collect boxes and bottles and pack them into sacks, then walk to Buganda Road and sell them to get money for water, food, and clothing.

Mukasa narrates their story, explaining the process they go through daily. Every day we collect boxes and mineral water bottles; carry them on our heads to Kivuubo where we sell a kilo of boxes at UGX 200 and for more than a kilo of bottles, we are paid UGX 500,. Mukasa narrates that his friend Peter usually carries the sack of boxes since they are lighter.

The two young men earn UGX 4,000 on average every day, which they use to buy water at UGX 200, a mixture of chapati and beans for a meal at UGX 1,000 and occasionally buy second-hand clothes. However, Mukasa notes that traders cheat them and are sometimes too rude.

Peter, the youngest, who does not know his second name said that sometimes people chase them from the rubbish pits especially in the Colleges. On such days, unfortunately, they collect little, earn small or even go without a meal.

According to Jennifer Magara, one of the Mary Stuart custodians, it is not good to have these street children in campus because of theft fears. She, however, says sometimes it is only human to let the boys be because they are looking for what to eat.

Shakul and Peter get a nights sleep on the Wandegeya street pavements and shop verandas. Despite the two not being related by blood, they consider themselves brothers and care for each other.

Shakul was dumped in the Old Taxi Park two years ago by his elder sister as they arrived from Jinja.

Her whereabouts have never been known to him until now. Peter says he was dumped in Kampala by his mother and sister upon the fathers departure to Kenya seven years ago. Peter hopes that someday his father will return and pick him but for now, he finds support and a father figure in Shakul.

The two are only a portion of 2,000-10,000 street children in Kampala alone, according to Save Street Children, Uganda.

April 12 is the International Day of World Street Child, a day to create awareness in society for equal treatment and rights of street children.

RelatedAccording to Kentucky.com, crowds gathered late last week to welcome home a deputy with the Scott County (KY) Sheriff's Office who was mostly paralyzed in a gunfight in September.

Scott County Sheriff Tony Hampton said that the agency did not receive word until Wednesday that Deputy Jaime Morales would be released from a spinal rehabilitation facility in Louisville on Thursday.

Hampton called Thursday a "mini parade" because he hopes to have a much larger event in the future.

Two days after the event, the agency posted to its Facebook page a message from Deputy Morales' family.

"Words can not express how thankful we are feeling," the family said. "The welcome home that our wonderful town, great schools, and incredible family of law enforcement had organized was the most incredible and heart warming event that we have ever seen in our lifetime.

"As the proud parents of a US Marine and Sheriff Deputy Jaime Morales, we extend our deepest heartfelt thank you to the so many people and area businesses that are helping our son. The love and respect we are receiving is overwhelming. We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts," the family said.The Boise Treasure Valley SeaHawkers Booster Club held an event on Sunday to raise money for Ada County's "Shop with a Cop" program.

The event featured a chili cook-off and a corn-hole tournament.

"We Have a BYE week this week, but it's the Perfect time for Our 3rd Annual Chili Cook Off and Corn Hole Tournament!" the organization said on Facebook.

There was also an auction for certain signed Seahawks jerseys and other items, according to the group.

The goal was to raise $1,000 to help at least five kids.By Mei Shixiong

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (ChinaMil) -- General Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of Chinas Central Military Commission (CMC), met with visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on the morning of October 19. General Zhang Youxia said that under the promotion and strategic guidance of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, China-Russia comprehensive strategic coordination partnership has reached an all-time high.

As an important part of the bilateral relations, the relationship between the two militaries has maintained the positive momentum in development and witnessed fruitful results in various areas of cooperation. China-Russia military relationship enjoys a broad based cooperation and bright future, General Zhang Youxia said.

General Zhang stressed that China is ready to work with Russia to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of states, promote the in-depth development of the bilateral military relations, and contribute to safeguarding the sovereignty, security and development interests of both countries and maintaining regional and world peace and stability.

Shoygu said that in recent years, a series of fruitful and pragmatic cooperation launched by the two militaries has added positive connotations to the bilateral relations. Russia is willing to work together with China side-by-side to expand military cooperation in various areas and make positive contributions to deepening the strategic coordination between the two countries and the two militaries.Two Dearborn residents are among the 11 people seeking two available spots on the State Board of Education.

Mary Anne Hering, of the Working Class Party, and Richard Zeile, a Republican, are the two local candidates.

Hering has spent most of her career teaching at area community colleges and has long been a political activist.

This year marked a turning point in my life, she said. I decided I could not live in society as it was. I had to do something to change it.

Hering said she wants to stop the theft of public money for private interests.

I am the person  to raise the banner that there are hundreds of thousands of people in Michigan who are fed up with business as usual with the political life of this society, she said. It is going to take more than elections to change things.

She said it will take an uprising from the working class to fix many of the things she feels are wrong with the state.

I have been active primarily in the working class because I have confidence that the working class when it is organized can move mountains, she said.

Zeile, who is an incumbent, has worked in religion and education most of his life. Hes been on the State Board of Education since 2010, and has served as pastor and Headmaster at St. Johns Lutheran Church and School in Taylor, as well as an adjunct professor at Concordia University.

Ive served the last eight years on your State Board of Education, he said. An important message that Ive tried to bring is that we respect our teachers.

Zeile said respect for teachers is important not only from teachers and parents, but from administrators and policymakers, as well.

Teachers are professionals, he said. We need to leave some room for professional judgment. For teachers to apply their skill and knowledge to the needs and personalities of the students weve entrusted to them.

Zeile said having a rule for every situation isnt needed, and that more rules being put in place makes it less likely that anyone specific rule will be enforced.(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/772409/Jelurida.jpg )



Participate in the Ardor Online Hackathon 2018

Jelurida is excited to announce a new initiative to expand its community of developers and business partners. The Ardor Online Hackathon 2018 runs from today through 6 December 2018 and is an open call for developers anywhere to participate in three challenges to use lightweight contracts to automate business processes on the blockchain. The challenges cover currency exchanges, data storage and streaming, and identity verification. Jelurida will be awarding first, second, and third place prizes equivalent to US$4000, US$2000, and US$1000 for each challenge. Details can be found on Jelurida's website and developers can sign up here to receive email updates related to the Hackathon.

Ardor - The Only "Full Blockchain as a Service"

Jelurida released a bold statement calling out Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure for providing "Cloud Blockchain as a Service." Jelurida went on to thoroughly demonstrate how the Ardor platform, as the only "Full Blockchain as a Service" offering, provides upgraded decentralized security and quicker launch times for new businesses integrating with the blockchain (full statement).

Business-Ready Features in Ardor Version 2.1.2

In early October, Jelurida released Ardor Version 2.1.2 with one new feature on testnet and three business-ready features on mainnet: easy-to-integrate Lightweight Contracts that avoid costly data migrations (testnet), foolproof Transaction Vouchers that eliminate wire fraud, instant crypto exchanges with Changelly directly in the Ardor interface, and five bundler templates for hedging monthly business transaction fees on the blockchain while sponsoring end user fees (full statement).

About Jelurida

Jelurida is a blockchain software company that enables enterprises to build decentralized applications and services utilizing the Nxt and Ardor technologies. We offer scalable proof-of-stake blockchain solutions, with a unique parent-child chain architecture, built on top of five years of software development and production blockchain experience.

Media Contact: Veronica Torras, Marketing and Business Development, [email protected]

SOURCE JeluridaHANGZHOU, China, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Westlake University (Westlake or "the University"), the first private research university in the People's Republic of China, held its grand founding ceremony on 20 October at The Dragon Hotel in the city of Hangzhou, followed by forums on the future of higher education and basic and translational research.

To celebrate the opening of the institution and to exchange ideas on the role of a university, the founding ceremony gathered several renowned scholars and educators, including 5 Nobel Prize winners, Lin Jianhua, President of Peking University; Mark S. Wrighton, Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis; and Wei Shyy, President of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

"Westlake University has been entrusted with the shared dreams of 3 million overseas students and 1.4 million returning graduates," said Yigong Shi, President of Westlake University, at the founding ceremony. "Westlake University has made contributions in exploring the reform of Chinese higher education. Over the years, the development of Chinese higher education and the fostering of innovation has been challenged by the educational system," he said.

The university campus boasts three colleges: School of Life Sciences, School of Science, and School of Engineering. The campus has seven buildings that can accommodate 2,000 researchers and assistants with a total of 120 labs housed within its 106,000 square meters site. A second campus, currently under construction in Yungu, is expected to open in 2021, providing an additional 446,000 square meters of space serving around 300 teachers and 3,000 doctoral students.

Westlake has been making efforts to form a world-class faculty. So far attracting 68 renowned scientists and scholars to join their staff, who have expertise in mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, information technology, biology, and basic medical sciences among others.

Westlake is the first institute of higher education to accept PhD students from the start. Its first batch of 19 doctoral candidates enrolled in the fall of 2017, while an additional 120 students, who were present at the opening ceremony, have been accepted this year.

"We envision that, in ten or twenty years, Westlake University will become a world-renowned institution of higher education with distinctive Chinese characteristics founded in China," said Shi.

To celebrate the founding, Westlake also invited distinguished educators and scientists to Hangzhou for two forums taking place on October 20, where participants exchange thoughts on the global role of higher education institutes and their role at the frontier of scientific discovery.

About Westlake University

Westlake University is a non-profit research-oriented university supported by public and private funding. The predecessor of Westlake University is Westlake Institute for Advanced Study. The institute was established in Hangzhou on December 10, 2016. On February 14, 2018, Westlake University was established with the approval of the Ministry of Education of China. By 2026, Westlake University is expected to have about 5,000 full-time students, 300 professors, 600 supporting staff members, and around 900 postdoctoral fellows.

SOURCE Westlake UniversityCellPoint Mobile's leading payment platform will manage all payment transactions

for the Western Caribbean airline's online and mobile channels and enable fast deployment of alternative payment methods

MIAMI, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CellPoint Mobile, a leading global provider of digital commerce and payment solutions for the airline and travel sectors, is announcing a multi-year agreement with Haiti-based Sunrise Airways to provide new web and mobile-based payment solutions for the regional carrier.

CellPoint Mobile will integrate its leading payment platform Velocity with Sunrise Airways' existing passenger service system to manage all digital payment transactions and accelerate the roll-out of new and relevant payment methods in all of the carrier's markets.

This deployment will enable Sunrise Airways to seamlessly streamline the path to purchase across all their direct digital channels, both online and mobile. The new payment solution will increase conversions and maximize revenue per digital customer, facilitating, for example, the cross-selling of ancillaries.

"CellPoint Mobile's digital payment platform gives us a future-proof solution that allows our airline to better cater to passenger demands as we expand our regional network and begin offering more value-added services," says Philippe Bayard, President of Sunrise Airways. "We are very excited to take our payment processes to the next level, creating better experiences for our passengers and helping to grow our top-line revenue."

CellPoint Mobile's digital payment platform, Velocity, dynamically optimizes payments in all direct channels, and allows airlines like Sunrise to accelerate their deployment of new payment methods. For Sunrise Airways, CellPoint Mobile will also deliver highly intuitive hosted payment pages optimized for both web and mobile web, ensuring a frictionless experience in all digital channels.

"We are pleased to partner with Sunrise Airways to provide this innovative regional carrier with an effective payment solution that will be instrumental to achieving their long-term digital commerce ambitions," said James Schildknecht, Director of Business Development for Airlines and Hospitality at CellPoint Mobile. "Our highly scalable solution coupled with our leading payment eco-system of more than 200 payment partners enables a fast roll-out of new payment services and will be a key driver to boost Sunrise's digital transactions."

Velocity, CellPoint Mobile's payment-side solution being implemented by Sunrise Airways, is a full payment platform that integrates seamlessly with travel merchants' existing systems. It is a unique payment gateway that enables immediate access to multiple payment service providers (PSPs), acquirers, global consumer wallets and alternative payment methods (APMs), and provides advanced payment capabilities like card vault, pay by link and advanced fraud monitoring. Velocity's intelligent routing module can also optimize the route of each payment transaction to maximize acceptance rates and minimize the cost of cross-border transactions.

For more information about the Sunrise Airways deployment or to set up an interview with James Schildknecht of CellPoint Mobile, please contact Vanessa Horwell at [email protected].

About CellPoint Mobile

We Make Travel Easier for airlines, travel merchants and their customers.

CellPoint Mobile provides airlines, ground and sea transportation providers, and hospitality firms across the globe with flexible, configurable and efficient digital commerce solutions to streamline the path to purchase and optimize the entire sales cycle. Dedicated to a client-first, mobile-first culture since 2007, CellPoint Mobile provides travel merchants with the fintech and travel-tech solutions they need to get to market quickly: booking, payments, alternative payment methods, ancillary sales, loyalty transactions, communications, stored payment capability, real-time reporting, reconciliation, connections to payment service providers (PSPs) and acquirers, and more. Serving companies on five continents, CellPoint Mobile has locations in Miami, London, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dubai, Pune and Singapore.

About Sunrise Airways

Sunrise Airways (IATA: S6, ICAO: KSZ) is rising to meet the progressively expanding demand for safe, reliable, and affordable air travel throughout the Western Caribbean. From its hub in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian-owned carrier operates daily scheduled passenger service connecting key gateways across the region with the world. Sunrise Airways currently serves Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (SDQ and JBQ); Havana (HAV), Camaguey (CMW) and Santiago de Cuba (SCU) in Cuba; Curacao (CUR) and Cap Haitien (CAP). New flights to/from Kingston, Jamaica (KIN); Providenciales, Turks & Caicos (PLS) are planned in the near future, pending government approval. Sunrise presently offers 12 flights per week to Cuban destinations, with connectivity throughout its network, and is on track to fly more than 200,000 passengers in 2018. Headquartered in Port-au-Prince, Sunrise Airways is a privately-owned corporation with registered offices in Haiti.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/328874/cpm_logo_logo_Logo.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/772517/CellPoint_Mobile_Sunrise_Airways.jpg

Related Links

www.cellpointmobile.com



SOURCE CellPoint MobileHESSLE, England, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Giacom announced today that it has partnered with Storetec - an award-winning market leader in scanning, storage and document management solutions - to bring a tailor-made cloud service to its reseller-only channel. Newly launched in the Giacom Cloud Market, Document Management by Storetec enables resellers to store all their customers' scanned paper, text and image-based documents in a fully secure, GDPR-compliant database.

With two thirds of UK businesses struggling with paper documentation, taking on average five or six days to retrieve information that was either lost or misplaced[1], it's clear they may be putting their business at risk, leading to compliance failure. Document Management eliminates the hassle of locating files by uploading them into a secure database for quick and easy 24/7 access from any location.

As an award-winning UK vendor for document management solutions, Storetec has more than 15 years' experience handling sensitive business-critical information. The company has worked with huge clients, including the NHS and Virgin Media, and has met stringent security requirements to become ISO 27001 certified.

Exclusive to Giacom in the CSP market, Document Management enables users to easily upload scanned documents into their organisational database, customise the index fields and enable OCR (optical character recognition) making it text-searchable, and restrict or allow users from accessing sensitive documents by enabling user privileges. Available in two storage amounts, resellers can upgrade their customers at any time.

Mike Wardell, CEO at Giacom, said: "Storetec has been a vendor of choice for Giacom for some time. Their Document Management service will provide safe, secure storage and 24/7 document access to end users who may not have a cloud-based, SaaS solution in place. It's perfect for resellers who service industries with stringent security and compliance legislation."

"We're thrilled to partner with Giacom and bring our document management solution exclusively to their 5,000+ resellers," said Dave Wilkinson, Sales Director at Storetec. "We believe that Document Management will be hugely popular with their client base as it's a perfect addition to their existing software portfolio. We hope this is the beginning of a long and lasting relationship with Giacom."

As the number one Cloud Distributor for SMEs in the UK, Giacom is committed to bringing its resellers leading cloud services from world-class vendors into the marketplace. Resellers can purchase Document Management in the Giacom Cloud Market.

[1] 'The future has no paper: How SMEs can take their first steps towards a paperless office' - smallbusiness.co.uk

SOURCE GiacomLEUVEN, Belgium, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Oxurion NV (Euronext Brussels: OXUR - formerly known as ThromboGenics), a biopharmaceutical company developing innovative treatments to preserve vision in patients with diseases affecting the back of the eye, announced today it is extending its partnership with Retina Global, an international nonprofit organization focused on sustainable outcomes to retinal disease management in underserved areas around the world. Oxurion will support Retina Global's Bolivian Diabetic Retinopathy Project (BOLDR), committed to reducing the number of people going blind due to the increasing prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR) in Bolivia. The company will also join Retina Global as a corporate partner at an industry meeting hosted at the American Academy of Ophthalmology's 2018 annual meeting (AAO 2018) in Chicago.

The BOLDR project, supported by the World Diabetes Foundation and Oxurion, is focused on increasing DR screening and providing treatment to individuals with diabetic eye disease in Cochabamba, Bolivia and its surrounding areas, with plans for expansion into other cities. As a part of the initiative, retina specialists from the Americas and Europe will visit the city every two months to provide clinical care to patients with DR. Further, the program will provide training and certification courses, instruments and infrastructure to local ophthalmologists to increase patient access to vision-preserving therapies for diabetic eye disease.

The Retina Global Reception at AAO 2018 will bring together retina specialists, ophthalmologists and industry leaders who are committed to improving treatment options and clinical care for individuals with retinal diseases. The event will take place in Chicago, Illinois on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. For more information, please contact info@retinaglobal.org.

Rajat Agrawal, M.D., chief executive officer of Retina Global, said: "Despite scientific advancement over the past years, there are still areas in the world where people are losing vision due to lack of access to basic retinal care. Fighting blindness worldwide has always been part of our core mission. The support by Oxurion and other local as well as international organizations has made it possible for our organization to provide the necessary resources, improve clinical care and outcomes, and potentially improve quality of life for individuals with retinal diseases in underserved communities around the globe."

Patrik De Haes, M.D., chief executive officer of Oxurion NV, added: "We are proud to be extending our partnership with Retina Global by supporting the BOLDR project. This partnership reflects our continued commitment to patients living with retinal diseases around the world. As we develop disease-modifying therapies for the treatment of disorders affecting the back of the eye, we hope to fight blindness across the globe through meaningful partnerships that will improve access to patient care, especially in underserved communities."

About Retina Global

Retina Global is a nonprofit corporation focused on outreach programs to areas of the world where people have no access to basic retinal care. The organization's mission is to provide sustainable solutions to the increasing number of people around the world afflicted with retinal diseases. For more information, please visit www.retinaglobal.org.

About Oxurion

Oxurion (Euronext Brussels: OXUR) is a biopharmaceutical company developing treatments to preserve vision in patients with diseases affecting the back of the eye. The company has built a diverse portfolio of disease-modifying therapies, including treatments for diabetic eye disease, a leading cause of blindness in people of working age worldwide.

Oxurion's clinical pipeline consists of THR-317, a PlGF inhibitor, for the treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME) and MacTel1; THR-149, a plasma kallikrein inhibitor for the treatment of DME; and THR-687, a pan-RGD integrin antagonist for the treatment of diabetic retinopathy and DME. Further new drug candidates are currently being assessed and developed for the treatment of diabetic eye disease.

Oxurion owns the global rights to JETREA (ocriplasmin), the only pharmacological vitreolysis drug approved for the treatment of symptomatic vitreomacular adhesion (in the U.S.) and vitreomacular traction (outside the U.S.).

Oxurion is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, and is listed on the Euronext Brussels exchange under the symbol OXUR. In the US, Oxurion NV operates ThromboGenics inc. as a subsidiary company. More information is available at www.oxurion.com.

For further information please contact:

Oxurion NV

Wouter Piepers,

Global Head of Corp Coms & Investor relations

+32-16-75-13-10 / +32-478-33-56-32

wouter.piepers@oxurion.com



EU - Citigate Dewe Rogerson

David Dible/ Sylvie Berrebi

Tel: +44-20-7638-9571

thrombogenics@citigatedewerogerson.com



US - LifeSci Public Relations

Alison Chen

+1-646-876-4932

achen@lifescipublicrelations.com



Important information about forward-looking statements

Certain statements in this press release may be considered "forward-looking". Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, and, accordingly, entail and are influenced by various risks and uncertainties. The Company therefore cannot provide any assurance that such forward-looking statements will materialize and does not assume an obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or any other reason. Additional information concerning risks and uncertainties affecting the business and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement is contained in the Company's Annual Report. This press release does not constitute an offer or invitation for the sale or purchase of securities or assets of Oxurion in any jurisdiction. No securities of Oxurion may be offered or sold within the United States without registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or in compliance with an exemption therefrom, and in accordance with any applicable U.S. state securities laws.

SOURCE Oxurion NV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Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe meets with the heads of the ASEAN delegations visiting the ASEAN-China Joint Maritime Exercise-2018 in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, on the afternoon of October 21, 2018. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)

GUANGZHOU, Oct. 22 (ChinaMil) -- Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe met with the heads of the ASEAN delegations visiting the upcoming real-troop ASEAN-China Joint Maritime Exercise-2018 in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, on the afternoon of October 21.

Wei said that the ASEAN-China Joint Maritime Exercise-2018 is the first joint maritime exercise between the Chinese military and militaries from the 10 ASEAN countries, marking an important milestone in the history of China-ASEAN relations and demonstrating the confidence and determination of China and ASEAN countries to maintain regional peace and stability.

Wei said that China is willing to uphold Chinese President Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy and the principle of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness guiding its neighborhood diplomacy, focus on improving China-ASEAN defense relations, strengthen communication and exchanges, deepen pragmatic cooperation, and cooperate with ASEAN countries to build a strategic partnership at a higher level.

The heads of the ASEAN delegations appraised the successful performance of the joint exercise. They unanimously stated that the ASEAN countries are attaching great importance to strengthening cooperation with China in maritime security. Taking the opportunity of the joint maritime exercise, they hope to continue strengthening the military exchanges and cooperation between both sides and deepen understanding and mutual trust to jointly address maritime security threats.

Prior to the collective meeting, General Wei Fenghe met with Rear Admiral Lew Chuen Hong, Chief of Navy of the Republic of Singapore. Commander of the PLA Southern Theater Command Yuan Yubai and other officials attended relevant meetings.Welcome Guest! You Are Here:Ex-St. Petersburg MPs sentence for corruption appealed

 RAPSI

13:32 22/10/2018

ST. PETERSBURG, October 22 (RAPSI) - Ex-lawmaker of St. Petersburgs Legislative Assembly Svetlana Nesterova has appealed her 5-year prison sentence in a 4.8-million-ruble (about $74,000 at the current exchange rate) corruption case, the United press service of St. Petersburg courts has told RAPSI.

Nesterova was convicted in September. In addition to the prison term, the Krasnogvardeysky District Court of St. Petersburg fined her 6.1 million rubles. Prosecutors earlier demanded a 10-year prison term and a 10-million-ruble (about $153,000) fine for her.

According to the Investigative Committee, from June 2013 to December 2014, Nesterova organized embezzlement of budget funds allocated for reimbursement of two non-governmental organizations expenditures for performance of social programs for senior citizens and people with disabilities. Investigators claim that she involved her assistants Vera Shishkina and Tatyana Kitova as well as the organizations director Svetlana Gasanova in the crime.

Instructed by Nesterova, Shishkina, Kitova and Gasanova provided the Social Policy Committee of St. Petersburg, the chief controller of monetary grants, with false information on the scope and cost of services rendered upon social programs, the case papers read.

Therefore, the accomplices stole budget funds, 4.8 million rubles of which were funneled to then lawmaker Nesterova.

Kitova, Shishkina and Gasanova pleaded guilty. They received a 4-year suspended sentence each for complicity in embezzlement.



By Huang Panyue, Liu Changping

ZHANJIANG, Oct. 22 (ChinaMil) -- All participating naval ships got concentrated at a military port in Zhanjiang, South China's Guangdong Province, and were ready for ASEAN-China Maritime Exercise 2018 as the Philippine logistic support vessel (LSV) BRP Dagupan City arrived at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

The Military band of the Chinese PLA Navy performed music at the port to welcome the arrival of all participating troops from ASEAN countries. The Chinese naval ships were adorned with nautical flags to convey welcome and show courtesy.

The Chinese Navy sent the guided missile destroyer Guangzhou (Hull 168), missile frigate Huangshan (Hull 570) and comprehensive supply ship Junshanhu (Hull 961) for the exercise. The participating ships of ASEAN countries include the Formidable-class frigate RSS Stalwart from Singapore, the patrol ship Daruttaqwa from the Royal Brunei Navy, the frigate Taksin from the Royal Thai Navy, the frigate Tran Hung Dao from Vietnam and the Philippine logistic support vessel (LSV) BRP Dagupan City.

According to Li Bailin, deputy director of the Office of the Staff Department of the navy under the PLA Southern Theater Command, China first proposed the joint maritime exercise with ASEAN countries at the China-ASEAN Defense Ministers' Informal Meeting in 2015 and got active responses from all parties. Subsequently, China and ASEAN countries exchanged views for several times and reached consensus on main contents of the joint exercise. During the China-ASEAN Defense Ministers' Informal Meeting held this year, the leaders of all parties agreed to participate in a Table-Top Exercise in Singapore and a real-troop exercise in China within the year.

The ASEAN-China Maritime Exercise 2018 will be held from Oct. 22 to 28. The participants will carry out exchange activities and real-troop exercises in Zhanjiang and the water and air spaces east of it. The joint exercise involves the use of the "Code for Unplanned Encounters", joint search and rescue, as well as formation and communication among warships.

The exercise is an important action to implement the consensus reached by Chinese and ASEAN defense ministers, deepen China-ASEAN defense security cooperation and enhance mutual trust. It will also help promote military relations between China and ASEAN countries, strengthen maritime security cooperation, and enhance capability of joint response to security threats.'The government expects demand for electronic products to reach $400 billion by 2023-24. This would be a huge foreign exchange outflow, which may further widen our trade deficit with other nations. Hence, the government plans to push local electronics manufacturing to cut down on their import bill.'

A file picture of an assembly line for television sets at the LG Electronics factory in Greater Noida. Photograph: Reuters

India should have specific benchmarks on direct tax on the lines of China and Vietnam if it wants to create a globally competitive electronics industry, the India Cellular & Electronics Association has said.

The electronics body has suggested that verticals other than mobile phones should also be given a push.

'The new draft policy touches upon the industry pain points and attempts to address them'

The ministry of electronics and IT has released a draft electronics policy, which aims to create a $400 billion turnover in the electronics manufacturing ecosystem by 2025. However, as the majority of the amount is linked to mobile phones, experts feel that momentum should be created in other verticals also.

"The draft policy recognises the progress made in the mobile phone and related component ecosystem in the last three years. It lays down almost complete responsibility of achieving $400 billion by 2025 on mobile phones and components. We have to create a huge momentum in other verticals also while consolidating the mobile phones segment and that is a correction which has to be made," chairman of ICEA Pankaj Mohindroo told Business Standard.

He further said the government needs to benchmark more specifically in direct taxes with geographies like Vietnam and China. "We cannot establish a globally competitive electronics industry without these benchmarks," he added.

In the draft policy, the government has proposed to provide suitable direct tax benefits for setting up a new manufacturing unit or expansion of an existing unit.

The policy also proposes to promote a forward looking and stable tax regime, including advance intimation to the industry to plan investments in the form of phased manufacturing programme in various segments of electronics, with a sunset clause.

'We have to create a huge momentum in other verticals also while consolidating the mobile phones segment'

It has also been recommended to increase income tax benefits on expenditure incurred on research and development in the electronics sector.

However, of the $400 billion turnover in the electronics manufacturing ecosystem, $190 million is slated to be achieved from mobile phones. The proposed policy aims to double the target of mobile phone production from 500 million units in 2019 to one billion by 2025 so as to meet the objective.

According to the draft, the government plans to end the modified special incentive scheme with plans that it will find easier to implement such as interest subsidy and credit default guarantee, among others.

Modified special incentive package scheme (M-SIPS) was launched in 2012 and provided for capital subsidy of 25 per cent for the electronics industry located in the non-SEZ area and 20 per cent for those in the SEZ areas.

"The government expects demand for electronic products to reach $400 billion by 2023-24. This would be a huge foreign exchange outflow, which may further widen our trade deficit with other nations.

"Hence, the government plans to push local electronics manufacturing to cut down on their import bill," said Hanish Bhatia, senior analyst, Devices & Ecosystems, Counterpoint Research.

Production of mobile handsets, TVs and LED products (such as light bulbs) has gone up significantly in the recent past, primarily due to adoption of a robust duty structure in conjunction with PMP and incentivisation of local manufacturing through schemes such as M-SIPS.

"The new draft policy touches upon the industry pain points and attempts to address them. For instance, exemption of duty and easier passage on capital equipment/machinery in India will encourage global firms to set up their manufacturing operations in India. Similarly, the government wants to boost the component supplier ecosystem by incentivising via investment-linked deductions and subsidies," Bhatia said.

The government also wants to make India an export hub for electronics goods, targeting African and SAARC nations as key markets.Photo: Li Huamin

The first China-ASEAN joint military drill began Monday in Zhanjiang, South China's Guangdong Province, a sign of commitment from both sides to safeguard regional peace and stability.

The drill is aimed at putting the consensus between the Chinese and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) military leaders into practice, deepening defense cooperation between China and ASEAN members and boosting mutual trust, Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command chief Yuan Yubai said at the drill's opening ceremony on Monday.

The drill is of significance as it is not only the first time ASEAN has conducted a joint military drill with a single country, but also the first time the PLA has conducted a maritime drill with ASEAN. It is likewise the first multinational drill the PLA Southern Theater Command has organized since its establishment, Yuan noted.

Yuan said he expects the drill to become an important platform for officers and soldiers from different countries to communicate and understand each other.

Yuan hoped it would become a new start to build a community of shared future between China and ASEAN and jointly maintain peace and security in the region.

The drill includes harbor activities, maritime exercises and an exercise summary.

Participants will engage in exchange activities and discuss military medication and diving work, inspect rescue training and take part in desktop tactics.

The ASEAN delegations were also invited to inspect a new Chinese-guided missile destroyer and training ship.

The drill is scheduled Monday to Sunday in sea and air to the east of Zhanjiang, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

ASEAN members including Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, will send military vessels to join Chinese vessels in the drill.

Chinese State Councilor and National Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Sunday hailed the first-ever joint military exercise as a milestone event that will showcase the resolve and determination of China and ASEAN to safeguard regional peace and stability.The state has allowed industrial units in special economic zones (SEZs) to lay off workers without governments sanction, regardless of the number of workers

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

The home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had a distinct way of implementing labour reforms than that endorsed by the Centre.

One area where this distinction is visible is the retrenchment clause for factories with less than 300 workers, which has been supported by the Centre and adopted by Rajasthan.

The state of Gujarat, on the other hand, has continually stated that it has no plans to work on that front.

We are conscious of the existing struggles and rights of industrial workers and would like to work towards them and not against them, said a senior state government official in the labour department of Gujarat government.

While it has steered clear of the controversial step, Gujarat's efforts can at best be termed partial.

This is because the state has allowed industrial units in special economic zones (SEZs) to lay off workers without governments sanction, regardless of the number of workers.

At the same time, the state also increased wages of retrenched workers from 45 days earlier, to 60 days.

That was part of the major labour reforms that Gujarat introduced in 2015, when its Labour Laws Amendment Act was passed by the then President Pranab Mukherjee.

The Act involved amendment of several related Acts including Employees Compensations Act 1923, the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Motor Transport Workers Act 1961, the Beedi & Cigar Workers Act 1966, the Contract Labour (Regulations & Abolition) Act 1970, the Payment of Gratuity Act 1972, the Equal Remuneration Act 1976, the Building & Other Construction Workers Act 1996, and the Unorganized Workers Social Responsibility Act 2008.

Apparently, the bill was introduced by the then labour and employment minister, Vijay Rupani, under the then chief minister of Gujarat, Anandiben Patel. Rupani is now the chief minister of Gujarat.

Legal experts, however, have lauded Gujarats efforts to empower worker's through some amendments such as the Employees Compensation Act.

One of the amendments has been to allow a nominated government official to apply for the compensation of a worker in case the latter has suffered a fatal injury or partial disability at the workplace after 90 days from the date of accident.

Earlier, only workers or their dependents were allowed to seek compensation.

This has been welcomed by Prof Asha Verma of Gujarat National Law University, who specialises in labour laws.

"Such steps by Gujarat are in consonance with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

"It also brought in an amendment in the Minimum Wages Act 1948 where payment was earlier made in cash or kind and there was no cap on employees.

"But now, in an establishment that has 20 or more employees, payment has to be made directly into the employee's bank account. This ensures transparency," Verma told Business Standard.

According to Verma, another worker-friendly step has been the amendment in the definition of the word 'employer' under the Minimum Wages Act.

"Earlier, outsourcing agencies were not included under the definition, but now they are.

"This means that even contractors will be regarded as employers and will have to pay minimum wages, bringing a huge relief for contractual workers," Verma added.

On the flipside, the amendment sought to give powers to the government to prohibit strikes in public utility services in the first instance, by increasing the period of prohibition from the existing six months, to one year, and subsequently to not more than two years.

It also scaled down the period a worker could fight his case against the industry.

Under the amended law, an industrial worker now gets only a year to make an application against his dismissal, discharge, etc, raising an "industrial dispute" to the labour court or tribunal, as against the earlier window of three years.

Further, in accidental cases, the government can also now be a pleader in case the victim has not moved the Labour Commission within 90 days, and mediate an out-of-court settlement with a maximum compensation of Rs 21,000, of which 25 per cent will go to the government.

Gujarat also implemented a compulsory certification-cum-consolidated annual return scheme for factories, by doing away with the need to submit a large number of annual returns as prescribed under various labour laws.

However, for checks and balances, regular audit of such industries was included under which units that complied with the labour standards were exempted from inspections.

The state also inserted a provision for compounding of offences under the Industrial Disputes Act, Minimum Wages Act, the Payment of Bonus Act, the Contract Labour Act, the Payment of Gratuity Act, the Motor Transport Workers Act, Equal Remuneration Act and the Beedi Cigar Workers Act.

What this meant was that unlike before, where criminal cases were filed in courts for violation of labour laws and took years for disposal, the government enhanced the fine but allowed out-of-court settlements.

However, what was intended to help the ease backlog of court cases by the ruling BJP government by bringing in the 'out-of-court settlement', has been criticized by the Congress party.

According to Manish Doshi, spokesperson for Gujarat Congress, the amended laws have ended up as a licence to owners to get away by paying the fine.

Earlier, owners were afraid of violating labour laws as that would be treated as a criminal offence.

This has led to lesser power for the workers and more power to the industrialists," he said.

An estimated 15 million industrial workers are employed in Gujarat.

Meanwhile, in terms of recent labour reforms, after the Centre, Gujarat also followed suit, with the state assembly this year approving reduction in number of registers to be maintained under various labour laws from 50 to 5.Prime Minister Modi felt there were too many silos with no arrangement to take a comprehensive view on national security.

The PM has entrusted NSA Ajit Doval to evolve a comprehensive roadmap and get it implemented, reveals Nitin Gokhale, Editor-in-Chief, Strategic News International.

IMAGE: Indian Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba, centre, flanked by Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat, left, and Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa at the Amar Jawan Jyoti on Navy Day, December 4, 2017. Photograph: SpokespersonMoD/Twitter

Three Deputy National Security Advisers.

A Military Adviser.

A reconstituted Strategic Policy Group.

A dedicated think-tank to monitor and assess China across the spectrum.

Formation of a Defence Planning Committee.

Additional budget for the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS).

India's national security architecture is being transformed to meet current and future challenges.

The changes -- some announced, some shrouded in official secrecy -- are outcomes of the review of the national security structure ordered by the Prime Minister's Office last year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sources say, felt there were too many silos in the system with no arrangement to take a comprehensive view on national security.

The review, completed in mid-2018, has now led to these changes.

Appointment of two more deputy national security advisers, as opposed to just one in the earlier structure, is part of a major restructuring.

Accordingly, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) Rajinder Khanna will look after external and technical intelligence matters, Indian Foreign Service officer, former ambassador to Russia Pankaj Saran is entrusted with handling diplomatic affairs, and R N Ravi, former Intelligence Bureau officer and interlocutor for the Naga talks, has been assigned to oversee internal security matters.

Ravi was chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee until he was re-designated deputy national security adviser.

Khanna and Saran were already Deputy NSAs.

IMAGE: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/Reuters

The three deputy NSAs will now widen the scope and responsibility of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), which works directly under National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, arguably Prime Minister Modi's closest confidant on foreign and security policies.

Doval, a former career intelligence officer -- like Ravi and Khanna -- has been NSA and Special Representative for talks with China since 2014.

His remit has steadily increased since then and so has the budget of the NSCS.

From a measly Rs 39.9 crore/Rs 399.9 million (actual expenditure) in 2016-2017, its budget was increased to Rs 333.58 crore/Rs 3.3358 billion in 2017-2018 although it could only spend Rs 168 crore/Rs 1.68 billion at the end of the financial year 2017-2018.

However, for the current financial year (2018-2019) it has again been allotted Rs 303.83 crore/Rs 3.0383 billion.

With the increase in its mandate, the NSCS will likely need more funds in coming years.

Photograph: Divya Nair/ Rediff.com IMAGE: The Kargil Memorial in Dras.

Along with the division of responsibility in the NSCS, the government has also reconstituted the Strategic Policy Group, a body that has existed since 1999 (appointed by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government a month before the Kargil conflict began).

It was earlier headed by the Cabinet Secretary.

In a partial but significant amendment to the original office memorandum, the SPG will now be led by the NSA, with the Cabinet Secretary and vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog becoming members of the group.

Like in its earlier avatar, it will also have the three service chiefs, the intelligence chiefs, secretaries of defence, home, finance, atomic energy, defence research and development, revenue, space, and governor of the Reserve Bank of India as members.

The NSA will have the power to co-opt any other official and department as and when needed while the Cabinet Secretary will ensure coordination and implementation of decisions taken by the SPG.

In another concurrent development, a National Security Strategy document is now ready to be presented for discussion at the highest level.

Those in the know say at least three versions of a National Security Strategy have been attempted in the past, but none of them was either approved or released for public consumption.

Despite some indications earlier this year that the Modi government may put out some elements of the National Security Strategy in the public domain, sources say, the prime minister has now ruled against making any part of the document public.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, April 27, 2018. Photograph: MEA/Twitter

Another development that has largely gone unnoticed is the formation of a China-specific, MEA-run and funded think-tank.

Called the Centre for Contemporary China Studies, the new entity will only study China from an Indian point of view.

Manned by serving officers drawn from the MEA, the three armed forces, the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and other relevant ministries and departments, CCCS will prepare reports and undertake specific studies on China at the behest of different government departments to provide real-time policy inputs to the decision-makers dealing with China.

So, for instance, the CCCS can be asked to provide quick inputs by the commerce ministry on the impact of US trade sanctions against China and the likely advantage that can accrue to India.

Or recommend a future course of action in India's (largely positive) relationship with North Korea post the Trump-Kim summit.

The CCCS' governing body is headed by the external affairs minister and the NSA is the deputy chairman.

IMAGE: General Bipin Rawat, chief of the army staff, brief Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi on the security situation in Kashmir after four soldiers were slain in a firefight with terrorists, February 14, 2017. Photograph: Kamal Singh/PTI Photo

Coupled with the formation of the Defence Planning Committee earlier this year, and the recent approval given by the prime minister to the formation of three tri-services agencies -- to create a join structure for cyber, space and special operations across the three armed forces -- the new focus on restructuring the national security architecture has never been more intense.

Like the SPG and NSCS, the DPC is headed by NSA Doval, inviting charges of too much concentration of power in the hands of one person.

No matter what critics say, recent decisions are a clear indication that the prime minister has entrusted his NSA to evolve a comprehensive roadmap and get it implemented.

Doval already has too much on his plate (dealing with Pakistan, China, the US and Russia for instance), heading the nuclear command authority and handling the overall security situation.

Now to expect him to deliver on these crucial issues looks a challenging task.

However, as a trusted man of the prime minister, the NSA has the necessary authority lacking in earlier structures that had suggested reforms and roadmaps to bring India's national security architecture up to speed.'Predators will always try, but I'm sure there will be less. We need one or two big examples like this.'

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

Olga Tellis is one of Indian journalism's legendary reporters.

Olga -- as she likes to be called even by journalists 30 years younger -- has spent half a century reporting on politics, social issues, corporate warfare and other matters of importance for multiple publications before giving up active journalism recently.

She started off in a tiny news bureau in Mumbai, the first woman reporter to be hired by the Ananda Bazar Patrika group of publications.

Olga tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih about how the work environment has changed for women journalists since she began her career 52 years ago, about the sexual harassment charges against M J Akbar, her editor at two publications, and where the #MeToo movement is headed.

How the work environment has changed for women journalists

When I began in journalism, it was a man's world. There are more women than men in journalism today.

I was the first reporter to be taken in by the Ananda Bazar Patrika. They had women doing food columns, but when I joined, Ananda Bazar had never had any woman reporter. My interview was not even like an interview.

I remember being told 'See how they take to you', but they accepted me from the first day. Within a month of my joining I was sent on an assignment to Sri Lanka.

There was a small bureau in Mumbai. I went, sat in my place and started to work.

It was just me, the manager and one more person who looked after advertising.

I started to report whatever there was. Whenever men came from the Calcutta office (where the Ananda Bazar Patrika group is headquartered), they always looked sideways to see who this creature was.

I was one of those wearing tight skirts and heels. A female on the staff was a novelty over there.

When you are young you are very confident, you think you can do anything. I was accepted even by colleagues at other newspapers. They used to say that they treat women badly and do not take them seriously but from day one, I was taken very seriously.

In fact, I owe a lot to male colleagues from other newspapers who really helped me.

If junior reporters ever complained to her about sexual harassment

No. No junior came to complain to me. I don't know how we never knew about (M J) Akbar. Women did not complain about it. (Olga worked with Akbar twice, at the Mumbai bureau of Sunday magazine and then at The Asian Age when Akbar was the editor based in Calcutta and New Delhi).

I was quite shocked to know that all this was going on. One knew that Akbar had a glad eye like a lot of men have, but never to this extent that one is reading.

I was very surprised. He educated you in journalism -- he told you what to do with your story, how to start it, etc. He had a hot temper and I owe a lot to him, but whatever he is today, I am pretty shocked.

In Mumbai I knew he would call people to his room, but I never heard that anyone had complained about it.

He joined Sunday as the youngest editor at 27. He changed the look of the magazine and it became a must-read for everybody. It was so popular.

Wherever I went, people knew me because of the magazine. No other paper or magazine had such an impact.

Then he employed me in the Asian Age. He was always in Delhi. He then became a politician.

He had such a respected journalism career. It is sad how he has squandered everything.

Whether she feels let down by M J Akbar

I don't feel let down. To each his own. But I am very surprised. He is finished now.

I don't see anyone giving him any due. He was at his peak as a minister and that is all gone.

Sometimes I wonder, people like this who are so brilliant don't realise it and take it for granted, as their right. They think they are irresistible and everyone just falls for them or something. I don't know.

Photograph: Uttam Ghosh/ Rediff.com IMAGE: Olga Tellis, one of India's earliest women reporters.

Will the #Me Too movement continue with the same intensity?

I hear men are trembling now. I hope they realise that you can't get away. Of course, there will always be these kind of predators.

Predators will always try, but I'm sure there will be less. We need one or two big examples like this.

Maybe fatigue will set in and it will get pushed back, but it will have an impact.

There are always these cycles that come. People know there is a #MeToo movement. As long as it continues abroad, it will still have an impact here.

If the interaction between men and women at the workplace is likely to change after #MeToo

Yes. Today, if you touch someone on the shoulder it could be seen as harassment -- that he touched me inappropriately.

I think even a compliment like what a nice dress you are wearing could be misconstrued. It is quite scary.

The relationship with old colleagues will not change, the camaraderie will continue, (but) with newcomers it will change.

Whether she ever encountered sexual harassment in her career

No, not at all. Even when I went to interview people I never had any problems -- and I have interviewed smugglers to whatever. Maybe because I was very intimidating in the way I dressed and carried myself.

I have never faced any harassment, but I know people have. I don't dispute what they have gone through.

I never experienced anything or heard anything.

On men saying they are being subjected to false sexual harassment charges

But you can't use that as an excuse. False cases will be found out later. And these cases will be very few.

If political parties should set up sexual harassment committees

We live in an interconnected world. I think it should impact politicians too. I read that even while giving tickets women are expected to give favours. Hopefully, it will stop if this was continuing.

The Vishakha guidelines are still not in place in many organisations. Maybe they will put them in place now.

On the charge that #MeToo is an urban phenomenon

The people who say this are petty-minded. In households, maids are being abused and people are saying how come no one is saying anything about this and it is an elitist thing.

But this leads to change and will percolate down.

It will snowball and in various other places people will come out and speak.

The justice system also has to change. You can't wait for 20 years for a judgment.'The RSS guides us, never dictates.'

IMAGE: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan addresses a meeting. 'Our rallies are converting to votes,' says BJP national Vice-President Prabhat Jha. Photograph: Kind courtesy Prabhat Jha/Twitter

As Madhya Pradesh gears up to face the electorate on November 28, Prabhat Jha, former state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party and now its national vice-president and Rajya Sabha member, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar, "Jyotiradiya Scindia and Kamal Nath are leaders of their constituencies, they are not leaders of the state."

You called the Congress 'faceless, senseless and baseless'. But the Congress has a chief ministerial face in Jyotiraditya Scindia, and without sense and a base the Congress could not have ruled India for 60 years.

Jyotiradiya Scindia and Kamal Nath are leaders of their constituencies, they are not leaders of the state. They cannot even win elections in the neighbouring constituency.

You know out of seven assembly constituencies in his Lok Sabha constituency Kamal Nath lost four. Jyotiraditya Scindia can win in Guna, but his party loses in Gwalior and Morena.

They are both egotistic, they know all their party leaders, but they don't know their party workers.

Kamal Nath is a businessman, not a politician. He is not a politician with a state-wide image. They (Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia) are not leaders of the common people.

You mention that large crowds attend Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's rallies, but anybody with vehicles and money can mobilise large crowds.

You are forgetting our victories in 2008 and 2013, our rallies are converting to votes.

We have conducted 300 programmes across the state this time. We have personally reached out to 5 crore (50 million) voters.

What about the Vyapam scam? Do you believe this scam, which has seen so many mysterious deaths, will not affect your party's electoral prospects in MP?

The Vyapam scam was probed by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) on the high court's orders. The state government has nothing to do with it.

Both the high court and Supreme Court have held the Congress responsible for this scam. The Supreme Court even told Kapil Sibal to fight his battles in the assembly election and not in court.

Does your party decide who contests the elections? Or is it the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) which decides? Two days ago came the news that the RSS has asked Chouhan to drop 70 sitting MLAs.

That is news created by the newspapers. The RSS never gives such diktats. We all came from the RSS and we respect the RSS.

The RSS guides us, never dictates.

Who contests the elections is decided by the BJP.

You dismiss Kamal Nath as a corporate man. Critics of your party call the prime minister a supporter of corporates, especially after the Rafale deal.

The prime minister meets people from the corporate sector as the prime minister. He doesn't belong to that sector.

He doesn't own a factory nor does he have 4,000 workers working in his factory like Kamal Nath does.

Why did your government prefer Anil Ambani's company over HAL for the Rafale deal?

That Dassault knows, the French president knows. The Rafale was selected after consultations between the defence chiefs, the defence minister and Arun Jaitley.

There are so many accessories needed for that aircraft. We cannot reveal all of that.

It's a matter of national security, it's a defence matter.

The Congress is playing dirty politics with national security.

You dismiss Jyotiraditya Scindia as belonging to dynasty politics, but what about Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, his paternal aunt, who is in your party?

Though belonging to a dynasty Vasundhara Raje knows what democracy is.

She is a democratic leader. She knows her party workers and she knows administration.

She relates to the people of her state and she has won their hearts.

Will Hardik Patel have an effect on the outcome in Madhya Pradesh?

When he doesn't have any effect in Gujarat, how can he have any effect in Madhya Pradesh?

The farmers are upset with you especially after the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government ordered firing on the Mandsaur protests last year, killing six farmers.

Farmers of our state are with us, our kisan rally had 40,000 farmers in attendance.

The farmers you are talking about lost their lives because of the Congress. Their farmer leaders provoked the farmers and thus they were killed.

In Sabarimala your party is protesting against the Supreme Court's ruling. Isn't that going against the law you are supposed to uphold?

I am busy with the elections in Madhya Pradesh and I am not following what is happening in Sabarimala.

But I would like to tell you that we are law-makers, not law-breakers.The feud between Central Bureau of Investigation Director Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana turned murkier with the arrest of Devender Kumar, a deputy superintendent of police in the special investigation team headed by Asthana.

CBI Director Alok Verma was called to the Prime Ministers Office on Sunday where he met senior officials, and concerns of the top office about the working of the agency were communicated to him.

The meeting took place in the background of a CBI FIR against its Special Director Asthana, who is heading the special investigation team and in-charge of several sensitive cases such as loan fraud by business tycoon Vijay Mallya and AgustaWestland chopper scam.

The CBI carried out searches at Kumars residence and his office at the agency headquarters on Saturday and Sunday, and claimed to have seized his mobile phones and iPads.

The CBI went a step ahead and arrested Kumar on Monday, alleging he had fabricated the statement of Sathish Sana, a businessman from Hyderbad, who was facing probe in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi.

The statement was shown to be recorded on September 26, 2018 when Sana was not in Delhi and it was done in order to strengthen Asthanas complaint against the CBI Director which is being looked into by the Central Vigilance Commission, officials said.

The matter relates to alleged creation of a fabricated statement U/S 161 (CrPC) of a witness in another case at Delhi by the said accused (Kumar), the CBI spokesperson said Monday.

In the purported statement, Sana informed the CBI team that he had said about the CBI case against him to a Rajya Sabha MP of the Telugu Desam Party, who had met CBI Director Alok Verma and after the meeting assured that he would be given clean chit in the matter, they said.

Asthana in his complaint to the CVC had mentioned about the statement alleging Verma was trying to give relief to Sana after taking bribe of Rs two crore from him.

With the statement now claimed to be fabricated by the investigating team of the CBI, Verma can use it in his defence before the Central Vigilance Commission which is seized of the matter, they said.

The probe in the matter has been handed to an officer of the agency against whom Asthana had levelled allegations of insubordination and questionable integrity who reported directly to Verma.

The feud between the two started when Asthana questioned the attempts of Verma to induct certain officers in the CBI last year.

Verma gave back by objecting to the promotion of Asthana as Special Director, which was not given heed to by the transparency watchdog.

An application against his appointment was also rejected by the Supreme Court paving the way for Asthanas appointment as Special Director and number two in the agency.

Asthana filed an exhaustive complaint to the CVC against the CBI Director on August 24, 2018 giving over 11 instances of alleged corruption and irregularities against him, which included receiving Rs 2 crore bribe from Sana.

Verma also wrote to the CVC that Asthana cannot represent him in selection committee meetings in the transparency watchdog when he is away.

Meanwhile, the CVC had called files of certain cases from the CBI which were mentioned by Asthana in his complaint. The files were furnished with a strong letter alleging that the role of Asthana was under probe in at least six matters.

On October 15, the CBI registered the FIR against Asthana alleging criminal misconduct on his part and that Sana had allegedly paid bribe of around Rs 5 crore through a middleman to the Special Director to get relief.Photograph: Umar Ganie for Rediff.com IMAGE: Security personnel guard a blocked road during a strike called by separatists in Srinagar on Monday.

Normal life was disrupted in the Kashmir Valley on Monday due to a strike called by separatists over the death of seven civilians in a blast at an encounter site in Kulgam district.

Shops, private offices, fuel stations and other business establishments were shut in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

They said public transport was off the roads while private cars were seen plying in few areas of the city.

The strike affected attendance in government offices and banks, the officials said.

They said while there were no restrictions anywhere in the city, there was heavy deployment of security forces at several places here as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order.

The officials said reports of shutdown were received from other district headquarters of the valley as well.

Separatists on Sunday called for a strike on Monday over the death of civilians in a blast at an encounter site in Laroo area of Kulgam district of south Kashmir.

The strike was called by separatists Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik under the banner of Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL).

Three terrorists were killed Sunday in the encounter, while seven civilians lost their lives in a blast following the gunfight there.

The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), a Kashmiri Pandit organisation -- Kashmiri Pandit Sangarash Samiti (KPSS) -- and All Kashmir Auto-Rickshaw Drivers Association have extended their support to the strike called by the separatists.

Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) and Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) have postponed examinations scheduled for Monday.Labelled as the semi-final before the big Lok Sabha poll, assembly elections in five states will set the tone for summer of 2019.

Together they constitute just 83 Lok Sabha seats, not even 20 per cent of the total strength of the Lower House. But elections to the five assemblies, for which the results will be out on December 11, will be about prestige -- for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power in three of the five states; K Chandrasekhar Rao and his Telangana Rashtra Samithi; and the Congress, which currently rules Mizoram.

Business Standard deconstructs the mathematics and chemistry of the forthcoming round of polls.

Rajasthan

The Vasundhara Raje government is facing a problem of plenty.

With 160 MLAs, she really cant be blamed for being unable to satisfy all.

This is the crux of the Bharatiya Janata Partys difficulties.

Those who have been in the BJP for decades have drifted away.

Admittedly, leaders like Ghanshyam Tewari, who has formed his own political party vowing to fight the BJP, will not be able to make much of a dent.

But the Raje government could have done without this problem.

On the other hand, the Opposition Congress, although with factional problems of its own, is snapping at its heels on the back of mistakes made by the administration.

In September 2017, the BJP government announced farm loan waiver of up to Rs 50,000 after a 13-day farmer agitation in the Shekhawati region but has not acted upon it.

The Centres recent announcement of hiking minimum support price, farmer leaders say, is also an eyewash because it doesnt take into account all the costs of production and includes only family labour, and cost of fertiliser and seeds.

Businessmen and traders have also complained that the good and services tax and demonetisation hit their businesses.

Livelihood issues, infrastructure creation and development are likely to be key issues.

Rajasthan has seen some vigilante violence which has the minorities up in arms.

Telangana

When the first-time chief minister of a new state, K Chandrasekhara Rao, called for the dissolution of the assembly and fresh election nine months ahead of the schedule (the state polls should have been held along with the Lok Sabha elections in May 2019), no one was surprised.

KCR has proved to be a wily politician -- keeping the BJP thinking it had an ally in him (the TRS supported its choice of president) but also hosting opposition MLAs from Karnataka in Hyderabad when after the Karnataka election, the Congress alliance, Janata Dal-United feared poaching by the BJP.

The TRS has encouraged defections from the Telugu Desam Party, reducing the number of TDP MLAs from 16 to 3.

The only force it has not riled is the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen.

As a government, the TRSs performance has been spectacular in terms of delivery, although the base has been low.

The Congress has a relatively weak leadership and the BJP hasnt even started building up a base in Telangana.

At the moment, its the TRS all the way.

Madhya Pradesh

With the Congress divided into many factions led by Kamal Nath, Digvijaya Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Suresh Pachauri, Ajai Singh, Arun Yadav, Kantilal Bhuria and a few others, the BJP is confident it will manage another term.

Not because it is popular but because the Congress is a divided house.

In a recent Dainik Bhaskar survey, 55 per cent respondents said factionalism is the biggest challenge for the Congress; 30 per cent said the party could not provide a viable alternative because of in-fighting.

But Madhya Pradesh is possibly the only state in India where firing on farmers led to the death of nine.

The primarily agrarian state suffered as a result of a global crash of agri-commodity prices, and while Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan tried to reverse the damage, he could not intervene effectively.

The plight of farmers, issues of caste (MP has seen a forward caste protest movement develop) and jobs are going to be the main issues.

Mizoram

Will this northeastern state buck the trend and not succumb to the BJP like its neighbours?

The state is currently ruled by the Congress but there is no visible anti-incumbency and at a recent party meeting, the 76-year-old chief minister, Lal Thanhawla, told party colleagues that the Congress would be able to win the assembly polls easily as it had brought peace and tranquillity, though it has been ruling since 2008.

Like in the rest of the northeast, tribal loyalties are strong here.

One of the biggest issues in the election is how to bring the entire state under the Sixth Schedule to protect the tribal nature of Mizoram, end border disputes with Assam, and drive out illegal immigrants.

Zoramthanga, chief of the Mizo National Front, the states biggest regional party that has been in power twice between 1998 and 2008, is clear that the BJP is not a factor and that the state would see a straight fight between his party and the Congress. '

Chhattisgarh

The most marginal player, untested in any previous election, the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh led by Congress rebel and former chief minister Ajit Jogi will likely hold the ace in the forthcoming election.

Over the years, the BJPs vote share difference with Congress has progressively declined from 2.5 per cent in 2003 to 1.7 per cent in 2008 and just 0.75 per cent in 2013.

The Congress had eyed the 4.27 per cent votes polled by Bahujan Samaj Party in 2013 to bridge the gap and leave the BJP behind.

But as the Congress scratched its head wondering how to proceed next, it was Jogi who moved in, tying up with the BSP to seal an alliance deal.

How will this play out? This is a crucial question.

Jogi will take away the Congress's votes.

But he has a following among tribals and will also take away the BJP's votes.

If the Jogi alliance manages to win some seats, the possibility of a hung assembly cannot be ruled out.

In case of a fractured mandate, it is possible that both national parties will woo him and he may act as kingmaker.

While the ruling Raman Singh administration will list its achievements ranging from leakage free delivery of rations, the Congress will home in on corruption and lack of development in the state.

This promises to be the most interesting among all the five assembly elections.The election seem to have been conducted without any major security lapses.

However, in the coming weeks, the military situation in Kandahar could tilt in the Taliban's favour, notes Aveek Sen.

IMAGE: An Afghan woman casts her vote in the parliamentary election at a polling station in Kabul. Photograph: Mohammad Ismail/Reuters

On Saturday, October 20, Afghanistan voted for its lower House of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, even as threats to attack the 'illegitimate elections' were issued by the Taliban and Islamic State-Khorasan Province, which is mainly composed of breakaway members of the Taliban.

A high voter turnout of more than 2 million was reported even as some attacks were reported as polling day ended. Speaking to the Afghan media, Afghanistan Chief Executive Dr Abdullah Abdullah said the 'high voter turnout was in response to enemies'.

Afghanistan's interior ministry said 27 civilians and security forces were killed in 192 different terror attacks across the country. The New York Times newspaper estimated the figures to be much higher -- 250 civilians wounded, mostly in Kabul and Kunduz.

Given that the voting began late in certain centres owing to the use of technological advancements for the first time, the Afghan election commission extended polling in those centres till 8 pm local time..

Voting in Kandahar province was postponed by a week due to the delicate security situation.

The entire top security leadership in the region, including the influential police chief General Abdul Raziq, were assassinated in a terrorist attack on October 18, an attack claimed by the Taliban.

General Razi was seen as a bulwark against the Taliban and had managed to maintain peace in the restive province.

The attack, which came just as a meeting on security measures to be implented during the election concluded, was carried out by a guard infiltrated into the governor's security team.

The Afghan intelligence agency NDS's Kandahar head, General Abdul Momin, was also killed in the attack. Kandahar Governor Zalmai Wesa was injured, but survived.

IMAGE: Kandahar police chief General Abdul Raziq, who died in the October 18 terrorist attack, Kandahar Governor Zalmay Wesa, who was wounded in the attack, and United States General Austin Scott Miller, commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, who escaped uninjured, at the meeting in the Kandahar governor's compound in Kandahar, shortly before the Taliban attack. Photograph: Reuters

General Austin Scott Miller, commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, was unharmed though another US general Brigadier General Jeffrey D Smiley was wounded (external link) in the attack.

Afghan Deputy Minister of the Interior General Akhtar Mohammad Ibrahimi said an 'enemy infiltrator' opened fire as the participants in the meeting headed to their helicopters after the discussions ended.

The news brought despair across Afghanistan. General Razi had survived dozens of such attacks.

A January 2017 attack at a Kandahar guesthouse office, again by an infiltrator -- a cook -- killed five diplomats from the United Arab Emirates including its ambassador to Afghanistan Juma Mohammed Abdullah al Kaabi. Humayun Azizi, the then Kandahar governor, was wounded in the attack and hospitalised for weeks.

General Raziq had just stepped out of the room that day before the bomb exploded. A joint investigation by the NDS, the Afghan police and an UAE investigation team concluded the target was the UAE ambassdor and instructions for the attack came from the Taliban's Quetta Shura.

"There has been an ongoing war in Afghanistan for a long time. Afghanistan is at war for the last 40 years and it affects civilians, security forces and government officials. Among all of this, General Raziq was a hero and a legend," Deputy Minister for Strategic Planning and Policy at Afghanistan's interior ministry Masood Ahmad Azizi tells this correspondent.

"He served his country truly and effectively. It is a very big loss for us. He will be remembered as a legend by us," adds Azizi.

"This is the most devastating moment in the history of the 17-year war so far," says Peymana Assad, a British politician who represents Afghan refugees who escaped that war in the United Kingdom.

"The assassination of General Raziq in Kandahar will have a profound impact on security in southern Afghanistan. Whilst the enemies of Afghanistan celebrate," says Assad, "I hope this sends a clear indication to the US and its allies, we need to get serious about the root causes of this conflict and the sponsors and backers of these terrorists in neighbouring countries, mainly Pakistan."

"It is distressing to see how dangerous the war has become and how things have been allowed to get so bad," says Ambassador Manpreet Vohra, a former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan.

"I knew the victims well. They were good Afghans working for the security and development of their people. This attack could be an inflection point for Afghanistan's future," Ambassador Vohra adds.

"A true son of Afghanistan has paid with his life for defending his country against the proxies of Pakistan. It is a huge loss for Afghanistan," says Ambassador Amar Sinha, another former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan.

"It is not the Taliban, but Pakistan's ISI which has killed General Razi and almost the entire top security hierarchy of Kandahar," asserts retired Indian diplomat Ambassador Rajiv Dogra.

"The police chief is the most important powerbroker in southern Afghanistan and Kandahar is one of the closest cities to Quetta where Pakistan has assembled its entire anti-Afghan leadership," says Ambassador Dogra.

The October 18 attack in Kandahar, Ambassador Dogra believes, "should be seen as a revenge by the Pakistan army for its Frontier Corps soldiers who were killed when they joined the Taliban in an attack on Ghazni in August 2018."

This attack, he adds, is "also a challenge to the US which has been urging Pakistan to stop its terror activities in Afghanistan. It is also the Taliban's reply to American efforts to engage with it in Doha."

IMAGE: The funeral of General Abdul Raziq, the Kandahar police commander killed in a Taliban attack on October 18, 2018. Photograph: Ismail Sameem/Reuters

Afghanstan's election commission says at least 10 candidates have been killed since July. The attacks intensified (external link) in the weeks before the election.

On October 17, 2018, a popular candidate, Abdul Jabar Qahraman, a general in the Afghan army in the 1980s, was killed in his office in the southern Helmand province in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

A Sikh Afghan candidate, Avtar Singh Khalsa, was killed in a suicide blast in Jalalabad in July. Avtar Singh was running unopposed for a seat reserved for the minority Sikh community.

The head of the Afghan Sikh and Hindu Council, Avtar Singh, had been a senator in the upper house of the Afghan parliament. He had also served in the Afghan army. His son Narinder Singh Khalsa, among those injured in the July attack, is now contesting the seat.

Saturday's election seem to have been conducted without any major security lapses. However, in the coming weeks, the military situation in Kandahar could tilt in the Taliban's favour.

As the US-Taliban peace talks progress and with the Donald J Trump administration impatient to have an honourable exit from Afghanistan, further battlefield gains would give the Taliban greater leverage to negotiate.The U.S. military has canceled new restrictions banning South Koreans from visiting U.S. military bases in Japan, Ambassador to Japan Lee Su-hoon told lawmakers here last Thursday.

The ban, which newly added South Koreans to a long list of foreigners who are banned from U.S. Forces Japan bases, caused some consternation here.

But Lee said the ban was "a mistake" and that restrictions have now been lifted.

Instead, South Koreans can enter U.S. bases in Japan as before as long as they have an invitation from U.S. military personnel and ID, an official at the Korean Embassy to Tokyo said.

On Oct. 15, the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that South Koreans would have to undergo extra screening before they can meet friends or attend events on U.S. bases in Japan and apply for a visitor pass about a month in advance.

Freedom in the World 2018 - Tuvalu

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Tuvalu, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce1626.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 94 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 10,000

Capital: Funafuti

GDP/capita: $2,970

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Tuvalu is a parliamentary democracy that holds regular, competitive elections. Civil liberties are generally upheld. Ongoing problems include a lack of antidiscrimination laws to protect women and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people.

Key Developments in 2017:

In July, a by-election was held to fill the seat of former prime minister Apisai Ielemia, who had been removed from Parliament in 2016 after a corruption conviction. However, the legitimacy of the vote was disputed, as Ielemia's conviction had been overturned and he was challenging his removal in the courts. The case was unresolved at year's end.

The Ielemia dispute stirred speculation that Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga's governing majority in Parliament was at risk, but he remained in office throughout the year.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 37 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

A governor general represents the British monarch as ceremonial head of state. The prime minister, chosen by Parliament, leads the government. Enele Sopoaga, who became prime minister after his predecessor was ousted in a no-confidence vote in 2013, secured a new term after the 2015 parliamentary elections, holding together his alliance of independent lawmakers.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The unicameral, 15-member Parliament is directly elected through contests in eight geographical constituencies, all but one of which have two members each. In the 2015 elections, all candidates ran as independents, and 12 of the incumbents returned to office. Each of the main inhabited islands in Tuvalu is also governed by an elected local council.

Apisai Ielemia, the prime minister from 2006 to 2010, was removed from his Parliament seat in 2016 following a corruption conviction earlier that year, even though the conviction had since been overturned. Ielemia maintained that his removal was invalid and that he was still a member of Parliament. Nevertheless, a by-election for his seat proceeded in July 2017, and the winner, Isaia Vaipuna Taape, was sworn in to fill it. Ielemia was pursuing an appeal in the courts as of late 2017.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

Tuvalu's legal framework provides for democratic elections, and the laws are fairly and impartially implemented.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 15 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

There are no formal political parties, though no law bars their formation. Candidates typically run as independents and form loose, frequently shifting alliances once in office.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Tuvalu has an established pattern of democratic transfers of power. Individual prime ministers and governments have seldom lasted a full term in office in recent decades, with intense political rivalries often prompting no-confidence votes in Parliament.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

Traditional elders and the main Protestant church play an influential role in society, but they do not exercise undue control over the political choices of voters and candidates.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

All Tuvaluans aged 18 and over who are present in the country on polling day but not imprisoned are eligible to vote. While women formally have full political rights, in practice their participation is somewhat inhibited by traditional biases. Three women ran for seats in the 2015 parliamentary elections, and one of them won office.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

Tuvalu's elected officials are able to develop and implement government policies and legislation without improper interference from any unelected entity.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

Corruption is not a severe problem in Tuvalu, and the country's independent auditing and law enforcement bodies are generally effective in combatting graft, though there have been some corruption scandals in recent years. Former prime minister Ielemia was convicted in 2016 for receiving over $15,000 from Japanese and Taiwanese sources while in office and depositing the money in a personal bank account. The conviction was overturned by a higher court a few weeks later, but the fact that Ielemia had begun to serve a prison term led to his disputed removal from Parliament.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

Government operations and legislative processes are generally transparent, though there is no freedom of information law to guarantee and regulate public access to official records. While officials are legally obliged to disclose their assets and income, the rules are not consistently enforced, according to the U.S. State Department.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 57 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 16 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 4 / 4

The constitution provides for freedom of the press, and there are no reported restrictions on this right, though the small media market does not support independent domestic news outlets. The government operates a radio station and a national newspaper. Many residents use satellite dishes to access foreign programming. Internet penetration has grown in recent years, approaching 50 percent of the population in 2017, though access is largely limited to the main island.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

The constitution and laws provide for freedom of religion, and this right is generally respected in practice, particularly on the main island of Funafuti. A Protestant church, the Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, has official status under the law, and about 97 percent of the population belongs. Traditional leaders are empowered to regulate local religious activities, and on smaller islands they sometimes discourage minority groups from proselytizing or holding public events.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

There are no significant restrictions on freedom of expression. The government does not improperly monitor personal communications or social media activity.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

The constitution provides for freedom of assembly, and the government typically upholds this right in practice.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Freedom of association is respected. Nongovernmental organizations operate without interference, providing a variety of health, education, and other services.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Workers in the private sector have the right to organize unions, bargain collectively, and strike. Public-sector employees can join professional associations and engage in collective bargaining, but they are not permitted to strike. Most labor disputes are resolved through negotiations in practice. The only registered union represents seafarers.

F. RULE OF LAW: 15 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

The judiciary is independent. The chief justice is appointed by the head of state on the advice of the cabinet, and other judges are appointed in the same manner after consultation with the chief justice. Judges cannot be removed arbitrarily.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

The authorities generally uphold due process during arrests, detentions, and trials. A public defense lawyer is available to detainees and defendants. However, the limited capacity of the legal system can lead to delays in court proceedings and access to counsel.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

There were no reports of physical abuse by police or in the prison system during the year. Criminal activity does not pose a major threat to physical security.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

While women generally enjoy equality before the law, traditional customs and social norms can limit women's role in society, and there are no specific legal protections against gender discrimination in employment.

Sexual activity between men can be punished with imprisonment, though the law is not actively enforced. Discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is not specifically banned.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 14 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Tuvaluans are free to travel within the country and abroad, and to relocate for purposes including employment and education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4

The legal framework and government policies are generally supportive of property rights and private business activity.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Although personal social freedoms are generally respected, domestic violence often goes unreported because it is viewed as a private matter. There are no specific laws against spousal rape.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Forced labor is prohibited, and the government mandates basic protections against exploitative or dangerous working conditions, though enforcement is not proactive or consistent. Most of the labor force works in the informal sector or in small-scale fishing and agriculture.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedThe decision would delay the project, dealing a blow to Korea Aerospace Industries and other defense companies while complicating the retirement of Korea's aging F-4 and F-5 fighter jets.

Jakarta originally pledged to shoulder 20 percent of the W8.5 trillion development cost of the KF-X fighter jet using Korean designs and technology by 2026 (US$1=W1,133).

Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs, Wiranto, on Friday told reporters that his government decided to renegotiate its share in the project. Wiranto said the decision came from President Joko Widodo.

Indonesia was to shoulder 20 percent of the development cost in return for one prototype of the fighter jet and the blueprints, as well as some 50 of the aircraft to be manufactured there.

But it failed to pay its portion of W238 billion for the second half of last year and the first half of this year.

Thomas Lembong, the head of the Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board, said the Korean government "understands" Jakarta's difficult position and that President Moon Jae-in agreed with the renegotiations during Widodo's visit to Korea in early September.

Lembong added that the two sides agreed to wrap up the renegotiations within a year.

The project was slated for completion in the first half of 2026, and 120 of the aircraft were to be built. The entire price tag for the project stands at W18 trillion.Freedom in the World 2018 - Transnistria

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Transnistria, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce18c.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Not Free

Aggregate Score: 24 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 6.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 6 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 6 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 510,000

OVERVIEW

Transnistria is a breakaway region of Moldova in which ethnic Russians and Ukrainians together outnumber ethnic Moldovans. The territory has enjoyed de facto independence since a brief military conflict in 1992, though it is internationally recognized as a part Moldova. Its government and economy are heavily dependent on subsidies from Russia, which maintains a military presence and peacekeeping mission in the territory. Political competition is limited, and the dominant party is aligned with powerful local business interests. Impartiality and pluralism of opinion in media is very limited, and authorities closely control civil society activity.

Key Developments in 2017:

Former president Yevgeniy Shevchuk faced corruption charges that were widely viewed as politically motivated, and fled the territory.

A key bridge between Transnistria and Moldova was opened in November, facilitating the easier movement of people and goods between the two and raising hopes for future agreements.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 10 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 3 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 1 / 4

The president is elected to up to two five-year terms. Parliament speaker Vadim Krasnoselsky, an independent closely associated with the Obnovleniye (Renewal) Party, defeated incumbent Yevgeniy Shevchuk in the 2016 presidential election, following a campaign characterized by corruption allegations traded between the two. Shevchuk was defeated even as his campaign draw significantly on public resources, including the state media, which heavily favored him and sought to portray Krasnoselsky as a crony of Sheriff Enterprises, the powerful business conglomerate that dominates the economy and backs the Renewal Party; Krasnoselsky had previously served as the company's security chief. Given Transnistria's political status, established election monitors did not send missions to oversee the contest.

Constitutional amendments approved in 2011 created a relatively weak post of prime minister. The president appoints the prime minister, who is approved by the parliament. Krasnoselsky tapped Alexander Martynov to serve as prime minister in late 2016.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 1 / 4

Members of the 43-seat, unicameral Supreme Council are elected to five-year terms. Renewal won a landslide victory in 2015 elections, due in large part to poor economic conditions and dissatisfaction with then president Shevchuk's government. A small group of Shevchuk's allies and supporters demonstrated against the results of the elections, claiming vote manipulation. As Transnistria is not internationally recognized, no established election monitor sent a mission to observe the election's conduct.

The winners of 2017 by-elections for seats left vacant by resignations were considered allies of Sheriff Enterprises. Several candidates were reportedly impeded from registration, including one who was favored to win his district.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 1 / 4

In recent years, actors from various political camps have alleged that the Electoral Commission is subject to political pressure. In 2015, ahead of that year's elections, authorities unsuccessfully tried to evict the Electoral Commission from its offices, in what was viewed as an attempt to interfere with its operations.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 5 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 1 / 4

Transnistria's entire political establishment, including nominal opposition parties and civil society organizations, supports the separatist system and Russia's role as patron. In the 2015 Supreme Council elections, Renewal won overwhelmingly with 35 of 43 seats; Proryv (Breakthrough) and the Communist Party each won 1 seat. Several independent deputies gained seats, but they are strongly affiliated with Renewal. With the 2016 election of Krasnoselsky as president, the entire political establishment is now controlled by Renewal. However, the Communist Party is able to hold some events and speak out against the government in a limited way.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 2 / 4

The Renewal Party has long dominated the legislature. In recent years, opposition candidates have occasionally faced difficulties registering to compete in elections.

While the main candidates in the 2016 election to the country's powerful presidency were independents, the post effectively rotated between power bases when Shevchuk was defeated by Krasnoselsky.

A number of corruption cases were initiated against Shevchuk in 2017, and he has since fled the territory, and is reportedly living in Moldova. In October 2017, the Renewal-controlled parliament passed an amendment allowing him to be tried in absentia.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 1 / 4

The Transnistrian political establishment is dominated by the monopolistic conglomerate Sheriff Enterprises. Moscow's political influence in Transnistria is undergirded by the presence of 1,500 Russian troops, who are stationed to guard a Soviet-era ammunition depot and uphold a 1992 cease-fire between Transnistria and Moldova. The Moldovan government periodically calls for Russia to withdraw its forces.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 1 / 4

Few women are included in the political elite (for example, there are only 3 women in the 43-seat Supreme Soviet). However, women are able to exercise some political rights and participate in campaigns.

While Transnistria has three official languages  Russian, Ukrainian, and Moldovan  Russian is the de facto language used by the government. Authorities do not allow voting in Moldovan elections to take place in Transnistrian-controlled territory, but residents with Russian citizenship had access to two dozen polling stations during Russia's tightly controlled 2012 presidential election.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 2 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 1 / 4

Elected representatives are promptly inaugurated following elections. Sheriff Enterprises exerts a strong influence on government policies, which are also closely monitored by the Russian political establishment.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 0 / 4

Transnistrian politics have long been built on nepotism and favoritism. In 2017, several prosecutions for abuse of power were initiated against Shevchuk; beyond this, there are few visible safeguards against official corruption.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 1 / 4

Although the authorities publish information on websites and are interviewed on television about their policies, many governmental discussions are not open to the media and governmental openness and transparency are limited.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 14 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 5 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 0 / 4

Authorities closely monitor and control the public media, and Sheriff dominates private broadcasting, leading to widespread self-censorship. There are few independent print outlets and they have limited circulation. Critical reporting draws harassment by the government, which also uses bureaucratic obstruction and the withholding of information to inhibit independent media.

In 2016, the parliament passed legislation giving itself greater authority over state media outlets, including the power to appoint editorial staff. The legislation also enabled officials to limit media access to their activities and bar the use of recording devices.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 2 / 4

More than 95 percent of the population is Christian Orthodox, and authorities have denied registration to several smaller religious groups, which face harassment by police and Orthodox opponents. A 2016 law imposed restrictions or penalties related to unauthorized distribution of religious literature, preaching in public spaces, and organized religious activities in residential buildings.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 1 / 4

While professors may take part in international forums, since civil society organizations in Moldova signed a Declaration on Red Lines in the Transnistrian settlement conflict in 2016, there has been an informal understanding that Transnistrian academics will not participate in forums organized by groups in Moldova. This has caused self-imposed limitations in academic dialogue with peers in Moldova.

The eight Latin-script schools in Transnistria governed by the Moldovan authorities continue to face pressure from local authorities and are limited to substandard facilities.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 2 / 4

People do share their opinions in private settings, including on sensitive developments. However, expression is inhibited somewhat in public spaces by concerns about surveillance or retribution for voicing dissent.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 2 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 1 / 4

Authorities limit freedom of assembly through measures such as rejection on administrative grounds of applications for permits to hold meetings and protests. Reportedly, only two protests actions have received formal permission in the past five years, both in 2015. Participants in unsanctioned actions have faced administrative penalties

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 1 / 4

Nongovernmental and civic work remains a challenge. Organizations working on human rights or which are perceived as threatening authorities face harassment. The Coordination Council of Technical Aid must approve governance-related work.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 0 / 4

Trade unions in Transnistria are unreformed since the Soviet era, and they are not independent. Local and regional authorities manipulate trade unions for political gain.

F. RULE OF LAW: 2 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 0 / 4

The judiciary serves the interests of the authorities. The 2017 conviction of Yuriy Gervazyuk, head of the Customs Service under the previous administration, of abuse of office by a court was widely viewed as a politically motivated decision; he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and issued a fine of $226,000.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 0 / 4

Justice is applied arbitrarily and to serve the political interests of those in power. The criminal cases filed against former president Shevchuk in 2017 are widely viewed as a government manipulation of the criminal justice system. Separately, in the fall, a 15-year old pedestrian was killed, allegedly by a speeding driver who was the wife of an influential businessman. Only after public outrage was a criminal investigation announced.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 1 / 4

Transnistrian authorities adopted an Action Plan in 2015 to end torture in custody, but the practice is still reported, and prison conditions remain poor.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 1 / 4

The Transnistrian constitution guarantees rights and freedoms of persons and citizens "without distinction as to sex, race, nationality, language, religion, social origin," and others, but these are not uniformly upheld. The Moldovan-speaking minority faces discrimination and harassment. According to a 2016 report from the nongovernmental organization Promo-Lex, people have been fined for using Latin script instead of Cyrillic; the language and alphabet issue is associated with the reasoning underpinning Transnistrian claims of independence. Same-sex activity is illegal in Transnistria, and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community has been forced underground as a result of widespread government and societal discrimination.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 5 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 2 / 4

Approximately 300,000 people in Transnistria hold Moldovan citizenship and can travel freely to European Union (EU) countries. A large majority of them hold Russian or Ukrainian passports as well. Without a foreign passport, residents of Transnistria cannot move freely outside the territory, and cars with local license plates cannot cross the border to Moldova. Many Transnistrians travel to Moldova or Russia to pursue higher education.

A key bridge between Transnistria and Moldova was opened in November, facilitating the easier movement of people and goods between the two and raising hopes for future agreements.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 1 / 4

Private property is only allowed for housing in Transnistria; other property rights, including land ownership, remain restricted. Procedures for establishing a private business are hampered by bureaucratic impediments.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 1 / 4

Same-sex marriage is not permitted. Many women are pressured to have large families. Domestic violence is a growing concern, with no law criminalizing it. However, the problem has become more public, including through television reports. Dedicated services, including psychological aid, a hotline for victims, and shelters are operated by civil society organizations.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 1 / 4

Economic opportunity remains very limited. Despite increased international aid to ensure better opportunities for women, many still fall victim to traffickers who subject them to forced labor or sex work.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Switzerland

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Switzerland, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce19c.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 96 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 8,400,000

Capital: Bern

GDP/capita: $82,016

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

The political system of Switzerland is characterized by decentralization and direct democracy. The multilingual state is typically governed by a broad coalition that includes members from the four largest political parties represented in the parliament. The 26 cantons that make up the Swiss Confederation have considerable decision-making power, and the public is often asked to weigh in on policy matters through referendums. Civil liberties are generally respected in the country, though laws and policies adopted in recent years have reflected a growing wariness of immigration and minority groups of foreign origin, which sometimes face societal discrimination.

Key Developments in 2017:

In February, voters passed a referendum that created an easier path to citizenship for third generation immigrants, easing Switzerland's restrictive citizenship laws.

In March, the Council of States rejected a ban on burqas proposed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP). In October, the government announced that a referendum on the subject would be put to a vote.

In September, the Intelligence Service Act went into effect. The law gives the government new surveillance powers, including the ability to monitor internet usage, bug private property, and tap the phone lines of suspected terrorists.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 39 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Executive power lies in the Federal Council (cabinet), a seven-member executive council, with each member elected by the bicameral Federal Assembly to four-year terms. The Federal Council is comprised of a consensus-based coalition between all of the large parties represented in the Federal Assembly. The presidency is largely ceremonial and rotates annually among the Federal Council's members. In December 2017, Alain Berset of the Social Democratic Party (SP) was elected President by the Federal Assembly in accordance with Swiss law.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The constitution provides for a Federal Assembly with two directly elected chambers: the 46-member Council of States (in which each canton has two members and each half-canton has one) and the 200-member National Council. All lawmakers serve four-year terms. Switzerland's electoral process is vibrant and pluralistic, garnering high levels of confidence from the public. The last elections were held in 2015. In the National Council, the right-wing SVP won 65 seats, up from the 54 it previously held. The SP won 43 seats, the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland (FDP) took 33 seats, the Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP) captured 27 seats, and the Green Party won 7 seats. In the Council of States, the FDP and the CVP won 13 seats each, the SP took 12, and three other parties split the remainder.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

Switzerland's electoral process is robust and well-implemented. Electoral laws are fair, and the Election Commission of Switzerland, which administers elections, is considered credible.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 15 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties are free to form and operate, and a wide range of parties are active at the federal and regional levels. The political system is stable, but remains open to new groups.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Switzerland operates a consensus-oriented political system, where most parties govern together by common agreement. The government often relies on referenda to decide on contentious policy issues, and there is a realistic opportunity for different parties to vie for influence. Parties frequently gain or lose seats in federal elections. The Federal Council is comprised of two members each from the SVP, the SP, and the FDP, and one member from the CVP.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

The people's political choices are generally free from domination by democratically unaccountable powers. However, the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) continued to criticize Switzerland for failing to combat the lack of transparency in party financing. Civil society leaders contend that the opaque campaign finance system allows wealthy interests to influence the platforms of the major political parties.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Restrictive citizenship laws and procedures tend to exclude many immigrants, as well as their children, from political participation. A referendum passed in February 2017 created an easier path to citizenship for third generation immigrants.

Women participate robustly in Swiss politics, both as voters and candidates for office. In the 2015 elections, 64 women were elected to the National Council.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 12 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

Switzerland's freely elected officials are able to effectively implement national and local policy through a decentralized system of government.

The 26 cantons have significant control over economic and social policy, with the federal government's powers largely limited to foreign affairs and some economic matters. Referendums, which are used extensively, are mandatory for any amendments to the federal constitution, the joining of international organizations, or major changes to federal laws.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 4 / 4

Safeguards against corruption are generally effective. However, with a robust financial sector and a number of loopholes in the tax laws, tax evasion continues to be a problem: in December 2017, the European Union (EU) placed Switzerland on a "grey list" of countries that had been uncooperative in abolishing questionable tax policies.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 4 / 4

The government is generally transparent. In 2017, however, an ongoing overhaul of federal procurement laws initiated by the Federal Council meant to increase transparency was weakened by the Council's own revisions to the law, strongly curtailing the law's intended purpose by restricting access to public procurement documents for the public and media.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 57 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 4 / 4

Freedom of the press is generally respected in practice. The law punishes public incitement to racial hatred or discrimination as well as denial of crimes against humanity. Switzerland has a free media environment, although the state-owned Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG/SSR) dominates the broadcast market. Consolidation of newspaper ownership in large media conglomerates has forced the closure of some smaller newspapers in recent years.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 3 / 4

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution and the penal code prohibits discrimination against any religion. However, Muslims face legal and de facto discrimination. The construction of new minarets and mosques is prohibited, the result of a 2009 referendum. In 2017, anti-Islamic political discourse intensified, especially from the SVP. A federal ban on burqas proposed by the SVP was rejected by the Council of States in March. In October, the government announced that a referendum on the subject would be put to a vote. In 2016, the canton of Ticino passed its own burqa ban

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is largely respected.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Individuals are generally able to express their personal views on political issues without fear of retribution. The Intelligence Service Act, approved by referendum in 2016, went into effect in September 2017. The law gives wider surveillance power to the Federal Intelligence Service, allowing it to monitor internet usage, bug private property, and tap the phone lines of suspected terrorists.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is guaranteed by the constitution and generally respected. However, in April 2017, the owners of the Zurich World Trade Center cancelled the reservation of the controversial Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (IZRS), which was planning a conference at the venue. The property owners claimed that they cancelled the booking because IZRS invited radical Islamists to speak at the event.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

NGOs operate without undue restrictions.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

People are generally free to form trade unions and other professional organizations. The right to collective bargaining is respected, and approximately 16 percent of the workforce is unionized.

F. RULE OF LAW: 15 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

While the judiciary is largely independent, judges are affiliated with political parties and are selected based on a system of proportional party, linguistic, and regional representation in the Federal Assembly. In late 2017, a group of civil society leaders introduced an initiative to remove the party affiliation requirement from the judicial nomination process in an effort to strengthen the independence of the judiciary.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

Due process normally prevails in civil and criminal matters.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

Switzerland is generally free from war and the use of illegitimate force by authorities is relatively rare. The occasional use of excessive force by police has been documented. The Universal Periodic Review of Switzerland's human rights record, which was presented by the Swiss government to the United Nations in June 2017, documented some incidents of alleged excessive use of force against undocumented immigrants during the deportation process. Conditions in prisons and detention centers generally meet international standards, and the Swiss government permits visits by independent observers.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Although the law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or religion, anti-immigrant attitudes have grown in recent years. An immigration law passed in 2016 enacted policies to curb mass migration from the EU. It also required employers to give preference to Swiss citizens in hiring practices. Despite the government's negotiations with the EU and a new law against mass immigration, the SVP initiated a referendum in June 2017 on an end to the free movement between Switzerland and the EU.

The rights of cultural, religious, and linguistic minorities are legally protected, but minority groups  especially those of African and Central European descent, as well as Roma  face societal discrimination. Roma continue to fight to be officially recognized as a minority in Switzerland. In April, two SVP officials were found guilty on charges of racial discrimination after publishing a racially charged campaign advertisement against people from Kosovo on the party's website and several news outlets. The officials were fined approximately $22,900.

While LGBT rights are generally respected, Switzerland's antidiscrimination laws do not specifically address sexual orientation or gender identity. Gender pay gaps and discrimination against women persist in the workplace. In July 2017, the Swiss cabinet presented the National Assembly with a bill obligating companies with more than 50 employees to conduct gender pay audits and publicly disclose their findings.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 15 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Freedom of movement is respected, and there are no undue limitations on the ability to choose one's place of residence, employment, or education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4

The rights to own property and establish a business remain unrestricted.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 4 / 4

Personal social freedoms are enjoyed by most people. In a 2005 referendum, voters approved same-sex civil unions. Recognized since 2007, these unions grant many of the legal benefits of marriage, with the exception of full adoption rights.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Although the government complies with international standards for combating trafficking, according to the U.S. State Department's 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report, Switzerland remains a destination for victims of human trafficking. Switzerland lacks a national minimum wage. Migrant workers are prone to exploitive labor practices and dangerous working conditions, particularly in the construction, healthcare, and tourism industries, among others.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - St. Vincent and Grenadines

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - St. Vincent and Grenadines, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce1ac.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 90 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 100,000

Capital: Kingstown

GDP/capita: $6,900

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a democracy that holds regular elections, though it has been under the political leadership of the Unity Labour Party (ULP) since 2001, and aspects of the most recent legislative polls are being disputed in court by the opposition. Civil liberties are generally upheld, though journalists and peaceful protesters have experienced police harassment during times of political tension.

Key Developments in 2017:

In July, the High Court of St. Vincent and the Grenadines ruled that two election petitions filed more than a year previously by the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) would be allowed to proceed. The cases involved alleged misconduct in vote counting in two constituencies during the 2015 legislative elections.

Authorities rejected an assessment of the country by the US State Department as a major hub for money laundering.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 36 / 40 (-1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 11 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The prime minister, usually the leader of the largest party in parliament, is head of government. They are normally appointed after legislative elections by the governor general, who represents the British monarch as head of state. The prime minister and governor general have historically been installed according to the country's laws. Ralph Gonsalves retained his position as prime minister following the victory of the incumbent Unity Labour Party (ULP) in the 2015 legislative elections.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The constitution provides for the direct election of 15 representatives to the unicameral House of Assembly. In addition, the governor general appoints 6 senators to the chamber: 4 selected on the advice of the prime minister and 2 on the advice of the opposition leader. All serve five-year terms.

The 2015 legislative elections saw a narrow victory by the incumbent, social democratic ULP, which took 8 seats in the House of Assembly; the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) took the remaining 7. International and domestic election observers deemed the polls generally competitive and credible. However, the Organization of American States (OAS) observer mission expressed concerns about partiality of the presiding officer at the final vote count in the constituency of Central Leeward. According to its observation report, the returning officer there continually refused requests for information or access from representatives of the NDP, while responding to requests from representatives of the ULP.

The NDP mounted several mass protests alleging electoral irregularities in the polls, and initiated two legal complaints regarding the conduct of polling in Central Leeward and North Windward. In July 2017, the High Court ruled that the petitions be allowed to proceed, and both cases were open at year's end.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

Electoral laws are generally fair and impartially implemented. While efforts to clean up voter lists were initiated in 2013, the 2015 OAS election monitoring mission noted in its final report that authorities should continue this effort. The mission also called for better standardization of voting procedures across voting sites.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 15 / 16 (-1)

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties can organize freely. While there have been a number of small political parties in the country, since 1998 only the ULP and NDP have won seats in parliament. The effects of the country's "first-past-the-post" electoral system has entrenched two-party politics. The dominance of the ULP in government since 2001 has been the source of some public frustration, though it does not appear to have affected voter turnout significantly.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

While there has not been a change of the party in power since 2001, opposition parties and candidates face no systemic restrictions, and there are realistic opportunities for opposition parties to increase their support or gain power through elections.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

Candidates and voters are generally able to express their political choices without interference from actors not democratically accountable. However, in 2015, the OAS raised concerns about the lack of transparency of party and election campaign financing, and thus the potential for unidentified actors to influence politics.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4 (-1)

Women are underrepresented in the legislature and in politics generally. No women were elected to the House of Assembly in 2015, when only 6 of the 43 candidates were women. There are currently three women senators in parliament, who were appointed. In its report on the 2015 elections, the OAS noted that there was a "pervasive reluctance" on the part of women who were potential candidates to take part in harsh political campaigns.

The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community is marginalized, and this impacts the ability of LGBT people to engage fully in political processes.

Score Change: The score declined from 4 to 3 due to the significant underrepresentation of women in politics.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 10

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The prime minister, cabinet, and national legislative representatives freely determine the policies of the government. However, in 2014, the NDP announced that it was suspending all cooperation with the Gonsalves government until the next general elections. Following the disputed elections in 2015, the NDP boycotted the parliament for two weeks.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

No independent body investigates government corruption, and government officials have indicated that they do not see a need to establish one. Nevertheless, reports of political handouts and other forms petty corruption continue. Separately, in 2017, authorities rejected an assessment of the country in a US State Department report as a major hub for money laundering. The document, the 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, also noted that in 2016 only one money laundering prosecution had been launched, and that the year had seen no convictions.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines generally operates with openness and transparency. However, freedom of information legislation that was passed in 2003 has yet to be fully implemented, and there is no active legislation requiring government officials to disclose assets, incomes, or gifts.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 54 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

The constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of the press, and these guarantees are usually upheld in practice. However, some journalists reported harassment and physical abuse by police as they covered the 2015 election campaign. Additionally, in 2016, lawmakers approved a new Cybercrime Act that broadened the definition and scope of defamation to include online publications; violation of its provisions can carry a fine of as much as EC$500,000 (US$186,000) and up to seven years' imprisonment. Journalists in St. Vincent and abroad strongly criticized the legislation, saying its provisions were worryingly vague and that it could be invoked to curb independent reporting.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is constitutionally protected and respected in practice.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally upheld.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Individuals are free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of retribution or surveillance.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is constitutionally protected and generally upheld in practice. However, there were reports of police using excessive force to disperse peaceful protests during the 2015 election period.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights-and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate without restriction.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Labor unions are active and permitted to strike and engage in collective bargaining. Antiunion discrimination is prohibited.

F. RULE OF LAW: 13 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The government generally respects judicial independence, but judicial effectiveness is hampered by a lack of resources. The highest court is the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, which includes a court of appeals and a high court. The country recognizes the original jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice, but the Privy Council in London remains the final court of appeal.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

Detainees and defendants are guaranteed a range of legal rights, which are mostly respected in practice. However, there is a significant case backlog, caused in large part by personnel shortages in local courts. According to the US State Department, about 20 people have been held in pretrial detention for longer than two years, with many of these cases involving delays in obtaining psychiatric evaluations of the defendant.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

Crowded prison conditions have improved after the long-awaited transfer of prisoners to a new correctional facility in 2012. However, in 2017, juvenile offenders continued to be held in adult prisons.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Legal and societal discrimination against LGBT people persists. Same-sex sexual conduct is illegal, and some such conduct between men is punishable with imprisonment of up to 10 years. These laws, however, are rarely enforced.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 14 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Individuals in St. Vincent and the Grenadines generally enjoy freedom of movement, and may freely choose their place of residence, employment, and education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or non-state actors? 4 / 4

Individuals are free to own property and establish and conduct business. The government has actively encouraged both national and foreign investors to do business in the country.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

The Domestic Violence Act of 2015, which went into effect in 2016 and provides for protective orders, offers some tools and resources to victims of domestic violence. However, domestic violence, and violence against women, remains a problem. Rape, including spousal rape, is against the law, and the government generally enforces the law when victims come forward.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Safety and other protections for workers are typically upheld. The Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act of 2011 criminalizes forced labor, but the government is not sufficiently proactive in its response, according to the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - St. Lucia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - St. Lucia, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce1bc.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 91 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 200,000

Capital: Castries

GDP/capita: $9,306

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

St. Lucia is a democracy that holds regular elections and sees the periodic transfer of power between parties. Challenges include government corruption and transparency, police brutality and a perception of impunity for it, and discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people.

Key Developments in 2017:

In June, the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to cooperate on an initiative aimed at reducing youth violence and participation in crime.

A lawmaker was awarded EC$40,000 (US$14,800) in damages in connection with libel cases filed against a journalist, a printing company, and a publishing company over a 2011 letter published in the Mirror that described the lawmaker as corrupt.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 38 / 40 (-1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 11 / 12 (-1)

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The prime minister, usually the leader of the largest party in parliament, is head of government. They are appointed by the governor general, who represents the British monarch as head of state. Allen Chastanet of the United Workers Party (UWP) was chosen as prime minister following the 2016 legislative elections, and installed according to the standard legal procedures.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Under the 1979 constitution, the bicameral Parliament consists of the 17-seat House of Assembly, whose members are directly elected to five-year terms, and the 11-seat Senate, whose members are appointed. The prime minister chooses 6 Senate members, the opposition leader selects 3, and 2 are chosen in consultation with civic and religious organizations.

The most recent elections to the House of Assembly took place in 2016. The polls were considered competitive and credible, and stakeholders accepted the results. The UWP secured 11 seats, defeating the governing Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP), which took 6. Voter turnout was low, at about 53 percent.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4 (-1)

Electoral laws are generally fair, and implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies. However, the unbalanced size of constituencies has resulted in unequal voting power among citizens. While the largest constituency (Gros Islet) has 20,593 registered voters, the smallest (Dennery South) has only 5,005.

Score Change: The score declined from 4 to 3 because the unbalanced size of St. Lucia's electoral districts allow unequal voting power among citizens.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 16 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties may organize and operate freely. The country's majoritarian, or "first-past-the-post" electoral system helps sustain two-party politics. While a number of small political parties operate, the UWP and SLP have dominated politics since the 1960s.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

There are realistic opportunities for opposition parties to increase their support or gain power through elections, and power has transferred regularly between the UWP and SLP.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

Voters and candidates are generally free to express their political choices without encountering undue influence from actors who are not democratically accountable. However, a lack of transparency surrounding party and election campaign financing raises concerns about the potential influence of unknown, powerful domestic and foreign interests on the country's politics.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 4 / 4

Women are underrepresented in politics, and won only two seats in the House of Assembly in the 2016 elections. Three members of the Senate are women.

The LGBT community is marginalized, and this impacts the ability of LGBT people to engage fully in political processes.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 11 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The elected prime minister, cabinet, and national legislative representatives freely determine the policies of the government.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

There are also several key state bodies that are responsible for combating corruption, such as the Parliamentary Commissioner, Auditor General, and Public Services Commission, but their effectiveness is somewhat restricted by a lack of resources.

Several high-level officials have faced corruption allegations recently. In 2016, the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal reinstated a claim against Prime Minister Chastanet that had been dismissed the year before. The claim, originally filed in 2013 and involving the 2011 general election, alleged breach of trust and misfeasance in public office. As of the end of 2017, the case had not yet been heard in the St. Lucian courts. And, in 2017, numerous corruption allegations against Guy Joseph, the current minister for economic development, housing, urban renewal, transport and civil aviation, surfaced in both the media and on the floor of the parliament. According to media reports, Joseph was among the targets of a bribery investigation involving an airport redevelopment project, which St. Lucian authorities had asked the United States to assist with.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 4 / 4

The government of St. Lucia generally operates with openness and transparency. Access to information is legally guaranteed, and government officials are required by law to present their financial assets annually to the Integrity Commission.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 53 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

The constitution of St. Lucia guarantees freedom of speech, and a number of private and independent news outlets discuss a wide spectrum of issues. However, criminal libel laws remain on the books, and convictions can draw heavy fines and a jail sentence of up to five years. In 2017, opposition lawmaker Philip Pierre was awarded EC$40,000 (US$14,800) in damages in libel cases filed against journalist Guy Ellis, the Mayers Printing Company, and Mirror Publishing Company, in connection with a 2011 letter to the editor published in the Mirror that described Pierre as corrupt.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is protected under the constitution and other laws. However, Rastafarians face various forms of discrimination.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Individuals are free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

The government generally respects the constitutionally protected right to free assembly. A number of protests took place peacefully in 2017, including several SLP-led events at which participants expressed opposition to government policies.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights-and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are free to operate.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Most workers have the right under the law to form and join independent unions, go on strike, and bargain collectively. Antiunion discrimination is prohibited.

F. RULE OF LAW: 12 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The judicial system is independent and includes a high court under the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC). St. Lucia announced in 2014 that it would adopt the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as its final court of appeal, replacing the London-based Privy Council. However, its accession to the CCJ has not yet been finalized at the end of 2017.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

Detainees and defendants are guaranteed a range of legal rights, which are mostly respected in practice. However, lengthy pretrial detention remains a problem. Defendants charged with serious crimes may spend up to six years in pretrial detention.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Police brutality has been seen as a significant problem in St. Lucia in recent years, and there is a widespread perception that members of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force (RSLPF) enjoy impunity for abusive behavior. In 2013, the United States cut aid to the RSLPF due to credible allegations of gross human rights violations related to 12 extrajudicial killings that took place in 2010 and 2011. The government responded by inviting an international investigation of the killings. Although the investigation was completed in 2014 and members of the RSLPF were seen as culpable, no legal action had been taken by the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions as of the end of 2017. As a consequence, through the end of 2017 St. Lucia remained excluded from military assistance from the United States under the Leahy Law, which prohibits all security-related assistance to the country as a result of what the United States views as serious abuse of human rights by security forces. In response to the 2014 investigation, the government did define a "use of force" policy for the RSLPF, and members were forced to undertake human rights training.

Separately, the government in June 2017 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to cooperate on an initiative aimed at reducing youth violence and participation in crime.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

No law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Same-sex sexual relations are illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. People living with HIV/AIDS experience discrimination, and medical professionals do not always honor obligations to keep their health care information confidential. The Civil Code makes reference to legitimate and illegitimate children, which can permit discrimination against children and unwed mothers in civil and family law cases.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 14 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Individuals in St. Lucia enjoy freedom of movement, and may freely choose their place of employment, residence, and education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or non-state actors? 4 / 4

Individuals are free to own property and establish and conduct business. The government has actively encouraged both national and foreign investors to operate businesses in the country.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Domestic violence is a serious concern and often goes unreported, as does sexual assault. The law criminalizes rape, but it only criminalizes spousal rape when a couple is separated, or if the Family Court has issued a protection order.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Safety and other protections for workers are typically upheld, though St. Lucia has no minimum wage law.

St. Lucia's government has made efforts to provide services to trafficking victims, but prosecutions are infrequent and the country's national action plan against human trafficking has not been fully implemented. A lack of awareness of trafficking among some officials and members of the public contributes to the problem. Immigrants from Caribbean countries and from South Asia are particularly vulnerable to trafficking for the purposes of forced labor and sex work.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - St. Kitts and Nevis

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - St. Kitts and Nevis, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce1cc.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 89 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 50,000

Capital: Basseterre

GDP/capita: $16,178

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

St. Kitts and Nevis is one of the world's smallest parliamentary democracies. The islands have a history of competitive and credible elections, and civil liberties are generally upheld. There are some concerns about government corruption and transparency, particularly in regard to the Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP). Authorities in recent years have struggled to address a rising crime rate.

Key Developments in 2017:

Former Jamaica Defense Force head Stuart Saunders was controversially appointed as the country's new national security adviser in July. Saunders had faced severe criticism for his actions during a 2010 police operation in Jamaica to capture a drug lord, which had left 74 people dead.

In a March report, the US State Department noted that despite government efforts to improve safeguards for the country's Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP), it was still characterized by "significant deficiencies in vetting candidates."

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 36 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 10 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The prime minister, usually the leader of the largest party in parliament, is head of government. They are normally appointed after legislative elections by the governor general, who represents the British monarch as head of state. The prime minister and governor general have historically been installed according to the country's laws.

After the 2015 elections, Timothy Harris, leader of Team Unity  an umbrella organization of the two main opposition parties, the People's Action Movement (PAM) and the People's Labor Party (PLP) in St. Kitts, and the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) in Nevis  was appointed prime minister.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

There are 14 seats in the unicameral National Assembly  8 for representatives from Saint Kitts, 3 from Nevis, and 3 appointed by the governor general; all serve five-year terms. Team Unity won the 2015 parliamentary election, taking 7 of the 11 directly elected seats and unseating the Labor Party (SKNLP), which had been in government for two decades. The vote took place peacefully and was considered credible, but a number of shortcomings were observed. Opposition candidates and others criticized a lack of campaign finance legislation, and a monitoring mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) noted that the difference between state resources and SKNLP financing was not always clear. Some observers also noted that the government enjoyed disproportionate access to state-owned media for campaign purposes.

Local elections in Nevis were held in December 2017, resulting in a win for the incumbent CCM.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

Electoral laws are generally fair, and are usually implemented impartially by the Electoral Commission. However, the lead-up to the 2015 elections saw an eleventh-hour dispute over boundary delineations, and concerns about the Electoral Commission's independence. In January 2015, the SKNLP government introduced new electoral boundaries just a month before the polls. The changes were ultimately thrown out four days before the election by the Privy Council in London, the highest court of appeal for Saint Kitts and Nevis, after the opposition had challenged the changes. Separately, OAS observers had expressed concerns that an election calendar with key dates was not shared publically. And, a delay in reporting the results of the 2015 polls prompted questions about the independence of the Election Commission. In December 2017, the former supervisor of elections was arrested and charged with misconduct in connection with the delayed transmission of the 2015 results.

B.POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 16 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

People have the right to organize in different political parties and to form new parties. For example, the PLP was established in 2013 by two former members of the SKNLP, and is now part of the Team Unity government.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Opposition candidates are able to campaign without restrictions or interference, and there are realistic opportunities for opposition parties to increase their support or gain power through elections. In 2015, the Team Unity coalition unseated the SKNLP, which had been in government for two decades.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

Candidates and voters are generally able to express their political choices without interference from actors not democratically accountable. However, in 2015, the OAS raised concerns about the lack of transparency of party and election campaign financing, and thus the potential for unidentified actors to influence politics.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 4 / 4

While women play an active role in political parties and as grassroots organizers, only one woman won a seat in the National Assembly in the 2015 elections. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community is marginalized, and this impacts the ability of LGBT people to engage fully in political processes.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The elected prime minister, cabinet, and national legislative representatives are able to freely determine the policies of the government.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

St. Kitts and Nevis's anticorruption laws are for the most part are implemented effectively. However, the 2013 Integrity in Public Life Bill, which established a code of conduct for public officials and financial disclosure guidelines, was still not operational at the end of 2017.

Recently, concerns have been raised over St. Kitts and Nevis's CIP program, which allows foreigners to gain citizenship through an economic investment in the country. In a March 2017 report, the US State Department noted that despite government efforts to improve the program's safeguards, it was still characterized by "significant deficiencies in vetting candidates," a problem that could facilitate money laundering within the country or permit the presence of people who threaten national security.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

The government of St. Kitts and Nevis generally operates with transparency, though the country still lacks freedom of information legislation. Both SKNLP and Team Unity governments have stated that freedom of information legislation is a priority, but as of the end of 2017 no legislation had been passed. The Financial Intelligence Unit investigates financial crimes, but these reports are not publically available.

In the fall of 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the government announced that it would temporarily reduce the amount required for participation in the CIP, and would link the investment program to a national hurricane relief fund. Inconsistent government statements about the nature of the temporary program prompted some confusion and media criticism.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 53 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

Freedom of expression is constitutionally guaranteed, and the government generally respects press freedom in practice. However, the government owns the sole local television station, and the opposition faces some restrictions on access to it, particularly around elections. Defamation is a criminal offence that can potentially carry a prison sentence. Some journalists reportedly self-censor in order to avoid pressure from government officials.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is constitutionally protected and generally respected in practice. However, Rastafarians face employment and other forms of discrimination on the basis of their beliefs.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

The government generally respects academic freedom.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Individuals are free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is constitutionally guaranteed, and generally respected in practice. Several demonstrations took place peacefully in 2017, including a Labor Day march hosted by the SKNLP, and a protest at which participants called on the government to address claims that a Chinese national accused of embezzling millions of dollars from a Chinese firm was being shielded by local authorities.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) generally operate without restrictions.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

While workers may legally form unions, employers are not bound to recognize them. A union can engage in collective bargaining only if more than 50 percent of the company's employees are union members. The right to strike, while not protected by law, is generally respected in practice.

F. RULE OF LAW: 13 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

The judiciary is largely independent, and legal provisions for a fair and speedy trial are generally observed. The highest court is the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, but under certain circumstances, there is a right of appeal to the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice, and the Privy Council in London.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

Defendants are guaranteed a range of legal rights, which are mostly respected in practice. Arbitrary arrests are prohibited and security forces generally operate professionally. However, extended pretrial detention is a problem, with some detainees remaining in custody for more than two years before facing trial  or seeing the charges against them dropped.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

While the islands are free from war and insurgencies, the government in recent years has struggled to contain increasing crime and homicides. Against these concerns, in July 2017, former Jamaica Defense Force head Stuart Saunders was controversially appointed as the country's new national security advisor. Saunders had been accused in a Commission of Enquiry report of "dereliction of duty and incompetence" in connection with his involvement in the violent 2010 police operation in Jamaica to capture drug lord Christopher "Dudas" Coke, in which 74 people were killed. The report had further recommended that Saunders not be employed in security operations.

Separately, there were two police shootings in 2016 and both officers implicated were awaiting trial in 2017. Prison conditions remain overcrowded.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Societal discrimination against LGBT people is pervasive, and same-sex sexual conduct between men is illegal and punishable with imprisonment of up to 10 years. No law specifically prohibits sexual harassment, which has been reported in workplaces.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 13 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Individuals in St. Kitts and Nevis generally enjoy freedom of movement and are free to change their place of residence, employment, and education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or non-state actors? 3 / 4

St. Kitts and Nevis is open to investment and both national and foreign investors are free to operate in the country, with the government actively sourcing foreign investment under its CIP program. However, eminent domain laws allow the government to seize private property and businesses, and the government does not always provide adequate and timely compensation.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

While domestic violence is criminalized, violence against women remains a widespread problem. Spousal rape is not prohibited by law. Child abuse and neglect is also a serious issue.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Despite its high income status, poverty is an issue and represents a serious barrier to socioeconomic mobility for many people. Youth unemployment is high. Many people rely heavily on remittances for income.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - South Ossetia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - South Ossetia, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce1db.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Not Free

Aggregate Score: 10 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 6.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 6 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 50,000

OVERVIEW

Large parts of South Ossetia, a breakaway territory of Georgia, enjoyed de facto independence after a civil conflict ended in 1992. A 2008 war that drew in Russian forces resulted in the expulsion of the remaining Georgian government presence and of many ethnic Georgian civilians. Only Russia and a handful of other states have since recognized South Ossetia's independence. The territory remains almost entirely dependent on Russia, and Moscow exerts a decisive influence over its politics and governance. Local media and civil society are largely controlled or monitored by the authorities, and the judiciary is subject to political influence and manipulation.

Key Developments in 2017:

Anatoly Bibilov defeated the incumbent, Leonid Tibilov, in April's presidential election.

A simultaneous referendum on changing the territory's name to "Republic of South Ossetia-State of Alania" passed by a large majority. The move was viewed as a precursor to potential constitutional changes to allow union with North Ossetia-Alania, which is a federal subject of Russia.

Authorities began to phase out Georgian-medium education in schools, and banned Jehovah's Witnesses as an "extremist" group.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 2 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 2 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 0 / 4

Although South Ossetia holds elections regularly, they are severely restricted at all stages of the process, and are not monitored by independent observers or recognized by the international community. In the most recent presidential election, in April 2017, former military leader Anatoly Bibilov was elected to a five-year term with 58 percent of the vote; he defeated the incumbent, Leonid Tibilov, who took 30 percent, and KGB official Alan Gagloyev, who took 11 percent.

Political analysts said that the conduct of the 2017 election was an improvement on the 2011 poll, the results of which had been disputed. Nevertheless, political debate and competition only occurred within a narrow field of candidates allowed by Russia and pro-Russian authorities. Moscow's open backing of Tibilov and significant political influence over the territory's politics generally calls into question the ability local authorities to hold a free and fair presidential election.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 1 / 4

Parliamentary elections held in 2014 were an improvement from previous ones. Unlike in 2009, in which only three parties were able to participate, candidates from nine parties succeeded in registering in 2014. The opposition United Ossetia, led by Bibilov, won 20 seats, followed by the Unity of the People party with 6 seats. Smaller parties captured four seats. However, South Ossetia's legislative elections are not internationally recognized, and the extent of Russian influence in the territory's politics precludes truly competitive legislative elections.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 1 / 4

In April 2017, President Bibilov declared that the 2019 legislative elections would be conducted by a mixed proportional and majoritarian system, instead of the fully proportional system that is currently in place. The decision was made without public input.

In a referendum held alongside the 2017 presidential election, over 80 percent of voters approved adding "The State of Alania" to the territory's name. The move was viewed as a precursor to potential constitutional changes to allow union with North Ossetia-Alania, which is a federal subject of Russia.

According to electoral laws, candidates must have permanently resided in South Ossetia for 10 years. Former president Eduard Kokoity, the only candidate who openly opposed annexation by Russia, was barred from running due to his failure to meet the residency requirement. The Supreme Court rejected Kokoity's appeal, in which he claimed that the evidence put forth by the Central Election Commission (CEC) was falsified.

Authorities reportedly continue to restrict voting rights of remaining Georgian residents of South Ossetia. Russian political influence continues to call into question the independence of the CEC.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 2 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 1 / 4

Moscow exerts a decisive influence over politics and governance, in effect placing significant restrictions on the ability of political parties outside of a narrow political spectrum to operate freely. However, a number of new political parties have been able to register in recent years. These include Bibilov's United Ossetia, which won the most seats in the 2014 elections. As of 2017, over a dozen political parties existed, though only four were represented in parliament. In October, the Ministry of Justice began a process to disband inactive or barely active political parties, in a move opposition activists considered politically motivated.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 1 / 4

In the 2017 presidential election, opposition candidate Anatoly Bibilov challenged and defeated the incumbent president. However, the success or failure of the territory's opposition politicians is largely determined by Moscow. South Ossetian government sources implied that banned presidential candidate Kokoity was not in Moscow's favor.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 0 / 4

The functioning of South Ossetia's institutions are almost entirely dependent on economic and political support from Moscow. There are few avenues for people to meaningfully participate in political processes if they wish to advocate for interests that fall outside of the narrow political spectrum defined by Russia and the territory's Russian-aligned authorities.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 0 / 4

The interests of women and minority groups are not represented politically. Most ethnic Georgian residents have either declined or have been denied the ability to participate in elections.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 0 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 0 / 4

The ability of elected officials to determine and implement policy is heavily influenced by the Russian government. A sweeping 2015 treaty on alliance and integration between Russia and South Ossetia closely integrates the territory's defense, security, and customs mechanisms with those of Russia, charging Moscow with protection of South Ossetia's borders; it is binding for 25 years with the possibility of extension. Russian aid comprises almost the entirety of South Ossetia's budget.

According to private emails leaked in 2016 that were apparently tied to senior Kremlin adviser Vladislav Surkov, Moscow mandated 13 working groups to review legislation drafted by the authorities in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's de facto capital, and had a timetable for the bills' approval by the territory's legislature. Some of Bibilov's ministerial appointments reflect a long trend in the territory to nominate Russian citizens to key roles, including the territory's security services.

Like his predecessor, President Bibilov has spoken repeatedly of formally uniting the territory with Russia's North Ossetia-Alania, or joining the Russian Federation as a separate region.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 0 / 4

Official corruption is widespread in South Ossetia, and there is little to no systematic attempt to fight it.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 0 / 4

Due in part to the significant level of Russian influence on domestic politics and decision-making, South Ossetia's government does not operate with transparency. Officials have not identified a lack of transparency as a policy priority.

ADDITIONAL DISCRETIONARY POLITICAL RIGHTS QUESTION:

Is the government or occupying power deliberately changing the ethnic composition of a country or territory so as to destroy a culture or tip the political balance in favor of another group? -2 / 0

During the 2008 war, Ossetian forces seized or razed property in previously Georgian-controlled villages, and large numbers of ethnic Georgians fled the fighting. Authorities in South Ossetia have since barred ethnic Georgians from returning to the territory unless they renounce their Georgian citizenship and accept Russian passports. Of approximately 20,000 ethnic Georgians displaced from their homes in South Ossetia, most have not been able to return. However, conditions for local residents have largely stabilized since the war, particularly due to the absence of open conflict across the administrative line separating the territory from Georgia.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 8 / 40 (-1)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 3 / 16 (-1)

D1. Are there free and independent media? 0 / 4

Local media are almost entirely controlled by the authorities. Self-censorship is pervasive, and defamation charges are used against critical media. South Ossetia's state broadcasters are subject to frequent blackouts and technical interruptions. An increasing number of residents rely on online outlets for news and other information, and foreign media, including broadcasts from Russia and Georgia, remain accessible.

Journalist and activist Tamara Mearakishvili was questioned on several occasions in 2017, during which investigators expressed interest in the nature of her work with international media outlets. In August, police searched her home. The same month, criminal slander charges case were brought against her as a result of an interview she gave to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) about alleged corruption among local officials. In December, a court rejected Mearakishvili's appeal.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 1 / 4 (-1)

While the majority of the population is Orthodox Christian, there is a sizeable Muslim community. Followers of Russian Orthodoxy and Ossetian neopaganism also inhabit the territory. Some property of the Georgian Orthodox Church is controlled by the South Ossetian Orthodox Church (called the Eparchy). In November, Bibilov said the Eparchy should come under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In October 2017, South Ossetia's de facto Supreme Court outlawed Jehovah's Witnesses as an "extremist" organization; the group had been banned in Russia in April.

Score Change: The score declined from 2 to 1 due a court ruling that categorizes Jehovah's Witnesses as an extremist organization, effectively banning the group.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 1 / 4

The government exerts strong influence over the education system. In 2017, the ministry of education began to phase out Georgian-medium education, starting with the first to fourth grades, with an additional grade to transfer to Russian-language education each subsequent year. In explaining the move, state officials cited the need to integrate the Georgian community, the lack of locally produced Georgian-language materials, and the advantage of Russian-language skills in pursuing higher education.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 1 / 4

Private discussion is constrained by the sensitivity of certain topics, particularly the territory's geopolitical standing. Speaking of the property rights and expulsion of the Georgian population is assumed to attract unwanted attention.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 1 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 1 / 4

Since the 2008 war, residents have demonstrated against corruption and the sluggish pace of postwar reconstruction, but freedom of assembly is limited. Small groups of supporters of banned candidate Kokoity held protests in Tskhinvali before and during the 2017 election. Authorities deemed a group picketing government buildings in March as an unsanctioned gathering and brought cases against 23 protesters, though Bibilov closed the cases in June.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 0 / 4

Although some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate in the territory, most are subject to government influence and are financially backed by Russia. Legislative amendments in 2014 increased the oversight capacity of local authorities over NGO activity and subjected organizations with foreign funding to broader and more frequent reporting requirements.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 0 / 4

Trade unions in South Ossetia largely defer to the policies of the separatist government. Conflict with Georgia has left trade unions weak and geographically divided.

F. RULE OF LAW: 1 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 0 / 4

South Ossetia's judiciary is not independent. The justice system has been manipulated to punish perceived opponents of the separatist leadership.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 0 / 4

Government allies reportedly continue to violate the law with relative impunity. Russian prosecutors have attempted to curb malfeasance by local officials, but the Russian court system itself remains deeply flawed. Justice structures are undermined by a lack of qualified lawyers.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 0 / 4

Victims of human rights violations committed during the 2008 conflict have few avenues for legal recourse.

Physical abuse and poor conditions are reportedly common in prisons and detention centers. In July, all inmates at a Tskhinvali prison declared a hunger strike, complaining that their rights, including access to medical treatment and to receive visitors, were not being respected.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 1 / 4

Discrimination against ethnic Georgians remains a cause for concern. Reports of arbitrary discrimination and detention of ethnic Georgians continue to arise. There are no initiatives to support the rights of sexual minorities in this very conservative society.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 3 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 1 / 4

Freedom of movement in and out of South Ossetia from Georgian-government controlled territory is restricted, though travel to Russia remains largely unimpeded. The South Ossetian security services closed the border with Georgia entirely on several occasions in 2017, and arbitrary arrest and detention of Georgian citizens along the border continued throughout 2017. Since 2015, Russian servicemen have slowly moved South Ossetia's administrative border into Georgian territory.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 0 / 4

The territory's political and military situation has negatively affected protections for property rights, particularly for residents close to the administrative border. The separatist authorities have consistently refused to countenance the return of ethnic Georgians expelled from their homes before or during the 2008 war.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

While no laws officially regulate individuals' public appearance, statements by public officials reflect the conservative nature of the society. No laws or government programs specifically protect victims of domestic violence.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 0 / 4

There is very little economic opportunity in South Ossetia. Populations living along the administrative border with Georgia face additional economic uncertainty due to divisions created by shifting and uncertain borders.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Somaliland

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Somaliland, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce1ea.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 44 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 4.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 4 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 3,500,000

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

Elections in Somaliland  whose self-declared independence from Somalia is not internationally recognized  have been relatively free and fair, but years-long delays have meant that elected officials serve well beyond their original mandates. Journalists face pressure from authorities, and police have employed excessive force and engaged in arbitrary detention. Minor clans are subject to political and economic marginalization, and violence against women remains a serious problem.

Ratings Change: Somaliland's political rights rating improved from 5 to 4 due to the holding of a long-delayed presidential election.

Key Developments in 2017:

In March, the upper legislative chamber, the Guurti, voted to further postpone the presidential election until November and the parliamentary and local elections until April 2019.

The presidential election, originally due in 2015, proceeded in November. Ruling party candidate Muse Bihi Abdi won with 55 percent of the vote and took office in December.

Harassment of journalists remained a problem, with the Somaliland Human Rights Centre (HRC) reporting that 25 journalists were detained during the year.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 19 / 40 (+4)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 5 / 12 (+3)

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4 (+3)

The president is directly elected for a maximum of two five-year terms and appoints the cabinet. The electoral mandate of incumbent president Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud "Silanyo" of the Peace, Unity, and Development Party (Kulmiye) expired in 2015, but the presidential election due that year was not held until November 2017. Bihi, the Kulmiye candidate, won the contest with 55 percent of the vote, followed by Abdurahman Mohamed Abdullahi of the opposition Wadani party with 40 percent and Faisal Ali Warabe of the For Justice and Development (UCID) party with 4 percent.

International monitors identified some irregularities in the process  including unstamped ballot papers and underage voting  and there was an outbreak of violence while results were being finalized, with police firing on pro-Wadani protesters amid suspicions of fraud. However, the observers concluded that such problems did not significantly affect the final result, which Wadani ultimately accepted in the public interest.

Score Change: The score improved from 0 to 3 because Somaliland held a competitive presidential election, ending a two-year period in which the chief executive lacked an electoral mandate.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 0 / 4

Members of the 82-seat lower legislative chamber, the House of Representatives, are directly elected for five-year terms, while members of the 82-seat upper chamber, the Guurti, are clan elders indirectly elected for six-year terms. Members of the current Guurti were chosen for an initial term in 1997, but due to a lack of legal clarity on how new elections are to be held, their mandates have been repeatedly extended. In practice, seats have been passed to family members when a member dies or retires. The last lower house elections were held in 2005, and new elections due in 2010 have been repeatedly postponed since then. In March 2017, the Guurti voted to postpone House of Representatives elections until April 2019, along with local council elections that were last held in 2012.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 2 / 4

The legal and administrative framework for elections is largely fair, but ambiguities in some laws as well as technical and logistical challenges have led to chronic election delays. International observers noted flaws in the voter registration process that preceded the 2017 presidential election.

The National Electoral Commission (NEC) consists of seven members, with two nominated by the president, two by the Guurti, and one each by the three registered political parties; all are then appointed through a majority vote in the House of Representatives. The NEC is generally considered impartial, but Wadani accused it of bias in the aftermath of the presidential vote.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 10 / 16 (+1)

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 3 / 4

The constitution allows for a maximum of three officially recognized political parties. The three groups that receive the most votes in local council elections are declared eligible to contest subsequent national elections, and they compete freely in practice. The system is meant to encourage alliances across clan-based divisions, but clan and party affiliation are still closely aligned.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 3 / 4 (+1)

The political system allows democratic transfers of power between rival parties, with the most recent such handover at the presidential level occurring in 2010. Opposition forces continue to hold positions in the legislature and in subnational governments. Long-running election delays have impaired the ability of opposition parties to challenge incumbent leaders, but the presidential vote held in 2017 removed one important obstacle.

Score Change: The score improved from 2 to 3 because the opposition was able to compete in the overdue presidential election.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

Clan elders play an influential role in politics, both directly with their kinsmen and through the currently unelected Guurti, which has the authority to extend officials' terms in office and approve election dates. There were isolated reports of partisan violence and intimidation during the 2017 election period.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 2 / 4

Women and various clan groups formally enjoy equal political rights. However, the larger, higher-status clans tend to dominate political offices and leadership positions, marginalizing smaller and lower-status groups. Cultural barriers also limit women's political participation, and only two women had seats in the House of Representatives in 2017. Women are generally excluded from the Guurti, as clan elders are traditionally men, though women have occasionally inherited seats from their husbands. The constitution requires that candidates for the presidency, vice presidency, and House of Representatives be Muslim.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 4 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 1 / 4 (+1)

The 2017 election improved the democratic legitimacy of the president in determining government policy, and decisions made by the national authorities are implemented in most of Somaliland's claimed territory. However, clan leaders in the eastern border regions of Sool, Sanaag, and a portion of Togdheer maintain a separatist administration known as the Khatumo State, over which Somaliland does not exercise full control.

Score Change: The score improved from 0 to 1 because an elected president took office, partially restoring the national leadership's democratic legitimacy.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 1 / 4 (-1)

There are almost no institutional safeguards against corruption and nepotism. Former president Silanyo took some measures to combat corruption earlier in his tenure, but the anticorruption commission he created in 2010 has been largely ineffective in recent years, and prosecutions of officials for malfeasance are rare. The government's opaque 2016 decision to award a 30-year port management concession in Berbera to the Emirati company DP World raised concerns about corruption. Under a related agreement in 2017, the United Arab Emirates began construction of a military base near the port.

Score Change: The score declined from 2 to 1 because the anticorruption commission and other mechanisms for combating graft have proven ineffective in recent years.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 2 / 4

The government operates with relative transparency in many respects, but it is more opaque regarding contracts for major projects. Journalists and civil society activists who attempt to scrutinize government activities often face harassment.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 25 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 7 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 1 / 4

A variety of print, television, and online news outlets operate, but many have political affiliations, and the state-run broadcaster has a monopoly in the radio sector. The penal code criminalizes defamation and other vaguely defined press offenses, such as circulation of "false, exaggerated, or tendentious news." The government has restricted the registration of new newspapers, and in 2017 it obtained court orders to block several websites for allegedly carrying false news. Social media were blocked for several days after the presidential election. According to the HRC, a total of 25 journalists were detained during the year, though most were released without charges; one remained in prison as of December, serving an 18-month sentence for defamation and publishing false news.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 2 / 4

Islam is the state religion. The constitution allows for freedom of belief, but it prohibits conversion from Islam and proselytizing by members of other faiths. Places of worship must obtain government permission to operate, though there are no clear penalties for noncompliance, and there is no mechanism to register religious organizations. In 2017, citing pressure from Muslim leaders and residents, the government reversed an earlier decision to allow the reopening of the only Roman Catholic church in Hargeisa, the de facto capital, which had been closed for decades.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 2 / 4

Teachers and professors are often able to pursue academic activities of a political and quasi-political nature without fear of intimidation. While funds allocated for public schools are uneven across the regions, they are generally free from overt political manipulation.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 2 / 4

While individuals can express themselves with relative freedom on political matters, remarks on sensitive social and cultural issues are increasingly subject to censure and retribution from nonstate actors.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 5 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 1 / 4

The constitution allows for freedom of assembly, but organized public demonstrations are infrequent, and the authorities have sometimes employed violence to disperse protests. Shortly after the presidential election in November 2017, security forces used live ammunition against opposition supporters protesting alleged fraud, killing at least four people and injuring several others.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 2 / 4

Local and international nongovernmental organizations often operate without serious interference, but such groups can face harassment for their work. In February 2017, the leader of the HRC was interrogated by police, and its spokesperson was arrested, after the organization launched a petition for police reform. They were accused of defamation and disseminating false news. Activists gathering signatures for the petition also faced intimidation. The spokesperson was released and the charges were dropped after the HRC discontinued its campaign.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 2 / 4

The constitution does not explicitly protect the right to strike, though it does permit collective bargaining. The right to belong to a union is generally respected.

F. RULE OF LAW: 7 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 2 / 4

The judiciary lacks independence, sufficient funding, and proper training. Judges are usually selected on the basis of clan or political affiliation and are subject to interference from the government. The chief justice appointed in 2015 has made some progress in reforming the judicial system.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 2 / 4

Due process is observed unevenly. Poverty and political factors play a role in how cases are charged and investigated, and whether there is adequate and timely representation for the defendant. Both customary law and Sharia (Islamic law) are in use alongside civil law, which complicates adherence to statutory procedure. In practice, police often engage in arbitrary arrests and hold detainees without charge for longer than the legal limit of 48 hours. Lawyers are frequently denied access to detained clients.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 1 / 4

Somaliland's police and security forces have been accused of using excessive force, and any cases against them must be adjudicated in military courts, which contributes to impunity for abuses. Conditions for detainees at police stations are harsh and overcrowded. In the contested eastern border area, security forces have periodically clashed with local separatists or the forces of the neighboring Puntland region.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Members of smaller, marginalized clans face societal discrimination, limited access to public services, and prejudice in the justice system. Clan connections play a critical role in securing employment. Women also suffer from inequality, including in the Sharia and customary legal systems. Same-sex sexual activity is a criminal offense, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people generally do not acknowledge their sexual orientation or gender identity publicly.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 6 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 2 / 4

Freedom of movement is respected to some extent, but traffic between Somaliland and Puntland is restricted, and the Somaliland government limits travel to and from Somalia's federal capital, Mogadishu. Individuals' ability to relocate within the territory is impaired by clan divisions.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

Individuals are able to own property and operate private businesses without undue interference from the government. However, land disputes are common, as tenure is often complicated by lack of documentation and inconsistencies among different legal systems and state authorities. Corruption is also a concern. In the wake of the 2016 agreement with the United Arab Emirates to develop the port of Berbera, publicly owned land in the area has allegedly been sold to wealthy investors or those with personal connections to officials.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 1 / 4

Personal social freedoms are constrained by a number of factors. Marriages between members of major and minor clans are stigmatized. There is no law to address widespread domestic violence, and rape is rarely reported to authorities due to social pressures against such complaints. The practice of female genital mutilation is common, and no law prohibits it.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 1 / 4

The informal sector, including traditional pastoral activities, accounts for much of the economy, and many households rely on remittances from relatives working in other countries. Trafficking in persons for forced labor or sexual exploitation abroad is a serious problem. Refugees from neighboring countries including Yemen and Ethiopia are also vulnerable to exploitation within Somaliland.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Solomon Islands

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Solomon Islands, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce1fa.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 72 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 2.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 700,000

Capital: Honiara

GDP/capita: $1,922

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Political rights and civil liberties are generally respected in the Solomon Islands, though corruption remains a serious issue, and the government does not operate with openness and transparency. Violence against women is a significant problem.

Key Developments in 2017:

Investigations by the anticorruption body Task Force Janus led to a number of high-profile arrests.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was ousted in a no-confidence vote in November, and replaced by former central bank governor Rick Hou.

The Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which was deployed in the aftermath of a violent conflict in 1999-2000, concluded its mission, and most associated officials had left the islands by year's end.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 28 / 40 (+1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 9 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

Members of the 50-seat unicameral National Parliament elect the Solomon Islands prime minister, who is the head of government. Irregularities are frequent in the run-up to prime ministerial elections, known as the "second election." Leading contenders usually separate into camps in Honiara's major hotels, and bid for the support of other members of parliament (MPs) with promises of cash or ministerial portfolios.

A boat used to transport legislators to and from a neighboring island (to prevent defections) ahead of the 2014 prime ministerial vote was fired upon by unknown assailants, in an apparent effort to disrupt the second election. The MPs nevertheless were able to travel on the vessel to parliament, and participate in the election; Manasseh Sogavare won the vote.

In November 2017, Sogavare was ousted in a no-confidence vote. However, the opposition failed to hold together to elect an alternative leader. Instead, a group of opposition members crossed the floor to team up with Sogavare, and elected Rick Hou, a former central bank governor and World Bank employee, as the country's new prime minister.

The National Parliament also selects a governor general for a five-year term. He represents the British monarch as head of state and appoints the cabinet on the advice of the prime minister. In 2014, Frank Kabui won a second term as governor general.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

The 50 members of the National Parliament are directly elected in single-seat constituencies by simple majority vote to serve 4-year terms. The parliamentary elections in 2014 were considered a significant improvement over previous elections. Independent candidates dominated the voting, taking a record 32 seats. The Democratic Alliance Party won 7, followed by the United Democratic Party with 5, the People's Alliance Party with 3, and three smaller parties with 1 each. A Commonwealth observer mission concluded that "the election was credible and the results reflected the wishes of the people."

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

Electoral rolls are much improved in Solomon Islands since the introduction in late 2013 of a biometric voter registration system, which reduced the previous practice whereby many Honiara voters were registered twice, both in their urban residence and on their home islands. In 2014, the Solomon Islands Electoral Commission (SIEC) said it had identified about 5,000 instances of multiple registration; these were referred to police, who said that their limited resources would make the issue difficult to address. The introduction of a single ballot box system has also diminished incidents of electoral corruption and fraud.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 13 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions on rights to organize political parties, but alliances are driven more by personal ties and local allegiances than formal policy platforms or ideology, and party affiliations shift frequently, often as part of efforts to dislodge incumbent governments. In 2014, Parliament approved a Political Parties Integrity Act with the aim of encouraging a stronger party system through more formalized registration mechanisms. Many formerly party-aligned legislators responded by standing as independents in 2014 (including the prime minister), calculating that doing so left them with greater flexibility under the new law.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Opposition parties and candidates may campaign freely, and power shifts frequently between groups. Since 1978, three governments have been ousted in opposition-led no-confidence votes, and prime ministers have resigned to fend off no-confidence challenges on two occasions. No incumbent prime minister has been able to win reelection, although both Sogavare and former prime minister Solomon Mamaloni were able to return to the prime minister's office after a period on the opposition benches.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

Political choices are generally unconstrained, but in some regions of the country church or tribal leaders exert strong influence. On the island of New Georgia, the Christian Fellowship Church secured reelection of its candidate, Job Dudley Tausinga, for decades, but schisms have since emerged on that island.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Discrimination limits economic and political opportunities for women, and just one woman won a seat in the 2014 elections. Many lawmakers have voiced support for increasing women's participation in the National Parliament, including through reserved seats for women.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 6 / 12 (+1)

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4

Solomon Islands governments have been able to determine national policy, but the islands' fractious politics hamper efficient policymaking. Prime ministers have struggled to sustain control of fractious coalitions, and splits within cabinet are frequent. Ministries are often run as ministers' personal fiefdoms, and are not accountable to the prime minister. The exigencies of survival often lead prime ministers to abandon a focus on their policy agenda. Ministers often defect to the opposition where there is a strong possibility of forming an alternative government.

Former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare left the annual summit of the Pacific Islands Forum in Samoa early in September 2017, to return home in response to political maneuvering aimed at removing him from office. Sogavare was ultimately ousted in November and replaced by Rick Hou.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4 (+1)

Corruption and abuse of office are serious problems, and Sogavare in 2016 and 2017 struggled to win support for anticorruption legislation, largely due to resistance from within his government. However, in the meantime, a number of senior officials have been investigated or arrested in connection with corruption charges due to the efforts of Task Force Janus, a joint anticorruption effort by the police force and Finance Ministry established in 2016. Among those who faces charges under the effort are Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Infrastructure Development Henry Murray, and permanent secretary of the Ministry of Police Edmond Sikua.

The change of government in November 2017 brought many MPs who supported anticorruption laws into the government.

Score Change: The score improved from 2 to 3 due to an anticorruption drive that has resulted in the arrest of a number of officials on corruption charges.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 1 / 4

Successive governments in Solomon Islands do not operate transparently. Dealings with Asian logging companies are not open to scrutiny. Efforts to improve accountability of funds spent by MPs in their constituencies have not been greatly successful. There is no law stipulating a formal process by which members of the public may request public information.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 44 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 14 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

Freedom of the press is usually respected, but politicians and elites sometimes use legal and extralegal means to intimidate journalists. There are several print newspapers. The government operates a national radio station, and subnational and private radio stations are also available. Subscription television services offer some local content.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is generally respected.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 3 / 4

While private discussion is generally unrestricted, taboos persist regarding the open discussion of some topics, including domestic violence, rape, and child abuse.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 9 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 3 / 4

The constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, and the government generally upholds this right in practice. However, peaceful demonstrations can give way to civil unrest, particularly during contentions parliamentary debate or large-scale labor actions.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 3 / 4

There are no constraints on nongovernment organizations (NGOs). However, many groups operate informally, and the government is not always receptive to the viewpoints of governance-focused groups. Locally based NGOs often lack resources, and there are reports that many such groups adopt platforms designed to win money from international donors, and that as a result, local knowledge bases are neglected.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

Workers are free to organize, and strikes are permitted with certain restrictions. Laws against antiunion discrimination by employers are reportedly ineffective. The country's main labor union, the Solomon Islands National Union of Workers, was disbanded by court order in late 2013 after lengthy litigation over an illegal strike by plantation workers. However, labor activists registered a new entity, the Workers Union of Solomon Islands (WUSI), in 2014.

F. RULE OF LAW: 9 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The judiciary has a reputation for independence, though it is badly underresourced, and case backlogs persist. The Court of Appeal is mainly reliant on foreign judges.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 2 / 4

Deficiencies in due process are somewhat common, but are mainly a result of limited resources and capacity constraints. Due to case backlogs, the country's prisons house many inmates on remand awaiting trial.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

Rebuilding the police force has been the major focus of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which was initially established in 2003 to maintain peace between the country's two dominant ethnic groups, the Gwale and Malaitans, following a conflict. The local police force was disarmed in 2003, and its paramilitary unit, the Police Field Force (which had participated in a coup in June 2000) was disbanded. Some two thirds of the police officers serving in the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force have resigned, retired or been dismissed since 2003, and an extensive training program has created a much more youthful force, with better representation of officers from across the country, and a better gender balance. In 2016, RAMSI undertook a limited rearmament of the Solomon Islands police force. RAMSI concluded its mission in the Solomon Islands in 2017, and almost all of its associated officials had left the islands by year's end.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Same-sex sexual activity can be punished with up to 14 years in prison. While cases are reportedly rare, the government has resisted international pressure to decriminalize such activity. Discrimination limits economic opportunities for women.

The Guadalcanal Plains Palm Oil (GPPOL) operation on northern Guadalcanal, one of the country's biggest employers, avoids employing Malaitan labor, even on a casual basis picking loose fruit, for fear of antagonizing local Guadalcanal communities.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 12 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 3 / 4

Informal impediments on freedom of movement exist, particularly in rural Guadalcanal in areas where people from the island of Malaita were expelled during the unrest in 1999-2000. Hostility to Malaitan settlement persists also in parts of the Western Province.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 3 / 4

Property rights are frequently contested. GPPOL has had its administrative buildings attacked on several occasions. Logging concession have been contested by local groups, as have tourism operations.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Domestic violence is a serious problem in Solomon Islands. A new Family Protection Act, formally criminalizing domestic violence and enabling victims to apply for protection orders, has been implemented, and police have received training on how to interact with victims and handle cases. However, domestic violence and rape are underrreported, and there is a reluctance among many victims who do report it to take cases to court.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Local and foreign women and children are vulnerable to sex trafficking and domestic servitude, including through forced marriages or "adoptions" to pay off debts. Migrant workers sometimes face forced labor in the mining, logging, and fishing industries. Authorities have taken efforts to update antitrafficking laws in recent years.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - San Marino

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - San Marino, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce20a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 97 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 30,000

Capital: San Marino

GDP/capita: $47,611

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

San Marino is a parliamentary democracy in which political rights and civil liberties are generally upheld. Corruption is a problem, and while investigative journalists are active, heavy fines for defamation can encourage self-censorship. Women are underrepresented in politics

Key Developments in 2017:

In March, a popular initiative to legalize abortion triggered strong divisions between the newly elected center-left government and the conservative opposition, which draws support from Catholic movements.

In June, a number of high-ranking former politicians were sentenced after being convicted of money laundering and other corruption charges, as part of the so-called Conto-Mazzini case.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 38 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Executive power rests with the 10-member State Congress (cabinet), which is accountable to parliament and is headed by two captains regent. As the joint heads of state, the captains are elected every six months by members of the unicameral legislature, the Great and General Council, from among its own members. Although there is no official prime minister, the secretary of state for foreign and political affairs is regarded as the head of government; Nicola Renzi was elected to the post in 2016.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The 60 members of the unicameral Great and General Council are elected every five years. The November 2016 elections were considered credible and free, and their results were accepted by stakeholders and the public. After two rounds of elections, the center-left Adesso.sm coalition finished first with 35 seats, and unseated the ruling San Marino First coalition, which took the remaining 25 seats.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

The electoral laws provide a sound basis for the organization of free and fair elections. However, in 2016, the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) urged San Marino to adopt legislation on the financing of political parties, noting that the current funding rules are insufficiently transparent.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 15 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Parties are free to form and operate in San Marino, and a great number of them contest elections. Since 2008, most parties are part of larger electoral coalitions.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions preventing the opposition from increasing support through elections. Multiple opposition parties are represented in the Great and General Council.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

There are no powerful groups without democratic legitimacy that influence or limit people's political choices.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

About 18 percent of the population consists of noncitizens who do not have political rights. Under San Marino's strict naturalization criteria, one must live in the country for over 30 years to obtain citizenship.

Women comprised 55 percent of eligible voters in the 2016 polls, but are underrepresented in the Great and General Council, where they hold 23 percent of seats, and in politics generally. An Organization for Co-operation and Security in Europe (OSCE) assessment mission deployed ahead of the 2016 polls noted that gender quotas on candidate lists were undercut by the country's preferential voting system. Women are better represented in the country's Electoral Council and in polling administration.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 11 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The government and parliament exercise their powers without undue influence from unelected actors.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

In response to a number of scandals involving high-ranking officials, San Marino has recently launched a series of programs to combat corruption and money laundering. In its July 2016 progress report, GRECO noted that significant progress has been made regarding the criminalization of corruption offences in the public sector.

In June 2017, a large number of former politicians were convicted for their involvement in bribery, corruption, money laundering, and vote buying. In this so-called Conto-Mazzini case, multiple former captains regent and ministers received prison sentences ranging from two to eight years, meaning that a large part of the former political elite will be imprisoned.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 4 / 4

Laws providing for the accessibility of government information are in place, and the government generally respected those laws.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 59 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

Freedom of speech and the press are generally upheld. Local media are pluralistic, and journalists investigate key issues including financial crimes. However, convictions under San Marino's strict defamation laws can carry hundreds of thousands of euros in damages, and reportedly prompt self-censorship among journalists.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Religious freedom is broadly upheld in San Marino. Religious discrimination is prohibited by law. There is no state religion, although Roman Catholicism is dominant, and Catholic religious instruction is offered in schools (though it is not mandatory).

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is respected.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Freedom of expression is legally safeguarded, and people are free to express their views on politics and other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is upheld in practice. Several demonstrations against an initiative by the new government to legalize abortion took place in 2017.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may operate without restrictions, and several human rights groups are active in the country.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Workers are free to strike, organize in trade unions, and bargain collectively, unless they work in military occupations. Approximately half of the workforce is unionized. The law prohibits antiunion discrimination and provides avenues for recourse for workers penalized for labor activity.

F. RULE OF LAW: 16 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

The judiciary is independent. Lower court judges are required to be noncitizens to ensure impartiality; most are Italian nationals. The highest court is the Council of Twelve, a group of judges chosen for six-year terms from among the members of the Great and General Council.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

Due process rights are generally upheld. Arbitrary arrests and detentions are prohibited by law, and the government respected these laws in practice.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

Civilian authorities maintain effective control over the police and security forces. There is one prison in San Marino and the inmate population is small. Law enforcement agents generally operate with professionalism.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 4 / 4

The law prohibits the publication of ideas related to racial or ethnic superiority and discrimination.

Women face societal discrimination that affects their access to employment and economic opportunity. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged San Marino to strengthen its legal framework against discrimination, in particular gender discrimination.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 16 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions on the freedom of movement, and San Marino residents may freely choose their place of residence, employment, and education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4

The rights to own property and establish business are upheld.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 4 / 4

Personal freedoms are generally safeguarded in San Marino. However, there is no legal recognition of same-sex couples. In 2014, the government rejected a proposal to fully recognize the rights of same-sex couples who were legally married abroad.

Women are given legal protections from violence and spousal abuse. A popular 2017 initiative to legalize abortion met with fierce resistance from conservative Catholic groups.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 4 / 4

San Marino has no national minimum wage, though some sectors have set their own. The government generally upholds labor protections for workers, and provides assistance to low-income individuals. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights in 2015 called on San Marino to continue with efforts to better protect foreign women employed as caregivers or domestic workers.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Sao Tome and Principe

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Sao Tome and Principe, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce21a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 82 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 2.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 200,000

Capital: Sao Tome

GDP/capita: $1,615

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Sao Tome and Principe holds regular, competitive national elections and has undergone multiple transfers of power between rival parties. Civil liberties are generally respected, but poverty and corruption have weakened some institutions and contributed to dysfunction in the justice system. The opposition has accused the ruling party of using its control over the presidency and a strong parliamentary majority to consolidate power.

Key Developments in 2017:

China formally opened its embassy in the country in April, after Sao Tome switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in December 2016. Beijing promised an increase in development aid and investment.

In August, President Evaristo Carvalho announced that elections for municipalities and for the regional government of Principe, which should have taken place in 2017, would be postponed to 2018 due to a lack of funds.

Also in August, the parliament adopted legislation that reorganized the electoral commission over the objections of the opposition, which argued that it could enable the ruling party to manipulate future balloting.

In December, the president promulgated legislation to create a new Constitutional Court despite a pending review of the measure by the Supreme Court, which attempted to block the promulgation. The dispute was unresolved at year's end.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 34 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 11 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The president is directly elected for up to two consecutive five-year terms. The prime minister, who holds most day-to-day executive authority, is appointed by the president based on the results of legislative elections. Executive elections are typically considered free and fair.

In the July 2016 presidential election, Carvalho, a former prime minister and member of the ruling Independent Democratic Action (ADI) party, led the first round with just under 50 percent of the vote; he was initially credited with over 50 percent, but the National Electoral Commission (CEN) revised the total downward, citing late results from certain areas. Carvalho's leading opponent, incumbent president and independent Manuel Pinto da Costa, was credited with nearly 25 percent, but he boycotted the August runoff vote, alleging irregularities in the first round. Carvalho was consequently elected unopposed. Despite this dispute, African Union observers generally praised the conduct of the election.

Patrice Trovoada has served as prime minister since 2014, when he was appointed following ADI's victory in that year's legislative elections.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Members of the unicameral, 55-seat National Assembly are elected by popular vote to four-year terms. In the 2014 elections, ADI secured 33 seats, followed by the Movement for the Liberation of Sao Tome and Principe-Social Democratic Party (MLSTP-PSD) with 16 seats, the Democratic Convergence Party-Reflection Group (PCD-GR) with 5, and the Union of Democrats for Citizenship and Development (UDD) with 1. International observers deemed the elections largely free and fair.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The electoral laws and framework are generally fair, but implementation suffers from a lack of resources and staff. Elections at the municipal level and in the autonomous region of Principe, last held in 2014, were due in 2017, but the president announced in August that they would be postponed to 2018, citing insufficient funds. The elections had been similarly postponed from 2013 to 2014.

Also in August, the ADI parliamentary majority adopted legislation that reorganized the CEN. While the previous commissions had nine members, including representatives of all parliamentary parties, serving four-year terms, the new body would have three members, with two nominated by the largest party and one by the second-largest party, serving seven-year terms. The opposition criticized the changes, saying they could allow the ADI to manipulate future elections.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 14 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

The multiparty system features free and vigorous competition between ADI, MLSTP-PSD, PCD-GR, and a variety of other parties.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Pinto da Costa and the MLSTP-PSD ruled Sao Tome and Principe as a one-party state from independence in 1975 until 1991. Since then there have been multiple democratic transfers of power between rival parties. Individual governments have tended to be short-lived, partly due to the country's system of proportional representation, which encourages coalition or minority governments.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 3 / 4

Voters and politicians are generally free from undue interference with their decisions. The practice of vote buying by political parties and candidates remains a problem, but it is reported to be waning over time and was never considered a decisive factor in elections. While the country experienced military coups in 1995 and 2003, normal civilian rule was swiftly restored in both cases.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Women and minority groups enjoy full political rights, though societal discrimination inhibits women's participation to some degree. Maria das Neves of the MLSTP-PSD, the country's first woman prime minister from 2002 to 2004, placed third in the 2016 presidential election. Women won 10 seats in the 2014 parliamentary elections.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 9 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The prime minster and cabinet determine the policies of the government, under the supervision of the National Assembly and the president. They are able to implement laws and policies without improper interference from unelected entities.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 2 / 4

Corruption is a major problem. Oversight mechanisms, the opposition, and the media have repeatedly uncovered evidence of official malfeasance, sometimes resulting in dismissals and other repercussions, but on the whole anticorruption laws are poorly enforced.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

The government generally does not restrict access to information about its operations, and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative has reported that authorities are making progress on implementing its recommendations as the country engages in offshore oil exploration. However, there is no specific law guaranteeing public access to government information, and officials rarely disclose their assets and income.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 48 / 60 (+1)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

Freedom of the press is constitutionally guaranteed and largely respected in practice. Public media convey opposition views and grant some access to opposition leaders, but only a handful of private media outlets are available, and a degree of self-censorship is reported at both public and private outlets. There are no restrictions on online media, though the sector is poorly developed. Less than a third of the population has internet access.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

The constitution provides for freedom of religion. Religious groups are required to register with the Justice Ministry and can face penalties for failure to do so, but the process is not reported to be biased or restrictive.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

The constitution prohibits political indoctrination in education, and academic freedom is generally respected in practice.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions on individuals' freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by the constitution. The government is not known to engage in improper surveillance of personal communications or monitoring of online content.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 10 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

The constitution protects freedom of assembly, which the government generally observes in practice. However, organizers are obliged to give authorities two days' notice before public gatherings.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights and governance-related work? 3 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are free to operate, and they often work with the government to address issues such as child labor and provide basic services. Nevertheless, the sector is relatively small, and NGO independence and activities are limited by a lack of funding.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

Worker have the legal rights to organize, strike, and bargain collectively, and these are mostly respected, though there are no provisions to regulate bargaining or punish antiunion practices by employers. Most union negotiations are conducted with the government, which remains the country's dominant formal-sector employer. Workers in the judicial system mounted a strike from March to June 2017, ending the action after they secured an agreement on pay and working conditions.

F. RULE OF LAW: 12 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The constitution provides for an independent judiciary, and the courts are relatively autonomous in practice, but they are susceptible to political influence and corruption. The system is also understaffed and underfunded.

In December 2017, the president promulgated legislation adopted in August that would create a separate Constitutional Court, as called for in the constitution. It would have ultimate authority over election results, and its members would be appointed by a simple parliamentary majority if an initial vote failed to reach a two-thirds majority. Opposition parties criticized the measure as undemocratic, noting that it had been promulgated while still under review by the Supreme Court, which has performed constitutional review functions in the absence of a separate tribunal. The Supreme Court ruled that the promulgation was null pending its verdict on the law, but the president claimed that the court could no longer act in its former capacity under the new legislation. The dispute had yet to be resolved at year's end.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

Law enforcement authorities generally observe legal safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention as well as guarantees for a fair trial, but police corruption is a problem, and there were reports in 2017 that indigent defendants were denied access to a lawyer. The country's bar association said in October that the state had failed to provide funding for such defense attorneys.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Police are sometimes accused of beating suspects during arrest, and prisons suffer from overcrowding and other harsh conditions. The country is relatively free of major violence or unrest. However, Rwandan troops arrived in May 2017 with a mission to train and advise local security forces amid growing ties between the two countries, and the opposition alleged that their presence was part of the government's antidemocratic agenda.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Equal treatment is guaranteed by law, but a degree of societal discrimination against women persists, hampering their access to economic and educational opportunities. Although same-sex sexual activity is not criminalized, discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people is sometimes reported, and the law does not specifically address such bias.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 11 / 16 (+1)

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4 (+1)

The constitution establishes the freedom of internal movement, foreign travel, emigration, and repatriation. The government has generally respected these rights.

Score Change: The score improved from 3 to 4 because there have been no recent reports of restrictions on the constitutional right to travel and relocate within the country or abroad.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 3 / 4

The legal framework and government policies are generally supportive of property rights and private business activity, though bureaucratic obstacles and corruption pose challenges in practice.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

There are few formal restrictions on personal social freedoms. However, domestic violence is reportedly common and rarely prosecuted. The minimum age for marriage with parental consent is 14 for girls and 16 for boys, as opposed to 18 without parental consent for both. Roughly a third of girls marry before age 18.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

Forced labor is prohibited and child labor is restricted by law. There are also basic legal protections against exploitative or dangerous working conditions. However, the government lacks the capacity to enforce these rules effectively, particularly in the informal agricultural sector.

The economy depends in large part on foreign aid, and the government has sought assistance from a variety of sources. Sao Tome and Principe switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in late 2016 amid pledges of increased aid and investment from Beijing, and a Chinese embassy was opened in April 2017.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedGM Korea in a shareholders' meeting on Friday decided to establish a research and development company despite opposition from workers and state-run Korea Development Bank, its second-largest shareholder.

KDB says it cannot understand why GM Korea needs to establish an R&D company here now instead of putting its promised investment into the manufacturing operation, and the workers fear the move is a precursor to massive layoffs.

Incheon Mayor Park Nam-chun joined the feud by threatening to take back land it gave GM for a test track if the automaker goes through with the plan.

Park in a Facebook post on Sunday said, "I've instructed my legal team to look into the legality of the city taking back the land. Incheon provided the land in the hope that GM would contribute to developing the automotive industry and job creation in the region. If GM Korea's union and the public do not support the spin-off of the unit, we will take steps to get the land back."Freedom in the World 2018 - Romania

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Romania, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce22a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 84 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 2.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 19,800,000

Capital: Bucharest

GDP/capita: $8,978

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

Romania's multiparty system has ensured regular rotations of power. Civil liberties are generally respected, though ongoing concerns include corruption in the police force, discrimination against Roma and other vulnerable groups, and interference in the judiciary. Key media outlets are controlled by businessmen with political interests. Political corruption is an entrenched problem that continues to prompt public protests.

Key Developments in 2017:

In January and February, Romanians across the country took to the streets in historic numbers to protest against a package of emergency ordinances that would have reversed past anticorruption efforts.

A watchdog group in May issued a report warning that media outlets had played a key role in spreading misinformation and propaganda during the anticorruption protests.

Liviu Dragnea, the powerful chairman of the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD), initiated a successful no-confidence vote in June against the newly seated, PSD-led government of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu. Grindeanu was replaced by Mihai Tudose.

The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) opened separate corruption investigations against key PSD figures: Dragnea, and Deputy Prime Minister Sevil Shhaideh.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 35 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS 11 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The president is chief of state and is directly elected to up to two five-year terms. The prime minister is the head of government, and is appointed by the president with the approval of the parliament; thus the prime minister's legitimacy is dependent in part on the conduct of parliamentary elections. Both presidential and parliamentary elections since 1991 have been generally free and fair.

After the December 2016 parliamentary elections, a majority comprised of the PSD and the Alliance of Democrats and Liberals (ALDE) proposed Sorin Grindeanu of the PSD to be prime minister. President Klaus Iohannis designated Grindeanu, and the new cabinet was sworn into office in January 2017. In June, Grindeanu was ousted in a vote of no confidence filed by the PSD and initiated by party chair Liviu Dragnea. Grindeanu was replaced late in the month by Mihai Tudose of the PSD.

Iohannis, Romania's centrist president, was elected in 2014.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Under the 2015 electoral law, members of the bicameral Parliament, consisting of a 136-seat Senate and a 330-seat Chamber of Deputies, are elected to four-year terms a in a closed party-list proportional system. The PSD took a plurality of seats in both houses in the December 2016 parliamentary elections. International election monitors assessed the poll positively, and stakeholders accepted the results.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The electoral law adopted in 2015 regulated the 2016 elections. The number of MPs decreased from 588 to 465, and the uninominal system was replaced by a closed party-list proportional system. A 5 percent electoral threshold for parties was maintained, while a new threshold of 8 to 10 percent was introduced for alliances.

The 2016 parliamentary elections revealed some gaps in the new electoral code, such as flawed procedures for vetting candidate eligibility, registering as an observer, and conducting ballot recounts. Analysts also noted a scarcity of regulations on party financing. The law also allowed mail-in voting for citizens living abroad, though participation was limited; fewer than 9,000 people registered to vote by mail, and some 4,000 ballots were cast by mail. New technological measures were introduced to help prevent fraud, including video cameras to record the ballot count.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 14 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Under the electoral law adopted in 2015, the number of members needed to create a new party decreased from 25,000 to 3, leading to the registration of many new parties. However, watchdogs have raised concerns about a provision stating that newly created parties can be eliminated if they skip two consecutive elections.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Romania's multiparty system features healthy competition between rival blocs. No single force has been able to dominate both the executive and legislative branches since 2012. The mainstream parties display little ideological consistency and tend to seek coalitions that advance their leaders' personal or business interests. Watchdogs have expressed concern about the large number of signatures required to place candidates on ballots for local and parliamentary elections, which can disadvantage small parties.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 3 / 4

People are generally free to express their political choices without undue influence from nondemocratic actors. However, clientelism in local politics remains a problem, and undermines political accountability. Watchdogs have expressed concern over the increasing presence of disinformation and propaganda in the media, which could influence people's political choices and views.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Ethnic, religious, and other minority groups enjoy full political rights under the law. Romania's constitution grants one lower house seat to each national minority whose representative party or organization fails to win any seats under the normal rules, and 17 such seats were allotted to minority representatives following the 2016 elections. President Iohannis, an ethnic German and a Lutheran, is the country's first president from either minority group.

Roma, who make up over 3 percent of the population, are underrepresented in politics. A number of women hold cabinet-level positions, but women are underrepresented in the Chamber of Deputies, where they hold 21 percent of seats, and in regional assemblies, where they hold 17 percent of seats. None of the major political parties are led by a woman. Social discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people discourages political advocacy for LGBT rights.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

Elections are held without delays, and elected officials are duly seated and generally able to craft policy. In 2017, intraparty disputes in the PSD hampered policymaking activities. PSD chairman Liviu Dragnea, who sits in the parliament but is not eligible for the prime minister's seat due to his 2015 conviction on electoral fraud charges, successfully forced out Prime Minister Grindeanu, also of PSD, through his efforts to bring a June no-confidence vote.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

High levels of corruption, bribery, and the abuse of power remain a problem. In spite of intense political interference and media pressure, the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) remains independent and powerful, and fairly investigates corruption cases across the political spectrum. In September, the DNA opened an investigation of Deputy Prime Minister Sevil Shhaideh of the PSD for abuse of power in a case that dates back to 2013, when she was in the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration. In November, the DNA announced that Dragnea was being investigated on allegations of abusing power for personal gain, and defrauding the European Union (EU) through the misappropriation of EU funds. Allegations of high-level corruption are typically given a substantive airing in the media.

In November, the European Commission raised concerns over the lack of political support for the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NAS) that was introduced by the government in 2016, and noted a resistance by politicians to lift the immunity of lawmakers so that corruption claims could be investigated and prosecuted.

In February, the government cancelled a pair of emergency ordinance that would have decriminalized some kinds of corruption, in the wake of massive public protests. A draft law that would offer amnesty for some corruption convictions was introduced in April and sparked more protests, and had not been adopted at year's end.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

Citizens have the legal right to obtain public information and can petition government agencies for it. In 2016, a new computer system, known as PREVENT, was established under the National Integrity Agency in order to prevent conflicts of interests in public procurements.The system entered into operation in June 2017.

However, apparent efforts by lawmakers to keep various government operations shrouded in secrecy continued in 2017. January's emergency ordinances that decriminalized some forms of corruption (and were later repealed) had not been debated extensively by the newly seated government, and were published unexpectedly, and late at night. Lawmakers also sought in 2017 to exempt a number of state-owned companies from corporate governance rules, and the government replaced the leaders of a number of state owned companies with loyalists.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 49 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 14 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

Although the media environment is pluralistic, key media outlets are controlled by businessmen with political interests, and coverage is highly distorted by the interests of owners. The watchdog group ActiveWatch in a May 2017 report warned that the media played a key role in spreading misinformation during the January and February antigovernment protests, and that many outlets had served as platforms for political actors to disseminate propaganda. It further accused the National Audiovisual Council of turning a blind eye to unprofessional behavior by media outlets as well as to intimidation of journalists by political figures, police, and members of the public. There were reports of police forcing journalists to delete footage of the protests.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 3 / 4

Religious freedom is generally respected. While the Romanian Orthodox Church remains dominant and politically powerful, the government formally recognizes 18 religions, each of which is eligible for proportional state support. There have been reports of discrimination and harassment against religions minorities. In October, a performance at the Cluj-Napoca Opera House was interrupted by self-described anti-Muslim activists. In 2017 there were reports of hate speech on social media against Jewish people, as well as vandalism of Jewish cemeteries.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

The government does not restrict academic freedom, though the education system is weakened by widespread corruption and by the power of local and national government officials in electing and approving heads of schools and academic institutions.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

People are generally free to express their opinions without fear of retribution. However, watchdogs reported that during the massive protests in January and February 2017, the Interior Ministry produced a list with names of journalists and politicians who has endorsed the street movements.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 11 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Romania's constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, and the government generally respects this rights in practice. Numerous public demonstrations were held throughout 2017, including a two-month-long anticorruption street movement that at times attracted as many as 500,000 protesters across the country.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate freely and play a role in informing and educating the public. Nevertheless, many groups focusing on human rights- or governance-related work suffer from funding shortages, and often face hostility and smears from politicians and other actors.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

Workers have the right to form unions and a limited right to strike and bargain collectively. There are legal limits on the ability of unions to participate in political activity, and the International Labor Organization has expressed concern about the level of government supervision of unions' finances.

F. RULE OF LAW: 12 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The judiciary is generally independent, but faces pressure from the executive and legislative branches. Many judges and prosecutors denounced proposed changes to the legal system in 2017, including a measure that would ban public statements about investigations and trials, and would allow suspects to attend court sessions when witnesses are giving testimony, the latter of which could contribute to witness intimidation.

A Code of Conduct adopted in October by Parliament acknowledges the respect of lawmakers for the principle of separation of powers.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

The country's courts and law enforcement authorities continue to suffer from problems including corruption, political influence, staffing shortages, and inefficient resource allocation. Dozens of law enforcement officials were arrested and prosecuted during the year for bribery, abuse of power, and corruption.

Separately, in November 2017, the European Commission warned that the lack of an independent and powerful process for appointing top prosecutors threatened the rule of law.

Many officials and lawmakers retain their positions despite criminal indictments or convictions.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Romania is free from war and insurgencies. Conditions in prisons, however, are harsh. In April, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sanctioned Romania for poor prison conditions, and ordered it to take immediate measures to improve the conditions of inmates and come up with a timetable for resolving the problems within six months. In response, the government in October passed legislation reducing the sentences of some prisoners; under it, about 530 inmates were initially released early and some 3,500 more became eligible for release the next month. Civil society groups and others expressed concern that the release of inmates as a measure to reduce overcrowding in the prisons was not a proper response to the ECHR's criticisms, and warned that the measure could be used to grant parole to officials convicted for corruption.

Abuse of detainees by police remains a problem.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

People with disabilities, LGBT people, the Roma community, and HIV-positive children and adults continue to face discrimination in education, employment, and other areas. The Constitution guarantees women equal rights, but gender discrimination remains a problem. According to the European Commission's 2017 Report on Equality between Men and Women in the EU, Romanian women are paid more than 5 percent less on average than their male counterparts.

While the number of recently arrived refugees and migrants is low in Romania compared to other countries in the region, some media outlets have carried harsh rhetoric aiming to stoke fears about a "migrant influx." Residents of refugee centers are subject to curfews.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 12 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Citizens face no significant restrictions on the freedom of movement, whether for internal or external travel, and are free to change residence and employment.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

Bureaucracy, corruption, and fiscal unpredictability hamper business development and investments.

The right to property is protected by law. Although significant progress has been made to support the property restitution process after the fall of Communism, Romania's government has not yet ensured the full restitution of religious properties.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Domestic violence against women remains a serious problem. Same-sex marriages are not permitted under Romanian law, and the rights of same-sex couples married elsewhere are not protected. In 2016, activists collected some 3 million signatures calling for marriage to be defined as between a man and a woman. The Constitutional Court accepted the validity of the proposal, paving the way for an expected referendum on the topic.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Human trafficking for the purpose of forced labor and prostitution remains a serious problem in Romania. Women and children from the Roma minority are particularly susceptible to forced begging. The government has worked to increase prosecutions, and has taken some action aimed at bolstering victim identification efforts.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Papua New Guinea

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Papua New Guinea, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce23a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 63 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 3.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 8,200,000

Capital: Port Moresby

GDP/capita: $2,659

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Papua New Guinea is a democracy in which regular elections are held, but polls have been marred by irregularities and violence. Party allegiances are fickle and only two governments have survived for a full term since independence in 1975. However, since the turn of the century, a mineral resources boom has helped successive incumbent governments to consolidate control. The judiciary retains some independence and the media is free to criticize government. Corruption remains a serious problem.

Key Developments in 2017:

The general election held in June and July was marred by violence and irregularities, particularly in the Highlands Region.

Peter O'Neill was reelected prime minister in August, in a parliamentary vote of 60 to 46.

The Australian-run detention center for asylum seekers closed in October, but many of the people housed there remained on the site, and had poor access to food, water, and electricity.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 25 / 40 (-1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 8 / 12 (-1)

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

The governor general  who represents the United Kingdom's monarch as head of state  formally appoints the prime minister, who is the head of government. A law provides that the largest political party emerging from a general election has the first right to nominate a prime minister. While the prime minister's legitimacy is partially rooted in the conduct of the legislative elections, the election of the prime minister by members of parliament is a highly competitive process. Following the victory of the People's National Congress Party (PNC) in the 2017 elections, held in June and July, Peter O'Neill was reelected prime minister in August, in a parliamentary vote of 60 to 46.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 2 / 4 (-1)

Voters elect members of a unicameral, 111-member National Parliament to five-year terms. A limited preferential voting system allows voters to choose up to three preferred candidates on their ballots.

Serious flaws, including bribery and voter fraud, were reported in the 2017 election. Some areas, notably the Highlands Region, saw election-related violence that resulted in dozens of deaths, as well as severe property damage. Due to irregularities, election results in the Southern Highlands were released several months late, and sparked renewed violence in the town of Mendi once made public. The electoral process was smoother in coastal areas, but those regions too were not completely free from irregularities and violence. Allegations of deliberate manipulation of voter rolls to favor the incumbent government were widespread, but most clear abuses were localized in the Highlands. Election observers expressed disappointment that past recommendations to clean up voter rolls had been disregarded.

Score Change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to election-related violence and serious electoral irregularities in the Highlands Region.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The electoral law, which mandates a preferential ballot, is fair although complex to administer. The voter rolls are poorly maintained. At the local level, election management bodies are chronically lacking in independence, particularly in all parts of the Highlands.

An Elections Advisory Committee resigned in July 2017, claiming that it was not obtaining the information necessary to carry out its work.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 13 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties in Papua New Guinea are able to form and operate freely, but electoral loyalties are driven by local and personal factors at the constituency level. Many candidates run as independents, and align with parties only after they are elected. Lawmakers frequently switch affiliations and alliances.

The law allowing the largest party first opportunity to form a government creates an incentive for parties to register with the Registrar of Political Parties, as does government funding for parties.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

The opposition has a reasonable chance of dislodging the government in elections or through a confidence vote on the floor of Parliament. Since independence in 1975, only two governments have served out a full five-year term: Sir Michael Somare's 2002-07 administration, and then Peter O'Neill's from 2012A- to 2017. Immediately after the 2017 election, the opposition benches were stronger than under the previous government. However, most members of parliament (MPs) from the major opposition party, Pangu, defected to join O'Neill's government.

The frequency of no-confidence votes on the floor of Parliament has been diminished somewhat by a provision which grants an incoming prime minister an eighteen-month "grace period."

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

Most citizens and candidates are generally free to exercise political choices. However, local leaders, politicians, and candidate agents control the balloting process in the Highlands, and bulk complete the ballot papers. As a result, some citizens are effectively denied the right to vote.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Women are underrepresented in elected offices. The 2017 elections saw the highest number of women candidates ever, but none won legislative seats, and there are currently no women in the 111-seat parliament. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people face societal discrimination that impedes their ability to advocate for their interests in the political sphere.

A 2005 agreement ended a civil war in Bougainville, and provided for an independence referendum to be held between 2015 and 2020. While the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) has been building its own civil service in preparation for the possibility of becoming an independent nation, and laying groundwork for a 2019 referendum, authorities on the mainland have expressed opposition to the island's possible secession. This dispute is reflected in an ongoing controversy involving the distribution of shares of the Panguna copper mine in Bougainville, which is not currently in operation. O'Neill has directed some of the shares to Bougainville landowners, rather than the ABG, a move ABG leaders say violate the agreement that established Bougainville's autonomy. The referendum on independence, scheduled for 2019, is not legally binding on Papua New Guinea's government.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 4 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4

The prime minister controls the government, but cabinet ministers often exert considerable control over their portfolios without necessarily being answerable to cabinet.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 1 / 4

Corruption is pervasive and is the biggest hindrance to development. Anticorruption bureaucracies have been subject to political interference. Task Force Sweep was established in 2011 to root out corruption, and carried out a variety of investigations against politicians, civil servants, and businessmen. However, when Task Force Sweep turned its attentions to millions of dollars' worth of fraudulent payments to local law firm Paraka Lawyers that were allegedly authorized by O'Neill, the prime minister responded by disbanding the outfit, and when courts ordered its resurrection, the government cut its funding. While courts continued to insist that O'Neill turn up to answer police questions about his role in the Paraka Affair, a court voided the warrant against him in December 2017, citing mistakes by arresting officers.

Separately, in February, O'Neill suspended Minister of Public Enterprise and State Investment William Duma and then-Minister of Defence Fabian Pok over claims that they had profited from a multimillion dollar land deal associated with plans to relocate the Port Moresby naval base. However, Duma and Pok were reelected to Parliament later in the year, and their United Resources Party became a key player in O'Neill's new coalition government. Pok assumed the powerful petroleum and energy portfolio, and Duma took his previous position as Minister of Public Enterprise and State Investment.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 1 / 4

Government operations are generally opaque, and the government does not frequently release information about public expenditures, procurement processes, or officials' assets. Papua New Guinea does not have an access to information law.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 38 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 13 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

Freedom of the press is generally respected. Local media provide independent coverage of the political opposition, as well as controversial issues such as alleged police abuse and official corruption. Politicians have been known to harass media professionals over negative stories. An NBC broadcaster was assaulted by police during student protests in 2016.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 3 / 4

Religious freedom is generally upheld. However, there have been reports of larger churches criticizing newer and smaller groups, as well as of anti-Muslim rhetoric that has accompanied the arrival of Muslim refugees.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 3 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected. However, a violent 2016 incident at the University of Papua New Guinea cast doubt upon students' ability to organize against the government on university grounds. Police had fired on student protesters as they prepared to march to the parliament to call for Prime Minister O'Neill's resignation. Police said 23 people were injured.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

There are no constraints on expression of personal views. Internet use is growing, but high costs and lack of infrastructure limit its spread outside urban centers. The Office of Censorship was established by the 1989 Classification of Publication (Censorship) Act, and is tasked with monitoring and regulating information traffic. In 2016, lawmakers praised a newly approved cybercrimes law for allowing the prosecution of people who use social media groups to incite violence; civil society groups cautioned that it could be misused to punish critical speech.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 9 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 3 / 4

The constitution provides for freedoms of assembly. However, marches and demonstrations require 14 days' notice and police approval, and authorities sometimes deny permits. In June 2016, police opened fire on students at the University of Papua New Guinea who were protesting against government corruption.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 3 / 4

A number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate in the country, including those focused on human rights and environmental causes, as well as some that provide social services. However, most are small and lack resources.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

The government recognizes workers' rights to strike, organize, and engage in collective bargaining. The government has frequently imposed arbitration in labor disputes to avert strikes. Most workers are employed in the informal sector, and lack access to union protections.

F. RULE OF LAW: 7 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 2 / 4

The judiciary is generally independent, but successive governments have exerted political pressure on the court system. The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal and has jurisdiction on constitutional matters. A shortage of trained judicial personnel is a key cause of lengthy detentions and trial delays. Laypeople sit on village courts to adjudicate minor offenses under customary and statutory law.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 1 / 4

Constitutional guarantees of due process are poorly upheld. Arbitrary detention is relatively common, and in practice, opportunities to challenge arbitrary detention are limited. Delays in the criminal justice system contribute to lengthy pretrial detention.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

Law enforcement officials have been implicated in corruption, unlawful killings, extortion, rape, theft, and brutality. Prison conditions are poor, and the correctional service is understaffed. Prison breaks are common. Lack of economic opportunities exacerbates urban unrest, frequently resulting in violent clashes, injuries, and deaths.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Same-sex sexual relations are a criminal offense, but the relevant laws are rarely enforced. No laws protect against discrimination or hate crimes. There is some discrimination against people of Chinese origin, which is mainly linked to resentment toward a growing Chinese business presence viewed as disadvantaging other groups.

Australia pays the Papua New Guinean government for detainment on Manus Island of asylum seekers who arrived in Australian waters by boat, and require application processing and resettlement. Those who are not granted refugee status or do not agree to settle in Papua New Guinea are left in limbo, with Papua New Guinea's government claiming that these people are Australia's responsibility. Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled Australia's Manus Island center unconstitutional in April 2016, and the facility officially closed on October 31, 2017. However, by mid-November, 350 detainees who refused to vacate remained on the site without regular access to water, food, or power.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 9 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 3 / 4

There are no constraints on freedom of movement for citizens. The freedom of movement of those who were detained at the Australian-run detention center on Manus Island was highly restricted.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

In Papua New Guinea, 97 percent of the land area is theoretically under customary tenure, but Special Agriculture and Business Leases (SABLs) have been used to facilitate land grabs by unscrupulous investors. In March 2017, O'Neill claimed that all SABLs had been cancelled, but the incoming Lands and Physical Planning Minister Justin Tkatchenko acknowledged in August that action still needed to be taken on SABLs.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

Laws to fight family violence and protect victims are poorly enforced. Discrimination and violence against women and children are widespread, with about two-thirds of partnered women experiencing physical abuse, according to multiple studies. Allegations of sorcery have been used to target women for violence.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

The government does not actively prosecute human traffickers, and efforts to identify victims are inadequate. The United States Department of Labor has assembled evidence of child labor in the coffee, cocoa, palm oil and rubber sectors, as well as in commercial sexual exploitation. The US State Department describes bride price payments as exploitative.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Northern Cyprus

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Northern Cyprus, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce24a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 81 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 2.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

OVERVIEW

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) is a self-declared state recognized only by Turkey. It has a democratic, multiparty political system, and civil liberties are generally upheld. Ongoing concerns include undue political and economic influence from Turkey, corruption, discrimination against minority communities, and human trafficking.

Key Developments in 2017:

In January, nine Turkish army colonels were detained in the TRNC and deported to Turkey on suspicion of involvement with the organization of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen. After the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the TRNC had declared the group a terrorist organization; a small number of related arrests were reported in 2017, but nothing on the scale of the crackdown in Turkey.

After UN-brokered reunification talks with Cyprus collapsed in July, partly over the issue of the Turkish military's presence on the island, the Turkish Cypriot side adopted a strategy of unilateral moves to change the status quo, including plans to open three Maronite villages in the north for resettlement by their former residents.

In November, under pressure from the opposition to hold early elections, the ruling coalition agreed to move the legislative balloting forward from April 2018 to January 2018.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 31 / 40 (-1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 11 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The president, who serves as head of state and represents the TRNC internationally, is popularly elected to five-year terms. In 2015, Mustafa Aknc  backed by the social democratic Communal Democracy Party (TDP)  prevailed in a runoff election with just over 60 percent of the vote, defeating incumbent Dervis Eroglu, who was supported by the right-wing National Unity Party (UBP).

The president appoints the prime minister and cabinet members, who must have the support of a legislative majority. During 2017, Prime Minister Huseyin Ozgurgun of the UBP headed a governing coalition with the center-right Democratic Party (DP). In 2016 the UBP had broken with its previous coalition partner  the center-left Republican Turkish Party (CTP), which seeks reconciliation with the Greek Cypriots and European Union membership  to pursue policies that were seen as more closely aligned with Ankara.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

For elections to the 50-seat Assembly of the Republic, the TRNC employs a proportional representation system with a 5 percent vote threshold for parties to win seats. Members serve five-year terms. In the 2013 elections, the CTP led the voting with 21 seats, followed by the UBP with 14, the DP with 12, and the TDP with 3. In November 2017, the governing parties yielded to opposition pressure and agreed to move the next elections, initially scheduled for April 2018, forward to January 2018. Campaigning was under way at year's end.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The Supreme Election Committee is an independent body composed of judges, and elections in the TRNC are generally considered free and fair.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 13 / 16 (+1)

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Turkish Cypriots are free to organize in political parties, and several parties compete in practice, with four represented in the legislature as of 2017. Under a 2015 law, parties that receive at least 3 percent of the vote may obtain state funding.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

There have been multiple democratic transfers of power between rival parties in both the presidency and the premiership over the past 15 years, with Aknc ousting the incumbent president in the 2015 election. Opposition parties maintained a strong presence in the legislature as of 2017.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 3 / 4 (+1)

Although Turkey continues to exercise considerable influence over the TRNC, it has little direct control over voters, many of whom have recently supported candidates and parties that display independence from Ankara. Even Turkish settlers with TRNC citizenship have reportedly distributed their votes among a variety of parties. The opposition's push for early elections and other criticism in 2017 illustrated its willingness to defy a government that had moved closer to Turkey.

Score Change: The score improved from 2 to 3 because many Turkish Cypriot voters and politicians have displayed relative independence from Ankara in recent years.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 2 / 4

All adult citizens may vote, but minority rights remain a concern. The few hundred Maronite and Greek Cypriots living in the TRNC are issued special identity cards and are unable to vote in TRNC elections. In 2017, President Aknc opened one Maronite village to resettlement and announced plans to open two more, while a team began discussions with Maronite leaders that included the possible expansion of their political rights.

Women have full political rights, and a 2015 law requires 30 percent of a party's parliamentary candidate list to consist of women. However, women's political participation is limited in practice, particularly in leadership positions, and just four women won seats in the legislature in the last elections.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 7 / 12 (-2)

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 3 / 4

While elected officials generally develop and implement policies and legislation without direct interference from Ankara, the TRNC remains diplomatically and financially dependent on Turkey  which also maintains a military presence  and this dependence affects policymaking. In recent years Ankara has pushed for austerity and privatization measures that opponents said would shift control over key assets from the TRNC government to Turkish companies that are close to the Turkish state. A dispute over such changes contributed to the breakup of the CTP-UBP coalition government in 2016.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 2 / 4 (-1)

Corruption, cronyism in the distribution of civil service jobs, and nepotism are serious impediments to good governance, and the media have exposed a number of scandals in recent years. Among other cases in 2017, Serdar Denktas, the finance minister and deputy prime minister, approved a plan to transfer public land to his son, Rauf Denktas, for the construction of a university to be named after the finance minister's father, founding TRNC president Rauf Denktas. The government appeared to backtrack on the plan in the face of public criticism, though it was not clear at year's end that the project had been abandoned.

Score Change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to a series of corruption scandals, including a 2017 case involving the allocation of public land to the finance minister's son.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 2 / 4 (-1)

Although there is a law providing for access to information, there has been very little progress in making government records available to the public in practice. Information is not always kept in an accessible form, and officials reportedly withhold data on sensitive topics such as naturalization of Turkish settlers as TRNC citizens. In 2017, the government was accused of improperly granting citizenship to individuals including the prime minister's girlfriend. Officials must periodically disclose their personal assets, but the disclosures are not made public.

Score Change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to the government's failure to properly implement constitutional and legal guarantees on public access to information.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 50 / 60 (+2)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16 (+1)

D1. Are there free and independent media? 4 / 4 (+1)

Freedom of the press is guaranteed by law, and TRNC authorities generally respect it in practice. Journalists sometimes face obstruction or threats from the subjects of their reporting, and the owners of certain outlets are believed to influence coverage. Nevertheless, the media often carry sharp criticism of both the TRNC and Turkish governments. For example, the newspaper Afrika has reported critically on Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish minority despite police questioning of its staff, and in December 2017 it carried a Greek cartoon of the Turkish president, drawing protests and threats of legal action from Ankara.

Score Change: The score improved from 3 to 4 due to the media's pattern of critical reporting on the local and Turkish governments despite some pressure from authorities.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 3 / 4

The TRNC is a secular state and legally guarantees freedom of worship, which is mostly respected in practice. However, authorities continue to impose some restrictions on access to churches and otherwise interfere with church services. Christians and non-Sunni Muslims have complained that the government favors Sunni Islam in its policies on religious education and places of worship. The government's Religious Affairs Department staffs Sunni mosques with imams.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected. While large numbers of teachers and professors have been fired or jailed for political reasons in Turkey since 2016, no similar purges had occurred in the TRNC as of late 2017.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

There are no significant restrictions on freedom of private discussion, and individuals generally do not face repercussions for expressing their political views on social media. However, in one prominent case in January 2017, Turkish fashion designer Barbaros Sansal was arrested and deported to Turkey for a social media post in which he used vulgar language to denounce corruption and human rights abuses in Turkey.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 11 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is guaranteed by the constitution and generally upheld in practice.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Numerous nongovernmental organizations are registered in the TRNC, and they typically operate without restrictions. Many such groups have worked with Greek Cypriot partners to advance reunification efforts.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

Workers may form independent unions, bargain collectively, and strike, and collective bargaining is reportedly common in the public sector. However, the government can limit strikes in ill-defined essential services, and employers are reportedly able to obstruct unionization in the private sector without legal repercussions.

F. RULE OF LAW: 13 / 16 (+1)

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4 (+1)

The judiciary is independent, and courts have often ruled against the government in recent years. The system is overseen by the Supreme Council of Judicature, which is headed by the president of the Supreme Court and includes that court's seven judges as well as one member each appointed by the president, the legislature, the attorney general, and the bar association. The council is responsible for judicial appointments, promotions, assignments, and disciplinary measures.

Score Change: The score improved from 3 to 4 because the judicial system is structurally independent and has displayed its autonomy in practice in recent years.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

Although due process rights are typically respected, police have been accused of violating protections against arbitrary detention and coerced confessions in some cases, for example by improperly denying suspects access to a lawyer.

There were no large-scale purges of security forces or other public employees in connection with the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey as of 2017, but due process was a concern in the cases that were reported. Nine Turkish army colonels were arrested and deported to Turkey in January for alleged links to the banned Gulen movement. A small number of Turkish Cypriot civilians were arrested on similar charges during the year, and dozens of police officers were screened or investigated. Use of the encrypted messaging application ByLock was often enough to raise authorities' suspicions.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

The population is generally free from threats to physical security, but police have been accused of abusing detainees, and prisons feature overcrowding and other harsh conditions.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Women enjoy legal equality, but in practice they encounter some discrimination in employment, education, housing, and other areas.

The tiny Greek and Maronite minorities live in enclaves and face social and economic disadvantages. In September 2017, the TRNC government began taxing UN aid deliveries to the enclaves. The small Kurdish minority reportedly suffers from discrimination in employment. Both groups have complained of surveillance by TRNC authorities.

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people reportedly face social stigmatization, though same-sex sexual activity was decriminalized in 2014, and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited by law. Gay pride events were held without interference in 2017.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 11 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 3 / 4

Movement within the TRNC territory is generally unrestricted. However, travel abroad is hampered somewhat by the TRNC's lack of international recognition. The only direct flights from the TRNC are to Turkey. Most governments do not accept TRNC travel documents, so many Turkish Cypriots carry Republic of Cyprus passports, for which they are eligible. Movement across the UN buffer zone dividing the island has improved since 2004 due to a growing number of border crossings.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 3 / 4

The authorities recognize the rights to own property and establish businesses. The TRNC formed the Immovable Property Commission (IPC) in 2006 to resolve claims by Greek Cypriots who owned property in the north before the island's 1974 division. In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights recognized the commission as an "accessible and effective" mechanism. However, its work has been seriously impaired in recent years by a lack of funding from the government and Ankara.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Personal social freedoms are generally respected, though women's organizations have criticized the government for failing to adequately address the problems of rape and domestic violence. According to a 2017 poll, one in three women have experienced violence in the home.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

While TRNC citizens generally have access to economic opportunity and protections from abusive working conditions, noncitizens often experience exploitation and lack mechanisms for appeal. Human trafficking and forced prostitution are serious problems, despite a nominal legal ban on prostitution. Thousands of African students pursuing higher education in the TRNC are vulnerable to labor and sex trafficking. The TRNC lacks adequate antitrafficking legislation and does not fund antitrafficking efforts. Observers also report that some authorities are complicit in trafficking.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Namibia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Namibia, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce25a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 77 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 2.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 2,500,000

Capital: Windhoek

GDP/capita: $4,771

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

Namibia is a multiparty democracy, though the ruling party, SWAPO, has been in power since independence in 1990. Protections for civil liberties are generally robust. Minority ethnic groups accuse government of favoring the majority Ovambo in allocating services. Nomadic San people suffer from poverty and marginalization. Other human rights concerns include the criminalization of same-sex sexual relations under colonial-era laws, and discrimination against women under customary law and other traditional societal practices.

Key Developments in 2017:

The Whistleblower Protection Act and Witness Protection Act were signed into law in October. Parliament passed the Combatting of Trafficking in Persons Bill in December, though it had not yet been signed into law at year's end.

Descendants of the Herero and Nama people filed a lawsuit in January against Germany seeking damages for colonial-era genocide. The case remained open at year's end.

The government, after a long delay, released a list of beneficiaries of a controversial land resettlement program. The list showed that most beneficiaries were from the central and southern regions. The ruling party rejected activists' demands for parliamentary debate of the program.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 30 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 10 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The president is both chief of state and head of government, and is directly elected for up to two five-year terms. In the 2014 election, Hage Geingob defeated numerous rivals for the presidency, winning 87 percent of the vote. The polls were deemed competitive and credible by election observers, though some logistical glitches with electronic voting machines were reported.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

The Third Constitutional Amendment, approved ahead of the 2014 polls, altered the composition of the legislature. Under it, the National Council is now comprised of 42 seats (from 26), with members appointed by regional councils for six-year terms, and the National Assembly is comprised of 96 seats (from 72), filled by popular election for five-year terms using party-list proportional representation. The new amendment also allows the president to appoint 8 nonvoting members to the National Assembly.

The 2014 polls were deemed competitive and credible by election observers, though some logistical glitches with electronic voting machines were reported. SWAPO won 80 percent of the vote, giving it 77 National Assembly seats. The closest opposition, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance of Namibia (DTA), won 4.8 percent of the vote for 5 seats, and eight additional parties won the remaining seats. While voters intimidation was not reported, opposition parties had some difficulty achieving visibility due to the dominance of SWAPO, which some observers said was reinforced by provisions of the the Third Constitutional Amendment.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The 2014 polls were the first held under the Third Constitutional Amendment, which increased the number of members in Namibia's bicameral legislature by 40 percent. SWAPO was criticized for rushing passage of the new law, which was seen to be in its favor given its dominant position in politics, in advance of the elections. However, the electoral framework is otherwise robust and well implemented.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 11 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 3 / 4

Political parties may form and operate freely. However, candidate registration fees can place an undue burden on smaller parties with limited resources. In 2015, ahead of regional elections, opposition parties claimed it would have cost them nearly N$300,000 (US$21,500) to run candidates in all of the country's 121 constituencies.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 2 / 4

Opposition parties may freely compete in elections and generally do not encounter intimidation or harassment during election campaigns. However, in practice the opposition is weak and fragmented, and does not pose any significant threat to SWAPO's political dominance.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 3 / 4

People are generally able to express their political choices without undue influence from actors that are not democratically accountable. However, the continued domination of SWAPO  an ideologically diverse "big tent" party whose energies are often consumed by intraparty disputes  limits voters' ability to directly express a preference for particular policies.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

The constitution guarantees political rights for all, and the government makes efforts to uphold these rights. Namibia has made great strides in increasing women's representation in Parliament; women now hold 48 of 104 seats in the National Assembly, making it more likely that women's interests and voices are robustly represented in the political sphere. Election monitors also noted that ahead of the 2014 polls, some parties voluntarily undertook efforts to increase women's political participation. Nevertheless, societal attitudes can discourage women from running for political office.

Almost all of the country's ethnic groups are represented in parliament and in senior political positions. However, members of the ethnic San have faced societal and practical restrictions on their political rights. The government only in 2017 addressed a widespread lack of identification for San from Okakoko village and Eenhana (the capital of Ohangwena Region); they were issued national IDs in January and September respectively, making future voting procedures easier.

Members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community face societal discrimination that hampers their ability to openly advocate for their interests.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 9 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 3 / 4

Namibia has a fully functioning system of democracy with a government and a national legislature that freely execute duties and determine policies. However, 2014 reforms increased executive power, including by permitting new president-appointed members of parliament and limits on the National Council's power to review certain bills. The reforms also granted the president power to appoint the head of the intelligence agency.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

Namibia has a sound legal framework for combating corruption. In April 2017, reforms to procurement procedures came into force. In October, President Hage Geingob signed into law the Whistleblower Protection Act and Witness Protection Act. However, anticorruption laws are inconsistently enforced. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) stands accused of moving slowly on cases involving high public figures, and its director general is accused of dropping investigations that could have significant political ramifications. In 2017, the ACC dropped investigations into allegedly high legal fees paid by the government on a genocide case, alleged underpricing practices of Namib Desert Diamonds (Namdia), and corruption linked to a N$3 billion (US$230 million) mass housing program. The alleged looting of almost N$175 million (US$13.5 million) by the Small and Medium Enterprises Bank (SME Bank), dominated headlines in 2017; the bank was taken over by the government and provisionally closed during the year, following revelations of mismanagement. Additionally, the president's Chinese business partner and friend Jack Huang was arrested in February (and released within days on bail) in connection with a N$3.5 billion (US$270 million) tax fraud case, to be heard in 2018.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

Namibia does not yet have a full institutional culture of transparency and openness. The country lacks access-to-information laws, and accessing information from many public agencies remains a challenge in practice. There is not frequent disclosure of private interests by public representatives. A veil of secrecy exists over the extractive industry, military spending, State House upgrades, and state security infrastructure.

Amid allegations that certain ethnic groups were favored in a government land resettlement program, the government for months ignored pleas for the release of a list of resettlement beneficiaries. The list, finally disclosed it in October, appeared to show bias toward central and southern beneficiaries. The ruling party rejected activists' demands for parliamentary debate of the program.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 47 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 14 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

Namibia's constitution guarantees media freedom and freedom of expression. In practice, journalists face few legal restrictions on their operations and may generally work without risking their personal safety. While self-censorship is common in state media, private media remains critical of government. State officials have frequently spoken harshly about the media, and observers have characterized such remarks by President Geingob and his information minister in particular as intended to intimidate journalists. A 2017 cabinet decision prioritized state-owned over independent media for state information dissemination and advertising.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Although religious freedom is generally respected in practice, two incidents in 2017 raised questions about authorities' commitment to upholding it. In June, police ordered the bishop of Jesus Christ Ministry (JCM) in Windhoek to close his church for disturbing peace and fomenting division in the local community. Also during the year, a Pentecostal church in the village of Oshatowa was shut down, in a disproportionate response to infractions including performing baptisms in a pool set aside for drinking water and occupying land illegally; it too was accused of fomenting division in local communities. A court convicted its leaders on several charges, but the church was able to resume operations after an intervention by a Christian rights activist.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is guaranteed by law and generally respected in practice.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 3 / 4

Freedom of expression is guaranteed in law and generally observed in practice. Social media is increasingly used to express political dissent. In February 2017, Namibia's vice president called for regulations allowing censorship of social media messages deemed to threaten Namibia's future, though no such regulation was implemented at year's end.

The 2009 Communications Act allows the government to conduct surveillance on various forms of communication without a warrant.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is guaranteed in law and is usually observed in practice, but can be restricted in situations of national emergency. In 2017, however, there were some cases of nonviolent interference by authorities in peaceful protest activities. In January, the police stopped a planned march in Walvis Bay by landless dwellers calling for affordable housing and termination of allegedly corrupt local government councilors. In December, police blocked an unannounced march to State House (the administrative capital building) by some 350 former Koevoet and South West Africa Territorial Force (SWATF) soldiers seeking war veteran status.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Human rights groups generally operate without interference, though government leaders sometimes use public platforms to attack civil society. In March 2017, the president derisively labeled some civil society activists as "failed politicians."

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Constitutionally guaranteed union rights are respected and observed in practice, though essential public-sector workers do not have the right to strike. Collective bargaining is not widely practiced outside the mining, construction, agriculture, and public-service industries.

F. RULE OF LAW: 11 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The constitution provides for an independent judiciary. In practice, the separation of powers is observed and judges are not frequently subject to undue influence. The establishment of the Office of the Judiciary separate from the Ministry of Justice in late 2015 affords the former administrative and financial independence. However, the judiciary is underresourced. Judges are appointed by the president upon the recommendation of the Judicial Service Commission, a body whose composition the president has some influence over.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

Namibia's Constitution protects the rule of law and fair trial rights. However, equal access to justice is obstructed by many factors, including economic and geographic barriers, a shortage of public defenders, and delays and backlogs that can last up to a decade.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Namibia is free from war and insurgencies. However, police brutality is a problem. Police abuses were reported during land disputes in Walvis Bay in May 2017, and Grootfontein in February. Inmates accused wardens of assault at Windhoek and Oluno correctional facilities during the year; officials from the Ombudsman's office went to investigate some of these cases. Namibia currently lacks an antitorture law.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

While the Constitution guarantees the right to equality and prohibits discrimination, challenges remain. In 2016, the Muzokumwe Volunteer Organisation petitioned the government to address discrimination against two Kavango regions. San leaders maintain that San people remain oppressed and marginalized. Same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized (though the prohibition is not enforced) and women face discrimination under customary law and traditional societal practices.

Descendants of the Herero and Nama people filed a lawsuit in January 2017 against Germany, seeking damages for colonial-era genocide; the case remained open at year's end.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 10 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 3 / 4

Freedom of movement is a constitutionally guaranteed right generally observed in practice. However, in October 2017, the Helao Nafidi town council passed a resolution that placed restrictions on the free movement of Angolan and other non-Namibian traders.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 3 / 4

Private property rights are guaranteed in law and the constitution prohibits expropriation without compensation. There are no legal barriers to women's access to land. However, customary norms regarding inheritance procedures and property rights limit women. The Helao Nafidi town council restrictions implemented in 2017 mandate that non-Namibian traders may only engage in business three days a week.

Land rights remain a contentious issue, and a government land resettlement program faced intense public scrutiny and allegations that certain groups are favored.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

Not all groups enjoy social freedoms. LGBT people face harassment, discrimination and attacks. Same-sex marriages are not recognized and many churches have indicated their nonwillingness to recognize or perform them, though the state ombudsman in 2016 expressed support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Gender-based violence is high. Forced and child marriages do happen, although government does not keep official statistics on them.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

The constitution outlaws slavery or servitude. However, forced child labor is rife in the agricultural sector and in people's homes. Human trafficking is a challenge, and Namibia still lacks minimum standards required to confront it. In December 2017, Namibia finally passed an antitrafficking law, which was awaiting the presiden't signature at years end.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Mozambique

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Mozambique, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce26a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 52 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 4.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 4 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 4 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 27,200,000

Capital: Maputo

GDP/capita: $528

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

Mozambique has been governed by the same political party since its 1975 independence, and the ruling party's unbroken incumbency has allowed it to establish significant control over state institutions. The opposition has disputed the results of recent elections, and its armed wing fought a low-level conflict against government forces that persisted until a truce was signed in December 2016. Mozambique also struggles with corruption, and journalists who report on it and other sensitive issues risk violent attacks.

Key Developments in 2017:

The December 2016 cease-fire that halted fighting between the government's FRELIMO forces and opposition RENAMO fighters was maintained throughout 2017, and dialogue between President Filipe Nyusi and opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama continued throughout the year.

In October, Islamic extremists attacked several police stations in the northern districts of Mocimboa da Praia and Palma, killing two police officers. In response to the attacks, more than 300 people suspected of having extremist ties were detained and seven mosques were closed.

The public debt scandal that broke in 2016, in which it was revealed that the government had taken out almost $2 billion in secret loans, continued to roil Mozambican politics. An audit report released in June indicated that $500 million in debt remained unaccounted for.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 20 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 6 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 2 / 4

The president, who appoints the prime minister, is elected by popular vote for up to two five-year terms. President Filipe Nyusi of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) won the presidential contest in 2014 with 57 percent of the vote. Voting was marred by some incidents of reported ballot box stuffing, inaccuracies in the voting register, and irregularities in the tabulation process in some precincts. Despite these flaws, international observers asserted that the election was largely credible. Afonso Dhlakama, the Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) candidate, denounced the results as fraudulent and called for new elections.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 2 / 4

Members of the 250-seat unicameral Assembly of the Republic are elected to five-year terms. The 2014 legislative elections were held concurrently with the presidential election. Incidents of ballot box stuffing, inaccuracies in the voting register, and irregularities in the tabulation process marred the election. International observers, while acknowledging these flaws, determined that overall, the election was conducted credibly.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 2 / 4

Elections are administered by the National Election Commission (CNE). FRELIMO controls the process by which the CNE members are appointed, which critics contend affects the impartiality of the body. Reforms to the electoral code passed in 2014 changed the CNE's composition to include four RENAMO officials and three civil society representatives, which was intended to mitigate distrust of the body. The CNE is supported by the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE), which handles the technical details of elections. STAE performs well generally, but is viewed with distrust by opposition parties and is known to favor FRELIMO.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 9 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 2 / 4

The right to form political parties is largely respected. A preponderance of parties compete, although most lack resources to campaign effectively and build a public following. Opposition leaders can face harassment and threats for speaking out against the government. Authorities sometimes deny political parties the right to hold peaceful demonstrations. In May 2017, police attempted to block members of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) from participating in a march organized by a leading union; authorities later relented and allowed MDM to participate.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 2 / 4

FRELIMO has remained in power since 1992. However, opposition parties made major gains in the 2014 elections: FRELIMO lost 47 seats, while RENAMO gained 38 seats. At the provincial level, FRELIMO suffered a net loss of 219 seats, and RENAMO won some provinces decisively.

FRELIMO has been documented by international observers using public resources to campaign, providing it with an unfair electoral advantage. During the 2014 campaign period, opposition parties had difficulty entering some FRELIMO strongholds due to hostile local crowds.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

Unelected elites in FRELIMO, including former president Armando Guebuza, retain great influence and play a large role in shaping the party's platform. Guebuza has criticized President Nyusi's political positions, including his decision to engage in negotiations with RENAMO to end the conflict, and has attempted to undermine the current president. Business leaders have close ties to government and influence the positions of elected officials, including President Nyusi, on trade and economic issues.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Ethnic minorities are generally able to participate fully in political life, and people from several ethnic groups hold high-level government positions. FRELIMO's support base lies in the north, and northerners therefore dominate the government while ethnic groups from other regions, such as the Ndau, are underrepresented.

Women participate robustly in politics, both as voters and candidates for office. Of the 250 members of parliament, 39 percent are women, one of the highest rates in the world. However, cultural factors still inhibit the participation of many women, and women are underrepresented in local government positions.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 5 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4

Although RENAMO members initially refused to take their seats in parliament after the 2014 elections, they were ultimately seated in early 2015. Power is highly centralized in the executive branch, which dominates the parliament and all other branches of government. Therefore, there are few checks on presidential power.

Foreign donors have a significant influence on policymaking, specifically as it relates to economic policy and public-sector reform. Business elites connected to FRELIMO have a strong impact on government decisions, particularly on foreign investment in the oil, gas, and agriculture sectors.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 1 / 4

Corruption remains widespread at the highest levels of government, and safeguards are ineffective. Patronage networks are deeply entrenched and compete for state resources. The anticorruption legal framework is undermined by a variety of loopholes. For example, embezzlement is not included in the Anti-Corruption Law. The judiciary is known to be corrupt itself, which further hinders the enforcement of anticorruption laws.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 2 / 4

Despite the passage of a freedom of information law in 2014, it is difficult to attain government information in practice. In May 2017, two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) released a report claiming that out of 49 government entities they contacted requesting information, only 18 percent responded within 21 days, as required by law.

Mozambique remained embroiled in a public debt scandal in 2017. In 2016, it emerged that the Mozambican government had taken out almost $2 billion in secret loans in 2013 and 2014. The revelation outraged the Mozambican public, exacerbated an existing economic crisis, and prompted the World Bank and IMF to suspend budget assistance to the country. In June 2017, an independent audit determined that over $500 million in debt remained unaccounted for.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 32 / 60 (-1)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 9 / 16 (-2)

D1. Are there free and independent media? 2 / 4

State-run media's influence remains strongest, though smaller independent outlets have increasingly provided important coverage of the conflict and corruption. Authorities often direct state-run outlets to provide coverage favorable to the government. Journalists frequently experience government pressure, harassment, and intimidation, which leads to self-censorship. The government is known to retaliate against journalists who criticize it by cancelling public advertising contracts.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 3 / 4 (-1)

Religious freedom is generally respected, but the government response to attacks by armed Islamists has alarmed human rights activists. In October 2017, a group of Muslim extremists attacked police stations in Cabo Delgado, a northern province, killing at least two police officers. Muslims reported feeling targeted after the government responded to the attacks by sending troops to the region. More than 300 people were detained, including Muslim leaders, and seven mosques were closed. Authorities claimed that the only mosques closed were connected to the militant group responsible for the attacks.

Score change: The score declined from 4 to 3 because of the government's disproportionate response to terrorism, including the closure of mosques in areas that are majority Muslim and the detention of more than 300 people.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 2 / 4

There are no legal restrictions on academic freedom. However, university professors are hesitant to criticize the government and frequently practice self-censorship in regard to sensitive or controversial topics. Indoctrination at primary schools has been reported, particularly in Gaza, where some teachers added FRELIMO propaganda to their curricula.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 2 / 4 (-1)

Civil society groups claim that authorities monitor criticism of the government posted online. In 2017, people expressing views critical of the government online have reportedly received threatening Facebook, WhatsApp, and text messages. Civil servants are cautious in expressing political views over email and on social networks, as there have been reports of government intelligence agents monitoring the emails of opposition party members.

Score change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to reports of online harassment of individuals who express views critical of the government.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 7 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 2 / 4

Freedom of assembly is constitutionally guaranteed, but the right to assemble is subject to notification and timing restrictions. The government frequently disallows protests on the basis of errors in the organizers' official applications.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 3 / 4

NGOs operate openly but can face bureaucratic hurdles in registering with the government. At the end of 2017, the registration of the Mozambican Association for the Defense of Sexual Minorities (LAMBDA) had still not been approved by the government. LAMBDA first applied for registration in 2008, and has had no success in attaining government approval, despite multiple resubmissions.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 2 / 4

Workers have the right to form unions, but a number of restrictions impede the right to strike and make the practice rare. Public-sector workers are not allowed to strike. In July 2017, administrative and technical staff at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) organized a strike to protest the nonpayment of a bonus. The university declared the strike illegal, and riot police broke up the picket line using tear gas and rubber bullets.

F. RULE OF LAW: 7 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 2 / 4

Judicial independence is hampered by the dominance of the executive branch. The attorney general is directly appointed by the president, with no legislative confirmation process. Pressure from FRELIMO's leadership often impedes investigations into corruption and fraud. Former president Guebuza and members of his administration have been credibly implicated in fraud and embezzlement scandals, but there have been no prosecutions. Observers claim that this judicial inaction results from the influence of FRELIMO's leadership.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 2 / 4

Although due process rights are constitutionally guaranteed, these rights are not always respected in practice. RENAMO leaders assert that the police arrest members of their party arbitrarily. Due to resource constraints and an understaffed judiciary, lengthy pretrial detentions are common. In 2017, reports surfaced of the government entering private homes and offices, as well as surveilling phone calls and emails, without warrants or proper authorization.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 1 / 4

Although the December 2016 truce to halt more than a year of fighting between RENAMO and FRELIMO held up throughout 2017, tensions between the leaders of both parties remained high. Negotiations continued between the two sides through 2017, but at the end of the year, a peace agreement had not been reached. Human rights abuses committed by FRELIMO forces in 2016, including the murders of civilians perceived to have backed RENAMO forces, did not result in any prosecutions.

Prison conditions improved in 2017 with the opening of several prisons that reduced overcrowding, but many prisons operate well above their prescribed capacity. Poor sanitation and a lack of healthcare still plague most of Mozambique's prison facilities.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Mozambican police reportedly discriminate against Zimbabwean, Somali, and Chinese immigrants. People with albinism continued to face discrimination, persecution, and violence. At least 13 albino people were murdered in 2017. Government efforts to protect people with albinism have been inadequate  a government strategy to prevent more murders was not implemented by the end of 2017.

Women experience discrimination in education and employment  on average, women are less educated and earn less than men. Sexual harassment in the workplace and at schools remains widespread.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 9 / 16 (+1)

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 3 / 4 (+1)

As dialogue between the government and RENAMO continued throughout 2017, violence in the central region ended, which made travel throughout the country easier. Although Mozambicans face no formal restrictions on domestic or international travel, movement is hampered by the presence of checkpoints manned by corrupt police officials, who often harass and demand bribes from travelers.

Score change: The score improved from 2 to 3 because the cease-fire has improved mobility across the country.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

The law does not recognize private property; citizens instead obtain land use rights from the government. Most citizens are uninformed about the land law and fail to properly register their holdings. The government must approve all formal transfers of land use rights in an often opaque and protracted process. As a result, most land transactions occur on an extralegal market.

Under customary law, women usually cannot inherit property. The government does not frequently intervene to protect women's property rights when inheritance is denied.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

Domestic violence is pervasive in Mozambique and laws against it are infrequently enforced. According to the Ministry of Women and Social Action, at least 54 percent of women will endure some form of physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Early and forced marriages remain common in rural areas. The International Center for Research on Women reports that 56 percent of girls marry before reaching the age of 18.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

Since 2012, human trafficking has been on the rise. Women and girls from rural areas are drawn into sex trafficking and domestic servitude. The number of investigations for trafficking decreased in 2017, but the number of prosecutions increased.

Child labor is permitted for children between 15 and 17 years old with a government permit. However, children under 15 frequently labor in the agriculture, mining, and fishing sectors, where they often work long hours and do not attend school. According to an August 2017 report released by the Ministry of Labor, Employment, and Social Security, more than one million children between the ages of 7 and 17 are actively employed.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Micronesia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Micronesia, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce2818.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 93 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 100,000

Capital: Palikir

GDP/capita: $3,018

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) is a relatively stable democracy that holds regular, competitive elections. However, secessionist movements have sometimes unsettled the country's politics and threatened its unity. The judiciary is independent, and civil liberties are generally respected. Ongoing problems include underreporting of domestic violence and a lack of legal protections for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people.

Key Developments in 2017:

Congressional elections were held in March, with all candidates running as independents.

A proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed dual citizenship failed to pass in a referendum held concurrently with the March elections. It reached the required 75 percent approval threshold in only one of the federation's four states.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 37 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The FSM president and vice president are indirectly elected for four-year terms by members of Congress from among the legislature's four at-large state representatives, known as senators. In 2015, Congress named Peter Christian, the senator representing the state of Pohnpei, as president and Yosiwo George, the senator for Kosrae, as vice president.

Each of the four states (Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae) also has its own elected governor.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The federal Congress consists of one senator elected by each state to serve four-year terms and 10 members elected for two-year terms in single-member districts that are allocated according to population. Each state also has its own elected legislature.

In March 2017, the FSM held congressional elections for the 10 two-year seats. Eight of the 10 incumbents were returned to office, and all candidates ran as independents. There were no reports of fraud or irregularities.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

Elections in Micronesia, which are generally considered free and fair, are administered by a government agency headed by a national election director and one commissioner for each state.

Constitutional amendments must be approved by three-quarters of the votes cast in at least three of the four states. In March 2017, referendum voters in all four states endorsed a proposed amendment that would have allowed dual citizenship, but it reached the required 75 percent threshold in only one state (Kosrae).

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 15 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

There are no formal political parties, but there are no restrictions on their formation. All candidates ran as independents in the 2015 general elections and the 2017 congressional elections.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

The country has an established record of democratic power transfers. Under an informal agreement, the presidency has typically rotated among the four states, but Congress has sometimes chosen to deviate from this pattern.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

Traditional leaders and institutions exercise significant influence in society, especially at the village level. However, neither these nor donor countries like the United States and China exert undue control over the political choices of voters or candidates.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Women and minority groups formally have full political rights, and they are free to participate in practice, though women's political engagement is limited to some extent by traditional biases. Two female candidates ran unsuccessfully in the 2017 congressional elections, and the FSM remained one of the few countries in the world with no women in its national legislature.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

Elected officials determine and implement policy and legislation at the federal level, though considerable authority is vested in the states and their elected governments. Some leading politicians from Chuuk, by far the most populous state, have advocated independence from the FSM in recent years, and during 2017 the issue remained a topic of public discussion under the guidance of the Chuuk Political Status Commission.

The FSM relies on defense guarantees and economic assistance from the United States under a 1986 Compact of Free Association. Under the current terms of the compact, the United States will provide more than $130 million in annual aid through 2023, in addition to funding from applicable U.S. federal programs. China has also become an increasingly important partner for trade and development aid in recent years, though its role does not amount to undue interference in FSM governance.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

Official corruption is a problem and a source of public discontent. Complaints about misuse of public resources are frequent, particularly from U.S. authorities overseeing aid funds. Government entities responsible for combating corruption, including the attorney general's office and a public auditor, are independent and fairly effective, though some corrupt officials reportedly enjoy impunity. In February 2017, former Pohnpei governor John Ehsa was charged with misappropriating travel funds in 2014.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

Government operations and legislative processes are generally transparent, though there is no comprehensive law guaranteeing public access to government information. Limited technical capacity and the country's sprawling geography pose practical barriers to openness and accountability in the FSM. Officials are not legally obliged to submit asset disclosures.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 56 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 16 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 4 / 4

The news media operate freely. Print outlets include government-published newsletters and several small, privately owned weekly and monthly newspapers. There are a number of radio stations, cable television is available, and satellite television is increasingly common. More than a third of the population has internet access.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Religious freedom is generally respected, and religious groups are not required to register with the government. About 99 percent of the population is Christian. A small Ahmadi Muslim community has reported some instances of discrimination and vandalism.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

There were no reports of restrictions on academic freedom in 2017.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

The constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and there are no significant constraints on this right in practice. The government does not improperly monitor personal communications or social media activity.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 11 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is protected by the constitution, and demonstrations typically proceed peacefully.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Citizens are free to organize in civic groups, and a number of students' and women's organizations are active.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

Freedom of association in general is respected, and there are no laws to prevent workers from forming unions, engaging in collective bargaining, or striking. However, such activities are not specifically protected or regulated by law, and few employers are large enough to support unionization in practice.

F. RULE OF LAW: 15 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

The judiciary is independent. The chief justice, who administers the judicial system, and the associate justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president with the approval of a two-thirds majority in Congress. They are appointed for life terms and cannot be removed arbitrarily.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

The police respect legal safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention, and defendants are generally provided with basic due process guarantees surrounding trials and appeals. However, a shortage of lawyers may sometimes impair detainees' access to counsel in practice, according to the U.S. State Department.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

There were no reports of physical abuse or inhumane treatment by police or prison officials in 2017. Criminal activity does not pose a major threat to physical security, though police have struggled to deal with illegal fishing.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

The constitution gives citizens equal protection under the law and prohibits discrimination based on race, ancestry, national origin, gender, language, or social status. Women generally receive equal pay in formal employment, though they continue to suffer from a degree of societal discrimination.

Same-sex sexual activity is legal, but no laws protect against hate crimes or discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 14 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Freedom of movement is generally respected. Under the Compact of Free Association, Micronesians are free to travel to the United States without visas for residence, education, and employment. Many Micronesians have migrated to U.S. Pacific states or territories such as Hawaii and Guam.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4

Property rights are protected by law, and individuals are able to operate private businesses; most such enterprises are small and family owned in practice. There are some legal restrictions on noncitizens' ability to own land and run businesses in certain sectors.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Personal social freedoms are largely protected. However, there are no specific laws against spousal rape, and both rape and domestic violence are rarely prosecuted due to societal inhibitions against reporting such crimes.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Forced labor is prohibited, and the government effectively enforces basic standards for working conditions in the formal sector. Foreign migrant workers nevertheless remain vulnerable to exploitative labor practices, including on foreign fishing vessels in FSM waters, and some Micronesian women are reportedly trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Monaco

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Monaco, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce284.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 82 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 2.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 40,000

Capital: Monaco

GDP/capita: $115,700

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

The Principality of Monaco is a hereditary constitutional monarchy headed by Prince Albert II. The prince appoints the government, which is responsible only to the monarch. Legislative power is exercised jointly by the prince and the National Council, Monaco's parliament. Human rights and civil liberties are generally respected.

Key Developments in 2017:

In, July, the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) released a report that highlighted insufficient mechanisms in place to ensure transparency in parliamentary work, including a lack of consultation with the public on proposed legislation and the confidentiality of committee meetings.

In September, Minister of Justice Philippe Narmino resigned after it was revealed that Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev allegedly gave him gifts in exchange for pursuing fraud charges against an art dealer.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 25 / 40 (-2)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 7 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 0 / 4

Monaco has one of the most politically powerful monarchs in Europe. Only the prince, who serves as head of state, may initiate legislation and change the government, though all legislation and the budget require parliamentary approval. Prince Albert II took the throne after his father's death in 2005. No constitutional provisions allow citizens to change the monarchical structure of government. The head of government, known as the minister of state, is traditionally appointed by the monarch from a candidate list of three French nationals submitted by the French government. Serge Telle, the current minister of state, took office in 2016.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The 24 members of the unicameral National Council are elected for five-year terms; 16 are chosen through a majority electoral system and 8 by proportional representation. The last parliamentary elections in 2013 were evaluated as credible by international observers. The Horizon Monaco coalition, which included the conservative Rally & Issues party, won 20 out of 24 seats.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

While the legal framework provides an adequate basis for credible elections, there are a number of restrictions on voting rights, including the denial of the right to vote for citizens in pretrial detention. City Hall administers elections and observers view their conduct to be credible. However, technical meetings in preparation for the election are not open to the public, limiting the body's transparency.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 10 / 16 (-1)

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 3 / 4

Political associations, groupings of people who hold similar political viewpoints, compete in Monaco, rather than traditional parties. There are no undue restrictions on the formation of new political associations. However, office seekers are prohibited from running as individual independent candidates: independents must instead form a list of at least 13 candidates to compete in elections.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 2 / 4 (-1)

Opposition political associations can gain seats in parliament. In 2013, Horizon Monaco gained 15 seats to capture parliament, while the Union Monegasque lost 11 seats. However, there are significant limits on the extent to which the opposition can gain power in the executive branch. Executive power is wielded by the prince, and the appointed cabinet is not responsible to parliament.

Score change: The score declined from 3 to 2 because the prince wields executive power and appoints the cabinet, which is not accountable to the parliament, leaving few meaningful opportunities for an opposition movement to gain power.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

Since the head of government is a French national appointed from a list submitted by the French government, and the head of state is an unelected monarch, people's political choices are limited in choosing leaders in the executive branch. The electoral process for parliamentary representatives is largely free from domination by any democratically unaccountable groups.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Most of Monaco's residents are noncitizens, so approximately 7,000 of the principality's 38,000 residents meet the citizenship requirements to vote or run for office. Women and minority groups are free to participate in elections, both as voters and candidates. Women's issues were not discussed frequently during the 2013 election campaign. Only 8 out of the 24 members of parliament are women.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 8 / 12 (-1)

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4

The prince has significant political powers, including initiating legislation, conducting foreign policy, and approving changes to the constitution, with no electoral mandate. Government ministers appointed by the prince cannot be held accountable by parliament. Parliament is generally free from interference by unelected groups.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4 (-1)

Despite recent improvements in the anticorruption legal framework, several loopholes remain. Parliament lacks a code of conduct on accepting gifts or potential conflicts of interest. High-level corruption is a problem, and officials sometimes act with impunity. In September 2017, Secretary of Justice Philippe Narmino resigned after it was revealed that Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev allegedly gave him gifts in exchange for pursuing fraud charges against an art dealer. At the end of 2017, Narmino had not faced criminal charges for his role in the scandal.

Score change: The score declined from 4 to 3 due to new evidence of high-level corruption, including a case in which the secretary of justice was implicated in an art fraud scandal, as well as weak anticorruption mechanisms.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

The law provides for access to government information, including draft laws and proposed legislation. However, a July 2017 report by GRECO highlighted insufficient mechanisms in place to ensure transparency in parliamentary work, including a lack of consultation with the public on proposed legislation and the confidentiality of committee meetings. There are no financial disclosure laws in place for parliamentarians or officials appointed by the prince.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 57 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 16 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 4 / 4

The constitution provides for a free press, which is generally respected in practice. Monaco has a weekly government newspaper, an English-language monthly, and several online publications. In addition, there is one public television channel (Monaco Info) and one privately owned channel (Tele Monte Carlo).

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is largely respected, although Roman Catholicism is the official state religion.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

There are no undue restrictions on academic freedom.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

People are generally free to express their personal views without fear of retribution, although insulting the ruling family is illegal, and can result in prison sentences of between six months and five years. No persons were charged with this crime in 2017.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

The constitution provides for freedom of assembly, which is generally respected in practice.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

No restrictions are imposed on the formation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), but no human rights organization is active in the country. International NGOs operate without restrictions.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

The law grants workers the right to establish unions, and antiunion discrimination is prohibited. Trade unions operate in the country. All workers except government employees have the right to strike.

F. RULE OF LAW: 15 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The constitution provides for an independent judiciary. The prince names five full members and two judicial assistants to the Supreme Court based on nominations by the National Council and other government bodies. The recruitment process for judges lacks transparency, which contributes to a perception that they may lack independence. The Judicial Service Commission (HCM) is ostensibly responsible for ensuring the independence of the judiciary, but in practice it lacks enforcement power. Approximately one-half of the judges in Monaco are Monegasque nationals, and the other half are French nationals.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

Due process rights are generally respected. Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty and are informed of the charges against them promptly. Defendants have access to attorneys and sufficient time to prepare a defense.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

Illegitimate or excessive use of force is rare in Monaco.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 4 / 4

Monaco lacks a law that prohibits discrimination based on race or ethnicity. In the absence of such a law, Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is used to prevent and punish discrimination. The government established the Office of the High Commissioner for the Protection of Rights, Liberties, and for Mediation in 2013 to address discrimination. The government does not publish statistics on hate crimes.

The law prohibits discrimination based on gender and women's rights are generally respected. The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people are legally protected, and incidents of discrimination are rare.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 14 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

There are no legal or de facto restrictions that limit freedom of movement internally or externally.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 3 / 4

Property rights are respected, and noncitizens holding a residence permit may purchase property and establish businesses. However, obtaining government approval to start a business is often a lengthy and complex process, and startup costs can be prohibitively expensive.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Personal social freedoms are generally respected. However, abortion is legal only under special circumstances, including rape and medical necessity. Monaco does not recognize same-sex unions or marriages. Domestic violence is outlawed in Monaco and there are few reported incidents. The government and NGOs provide a network of support services for victims of domestic violence.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 4 / 4

Laws protecting against economic exploitation are adequately enforced. However, employers can fire foreign employees without cause. Workers' rights are generally respected. There were no reports of human trafficking in 2017.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Mauritius

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Mauritius, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce29132.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 89 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 1,300,000

Capital: Port Louis

GDP/capita: $9,260

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Mauritius is home to an open, multiparty system that has allowed for the regular handover of power between parties through free and fair elections. However, the political leadership remains dominated by a few families, corruption is a problem, and journalists occasionally face legal pressure.

Key Developments in 2017:

In January, Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth resigned and named his son, Pravind Jugnauth, as the new prime minister. The move prompted opposition protests.

In September, the justice minister was forced to resign after an investigation by journalists implicated him in a money laundering scheme.

The journalists responsible for the story implicating the justice minister in corrupt activities were arrested and detained for questioning, but ultimately released without charge.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 37 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The president, whose role is mostly ceremonial, is elected by the unicameral National Assembly to a five-year term. Executive power resides with the prime minister, who is appointed by the president from the party or coalition with the most seats in the legislature. After the 2014 general elections, Anerood Jugnauth, leader of the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM), was appointed to the post for his sixth nonconsecutive term since 1982. He resigned in January 2017 and named his son, Pravind Jugnauth as his replacement. The opposition decried the power handover as immoral, though it was approved by the president and considered legal under the constitution. The developments reflect the dynastic character of Mauritian politics.

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim was elected the country's president in 2015, becoming the first woman to hold the post.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Of the National Assembly's 70 members, 62 are directly elected and up to 8 "best losers" are appointed from among unsuccessful candidates who gained the largest number of votes. The members of the National Assembly serve five-year terms.

The 2014 elections took place peacefully, and stakeholders accepted the results. Mauritius's two main political parties  former prime minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam's ruling Mauritian Labour Party (PTR) and former prime minister Paul Berenger's Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM)  unexpectedly lost the elections to the Alliance Lepep coalition, made up of the MSM, the Mauritian Social Democratic Party (PMSD), and the Liberation Movement (ML). The 2014 election results were widely interpreted as a reaction to Ramgoolam's proposed constitutional reform to increase the power of the president. The Alliance Lepep won 47 of the 62 elected seats, while PTR-MMM alliance gained 13 of the elected seats. In 2016, the PMSD left the Alliance Lepep and joined the opposition.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

The Electoral Supervisory Commission has impartially supervised the electoral process. There have been 10 general elections in Mauritius since the country became independent in 1968.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 15 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties are generally free to form and operate. Forty-five parties competed in the 2014 elections.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Since independence, political power has peacefully rotated among the three largest parties  the PTR, the MSM, and the MMM.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

Voters and candidates are generally able to express their political choices without pressure from actors not democratically accountable.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

The Hindu majority is viewed as maintaining most positions of political influence. Women hold a handful of cabinet seats and other high-level political positions, but are generally underrepresented in politics. Local elections require that women comprise one third of political parties' candidates in each district.

At least two small LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) groups are active in Mauritius, and seek to raise visibility of LGBT issues and counter homophobia.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

Elected representatives are duly seated, and the government has generally been able to make policy without interference or major political disruptions. However, politics in Mauritius are dominated by a few families, with coordination among the head of the government, members of the National Assembly, and other relevant individuals. Only five different individuals have held the post of prime minister since independence in 1968.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

The country's anticorruption framework is robust, but at times inconsistently upheld. In September 2017, the justice resigned in the wake of money laundering allegations levied against him.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

The government openly debates the country's budget in the National Assembly and publishes it and other legislation online and in the press. In May 2017, the Minister of Technology, Communication, and Innovation announced that a National Open Data Portal was being developed to provide Mauritians with data in numerous categories. In recent years, the authorities have worked to implement other transparency initiatives, though the country still lacks a freedom of information act.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 52 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

The constitution guarantees freedom of expression. Several private daily and weekly publications freely report on the ruling and opposition parties, but the state-owned Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television services generally reflect government viewpoints. A small number of private radio stations compete with the state-run media.

Journalists occasionally face legal pressure. In 2017, three journalists were arrested in apparent connection with reporting that had implicated Justice Minister Ravi Yerrigadoo in a money laundering scheme, and ultimately forced his resignation. The journalists were detained for several hours before being released; the incident was described in the media as an attempt to intimidate them.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Religious freedom is generally upheld. The government grants subsidies to Hindu, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Seventh-day Adventist communities, but not to smaller groups, though all religious groups may apply for tax-exempt status. Tensions between Muslim and Hindu communities continue to be reported. Several Hindu sites were vandalized during the year.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally upheld.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Private discussion is unrestricted.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is generally upheld. A number of protests took place in 2017, including one in January 2017 against Anerood Jugnauth's move to install his son, Pravind Jugnauth, as the prime minister.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Civil society groups operate freely. However, many are reliant upon government funding that could compromise their independence.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Unions regularly meet with government leaders, protest, and advocate for improved compensation and workers' rights. There are more than 300 unions in Mauritius.

F. RULE OF LAW: 13 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The generally independent judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court, administers a legal system that combines French and British traditions. The judicial system is considered transparent and nondiscriminatory. The judiciary's independence is sometimes questioned, however, in cases involving politicians. Mauritius has maintained the right of appeal to the Privy Council in London.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

Constitutional guarantees of due process are generally upheld. However, Mauritian criminal law allows for police to charge suspects provisionally, and then hold suspects indefinitely for months until a formal charge is issued. Due to court backlogs, many of those being held in prison are in pretrial detention, and some detainees reportedly must wait years before facing trial.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Mauritius is free from war and insurgencies. Allegations of abuses by police continue. A measure establishing an Independent Police Complaints Commission was passed in 2016, but the body, which was not yet in operation in 2017, is expected to have limited power to investigate police misconduct.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), set up by the 2008 Equal Opportunities Act, prohibits discrimination, promotes equality of opportunity in the public and private sectors, and investigates possible cases of discrimination. Though the law and the EOC do not allow for discrimination in the workforce, some citizens view economic leadership to be closed to ethnic minorities. Women generally earn less money than men for equal work. Sodomy is a crime, but is rarely invoked as a means of punishing same-sex sexual activity.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 12 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Citizens are generally allowed to move freely within Mauritius but there are some restrictions on travel in the Chagos Islands, which are disputed between Mauritius and Great Britain. Mauritians are free to change their place of residence, employment, and education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 3 / 4

Mauritius is considered among the most business-friendly countries in Africa. However, the Non-Citizen Property Restriction Act limits most noncitizens from owning or acquiring property. Corruption can hamper business activity.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

The government generally does not limit social freedoms, though same-sex unions are not recognized. Rape is against the law, but spousal rape is not specifically criminalized. Although domestic violence is against the law, it remains a significant concern.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

Women and children are vulnerable to sex trafficking, and while the government has made some efforts to prosecute traffickers and provide services to victims, these efforts are generally inadequate. The position of migrant workers in the manufacturing and construction can be precarious, and there have been reports of employers confiscating their passports.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Mauritania

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Mauritania, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce2a13.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Not Free

Aggregate Score: 30 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 5.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 6 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 4,200,000

Capital: Nouakchott

GDP/capita: $1,158

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

The current leadership in Mauritania came to power in 2008 through a military coup. It has since confirmed its position in flawed elections that were boycotted by the main opposition parties. The government has adopted laws to address the problem of institutionalized slavery and discrimination, but it continues to arrest antislavery activists. Blasphemy and apostasy are punishable under the death penalty.

Key Developments in 2017:

Constitutional reforms adopted through a referendum held in August dissolved the Senate, the upper chamber in the bicameral legislature. The main opposition coalition boycotted the referendum, claiming that the president sought the dissolution of the body to pave the way for a constitutional amendment that would allow him to seek a third term.

In August, Senator Mohamed Ould Ghadda, who opposed dissolving the Senate, was arrested on vaguely defined corruption charges. At the end of the year, he was still held in detention.

In November, an appeals court reduced the sentence for a blogger who had been sentenced to death for apostasy in 2014 to two years. Also in November, a draft law was presented to the National Assembly that would no longer make it possible for those found guilty of apostasy to repent and thus avoid the death penalty.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 9 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 3 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 1 / 4

The president is directly elected to as many as two consecutive five-year terms by popular vote. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who first came to power through a military coup in 2008, won a second term in 2014 representing the Union for the Republic (UPR), taking 82 percent of the vote. Most opposition parties, including the main opposition coalition, the National Front for the Defense of Democracy (FNDU), boycotted the election, claiming that the process was flawed and biased. The antislavery activist Biram Dah Abeid ran as an independent and captured 9 percent of the vote. His allegations of electoral misconduct and fraud were dismissed by the authorities.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 1 / 4

Until 2017, the Mauritanian legislature was bicameral, with a National Assembly and a Senate. Constitutional reforms adopted through the passage of an August referendum dissolved the Senate. The National Assembly was elected in 2013 in a poll that most major opposition parties boycotted, claiming the results were predetermined and the process nontransparent.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 1 / 4

The opposition has denounced the lack of independence of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Opposition leaders have also criticized the electoral party lists as discriminatory, arguing that the electoral census deliberately excluded many Haratin and Afro-Mauritanians. The most recent legislative and presidential elections were conducted before the completion of the national census. As a result, Mauritanians without a newly issued identity card were unable to vote.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 2 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 1 / 4

Though political parties are free to operate, many obstructions prevent parties from successfully mobilizing their bases. Authorities often break up or otherwise prevent demonstrations organized by political parties. In November 2017, police violently dispersed protests organized by several political parties against the commutation of a blogger's death sentence for apostasy. Also in November, several opposition parties, including the National Rally for Reform and Development, an Islamist party, were denied a permit for a planned protest against the government's policies.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 1 / 4

The opposition does not have a realistic opportunity to gain power through elections. Most opposition parties boycotted both the 2013 parliamentary elections and the 2014 presidential election, citing a system dominated by the ruling UPR, which won both elections handily.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 0 / 4

The political choices of Mauritanians are greatly influenced by the military, which dominates the political system. Since 1978, Mauritania has either been under military rule or led by a military leader, with the exception of 18 months of civilian government between 2007 and 2008.

Traditional religious leaders exert influence on voters, often backing the ruling UPR and urging voters to support its initiatives.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 0 / 4

The Bidhan ethnic group dominates the Mauritanian government, while Afro-Mauritanians and the Haratin ethnic group are underrepresented in elected positions and in high-level government roles. Discrimination hinders the ability of these groups to gain power. Thousands of Afro-Mauritanians who were forced out of their villages by the military in 1989 have been allowed to return, but many of them face difficulties when trying to enroll in the census and register to vote. Discrimination against Afro-Mauritanians persists in the electoral process, since many lack the government identity cards necessary to vote.

Women participate in politics at lower levels than men, largely due to traditional cultural norms. 31 out of 147 seats in the National Assembly are held by women, and nine out of 29 ministers are women.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 4 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 1 / 4

The executive dominates the legislative branch in Mauritania. The president has the power to dissolve the National Assembly, but the legislature has no impeachment power over the president. The 2017 referendum that dissolved the Senate was viewed by many observers as an attempt by President Aziz to consolidate his dominance over the legislative branch, which could make it easier to pass a constitutional amendment that would allow him to run for a third term. The opposition called for a boycott of the vote.

The military remains a powerful force in the Mauritanian government, and still has a great deal of influence on policymaking.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 2 / 4

Although the government has adopted numerous anticorruption laws and in 2005 signed the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption, corruption remains widespread and the laws are not effectively enforced. A report published in July 2017 by Sherpa, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), documents multiple cases of corruption at the highest levels of the Aziz administration that have gone unpunished. Among other cases, the report alleges that the president's son used his influence to ensure that the French subsidiary of a Finnish company, Wartsila, received a contract to construct a power plant in exchange for a payment of over $11 million.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 1 / 4

The government largely lacks transparency, particularly in granting mining and fishing licenses, land distribution, government contracts, and tax payments. The construction of a new airport in Nouakchott that opened in 2016 drew criticism  a company with no experience in airport construction won a contract to build the facility through an opaque procurement process.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 21 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 9 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 2 / 4

Mauritania has a vibrant media landscape, with several privately owned newspapers, television stations, and radio stations in operation. However, journalists who cover sensitive topics or scrutinize the political elite can face harassment and arrest. In October 2017, the government shut down five television stations for failing to pay their airing bills. Journalists claimed that the move was in retaliation for critical coverage of the August referendum to dissolve the Senate. Several journalists covering protests against the referendum were also arrested in August and September.

In 2014, a court in Nouadhibou sentenced Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed M'Kheitir, an independent blogger, to death for apostasy in an expedited judicial process. Ould M'Kheitir had criticized the unequal social order in Mauritania and the prophet Muhammad. In November 2017, an appeals court in Nouadhibou reduced Ould M'Kheitir's death sentence to two years in prison, which he had already served. Ould M'Kheitir was still in custody at the end of the year.

Criminal defamation laws remain on the books, and are sometimes enforced against journalists. Most journalists practice a degree of self-censorship when covering potentially contentious issues such as the military, corruption, and slavery.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 2 / 4

Mauritania is an Islamic republic. Non-Muslims cannot proselytize or become citizens, and those who convert from Islam to another religion lose their citizenship. In practice, however, non-Muslim communities have not been targeted for persecution.

Apostasy is a crime punishable by death. To date, nobody has been executed for the crime. However, a draft law was presented to the National Assembly in November 2017 that would mandate the death penalty for all apostasy convictions.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 3 / 4

Academic freedom is largely respected. However, the increasing use of Arabic as the lingua franca at universities has hindered Afro-Mauritanian students' access to education. Student activists sometimes face pressure from university administrators, including threats of expulsion and intimidation.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 2 / 4

At times, individuals face reprisals for expressing views critical of the government on social media, including termination of employment from government agencies. In October 2017, Abdellahi Ould Mohamed Ould El Haimer was fired from his job at the National Rural Water Agency after writing a Facebook post critical of the prime minister. The director of the agency claimed he was fired for "gross misconduct."

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 4 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 1 / 4

While the constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, organizers are required to obtain consent from the government for large gatherings, which is often denied. In 2017, protests and demonstrations were often violently broken up by authorities. In April, police used tear gas to suppress a peaceful demonstration in Nouakchott convened to address youth unemployment; at least 26 protesters were arrested.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 1 / 4

NGOs, particularly antislavery organizations, frequently encounter intimidation, violence, and repression in carrying out their activities. At the end of 2017, Abdallahi Maatalla Seck and Moussa Biram, leaders of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania (IRA Mauritania), an antislavery organization, remained in prison after their conviction for membership in an unauthorized association, among other charges. IRA Mauritania has repeatedly been denied registration by the government.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 2 / 4

Workers have the legal right to unionize, but unions require approval from the public prosecutor to operate and often confront hostility from employers. Approximately 25 percent of Mauritanians are employed in the formal economy, but around 90 percent of workers in the industrial and commercial sectors are unionized. The right to collective bargaining is not always respected, and the government sometimes pressures union members to withdraw their membership. The right to strike is limited by notice requirements and other onerous regulations.

F. RULE OF LAW: 4 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 1 / 4

Mauritania's judiciary lacks independence. The president has the power to unilaterally appoint many key judges, including three of the six judges on the Constitutional Court and the chair of the Supreme Court. The courts are subject to political pressure from the executive branch. Instances of judges facing retaliatory measures for issuing rulings against the government have been reported.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 1 / 4

Due process rights are often not respected in practice. Suspects are frequently arrested without being informed of the charges against them. Lengthy pretrial detentions are common.

Arbitrary arrests of opposition politicians, journalists, and human rights activists occur with some frequency. In August 2017, Mohamed Ould Ghadda, a senator who opposed the 2017 referendum to abolish the Senate, was arrested on vague corruption charges. At the end of 2017, he was still held in detention.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 1 / 4

Torture and abuse at Mauritania's prisons and detention centers remained a problem in 2017, and perpetrators are rarely held accountable. Police frequently beat suspects following arrest.

Prisons are plagued by violence, are overcrowded, and lack basic sanitation. Food shortages are also common in prisons. Children are sometimes held with the adult prison population.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 1 / 4

Same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Mauritania and punishable by death for men. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals generally hide their sexual orientation or gender identity due to severe discrimination.

Sharia law as it is applied in Mauritania discriminates against women. The testimony of two women is equal to that of one man. Female victims of crime are entitled to only half the financial compensation that male victims receive.

There were reports of refugees being expelled and ultimately abandoned just across the border in Senegal, violating the principal of nonrefoulement, which obligates countries to not return refugees to a country where they will face further persecution.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 4 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 1 / 4

While the Bidhan population is relatively free to make personal decisions about residence, employment, and education, the choices of Afro-Mauritanians and the Haratin are often constrained by racial and caste-based discrimination. People lacking government identity cards are not allowed to travel in some regions, which disproportionately effects Afro-Mauritanians.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

Though the law guarantees property rights, these rights are not always enforced in practice, as it can be difficult to get property disputes fairly adjudicated in court. Complex laws and an opaque bureaucracy present challenged to starting a business.

Many Afro-Mauritanians who left their homes in the Senegal River Valley in the wake of the 1989 conflict have returned, but have been unable to regain ownership of their land. Local authorities reportedly allow the Bidhan to appropriate land used by the Haratin and Afro-Mauritanians.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 1 / 4

According to UNICEF's 2016 The State of the World's Children report, 37 percent of girls are married before the age of 18. In January 2017, the government sent parliament a bill that would ban marriage for girls under 18. The bill failed in the National Assembly, largely due to pressure from religious leaders. Female genital mutilation is illegal, but the law is rarely enforced and the practice is still common. Domestic violence and rape remained problems in 2017, and victims rarely sought legal redress  convictions for these crimes were rare.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 0 / 4

Despite amendments to the antislavery law passed in 2015 meant to address the problem more robustly, slavery and slavery-like practices continued in 2017, with many former slaves still reliant on their former owners due to racial discrimination, poverty, and other socioeconomic factors. Some rights groups estimate that up to 20 percent of the population is enslaved or endures slavery-like practices. The government rarely prosecutes perpetrators and cracks down on NGOs that push for greater enforcement of the law.

Trafficking in persons remains a problem in Mauritania in 2017. The government failed to prosecute a recruitment agency that allegedly recruited more than 200 women under false pretenses into forced prostitution and domestic slavery in Saudi Arabia in 2016.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Maldives

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Maldives, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce2c13.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 35 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 5.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 400,000

Capital: Male

GDP/capita: $9,792

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

OVERVIEW

Following decades of authoritarian rule under former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the Maldives held its first multiparty presidential election in 2008. However, democratic gains have been reversed in recent years amid severe restrictions on opposition activities, the imprisonment of opposition figures, restrictions on freedoms of expression and assembly, politicization of the judiciary and other independent institutions, and increasing Islamist militancy.

Key Developments in 2017:

Yameen Rasheed, a prominent blogger, human rights defender, and critic of religious extremism, was murdered in April. The killing was followed by increased threats and state persecution aimed at other liberal writers and perceived opponents of Islam.

To prevent a vote to replace the parliament speaker, military forces removed opposition lawmakers from the parliament in March and July and maintained a presence in or around the chamber itself during subsequent sessions.

The Supreme Court ruled in July that lawmakers who switch or are expelled from their parties should lose their seats. A dozen members of the governing Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) who had defected to the opposition were consequently removed, though the action was still being disputed in the courts at year's end.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 14 / 40 (-3)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 5 / 12 (-2)

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 2 / 4

The president is directly elected for up to two five-year terms. In the 2013 election, PPM leader Abdulla Yameen, a half-brother of former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, won a runoff vote against former president Mohamed Nasheed of the Madivian Democratic Party (MDP), 51 percent to 49 percent. The process, which included an annulment and rerun of the first round, was marred by repeated interference from the Supreme Court and the police.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 2 / 4 (-1)

The unicameral People's Majlis is composed of 85 seats, with members elected from individual districts to serve five-year terms. Elections held in 2014 were largely transparent and competitive, though they also featured some Supreme Court interference, vote buying, and other problems. The PPM won 33 seats, while the MDP captured 26. The Jumhooree Party won 15 seats, the Maldives Development Alliance won 5, and independents took an additional 5. The Adhaalath Party won the remaining seat. Subsequent party-switching gave the PPM a majority.

In July 2017, after a number of defections from the PPM threatened its control over the legislature, the Supreme Court ruled that members of parliament who switch or are expelled from their parties should lose their seats; the constitution contained no such provision. The decision did not apply retroactively, but the PPM and the Elections Commission argued that 12 members who defected to the opposition earlier in the year had not been officially removed from the party registry until after the ruling. While the seats were formally vacated, and the constitution required by-elections within 60 days, no such elections were held. The ousted lawmakers continued to contest their disqualification at year's end.

Score Change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to the politicized removal of a dozen ruling party lawmakers from their seats after they joined the opposition, as well as delays in the holding of by-elections to fill the vacancies.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 1 / 4 (-1)

The independence of the Elections Commission has been seriously compromised in recent years. In addition to its handling of the party-switching dispute, which was widely seen as favoring the PPM, it repeatedly delayed the holding of local council elections in 2017. When the elections ultimately proceeded in May, leading to losses for the PPM, the commission delayed the announcement of results without a clear explanation.

Score Change: The score declined from 2 to 1 due to politicized and irregular actions taken by the Elections Commission in its management of local elections and its removal of parliament members who defected from the ruling party.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 5 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 2 / 4

Political pluralism and participation have deteriorated in recent years as the authorities continue a pattern of persecuting and jailing opposition figures. Restrictions on and dispersals of political protests, raids on opposition offices, and arbitrary detentions of opposition politicians are common. Former president Nasheed, who had been sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2015 after a flawed trial on terrorism charges, remained in Britain in 2017, having obtained asylum there while on medical leave in 2016. Among other cases during 2017, Gasim Ibrahim, leader of the Jumhooree Party, was arrested on dubious bribery charges in April and sentenced to more than three years in prison after a politicized legal process in August. Gasim was allowed to seek medical treatment in Singapore in September, and he remained abroad at year's end. Faris Maumoon, the son of former president Gayoom, was arrested on similar charges in July; both he and his father had split with the PPM and moved to the opposition.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 1 / 4

Under President Yameen, the government and the PPM have used the politicized justice system and the security forces to cripple the opposition and maintain control of the legislature. In March 2017, during a failed opposition vote to remove the parliament speaker, Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed, military personnel physically removed protesting lawmakers. In July, the military blocked opposition members from entering the parliament, and several faced criminal charges for forcing their way in. A combination of military guards and the dubious expulsion of opposition members under that month's Supreme Court decision prevented further attempts to remove the speaker for the rest of the year.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 1 / 4

The incumbent leadership has exerted improper influence over a number of state institutions to restrict the political choices of voters and politicians. In addition to using security forces, the Elections Commission, and the justice system to suppress dissent, the president's allies have reportedly threatened public and private-sector employees with dismissal for participating in opposition protests or other political activities. Such workers have also been forced to attend progovernment events. Vote buying remains a problem during elections, and allegations of bribery and corruption have surrounded instances of party switching in recent years.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 1 / 4

The Maldivian constitution and legal framework require all citizens to be Muslims and all candidates for elected office to be followers of Sunni Islam. Societal discrimination against women has limited their political participation. Just 39 of 653 local council seats were won by women candidates in the May 2017 local elections, and five women won seats in the parliament in 2014. Foreign workers, who make up between a quarter and a third of the population, have no political rights.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 4 / 12 (-1)

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4 (-1)

Elected officials generally determine and implement government policies, but the functioning of the parliament was seriously impaired during 2017 by the leadership's heavy-handed attempts to retain control in the face of defections to the opposition. After the military closed off the parliament in July, the speaker held a brief session in August with military personnel physically surrounding the rostrum. The military continued to provide security inside the parliament for the rest of the year, and when the body reconvened after a recess in October, a large wall had been constructed around a newly elevated speaker's desk.

Score Change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to the disruption of normal legislative business caused by the use of closures, physical barriers, and military personnel to suppress opposition lawmakers' efforts to replace the speaker of parliament.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 1 / 4

Corruption continues to be endemic at all levels of government. The Anti-Corruption Commission is only moderately effective, often launching investigations and taking other actions in response to public complaints, but rarely holding powerful figures to account for abuses.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 1 / 4

Large state contracts for infrastructure and other projects are regularly awarded through opaque processes, in which bribery and kickbacks are widely believed to play a role. The president, cabinet ministers, and members of parliament are required by the constitution to submit annual asset declarations, but these are not made public, and the relevant agencies have even resisted disclosing how many officials comply with the rule.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 21 / 60 (-2)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 3 / 16 (-2)

D1. Are there free and independent media? 1 / 4

The constitution guarantees freedom of expression so long as it is exercised in a manner that is "not contrary to any tenet of Islam," a vague condition that encourages self-censorship in the media. Regulatory bodies, especially the Maldives Broadcasting Commission (MBC), are conspicuously biased in favor of the government and restrict coverage of the opposition. A 2016 law imposed criminal penalties for defamation or any other expression that "threatens national security" or "contradicts social norms," and it has been used to intimidate journalists and media outlets. Several journalists were arbitrarily detained during 2017, and others reported receiving death threats, including from PPM members.

In April 2017, prominent liberal blogger and political commentator Yameen Rasheed was fatally stabbed near his home. Seven alleged religious extremists were charged with the crime, but the subsequent court hearings were closed, and Rasheed's family called for an independent investigation. Rasheed had complained that police failed to investigate multiple death threats against him. Among other activities, he had led a campaign to solve the 2014 disappearance of journalist Ahmed Rilwan.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 0 / 4 (-1)

Freedom of religion is severely restricted. Islam is the state religion, and all citizens are required to be Muslims. Imams must use government-approved sermons. Non-Muslim foreigners are allowed to observe their religions only in private. In recent years, growing religious extremism has led to an increase in threatening rhetoric and physical attacks against those perceived to be insulting or rejecting Islam. Religious leaders and PPM members accused Rasheed of insulting Islam, and shortly after the blogger's murder in April 2017, President Yameen gave speeches that appeared to justify the killing. The authorities intensified a crackdown on secularist writers in the wake of the murder, ordering four online activists who worked in exile to report for questioning or face prosecution. Other prominent Maldivians who defended freedom of conscience from abroad were labeled apostates or faced death threats. Also during the year, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs undertook a number of projects with religious leaders, media outlets, and others to promote religious conformity and combat "atheism."

Score Change: The score declined from 1 to 0 due to an increase in threats and government harassment aimed at perceived opponents of Islam surrounding the April murder of liberal blogger Yameen Rasheed.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 1 / 4

Academic freedom has narrowed in recent years as the government steps up monitoring and punishments for academics and teachers who espouse opposition political views or participate in protests. Islam is a compulsory subject in schools and is incorporated into all other subject areas. School and university curriculums are coming under increased influence from hard-line religious leaders, resulting in some content that denigrates democracy and promotes jihadist narratives.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 1 / 4 (-1)

It has become increasingly dangerous for individuals to express political and religious opinions freely. The jailing of opposition leaders, the murder of Yameen Rasheed, police harassment of other social media activists, and death threats against anyone speaking out in favor of tolerance or religious pluralism  including Maldivian citizen Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur for freedom of religion or belief  all served to inhibit free speech in 2017.

Score Change: The score declined from 2 to 1 due to growing violence, intimidation, and state persecution targeting outspoken liberals and opposition figures, which contributed to broader self-censorship.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 5 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 1 / 4

Freedom of assembly is severely constrained. A 2016 law requires protest organizers to obtain police permission for their events and restricts demonstrations to certain designated areas. In 2017 authorities allowed progovernment assemblies but consistently banned or dispersed other protests. In August, relatives of Rilwan and Rasheed were dismissed from their civil service jobs after participating in protests marking Rilwan's disappearance.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 2 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) continue to operate in a restrictive environment. They are required to obtain government approval before seeking domestic or foreign funding, and regulators have broad discretion to investigate and dissolve NGOs. The Human Rights Commission of Maldives is not independent in practice.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 2 / 4

The constitution and labor laws allow workers to form trade unions, and a number of unions are active. However, collective bargaining is not protected, and strikes are prohibited in many sectors, including the crucial tourism industry.

F. RULE OF LAW: 6 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 1 / 4

Judicial independence is seriously compromised. Many judges are unqualified, and the courts are widely considered vulnerable to corruption or political influence. The Supreme Court has repeatedly intervened in political affairs and apparently exceeded its constitutional authority, typically acting in the ruling party's interests. In May 2017, for example, it declared that it would be the final arbiter of the validity of parliamentary no-confidence or impeachment motions against executive, judicial, or independent officials. In September, after a group of 56 lawyers filed a petition calling for reforms to ensure judicial independence, the Supreme Court summarily and indefinitely suspended them from legal practice. Those affected made up nearly a third of all registered criminal lawyers in the country who do not represent the state, and many were defending opposition figures.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 1 / 4

Police regularly engage in arbitrary arrests, often to disrupt opposition activities, protests, or the work of journalists. Due process rights are not well enforced in practice, and opposition figures have been subjected to deeply flawed trials on politically motivated charges, according to human rights groups and international monitors. In Gasim's bribery case, two judges who initially dismissed charges against the Jumhoorree Party leader were quickly demoted; the new judge held an accelerated, closed trial and issued the August sentence while the defendant was hospitalized.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

The constitution bans torture, but police brutality and the abuse of detainees remain problems. Flogging and other forms of corporal punishment are authorized for some crimes, and flogging sentences are issued in practice. Prisons are overcrowded, and inmates reportedly lack proper access to medical care.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Gender-based discrimination in employment is prohibited by law, but women continue to face discrimination in practice, and they are disproportionately affected by Sharia (Islamic law) penalties for crimes like fornication and adultery.

Migrant workers in the country encounter disparate treatment by state authorities and have difficulty accessing justice.

Same-sex sexual acts are prohibited by law and can draw prison sentences and corporal punishment. As a result, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people rarely come forward to report societal discrimination or abuse.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 7 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 2 / 4

Freedom of movement is provided for by law, but there are some restrictions in practice. Authorities have imposed travel bans on members of opposition parties and other perceived government opponents. Migrant workers are also subject to constraints on their movement, including through retention of their passports by employers.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

Property rights are limited, with most land owned by the government and leased to private entities or commercial developers through what is often an opaque process.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 1 / 4

Personal social freedoms are restricted by Sharia-based laws and growing religious extremism in society. Among other rules on marriage and divorce, citizen women are barred from marrying non-Muslim foreigners, while citizen men can marry non-Muslim foreigners only if they are Christian or Jewish. Extramarital sex is criminalized, and there is a high legal threshold to prove rape allegations. Women face increasing pressure to dress more conservatively, in keeping with hard-line interpretations of Islam.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

The legal framework provides some protections against worker exploitation, including rules on working hours and bans on forced labor. However, migrant workers are especially vulnerable to abuses such as debt bondage and withholding of wages. Women and children working in domestic service may also be subject to exploitative conditions.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedLiberty Korea Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun on Sunday said that he analyzed the Chinese data and found that the North blew $4.04 billion on luxury goods from 2012 to 2017.

Last year alone, North Korea spent $640.8 million on luxury goods despite international sanctions banning their sale to the impoverished country. That is equivalent to 17.8 percent of North Korea's total imports from China last year of $3.7 billion.

The products were bought either for direct use by the ruling Kim family or as gifts to buy the loyalty of the elite.

North Korea spent at least US$4 billion on luxury cars, watches and jewelry since Kim Jong-un came to power in 2012, analysis of Chinese customs data suggests.

That broke down into $2 billion worth of electronics, $1.4 billion worth of luxury cars, $165 million worth of liquor, $147 million worth of optical equipment, $52.5 million worth of cosmetics and perfume, $49 million worth of watches, $48 million worth of leather goods, $47 million worth of fur coats, $37.6 million worth of fine carpets, $36 million worth of luxury boats, $12.4 million worth of musical instruments and $7.11 million worth of jewelry.

The cars include Kim's bulletproof Mercedes-Benz and a Rolls-Royce believed to have been added to his official rides recently. Luxury cars and watches are favorite gifts for loyal apparatchiks.

The musical instruments were mostly likely distributed to members of Moranbong troupe and Samjiyon Orchestra, which mainly sing and perform for the leadership.

"If North Korea had used the money it spent on luxury products last year to buy rice on the international market, it could have bought around 1.65 million tons of rice, which is twice the amount of its shortfall of 802,000 tons," Yoon said. "North Korea's food shortage does not stem from a lack of support from the international community but from Kim Jong-un's lack of will to feed his own people."

North Korea was apparently able to buy banned goods despite the sanctions because China, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the North's trade, turned a blind eye.

"Our government should be calling on China to enforce sanctions, but instead it's rolled up its sleeves to ease those sanctions," Yoon complained.

China is slackening controls even further. According to Voice of America, the North Korean vessel Tong San 2, which is on a UN blacklist, was spotted in Chinese waters on Oct. 15. And the Daily NK website on Friday said Chinese cars are being more or less freely smuggled into North Korea as Chinese officials turn a blind eye.

Last week, one Singaporean citizen and three companies in the city state were nabbed there on charges of selling $500,000 worth of jewelry and watches to North Korea.

Freedom in the World 2018 - Luxembourg

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Luxembourg, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce2d13.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 98 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 600,000

Capital: Luxembourg

GDP/capita: $101,447

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Luxembourg is a small, landlocked state in western Europe. It is officially trilingual, with German, French, and Luxembourgish as the official languages. Luxembourg is a constitutional monarchy ruled by a democratically elected government. Grand Duke Henri is the head of state and holds largely ceremonial powers. Political rights and civil liberties are generally safeguarded. Luxembourg, as a major financial hub, is considered a tax haven.

Key Developments in 2017:

In March, the minister of justice presented plans to create a Supreme Judicial Council, which would be responsible for nominating judges; currently the grand duke is responsible for judicial nominations.

In July, parliament passed a law to end religious instruction at schools, a move observers believe will strengthen the separation of church and state.

At the end of the year, parliament still had not passed a comprehensive access to information law.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 38 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The prime minister is the head of government and serves five-year terms. The leader of the majority coalition formed after parliamentary elections is appointed prime minister by the monarch, the grand duke. Prime Minister Xavier Bettel of the Democratic Party (DP) was appointed in 2013 following the parliamentary elections. The elections were viewed as credible by international observers. Luxembourg's head of state is Grand Duke Henri, whose powers are largely ceremonial.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The unicameral legislature, the Chamber of Deputies, consists of 60 members elected to five-year terms by proportional representation. The last parliamentary elections were held in 2013. Former prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker's Christian Social People's Party (CSV) captured 23 seats, down from 26 in the 2009 elections. The Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party (LSAP) and the DP each won 13 seats, the Green Party took 6 seats, and smaller parties won the remaining 5 seats. The elections were held seven months early as a result of the collapse of Juncker's government, and were conducted credibly according to observers. The DP built a coalition with the LSAP and the Green Party to form a government.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

The electoral laws and framework are considered fair, and are generally implemented impartially. Voting is compulsory for Luxembourg's citizens. In February 2017, the government passed a law allowing postal ballots for all citizens. Foreigners constitute nearly half of the population and are allowed to vote in local elections.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 16 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

The political system is open to the establishment of new parties, which do not face undue obstacles in their formation. There are three parties that have traditionally dominated politics: the CSV, historically aligned with the Catholic Church; the LSAP, a formerly radical but now center-left party representing the working class; and the DP, which favors free-market economic policies.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

The opposition has a realistic opportunity to gain power through elections. Both the DP and the Green Party were in the opposition before forming the governing coalition with the LSAP in 2013. The CSV, which had dominated politics since 1945, was shut out of power for the first time since 1979.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

The people's political choices are generally free from domination by any democratically unaccountable groups.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 4 / 4

Women participate actively in politics, and the government has taken measures to encourage greater women's participation. In 2016, parliament passed a law mandating that 40 percent of each party's candidates in elections be women; parties risk losing a portion of their public financing if they do not meet the quota. Minority groups are free to participate in politics as well.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The prime minister and parliament determine the government's policies.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

Corruption is not widespread in Luxembourg, and allegations of corruption are generally investigated and prosecuted. However, the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) has criticized the government for lacking a comprehensive strategy to prevent corruption. Additionally, rules on accepting gifts, lobbying, and mitigating conflicts of interest after government officials leave office are lacking.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

Cabinet members are obligated to disclose any shares in companies that they own, but there are no penalties for those who do not cooperate. There is no comprehensive access to information law in place, and in practice, the media and civil society groups often have difficulty obtaining official government information.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 60 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 16 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 4 / 4

Freedom of the press is guaranteed by the constitution and generally respected in practice. A single conglomerate, RTL, dominates broadcast radio and television. Press outlets usually represent a broad range of opinions. Internet access is not restricted.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is largely respected in practice. The state pays the salaries of clergy from a variety of Christian groups. Islamic clergy, however, are not supported by the government. A law passed in 2016 ended the practice of the government paying the salaries of any clergy that began their careers after 2016. In 2017, Prime Minister Bettel's government introduced reforms to increase the separation of church and state, including a July law passed by parliament that ends religious instruction at public schools.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected in practice.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Freedom of expression is largely respected, and individuals can express their political views without fear of retribution.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is guaranteed by the constitution and generally respected in practice.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are largely free to operate without any undue restrictions.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Luxembourgers are free to organize in trade unions, and approximately 41 percent of the workforce is unionized. While the right to strike is not explicitly guaranteed by the constitution, it is protected by case law stemming from a 1952 Court of Cessation ruling.

F. RULE OF LAW: 16 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

Judicial independence is generally upheld. In March 2017, the minister of justice presented plans to create a Supreme Judicial Council, which would be responsible for nominating judges; the grand duke currently nominates judges. Civil society leaders believe that the proposed legislation would further strengthen judicial independence. The reforms were still being debated by parliament at the end of 2017.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

Due process is largely upheld in criminal and civil matters. Defendants have the right to a fair and public trial, and this right is generally respected. Trials can be lengthy because many defendants are foreign nationals, and cases often involve other foreigners.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

Luxembourg is free from war and insurgencies. Protections against the illegitimate use of force are adequate.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 4 / 4

Discrimination on the basis of race, religion, disability, age, gender, or sexual orientation is prohibited by law. The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people are generally respected. Xavier Bettel became the nation's first openly gay prime minister in 2013.

Despite reductions in the gender pay gap and an increase in the labor participation rate in recent years, women hold significantly fewer positions of power than men; according to government statistics, only 20 percent of people serving on boards of directors are women.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 16 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Individuals generally enjoy freedom of movement and choice of residence, employment, and institution of higher education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4

The rights to own property and operate private businesses are legally protected and respected in practice.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 4 / 4

Same-sex marriage has been legal since 2014 and same-sex couples have full adoption rights. Abortions are legal within the first trimester of pregnancy, although women must wait three days before the procedure and are required to receive counseling. Additionally, women must determine themselves to be "in distress," a condition that is confirmed in the required counseling session, before receiving an abortion.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 4 / 4

Luxembourgers generally enjoy equality of opportunity. Occasional cases of forced labor in the construction and food service industries have been reported, especially among migrant workers.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Lesotho

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Lesotho, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce2e13.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 64 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 3.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 2,200,000

Capital: Maseru

GDP/capita: $1,152

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

Lesotho is a constitutional monarchy. In recent years, the army's involvement in the country's already fragile politics has resulted in political instability and a security crisis. Corruption remains a challenge. Customary practice and law restricts women's rights in areas such as property, inheritance, and marriage and divorce.

Key Developments in 2017:

A parliamentary no-confidence vote in March triggered the third round of legislative elections in five years. The polls took place peacefully and were deemed well administered and credible by international election observers, who offered particular praise for the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

Thomas Thabane's All Basotho Convention (ABC) won a plurality of seats in the snap polls, and formed a coalition government.

In September, Army Chief Khoantle Motsomotso was assassinated by rivals. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) subsequently deployed a 258-person regional force to Lesotho, tasked with helping reestablish security.

Police were criticised for a violent response to student protests held in April on a campus of the National University of Lesotho.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 27 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 10 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

Lesotho is a constitutional monarchy. King Letsie III serves as the ceremonial head of state. The prime minister is head of government; the head of the majority party or coalition automatically becomes prime minister following elections, making the prime minister's legitimacy largely dependent on the conduct of the polls. Thomas Thabane became prime minister after his ABC party won snap elections in 2017. Thabane, a fixture in the country's politics, had previously served as prime minister from 2012-14, but spent two years in exile in South Africa amid instability that followed a failed 2014 coup.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The lower house of Parliament, the National Assembly, has 120 seats; 80 are filled through first-past-the-post constituency votes, and the remaining 40 through proportional representation. Members serve five-year terms. The Senate  the upper house of Parliament  consists of 22 principal chiefs who wield considerable authority in rural areas and whose membership is hereditary, along with 11 other members appointed by the king and acting on the advice of the Council of State.

In March 2017, the coalition government of Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili  head of the Democratic Congress (DC)  lost a no-confidence vote. The development triggered the third round of legislative elections held since 2012. Election observers from the SADC, African Union (AU), and the Commonwealth Observer Group reported that the elections took place peacefully and were generally well administered and competitive. However, some isolated instances of political violence were noted, as was a heavy security presence at many polling places, which electoral officials said intimidated some voters. Thabane's ABC won a plurality of seats formed a coalition government, with Thabane serving again as prime minister.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

Although the IEC faces capacity constraints, and the credibility of the voters' roll has been questioned in the past, it has been commended for its independence and its efforts to uphold electoral laws and oversee credible elections. In 2017, international election observer missions broadly commended the IEC's administration of the snap polls, but noted deficiencies they linked to the body's lack of capacity, including late disbursement of campaign funds to political parties.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 11 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 3 / 4

Political parties may form freely and are allotted funding by the IEC, and 27 parties contested the 2017 elections. However, politics have been unstable since a failed 2014 coup. The country has seen politically motivated assassinations and assassination attempts, and political leaders operate within the country at some risk to their personal safety. Lipolelo Thabane, Prime Minister Thabane's estranged wife, was shot and killed two days before his June 2017 inauguration, though the motive was unclear. No arrests had been made at year's end.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 3 / 4

Opposition parties have a realistic chance of gaining power through elections, and power has rotated frequently between DC- and ABC-led coalitions. However, political instability and associated violence and intimidation has at times prompted opposition leaders to flee the country.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

Recent political instability is largely related to politics becoming entangled in disputes among factions of the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF). Although the heavy military presence at voting stations during the 2017 elections was questioned, no incidences of interference with voters were reported. Traditional chiefs wield some political influence over their rural subjects.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

The constitution guarantees political rights for all. However, societal norms discourage women from running for office, and women remain underrepresented in Parliament; following the 2017 elections, 23 percent of seats are held by women, down from 25 percent previously. The inaccessibility of some polling stations to persons living with disabilities was raised as a concern during the year's elections. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals generally face societal discrimination, and this discourages them from advocating for their rights in the political sphere.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 6 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4

While elections are held without delays and representatives are duly seated, persistent political instability disrupts normal government operations.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 2 / 4

Official corruption and impunity for it are perceived as a significant problem in Lesotho. The main anticorruption agency, the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences (DCEO), lacks full prosecutorial powers, and faces capacity and funding challenges. However, its budget was increased by 40 percent in 2017, and despite its challenges, DCEO officers do work to pursue the body's mandate. In 2017, it pursued several controversial cases that involved former cabinet ministers. For example, in August, it interrogated former ministers implicated in a vehicle contract controversially awarded to South African company Bidvest.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 2 / 4

Lesotho has no access to information law, and responses to information requests are not guaranteed. While the Finance Ministry, Bureau of Statistics, and other government bodies publish some data online, not all government departments have an online presence; notably, the Energy and Defence Ministries do not have websites. The management of public finances is clouded in secrecy. Government procurement decisions and tenders generally cannot be accessed online.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 37 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 12 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 2 / 4

Freedom of the press is only indirectly protected under constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression. Journalists are subject to threats and intimidation from both authorities and private citizens. Both state and private media stand accused of being openly biased, and 2017 election monitoring missions noted media bias. Both the current and previous administration shut down radio stations in 2017. In February, Pakalitha Mosisili's government shut down two local radio stations for allegedly broadcasting defamatory content against himself and his deputy prime minister. In September, Mo-Afrika FM was temporarily prevented from broadcasting by the ABC-led government, and its owner was arrested and charged with defamation over airing content perceived as antigovernment.

In October, a South African Broadcasting Corporation correspondent fled Lesotho after receiving death threats. Five soldiers went on trial in December for the 2016 attempted murder of a Lesotho Times journalist.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

The Constitution provides legal protections for freedom of religion and prohibits religious discrimination, and religious freedom is generally upheld in practice.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 3 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected in practice. However, police were criticised for a violent response to student protests on a campus of the National University of Lesotho that took place in April. The students were protesting then prime minister Mosisili's failure to intervene in a dispute involving nondisbursement of scholarship funds, and the events raised questions about the ability of students to organize antigovernment protests on university grounds. Separately, in May, the DC leaders accused the university of having sought the ouster of the DC-led coalition government, and declined to participate in a debate the university had planned.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 3 / 4

The constitution provides legal protections for freedom of expression. However political violence in recent years has discouraged some open political debate. Additionally, in February 2017, authorities temporarily detained and questioned the operators of a Facebook page in an attempt to learn the identity of a user who had published sensitive government information using a pseudonym.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 7 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 2 / 4

Protests and demonstrations are permitted, but organizers must seek a permit seven days in advance. Demonstrations take place each year, but are sometimes broken up violently by police, as was the case with the 2017 student demonstrations at the National University of Lesotho.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 3 / 4

NGOs generally operate without restrictions. However, the Mosisili government was notably reluctant to cooperate with such NGOs and accused them of bias, according to the US State Department.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 2 / 4

While labor and union rights are constitutionally guaranteed, the union movement is weak and highly fragmented, and these challenges have undermined unions' ability to advance the rights of workers. The government also stands accused of undermining bodies like the National Advisory Committee on Labour (NACOLA), Wages Advisory Board, and Industrial Relations Council. Many employees in the textile sector  Lesotho's largest formal employer  face obstacles when attempting to join unions.

F. RULE OF LAW: 9 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The constitution of Lesotho protects judicial independence and the judiciary is generally independent in practice. However, it is underresourced and some appointments have been criticized." The August 2017 reappointment of Justice Mosito as head of the Court of Appeal raised questions among many observers, as he had resigned eight months earlier to avoid impeachment over allegations of tax evasion. Separately, the government in 2017 asked the country's chief justice to either resign or face impeachment over a controversial rental transaction, she has also been accused of political bias.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 2 / 4

Courts uphold fair trial rights in most judiciary proceedings. However, the large backlog of cases often leads to trial delays and lengthy pretrial detention. Officials within the criminal justice system have faced intimidation. In October 2017, the 35-year-old practice of well-known human rights lawyer Zwelakhe Mda was allegedly burned down. At the time, he was involved in a high-profile case challenging the appointment of Mosito, the new head of the Court of Appeal.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

Violence related to factional disputes in the army continued to play out in 2017. In September, Army Chief Khoantle Motsomotso was assassinated by rivals. The SADC subsequently deployed a 258-person regional force to Lesotho, tasked with helping reestablish security. Separately, soldiers who fled to South Africa in 2014-15 amid mutiny charges began arriving back in Lesotho in October 2017, after being asked to return.

Although the constitution provides legal protections against torture, allegations of torture have been levelled against the police, LDF, and prison authorities. In April 2017, Opposition Alliance of Democrats (AD) Youth League President Thuso Litjobo and his bodyguard were allegedly tortured by the police following their arrest on a murder charge. The LDF has been accused of carrying out extrajudicial killings of suspected gang members.

In April, a student from the National University of Lesotho was shot in the back of the head by a police officer and died from the injury while at a club near the campus.

Prison conditions are inadequate and detainees are subject to physical abuse.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Rights are restricted for some groups. Same-sex sexual relations between men is illegal, though this law is not enforced. LGBT individuals face societal discrimination, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is not prohibited by law. Schools often lack facilities for students with disabilities.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 9 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 3 / 4

The constitution protects freedom of movement, and this is generally upheld. In 2017, media reported that a high incidence of rape on a path near the Ha Lebona and Ha Koeshe villages has prompted some women to reduce travel in the area.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

The Constitution protects property rights, though in practice the related laws are inconsistently upheld. Customary practice and law still restricts women's rights in areas such as property, and inheritance. Expropriation is provided for in the Constitution but is unlikely, and subject to fair compensation. Government instability and the country's volatile politics hampers normal business activity.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

Not all individuals enjoy full social freedom. Traditional practices and harmful patriarchal attitudes negatively affect women. Violence against women is high, and there is still no domestic violence law, despite government promises to enact one. Forced and child marriages remain an ongoing problem. Customary practices and law restrict women's rights in and marriage and divorce.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

Human trafficking remains an ongoing challenge. The State Department's 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report found Lesotho's legal framework for prosecuting human trafficking to be weak and inconsistent with international law. It also noted a lack of inspections in informal work settings where forced labor is rife. However, government efforts to fight trafficking including the signing of a memorandum of understanding to help reestablish the only NGO that had provide shelter for victims.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Latvia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Latvia, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce2f13.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 87 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 2.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 2,000,000

Capital: Riga

GDP/capita: $13,658

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Latvia has successfully developed into a democracy since regaining independence in 1991. Elections are regarded as free and fair, and political and civil rights are generally respected in practice. However, Latvia is troubled by corruption and high income inequality, and a relatively high homicide rate.

Ratings Change: Latvia's political rights rating declined from 1 to 2 due to the government's weak response to the "Oligarch Talks" scandal, which revealed the extent to which recent legal improvements have failed to loosen the grip of powerful businessmen on the political arena.

Key Developments in 2017:

In June, transcripts of secretly recorded talks between politically powerful businessmen revealed the extent of their influence over Latvian media, business, and politics, shaking public confidence in state institutions.

In June's local elections, an alliance between Harmony Center and the Honor to Serve Riga (GKR) party won a plurality of votes the capital. However, the results also indicated declining support for Harmony Center, which seeks to represent the interests of Latvia's ethnic Russians.

A proposal to reduce school instruction in languages other than Latvian sparked protests.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 35 / 40 (-1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The parliament elects the president in a secret-ballot vote, and the president may serve up to two four-year terms. The prime minister is nominated by the president and approved by the parliament. Both the 2016 parliamentary confirmation of current prime minister, Maris Kuainskis of the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS), and the 2015 election of president Raimonds Vejonis, former ZZS leader, took place according to legal requirements.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The Latvian constitution provides for a unicameral, 100-seat parliament (Saeima), whose members are elected to four-year terms. The 2014 parliamentary elections were viewed as competitive and credible, and stakeholders accepted the results. The polls saw a victory by the ruling conservative coalition, which is comprised of the Unity party, ZZS, and the nationalist National Alliance, which together took 58 percent of the vote. Harmony Center, which represents the interests of Latvia's ethnic Russians took 23 percent of the vote  won more voted than any other single party.

Elections to local councils took place in June 2017. Turnout was low, at just over 50 percent. The polls brought little change to the composition of municipalities' councils. An alliance between Harmony Center and the Honor to Serve Riga (GKR) party won a plurality of votes in Riga, the capital, but the results indicated declining support for Harmony Center.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

In general, the electoral legal framework is implemented fairly by the Central Election Commission (CEC) and regional and local election administrations.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 14 / 16 (-1)

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Latvia's political parties organize and compete freely. However, Latvian political candidates cannot run as independents, and those who belonged to communist or pro-Soviet organizations after 1991 may not hold public office. Parliamentary elections usually result in the entry of new political parties to the Saeima.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Opposition parties compete freely and have a realistic chance of increasing power through elections. However, Harmony Center and its predecessors, mostly supported by Latvia's Russian-speaking population, have never been invited to participate in a coalition government.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 3 / 4 (-1)

In the summer of 2017, the political scene was shaken by the release of transcripts of talks between so-called oligarchs Aivars Lembergs, mayor of Ventspils, and Ainars Slesers, a former transportation minister, and their associates in 2009-11. The conversations  which were apparently recorded by Latvia's Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) and leaked to the Latvian weekly magazine Ir, which released them  included discussions on their efforts to replace the general prosecutor and other officials, influence media outlets, and influence strategic Latvian companies, and some of the plans discussed were ultimately realized. Key political figures failed to respond meaningfully to the revelations. KNAB opened an investigation in response to the disclosures, but at year's end had not issued related charges. A previous, long-running KNAB investigation against Lembergs and Slesers had been closed in 2016. The lack of a powerful institutional response to the latest revelations of oligarchs' influence over Latvian politics prompted protests, and undermined public confidence in the government.

Authorities and other observers continue to express concern about the presence of disinformation and Russian propaganda in Latvian media.

Score Change: The score declined from 4 to 3 because the "Oligarch Talks" scandal revealed the extent to which oligarchic figures influence Latvia's politics.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

Approximately 240,000 of Latvia's registered residents are stateless persons, most of whom are ethnic Russians. They may not vote, hold public office, work in government offices, or establish political parties. Children of noncitizens born after August 1991 can gain Latvian citizenship if they reside in Latvia permanently and have never acquired citizenship in another state. Lawmakers in September 2017 rejected legislation that would have granted citizenship to Latvian-born children automatically.

Women hold 19 percent of seats in the Saeima and few senior-level political posts. Latvia has no gender equality law, though the government has undertaken some initiatives aimed at promoting gender equality, and there are some associated protections in the country's labor laws.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 9 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 3 / 4

While elections are held on time and elected representative duly seated, Latvian governments are frequently fragmented and short-lived. Although the government is generally capable of developing and implementing policies, oligarchs have tended to exploit the fragility of government coalitions to influence its decisions.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

In recent years, the Latvian government has taken efforts to fight corruption and money laundering. Its admission to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2016 has raised international credibility. However, the investigative and auditing bodies have not been very successful so far in taming the corrupt behavior of politicians, due in part to institutions' inability to consolidate power within their own fields of competence

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3 / 4

The legislative framework for ensuring openness and transparency of the government is extensive. However, there is a notable lack of transparency in functioning of state companies, and in public procurement processes.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 52 / 60 (+1)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

While Latvian media outlets publicize a wide range of political views in both Latvian and Russian, government offices and courts sometimes interfere with media outlets' and reporters' work. The "Oligarch Talks" recordings released in 2017 revealed influence on Latvian media by Lembergs, who used his influence to persuade government-controlled enterprises to purchase advertising space in the Neatkariga Rita Avize daily newspaper, which he controlled, and by Slesers, who took over the liberal Diena daily newspaper and replaced the staff with journalists sympathetic to his now-defunct political party. In the tapes, the men expressed annoyance at radio journalists at the public broadcaster, whom they were apparently unable to influence.

Libel remains a criminal offense. Financial pressures have prompted changes in ownership or in senior editorial staff at numerous media outlets in recent years.

Authorities have occasionally restricted Russian radio and news websites, citing concerns about propaganda.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is generally respected. However, in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, social pressure on the country's roughly 1,000 Muslims has increased.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected. However, a number of potentially restrictive laws are on the books. In 2015, parliament adopted a law mandating that schools provide children a "moral education" that coincides with the values of the constitution, including traditional views of marriage and family life. A law that came into effect in January 2017 enabled the firing of teachers found to be "disloyal to the state." In addition, the government continued to voice an intention to reduce school instruction in languages other than Latvian, measures that would affect the country's minority schools.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Private discussion is open and free. The public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols is banned.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Freedom of assembly is protected by law and generally respected in practice. A number of protests and demonstrations took place in 2017, including events opposing proposals to make most school curriculum Latvian-language, and to express dismay about corruption following the release of the "Oligarch Talks" transcripts.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

The government does not restrict the activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). However, advocacy by NGOs is increasingly viewed as partisan activity.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Workers may establish trade unions, strike, and engage in collective bargaining.

F. RULE OF LAW: 12 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

While judicial independence is generally respected, inefficiency, politicization, and corruption within the judicial system continue to be problems. According to European Union (EU) polling, only about half of respondents from among the general public and companies agree that the courts in Latvia are independent.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

The legal system is widely considered corrupt and ineffective; according to EU polling, more people tend not to trust it than to trust it. By law, legal aid must be provided to people who cannot retain their own, but this is inconsistently enforced. Suspects are sometimes interrogated without the presence of a lawyer. Lengthy pretrial detention remains a concern. The justice system is overburdened and almost half of all criminal cases being investigated by the state police are over five years old.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Latvia has one of the highest prison population rates in the EU. Prisons continue to suffer from overcrowding, and abuses of detainees and prisoners by law enforcement agents has been reported.

The rate of intentional homicides in Latvia is among the highest in the EU.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Latvian laws do not offer specific protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (except in employment) or gender identity. Women often face employment and wage discrimination. Members of the country's Roma minority face discrimination in schools and workplaces. Unemployment is higher among ethnic Russians than ethnic Latvians.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 13 / 16 (+1)

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

Citizens and noncitizens may travel freely within the country and internationally.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4

Years of reform efforts have created an environment in which people may freely establish businesses and own property, though corruption can impede business activities.

Score Change: The score improved from 3 to 4 because there are no significant impediments on people's ability to own property or engage in commercial activity.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Domestic violence is not frequently reported, and police do not always take meaningful action when it is. Same-sex marriage was banned in 2005, and Latvia is one of six remaining countries in the EU that does not recognize same-sex partnerships.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

Around 28 percent of Latvia's population was at risk of social exclusion or poverty in 2016, according to EU statistics. The shadow economy is extensive, and informal workers are vulnerable to labor abuses and being drawn into criminal operations. Under labor laws approved in July 2017, the monthly minimum wage will increase by 50 ($57), to 430 ($490), in 2018.

Men, women, and children continue to fall victim to human traffickers, who tend to transport them to other European countries for forced labor or servitude. The government has increased efforts to provide services to victims of human trafficking, but victim services remain inadequate. A lack of awareness of human trafficking hampers the government's ability to respond to the problem.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Kosovo

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Kosovo, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce3011.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 52 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 3.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 4 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 1,800,000

Capital: Pristina

GDP/capita: $3,575

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

Kosovo holds credible and relatively well-administered elections, but its institutions remain weak, and rampant corruption has given rise to deep public distrust in the government. Journalists face serious pressure, and risk being attacked in connection with their reporting. The rule of law is inhibited by executive interference in the judiciary.

Key Developments in 2017:

A snap election in June followed a vote of no confidence in the government. After nearly three months of negotiations, a deadlock ended with the election of Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK). Several new parties joined the governing coalition, but the near-term stability of the government remains in question.

President Hashim Thaci's December decision to pardon three former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) members convicted of murder in the so-called Hajra Family Case drew criticism from human rights activists.

Journalists continued to experience harassment and violence for reporting critical of the government. Two prominent journalists reporting on corruption were assaulted in May and August, respectively.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 24 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 9 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

Kosovo's prime minister, who serves as head of government, is indirectly elected for a five-year term by at least a two-thirds majority of the unicameral Assembly. Snap general elections were held in June 2017 following a vote of no confidence in the government. The elections were considered credible by international observers, although there were inaccuracies in the voter lists and intimidation in Serb enclaves against both voters and candidates. After no party won sufficient seats to form a government, the political deadlock ended in September when Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerilla fighter and leader of the AAK, was elected prime minister by the Assembly.

The president, who serves as head of state, is also elected to a five-year term by a two-thirds majority of the Assembly. President Hashim Thaci was elected in 2016.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

Members of the 120-seat Assembly are elected to four-year terms. International observers assessed the snap elections held in June 2017 as credible, but highlighted intimidation in Serb constituencies against both voters and candidates. Voter lists contained a number of inaccuracies, including deceased voters and voters being assigned polling stations relatively far from their homes.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The Central Election Commission (CEC), which administers elections, generally acts transparently and fairly. However, because elections must take place between 30 and 45 days after the dissolution of parliament, the CEC struggled to meet important deadlines, send materials to voters living abroad, and adjudicate preelection complaints in a timely manner during the 2017 election period.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 10 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 3 / 4

A proliferation of parties compete in Kosovo. However, political parties sometimes face intimidation and harassment that can negatively impact their ability to operate. The Serb List has been accused of harassing rival parties and creating an environment where voters fear supporting any alternatives to the Serb List.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 3 / 4

Opposition parties have a reasonable chance of gaining power through elections. The ruling PANA coalition, which includes the three largest parties  the AAK, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), and the Social Democratic Initiative (NISMA)  lost 15 seats in the 2017 parliamentary elections. Vetevendosje, a nationalist party, gained 16 seats. After nearly three months of a deadlock, several parties previously in the opposition joined the PANA coalition and elected Prime Minister Haradinaj.

During the campaign in Serb areas, independent candidates and political parties other than the Serbian List experienced intimidation and violence.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

The platform of the Serb List, a member of the coalition government, is influenced by the Serbian government. Several top political figures in Kosovo, including President Thaci, have links to organized crime, which plays a powerful role in politics and influences the positions of key leaders.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 2 / 4

While several political parties represent the Serb minority, the population is not fully integrated into the electoral process or Kosovo's institutions. Serb List members have halted their participation in parliament, most recently in December 2016, which renders many Serbs without effective representation. The Turkish community is politically well-organized and is represented by three parties. . In addition to Serbs, Kosovo's largest ethnic minority, eight other minority groups are officially recognized and politically represented. Serbs are allocated 10 parliamentary seats, and 10 more are reserved for representatives from smaller minority groups.

Kosovo has the largest participation of women in its parliament among western Balkan countries, thanks to gender quotas enshrined in the constitution. However, women's interests are not consistently represented by the government. Many women in rural areas are disenfranchised through the practice of family voting, in which the male head of a household casts ballots for the entire family.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 5 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4

The lengthy deadlock before the formation of a coalition government in September 2017 highlighted the dysfunction and instability that troubles the political system. The PANA coalition was joined by the Serb List and the New Kosovo Alliance (AKR) to end the deadlock.

Serbia still maintains influence in northern Kosovo, where Kosovar institutions do not have a strong presence. In recent years, the government has advanced the decentralization process, granting self-rule to Serb enclaves in the southern part of Kosovo, which weakened parallel structures run by the Serbian government in those areas. However, parallel structures endure in northern Kosovo's Serb areas, meaning that the Kosovar government cannot fulfill its functions in these areas. A 2015 agreement between Kosovo and Serbia laid the groundwork for the Community of Serb Municipalities, a body intended to promote the interests of Serbs, which includes a proposed legislature for the Serb community. The establishment of the community remains at an impasse, however, and has been violently contested within and outside parliament. Three opposition political parties  Vetevendosje, AAK, and NISMA  believe it threatens Kosovo's sovereignty.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 1 / 4

Corruption remains a serious problem, and the institutional framework to combat it is weak. The mandates of Kosovo's four main anticorruption bodies overlap, and they have difficulty coordinating their efforts. Authorities have shown little commitment to prosecuting high-level corruption, and when top officials are prosecuted, convictions are rare.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 2 / 4

Despite the passage of the Law on Access to Public Documents in 2010, which was intended to make government documents available upon request, in practice government institutions frequently deny requests for information with little or no justification. Courts are slow to respond to complaints from those denied government information due to persistent backlogs in the judicial system.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 28 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 9 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 2 / 4

The constitution guarantees press freedom and a variety of media outlets operate in Kosovo. However, the government and business interests exert undue influence on editorial lines, and journalists report frequent harassment and intimidation. In May and August 2017, two prominent journalists who report on political corruption were physically assaulted in separate incidents. These and other occurrences of intimidation and violence lead many journalists to practice self-censorship.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 2 / 4

The constitution guarantees religious freedom. However, the Law on Freedom of Religion prevents some religious communities from registering as legal entities, a designation that would allow them to more easily buy and rent property, access burial sites, establish bank accounts, and carry out other administrative activities. Tensions between Muslims and Orthodox Christians occasionally flare up. In January 2017, protesters threw stones at the bus of Serb pilgrims visiting the Serbian Orthodox church in Gjakove/aakovica, amid claims that war criminals were among the visitors.

The government has reacted strongly to the threat of attacks by Islamic extremists and the radicalization of some Kosovar citizens. Bulk arrests and heavy-handed tactics by authorities have led some members of Kosovo's majority Muslim community to raise concerns about religious persecution.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 2 / 4

Academic freedom has improved in recent years. However, the university system is subject to political influence, as evidenced by 2017 revelations of a spate of suspicious promotions at the University of Pristina.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 3 / 4

Individuals are largely free to express their political views without fear of retribution. In recent years, space has opened for discussion on sensitive topics such as ethnic relations, Roma communities, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) matters, though some people are still uncomfortable discussing these issues.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 6 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 2 / 4

Freedom of assembly is generally respected, though demonstrations are occasionally restricted for security reasons. The constitution includes safeguards for public order and national security. Numerous antigovernment demonstrations took place in the capital in 2017. Some protests ended in clashes between demonstrators and police.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 2 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) function freely, though the courts can ban groups that infringe on the constitutional order or encourage ethnic hatred. NGOs occasionally experience pressure to curtail criticism of the government. Funding for NGOs remained an issue in 2017, as international sources of support declined. To address this issue, the government passed a regulation in June that created a framework for government support for civil society.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 2 / 4

The constitution protects the right to establish and join trade unions, but employers frequently do not respect collective bargaining rights. It is difficult to form a private-sector union because employers often intimidate workers to prevent them from organizing. As a result, few private-sector unions exist in Kosovo.

F. RULE OF LAW: 6 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 1 / 4

Authorities and international donors have continued efforts to strengthen Kosovo's judicial system, but political interference in the judiciary, particularly from the executive branch, remains a problem. Widespread judicial corruption also negatively impacts the branch's independence. Resource constraints and a lack of qualified judges hinder the performance of the judiciary.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 1 / 4

Prosecutors and courts remain susceptible to political interference and corruption by powerful political and business elites, affecting the right to a fair trial. Detained suspects are sometimes denied access to a lawyer until after questioning by authorities; occasionally, suspects do not meet with a lawyer until their first court appearance. Although the law states that defendants should not be detained before trial unless they are likely to flee or tamper with evidence, judges often order suspects detained without cause. Lengthy pretrial detentions are common due to judicial inefficiency and resource constraints.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

Although the European Union (EU) brokered an agreement in 2015 between Kosovo and Serbia to disband the Serb Civilna Zastita (Civil Protection) security force in northern Kosovo, there have been reports that the force is still operating illegally. Prison conditions have improved in recent years, but violence and poor medical care remain problems.

Many former KLA members have been accused of war crimes, yet hold high-level positions in the government. Parliamentarians have attempted to stop the work of a war crimes court based in the Hague through efforts to repeal or renegotiate the 2015 law establishing its existence. Some former KLA members have been convicted by other courts. In December 2017, President Thaci controversially pardoned three former KLA members who had been convicted of murdering a family in 2001.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Kosovo's Roma, Ashkali, and Gorani populations face discrimination in employment, education, and access to social services. Attacks on Serbs are common in Albanian areas, and perpetrators are rarely prosecuted. LGBT people face pressure to hide their sexual orientation or gender identity due to social stigma.

Women experience discrimination in employment, particularly in regard to hiring for high-level positions in government and the private sector.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 7 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 2 / 4

Travel to Serb enclaves is sometimes restricted due to security concerns. The government refuses to accept travel documents issued by the Serbian government that show towns in Kosovo as the place of residence, which makes travel difficult for many Serbs.

One of the new government's first acts after its formation in 2017 was to establish a new commission to assess the border demarcation deal with Montenegro. Approval of the deal is one of the conditions for Kosovo citizens to enjoy visa-free travel in Europe's Schengen zone.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 1 / 4

The legal framework on property rights is poorly outlined, and those rights are inadequately enforced in practice. While the law states that inheritance must be split equally between male and female heirs, strong patriarchal attitudes lead to pressure on women to relinquish their rights and surrender land to male family members. According to a study by USAID, less than 4 percent of women in Kosovo have inherited property. Property reclamation by displaced persons is hindered by threats of violence and resistance to accepting returnees from local communities.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

Domestic violence remains a problem despite the government's five-year strategy to address the issue that was announced in 2016. The Kosovo Women's Network, an NGO, estimates that two-thirds of women have been victims of domestic abuse. Domestic violence is considered a civil matter unless the victim is physically harmed. When criminal cases are referred, prosecutions and convictions are rare. Rape is illegal, but spousal rape is not addressed by the law. Courts often give convicted rapists sentences that are lighter than the prescribed minimum.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

Equal opportunity is inhibited by an unemployment rate of approximately 30 percent, a slight decrease from 2016. Estimates of the youth unemployment rate are above 50 percent.

Kosovo is a source, transit point, and destination for human trafficking, and corruption within the government enables perpetrators. Children are at particular risk of exploitation by traffickers, who can force them to beg or engage in sex work.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Ireland

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Ireland, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce31c.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 96 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 4,700,000

Capital: Dublin

GDP/capita: $62,140

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Ireland is a stable democracy. Political rights and civil liberties are robust, although the government suffers from some incidence of corruption. There is some limited societal discrimination, especially against the traditionally nomadic Irish Travellers.

Key Developments in 2017:

Leo Varadkar  the son of an Indian immigrant, openly gay, and 38 years old  was elected by the Dail as the youngest Prime Minister (Taoiseach) ever, following the decision by Enda Kenny to step down after six years.

In July, the Council of Europe criticized the Irish government for failing to uphold its commitments to implementing anticorruption measures.

In March, the country was shocked by the discovery of a mass grave of babies and children at the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Galway. The facility had housed orphaned children and the children of unwed mothers, and closed in 1961.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 39 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The Taoiseach, or prime minister, is nominated by House of Representatives (Dail Eireann) and formally appointed by the president. Thus, the legitimacy of the prime minister is largely dependent on the conduct of Dail elections, which historically have free and fair. The Dail elected Leo Varadkar of the Fine Gael party as Taoiseach in June 2017, following the decision by Enda Kenny, also of Fine Gael, to step down after six years. The son of an Indian immigrant and openly gay, Varadkar is also Ireland's youngest-ever Taoiseach at 38 years old.

Deputy Prime Minister (Tanaiste) Frances Fitzgerald resigned in November to avoid a no-confidence motion that would have provoked a new general election. She had come under pressure for her alleged failure to support a whistleblower when the police (Garda) commissioner attempted to discredit him during a commission of inquiry into Garda behavior.

The president is elected to up to two seven-year terms, and as chief of state has mostly ceremonial duties. Michael Higgins was elected president in 2011.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The 2016 Dail elections saw no major irregularities or unequal campaigning opportunities. Fine Gael remained the largest party, but with far fewer seats than it had taken in the 2011 general election, while Fianna Fail more than doubled its share of the vote. The parties formed a minority coalition following the 2016 polls.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

Ireland's electoral framework is strong and government bodies are able to put on credible polls. However, there is no electoral commission in Ireland and the organization of Ireland's elections has been criticized. Following a 2014 Constitutional Convention, the government voiced a commitment to establishing an electoral commission after the next elections. Public consultation has begun but no legislation has been brought before parliament.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 16 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties in Ireland are free to form and compete. The two main parties  Fianna Fail and Fine Gael  do not differ widely in ideology; they represent the successors of opposing sides in the nation's 1922-23 civil war. Other key parties include the Labour Party and Sinn Fein. The Green Party reentered the Dail in 2016 following previous losses.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

Opposition parties generally do not encounter restrictions or harassment that affects their ability to gain power through elections. Fianna Fail dominated politics after Ireland became independent, holding power for 61 out of 79 years until 2011. Fine Gael is now the largest party in parliament.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

People's political choices are generally free from domination by military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies and other powerful groups. The influence of the Catholic Church has declined in recent years.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 4 / 4

Ethnic and other minorities are free to participate in politics. Women are active in politics, and due in part to gender quotas, make up 22 percent of Dail representatives.

The roughly 30,000 member of the Irish Traveller minority have little political representation, and efforts to include them in political processes are minimal.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 11 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

Elected officials freely determine government policy.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3 / 4

Ireland has relatively high levels of government corruption compared to its northern European neighbors, and cronyism, political patronage, and illegal donations are recurring problems. In June 2017, the Council of Europe's anticorruption body, known as GRECO, criticized Ireland for failing to implement 8 out of 11 anticorruption reforms it had recommended concerning parliamentarians, judges, and prosecutors. Government officials continue to affirm their intention to enact an antibribery measure unveiled in 2012, but have yet to do so.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 4 / 4

The public has broad access to official information under the 2014 Freedom of Information Act, though partial exemptions remain for the police and some other agencies. A Transparency Code requires open records on the groups and individuals that advise public officials on policy.

The government has been criticized for failing to consult meaningfully with civil society groups and relevant stakeholders in the formulation of policy, particularly regarding Roma, Travellers, and persons with disabilities.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 57 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 16 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 4 / 4

Irish media are free and independent, and print media present a variety of viewpoints. The state may censor material deemed indecent or obscene, but this provision is rarely invoked. The government announced it will in 2018 finally hold a referendum on removing the offense of blasphemy from the constitution and repealing the 2009 Defamation Act, which made blasphemy punishable by heavy fines. Internet access is unrestricted.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed. Although religious oaths are still required from senior public officials, there is no state religion, and adherents of other faiths face few impediments to religious expression. In recent years, Ireland has faced a notable decline in religiosity following a series of sexual abuse scandals linked to clergy in the Catholic Church.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is respected. The Catholic Church operates approximately 90 percent of Ireland's schools and most schools include religious education, but parents may exempt their children from it. The constitution requires equal funding for schools run by different denominations.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

There are no significant impediments to open and free private discussion, including in personal online communications.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 12 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

The right to assemble freely is respected, and peaceful demonstrations are held each year.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Freedom of association is upheld, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can operate freely.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 4 / 4

Labor unions operate without hindrance, and collective bargaining is legal and unrestricted.

F. RULE OF LAW: 14 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

Ireland has an independent judiciary and a legal system based on common law. The Court of Appeal, established in 2014, aims to ease the Supreme Court's backlog. The government has not yet implemented the Council of Europe's recommendations to establish a Judicial Council and improve the judicial appointments procedure. In 2017, the Council of Europe called on the government to implement additional anticorruption measures in the judiciary.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

Due process generally prevails in civil and criminal matters. However, in 2017, the Council of Europe called out corruption in the prosecution service. The police force has been rocked by repeated scandals over the past years, and the head of the Irish police resigned in September in the wake of investigations of her handling of investigations of irregular use of breathalyzer tests, and questions about her approach toward whistleblowers. Separately, the 2017 final report of the Fennelly Commission that investigated allegations that some Garda stations had illegally taped telephone calls found evidence of unlawful recordings, but concluded that it was neither widespread nor systematic. The Garda have also been accused of routinely wiping penalty points from driving licenses of police members.

A series of official inquiries in recent years have detailed decades of physical and emotional abuse  including forced labor as recently as 1996  against women and children in state institutions and by Catholic priests and nuns, as well as collusion to hide the abuse. In March 2017, the country was shocked when government investigators revealed that a mass grave of babies and children was discovered at the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Galway, a Catholic Church-run facility that housed orphaned children and the children of unwed mothers. The facility, which had received unmarried pregnant women and separated their children from them upon birth, had closed in 1961.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Irish prisons and detention facilities are reportedly dangerous, unsanitary, and overcrowded. In 2016, the inspector of prisons published a review of prisoner complaint procedures that found failures to adhere to complaint protocols. The government has taken some steps to address a 2015 Council of Europe report that criticized the continued lack of toilet access in some cells.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

The Irish Travellers face discrimination in housing and hiring. There are concerns that people with disabilities are persistently institutionalized and have suffered a severe reduction of social benefits as a result of a government austerity drive. Irish law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, but some social stigma against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people persists. In 2015, the parliament passed legislation to curtail an exemption that allowed health and educational institutions run by religious entities to practice employment discrimination on religious grounds  for example, on the basis of sexual orientation.

The asylum application process is complex, and asylum seekers are housed for lengthy periods in poor living conditions. The 2015 International Protection Law expedites asylum procedures, although it focuses on enabling deportations rather than properly identifying and processing asylum cases.

Discrimination in the workplace on the basis of gender is illegal, but gender inequality in wages persists.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 15 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions on travel or the ability to choose one's place of residence, employment, or education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4

Private businesses are free to operate, and property rights are generally respected.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Domestic and sexual violence against women is a serious problem, and access to support for victims is particularly difficult for marginalized and immigrant women.

In 2015, referendum voters approved the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples. The constitution was duly amended and the Marriage Act passed, which provides for same-sex marriages. Also in 2015, the Children and Family Relationships Act extended adoption rights to same-sex as well as cohabiting couples, and the Gender Recognition Act began allowing transgender individuals to obtain legal recognition without medical or state intervention, and  for married transgender people  without divorcing.

A 2013 law granted limited abortion rights in cases where a woman's life is at risk, but abortion otherwise remains criminalized with a penalty of up to 14 years' imprisonment. The constitution acknowledges "the right to life of the unborn."

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 4 / 4

People generally enjoy equality of opportunity. However, although the government works to combat human trafficking and protect victims, undocumented migrant workers remain at risk of trafficking and labor exploitation.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Fiji

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Fiji, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce32c.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 59 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 3.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 900,000

Capital: Suva

GDP/capita: $4,922

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

The repressive climate that followed a 2006 coup has eased since democratic elections were held in 2014. However, the ruling party frequently interferes with opposition activities, the judiciary is subject to political influence, and military and police brutality is a significant problem.

Ratings Change: Fiji's civil liberties rating improved from 4 to 3 due to greater state tolerance of political gatherings compared with the previous year.

Key Developments in 2017:

In March 2017, three executives from the Fiji Times and an editorial contributor were charged with sedition for publishing a controversial letter about Muslims. Human rights groups claimed that the charges were politically motivated.

The military made several statements criticizing political parties for their rhetoric throughout the year, including remarks made by Chief of Staff Jone Kalouniwai in June criticizing Pio Tikoduadua of the National Federation Party (NFP) for sowing ethnic divisions with his advocacy of the indigenous iTaukei people.

Several Hindu temples were vandalized at the end of the year, raising concerns about sectarian tensions and discrimination against the Indo-Fijian population.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 24 / 40 (-1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 8 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

The prime minister is the head of government and serves four-year terms. The party that wins the most seats in parliamentary elections selects the prime minister, who is then appointed by the president. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama's Fiji First won 59 percent of the total vote and 32 seats in the 50-member Parliament. International observers reported that the elections were credible, with no reports of violence or intimidation. However, there were some flaws in the process: domestic observers were prohibited from polling stations and a restrictive media environment made it difficult for some political parties to obtain media coverage.

The president is elected by parliament, which chooses between two candidates: one named by the prime minister and one by the leader of the opposition. As head of state, the president  who is elected for one three-year term and is eligible for reelection  holds a largely ceremonial role. President George Konrote was elected by parliament in 2015.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 2 / 4

Parliament is Fiji's unicameral legislative body, with 50 members elected to serve four-year terms. International observers regarded the last parliamentary elections, held in 2014, to be largely credible, although civil society participation was restricted.

Municipal councils continue to be run by government-appointed administrators, having been dissolved in 2009 in the wake of the abrogation of the 1997 constitution. As a result, municipal elections have not been held since 2005.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The legal framework for Fijian elections is considered fair. However, the structure of the electoral system has raised concerns about potential political interference. Fiji First's general secretary, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, serves as minister of elections, as well as attorney general. Opposition parties claim that this creates a bias in the Electoral Commission, which administers elections, and affects the independence of the body.

In 2016, the government awarded a contract to a Pakistani company to administer the 2018 parliamentary elections. The move drew criticism from opposition parties, who argued that the outsourcing of election administration threatened the integrity of the process.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 9 / 16 (-1)

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 3 / 4

The right to form political parties is constitutionally guaranteed, but the government has eligibility requirements that discourage the formation of smaller parties: prospective parties must submit 5,000 signatures to become registered. The 5 percent nationwide threshold for representation in parliament further disincentivizes the formation of smaller parties.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 1 / 4

The dominance of Fiji First in parliament and its popularity with the public has left little space for opposition forces to assert themselves politically. After winning no seats in the 2014 elections, the Fiji Labor Party, the longstanding opposition party, became defunct and ceded that role to the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), which won 13 seats. Fiji First allegedly used state resources to campaign in 2014, which further disadvantaged opposition parties.

The prime minister has, in the past, stated that he would not allow the opposition parties to assume office. Ahead of the 2014 elections, he issued warnings of instability in the event his Fiji First party was defeated.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4 (-1)

Despite constitutional guarantees that it remain apolitical, the military frequently inserts itself into Fijian politics, and made several statements directed against opposition politicians in 2017. In June 2017, Chief of Staff Jone Kalouniwai criticized Pio Tikoduadua of the NFP for sowing ethnic divisions with his advocacy of the indigenous iTaukei people. The leaders of the three major political parties (including Tikoduadua) are former military officials, which contributes to the perception that the military has an undue political influence.

Score change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to the military's increased involvement in politics by criticizing opposition parties.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

The law does not restrict the participation of minorities and women in politics. However, due to cultural traditions, the participation of indigenous women is limited. Only 7 out of the 50 members of parliament are women.

Smaller minority groups, including Banabans, Chinese, and people from other Polynesian islands, lack significant political representation.

Historically, political affiliations have been associated with ethnicity. The Bainimarama-led interim government pushed for national unity and a national identity transcending ethnicity, race, and religion. For the 2014 general elections, all political parties were required to have English names to appeal to all ethnic groups. Reserved seats and special considerations for ethnic and religious groups were eliminated.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 7 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 3 / 4

The executive branch under Prime Minister Bainimarama determines the policies of government. However, the military is still influential in shaping the government's policies: 10 military officers were elected to parliament in 2014. With Fiji First holding a strong parliamentary majority, the government has frequently pushed through bills and budgets with minimal opposition scrutiny.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 2 / 4

Safeguards against corruption are limited in their effectiveness. In 2017, the Fiji Independent Commission against Corruption (FICAC) had some success combatting institutional corruption, pursuing several high-profile cases. In July, for example, former education minister Mahendra Reddy was charged with bribery, but was acquitted by a court in December. Despite the prosecutions that have resulted from FICAC's investigations, corruption remains a serious problem and many officials still act with impunity. FICAC has also allegedly pursued politically motivated corruption cases.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 2 / 4

Government standards of openness and transparency have improved since the restoration of elective democracy in 2014. Parliamentary sessions are broadcast live, and Hansard (an official report of parliamentary proceedings) is updated regularly. Despite these improvements, there is no law requiring parliamentarians to disclose their assets and income. Fiji lacks an access to information law, and requests for information from the media and the public are sometimes denied.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 35 / 60 (+1)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 12 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 2 / 4

Fiji has an active media sector, with several private television stations, radio stations, and newspapers. The opposition and other critics of the government have accused the government of using state power to silence critics. For example, the vaguely worded Media Industry Development Decree bans reporting that is critical of the government or harmful to "national interest public order." The restrictive press laws are sometimes enforced by the government, which leads to self-censorship. In March 2017, three executives from the Fiji Times and an editorial contributor were charged with sedition for publishing a controversial letter about Muslims.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is generally respected. However, several Hindu temples have been vandalized in recent years, including the desecration of the Tirath Dham temple in Nadi in December 2017; a temple near Suva was attacked the previous month. In Ra province, 15 people were convicted of sedition in September for attempting to form a Christian state.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 3 / 4

Academic freedom is not overtly constrained, but government control over funding has been used to exert influence over tertiary institutions. The University of the South Pacific prohibits the majority of its employees from taking on an official position with a political party or running for office.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 3 / 4

There were no confirmed reports of government restrictions on private discussion on political matters or other sensitive topics in 2017. However, the government places constraints on free speech, such as a law banning the burning of the national flag.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 6 / 12 (+1)

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 2 / 4 (+1)

Assembly rights were more respected in 2017: the crackdown on public gatherings that took place in 2016 was eased. Police permits are required for public gatherings and protests, and civil society leaders have reported that the permit process can be lengthy. The constitution gives the government wide latitude to prohibit protests, including on the basis of public safety and public morality.

Score change: The score improved from 1 to 2 because assembly rights were better respected in the year after the 2016 crackdown on public demonstrations, with no reports of gatherings being suppressed by authorities.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 2 / 4

Fiji has an extensive nongovernmental organization (NGO) network, which largely operates without government interference. However, strict sedition laws, which criminalize criticism of the government, place sharp constraints on the range of initiatives that NGOs can undertake. NGOs have been critical of the proposed Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Bill, which they claim criminalizes criticism of parliament and could further erode civic space.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 2 / 4

The general environment for trade unions has improved. Since the passage of the 2016 Employment Relations (Amendment) Act, all workers have the right to form unions and strike. However, the law restricts political activities by union members, prohibiting union members from becoming parliamentarians and impeding their ability to join political parties.

F. RULE OF LAW: 7 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 2 / 4

While the constitution guarantees an independent judiciary, there have been credible allegations of political interference. The prime minister has substantial appointment powers, with the power to both appoint and dismiss judges on the Supreme Court and other high courts. These powers leave the judiciary vulnerable to interference and abuse by the executive.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 1 / 4

Due process rights are often not respected in practice. Corruption is a major problem in the police force. Due to resource shortages, lengthy pretrial detentions are common. The law allows suspects to be arrested without a warrant for violating the Crimes Decree. Politically motivated criminal charges are not uncommon. Amnesty International claimed that the sedition charges leveled against the Fiji Times in 2017 were meant to silence criticism of the government.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

Although the number of reported cases declined in 2017, torture and beatings by police remained a problem. Police officers and military officials who commit abuses are rarely brought to justice, and those who are convicted of crimes are frequently pardoned or have their convictions overturned on appeal. Prisons are often overcrowded, lack sanitation, and provide inadequate health services.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people face discrimination in employment and access to healthcare. Women experience discrimination in employment as well: a gender pay gap persists.

Relations between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians remain strained. Indigenous Fijians previously enjoyed legal advantages in education and political representation. However, the interim government, after the 2006 coup, removed many of these privileges in a bid to foster a sense of national unity. Despite this progress, Indo-Fijians still experience discrimination.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 10 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 3 / 4

Citizens enjoy the freedom to travel, live, work, and seek education inside and outside the country. However, the law gives the government broad powers to restrict both internal and foreign travel. The government did not utilize the law to impose any restrictions on travel in 2017.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 3 / 4

Property rights are generally respected. However, it is difficult to obtain land titles. The government amended the Land Sales Act in 2014 to require foreign nationals who fail to build a dwelling on their land within two years of acquisition to pay a fine equivalent to 10 percent of the land value every six months. Under the law, urban residential freehold land cannot be sold to foreigners.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

Domestic violence remains a problem in Fiji, and perpetrators who are convicted of the crime often receive light sentences. The Minister for Women, Children, and Poverty Alleviation asserts that 72 percent of Fijian women have been victims of violence in their lifetimes. To address the problem, in March 2017, the government established a toll-free helpline to support victims of domestic violence.

Rape is also a serious issue in Fiji. Reports of rape increased dramatically in 2017, possibly because awareness of the legal consequences of the crime grew.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

Sex trafficking of children remained a problem in 2017, and the government was ineffective in addressing it: there were no prosecutions for the crime during the year. Safety standards at workplaces are not always adequately enforced. Long work hours are common in some jobs, including transportation and shipping.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Comoros

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Comoros, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce33c.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 55 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 3.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 3 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 4 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 800,000

Capital: Moroni

GDP/capita: $728

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

The 2001 constitution outlines a system in which the presidency rotates between the islands of the union, and this system has brought about a series of relatively peaceful elections. However, systemic corruption, violence against women, and poverty remain problems. Many journalists self-censor in order to avoid legal reprisals for critical reporting.

Key Developments in 2017:

President Azali Assoumani in July replaced ministers from the Juwa Party, ending the coalition between Juwa and his own political party, the Convention for the Renewal of the Comoros (CRC), amid indications that he wanted to end the rotating union government presidency and seek another term in the next election.

In November, a car belonging to Dhoulkamal Dhoihir, the vice president of the parliament, was set on fire. Dhoihir suggested the attack came as retaliation for his investigation into suspected corruption surrounding a plan to sell Comoros citizenship to stateless people in Gulf States.

Poverty drove many people to attempt the dangerous trip to Mayotte, a French territory, in flimsy boats known as kwassa-kwassa. Amid a crackdown on Comoros migrants in Mayotte, Comoros politicians have demanded that France relinquish control of the island and turn it over to Comoros authorities.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 24 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 9 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

Under the 2001 constitution, the president is directly elected for a single five-year term, with eligibility rotating among the islands. The three candidates who lead the vote on the designated island advance to a second, nationwide round of voting. In addition to its own assembly, each of the three islands also has a directly elected governor.

Comoros held relatively free and fair presidential elections in 2016. The presidency rotated from the island of Moheli to the island of Grande Comore (Ngazidja). The cycle skipped the island of Mayotte, which Comoros claims but which remains under French administration. Former president and coup leader Azali Assoumani of the Convention for the Renewal of the Comoros (CRC) won the election with 41 percent of the vote. International election observers noted some flaws during the first round in administration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), and disputes, in the second round, over alleged electoral fraud on the island of Anjouan that sparked violence in several constituencies. The High Constitutional Court (HCC) ordered that polling at 13 stations be rerun due to these irregularities, though the results of the rerun were roughly the same as in the annulled round.

In July 2017, Assoumani replaced ministers from the Juwa Party, ending the coalition between Juwa and his own CRC, amid indications that he wanted to end the rotating union government presidency and seek another term in the next election.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

The unicameral Assembly of the Union consists of 33 members, with 9 selected by the assemblies of the three islands and 24 by direct popular vote; all members serve five-year terms. Elections to the Assembly of the Union took place in 2015. The Union for the Development of Comoros (UPDC) won 11 seats, the Juwa Party 10, the Democratic Rally of the Comoros (RDC) 4, the CRC 2, and three smaller parties 1 each. Three independent candidates also won seats. While international observers present during the polls deemed them calm and transparent, they were marred by were accusations of fraud, and of misuse of state resources by then President Ikililou Dhoinine's UPDC.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4

The CENI, while generally able to run credible elections, has faced accusations of bias and corruption among its members. In 2016, Ahmed Djaza, president of the CENI, and three members of the commission were detained for embezzlement. However, the CENI reelected Djaza to its presidency in September 2017. Political party concerns over the commission's independence have since increased.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 11 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 3 / 4

Political parties are mainly formed around specific leaders and draw on island or ethnic bases of support. Parties may generally operate freely, though the government occasionally disrupts opposition parties' activities by denying them meeting and assembly space. In late 2017, the government denied opposition parties permission to hold a meeting in Anjouan.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 3 / 4

Comoros's numerous opposition parties have a realistic chance of gaining power through elections. However, occasional government interference in the operations of opposition parties can have a negative impact on their ability to campaign. Additionally, there were allegations during the 2015 campaign period that then president Ikililou Dhoinine's UPDC benefited from state resources and the assistance of state-run companies, placing opposition groupings at a disadvantage.

In 2017, a number of parties indicated that they would unite to challenge the government.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 3 / 4

People are generally free to exercise their political choices. However, the influence of Comoros's powerful army  which has occasionally cracked down on dissent  as well as of religious authorities can place pressure on voters and candidates.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 2 / 4

There are no laws preventing various segments of the population from having full political rights and electoral opportunities. However, traditional attitudes discourage women form participating in politics, and women won just two seats in the legislature in 2015 elections. Legal and societal discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay bisexual, and transgender) people makes political advocacy for LGBT rights difficult.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 4 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 2 / 4

According to the constitution, the president decides on the policies of the state, which are executed by the government. However, irregular activity in the legislature has hampered representative policymaking. In 2015, the newly installed Union of the Assembly chose its president in an irregular election that sparked accusations of an "institutional coup" from the opposition. During the vote, opposition members were prevented from accessing the chamber, at times through the intervention of security forces. The opposition parties, deeming the election illegitimate, unsuccessfully brought a case calling for the dismissal of the assembly president to the Constitutional Court.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 1 / 4

There are reports of corruption at all levels, including within the judiciary, civil service, and security forces. The former government of President Ikililou Dhoinine had made progress in establishing institutions and a legal framework for combating corruption, but anticorruption laws are not consistently upheld. Moreover, the Assoumani administration dissolved the National Commission for Preventing and Fighting Corruption (CNPLC) in 2016. The Constitutional Court ruled that the president did not have executive authority to dismiss the commission, but following the decision, the administration simply declined to renew the body' mandates or appoint members to open seats.

Separately, in 2017, a car belonging to Dhoulkamal Dhoihir, the vice president of the parliament, was set on fire, in what he suggested was retaliation for his investigation into a plan to sell Comoros citizenship to stateless people in Gulf states. The attack took place a day before a commission he led was scheduled to question two former presidents, Ikililou Dhoinine and Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, about the program.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 1 / 4

Government operations are characterized by a lack of transparency. Various reform initiatives have so far not successfully addressed the problem. Financial asset disclosures by public officials are not released to the public.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 31 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 10 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 2 / 4

The constitution and laws provide for freedoms of speech and the press. However, the use of censorship laws to prosecute legitimate journalistic work, and other pressure, has prompted widespread self-censorship. In 2016, the owner of the La Baraka FM radio station was convicted of insulting the judiciary and assigned a fine and suspended sentence. An appeals court overturned the conviction in February 2017, but shortly afterward, authorities issued an order to close the station's office, and confiscated equipment.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 2 / 4

Islam is the state religion, and 98 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim. The constitution proclaims equality of rights and obligations for all individuals regardless of religion or belief. The law restricts public religious events to Sunni Muslims, though typically other religious groups are not prevented from holding ceremonies. The president appoints the grand mufti, an official government position. The courts have condemned Muslims for disobeying the grand mufti; in September 2017, 28 people were arrested and found guilty for violating a one of the mufti's directives regarding the celebration of a religious holiday. Christians are prohibited from proselytizing.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 3 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected. However, occasional disputes involving schools can hamper their normal operations. In 2017, a private electricity company shut off power at a high school in Moroni due to fraud allegations against the school. Teachers and students subsequently protested, and the demonstration was violently put down by police; seven students were injured, including one who sustained a gunshot wound.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 3 / 4

Citizens may generally engage in private discussion without fear of retribution. However, the legacies of the country's volatile political history, which involves a number of coups and attempted coups, can discourage ordinary people from discussing politics in public places.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 7 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 2 / 4

Freedoms of assembly and association are protected in the constitution, but the government continues to restrict some events, including opposition meetings, and police have occasionally respond to public protests with violence. In 2017, striking public school teachers were denied a permit to hold a march, and police dispersed participants when they attempted to hold it anyway.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 2 / 4

Civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate in the country. Groups occasionally face bureaucratic interference in their operations, such as requirements to secure permits from high-level officials in order to visit prisons.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

Workers have the right to form unions, bargain collectively, and strike. In cases of national interest, the government may require essential personnel to return to work. No law prohibits antiunion discrimination or protects workers from retribution for striking.

F. RULE OF LAW: 8 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 2 / 4

The judicial system is based on both Sharia (Islamic law) and the French legal code, and the judiciary is subject to influence by the executive branch and other elites. Though the law establishes mechanisms for the selection of judges and attorneys, the executive branch often disregards these and simply appoints people to their positions. Court decisions are not always upheld.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 2 / 4

According to the law, all defendants have the right to a fair public trial, but they often face lengthy delays. Corruption within the court system can prevent guarantees of due process. Interpreters are not usually provided to those who need them, as required by law

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

The law prohibits the illegitimate use of physical force, but security forces have engaged in excessive force, and are generally not held accountable for such behavior. There are questions about the will or capacity of the army to identify and punish abuses within its ranks.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2 / 4

The law provides for equality of persons. However, same-sex sexual activity is illegal, with punishments of a fine and up to five years in prison. Few women hold positions of responsibility in business, outside of elite families. Laws requiring that services be provided for people with disabilities are not well enforced.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 6 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 2 / 4

The constitution and law provide for freedom of movement, both internally and externally. While these rights are generally respected by the government, in practice, poverty frequently prevents travel between the islands as well as access to higher education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

In accordance with civil and some customary laws, women have equal rights in inheritance matters. Local cultures on Grande Comore and Moheli are matrilineal, with women legally possessing all inheritable property. However, this is complicated by the concurrent application of Islamic law, interpretations of which can limit gender equality. In addition, a poor system of land registration and women's difficulties in securing loans hampers women's right to own land.

Endemic corruption and a lack of a culture of transparency hampers normal business activity.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 1 / 4

Early and forced marriages have been reported in Comoros. The law prohibits domestic violence, but courts rarely fined or ordered the imprisonment of convicted perpetrators, and women and children rarely filed official complaints. Sexual violence and workplace harassment are believed to be widespread, but are rarely reported to authorities.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 1 / 4

The Comorian economy, which is primarily agricultural, relies heavily on remittances from Comorian citizens in France. Many young people struggle to find sustainable opportunities for employment. Poverty has driven many people to attempt the dangerous trip to Mayotte, a French territory, in flimsy boats known as kwassa-kwassa.

Government efforts to identify and prosecute human trafficking are minimal, and trafficking cases, if addressed, are often done so through informal mediation processes. At times, these mechanisms have facilitated the return of trafficking victims to traffickers.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Brunei

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Brunei, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce34c.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Not Free

Aggregate Score: 28 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 5.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 6 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 400,000

Capital: Bandar Seri Begawan

GDP/capita: $30,968

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

OVERVIEW

Brunei is an absolute monarchy in which the sultan exercises executive power, and in which there are no elected representatives at the national level. Freedom of the press and of assembly are significantly restricted. Online speech is monitored by authorities, but lively nevertheless.

Key Developments in 2017:

Nineteen Indian residents of Brunei were fined in February for gathering without a permit to support playing a south Indian sport called Jallikattu.

In July, a government employee was charged with sedition after criticizing on Facebook new government halal certification regulations, and expressing concern about the impact they might have on local businesses.

Brunei delayed implementation of further phases of its Sharia-based penal code. The first phase was implemented in 2014.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 6 / 40 (A--1)

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 0 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 0 / 4

The hereditary sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, is the head of state and prime minister, and continues to wield broad powers under a long-standing state of emergency imposed in 1984.

In 2017, Brunei appeared, in the fiftieth year of the sultan's rule, to be paving the way for Hassanal's son, Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah, to eventually take power. There are no indications that any transition would also involve moving away from a traditional monarchy.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 0 / 4

The unicameral Legislative Council has no political standing independent of the sultan, who appoints most members. Brunei has not held direct legislative elections since 1962.

Elections are held for village-level councils that play a consultative role, though candidates are vetted by the government.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 0 / 4

There are no national-level electoral laws, since there have not been any national, direct legislative elections in over five decades.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 3 / 12

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 1 / 4

Genuine political activity by opposition groups remains extremely limited. The National Development Party (NDP) was permitted to register in 2005 after pledging to work as a partner with the government and swearing loyalty to the sultan; it is the only registered party.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 0 / 4

There are no national-level elections in which opposition forces could gain power. Since the National Solidarity Party was deregistered without explanation in 2008, the NDP has been Brunei's sole legal political party. It has no formal political role, few activities in practice, and a small membership, and is unable to challenge the sultan's power in any meaningful way.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 1 / 4

The dominance of the sultan and lack of elections leaves people with few avenues for genuine and autonomous political participation. However, people have some very limited ability to challenge unpopular policies through the organization of social movements. In 2015, for example, authorities found a compromise solution to address the concerns of vendors who had been ordered to relocate. Analysts suggested that the government was amenable to the compromise because it aided the sultan's public image.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 1 / 4

Ethnic and religious minorities have few opportunities for political participation, even on a local level. Village council candidates must be Muslim, and ministers and deputy ministers must be Muslim and Malay unless the sultan grants an exception.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 3 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 0 / 4

None of Brunei's national-level policymakers are chosen through elections. The sultan wields broad powers, and is advised by appointed advisory bodies and the appointed legislature.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 2 / 4

The government claims to have a zero-tolerance policy on corruption, and its Anti-Corruption Bureau has successfully prosecuted a number of lower-level officials. In August 2017, a civil servant in the Defense Ministry was sentenced to six months in jail for misappropriating state funds.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 1 / 4

Although the appointed Legislative Council has no independent power, it formally passes the state budget and engages in question-and-answer sessions with government officials. The Council meets once each year for a session lasting approximately two weeks. However, in general there is little transparency in the operations of the Brunei government, and this lack of transparency is exacerbated by the country's lack of press freedom.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 22 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 6 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 1 / 4

Officials may close newspapers without cause and fine and imprison journalists for up to three years for reporting deemed "false and malicious." Brunei's only television station is state-run. The country's main English-language daily newspaper, the Borneo Bulletin, is controlled by the sultan's family and its journalists often practice self-censorship. Another former English-language newspaper, the Brunei Times, closed abruptly in 2016, allegedly after complaints from the Saudi embassy in Brunei over critical coverage of Saudi hajj policies.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 1 / 4

The state religion is the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam, but the constitution allows for the practice of other religions. Non-Shafi'i forms of Islam are actively discouraged, and marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims is not allowed. Muslims require permission from the Ministry of Religious Affairs to convert to other faiths.

Christians are allowed to hold low-key Christmas celebrations inside churches or at homes, but not outdoors or at shopping malls. In 2017, it appeared that the government no longer issued permits for the construction of new churches.

In 2014, Brunei implemented new criminal regulations based on Sharia law (Islamic law), which include limits on the use of certain words and expressions deemed to be sacred to Islam in reference to other religions. The new code also includes a ban on proselytizing of a religion other than Islam to Muslims or atheists, and requires Muslims to participate in fasts and other religious observances. In 2017, the Brunei government had yet to implement a planned second phase of the law, which prescribes much tougher penalties for violations.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 2 / 4

Academic freedom is respected to some extent, although institutions must seek approval from authorities to host visiting scholars, public lectures, and conferences. Scholars reportedly practice self-censorship or release their work under pseudonyms in overseas publications to avoid repercussions in Brunei.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 2 / 4

The government utilizes an informant system to monitor suspected dissidents, and online communications are monitored for subversive content. In July 2017, a government employee complained, in a social media post on Facebook, about new government halal certification regulations and the impact that might have on local businesses. He was charged with sedition and pleaded not guilty in September. Nevertheless, Brunei has an active online discussion community.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 3 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 1 / 4

Long-standing state-of-emergency laws continue to restrict freedom of assembly. No more than 10 people can assemble for any purpose without a permit, and these laws are frequently enforced. Nineteen Indian residents of Brunei were fined in February 2017 for gathering without a permit to support playing a south Indian sport called Jallikattu.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 1 / 4

Most nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are professional or business groups, although a few work on issues related to social welfare. All groups must register, registration can be refused for any reason, and registered groups can be suspended.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 1 / 4

The law guarantees the right to form and join a union, but the agreement that had permitted Brunei's only active union, the Brunei Oilfield Workers Union, is now expired. Strikes are illegal, and collective bargaining is not recognized.

F. RULE OF LAW: 6 /16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 1 / 4

Brunei has a dual judicial system of secular and Sharia courts; all senior judges are appointed by the sultan. The courts appear to act independently when handling civil matters, and have yet to be tested in political cases.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 2 / 4

Civil and criminal law is based on English common law and is enforced in secular courts, while Sharia is enforced in Sharia courts. People detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) lack due process rights including the presumption of innocence.

The country's controversial new penal code, based on Sharia law, continued to be delayed; Brunei implemented the first phase of the new code in 2014 but has held off implementing phases two and three, which contain more severe penalties for violations. The Sharia penal code includes rules that apply to non-Muslims as well as Muslims. Many of the new Sharia rules overlap with existing provisions of the civil and criminal codes, but under the new Sharia code there are different sentences and burdens of proof.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 2 / 4

Phased amendments to the new Sharia code permit the death penalty for drug-related offenses and other, more serious offenses, but these amendments have not yet been enacted. Brunei retained the death penalty for crimes including drug trafficking before the new Sharia code was launched. Secular law allows for dozens of offenses to be punished by caning. Prison conditions generally meet international standards.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 1 / 4

Brunei citizenship is inherited automatically from citizen fathers. Citizen mothers must complete an application to pass citizenship on to children born to a noncitizen father.

Thousands of stateless residents of Brunei, including longtime ethnic Chinese residents, are denied the full rights and benefits granted to citizens. Same-sex sexual activity is a crime, and there are no protections against discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS 7 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 2 / 4

Freedom of movement is respected. All government employees, domestic and foreign, must apply for permission to travel abroad, but permission is easily obtained. Stateless children do not have free access to education and instead must apply to enroll in schools; if accepted they sometimes have to pay tuition not required of citizens.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 2 / 4

Brunei citizens are able to own property and establish businesses, and can establish businesses with relative ease, but protections for private property are not strong. State-linked firms dominate many sectors of the economy and the government heavily subsidizes many sectors. Islamic law generally disadvantages women in cases of inheritance.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 1 / 4

Islamic law generally disadvantages women in matters involving divorce and child custody. The new Sharia penal code criminalizes "indecent behavior" and enjoins women to dress "modestly." There is no specific law against domestic violence, and although rape is a crime, spousal rape is not criminalized. The results of a study released in March 2017 by the Women Graduates Association of Brunei Darussalam (PSW) found that more than half of the female respondents had faced sexual harassment at work.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 2 / 4

There is no private-sector minimum wage in Brunei. Labor inspections are frequent, but are often aimed at identifying undocumented migrant workers.

Migrants who come to Brunei to serve as household workers are often coerced into involuntary servitude or debt bondage, and can be subject to varying forms of abuse. Workers who overstay visas are regularly imprisoned and, in some cases, caned.

According to the US State Department's 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report, Brunei made its first trafficking conviction in four years during the reporting period. However, authorities still struggle to confront trafficking; for example, the report cited instances in which trafficking victims, particularly foreign victims, were themselves charged with crimes, or were fined.

Explanatory Note: Due to a methodological change affecting certain monarchies, Brunei's aggregate score for political rights declined by one point; for more information see the report methodology.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Belize

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Belize, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce3534.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 86 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 2 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 400,000

Capital: Belmopan

GDP/capita: $4,850

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Belize is a democracy that has experienced regular rotations of power through competitive elections. However, government corruption is a problem. Authorities have also been reluctant to address persistent problems with police brutality, and human trafficking within the country's borders.

Key Developments in 2017:

In January, a new attorney general, Michael Peyrefitte, was sworn in. He replaced Vanessa Retreage, who had resigned the previous month. Retreage and Prime Minister Dean Barrow denied that she had been forced out over her efforts to reform the Lands Department.

In April, a viral video emerged in which a woman was seen being thrown to the ground and kicked by police officers during a confrontation between police and residents of San Pedro.

In September, police reportedly deployed tear gas against anticorruption demonstrators who had blocked a road and refused orders to disperse.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 36 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The prime minister, usually the leader of the largest party in parliament, is head of government. Formally, the prime minister is appointed by the governor general, who represents the British monarch as head of state. The legitimacy of the prime minister is largely dependent on the conduct of legislative elections, which are typically professionally run and credible.

Dean Barrow returned as prime minister following the victory of the United Democratic Party (UDP) victory in 2015 elections, which the Organization of American States (OAS) said were conducted in a fair and professional manner.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

The 31 members of the House of Representatives are directly elected to five-year terms. The Senate has 12 seats; the ruling party, opposition, and several civil associations select the senators, who are then appointed by the governor general.

In the 2015 legislative polls, the incumbent UDP increased its representation to 19 seats in the House of Representatives, and entered an unprecedented third consecutive term. The opposition People's United Party (PUP) took the remaining 12 seats. OAS observers said the polls were conducted in a fair and professional manner.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

Electoral laws are generally fair, although ahead of the 2015 polls it was reported that the Chief Elections Officer and her family were threatened by masked men ahead of election day. In response, police provided added security at her home. Separately, the OAS has suggested that the role of the Elections and Boundaries Commission and the Elections and Boundaries Department be strengthened, and that authorities work to reduce partisanship associated with the confirmation of appointees. It further noted that voter lists should be reviewed.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 14 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties can organize freely. The effects of the country's "first-past-the-post" electoral system has entrenched two-party politics; while a number of small political parties have competed, only the PUP and UDP have won seats in parliament.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

There are realistic opportunities for opposition parties to increase their support or gain power through elections. Since 1984 there has been a fairly regular transfer of power between the two parties.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

Recent elections, including those in 2015, have been viewed as generally free and fair. However, the OAS has raised concerns about the potential impact of unregulated campaign financing on the transparency of the electoral process.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 2 / 4

Women hold only 2 seats in the current National Assembly, and 3 seats in the Senate. There were only 11 women candidates out of a total of 88 in the 2015 elections. However, women play a significant role in the political system more generally.

Indigenous groups, particularly of Mayan descent, are not well represented in politics. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community is marginalized, and this impacts the ability of LGBT people to engage fully in political and electoral processes.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 10 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The elected prime minister, cabinet, and national legislative representatives are duly seated following elections and are able to determine the policies of the government.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 2 / 4

Belize continues to struggle with corruption, and there is little political will to address the issue. Anticorruption laws are poorly enforced; for example, no one has ever been prosecuted under the Prevention of Corruption in Public Life Act, which has been on the books for over 20 years. Members of the country's business community allege that favoritism influences the government's awarding of licenses and public contracts. In 2016, the government faced accusations of corruption over the issuance of visas and passports; in August of that year, a special audit that confirmed the involvement of high-ranking officials became public.

Controversy and financial disputes continue in connection with the government's recent nationalization of the heavily indebted Belize Telemedia Limited.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 4 / 4

The government of Belize generally operates with openness and transparency. However, while the law requires public officials to submit annual financial disclosure statements for review by the Integrity Commission, the body had been defunct for years before members were finally appointed by the ruling party and opposition in early 2017. There is little opportunity for the public to challenge the disclosures.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 50 / 60 (-1)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, and in general, reporting covers a wide range of opinions. However, authorities can restrict press freedom in the interests of national security, public order, or morality. Separately, in September 2017, media coverage of an anticorruption demonstration was reportedly disrupted when police deployed tear gas against protest participants.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is constitutionally protected and respected in practice. The various religious groups in the country are integrated and, despite some minor political disagreements, coexist peacefully.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

Academic freedom is generally respected.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Individuals are free to express their views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 10 / 12 (-1)

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 3 / 4

Freedoms of assembly and association are constitutionally protected, and the government generally respects these rights. However, protests occasionally become unruly. In September 2017, clashes between protesters and police took place after anticorruption demonstrators refused police orders to stop blocking roads. Officers reportedly deployed tear gas against the protesters.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights-and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Nongovernmental organizations are generally free from government interference.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4 (-1)

Unions are free to form and operate. Official boards of inquiry adjudicate labor disputes, and businesses have been penalized for labor-code violations. However, while labor unions are active and are politically influential, their ability to protect workers' rights is limited in practice. In 2016, the Belize National Teacher's Union (BNTU) held several national strikes, prompting the government that fall to accept a number of workers' demands, including a 3 per cent salary adjustment. Nevertheless, reports of teachers not being paid continued in 2017. The country's definition of "essential" workers  whose ability to strike is limited  is broader than the International Labor Organization's definition.

Score Change: The score declined from 4 to 3 because despite their robust activity, unions have struggled to secure protections for workers.

F. RULE OF LAW: 12 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 3 / 4

The judiciary is generally independent, if underresourced. However, there have been attempts by political and business interests to interfere with the composition of the judiciary. Litigants may appeal cases to the Caribbean Court of Justice, the country's highest appellate court.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3 / 4

Detainees and defendants are guaranteed a range of legal rights, which are mostly respected in practice. However, police have reportedly detained suspect without charge for longer than is permitted by the law, and have used the threat of extended detention to intimidate suspects. Judicial delays and a large backlog of cases contribute to lengthy trial and other procedures.

In January 2017, a new attorney general, Michael Peyrefitte, was sworn in. He replaced Vanessa Retreage, who had resigned the previous month. Retreage and Prime Minister Dean Barrow denied rumors that she had been forced out for her work in reforming the Lands Department.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3 / 4

Belize is free from war and insurgencies, and ordinary citizens have little reason to fear for their general safety. However, cases of police brutality continue to emerge. In April 2017, a viral video depicted a woman being thrown to the ground and kicked by police officers during a confrontation between police and residents of San Pedro. While two officers were charged in connection with that incident, the government frequently ignores or dismisses reports of abuses by police, or transfers accused officers to other areas within their department.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Legal and societal discrimination against LGBT people persists. Although in August 2016 the country's Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a portion of the criminal code that outlawed same-sex sexual activity; the case is currently being appealed. Belize held its first Pride Week in August 2017.

Women face employment discrimination and are less likely than men to hold managerial positions. However, the government has actively pursued programs aimed at encouraging gender equality and protecting women's rights.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 13 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

The government generally respects freedom of internal movement and foreign travel. In April 2016, authorities temporarily prohibited citizens from accessing the Sarstoon River in response to a spike in tensions with Guatemala over its contested border. The decision was widely criticized, and was subsequently rescinded.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or non-state actors? 3 / 4

Individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses. However, legal regulations are at times poorly enforced, and the indigenous Maya community say that their ancestral land rights are not protected.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3 / 4

Violence against women, particularly domestic violence, remains a serious problem. Rape, including spousal rape, is illegal, but there are poor conviction rates and when there are convictions, sentences are sometimes light.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3 / 4

Belize is a source, transit, and destination country for women, men, and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor. In 2017, the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report continued to rank Belize in the lowest tier. The report cited widespread sex and labor trafficking, and a lack of government efforts to address the problem.

Economic inequality is significant, and unemployment remains a problem.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedFreedom in the World 2018 - Andorra

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Andorra, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce37a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 96 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 1.0 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 1 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 80,000

Capital: Andorra la Vella

GDP/capita: $36,038

Press Freedom Status: Free

OVERVIEW

Andorra has a parliamentary system of government and regularly holds free and fair elections, though more than 50 percent of the population consists of noncitizens who do not have the right to vote. Political rights and civil liberties are generally respected and safeguarded. However, domestic violence is a problem, and the country is not fully compliant with international standards on accessibility for disabled people. The small Muslim and Jewish communities lack dedicated cemeteries, and the country has no recognized mosque.

Key Developments in 2017:

In June, the government approved a draft law that would protect the rights of people with disabilities and provide assistance to victims of racism or discrimination.

In July, the government passed a law to criminalize tax evasion, which will enter into effect in 2018.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 39 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Andorra has a parliamentary system, with a prime minister elected by and accountable to the parliament. The prime minister is usually the head of the largest party in the parliament, and their legitimacy rests largely on the conduct of parliamentary elections, which have historically been competitive and credible. Antoni Marti, head of the Democrats for Andorra (DA), was reelected as prime minister following that party's victory in the 2015 legislative elections.

Two unelected "co-princes," the French president and the bishop of La Seu d'Urgell, Spain, serve jointly as ceremonial heads of state.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4

Popular elections are held every four years for the 28-member Consell General. The most recent elections occurred in March 2015. The DA won 15 seats, followed by the Liberal Party of Andorra (PLA) with 8, an independent coalition with 3, and the Social Democracy and Progress party (SDP) with 2. International observers deemed the polls competitive, credible, and generally well administered.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 4 / 4

The Electoral Law, which was last changed in 2014 to introduce regulations on campaign finance, provides a sound framework for free and fair elections. The Electoral Board supervises elections impartially.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 15 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4

Political parties may form and operate freely, and there are a number of active parties in Andorra.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions preventing the opposition from increasing its support through elections. Multiple opposition parties are currently represented in the Consell General.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 4 / 4

There are no powerful groups without democratic legitimacy that influence or limit the people's political choices.

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4

More than 50 percent of the population consists of noncitizens who do not have the right to vote. Under Andorra's restrictive naturalization criteria, one must marry a resident Andorran or live in the country for more than 20 years to qualify for citizenship. Prospective citizens are also required to learn Catalan, the national language.

Women are active in politics, and hold 36 percent of seats in the legislature.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 12 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 4 / 4

The elected government and parliament exercise their powers without undue restraints from nonelected or nonstate actors, and freely determine the policies of the government.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 4 / 4

Government corruption is not viewed as a pressing issue in Andorra. Significant progress was made to address concerns raised in a 2011 report by the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) about Andorra's laws concerning bribery and campaign finance. In a 2017 progress report, GRECO notes that eighteen of the twenty recommendations have now been satisfactorily implemented.

Andorra continued to make efforts to address longstanding concerns about abuse of its banking system in 2017. In July, the government approved a law to outlaw tax evasion, making this practice punishable by prison sentences of between three months and three years. The new law will enter into force in January 2018, together with a law renouncing banking secrecy, which was passed in December 2016.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 4 / 4

No law exists to provide public access to government information. However, the government weekly publishes its main actions in a bulletin, which is accessible online or by e-mail.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 57 / 60 (+1)

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 15 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 3 / 4

There a number of daily and weekly newspapers, and one Andorran television station, operated by the public broadcaster Radio i Televisio d'Andorra. Business, political, and religious interests heavily influence media coverage. Reporting on the activities of Andorra's banks is particularly difficult.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 4 / 4

Freedom of religion is generally respected, but the Catholic Church enjoys a privileged position that allows it to draw on some state support, and to bypass some bureaucratic processes that other faiths must adhere to.

Despite years of negotiations between the Muslim community and the government, there is no proper mosque for the country's roughly 1,300 Muslims. The government has organized meetings with Jewish and Muslim communities to talk about the possible construction of a special cemetery where these groups may engage in burials according to their customs and beliefs, but progress toward establishing one has stalled.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions on academic freedom, and the educational system is free from indoctrination.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 4 / 4

Freedom of speech is respected across the country, and there are no restrictions on internet access or online communications.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 11 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 4 / 4

Andorran law provides for freedom of assembly, and the government respects this right in practice.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 4 / 4

Various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are active in the country, and can function without restrictions. The groups were able to publish their findings on human rights cases, and experienced cooperation from the government.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3 / 4

While the government recognizes that both workers and employers have the right to defend their interests, the right to strike is not legally guaranteed. There are also no laws in place to penalize antiunion discrimination or regulate collective bargaining, although a 2009 law guarantees unions the right to operate.

F. RULE OF LAW: 15 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 4 / 4

The judiciary is impartial and independent, and the government generally respects the independence of the judiciary.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 4 / 4

Defendants enjoy the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial, and due process is generally upheld in the criminal justice system. The constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, but police can detain suspects for up to 48 hours without charge

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 4 / 4

Andorra is free from war and insurgencies, and law enforcement agents are not known to use excessive force against civilians.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 3 / 4

Same-sex marriage is legal in Andorra, and discrimination against women is illegal. In June 2017, the government approved a draft law that would protect the rights of people with disabilities and provide assistance to victims of racism or discrimination. However, the country is not fully compliant with international standards on accessibility for disabled people and ensuring their entry into the workforce. The law does not require equal pay for equal work, and the Department of Statistics has estimated that women earned 24 percent less than men for comparable work.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 16 / 16 (+1)

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 4 / 4

There are no restrictions on the freedom of movement, and people are generally free to choose their place of employment, residence, and education.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 4 / 4 (+1)

Citizens enjoy the right to own property. Legislation passed in 2012 fully opened up the economy to foreign investors as well, allowing noncitizens to own up to 100 percent of any commercial entity.

Score Change: The score improved from 3 to 4 due to efforts to eliminate restrictions on individuals' rights to own a business or property.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 4 / 4

Domestic violence and sexual exploitation are prohibited by law and are punishable with prison sentences. The government pursues domestic violence cases and provides resources for victims. Nevertheless, domestic violence remains a problem, and sometimes involves violence against children.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 4 / 4

Andorran laws provide protections for most workers, including migrant workers. However, temporary workers are in a precarious position, as they must leave the country when their employment contract expires, leaving them vulnerable to potential abuse by employers. The Labour Inspections Office successfully addresses cases of violations of workers' rights.

There have been no confirmed reports of human trafficking occurring in Andorra in the past year.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedA state-funded program to train the children of mixed-race couples and foreign students in Korea results in just six percent of them landing a permanent job, a report suggests.

The figures come from a report by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency on Sunday, which showed that since 2013, 680 children of multicultural families and foreign students have gone through the program.

But only 163 or 23.9 percent landed jobs afterwards, and just 6.6 percent were permanent positions. Many of them landed temporary jobs in call centers. Most of them quit soon after getting their job, so only six or 0.88 percent actually held on to their positions.

KOTRA had planned to tap multicultural labor by training young people who are fluent in the language of their migrant parents.

But Rep. Chung Woo-taik of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party said, "Because of nepotism and militant labor unions, much-needed assistance in the hiring of multicultural workers has been neglected."

Freedom in the World 2018 - Abkhazia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 5 October 2018 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018 - Abkhazia, 5 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdce38a.html [accessed 18 November 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.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 41 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free)

Freedom Rating: 4.5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Political Rights: 4 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Civil Liberties: 5 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free)

Quick Facts

Population: 240,000

OVERVIEW

Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia, has held de facto independence since the end of a civil conflict in 1993. The government is financially dependent on Russia, which maintains a military presence in Abkhazia and is one of a handful of states that recognizes Abkhazia's independence. The political system features significant opposition and civil society activity. Ongoing problems include a flawed criminal justice system, discrimination against ethnic Georgians, and a lack of economic opportunity.

Key Developments in 2017:

Parliamentary elections in March saw the election of many independent deputies. As in past elections, ethnic Georgians living in Abkhazia but lacking Abkhaz documents were excluded from the vote.

In March, separatist authorities closed two pedestrian crossing points over the Inguri River into territory controlled by the Georgian government. Only two such crossing points now remain.

A European Union (EU) report on human rights in Abkhazia  kept internal by the EU but released by its authors in the summer  concluded that unresolved conflict issues still had a "severe impact" on residents. The report described costs including displacement, restrictions on physical movement and economic mobility, and a widespread sense of isolation among residents.

POLITICAL RIGHTS: 18 / 40

A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 6 / 12

A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4

Abkhazia's 1999 constitution established a presidential system, in which the president and vice president are elected for five-year terms.

A snap election was held in 2014 after President Aleksandr Ankvab resigned amid protests. While most established election observers do not monitor Abkhazia's elections due to the disputed nature of the territory, informal observations indicated that the election was largely peaceful and transparent. Among four candidates, Raul Khajimba won with 51 percent of the vote, followed by former security head Aslan Bzhania, with 36 percent.

A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 2 / 4

The parliament, or People's Assembly, comprises 35 members elected for five-year terms from single-seat constituencies. March 2017 parliamentary elections were marked by some instances of intimidation, with violent attacks on two candidates. The election was voided and rescheduled in one district due to ballot irregularities. The election saw victories by many independent deputies.

A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 1 / 4

Although the 2017 elections were quite competitive, elections are predicated on the exclusion of ethnic Georgians, leaving elections dominated by ethnic Abkhaz.

B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 8 / 16

B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 2 / 4

A large number of political parties participate in Abkhazia's fractious politics, and freedom of association with these movements is generally respected. However, corruption within parties hampers their democratic operation. In March 2017 parliamentary elections, 112 of 137 candidates ran as independents and the remainder represented political parties.

B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 3 / 4

Because political parties tend to be weak, many opposition candidates prefer to register as independents. Consequently, these candidates are less able to draw on the sort of support or infrastructure associated with membership in a formal political party.

However, opposition and independent candidates run competitive campaigns in Abkhazia. The March 2017 elections saw victories for opposition candidates including Almas Japua, an opponent of Russian ownership of Abkhazian real estate. Outgoing government ministers lost seats. Despite initial fears that the Central Election Commission would refuse to register his candidacy, ousted president Aleksandr Ankvab returned to politics and gained a seat in parliament.

B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 2 / 4

While the citizenry's choices influence domestic politics, the functioning of Abkhazia's institutions are almost entirely dependent on economic and political support from Moscow. In 2017, 4.7 billion rubles ($78 million) of the annual 5.4 billion ruble ($90 million) budget was contributed by Moscow.

An EU report on human rights in Abkhazia, which EU authorities decided not to publish but whose authors released on their own accord, noted "a concern among some people that Abkhazia may be assimilated into the Russian space."

B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 1 / 4

Under the constitution, only ethnic Abkhaz can be elected to the presidency. The ethnic Georgian population is routinely excluded from elections and political representation; in 2017, authorities argued that the majority of Gali's residents were Georgian citizens and therefore not permitted to vote. The Armenian and Russian communities traditionally have an informal agreement whereby parties nominate ethnic minority candidates in districts where they predominate. A handful of cabinet-level positions are held by women. However, societal norms discourage women from running for office.

C. FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT: 4 / 12

C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 1 / 4

While Abkhazia's president sets the tone for most domestic policy, the ability of elected authorities to set and implement policies is limited by the economic and political influence of Moscow. In 2017, Russia had several thousand troops permanently stationed in the territory. However, there has been significant pushback against a 2014 Russian-Abkhaz treaty, provisions of which critics say threaten Abkhazian autonomy. Separately, analysts have reported that the high number of independents in parliament lead to a lack of substantive policy debates.

Abkhazia entered 2017 after a tense standoff between opposition protesters and the government. A December 2016 agreement to stabilize the situation said that Khajimba would remain in power but nominate opponents to key posts in the constitutional court and electoral commission. In May, opposition leaders accused him of not fulfilling the terms of the agreement and declared a renewed political crisis.

C2. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 1 / 4

Corruption is believed to be extensive and is tolerated by the government, despite promises to combat it. In recent years, Russian officials have voiced concern at the large-scale embezzlement of funds provided by Moscow.

C3. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 2 / 4

Legal amendments from 2015 allow citizens to request information about any government decisions not classified as state secrets, and to receive a response within a month. Nevertheless, the territory's political culture is nontransparent, and social stigmas prevent citizens from requesting information. Government officials are not required to provide declarations of income.

In May 2017, the opposition sent an open letter demanding that Abkhazia's parliament have access to all information on the activities and funding of a new Abkhazia-Russia joint law enforcement center.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: 41 / 60

D. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND BELIEF: 8 / 16

D1. Are there free and independent media? 2 / 4

Broadcast media are largely controlled by the government, which operates the Abkhaz State Television and Radio Company (AGTRK). Abkhaz journalists have criticized AGTRK for failing to air material that could be perceived as unflattering to the government. Two state-owned newspapers compete with privately owned papers. The internet and social media have become increasingly popular sources of information. Some legal restrictions apply to both traditional and online media, including criminal libel statutes.

Major Russian television stations broadcast into Abkhazia, and residents of the Gali district have access to 20 Georgian channels. Many local publications have difficulty competing with Russian media.

D2. Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private? 2 / 4

Orthodox Christianity is the dominant religion in Abkhazia, but the Georgian Orthodox Church faces discrimination and limitations. Most practicing people adhere to one of the branches of the Abkhazian Orthodox Church.

Muslims are allowed to practice freely, but some community leaders have been attacked in the past. Jehovah's Witnesses are banned by a 1995 decree.

D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 1 / 4

Russian- and Armenian-language schools generally operate without interference. However, Georgian-medium schools in Gali have been undergoing reorganization since 2015 in order to Russify them.

Universities in the capital have recently become more lenient about Gali Georgians without Abkhaz passports enrolling as students. Nevertheless, bureaucratic complications in obtaining a diploma still arise.

D4. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution? 3 / 4

Social media has become a vibrant space for discussion on political and other topics. However, a number of taboos prompt self-censorship, especially relating to Georgians in Abkhazia and relations with Tbilisi.

E. ASSOCIATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS: 6 / 12

E1. Is there freedom of assembly? 3 / 4

Freedom of assembly is largely respected, and opposition and civil society groups mount regular protests. In 2017, protests connected to the parliamentary elections took place without incident. In a sensitive case involving human rights in Russia, around 300 protesters demonstrated in September, demanding that Moscow respect the rights of ethnic Circassian activist Ruslan Gvashev. Violent confrontations between protesters and police have occurred in the past, however.

E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations, particularly those that are engaged in human rights- and governance-related work? 2 / 4

Civil society, particularly groups representing Abkhazia's veterans, exerts influence on government policies. Several hundred nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are registered, though few are active. Many groups struggle to secure sustainable funding, in part because partnerships with foreign or international NGOs are complicated by Abkhazia's territorial status. NGOs that receive funding from governments or entities that do not recognize Abkhazia face criticism from journalists and authorities.

E3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 1 / 4

Trade unions exist, but unions and labor activists have struggled to effectively defend the rights of workers.

F. RULE OF LAW: 4 / 16

F1. Is there an independent judiciary? 1 / 4

Nepotism and corruption, often based on clan and ethnic ties, reportedly have a significant impact on Abkhazia's judiciary. Implementation of judicial decisions remains inconsistent.

F2. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 1 / 4

The criminal justice system is undermined by limited defendant access to qualified legal counsel, violations of due process, and lengthy pretrial detentions.

In 2016, Abkhazian border guard Rashid Kandzhi-Ogly killed a Georgian internally displaced person, Giga Otkhozoria. A Georgian court sentenced Kandzhi-Ogly for murder in absentia. However, a Sukhumi court dismissed evidence provided by Tbilisi, and dropped all charges against Kandzhi-Ogly in June 2017.

F3. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 1 / 4

Isolated acts of criminal and political violence occurred across Abkhazia in 2017, and many observers concur that crime is increasing. In December, businessman Pavel Ardzinba was assassinated; Ardzinba had been implicated in one of several attempts on the life Aleksandr Ankvab. At least three Russian tourists were killed and several more were injured in attacks during the year. Prison facilities are insufficient.

F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 1 / 4

Ethnic Georgian residents of the Gali region continue to face discrimination. In April, Sukhumi began issuing residence permits to Gali Georgians for five-year renewable terms. Permit holders may retain Georgian citizenship, reside in Gali, and cross the border into Georgia proper. However, in July, the separatist authorities stated that they would grant Abkhazian citizenship to any Georgian willing to "rediscover their Abkhaz ethnic heritage." Local officials warned Gali Georgians against attempting to hold both passports amidst complaints of bureaucratic hurdles in obtaining the residency permits.

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people do not enjoy comprehensive legal protections.

G. PERSONAL AUTONOMY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 5 / 16

G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of movement, including the ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education? 1 / 4

Travel and choice of residence are limited by the ongoing separatist dispute. Travel permits remain expensive and burdensome to obtain. About 90 percent of Abkhazia's residents hold Russian passports, as Abkhaz travel documents are not internationally recognized.

In March 2017, separatist authorities closed two pedestrian crossing points over the Inguri River into territory controlled by the Georgian government, leaving just two such crossing points. This has created a burden on residents in border villages.

G2. Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors? 1 / 4

The rise in criminal activity across Abkhazia has raised concerns among owners of small- and medium-sized businesses. Foreigners, including Russians, are barred from buying property in Abkhazia. Uncertainty continues over property rights for ethnic Georgians in Gali, whose residency permits do not allow them to officially own or inherit property. The legal status of properties of those expelled from Abkhazia during the 1990s continues to be fraught, as internally displaced persons cannot return to claim them.

G3. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 2 / 4

Social mores in Abkhazia are conservative; taboos remain against "nontraditional" lifestyles, including homosexuality and gender nonconformity. A 2016 law banned abortions in all circumstances apart from prior fetal death.

NGOs have expressed concern about honor killings of young women. Domestic violence and rape are serious problems, and victims have few avenues for recourse.

G4. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 1 / 4

Equality of opportunity is limited by corruption, crime, and economic reliance on Russia. The EU human rights report on Abkhazia leaked in 2017 noted that complications arising from Abkhazia's unresolved status were viewed as a significantly harming economic opportunity.

In January, Abkhazia introduced a new labor code that makes employment contracts compulsory and fines employers who violate workers' rights. However, observers reported that in late 2017, not all workers were aware of their new rights, and implementation of the code was incomplete.

NGOs have expressed concern about human trafficking in Abkhazia.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights ReservedUZBEKISTAN: Under-18s pressured, illegal raids, legal books confiscated

Publisher Forum 18 Author Mushfig Bayram Publication Date 19 October 2018 Cite as Forum 18, UZBEKISTAN: Under-18s pressured, illegal raids, legal books confiscated, 19 October 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bcdd4a04.html [accessed 18 November 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.

In southern Bukhara [Bukhoro] Region the ordinary police and State Security Service (SSS) secret police are openly watching people who go to mosques, especially during Friday prayers, and trying to stop males under the age of 18 attending mosques (see below).



In Tashkent Region a group of 40 Protestants were illegally raided, detained and questioned, police "psychological pressure" resulting in two being hospitalised. Police did nothing to stop four unknown women who accompanied them on the raid stealing property from female Protestants (see below).



In the north-western Navoi [Navoiy] Region, after an illegal raid on a state-registered Baptist Church, police confiscated three Uzbek-language New Testaments, two Kazakh-language Bibles, and one copy of a book for children entitled "Stories from the Bible". Despite the Pastor being able to prove that the books were bought legally and had passed state censorship, courts have ordered that the books stay confiscated and be given to the Religious Affairs Committee in Tashkent. "It is a total nonsense", local Protestants stated. "This means that the Church cannot keep its legally bought Christian literature in its building" (see below).



Judges and police have denied the flagrant breaches of the rule of law and due process that happened in the cases (see below).



Mosques still monitored, males under 18 pressured not to attend



Ordinary police and State Security Service (SSS) secret police in the southern Bukhara [Bukhoro] Region are still openly watching people who go to mosques, especially during Friday prayers, human rights defender Shukhrat Ganiyev told Forum 18 on 17 October. Particular attention is given to men and boys under the age of 18. After they are identified, police visit their parents' homes to pressure them into stopping their children from attending mosques, Ganiyev stated. He knows of about 50 such cases involving men and boys since July 2018.



Mosques are under total state control, and the ordinary police and SSS secret police have long openly carried out surveillance of anyone of any faith meeting for worship. Children and young people attending meetings for worship are especially targeted by the authorities (see Forum 18's Uzbekistan religious freedom survey

However, Ganiyev thinks that in Bukhara Region, officials have put less pressure on Muslim young men attending mosques in 2018 than in 2017. But throughout Uzbekistan, police and SSS secret police have in August and September raided homes and jailed at least eight bloggers "to intimidate all others who want to speak about freedom of religion and belief.



Shavkat Rakhmonov, Chief of Bukhara Regional Administration's Department responsible for religious affairs, refused to explain to Forum 18 on 17 October why mosques are under surveillance and men and boys under 18 targeted if they attended mosques.



Bukhara Regional Police also refused to answer Forum 18's questions themselves and then passed Forum 18 to Lieutenant Colonel Khokim Jumayev, head of the police "Struggle with Extremism and Terrorism Department". Jumayev on 17 October identified himself when Forum 18 asked questions then claimed that it was a "wrong number".



So-called police "Struggle with Extremism and Terrorism Department" officers routinely target people exercising their freedom of religion and belief

Protestant meeting raided, women's property stolen, detentions



On 30 September, about 20 officers of Bostanlyk District Police in Tashkent Region raided a group of 40 Protestants from an ethnic Korean church and other Protestant churches meeting at a Protestant centre in Kyzl-Su, a Protestant who asked not to be named for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18 on 5 October. The police arrived in eight police cars in the middle of the day. Leading the raid were officers Khusniddin Sharipov and Shakhzod (who would not give his last name).



The police also brought four unidentified women with them, who began "pushing retreat participants around, searched the bags of women only, and stole anything they wanted from the bags", the Protestant stated. When the Protestants complained to the accompanying police officers, "they did not react at all" to the open theft of private property.



The Protestant told Forum 18 that they know that in the past the police have "used such women during their raids as witnesses to open prosecutions against Protestants. The authorities also try to pressure members of religious communities into becoming informers.



Illegal search and confiscations



The police then illegally without a search warrant began searching the Protestant centre. They filmed the centre and the Protestants without their permission. Police also confiscated numerous items of church property, including a laptop computer, guitar, overhead projector, loudspeaker, three microphones, three electric kettles, music stands, a writing board, and two Christian books. Also against the law, the police provided no formal record of the confiscations.



Police routinely break the law, and unfair trials are also common

About two and half hours after the raid began, police then forced meeting participants (who included babies and young children aged under 5) into a bus and took them to the local Buston Police Station. They were kept there for 30 minutes until higher authorities ordered the police to take the Protestants to Bostanlyk District Police Station.



"Psychological pressure" resulting in hospitalisation, illegal detention



At Bostanlyk District Police Station, police applied severe "psychological pressure" to the detainees. This resulted in one of the Protestant woman and a five year old girl having to be taken to hospital.



Torture, particularly against women, is common used by the authorities. Despite President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's claims and legal changes claiming to ban torture and punish the perpetrators, torture continues with many afraid to complain for fear of state reprisals.



"The police took photographs of the adults and children," a Protestant who wished to remain anonymous for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18. "The children were questioned about their school activity. All the detained Protestants had to write statements."



The police released all the detainees at 2 am on 1 October after 12 and half hours of detention. "This is unlawful as the police cannot lawfully detain people in a police station for more than three hours solely for the purpose of identifying them," the Protestant pointed out.



"No such raid took place"



The duty officer at Bostanlyk District Police Station, who refused to give his name, refused to answer when Forum 18 questioned him about the police's illegal actions. He then claimed that "no such raid took place". When Forum 18 asked to be put through to other police officers, including those whose role includes repressing freedom of religion and belief, the duty officer replied: "You cannot talk to anyone because the raid did not take place." He then put the phone down.



Begzot Kadyrov, Deputy Chair of the Religious Affairs Committee in the capital Tashkent, refused to discuss the case with Forum 18 on 17 October. He then put the phone down. The telephones of Jasur Akramov, Chair of the Religious Affairs Committee, went unanswered on 17 October. Akramov and other Committee officials routinely avoid answering questions about why the state with the Committee violates people's freedom of religion and belief.



Church raided, books confiscated, illegal fines, Bible claimed to be banned



On 17 May police in Uchkuduk in the north-western Navoi [Navoiy] Region raided the state-registered Baptist Church's building, local Protestants who asked not to be identified for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18 on 4 October. Without the legally-required search warrant, police searched the Church and confiscated Christian books bought from the state-registered Bible Society of Uzbekistan.



All the confiscated books were also stamped as approved by the Religious Affairs Committee. They were three Uzbek-language New Testaments, two Kazakh-language Bibles, and one copy of a book for children entitled "Stories from the Bible".



Uzbekistan imposes total censorship of all printed and electronic religious literature, and police often confiscate books which have passed the state's compulsory censorship (.



On 4 July the Church's Pastor Igor Zherebyatnikov and caretaker Iskhok Urazov were tried at Uchkuduk Court for breaking Administrative Code Article 184-2 ("Illegal production, storage, or import into Uzbekistan, with the intent to distribute or actual distribution, of religious materials by physical persons"). The Judge fined Pastor Zherebyatnikov 861,200 Soms or 5 times the minimum monthly wage, and Urazov 172,400 Soms or the minimum monthly wage, Baptists told Forum 18.



The Judge did not give his name during the court hearing.



The Judge also ordered the destruction of all the literature including the Bibles and New Testaments. Courts often order the destruction of religious texts.



"We did everything according to the law"



Major Laziz Sadikov, Deputy Chief of Uchkuduk Police claimed to Forum 18 on 17 October that "we did everything according to the law. We did not violate anything". When Forum 18 asked what exact legal basis the police had for confiscating the books and opening a case against the Baptists, he replied: "Tell the Baptists to come to me and I will explain to them." He then refused to discuss the case further.



Appeal, books still confiscated



On 25 September, Navoi Regional Administrative Court upheld the fines, but ordered that all the books should not be destroyed but instead given to the Religious Affairs Committee in Tashkent. This was despite Pastor Zherebyatnikov being able to give the Court written proof that the books had been bought legally.



"It is a total nonsense," local Protestants stated. "This means that the Church cannot keep its legally bought Christian literature in its building."



Illegally, the Baptists were not given a written copy of the decision, which is supposed to be provided within three days of the hearing. Without a copy of the decision the Baptists cannot legally make an appeal.



The Judge did not give his name during the court hearing, but an official subsequently told Forum 18 that he was Judge Abubakir Rakhimov.



Judge Rakhimov refused to discuss the case. "If you or the Baptists are not happy with my decision, you can make an appeal," he told Forum 18 on 17 October. He then refused to talk more.



"The confiscated books were illegal"?



Judge Mamura Savurova, Deputy Chair of Navoi Court, claimed to Forum 18 on 17 October that "the confiscated books were illegal", even when Forum 18 pointed out that all of them had passed state censorship and been legally bought.



Asked how she can prove her claim, Judge Savurova claimed that the "Religious Affairs Committee expert analysis of the books says that their import into Uzbekistan is banned". Asked how it is possible that the import of Bibles or New Testaments, which are known sacred texts, is banned, she replied: "You ask that question to the Religious Affairs Committee."



When Forum 18 asked Judge Savurova why the Baptists had illegally not been given a copy of the appeal court decision, she claimed: "On the third day we sent the copy of the decision by mail. It's not our fault if they have still not received it."



An official of the "Expert Analysis" Department of the Religious Affairs Committee, who refused to give his name, refused to answer Forum 18 and put the phone down when asked why the "expert analysis" claimed that the books were banned. "Expert analyses" are often used to justify the confiscation or destruction of religious texts.Share

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I cant resist a 1960s Twiggy image, so this 1967 Vogue Twiggy print by Ronald Traeger at Heals is right up my street.

Its a slightly confusing one as the print is part of the King & McGaw collection, but isnt available directly from that retailer. You need to go to Heals, which looks to have an exclusive on it.

As for the print, well thats something of a classic. American photographer Ronald Traeger arrived in the UK in the early 1960s, eventually collaborating with Vogue and capturing what was eventually known as swinging London.

This is one of a number Traeger took of Twiggy in Battersea Park and an image that eventually made its way onto the pages of Vogue in July 1967. Its a classic and is still timelessly cool over 50 years on.

The image has been printed on semi-gloss paper, which is ideally suited to photographic images and is finished with a solid wood frame. if you want it on your wall, Heals has it for 90 online and instore.

Find out more at the Heals website

Note that you can also get a Cecil Beaton image of Twiggy from a few months later at King & McGaw.Seaplane to boost maritime capability, firefighting

From:ChinaDaily | 2018-10-22 02:29

amphibious airports, in Hubei province, on Saturday. CHENG MIN / XINHUA

China will have better capability in maritime search, rescue and firefighting as it moves closer to putting the world's largest amphibious aircraft into use.

Developed and built by State-owned aircraft giant Aviation Industry Corp of China, the AG600 carried out its first water-based takeoff and landing at Jingmen Zhanghe Airport, one of China's leading amphibious airports in Jingmen, Hubei province, on Saturday.

President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to researchers and engineers of the program to express his congratulations, encouraging them to continue to strive to build a strong aviation industry.

The success of the first waterborne flight of the AG600 marked another significant achievement through independent innovation by China's aviation industry, Xi said.

Leng Yixun, a senior project manager in charge of the AG600, said on Saturday after the water test that AVIC is poised to speed up the aircraft's flight tests and plans to deliver it to users as soon as possible.

Once delivered, the AG600 will mainly be tasked with performing maritime search and rescue operations as well as firefighting activities.

It can also be refitted to conduct environmental inspections, resource surveys, anti-smuggling operations as well as personnel and supply transport, said Huang Lingcai, chief designer of the AG600.

Lu Guangshan, AVIC's chief engineer, explained that the seaplane is very suitable for maritime operations as it is much faster than ships and is more flexible, being able to land on waters that some ships have difficulty approaching.

The aircraft is 37 meters long with a wingspan of 38.8 meters, which makes it roughly the size of a Boeing 737. Powered by four domestically designed WJ-6 turboprop engines, the seaplane has a maximum takeoff weight of 53.5 metric tons. These specifications make it the world's largest amphibious aircraft, surpassing Japan's ShinMaywa US-2 and Russia's Beriev Be-200.

The aircraft is designed for land and water takeoffs and landings, and has an operational range of more than 4,000 kilometers. It is capable of carrying 50 people, besides the crew.

When assigned to fight forest fires, it can collect 12 tons of water from a lake or sea in 20 seconds and then use the water to douse blazes over an area of about 4,000 square meters, according to AVIC.

A market prospect report by AVIC forecasts that the market will need about 280 AG600s in the coming decade.

Development of the AG600 was approved by the central government in June 2009. Construction of the prototype began in March 2014 and was completed in July 2016.

The seaplane made its maiden flight in December in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, taking off and landing at an airport, and it has conducted many land-based test flights since then.

The amphibious plane is one of three large-sized aircraft to emerge from the nation's effort to become a top-tier player in the global aviation sector, joining the Y-20 strategic transport plane  delivery of which began in July 2016 to the People's Liberation Army Air Force  and the C919 narrow-body jetliner, which is being flight-tested.

The AG600 has become China's second amphibious aircraft after the SH-5, which was developed in the 1970s for military use. More than 10,000 researchers and engineers took part in the AG600 program, AVIC said.ProRomania comes not only with a pragmatic message and concrete solutions, but mostly with the responsibility needed in order to put all these in practice. We promote key development policies that will generate economic growth and will consolidate Romanias EU Membership. We aim for Romania to play an active role within the European Union, while ensuring that EU requirements in terms of economic competitiveness, social solidarity and rule of law are finally fulfilled.

European Union means, first, 70 years of PEACE; solidarity, social protection, economic growth and most of all, a much better life for our citizens, no matter in which part of Europe they are living.

Therefore, in a time when our European project is facing difficult and challenging times, we cannot afford to stay silent or to focus only on national issues. We cannot afford to encourage any form of division between East and West. We have to listen the voice of our citizens, in order to understand their real problems, and join our forces to come up with common European solutions.

We do believe that national leaders have a key role to play in this regard, in each member state, in order to bring Europe closer to the citizens. It is our responsibility to act in a proactive manner, at national and European level, and to work hand in hand with all the pro-European forces to protect and improve our European Project.

Romanias accession to the European Union, a key moment in our history, brought forward undeniable benefits for our country and citizens and we cannot afford to ever take all that for granted.

ProRomanias mission will be to ensure that Romania will only move further, towards a better future of our citizens, whithin the European Union.

Pro Romania will run for the European Parliament elections, in 2019, as part of the European Progressive Family, and will play an active role in representing our citizens, defending our European values and fight back against populism.Dutch consumer electronics giant Philips Electronics NV (PHGFF.PK,PHG) reported Monday that its third-quarter net income plunged to 292 million euros from 423 million euros last year. Earnings per share were 0.31 euro, down from 0.33 euro last year.

Net income from continuing operations increased 17% to 307 million euros or 0.32 euro per share from 263 million euros or 0.28 euro per share a year ago.

Income from operations or EBIT increased to 451 million euros from prior year's 299 million euros. Income from operations margin improved to 10.5 percent from 7.2 percent last year.

Adjusted EBITA margin improved by 40 basis points to 13.2% of sales, including a 60 basis points adverse currency impact, compared to 12.8% of sales in 2017.

Sales in the quarter were 4.31 billion euros, 4 percent higher than last year's 4.15 billion euros. Comparable sales growth was 4%. Comparable order intake increased 11%.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business NewsDutch consumer electronics giant Philips Electronics NV (PHGFF.PK,PHG) reported Monday lower net profit in its third quarter mainly due to the deconsolidation of Lighting. Profit from continuing operations climbed with improved margin and sales. Order intake also increased. The company noted that its operational improvements were partly offset by increased foreign exchange headwinds.

Looking ahead, the company reiterated targets for the 2017-2020 period of 4-6 percent comparable sales growth and an average annual 100 basis points improvement in adjusted EBITA margin.

For the third quarter, net income plunged to 292 million euros from 423 million euros last year. Earnings per share were 0.31 euro, down from 0.33 euro last year. The latest results included loss from discontinued operations of 15 million euros, while prior year's results included profit of 160 million euros mainly related to Lighting unit.

Net income from continuing operations increased 17 percent to 307 million euros or 0.32 euro per share from 263 million euros or 0.28 euro per share a year ago.

Income from operations or EBIT increased to 451 million euros from prior year's 299 million euros. Income from operations margin improved to 10.5 percent from 7.2 percent last year.

EBITA margin improved to 11.9 percent from prior year's 8.8 percent. Adjusted EBITA margin improved by 40 basis points to 13.2 percent of sales.

Adjusted EBITDA grew to 750 million euros from 686 million euros last year, and adjusted EBITDA margin grew to 17.4 percent from 16.5 percent a year ago.

Sales in the quarter were 4.31 billion euros, 4 percent higher than last year's 4.15 billion euros. Comparable sales growth was 4 percent reflecting mid-single-digit growth in the Diagnosis & Treatment businesses and the Personal Health businesses. Meanwhile, the Connected Care & Health Informatics businesses showed a low-single-digit decline compared to a very strong third quarter in 2017.

Comparable order intake increased 11 percent.

Philips shares settled at $39.95 on Friday at the NYSE, down 1.38 percent.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business NewsQinetiQ Group plc (QQ.L), a defense, security and aerospace company, announced Monday that it has agreed to acquire 85% of the shares of Inzpire Group Limited, with an agreement to acquire the remaining 15% after two years, for a total consideration of 23.5 million pounds.

Inzpire is a provider of operational training and mission systems for military customers in the UK and internationally. Approximately three quarters of its revenue comes from airborne training and evaluation services, primarily for the Royal Air Force.

Inzpire has a five-year track record of consistent revenue growth, and is expected to deliver 13.3 million pounds revenue and 2.0 million pounds of adjusted EBITDA in the financial year to August 31, 2018.

Inzpire is growing internationally, working for the European Defence Agency and customers in the Middle East.

QinetiQ said that Inzpire creates cost effective mission control systems that are disrupting a market traditionally dominated by large defence contractors. In addition to access to capital for growth, this strategic investment provides Inzpire with access to QinetiQ's missions systems capabilities to enhance and broaden its differentiated offerings.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business NewsGerman stocks were trading higher on Monday after Moody's Investors Service cut Italy's credit rank by one step to Baa3, but set the outlook for the assessment at "stable", removing the immediate threat of a downgrade to junk.

A big rally in Chinese for the second day running on hopes for more stimulus also bolstered investor sentiment.

The benchmark DAX was up 74 points or 0.64 percent at 11,628 in opening deals after declining 0.3 percent on Friday.

Shares of Leoni slumped 4.5 percent after the provider of energy and data management solutions in the automotive market reported weak third-quarter results. The company also announced a downward revision in its outlook for fiscal 2018.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.comEuropean stocks advanced on Monday, with Italian leading the surge after Moody's Investors Service cut Italy's credit rank by one step to Baa3, but set the outlook for the assessment at "stable", removing the immediate threat of a downgrade to junk.

A big rally in Chinese markets for the second day running on hopes for more stimulus also bolstered investor sentiment.

China's Shanghai Composite index jumped 4.09 percent to 2,654.88, extending a 2.6 percent rebound on Friday, after President Xi Jinping vowed "unwavering" support for the country's private sector.

In an open letter published in state media, he said that Beijing would continue to value and protect the country's private owners to ensure a "better tomorrow".

Closer home, the pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index was up 0.25 percent at 362.13 in late opening deals after closing 0.1 percent lower on Friday.

The German DAX was rising half a percent, France's CAC 40 index was moving up 0.3 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was climbing 0.7 percent.

Shares of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. jumped more than 5 percent in Italy after the automaker announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its automotive components business Magneti Marelli S.p.A for 6.2 billion euros.

German chemicals giant BASF rose about 1 percent. The company has selected Harjavalta, Finland, as the first location for battery materials production serving the European automotive market.

Dutch consumer electronics giant Philips slumped 6 percent after its third-quarter net income plunged to 292 million euros from 423 million euros last year.

Low-cost airline Ryanair jumped 4.5 percent despite reporting lower-than-expected profits for the second quarter of its fiscal year.

Miners Anglo American, Antofagasta and Glencore rose about 2 percent each.

Shares of Leoni tumbled 2 percent in Frankfurt after the provider of energy and data management solutions in the automotive market reported weak third-quarter results. The company also announced a downward revision in its outlook for fiscal 2018.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.comThailand's trade surplus missed consensus expectations in September as both exports and imports slowed, and the current account surplus remained large enough to sustain the positive sentiment towards the Thai baht, ING economist Prakash Sakpal said Monday.

The trade balance swung to a surplus of $487 million in September after two consecutive monthly deficits, preliminary data from the Thai Commerce Ministry showed. This was smaller than the $1.8 billion surplus economists had predicted.

Exports shrunk 5.2 percent year-on-year, reversing August's 6.7 percent growth. The decline was the first since early 2017. The pace of growth in imports slowed to 9.9 percent from the 22.8 percent surge in August.

The ministry attributed the weak export performance to a high base effect, the US-China trade tensions, and problems in some emerging .



"Data clearly undermines the Ministry's expectations of sustained export growth in 2019 projected at 8 percent on the back of strong demand from China and ASEAN countries," Sakpal noted.

"The escalation of the US-China trade tensions will remain an ongoing threat to exports in the period ahead," the economist said. "But on a positive note, it could also open the opportunity for increased intra-regional trade to bypass tariff barriers."

The current account surplus for the January to September period was $2.8 billion, which was $10.4 billion narrowed than a year ago.

At this rate, the full-year 2018 trade balance could be in deficit to the order of $1 billion against over $15 billion of surplus in 2017, Sakpal said.

ING expects the current account surplus to fall to 7 percent of GDP this year, with the risk biased to the downside, versus the plus 11 percent logged in the last two years.

"It's still large compared to other Asian economies, which is what lies behind Thai baht's (THB) ongoing outperformance among Asian currencies this year," Sakpal said.

"We maintain our end-2018 USD/THB forecast of 33.0 (spot 32.6)."

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.Almost all newspapers published in Kathmandu on Monday, the first day after Dashain, have prioritised reports on Nepal Police HQs preparation to fire two officers involved in the initial investigation of the Nirmala Pant murder and rape case. Similarly, the bus accident in Nawalparasi on Sunday has also received considerable attention. Heres a summary of reports that made it to the front page on Monday.

Important

Police HQ recommends officers fired

The Himalayan Times reports that the Nepal Police Headquarters has initiated the process to sack suspended SP Dilliraj Bista and Inspector Jagadish Bhatta who investigated the Nirmala Pant case. The report says that the HQ has recommended that the Ministry of Home Affairs dismiss the suspended officers by rendering them disqualified to hold any government post in the future. The Kathmandu Post reports that the ministry has given the duo 24 hours to defend charges against them. If their clarification is not convincing, both could be removed from the service, the paper quotes a source as saying.

Naya Patrika reports that at least a dozen policemen involved in the investigation are likely to face action as an AIG-led committee submits its report in the next few days.

Ministry preparing to nominate 10 ambassadors

Kantipur reports that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is preparing to appoint ambassadors to 10 Nepali diplomatic posts abroad. The paper says the ministry has prepared a roster of qualified candidates for the positions. The paper quotes Minister Pradeep Gyawali to say that nominations will be made before Tihar.

Ignored

31 killed in 23 road accidents during Dashain

Annapurna Post reports that 23 cases of road accidents were reported during the Dashain holidays this year. The report says that at least 31 people lost their lives in the accidents.President Donald Trump announced his administration will begin "cutting off, or substantially reducing", the massive foreign aid routinely given to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador after those countries were unable to stop their people from joining the migrant caravan headed to the U.S.

Trump has repeatedly warned the migrants to turn back, threatening to close down the U.S. border and cut aid to countries allowing the caravan to pass by.

In a series of Twitter messages on Monday, Trump expressed alarm that Mexican authorities seem unable to stop the caravan of thousands of U.S.-bound migrants and said he has alerted the border patrol and the military that it is a national emergency.

Mexican police and military had managed to block thousands of Central Americans, mostly from Honduras, on a border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala on Sunday, but some of them reportedly managed to cross into Mexico illegally by boat over the Suchiate river and are marching further north.

Trump claimed "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners" are mixed in the large group of migrants.

Even as tension at U.S.-Mexican border is looming, Trump tried to take political advantage by putting the blame on the Democrats.

"Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws," Trump tweeted. "Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally."

In a separate tweet, Trump called the caravan a "disgrace to the Democrat Party" and demanded immediate changes to immigration laws.

Earlier, the president said full efforts are being made at the U.S.-Mexico border "to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Southern Border."

Trump suggested that people have to apply for asylum in Mexico first and made it clear that "if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away."

The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable, he tweeted.

Ever since Trump's election, Mexico has become a growing destination for migrants from neighboring countries, and since the Mexican asylum system is not prepared to handle a large influx, the country is buckling under pressure on how to accommodate them.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business NewsThe European traded in the green for the bulk of Monday's session, but turned lower in the afternoon following the early reversal on Wall Street.

Early gains were fueled by the rally in the Chinese stock market and easing concerns over Italy. Moody's Investors Service cut Italy's credit rank by one step to Baa3, but set the outlook for the assessment at "stable", removing the immediate threat of a downgrade to junk.

Traders are also looking ahead to Thursday's policy statement from the European Central Bank.

The pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index weakened by 0.41 percent. The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone blue chip stocks decreased 0.64 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, lost 0.35 percent.

The DAX of Germany dropped 0.26 percent and the CAC of France fell 0.62 percent. The FTSE 100 of the U.K. declined 0.10 percent and the SMI of Switzerland finished lower by 0.07 percent.

In Frankfurt, chemicals giant BASF slid 0.10 percent. The company has selected Harjavalta, Finland, as the first location for battery materials production serving the European automotive market.

Leoni tumbled 2.34 percent after the provider of energy and data management solutions in the automotive market reported weak third-quarter results. The company also announced a downward revision in its outlook for fiscal 2018.

In London, low-cost airline Ryanair jumped 4.19 percent despite reporting lower-than-expected profits for the second quarter of its fiscal year.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. leaped 3.09 percent in Milan after the automaker announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its automotive components Magneti Marelli S.p.A for 6.2 billion euros.

Consumer electronics giant Philips sank 8.69 percent in Amsterdam after its third-quarter net income plunged to 292 million euros from 423 million euros last year.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market AnalysisAfter gapping open significantly lower, shares of Hasbro Inc. (HAS) have climbed off their worst levels of the day but remain firmly negative in afternoon trading on Monday. Hasbro is currently down by 3.1 percent after hitting its lowest intraday level in nearly four months.

The initial drop by Hasbro came after the toymaker reported third quarter results that came in below analyst estimates due in part to lost Toys "R" Us revenues.

Hasbro reported adjusted third quarter earnings of $1.93 per share on revenues of $1.57 billion compared to analyst estimates for earnings of $2.23 per share on revenues of $1.71 billion.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business NewsDemocratic Senator Bill Nelson, D-Fla., continues to lead Republican Governor Rick Scott in the closely watched Florida Senate race, according to the results of a new Quinnipiac University poll released on Monday.

The poll showed Nelson with a 52 percent to 46 percent lead over Scott among likely Florida voters, nearly unchanged from the 53 percent to 46 percent advantage for the incumbent in a poll conducted last month.

Nelson benefits from strong support among women, black, and Hispanic voters as well as a 60 percent to 38 percent advantage among independent voters. Scott leads among men and white voters.

"The Florida race is one of a handful of contests around the country that will decide control of the U.S. Senate," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "Sen. Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott have spent so many millions of dollars on television ads it is almost impossible to avoid seeing them."

"At this point, Sen. Nelson's six-point overall lead is built on his large margin among independent voters," he added. "If that margin holds up, the senator will be difficult to beat."

The poll showed only 2 percent of likely Florida voters remain undecided and just 4 percent of those who named a candidate say they might change their mind before Election Day.

The Quinnipiac survey of 1,161 likely Florida voters was conducted October 17th through 21st and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political NewsWorld Sailing's Board reiterated its strong support for the progress being made by the World Sailing Governance Commission at the Board meetings held on 18 September and 3 October 2018.

World Sailing President Kim Andersen said, "I am really pleased with the progress made by the Governance Commission which has come up with some good ideas for us to discuss with the membership in November. Solid governance foundations and decision making practices are critical to all aspects of World Sailing so it is important we consider possible changes with an open mind in terms of how they can take us forward as an organisation".Following the Commission's two-day meeting in Tokyo on 16 and 17 September 2018, the Commission Chairperson, Maria Clarke, reported in person to the Board at its 18 September 2018 meeting. She reported on the progress of the Commission and an initial draft of ideas on possible governance changes. The Board also endorsed the Commission's request to do a survey to seek further feedback from members and other stakeholders.The survey is now being analysed and the Governance Commission will be considering the results. The independent Chairperson, Maria Clarke said, "It is important that we continue to seek and receive ideas and feedback from all stakeholders and persons with an interest in World Sailing throughout the review so we have set up a direct email for this purpose at governancereview@sailing.org ."The Commission will be making a presentation to the Annual Conference, Council meeting and Annual General Meeting in Sarasota in early November where it will share the findings from its work and present its early ideas for possible reform for discussion and feedback.The Commission expects to then further develop detailed proposals on which it intends to consult widely in April/May 2019, with a view to proposing any changes to the Constitution and Regulations at the Annual General Meeting in November 2019.Further information on the Governance Commission, including the members and its terms of reference, can be found at http://www.sailing.org/about/governance/governance_review.phpEverybody enjoys eating a banana in any shape or form. Monkeys do too.

Most of the Samoans never thought that what is left after you enjoy your banana can make you rich. No kidding! So, what is left, apart from the peels?

First let us understand that banana is not a tree. Dont say I have some many banana trees in my plantation. I will say I have 7 or 9 banana plants on my  acre plantation I cant possible compete with Charlie whose plantation (banana) can rival the one I have seen up north Sydney, Australia.

It is the tallest herbaceous plant, a grass, if you will, and there are more than 300 varieties mostly around the tropic and sub-tropic regions of the world grown on about 8.8 million hectares.

Banana is the second largest produced fruit after citrus, contributing about 16% of the worlds total fruit production.

India is, of course, the biggest producer of banana in the world (19%) with 500,000 hectares producing 139 million MT. Now listen to this:

but only 10% of the banana pseudo stem waste is processed into fiber. India is followed by Ecuador (12%), China (10%), Colombia (6%) etc.

In India there is the Jalgaon district with a banana plantation of 55,000 hectares with an average productivity of 50-60 MT of banana fruit per hectare.

Now let us do the math. Those 55, 000 hectares of banana at the rate of 70MT/hectare will give us 3,850,000 MT of left over pseudo-stem .

Note. Since the banana plant is not a tree we cant call it what is left a STEM

So it is called a pseudo-stem.

These pseudo-stem as we all well know is considered a waste and are thrown on boundaries and burn after drying wasted presently by the banana grower.

Didnt you know that part of the banana tree left after you chopped your bunch of bananas is a gold mine? I didnt know either.

In a trip I took with a friend to visit the banana plantation of Charlie Westerlund that this question came to me : after harvesting so many hectares of banana what do they do with the pseudo-stem that is left on the field? I was told that some are chopped up in pieces and placed them around the black pepper plants. Really! Money around a plant?

By nature I am a researcher, and a sharp observer; so I decided to look up in the internet what other banana producing countries manage to get rid of that supposed to be an agricultural waste, and as such a burden for the banana grower transportation wise.

Matt Simpson is an American teacher that settled in Kosrae. Kosrae is not too far away from Guam were I worked for the USDA for three years. Kosrae is a poor island with 3,500 inhabitants. Most of the youth emigrates to other islands/countries due to the high unemployment. Matt also saw and wondered what the banana growers were doing with the pseudo stem. Nothing,

Matt having a lot of spare time did some reading and found out that the Japanese were using that pseudo-stem to make a lot of things out of the fiber extracted from them. With his savings and help from the village chiefs he set up a cottage industry to extract the banana fiber for export to Japan. First by hand and later with a raspador machine. His initial crew were mostly women and youth, now close to 35.

My question is: a lot of Samoan farmers growth banana . Therefore, they have in their hands a lot of Banana trees to get rid of. Most of them will get rotten in the field.

Modern society is unable to manage the enormous amount of household, industrial and agricultural waste that it creates. A large fraction of this is organic in nature, especially pertaining to agricultural and household waste.

Instead of making use of this waste it is frequently disposed by means of landfill, incineration or land application. Applying organic waste to the land means that the waste has not been stabilized and could contain pathogens. Each of these methods is an imperfect solution.

Samoa and society in general needs a better way of turning waste into a usable form.

India, as I said above is the largest producers of banana in the world (19%), therefore, also the largest producer of pseudo-stem-and as I said before also the largest producer of pseudo-stem classified as waste.

Of this waste only 10% is being used for making products and the remaining is truly wasted . The population in India right now is over one billion, of those 300,000 -350,000 (3.5%) people earn their living on banana cultivation, harvesting, handling, and transportation of banana.

Since I am talking about the pseudo-stem as a waste. Let us X ray it and see what we can get out of it. Plenty.

USEFULNES OF BANANA TREE

Banana fruit (human) leaf (animal)

Pseudo-stem

85-90%

Sap Fiber Central core Scutcher

35-40% 1.5-2% 10-16% 40-45%

1.-Liquid fertilizer 1,-Yarn 1.-Candy 1.-Vermicompost

2.-Nutrient spray 2.-Fabric 2.-Pickles 2.-Fish fee

3.-Mordant 3.-Apparel 3.-Soft

4.-Paper and paper made products

5.-MCC Biochemical

Let us concentrate for a second on the fiber component of the pseudo-stem.

All varieties of banana plant abound in fibers. These fibers (1.5-2%) inside the pseudo-stem is that maintain the plant erect. There are 14-18 sheaths available in a pseudo- stem. Each sheath has 3 distinct layers.

Just by looking at the above diagram you and anybody with enough common sense can figure out that there is a lot of by-products that can come out of our humble banana pseudo-stem waste.

I challenge the government (MAF) and private individuals and corporations in Samoa and other small islands, to make use of this waste to infuse an economic gain to the country and at the same time ameliorate in great degree unemployment of women and youth.

Your question would be: How we go about taking advantage of this waste? Simply. By creating clusters cottage industries at the village level. And what cottage industry would consist of? Elementar Dr. Watson.

For that you (the banana grower (s) ) need:

A shed of 2,000 sq. ft. or an appropriate space.

1 or more fiber extraction machine (could be done by hand) check with SROS.

1 pseudo-stem splitting machine (cut the stem in 4 sections.)

1 press machine for separation of sap (liquid fertilizer)

Compost pit

Electrical fitting and connections

Storage tank

Crates and trays.

Of course, all these elements cost money. Money invested on the above is money well invested. Those villagers who borrow money for faalavelaves and show off funerals can channel that money plus the remittances from your hard working relatives overseas to their cottage industry. Banks should be happy to lend money to make money. No slavery paying loans for church donations and show off funerals. Hot tea from lemon trees leaves and hard biscuits will do for a loved one going to heaven. Some wise Samoan suggested that. I believe in cremation. Cheaper and fast and your loved one still get to go to heaven.

Here is the challenge to the Samoan entrepreneur:

The biggest challenge is to convert this huge Biomass of Pseudo-stem into value added products. Hello SROS!

Second challenge is to convince the banana growers for extraction of their Biomass into Fiber, Sap and Scutcher i.e. basic products from banana Pseudo-stem

Third challenge is to convince the banana growers for utilization of Sap as growth promoter and convertion of scutcher into Compost.

It is very difficult to change the mind set of banana growers in context to:

Banana Pseudo-stem is a gold mine Compost made out of scutcher is very good compost for soil Banana sap has high valuable nutrients for crop growth.

Here is how it works and it is done in Zambia, Nepal, Costa Rica, etc.

The Banana Growers bring their banana pseudo-stems after cutting bunch of banana to your nearest Cottage Industrial Unit and get an agreed price per MT. These units are operated by the local farmers. The Unit extracts banana fiber from banana pseudo-stems. The banana fiber and sap is carried to a Central processing Unit for value adding.

The Cottage Industrial unit makes compost at Unit from the Scutcher waste and sell to local farmers. Great savings in fertilizers.

Single Fiber Extracting Machine can extract around 15-20 Kg of banana fiber per day from 1 MT of pseudo-stem (approximately 50 to 60 of them). The fiber thus extracted can be exported to Japan or elsewhere.

Note to the reader. This the third challenge to MAF. The other two brilliant initiatives, as published in the S.O., by yours truly are: !.-Stevia Growing. A replacement for sugar cane. 2.-.Introduction of Guinea Pig in Samoa. A more nutritious meat than beef, pork and our frozen chicken.

If MAF/SACEP or else can not supply of: (this straight from the paper:: Healthy food? Take the cost of lettuce, which is nearly S50 tala. And at the same store, two imported tomatoes cost S35 56 years with MAF and 6 years with SACEP and still paying thru the nose for those healthy foods? No wonder NCD is as bad as climate change. Any Samoan handicraftman can make a reusable shopping bag out of banana fiber. Adieu plastic!

On the above, further details can be obtained by contacting me by email: [email protected]

*Orlando Huaman is an agronomist and a freelance writer.We humans have always had the tendency to exploit our natural environment  nothing new there.

But lets put all other environmental exploitations aside and focus on our marine ecosystems, and how human activities threaten it daily.

Guided by greed and the mindset if I dont take everything now, then someone else might take it instead, we humans have given birth to an ocean of problems, problems like; overfishing, pollution, and climate change  all of which makes up the three greatest threats to our marine ecosystems.

So why is the desire to exploit our oceans such a common trait and so hard to avoid?

Well for one, modern fishermen catch fish for money and not to put on the dinner table. So in other words, fishermen aim to catch as much as possible because a bigger catch equals a bigger paycheck.

And when catching as much fish as possible becomes the primary objective, the line between sustainable fishing practices and destructive ones thins out into nonexistence.

So how does overfishing affect our oceans?

Overfishing is when fish are caught faster than its populations ability to replace itself through natural reproduction. So obviously, the first initial impact is the decline in fish stock or even threats of extinction for some fish species.

Another impact would be the disruption of the Marine Food Chain. When a marine species is fished to the point of extinction, other marine life that rely on that particular species as a source of food will end up starving and eventually (possibly) dying out too.

In short, this causes a chain reaction meaning that when one species dies out, others may passively follow.

As mentioned above, destructive fishing practices also cause a huge problem for marine life. An example of this would be intensified fishing of a specific species like the grouper (gatala) during its aggregate spawning period (iafaanoa) which affects the species ability to reproduce.

Furthermore, another example of a destructive practice is when purse seiners set their nets around species of special interest or concern. This is where large commercial vessels haul in everything including juvenile fish, turtles and sharks.

What about Samoa? How are our local waters faring against such issues?

According to CI Samoas Associate Programs Officer, Maria Fiasoso Sapatu, who has an extensive background in the marine field, Samoas waters faces a number of threats.

Our coastal waters are subject to much pollution from poor waste management and destructive fishing practices such as destruction of corals in gleaning for invertebrates, fishing undersized fish that have yet to mature to spawn or have been fished during spawning such as egg bearing lobsters you see at the domestic markets, she explained.

While in our offshore waters, there are concerns of localized depletion of fish stocks given the increasing number of fishing effort by both domestic and foreign fleets, particularly becauseSamoa has the smallest Exclusive Economic Zone in the Pacific.

And of course, there is the changing weather that impacts the behavior/life cycle of marine life and the health of live corals.

So what can we do to prevent this issue from getting worse?

Ms. Sapatu explains that the key to truly protecting our waters is through voluntary compliance towards existing Government regulations and policies that are set to help sustain Samoas marine ecosystem.

Furthermore, she added that the great efforts by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (M.N.R.E.) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (M.A.F.) in the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (M.P.A.) and Fish Reserves have proven successful in managing Samoas marine resources.

Continuous awareness on these issues is important too as once the public are well informed, they will become the change thats needed, she added.

A great example of one continuous awareness program is M.A.F.s AGRO show which they will be running this week. I urge members of the public to visit and gain more understanding on the current status of our oceans and initiatives that are being implemented to tackle ocean threats.

Aside from above mentioned issues, our marine ecosystems are also exposed to many other human induced problems.

One such problem is climate change and global warming leading to issues such as; coral bleaching  corals act as homes and breeding grounds for fish but are highly sensitive to the rising temperatures; fish migration  fish are escaping heating waters and are migrating towards the poles in response to this; and drowning of wetlands, such as mangroves, due to sea level rise  this also threatens coral reefs and sea grass meadows since they can only photosynthesize in relatively shallow waters.

Other related issues include; ocean acidification, increased surface run-off of soil and other terrestrial matter due to increased natural disasters and climate anomalies, and pollution (details on impacts of pollution on marine life can be found in an article titled Apias growing litter problem an eyesore published by the Samoa Observer last week).

When implementing CI Samoas Guardians  Tausi Lou Faasinomaga campaign (campaign details can be found on Conservation International Pacific Islands Facebook Page), the M.A.F.s  Fisheries division representative, Catherine Esau, led the Wise Fishers Module highlighting many of the above mentioned issues.

Ms. Esau taught the children of targeted communities on the importance of Fish Reserves, M.P.A.s, impacts of destructive fishing practices, the importance of the marine food chain and other marine related lessons crucial for those who wish to become wise fishers.

And when the majority of the Pacific is covered by ocean, protecting it should be a top priority.#dog meat Cabinet to discuss dog meat consumption issue next week The government will launch a formal discussion on whether to prohibit dog meat consumption, officials said Thursday, following President Moon Jae-in's suggestion to review the cont...

#stocks-summary Seoul stocks down for 3rd day amid inflation woes South Korean stocks retreated for a third straight session Thursday, as investors worried that the fast recovery from the pandemic is spurring inflation pressure. The Korean won ro...TOKYO (AP)  European and Japanese space agencies said an Ariane 5 rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft carrying two probes into orbit Saturday for a joint mission to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

The European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the unmanned BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and was sent into orbit from French Guiana as planned to begin a seven-year journey to Mercury.

They said the spacecraft, named after Italian scientist Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, was in the right orbit and has sent the first signal after the liftoff.

ESA says the 1.3 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) mission is one of the most challenging in its history. Mercury's extreme temperatures, the intense gravity pull of the sun and blistering solar radiation make for hellish conditions.

The BepiColombo spacecraft will have to follow an elliptical path that involves a fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself so it can slow down before arriving at its destination in December 2025.

When it arrives, BepiColombo will release two probes  Bepi and Mio  that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury. The probes are designed to cope with temperatures varying from 430 degrees Celsius (806 F) on the side facing the sun, and -180 degrees Celsius (-292 F) in Mercury's shadow.

The ESA-developed Bepi will operate in Mercury's inner orbit, and JAXA's Mio will be in the outer orbit to gather data that would reveal the internal structure of the planet, its surface and geological evolution.

Scientists hope to build on the insights gained by NASA's Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year orbit of Mercury. The only other spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's Mariner 10 that flew past the planet in the mid-1970s.

Mercury, which is only slightly larger than Earth's moon, has a massive iron core about which little is known. Researchers are also hoping to learn more about the formation of the solar system from the data gathered by the BepiColombo mission.

"Beyond completing the challenging journey, this mission will return a huge bounty of science," said Jan Worner, ESA Director General, in a statement.

JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa, who earlier managed the project, said, "We have high expectations that the ensuing detailed observations of Mercury will help us better understand the environment of the planet, and ultimately, the origin of the Solar System including that of Earth."

It is the second recent cooperation between the Europeans and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. JAXA's Hayabusa2 probe dropped a German-French rover on the asteroid Ryugu earlier this month.The Unit Trust of Samoa (U.T.O.S.) is mourning the death of their long serving Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O.), Sau Justina Sau.

Sau, 43, of Apolima-uta and Sinamoga, was found dead on Sunday morning.

The Board and Management of the Unit Trust of Samoa are deeply sad to confirm the untimely passing of its C.E.O. Sau Justina Sau, a statement issued by U.T.O.S. yesterday said.

The Police also confirmed her death in a statement.

In the early morning of Sunday 21st of October 2018 at 4.00am, a call was received from T.T.M. hospital reporting that a 43-year-old female was brought to the hospital and she was declared dead upon arrival, the Police said.

The Police say they are not ruling out foul play in their investigation.

A postmortem is schedule to confirm the cause of death and C.I.D. police investigations are continuing to determine whether any foul play is involved.

No criminal charges has been filed yet.

In the meantime, U.T.O.S. has announced the appointment of Fainuulelei James Ah Wai, as the Acting C.E.O.

To ensure the operation of U.T.O.S. functions routinely without disruption, appropriate governance and transitional arrangements have been put in place, the statement from U.T.O.S. said.

U.T.O.S. say Fainuulelei is the contact point for any enquiries relating to investments and operation.

He can be contacted on phone 26949 or email address [email protected], the statement reads.

The public is reminded that opening hours of the U.T.O.S. office at the 3rd floor of the D.B.S. Building remains from 9am  5pm, Monday to Friday.

Access online is also available through the UTOS website www.utos.ws and the UTOS Mobile App app.utos.ws or download it from Google store.A District Court Judge yesterday described two motorists screeching of their vehicle tyres out of respect for a boy who died in a car crash as a beautiful tribute.

Orlando Keil and Scott Levi were charged by the police with reckless driving, with the former also facing a charge of driving an unregistered vehicle.

This followed their actions on July 31 this year, when they drove their vehicles on to Tuanaimato road and Vaea Street, and screeched their tyres thereby making it dangerous to the public. The defendants were allegedly part of a funeral procession.

But Judge Alalatoa Rosella Viane Papalii questioned the rationale behind the reckless driving charges, which the police laid against Orlando Keil and Scott Levi, when they appeared before her yesterday with their lawyer Charlie Vaai.

The prosecution has argued that the actions of the two defendants were dangerous as they had no regard for the nature, condition and use of the road and for Scott, his vehicle tyres created smoke. The prosecution had also submitted to the Court that residents at Tuanaimato lodged complaints against both defendants.

However, Judge Alalatoa told the two defendants that she struggled to understand how their actions amounted to reckless driving when it was a beautiful tribute to a car racer.

I myself thought it was a beautiful tribute for a car racer child really who passed away suddenly in rather tragic circumstances I did not see anything wrong with it.

But its obvious other people dont agree with my view. But police saw it fit that charges of reckless driving, and again I come back to the point that I had raised before about what was it about your driving Scott at Tuanaimato. And you Orlando at the Vaea street that was reckless alone to attract the criminal law in circumstances, she said.

The actions of the defendants could have been prosecuted under Section 69 of the Crimes Act, added Judge Alalatoa, and be categorised disorderly conduct.

But as supposed to reckless driving because as I said before, regardless of where I look I failed to see how your driving could have amounted to reckless driving as stated, even to the point that in my respectful view should have never attracted any criminal charges from the start.

The defendants lawyer Charlie Vaai had earlier submitted to the Court that his clients volunteered to showcase their classic vehicles on July 31 for a funeral procession for one of their members son, who died from a car accident.

The screeching of the vehicle tyres were done in a controlled funeral procession and the defendants conceded that they screeched their tyres. Both men have pleaded guilty to the offence.

Judge Alalatoa said she noted that their actions were done in a controlled environment as a tribute to their friends son, whose father was a member of the V8 Club, and that the defendants vehicles were not the only ones screeching their tyres and creating noise.

And I think its time we correct this common mistake that seems to be popping up quite frequently in charges brought against accused for screeching tires, she said.

Taking into consideration all these factors, Judge Alalatoa subsequently ruled that the two defendants are discharged without convictions.A 12-year-old girl has donated $2,000 tala to the Little Sisters of the Poor at the Mapuifagalele Home.

Seirosa Wallwork Lamb was inspired by the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor, so she decided to donate the money she raised from her Cookies for Charity project last Saturday.

In an interview with the Samoa Observer yesterday, Seirosa said she did some research on the home of the elders, especially the sisters who volunteer there.

I always hear my parents talk about how Mapuifagalele is always a charity that they have to donate to it.

So I did some research on them and I found out that they dont always have big donors and after hearing about all the work that they do for the elderly people I decided to choose them as a charity, she said.

Seirosa said it feels good knowing that she had was able to give back to the community, especially to the sisters at Mapuifagalele.

They do so much and sacrifice so much for all their success that they have. I wish I could do more but this is just the start for my help towards them.

According to Seirosas mother, Sua Hellene Wallwork Lamb, her daughter had been so active and loved to bake ever since she was young.

She likes seeing people enjoy her baking. From this experience of doing her cookies for charity project, Seirosa has now found how blessed she is when we visited Mapuifagalele on Saturday.

She met the nuns that do all the work at Mapuifagalele and the elderly people who reside there and now she has so many prayer warriors who gave her blessings and will continue to pray for her success in life.

Seirosa always loved to bake she has always baked even before she could reach the counter, she was wanting to bake and she would stand on those small stools and wanting to bake cookies and then she realised that people wanted to pay money for her baking, she said.

Her mother said while Seirosa was baking and raising funds, she was already looking for projects that she could support.

Last year during Christmas, she was inspired by her grandmother Sua Julia Wallworks project of giving back to the village project that Samoa Observer had published and thats when she did the first aid kits.

This is the second time that shes been able to give as a result of her fundraising. Shes hoping that once exams are finished, she will get back into it, and hopefully do another donation before Christmas. And shell be looking to see how she can donate to that next fundraising, added her mother.The father of a girl diagnosed with cancer and fighting for her life in a United States hospital has appealed to Samoans to pray for his daughter.

Audrey Anusaga Lonise Lefono, 10, from the villages of Apia, Falefa, Luatuanuu and Leauvaa suffers from Acute Myeloid Leukemia, which is a form of cancer. She has been admitted at the Seattle Childrens Hospital in Washington, U.S.

Jerry Wayne Lefono told Samoa Observer that his daughter was diagnosed with Myeloidysplastic Syndrome (M.D.S.) in 2016 when they used to live in American Samoa, and she was later transferred to the United States due to her deteriorating condition.

He said Audrey has gone through chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, which her sister donated.

She spent two years in remission and in August this year, the family found out that she relapsed with leukemia, which she is now undergoing treatments for.

Jerry said his daughter can get better, but she still needs a full bone marrow transplant. But before that, she needs to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment, before they can try a bone marrow transplant.

Audreys family is now praying for her recovery and they are asking the people of Samoa to join them in prayer according to her father.

I would like to ask my people for prayers, continuous prayers for our daughter.

The road that she has to face is a very hard and gruesome road because it takes a toll on her body, and we hope that her story will be one that reaches all of our people to unite in prayers for her.

We would be very thankful and appreciative, he addedMore seasonal workers from Samoa are heading to work in New Zealand.

This is made possible under the partnership of the Government of Samoa and the Silver Fern Farms in New Zealand.

At the farewell ceremony for 100 workers yesterday, Samoan Recognised Seasonal Employer Liaison Officer, Lemalu Nele Leilua said this year, the number of those recruited has increased with the addition of the Pacific Labor Scheme and the Pacific Partnership Scheme.

Under the two new schemes, 10 qualified carpenters from Samoa will work in New Zealand for a period of over one year

This is an opportunity for Samoan citizens to work overseas and earn income for their families and for themselves, Lemalu said.

She also highlighted some challenges associated with previous recruitments.

There were issues before with some workers who have been creating fake Facebook pages and reported some of the married men with palagi girls, which is not healthy for the women and their kids here in Samoa.

And also for the fact that if anyone gets injured, I dont want them to post their pictures up on Facebook because its a concern for the families here and they get worried about them, Lemalu said.

Forty-one-year-old Lisi Tanielu from Vailoa is a father of four and he sees a huge benefit by joining the scheme.

It gives an enormous lesson for us especially the newcomers like us, in learning how to take care of our families, Mr. Tanielu said.

Here in Samoa, we always need money to survive and we cannot miss out on such an opportunity to learn something new and put bread on the table.

This is not only a matter of them going overseas to earn income but its also an opportunity for them to learn how to speak English, learn how to be an expert in using knives and many other new things to absorb, Lemalu said.

Silver Fern Farms Ltd is the biggest meat industry company in New Zealand and with the increasing number of workers; it promises huge benefits for Samoans and the company.

The next set of recruitment will take place around the same time next year.A four-day train the trainers programme on pests and disease management of coconut plantations began at the Tanoa Tusitala Hotel yesterday.

Co-ordinated by the Coconut Industry Development for the Pacific (C.I.D.P.), which is a joint initiative of the Pacific Community and the European Union, representatives from 15 Pacific Island countries, including Samoa and members of the private sector are attending the training.

C.I.D.P. Team Leader Naheed Hussein said at the end of the training, participants would be able to better understand the type of pests and diseases affecting the coconut plantations, and learn how to recognise symptoms, and study the practical ways of preventing and controlling pests and diseases.

He said the training will equip the participants so that they are able to help create awareness among farmers in their local communities, and coordinate a concerted effort in controlling and minimising pests and diseases.

We want this training to continue at the national level and C.I.D.P. will continue the training at national level, Mr. Hussein said.

Under the 10th European Development Fund, he said, the European Union has allocated EUR4 million (T$12.2 million) to assist the growth of the coconut industry in the Pacific through C.I.D.P. project.

This project aims to support participants all along the value chain, from small farmers plantation operators, owners and workers, coconut-processing communities and enterprises, young people and women involved in coconut production, processing, marketing and export.

It seeks to strengthen regional integration of related markets and intensify production across the Pacific A.C.P. group of countries.

The Pacific Island countries that are being represented are Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. The training continues with field visits every afternoon.The Ombudsmans Office hosted the first Samoa Faafafine Association (S.F.A.) and law enforcements guidelines and standards workshop last week.

The Samoa Stationery and Books conference room was occupied by representatives from the Ministry of Police, Ministry of Prisons and Corrections, and the S.F.A. for the two-day workshop, which concluded on Thursday.

The Ombudsman or National Human Rights Institution (N.H.R.I.) Samoa in support of the important work of Law Enforcement Institutions in Samoa is promoting the development of complementary Law Enforcement Guidelines and Standards that is inclusive of all Samoan citizens including marginalised communities.

Director of Human Rights Division of the Ombudsmans Office, Loukinikini Vili told the Samoa Observer the sole purpose of such guidelines and standards is to ensure Human Rights is at the core of Samoa Law Enforcements work in the protection of all Samoan people.

The workshop facilitated discussions between the S.F.A. and Law Enforcement Institutions, and informed the N.H.R.I. Samoa in developing Law Enforcement Guidelines and Standards that is inclusive, both in policy and practice of the S.F.A. community.

The workshop was to build awareness among Law Enforcement Institutions of the S.F.A. Community in the context of Human Rights, Gender Based Violence and Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights.

It also aims to instigate a discussion between S.F.A. and Law Enforcement institutions on the gaps in Social and Law Enforcement Protection measures that continues to marginalise the S.F.A. Community.

Additionally it will also look at developing a roadmap for the N.H.R.I. Samoa development of Law Enforcement Guidelines and standards that is inclusive of the S.F.A. community.

And also encourage systems that foster positive relations between Law Enforcement Institutions and S.F.A. as a marginalised community, says their programme.

Developing Law Enforcement Guidelines and Standards that is inclusive of the S.F.A. community are all necessary and positive steps towards realising a just and peaceful society.

Ministry of Police, Superintendent Auapaau Logoitino Filipo, who oversees General Policing and Police Outpost, acknowledged the importance of the workshop.

In my own perspective as a police officer, we treat everyone equally under the law, we respect their human rights. We dont discriminate, as the law protects everyone, said Auapaau.

The issues that were raised by our counterparts; we were not aware of it and we cannot address it, unless they come forward and file an official statement with the Police.

The law protects everyone, not just a few and that is why it is important to come forward and file a complaint.

He said the police professional standards unit deals with such behaviour if they are being treated unfairly, said the Police Superintendent.

However, some of the concepts raised in the workshop is new to law enforcement such as giving these members of the community a choice of who can conduct a body search is not being practised.

This is because it also touches on the core fabric of our Christian and cultural beliefs between a male and a female and add something again, said Auapaau.Mary had just finished her sophomore year of college and was under pressure to declare a major for her last two years. As a result of her fathers request  networking at its best -- we met for an informational interview. Mary was still in college and fairly young so our conversation began very generally.

When I asked about her ideal job, she struggled at first for an answer, saying shed never really given it much thought. After a few seconds, suddenly excited, she declared that, yes, she wanted to be the next Dr. Freud and discover the cure for addiction!

Wow, I thought to myself. That sounded pretty darned impressive. But what did she really mean? And where did those goals come from?

Of course, aspiring to become the next Freud was beyond ambitious. And I couldnt help but wonder why would Mary want to tackle the scourge of alcohol and drug addiction. Intrigued, I asked her to explain.

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As it turns out, Marys father was a successful physician and shed always been impressed with his desire to ability to help people. More to the point, her father had told her countless stories about patients he had treated for physical ailment, but whose real problem was an underlying addiction to drugs or alcohol.

As we talked, I learned more about Mary and her career goals. She was bright, engaging and well-spoken. Talking to people she didnt know very well didnt make her uneasy. In fact, she enjoyed it.

Undaunted by new situations or sudden challenges

Indeed, she was clearly undaunted by new situations or sudden challenges. A few years earlier, she had been a lifeguard at a local public pool and helped save a child from drowning by using her first-aid and rescue training. She told me that was her proudest life moment.

Then we talked about how her selfless, giving personality might evolve into possible career goals. I offered a few suggestions: How about nursing? School teacher? HR professional? Drug and alcohol counselor?

Though they were all different, requiring varied career paths and degrees, she was self-aware enough to see the common thread of what I was suggesting  that of encouraging and helping others succeed.

I advised her to learn as much as she could about each of those fields. Do intensive research, I urged her. Talk to experts, ask questions, listen to the answers.

One by one, she pursued each of the suggested career paths. Sure, they were my suggestions, but she seemed motivated enough to check them out, if only to make me happy.

And soon enough, she realized that each of them had fairly unpleasant, disqualifying aspects. Nursing meant she had to endure too much second-hand pain and suffering. To be a school teacher required more baby-sitting than actual teaching, especially when the little ones got rowdy.

And the idea of becoming an HR professional wasnt all that exciting to her --though, of course, Id take exception to that.

Helping people who desperately needed her advice

To her surprise, largely because of a recent crisis with a family member, she was drawn to the final choice  drug and alcohol counselor. After pursuing a summer internship at a community clinic, she later told me, she felt fulfilled. She was helping people who desperately needed her advice.

Because she was making a difference in peoples lives, as well as in her own, thats when her future suddenly came into focus.

At long last, she had a plan: Shed pursue a degree in addictive behavior counseling and make that her career. She was certain thats what she wanted to do, so she did it.

While Mary might never find a cure for addictive behavior, Im happy to say that shes now a professionally fulfilled therapist these days. Plus, her patients have the benefit of someone whos truly devoted to her calling.

Whats the lesson? Dont be afraid to discover what  and who  you are meant to be. And always keep your radar out for the next best opportunity. You evolve as your career evolves, so dont get yourself into a lifelong rut. Not now, not ever.

Eager to hear your thoughts.

Blair, co-founder of Manpower San Diego and author of Job Won; pblair@manpowersd.com

Twitter: @PhilManpowerSDFaced with a referendum seeking to repeal San Diegos new restrictions on short-term rentals, the City Council did just that on Monday, but left open the question of how it will regulate home sharing in the future.

The council Monday afternoon had only two choices before it  repeal the regulations it initially approved in July and reaffirmed in August or put the question before the electorate in a future election. The effect of the council action is to once again leave San Diego in limbo on the long debated question of who can rent out homes for periods of less than 30 days, an increasingly common practice popularized by online platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway.

The council vote to rescind the short-term rental legislation was 8-1, with Councilwoman Lorie Zapf dissenting. Zapf had supported taking the matter to the voters.

I was not elected to represent the interests of out-of-town investors and I will not let corporate interests with a lot of money bully me into rescinding this ordinance, said Zapf, who represents the beach communities that have been most affected by the proliferation of vacation rentals. I just feel we worked too hard on this issue. There is no guarantee a compromise will be reached any time soon or ever.

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Other council members, however, expressed some optimism that a compromise on new regulations can be reached, despite years of debate and struggles to reach consensus.

What Ive always said is a good compromise is where you find yourself where neither side is totally happy, said Councilman Scott Sherman, who was one of the formal backers of the referendum effort. We found ourselves, though, where one side was very happy and the other side very unhappy, but I think there is room to find a true compromise. Were going to have to let the dust settle and cut back on some of the rhetoric. We can get to a place where I think a compromise can happen.

The repealed regulations, which were to go into effect next July, would have barred the short-term rental of second homes but would have permitted the use of primary residences for short-term stays while the owner was absent for up to six months out of the year. The intent was to curtail the use of investor-owned properties for short-term stays, which critics say has exacerbated the citys supply of affordable long-term housing.

The council actions followed more than three years of often emotional debate that has polarized the city. Short-term rental hosts have long argued they should have the right to use their properties as a way of supplementing their income while residents have complained about the emergence of mini hotels disrupting their once quiet neighborhoods.

While the council members were limited in what action they could take on Monday, many of those who spoke pushed for speedy action on replacement regulations. The city legally has the option of adopting a new set of rules within the next year, but they would have to be substantially different from the ones that were repealed.

It remains unclear what sort of alternative regulations would pass legal muster as being essentially different, although there likely will be a renewed push to allow the short-term rental of second homes.

Our communities cannot wait an indefinite period of time to bring this pressing issue to resolution, said La Jolla Town Council President Ann Kerr-Bache, who also heads a short-term vacation rental working group representing some 20 community groups. We are prepared to immediately work with the city and all stakeholders to create legal, reasonable and improved ordinances that protect our communities.

Others urged the council to take immediate steps to enforce the citys municipal code, which they say bars all short-term rentals.

Last year, City Attorney Mara Elliott issued a memo stating that such rentals are not permitted in any zone in the city, an opinion not shared by previous San Diego city attorneys. The mayors office so far has chosen not to declare such rentals illegal and instead is awaiting adoption of specific regulations.

Councilwoman Barbara Bry, who pushed for the primary residence-only regulations, called on Mayor Kevin Faulconers office to enforce the city code and bar short-term rentals for now.

This is really a sad day for our city, she said. After a multi-year process and numerous compromises, the council passed a legally sound ordinance. It was not a de facto ban. Im disappointed that a corporation valued at $31 billion descended on our city and used deceptive tactics to force us to where we are today. If this goes to the ballot, this large corporation would likely spend millions of dollars, and since the next regular election is not until 2020 our city would endure a two-year freeze on any progress on this issue.

In a statement released after the vote, Faulconers office said it has already begun working with the various stakeholders on a new compromise plan.

Todays action may take us back to the drawing board, but the good news is that we are not back at square one, said Faulconer spokeswoman Christina Di Leva Chadwick. Mayor Faulconer will continue to advocate for a system that protects neighborhoods through increased oversight and enforcement, and in the meantime staff will continue to enforce existing laws against noise and other quality-of-life crimes.

In advance of the councils July and August votes this year, Faulconers office had come up with a compromise proposal that would have allowed vacation rental hosts to rent out their primary residences while they were away, plus one additional home. Faulconer also had proposed a steep licensing fee of $949 annually to help finance the hiring of 16 people to enforce the regulations, which the council did support at the time.

Home sharing platforms Airbnb and HomeAway said Monday they look forward to working with the city on a better way to regulate short-term rentals. Airbnb and HomeAway parent company Expedia together contributed more than $1 million toward the referendum effort.

In a statement they released, along with a coalition of short-term rental hosts and management companies, they added, This rescission passed because voters want regulations that protect private property rights, encourage tourism, weed out bad actors and create an enforceable regulatory structure.

During the council hearing, Bry specifically asked a representative of the mayors office about a list of about 10 problem short-term vacation rental properties it was sent. She asked for a status update and was advised she could get one within five business days.

Councilman Chris Ward said time is of the essence for both local neighborhoods and vacation rental operators to craft a workable solution.

Im ready and available for all parties, Ward said, to be able to continue the conversation to get something right that will pass muster and will be able to satisfy the interests of our neighborhoods in reducing the nuisances and being able to mitigate and push back against the impacts to our housing supply.

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lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-2251

Twitter: @loriweisbergThe Grossmont Healthcare District, a public agency that oversees Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, recently gave a total of more than $85,000 to three organizations that help get food to those in need.

The districts five-member board recently OKd the grant money to nonprofits Jewish Family Service of San Diego, Meals on Wheels and the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank.

Michael Emerson, the health care districts board president, said Grossmont is working to connect more of the people it serves to a lifeline of community resources so they can build and sustain healthy and well-nourished lives.

Jewish Family Service of San Diego was granted $40,000 to support its food assistance program. The funds will help the group cover expenses for the JFS Foodmobile program. In East County, the foodmobile annually delivers more than 11,000 meals to homebound seniors and adults with disabilities.

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Gabi Charo, director of nutrition services with JFS, told the district that home-delivered meals cost an average of $2,500 per individual for a full year. The group delivers food to all San Diegans regardless of faith or ethnic background.

Meals on Wheels was given $27,500 to help purchase a transit van for the daily delivery of meal services. The new van will be used to transport volunteers who will deliver year-round meals to more than 384 homebound, low-income seniors living in East County.

Meals on Wheels serves up to two fresh meals per day, accompanied by a daily safety check/in-home social visit for low- to moderate-income homebound seniors.

The van will help volunteers deliver more than 97,000 meals annually to East County residents from its service center in El Cajon.

The board also approved an $18,000 grant to the San Diego Food Bank to pay for the doling out of fresh fruits and vegetables at a food distribution site in Spring Valley called Heavens Windows.

The grant to the Food Bank will provide sustenance to about 210 families per month, said James Floros, president/CEO of the San Diego Food Bank. Floros said that census data shows that 1 in 7 individuals in East County live in poverty.

San Diego Food Bank officials said the Grossmont grant will be matched by another nonprofit, Price Philanthropies, doubling the amount of fresh produce distributed at Heavens Windows.

Heavens Windows is one of the largest food bank distribution sites in the East County, providing 2,000 bags of food and serving more than 1,500 families a month.

Hunger is everywhere, Floros said. This grant will help bridge the gap between limited incomes and healthy grocery options. Our vision is to end hunger in San Diego County.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.comBoaters who find themselves dead in the water can no longer count on a free tow back to the Oceanside harbor.

The city has turned its non-emergency assists over to the private company Tow Boat US, said Lt. Aaron Doyle of the Oceanside Harbor Police. The company will help anyone, but charges an annual membership fee or an hourly rate for nonmembers.

Until recently, the Oceanside harbor police would respond to any stranded vessel, sometimes traveling as far as 10 miles or more, and bring them back to a slip at no charge, Doyle said.

Its just not a fiscally responsible practice, he said in an explanation of the policy change this week at a meeting of the citys Harbor and Beaches Advisory Committee.

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Also, assisting a stranded vessel miles away can tie up two or more harbor police officers and their boat at sea for hours at a time, and back-up officers must be called in to protect the harbor.

The City Council approved a resolution in 2011 that allows the police to charge $50 per hour per officer and $100 per hour for non-emergency tows, he said. Thats a total of $200 per hour for the citys response, which usually takes two hours or longer.

So far, no boaters have had to pay the fees, Doyle said, and the city has absorbed the cost.

But the city can no longer afford to provide the free service, he said. Harbor police will now only respond in an emergency such as a boat taking on water and likely to sink, or in danger of crashing onto the rocks.

Its unclear when people might start being billed for emergency tows, he said, though it could be soon.

Some Oceanside boaters have grown to rely on the free service.

People were really counting on you to help them out, said Stephen Ford, an Oceanside boater and member of the harbor advisory committee.

Boaters also fear that response times will be longer when someone other than the harbor police are called in. It usually takes 30 to 45 minutes for a boat to arrive at a scene near the harbor, Doyle said.

For somebody sitting several miles out there with a dead engine, thats a long time, said committee member Michael Cobas.

Still, Cobas agreed that its time for the city to cover its costs.

Weve been spoiled, basically, because weve been getting such good service, he said.

Tow Boat US began docking one of its boats at the Oceanside harbor last year to be more responsive to local boaters. Before that, the company usually had to send a vessel from Dana Point, in Orange County.

Tow Boat US is a national company similar to the AAA automotive assistance for cars. Boaters can pay $149 for an annual membership with unlimited tows, or non-members can pay $250 an hour for a single tow.

Between May and December of last year, the private company responded to 84 non-emergency calls from Oceanside, local franchise owner Scott McClung of Dana Point said by email when asked about the service.

The most common calls are engine failure, fuel delivery and jump starts, McClung said. Our operation includes responding to vessels that have capsized, sunk, or have been beached.

Our crew is comprised of (U.S Coast Guard) licensed captains, certified beach lifeguards, PADI open water divers, and retired law enforcement.

Tow Boat US is reachable at any time on VHS radio, he said.

The Oceanside Harbor Police has been the only rescue service between Mission Bay and Dana Point since the Coast Guard cutter Pt. Hobart, formerly based at the harbor, was decommissioned in 1999.

The municipal harbor, built in the 1960s, has more than 900 boat slips, all occupied, with a waiting list for potential renters.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehlInside a greenhouse off Champagne Boulevard north of Escondido, lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes are being grown in an aquaponic research facility designed to teach others about sustainable farming.

The ultimate goal of the center is far loftier: to save the world.

The small greenhouse, dubbed the Auqaponics Innovation Center, contains a sophisticated system that uses fish, water and numerous filtration systems. Its run by Ecolife Conservation, a nonprofit headquartered in Escondido, whose director is Bill Toone, a conservation biologist by training.

Years ago, while working a conservation project in a national park in Madagascar, Toone lived with villagers near a rain forest for three years. Two months after leaving, the village was wiped out in a massive typhoon.

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So I reached out to all the conservation groups that for the past four years had funded me, Toone said. I asked for money to go back to look for people and help put things back together. And everyone said no. They said we do animals. We dont do people.

It pissed me off and broke my heart.

Toone said he took some time off to contemplate whether all the conservation work he had spent his life doing was making any difference.

A few years later, in 2003, he established Ecolife and began a quest to address huge ecological and human problems.

Extinction is caused by loss of habitat. Animals die because they dont have anywhere to live, he said. And the single largest cause of habitat destruction is expanding agriculture production. We use up more land to grow food than any other thing we do. We drive more species to extinction by agriculture.

It became very clear to me if you wanted to save the world, you better learn how to farm more sustainably.

The aquaponic center, built just a few months ago, is designed as a research and training facility that people can visit who wish to learn how to grow vegetables and fruit using far less water and land.

This place is about giving us the opportunity to bring some attention to it, to demonstrate it at scale, he said.

Last week, a couple farmers from Murrieta toured the facility to learn the process as did a gentleman representing a restaurant consortium that is interested in building rooftop aquaponic facilities atop the businesses.

The idea is to save water, save land, reduce our carbon footprint and make a real conservation impact, Toone said.

California produces 78 percent of the lettuce consumed in the United States.

We export 55 billion gallons of water in California every year hidden in the heads of lettuce, Toone said, And we dont have any water, yet were sending it all over the country.

Though a very small operation, what is being done at the innovation center can be reproduced on a far larger scale, he said.

This system uses 10 percent of the water, Toone said. We could reduce that 55 billion gallons of water in lettuce to about 5 billion by growing produce this way.

All of the vegetables grown at the center are donated to nonprofits such as Interfaith Community Services in Escondido.

In the past month, we donated 400 pounds of cucumbers, for example, said Connor Leone, the centers education coordinator.

On Thursday morning, a half-dozen volunteers with Senior Gleaners, a nonprofit that picks fruit and vegetables for the hungry, were at the innovation center to harvest about 40 pounds of lettuce.

They contacted us. Its wonderful, said Karen Clay, a scheduler for the Gleaners. I think its amazing the work they have done here and the work they are doing in different areas to help people.

Leone said the lettuce and other vegetables grow in about two-thirds the time they would in the ground and they can be planted in far greater densities using aquaponics.

Simply put, the self-contained system uses fish  Mozambique Tilapia -- in a tank that produces waste which is then turned into plant nutrients and added to water that the plants sit atop of on floating racks.

Various filtration systems designed to catch solid waste, maintain pH levels and biofilters for nitrifying bacteria to colonize, all connected through PVC piping, complete the system.

The center is located on land donated by one of several of Ecolifes angels, as Toone calls them  large donors who support the goals and operations of the company.

Those goals include building and supplying wood-burning stoves to people in Mexico and Africa.

The fifth-leading cause of deforestation in the world, and the No. 1 killer of human beings in the world, is harvesting of wood for cooking fires, Toone said.

Those cooking fires kill an estimated 4.3 million people every year from either burns or smoke inhalation-related diseases.

He said three billion people still cook over an open fire, often indoors where smoke grows thick.

Its the equivalent of smoking 400 cigarettes a day, according to the World Health Organization, Toone said. Ecolife builds stoves with chimneys to vent smoke out of the dwellings.

For more information about Ecolife and its work go to ecolifeconservation.org on the web.

jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjonesTwo San Marcos City Council members and a local author are competing to be the next mayor of San Marcos.

Council members Chris Orlando and Rebecca Jones, both with three terms on the council, and local childrens book author Bradley Zink are vying to fill the seat left open by Mayor Jim Desmond, who is reaching his term limit and running for county supervisor.

The San Marcos mayoral position is elected at large, while the council seats will be decided for the first time by voting districts. While the mayor has a single vote on the council, the position shapes council debates and helps forge relationships with other local government bodies.

The two incumbents differ largely in their positions on growth, with Jones stressing the need to meet state mandates and market demand for new housing, and Orlando stating a commitment to reviewing development proposals with the concerns of neighbors in mind.

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Jones, 51, has served on the council for 12 years, including six years as vice mayor. She built a local furniture sales and marketing business in 1997, and has held positions with the League of California Cities and the San Diego Association of Governments, as well as various civic organizations.

San Marcos Councilwoman Rebecca Jones is running for mayor. (Photo courtesy of Rebecca Jones)

Jones said shes focused on traffic relief, strong fiscal policy and quality of life, including public safety, infrastructure and recreation.

Our future must include us continuing our stellar public safety service as a high priority to maintain our current title of being the safest city in North County, she said. I will continue to make sure we maintain our roads, community services, parks, trails at an enviable standard, the reasoning behind the San Diego Reader dubbing us San Parkos.

Jones said she is calling for a financial plan to meet obligations for employee pensions, and calls for keeping San Marcos ambulance service under the citys auspices, and supporting the city fire department.

She said San Marcos has to plan for 11,500 homes that are slated for construction under state law, and to secure its fair share of infrastructure dollars from those projects.

I will continue to protect the community character, preserve open space and mitigate new traffic, Jones said. Im very concerned with the amount of our workforce that is moving north to Temecula and Murrieta due to the high cost of housing. We must work with development partners to provide this housing for our college graduates purchasing their first homes, firefighters, sheriff Deputies, teachers and (buyers scaling down.)

Jones advocates a form of traffic control called dynamic sequencing, which uses artificial intelligence to control stoplights, works with autonomous vehicles, and can be synced with traffic systems for surrounding cities.

This dynamic sequencing, though not inexpensive, is the quickest way to provide relief as it moves traffic in the most efficient manner without adding lanes, she said.

She is also teaming up with council candidate Mike Sannella on a plan they call SMARTS (San Marcos Area Residents Transportation Solution) to add bus routes that would minimize congestion around school drop-off and pickup areas.

We envision the reintroduction of school buses as being a significant traffic improvement that will take thousands of cars off the road each day, improve safety for our kids, and a proposal that we can move quickly to establish, she said.

Orlando, 48, is completing his third term on the council, and will reach his term limit at the end of the year.

San Marcos City Councilman Chris Orlando is running for mayor. (Melissa Jacobs photo)

With a bachelors degree in political science and an MBA from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Orlando has a background in corporate communications, and co-founded a financial technology firm, Fit Pay, Inc., in 2013.

Orlando served for six yeas as a board member or chair of the North County Transit District, and six years on the board of directors of the San Diego Association of Governments, as well as other posts. If elected, he said, hell focus on a balanced budget and economic development.

As Mayor, Ill take a resident-first approach to every decision, putting whats best for residents before everything else, Orlando said. My agenda will be to implement solutions to our traffic problems, enhance parks and trails, and protect our neighborhoods by only supporting developments that bring needed infrastructure or amenities.

Orlando cited his votes against two controversial housing projects as examples of his response to residents concerns about the impacts of development on existing neighborhoods.

In 2016, he voted against San Marcos Highlands, a 189-home development in the northern part of the city, and in January, he cast the sole no vote on a 220-home Brookfield project planned for the intersection of Twin Oaks Valley Road and Village Drive. Neighbors said they feared those projects would worsen traffic and school crowding.

The question is not Is development good or is development bad.? Orlando said. As a City we are going to grow. The question is how were going to grow. Do we approve every project that comes forward, or do we take a more thoughtful, incremental approach - working hard to make sure that new projects benefit our communities and our businesses?

Orlando said the city should consider new housing in a variety of price levels, saying the city has built an excess of expensive, high-end homes, but little low and moderately priced housing.

Those expensive homes drive up housing costs, he said. They dont make it easier for our teachers, fire and sheriffs personnel to buy homes here, they make it harder.

While congestion is a key concern for San Marcos residents, Orlando said the city cant solve that single-handedly.

First and foremost we need to recognize that the region is decades away from a solution to the single biggest contributor to traffic on our local streets: congestion on (State Route) 78, he said. We cannot keep approving new projects that add cars to our roads without adding new infrastructure. It only makes the problem worse.

San Marcos also needs to scale down some planned development in the city, remove plans for six-story buildings off San Marcos Boulevard, eliminate residential housing over ground-floor retail, and increase the types of transportation available in the city, Orlando said.

Zink, 45, is a local childrens book author and newcomer to the citys political structure who is also vying for San Marcos top job.

San Marcos resident Bradley Zink is running for mayor (Photo courtesy of Bradley Zink)

Zink said he holds a bachelors degree in telecommunications management, and has worked in corporate offices of eBay/PayPal, FedEx Kinkos and Upper Deck.

His priorities, he said include plans to build roads before development, and to Push for development of infrastructure before housing, to ensure our water, power and emergency services can handle the strain of additional residents.

He favors Developing smaller-scale developments, in correlation to existing schools, thus reducing overcrowding at targeted locations.

Multiple developments of several hundred homes could provide housing, he said, but would eliminate need to shut down major traffic thoroughfares for multiple years.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennanChula Vistas mayoral election is less than one month away.

Incumbent Mayor Mary Casillas Salas, 70, holds a significant financial advantage over her challenger, Otay Water District Director and Realtor Hector Gastelum, 43. The mayor has more than $37,000 cash on hand. Gastelum has less than $2,000.

Salas also has momentum from a June primary in which she obliterated the competition by getting 64 percent of the vote in a crowded field.

Gastelum finished a distant second with 17 percent of the vote.

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Despite Junes lopsided victory, the two face off again on Nov. 6. The two took one last chance to win over voters during the citys last pre-election campaign forum Oct. 11.

Mayor Mary Casillas Salas

Salas continued to present herself as an experienced leader with more than 20 years of experience as an elected official who has represented Chula Vista on the City Council and the state Assembly. She was first elected to the City Council in 1996, became a director of the Sweetwater Authority/South Bay Irrigation District in 2004, and was elected to the state Assembly in 2006. Salas came back to the council in 2012 and became mayor in 2014.

She is asking for a fourth term to finish what she started. That includes bringing a four-year university to Chula Vista, starting development on the Bayfront, addressing the citys infrastructure needs and hiring more police officers and firefighters.

I want to complete the work that I started, she said. I want to continue to serve the city I love.

Hector Gastelum (Howard Lipin/The San Diego-Union-Tribune)

Gastelum, 43, continues to present himself as an anti-big government conservative who hates political correctness and wants to kick Planned Parenthood out of Chula Vista. He did not say how he plans to accomplish this.

During the forum, Gastelum stressed the need to solve the projected budget deficits. He attacked pensions and said hed make government more efficient by eliminating regulations but did not name any specific regulations he plans to slash.

If we dont get ahead of this, were going to bankrupt our city, he said.

Apart from serving in the Otay Water District, Gastelum is a Realtor with Big Block Realty.

Contact Gustavo Solis via Email or TwitterIn the crowded field of candidates running for City Council in National City, voters will choose among two familiar faces and four newcomers.

A social worker, insurance agent and a community organizer are challenging Councilwoman Mona Rios and termed-out Mayor Ron Morrison.

There are two open seats in the Nov. 6 election.

Ron Morrison (Ron Morrison)

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Morrison joined the council race after a ballot measure that was intended to undo mayoral term limits and set new term limits for all elected officials was narrowly defeated in June.

While candidates generally agree there are opportunities to improve police-community relationships in the aftermath of the controversial in-custody death of Earl McNeil, they differ in their views on rent control and the ways to address a $4 million deficit in the citys budget.

One candidate, James Kim, a 13-year city employee who works as a graffiti abatement technician, declined a formal interview. Kim, who is not campaigning, said he was unaware when he decided to run that, if elected, he would be required to leave his job. Resigning is not an option, he said, because he has two children who attend Southwestern College and a 75-year-old father who depend on him financially.

MEASURE W

Perhaps the most disputed issue in National City is ballot Measure W, which would cap annual rent increases at 5 percent and require legitimate reasons for evictions.

The citizens-initiated measure has the support of two candidates: Rios and Jose Rodriguez, who are campaigning as part of the same slate.

Rios, 65, said she believes the housing shortage will create extremely low vacancy rates, while the drive for increasing profits will create even higher rent prices.

Mona Rios (Mona Rios)

Unless there is rent stabilization, there will be a widespread creation of homelessness and increased worker/family suffering, the councilwoman said.

Measure W can help with our housing crisis by stabilizing rents immediately and providing protections from unjust  evictions, she said. All tenants should be able to enjoy the right to a safe, healthy and stable environment without fear of displacement.

Rodriguez, 32, said he has met residents while campaigning who have shared heartbreaking stories about rent increases ranging between $200 to $600 in a year.

This is forcing families to make difficult financial decisions and hurting our local economy by taking our residents spending power away from our city, he said.

Rodriguez, a community organizer with the nonprofit San Diego Organizing Project, said the city needs to streamline the development process and remove red tape to create both market-rate and affordable housing.

Jose Rodriguez (Jose Rodriguez)

We have the opportunity to do smart growth with more (transit) oriented development and mixed-use construction to fully utilize our land, he said.

Candidates who oppose Measure W are Morrison, Sherry Gogue and Candy Morales.

Morrison, 68, said the city has done its part to address the housing crisis and will continue to do so. He noted the city has allowed higher density in transportation corridors, secured funding for subsidized housing and lowered parking requirements for developers, among other steps.

That being said, we cant be the relief valve for the county, and must expect the other cities to do their part in providing a reasonable balance in housing, the mayor said.

He said he believes Measure W is just snake oil medicine that is meant to fool people that are eager for solutions to the rising housing prices, adding that it would in the long run only make our housing situation much worse.

Gogue, 57, shares a similar point of view. Gogue, an insurance agent, said rent control would harm our community long term, far worse than any short-term relief or value.

The city, she said, needs to address the need for infill development, which refers to development on vacant or under-used parcels within urban areas.

Morales, a 32-year-old county social worker, said Measure W appears to be one-sided, and all parties are not equally represented, protected, or benefit from this measure.

Candy Morales (Candy Morales)

Instead of building more housing and helping stabilize affordable housing efforts, it may do the exact opposite, she said, adding that she believes it would deter investors from developing in National City.

She said the city should continue ongoing efforts to encourage and support homeownership.

BUDGET

Ideas to address the citys budget shortfall vary from one candidate to another.

Rodriguez said the city has become too reliant on sales tax. He said the city needs to re-think its economy and support small businesses and homeownership.

He said the city should increase wages for large businesses and stabilize rent prices so residents have more spending power, hire locally for projects and hire full-time positions to secure federal and state grants to fix roads.

Gogue also touched on the citys 8.75 percent sales tax.

Sherry Gogue (Manuel Cavada)

We cannot continue to tax National City residents in hopes of addressing a budget shortfall  we are already the highest-taxed city in the county, which hurts families and businesses, she said.

She said she plans to push efforts to grow the local economy.

I will bring forward an agenda item that will provide a comprehensive analysis and economic development work plan for National City, Gogue said.

Rios said she would support sustainable economic development to generate revenue that is not as impacted during economic slowdowns. She also said it is crucial to develop a timeline for budget discussions that involve residents.

Morales said the city should possibly allow an establishment, such as a medical marijuana dispensary, with the right policies and procedures in place that could produce benefits on many levels, in particular financial revenue.

In an effort to cut expenses, she said, the city could look at the way it handles the business and building permit process.

Morrison said the only positive, long-term solution is to increase revenue (through) growth in our business community.

For that to happen, he said, voters should reject Measure W. Otherwise, he said, it will drive out investment and business. Also, the mayor said, the City Council needs to stop taking advise and direction from individuals and organizations that are clearly unqualified and anti-business.

POLICE

Generally, candidates agree theres more that can be done to improve relationships between police and residents. For weeks this past summer, City Council meetings were interrupted by regular protests over the June 11 death of Earl McNeil, who stopped breathing while in police custody.

We need more police transparency and we need to work with community organizations to develop better training and support (for) our police officers, Rodriguez said. Our community needs ongoing forums to address and improve our police-community relations.

Morales shared a similar idea, saying perhaps the city should host community meetings to raise awareness about policies and procedures. Another idea, she said, is to create a citizens academy or quarterly training to allow interested residents to understand daily operations, limitations and expectations of the department.

Rios said she has seen firsthand the Police Departments partnerships and community engagement events aimed at improving relationships. She touched on the importance of engaging the community in planning and oversight, improving police training and having policies that focus on equity, transparency, accountability and shared information.

Morrison highlighted the fact that many of the protesters live outside of National City.

We should not allow the disruptions of a few people from outside our community to dictate our decision or courses of actions without there being deliberate and clear reasoning, he said. Our Police Department has come light years from where it was 30 years ago in the form of community relations and transparency.

However, he said every situation should be looked upon as an opportunity to evaluate and improve our service and relationships, and this will be evaluated both internally and through our (Community and Police Relations Commission).

Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com

Phone: (619) 293-1876

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandezTomas Vargas, his wife and their 18-year-old son and 20-year-old daughter have lived in a studio apartment in National City for two years.

But the family wont call the studio home for much longer. On Sept. 11, all tenants at the nine-unit apartment complex where the Vargas family lives were handed 60-day notices to move out.

The reason? The property owner plans to sell the apartment complex on C Avenue, as well as two other National City properties, where tenants also received 60-day notices to vacate.

The property owners attorney said her clients decision to walk away from the rental business in National City  a legal right  is largely based on financial concerns triggered by a push to enact rent control in the city just south of downtown San Diego.

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The situation illustrates both property owners unease over rent control and tenants concerns about possible evictions and rent increases in the absence of rent caps and other protections for renters.

National City voters will consider in November a ballot measure that would limit rent increases to 5 percent and only allow evictions under specific circumstances. At the same time, voters across the state will decide on Proposition 10, which would allow cities to impose rent control on units built after 1995 and on single-family homes.

Rachael Callahan, an evictions attorney who represents landlords and property owners, said Measure W and Prop. 10 have created panic among property owners who are concerned about the future of their investments in National City. She said she has been consulted on a weekly basis by owners who are contemplating putting properties up for sale.

The units where tenants received the 60-day notices are owned by Sterling Investment Group. Callahan represents CEO Nick Davison.

She said it was never his desire to displace the tenants.

From a financial standpoint, she said of the decision to sell the properties, its now or never for him.

She said Davison is concerned other investors will not be inclined to purchase the properties if and when rent control is enacted.

From an investors perspective, the passage of (Measure W and Prop. 10) really creates a limitation on the investors ability to utilize their investment, she said.

If a property owner wants or needs to make upgrades, for example, all of a sudden they cant recoup the costs because theyre limited by the 5 percent cap, she said.

Proponents of rent control in National City argue Measure W is fair to both tenants and landlords. They say landlords and property owners are entitled to a favorable return on investment under the measure.

Measure W allows a landlord to petition a rent control board  created by the measure  for rent increases beyond 5 percent.

If landlords feels they are going to lose money, then the fact of the matter is that they are guaranteed a fair rate of return, said Shanti Singh, development and communications coordinator for Tenants Together, a statewide renters rights group. No rent control (ordinance) says theres no way you cant go beyond capped rent if you feel there is a hardship or burden.

Property owners, however, take issue with the proposed rent control board  which they see as a layer of government  having a say in the way they manage their investment. They argue the five-member board, which would have three seats reserved for tenants, would side with renters over landlords or property owners.

Whitney Benzian, vice president of public affairs for the California Apartment Association, said his organization has heard from concerned mom-and-pop owners whose livelihoods or retirement depend on the revenue from their rental properties.

For tenant groups, the 60-day notices highlight the lack of protections for tenants. They say forcing out tenants, through no fault of their own, is unfair. To make matters worse, evictions may leave tenants susceptible to higher rents elsewhere, tenant advocates say.

Right now it really is the wild west still, Singh said. Its an incredibly adverse environment to be a tenant.

Without adequate protections such as guards against unmerited evictions, tenants dont have the legal rights to fight an eviction in court, Singh said.

The cards are really stacked up the moment that (eviction) notice shows up, she said.

The 60-day notice that the Vargas family received has left them in limbo as they scramble to find a new home. Theyve applied to five or so apartments and have been told to expect to be wait-listed for at least six months, Thomas Vargas said.

Even though one feels bad and cant find something, we have to accept it, he said. What else can we do?

His family moved from Tijuana to National City three years ago in search of better treatment options for his disabled son. They moved into the studio two years ago and have paid $1,000 a month.

One option on the table if the family is unsuccessful in finding a new home is to return to Tijuana, Vargas said reluctantly.

Well have to wait and see what happens, he said.

Callahan, the evictions attorney, said its unfair to both sides when a landlord decides to remove a property from the rental market because of financial concerns.

Its not fair to the tenants and its not fair to the owners, she said.

There needs to be a solution to help tenants without sacrificing, and substantially infringing, on ownership rights, Davidson said in a statement. Proposition 10, and (Measure) W are short-sighted and will cause more harm then good. Although the upcoming propositions are not the only influence on my decision to sell my building, they are a strong influence nonetheless.

Davidson plans to begin minor upgrades so the properties are in prime salable condition, then put them up for sale, as soon as tenants move out, Callahan said.

She said some tenants who have been renting for less than a year were entitled to 30-day notices under state law, but Davidson gave all tenants 60-day notices. The notices, which mark the first step in the eviction process, are precursors to court orders to vacate.

Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com

Phone: (619) 293-1876

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandezAssimilation, discrimination, the hazards of navigating dual cultural identities: Those are big, potentially daunting concepts that are skillfully distilled into an intimate story made both personal and powerful in Tanya Sarachos Fade.

The play, now getting its San Diego premiere at Moxie Theatre, puts together two people who, try as they might, often find themselves speaking different languages.

Thats true in a literal sense early on. When the young, Mexican-born television writer Lucia (Sofia Sassone) first meets Abel (Javier Guerrero), the Latino man who cleans her L.A. office, she unthinkingly speaks to him in Spanish, learning only later that hes American-born and prefers English.

Abel makes assumptions of his own, calling her a fresa (Mexican slang for an overprivileged young woman) even though she has had to work to get by, and scoffing at the idea that the light-skinned, Americanized Lucia might face the same kinds of obstacles he does.

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Their interplay points up the kinds of biases and misunderstandings that can pop up even among people who share (at least nominally) a heritage, and Saracho  herself an accomplished TV writer and show-runner (Vida) who was inspired by her own experiences to write Fade  also has plenty to say about the perils of cultural appropriation.

Its the kind of material that could come off as a little preachy or didactic if the relationship between Lucia and Abel didnt feel totally real.

At Moxie, though, under the assured direction of Maria Patrice Amon, the two actors make the pairs give-and-take pop with a complex mix of mutual affection and suspicion as well as a latent romantic tension.

Keeping things alive and vibrant for the full, fast-moving 90 minutes of Fade takes commitment, but these two never let up, bringing wit and zip and a sense of authenticity even when the writing occasionally shades into contrivance.

The kinetic and funny Sassone is a real find, owning the role of this passionate but insecure and disaffected writer from the moment Lucia bops onstage to the beat of Spanish-language hip-hop. (Lily Voons sound design is full of fantastic and well-placed music.)

Guerrero proves an excellent foil as the friendly but more reserved Abel, an ex-Marine with a fierce devotion to family and a growing skepticism of Lucias ambitions.

There are real stakes here, as Lucias rise coincides with revelations about Abels past, which ultimately may prove less harmful to him than Lucias selfish determination to capitalize on them.

Amon keeps the production humming with sharp scene transitions, aided by lighting designer Mextly Almedas fine work on Kristen Flores smartly conceived office-building set, whose back hallway forms a tenuous connection between the characters disparate worlds. Carmen Amons costumes also track Lucias evolution from artsy to Establishment.

And while the plays conclusion may startle (and even seem a bit out of character), it is gratifyingly anything but pat.

The women-centered Moxie staged Fade in association with TuYo Theatre, a company co-created by director Amon; it will be San Diegos only professional Latinx (the preferrred gender-neutral term) theater company when it officially launches soon.

If this show is an indication, theres promising work to come.

Fade

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 11.

Where: Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd., Rolando District.

Tickets: $18-$43

Phone: (858)598-7620

Online: moxietheatre.com

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @jimhebertSome careful detective work  either that or a desperate need for an eye exam  has revealed that the title of Holmes and Watson is a ruse: The great English crime-buster Sherlock Holmes actually appears in triplicate onstage at North Coast Rep (although Ill grant you that Watson and the Three Holmeses sounds more like a bad 1960s pop band than a play).

The other thing our sleuthing has uncovered: This is one fun, surprising and smartly crafted show.

Jeffrey Hatchers play, which just opened its West Coast premiere at the Solana Beach theater, takes off from one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles famous Holmes stories, and proceeds to weave its own absorbing mystery, complete with clever head-fakes and carefully doled-out clues.

At NCRT, artistic chief David Ellenstein directs the piece with a rich sense of atmosphere, capturing both the chills and the dry-as-sherry wit that courses through Hatchers work. Ellensteins seven-member cast also makes the play feel convincingly in-tune with the Conan Doyle universe, and manages to keep us guessing nonstop about their characters backgrounds and motives.

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Holmes and Watson is set in a remote Scottish asylum, designed to bleak and forbidding effect by Marty Burnett. Its there that Dr. John Watson (Richard Baird), Sherlock Holmes longtime confidant, has arrived to offer counsel on a bizarre turn of events.

Three years earlier, Holmes had disappeared  presumed dead after an encounter with his archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty, atop the towering Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, a fateful meeting described by Conan Doyle in his story The Final Problem.

But Holmes body was never recovered. And now, three new patients have arrived at the asylum, all claiming to be Holmes.

Watsons charge: To identify which, if any, is the real Holmes  a task complicated by radical changes in physical appearance and the onset of possible madness.

Is it the well-spoken would-be Holmes (played by Jacob Sidney) who has an inordinate interest in Watsons revolver? Is it the voluntarily straitjacketed, straggly-haired patient (Drew Parker) who turns the tables on Watson, peppering him with questions? Or is it the apparently deaf, catatonic figure (Christopher M. Williams) whose claim to be Holmes seems the biggest riddle?

Watson gets guarded help from the places proprietor, Dr. Evans (Si Osborne), whos accompanied by a tough, Cockney-accented orderly (J. Todd Adams) and a very proper, taciturn nurse (Alice Sherman).

The piece begins like a police procedural, as Watson interrogates each of the three at the asylum. But one of the plays most satisfying aspects is the way the sudden, remarkable transformation of Williams character (under hypnosis) ushers us through a kind of secret door into whole new layers of narrative, starting with the simple words: It began with a woman.

The play proves an excellent showcase for Baird, the NCRT favorite who has an elegant facility for the language and conveys a sense theres a whole lot going on behind Watsons no-nonsense facade.

Kim Deshazos detailed costumes, Chad Lee Thymes foreboding sound design and Matthew Novotnys often spooky lighting mesh well with Burnetts sets: A series of vignettes showing different versions of Holmes encounter with Moriarty are especially eye-catching.

As for the mystery: No hints here, but Ill bet a full house of Holmeses you wont see where this is going.

Holmes and Watson

When: 7 p.m. Wednesdays (plus 2 p.m. Nov. 7); 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 18.

Where: North Coast Rep, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach.

Tickets: $46-$53, discounts available. $20 rush tickets, 15 minutes before performance if available.

Phone: (858) 481-1055

Online: northcoastrep.org

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @jimhebertOctober 22, 1967 The San Diego Union

The San Diego Union-Tribune will mark its 150th anniversary in 2018 by presenting a significant front page from the archives each day throughout the year.

Sunday, October 22, 1967

In 1967 more than 600 people were arrested when thousands of protesters marched to the Pentagon to demand an end to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.

The tumultuous demonstration was seen as a turning point for the peace movement in America.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the story:

Antiwar Mob Routed In Melee At Pentagon

GIs, Police Seize 150 Protesters

By L. Edgar Prina, Military Affairs Editor, Copley News Service

WASHINGTON  Thousands of antiwar demonstrators hurled themselves at the Pentagon yesterday in a tumultuous, often ugly protest against American policy in Vietnam. More than 150 persons were arrested.

At one point several thousand protesters outflanked defending Army troops, U.S. marshals, and police and stormed a lightly-guarded door on the mall entrance. About 20 youthful demonstrators broke into a vestibule and about a half a dozen entered the corridor beyond. Army troops inside the building hurled the demonstrators out, then formed a flying wedge and drove the crowd back from the door. Several persons suffered cuts in the melee, but no serious injuries were reported.

PLANS FOILED

Careful plans had been laid to keep the demonstrators away from the Pentagon and in the prescribed parking lot area where they had received a permit to rally. Leaders of the demonstration had vowed they would storm the huge defense center and disrupt the war effort.

Waving the red and blue flag of the Communist Viet Cong National Liberation Front, the demonstrators who entered the Pentagon took advantage of a nearby skirmish to slip around marshals and troops near the mall entrance.

The penetration of the building came after several previous attempts had been repulsed in frantic pushing and shoving contests. At least one tear gas shell exploded. Officials denied that it was fired by any of the Pentagons defenders.

We believe the demonstrators were using their own tear gas, said one Defense Department spokesman. We know they had it with them.

AT LEAST 60,000

There was no accurate count of the number of demonstrators involved. Estimates ranged from 50,000 (a Washing Police Department figure) to 200,000 (an estimate by march leaders.)

There was general agreement that the crowd totaled somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000. It grew steadily during a day that began in relatively mild fashion with speeches at the Lincoln Memorial, grew tense as the crowd marched across the Potomac River to the Pentagon a mile and a half away and then exploded into angry swirling confrontations around the huge five-sided building.

View anniversary front pages online at sandiegouniontribune.com/150-years. For more from the Union-Tribune digital archives, go to newslibrary.com/sites/sdub. Searching is free, with registration. A fee is required to view full stories.A Lynwood man was sentenced to 423 years on Monday for knocking on doors in Long Beach and then assaulting and robbing the elderly women who answered.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury in July convicted Melvin Earl Farmer Jr., 40, of 13 felony counts, including burglary, sexual battery, dissuading a witness from reporting a crime, criminal threats and forcible rape, according to court records.

Farmer was sentenced to 280 years to life in this case plus 143 years for sentence enhancements, according to a spokesman for the district attorneys office.

Prosecutors say that over the course of about a week in February 2017, Farmer sexually assaulted and robbed several women, whose ages ranged from 63 to 90.

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Most of the robberies happened at a senior housing complex near Atlantic Avenue and Via Carmelitos in North Long Beach. Farmer knocked on the womens doors, forced his way inside when they answered and physically assaulted them before he made off with purses, cellphones, jewelry and cash, police said.

The robberies grabbed headlines last year after Long Beach police circulated security camera footage in an effort to identify a man who was preying on elderly women. After the images were made public, a tipster identified the man as Farmer. A day later, he was in custody.

Prosecutors said Farmers criminal history dates to 1999, when he was convicted of second-degree robbery. He also was convicted of attempted second-degree robbery in 2007.

Authorities also arrested Sophia Yim, 33, of Lynwood, who police say drove Farmer to the Bixby Knolls home of a 90-year-old woman whom he beat, sexually assaulted and robbed.

Farmer knocked on the womans door shortly before 7:30 a.m. and forced his way into her residence when she answered. The woman fought back, and during the struggle a panic alarm at the residence was activated. The woman was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

Yim pleaded no contest in July to first-degree residential robbery and first-degree burglary. She was sentenced to five years probation and community service, court records show.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahnfryOn the day that Joshua Banka died, he smoked marijuana, then injected crushed oxycodone pills he had stolen from a roommate. Later, he injected some heroin that hed bought with his wife from a dealer.

Bankas body was discovered hours later, along with a stash of other drugs at his Iowa home and in his car, including alprazolam, clonazepam and hydrocodone.

The heroin dealer, Marcus Burrage, was charged with his death.

But, whos to say whether the heroin, and not the other drugs, was what killed him? Two medical experts at Burrages trial certainly couldnt.

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Its why the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately overturned Burrages conviction  and 20-year prison sentence  and set a legal standard that prosecutors must meet before bringing similar charges.

The 2014 decision is among a small collection of case law  some of it going back to the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 90s  that is now being analyzed with renewed interest in the face of the opioid crisis.

Last year, an estimated 72,000 Americans died of drug overdose.

In an effort to combat the rising tide of fatalities, prosecutors around the country have increasingly turned to laws that havent been used in years to charge drug distributors with the deaths.

For many defense lawyers, even seasoned ones, this was new territory.

To help them catch up, Northeastern Universitys Heath in Justice Action Lab is compiling a playbook of sorts on how to adequately defend these cases. The tool kit includes a listing of cases such as Burrage v. United States that are incredibly specific to this type of law that many general practitioners may not have encountered before.

The guide, written with help from legal minds across the country, probes questions such as: What happens if a friend was merely sharing, not selling, the drugs that killed someone? What if two friends pooled their money together to buy drugs and one dies? What if someone sold a user oxycodone and didnt realize it was a counterfeit pill containing fentanyl?

Besides being a practical defense tool kit, its authors say it aims to ask larger questions, too, including whether prosecutors are targeting friends and low-level dealers who are addicts themselves versus bona fide, career drug dealers and their leaders.

The rise in these cases is spurred on by the real need in communities looking for decisive action to address the crisis, said Leo Beletsky, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern in Boston, as well as an adjunct professor at University of California San Diego. But instead of investing in what works, they are doubling down on what never works, which is beating people over the head with huge penalties.

Generally referred to as drug-induced homicide cases, these prosecutions are being brought throughout the U.S. under a variety of state laws  from murder to manslaughter to other more specifically tailored measures  as well as the workhorse federal law: distribution of drugs resulting in death.

A report by the Drug Alliance Policy noted that such overdose prosecutions have spiked nationally in response to the deepening opioid epidemic, from 363 in 2011 to 1,178 in 2016.

Its such a new phenomenon as far as being brought in significant numbers, said Alex Kreit, a Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor in San Diego and drug law expert who helped author the guide.

In San Diego, law enforcement countywide has developed a new protocol for overdose fatalities that includes processing crime scenes with the precision of a homicide case and investigating the source of the fatal dose.

The U.S. Attorneys Office here has brought charges in at least five fentanyl or heroin overdose deaths since last year, and the county District Attorneys Office has brought at least two cases  a charge of murder against a drug dealer and charges of child endangerment likely to produce great bodily harm or death against a couple in the death of their infant son.

Beletsky, faculty director at Northeasterns Health in Justice Action Lab, began researching these cases over a year ago, mapping the growing number of prosecutions across the country.

Looking at the cases themselves it became clear a lot of people were not getting adequate defense, he said. The professor also began receiving calls from family members of defendants as well as defense lawyers asking for help understanding the law involved. He began compiling more information and sending it out piece meal. He figured something should be done on a larger scale.

The initial version of the tool kit was published Oct. 12 free for download. It is intended to be a living document, to be updated as feedback from other experts comes in and expanded to address issues such as trial and jury techniques, cellphone searches and good Samaritan laws.

Possession vs. distribution

The toolkit describes two primary ways to defend such cases.

One is the joint-user defense, which is possible when the case involves a user who was potentially sharing drugs with the accused.

The key issue is determining at what point the user took possession of the drug.

Several federal courts have held that a financial transaction does not need to occur for someone to be guilty of distribution, and that a person buying drugs and later sharing it with friends was not sufficient to invoke to the joint-user defense.

But what if the user had asked the friend to buy drugs for him, supplying the money? What if he was present when the transaction happened, or sitting in the car a few feet away?

A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case  which includes California in its jurisdiction  held that both users must be physically present and acquire the drug simultaneously. In that case, a user had given the defendant money with the request to buy heroin, but didnt direct the defendant where to get the heroin. The defendant was ultimately found to have acted as a distributor.

A Minnesota Supreme Court case, however, found otherwise.

A wife bought heroin clearly for herself and her husband. She brought it home, used her half and then showed him where shed hidden his half before leaving. The husband injected himself with the drug and died of an overdose.

That the absent spouse did not exercise physical control over the substance at the moment of acquisition is an irrelevancy when there is no question that the absent spouse was then entitled to exercise joint physical possession, the court ruled.

The court dismissed the felony murder charge against the wife.

While courts have read this opinion as one that can be applied broadly, a Minnesota appeals court recently read the ruling more narrowly, suggesting it only applied to spouses.

The tool kit argues that the mixed rulings present a problem, potentially allowing prosecutors to define possession as it suits their needs.

The guide points out a Michigan Supreme Court case that determined a man had possession and control over cocaine that hed directed someone else to buy for him, even though he was not present at the time of sale.

Requiring both users to be physically present at the purchase for the joint-user rule to apply lets the government have it both ways, defining constructive possession broadly when it supports a conviction  but narrowly when it supports the joint-user defense, the authors of the guide argue.

Causation

The second area ripe for challenge on overdose prosecutions deals with causation.

Under the federal drug-induced law, a minimum element prosecutors must be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt is that but for the defendants acts, the user would not have died when he or she did. Its the standard that the U.S. Supreme Court set as a result of the Burrage case involving multiple drugs on the toxicology report.

Kreit said the causation issue in the context of these cases could bring up interesting challenges that have been typically relegated to strange law school hypotheticals.

Such a consideration may be underway in the decision of whether to charge a distributor in the 2017 death of a 41-year-old North Park woman, who prosecutors say is believed to have purchased fentanyl-laced pills from a woman known as The Drug Llama.

The users toxicology showed not only fentanyl, but also clonazepam, quetiapine and gabapentin.

How sound is the science behind them saying it was this drug as opposed to this other drug? Kreit asked.

There is another level of causation that prosecutors might be required to prove, called proximate causation. It requires proof that death was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendants action.

Many federal circuit courts have agreed that proximate causation is not required under the federal law; the defendants illegal act alone is enough. Various state laws, however, do require this, including a murder charge.

In San Diego, the District Attorneys Office has used murder once in recent history to prosecute an overdose death. According to the evidence, the victim apparently thought he was buying Percocet pills from Alfred Lemus Jr. in 2016. But the pills turned out to be laced with fentanyl, a deadly synthetic heroin.

Evidence indicated Lemus was well aware that he was selling fentanyl and that taking it could result in death, according to prosecutors. Lemus was recorded telling others in his jail cell that another customer had died in an alley after taking one of the pills.

Lemus ultimately pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The District Attorneys Office did not comment specifically about the defense strategies being disseminated but said, in general, that the office evaluates each overdose case individually and makes charging decisions based on the facts and evidence. Some cases that may not be charged under state law are referred to the U.S. Attorneys Office for prosecution.

The reason that law enforcement investigates the source of the drug that caused the overdose is primarily to prevent that same dealer from selling the same deadly substance to another person, so the first goal is to prevent future harm if we are able, the office said in a statement.

We are obviously not looking to charge low-level dealers, who sell drugs to support their habit, with murder. We do evaluate cases with an eye toward individuals who possess the knowledge of the dangers of the drug specifically fentanyl  and sell it for financial gain, with no regard for the safety of the victim. Each case presents a unique set of facts and equities, and our charges reflect those.

Five cases charged at the federal level in San Diego remain active, with one set for trial in January.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavisA review of more than 9,000 claims against cities, school districts, water boards and other local governments in San Diego County over three years found that a tiny fraction involved complaints of sexual harassment, a number that appears surprisingly low compared to the prevalence of such harassment when people are surveyed about their life experiences.

The personal injury, employment, discrimination, property damage and liability claims were filed against public agencies throughout the county from January 2015 through the beginning of this year. The Union-Tribune reviewed them and found 41 related to harassment of any kind, and seven that specifically complained of sexual harassment.

The low number of claims could indicate dozens of government employers have few incidents, and the ones that come up are successfully handled short of a legal claim. Or it could indicate a system that is intimidating to victims and fails to document and address what happened to them.

There are lots of employees that are reluctant to come forward and describe and report instances of sexual harassment because theyre afraid of retaliation, ostracization by their peers, said Wendy Patrick, an attorney and business ethics lecturer at San Diego State University. Theyre afraid of being blamed and shamed by their co-workers. That is particularly true if the harasser is a person in a position of power.

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Patrick said there are dozens of reasons for the low incidence of complaints. In the best case scenario, harassment incidents that dont rise to the level of criminal misconduct can be handled in house.

The goal is to really not have sexual harassment occur and not have to litigate anything, she said. There are other remedies short of formal action that are available to employers. When those are used, you wouldnt have a record of a formal complaint occurring.The problem for you and I is, we have no idea how often that occurs, because theres no record of complaints. So it may be that formal complaints under-represent the problem.

A majority of women  and a significant number of men  say they have experienced sexual harassment. In January, researchers with the University of California San Diego Center on Gender Equity and Health worked with the nonprofit organization Stop Street Harassment to study the scope of sexual harassment.

The nationwide survey of 2,000 people found that 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime. About 38 percent of women and 13 percent of men said those incidents occurred in the workplace. Still, most people who face harassment stay silent, researchers said. Part of that stems from fear that their predicament will only worsen if they report it.

As the #MeToo movement gained traction, the Union-Tribune in December requested records of any claims submitted to cities, school districts and other public agencies in San Diego County. About 80 entities were surveyed and 60 responded by releasing documents and databases of such claims. The remaining 20 never responded to the request or reported that no claims had been filed during the requested time frame.

The goal was to gauge how often sexual harassment is reported  beyond internal human resources and other similar departments  and if public agencies actively work to settle such cases quietly.

The low number of local cases identified might even be an uptick from previous years, based on trends seen on a state and national level. Claims submitted to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing and lawsuits filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have increased since the #MeToo campaign began.

According to a 2017 report, the state office received nearly 25,000 administrative complaints and inquiries last year. Thats a 5 percent jump from 2016 and a 30 percent increase from the number of complaints filed in 2014.

About 19,000 resulted in an investigation or private lawsuit. The agency reported that 4,000 of that total were employment related and another 13,000 sought right-to-sue letters, which allows complainants to bypass the agencys investigation process and file their own lawsuit in court. About 7 percent of the employment complaints involved sexual harassment and 11 percent cited gender discrimination, the report said.

Complaints are on the rise but those numbers have yet to reflect the rate and frequency of sexual harassment experts and researchers say exists. Anita Raj, a professor of medicine and education at UC San Diego, who worked on the survey, cited figures from the EEOC. Those showed that about 12,000 to 13,000 people per year submitted sexual harassment complaints to the federal agency between 2010 and 2017. Thats less about one complaint for every 12,000 U.S. workers.

I do not have clear percentage on reporting rates, but the numbers reporting to EEOC indicate that the percentage is very low, Raj said.

For example, the city of San Diego employed about 12,000 people in 2015, 2016 and 2017, the time frame of the requested records. During that time, two people submitted claims for sexual harassment, and one does not specify whether or not it was a work-related incident.

San Diego County has about 20,000 employees. Data show nine people filed claims against the county with the state fair employment office in 2017. None of them listed sexual harassment as a basis for the complaint.

One case in El Cajon demonstrates why women might not come forward.

El Cajon police officer Christine Greer claims she was mistreated after she complained about harassment by a fellow officer. Greer sued the city, alleging continuous unwanted sexual advances by officer Richard Gonsalves, including an incident in which he allegedly texted her a photo of his genitals. She settled her complaint for $90,000 in 2015, and Gonsalves was demoted from sergeant to officer. He became embroiled in another high-profile news event in 2016 when he was involved in the shooting of an unarmed man, Alfred Olango.

As a result of her litigation, Greer said she faced ongoing discrimination and was passed over for promotion. In 2017 she alleged that received an unfavorable performance evaluation from her supervisor, whom she said also sent her sexually explicit text messages. She has filed a subsequent complaint, which is scheduled for trial, according to her attorney, Dan Gilleon. He said cases like Greers can snowball as accused employees and their supporters circle the wagons against a complainant.

Gilleon maintains that cycle is particularly pernicious in public agencies, where internal politics can result in cliques  its almost like clans  that protect each other and retaliate against anyone who speaks out, whether its a whistle-blower or someone complaining about sexual harassment.

Data show Greer is one of nearly 200 claims filed against the city of El Cajon since 2015. A quarter of them resulted in payouts ranging from $78 to $159,000.

UC San Diego reported 32 claims, seven of which sought damages for discrimination based on gender or sexual harassment. The university did not release the names of complainants, preventing the Union-Tribune from obtaining more information about the incidents, but records show the payouts of the seven claims ranged from $7,000 to $137,500.

Another two claims involved whistle-blowing. One complainant received $75,000 from the university. Another was paid $27,000.

According to Lisa Kath, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who studies workplace dynamics and occupational issues, uncomfortable dynamics can occur in public or private workplaces, but harassment can be more frequent and severe in organizations in which men outnumber women.

One contributing factor is gender distribution, Kath said. The more male-dominated a workplace is, the more likely sexual harassment is to occur.

While fear of repercussions can create powerful incentives to stay silent in the face of harassment, Kath said there are also subtler factors at work. Those include the psychological costs of labeling unwanted comments or advances as harassment, particularly when the harasser is a close colleague or supervisor.

Some women dont want to label it as harassment because that causes a lot of conflict in their own minds, Kath said. These are people they work with, and they may have positive interactions with these people, or these people may have power over them. So psychologically, as soon as you label this as yes, I was sexually harassed, theres a whole bunch of baggage that comes with it.Your brain operates to protect your sense of self, and to save energy, and to protect the status quo. So sometimes its easier to say, well, Im sure I was mistaken.

That phenomena helps explain why only about 20 percent women who experience unwanted or offensive sex-related behaviors label incidents as harassment, Kath said. As a result, many cases may never even make it to internal officials such as management or human relations departments.

Of course, the other option is that the target of harassment has been additionally bullied in some way into being silent, perhaps by threats of retaliation, she said.

Records of 53 claims were provided without an incident description and were not included in the analysis.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennanThe University of San Diego will try to cut operating expenses by at least $15 million over the next five years, largely to avoid the need for big hikes in tuition, an issue thats causing problems at private liberal arts schools across the country.

The 69-year-old Catholic institution has raised tuition by almost $15,000 over the past decade, pushing the figure to $48,750, roughly the cost of a new Mercedes-Benz SLC class automobile.

The tuition hikes havent stymied growth; enrollment hit a record 9,075 this fall. The school has nearly reached capacity at its campus in Alcala Park.

But students and parents nationwide are expressing anger about the seemingly endless tuition increases that have been imposed by colleges and universities.

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Administrators say the hikes are needed to cover such things as raises for faculty and staff, and rising cost of health care.

But USD concedes there is a problem.

We are trying to take pressure off students, said USD Vice President Andy Allen. I dont want our tuition to keep going up and up and up. It doesnt make any sense.

The non-profit university is going to review its operating expenses in hopes of cutting millions of dollars campuswide. Some of the savings will be turned into scholarships, helping students to pay for tuition. Its an age-old form of discounting used to make college more affordable, and enable schools to compete for the best students. USD also needs money to recruit and retain faculty.

There may be a few private colleges and universities  think Stanford  that dont need to worry too much about pricing issues, said Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, an online news organization.

But for most, even if they are attracting healthy applicant pools, there is a very real worry. Many of these colleges are generous with very low-income students, but are having a tough time with the middle class. So it certainly makes sense to look at the economic model, which many are.

USD is dealing with success and challenges across the board.

Earlier this year, the campus completed a capital campaign that raised a record $317 million. The money is helping the university improve academic programs, from engineering and nursing to business and peace studies.

But USD still needs to raise tens of millions of dollars, mostly to help fund major new structures, including the construction of a $67 million complex for the business school, and to renovate older landmark buildings, like Founders and Camino halls. Copley Library also needs to be modernized.

The university also is examining the status of academic programs, including the School of Law, where enrollment has been declining, as it is nationally. The drop partly reflects the countrys strong economy; many people choose jobs over college when work is plentiful.

But labor experts say that the rise of automation in the legal world also is discouraging people from going to law school.

Then there is the issue of USDs size.

College enrollment is declining across the country, particularly at liberal arts schools. But USD managed to add 1,438 students over the past decade, eclipsing the 9,000 mark.

That wouldnt be an issue at a place like UC San Diego, which sits on a massive piece of land in La Jolla. But USD is shoe-horned into a 180-acre parcel, and its mostly built out.

The university wants to be able to flesh out its graduate programs while preserving the schools relative intimacy, and its physical appeal. Last year, the Princeton Review ranked USD the most beautiful campus in the U.S.

Were not going to build lecture halls to hold 700 students, Allen said. Thats just not who we are, or who we want to be.

We want our students and faculty to know each other on a first name basis. Thats part of what you expect to get when you come to USD.The annual open enrollment period for Medicare is under way and millions of Americans age of 65 or older will sign up for the first time or shop around for new coverage.

As with all insurance policies, you should have a clear understanding of the terms  because, like other insurance, Medicare has quite a few restrictions on what it will pay for.

Avoid unpleasant surprises. Make sure you know about these 10 medical expenses that are not covered under basic, original Medicare parts A (hospital insurance) and B (medical insurance).

Long-term care

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In general Medicare doesnt cover long-term care, including most nursing home care and full-time or ongoing nursing care in your home.

Medicaid, the governments health insurance for lower-income Americans, does cover long-term care. However, if your income is too high, you must pay for long-term care out of your own pocket until your resources are depleted and you reach Medicaid eligibility. This is called a spend-down.

Prescription drugs

Prescriptions are not included in basic Medicare coverage. Parts A and B primarily cover hospital stays, doctor visits, ambulance services and medical equipment.

To receive prescription drug coverage in your senior years, you must enroll in either a Medicare Part D drug plan or a Medicare Advantage (Part C) plan. Both programs are overseen by Medicare but are run by private insurance companies.

Medicare Part D comes with annual premiums averaging $34 per month. Medicare Advantage costs vary widely.

Dental checkups and dentures

Medicare pays for basic inpatient and outpatient medical care -- which means dental care is not included. You do have a few options for getting dental coverage.

You may buy private secondary insurance that includes dental coverage. Some Medicare Advantage plans also offer dental coverage and are usually cheaper than commercial secondary insurance, though theres usually an annual dollar limit on dental benefits.

So, some Medicare policyholders opt to use an existing, tax-advantaged health savings account to pay for dental expenses. But note that you cannot contribute to an HSA once youre on Medicare.

Eye exams and glasses

Unless a patient has diabetes or cataracts, standard Medicare does not cover routine eye care, including exams, eyeglasses and contact lenses.

Some Medicare Advantage plans include vision coverage, but many seniors opt to purchase stand-alone vision insurance instead, because it can be cheaper.

If you dont wear glasses or your vision has been stable, paying out of pocket for an annual visit to the eye doctor may cost less than premiums. But dont skip your yearly exams, because those can pre-empt serious eye conditions or vision loss.

Hearing aids

Hearing problems often present themselves later in life than vision problems. Unfortunately, original Medicare does not cover hearing aids.

Some Medicare Advantage plans will pay for a hearing aid, or you might use money from a health savings account.

Again, Medicare doesnt allow its enrollees to put money into HSAs. So, many experts recommend investing in an HSA while youre still working, to fund hearing aids, dental care and other incidental medical costs after you retire.

Cosmetic surgery

Cosmetic surgery that isnt intended to remedy a documented medical or mental health issue is rarely covered by any health insurance  and Medicare is no exception. If you want Medicare to pay for your cosmetic procedure, youll need to prove that the surgery is medically necessary.

But if its just a matter of having your nose reshaped or your face contoured, youll have to pay for it yourself.

Acupuncture

Medicare flatly will not cover acupuncture, which it views as an alternative medicine thats not medically necessary.

Note that a few private Medicare Advantage plans will pay for acupuncture. Youd need to check the terms of the policy.

Acupuncturists often set their prices lower or offer payment plans to make things easier for their older clients on fixed incomes.

Routine foot care

Medicare says it covers medically necessary and reasonable foot care. In other words, it wont pay for a podiatrist visit unless the policyholder has diabetes or a diagnosed foot disorder, such as a bone problem.

The program also does not pay for orthopedic shoes, arch inserts or other foot-related medical supplies that are considered routine. And, it wont cover callus removal or bunion surgery unless a doctor can establish that theres a medical need.

TV, phone or a private room in the hospital

Some hospitals have fees if you want a television or landline phone in your room. Medicare wont cover those charges.

Enrollees are free to choose those amenities, but youll be responsible for the costs.

Hospitals also charge more for private rooms. Medicare will cover the cost of a private room only if there is a documented medical reason to have one.

Medical care abroad

Like many private health insurance policies, Medicare is guaranteed to cover you only within the United States.

Medicare will pay for medical services abroad only in a few rare cases:



If youre traveling through Canada between Alaska and another state and you must receive urgent care on Canadian soil.



If you live in the U.S. but a foreign hospital is closer to your home than an American one.

Retirees traveling abroad are encouraged to purchase temporary travel medical insurance. Otherwise, youll have to pay for medical services out of pocket  often before you even see a doctor.

Esther Trattner writes for MoneyWise.com

MoneyWise.com has a free retirement eBook you can download, filled with useful tips and information.For the first time, there are two Democrats fighting for the right to represent coastal North County in the state Assembly.

Long a Republican stronghold, the decision of incumbent Rocky Chavez to participate in the primary fight to succeed Darrell Issa in the 49th Congressional District left a key opening for newcomers. And the regions top-two primary system, introduced in 2012, made it possible for a pair of Democrats to appear on the general election ballot this year.

Fewer than 1,200 votes separated activist and freelance journalist Elizabeth Warren of Oceanside from Encinitas City Councilwoman Tasha Boerner Horvath, with the two women finishing first and second among a primary field of seven candidates.

Since June, Democrats and Republicans alike have been faced with an unprecedented question: Which of these two women from the same party should they support?

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In the ensuing months, both have built active campaigns with tight core groups of loyalists focused every day until Nov. 6 on explaining the differences they see among two candidates whose basic views are significantly more similar than they likely would be if Republican faced Democrat this year.

On Monday morning, a crew was busy making calls on Warrens behalf inside a small office across the street from the Oceanside Civic Center. Many have grown used to explaining that this Warren is not that Warren, the senator from back East engaged in a never-ending war of words with President Donald Trump.

Towering San Diego paramedic Kyle Thayer of Carlsbad was there making calls and chatting with fellow supporters. He said he met Warren through the Move On movement. Both attended local marches, and she helped him organize some public forums on Medicare for All, the movement that motivates him the most.

Elizabeth Warren talks with campaign volunteer Kyle Thayer at campaign headquarters in Oceanside Monday. (Paul Sisson)

Thayer said he and his family are struggling to survive on the $15 per hour that non-government paramedics make, and he has grown tired of seeing the people he picks up struggling with preventable diseases that have become emergencies due to lack of access to primary care.

The system has gotten more than a little bit jacked up, and I want to change the way that its run, Thayer said. Im supporting Liz because she wants to do the same. I really believe that.

Three miles south near Buena Vista Lagoon in a similar rented campaign office, a group of volunteers sat Thursday making cold calls on behalf of Boehner Horvath.

Volunteer Rebecca Kay and candidate Tasha Boerner Hovrath at campaign headquarters in Carlsbad Thursday. (Paul Sisson)

Rebecca Kay of Leucadia said the idea of making cold calls to total strangers was more than a little uncomfortable, but she came out and got dialing because she knows the candidate. Their kids are friends, and she has watched Boehner Horvath move from local PTA issues to city-wide issues in a short time.

At every level, she said, her friend has shown the right mix of backbone and collegiality to bring people together.

I know her, and I know she can get things done, Kay said. Shes aggressive without being offensive. Thats what I like about her personality. And shes open minded. I think thats really important right now.

On the issues, the pair are similar, but not identical.

Recent responses to questions from The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board show that Warren, for example, favors creating a public bank of California to provide working capital for builders willing to create affordable housing. Boerner Horvath focuses on legalization of accessory dwelling units when confronted with the affordable housing question.

The Encinitas councilwomans campaign has steered toward environmental stewardship, increased public school funding and neighborhood safety as key issues to motivate voters. Warren, by comparison, has been most strident on health care for all and the $15-for-all, living-wage fight.

Neither has been endorsed by the Democratic party because both agreed, after the primary votes rolled in, not to seek their partys formal endorsement.

But that has not kept endorsements from flooding in anyway.

On her website, Boerner Horvath lists support from more than 20 current state Assembly members and many business groups. Warren is strong with the insurgent spirit embodied by 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders which has garnered support from the Progressive Democrats of North San Diego County and the San Diego Democratic Socialists of America.

One candidate has enjoyed significantly stronger fundraising so far.

As of Sept. 22, the most recent fundraising deadline, Boerner Horvath had out-raised Warren by a factor of six-to-one, bringing in more than $400,000 in donations compared to about $70,000 for her competitor.

Detailed contribution data from the California Secretary of States campaign finance database shows that the candidate from Encinitas has garnered a string of large donations from labor unions, with the three largest being the California State Council of Service Employees, the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California and the California Teachers Association, which each contributed a total of $17,600 as of Sept. 22.

Warren, by comparison, listed just one political action committee contribution, a $457 donation from grassroots, organizing powerhouse moveon.org. The rest of her contributions came from individuals and, so far, have totaled no more than $5,250.

While this fundraising disparity might seem insurmountable, roughly the same money mismatch was present during the primary, and Warren still came out on top. The candidate and her supporters are quick to use those big donations as a cudgel on social media, while Boerner Horvath is just as quick to note that she has brought in more small donations from regular citizens than her opponent.

Though the two have agreed to forego seeking their partys endorsement, that lets just get along spirit has not meant that these two camps are holding hands and singing kumbaya.

In August, Warren faced a challenge from a local voter who questioned her ballot designation of community activist and journalist, noting it has been several years since she has been employed in the latter and she is not paid for the former. Warren found herself successfully defending those monikers in a California Secretary of State hearing.

Warrens team quickly spotted the name of the law firm that pushed the suit among Boerner Horvaths listed campaign expenditures, and the candidate said she smells the party machine at work.

Part of the reason they dont want me up in Sacramento is Im not a rubber stamp for the party, Warren said.

Asked Thursday about her campaigns decision to pay for the challenge, Boerner Horvath said her campaign felt it was important to set the record straight, but added that she has consciously avoided making the challenge a mud-slinging event.

We have focused on what we believe I bring to the table, but we have never, in our communications, gone negative on that issue, Boerner Horvath said.

For more information on where each candidate stands on specific policy issues, check out bit.ly/Horvath76 and bit.ly/Warren76.

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paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsissonWhen Christian Ilaka wakes up, the first thing he sees on his wall in large letters is the word Focus.

The 25-year-old uses the reminder to motivate himself to do what he needs to do to succeed in his new life in the U.S.

Ilaka, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, came as a refugee in February with eight family members as part of a shrinking number of newcomers to San Diego County.

While new arrivals from the Democratic Republic of Congo, at 115, made up the largest group of refugees who came to the county in fiscal 2018, the overall number of Congolese resettled in San Diego decreased to the lowest number since 2014 when 53 came.

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Iraqis used to be the largest group of newcomers to the county, and so many came that they made San Diego the California county that resettled the most refugees for about a decade. That changed in fiscal 2018 with new policies in place from the Trump administration drastically lowering the overall number of arrivals as well as changing who was able to come.

Though President Donald Trump took office during fiscal 2017, this past fiscal year, which ended in September, was the first full year with his changes and the first time those changes knocked San Diego County from the top of the list.

The county resettled 264 refugees in fiscal 2018, an 82 percent drop from the 1,503 who came in fiscal 2017, and a 91 percent drop from the 3,075 who came in fiscal 2016. More refugees came to San Diego in one month during previous fiscal years than did for all of fiscal 2018.

President Donald Trump set the annual cap last year at 45,000 refugees. The U.S. resettled just under half of that at 22,491. Thats also lower than the planned cap for fiscal 2019, proposed at 30,000.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in announcing the new cap that the reduction was to account for an increase in asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The refugee ceiling number should not be viewed in isolation from other expansive humanitarian programs, Pompeo said. Some will characterize the refugee ceiling as the sole barometer of Americas commitment to vulnerable people around the world. This would be wrong.

Pompeo also defended the longer processing times that have come with Trump administration changes to the resettlement program.

The American people must have complete confidence that everyone granted resettlement in our country is thoroughly vetted, Pompeo said. The security checks take time, but theyre critical.

Resettlement agencies fear that the new cap of 30,000 could mean the number of actual arrivals shrinks even more.

Our intent is to really hold the government accountable for reaching that target knowing we have many people in harms way and in desperate situations, said Donna Duvin, executive director of the International Rescue Committee in San Diego.

For Etleva Bejko, director of refugee and immigration services at Jewish Family Service, watching the number of arrivals shrink has been especially difficult knowing that conflicts around the world have created more refugees registered with the United Nations than ever before.

When you do this work day-to-day, and you work with the clients, youre not even thinking about the numbers as much, Bejko said. Each one is a family that is trying to do their best, focusing on their children. All they want is to be safe and have a future.

Her agency helped a family of seven refugees from Myanmar  formerly known as Burma  get settled this year. They had been waiting since 1999.

This is the day I have been living for, the mother told Bejko after the family arrived.

For other families, arriving in the U.S. doesnt mean that the wait is over. Many have family members still waiting overseas for their processing to finish.

Its just heart-breaking to see somebody worrying about family constantly and not be able to have a final answer, Bejko said. People are still in process, but its taking longer to get information.

The International Rescue Committee was able to reunite at least one person  a Rohingya refugee fleeing Myanmar  with family here, according to Duvin.

The agency also began receiving refugees being held by Australia on Nauru Island. The process, based on an agreement the U.S. made with Australia before Trump took office, has been slow, Duvin said, but she was happy that some were making it through.

Resettlement agencies like Jewish Family Service and International Rescue Committee have had to restructure their programs because of the lower numbers of arrivals. When staff positions fell vacant, they often went unfilled. Those who remained shifted to providing longer-term services to refugees who had already arrived, and agencies became increasingly reliant on private donations to fund their work.

With the shifting focus from resettling refugees from the Middle East to resettling those from African countries, the International Rescue Committee has also been recruiting Swahili speakers.

While resettlement agencies prepare for the possibility of even fewer arrivals in fiscal 2019, they still dont know how much money they will receive to do their work or whether they will be allowed to stay open. Since the Trump administration is still working out details about the 2019 resettlement efforts, it has not yet released its budget for the program for this year.

Local resettlement agencies are operating through December with leftover money from the fiscal 2018 budget because the number of resettled refugees didnt reach the 45,000 cap. They have been told that some of the nine agencies nationwide may be asked to close their doors once the 2019 budget is finalized.

A State Department official confirmed that the administration is expecting to fund a smaller number of resettlement agencies.

We expect to have a resettlement network that is smaller but still national in scope, the official said. Decisions regarding the location of resettlement affiliates will be based, as they have always been, on prioritizing family reunification and consideration of the local resettlement environment and economy.

For Ilaka, the shrinking numbers of arrivals have personal impact because he has friends back in the refugee camp in Uganda where he lived for eight years who are still waiting to come. He celebrates what he has here, but he faces constant inner conflict about how much he can help the people left behind while he works to better his own future.

He compared the feeling of waiting in the refugee camps to that of waiting for a bus that is supposed to come in 10 minutes but doesnt arrive for 10 hours. He waited for so long that it felt like he had no choice but to wait more. He couldve started walking, he said, but then if the bus came, he wouldve had to run back to catch it.

You have to be there to know what its like to be a refugee, to be waiting for something you have no control over, Ilaka said. You go to bed, wake up the next morning and hope. Thats the only thing you have when youre a refugee  hope.

He recalled the pain of telling the intimate details of the worst moments of his life to officials who were deciding whether he counted as a refugee. The longer a refugee waits to be resettled, the more they have to tell those stories, he said.

He keeps the trauma buried in the back of his mind and tries not to think about memories like the Six-Day War that rained hundreds of bombs and thousands of bullets on the town he lived in when he was about six years old.

He was at school when the war broke out, a hailstorm of bullets echoing in his classroom. He took shelter under his desk for hours until a stranger arrived that afternoon to help him get home.

He remembers running past the dead bodies of older students who had tried to go home earlier in the day and having to jump over some of the dead as he made his way across town.

Exhausted from running, he and the man helping him stopped for a moment to rest under a tree. Right after they started moving again, a bomb exploded at the spot where they had been standing. Once they reached home, Ilaka hid in his basement until the end of the war. He couldnt eat meat for a long time because it reminded him of what he had seen.

This nightmare you cant explain, Ilaka said. The images you cant make sense of. There are a million ways to die. Some you cant explain. It just sticks in the head.

In addition to working a job at a factory assembling car parts and going to school for software engineering, Ilaka is interning with the International Rescue Committees youth program to mentor high school boys. He hopes to inspire them to go after their dreams early in life.

The American dream, its what you make of it, Ilaka said. Thats what I like about this place, you have the power to decide what you will make for your future.

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kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on TwitterFederal officials are seeing a steep increase in families and unaccompanied minors seeking legal asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, and shelters in Tijuana report they are housing record numbers of migrants waiting their turn.

The number of people who are part of a family unit seeking legal entry into the U.S. through the San Diego ports of entry in fiscal year 2018, through August, was up 139 percent compared to the same period in 2017. The number was 12,340, up from 5,167.

Customs and Border Protection statistics show a 31 percent increase in unaccompanied children during the same period. The majority of unaccompanied children come from Guatemala while the families are overwhelmingly coming from Mexicos interior, the data shows. Others come from Nigeria, Honduras and Pakistan.

Tijuanas shelters say they are strained from the number of mothers with children trying to enter the U.S. seeking asylum through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, after the U.S. ended a policy of family separations at the border. Thousands are hunkering down in Tijuana shelters or in tents right outside on the streets.

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Capt. Isaac Olvera runs the Salvation Army Center for women and children in Colonia Libertad, where he says more than 2,000 people in Tijuana are waiting in limbo, a number hes never seen before.

Full. Full. Full, Olvera said in Spanish. The shelters for women and children are full. They are sick. They have nutritional problems. There isnt enough food. This is causing a lot of problems.

At the Refugio para Mujeres por el Ejercito de Salvacion, Maria de Carmen Rojas Cruz, 21, has waited in Tijuana for 15 days with her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son at her side, after a journey by train and foot from Michoacan, Mexico.

I had to leave because there were ugly things happening there, she said. Rojas said she fled because drug cartels were stealing children from their mothers.

There was so much violence. I was so afraid I could not even be out in public with my kids because I feared they would be taken from me, she said. There was a very serious problem with children being stolen.

Rojas hopes for a better life in Chicago.

Im all alone, Rojas said. Its really difficult for me because I know that my aunt and uncle in Chicago can help me watch the kids while I find work, and they want to help me. But, practically, its so hard because of all that I have to do to get there 

Her voice trails off, as her 3-year-old son tugs at her, trying to get her attention for a vitamin pack, just delivered by volunteers.

The situation is straining resources for those who serve Tijuanas homeless population and shelters for Mexican nationals who are deported from the United States back across the border into their native homeland.

At Padre Chava  another shelter in Tijuana  women from 19 different countries sit around one table. Despite language barriers, their maternal glances and noises are understood, as the laughter of their children making handstands reaches their table.

Many migrants come to Tijuana believing that asylum is a feasible way to cross the border into the U.S. when its actually not, said several immigration authorities in Mexico and the U.S.

In fact, their chances of being granted U.S. asylum are not good, and they will likely be returned to the country from which they fled.

The U.S. denies entry or deports migrants from Mexico and Central America  particularly Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras  at higher rates than other countries, such as India, China and countries in Africa. All have to meet a strict legal standard to claim asylum.

Typically, when non-Mexicans present themselves at U.S. ports of entry, theyve already been issued a temporary visa from the Mexican government that allows them to travel through the country for two weeks.

Currently, that office, the Comision Mexicana de Ayuda de Reugiados, is severely backlogged itself after being destroyed in the 2017 earthquake in Mexico City. Even though the Oficia de Salida pass gives migrants only two weeks, many have been waiting in Tijuana shelters for more than 40 days with no plans to leave the country until their number is called by U.S. officials.

Mexico does not plan to deport migrants back to their home country as they wait in Tijuana. When their number is approaching, U.S. immigration authorities alert the shelters to send the migrants to the border, according to those working at the shelters.

Theyve done a really good job of spreading them out all across the city this time so it doesnt look so much like a crisis like it did in 2016, says Alejandro Fonseca, a Salvation Army volunteer. But this is a crisis, and here comes another wave, he says referring to a caravan of 2,000 Honduran refugees reportedly making their way to Tijuana.

At the U.S.-Mexico border, asylum seekers submit to an initial screening by inspectors from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

If they clear that hurdle, they are turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to consider whether the individuals must be detained while their cases are reviewed by Department of Homeland Security and immigration courts.

Even for families who get over the first hurdle of an asylum application, which is test of whether they have credible fear of living in their homeland, the legal process will be lengthy and difficult. People fleeing violent regions threatened by drug cartels dont necessarily qualify, according to immigration authorities. The asylum law requires extensive paper documentation, and first-hand testimony showing well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality or membership of a particular social group.

Thousands who are unsuccessful face removal from the U.S.

For people staying in Tijuanas shelters this week, awaiting their turn to be processed, like Rojas, the outlook is bleak.

Its so difficult, but all I can do is wait, she said.

Olvera worries for the moment that Tijuanas shelters can no longer accommodate any more women with children.

This is a dangerous city with organized crime, and its very dangerous for women with children to be alone on the street, he said.

Contributor Wendy Fry can be reached at wendym.fry@gmail.comSurveillance video recorded by Turkish law enforcement appears to confirm reports that Saudi agents used a body double as part of an attempted coverup after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The video  obtained and broadcast by CNN on Monday  purportedly shows a Saudi agent walking out of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul wearing Khashoggis clothes, as well as spectacles and a fake beard, in an apparent attempt to disguise himself as the slain Saudi journalist.

The video was released as pressure intensified on Saudi officials to explain what happened to Khashoggi, 59, a critic of the Saudi government who had been living in self-exile in Virginia and was in Istanbul to obtain documents for the pending marriage to his Turkish fiancee.

After denying any knowledge of Khashoggis death, the Saudi government reversed course Saturday, saying he had accidentally been killed in the consulate after an altercation with a team sent to negotiate his return. But that account has been greeted with suspicion and derision by European leaders and many U.S. politicians.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to reveal details of an extensive investigation into the death Tuesday, in what could be a pivotal moment in the case. Turkish investigators have alleged that 15 Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, soon after he entered the consulate in Istanbul three weeks ago.

The Trump administration has intensified its contacts with the Saudi leadership in recent days, as the president and his allies have scrambled to preserve their relationship with the kingdom, a close regional ally and major purchaser of U.S. weapons. President Donald Trump has swung between publicly accepting the Saudi account of Khashoggis death and complaining of deception and lies from the kingdom.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Trump said that he was not satisfied with what he has heard about who is responsible for Khashoggis killing but that he did not want to lose all of that investment by punishing the Saudi leadership. Later, in an interview with USA Today, Trump said he believed that the death resulted from a plot gone awry, seemingly echoing the official Saudi explanation.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met Monday in Riyadh with Saudi Arabias de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, illustrating how the White House is retaining close ties with the embattled leader despite the growing international outcry.

Saudi Arabias Foreign Ministry posted a photo of the meeting on Twitter, saying in a caption that Mohammed stressed the importance of the Saudi-US strategic partnership in the encounter.

Tony Sayegh, Mnuchins top spokesman, said the two men discussed the Khashoggi investigation, the implementation of sanctions against Iran, the Saudi economy and ways to combat the financing of terrorism.

Still, the Treasury Department was reluctant to comment on the meeting, which had not been announced in advance.

Bruce Riedel, a former senior Central Intelligence Agency official who is now head of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution, said the session was a way for Saudi officials to signal that the crown prince wont be cowed by any investigation into Khashoggis death.

Hes just trying to tough it out and say, You have to deal with me,  Riedel said.  Im in charge here. Im not going anywhere. You cant avoid having your picture taken with me when you come here. 

There have been growing questions in recent days about what role, if any, Mohammed played in the murder plot. Twelve of the 15 members of what Turkish officials call a hit squad dispatched to kill Khashoggi have ties to the Saudi security services, and several have connections to the crown prince, according to their posts on social media, emails and local media reports. Saudi authorities deny that Mohammed was aware of the operation.

Like many other foreign officials, Mnuchin announced last week that he was withdrawing from a high-profile investment conference in Saudi Arabia this week. But he traveled to the kingdom for other meetings, officials said.

In New York, Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and a White House adviser, said in an interview at a CNN conference Monday that he has advised Mohammed to be fully transparent about the Khashoggi case. Kushner has cultivated a close partnership with the heir to the Saudi throne.

Kushner declined to say whether he believes the Saudi account of Khashoggis death, saying the administration was still in the fact-finding phase.

Trump said that top U.S. intelligence officials were in Turkey, suggesting they were trying to assess the information the Turks have gathered. CIA Director Gina Haspel departed for Turkey on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Saudi officials have so far refused to say what happened to Khashoggis remains, one of many questions raised about their explanation for the killing.

For weeks, the Saudi government had said Khashoggi walked out of the consulate after his Oct. 2 visit. The body double shown in the newly released video appeared to be an attempt to substantiate that claim, but the cover story fell apart, according to a diplomat familiar with the case. The video footage clearly reveals the man is wearing different shoes than Khashoggi wore when he entered the consulate.

It was a flawed body double, so it never became an official part of the Saudi governments narrative, said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

The video aired Monday - which appeared to show Mustafaal-Madani, 57, and an accomplice - further challenges the Saudi governments explanations of what transpired in the consulate and in the hours after Khashoggis death.

In a series of clips from closed-circuit television cameras, Madani is shown wearing the gray pants, light shirt and black jacket worn by Khashoggi before he entered the mission.

Madani, who is suspected of working for Saudi intelligence, traveled to New York shortly before Prince Mohammed was scheduled to arrive there as part of his U.S. tour this spring, according to records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. Four users of a caller-ID app popular in the Arab world list Madani as working in intelligence, and another describes him as working in the headquarters of the kingdoms primary intelligence agency.

In the video,Madani arrives at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbuls Levent district at around 11 a.m., wearing black and white sneakers and a blue plaid shirt, roughly two hours before the arrival of Khashoggi.

Madani is shown departing the consulate about four hours later wearing Khashoggis clothing - except for his shoes. He is accompanied by another man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and carrying a white plastic bag. The two suspects take a taxi to Istanbuls Sultan Ahmet district, where they enter a bathroom, the images show. Madani emerges from the bathroom wearing the same plaid shirt he had on when he arrived at the consulate, and the two men dispose of the plastic bag, which Turkish officials believe contained Khashoggis clothes, CNN reported.

Later, the two are seen laughing as they approach the Movenpick hotel, where both were believed to have stayed during their brief stay in Istanbul.

The video was released as Turkish authorities continued their investigation, which has included seeking testimony from the consulates employees. Investigators on Monday discovered an abandoned vehicle they said belonged to the consulate. It was located in a private parking lot in the Sultangazi district, about 10 miles from the consulate grounds.

Turkish investigators were prevented by Saudi authorities from searching the car, which bore diplomatic license plates, Turkeys NTV news channel reported.

Later Monday, the pro-government A Haber channel aired footage it said was of Saudi consulate officials burning documents in the missions garden the day after Khashoggi was killed. The channel did not say how the footage was obtained but it appeared to have been filmed from directly above the consulate.

Turkish officials have maintained a steady leak of information to both local and international media outlets in the weeks since Khashoggi was killed.

The strategy, analysts say, is designed to maximize pressure both on the United States and on Saudi Arabia, its rival.

More than four dozen members of Congress sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats on Monday demanding clarity on what the intelligence community knew about the risk Khashoggi faced before his disappearance and whether American officials attempted to notify him that his life was in danger. Theyve also sought the declassification of relevant intelligence intercepts.

U.S. intelligence agencies have a duty to warn people at risk of being kidnapped or killed, according to a policy adopted in 2015. The letter, signed by 54 Democrats and one Republican, says the lawmakers intend to use the full force of Congressional oversight and investigatory powers to obtain these answers should they not be forthcoming.

The office of the Turkish presidency said early Monday that Erdogan and Trump spoke by phone the night before and agreed to clear up the Jamal Khashoggi incident.

A White House official confirmed that the call took place. Trump and his administration have emphasized Saudi Arabias status as a key U.S. ally.

Paletta reported from Washington. The Washington Posts Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul and John Hudson, Karen Demirjian, John Wagner, Shane Harris and Josh Dawsey in Washington contributed to this report.

Published by Washington Post.A police officer on Monday shot and killed an 18-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another officer near a school in the Atlanta area over the weekend, police said.

Tafahree Maynard was one of two men charged in the fatal shooting Saturday of Gwinnett County police Officer Antwan Toney. Police believe Maynard shot Toney and had launched a manhunt as he faced charges of aggravated assault and felony murder.

Police got a credible tip about Maynards whereabouts around 3 a.m. Monday, Gwinnett County police Chief Butch Ayers told reporters. Dozens of police officers went door-to-door in a search for him and interviewed people.

Two officers searching a shed behind a house encountered Maynard, who failed to comply with verbal commands, Ayers said. Maynard initially had his hand behind his back and when he showed his hand, he was holding an edged weapon in his hand, the chief said.

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One officer fired a stun gun at Maynard and the other fatally shot him from about 5 or 6 feet away, Ayers said.

Tafahree Maynard (Gwinnett County Police Department)

I would like to say that the danger to the community is over, Ayers said at a news conference, adding that police would continue to investigate any potential charges against people who may have provided assistance to Maynard during his attempt to escape justice.

Toney was responding to a call around 2:30 p.m. Saturday about a suspicious vehicle near Shiloh Middle School in the Snellville area, about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta. When the officers approached, someone in the vehicle opened fire and Toney was hit, police said. Then the vehicle sped off.

Toney died at a hospital from his wounds, police said. The 30-year-old from Southern California had been with the Gwinnett County Police Department for nearly three years, serving in his first police job.

The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community, Ayers said.

Isaiah Pretlow (Gwinnett County Police Department)

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a gun at an officer during the pursuit after Toneys fatal shooting, police had said earlier.

According to police, Pretlow drove the vehicle away after the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants. An officer searching the area later encountered Pretlow around 3 p.m. Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots, according to police. Pretlow was not hit and fled into some woods. He was subsequently taken into custody around 11:30 p.m. Saturday by U.S. marshals.President Trump took the stage at Houstons Toyota Center on Monday night to deliver a message unthinkable two years ago to many of his most ardent fans: Vote for Ted Cruz.

You know, we had our difficulties, Trump said soon after taking the podium. He went on to say that Cruz had become a really good friend.

Thats the same Texas senator Trump once dismissed as Lyin Ted, whose father Trump suggested played a role in the assassination of President Kennedy, and whose wife he mocked, prompting Cruz to call him a sniveling coward.

The same Cruz who called Trump a pathological liar and an amoral bully on the campaign trail and, after losing the primary, refused to endorse Trump at the Republican National Convention, urging Republicans to vote your conscience.

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But now they are united in the common cause of the midterm election, and all the bad blood seems to be forgotten.

Cruz, who appeared as Trumps warm-up, described the president as bold and courageous.

Im proud to have worked hand in hand with President Trump, he said, drawing the biggest applause when he predicted that in 2020, Donald Trump will be overwhelmingly reelected.

Cruzs race is among the most closely watched Senate contests. As early voting started Monday, it appeared that the new relationship between Cruz and Trump extended to their supporters.

From the archives: Donald Trump says he wouldnt accept Ted Cruzs endorsement even if it were offered 

Theres a reunification going on, said Eric Smith, a Cruz backer who became a Trump fan during the last two years and lined up early for Mondays rally. Its like when your favorite band breaks up and the two main guys dont get along.... I think theres a future.

Rhonda Bland, 50, a retired librarian from Houston who voted for Trump two years ago in the Republican presidential primary and was now backing Cruz, said she thought the rally would drive turnout among Trumps base  for Cruz.

We know whats at stake, she said.

Trump made the same pitch to his supporters that hes made at rallies across the country for other congressional candidates: A vote for a Democrat is a vote to surrender Congress.

He also gave it a Texas twist: In this election you can send a message to the radical Democrats: Dont mess with Texas.

The visit to Houston was designed to counter a surge in support and record donations for Cruzs opponent, Democratic Rep. Beto ORourke, who also held get-out-the-vote rallies Monday in and around Houston.

Trump has called ORourke a flake and a total lightweight compared with Cruz, even as ORourke raised more money and the race tightened enough to give him a chance.

On Monday, the president dismissed ORourke as a stone-cold phony and a pro-immigrant lawmaker in favor of higher taxes and open borders.

The Democrats would rather destroy American values than protect Americas borders. Vote for Ted Cruz, Trump said, reminding the crowd that a caravan of thousands of Central American immigrants is wending its way north through Mexico.

Nobody has helped me more, Trump said of Cruz. We are defending that border.

Cruz pointed out that he had the endorsement of the Border Patrol union, which led to chants of support for Trumps signature promise: Build the wall!

There is no race in the country with a starker divide on immigration, Cruz said. We need to build the wall.

Britney Husfeld was persuaded. The 34-year-old voted for Trump over Cruz in the 2016 Texas Republican primary. She said the crowd at Mondays rally sent an important message: There are people who support Trump and Cruz.

Recent polls show Cruz is ahead in the Senate race, and supporters hoped the Trump rally would boost Republican turnout.

Trump is going to swing people, said Joe Hunter, 60, a chemist from nearby Friendswood, where yards have sprouted a mix of Cruz and ORourke campaign signs. Hes got a Cruz one.

But Husfeld, a real estate agent from rural, conservative Navasota, where shes also spotted ORourke campaign signs, said she was worried that hard-core Trump supporters wouldnt be motivated to vote for Cruz.

I dont know that people can be swayed, she said.

Cruz has said he talked to Trump about visiting Texas, but it was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Tea Party stalwart and Trumps 2016 Texas campaign chairman, who traveled to Washington to seal the deal. Patrick and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott both spoke at the Houston rally, along with Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Trumps son and daughter-in-law Eric and Laura Trump.

In recent weeks, Vice President Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump have traveled to Texas for events with Cruz.

Trumps speech at the nearly packed 18,000-seat Toyota Center began at 6:30 p.m. local time, but hundreds of fans lined up overnight, having traveled from across Texas and surrounding states.

Patricia Brady said she drove her 14-year-old son several hours from their home in Corpus Christi, Texas, to the Trump rally, their first. She was inspired after watching the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, which she called outrageous. Brady said she agreed with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that Kavanaugh was unfairly pilloried, and said the hearings would probably motivate conservatives to turn out in the midterm election.

There was a fire that got ignited by the hearings, said Brady, 47, a respiratory therapist. The way the Democrats have been acting upset a lot of people.

He says his wife got it for him #texas pic.twitter.com/tHThlzw5Qh  Molly Hennessy-Fiske (@mollyhf) October 22, 2018

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

@mollyhf

UPDATES:

8:30 p.m.: The article was updated with scenes from the rally.

The article was originally published at 12 p.m.SYDNEY  Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered a formal apology on Monday to Australias victims of child sex abuse, saying the nation must acknowledge their long, painful journey and say sorry.

His emotional speech delivered in Parliament before hundreds of survivors followed the conclusions of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the nations highest level of inquiry.

Today as a nation we confront our failure to listen, to believe, and to provide justice, he said, adding: We say sorry.

The four-year inquest that delivered its final report in December revealed shocking evidence from more than 17,000 survivors and heard allegations against government, church and private institutions, as well as prominent individuals. It also heard evidence from leaders such as Vatican Cardinal George Pell, who is charged with committing historical sex abuses himself and was accused of failing to protect children.

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Morrison said it was time for Australia to confront key questions.

Why werent the children of our nation loved, nurtured and protected? Why was their trust betrayed? he said.

Why did those who know cover it up? Why were the cries of children and parents ignored? Why was our system of justice blind to injustice? Why has it taken so long to act? Why were other things more important than this, the care of innocent children? Why didnt we believe?

Morrison said nothing could be done to right the wrongs inflicted on children.

Even after a comprehensive royal commission, which finally enabled the voices to be heard and the silence to be broken, we will all continue to struggle, he said.

So today, we gather in this chamber in humility, not just as representatives of the people of this country, but as fathers, as mothers, as siblings, friends, workmates and, in some cases, indeed, as victims and survivors.

The lawmakers stood for a minutes silence following the apology, which came with the announcement of government plans to create a museum and research center to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse, and to ensure the nation does not forget the horrors victims have suffered.

The research center will also assist those seeking help, and guide best practice for training and other services.

The government will also commit to reporting every year for the next five years on the progress of the royal commissions recommendations.

It has already accepted 104 of the commissions 122 recommendations, including a redress payments program, with the other 18 still under examination.

The government has also established a new office of child safety, to report to the prime minister.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten joined the apology, saying Australia had failed tens of thousands of children, across generations.

Our nation let you down. Today, we offer you our nations apology, with humility, with honesty, with hope for healing now, and with a fire in our belly to ensure that our children will grow up safe in the future, Shorten said.

While many survivors and campaigners went to Canberra to hear the apology, many are still calling for far more work to be done to address the history of abuse.

Care Leavers Australia Network chief executive Leonie Sheedy called on the government to remove a charity tax exemption from institutions that are still deciding whether to opt in to the national redress scheme for victims.

She says shes never healed from being abused.

You can learn to live with it, but it never goes away. It will be with me and all care leavers until the day that they put the lid on the coffin, Sheedy told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday.

Hetty Johnson, founder of the Bravehearts support group for victims, said survivors had made it clear they wanted all the royal commissions recommendations fully implemented.

There is a lot of anger in the community, she told Sky News.

Theyve made it very clear they want these recommendations implemented as they were intended and its yet to see whether the government will actually do that.TAPACHULA, Mexico - Thousands of Honduran migrants hoping to reach the U.S. stretched out on rain-soaked sidewalks, benches and public plazas in the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, worn down by another days march under a blazing sun.

Keeping together for strength and safety in numbers, some huddled under a metal roof in the citys main plaza Sunday night. Others lay exhausted in the open air, with only thin sheets of plastic to protect them from ground soggy from an intense evening shower. Some didnt even have a bit of plastic yet.

We are going to sleep here in the street, because we have nothing else, said Jose Mejia, 42, a father of four from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. We have to sleep on the sidewalk, and tomorrow wake up and keep walking. Well get a piece of plastic to cover ourselves if it rains again.

Adela Echeverria, 52, a single mother of three, teared up as she spoke about her plight.

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One of my companions went to look for some plastic, she said. We are used to sleeping like this, taking care of each other. We dont want to be separated.

The groups advance has drawn strong criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, who lashed out again Sunday at the Democratic Party over what he apparently sees as a winning issue for Republicans a little over two weeks ahead of midterm elections.

After blaming the Democrats for weak laws on immigration a few days earlier, Trump said via Twitter: The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat party. Change the immigration laws NOW!

In another tweet, he said the migrants would not be allowed into the United States.

Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador suggested Sunday that the United States, Canada and Mexico work out a joint plan for funding development in the poor areas of Central America and southern Mexico.

In this way we confront the phenomenon of migration, because he who leaves his town does not leave for pleasure but out of necessity, said Lopez Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1.

The migrant caravan, which started out more than a week ago with less than 200 participants, has drawn additional people along the way and it swelled to an estimated 5,000 Sunday after many migrants found ways to cross from Guatemala into southern Mexico as police blocked the official crossing point.

Later in the day, authorities in Guatemala said another group of about 1,000 migrants had entered that country from Honduras.

1 / 87 Overcrowding of families is observed by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General on June 11, 2019, at the Border Patrols Centralized Processing Center in McAllen, Texas. This photo was released on Tuesday, July 2, 2019, as part of a report by the Office of the Inspector General noting DHS needs to address dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults in the Rio Grande Valley. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 2 / 87 This image released in a report on July 02, 2019 by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Office shows the overcrowding of a Border Patrol facility on June 12, 2019, in Fort Brown, Texas with 88 adult males in a cell that has a maximum capacity of 41. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 3 / 87 This image released in a report on July 02, 2019, by the US Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Office shows migrant families overcrowded in a Border Patrol facility on June 11, 2019, in Weslaco, Texas. The report by the DHS Inspector General said the health and security of both migrants and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are under threat. (Eric BARADAT / DHS/ Office of the Inspector General / AFP/Getty Images) 4 / 87 This image released in a report on July 02, 2019 by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Office shows the overcrowding of a Border Patrol facility on June 10, 2019, in McAllen, Texas with standing room only for adult males. The report by the DHS Inspector General said the health and security of both migrants and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are under threat. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 5 / 87 This image released in a report on July 02, 2019 by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Office shows the overcrowding of a Border Patrol facility on June 12, 2019, in Fort Brown, Texas with 71 adult males in a cell designated for adult females with a maximum capacity for 41. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 6 / 87 Overcrowding of families is observed by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General on June 11, 2019, at the Border Patrols Centralized Processing Center in McAllen, Texas. This photo was released on Tuesday, July 2, 2019, as part of a report by the Office of the Inspector General noting DHS needs to address dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults in the Rio Grande Valley. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 7 / 87 This image released in a report on July 02, 2019 by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Office shows the overcrowding of a Border Patrol facility on June 12, 2019, in Fort Brown, Texas with 51 adult females held in a cell designated for male juveniles with a maximum capacity of 40. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 8 / 87 Overcrowding of families is observed by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General on June 11, 2019, at the Border Patrols Centralized Processing Center in McAllen, Texas. This photo was released on Tuesday, July 2, 2019, as part of a report by the Office of the Inspector General noting DHS needs to address dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults in the Rio Grande Valley. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 9 / 87 This image released in a report on July 02, 2019 by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Office shows the overcrowding of a Border Patrol facility on June 10, 2019, in McAllen, Texas with standing room only for adult males. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General) 10 / 87 Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas led a delegation of members of Congress to visit two border patrol facilities on July 1, 2019. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pictured here (bottom right) hugging one of the many women detained at the El Paso Border Station #1, was one of many Congressmen and women who visited the centers. (Joaquin Castro via Twitter) 11 / 87 Rep. Joaquin Castro took photos inside El Paso Border Station #1 during his delegation visit on Monday, July 1, 2019. Castro showed some of the women detained sharing a cramped cell, some held for 50 days, denied showers and life-saving medication. (Joaquin Castro via Twitter) 12 / 87 The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande on June 24, 2019, in Matamoros, Mexico, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. According to reports, Martinez had gone back into the river to get his wife after he had safely gotten their young daughter across the river. Valeria followed her father back in the river and as he tried to retrieve his daughter, they were both swept away. Martinez wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (Julia Le Duc / AP) 13 / 87 Authorities stand behind yellow warning tape along the Rio Grande bank where the bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande on June 24, 2019, in Matamoros, Mexico, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. (Julia Le Duc / AP) 14 / 87 Rigoberta Vasquez (r.), mother of sixteen-year-old migrant Carlos Hernandez Vasquez, who died May 20, 2019, at a U.S. Border Patrol holding facility in Weslaco, Texas, mourns with relatives at her house in San Jose El Rodeo village, Cubulco municipality, Baja Verapaz department, northwest of Guatemala City on May 22, 2019. Hernandez become the fifth child to die since December after being apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents. Authorities said the cause of death was unknown but local news reports said the boy had reported on May 19, 2019, that he was not feeling well and he was seen by a nurse who determined he had the flu. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 15 / 87 Tijuana, Mexico, left, and San Diego, Calif, right, are seen on Dec. 22, 2018, separated by the U.S. border fence. (Daniel Ochoa de Olza / AP) 16 / 87 Migrants seeking asylum in the United States check their names on a printed list thats posted on a board near the international bridge on April 30, 2019, in Matamoros, Mexico. They have been told that U.S. and Mexican authorities decide daily how many people will be allowed to seek asylum. President Donald Trump is proposing charging asylum seekers a fee to process their applications as he continues to try to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants seeking to cross into the U.S. (Eric Gay / AP) 17 / 87 Shreds of mylar blankets and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle are seen under the Paso Del Norte International Bridge in El Paso, Texas, on March 31, 2019. Migrants, including young children and babies, seeking asylum were being kept in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary holding area under the bridge. Some migrants were held there for as many as four days and were forced to sleep outside on gravel, provided only thin mylar blankets for warmth. (Ryan Michalesko/The Dallas Morning News via AP) 18 / 87 Central American migrants settle in a shelter at the Jesus Martinez stadium on Jan. 28, 2019 in Mexico City. Thousands of Central American migrants are waiting for Mexican officials to issue them humanitarian visas, which give them permission to be in Mexico for one year and work legally. (Marco Ugarte / AP) 19 / 87 Migrants run as tear gas is thrown by U.S. Border Protection Officers to the Mexican side of the border fence after they climbed the fence to get to San Diego, Calif., from Tijuana, Mexico, on Jan. 1, 2019. Discouraged by the long wait to apply for asylum through official ports of entry, many migrants from recent caravans are choosing to cross the U.S. border wall and hand themselves in to border patrol agents. (Daniel Ochoa de Olza / AP) 20 / 87 A group of Central American migrants walk away from tear gas thrown by the U.S. Border Patrol Officers, after they tried to cross from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego, Calif. as seen from Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico on Jan. 1, 2019. Around 100 Central American migrants made a failed attempt on New Years Eve to cross over from Mexico into the United States. As night fell and people on both sides of the frontier prepared to celebrate New Years Eve, the migrants tried to cross over but at least two smoke bombs were hurled and the migrants ultimately held back. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 21 / 87 A Central American migrant is approached by a U.S. Border Patrol Officer after he jumped over the U.S.-Mexico border fence from Tijuana, Mexico, into the United States on Jan. 1, 2019, as seen from Tijuana. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 22 / 87 Central American migrants react in Tijuana, Mexico, on Jan. 1, 2019 after U.S. Border Patrol Officers threw tear gas at them while they were trying to jump over the U.S.-Mexico border fence from Tijuana into the United States. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 23 / 87 A Central American migrant escapes from tear gas thrown by the U.S Border Patrol Officers, after they tried to cross from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego, Calif., as seen from Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico on Jan. 1, 2019. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 24 / 87 Asylum seekers stand at a bus stop after they were dropped off by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Greyhound bus station in downtown El Paso, Texas late on Dec. 23, 2018. The group of around 200, mostly from Central American, were left without money, food and means of communication. Volunteers from Annunciation House and other local churches came to the aid of as many people as possible, to find a place to house them for the night. (PAUL RATJE / AFP/Getty Images) 25 / 87 A man climbs up a section of a U.S.-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico on Dec. 24, 2018. Discouraged by the long wait to apply for asylum through official ports of entry, many Central American migrants from recent caravans are choosing to cross the U.S. border wall and hand themselves over to U.S. border agents. (Daniel Ochoa de Olza / AP) 26 / 87 A Central American migrant girl holds a book as other migrants travelling in a caravan, climb the Mexico-U.S. border fence in an attempt to cross to San Diego County, from Playas de Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico on Dec. 12, 2018. Thousands of Central American migrants have trekked for over a month in the hopes of reaching the United States. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 27 / 87 Honduran migrants walk away on Dec. 12, 2018 after failing to cross over the U.S. border wall to San Diego, California, from Playas in Tijuana, Mexico. (Moises Castillo / AP) 28 / 87 A young Honduran migrant waits for his parents to cross over the U.S. border wall after he was squeezed through one of its gaps on Dec. 12, 2018, from Playas de Tijuana, Mexico. The group of Honduran migrants turned themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents in order to apply for asylum. (Moises Castillo / AP) 29 / 87 Three migrants in the caravan huddle in the riverbank amid tear gas fired by U.S. agents on the Mexico-U.S. border near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (Ramon Espinosa / AP) 30 / 87 Migrants run from tear gas launched by U.S. agents after a group of migrants got past Mexican police near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) 31 / 87 A Central American migrant is stopped by U.S. agents who order him to go back to the Mexican side of the border near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (Pedro Acosta / AP) 32 / 87 Migrants clash with Mexican police at the Mexico-U.S. border after getting past another line of Mexican police near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) 33 / 87 Those who reached the border on Nov. 25, 2018 were the first group from the migrant caravan to do so. (PEDRO PARDO / AFP/Getty Images) 34 / 87 A group of Central American migrants climb the border fence between Mexico and the United States, near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (PEDRO PARDO / AFP/Getty Images) 35 / 87 A man lifts a child up at the border fence between Mexico and the United States, near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana on Nov. 25, 2018. (PEDRO PARDO / AFP/Getty Images) 36 / 87 Central American migrants struggle as Mexican Police push against them near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 37 / 87 Central American migrants are stopped by Mexican police forces as they reach the Mexico-U.S. border near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (PEDRO PARDO / AFP/Getty Images) 38 / 87 United States Military personel and Border Patrol agents secure the United States-Mexico border, south of San Diego, on Nov. 25, 2018. (SANDY HUFFAKER / AFP/Getty Images) 39 / 87 A migrant woman helps carry a handmade U.S. flag up the riverbank at the Mexico-U.S. border near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (Ramon Espinosa / AP) 40 / 87 A group of Central American migrants cross the nearly-dry riverbed of the Tijuana River in an attempt to get to El Chaparral port of entry, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (PEDRO PARDO / AFP/Getty Images) 41 / 87 A group of Central American migrants run along the dry riverbed of the Tijuana River in an attempt to get to El Chaparral port of entry, in Tijuana, on Nov. 25, 2018. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 42 / 87 Central American migrants, mostly from Honduras, line up to register at an employment fair on Nov. 19, 2018 near the U.S-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico. Some migrants from the caravan, currently in Tijuana, are considering staying and working, while others are deciding whether to go forward and claim asylum in the U.S., a long and arduous process. On Nov. 20, 2018, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar blocked President Trumps order to deny asylum claims to migrants who illegally crossed the southern border. (GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/Getty Images) 43 / 87 Guatemalan migrants Karen Vazquez and Edgar Vega embrace before starting on their trip on Nov. 20, 2018 from Mexicali to Tijuana, Mexico. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) 44 / 87 Thounsands of migrants continued their march towards the US on Oct. 29, 2018. Many took a break the day before. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) 45 / 87 Migrants wait in line as they arrive into the small town of Santiago Niltepec in Mexico on Oct. 29, 2018. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) 46 / 87 As the march continued though, the numbers of those participating has dwindled due to heat exhaustation, poor sanitary conditions and the distance left. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) 47 / 87 Hundreds of Honduran migrants crossed the Suchiate River, running between Guatemala and Mexico, after a security fence on the international bridge was reinforced on Oct. 29, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 48 / 87 A man carries a child as they crossed the Suchiate River, from Tecun Uman in Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico, after a security fence on the international bridge was reinforced on Oct. 29, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 49 / 87 Migrants form a human chain to cross the Suchiate River, from Tecun Uman in Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico, after a security fence on the international bridge was reinforced on Oct. 29, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 50 / 87 Those crossing are reportedly part of a new of Honduran migrants trying to cross the Guatemalan border into Mexico, in hopes they will eventually reach the United States. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 51 / 87 Mexican authorities talk to migrants after they swam across the Suchiate River, from Tecun Uman in Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico, after a security fence on the international bridge was reinforced to prevent them from passing through on Oct. 29, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 52 / 87 Migrants hold hands as they make their way across the Suchiate River, from Tecun Uman in Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico, after a security fence on the international bridge was reinforced on Oct. 29, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 53 / 87 Candles arranged in the shape of a cross serve as a simple memorial for a migrant man who died the day before after he fell from the back of a moving vehicle while traveling with a caravan to the U.S., at the central park in Huixtla, Mexico on Oct. 23, 2018. (Moises Castillo / Associated Press) 54 / 87 A Central American migrant holds his bedroll as the day begins in Huixtla, Mexico on Oct. 23, 2018. (Moises Castillo / Associated Press) 55 / 87 A Honduran migrant brushes his teeth at the main square in Tapachula, Mexico, on October 22, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 56 / 87 Honduran migrants board a truck in Metapa on their way to Tapachula, Mexico on Oct. 22, 2018. (PEDRO PARDO / AFP/Getty Images) 57 / 87 Honduran migrant children read a newspaper as they rest at the main square in Tapachula, Mexico, on Oct. 22, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 58 / 87 Honduran migrants rest at the main square in Tapachula, Mexico on Oct. 22, 2018. (JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP/Getty Images) 59 / 87 Honduran migrants wait to cross the border from Ciudad Tecun Uman in Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico on Oct. 22, 2018. (ORLANDO SIERRA. / AFP/Getty Images) 60 / 87 Honduran migrants wait to cross the border from Ciudad Tecun Uman in Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico on Oct. 22, 2018. (ORLANDO SIERRA / AFP/Getty Images) 61 / 87 Honduran migrants carry their belongings as they wait to cross the border from Ciudad Tecun Uman in Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico on Oct. 22, 2018. (ORLANDO SIERRA / AFP/Getty Images) 62 / 87 Central American migrants walking to the U.S. start their day departing Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico on Oct. 21, 2018. Despite efforts to stop them at the Guatemala-Mexico border, about 5,000 Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early today in southern Mexico. (Moises Castillo / Associated Press) 63 / 87 Central American migrants walk north toward Tapachula, Mexico with whatever they can carry after departing Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, on Oct. 21, 2018. (Moises Castillo / Associated Press) 64 / 87 Honduras migrants wait to be attended by Mexican migration authorities on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, on Oct. 21, 2018. (Oliver de Ros / Associated Press) 65 / 87 Honduran migrants heading for the U.S. cross the Suchiate River, the natural border between Guatemala and Mexico, in makeshift rafts, in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala, on Oct. 21, 2018. (ORLANDO SIERRA / AFP/Getty Images) 66 / 87 A Honduran migrant looks over the Suchiate River, which separates Mexico, right, and Guatemala, left, as he stands on a bridge covered with drying clothes in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, at sunrise on Oct. 21, 2018, near Mexicos Ciudad Hidalgo. (Oliver de Ros / Associated Press) 67 / 87 A boy cries as he is brought back down after an unsuccessful attempt to lift him over a border fence, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Earlier in the day, waving Honduran flags and carrying umbrellas to protect against the sun, thousands of migrants arrived at the Guatemalan side of the border with Mexico, demanding they be allowed passage. (Oliver de Ros / AP) 68 / 87 A Honduran migrant family is allowed to pass through to safety by Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trumps threats of retaliation. (Moises Castillo / AP) 69 / 87 A wounded man is given first aid, after clashes at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trumps threats of retaliation. (Moises Castillo / AP) 70 / 87 Men attempt to grab a tear gas canister thrown by the Mexican Federal Police, after Central American migrants rushed the gate at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trumps threats of retaliation. (Moises Castillo / AP) 71 / 87 A youth calls for calm as he stands in from of a phalanx of Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, after Central American migrants rushed the gate at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trumps threats of retaliation. (Moises Castillo / AP) 72 / 87 Honduran migrants rest at the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Members of a 3,000-strong migrant caravan have massed in this Guatemalan border town across the muddy Suchiate River from Mexico, as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens retaliation if they continue toward the United States. (Oliver de Ros / AP) 73 / 87 A Honduran migrant family is allowed to pass through to safety by Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trumps threats of retaliation. (Moises Castillo / AP) 74 / 87 Thousands of Honduran migrants rush across the border towards Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Migrants broke down the gates at the border crossing and began streaming toward a bridge into Mexico. After arriving at the tall, yellow metal fence some clambered atop it and on U.S.-donated military jeeps. Young men began violently tugging on the barrier and finally succeeded in tearing it down. (Oliver de Roos / AP) 75 / 87 Thousands of Honduran migrants rush across the border towards Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Migrants broke down the gates at the border crossing and began streaming toward a bridge into Mexico. After arriving at the tall, yellow metal fence some clambered atop it and on U.S.-donated military jeeps. Young men began violently tugging on the barrier and finally succeeded in tearing it down. (Oliver de Ros / AP) 76 / 87 A child is carried over the border fence as thousands of Honduran migrants rush across the border towards Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Migrants broke down the gates at the border crossing and began streaming toward a bridge into Mexico. After arriving at the tall, yellow metal fence some clambered atop it and on U.S.-donated military jeeps. Young men began violently tugging on the barrier and finally succeeded in tearing it down. (Oliver de Ros / AP) 77 / 87 A Honduran migrant hold his national flag, climbs the border fence in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Migrants broke down the gates at the border crossing between Guatemala and Mexico and began streaming toward a bridge into Mexico. The road sign reads in Spanish Welcome to Mexico. (Moises Castillo / AP) 78 / 87 Honduran migrants, waving their countrys flag, march in a caravan towards the GuatemalaHonduras border on Oct. 15, 2018 as they flee their homeland for a better life in the United States. A group of roughly 1,600 people joined the caravan since its inception on October 12. (Moises Castillo / AP) 79 / 87 Guatemalan police stand in the road in Esquipulas to block Honduran migrants from making their way through Guatemala and towards the U.S. on Oct. 15, 2018. (Moises Castillo / AP) 80 / 87 An elderly Honduran migrant woman talks with Guatemalan police who temporarily block the road to keep her and her caravan from advancing in Esquipulas, Guatemala on Oct. 15, 2018. While police stopped the migrants for several hours, the travelers refused to turn around and were eventually allowed to pass. (Moises Castillo / AP) 81 / 87 Honduran migrants making their way to the U.S. stand against the Guatemalan police officers blocking their path after crossing the Honduras-Guatemala border without incident on Oct. 15, 2018. (Moises Castillo / AP) 82 / 87 Honduran migrants, eventually allowed to cross through Esquipulas, Guatemala, make their way towards the U.S. on Oct. 15, 2018. (Moises Castillo / AP) 83 / 87 A Honduran mother and child rest where on the road where Guatemalan police block the caravans path after they crossed the Honduras-Guatemala border without incident in Esquipulas, Guatemala. (Moises Castillo / AP) 84 / 87 A Honduran migrant rests at the feet of Guatemalan police who temporarily block the road to keep him and his caravan from advancing in Esquipulas, Guatemala on Oct. 15, 2018. (Moises Castillo / AP) 85 / 87 A faint Honduran woman is helped by Guatemalan Red Cross workers while the caravan of Hondurans migrants are blocked at the border that connects to Agua Caliente, Guatemala on Oct. 15, 2018. (Moises Castillo / AP) 86 / 87 Honduran migrants receive free water from Guatemalan police at the Honduran border crossing that connects to Agua Caliente, Guatemala. (Moises Castillo / AP) 87 / 87 Honduran migrants making their way to the U.S. wait for Guatemalan police to let them through cross the Honduran border without incident in Esquipulas, Guatemala on Oct. 15, 2018. (Moises Castillo / AP)

In interviews along the journey, migrants have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption in Honduras. The caravan is unlike previous mass migrations for its unprecedented large numbers and because it largely began spontaneously through word of mouth.

Migrants received help Sunday from sympathetic Mexicans who offered food, water and clothing. Hundreds of locals driving pickups, vans and cargo trucks stopped to let them clamber aboard.

Civil defense officials for Mexicos southern state of Chiapas said they had offered to take the migrants by bus to a shelter set up by immigration officials about 5 miles (7 kilometers) outside Tapachula, but the migrants refused, fearing that once they boarded the buses they would be deported.

Ulises Garcia, a Red Cross official, said some migrants with injuries from their hard trek refused to be taken to clinics or hospitals, because they didnt want to leave the caravan.

We have had people who have ankle or shoulder injuries, from falls during the trip, and even though we have offered to take them somewhere where they can get better care, they have refused, because they fear theyll be detained and deported, Garcia said. They want to continue on their way.

Garcia said he had seen cases of swollen, lacerated and infected feet. But they are going to continue walking, and their feet wont heel as long as they keep walking, he said.

Jesus Valdivia, of Tuxtla Chico, Mexico, was one of the many who pulled his pickup truck over to let 10 or even 20 migrants hop in at a time, sometimes causing vehicles springs to groan under the weight.

You have to help the next person. Today its for them, tomorrow for us, Valdivia said, adding that he was getting a valuable gift from those he helped: From them we learn to value what they do not have.

Passing freight trucks were quickly boarded by dozens of migrants, and straining tuk-tuks carried as many as a half-dozen.

Brenda Sanchez of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who rode in Valdivias truck with three nephews ages 10, 11 and 19, expressed gratitude to God and the Mexicans who have helped us.An 8-year-old boy with disabilities walked away from his California elementary school  and ended up getting handcuffed.

Butte County Sheriffs Deputies saw the boy leaving the Chapman Elementary School campus in Chico, Calif., on Thursday morning.

As deputies followed him, they were concerned the boy would run into traffic and decided to cuff him. The encounter was captured on video.

The boys mother Meagan Ramey told KRCR-TV the deputies actions left her devastated  It broke my heart.

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Hands behind his back, his pants were past his bottom, shoes were thrown off, Ramey said. He was screaming, kicking and crying because he has asthma as well.

Ramey was especially upset because her son often walks away from the schools campus, and his disabilities had been discussed with the schools principal multiple times.

She said her son will be checked for wrist pain after she found bruises on his body.

When bystanders see someone screaming and yelling while being restrained  it doesnt look good, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea told the news station.

My heart goes out to all of the people there, but based on what I can see, their actions were motivated out of concerns for this young man, he said.

The boys parents plan to file an official complaint, which would lead to a review of the deputies body camera footage.A 19-year-old Fort Bragg soldier is accused of kidnapping a 12-year-old girl he had been communicating online with.

Investigators focused on James Peele after they learned that he was Facebook friends with the missing girl, who was found at the military installation in North Carolina on Sunday, about a two-hour drive from her home.

The girl was reported missing from her Craven County home earlier the same day by her grandmother, who found a ransom note on the girls bed and her window open.

The young victim and her grandmother were reunited on Sunday evening.

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Peele, a resident of Chesterfield, S.C., was arrested and charged with first-degree kidnapping. He will be transported to Craven County to face more charges, including statutory rape. He is believed to be a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, according to the News & Observer newspaper.

The Craven County Sheriffs Office credited the states Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, the U.S. Army CID and multiple other agencies for helping with the safe return of the girl.

With News Wire ServicesFour Americans were killed Saturday during a rafting trip in Costa Rica when their rafts flipped in the Naranjo River, according to officials.

Miami-area friends Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo and Andres Dennis, who were celebrating a bachelor party, were identified by Costa Ricas Judicial Investigation Organization.

The local guide, Kevin Thompson Reid, was also killed.

Officials said the other nine tourists and four guides were able to climb to safety

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Costa Rica has seen heavier than usual rainfall recently, causing the waters in the Naranjo River to rise.

President Carlos Alvarado expressed his dismay at the accident and asked authorities to help the victims families in any way possible.

The Judicial Investigation Department has launched an investigation into the incident.

With News Wire ServicesA female lion unexpectedly attacked the father of her three cubs at the Indianapolis Zoo  and killed him.

An unusual amount of roaring from the outdoor lion yard was heard by animal care staff early morning on Oct. 15, according to a statement released Friday by the Indianapolis Zoo.

Employees saw an adult lioness named Zuri being hostile with 10-year-old Nyack, a lion on loan from the San Diego Zoo.

She had Nyack by the neck. Keepers came up and saw what was occurring and made an attempt to separate the two. But she continued to hang onto Nyack by the neck until he stopped moving, David Hagan, curator of the Indianapolis Zoo, told Reuters.

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Sukari, the 3-year-old daughter of Zuri and Nyack, was in the lion yard at the time of the attack.

An animal autopsy, known as a necropsy, was conducted by the zoos veterinary staff and confirmed Nyack died of suffocation from neck injuries.

They were compatible with no outward indication that an event like this would occur, zoo officials said in the press release.

Our Zoo family is sad to announce 10-yr-old male lion Nyack has died. Earlier this week he was injured in a physical incident with female lion Zuri. We will conduct a thorough review to attempt to understand what may have led to this. pic.twitter.com/hQD2hOAaCp  Indianapolis Zoo (@IndianapolisZoo) October 19, 2018

Both Nyack and Zuri were part of a Species Survival Plan and had lived together for eight years.

Animal care staff had never reported abnormal aggression, injuries or wounds between Nyack and Zuri before the unexpected attack.

Nyack was a magnificent lion & will be greatly missed. We appreciate the support from our community as we cope with the loss, the zoo tweeted.

A thorough review will be conducted by the Indianapolis Zoo in attempt to understand what caused Zuri to attack her longtime partner.

Following Nyacks death, the zoo does not plan on changing how it manages lions, and Zuri will remain in her female pair group with her daughter Sukari.ATLANTA  Officials say an Atlanta-area piano teacher charged with molesting two children was found dead in his jail cell.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that according to a statement from the Atlanta Police Department, 55-year-old Troy Lawrence Palmer was found hanging in his cell Saturday morning. Authorities are investigating the death, saying the cause of the death appears to be suicide.

Palmer was arrested Sept. 13 on two counts of aggravated child molestation.

Officer Lisa Holland, a spokeswoman for police in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, said in September that Palmer had been accused of molesting two children multiple times between 2008 and 2012 while inside Palmers home.

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Palmer taught piano for more than 35 years and had taught lessons in his home for 13 years.A 43-year-old man was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of stealing copper cabling from an Encinitas property and beating up the property owner when he was reportedly caught, a sheriffs sergeant said Monday.

The 62-year-old victim got an alert from his surveillance system that someone was in his yard on La Costa Avenue near Seabreeze Court about 5 a.m. Saturday, said sheriffs Sgt. Joe Tomaiko. The man told investigators that copper cabling had gone missing from his property in the past, leading him to set up the security system.

The victim armed himself with a shotgun and was checking his property when he spotted a man trying to hide. He ordered the man to show himself and walk toward the front gate, Tomaiko said.

As the two approached the gate, the intruder grabbed the barrel of the property owners shotgun and tried to take it away. The victim fired the weapon, which was pointed toward the sky, in an attempt to scare the suspect away, but the suspect managed to wrestle the gun away, Tomaiko said.

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The intruder than punched the victim several times in the face, breaking his nose, and began choking him with the barrel of the shotgun, the sergeant said.

The victims 58-year-old wife and 19-year-old son saw the melee over the surveillance system, and rushed to help, Tomaiko said. The son had armed himself with a TASER and used it to incapacitate the suspect.

The family then used a belt to restrain the intruder until deputies arrived, Tomaiko said.

Both the victim and the suspect were taken to hospitals for their injuries.

Sheriffs investigators later determined copper wiring had been cut and was being collected on the property. The suspected assailant, who was homeless, was arrested on suspicion of robbery, grand theft and assault with a deadly weapon.

Anyone with information about the incident, or any other thefts at the property, was asked to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at (888) 580-8477. Tipsters may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to an arrest.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.comForensic evidence and a bit of luck led Oceanside authorities to arrest a transient in the slaying of a 77-year-old man, whose wife found him dead when she came home from an overnight work shift two months ago, police said Monday.

Detectives had surmised that the August slaying of John Roth may have happened during a botched burglary. On Sunday they arrested Carey Lamont Reid, Jr. in a parking lot near the home of the victim.

Police said the suspect had left DNA at the scene. On Friday, police learned that the DNA belonged to Reid, a 21-year-old transient, police said.

And then Sunday, someone called to report a person sleeping in the parking lot of a tire shop on North Coast Highway, not far from Roths home on Tremont Street.

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That person was Reid, who was subsequently arrested and booked into jail on suspicion of murder.

Reid remained jailed Monday and held without bail. His arraignment could be Tuesday, according to online jail records.

Oceanside police spokesman Tom Bussey called it a coincidence and a strange thing.

Things just fell into place, Bussey said. We were notified (of the DNA match) and two days later, we get a call of an individual sleeping in a parking lot of a tire shop  and it turns out to be our suspect.

Also, as it happened, Detective Erik Ellgard, the lead investigator on the Roth case, was working in his office Sunday when Reid was found.

Roths death had been a mystery for weeks. Around 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 14, Roths wife, Zui Pang, returned from work and found his body in their home, a three-story duplex on North Tremont Street at Surfrider Way.

Police have not said how Roth died, other than that he had sustained significant trauma to his upper body.

At a press conference in front of Roths home last month, Ellgard said it appeared Roth  who had mild dementia  may have been asleep and possibly just waking up when he was killed.

There was no forced entry. Pang came home to find the back door of the home open.

The house had been tossed, and a number of items were missing, including jewelry and a jewelry box, computer, cellphone and Chinese coins, brass pieces that had oxidized to green.

Four days after Roths death, someone found an old purse belonging to Roths wife dumped in an alley on North Ditmar off Surfrider. The site is less than a quarter-mile from Roths residence.

Items scattered outside the purse included a photo of Roth. The person who found the bag recognized Roths photo and called police, Ellgard said during the press conference last month.

Roths wife was the last known person to see him alive, about 1 p.m. on Aug. 13. She found him dead when she came home from her overnight job at a nursing home.

Roth was well known in the neighborhood and a regular at a tavern not far from his home.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUTA 48-year-old man broke his arm Sunday evening after crashing the Bird scooter he was riding into another Bird scooter in downtown San Diego, police said.

The man was headed east on G Street about 6:05 p.m. when the rider he was following slowed down near Seventh Avenue, San Diego police Officer Robert Heims said.

The man was following at an unsafe distance, police said, and hit the rear wheel of the scooter in front of him. He extended his arm as he fell and suffered an open fracture to his left arm.

The injured man had been drinking, but he was not considered to be under the influence of alcohol, Heims said. He was taken to a hospital with an injury not believed to be life-threatening.

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Bird is a dockless scooter share company based in Santa Monica and operates electric scooters in cities around the country.

Twitter: @karenkucher

(619) 293-1350

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.comA 20-year-old man was shot in the arm and leg in the community of Southcrest Sunday night, and San Diego gang detectives are searching for the gunman.

The shooting happened about 8:15 p.m. on Boston Avenue near South 40th Street, which is near the Southcrest Recreation Center.

The victim was standing in his front yard when a man walked up, yelled at him and started shooting, San Diego police Officer Robert Heims said. Bullets struck the victim in his elbow and grazed his right calf.

He was taken to a hospital with injuries that werent believed to be life-threatening.

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The suspect was last seen running west on Boston Avenue. He was described as Latino, about 6 feet tall and about 180 pounds. He was last seen wearing a blue shirt, black pants and a baseball hat.

Anyone with information about the shooting can call Crime Stoppers anonymously at (888) 580-8477.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com

UPDATES:

This story was originally published on Oct. 21 at 9:15 p.m.Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, was hit with a personal judgment of $4.85 million Monday for his failure to pay a debt to a former colleague at his longtime Newport Beach firm.

Less than an hour after his defeat in the Los Angeles lawsuit, Avenatti suffered another setback at a trial in Orange County: The Irvine Co. won a court order evicting him and his staff from their offices because the firm, Eagan Avenatti, skipped the last four months of rent.

The twin blows came as Avenatti was heading to New Hampshire for his third visit to the state that kicks off the 2020 presidential primaries. The celebrity lawyer is exploring a run for the Democratic nomination. His troubled financial history could emerge as a significant campaign issue if he joins the race.

The personal judgment against Avenatti by Judge Dennis J. Landin in Superior Court in Los Angeles was his latest in a series of courtroom losses in a protracted dispute with Jason Frank, the former colleague.

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Eagan Avenatti emerged from federal bankruptcy protection in March after Avenatti promised that it would pay millions of dollars to Frank and other creditors, including the Internal Revenue Service. It has defaulted on nearly every payment that was due.

No one has pursued Avenatti more relentlessly than Frank, who has been fighting in federal court to collect on a $10-million judgment that he won against the firm in May.

My client has had an awful lot of money owed to him for a lengthy period of time, said Franks attorney, Eric George, and it has been delayed through one tactic or another. Today, finally, the right thing happened.

Avenatti has been the managing partner of Eagan Avenatti since its founding in 2007.

He recently told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge that his other firm, Avenatti & Associates, wholly owned by Avenatti, had acquired 100% of the equity in Eagan Avenatti, buying out his minority partner, Michael Eagan of San Francisco.

But Avenatti told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that he hadnt owned Eagan Avenatti for months. He refused to identify the new owner.

Any judgment issued against me will be deducted from the over $12 million that Jason Frank owes me and my law firm Avenatti & Associates as a result of his fraud, Avenatti said by email.

No court has found Frank engaged in fraud, and Avenatti is not pursuing any court case alleging that he did. When Frank and two others left Eagan Avenatti to form their own firm, some clients went with them, angering Avenatti.

Frank alleges that Eagan Avenatti cheated him out of millions of dollars in compensation.

As part of its bankruptcy settlement, Eagan Avenatti agreed to pay Frank $4.85 million. Avenatti guaranteed that if the firm missed the deadlines for making the payment, which it did, he would personally be required to pay Frank.

To enforce the personal guarantee, Frank sued Avenatti, and on Monday he won the case.

Daniels, the adult film star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is represented by Avenatti & Associates, which operates out of the same offices as Eagan Avenatti and uses the same attorneys. Daniels is trying to void a nondisclosure agreement that bars her from discussing her alleged sexual affair in 2006 with Donald Trump.

Last week, a judge dismissed the defamation suit that Avenatti filed on Daniels behalf against Trump, finding the president was exercising his right to free speech when he attacked her credibility on Twitter.

Avenatti had another reversal last month at the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. The Senate Judiciary Committee refused to interview an Avenatti client, Julie Swetnick, who alleged that Kavanaugh attended a 1982 party where where she said she was gang-raped.

In the Santa Ana trial, 520 Newport Center Drive LLC, an arm of the Irvine Co., alleged that Eagan Avenatti missed $213,254 in rent payments over the last four months for its ocean-view suite on the 14th floor of an office building at Fashion Island.

Nobody from Eagan Avenatti showed up for the trial.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Moss ordered the firm to vacate the premises and pay the landlord the full amount of overdue rent. He also canceled the remaining three months of the lease. If the firm fails to move out, it could take a few weeks for the Orange County Sheriffs Department to enforce the eviction.

In court papers filed by Avenatti, the firm claimed it deducted the cost of needed repairs from its rent payments but did not receive proper credit.

The Irvine Co. denied that the offices needed any serious repairs. And the lease, signed by Avenatti, says the tenant understands that it shall not make repairs at landlords expense or by rental offset.

At the short morning trial, Mark A. Kompa, an Irvine Co. attorney, called just three witnesses. He asked one of them, Irvine Co. assistant manager Abigail Yocam, what happened to the last rent payments received from Eagan Avenatti in July.

She testified: The checks bounced.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Twitter: @finneganLAT

UPDATES:

3:55 p.m.: The article was updated with the testimony of Irvine Co.s Abigail Yocam and background on Stormy Daniels and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

1:45 p.m.: The article was updated with additional details on the court cases.

11:50 a.m.: The article was updated with background on Michael Avenatti exploring a run for president and the Stormy Daniels litigation against President Trump.

11:15 a.m.: The article was updated with a comment from Michael Avenatti, background on Eagan Avenatti and the eviction judgment.

The article was originally published at 10:15 a.m.LGBTQ leaders across the U.S. reacted with fury Monday to a report that the Trump administration is considering adoption of a new definition of gender that would effectively deny federal recognition and civil rights protections to transgender Americans.

I feel very threatened, but I am absolutely resolute, Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Rights, said at a news conference convened by more than a dozen activist leaders. We will stand up and be resilient, and we will be here long after this administration is in the trash heap.

The activists, who spoke amid posters reading "#WontBeErased, planned a protest march to the White House later in the day.

The Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged months ago that it was working to rewrite a federal rule that bars discrimination in healthcare based on gender identity. It cited a Texas-based federal judges opinion that the original rule went too far in concluding that discrimination based on gender identity is a form of sex discrimination, which is forbidden by civil rights laws.

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On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the agency was circulating a memo proposing that gender be defined as an immutable biological condition determined by a persons sex organs at birth. The election-year proposal would define sex as either male or female, and any dispute about ones sex would have to be clarified through genetic testing, according to the Times account of the memo.

The department was terse in its response, saying it did not comment on alleged leaked documents. It did release a statement from Roger Severino, the head of its Office for Civil Rights, saying his agency was reviewing the issue while abiding by the 2016 ruling from the Texas-based federal judge, Reed OConnor.

Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights, said in a statement that his agency was reviewing the issue while abiding by a 2016 ruling. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated press)

LGBTQ activists, who pledged legal challenges if the reported memo leads to official policy, said several other courts had issued rulings contrary to OConnors.

For years, courts across the country have recognized that discriminating against someone because they are transgender is a form of sex discrimination, full stop, said Diana Flynn, Lambda Legals litigation director. If this administration wants to try and turn back the clock by moving ahead with its own legally frivolous and scientifically unsupportable definition of sex, we will be there to meet that challenge.

Shannon Minter, a transgender attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called the reported plan a cynical political ploy to sow discord and energize a right-wing base before the Nov. 6 election.

The fact that the court ruling by a single federal district court judge was issued nearly two years ago only underscores the suspiciousness of this timing, Minter said.

LGBTQ-rights leaders viewed it as the latest Trump administration attack on transgender Americans. Among the others are an attempt to ban them from military service; a memo from Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions concluding that civil rights laws dont protect transgender people from discrimination on the job; and the scrapping of Obama-era guidance encouraging school officials to let transgender students use school bathrooms that matched their gender identities.

According to Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, the proposed rule change appears to be undergoing White House review and would need to be signed off by the departments of Justice, Labor and Education, which are also involved with civil rights enforcement.

He said the purpose of this rule is to erase transgender people from existence, to write them off from federal law, and to institute a definition that is contrary to case law, contrary to medical and scientific understanding, and contrary to the lived experience of transgender people.

While social mores enter into the debate, medical and scientific experts have long recognized a condition called gender dysphoria  discomfort or distress caused by a discrepancy between the gender that a person identifies as and the gender at birth. Consequences can include severe depression. Treatment can range from sex-reassignment surgery and hormones to people changing their outward appearance by adopting a different hairstyle or clothing.

According to an estimate by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, there are about 1.4 million transgender adults in the United States.President Trumps latest tweet is a National Emergy.

The American commander-in-chief misspelled the word emergency in a Monday morning Twitter post regarding the caravan of Honduran migrants traveling through Mexico toward the United States.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in, Trump tweeted. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!

The running list of typos from President Trumps White House 

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The misspelling led to some mocking from Twitter users, including one with the username Mark Power who wrote, Its like an emergency, just not quite as emergent.

Another with the username Michael Christopher tweeted, Emergy! Emergy! Somebody call 911!!

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

YouTube commentator John Iadarola tweeted, Low Emergy Donald, appearing to call back to Trump referring to his former Republican running opponent Jeb Bush as Low-energy Jeb.

Another user with the Twitter handle @Bojangl50257862, meanwhile, seemed to reference the President Alert sent to millions of peoples phones earlier month by writing, Emergy?!?! Are you going to text our phones.

Trump continued to address the situation in a pair of posts following that initial tweet.

Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally, the President wrote.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.

Trump has often made headlines for his typos on Twitter, including him famously writing covfefe in a post last year.A Saudi operative was seen wearing slain journalist Jamal Khashoggis clothes and a fake beard the day of the murder, according to reports.

Surveillance video shows the imposter leaving the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, according to CNN. The was wearing Khashoggis dress shirt, suit jacket and pants. He was also wearing the fake beard and glasses.

The body double was a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the Washington Post columnist, a senior Turkish official told CNN.

The man in the surveillance video was identified as 57-year-old Mustafa al-Madani. Khashoggi was 59.

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You dont need a body double for a rendition or an interrogation, the official told CNN. Our assessment has not changed since October 6. This was a premeditated murder and the body was moved out of the consulate.

This image taken from CCTV shows Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. (AP)

The Turkish state-run news channel TRT also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving in Khashoggis clothes.

Turkish investigators have said that Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered after entering the consulate, but Saudi Arabia officials claim the writer died in a fistfight.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News on Sunday that the slaying was a rogue operation and that we dont know where the body is.

The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority, he said. There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government.

Saudi state media reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman made calls to Khashoggis son early on Monday morning to express their condolences.

President Trump told the Washington Post over the weekend that he hopes the crown prince is not responsible for the slaying, and said he did not want to stop proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

With News Wire ServicesWASHINGTON  A Republican senator says the U.S. needs a president who celebrates the First Amendment, not one who pretends that beating up a reporter is OK.

Nebraskas Ben Sasse has frequently criticized President Donald Trump for what he considers Trumps uncivil rhetoric. Sasse has said he regularly considers leaving his party and becoming an independent.

Last week in Montana, Trump praised a congressman who, as a candidate last year, body-slammed a reporter. Trump called Greg Gianforte a tough cookie and my kind of guy. Gianforte pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.

Sasse says many consider Trumps raw rhetoric playful and tune most of it out.

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But Sasse tells CNNs State of the Union any president should be a steward of a free press and not joke about an assault.President Trump backpedaled Monday on his embrace of Saudi Arabias explanation for Jamal Khashoggis death, declaring hes not satisfied with the kingdoms ever-changing timeline as U.S. and Turkish officials prepared to release their findings of what actually happened to the slain writer.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump declined to discuss specifics but indicated he is not convinced by the Saudi regimes conflicting accounts about Khashoggis killing and said he will disclose more information once a team of American investigators returns from overseas.

Im going to know very shortly because I have a great group of people in Turkey right now and a great group of people in Saudi Arabia, Trump said before traveling to Texas for a political rally. Theyre coming back tonight, tomorrow, and I will know very soon.  I am not satisfied with what Ive heard.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and outspoken critic of the conservative kingdom, disappeared without a trace after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain documents necessary for his wedding.

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The Saudi government at first insisted Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed, even as Turkish officials said they had evidence that the 59-year-old journalist was tortured, killed and dismembered with a bone saw by a team of assassins operating at the behest of the Saudi royal court.

Finally, Saudi officials admitted Friday that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate but maintained his death was the result of a fistfight and not premeditated.

Trump initially accepted that explanation, saying he found it credible and a big step in the right direction.

Turkish investigators have cast doubt over Riyadhs claims.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was friends with Khashoggi, promised Monday that the details of his death will be laid out in all its nakedness in an address before parliament on Tuesday.

The results will be brought into the open, those responsible will be punished and no one will dare think of carrying out such a thing again, said Omer Celik, a spokesman for the Turkish leader.

Erdogans highly anticipated announcement will coincide with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans investment summit in the Saudi capital, which will have an unusually sparse crowd as scores of top business leaders have declined to attend because of Khashoggis killing.

President Trump told reporters on Monday hes not satisfied with the Saudi response. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)

Trump said he has spoken with the crown prince but wouldnt elaborate on their conversation. Turkish officials accuse the prince of ordering Khashoggis death as part of an aggressive crackdown on critics of the kingdom.

Also Monday, leaked surveillance footage revealed a man strolled out of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul wearing what appears to be Khashoggis clothes hours after his death in a suspected attempt at covering up his disappearance.

The footage, which was obtained by CNN and Turkish outlets, shows a man dressed in Khashoggis shirt, suit jacket and pants, albeit with different shoes. After exiting the consulate, the unnamed man  who was described by a Turkish source as a body double  is seen taking a cab to Istanbuls Blue Mosque, where he goes to a public restroom and changes out of Khashoggis clothes.

The man is then captured on video laughing and having dinner with an accomplice before returning to his hotel.

It remains unclear where Khashoggis body is.

The Saudi regime says it has arrested at least 18 people in Khashoggis killing and claims Mohammed bin Salman didnt order or know about his death. Turkish officials have disputed those claims and say they have phone records showing that a member of the crown princes inner circle phoned the royal office from the consulate in Istanbul around the time of Khashoggis death.

The 33-year-old crown prince, who serves as Saudi Arabias de facto leader, has drawn international scrutiny for silencing and jailing dissenters while waging a brutal war in Yemen that has killed hundreds of civilians.

Despite mounting evidence and international condemnation of the Saudis, the Presidents son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner insisted Monday the Trump administration was still in the fact-finding phase and declined to outright blame the crown prince, with whom he has cultivated a close relationship.

Kushner, 37, speaking at a CNN-hosted conference in Manhattan, also signaled he doesnt want to upend U.S.-Saudi relations over Khashoggis death.

We have to be able to pursue our strategic objectives, Kushner said. But we also have to deal with what is obviously a terrible situation.Browsing okapis, drowsy koalas and pandas, toothsome tigers  this bright and sunny weekend showcased an endless ocular menu of animal delights. Heres some of what I encountered.

The photo above is what I could see of an enormous hippo, mostly submerged, with skin that wouldnt look too out of place on an octopus.

Below are photos of snow leopards, rare cold-weather leopards. They live in mountainous regions of eastern Asia. The San Diego Zoo is taking part in a conservation program to help the species, which numbers less than 7,000 in the wild.

Snow leopard. (Bradley J. Fikes)

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What are you looking at? (Bradley J. Fikes)

Time for my close-up! (Bradley J. Fikes)

Feline relatives of snow leopards, Malayan tigers are bigger in body and in bite. They mostly live in the tropical forests of the Malay peninsula.

Wheres breakfast? Could it be you? That appears to be on the mind of this Malaysian tiger. (Bradley J. Fikes)

Below is an okapi, getting breakfast. Youll notice the strange bluish tongue, somewhat like that of its relative, the giraffe.

An okapi, a relative of the giraffe, chowing down on some tasty leaves. (Bradley J. Fikes)

There are few sure things in photography. One is that its nearly impossible to take a bad picture of a panda. Here are a few. The zoo has three pandas, part of a conservation program that brought giant pandas to San Diego in 1996.

Below are photos are Xiao Liwu, born at the zoo on July 29, 2012. Hes the sixth cub born to Bai Yun, by all accounts an expert mother.

Hi there! Xiao Liwu looks back at curious visitors looking at her. (Bradley J. Fikes)

Working with the Chinese government and other zoos across the world, this program has brought pandas back from being endangered and at risk of extinction. While challenges remain, the immediate danger has passed.

Panda-mania isnt as overwhelming at the zoo as in 1996, when two arrived at the zoo from China. But on Sunday morning, I saw plenty of people passing through the exhibit.

Contemplating bamboo? (Bradley J. Fikes)

Pandas eat only bamboo, and their lives revolve around the grass. But they are descended from carnivores, as their dentition gives evidence. Along with their claws, pandas have formidable weapons to defend themselves.

Nice teeth! Now go use them on some bamboo. (Bradley J. Fikes)

While giant pandas get most of the attention, lets not forget the red panda, which is endangered and cute in its own more colorful way. Its not closely related to the giant panda.

Red panda doing one of its favorite things, climbing. (Bradley J. Fikes)

Rivaling pandas in the cuteness factor are koalas, which I saw Friday. These marsupial natives of Australia were hunted in droves in the 19th century and early part of the 20th century.

Its easy to take photos of koalas, because they sleep up to 20 hours a day. Like pandas, they eat one kind of plant, in this case, eucalyptus. These leaves provide little nutritional value, so koalas sleep to conserve energy.

Sleeping beauty. (Bradley J. Fikes)

But if youre patient, you may eventually see a koala actually doing something. That something is probably eating. And keeping other koalas away from their delicious leaves. They may look adorable, but theyre hermits at heart.

This is my leaf, and you cant have it! (Bradley J. Fikes)

Finally, flamingos sit at the other end of the social spectrum from standoffish koalas. They are group creatures. A flamingo alone is a lonely flamingo indeed.

Flamingos love to be around each other. (Bradley J. Fikes)

At a glance, you can tell that babirusa are relatives of domestic pigs. Various species are found in Indonesia. In one species, North Sulawesi babirusa, tusks of the males curve upwards, and can eventually curve back to pierce the skull.A growing caravan of roughly 7,000 Central American immigrants continued its trek toward the United States on Sunday, blowing past Mexican police and immigration officials.

The group, which has swelled in size in recent days, set out before dawn on the only road out of the small Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo. It arrived in the afternoon in the city of Tapachula, more than 20 miles away.

The migrants, nearly all from the poor and violent nation of Honduras, posed a growing political and humanitarian calamity for Mexico, which has come under intense pressure from President Trump to stop them.

On Friday, Mexican police used tear gas to block migrants from storming an official border crossing. But in the days since, Mexico has appeared unwilling to use force to stop the thousands of people who have illegally crossed the Suchiate River from Guatemala into Mexico and started walking north.

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That may be in part because the migrants include hundreds of women and small children, some in strollers. It could also be because of the daunting size of the caravan, which stretched for at least two miles.

As the caravan headed north Sunday in the 90-degree heat, another group of roughly 1,500 migrants waited on the Guatemalan side of the river, hoping to enter Mexico legally.

Authorities said more than 1,000 caravan members already have entered legally and applied for refugee status in Mexico and are being detained while their applications are processed.

The migrants left Honduras more than a week ago and began arriving several days ago at the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman, just across the river from Ciudad Hidalgo.

Most say they intend to cross into the United States, not seek refuge in Mexico. Some complain that they were unable to find work in Honduras. Others say they are fleeing violence or political repression there and hope to apply for asylum in the U.S.

Im only just realizing the massive scale of this caravan as they march north into Mexico. Its several thousand people. Just look. pic.twitter.com/aRuoLNYTZg  Kate Linthicum (@katelinthicum) October 21, 2018

The caravan is more than two miles long. People near the end are stumbling. Its 23 miles to Tapachula and its so hot  90 degrees  today.  Kate Linthicum (@katelinthicum) October 21, 2018

Ingrid Andino, her husband and their two children left their small town in Honduras about a month ago after a local gang started pressuring her 16-year-old son to sell drugs. They were going to kill him or kill us, she said.

Andino said her family stayed with relatives in another town for a time before seeing the caravan on the news and deciding to join.

On Sunday, she and her family walked north in a line, holding hands, while she carried a bag containing the familys possessions balanced on her head.

Trump has made the caravan a campaign issue at rallies across the country ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, calling it a menace to national security. He has threatened Mexico and Central American countries with economic reprisal if they fail to stop the migrants and vowed to send the military to close the U.S. border should the group make it that far.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, under pressure from Trump, has said repeatedly that no migrants will be allowed to enter the country in an irregular manner. Mexicos deterrence of those who tried to storm the official border crossing Friday drew praise from Trump.

But when droves of people began crossing the river, swimming or boarding rafts, Mexican police and immigration agents just watched.

Gerardo Hernandez, head of the civil protection agency in the municipality of Suchiate, Chiapas, said that as of Saturday night, 7,233 immigrants had been registered at a shelter in Ciudad Hidalgo.

The group formed an imposing bloc as it began to march Sunday. Many Mexicans who live in the area lined the highway, handing out free clothes, sandwiches and bottles of water while cheering the caravan on.

May God bless you! one woman shouted.

Thank you, Mexico! the migrants shouted back.

Several times, large groups of police officers clad in riot gear blocked the road but then retreated. At one point, a small group of police watched as members of the caravan passed, some of them skipping.

When a small group of immigration officials tried to stop the caravan to persuade its members to apply for political asylum, the caravan swept past them, too.

As the day wore on, the enthusiasm drained somewhat.

The strongest of the group, mostly young men, led while the weaker fell behind. One teenage girl stumbled into a car parked on the shoulder of the highway, then rested her head for a brief moment on the trunk. Others carried cases of water, stuffed animals or children.

Paola Oviedo, 21, walked while hugging her 18-month-old son to her chest. She was panting, and she and her baby were both sweating heavily.

Oviedo, who crossed the Suchiate River on a raft, said she decided to leave Honduras after facing death threats from her abusive ex-husband. The police did nothing to help her, she said.

She said she didnt want her son to grow up without his mother.

I have to do this for his future, she said.

Each immigrant was driven by a different dream.

For Cesar Meijia, 23, it was the freedom to be himself.

When Meijia came out as gay several years ago, his family sent him to a psychologist and the local gang threatened to kill him, saying they did not want people like him in their neighborhood. I want to go to a place where people respect me, he said, marching with a rainbow flag tied across his broad shoulders.

For Ramon Izaguirre, 20, the dream was to return to the life he left behind.

Izaguirre was born in Honduras but later moved to Phoenix with his mother. She cleaned houses while Izaguirre worked construction. He earned enough to buy a small condominium and a silver Mazda Miata.

He said he was was deported about a month ago after a routine traffic stop revealed that a work permit he used to enter the country had expired.

Izaguirre had convinced several friends in Honduras to try to reach the United States with him again.

All my life is there, waiting for me, he said in English. I miss my PlayStation. I miss Buffalo Wild Wings. I miss my car.

The group walked together Sunday at a quick pace. Izaguirre, dressed in a camouflage shirt from his days in ROTC at a Phoenix high school, led the way. At one point, he started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

When a pickup truck pulled up next to the caravan and offered them a ride, Izaguirre and his friends scrambled into the back.

Lets go, he said, and the truck sped off.

Migrants arrived throughout the afternoon in Tapachula, finding their way to a plaza in the citys colonial-era center.

Denis Omar Contera, an organizer with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which is helping the group, said the caravan plans to rest Monday before setting out again.

He laughed off claims made by some Republicans that the caravan is being organized by Democrats or political opponents of the right-wing president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

The only people who have helped us are the poor people of Guatemala and Mexico who have shared with us their beans and tortillas, he said.

Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell in Mexico City contributed to this report.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Twitter: @katelinthicum

UPDATES:

6:20 p.m.: This article was updated to include the new number of caravan members who have applied for refugee status in Mexico.

5:10 p.m.: This article was updated with political analysis and scenes from the caravan.

9:30 a.m.: This article was updated with the caravan passing police en route to the U.S. and with additional background.

This article was originally published at 7:15 a.m.Emergency landings are no joking matter

Re Flight instructor, student safely land small plane on I-8 in El Cajon; no injuries (Oct. 20): Planes landing on freeways and side streets in El Cajon have happened too often. El Cajon has had two forced emergency landings. (Sept. 2017 and Oct. 2018). This never happened before.

The county implemented a new flight pattern/approach to Gillespie Field in 2011. The pattern is east around Rattlesnake Mountain over Santee, Lakeside and El Cajon. The pilots who have an emergency behind the mountain cannot reach the airport. The mountain blocks the line of site from the tower, so no help there. The pilots are forced to land on side streets and freeways in Lakeside and El Cajon.

It is only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt or killed because of this new fight pattern for the State of the Art International Flight Training Center AKA Aerotropolis.

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Robert Germann

Citizens Against Gillespie Expansion- Low-Flying Aircraft

Unlike the officials who recently praised the pilot for making an emergency landing on the Intertstate 8, I do not appreciate private pilots who fly their aircraft in ways that endanger the public.

Aircraft break down in flight and pilots must operate the aircraft to mitigate danger to the public. That means fly at safe altitudes, avoid low flight over populated areas, always have emergency landing sites in mind that do not endanger the public. Landing on the 8 put many lives in danger.

A few years ago a family was killed when an aircraft made an emergency landing on State Route 15 in North County. In both these cases the pilot chose to endanger the public in order to save themselves. The overriding strategy must be to protect the public. Landing on a freeway does not protect the public. Fly safe or dont fly.

Ed Miller

Bonsall

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.Re Faulconer proposes new rules for rental scooters (Oct. 19): So our society and culture have a new baby to deal with and our leaders are dumbfounded on its care. These so-called scooters, meant to lift the strain of traffic congestion and pollution, are the most asinine trend to hit our streets since the Roman Empire.

Sure, if you are under 30 and wish a joyride and cheap thrill, be my guest. What on Earth is the purpose of these toys anyway? Scooters are strewn about like discarded garbage all over our city. Older folks, small children and the disabled are terrorized by these obscene so-called additions to our transportation network every day. As far as their intent, there is an old axiom in my sport of triathlon. That being, if it were easy everyone would do it. And San Diegans just plain lack the constitution to improve our climate and traffic congestion by way of scooters.

Daniel Smiechowski

Bay Ho

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I have yet to see the dockless scooters being used as replacements for autos. Mostly they are used for joyriding like an amusement ride. So who is kidding who about the reason for these conveyances? They seem to be only another amusement as opposed to a replacement for auto travel.

Greg Kowalski

City Heights

San Diego continues to do too little, too late

Re San Diego proposing crackdown on Segway tour companies after $1.7 million payout (Oct 16): Once again the city of San Diego flaunts its well-established Americas Finest Post-Active City Way of Doing Business. After another million-dollar-plus injury payout settlement, the powers that be have proposed additional requirements including following safety procedures, special permits and insurance for the Segway tour companies.

Unfortunately, the new law would not apply to the electric scooters as the city is exploring separate legislation for those devices. I wonder how many millions of taxpayers dollars will be paid out before the legislation for those devices, electric scooters, is established? Indeed the city is in motion, slow motion.

Byron Wishnek

La Mesa

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.

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.Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/22/2018 -- Global Corundum Market: Overview



Corundum is considered a crystalline form of aluminum oxide (Al

2O). It typically contains traces of vanadium, chromium, iron, and titanium. It is also a rock-forming mineral. Corundum is a naturally transparent material, which exhibits different colors when impurities are intermixed in the mineral. Impurities include the presence of transition metals in the crystal structure of corundum. According to the Mohr's scale of hardness, pure corundum has hardness of 9.0. It is considered one of the durable gemstones.



Global Corundum Market: Key Segments



The corundum market can be segmented based on type, application, and region. Corundum is available in all the colors of the rainbow; however, it is commonly found as opaque crystal with dull color. Based on type, the corundum market can be classified into emery (black), Padparadschah (pink and orange variety of sapphire), ruby (pink or red), green sapphire, blue sapphire, star ruby, and star sapphire, and others. Red corundum is called ruby, blue corundum is called sapphire, while all other colors are called fancy sapphires. Some varieties of corundum fluoresce under short wave and long wave UV light if there is enough chromium in the crystal structure but little iron, which tends to quench any emitted energy. Corundum can also be used in the preparation of ornaments. Apart from ornaments, synthetic corundum is also used to produce mechanical parts (tubes, bearings, rods, and other machined parts), scratch-resistant optics, scratch-resistant watch crystals, instrument windows for satellites and spacecraft (because of its transparency in the ultraviolet to infrared range), and laser components. It is also used in construction for sand blasting, grinding, and plunge cutting applications.



Read Report Overview @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/corundum-market.html



Corundum is one of the hardest known mineral after diamond. Artificial corundum can be manufactured as a specialty product. It can be obtained by slow accretion and controlled growth on a boule in an ox-hydrogen flame, particularly known as the Verneuil process.



One of the major restraints of corundum market is in displaying the stone's vibrancy, the cut of sapphires and rubies is not as critical as that for diamond. Zoning is caused to the corundum if it is not appropriately. It would ultimately loose it luster, thereby making it dull. Corundum is a capital intensive business. Corundum also requires polish. Thus, new technologies and innovations are emerging to improvise the quality of corundum and lower its costs.



In terms of region, North America constitutes major share of the corundum market. Demand for artificial corundum market is high in the region due to its lack of natural occurrence. Changing lifestyle and attraction toward precious gemstones have boosted the demand for corundum market. Europe also accounts for large share in terms of demand for the mineral. Demand for corundum is especially high in Germany, Turkey, France, and the U.K. China is a major manufacturer and consumer of artificial corundum in Asia Pacific. India, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan are the key manufacturers of corundum in the region. Natural corundum is mined in several countries such as India, Australia, Myanmar, Japan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Papua New Guinea in Asia Pacific. Of late, countries in Africa have been producing corundum in large quantities. Madagascar, Tanzania, and South Africa have rich reserves of corundum. The usage of corundum is anticipated to increase in countries in the Middle East and Latin America in the near future.



Request Report Brochure @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=45831



Global Corundum Market: Key Players



Key players operating in the corundum market include Alteo Alumina Riken Corundum Co. Ltd., Swarovski Gemstones, Henge Group, and K.A. Refractories Co. Ltd., Zhongtian Special Alumina Co., Ltd, Retek LTD, Xinyang Jinbo Abrasives Co., Ltd., Rock & Gem company Ltd., and others



The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.Saint Paul, MN -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/22/2018 -- In response to financial challenges faced by Minnesota farms, Insight Commercial Capital has launched a new Agricultural Finance Division. The profitability of farming can fluctuate drastically year to year. According to the USDA, net farm income has decreased by 13 percent this year, while farm sector return on assets is now down to 2.3 percent, making 2018 the fourth lowest year since 1990. Insight's new agricultural program has been designed to help our local farms weather lean years just like this.



Most Minnesota agricultural operations have strong assets, including vast tracts of land and valuable equipment and heavy machinery. But when revenue is down and incoming cash doesn't cover annual expenses, strong assets don't help. Next season may be profitable, but that doesn't matter if a farmer can't cover loan payments and banks foreclose on their land or equipment before next harvest.



Insight Commercial Capital's new agricultural financing program is designed to help Minnesota farmers through gap periods like 2018. The program offers low rates and rapid approval for financing across the agricultural sector. Special features include farm equipment financing, ranch loans, farm land loans, cattle loans, and financing for farmers with lower credit ratings.



Insight's unique funding model brings together a large and diverse network of agricultural capital sources in one lending platform. Lenders are placed in a competitive environment where they bid to offer farmers the best financing terms. This results in a larger lending pool, a faster approval process, and lower rates for farmers. Insight's staff then works directly with each applicant to help them evaluate offers and select the agricultural financing that will be best for their agricultural operation.



About Insight Commercial Capital

Insight Commercial Capital is a commercial loan brokerage located in St Paul, MN. They specialize in agricultural financing and farm loans. Their team provides financing with rapid approval and low rates customized to the needs of each ranch, farm, or agricultural operation.



Contact: Matt Knutson

Company: Insight Commercial Capital

Phone: 612-268-2530

Email: matt@insightcommercialcapital.com

Address: 445 Minnesota StreetSuite 1550St. Paul MN 55101

Website: http://insightcommercialcapital.comSapphire Princess embarked on the 38-day voyage on Sunday and will arrive in Singapore on November 28. The sold-out cruise will visit 17 ports including Rome, Gibraltar, Athens, Malta, Petra, Dubai, Cochin, Colombo and scenic cruising along the Suez Canal.

Fifth homeport season in Singapore

Homeporting in Singapore for her fifth season, Sapphire Princess will sail to Southeast Asian destinations on 3-to 13-day voyages.

During this time, she will also embark on a Grand Asia voyage from Singapore to Shanghai over the Christmas and New Year period. Sapphire Princess will then return from Shanghai to Singapore in early January to continue sailing in the region until March 2019 after which she will return to Europe.

Diamond Princess to join Sapphire Princess

Diamond Princess, sister ship to Sapphire Princess, will arrive in Singapore from Japan for Christmas and New Year sailings from Singapore to Southeast Asian destinations.

For the Christmas period, Diamond offers a 10-day roundtrip sailing from Singapore to Kota Kinabalu, Nha Trang, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok and Ko Samui.

The New Year itinerary offers a 10-day sailing from Singapore to Bali, Port Klang, Penang (late night) and Phuket.

Bringing two ships to homeport in Singapore demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing our guests with even more choice and opportunity to enjoy cruising in the region, said Farriek Tawfik, director Southeast Asia, Princess Cruises.

Bookings for this season are very healthy and the Grand Asia voyage from Shanghai to Singapore is almost sold out, added Tawfik.

Sapphire Princess underwent dry dock in March this year before sailing for Europe. Diamond Princess will also undergo a dry dock in Singapore before she returns to Japan in February, 2019.

Princess Cruises continues to enhance its ships as part of its ongoing US$450m enhancement programme.Sen. Bam still eager to help Filipino families after free college law and 30-plus laws passed

TARLAC CITY -- Sen. Bam Aquino visited his hometown of Tarlac on Monday, days after filing his certificate of candidacy for a second term in the 2019 elections, to attend the flag ceremony with Tarlac City officials, led by mayor Cristy Angeles.

In his visit, Sen. Bam reiterated that he's still eager to help his countrymen and serve the country while making his fellow Tarlaquenos proud.

"Doon po sa Senado isa po sa pinaka-proud moments ko, kapag tinatawag po akong Senator Aquino the Gentleman from Tarlac. Ginaganahan ako magtrabaho para maging proud din po kayo sa amin at sa aming nagagawa sa Senado," said Sen. Bam, who hails from Concepcion.

Sen. Bam has passed over thirty laws in his first term in the Senate, including the law granting free tuition and miscellaneous fees in public universities and colleges. With the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, students from state universities and colleges in Tarlac will save anywhere from P10,000 to P15,000 every year.

Sen. Bam is the principal sponsor of the free college law and defended the measure in the Senate. He also worked to upgrade the Tarlac College of Agriculture to the Tarlac Agricultural University, so they may offer even better quality education with improved facilities as a state university.

Sen. Bam is currently pushing to pass the Bawas Presyo sa Petrolyo Bill to remove the excise tax on fuel products from the TRAIN Law. He hopes this will ease the burden of high prices, especially for jeepney and tricycle drivers.

"Marami pa rin po akong nakikilalang Pilipino na nangangailangan ng tulong. Kaya gusto ko pang magserbisyo para sa inyo at sa ating bansa," said Sen. Bam.

Sen. Bam also lauded the unity and cooperation between local government units (LGUs) in Tarlac, earning it the identity as one of the model provinces in the country.

He was scheduled to meet with municipal, barangay officials and non-government organizations from the 1st District of Tarlac in a gathering organized by Cong. Charlie Cojuangco.Press Release

October 22, 2018 MESSAGE ON THE CELEBRATION OF THE 31ST PRISON AWARENESS WEEK I am one with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines-Episcopal Commission on Prison and Pastoral Care (CBCP-ECPPC) and the rest of our nation in celebrating the Prison Awareness Week. Our Constitution declares that the "State values the dignity of every person and guarantees full respect for human rights." Anuman ang katayuan sa buhay, anuman ang pinanggalingan at pinaniniwalaan, obligasyon ng bawat isa ang pagrespeto sa karapatang pantao. Sapagkat sa pagbibigay ng respeto tumitingkad din ang ating pagkatao at pagpapakatao. Dito nagbubukal ang pagtanggap at paggalang sa isa't isa na siya namang nagbubunsod ng kaayusan sa ating mga komunidad at mabuting ugnayan ng lahat sa ating lipunan. In this meaningful occasion, we are called upon to reflect and look at the plight of our brothers and sisters in prison and to raise awareness on how we can participate in their effective rehabilitation and reintegration in society. Together, we need to address the often-repeated challenges of effective correctional system and jail management in pursuing restorative justice for those found guilty of violating our criminal laws. This is the fundamental principle behind a bill, which I intend to file soon, that will seek to institutionalize prison reform and restorative justice in the Philippine correctional system. At its core, the bill will propose a policy of decongesting and improving our prisons and detention facilities, while introducing an improved system of custody and rehabilitation of the prisoners. I envisioned the proposed measure to run parallel with Senate Bill No. 1879, which I earlier filed. SB No. 1879 seeks to establish a unified corrections and jail management system under a central authority that will address the current problem of having a fragmented set up of our prisons and jails. Likewise, it seeks to fulfill the need to regionalize the prisons, and to standardize the rules and regulations in running all types of detention facilities. Malinaw ang ating layunin: Hubugin ang isang bayang hinihikayat ang pagbabagong buhay ng mga bilanggo. Pandayin ang isang sistema ng batas na magtitiyak hindi lamang na ang krimen ay nasusugpo at naiiwasan, ang mga may kasalanan ay napaparusahan, ang mga biktima ay nabibigyang katarungan, kundi ang mga bilanggo ay nananatiling may pag-asa sa buhay at sa kanyang bayan. Naniniwala ako na ang katarungan, na kakambal ng kaayusan ng lipunan, ay kolektibong tungkulin nating lahat. I am thus reminded about what the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of "Crime and Punishment," once said about the value of a humane and effective correctional system: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Let us all do our share in improving our prisons and jails, and the situation of our inmates. Have a meaningful Prison Awareness Week. LEILA M. DE LIMA PNP Custodial Center, Camp Crame

22 October 2018Dispatch from Crame No. 409:

Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Statement on the Hacienda Nene Massacre

10/22/18

I strongly condemn the killing of the nine (9) farmers, including four (4) women and two (2) minors, in Hacienda Nene in Sagay City, Negros Occidental last Saturday night. The reports say that the victims just started their "bungkalan" activity wherein peasants occupy and cultivate idle portions of private lands when the shooting happened.

This was also a grim reflection of the decades-old failure of the government's agrarian reform program to extricate poor Filipino farmers from vicious and degrading cycle of poverty.

Nakakagalit at nakakalungkot na humantong tayo sa sitwasyong kamatayan ang tugon sa pagsusumikap ng ating mga magsasakang pagyamanin ang lupa, ibsan ang kanilang gutom at ipaglaban ang kanilang karapatan.

At sino ba ang naghikayat at nagpauso sa mga nangyayaring patayan ngayon sa ating bayan? Hindi ba mismong Si Presidente Duterte at ang kanyang war on drugs?

This is impunity in one of its worst forms wherein helpless farmers, just striving to survive were reportedly gunned down by forty (40) armed assailants! An impartial and thorough investigation is in order!

Just like the thousands of deaths under Duterte's war on drugs, we cannot be numb and lose these kinds of incidents from our collective memory. Instead, we must continue to demand for justice and accountability of perpetrators including those who encouraged such dastardly acts.Press Release

October 22, 2018 Zubiri condemns killing of sugar farmworkers in Negros Sen. Juan Miguel F. Zubiri pressed for indepth investigation on the killing of nine sugar workers including women and minors in Hacienda Nene in Sagay City, Negros Occidental. "I condemn this killing in the heart of sugarland which is an important sector of our economy. I have just come from Bacolod in Negros and I feel disheartened by these deaths. However, I note a few positive developments consisting of the willingness of the landowner to talk with government, specifically the PNP and the offer of huge rewards by Gov. Maranon and his son who is the Mayor of Sagay City. I hope that these will lead to the early resolution of the case and killers be brought to the bar of justice." "This violence should not be happening in this day and age since all agencies of government are bent on empowering the farm sector and farm incomes to grow. There are ways to help the farm sector, specifically the sugar industry. Farmers have become competitive as shown by the largest cooperatives in Southern Luzon. Let the fight be against poverty, not against defenseless farm workers." "It is disheartening to know that the dead who included women and minors are painted in a bad light by being migrant workers from other barangays such as Brgy. Plaridel, also in Sagay City. The use of migrant workers is part and parcel of sugar plantation operations." Workers who were able to run away from a nearby hut and survivors who were in the same hut as those killed said numerous men attacked the farm workers. Police noted that a gun and ammunition were found near the bodies. Found with the bodies were a paltik - a home-made gun, a few cal. 38 bullets, empty magazines and ammunition for a 12-gauge shotgun. However, investigators said it was common for people in the area to own a gun. Police estimated 10-12 men attacked the farm workers. They are still determining if the killing involved strafing and whether the deaths resulted from a massacre, or a fire fight. Negros island is one of areas with large Land Acquisition and Distribution balances, according to the DAR. Zubiri, who traces his roots to Negros, has fought to keep the competitiveness of locally-produced sugar against imported sugar and alternative sweeteners.Telecommunications provider TeamTalk is planning to raise up to $8.7 million to help fund the expansion of its digital radio network and the upgrade of its Wellington fibre business.

The company will raise $2 million through a placement of 2.7 million shares at 75 cents each to selected institutions and investors. It will also raise about $6.7 million through a one-for-three renounceable rights offer creating about 10.3 million new shares at 65 cents a share.

TeamTalk shares closed last week at 82 cents. Both the placements and rights offer are underwritten by Forsyth Barr.

The company, which last year sold its Farmside rural internet service to Vodafone, is aiming to complete a new digital radio network across the country by June.

Its other main business  CityLink  is upgrading its Wellington service to provide a 5G-capable network in the CBD. The 18-month programme was initiated after the closure of the citys trolley bus network required the undergrounding of much of the fibre network, using Powercos gas ducting.

TeamTalk expects to complete the placement today. The rights offer will open on Oct. 30 and close on Nov. 20.

(BusinessDesk)

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Merkel told reporters at party headquarters, "I agree with all those who say when it comes to our already limited arms exports (to Saudi Arabia) that they cannot take place in the current situation."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was reported as saying on Sunday that her country will not export arms to Saudi Arabia, for now, in the wake of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi's violent death.

Merkel condemned Khashoggi's killing "in the strongest terms" and saw an "urgent need to clear up" the case. Meanwhile, she admittted that she would continue to consult with international partners about a coordinated reaction to the case.

Last month, Germany approved exports of 416 million euros (USD 480 million) worth of arms to Saudi Arabia for 2018. In the past, military exports by Berlin to Saudi have mostly consisted of patrol boats.

Germany and Saudi Arabia only returned their ambassadors in September after 10 months of frosty relations following criticism from Berlin of what it said was Saudi interference in Lebanese affairs.

The Khashoggi case has opened a serious new rift with European partners Britain, France and Germany saying in a joint statement earlier that Saudi Arabia must clarify how Khashoggi died inside its Istanbul consulate, and its account must "be backed by facts to be considered credible".

After a fortnight of denials, Saudi authorities admitted Saturday that Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and prominent critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed after entering the consulate in Turkey on October 2.

But it has faced a growing chorus of incredulity over its belated explanation that he died in a "brawl", as world powers demand answers and the whereabouts of his body.

With Agency InputsActress Amyra Dastur says filmmaker Leena Yadav has brought out her best performance with

"I love Leena. I think she has brought out my best performance till date. She is the definition of a 'woman on the rise' and someone who truly breaks barriers. I'm really excited about Rajma Chawal, especially now that Netflix has decided to release it worldwide," said Amyra.

Rajma Chawal, starring Rishi Kapoor, Amyra Dastur and Aniruddh Tanwar, will be available on Netflix worldwide on November 30.

"It is a wonderful feel-good-film and you will even see Rishiji in a different light. I have worked my hardest for this film and I am absolutely confident that people will appreciate my character, Seher and the film as a whole," she added.

Set in the chaotic, vibrant Chandni Chowk area in Delhi, Rajma Chawal captures the relationship between a father attempting to reconnect with his estranged son through social media, a new world for him.

Amyra will also be seen sharing screen space with actor Rajkummar Rao in Mental Hai Kya and Made In China.



Images: Amyra on Instagram



Text: IANSIn his letters to the Cabinet Secretary and Central Vigilance Commission, Asthana had written about 10 cases of alleged corruption and irregularities against Verma, levelling serious corruption charges in some of them.

: The Central Bureau of Investigation Sunday tried to defend its director Alok Verma following allegations of corruption levelled against him by his deputy Rakesh Asthana, booked by the agency on bribery charges last week, saying they are "false and malicious".

One of the case pertained to Sathish Sana, a businessman facing probe in a corruption case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi in which Asthana had alleged on August 24 that Sana paid Rs 2 crore to Verma to get relief in the case.

Asthana had also alleged that Verma delayed his team's request to arrest Sana in the case.

The complaint was referred to Central Vigilance Commission by the Government which is looking into it.

Gujarat-cadre officer Asthana, currently number two in the CBI, has also cited instances of alleged irregularities and violation of rules and regulations against Verma.

In an unprecedented operation, the CBI registered an FIR against Asthana and his deputy superintendent of police Devender Kumar, and two alleged middlemen Somesh Prasad and Manoj Prasad on the basis of a statement from Sana that bribe was paid to the middlemen to get relief in repeated questioning by the Asthana's Special Investigation Unit.

Asthana had alleged that he had moved a file for the arrest of Sana on September 20, 2018 which was held by the CBI Director Alok Verma and was later referred to Director of Prosecution who demanded the evidence file.

He had alleged that it was his team which opened a Look Out Circular against Sana who was stopped at immigration and prevented from fleeing the country.

In a tatement, CBI spokesperson said allegations that director CBI was not aware of LOC issued against Satish Sana is incorrect.

"DCBI had seen and ratified the proposal to issue LOC on May 21, 2018," he said.

The spokesperson said contention that director CBI made an attempt to stop Sana's arrest is false and malicious.

"The allegation has been made to deflect the charge of receipt of bribe money by CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana and the other public servant named in the FIR," he said.China VP pays highest-level visit to Israel since 2000



Jerusalem, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan on Monday became the most senior Beijing official to visit Israel in 18 years, as the two countries look to bolster their growing business ties.

Wang headed to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of the most sacred sites in Judaism, after touching down at the start of his four-day trip, Israel's foreign ministry said.

The visit to the Jewish state is the highest-level Chinese arrival since then president Jiang Zemin came in 2000, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Wang was set to meet Netanyahu, who visited Beijing last year, later on Monday and will also host a meeting of a joint innovation commission with the Israeli leader.

The Chinese official is due to travel to Ramallah on Tuesday to hold talks with Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah, according to the official programme.

China and Israel, a firm US ally, have stepped up trade and business ties in recent in years and launched free trade talks.

Chinese firms have made major inroads in Israel, including the takeover of local food giant Tnuva in 2014 and deals to manage the key Haifa and Ashdod ports.

But the growing Chinese involvement has also sparked scepticism, with a former intelligence head warning of dangers from Beijing's involvement in sectors vital to Israel's security.

Israeli media reported that these concerns led to the finance ministry rejecting attempts by Chinese firms to take over two of the country's major pension funds.Page Content

The St. Maarten Chamber of Industry and Commerce (COIC) held its first official meeting with the Minister responsible for Economic Affairs, the honourable Stuart Johnson on Tuesday October 16th, during which its members presented their plans for the development of their new Economic Service Centre, ESC in the area of the former Air Lecabec Restaurant, on the Walter Nisbeth Road.





Plans for the ESC are being finalised, and according to the COIC members, the intention is to break ground for the commencement of construction by the end of 2018.





The COIC members indicated that once completed, the ESC will be an eco-friendly and State of the Art, facility with18 units earmarked as "lease to own" properties intended for small business owners to lease or purchase outright to expand their business and increase their customer reach. The facility will also have over 97 parking lots with a full-service office from which the COIC will be able to provide improved customer services to its members.





COCI was represented at the meeting held at the Government Administration Building, by Executive Director Anastacio Baker, Board President Stanley Lint, Vice President Benjamin Ortega, Board member Mrs Pamela A. Illis-Friday. The COIC is an advocacy organisation and provides a link between the government and its members and is a source of advice to government on economic developments. It was against this backdrop that COIC President Lint also made use of the opportunity to start the process of re-establishing a close working relationship with government, which he explained was for fragmented for some time.





Minister Johnson said he had every intention of ensuring that his ministry did its part to ensure that the Chamber of Commerce and Industry remains a crucial partner in the redevelopment of St. Maarten.





The COIC has also proposed the establishment of a Think Tank from within the business community to brainstorm on ways and means for economic revitalisation and implored Minister Johnson, through his Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Traffic & Telecommunication (TEATT), to ensure the COIC remains part of the economic recovery plan.





Minister Johnson spoke to the members about his economic development plans for the island and asked whether consideration was already given by the Chamber on engaging its members in activities aimed at redeveloping Philipsburg. Johnson said putting life back into Philipsburg is a significant part of the economic recovery initiatives his ministry is undertaking during the recovery phase.





According to Johnson, Economic recovery, in general, requires a collective approach to creating solutions to fill the economic void that presently exists and to stimulate activity in Philipsburg." He said, "It cannot be business as usual, and the government simply cannot do it on its own. He said, It would take the full cooperation of all businesses and organisations to achieve the level of economic activity the island so desperately needs.





Johnson said he was also encouraged by the Chamber's report on their strategic plans to improve the way business is done on St. Maarten. Johnson said, The development of new business and redevelopment of businesses that suffered a significant loss when hurricane Irma and Maria struck the island, is the most critical aspect of our economic revitalisation plan and the sustainable economic future of St. Maarten.





He said it is especially commendable that the COIC had reached out to other associations on the island as well as in Curacao and Aruba, that represent business interests to find ways of connecting their members with the right resource and information needed to enhance their product and service levels.





The Chamber President spoke briefly of the COIC's strategic plan dubbed S.P. (Strategic Plan) 2020, which he said has as one of its primary objectives, ensuring that the COIC regains its relevance through improving processes, services, and providing follow-up on action items, rather than leaving great ideas on paper and never acting on them.





Johnson said the Chambers role in the redevelopment of St. Maarten post-Irma is indeed critical" and commended the young President and Board members on their initiatives to ensure that the COIC remains relevant and remains part of the discussion on the economic future of St. Maarten. He explained that because the Chamber is, by design, required to provide the service of navigating government complexities for its members and because it acts as the leading voice in raising its members concerns, we as a government are very interested in hearing what the Chamber has to say. He said the Chamber has to continue to be seen as an extension of the business community and as such their words when echoed should be, and should be viewed as being the concerns of the business community.





In the photo from the left, St. Maarten Chamber of Industry and Commerce (COIC) Executive Director Anastacio Baker, Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Traffic & Telecommunication (TEATT) the honourable Stuart Johnson, COIC President Stanley Lint pointing to the artist impression of the new COIC Economic Service Centre, while COIC Board Member, Mrs Pamela A. Illis-Friday and Vice President Benjamin Ortega look on.



System error

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context: ... 21: </%method> 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: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

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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(0x7f3fdd52a178)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdd65d2b8)', '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(0x7f3fdd52a178)') 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(0x7f3fdd65d2b8)') 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(0x7f3fdd650a28)') 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(0x7f3fdd65d2b8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdd65d2b8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdd128ac8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdd619a38)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdd619a38)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0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: </%method> 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: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951

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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(0x7f3fddaca2b8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdda17a88)', '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(0x7f3fddaca2b8)') 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(0x7f3fdda17a88)') 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(0x7f3fddad46f0)') 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(0x7f3fdda17a88)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdda17a88)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdcc791d0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdd95da28)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdd95da28)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0Musk says LA Hyperloop tunnel to be unveiled December 10



New York, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



Elon Musk's Hyperloop ultra high-speed transport system will be unveiled in Los Angeles in early December with free test rides to the public, the entrepreneur announced.

"The first tunnel is almost done," Musk said on Twitter late Sunday night. "Opens Dec 10."

Responding to comments on Twitter, Musk said there would be an opening event that night and "free rides for the public next day."

Musk's venture, "The Boring Company," has been pushing the underground system as a futuristic concept that could radically speed transport within and between cities.

In another tweeted response, Musk said the test tunnel has a top speed of 155 miles per hour (250 kilometers).

Supporters of the technology have discussed a vision where a trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco might take 30 minutes instead of five or six hours.

A hyperloop is a shuttle pod that travels on magnetic rails, somewhat like a train, but which runs in a tube with little or no air. In theory, hyperloops could allow travel faster than the speed of sound.

In a presentation in Los Angeles in May, Musk said vehicles could reach downtown LA from its international airport in under 10 minutes, with a long-term objective of reaching over 300 miles an hour.

Hyperloop is one of Musk's envelope-pushing ventures, along with SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Shares of Tesla have fallen more than 30 percent since August 7, when he infamously tweeted that he had funding lined up to take Tesla private.

He subsequently paid a $20 million fine to settle after the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused the entrepreneur of fraud.

Another visionary entrepreneur, Richard Branson, who like Musk also is involved in space travel, is backing a Virgin Hyperloop One which has been testing in Nevada and opened a research center in southern Spain.

Virgin Hyperloop One confirmed on Monday that Branson is stepping down from its board of directors, saying the company "needs a more hands-on chairman."

Branson's seat on the board will go to another Virgin Group executive.

No mention was made of a decision last week by Branson to suspend two directorships linked to tourism projects in Saudi Arabia following the unexplained disappearance in Turkey of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In a statement last week, Branson said also that his Virgin group would suspend discussions with Saudi Arabia over proposed investment in Virgin Galactic, which is set to carry out its first space flight within weeks.

"What has reportedly happened in Turkey around the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, if proved true, would clearly change the ability of any of us in the West to do business with the Saudi government," Branson said.

Several startups have also taken to pursuing the hyperloop idea after its feasibility was shared publicly in a white paper released by Musk about five years ago.

Canadian company Transpod is working to begin testing the system in France.

jmb/mdlNorway mourns WWII resistance fighter who halted Nazis' nuclear drive



Oslo, Oct 21 (AFP) Oct 21, 2018



Norwegian World War II hero Joachim Ronneberg, who led a major sabotage operation against the Nazis in his occupied homeland, died on Sunday, aged 99.

Ronneberg's daring operation was given the Hollywood treatment in 1965 in the film "The Heroes of Telemark" starring Kirk Douglas.

"Ronneberg is probably the last of the best known resistance fighters to pass away," Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg told the NTB news agency.

Ronneberg trained with the Norwegian resistance in Britain and in February 1943 led a six-man team on a secret mission called Operation Gunnerside.

They sabotaged a plant in southern Norway that produced heavy water, a component in early nuclear energy research, putting a halt to the Nazis' nuclear weapon ambitions.

Situated near the city of Rjukan, the Vemork plant at the time was the only one in the world that produced significant quantities of heavy water.

After the war he turned to journalism and for a long time was reticent about his wartime experiences. Then in the 1970s he broke his silence, and became known for his involvement with young people to make them aware of the dangers of war.

"Those growing up today need to understand that we must always be ready to fight for peace and freedom," he said.Biopic tribute to slain war reporter Marie Colvin as journalism comes 'under attack'



London, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



A biopic of war correspondent Marie Colvin, who died in Syria in 2012, is a celebration of journalism as it increasingly comes "under attack", according to the film-makers.

"A Private War", released in US cinemas next month, chronicles the harrowing career of Colvin -- played by "Gone Girl" star Rosamund Pike -- who was an award-winning journalist for Britain's The Sunday Times.

The feature film debut of director Matthew Heineman -- an Oscar nominee in 2016 for his documentary "Cartel Land" -- shows the reporter's struggles to cope with the impact of reporting from the world's conflict zones.

For Heineman, whose mother was a journalist, it is a "homage" to both Colvin and an increasingly besieged profession.

"It's so important right now in this world of fake news and soundbites, where journalists are under attack, to celebrate journalism and to celebrate people like Marie," he told AFP at a London Film Festival screening Saturday.

The movie, which got its world premiere in Toronto last month, hits screens as reporters face ever more threats, from US President Donald Trump labelling them "the enemy" to the killing this month of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Actor Jamie Dornan -- of the "Fifty Shades" franchise -- who plays freelance photographer and longtime Colvin colleague Paul Conroy, said the work felt "timely".

"This is a film about telling the truth," he told AFP on the red carpet. "Anything that can try to show true journalism in its finest light -- the people who will go to these places to risk everything to tell us the truth -- that's a good thing."



- 'Fierceness of passion' -



American Colvin died aged 56, alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik, in an alleged government bombardment of a media centre in the war-ravaged Syrian city of Homs.

"A Private War", adapted from a Vanity Fair article following her death, depicts her decades-spanning career and the psychological and physical toll it took on her.

It captures Colvin losing the sight of one eye -- leading to her wearing a signature eyepatch -- while covering Sri Lanka's civil war, and interviewing former Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi shortly before his death in 2011.

The film also shows her retreating into heavy drinking and battling likely post-traumatic stress disorder in between assignments.

Oscar-nominated Pike said she was attracted to the part by Colvin's complexity.

"I wanted to put a woman out there on the screen who is admirable but not every quality she has is admirable," she told AFP.

"There was something about... the fierceness of passion in what she did that I related to."

Photographer Conroy, who was injured by the bombing that killed Colvin but made a full recovery, said he was eager to advise on the film in part because of Heineman's background in documentaries.

"His idea of the truth carried through from that -- it wasn't just 'lets make this frothy Hollywood film'," he said at the screening. "The attention to detail is extraordinary."



- Authenticity -



Heineman said he spent months researching the story, including watching practically every war film ever made.

He also enlisted locals rather than actors to play the parts of extras in the war zones portrayed.

"Those are real Syrian women shedding real tears and telling real stories," he explained of scenes showing Colvin interviewing civilians in Syria.

"That was really important to me to try to bring an authenticity to this experience."

The director said making "City of Ghosts", a 2017 non-fiction film about a Syrian media activist group in Raqqa, and other conflict-driven documentaries helped him emphathise with Colvin.

"I just felt enormous kinship with her, and also her desire to put a human face to poor innocent civilians who are caught in the crossfire of these geo-political conflicts," he added.Trudeau: Canada could scrap Saudi defense deal over rights



Montreal, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada could cancel a multi-billion dollar defense contract with Saudi Arabia following the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Trudeau, speaking on French-language talk show "Tout Le Monde En Parle" -- recorded Thursday, before Riyadh confirmed Khashoggi's death at its Istanbul consulate -- insisted Canada would "always defend human rights, including with Saudi Arabia."

Canadian military equipment sales regulations contain restrictions on human rights violations against the buying country's citizens, and prohibit use against civilians.

Asked about a key deal with Riyadh for the sale of light armored vehicles worth CAD$15 billion, Trudeau said "in this contract, there are clauses that must be followed in relation to the use of what is sold to them."

"If they do not follow these clauses, we will definitely cancel the contract."

Last year, Ottawa already expressed concern about the vehicles possibly being used in law enforcement operations in Saudi Arabia's east.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Saturday branded Saudi Arabia's explanations as not credible and demanded a thorough investigation.

Relations between Canada and Saudi Arabia have been tense in recent months.

After Canada criticized the Saudi arrest of human rights activists, the kingdom retaliated by expelling the Canadian ambassador, recalling its own envoy to Ottawa and freezing trade and investment between the two countries.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would not export arms to Saudi Arabia amid the uncertainty around Khashoggi's death.Germany urges joint European stance on Saudi arms exports



Berlin, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



European nations should take a joint stance on whether to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said Monday.

He reiterated Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement from Sunday, saying Berlin "at this stage will not approve further arms exports because we want to know what happened", adding that "all explanations so far have been unsatisfactory".

But Altmaier, a close Merkel confidant, stressed that "there won't be any positive effects if only we halt exports and then other countries fill the gap".

"Only when all European nations are in agreement will this make an impression on Riyadh," he said, speaking on public broadcaster ARD.

Merkel had said Sunday that "when it comes to our already limited arms exports ... they cannot take place in the current situation".

Germany last month approved 416 million euros ($480 million) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018. In the past, German military exports to Saudi have mostly consisted of patrol boats.

Germany and Saudi Arabia only returned their ambassadors in September after 10 months of frosty relations following criticism from Berlin of what it said was Saudi interference in Lebanese affairs.

The Khashoggi case has opened a serious new rift, with Britain, France and Germany demanding that Saudi clarify how the journalist died inside its Istanbul consulate.

After a fortnight of denials, Saudi authorities admitted Saturday that Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and prominent critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed after entering the consulate in Turkey on October 2.

But it has faced a growing chorus of incredulity over its belated explanation that he died in a "brawl", as world powers demand answers and the whereabouts of his body.Jihadists claim responsibility for Iran troops abduction



Tehran, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



A jihadist group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of 12 Iranian security personnel near the border with Pakistan, Iran's semi-official news agency ISNA reported Monday.

"The terrorist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice in Arabic) has posted two photos... claiming that those in it are the forces abducted" on October 16, ISNA said.

Jaish al-Adl, formed in 2012, is a successor to the Sunni extremist group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) which has carried out a spate of attacks on Iranian security forces in recent years in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

The photos show seven members of the elite Revolutionary Guards force and five police commandos, all in combat gear, according to state news agency IRNA.

The Iranians, including intelligence offices, were abducted near Lulakdan, a village 150 kilometres (90 miles) southeast of Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchistan.

They were "made unconscious" by a "single infiltrator" and then kidnapped and taken to bases inside Pakistan, said Guards commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, quoted by IRNA.

The photos also show a haul of automatic weapons and sniper rifles, rocket launchers, machine-guns, grenades and ammunition, apparently seized from the Iranian forces.

Sistan-Baluchistan has long been a flashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and jihadists carrying out regular cross-border raids against Iran.

The province has a large, mainly Sunni Muslim ethnic Baluchi community which straddles the border.

A delegation led by the Guards' ground forces commander Mohammad Pakpour visited Pakistan on Monday to follow up on efforts to free the Iranians, the force said on its website.

Pakistan said last Wednesday that it has launched "active" efforts to locate the missing men.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has blamed the kidnapping on "our common enemies unhappy with the existing close, friendly relations between Pakistan and Iran".Major nuclear treaties between Moscow, Washington



Paris, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



Moscow and Washington have signed a string of key treaties aimed at reducing nuclear weapons, including the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which US President Donald Trump plans to withdraw from.

Here is a summary of these pacts:



- Two multilateral treaties -



In August 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in Moscow, banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater.

This was followed by the landmark Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), under which nuclear powers agreed not to assist other states in obtaining or producing nuclear weapons.

In force since 1970, the NPT was extended in 1995 for an indefinite period.



- Obsolete bilateral accords -



In May 1972, Moscow and Washington signed SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) and the ABM (Antiballistic Missile Treaty).

SALT I froze for five years the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels. The ABM, meanwhile, banned the Soviet Union and the US from deploying missile shields.

In June 1979, the powers signed SALT II to set limits on the number of strategic bombers and launchers. But the pact was never applied.

In July 1991, the two countries agreed to cut their warheads over a period of seven years with the START I treaty, which expired in December 2009.

Another pact, known as START II, was signed in January 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet Union with the aim to further reduce each side's strategic arsenal. But it never came into force.

When the US in 2002 withdrew from the ABM Treaty, Russia withdrew from START II.

The same year, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), commonly known as the Moscow Treaty, was signed to cap the number of nuclear warheads.



- Two bilateral treaties in force -



SORT was replaced in April 2010 by the new START treaty, which allowed Russia and the US a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads -- about 30 percent lower than the limit imposed under the 2002 pact.

The accord, which also includes reciprocal checks, is up for renewal in 2021.

The INF agreement, from which Trump wants to withdraw, was created in December 1987. It bans missiles that can travel distances of between 310 and 3,400 miles (500 and 5,500 kilometres).

Trump has accused Russia of not respecting the accord.US security chief in Moscow as nuclear treaty hangs in balance



Moscow, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2018



The Kremlin said on Monday that Washington's withdrawal from a key Cold War-era nuclear treaty would make the world more dangerous, as Donald Trump's national security advisor met senior Russian officials in Moscow.

John Bolton is expected to discuss Trump's plan to jettison the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

On Monday, Bolton discussed the fate of the treaty with Russian Security Council Chief Nikolai Patrushev and was expected to meet with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later in the day.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that ditching the treaty "will make the world more dangerous" and rejected US claims that Moscow has violated the pact, instead accusing Washington of doing so.

"It is the United States that is eroding the foundations and main elements of this pact" with its missile defense capabilities and drones, he said.

Lavrov said he was waiting to hear Bolton's "official explanation" regarding Trump's intentions, adding that for the moment the US side has not initiated the official procedure for exiting the treaty.

Trump on Saturday claimed that Russia had long violated the treaty, known as the INF.

"We're the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we've honoured the agreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement, so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out," he told reporters.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years," he said.

"And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons (while) we're not allowed to."



- EU, China concerned -



Trump's announcement raised global concerns, with the European Commission urging the US and Russia to pursue talks to preserve the treaty and China calling on Washington to "think twice".

The Commission, the 28-nation European Union executive, stressed that the INF has been a mainstay of European defence for the last three decades.

"The US and the Russian Federation need to remain in a constructive dialogue to preserve this treaty and ensure it is fully and verifiably implemented," spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told reporters.

She said the agreement was important for both European and global security.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said a unilateral withdrawal from the treaty "will have a multitude of negative effects."

Trump argued that the treaty does nothing to hold non-signatory China back from developing missiles, but Hua said that "it is completely wrong to bring up China when talking about withdrawal from the treaty".

The treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles was signed in 1987 by then US president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader.

Gorbachev on Sunday said that "dropping these agreements... shows a lack of wisdom" and was a "mistake".

The INF resolved a crisis over Soviet nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles targeting Western capitals.



- Arms race fears -



The latest row between Russia and the United States comes ahead of what is expected to be a second summit between Trump and Putin this year.

Analysts have warned that the latest rift could have lamentable consequences and drag Russia into a new arms race.

The Trump administration has complained of Moscow's deployment of Novator 9M729 missiles, which Washington says fall under the treaty's ban on missiles that can travel distances of between 310 and 3,400 miles (500 and 5,500 kilometres).

Britain's The Guardian newspaper said that Bolton himself is pressuring Trump to leave the INF and had blocked talks to extend the New Start treaty on strategic missiles set to expire in 2021.

US-Russia ties are under deep strain over accusations Moscow meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The two countries are also at odds over Russian support for the Syrian government in the country's civil war, and the conflict in Ukraine.

On Friday, the US Justice Department indicted the finance chief of Russia's leading internet troll farm for allegedly interfering with US congressional elections to be held in November.

Russia accused the United States of fabricating the charges.

Putin and Trump will both be in Paris on November 11 to attend commemorations marking 100 years since the end of World War I.Optimization

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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.Interview with Italian Vintner Antinori 'Italian Wines Are Drunk, Not Collected'

Albiera Antinori is head of the centuries-old Italian vintner of the same name. In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, she speaks of the flood of cheap wine, new buying habits in China and the populist government in Rome.Gonfreville-L'Orcher (France), October 22, 2018 (SPS) Polisario Front lawyer Gilles Devers warned on Saturday in Gonfreville-L'Orcher (France), that European companies operating in the territory of Western Sahara, must now choose between negotiating with the Polisario Front or stop their activities and leave.



"From now on, since the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the European companies operating in the territory of Western Sahara, must either negotiate with the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, the Polisario Front, or cease their activities and leave," he insisted during his speech at the International Conference on the Natural Resources of Western Sahara which closed its works Saturday night.



Having explained that with its two rulings of justice, the international law has passed to the European law, the lawyer recalled their important decisions, namely Morocco and Western Sahara are two separate territories, Morocco does not enjoy any sovereignty over the territory of Western Sahara, the presence of Morocco in Western Sahara is a military occupation, thus a war zone and the Sahrawi people is the only one to benefit from its natural resources.



"Nothing can be done in this territory without the consent of the Saharawi people, through its legitimate representative, the Polisario Front," said the lawyer, considering the two rulings of the CJEU "earthquake" that will shake the European edifice with their application sooner or later.



However, he acknowledged that there is still "a way to go" and that the battle "is not over yet", even if these rulings are "acquired" and all European states are required to apply.



"We are in the middle of a battle, countries like France and Spain are trying to find legal interpretations to circumvent the rulings in favor of agreements signed by the EU and Morocco," he said, ironically these countries "want to implement agreements signed with a country in a territory other than that country".



The Conference, organized by the Association of Friends of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (AARASD), concluded Saturday evening with a final declaration to be presented at the next meeting of EUCOCO to be held in November in Madrid. (SPS)



062/SPS/TRAAl-Ayoun (Refugee Camps), October 22, 2018 (SPS) - President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, affirmed that the Moroccan occupier is in an international isolation, despite its prevarications, stubbornness and obstacles, pointing out that Morocco has no other choice but to negotiate with the Polisario Front to seek a formula leading, inevitably, to the independence of the Sahrawi people.



The next negotiations between the two parties to the conflict, namely the Polisario Front and Morocco, will focus mainly on the way to follow to enable the Sahrawi people to exercise their right to self-determination and independence, said Ghali on Saturday in the wilaya of Al-Ayoun, Sahrawi refugee camps, in a speech on the occasion of the 17th meeting of the North communities.



Sahrawi President condemned the psychological war conducted by Morocco against the Sahrawi citizens by questioning the achievements made by the Sahrawi people, stressing the urgent need to thwart these desperate attempts by the consolidation of ranks, commitment to the national unity and the rallying around the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi peoples only and legitimate representative.



Ghali stressed the need to strengthen activism in all its forms, notably diplomatic, citing, in this regard, the struggle for the natural resources in which, the Sahrawi people, snatched several victories, despite the attempts of the enemy and some European countries aimed at circumventing the international law.



On this occasion, Ghali said that the Sahrawi people own all the natural resources of Western Sahara and that no other party can exploit them without consulting their only and legitimate representative, that is the Polisario Front. (SPS)



062/090/APS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.Ambedkar: A man who fought all his life to end discrimination By Hema Goonatilake It is 62 years after Dr. Ambedkars conversion to Buddhism on October 14, 1956 View(s): View(s):

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar was best known as a social reformer who campaigned against social discrimination against Dalits (untouchables). Ambedkar was born into a poor low Mahar (Dalit) caste, members of which were treated as untouchables in India. (We should note here in parentheses that 50 years earlier, it was our own Anagarika Dharmapala who developed the first Dalit Buddhist movement among South Indian Tamils. Decades later this morphed into the South Indian chauvinist movement whose primary target was North Indians and a separate state for Tamils. For those interested they could read details in the Dalit author Aloysius Religion as Emancipatory Identity: A Buddhist Movement Among Tamils Under Colonialism)

Ambedkar was the first person in India to campaign for Universal Adult Franchise before the Southborough Commission and later before the Simon Commission for all Indians without gender, caste and class bias. Earlier, only the rich, the landed and the tax payers had the right to vote.

Ambedkars campaign for womens rights is = less known. It was Ambedkar who played a major role for the Maternity Benefits Bill for the factory women workers in the Bombay legislature in July 1928. In fact, it was the first Maternity Benefits Act passed in India.

Ambedkars Conversion: A long-term plan

In 1908, as Ambedkar was the first untouchable to enter a college, at a public ceremony organised by the community to celebrate his success, he was presented with a biography of the Buddha  The Buddha and his Dhamma, by Dada Keluskar, the author and a family friend.

Ambedkars conversion to Buddhism was a process planned over a long period of time. Already in 1935, he declared, I was born a Hindu, I do not want to die a Hindu at a small conference held in Yeola, Nashik. Ambedkar had already quit Hinduism by then.

Ambedkar took the time to study the teachings of different religions, and analysed the implications of the conversion of the Dalit population to another religion.

He explained to his followers in no uncertain terms, So long as we remain in a religion, which teaches a man to treat another man like a leper, the sense of discrimination on account of caste, which is deeply rooted in our minds, cannot go. For annihilating caste and untouchables, change of religion is the only antidote.

Ambedkar explained further, After giving deep thought to the problem, everybody will have to admit that conversion is necessary to the Untouchables as self-government is to India. The ultimate object of both is the same. There is not the slightest difference in their ultimate goal. This ultimate aim is to attain freedom. And if freedom is necessary for the life of mankind, conversion of Untouchables which brings them complete freedom cannot be called worthless by any stretch of imagination.

Why did Ambedkar convert to Buddhism?

Christian missionaries approached Ambedkar to convert him and other Dalits to Christianity with the promise of huge financial and other inducements. The Muslims also pleaded with him for conversion to Islam. In fact, the Nizam of Hyderabad offered him Rs. 75 million if he and his people converted to Islam. Ambedkar rejected the offers of Christians and Muslims, and said, If one converts to Christianity, he ceases to be an Indian. The brotherhood in Islam is confined to the Believers; that is, only to Muslims. It cannot promote universal brotherhood. I will not convert to either of these religions. I will convert to one of the religions that are born here, in this country India. Of all the various Indic religions, Sanatan Dharma, Arya Samaj, Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Veerasevism etc., Buddhism appeals to me most. It is all- humanity embracing. It has no castes. I will, therefore, convert to Buddhism and advise all my Dalit brothers to convert to Buddhism and avoid conversion to a non-Indic religion.

Ambedkar further said, In the hymns of the Rig Veda, we see mans thoughts turned outwards, away from himself to the world of the gods. Buddhism, directed mans search inwards to the potentiality hidden within himself, whereas the Vedas are full of prayer, praise and worship of the gods, Buddhism aims at training of the mind to make it act righteously.

Ambedkar decided to convert to Buddhism on October 14, 1956, convinced that Buddhas dhamma is the best and that Buddhism was the most scientific religion. Another major reason was that he was convinced that Buddhism could improve the social status of Indias oppressed classes.

Ambedkars visit to Sri Lanka

Ambedkar arrived in Sri Lanka in May 1950 to attend the inaugural meeting of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Colombo. As he had not become a Buddhist by then, he did not address the formal session of the conference. Later, he addressed the delegates and explained that the objectives of his visit were to observe ceremonies and rituals not witnessed in India and to find out to what extent Buddhism was practised in in its pristine purity and whether it existed merely because people in the country happened to be Buddhist in the traditional sense of the word. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the formation of a World Fellowship of Buddhists, and declared that what was necessary was not just a Fellowship, but that the Buddhist countries in Asia should be less inward-looking and more outward-looking, and organise themselves to propagate the religion in other countries.

Ambedkar also addressed the Young Mens Buddhist Association of Colombo on the Rise and fall of Buddhism in India at a meeting chaired by Sir Ernest de Silva. Shortly afterwards, he addressed a meeting in the Colombo Town Hall and appealed to the Untouchables there to embrace Buddhism saying that there was no need to form a separate organisation. He also urged the Buddhists in Sri Lanka to accept the Untouchables and look after their interests with paternal care.

After his visit to Sri Lanka, he gave much thought to the fact that any one after conversion should not remain a nominal Buddhist as in India and other Buddhist countries. This motivated him to publish his Bauddha Puja Path or Buddhist Worship, a short collection of texts in Pali (with Marathi translation). The booklet began with the Three Refuges and Five Precepts and ended with the Ratana Sutta, and also included verses recited when offering flowers to the Buddha and three of the most important verses of the Dhammapada. Ambedkar, on several occasions, consulted the Venerable Hammalawa Saddhatissa Thera who was resident in India on the conversion programme he was going to launch. He was also in correspondence with Devapriya Valisinha, the General Secretary of the Mahabodhi Society.

Ambedkar chose the oldest monk in India, a Burmese, the Venerable U Chandramani of Kusinara to initiate him into Buddhism on October 14, 1956. He also invited Devapriya Valisinha to participate in the ceremony. He and his wife took the Three Refuges and Five Precepts from U Chandramani, and several minutes after that, Ambedkar himself administered the same Three Refuges and Five Precepts together with twenty-two supporting vows which he had formulated to the 360,000 men, women and children who had assembled there to convert to Buddhism.The social scientist in Amunugama and the many facets of Lankas socio-political transformation Dreams of Change: Land, Labour and Conflict in Sri Lanka by Sarath Amunugama Reviewed by Dhammika Amarasinghe View(s): View(s):

This book is a collection of essays written by Sarath Amunugama over many years on a variety of subjects relating to socio-economic change and political conflict in Sri Lanka. Jayadeva Uyangoda positions these essays in the following way.

In this collection of essays, Sarath Amunugama deals with one of the central themes of Sri Lankas socio-political transformation during the colonial and post-colonial phases; the land question. Land has provided the material basis for modern Sri Lankas development policies, electoral politics, inter class political alliances, ethnic conflict and civil war, Left-wing insurgencies, inter-ethnic relations as well as political and religio-social ideologies.

The intellectual approach of the book is brought out in its main title: Dreams of Change. The cover of the book has a set of pictures: On one side is D.S, Senanayake, independent Sri Lankas first Prime Minister and the reputed regenerator of the Rajarata, dressed in an amude in the company of several young men representing the new generation of the emergent nation. (The unsaid interesting story about this picture is that one of the youths in shorts happens to be C.P. de Silva, then a school boy at S. Thomas College and destined to be DSs Civil Service lieutenant and later a Minister of Lands in a rival administration. The boy behind the camera was Dudley Senanayake, destined to carry forward DSs legacy in agricultural development in later years and to be Prime Minister himself.) If DSs dream for the new nation was a sturdy yeoman peasantry, the man in the companion picture, Rohana Wijeweera, arriving for his trial in the courts had other dreams  of a more violent and revolutionary kind.

Sarath Amunugama is well qualified for the task of providing an analytical narrative. His intellectual equipment was honed in the Sociology Department of the then prestigious University of Ceylon, at Peradeniya, under teachers like Ralph Pieris, Stanley Tambiah and Gananath Obeyesekere, most of whom later adorned the faculties of front rank universities abroad. He obtained his doctorate in anthropology at the Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociale in Paris. As a member of the elite Ceylon Civil Service (CCS), Dr Amunugama had the good fortune to work in the early years of his public service career (before he ended up as a Ministry Secretary and later as an international Civil Servant) in rural administration, ending up as a Government Agent. These assignments enabled him to work closely with the people at grassroots level and to be intimately involved in numerous development projects.

He was in fact the official in charge of the Chandrikawewa colonisation scheme, the subject of one of the essays in this book. Quite appositely Amunugama raises the important methodological issue of a bureaucrats eligibility and competence to comment academically as an independent observer. He challenges the view held by some anthropologists that administrators do not have access to accurate information from informants with whom they have an official relationship.

Amunugamas later experience of three decades as a politician and a Minister has certainly enhanced his experience in relation to the subjects dealt with in the book, as surely it must have deepened his insights with regard to them. Therefore, one can conclude that he knows what he is talking about  whether or not one agrees with his point of view on some matters.

Land problems

The book provides invaluable background material in respect of several subjects. For instance, there is a good summary of the genesis of the land problem starting with Sri Lankas equivalent of the Enclosure movement enabled by the abolition of Rajakariya by the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms and the promulgation of Wasteland Ordinances. Despite the existence of a school of thought that there was no actual dispossession of the Kandyan peasant by colonial land legislation, Amunugama points out that, for instance, Gananath Obeyesekere in his research at Medagama in Hinidumpattu, in which Amunugama was his assistant, had found that the area of the village as claimed by its inhabitants had in fact shrunk to one seventh of that size in the official settlement, graphically demonstrating the validity of the dispossession theory and the origin of the problem of rural landlessness.

Another essay deals with Dry Zone colonisation schemes initiated by D.S. Senanayake, partly for relieving the pressure on land in the western and southern segments of the island. The economic arguments advanced against these schemes by contemporary leftist critics, notably Philip Gunawardene and S.A.Wickramasinghe, are also analysed in the book. Reference to other attempts at relieving the problem of landlessness  like Village Expansion Schemes  rounds up a concise presentation of the rural land situation.

In the context of several of the essays to follow, the introduction of some elements of the social structure in the southern dry zone, particularly the institution of gambaraya and other patron-client relationships in village life, forms a necessary complement to the foregoing analysis of the land problem.

Still another useful section of the introductory chapter is the account of the social amelioration measures taken by the government following the grant of universal adult franchise in 1931. We see here that a significant first step taken was the first ever scientific socio-economic survey carried out in the country, the B.B. Dasgupta Economic and Industrial Survey, commissioned by the State Council in 1935. (Dasgupta with his engaging Indian-English pronunciation and the perennial blue jacket was the first Economics professor for many of us at Peradeniya). This survey for the first time had provided the government, and the society at large, with an objective presentation of the contours of the socio-economic problems confronting the country. One of the significant findings of the survey was the prevalent incidence of rural indebtedness and landlessness. The findings of the survey prompted the initiation of various measures of social amelioration which resulted in the achievement of high rankings by the country in the Human Development Index, while still remaining a poor country in economic terms. The resulting situation was an essential background to the later violent political upheavals analysed in the book.

The next chapter is on the Chandrikawewa colonisation scheme with which the author had been personally involved as a Civil Servant. The author draws on the official diaries of the colonial era Government Agents of Ratnapura, reminiscent of the published diaries of Leonard Woolf at Hambantota, to paint the pathetic situation in which the area which came under the scheme was in earlier times. The author narrates in detail the selection of allotees for land in the Chandrikawewa scheme, from different parts of the Ratnapura and adjoining Matara and Hambantota districts, the travails of their settling down process and the problems of growing up as a new community. As a professional sociologist, he does not simply narrate but analyses such problems, backing his analysis with sociological theory. He describes the undercurrent of human relationships underlying the officially ordained superstructure.

The many facets of rural credit constitute the subject matter of the next chapter. A considerable amount of information relating to the subject, drawn from two official socio-economic surveys is presented by the author. Although this information relates to a past period, it is unlikely that, in the slow moving rural sector, the basic contours of the problem would have changed much. The author quotes with approval the well-known economic historian R.H. Tawney who has said In all countries where farming is in the hands of small producers, the fundamental problem of rural society is not that of wages but that of credit. In regard to rural credit, Amunugama makes two important points: (a) that the entire spectrum of credit needs of the individual who happens to be a peasant needs to be taken into consideration and not just his needs as a producer and (b) his credit needs are highly time-sensitive and are closely tied up with the community farming calendar. The author also refers to the perennial problem of collateral in a yet undeveloped economy and sees a solution only in a system tied to a broad based crop insurance scheme.

In another essay, Amunugama examines the dynamics of Rural Development and Shramadana in a colony in the Southern Dry Zone. The setting is a relatively small village that had developed in the previous 50 years with migrants from near and far settling down periodically. Hence the use of the colony nomenclature. However, interestingly enough, the seemingly ubiquitous gambaraya, is present here too. The author starts with a useful historical account of the Rural Development movement and the Shramadana movement in Sri Lanka. The fluctuating fortunes of the Rural Development Society in the Andalla village (Alibokkuwa) are then recounted, bringing out the interplay of the different social segments of the village and the part played by local politics. There is no reason to doubt that Andalla is typical of the Southern village and indeed shorn of its ecological features, typical of the local villages, in its social dynamics, except perhaps in respect of this particular Gambaraya who plays no role at all in the public activities there even for the sake of prestige, unlike many other lords of the manor all over the country.

JVP: Defeated dreams

Amunugama has written three essays relating to the JVP and its activities. The essay titled Defeated Dreams: the JVP insurrection of 1971 sets the insurrection of 1971 against the background of a crisis which had been developing since before the gaining of independence, in a scenario of remarkable improvements of social indicators in health, education and social welfare against the background of a stagnant insular economy  a crisis in expectations. Among other matters relevant to the origin of the JVP and its militancy, the essay touches on the much speculated upon caste factor. The post mortem verdict of the author is: The insurrection of 1971 failed due to a contradiction between theory and practice, the failure to win over a peasantry who were correctly identified as the most oppressed of the local poor, the lack of rapport with the organised working class and the inability to win over the other ranks of the armed services. While this article focuses on the 1971 insurrection, the second article on the JVP, though its title has a personal flavour, being worded Wijeweera and the Leadership of the JVP, provides a detailed account of the formation of the JVP and its development. It is an invaluable source of information for the student of contemporary politics. The aura of supreme authority which Wijeweera, unprepossessing in personal appearance, seemed to excercise over the rank and file of his supporters (in the leadership circles, of course, it is now known that there were detractors) has always been an enigma. Amunugama provides what to him appears as an explanation: His predominance is related to his uncompromising critique of the Capitalist state which is based on an orthodox reading of Marx and Engels and a Leninist theory regarding the nature of the state. Anyway, the equation of super-predominance has two sides  the super hero and the disciples. Its understanding may require looking at both sides and not just at the super hero.

The third of Amunugamas essays relevant to the JVP as well as present day radical nationalist movements is appropriately titled Buddhaputra and Bhumiputra; Dilemmas of Modern Monks in relation to Ethnic and Political Conflict. Given the rationale of the radical nationalist (however strongly one may personally disagree with their ideology) one must concede that at the level of the lone individual, this indeed would be a painful soul crushing dilemma for the authentic Buddhist monk, who is a radical nationalist or a dedicated social revolutionary, at the same time.

Media and ethnic relations

The essay titled Media and Ethnic Relations is an interesting one, though it only confirms by statistical analysis what intelligent observers of the media scene have always known in this era of fake news. This article also records the disreputable episode of a certain newspaper carrying on a campaign of highly irrational vilification against an internationally reputed academic of Sri Lankan origin and his scholarly work, on thinly veiled ethnic grounds. The author has done a great service by recording this disgraceful episode for posterity.

The book contains other useful articles on subjects as varied as new trends in recruitment to the Sri Lanka Administrative Service (an eye opener in the context of present popularly held views about this service), social science research in family planning, providing useful insights for policy making and programme designing and the sociology of radio and television broadcasting in Sri Lanka (containing, inter alia, a first hand account of the political, financial and technical issues that were involved in the introduction of television in Sri Lanka).

Lastly, the author, being a good Sri Lankan, has performed his guru upahaara (veneration of the teacher) by devoting his final chapter to pay tribute to his old teacher at the University of Ceylon (now Peradeniya), the Late Ralph Pieris  the man who loved an argument, never stifled dissent and stood for individuality and freedom

The author deserves to be congratulated for revising several social science conclusions regarding recent events in the country. This will help in providing a more rounded view of our recent history than now available through the works of other social scientists.

As Professor H.L. Seneviratne, says Within this broad canvas, Amunugama provides the reader with a rich body of data that reveals an unparalleled intimacy with the contemporary social and cultural processes of the island. While the topics dealt with are familiar from numerous studies of these subjects by professional scholars as well and other observers, the unique perspective of the book derives from the authors wide experience well beyond the narrowly academic, and consisting of the perceptions of a senior administrator and a participant observer of the second wave of colonisation schemes; a former media specialist of the UNESCO; and outstanding scholar with a PhD completed under the guidance of the distinguished French anthropologist Louis Dumont; a poet and literary critic, and a political activist who was to become one of the countrys leading politicians.

As always Amunugamas writing is simple, lucid and a pleasure to read. Dreams of Change is a worthy successor to his award winning book on Anagarika Dharmapala, entitled The Lions Roar.Tulabhara: An age-old tradition revived for a worthy cause Dr. P.G. Punchihewa View(s): View(s):

Traditionally, Sri Lankans are well known for their generosity, particularly when it comes to feeding the maha sangha and the poor. From the early times it was the royalty that was in the forefront in liberality. King Devanampiyatissa had constructed a refectory called Mahapali to store the provisions for a thousand bhikkhus. According to Mahavamsa, in forty places, King Dutugemunu had commanded the perpetual giving of rice foods prepared with honey. A 19-metre-long canoe carved out of granite lying today in the Abhayagiri stupa premises in Anuradhapura had the capacity to hold food given as alms sufficient for 5,000 monks. The canoe was filled with cooked rice and a smaller granite canoe lying close by would have been used for curries. Incidentally, Faxian, the Chinese pilgrim who visited Sri Lanka in the early 5th century and lived here for two years, had recorded that 5,000 monks lived at Abhayagiriya temple.

In ancient times, there was another form of generosity undertaken by the kings known as Tulabhara dana (Tula meaning a weighing scale and dana meaning almsgiving, liberality and offering). A donation made to the needy mainly with food or other requisites equal to the weight of the donor who sits on one side of the scales while the other side was being filled with whatever the donor wanted to distribute among the poor.

A number of references are made to such tulabhara dana in Sinhala classical literature and chronicles. Thupavamsa records King Bhatiya carrying out a tulabhara dana for the triple gem  meaning Buddha, dhamma and sangha. Culavamsa mentions that King Vijayabahu I thrice dispensed alms to the poor of a weight equal to that of his body. Parakramabahu I had summoned the beggars every year and performed the tulabhara dana. Nissankamalla was the last king to have given a tulabhara dana. After that no mention has been made in classical literature about this practice.

On the last full moon day of September, I was a witness to a historic event  the revival of this age-old tradition by the Ven. Tallale Chandakitti Thera, the chief incumbent of Narada Dharmayatanaya in Colombo 7. The ceremony gave the tradition a new meaning and a new purpose. To commemorate 30 years of pabbajja (priesthood) of the Ven Chandakitti Thera, the dayakas in consultation with the Venerable Thera had carefully selected fifty mothers expecting their third baby and presented them with all the requirements (worth seventy five thousand rupees each), needed for a mother and baby for one year. The mothers were from poverty stricken families in and around Anuradhapura. The ceremony was attended by a large number of bhikkhus and laymen at Vajiraramaya in Anuradhapura.

Unlike on previous occasions when provisions were provided to the weight of the giver, here, it was the weight of the recipient that mattered. One by one, the mothers were led to a well decorated weighing scale specially made by an engineer and helped to sit on one side of the scale while the other side was filled with the requirements they and their babies needed for the next twelve months. It was a pleasant sight to see the coy, smiles of the young mothers beaming with happiness as they got down from the scale hugging the Buddha statue, which was among other things, perhaps, the most valuable gift they received. I walked away thinking of the fifty fortunate children who, no doubt, would be beacons of light that will illuminate this punya bhumi (fortunate land) on a future day.

It was a historic event for more than one reason. It was a revival of an age-old tradition after the Polonnaruwa period .It was not the weight of the benefactor that mattered but the weight of the beneficiary. The beneficiaries were selected from a highly vulnerable section of society. The most important factor was that what was performed earlier by the kings as individuals with the expectation of receiving merit, has now passed on to the maha sangha and is being performed as a collective community project. It is a project which needs to be encouraged wherever feasible.

Sri Lanka has again demonstrated to the world that its sense of generosity is yet alive.

Incidentally, a UK-based independent organisation, Charities Aid Foundation looked at how and why people around the world give to charity. Generosity across the World, the eighth edition of the CAF World Giving Index, (2017) had collected data from 139 countries, which represented an incredible 95% of the worlds population, and Sri Lanka has ranked eighth for the past five years. Myanmar was first for five consecutive years. Some of the well-known donor countries were way behind.

(The writer was a member of the former Ceylon Civil Service and is the author of about 35 books.)Anne Paloma Ruiz-Picasso Gilot, (born 19 April 1949 in Vallauris, France) has been designing jewellery for much of her life; she began with Yves Saint Laurent, although now she does so exclusively for Tiffany & Co. It is this artistic side which also led her to play the role of a condemned woman in a film, although that was her only venture into the world of cinema. However, this pleasant and apparently extrovert woman will always be best-known as the daughter of Malaga artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso.

"Sometimes we had to say he wasn't in" Paloma Ruiz-Picasso lived with the artist for several years, and says it was a happy time. What was your everyday life like? He was a lovely father. He didn't care whether I did well or badly at school. At the end of the school year, when we went to the south of France, he felt he ought to ask me how I had done, but you could see he wasn't interested. What was wonderful was that life and art were mixed together; for example, as soon as we finished eating, he would immediately start working again, as if eating lunch interrupted something he had in his mind. But he could also lie quietly on the beach for hours. In fact, in the summer he worked more at night because we used to be out in the sun all day. Did many people visit him? Of course. But some days he wanted to work and we had to tell them he wasn't there, otherwise people would have been there all the time. Do you remember any particular visitors? I remember Cocteau often used to come. Poets, musicians, artists. I think that's when I met Miro. But Picasso never came back to Malaga? After 1935, he never returned to Spain at all.

Coinciding with the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Museo Picasso Malaga, Paloma and her husband (who works with her on everything relating to the artist) have just spent a few days in the city. They met us in a beautiful, spacious room in the Gran Hotel Miramar; a setting which perfectly suits the understated elegance of a woman who wears the jewellery she has designed herself. Although she rarely gives interviews, she spoke openly about her father, sometimes wavering between seeing him as the paternal figure and the greatest artist of the 20th century. She is amazed at the changes in Malaga city since she was last here, and refers several times to the "fantastic" work that Bernard Picasso is doing with the museum. Nor does she mind talking about politics, everyday life with her father and what her life has been like, bearing such a famous surname. However, the moment when she became most nostalgic and sounded happiest, without a doubt, was when she said that Picasso's Paloma de la Paz is the loveliest gift anyone has ever given her.

It's now 15 years since the Picasso Museum opened in Malaga. It was a turning point for the city and opened the way to it becoming one of the most important in Spain in terms of art. How does that make you feel?

QUOTES "I would like to see in Malaga an exhibition about the painted sculptures" "It's incredible for a man to be able to fight, not with weapons, but with his art" "When there is a particularly interesting exhibition about my father I try to see it several times" "The Paloma de la Paz is the loveliest gift I have ever been been given in my life" "Because I was a very calm and quiet child, I was allowed to stay with him while he painted for hours" "For me, Spain was always a dream; and I knew that for him it was something very important" "France was where he lived and where he wanted to live, but he never felt French" "He would be delighted to see that Malaga has become a world famous centre for art"

I think it was a wonderful idea. One can really see all the benefits for the city now. I suppose even more so in the future, but what I have seen so far is fascinating. We arrived last night and the first thing I thought was how lovely Malaga is looking. It radiates energy.

Is it long since you were last here?

Yes. I don't really remember when it was, but I'm sure it was before the airport was modernised. It must be about ten years ago.

Do you think your father ever imagined that there would be a museum bearing his name in Malaga?

I don't think so, no, but he would be very proud. Not just of that, but also seeing how the country has changed and how Malaga, from being a distant provincial city has become a world-famous centre for art.

Did he talk to you about Malaga? What image did you have of the city in which he was born?

To be honest Spain for me was like a dream. I knew it was very important to him... Look, he always talked to me in French, with a very strong accent, but always in French. The only times he spoke Spanish were when we were with people who didn't speak a word of French: when we went to the bullfights, with the bullfighters, then he would speak Spanish. But he did used to talk about flamenco, which is when I began to relate to what Andalucia signified. I was 25 when I came here for the first time, for a photo session in Carmona for the French Vogue magazine. I was with a group of photographers and make-up artists, and I was the only one who could speak Spanish. People would ask me what we were doing in the street in Carmona at six o'clock in the morning, because we took the photos early to avoid the heat. For me, it came as a shock because I realised then that I was half Andalusian. Not Spanish, Andalusian; and I recognised things in me that came from my father. He was very Andalusian in the way he treated people, very open, very easygoing. Sometimes people would see him in the street, and being Picasso, they would all feel very nervous, but he was very good at communicating.

Do you have a sense that Picasso, in a way, felt partly French?

No. He used to say France was where he lived and where he wanted to live, but he didn't say he felt French.

You also have an artistic side, especially in jewellery design. However, some years ago you played Countess Erzsebet Bathory in the erotic film 'Cuentos inmorales', with Polish director Walerian Borowczyk; you received praise from the critics for that. Will you make any more films?

I doubt it. I felt very shy about doing that. And you will understand that with a surname like mine, and being shy as well... But in the end I decided I didn't like being so timid. They suggested that I did the film because I used to talk a great deal about the book and the character in particular, so when the producer asked me he knew I couldn't say no. I thought at the time, it will either kill me or make me less timid.

So it was quite hard for you to play that role?

Yes, but the reason I did it was because I knew she was an almost silent person; there was very little dialogue. And because it bore no relationship to my own life.

I understand that your interest in art came from your father.

Yes. Because I was very calm and very quiet, I was able to sit beside him for hours while he painted. If he told me not to talk, I wouldn't; and he used to give me paper and pencils to draw alongside him.

Who were you sitting with when he painted, your father or Picasso?

With my father, although at the same time I could never forget who he was. When we went out, people in the street would come and ask him for autographs. He was like a superstar. But for me that was the secondary aspect.

Of course, when you were born he was already world famous.

Exactly. When I look at his works, I have always thought of them as being by Picasso, not by my father. It's a type of respect for his art, which is more important than the fact that he was my father. But of course, I also had another way of seeing him.

I understand that you identify especially with the Paloma de la Paz.

I always say that is the loveliest gift anyone has ever given me, and I should also say that I am a placid person, so the name suits. At that time it was very unusual, although it is more popular now. But when I was born, nobody was called Paloma.

Do you identify especially with any other works?

There are many. His work was so great, so varied. One tends to talk about my father as the greatest painter of the 20th century, but he was also the greatest sculptor and the greatest ceramic artist, and the same with the prints. Overall he has done more than anyone else, but it isn't just that: he discovered things that nobody else had, ever. And then there are the things that he returned to years later, which shows that in his mind he hadn't finished something.

Although he was your father, you must have had to study his career as well.

Yes, of course, and it has been a pleasure. There are so many exhibitions in the world of Picasso; I don't go to all of them, but when there is something particularly interesting we'll visit the same one in different places. That way, you discover things you hadn't noticed before.

Although everyone has their own opinion about it, there is no doubt that Guernica is one of his most important works. With that in mind, and thinking about the present day, I wanted to ask you what you think your father's opinion would be about the fact that 40 years after Franco's death they are going to withdraw his honours.

I believe that in life one has to move calmly. He may have been revolutionary in his art, but I think he would have believed that with history you have to take your time. Things shouldn't be done when a wound is still wide open. It's better to deal with the problem now than it would have been 40 years ago.

I imagine he was always aware of the importance of that painting.

When the Republic asked him to do something for the Spanish pavilion he couldn't think what to do, and suddenly he realised that this picture would truly be a Hymn For Peace. It's fascinating for a man to be able to fight, not with weapons but with art.

What do you hope Malaga will be like in another 15 years, when we repeat this interview?

I think it is on the right path, it just has to continue in the same way. The city is lovely in itself, and I believe that if it continues to focus on art it will always do well.

What temporary exhibition would you like to see at the Picasso Musum in Malaga?

I would do one about the painted sculptures. There is something about the third dimension and painting that deserves to be studied further.Thousands of film fans were in town for Marbella's International Film Festival (MIFF) last weekend.

WINNERS AT THE 2018 MARBELLA FILM FESTIVAL Best Newcomer. Andrea Martinez, Shadow. Best Short Film. Easy Way Out. Best Shorter Short Film. Trigger Finger. Best Actress. Catia Ojeda, Closure. Best Actor. Steven Berkoff, Tell Tale Heart. Best Director. Tony Farjallah, Morine. Best Feature Film. Solo!

Now in its 13th year, the festival saw 25 independent films from around the world screened and scores of film makers in attendance.

The five-day movie extravaganza then closed with a glitzy awards ceremony last Sunday.

Among the guests was British actor Steven Berkoff, who ran a workshop on the secret of acting before attending the red carpet premiere of his latest film Tell Tale Heart at Teatro Goya on Sunday.

Festival director Mac Chakaveh, told SUR in English: "We had a great festival and lots of people came to watch the movies. We are certainly increasing in terms of production companies and investors this year which is great for Marbella as they are all high net worth people. And this is part of the aim of the festival, to bring in fresh blood to help the local economy."

Chakaveh was especially impressed by Berkoff's workshop. "It was packed," he said. "He's a very interesting guy and I was mesmerised by the workshop. And then he went on to win the Best Actor category.

"We also had a great locally-filmed Spanish film, Solo!, that used local actors and went on to win the Best Feature Film category."

During the five-day film frenzy, a number of workshops, seminars and networking events were held at the H10 Andalucia Plaza Hotel, where scores of industry professionals were in attendance.

The closing night of the festival saw the Gala Awards Dinner take place at the H10, where guests dressed in black ties and sleek dresses to find out who won in the different categories, before enjoying cocktails, live music and the rest of the closing ceremony.

The festival was launched in 2006 and works closely with the Marbella town hall and tourist board, the Marbella Film Office and the Andalucia Film Commission.Complaints from several residents about large quantities of sewage floating in the sea water at specific points along the Marbella coastline raised the alarm earlier this month. After technical checks ruled out a breakdown in the system, representatives from the Beaches department at the council and the water companies Acosol and Hidralia set about the task of inspecting the underwater outlets in search of a leak. Divers from the local fire brigade's subaquatic unit joined the operation to check the pipes located around 200 metres off the shore.

The fire brigade divers began by concentrating their inspections off Casablanca beach although the aim is to examine outlets at different points of the coastline, as the councillor for Beaches and CEO of Acosol, Manuel Cardena, pointed out.

"We are trying to detect the source of the leakage, which could come from a pipe that is not connected to the main sewerage and is tipping [sewage] directly into the sea," he said. The councillor added that the local authority has been working to separate rainwater drains and sewers and their intention was to "rule out the possibility of the existence of an unofficial connection" to a drain.

Manuel Lavigne, a member of the fire brigade's diver unit, said that they were working in conjunction with lifeguards on the beaches who report the presence of sewage in the water so they can "act directly at that specific point".

The joint operation will also enable the local authority to draw up a general inventory of underwater outlets and their condition, explained Cardena.Residents who are registered on Marbella's local population census (padron) will travel free of charge on the town's local bus service, without exception, when a new bylaw comes into force in 2019.

The revised regulations that detail the rights and obligations of users of the bus service, which can be consulted on the town hall website for the next two weeks, introduce a new municipal mobility card (Tarjeta Municipal de Movilidad) which will allow registered residents to access the service. The card will have a small issuing fee of no more than ten euros, said the mayor, Angeles Munoz, at a press conference on Tuesday.

The council is to invest three million euros a year in the initiative which, the mayor explained, is aimed mainly at promoting the use of public transport, but is also expected to increase the number of residents registered on the padron.Due to Revan has been released in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, the devs over at Bioware Austine has made the two SWTOR expansions, Shadow of Revan and Rise of Hutt Cartel, free until Nov 1. So if you havent yet tried them, now is your chance!

Below is the official news:

The Star Wars: The Old Republic team is excited to celebrate the release of classic KOTOR characters in the acclaimed Star Wars mobile game  Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. In Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, players can unlock and play as beloved KOTOR companions, including the devoted Bastila Shan, the cynical Jolee Bindo and now the Savior of the Republic Jedi Knight Revan!

Join us in celebrating KOTORs legacy in both games:

Star Wars  Play the Shadow of Revan Expansion for free* and uncover the fate of Revan! Now through November 1, 2018 at 11:59PM PDT / November 2, 2018 at 6:59AM GMT, redeem the code below to unlock the first two story expansions!

REVANSFATE

Visit www.swtor.com/redeem-code and enter the shareable code above. This code offers you access to the first two story expansions, Rise of the Hutt Cartel (Level 51  55) and Shadow of Revan (Level 56  60), so you can play the story free from Level 1  60!

Star Wars  Collect and battle your favorite Old Republic heroes to unlock Jedi Knight Revan in the new Legend of the Old Republic event, live October 18  25, 2018!

FIND OUT MORE

Thank you for being a part of the ongoing legacy of Knights of the Old Republic!Indie Barcroft Media has landed a new interactive series, Most Incredible Homes, revealing astonishing dream homes from around the world for Facebook Watch.

The series will premiere on November 3 with episodes dropped weekly.

In Most Incredible Homes(5 x 12), each episode visits three incredible real-life homes to meet their owners.

From the luxury jungle tree house in tropical Costa Rica to the car-shaped home created by a petrol-head in Austria, the series travels the globe to experience the worlds most unique and extraordinary properties.

And each week, the Most Incredible Homes community on Facebook Watch will get the chance to vote for their favourite property at the end of the show; with viewers ultimately deciding which is their favourite via Facebooks new video polling feature.

Additional content featured on the Most Incredible Homes page will include a 360 walk around of the properties featured in the show and a reaction video from the winning home owners of each episode.

Executive Producers for Barcroft Media are Sam Barcroft and Peter Wyles. Barcrofts Showrunner is Jude Parker.

Most Incredible Homes will be available free to view on Facebook Watch via mobile devices, desktop and Facebooks TV apps.

Having launched 15 shows on Facebook Watch over the past year, we have seen how communities congregate around compelling shows. Naturally were excited to take things to the next level with this interactive original series, said Sam Barcroft, CEO of Barcroft Media.

Share this storyTICKERS: VGCX; VITFF

Source: Streetwise Reports (10/22/18)

With construction 40% completed, this gold explorer/developer is well on the way to getting the Yukon's next gold mine up and running.



Construction crews are racing against Mother Nature, pouring concrete and erecting steel at Victoria Gold Corp.'s (VIT:TSX.V) Eagle Gold Project in the Yukon, in order to continue interior construction once the Yukon winter sets in. Concrete for the crushing plants should be completed by the end of October and steel is currently being erected at the gold plant.

Construction has come a long way since March, Victoria CEO John McConnell told Streetwise Reports. "Once we had the financing in place in March, we immediately mobilized. In the spring we focused on earthworks, got roads in, worked on the heap-leach pad and leveled out areas for the crushing system."

"Concrete works should be done by the end of October. The goal now is to erect steel and have the buildings clad by the end of November so we can be working indoors through the coldest months, doing the electrical and mechanical work. We are right on schedule," McConnell added.



Primary Crusher Under Construction

Victoria closed a comprehensive CA$505 million financing package in March with Orion Mine Finance, Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd. and Caterpillar Financial Services Ltd. that fully funds the Eagle Gold Project to commercial production.

The financing included:

two credit facilities totaling US$175 million (approximately C$219 million);

an equipment financing facility for up to US$50 million (C$63 million);

a C$98 million royalty financing; and,

a private placement of Victoria common shares to two separate subscribers for a total of C$125 million.

The Eagle Gold Project is part of Victoria's 100%-owned Dublin Gulch property, located in central Yukon Territory, about 375 miles north of Whitehorse. The roughly 555-square-meter property is accessible all year by road and is tying into Yukon Energy's electrical grid only 45km from site. A comprehensive cooperation benefits agreement with the First Nation of Na-cho Nyak Dun is in place, signed in 2011.

The feasibility study for Eagle and Olive deposits estimates Proven and Probable reserves of 2.7 million ounces of gold, and if all goes according to plan, Victoria should produce its first gold in the second half of 2019. Eagle is projected to produce approximately 200,000 ounces of gold per year at the cash cost of US$550 per ounce. Permits are in place for construction and operations.

The feasibility study, using a $1,250/oz gold price, projects an after-tax Net Present Value (5%) of $508 million, with an internal rate of return of 29.5%.

With an eye on adding to the resource, exploration is continuing at Dublin Gulch. McConnell noted, "We spent $2 million this year on exploration, drilled 5,000 meters and conducted 8,000 meters of surface trenching. We've had far bigger programs the last two or three years, but have scaled back because our focus is on construction this year."

Industry analysts have been closely following Victoria's progress.

Richard Gray, an analyst with Cormark Securities, was impressed with Victoria's progress. On September 20 he wrote, "Victoria has delivered an impressive summer of development at its Eagle gold project, de-risking its expectation for first pour in H2/19 and putting it well on track to become Canada's next gold mine. Despite a fully financed project that is already 1/3rd through its expected total build hours, Victoria continues to trade at just 0.36x NAV and should re-rate as it closes in on production." Cormark has a Buy recommendation and target price of C$0.70 on Victoria's shares.

Gary Sidhu of PI Financial found Victoria's September construction update. He wrote on September 19, Victoria "has provided an update outlining the progress of development since commencing construction on March 15, 2015. Impact: Positive: Construction is proceeding on schedule. The majority of the earthworks is complete and critical path items are on schedule to be completed before the end of October (within the weather window.) The first gold pour is expected in H219." PI Financial has a Buy rating on Victoria and a price target of C$0.80.

[NLINSERT]

Disclosure:

1) Patrice Fusillo compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise reports as an employee. She or members of her household own securities of the following companies mentioned in the article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Victoria Gold. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article.

Disclosures from Cormark Securities, Victoria Gold Corp., Morning Meeting Notes, September 20, 2018

Analyst Certification: We, Richard Gray and Alex Hunchak, hereby certify that the views expressed in this research report accurately reflect our personal views about the subject company(ies) and its (their) securities. We also certify that we have not been, and will not be receiving direct or indirect compensation in exchange for expressing the specific recommendation(s) in this report.

During the last 24 months, has Cormark provided financial advice to and/or, either on its own or as a syndicate member, participated in a public offering, or provided private placement of securities of this issuer? Yes.

During the last 24 months, has Cormark received or is expected to receive compensation for having provided investment banking services to this issuer? Yes.

During the last 24 months, has the analyst of this company received compensation from a pool that included investment banking revenue from this issuer earned by Cormark or entities affiliated with it? Yes.

Does the analyst, associate or any individual responsible for the preparation of this research, or a member of that person's household, have a financial interest in the securities of this company? Yes. RG-Long position, Common shares.

Disclosure Statements and Dissemination Policies: A full list of our disclosure statements as well as our research dissemination policies and procedures can be found on our website.

Disclosures from PI Financial, Victoria Gold Corp., Research Flash, September 19, 2018

Analyst Certification: I, Gary Sidhu, hereby certify that all of the views expressed in this report accurately reflect my personal views about the subject securities or issuers. I also certify that no part of my compensation was, is, or will be, directly or indirectly related to the specific recommendations or views expressed in this report. I am the research analyst primarily responsible for preparing this report.

Research Disclosures:

Victoria Gold:

PI Financial Corp. and/or its affiliates expect to receive or intend to seek compensation for investment banking services from the subject company.A new outdoor brand just dropped in Sweden. The team behind Norra are on a mission to create sustainable outdoor gear that will not only last a lifetime, but remain affordable thanks to direct to consumer sales.

Norra was started by Jacob von Matern together with Petter Zachrisson. Jacob spent seven years designing and developing backpacks and bags for the Swedish outdoor brand Haglofs before leaving to start his own design firm, Norra Designs, where he worked with clients like Silva, Helly Hansen, and Peak Performance. Upon meeting e-commerce and outdoor retail wiz Zachrisson, the idea for Norra was born.

Norras first product is the Ljung outdoor pant. Durable, comfortable, and functional, the pants are made of a stretch recycled polyester and organic cotton fabric. The fabric is treated with a fluorocarbon-free DWR to add dirt- and water-resistance.

The Ljung pants are designed to work in as many weather conditions as possible. The pants are warm enough to handle cooler temperatures and thanks to a two-way zipper running along the side of the pants, you can easily vent if you are getting too warm.

Other features include two deep hand pockets, two thigh pockets, and a phone pocket for plenty of storage while on the go. The waist features velcro adjustment straps to help you get a custom fit without the need for a belt.

The width of the pant hem is adjustable via an aluminum hook and on the inside of the hem youll find another hook to secure to your boot laces. If you dont want to wear gaiters, you can ensure your pants stay over your booth via an elastic cord that slips under the soles of your shoes. And for those that work outside on their knees, Norra even offers flexible EVA foam pad inserts.

Much like Live Out There or Stio, Norra plans to cut out the middleman and sell only direct to consumer. And during the design process, Norra plans to get input and feedback from consumers before settling on the final product.

Norra is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to take pre-orders on the Ljung pants. Norra will offer their pants at a price of 119 Euro or roughly $137. Delivery is expected in May.We have all seen the scene at least once, although some of us have savored it perhaps dozens of times. The handsome, dynamic, misunderstood, modernizing young king, with his slender physique, slender beard, and even more slender morals, strutting about the banquet hall knocking the plates and goblets off the table in a drunken frenzy. Finally, in a fit of seething fury, he bellows that royally rhetorical question: Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?

I have always liked that scene from Becket and, when I was a child, I even sympathized with the wine-swilling, friend-killing king. My child-mind looked at the problem with that shallow realism too often mistaken for deep wisdom: The poor king was just trying to keep his country together, he was just trying to strengthen its secular institutions, and he was just trying to preserve his lineage. Moreover, I concluded, he had been a good friend and that Thomas guy had the effrontery not to be grateful for all the benefits he had reaped from his royal connections. But as St. Paul reminds us, we should put away childish things, including making excuses for evil acts, once we grow up. The child-mind is always ready to make excuses and to fabricate different scenarios to lessen the crime and blur moral clarity. One can always find a million excuses, some even plausible, for committing almost any act. This making up of excuses, this straining of the bounds of credulity, is exactly what President Trump has done by refusing thus far to acknowledge the obvious: Nothing so momentous an act as the killing of an internationally respected Saudi citizen and journalist would ever be dared without the approval of the royal family.

One can almost imagine a similar Becket scene in the Royal Palace in Riyadh. A young prince, Mohammed bin Salman, better known as MBS, is on a noble and beneficent quest to modernize his backward country. He is almost as handsome as Peter OToole, although not as slender of body or beard, and embraces an even more slender morality. The young Crown Princes dearth of morals would have made Henry marvel and blush simultaneously, but Henry would certainly understand the need to protect the royal image and to do whatever was necessary to continue his modernization program. In this Becket-like scene, the Crown Prince is just another misunderstood royal who really only wants what is best for his country and is willing to do, quite literally, whatever it takes to protect his reputation and that of his nation. He is understandably upset over the disrespectful journalist, and he fears that his own hold on power is threatened by any opposition to his rule. The journalist in question, Jamal Khashoggi, is not as close a friend of the Crown Prince as Becket was to Henry, but Khashoggi was a close confidante of the Saud and had benefited greatly from his connections to the royal family. So the movie scene proceeds: Angry, outraged, losing control, the Crown Prince finally asks to be rid of that meddlesome journalist and thus triggers, unintentionally, a rogue operation within his Kingdom for which, according to our president, the earnest young prince cannot be blamed. The problem with this script is that four of the fifteen Saudi experts who traveled to Istanbul to retrieve or interview Khashoggi were members of the Royal Guard, which is under the direct control of the Crown Prince. It is one of those intriguing little coincidences between the historical event in England and the current drama reeling out today in Saudi Arabia, that it is exactly four would-be helpers of the young modernizers who are seen as culpable for doing what they earnestly know they had been commanded to do.

Of course, it is hard to imagine a drunken display of outrage by the young Saudi prince; the Saudi royals prefer to be circumspect and hide their unspeakable vices from the public. But it is far less difficult to understand why President Trump and others are so reluctant to accept the disturbing evidence of the Crown Princes complicity in the murder of Khashoggi. We have gotten so used to listening to Saudi lies and being duped by Saudi flattery that it would take an incredible act of will to accept what has happened. Just as former President Bush let the Saudis off the hook for high-level support for Osama bin Laden and just as former President Obama let the Saudis off the hook by ignoring their appalling human rights record, so too President Trump will strive mightily to avoid any unraveling of the Saudi-American relationship. While the newspapers have been replete with explanations of the multi-billion dollar arms deals and the need for oil, they have almost completely ignored the overriding reason why President Trump and the United States will want this problem to go away: Iran and Israel. Israel has for a long time sought to convince us to take military action against Irans nuclear facilities, but that will be nearly impossible without Saudi Arabia endorsing our air strikes. The Israelis, who probably have gathered from their own intelligence sources in Turkey more incriminating evidence against the Saudis, have been intriguingly silent throughout this entire episode. They too are hoping this crisis passes quickly.

History Does Not Repeat, but Royal Excuses Do

It is probably too much to expect American politicians ever to give up childish things and it is certainly unrealistic ever to think any depravity is beneath the dignity of a Saudi prince, but unless the United States has completely lost its moral bearings, President Trump will have to do better than fabricate a Henry II defense for his friend, Mohammed bin Salman. There is, of course, some validity to the Trumpian argument that even monarchs should be accorded the right of presumed innocence, but the circumstantial evidence against the Crown Prince is compelling and the history of the House of Saud indicates strongly that murder is not something they would be squeamish about at all. To say the Saudi royals are known for their piggishness is to slur those lovable porcine creatures. It is no surprise that the Crown Prince probably ordered Khashoggis murder; the surprise, rather, is that anyone is at all surprised. When Senator Lindsey Graham expresses outrage and condemns the killing, it is to be commended. But when he adds that he feels used and abused because he has been, in his own words, the Kingdoms biggest defender, one can only conclude that heand so many others including our last several presidentshave willfully ignored the well-documented abuses and crimes of that regime.

If the Crown Prince eventually acknowledges the murder and bemoans the fate of his victim, he will be following in a long line of dissembling dignitaries, stretching back at least as far as ancient Rome when the Emperor Claudius feigned sorrow and regret at the execution of his wife, Messalina. Even in England, Henry II does not stand alone in his surprise at how his minions circumvented his orders. Perhaps the Oscar for best actor expressing regret should go to Elizabeth I, who having signed the execution warrant for Queen Mary of Scotland, nonetheless convinced so many of her subjects that she was surprised and saddened that the execution had actually been carried out.

Perhaps we have all been watching the wrong Peter OToole movie. Perhaps the answer to what is going on in Saudi Arabia is not in Becket, but in Lawrence of Arabia. I have known many Arabs whom I admire and who are among the most decent people I have ever known, but I think OTooles observation is dead on when referring to the House of Saud: A little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous and cruel. Our president once long ago understood this. Long before becoming president he raged against the Saudis, but he has been seduced by their charm and their feigned affection for him. They would as soon kiss him as dismember him, depending on which act would serve their interests best.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Antonius Alexander Tigor (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 15:56 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778bace0 3 Opinion digital-economy,economic-growth,technology,digital-technology,economy Free

The digital and communication technology is in full swing. By 2030, 8 billion people and 25 billion smart devices are estimated to be connected to one enormous network. This dynamism offers innovations and efficiencies to kick-start productivity to deliver strong, sustainable, and inclusive growth. However, such a future is also demanding and disruptive, and could deepen social and economic divides. The participant countries of the recently concluded annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund  World Bank Group in Bali should act now.

At least three strategic issues should be taken into account when formulating the digital economy for more inclusive economic growth.

Firstly, by connecting people through affordable and reliable infrastructure. Barriers to access and effective use of digital technologies typically include some combination of a lack of high-quality and affordable infrastructure. The high costs and poor access to financing for smaller firms to develop the digital ecosystem will decrease potential investors, thus making digital technology accessible only for a certain group of people in countries.

These barriers can be reduced by implementing comprehensive digital strategies to improve competition in digital markets and improve internet access for disadvantaged groups or people in rural areas, including local small and medium enterprises. Ensuring internet openness and cross-border data flows are imperative to ensure access to information among a populace.

Key barriers to high-speed networks and services include the characteristic of infrastructure when it is controlled by a monopoly, which can impede market entry. It means the infrastructure provider may determine the cost and tariff to the customer in a certain area.

Secondly, by empowering citizens with skills and sufficient education, to help people displaced by technology to find new means of income. They should be armed with digital literacy, numeracy, problem-solving and basic information communication technology skills, as well as social and emotional skills in the digital environment; all these skills needed to succeed in the digital economy. Likewise, business owners and employers should support life-long training to improve workers' skills to embrace technological progress.

Lastly, a digital economy needs an improved digital infrastructure and legal framework. As regulatory frameworks tend to evolve more slowly than digitalization, 20th-century laws commonly guide 21stcentury, digitalized economies and societies  as reflected in unrest and disputes over online transportation apps in many countries. Hence the concerns that organizations and consumers are losing benefits and opportunities. Further, they face inadequate protections and greater uncertainty.

The participant countries in the recent IMF WB meeting should therefore review their legal and regulatory frameworks and, where appropriate, update them to ensure their effectiveness in a rapidly changing technological environment.

One of the important legal areas affected by digitalization is competition. Digital information is the most vital competitive asset in some markets, thus needing different approaches to market power and definition of diverse markets, and a greater focus on international cooperation and coordination among national competition authorities. Digitalization promotes greater competition in various service and product markets, both internationally and domestically.

Digitalization has destroyed geographic market boundaries by facilitating the entry and growth of internet-based suppliers and marketplace as in the cases of Traveloka, Tokopedia and Amazon. Governments should consider updating laws and regulations that unnecessarily make working through online platforms less attractive including lack of clarity in laws and regulations, tax issues and consumer and privacy protection of online market participants.

Meanwhile in the European Union businesses must now adjust their business models to comply with the most comprehensive data protection regulation on earth. The General Data Protection Regulation became effective since May this year. All governments should clearly make robust policies and practices to address digital security and privacy risks without hampering the potential of digital platforms.

As some of the participant countries in the Bali meeting have a data localization policy, bilateral or multilateral agreements could help participant countries create and improve digital services for their citizens without hampering innovation and invention. The countries could also initiate international arrangements on effective privacy and data protection across jurisdictions, digital data flows across the nation, including through national privacy strategies that foster interoperability among frameworks. They could explore opportunities for strengthening cooperation and international arrangements that promote greater sharing of digital information.

Such international agreement and strategies should incorporate the flexibility needed to take advantage of digital technologies for the benefit of all people. For example, the Safe Harbor framework governing data flows between the European Union and the United States also highlights how data flows matter for small and medium enterprises in the regions.

It is now high time for Indonesia to have an integrated digital data policy as a national master plan on the management of digital data aimed to optimize the economic and social advantages expected from digital openness. It is imperative to boost the digital trust from any relevant parties and leverage the digital economy for the good of all humanity.

***

The writer is a legal technology expert in computer and communications law at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, and a recipient of the Chevening scholarship.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Santiago, Chile  Mon, October 22, 2018 21:09 1122 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778c60e3 2 Art & Culture Britain,Chile,Museum,culture,sculpture,indigenous-people,Easter-Island Free

For 150 years, the British Museum has housed one of the iconic, heavy-browed stone figures that Chile's Easter Island is famous for.

Now the islanders are hoping desperately to get it back.

They plan to build a copy of the four-ton monolith and, potentially swap it for the real thing.

The statue, known as a "moai" and named the Hoa Hakananai'a, is one of hundreds originally found on the island. Carved by Polynesian colonizers somewhere between the 13th and 16th centuries, each of the big-headed figures was considered to represent tribal leaders or deified ancestors.

About a dozen have been removed from the island over the years. Now Camilo Rapu, president of the island's Ma'u Henua community, said it's time Hoa Hakananai'a was returned.

The Ma'u Henua community, with Chilean government support, launched a campaign in August to persuade the British Museum and Queen Elizabeth II to return the famous moai -- in exchange for an exact replica to be carved on Easter Island.

"Our expert carvers will make a copy in basalt, the original stone used in the Hakananai'a moai, as an offering to Queen Elizabeth in exchange for the original," Rapu told reporters in Santiago.

Read also: Chile to restrict tourists and non-locals on Easter Island

The Ma'u Henua have signed an agreement with the Bishop Museum -- Hawaii's largest museum, with a huge collection of Polynesian artifacts -- to produce a polycarbonate copy of the Hakananai'a, to be ready by November 3.

The actual carving of the statue will take place on Easter Island, using thousand-year-old Rapa Nui techniques -- combined with some modern technology to allow the job to be completed in seven months.

The Hakananai'a moai in the British Museum stands 2.4 meters tall (eight feet) and weighs about four tons.

On November 23, a committee of islanders and Chilean officials plans to travel to London in hopes of negotiating the moai's return.

"This is a historic demand of the Rapa Nui people," said Rapu. The Rapa Nui were the island's aboriginal settlers, and their descendants still make up a large part of the population.

"This moai has a spiritual value; it is part of our family and our culture. We want her (the queen) to understand that for us, this is its value -- not as a museum piece," he said.

The islanders will bring with them a book, in support of their demand, signed by some of the thousands of tourists who every year visit the Pacific island paradise some 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) off Chile's mainland.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Prapti Widinugraheni (The Jakarta Post) Perth  Mon, October 22, 2018 09:21 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778a6d4b 4 Books UWRF-2018,ubud-writers-readers-festival,Literature,writer,literary-festival,Kim-Scott Free

Before departing for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF), Kim Scott reflects modestly on his journey  from teaching in remote communities in Australia to becoming, perhaps, the countrys most critically acclaimed novelist.

The author has twice won the Miles Franklin Literary Award for Benang: From the Heart and That Deadman Dance, and his latest work, Taboo, is in line for this prestigious award as well as the Prime Ministers Literary Award.

Engaging with stories of the aboriginal Australian Wirlomin Noongar people reclaiming identity and culture in southwest Western Australia, Taboo shreds colonial power in the most artful way.

Scott, who is also a descendant of the Noongar people, began his writing career seriously when he was teaching secondary school level kids.

I felt a little fraudulent telling kids about how youre meant to write when Ive never had anything published myself. The first novel I wrote while still teaching in secondary school, he said.

Writing is a perverse pleasure and I used to like it when I was innocent about it, playing around with writing. But increasingly theres been a lot of anxiety about it, and that takes away the pleasure, to some extent, so I try to rediscover the play.

Taboo is a bit like that  you work on the craft, artifice, the playfulness of how you construct stories, how you put them together  and focus on that rather than the big ideas stuff, which inevitably is in there somewhere.

Scotts inspiration for his novels come from the Wirlomin Noongar peoples old stories.

For me, the issue is how to have some of the old stories I work with, in the Wirlomin Language and Stories recovery project, inform a contemporary Australian literary novel. I wanted to do that without being exploitative or reductionist in any sort of way and without being too overt and obvious.

Something I had noticed in a number of old stories we were working with, was not only do you have the archetypal stories that talk about a single protagonist moving away from home, facing contests and challenges successfully, then orbiting back home having grown and enriched and better able to contribute and expand the world of his own community; you also have, on occasion, those protagonists failing and either dying or being really damaged.

Even more so in these ancient stories, people are healed, if not brought back to life by a member of their family breathing into them and giving language back, making them speak again. I thought that was a really important thing ancient stories could offer in a contemporary sense: recovering Noongar community through reconnecting with precolonial heritage and community development, through ancient story and song.

The style of writing in Taboo shifts like different places in the story, but Scott denies that this has anything to do with bringing out aboriginality in some of the characters.

I get a lot of comments that my writing is non-linear. With this one I was trying to get myself out of that and bring in the craft and playfulness. And because its indigenous literature  its about the issues and never just because of who I am  I try to seduce [] lure people into it. Its not intended to suggest anything to do with the aboriginality of the characters, he said.

In fact, a lot of my writing is trying not to posture aboriginality,

I leave it open, try to open doors for people to come a bit closer.

Taboo examines power relations affecting indigenous people, but avoids using Noongar words. These are kept safe, through phrases like the ancient language.

Its partly that posturing business. If you want it to be anything other than very provincial, it has to speak about circumstances in other areas of Australia, where there are many different aboriginal languages, Scott said.

In the last couple of novels, Scott said he had had a sort of dual focus between the Noongar language recovery project work and his own literary work.

I can use the literary work to shine a light on the community development and language recovery. That feels very authentic and organic, as opposed to putting in some words that look Aboriginal, which no one  or very few  can understand. In the Noongar community, I dont have a great lot reading my novels, because of literacy levels and other things, Scott said.

Having Noongar words and an accompanying glossary marginalises your readers and pushes them back. I dont think thats a way to operate; I think you try and lure readers in close, then get them to feel the discomfort once theyre close.

Part of this discomfort is generated through the experience of a teenage female protagonist in Taboo, and Scott has his own reason to put a young girl at the center of this novel.

Part of the perverse pleasure I take in writing is risk. My wife, when I first talked to her about using a female protagonist, admonished me and said I cant do that. But thats the perverse pleasure that interested me, Scott said.

Most significantly, I was working with power relationships. And to have a young woman in those circumstances was to talk about vulnerability [] and a power relationship that I think is deeply characteristic of Australia and our history.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Alya Hikmayuda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 08:43 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778a516d 4 Art & Culture short-story,#shortstory Free

Someday, if you see your dad walking out at night, dont ever follow him and never ask him anything. Just act like you dont see anything, Grandma said to me, years ago.

Thats how I have been living my life all this time: pretending to be silent and acting as if Im not curious. Its been five years since I discovered Dads strange habit. Every twentieth night of the month, Dad will come out quietly carrying plates of a boiled chicken, fruits and other food. Then, he will return at 2:30 a.m.

Im Alan, by the way. Alan Mandigula. Im 11 years old. I live with my dad. My mom died when I was little. Our family owns a citrus plantation, which is also our source of livelihood. I always play there with my friend. But my dad always forbids me from playing in the southern part of the plantation. He said the place is dangerous.

I often hear the villagers chattering about the queen in our village. Her name is Layang Sulih. She likes to capture beautiful women whom she would then turn into her slaves and no one would ever hear from them again. Thats why many parents in this village will send their daughters to the city, before Layang Sulih takes them. But of course, its just a myth.

I walk through this vast citrus plantation, hiding behind the tree when a worker passes by. Today is Friday. The workers are away to attend Friday prayers. And this is the right time to find out what my father has been hiding in the southern part of the plantation.

Its amazing, I whisper unconsciously. Somehow, Ive been standing in the southern part of the plantation. The citrus trees that grow in these parts are very thick. The citrus fruits are large and thick. I pick one, then peel it off. It tastes very sweet. Different from other citrus fruits.

I become more curious and am surprised when I see a citrus tree standing right in front of me. This tree is different from the others. The stem is bigger, taller. The fruits also grow at the bottom of the trunk, whereas Ive never seen citrus fruits grow in the lowest part of the tree.

Not only that, I also see a large stone shaped like a table under the tree.

What are you doing here?!! a familiar voice scolds me.

Dad, I am shocked, nervous mixed with fear. Im sorry.

He doesnt reply. And, instead, he pulls my hand and leads me away from there.

What are you doing there? Didnt I tell you not to go there? What if she sees you? Oh God, Alan. Dad snaps at me as soon as we arrive at home.

Im sorry Dad. I promise I will never do it again. Im just curious, why you wouldnt let me go there.

Your curiosity is dangerous. Do not ever do that again. I hope this is the last time. You disappoint me, Son, his voice trembles. I feel his voice choking with tears. Then he leaves me.

This is the first time my father has ever scolded me, as if I had committed a major sin. I hadnt intended to disappoint him. I didnt know my visiting that part of the plantation would be such a big deal.

Tonight, my father doesnt say a word to me. Maybe he is still angry. He simply checks on me from the doorway of my bedroom just to see whether I am asleep. Then he leaves the house, carrying the usual plates.

Curious, I follow my father and go about the same route I did earlier in the day. Before I know it, I have arrived in the southern part of the plantation. I step aside to avoid being seen and hide behind one of the trees. I catch my father place the plate of food on the boulder. Then he prostrates himself before the big tree and says,

Please, return her to me. I cant live without her. Please [...] My daddy shouts at the tree.

I always bring you your favorite food. Why wont you keep your promise? I need her. Please return her to us. Find someone else, please find someone else, he pleads, now hugging the big tree.

I wonder whether I am seeing what Im seeing. Is my father losing his mind? Then I hear a voice coming from the tree, I cant, Andi. Its been a long time since I wanted to let her go, but I cant. I havent found a replacement. Im sorry for not being able to fulfill my promise. Instead, enjoy the fertility of my citrus fruits.

I dont need citrus fruits. I just want her back, my father is sobbing now. I am seeing a different side of my father. He is not the strong man I know. He is fragile and in pain.

You must be Alan, right? the voice approaches me. When I turn around, I find a woman standing behind me. I feel blood is draining away from my face. I nod my head slowly.

The woman is tall, her long hair is tied up like a horses tail, and she is wearing a knee-length blue blouse. She looks beautiful.

What are you doing here at midnight? Didnt your father forbid you to come to this place? she asks.

Please dont tell my Dad.

You are very similar to your father. Then, go home [...] before your father sees you, says the woman again, rubbing my head.

You wont say anything to him right? I ask. The woman just smiles and shakes her head. I run as fast as my legs allow me to. On my way back to the house, I realize I have seen that woman before. In a photo my father had taken long ago. The woman sat next to him with a huge smile on her face. She was pregnant. My heart is beating fast, steps away from the house now. I know who she is.

My legs are numb. I turn to look at the now dark plantation where the mystery of my mothers disappearance will stay unresolved and unfathomable.

***

Alya Hikmayuda is a student at Politeknik Negeri Lhokseumawe. She resides in Lhokseumawe, Aceh.

___________

We are looking for contemporary fiction between 1,500 and 2,000 words by established and new authors. Stories must be original and previously unpublished in English.

The email for submitting stories is: shortstory@thejakartapost.com

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shortstory@thejakartapost.com

We are no longer accepting short story submissions for both online and print editions. New submissions towill not be published.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Theresia Sufa (The Jakarta Post) Bogor, West Java  Mon, October 22, 2018 06:14 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778a27d0 1 City StapleFood,rice,sweet-potatatoes,cassava,corn,food-resilience,food-security,CatholicChurch,Catholic,bogor,farmers Free

The Catholic Church of St. Andrew and BMV (Beatae Mariae Virgin) Cathedral, two churches within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bogor in West Java, commemorated World Food Day on Saturday by holding seminars on water and food sustainability.

At St. Andrew, people cooked various local staple foods, from cassava and sweet potatoes to corn, before eating them in a feast. They also shared the food with people who live around the church.

Besides serving alternative carbohydrates to rice, they also presented traditional snacks and a variety of fruits.

Bogor Bishop Mgr. Paskalis Bruno Syukur said the feast was a way for the church congregation to be thankful for Gods gifts in the form of food and to share such blessings with others.

We encourage them to respect Mother Earth, which has provided us with food. In return, we should ensure water sustainability to protect the earth, he said.

He called on the government to ensure food sufficiency for everyone by intensifying farming efforts and protecting farmers interests.

The governments plan to develop infrastructure nationwide has sped up the food distribution process from the farmers to the people.

Church member Yonetta Fergina DeYesus said the event made her appreciate food and be more grateful. We dont have to rely only on rice for a source of carbohydrate, she said. (vla)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 05:55 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778a187a 4 National Buton,Southeast-Sulawesi,dance,harvest-festival,harvest,riot,police,Buton-Island Free

Residents of Lawele in Buton regency on Buton Island in Southeast Sulawesi went into a riot and burned a number of police vehicles early on Sunday morning after police forbade them from having a dance event after a harvest time celebration in the village.

The residents initially requested that the harvest celebration in Lawele be continued with an all-night dance event and live music, but the Buton Police rejected this request, kompas.com reported. Angry residents responded to the decision by throwing rocks at several police personnel.

Police personnel later shot tear gas toward the angry mob, who did not stop throwing rocks at the members of the force. As the police started retreating, the mob kept pushing on and later burned a patrol car as well as seven police motorcycles.

We are still investigating the incident as well as the identity of the person who burned the vehicles, Buton Police criminal division chief First Insp. Najamuddin said on Sunday, as quoted by kompas.com.

Apart from the vehicles, a member of Buton Police also sustained a head injury during the incident. (kuk/evi)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 17:50 1122 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778bd9e2 1 Business SIAL-Paris,Indonesia,food-and-beverage,exhibition Free

Eighteen Indonesian food producers are displaying their various premium products at the Salon International dAlimentation (SIAL), a five-day global food trade fair in Paris and which is held every two years, from Oct. 21.

The companies occupy the 180-square-meter Indonesian Pavilion established by the Indonesian Embassy in Paris, the Trade Ministry, the Industry Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and Indonesian Trade Promotion Center in Milan -- at the Paris Nord Villepinte.

Players and buyers in the food-product business from across the globe meet to develop their relationships during the event, Agung, the head of the Indonesian Representatives in Paris, said when opening the Indonesian Pavilion at the event as quoted in a press statement received by The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Agung said Indonesian exports to the European Union amounted to US$818 million last year.

He expressed the hope that the Indonesian food producers would use the prominent event to introduce their various products and examine various innovations to develop food and beverage products in Indonesia.

Food producers taking part in the event include Kawanasi (fruit chips), Java Peppers Industries (various condiment), Manna Anugrah Sejahtera (various types of sugar), Karsa Abadi Madeteas (herbal tea), Hitara Cipta Selaras (black garlic), Biobali Internasional (organic oil), Coco Sugar Indonesia (coconut sugar), Mayora (snack producer) and Nison Indonesia (canned seafood).

In 2016, SIAL Paris attracted 160,000 visitors from 194 countries. (bbn)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 15:24 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778ba675 4 Business bni,Meikarta,apartment,ownership,credit-facility Free

State-owned lender PT Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) has announced it will stop disbursing credits for ownership of apartments in Meikarta township project, following the arrests of several people, including executives of Lippo Group, by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in a bribery case.

BNI retail director Tambok PS Simanjuntak said the ceasing of the disbursement would be in effect until the bribery case had legal certainty.

We will stop apartment ownership credits for new customers until the legal process is completed. Or at least there will be clarity on direction of the case, Tampok said as reported by tempo.co on Monday.

The KPK has named suspects and arrested a number of officials and businesspeople in Bekasi regency, West Java, for alleged bribery concerning the issuance of property permits for the modern city of Meikarta  a flagship project of diversified conglomerate Lippo Group.

The suspects include Bekasi Regent Neneng Hassanah Yasin and several other officials as well as Lippo Group executive Billy Sindoro, along with the group's consultants  Taryudi and Fitra Djaja Purnama  and Lippo employee Henry Jasmen.

PT Mahkota Sentosa Utama (MSU), a subsidiary of PT Lippo Cikarang, part of the Lippo Group, announced in March that Meikarta was supported by 12 banks to finance the apartment ownership credits.

Tambok said BNI would also evaluate the credits that had already been disbursed for the apartment ownership in Meikarta. Our legal team is reviewing and will find a way to seek a solution, he said, adding that BNI had 200 creditors for the apartment ownership in Meikarta, which is worth Rp 50 billion (US$3.29 million). (bbn)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Semarang  Mon, October 22, 2018 18:40 1122 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778c197a 1 Politics santri,National-Santri-Day,Ganjar-Pranowo,hoax,jihad,Central-Java,Jokowi Free

Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo has urged santri (Islamic boarding school students) to fight against terrorism, radicalism, stupidity, porn and hoaxes as parts of "todays jihad revolution".

Speaking on Monday in front of thousands of santri attending the 2018 National Santri Day celebration in Simpang Lima Square in Semarang, Central Java, Ganjar said the students could serve as pioneers of peace.

Be there to fight against hoaxes, hate speech and those who undermine this nation. Lets fight against them. This is a form of jihad, Ganjar said.

Ganjar is a politician from the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). His message was in line with the President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo administration's efforts to combat hoaxes, many of which have targeted the President himself.

He also reminded students of their role in defending and developing Indonesia, urging them to continue the mission of ulema and clerics of the past to build a better country.

Reading out remarks from Religious Affairs Lukman Hakim, he called on santri to strengthen Islam and the nation by contributing to the country in any way they can.

Thousands of santri from across Central Java attended the ceremony, which was also joined by Central Java Deputy Governor Taj Yasin Maimoen, Central Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Condro Kirono, Military Region IV Diponegoro commander Maj. Gen. Wuryanto, provincial administration secretary Sri Puryono and Semarang Deputy Mayor Hevearita G Rahayu. (swa)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Aislinn Laing (Reuters) Santiago, Chile  Mon, October 22, 2018 09:09 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778a61bc 2 World #Chile,#religion,Chile,Court,fine,CatholicChurch,sex-abuse Free

Chile's Court of Appeal has ordered the office of Santiago's Archbishop to pay $450 million pesos ($650,000) to three men who alleged they were sexually abused for decades by Chilean priest Fernando Karadima, a local newspaper reported on Sunday.

Citing a copy of a leaked judgment, La Tercera said the three judges who heard the case on Thursday found in favor of an appeal for "moral damages" against the church for allegedly covering up the crimes. The case was previously rejected by a lower court for lack of evidence.

Reuters could not independently confirm the report. The Santiago Archbishopric, which could appeal to Chile's Supreme Court, said it was considering "what steps to take."

If confirmed by the court on Monday, it would be the first damages order to have been leveled against Chile's powerful Roman Catholic Church for a scandal of sex abuse and cover-up that prompted Pope Francis to apologize to its faithful.

Legal experts have said it could pave the way for more claims amid a new climate of discovery which has seen hundreds of people come forward to allege they were abused and criminal prosecutors launch scores of new investigations.

In a statement hailing the reported verdict, claimants James Hamilton, Jose Andres Murillo and Juan Carlos Cruz - who were invited to Rome earlier this year to tell the Pope about their alleged abuse - said it was the culmination of a "journey that was long and painful, but worth it".

"We are witnessing an important cultural shift, in which the abuses of the powerful are beginning to be seen as unacceptable, and Justice is confirming that," they said.

Their lawyer, Juan Pablo Hermosilla, told Reuters they believed the report was credible but added: "I don't have official confirmation yet."

Karadima worked for the Santiago Archbishopric as a parish priest in the wealthy suburb of El Bosque for 21 years between 1985 to 2006.

Now 88 and living in a nursing home in the capital, Karadima has always denied accusations of abuse. He was never charged by civilian authorities because the statute of limitations on such crimes had expired. He was found guilty of sexual abuse in a Vatican investigation in 2011, and last month was defrocked by the Pope.

Hermosilla said that since the case was rejected by a lower court, new evidence had emerged including an email written in 2009 from a former archbishop, Cardinal Francisco Errazuriz, to the then papal nuncio that was read to the court on Thursday.

In the email, Errazuriz described the trio of accusers as "aggressive" and said he was closing the case against Karadima.

In a statement responding to the report of a verdict, the Santiago Archbishopric said it did not know the court's ruling, but that it would have to study it and recent developments in the case before deciding how to act.

"We must analyze the situation, together with the ruling, to resolve what steps to take," the archbishopric's statement said. (Reporting by Aislinn Laing; Editing by Daniel Wallis)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Surakarta  Mon, October 22 2018

President Joko Jokowi Widodo and First Lady Iriana attended a National Santri Day rally in Surakarta, Central Java, on Saturday, meeting with tens of thousands of santri (Islamic boarding school students) from across the country.

Santri must be able to safeguard diversity, Jokowi said at the event. Indonesia is made up of many tribes, religions, cultures and races. Those differences should make us want to get to know and respect each other.

Abdul Ghoffarrozin, the head of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) pesantren (Islamic boarding school) wing, said this years National Santri Day rally was attended by 48,000 santri from 34 provinces and was part of a commitment by santri to protect the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 18:40 1122 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778c14ef 1 City Depok,land,rain,crack Free

Residents of Kampung Pedurenan in Depok, West Java, were surprised to see a crack in the ground after rain poured down on Saturday afternoon. The crack, which stretched to around 20 meters, was visible in a field in front of some houses on Monday.

A video capturing the phenomenon went viral on social media on Sunday.

It was pouring down with rain with heavy wind at 2 p.m. It lasted for about an hour. When it was over, my child told me that there was a crack in the field in front of our house, a resident named Nasah said as quoted kompas.com on Monday.

Im shocked, the crack is about 1.5 meters deep, Nasah added, adding that she had been worried ever since.

Another resident, Sutikno, said such a phenomenon had never happened before in the area.

Thats why were all becoming anxious every time the rain pours down in our area. But the crack has definitely sped up water absorption, he said.

The head of RT 02 neighborhood unit and RW 02 community unit, Endang Suherman, called on the Depok administration to immediately examine the crack in the ground.

I hope that the administration will check the crack, talk to the residents and ensure that the crack doesnt put us in danger, Endang said. (vla)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 12:14 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778b201a 4 Business Susi-Pudjiastuti,fish-production,increase,illegal-fishing,policy,crackdown Free

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti relished in the improved performance of Indonesias fishing industry ever since the administration began cracking down on illegal fishing by foreign boats in 2015.

Speaking at the Security Summit in Yogyakarta recently, Susi said Indonesias fish stock had risen to an average 12.5 million tons per year compared to 7.1 million tons before 2015.

As a result, the ministry recorded gross domestic product (GDP) of Indonesias fishing industry at Rp 169.5 trillion (US$11.2 billion) last year, the highest in Southeast Asia according to the minister.

She also claimed that the fishing industrys GDP in Thailand and Vietnam have dropped significantly since 2015.

So now we know where these countries had really gotten their fish from, she said as reported by tempo.co. They should really just buy Indonesian fish.

However, Susi said her tough stance on illegal fishing vessels did not mean that Indonesias fishing industry would be completely closed off to foreigners.

Susi said the government welcomed foreigners to invest in the domestic fish-processing sector and that investors would be allowed to have full control over any factory or technological asset they set up in Indonesia.

We welcome foreign investment as long as the fishing is done by Indonesians, she said.

Sinking illegal fishing vessels is a cornerstone of Susis maritime affairs policy. Under her guidance, the government has sunk more than 380 vessels since 2015. You cant solve big problems with a soft approach, so we settled upon a boom! approach, said Susi. (nor/bbn)

Editor's note: The second paragraph of this article has been corrected.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Serdang Bedagai, North Sumatra  Mon, October 22, 2018 12:13 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778b1d04 1 National tree-planting,North-Sumatra Free

The North Sumatra administration, along with a Buddhist association, planted on Sunday 10,000 trees on the coast of Lubuk Saban village in Serdang Bedagai regency, North Sumatra, to build a natural seawall to protect the area from potential tsunami waves, among others.

Different coastal trees, including mangrove, coconut, ketapang (sea almond tree), beach sheoak and trembesi were planted during the event, which was co-organized by Majelis Nichiren Shoshu Buddha Dharma Indonesia.

North Sumatra Governor Edy Rahmayadi said the tree-planting activity was expected to encourage residents to preserve the environment, adding that forest degradation was a result of illegal logging. He also hoped the natural seawall would provide the region with a coastal defense.

We dont want tsunami waves to ever hit us. However, if it happens in the future, these trees can protect us from massive destruction, Edy said on Sunday.

The governor added that attempts to protect the environment were not only the responsibility of the government but also residents and environmental organizations.

Herwindra Aiko Senosoenoto, the chairwoman of the Buddhist association, said the event was also a manifestation of gratitude toward nature. Let us work together as religious people to maintain the environment. (kuk/swd)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Yulia Savitri (The Jakarta Post) Palembang, South Sumatra  Mon, October 22, 2018 16:47 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778bc47a 1 National Palembang Free

The South Sumatra capital, Palembang, will open the Musi IV Bridge in November. The bridge, which has an earthquake-proof structure, will connect the two areas of the city separated by the iconic Musi River.

Kiagus Syaiful Anwar, the head of National Road Body (BBPJN V) overseeing the region, said the main span of the bridge was constructed using the extradosed method, which uses a structure that combines the main elements of prestressed box girder bridge and a cable-stayed bridge.

The bridges durability can reach up to 100 years and it is more resistant to earthquakes, Kiagus said, adding that the method was also suitable for rivers on which there were frequent cruises like the Musi.

Kiagus said the constructor had also applied technology to monitor the bridges condition remotely, called the structural health monitoring system.

State-owned construction company PT Adhi Karya has nearly completed the construction as the two parts of the bridge were connected over the weekend. The public works and housing minister said the bridge would be inaugurated in November by President Joko Jokowi Widodo.

The bridge will offer alternative access to people crossing the Musi River. To date, motorists and motorcyclists rely on the Ampera Bridge, another city icon. Authorities will conduct a traffic feasibility test on roads leading to the bridge.

Palembang Mayor Fitrianti Agustinda said she was upbeat that the bridge would help spur the local economy. A well-connected transportation [system] will contribute to the citys development. (kuk/swd)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22 2018

As many parts of the world face growing skepticism over multilateralism, the global community has been advised by various international relations experts and practitioners on the need to review and reform multilateral schemes so that the interests of more parties can be accommodated.

Setting the tone of the 2018 Conference on Foreign Policy (CIFP), former Indonesian deputy foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal said that the current fog of uncertainty afflicting the global geopolitical and geoeconomic climate had turned dangerous.

One of the issues is that there is [waning] interest in multilateralism, Dino said in Jakarta on Saturday, in his opening remarks to the CIFP, Indonesias largest conference on foreign affairs initiated by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI).

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 16:13 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778bc3fa 1 City prank,ghost,teenagers,punishment,grave,Depok Free

Two teenagers in Depok, West Java, were forced to sleep next to a grave after they were caught wearing mukena (head-to-toe womans prayer gowns), which made them look like ghosts, to scare residents.

The neighborhood unit head in Sukamaju subdistrict, Arsyad, said the punishment was meant to stop the teenagers from doing it again. Although their aim was to have fun, the incident had caused uneasiness in the neighborhood, he added.

A video of them looking like pocong (shrouded ghosts) while sleeping next to the graves went viral on social media, including on Instagram handle @ics_infocegatansolo on Sunday.

The two teenagers, who were inspired by pranks posted on social media, reportedly used their grandmothers mukena.

After their grandmothers finished praying, they took the mukena and cut it up. They said it was just for fun because they saw similar pranks on [social media], Arsyad said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

The prank was uncovered after a resident recognized them.

As a part of their punishment, the teenagers are required to limit the use of their smartphones. (fac)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, October 22, 2018 16:57 1122 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778bc9ef 1 City Nur-Mahmudi-Ismail,graft,travel-ban,extension Free

The immigration authorities have extended their ban on former Depok mayor Nur Mahmudi Ismail traveling abroad, to assist the police's ongoing investigation into a graft case in which he is implicated.

Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono said the police had submitted on Oct. 18 a letter to the Immigration Directorate General to extend the ban, which would have expired on Monday.

"He will be banned from traveling abroad for the next six months," Argo said on Monday as quoted by kompas.com.

Argo added the police were still revising the case dossier and they would hand over the case to prosecutors as soon as possible.

Previously, the police named Nur Mahmudi and city secretary Harry Prihanto suspects in a Rp 10 billion (US$658,545) graft case related to a road-widening project on Jl. Nangka, Depok.

The 2015 plan was to widen the entire road by 6 meters on each side, which meant demolishing several roadside homes.

Nur reportedly requested the contractors to use their own funds rather than from the Depok regional budget for the project.

However, it was later found that the project was still allocated in the 2015 regional budget despite it supposedly being covered by the contractors. (cal)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Issam Ahmed and Brian Knowlton (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Mon, October 22, 2018 08:18 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778a3c3c 2 World #USA,#SaudiArabia,DonaldTrump,accusation,Saudi-Arabia,lies,killing,journalist Free

US President Donald Trump accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, his strongest comments to date on the affair, as pressure built Sunday on the administration to identify and punish those responsible.

In an interview with The Washington Post published late Saturday, Trump stepped back from his stance that the Saudis had earlier provided a credible explanation for the death of the journalist inside their Istanbul consulate, but he said he remained confident in the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

"Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies," he said of the shifting accounts offered by Riyadh.

Saudi officials originally said Khashoggi, who entered the diplomatic mission on October 2, had left unharmed, before announcing Friday that he was killed inside the building in what they described as an altercation.

"Their stories are all over the place," added Trump.

Saudi Arabia faced a growing chorus of incredulity Sunday, with world powers including Britain and France demanding answers and some American politicians calling for tough, concerted action to punish the Saudi royal family if it were proven to be responsible.

The Saudi version lacked "consistency and credibility," said Chrystia Freeland, Canada's foreign minister.

- Growing pressure -

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir insisted Sunday that the killing was "a tremendous mistake" -- part of a "rogue operation," he said -- and the crown prince had not ordered it.

He also expressed confidence that the US-Saudi relationship would survive the crisis.

"The strategic relationship is important for both countries," Jubeir told Fox News. "The relationship will weather this."

But a series of US lawmakers of both parties expressed doubt, demanding a stronger stance against the longtime US regional partner.

Several senior members of Trump's Republican Party said they believed Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, was linked to the killing, and one called for a "collective" Western response if a link is proved.

Trump emphasized the importance of the US-Saudi relationship to Washington's regional strategic goals.

He described the 33-year-old prince, widely known as MBS, as a "strong person; he has very good control."

Trump added that he has yet to be shown any evidence by intelligence officials that would make him believe MBS had any direct role.

"Nobody has told me he's responsible. Nobody has told me he's not responsible. We haven't reached that point," the president said.

"It could be something in the building went badly awry."

- Republicans hit MBS -

Amid Trump's apparent equivocations, several leading Republicans demanded a tougher stance.

Asked if he thought Prince Mohammed was behind the killing, Republican Senator Bob Corker told CNN: "Yes, I think he did it. Let's finish this investigation."

Corker, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, added that if the prince is implicated, "There should be a collective response."

"I think you're going to see the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany working collectively with others if he did this to respond in an appropriate way."

Perhaps the strongest words came from Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump ally in the Senate who called for Prince Mohammed to "be removed."

"I would like to punish those involved. It's impossible to believe the crown prince wasn't involved. I don't mind military sales but I object to business with the current leadership," he said.

Trump has cited a planned $110 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia as a reason for a cautious approach, although many components of that package had been set in motion months or years before he took office.

"This behavior is outside the norm to the point that the people involved need to be removed in my view. Saudi Arabia is a country and MBS is a person. I'm willing to separate the two," Graham continued, accusing the prince of acting in a "barbaric fashion."

Democrats have repeatedly lashed out at Trump's response as weak and indecisive, and they said his latest reaction fell short as well.

Barring an unlikely "confession" from Prince Mohammed, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff said Sunday, "the president is going to accept the crown prince's denials like he's accepted Putin's denials and Kim Jong Un's denials."

"We have to see if financial motives are influencing the president," he said on ABC.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin called in a statement for the expulsion of the Saudi ambassador from the United States -- Prince Khalid bin Salman, the crown prince's younger brother -- pending completion of a "third-party investigation into the kidnap and murder of Jamal Khashoggi."Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji (The Jakarta Post) Palu  Mon, October 22, 2018 11:21 1123 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778b0c79 1 National Palu-Earthquake-Tsunami,Sigi-Regency Free

Volunteers and journalists have reportedly been isolated for days in Kulawi district in Sigi, Central Sulawesi, while distributing disaster relief, as flood and landslide debris blocked the main road leading to the provincial capital of Palu.

Torrential rain had poured in the region for days, leading to floods that inundated villages in the district, including Sadaunta and Salua. A landslide later blocked the main road connecting Sigi and Palu, hindering motorists and motorcyclists from reaching the provincial capital.

Hendra, an editor of local state-owned television station TVRI, told The Jakarta Post on Sunday that there were at least three TVRI journalists trapped in Kulawi district, located around 72 kilometers south of Palu.

They cant go back to Palu as the road was blocked, Hendra said, adding that they were all safe and could make phone calls to their respective offices in Palu.

Local newspaper Luwuk Post journalist Irwan K. Basir said he and dozens of volunteers who previously distributed aid in the area have safely relocated to Bolapapu village.

Were taking shelter in Sadaunta village, which was not hit by the flood, Irwan said via a text message.

Central Sulawesi administration spokesman Haris Kariming said authorities had dispatched at two heavy machines around the location of the landslide to remove debris from the road. (kuk/swd)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Ganug Nugroho Adi (The Jakarta Post) Surakarta, Central Java  Mon, October 22, 2018 18:46 1122 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308778c21d2 1 National #Surakarta,#Water,surakarta,residents,complaints,water,quality Free



Residents of Banyuanyar subdistrict in Surakarta, Central Java, have complained that the water supplied by the city-owned tap water company (PDAM) has turned red over the last two weeks.

We suspect an outflow of factory waste is connected to the water pipes. Our team and the police are still investigating the matter, Surakarta PDAM spokesman Bayu Tunggul said on Monday.

A Banyuanyar resident, Arief Setiaji, said residents had been afraid to use the water as they were worried it might contain dangerous chemical substances. He added the water would change color at certain times, especially in the evening when the water flow reached its peak.

Sometimes the color is dark like blood, sometimes its blue. We have used the PDAM service for dozens of years, but this has only occurred recently, Arief said.

The incident has prompted residents to buy water collectively from a water tank truck to fulfill their needs for clean water.

PDAM director Sarwono said the company had earlier reported a textile factory to the Surakarta Police and the Surakarta Environment Agency. The report was filed following early indications that the factory had polluted the water.

The city administration reacted quickly to the matter, with Mayor FX Hadi Rudyatmo instructing the environment agency to seal the factory as it was discovered to lack a waste water treatment plant (IPAL). All textile factories are required to have waste treatment facilities.

Theoretically, the factory can reopen as long as it fulfills the IPAL requirement. However, as the police are currently handling the case, the management should wait until the legal proceedings are complete, Hadi said, adding that its closure also served as a warning to other factories not to ignore operational requirements. (kuk)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Sri Wahyuni (The Jakarta Post) Magelang, Central Java  Tue, October 23 2018

A branch of the countrys second-largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, in Gunungpring, Muntilan, Central Java, is not a key branch, making up less than 10 percent of the population of the subdistrict of around 13,000. Yet, it has been acknowledged as one of the most successful branches this year, thanks to its robust business activities.

What the Muhammadiyah Gunungpring branch developed was very simple: It established a school shuttle service to pick up students of the elementary school it runs. Muhammadiyah is well known for its social enterprises, running educational institutes as well as hospitals for its members and non members.

The shuttle business developed rapidly. Starting with only two minivans in 2009, the branch now operates 18 minivans and contributes Rp 26 million (US$1,710) in revenue per month to the branch, which has some 1,000 members. But the benefits go beyond money.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Palembang  Tue, October 23 2018

The South Sumatra capital of Palembang will open the Musi IV Bridge in November. The bridge, is earthquake-proof will connect two areas of the city separated by the iconic Musi River.

Kiagus Syaiful Anwar, the head of the National Road Body (BBPJNV) overseeing the region, said the main span of the bridge had been constructed using the extradosed method, which combines the main elements of a prestressed box girder bridge and a cable-stayed bridge.

The bridge can last for up to 100 years and it is more resistant to earthquakes, Kiagus said, adding that the method was also suitable for rivers on which there were frequent cruises like the Musi.

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Periods of rain. High 9C. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

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Showers early, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 1C. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.Bob Bamberg has been in the pet supply industry and writing about pets, livestock and wildlife for three decades. He can be reached at petsap@comcast.net.

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.MBABANE  While government dreams to make life easier for spouses after the death of their partners, some of emaSwati are reluctant to draw up wills.

A will is a document that details ones wish with regard to the distribution of his/her estate after death.



Government, under the Ministry of Tinkhundla Administration and Development, has set up Master of the High Court offices in the various constituencies in order for the nation to draw up their wills without travelling long distances.

The Master of the High Court offices are housed in the new tinkhundla centres across the country.



In an interview last Friday, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Tinkhundla Administration and Development Nonhlanhla Dlamini confirmed the new development. However, Dlamini said it was premature to talk about the new development as it was still a dream for the country.

When you talk about decentralisation, it has to be a collaboration of ministries, which require a budget. It is true that government has set up new structures, which include the office of the Master of the High Court and other offices like the Revenue and Immigration but I cannot talk much about it until the dream becomes real, Dlamini said.



Dlamini was interviewed after residents of Ezulwini under Lobamba Constituency were informed about this initiative during a meeting. The constituents were informed about the new development by the Headman of the area, Bhekisisa Bhembe.



If you want to protect the interest of your spouses, government has made it easier for you. An office of the Master of the High Court has been set up in the new structure at Lobamba. You will get counselling and advice before you draw up a will, he said.



In random interviews, it appeared that some of emaSwati have no idea about the drawing up of a will. When it was explained to them, they viewed it as a western culture that was appropriate for people who owned property. What you are talking about is good for those who own properties. I have never seen it even with my forefathers and, therefore, I am not dreaming about it. EmaSwati do not rely on wills as it is not their culture, said an elderly man of Maphalaleni.



Nisisa Maphalala said her spouse, family and children would decide what to do with her estate when she died. Maphalala viewed a will as discriminatory to children. A will is bound to cause division and hatred among children after the death of their parents. The beneficiary will always be in danger if the estate is not distributed equally. I would not like to cause hatred among my relatives after I die, said Maphalala.

Jabu Ngobe felt that she had no need to draw up a will because she did not own any property.

However, some members of the public felt that government should prioritise the Master of the High Court offices due to the predicament that was faced by the spouses and their children after the death of their partners.

Hulumende kumele acale avule lihhovisi laka Master of the High Court uma simo semnotfo sisimama. Bafa kuhlukubeteka bafelokati netintsandzane uma kufa banumzane bemakhaya, said one of the widowed women, who preferred anonymity, meaning Government should open the office of the Master of the High Court as soon as the economy recovers.

It also appeared that some people already have wills, while others were eager to draw them up.MBABANE  Is stabbing a woman 17 times in front of her mother a way to show your love for her?



Thandeka Masuku (21) survived to tell the tale of her being stabbed several times all over the body, allegedly by her taximan boyfriend.

The incident happened on Saturday morning at Mnyamatsini where Thandeka was staying with her boyfriend of about to two years.



Thandeka is currently admitted to hospital and she cannot talk properly as she has pipes attached to her body draining blood due to internal bleeding.

Dudu Masuku, Thandekas mother, explained that her daughter and boyfriend had not argued but he had asked what her moving out of their rented flat meant about their relationship, to which Thandeka had said it meant nothing.



However, in an interview in her hospital bed, Thandeka said she moved out because her boyfriend was allegedly abusive to her.

Also, she claimed her parents had pleaded with her to move out.



Clothing



According to Dudu, she had accompanied her daughter to get her clothing from the boyfriends house, as they did not have a car to collect the other household items. Dudu explained that they arrived in the morning so they could find him in the house as Thandeka did not have her own keys to the house.

When they arrived, the boyfriend opened the door without showing any problem.



Dudu said she then explained to him that they had come to get her daughters clothes, since she would be moving in with her.

Her father and I had been telling Thandeka that we do not accept her staying with a man who had not married her. Since Thandeka had also told us several times that he (allegedly) abused her, we emphasised that she moved out, Dudu explained.



The mother said her daughter packed her clothes on the Saturday morning and when they left, the boyfriend followed them. He would sometimes call Thandeka and they would stop to talk.MBABANE  Lobbying for the Senate President seat has started among the newly appointed senators.



A day after the appointed senators were announced to the public by the Chairperson of the Elections and Boundaries Commission, Chief Gija, some of them were already lobbying their colleagues to consider them for the Senate president seat.



According to a number of senators, the lobbying started just after the appointees were announced and Pastor Lindiwe Dlamini is one of the senators being eyed for the seat. The former Minister of Public Works and Transport is the only appointed member of the Executive which recently exited office.



Winile Nxumalo, an elected Senator, said she supported Dlamini due to her experience in politics. She touted Dlamini as the best to take over the seat as she would assist them push the agendas of Senate. I believe she can do well for us as she is a hard working woman, Nxumalo said.



Nxumalo said no one had phoned her but she felt that Dlamini was the best candidate to take over the seat. She said her candidate for deputy president was Mike Temple.



Another elected senator said: I was phoned by a senator who lobbied that I vote for Pastor Lindiwe Dlamini. The senator said Dlamini was experienced and was a pastor, which would make her put the Lord first while doing the duties of the House.



However, the former ministers phone rang unanswered when this publication sought her comment on whether she would be interested in taking the seat.

Meanwhile, His Majesty King Mswati III appointed seven women into Senate. Making the list was his first-born daughter Princess Sikhanyiso, followed by Princess Tsandzisile, Princess Ntfombiyenkhosi and Inkhosikati LaMasuku.MBABANE  Former head teacher of Mhlatane High School Simeon Makhubu has been rearrested.



Shobane, as Makhubu is popularly known, was arrested by members of the Royal Eswatini Police Service at around 3pm on Saturday.

This comes after he failed to pay in full the fine of E474 000 as ordered by the court.



The sickly Makhubu was arrested at Checkers in Mbabane, where he resided with his wife, in a government house.

His arrest on Saturday comes after efforts to locate him on Friday proved to be an impossible mission.



Warrant



On Friday, he was reportedly not found in all his places of abode after a warrant of arrest was issued against him.

The police had tried to locate him at Nkhaba and Mbabane.



Also, his phone rang unanswered when called by the law enforcers. Makhubu was finally located on Saturday and later taken to the Mbabane Police Station

He was yesterday taken to Sidvwashini Correctional Facility.



Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati confirmed Makhubus arrest.

The warrant of arrest against the former Mhlatane High School head teacher was issued by Judge Mbutfo Mamba on Friday.

Out of the fine, which the court had ordered him to pay over a period of six months in instalments of E79 000, Makhubu only paid E158 000. The outstanding balance is E316 000.



The issuance of the warrant follows an application by Principal Crown Counsel Macebo Nxumalo.

The judge ordered that Makhubu should be lodged in prison to serve the balance of the sentence that was meted out to him by the court.

According to a notice of set down that was filed by the Crown, Makhubu has failed to abide by the court order to pay the sum of E474 000 by September 2018.

On March 16, he paid an amount of E79 000. He paid a similar amount on May 4. The balance which he ought to have settled on or before September 9, 2018 is E316 000.



When passing the sentence, Judge Mamba said he hoped Makhubu would learn from the sentence.

The court found Makhubu guilty of defrauding Mhlatane High School over E1.7 million.

He told the court that he did not benefit from the money, because he gave it to the now deceased Sijabu Temnkitsi Dlamini, who claimed to have been sent by an Inkhosikati.Croatia\s former premier Ivo Sanader was convicted on Monday of war profiteering, in a re-trial that found him guilty of taking a bribe from an Austrian bank during the country\s 1990s conflict.

Sanader, who steered Croatia into NATO and to the doorstep of the European Union in the 2000s, was sentenced to two and half years in prison for accepting nearly 500,000 euros ($558,500) in bribes from Austria\s Hypo Group Alpe Adria bank.

But the former prime minister, who can appeal the verdict, will not have to go jail as he already served time in a previous sentence and detention period.

The Zagreb court said Sanader, 65, accepted the bribes as deputy foreign minister in the mid-1990s, during the country\s independence war and the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia.

The cash came in the form of a five percent commission Sanader collected on the bank loan that was used to pay for Croatian embassies abroad, the court said.

"He abused his position and authorities  to earn himself significant illegal gains," said judge Jasna Galesic.

He was sentenced to two years and six months in jail for "abuse of power and war profiteering," she added.

Sanader will also have to pay the state back for the amount he took in bribes, the judge said.

Sanader was first sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2012 for taking bribes from the bank as well as pocketing millions of euros from Hungary\s energy giant MOL.

But the sentence was later cut to eight-and-half years before the country\s top court quashed it in 2014, saying Sanader\s right to a fair trial had been violated.

A retrial was ordered and the two cases were separated.

Sanader, who led the government from 2003-2009 and faces several other graft cases, pleaded not guilty when the retrial opened in March.

In a separate trial on Monday, the Zagreb court acquitted him on abuse of power charges over the sale of electricity from the state-run power firm HEP to two local companies at below-market prices.

Sanader is the highest Croatian official to be charged with corruption since the country proclaimed independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

Tackling graft was key for Croatia\s successful bid to join the EU in 2013.

SOURCE: AFPBy Trend





Iran's foreign minister said that the issue of abduction of Iranian border guards, as well as measures to be taken, have been discussed with Pakistani officials, IRNA reports.

The embassies of the two countries, as well as their defense and interior ministers are closely following the issue of the abducted Iranian border guards, Mohammad-Javad Zarif said.



The terrorist group, calling itself Jaish ul Adl, has claimed the responsibility for kidnapping 14 Iranian guards on October 16.



The foreign minister also noted that the Pakistani government is responsible since the perpetrators fled into the country and the abductees are being kept in Pakistan as well.



The Pakistani government has said that Islamabad is willing to cooperate with Iran on the issue, the foreign minister added.



Zarif also said that the suggestion of increasing the number of Pakistani border guards was discussed, adding that Iran has a good presence at the common border.



He noted that following a previous incident on the shared border, Pakistan increased its forces, but it has vowed again to add the number.After Greeces exit from the programme, it will have the active support of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as it works to repair the damage of austerity policies, the Secretary of the OECD  Greece Joint Steering Comittee Mario Lopez-Roldan said in statements to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) on the sidelines of the 2018 Rhodes Forum for the Dialogue of Civilisations.

I think it is a new era. Obviously there are structural issues and problems for the Greek economy that will not be easy to solve. But this is a very important moment because for the first time this government will have the opportunity to promote its own policies. Now that they are coming out of the programme, they have a new national development strategy, which is very focused on repairing the damage of austerity policies. They have the support of the OECD. We are working with Greece actively, he noted.

Read more at thenationalherald.com

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Greece currently ranks second in the world for the highest number of Blue Flags, with 519 blue-flag Greek beaches and 15 marinas, and it can easily become first

Greece is expected to attract more than 32 million tourists in 2018, Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura noted at the "Blue Flags" annual meeting organised by the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature, the municipality of Zakynthos and the island's hoteliers.

"Revenue has double-digit growth, about 17 pct compared with 2017, so tourism is the economic power of our country, and we have to protect it and work hard," she added.

Regarding the Blue Flags, she said that everyone must make an effort so that each region acquires as many blue flags as possible in each region.

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China requests Greeces scientific expertise on Assisted Reproduction after the change in its existing law to a two-child policy, a policy proposed in order to help address the aging issue in China, which finds, though, now the Chinese couples aged enough to conceive a new child, facing numerous infertility problems. Anhui University Hospital by its Assisted Reproduction medical team of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Greeces medical experts on the field signed an important cooperation agreement to join forces and therapeutic practices, aiming to give the Chinese families a second chance: Chinese babies Made in Greece.

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed in Athens between the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine and, from Greeces side, the International Health Tourism Council and the Global Greek Doctor's Institute, in order to further promote the medical exchanges and cooperation between China and Greece, fully utilize the strengths of the distinctive areas from both sides, enhance the internal development of both sides, and promote cultural exchanges and communication between the two sides.

The Memorandum foresees the exchange of know-how between Greece and China for the combination of the most advanced scientific methods of Western Medicine in Assisted Reproduction with the Medical practices of the Eastern Traditional Medicine of China, as well as the creation of a Reproduction Center within a large State University Hospital in Anhui Region with the participation of Greek scientists.

"The cooperation with the top Medical staff of Greece on Assisted Reproduction is extremely important for China and we expect that many Chinese couples will benefit from the combination of in Vitro fertilization Medical methods, which will applied by the Hellenic team , with the Traditional Chinese Medicine methods on Assisted Reproduction. The Agreement of Cooperation and Greek-Chinese Alliance opens up new ways of scientific assistance to the peoples of both countries, broadens the chances of scientific, tourist and cultural exchange and sets new paths in Health Tourism.", the Chairman of the Center Council for the International Cooperation of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine Mr. Sihong Zhang stated after signing the agreement.

The International Health Tourism Council and the Global Greek Doctor's Institute are both non-profit companies and the contracting parties from Greeces side at the Memorandum of Understanding, as being legaqlly represented by Chairman of the board Mr.Patoulis.

The President of Central Union of Municipalities of Greece, President of the International Health Tourism Center and President of the Global Institute of Greek Doctors George Patoulis stated:

"It is an important day for the prospects of Greeces Health Tourism that unites Hippocratic Western Classical Medicine with the Traditional Eastern Medicine of China. The huge country betakes itself to the country of Hippocrates, Greece, aiming to open new paths to combine, unite and eventually offer a common development perspective for the future. The flows of the Chinese (patients and Health Travelers) - who will be cured by the specialized medical teams of In vitro fertilization in Greece, is a prospect with important significance.

New perspectives are opened up for the in-depth exchange of scientific opinions, as well as the exchange of people, scientists, doctors and health tourists, from one country to another,

A State university in the eastern part of China with a 3000-bed hospital capacity signed a significant cooperation agreement with the Global Institute of Greek Doctors and the IHTC, the International Health Tourism Center, -that is to say, the international Body for the development of health tourism that we have created for Greece - with the perspective to become a member of Greeces IHTC in March. The perspectives of Greek-Chinese Alliance in Health Tourism are enormous "

The Vice President of the Global Greek Doctors Institute, Mr. Constantine Pantos stated: "The fact that even China, this huge country from the other side of the world, recognizes the high level of Greek scientists, is a great honor for our country. This recognition should become the vehicle for strengthening relations, creating bridges of friendship and new partnerships, and, above all, it reverses the climate of lack of confidence in our country. The recovery of trust to Greece through the recognition of Greek doctors is a national goal. "

Within the framework of the Memorandum, educational programs of Greek and Chinese scientists and students will be developed, as well as exchanges of Greek and Chinese doctors for medcial practice between the two countries.

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The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) is organising an Arab Halal Day at the ongoing Salon International de lAgroalimentaire (SIAL Paris), Europe's leading food industry show, being held in France.



SIAL Paris, which kicked off yesterday (October 21), will run until October 25, in Paris.



The Arab Halal Day, which is being hosted in partnership with the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil), will happen on October 23, said a statement.



Arab Halal Day is aimed towards promoting halal meats and attracting the interest of Arab importers, it said.



According to recent industry reports, the Arab region consumed over $3.5 billion halal beef and poultry from Brazil in 2017. With this figure in mind, holding 'Arab Halal Day' proves to be both timely and strategic as it is expected to help give Brazilian businesses a much-needed push in connecting with potential Arab importers who will be present at the Paris show.



ABCC will be bringing in 22 industry players from Brazil, including leading companies like JBS, Mafripar, Marfrig, Minerva Foods and Xinguara.



The chamber has revealed that they will be serving Brazilian halal beef barbecue available from the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association (ABIEC) pavilion and halal chicken shawarma from the Brazilian Animal Protein Association (ABPA) pavilion.



Aside from the food to be served, the ABCC will also feature key videos and hand out marketing collaterals that looks towards promoting Brazilian halal meats in the Islamic markets.



Rubens Hannun, president, ABCC, said: We are excited to announce that we will be hosting the third Arab Halal Day at this years edition of SIAL Paris. During the show, we will be serving free halal meats for tasting--excellently flavoured halal beef barbecue and halal chicken shawarma--as part of our move to help connect Brazilian halal meat businesses with potential partners from the Arab region.



At the same time, we also want to throw the spotlight on halal products, even across the non-Arab world as these products are continuously trending and is considered as a fast growing market, he added.



Brazil is a leading manufacturer and exporter of halal beef and poultry, with sales to Arab League countries coming out to $3.5 billion in 2017  $2.6 billion of which came from poultry. The top buyers were Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Algeria.



The ABCC is encouraging interested businesses and media to come visit their stand at the show to find out more about the participating businesses and the halal meat products on showcase, it stated.  TradeArabia News ServiceAluminium Bahrain (Alba), the Bahrain-based aluminium smelter, today (October 22) welcomed Justin Siberell, US Ambassador to Bahrain, as part of the companys endeavours to strengthen commercial ties with US.



During the visit, Siberell and the delegation were briefed on the fast-paced progress of Albas Line 6 Expansion Project which will achieve the first hot metal on January 1, 2019.



Albas chief executive officer Tim Murray said: Bahrain and US have a historic relation of trade and friendship spanning many decades.



We are pleased to welcome Siberell the US Ambassador and we look forward to strengthening the strong partnership between Bahrain and US as well as boosting business trade between the two countries, he added.



The delegation was also given an insight into the vital role that Alba plays in supporting the national economy and its role as a champion of Workplace Safety and Health, it stated.  TradeArabia News ServiceSiemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) was named preferred supplier today (October 22) by customer rsted for its 900 MW Greater Changhua offshore wind power projects in Taiwan.



The project includes approximately 112 units of the Asia-Pacific variant of the SG 8.0-167 DD offshore wind turbine and a Service agreement. Subject to the agreement becoming a final contract, Siemens Gamesa will establish a nacelle assembly facility near Taichung Harbor. The facility is expected to be ready by 2021, ahead of the local content creation timeline as set by the Taiwanese government.



Wind turbine towers for the projects will be supplied locally through the partnership between CS Wind and Chin Fong in Taiwan, meeting the official requirements for local content on wind turbine components. Offshore construction for the projects is to begin in 2021.



We are proud that rsted has selected us as the preferred supplier for these important projects in Taiwan, and look forward to it becoming a confirmed order according to the current plans. Greater Changhua represents an extremely significant leap forward for SGRE in Taiwan. It will enable us to establish a nacelle assembly facility in Taichung Harbor by 2021 upon rsteds request, and ahead of local content requirements as set by the Taiwanese government, said Andreas Nauen, CEO of the Offshore Business Unit in Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.



The SG 8.0-167 DD offshore wind turbine variant for Asia-Pacific markets addresses local conditions across the region. It ensures that the SG 8.0-167 DD is tailored to meet local codes and standards regarding typhoons, seismic activities, 60 Hertz operation, as well as operation in high and low ambient temperatures.



It has a rated capacity of 8.0 megawatts (MW), and a rotor with a 167-meter diameter. It has a swept area of 21,900 sq m, and utilizes the SGRE B81 blades, each measuring 81.4 meters. By 2020, more than 1,000 SGRE Direct Drive offshore wind turbines will be installed globally.



Securing this preferred supplier agreement with rsted proves that our technology and business commitment fit extremely well with the Taiwanese offshore wind industry and the governments commendable plans. Were creating workplaces in the short-, medium-, and long-term, and contributing to the positive growth story of renewable energy in the market, said Niels Steenberg, executive general manager of Siemens Gamesa Offshore for Asia-Pacific.



Matthias Bausenwein, rsteds general manager for Asia Pacific, said: Building large-scale wind farms in the offshore conditions of the Taiwan straits is a new journey for rsted. Were delighted to work with our experienced partner Siemens Gamesa in adopting a typhoon-proof technology for our Greater Changhua offshore wind farms. SGREs mature localisation plan was a key reason for selecting them as our preferred turbine supplier.  TradeArabia News ServiceThe contribution of Hilal Computers - Saudi Arabia to the Jazan Gas Project was recognised by Air Products at a ceremony in Jazan recently.

Jazan Gas Project, the worlds largest industrial gas complex, will supply 75,000 metric tons of gas per day to Saudi Aramcos refinery being built in Jazan. The complex, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco, Acwa Power and Air Products, will produce 20,000 metric tons of oxygen and 55,000 metric tons of nitrogen.

At the event titled Safe Achievement of Mechanical Completion Hilal Computers - Saudi Arabia (a sister company of Hilal Computers, Bahrain) was recognised by the joint venture partners of Jazan Gas for its safety and delivery record while contributing to the digital transformation requirements of the project.

Receiving the award on behalf of Hilal Computers, the companys managing director, Ronnie Middleton, said: The award by Air Products is recognition of the industry standards delivered by Hilal Computers, which reflect the quality, dedication and professionalism of the team. Our small contribution to one of the worlds monolithic energy projects has today been appreciated.

Hilal Computers - Saudi Arabia has shown its capacity of service delivery for future transformational projects in Saudi Arabia and across the GCC, commented Middleton.

Hilal Computers managed the roll-out of 20 systems of IT protocols aligned in different domains including cybersecurity, ICT networks, server farms, cabling, enterprise network and consulting. The transformation of the internal systems took 40,000 man hours of work to complete; requiring cabling provisioned to 47 buildings, 146 FoC tests, setting up 579 UTP cables and CCTV surveillance," commented Sandeep Menon, account manager.

Simon Philips, Hilal Computers project manager who was on site for 201 days overseeing the completion of project deliverables, commented: "The pressure on the team to deliver telecom services to such a key development in Saudi Arabias largest industrial gas complexes was immense. The enormity of the Jazan Gas Project is mind-blowing  the Hilal element of the project has delivered so far 91 technical drawings and created over 30,000 pages of project documentation.  - TradeArabia News ServiceKey priorities for the development of the world tourism sector over the next two years will be the focus of a major event hosted by Bahrain next week.

Bahrain, represented by the Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority (BTEA), will be the venue for the 109th session of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Executive Council from October 30 to November 1. The session will be held at Art Rotana Hotel in Amwaj.

The executive council will discuss several topics on the agenda that are related to the development of the global tourism sector, including the Secretary- Generals report and general programme of work, the UNWTOs financial report for the period ended June 30, 2018 and the organisations budget.

Members of the council will also discuss the organisations focus and plans to drive innovation and transformation in the tourism industry by 2030.

In addition, the session will review the progress on the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) recommendations, and the associate members will elect the executive vice president of the Executive Board for 2019.

We look forward to hosting the 109th session of UNWTO Executive Council; our participation comes as a part of our commitment as active members of the UNWTO Commission for the Middle East. We aim to contribute significantly to the development of additional partnerships and strengthen cooperation among the council members to achieve the best results, said the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani.

The UNWTO will focus on five pillars in the coming period including innovation, digital transformation, investments and entrepreneurship, education and employment, safe, secure and seamless travel in addition to social, cultural and environmental sustainability. This will lead to the creation of new job and business opportunities, an increase of investments in tourism, and enhanced competitiveness and sustainability within the sector, he added.

Bahrain, represented by the BTEA, was selected as member of the UNWTO Executive Council for the period 2018-2021. This selection comes as a result of the BTEAs efforts towards developing the tourism sector on a local level, as well as the kingdoms capability to represent the Middle East region in terms of tourism developments.

The Executive Council is considered the worlds top tourism executive body with 32 members representing the six regions of the world.

The UNWTO was established in 1975 and is based in the Spanish capital of Madrid. It is concerned with countries political affairs in terms of tourism and produces statistics on tourism demand and supply worldwide. Its membership includes 145 countries, comprises six regions, and 350 affiliate members representing the private sector, educational institutions, tourism associations and local tourism authorities.  TradeArabia News ServiceGoldman Preps Marquee Upgrade

Goldman Sachs has slated a significant fourth-quarter rollout to the firm's Marquee automated trading platform according to company executives.

We have a huge ambition, a cross-asset integrated agency and principal platform for accessing liquidity across all of the products and making that liquidity available to our client in a variety of formats," said Marty Chavez, out-going CFO at Goldman Sachs, during the company's third-quarter earnings call.

Chavez, who will take on the co-leadership of the firm's securities business in the near future, expects that Goldman Sachs employees and clients will use the same set of tools over Marquee and that client will connect their systems directly to the firm's platform.

In the meantime, the firm is re-engineering its legacy FICC systems to automate processes further and increase their ability to scale while funding the re-engineering organically, he added.

The firm plans to leverage many of the themes that it found successful in its equities business.

"There are a lot of parallels to equities," he noted. "Of course the market structure is different, and these businesses will evolve differently and at different speeds."

Although Chavez views FICC as a "people" business, he wants to provide people with the tools that permit them to do their best and leaving to machines what they do best.

"I would not like to compete with my HP 12c to see who can add or multiply the faster," he said. "That is the general theme."

The continuing pressure on margins also a major reason for the upgrades, according to Chavez.

It is just the way of the world, compression wherever you look, he said. That is a trend that we are embracing and not resisting.

Goldman Sachs began deploying Marquee to its London office at the start of the year under the leadership of John Lynch, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, the Financial News reported earlier this year.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:RETAIL REPORT: SECs New Strategic Plan Puts Investors, Innovation, and Performance at Top

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a new strategic plan to guide the agencys work over the next four years with a primary focus on investors, innovation, and performance. The plans goals reflect the agencys commitment to its longstanding mission while leveraging the opportunities and addressing the challenges that come from fast-evolving markets, products and services. ]IMGCAP(1)]

"Our new strategic plan is a concise, straight-forward explanation of the goals that will guide us as our markets evolve. It is based on the core values that have motivated the women and men of the SEC for over 80 years, including, most importantly, serving the interests of our long term Main Street investors," said SEC Chairman Jay Clayton in a statement.

The SECs new strategic plan was published in accordance with the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010, which requires federal agencies to outline their missions, planned initiatives, and strategic goals for a four-year period.

Strategic Plan Summary

GOAL 1. Focus on the long-term interests of our Main Street investors.

The SEC will strive to better understand how a wider range of investors participate in the capital markets and how to reach them while tailoring policy initiatives with retail investors in mind. Initiatives under this goal will include modernizing disclosure and expanding investor choice.

GOAL 2. Recognize significant developments and trends in our evolving capital markets and adjust our efforts to ensure we are effectively allocating our resources.

Under this goal, the SEC will embrace innovation by analyzing market developments, evaluating existing rules and procedures, understanding the continually changing cyber-landscape and ensuring the appropriate resources are dedicated to each area.

GOAL 3. Elevate the SECs performance by enhancing our analytical capabilities and human capital development.

The SEC will invest in data and technology to leverage the experience, knowledge, creativity, leadership and teamwork of the SECs staff and its leaders. The agency is also committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce with a wide range of skills and expertise.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:Edinburgh, Oct 22- The Scottish Government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are jointly announcing a 2-year programme of collaboration aimed at mobilising private capital for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the Scottish Government committing 400,000 in funding matched by UNDP in support of this project. It was announced at the Ethical Finance 2018 Conference ( Oct 22-23) in Edinburgh, attended by around 300 delegates from across the globe.

The SDGs were agreed and adopted by the UN in September 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 17 quantitative and qualitative Global Goals reflect the aspirations of the people from around the world. They are designed to address global economic, social, governance and environmental challenges, providing a common framework for shared action across all sectors and countries. 193 countries (including Scotland) have adopted the SDGs since September 2015 with the target date of 2030.

With an urgent need to move from a grant-dependent or charity-dependent model towards a self-sufficient business enterprise, the collaboration will seek to develop innovative financial structures and delivery vehicles to allow some of the UNDPs 4,500 natured-based, and SDG-aligned, projects to become viable investment propositions. It will also develop and facilitate a programme of investor and stakeholder engagement activities aimed at driving more private capital to SDG funds and projects.

UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner stated, Our goal in this partnership is to explore and test new ways of channeling finance to focus on inclusive, nature-based, small and medium enterprises. Inclusive investments target those who have had difficulty gaining access to finance  small farmers, fishers, forestry and eco-toursim enterprises. Nature-based investments achieve triple wins for people, planet and prosperity.

Heriot-Watt University through the distance learning experience of Edinburgh Business School, will co-develop a course on entrepreneurship.

Having played a key role in bringing the parties together, and developing the scope of the collaboration, the global programme office will be located at the Ethical Finance Hub in Edinburgh Business School.

Graham Burnside, Ethical Finance Hub commented: Scotland is an ideal partner for this programme, given its whole economy approach to policy, its commitment to sustainable inclusive economic development, its powerful and diverse financial cluster and its international reputation for innovation and ethical finance.

The programme and Ethical Finance 2018 both form part of the Global Ethical Finance Initiative (GEFI) which consolidates some of the pioneering and innovative ethical finance work being undertaken in Scotland.



Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Finance Derek Mackay said, The Scottish Government welcomes a week of ethical finance events to Edinburgh, home to the Ethical Finance Hub and we are delighted to efforts to shift the focus of finance to a responsible and ethical approach, reflecting our commitment to sustainable, inclusive growth.

The powerful combination of the work of the Hub, and Scotlands reputation both as a financial centre and a nation of innovation, has been recognised globally, attracting the attention of the United Nations Development Programme.

I am pleased to announce that the Scottish Government and UNDP are committed to a two-year programme of collaboration to mobilise private capital in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals with the Scottish Government committing 400,000 in funding matched by UNDP in support of this project.

This week, anchored by the conference and under the GEFI brand, Edinburgh will host a series of ethical finance events convening finance, development and faith leaders to co-develop and shape a fairer, more sustainable financial system.

Video message of UNDP Administrator here.

For media queries:

Chris Tait, Project Manager, Ethical Finance Hub, +44(0)7931 103573, chris@ethicalfinancehub.org

Sangita Khadka, Communications Specialist, UNDP Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, email: sangita.khadka@undp.org, Tel: +1 212 906 5043UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie listens to Venezuelan women at the Albergue Sin Fronteras shelter in Lima, Peru.  UNHCR/Santiago Escobar-Jaramillo

UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie is carrying out an official visit to Peru this week. Peru is one of the countries most affected by the surge in Venezuelan refugees and migrants  the largest movement of people in Latin Americas recent history.

Following up on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' recent visit to the region, Jolie is undertaking a three-day mission to assess the humanitarian needs of Venezuelan refugees and the challenges facing Peru as a host country, and to discuss the possible regional responses to the crisis.

During her mission, the Special Envoy will meet refugees, representatives of the Government of Peru and organizations contributing to the humanitarian response. She will visit programmes providing protection and assistance to asylum-seekers, refugees and host families, and observe Perus generous response to Venezuelan refugees and migrants.

The Special Envoy focuses on major displacement crises, representing UNHCR and the High Commissioner at the diplomatic level. The Special Envoy Jolie last visited Latin America in 2012, for a mission to Ecuador, her third visit to meet then Colombian refugees in the region.Name: Massoumeh Farman Farmaian. Born in Iran.

Job Title: Senior emergency inter-agency coordinator, based in Geneva.

Years at UNHCR: Fifteen, with deployments to more than a dozen countries.

Why did you become an aid worker?

I was born in Iran and I speak Farsi. I always wanted to work in Afghanistan. I wanted just to see, feel, smell and absorb the place for as long as I could remember. I got the opportunity to work there after the September 11 attacks.

I was working in the private sector in New York at the time of the attacks, and when the military went into Afghanistan, I thought to myself, This is a good time to go and help these people. I need to be there and contribute somehow. I called several aid agencies and told them I'm here, I speak the local language.

I started working for UNHCR in Iran in 2003 and then I went to Pakistan in 2005 to help after an earthquake. From there I went to Afghanistan, where I finally got to use my language skills, as Dari is very close to Farsi. After a decade in the region, I went to Chad.

Massoumeh Farman Farmaian (in UNHCR vest) with colleagues in Uganda at a border crossing with South Sudan in 2016.  UNHCR/Yamah Massaley

Massoumeh Farman Farmaian works with South Sudanese refugees in in Nyumanzi transit center in Uganda.  UNHCR photo

Massoumeh Farman Farmaian, speaks to displaced people in Idomeni, Greece, in November 2015, about their right to seek asylum.  UNHCR/Yorgos Kyvernitis

Nigerian refugee women and children in Tchoukoutalia, Chad in 2015. The refugees had fled militant attacks in Borno State, Northeastern Nigeria, traveling by boat.  UNHCR/Massoumeh Farman-Farmaian

What is the most rewarding/challenging thing about your job?

When conflicts or political upheaval displace a population overnight, UNHCR is there to help. In emergencies, we must think quickly and act fast.

Our aid and experts are ready for rapid deployment anywhere in the world. We can launch an emergency operation within 72 hours, thanks to a global network of stocks and supplies, specialists and partners.

Your mind is always on standby. Sometimes Im required to leave in less than three days and I am okay with it. I have to live with the unpredictability  and I love it.

When I am deployed  whether its to Greece, Uganda or Bangladesh  it's hard work because I don't usually take days off. How can you take a day off when you're in the middle of an emergency?

But I do enjoy the work. I love being in the field because of the experiences, meeting people from diverse cultures and having an opportunity to make a difference. The most rewarding bit is being able to see the impact of your work.

What was your best day at work?

More than 1 million people have fled South Sudan and sought safety in neighbouring Uganda since fighting erupted in 2013.

Probably one of my proudest moments working with UNHCR was when I was in deployed to Uganda in 2016, when thousands of South Sudanese refugees were arriving on foot every day through the bush, the vast majority of them women and children.

Within a few weeks of setting up the settlement for new arrivals we had thousands of people in school. It was wonderful to see children in classes and teachers planning their next lessons.

I also had quite an emotional experience in Greece, where I was called to a hospital that was caring for some children who had been rescued after a boat that capsized. They were injured and no one spoke their language. Nobody knew who they were.

So I went to the hospital and I was trying to figure out if they spoke Farsi and finally figured out their names. They were Iraqi Kurds. I also took their photos and shared them with colleagues from different locations of the operation  they were finally reunited with their parents.

Massoumeh Farman Farmaian stops for a picture with South Sudanese refugee children in Uganda's Rhino camp.  UNHCR photo

What was your worst day?

I met an Afghan man in his late thirties who had just lost his family in a shipwreck. He had boarded a boat with his wife  who was eight months pregnant  and his two children, a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. When the boat capsized, his family didnt make it to shore. After a frantic search in all the registration centres and hospitals, we started making the rounds of the morgues.

Eventually we found the bodies. He was completely distraught. He later said, Im going back to Afghanistan, where I want to die. Everything I have to live for is gone.

This was the worst experience ever for me because there was nothing I could do for him. But what keeps me going is the thought of all we as UNHCR have been able to accomplish in the various emergencies across the world.

The UN Refugee Agency works in 128 countries helping men, women and children driven from their homes by wars and persecution. Our headquarters are in Geneva, but 87 per cent of our staff are based in the field, helping refugees. You can listen to a podcast discussing what it takes to be a humanitarian worker in some of the worlds most challenging locations here.Somali refugee Sabah holds up photos of her three children at a detention centre in Nauru, in 2014. She had not seen them for three years.  Panos/ Vlad Sokhin

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, appeals to the Government of Australia to take urgent action for all refugees and asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru today. UNHCR appreciates the efforts of doctors, independent experts, lawyers and elected representatives from all sides of politics to highlight the human cost of offshore processing and its consequences in recent weeks. This reflects growing recognition that lives are at immediate and critical risk, as well as increased community concern. Despite this, decisive action is still to be taken.

The immediate evacuation of refugees and asylum-seekers from Papua New Guinea and Nauru to Australia does not require legislative change. Further, constraints upon freedom of movement and any differentiated treatment of refugees are both unnecessary and contrary to fundamental principles of refugee protection[1]. Concerted action, founded upon a clear humanitarian imperative, is needed to prevent further deaths and harm to innocent men, women and children alike.

While children are an obvious priority, there are many other acutely vulnerable men and women in both Papua New Guinea and Nauru who must not be forgotten, urged UNHCR Regional Representative Thomas Albrecht. Australia has both the ability and responsibility to take action and save lives today.

The movement of only children and their families would do nothing to address the predicament of others with urgent medical needs, a number of whom were also children when they were forcibly sent to Nauru over five years ago. Equally, the desperate situation of refugees and asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru is now such that evacuation of only some individuals would heighten the despair and exacerbate severe mental health risks of those left behind.

As early as 2016, UNHCR medical consultants found that cumulative rates of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder exceeded 80 per cent among the surveyed population in both countries. Circumstances have continued to deteriorate since that time.

The circumstances of refugees and asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru are entirely distinct from those of nationals and people who have migrated voluntarily. The unique needs of human beings who have fled war and persecution, have been forcibly transferred, detained and subject to harrowing conditions require an intensive response that is simply not available locally. These facts in no way detract from the various good faith efforts of the Governments of Papua New Guinea and Nauru respectively, or the warmth and hospitality of their people.

Background

Approximately 3,000 refugees and asylum-seekers have been forcibly transferred by Australia to so-called offshore processing facilities in Papua New Guinea and Nauru since the introduction of the current policy in 2013. Of these, some 800 remain in Nauru and 650 in Papua New Guinea.

Refugees and asylum-seekers were initially held in closed detention, before the transition of the Nauru Regional Processing Centre (in 2015) and Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (in 2016) to more open facilities. In April 2016, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea found that the detention arrangements on Manus Island violated the right to liberty under Papua New Guineas Constitution.

Circumstances and conditions for refugees under Australias offshore processing policy have had severely negative impacts on health, and particularly significantly mental health. During 2016, UNHCR medical experts found cumulative rates of depression, anxiety and PTSD among refugees forcibly transferred to Papua New Guinea and Nauru to be the highest recorded in the medical literature to date at over 80 per cent in both locations.[2] The wellbeing of refugees has been noted by various medical experts to have further deteriorated since that time.

The Government of Australia currently contracts International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) to provide limited healthcare services to refugees and asylum-seekers in Nauru, and Pacific International Hospital in Papua New Guinea. The respective local healthcare systems, on which most refugees are forced to rely after hours, are under-resourced and understaffed in both countries. Torture and trauma counselling services were discontinued on Manus Island following the withdrawal of the Government of Australia in October 2017. In Nauru, torture and trauma support is available only to those who experienced trauma prior to their arrival in Australia. MSF International ceased providing medical services to Nauruans and refugees alike on 6 October 2018, in accordance with an order received from the Government of Nauru. They have called for the immediate medical evacuation of all refugees and asylum-seekers from Nauru, noting at least 78 instances of attempted suicide, suicidal thoughts and self-harm among their patients in Nauru in the past 11 months.

The Government of Australia stated in May 2018 that 494 people had been returned for medical reasons from Papua New Guinea and Nauru to Australia as of 30 June 2017.[3] Those brought back to Australia for medical treatment do not escape the ongoing negative impacts of offshore processing. Some have been formally detained in onshore detention centres in Australia following their medical transfer, which is particularly damaging in cases of poor mental health. The current policy offers them no long-term solution in Australia, and leaves them vulnerable to being sent back to Nauru or Papua New Guinea in future. They live with the persistent threat of being returned to the place where they were detained for years, and where adequate support services and long-term solutions are lacking. UNHCR has strongly urged the Government of Australia to not return anyone to Papua New Guinea or Nauru.

Under a bilateral arrangement between Australia and the United States of America, announced in November 2016, 1,250 refugees are expected to be relocated from Nauru and Papua New Guinea to the United States. As of October 2018, a similar number of men, women and children remain with no appropriate solutions in sight.

UNHCRs briefing note of 12 October 2018 also available here.

Media Enquiries

Catherine Stubberfield, +61 424 545 569, [email protected]

[1] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Regional Processing Cohort) Bill 2016, 16 November 2018, available here.

[2] See: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Submission by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the Inquiry into the Serious Allegations of Abuse, Self-harm and Neglect of Asylum-seekers in Relation to the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, and any like Allegations in Relation to the Manus Regional Processing Centre Referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, 12 November 2016, available here.

[3] See Question on notice no. 142, Portfolio question number: AE18/147, 2017-18 Additional Estimates, Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Home Affairs Portfolio, available here.New Delhi, Oct 22 (UNI) Two days after more than 60 people were mowed down by a speeding train in Amritsar on Dussehra, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notices to the Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab and the Chairman, Railway Board, Ministry of Railways, calling for a detailed report in the matter, within four weeks.

'The State Government is expected to provide all the details regarding disbursement of relief and rehabilitationto the aggrieved families as well as the information on the status of the treatment being provided to the injured in different hospitals of Amritsar,' the Commission said in a statement on Monday.



The NHRC has taken suo motu cognizance of media reports that more than 60 people died on the spot and several others got seriously injured in Amritsar district of Punjab, where several people watching Dussehra celebrations from the railway tracks were mowed down by a passenger train on October 19.



'Issuing the notices, the Commission has observed that it cannot be said to be a sane act by people to sit on the railway tracks,at the same time, the negligence on the part of the district authorities is apparent behind this bizarre and horrific incident,' it said.

'It seems that the local authorities and theorganizers did not properly managed the crowd, gathered to watch the Dussehra celebrations. It was the responsibility of the State to provide proper safetyand protection to the citizens during the event,' the commission said.

'If it is true, as reported in some sections of the media, that the railway authorities were not informed about the event, it indicates towards highly negligent and reckless attitude of the authorities responsible. This is a case of serious violation of human rights of the victims,' it said.



According to the reports, several people were sitting on the railway track, taking photographs and enjoying burning of the effigy of Ravan, when a train passed through crushing the people.

The Government Railway Police (GRP) have registered a case of culpable homicide and causing death by negligence against un-identified persons, on a complaint given by a local police officer.

The Railway authorities have stated that they cannot be blamed, as they were not informed about Dussehra celebrations.

UNI PY/ VT 1810SC upholds Maldives' results of Presidential election

Male Oct 21 (UNI) The Maldives' top court has unanimously rejected a bid by outgoing President Abdulla Yameen to annul results of a presidential election held in September.

The Supreme Court said on Sunday the president failed to substantiate claims of fraud and found there was "no constitutional basis to overturn the election and order a new poll", according to a court document.

Yameen, who presided over a five-year crackdown targeting political rivals, media and rights activists, lost the September 23 election by a margin of 16 percent to opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in an outcome hailed as a victory for democracy in the Indian Ocean archipelago.Published: October 22, 2018

Oct. 30 Writers at the University Series Features Alissa Nutting

On Tuesday, Oct. 30, The University of Tampa will host a reading by Alissa Nutting, assistant professor of English at Grinnell College, as part of the Writers at the University series. The event begins at 7 p.m. in the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery, and is free and open to the public.



Nutting will read from her short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, which was selected as the winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction and a was ForeWord Book of the Year finalist.



Nutting is also author of the novel Tampa, which addresses double standards like gender-based expectations of females regarding beauty and the great extent of mischief that women may be forgiven for. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Fence, BOMB, Elle, The New York Times, Conduit and O: The Oprah Magazine.



The Valrico, FL, native holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and a doctorate from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She is currently working on two television pilots.



Writers at the University is presented by the UT Department of English and Writing. For more information, contact Lynne Bartis at lbartis@ut.edu or (813) 257-3514.(Oct. 22, 2018) -- The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) College of Business received a $2 million grant from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as part of its Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence Critical Technology Studies Program.

The grant will allow the college to expand its current Master of Science in Data Analytics (MSDA) program to offer a new track in analytics cyber intelligence; launch an intelligence studies certificate program; award scholarships and stipends to select program participants; collaborate with academic and industry partners on cyber analytics research and training; and work with the intelligence community to promote internship and job opportunities.

The College of Business has positioned itself as a leader in the fields of cybersecurity and big data analytics, said Wm. Gerard Sanders, dean and Bodenstedt Chair of the UTSA College of Business. We look forward to partnering with DIA on this prestigious grant. It further enhances the reputation of the colleges Master of Science in Data Analytics program.

Led by business faculty members Max Kilger, director of the data analytics program, and Paul Rad, associate professor in the Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, the three-year grant will run through 2021.

We are providing a critical pathway of analytics and cyber education to train the national security workforce, said Kilger, a nationally known cybersecurity expert. Our faculty are experts in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data visualization, computational statistics, algorithm design and analytic writing and briefing.

According to a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, there is a predicted shortfall of 250,000 data science professionals in the coming years.

Graduates of the MSDA Critical Technology Studies program will have not only expertise in data analytics techniques, but also training and experience in applying these techniques in the cyber domain with an emphasis on intelligence analytics.

MSDA students take classes in areas such as data analytics applications, data driven decision making, data visualization and data algorithms. They also gain experience in a number of industry standard platforms and data architectures such as R, SAS, Python and Hadoop.

Six new courses in intelligence studies and national security applications will be developed for the Critical Technology Studies Program. Coursework includes The Role of U.S. Intelligence in National Security; Intelligence Reasoning and Analysis; Methods in Intelligence Collection; Analytical Writing, Reporting and Briefing to the Intelligence Community; National Security and Human-Digital Technology Relationships; and Analytic Methods, Interpretation, Writing and Briefing of Cyber Intelligence Data.

Leveraging UTSAs newly-established National Security Collaboration Center (NSCC), the college will engage with partners in the intelligence community including the Army Research Laboratory, the 25th Air Force and Booz Allen Hamilton.

The DIA CAE program in Critical Technology Studies was built to provide a pipeline for partners of the National Security Collaboration Center, a government-university-industry ecosystem working to rapidly develop and prototype state-of-the-art technologies and solutions for national security and global defense. This program will create students with a global understanding of intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence and other key aspects within intelligence studies, said Bernard Arulanandam, interim vice president for research, economic development and knowledge enterprise at UTSA.

The NSCC advances research, education and workforce development in the areas of cybersecurity, data analytics and cloud computing.

In todays cyber era, threats can easily thwart legacy defense mechanisms and learn how to behave and appear as realistic as users, said Rad, an expert in artificial intelligence, autonomy and cloud computing. AI-based cybersecurity is critical to defending our nations information infrastructure. The DIA CAE program grant allows us to train the next-generation workforce to implement AI and cybersecurity.

UTSA is ranked the No. 1 cybersecurity program in the nation by the Ponemon Institute and has three Center of Academic Excellence designations in information assurance/cyber defense education, information assurance research and cyber operations from the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.

"As an industry leader in the defense, intelligence and cyber arenas, Booz Allen Hamilton congratulates UTSA on winning an important federal grant to work toward becoming an Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence, said Bob Miller, vice president and San Antonio location general manager at Booz Allen Hamilton. This is a victory for the whole national security community in San Antonio, as it will bring additional emphasis and synergy to South Texas, by educating students and community leaders alike in the key, common issues that matter to industry, academia and government."

The College of Business will also establish an academic consortium with five South Texas Universities. Consortia faculty and students will collaborate on research, participate in academic boot camps and network with local, regional and national intelligence community experts.

We are building a diverse community of scholars with an interest in analytics and cyber intelligence, said Kilger. And, we are creating a pipeline of future students to fill the critical shortage in the national security workforce.

The college launched its Master of Science in Data Analytics program in 2016. The program produces highly-skilled and educated data analysts who can convert the growing amount of data confronting all organizations into usable information for decision makers across a variety of disciplines.(Oct. 22, 2018) -- UTSA is a designated early voting site for the Nov. 6 midterm election. Any registered Bexar County voter can skip the lines and cast a ballot at UTSA Oct. 22 to Nov. 2 in the H-E-B Student Union Bexar Room (HSU 1.102) on the UTSA Main Campus. Voters at the Downtown Campus can vote early at the nearby Bexar County Elections Dept. at 1103 S. Frio St.

During this midterm election, Texas voters will be deciding on races for seats in the House of Representatives and Senate along with Governor, Lt. Governor, Comptroller, State Land Commissioner, State Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, State Agriculture Commissioner and State Railroad Commissioner. Bexar County elections include County Commissioner, District Attorney, District Clerk, County Clerk, County Judge and San Antonio charter propositions.

The UTSA Center for Civic Engagement is hosting several events to get the campus community excited to vote.

Roadrunner Voter Kickoff is from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 22 on the Paseo on Main Campus.

For those at the Downtown Campus, bring a helmet and ride to the polls Monday, Oct. 22 at 11 a.m. Rain or shine, the entire community is encouraged to meet at Bill Miller Plaza and join City Council District 5 Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales as she leads Roadrunners on scooters to the early voting site at the Bexar County Elections Department. Participants should sign up in advance to reserve a free scooter to ride during the event.

On Monday Oct. 29, Move Texas will host a Party at the Polls from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the Paseo. Guests will enjoy music, fun activities and food.

During the 2014 midterm election, 20.8 percent of UTSA registered voters cast their vote. The Center for Civic Engagement challenges more Roadrunners to vote this year to increase the number.

Early voting times at UTSA:

Monday, Oct. 22  Friday, Oct. 26

8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 27

8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 28

12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Monday, Oct. 29  Friday, Nov. 2

8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Voters should be prepared to show a valid photo ID or secondary supporting ID.UW in the News

State, national and international media frequently feature the University of Wyoming and members of its community in stories. Here is a summary of some of the recent articles:

The Laramie Boomerang reported that UW administrators revealed their preferences of where to build residence halls housing 2,000 students during a legislative task force meeting last week. The Boomerang also reported that the legislative task force charged with overhauling residence halls met for the final time but did not produce a bill to finance construction for the buildings in 2019.

Slain UW student Matthew Shepards collection of papers and personal objects will be donated to the Smithsonians National Museum of American History, according to MSN News.

The Laramie Boomerang reported that the Joint Appropriations Committee will draft a bill that is expected to lead UW to privatize the operations of its two family medical clinics in Cheyenne and Casper.

Professor Jeff Lockwood wrote a column for Entomology Today about his collaboration with UW colleagues on their locust opera. The article is titled Entomological Storytelling: Why We Wrote an Opera About Locusts (Really!).

The Powell Tribune reported that Northwest College and UW are teaming up to offer a four-year degree at the Powell-based community college.

Among the UW releases published on Sheridan Medias website were the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research Conference Roundup last week; UW partnering with Ramsey Educations Foundations in Personal Finance curriculum to help Wyoming students develop good personal finance habits; the UW College of Health Sciences honoring six of its alumni during last weeks Homecoming; UWs Master of Science in Health Services Administration Program, offered through UWs School of Pharmacy, producing its first group of graduates; and 10 innovative businesses formed by UW graduate students being finalists in the Fisher Innovation Launchpad.

Laramie Live published UWs release noting that all four gubernatorial candidates will debate at the College of Arts and Sciences auditorium this week.

Wyo4News published UWs release announcing Homecoming events. Laramie Live published a similar article on its website.

The Boomerang also reported on these UW news articles: UW trustees recently approving designs for a new energy plant; the UW-sponsored Wyoming Latina Youth Conference; and a preview of the UW Symphony Orchestra concert this week.

UW administrators may ask the Board of Trustees to revise the schools housing policy to require all incoming freshmen living more than 30 miles outside of Laramie to live on campus, noted The Boomerang.

The Akron Beacon Journal noted that former UW standout Larry Nance Jr. signed a $45 million, five-year extension with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The UW mens cross country team entered the national rankings for the first time in program history last week, according to WyoSports. The Cowboys are ranked 13th nationally.SHSG Calls for an End to Privilege for Bishop

The Secular Humanist Society Gibraltar have said that in asking for, and getting, an extension to the command paper on the Abortion Bill, the catholic bishop has invoked and been granted undeserved christian privilege.

The SHSG, who represent a fast growing section of the community, calls for this extension to be annulled, "[but] we are certain that this wont happen, as this privilege seems only to extend to one individual."

Their statement, released this evening, continues, "Although the bible is virtually silent on this matter, and the church is free to submit a document like everyone else (we are all for freedom of expression), it would seem that inexplicably, his view carries more weight than any others. This is the essence of religious privilege  getting better treatment for their views than other organisations.Our concern is not about the extension per se, but what else has the bishop asked for using this special licence? What other concessions have been given within this framework of christian privilege?"

"In our opinion, the Catholic Church is overreaching, in the meantime people are made to wait longer and suffer. The SHSG advocates for freedom of religion and freedom from religion as demanded in our Constitution."

"Right now, we believe this fundamental human right, enshrined in our constitution, is being ignored, trampled on and run roughshod. Moreover, didnt the so-called 'Pro-Life Movement' (More accurately the 'Anti-Choice Movement') state that they werent religious?"

"None of the Pro-Choice organisations have requested an extension - we know this for a fact. On whose behalf is the bishop speaking or what group is he openly helping? It can only be the alleged 'Pro-Life' group. This organisation has disingenuously led people to believe that it is not a religious movement, when it clearly is."

Additionally, the SHSG says it calls upon the Government of Gibraltar to uphold its duty to separate church and state by stopping religious privilege once and for all.Gibraltar Health Authoritys School of Health Studies: Health and Social Care Awards

Twenty four members of staff received awards at the Health and Social Care Awards ceremony which took place at the Rock Hotel on Thursday. The awards related to training and education undertaken in Gibraltar and are the culmination of hard work, dedication and commitment.

The demands of study have been challenging, with students having had to produce a portfolio of evidence showing that they have achieved the requisite standards laid before them, as well as having to demonstrate that they have mastered a range of clinical skills within contemporary and demanding health and social care settings. These achievements are quality assured externally by Pearson/Edexcel, an external international education and training body, as well as being subject to external scrutiny of the Enrolled Nurse Programme by Mrs Karen Wild, UK external advisor to the programme. Mrs Wild commented how impressed she was with the strength of support provided by the clinical nursing team who had direct involvement with the practice assessments. She said there was a real sense of high profile nursing staff truly engaging with the pupils in a positive and supportive way. The programme, she added, is challenging, robust and innovative and, above all, it remains fit for purpose.

Seventeen staff members received a conjoined award, comprising Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) Level 3 in Health and Social Care, as well their Enrolled Nurse Hospital Badges. Following the GSLP/Liberal's re-introduction of training for Enrolled Nurses, the GHA have said it has been unwavering in its pledge to this training, offering Nursing Assistants an opportunity to further progress in their careers. Other awards are also providing career progression opportunities; including continuing personal and professional development from a variety of professional perspectives.

Dr Ron Coram, Principal of the GHAs School of Health Studies said how delighted he was to see this number of staff receiving these awards, testament he said, to their hard work and dedication as each member of staff strives to make a difference to the life of each patient they care for.

Professor Ian Peate, Head of the School of Health Studies, noted: The awards presented today not only recognise the efforts staff have put into their studies, it also demonstrates a commitment to provide care of a high quality, that is not only patient centred, but is also safe and effective, offered to service users who come from different backgrounds.

A variety of vocational awards were presented at the ceremony, including Certificates of Achievement. Mrs Janet Lane, Senior Nurse Tutor commented: These awards mark both the academic and practice progression of staff employed within various areas. This event highlights, as have others in the past, the accomplishments of our Nursing Assistants, Enrolled Nurses and Practice Assessors.

The Minister for Health, Care and Justice, the Honourable Neil F. Costa MP added: The achievements being celebrated are significant and are testament to the GHAs commitment to providing vocational studies. Today, we have focused on the students who are receiving their awards, reflecting on the determination and dedication that they have put into their studies. Family, friends and staff present today, will feel truly proud to see our students receive these deserved awards. They have been required to study at the same time as they have been working, in order to achieve such magnificent outcomes. This has required admirable sacrifices and stamina. I am very proud of all of our students, and I am indeed delighted with those who are now fully prepared and ready to excel in the work that they do. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the award recipients my sincere congratulations and best wishes.Anthony Atamanuik. Photo: Comedy Central

Since the debut of his Comedy Central series The President Show and several specials that followed, Anthony Atamanuik has distinguished himself in a sea of Trump impersonators by being the most accurate. He credits that, in part, to his empathy for the man. At the same time, Atamanuik was one of the first comedians to call out Trumps white-supremacist leanings. Growing up in the suburbs of Boston (Chelsea, to be exact), he saw how teens got swept up in the skinhead movement. Trumps campaign hit all the same beats. How can one be empathetic of a such a person? Empathy is not an endorsement. It is an understanding of a person, he told me over the phone. Ataminiuks take on Trump is that he truly doesnt understand what it is to love and be loved, so he lets his most base thoughts rule him. Where it makes us angry, he says, is that he is in the position where how he is affects our lives. I think thats the thing that makes us angry  the lack of control we feel.

Atamanuiks new special, A President Show Documentary: The Fall of Donald Trump, forecasts what will happen to the key players in this administration when they lose control. Regulars from The President Show are joined by such faces Law & Order: SVUs Stephanie March (Ivanka) and Kathy Griffin (Kellyanne Conway) looking back on Trump after hes completely disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Why did you decide to do a special about the end of Trump?

I had this idea in my back pocket in 2016, since before the election. I had pitched it to Comedy Central before I ever had the show with them. I was doing @midnight at the time. I thought it would be an interesting mini-series before the election. But there wasnt enough time for the sort of epic-ness that I wanted. After the first season, and the next season that was specials, I realized that something we had done really well was predict events. We had predicted so many things. From Im the president, can you believe it? to toilet paper on his shoe to separating kids from families. Ad infinitum, I could name them. And I thought, Wouldnt it be great to just steer into that and really make something that predicts the future? I wanted to, in a sort of velvet-glove/iron-fist way, paint the abject period that I think were going to go through but also show, as George Harrison said so well, all things must pass. This era that were in will eventually transmute into something else, and I wanted to show that.

Here's more proof that the greatest minds think alike. pic.twitter.com/BaWgVAT83N  The President Show (@PresidentShow) August 24, 2017

I think one reason youre so good at predicting things is that youve never been surprised by the ugliness of this country, especially the racism.

Yes. And hatred of women, lets not forget that.

I have a hard time forgetting that.

No, of course.

Is it a Chelsea thing, being able to see that ugliness?

Ha! Yeah, I mean Chelsea, Massachusetts, in terms of a city, is so diverse  especially now  and also impoverished. I grew up there from age 6 on. Prior to that, I was in this pastoral, sort of rural town of Topsfield, Massachusetts. I really got to see the heights of white privilege, then see where the world really is. It definitely informed me about the disparities in the world, the ugliness of the world, and the unfairness of the world. Massachusetts is so racist they really break it down by white people, too. If youre a Jewish kid from Chelsea, youre trash 20 miles north. And I think that informed a lot for me. And I think it made me not sympathize, but empathize at least with the notion of Trump being from Queens. His root desire, which he never really connected with, is always feeling on the outside. Even as a builder, he was on the outside of the Wasp-y builders of Manhattan. As a candidate, he was on the outside of all the people running for office. I dont say that in a reinforcing way, I just say that as an observation. Maybe in that sense, I was able to connect with him in a way.

Youve said before that your Trump impression is more examination than exaggeration, and theres some empathy in there. But what are you feeling when you are writing or doing the character?

When Im doing the character, I would say that I am just doing. Im not really thinking anything. But in observing him and learning how to do him, Ill stand by it till the day I die: You have to have empathy for him. Hes a person. He might be the worst person in the world to a lot of people, but hes a person. And if you want to understand how he works and what he does, empathetically you must get there. Im not religious, but there but for the grace of God go I. I could be him, you could be him, any of us could be him.

Your version of Trump enjoys being a pot-stirrer. He gets off on the provocation, whereas other people might play him more oblivious of the effect hes having.

Yeah. Absolutely.

A lot of comedians like to think of themselves as agents provocateurs. Does that calling-out of pot-stirring affect how you do comedy?

I think what I try to do is play the private him. Ive read a lot of things about how he enjoys watching his employees, or his sons, argue with each other. Hell set the ball rolling and watch it play out. Thats such a classic abusers behavior. I like to try to play [him as] the pot-stirrer, and I dont think hes dumb. Like a classic abuser, he lashes out or upsets people or sets people against each other, and then he walks away from it.

How has the performance or character changed over the past two years?

I think Ive really settled into it more. Im able to sit in his voice more and his behaviors more. I think Ive integrated the way I interpret him as a character into the way I portray him. The road has diverged a little bit. My portrayal of Trump can be frighteningly accurate, if I want to be. But I like the way that hes sort of jumped into a little bit of a Homer Simpson. I like that my version of him has evolved into sometimes strangely observant, other times completely ignorant. I think that happens after you play a character for a long time. He is a painting that now I have made. In the beginning, I was very concerned in making sure that it feels accurate, that it feels on-point. And then we did that truck monologue, which was the very first thing we did on remote shoot, and that changed everything for me.

I was literally  at this @PresidentShow clip last night. @TonyAtamanuik just might be a comedic genius: https://t.co/SjuNN0Kkmj pic.twitter.com/VqZKnJLm4A  Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) April 28, 2017

How did it change everything for you?

Because, in that moment, when that truck monologue happened, I was actually sitting and taking a break. They were filming me, but I was just sitting there as myself. When the honk happened, I was doing that for the crew. I never thought that would be on air. I realized in that moment what I loved so much about my live performances I did with James [Adomian], and my Trump Dump shows, and what Ive always loved at UCB. Ill joke about my contempt for the audience, but I like intimacy of doing it just for a few people. And I like when it feels like a private joke between us. And when I realized that I could do that on a larger scale and that I could speak my interpretation of what I think is going on inside of him as a character monologue, I discovered that it could translate in TV. And I hadnt known that it could.

This special is very much an ensemble piece. Everybody is bringing a lot. How do you make sure that almost a dozen performers doing impressions of famous people is tonally consistent?

We definitely have conversations. Stephanie March was new to the show but is such a professional and so talented. She immediately got in with us. I know Kathy [Griffin] now, I know Mario [Cantone], Ive known John Gemberling forever. Ive known Pete [Grosz] for years. Austin Pendleton is just a great actor. You know hes going to do his thing, and he did it incredibly. I like to think that we bring some great New York theater vibes to this show. As a troupe, you all convey with each other what the tonality is. And of course Im present throughout everything. Ryan McFaul is an amazing director. So you just have the best of the best making it.

There are two ways to work. Well, there are many ways to work. But theres the waiter way, where I get all these people who do wardrobe and cinematography and acting, and I go, Im the customer, youre the waiter, and I want you to bring me what I order. Or I could say, Youre the craftsperson, and this is kind of what I want, but I want you to give me your version of the bookshelf. I would prefer to work in the second way. I prefer to hire people, whether its actors or the people who work around me in that supporting system that makes the show, and say, Heres the vision. We share the vision, weve all worked together for a while. I have a high retention of the people I work with because I respect them, and they respect me. And I want them to show me their wares, and that becomes part of the work. Thats a great way to work  you make better work that way.

Have you been paying attention to the global rise of these authoritarian populist characters? Are there other Trumps popping up on the horizon youre taking notice of?

I know in Brazil theres a new Trump coming along any moment, right? The election is in a couple of weeks or a month away?

Its pretty imminent.

And theres Duterte, Putin. You have Xi in China, you got all the old standards. Also, in Europe I know theres been a lot of challenge in Germany from the far right there. And Italy has recently gone into the land of the junta. Theyre not just popping up, theyve been there for a long time. And the United States has been working with them for a long time.

This is a rare moment for me to say this, but the Saudi Arabia thing with Trump, I find to be quite unfair. Because, yes, of course he has business partnerships with the Saudis and of course hes corrupt. But did we forget that George Bush held the hand of the Saudi leader months after 9/11? And 9/11 was a Saudi operation against the United States? Its insane to me that were laying this at Trumps doorstep when this has been a relationship that has extended for decades. Part of the reason that Wahhabi schools even existed in Saudi Arabia  and allowed for the rise of fundamentalist thinking that ended up poisoning the well of Islam, that has hurt billions of people who are freethinking peaceful Muslims around the world  is because of the United States involvement in the oil trade in Saudi Arabia. Its a prime example of how were pouring all our ills into Donald Trump, when both parties have been looking the other way in Saudi Arabia for decades. Give me a break!

Its almost like his branding as being completely separate from the deep state was too effective, and now nobody is willing to look at the machinery behind him.

Absolutely. And I dont think that, conspiratorially, thats by design. But I think everybody loves that its happening. I think that the worst thing that could happen is Trump gets out of office and then you suddenly have both of the parties that led us to Trump going, See, were back! Its all sane again. And we can continue to slowly choke out the poor and have legislation that doesnt really help women or people of color in this country. We can ignore the crisis and wounds of slavery that led us to this place that we are in now. And you know what? Lets elect Scott Walker president, because at least hes a thinking Republican. Thats what Im afraid of. Im afraid we are not going to take this moment to see that Trump is the result of this, he is not the cause.

Im from Indiana, so in some ways I fear a Trump impeachment almost as much as a Trump presidency.

Oh my God, absolutely. Mike Pence is a dark soul. That is a dark human being right there.

Why do you think that Pence gets so much of a pass in a lot of humor? People are always talking about how hes bland or chill without looking at his actions before coming to a national stage.

I see that even in our show. We do a lot of hes mayonnaise on bread. But part of it is that were portraying him in the show as the sycophant orbiting Trump. Thats how we always see Pence  hes this sycophant whos always sucking up to Trump and sort of standing behind him and chuckling whenever hes saying something crazy.

What do you think is going to happen in the midterms?

If people show up the way that theyve been tweeting, and if people show up the way theyve been protesting, then I think youll have a substantial turn. Twenty-three seat majority, twenty-four seat majority in the House. And I think in the Senate, youll probably lose some seats and the Republicans will have a 53/54 seat majority. If they dont show up, then I think you could see a slight move where there is a split House and the Republicans barely retain it. And if that happens, then I think every person who didnt vote should be arrested if they complain about anything that happens after that day. They should be arrested and silenced. Im joking, but I just think that if you dont vote, then youre trash right now.

Now I want to acknowledge that within all of that, they purge people of color from the voter polls. That you have the race in Georgia where one of the candidates is actually purposefully pulling 53,000 black voters off of the rolls. That you also have the possibility of voting hacking, because we keep moving to a voting system thats predicated on electronic voting machines that run on Windows 95. So Im well aware of all those things that could lead us to an outcome that we dont deserve. But overwhelming force would make sure that it wasnt a possibility. Hacking can only occur on the margins of slim votes. So I think that everyone has no excuse. And we should make voting a national holiday. But, quite frankly, go and lose your goddamn job and go vote! Because youll get another one after. Just go vote. Thats all I have to say.

Atamanuiks A President Show Documentary: The Fall of Donald Trump airs on Comedy Central tonight at 11 p.m.Excerpt from Dirty Plotte. Photo: Julie Doucet / Drawn + Quarterly.

This article contains explicit illustrations.

Julie Doucet was surprised by the number of penises she received. On the final page of issue six of her revolutionary comics series Dirty Plotte, published in November 1992, she made the following request of her growing band of readers: Send me a photo of your dick and the name of your tattoo and tell me about your dreams (at night), tell me about your first time, send me a picture of yourself, or a drawing, send me stuff and things and shit you know. Enjoy this silly issue.

Sitting in her tidy home in a quiet nook of central Montreal, I ask Doucet how many dicks came in the mail. Ugh, she replies. Maybe 15. And how many had she expected? I wasnt sure. Maybe a couple, but not that many. She laughs politely. Everything about the bespectacled Doucet is polite  which is a shock, given how rude and louche her semi-autobiographical depiction in Dirty Plotte always was. So why did she even ask for all those phalluses? I just wanted to get something in the mail, she says. Something different, rather than just, I love your work or whatever.

If Doucet finds declarations of love for her work dull, then she must be terribly bored by the tastemakers in high-end comics fandom. In fact, theres a good deal of evidence that she is. Feeling tired of the industry and the medium, she walked away from comics years ago and has yet to return. Nevertheless, over the past 30 years, the French-Canadian cartoonist has become one of the most beloved critical darlings to ever put pen to paper.

Her work  deliberately sloppy, relentlessly explicit, extremely funny, brutally observant  is some of the most vital to ever come out of the alternative comics scene of the 1980s and 90s. Though one is loath to pigeonhole her, her boldly crass and routinely gory feminist vignettes in many ways redefined what could be expected from a female comics creator. And yet, despite all that, shes never garnered the kind of mainstream following enjoyed by male peers like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, or Charles Burns. Although Doucet is too modest to complain all that loudly, her lack of widespread fame is something of an artistic crime.

Excerpt from Dirty Plotte. Photo: Julie Doucet / Drawn + Quarterly.

The winds may be shifting. This week sees the release of Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet from venerable indie publisher Drawn + Quarterly. It contains all of the Dirty Plotte series (plotte, by the way, is Quebecois slang for vagina), originally published in various forms between 1988 and 1998, including a beloved serialized chronicle later collected as My New York Diary; as well as unpublished material, analyses of her work, and appreciative essays from literary luminaries like Adrian Tomine and Jami Attenberg. The compilation might be what it takes to make Doucet finally achieve the notoriety she deserves. However, whether that notoriety would be enough to bring her back to the medium she mastered remains an open question.

Another open question is just how much of the real Julie Doucet can be found in the compiled comics. They do generally star a character named Julie Doucet, whose travels overlap with those of her real-world counterpart, but the contrast between the two is stark. The Julie that readers fell in love with is a dysfunctional, foul-mouthed, messy, violent misanthrope whos uninterested in cleaning her living spaces and excited about castrating men. One assumes this paper Julie comes from a rough and slipshod background and is perhaps working through some childhood trauma. The living Julie, however, says her young life was generally pleasant. Born in Montreal in 1965, she was raised in a nearby suburb by what she calls an artistic family, attending Catholic school and reading classic comics from France and Belgium like Asterix and Tintin (there was no French-Canadian comics scene to speak of at the time). She never endured parental pressure to give up her dreams of drawing: My mother wanted me to become a graphic designer so I would at least have a job, Doucet recalls. But that was it.

From an early age, she fantasized about subverting gender and its conventions. When I ask her what she used to doodle as a kid, she replies, Horses. Indians. I wanted to be an Indian, but an Indian guy, not a woman, because the women were just cooking and I was not interested in that. I just wanted to horse-ride and go swimming and explore the forests. Around age 17, she started making her own comics, which shes reluctant to revisit. Very hippie-style, she says of them, laughing. Rainbows. Watercolors. What can I say? It was pretty bad. Only once she got to the University of Quebec, studying fine art, did she contemplate showing her work to the world. Shed been drawing comics for no one in particular, but a group of school compatriots liked her style and asked her to join an anthology they were a part of. In 1986, with a circulation of God knows how few people, Doucet had her first published work.

Excerpt from Tchiize! bis. Photo: Julie Doucet / Drawn + Quarterly.

Its remarkable how confrontational even that first, brief comic is. It features a woman wordlessly dancing a striptease. First shes in a trench coat, then a shirt and tie, then a bra and panties, then her birthday suit. But it keeps going: she saws off her right breast, then her left one, then reaches down to her crotch with a serrated knife and cuts upward, gutting herself. A cat and dog run to eat her viscera in the penultimate panel; the last one just features words, declaring, It was another episode of The Artist, our guest this week: Dulie Joucet, showing her guts. So  thats all folks, see you next week, same time, same channel! Throughout, the panel borders warp and wave, the perspective shifts vertiginously, and the smile of Dulie grows increasingly deranged. It may seem curious that the native French speaker would be making comics in English, but Doucet says that was part of her loose, chaotic approach: When its not your first language it seems you have so much freedom because you know that its not going to be perfect. Doucet had emerged more or less fully formed. A path had been lain.

She quickly chafed at the frustration of sharing that path with others. The anthology was just coming out once in a half a year, she says. It was really frustrating, always waiting for people, for something to happen. She put comics into local zines and her school paper, but it wasnt enough for her. She tried to create a series with a friend, but it was not to be. We had a fight, Doucet says. So I decided just to do it myself. By chance, she came across a periodical called Factsheet Five, which advertised underground comics. It was a cornucopia for the curious young Doucet. She resolved to make her own comic and sell it there. Factsheet Five had these tiny little ads and it was a world in itself, she says. I guess it felt like I was a part of something then. She dropped out of school, went on welfare, and got to work.

The result was the first run of Dirty Plotte, which took the form of 14 short, mimeographed, stapled-together collections of absurd and obscene strips, released roughly once a month, beginning in 1988. Right off the bat, she created a unique, fully formed world to explore, says comics creator John Porcellino, who was one of her earliest readers. Shes just a natural-born cartoonist. Those early works covered a wide range of topics: you were just as likely to see surreal fantasies about women murdering men as you were to see a cute short story about a couple selling a dirty mattress as a work of art. These mini-comics also featured what is perhaps her most famous work, a strip called Heavy Flow, in which Doucet imagines a particularly copious bout of menstruation causing her comics counterpart to become a rampaging giantess.

The great writer/artist Aline Kominsky-Crumb came across her work and had her contribute to a pair of anthologies, further raising her profile. Cartoonist Chris Oliveros came across a Dirty Plotte comic at a Montreal bookstore in 1989 and was astounded. Soon afterward, he wrote a letter to Doucet and the two met. He was in the early stages of launching a publishing house called Drawn + Quarterly, and Doucets work made him rethink his whole approach to it. My original plan with Drawn + Quarterly was to publish just one comics anthology magazine, with no intention of expanding with other books or solo comics pamphlet series, Oliveros says. She mentioned that she was looking for a publisher for Dirty Plotte. I think I may have asked her either on the spot or within a day or two if I could publish it, and thankfully she agreed. I didnt have a business plan or budget forecast to determine if it was wise to risk branching out  I just loved her comics, and publishing her solo comic book series seemed to make perfect sense. Within a few months, Doucet was putting out a new, professionally published reboot of Dirty Plotte under the aegis of this new company.

That second series forms the bulk of the new omnibus collection, and it feels as vital and boundary-pushing now as it did then. There were gritty flights of fancy: anthropomorphic cats in toxic relationships, a snake giving a man a blowjob, and so on. But the best stuff was about the quasi-fictional Doucet herself. To pick an example more or less at random: in issue three, Doucet published a strip called Oh La La What a Strange Dream! In it, she conjures up a dream in which Major Doucet, an astronaut, is rocketed into space for three years on her own. Just before she takes off, her mother shows up at the doorway of the spaceship and gives her some cookies, adding, These are for masturbation purposes, my child!

Excerpt from Dirty Plotte. Photo: Julie Doucet / Drawn + Quarterly.

On the final page, as she floats in zero-gravity, Major Doucet rubs a cookie on her plotte, yelling, Yeah thats fiiiine! Yaahaaaa! while her crotch emits the sound effect Clit! Clit! Clit! In the final panel, the no-longer-dreaming Julie sits up in bed, looks at the reader, shrugs, and says, Heh. That kind of evocative honesty about weird sex rivaled the work of R. Crumb, and the strip is visually gripping, as well, screwing with depth perception, cramming detail into every panel, crafting distinctive figure-work with oversize heads and squiggly bodies, and a certain loopy je ne sais quoi that made the whole thing hilarious.

As Dirty Plotte went on, Doucet retained her powerful rawness and idiosyncratic imagery, but her storytelling matured. Perhaps the finest work in the new book is the collection of strips from the late 1990s that added up to My New York Diary. A chronicle of a failed relationship that is by turns hilarious, disgusting, and tragic, its often held up as her masterwork. In it, Doucet recounts a period, earlier in the decade, when she left Montreal for NYCs Washington Heights in order to live with a man she barely knew. Hes a barely employed factotum, shes a rising comics star, and initially, they are joyous in their hedonism; drinking, doing whippets, and making love, wasting time like rent will never be due and deadlines will never come.

Of course, everything falls apart as the mans passion for her outweighs hers for him and she realizes she needs to put down the drugs and pick up her pen. It ends with Doucet addressing the reader, recounting how shes leaving the city to go to Seattle and try to start her life again. And I dont have any regrets, she says as she puts on a jacket and picks up her cat to walk out the door. Then we hear her thoughts: No, no regrets at all  As she departs the building, a marching band walks by, bellowing out notes as she ambles toward a new world. The story is never saccharine or lugubrious, and its straightforward storytelling belies a command of the comics form. As Attenberg puts it in her essay about the story within the new collection, There was chaos in her world, but the detail and the precision of Doucets work showed it was possible to depict the messiness of life with order and control.

Excerpt from the My New York Diary series in Dirty Plotte. Photo: Julie Doucet / Drawn + Quarterly.

Even though stories like that had helped her develop a cult following by the dawn of the new millennium, Doucet was unwilling to rest on her laurels. She started to experiment with other approaches, putting out a 2000 longform comics mystery story, a 2001 collection of engravings and screenprints, and a strange 2006 prose autobiography, published in French and never translated, made entirely of cut-out words from other sources. But that year also brought a shock to her fans: she announced that she was quitting comics.

I felt trapped, she tells me. I felt Id tried every form of comic storytelling  which is not true, of course, but to me it was over. There was another factor, too; one thats a sad commentary on the world of high-end North American sequential art: I was quite sick of the crowd, the all-mens crowd. And men tend to be your comic people. Men tend to be very obsessive about comics and not be interested in anything else but comics. That drove me crazy. I used to be so comfortable hanging out mostly with men, but I just couldnt relate anymore. That was that. Since then, shes lived off the money she made over the course of her career, done illustration work, made a short film with Michel Gondry, sold pages of her original art, and put out a strange book of non-sequitur collages called Carpet Sweeper Tales in 2016. Indeed, she stopped drawing altogether, even in her private time.

That said, she has a little secret: she recently started drawing again. After we finish our conversation, she shows me a little book of sketches shes been working on, most of them faces and bodies. They have the distinctive Doucet touches, but theyre more naturalistic, somehow; more based in anatomy. Whats more, she drew similar collections of people for the jackets of the two volumes inside the new boxed set. Could it be that shell make a triumphant return? She talks about coming back to comics, says her friend and fellow artist Diane Obomsawin. She says she likes to draw, and recently, shes into a lot of drawing. But I dont know. Maybe shell find the right angle to do a new comic.

In the meantime, Doucet is happy to simply revel in what she made all those years ago. While some artists hate revisiting their old work, she delights in it. To me, it is my favorite, she says of her first Dirty Plotte mini-comics. It is freer. It has this vibrant energy in it. Its just over the top. Its really funny. When I reread them the first time, I was just laughing. Perhaps now that the public can join her in revisiting the bulk of her work in one volume, theyll embrace her and give her a more prominent place in the canon.

But if that happens, just make sure you dont deceive yourself into thinking you know Julie Doucet. You dont. When I ask her if her comics were autobiographical, she shakes her head vehemently. No, she says. No, no. I was just using my own character to tell stories. Of course, its inspired by my own life and my own questions about life and being a woman and all that. But to say that it is autobiographical? No. Even the dreams, can you call that autobiographical? Not really. She smiles. Its complete fiction.The Shape of  not lying in two years. Photo: Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images

Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro (who probably hasnt had time to read Leslie Joness hilarious and scathing critique of his fish-fucking movie) has lined up his next project with Netflix. Del Toro will write, produce, and direct a stop-motion musical version of Pinocchio, to be set in Italy during the 1930s. No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio, del Toro said in Netflixs announcement. In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father who gets lost in a world he cannot comprehend. He embarks on an extraordinary journey that leaves him with a deep understanding of his father and the real world. Ive wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember.

Production on del Toros Pinocchio is expected to begin this fall. Hell produce alongside the Jim Henson Company and ShadowMachine (BoJack Horseman). Patrick McHale will co-write the script, with Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox) co-directing. The puppets will be built by Mackinnon and Saunders (Corpse Bride). The project will be an expansion of del Toros many Netflix collaborations: the director has worked with Netflix on DreamWorks Trollhunters, and is creating a horror anthology of personally curated stories, that are both equally sophisticated and horrific. But is del Toro tempting fate following up his Oscar-winning movie with a Pinocchio remake, which did not really work out well for Roberto Benigni postLife Is Beautiful? Mayhaps!

Breaking Guillermo del Toro news: The Academy Award-winning filmmaker will write, produce, and direct a stop motion musical version of Pinocchio for Netflix. Del Toro explained, Ive wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember. Jiminy Cricket! pic.twitter.com/25cVRITSrT  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) October 22, 2018rock music! Photo: Josh Brasted/FilmMagic

Cloud Nothings began as a slapdash lo-fi pop project for Dylan Baldi in his parents Westlake, Ohio, basement, and the band churns out some of the most frenetic, head-smashing music in indie rock right now. Released last week, Cloud Nothings latest album, Last Burning Building, sounds like theyre throttling away from 2017s more measured Life Without Sound, but Baldi  ever wary of overthinking music tropes like career narratives or thematic content  doesnt tend to look at his albums as reactions to what came before. Nothing is on purpose. Well do a bunch of shit really fast and then later have time to reflect on it and be like Oh, maybe thats what this is about.

The first-thought-best-thought approach has been a guiding principle for one of the most flat-out thrilling indie rock institutions of the decade. So it may seem counterintuitive to ask an artist who raged against nostalgia and sentiment on his breakthrough album to look back on defining songs at each point in his career, but we did it anyway. Heres Baldi on six crucial Cloud Nothings tracks.

Hey Cool Kid (Turning On, 2010)

A truncated version of Baldis origin story goes like this: as a freshman saxophone major at Case Western Reserve University, he spent weekends writing songs on GarageBand in his parents basement. These were then uploaded to multiple Myspace accounts for fake bands hed daydreamed up in school, one of which would be actualized into Cloud Nothings. He was mostly looking for a way out of the malaise of whatever a normal life might bring. I was taking it a little more seriously than I should have. Even the sound quality of these songs, they sound horrible, but they were cool. I was just making these tin can recordings, so I guess I was a kind of delusional 18-year-old at the time.

Hey Cool Kid, the first of his Cloud Nothings singles, would become something of a firestarter for Baldi, generating interest on MP3 blogs and eventually, getting booked on a New York show. This led to more touring opportunities for the young songwriter and an eventual compilation of early recordings, Turning On  first released by Bridgetown Records, later reissued when the band signed to Carpark Records. I do feel like it is kind of an artifact of the era, Baldi says of its scrappy lo-fi sheen, remarking that he isnt sure how this trajectory could happen today. The same blistering snark is of a piece with the Cloud Nothings who would eventually  cover Coldplays Clocks. Baldi says the track, which still rates as one of the bands most streamed songs despite clearly existing in a different musical era, came from being an outcast for much of his life. I think its just  I never really felt like I fit in as a kid or at any point, it was always just sort of on the fringe of various groups of people who identified really hard as one thing.

Heartbeat (Cloud Nothings, 2011)

For Cloud Nothings debut album, Baldi was pushed outside of his comfort zone. I remember being kind of freaked out, cause I had to drive all the way to Baltimore from Cleveland and at that point I still really hadnt gone to too many places outside of Ohio. And I was staying on a couch of some dude I didnt know at all, he says. In Baltimore, he was paired with producer Chester Gwazda, whod previously worked with Dan Deacon. He helped Baldi sand away the rough edges of his music, keeping the sugary roots intact and bringing his vocals more clearly to the front. Baldi now likens the self-titled debut to going down a slide, and doesnt seem interested in its circular brevity. I dont think a whole lot about this record. I dont know the last time I listened to it, I think cause my voice freaks me out on this one.

On a record almost entirely composed of bright, sunny hooks, he tends to latch onto Heartbeat, a dark quickie that never repeats itself. This one was still really fast and fun but there was sort of a darker side to it that I didnt realize until I heard it back. I dont remember if I thought I want to make more stuff like that, but I think maybe in the back of my mind that was brewing.

No Future/No Past (Attack on Memory, 2012)

A line in the sand if there ever was one, the lead single for Attack on Memory made clear this was a new kind of band. Baldi tends to think of this as a pivot point only in the sense that it was the first record people liked, but the presence of Cloud Nothings live lineup (Jayson Gerycz, TJ Duke, and Joe Boyer, initially) for the first time in studio made a palpable difference. This was a ferocious unit, capable of swallowing a song whole into extended noise midsections, while Baldi nearly shredded his vocal cords and kept piling up the hooks. He was diving deep into 80s punk, overtly trying to mimic Wipers Youth of America in the case of Wasted Days, but ended up with something else entirely.

No Future/No Past hangs on those hopeless, repeated mantras that would come to define Cloud Nothings heaviest entries, and Baldis most guttural vocal work widely available at that point. He still remembers where he was when the song came out, several weeks before their fortunes would really change with Attack on Memorys release  a sparsely attended show in Baton Rouge, insanely sick in flannel sweatpants and a giant hoodie. The online/real-world contrast stuck with him: I remember that day in particular, because it was weird reading people online being like Yeah this songs awesome, and to be playing a show for two people while Im throwing up.

Im Not Part of Me (Here and Nowhere Else, 2014)

If Attack on Memory was an introduction to what this rhythm section was capable of, Here and Nowhere Else uncorked them with fury. Producer John Congleton summoned Geryczs thwacks to hit louder, faster, and higher in the mix, and the whole band  reduced to a three-piece at this point  seemed to level up out of necessity. It was the last time Baldi consciously tried to emulate another artist, the jerky riff-work of Scottish punk band Life Without Buildings. (He realized during our talk that their band name was sort of a portmanteau of the last two Cloud Nothings albums.)

Baldi has a complicated relationship with their hook-crazy calling card Im Not Part of Me, to the point where he wasnt even sure about releasing it as a single. I was like This one sucks, you cant put this one out first. I hated it. Then everyone else was like, No you should, I think people will like this one. Turns out, everyone else was right. Its not uncommon for a punk-adjacent artist to feel burned out with their most popular song, but Baldi would eventually find its structural perfections satisfying in a math way like architecture or something  interchangeable pieces you can align in their right place and repeat. But despite the songs jagged edges and knotty lamentations on grounding yourself after heartbreak, Baldi seems more interested in verse-chorus-verse-noise structure these days.

Modern Act (Life Without Sound, 2017)

Cloud Nothings took their time leading up to Life Without Sound, largely a product of Baldi living in Paris and Massachusetts for long stretches. What made the other records so cohesive is we were just together all the time. There was barely any time where we werent thinking about these songs or talking about music, he says. This one, that slowed down so rapidly that I almost forgot what the band sounded like. Working with veteran producer John Goodmanson (Death Cab for Cutie, Sleater-Kinney) proved to add a new luster, although the bands ferocity still bubbled underneath.

Baldi also took his time on lyrics, which is to say, more than scribbling them down in the studio as had been the method on past releases. Since so much time had spanned from writing and recording to the albums release, these could easily get misconstrued. Take the clean, sharp Modern Act, whose cynicism toward much of the outside world could seem a little topical when the album was released in January of 2017. Baldi assures the impending carnage wasnt anywhere near his mind when writing it in 2015; any Cloud Nothings fan would know the hopelessness is evergreen. It wasnt very of the moment, even though the lyrics could be interpreted that way because my general outlook is Well, the worlds going to shit, no matter whats going on.

Dissolution (Last Building Burning, 2018)

Three of the four full-band Cloud Nothings records have followed the same formula: seven breakneck tracks and one sprawling beast that threatens to consume the album whole. Dissolution is the latest entry into the latter category, following Wasted Days and Pattern Walks, and stands as Cloud Nothings longest track to date. Its a natural progression, but its midsection noodles off into drone and Geryczs jazz inclinations to be something more complex than its predecessors, before thundering back in the final minute. The bulk of Dissolution would not sound out of place from Gerycz and Baldis avant-garde digressions with a side project called Skunk Wook Quartet, which performed a wild one-off gig this summer in Cleveland.

Baldi was in a heavy mind-set during the Last Building Burning sessions, listening to a bunch of doom metal, and pairing with a producer in Randall Dunn (Wolves in the Throne Room, Sunn O)))) who knew his way around this kind of onslaught. An outside-the-box pairing, but of a piece with Baldis recurring musical interests. The stuff that Im really into and have been my whole life is  hard to listen to sometimes, stuff thats pretty chaotic. That feels like what the inside of my head is like the whole time, so I listen to stuff that makes me feel like Im normal.Jill Soloway and Hannah Gadsby Photo: Getty Images

Hannah Gadsby, the boundary-breaking stand-up comic behind Nanette, and Jill Soloway, the creator of Transparent and writer and director of I Love Dick, are now dating, according to Page Six.

Per the report, the couple has been together since this summer and have been getting increasingly serious. The source told Page Six that Soloway recently went to Australia to meet Gadsbys family. They have been traveling together on a press tour for Soloways new memoir, She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy (which has been stirring up a fair shareof controversy on the internet). After telling Page Six about the couple, the source added that they dont want people to know they are a couple, saying they are very private.

When you're caught between wanting to respect the privacy of people you deeply stan and also OH MY GOD I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU! THIS IS BEAUTIFUL! YOU DESERVE LOVE AND HAPPINESS FOREVER! WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO REGISTER? DO YOU LIKE PARACHUTE SHEETS?! https://t.co/FhorCAItwD  me (@NotMeganEdge) October 22, 2018

Soloway was married to music supervisor Bruce Gilbert until announcing their separation in 2015 and coming out as nonbinary and gender-nonconforming; Soloway then went on to date poet Eileen Myles, after meeting Myles on the set of Transparent.

On Tuesday, at a TimesTalk at the New School, Soloway described reaching out to Gadsby in a search for queer, intersectional, interesting folks to speak to about book writing for their Amazon imprint, Topple Books. After then watching Gadsbys Netflix stand-up special, Nanette, Soloway described being so blown away.

We had breakfast the next morning  and became friends after that, Soloway said. We realized yes, we both have a lot of things in common that we like to talk about that generally annoy other people.

I think it overwhelms people, Gadsby interjected. It was nice to meet someone who in the course of small talk, you are talking about consent.

Soloway added, Rage, patriarchy, consent before the coffee comes.Photo: Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for BFI

Nicole Kidman only had a three-week break between filming the family drama Boy Erased, where she plays the mother of a son in gay conversion therapy, and the crime thriller Destroyer, where shes an LAPD detective battling a gang. During a Focus Features reception for Boy Erased last Friday, Kidman told the crowd that she tried to drop out of Karyn Kusamas new film because both were so emotionally intense. I did Boy Erased first. And then I tried to pull out of Destroyer. I did! I went, Im tired, Im absolutely terrified to go into that role, get me out of it, and I was told that I couldnt get out of it. I do that a lot, she said with a chuckle. Anyone in this room thats about to work with me, know that! Between the prep  I did an enormous amount of prep  there was a three week break [between Boy Erased and Destroyer].

Kidman explained she likes having a career that keeps her busy, because its more similar to the revolving-door-style of working that drama students get. I fight hard to keep [my career like this] because the idea of getting pigeonholed is terrifying to me, she said. But then comes the fear and then comes the idea that you cant do it, and then comes the struggle to go in. And thats what I struggled with, with Destroyer: I didnt want to [do it] because I didnt want to go to that place. Understandable  you try making back-to-back emotionally wrought prestige dramas!Sarah Perry. Photo: Jamie Drew/Courtesy of Sarah Perry

When I meet the gothic British novelist Sarah Perry on a gloomy fall afternoon, she isnt surprised that I dreamed, the previous night, of a woman robed in black, with eyes like black holes, watching me from the corner of my apartment. Id been visited by the mysterious figure that haunts the dark corners of her third novel, Melmoth. Ive heard a lot of that, she says. I can remember when I was planning it, saying to my husband, I just want to really shit people up with this book. And people have been really shit up! And now I feel bad. Lots of people cant sleep. One woman said shed keep the book in the freezer overnight.

Perry is in New York on tour for Melmoth, a feminist reimagining of an 1820 gothic tale about a man who sells his soul to the devil. In Perrys version, Melmoth is a woman, and not a very nice one. Condemned to a life of eternal loneliness, she wanders the world like a black ship adrift in a windless calm, seeking out everything thats most distressing and most wicked, in a world which is surpassingly wicked, and full of distress. Shes there when an Ottoman bureaucrat draws up a document facilitating the Armenian genocide; shes there when a boy in Nazi-occupied Prague gives up his Jewish neighbors because he covets their beautiful radio. Mothers warn their children about her: if youre bad, they say, shell take you away. Like Perrys first two novels, Melmoth succeeds on at least two levels  as a thrilling monster story that will keep you up late into the night and a weighty meditation on the dark side of human nature. In one particularly effusive review, the Guardian called it a masterly piece of postmodern gothic, deserving all the prizes and praise that will be heaped upon it.

Perry occupies an unusual place in the literary world. She is a successful genre novelist who happens to work in a genre that largely went out of fashion with corsets and top hats. With her penchant for murky settings and supernatural plots and her skill at crafting sentences as shimmery and ornate as a Victorian candelabra, she could be channeling the ghosts of Henry James or Mary Shelley. On Twitter she goes by the late Sarah Perry, and she is often photographed with her peculiar pet, a model jackdaw (a raven-like bird) named Hoffman. Despite (or perhaps because of) her gloomy antiquarian impulses, she has found a dedicated contemporary audience. Her second novel, The Essex Serpent, a fantasy about a widow searching for a fabled beast lurking in an English marsh, hit the best-seller list in England and won a British Book Award.

I meet up with Perry at St Pauls Chapel, the oldest church in Manhattan. She wanted to see a tiny bit of Manhattan left from the 18th century that her friend, the British novelist Francis Spufford, told her about, but now that were here, she seems mildly disappointed by the decor. I dont think Ive ever seen crystal chandeliers in a church before, she says. Perry is 38 years old, though she says she often tells people she was born in 1860. She grew up in Essex, in a household without television or any other whisper of the modern world. Her family belonged to a Baptist church that was so strict they didnt celebrate Christmas. (Too pagan.) Everything had to be completely plain, completely bare, she says, still eyeing the chandeliers. Theres a little bit of me that, however beautiful it is, Im like, This is highly inappropriate. This is not apt for worship of our Son of man who had nowhere to lay down his head.

Perry has cast off that baggage in more ways than one. Shes dressed in a leopard-print dress and a black trench coat, with a coppery-gold pixie cut and a lilting, acrobatic voice that veers swiftly from gentle amusement to operatic horror. Her earrings are silver serpents wound around teardrops of Victorian bone  a gift she bought herself to celebrate the publication of The Essex Serpent. Perry left her church in 2007 over its opposition to same-sex marriage, but it wasnt the sort of departure that leaves behind a trail of bitter estrangement. Shes still close with her parents, and she doesnt lament her upbringing. Because there was no television, I have loads of accomplishments. Im an embroiderer. I can do dressmaking. Im a good cook. I play the piano. Im basically Mary Bennet. Her gothic sensibility is just a byproduct of her childhood. Thats what you get if youre brought up surrounded by ideas of sin, strangeness, and this constant feeling that this  she offers a sweeping hand gesture that seems to encompass both the church and the bustling financial district beyond its stained glass windows  this isnt it. Theres a whole bunch of other stuff, including Hell.

We leave the brightly lit chapel in search of shadows. Oh wow, I love a graveyard, she exclaims, as we step out the back door. Down the street, we find ourselves outside Trinity Church, with its looming spire and dark stone. Now thats Gothic, she says, feeling at home. Dont you feel different looking at it? The Gothic churches make you think, Oh, what have I done? And then you start to think, I can hide here. Perry, who wrote her Ph.D. thesis on the Gothic in contemporary literature, said that feeling of simultaneous attraction and repulsion is the essence of the Gothic aesthetic. When you desire, but also want to shut your eyes  thats the gothic, she says. Im completely in love with that feeling.

Thats the feeling of each character who encounters Melmoth  a kind of longing fear, one says, as if what I desired most was also what appalled me most. Sometimes I made out a grinning mouth, a wrist, a hand  then I would reach for it and find myself saying: Melmoth  Melmoth! The book is set mostly in contemporary Prague, and the protagonist is a drab 42-year-old translator named Helen with a wicked secret in her past. Helen doesnt believe in fairy tales, but when a friend disappears, leaving behind a sheaf of documents relaying tales of Melmoths encounters throughout history, she begins to sense that a figure cloaked in black is trailing her through Pragues snowy streets. Before long, Helen dreads and longs for Melmoth, too. Shes incredibly seductive, Perry says. She knows everything youve ever done. If anyone else knew, theyd hate you, but she wont. Shed rather you had done a bunch of bad shit because then, youd really want her, wouldnt you? Youd feel like there was no other choice.

When she began writing the book, in 2016, Perry was in a bleak place. Her health was failing, and she was spending a lot of time on Twitter reading terrible news from around the world  ISIS, the Syrian refugee crisis, the Orlando massacre. I remember thinking that I wanted to give up writing because it seemed so futile to just be making up stories when the world was burning, she says. Shed been toying with the idea of a feminist Melmoth rewrite for years, but in that troubled moment it occurred to her that her monster could bear witness to the worlds atrocities. She gave her a new backstory, as well. Melmoth is condemned because she is with a group of women who witness Christs resurrection; she, alone, lies about it and says it never happened. The reason she lied was because the women at the tomb werent believed, Perry says. So her whole curse is based on a woman who knew that men wouldnt believe her, and was then damned for it.

We stop for lunch at a nearby pub. Over Pinot gris and burgers, Perry wonders aloud what Melmoth would make of the men of #MeToo. I just would like to see Melmoth the witness have an hour with Harvey Weinstein or Brett Kavanaugh, she says. To brutally and savagely show them exactly what theyve done. However frightening Melmoth is, Perry ultimately finds her a comfort. Wouldnt you rather she be watching? That right now, Weinstein cant relax, because he feels something on the back of his neck? I wish that was the case.

In other words, Perry hopes to create a modern legend. If I were to say what my ultimate hope would be, its that before long, people forget that I invented the legend and theyll just say, Melmoth is watching.Adapted excerpt from The Downtown Pop Underground by Kembrew McLeod published by Abrams Press.  2018 Kembrew McLeod Jackie Curtis (left) and Kristian Hoffman (right) at Pat Louds apartment, circa 1974. Photo: Courtesy Kristian Hoffman

Jackie Curtis was one of Andy Warhols Superstars  a somewhat ironic term, to be sure: being an East Village drag performer in the 1960s and 1970s wasnt a career track that led all that often to opulent Hollywood fame and fortune (though track marks were not uncommon.) But a tinsely renown didnt entirely elude Curtis, a playwright, poet, and genderqueer performer, who died in 1985, at 38, of a heroin overdose. Shes immortalized in Lou Reeds Take a Walk on the Wild Side (Jackie is just speeding away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash) and the 2004 documentary, Superstar in a Housedress. And now her story, among many others from that fabled, filthy, fabulous lost downtown before gentrification sent the all the weird and interesting young people across the river and five or six subway stops into Brooklyn, is told again in The Downtown Pop Underground, a meticulously catalogued  there are endnotes!  new book by Kembrew McLeod, a University of Iowa professor, from which this excerpt was adapted.

Jackie Curtis loved the limelight.

A Lower East Side slum kid, born John Curtis Holder Jr., Jackie was raised in a quasi-criminal atmosphere by an aunt, Josephine Preston, and his grandmother, who everybody called Slugger Ann. Born Ann Uglialoro, she owned a bar named Slugger Anns on Second Avenue and 12th Street, and earned her nickname after working as a taxi dancer in a Times Square dance hall (where lonely guys paid female companions for a dance). You were supposed to keep your hands raised and you werent supposed to get fresh, performer Agosto Machado remembers. She was famous because this man kept his hand on her ass, so she slugged him and knocked him down  which is how she became Slugger Ann.

Slugger Anns was a dimly lit working class shots-and-beer joint with a few tables. Jackie really grew up in the bar, said Melba LaRose, the star of Jackie Curtiss play, Glamour, Glory, and Gold. Slugger Ann was a great old babe, loudmouthed. She obviously had been a beauty in her day, a sexy beauty. Bleached hair, and a feisty personality, great fun. She would sometimes have a half dozen Chihuahuas stuffed inside her low-cut dress, propped up by her enormous breasts.

Jackie sometimes tended the bar in jeans and a white T-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in a sleeve, and other times in a shredded dress. It wasnt a gay crowd or a drag queen crowd, but sometimes Jackie was tending bar in drag, LaRose remembers. But if any customers would have said anything about Jackie, Slugger Ann would have punched them out. She was very protective of Jackie.

I never thought of him as a woman, LaRose said. He went back and forth so many times. When I met Jackie, he was a little boy with a shopping bag. He had bangs. He was very cute.

Sometimes hed kind of have a James Dean style, but ragged, playwright Robert Heide said of Curtis, and other times Jackie would dress as Barbara Stanwyck. She would look really good in a red wig or that kind of thing.

It was a defiant stance, which today we might call nonbinary. As Curtis herself put it: Im not a boy, not a girl, not a faggot, not a drag queen, not a transsexual  Im just me, Jackie.

She looked like a man in a dress: a little stubble or a beard, torn stockings, trashed dresses, smeared makeup, and plenty of body odor.

Curtis was constantly broke, and even when she got something nice, it tended to get messed up. They would get rips and things in them, recalled her friend, the performer Jayne County, and she really didnt have the money to buy new ones, so she would just continue to wear them and theyd get more and more holes in them. Finally, they were just kind of rags on her legs. They became works of art. Sometimes she would put them together with safety pins, not because she was trying to be cute, but because she was really trying to keep the dress together. It became a style and a fashion, but she was the first person I ever saw to wear that style.

Curtis loved 1930s dresses, which could then be found in thrift stores or by raiding Slugger Anns and Aunt Josies closets. One time, when a neighbor passed away, Jackie crawled through the window onto the building ledge and broke into the deceased womans apartment, bringing back an entire wardrobe of black Italian dresses, shoes, and accessories.

Jackie was blowing up the idea of gender, LaRose observed. When he was a boy he liked to look really rough: saddle shoes or other big shoes, vest sweaters like a boy jock. Machado recalled, With Jackie, you never knew what she was going to wear or what she was going to do, but she had a force of personality.

Bruce Eyster met Curtis at Maxs Kansas City, the Warhol hangout. Eyster recalled that being with Curtis was akin to running around with Harpo Marx in a slapstick comedy  like one time when they needed to cross a busy street and Jackie hailed a taxi, then crawled through the cabs backseat and came out the other side, then crawled through the back of another car, and then another. We did four cars to get across the street instead of just taking the crosswalk, Eyster said. He was just so hilarious. Jackie would walk into a room and you could feel the electricity. He really did have a movie star quality about him. Kristian Hoffman, whose band the Mumps would later become regulars at Maxs and CBGB, vividly remembered the time when someone asked Curtis to do something camp for them. Camp? Ill give you camp, Curtis shouted. CONCENTRATION CAMP!

One of Curtis close friends was Candy Darling, who also is immortalized in Walk on the Wild Side (Candy came from out on the Island/ in the back room she was everybodys darling). Born James Slattery, Darling grew up in Massapequa Park, Long Island, before moving to New York. Hanging out on the stoops or in the parks, she would often be invited back to peoples apartments in the hope that she could inject a little glamour into their evenings. Candy looked beautiful, Jane Wagner recalled, like she just stepped out of a movie.

When they met, Curtis quickly took Darling under her wing and, one evening, brought the new arrival to a friends apartment. I would like you to meet this boy that just arrived in town, Curtis told him. His name is James, but were going to call him Candy  Candy Darling. And Candy Darling is never going home again.

Maybe Candy actually was transgender, but in the beginning we didnt think of Candy as a woman, or someone who was trying to be a woman, recalls another friend, Tony Zanetta. Candy was a boy who was being a star. He recreated himself in the guise of Lana Turner or Kim Novak. Candys life was performance art about stardom, more than anything. We were attracted to the movies, but we were especially attracted to the stars.

Curtis and Darling first met Warhol on the Greenwich Village streets, asking for an autograph and inviting him to his play Glamour, Glory, and Gold. Walking just ahead of us was a boy about nineteen or twenty with wispy Beatle bangs, Warhol recalled, and next to him was a tall, sensational blonde drag queen in very high heels and a sundress that she had made sure had one strap falling onto her upper arm.  Warhol loved Curtiss show and provided a publicity blurb  For the first time, I wasnt bored  which led to parts for Curtis and Darling in Warhols Flesh.

Curtis, Darling, and another newcomer, Holly Woodlawn, appeared in many Warhol films, on cabaret stages, and in underground theater productions. Woodlawn, born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhaki, was also name-checked by Lou Reed: Holly came from Miami, F-L-A/ hitchhiked her way across the USA/ plucked her eyebrows along the way/ shaved her legs and then he was a she. (In fact, Holly took the bus to New York.) Through Jackie, I would end up at Maxs with Jackie and Candy and Holly, Eyster recalled. They were all very funny in different ways and had their own take on things. Holly was kind of like the Martha Raye comedienne slapstick girl.

Ruby Lynn Reyner also hung out with all three, and would act out scenes from 1940s movies and 1950s televisions shows with them. They knew all the dialogue from old Kim Novak movies, Joan Crawford movies, or I Love Lucy, she said. Wed switch off playing the roles. Jackie and I would always fight over who would be Lucy and who would be Ethel. Oh, and Holly and I had adventures together. We used to wear these old vintage 1930s nightgowns and wander through the East Village, clinging together in the night. One time she came to answer the door and she was just out of the shower and she had a big dick. I couldnt believe it. I always thought of Holly as my girlfriend.

Machado remembered Woodlawn as a very open, childlike, and loving friend. One of the things people noted was her vulnerability, he said. She didnt have that protective armor, but Holly was so much fun and so good-spirited. Woodlawn, Darling, and Curtis were sometimes homeless and crashed where they could, making their destitute surroundings glamorous through sheer force of will. Sometimes they were allowed to stay in a place behind Slugger Anns, a little studio apartment with crumbling concrete steps that led to the door. Aside from a mattress for Curtis, it was filled with books, photos of movie stars tacked to the walls, and notebooks of Curtiss writings.

Glamour, Glory, and Gold was a send-up of Hollywood melodramas. LaRose played the lead role as Nola Noon, an amalgam of movie stars like Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford. The play began with Noon working in a burlesque house. LaRose walked onstage wearing nine feather boas and started throwing glitter. It was everywhere, she said. The set was covered with sparkles and glitter. The character then became a big Hollywood star, and ended with LaRoses character mock-tragically walking into the ocean as the Warsaw Concerto played.

The shows title came from Lady Bird Johnson: once she crossed paths with an extravagantly dressed Jackie Curtis at Lincoln Center. The story goes, she saw Curtis and exclaimed: Oh my. Glamour, glory, and gold.

Jackie wanted to write something that was a comedic takeoff on all those Hollywood stars of the thirties, LaRose said. We were trying to make those movies our own.

I think we all came from very dysfunctional backgrounds, and we just sort of lived through those films, LaRose said. There was, of course, all the glamour and we genuinely loved all thatthe makeup, the clothes, the feathers, the glitter. It was the beginning of camp. We thought we were really living out these parts onstage and in life, so we didnt think of it as campy. It was a style that we created. Everything was larger than life, but still had reality in it, and it still had something in it that we really believed. It wasnt just clowning.

Curtis and her friends knowingly appropriated these products of the culture industry. She also appropriated the clothes for Glamour, Glory, and Gold from the closets of Slugger Ann and Aunt Josie. When the cast burst onstage during opening night, the two stood up and shouted, They stole our fucking clothes!

Glamour, Glory, and Gold served as the stage debut of both Candy Darling and a young actor named Robert De Niro, who played all the male roles in the show. Even before Darling transformed herself from a brunette into a peroxide blonde goddess with blue eye shadow, false eyelashes, and an icy wit, she could play a convincing woman. New York Times theater critic Dan Sullivan was fooled, writing in a review: A skinny actress billed as Candy Darling also made an impression; hers was the first female impersonation of a female impersonator that I have ever seen. Darling even convinced aging film director Busby Berkeley that she was a woman during an open audition for a Broadway show he was involved in. Darling wore a black 1930s dress with leaping gazelles, while Curtis looked decidedly less femme in a ratty raincoat, torn stockings, and glitter-damaged face. Darling and Curtis were cooing and talking to the director, who took one look and said to Darling, If its based on looks alone, youll get it. He had no idea Darling was in drag.

Curtis, who was always writing, quickly followed his theatrical debut with a musical, Lucky Wonderful. She also starred in it. Paul Serrato composed the music. He also composed music for Curtiss biggest underground hit, 1971s Vain Victory, and he later did a cabaret act with Holly Woodlawn.

Lucky Wonderful included a lovely bossa nova number, My Angel, along with the sultry White Shoulders, Black and Blue (the song was later revived in Vain Victory for Candy Darling to sing). The songs were fairly low-key, though the acting was wildly animated. Jackie wrote things with tremendous energy, LaRose said, and each show was only an hour and ten minutes straight through. It was high, high octane energy. The cast started taking amphetamine pills, Dexamyl, and drinking backstage  anything to keep the energy up for the shows. So it was easy to gravitate into drinking and drugs, and I was seeing people getting worse, and I was caught up in it myself, LaRose said. So I just decided to take an escape and leave town.

Jackie Curtiss next play was Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit. She wrote it while touring with John Vaccaros Play-House of the Ridiculous, which appeared at the Pornography and Censorship Conference at the University of Notre Dame (ironically, their show was censored by university officials during the conference). Everybody went there, Vaccaro said. Allen Ginsberg, we all went, and I did a show called The Life of Lady Godiva. We took a train to South Bend, and on the train Jackie wrote Heaven Grand, speeding out of his mind. He got the names of the character from a racing form.

The script was written in a large wallpaper sample book that was covered with Curtiss tiny handwriting, filling the margins. Like many of his scripts, it was littered with references to old movies, television shows, and a random assortment of other pop culture ephemera, including the 1958 TV movie The Secret Life of Adolf Hitler, TV Guide magazine, All About Eve, a menu from Howard Johnsons, Gone with the Wind, The Ten Commandments, The Wizard of Oz, and the surf rock group Dick Dale and His Del-Tones thrown in for good measure.

Jackie was a force of nature, recalled Heaven Grand cast member Penny Arcade. When we met I was speeding out of my mind, and so was Jackie. She was a very interesting combination of a completely self-absorbed narcissistic personality who also had a huge heart and a tremendously curious mind. Many of the lines in the play were borrowed from old films and television sitcoms, though a lot also came from what Curtis witnessed on the streets of downtown New York. The main character was partially based on a demented person he had seen wandering through a store shouting, FASCINATION!

Newsweek even published a glowing review: What this is can only be experienced, and seeing Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit is seeing an explosion of pure theatrical energy unconfined by any effete ideas of form, content, structure, or even rationality. It is an insanely intense, high-velocity, high-decibel circus, costume ball, and scarifying super-ritual in which transvestism, scatology, obscenity, camp, self-assertion, self-deprecation, gallows humor, cloacal humor, sick humor, healthy humor, and cutting, soaring song all blast off through the tiny, backless-benched theater.

Vaccaro played Princess Ninga Flinga, an aspiring actress whose career was hampered by the fact that her arms were cut off at the elbows, and the show featured designed-to-offend songs such as Thalidomide Baby and In Gods Shitty Lap. As for the plot, Reyner summed it up thus: The show was nonsensical. She recalled that when Curtis brought the script to Vaccaro, it was nothing but gibberish. It was a litany, a mishmash  dialogue that was taken from old movies and transposed into a play. Vaccaro had to make sense out of it, so he set it in a carnival sideshow filled with bizarre characters. He liked directing plays that made little sense, because he could imbue them with his own brand of social satire. With Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit, Arcade said, once again, John took that play and made it into something entirely different, which had nothing to do with anything that Jackie had planned.

Vaccaro also added original music. I turned everything into musicals, he said. I did a lot of changing. I was very creative, but not everyone liked to have their plays fucked with. Vaccaro was one of the originators of rock n roll theatrical music, though others would go on to greater renown (Gerry Ragni and Jim Rado, the cocreators of Hair came to Play-House shows and soaked up ideas). Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit had great songs, Michael Arian recalled, like Hes Got the Biggest Balls in Town. It was all pretty extreme. It was exceptional, and really spoke to the time. The song Freakin On In was definitely of the moment  a kind of musical manifesto of the East Village scene:

We were exceptional children Under-achievers so it seems  We were born to be looked at Street stars on side-show screen Now were full fledged freaks, folks Our Christmas is your Halloween

It was pretty psychedelic, Zanetta said, with all the bright color and the

glitter in the show. Vaccaro was deeply influenced by visual art, and his shows were akin to living paintings composed of flesh, colorful makeup, and brightly lit glitter. Heaven Grand was the most incredibly entertaining piece of theater Ive ever seen, Arian added. It was total non sequitur and was as funny as funny could be. He first saw it while high on LSD, when the cast passed around a dead fish throughout the night just to see what the next person would do with it. And boy, I got to tell you, Arian said, it was really entertaining. It was a sensory overload for real. Adding to the surreal scene was the venue where Heaven Grand premiereda funeral home-turned-theater in the midtown district.

Jackie was a nice person, Vaccaro said, but she was very screwed up with drugs. Some would say the same about Vaccaro, but what really stirred up trouble between the two was their diverging choice of mind-altering substances: Curtis was a speed freak, and Vaccaros go-to drug was marijuana. During the Heaven Grand rehearsals, the mercurial Vaccaro grew frustrated with Curtis  who played the lead character, Heaven Grand  after she showed up late and a bit out of it. Im going to kick your ass!!! Vaccaro would shout, until one day he fired the playwright from her own show. They were always having these horrible fights, Reyner said, and so finally he just turned to me and said, Youre playing Heaven Grand. 

The fallout between Vaccaro and Curtis blurred the lines between high drama, slapstick comedy, gangster movies, and real life  Vaccaro ranted every day that he was going to have Curtis killed (it was rumored that the Italian director had ties to the mob). Im gonna call Joey Gallo, he would scream. Im gonna break Jackies legs! Curtis hid out at an Avenue B loft belonging to painter Larry Rivers, and Arcade would stop by after rehearsals. It was totally insane, Arcade said. I mean, Jackie was terrified of Vaccaro, but it was also kind of a joke. Like it was both, a joke and it was real. Reality, per se, didnt exist.

Meet the author: October 23, 6:30pm, with Bibbe Hansen, Mary Lou Harris, and Cynthia Carr. October 24, 6pm, with Agosto Machado and Lisa Jane Persky.The cast of The Ferryman (sans bird), at the Jacobs. Photo: 2018 Joan Marcus

We might as well start with the goose. By the time one of the more than 20 actors in Jez Butterworths boisterous behemoth of a new play, The Ferryman, enters with a fat, live goose under his arm  its little rubbery feet paddling gently in the air as it calmly tries to eat a button off its captors duffle coat  the audience is done for. Weve already been treated to a real baby (the play has a rotating cast of four angelic, pliable infants representing the youngest member of its storys central family) and a real rabbit, pulled from the capacious pockets of the very actor who eventually serves as goose-bearer. You can practically smell the dopamine gushing through the theater. Our brains, our bodies, are being irrepressibly triggered and we love it. That baby, that bunny, that goose! They give us the pleasurable shock of the real, the unfakeable, in a necessarily artificial world, and they go a long way towards convincing us of that worlds essential, if not literal, reality  of its gritty, fleshy, tangible truthiness.

But the farther you get away from The Ferryman, the more the rush starts to subside, and the more the plays emotional mechanics are exposed. Landing splashily on Broadway after raking in euphoric notices from seemingly every critic in London, the three-and-a-half-hour epic yarn about a Northern Irish family grappling with risen ghosts, secret desire, and fermenting violence during the Troubles is a frankly fascinating mixture of prodigious craftsmanship and brazen cultural and dramatic cliche. It pushes every high-drama button and checks every shamrock-shaped box, and Butterworths writerly skill  his sense for build and climax and his raconteurs gift for abundant, colorful language  is almost enough to dazzle us into submission. Almost. Though he and director Sam Mendes (with whom Butterworth worked as a writer on the James Bond film Spectre) are aided by a huge ensemble of uniformly fantastic actors, and though The Ferryman contains many genuinely exhilarating moments, the show itself is like an enormous version of that goose: It works on you, and eventually you start to realize how its working on you, the levers its pulling, the pleasure centers its poking. And its Irishness  which walks a knife-edge between robust authenticity and lyrical exaggeration  starts to slip towards blarney.

As an English playwright, Butterworth was originally hesitant to write a play set in Northern Ireland, but eventually yielded to the call of an irresistible story. His partner, the actor Laura Donnelly, who gives a nuanced, fiery performance at the center of The Ferryman, had an uncle who was disappeared by the IRA, and whose body was found preserved in a peat bog three years after he vanished. Thats a powerful word. Vanishing, says Quinn Carney (Paddy Considine), the patriarch of the expansive Carney clan, whom The Ferryman follows over the course of a tempestuous day and night in late August 1981. The Carneys  father, mother, seven children, two aunts, one uncle, Quinns sister-in-law Caitlin, and her son Oisin  are bringing in the harvest on their Armagh farm, along with their cousins, the three Corcoran brothers. Its a day of hard work followed by celebration, and forty miles away, in Belfast, its also the day that Michael Devine, the tenth and last of the Irish Republican hunger-strikers, will starve to death in prison. And its the day that Caitlin (Donnelly) will finally learn the fate of her husband, Quinns younger brother, who disappeared ten years ago. In a menacing, noir-ish prologue, we see a timorous priest, Father Horrigan (Charles Dale), meet with an IRA headman called Jimmy Muldoon (Stuart Graham) and his two thugs. The body of Seamus Carney has been found pickled in peat, Timex wristwatch and rosary beads intact, bullet hole in the back of his skull. Horrigan is the Carneys family priest. The IRA men want his assistance in ensuring that  in this moment of unprecedented global focus on the demands for Irish liberation  the Carneys dont make a fuss over Seamus. The murder cant come back to the IRA. Things will have to be forgotten, sacrifices made, in the greater cause of justice. Or else.

Along with the steadily mounting threat to the Carneys in the person of Muldoon, Butterworth weaves in plentiful threads both political and personal, plus a heavy (like, Christmas-dinner heavy) helping of poetic symbolism. Quinns wife, Mary (Genevieve OReilly), has also vanished, in a way, continuing to bear children but withdrawing from the family, hovering upstairs like a ghost in a white nightgown, constantly bedridden with psychosomatic viruses. For years, its been the spirited, dependable Caitlin whos cooked the food, kept the house straight, and juggled the herd of Carney children, and its clear from scene one that she and Quinn carry a secret torch for each other. Meanwhile, Caitlins brooding son Oisin (Rob Malone, whose character is named for Irish mythologys Orpheus figure, who makes an ill-fated visit to the underworld) spies in doorways, the Corcoran boys strut and brag about becoming IRA foot-soldiers, a neurodivergent English foundling called Tom Kettle (Justin Edwards) helps out on the Carney farm and sighs over Caitlin, Uncle Pat (Mark Lambert) philosophizes and drinks Bushmills for breakfast, Aunt Pat (Dearbhla Molloy) stews in republican fervor and bitter hatred for Margaret Thatcher, and Aunt Maggie Far Away (Fionnula Flanagan) sits in the corner of the stage with a vacant stare, sporadically returning to lucidity to tell fairy-tales, predict the future, and sing snatches of Yeats poems.

Though Flanagan makes Aunt Maggie into a compelling storyteller when she comes back from her mental journeys (thats how the Carney children phrase it), the character is essentially theme-spouting set dressing. She floats into the action conveniently, to draw a magical circle around big ideas like star-crossed love, or the cycle of violence and revenge, or the unquiet souls of the legions of dead that haunt Irelands long history of oppression at the hands of the English. She talks about banshees and fairy battles, and also swears lustily as she rhapsodizes about a boy she loved in her youth, specifically about how she could have ridden [him] from here to Connemara. And back. The young Carney girls sit rapt at her feet, treating her like a profane prophetess. And the audience is likewise enraptured: Aunt Maggie, like The Ferryman overall, embodies so many of our seductive notions of Ireland. The play is awash in romantic motifs played at maximum volume  the lush mysticism and winking ribaldry, the ghost stories and glamor and earthy wisdom, the colorful cursing and constant drinking (both given increased hilarity when performed, as they frequently are, by the kids), the wild bursts of step dancing, brought up short by the solemn singing of Erin go Bragh in honor of those fallen for the cause of freedom.

And we feel all of it: This stuff, especially to certain sensibilities, is catnip. I freely admit to being among the susceptible. I grew up with a full-blown Yeats obsession, a penchant for fairy-tales, and a fixation on James Joyce that led me, in high school, to wear a three-piece suit with ivy pinned to the lapel on October 6. Watching The Ferryman, I could feel myself responding chemically, even as my brain remained aware of a litany of overripe cultural stereotypes. I dont want to call it appropriation  Im very wary of arguments that limit writers to writing only of their own ultra-specific identities and experiences, and it seems clear that Butterworth entered into his project aware of its many complexities. I cant help feeling, though, that some of those complexities got washed away in a rush of nostalgia, of excitement over the image of a Super-Irish Ireland.

Tellingly, it isnt just the cultural milieu that tempts him into questionable territory. The Ferrymans English character, Tom Kettle, is also a shameless conscript from Central Casting, as well as the second possibly autistic gentle giant lumbering across a New York stage this fall (Conor McPherson provides the other in Girl From the North Country). It feels a little weird, and a little easy, that Butterworth hangs a lot of his thematic exposition on one of his mentally different characters (Maggie) and a lot of plot instigation on the other one (Tom). And it feels downright icky when  at the plays inevitably bloody climax  this kindly, poetry-quoting, bunny-carrying lonelyhearts commits a shattering and, by its very nature, prolonged act of violence. Nothing in Tom Kettles nature has hinted at brutality, but Butterworth takes the well-worn and dangerous road of equating a character whos on some sort of spectrum with a character that can become an animal when the plot requires it.

What keeps us engaged with Tom as a human being and not as a device is Edwardss delicate, immensely poignant performance. In the hands of lesser actors, some of The Ferrymans cleverly built gimmickry might be easier to spot, but here, the masterful ensemble gives Butterworths undeniably juicy text the fuel and lift of a fighter jet. Theres not a shaky player in the bunch, from Donnellys steadfast, wild-hearted Caitlin to Considines slow-burning Quinn; from Molloys zealous, harrowingly acidic Aunt Pat (shed make a killer Queen Margaret in Richard III) to Tom Glynn-Carneys cocky Shane Corcoran, a pugnacious cool-kid and IRA recruit whose descent into drunken, terrified childishness makes us bristle with pity and revulsion. The Carney kids are also a pack of brilliant young talents, with Fra Fees perceptive, playful, not-to-be-bullied Michael and the ridiculously adorable Matilda Lawlers salty, inquisitive Honor (excuse me, she much prefers Cleopatra) as standouts.

Mendes is at his best in the moment-to-moment work with these instinctive, powerful performers. Scenes like the rowdy, choric introduction of the Carney children, or the confrontation that flares up amongst the Carney and Corcoran boys as they get high on whiskey and war stories, crackle with narrative force and verbal flair. The boys late-night bravado, which starts The Ferrymans third act, makes for one of the plays best scenes: The voices feel sharp and present, the mix of humor and morbidity feels rich and real, and the political and familial tensions are palpably electric. (Butterworth, who, along with Mark Rylance, blew minds on Broadway in 2011 with Jerusalem, is on his home turf with this kind of energetic swagger.) I wish that more of the significant scenes involving The Ferrymans women felt this alive. Unfortunately, despite Donnellys ferocity, Caitlins eventual declaration of love for Quinn sounds Hollywoodish and maudlin  I love you more than the future. Because in the future, we cannot be. So kiss me, and then it is the future. Where we are not. Where we can never be. And as Mary, the ghost-in-the-attic invalid wife, OReillys got to deliver some of the plays big-lick-iest dialogue, which Mendes has her fill with tortured wistfulness and pregnant pauses: I didnt know the words to say to make you smile. I did  once.

In exchanges like these, Mendes treats the play like one of his James Bond movies: The emotional register gets overblown, as if underscored with dark violins. The director is also more cinematic than theatrical in his handling of The Ferrymans dramatic flow. Sometimes it works  as with the smash blackout and blaring of the Rolling Stones that follow the prologue, in the manner of a films opening credits sequence  but often it doesnt. Few things bother me more than finding out that a long play is going to have one 15-minute intermission following Act 1 and a brief 3-minute pause following Act 2. I love epic! Give me epic! But figure out your transitions. Figure out how to use the stage as a stage, not as a movie that annoyingly lacks the ability to jump-cut. I dont want to see a crew  even one as diligent as The Ferrymans  emerge in the half-dark in that 3-minute pause, to do an unnecessary amount of candle-lighting and furniture-shifting. Especially not when the action on either side of this business occurs on the same night, in the same place. No amount of eerie background music (from sound designer Nick Powell) will help preserve the swell of tension at the end of The Ferrymans second act, which Mendes deflates by not pursuing more theatrical seamlessness.

As the Carneys long days journey proceeds, Butterworths three acts get progressively more overwrought, more dependent on trope, contrivance, and symbolism. Do we really need Uncle Pat to recite to us straight out of Virgil, making explicit the titles inherent mythological freightage? Do we really buy former IRA loyalist Quinns gangster-movie patter with Muldoon (I told you I wanted out. I told you why. I said I had enough blood on my hands)? Is it any surprise that the gun Aunt Pat keeps under her bed, a heartbreaking souvenir from a brother who died in the Easter Rising, will make a dire reappearance?

The devil of it all is that is that, both despite and because of its flagrant use of formula, The Ferryman hooks us by the gills and pulls us along. After all, are we not entertained? Theres a live goose, for Gods sake. In the wake of the plays frantic, lurid, pull-out-all-the-stops-and-knock-down-all-the-pins conclusion (which makes the whole play feel like the prequel to an as-yet-unwritten bloodbath blockbuster called The Wrath of Quinn), the audience rocketed to its feet  and I got the reaction  even though, when I stopped to think about it, at least three different elements of the storys catastrophic final 60 seconds left me wondering, Wait, but why? In a sense, set and costume designer Rob Howells rendering of the Carneys farmhouse, with its barrage of meticulous detail and its absurdly outsize proportions, is the perfect metaphor for the play itself: Its a head-trippy presentation of rich, authentic-seeming texture inside a romanticized, larger-than-life box  a gourmet meal by a very clever chef that somehow gives us the same uneasy satisfaction as do Lucky Charms. That just  almost looked right, said the friend who saw it with me, whose family lives in Donegal, and  almost felt right. But  

That But. No matter the delights and thrills of the play, and there are many, its always there. How green is The Ferrymans uncanny valley.

The Ferryman is at the Jacobs Theatre through February 17.The SAFE Working Group (SWG) met for the 20th time from 17 to 19 October 2018 at the WCO headquarters in Brussels. It brought together over 150 delegates from Customs administrations, partner government agencies, the Private Sector Consultative Group (PSCG), international organizations and academia to discuss and develop collaborative solutions for enhancing supply chain security and efficiency.

Opening the meeting, Mr. Ernani Checcucci, WCO Director Capacity Building, welcomed all the SWG delegates, congratulating them on the successful finalization and publication of the 2018 edition of the SAFE Framework of Standards along with several new and updated tools in the form of the SAFE Package 2018. Given the global security concerns including increasing cyber security threats and the renewed focus on trade facilitation, he stressed the need for harmonized and effective implementation of various standards of the SAFE Framework of Standards around the world and encouraged delegates to think out of box to find innovative solutions, going beyond legacy processes and systems.

The Co-Chairs Ms. Suzanne Stauffer (the EU) and Mr. John Mein (the PSCG) underlined the importance of the SAFE Framework of Standards, noting its flexibility to adapt to new threats and challenges, and underlined the need for sustained efforts for consistent and robust implementation, while exploring new opportunities for collaborative partnerships.

Through breakout and plenary sessions, the SWG discussed the current security environment, took stock of the SAFE implementation scenario, identified potential opportunities for effective and harmonized implementation, and provided a number of suggestions including a potential need for a monitoring mechanism/peer reviews.

Initiating a new SAFE cycle 2021, the SWG held extensive deliberations on several futuristic topics such as the use of e-seals in the supply chain management, regional/plurilateral approaches to AEO programmes and MRAs, the inclusion of E-Commerce stakeholders in AEO programmes, the use of cutting-edge technologies such as blockchains for an efficient implementation of AEO programmes and MRAs. This led to a number of tangible outcomes and suggestions, setting out the agenda for further work.

Other highlights of this meeting include the progress on implementing Phase 2 of the Unified File Format (UFF) Development Programme and the preliminary outcomes of the Dutch Customs pre-pilot, as well as Pre-loading Advance Cargo Information (PLACI) for air cargo security. The SWG agreed a document detailing the Guiding Principles for Pre-loading Advance Cargo Information will be enhanced and included in the 2021 review of the SAFE Framework of Standards.

Furthermore, the SWG discussed the advance electronic information (AEI) SAFE Dataset based on the preliminary analysis of Members responses to a survey and agreed to continue further discussions and work during the 2021 SAFE review cycle with respect to a potential update and maintenance of the SAFE Dataset and related business processes including its (re-) mapping with the latest version of the WCO Data Model.

Throughout the meeting, many interesting and very informative presentations and interventions were made by several delegates and experts from the industry and academia on the implementation of various aspects of the SAFE and AEO programmes, as well as efficient negotiation and implementation of MRAs, using the relevant WCO tools.

Finally, the SWG, through a panel discussion, deliberated and provided operational perspectives on how new elements of Pillar 3 of the SAFE Framework of Standards could further contribute to enhancing supply chain security and facilitation by strengthening cooperation between Customs administrations and other government agencies such as immigration, post, and border force. It examined the business case for, and provided guidance on, the interoperability of processes and systems for strengthening collaboration between and among various government agencies within and across the border, with a view to developing a guidance on interoperability of processes and systems within the framework of the 2021 SAFE review cycle.Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required.

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Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required.By The Associated Press

By The Associated Press Oct. 22, 2018 | 10:26 AM | CARBONDALE

President Donald Trump will stop in southern Illinois this weekend to support Republican Rep. Mike Bost's re-election bid.

Trump has scheduled a rally with Bost on Saturday at Southern Illinois Airport, between Carbondale and Murphysboro.



His campaign says he's expected to discuss his America First agenda and the need for Illinois voters to help protect and expand the Republican majority in Congress.

Bost is in a tight race against Democrat Brendan Kelly, the St. Clair County state's attorney.

The 12th Congressional District is one of four GOP-held seats that Democrats are targeting as they try to take control of the House.

Voters in the once reliably Democratic district supported Trump in 2016.By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 22, 2018 | 11:24 AM | GRAVES COUNTY

In response to a request from the media and many concerns from community members regarding the Samantha Sperry missing persons case, the Graves County Sheriff's Office has prepared the following statement:

The Sheriff's Office received a complaint of Rhen Hendrickson disappearing into the woods off Dooms Chapel Road on March 28, 2018. When our deputies responded, they learned that Hendrickson had contacted his mother via FaceTime and stated that he had taken several pills and was going into the woods to die. The Sheriff's Office has had past interactions with Hendrickson when he was violent and armed. Hendrickson is well known to law enforcement and is considered an officer safety risk. As Emergency Management Director, Chief Deputy Davant Ramage, made the decision that night not to go into the woods to look for Hendrickson, due to officer safety and the safety of other individuals who would be assisting in a search. We would have had to ask volunteer fire departments to come help look for Hendrickson as well. Again, knowing he has a violent past, we couldnt put unarmed civilians in the woods at night. At this point, Samantha had not yet been reported missing. It was not until Thursday, March 29, 2018, that Mr. and Mrs. Artis reported her missing.



On the night of March 29, 2018, Samantha's abandoned car was impounded. It was searched by one of our deputies. At that same time, two deputies traveled to Paducah. They interviewed an individual to verify information that we had been given about the whereabouts of Dusty Holder during the time frame of the previous days. Another person was being interviewed in Graves County about Samantha's disappearance.



On March 30, 2018, the first search was done for Samantha. It was done by the Graves County Sheriff's Office. On that date, Dusty Holder met with Detective Steve Halsell, Deputy Brooke Nelms, Deputy Richard Edwards and Chief Deputy Ramage. They went to the Kaler Bottoms area where Samantha was allegedly last seen by Holder. Holder said that he and Samantha had ridden a four-wheeler into the woods, gotten stuck and stayed there the rest of the night. According to him, they left on foot the next morning.



Chief Ramage asked an unnamed individual to conduct a search independent of Sheriff's Office. This individual has extensive knowledge of the area due to him being raised nearby and hunting there throughout his life. Chief Ramage had explained to him what deputies were looking for. While the deputies and Holder were searching for the four-wheeler Holder said had been left in the woods, the other unnamed party located said four-wheeler. He came back and reported this to the deputies. He also reported that there was only one set of footprints around the four-wheeler and one set of footprints coming out of the woods. This information was not revealed to Holder.



The important facts that were learned here are as follows:

Holder's story did not match up with the physical evidence at the scene or in the surrounding area.

There was absolutely no proof that Samantha was ever there or in that area.

There was evidence of a small fire. In that fire we located two cell phones identified as belonging to Dusty Holder. They were collected and are being analyzed.



Once Holder's four-wheeler was recovered, all parties left the woods. Holder was allowed to leave and agreed to meet detectives at the Sheriff's Office later for an interview.

When Hendrickson went missing, it was not known to the Sheriff's Office that Samantha was missing. However, when Samantha's missing person's report was taken, an investigation began immediately. Persons of interest were being developed and questioned. Evidence was being collected. In under 24 hours of the report being taken, deputies and one private citizen were in the woods searching for Samantha. Several different individuals were being interviewed on that Friday afternoon. We were able to find someone who was of solid character who had seen Samantha recently. From his account, we were able to put Samantha in Graves County early Tuesday morning, but not in the same area where we were told she went missing. At this point, the last place she was seen by a credible source was in a car, and a day earlier than when Holder stated he and she were in the woods for the night. To this day, there has been no physical evidence to suggest Holder's statement was true or that Samantha was ever in those woods that night.



Deputies interviewed Dusty Holder at the Sheriff's Office on the night of March 30, 2018. Holder gave the story that he and Samantha had entered the woods on the four wheeler, became stuck, stayed the night and walked out the next morning (note the above-mentioned physical evidence at the site indicated that only one persons footprints were in the vicinity). Holder stated that Samantha headed south on State Route 131 and he headed north. According to Holder, this was the last time he saw Samantha. During this interview, deputies from the Sheriff's Office applied for, and obtained a search warrant for Samantha's home in Murray. Accompanied by deputies from Calloway County, the warrant was executed. Several items were seized to be sent to the Kentucky State Police Lab for analysis. These activities lasted until the early morning hours of Saturday, March 31, 2018.



The Kentucky Revised Statute 39F.180, states that a search may be (not shall be) conducted as soon as a missing person is reported. It states that there is nothing that prevents a search from being done immediately. In this particular instance, there was no statute requiring a search be done; however, the Graves County Sheriffs Office completed a search and conducted interviews in an attempt to locate Samantha.



To our knowledge, on Saturday, March 31, 2018, there was no searching done. Then on April 1, 2018, a group of people went out and entered the woods and searched.



On Sunday night, April 1, 2018, Hendrickson came out of the woods and acknowledged having been there for five days. He was taken to the hospital that night and brought to the Sheriff's Office on Monday for questioning. Hendrickson gave his account of the events surrounding Samantha's disappearance, as well as his own disappearance. It was in that interview that we learned that Hendrickson himself had taken items of Samantha's and his own into the woods and lost them. As far as we can prove, these items were taken into the woods by Hendrickson. There is no evidence to dispute this. If these items, in fact, existed, they would be valuable evidence for our case. Deputies asked a search party to look for these items, and they were found.

Jeremy Blansett, who is the Area 1 Emergency Management Coordinator for Kentucky, asked Chief Ramage if the Sheriff's Office wanted him to step in to coordinate and oversee the ground search activities. This was a welcomed request as it allowed Sheriff's Office investigators to follow up on other leads and possible sightings, as there were many. We did, however, have a deputy at every search of which we were made aware. The Graves County Sheriff's Office is a small department, and at the same time these searches were going on, there were also calls for service throughout the county. Deputies were needed to answer these calls and provide services to its citizens.



Chief Ramage continued to speak to Tina Artis, keeping her up to date on a regular basis. For some time, they spoke every Thursday around 10 am. That was the arrangement that was made between the two of them. There were times she gave information for us to follow up on, and we did. As a matter of fact, Chief Ramage has spoken to her within the last two weeks, updating her and answering questions.



During this investigation, we were contacted by the FBI, who offered their assistance. The FBI reviewed the case. They stated that it appeared we were doing everything they would do and that if we needed help to call them. They could find no fault with our actions. We have been working with the Kentucky State Police as well. They have reviewed the file in its entirety and arrived at the same conclusion as the FBI.



Recently, through combined efforts, we have been able to generate another lead. We were able to track down some possible evidence in another county. It has been collected and sent to the Kentucky State Police Lab. Over the past seven months, we have not quit looking for and following up on any lead, no matter how small it may have been. There are numerous other search warrants that have been executed during this time that we cannot presently elaborate on.



To sum up, the search for Samantha Sperry continues. The Graves County Sheriff's Office performed the first search two days before anyone else searched. We have collected many, many pieces of evidence and sent items that can be analyzed to the lab for examination. As of now, we have sent a total of 39 pieces of evidence to the lab. From our initial search we were able to develop other possible leads and persons of interest. We followed up with those and all that have developed since. We sympathize with how difficult this situation must be for the family, and we will continue to work to resolve the disappearance of Samantha Sperry.



Those with information on this case may call the Graves County Sheriffs Office at 270-247-4501, contact the sheriffs office via their Facebook page or call West Kentucky Crime Stoppers at 270-443-8355..  ,          ,              .          -           ,     ,     ...Journos need to fall in love again

Award winning journalist Niren Tolsi has called on journalists to use their power responsibly and to return to the values of the profession.

Tolsi delivered the annual Ruth First Memorial lecture titled Fire and Media: Towards a New South African Journalism. The lecture reflected on fire incidents in South Africa and how these were covered by South African media, and offered insightful critique about how what we know, or do not know, about the these fires  how they started, who they consumed and how those who died had lived their lives is entirely dependent on journalists, according to Tolsi.

It depends on their biases, their stresses and pressures, their willingness to witness and make enquiries of the world around them, said Tolsi who compared the coverage of fires in informal settlements versus those that affect the middle-class.

Read the full speech which concludes with Tolsi urging journalists to once again fall in love with people, and remember that they are the first line of information for people - a role not to be taken for granted.

The Ruth First Memorial Lecture is hosted by Wits Journalism in honour of Ruth First, a fearless journalist, scholar and political activist whos life ended when the apartheid government.

According to reports the deadly letter bomb arrived at the Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique) after First had just presided over a seminar sponsored by the UN about transformation of the countryside in the recently independent Mozambique.

First has become enduring icon of our struggle icons who helped to liberate and shape southern Africa. The Wits journalisms department launched the Ruth First Fellowship and memorial lecture to promote Firsts values and journalism in service of the people. Each year the fellowship is awarded to journalists, writers, researchers, filmmakers or photographers to pursue in-depth projects that can be presented in ways to influence thinking, discussion and debate in South Africa.LAFAYETTE (Ind.) WLFI -- Levi Madras is hosting a toy drive to honor the life of his son Braxton. Hes held this drive for the past five years, but this time he's doing it differently.

This year, Madras partnered with the organization Heart of a Hero, a nonprofit organization created by a man named Ricky Mena.

Mena has a special way of helping children who are sick. He delivers toys to the hospital but not before putting on his very own spider-man suit.Madras said after seeing videos of Mena on social media, he knew Heart of Hero was the perfect organization to help honor his son, who died of sickness at age 4.

I just thought how much my son would have loved to see him in real life, said Madras.

Madras and his fiance Kaila Golmicz made toy donation boxes, that will be placed in businesses across the city. Once the drive ends, they will send the toys to Heart of a Hero to be distributed to thousands of children's hospitals. Experiencing his own son's hospitalization, Madras hopes these toys will bring light to other children.

These children, they're suffering and if we can just give them just a little bit of hope, that could change dramatically for them, said Madras.

The couple said they thrive when they're giving back and to be able to also celebrate Braxton is a bonus.

For me as his fiance, you know, I'll never get to know Braxton except through his memories and so to celebrate him, that's the way I can give love and I think that's really special for me, said Golmicz.

The couple urges the community to donate and help bring in as many toys as possible, especially as we head into the holiday season.

Donation boxes are located at The Ross Tattoo, The Back Porch Salon, Salon Centric and Flooring Express.

The couple will be collecting toys until Nov. 20. Any toys donated must be in its original box for the safety of the children.

Donations can also be made through Amazon. The couple plans to ship the toys by November 27th, which would have been Braxton's 10th birthday.PLAINFIELD, Ind., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Twenty-one Indiana nonprofit organizations are receiving $315,000 in Duke Energy Foundation grants to make a difference in their communities. Their projects range from a holiday food drive for the needy in Howard County to Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concerts for elementary students from around the state.

"It's an honor for us to help support these nonprofit organizations as they bring life, health and vitality to their communities," said Melody Birmingham-Byrd, Duke Energy state president for Indiana. "We are dedicated to supporting initiatives that enhance the regions where our customers live, work and play."

Top grant recipients include:

Food Finders Food Bank, Inc., in Howard County, $50,000 to provide additional food during the high-need holiday season

Indiana Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Inc., $50,000 to advance workforce development goals

Indiana Symphony Society, Inc., $30,000 to support Discovery Concerts, offered to third- through sixth-grade students

Indiana Special Olympics, Inc., $20,000 to support the Olympic Town summer games for contestants with intellectual disabilities

Indiana University Southeast, $17,500 to help build nonprofit capacity in Southern Indiana through a professional development conference and on-site consulting

Heart of Rushville in Rushville, Ind., $16,500 to create a park in memory of Carol Jenkins-Davis, a young woman who lost her life due to a racially motivated crime

Arts Council of Southern Indiana, $10,000 to help fund creation of Art on Wheels, a mobile van that will travel in Clark, Harrison and Floyd counties, delivering interactive art experiences to children under age 18

YMCAs of the Wabash Valley, $15,000 to support a youth food delivery program, helping feed approximately 400 school-age children during the two-week winter holiday break

Arts and Cultural Council, Decatur County, $12,000 for the Rebekah Park amphitheater, providing a permanent location for arts and cultural events

Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum, Greene County, $12,000 for a traveling foundry program to support STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) programsFRANKFORT, (Ind.) WLFI -- U.S. Representative Todd Rokita hosted a Town Hall at the Frankfort Neighborhood Center. The discussion was lead by the community and focused on local and national concerns.

Rokita said he plans to defer the issues discussed at the Town Hall right to those leaders. He said these meetings are meant to be organic but also an opportunity for people to share what's on their mind.

Rokita has traveled all over the district but was glad to make a stop in Frankfort.

Even though I am seeing the final months of my term in office, it's important for me to stay connected with those that have hired me to represent them. And that's the people of the 4th district, said Rokita.

Rokita said its important for him to finish the term strong.

It's just been a real honor and a pleasure to represent the state of Indiana and the people of the 4th district these years, and who knows what comes next but whatever we do, we're gonna be very proactive at it., said Rokita.



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 : ,        .          -   ,       -       -      -        ,  ,      ,    .Many workers across Australia will take part in union rallies on October 23 to express their opposition to the corporate offensive against jobs, wages and working conditions, and the assault on social spending being prosecuted by the federal and state governments. However, the openly stated aim of the Change the Rules protests organised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is to channel these sentiments into the election of yet another big business federal Labor government.

The entire campaign is fraudulent. In its material, the ACTU and its secretary Sally McManus have highlighted soaring inequality, exemplified by the fact that the richest one percent of the population owns more wealth than the poorest 70 percent. The unions have denounced the prevalence of casual and contract labour, which now accounts for up to half the entire workforce, condemned to stagnant and falling pay.

Left out of the ACTU rhetoric is the reality that all these conditions that workers face are the outcome of the decades-long collaboration by the unions with the corporations and successive governments, both Labor and Coalition.

The very Fair Work Australia industrial legislation the unions claim to be fighting to change was imposed by Labor with their support.

In 2007, the ACTU and its affiliates launched the Your Rights at Work campaign, upon which Change the Rules is modelled. The aim was to channel hostility to the Coalition government of John Howard, and its Work Choices industrial relations regime, into the election of Labor.

One of the first acts of the new Rudd-Gillard Labor government was to pass the Fair Work legislation, which retained most of the draconian provisions of Work Choices. The laws, which illegalised virtually all industrial action and cleared the path for continuous pro-business restructuring, were praised and fully backed by the unions.

Ever since, Labor and the unions have invoked the Fair Work legislation to suppress any political or industrial struggle by workers. Time and again, they have insisted that workers end strike action, accept wage cuts and acquiesce to sackings, because they have been given the green light by the pro-business Fair Work Commission, which the union apparatus asserts is an independent umpire.

The Fair Work regime itself was the outcome of the assault on the conditions of the working class that was launched after the coming to power of the Hawke-Keating Labor government in 1983.

The so-called Accords between the Labor government, the ACTU and the major employers facilitated a vast restructuring and deregulation of the economy. As part of this agenda, the unions enforced the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs and abolished the shop stewards committees and other forms of rank-and-file workplace organisation that called for opposition to the demands of the corporations for international competitiveness.

The result was the fastest growth of social inequality since the end of World War II and a social disaster in working class areas. Entire generations of workers and youth have been condemned to a future of precarious work and low wages.

In the 1990s, the ACTU backed the Labor government of Paul Keating when it introduced the modern system of enterprise bargaining. This ended industry-wide negotiations over conditions, and tied workers to the immediate profit demands of their individual companies.

The complicity of the unions in the attack on the working class is starkly revealed in the virtual disappearance of strikes, the most elementary form of workers struggle against the employers. Since the introduction of enterprise bargaining, and especially since the imposition of the Fair Work legislation, the number of strikes has fallen to its lowest level in Australian history.

The unions have presided over one enterprise agreement after another which have slashed real wages, eliminated conditions and destroyed jobs.

The Australian Workers Union, for instance, including when it was led by current Labor leader Bill Shorten, signed secret agreements with major employers that cut wages and abolished penalty rates for some of the countrys lowest-paid workers, including cleaners and agricultural labourers.

Across the fast-food and service sectors, penalty rates are virtually a thing of the past, along with sick and holiday leave and a living wage, after years of sweetheart deals between the unions and major transnational companies.

In the manufacturing sector, the unions have overseen the shutdown of the car industry and the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs at the ports, in the steel and mining sectors, textiles and other industries.

The ACTU officials running the Change the Rules campaign apparently hope that workers suffer collective amnesia and have forgotten their bitter experiences with the Labor Party and the unions themselves over the past 30 years.

In a speech this month, McManus declared: We have so often turned to the Labor Party to enact legislation that ensures working people have the rights they need. She claimed that Labor was the party of full employment and has the track record on reform that benefits the workers of Australia.

As the record demonstrates, these are transparent and shameless lies.

If Labor returns to power, it will be a government of, for and by big business and the wealthiest layers of society, no different to the Coalition. Amid the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the next government will cut education, healthcare and welfare, escalate Australias alignment with the militarist US-led confrontation against China and intensify the attacks on democratic rights, including the persecution of refugees.

The changes to industrial relations laws that the ACTU is proposing a Labor government introduce are not intended to improve workers conditions, but assist the corporations continue to drive them down.

In her recent speech, McManus reiterated the ACTUs call for the abolition of enterprise bargaining and the re-establishment of industry-wide agreements. She said that this was necessary because enterprise bargaining was no longer delivering sufficient boosts to productivity, i.e. cuts to employers costs and ever-greater profits.

Industry-wide bargaining, McManus declared, would allow business owners and unions to come together to improve productivity. McManus called for even greater powers for the Fair Work Commission, declaring that it should be able to arbitrate disputes to make bargaining more efficient and resolve situations when groups cannot see past their own conflict to the point of common ground.

In other words, McManus is advocating for an industrial relations system in which a handful of union officials, Fair Work bureaucrats and corporate representatives come together and impose cost-cutting agreements upon tens of thousands of workers across entire industries. McManus has previously cited Germany, where union officials sit on company and state boards alongside government employers, as a model to be emulated.

The fraudulent rhetoric over social inequality by the ACTU is simply an attempt by the discredited union apparatus to try and keep control over workers. The unions are terrified by the resurgence of the class struggle internationally, which this year alone has seen mass strikes by teachers in the US, lecturers in the UK, nurses in New Zealand and millions of workers across the Indian subcontinent and Chinain opposition to the official trade unions.

In every struggle that emerges internationally, the unions function as strikebreakers and company agents. In an era of globalised production and capitalist crisis, the unions, based on a nationalist and pro-capitalist program, operate as the representatives of their own national ruling class. They seek to ensure that national industry remains internationally competitive by forcing down wages and eliminating conditions.

In Australia and around the world, workers need to establish their political independence from the unions by forming new organisations of struggle, including independent workplace committees and workers councils. Such organisations would reject the collaboration of the unions with the corporations, unite workers across entire industries and countries and spearhead a genuine counter-offensive against the corporate onslaught.

Above all, what is required is a new political perspective and the building of a mass, international socialist political movement of the working class.

The capitalist system has failed. It cannot be reformed. The future being offered under capitalism is economic crisis and the growing danger of a third world war that would see the catastrophic use of nuclear weapons. In country after country, the ruling class is preparing for dictatorial forms of rule by attacking fundamental democratic rights and promoting nationalist, anti-immigrant right-wing and fascistic organisations.

The international working class is the vast majority of the population. Its labour power produces all societys wealth. Its social and democratic rights can only be defended, and dictatorship and war prevented, by uniting internationally in the common struggle for world socialism.

This means the fight to establish workers governments, which would implement socialist policies, including placing the banks and major corporations under public ownership and democratic workers control, and carrying out a far-reaching redistribution of wealth to end social inequality.

The Socialist Equality Party, the Australian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, fights for this perspective. All workers who want genuine social change should join our movement.Lawyers have filed a lawsuit in Quito, Ecuador seeking a ruling against the threat by the Ecuadorian government that it will renege on its political asylum for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, and evict him from its embassy in London, unless he meets harsh new terms and conditions outlined in a so-called Special Protocol.

The intensified persecution of Assange comes after nearly seven months during which Ecuador has prevented him from having visitors apart from his legal representatives and denied him his right to communication via Internet or phone, even with his children and parents. Assange has now been confined inside the small embassy, without access to direct sunlight, for over six years.

The British government has threatened to arrest him if he steps outside the embassy and has refused to give a guarantee that he will not be extradited to the US. American authorities have relentlessly pursued Assange for his leading and courageous role in WikiLeaks publication of information that has exposed US war crimes, abuses of power, intelligence agency spying and conspiracies, diplomatic intrigues and official corruption.

Julian Assange

Ecuador, which provided Assange with asylum on June 19, 2012, turned against him after current president Lenin Moreno took office in 2017. As part of his venal efforts to restore relations with the US, Moreno ordered that all Assanges communications be cut off on March 28 to prevent him publicly opposing the anti-democratic actions of the US and other governments. Assange was silenced one day after top-level meetings between Ecuadorian and American military commanders and officials.

WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon gave a press conference in Spanish in Quito on October 19 to announce the law suit against Morenos government. An English language press release issued by WikiLeaks the same day detailed the scope of the draconian new conditions to be imposed on Assange:

The protocol makes Assanges political asylum contingent on censoring his freedom of opinion, speech and association. The protocol also requires journalists, his lawyers and anyone else seeking to see Julian Assange to disclose private or political details such as their social media usernames, the serial numbers and IMEI codes of their phones and tablets to Ecuadorwhich the protocol says the government may share with other agencies. The protocol claims the embassy may seize the property of Mr Assange or his visitors, and, without a warrant, hand it over to UK authorities.

Assange will have to pay for his own costs, including food and internet usage. The protocol stipulates that he undergo a medical examination every three months, at his own expense, and states that doctors can recommend that he be sent out of the embassy if they conclude that he requires urgent treatment. Due to his inability to safely receive adequate care, Assange has well-documented shoulder problems and dental issues, and is suffering the consequences of being denied sunlight and fresh air for so long.

On these terms, Ecuador has offered to continue to provide asylum and partially restore Assanges ability to communicate on December 1, but on the condition that he does not express any view that the Moreno government deems to be interference in any other countrys political matters. In other words, a journalist and the publisher of a ground-breaking media organisation who was forced to seek political asylum will be effectively banned from expressing any opinion about any government in the world. If he does, he will be handed over to his persecutors. The conditions also imply that all his communications, even private, would be monitored, recorded and shared with US, British and other intelligence-police agencies.

The Ecuadorian government has imposed these terms to manufacture a pretext to evict Assange. At the same time, efforts are underway to strip Assangean Australian citizenof the dual Ecuadorian citizenship he was granted by the former government.

These actions are a clear response to stepped-up demands from the US establishment that Ecuador hand Assange over. Last week, congressional Democrat Eliot Engel and Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen issued a bipartisan letter to Moreno labelling Assange as a dangerous criminal and a threat to global security who should be brought to justice. The letter asserted: On numerous occasions, Mr. Assange has compromised the national security of the United States. He has done so by publicly releasing classified government documents along with confidential materials from individuals connected to our countrys 2016 presidential election. It linked closer relations with the US to evicting the WikiLeaks founder from the London embassy.

The investigation by Special Counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller into alleged collusion with Russian meddling in the 2016 election has sought to implicate WikiLeaks and Assange in the unsubstantiated claims that Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump because of a nefarious plot organised in Moscow.

The purported evidence of WikiLeaks colluding with Russian intelligence is its publication of emails sent by the Democratic National Committee. It began publishing the DNC emails on July 22, 2016on the eve of the Democratic Party convention, exposing the fact that the Clinton camp had sought to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the primary elections.

Facing outrage among the millions of people who had supported Sanders as a left candidate against Clinton, top DNC officials were forced to resign in disgrace over their attempt to manipulate the outcome. Later, in October 2016, WikiLeaks also published emails leaked from Clinton campaign director John Podesta, which shed further light on the right-wing, militarist character of her policies and campaign.

WikiLeaks does not reveal its sources, but Assange publicly stated that the DNC and Podesta leaks did not come from hackers working for Russian intelligence. He first revealed that WikiLeaks had information on the Clinton campaign in a media interview on June 12, 2016well over one month before it was sent an email by a dubious hacker Guccifer 2.0 on July 14 purportedly offering access to an archive of Democratic Party emails. Former British whistleblower Craig Murray has stated he was informed that the data published by WikiLeaks had been provided to it earlier by disgruntled DNC employees who were outraged by the anti-democratic actions of its leadership and the Clinton campaign.

The Mueller investigation has nevertheless pursued the allegation that WikiLeaks conspired with Russian intelligence agents working for the Trump campaign to obtain and publish the information that damaged Clinton. The final report, expected to be released after the November 6 mid-term congressional election, may provide the pretext to seek Assanges extradition.

The persecution of Julian Assange is one of the most egregious examples of burgeoning censorship of the Internet and efforts to silence all independent and critical media. Defenders of democratic rights and freedom of speech must use all available forums to demand his immediate and unconditional freedom and expose the myriad slander and lies that are being continually spread about the WikiLeaks publisher.Socialist Alternative (SA) hosted an election event, Rally to Put Socialists in City Hall, at the United Electrical Workers Hall in Chicago Thursday night to build support for three Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates for Chicago City Council: Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th ward), Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd ward), and 35th ward alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, currently running for re-election.

The event was aimed at promoting increased collaboration between Socialist Alternative and the DSA, as both deepen their integration into the Democratic Party.

The DSA is a faction of the Democratic Party and is being promoted by sections of the party establishment and the media. Obama recently endorsed DSA member and New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Just hours before the rally began, the DSAs Ramirez-Rosa endorsed Democratic candidate for mayor Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County board president and machine politician. Last year, Ramirez-Rosa had a short stint as candidate for Illinois lieutenant governor as part of Illinois Democrat Daniel Bisss campaign (see: The six-day rise and fall of democratic socialist Ramirez-Rosa for Illinois lieutenant governor).

Ramirez-Rosa endorsed Preckwinkle at the Logan Square L station, alongside alderman Will Guzzardi, a protege of Biss. Preckwinkle chairs the Cook County Democratic Party, long known for its corruption and duplicity. A Chicago alderman from 1991 to 2010, she has since been president of the Cook County Board, presiding over budget cuts to the county health and hospital system as well as the public defenders office and the Cook County Jail, known internationally for its horrific conditions. She was an important early supporter of Barack Obama.

Somewhat embarrassed by these developments, Socialist Alternative members criticized the DSA for being too willing to endorse all and sundry Democratic officials, such as Preckwinkle. This is done with the aim of trying to maintain a nominal distance from the Democratic Party establishment, even as Socialist Alternative calls for collaboration with and support of Democratic Party candidates and policies.

Chicago Socialist Alternative leading member Teresa Powers chaired the event, proclaiming the organizations willingness to work with any progressives, and outlined a united front electoral strategy for rent control and affordable housing initiatives, taxing the rich, and a civilian police review board, suggesting support for the Democratic Partys Civilian Office of Police Accountability (see: Chicago launches new fig-leaf police oversight agency)

Emphasizing the threat posed by the far-right, Powers and the three city council candidates called for left unity and a new party to fight against fascism. She described SAs aim in building a new party independent of the rotten Democratic machine, but then said, We dont have resources to launch all this.

This was intended to justify collaboration with the Democrats, and in fact any new party set up by Socialist Alternative would be at aimed at corralling support behind the Democrats, as Socialist Alternative currently does. During the 2016 elections, the organization virtually dissolved itself into the electoral campaign of US Senator Bernie Sanders, who ended up endorsing Hillary Clinton.

Proposals included a demand for a $15 minimum wage, union rights for all and lifting the ban on rent control in the city, an initiative supported by billionaire Democratic candidate for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. That a $15 minimum wage is wholly inadequate, given that the current city minimum wage stands at $12 per hour and is set to rise to $13 in 2019, passed by unmentioned.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, the worlds wealthiest man, recently announced that he was raising the minimum wage at Amazon to $15 an hour, even as he moved to end bonuses and other pay schemes that will result in a pay cut for many Amazon workers. This move was praised by Sanders.

The speeches given by the three city council candidates were characteristically devoid of political content and leaned heavily on the personal identity of the speakers and their experiences. Rossana Rodriguez spoke of her experiences in Puerto Rico before moving to Chicago in 2009. Ramirez-Rosa attempted to portray his ejection from the Biss campaign over opposition to Israeli policies as a profile in courage.

A 2015 Democratic Party candidate for alderman, now a DSA member running in the 25th ward, Byron Sigcho struggled to explain his reasons for running as a socialist in this election, other than that it seems to be in fashion. The leader of the Pilsen Alliance and SEIU Local 73 official declared the likelihood of his electoral success: Last time, I was only 70 votes from a run-off. So I believe in the people. I believe in the working class.

In 2015, Sigchos platform included support for small businesses, green development initiatives, anti-gentrification policies and expanded policing.

There were comic moments, as attendees heckled Ramirez-Rosa about his endorsement of Preckwinkle, earning loud protests from DSA members. Rather than being treated as a central question of political principle, open endorsement and collaboration with the United States oldest bourgeois party was approached like a minor disagreement over tactics.

Speaking last, Socialist Alternatives Kshama Sawant, a member of the Seattle city council, spoke on the right way to work with the Democrats, criticizing Ramirez-Rosas collaboration with leading Democrats and the recent endorsement.

Sawant rubs elbows at Democratic Party fundraisers, and she capitulated with the rest of the Seattle city council before Amazon in overturning a minuscule business tax under pressure from the megacorporation. The council even declared to the bourgeoisie in its letter, We heard you.

At the end of the speeches, a Socialist Alternative member rose to criticize Ramirez-Rosas endorsement of Preckwinkle, saying, We have the opportunity to hold a sitting aldermans feet to the fire. DSA members again complained loudly, and SA organizers quickly shut him down and pulled him aside.

There are no principled differences between the DSA and Socialist Alternative. Both are seeking to provide a political cover for the Democratic Party, aware of growing opposition among young people and workers to the entire political system.

Since the election of Trump, the Democrats have sought to channel all opposition to the administration behind the right-wing, pro-war agenda of sections of the military and intelligence apparatus. The party is currently running an unprecedented number of actual CIA agents and other intelligence operatives for office in the 2018 elections.

Groups like the DSA and Socialist Alternative speak for privileged sections of the upper-middle class, including factions of the trade union apparatus, that support the policies of the Democrats and are seeking some way to give them a left gloss, the better to prevent a genuine socialist movement of the working class.

The author also recommends:

Socialist Alternative on the New York primaries: Burrowing further into the Democratic Party

[8 October 2018]

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announces he will not seek re-election

[7 September 2018]

The six-day rise-and-fall of democratic socialist Carlos Ramirez-Rosa for Illinois lieutenant governor

[24 October 2017]A series of grisly discoveries at two local funeral homes last week shocked Detroit-area residents and prompted news coverage around the world. Dozens of fetuses and bodies of infant children were found in cardboard boxes, concealed in a drop ceiling or otherwise improperly stored at the Cantrell and Perry funeral homes, which have both been shut down.

State and city authorities have launched a full-scale criminal investigation into the handling of corpses and cremated remains at the two funeral homes, one on the citys east side, the other near Wayne State University. Many questions remain about what combination of gross negligence, profit-gouging and sheer indifference is involved, but one thing is certain: This macabre episode demonstrates the continuing decay of Detroit, the poorest urban center in America, and it gives the lie to the celebratory propaganda in the media about the revival of the Motor City.

So far over a hundred fetuses, infant bodies and adult corpses have been found improperly stored, as well as 269 sets of cremated remains. Other funeral homes are being searched. An attorney for the parents of one of the deceased children believes there could be hundreds more improperly disposed bodies.

The first report came on October 12. Michigan state inspectors got a tip that the bodies of infant children and fetuses were improperly stored in the Cantrell Funeral Home on Mack Avenue on Detroits east side. Police and state investigators uncovered the body of a newborn infant and the remains of 10 fetuses hidden in a drop ceiling.

Last April, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) closed Cantrell after they found 21 improperly stored bodies, some of them covered with mold, according to the Detroit News. As of October, a total of 38 unattended bodies and 269 containers of cremated remains have been discovered at the facility.

After hearing about the Cantrell investigation, parents who had filed a lawsuit a year prior against Perry Funeral Home over similar issues, asked that the police investigate the conditions at Perry. After their child died only three days old in 2014, they had donated the remains to science but had been unable to trace the ultimate disposition of the body. The police raided Perry Funeral Home on October 19, discovering the remains of 63 fetuses or bodies in cardboard boxes or freezers.

There are indications that the funeral home charged Medicaid for the cost of burial when the childs remains were actually stored in a mortuary school connected to Wayne State University. According to LARA, which also suspended the license of Perry Funeral Home, the business failed to certify and file death certificate for the dead bodies of the fetuses and infants for whom the assumed custody with the appropriate government authority within 72 hours of death.

The WSWS spoke to a Michigan social worker in the hospice field who explained the connection of this horrific scandal with the growth of poverty in Detroit, observing that it is not unusual for a family experiencing a terrible tragedy such as a newborns death and lacking the resources to bury the child, to donate the body for medical research.

A recent Federal Reserve Board study found that most working-class families in the United States could not pay an emergency $400 bill without borrowing the money. A childs funeral can cost double or triple that amount, or even more. And workers in Detroit are paid well below the average. According to one recent report, about one in every five workers in Wayne County (which includes Detroit) make less than $12 an hour. An estimated 60,000 of those workers have a median wage of less than $10 an hour.

The social worker further explained: In order for someone to donate human remains to the University of Michigan or WSU for anatomical testing you have to sign up with the university first. WSU has one of the only testing labs in the region for the remains of children. You also need a funeral home. The funeral home provides transportation of the remains to the university. They also may store them, [for example]  if it happens over a weekend for a few days. The funeral home will have storage, refrigeration, before the remains are moved.

They also provide the death certificate. Only funeral homes can provide death certificates for human remains. Thats to inform the government, Social Security, Medicaid, whomever you need to inform that someone has passed away.

A lot of the families probably have Medicaid, and Medicaid subsidizes recipients for funerals, stated the social worker. One of the things about the funeral homes is they wanted to get that subsidy. From what I could tell it looks like they were defrauding Medicaid.

In Michigan the state pays the funeral director $220 for cremation without service, but the rate doubles to $455 for cremation with memorial service. For burials, the rate is $475 to the director with a memorial service not counting $145 to the cemetery for burial.Speaking at a campaign rally in Nevada on Saturday, President Donald Trump said Washington will repudiate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and develop intermediate range nuclear missiles. Well have to develop those weapons, he said. Were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out.

With this decision, Washington is scrapping the entire nuclear arms control framework that emerged from the Cold War. In 2001, Washington repudiated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, so it could begin working on a Star Wars anti-ballistic missile system to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles. Now it is scrapping the 1987 treaty that bans US or Russian manufacture and deployment of nuclear missiles with ranges of 500-5,500 kilometers (310-3,420 miles). For the first time since 1972, there is to be no treaty limiting the major powers deployment of nuclear arms.

Washington is aggressively stoking a nuclear arms race, with Russia and China first in its gun-sights, which would provoke stepped-up missile deployments across Europe and East Asia. It points to the immediate and growing risk of nuclear war between the major powers.

Trump blamed his decision to scrap the INF treaty on Moscow and Beijing: Russia has violated the agreement. Theyve been violating it for many years and I dont know why President Obama didnt negotiate or pull out.  Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, Lets all of us get smart and lets none of us develop those weapons, but if Russias doing it and if Chinas doing it and were adhering to the agreement, thats unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military.

Moscow condemned Trumps statement as blackmail against Russia. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS: At first glance, I can say that apparently the INF Treaty creates problems for pursuing the line towards the US total domination in military sphereThis would be a very dangerous step, which, Im sure, wont be just understood by the international community, but arouse serious condemnation of all members of the world community.

Ryabkov said he would discuss it with US National Security Advisor John Bolton, who supports killing the INF treaty. Bolton arrived yesterday in Moscow for two days of talks starting today.

Trumps attempt to blame Moscow and Beijing for his decision is a transparent political fraud. The US repudiation of nuclear arms control treaties is part of a longstanding, aggressive foreign policy aiming to exploit US military supremacy in the aftermath of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union to counterbalance the effects of its accelerating economic decline in world affairs. The 2001 repudiation of the ABM treaty was part of the Bush administrations turn to war, including the illegal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, to dominate the Eurasian landmass.

The Democratic Party escalated this policy, launching wars in Libya and Syria while initiating a pivot to Asia to confront China in Barack Obamas first term. In his second term, together with its European allies, Obama backed a far-right coup in Ukraine that toppled a pro-Russian government and provoked an all-out military confrontation with Russia in Eastern Europe. Washington and its European allies have deployed tens of thousands of troops on the very borders of Russia.

The coup in Ukraine and the resulting escalation by Washington and the European imperialist powers in Eastern Europe set the world on course towards nuclear war. Amid the NATO military build-up against Russia, Washington first alleged in July 2014 that Moscow was developing a ground-launched cruise missile system violating the INF treaty. Recently, on October 2, US Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison took the extraordinary step of threatening to bomb Russia to take out these missiles, after again denouncing Russia for violating the INF treaty.

It is not Russian but US aggression that is driving Washingtons decision to scrap the INF treaty. In fact, powerful factions of the US military and foreign policy establishment have been campaigning for years to scrap the INF treatynot because of Russia, but to threaten China.

After Obama launched the pivot to Asia in 2011, Beijing sought to develop intermediate-range missiles capable of hitting US aircraft carriers and military bases in the Western Pacific, to deter Washington from using them to attack China. As the balance of power in that region shifted ever more in Chinas favor, voices in US ruling elite began to call for scrapping the INF treaty, using tensions with Russia as a cover for a policy designed to target China.

In 2014, the National Interest published an article, Chinas Missile Forces Are Growing: Is It Time to Modify the INF Treaty? It wrote that forward-based missile forces could be a partial solution to emerging operational problems in the Western Pacific. However, the INF treaty bans Washington and Moscow from having the type of missiles the Pentagon would deploy to the Western Pacific to target China. So, it added, How might Washington leverage current tensions with Moscow to improve its long-term military posture vis-a-vis Beijing? One option is to abrogate INF.

Admiral Harry Harris, who recently stepped down as commander of the US Pacific Fleet to become the US Ambassador to South Korea, became an aggressive proponent of renegotiating or scrapping the INF treaty. Last year, Harris said that he considered arms control problematic, as the INF treaty limits our ability to counter Chinese and other countries cruise missiles, land-based missiles.

Testifying to the US Senate this March, Harris made clear that scrapping the INF treaty was critical to trying to re-establish full US military dominance of the Pacific Ocean. We are at a disadvantage with regard to China today in the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that threaten our basing in the western Pacific and our ships, he said. We have no ground-based capability that can threaten China because of, among other things, our rigid adherence  to the INF treaty.

Washingtons repudiation of nuclear arms control as it seeks to maintain global military dominance is a warning to the working class in America and worldwide.

With the major powers pledged to spend massive sums on their arsenals of missiles and nuclear warheads, led by Washington, who pledged in 2014 to spend $1 trillion to modernize its nuclear arms, untold social resources are being squandered on creating conditions for a nuclear war. Governments internationally are determined that the costs of this insane policy are to be borne by workers, through austerity and attacks on living standards.

The construction of an anti-war movement based in the working class is a critical necessity, objectively posed by the rapid development of the danger of wars that could end in a nuclear conflagration.Under conditions of mounting social opposition and escalating plans for military conflict, the US political establishment is moving ever more brazenly to implement internet censorship.

On Saturday, the two principal newspapers of the political establishment, the New York Times and the Washington Post, published editorials demanding an intensification of political censorship on social media. The Times, in The Poison on Facebook and Twitter Is Still Spreading, cited a supposed proliferation of misinformation on social media, including homegrown campaigns spread[ing] partisan lies in the United States, to demand much more aggressive action.

The Times praises journalists (that is, itself) along with self-taught vigilantes for forcing social media companies to act to take down content. However, much more fundamental action is required, it concludes. [A]t this stage of the internets evolution, content moderation can no longer be reduced to individual postings viewed in isolation and out of context. The problem is systemic, currently manifested in the form of coordinated campaigns both foreign and homegrown.

The solution: Social media companies must internalize censorship procedures on a much more systematic level. The role that outsiders currently play, as consumer advocates and content screeners, can easily be filled in-house. The social media companies, that is, must themselves become the gatekeepers of information, as former Times editor Bill Keller once referred to his newspaper.

The Washington Post, for its part, warned of the supposed threat played by domestic disinformation. Twitter and Facebook are, the Post wrote, finally starting to articulate their responsibility not to facilitate manipulation, no matter who pulls the strings.

What is the domestic disinformation that Facebook and Twitter are fighting, with the full support of the Times and the Post? That question was answered positively earlier this month, when Facebook removed a series of popular left-wing media accounts, including organizations opposing war and police violence, in the name of fighting fake news.

The term fake news (or misinformation) has been introduced very deliberately and consciously into the vernacular of American and international politics as the catch-all justification for censorship. The media uses the term without ever explaining exactly what it means, hoping that the population will simply accept that it is something bad that must, of course, be blocked.

When most people think of the term fake news, they think of the headlines in supermarket tabloids about alien invasions and two-headed grandmothers giving birth to quintuplets. But when the New York Times and the leading US intelligence agencies use the term, they mean something entirely different: reporting that cuts across the efforts of the state to promote war and political viewpoints that challenge the establishment.

Included in this journalistic amalgam are such assertions as: The US is preparing for total war, that it organized the coup in Ukraine in 2014 in alliance with fascistic forces, that it has staged chemical weapons attacks in Syria to justify its campaign of regime change, that both parties in the US function as paid servants of the corporate and financial elitethis is all fake news. As for the fact that political operatives, including figures like Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, are conspiring with the establishment media to censor the internet under the guise of combatting fake newsthis, no doubt, is itself fake news.

In her memoir, Hillary Clintonwhose defeat in 2016 was the occasion for broadly introducing the term fake newsexplained that this fake news consists of true statements that served to discredit her in the public eye. As she put it, WikiLeaks... helped accelerate the phenomenon that eventually came to be known as fake news. There were wild tales spread about the terrible things I must have said behind closed doors and how as president I would be forever in the pocket of the shadowy bankers who had paid my speaking fees.

The only tales spread by WikiLeaks were the transcripts of Clintons paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, where she pledged to expand the influence of the rich in politics, and copies of emails by leading figures in the Democratic National Committee conspiring to rig the Democratic nomination contest in Clintons favor.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks publisher, is still paying the price for his role in this intolerable breach of the wall of media lies and propaganda. On Tuesday, Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs committee, penned a letter to Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, effectively blackmailing the whole country for continuing to shelter the dissident journalist and demanding that he be turned over for prosecution.

In March, the US special forces held a conference to discuss state censorship, whose proceedings were documented in a report by the Atlantic Council. It warned, Technology has democratized the ability for sub-state groups and individuals to broadcast a narrative with limited resources and virtually unlimited scope. By contrast, In the past, the general public had limited sources of information, which were managed by professional gatekeepers.

In other words, the rise of uncensored social media allowed small groups with ideas that correspond to those of the broader population to challenge the political narrative of vested interests on an equal footing, without the professional gatekeepers of the mainstream print and broadcast media.

A principal aim of the campaign for censorship is to restore these gatekeepers and to restrict the publics access to warnings of the imminent war danger.

Notably, when Google initiated a change in its page ranking algorithm last year in the name of fighting fake news, the WSWSs coverage of the threat of war was most dramatically affected. Search terms associated with the danger of world war that had previously returned the WSWS in the top 10 results no longer took visitors to the WSWS.

There is an adage, attributed to Senator Hiram Johnson when the US entered World War I, that the first casualty when war comes is truth. That saying applies today with one exception: Truth is being strangled in anticipation of war. And all in the name of combating fake news! We have truly entered the realm of Orwells 1984.

Nothing frightens the ruling class more than the prospect that the working class will be informed. The escalating campaign for war and censorship expresses the deep crisis confronting the ruling elite. Facing growing social opposition and a wave of working class struggle, the ruling elite sees in war and its accompanying attack on democratic rights the means to defend its rule through naked repression.On Wednesday, October 17, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leading Russian liberal oppositionist, was interviewed by Keith Gessen, editor of the n+1 magazine, in an event hosted by Columbia Universitys Harriman Institute for the Study of Eurasia, Russia and Eastern Europe. The event was a stark testimony to the advanced preparations for a US-backed color revolution in Russia, i.e., an imperialist-orchestrated and funded movement of a section of the oligarchy and upper middle class to topple the Putin regime, similar to those that have taken place in Ukraine and Georgia.

Vladimir Kara-Murza is one of the many shadowy figures of Russian politics who, while little known to most people inside or outside Russia, are playing a key role in directing and supporting the US anti-Russia policy and the course of the Russian pro-US liberal opposition. The son of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Sr., who was a major figure in the oligarch-controlled Russian media under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr. worked for many years as the right-hand man of Boris Nemtsov, one of Yeltsins key allies in the 1990s and a right-wing political opponent of Putin, who was assassinated in 2015 under murky circumstances.

Along with Nemtsov, Kara-Murza was an early backer of the US congressional passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which targets Russian oligarchs and officials who support the Putin regime and are accused of corruption and human rights abuses. He has lobbied for the adoption of similar legislation by governments throughout the world. Through this work, Kara-Murza also became close to the late John McCain, one of Washingtons foremost supporters of color revolutions throughout the territory of the former Soviet Union. In August, Kara-Murza served as a pallbearer at McCains funeral, along with former Vice President Joe Biden and the actor Warren Beatty.

Since 2014, Kara-Murza has worked for the Open Russia Foundation, which was founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who rose to become one of the most powerful and richest oligarchs of Russia during the 1990s and was imprisoned by Putin in 2003.

In short, Kara-Murza has been at the center of the operations for a color-revolution-type movement in Russia for years. And this is precisely what he was invited to speak on with the self-styled leftist and Russia expert Keith Gessen, founding editor of the n+1 magazine, one of the most popular magazines among pseudo-left circles. (Gessen also teaches at Columbia Universitys Journalism School and is the brother of Masha Gessen, who has been heavily involved in the anti-Putin media propaganda for many years.)

The event started with Keith Gessen asking Kara-Murza about the assassination of Boris Nemtsov which the latter, of course, attributed to the Kremlin. For most of the discussion, however, Kara-Murza detailed his involvement in the preparations for a color revolution in Russia.

Kara-Murza insisted that the history of Russia teaches us that big political changes in our country can start quickly and unexpectedly. He referred to both the 1905 Revolution and the February Revolution of 1917, which, as Kara-Murza pointed out, even took Lenin by surprise, and then the collapse of the USSR in three days in 1991. This is how things happen in Russia, he insisted, and the problem with this is that nobody is prepared. We [at the Open Russia Foundation] see it as our mission to begin those preparations for future change now. We cannot afford to not be ready again. Most of the things we do inside of Russia is targeted at preparing for this future transition.

The Open Russia Foundation, he continued, had 25 regional branches and a series of working groups which were already elaborating plans for political reforms and constitutional changes for the post-Putin period. Furthermore, they were focusing on work with the new generation, the people who will be in charge of Russia through training and education programs. Lastly, they were doing international work, which he himself was in charge of, which included outreach directed, again, at preparing the future transition.

When later asked by an audience member how he saw the future of Russia in the next few decades, he declared that this change would come not within the next few decades, but within the next few years.

When he was asked from the audience whether the latest pension reform, which is opposed by over 90 percent of the population, could trigger the kind of sudden change he was expecting, Kara-Murza said: It could but it doesnt have to. There is always the argument that its [going to be] something of a socio-economic nature. Actually, if we look at the two decades of Putin, the peak of the protests was in December 2011 when the middle class was booming. It was about dignity, it had nothing do to with social issues.  The trigger will not be necessarily economic.

He continued, The only really shaky point [for Putin] was when so many people felt insulted that the government was wiping its feet over them. I think its going to be something like that. A color revolution of dignity, like the events in Ukraine in 2014. In other words, what Kara-Murza and the Open Russia Foundation are working on is the promotion of a right-wing middle-class movement similar to the Maidan in Ukraine, which would provide the basis for a coup to topple the current government.

The key figures and mechanisms for such a color revolution were also addressed at some length. Keith Gessen asked how Kara-Murza viewed the campaign of the blogger Alexei Navalny, who, as the WSWS has written, is a far-right, pro-US figure who cloaks his right-wing program behind murky phrases about corruption. Just how fraudulent and politically calculated this focus is became clear in the discussion when Keith Gessen asked whether Navalnys focus on corruption as the center of his political platform was a winning platform. Kara-Murza responded: Yes, it is. Corruption is such a widely understandable issue. Its an issue that everybody is aware of.

In the discussion, a graduate student from Harriman asked whether the Open Russia Foundation had a particular road map for what to do when the sudden event Kara-Murza expected actually occurred. Kara-Murza replied: If there were a model, it would be something like the Polish roundtable [of 1989]. The way we want a transition to happen in Russia is peaceful and smooth. We don't want a violent revolution. Russia has had enough revolutions. The problem is that the people who are in power today are doing everything for a revolution to occur.

Then, he went into the figures who would be included in such a roundtable. Of course, Boris Nemtsov would have been at the roundtable, but, he assured his audience, there were many others. The figures he named were: Yevgeni Roizman, the mayor of Yekaterinburg, who is a notorious far-right-winger, with deep ties to the local mafia. In Russia, he became known above all through his alleged drug relief program, which has involved heavy physical abuse of drug addicts.

He also named Galina Shirshina, a member of the liberal opposition party Yabloko (which Nemtsov led until his assassination) as well as Lev Shlosberg, a local politician in Pskov who is also a leading member of Yabloko. Finally, Kara-Murza named Dmitri Gudkov, who is heading the opposition Party of Changes with Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putins mentor Anatoly Sobchak, who ran as a presidential candidate this year.

Navalny and Khodorkovsky would obviously also be at the roundtable, Kara-Murza added. When Gessen asked What about the Communists? Kara-Murza said that Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Stalinist and National Bolshevik Left Front, may also hope for a seat at the roundtable. We have very different views, but we have a good personal relationship. Hes a decent human being, politically and on a human level.

Then, he added, there are also many nationalists who are not controlled by the Kremlin and who could join the roundtable. Throughout the event, Kara-Murza repeated that he and his allies were the true patriots and Russian nationalists, as opposed to Putin and the oligarchs and officials around him. I just dont want to bore everyone with a long list of names, he said, as he concluded his enumeration of prospective of roundtable participants.

Like all Russian liberal oppositionists, Kara-Murza makes a hue and cry about rigged elections under Putin. Yet at no point did he even mention the possibility of an election before or after such a roundtable, the participants of which have most evidently already been discussed and set.

There could hardly be a more open statement about the complicity of the so called opposition forces in Russian in a premeditated, US-backed plot to overthrow the Putin regime and install another, more pro-US, right-wing government in its place.

Kara-Murza speaks for a section of the oligarchy which not only seeks to gain control over the social and economic wealth of Russia, but also fears that a continuation of the Putin regime will threaten not only Russias geopolitical position, but also social revolution. They see their main goal in making sure that a reshuffling within the oligarchy and upper middle class takes place, to assure both a reorientation of Russian foreign policy more directly in line with the interests of imperialism, and the ongoing suppression of the working class.

The complete indifference toward the implications of these policies for the masses of working people in Russia was at full display when Kara-Murza defended the process of capitalist restoration and the 1990s as time when Russia was actually make headway on the world stage: Russia was included in the G8 and finally internationally recognized, Kara-Murza stressed.

He contemptuously dismissed any criticism of the 1990s by referring to this decade as the supposedly horrible 90s. The fact that the Russian economy experienced the worst collapse recorded in modern history for peacetime; that life expectancy plummeted, that hundreds of thousands committed suicide and were driven into substance abuse and that workers were going without pay for months and years, all of this is evidently of no concern to him.

Underlining the recklessness of the whole operation, the question of the potential consequences of a color revolution was not even raised. But anyone who looks at the past three decades of US foreign policy knows where this type of intervention of leads: civil war, ethnic strife, dictatorial regimes, and decades of economic, social and economic crisis. In the case of Russia, a color revolution would most likely mean the violent break-up of the Russian Federationmany opposition leaders in fact argue for different borders of Russia. It would, moreover, raise the very immediate danger of a nuclear catastrophe: what if a section of the military resorts to the vast nuclear arsenal of Russia to defend its interests? And what will the US military and NATO do if a color revolution underway in Russia suddenly threatens to go astray? Will they intervene directly militarily?

The involvement of Keith Gessen in this dubious event is revealing. At no point did he raise something akin to a critical question. His role was nothing but to ask polite questions and provide Kara-Murza with a platform. A self-styled leftist, Gessen has translated and published the writings of Kirill Medvedev, a leading figure in the Russian Socialist Movement (RSM), a Pabloite formation in Russia. This year, he published a novel A Terrible Country in which he, yet again, promotes the Russian pseudo-left. In 2014, the RSM fully backed the far-right coup in Kiev. In Russia itself, the RSM has long shifted toward full support for Alexei Navalnys right-wing anti-corruption campaign, ignoring or dismissing his history of support for Russian fascism and racism. The role of Gessen in this event is emblematic of the role of these forces as handmaidens US and European imperialism.

It was befitting for Columbia Universitys Harriman Institute to host this event: the first interdisciplinary Russia institute to be formed after the beginning of the Cold War, it has historically been associated with US imperialist plotting against first the Soviet Union and then Russia. To this day, the Harriman Institute, which is a non-profit, functions primarily as a think tank as well as an educational and recruiting center for Washingtons foreign policy establishment and the CIA.

For much of its existence, the Harriman Institute was dominated by the figure and work of Zbigniew Brzezinski who, for over half a century, played a central role in elaborating the world strategy and justifying the war crimes of US imperialism. One of Brzezinskis political trademarks was his advocacy for fostering political opposition and insurrections in the Soviet Union, to undermine the regime and thus fight what he saw as one of the USs main competitors for the control of Eurasia. The color revolution strategy of US imperialism since 1991 stands in precisely this tradition. Now as then, far-right forces within the elites and fake left tendencies are the props of imperialism on the ground.

Events like the one at Columbia reveal much about the state of world politics. Color revolutions which will impact the lives of hundreds of millions and threaten civil and all-out nuclear war, are being discussed and plotted behind the exclusive doors of an Ivy League institution with an audience of some 50 people, most of whom are graduate students and professors who, one may assume, either already are on the payroll of the CIA and the State Department or seeking to get there.

The Putin regime offers no alternative to these imperialist machinations. Like the sections of the oligarchy that Kara-Murza speaks for, Putin and his cronies have emerged out of and enriched themselves on the basis of the destruction of the Soviet Union which was carried by the Stalinist bureaucracy hand-in-gloves with imperialism. It considers not imperialism, but the Russian working class to be its main enemy, and, hence, responds to every imperialist provocation is a response of desperate attempts to find a deal with imperialism, largely behind closed doors, and the promotion of nationalism and militarism at home.

This sinister event is a warning to the international working class about the advanced preparations for the next step in the efforts of US imperialism to topple the Putin regime and bring the resources of Russia under its direct control: it is high time for workers both in the US and in Russia to intervene in politics on an independent basis to put an end to these dangerous conspiracies of imperialism through the struggle for socialism.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Authorities in Florida say Hurricane Michael has killed at least 29 people in the state, bringing the overall death toll to 39.

Florida Emergency Management Division spokesman Alberto Moscoso says the state toll stood at 29 on Monday afternoon. Ten deaths have been reported in other states.

The latest update in Florida adds four deaths from the hardest-hit coastal Bay County, bringing the total there to 19. Gulf County had 3 deaths, Gadsden and Jackson counties each had two deaths, and Clay, Liberty and Calhoun counties each had one death. State emergency management officials tally storm-related deaths based on rulings from district medical examiners.

Michael slammed into Florida's Panhandle with 155 mph (250 kph) winds on Oct. 10, and also affected Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Officials: Michael killed at least 20 in Florida

The Latest on Hurricane Michael (all times local):

Authorities in Florida say Hurricane Michael has killed at least 20 people, bringing the overall death toll to 30.

Michael, which slammed into Florida's Panhandle with 155 mph (250 kph) winds on Oct. 10, retained hurricane-force winds as far inland as southern Georgia, and also affected the Carolinas and Virginia. Six deaths were reported in Virginia, mostly from flash flooding. North Carolina had three deaths, and Georgia had one.

Florida Emergency Management Division spokesman Alberto Moscoso says the state toll stood at 17 on Thursday morning. It included an additional death confirmed in Liberty County. Those numbers come from fatalities confirmed as storm-related by district medical examiners, and include 12 deaths from the hardest-hit Bay County.

Additionally, three more deaths have been confirmed as storm-related to bring Bay County's total to 15 deaths, according to Whit Majors, chief investigator for the district medical examiner's office.

Majors says those deaths were reported to state emergency management officials. It wasn't immediately clear why they were not yet added to the statewide tally.

_______

With stunned faces and tears, residents of hard-hit Mexico Beach returned home for the first time Wednesday about a week after Hurricane Michael hit to find pieces of their lives scattered across the sand and a community altered.

Nancy Register sobbed uncontrollably after finding no trace of the large camper where she'd lived with her husband. She was particularly distraught over the loss of an old, black-and-white photo of her mother, who died of cancer.

Husband Taylor Register said he found nothing but a stool that he uses for cutting his hair, a hose and a keepsake rock that was given to him by a friend 40 years ago.

"That's my belongings," he said, pointing to a small pile beside his red pickup truck. Choking up, he said: "I appreciate God humbling me. Everybody needs it."

Just up the road, tears ran down Lanie Eden's face as she and husband Ron Eden sifted through sand in search of items they left before evacuating from the small beach house they've rented each October for years. They didn't find much - just a large pack of toilet paper that somehow stayed dry and a son's camp chair.

The Edens, who are from Fort Knox, Kentucky, and are temporarily staying in Alabama, were stunned to see mountains of debris and countless destroyed buildings as they drove into town for the first time. In a state of condominium towers, Mexico Beach was one of the few remaining places with small houses and a 1950s feel.

"Basically, we lost 'old Florida.' It's all gone," said Lanie Eden.

Residents among the community of about 1,200 people who rode out the storm at home have been in Mexico Beach since Michael hit. But officials used the city's Facebook page to tell others to stay away for a week after the Category 4 storm ravaged the beach town with 155 mph (250 kph) winds and a strong storm surge.

State emergency management officials said some 124,500 customers across the Panhandle were still without power Wednesday morning and 1,157 remained in shelters.

In Bay County, home to Mexico Beach and Panama City, more than half of the households and businesses remained without electricity. Inland, in Calhoun County, 98 percent of the customers didn't have power Wednesday morning, according to the emergency management website. And in Jackson County, which borders Alabama and Georgia, about 83 percent were without power.

In the meantime, in many areas devastated by the hurricane, law enforcement officials are battling looting of homes and businesses.

Bay County Sheriff's Maj. Jimmy Stanford said deputies have arrested about 10 looters each night since the storm hit. In some parts of the county, residents have spray-painted signs warning that "looters will be shot."

Panama City resident Wes Allen said looters have been a constant problem at the badly damaged motel where he is staying with his wife and three children. Residents have formed a nighttime patrol to keep an eye out for thieves.

"We've got looters breaking in and stealing whatever they can," he said. Allen said he hasn't reported the thefts to police because authorities seem so busy with other things.

Often the looters have been armed, Stanford said.

"Most of our officers lost their homes, have been working 16- to 18-hour shifts with no sleep, no shower, and now they're encountering armed individuals," he said. "It's a stressful time for everyone in Bay County."

The storm killed at least 16 people in Florida, most of them in the coastal county that took a direct hit from the storm, state emergency authorities announced Tuesday. That's in addition to at least 10 deaths in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

The state's tally did not provide details of how the victims' deaths were storm-related, and The Associated Press was not immediately able to confirm those details for all of them. The AP's tally of deaths, in which authorities have confirmed details of how people died, stood at eight in Florida, and 18 overall including other states.

In Mexico Beach, what had been a town of about 1,200, residents don't expect power or anything else anytime soon.

Carlton Hundley, 25, returned to the house he rented with his girlfriend Connie Huff to find nothing but a long pile of shattered wood. What few possessions they found, including one of his shoes, were scattered across the ground.

"I knew it was bad, I'd already seen the pictures. But it's a lot more than I thought," he said.

Roxie Cline, 65, was overcome with emotion as she tried to describe the destruction in Mexico Beach, where she and her husband had lived for three years.

"I can't, I can't," she said, tearing up. "It's devastating. You lose everything. Everybody has."

___

Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida, and Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - On Sunday afternoon, people rallied outside the historic Capitol in Tallahassee to voice their opposition of police brutality.

Groups including Students for a Democratic Society and the Tallahassee Community Action Network say they want to see more officers held accountable when it comes to police-involved crime.

Activists said they demand justice for all victims and that officers should go to jail for shooting and killing civilians.

Activists also said the implementation of a Civilian Police Accountability Council would hold officers accountable, and help regulate how policing happens in our own communities.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Floridians are just a couple of weeks away from election day, but for those of you looking to get it out of the way, early voting starts Monday.

WTXL ABC 27's Jada Williams was live Monday morning at one of the polling locations with a breakdown of everything you need to know.

For the Florida Voters ready to send off their ballot, starting Monday morning, there will be several locations in Leon county to do so:

Leon County Courthouse

Donald L Tucker Civic Center (East Entrance)

Supervisor of Elections Office

Dr BL Perry Jr Branch Library

Eastside Branch Library

Jane G. Sauls Fort Braden Branch Library

Lake Jackson Community Center

Northeast Branch Library

Woodville Community Center

To vote, you'll have to bring in a valid photo ID or request a provisional ballot.

This is the first time early voting is happening on a college campus in 4 years.

Campuses across town are hosting events to get students motivated to go out and cast their ballots.

Early voting runs from today until Sunday, November 4.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A former property manager at University Green Apartments has been arrested, accused of stealing over $21,000 worth of tenants' rent money for herself.

Xianna Pagan, 27, was the property manager at University Green Apartments when she stole and cashed 55 money orders valued at $21,403, according to a probable cause document.

On Jan. 29, 2018, the owner of the company that operates the apartments told the investigator about the altered money order that prompted the investigation.

The company's bookkeeper found that in December 2017 a tenant tendered a $650 money order that Pagan's name was added to as an alternate payee, the court document said. That money order was cashed at Ace Cash Express at 2011 North Monroe Street.

Then, checking into the rent payments from University Green, the bookkeeper and the owner of the company found more discrepancies concerning rent payments.

Pagan's signature on the money orders was found to be similar to her "known signature from her Florida driver license," a Leon County Sheriff's Office investigator wrote.

Several tenants also told the investigator they did not add the name "Xianna Pagan" to their rent payments.

In a letter of resignation sent by email, Pagan "admitted to taking the 'missing money orders from December,'" the court document said.

"I would like to ask that my vacation time and sick time be applied to my last check and for you to keep my final check and apply it to the missing payments for December," the court document said. "I would like to thank you for the opportunity to work with this company and I do apologize for the troubles that I have put you through."

Speaking with the investigator by phone, Pagan agreed to meet with the investigator in April but did not show up for the interview, court documents said. Other attempts to contact her by telephone were unsuccessful.

Pagan was arrested for passing forged/altered instruments, grand theft of $20,000 less than $100,000 and committing fraud to obtain property under $20,000.

She was booked into the Leon County Detention Center on Friday and released after two days in jail on a $10,000 bond.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Three Tallahassee artists are giving kids staying at a hurricane shelter a chance to unwind.

WTXL ABC 27's Jada Williams was live Monday morning to show us how.

Some local artists are showing the power of healing through art to not only the kids, but also the families currently staying in the Blountstown High School Emergency Shelter.

On a normal day, there's not much for Hurricane Michael evacuees to do at the Blountstown High School shelter.

So imagine their surprise to see three artists set up paints, brushes, canvases and then welcome the children to come over and get creative.

"It's not going to rebuild their houses," said Jim Russell. "It's not going to get the electricity flowing or the water running, but if it can give people a source of strength to take a break from all of the stress, that's what I hope I accomplish for them."

Russell, Walter Abbott and Kollet Probst packed up their supplies and made the trip from Tallahassee to Blountstown to offer a mental break for the people living in the shelter.

"They're happy to see us come," Probst said. "It's a break for them, to know that there's something for the kids to do on this beautiful day. A lot has happened so everyone is finding some excitement in this."

The children immediately took to the canvasses to unleash their creativity.

Juelz Colon said that "It helps to let you know that even in rough times, you can do anything you want to help."

Coming out and painting while staying in the shelter is providing a piece of mind not only for the children, but also the parents while they await what happens next. But most importantly, they're showing that they're Florida Strong."

Qua'Nasia Ingram, an evacuee: "It gives us something to do. It takes our mind off of the shelter and the hurricane and everything that happened."

That's exactly what the three artists were looking to accomplish.

"That's why I like to do it and I'm glad that I'm here," Abbott said. "It helps to bring the community together and hopefully distract them from what happened."

It could take weeks for some of these families to leave the shelter, but at least these kids had a chance to have fun despite everything around them.

The artists will auction off the work they painted in Blountstown.

The money will be used to help that community rebuild.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Early voting in the Sunshine State starts Monay.

As Floridians head to the polls, they'll be deciding on more than just candidates.

Twelve amendments are on the ballot. Here's a closer look at each one.

Every 20 years, Floridians get the chance to revise the state constitution.

2018 is one of those years, with several issues to consider.

Amendment 1 would give some homeowners a tax break, though local governments would lose more than $600 million a year.

Amendment 2 would put a permanent cap on tax increases for non-homestead properties -- like apartments and vacation homes.

Amendment 3 would give voters control of gambling.

Amendment 4 would restore voting rights for most people with prior felony convictions that have finished their sentences.

Amendment 5 would require a two-thirds vote of the Florida legislature in order to impose or raise state taxes.

Amendment 6 would expand victims' rights in the Constitution. It would also raise the mandatory retirement age for judges.

Amendment 7 would require the state to pay *death benefits* to families of first responders and members of the military.

It also would require a "supermajority vote" for public universities to impose or raise fees.

The Florida Supreme Court removed Amendment 8.

Amendment 9 would ban offshore drilling for oil and gas. It would also put strong restrictions on *vaping* indoors.

Amendment 10 has a lot of elements. It would create an Office of Domestic Security and Counterterrorism within the FDLE. It would also mandate a state department for veterans' affairs.

The amendment would require elections for five county-wide offices listed in the Constitution - and it would establish the start of session in even-numbered years.

Amendment 11 would repeal a ban on non-citizens owning property. It would also get rid of the requirement to prosecute suspects in crimes under the provisions of the law they're accused of breaking -- even if that law has been changed.

Amendment 12 would expand ethics rules for public officials when it comes to lobbying.

And Amendment 13 would ban dog racing.U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Elko Regional Airport in Elko, Nevada, U.S., October 20, 2018. (REUTERS PHOTO)

MOSCOW, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian officials said Sunday that the U.S. statement on its intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) could be seen as "blackmail," warning that cancelling the treaty would be very dangerous.

Head of the Russian Federation Council's International Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev said that the INF Treaty stipulates a unilateral pullout is only possible under "exceptional circumstances" with their substantiation within six months.

"So far, no formal steps have been taken in this regard, which gives grounds to consider (U.S. President Donald) Trump's statement as an attempt of continuing blackmail rather than an accomplished act of law," Kosachev said on Facebook.

On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement.

Kosachev warned that Washington's possible withdrawal from the treaty might cause its Western allies to take the same path, which could trigger a war.

"The situation is critical, and the threats to peace are getting a particular shape," he said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said that the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty would be a very dangerous step, and condemned by the international community.

"Apparently, inability and unwillingness to come to terms with us on a sound foundation push certain forces in Washington to encourage the country's leadership to make a decision on a formal withdrawal from the treaty," he said.

Russia expects that U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who is arriving in Moscow on Sunday, will clarify Washington's stance on this matter, Ryabkov said.

The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

Moscow and Washington have been accusing each other of violating the arms control agreement in recent years amid increasing tensions between the two countries.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 01:21:12|Editor: yan

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by Murad Abdu

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of forcibly displaced Yemenis started preparing themselves for winter in huts and tents amid difficult living conditions as well as lack of humanitarian assistance in the war-torn Arab country.

On the outskirts of the southern port city of Aden, a large number of displaced people who fled war-torn areas in the Red Sea coastal city of Hodeidah are struggling to stay alive in a desert area without basic services such as water and electricity.

Dozens of displaced people living in huts outside Aden sent urgent appeals for support from the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and other humanitarian organizations to confront the upcoming cold months.

Adeeb Omar, a displaced civilian from Hodeidah, told Xinhua that new difficulties will emerge for thousands of displaced people during winter, as storms and cold have just started to hit their huts.

"Winter will be an unwelcome visitor because we are unable to confront cold nights in a desert area free from basic living means," Omar said.

"The already hungry children and the elderly people who barely survived during the past period" will be the most vulnerable, he added.

Um Khaled, mother of three children, made the same appeals.

"We hope the new prime minister and his government members will not leave us alone in this desert area," Khaled said.

"Without assistance many destitute families won't be able to stay alive during this winter season," she added.

Bashir Alwai, a local humanitarian officer, said cooperation between local and international organizations are a necessary step to reduce the suffering of displaced people living near Aden.

"The international organizations have the adequate financial sources and can bring a real difference in the humanitarian field particularly during this difficult time," Alwai said.

"Local charities can also help in distributing heating devices, warm clothes and sufficient meals for displaced people," he added.

Meanwhile, a source from the internationally-backed government based in Aden told Xinhua that new campaigns will be launched in the next few days to distribute essential humanitarian aid for displacement camps.

"The plans were already discussed and all camps located in the government-controlled areas will receive sufficient support in the next days," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The government source also urged the United Nations to coordinate with local authorities in Aden and other neighboring main cities.

Yemen has been locked into a civil war since Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa, in 2014.

Saudi Arabia, along with several other Arab countries, intervened militarily and began pounding the Houthi-controlled Sanaa in March 2015 in response to an official request from Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to protect his country.

The internal military conflict between Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government recently entered its fourth year, aggravating the suffering of Yemenis and deepening the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Three quarters of the Yemeni population, or more than 22 million people, including 8.4 million who struggle to find their next meal, urgently need humanitarian assistance.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 02:36:21|Editor: yan

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SWEIDA, Syria, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Two women who were recently freed from the captivity of Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria's southern province of Sweida hoped to see all remaining hostages released.

The two women, along with four children, were the first batch to be released on Saturday after more than 80 days of captivity in the IS-held pocket in the desert of the eastern countryside of Sweida.

Reports said 30 people were hustled from their homes in the town of Shbeki during a surprise IS attack before daybreak on July 25.

Three of the hostages lost their lives. One woman died of her tough medical condition. A 19-year-old young man and a 25-year-old woman were killed by the IS.

The two released women described tough living conditions in the caves of the Tulol al-Safa hills, the last IS-held area in Sweida.

On the day of kidnapping, all hostages had to walk for 12 hours to reach the destination of captivity, where they had to live in tents inside caves of Tulol al-Safa hills, they said.

Rasmiyeh Abu Ammar, one of the two released women, said her happiness is not complete as the rest of the hostages are yet to be released.

"I wish for the release of the other hostages because the situation is so hard. All of them are suffering from the tough situation," she told Xinhua.

The woman, however, doesn't know that her 19-year-old son, Muhannad, was killed by the IS.

"I am happy now but my happiness is not complete because my son didn't come with me and I didn't see him," Rasmiyeh said.

Her husband, Thuqan Abu Ammar, who suffered both the loss of his son and the kidnapping of his wife, said his wife will need time to recover.

The other woman, Abeer Shilgheen, told Xinhua that she clung to hope during her captivity despite desperation.

"We suffered as we were staying in caves. As winter approached, we had become so tired especially in the last two weeks ahead of our release," she said.

Her husband, Mulhem Jibai, said his happiness is beyond description when his wife and four children came back.

"I am a father and I remained in pain for 85 days. I didn't know what was going on with them and their fate was unknown," the man said in an on-and-off voice.

According to official SANA news agency, the rest of the hostages should be released soon, as the Syrian army has tightened the siege around Tulol al-Safa hills after the release of the first batch.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the release of the hostages comes in accordance with a Russia-backed deal.

According to the London-based watchdog, IS militants demanded the release of 60 women from government jails as well as an unidentified number from the prisons of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria.

The abduction case has created tension in Sweida, which has remained relatively calm during Syria's more than seven year war.

It's not yet clear whether the IS militants will be allowed to leave the desert region in Sweida under the Russia-backed deal.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 03:46:34|Editor: yan

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BELGRADE, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- The 63rd International Belgrade Book Fair opened here on Sunday under the slogan "The Joy of Reading", providing a variety for thousands of booklovers to pick from and a platform for the exchange among writers of different countries.

The annual fair, which this year takes place from Oct.21 to 28 with 1,000 exhibitors from around 20 countries, is a place where some of the most popular domestic writers meet their colleagues from other countries and publishers who promote their new publications, books and authors, while hundreds of thousands of visitors roam in the halls to buy books at discount rates.

This year's special guest country is Morocco whose stand of some 100 square meters decorated in their traditional style presents more than 1,000 books of prominent national publishers.

The fair was opened by speeches of Moroccan and Serbian authors, Abdellah Boussouf and Matija Beckovic, in front of culture ministers of the two countries, Mohamed Laaraj and Vladan Vukosavljevic, and hundreds of writers, publishers and booklovers.

Boussouf, also a Moroccan historian, said that the fair will be a chance for the delegation of his country to get to know aspects of Serbian heritage, which will also represent "a contribution towards the development of cooperation between writers and culture stakeholders in both countries and bringing the two peoples closer".

Beckovic pointed out that the book fair is an important date in the calendar of Serbian people and its culture, and that its international character confirms that "culture cannot exist in isolation and without contact with other cultures, and although, of course, there are older, more famous and richer book fairs in the world, neither of them can make one feel so welcome and where one can meet more people that like to read".

Among the participating publishers are those from China, Russia, the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries.

Visitors to the Chinese stand took interest in the offer of thematic books, children's books, traditional culture, Chinese literature, humanity and social sciences and language learning from three publishers including China Architecture and Building Press, The Commercial Press Ltd., and Heilongjiang Publishing & Media Co. Ltd., under the organization of China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Corporation.

Representatives of the Chinese publishing companies also donated books to the Confucius institute in Belgrade.

Organizers told Xinhua that these books show the achievements of China since its reforms and opening up in the areas of politics, economy, culture and society and "are an important window for Serbian readers to get to know Chinese culture and the development of modern China".

Programs of the fair also include discussions about books, literature theory and dictionaries.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 07:20:09|Editor: Liangyu

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A couple take care of their baby in their new house in Xia'an Village of Quyang County, north China's Hebei Province, Oct. 20, 2018. Due to harsh environmental conditions, Xia'an has long been a less developed village in Hebei. From 2016 to 2017, a relocation program had been carried out to build houses in better-off places for poverty alleviation purposes. Many villagers have moved into their new houses since the completion of the program in July 2017. (Xinhua/Qin Qing)Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 07:21:18|Editor: mmm

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Director of World Forum Programme (WFP) Center of Excellence Against Hunger Daniel Balaban delivers a speech at the 20th Annual Global Child Nutrition Forum in Tunis, Tunisia, Oct. 21, 2018. Over 300 participants attended the forum to discuss child nutrition issues. (Xinhua/Adele Ezzine)Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 07:27:11|Editor: Yamei

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By Julia Pierrepont III

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- The 2018 fourth edition of the China Onscreen Biennial kicked off Friday night at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles to a mixed capacity crowd of film-lovers, scholars, and students, both American and Chinese.

"I'm interested in Chinese filmmakers - they have a unique voice and lots to say," said Scott, a UCLA film student attending the Biennial.

The Biennial was launched in 2012 to redress the lack of quality Chinese cinema in the U.S. and to promote U.S.-China dialogue and greater cross-cultural understanding through the art of the moving image.

"What better stage than Los Angeles to bring together a rich array of Chinese film, to celebrate artistry, and mutual cultural understanding in the city where filmmaking is such an integral part of our lives," explains COB's Artistic Director, Cheng-Sim Lim.

Heralded as part film festival, part film series, and part film tour, the unique event is LA' s preeminent showcase of the best in current and iconic Chinese cinema.

To align their organizational policies with their goals, the Biennial adopted a unique team-curatorial approach, eliciting recommendations from such diverse, high profile partner institutions as, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), The Film at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre), the Asia Society Southern California, The AFI Fest, and the Asia World Film Festival.

Their grand experiment has paid off handsomely, resulting in a stellar showcase of exceptional Chinese works - some drawn from the top ranks of existing Chinese filmmakers with a handful of breakout newbies, as well as other artists and formats.

"This year we have not only a selection of the best new short and feature films from china, but an accompanying array of music, arts, conversations and celebrations all curated with care by an extraordinary team of programmers," Paul Malcolm, programmer at UCLA' s renowned Film and Television Archive told Xinhua Saturday.

Opening night unveiled the West Coast premier of Bi Gan's haunting "Long Day's Journey Into Night," a China-France co-production which world-premiered in May in Cannes's high profile Un Certain Regard section. It's being released in North America by Kino Lorber.

Well-written, with startlingly-fresh, uniquely-crafted scenes and stunning cinematography, Gan's sophomore film pulls viewers into an evocative, labrynthian dreamscape reminiscent of such directorial greats as Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Fellini, Scorsese, and Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad," but which he makes uniquely his own.

The brooding protagonist, played intensely by Huang Jue, sets out to track-down a lost love, played compellingly by Tang Wei, but ends up trapped in an oneiric maze complete with karaoke-caroling king-pins, smart-ass urchins, and tantalizing glimpses of the love that could have been.

A convincing star-turn by the iconic Taiwanese-born Silvia Chang and Gan's tour-de-force, 59-minute single-take sequence in 3D that literally forces the audience into drifter Luo Hongwu's dreamscape are icing on the cake.

Artistic Director Lim points out, "Bi Gan is a poet. Maybe it takes a poet who didn't go to film school to upend our schooled associations, to audaciously propose the camera as a devise to explore time and editing as a way to imagine space."

She continued, "His dream-state may be closer to reality than what we call reality." She encouraged viewers as they watch to "forget clinging to the construct of plot or, as the Buddhists might say, the Self."

But not everyone was mesmerized. One young Chinese film student, Sha Zhang, dismissed the film in an interview with Xinhua as, "derivative of other great directors."

He felt Gan's use of well-known actors and "his juxtaposition of stylized, poetic dialogue with gritty, Tarantino-type scenes made the film feel inauthentic and contrived."

This year's China Onscreen Biennial's "Best of" showcase also includes first-time director, Yang Mingming's, more personal dramedy, "Girls Always Happy," which highlights the love-hate emotional yoyo that governs many mother-daughter relationships.

"It's a relationship I understand," Yang revealed to Xinhua.

"But in my own culture and country. I'm not sure of anywhere else," she explained, adding that she thought she'd have to stay in the U.S. for at least years to get a sense of how similar relationships worked here.

COB's Artist-in-Residence program will feature the renowned, Jia Zhangke, one of China's more famous and prolific sixth generation directors and the winner of the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award.

Many of his seminal works will be screened in LA, including "Still Life," "Ash is Purest White," "A Touch of Sin," "Xiao Wu," "Platform," "The World," and "Revive."

"We're thrilled to present the most expansive and culturally significant selection of films in the history of our event," said Cheng-Sim Lim.

The bicoastal event will run from Oct. 19 through Nov. 11 in LA, screening at multiple venues across the city, then travel to Washington D.C. from Nov. 2 to 11, and wrap up in New York on Dec. 2.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 08:07:15|Editor: mmm

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NEW YORK, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- A concert featuring several remarkable events in Chinese history was held Sunday in Lincoln Center, New York City.

Starting from 3 p.m., the two-hour concert began with the symphony "Humen 1839." Jointly composed by Pulitzer Prize-winning Chinese composer Zhou Long and the highly accomplished violinist and composer Chen Yi, the work is a musical portrait of the heroic effort to confiscate and burn imported opium.

The concert also highlighted Chinese composer Ye Xiaogang's "My faraway Nanjing" for cello and orchestra, and composer Tony Fok and writer Su Wei's joint work "Ask the sky and the earth".

The whole program confronts three significant events in Chinese history: the first Opium War of 1839-42, the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, and what is now known as the "sent-down youth" movement during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.

The performance won thunderous applause. "The music is beautiful and the percussion is impressive," Suzanne Mark, a New York resident told Xinhua, adding that this kind of Chinese history-themed melody helped her understand more about Chinese culture.

The event was part of the 2018 China Now Music Festival presented by the U.S.-China Music Institute of Bard College Conservatory of Music in collaboration with Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijing. It is dedicated to promoting an understanding and appreciation of music from contemporary China through an annual series of concerts and academic activities, according to the institute director Jindong Cai.

"Chinese composers all have the strong sense of responsibility with the society. They always want to communicate with the society through music, so this concert mainly reflects how Chinese composers have looked into the past," said Cai during the preconcert lecture on Sunday.

The inaugural season of the China Now Music Festival is under way in New York from Oct. 19 to Oct. 22, with theme "Facing the Past, Looking to the Future: Chinese Composers in the 21st Century."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 08:12:15|Editor: mmm

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ISLAMABAD, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least 19 people were killed and over 40 others injured in a head-on collision between two passengers buses in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province Sunday night, police and local media said.

According to reports, the accident happened at Multan road near the Ghazi Ghat area of Dera Ghazi Khan, a district in Punjab province.

One of the passenger buses was completely destroyed in the accident, reported local TV channel ARY News, adding that the bodies of the dead and injured were retrieved after cutting parts of the ill-fated buses.

Following the incident, rescuers, police and local people rushed to the site and shifted the bodies and injured to a hospital. A hospital official said that the death toll might further rise as several injured were in critical condition.

Police officials in the area said the accident happened due to over-speeding and negligence of the bus driver, adding that a case has been registered against the driver for the negligence.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has expressed grief and sorrow over the loss of lives in the tragic incident. He also directed hospital authorities to provide the best medical treatment to the injured passengers.

According to official data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, around 9,000 road accidents are reported every year since 2011, killing more than 4,500 people on average annually.

Traffic police said that 90 percent of the accidents in Pakistan are caused merely by human error.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 08:47:27|Editor: mmm

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CANBERRA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has come under fire from the governing Liberal Party for failing to campaign for the party in a key by-election.

The future of the Liberal-National Party Coalition (LNP) government has been cast into doubt after it lost its majority in the House of Representatives in Saturday's by-election in Turnbull's former seat of Wentworth.

Independent Kerryn Phelps claimed victory over Liberal candidate Dave Sharma after a 19-percent vote swing against the government, the largest swing in a by-election since 1992, delivered her a narrow victory.

The by-election was triggered when Turnbull resigned from the parliament after he was deposed as PM by the Liberal Party in August with Scott Morrison installed as leader.

Turnbull did not campaign in Wentworth despite Sharma personally asking the former PM for a public endorsement, instead remaining in the United States on holiday.

Nick Greiner, president of the Liberal Party, accused Turnbull of being "precious," saying that his intervention could have changed the result.

"There are understandable emotions behind him becoming precious, but he could have sent out a tweet that said 'Sharma is the best candidate and you should vote for him'," Greiner said.

Alex Turnbull, Malcolm's son, was vocal on social media campaigning against the LNP in his father's former seat, citing the LNP's inaction on climate policy as a key reason to vote for Phelps.

Morrison refused to buy in to the idea that an endorsement from Turnbull could have saved his majority, saying that was for "others to judge."

However, Sharma said public support from Turnbull would have been "helpful."

"I was in touch with him regularly through the campaign and, look whatever he was willing to provide was helpful," he told Sky News Australia.

"Whatever more he would have been willing to provide would have been even more helpful, no doubt."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 09:57:35|Editor: mmm

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by Jose Aguiar

LIMA, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Visitors to No. 705 Jiron Independencia Street, in Peru's northwestern town of Trujillo, are instantly transported back in time to a childhood of past, not necessarily of their own.

The building houses a Toy Museum featuring some 5,000 mostly antique toys from pre-Columbian cultures to mid-20th century European manufacture.

"It's a very rich (collection) because I (mostly) limited myself to toys that predate the 1950s," before they were mass produced, Peruvian artist and collector Gerardo Chavez told Xinhua.

Opened in 2001, the museum is divided into four areas: the Feminine room, with toys dating from 1840, the Masculine room, with toys dating from 1910, the Folk Art room featuring handcrafted toys, and the Pre-Hispanic room, exhibiting the oldest toys, mainly from the Chimu and Chancay cultures of ancient Peru.

Two guides are on hand to explain the history and unique features of the collection, including Liz Aponte, 28, who is studying to become a licensed tour guide.

"I was very excited to work at this museum, alongside artist Gerardo Chavez, who is a great painter, a great master," said Aponte.

Many visitors "tell us about their childhood," she noted.

Chavez said he was inspired to open such a museum "simply by the nostalgia of childhood, the nostalgia of not having had toys as a child."

Born into a family of modest means, Chavez had no toys except the ones he made himself from materials he came across.

Some of his favorite items on display are a whistle made by the Viru culture, cars and trains, tricycles, wooden horses, lead soldiers, rag dolls, porcelain dolls, and dollhouses from around the world.

"Some are donations (but) I bought the large share of the toys from the places I visited," said Chavez.

That's how "the world of toys gradually became internationally popular, because it's not just Peruvian," he said of the collection.

The museum, he believes, pays tribute to "the beauty of antique toys because they were made by hand ... and because man made these objects not just to entertain children, but also to preserve their childhood."

The collection has grown in recent years, leading Chavez to consider opening a second museum in Peru's capital Lima, to showcase another 2,000 relics of childhood from different cultures.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 10:17:37|Editor: mmm

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YANGON, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's parliament will resume its 10th session on Nov. 12, said an announcement of the parliament published Monday.

The sessions of both House of Representatives (lower house) and House of Nationalities (upper house) will separately reconvene on the day before the bicameral Union Parliament session in the afternoon.

The resumed sessions will also come nine days after a by-election on Nov. 3 to fill 13 vacant seats in the parliament.

The previous 9th parliament session concluded on Sept. 19 with a detailed report on the current work of the government related to political. economic and social development and the peace process presented by Minister of the Office of the State Counselor U Kyaw Tint Swe.

During its 9th session, which lasted from July 23 to Sept. 19, the parliament, besides approving the National Planning Bill and the Union Budget Bill, also appointed the governor of the Central Bank and sought approval for Part II of the Union Accord from the 21st Century Panglong Peace Conference.

In addition, the session also approved the forest bill and the Union Taxation Bill 2018-19 as well as motions to accept a soft loan of 30 million euros (about 40 million U.S. dollars) from Italy to implement agricultural projects, a loan of 298.9 million U.S. dollars from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to be used in implementing power supply network project, a loan of 8.984 million U.S. dollars from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and a loan of 61.816 million dollars from the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF).

Moreover, the parliament also approved the join-in signing of treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The current parliament was formed after the general election in November 2015 and is dominated by the winning National League for Democracy (NLD) party.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 11:22:53|Editor: Yamei

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BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Mainland authorities on Monday mourned victims who died in a passenger train derailment in Taiwan Sunday afternoon and sent condolences to their families and the injured.

The mainland has paid close attention to the accident, said officials from the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.

At least 18 people died and 187 were injured, and two female passengers from the mainland were among the injured, according to the island's railway authority.

The Puyuma Express No. 6432 bound for Taitung from Shulin Station with 366 passengers on board derailed at 4:50 p.m. at Xinma Station, Yilan County.

All eight cars of the express train derailed, with three of them overturned. The cause of the derailment is still under investigation.

The accident, the worst of Taiwan railways in more than three decades, happened on a popular line along the island's east coast. Train services were partially resumed Monday morning.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 11:22:53|Editor: mmm

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. lawmakers on Sunday voiced skepticism about the Saudi explanation of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, calling on Washington to take action in response.

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, has been missing since he entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey's Istanbul on Oct. 2. The Saudi authorities said early Saturday that Khashoggi had died in a "brawl" in its consulate.

In a Fox interview Sunday, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that the kingdom did not know where Khashoggi's body was, calling the killing a "tremendous mistake."

The Saudi explanation has drawn criticism from U.S. senators and congressmen. Republican senator Rand Paul said he did not believe Saudi's words, calling them "insulting."

"I think we really need to discontinue our arms sales to Saudi Arabia and have a long and serious discussion about whether or not they want to be an ally or they want to be an enemy," Paul told Fox News Sunday.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, raised the question on Sunday about Trump's "financial motives" that may influence his administration's Saudi Arabia policy, urging Congress to look into the matter.

Senator Dick Durbin suggested in an NBC interview that the kingdom's ambassador in Washington should be expelled, calling it part of a broader effort to send a message to the Saudi leadership about Khashoggi's death.

The tough stance by the Congress may be at odds with the remarks from the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he'll work with Congress on what the U.S. response should be, but he'd prefer not to hurt American companies and jobs by cutting billions of dollars in arms sales to the kingdom.

After releasing the results about its initial investigations, the Saudi Public Prosecution also announced that 18 people were arrested over their alleged connections to the killing.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 11:47:56|Editor: Yamei

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MANILA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government and police have condemned the killing of nine sugarcane workers, including two minors, in central Philippines, calling the bloodshed "dastardly" and "extremely cruel."

Oscar Albayalde, chief director-general of the Philippine National Police (PNP), pledged on Monday a swift investigation to pin down suspects.

According to police investigators, unidentified armed men shot and killed the nine workers at about 9:45 p.m. local time Saturday night as they rested at the Hacienda Nene in Purok Firetree in Sagay City, Negros Occidental province in central Philippines.

"The Presidential Palace is deeply perturbed to learn about the incident and PNP has already been ordered to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation on this dastardly act," Presidential Spokesperson and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said in a statement on Sunday evening.

The workers allegedly occupied an agricultural farm in Hacienda Nene a day after the owner of the farm harvested sugarcane. Three of the workers who died were allegedly burned by the suspects.

The Sagay City Police Station said investigators were eyeing land conflict as the motive of the incident.

"Families of the victims of this extremely cruel act can count on the government that it will enforce the full wrath of the law against its perpetrators," said Panelo.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 11:47:56|Editor: Yamei

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SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed to hold general-grade military talks later this week at the border village of Panmunjom, Seoul's defense ministry said Monday.

The general-level dialogue would start at 10 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) on Oct. 26 at Tongilgak, a DPRK building in Panmunjom, the ministry said in a statement.

The five-member military delegations from the two sides will discuss the implementation of the inter-Korean military agreement, which was signed by defense chiefs of the two Koreas during the Pyongyang summit in September between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un.

They will also discuss ways to form a joint military committee, which would consult on military affairs between the two Koreas.

Under the military agreement in Pyongyang, the two sides agreed to stop all hostile acts in border areas by setting up a buffer zone along the heavily-armed inter-Korean border.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 12:07:58|Editor: xuxin

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Delegations of South Korea (L) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) attend working-level talks over forestry cooperation at the joint inter-Korean liaison office in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong, on Oct. 22, 2018. (Xinhua/South Korean Joint Press Corps)

SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday held the working-level talks over forestry cooperation, according to a pool report from South Korean media.

Three-member delegations from the two sides launched the dialogue from 10:05 a.m. local time (0105 GMT) at the joint inter-Korean liaison office in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong, which was opened last month.

Park Chong-ho, vice minister of the Korea Forest Service who led the South Korean delegation, told local reporters before heading to the venue that he would make efforts to produce visible and effective results via this dialogue.

The first forestry cooperation talks between the two sides were held on July 4.

On Aug. 8, South Korean officials visited the DPRK's Mount Kumgang area together with DPRK officials to conduct a joint study on the DPRK's forest situations.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 12:17:59|Editor: Yamei

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SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export posted a double-digit growth in the October 1-20 period compared with the same period of last year due mainly to more business days, customs office data showed Monday.

Export, which accounts for about half of the export-driven economy, reached 33.39 billion U.S. dollars for the first 20 days of October, up 26.0 percent from a year earlier, according to the Korea Customs Service.

The double-digit expansion was attributed mainly to a rise in the number of working days. As the Chuseok holiday, the South Korean version of Thanksgiving Day, moved to September this year from October last year, the number of business days increased by 4.5 days this month.

The daily export, which excludes the working-day effect, averaged 2.3 billion dollars in the cited period, down 13.1 percent from a year earlier.

Import advanced 31.4 percent over the year to 31.75 billion dollars for the first 20 days of this month, sending the trade surplus to 1.64 billion dollars.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 13:23:07|Editor: mmm

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NEW DELHI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Around 400 fuel pumps in Indian capital city Monday suspended their sale operations to protest local Delhi government's refusal to reduce Value Added Tax (VAT) on diesel and petrol.

The fuel pumps began shutdown at 6:00 a.m. local time and would remain closed util 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday.

The protest was called by the Delhi Petrol Dealers Association on Oct. 10 - days after 13 states slashed VAT following a request by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal blamed Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) for sponsoring strike.

"Petrol pump owners have told us privately that this is a BJP-sponsored strike, actively supported by oil companies," Kejriwal wrote on Twitter ahead of the strike.

"In fact, the BJP has thrust it on petrol pump owners. People will give the BJP a befitting reply in the elections for continuously inconveniencing people through their dirty politics."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 13:28:08|Editor: Liangyu

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By Xinhua Writer Luan Xiang

LINCANG, Yunnan, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) - The world's biggest plantation of macadamias is not found in Hawaii or Australia but stretches across the mountains surrounding Lincang, on China's southwestern border with Myanmar.

Native to Australia, the nicknamed "King of Nuts" has become a true "cash tree" for the local farmers in their pursuit of ecological, sustainable development, said experts attending a recent international meeting here.

With a total plantation of 151,333 hectares, Lincang, in Yunnan Province, has set a world record for the largest macadamia planting area, announced Yang Haodong, secretary of the local Party committee, at the 8th International Macadamia Symposium held last week.

The Chinese farmers expect to widen cooperation and trade with their foreign partners in branding and promoting "Lincang Nuts" worldwide, he said.

YUNNAN GOES NUTS

Macadamia, known as one of the most valuable tree nuts for its unique creamy taste and rich nutrients such as monounsaturated fats, are seeds of an evergreen tree genus of the Proteaceae family native to Australia.

In the early 20th century, large-scale commercial plantations of macadamia began in Hawaii, and expanded to the west coast of the United States, central and southern Africa, central America and Southeast Asia.

In 1991, 404 macadamia seedlings were introduced to Lincang, where they thrived given the similarity between the local climate, soil and water conditions and those in their native Australian rainforest.

As of 2017, the macadamia planting area in China had grown to 2.8 million mu (186,700 hectares), accounting for 62 percent of the world's total of 4.6 million mu (306,700 hectares), and 93 percent is in Yunnan, said Ren Zhizhong, Director of the Provincial Forestry Department.

In 2017, Yunnan's 336,700 mu (22,447 hectares) of yielding macadamia trees produced nearly 1 billion yuan in output value, generating over 10,000 yuan per mu for the local farmers.

"Macadamia has become a 'cash tree' and a 'green bank' for farmers in tropical and subtropical mountainous areas of Yunnan," he said.

Lincang plans to plant 170,000 hectares of macadamia trees by 2020, with an expected output value of over 3 billion yuan.

By the time these long-living trees reach a prolific age, the total output value is expected to surpass 20 billion yuan, with 50,000 jobs and a per capita disposable income of over 10,000 yuan generated in the city's macadamia industry, predicted Zhang Zhizheng, mayor of Lincang.

Lincang opts for an ecological, sustainable and high-tech-driven development model, he said.

On one side, Chinese researchers have been optimizing and creating macadamia varieties better adapted to the local conditions applying state-of-the-art technologies.

On the other, using cloud computing, big data and Internet platforms, the agro-industry is self-evolving to design better products that cater to the growingly diversified consumer demand.

In Lincang, the nuts have a cloud-based big data platform with real-time information collected from each farmer monitored by China's own Beidou satellite system.

It is a platform ready to be launched online and shared by all players of the nut business worldwide, said Yang Guoquan, engineer of the developer team.

"The macadamia industry has a promising future in Lincang," said Dr. Femi Akinsanmi, Senior Research Fellow at The University of Queensland, Australia, after a visit to China's first and only State Key Laboratory of Nut Inspection based in Lincang.

NUT BIZ GOES HIGH-TECH, GLOBAL

China is determined to innovate and push forward the healthy, sustainable development of its forest industry as an effective implementation of rural revitalization, said Liu Tuo, General Director of Reform and Development of China's State Forestry and Grassland Administration.

Innovation will play a key part in turning the forest industry into a comprehensive industrial chain of world-class technologies, financing, and management as well as high added value, he said.

Backed by dedicated scientists and agro-technicians, the nut farming in China has seen advancement in production, processing, all the way to product design, marketing and commercialization.

The next step would be to deepen international exchange and cooperation, learn from successful precedents and broaden the platforms and channels of collaboration to make "Lincang Nuts" a regional brand prominent in the global market, suggested Liu.

At the triennial Symposium held from Oct. 17 to 19 in Lincang, macadamia growers, researchers, and merchants from over 30 countries and regions agreed to strengthen cross-border cooperation.

A standing committee of the International Macadamia Symposium was founded last Wednesday to better synchronize the business and share up-to-date findings of related research and development projects.

The nut industry is facing an enormous opportunity as the latest predictions of the world's food industry pointed to a rapid growth of demand for plant-based protein, said Stella Si, Managing Director of ACC Lab, a food security consulting firm based in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

Macadamia will reinforce its image as a healthy, eco-friendly, protein-rich snack and a luxurious ingredient for confectionary, beauty, and localized products in the future, said Lynne Ziehlke, Market Development Manager at Australian Macadamias.

With China's expanding plantation, the world's most expensive nut is expected to have a greater production quantity.

Currently, China is the 3rd largest producer, exporter, and trader of nuts, only after the United States and Turkey, said Michael Waring, vice chairman of the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council Foundation.

China also imported 13 percent of the world's traded supply in 2017, at 337,000 metric tonnes, he said. The appetite of the 1.3 billion Chinese nut consumers brings opportunities for the business.

The world's tree nut production will exceed 4.5 million tonnes in the near future, which means an increase of 7 percent from 2017 and is 30 percent up from the 10-year supply average, he said.

The supply value has reached nearly 35 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of over 43 percent from the prior 10-year average, he added.

While the nut business deepens its globalization, Lincang hopes to build a "silicon valley" for the nut industry around the world, said Zhao Guixiang, vice mayor of the border city.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 13:48:10|Editor: mmm

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LONDON, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The famous budget airline Ryanair has been criticized after failing to remove a racist passenger from a flight from Barcelona to London Stansted on Friday.

According to a short video shot by a fellow passenger, the incident started after a woman was unable to move out from her seat quickly to let a man enter and sit in his window seat.

Then the man shouted at the woman while her daughter told him her mother was disabled. Although a fellow passenger and a flight attendant tried to intervene and calm the man down, he replied that he would carry on as far as possible with "this ugly black bastard."

A number of passengers on the flight called for the man to be removed from the plane, but he was still allowed to stay on it, which sparked outrages of public and politicians after the video was viewed for more than 4 million times on Facebook.

David Lawrence, the passenger who recorded the widespread video, told BBC that he was "shocked" that Ryanair "allowed something like this just to go unchecked."

"He should have been removed from the flight and handed over to the police," the Member of Parliament and shadow transport minister Karl Turner also tweeted.

"We operate strict guidelines for disruptive passengers and we will not tolerate unruly behavior like this," Ryanair replied. "We will be taking this matter further and disruptive or abusive behavior like this will result in passengers being banned from travel."

The airline tweeted on Sunday that it has reported the incident to the police.

Founded in 1984, Ryanair is one of the largest airlines in Europe, serving 37 countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 14:38:19|Editor: mmm

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NEW DELHI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Indian authorities have put the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on high health alert in the wake of Zika virus outbreak in Rajasthan state.

A senior health official said Monday all hospitals in Uttar Pradesh have been asked to be extra vigilant on people suffering from fever as the northern state could be the next after Rajasthan where over 100 cases have been reported so far.

Meanwhile, the state's director of communicable diseases, Mithilesh Chaturvedi, has said there was a need to keep strict watch on people suffering from fever as Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads Zika virus," is widely prevalent" in the northern state.

Chaturvedi has asked airports advised to take preventive measures particularly in dealing with passengers from Rajasthan. "There should be proper examination of passengers complaining of fever, maculopapular rash or any other associated symptom," he told the media.

In Rajasthan, the number of Zika cases has crossed 100, and most are from state capital Jaipur. The Indian Ministry has already set up a control room at the National Centre for Disease Control to undertake regular monitoring of the situation in Rajasthan.

Zika virus disease is spread by daytime-active Aedes mosquitoes. Its symptoms include fever, skin rashes, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, and headache.

This is the third Zika virus outbreak in India since January 2017.

The first outbreak of Zika was reported in India in January 2017 in the western state of Gujarat, while the second outbreak was reported in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in July 2017. Both these outbreaks were contained.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 15:33:26|Editor: Xiang Bo

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NEW DELHI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- India's two leading Bollywood actors Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone have finally decided to tie the knot next month, putting an end to months of speculation about their relationship.

In a statement released Sunday evening, 33-year-old Singh and 32-year-old Padukone said, "With the blessings of our families, it gives us immense joy in sharing that our wedding is set to take place on the 14th and 15th November, 2018."

"We thank you for all the love you have showered upon us over the years and seek your blessings as we embark on this incredible journey of love, loyalty friendship and togetherness," it added.

Local media reported that the couple, who have acted together in films such as Ram-Leela, Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat, may opt for a destination wedding in Italy's Lake Como with friends and family.

The entire Bollywood has taken to social media to congratulate the couple.

"Congratulations @deepikapadukone and @RanveerOfficial! May you be as happy as any two people possibly can! Wishing you the world, joyously," tweeted actress Richa Chadda.

"Lots and lots of love," filmmaker Karan Johar tweeted.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 15:38:29|Editor: xuxin

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by Levi J Parsons

SYDNEY, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- One of the world's largest financial conferences started in Sydney on Monday, with the harbor city playing host to nearly 8,000 delegates from all over the globe.

Focused on the future of the financial services industry, experts at the Swift International Banking Operations Seminar (SIBOS) will spend the next four days examining what affect emerging technologies, innovation and digital disruption is having on the sector.

"The industry is moving very fast," head of payments at Swift Asia-Pacific, Michael Moon, told Xinhua.

"One of the major effects that new technology has had on the industry is the ability to be more flexible and more agile in the way you build services for customers."

"The future of financial services is about being fast and instant in real-time, it's about being information rich, it's about customers being able to consume services 24 hours per day, seven days per week."

With over 70 fintech exhibitors on show at the event, Moon explained that there's a great deal of opportunity in the financial industry for collaboration between the traditional banking world and the newer technology firms.

"There are about 500 to 600 fintech organizations in Australia, many of those are in Sydney," he said.

"So I think it is an opportunity... to curate solutions in order to solve some of the harder problems in the industry."

Among one of the most groundbreaking developments set to be discussed at the seminar, is the success of an international payments trial which allows financial institutions to make cross-border payments in real-time.

Developed by Swift, the Global Payments Innovation (GPI) trial involved a total of 12 banks from China, Australia, Singapore and Thailand.

"We launched this a bit over 12 months ago and we now have 280 financial institutions around the world that are subscribed to Swift GPI with 80 banks that are live on GPI," Moon said.

"China's financial industry has been very actively involved with Swift GPI."

"At last count we had 74 financial institutions in China that have joined Swift GPI and 15 of those are live today."

Previously taking up to 2-3 days to complete an international transaction, the trial's fasted cross-border payment was clocked at just 18 seconds and capable of almost instant, real-time transactions outside of normal banking hours.

But with such rapid change occurring right across the global financial services industry, Moon said it also presents tremendous challenges to all the major players and highlights the need for financial institutions to digitize and innovate.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 15:48:30|Editor: xuxin

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ISTANBUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least two illegal migrants died after a boat sank off Turkey's Aegean coast on Monday, the Turkish coast guard said.

The inflatable boat carrying migrants capsized near the resort town of Bodrum in the southwestern province of Mugla, the force said in a statement posted on its website.

A total of 20 migrants were rescued, the statement said, noting two of them later died at a hospital.

The rescue operation is continuing as it is not immediately clear how many migrants were on the boat, who were believed to have tried to sneak into a Greek island, said the statement.

The Aegean Sea was once the main route for migrants fleeing into Europe via Turkey. A deal signed between Turkey and the European Union in March 2016 has helped reduce the flow of illegal migration.

A total of 21,249 migrants have attempted to reach the Greek islands via Turkey this year, up from 17,229 over the same period in 2017, according to figures released by the Turkish coast guard.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 16:03:31|Editor: xuxin

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DAMASCUS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Syria's deputy foreign minister said that Turkey must live up to its commitments to push extremist groups to withdraw from the demilitarized zone in northern Syria, local media reported Monday.

Speaking to the pro-government al-Watan newspaper, Faisal Mekdad said it's the responsibility of Turkey to push the rebels to commit to the demilitarized zone deal that was established between Turkey and Russia in September in Russian resort city of Sochi.

The official said the Syrian government is confident that Turkey can implement its part of the deal because "the terrorist groups take orders from Turkey."

He added that the patience of the Syrian government-- regarding the rebels' failure to fully implement the deal-- has limits.

Mekdad, meanwhile, stressed that the Syrian government will regain control over all Syrian areas such as Idlib and areas on the eastern side of Euphrates River.

Mekdad's remarks come as the extremist groups in the demilitarized zone in northern Syria failed to implement the second part of the deal, which is withdrawing from that zone.

The Russian-Turkish deal to impose a buffer zone between the Syrian army and the rebel groups in northern Syria has been partially implemented in terms of pulling out heavy weapons from the zone.

However, the second stage of the deal is for the ultra-radical rebel groups to withdraw, which did not happen as such groups, mainly al-Qaida-linked groups, have rejected to pull out.

The planned demilitarized zone stretches from the northeastern countryside of Latakia province to the northern countryside of the province of Hama and western countryside of Latakia as well as areas in the countryside of Idlib province in northwestern Syria.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, also known as al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, is considered as the most powerful among the rebel groups in Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.

The deal for imposing a demilitarized zone was reached in September between the leaders of Turkey and Russia, aiming at averting Idlib province from a wide-scale offensive by the Syrian army.

The Syrian government has welcomed the deal but noted that it was only temporary.

Turkey's task in the deal is to persuade the rebel groups in Idlib to abide by the plan as Ankara enjoys sway over the militants there.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 16:03:32|Editor: Yurou

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CHANGSHA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Local authorities in central China's Hunan Province have arrested six people on suspicion of printing and selling over 30.9 million volumes of pirated children's books worth over 350 million yuan (50.5 million U.S. dollars).

This sees the largest amount of money involved in any case related to e-commerce sales of pirated children's books uncovered by the police so far, said the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications on Monday.

In January, local law enforcement authorities in Hunan's Yiyang city spotted an online store seemingly selling pirated children's books.

Upon further investigation, local authorities traced the books back to the city of Yiwu in east China's Zhejiang Province. Afterward, a national network for the publishing, printing, distribution and selling of illegal children's publications, spanning Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan and Guangdong, was uncovered and brought to justice.

Chinese authorities launched a campaign earlier this year to foster a healthy cultural environment for children.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 16:13:34|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government has decided to issue Facebook Inc. an order to improve the way it protects its users' personal data, sources in the government said Monday.

The move will mark the first time the Japanese government's Personal Information Protection Commission will issue this kind of warning to Facebook Inc. and comes in the wake of a massive data breach found earlier this year.

The breach affected the personal data of 87 million of the social media giant's users across the world, with more than 100,000 possibly being affected in Japan.

The data breach involved London-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, who in spring was found with information from Facebook users that might, in 2016, have been used by U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign body.

Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission will, henceforth, insist that Facebook address the problem in sufficient detail and respond to the problem appropriately.

The commission wants Facebook, in addition, to fully communicate the problem with the users and delete any data that may have been illegitimately used during and after the breach.

The commission, separately, will also order the Facebook, also owner of the photo and video-sharing social networking service Instagram, to launch a probe and reveal exactly why private information from 29 million users was able to be stolen by hackers in a separate case in September.

The commission has the authority to issue government sanctioned orders and instructions as per relevant laws.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 16:28:36|Editor: xuxin

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BEIRUT, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese Armed Forces Commander Joseph Aoun said Monday that the army's priority today is fighting against terrorists and drug dealers, local media reported.

"Security operations today are ongoing due to the presence of dormant terrorist cells threatening to conduct terrorism operations in Lebanon," Aoun was quoted as saying by Elnashra, an online independent newspaper.

Aoun said the army plays an important role in fighting terrorism and in exchange of information with countries facing the same threats.

He noted that the U.S. has continuously supplied the Lebanese army with military equipment but the problem is that the maintenance of the equipment is very expensive.

Also, the government has reduced last year the budget of the defense ministry by 20 percent, he added.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 16:28:37|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. leading software technology company Oracle Corporation (Oracle) said Sunday that more than 60,000 customers are expected to attend its annual tech conference OpenWorld 2018.

According to Oracle, the conference, to be held here from Oct. 22 to 25, will also draw partners from 175 countries and 19 million virtual attendees.

Dedicated to trending future technologies of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI), the annual Oracle event will bring together many heavyweight players from the political community and tech and business.

The company said its Executive Board Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison will talk about the latest-and-greatest technologies being incorporated into Oracle's next-generation cloud that will make data an even more valuable asset across industries.

"Oracle OpenWorld 2018 delivers a world-class conference experience that immerses attendees in the future of cloud, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies," said Tania Weidick, Oracle vice president of event marketing.

This year's event, which is designed to promote new ideas and collaboration, "will continue our 20-plus year legacy in San Francisco, contributing 195 million U.S. dollars in positive economic impact to the city," Weidick said.

The conference will feature thousands of sessions and speakers, as well as hundreds of demos and case studies to showcase unique ways that Oracle Cloud and emerging technologies, such as AI, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Human Interfaces and Oracle Autonomous Database, are driving new business models and creating new business value.

Dedicated to helping businesses leverage Cloud for their innovation and growth, the Oracle conference delivers insight into industry trends and breakthroughs driven by technology.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 16:43:40|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Nagoya-based Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp. said Monday that multinational aerospace and transportation company Bombardier Inc. has sued it in the United States, stating that trade secrets had been passed on by former employees before beginning work for the Japanese company.

According to Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp. here, the suit was filed in Seattle on Friday with a federal court.

Bombardier is seeking monetary damages of an unspecified amount.

The Canadian firm is also seeking an injunction instructing Mitsubishi not to use "any proprietary Bombardier information misappropriated by any former Bombardier personnel."

The injunction goes on to say that Mitsubishi should refrain from recruiting its employees to obtain classified information.

Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp., for its part, has said the claims are baseless.

Owing to multiple delays on delivery of its Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ), Japan's first domestically produced airliner since Nihon Aircraft Manufacturing Corp.'s YS-11 turboprop planes went out of operation here in 1974, Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp. has been actively recruiting foreign engineers of veteran age and experience to speed up production.

Production of the sleek jet has also been plagued by rising costs and safety issues.

The company still feels confident, however, that the jet's narrow fuselage and fuel-efficient engines will see it become a viable competitor in its niche market.

The MRJ's are supposed to tap into the market for passenger jets with less than 100 seats, with the MRJ taking aim at the likes of Brazil's Embraer SA and Canada's Bombardier Inc. who both hold sway in their respective markets.

ANA Holdings Inc., one of the MRJ's first customers, has been told it will receive its order for the jet two years later than expected in 2020.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 16:48:42|Editor: xuxin

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JERUSALEM, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Israeli forces shot dead a knife-wielding Palestinian after he lightly injured a soldier in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, the military said.

The incident took place at a flashpoint holy site, known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque and to Jews as the "Cave of the Patriarchs."

"An assailant attempted to stab a soldier adjacent to the Cave, lightly injuring him," the military said in a statement.

The soldier and other forces at the scene responded with live fire, "neutralizing the assailant," the statement read.

An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed to Xinhua that the suspect was pronounced dead.

The incident came amid tensions between Israel and Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.

Over the past seven months, Israeli forces killed at least 156 Palestinians near the fence between Gaza and Israel during protests against the crippling blockade imposed by Israel since 2007, according to Gaza Health Ministry.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 18:03:59|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China calls on all relevant countries to properly resolve their disputes over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty through dialogue and consultation, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that his country will pull out of the INF Treaty, which was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the U.S. to eliminate intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

Trump accused Russia of violating the treaty, and said that the U.S. will have to develop those weapons unless Russia and China committed to stopping the development process.

"It's completely wrong to link the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty to China," spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a routine press briefing.

The INF Treaty is an important arms control and disarmament treaty reached between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Hua said. It has played an important role in easing international relations, advancing the process of nuclear disarmament, and maintaining global strategic balance and stability, she said, adding that the treaty is still of great significance today.

"The unilateral withdrawal from the treaty will cause negative impacts in various areas," she continued.

China hopes that relevant countries can cherish hard-won achievements over the years, carefully and properly handle the issue through dialogue and consultation, and think twice about the withdrawal, Hua said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 18:14:03|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Chinese leaders Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng attend the opening session of the 17th National Congress of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The 17th National Congress of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) opened in Beijing Monday.

President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended the opening session.

The meeting was also attended by other leaders of the CPC and the state including Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng, all members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

Wang Huning, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, delivered a speech on behalf of the CPC Central Committee.

Over the past five years, trade unions at all levels have mobilized employees to make accomplishments at work, promoted harmonious labor relations, and pushed for reforms and innovations of trade unions, among other achievements, Wang noted.

He said Xi's important discourses on the working class and the work of trade unions have pointed out the directions of innovations and development for labor movement and trade unions' work in the new era.

"It is the common task of the whole Party and Chinese people of all ethnic groups, as well as the historic mission of the working class, to realize the great blueprint laid out at the 19th CPC National Congress," Wang said.

He urged the working class to implement the spirit of the 19th CPC National Congress, hold fast to their ideals and faith, give full play to their enthusiasm, advance reforms and innovations, and improve their working skills.

More than 2,000 delegates from all walks of life, along with nearly 100 specially invited delegates, attended the national congress.

The congress is held every five years. The previous session was convened in Beijing in October 2013.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 18:39:09|Editor: xuxin

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi a "huge and grave mistake," while insisting on the innocence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Saudi Public Prosecution announced on Friday the death of the Saudi journalist amid growing pressure from some western countries on the kingdom to explain the disappearance of the missing journalist following a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to complete paperwork for an upcoming marriage.

KING'S CONDOLENCE

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed on Sunday called Saleh Khashoggi, Khashoggi's son, to extend their condolences to him and his family over the journalist's death.

In an interview with Fox News, al-Jubeir called the killing of Khashoggi "a rogue operation," saying that "this was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had. They made the mistake when whey killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it."

Khashoggi was a 59-year-old Washington Post's columnist who had been living in the United States since he fled the kingdom in Sept. 2017.

Turkish authorities have conducted investigations ever since Khashoggi's disappearance, saying that the missing journalist hadn't left the Saudi consulate, and 15 Saudis who traveled to Istanbul were involved in his disappearance.

In contrasting opinion to the Turkish side, Saudi officials insisted that Khashoggi had left the building. Saudi Arabia's crown prince welcomed Turkey to search the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, noting that "we have nothing to hide."

A reversal came on Friday as the initial investigations by the Saudi Public Prosecution revealed that Khashoggi had a physical fight with those he met at the consulate, which led to his death in the compound, resulting in the arrest of 18 people.

Shortly after the announcement of Khashoggi's murder, the Saudi king issued orders to dismiss the deputy head of the country's primary intelligence agency and an advisor at the Royal Court, and terminated the services of three senior intelligence officers.

"NAKED TRUTH"

The dramatic twists of the case have attracted widespread attention around the world, and instead of relieving the already existing pressure on the Saudi government from some western countries, the latest explanations over the death of the journalist have led to rising suspicions and criticism of the kingdom.

"I think we really need to discontinue our arms sales to Saudi Arabia and have a long and serious discussion about whether or not they want to be an ally or they want to be an enemy," U.S. Republican senator Rand Paul said in an interview, adding that he did not believe Saudi Arabia's words.

However, the tough stance by some U.S. senators may be at odds with the remarks from the White House. While promising to work with Congress on what the U.S. response should be, U.S. President Donald Trump indicated that he'd prefer not to hurt American companies and jobs by cutting billions of dollars in arms sales to the kingdom.

Meanwhile, some close allies of the United States have taken actual steps to express their dissatisfaction with the kingdom.

"There is an urgent need to further clarify what happened by the Saudi authorities. We are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible should be held to account," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, adding that Germany will not sell arms to Saudi Arabia while the death of Khashoggi remains unclear.

France and Britain also issued statements to condemn the killing of Khashoggi, asking for further clarification of exactly what happened.

Playing an indispensable role in the progress of the case, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that he would make statements about the murdered journalist during his party's group meeting at the parliament on Tuesday.

"Why did 15 people come here and why were 18 people arrested? I'm going to tell you in a very different way on Tuesday. We're going to go into detail," Erdogan said, noting that Turkey will seek justice and reveal the "naked truth."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 18:44:14|Editor: xuxin

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PARIS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron has reiterated the importance of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in a telephone conversation with his American counterpart Donald Trump.

According to a statement issued Monday by the French presidency, Macron said the treaty is important "especially for European security and our strategic stability."

Trump said Saturday that his country will pull out of the INF Treaty, which was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

The treaty is regarded as an important arms control and disarmament agreement in easing international tensions, advancing nuclear disarmament, and maintaining a global strategic balance and stability.

Macron and Trump also discussed together "the situation in Syria and shared their concerns about the circumstances that led to the tragic death of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi," the statement added.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:29:28|Editor: Yurou

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TIANJIN, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China has launched a third prototype exascale computing machine, the next-generation supercomputer, according to the developer.

The Shuguang exascale computer is expected to be put into operation in national supercomputing centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen, said its developer Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd.

An exascale computer is able to execute a quintillion calculations per second. In China, prototypes are being developed by three teams led by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC), Dawning Information Industry, and the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT).

With Shuguang's launch, the three developers have all launched prototype exascale computing machines, marking a further step toward China's successful development of the next-generation supercomputer.

"The launch of a prototype exascale computing machine helps researchers test and improve key technologies through trial and error, and clear obstacles for the final computing system," said Zhang Yunquan, a researcher with the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:29:28|Editor: xuxin

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BEIRUT, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- A human trafficker was shot to death Monday in Sowayri, Bekaa by the Lebanese General Security, local media reported.

The General Security went into the trafficker's house which led the trafficker to fire at a security member, injuring him.

"General security have in return fired at the trafficker in self-defense which killed him," said a statement published by Elnashra, an online independent newspaper.

The Lebanese security forces have been active lately in arresting human traffickers.

On Oct. 12, Lebanese security forces arrested five members of a network involved in smuggling of Syrians to Lebanon.

According to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), the migrant smuggling business has become a "large, profitable and sophisticated criminal market."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:34:31|Editor: xuxin

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ISTANBUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Turkish prosecutors are questioning more employees of Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul as part of the investigation into the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, local media reported on Monday.

Five Turkish employees are currently giving testimony at the Istanbul prosecutor's office, the state-run Anadolu News Agency said, noting 17 more people from the consulate are also expected to be questioned as witnesses.

According to Anadolu, a total of 23 consulate employees, including a driver, a technical officer, a switchboard operator, and an accountant spoke to the prosecutors last week.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the previous day that he would reveal the "naked truth" behind the murder of Khashoggi during his party's parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday.

The Saudi journalist has not been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate on Oct. 2 to obtain documents related to his upcoming remarriage.

Riyadh has confirmed Khashoggi's death inside its consulate, saying he was killed first as the result of a "fistfight," but then due to a "chokehold."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:39:33|Editor: xuxin

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ZAGREB, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Workers from the Uljanik shipyard in Croatia's coastal city Pula started a strike on Monday morning due to unpaid salaries for September, Croatian national television reported.

Around 1,500 workers protested first in front of the management building, asking the leave of the company management. They went later out of the shipyard and walked through the city with many people greeting and cheering for them.

Boris Cerovac, president of the union, told reporters that president of the Uljanik Group Gianni Rossanda has to step down today and that the Croatian government should speed up a restructuring plan for the company. Unless they do that, Rossandi said, the workers will go in the capital Zagreb to stage a protest in front of the government's building.

Croatian television reported that the Uljanik management had sent on Friday a restructuring plan to the Croatian government who should soon decide on further steps.

This is the third strike in Uljanik Group this year. After the last strike in September, the government found a model to help workers and secured them salaries for July and August, but after that, the economy minister said that further help would not be possible. After the last strike, clients have terminated a few shipbuilding contracts worth millions of euros. There are two ships in the shipyard that should be finished by the end of the year.

Uljanik Group controls two shipyards in the northern Adriatic, one in Pula and another in Rijeka. The European Commission rejected the latest restructuring plan that was intended to prevent bankruptcy at the company.

Shipbuilding was once a prosperous industry in Croatia. It is still very important because shipyards and their subcontractors share up to ten percent of Croatian employment and two percent of the country's GDP.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:39:34|Editor: xuxin

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BAGHDAD, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- the Iraqi government signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with Siemens and General Electric (GE) to provide up to 24 gigawatts of power generation, the Iraqi government said on Monday.

"The Ministry of Electricity signed two MoUs with the German energy company Siemens and the U.S. GE to increase Iraq's production of electricity," Mosab al-Modaris, spokesman of the ministry, told Xinhua.

Modaris said that the Siemens agreement, which valued more than 10 billion U.S. dollars, would add 11 gigawatts to Iraq's power generation capacity during the next four years.

Whereas the agreement with GE, which valued 15 billion dollars, would increase the production of electricity up to 14 gigawatts within three to five years, Modaris said.

Siemens in a statement posted on their website said the "roadmap proposes cost savings in billions of dollars and generating additional electricity 24/7 for 23 million people."

The Siemens agreement includes establishing power plants and upgrading existing ones, and also donations to hospitals, schools, university funding, and vocational training, the statement said.

On the other hand, GE said in a statement on its website that it is "expected to generate up to 14 gigawatts of power, create up to 65,000 direct and indirect jobs and support the government to realize savings and recoverable losses of up to 3 billion dollars per year."

Currently, Iraq's capacity of power generation reaches 15.7 gigawatts, while its need is more than 23 gigawatts, according to Modaris.

Iraq is suffering from acute shortage in power supply during the years following U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but the post-war governments failed to rehabilitate electricity production due to corruption and poor management.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:49:36|Editor: Yurou

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BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The fourth International Congress on Planted Forests (ICPF) will be held in Beijing from Tuesday to Thursday, the first time for the conference to be held in Asia.

With "planted forests -- a solution for green development" as its theme, this year's ICPF will cover a wide range of topics including the sustainability of planted forests in the context of a changing climate.

Xiao Wenfa, deputy head of the Chinese Academy of Forestry, said the sustainable development of planted forests has become an important measure of addressing the changing climate.

Planted forests are now expanded both as a source of lumber and an integral part of ecology amid mounting concerns over global climate change, Xiao said.

China is home to the world's largest planted forests of nearly 70 million hectares, which account for 17 percent of the country's total forest reserves, official data showed.

The ICPF is an international academic conference organized by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations with technical support from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Chile and New Zealand held the first and second conference in 1999 and 2003, respectively, while the third was held in countries including France, Ireland and Portugal in 2013.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:54:37|Editor: xuxin

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KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban key commander Mullah Mansoor, the military operational chief of the Taliban outfit, was among 21 armed insurgents who have been killed in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz province, an army spokesman in the northern region Ghulam Hazrat Karimi said Monday.

"Mullah Mansoor, the military operational chief of Taliban in Kunduz province and deputy to shadow district governor of Imam Sahib district are among 21 rebels who have been killed in crackdown against Taliban since Sunday night," Karimi told Xinhua.

About 30 more militants have been injured and the Taliban fighters have been expelled from several villages in Imam Sahib district over the past several hours, the official asserted without commenting on security forces casualties.

Meanwhile, Mahboubullah Sayedi, the governor of Imam Sahib district has confirmed that three security forces had been killed and six others injured since the clash erupted in the district late on Sunday.

However, villagers have reported killing four civilians including women and children and injuring five others due to the ongoing fighting in Imam Sahib district of Kunduz province.

Taliban militants haven't commented.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 19:59:39|Editor: xuxin

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SINGAPORE, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced on Monday that it would launch a new platform that curates and matches promising next-generation ASEAN enterprises with global private equity and venture capital at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2018 this November.

The platform, called Meet ASEAN's Talents and Champions (MATCH), is powered by Ernst & Young as a new component of this year's Singapore FinTech Festival. It is built on the success of the Singapore FinTech Festival's Investor Summit 2017 by expanding the scope of the deal-making platform to sectors beyond FinTech, MAS said in its media release.

The authority added that the upgraded platform had had 380 participating investors enrolled, and these investors would invest up to a total of 6.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 and an additional six billion dollars in 2020-2021 into 840 ASEAN enterprises.

Among these ASEAN enterprises, start-ups and growth stage enterprises are more popular, and about 60 percent of the investment allocation for 2019 was concentrated in FinTech, healthcare, and medical technology, as well as the information and communications technology sectors.

MAS said the MATCH conducted matchmaking exercise for enterprises and investors from May to September 2018. By now, the intended investment to be deployed has outnumbered the demand for financing from ASEAN enterprises participating in the platform.

"MATCH presents a great opportunity to ensure that private capital is deployed towards the development of promising ASEAN enterprises," said Jacqueline Loh, MAS's Deputy Managing Director, adding that both the supply of and demand for growth capital in ASEAN are in an upward momentum.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 20:04:39|Editor: Yurou

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BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature is considering a change of the intellectual property right (IPR) appeals procedure, which would hand the Supreme People's Court (SPC) cases that require more expertise.

"The SPC will have a national appeal court for civil and administrative IPR cases," said Chief Justice Zhou Qiang, when elaborating a draft resolution on the IPR appeal procedure at the bi-monthly session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee on Monday.

"Due to the complexity of IPR cases and expertise needed for their trials, a national appeal court will help prevent inconsistency of legal application and improve the quality and efficiency of trials," Zhou said.

"A national IPR appeal court will also help nurture a favorable legal environment for technological innovation and a better business environment for domestic and international enterprises."

IPR cases refer to a broad range of lawsuits such as patents, copyright, trademarks, new plant varieties, integrated circuit layout design, and monopoly.

"The national appeal court will mainly handle appeals of cases that require more technological expertise, such as patent cases," Zhou said.

Chinese courts heard a total of 213,480 IPR cases in 2017, 40.4 percent more than in 2016, and doubling the number from 2013.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 20:19:45|Editor: Yurou

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TAIPEI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan's export orders grew 4.2 percent year on year to 47.86 billion U.S. dollars in September, slowing from the 7.1-percent rise in August, according to the island's economic authority.

Total export orders in the first three quarters were worth 371.77 billion U.S. dollars, up 6.5 percent from the same period last year, the agency said.

From January to September, orders from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong totaled 98.38 billion U.S. dollars, up 10.2 percent year on year.

During the same period, orders from the United States stood at 103.01 billion U.S. dollars and those from Europe were worth 70.07 billion U.S. dollars.

In September, Taiwan's information communication and electronic products saw robust growth in export orders, the agency said, citing peak season for launching new smartphones and wearable devices that pushed up demand along the supply chain.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 20:29:48|Editor: Chengcheng

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South Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United Nations Command hold the second consultation on disarming the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the inter-Korean border area at the Freedom House, Panmunjom, South Korea, Oct. 22, 2018. South Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United Nations Command agreed on Monday to withdraw firearms and guard posts by Thursday from the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the inter-Korean border area, South Korea's defense ministry said. (Xinhua/South Korean Defense Ministry)

SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United Nations Command agreed on Monday to withdraw firearms and guard posts by Thursday from the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the inter-Korean border area, South Korea's defense ministry said.

The agreement was reached after the second consultation on disarming the JSA was held at the Freedom House, a South Korean building in the border village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The first one was held last week.

From Oct. 1, soldiers from the two Koreas conducted a 20-day operation to remove landmines inside the JSA, which was set up right after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with armistice.

During the second consultation, the two Koreas and the UN Command agreed to pull firearms and guard posts out of the JSA by Oct. 25, and to conduct a joint verification for the next two days.

The three parties jointly confirmed the official completion of the landmine removal works in the JSA, according to the ministry.

The disarmament of the JSA was agreed upon by defense chiefs of the two Koreas during the Pyongyang summit in September between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and DPRK top leader Kim Jong Un.

Following the disarmament, South Korea and the DPRK planned to station a patrol of non-armed 35 soldiers each, including five officers, inside the JSA.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 20:34:49|Editor: xuxin

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ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Clashes between security forces and protesters over the weekend in Tigray regional state, located in northern part of the country, left three people dead, authorities said on Monday.

In a press statement, Tigray Regional State Communication Affairs Bureau (TRSCAB) said the deadly clashes erupted in Alamata city on Sunday when protesters incited by forces advocating "identity issue" clashed with security forces, leaving three people dead.

The statement further said the Tigray regional state government is ready to accommodate legal and peaceful requests of the people, while it rejects political demands that are done in a coercive manner, warning it will not tolerate those seeking illegal means to satisfy their demands.

Speaking to state media outlet, Haile Misgun, Chief Security Affairs Officer in southern zone of Tigray regional state, said the situation in the city has calmed down through the joint efforts of local authorities with local elders and religious elders.

Alamata city is located on the southern edge of Tigray regional state, near the neighboring Amhara regional state, with ethnic Amhara activists claiming the people living in and around Alamata city as well as the city historically belongs to Amhara regional state.

Some activists from Alamata city and nearby localities are advocating for the creation of a separate autonomous region comprising of areas located in Tigray and Amhara regional state, which they claim will meet the need of their distinctive community.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 20:39:51|Editor: Yurou

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BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- More than 500 representatives from 67 countries and seven organizations will attend the eighth Beijing Xiangshan Forum, the organizers said Monday.

This year's forum is scheduled from Oct. 24 to 26, and themed: "Building a new type of security partnership of equality, mutual trust and win-win cooperation."

Officials and scholars will focus on issues including global security governance, terrorist threats and countermeasures, maritime security cooperation and UN peacekeeping.

Forum discussions will include Northeast Asia security, Middle East issues and artificial intelligence.

Seminars for young officers and scholars will also be held.

Formerly known as the Xiangshan Forum, the event was first launched in 2006 and aims to promote exchanges and cooperation among defense authorities, armed forces, international organizations and scholars.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 20:59:54|Editor: xuxin

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Students attend the 2018 China Higher Education Exhibition at the Warsaw University of Technology in Warsaw, Poland on Oct. 21, 2018. The 2018 China Higher Education Exhibition has been held here with the main aim of comprehensively introducing Chinese universities and encouraging Polish students to study in China. (Xinhua/Jaap Arriens)

WARSAW, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The 2018 China Higher Education Exhibition has been held here with the main aim of comprehensively introducing Chinese universities and encouraging Polish students to study in China.

The exhibition on Sunday was hosted by the China Scholarship Council and the Chinese Embassy in Poland.

In his speech, Liu Guangyuan, Chinese ambassador to Poland, pointed out that this edition of exhibition included Chinese universities covering various disciplines and fields, such as science, engineering, and humanities. He emphasized that many of them were world-renowned universities, representing the highest level of China's higher education development.

Liu added that this year's edition was also the largest exhibition of higher education held by China in Poland in recent years. It was an important event for enhancing mutual understanding and trust between the universities in the two countries and promoting the exchanges between them.

Li Qing, deputy secretary-general of the China Scholarship Council, said that in recent years, the cooperation between China and Poland within the field of higher education has become closer, and university exchanges have become more frequent.

In 2017, a total of 2,115 Polish students studied in China. The China Scholarship Council wants to use this platform of educational exchanges to deepen the cooperation with Polish education sector and academic circles, further promote cooperation and exchanges between universities and support the two-way flow of students, scholars and teachers, Li said.

The exhibition were held at the Warsaw University of Technology. The university's Vice-Rector, Professor Krzysztof Lewenstein said that the fact that the 2018 China Higher Education Exhibition is held at their university makes him feel very honored, and many Chinese universities participating in this exhibition have cooperative relations with the Warsaw University of Technology.

"I firmly believe that the cooperation between Polish and Chinese universities will continue to maintain a good momentum, including our school." Lewenstein said.

More than 50 representatives from 25 universities, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology participated in the exhibition. The event attracted a large number of middle school and college students and parents from many cities in Poland.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:14:57|Editor: xuxin

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JAKARTA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- A team from Indonesia won the International Dragon Boat Race 2018 in Tanjung Pinang of Kepulauan Riau province, Indonesia, winning the title for the third consecutive year.

The Koarmada IA team crossed the finish line first in 2:39.18, with Koarmada IB coming second in 2:40.59. A Malaysian team took third place, finishing in 2:42.04.

The race took place in the Carang river on October 19 and 20. A total of 41 teams from Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and hosts Indonesia raced for the title.

The tournament has largely contributed to the promotion of tourism in the province which has beautiful scenery and rich cultures, according to local tourism official Ni Wayan Adnyani.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:14:58|Editor: xuxin

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SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed on Monday to jointly combat forest diseases and pests, according to a joint statement adopted after the working-level talks.

The working-level dialogue was held at the joint inter-Korean liaison office in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong, which was opened last month, to implement the Pyongyang Declaration signed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and DPRK top leader Kim Jong Un after their third summit in Pyongyang in September.

The two sides agreed to jointly fight forest diseases and pests, including pine tree pests, every year through future consultations.

As part of the efforts, South Korea agreed to provide necessary drugs for pine tree pests in November and conduct a joint combat project until March next year.

The two Koreas also agreed to gradually conduct projects to modernize tree nurseries in the DPRK. Within this year, the two sides would push to modernize 10 tree nurseries in the DPRK.

According to the joint statement, the two sides will actively push to jointly tackle forest fires and protect ecosystems, while jointly holding seminars on forest-related science and technology.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:19:59|Editor: xuxin

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SARAJEVO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Former Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) minister of agriculture Jerko Ivankovic Lijanovic was sentenced on Monday by Court of BiH to 12 years in prison for alleged organized crime.

Ivankovic Lijanovic is accused of "organized crime, money laundering, tax evasion, non-payment of taxes, counterfeiting or destruction of business books and documents", an official Court of BiH statement said.

In this case, Court of BiH pronounced a verdict of 52 years in total to Ivankovic Lijanovic and nine other persons.

Ivankovic Lijanovic et al. are charged with having acted as a group from 2007 to 2012, establishing new companies to transfer their raw materials, products and equipment, and continued their business by leaving the acquired multimillion debts to previously established companies. In this way, the group unlawful gained some 13.5 million KM (7.94 million U.S. dollars), the indictment said.

In this way, by tax evasions for several years, the group damaged BiH budget, hence citizens, the indictment said.

During the process, BiH Prosecutors Office examined 40 witnesses and expert witnesses, and 1,000 material evidence.

From 2011 until 2014, Ivankovic Lijanovic was BiH's Federal Minister of Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry and in 2018 General Elections he was a candidate for BiH Presidency.

After the judgment, Ivankovic Lijanovic said to reporters that he sees this as a political pressure to stall his political engagement.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:01:46|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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Photo taken by Liu Jieta on Nov. 23, 2017 shows the snow in Huanglong scenic area, southwest China's Sichuan Province. Liu Jieta, 34, is a sanitation worker in Huanglong scenic area. He started to take photos and record life with his cell phones two years ago. His photos, mainly about picturesque scenes and people around him, are full of love of life. Since May of 2018, the administration of Huanglong scenic area has provided the sanitation workers here a professional training on photo-taking, in the hope that their photos will help people know about Huanglong and raise awareness of protecting environment. (Xinhua/Liu Jieta)Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:30:03|Editor: xuxin

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JERUSALEM, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- A senior official from Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) Northern Command said on Monday that the IDF has revealed a reconnaissance point of Lebanese Hezbollah organization on the border with Israel in the north.

According to the senior official, the new observation point is operating under the guise of an NGO called "Green Without Borders."

Last year, the IDF claimed to reveal five such different locations.

In 2006, Hezbollah and the IDF fought a deadly war which left the south of Lebanon virtually destroyed by Israeli forces. Israel was the target of many missiles fired by the militant organization.

UN resolution 1701 ended the war. A UN peacekeeping force, known as the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), was tasked with keeping the fragile cease-fire in tact. No presence of any armed forces other than the Lebanese army or UNIFIL is allowed in southern Lebanon.

Israel has repeatedly said Hezbollah is breaching the resolution by continuing its military activity in the region.

"This NGO is not really concerned with planting trees, it's a way to conceal activities," the senior IDF official said. "They are more focused on taking pictures and less focused on planting trees. It is clear these people are not environmentalists, but trained operatives preparing for an attack against Israel."

According to him, the IDF has spotted "high-end cameras" at the site, meant to collect intelligence about Israeli military activity and the nearby Kibbutz of Misgav Am.

"We expect this to be dealt with, for UNIFIL to live up to its mandate," said the senior officer. "We are committed to (UN resolution) 1701, continuation of stability and prevention of tension between the two sides is the right course of action."

There has been relative calm between the two sides since the war over a decade ago, with several isolated cross border incidents. Last summer, when the UN extended the mandate for the peacekeeping force, the UN Security Council warned of renewed conflict should tensions boil over.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:35:04|Editor: Liangyu

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Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, met with Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva on Monday, with both officials pledging to boost bilateral ties between the two countries.

Hailing the development of ties over recent years, Yang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said China stands ready to work with Portugal to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries to consolidate political trust and tap potential for continuous cooperation.

The comments came before the two sides prepare to mark the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations on Feb. 2.

China will make joint efforts with Portugal to boost cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and lay a more solid foundation for the two countries to elevate the comprehensive strategic partnership in a new era, Yang said.

Silva said the Portuguese side, attaching great importance to its relationship with China, will deepen exchanges and cooperation with the country in various fields, and enhance communication and coordination with the Chinese side in international affairs to jointly safeguard multilateralism.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:35:04|Editor: xuxin

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GAZA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Islamic Hamas movement's Chief Ismail Haniyeh and a number of Hamas officials met Monday with a high-profile Egyptian delegation in Gaza.

The delegation is headed by Ahmed Abdulkhaleq, who is in charge of Palestinian affairs files in the Egyptian Security Intelligence.

The delegation arrived in the Gaza Strip Monday afternoon and held a meeting with Hamas to continue their discussions on a possible truce with Israel and a reconciliation with Fatah Party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas discussed with the senior delegation several issues, above all the cease-fire agreement with Israel and the Palestinian reconciliation.

It is the second meeting in less than a week. Hamas hailed the Egyptian endeavors to alleviate the difficult humanitarian situation in Gaza and thanked Egypt for placing the plight of Gaza as a priority in their agenda.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:45:06|Editor: xuxin

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MOSCOW, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Moscow is concerned about U.S. President Donald Trump's intention to pull out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, the Kremlin said Monday.

"Such a step, if really taken, will make the world a more dangerous place," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a daily briefing.

On Saturday, Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the arms control agreement signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States to eliminate intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

"We categorically disagree with the allegation that Russia is violating provisions of this treaty. Russia has been and remains committed to them," Peskov added.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton has arrived in Moscow and he is scheduled to meet Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lavrov said at a press conference on Monday that Moscow is ready for contact with Washington via any channels to clarify the situation about the INF Treaty.

"If Bolton is ready to do this, of course, we will listen to him and then we will assess the situation. If they intend to do this through other channels, we will also be ready to have these contacts," he said.

Washington had not yet activated the procedure for leaving the INF Treaty, Lavrov noted.

He said that Moscow expected Washington not to give up its share of responsibility for global stability in the framework of the INF Treaty as well as the New START Treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive arms.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 21:58:19|Editor: xuxin

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A doctor from the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) hospital of Changxing explains the efficacy of medicinal herbs to students of Baixian central primary school in Meishan Town of Changxing County, east China's Zhejiang Province, Oct. 22, 2018, the World Traditional Medicine Day. Students of the primary school, which is an educational base of TCM culture in Huzhou City, learn to identify, collect and process medicinal herbs under the guidance of a TCM doctor. (Xinhua/Xu Yu)Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:10:09|Editor: xuxin

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LONDON, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- More than 2,500 war memorials across England have been officially listed over the past four years as historic structures to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.

Historic England said Monday that 11 of the memorials were nominated by children through the Heritage Schools program as well as 50 nominated by university students.

One memorial at Horley in Surrey commemorates one of the oldest men to fight in the war who, aged 67, was determined to serve alongside his four sons. His sons all survived but their dad died two months after going to war.

Also included is a rocky outcrop above a farm in Cumbria where conscientious objectors campaigned against the war.

Before the project began Historic England said there were more traditional red telephone boxes listed than war memorials.

The newly listed war memorial include 202 in London, 520 in southwest England, 391 in the southeast and hundreds more in the Midlands and northern England.

A memorial to the children of Upper North Street School in Poplar, London, remembers 18 young children killed and many more injured when London's East End was bombed by one of Germany's new long-distance Gotha aeroplanes in the first daylight air raid of the war. School caretaker, Benjamin Batt, found the remains of his son Alfie amongst the devastation. So haunted by the trauma of the day, Batt took his own life five months later.

Heritage Minister Michael Ellis said: "The First World War was a period of unprecedented loss for families across the country and after the Armistice communities sought to commemorate their fathers, sons, and brothers who sadly never returned. It is right that 100 years on we have protected these poignant memorials and continue to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice."

Historic England CEO Duncan Wilson, said: "The stories behind these memorials are very moving and each one tells us how devastating the First World War was for communities across the country. Over a million Britons lost their lives during the war and it's important that their sacrifice and struggle is not forgotten."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:29:54|Editor: Xiang Bo

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German engineer Martin Holzheid shows a design sketch of Taurus milling machine in Shanghai, east China, Oct. 17, 2018. Preliminary assembly of the milling machine, which will be the largest exhibit to be on show at China's upcoming import expo, was finished here on Monday. The exhibit is expected to cover 200 square meters of exhibiting space during the expo, which is scheduled to be held in Shanghai on Nov. 5-10. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:35:14|Editor: yan

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ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced on Monday it has signed a peace deal with a prominent rebel group Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), formally ending the group's 34 years of insurgency.

In a press statement, the MOFA said a delegation led by Ethiopian Foreign Minister Workneh Gebeyehu reached a peace deal with the ONLF Chairman, Admiral Mohammed Omar Osman in Eritrean capital, Asmara, allowing ONLF to undertake peaceful political struggle in Ethiopia.

Formed in 1984, ONLF had been fighting for more than three decades for the rights of ethnic Somalis living in eastern Ethiopia to have self-determination rights, including the option of secession.

The removal of ONLF from a terror list by the Ethiopian parliament in July, and the announcement of indefinite unilateral ceasefire by the rebel group in August facilitated the resumption of the recent peace talks.

Ethiopia's rapid diplomatic thaw with former bitter rival Eritrea since July also helped turn Eritrea from a chief sponsor of ONLF to one that is mediating between the two sides.

The ONLF made international headlines on April 24, 2007, when it launched a deadly raid on an oil field. The attack left 74 people dead.

After the attack the Ethiopian government undertook a vigorous counterinsurgency campaign.

Ethiopia also undertook large scale infrastructure projects to win the hearts of local population who were thought to be sympathetic to ONLF.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:45:18|Editor: yan

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by Keren Setton

JERUSALEM, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- At one of the outposts in the outskirts of Jerusalem, three female guard soldiers stood at the entrance.

One of their commanders is First Lieutenant Tzlil Cohen, a 23-year-old officer at the Caracal coed battalion. The battalion soldiers are mostly women, while most of the commander positions in the unit are also held by women.

Cohen is highly motivated and determined to continue, and enjoys every minute of her service, despite difficulties she said she encountered in the beginning when joining the army at the age of 18.

"It was beyond my expectations," she said with a chuckle, "I am surprised again and again and I enjoy myself. Even if at the moment it is hard, in the end everything is an experience ... The stories and experiences I have from the army are crazy and I do not regret a single moment."

It arouses controversy for females serving in the army in Israel.

For religious men serving in the military, being close to women is problematic. Leading rabbis in Israel have voiced their strong opposition to integration of women into combat roles.

For decades, women served in non-combat roles, mainly as clerks or other supporting roles.

But, as society in Israel changed so did the army. Since the mid 1980s when more roles became available for women, their participation in combatant positions has increased.

In the past five years, there has been a sharp rise in women volunteering for combat service.

"The girls here are capable of things that no one sees and these are really meaningful things. People need to see this," Sergeant Ido Basha, a male Israeli soldier, told Xinhua.

Last summer, the Israel Defense Forces announced the completion of a successful trial of women serving as tank commanders.

Although in case of a war, they will not enter other countries' territory, they are expected to be incorporated into daily service in the tanks.

There is still a glass ceiling to break for female soldiers in the army though there are high-ranking female officers. In 2011, the first female major general was appointed, but no senior female official was appointed after that.

"If there will be a female chief of staff, it will be me .... just kidding," Cohen laughed. "I do not know if there will be a female chief of staff, but there will be someone high up there some day."Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:55:22|Editor: Chengcheng

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PHNOM PENH, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) has called on the European Union (EU) not to suspend trade preferences for Cambodia, saying that any sanctions may spell adverse impacts on the lives of workers and their families.

The call was made after EU notified Cambodia earlier this month that it had initiated the process for the temporary withdrawal of its preferential trade treatment under the Everything But Arm (EBA) scheme for Cambodia, citing concerns over human rights and labor rights.

In a letter addressed to EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom on Saturday and released to the media on Monday, GMAC Secretary General Ken Loo said some 1,000 garment and footwear factories in the kingdom directly employ about 700,000 workers with more than 85 percent being female coming from the rural provinces.

It is estimated that another 2 million out of the country's total population of 16 million economically depend on the sector, he said, adding that every month, more than 150 million U.S. dollars is paid out as salary to these workers.

"A temporary suspension of the EBA or any short-term unilateral sanctions may have long-term negative impacts on the lives of our workers and their families," Ken Loo said.

"We therefore appeal for your careful actions and thoughtful decision," he said. "GMAC stands ready to provide you with further facts as you may require during your monitoring process."

EU is an important trading partner for Cambodia, especially for the apparel and footwear sector, Ken Loo said, adding that more than 46 percent of Cambodia's total exports of apparel and footwear is to the EU.

The kingdom's export to EU was valued at about 5.77 billion U.S. dollars last year.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:55:23|Editor: yan

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MALE, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) has welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court of the Maldives to uphold the results of last month's presidential election, saying the verdict would pave the way for an orderly transfer of power, local media reported Monday.

The EU in a statement on its official twitter account also said it looked forward to working closely with the future government of the Maldives.

The Supreme Court of the Maldives on Sunday upheld the results of last month's presidential election after a case was filed by the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), challenging the result of the polls.

The election commission last week also dismissed the allegations raised by the PPM and stressed there were no irregularities or complaints that could affect the outcome of the election.

According to the official and final results released by the election commission last month, opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had secured 134,705 votes in the presidential polls while incumbent President Abdulla Yameen had secured 96,052 votes.

The new president is expected to be sworn in on Nov. 17.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 22:55:24|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China will encourage private equity funds to participate in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to drive the healthy development of the country's fund sector, the top securities regulator said Monday.

Liu Shiyu, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), made the remarks during a speech at a forum commemorating the 20th anniversary of the country's fund industry.

He said that private equity funds and venture capital funds will be supported in participating in M&As, debt-to-equity swaps and equity investment, underscoring their role in galvanizing market vitality.

Mutual funds, private equity funds and other asset management plans now own 5 trillion yuan (about 721 billion U.S. dollars) worth of A-share market capitalization, or 10 percent of the total, Liu said.

He also pledged support for the establishment of more buyout funds, which will ease financing and improve corporate governance for listed companies and forestall risks of equity pledges.

Foreign-invested asset management institutions will receive support in running equity assets-related businesses, and private equity funds investing in high-tech enterprises will be granted favorable fiscal and tax policies, Liu said.

The CSRC said last week that China will continue reforming the financial market while promoting opening-up and innovation to stabilize and boost market confidence.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 23:00:29|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to pass legislation to prevent the widespread imposition of diesel driving bans in German cities, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader announced on Sunday night.

Speaking to press following a CDU leadership conference, Merkel said that her party considered outright bans on diesel vehicles to be a disproportionate means to improve urban air quality in cases where regulatory limits for Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) pollution where only breached to a limited degree. The CDU would instead advocate for a change to relevant laws in a way which re-directed policy efforts towards other, less radical, solutions.

The Federal Environment Agency (UBA) has previously estimated that diesel cars are responsible for more than 50 percent of harmful NOx emissions in Germany. Diesel drivers in the country currently face the prospect of being barred from major cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Hamburg after local administrative courts ordered them to do so as a last resort to ensure compliance with European Union (EU) clean air legislation.

In response, the ruling "grand coalition" of the CDU, Christian Social Union (CSU) and German Social Democrats (SPD) has recently unveiled a new "dieselgate" policy package aimed at preventing looming driving bans in 14 cities with fleet renewal incentives and technical retrofitting, so-called "hardware upgrades", of vehicles.

NOx levels exceed binding limits set in EU clean air legislation in dozens of German cities, prompting the European Commission to file an ongoing lawsuit against the federal government in Berlin at the European Court of Justice.

According to Merkel, however, NOx pollution is only slightly above the regulatory threshold in 51 of the urban areas in question and could hence be effectively combatted without requiring driving bans. The chancellor cited the example of Frankfurt as a city in which other measures would suffice to alleviate the situation and where she was confident that a court-ordered driving ban would ultimately be overturned.

Merkel emphasized that she stood at the side of motorists in the ongoing scandal surrounding the installation of illicit defeat devices by carmakers in diesel vehicles to understate their NOx emissions levels.

"The automotive industry has truly destroyed trust to a massive extent and hence it must also make a contribution to restoring this trust again", Merkel told press. This meant that diesel owners could not suffer any personal financial damage as a consequence of emissions-cheating practices.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 23:20:37|Editor: yan

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MOSCOW, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday ordering the government to compile a list of Ukrainian individuals and legal entities practicing "unfriendly actions" against Russia.

The decree, published on the official website for legal information, also ordered the government to determine economic sanctions to be applied to the individuals and entities on the list.

The decree was signed "in response to unfriendly actions of Ukraine contradicting international law" and "the imposition of restrictive measures against Russian citizens and legal entities," without specifying them.

Relations between Kiev and Moscow have been deteriorating since early 2014 over Crimea and armed conflicts in eastern Ukraine. Kiev has imposed a series of sanctions against Russia since then.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 23:25:38|Editor: yan

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MOSCOW, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Russia intends to send an additional 60 instructors and a second batch of military products to the Central African Republic (CAR), the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.

"We intend to continue to provide Bangui with necessary assistance in rebuilding the national armed forces," it said in a statement.

Responding to an appeal of CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera, Russia, with the consent of the UN Security Council, donated a batch of small arms and ammunition to the CAR earlier this year and sent 175 instructors, according to the statement.

To date, more than 1,000 Central African troops have been trained by them, it said.

Russia seeks to use its capabilities to facilitate the negotiation process in the CAR in order to find ways out of the protracted crisis in the country, it said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 23:30:39|Editor: yan

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WINDHOEK, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Stergomena Lawrence Tax will visit Russia on Oct. 23-24 to attend an investment forum, the SADC Secretariat said Monday.

During the visit, SADC and the Russian Federation will sign a memorandum of understanding and discuss progress on an earlier MoU on security, according to a SADC statement issued on Monday.

The main objective of the SADC investment forum in Moscow is to create a platform for SADC to share with Russian partners information on investment opportunities in the SADC region, the statement said.

"During the investment forum, the SADC secretariat will participate in the panel discussions, focusing on energy and infrastructure development; finance and logistics; regional industrial value chains, mining and health," it said.

On the sidelines of the investment forum, Tax and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will sign an MoU on the basic principles of relations and cooperation between SADC and the Russian Federation.

"During the visit, the executive secretary will hold discussions with the Federal Agency for Military-Technical Cooperation of the Russian Federation on the implementation of the MoU signed on July 27, 2018, between SADC and Russian government in the areas of military-technical cooperation," the statement said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 23:40:40|Editor: Liangyu

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Green Talents Award 2018 winners from China Zhou Di (L) and Shan Yuli pose for photos at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Berlin, capital of Germany, on Oct. 22, 2018. Two Chinese scientists, together with 23 others from different countries, have been awarded the Green Talents Award 2018 by the German government on Monday for their achievements in sustainability related research. (Xinhua/Shan Yuqi)

BERLIN, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Two Chinese scientists, together with 23 others from different countries, have been awarded the Green Talents Award 2018 by the German government on Monday for their achievements in sustainability related research.

The 25 young awardees were honoured at the "Green Talents - International Forum for High Potentials in Sustainable Development" held by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Berlin. The forum aims at promoting the international exchange of innovative green ideas.

Two Chinese scientists, Zhou Di and Shan Yuli, were among the 25 awardees for their respective expertise in environmental law and low carbon cities.

Shan Yuli, researcher in Climate Change Economics with the U.K.'s University of East Anglia, told Xinhua, "I feel quite honored for receiving the prize, and I think I was awarded because of my research on low-carbon roadmaps for Chinese cities.

He is engaged in working out a catalogue of carbon emission statistics of various levels of Chinese localities and proposing low-carbon development models for different localities accordingly. His research has been published by the journal "Science Advances".

The jury highlighted Shan's study "City-level climate change mitigation in China" which found that different cities should have different low-carbon roadmaps due to the natural resources available to them and previous development tracks in each city.

Zhou Di, a post-doctorate researcher with China's Wuhan University, said her research aimed at making laws and regulations at both central and local levels, national and international levels compatible, so that sustainability can be practiced in a systematic way.

The jury said they were impressed by Zhou's strong interdisciplinary interests and her work on creating a legal system in which the legislation is fully embedded within the idea of sustainability.

"Through this, the rule of law itself can become a driving force for a sustainable development and create an ecological civilization," the jury wrote.

Georg Schutte, State Secretary at the BMBF, said at the award ceremony: "The effects of climate change are becoming more and more visible around the world - even in Germany. This is something that this year's winners of the Green Talents competition are addressing."

"They are making important contributions worldwide to creating a sustainable society with their work in such areas as water management, bioenergy use and alternative economic systems. "

The award winners have been granted unique access to the country's research elite. They attended a two-week Science Forum on Oct. 13-27, visiting different hotspots of sustainability science in Germany.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 23:45:44|Editor: Liangyu

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Commandant of Naval Command College of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Rear Admiral Han Xiaohu addresses at the "Galle Dialogue 2018," an international maritime conference held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Oct. 22, 2018. China is ready to synergize its efforts with other countries to deal with threats and challenges facing the Indian Ocean in order to maintain peace and stability in the region, a Chinese navy officer said on Monday. (Xinhua/Tang Lu)

COLOMBO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China is ready to synergize its efforts with other countries to deal with threats and challenges facing the Indian Ocean in order to maintain peace and stability in the region, a Chinese navy officer said on Monday.

Commandant of Naval Command College of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Rear Admiral Han Xiaohu made the remarks at the two-day "Galle Dialogue 2018," an international maritime conference held in Sri Lanka.

Han said the Indian Ocean region is facing non-traditional threats such as piracy, terrorism, trans-border crimes, massive natural disasters and ecological catastrophes, and the countries must work collaboratively and figure out a solution jointly.

On the basis of respecting Indian Ocean countries' core interests and great concerns, China would like to join hands with regional and non-regional countries to discuss extensively maritime security topics, and shoulder stability maintenance obligations, among others, according to Han.

He added that China also supported the international community's initiative to promote peace and stability of the Indian Ocean by pushing forward maritime information sharing, improving connectivity of maritime security facilities and perfecting maritime operation coordination so as to effectively deal with maritime security threats and challenges.

"China would like to be together with the international community to construct and maintain a free, open, inclusive and cooperative maritime order in the Indian Ocean through open, sincere and deep talks, to make equitable, rational and inclusive maritime rules on the basis of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea," Han said.

The Galle Dialogue conference started in 2010. This year's Galle Dialogue is held under the theme "Synergizing for Collaborative Maritime Management".Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-22 23:55:46|Editor: Chengcheng

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KABUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- A NATO soldier was killed and two service members wounded after an Afghan soldier turned his weapon and fired against them on Monday, the NATO-led coalition said.

"A Resolute Support service member was killed in Herat province today," Resolute Support Public Affairs said in a statement.

The initial reports indicated that the attack was committed by a member of the Afghan security forces, the statement added.

Local media reported that the shooter was arrested by the coalition troops.

"Further details will be shared after the appropriate national authorities have followed their processes for releasing information," the statement added.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 00:20:52|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The head of the African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region on Monday recommended "stern action" by the UN Security Council against rebel leader Abdul Wahid al Nur.

All efforts to bring the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction into the peace process have so far failed, said Jeremiah Mamabolo, AU/UN joint special representative and head of the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).

He has urged the AU Peace and Security Council to consider stern action against Nur "because from all accounts, he prefers belligerence and armed struggle to cessation of hostilities and a political process," Mamabolo told the UN Security Council.

"It is highly unlikely that he would change this position any time soon. The (UN) Security Council may wish to consider stern measures against the SLA leader," said Mamabolo via a video link from Johannesburg.

Al Nur's SLA faction has rejected the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement.

Mamabolo said he has continued to engage with the Sudanese government and the rebel movements to bridge their differences so that they could agree on and sign a pre-negotiation framework which would facilitate the signing of a cessation of hostilities agreement and resumption of political negotiations.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 00:25:53|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is outraged by the continued killing and abduction of civilians by armed groups in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), his spokesman said Monday.

Guterres condemns Saturday's killing of at least 11 civilians, including one boy, as well as the injury and abduction of several more during an attack on a town on the outskirts of Beni, said Farhan Haq, the spokesman, in a statement.

The UN chief is also deeply troubled by reports that on Friday two Congolese health workers helping to combat the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu were killed in Butembo when armed militia attacked the Congolese army unit to which they were attached.

Guterres calls on all armed groups to immediately cease attacks against civilians and ensure humanitarian access to populations in need, said the statement.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 00:35:55|Editor: yan

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NEW DELHI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China and India held here on Monday their first high-level meeting on law enforcement and security.

Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi said at the meeting that China and India, as good neighbors and good friends, have great potential and broad prospects for cooperation in law enforcement and security.

The establishment of a high-level meeting mechanism on law enforcement and security between the two countries and the holding of the first meeting will be of great significance in promoting the development of bilateral relations and enhancing law enforcement and security cooperation, Zhao said.

Zhao hoped that the two sides will earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, further strengthen strategic communication, give full play to the role of the high-level meeting mechanism, and focus on pragmatic cooperation on counter-terrorism, combating separatist forces and cracking down on transnational crime so as to provide a safe and stable environment for the common prosperity and development of the two countries.

Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh, on his part, said that India is willing to work with China to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, enhance political mutual trust, expand mutually beneficial cooperation and strengthen pragmatic cooperation in areas such as anti-terrorism, combating separatist forces, and cracking down on transnational crimes.

After the meeting, the two ministers signed a cooperation agreement between the two countries.

Also on Monday, Zhao met with Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and the two sides exchanged views on strengthening cooperation on law enforcement and security between the two countries.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 00:41:01|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's lawmakers on Monday began a second reading of a draft regulation on the ranking system for firefighting personnel, designed to create a more standardized and professional force, and increase responsibility, honor and discipline.

The new draft was submitted to the National People's Congress Standing Committee for deliberation at a bi-monthly session running from Monday to Friday.

According to the draft, firefighting personnel ranking is the basis for how they are treated by the country.

The draft said that "firefighting personnel who are promoted should be capable of the job, observe discipline and laws, have integrity and be honest in performing duties."

The regulation is part of a plan on transforming China's fire services and armed forestry police to build a national firefighting rescue team.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 00:56:07|Editor: yan

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YAOUNDE, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Paul Biya has been re-elected president of Cameroon for his seventh term, winning 71.28 percent of the votes, the Constitutional Council announced on Monday.

The candidate of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) Maurice Kamto came second with 14.23 percent of votes, while Joshua Osih of the main opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) collected only 3.35 percent.

Nine candidates competed in the Oct. 7 election.

According to official statistics, 3,590,681 of 6,667,754 registered voters cast their ballots, making a turnout of 53.85 percent, compared with 65.82 percent in 2011 and 82.83 percent in 2004.

The turnout was low in the English-speaking zone, which is the SDF's base, where less than 10 percent of registered voters cast their ballots, amid threats from armed secessionists to disrupt the polls.

For two years, the English-speaking minority, representing 20 percent of the national population, have protested against what they described as marginalization and "francization" vis-a-vis the central government.

Armed clashes between Cameroonian security forces and separatists, now considered by the government as terrorists, have caused heavy casualties. Many were displaced.

Biya, 85, has been in office since 1982.

In the next seven years, he will continue "the decentralization in a united and indivisible Cameroon," Biya said during his campaign.

On Oct. 19, the Constitutional Council rejected the last of 18 post-election petitions demanding the cancellation of the poll.

The Constitutional Council's president, Clement Atangana, said the election was "free, transparent, peaceful, and credible."

According to the electoral code, Biya is expected to take oath of office in no more than 15 days.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 00:56:07|Editor: yan

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ISLAMABAD, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari said Monday that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will help improve labor rights and labor situation in Pakistan.

Addressing a ceremony in Islamabad, the minister said when CPEC moves beyond road construction to enter into the building process of economic zones, the standard of workforce will be raised in Pakistan.

"As special economic zones are coming to play, multinational enterprises will bring corporate social responsibility with them. With the bringing in of great corporate social responsibility, we will see the rise and improvement in the standard of workforce, including the women workforce."

The minister said the new Pakistani government fully supports CPEC and they believe it will contribute to Pakistan and its economy.

"One thing should be made categorically clear, and that is also the position of our government, that CPEC is here to stay and it can only move forward."

The minister said the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative is a starting point of a wide regional network of economic cooperation and development where people will no more be dependent on the far away lands.

"(Under CPEC), Indigenous enterprises and indigenous development become stronger and stronger, and that is an extremely positive sign for the future of our region and Pakistan," said the minister.

Mazari said she is optimistic that CPEC will provide a wide range of employment opportunities for Pakistani women, hoping the project will include greater technical education and vocational training for women to find employment in CPEC projects.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:01:08|Editor: yan

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ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Mahama Ouedraogo, African Union (AU) Director of Human Resources, Science and Technology Department, on Monday called for concerted efforts in harnessing the continent's burgeoning youth population as a positive imputes toward development.

"Youth development is fundamental if Africa is to achieve its mission of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena," Ouedraogo told a meeting.

"The time to harness African youth as partners, assets and as a prerequisite in the fight against corruption for the sustainable development of the African continent is now," he said.

Investment in youth is a major priority area of the AU's "seven aspirations" as indicated in its flagship 50-year development plan, Agenda 2063.

Aspiration 6 of Agenda 2016 advocates for "an Africa whose development is people driven, relying on the potential offered by African people, especially its women and youth, and caring for children."

"Young people are Africa's main assets for today and the future," Ouedraogo said.

"The African Union and its member states need to collaborate, invest and build on the richness and potential that young people represent for the continent in terms of skills, creativity and diversity," he said.

Ouedraogo made the call during the AU's Specialized Technical Committee Meeting on Youth, Culture and Sports.

The five-day meeting, underway from Oct. 21 to 25, mainly aims to provide opportunities for AU member states to discuss issues pertaining to the development of the youth, culture and sport sectors at national, regional and continental levels as well as establish synergies among the three sectors, according to the AU.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:01:08|Editor: yan

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HELSINKI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Some of the security personnel in the Helsinki Airport walked out on Monday to protest against one of their colleagues' layoff for wearing a pink ribbon, which is an international symbol of breast cancer awareness, Finnish media reported.

Nearly 30 security check workers, who belong to the Finnish Aviation Union (IAU), participated in the work stoppage from 12:00 a.m. to 16:30 p.m. local time on Monday. The action was directed towards their employer Airpro, an aviation service company.

The employee was dismissed, as he had received a warning from Airpro for wearing a pink ribbon on his uniform, but refused to take it out, according to local newspaper Iltasanomat.

Janne Hattula, managing director of Airpro, told the newspaper that the employee's dismissal related to the appearance of staff uniforms, saying that the workwear should be neat and uniform.

IAU's vice chair Pekka Kahkonen told Finnish national broadcaster Yle that some of airport staff members, wore the pink ribbons during October, which is the Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Kahkonen believed that the employer's reaction was somewhat excessive, even though they would have an official reason to ban the wearing of a pink ribbon.

Finavia, the Finnish airport operator, told media that the walkout could cause delays at security checkpoints of Helsinki Airport from 14:00 p.m. to 18:00 p.m. on Monday.

The 22-year-old employee told Iltasanomat later that his wearing the pink ribbon aims to support his mother, who is suffering from breast cancer. "I fight for my mother," he said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:06:10|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The head of the African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region said Monday that the hybrid mission is undergoing reconfiguration and drawdown before a final exit.

The mission, known by its acronym as UNAMID, together with the UN Country Team in Sudan, is in the process of finalizing the concept of the state liaison functions, which will facilitate collaboration for the mission's transition and eventual exit, said Jeremiah Mamabolo, who is also AU/UN joint special representative for Darfur.

The mission is in the process of relocating its headquarters from El Fasher to Zalingei, and his office to Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, he told the UN Security Council.

UNAMID is on course to reduce the military component by 3,265 personnel by December 2018 and another 1,420 personnel by June 30, 2019, said Mamabolo via a video link from Johannesburg, South Africa.

The military component will continue to maintain its presence in the redefined area of responsibility in the greater Jebel Marra area, focusing on traditional peacekeeping functions while maintaining the flexibility to respond in the rest of Darfur when the situation demands, he said.

The police component will maintain an overall strength of 2,500 personnel, said Mamabolo.

The abolishment of 1,184 civilian personnel positions by the first half of 2019 is being finalized, he said.

The Security Council will be considering realistic and achievable exit benchmarks in accordance with UNAMID's redefined priorities of protecting civilians, monitoring and reporting of human rights and the facilitation of humanitarian assistance; mediation of inter-communal conflict, other local conflict and measures to address root causes; and mediation between the Sudanese government and rebel movements, he noted.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:11:10|Editor: yan

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VILNIUS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Lithuanian Army brigade has been affiliated to German Army division amid closer military cooperation between the two countries, local media reported on Monday by quoting a Sunday statement from the Lithuanian Armed Forces.

According to the affiliation agreement signed between Lithuanian and German commanders, Mechanized Infantry Brigade Iron Wolf has been affiliated to a German Army division.

Lithuanian commanders believe the affiliation would ensure the Iron Wolf Brigade's readiness to operate "in composition of a superior military unit", enhancing its training.

"It will also improve interoperability with the German-led NATO enhanced Forward Presence Battalion Battle Group," the Commander of the Lithuanian Land Force Brigadier General Valdemaras Rupsys was quoted as saying by local media.

German side described the agreement as "one more stone to the wall" that both countries are building together.

"Affiliation of the Iron Wolf Brigade to a German Army division will strengthen our cooperation like never before," said the Commander of the German Field Army Lieutenant General Jorg Vollmer.

Germany is leading the multinational Enhanced Forward Presence Battalion deployed in Lithuanian by NATO in response to tensions in the Eastern Europe.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:16:13|Editor: yan

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TAIPEI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- A preliminary investigation showed that speeding was the cause to Taiwan's worst train disaster in decades, which claimed 18 lives and left nearly 200 people injured Sunday.

An official in charge of the investigation said Monday evening that the express train was going too fast when it entered a section of a curved track, before it ran off tracks in Xinma Station, Yilan County. The radius of the curved rails is about 300 meters with a designated turning speed of 75 kph, but the train was running over 80 kph, and perhaps even over 100 kph when the accident happened.

The cause of the speeding, however, still awaits further investigation, the official said.

Local procuratorial authority in Yilan has filed a case to the local court for detaining the driver, identified by surname as You, on suspicion of causing deaths by negligence.

The Puyuma Express No. 6432 bound for Taitung from Shulin Station with 366 passengers on board derailed at 4:50 p.m. Sunday afternoon in Yilan, leaving 18 people killed and 190 people injured. It was considered Taiwan's worst train crash in more than three decades.

According to local media reports, the driver and the conductor reported brake faults and problems with the power system before the accident happened.

Mainland authorities on Monday mourned victims who died in the accident and sent condolences to their families and the injured.

Two female passengers from the mainland were found injured in the derailment. One of them, aged 44 and surnamed Yao, was still in critical condition.

The island's railway authority is carrying out full safety checks into its Puyuma express trains and related infrastructure.

By Monday morning the wreckage has been cleared and train services on the line were partially resumed.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:31:17|Editor: yan

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LAGOS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least 357,300 people were affected by recent flood incidents in Nigeria's northeast state of Adamawa, an official said Monday.

Some 7,893 houses were also affected, Muhammad Sulaiman, head of the State Emergency Management Agency, told reporters in Yola, the state capital.

He said the state has sent the list of destruction caused by the floods to the National Emergency Management Agency in Abuja, the capital, for support.

Sulaiman called on the federal government to take urgent action to support affected families.

At least 200 people have been killed so far by floods across Nigeria this year, according to government data; some 1,300 people have been reportedly injured and nearly 2 million affected by the recent flooding in areas along the Niger and Benue rivers in Nigeria.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:31:18|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan's Darfur region face a series of security challenges although the overall security situation remains relatively calm, warned an African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) joint envoy on Monday.

"Despite the improved security situation, there is continuing concern among IDPs over systematic attacks, assaults, farm destructions, harassment, land occupation issues and livestock theft," said Jeremiah Mamabolo, AU/UN joint special representative and head of the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).

During the four months ending Oct. 8, six inter-communal clashes over land and livestock theft, resulting in 18 fatalities, were reported, Mamabolo told the Security Council in a briefing.

UNAMID continues to focus on early warning, preventive measures, capacity-building and efforts to address the root causes of conflicts in collaboration with government authorities, community leaders and relevant institutions, he said via a video link from Johannesburg, South Africa.

During the period, the security situation in Darfur remained relatively calm and peaceful, with the exception of pockets in the Jebel Marra area where armed conflict between government and rebel forces continued, said Mamabolo.

The number of cases of human rights violations and abuses also dropped, he said.

UNAMID documented 134 new cases involving 304 victims in the June-October 2018 period, compared with 169 cases involving 508 victims during the previous four-month period, he said.

Preparations are under way to start a constructive discussion with the Sudanese government on the need to establish a country office of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights in Sudan, said Mamabolo.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:36:18|Editor: Liangyu

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Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over a bimonthly session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature on Monday started its bimonthly session to deliberate a draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law and a draft amendment to the Drug Administration Law, part of a five-day agenda.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presided over the meeting.

The draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law, submitted for a third reading, includes "default judgment" provisions, which will let a criminal trial continue even if the defendant has fled China. One provision makes it applicable to corruption-related criminal cases, and also serious cases endangering state security and terrorist activities that have been examined and approved by the Supreme People's Procuratorate and need to be tried in a timely fashion.

To better protect the legitimate interests of the defendant, the draft imposes new stringent rules, requiring the courts to examine whether a case is applicable to a "default judgment."

The amendment to the Drug Administration Law aims to address counterfeit drug problems with tougher punishment and all-round supervision. A draft law on basic healthcare and health promotion was also submitted for a second reading.

The session will also consider draft revisions to the People's Courts Organic Law and the People's Procuratorates Organic Law.

Lawmakers will also review a package of draft revisions on 15 laws, including the Wild Animal Conservation Law and the Metrology Law, in a bid to conform to a key institutional reform plan adopted by the NPC on March 17.

For example, the customs and quarantine offices used to be parallel law enforcement agencies under the Wild Animal Conservation Law, but the latter are now a part of the customs administration.

Several reports, including two submitted by the State Council on state assets, will also be discussed, according to the agenda.

Lawmakers are also considering a change of the intellectual property right appeals procedure, which would hand the Supreme People's Court cases that require more expertise due to the complexity of such cases.

The meeting is expected to decide whether to adopt revisions to the Company Law, which set to relax restrictions on public companies making share repurchases.Russian servicemen drive S-400 missile air defence systems during the Victory Day parade at Red Square in Moscow on May 9, 2018. (REUTERS PHOTO)

MOSCOW, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Moscow is concerned about U.S. President Donald Trump's intention to pull out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, the Kremlin said Monday.

"Such a step, if really taken, will make the world a more dangerous place," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a daily briefing.

On Saturday, Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the arms control agreement signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States to eliminate intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

"We categorically disagree with the allegation that Russia is violating provisions of this treaty. Russia has been and remains committed to them," Peskov added.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton has arrived in Moscow and he is scheduled to meet Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lavrov said at a press conference on Monday that Moscow is ready for contact with Washington via any channels to clarify the situation about the INF Treaty.

"If Bolton is ready to do this, of course, we will listen to him and then we will assess the situation. If they intend to do this through other channels, we will also be ready to have these contacts," he said.

Washington had not yet activated the procedure for leaving the INF Treaty, Lavrov noted.

He said that Moscow expected Washington not to give up its share of responsibility for global stability in the framework of the INF Treaty as well as the New START Treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive arms.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 01:56:21|Editor: yan

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KIEV, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine expects the second-largest grain harvest in its history this year mainly due to strong corn yield, the country's Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food said on Monday.

According to a statement on the ministry's website, Ukrainian farmers are forecast to have a grain harvest of about 64 million tons in 2018, compared with 61.3 million tons in the previous year.

In the current marketing year, between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019, Ukraine plans to export 42.5 million tons of cereals, the statement said.

In the previous marketing year, Ukraine sold abroad 39.4 million tons of grain. During the period, China was Ukraine's largest corn importer, accounting for 16.4 percent of the total maize exports, and the second-largest barley importer with exports share of 19.3 percent.

Ukraine's grain harvest reached an all-time high of 66 million tons in 2016.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 02:11:26|Editor: yan

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CAPE TOWN, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Minister of Women in the Presidency Bathabile Dlamini on Monday urged South Africans to fight gender-based violence in the guise of religion and faith.

"We condemn the acts of gender-based violence that occurred in the guise of religion and faith," Dlamini said at the trial of Nigerian Pastor Timothy Omotoso and two co-accused in the Port Elizabeth High Court, Eastern Cape Province.

Dlamini, along with Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane and Eastern Cape Premier Phumullo Masualle, attended the trial, indicating the high attention the government is attaching to the case.

"This is a turning point for everyone to ask themselves what they have done to protect women, especially the justice system," Dlamini said while addressing the public outside court.

Omotoso is charged with rape and human trafficking, while the two co-accused women are accused of recruiting girls from all over the country for purposes of sexual exploitation.

The trio are facing more than 60 charges that include racketeering and rape.

The 58-year-old televangelist allegedly trafficked more than 30 girls and women who were from various branches of his church to a house in Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, where he allegedly sexually exploited them.

Omotoso was arrested on April 20 last year, by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, known as the Hawks, at the Port Elizabeth Airport.

According to state prosecutors, some of the alleged victims are as young as 13 years old.

The pastor has been denied bail on two occasions, as he was deemed a flight risk. The co-accused were arrested in November last year and are out on bail.

The case has sparked public interest in South Africa, where there is a history of so-called holy men taking advantage of their congregations.

"Today we find adults who took children to places of worship who are accomplices since they also contributed to the grooming of these children as sex slaves," Dlamini said.

"We condemn the hijacking and use of our own buildings and sites for illegal religious practices," she said. "What is happening in these places of worship is human trafficking."

The minister said her department is also aware of the many cases of intimidation against women who have spoken up against Omotoso.

"We note with concern the social media comments going around. We wish to warn all those who intimidate these women that they are accomplices in the crime of abuse that Omotoso is accused of," she said.

The minister said her department will be embarking on a process of planning toward public hearings with various stakeholders against gender-based violence and all forms of abuses in the guise of religion and faith.

"These abuses can be in churches, in synagogues, in mosques, on mountains, under the sea and in heaven above," she said.

These hearings will offer women a platform to speak about their experiences, according to Dlamini.

"They will also shed the veil of shame that comes with being abused, and finally heal the pain they have been carrying alone," she said.

Concurrent to the hearings, the government will be reviewing the Sexual Offenses Act, the Domestic Violence Act and the Criminal Procedures Act, with the view to strengthen the country's laws to protect women, Dlamini said.

She said her department will also be meeting with the Departments of Home Affairs and International Relations and Cooperation to deliberate on the theme of migration as it pertains not only to this case in particular, but also to the many unregulated religious institutions headed by foreign nationals.File Photo: Internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing from tribe clashes in Balela locality rest after arriving at Kalma camp in Darfur, Sudan July 24,2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan's Darfur region face a series of security challenges although the overall security situation remains relatively calm, warned an African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) joint envoy on Monday.

"Despite the improved security situation, there is continuing concern among IDPs over systematic attacks, assaults, farm destructions, harassment, land occupation issues and livestock theft," said Jeremiah Mamabolo, AU/UN joint special representative and head of the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).

During the four months ending Oct. 8, six inter-communal clashes over land and livestock theft, resulting in 18 fatalities, were reported, Mamabolo told the Security Council in a briefing.

UNAMID continues to focus on early warning, preventive measures, capacity-building and efforts to address the root causes of conflicts in collaboration with government authorities, community leaders and relevant institutions, he said via a video link from Johannesburg, South Africa.

During the period, the security situation in Darfur remained relatively calm and peaceful, with the exception of pockets in the Jebel Marra area where armed conflict between government and rebel forces continued, said Mamabolo.

The number of cases of human rights violations and abuses also dropped, he said.

UNAMID documented 134 new cases involving 304 victims in the June-October 2018 period, compared with 169 cases involving 508 victims during the previous four-month period, he said.

Preparations are under way to start a constructive discussion with the Sudanese government on the need to establish a country office of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights in Sudan, said Mamabolo.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 03:01:36|Editor: Chengcheng

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Photo taken on Oct. 22, 2018 shows a general view of the opening session of the 2018 World Investment Forum 2018 (WIF) in Geneva, Switzerland. The 2018 World Investment Forum kicked off here on Monday with speakers at the opening session calling for a focus on the current economic uncertainty and cooperation between government and private sectors on sustainable development goals (SDGs). (Xinhua/UNCTAD/Violaine Martin)

GENEVA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The 2018 World Investment Forum (WIF) kicked off here on Monday with speakers at the opening session calling for a focus on the current economic uncertainty and cooperation between government and private sectors on sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The forum is a high-level biennial conference organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for addressing investment-related issues.

Saying the Oct. 22-26 forum has drawn 6,000 participants, 12 heads of state and more than 50 CEOs of private companies, UNCTAD's Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi stressed that the global economy faces more uncertainty than at the first WIF 10 years ago.

"We are seeking to counter uncertainties and an inward-looking perspective, to refocus political attention and corporate leadership on the opportunities rather than the pitfalls that the global economy can offer," said Kituyi.

Confronting these challenges is enormously important for global prosperity and the process to attain the UN SDGs by 2030, he said.

Kituyi noted that over two decades, cross-border investment activity has become the engine of global production of growth and that job creation and technology transfer has a direct impact on over 80 percent of international trade.

He said the WIF can help "today in international policy-making by helping bring about gradual reforms in international investment policies, making them more sustainable and sustainable-development friendly."

The Swiss president Alain Berset called for "more sustainable investment", saying the international community, the private sector, and civil society need to intensify efforts on sustainable development.

He said the public sector establishes a framework that is conducive to financial innovation and "in return, the private sector can apply significant leverage thanks to its know-how, creativity and financial strength."

Gabriela Cuevas, a Mexican senator who is president of the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), said that sustainable growth will be one of the biggest challenges of the early 21st century.

The 2030 Agenda and its SDGs constitute the most ambitious plan "to counter poverty, inequality, environmental degradation and ultimately conflict ever crafted," said Cuevas in her remarks.

"We only have 12 years to change the Planet," she said, noting that financing the "global goals" means looking for new ways to mobilize private sector investment.

"The whole SDG enterprise can succeed only if governments, parliaments, civil society and the private sector work together," she noted.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 03:01:36|Editor: Chengcheng

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French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (L) shakes hands with Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui during their meeting in Tunis, capital of Tunisia, on Oct. 22, 2018. Tunisia and France on Monday signed three bilateral cooperation conventions worth 49 million euros (56.2 million U.S. dollars). (Xinhua/Adele Ezzine)

TUNIS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Tunisia and France on Monday signed three bilateral cooperation conventions worth 49 million euros (56.2 million U.S. dollars).

The three conventions, covering technology, culture and heritage preservation, youth and employment, were signed by visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed.

"The partnership between France and Tunisia is increasingly fruitful and constructive," said Le Drian, reiterating his country's commitment to supporting Tunisia in its fight against terrorism and irregular immigration.

According to the Tunisian government, the visit is part of the commitments made during the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Tunisia in February.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 03:01:36|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The head of the African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region on Monday recommended "stern action" by the UN Security Council against rebel leader Abdul Wahid al Nur amid a drawdown of the hybrid mission.

All efforts to bring the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction into the peace process have so far failed, said Jeremiah Mamabolo, who is also AU/UN joint special representative for Darfur.

He has urged the AU Peace and Security Council to consider stern action against al Nur "because from all accounts, he prefers belligerence and armed struggle to cessation of hostilities and a political process," Mamabolo told the UN Security Council in a briefing.

"It is highly unlikely that he would change this position any time soon. The (UN) Security Council may wish to consider stern measures against the SLA leader," said Mamabolo via a video link from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Al Nur's SLA faction has rejected the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement.

Mamabolo said he has continued to engage with the Sudanese government and rebel movements to bridge their differences so that they could agree on and sign a pre-negotiation framework which would facilitate the signing of a cessation of hostilities agreement and resumption of political negotiations.

The AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) is undergoing reconfiguration and drawdown before a final exit, he said.

The mission, together with the UN Country Team in Sudan, is in the process of finalizing the concept of the state liaison functions, which will facilitate collaboration for the mission's transition and eventual exit, said Mamabolo.

The mission is in the process of relocating its headquarters from El Fasher to Zalingei, and his office to Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, he said.

UNAMID is on course to reduce the military component by 3,265 personnel by December 2018 and another 1,420 personnel by June 30, 2019, said Mamabolo.

The military component will continue to maintain its presence in the redefined area of responsibility in the greater Jebel Marra area, focusing on traditional peacekeeping functions while maintaining the flexibility to respond in the rest of Darfur when the situation demands, he said.

The police component will maintain an overall strength of 2,500 personnel, said Mamabolo.

The abolishment of 1,184 civilian personnel positions by the first half of 2019 is being finalized, he said.

The security situation in Darfur remains relatively calm and peaceful, with the exception of pockets in the Jebel Marra area where armed conflict between government and rebel forces continued, said Mamabolo.

Despite the improvement, internally displaced persons (IDPs) face a series of security challenges, he warned. "There is continuing concern among IDPs over systematic attacks, assaults, farm destructions, harassment, land occupation issues and livestock theft."

During the four months ending Oct. 8, six inter-communal clashes over land and livestock theft, resulting in 18 fatalities, were reported, said Mamabolo.

UNAMID continues to focus on early warning, preventive measures, capacity-building and efforts to address the root causes of conflicts in collaboration with government authorities, community leaders and relevant institutions, he said.

The mission was approved by a UN Security Council resolution in July 2007 to bring stability to the war-torn Darfur region while peace talks on a final settlement continue.File Photo: UNAMID peacekeepers stand guard as a delegation of Ambassadors of European Union to Sudan visits a women development program center funded by World Food Programme (WFP) at Shagra village in North Darfur Oct. 18, 2012. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The head of the African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region on Monday recommended "stern action" by the UN Security Council against rebel leader Abdul Wahid al Nur amid a drawdown of the hybrid mission.

All efforts to bring the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction into the peace process have so far failed, said Jeremiah Mamabolo, who is also AU/UN joint special representative for Darfur.

He has urged the AU Peace and Security Council to consider stern action against al Nur "because from all accounts, he prefers belligerence and armed struggle to cessation of hostilities and a political process," Mamabolo told the UN Security Council in a briefing.

"It is highly unlikely that he would change this position any time soon. The (UN) Security Council may wish to consider stern measures against the SLA leader," said Mamabolo via a video link from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Al Nur's SLA faction has rejected the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement.

Mamabolo said he has continued to engage with the Sudanese government and rebel movements to bridge their differences so that they could agree on and sign a pre-negotiation framework which would facilitate the signing of a cessation of hostilities agreement and resumption of political negotiations.

The AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) is undergoing reconfiguration and drawdown before a final exit, he said.

The mission, together with the UN Country Team in Sudan, is in the process of finalizing the concept of the state liaison functions, which will facilitate collaboration for the mission's transition and eventual exit, said Mamabolo.

The mission is in the process of relocating its headquarters from El Fasher to Zalingei, and his office to Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, he said.

UNAMID is on course to reduce the military component by 3,265 personnel by December 2018 and another 1,420 personnel by June 30, 2019, said Mamabolo.

The military component will continue to maintain its presence in the redefined area of responsibility in the greater Jebel Marra area, focusing on traditional peacekeeping functions while maintaining the flexibility to respond in the rest of Darfur when the situation demands, he said.

The police component will maintain an overall strength of 2,500 personnel, said Mamabolo.

The abolishment of 1,184 civilian personnel positions by the first half of 2019 is being finalized, he said.

The security situation in Darfur remains relatively calm and peaceful, with the exception of pockets in the Jebel Marra area where armed conflict between government and rebel forces continued, said Mamabolo.

Despite the improvement, internally displaced persons (IDPs) face a series of security challenges, he warned. "There is continuing concern among IDPs over systematic attacks, assaults, farm destructions, harassment, land occupation issues and livestock theft."

During the four months ending Oct. 8, six inter-communal clashes over land and livestock theft, resulting in 18 fatalities, were reported, said Mamabolo.

UNAMID continues to focus on early warning, preventive measures, capacity-building and efforts to address the root causes of conflicts in collaboration with government authorities, community leaders and relevant institutions, he said.

The mission was approved by a UN Security Council resolution in July 2007 to bring stability to the war-torn Darfur region while peace talks on a final settlement continue.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 03:36:50|Editor: yan

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KIEV, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Standard and Poor's (S&P) rating agency has maintained Ukraine credit ratings at B-/B and kept outlook at stable, Interfax-Ukraine news agency said on Monday, citing the S&P's report.

According to the report, the stable outlook reflects the S&P's expectation that Ukraine's existing cooperation program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which expires in March 2019, will be replaced with a new 14-month program.

"We expect the new arrangement will aid Ukraine's efforts to cover sizable external debt obligations maturing next year, and also help to anchor macroeconomic policies through the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections," the report said.

The rating agency said it anticipates that the new IMF program for Ukraine will be approved by the end of 2018.

Last week, the IMF said it has reached a staff level agreement with Ukrainian authorities on economic policies for the 14-month Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). The SBA is set to replace the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), under which Ukraine has received about 8.7 billion U.S. dollars since 2015.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 03:46:53|Editor: yan

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MAPUTO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Red Cross of Mozambique said on Monday in Maputo that support from its partners that had stopped due to financial crisis are now resuming, making its capacity stronger to deliver humanitarian assistance.

"Recently, we had a meeting with partners and we registered new partners willing to support Red Cross Mozambique," said Director of Institutional Development and Resources of the Red Cross of Mozambique Cristina Uamusse.

"There was a good participation of partners and this is a positive indicator," she said. "We are hopeful that we will recover."

According to Cristina, Red Cross Belgium has already pledged its support while Red Cross Italy and Red Cross Finland expressed their interest to resume the injection of funds to Red Cross Mozambique.

At the moment, Red Cross activities in Mozambique are supported by its counterparts from Spain and Germany, who have been continued operating in Mozambique despite the international crisis that affected several countries.

As Mozambique enters the rainy season, the Red Cross held a meeting to evaluate its capacity to provide assistance to the country's vulnerable groups such as orphans, the disabled, and families headed by women.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 04:47:10|Editor: Chengcheng

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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Tapestry Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of U.S. aircraft giant Boeing, has won a contract from the U.S. Army to help manage ground transportation logistics for the U.S. military in the Middle East region, Boeing said Monday.

Tapestry will provide In-Transit Visibility (ITV) services for ground transportation logistics in the U.S. Central Command's (CENTCOM) area of operations by deploying the company's Global Distribution Management System (GDMS) to track and manage civilian contractors who move Army equipment and supplies throughout Kuwait, the Trans-Arabian Network and Iraq.

The contract, which includes a base-year and one-year options, expands upon Tapestry's current GDMS/ITV program in Afghanistan. Since 2009, Tapestry's commercial software solution has served as a key element of the U.S. military's Host Nation Trucking and subsequent National Afghan Trucking programs.

Working as a central data fusion system, GDMS enables the U.S. military to have near real-time visibility, tracking metrics and accountability for all registered commercial vehicles.

The GDMS centralized database links cargo movements with vehicles equipped with GPS-based transponders, and the system offers panic alarms/alerts to contractors as they pass hazards and checkpoints, and displays the mission data on topographical maps.

Tapestry will deploy the ITV/GDMS solution for CENTCOM to facilitate its logistics operations in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Jordan.

"The award further illustrates our customers' confidence in our products, services and people," said Michael Spencer, vice president of Global Sales and Marketing at Tapestry.

He said Tapestry's GDMS team has managed thousands of transportation movements every month in Afghanistan by working 24 hours a day to safeguard people, data and cargo.

Boeing said the deployment will begin soon.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 05:17:17|Editor: yan

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CAIRO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian court on Monday sentenced 16 loyalists of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group to 15 years in prison over inciting anti-state violence and protests, official MENA news agency reported.

The 16 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, were arrested in 2014 in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, north of the capital Cairo, for spreading leaflets against the armed forces and the police and shouting anti-government slogans during protests.

The prosecution charged the defendants with holding illegal protests, blocking traffic, using guns and fireworks and terrifying citizens.

Morsi was deposed by the army in early July 2013, in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his Muslim Brotherhood.

The group was later blacklisted by the new government of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi as "a terrorist organization."

Most Brotherhood leaders, members and supporters, including Morsi himself and the group's top chief Mohamed Badie, are currently in jail.

Many of them have received appealable death sentences and life imprisonments over charges varying from inciting violence and murder to espionage and jailbreak.

Morsi is serving a 20-year prison sentence over inciting deadly clashes between his supporters and opponents in late 2012 and a 25-year jail term over leaking classified documents to Qatar.

Since Morsi's ouster, Egypt has been facing a wave of terror attacks that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers as well as civilians.

A Sinai-based militant group affiliated with the Islamic State regional terrorist group claimed responsibility for most of the attacks in Egypt over the past few years.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian forces have killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested thousands of suspects during the country's anti-terror war declared by Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsi's ouster.Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-23 05:52:25|Editor: yan

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DAMASCUS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) advanced on Monday into the last Islamic State (IS)-held pocket in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, a war monitor reported.

The move was part of a wide-scale offensive launched last month to eradicate the terror-designated group in the key area near the Iraqi border, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Kurdish-led SDF, backed by the U.S.-led coalition, captured on Monday parts of the town of Souseh on the eastern bank of Euphrates River in eastern Deir al-Zour countryside.

On Saturday, State news agency SANA said U.S.-led strikes killed 63 civilians within 24 hours in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour.

The SDF launched a wide-scale offensive on the last IS-held pocket on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in eastern Deir al-Zour on Sept. 10.

The IS militants attempted to thwart the SDF advance through mines, some of which are advanced and laser-controlled and difficult to be detected.

The terror group also carried out suicide bombings to stop the SDF from advancing in the areas of Baghous and Hajin in the last IS-held pocket in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour.

Recent reports said the IS-controlled Syrian territory has shrunk to one percent from almost half of the country a couple of years ago.

The Syrian army has cleared IS militants from large swathes of areas in Deir al-Zour, while the SDF is attempting to consolidate positions in the strategic oil-rich northern and northeastern countryside of the province near the Iraqi border.Seattle, Oct. 21, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Phase Genomics, the leader in Hi-C proximity-ligation based genomic solutions, announced today agreements with six life science technology distributors serving much of Asia Pacific. Phase Genomics sells Hi-C kits paired with proprietary analysis software that allows researchers studying humans, plants, animals, and microbes a time-saving and inexpensive genomic discovery platform. The Hi-C kit, contrary to traditional methods, provides an easy-to-use protocol that lets scientists generate a sequencer-ready Hi-C library from almost any sample in as little as eight hours.



Dr. Ivan Liachko, CEO and Co-founder of Phase Genomics commented, With our new partnerships, Phase Genomics is proud to expand our reach and provide more scientists and researchers throughout Asia, Australia, and New Zealand with the tools, services, and analyses needed to produce the worlds best genome and metagenome assemblies. The results generated with our technology offer researchers a new dimension of genomic information, produce novel discoveries, and save scientists both time and money.





Phase Genomics applies Hi-C and other proprietary proximity-ligation methods to enable chromosome-scale genome assembly, metagenome deconvolution, as well as analysis of structural genomic variation and genome architecture. The United States based company offers a comprehensive portfolio of laboratory and computational services and products, which are now available through the new Asia Pacific partnerships. Products include ProxiMeta Hi-C metagenome assembly kits and Proximo Hi-C genome assembly kits as well as industry-leading analysis services.

The non-exclusive distribution partnerships include:

Phase Genomics technology powers scientists to advance research with breakthrough discoveries in human disease, agricultural breeding and sustainability, animal health, reference genomes, and the environment.

ABOUT PHASE GENOMICS  Phase Genomics applies Hi-C and other proximity-ligation methods to enable chromosome-scale genome assembly, metagenomic deconvolution, as well as analysis of structural genomic variation and genome architecture. They offer a comprehensive portfolio of laboratory and computational services and products, including Hi-C kits for plants, animals, microbes, and human samples as well as industry-leading genome and metagenome assembly and analysis software.

Based in Seattle, WA, the company was founded in 2015 by a team of genome scientists, software engineers, and entrepreneurs. The companys mission is to empower scientists with genomic tools that accelerate breakthrough discoveries.

AttachmentsThe congress of green opposition LMP elected Marta Demeter as the co-leader of the party in Budapest on Saturday.

Demeter, who ran alone for the post, has so far been deputy group leader of LMP. She will fill the post of Bernadett Szel, who resigned in August after LMPs ethics committee barred her from holding any positions within the party for three years.

Laszlo Lorant Keresztes is LMPs other co-leader. Speaking at a press conference after the vote, Demeter called her party the governments toughest adversary and said that the current regime will collapse like a house of cards.

Once that happens, LMP will be ready for government, she said, and pledged maximum support to LMPs current policy.

Demeter called preparations for the upcoming European Parliamentary elections and Hungarys municipal elections a priority, in the interest of starting a new age next year.

She said that not only a new European Parliament and a new European Commission are needed but also MEPs that represent real national values and can provide stability and security for the people rather than promote multinational companies.



MTI Photo: Balogh ZoltanA no-deal Brexit would seriously hurt the European Unions remaining member states given that the United Kingdom is the blocs second and the worlds fifth largest economy, Hungarys foreign minister told BBC News.

It is obvious to Hungary that the UK must reach a deal with the EU on the terms of its exit from the bloc, Peter Szijjarto said in Brussels.

Failure to reach a Brexit deal would also be very bad news in terms of security cooperation between the EU and the UK and the current security challenges facing the bloc. This was why it was crucial for the two sides to do everything they can to make sure that the Brexit talks result in a deal, he said. Hungary wants a fair Brexit deal that is mutually beneficial to the UK and the EU.

Hungarys interest also lies in the talks concluding with the deepest, most comprehensive and broadest possible free trade agreement. If such a trade deal falls through, EU trade in the UK will continue with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, the minister said.

Asked about Hungarys economic ties with Russia, Szijjarto said western Europe was being hypocritical about Hungarys relationship with Russia. He argued that on the surface, western Europeans criticise Russia while beneath the surface they enter into significant business agreements with that country, mainly in the energy sector.

Szijjarto added that it was not central European but major western European energy companies that were heavily involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.

He noted that the guest star of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was French President Emmanuel Macron and that the Russian Energy Week conference in Moscow earlier this month had been attended by the leaders of major energy companies such as Total, Enel and Shell.

Meanwhile, Hungary over the past several years has lost about 7 billion dollars worth of export opportunities due to the sanctions against Russia, Szijjarto said.



MTI Photo: Szecsodi BalazsThe opposition Parbeszed party will submit a bill to parliament initiating the scrapping of workday Saturdays that replace a workday between a holiday and a weekend.

Hungarians often enjoy an extra Monday or Friday off if a holiday happens to fall on a Tuesday or a Thursday, but they must make up for it by working on a Saturday.

Parbeszed lawmaker Bence Tordai told a press conference that six-day workweeks should be scrapped. He argued that Hungarian employees were overworked as it is and that economies where people work 3-400 hours less than in Hungary were more developed.

Hungarians this year have to work on six Saturdays to make up for the weekdays off.The U.K.s World Bread Award has gone to Hungarian baker Istvan Nadhazi this year for his "French Country Sourdough", with the baker winning both the "Real Bread Campaign" and overall categories, according to worldbreadawards.com.

Nadhazi moved to London with his family in 2011. He started his career at bakery Gails. Now he runs his own business, "Ms Bakery" with his wife and employs a single shop salesperson.

Bread is a huge industry in the United Kingdom: 12 million loaves are sold every day. The phenomenon of the artisan bakery has taken off in the last decade.

The main goal of World Bread Award is to promote the skill of bread-making, and to encourage and foster the art of baking both now and for future generations.BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, Oct. 21, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Monterey N.L., Mexico: Theres nothing more tempting than the idea of a South American adventure to look forward to. With Royal Holidays exclusive Argentinian locations, members can enjoy a decadent trip to the charming resort village of Bariloche, home to Royal Holidays Hotel Posada del Angel location, the Australis Paradis in Carilo, or the Park Royal Buenos Aires located in the thriving city capital. Wherever you end up staying during your journey, youll need to make sure you take advantage of all the beauty and mystery Argentina has on display. Its not just about hitting the beach and strolling along the sand. In Argentina, youll be able to take a cultural deep dive and enjoy some of the finest cuisine in the world. Before you head out on your trip, here are a few things you have to plan for.

You Cant Miss Gazing At the Iguazu Falls

If youre someone who appreciates natural splendor, youll need to take at least a day to appreciate the majesty of the strip of waterfalls that stands between Argentina and the Brazilian border. Connecting to a channel known simply as the Devils Throat, the Iguazu Falls are some of the most breathtaking waterfalls youll ever have the chance to see up close. Visitors travel from miles around just to catch a glimpse of the falls and the accompanying sunset.

The Cave of Hands Is Calling Your Name

While it might sound terrifying at first, the Cueva de las Manas, or Cave of Hands, is a living museum full of some of the earliest discovered cave drawings and handprints. Its not only one of the wonders of the ancient world, its located in the Argentine Patagonia, a gorgeous spot located right at the very tip of the South American coast. This mountainous region is known for its beauty and winding dirt roads. If you have the time, take a trip to this isolated spot to cave at the thousands of hand paintings in solitude.

Buenos Aires is More Than a Tourist Trap

While some travelers might assume that staying away from the capital city of Buenos Aires is the best way to avoid crowds, youd be wrong to bypass it entirely. While Buenos Aires is full of bustling tourist attractions, there are also plenty of out-of-the-way sights and sounds to enjoy. If youre looking for a historic landmark, try the old Cerveceria Munich or the El Ateneo Grand Splendid, an unusual cafe with a bookish edge. The Parque de la Memoria is a beautiful monument to the passage of time, and the Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur will offer a beautiful view and some delicious local tastes.

The Local Cuisine is Where Its At

Argentina is home to some of the worlds finest eats, from holes-in-the-wall like Feria de Mataderos empanada shop to Palermos Chori restaurant, specializing in haute street cuisine. Whatever you do, stick to the local delicacies and be sure to hit up a Parilla or two while youre in the area to cook some fresh meat at home. For dessert, helado, the Argentinian twist on Italian gelato, will leave you craving more.



About Royal Holiday Vacation Club: The Mexico-based Royal Holiday Vacation Club has been serving over 100,000 customers for more than 25 years. By providing affordable, world-class cruises, resort stays, and hotels for members to stay in all around the world, Royal Holiday promises a fun, invigorating vacation for its patrons each and every year. With over 180 destinations all across the globe, vacationers can find something to love no matter where theyre headed. For more information, go to https://www.royal-holiday.com/en/us.Fiica lui Sorin Bontea este indragostita. Cum arata iubitul Mirunei

Miruna, fiica de 19 ani a lui Sorin Bontea, este indragostita si radiaza de fericire alaturi de iubitul ei. Tanarul a postat pe retelele de socializare mai multe imagini cu ei impreuna, iar relatia este oficiala. Fiica juratului de la Chefi la cutite se afla [citeste mai departe]Sunnyvale, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arrayit Corporation (OTC: ARYC ), a life sciences and personalized medicine company, launches a fully automated allergy testing portal for doctors and clinics to streamline and accelerate the allergy testing and treatment process. The Patient Data Solutions (PDS) allergy-testing suite is secure and fully compliant with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements to ensure the privacy of patient health records. The new PDS portal allows doctors to order allergy blood card collection kits, request express mail shipping labels, download allergy test results, and order immunotherapy products from our independent allergy therapeutics partners. The PDS portal, which is free of charge to doctors and clinics, offers continuous, real-time technical assistance to ensure a positive on-line experience.

Arrayit recently completed an allergy testing pilot program for a top retail chain, established a nationwide network of 1,700 allergy sales professionals, met with top officials at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding approval of a major product line, signed allergy testing contracts with a consortium of 178 medical clinics, received approval for in-store promotions by a major retailer, announced allergy testing partnerships with major allergy therapeutics providers, received approval for direct Medicare billing by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), reported the sale and shipping of clinical instrumentation to the FDA, and aced three consecutive rounds of proficiency testing with the College of American Pathologists. The PDS allergy-testing portal with its enterprise-level functionality ensures the seamless onboarding and servicing of physicians in private healthcare practices, allergy clinics, hospitals, health maintenance organization (HMO) facilities and in-store retail clinics.

Chief Executive Officer Rene Schena states, The Patient Data Solutions electronic suite gives doctors direct access to the resources required for efficient, high-throughput allergy testing. This enterprise scale solution highlights our commitment to pioneering the markets most advanced physician-directed strategies for diagnosing and treating allergy and asthma.

About Arrayit

Arrayit Corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, leads and empowers the research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, clinical and healthcare sectors through the discovery, development and manufacture of proprietary life science and personalized medicine products and services to advance biomedical research and improve wellness and human health. Please visit www.arrayit.com for more information.

Safe Harbor Statement

We have identified forward-looking statements by using words such as "expect", "believe", and "should". Although we believe our expectations are reasonable, our operations involve a number of risks and uncertainties that are beyond our control, and these statements may turn out not to be true. Risk factors associated with our business, including some of the facts set forth herein, are detailed in the Company's public filings.Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- The motion of censure initiated by PSD (Social Democratic Party) has been adopted by the Parliament on Tuesday. There were 281 votes cast "in favour" of the motion, according to parliamentary sources. The MPs of PNL (National Liberal Party), UDMR (Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania)

- USR PLUS (Save Romania Union - Party of Liberty, Unity and Solidarity alliance) lawmakers will vote on the first motion of censure that will be put to the vote, spokesman Ionut Mosteanu announced on Tuesday, agerpres reports. Mosteanu specified that the National Bureau of USR PLUS has mandated the

- The president of CNCAV, Valeriu Gheorghita, specified on Tuesday that in Bucharest there is a vaccination coverage rate of over 50% of the eligible resident population, over 12 years, reaching 50.15%, and 40% of counties, including Bucharest, have a vaccination coverage rate of over 30%, agerpres

- The increase in the number of cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection will continue in the coming period, and over 92 pct of deaths were recorded in unvaccinated persons, announced, on Tuesday, the the president of Romania's National COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination Committee (CNCAV), military doctor Valeriu

- Romania has deployed major efforts to evacuate Romanian and Afghan nationals at risk of Taliban's revenge in Afghanistan, and succeeded, Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu told the Annual Meeting of the Romanian Diplomacy (RADR) 2021 in opening remarks on Tuesday. "Buttressed by exceptional

- Romanian photovoltaic energy producer, MW Green Power Export listed on Tuesday its second issue of bonds on the Multilateral Trading System (MTS) of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) under the ticker of MWGP24, according to a press release. The company has attracted from investors a total of over RON

- Romanian cyclist Eduard Novak, the current Minister of Youth and Sports, placed 8th in the road time trial, category C4, on Tuesday, at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Novak (45 years old) was timed with a time of 50 min 16 sec 60/100 on 32 km, finishing on the penultimate place, at 4 min 29 sec 50/100

- Premierul Florin Citu a afirmat, marti, la o discutie cu reprezentantii Coalitiei pentru Dezvoltarea Romaniei, ca doreste ca sistemul fiscal sa ramana acelasi cel putin pana in 2024, fara cresteri de taxe. Participarea premierului Florin Citu la consultari, in sistem online, cu reprezentantii CoalitieiStiri pe aceeasi tema

- US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the United States is considering adding four countries to its Visa Waiver Program that allows citizens to come to America without a visa for a stay of up to 90 days, according to Reuters. We have four candidates in the pipeline: Israel, Cyprus,

- Arad border police caught 21 migrants from Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who in the last 24 hours tried to cross the border illegally to Hungary, hiding in three trucks loaded with various goods, at border checkpoints Varsand and Nadlac II, the Arad Border Police informed on Wednesday. In all

- Three young people, aged between 25 and 30, are being investigated for dangerous drugs trafficking, as they were caught red-handed by the police of the Service for Combating Organized Crime in Mehedinti, together with the policemen of the Craiova Organized Crime Brigade and the DIICOT (Directorate

- Tens of trucks belonging to three employers' associations of road hauliers are parked, on Wednesday morning, in Victoriei Square, during a protest rally of transporters against the Government's policy of taxing the daily allowance of freight transport drivers, but also against the prices of compulsory

- The main suspect in the jihadist rampage that killed 130 people across Paris, on November 13th 2015, described himself defiantly as an Islamic State soldier on Wednesday, upsetting some survivors who took it as a threat at the start of the trial into the 2015 attacks. Salah Abdeslam, 31, appeared

- Federatia Romana de Baschet organizeaza, in perioada 3-10 septembrie, in municipiul Ploiesti, Programul National de Selectie pentru sportivii din categoria de varsta U14, masculin si feminin (nascuti 2008).Prima actiune de selectie Trial U14, la care vor participa peste 160 de sportivi si sportive

- The USR PLUS Together platform, which unveiled today its political program and also announced its bid for the formation's National Bureau, said it supports Senator Irineu Darau for party Chairman. "We - the USR PLUS Together platform - are a team that will run for the party's National Bureau. For

- The Romanian firefighters who took off for Greece have the mission to protect three localities in the Attica area, the Emergency Situations' General Inspectorate (IGSU) informs on Sunday, in a release. "The rescuers will act to limit the flames so that the spread of fires does not endangerSepta bus drivers' pensions are guaranteed by a $1.4 billion plan that's buying a complex array of new investments. Photo by Cameron Hart Read more

SEPTA, with its train, bus, and trolley lines, its political board and state subsidies, its buggy train cars and Key Cards, exemplifies complexity. Its $1.4 billion pension plan  for thousands of SEPTA bus and office retirees who aren't part of the federal Railroad Retirement System  is complex, too, as is the thinking behind such investments as the SEPTA board's Sept. 27 vote to send $10 million to Golub Capital Partners of Chicago and $5 million to Arrowhead Investment Management of Greenwich, Conn.

Send it where? Lance Haver, Philadelphia's relentless consumer advocate, asked basic questions at that meeting: How do we know these firms will generate any more cash than, say, buying indexed stock funds from Vanguard? Why not keep the money home and invest it, for example, in Philly-based "transit-oriented development," with local contractors who meet SEPTA's own "fairness and diversity" guidelines?

Like other employers that still guarantee pensions, SEPTA is under pressure to boost returns above its long-term target of 7 percent a year.

Thanks to the Trump-Obama bull market, SEPTA has beaten that target, on average, since 2010. The plan returned 10 percent over the year ended June 30, compared with 9.3 percent for the state's largest pension fund, the Public School Employees' Retirement System.

But U.S. stocks did better. And SEPTA's $1.4 billion pension assets are still far below the $2.2 billion it will need to keep paying pensions without in time running out of money and having to pay retirees alongside operating expenses, which would cost way more. It's more solvent than the state's pension systems, far more than Philadelphia's, but still under pressure.

The board, under chairman Pasquale T. "Pat" Deon Jr., a Bucks County beer distributor and Republican leader, approved the Golub and Arrowhead investments despite Haver's questions. Later, SEPTA's chief financial officer, Thomas McFadden, and Rich Burnfield, deputy general manager, sat me down with a stack of printouts and told a little about how the agency's pension-fund sausage gets made.

SEPTA invests mostly in stock index funds managed by Vanguard ($400 million) and Blackrock ($160 million); in actively managed stock funds ($300 million) run by a balance of Pennsylvania-based (Emerald) or minority-run (Edgar Lomax) investment companies; and in safe, easier-to-sell-in-troubled-times, but much-lower-yielding U.S Treasuries and high-rated bonds run by a similar balance of local and national firms ($225 million).

The other $300 million-plus is split among more than 20 outside firms that pump the cash into junk-bond, real estate, timber, and other commodities, hedge funds, and private-equity buyout funds.

Almost all of those "alternative" investments have yielded lower profits than SEPTA's U.S. stock index funds since SEPTA began buying more of the former and keeping track of the results back in 2010. But still better than bonds, mostly.

Why go to all that extra trouble? "We wanted to diversify," said McFadden.

"Our strategy is to build around the index funds" and own other stuff that might not get caught so badly in the next stock market collapse. Even if it means a drag on total returns for now, compared with just owning stocks. Funds that owned only stocks lost a lot of capital dumping assets cheap in 2008-09.

So PFM  Public Financial Management, a Philadelphia-based firm that connects many of Pennsylvania's 3,000 municipal pension plans to private-sector money managers  has boosted SEPTA's "alternative" investments  timber and junk bonds and the rest. Most recently PFM gave SEPTA a short list of private-debt funds it saw as promising. The investment committee, headed by SEPTA board member and Pottstown traffic engineer Kevin L. Johnson, picked Golub, which makes senior loans to middle-market companies, and Arrowhead, which picks higher-yielding, less-secure mezzanine debt. The goal: what McFadden called "equity-like [higher] returns with bond-like [lower] volatility."

SEPTA will pay the firms each a fee of 1 percent a year  a dollar for every $100, totaling $150,000 the first year  and let them keep 20 percent of profits after an initial yield of 8 percent. That's a lot more than Vanguard or Blackrock charge for index funds, lately as little as 0.01 percent (a dollar for every $10,000). That's the price not (usually) of higher net returns, but of a certain kind of diversity.

This was a relatively light month's work for SEPTA's investors. Earlier this year SEPTA pumped $50 million into Australia-based AMP Capital, whose "infrastructure" arm finances publicly backed, privately managed projects  energy, transport, old folks' homes  which SEPTA's advisers say is a growth business. Especially with President Trump's encouragement of "public-private partnerships."

Philadelphia needs plenty of its own infrastructure  new pipes, safer streets, better clinics, and school tech. I wish SEPTA and its rail partners could afford more updates, too.

But, let's face it, would you trust the politicians who dominate SEPTA to pick local projects for the pension to fund  given the bedrock need for solid returns to pay retirees?

No wonder PFM's advisers would rather scout pros in Connecticut hedge fund country, or down the sunny highways of Australia.

Of course, their returns aren't guaranteed, either.Steak 48, which has locations in Houston and Chicago, is planning a restaurant at Broad and Spruce Streets. Read more

Steak 48, a family run steakhouse with locations in Houston and Chicago, has signed a deal for a splashy restaurant at the Atlantic Building across from the Kimmel Center at Broad and Spruce Streets, encompassing the spaces occupied formerly by Ted's Montana Grill and Ruth's Chris.

Steak 48 won't open for about a year, according to Oliver Badgio, chief brand officer for Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Prime Steak Concepts.

By then, it will join a Center City steakhouse lineup that will include a Del Frisco's Grille expected to open by the end of 2018 at the new Cambria Hotel just up the street.

Badgio said the Steak 48 would resemble the Chicago location, with floor-to-ceiling glass framing the open kitchen. Large windows will look out to the Broad Street frontage. Rather than one large dining room, the restaurant will be "a collection of intimate spaces," he said.

Brothers Jeff and Mike Mastro also own three other restaurants in Arizona  a seafooder called Ocean 44 and a steakhouse called Dominick's in Scottsdale, as well as Steak 44 in Phoenix.

They made the meatery scene with the Mastro's Steakhouse and Mastro's Ocean Club brands, now owned by Landry's, parent company of Morton's.

A little history for the space at the corner of Broad and Spruce:

Before it was Ted's Montana Grill, which ran from 2006 till late 2011, it was Avenue B, a fancy joint owned by Neil Stein that had a 2-year run from 2000 to 2003; Bonaparte, a French American-themer that lasted only eight months, from May 1998 till January 1999; and Joseph's on the Avenue, an Italian restaurant that crashed and burned after only four months in 1998.A leader of a large-scale drug trafficking organization that distributed thousands of pounds of marijuana throughout the Philadelphia region was sentenced Monday in federal court.

Tyron McFadden, of Philadelphia, pleaded guilty to cocaine and marijuana distribution charges and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He will serve 23 years in prison and 10 years of supervised release.

McFadden, 36, and two of his brothers allegedly transported multiple kilograms of cocaine and suitcases full of marijuana from the Los Angeles area to Philadelphia using checked luggage on commercial airlines. His operation ran between 2009 and 2015.

McFadden was brazen. Even while serving a five-month sentence for fraud, he was able to direct an associate to move three kilos of cocaine to Philadelphia. Also, while in custody he directed his sister to distribute 20 pounds of California marijuana.

Several Philadelphia-based drug traffickers in 2009 and 2010 used the services of Tasfa Payne and Abdullah Robinson, who both claimed to have a "TSA connection" at the Los Angeles airport who ensured baggage was not searched, according to court documents. McFadden claimed to use their services, but prosecutors said it was only to exact more money from drug dealers farther down the distribution ladder.

McFadden moved to using the mails in 2012 after federal agents arrested Payne and Robinson and word was the airport was "hot," prosecutors said.

McFadden solicited help from U.S. Postal Service mail carriers and paid them to intercept priority mail packages containing the drugs and deliver them to him directly, according to court records

After law enforcement seized cash made from drug sales, McFadden stopped using the airlines to ship money between the coasts. Authorities said the organization laundered more than $1 million by using banks with branches in both Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

"McFadden and other members of this deadly drug organization pumped cocaine and marijuana into our community for years, profiting from other people's misery," said U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain.

"Even when he was in jail, McFadden continued to try to keep his drug operation afloat," McSwain said. "The sentence today reflects the seriousness of his conduct and the need for leaders of drug organizations to be held accountable for their actions."The average student loan debt for Pennsylvania college graduates in 2016 totaled $35,759  the second-highest amount of any state in the nation.

Pennsylvanians collectively owed $61.8 billion in private and federal student loans as of December 2016.

Did you know? Both data points surprised me.

But it's no surprise that Attorney General Josh Shapiro has jumped into the student loan fray.

Last week, Shapiro's office won a key court decision in a lawsuit against Navient Corp., which it called America's largest servicer of federal and private student loans.

With headquarters in Wilmington and a Wilkes-Barre call center employing roughly 1,000, Navient has offices in Philadelphia's backyard.

The latest legal victory allows the attorney general access to loan records that Navient had refused to provide, arguing loan data were the property of the U.S. Department of Education. The ruling in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ordered Navient to turn over the records.

The AG's Office claims its October 2017 lawsuit could impact hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians who received private student loans from Sallie Mae, one of Navient's predecessors, or anyone who has federal or private loans serviced by Navient and experienced repayment issues.

Navient declined to comment but pointed to past statements. "The allegations are completely unfounded, and the case was filed without any review of Pennsylvania residents' customer accounts," the company said last fall in response to the Pennsylvania lawsuit.

That suit alleges widespread abuses in Navient's student loan origination and servicing, and it may pick up where the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's January 2017 lawsuit left off. The CFPB's suit has languished under the Trump administration.

"Navient's deceptive practices and predatory conduct harmed student borrowers and put their own profits ahead of the interests of millions of families across Pennsylvania and the country who are struggling to repay student loans," Shapiro said in a statement last week.

Navient CEO Jack Remondi criticized the litigation in June: "If the parties were truly interested in addressing the real issues in higher education and student debt, they would direct their focus" to provide better information about the full cost of earning a degree and the cost of loans used to pay for it, he said. They would also work to increase graduation rates (Remondi blamed dropping out as the largest factor in student loan defaults), simplify repayment programs, and ease the enrollment process for these programs, he added.

"These steps are not easy and require hard work. It is, unfortunately, much easier to file a lawsuit, creating the perception that something is being done," Remondi said.

Academics agree something needs to change.

"We need somebody to fight back on this problem. There's a real problem with the servicers. That's such an important part of the system. We have this structural reliance on loan servicers. If they're not doing their job, it's a problem," said Laura Perna, a professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education and executive director of the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy.

Student borrowers who believe they have been subject to unfair or deceptive practices can file a complaint with the Office of Attorney General at www.attorneygeneral.gov, or call 800-441-2555 or email scams@attorneygeneral.gov.

Separately, U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes (D., Md.) said he would call for hearings in Washington regarding the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. More than 28,000 applied, but fewer than 1,000 were accepted. (Public service workers include public school teachers, social workers, police, emergency medical technicians, nurses, and nonprofit lawyers.)

Should the Democrats take control of the House after the November elections, "I would be among a number of members of Congress who would point to this as a priority for hearings and inquiry," Sarbanes said. He authored the loan forgiveness bill in 2007.

"If litigation in this arena moves to a point where it turns up relevant information, then I'm certain, with oversight, we'd take that and do further inquiry," he said. "This goes right to the heart of why Navient's behavior is so outrageous. It's undermining the incentives we're hoping to offer. For a while, the excuse on the part of the servicers was, 'We're trying to get our heads around this program.'"

He's not buying it any longer. Instead of cracking down on the servicers, he said, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos "has the student-loan servicing industry on speed-dial."David Adelman, left, CEO of Campus Apartments and chairman of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, and Alan Horwitz, chairman of Campus Apartments and a donor to the new Holocaust Memorial Plaza along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, talk about features of the new memorial plaza. The renovated plaza includes the existing Monument to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs, visible at right, which was installed in 1964. Read more

Thirty-three years ago, David Adelman used his bar mitzvah money to buy a $2,000 stake in Campus Apartments, the student housing business owned by his mother's lifelong friend Alan Horwitz. It paved Adelman's entry into what's now a national network of student apartments that he has come to lead.

Now "Uncle Alan," as he was once affectionately known, has returned the favor 1,000-fold with a $2 million donation to another venture currently helmed by Adelman: the plaza commemorating Holocaust victims that opens Monday on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Center City.

In return for that gift, the site will be dubbed the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Plaza in honor of Horwitz and Adelman's grandfather, Sam Wasserman, who died in 1991 at 81.

Wasserman escaped during an uprising at the Sobibor extermination camp in what is now Poland after losing his wife and children there, then raised a second family in the United States, Adelman said. Horwitz, who was young when his own father died, stuck close to Wasserman growing up, which positioned him to become a mentor to Adelman in later years.

"It's like honoring my dad," Horwitz, 74, said of the decision to share the memorial's naming opportunity with Wasserman.

The plaza, which is scheduled to open at a ceremony attended by Mayor Kenney and other elected officials, fills most of the triangular site at Arch Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway behind the Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs, a bronze sculpture completed in 1964 by Poland-born artist Nathan Rapoport that depicts human bodies engulfed in flames.

By the early 2000s, the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which held yearly events at the monument, decided that it deserved a better backdrop than sparsely landscaped patches of grass and cement and began looking for ways to improve the plaza.

Inspired by the story of his grandfather, Adelman joined the foundation and worked on an earlier site proposal entailing an educational center designed by Moshe Safdie, the architect behind Israel's main Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.

That plan, which would have cost as much as $50 million to complete, was derailed by the last decade's recession, said Adelman, who by then had become Campus Apartment's chief executive, leading the expansion of Horwitz's West Philadelphia-centered rental business into a national developer of big student housing complexes.

The memorial plaza plan lay dormant until 2015, when the cause was adopted by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, led by members of its active real estate industry subgroup, including Matthew Pestronk, president of developer Post Bros., and Jacob Reiter, an executive at Verde Capital Corp.

The backers pushed for a scaled-back approach that resulted in what's to be unveiled Monday on the city-owned property. The Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which Adelman now chairs, is paying a nominal rent to lease from the city for 80 years.

Arranged around the new stone-paved plaza are rail tracks from outside the Treblinka death camp in Poland, a grove of trees to represent the woods where partisan freedom fighters hid as they battled the Nazis and their allies, a digital eternal flame, and other symbolic features to inspire reflection on the early 20th-century genocide.

The foundation is collaborating with the Steven Spielberg-founded USC Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California and the Anti-Defamation League on a rotating series of smart-phone-based guides to the memorial that explore the Holocaust and other instances of genocide and racial hatred.

"We go light on the structure and heavy on the technology," Adelman said. "We're trying to create a place of contemplation and a place of education."

To sustain that vision, the foundation calculated that it would need an endowment of several million dollars, beyond the $7 million it cost to build the memorial itself, to sponsor programming and maintain the site.

With the completion date approaching and the naming opportunity on the table, Horwitz said he was happy to help his acolyte see the plan through, as he had done in the past for Adelman's ventures within their company.

"Any time David needed whatever he needed, I was always there to take care of it," Horwitz said. "It's just the other things have been business.  This happens to be the Holocaust."Like UntuckIt, with its store at King of Prussia mall, many online retailers are now finding a benefit to having a physical location. Read more

Stores are so 20th century.

At least that's what many online brands believed. Companies like Warby Parker, Bonobos, and Casper didn't need physical locations to win over millennials and steal market share; a well-designed website was more than enough. And who could fault their logic? Given the brick-and-mortar carnage across America, the evidence seemed overwhelming.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the retail apocalypse. Stiffening competition, surging online advertising costs, and cheap mall space have prompted these so-called digital natives to embrace what they call "off-line" in a big way. In their push to become retail's next household names they're venturing beyond the coasts and the downtowns of major cities into shopping malls in suburban America. It's also an acknowledgment that 90 cents of every retail dollar in the U.S. is still spent at a physical location, and industry watchers don't expect it to fall below 75 cents until the middle of the next decade.

The "clicks-to-bricks" phenomenon encompasses such big names as Amazon Books and Casper as well as less-known start-ups such as men's shorts purveyor Chubbies and hair-color brand Madison Reed. All told, these digital natives now operate more than 600 stores across the country, according to Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm.

"What some brands are starting to figure out is, 'Oh wait, perhaps these retailers who have been around for 100 years were onto something,'" says Jared Blank, a senior vice president at Bluecore, a retail consulting firm. "You will definitely see more of these insurgents coming into brick and mortar."

Micky Onvural, who runs Bonobos, says mall operators increasingly see the menswear company as an anchor tenant. "They want us there," she says.

If physical outposts were initially exercises in branding and publicity, they're now core to long-term growth. Retail start-ups are even starting to include a store opening plan in pitches to venture firms. Many cite the success of a pop-up location to show that they can leverage their online customers and stand out from their online-only competitors.

Everlane founder Michael Preysman, who once proclaimed he'd rather shut down his clothing brand than sign a lease, operates two stores and is considering more. Casper, which popularized the "bed-in-a-box," has about 20 stores and plans to open 10 times as many in the next three years. Warby Parker expects to have 100 stores by the end of this year  giving the optical chain the biggest store fleet among these upstarts.

The stores are also popping up in smaller metropolitan areas. Last month, Warby Parker opened a store in a former GameStop next to a Chick-fil-A in Raleigh, N.C. In April, the eyewear brand debuted in Alabama. Bonobos, acquired last year by Walmart Inc., recently opened in Lexington, Ky., and will soon have more than 60 locations.

Real estate firm CBL Properties says one digital native is looking at a property in Laredo, Texas, along the border with Mexico. UntuckIt  which has been selling shirts since 2011  tested a pop-up at the end of 2015 in Manhattan and now has almost four dozen permanent locations, including one in the Mall of America, adjacent to a Crocs store. It wants to hit 150 by the end of 2020.

"A lot of people ask, 'Why are you opening stores so fast?'" says Chris Riccobono, UntuckIt's founder. "Well, all of our stores are performing well."

Here's another reason: Online advertising is no longer the growth accelerant it was. Buying ads on Google, Facebook, and Instagram once made a lot of sense because nascent brands could narrowly target shoppers and grow fast, pleasing their venture capital backers. Now, social feeds are jammed with posts from obscure brands hawking everything from sneakers to generic Viagra. The competition for eyeballs has pushed up the cost of ads even as those ads become less effective because there are so many of them clamoring for attention. Much the same thing is happening off-line too with subway ads, direct mail, podcasts, and television.

Meanwhile, opening a physical location has become cheaper as retailers shed stores or died, creating millions of square feet of prime space all over the country. Spurred most recently by the woes at department-store chain Sears, mall vacancy rates hit 9.1 percent last quarter  the highest since the depths of the recession. The digital natives realized it made more sense opening stores than relying on pricey Google and Facebook ads.

Retail landlords understand that these upstarts typically require less space than traditional retailers because many of them don't carry inventory. But that hasn't prevented battered mall owners from seizing the opportunity with both fists. Many have created recruiting teams focused on digital natives and are using sweetheart deals and perks once reserved for established brands such as Apple Inc. or Barnes & Noble Inc.

"It's extremely competitive," says Jim Ward, who in February was appointed to a newly created position to head up recruiting digital natives for CBL. "Every landlord out there is looking for these new, exciting concepts."

Landlords aren't demanding the long-term commitments once considered standard and are instead offering leases as short as a year with extension options. That flexibility extends to temporary locations, too, with spaces dedicated to rotating pop-ups so the tenants can easily test concepts. To further reduce risk, they're offering to help pay for store remodeling and taking a small percentage of sales instead of monthly rent.

Some shopping centers are becoming venture capitalists, investing in promising retail start-ups that could become future tenants. Simon Ventures, sponsored by Simon Property Group, the largest U.S. mall owner, has a stake in Dirty Lemon, a beverage start-up that opened its first store last month. The downtown Manhattan location doesn't have any staff, and shoppers pay via text message.

Now that they've gotten brick-and-mortar religion, the brands are starting to understand why Macy's has 850 locations. A physical store uses the power of instant gratification, merchandising, employee service, and dressing rooms to get shoppers to buy more and return fewer items, which boosts profits. Alexa Buckley, who cofounded women's shoe purveyor Margaux, figured out the merits of having a store when she rented a loft space in Philadelphia. Despite heavy rains and wind from the remnants of a hurricane, 200 women showed up and generated almost a month's worth of sales.

"It was the craziest three hours of my life," Buckley recalls. "It was like nothing we could have anticipated, in terms of the appetite for this off-line experience."

Margaux tested temporary stores in cities like Atlanta, Boston, and Dallas and got the same results. Some customers needed to try on the shoes in-person before committing to that first purchase, and off-line shoppers spent more  today the spread is 13 percent  and returned less. In July, Margaux opened a permanent store in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. She's planning more. "It is a customer acquisition necessity for us," Buckley says. "We're finding that continually in city after city."

Going off-line marked the moment UntuckIt took off. By late 2015, the company had already become an aggressive advertiser online and by traditional means such as print and radio, but when it opened a pop-up store in Manhattan the effect of all that marketing multiplied.

Profit margins were better, too, without paying for shipping or as many returns. Plus, off-line customers bought more, and after the store's debut, there was a noticeable lift in the surrounding area's online sales. On the heels of that brick-and-mortar success, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an early Amazon backer, invested $30 million in UntuckIt so it could open more stores.

"Stores took us to a different level," says Riccobono, the UnutckIt founder. "Customers who didn't want to buy a $98 shirt because they weren't sure if we're just another fly-by-night e-comm company started taking us very seriously."

Bonobos's "guide shops" are set up for customers to try on and order clothes  there's no inventory  and have become as important to the marketing mix as glossy catalogs and TV commercials. Bonobos focuses not on sales-per-square-foot  a traditional industry metric  but on how much the stores drive sales online and off in a particular market. Bonobos has discovered that new customers who visit its stores typically spend 20 percent more than they would if starting their experience online.

Bonobos CEO Onvural likens each store to a "ginormous billboard."

In embracing the off-line world, the digital natives have absorbed many of the lessons honed by retailers for the past century: that people like to feel the fabric, try on glasses, get face-to-face shopping tips. The question is whether Bonobos, Warby Parker, and the rest have also learned the painful lessons  how overexpanding can cannibalize existing stores  that laid low so many specialty retailers in recent years.

The digital natives say they're smarter. That they have better data about their customers. That they won't make the same mistakes. Of course, they also said physical stores were a relic of the past.Houston native, Howard University alum, and now New York Times best-selling author Michael Arceneaux opens his debut book I Can't Date Jesus with a confession: "I hadn't been to church in five Beyonce albums." He offers 15 personal essays that survey the black gay experience through the lens of religion, sex, and humor. Arceneaux, 34, will bring his book to Philadelphia on Wednesday, Oct. 24, with an appearance at the People's Education Center. He spoke with the Inquirer and Daily News about Catholicism, his family's reaction to the book, and the importance of consent in queer encounters.

You walk us through the complexities of being gay and growing up in a black Catholic church. Can you talk about why that was so important to you?

It's so interesting that people don't think black Catholics exist. There was an article last year in the Atlantic that found there are actually more black Catholics in this country than the A.M.E. [African Methodist Episcopal] church. That's just an experience that I've never read about. I can't think of a memoir that talks about being black and Catholic.

A black priest even tried to recruit me for the priesthood because they know that they don't have a lot of black clergy members. I do know a lot of black Catholics have swooped into my email, or my [direct messages on Instagram] to be like, "Oh thank you because I've actually not heard anyone else speak about this nightmare." I'm sure it's not [a nightmare] for everybody, but you know what I mean.

You wrote, the meanings of words could transform over time  even the word abomination.  How do think the meaning of abomination will evolve?

It kind of already is evolved. There's a great documentary called For the Bible Tells Me So and in it, they talk about those six passages in the bible that speaks about homosexuality and they contextualize it. People don't really study the word, but if you talk to theologians and historians, they'll tell you that abomination didn't have the same connotation that it does now. It wasn't as intense in its meaning. From my understanding, to compare phrases, [abomination] is like abnormal. So we think about abomination in the context of eating shellfish or mixing fabrics. So the language is the same, but it's not stigmatized in the same [as homosexuality]. This is very intentional.

While I'm not particularly religious anymore, I do have a great respect for religion. But I think if we are to get people to live up to Christian virtues more authentically, we need to confront and interrogate these biases.

You mentioned that you speculated how much better your mothers life might be if she focused more on what she could change now as opposed to waiting to be rewarded for her virtues in the afterlife. Do you think shell ever come around to that?

A point that I wanted to make in the book is that you have to meet people where they are and then reflect on why they are the way they are. If you love a person, have a level of respect for them. For me, I understand why my mom is the way she is, particularly her interpretation of religion, her interpretation of dogma, that version of Christianity. I understand why that works for her and has kept her going. I recognize why she is the strongest person I know and why I admire her so much.

The disconnect is that I don't think [my mother] and people who hold similar views  very rigid, very "this is the way it is" and not allow any type of grayness  have the same type of consideration for me. I think what works for her works for her and I respect that's where she is. I choose to live my life differently but we both love each other and we both respect where the other is. That's the best Christian I can be.

Has your father read the book?

No. My parents haven't read the book. Some relatives have. [My relatives] said that I was "honest but respectful," which is the nicest cosign you can get from older Southern black people when you're writing about personal stuff that they'd rather not know. My mom will not read the book.

In the chapter The First, The Worst you detail a traumatic sexual experience you had with another man. Would you say you were sexually assaulted?

I did not consider myself to be sexually assaulted, but that's something that has come up in one or two interviews. I understand why some people might interpret it that way and I've never thought about it in those terms. That's something that I'm still reflecting on. I don't think the intent was to [assault] but it nonetheless happened. It's an issue about consent and the role alcohol plays and how consent works in those types of situations.

I'm still kind of processing it because it's interesting to have people ask me that, and in some cases, maybe assign that to me.

Lets talk about gay dating apps, which you talk about in the book. Why do gay men have such a love/hate relationships with apps like Grindr and Jackd?

To be blunt, gay sex is very much stigmatized. Whether consciously or otherwise, we're typically conditioned to feel bad about wanting pleasure and bad about wanting sex. I actually would rather meet the person in person. Apps, in general, allow people to be colder and distant. It's interesting because we're all so connected but it's easier to be distant with the app. I think apps can bring out the worst in people and they're allowed to do that because they're alone and don't have to be face to face.

But if you need to use an app and you think it's for sex, good for you. It's not that big of a deal, ultimately.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

AUTHOR APPEARANCE

Michael ArceneauxThe strangest thing about Nick Millevoi's new bimonthly gig at the West Philly bar Booker's is how not strange it is.

On Thursday evening, the guitarist and his trio the Stardusters  bassist Matt Stein and drummer Mike Szekely  played repertoire ranging from Hank Williams to Duke Ellington, with classics like "Red River Valley" and "Caravan" rendered as Americana-tinged jazz with a surf-guitar flair. But the melodies were played straight, lovely enough to serve as happy hour background music (or, in Millevoi's preferred term, "social music") if you didn't pause at your bar stool to tune in to the band's obvious virtuosity.

"The idea of the band," Millevoi says, "is to play music from the '50s and '60s that you can google and find a million different versions of, but they're not necessarily jazz standards. They might be both  'Autumn Leaves' is a jazz standard that also would have fit into this other canon of music  but aesthetically, songs that were recorded as pop instrumental covers or in exotica versions."

Musical influences don't typically pass through Millevoi's hands quite so unaltered. The Philly guitarist has co-led the power trio Many Arms, which parlayed blistering riffs and mathematical complexity into rigorously brutal prog-metal workouts; with frequent collaborator Dan Blacksberg, he formed the avant-garde trombone/guitar duo Archer Spade and played Hasidic doom metal and radical klezmer music; of late, he's played in psych-experimentalist Chris Forsyth's Solar Motel Band and performed pieces from uncategorizable composer John Zorn's extensive catalog alongside Cleric guitarist Matt Hollenberg.

If each of those projects thrives on a collision of styles, Millevoi's Desertion Trio is a traffic-stopping, multi-genre pileup. Given the band's vigorous sound, free jazz freakouts can emerge from a haze of Crazy Horse distortion, or a free-floating country twang can suddenly sharpen into surf-rock riffery. One track may conjure a scene of secret agent skulduggery while another offers a glimpse of a fantasy landscape constructed from Les Baxter exotica and soft-focus cinematics.

On Thursday night, Millevoi and the Desertion Trio will celebrate the release of their second album, Midtown Tilt, at Johnny Brenda's, with jazz harpist Brandee Younger opening the show, presented by the Ars Nova Workshop. The band, which also includes Many Arms bassist Johnny DeBlase and drummer Kevin Shea of Mostly Other People Do the Killing, will be joined by the adventurous (and impressively bearded) keyboardist Jamie Saft, who appeared on and recorded both of the trio's albums in his New York studio.

You can rattle off a laundry list of names from Neil Young to the Ventures as touchstones, but the main influence behind Midtown Tilt is not an artist but a place: Wildwood. Raised in Northeast Philly, Millevoi has been frequenting the Shore town since childhood, discovering inspiration in its uniquely nostalgic aesthetic in recent years.

"I started thinking about what Wildwood has meant to me," he says, "but also what the city of Wildwood means as a cultural object. It's a unique place, and so much of it is preserved intact. That idea of Wildwood being a time capsule relates to my feeling of music, that these tunes are frozen in time. There's a personal nostalgia, but then there's a nostalgia for a place that is nostalgic."

Millevoi's adoration of the look of Wildwood feels untainted by irony; even his guitar, a custom seaside green Jazzmaster-style Creston, looks like something that could be mounted on a spinning neon sign a block or two from the beach. He and his wife frequent the city, on and offseason, usually staying at the well-preserved Caribbean Motel.

"It looks exactly the same as it does in pictures from the '50s," Millevoi says. "Each one of these themed motels  the Shalimar, the Singapore, the Malibu  is supposed to evoke a place that the people that built it probably had no idea about. It's like listening to exotica music: It's fake culture. You go down one street and you have all these places evoking other places in other time periods. I wanted to explore that musically, with each track on the album having its own feeling and its own sound, so you can have a cowboy track next to a spy track next to a surf track."

As opposed to the recognizable renditions of classic tunes he plays with the Stardusters (whose name refers simultaneously to a jazz standard, a Wildwood motel, and an early Neil Young band), his music with the Desertion Trio is more exploratory, distorted, and warped. Conceptually, that might suggest the decay that many of these Shore town landmarks have suffered in the intervening decades, but Millevoi says that's not his intention. "That's my lens, how I feel music. That's not conceptual; that's just me."Octopus Titan VCT plc (the Company)

22 October 2018

Adjournment of General Meeting

The Company announces that it is proposed to adjourn (the "Adjournment") the general meeting ("General Meeting") that has been convened for 11.30am on 25 October 2018 to 6 December 2018, at 3.45pm at 33 Holborn, London EC1N 2HT. The resolutions to be considered at the General Meeting include resolutions relating to the Company's offer for subscription (the "Offer") as set out in the prospectus dated 13 September 2018 (the "Prospectus"), the Offer being conditional on their approval by the Company's shareholders. The Adjournment is in order that the General Meeting may take place immediately following a further general meeting that the Company is proposing to convene to consider certain amendments to the Company's investment management and administration arrangements that were referred to in the Prospectus and which it is anticipated will be approved by the Company's shareholders prior to the first allotment of shares under the Offer.

For further information please contact:

Parisha Kanani

Company Secretary

22 October 2018Emily Eekhoff talks to a TV station after her daughter Ruby was born. She said counting the fetal kicks led to a Caesarean section that saved Ruby's life. Husband Jeremy holds their son, Liam. Today, a nonprofit group, Count the Kicks, promotes the method. Read more

Emily Eekhoff was in the 33rd week of her second pregnancy when she made an unsettling discovery.

As she had with her first baby, Liam, Eekhoff had been religiously keeping track of the number of kicks her unborn baby delivered during the third trimester.

This baby had been consistent, kicking about 10 times in a 10-minute period. But that day, in 2017, "I noticed she was not moving like she normally did," said Eekhoff of Ankeny, Iowa. "That day, it was like three or four kicks in a couple hours."

She alerted her doctor's office and was told to immediately go to the hospital, where the staff detected a heartbeat, but couldn't coax more movement. When an ultrasound revealed the baby was in distress, Eekhoff was quickly dispatched to an operating room for an emergency Caesarean section.

Out came baby Ruby, with her umbilical cord wrapped three times tightly around her neck. "The on-call doctor who examined the ultrasound said that if they had waited even a day longer, she probably would have died," Eekhoff recalled.

Ruby, now 15 months old and scooting around the house, was the beneficiary of the mothers-initiated campaign "Count the Kicks." Started in 2008 in Iowa, it teaches pregnant women to track the movements of their unborn babies in the last trimester of pregnancy so they can quickly detect in utero distress. The campaign has corresponded to a nearly 28 percent drop in stillbirths in Iowa  and it is starting to spread.

Campaigns based on the Iowa model have been launched in Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas and Missouri, the last two this year and both with state financing. Emily Price, executive director of Count the Kicks, the nonprofit group behind the campaign, said there are plans for launches by the end of the year in Alabama and Ohio.

Many doctors have long urged pregnant women to pay attention to fetal kicks. But too many physicians still rely on what they glean from routine office visits, even though waiting for the next scheduled appointment may be too late, said Jason Collins, a Louisiana obstetrician who has practiced for 30 years and has studied stillbirths.

"Mom is the best evaluator of the baby's status," Collins said. "Educating moms about kick counts is the path to preventing stillbirth."

The campaigns, which put educational materials in the offices of all providers of maternity health care, cost little. In Kansas, for example, it is expected to cost about $9,000 a year, with the money coming from the state's federal Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant, according to Rachel Sisson, director of the Bureau of Family Health in the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

In 2003, Tiffan Yamen, a marketing and sales executive who lived in the Des Moines suburb of Waukee, went into labor 10 days before her scheduled C-section.

It was her second delivery, and she felt comfortable waiting until the end of her workday before heading to the hospital, where she was monitored for the next six or seven hours. Several times, nurses said, "You have a very sleepy baby."

She was given medication to slow down her labor in the hopes of delaying delivery until closer to her due date and sent home. The next day, she woke up not feeling well and noticed her baby was not moving. But because the previous day's tests hadn't alarmed her caregivers, and no one had told her to pay particular attention to the baby's movements, she wasn't alarmed.

By coincidence, she had an appointment with her obstetrician that day. When she showed up with her 2-year-old, Isabela, in tow, the staff made a routine check for the baby's heartbeat. Then, without a word of explanation, Yamen remembers her doctor saying, "We need to get an ultrasound right away." She remembers him rushing her down the hall.

Yamen said she was more focused on Isabela, whom they had left alone in the other room, than the doctor's frantic probing with the ultrasound. That is, until he abruptly pronounced the words she would not forget. "Tiffan," he said, "I'm sorry. It's too late."

The next day, Yamen delivered the baby, posthumously named Madeline, stillborn.

The baby's umbilical cord had formed a knot around her neck, a frequent cause of stillbirths. The knot had apparently tightened with every contraction, cutting off the baby's oxygen.

Because of how distraught Yamen was in the aftermath, she said, her pastor put her in touch with another woman in his congregation who had just had a stillbirth. Together, they connected with three other women, two of whom had also had stillbirths. The third woman had lost her baby within days of delivery.

The five women started meeting regularly at a coffee shop as an informal support group. As they learned how little was said about stillbirths outside medical circles, they began sharing ideas about how to help others. They settled on the idea of asking the state to create a stillbirth registry review panel, which would record all stillbirths in the state and investigate their causes.

One member of their group was then-state Rep. Janet Peterson, a Democrat who is now a state senator. She introduced the bill to create the registry. It passed in 2004.

The women then headed to Washington, D.C., to seek funding for the registry, enlisting the help of then-U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who secured start-up funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Iowa registry became a model for registries elsewhere, in Hawaii, Atlanta, and parts of Colorado and New York.

The mothers' group wasn't done, however. Attending a 2009 summit in Washington on stillbirths, some wandered from sessions geared toward mothers to another area where childbirth researchers were presenting their findings.

There, Yamen heard about a study from Norway that had demonstrated the rate of stillbirths among expectant mothers who had received training in systematically tracking fetal movement fell by nearly 50 percent.

"We said, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we did this in the United States?' " said Yamen, who in 2005 delivered another healthy baby daughter, Zoe.

The mothers' group created Count the Kicks and planned to launch their first campaign at home, in Iowa. State officials were encouraging, but said they didn't have money to support the campaign. Instead, March of Dimes donated $15,000. With that, Yamen said the group created brochures and contacted every provider of maternal health care in the state, offering them the educational materials to provide their patients.

Price, the executive director of the nonprofit group, said that at least 90 percent of the providers requested the materials.

The results have been impressive. Within five years, the stillbirth rate in Iowa dropped from 6.13 to 4.36 per thousand births (it ticked back up between 2015 and 2016, but declined again the next year, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health). While other factors might explain the reason for the drop, no one has identified any changes other than the campaign to explain it.

In 2012, the campaign added a free app that enables pregnant women to record their daily counts.

Price said that the Iowa campaign this year has focused more on minority communities, in which the stillbirth rates are higher. Nationally, the stillbirth rate among black mothers in 2013 was 10.5, compared with 4.9 for whites. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, the state stillbirth rate among blacks was 8.1 compared with 4.1 for whites.

The Iowa campaign held focus groups this year with at-risk expectant mothers and their providers to try to design ways to reach them, Price said. "We know that without intentional focus on women of color, independent of income, we are likely to unintentionally widen disparities in stillbirth rather than decrease them."

Price said that when the campaign began, she heard concerns from some obstetricians that counting fetal kicks would cause women undue anxiety, leading to unnecessary doctor visits. She said she has not heard any evidence that has happened, and in any case dismisses the concern.

"We don't want to scare moms, but we think this is actually empowering for them." The app, she said, gives the women strong data to present to doctors.

Many obstetricians are big supporters, including Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, who brought the campaign to his state.

"We are the first state health department to initiate and fund this," said Williams, who was a practicing obstetrician for 30 years. Missouri is using federal maternal block grant funds to finance the effort, about $24,000 this year, a department spokeswoman said.

One of the early backers of the campaign in Iowa was Neil Mandsager, medical director of obstetrics at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, who performed the emergency C-section on Emily Eekhoff to deliver Ruby. He said that many women have, like Eekhoff, arrived at the center reporting diminished movement and requiring immediate deliveries.

"All of the credit goes to these five women who saw a gap in medical knowledge and took steps to fill it," Mandsager said.

Ollove is a reporter for Stateline, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts.The Headquarters Road Bridge has spanned Tinicum Creek in a bucolic slice of Bucks County since the War of 1812.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has been seeking to replace its centuries-old stone foundation for more than a decade, because, it says, it's simply too old. So PennDot came up with plans for a modern bridge that seeks to keep the original character as much as possible.

But the Delaware Riverkeeper Network sued the state and Federal Highway Administration on Monday in federal court in an attempt to block the project, believing the bridge and its character can be preserved and re-opened for traffic. The group is a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Delaware River watershed.

"The Tinicum Creek and Headquarters Road Bridge are beautiful and irreplaceable assets to Tinicum Township, Bucks County, and our wild and scenic Delaware River landscape," Maya van Rossum, leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said in a statement. "There is no defense for PennDot or the federal government's decision to destroy the bridge and inflict damage on the exceptional value of Tinicum Creek, especially when they are doing so in violation of the laws that are intended to help avoid such bad decision-making."

PennDot issued a statement saying the project not only received federal approval, but underwent 12 public meetings. The department considered 10 other alternatives before settling on the plan.

Because of its poor condition, the bridge has been closed to traffic since 2011. An inspection the following year found that "the overall condition of the bridge is serious, and that the structure, in its current state, is structurally deficient." The bridge once accommodated 900 vehicles per day, but that had dropped to 631 vehicles by the time it was closed. Because its lane is 16 feet wide, only one lane of traffic can pass at a time. Emergency vehicles can't fit at all.

As a result of the bridge's condition, which includes crumbling masonry, the state came up with a replacement plan that calls for turning the current one-lane setup into two lanes. That would mean ripping out the existing foundation and replacing it with a new base that includes stonework.

The bridge, also known as Burnt Mill Bridge or Sheephole Bridge, is the oldest "pier-to-pier" constructed bridge left in Pennsylvania and there is only one other left in the country, according to the complaint. Of eight remaining working bridges built in Pennsylvania before 1812, all were common stone arch construction.

The bridge is located where Headquarters and Sheep Hole Roads meet in Tinicum Township. Ottsville is on the west side and Erwinna is on the east side. It's about two miles as the crow files from the eastern edge of Nockamixon State Park. Some residents object to the years of detours caused by the bridge closure.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network says the bridge should have been included in the National Register of Historic Places and that increasing vehicle traffic would have adverse environmental effects on the area, including sediment pollution from construction and alteration of the stream's flow.

It also said replacing the bridge will not only "adversely affect the ecotourism experience" of the Ridge Valley Rural Historic District that is listed in the National Register, but will take longer and be more expensive than rehabilitation.

The bridge was first opened to automobile traffic in 1919. Prior to that, it was used by pedestrians and horses. PennDot began scoping out how to replace the bridge since 2002 and held its first public meeting in 2005. The bridge continued to deteriorate and its load limit was reduced before it was closed.

The Riverkeeper Network began asking that the bridge be rehabilitated and considered "an irreplaceable historic and environmental resource." It hired its own experts to show it was possible to keep the bridge's original masonry.

The court complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, says that PennDot's plan is in violation of environmental regulations and moved ahead "a predetermined outcome in mind: replacement of the bridge" without seriously considering alternatives. It seeks a court order to stop construction.

The Riverkeeper Network has offered its own plan by McMullan &Associates that calls for replacing the top deck and guardrails of the nearly 80-foot-long bridge. It would also preserve the original masonry piers and abutments.

PennDot's statement said that the degree of analysis it undertook was "unprecedented" for such a project. It does not agree with the Riverkeeper that a rehabilitated bridge would meet "the needs of the community" and would "be a wise investment of taxpayer dollars."Malnourished, dehydrated, and covered in deep, infected bedsores, 84-year-old Albert Weaver Sr. was unable to speak when paramedics arrived at his Quakertown home in November 2016.

Once at St. Luke's Hospital, he was able to utter two words: "Help me."

Twelve days later, he died, the end to years of neglect by the four people  including his son and granddaughter  he had allowed to live on his property and entrusted with his care.

On Monday, his son, Albert Jr., 53; his daughter-in-law, Virginia Weaver, 49; and his granddaughter's boyfriend, Anthony Dorney, 33, pleaded guilty to neglect of a dependent person and other charges, and were sentenced to state prison. Even as they admitted their guilt, each denied being his primary caregiver. All said they regretted not doing more for Weaver as his health deteriorated and he essentially starved to death

His granddaughter, Amanda Weaver, 27, admitted guilt as well, but her sentencing was delayed for a mental-health evaluation.

Virginia Weaver, Amanda Weaver, and Dorney also admitted to stealing money from Weaver and using it for their own expenses, including drugs. After Albert Sr. died, Virginia Weaver cashed several of his pension checks.

"It is incomprehensible to me that a family who claims to love someone would treat him this way," Judge Wallace H. Bateman said before handing down his sentence in Bucks County Court. "That's how you treated somebody that you loved? Here's what I think, I think he was a cash cow for you. You took his money, and you didn't even give him the slightest bit of care."

With police photographs of Weaver's bedsore-covered body in front of him, Bateman came down hard on all three defendants, sentencing them to longer prison terms than sentencing guidelines recommend.

"It's really troubling," Bateman said. "I'd have to be a fool to think the three of you had no idea the condition he was in, when you take a look at this photo."

Albert Jr., who had been free on bail, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of negligent care of a dependent person, and was sentenced to 15 to 48 months in state prison. Virginia Weaver and Dorney, who have been jailed since their March arrests, pleaded guilty to negligent care of a dependent person and felony theft, and were sentenced to two to five years in state prison.

The attorneys for Albert Jr. and Virginia Weaver declined comment after sentencing. Sharif N. Abaza, who represents Dorney, said he was glad to see his client's case resolved with a guilty plea.

This case began on Nov. 10, 2016, when paramedics responded to a call for help at the Weaver property on the 100 block of Union Road. Dorney, who lived in a mobile home on the property with his girlfriend, their children, and Weaver Sr., told authorities he had been giving Weaver his daily bath when the elderly man's eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Paramedics said they found Weaver Sr. on the floor of a bathroom in the dark mobile home. He was naked and curled up under a blanket. His ribs were visible through his skin, authorities said, and the house looked "deplorable," with clothes and garbage strewn across the floor and a "smell of infection" in the air.

Weaver Sr. did not have a bedroom in the mobile home, or in the adjacent two-story, four-bedroom home Virginia and Albert Jr. shared on the property. Instead, he slept on a recliner, which the family burned after his death.

Despite some improvement at the hospital, Weaver died on Nov. 22. Forensic pathologists testified that his death resulted from sepsis and malnourishment, and said that had he been cared for by his family, he would have survived. Charges were filed in March.

In court on Monday, Albert Weaver Jr. said he failed as a son by trusting the others, all of whom suffered from alcohol or drug problems, to care for his father.

"My client was a bad son. He didn't follow up. He didn't check on him as he should have," said his attorney, Keith Williams, who argued that his client did not deserve to go to prison. "He was barely in charge of his father, that's what caused the problem."

Virginia Weaver said she had previously cared for other elderly people, even her own father, who had abused her and left the family when she was a teenager. But this time, she said, alcoholism, depression, and an addiction to painkillers got in the way.

"I was just involved with myself," she said. "I got to the point where he got so ill, I was scared that I'd be in trouble.  I miss him a lot. If there was anything I could do to change it, I would."

Dorney, meanwhile, said he was consumed by meth addiction as he cared for his girlfriend's grandfather.

"I'm never going to forget what this man has done for me. He did more for me than most of family," Dorney said. "I'm very sorry; I just wish it would've went a lot different than it did."

Bateman had little sympathy for the defendants and had perhaps the harshest words for Albert Jr.

"Alcoholics and drug addicts taking care of your father. Bet you're proud today of how you treated him. He took care of you," Bateman said. "He could have lived a productive life had anyone taken the time to care for him."Eric Lawton, right, and his son, Shawn, 7, stand for a portrait at the Happy Hollow Recreation Center in Germantown on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018. The two star in popular Instagram videos posted to Lawton's account, GheeFunny. Read more

When Eric Lawton is playing himself in his comedy videos, he's not trying to be the picture-perfect father. His image looks nothing like the dads in Norman Rockwell paintings, nor the corny, confidant types often seen in television for teens. And while he may be writing jokes about black families, he most certainly is not doing The Cosby Show.

Lawton, who stars alongside his son, Shawn, wants to portray a father who can slip up.

Some critics say he's doing just that: He is, after all, writing one-minute sketches where he and his 7-year-old trade jabs laced (sometimes) with sexual innuendo. But fans of the pair appreciate the blend of subversive African American comedy traditions with father and son's satiric ability to capture the challenges of everyday parenting, economic realities especially  talents that have earned the pair 660,000 Facebook followers and an Instagram following of 188,000 under the moniker GheeFunny.

Take a recent sketch posted in January, where Shawn asks for a dog. Lawton: "Hell, no.  You just started wiping your own a two months ago."

READER NOTE: The Instagram videos below may contain foul language or sexual references.

Unlike his on-screen persona, the real-life director at a local youth development program is laid back, with a calm tone of voice. As he was preparing to hit the "share" button on a more recent clip, he shook his head and laughed.

"This video is probably going to get some bad feedback," Lawton said of the video in which he takes Shawn to the doctor because of persistent itchiness  he guessed that was from chasing around girls four grades ahead of him. From other videos, too, Lawton has received backlash from viewers who don't like that his character uses foul language, or that he shuts his son down by insulting him.

"Who cares? Not me. You need negative," said Lawton, 30, of Strawberry Mansion. "Without turmoil, who are you?"

Negativity aside, his goals are positively ambitious: He wants Shawn to be able to make the leap from digi-shorts novice to professional actor. Lawton sees it as showing his son something other than playing ball. They're already working on leveling up: Next month, they'll debut The GheeFunny Show  Ghee is Lawton's nickname  a web series of 25-minute episodes with professional camerawork instead of iPhone grabs. Lawton said he is in negotiations with Facebook and YouTube over which platform will host the first season.

But it all just started as a funny guy from a funny family who figured he'd try sharing his wisecracks on social media. And then when Shawn was 6, the child asked a question all parents know is ripe for comedy: Where do babies come from?

In that moment, he understood their conversation was unfolding in a funny way, so he asked his son to raise the question on camera.

Experts and fans now marvel at Shawn's comedy chops at so young an age. "He'll tell me something, or I'll just make something up," Shawn explained nonchalantly. "I'll say this or I'll say that."

His father estimates about 70 percent of their dialogue is off the cuff. How does Shawn come up with it? "I just figure it out from what he says, and then I say something back that's disrespectful."

Over time, their sketches, which earn some money through sponsors but not views, have become a mix of scripted dialogue and their own improvised banter, with a range of plots. There's a video where Shawn thinks his ankle is broken. (Lawton, unwilling to pay for a hospital visit, tells Shawn to put on his Lebron James sneakers.) Or when Lawton gets pulled over and tries to gloss over his infractions to a cop. (Shawn pipes up to tell the truth after each response.)

This is "more than a high-concept buddy comedy between the Rock and Kevin Hart might make [people] feel," said Nick Marx, a comedy studies expert based at Colorado State University. He said social media comedy often captures "everyday lived experiences."

Black parenting, of course, is not a monolith. But in many black households, parents teach that respect is an ironclad boundary. GheeFunny's comedy exposes what can happen when that understanding goes off the rails, like when the kid keeps crossing the line, or if the parent is wrong. What if parent and child are actually talking about different things? Shawn's catchphrase is: "That's besides the point." Lawton's catchphrase is: "Do it look like I give a f."

"Our relationship in real life is nothing like that," Lawton insisted. Still, "a lot of the stuff we do is stuff that we go through. But once we do it on camera, we take it to the max."

Denene Millner, an author and expert on African American parenting, pointed out that many black parents turn a good phrase as they lay down the law. The Lawtons are tapping into that, notably in a media landscape where black fathers lack visibility.

Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal, a scholar of African American popular culture, sees their sketches as a brilliant blend between African American comedy and how black fathers turn to humor to "cut through the tension between all this maleness" when speaking to their sons  GheeFunny "ain't The Cosby Show, and this ain't Black-ish." It also reminded him of conversations with his own daughter.

"The conversation is real and it can be profane, but it's a glimpse into what the challenges of everyday parenting" are, said Neal. "It's not romantic. It's real."

Except when it isn't. In real life, Shawn is every bit a 7-year-old: He's energetic. He loves pancakes, hot dogs, PBJ, and soda and candy. When he grows up, he wants a mansion in California where he hopes to raise twins. Sometimes, he said, teachers at his school quote his catchphrase.

"A lot of people from school know me from Instagram," Shawn explained. "I have a lot of friends. That's good. They talk about my videos at lunch and stuff."

Also, in real life, Shawn doesn't understand the sexual references.

"Those are the videos where I have to write the content out," Lawton said. "I have to make sure I'm staying in bounds."

Shawn still asks questions, though, like when they were filming a sketch where Shawn asks why his father's bedroom smells like fish.

Lawton remembered giving this explanation: "When you have friends over, it's not good to have a seafood smell."

Upon hearing his dad's retelling to a reporter, he got curious again. Lawton feigned ignorance: "I don't know what you're talking about."

That video has more than 6 million views on Facebook, with the majority of commenters responding positively. Still, some posted upset critiques. "That boy is a child and should not be exposed to such ignorant nonsense!!!" one viewer wrote.

Millner wishes that social media videos had rating systems like movies do, giving parents the tools to know which content is not suitable for children. GheeFunny's accounts, for instance, aren't, she said. Still, she finds their work "hysterical," and believes much of the backlash is due to the medium.

"If it was HBO or Showtime," nobody would really notice, said Millner. "I don't look at this father-son duo any differently than I look at Jodie Foster [who played a prostitute at age 12] in Taxi Driver. Or Quvenzhane Wallis [who was 9 when she punched her on-screen dad] in Beasts of the Southern Wild."

Shawn's mother, Ashley Reavis, who co-parents with Lawton, is famously absent from the videos. She said she's gotten bad feedback about the content, which she hears out but doesn't heed. Shawn said he doesn't pay it much mind either: "I really just ignore them 'cause they hatin'."

Grandpop Lawton is especially proud of the sketches  that's because they are an exaggerated version of his tough but hilarious fathering, his son said. Eric Lawton Sr. gets worried, though, too.

"I told my son the other day to make disclaimers," said Lawton Sr. "There's a lot of child abuse in this world. There's a lot of bad parenting in this world. I don't want anyone to take it to a point where they think this is real."

Lawton does get messages from people who don't know that they're acting, which he finds absurd. But Lawton doesn't ignore the comments. In fact, he made a strategic decision months ago to scale back how many obscenities he uses. Since then, his Instagram following has tripled.

In the future, he hopes to do more public appearances  Jan. 30 was his biggest gig yet, at Onyx, a strip club. (Shawn didn't see the ad for that.) Stand-up is next. Lawton is not letting the detractors stop him: "Sometimes negative energy motivates you."Rhonda Alvin is charged with shooting her 15-year-old son during an argument in their North Philadelphia home on Sunday, Oct. 21. Read more

A woman has been charged with shooting and wounding her 15-year-old son during an argument in their North Philadelphia home, police said Monday.

Police did not spell out the nature of the dispute.

Officers responding to a call for a shooting at a residence on the 4600 block of North 12th Street about 6:05 p.m. Sunday were met by the teenager, who told them his mother shot him in the left leg during an argument, authorities said. Police took the teen to Einstein Medical Center, where he was reported in stable condition.

The boy's mother, Rhonda Alvin, 38, remained at the scene and was arrested, officials said.

Investigators recovered two firearms, which Alvin has a license to carry, police said.

Alvin was charged with aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a minor, simple assault, and related offenses, police said. At a hearing earlier, bail was set $75,000, which she posted. A preliminary hearing was set for Monday.Pa. state Rep. Vanessa Brown will face trial nearly four years after being criminally charged. AP FILE PHOTO Read more

HARRISBURG  Nearly four years after being caught in a high-profile corruption sting, Democratic State Rep. Vanessa Brown is scheduled to go on trial Monday on charges that she abused her office by accepting cash-stuffed envelopes in return for official favors.

It will be a closely watched case. Brown, 52, who represents portions of West Philadelphia and is running unopposed in next month's election, is the last remaining defendant in the ambitious investigation was launched eight years ago by the state attorney general's office.

The investigation became the catalyst for a destructive series of clashes among law enforcement officials in Pennsylvania. It shook the state's legal and political circles, and culminated in criminal charges  and a conviction  against the state's top law enforcement officer.

Brown's trial is expected to feature more than a dozen secret recordings and the likely return to the witness stand of the sting's undercover informant, Tyron B. Ali. During the investigation, Ali posed as a lobbyist and was deployed to the Capitol to shower legislators with cash and gifts. Brown is accused of taking $4,000 in cash from him.

Her lawyers are expected to argue that the case was built on a flawed investigation that relied on a mercurial and untrustworthy operative.

Prosecutors are poised to counter that the Democratic legislator's own words on the recordings demonstrate that she was willing to sell her office for cash. They are also expected to introduce testimony she gave before the grand jury that heard evidence in the case, in which they say she admitted her guilt.

Brown, who faces charges of bribery, conspiracy and conflict of interest, could not be reached for comment last week. Her lawyer, Patrick Casey, did not return a call.

She is the only defendant to fight the case, which resulted in pleas of guilty or no contest from four other onetime state lawmakers and a former traffic-court judge in Philadelphia.

The sting case dates to 2010, when Ali, hoping to win favorable treatment after his arrest in an unrelated fraud case, agreed to wear a wire for the state Attorney General's office and tape public officials as he made his rounds in Philadelphia and Harrisburg. The investigation was run by former state prosecutor Frank Fina, who had carved out a niche pursuing big public-corruption cases.

In March 2014, the Inquirer reported that former Attorney General Kathleen Kane secretly shut down the investigation after taking office in 2013. The revelation set off a nasty and deeply personal fight between Kane and Fina that lasted years and ended with criminal charges against Kane, a Democrat. She was convicted in late 2016 of leaking grand jury information in an effort to smear Fina.

The sting case was resurrected by former city District Attorney Seth Williams, who charged Brown and five others in late 2014 and early 2015. Five have pleaded guilty or no contest and their cases have been closed. Of those, three were sitting Democratic House members from Philadelphia who resigned from office as part of pleas that allowed them to keep their government pensions.

State law allows Brown and other elected officials accused of crimes to remain in office through trial. If convicted, they are required only to resign on the day of sentencing.

In all, Brown is accused of getting the cash from Ali in five installments.

In one instance, she accepted $2,000 from Ali while in her Harrisburg office. She looked at the money, and declared: "Ooh, good looking!  Thank you twice."

She initially agreed to plead guilty in the case, even providing testimony before the grand jury in Philadelphia during which she admitted she had taken the money and acknowledged that it was wrong, according to court documents.

"I am sorry. I never wanted to be in this position," Brown testified before the grand jury. " You can't survive up here if you don't raise the money. The pressure is too much.  But now that I look back, it was the wrong thing. It was wrong. I accept full responsibility for what I've done."

In the summer of 2015, on the day she was expected to enter a guilty plea in court, she changed her mind.

Her trial has been rescheduled more than a dozen times since, as her lawyers have raised a long list of legal issues, including the contention that she and other defendants in the case had been targeted because of their political affiliation and because they were African American. But a judge dismissed the argument.An ad tying Democrat Scott Wallace to convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has been taken off the airwaves. Read more

Television stations in the Philadelphia region have stopped airing a super PAC's ad alleging that Democratic congressional candidate Scott Wallace helped pay for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal defense.

Maureen Faulkner, widow of the police officer Abu-Jamal was found guilty of murdering, claims in the spot that Wallace "funded Jamal's legal defense through an organization that has given my husband's killer a public voice for the last 21 years."

The super PAC Defending Main Street has provided no evidence that Wallace, a multimillionaire philanthropist running for Bucks County's First District seat, donated to Abu-Jamal's legal defense or appeals.

Instead, the group cites as documentation for its claim a media report about controversial donations that Wallace's family foundation made to Democracy Now!, a liberal news organization. Earlier this year, a website called Times Herald News republished a Fox News article that reported the Wallace Global Fund gave $3 million to Democracy Now! between 2003 and 2016.

The media outlet has provided Abu-Jamal with a platform "at least 20 times," according to Fox, and its coverage has been favorable. Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence.

>> VOTERS GUIDE: View candidates in the 2018 midterm election based on your address, or browse all the action in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware

Scott Thomas, an attorney for Defending Main Street, said in a letter addressed to local TV stations that "by funding Democracy Now!, the Wallace efforts have funded Abu-Jamal's numerous defense-related assertions and theories."

But Wallace does not control Democracy Now!'s editorial content, and it is not accurate to say that Wallace funded Abu-Jamal's legal defense. Donating to a media outlet sympathetic to Abu-Jamal's claims is not the same as paying his lawyers.

Adam Bonin, an attorney for Wallace, said that "at no time did Wallace provide funding" for that.

The Wallace campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter to Comcast and WPVI-TV on Thursday, shortly after the ad was released, that called its claim a "totally unfounded and false statement."

A spokesperson for Comcast's advertising sales division said the cable TV company suspended the spot on Saturday after reviewing the Wallace campaign's letter.

The ad has been pulled "pending receipt and review of the advertiser's written response to the letter and documentation substantiating the claim," the spokesperson said.

WPVI-TV confirmed in an email obtained by the Inquirer and Daily News that it, too, would suspend the ad. The ABC station declined to comment.

Defending Main Street reserved enough time for the ad to air for two weeks starting on Thursday, according to conservative website the Daily Caller.

But now the super PAC claims it only wanted the spot to air until last Friday.

Defending Main Street said a different version of the ad, which leaves out any mention of funding Abu-Jamal's legal defense, began airing today. Comcast said it would "schedule it to air once it is processed in the normal course of business."

"The power of this ad is not seen or heard through one line that Scott Wallace and his team happen to be uncomfortable with," said Sarah Chamberlain, president of Defending Main Street. "What's uncomfortable for Pennsylvania voters is that Wallace helped give Mumia Abu-Jamal, a convicted cop killer, a public and sympathetic platform."

Zoe Wilson-Meyer, a spokesperson for the Wallace campaign, said, "In what world would Defending Main Street put this ad up with the intention of taking it down? That's a ridiculous claim, and as the Philadelphia Inquirer previously confirmed, this attack is intentionally misleading to the voters of PA-01 and has been called 'race-baiting' and a 'Willie Horton-style smear.'"

>> SIGN UP: Get daily text messages on key issues leading up to the election

This isn't the first time that Wallace's political foes have attempted to link him to Abu-Jamal, who is serving a life sentence in the 1981 murder of Officer Daniel Faulker. Wallace's Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, began broadcasting an ad in September that said Wallace's foundation donated to "a liberal organization that has given a voice to the convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal."

Fitzpatricks seat is one of Democrats' top targets in their campaign to take back the U.S. House next month. Political analysts have rated the race as a toss-up, and a recent poll by the New York Times found Wallace ahead of Fitzpatrick by seven points. Previous surveys, including one released this month, showed Fitzpatrick in the lead.Scott Wagner, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, meets with students in Philadelphia on Oct. 10. Read more

As it was four years ago when Democrat Tom Wolf was elected Pennsylvania's governor, education funding is a major issue in his campaign for reelection.

Wolf is casting himself as the "education governor," and Republican nominee Scott Wagner is using the issue as a campaign centerpiece. But overall, both candidates are sticking to platitudes.

Here is a review of their statements:

Wagner has called for spending an additional $1 billion annually, while also saying Pennsylvania schools "have enough money."

Asked during an Oct. 1 debate how he would pay for the plan, Wagner said he would find savings in the state budget. But while his campaign highlighted programs Wagner would trim, it's unclear how the plan would generate all the projected revenue.

It's also unclear how Wolf would follow through on his goals. Wolf has added more than $500 million to the main subsidy for public education, although school district costs have risen faster. The state is being sued over school-funding inequities, and Wolf says he'd continue to press for more education aid if reelected.

Wolf points to his record, but offers vague plans going forward

Unlike Wagner, the governor isn't putting a dollar figure to his plan.

The governor, who unsuccessfully advocated for tax increases to fund education in his first term, says he has no plans to push broad-based tax hikes.

He said he would support running all education aid through the state's need-based formula, which now applies only to a portion of state aid. More money would go to some school districts, but the majority would see cuts.

But Wolf says such a change would take time, and that he doesn't support reducing any district's aid.

"It's not possible to make everyone better off and do that," said Mark Price, labor economist at the liberal-leaning Keystone Research Center.

In a recent interview with the Inquirer and Daily News' editorial board, Wolf said that "we need to make sure we're funding our schools adequately and fairly."

"I support the idea of world peace too," he added.

A closer look at Wagners proposal

Leasing the wholesale liquor system and privatizing alcohol sales. Wagner's projected savings: $500 million first year; $300 million recurring

Politicians have previously sought to privatize Pennsylvania's liquor system  and promised to send proceeds to schools. Former Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, proposed doing so in 2013, planning to net $1 billion from selling off the stores. But he and lawmakers couldn't reach an agreement.

Wagner campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said the state would gain recurring revenue by leasing the wholesale liquor system ($200 million a year) and privatizing alcohol sales ($300 million in first year, $100 million in recurring years). The fiscal notes cited by the campaign don't include estimates for recurring revenue.

Romeo said leasing the system would continue to yield revenue because annual permit renewal fees would be based on the permit holder's sales.

"Like any business, once you sell it, you don't get the profits anymore," said Roland Zullo, an associate research scientist at the University of Michigan who has studied state liquor systems, and who on behalf of the Keystone Research Center analyzed a report Corbett commissioned on privatizing Pennsylvania's system. A permit holder is "going to also want to earn their cut of the profit from managing the operation."

Privatization also likely means some loss in tax revenue and higher enforcement costs, Zullo said.

The Liquor Control Board transferred $217 million in non-tax revenue to the general fund in 2016-17. The total contribution, including liquor sales taxes, was $721 million, according to LCB's annual report.

Corporate welfare / tax credit elimination. Wagner's projected savings: $300 million

Pennsylvania spends more than $700 million annually on economic incentives programs, directly and indirectly, according to a 2016 analysis by the state's Independent Fiscal Office.

The money is allocated via tax incentives, general fund expenditures, loan programs, and bond issues, and "special fund" expenditures.

Romeo said Wagner would eliminate tax incentive programs "that do not have a positive economic impact" and had already identified two he would cut: Keystone Opportunity Zone and Keystone Innovation Zone. The state awards $15 million annually in tax credits through KIZ.

The Independent Fiscal Office warns that the value of such awards "should not be construed as the revenue that could be gained if a particular tax incentive were repealed, as the economic activity may not have occurred in the absence of the special treatment."

The KOZ program, which accounted for an estimated $90 million in tax expenditures in 2016-17, exempts certain economically distressed areas from most local and state taxation.

The Wolf administration in 2016 rejected applications for the Keystone Opportunity Zone initiative from Philadelphia, Coatesville, and other municipalities seeking the KOZ designation. The administration said at the time that the state needed to save money.

Social-services / welfare changes. Wagner's projected savings: $600 million

Wagner would seek waivers from the federal government that "will save money as well as secure and protect federal funding," Romeo said. For example, he supports enacting work requirements for Medicaid recipients  one of a number of proposals included in legislation cited by Wagner's campaign.

The fiscal note attached to that legislation doesn't include revenue estimates for many of the proposals. That's because Pennsylvania would need federal approval, said a House Appropriations Committee aide.

Price, of the Keystone Research Center, said it was "certainly possible" for Pennsylvania to spend less on social services.

"That will mean taking money out of things like access to health care for people," he said.

The big question: Property taxes

In addition to finding $1 billion for education, Wagner is also pledging to scrap school property taxes  a $14 billion revenue source.

But he isn't committing to how much he would raise sales and income taxes to compensate. Romeo said Wagner would use "zero-based budgeting" to lessen the severity of the hikes.

Analysts said recouping a significant chunk of that $14 billion through the budget was unlikely.

"Could it be done mathematically? Yes, if you look at the entire state budget," said Nathan Benefield, chief operating officer and vice president of the conservative Commonwealth Foundation. "Is it possible politically? Probably not, because every pot of money has a constituency.  If you're taking the money from one to pay for another, you're going to have pushback on a lot of areas."Amazon's immense multi-level warehouse called a fulfillment center in Kent, Wash. After Amazon announced its new $15-an-hour wage floor, some longtime workers said their total compensation would shrink because of the elimination of stock grants and bonuses. Read more

Does Amazon's embrace of the Fight for $15 mean Congress should do the same?

N.J. Rep. Donald Norcross recently made that case, arguing that the retail giant's embrace of a $15 minimum wage meant other businesses could afford it as well. But Norcross' argument confuses a voluntary raise with an involuntary mandate: One boosts paychecks; the other could leave employees without any pay at all.

Today, a smaller percentage of the hourly workforce earns the federal minimum wage than at almost any time in the past 40 years. Since the last federal hike in 2009-10, the number of employees earning the federal minimum wage has fallen in every year. Norcross and other proponents lament that the pay floor has been "stuck" since that time, but employees haven't been waiting on the federal government to give them a raise.

Research from economists at Miami and Trinity Universities finds that, historically, most minimum-wage employees earn a raise in their first 1-12 months on the job. In today's tight labor market, the size and speed of that raise have been accelerated.

Target, Walmart, McDonald's, Amazon, and dozens of other large employers have announced starting pay rates far above the federal or relevant state minimum wage. (Norcross laments the "heinous tax scam" passed by a Republican Congress last year, but many companies voluntarily offered bonuses or raises in direct response to this so-called "scam.")

The news of Amazon's voluntary raise was soured by the company's announcement that it would lobby for an increase in the federal minimum wage, creating a new mandate for its smaller competitors to deal with. Amazon should know better: Its hometown of Seattle offers all the proof Congress should need of what happens when government tries to raise wages to $15 through a mandate, rather than letting market forces do their work.

A team of researchers at the University of Washington, who were originally funded by the City of Seattle, reported that employees lost $125-per-month on average as a consequence of the city's minimum-wage experiment. Employees who were supposed to benefit from a boost in their hourly wage rate saw their work hours cut when employers couldn't offset the wage costs. (These researchers lost their funding after reporting this inconvenient truth to a City Council that wasn't interested in hearing it.)

Some businesses in Seattle closed their doors altogether. Weaving Works, Louisa's Cafe, and Z Pizza are just a few of the businesses that couldn't survive the city's embrace of the Fight for $15. (Their stories and others are featured on the website FacesOf15.com.)

One owner put it this way: "Seattle is no longer an environment where our business model works." One business owner who supported a rising minimum wage  Felix Ngoussou of the Lake Chad Cafe  even admitted that he had been forced to cut half his staff due to the law's costs.

If a $15 minimum wage  which is double the historic federal-wage precedent  is too radical for Amazon's high-wage hometown of Seattle, imagine would it would do to Sioux Falls, St. Louis, or even Seaside Heights.

Amazon is free to raise its own starting wage to $15, $20, or even $25  if it believes its customers will pay the correspondingly higher prices to offset the cost. (Given that Amazon Prime customers pay for the privilege of using the site, this is probably a safe bet.)

But what works for one of the largest retailers in the country doesn't work for the country's smallest. It's a good lesson for Norcross as he charges ahead with his own misguided fight for $15.

Michael Saltsman is managing director at the Employment Policies Institute. This piece originally appeared in CQ-Roll Call.Living in Pennsylvania this past year, I fell in love with the natural beauty of the state. I was surrounded by a diverse landscape  everything from sea-level marine estuaries and tidal marsh, to the Appalachian Mountains and Allegheny Plateau. For many Pennsylvanians, weekends often mean hiking the Appalachian Trail or kayaking down the Delaware Water Gap in the northeast corner of the state. For more than 50 years, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) has been a crucial line of defense for these outdoor treasures, along with national parks, forests, monuments, wildlife refuges, and local park projects across the state.

This vital conservation and recreation program, which has saved outdoor places in every state and nearly every county in the U.S., expired at the end of September due to congressional neglect. With the future of America's outdoor heritage at stake, it is vital that we continue cheering on Pa. Democratic Reps. Robert Brady and Dwight Evans, and Republican Mike Kelly, cosponsors of legislation that would permanently reauthorize the LWCF. It is also crucial that these Pennsylvania lawmakers demonstrate true bipartisan leadership and urge their colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get on board with efforts to protect the iconic landscapes and waterways we all love before it's too late.

Simply put, the great outdoors is a way of life and vital to the economy of Pennsylvania. According to the Outdoor Industry Association, this major economic driver employs more than 250,000 Pennsylvanians every year, more than three times the number employed by the state's natural gas industry.

Overall, outdoor recreation contributes a staggering $29.1 billion annually to our state's economy and generates $1.9 billion in state and local tax revenue, which funds our public schools and the vital social programs that our communities depend on. Outdoor recreation is the bedrock of communities across Pennsylvania, and the longer Congress allows to the LWCF to remain expired, the more harm it causes to our public outdoor spaces and local economies.

Before expiration, the LWCF provided another significant benefit for our community: it protected outdoor recreation opportunities for urban dwellers that may have otherwise been lacking. Too often urban residents, particularly people of color, experience a disconnect with the great outdoors. Communities of color, especially those concentrated in large urban areas, such as Philadelphia, have fewer outdoor spaces in their neighborhoods and may not have the means to travel long distances to enjoy recreational activities. Earlier this year, the Hispanic Access Foundation released a report highlighting the important role the LWCF has played in protecting outdoor access for Latino, urban, rural, and low-income communities across the country.

One of the sites featured in the report is the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, where I had the opportunity to intern last summer. It was my desire to improve the bond between Latino communities and our public lands that led me to apply for the internship. Located a stone's throw away from Philadelphia International Airport, the refuge protects the largest remaining freshwater tidal marsh in the state.

Throughout the course of my work at the refuge, I was able to get hands-on conservation experience while working to protect a natural treasure that provides irreplaceable and easily accessible outdoor opportunities to Philadelphians of all backgrounds. At a time when our outdoor spaces, particularly those in and around urban areas, are increasingly threatened by development, Congress should be exploring ways to promote access to the outdoors  not threatening it.

In the coming months, communities across America are counting on our leaders to make good on their commitment to the LWCF and protect access to our iconic landscapes and waterways for generations to come. Failure to do so will have terrible consequences for the thousands of hard-working Pennsylvanians who depend on the outdoor recreation industry for their livelihood and will disproportionately impact urban communities.

It is time for Congress to set aside politics and stand up for the vast majority of Pennsylvanians who agree that the LWCF is essential to protecting our local economies and access to the great outdoors that we all deserve.

Gabby Perez is a former intern at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Pa.

A previous version of this post referred to Rep. Mike Kelly as a Democrat. He is a Republican. The post has been updated to reflect this.First Liberty attorneys file appeal seeking review of Oregons decision to compel the speech of Aaron and Melissa Klein, forcing them out of business

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Attorneys for First Liberty Institute and Boyden Gray & Associates today filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of Aaron and Melissa Klein. The petition asks the Court to reverse the State of Oregons decision that forced Aaron and Melissa out of business by penalizing them $135,000 for refusing to create a government-approved message.



A copy of the petition can be found here .

Freedom of speech has always included the freedom not to speak the governments message, said Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty. This case can clarify whether speech is truly free if it is government mandated.

Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, of Boyden Gray & Associates, who is also a First Liberty network attorney, said, Free Americans should not be compelled by the government to create a message that conflicts with their deepest convictions.

The Supreme Court has long protected the right to differ. Recently, in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Court only reminded the state that government officials cannot be hostile to the free exercise of the religious beliefs of its citizens. In this case, the Court has the opportunity to resolve perhaps the most critical issue the Masterpiece Court left unresolved: whether the government can compel citizens to create a message contrary to their religious beliefs.

The State of Oregons Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) found that Aaron and Melissa violated Oregons public accommodations statute after they declined to design and create a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex marriage. In addition to the $135,000 penalty for emotional damages, BOLI issued a gag order, preventing them from even talking about their actual beliefs. As a result, the Kleins were forced to shut down their bakery. Aaron and Melissa appealed the BOLI ruling to the Oregon Court of Appeals in April 2016. The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the gag order but otherwise upheld the decision of BOLI.

To learn more about the case, visit KleinFacts.com .

About First Liberty Institute

First Liberty Institute is a non-profit public interest law firm and the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans.

To arrange an interview, contact Lacey McNiel at media@firstliberty.org or by calling 972-941-4453.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d8cbc307-cfc3-451a-b808-0fdad4c112db

Contact: Lacey McNiel, media@firstliberty.org

Direct: 972-941-4453The U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania had hardly made news  until Bob Casey Jr.'s campaign aired an ad slamming opponent Lou Barletta for his stance on preexisting conditions that featured sick children. Barletta, who has a young grandson with cancer, took offense, and Casey ended up apologizing and withdrawing the ad.

Generally, though, it's been a quiet race, with polls showing Casey leading by an average of 16 points over former Hazleton mayor and current U.S. Rep. Barletta.

Even a Trump rally for Barletta and an Obama-Biden rally for Casey weren't able to make this race exciting to either base.

But this doesn't mean that the race isn't important. In fact, the stakes are high, and not only on issues such as immigration and health care. As we saw during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process, the Senate is highly partisan and polarized. In this environment, one vote can make a big difference. The question is: Who will get that power from Pennsylvania?

Casey, an anti-abortion Democrat, represents a dying breed of centrist politicians  although on certain issues, such as guns and same-sex marriage, he has moved leftward. And in the last two years, Casey has seemed energized, mainly in defense of our country's tradition as a nation of immigrants. In 2017, when President Trump signed the Muslim travel ban, Casey rushed to the Philadelphia airport in a tuxedo from an event at the Academy of Music to show his support to Syrian families. He also spoke out against child separation at the southern border.

Even though Casey identifies as anti-abortion, he has a strong record defending a woman's right to choose and protecting Planned Parenthood. In his time in the Senate, he has taken on causes that often don't get headlines but are vitally important  such as allowing states to offer people with disabilities tax-exempt savings accounts, investing in repairs of bridges off the federal highway system, and requiring transparency and accountability in investigation of sexual assault cases on campuses. He recently led a bipartisan effort to push the Senate for more funding for states to tackle the opioid crisis.

Barletta's views on immigration are troubling. As a mayor, Barletta made his name cracking down on undocumented immigrants. His crowning achievement was an ordinance that penalized businesses landlords for dealing with undocumented immigrants, which was struck down by a federal judge. Barletta opposes sanctuary cities and argues that if families don't want to be separated, they shouldn't cross the border.

Barletta says that the biggest difference between him and his opponent is Casey's partisanship. But Barletta is one of Trump's most reliable votes in Congress  in the last two years, he voted with the president 98 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight. Casey, on the other hand, voted with Trump 30 percent of the time.

Because of his ability to occasionally work across the aisle, and his willingness to defend human rights and America's legacy as a nation of immigrants, Bob Casey should continue to represent Pennsylvania in a third term. He is the right choice for Senate.The change of law enshrined in Hungarys constitution, which effectively outlaws living on the street, serves the interests of society as a whole, a government official said.

The law amendment that enters into force on Oct. 15, aims to ensure that homeless people are not on the streets at night time and that citizens can make use of public space unimpeded, Attila Fulop, the state secretary for social affairs and inclusion, told a press conference in Veszprem, in western Hungary.

The law states that making public space a habitat is forbidden. He said the government is setting aside a reserve fund of 300 million forints (EUR 925,000) for homeless provision such as ensuring the operations of day and night shelters and 24-hour aid for the needy.

From a humanitarian point of view, it is important to develop the institutions that provide for the homeless, he added.

Additionally, seven tenders worth 650 million forints have been won to upgrade institutions for the homeless across the country, he said. Miklos Vecsei, deputy head of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service, said it was important to find professional solutions for dealing with people living on the street who are reluctant to move into an institution.

Lajos Nemedi, the (FideszKDNP) deputy mayor of Veszprem, said that caring for the homeless worked well in the city thanks to the good cooperation of the people concerned, and this would apply in the future, too.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...New Delhi: A major fire broke out at the bus parking of northeast Delhi's Mori Gate on Monday morning.

Several fire tenders have been rushed to the spot.

#SpotVisuals: Fire breaks out at a bus parking at Mori Gate; fire tenders rushed to the spot. More details awaited. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/cUrcqCJK8m  ANI (@ANI) October 22, 2018

No reports of casualties or injuries have emerged so far.

A call was received about the fire at 10.30 am and three fire tenders were rushed to the spot, he said, adding the fire was doused by 10.55 am.

A bus and a car in the Mori Gate parking area behind the Tis Hazari Court had caught fire, the officer said.NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and held them responsible for the strike in Delhi. All 400 fuel pumps in the national capital are closed on Monday after Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government's refusal to reduce Value Added Tax (VAT) on diesel and petrol in the national capital.

Kejriwal stated that despite the petrol prices being the lowest in Delhi across the four metros, there is a strike in the national capital and not anywhere else. Kejriwal blamed the BJP for the strike and asked them to apologise to the people of Delhi.

"Oil prices lowest in Delhi amongst the four metros. Why arent petrol pumps in Mumbai, which has highest prices, on strike? Becoz Mumbai is BJP govt and BJP is behind todays strike in Delhi. BJP MUST apologize to the people of Delhi," he tweeted on Monday.

Oil prices lowest in Delhi amongst the four metros. Why arent petrol pumps in Mumbai, which has highest prices, on strike? Becoz Mumbai is BJP govt and BJP is behind todays strike in Delhi. BJP MUST apologize to the people of Delhi pic.twitter.com/v5BUI0cfRG  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) October 22, 2018

Kejriwal had earlier stated that the people of Delhi will give a befitting reply to the BJP in elections. "Petrol pump owners have told us privately that this is a BJP-sponsored strike, actively supported by oil companies. In fact, the BJP has thrust it on petrol pump owners. People will give the BJP a befitting reply in the elections for continuously inconveniencing people through their dirty politics," Kejriwal tweeted.

The 23-hour shutdown has been called by Delhi Petrol Dealers Association and is supported by taxi and auto associations.

On October 4, the Centre had slashed fuel prices by Rs 2.50 after curbing excise duty on the commodity by Rs 1.50 per litre. The decision was backed by several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura, which reduced local sales tax or the VAT. However, the Delhi government refused to reduce VAT on fuel both petrol and diesel citing that it's not a long-term solution. The AAP government's decision has resulted in fuel becoming more expensive than bordering Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.AMRITSAR: Several eye-witnesses have slammed the locomotive driver's statement in the Amritsar train incident that mowed down 61 onlookers and injured over 50 people participating in the Dusshera revelries on Friday evening.

"I was at the spot. Leave alone stopping, the train did not even slow down. It seemed as if the driver wanted to mow us down. The train passed us in a matter of seconds. Is it logically possible for us to pelt stones at the train when so many people were dead and injured around us? Is it possible for us to get our bearings after such an incident and pelt stones at a speeding train? The driver is lying," Shailender Singh Shally, Councillor, Ward Number 46, Amritsar, said.

The clean-up operation, which resumed on Sunday evening, continued at the site  on Monday morning.

Operation continues after being resumed yesterday evening at Amritsar's Choura Bazar where 60 people were killed and over 50 were injured after being run over by a train on October 19. #Punjab pic.twitter.com/AAPu8RT47O  ANI (@ANI) October 22, 2018

Locals, who have been protesting against the accident, claimed that the people celebrating Dussehra at the accident spot had pelted stones at the train.

"He did not even slow down, let alone almost stopping. The train was in such speed that the accident happened in split seconds. There are hundreds of videos that show how fast the train went. There was no chance of us reacting, leave alone pelt stones. All we could hear around us was people screaming and crying," Paramjeet Singh, another onlooker, said.

Arvind Kumar, the driver of the train which crushed 61 people to death, said that he knew that people were killed but had to keep driving for the safety of the passengers. In his statement, the driver said that he applied the emergency brakes while continuously honking yet some people came under the train.

"I saw a crowd of people around the track. I immediately applied emergency brakes while continuously blowing the horn. Still some people came under it. The train was about to stop when people started pelting stones, so I started the train for the safety of the passengers," the train driver said.

Speaking on the incident, Minister of State for Railways, Manoj Sinha, said, I believe that the statement of Amritsar Police Commissioner must be an authorised statement of Punjab government. He said that we (Railways) didn't give any permission regarding the event.

The maximum speed of the train, which was a Diesel Electrical Multiple Unit (DEMU) is 96 kmph, once brakes are applied, this kind of train stops completely in about 300 metres if empty, and in 600 metres if full, officials said. The last recorded speed of the train, according to Divisional Railway Manager (Ferozpur) Vivek Kumar, was 68 kmph, reported PTI.

"As the train passed, I heard people screaming and shouting. There was no stone pelting. I don't understand why the driver would make up such a thing. Will people who are seeing their loved ones lying in pools of blood leave them and pick up stones to hit the train?

"Anyway, the speed of the train was such that even if people wanted to pelt stones, by the time they collected them, the train would have disappeared from sight. He is lying," Ajay Goenka, who was present at the spot, said.

Local police too corroborated the claims of the eyewitnesses and said that not just the train was travelling at a high speed, there were no reports of stone pelting at the site of the incident on October 19.

After more than 40 hours on Sunday of the Amritsar train accident in Punjab, the train services resumed on Sunday after the Punjab police removed protesters from the railway tracks.

With agency inputsCALGARY, Alberta, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gravity Espresso & Wine Bar has won $25,000 toward marketing services through a contest presented by Servus Credit Union, and marketing agencies WAX and OMD. The contest was launched following Servus' move into the Inglewood community. It was aimed at supporting Inglewood businesses and giving them the opportunity to tap into marketing resources they may not otherwise be able to.



"We wanted to give something back to the community of Inglewood, which is home to so many unique businesses," says Ellen Hamilton, Servus' Senior Relationship Manager for Business Banking, Calgary Region. "When we told our partners at WAX and OMD, they immediately jumped on board to make the prize more substantial. We're all really excited to work together with Gravity." Together, the team will create and execute a new marketing plan.

Andy Fennell, owner of Gravity Espresso & Wine Bar, admits to only having recently "woken up" to evolved marketing strategies and their advantages. "For someone that grew his brand and business from word of mouth advertising and external write-ups and reviews, this prize means a great deal," he said. "As the owner of a family-run business, I have found it extremely difficult navigating this economy over the past 3 years. I am excited to see what this $25,000 can do for the business."

Work between WAX and Gravity is beginning immediately. As an independent creative agency, we understand the challenges small businesses face," says Nick Asik, Creative Director at WAX. "Were looking forward to bringing that knowledge to helping them outsmart, not outspend the competition.

OMD is excited to support Servus and their commitment to local communities through the Small Business Contest," says Jason Snider, President at OMD West. "Were thrilled to contribute our world-class strategic media planning expertise to help Gravity Espresso and Wine Bar discover, reach and inspire new customers.

More about Gravity Espresso and Wine Bar will be revealed on Servus's social media channels in the weeks to come.

About Servus Credit Union Ltd.

Servus Credit Union is a member-owned financial institution serving members from more than 100 locations in 59 communities. Servus aspires to build a better world - one member at a time  by shaping member financial fitness to help Albertans feel in control, financially resilient and able to pursue opportunities. For more information, call toll-free 187SERVUSCU / 1.877.378.8728 or visit servus.ca.

About OMD

OMD is a full-service global communications agency specializing in strategic media planning and buying. Underpinned by data-science and an unrelenting desire to understand consumer behavior, our motto of Better Decisions Faster seeks to navigate an ever-changing marketing landscape to drive business results for our clients.

About WAX

WAX is an independent creative agency based in Calgary, Alberta. It was founded in 2005 by president Dan Wright and design director Monique Gamache. Clients include the Prairie Honda Dealers Association, Servus Credit Union, Moxies Restaurants, AltaLink, The CORE Shopping Centre, Sproule and WCDT. The agencys Designvertising philosophy gives equal care and attention to both advertising and design to create content that gives audiences a reason to notice, to share and to be compelled to act.

For more information contact:

Rosemary Malowany

Manager, PR & Social Media, Servus Credit Union

T: 780.638.8838

C: 587.920.9158

Email: rosemary.malowany@servus.caThe Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday arrested DSP, CBI Devinder Kumar over allegations of falsification of records in an ongoing investigation into a corruption case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi. The matter relates to the creation of a statement of Sathish Sana, who is a witness in the Moin Qureshi case.

As per the records, the statement was recorded on 26 September 2018 in Delhi. However, it was found during the investigation that Sana was not present in Delhi and was in Hyderabad on that day. Sana actually joined investigation at Delhi only on October 1.

The CBI said that Devinder fabricated Sana's statement as an afterthought plan to corroborate the allegations made by Special Director Rakesh Asthana against CBI Director Alok Kumar Verma to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

The role of other officers of SIT, CBI, then supervising the Moin Qureshi case, are also being probed by the agency.

The CBI had already called the allegations by Rakesh Asthana, booked by the agency on bribery charges last week, against its Director Alok Verma as "false and malicious".

In his letters to the Cabinet Secretary and Central Vigilance Commission, Asthana had mentioned about 10 cases of alleged corruption and irregularities and levelled serious corruption charges against the CBI Director.

One of these 10 cases pertained to Sathish Sana, who is facing probe in a corruption case involving Moin Qureshi in which Asthana had alleged on August 24 that Sana paid Rs two crore to Verma to get relief in the case. Asthana had also alleged that Verma delayed his team's request to arrest Sana in the case. The complaint was referred to Central Vigilance Commission by the government.

Gujarat-cadre officer Asthana, currently number two in the CBI. He had also cited instances of alleged irregularities and violation of rules and regulations against Verma. In an unprecedented operation, the CBI then filed an FIR against Asthana and his Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar, and two alleged middlemen Somesh Prasad and Manoj Prasad on the basis of a statement from Sana that bribe was paid to the middlemen to get relief in repeated questioning by the Asthana's Special Investigation Unit.New Delhi: In a major development, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked its second-in-command Special Director Rakesh Asthana for allegedly accepting bribes on Sunday.

But building the case against Asthana was not easy.

The CBI started the probe following the arrest of a Dubai-based middleman Manoj Prasad on October 16, 2018.

The investigative agency intercepted nine phone calls immediately after middleman Manoj Prasad was held in the alleged bribery case against Asthana, to allege that there was panic after the middleman's brother, Somesh Prasad got "wind" of the arrest, officials said Sunday.

Call data analysis shows that the phone calls were allegedly exchanged between Asthana and a senior officer of another intelligence agency, who wanted to confirm the details of the middleman's arrest.

Prasad reportedly came to know his brother's arrest on October 16 and immediately called his contact, the senior officer of the intelligence agency on the same day. A call was then made by the officer to Somesh within a minute, claims CBI.

Next day, the intelligence agency officer allegedly called Asthana to purportedly know the situation.

Three more calls were exchanged between the two, the agency claimed.

The calls were also exchanged between the senior officer and the wife of middleman Prasad among others, an officer claimed.

The sources claimed that call data records show that four calls were exchanged between Asthana and the senior officer on October 17, 2018, a day after the arrest.

In addition to the call exchanges, CBI is also depending heavily on the Whatsapp messages recovered from Manoj Prasad's phone.

The CBI registered the case on the basis of claims made by businessman Sathish Sana, probed by him in a separate case, that he was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 crore by Manoj Prasad, an investment banker based in Dubai to get relief from repeated summons and a clean chit in the case, they said.

Satish also claimed that he was being harassed by the CBI officers to pay more.

Interestingly, Asthana, the second-in-command in the agency, had intimated the cabinet secretary nearly two months ago that Sana had allegedly paid a bribe of Rs 2 crore to CBI Chief Alok Verma to get relief in the case.

The CBI is now defending Director Verma, terming the charges as "false and malicious".

In his letters to the Cabinet Secretary and Central Vigilance Commission, Asthana had written about 10 cases of alleged corruption and irregularities against the CBI Director Alok Verma, levelling serious corruption charges in some of them.

One of the case pertained to Sathish Sana, a businessman facing probe in a corruption case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi in which Asthana had alleged on August 24 that Sana paid Rs two crore to Verma to get relief in the case.

With agency inputsPakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has stoked a fresh controversy by again raking up the Kashmir issue to target India. Taking to microblogging site Twitter, Imran Khan alleged that India was carrying out new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris.

The newly-elected Prime Minister of Pakistan reiterated that the Kashmir dispute could be resolved only through dialogue in accordance with the UNSC resolution and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

Imran tweeted, Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people.  Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) October 22, 2018

The post was retweeted by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chairman of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, who said that Pakistan needed to do more as a party to the dispute. He claimed that the people of Kashmir appreciate Pakistans concern.

People of #Kashmir appreciate Pakistans concern,but to put an end to the appalling grind of repression and human right abuse that Kashmiris are suffering at the hands of Indian state urgently requires #Pakistan as a party to the dispute to do much more, tweeted the Hurriyat leader.

People of #Kashmir appreciate Pakistans concern,but to put an end to the appalling grind of repression and human right abuse that Kashmiris are suffering at the hands of Indian state urgently requires #Pakistan as a party to the dispute to do much more https://t.co/fVsvZL9Pab  Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (@MirwaizKashmir) October 22, 2018

This comes almost a month after Imran Khan asked the Indian government to shun arrogance and hold talks with Pakistan on all issues, including Kashmir. He had said that Pakistans offer for talks should be considered the countrys weakness.

I hope the Indian leadership will shun arrogance and hold (peace) talks with Pakistan. Our offer of friendship should not be considered as our weakness. Friendship between Pakistan and India will help overcome poverty, Imran Khan had said.

Prior to it, Imran Khan had reportedly written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking resumption of bilateral talks on key issues, including terrorism and Kashmir.On a day when Imran Khan alleged that Indian security forces are targeting innocent lives in Jammu and Kashmir, India reacted sharply and said that the Pakistani PM should worry about his country's bankruptcy rather than focus on making false accusations.

Imran on Monday claimed in Twitter post on Monday that India was carrying out a 'new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris.' He did not make any reference to actions of Pakistan-sponsored terrorists or his country's Border Action Team (BAT) making repeated infiltration bids which are being thwarted by Indian security forces. "Imran Khan should first worry about his own country. Pakistan is at the cusp of bankruptcy," said Shahnawaz Hussain, spokesperson for the ruling BJP at the centre. "He should not meddle in the internal affairs of India and ought to know that not only Jammu and Kashmir but even Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is an integral part of our country.

Later in the evening on Monday, India's external affairs ministry too issued a strong rebuttal. "The remarks made by Pakistani's Prime Minister in his tweet today are deeply regrettable. Instead of making comments on Indias internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues," it said. "Pakistan would serve interest of people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists terror activities against India and its other neighbours."

Recent days have seen an increase in cross-border activities of Pakistan's BAT units which recently killed three Indian Army soldiers in J&K's Sunderbani sector. On Sunday, the Indian Army shot dead two BAT intruders even as their accomplices managed to escape. On the same day, three terrorists were gunned down in Kulgam in an incident which also resulted in the deaths of seven people.

Despite the country on the verge of economic collapse and running pillar to post in search of bailout packages, it continues to arm, train and support terrorist groups across the Line of Control (LoC). BAT units too play an active role in providing cover to intruders even as efforts to sneak in are almost always countered strongly by Indian security forces.Congress president Rahul Gandhi has stoked a fresh controversy by claiming that Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys daughter was paid by absconding billionaire Mehul Choksi. Taking to microblogging site Twitter, the Gandhi scion alleged the Finance Minister allowed him to flee.

The Congress chief also mentioned a bank account number in which Jaitleys daughter allegedly received the money from Mehul Choksi. He also accused the media of blacking out the story.

Arun Jaitlies daughter was on the payroll of thief Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile her FM daddy sat on his file & allowed him to flee. She received money from ICICI a/c no: 12170500316. Its sad that media has blacked out this story. The people of India wont, tweeted the Congress president.

Arun Jaitlies daughter was on the payroll of thief Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile her FM daddy sat on his file & allowed him to flee. She received money from ICICI a/c no: 12170500316 Its sad that media has blacked out this story. The people of India wont. #ArunJaitlieMustResign  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 22, 2018

The scathing attack by Rahul Gandhi came hours after Congress leader Sachin Pilot hit out at the Finance Minister over the issue, claiming that a law firm owned by Jaitley's daughter and son-in-law was paid Rs 24 lakh by Choksi's Gitanjali Gems.

"Gitanjali Gems was engaged to retain Arun Jaitley Ji's daughter Sonali Jaitley and son-in-law Jayesh Bakshi's legal firm for a sum of Rs 24 lakh. Mehul Choksi fled the country on Jan 4, 2018. On February 20, Sonali and Jayesh returned those 24 lakh saying we didn't do any work for them," Sachin Pilot had said during a press conference.

The Congress demanded that Jaitley must be sacked as the Finance Minister of the country.

The fresh attack by the Congress and Rahul Gandhi came days after Jaitley mocked the party chief, asking in Facebook post, Is it a case of Clown Prince out-clowning himself?

In a lengthy post on Facebook, the Finance Minister gave a point-by-point rebuttal of allegations made by Rahul Gandhi concerning the Rafale fighter jets deal, GST, NPAs and fleeing of Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi.

Referring to the attack over Nirav Modi, who has fled the country, Jaitley had claimed that he had never even seen the absconding billionaire.

I do not recollect ever having even seen Nirav Modi in my life. The question of his meeting me in Parliament does not arise. If he came to Parliament, as Rahul Gandhi claims, then reception records would show that. Where have I admitted all this Mr Gandhi? the Finance Minister had said.The family of Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who was found dead in Dasuya in Punjab's Hoshairpur is urging that his body be brought to Alappuzha. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara was a prime witness in the rape case filed by a nun against Bishop Franco Mulakkal in Kerala. Police said that he was found dead under 'mysterious circumstances'.

"Have no faith in Punjab Police.Want to bring the body to Alappuzha and bury it. If they want to do postmortem without letting us know, is there any guarantee that it'll be done without foul play," Brother of Father Kuriakose Kattuthara said.

Relatives of the priest in Kerala said Kattuthara was concerned about his safety after coming out openly against the bishop. Besides a thorough probe into his death, they want that the postmortem be conducted at the Alappuzha Medical College.

The 62-year-old priest was found unconscious in his room on Monday morning. He was rushed to a local hospital where he was declared brought dead. The cause of the death is yet to be ascertained. However, the police confirmed that no visible injury marks were found on the body.

The brother of the nun who has levelled rape allegations against the Bishop has also called her death a pre-planned murder. "I think it is a pre-planned murder. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara had said that his life was under threat. An investigation should be conducted into his death. All witnesses should be given police protection," brother of the Kerala nun said.

Father Kattuthara was transferred 15 days back to the church at Dasuya. He was staying in the premises of the church.

Priest Kattuthara had testified against Bishop Mulakkal, who is facing allegations of raping a nun. In her complaint to the Kottayam Police in June, the nun had alleged that Bishop Mulakkal raped her at a guest house in Kuravilangad in May 2014 and later sexually exploited her on several occasions. However, Mulakkal has denied the charges as "baseless and concocted," insisting she levelled those as the Catholic order had rejected her demand for favours.Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, a key witness in the Kerala nun rape case was on Monday found dead in Jalandhar in Punjab on Monday. Father Kattuthara was a witness in the case against Bishop Franco Mulakkal. He was found dead in St. Mary's Church in Dasuya in Jalandhar.

Father Kuriakose was among the people who had been vocal against Bishop Mulakkal and had also given his statement to the police in connection with the rape case of a nun from Missionaries of Jesus. The cause of his death is yet to be ascertained.

However, the police said that there no injury marks were found on his body. "He used to stay at St Paul's Church in Dasuya. He was found dead there. He was 62. I have been informed that no injuries have been found," DSP Dasuya AR Sharma said adding that the matter will be investigated.

"It was found that he vomited on the bed. Blood pressure tablets were found at the spot," the DSP said.

The family of the 62-year-old priest has suspected a conspiracy in his death. His brother, Jose Kattuthara, reportedly said that he was killed for giving a statement against Bishop Mulakkal.

The priest had earlier alleged that he was under severe pressure by church officials for backing the nun who had levelled rape allegations against the bishop. "The sisters had approached me complaining about Bishop Franco. They did not approach the Kerala police fearing the bishop. In fact, I fear what will happen to me for speaking out against him," he had said in an interview to Mathrubhumi.

Bishop Mulakkal, who was recently released on bail from a Kerala jail, is facing allegations of repeatedly raping a nun of his own congregation. While he has denied the charges, the allegations against him have whipped up a storm, polarising the church hierarchy with several priests speaking against him.NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will Tuesday pass an order on whether sale of firecrackers should be banned in the country or not. A number of petitions have been filed in the top court seeking a direction to ban the sale of firecrackers.

The apex court had in August said that it needs to take into account all aspects, including the fundamental right of livelihood of manufacturers and the right to health of over 1.3 billion people in the country, while considering a plea for a ban on firecrackers.

The court had said the Article 21 (right to life) of Constitution applies to both segments of people and it needs to maintain a balance while considering a countrywide ban on firecrackers.

The court had also asked the Centre to file an affidavit giving details of measures to be taken for curbing pollution and what is the effect of firecrackers on the public at large. "There are economic aspects attached to it. The government affidavit says there are 1,750 firecrackers manufacturing industries in Tamil Nadu, which employs 5,000 families directly or indirectly. It says firecrackers industries are worth Rs 6,000 crore. We have to see what is the relevance of economic aspect on the fundamental rights," the bench had said.

The apex court had said that a spike in PM 2.5 levels in the air is a severe problem as the particulate matter remains in people's lungs, leading to serious health implications.

Firecrackers manufacturers had told the court that use of firecrackers should not be completely banned and it should instead be strictly regulated. They have contended that the crackers are not the reason for increase in air pollution and there are other factors, like wind and temperature, which contribute to it. They said the firecracker manufacturers can be deprived of their right to do business based on statements which were not supported by facts.

On October 9 last year, the top court temporarily banned the sale of firecrackers ahead of Diwali. Later, the court refused to relax its order while dismissing a plea by traders who had sought permission to sell crackers for at least a day or two before Diwali on October 19, 2017.

The apex court said its ban order during Diwali that year was an experiment to examine its effect on the pollution levels in the region.New Delhi: Last year`s Pixel 2 was practically the best smartphone camera that Google made. However, the screen`s dreaded blue tint and other hardware issues overshadowed a capable phone.

It is good to see Google taking serious note of the flaws in the Pixel 2 XL and changing vendors (from LG to Samsung) for this year`s Pixel 3 XL.

What you get for Rs 83,000 is the base variant of Pixel 3 XL with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage with the top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset. The 128GB storage variant costs Rs 9,000 more. Pixel 3 costs Rs 71,000 for the 64GB storage variant.

This year`s iteration packs in a better looking body with matte finish, refreshed colours (just black, clearly white and not pink) and a big notch which many people have deemed "ugly".

Google shipped nearly twice as many smartphone units in 2017 as compared to 2016, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). However, Google`s numbers are still pretty low when compared to the volumes shipped by Apple and Samsung.

Let us see if the Pixel 3 XL will help Google convince buyers to choose it over other flagship competitors.

We have to admit the Pixel 3 XL is a camera smartphone at heart, despite not having a dual lens set-up like the new Apple iPhone models and Samsung Galaxy Note 9.

Google`s Machine Learning (ML) and image processing technology gets the job flawlessly done with the help of a Pixel Core chip. A single 12.2MP primary lens with an f/1.8 aperture and optical stabilisation delivers a great camera experience.

The images were beautifully detailed and had accurate colours, sans any sort of over-processing. Not to forget the camera`s impressive dynamic range and low-light performance; it can be said that Pixel 3 XL has the best smartphone camera out there.

Close-up images taken in normal mode had a natural, shallow depth-of-field, so we didn`t feel the need to switch to the Portrait mode often. The Portrait mode particularly churned out images with a high level of detail and sharpness around the edges of the subject.

It`s worth mentioning that Google has added features such as the motion auto-focus to this year`s iteration which essentially locks focus on a subject and tracks it around the frame.

The company has added an 8MP+8MP dual camera set-up in the front that makes the Pixel 3 XL a great selfie camera as well. The wide-angle sensor makes sure you get a larger view of the background or squeeze in more people into the frame for group selfies.

Another significant improvement over 2017`s Pixel 2 XL is the screen. The bigger 6.3-inch screen with QHD+ resolution (1440x2960) and a ppi of over 400 results in sharper and brighter text and images. The OLED display also means lower power consumption and deeper blacks.

The screen space is bigger thanks to slimmer bezels and taller aspect ratio but there`s a chin and a much-talked about notch on the bigger Pixel.

The glass panels on the rear and front are made of Gorilla Glass 5. The top portion is slightly glossy while the bottom is absolutely matte and non-slippery.

Google has accommodated front-facing stereo speakers that, it says, are 40 per cent louder. Well, these are certainly louder than those in the Galaxy Note 9 and have no distortion.

There`s no standard 3.5-mm headphone jack but the company`s bundled Pixel USB-C earbuds with Google Assistant means that notifications will be read out to you.

The Pixel 3 XL, with its 3430mAh battery, lasted close to 24 hours with mixed use of video and audio streaming and simultaneously running several apps.

What does not work?

The only thing which might be a put-off for some users would be the notch on Pixel 3 XL which houses the dual-selfie cameras. One way to hide it is to turn it off in developer settings and Google has promised a future update to address this.

Conclusion: A significant improvement in the display department coupled with the matte glass rear and impeccable cameras make Pixel 3 XL the best Android camera phone in the market. Also comes with it the best Android (stock) experience.Paytm managing director Vijay Shekhars personal secretary and three others were arrested on Monday for allegedly seeking a ransom worth Rs 20 crore from him. According to sources, the personal secretary of the Paytm boss stole his personal data and then threatened to leak them if not paid the ransom amount.

The sources further said that the company had already transferred a sum of Rs 67 lakh to the account of the blackmailers, but the ransom amount was constantly being hiked by them. Those arrested include the husband of the personal secretary and another employee of the company.

The blackmailers allegedly used a Thailand-based number to make WhatsApp calls for the ransom.

Paytm sought help from an Israeli company to trace the location of the miscreants and later lodged a complaint against them at Noida Sector 20 police station.

The police have launched investigation into the case.

The owner of Paytm had made a complaint with the police that their employees, a woman and her aides, had stolen some data from the company and were blackmailing. They were demanding Rs 20 crore for not leaking it, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ajay Pal Sharma told news agency PTI.

Taking immediate action on it, an FIR was registered and three persons, including the woman, arrested. They are being probed about the data and their modus operandi. Police will share the facts as they are unearthed, he further said.

The SSP said they would seek their custody to interrogate them further and gather more details.TORONTO, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HydRx Farms Ltd. (o/a Scientus Pharma) (Scientus or the Company), a biopharmaceutical company conducting research and product development for extracts and formulations related to medical cannabinoids and their derivatives, is pleased to announce that it has received Health Canada authorization to produce cannabis softgel capsules and oils at its state-of-the-art, 45,000 Sq. Ft. commercial production facility in Whitby, Ontario.



The company is now ready to launch the next generation advancement toward a more consistent and safer product for medical patients. To date, existing extraction methods in the industry do not adequately activate the medicinal component of the cannabis plant, such as THC and CBD. Nor do they compensate for large batch-to-batch variability inherent in natural plant materials. Scientus has solved these challenges on both fronts.

At Scientus Pharma, our main purpose is to provide patients and physicians with a standardized, predictable and effective medicine. We have developed a proprietary continuous flow extraction platform to produce consistent batch profiles of oils and softgel capsules with 100% decarboxylation, said Har Grover, Chairman and CEO of Scientus. This will allow us to generate product predictability, to increase patient safety and to help health care practitioners improve dosing guidelines.

Scientus has been granted a Notice of Allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office on the first of its patent applications. The Company has several other patent applications pending that, if granted, would provide additional protection for its formulation and extraction technologies.

About Patient Safety

Many patients interested in exploring medical cannabis therapies have been looking for derivatives that are predictable and effective. Up until now, the most consistent and efficacious method to benefit from the therapeutic effects of cannabis was smoking the plant, which traditionally delivers the highest level of decarboxylation and potency. Decarboxylation is the chemical process that activates the potency of the cannabis plant through heat.

With several delivery methods now available, patients are no longer restricted to having to smoke cannabis to obtain the full therapeutic benefit. But this diversity comes with its own risks, because potency levels among non-combustible medical cannabis products, such as a concentrate or an oil, varies greatly based on the method used to activate the cannabinoids.

In fact, a recent Canadian study that looked at cannabis oils, concentrates and capsules currently available for medical use, uncovered varying levels of potency from batch to batch within the same product families. This means that patients could be paying hundreds of dollars monthly for medical cannabis derivatives that either have no therapeutic effects at all, or that are much more potent than expected and could result in a negative experience.

About Scientus Pharmas Production

The cannabis plant is highly complex with over 500 elements. There can also be huge variability in batches from one harvest to another. Many growers have developed standardized cultivation methods to reduce these variabilities, but that is not enough when it comes to producing derivatives for medical purposes. This variability must be reduced or eliminated in order to align with the high standards of the pharmaceutical industry and other sectors such as consumer products and beverages.

The Companys process starts with the extraction method. Scientus Pharma has developed a proprietary method for extraction and activation of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) from the cannabis plant. The result is an intermediary resin that can be used in a range of dosing forms. The companys extraction process provides the chemical and biological quality control appropriate for pharmaceutical grade product lines.

At a manufacturing capacity of up to 200,000 cannabis softgel capsules per hour, we believe that our in-house production capabilities are unrivaled, said Mr. Grover. That, combined with our ability to produce cannabis-infused gelatins into a product that is >99% activated for THC and CBD, makes us unique in the cannabis industry. Our production platform can also be major value-add in the beverage sector.

In addition to the production license received, the Company has had its pre-sales audit, the final step prior to receiving its Sales License from Health Canada.

About Scientus Pharma Inc.

Scientus Pharma Inc. is a vertically-integrated biopharmaceutical Licensed Producer and Licensed Dealer under the Narcotics Control Regulations of Canada who conducts scientific research on cannabinoids with a focus on developing and commercializing pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoid derivative products. Being one of a limited number of Licensed Dealers in Canada authorized to handle and conduct cannabinoid products, Scientus Pharma has the ability to wholesale, buy, process and sell cannabinoid derivatives, from and to other Licensed Producers, as well as international markets. Scientus is also a Licensed Producer under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR).

Forward-Looking Statements

This new release includes forward-looking statements regarding the Company and its business. Such statements are based on the current expectations and views of future events of the Companys management. In some cases, the forward-looking statements can be identified by words or phrases such as may, will, expect, plan, anticipate, intend, potential, estimate, believe or the negative of these terms, or other similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include the Companys expected U.S. patent grant. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. In addition, certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking information that involves substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. This forward-looking information is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company, including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, and dependence upon regulatory approvals. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward looking information or statements. Except as required by applicable securities laws, forward-looking statements or information speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement or information, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Contacts:

Corporate:

Har Grover

Chairman and CEO

1-844-493-7922

hgrover@scientuspharma.com

Investors:

Stephen Kilmer

1-647-872-4849

skilmer@scientuspharma.comNew Delhi: Actress Alia Bhatt, who had recently flew to New York to spend time with beau Ranbir Kapoor and his ailing father Rishi Kapoor, is back to Mumbai. The 'Raazi' actress was captured by the shutterbugs looking stylish in a light flower-print blazer, white tee and cullotes.

Take a look at her stunning airport pictures here:

For the unversed, Ranbir is currently in New York for his father Rishi, who has been undergoing medical treatment there. Alia Bhatt, who had been shooting for 'Brahmastra' and 'Kalank', flew to New York to be with Ranbir at the time of crisis. The duo were snapped taking stroll on a street and were even clicked shopping together, just lke any other couple.

In fact, they chose to indulge in a little shopping at an upscale boutique in New York that is known for Hollywood celebs-favourite. The store, in return, posted a picture of the, on their official Insta handle.

Besides spending time with him and his family, Alia also met Priyanka Chopra and the two indulged in some shopping together.

Now that Alia is back in the city, she is most likely to resume her professional commitments. Alia has films like 'Brahmastra', 'Gully Boy', 'Kalank', 'Zero' and 'Takht' in her kitty.New Delhi: Filmmaker cum superb chat show host Karan Johar kicked off season 6 of 'Koffee With Karan' with much pomp and show. Two stunning B-Towners Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt graced the couch and were like a house on fire!

KJo quizzed the two gorgeous ladies on many thingsread personal and even addressed the elephant in the roomRanbir Kapoor. But, this is new age Bollywood and there is absolutely no air of uneasiness between the actors even if there has been a history with the love interests.

So, coming back to the show, Karan in his ususal fun rapid fire round asked Alia to pick one actress for alleged former lover Sidharth Malhotra with whom she thinks he could hook up. And pat came the reply, Kiara Advani and then she quickly added Jacqueline Fernandez's name, saying if the first one doesn't work out, this can.

Whoa! Now that's some rapid answering, we say.

While Sid and Kiara have not worked in any movie together as yet, the 'Student Of The Year' actor has worked with Jacqueline Fernandez in 'A Gentleman'. And it was during that time that rumours about them being more than friends had caught fire. However, it soon fizzled out and turned out to be mere speculations.

So, how did you like the opening episode of 'Koffee With Karan' season 6?Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will soon embark on state-level visits to three countries with an eye on getting much-needed financial aid to take his country's economy out of doldrums.

Dawn reported that Imran would first visit Saudi Arabia on Monday, followed by a visit to Malaysia later in the month. He would also go to China early next month and is expected to raise the issue of financial aid for Pakistan in each of these countries considered as friendly.

Pakistan has already approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout package but the US has made it clear that using IMF funds to repay Chinese debts won't be acceptable. As such, any help from IMF is still under a cloud of doubt although officials are expected in Islamabad in early November to discuss the terms of the request made. "If we get good monetary support from our friendly countries, then there is a possibility that we will not require the support of IMF, " a member of the federal cabinet was quoted as saying.

Assistance from countries like Saudi Arabia and China could, therefore, be crucial although a Pakistani minister had previously claimed that deal was already done for $10 billion with Riyadh earlier. Information minister Fawad Chaudhry's claim was rejected by the country's finance minister Asad Umar who said that no secret deal would be done with any country.

Pakistan is in dire need of billions of dollars to restructure its economy. And this is by the admission of Umar himself. The government under Imran, who took oath on August 18, has begin an austerity drive and has even asked non-resident Pakistanis to do their bit.Ankara: Turkey`s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his US counterpart Donald Trump discussed on telephone on Sunday night the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and agreed that "all aspects of the case should be brought to light".

This was announced by Turkey`s presidential press office, reports Xinhua news agency.

Erdogan said earlier on Sunday that he will make a statement and address the issues "in detail" on the Khashoggi case on Tuesday during his party`s group meeting at Parliament.

Khashoggi, who was a critic of the Saudi monarchy and lived in the US, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

The kingdom claimed early on Saturday that Khashoggi had died in a "brawl" in its consulate, but did not explain the cause of his death.

Erdogan and Trump also discussed bilateral relations, the presidential press office said in a statement.Open source

A few days ago, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto voiced loud allegations against the authorities of the European states. He stated that they criticized Hungary, expressing their claims for too friendly relations with Russia, while they themselves were secretly engaged in big business with Russia and hide it behind "superficial quarrels." The Hungarian minister accused European countries of having double standards, noting that the Hungarians are already fed up with it all. This is not the first similar demarche of the Hungarian minister. In 2016, he said that he would never accept the approach of large European countries with a high level of GDP that easily cooperate with Russia and accuse small countries of being engaged in relations with Moscow, of neglecting the common European unity and espionage. Last year, Szijjarto admitted that he taught Russian at school and at university and he likes to watch Russia 24 and RT TV channels. Szijjartos statement should be taken as a reflection of the position of the official Budapest, which is interested in business cooperation with Moscow and is in a kind of confrontation with Brussels and Kyiv.

Mutual interests of Orban and Putin

We should not take Szijjartos too literally. Hungarians do not actually like Russians and do not want to return under Moscows influence, like during the Cold War. Even Szijjarto does not believe that Moscow influences Budapest policy. The fact is that Hungary is using the contradictions of the European Union and Russia, trying to get some economic benefits. In September, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Moscow and, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, thanked him for the fact that both countries had increased trade over the past year despite the anti-Russian sanctions. Putin considers Hungary one of Russia's key partners in Europe.

Hungary ranks 22nd among Russian trade and economic partners, the economy of this country has lost $ 6.5 billion due to the anti-Russian sanctions. In 2016, the Hungarian government called on the Russian Federation to abolish the restrictive response measures for most of its products. For 8 months of 2018, the trade turnover of Russia and Hungary amounted to $ 4.5 billion. Hungarian-Russian trade growth was provoked by the increase in purchases of Hungarian machinery and equipment by Russian companies by 31.5%, chemical products by 26%, vehicles, consumer goods, and food products by 68%. Hungary increased its grain export to Russia by 88%. Hungarian medicines manufacturers Gedeon Richter, Egis, and Korax Machine Works Ltd. continue to work in Russia, while Dairy-Consulting Kft opened a meat processing plant in Russian Sverdlovsk region in July 2017.

Open source

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban

Budapest also complied with Moscow on a number of issues. Orban gave the Russians a carte blanche in the field of energy. Russia supplies 70% of oil and 65% of natural gas consumed by Hungary. During Orbans last visit to Moscow, a contract with Gazprom for the supply of natural gas in 2020 was signed. The ruling Fides party is not looking for ways to reduce its energy dependence on Russia. Last year, Russian gas supplies to Hungary amounted to 7 billion cubic meters, which is almost 22% more than in 2016. During 8.5 months of 2018, Gazprom increased deliveries to Hungary by 8.6%. Putin and Orban discussed the prospects for building a branch of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline through the territory of Hungary, which will increase the supply of Russian natural gas to this country by 30%. The Russian-Hungarian project of the Paks II nuclear power plant is also being implemented. In 2016, agreements were reached for Russian Energomashspetsstal enterprise (manufacturer of special cast and forged products - Ed.) to supply slag cups for the Hungarian Dunaferr metallurgical plant, which is part of the ISD group of Ukrainian businessman Serhiy Taruta. In 2015, Russian Metrovagonmash plant won a tender for the modernization of 222 cars for the Budapest metro in the amount of 220 million euros. Hungarians give Russians contracts that could be executed by European industrial enterprises in the context of the EU Common Market.

The best defense is a good offense

The intensification of trade relations between Hungary and Russia can be used by the European Commission as a pretext for increasing pressure against the Orban regime. Relations between Hungary and the EU are in a deep crisis. In September, the majority of MEPs supported the imposition of sanctions against Hungary (deprivation of the right to vote in the European Council) in response to the governments restricting press freedom, NGO activities, and independent judges removal. In July 2018, the European Commission filed a lawsuit against Hungary for refusal to place refugees on its territory and proposed to introduce financial sanctions against the country. German chancellor criticized Orban for the harsh treatment of refugees and said that the fences erected along the Hungary state border are not an answer to the migration crisis. Recent trends in gas relations between Russia and Hungary bring down the wrath of US President Donald Trump, who is interested in Europes reduction in energy dependence on Russia and in buying more American liquefied gas.

The Hungarian government uses the best defense is a good offense principle, and Szijjartos recent rhetoric is good evidence of this. He emphasized that influential European countries continue to work with Russia despite the sanctions to justify the intensification of the Hungarian-Russian trade. So Hungary is not the only example of such a trend. Recently, there has been an increase in trade between the European Union and Russia. In 2014-16, trade between Russia and the EU fell from 285.66 billion euros to 191.34 billion euros, in 2017 it somehow increased to 231.28 billion dollars.

Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin

Last year, the top ten largest trading partners of Russia included anti-Russian sanctions participants, including Germany (second place), Holland, Italy, and the United States. Germany is the largest customer of Gazprom and in 2017 imported 53.4 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas. Like the Hungarians, the Germans are interested in receiving income from the Russian gas transit. Merkel supports the construction of the Nord Stream - 2 gas pipeline. Gazprom plans to increase natural gas supplies to Europe to 200 billion cubic meters this year. German Siemens supplied gas turbines to Russia, which were used in the annexed Crimea, omitting anti-Russian sanctions. From the beginning of 2018, Russia supplied oil and petroleum products to Holland for $ 23 billion (76% of bilateral trade). France and Poland are not far behind Kazakhstan in terms of trade with Russia (about 3% in foreign trade), which participates in the Eurasian Economic Union.

Using his high-profile statements, Szijjarto goes all-out, trying to divert the attention of the international community from the issue of Orbans authoritarianism and non-compliance with the "open door" policy. To some extent, Szijjarto takes Trumps example, who also criticizes European countries, especially Germany, for neglecting anti-Russian sanctions and buying Russian natural gas.

Szijjarto lobbies for the lifting of sanctions

It seems that Szijjartos ultimate goal is to provoke a kind of commotion in the EU concerning anti-Russian sanctions and to gather his supporters. At various times, the authorities of Italy, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Slovakia expressed a similar desire. The Hungarian Minister directly recognizes the interest of Europeans in cooperation with the Russians in business. Szijjarto considers anti-Russian sanctions untenable, because, in his opinion, they do not help implementation of the Minsk agreements and damage the European, Ukrainian, and Russian economies. Recently he has been accusing Ukraine of treason, referring to Ukraines law on compulsory education in the state language in all educational institutions, including Zakarpattia schools, visited by local Hungarians. Hungary is blocking decisions on Ukraine at the NATO level.

Thus Budapest is trying to convince Brussels and Washington that supposedly they should not pay much attention to Kyiv.

The position of the Hungarian authorities on anti-Russian sanctions is not true. Even despite the fact that Europe and America did not stop trading with Russia, the existing restrictive measures caused damage to the banking sector of the Russian Federation and had a negative impact on the investment climate of the country. In 2014-17, capital inflows to Russia declined by 160-170 billion dollars due to the sanctions. According to the European Parliament, in 2014-16. sanctions caused fluctuations at the level of 810% of GDP. Sanctions have limited Russia's access to high technology and financial markets, which exacerbates the country's technological lag and constrains GDP growth. Russia could suffer more serious losses and become more cooperative on the Ukrainian issue if the EU reduced imports of Russian natural gas by increasing gas imports from the United States, Asia, and Africa. However, this is hampered by the fact that some European countries, such as Hungary, put economic interests above the questions of European security and geopolitical ambitions to turn the European Union into a self-sufficient center of power. And there is nothing surprising in this.

Read the original text at 112.ua.The outcome of the Ukrainian gas industry in the last three years shows an unattractive picture. Despite the declarations of the authorities, in recent years not a single major foreign investor has been able to enter the country. Permits for the work on best deposits were concentrated in the hands of the Ukrainian oligarchs and state-owned companies, while about a third of them fell into the hands of speculators. The result is sad, experts say: the government program to achieve the country's energy independence and the rejection of gas imports by 2020 has almost failed

Open source



Fields only for Ukrainians



The domestic gas industry is able to offer a variety of investment projects and attractive working conditions to foreign partners, according to a press release to Ukraine: Natural Gas Production. Playbook 2018 investment research recently presented. As the booklets creators explained, its goal is to attract foreign investors to the gas production industry of Ukraine.



But after all, we have seen quite a few declarations of intent in recent years. And what is the result? For three years, not a single gas producing company, especially a foreign one, was able to get into our country. Since 2014, no new production-sharing agreement was concluded, Gennady Kobal, director of ExPro Ukraine, said in an interview with 112.ua. Only those operating on the Black Sea shelf with Exxon, DTEK (became party to the agreement instead of Vanco International) remain. They do not carry out any work due to the proximity of the occupied Crimea and the military threat from Russia.

"Over the past years, Ukraine did not come up with investment proposals. There were practically no contests. Look at the number of special permits (for the development of promising oil and gas areas) issued in recent years. Even if special permits were issued, foreign companies didnt receive them. Now we first come out with proposals, Yulia Kovaliv, head of the office of the National Investment Council acknowledged at the Playbook 2018 presentation.



According to the data presented in the Playbook 2018, almost 80% of natural gas in Ukraine is mined by the state-owned Ukrgasvydobuvannia and the semi-state Ukrnafta (Igor Kolomoysky maintains control over the company). Private companies account for no more than 20% of production. And among them are all the same people: DTEK of Rinat Akhmetov, companies controlled by Igor Kolomoisky, Regal Petroleum  a member of Smart Holding of Vadym Novinsky , Geo Alliance of Viktor Pinchuk, Burisma of Mykola Zlochevsky. The companies usually associated with the current Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, have also entered the gas production sphere.



Another part of special permits is concentrated in the hands of resellers - the companies that get them hold until the time it will be possible to resell them. And no work is being done on the fields. The number of "sleeping" special permits is about a third, the chairman of the State Service of Geology and Mineral Resources of Ukraine, Oleg Kirilyuk said. According to him, the issued special permits can be annulled only on the basis of violations identified during the inspection. For three years, a moratorium on such inspections was in force in Ukraine. Inspections were resumed only in March. But the procedure is "very difficult," explained Kirilyuk. In the case of violations authorities issue a prescription and give the time to correct mistakes. Only if the violations are not corrected, then the action of the permit can be suspended and go to court for cancellation. The chairman assured that the process of identifying unscrupulous holders of special permissions may take more than one day, but his department will cope in a year. "I think that in a year we will not have" sleeping "special permits," Kirilyuk assured.

Situation with special permits in Ukraine



Among the main reasons that restrain entry of companies, in particular foreign ones, into the oil and gas mining industry experts point out the lack of auctions for the sale of special permits. "For a year in Ukraine, no bidding was held. At the same time, about 90% of all fields permits were issued outside the auction, which indicates the dominance of double standards," the booklet of the Association of Gas Production Companies of Ukraine says. According to the association, in 2015 only 484 special permits were sold at auctions, while 1364 were issued outside of it, in 2016 the ratio was 657/1962, and in 2017 it was 0/2319.

At the same time, in 2015-16, when the auctions were still held, large gas areas were not sold, says Gennady Kobal. Ukrainian oligarchs have long taken the best areas, he says, and notes tha, almost ideal conditions, perhaps the best in Europe, have been created in the gas industry in recent years. Only our oligarchs have been using them for now. "We have excellent fiscal conditions. Last year decreased the rent for gas production, and from 2018 - for oil production. The rent for gas condensate production should decrease even more since the New Year. We have very good conditions for potential investors, but no new deposits to offer them, "said the director of ExPro Ukraine.



"Another important point that has slowed down the development of the gas industry is the environmental impact assessment (EIA). The industry fully supports the observance of environmental standards and the harmonization of Ukrainian legislation with European ones. But, unfortunately, due to bureaucracy and inadequate preparation of the Ministry of Ecology this procedure was delayed by the EIA and the work of the regional state administrations was blocked, which led to the fact that many gas companies had to postpone the drilling and the implementation of their projects. Currently, the environmental assessment procedure works, but it still takes a rather long period of time - up to 6 months, Roman Opimakh, executive director of the Association of Gas Production Companies of Ukraine told 112.ua

Many companies had problems obtaining an assessment regarding the impact on the external environment. Kobal agrees: "In particular, the Slovak company Nafta was forced to postpone the drilling of the first well in the Uzhgorod gas area to a later date." Note that Nafta is also interested to enter into a production sharing agreement on Yuzovska Square instead of Shell. The company applied for the necessary approvals to the Cabinet of Ministers on August 4, 2016. There is still no final decision on this issue.

Geological information is still unavailable



An important component for the arrival of new players on the market is the discovery of geological information, notes Roman Opimakh: "Not a single foreign mining company will make a positive decision on the implementation of an oil and gas project without studying and analyzing geodata." At the same time, geological information in modern understanding is not available in Ukraine. "Today, all geological data, and these are 175,000 volumes of reports, most of which are from Soviet times, are stored in Geoinform in printed form. For the outside world, this information is practically non-existent. Yes, any enterprise can apply and read this information directly in archives, but a potential investor from abroad cannot do this while sitting online at a computer. This is undoubtedly a big problem, because many countries around the world have long ago converted their geodata to electronic format. The same thing needs to be done in our country - to select, digitize and process information by posting it on online resources, "said Opimakh, adding that" the level of opacity in the process of providing access to geological information in Ukraine is evidenced by the recent scandal with one of officials prosecutors suspected of selling geological information. "

"About 70% of all available geological information we have only in paper form. All this volume must be digitized. Even with proper funding, this process will take at least a year or two. As far as I know, foreign grants were allocated for these purposes and part of the work was done, but there is still a lot of work, agrees Gennady Kobal.

Foreigners do not lose hope



Despite the situation in the gas industry, interest from foreign companies is not declining, Yulia Kovaliv noted.



Against the background of legislative changes, in particular, the introduction of stimulating rents for drilling new gas wells, facilitating permitting procedures, the interest of foreign gas companies to Ukraine has increased significantly, said Roman Opimakh.



In support of his words, he cites the following: representatives of about 20 companies, half of which are foreign, came to the presentation of the PEC (production enhancement contract which implies the cooperation with gas producing and service companies in depleted fields).

Vadym Bodaev, head of the Sigma Bleyzer Foundation in Ukraine, spoke about the founding of an investment fund worth $ 250 million by foreign investors who are interested in gas production in Ukraine. At the same time, it has not yet been able to start work. When a foreign investor, after reading all the advertisements, comes to Ukraine, he asks the only question: who should I negotiate with to start a (gas production) business? We dont have an entry point to come and start investing money and work honestly, said Bodaev at the presentation of the Playbook 2018.



The State Geoagency, in turn, continues to make promises to hold new auctions for special permits, including electronic ones. Oleg Kirilyuk said that the State Service of Geology and the Subsoil of Ukraine will hold three auctions by the end of the year to provide sites for oil and gas. The closest auction is scheduled for October 25th. For now, these will be auctions without electronic bidding: it has not yet begun to operate. Such auctions promised to be held in late December, in January and February.

Is the 2020 program failed?



As a result, Ukraine has come to disappointing results, experts say. It was not possible to achieve growth in gas production in the country, despite numerous declarations of the authorities. The government-initiated program for achieving energy independence and the rejection of gas imports by 2020 was on the verge of failure.



But the authorities do not recognize this. Note that even in the opening remarks of Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, published in the Playbook 2018, it is said about plans to realize the strategic goal and make Ukraine energy-independent, refusing to import gas by 2020.



Unfortunately, the implementation of the program is already doomed, and there is no chance to fulfill it. It was clear from the very beginning that the expectations were, to put it mildly, too high. When such a task was declared, it was already clear that it would be extremely difficult to accomplish and now it is clear that this is absolutely impossible. The declared production volumes should have been growing at the level of 8-10% per year. Over the past 3-4 years they have not managed to reach such rates in one year," ExPro Director Gennady Kobal said.



"According to the government's concept for the development of the gas industry, it was planned that Ukraine would become energy independent in 2020. Even if it does not happen in 2020, it will happen in 2022," said Opimakh being more optimistic.



Energy independence can only be achieved "by increasing the share of private companies in production, but through really fair auctions and a fair procedure for issuing gas production licenses," said Lubomyr Vasunnyk, the head of gas and energy market research at Derzhzovnishform state company. At the same time, the operational efficiency of state-owned mining companies can be significantly increased, and measures in this area need to be carried out continuously. Depending on the success of these measures, actual gas production in Ukraine can increase from 15 to 24 billion cubic meters by 2030, he said. Today, about 20 billion cubic meters of gas are mined in the country annually. Our imports are at the level of 14 billion cubic meters (at the end of 2017).The two civilians deceased on October 18, as they tripped over the explosive device while on their way to Zolote-5 in the occupied part of Luhansk region

Russian occupant forces have been ignoring the requests of the Ukrainian side to evacuate the remains of two civilians. The man and the woman deceased on October 18, as they tripped over the explosive device while on their way to Zolote-5 in the occupied part of Luhansk region. Ukrinform news agency reported this, quoting Leonid Matyukhin, the head of the press center of the Joint Forces HQ.

'Despite the fact that the tragedy occurred on the territory, which is out of control of the Ukrainian side, the Joint Forces command repeatedly sent the requests to cease fire so that the bodies of the deceased would be evacuated. But the Russian occupant forces ignored the request so that they could distort the actual state of affairs and increase the tension among the locals', Matyukhin said.

The HQ of the Joint Forces Operation expressed deep condolences to the families of the deceased.

The tragic accident occurred on October 18, as the civilians left Zolote-4 and headed to Zolote-5 in the occupied part of Luhansk region. Their bodies currently stay near the outpost of the Russian militants in that area. The OSCE launched a drone that hovered over the site and passed the coordinates to the Red Cross. The relatives of the victims asked the Red Cross to get the bodies and hand them over to them. However, the militants refused to cooperate.The National Interest

During the current day, October 21, three Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the Donbas conflict zone. This is reported on the Joint forces operation page on Facebook.



"Unfortunately, we have losses - three Ukrainian soldiers from Ukraine's Joint Forces were injured," the headquarters said.



The Russian occupation forces violated the ceasefire 8 times. At the same time, one case of the use of weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreements was reported.



In comparison with the past days, the situation in Luhansk direction has somewhat worsened. The strongholds of our troops near Krymske were fired from mortars of 82-mm caliber, and our positions near Shchastia was attacked with small arms.



In total, the enemy opened aimed fire from grenade launchers, large-caliber machine guns, and small arms at the positions of the Joint forces in the areas of Marinka, Taramchuk, Krasnohorivka.



In a life-threatening emergency of the personnel, Ukraine's commanders shoot back.

Related: Germany not to sell arms to Saudi Arabia because of death of journalist KhashoggiWhen in office, Artur Yemelyanov allegedly influenced the decision-making process in the court for a bribe

Open source

Ukraines Security Service (SBU) seized over $200 thousand from the judge Artur Yemelyanov, who is suspected of funding separatism, as Pravda reported, referring to SBU.

Former Deputy Chairman of the Higher Economic Court Artur Yemelyanov is suspected in funding the terrorist organizations in occupied Donbas.

According to the news agency, when in office, Yemelyanov took a bribe to influenced the decision-making process in the court.

The judge Artur Yemelyanov committed purchases of business-objects and commercial property on the temporarily occupied territory of Donetsk region through entrusted and straw people, Security Service reports.

SBU representatives said they documented the fact that the companies, controlled by Yemelyanov, paid taxes to the militants regularly.

Besides, a unit of a fake central bank of the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic was located in one of the premises Yemelyanov bought.

While searches, the law enforcers seized documentation and information carriers, which might prove that Yemelyanov and his accomplices were involved in commercial deals in occupied Donbas and funding of terrorist activity.

A pre-trial investigation under the article on funding terrorism is underway.

On June 4, 2018, the Higher Council of Justice suspended Artur Yemelyanov. In addition to funding separatism, he is suspected of corruption and pressure on the judges.

Moreover, Yemelyanov along with his wife is implicated in a case on legalization of income, obtained by criminal means.

In March of 2018, the peoples deputies of Ukraines Parliament demanded to prosecute Artur Yemelyanov and his known associates, including Viktor Tatkov and Pavlo Malyk.Ukraine's First Vice Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv is on the visit to Canada for talks with leaders of the state

Open source

Ukraine and Canada negotiate on the possible use of Ukraine's middle-class Antonov aircraft. Stepan Kubiv, Ukraine's First Vice Prime Minister and Jim Carr, Canadian Minister for International Trade Diversification discussed the topic during their meeting as quoted by Ukrinform news agency.

'We talked the issues of investments, which broaden the opportunities of U.S., Canadian and European technologies on the Ukrainian market, taking into account the course of reforms in the areas of social, pension, education and medical policy, including the corruption problem, and the cooperation in the aircraft engineering of Antonov middle-class planes, which may be used on the Canadian market,' Kubiv said.

The Ukrainian official added that over the past two years, Canadian companies 'invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Ukraine's agrarian and IT area.'Toronto, Ontario, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- An innovative new platform connecting job seekers with employment opportunities in the cannabis industry is now available in Canada. Careers Cannabis is an online job search engine, making it faster for employers and job hunters to find the right match, simplifying and improving the job search process within the cannabis sector. Their beautiful, easy-to-use platform provides a centralized database for cannabis-related job opportunities in Canada across all departments, from executives to bud tenders.





Founded by Anshul Sharma and Brian Sekandi, Careers Cannabis is dedicated to the support and growth of the cannabis job industry. We are utilizing artificial intelligence to not only curate all cannabis industry jobs in one searchable platform, but to be positioned to directly connect great talent with great companies, said Sharma. Through us, employers will easily find the right candidates in order to fill their open roles quickly.

Careers Cannabis will also be heavily involved in the community through events, brand launches, and career fairs. Careers Cannabis is not only a hub for job opportunities, but a community for those interested in the cannabis industry, said Sekandi. Our brand is uniquely positioned to collect and analyze data on industry needs and trends, then develop targeted solutions to meet those needs, whether through technology, curated events that connect the right people together.

The simple to use, beautiful platform will make it easy for Canadians looking to enter the cannabis job industry find the information they need to get started and grow in their new career. For more information or to view current job openings in the cannabis sector, visit www.careerscannabis.com.

---

ABOUT CAREERS CANNABIS

Careers Cannabis is on a mission to improve the experience of finding a job and starting a new career in the cannabis industry. Were a group of developers, recruiters, and designers with a passion for smart technology and beautiful design. We were established and built at WeWork by two serial entrepreneurs that have a passion for education, creativity, collaboration, action and love.

Follow Careers Cannabis on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.The police search for the perpetrators, investigation underway

The police of Zakarpattia region (westernmost Ukraine, - 112 International) opened a criminal case on the fact of deployment of anti-Hungarian billboards in several districts. Hennadiy Moskal, Zakarpattia region governor posted it on his website.

The writing reads 'Let's stop the separatists' in Ukrainian, as seen on the image above.

The case was initiated on the fact of ethnic hostility and hatred, the authority specified.

The police search for the perpetrators and the pre-trial investigation is underway.

Recently, the Hungarian Government decided to double the help to support Hungarians in Zakarpattia region in 2019. Janos Potapi, State Secretary for National Policy claimed this, Origo reports.

According to Potapi, the financial aid will help 23-24 thousand people involved in the education, health, media and social and cultural sectors.

He added that the annual subsidies for the Hungarian teachers in Zakarpattia region will be increased from $960 to $1800.

He said that the reason for this decision is the current tensed diplomatic situation and an unstable economic situation in Ukraine.

Related: Anti-Hungarian billboards appear in Ukraine's Zakarpattia

Related: Budapest doubles assistance for Hungarians in Ukraine's ZakarpattiaTASS

If the United States continues to unilaterally withdraw from international agreements, Russia will take retaliatory measures, including those of a military nature. This was stated by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in response to the withdrawal of the U.S. from Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) agreement, RIA Novosti reports.



The diplomat also said that the Russian Federation condemned the actions of the United States," which is trying to blackmail Moscow to make concessions in the sphere of strategic stability."



According to him, Washingtons accusations that Russia produces medium and short-range missiles are far-fetched. Ryabkov also said that the issue of breaking the INF Treaty was too serious to be resolved through public debate.



The clumsy and crude American policy is causing an increasing rejection in many countries and among wide circles of the international community. Washington should not underestimate these moods shifts, the diplomat added.



Earlier, Trump, speaking to reporters, said the United States is withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty because Russia has violated it and did not provide a report.

Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years, Trump said after a rally in Elko, Nevada. Were not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and were not allowed to. Were the ones that have stayed in the agreement and weve honoured the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement so were going to terminate the agreement, were going to pull out, the US president noted.

The agreement has constrained the U.S. from developing new weapons, but America will begin developing them unless Russia and China agree not to possess or develop the weapons, Trump said. China is not currently a party to the pact.



The Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles was signed in 1987 by General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan.



The agreement prohibits the parties from manufacturing ground-based ballistic and cruise nuclear missiles with a range from 500 to 5,500 km, as well as their testing and deployment.

Related: More than 200 thousand Ukrainians became victims of human trafficking since 1991The U.S. National Security Adviser's visit to Moscow comes after Trump vowed to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

John Bolton, the U.S. National Security Adviser, arrived in Moscow for two days to conduct negotiations with senior Kremlin officials, as Deutsche Welle reports.

The visit comes after President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from a landmark nuclear weapons treaty, the news agency reads.

According to the message, the U.S. leader stated that the country would withdraw from the Cold War-era 'Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty' (INF) with Russia.

Besides, Donald Trump accused Russia of "violating the terms of the treaty".

The US would go ahead and develop nuclear weapons unless Russia and China signed up to a fresh agreement, Deutsche Welle reads referring to Trump's speech.

The treaty was signed in 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the then U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The treaty bans the parties from producing nuclear ballistic and cruise missiles of a land-base with a range of 500-5500 m and their testing and deployment.Open source

Businessman Tymophiy Nagorny was supposed to create a political party to support Russias interests in Ukraine, as Oleg Valendyuk, the Head of Security Service Department in Kyiv, said at the briefing, broadcasted by 112 Ukraine.

Public figure (Nagorny) was supposed to create and develop a political party to promote Russias foreign policy interest and to destabilize the situation in Ukraine under the task of FSB (Russian Security Service, - ed.) officers. This party had to run in elections, lobby and promote Russias interests, impede the process of Ukraines integration into the EU and NATO, raise a question on adopting Russian a state official language, Valednyuk noted.

At the briefing, Ukraines Security Service (SBU) showed the videotapes where Nagorny allegedly told about his detention and recruitment by the officers of the Russian Security Service in Moscow.

SBU representatives stated that they managed to reveal Nagorny as the law enforcers got a proposal from a man - he offered around $1,1 million to cease the criminal cases against him in Russia. Nagorny was supposed to be one of the mediators.

Reportedly, on October 4, Nagorny was arrested with a right for bail. On October 8, Ukraines Security Service confirmed the detention.

Vesti news agency reported that after the bailment was made, State Judicial Administration issued the documents to release Nagorny from SBU detention facility, but after release, he appeared on the Court of Appeal.

The court session lasted for 15 minutes. The lawyer stated that Nagorny did not examine the case files and asked to postpone the consideration of the case. On October 11, Nagorny was released from the detention facility.His press service calls it a response to Ukraines restrictive measures against the Russian citizens and legal entities

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree on imposing sanctions against Ukraine in response to Ukraines restrictive measures against the Russian citizens and legal entities. The press office of the Kremlin reports.

Having signed the document, Putin commissioned the Russian Federation to define Ukrainian individuals against who the sactions would be introduced. In addition, he ordered, to take other measures necessary for the realization of the real order. Also, Russia has to determine the measures that will be taken against the citizens and legal entities.

The order enters into force today. The sanctions can be lifted if Ukraine adopts a similar decision.

Earlier, the EU Council had extended sections against Russia for the illicit annexation of Crimea. Later, Montenegro, Albania, Norway, Ukraine, and Georgia have joined the sanctions.

The sanctions include the import bans for EU of the goods produced in Crimea and Sevastopol, service connected with tourism in Crimea and Sevastopol for the transport, telecommunication and energy sectors along with the oil and gas industry and mining industry.Open source

The Supreme Court of Ukraine recognized the termless use of the cars with the EU license plates imported in the regime of transit as legal as the press service of the court reported.

The use or disposal of the vehicles imported for the purpose of the transit through the customs territory of Ukraine is not the administrative offense provided by the Customs Code of Ukraine, the message said.

The Supreme Court has made such decision considering the lawsuit of the individual against the customs service on the cancelation of the regulation that recognized the claimant guilty in the violation of the customs rules and fined him for $300.

The point of the dispute is that the claimant as the owner of the car with the license plate from Estonia that was not removed from the register there imported this car to the customs territory of Ukraine on February 26, 2016 for the purpose of the transit. During the court sessions, the claimant recognized that he imported the mentioned vehicle for the prolonged use and pointed the transit regime to avoid the necessity of the customs clearance of the car and payment of the proper fees.

The Appeal Court noted the regulation of the first instance court and refused to satisfy the suit. In his turn, the claimant did not agree with such decision and appealed it in the cassation referring to the decision of the Constitution Court that points that the use or disposal of the transport vehicles of the personal use imported for the transit through the customs territory of Ukraine is not the administrative offense.

The Supreme Court consisted of the panel of judges of the Cassation Administrative Court recognized that the cassation appeal should be satisfied. According to the appealed regulation, the basis for its adoption is that the claimant did not re-export the car from the country in the established terms (10 days for the vehicle; 5 days if it is used within the activity zone of the same customs), so he used it as the vehicle with not competed clearance and without the permission of the customs service.

The Supreme Court, taking into account the conclusion of the Constitution Court, noted that the Customs Code of Ukraine clearly defines the actions, inaction, and terms, which are qualified as the violation against the goods, customs clearance of which is not finished.

In such terms, the panel of judges of the Cassation Administrative Court finds the cancelation of the fine grounded as the offense is absent in the actions of the claimant.

On July 13, 2018, Verkhovna Rada supported a bill providing for increased responsibility for breaching the rules of car import to Ukraine. The document establishes a single term for sanctions for customs rules breach, - half a year since the day of detection of the violation.

Earlier the downtown Kyiv was blocked, and the car traffic in the city's government quarter went to a halt was is due to protests by the drivers of cars with EU license plates.

The car drivers joined the rally called 'Action for Protection and Customs Clearance'. They demand that the government approve the police checks of the cars with foreign license plates and apply sanctions according to the customs law. The drivers said they intended to make the rally a timeless event until the government agrees to their conditions.

Later drivers of EU license plates cars blocked the exits from the parliament's building and damaged a lawmaker's car. They blocked the exits located on the surface, which lead to the Constitution Square, Hrushevskoho street, as well as Shovkovychna and Sadova streets. The activists did not let outside the MPs, reporters and the parliament staff, chanting 'Shame on you!' and 'Go to work!'.

The speaker already closed the session of the parliament; however, the EU license plates car owners demanded that the MPs vote for the bill on customs clearance for such vehicles. A correspondent of 112 Ukraine TV channel reported that most of the MPs left the building of the parliament.

Related video:The multiple launch rocket systems can engage targets at a distance up to 35 km

Open source

The Armed Forces of Ukraine got the shipment of repaired multiple launch rocket systems Uragan as the press service of s Ukroboronprom reported.

Shepetivsky Repair Plant that enters Ukroboronprom group has finished the repair of another shipment of 220-mm Uragan multiple launch rocket systems. The fighting vehicles were already passed to the client, the message said.

Multiple launch rocket systems Uragan is one of the most long-range and powerful systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In 20 seconds, Uragan can commit full spread consisted of 16 rockets, which can engage targets at a distance up to 35 km.

Uragan is used for the destruction of the manpower, unarmored and soft-skinned hardware, detachments of the anti-aircraft defense and artillery, command centers, communication hubs, and other important objects of the enemy.

Earlier another stage of the test of Ukrainian cruising missile was held in the south of Odesa region.

Also, Ukraine finished testing 152-mm shells for artillery system Giatsint and started its batch production.

Related video:Open source

On Sunday, October 28, Ukraine is switching to winter time.

The daylight-saving takes place in Ukraine according to the regulation of the Cabinet of Ministers as of May 13, 1996, on the procedure for calculating of time in Ukraine.

To introduce the following order for calculating of time in Ukraine: the time of the second time zone (Kyiv time) with changing the clock on last Sunday of March at 3 am for one hour forward and on the last Sunday of October at 4 am for one hour back, the document says.

Earlier, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, stated that the EU intended to cancel transition to summer and winter time. It was noted that more than 80% of the respondents supported the cancellation of the daylight-savings. 4,6 million people took part in the largest online-survey in the EU.

It was also reported that daylight saving might be canceled in Ukraine. If the EU makes this decision, Ukrainian Ministry of Economic Development will ask the Cabinet of Ministers to introduce changes to the process of computation of time.A meditation and sharing support group focused on the practice of Buddhist teachings and the 12 steps of recovery while integrating the Dharma and the basic goodness of meditation.

The Heart of Recovery is a meditation and sharing support group with the purpose of bringing together the practice of meditation, the Shambhala and Buddhist teachings, and the Twelve Steps of Recovery with the goal of integrating the basic sanity of the Dharma and the basic goodness of meditation with our commitment to abstinence. We welcome all those who wish to share in these common interests.

The Heart of Recovery is a meditation and sharing support group with the purpose of bringing together the practice of meditation, the Shambhala and Buddhist teachings, and the Twelve Steps of Recovery with the goal of integrating the basic sanity of the Dharma and the basic goodness of meditation with our commitment to abstinence. We welcome all those who wish to share in these common interests.It is common for companies to organize various informal events where workers can come with their partners. One of those...DENVER, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Pulse Beverage Corporation ("Pulse") (OTCQB:PLSB) announced today that they are initiating a corporate investigation into two separate press releases that were distributed by a Unnamed National Press Release Distributor (UNPRD) on October 9, 2018 and October 16, 2018 that contained false statements about the Companys activities, future plans, relationships with third parties and other misleading statements and characterizations about Pulse.



These unauthorized press releases did not originate from the Company and seem to have been initiated by a third party/(parties) who are unknown and unrelated to the Company. We strongly condemn this activity and would like to caution investors to be wary about future press releases that may be released via UNPRD about our Company activities. The Company has not done business with UNPRD in the past and any future news publications and press distributions from UNPRD about The Pulse Beverage Corporation should be read with caution.

UNPRD has been contacted directly by the CEO of The Pulse Beverage Corporation and offered the opportunity to publish a retraction of the misleading press releases. The requested retraction has not been forthcoming.

The following is a validated statement from Bob Yates the CEO of The Pulse Beverage Corporation, The Unauthorized Press Releases published and distributed on October 9 and October 16, 2018 were not authorized by us and investors should be cautioned not to rely on any of the information contained within them. For information about the Company interested parties should review prior press releases and filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. We strongly condemn this unethical and illegal activity.

Bob Yates, CEO finished, I would like to declare that Pulse and its officers have not benefitted in any way from the publication and distribution of this false information.

About Pulse Beverage Corporation:

Pulse Beverage Corporation ("Pulse") is an emerging beverage company that offers Natural Cabana Lemonade/Limeade in 7 great tasting, low-calorie flavors and Natural Cabana Coconut Water in pineapple and natural flavors. With Pulse's revamped business model, utilizing warehouse direct and key accounts, Pulse directly teams up with major retailers like Walmart, Albertsons/Safeway, Kroger, Stater Bros, Food Max, Houchens, Kmart, 7-Eleven, United C-stores, Weis Markets, King Kullen, Hy-Vee Supermarket, WinCo Foods, Price Less Markets, Gristede's Foods, Toot n Totem and Travel America. Consumers easily find Pulse's prominently displayed products thereby increasing revenue and earnings for shareholders of Pulse.

For more information, please visit: www.pulsebeverage.com or email info@pulsebeverage.com. Follow Pulse Beverage on Twitter at https://twitter.com/drinkpulsebev. Become a Pulse Beverage Facebook Fan at https://www.facebook.com/PulseBeverageCorporation .

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things, regulatory incentives, the development of new business opportunities, and projected costs, revenue, profits and results operations. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with new projects and development stage companies. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that any such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR THROUGH U.S. NEWSWIRES

CALGARY, Alberta, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HAW Capital Corp. (the Corporation or HAW) (TSXV- HAW.P), is pleased to announce that on October 22, 2018 it entered into a definitive amalgamation agreement (the Agreement) with Merrco Payments Inc. (Merrco) and a wholly-owned subsidiary of HAW (Acquireco) pursuant to which the parties have agreed to complete an amalgamation involving Acquireco and Merrco that will have the effect of HAW acquiring all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Merrco (the Transaction). The Transaction is an arms length transaction and, when completed, will be the Qualifying Transaction for HAW for the purposes of the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. (TSXV). It is expected that the Resulting Issuer (as defined below) will be listed as a Tier 1 Industrial Issuer on the TSXV, subject to TSXV approval.

About Merrco

Merrco is a private Toronto-based corporation incorporated under the Business Corporations Act (Alberta) that operates in the payment processing industry, developing and delivering technology, financial services and solutions to facilitate electronic payments for merchants. Merrco actively markets payment solutions to merchant customers to enable them to accept credit, debit and alternative payments online and at the point of sale. In particular, Merrco focuses on facilitating payment processing for Canadas emerging cannabis industry, including for the sale of recreational cannabis which was legalized on October 17, 2018.

Merrco believes that the legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada presents a significant market opportunity for Merrcos services. While legalization of recreational cannabis occurred at the federal level in Canada, the implementation of sales and distribution regulations is on a province by province basis. Merrco believes that its proven solution is well placed to capitalize on this opportunity and to enable the payment aspects of regulated sales of cannabis in Canada because it provides merchant customers with an established set of compliance tools including age/identity verification, velocity rules, and geo-fencing capabilities that are embedded in its solution.

While the legalized cannabis market in Canada is currently the primary focus of Merrco, opportunities for growth exist in emerging cannabis markets such as the U.S., Germany and Australia as the legalization of medicinal and/or recreational cannabis proceeds in those jurisdictions.

Merrco acquired Payfirma Corporation, based in Vancouver, in February 2018 pursuant to an amalgamation transaction, with Payfirma now operating as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merrco. The Payfirma business offers payment processing services and financial technology that allows businesses to accept and process payments made by way of credit and debit cards. Payfirmas proprietary technology, PayHQ provides merchants with several different ways to accept payments, including virtual terminal, recurring billing modules and customized merchant reporting.

Merrco and Payfirma market services directly to merchants and through a network of referral channel and integrated partners. Merrco and Payfirma are registered Independent Sales Organizations with Visa and registered Member Service Providers with Mastercard.

Selected Merrco Financial Information

Based on the unaudited condensed consolidated interim financial statements of Merrco for the six-month period ended June 30, 2018, Merrco had revenue of $2,385,221 and had a net loss of ($4,139,083), which included one-time transaction costs for the Payfirma acquisition in February 2018 and non-cash depreciation and amortization of intangible and capital assets. As at June 30, 2018, Merrco had total assets of $37,935,420, total liabilities of $1,155,192 and $36,780,228 in shareholders equity. All dollar figures are given in Canadian dollars.

The Qualifying Transaction

Merrco, HAW and Acquireco have entered into the Agreement pursuant to which Merrco will amalgamate with Acquireco to form Amalco, and HAW (which will be the Resulting Issuer from the Transaction, as defined under the policies of the TSXV) will issue common shares to the former Merrco shareholders, on the basis of three common shares of the Resulting Issuer for each one Merrco common share, with such exchange ratio to be adjusted as necessary based on the final terms of the Private Placement (as defined below) and as agreed between HAW and Merrco. Merrcos outstanding Special Preferred Shares will be redeemed immediately prior to the effective time of the amalgamation in accordance with their terms. Each outstanding option, warrant and convertible security (if any) of Merrco will remain outstanding and be adjusted, assumed or converted in accordance with its terms or be exchanged for options, warrants or convertible securities of the Resulting Issuer on substantially the same economic terms and conditions as the existing options, warrants and convertible securities of Merrco. Upon completion of the Transaction, Amalco will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Resulting Issuer.

On the date of this press release, Merrco has 7,940,235 common shares, 2,732,235 Special Preferred Shares, 58,110 broker warrants (each exercisable for one Merrco common share), 563,800 common share options (each exercisable for one Merrco common share) and 12,614 unit options (each exercisable for one Merrco common share and one Special Preferred Share) outstanding, and HAW has 13,540,000 HAW common shares, 1,200,000 options (each exercisable for one HAW common share) and 354,000 warrants (each exercisable for one HAW common share).

As part of the Transaction, HAW will be seeking shareholder approval to consolidate its common shares on the basis of one post-consolidation HAW common share for each 33.3333 HAW common shares currently held by each shareholder, rounded down to the nearest whole common share and with such consolidation ratio to be adjusted as necessary based on the final terms of the Private Placement and as agreed between HAW and Merrco. On this basis, each post-consolidation HAW common share issued in connection with the Transaction is expected to have a deemed price of $5.00. HAW will also seek applicable approvals to change its name to Merrco Payfirma Corporation effective as of the closing of the Transaction.

Under the Agreement, the obligations of HAW and Merrco to consummate the Transaction are subject to customary conditions to closing for a transaction of this type, including receipt of all requisite regulatory (including the TSXV), third-party and board approvals and consents, Merrco shareholder approval and no material adverse effect on either HAW or Merrco having occurred.

Private Placement

In conjunction with or prior to the closing of the Transaction, Merrco expects to complete a brokered private placement for aggregate gross proceeds of up to approximately $30 million (the Private Placement). The Private Placement is expected to be comprised of subscription receipts exchangeable for Merrco common shares and convertible debenture units (comprised of convertible debentures and warrants convertible into or exercisable for, as the case may be, Merrco common shares). Additional details of the Private Placement, including with respect to the amount, nature of the securities to be offered, terms, use of proceeds and the details of the agents commissions, will be provided in a subsequent news release and in the Circular (as described below).

Arms Length Transaction

The Transaction will take place at arms length and will not be a Non-Arms Length Qualifying Transaction for purposes of the policies of the TSXV. As a result, although HAW shareholders will be asked to approve the share consolidation, name change and certain other matters (including certain annual meeting matters), in accordance with applicable polices of the TSXV, HAW will not be obtaining approval of the HAW shareholders for the Transaction.

As of the date of this press release, only James McRoberts holds more than 10% of the issued and outstanding common shares of HAW and there are no control persons holding 10% or more of the issued and outstanding shares of Merrco. Mr. McRoberts currently holds approximately 14.77% of the issued and outstanding HAW common shares and is also a director and the Chief Executive Officer of HAW and a director of Merrco. As a result, Mr. McRoberts has declared this interest in the Transaction to the boards of directors of both HAW and Merrco and, in accordance with the Business Corporations Act (Alberta), has not voted and will not vote on applicable matters relating to the Transaction.

Sponsorship

HAW intends to apply to the TSXV for an exemption from sponsorship requirements. There is no assurance that a sponsorship exemption will be granted by the TSXV. Should this sponsorship exemption application be denied, sponsorship will be required.

Joint Management Information Circular

HAW and Merrco will prepare and mail to their respective shareholders a joint management information circular (the Circular) in connection with the shareholder approvals to be sought by each of them in connection with the Transaction (in the case of Merrco, approval of the amalgamation and in the case of HAW, approval of the share consolidation, the name change, and certain other matters (including certain annual meeting matters)). The Circular will also provide additional information with respect to the Transaction, the Private Placement and with respect to HAW, Merrco and the Resulting Issuer.

Trading Halt

Trading in the HAW Shares on the TSXV is halted and is expected to remain so until completion of the Transaction.

Directors and Management of the Resulting Issuer

The following is a brief description of each of the proposed key members of management of the Resulting Issuer:

Fern Glowinsky



President and Chief Executive Officer; Director Ms. Glowinsky was appointed and President and CEO of Merrco on February 26, 2018, following Merrcos acquisition of Payfirma Corporation, having previously served as a director of Merrco from November 17, 2017. From 2001 to 2016 Ms. Glowinsky was a senior executive at Moneris Solutions Corporation (Moneris), a joint venture of RBC and BMO and one of North Americas largest payment processors. As COO of Moneris, Ms. Glowinsky was responsible for enterprise operations, transforming the end-to-end customer experience while leading a comprehensive technology modernization across the operational footprint. Ms. Glowinsky graduated from the joint MBA/JD program at Schulich School of Business and Osgoode Hall Law School, has a Bachelor of Arts, Economics from the University of Western Ontario and holds the ICD.D designation. Ms. Glowinsky was previously CEO and Director of Cliffside Capital Ltd. (TSXV:CEP). Nicholas Georgakakis



Chief Financial Officer Mr. Georgakakis joined Merrco from HSBC Commercial Banking. Mr. Georgakakis has spent the majority of his career in finance roles in the payments sector. His previous experience includes roles on the management team at Chase Paymentech as Vice President Finance & Business Strategy, as Head of Business Intelligence for TD Merchant Services and as Director of Finance for First Data International. Mr. Georgakakis is a Chartered Professional Accountant and holds a Masters in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science from McGill University. Kiki Plytas



Chief Operations Officer Ms. Plytas joined Merrco from Moneris where she held increasingly senior roles. As Vice President, Business Transformation & Customer Enablement Ms. Plytas oversaw a team responsible for driving fundamental business change with the goal of creating lasting continuous improvements that increased competitiveness and accelerated strategic plan implementation. Ms. Plytas was also responsible for identifying enhancements to customer enablement and establishing systems and processes that more efficiently responded to customers needs. In prior roles Ms. Plytas created the Moneris Compliance function from inception and oversaw U.S. Operations. Ms. Plytas attended Ryerson University in Business Management and Communications. Shakir Tayabali



Executive Vice President, Sales Mr. Tayabali joined Merrco from Global Payments where he was Vice President, Integrated Solutions and managed all partner relationships and developed an eCommerce sales strategy and sales team. In 2012 Mr. Tayabali held the role of Vice President, Customer Experience where he was charged with oversight of customer experience from boarding through ongoing maintenance as well as loyalty programs and the installation of service teams. Prior thereto, Mr. Tayabali was Vice President of Sales, SME overseeing the telephone sales team and merchant retention methodology while managing an annual revenue portfolio of $150 million. Mr. Tayabali holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Western Ontario. Colleen Moorehead



Chair of the Board

Ms. Moorehead is the Chief Client Officer at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP since January 2012 and Chair of the Governance Committee and Director of Solium Capital. Previous experience includes being the Cofounder and President of E*TRADE Canada, President and CEO of Nexient Learning and serving as the Entrepreneur in Residence at Signal Hill Equity Partners. Ms. Moorehead holds an honorary doctorate of civil law from St. Marys University and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance (Honours) from Wilfred Laurier University. John Rante



Director

Mr. Rante was the Executive Chairman, BluePay Processing from 2016 to 2018. He also held a Director position at Payfirma Corporation from May 2011 to February 2018. He was the Chief Executive Officer of BluePay from 2003 to 2016. He was also the President and CEO of Data Transfer and President, CEO and Chairman of Online Data Corporation. Mr. Rante holds his MBA from DePaul University Chicago.

It is anticipated that an additional director who will be independent for purposes of applicable securities laws will be identified and appointed to the board of directors of the Resulting Issuer following the Transaction. This individual is currently expected to serve as the chair of the audit committee of the board of the Resulting Issuer. It is also expected that an individual who will serve as the Corporate Secretary of the Resulting Issuer will be appointed at or prior to such time. Merrco and HAW intend to press release the identity of these individuals once they have been identified and have agreed to serve to the extent they are not otherwise disclosed in the Circular.

For further information, please contact:

HAW Capital Corp.

David Hyman, CFO

haw.investors@gmail.com

Merrco Payments Inc.

Fern Glowinsky, President & CEO

fern.glowinsky@merrco.ca



Forward-Looking Information

Certain information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements or information (forward-looking statements), including details about the Transaction, the Private Placement and the anticipated terms, timelines for completion and other particulars thereof (including the anticipated exchange and conversion ratios, the treatment of options, warrants and convertible securities under the Transaction, the satisfaction of conditions to closing of the Transaction, the timelines, amounts and structure of the Private Placement, the eligibility of the Transaction for an exemption from the sponsorship requirements of the TSXV, that an additional independent director and an individual willing to serve as corporate secretary will be identified and other matters), together with statements regarding the anticipated listing of the Resulting Issuer as a Tier 1 Industrial issuer, the existence of a significant market opportunity for Merrcos business resulting from the legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada and the positioning of Merrcos products and services to address this opportunity, the existence of other potential growth opportunities for Merrco and its subsidiaries and other matters. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond the Corporations control, including the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, currency fluctuations, environmental risks, operational risks, competition from other industry participants, stock market volatility, the risks that the parties will not proceed with the Transaction or that the conditions to closing (including receipt of applicable shareholder and other approvals or consents) are not satisfied in the manner or on the timelines anticipated or at all, that the ultimate terms of the Transaction and the Private Placement will differ from those currently contemplated, that the anticipated directors and officers of the Resulting Issuer are not able or willing to continue to act following the closing of the Transaction, that new directors are not identified on the timelines anticipated or at all and the ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources.

Although the Corporation believes that the expectations in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, its forward-looking statements have been based on factors and assumptions concerning future events which may prove to be inaccurate. Those factors and assumptions are based upon currently available information. Such statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could influence actual results or events and cause actual results or events to differ materially from those stated, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, as no assurance can be provided as to future results, levels of activity or achievements. Risks, uncertainties, material assumptions and other factors that could affect actual results include that the assumptions regarding the forward-looking statements are not accurate and other risks, uncertainties and material assumptions are discussed in our public disclosure documents available at www.sedar.com. Furthermore, the forward-looking statements contained in this document are made as of the date of this document and, except as required by applicable law, the Corporation does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The forward-looking statements contained in this document are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

Completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, TSXV acceptance and shareholder approval (if required). The Transaction cannot close until shareholder approval is obtained (if required). There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all.

Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the management information circular or filing statement to be prepared in connection with the Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied on. Trading in the securities of HAW Capital Corp. should be considered highly speculative.

All information contained in this press release with respect to the Corporation and Merrco was supplied by the Corporation and Merrco, respectively, for inclusion herein.

This news release is not an offer of securities for sale in the United States. Securities may not be offered or sold in the United States or to or for the account or benefit of U.S. persons (as such terms are defined in Regulation S under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act)), absent registration or an exemption from registration. The securities offered have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any state securities laws and, therefore, may not be offered for sale in the United States, except in transactions exempt from registration under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state 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) has in any way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of the press release, nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The Shadowy Arms Trade



A Look Back at a Questionable Tank Deal



By Sven Becker and Michael Sontheimer



An intermediary received a commission of almost $200 million for the sale of battle tanks to United Arab Emirates. Some of that money, though, may have been used to bribe government officials.



French-made Leclerc tanks in Yemen





The tanks were first deployed in combat three summers ago. In early August 2015, they rolled along Yemen's N1 highway, heading north to Al Anad Air Base. Their orders were to help government troops beat back the rebels.



The battle for the base only lasted a few days, after which the Sunni government declaredvictory over the Houthi rebels. The success came partly due to its foreign backers, most notably the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi had sent a brigade of Leclerc tanks to rout the Houthi rebels from the air force base.



The Emirates once shelled out more than $3 billion (2.6 billion euros) for 436 Leclerc tanks and other armored vehicles. The motors were from Germany, manufactured by the Motoren und Turbinen Union (MTU) in the city of Friedrichshafen on the shores of Lake Constance. The transmissions were from a company called Renk AG in Augsburg. The tanks were assembled by Giat, a state-owned enterprise in France that is now a part of the French-German joint venture Nexter.



Abu Dhabi is a party to Yemen's civil war, which has left thousands of people dead. It's unclear how many of those deaths were because of the tanks the Emiratis sent, but it is possible to reconstruct just how the machines found their way to the Arabian Peninsula. The whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks has published a rare document that pulls the curtain back on the international arms trade. DER SPIEGEL, along with the French online investigative journal Mediapart and the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, were given early access to this document.



It describes an arms deal of immense proportions: The commission alone amounted to a whopping $235 million. Of that, $195 million flowed from Giat, through a letterbox company in the British Virgin Islands, and on to the enigmatic Arab businessman Abbas Ibrahim Yousef Al Yousef.



Bribes in Germany?



He is considered one of the Emirates' richest men. There are some indications that Yousef didn't keep all the money from the commission for himself, but that he passed some of it on to Arab officials. The documents also raise the question of whether bribes were paid to anyone in Germany to ensure the export of the motors and the transmissions went smoothly. In 2009, Yousef said: "I undertook the lobbying of the German authorities and was instrumental in ensuring that the necessary approval or waiver was obtained."



That's according to a ruling handed down by one of the International Chamber of Commerce's arbitration courts, which met secretly in Paris. When a deal was reached on the sale of Leclerc tanks to the UAE, Giat and Yousef agreed on a commission of 6.5 percent, the equivalent of $235 million. The managers of the French state-owned company sent regular payments to Yousef until March 2000, but they stopped after about $195 million. This didn't sit well with the businessman. He turned to the arbitration court and demanded he be paid the remaining $40 million. While pleading his case, he included some highly sensitive details. These are reflected in the ruling handed down by the arbitration court, which was anonymously provided to WikiLeaks.



Arms deals tend to have a long lifecycle. Fighter jets, battleships and tanks are ordered and delivered over a period of several years and must be kept in good repair. The beginning of the billion-dollar deal with the Leclerc tanks can be traced back to an era in which the French socialist Francois Mitterrand was in charge in France and Helmut Kohl, a Christian Democrat, was chancellor of Germany.



In the 1980s, French generals dreamed of a modern battle tank. The main gun -- a 120-millimeter caliber weapon -- should automatically reload itself, they thought, making it possible for a three-man crew to operate the tank, rather than the conventional four. The tank should be lighter, smaller and nimbler than the German Leopard or the American M1 Abrams.



The high cost of development drove Giat to look beyond France for potential buyers. That's how Yousef, the arms dealer, got involved. The Emirati businessman had apparently been an intermediary for Giat and the UAE since 1989.



Like most people in the secretive world of international arms sales, Yousef rarely makes public appearances. He is ostensibly from the same village as Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE's founding father and a former president. Yousef's contacts within the family of the current Emirati president are said to be good as well. As a young man, Yousef flew fighter jets manufactured by the French company Dassault. A once-powerful manager in France described him as being very Western-oriented. Yousef worked as a middleman for many French weapons manufacturers in the UAE, the manager said.



But business wasn't always kosher. Last year, Yousef was identified as perhaps having been involved in a possible corruption affair at Airbus. The German-French aerospace giant had paid 19 million euros to another company called Avinco, which bought and sold used airplanes and helicopters, and had used a sham firm to cover its tracks. Yousef appears to have been behind Avinco. The businessman allegedly shifted the lion's share of the payments from Airbus to another company in Panama. What happened to the money after that is unclear. Yousef was not available for comment. When asked, Airbus said the case would be investigated.



Complications



As a businessman, Yousef hasn't limited himself to weapons deals. He invested a portion of his profits into the Munich-based organic supermarket chain Basic AG. Today, his son sits on the company's advisory board.



Some strands of the tank deal lead back to Germany. The Emirati arms buyers were smitten with the Leclerc. But Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan wanted his new tanks to have similar motors as the German Leopard 2, a 12-cylinder model from MTU in Friedrichshafen with transmissions from Renk in Augsburg. The Emiratis had their hearts so set on the German motor that they even offered to cover the additional development costs of 60 million francs, or roughly 9 million euros. Yousef proudly told the arbitration court: "The idea was tochoose the best parts of the competitive products and pull them together to make the best tanks in the world."



But the German motors complicated the deal. In Germany, exports of war machinery are subject to the War Weapons Control Act. A special body known as the Federal Security Council controls the export of military weapons and war machinery. At the time of the deal, the council was made up of Chancellor Kohl and seven ministers from his coalition government.



Normally, the council signs off on weapons exports to France without issue. But there was an additional consideration this time around, namely that the buyer was located in a crisis region.



The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had recently invaded neighboring Kuwait, which had prompted the United States and 30 other countries to come to Kuwait's defense. One of those countries was the UAE, which had provided 1,000 soldiers.



The Federal Security Council's decisions are secret and it's rare for details to trickle out. In the case of the Leclerc tanks, however, the German newsmagazine Focus reported in February 1993 that the council had signed off on the deal. Most recently, the Federal Security Council has proven itself to be "rather rigid," such as during deliberations about exporting arms to Thailand, but back when it was considering the tank deal, it was "less picky" and approved the delivery of motors on Dec. 8, 1992.



And with that, the deal was sealed. To this day, it remains the only time Germany has ever exported Leclerc tanks. The Emiratis ordered 388 battle tanks, 46 armored recovery vehicles, two driver training vehicles plus accessories for $3.6 billion. A significant chunk of that money flowed to Germany. MTU delivered 473 motors for 300 million deutsche marks, worth about 150 million euros today. There were also the transmissions from Renk.



Following the Money



When contacted for comment, MTU said it knew nothing about any cooperation with an Arab middleman. "According to our records," a company spokesman said, there was "neither a cooperation with lobbyists nor did a Mr. Abbas Ibrahim Yousef Al Yousef appear."



Giat, however, acknowledged knowing Yousef. The French state-owned company admitted Yousef had received a commission of 6.5 percent of the total price of the deal. The final sum came out to $234,875,369.40. One stipulation of the deal was secrecy: No one besides those directly involved should know about it. The money didn't go to Yousef directly, instead flowing to his shell company Kenoza Industrial Consulting & Management, located in the British Virgin Islands.



The Caribbean tax haven is notorious for keeping secret the names of people who stash their money there. Yousef also used accounts in Gibraltar and Liechtenstein. From his Kenoza account, the money was transferred to Yousef's holding company, according to Yousef's wealth manager, who revealed the money trail to the arbitration court in Paris. Yousef was trying to cover up where the money had come from.



But one question remains: Who profited from the payments from France? Only Yousef? Or were government employees or other officials bribed with a portion of Yousef's commission?



The judges in Paris wanted to know this too. They called upon Yousef and Giat to explain their business relationship more closely. Only then would they be able to assess whether Yousef had a right to the remaining $40 million. During oral proceedings, the judges' follow-up questions caused scenes that likely would not have happened had the case been heard in a public court.



Representatives from Giat openly admitted that parts of the commission had been used to pay bribes. The "real intention was to facilitate the conclusion of the UAE contract by offering civil servants or other officials from the United Arab Emirates part of its commission," they said.



The contract, they added, was "consequently both contrary to morality and public policy."



They went on to say that Kenoza planned and actually carried out acts of corruption. But the weapons manufacturer couldn't say who Yousef had actually bribed. The business relationship between Yousef and Giat apparently had not left a trace, the company's representatives said.



Investigations and Prison Sentences



For a long time in France, and in Germany, it was not illegal to bribe a foreign official. But then in 2000, France implemented a guideline from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development aimed at fighting corruption. Now bribes would be met with investigations and prison sentences. From then on, Giat managers told the arbitration court, the payments to Yousef were no longer viewed as permissible, and that's why they stopped them. Nexter, Giat's legal successor, declined to answer questions from DER SPIEGEL, citing confidentiality clauses.



Yousef denied all corruption charges in front of the arbitration court. The commissions he received "were not used to pay UAE officials," he said. Instead, he had invested the money in his companies "in various parts of the world."



When the judges wanted to know what Yousef had done to earn his paycheck, he was unable to provide any documents. He had "destroyed his notes in order to protect Giat's confidentiality."



He described his role as follows: "I developed a good working relationship with the GIAT team and spent a considerable amount of time with them advising on the best way to present their products from the point of view of UAE culture, psychology and the business and governmental environment. I relayed to them at each stage what the UAE authorities were thinking." But Yousef preferred not to reveal who his negotiating partner was on the Arab side. At Giat, he was in contact with the chairman of the board and the head of sales.



Yousef also didn't want to talk about his contacts in Germany. Prior to oral testimony, he explained in writing that he had ensured the issuance of an export permit, "a process which involved decision-makers at the highest levels in both France and Germany." When the judges wanted to know more during oral arguments, Yousef clammed up. In response to the question as which German officials he had met with, he answers: "Nobody." No politicians, no officials, allegedly only lobbyists.



Multiple Years for Corruption



Is that true? German politicians in those years had plenty of experience in dealing with arms lobbyists and exports to the crisis regions in the Arab world. The government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl approved the 1991 sale of 26 Fuchs armored reconnaissance vehicles to Saudi Arabia, a deal which ultimately led to the largest corruption affair in postwar German history.



The affair focused on Thyssen Henschel's payment of 220 million deutschmarks into dark channels. A number of public prosecutors launched investigations into high-ranking members of government, including then-Economics Minister Jurgen Mollemann, whose ministry was responsible for the deal. In 2005, the Augsburg District Court convicted Ludwig-Holger Pfahls, a former state secretary in the Defense Ministry, for acceptance of benefits and tax evasion and sentenced him to 27 months in prison. He admitted to having accepted 873,000 deutschmarks in connection with the armored vehicles.



The question as to whether bribe money was paid to Germany in connection with the Leclerc tank order was left open in front of the arbitration court. Clarification can hardly be expected from Germany. Kohl and others who were involved have since passed away. Volker Ruhe and Theo Waigel, who were defense minister and finance minister at the time, respectively, both responded to a query by saying they have no memory of the event. Others chose not to respond to requests for comment at all.



It is, however, clear that the German company Renk AG paid a 2.6 million euro "consultation fee" to the Swiss accounts belonging to two shadowy figures from France for the Leclerc contract. In 2005, a Paris court sentenced those men to multiple years in prison for corruption. In the same trial, two German employees of Renk were handed an 18-month suspended sentenced and fined 100,000 euros each.



Yousef could likely provide information about other members of a network of corruption, but he's not inclined to. That is another reason why he lost out in the September 2010 proceedings of the Paris arbitration court. The judges refused to grant him the $40 million he was demanding given that he refused to say what the money was for. In the end, Yousef actually ended up with less money than before. The judges made him pay for the costs of the proceeding: $550,000.I have always wondered what in the heck goes on inside Masonic lodges: The secrets of Freemasonry are not for women to knownot for anyone but Freemasons to know, reallywhich makes me inherently suspicious of the entire operation. What do men get up to in there, and why can't they breathe a word of it to anyone outside the brotherhood? What is so incriminating, or so stigmatizing, or so singularly valuable that it warrants such a heavy cloak of silence?

Last week, Joseph Patzner, a librarian at the Chancellor Joseph R. Livingston Masonic Library, situated on the 14th floor of the Masonic Hall in Manhattan's Flatiron District, agreed to sit down with me and discuss the mystery, along with a bit of the Hall's history. This peek behind the curtain did not illuminate the full extent of the Masons' cloistered activity, but it did provide a festive backdrop against which my imagination now runs wild.



The Masonic Hall on Broadway, 1830. (Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York; 29.100.2770)

Between 1826 and 1856, New York's Masonic Hall stood on Broadway, between Duane Street and Pearl Street. For upwards of a century, however, some version of the 6th Avenue spot has served as the Headquarters for the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York for upwards of a century: Construction on the first building to occupy the plot at 6th Avenue and 23rd Street completed in 1875.

Ballooning interest in the order, however, meant that the freemasons soon required a bigger space: In 1870, when they laid the cornerstone for the original temple, membership stood at 75,262; by 1905, that number had grown to 126,177, Patzner said. A new building went up between 1907 and 1909 on 24th Street, and in 1911, demolition began on the 23rd Street site. The original temple was replaced with today's Masonic Hall in 1912, and merged with the 24th Street building in 1913: Now, the hulking structure now sprawls across a full block.

While Patzner couldn't explain the catalyzing spike in membership, he did note that Freemasonry appealed to many because it afforded members "a space for networking between different trades," as well as "a space to better yourself," a pursuit that sits at the heart of the extremely hazy definition of what Freemasonry involves.



Banquet in the Grand Lodge Room of the Masonic Temple, 1904. (Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York; 93.1.1.3867)

Freemasonry, as the Economist explains, traces its roots back to medieval stonemasons' guilds, which conjured up an ancient lore around the trade and established the emphasis on study, especially of mathematics and geometry, that apparently persists today. These guilds ultimately expanded to include men who did not build things from stone and brick, and who paid fees for the privilege of joining in the order's educational pursuits. Freemasonry remains the definition of a boys' club, barring women from membership to this day, although I was surprised to see a number of non-men milling about the building during my visit.

According to Patzner, who is not a mason and therefore does not get to know all the secrets, self-improvement remains the central theme, one best encapsulated by the Masonic symbolism of an ashlar: a large stone that starts out rough and uneven, but through the concerted efforts of a Mason, takes on the clean lines of a finished brick. "As you go through with your coursework," Patzner explains, "you're improving yourself. You smooth out the stone that was once rough."

Freemasonry encompasses a diffuse network of lodges operating on that same principle, even as they adhere to distinct, individual ideologies. A fraternal order devoted to personal betterment and the betterment of society writ large, Patzner explains, Freemasonry pulls symbols and practices from cultures around the globe, with a special emphasis on antiquity.

Those influences are evident in the architecture and the decor of New York's Masonic Hall: Every meeting room houses columns, which recall the Temple of Solomon (a prominent feature in Masonic symbolism for reasons not immediately clear to Patzner), topped with globes intended to invoke the "universality," as Patzner puts it, of humankind. Every room has an organ, decorated in keeping with its aesthetic theme, used during rituals whenever they call for hymn singing. All rooms are arranged in an east-to-west layout, and each houses three tall candles arranged as a rectangle with the fourth corner missing: The Master of the lodge stands at the eastern candle, because the eastrepresentative of knowledge"is seen as like the most sacred space in the lodge," Patzner says. "It's where the light rises, kind of comes in."

Freemasonry ascribes great significance to the sun, to light, and yet next to no natural light penetrates their ceremonial and meeting rooms: Symbols incorporated in Tiffany-style glass panels stand out thanks to artificial backlighting. Patzner cannot say exactly why these spaces lack windows, although if I had to make an educated guess, I would attribute this design choice to the brotherhood's compulsive privacy, and their reported desire to keep the outside world from seeing what goes on inside the lodge.

Symbols embedded in the architecture provide a few clues: The Renaissance Room on the Hall's 6th Floor, for example, calls out the four cardinal virtues of Freemasonry (temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice), as well as the seven muses. Many rooms boast a window with a big G emblazoned across the glass, which Patzner tells me stands for sacred geometry, or godnot Christianity's God, or the divine figure worshipped in any one religion, but any kind of deity. Belief in a higher power of some kind is a prerequisite for masonry membership. In Masonic symbolism, you often encounter the trowel (which represents brotherly love) and the triangle (which stands for "the universal nature of those who are coming together," Patzner says), which seem like they were once pulled from the mason trade itself, although an outsider can only speculate.



Masonic Hall, Egyptian Chapel Room, ca. 1910. (Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York; X2010.7.1.1155)

Still, we know that Freemasons have always thrived within the ranks of powerful men. George Washington, a towering gilded statue of whom looms over the Hollender conference room in New York's Masonic Hall, was a Freemason. Benjamin Franklin, Mozart, Mark Twain, J. Edgar Hooverall Freemasons. New York's Grand Lodge counts a number of famous names on its membership rosters: Iconic magician Harry Houdini, prominent builder John Jacob Astor, former Mayor Fiorello Laguardia. Paul Revere was a Mason. William McKinley, whose Ashlar stone stands in the library, was a Mason.

So what were all these guys doing inside their lodges? Patzner has no intel on the exact nature of Masonic rituals, and emphasizes that these gatherings are convened on a basis of member need: The need to advance to a higher degree of understanding, and the lesson currently being pursued. We know these rituals involve organ music, hymns, and chanting. We know they involve candles and a very specific positioning of high officers. We know they involve something called a tracing board, which displays the symbols central to the lesson and, based on the one I saw hanging in the library, look like a surrealist jumble of icons incoherent to me but legible to a Mason. And according to Patzner, these lessons may occasionally involve alchemy, at least once a Mason ascends the order's highest degrees.

Were our founding fathers, our presidents, our city planners, our entertainers, witches conjuring their dominion over their particular field? Are they still? I couldn't say, and Patzner would probably wave me away from that idea in the calmest possible terms, but there is something eerie in a gender-exclusive meeting of male minds that just happens to have spit out some of history's most powerful men.

If you are curious, or if you would simply like to gaze upon all these ostentatious ornamentsthese pillar-like candles and stately seatswith your own eyeballs, the Masonic Hall has offered tours since the early aughts. This seems to have something to do with declining membership (39,000 in 2017, versus a high of over 350,000 in the 1930s) and the necessity to attract younger generations, but again, only the Masons know that for sure. And they're never going to tell.The NYPD has arrested three more people in connection with the street brawl outside the Metropolitan Republican Club in the Upper East Side last Friday.

According to police, Irvin Antillon, Douglas Lennan, and Maxwell Hare were all arrested and charged with riot and assault on Monday. Hare, a Pennsylvania resident, was also charged with gang assault and criminal possession of a weapon. The NYPD did not immediately respond to Gothamist's inquiries seeking additional information about the weapon, or why Hare alone received the gang assault charge.

Antillon, a 41-year-old Queens resident, is reportedly a member of the primarily Latino skinhead crew Battalion 49. He attended the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville as a member of the Proud Boys-affiliated group the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Both Lennan, 40, and Hare, 26, are believed to be full-fledged members of the Proud Boys. Hare has been identified on the official Proud Boys website, and was reportedly scheduled to speak alongside Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes at an anti-Muslim rally in Manhattan last year.

1.) This is Maxwell Hare with Gavin McInnes. Max is a Proud Boy-- an @splcenter-designated hate group-- who was attacking protesters in Providence on Saturday. I suspect he's currently unemployed, but I need you to call his old union and make sure he doesn't work with them again. pic.twitter.com/dzhi9kMChM  AntiFash Gordon (@AntiFashGordon) October 12, 2018

Let's all welcome our new addition to #DoxxAllYourBoys, Douglas "Butcher" Lennan. Heyyy Dougie!  Here we show Douglas three ways, none of them any good. https://t.co/B5P3HdvlqQ pic.twitter.com/5JouxqOrjS  New York City Antifa (@NYCAntifa) October 16, 2018

Two other Proud BoysGeoffrey Young, 38, and John Kinsman, 39were arrested on Friday and subsequently arraigned. While Young was released following his arraignment, Kinsman"the single most vicious of all the attackers," according to prosecutorswas held in lieu of $25,000 bond. As of Monday, the NYPD has arrested a total of five people involved with the Proud Boys for their role in the melee, in addition to three antifascist protesters.

On Friday, Gavin McInnes told the Times that the remaining members of the Proud Boys still wanted by police planned to surrender by the end of the nightthough that still has not happened yet. According to John Miller, the Police Departments Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, the Proud Boys are now the subject of a regular criminal investigation."

12:11 | Lima, Oct. 22.

The request was submitted by the Public Ministry that formalized the preparatory investigation against the former magistrate.





According to Judge Hugo Nunez, the accused left the country to evade justice once Congress had approved the constitutional complaint against him.













"As such, the request for pretrial detention has been declared well founded, thus a 36-month pretrial detention against the accused Cesar Hinostroza Pariachi has been ordered," the resolution reads.





This period is justified since the investigation against him is related to organized crime.





About the case





Hinostroza is implicated in a series of audio recordings released by Panorama TV show and investigative journalism site IDL-Reporteros.





In the conversations, the former judge offers and accepts favors to and from National Council of the Magistracy (CNM) members and other officials. These actions were harshly criticized by most Peruvians.





On October 4, Peruvian Congress approved that Hinostroza be dismissed and banned from holding public office for 10 years.





(END) FHG/DTK/MVBYuja Wang

Piano, passion, and percussion

by arwulf arwulf

From the October, 2018 issue

Early footage of Yuja Wang as a diminutive child prodigy dressed in white satin shows the young pianist waltzing with the spirit of Chopin, her delicate hands floating gracefully over the keys. Born in Beijing, the child of a ballet dancer and a rhythmically exacting percussionist, she is now an internationally celebrated virtuoso who has tackled some of the most challenging works in the classical piano repertoire.



Far too much media attention has been focused on this artist's glamorous wardrobe. Granted, her couture represents personal and professional empowerment; she has freed herself from the constraints of the classical music performance dress code. But what matters most and makes her so exciting in concert are the sounds she draws from the piano, the breathtaking delicacy and lightning-quick intensity of her technique, and the passionate absorption that is visible on her face during a live performance.



Wang's phenomenal success is the result of a deeply ingrained work ethic, maintained over the years with Olympic perseverance. She recalls her first encounter with Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto as a mind-expanding revelation, and compares the task of mastering Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata to a daunting Himalayan ascent.



Wang describes the art of learning a musical composition as a metabolic transformation. Communing with the thought processes of the composer, she digests the work's every note and nuance until it manifests in her bloodstream, possesses her heart, and ultimately alters her DNA. The pianist fully embodies the music and says she loves to feel it playing through her.



When Wang returns to Hill Auditorium on October 24, it will be in the company of Martin Grubinger Jr.'s Percussion Planet Ensemble. They will perform Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, using arrangements tailored for this ensemble by Martin Grubinger Sr. The program also includes DanzOn no. 2 by Mexican composer Arturo Marquez, and One Study One by New Zealand's John Psathas. This multinational mix reflects Grubinger's worldview: He's written that "percussion

...continued below...

thrives on its universality. It recognizes no borders or racial divisions."busily showcases marimba and junk percussion, their rattling motoric rhythms triggering memories of Max Roach's M'Boom Re: Percussion Troupe and Roy Brooks' Detroit-based Aboriginal Percussion Choir. Poised in the eye of this expertly coordinated hurricane, Wang ferociously attacks the ivories with unerring rapid-fire hammer strokes. Marveling at the blur of her hands flying over the keyboard, I'm reminded of jazz historian Val Wilmer's oft-quoted description of the late Cecil Taylor handling the piano as if it were "eighty-eight tuned drums." [Originally published in October, 2018.]YEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Armen Sarkissian has departed to Switzerland on a three-day working trip, the presidents office said in a press release.

Sarkissian will participate in the World Investment Forum 2018  organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)  which this year is held under the Investments For Sustainable Development motto in Geneva, Sarkissian's office said.

The Armenian president will deliver remarks at the Global Leaders Assembly on the sidelines of the forum, according to his office.

Sarkissian will also participate in the grand opening of the 20th annual Crans Montana Forum. The Armenian president will be the keynote speaker at the local and global security matters discussions of the event, Sarkissian's office said.

Crans Montana Forum brings together leaders from more than 100 countries who discuss social, economic and security issues in an informal atmosphere.

Edited and translated by Stepan KocharyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. The Eurasian Week International Forum, which launched in Yerevan on October 22, is attended by more than 2500 representatives from over 25 countries, reports Armenpress.

During his welcoming remarks Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Tigran Sargsyan said the exhibition, which is organized within the frames of the event, is attended by over 120 companies.

While organizing the Forum works an importance was attached to the improvement of relations between the authorities and the business. In this sense the cooperation development and collaboration in different branches of economy will be an important task, he said.

The EEC Board Chairman said different initiatives will be discussed during the Forum. The competition of digital programs will also be summed up.

The joint activity of cooperatives is the main direction of all integration processes. The competitiveness is at best presented by Australia and New Zealand which act as competitors in the field of livestock, and today they have a joint export strategy which we dont have, Tigran Sargsyan said.

He added that the Eurasian Week will also touch upon the Unions development strategy. Today the task to carry out joint policy has already matured. In any case, we will always meet criticism about our activity, and new obstacles will appear instead of the eliminated ones, he noted.

Tigran Sargsyan on behalf of the EEC Board wished productive work to the Forum participants, expressing confidence that their all expectations will be justified.

Edited and translated by Aneta HarutyunyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. One of the reasons behind the failure of the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) government was that sometimes the party would pretend, say things that they didnt agree with deep down inside, according to HHK MP Armen Ashotyan.

Earlier Ashotyan had said that adopting the Electoral Code bill within a 24-hour regime is wrong, and in response reporters argued that the HHK would submit bills and hastily adopt them back when they were in power.

Some of my colleagues are saying things, who I am sure dont think that way. Perhaps they are imitating us, but they learnt our mistakes very quickly. Dont [fool] yourselves. One of the reasons of our governments failure was this, that we were sometimes [fooling] ourselves, saying things we didnt agree with deep inside, Ashotyan said.

Ashotyan called on the government not to repeat the mistakes which led to the Republican Partys political crisis.

Edited and translated by Stepan KocharyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Groningen University of the Netherlands in partnership with the Yerevan State University and with the support of the European Union Delegation in Armenia organized a massive scientific international conference  Frontiers in Chemistry: Armenia (ArmChemFront2018) on October 22, reports Armenpress.

World-renowned speakers, including 2 Nobel Prize winners and the EUs Horizon2020 participants have been invited to Armenia. Apart from the invited top speakers, more than 100 scientists from all over the world, including Armenia, were present at the conference. The main goal of the symposium is to provide Armenian scientists, especially the younger generation, with the opportunity to get acquainted with the best practices in the field using innovative methods and quality techniques in their work. The core message of the conference is the need to reenergize chemical research in the Republic of Armenia tailored to the specific requirements and conditions of the country and in line with the scientific achievements of the world.

The conference kicked off with the welcoming speech by Syuzanna Harutyunyan, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Groningen and the main Coordinator of ArmChemFront 2018. She stated that the main goals of the conference focus on empowering Armenian scientists. International conferences play an important role in scientific research, since they serve as a unique platform for the researchers to present their scientific achievements and results, as well as to expand their network of cooperation, she said.

During the opening ceremony EU Ambassador Piotr Switalski said Armenia needs more participation in international research and innovation programs. Science, research and development (R&D), technology and innovation are key for improving competitiveness, economic growth and for creating jobs. European Union is committed to stronger Armenia and ready to bring people together around the practice and enjoyment of learning and innovating to showcase the link between educations, learning and employability as well as finding solutions in a community, he said.

Deputy minister of education and science Hovhannes Hovhannisyan also delivered welcoming remarks at the event: The economic difficulties accompanying the historical course of events focused on the restoration of the independence at the end of the 20th century created certain natural obstacles for the preservation and further development of scientific and industrial capacities of the sphere. Nowadays, under the new realities in Armenia, we do need modern, up-to-date solutions in line with the current requirements in order to restore and upgrade the formerly existing chemistry capacities, he said.

Other officials also delivered remarks during the event.

At the end of the conference The Best Talent scholarship award will take place on October 25. The international panel of scientists will select the brightest Armenian talent. Within the framework of the scholarship the selected student will get a chance to have a 3-month internship at one of the top chemistry research groups in the world.

The University of Groningen organized the first International Chemistry Conference ArmChemFront in Yerevan in 2013.YEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. The ARF Armenias Supreme Assembly held a session on October 19-21 aimed at discussing the agenda of the upcoming ARF General Assembly, the party told Armenpress.

Based on the comprehensive discussions the Assembly made a decision to participate in the snap parliamentary elections.

The Assembly adopted a statement according to which the ARF considers unacceptable holding snap parliamentary elections in December without complete legislative changes.

The ARF, as an opposition, regardless of election results, will always act with its principled positions, consistent and decisive steps, the statement says.

Edited and translated by Aneta HarutyunyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Acting defense minister of Armenia Davit Tonoyan on October 22 received former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani, who arrived in Armenia on a private visit at the invitation of Chairman of the Union of Armenians of Russia Ara Abrahamyan, the ministry told Armenpress.

During the meeting the acting defense minister introduced the guest on the current security environment across Armenia. They exchanged views on a number of regional and international issues.

The sides highlighted the role of the Armenian community of the US, in particular that of New York in the countrys domestic life, as well as the Armenian-American relations.

Edited and translated by Aneta HarutyunyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Zohrab Mnatsakanyan has held a meeting today with Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus Ambassador Rudolf Michalka, the foreign ministry said.

During the meeting Mnatsakanyan congratulated Michalka on his appointment to office and wished good luck in his mission.

Michalka presented his agenda and upcoming steps in office.

Mnatsakanyan and Michalka addressed the developments that took place in the region and exchanged ideas over prospects of cooperation with the Special Representatives Office.

At the request of Michalka, Mnatsakanyan touched upon the latest domestic political developments in Armenia, stressing that the government continued the reforms process aimed at combating corruption, strengthening rule of law and justice and ensuring equal conditions in the social and economic sectors based on the broad mandate of the people.

The acting FM reiterated the Armenian governments commitment on holding snap elections of parliament in conformity with international standards. In this context Mnatsakanyan attached importance to cooperation with OSCE ODHIR and other international institutions.

Presenting Armenias stance and approach in the direction of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, Mnatsakanyan reaffirmed the commitment of the Armenian side to the exclusively peaceful solution of the conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship.

In this context Mnatsakanyan emphasized that Armenia attaches great importance to the development of an atmosphere of security and peace, emphasizing that international partners should refrain from all actions which lead to arms race and which increase dangers of destabilization.

Edited and translated by Stepan KocharyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Armenian exporters and manufacturers will supply their products to Russian supermarkets without mediators and any barriers, Artak Shaboyan  chairman of the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition, told reporters within the framework of the Eurasian Week International Forum which launched in Yerevan on October 22, reports Armenpress.

He said representatives of a great number of Russian retail chains have been invited to the Forum, and meetings have already been organized for them with the Armenian exporters.

As of now some exporters are already cooperating with the Russian supermarkets without mediators, but it is necessary to take actions to increase their number, he said, adding that the Russian supermarkets preferred to receive the Armenian goods via local suppliers which increased the value of that good and made it less competitive in the market.

The Eurasian Week three-day forum is being held by the initiative of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the support of the Armenian ministry of economic development and investments and Business Armenia Foundation.

Edited and translated by Aneta HarutyunyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. The European Investment Bank (EIB) continues encouraging the sustainable financing of the private sector in Armenia.

The Central Bank of Armenia said it was signed a 50 million Euro loan agreement with EIB with the purpose of funding SME projects.

Loans will be mainly provided aimed at encouraging exports, and implementing tourism, agriculture and agricultural reprocessing projects.

Cenbank president Arthur Javadyan said: The EIB-funded loan programs have special role in terms of increasing financial accessibility and affordability in Armenia. Through these projects the local business is guided toward competitive and sustainable development, while a green financing culture is being established in mediator financial organizations.

Since 2014, EIB and Armenias central bank have implemented 100 million Euro worth of SME funding projects.

Edited and translated by Stepan KocharyanYEREVAN, 22 OCTOBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 22 October, USD exchange rate up by 0.33 drams to 484.13 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 2.22 drams to 556.80 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.04 drams to 7.41 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 0.24 drams to 630.63 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price up by 88.47 drams to 19111.66 drams. Silver price up by 1.64 drams to 227.41 drams. Platinum price up by 117.74 drams to 12996.89 drams.YEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian parliament has failed to pass the bill package of Electoral Code amendments.

56 Members of Parliament voted in favor of adopting the bill, and three voted against.

63 votes were required for the bill to be adopted.

Most of the Republican Party (HHK) faction MPs did not attend the voting in an apparent boycott.

Only 59 MPs were in attendance and even if theoretically all wouldve voted in favor the bill still would fail to pass.

Edited and translated by Stepan KocharyanYEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Ukraine has launched complaints at the World Trade Organization to challenge anti-dumping duties imposed by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan on certain types of Ukrainian steel pipes, ARMENPRESS reports, citing Reuters, documents published by the WTO showed on Monday.

Ukraine said the two countries, should have phased out duties that were higher than necessary, erroneous and based on deficient rulings, procedures and provisions. Ukraine has already lodged a similar WTO complaint against a third member of the customs union, Kazakhstan. Countries accused of breaking the WTO rules have 60 days to settle the matter or Ukraine could ask the WTO to adjudicate.

Edited and translated by Tigran SirekanyanWhen I started in journalism, as a fresh 18-year-old in 1964 it was the year after President Kennedy was assassinated and I naively thought my hopeful world had ended, Beatlemania was in overdrive and New Zealand had been sucked into the Vietnam War.

SUVA - For many of you millennials, youre graduating and entering a Brave New World of Journalism. Embarking on a professional journalism career that is changing technologies at the speed of light, and facing a future full of treacherous quicksands like never before.

Keynote address by Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie at the University of the South Pacific Journalism Awards, 19 October 2018, celebrating 50 years of the university's existence. You can read the complete address here

Professor Robie says the journalism profession has rarely been more dangerous than it is today

And my journalism career actually started four years before the University of the South Pacific was founded in 1968.

Being a journalist was much simpler back then  as a young cadet on the capital city Wellingtons Dominion daily newspaper, I found the choices were straight forward.

Did we want to be a print, radio or television journalist? The internet was unheard of then  it took a further 15 years before the rudimentary network of networks emerged, and then another seven before computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and complicated journalism.

The first rule for interviewing, aspiring journalists were told in newsrooms  and also in a 1965 book called The Journalists Craft that I rediscovered on my bookshelves the other day  was to pick the right source. Rely on sources who were trustworthy and well-informed.

This was long before Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post made deep throat famous in their Watergate investigation in 1972.

The second rule was: make sure you get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but

We were told that we really needed to get a sense of when a woman or a man is telling the truth.

This, of course, fed into the third rule, which was: talk to the interviewee face to face.

Drummed into us were accuracy, speed, fairness and balance. Many of my days were spent on the wharves of Wellington Harbour painstakingly taking the details of the shipping news, or reporting accidents.

The whole idea was accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. And what a drumming we experienced from a crusty news editor calling us out when we made the slightest mistake.

If we survived this gruelling baptism of fire, then we were bumped up from a cadet to a real journalist.

There were few risks to journalists in those days  a few nasty complaints here and there, lack of cooperation from the public, and a possible defamation case if we didnt know our media law.

It wasnt until I went to South Africa in 1970  the then white-minority ruled country that jailed one of the great leaders of our times, Nelson Mandela  that I personally learned how risky it could be being a journalist.

Jailings, assaults and banning orders were commonplace. One of my colleagues, banned then exiled Peter Magubane, a brilliant photographer, was one of my earlier influences with his courage and dedication.

However, today the world is a very different place. It is basically really hostile against journalists in many countries and it continues to get worse.

Today assassinations, murders  especially the killing of those involved in investigating corruption  kidnappings, hostage taking are increasingly the norm.

And being targeted by vicious trolls, often with death threats, is a media fact of life these days.

In its 2018 World Press Freedom Index annual report, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without borders (RSF), declared that journalists faced more hatred this year than last year, not only in authoritarian countries but also increasingly in countries with democratically elected leaders.

RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement:

"The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is one of the worst threats to democracies. "Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters bear heavy responsibility because they undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda. "To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire."

Fifty seven journalists have been killed so far in 2018, plus 10 citizen journalists for a total of 67; 155 journalists have been imprisoned, with a further 142 citizen journalists jailed  a total of 297.

While such ghastly fates for journalists may seem remote here in the Pacific, we have plenty of attacks on media freedom to contend with in our own backyard. And trolls in the Pacific and state threats to internet freedom are rife.

The detention of Television New Zealands Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver for four hours by police in Nauru at last months Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Summit while attempting to interview refugees is just one example of such attempts to shut down truth-seeking.While this included some potentially helpful foreign policy initiatives, defence has largely been overlooked in discussions about how Australia can enhance its engagement with the region.

Fuelling this interest is an escalating number of public references to Chinas increased presence in the region.

CANBERRA  The level of Australian strategic interest in the Pacific islands is reaching a height not seen since concerns about perceived state failure in the Solomon Islands motivated Australia to lead the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands in 2003.

Three recent reports have brought the Defence Cooperation Program to the foreground of these discussions.

In early September 2018 it was reported that Australia had outbid China to fund the upgrade of Fijis Blackrock Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Camp.

Australia will develop infrastructure and provide personnel to undertake training at the base, which Fiji intends will become a centre for training and the development of the regions peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster response capabilities.

Regardless of whether Australias investment in the Blackrock base was motivated by Chinese interest, if this investment enhances coordination and interoperability between the Australian Defence Force and regional military forces for humanitarian and disaster relief, it will be a positive development for Australias relationships in the region.

The investment also represents a positive development for relations between the ADF and the Republic of Fiji Military Forces after years of sanctions following the 2006 Fiji military coup. During that period significant opportunities to build relationships between ADF and RFMF officers were lost, and China stepped into the breach by providing training and equipment.

Fiji continues to maintain links with China and questions remain over the RFMFs commitment to democracy and human rights protections. Australia is taking a pragmatic approach and is working hard to rebuild the relationship through measures like the establishment of the annual AustraliaFiji Defence Ministers meetings in 2017.

In early October 2018 it was reported that Australia is in talks with Papua New Guinea about developing a joint naval base on Manus Island. While these talks are reportedly in response to Chinese interest in developing a port on Manus and in three other locations in PNG, Australia has long been keen to develop a naval base on Manus.

The United States established a naval base on Manus Island during the Pacific War in the 1940s. After the war, then Australian minister for external affairs HV Evatt unsuccessfully lobbied to turn it into a permanent joint AustraliaUnited States base.

When Kim Beazley was defence minister in the 1980s he made steps to reopen the naval base, which he identified as a choke point on a critical strategic approach to Australia.

Although Australia could not reach an agreement with PNG, it did restore the wharf on Manus in the 1990s in the context of the Pacific Patrol Boat Program. A sticking point in negotiations was PNGs concerns about protecting its sovereignty. It remains unclear how these concerns will be addressed as part of the new plans.

News of the proposed naval base was accompanied by reports that the ADF may begin military rotations to PNG, building on the small number of ADF personnel who are currently involved in training the Papua New Guinea Defence Force.

It remains to be seen how receptive PNGs government and public will be to ongoing ADF deployments. They may be viewed as impinging on PNGs sovereignty and bring back memories of the ADFs role during the Australian colonial administration.

This would echo sensitivities over the deployment of ADF personnel during the Bougainville peace process in the 1990s. With the referendum on Bougainvilles political future scheduled for June 2019, there is the potential for similar sensitivities to resurface.

Despite these and other concerns about the defence cooperation program, particularly regarding the management of its projects, it is an example of Australian assistance that is generally viewed positively in the region. The program is driven by a process of joint identification of the interests and ambitions of both recipient states and Australia.

A particularly well received aspect of the defence cooperation program is the Pacific Patrol Boat Program. While the program has faced challenges in the past, these have been outweighed by its benefits, both to recipient states and Australia.

Australia was right to build on the existing program with the Pacific Maritime Security Program, which will see new boats supplied to the region as well as a commitment to provide personnel and sustainment over 30 years.

Increasing Australias strategic engagement with the Pacific islands in response to Chinese interest in the region poses dangers, not least of which are creating self-fulfilling prophecies relating to the so-called China threat.

But if Chinese interest motivates Australia to commit to partnerships and projects that meet both the regions interests and its own, it could be that these risks are worth bearing for the time being.

Joanne Wallis is a senior lecturer at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National UniversityChina and Southeast Asian states kicked off their first joint maritime exercises on Monday in an effort to ease regional tensions linked to rival claims in the South China Sea. Eight warships set sail from the port of Zhanjiang, in China's southern Guangdong province, with 1,200 military personnel taking part in the event, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. Beijing's expansive claims to the South China Sea have long been a source of friction with rival claimants in Southeast Asia, as well as Washington which has traditionally been the dominant naval power in the area. The navies of China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to hold the week-long manoeuvres as part of efforts to promote stability and ease tensions across the disputed sea. Singapore, which is co-organising the event, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines deployed ships to participate in the exercise, according to China's defence ministry. Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar sent observers, according to CCTV. Exercises are expected to include a joint search and rescue operation and communication exercises while in formation, the Chinese defence ministry said in a statement late Sunday. The joint naval exercises are taking place after preparatory tabletop exercises were held in Singapore in August between ASEAN and China. In a speech during Monday's opening ceremony, Singapore chief of navy, Rear-Admiral Lew Chuen Hong emphasised the security benefits, as well as economic growth, to be reaped from regional collaboration, reported The Strait Times. "To allow the stable and collective use of a shared space, a set of common rules and understanding is very important," he said. The Chinese defence ministry said Sunday the exercises would "enhance mutual trust" and "help promote military relations between China and ASEAN countries, strengthen maritime security cooperation, and enhance the ability to jointly respond to security threats." Attending an ASEAN ministerial meeting where the drill was announced on Friday, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he did not believe the exercises were "contrary" to US interests. The United States has raised concerns about China's installation of military facilities in artificially-built islands in the South China Sea, and routinely conducted "freedom of navigation" operations to challenge Beijing's territorial claims. A Thai navy ship in the port of Zhanjiang, in China's southern Guangdong province, from where eight vessels set sail on joint maritime exercises between China and ASEAN nationsItaly's populist government on Monday responded to EU criticism of its budget with a vow to stick to its public spending hike while scrupulously keeping to its own deficit limits. "The figure of 2.4 percent (deficit to GDP ratio in 2019) is a ceiling that we have solemnly undertaken to respect," Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told journalists after the coalition sent its pledge in a letter to EU officials in Brussels. "It's possible that we don't reach it, but it's certain that we won't exceed it," Conte said of the self-imposed deficit limit. The government had until midday (1000 GMT) to reply to Brussels' concerns about the cost of its draft budget aimed at stimulating growth. Despite the war of words, Conte also vowed that Italy would remain within the European Union and keep the euro currency. "Read my lips: for Italy there is no chance of Italexit, to get out of Europe or the eurozone," Conte said, amid growing concerns over Brexit negotiations and the prospect of Britain crashing out of the bloc without an agreement. A deficit of 2.4 percent of annual economic output next year would be triple the amount forecast by the previous Italian government and approach the EU limit of 3.0 percent. In turn, it would aggravate Italy's already huge debt mountain, at some 130 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), way above the EU's 60-percent ceiling and second only to Greece's in Europe. - 'Constructive dialogue' - But the coalition government of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and anti-immigrant League has said it would reduce total debt to 126.5 percent in 2021. "We are not hot-headed. If we had adopted a different budget we would have gone into recession," Conte said. "We want a dialogue with European institutions in a spirit of faithful collaboration and constructive dialogue." In its four-page letter to the European Commission, Italy's government admitted its budget was "not in line with the norms of the stability and growth pact" governing EU member state public finances. "It was a difficult decision but necessary given the delay in achieving pre-crisis GDP levels and the dramatic economic situation of the most disadvantaged in Italian society," the letter said. Italy's proposed hike in public spending saw Moody's on Friday cut its debt rating from Baa2 to Baa3, although with a stable outlook, meaning it will likely not downgrade the Italian economy again within six months. Moody's cited concerns over the government's plans to increase public spending sharply after years of austerity, implementing election promises for a universal basic income and pension reform. Milan's FTSE Mib Index was down 0.66 percent at around 1400 GMT, having opened up 1.82 percent. The closely-watched "spread", or difference between rates on 10-year debt paid by Italy compared with those offered by fiscally conservative Germany, widened from 286 points Monday morning to 302 points after Conte's press conference. "The Italian government's reply to the European Commission suggests that there is unlikely to be a quick resolution to the current fiscal impasse," analysts at Capital Economics said. "We expect yields to rise in the coming years." - 'People's budget' - The European Commission formally warned Italy last week that its plans for 2019 were a serious concern, sending a letter to Rome to warn that it did not rule out rejecting the entire budget. Aimed at fulfilling electoral promises, Italy's planned spending boost is what the government calls its "people's budget". It includes a series of pension and tax changes costing 37 billion euros ($43 billion), of which 22 billion is to be paid for by borrowings, expanding the deficit. "I see that in a country with six million living in poverty, they are implementing plans to alleviate poverty," EU Economics Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said on Monday. Rome "thinks that raising public spending will create growth (but) we're in a period of overheating and most economists think that this will not be the case," Moscovici told France Inter radio. Nevertheless "the European Commission doesn't want a crisis between Brussels and Rome," he said. "Italy's place is in the heart of Europe and not outside." Italy's Finance Minister Giovanni Tria (L) and EU finance chief Pierre Moscovici met in Rome last weekThe family of a Cairns man who was working as a tour guide in Vietnam when he became critically injured in a motorcycle crash, has made a desperate bid to bring him home for medical treatment.

Luke Rampal spent the bulk of his time in Asia volunteering to help rescue children who have been trafficked for sexual slavery or labour exploitation, but now the Aussie is leaning on others to help him after breaking his spine and shoulder.

Lukes a loyal, generous, loveable son, brother, uncle and friend who would give the shirt off his back to a person in need, his family said on the website Bring Luke Home.

Cairns man Luke Rampal, 42, was working as a tour guide in Vietnam when he became critically injured in a motorcycle crash, at Hoi An on October 8. Source: Shay Erin Rampal

Mr Rampal, 42, suffered a break to his C3 and C4 vertebrae in the crash at Hoi An on October 8.

He was then transferred to Bangkok, in Thailand, for life-saving surgery, however it is unknown how badly his spinal chord is damaged.

He has no feeling and movement on his right side, and minimal feeling on his left side. His shoulder is also broken, his family said.

Luke Rampal, 42, suffered a break to his C3 and C4 vertebrae in the crash. Source: Shay Erin Rampal

So far Luke Rampals medical expenses have exceeded $95,000. Source: Shay Erin Rampal

His family are raising funds towards his medical expenses including scans and surgery  with plans to bring him home for further treatment.

So far medical expenses have exceeded $95,000.

This has included medical evacuation, emergency surgery and all pre- and post-operative care, his family wrote on the website.

Daily, Lukes care costs continue to accumulate and cannot be sustained for much longer.

Luke Rampal was transported from Vietnam to Bangkok, in Thailand, for life-saving surgery . Source: Shay Erin Rampal

The immediate goal is to bring him home to Australia so he can continue to get medical care, surrounded by the love and support of his family, friends and community.

Mr Rampals family is planning to bring him back home as a stretcher patient on a commercial flight to Brisbane by October 22, supported by a medical team.

His sister Shay has set up a GoFundMe account, which has so far raised almost $39,000 of its $300,000 goal to help with the costs to get her brother home.A new treatment for a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis can cure 80 percent of sufferers, according to a trial hailed Monday as a "game changer" in the fight against the global killer. Doctors in Belarus -- a country with one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world -- spent months treating patients with a new drug, bedaquiline, alongside other antibiotics. The results, seen exclusively by AFP, were startling: Of the 181 patients given the new drug, 168 people completed the course and 144 were totally cured. The World Health Organization says currently only 55 percent of people with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are successfully treated. The Belarus trial cure rate -- 80 percent -- was largely replicated in bedaquiline trials in other countries in eastern Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia, according to abstracts seen by AFP, due to be unveiled at a major tuberculosis conference later this week. "The results from this study confirm... that newer drugs like bedaquiline can cure and are game changers for people living with multidrug-resistant and extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis," Paula Fujiwara, scientific director of The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease who was not involved in the research, told AFP. Lead researcher Alena Skrahina, from the Republican Research and Practical Centre for Pulmonology and TB in Minsk, called the bedaquiline results "promising". "Generally, our study confirms the effectiveness of bedaquiline in previous clinical trials, and does not confirm the concerns about safety problems," she told AFP. Tuberculosis killed at least 1.7 million people in 2017, according to the WHO, making the airborne infection the world's deadliest infectious disease. It kills more than three times as many people as malaria every year and is responsible for the majority of HIV/AIDS deaths. Despite the huge death toll, tuberculosis receives roughly a tenth of the global research funding that goes to HIV/AIDS. Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is immune to two of the most common antibacterial drugs used to treat the disease. Experts believe it is spreading worldwide due to poor handling of tuberculosis cases. Unlike other global killers such as HIV, tuberculosis is curable -- but currently only under a strict six-month supervised regimen involving multiple daily drug doses. In many parts of the world medications are incorrectly stored, or simply run out before the treatment has finished, leading to greater drug resistance, especially in crowded settings such as prison and hospitals. The WHO says variants of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis have been reported in at least 117 countries around the world. - $13 billion pledge - Unlike many antibiotics, bedaquiline doesn't attack the bacteria directly and instead targets the enzymes that the disease relies on for its energy. All of the patients in the study experienced side effects but these were less severe than previously thought. Last month UN member states agreed a global plan to fight tuberculosis and to facilitate cheaper access to vital drugs. On the sidelines of the General Assembly in New York, world leaders pledged $13 billion annually to end the tuberculosis epidemic, with a further $2 billion to fund research -- up from $700 million currently. Unlike the battle against HIV, which has received high-profile celebrity backing, tuberculosis is often seen as a historic affliction effecting only remote and undeveloped parts of the world. Scientists and policymakers gather this week in The Hague for a global conference on lung health, where they are expected to warn that tuberculosis could spread through richer nations currently struggling with non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and obesity. India alone accounts for a quarter of all tuberculosis cases, and there are hopes that new, cheaper drugs could help strangle the spread of the disease if rolled out worldwide. "We urgently need more affordable drugs like bedaquiline if we are to seriously make a dent in curing the estimated 600,000 people falling sick to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis each year and avoiding nearly a quarter of a million deaths," said Fujiwara. Tuberculosis killed at least 1.7 million people in 2017, according to the WHO, making the airborne infection the world's deadliest infectious diseaseHaiti's President Jovenel Moise removed two top government officials Monday as part of a purge of people linked to a corruption scandal that has ignited mass protests. The cabinet chief and the secretary general of the presidency were removed from office along with 15 government advisers, an official announcement said. "To have a healthy process, the president has decided to rid the environment of people linked to Petrocaribe without admitting they are guilty of anything," Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant said at a news conference. "The courts will say who is guilty and who is not." The move came five days after tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Port-au-Prince and other cities to protest corruption. Investigations by the Haitian Senate in 2016 and 2017 concluded that nearly $2 billion from a Venezuelan aid program called Petrocaribe were misused. Through Petrocaribe, Venezuela for years supplied Haiti and other Caribbean and Central American countries with oil at cut-rate prices and on easy credit terms. A dozen former cabinet ministers were implicated, including the two officials removed from office on Monday. The Senate's findings, however, led to no legal or government actions, prompting the rise of a civil protest movement called Petrocaribe Challenge demanding that the government explain what happened to the money. "We are going to create an independent commission to investigate the truth of Petrocaribe," Ceant told journalists. He said a foreign firm will be chosen by the commission to trace the Petrocaribe funds and find out what happened to the money and how to recover it. Protesters set fires to block streets as they demonstrate in Port-au-Prince on October 17, 2018, calling for the resignation of President Jovenel MoiseA prized caterpillar fungus that is more valuable than gold and is nicknamed "Himalayan Viagra" in Asia, where it is seen as a wonder drug, is becoming harder to find due to climate change, researchers said Monday. People in China and Nepal have been killed in clashes over the years over the elusive fungus "yarchagumba," known formally as Ophiocordyceps sinensis. Although it has no scientifically proven benefits, people who boil yarchagumba in water to make tea or add it to soups and stews believe it cures everything from impotence to cancer. It is "one of the world's most valuable biological commodities, providing a crucial source of income for hundreds of thousands of collectors," said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal. In recent decades, the fungus has skyrocketed in popularity and prices have soared -- it can fetch up to three times the price of gold in Beijing, researchers say. While many have suspected overharvesting was the reason for its scarcity, researchers wanted to find out more. So they interviewed around four dozen harvesters, collectors and traders of the prized fungus. They also examined previously published scientific literature, including interviews with more than 800 people in Nepal, Bhutan, India and China, in order to understand its apparent decline. Weather patterns, geographic factors and environmental conditions were also analyzed to create a map of yarchagumba production in the region. "Using data spanning nearly two decades and four countries, (we) revealed that caterpillar fungus production is declining throughout much of its range," said the report. The finding "is important because it calls attention to how highly valuable species, like caterpillar fungus, are susceptible not only to overharvesting, as is often the focus, but also to climate change," lead study author Kelly Hopping told AFP. "This means that even if people start reducing the amount that they harvest, production will likely continue to dwindle as a result of ongoing climate change," said Hopping, who conducted the work while a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University and is currently assistant professor in Human-Environment Systems at Boise State University. Researchers were unable to tell which factor -- overharvesting or climate change -- had a larger impact on the fungus. "To do so would require access to better harvest records, but monitoring of it is very limited throughout most of the areas where it grows," Hopping said. - Particular temperatures - The cone-shaped fungus is only found above an elevation of 9,800 feet (3,000 meters), and forms when the parasitic fungus lodges itself in a caterpillar, slowly killing it. To grow, it needs a specific climate with winter temperatures below freezing but where the soil is not permanently frozen. "Such conditions are typically present at the margin of permafrost areas," said the PNAS report. "Given that winter temperatures have warmed significantly from 1979 to 2013 across much of its range, and especially in Bhutan, its populations are likely to have been negatively affected." The warming trend has particularly affected Bhutan, with average winter temperatures "increasing by 3.5?4 degrees Celsius across most of its predicted habitat (+1.1 Celsius per decade, on average)," added the study. Researchers have previously found that vegetation on the Tibetan plateau "did not shift upward in response to climate warming from 2000 to 2014," suggesting that the caterpillar fungus will be unable to simply move up the mountain to colder habitats as the climate warms. This spells trouble for harvesters who sell the fungus in order to survive, according to Hopping. "Communities throughout the Himalayan region have become very financially dependent on collecting and selling caterpillar fungus, and so this study could serve as a warming of what many harvesters already realize," she said. "That decreasing availability of this fungus will be devastating to local economies, and that these communities need other viable livelihood options." The fungus known in Asia as "Himalayan Viagra" -- seen here -- has no scientifically proven benefits, but people believe it cures everything from impotence to cancer The prized caterpillar fungus is a hot commodity across Asia -- here, it is sold in the Chinese city of Gannan, in Gansu province, in June 2013

One of the worlds largest and oldest living things is slowly dying, experts have warned  and people are to blame.

Pando, in the US state of Utah, is a forest of 47,000 genetically identical cloned trees sharing the same root system.

The trees in total weigh 5.8 million kilograms and is thought to have been there for 80,000 years.

However, its now failing to regenerate, and its growing too slowly to survive.

Pando, a forest of cloned trees in the US state of Utah, is dying. Source: GoFundMe/ The Pando Pledge

Paul Rogers of the Western Aspen Alliance and Utah State University told Gizmodo, people are at the centre of that failure.

Mr Rogers added over the past 30 or 40 years, grazing animals have chewed away at the Pando clone  and human failure to protect the trees through proper fencing is to blame.

After significant investment in protecting the iconic Pando clone, we were disappointed in this result, he said.

In particular, mule deer appear to be finding ways to enter through weak points in the fence or by jumping over the eight-foot barrier.

Grazing animals are being blamed for Pandos decline. Source: GoFundMe/ The Pando Pledge

Mr Rogers said the forest is now collapsing on our watch.

One clear lesson emerges here: we cannot independently manage wildlife and forests, he said.President Donald Trump said Monday the United States is ready to build up its nuclear arsenal after announcing it is abandoning a Cold War-era nuclear treaty, as Russia warned the withdrawal could cripple global security. Trump sparked concern globally at the weekend by saying he wanted to jettison the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed former US president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader. In explaining his decision, Trump told reporters in Washington that Russia had "not adhered to the spirit of that agreement or to the agreement itself." "Until people come to their senses, we will build it up," he said, referring to America's nuclear stockpile. "This should have been done years ago." "It's a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China. And it includes Russia," the US president continued. "And it includes anybody else who wants to play that game. You can't do that. You can't play that game." "Until they get smart, there's going to be nobody that's going to be even close to us." - Blow to security - Russia however has warned that abandoning the agreement would be a major blow to global security. Moscow was ready to work with the United States to salvage the agreement, the Russian Security Council said after a meeting between its chief Nikolai Patrushev and US National Security Advisor John Bolton. Bolton, who is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday, was visiting Moscow in the wake of Trump's announcement Saturday that he wants to do away with the pact that bans intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles. Signed in 1987, the INF resolved a crisis over Soviet nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles targeting Western capitals. On Monday, Bolton discussed the fate of the treaty with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and spent "nearly five hours" in talks with Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, a spokesman for the council told AFP. Speaking after his meeting with Patrushev, Bolton said the Russians had insisted that Moscow did not violate the treaty. "The position was very firmly announced by Russia that they did not believe that they were breaching the INF treaty. In fact they said: 'You are breaching the INF treaty,'" Bolton said in an interview with Kommersant, a Russian broadsheet. "You can't bring somebody into compliance who does not think they are in breach," he said, adding the treaty seems to have run its course. The two men also discussed a possible extension by five years of the New START arms control treaty, which expires in 2021, the Security Council said. Bolton told Kommersant that Washington wanted to "resolve the INF issue first." The Russian foreign ministry released a picture of Lavrov talking to a grinning Bolton, and said the two men discussed bilateral cooperation, the fight against terror, and "maintaining strategic stability." Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected claims that Moscow has violated the pact, instead accusing Washington of doing so, and called Bolton's upcoming meeting with Putin important. "There are more questions than answers," he told journalists. - EU, China concerned - Trump's announcement has raised global concerns, with the European Commission urging the United States and Russia to pursue talks to preserve the treaty and China calling on Washington to "think twice." "The US and the Russian Federation need to remain in a constructive dialogue to preserve this treaty and ensure it is fully and verifiably implemented," said Maja Kocijancic, the EU spokeswoman for foreign affairs and security policy. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said a unilateral withdrawal from the treaty "will have a multitude of negative effects." Bolton, however, said Britain, Japan, and a number of other countries supported the US position. Analysts have warned that the latest rift between Moscow and Washington could have lamentable consequences, dragging Russia into a new arms race. Putin last week raised eyebrows by saying Russians would "go to heaven" in the event of nuclear war and that Moscow would not use nuclear weapons first. "The aggressor will have to understand that retaliation is inevitable, that it will be destroyed and that we, as victims of aggression, as martyrs, will go to heaven," he said. "They will simply croak because they won't even have time to repent." The Trump administration has complained of Moscow's deployment of Novator 9M729 missiles, which Washington says fall under the treaty's ban on missiles that can travel distances of between 310 and 3,400 miles (500 and 5,500 kilometers). US-Russia ties are under deep strain over accusations Moscow meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The two states are also at odds over Russian support for Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria's civil war, and the conflict in Ukraine. Putin and Trump will both be in Paris on November 11 to attend commemorations marking 100 years since the end of World War I. "Until people come to their senses, we will build it up," said President Donald Trump Bolton's Moscow visit was planned before Trump's announcement that the US was ditching the INF treaty Diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Washington are rising and Russia already warned the US move to withdraw from a Cold War-era nuclear pact is 'dangerous' The world's nuclear arsenal, by countryA rounded rocky outcrop covered with metallic shacks, Migingo Island rises out of the waters of Lake Victoria like an iron-plated turtle. The densely populated island is barely a quarter of a hectare large, its residents crammed into a hodge-podge of corrugated-iron homes. There's little else but a few bars, brothels and a tiny port. Nevertheless for over a decade Migingo has been a source of tension between Uganda and Kenya, who have been unable to decide to whom it really belongs. They were once pushed to the brink of what some said would have been Africa's "smallest war" over the island. While fishing communities around Lake Victoria have seen their catches slowly diminish over the years, the deep waters surrounding Migingo abound with catch such as Nile Perch. Isaac Buhinza, 22, of Uganda learned fishing from his father and never went to school, and said he was drawn to Migingo because "my friends who were here before used to come back home with lots of goodies" from their fishing bounty. "I do not know which country this (island) belongs to, I just stay here." For fisherman like Buhinza, living directly on the tiny island saves them fuel and also gives them direct access to wholesale buyers. It was in the early 2000s when the island was barely inhabited -- then situated within Kenya on all maps -- that it began drawing the attention of Ugandan authorities who sent officials to Migingo to tax fishermen and offer protection against pirates. Kenyan fishermen in return began complaining they were being shaken down by the Ugandans in their own waters and chased from the island. They called on Kenya's government which deployed security forces to Migingo in a move that nearly brought the two nations to blows in 2009. Kenya and Uganda then decided to create a joint commission to determine where the watery border is, relying on maps dating from the 1920s whose interpretation is a key point of contention. But nothing has come of the commission, and in the absence of any decisions on the boundary, the island is co-managed by both countries, a marriage of convenience that has seen highs and lows. - A flap over flags - Whether gutting fish on the rocks of the island, frying them up in greasy cafes, or stringing them up to dry on wires between rusty metal shacks, Migingo's residents generally just go about their own business. But "sometimes there are tensions", admitted Collins Ochieng, a young fisherman who moved to Migingo to "make money". A Kenyan policeman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest flare up of acrimony came in mid-September, when Kenya tried to raise its flag on the island -- which had long had only the Ugandan flag fluttering above it. He said the Ugandans "wanted to flex their muscles" and began patrolling the island in uniform and carrying weapons, "terrorising" residents. On the Ugandan side, a policeman concedes there were tensions but said the issue was quickly resolved. "We decided no flag would be hoisted," he said. For Boaz Owuor, a 28-year-old fisherman based in Sori on the Kenyan side of the lake, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Migingo, the incident proved that "Ugandan authorities take Migingo a lot more seriously than Kenyan authorities." The co-management agreement stipulates there should be equal numbers of police from both nations but "there are more Ugandans", said a Kenyan officer based on the larger nearby island of Ugingo. The Ugandan side denies this. - 'We just want to sell fish' - Lake Victoria is the largest in Africa, and the loss of its once abundant fish life has raised the stakes for millions living along its shores in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. In the past four decades up to 80 percent of indigenous fish species have been lost, and 70 percent of forest cover in the area, according to the conservation group WWF. Meanwhile thick green fields of water hyacinth have bloomed, bedevilling fishermen. Around Migingo, Kenyan fisherman complain about Ugandan officers harassing them, seizing fish and equipment in what they say are their waters. Rejecting the accusation, the Ugandan policeman told AFP that it is a "complex issue". "The deep waters where fishermen fish are more on the Uganda side, and the shallow waters where fish breed are more on the Kenyan side. We all need to work together," he said. Adams Mulabbi, the officer in charge of the Ugandan police station on Migingo, said : "We just want fisherman to be able to do their business in peace." Faced with mounting complaints from their constituents, local Kenyan politicians have called on Nairobi to ask the International Court of Justice to intervene and make a decision on the border -- to no avail. "What matters now is not about the claims by either side, but the need to demarcate the place properly so that the border lines are clear," said Patrick Mugoya, permanent secretary in Uganda's foreign ministry. On the island, some taunt each other good-naturedly. "This is Kenya," said Colins Ochyeng. "It's Uganda," fired back a Ugandan fisherman passing by, with a smile. "I don't know who this island belongs to," said Kenyan fisherman Emmanuel Aringo. "These are all political issues and we just want to sell our fish." A newly-built tin roof shines on top of Migingo island where its residents fish mainly for Nile perch in Lake Victoria on the border of Uganda and Kenya Fishermen preparing their nets on Migingo island whose surrounding waters abound with Nile Perch A woman cuts and cleans Nile Perch. Despite on and off tensions between Uganda and Kenya over the island, Migingo's residents generally just go about their business The densely populated island of Migingo in Lake Victoria is covered with corrugated-iron shacks For the fishermen the issue of who the island of Migingo belongs to is a political one -- they just want "to sell our fish"A Peruvian court postponed Sunday a ruling on a prosecutor's demand to put opposition leader Keiko Fujimori in preventive detention for 36 months, which she called a conspiracy to "bury" her presidential hopes. Anti-corruption prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez had asked the court to hold Fujimori and 11 others for the lengthy period as his team investigates who benefited from millions of dollars in campaign bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. However, Sunday's hearing was adjourned by Judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho after defense lawyers said the prosecution had failed to hand over requested documents, and would need more time to make their case. The judge said he would give "24 hours to the prosecution to comply with the request" and then call a new hearing. Fujimori, leader of the opposition Popular Force party, left the courthouse smiling and waving to photographers beside her husband, Mark Vito. "Prison is for the guilty, not for the accused," she told a press conference Sunday night. "How do they expect us to defend ourselves if we still do not know what we are accused of?" Fujimori added. The judge, however, rejected her lawyer's demand that he recuse himself so the case could be transferred to another court. He is the same judge that earlier this month allowed Lopez's request to hold Fujimori in preventive detention for 10 days. - Case an effort 'to bury me' - Peru's constitution allows for suspects to be held without trial for up to 36 months in complex cases such as the Odebrecht investigation, which involves tracing millions of dollars in illicit payments. It also ensures that suspects cannot interfere with evidence or witnesses in an ongoing investigation. Acceding to the prosecutor's request would all but end Fujimori's 2021 presidential chances, after she lost runoffs in 2011 and 2016. Fujimori said the prosecutor and the judge were conspiring against her. Both have gained notoriety in Peru for a string of anti-corruption prosecutions against top politicians. "I feel there is a conspiracy between prosecutor Perez, representing the Prosecutor's Office, and Judge Concepcion Carhuancho," she told the Peru21 newspaper. "Every minute, there is fake news, a lie about our party and my person. "They are trying to get me out of politics, bury me," she said. The 43-year-old daughter and political heir to disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori, Keiko has increasingly come under the spotlight as prosecutors investigate millions of dollars in illicit campaign contributions to several former presidents. "As a father, I only ask for a fair trial for my daughter, nothing more," said the 80-year-old former president, whose humanitarian pardon for crimes against humanity was revoked by a court last month and who is once again in hospital. Peruvian opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, leader of the opposition Popular Force party, left the courthouse smiling and waving to photographers beside her husband, Mark Vito Acceding to the prosecutor's request would all but end Fujimori's 2021 presidential chances, after she lost runoffs in 2011 and 2016A Philippine judge rejected on Monday an effort by President Rodrigo Duterte to arrest one of his fiercest critics, a decision hailed by opponents as a check on the leader and a victory for the rule of law. The decision from a Manila court denied a government petition to take Senator Antonio Trillanes into custody on charges for which the lawmaker had already been granted amnesty. Trillanes has attacked the president's deadly narcotics crackdown, but also accused Duterte of corruption and his son of involvement in drug dealing. "We wish to thank Judge Andres Soriano who has singlehandedly upheld justice and the rule of law in the country despite extreme pressure coming from the Duterte regime," a beaming Trillanes told reporters. The order for Trillanes' arrest stems from the president voiding in September an amnesty granted eight years ago to the senator, an ex-navy officer, for his role in two coup attempts in the mid-2000s. Duterte alleged the lawmaker did not complete the requirements of filing an official application and admitting guilt, but Monday's ruling threw out those arguments. However, this decision is unlikely to be the final word on this case. The Philippines' top court is weighing the constitutional questions posed by Duterte's amnesty revocation and the government all but pledged to appeal. "This is not the end. Nobody has to claim total victory here," Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told reporters. "This may be subject to review by the higher courts." Monday's news came as Trillanes was on bail over another military uprising case that was revived by Duterte revoking the lawmaker's amnesty. His arrest last month in that case made Trillanes the second senator critical of Duterte's drug war to be detained. Leila de Lima has been behind bars since February 2017 on charges she says were concocted to silence her. Human Rights Watch called Monday's decision a temporary victory for rule of law in the Philippines. "The Duterte administration's campaign is designed to silence Trillanes," HRW researcher Carlos Conde told AFP. "We expect it (the government) to continue, even ramp up, this political harassment and intimidation," he added. Trillanes had faced rebellion and coup d'etat charges for being among military officers who rose up against then president Gloria Arroyo over alleged corruption and mismanagement. He led scores of junior officers in taking over part of a main district of Manila in 2003 and seized a posh Manila hotel in 2007 along with several armed followers as they demanded Arroyo's resignation. Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes, a fierce critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, smiles as he speaks to the media after a judge rejected an attempt to arrest him

After millions viewed a video of a man hurling racial slurs at a black woman on a Ryanair flight, it seems the airline may be taking further action.

According to the BBC, the discount European airline said it will ban passengers who behave like he did.

We will be taking this matter further, and disruptive or abusive behaviour like this will result in passengers being banned from travel, the airline told the BBC.

Initially, Ryanair did not appear to do much in reaction to the video, shot by fellow passenger David Lawrence, showing an unidentified man calling the woman an ugly black b****** and stupid ugly cow.

A flight attendant eventually asked the woman if she wanted to move, and she went to sit with her daughter before the flight took off from Barcelona to London as scheduled.

We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police, the airline said in a statement and tweet.

The video has been viewed more than four million times on social media. Source: David Lawrence/ Facebook

But as the video reached three million views on Facebook, it was clear that wasnt enough, particularly after Lawrence and the daughter of the woman known only as Mrs Gayle spoke to the press.

Calls for a boycott of Ryanair had rippled through Twitter by Sunday morning.

Ok boycott @Ryanair if they think its ok for a racist man to abuse an elderly black woman and remain on the plane, David Lammy, a member of parliament, wrote.

Others were less measured.

The mans rant stunned passengers, with one sitting in a row behind attempting to intervene. Source: David Lawrence/ Facebook

Gayles daughter told HuffPost UK that she had taken her 77-year-old mother on vacation to cheer her up on the one-year anniversary of her husbands death.

Gayle has arthritis and was slow to stand up from her aisle seat when the man wanted to get to his window seat.

The underlying reason behind the mans abusive behaviour comes down to the fact that my mum is a black woman and he didnt want her sitting next to him  he says it in the video, the daughter told HuffPost.

Statement: We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police  Ryanair (@Ryanair) October 21, 2018

Rather than asking the man to move or disembark, the flight attendant asked Gayle if she wanted to move.

Story continues

Another passenger, along with many who have viewed the video since then, questioned why the man was allowed to remain on the flight.

According to Gayles daughter, the flight attendant denied hearing any racial slurs and told them to complain about it to customer service on Monday.

It is unclear whether Ryanair had planned on doing more about this all along, or if public outcry spurred the airline into action. Now other officials are involved as well.

Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously, and we want all incidents to be reported, the police told the BBC.

We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation.

The UKs Department of Transportation also told the network it would be looking into how else to deal with disruptive passengers.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected Tuesday to reveal what he has said is the "naked truth" about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul -- a killing Ankara has said was "savagely planned". His speech comes as US President Donald Trump said he was "not satisfied" with Riyadh's explanation of the Washington Post contributor's death in a case has tarnished the image of powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A tough critic of the Saudi Crown Prince, Khashoggi, 59, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to collect a document for his upcoming marriage. A few days later, a Turkish government source said police believed he was murdered by a team sent to Istanbul, and on October 17, a Turkish newspaper said he was tortured and decapitated inside the consulate. After more than two weeks of near silence, Saudi Arabia admitted on Saturday that Khashoggi was killed in an altercation at the consular office -- an explanation rejected by friends and foes alike. Trump, who had said he found Riyadh's initial explanations credible, told reporters at the White House Monday: "I am not satisfied with what I have heard" since then, and expected to know more "very soon". US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin meanwhile met the Crown Prince behind closed doors in Riyadh for talks while CIA Director Gina Haspel headed for Turkey, although details of her trip were not immediately clear. White House advisor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner said he had urged Prince Mohammed to be "fully transparent" stressing that "the world is watching". The case has shone the spotlight on the Crown Prince, who was credited with spearheading a reform drive but is now accused of having ordered Khashoggi's murder -- a claim Riyadh denies. And as further details of the killing continued to seep out, CNN broadcast images showing a Saudi official playing a body double for Khashoggi, wearing the journalist's clothes, exiting the consulate. - 'Enemy of Turkey' - Omer Celik, spokesman of Erdogan's ruling party, said the killing "was planned in an extremely savage manner," and that "there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this". An Erdogan adviser, Yasin Aktay, wrote in the Yeni Safak daily that Riyadh's version of events "feels like our intelligence is being mocked". The security official heading a team of 15 Saudis allegedly sent to Istanbul, called the head of Prince Mohammed's office, Bader al-Asaker, "four times after the murder", the adviser added. Abdulkadir Selvi, whose Hurriyet newspaper columns are closely watched for indications of Erdogan's thinking, wrote that Khashoggi was slowly strangled to death before a Saudi forensic specialist cut his body into 15 pieces while listening to music. "We cannot close this file until the crown prince is brought to account and removed from his post," said Selvi. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, a smooth former envoy to Washington, appeared on Fox News Sunday to blame a "rogue operation" by individuals who "exceeded their responsibilities" and then "tried to cover up for it". With Khashoggi's remains still missing, Turkish police have found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate in an underground car park in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, state media said. Erdogan has stopped short of directly pointing the finger at Riyadh. Analysts say he preferred to authorise the leak of incriminating information to pro-government media to put pressure on the kingdom. He has twice held telephone talks with King Salman on the crisis, interpreted by some as sidelining the ageing monarch's son Prince Mohammed. - 'Justice must be served' - The timing of the controversy could not be worse for the crown prince as he prepares to host a key investment summit Tuesday, overshadowed by big name cancellations. Dozens of executives from bankers Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to ride-hailing app Uber to Western leaders like International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde have pulled out of the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII), dubbed "Davos in the desert". The chief executive of German industrial conglomerate Siemens Joe Kaeser was the latest to cancel, saying "for now, the truth must be found and justice must be served". Petrol giant Total's head Patrick Pouyanne, however, said he will attend the meeting as "empty chair politics" do not advance human rights. Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would not export arms to Riyadh "in the current situation," despite Germany's approval last month of 416 million euros' ($480 million) worth of arms exports in 2018. burs/jah/jta Khashoggi went to the consulate on October 2 to get documents ahead of his upcoming wedding to his Turkish fiancee Several senior members of Trump's Republican Party said they believed Crown Prince Mohammed (L) was linked to the killing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) met with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in Riyadh last week to discuss what happened to Khashoggi Erdogan said he would give new details on Tuesday about Khashoggi's disappearance Plotting out the diplomatic fallout in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.A special envoy urged the UN Security Council on Monday to consider "stern action" against rebel chief Abdul Wahid Nur for resisting efforts to bring peace to Sudan's troubled Darfur region. Jeremiah Kingsley Mamabolo, the special representative of the United Nations and African Union in Darfur, noted that there were still confrontations between rebels and government forces in the mountainous Jebel Marra region despite a "relatively calm and peaceful" security situation elsewhere. He said he informed the Security Council that "all efforts to bring the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), Abdul Wahid Nur, into the peace process have so far failed." "I urged the council to consider stern action against the SLA leader because from all accounts, he prefers belligerence and armed struggle to cessation of hostilities and a political process. It is highly unlikely that he would change this position any time soon," Mamabolo said. A diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity after a close door consultations of the 15-member Security Council, said several countries had spoken of the need to impose sanctions on Nur. Nur, who was born in the Jebel Marra but has long lived in exile in Paris, heads the Sudan Liberation Movement that has been battling President Omar al-Bashir's regime since 2003. An insurgency began in Darfur in 2003, as ethnic rebels rose up against Sudan's government, accusing it of marginalizing them. Khartoum responded by using militias to crack down on rebels and since then, insurgent groups have fragmented, with fighting punctuated by periods of relative calm. The United Nations says that over the years the conflict has killed about 300,000 people and displaced more than 2.5 million, with many having set up home over the last decade and half in sprawling semi-permanent camps. With the overall fall in violence in Darfur, a joint peacekeeping mission between the UN and the African Union, known as UNAMID, has been reducing its troops, which currently stand at about 8,700. Plans are to cut them to 4,050 by June 2019, with mission itself terminated by the end of 2020, under pressure from the United States to cut back on expenses. With the overall fall in violence in Darfur, a joint peacekeeping mission between the UN and the African Union, known as UNAMID, has been reducing its troops, with plans to end the mission in late 2020China on Monday called on the United States to "think twice" about its decision to ditch a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty with Russia. US President Donald Trump announced over the weekend his plan to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometres (300 to 3,500 miles). But Trump said the Russians had been violating it "for many years" and that China, not a signatory, remained free to develop such weapons. Two top Republican lawmakers backed Trump's worries about China on Sunday, saying there are concerns the treaty is holding the US back while allowing China to move forward with its own developments. "It needs to be emphasised that it is completely wrong to bring up China when talking about withdrawal from the treaty," said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying Monday. The treaty has played an important role in advancing the disarmament process and maintaining a strategic balance and global stability, Hua said. "Unilateral withdrawal will have a multitude of negative effects," she told a regular news briefing. Hua said China hoped the relevant parties can "think twice about the issue of withdrawing," in a reference to the US. On Sunday Republican Senator Lindsey Graham backed Trump's plan to withdraw from the nuclear accord, saying the US needed to be free to respond to a Chinese nuclear build-up. Washington has complained for nearly two years that a ground-launched missile system deployed by Russia breaches the treaty. Another senior Republican, Senator Bob Corker, said on CNN that he hoped Trump's stance was designed merely to pressure Russia to return into compliance. The landmark treaty was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated. It put an end to a mini-arms race in the 1980s triggered by the Soviet Union's deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles targeting Western European capitals. China has warned that if Donald Trump pulls out of an arms control treaty with Russia it will have "a multitide of negative effects"POPLAR RIDGE  Before facing voters in two weeks, the candidates for the 126th Assembly District took questions from students at the Southern Cayuga High School auditorium Monday.

Republican Assemblyman Gary Finch and Democratic challenger Keith Batman participated in the forum organized by the high school's public affairs class. The questions covered a range of topics from gun laws and reproductive rights to the state of the dairy industry and technical education.

One of the first questions for the candidates dealt with broadband access. Expanding high-speed internet in southern Cayuga County has been discussed for years, and there has been some progress. But the lack of reliable broadband remains a concern.

Finch, R-Springport, said one challenge is the geographic area and the terrain. He acknowledged that broadband access is needed, especially for businesses and farms. There is wireless internet available in the school, but outside of the campus access is lacking.

"It's a constant battle and there are constant problems with it," Finch said. "It's not the best. We need to improve it."

Batman, D-Scipio, highlighted his work on broadband expansion when he was Scipio town supervisor. A group of town officials came together eight years ago to bring broadband access to the southern half of the county. Clarity Connect, a Tompkins County-based internet service provider, has made some progress in providing broadband to residents.

The state's broadband expansion called for service with download speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. A carve-out was created for remote areas so that the minimum would be 25 megabits per second. However, the service in southern Cayuga County is nowhere near those targets, Batman explained.

"I'm confident that when we take stock of where we are and what resources we have, we'll find the partners to be able to expand that," he said.

While the candidates found common ground on broadband, they differed on other issues. They differed on whether the state should legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

Finch believes marijuana is a gateway drug and doesn't want to see it legalized. He supported permitting the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but wouldn't expand that to include recreational use.

Batman disagrees. He said he takes a "T-R-R" approach: tax, regulate, restrict. It should be addressed carefully, intentionally and rationally, he added. He supports removing the criminal designation for people "who use something that is in widespread, habitual use."

The students also asked about protections for LGBTQ people. Finch recalled voting against the Marriage Equality Act in 2011. The legislation, which passed the state Legislature and was signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, legalized same-sex marriage in New York.

"My vote was a no vote on marriage equality for reasons which were sound at the time," Finch said. "Now, when I look back, I regret that vote. I would've voted the other way."

He spoke out in support of protections, especially for transgender people. But Batman questioned that stance and referred to his vote against the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act in the state Assembly five months ago.

GENDA, as its known for short, would "prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity in considerations of employment, education, and in consumer credit and housing," according to a news release distributed by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's office in May.

"I don't know how those two are compatible," Batman said of Finch's vote and statement at the forum. "I would vote for such bills. It's an issue that comes down to respect."

The candidates agreed on other issues. On reproductive rights, they said a woman's health decisions should be between her and her doctor and aren't the government's business. They also reached consensus on the opioid epidemic and the need for more action and resources to curtail the problem. They both support gun rights, but believe there should be background checks and measures in place to prevent the mentally ill from acquiring firearms.

They also shared a similar stance on technical education. Batman supports focusing on the link between BOCES programs, community colleges and employers. Finch lamented the loss of skilled workers because of the state's economic climate. He said New York has a "worker crisis" because too many good people are leaving the state.

The forum concluded with a question asking Batman and Finch to name one thing they respect about their opponent. Batman lauded Finch for his contributions to the community and career in public service. Finch returned the praise by applauding Batman for running for state Assembly.

"I believe that we do these things for the right reasons," Finch said. "We have a history of it. We enjoy it. We enjoy being with people. I respect all of those things in Keith."

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 6. Finch is seeking a 10th full term representing the 126th Assembly District, which includes parts of Cayuga, Chenango, Cortland and Onondaga counties. Batman, a Cayuga County legislator and former Scipio town supervisor, is running for state-level office for the first time.

Online producer Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0A Camillus man who was a paid petitioner for John Mannion's state Senate campaign has been arrested for allegedly forging three signatures on Democratic and Reform party petitions Mannion filed to run in the 50th Senate District race.

Daniel Deragon, 24, of 106 East Gate Road, has been charged with third-degree forgery, a class A misdemeanor. He was arrested by the Onondaga County District Attorney's Office on Oct. 10, according to documents obtained by The Citizen.

The arrest stems from an investigation that began in August. The district attorney's office interviewed three people who said their names and addresses were added to petitions without their knowledge.

Two of the individuals interviewed are Deragon's neighbors. They told authorities that their names were signed on one of Mannion's Democratic petitions without their consent.

A woman who previously lived in New York but now resides in North Carolina said her name was forged on a voter registration form. Her name and address also appeared on Mannion's petition for the Reform Party line, but she told the district attorney's office that she never gave anyone consent to fill out the forms.

Mannion's campaign has said Deragon was a paid petitioner. Campaign finance records show he was paid $446.17 in reimbursements during the petitioning process, which ran from early June through early July.

He is no longer employed by the campaign.

Supporters of Republican candidate Bob Antonacci objected to Mannion's Reform Party petition in July. Mannion, who was endorsed by the minor party, needed two valid signatures to appear on the line. He filed a petition with two signatures.

Antonacci's side accused Mannion's campaign of fraud. In state Supreme Court, it was revealed that Deragon allegedly filed a voter registration form using the name of the woman who now lives in North Carolina and signed her name on the Reform Party petition.

State Supreme Court Judge Norman Seiter ruled that Mannion's Reform Party petition was invalid. John Ciampoli, an attorney who represented Antonacci's supporters, argued that other petitions Deragon signed should be invalidated, too. Seiter didn't take further action, and Mannion remained on the Democratic, Women's Equality and Working Families party lines.

Deragon was arraigned on Oct. 10 and appeared in Onondaga Town Court on Oct. 17. He is due to reappear in court Nov. 7.Voters in the 24th Congressional District have probably seen a television commercial (or a few) that claims U.S. Rep. John Katko is a "yes man" for President Donald Trump and has voted with the president at least 90 percent of the time.

Democratic challenger Dana Balter released an ad labeling Katko, R-Camillus, a "Trump yes man" earlier this month. Her campaign has another commercial with a similar theme airing in the Syracuse media market.

Has Katko voted with Trump 90 percent of the time? Let's take a look at the claim.

FiveThirtyEight

The source of the claim is FiveThirtyEight's Tracking Congress in the Age of Trump. The purpose of the project, according to the website, is to track "how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president."

FiveThirtyEight's tally doesn't include every vote cast in the House. It excludes procedural votes and many amendments. It focuses mainly on major legislation the House has considered in the current Congress, which began in January 2017.

The analysis is based on 93 votes in the House. FiveThirtyEight compares Katko's vote to Trump's position. According to its tally, Katko voted with Trump's position 83 out of 92 times. (He missed one vote, so it wasn't included in the calculation.)

Katko's score is the 46th lowest among House Republicans and in the middle of the pack among New York GOP members. Katko had a higher score than five New York Republicans, but his mark was lower than three others  U.S. Reps. Chris Collins (98.9 percent), Claudia Tenney (96.8 percent) and Tom Reed (96.6 percent).

Katko's votes with Trump

The most notable votes in line with Trump's position came on the tax overhaul Congress approved last year. Katko voted for the House version of the bill in November 2017. He cast two votes on the final bill in December 2017.

Katko was one of four New York Republicans who supported the tax law.

In early 2017, Katko and House Republicans voted to repeal several Obama-era rules. The rules covered a range of subjects from requiring federal contractors to report labor violations to stream protection, teacher preparation programs and drug testing applicants for unemployment benefits.

Katko sided with Trump on a few abortion-related measures. He voted for a bill that would permanently ban the use of federal funds for abortion or health coverage that includes abortion. He also voted to repeal a rule requiring federal funds to be distributed to health centers even if they perform abortions.

Some bipartisan bills are included in the tally. For example, Katko voted for the Department of Defense Appropriations Act in March 2017. The legislation passed by a 371-48 vote. Later that month, he voted for legislation to remove the antitrust exemption for insurance providers. That bill passed by a 416-7 vote.

But not all of the votes are clear examples of Katko siding with Trump. Among the bills included in FiveThirtyEight's tally is a "compromise" immigration reform proposal that the House rejected in June. Katko supported the legislation, and played a role in drafting it.

After the vote in June, Katko criticized Trump because "he was all over the map on whether he supported it or not." Trump offered tepid support of the bill before the vote. Half of the House GOP caucus voted against it.

Katko's votes against Trump

The first of the nine votes "against Trump" actually came before Trump was president. On Jan. 13, 2017, one week before Trump's inauguration, Katko voted against a House budget resolution to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The vote was in line with Katko's stance on repealing the 2010 health care law commonly referred to as "ObamaCare." He supports repealing the law, but believes a suitable replacement should follow.

Katko's first true vote against Trump came when he opposed the repeal of a rule requiring energy companies to reduce emissions and waste. He was one of 11 Republicans who opposed the resolution.

One of the biggest examples of Katko breaking with Trump came in May 2017 when he voted against the GOP's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The bill, the American Health Care Act, passed the House without Katko's support. He was one of 20 Republicans who opposed the measure.

Katko split with Trump when he voted for imposing sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia. That measure received strong bipartisan support in the House.

To round out 2017, Katko opposed an appropriations bill for several government agencies and another GOP budget resolution.

This year, Katko broke with Trump when he voted against the farm bill in the House. There were two votes on the House farm bill proposal, and Katko opposed it on both occasions. He said he opposed the farm bill, in part, because of proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Conclusion

It's true that, based on FiveThirtyEight's analysis, Katko has voted 90.2 percent of the time with Trump. FiveThirtyEight's tally includes many of the prominent bills the House considered over the past two years.

However, there is this caveat: The tally is a small fraction of the total votes cast in the House.

During the 115th Congress, there have been 1,125 roll call votes in the House. Not all of those votes are on high-profile bills. Some votes are on procedural matters. Others are on amendments to larger bills.

The actual percentage could be higher or lower. FiveThirtyEight extracted the votes on what they viewed as the most important bills, and Katko has voted slightly more than 90 percent of the time with Trump on those measures.

Love 7 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2A union representing 40,000 hospitality workers in New Jersey and New York blasts Republican U.S. Rep. John Katko's tax vote in a new television ad that will begin airing Tuesday.

The New York Hotel Trades Council's ads  the group is already airing a radio ad targeting Katko, R-Camillus, in the Syracuse area  are part of a $2 million independent expenditure targeting five congressional races in New York and New Jersey. The campaign includes the 24th Congressional District race pitting Katko against Democratic challenger Dana Balter.

The ads against Katko criticize him for his vote on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a Republican-backed tax overhaul that passed last year and was signed into law by President Donald Trump.

"John Katko voted to put health care at risk for New Yorkers with preexisting conditions," the ad's narrator said.

Democratic-aligned groups have repeatedly made the link between the tax vote and a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, a 2010 health care law that remains one of President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievements.

The tax law contained a provision that eliminates the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate penalty. The health care law, which is also referred to as "ObamaCare," requires individuals to purchase health insurance coverage. If they don't, they must pay a fine.

In 2018, the penalty for adults is $695 or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is greater.

Beginning in 2019, the penalty will no longer be in effect.

With the individual mandate's repeal, Republican attorneys general launched an effort to dismantle the entire law. Without the individual mandate, the attorneys general argue that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. They filed a federal lawsuit challenging ObamaCare.

Supporters of the Affordable Care Act say that the lawsuit threatens protections for those with preexisting conditions. The health care law prohibits health insurers from refusing to provide coverage or charging people more if they have a preexisting condition.

The radio and TV ads funded by the Hotel Trades Council will run through Election Day. The TV ad will air on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and Spectrum News. The radio ad is already airing on Syracuse-area stations.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 5Auburn Community Hospital has collaborated with energy services company Trane, a brand of Ingersoll Rand, to complete an energy-efficient indoor comfort system, according to a news release.

The new system reduces the hospital's heating and air conditioning energy use by 50 percent and saves more than $220,000 in energy costs annually, allowing the hospital to reinvest those savings into patient care.

New chillers generate cooler air in the hospital's six operating rooms, where operations and the hospital's legacy cooling equipment created less-than-optimal temperatures and humidity. The system also uses data to ensure the equipment runs as efficiently as possible by using water more effectively and generating cooler, dryer air to circulate throughout the building.

The people of Auburn rely on the Auburn Community Hospital to provide quality, patient-centered care to everyone that walks in the door, said Matt Chadderdon, vice president of communications for the hospital, in the news release. Improving the buildings air systems improves our bottom line, and increases comfort for patients and staff. We put the savings back into the hospital to ensure the best patient experience possible.

For more information, visit auburnhospital.org or trane.com.

Love 3 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0An Auburn man was arrested early Monday morning for biting his girlfriend, city police said.

Just before 4 a.m., Michael Smith, II, 26, was arrested at his 73 Wall St. apartment for violating an order of protection by biting a female victim, the Auburn Police Department said Monday.

Smith was charged with first-degree criminal contempt, a felony, and second-degree harassment, a violation, APD said.

Smith was arraigned in Auburn City Court Monday morning. He was remanded to Cayuga County Jail with bail set at $1,000 cash or $2,000 bond. He is due back in city court Oct. 26.

Love 1 Funny 8 Wow 4 Sad 1 Angry 4WASHINGTON, D.C.Adult industry members and fans may not know this, but for the conservative religious people that currently control the federal (and several states') government, there is no such thing as a "transgender person." Yes, the tiny brains that are currently making policy for what used to be the world's bulwark of democracy can only see gender as a black-and-whiteor, more accurately, male-and-femaleissue. And now the Criminal In Chief wants to officially define gender exactly that way, based solely on what genitalia a person was born with. Got a penis? You're male. Got a vagina? You're female. That's it!

"Sex means a persons status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth," the Department of Health and Human Services proposed in a memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring, and was recently obtained by The New York Times. "The sex listed on a persons birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a persons sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence. ... After more than a year of discussions, Health and Human Services is preparing to formally present the new definition to the Justice Department before the end of the year, Trump administration officials say.

"The Department of Health and Human Services has called on the 'Big Four' agencies that enforce some part of Title IXthe Departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, and Laborto adopt its definition in regulations that will establish uniformity in the government and increase the likelihood that courts will accept it."

Such a policy statement echoes what millions of religious conservatives have long believed. Whether it's Target Department Stores' policy of allowing people to use whichever restroom matches their self-defined gender, or a similar non-discrimination policy in Charlotte, North Carolina (which was overturned when the state legislature passed HB2), to an Anchorage, Alaska, religious homeless women's shelter being sued to force it to provide beds for transgender applicants, conservative religious "news" sites invariably describe transgender women as "men" and transgender men as "women"and spend thousands of words touting the "dangers" that trans people pose when allowed to use facilities like bathrooms and dressing rooms reserved, they charge, for people with genital-defined gender roles. In fact, most have solicited donations to fight the transgender "menace."

"At a downtown homeless shelter, a man who goes by the name Samantha tried to enter the Hope Center, where the women sleep on the floor, inches apart," wrote Family Research Council (FRC) head Tony Perkins of the Anchorage dispute. "Two times, the shelter, a faith-based operation, turned him away. 'Many of the women who the Hope Center shelters have escaped the horrendous conditions of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. It would be wholly irresponsible and potentially dangerous for Hope Center to house biological males in its shelter overnight with the population of abused and battered women who stay at the shelter,' staffers said." [Emphasis added]

In fact, just today FRC published its defense of HHS's impending action, claiming that when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, whose Title IX provides protections from discrimination on the basis of "sex," that Congress didn't mean transgendersand they aren't too happy that courts have seen fit to include gays and lesbians in those protections either.

"In Sunday's piece, a trio of reporters argues that the Trump administration is disenfranchising people by defining gender as it always has been: a 'biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth'," Perkins claimed. "No one is quite sure how that's radical, since it's how the law has been understood both before and since 1964. Not a single president questioned it until Obama, who decided that he didn't care what the Civil Rights Act said. He was going to 'reinterpret' the 54-year-old law on 'sex' discrimination to mean 'sexual orientation' and gender identity too."

Yeah, as far as FRC is concerned, "sex" is binary and there ain't no two ways about it!

"Gender is not a social construct," wrote Southern Baptist "scholars" Adam Groza and Ben Arbour. "Rather, it is divinely instituted, and it's an essential aspect of personal identity. This doesn't mean things aren't complicated sometimes, because ... sin messed everything up. 'Everything,' unfortunately includes chromosomes, hormones, neuropathways and other biological aspects of humanity."

The proposed HHS redefinition is hardly the Trump administration's first attempt at gender discrimination. Back in March of 2018, Trump issued a directive to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis which stated that "transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service," and according to a New York Times story, while "[t]ransgender troops who are currently in the United States military may remain in the ranks ... the Pentagon could require them to serve according to their gender at birth." The directive built on tweets Trump posted in July of 2017, one of which stated "the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military." While the transgender military ban has been walked back somewhattrans soldiers are allowed to complete their servicethe HHS memo is more aimed at taking away transgender rights in almost the entire public sphere.

Moreover, as noted by the blog ThinkProgress, "The Trump administration has already taken steps to roll back transgender protections in piecemeal ways. For example, the Department of Education rescinded its guidance protecting transgender students under Title IX and stopped hearing their discrimination complaints entirely, the Bureau of Prisons rescinded protections for transgender prisoners, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is working to undo transgender health care protections found in the Affordable Care Act, and the Department of Housing & Urban Development has delayed implementing homeless shelter protections for transgender people. The DOJ has already begun arguing that employment discrimination against transgender people should be legal... Its not an exaggeration that this change would legally write transgender people out of existence as far as the federal government is concerned."

The right-leaning bigots like to describe transgenderism as "gender dysphoria," which is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) V as "a conflict between a persons physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify," but with few exceptions, transgender persons say they've known since childhood what gender they feel themselves to be, no matter what genitalia they were born withand that realization only appears to be a "conflict" to those who don't accept the very concept of transgenderism.

"Transgender people are frightened," said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, which presses for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. "At every step where the administration has had the choice, theyve opted to turn their back on transgender people."

The Times also noted that after its story was published yesterday, "transgender people took to social media to post photographs of themselves with the hashtag #WontBeErased."

Pictured: Aubrey Kate, whom the Trump administration considers to be "male." (Pictured in Aubrey Kate: TS Superstar; Evil Angel Films)ALBUQUERQUENew York-based pleasure products company Blush Novelties resident sex educator Ducky DooLittle will teach two classes, courtesy of Eldorado Trading Co., at Self Serve this week.

The Albuquerque, New Mexico, retailer won the appearance, compliments of pleasure products distributor Eldorado Trading, who held a contest amongst its retail partners earlier this year.

Eldorado customers were asked to share their tips and tricks for creating a successful in-store event, for a chance to win an in-store appearance from Blushs resident Sex Educator, says Eldorado Trading Marketing Strategist, Preston Garland. Whether a ladies night, sex ed workshops, appearances by authors or adult stars, lingerie fashion shows, mixers, store tours, or shopping events, Eldorado wanted to know what has worked for adult retailers. The winner had the option of hosting an event of their choosing with Ducky (a staff training session, a customer event, a customer sex education class, a community event, etc). There was tremendous participation on this contest, from our retail partners all across the country. Great ideas were shared, and it was very difficult to select a winner from among all the fantastic entries!

The contest was posted on Facebook in May; to view, visit Facebook.com.

Self Serve is honored to host Ducky DooLittle for two amazing events, which support survivors and offers free education to our community in Albuquerque, says Self Serves Director of Education and sex educator Hunter Riley. We're especially thankful to Eldorado and Blush for making this happen. Ducky DooLittle is an educator we've always learned from, and looked up to. Her sense of humor and accessible content is one of the reasons we're so excited to have her here. We know our Albuquerque sex-positive community will be excited to attend these events, and to meet more of the inspiring sex educator community."

Self Serve is more than a pleasure product retailer; it's easy to understand how they won, said DooLittle. They have been creating groundbreaking classes and events, which have fed the Albuquerque community for years. I am thrilled to finally have the opportunity to spend some time in their store, with their staff and customers. I feel like I am the one who won the contest!

Both events do require registration:

Tuesday, October 23, 7:30 p.m.:

 Sex for Survivors: Healing After Trauma

 Join Ducky, herself a survivor and a Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Counselor, as we explore ways of growing beyond the trauma. In a safe and non-judgmental environment, you are invited to discuss common issues survivors face or simply listen to inspiring ideas on how you might find more pleasure, become more conscious in your body, build confidence, bond with your partner, embrace your desires, and explore healing through touch.

For more information, and to register, visit SelfServeToys.com.

Wednesday, October 24:

 Sex Ed! Mini Classes! Raffle Prizes and more!

 Join Self Serve& Sex Educator Ducky DooLittle for an evening of learning, laughs, and sex toys! Expect to learn about pleasure anatomy, orgasms, and toys! Raffle prizes sponsored by Blush. Everyone is invited, all orientations, genders, singles, couples, and all.

For more information, and to register, visit SelfServeToys.com.

For more information on Ducky DooLittle, visit OhILikeThis.com.

Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center is located at 3904B Central Ave SE, Albuquerque, NM 87108, in the Nob Hill district. For more information, visit SelfServeToys.com, Twitter.com/SelfServeToys and Facebook.com/selfservetoys/.

Blush Novelties may be followed on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. For more information on Blush Novelties, visit BlushNovelties.com; the site is a wholesale-only site. Consumers may purchase Blush Novelties products at retailers around the world.Warrens Bakery has acquired three former franchise stores and is to re-open them as company-managed sites.

The business today (22 October) announced it had bought three of its franchise stores - Bridgwater, Taunton and Yeovil - and would be relaunching them as managed sites following an agreement with its local franchisee.

Warrens kicked off its franchise operation last February with a store in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, and has expanded rapidly outside its south west heartland through franchise partnerships.

The business, which won the Craft Bakery Business Award at this years Baking Industry Awards, now operates 70 stores in locations including the south west, Wales, Manchester, Birmingham, Hampshire, Surrey and London - 20 of these are franchised.

Warrens today said it was continuing its franchise roll-out by teaming up with a major partner to open a cafe at Bristol Airport, adding that a further 10 franchise stores were set to open by early next year. The business is also opening two company-owned cafes at Musgrove Hospital (Taunton).

We are very excited about these sites which, along with our existing stores in Bristol City Centre and Wellington, give us a platform for growth in the region, said Warrens Bakery chairman Mark Sullivan.

As an established West Country brand with over 150 years of tradition and trust, we look forward to taking our handcrafted pasties, sandwiches and sweet treats to locals, who have been asking us to set up nearby for years.

The initiatives will result in more than 40 jobs locally, along with regional management infrastructure.

Jason Jobling, director at Warrens Bakery and chairman of the Cornish Pasty Association, said: It is exciting to expand throughout the West Country, while driving increased production out of Cornwall.Should Beaufort County's commissioners be resolved to ask the federal government to defend our Southern Border by ending the Biden /Harris Open Border policy in regards to that one border that is intentionally made wide OPEN?

Yes, Illegal Migrants are a huge expense to local governments.

No, the cost of Undocumented Immigrants is insignificant in our providing a pathway for Dramatic Demographic Upheaval..Nearly 255 government-owned or supported chimpanzees are being held at three laboratories, and a number of parties in the research community have been trying to stop them from being transferred to Chimp Haven, the national sanctuary for chimpanzees in Louisiana. Above, previously retired chimpanzees enjoying themselves at Chimp Haven. Photo by Brandon Wade/AP Images for the HSUS

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The National Institutes of Health says it remains committed to retiring nearly 255 federally owned or supported chimpanzees to a sanctuary. This announcement, made late last week, is a favorable development in a long-running, and sometimes rocky, saga that has been unfolding ever since we succeeded in making it unlawful to conduct invasive research on chimpanzees in 2015. But the struggle isnt over.

This issue matters so much to me, and thats why, in July, I urged you to reach out to the NIH to say that you want these chimpanzees retired to sanctuary as soon as possible. The NIH received more than 4,000 public comments, and on Thursday, NIH director Dr. Francis Collins stated that NIH remains fully committed to retiring all chimpanzees it owns or supports to the Federal sanctuary unless relocation would severely or irreversibly accelerate deterioration of the chimpanzees physical or behavioral health.

At this time, the government-owned or -supported chimpanzees are being held at three laboratories. Regrettably, a number of parties in the research community have been trying to stop these animals from being transferred to Chimp Haven, the national sanctuary for chimpanzees in Louisiana. The laboratories have a financial interest in holding on to the chimpanzees because they receive funding through government grants and contracts to care for them. Representatives of these institutions and a few allies have lately been claiming that many of the chimps shouldnt be transported due to health issues and that, instead, they should remain in their facilities.

The report accompanying Dr. Collins statement made clear the agencys commitment that chimpanzees will continue to be moved to Chimp Haven without delay as a new process for assessing chimpanzee health is implemented. This new assessment tool was recommended by an NIH-created working group that, in May, emphasized that as many chimpanzees as possible should be released to sanctuary. The tool can be used by the NIH to assess the health status of each chimpanzee, and make it possible to quickly retire healthy chimpanzees to sanctuary. Only those few who are extremely sick and would suffer from a severe deterioration in health from being transported would be held back.

We also welcome the fact that the laboratories themselves will no longer be left to decide whether the chimpanzees in their custody remain confined in the laboratories or are retired to sanctuary. If the responsible veterinarian at a laboratory wants to keep a chimpanzee at the facility, a final decision on the animals fate will be made by an independent panel.

While the news is generally good, we have remaining concerns with the process that will require our watchful eye and engagement. For instance, we are disappointed that the NIH has chosen not to include a primate behaviorist or ethicist or a veterinarian with sanctuary experience on the independent panel. Instead, the panel is made up of three of NIHs own primate veterinarians who will likely have spent at least part of their careers working with primates in a laboratory setting.

In the near term, the NIH will need to operate with transparency and in a timely manner to assure the American public that it is trying to do what is truly best for these animals. We urge the agency to keep the public updated on panel appointees, on changes to its assessment protocols for the animals, and any decisions surrounding the fate of individual chimpanzees.

The fight to end chimpanzee use in experimentation has been waged for a long time, too long quite frankly, and I want to see this final challenge resolved the right way. The end of chimpanzee research and the news that these animals, who have spent a lifetime in captivity, would be retired to sanctuary was welcomed with enthusiasm by most Americans. For the chimpanzees sake, and for our own, we need to do all that we can now to ensure that these animals, held in labs with taxpayer funds, will finally get the necessary care and attention they deserve in retirement.The Vernepator Cur was once a ubiquitous dog breed in the UK and the American colonies, and it had a job: for six days a week, it ran tirelessly in a wheel in the kitchen that was geared to turn a meat-spit over the fire (on Sundays it went to church with its owners and served as their foot-warmer).



The Vernepator Cur (AKA the "turnspit dog") was bred to replace the children who once labored in kitchens, turning spits until their hands blistered, and their heyday was 1750 to 1850. But by 1900, they had dwindled away, thanks to the rise of spit-turning machines called clock jacks.





The turnspits were mentioned in Shakespeare; they fascinated Darwin, and their cruel lives led to the founding of the SPCA.



Back in the 16th century, many people preferred to cook meat over an open fire. Open-fire roasting required constant attention from the cook and constant turning of the spit. "Since medieval times, the British have delighted in eating roast beef, roast pork, roast turkey," says Jan Bondeson, author of Amazing Dogs, a Cabinet of Canine Curiosities, the book that first led us to the turnspit dog. "They sneered at the idea of roasting meat in an oven. For a true Briton, the proper way was to spit roast it in front of an open fire, using a turnspit dog." When any meat was to be roasted, one of these dogs was hoisted into a wooden wheel mounted on the wall near the fireplace. The wheel was attached to a chain, which ran down to the spit. As the dog ran, like a hamster in a cage, the spit turned.



Turnspit Dogs: The Rise And Fall Of The Vernepator Cur [Kitchen Sisters/The Salt]





(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)The Saudi entourage who went to the embassy in Turkey to cut off journalist Jamal Khashoggi's fingers, inject him with a drug to silence him, and dismember him with a bone saw made four calls that day to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's office, according to Turkish media reports. The Crown Prince denies knowing anything about the gruesome torture/murder of Khashoggi, who was a US resident. Three of Khashoggi's children are US citizens.

From Global News:

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer. The report by Yeni Safak on Monday said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed's office. It said another call went to the United States.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio says the real victim here is not Khashoggi, but Trump and other lawmakers owned by the House of Saud who now suffer from the discomfort of having everyone on the planet angry that they continue to treat Saudi Arabia with kid gloves.

The #KhashoggiMurder was immoral. But it was also disrepectful to Trump & those of us who have supported the strategic alliance with the Saudi's. Not only did they kill this man,they have left @potus & their congressional allies a terrible predicament & given Iran a free gift.  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 22, 2018

Image: Global News video screengrabLawrence Lessig was once best-known as the special master in the Microsoft Antitrust Case, then he was best known as the co-founder of Creative Commons, then as a fire-breathing corruption fighter: in America, Compromised , a long essay (or short nonfiction book), Lessig proposes as lucid and devastating a theory of corruption as you'll ever find, a theory whose explanatory power makes today's terrifying news cycle make sense -- and a theory that demands action.

For decades, America has been undoing the great work of history's anti-corruption movements, allowing the wealthy to intervene directly in politics, creating political outcomes that increase their wealth  lather, rinse repeat.





The courts and their ideological backers  the Chicago School economists who used shitty math to prove that greed is good and that corruption consists solely of direct quid-pro-quo bribery  have served as enablers and even cheerleaders for this new Gilded Age, celebrating anonymous political cash contributions as a form of speech protected under the First Amendment and arguing that the Framers of the Constitution would have agreed wholeheartedly with them.







Lessig walks a fine line between academic and activist as he rebuts this argument, drawing on the research produced by the fellows at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, an interdisciplinary corruption-study center he founded at Harvard and then turning to the rhetoric that made him such an inspirational figure in the Free Culture movement.





Lessig lays out the historic case for the Framers' understanding of corruption as a systemic phenomenon, in which the structure of institutions demand that even the best, most moral people sacrifice their principles to thrive (or just survive)  a conception at long odds with the Chicago School orthodoxy and the think tanks and ruling elites that back it.





From this historic perspective, Lessig painstakingly builds up an argument about how inequality has fueled corruption, which has fueled inequality  and how the bankrupt ideology of the Chicago School corrupted every institution, forcing each of us to make one tiny compromise after another, until we arrive at the present moment.





Lessig's use of case-studies alternated with broad statistical and political analysis flips back and forth from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, from individuals and institutions to the whole society and back again, in a story that is as compelling as it is infuriating.





Lessig is well-known for having formulated the "four forces" theory of social change: that the world is moved by markets (what is profitable), norms (what is considered ethical), code (what is technically possible) and laws (what is legal). In his final section, he presents a set of prescriptions touching on all four factors, from the discussions we need to have with one another about these issues (norms) to the tools that would help us hold the powerful to account (code) to the policies that would reverse the damage (laws) to the kinds of businesses and nonprofits that could help us make a better world (markets). In a moment when the monopolism of Big Tech is replicating itself in every sector from energy to aviation to prisons to finance, these prescriptions are both reasonable and compelling.





This is a short book, but it's full of very big ideas. Lessig's dual identities of "scholar" and "activist" have never been so perfectly merged.



America, Compromised [Lawrence Lessig/University of Chicago]

(Image: Joi Ito, CC-BY)- Concerned members of the ANC has again put in a bid to nullify Ramaphosa's election as leader

- ANC member Ronnie Malomane submitted paperwork to court that allegedly proves Ramaphosa election wasn't legit

- The case has been postponed until 13 December

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The week starts with another bid by the ANC to nullify President Ramaphosa's election as leader.

Members of the ruling party claim Ramaphosa won the election thanks to fake Mpumalanga branches.

This again highlights the divisions within the ANC and weakens Ramaphosa's rule.

A report by News24 indicates that Ronnie Malomane, former campaign manager for presidential candidate Mathews Phosa, submitted papers to court to have the ANC's Mpumalanga provincial executive committee disbanded.

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According to concerned members of the ANC, the provincial committee was not elected legally because they were elected by fake branches in the province.

Malomane added that this means the elective conference wasn't legal because these fake branches voted.

Mpumalanga came to the Nasrec conference with 508 branches; 108 bogus branches participated in the Nasrec conference.

This case has been postponed until 13 December.

READ ALSO: Mboweni: state capture was one of the "greatest heists of our time"

It is believed that if the court action is a success, it will greatly and negatively affect President Ramaphosa's leadership.

How do you feel about this new bid to nullify Ramaphosa's election? Let us know on our Facebook page and we could be sharing your thoughts and views.

Watch the silly video Kim Kardashian And Donald Trump: What Unites Them? and take a look at what else is happening on Briefly South Africa's YouTube channel.

To stay up to date with the latest news, download our news app on Google Play or iTunes today.

Source: Briefly.co.za- On Friday, a shocking video went viral, which showed a man going on a racist rant after he was seated next to an elderly black lady on a Ryanair flight

- The man shouted he did not want to sit next her before calling her an 'ugly black bastard'

- The footage sparked outrage on social media and the airline received backlash for not handling the situation better

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David Lawrence was seated on a Ryanair plane when he heard a commotion a couple of seats back.

When he turned around he spotted a white male going on a racist because he was seated next to an elderly black gogo. So, he got out his camera and filmed the entire incident.

Briefly.co.za learned the flight was set to depart from Barcelona to London when the unidentified man went on a racist rant because he was seated next to an elderly black woman.

In the video, the white man can be heard shouting the woman, who boarded the plane in a wheelchair, was blocking his way and he did not want to sit next to her.

At one point he could be heard shouting, "You're in my way, get out! I don't want you here next to me!"

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He then went on to call the victim an "ugly black b***ard". The woman's daughter tried to stand up for her mother, adding he should not shout at her and that she is disabled. But, the man shouted back that he does not care.

The footage sparked outrage on social media and the airline received backlash for not handling the situation better.

Karen Smith wrote, "Disgusting they should have had him removed!"

Chris Miles added, "Shame on you Ryanair! Should have thrown him off, horrible piece of sh*t!"

Jed Camara commented: "Should have slapped the fish and chips grease out of his mouth and dragged his ass off the plane like Delta airways did that doctor."

READ ALSO: SA left divided after another video went viral of a drunk on-duty cop

Take a look at the video below:

Do you have a story to share with us? Inbox us on our Facebook page and we could feature your story.

A man loses his axe, and an angel decides to help him. What could go wrong? Check out more cartoons on Brieflys YouTube page.

To stay up to date with the latest news, download our news app on Google Play or iTunes today.

Source: Briefly.co.zaFeatured Post McGill will co-operate in search for unmarked graves on Royal Victoria Hospital site McGill will co-operate in search for unmarked graves on Royal Victoria Hospital site The Mohawk Mothers say experiments on First Nations chi...

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About Censored News Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell. Since 2006, Censored News has received more than 20 million pageviews. As a collective of writers, photographers and broadcasters, we publish news of Indigenous Peoples and human rights. Contact publisher Brenda Norrell: brendanorrell@gmail.com

From the publisher Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell, a journalist in Indian country for 39 years. Norrell created Censored News after she was censored and terminated as a staff reporter at Indian Country Today in 2006. She began as a reporter at Navajo Times during the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation. She was a stringer for AP and USA Today and later traveled with the Zapatistas through Mexico. She has been blacklisted by all the mainstream media for 14 years. Contact brendanorrell@gmail.com

TranslateNews / National

by Staff reporter

Vice President Constantino Chiwenga is back on his feet and yesterday attended a prayer meeting at his rural home in Hwedza where he took people down memory lane explaining how he joined the liberation struggle.Chiwenga kept the crowd in stitches with his liberation struggle account. After he was introduced by Minister Perrance Shiri, Chiwenga took to the podium and greeted the crowd with a thunderous Zanu-PF slogan. He revealed that he crossed into Botswana in the company of Perrance Shiri and two other cadres."In his introductory remarks VaMangwende (Minister Shiri) is deliberately omitting that we were together in all the 'crimes' that we have committed," he said in jest."He is now presenting himself like a good boy. Vokanganwa kuti pagan'a pavakachera mbambaira dzemagoko taive tese. Kana patakaviga zvikabudura taive tese. Zvese zvavataura taive tese."This was after Minister Shiri introduced the Vice President by way of a narration of his liberation struggle history and how he led Operation Restore Legacy that led to the resignation of former president Mr Robert Mugabe."We were four when we left for the liberation struggle. When we came back after the war, we were three. One of our colleagues, Ernest Mandizvidza, died during the war. Shiri, Huchu and myself we came back to bear testimony on how we fought the war."In 1978 we passed through this area, but all the people here failed to recognise us. The history of the liberation struggle is long. Many people lost their lives, but what is more important is that we now have a Zimbabwe that we want."Chiwenga urged people to remain resolute and focused as Government implements measures to rebuild the economy. He said President Mnangagwa, who was supposed to be the guest of honour at the event, would visit the province at a later date to thank the people of Mashonaland East for voting for Zanu-PF resoundingly.Tino Machakaire, who is the legislator for Hwedza South where the VP comes from, said: "We are happy that the VP has come to see us here. His visit has put to rest all the social media speculations about his health."As the legislator from this constituency, I am taking President Mnangagwa's message of development seriously. When I was elected as the House of Assembly member for this constituency, we had around 200 boreholes, but so far we have drilled over 100 boreholes more."Most of our parents here lost their cattle due to various livestock diseases and we are constructing more dip tanks to control the diseases."We presented that problem to Minister Shiri as we drift towards the farming season and he promised to assist us in every way possible."Machakaire urged Zimbabweans to support President Mnangagwa in his efforts to build a better Zimbabwe. He said unity was of paramount importance if the country was to achieve middle income status by 2030.News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Mthwakazi Republic Party has appealed to government and non governmental organisations to assist victims of the gold wars that erupted in Gwanda recently.Party president Mqondisi Moyo said it is unfortunate that the victims of the tribal attacks in Gwanda are in such a desperate state."The attacks of the artisanal minors in Gwanda attracted the attention of the NPRC, with its chairperson, Retired Judge Selo Nare condemning it strongly, but there has been no action from both government and non governmental organisations towards assisting the victims. What happened in Gwanda is surely a human rights issue, considering the fact that these Gold syndicates in Matabelelend are run by security officers, particularly the CIO and CID. As we speak today the government only played a visibility stunt by flooding the area with riot police officers to intimidate the local people. Not much to date has been done to bring the killers to justice," he said."We call upon Civic organizations and non-governmental organisations to put the donor funds to use by attending to this Human Rights abuse issue. We also encourage this seemingly toothless NPRC to at least prove its existence by attending to this issue and to probe the involvement of the state and military security in the gold mining activity in Gwanda.""We have come to a point where we have lost confidence in the police and Justice systems of this country and will be left with no option but to mobilise communities and take the law into our own hands."Moyo said the ruling Zanu PF is also involved in this elicit mining activity through underhand associations that sponsor some party gold buyers."It has been in the public domain that the newly elected State Security minister, Owen Ncube is in charge of a violent brigade of amakorokoza that terrorise villagers and invade other people's mining spaces. It is the same group from Kwekwe which is suspected to have invaded and killed Gwanda residents," he said."We discovered that Alois Ndlovu has been in agonising pain at Mpilo Hospitals since the day of his injury two weeks ago. He has not been able to secure money to buy a plaster for his fractured leg and to do a head scan after being axed by the assailants. He is in a sorry state and we encourage all those with a heart to give a hand."Opinion / Columnist

All peace loving people will agree with me that the disturbances which started in Zimbabwe soon after independence and saw approximately 20 000 people mainly of the Ndebele tribe constitute genocide and that victims of the government sponsored killings must be compensated. However, it is the unexplained delay in finding a closure to this pertinent issue, which had caused tensions and anxiety casting doubts on whether the government will recognise its 1980s human rights crimes and do the honourable thing to compensate the victims of Gukurahundi genocide.A lot of Gukurahundi genocide activists had agreed that atrocities of the 1980s were indeed a genocide. The website www.history.com defines a genocide as "any violence against members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group with the intent to destroy the entire group." Basing on the above genocide definition I agree with other activists that indeed gukurahundi was a Zimbabwean genocide which was aimed to wipe Ndebeles and moderate Shonas in Matebeleland and Midland provinces soon after independence.Is it then justified to compensate Gukurahundi genocide victims? Mustn't we just say let the bygone be bygones? The author is of the view that compensation assist in peace building and that compensation is a material apology by offenders to the offended and therefore necessary. Henry Therlautt as quoted in Wikipedia agrees with the author's views when he went on to say compensation maybe in form of financial support or estate.He goes on to say the compensation can be paid to individuals or to collective groups.There are several setbacks to Gukurahundi victims' compensation in Zimbabwe. The first setback is that of the international community which had failed or refused to recognise Gukurahundi as genocide. Yes several journalists have written a lot on human rights violations during the Gukurahundi massacre, some have produced documentaries on Gukurahundi but it seems this was or is not enough to convince the international community that indeed genocide indeed occurred in Zimbabwe. This had left a lot of unanswered questions as to how the international community qualifies types of killings as genocides. One wonders if the international community uses the total number of people killed during a disturbance or something else. If it's the issue of numbers why is it that that the Black War of Australia with an estimated death toll of 1000 people is considered a genocide while Gukurahundi of Zimbabwe with an estimated death toll of 20 000 is not considered as such by the same international community? This confusion had helped the Zimbabwean government to ignore the gukurahundi victims since there is no pressure from the international community to recognize and compensate them.The second setback is that of finding individuals or organisations including the government itself held as accountable for the 1980 atrocities. Accountability comes through both open unsolicited admissions and apology by individuals or institutions that were involved in human right violations. However, since punishment is the inevitable result of such admissions and apologies nobody, be it individuals or government had ever apologised or taken responsibility for the gukurahundi genocide. Punishment and compensation can only follow after there is someone held responsible by either a commission of enquiry or through legal court systems.The third set-back is the lack of unity amongst the victims of Gukurahundi. The author was expecting victims to meet say in Bulawayo and appoint their leaders who will speak on their behalf. There is a Ministry headed by VP Mohadi called Peace and Reconciliation, the author was expecting the leaders of the victims to frequent Mohadi's office but this is not happening. The issue of Gukurahundi is left into the hands of pressure groups led by people who are not genuine Gukurahundi victims, individuals who are just after donor money and has no Gukurahundi interest at heart.The fourth set-back is lack of a political will by the government to solve or to compensate the gukurahundi victims. The same people who ordered the Gukurahundi genocide are the same people in power today. It is therefore impossible for anyone to self-incriminate oneself. A lasting solution towards compensation is a radical change in government, I mean regime change not the current false new dispensation.A ray of hope for the Gukurahundi victims came when the former Prime Minister set a commission of enquiry in 1983. The Commission was supposed to make findings and recommendations. Indeed the report was handed to Mugabe but the report was never published. In January 2018 the Newsday reported that some pressure groups had sued Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Mohadi and Theressa May demanding the release of Chihambakwe Commission of Enquiry report and seeking an order for the President to start a new inquiry into the Gukurahundi genocide. However, the case was struck off the roll on technical grounds. It is not yet clear if the technicalities were corrected by applicants so that the case is placed back on the High Court roll. If such kind of cases are not instituted in the courts let's forget about any compensation being paid to Gukurahundi victims in any near future.The other alternative available is to sue individuals who are known to have been killing people in Matebeleland and Midlands.Some of those people are known and are very famous, individuals such as army commanders who were working specifically with the 5th Brigade. One wonders why there hasn't been an attempt to sue these people in criminal or civil courts?It is the author's conclusion made after a rudimentary research, that generally, it is hard to get any victims compensation after genocide. Of all the world's recorded genocides it is only the Holocaust victims who received compensation from Germany, the rest such as the Rwandan genocide, the Nama-Herero genocide of Namibia, the Armenian Genocide etcetera, victims are still struggling to get any form of compensation.Even though the author had glaringly exposed how hard it is for Gukurahundi victims to get any form of compensation from the current Zimbabwean government, we continue to pray that one day a lasting solution will be found that will make the Matebeleland/Midlands people happy. We continue to pray for a new government which will bring closure to the Gukurahundi genocide.Etiwel Mutero is an archivist and a political commentatorEtiwelm02@gmail.com+264817871070Opinion / Columnist

The seven-member Commission of Inquiry into the 1 August 2018 post-poll violence incident in which six people died in Harare city centre commenced its work last week with witnesses testifying on their experiences. The accounts were characterised by two main sentiment types. There were heartfelt expressions of the unfortunate and regrettable loss of life by those who lost their loved ones and those who lost property on one side, and those who sought to use both incident and the commission's work to wring non-existent political capital on the other hand.Some of the witnesses, who have so far testified have implicated the MDC T Chamisa faction leader, Nelson Chamisa, his deputy chairman, Tendai Biti and former ZANU PF Harare Provincial Youth League Chairman, Jim Kunaka as having been at the forefront of organising and inciting the rowdy MDC youths who wreaked havoc in the city centre on the day in question. While Chamisa and Kunaka have not responded to their implication in the opposition's mindless orgy of violence during the tail end of the last election season, Biti has sought to divert attention from his party's apparent prominent role in the violence by drawing the world's attention to the involvement of the Army in quelling the violence."The real issue about (the) 1 August (incident) is who gave the order to deploy the Army & on what basis? Who gave the order to shoot an unarmed civilian population? We will therefore not accept ZANU PF's diversionary attempts to create fake news and to defame victims," stated Biti on his twitter handle in response to the commission's work.One wonders where Biti gets the justification to claim the moral high ground from which he is pointing fingers when he and Chamisa in the run-up to July 30 elections shamelessly declared that their political outfit would not accept any poll result other than one which conferred victory on them. As if this was not enough, Biti repeated his 2008 criminal act of declaring the MDC-T Chamisa faction and Chamisa as the winners in blatant disregard of the law which precludes anyone other than the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) from announcing election results. The question that readily comes to mind is: If Biti and his so called alliance were right, why then did he attempt to sneak out of the country to seek political asylum in Zambia?If anyone is attempting to be diversionary on the matter, it is Biti and his opposition colleagues who are trying to re-frame the commission's terms of reference and mandate by limiting it to only inquiring into how the Army ended up assisting the police in quelling the out-of-hand political violence at the expense of also establishing how the whole incident started. This is obviously because Biti and his fellow opposition members are complicit in unleashing political violence on innocent Harareans, businesspeople and their property all in pursuit of narrow and selfish political interests.Government has never attempted to cover up the involvement of the Army in the incident. If anything, this is the reason why it appointed the commission so that it can get to the bottom of the matter to enable the nation to find closure to the issue and move on. If the involvement of the police and the army is part of the commission's brief surely it should also establish how an opposition party ended up announcing its own non-existent win and protesting violently in Harare against ZEC which was still in the process of collating and announcing results. Zimbabweans and the world are keen to know how an opposition alliance, that claims to champion democracy and pledged a to peaceful elections in a pact with other political parties in June at the Harare International Conference Centre, ended up causing unnecessary violence and, by extension, deaths in Harare during so important a national democratic process as an election.Apart from the MDC-T Chamisa's futile attempts at diverting the nation and the world's attention from its apparent guilt in the 1 August incident, it has also sought to malign the process and some of the commission members in what seems to be an agenda to embarrass and disrespect President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who appointed the commission. In this regard, one of the opposition activists, Makomborero Haruzivishe late last week took to the witness' stand and, instead of giving an account of what he witnessed, went off at a tangent dwelling loud and long on the person of one of the commissioners, Rodney Dixon of the United Kingdom. He accused Commissioner Dixon of being on the side of Government and allegedly wasting the taxpayers' money by being part of the commission. Haruzivishe further claimed that Commissioner Dixon was part of a similar commission in Sri Lanka in the past where he (Haruzivishe) charged that the commission was paid US$400 000.Local commissioners such as Professors Charity Manyeruke and Lovemore Madhuku were not spared either. Prof Manyeruke was accused of being a ZANU PF member as of it is criminal to support the party. Professor Madhuku took flak for agreeing to be a Commissioner despite suffering in what he (Haruzivishe) termed police brutality back in March 2007. Surely the professors have a constitutional right to associate with whoever they choose without having to seek leave from Haruzivishe. The purpose of the enquiry is not to entertain questions on the composition or remuneration of the commission. If Haruzivishe was serious about the two aspects of the commission the courts are in place to entertain and rule on such matters should an aggrieved citizen approach them. The fact that he waited for the hearings to raise his complaints betrays his intention to score political points and play to the gallery of anti-Government elements.Haruzivishe and his cheerleaders such as Edmund Kudzayi, Prof Jonathan Moyo and Alex Magaisa should know that if they do not support President Mnangagwa and ZANU PF it does not mean that the President and the party are everyone's enemy. They should also know that not every situation requires the student politics type of militancy and defiance which Haruzivishe displayed to the esteemed commission. Apart from the misplaced cheers from Magaisa, Moyo, Kudzayi and other like-minded people, Haruzivishe did not gain anything from responding to the commission's question on the number of military personnel that he saw on 1 August by disrespectfully indicating that President Mnangagwa should know.Political analyst and twitter user, Kudzayi Mtisi aptly summed up the opposition's behaviour during the hearings so far when he tweeted that;"All MDC Alliance aligned witnesses are displaying similar traits: disrespect for commissioners, lack of substance (except) just hollow comments, lying about the reality and, instead of facts, they are spewing conspiracies and nefarious conclusions (as well as) unhinged anger."So far the MDC-T Chamisa faction has wasted a valuable opportunity to give its side of the story by playing to the gallery and seeking to win what it lost in the ballot box and in the Constitutional Court. If it sought to gain sympathy, it may lose more of it for taking the commission's work as child's play.Opinion / Columnist

We Africans are proud of our villages, our traditions and our heritage. And rightly so. We are the cradle of humanity, a culture dating back to the annals of time. Obviously, there is a lot of wisdom to be found in traditions as old as ours, and nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in old African proverbs, full of wit and wisdom which help us get through even the toughest of times.But there is another area of our traditional ways that could give us guidance in these hard times: Agriculture. We all have ancestors who toiled the earth and were connected to nature in a way that is hard to grasp for today's city-dwellers. For example, it is well-known that the coldest part of the night, the part in which plants are the most vulnerable, is right before sunrise.This makes sense, after all. It is the moment of the night when the sun has been gone for the longest time. But this is also a valuable lesson for us in Zimbabwe right now. The hard times we are facing right now are just the darkest, coldest moments of the night. And while we are vulnerable, and it may feel the cold will never end, in reality the sun will soon start to rise.We can see that the government is laying the foundations for this metaphorical sunrise. They are reengaging, diplomats are flocking back to Harare after years of Mugabe's disastrous isolationism, and our senior ministers find time to draw up healthy policy, receive backing from the international community and tour the situation on the ground so they don't lose touch with the citizens. I haven't seen such an engaged and professional cabinet in a long time. Even national disasters like the Cholera outbreak were ultimately addressed well, and didn't knock the government off its reform agenda.Now we have to stop to be overwhelmed by baseless panic-attacks and trust the wisdom of the old villagers. And they know that after every cold, dark night, the sun shall soon rise again.The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) has lost the support of Saskatoon-area chiefs and others across the province say they may soon follow.

"The FSIN is in disarray, and it makes all First Nations people look bad," Saskatoon Tribal Council Chief Mark Arcand said.

Others, however, defended the federation.

"They are very relevant  I think they're doing a good job," Peter Ballanytne Cree Nation Chief Peter Beatty said.

FSIN delegates will vote for a new chief this week at an assembly in Saskatoon, but Arcand and others say it will take more than an election to fix the 72-year-old institution.

The seven bands of the Saskatoon Tribal Council sent a letter to the FSIN saying the federation no longer speaks for them. Arcand said the province's 74 member First Nations should stop contributing to the FSIN's budget.

"Don't take our money anymore. We don't see a return on investment," Arcand said. "They've lost their vision."

Arcand and others say the FSIN has become preoccupied with bickering and infighting. For example, police were called to the FSIN offices in Saskatoon this month during a dispute over who should be interim chief during the election campaign.

Arcand said the FSIN also failed to support them in their legal and political child welfare fight.

"We've had no support from FSINnothing," he said.

Omayra Issa

Longtime Sakimay First Nation Chief Lynn Acoose said she's been pressing for reforms, but little has been accomplished in recent years. She said the FSIN has forgotten the original mandate of fighting for treaty rights.

"I think it's very disorganized, and they spend too much time chasing grant money. If things don't change, we are headed for assimilation," she said.

Acoose said the chiefs who signed treaties more than 125 years ago would not be happy with the state of the FSIN.

"I don't think that our Mooshums would have envisioned static organizations that only seem to be interested in their self-preservation," Acoose said.

Story continues

FSIN should be stripped of governance power: chief

Acoose says she'll come to the assembly next week to vote, but that she thinks the FSIN should be stripped of its governance power. She said it could still be useful as a research institute for bands seeking legal or technical help, but chiefs will have to consider dissolving the FSIN altogether if things don't improve soon.

Brad Bellegarde/CBC News

Acoose, Arcand and others say there are many other groups that could take on the roles of the FSIN. Individual First Nations and regional tribal councils have trained growing numbers of in-house lawyers, accountants and other experts. Campus Indigenous groups, Idle No More and other bodies are playing an increasing role.

"And maybe this is the way it should be," Acoose said.

Former FSIN chief Sol Sanderson said the Federation is worth saving. He agrees the petty power struggles must stop. He said not much has been done by the FSIN in recent years.

He noted the federation was created in 1946 by chiefs and First Nations veterans of the Second World War who were denied the land and benefits given to other returning soldiers. In those early days, they were forced to meet in secret and were subjected to RCMP surveillance, he said.

Jason Warick/CBC

In the 1970s, Sanderson and others created a host of educational and cultural institutions such as First Nations University of Canada and the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies. Those are now used as models by Indigenous peoples around the world.

In 1993, FSIN leaders helped broker the Treaty Land Entitlement deal  $440 million to compensate First Nations for century-old broken promises. In 1995, the FSIN's gaming agreement led to tens of millions in casino revenue and thousands of jobs.

Since then, progress has stalled on many fronts, he said. Sanderson is hopeful the FSIN can be reinvigorated if it returns to those roots. He said the FSIN can be a powerful vehicle to collectively advance First Nations rights and assert sovereignty.

"Our inherent rights and treaty rights are granted by the Creator to who? To the nations and to the peoples of the nation, not just one community, not just one band," he said.

"The Federation will stay in place for as long as we need it."

Other chiefs defend FSIN's work

Jason Warrick/CBC Saskatoon

Beatty and other chiefs of individual First Nations contacted CBC News on Sunday to speak on behalf of the FSIN.

They said the federation can always improve, but is helping First Nations to act collectively on language, education and other treaty issues.

Lac La Ronge Indian Band Chief Tammy Cook-Searson said the FSIN has her "full support" for its work.

"They offer a venue for solidarity, for the nations to gather and discuss issues," said Chief Nathan Pasap of the White Bear First Nation.

Chief Michael Starr of the Star Blanket First Nation said he agrees it's time to "refresh and renew" the federation.

But he said criticizing it publicly and threatening to pull out is not the right approach.

"Our ancestors wanted us to work together," Starr said. "I believe we'll get there."On October 3, 2016, Scott Moe walked out of a meeting of provincial and federal environment ministers in Montreal as it was in progress.

It was sign of things to come.

Moe was Saskatchewan's environment minister at the time. He and his cohorts were supposed to be hashing out the details of a national climate plan. Instead, Prime Minister Trudeau announced that provinces needed to adopt a carbon tax or cap and trade system by 2018 or the federal government would impose one.

Moe called it a "betrayal," adding "many westerners will see this as 'national energy program 2.0.' "

Leaving the meeting in Montreal was Moe's first big moment in the national spotlight.

"It was his issue from the beginning," said Jim Farney, department head of Politics and International Studies at the University of Regina.

Two years later Moe  now premier  continues to fight Ottawa's climate plan. It has been his main talking point, from his time as a minister to his campaign for party leadership to now.

"They're hitting such pay dirt with the carbon tax stuff they'll keep mining that," Farney said.

'Just watch me'

Moe won the party leadership on Jan. 27, 2018. Moe spoke to a room divided by loyalties to the four candidates he had defeated. His victory speech was aimed more at the federal Liberal government and less at his provincial opposition.

"I will fight for this province. I will fight for our economy to ensure that we do not have a carbon tax," said Moe in his speech.

"And Justin Trudeau, if you are wondering how far I will go: Just watch me."

It won the crowd over.

"It's always a good political game for the premier of Saskatchewan or any premier to run against the federal government and that's what Moe has been on from the get go," Farney said.

"The thing that Wall was magical at and what Moe, if not magical, is very good at is positioning himself as the common sense of the province."

Story continues

Polling supports Moe

An Angus Reid Institute Poll released in July showed 72 per cent support for Moe's decision to challenge the carbon tax in the courts. Support was even higher in Saskatchewan at 88 per cent.

An earlier poll found 56 per cent of Canadians supported a carbon tax plan in the spring of 2015. That has since dropped to 45 per cent, according to Angus Reid Institute.

Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press

"It all depends on how it's being framed and that's why it's a pretty good issue for both Conservatives and conservative politicians and Liberals and the prime minister," said CBC News Polls Analyst Eric Grenier.

"When it's framed as a tax issue that's something that's going to cost people, it doesn't score very well. It's not very popular. But when it's presented as an environmental issue something that's used to encourage people to get off of fossil fuels to fight climate change, then it can score pretty well."

Allies join Moe

The federal government's plan would initially price tax carbon dioxide pollution at $10 per tonne, with the cost rising to $50 by 2022.

Ottawa has maintained the tax will be revenue neutral and the money generated will be returned to the provinces and territories.

Former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall was largely alone among premiers opposing Ottawa's carbon pricing plan. As the other provinces signed on to the federal government's Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, Saskatchewan held out, costing the province $62 million in green energy funding. Saskatchewan had to apply against competition for that money.

The potential loss of millions from Ottawa has not caused a crisis of conscience for the government. which maintains the carbon tax would cost the Saskatchewan economy between $2.5 billion and $4 billion because of the economy's reliance on oil, gas, mining and manufacturing.

In February, Manitoba signed on to the framework, leaving Saskatchewan as the only province not to have done so.

Then came the election of Doug Ford in Ontario, which started a domino-effect of provinces choosing to leave the agreement.

Ford's government quickly ended his province's cap and trade system. Ontario also joined Saskatchewan's constitutional reference case challenging Ottawa's jurisdiction over the carbon tax and launched a case of its own.

Ford travelled to Saskatoon earlier this month to present a united anti-carbon tax front with Moe. Both lauded Manitoba's Premier Brian Pallister, who announced a week earlier that his province would leave the federal carbon plan. New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party leader Blaine Higgs campaigned against the carbon tax in his province's recent election, in which his party formed a minority government.

Moe, Ford, Higgs and Alberta United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney have all referred to the federal plan as "the job-killing carbon tax".

Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press

In August, Alberta also backed out of the federal plan, citing delays in the Trans Mountain pipeline project. Premier Rachel Notley said Alberta will wait until construction gets underway. The province will keep its existing carbon tax but will not increase it each year.

"It's an ideological fight," said Cristine de Clercy, associate professor of political science at Western University.

"All of those opposed to federal plan are conservative parties. Opposing Ottawa is always popular in the west."

No signs of slowing

Moe is expected to continue his anti-carbon tax crusade as the fall sitting of the legislature gets underway this week.

One only has to look at Moe's Twitter activity to get a sense of the message he will present. Moe tweets about the carbon tax approximately once every four days.

Moe has rarely given a speech or an interview where he doesn't mention his opposition to the tax.

In April, after launching its court case Moe said, "we have a made-in-Saskatchewan plan to reduce emissions and fight climate change, and that plan does not include a job-killing carbon tax on Saskatchewan families."

In May, he told the the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, "as an economic plan, it's a disaster for Saskatchewan."

In July, at the premiers' meetings in New Brunswick, he said it was "an ineffective policy that simply does not reduce emissions,"

In August he told CBC, "this carbon tax policy does not have any substantial environmental outcomes but it does have severe impacts to our economy."

2020 election

The carbon tax discourse and the back and forth between the Saskatchewan premier and Ottawa likely isn't going anywhere until the court cases are settled. More likely it won't be at least until the province goes to the polls in 2020.

"As we get closer to the next election voters think how does this matter to me and if we're still in the same nobody's doing anything they'll find other things that matter to them," Farney said.

de Clercy said Moe can't campaign singularly on the carbon tax issue.

"I see many other issues where voters will be looking at party leaders and asking for solutions to issues."

de Clercy said environmental policy will be a ballot issue.

"I expect the question of how to preserve, maintain quality of environment will be an election issue."MELBOURNE, Australia (AP)  Godolphin stable's Best Solution won the Caulfield Cup in a photo finish ahead of American-bred Homesman, with The Cliffsofmoher finishing third on Saturday in the 2,400-meter race.

Ridden by Pat Cosgrave of Northern Ireland, Best Solution recovered from a bad start to follow Taj Mahal at 600 meters to go and hold on for the Group One win.

Cosgrave was later suspended by race stewards for 11 meetings for a careless riding charge.

The jockey decided to take his suspension immediately, which means he will miss the Cox Plate, another major lead-up race to the Melbourne Cup, Australia's richest and most prestigious race on Nov. 6 at Flemington.

Cosgrave plans to ride in Dubai on Nov. 3 before returning to Melbourne to again partner Best Solution in the Melbourne Cup.

Cosgrave pleaded guilty to the charge that he allowed Best Solution to shift in near the 1,800-meter mark of the Caulfield Cup, tightening Japanese runner Sole Impact.

Japanese rider Ryusei Sakai was also suspended for causing interference at the same point of the Caulfield Cup when he too shifted ground when not clear. He was suspended for 11 meetings and is able to ride again on Oct. 31.

The victory gave trainer Saeed bin Suroor and Godolphin their second Caulfield Cup after All The Good won in 2008.

Pre-race favorite Kings Will Dream had a bad start to drop a couple of lengths and never recovered, finishing sixth after being caught in traffic.

___

More AP sports: https://apnews.com/tag/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_SportsA firefighter died after flash flooding hit Malaga, Spain, on October 20, local reports said.

The firefighter, who went missing during the emergency response in Campillos, was found dead on Sunday. The floods damaged vehicles and flooded homes, the report said.

This footage shows the flood damage in Campillos on Saturday and Sunday. Credit: Carmen Soriano Perez via StoryfulA 12-year-old student in Iqaluit says he ended up in the principal's office after he sat during the Canadian anthem to make a statement about how the history of residential schools is taught.

"I guess I just wanted to make a statement for... changes in school," Miles Brewster said. "Like more education about the past like what happened to the First Nations and Inuit. They had to go to residential school."

It started on Sept. 30  Orange Shirt Day  a day dedicated to survivors of Canada's residential schools. Miles was having a difficult time in school and his mother, Janet Brewster, says he was disappointed when his class didn't talk about the reason they were donning orange shirts.

"He thought that it was really ironic that they were asked to do that, yet he's... not learning about our lived history as Inuit," she said.

"Miles has been having concerns with what's going on in his own classroom. And has felt that it hasn't been a very safe or respectful environment for him."

Travis Burke/CBC

Brewster said she and Miles have always had an open discussion about her mother and stepfather's experiences in residential schools. Miles is named after Brewster's stepfather, who died by suicide after years of struggling to cope with the abuse he suffered at residential school in Inuvik.

"As Inuit, we always tell the story of who you're named after," Brewster said. "He knows about the impact of the residential schools through the story of his name."

When Miles was struggling with issues in his classroom at Iqaluit's Aqsarniit Middle School, Brewster encouraged him to feel empowered to act in a respectful way to ask for change.

"In his own small way, he's taking some control and doing that in a way that's not disturbing his classmates," Brewster said.

She said she was called by the principal when Miles refused to stand.

I sat down for the anthem to make a statement. I got sent to the office for that, because I think my teacher thought I was trying to be a troublemaker. - Miles Brewster, 12

Story continues

"They were concerned that Miles was being inappropriate by sitting through the anthem."

But Miles says he'll continue to sit.

"I sat down for the anthem to make a statement. I got sent to the office for that, because I think my teacher thought I was trying to be a troublemaker," he said.

Miles said he got "a little scared" when his teacher raised his voice when ordering him to the office, but he doesn't plan to stand again any time soon.

"I think we need a change. More education, more Inuit as teachers and school staff."

Brewster is supporting her son.

"This is the time in age and education where you can very easily lose a student. This is, Grade 7 and 8, is really key to keeping those children engaged so that they feel excited about school and they see what the benefit is of staying in school," she said.

"I don't want his experience to change from being really positive into school being something that he dreads."

Neither the school's principal or the Nunavut Department of Education would comment on the situation.

With files from Eva MichaelBy Andrew Osborn, Maxim Rodionov and Jeff Mason MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday it would be forced to respond in kind to restore the military balance with the United States if President Donald Trump carried through on a threat to quit a nuclear arms treaty and began developing new missiles. But Moscow signaled it may be willing to give some ground, with a senior official telling Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, that Russia was ready to address U.S. concerns about how the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was being implemented. In Washington, the U.S. president reiterated his concern about the treaty and said the United States would build up its nuclear arsenal. "Russia has not adhered to the agreement. ... Until people come to their senses - we have more money than anybody else, by far. Well build it up," he told reporters at the White House. "Until they come to their senses. When they do, then well all be smart and well all stop." Asked if that were a threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump said: "Its a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game. You cant do that. You cant play that game on me." Trump said China, too, should be included in the accord. The U.S. president drew a warning of "military-technical" retaliation from Moscow after saying on Saturday that Washington would withdraw from the Cold War-era pact that rid Europe of land-based nuclear missiles. Signed by then-President Ronald Reagan and reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the treaty required the elimination of all short- and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles held by both countries in Europe. Its demise could raise the prospect of a new arms race, and Gorbachev, now 87, has warned that unraveling it could have catastrophic consequences. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Trump's withdrawal plan a matter of deep concern for Moscow. "Such measures can make the world more dangerous," he told reporters on a conference call. Despite repeated Russian denials, U.S. authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Trump said the United States would develop equivalent weapons unless Russia and China agreed to a halt in development. China is not a party to the treaty. Peskov said Putin had repeatedly warned that the demise of the treaty would compel Moscow to take specific military steps. "Scrapping the provisions of the INF treaty forces Russia to take measures for its own security because what does scrapping the INF treaty mean?" said Peskov. "It means that the United States is not disguising, but is openly starting to develop these systems in the future, and if these systems are being developed, then actions are necessary from other countries, in this case Russia, to restore balance in this sphere." BOLTON IN MOSCOW Bolton had talks in Moscow with Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In comments released after his meetings, Bolton denied Russian allegations the United States was using the threat of treaty withdrawal to blackmail Russia. Washington had not yet taken any decision on deploying missiles in Europe targeting Moscow in the event that the INF treaty is scrapped, Russia's RIA news agency quoted him as saying. Bolton said Russia was violating its commitments under the pact, an allegation Moscow has denied. In any case, he added, a bilateral treaty no longer met today's realities because unlike in the Cold War, multiple states are now developing intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Those states, he said, include China and North Korea. "The next step is consultations with our friends in Europe and Asia," Bolton was quoted as telling Ekho Moskvy radio station, adding that consultations with Russia would continue. EUROPEAN ALARM The INF treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to forgo all nuclear ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km (310 to 3,415 miles), eliminating an entire category of weapon. As a result, the Soviet Union scrapped hundreds of SS-20 missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Many of them had been pointed at Europe. NATO's decision to station Cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles in Europe provoked waves of protests in the 1980s from campaigners who felt that would turn Europe into a potential nuclear battlefield. The European Union called the INF treaty "a pillar of European security architecture" that had resulted in the destruction of almost 3,000 nuclear and conventional warheads and continued to play an important non-proliferation role. "The United States and the Russian Federation need to remain engaged in constructive dialogue to preserve the INF Treaty," Maja Kocijancic, the EU's spokeswoman for foreign affairs and security policy, said. "The world doesn't need a new arms race." French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Trump on Sunday to stress the importance of the treaty, his office said on Monday. The German government regretted Trump's decision, saying NATO would now have to discuss the development. China also condemned Trump's move, saying it was wrong to pull out of the treaty unilaterally. (Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Maxim Rodionov in Moscow and Jeff Mason in Washington; Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Tom Balmforth in Moscow, Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Sudip Kar-Gupta and Michael Martina in Beijing; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by David Stamp and Peter Cooney)The lead up to installation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in the US, could have been mistaken for the movie series The West Wing. Machinations, intrigue and skullduggery abounded. It ended in tears, mixed with rage for the left (the Democrats, boy are they sore losers), but rejoicing and euphoria by the right (the Republicans).

The 90-day battle to install Mr Kavanaugh was concluded in the first week of October, with a razor thin margin 50-48. It proved to be the most dramatic fight in a quarter-century, a showdown of epic proportions, that tested the presidents resolve, drove a wedge through the Senate, gripped a nation, ignited protests and demonstrated just how polarized American politics is. And most of all just how fragile democracy is.

If it Sounds too Good to be True- It Probably is.

Things were looking dire for Kavanaugh. When what appeared to be two credible witnesses accused him of serious sexual misconduct. You know the usual, he tried to rape me while drunk (Dr Blasey 51yrs, female) and then he exposed his genitals (Deborah Ramirez 53yrs, female).

The mud was starting to stick, despite Kavanaughs fervent denials. But then came a gift from heaven.

Michael Avenatti, a left leaning Californian (of course) lawyer, stepped into the fray. He produced a third witness, Julie Swetnick who alleged that Kavanaugh frequently attended parties where women were gang raped, and that shed been raped at one of these parties, though not by Kavanaugh.

Well this set the feminist blood boiling, they wanted Kavanaughs head on a pike.

Oops, let us digress, for a moment. It should be noted that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. In the case of Kavanaugh this time honoured- tradition can be set aside, because after all he is a Conservative, and Trumps nominee. Therefore he must be guilty.

Back into the fray. On further investigation (yes! even the FBI got involved) it was unearthed that Ms Swetnicks claims didnt add up. Why would she as a college student repeatedly go to high school parties where young women are raped? And in addition it was discovered that she a penchant for litigation.

Then the spot light turned to Mr Avenatti, wasnt he the lawyer representing the salacious, porn-star Stormy Daniels, whos been in pursuit of Trump. The credibility of the third witness sunk the ship for the Democrats, it was all over. Kavanaugh won the day.

A Respected Edifice Falls

The once venerable, The American Civil Liberties Union poured over $1million into its campaign to impugn Kavanaughs character. In fact, lately the ACLU has been awash with cash. Well that is since Trump came to power.

In case youre unaware, ACLU was or is meant to be non-partisan ie neutral when it comes to politics.

Interestingly, when Obama (a Lefty) was president, the ACLU was the defender of individual freedoms par excellence. Everyone from Nazis to Christians were included in its purview. It was also poor.

However, the funds came pouring in from the Left, when Trump won the presidency. Silicon Valley and Hollywood billionaires have put around $450 million into the coffers of the ACLU, from the advent of Trump onwards.

And as its current leader Faiz Shakir (a Democrat operative) said, People have funded us and I think they expect a return (for their money) That return is to attack Trump, Conservatives and Christians.

The problem that the Left has with Kavanaugh is that he represents Christian values, which means Trumps attempts to drain the swamp of its nefarious life-forms will no longer be blocked by the Supreme Court.

Womens right to abort (kill healthy babies), Euthanasia and LGBT rights will all be open to challenge with Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, and hes there for life.

Oh no. Lets protest.

Vic Matthews, has three degrees B.Optom, B.Arts & B. Christian Studies. He is a kiteboard tragic, who now works as a Christian Copywriter. He can be found at http://trustworthycopywriter.com/writing-services/christian-copywriter/

Vic Matthews' previous articles may be viewed http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/vic-matthews.htmlPage Content

Prize reflects emphasise placed by ARLEM on stimulating local business and helping young people.

The Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) has launched a prize for young entrepreneurs from the European Union's partner countries in the Mediterranean whose work demonstrates an innovative mind-set. The panel, which will be made up of ARLEM members, particularly wishes to recognise entrepreneurial projects at the local level, developed with the support of local and regional authorities, reflecting the assembly's wish to encourage collaboration between the private sector and public authorities.

The prize, which will be awarded in Seville in 27 February 2019, is one of a range of recommendations contained in a draft report by ARLEM on how to promote entrepreneurship among young people in the EU's southern neighbourhood. The draft report, which will also be adopted in February, is the work of Domenico Gambacorta (IT/EPP), President of the Province of Avellino. The draft was discussed on 11 October in ARLEM's sustainable-development commission with experts from the European Commission and the European Training Foundation.

Mr Gambacorta's draft report emphasises the need to showcase success stories that emerge from an entrepreneurial-friendly environment created by local or regional administrations, and includes proposals directed at central government as well as local administrations. The report urges central governments to involve local authorities more in business policies, to develop business incubators, and to invest more in innovation, research and entrepreneurship. Local administrators should, the report says, try to ease the participation of women in the labour market, collaborate with chambers of commerce, and reach out to schools, diaspora communities and local authorities in other countries.

The debate in the sustainable-development commission of ARLEM, which was created in 2010 by the European Committee of the Regions to facilitate political contacts and practical cooperation with local administrations in non-EU countries on the eastern and southern Mediterranean, saw members point to range of areas with the potential to stimulate entrepreneurship among the region's fast-growing youth population.

Francisco de la Torre Prados, mayor of Malaga and member of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), and Mary Freehill (IE/PES), a member of Dublin city council and ARLEM's rapporteur on "women's empowerment in the Mediterranean region", emphasised the value of working with diaspora communities. Ms Freehill also stressed that politicians need to ensure that entrepreneurs can have a "second chance" if they fail with their first idea, while David Simmonds (UK/ECR) from the London borough of Hillingdon spoke of the value of microcredit and of volunteering as a "well-proven route to gaining experience". Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis (FR/EA), member of the Corsican council and the CoR's rapporteur on entrepreneurship on islands, said she was convinced that "there has to be genuine ownership within a community" of entrepreneurship policy, while a number of contributors argued that decentralisation of power between the levels of government is a critical factor in stimulating entrepreneurship.

ARLEM's focus on ways to stimulate the local economy was also in evidence a day earlier, on 10 October, when it held a workshop on "fostering local development in the Mediterranean via tourism and cultural heritage" during the European Week of Regions and Cities, an annual event co-organised by the CoR and the European Commission. Among the speakers was Rania Mechergui, a young eco-tourism entrepreneur from Tunisia.

ARLEM ENTREPRENEURSHIP PRIZE

Applications are welcome from entrepreneurs up to the age of 35 whose businesses have been active for three years or more in Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Palestine, Monaco, or Montenegro.

The jury will award a project built with and for the community that can show results and a strong social dimension.

The deadline for applications is 30 November. ARLEM can cover the travel expenses of the two winners to Seville for the award ceremony.

A link for applications will open soon. For more information contact the ARLEM secretariat (arlem-secretariat@cor.europa.eu).Page Content

Speaking at a meeting of foreign ministers on 15 October, the foreign-policy chief of the European Union, Federica Mogherini, underlined the importance of working with local and regional authorities to communicate about the EU with citizens of the six Eastern Partnership countries.

The Eastern Partnership Foreign Ministers meeting in Luxembourg was attended by two representatives of the Conference of Regional and Local Authorities for the Eastern Partnership (CORLEAP), which was created by the European Committee of the Regions in 2011. Other stakeholders who were invited were the EaP Civil Society Forum, EURONEST, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The meeting took stock of progress over the past 10 years towards achieving 20 deliverables intended to strengthen the economies, governance, connectivity and societies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The discussions also considered what should happen beyond 2020, preparing the ground for a 10th anniversary event in 2019 and paving the way towards the Summit of national leaders from the EU and the Eastern Partnership countries in 2020.

CORLEAP will contribute to debate with recommendations and hopes to be able to set out its principal proposals directly to national leaders, as was the case at the last Eastern Partnership Summit in November 2017.

At the ministerial meeting, Pavel Branda (CZ/ECR), a member of the CoR and deputy mayor of Radlo, said: "A policy focus on common ownership, joint commitment and tangible benefits for citizens cannot be sustained without the involvement of local and regional authorities. Our main message is straight-forward: Help us deliver even more!"

He continued: "The understanding and acknowledgement of the sub-national efforts are essential for further pursuing decentralisation reforms and sustained empowerment of local and regional authorities, with the ultimate aim of consolidating local democracy and territorial development  seeds for overall stability and prosperity."

The importance of communicating about the Eastern Partnership and of countering disinformation emerged as common threads during the debates on the achievements and future of the Partnership, and it was one of the principal points made to foreign ministers by Emin Yeritsyan, president of the Union of Communities (Municipalities) of Armenia and co-chairman of CORLEAP.

Mr Yeritsyan said that CORLEAP plans "to help local and regional authorities fight disinformation, raise media literacy and improve understanding of disinformation technics in their constituencies". CORLEAP will draw on its experience of organising a youth workshop on disinformation in Kyiv on 24 September, during which "four mixed groups of young people from all six EaP countries created complex disinformation campaigns and proposed concrete steps to counter those".

Looking back over the years since the Eastern Partnership was launched in 2009, foreign ministers highlighted the conclusion of visa-liberalisation agreements, Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements, and association agreements as the central achievements, while Johannes Hahn, the European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, also stressed the value of the EU's support for social and medium-sized enterprises and of a now-finalised action plan to invest in 5,500 kilometres of road and rail projects by 2020. Looking ahead, a range of speakers identified the need to build up the resilience of countries to cope with hybrid attacks, in part by increasing cooperation between members of the Eastern Partnership and with countries within the EU.

Mr Yeritsyan is CORLEAP's rapporteur on "Economic cooperation and economic development at local level in the Eastern Partnership countries" and, in 2016, developed CORLEAP's recommendations on "Energy efficiency: The role of the local and regional authorities". As president of the Union of Communities (Municipalities) of Armenia, he has championed the Mayors for Economic Growth initiative by the European Commission. To date, 266 communities have joined initiative, which is currently in its pilot phase; of these, 72 are from Armenia. Thanks to the scheme, local communities gain access to the technical support of the European Commission in drafting local economic-development strategies.

Mr Branda is the CoR's rapporteur on "People-to-people and small-scale projects in cross-border cooperation programmes", which was adopted in mid-2017, and, as a member of CORLEAP, he champions the potential of cross-border projects as a means of improving relations between communities.Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved more than $1 billion new investments for 19 new projects to help developing countries tackle climate change. The decision was taken during four-day meeting of GCF in Manama, Bahrain. The funding was approved for projects linked to geothermal energy in Indonesia, greener cities in Europe and Middle East and protection for coastal communities in India.

Green Climate Fund (GCF)

GCF is UN-backed fund considered as key vehicle for climate-related development programs. It is guided by the principles and provisions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It aims to help developing countries to finance clean energy projects other mitigation efforts, practices and adaptation to counter climate change. It was formally established by UNFCCC decision in Durban, South Africa in December 2011. It is based in new Songdo district of Incheon, South Korea. It is governed by a Board of 24 members and initially supported by a Secretariat. GCF was central to the Paris climate agreement signed in 2015. GCFs assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change by redistributing money contributed by the developed countries. It supports projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing country Parties using thematic funding windows. It was intended to be the centrepiece of efforts to raise Climate Finance of $100 billion a year by 2020.United States (US) President Donald Trump has announced that US will unilaterally pull out of three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed with Russia during Cold War.

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty

It was crucial Cold War-era treaty banning development, testing and possession of short and medium range ground-launched nuclear missiles with range of 500-5,000 km. The treaty was signed in December 1987 between then US President Ronald Reagan and his USSR counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev.

The treaty banned all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 5001,000 km or (short-range) and 1,0005,500 km (intermediate-range). This treaty was central to ending arms race between two superpowers during cold war and protected Americas NATO allies in Europe from Soviet missile attacks. It was designed to provide measure of some strategic stability on continent of Europe.

Reasons of US withdrawal

US President Trump has alleged that Russia has violated treaty and has been violating it for many years. This violation comes after Russias alleged development and deployment of Novator 9M729 missile (also known as SSC-8), that could strike Europe at short notice.

Accusations of Russia violating this treaty pre-dates Trump presidency and go back to 2008 during President Obama administration. Under former President Barack Obama raised issue of Russia testing ground-launched cruise missile with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014. But Russia had denied allegations and raised counter-allegations of the US installing missile defence systems in Europe. While two countries failed to find resolution using dispute resolution mechanism in treaty, US continued to remain party to treaty under pressure from its European allies.

Implications

The unilateral withdrawal from this treaty will allow US new nuclear weapon options in Pacific in its efforts to counter Chinas growing influence. There are also concerns that unilateral termination of this treaty could mark beginning of new arms race between US and Russia.A couple who flew to Italy for a family wedding were 'held hostage' and forced to take out a 4,000 (3528) loan when they accidentally damaged a marquee.Rosie and Jack Deverson have described the 'terrifying interrogation' they endured at Villa Silvana near Sorrento, in which they were locked behind iron gates for four hours.Their ordeal started when Jack, 24, threw sparklers over a balcony which had not completely gone out, to avoid being burned by them, at the August wedding.But the hot rods landed on the wedding marquee, erected for Rosie's cousin's big day.The couple from Folkestone, Kent, immediately ran down and confessed to the 'minimal damage'.The following day, determined to ensure her cousin's deposit would not be lost, Rosie returned to the venue with her husband.However, what happened next shocked both of them.Office manager Rosie said she was forced to take out a loan via her phone and would not have been allowed to leave otherwise.She told the Daily Star Sunday: 'I had to show my face, it was the decent thing to do to make sure my cousin didn't lose her deposit.'But as soon as we got there the gates were locked behind us. It was a horrible situation and we were told the damage would cost 8,000 (7056) to fix.'They made us sign documents which said we were solely responsible for the damage.'We were completely intimidated and we would not have been able to leave without paying 4,000 there and then.'The damage was small burn marks, according to the couple who had used the sparklers provided for guests while the cake was being cut.Rosie said: 'I made the payment on their card machine. I felt terrified. I've now got a loan that will take me two years to pay off.''I couldn't wait to get home, it was just awful.'We're both distraught and I never want to go to Italy again. It ruined the wedding for me.'Rosie also claims that venue bosses made the couple hand over their address and passports, and were told to expect a bill for the remainder of the cash at home.Now safely back at home, Rosie and Jack have done all they can to seek legal help from solicitors and have contacted the police both here and in Italy, to no avail.However, the villa staff said they planned to bill them soon for the other half.The Deversons contacted the police in the UK and in Italy and have consulted a lawyer.British paratroopers are secretly training Saudi Arabia's army how to fire missiles, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.The elite soldiers are teaching their Saudi counterparts to use the 81mm mortar, a mini-rocket system which fires high explosive rounds up to three miles.Troops, understood to be from the Royal Engineers and Royal Logistic Corps, are also instructing Saudi soldiers how to find and defuse improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and ways to improve border security.In the wake of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, former development secretary Andrew Mitchell last night called for the UK teams to stop working with the Saudis.'A period of inactivity would be sensible given where we are, even though there is no doubt that the involvement of the British Army can be a force for good in underlining respect for human rights and the rules of war,' he said.Lord West, the former head of the Royal Navy, said: 'Following the appalling killing of Jamal Khashoggi, we must be clear and open about the assistance we are providing to Saudi Arabia. Never has there been a greater need for transparency than now.'A Saudi-led coalition is using rockets and airstrikes against Yemeni rebels and their allies who drove the Saudi-backed government into exile in 2015. British soldiers have trained Saudi forces throughout the conflict.UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia are worth about 675 million a year.A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: 'We have an ongoing and wide-ranging defence engagement relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has included the provision of training, advice and guidance in the UK and Saudi Arabia.'Dozens of Jane Austen enthusiasts descended on an Italian hotel to celebrate the life of the Pride and Prejudice author.The period-dressed 'Janeites', as they are dubbed, took to Hotel de la Ville in Monza, near Milan this week for the two-day event.Janeites are devotees of the life and work of British novelist Jane Austen, and more generally of the Regency era.These incredible pictures show the efforts the British author's most devoted fans will go to in an effort to relive the heyday of her life.Fascinating pictures show the 'Janeites' dancing with raised glasses in the lavish rooms of the four star hotel while others, in a strange juxtaposition, show them taking selfies on their modern phones.A weekend with Jane Austen, as the event is called, is organised with the support of the Jane Austen Society of Italy (JASIT), the Italian cultural association that intends to promote in Italy the knowledge and the study of Jane Austen.Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British at the end of the 18th century.Austen's plots often explored the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security.Her use of biting irony, along with her realism, humour, and social commentary, have long earned her acclaim among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike.Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate a 'huge and grave mistake', but said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware.Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir spoke to US broadcaster Fox on Sunday and extended condolences to Khashoggi's family.'This is a terrible mistake. This is a terrible tragedy. Our condolences go out to them. We feel their pain,' he said.'Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this.'He said the Saudis did not know how Khashoggi, a Saudi national and US resident, had been killed or where his body was.He also said that Prince Mohammed, de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, was not responsible.'This was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had,' he said.'They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it.'The kingdom first denied his death before admitting it on Saturday amid an international outcry.The weeks of denial and lack of credible evidence have shaken global confidence in ties with the world's top oil exporter, Western governments say.US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said Saudi Arabia's admission that the Washington Post columnist had been killed in a fistfight was a 'good first step but not enough'.Three major European powers - Germany, Britain and France - pressed Saudi Arabia to provide facts to back up its earlier explanation of a fight.Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would not export arms to Saudi Arabia while the current uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persisted.Khashoggi went missing after entering the consulate on October 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.After denying any involvement in the 59-year-old's disappearance for two weeks, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, had died during a fight in the building.An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold.'Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,' Germany, Britain and France said in their joint statement on Sunday.A senior Saudi government official has laid out a new version that in key respects contradicts previous explanations.The latest account includes details on how the team of 15 Saudi nationals sent to confront Khashoggi had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and killed him in a chokehold when he resisted.A member of the team then dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.In a speech on Sunday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was getting ready to release some information about the Turkish investigation, and would do so at his weekly speech to members of his ruling AK Party in parliament.There are more than five times as many Russian intelligence officers now than there were during the Cold War, according to a report uncovered by Andrew Gilligan for The Sunday Times.The findings come from a report to be published next week by the Henry Jackson Society think tank following their interviews with former intelligence officials.The report will reveal that there are an estimated 200 spies in the UK and at least 500 agents providing information.The figures come amid an increasing fear of Russian infiltration and espionage in the country following the attempted murders of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March this year.The father and daughter, who were poisoned with a military grade Novichok nerve agent, were discovered unconscious on a bench in Salisbury on March 4 before rescue services were called to the scene.Months later police were investigating a second case of Novichok poisoning after victims Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were exposed to the nerve agent.Mother-of-three Mrs Sturgess, 44, died after her exposure to the lethal poison.Two Russian men, travelling under the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, were later charged for the poisoning in Salisbury, Wiltshire.Following the attempted murder of the former KGB spy Sergei Skripal, 23 suspected intelligence officers were expelled from the UK.However the report will expose that about half of the 56 accredited Russian diplomats still in London are still believed to be involved in intelligence work.It will also unveil that there are several spies based at the Russian trade delegation office in Highgate and the Rossotrudnichestvo cultural centre in Kensington High Street.Author of the report Andrew Foxall said that the capital is 'ill-equipped' to deal with the worrying espionage figure and calls for the country to follow the steps similar to those in Estonia, according to The Sunday Times.In Estonia an annual report is published naming those working for organisations with links to Russian intelligence.The concerning figure marks a significant rise to that recorded in 2010.In 2010 the MI5 had said the number of Russian intelligence officers in London was at the same level as in Soviet times.On their website they had written: 'We estimate that at least 20 foreign intelligence services are currently operating in the UK against UK interests. The Russian and Chinese intelligence services are particularly active, and currently present the greatest concern.'Russian authorities are encouraging farmers from South Africa to move abroad in the hope of boosting the country's agricultural industry.This follows the announcement from the council for the city of Ekurhuleni to seize acres of land from private owners to build housing.This summer South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that he wanted to change the country's constitution to allow expropriations, a move which received widespread condemnation throughout the country.Critics said the plans, which allows the authorities to seize white-owned land without giving compensation, was evident of the government not respecting the rule of law.However the plans could now see Russia benefit and acquire skilled labourers, with experts travelling to the country to talk about trade with locals.According to The Daily Star Vladimir Poluboyarenko, a government liaison from the Stavropol region in southern Russia, said: 'I want them to know that Russia can be their mother country, too.'The Russian Government have also removed the tourist visa requirements for South Africans enabling them to buy potential homes.In August white farmers in South Africa were seen trying to flog their land as fears grew that the government was about to start a widespread campaign of seizures.Two farms in the north of the country reportedly became the first targets for seizures after talks between the government and owners about buying the land broke down.Agri SA union, which represents mainly white commercial farmers, warned that the land expropriations may rob South Africa.According to The Daily Star Omri van Zyl, of agricultural industry association AgriSA, said: 'The Russian agricultural sector is very interesting to us, and we are also interested in the Russian market.'The Russians support us very much from this point of view, because you have already been through this.'Read more: South Africa land expropriations: White farmers could flee to RUSSIA | Daily StarAt least 22 people have been killed and over 170 others have been injured after one of Taiwan's newer, faster trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, just south of the city of Luodong.The Puyuma express train was carrying more than 366 passengers from a suburb of Taipei toward Taitung, a city on Taiwan's southeast coast, when it went off the tracks at 4:50pm, the Taiwan central government said in a statement.The National Fire Agency cites the Cabinet spokesman's office as saying 22 people were killed when the Puyuma express train went off the tracks late Sunday afternoon. It says 171 others were injured.Some passengers were crushed to death, Ministry of National Defense spokesman Chen Chung-chi said.'Their train car turned over. They were crushed, so they died right away,' Chen said, adding that soldiers have been removing bodies to identify them but nightfall was complicating rescue work.Photos from the scene showed the train's eight cars in a zig-zag formation near the tracks. Five of the cars are turned over on their sides.Most of the deaths were in the first car, which flipped over, a government spokesman said.It was unclear how many people may still be trapped in the train, said the spokesman, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.Some 120 soldiers joined firefighters in their rescue work.Local television reports said passengers were trying to escape through train windows and that bystanders had gathered to help them before rescuers arrived.The Puyuma was launched in 2013 to handle the very difficult topography of Taiwan's east coast and is distinct from the high-speed rail that runs on the west coast.The trains travel up to 150 kilometres per hour - faster than any other in Taiwan except for high-speed rail.The train that derailed is 6 years old and its most recent inspection and major maintenance took place in 2017, Taiwan Railways Administration Director Lu Chie-shen said at a televised news conference.Authorities are investigating the cause of the derailment.Turkish investigators believe they are 'very close' to finding the remains of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.As forensic teams continued to scour a forest outside Istanbul, officials suggested that the 59-year-old's mutilated body may have been buried with the help of 'Turkish collaborators' with links to the criminal underworld.One Turkish official said: 'We'll find out what happened to the body before long.'The development came as:The Saudi government finally admitted that Mr Khashoggi had died inside their consulate in Istanbul on October 2  but claimed he had done so in a fist fight;Donald Trump sparked anger by describing the Saudi version of events as 'credible';Footage emerged of the journalist and his fiancee together just hours before his death;The vans that left the consulate  and which may have contained Mr Khashoggi's body  tried to avoid being tracked;Turkish investigators said that parts of the consulate, as well as being painted, showed signs of being 'chemically cleaned'.A fortnight after Mr Khashoggi's disappearance and apparent slaughter caused worldwide revulsion, the Saudis were finally forced to admit that he had died at their consulate in Istanbul.But they denied his death had been ordered by the country's ruling elite, instead claiming he had been killed in a fight.Saudi Arabia's deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, have been sacked over the affair.Yesterday, despite widespread cynicism over the account, President Trump described it as 'credible'. Republican Senator Rand Paul was among those who rubbished the comment, saying: 'The so-called explanation from the Saudis is not even close to credible.'The British Government did not comment yesterday, but Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has previously warned of 'consequences' if Mr Khashoggi was murdered.As the worldwide political implications of the affair continued, grainy footage of the journalist with his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, 36, emerged on Turkish TV. It showed the couple arriving at their apartment in Istanbul's Topkapi district at 5am on October 2 and leaving shortly afterwards.They were captured on camera again at 2pm and as they left on the six-mile journey to the consulate in the Levent area of the city.Mr Khashoggi had gone to the consulate to obtain a copy of his divorce certificate so he could marry Ms Cengiz. Instead, he was walking to his death as his fiancee waited outside.According to reports thought to be based on information from the Turkish intelligence services, Mr Khashoggi was tortured and mutilated by a 15-strong hit squad, who then dismembered his corpse during a seven-minute bloodbath.Turkish media reported yesterday that some of the rooms in the consulate appeared to have been 'chemically cleaned'.There were also reports that vans leaving the building sought to evade CCTV, but were traced to Belgrade Forest, 18 miles north of Istanbul.Forensic teams were also searching an area in the remote town of Yalova, 58 miles east of Istanbul. One van  fitted with diplomatic plates  reportedly 'disappeared' from cameras for about seven minutes, leading investigators to suspect Mr Khashoggi's remains may have been handed to a local criminal group for burial.Last night, Numan Kurtulmus, a deputy head of justice of Turkey's ruling AKP party, said full details of the death would be released.US National Security Adviser John Bolton faces two days of high-tension talks in Moscow after President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from a landmark nuclear weapons treaty.Trump's announcement that the United States would leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty brought sharp criticism on Sunday from Russian officials and from former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the treaty in 1987 with President Ronald Reagan.Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it has produced and tested such a missile.Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as telling state news agency Tass that leaving the treaty 'would be a very dangerous step.'It would 'cause the most serious condemnation from all members of the international community who are committed to security and stability.'Konstatin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's upper house of parliament, said on Facebook that a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would mean 'mankind is facing full chaos in the nuclear weapons sphere.''Washington's desire to turn back politics cannot be supported.'Not only Russia, but also all who cherish the world, especially a world without nuclear weapons, must declare this,' Gorbachev was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency.Western reaction was mixed.British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said the U.K. stands 'absolutely resolute' with Washington on the issue and called on the Kremlin to 'get its house in order,' according to the Financial Times.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that Trump's announcement 'raises difficult questions for us and Europe,' but noted that Russia hasn't cleared up allegations of violating the treaty.The Kremlin hasn't directly commented on Trump's statement, but spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that 'after the last statements, explanations of the American side will be required.'Bolton and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on Tuesday. On Monday, Bolton meets with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.Iran Human Rights; October 22, 2018: A prisoner was executed on a murder charge at Ardabil Central Prison this morning.





Meisam Saber, 27, was convicted to qisas (retribution in kind) on a murder charge in 2013. His execution was carried out on the morning on Sunday, October 22, 2018.





According to HRANA, Meisam Saber was transferred to the solitary confinement a day prior to the execution.





The Iranian media outlets have not published news related to the aforementioned execution so far.





According to Iran Human Rights annual report on the death penalty, 240 of the 517 execution sentences in 2017 were implemented due to murder charges.





There is a lack of a classification of murder by degree in Iran which results in issuing a death sentence for any kind of murder regardless of intensity and intent.





Man Hanged at Zahedan Prison





Iran Human Rights (IHR); October 20, 2018: A prisoner was executed at Zahedan Central Prison on rape charges this morning.





According to the IHR sources, Mehdi Mirshekar, 31, was in prison for 6 years before the execution.





He was convicted to death on rape charges and his execution was carried out on the morning of Saturday, October 20.





According to HRANA, Mehdi Mirshekar was transferred to the solitary confinement of Zahedan Central Prison on Monday, October 15, 2018.





The Iranian media outlets have not published news related to the execution so far.

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar WildeThe worst of the killing of 59-year-old Jamal Khashoggi, the self-exiled American-educated Saudi journalist, is probably still to come. Turkey claims to have more macabre details up its sleeve to be revealed in all its naked truth. The controversy will intensify but individual tragedies seldom affect the fate of nations. The question is: Should the murder be allowed to dwindle into a footnote in history books like the Prague Spring or should the world sit up and take notice of the stark pursuit of a ruling elites self-interest at the cost of all civilised considerations?

The underlying principle, which affects India as much as it does Turkey or the United States which have a more direct stake in Saudi morality (or the lack of it), isnt confined to one controversy. What matters is a countrys  any countrys  credibility, and the extent to which that credibility shapes the response of other nations. Whether or not Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked of the longtime Nicaraguan dictator, Somoza may be a son of a b****, but hes our son of a b****, that kind of cynicism is self-defeating. No healthy, productive and rewarding foreign policy can be founded on expedient pacts that are so utterly devoid of respect.

That principle could be invoked for two key areas of Indias foreign policy  its unfolding honeymoon with Israel and the bittersweet ups and downs of Sino-Indian ties. Before gushing about his friend Bibi, Narendra Modi would have done well to reflect on whether Benjamin Netanyahu, who contemptuously dismisses the Oslo peace process and is hounding Palestinians out of their own land, can ever care for any interests save his own, even if he does flatter Mr Modi by returning his compliment with a chummy Narendra. Likewise, Jawaharlal Nehru may not have died brokenhearted if his assessment of China had risen above Asian revivalist sentiment to take note of Mao Zedongs ruthless conquest of Tibet or the 45 million Chinese killed by his Great Leap Forward.

In other words, while bilateral signals are important, a governments true nature  like a persons  can be gauged only by studying its behaviour with many entities. The support of Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE to Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi affair may owe something to the persuasive power of Saudi petrodollars, but also speaks volumes for the stranglehold these three governments maintain at home. The pitfall is that the logic can be abused as happened in 1990 when Saddam Hussain seized Kuwait, which Iraqs earlier pro-Western monarchy had first claimed. The Saudis screamed they were next on the conquest list. It suited George W. Bush to believe this and drum up a range of supportive evidence for Operation Desert Storm. Riyadhs ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, paid for and directed the war.

Generally, however, theres a pattern to national (or individual) conduct. The Biblical maxim Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is more than morality. It reflects hard-headed reciprocity. So, when Germanys chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign minister, Heiko Maas, demanded transparency from Saudi Arabia about the circumstances of (Khashoggis) death, condemned the crime in the sharpest possible manner, and insisted that those responsible must be held to account, they were laying down conditions for future ties so that the Saudis do not display the same disregard for legality in their dealings with Germans as they are accused of doing with the journalist who had reportedly fallen foul of the all-powerful 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Mr Maas hint that arms exports to the kingdom might be suspended until the mystery of Khashoggis death has been cleared made this more pointed. More than threatening the Saudis, Germanys foreign minister was articulating an important principle of future German foreign policy. Berlins longstanding economic ties with Riyadh include significant arms shipments. Having authorised military exports worth $291 million to Saudi Arabia since March, Germany is anxious for assurances of Riyadhs good faith and commitment to the rule of law. Australia, Canada, the European Union, France and the United Nations are all worried that Saudi Arabias tremendous wealth may have convinced it that it is above the law.

Britain and the United States have the most reason for concern. Saudi Arabia is the UKs top destination for arms exports, with over $15 billion delivered in jets, weapons, bombs and other equipment between 2008 and 2017. The amount increased dramatically after the Saudi military intervention in Yemen which is blamed for a colossal human disaster. Theresa May must be uncomfortably aware that there is far more direct evidence of Saudi guilt in Khashoggis murder here than there was of Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning. As for the US, Donald Trump has warned Riyadh of very severe consequences and economic sanctions, but he also emphasizes his personal support for Prince Mohammed (another Somoza?) and Saudi Arabias value as a strategic ally against Iran and Islamist militants. The agreement to sell arms worth $350 billion over 10 years supports more than a million American jobs. He fears that if the US pulls out, Russia or China will move in.

Outsiders cant ever dictate another countrys priorities. But it stands to reason that a regime that lied consistently for two weeks and is thought to be concealing more than it has revealed, that is suspected of using cold-blooded murder as an instrument of state policy, cannot make a reliable ally except on its own terms. If the West needs to reorient its global perceptions, all countries  including India  need to consider the ethical dimension of alliances. After all, foreign policy is meant to further the peoples welfare, not massage the egos of self-important national leaders.Islamabad has already asked the IMF to open negotiations for the country's second potential bailout in five years. (Photo: File)

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan left for Saudi Arabia to attend an investment conference boycotted by other leaders over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Khan told an interviewer before leaving he was concerned at Khashoggi's death but could not skip the conference because "we're desperate" for possible Saudi loans to shore up Pakistan's economy.

It is Khan's second visit to Saudi Arabia in just over a month, but he has not succeeded in securing significant financial assistance to stave off a looming balance of payment crisis.

Khan told the Middle East Eye in an interview published on Monday that he could not pass up the invitation to meet Saudi leaders again.

"The reason I feel I have to avail myself of this opportunity is because in a country of 210 million people right now we have the worst debt crisis in our history," he was quoted as saying.

"Unless we get loans from friendly countries or the IMF (International Monetary Fund), we actually won't have in another two or three months enough foreign exchange to service our debts or to pay for our imports. So we're desperate at the moment."

Finance Minister Asad Umar and Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood are accompanying Khan, a statement from Khan's office said on Monday, adding it "will give a chance to connect with those people who are interested in investing in Pakistan".

Islamabad has already asked the IMF to open negotiations for the country's second potential bailout in five years.

Khan, who took office in July, still has been seeking alternatives to the tough conditions the IMF is likely to impose for loans, limiting his vision of an Islamic welfare state.

The central bank's foreign reserves dropped this month to USD 8.1 billion, a four-year low and barely enough to cover sovereign debt payments due through the end of the year. The current account deficit has swelled to about USD 18 billion.

Khan has blamed the previous government's policies for the ballooning current account deficit.

He told the Middle East Eye that he was concerned over the "shocking" death of Khashoggi, a US resident and Washington Post columnist, after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

"The Saudi government will have to come up with an answer... We wait for whatever the Saudi explanation is," he was quoted as saying. "We hope there is an explanation that satisfies people and those responsible are punished."I am a retired newspaperman. I live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 44 years, Lou Ann. I grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.



Report all errors to DonSurber@GMail.comThe 4,896-square-meter plot of land on Le Duan Street in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

A HCMC company, whose prime land is set to be repossessed by the city on suspicion of corruption, has complained to the prime minister.

Lavenue Investment JSC, which had planned to build a five-star hotel and shopping mall on a 4,896-square-meter (5,856-square-yard) plot of land on Le Duan Street in District 1, has sought his intervention to allow it to resume construction.

The development ground to a halt after the Government Inspectorate concluded last May that the city People's Committee had sold the land to private firms against regulations, causing a loss of trillions of dong (VND23,250 = $1) to the treasury and urged the city to appropriate the land.

Lavenue general director Do Minh Quan said in his letter to PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc" "[The inspectors] cannot request to have the land repossessed because of the city leaders' mistake. If the leaders committed mistakes then it was partially due to budgetary pressures during the economic crisis, they did not get any [personal] benefit from approving our project."

According to Quan, Lavenue did not commit any violation, the land use fee it had paid was twice the market rate at a time when the property market was frozen.

Besides, the company had spent VND1.5 trillion ($64.5 million) on the project, including VND624 billion ($26.84 million) in land use fee, VND23 billion ($989,400) in land rental to the city, VND148 billion ($6.36 million) to hire foreign consultants, and VND687 billion ($29.57) million) on loan interest.

"If the project stalls, the company will go bankrupt and our employees will be jobless. We will have to file a lawsuit against the HCMC People's Committee in court and seek international arbitration to safeguard our rights and discharge our responsibilities toward shareholders."

Speaking to VnExpress earlier this month the city People's Committee had said it would take disciplinary actions against all individuals and organizations involved in the sale of the plot of land, and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment would repossess and reauction it.

The land is located at the intersection of Le Duan and Hai Ba Trung streets in downtown Saigon and virtually behind the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Before 2007 the Ho Chi Minh City Housing Management and Trading Company managed it and rented it out to four companies belonging to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

In 2007 city authorities announced plans to build a five-star hotel and shopping mall at the site.

The city was supposed to identify a reputable, experienced investor in the hotel sector through a public auction.

At the Ministry of Industry and Trade's request, the city authorities agreed in 2010 to establish Lavenue Investment JSC to manage the task, with the HCMC Housing Management and Trading Company owning a 50 percent stake in it and the ministry's four companies each having a 12.5 percent stake.

Two months later 80 percent of the new company's shares were sold to private firms, including the 50 percent held by the ministrys firms for a profit of VND50 billion ($2.13 million) each for the four.

In 2011 Lavenue received the city's approval to build a complex comprising a high-end hotel, retail outlets and rental apartments. But construction has yet to begin and currently the land is being used as a parking lot.

At the time of the approval the city's Department of Finance asked Lavenue to pay nearly VND177 million ($7,616) per square meter to buy 3,433 square meters and VND3.53 million ($150) per square meter per year to rent the remaining 1,463 sq.m.

But the Government Inspectorate said since the current market price of the land is over VND400 million ($17,211) per square meter, the city could get over VND2 trillion ($86.06 million) by auctioning it afresh.

The inspectors also concluded that the People's Committee, including former Vice Chairman Nguyen Thanh Tai, several departments, and the HCMC Housing Management and Trading Company had deliberately violated state regulations and merited severe punishment.History in the making: Party chief set to become Vietnams new president

Vietnam's General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong is now the only candidate for the president post. Photo by Vietnam News Agency

Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong was the only presidential candidate announced by the National Assembly on Monday.

The assembly's Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan made the announcement during the 6th session of the 14th National Assembly (NA), scheduled to last 24 days beginning Monday.

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong was unanimously nominated for the position by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, and his name is the only one that the parliamentary standing committee has recommended.

The parliament will ratify the candidate using an electronic voting system before electing a new president by secret ballot Tuesday morning.

The votes result will be announced in the afternoon, after which the new president would be sworn in, with the ceremony broadcast live on national radio and television.

If the NA votes for the appointment, Trong will become the first Vietnamese leader to be the head of state and the Party since founding President Ho Chi Minh.

If Trong becomes the president, he would have equal status with other heads of state in diplomatic protocol terms, said Emeritus Professor Carlyle Thayer from the University of New South Wales Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy in an emailed response to VnExpress International.

He said Trongs assuming the position would not signal any major shift in either Vietnams economic policy or its fight against corruption. In fact, by holding two offices, Trong would be able to better cut through bureaucratic red tape and implement policy decisions quicker.

Combined with his strong stance on fighting corruption, evident in numerous crackdowns on top businesspeople and government leaders, the countrys anti-corruption campaign against high officials is likely to intensify, Thayer said.

Vietnam will go through a period of trial and error, which is normal when political changes of this magnitude are made.

He also said that Trong will be very busy and it may be necessary to create special assistant positions to take on the increased responsibility for Party and Government affairs in this new situation.

Currently, Vietnams acting President is Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, who is serving as Vietnam's first female head of state in place of President Tran Dai Quang who passed away on September 21 due to a serious illness.

The president is the countrys top representative in both internal and external affairs, as well as commander-in-chief of the military.

Vietnams leadership structure now has four pillars: Party chief, president, prime minister and national assembly chair.

Trong, born 1944 in Hanoi, studied Literature in university and spent many years working for the Communist Review, the political journal of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and was its editor in chief between 1991 and 1996.

He served as Hanoi's Party Secretary between 2000 and 2006, before chairing Vietnam's National Assembly for two consecutive terms.

Trong became a standing member of the Politburo, the Party's decision-making body, in 1999.

In 2011, he became the General Secretary of the Party's Central Committee, and was reelected to the position in 2016.Vietnamese fishing boats in Ben Ngu wharf of Nam Du Islands, Kien Giang, Vietnam. Photo by Shutterstock/Melinda Nagy

Eight Vietnamese fishermen have been arrested for smuggling over $72,000 worth of liquor and exotic animals, the Malaymail reported Saturday.

The fishermen, aged between 25 and 35, were found approximately 20 nautical miles from Tanjung Gemuk Village, Rompin District, on Friday, according to the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).

They had no valid travel documents and used fake boat registration numbers to deceive authorities and smuggle goods, said the Pahang MMEA deputy director Captain V. Pannir.

He said authorities suspect that the smuggling activities were carried in the waters using the barter system.

This is based on the presence of several boats that surrounded the fishing boats before they managed to flee upon noticing our presence, said Pannir.

46 cartons of liquor of unrecognized brands, 10 barrels of snakes and squid were found on the fishermens boat.

Malaysian authorities believe that the goods were about to be smuggled out of the country for consumption in the Vietnamese market.

Also last week, 39 Vietnamese fishermen were arrested by Malaysian authorities for illegally fishing in its waters.

Hundreds of Vietnamese fishermen have been charged with fishing violations in foreign waters in recent years, prompting Vietnamese authorities to try raising fishermens awareness of maritime boundaries and international maritime laws.Nguyen Bac Son is removed from the post for his violations in the state-run MobiFones acquisition of private TV AVG. Photo courtesy of Vietnam News Agency

Former information minister Nguyen Bac Son has been retrospectively dismissed from the post, the National Assembly announced Monday.

The punishment was meted out for serious violations that he committed in the state-run telecom giant MobiFones acquisition of private pay TV firm AVG.

The National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee had taken the decision last week to remove Son from his post as Minister of Information and Communications for the term 2011-2016.

Early this month, Son was also stripped off titles as member of the 11th Party Central Committee and Secretary of the ministry's Party unit for the term 2011-2016.

The punitive measures followed the Politburo, the Party's decision-making body, asking the Central Committee in July to initiate "strict" disciplinary action against Son.

The Politburo held Son mainly responsible for violations committed by the information ministry's Party unit for the term 2011-2016. Son was found to have violated the democratic centralism principle and working regulations, enabling many very serious violations to take place.

Son directly approved the AVG acquisition against regulations and asked his subordinates to sign documents that did not abide by regulations, the Politburo said.

MobiFone, the country's third largest telecom firm, made headlines early in 2016 when it announced it was breaking into the pay TV market with the acquisition of a 95 percent stake in AVG.

But the Government Inspectorate concluded that the deal had violated investment laws and caused an estimated loss of around VND7 trillion ($307 million) to the Government.

A criminal investigation into the deal was launched in July. Truong Minh Tuan was dismissed as Minister of Information and Communications in July for signing the illegal deal when he was serving as a deputy minister.

Son, born in 1953 in Hanoi, holds a doctorate degree in Economics. He was a member of the 10th and 11th Party's Central Committee, and a delegate of the 13th National Assembly.

He had worked in various positions as a military officer, assistant of former President Le Duc Anh, northern Thai Nguyen Province's Party Secretary, deputy head of the Central Propaganda and Training Commission and Minister of Information and Communication.For 21 years, Gia Tran has been depositing bottles and cans in Vancouver to support the fight against cancer.

It would not be a regular weekday at the B.C Cancer Foundation Office in Vancouver without Gia Trans visit, a CBC News report said.

Last Friday, she donated a $10 bill and a toonie, a Canadian two-dollar coin. In return, she received a handwritten receipt, some kind words and friendly smiles.

The 62-year-old woman visits the foundation almost every weekday to make a small donation.

"It's always the same," said Dianne Parker, the receptionist at the foundation's office. "She comes in with a big smile and she always says, 'I love everybody here, and I want to help people.'"

The B.C Cancer Foundation in Canada has been the beneficiary of Gia Trans donations for more than two decades. Photo courtesy of B.C Cancer Foundation

Gia Tran has been depositing cans and bottles for the last 21 years and gives away the refunds for charity. The foundations system only has records of donations shes made going back 10 years, but her contribution has been about $15,000, the staff estimate.

Her kids advise her not to go outside in the cold, but Tran doesnt listen. No, I go. I want to help people. I want to go to the hospital  cancer. I help people.

Hot weather works better for Trans collection campaign as more people spend time outdoors drinking.

Cans are better for her as they are not as heavy as glass bottles.

After she feels she has collected enough cans and bottles, Tran walks to the returns depot with the bags. She can take the bus but it is not always easy for her, as the driver does not allow heavy loads.

On the bus I only get one bag, not two bags. I walk. I dont care.

Once she is done at the depot, she takes the bus or goes to the foundations office on foot. A one-way trip usually takes her 45 minutes, but the trip can last 90 minutes on winter days.

Sarah Roth, chief executive of the B.C Cancer Foundation, said she is delighted by Trans daily presence and so is everyone else.

She is like the joy of our day when she comes, absolutely, Roth said, adding Trans visits generate a positive vibe in the whole office.

Gia Tran, a Canadian citizen, according to The Guardian, cant really explain why she chose the B.C. Cancer Foundation as the beneficiary of her altruistic drive.

She says: I dont know why. People happy, Im happy too.Knives, glass trays and even big objects like stainless steel table stick to the body of a Mekong Delta resident.

Nguyen Huu Tai, 60, lives in My Tho City, southern Tien Giang Province. He stumbled on this strange ability or property 13 years ago, when a stainless steel object got attached to his body.

"I was eating when the spoon fell, but it stuck to me, which was very weird. I thought it was because of sweat, but the more I wiped the sweat off, the tighter it clung to me," Tai said.

So he tested what happened with other stainless steel items and the same thing happened: they stuck to his body, defying gravity. At this time, he was busy with his business, so he did not explore this phenomenon further.

Tai with 6 stainless-steel knives sticking to his body. Photo by VnExpress/Phan Than

During the last Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, Tai tried it again and his ability had not gone.

"I took a photo of me and the attached knives and sent it to my friends. After that, many people came to know about my ability, Tai said.

His sister, a head physician at Tien Giang General Hospital - visited his home and asked to see the phenomenon with her own eyes: "My brother has this power and I didnt know until now, Dr Nguyen Thi Hanh said.

At first, only stainless steel objects stuck on him. Recently, he found even glass and massage stones were doing the same thing. The heaviest object his body has been able to hold so far is an inox table with dozens of bricks weighing 20kg hanging from it.

An 8kg inox table stands still on Tai for a few minutes. Photo by VnExpress/Phan Than.

He should not make any sudden movement when he walks and talks to people when things are attached to his body. The attachment lasts for as long as 10 minutes, but if there is some walking involved, the time is reduced by half.

The sticky man explained that the execution of his ability requires a set of techniques like light breathing, mostly inhaling with limited exhaling, and especially, no strong exhalation.

He can demonstrate this ability on his upper body: abdomen, chest, back, shoulders, arms, both cheeks and forehead, but he restricts experimenting on his face because it could be dangerous, Tai said.

Tai has never experienced anything that was a precursor to this phenomenon. He is the only one in the family with this ability or property.

Normal potential?

Some scientists have remarked that every human being has the potential to attract objects, like the ability to swim. They say a newborn can swim by itself, but those who want to excel in it have to practice, and those who are afraid of water will not be able to swim.

Tran Hoang Dieu, chairman of the Union of Science and Technology Association of Tien Giang Province, said after watching the video clip of Tai with knives clung onto his body that this ability does not happen naturally but takes practice.

"This phenomenon is popular in the world, it can be achieved by training," Dieu said.

Vu The Khanh, director general of the Union of Applied Science and Technology, explained that every human being has the ability to draw objects, depending on the weight and material. For instance, anyone can have electricity charged nylon or wool attach to their body. However, to be able to keep heavy objects on the body and do so for a long time, it is important to practice regularly and persistently.

Khanh also claimed that in recent years, there have been drastic energy" (nang luong cam xa) classes in Hanoi where students train to attach bricks, rocks and iron objects weighing 50-70kg to their body.

"It's like practicing qigong, or yoga, to help people stay healthy and keep many illnesses at bay," Khanh said.

While these explanations dont seem to pertain to Tai, who has apparently not practiced to gain this property or ability, he said he has noticed that among all objects, he feels the strongest vibration with stainless steel.

"It runs powerfully in me like an electricity flow. Every time I do this, I lose a lot of energy, but in return, I feel good and my mind is at ease."The Tapanuli orangutan is a newly discovered species that numbers just 800 individuals. Photo by AFP/Nanang Sujana

A billion-dollar hydroelectric dam development in Indonesia has sparked fresh concerns about the impact of China's globe-spanning infrastructure drive.

The site of the dam in the Batang Toru rainforest on Sumatra island is the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, a newly discovered species that numbers about 800 individuals in total.

The $1.6 billion project, which is expected to be operational by 2022, will cut through the heart of the critically endangered animal's habitat, which is also home to agile gibbons, siamangs and Sumatran tigers.

Indonesian firm PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy is building the power plant with backing from Sinosure, a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) that insures overseas investment projects, and the Bank of China, company documents show.

Chinese SOE Sinohydro, which built the mammoth Three Gorges Dam, has been awarded the design and construction contract for the project.

The development is one of dozens being pushed by the government to improve electricity supply throughout the sprawling archipelago, parts of which are regularly plagued by blackouts.

But the Chinese-backed project has sparked fierce resistance from conservationists, who say the potential environmental risk has already seen the World Bank Group shy away from involvement.

Its Chinese backers appear undeterred, however, something critics say underscores the troubling environmental impact of Beijing's trademark "Belt and Road Initiative", which seeks to link Asia, Europe and Africa with a network of ports, highways and railways.

"This issue is becoming in some ways the face of the Belt and Road initiative," Professor Bill Laurance, director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Australia, told AFP.

"I think this crystallises in a way that people can understand what a tsunami of 7,000-plus projects will mean for nature."

'Death knell'

Until recently, scientists thought there were only two genetically distinct types of orangutan, Bornean and Sumatran.

But in 1997 biological anthropologist Erik Meijaard observed an isolated population of the great apes in Batang Toru, south of the known habitat for Sumatran orangutans, and scientists began to investigate if it was a unique species.

Researchers studied the DNA, skulls and teeth of 33 orangutans killed in human-animal conflict before concluding that they had indeed discovered a new species, giving it the scientific name Pongo tapanuliensis or Tapanuli orangutan.

The 510-megawatt dam, which will supply peak-load electricity to North Sumatra province, will flood part of the ape's habitat and include a network of roads and high-voltage transmission lines.

Critics say it will fragment the three existing populations, who are living in a tract of forest less than one-fifth the size of the greater Jakarta region, and lead to inbreeding.

Meijaard said the dam would be the "death knell" for the animal.

"Roads bring in hunters (and) settlers -- it's the start, generally, of things falling apart," he told AFP.

Weighing the risk

But the plight of the cinnamon-furred ape seems to have been given little attention in the environmental impact assessment by PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy, according to conservationists and scientists who have seen the document.

In August, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) filed a legal challenge against the environmental permit approved by the North Sumatra government, saying it failed to address the dam's impact on wildlife, communities living downstream, or the risk of damage from earthquakes in the seismically active region.

PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy and Indonesia's environment ministry declined to respond to AFP's requests for comment.

Bank of China said in a statement it did not comment on specific projects, but added it takes "all relevant factors into consideration when formulating policies and making decisions."

The World Bank, through its sister organisation the International Finance Corporation, declined to comment on any aspect of its initial ties to the project -- outlined in World Bank documents dated March 2017 -- or environmentalists' claims it pulled out due to habitat concerns.

The Batang Toru project is not the only development in Indonesia linked to the Belt and Road initiative, which aims to bolster Chinese influence abroad.

But it might be the most contentious.

"We really hope the financial backers of this project will see there are environmental and social problems with the project and decide not to support the project," said Yuyun Eknas of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).

"The World Bank has pulled out. We hope the Bank of China will do the same."S&P affirms Ukraine ratings at 'B-/B' with stable outlook

The rating agency expects that a new program with the IMF will be approved by the end of 2018.

If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+EnterSwiss Supreme Court rejects Russia's complaint in dispute with Ukrnafta over property seized in Crimea

The Swiss Federal Tribunal rejected Russia's petition for appealing decisions on jurisdiction and ruled to recover from Russia legal costs and compensation to Ukrainian companies worth CHF 550,000.

If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+EnterUkraine has already lodged a similar WTO complaint against a third member of the customs union, Kazakhstan.

Ukraine has launched complaints at the World Trade Organization to challenge anti-dumping duties imposed by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan on certain types of Ukrainian steel pipes, documents published by the WTO showed on Monday.

Ukraine said the two countries, both members of the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union, should have phased out duties that were "higher than necessary, erroneous and based on deficient rulings, procedures and provisions," Reuters said.

Read alsoUkraine files appeal in dispute with Russia over railway equipment import restrictions

Ukraine has already lodged a similar WTO complaint against a third member of the customs union, Kazakhstan.

Countries accused of breaking the WTO rules have 60 days to settle the matter or Ukraine could ask the WTO to adjudicate."We condemn any attempts at borderisation, as observed since the incursion of Azerbaijani troops into Armenian territory on 12 May" Joint statement

The United States is deeply concerned about reports of intensive fighting today between Armenia and Azerbaijan.ANTONY J. BLINKEN

Statement of the MFA of Armenia

Ookla has awarded Ucom with The fastest fixedline network in Armenia award

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Recognizing the One-Year Anniversary of the Ceasefire Declaration Between Armenia and Azerbaijan

They should not be positioned near civilian communities neither in Armenia nor in Artsakh

Humanitarian and human rights protection needed following the 2020 outbreak of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh

Galaxy Group of Companies expands its activities in Belarus: a new TIME and Pandora store launched

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UCOM has officially launched the sale of IPHONE 13

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Six servicemen were wounded by the attack of the Azerbaijani armed forces in Artsakh, two of them in critical condition

S&P Improved the Outlook on Ameriabank to Positive

Ararat Mirzoyan to visit to Minsk

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"Fall forward": Gurgen Khachatryan, the Co-Founder of the Galaxy Group of Companies, addressed a message to young people in Armenia

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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Armenias acting FM holds meeting with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for South Caucasus (video)

Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Zohrab Mnatsakanyan has held a meeting today with Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus Ambassador Rudolf Michalka, the foreign ministry said. During the meeting Mnatsakanyan congratulated Michalka on his appointment to office and wished good luck in his mission. Michalka presented his agenda and upcoming steps in office. Mnatsakanyan and Michalka addressed the developments that took place in the region and exchanged ideas over prospects of cooperation with the Special Representatives Office. At the request of Michalka, Mnatsakanyan touched upon the latest domestic political developments in Armenia, stressing that the government continued the reforms process aimed at combating corruption, strengthening rule of law and justice and ensuring equal conditions in the social and economic sectors based on the broad mandate of the people. The acting FM reiterated the Armenian governments commitment on holding snap elections of parliament in conformity with international standards. In this context Mnatsakanyan attached importance to cooperation with OSCE ODHIR and other international institutions. Presenting Armenias stance and approach in the direction of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, Mnatsakanyan reaffirmed the commitment of the Armenian side to the exclusively peaceful solution of the conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship. In this context Mnatsakanyan emphasized that Armenia attaches great importance to the development of an atmosphere of security and peace, emphasizing that international partners should refrain from all actions which lead to arms race and which increase dangers of destabilizationYulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the Batkivschyna party, has called on President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to reverse the government's decision on increasing natural gas prices for households by 23.5% starting November 1, 2018.

"An extraordinary thing has just happened. President Poroshenko ordered minutes ago that the price for gas be raised by 23.5%. This means by nearly a quarter more. And Poroshenko's decision has been fulfilled. This means that the price for gas and heating tariffs will be 23.5% higher in the new heating season," Tymoshenko said in a statement published on the Batkivschyna party's website.

For an absolute majority of people in the country, this price hike comes as "a real shock" and "a disaster that will push Ukrainians into a poverty niche," she said.

"Why has it happened that the prices for gas, and therefore the heating tariffs, have been raised? Because Poroshenko's corrupt entourage has already taken the best mineral fields in Ukraine. And in the seven months that are left before the end of their governance, they want to put billions on their offshore accounts by extracting gas from our own Ukrainian fields," Tymoshenko said.

She insisted that this cannot be allowed.

Tymoshenko also addressed Verkhovna Rada speaker Andriy Parubiy and the parliamentarians to immediately convene an extraordinary parliamentary session to consider the matter.

"If the deputies and all political forces do not react to this and pretend that nothing happens, most of the families will simply be unable to survive this winter," she said.

This time around, this spontaneous increase of the gas price has gone beyond all limits, "and everyone involved in the criminal groundless increase in the tariffs for gas and heating will be held accountable under the Criminal Code," she said.

Tymoshenko also demanded that the president of Ukraine stop "this genocide of the Ukrainian people."

"I also want to say that, when this administration led by the president is removed through democratic elections in seven months, I guarantee you that the tariffs for gas and heating will be cut at least by half. Or possibly even by 60%," Tymoshenko said.Horizon Capital to invest up to $200 mln in Ukraine in 3-5 years

Horizon Capital Group, which manages $800 million, plans to invest up to $200 million in Ukraine over the next three or five years, Denys Tafintsev, a senior partner and a member of the Horizon Capital investment committee, has said at the Kyiv International Economic Forum.

"Ukraine has a relatively stable macroeconomic situation and poorly priced assets: six years ago they were three times more expensive," he described the current situation.

Tafintsev noted that large international investors are unlikely to come to Ukraine on the eve and during the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2019.

"This is a good opportunity for us as a domestic fund," he said.

According to him, among the company's industry priorities are IT, processing, export sectors, and light industry.

Tafintsev noted that Horizon Capital invests in share capital, avoiding companies with large debts.

He told Interfax-Ukraine that the named volume of investments is planned not only at the expense of the new investment fund Horizon Capital is currently creating, but all the company's investments.Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called on compatriots not to believe populists who promise a reduction in the price of natural gas, the press service of the head of state has said.

"Listen today to the promises of populists to reduce the price of gas by two, three, four or even six times. This can be done only by returning to Russian gas bondage," Poroshenko said at a meeting with the staff of the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine in Kyiv on Monday.

He stressed that he would in no circumstances allow returning Ukraine "to the gas bondage" of the Russian Federation.

"We have barely got out of this bondage and are now trying to return there again. I will not allow the country to return to the so-called 'Russian world' under any circumstances. I advise you to listen less to the sweet voices of pseudo-defenders. Why? Because there is a lot of honey in them, there is little truth, or maybe there's no truth at all," Poroshenko said.

Commenting on the situation with publicly guaranteed debt, the president said: "The greatest number of loans was taken by political forces that currently defend ordinary people most loudly. $54 billion is the aggregate debt heritage that today's truth fighters took in 2007-2013, when the respective political forces were in power."

Poroshenko also recalled the promises and commitments undertaken by the Ukrainian authorities to equalize domestic gas prices with the import price.

"It would not be superfluous to recall that Ukraine took the obligation to equalize domestic gas prices with the price of imported gas when [Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr] Groysman was still the mayor of Vinnytsia. The respective memorandum with the IMF was signed on October 31, 2008. The Fund was then headed by Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Who was prime minister at the time? It's very easy to look into Wikipedia. But whoever it is, such obligations are not personal, but international legal. Although obligations and money were taken by certain people, money must be returned by others," he said.Ukrenergo and Moldelectrica in the middle of October signed four appendices to the operational agreement on simultaneous work in the Ukraine-Moldova common regulation unit, the press service of the company has reported.

In particular, the parties agreed and signed the following documents: the procedure of compensation for unforeseen deviations in the common regulation unit, the order of planning of intersystem flows in the common regulation field, dispatching control over the simultaneous operation of the energy systems of Ukraine and Moldova, parameters of synchronization devices in the intersystem grids of the enterprises. The parties plan to sign four more applications of the operational agreement after completion by the end of this year.

During the meeting, the sides also discussed the mechanisms for implementing the provision/receipt of emergency assistance between the parties, and also agreed to form a working group under the auspices of the Energy Community to agree on the step-by-step implementation of the process of exchange of the balancing energy and power reserve.

"The operations agreement regulates the parallel work of the power systems of Ukraine and Moldova in accordance with European rules and standards and is one of the conditions for the synchronization of the energy systems of Ukraine with ENTSO-E. Consistent and well-coordinated work with Moldelectrica is another confirmation of the interest of the two countries' energy systems in synchronization with ENTSO-E and effective cooperation with the Energy Community," the deputy director for operational management, the chief dispatcher of Ukrenergo, Vitaliy Zaichenko, said.The Russian fishing vessel Nord detained by Ukraine has been handed to the Ukrainian National Agency for Tracing, Recovery and Management of Crime Assets as material evidence in a criminal case, the prosecutor's office of the so-called Autonomous Republic of Crimea based in Kyiv has reported.

This transfer was accomplished in line with a ruling by the Kherson City Court, the office said.

The Russian vessel should be put up for auction.

"The goal of the vessel's transfer is to carry out all management procedures to preserve and increase the value of assets or transfer the management of assets based on a management or disposal contract, or to sell the relevant assets and then deposit the cash into accounts with state banks until the completion of the criminal proceedings," Yevhen Komarovsky, a senior official at the prosecutor's office of the so-called Autonomous Republic of Crimea, said.

The decision was made to save budget funds for keeping the detained vessel at Berdiansk seaport, it said.

It was reported earlier that the Ukrainian State Border Service detained the Nord with ten crewmembers on board on March 25, 2018.

The office of the Verkhovna Rada human rights commissioner said it upheld the ownership rights of the sailors from the Nord, as some of their personal belongings were discovered on board when the vessel was being transferred to the Ukrainian national agency for its subsequent sale through an auction.

"Volodymyr Ostapenko, the commissioner's representative for the southern regions, and secretariat employee Viacheslav Bondarenko ensured the observance of the sailors' ownership rights during the vessel's transfer by the prosecutor's office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to the agency. They inventoried the sailors' personal belongings and drew up a relevant deed. This deed and a log with records have been passed to the ombudsman's office," the office said in a statement on Friday evening.

The office said it was monitoring the observance of the Nord sailors' rights and therefore invited them to be present during the vessel's transfer, but they refused.

"The commissioner's office stresses yet again that the rights of the Nord crewmembers have not been violated," it said.The U.S. authorities demonstrate Russia that they will not tolerate its failure to fulfill its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said.

"I understand the U.S. intention to withdraw from the INF Treaty. They demonstrate Russia that they will no longer tolerate its "hybrid" failure to fulfill its obligations. The architecture of strategic stability must be transparent, fair and efficient," he wrote on his Twitter page on Monday.

As reported, on October 21, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he intends to withdraw the United States from the INF Treaty. He said the U.S. would pull out "and then we are going to develop the weapons," the Associated Press said.The state-owned Shepetivka Repair Plant (part of the Ukroboronprom State Concern) has completed the repair of another batch of 220mm Uragan multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) and handed them over to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"The Ukrainian Armed Forces have received a new batch of repaired Uragan multiple launch rocket systems. This is one of the long-range and most powerful multiple launch rocket systems used by our military. Within 20 seconds, the Uragan can make a full volley of 16 missiles, which will reliably hit targets at a distance of up to 35 kilometers," Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page on Monday and posted a respective video.

At the same time, Ukroboronprom reported that during the repair, the plant had fully restored all components and assemblies of the Uragan MLRS and successfully completed acceptance tests in the presence of the customer.

Noting the advantages and tactical and technical characteristics of the MLRS of this type, the concern's press service noted that bringing the system to combat state takes only three minutes, which in combination with the highly mobile 8x8 chassis helps quickly move to the position, strike the enemy and avoid return fire.The Batkivschyna Party faction has asked Verkhovna Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy to convene an extraordinary session of parliament to adopt a decision on a moratorium on tariff increases.

"The Batkivschyna faction has appealed to Parubiy with the demand to immediately convene an extraordinary session of parliament. We demand a resolution on a moratorium on tariff increases, which can ban the government from making further unlawful decisions. Under the Constitution, such an extraordinary meeting of parliament can be convened by the speaker or 150 deputies," reads a statement issued by the party on Monday.

"We count on the support of all concerned people's deputies, who believe that the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers to increase tariffs should be stopped, and utility tariffs should be brought to a reasonable level," the party said.

"You can put your signatures at any time (24 hours a day) in the party office in Kyiv. Our faction members have already signed," the statement said.

As earlier reported, on October 19, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to increase the price of natural gas for the population and heat supply companies by 23.5% from November 1, 2018.

Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko called on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to revoke this decision.

Tymoshenko also called on deputies of all levels to immediately convene extraordinary sessions and appeal to the president to immediately abolish this increase in tariffs. In addition, Tymoshenko appealed to Parubiy and people's deputies with the request to immediately initiate the convening of an extraordinary session of parliament to consider this issue.

The Rada's Batkivschyna faction numbers 20 deputies.Ukrainian positions in Donbas attacked five times on Monday, no casualties recorded

Illegal armed groups violated the ceasefire in Donbas five times on Monday, October 22, without using weapons proscribed by the Minsk agreements, the press center of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) has reported on Facebook.

According to the report, Ukrainian soldiers were not hurt in fighting.

Militants used grenade launchers of different systems, heavy machineguns and small arms.

"The enemy was most active near Maryinka. Russian occupation forces fired at the positions of the Joint Forces in the areas of the settlements of Krymske, Maryinka, Novotroitske and Lebedynske," the report says.On Wednesday, October 24, at 11.30, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference entitled "Features of Police Provocations and Justice of Titushki (hired thugs)." Participants include lawyer Orest Shevchuk; chairman of the NGO "Commission for the Protection of Illegally Accused" and lawyer Yulia Vasylenko; chief physician of the Metropolitan Sheptytsky Hospital and Chairman of the NGO "Lviv Human Rights Initiative" Nataliya Van Doeveren; activist of the NGO "Commission for the Protection of Illegally Accused" Elvira Serbayeva. Organizer - NGO "Commission for the Protection of Illegally Accused" and NGO "Lviv Human Rights Initiative" (8/5a Reitarska Street). Registration requires press accreditation. More information by phone: (097) 860 4781 (Orest Shevchuk).The lack of medicines and free health care increases the mortality tenfold, and the health care sphere is a redistribution of financial flows, Head of the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) Illia Kyva, said, the press service of the SPU has reported on its official website.

"Today, the majority of the population of Ukraine is elderly people who require the attention of doctors. However, we do not have medicines, free health care. People are afraid of getting sick, because any disease that could have been cured in the hospital before, today is becoming a sentence and there is a risk of losing your life. Not to mention oncological diseases," he said on the Newsone television channel.

The politician said that the Ukrainians do not have enough funds for treatment, since medicine prices are "frightening."

In his opinion, the attempts made to overcome corruption in health care to this day have been unsuccessful, since it is not beneficial for the officials of the highest echelons, and while they are dividing the money, Ukrainians are dying.

"Probably the current acting Minister of Health tried to defeat the old system, eradicate corruption schemes, fight the pharmacological mafia, but, unfortunately, no one has yet managed to defeat the government. They will continue to act as it is convenient for their pockets," he said.Arbil , Iraq, Oct 21, 2018 (AFP)



The dominant party in Iraq's Kurdistan has secured the most seats in the autonomous region's parliament, despite its leader Massud Barzani having championed an ill-fated independence referendum last year, the local electoral commission said Sunday.

Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) won 45 of 111 seats in the September 30 elections, up from 38 at the last polls in 2013, according to final results announced by the commission.

Barzani was the key backer of Kurdistan's independence vote in September 2017 that was deemed illegal by Iraq's central government and saw Baghdad impose economic penalties and retake disputed territory.

The KDP's main rivals, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), likewise made gains and will see 21 of its lawmakers enter parliament, up from 18.

The leaders of the region's top two political parties also took their rivalry to Baghdad, contesting the honorary role of Iraqi president.

The PUK's candidate Barham Saleh won that race, maintaining a tacit accord between the two parties which sees the PUK take the federal presidency while the KDP holds the Kurdistan presidency.

However, the Iraqi Kurdish presidency has been left vacant since Barzani stepped down following the failed independence referendum.

But he still has clout in Iraq, with the KDP winning 25 seats in nationwide parliamentary elections in May.

"Now that he is the great heavyweight of Kurdish politics, no-one can do without him in Baghdad," said Adel Bakawan, a research associate at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris (EHESS).

"He lost the gamble of the referendum, but the legislative (elections) in May were a tremendous moment of grace; he was courted by the Americans and the Iranians," said Bakawan in reference to the two key powerbrokers in Iraq.

- New Kurdistan movement -

In Kurdistan's parliamentary vote, the main opposition Goran (Change) party lost half of its seats and was left with 12 lawmakers.

Observers have put Goran's losses down to the arrival of another group standing in opposition to the KDP and PUK heavyweights.

The New Generation movement, founded this year to channel public anger at the region's elite, won eight seats in the September 30 poll.

The results mean the KDP could theoretically have the parliamentary majority without having to form an alliance with its political rivals, instead gaining the backing of minority lawmakers.

The appointment of a new president to replace Barzani has been on hold, pending the drafting of a new Kurdish constitution for which no timetable has been set.

Goran and numerous Islamist parties have said they will reject the results of the vote, which saw a 57 percent turnout according to official figures.

The ethnic and religious minorities of Kurdistan's three provinces in northern Iraq -- which have been autonomous since 1991 -- are reserved 11 seats in parliament.

Five each go to Turkmen and Christian candidates, with one for the Armenian community.

The remainder of the seats were won by smaller, mainly Islamist parties.A new batch of US sanctions announced on October 16 targeted some 20 companies and financial institutions that finance Basij Resistance Force, a paramilitary organization linked to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Introducing the sanctions last Tuesday, the United States Treasury Department said in a statement that the network of businesses that were targeted by the new sanctions provide financial support to Basij, that trains child soldiers for the IRGC.

The new sanctions are part of the United States economic campaign to pressure Iran over what President Donald Trump's administration describes as its "malign" role in the Middle East, including support for militant groups.

But is the Basij force as violent and destructive as its critics charge? Radio Farda asked its listeners in one of its call-in shows; The Sixth Hour.



The shows host and Radio Fardas chief editor, Niusha Boghrati, probed into the nature of Basij's activities as well as its structure, its link to the Iranian military, its expansion in the region and its activities in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

One listener, questioned Basij's definition as a defender of the country, saying, "Those who defended Iran during the war with Iraq in the 1980s, were young men who were raised in Iran under the Shah. They are now either in prison or living in exile if they are still alive. What is known today as Basij is a tool to create terror."

Another listener highlighted Basij's role in intimidating and suppressing peaceful protesters. He said, "Basij members keep shockers and tear gas canisters at home ready to be used against demonstrations as they break out. Sometimes they even frighten the regular police."

Listener Amir was adamant that Basij members were "brainwashed" to believe the regime's core ideology and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's personality cult.

Speaking about Basij's structure, Radio Fardas expert on the IRGC, Morad Veisi said: "IRGC has four forces and two organizations. The four forces are the ground force, the aerospace force, the naval force and the extra-territorial Qods Force. The two organizations are the Intelligence organization and the Basij. The Basij network starts from Tehran and spreads to the rest of the country down to the smallest villages via a capillary network."

"This structure, which runs through every street and alley, was widely used in the disputed Presidential election in 2009. The network efficiently carried out decisions about supporting hardline candidates favored by IRGC down to the last person. The government has been using this network as a key tool since then," Veisi added.

"Meanwhile, Basij has spread its structure into various sectors, creating sub-structures such as Students Basij, Government Employees Basi and so on," He continued.

Elsewhere in the program, Veisi explained how the Basij owns and manipulates interests in the stock market and how it runs investment and industrial firms including banks and steel plants.

Veisi also explained the Basij's regional activities. He said, "The Islamic Republic has duplicated Basij's structure and organization in various Middle Eastern countries to support the political forces that align with Tehran."

"The first of such experiences was the creation of Hezballah in Lebanon, which is now a key player in that country. According to IRGC commanders, later on, in Syria, when the armed opposition was about to capture Damascus, IRGC commanders armed civilians to defend the Bashar al-Assad government. The first commander of the Basij-like forces in Syria was an IRGC general who was later killed in a road accident," Veisi explained.

According to Veisi, when ISIS became highly active in Iraq in 2014 and Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa for jihad against ISIS, Iran helped form the Hashd al-Sha'bi by recruiting the militia wings of various political groups in Iraq. The force, however, is still active in the post-ISIS Iraq with some 120,000 armed men.

Veisi said that Iran's latest experience in duplicating Basij's model is still going on in Yemen, where Iran has been working to form and strengthen the militia group Ansarollah based on Basij's structure and mission.

A listener joining the debate towards the end of the program said that although Basij helped the Islamic Republic to attain its goals in the war against Iraq, later it was quickly turned into a force for suppression of the regimes opponents. A force that according to yet another listener, identifies reform-minded individuals and intellectuals and clamps down on them.A French senator visiting Iran said on Sunday that European nations are seeking to ensure at least one Iranian bank stays connected to the world after the US imposed new sanctions against the country.

The European efforts to help Iranians benefit from the nuclear deal despite the US sanctions is "difficult but it's possible", said French Senator Philippe Bonnecarrere.

One way was "to have at least one Iranian bank remain connected to the international banking system through SWIFT to keep up commercial relations on goods or services that are not subject to sanctions," he added.

Bonnecarrere, who heads the France-Iran friendship group in the upper house of parliament, made the remarks during a news conference with French and Iranian counterparts.

Bonnecarrere was in Iran with six other members of the French parliament. The visit was a sign of "all the determination and all the will of France to keep alive the nuclear agreement," said one of the lawmakers.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's Mega International Commercial Bank will immediately terminate its payment clearing mechanism between Taiwan and Iran in a response to the United States' sanctions on Iran, a senior bank official told Reuters on Monday.

The official declined to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the media. In August, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters Mega International Commercial Bank planned to terminate its payment clearing mechanism between Taiwan and Iran after November.

Reporting by AFP, ReutersIn a telephone call to their Pakistani counterparts, Irans armed forces chief of staff and interior minister have called for the swift release of 14 Iranian military personnel and punishment of those responsible for abducting them.

"Based on agreements [signed] between the armed forces of the two countries to ensure security of common borders, we expect the Pakistani armed forces to adopt the necessary preparations and push for the immediate release of the abducted [Iranian] soldiers and border guards," state-run Young Journalists' Club (YJC) cited IRGC Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri as saying in a phone call with his counterpart, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, on October 19.

Baqeri also called on Pakistan to take "immediate and severe" action to arrest the terrorists behind the abductions.

The senior Iranian commander stressed the importance of strengthening the presence of Pakistani security forces along the common border to promote security and prevent acts of terror, YJC reported.

Bajwa, for his part, briefed his Iranian counterpart on the latest development concerning the abducted Iranians. He expressed hope that the measures carried out by Pakistani security forces would secure the arrest of those responsible and the release of the Iranian forces as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Iranian Interior Minister AbdolRahman Rahmani Fazli also called his Pakistani counterpart, Shehryar Afridi, on October 20 to follow up on the case of the abducted Iranian border guards, who were taken across the border into Pakistan by a terrorist group on October 16.

Shehryar Afridi assured Rahmani Fazli that Pakistani reconnaissance planes were monitoring the suspects and are cooperating with Iranian forces on the matter.

On October 17, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had talked to his Pakistani counterpart, calling for Islamabad's action to release the hostages and arrest the kidnappers.

A Sunni Baluch armed group, Jaish ul-Adl or Jaish al-Adl (the Army of Justice), which is said to be based in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the abduction on its Twitter account.

The Iranians were kidnapped on October 16 while patrolling the Iran-Pakistan border.

According to Jaish ul-Adl, the Iranian border guards, serving at an outpost in the city of Mirjaveh, southeast Iran, were "totally disarmed" and "captured."

IRGC Chief Commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari has said the Iranian border guards were first drugged and then kidnapped.

Jaish ul-Adl, which claims to be fighting for the Sunni Baluch minority's rights in Iran, has repeatedly attacked Iranian border guards, killing or taking them hostage in Iran's second-largest province, Baluchestan, bordering Pakistan.

Iranian authorities maintain that Jaish ul-Adl is a terrorist group related to "foreign governments.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict depends directly on the parties to the conflict, Dr. Sarunas Liekis, the Lithuanian political analyst, a board member of the Vilnius Institute of Political Analysis, who is in Baku, told Trend.

The OSCE Minsk Group can only stabilize the situation around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he said. The Group can make recommendations and maintain the status quo.

Liekis noted that with the coming of the new government to power in Armenia, it is possible to expect constructive changes in the countrys position on the settlement of the conflict.

The unresolved conflict keeps Armenia in isolation, and the country cannot participate in significant international projects, Liekis said. Armenians themselves are also dissatisfied with the situation in the country. This conflict negatively affects the overall development of the region.

Nevertheless, Liekis believes that the status quo will continue.

There are always chances in international politics, and sometimes you have to wait for a long time for a conflict to be resolved, he said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_ZeynBaku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Samir Ali - Trend:

Azerbaijan is further increasing its economic power by implementing such projects as the construction of the Star oil refinery, Azerbaijani MP Tahir Mirkishili told Trend.

He noted that qualitative changes are taking place in Azerbaijani economy, which are important for the future of the country.

One of such projects is the Star oil refinery, the construction of which was completed in Turkey, he said. This plant worth $6.3 billion will produce diesel, aviation fuel, naphtha, xylene and other products for the Turkish domestic market. The annual production capacity of the plant is 4.8 million tons of diesel fuel, 1.6 million tons of naphtha and 1.6 million tons of aviation fuel. The Star refinery will increase the oil refining capacity in Turkey, which now reaches 28.1 million tons, by 33 percent, will make it possible to save $1.5 billion in imports of refined petroleum products.

The MP noted that the need for diesel fuel is steadily increasing in the developing transport sector of Turkey.

Turkey imported diesel fuel worth $7 billion in 2017, said Mirkishili. The Star refinery will reduce imports of petroleum products by 36 percent. The refinery, depending on oil prices, will generate trade value of $6-8 billion annually.

He added that after the completion of all projects in Turkey, investments of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR in the Turkish economy will reach $19.5 billion.

Azerbaijan, which is building a regional economy, will further increase its economic power with these projects, said the MP.

The opening ceremony of the Star oil refinery took place on October 19 in Izmir city of Turkey with the participation of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The total oil refining capacity of the refinery will be 10 million tons, and Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR is the main supplier of raw materials for the refinery. The refinery will significantly reduce the dependence of Turkey on imports of petrochemical products.

At the refinery worth $6.3 billion, built by SOCAR in the Aliaga district of the Turkish city of Izmir, on the territory of the Petkim petrochemical complex, 1.6 million tons of naphtha, 1.6 million tons of aviation fuel, 4.8 million tons of low-sulfur diesel fuel, 700,000 tons of petroleum coke, 420,000 tons of mixed xylene and 160,000 tons of sulfur will be produced.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the inauguration of a new distributary channel of the Araz River in Imishli district.

The head of state made a speech at the event.

Following the ceremony, Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev and Chairman of Irrigation and Water Management Open Joint Stock Company Ahmad Ahmadzade informed the head of state of the work carried out under the project, and the future plans.

The head of state pressed the key to launch the new distributary channel of the Araz River.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening of Imishli Automated Control and Monitoring Center of Azerishig Open Joint Stock Company.

The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the center and familiarized himself with the conditions created here.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening of the Flag Museum in Imishli.

The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the museum.

President Ilham Aliyev viewed conditions created at the museum.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

As part of his visit to Imishli district, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening of the ASAN Hayat complex.

The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the complex.

While touring the complex, President Ilham Aliyev was informed of the work done there.

The head of state then launched the Imishli ASAN xidmet center.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

Azerbaijan strongly condemns the visit of the mayor of the French city of Saint-Etienne to the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan (MFA) said in a message on Oct. 22.

"This step taken by the local authority of France in a breach of norms and principles of international law, the Azerbaijani legislation, as well as the as the national legislation of France serves to promoting the illegal separatist regime created by Armenia in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. The mayor of the city of Saint-Etienne is accompanied during this illegal visit by Francois Rochebloine, a person notoriously known for his bias position against Azerbaijan and acting under influence of the Armenian lobby in France."

"We refer to the Circular on the legal framework of external actions of local authorities signed by the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France on May 24, 2018, and recall that the local authorities are prohibited from interacting in any form, including concluding agreements, carrying out visits and holding joint actions with the separatist authorities of territorial entities which have not been recognized by France. In this regard we underline that the allegedly signed Friendship Statement during this illegal visit does not have any legal basis," the MFA message reads.

"Such illegal steps of the local authorities of France seriously undermine the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, where France is represented, to find a solution to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict via negotiations, and the image of France as a mediator. We call on the Government of France to take necessary measures to restraint its local authorities from any actions serving the strengthening of the current situation of status quo created as a result of the occupation of the Azerbaijani territories and urge them to unconditionally implement the provisions of its legislation," the message further reads.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the name of the French citizen Gael Perdriau will be included to the list of the persons whose entry to the Republic of Azerbaijan is denied for conducting the illegal visit to the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan in violation of the Azerbaijani legislation.

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, Oct. 22

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has viewed conditions created at a new building of Imishli District Court.

Chairman of Imishli District Court Gurban Hajiyev informed the head of state of the work done here. The two-storey building covers a total area of 2300 square metres.

The necessary infrastructure was created at the building for the application of the Electronic court information system under the order of the head of state. The building was supplied with modern ICT under a joint project implemented by the World Bank and the Ministry of Justice.

The building has a conference hall, training room, library, archives, cells and a parking lot.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

The 2nd youth exhibition Through the eyes of students: Environmental problems and ways of addressing them has been held at Baku Crystal Hall.

Vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, founder and head of IDEA (International Dialogue for Environmental Action) Public Union Leyla Aliyeva, Minister of Youth and Sport Azad Rahimov, officials, MPs, foreign ambassadors in Azerbaijan attended the exhibition.

Organized by the Ministry of Youth and Sport, the exhibition aimed to encourage youth interest in and raise awareness of environment-related issues, support their creative potential and stimulate social initiative.

Vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva and Minister of Youth and Sport Azad Rahimov viewed works showcased at the exhibition.

On display at the exhibition were nearly 200 handiworks by young people aged between 14 and 29.

The event also featured a ceremony to award winners of the exhibition.Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 22

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistan, which has embarked on the industrialization and diversification of the economy, welcomes the investment activity of Japanese partners, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said at a government meeting, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper wrote.

A meeting of the Turkmen-Japanese Committee for Economic Cooperation and a joint business forum will be held in Tokyo, the message says.

This issue was discussed at the government meeting.

Noting the importance of expanding partnership with Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), with whose participation major investment projects in the oil and gas and chemical industries and other industries were implemented in the country, the head of state addressed a series of specific instructions to the leadership of the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs of Turkmenistan (Turkmenvnesheconombank).

It was emphasized that Japan is one of the reliable business partners of Turkmenistan. The portfolio of cooperation with Japan includes the implementation of work for construction of industrial complexes in the Balkan region of Turkmenistan including the enterprises for the production of urea fertilizers in Garabogaz, polyethylene and polypropylene - in Kiyanly, the plant for the production of gasoline from natural gas in Akhal region.

In its commentary, the state news agency Turkmen Dovlet Khabarlary paid particular attention to the agreements reached after the summit talks held in 2009 and 2013 as part of official visits of the President of Turkmenistan to Japan, and in 2015, during the official visit of the Prime Minister of Japan to Turkmenistan.

It was reported earlier that JBIC also expressed its readiness to finance the project of construction of a gas-turbine power plant with a capacity of 432 megawatts in the Charjew district of the Lebap region of Turkmenistan.

In 2013, a number of agreements and contracts were signed between the Turkmengaz, Turkmenkhimiya and Turkmennebit (Turkmenoil) state concerns with Japanese Sojitz, Chiyoda, Nippon, ITOCHU, JGC, Kawasaki, TOYO, Mitsui, Tsukishima, Mitsubishi Sumitomo companies. The total cost of the joint projects slated for implementation was estimated at $ 10 billion.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Olmazor Business City in the Olmazor district of Tashkent has begun searching for investors, the directorate of the business city told Trend on Oct. 22.

The representative of the directorate said that a special competition has been announced, according to which both local and foreign entrepreneurs may get acquainted with the project of the business city to make an investment decision.

According to the information, the construction of the business city is planned to be completed by 2021.

The directorate rep reminded that work on the creation of the Olmazor Business City in began in accordance with the Aug. 2, 2018 decree of President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev On measures to create modern business centers in the country.

A concept plan has already been developed, and the design work of Olmazor Business City is underway.

The main focus is on ensuring that the complex is close and understandable for the population. For example, in addition to multi-storey buildings and business centers, a large apple orchard will be laid on an area of 23 hectares and the area along the water basins located here will be landscaped, the representative of the Olmazor Business City noted.

Residential buildings will be located in the form of a ladder in order not to close the view of the Qichqiriq canal running through the Olmazor Business City.

The presentation of the project on the construction of the Olmazor Business City, the new center of the Olmazor district of Tashkent, took place at late June 2018.

Administrative buildings, multi-family housing, business centers, hotels and avenues, educational and medical institutions are planned to be built on the area located between Yangi Olmazor Street and the Little Ring Road.

The project will contribute to the development of industry and the creation of new jobs. An inventory of unused buildings in the area will be conducted, with further attraction of foreign investments and technology.

Olmazor district is located in the northwestern part of Tashkent. It is one of the four historical districts of the city, formed in the XVIII century. The area of the region is 3,450 hectares, the population is over 306,000 people.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanovBaku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Taleh Mursagulov - Trend:

Logistics companies of Kazakhstan and Romania have joined the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), Javid Gurbanov, chairman of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC, told reporters in Baku Oct. 22.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a regular meeting of the TITR International Association.

He said that Russian companies are also showing interest in the route.

He noted that for the efficient operation of transport corridors, a great number of participants of these corridors, transparency and uniform tariffs are necessary.

Gurbanov added that the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, which is important for the work of the TITR, has already been commissioned.

Today [at the meeting] we discussed new tariffs and considered issues of price adjustment to market conditions, Gurbanov said. In the future, this will be useful for us.

On October 22, Baku hosted the meeting of the TITR International Association. The event was attended by 15 participants, including representatives from Kazakhstan, Turkey, Georgia, Romania, Poland and others.

TITR is an initiative by transport and logistics companies from China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to transport goods from China to Europe.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Taleh Mursagulov - Trend:

Construction project of a railway between Baku and Azerbaijans Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic is being revised, Chairman of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Javid Gurbanov told reporters in Baku Oct. 22.

He said that Azerbaijan is working on this issue.

The construction of the railway requires a fresh look, Gurbanov said. So the Azerbaijani government is reconsidering this issue.

However, he added that the government is making efforts to build this railway.

Creation of a direct railway communication between Baku and Nakhchivan will be possible after completion of construction of the Iranian section of the International North-South Transport Corridor.

Upon completion of construction of the Iranian section, it will be possible to create a 1,450-kilometer corridor between Baku and Nakhchivan along the territory of Iran.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Taleh Mursagulov  Trend:

Azerbaijan is a key transit point for the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), the Vice President of Kazakhstan Railways (KTZ) JSC National Company Sanzhar Elyubayev told reporters Oct. 22 in Baku.

Elyubayev noted that Azerbaijan is not only the final point of delivery of export and import cargoes, but also an important link in the transit of goods from China to Europe, Turkey and other regions.

In general, we highly appreciate our cooperation. All our joint initiatives are well received, Elyubayev said.

The KTZ Vice President noted that in general, the transit of goods increased by 77 percent, the transit of containers rose by 3.3 times.

"I believe that it will continue to grow in this progression," Elyubayev said.

The KTZ Vice President also noted that the main goods for transit are grain and metals.

According to the State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan, in January-September 2018, the trade turnover with Kazakhstan amounted to $169.8 million. At the same time, the export of goods to Kazakhstan amounted to $36 million, the import to $133.8 million.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Matanat Nasibova  Trend:

The project to support development of vocational education, implemented by the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs (Employers) Organizations of Azerbaijan Republic (AEC), worth 20,000 euros, has been extended until 2021, the Vice President of the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs (Employers) Organizations of Azerbaijan Republic Vugar Zeynalov told Trend.

The vice president noted that the project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Economic Development Fund (SEQUA GmbH), is aimed at strengthening cooperation between entrepreneurs and the vocational education system in order to increase employment among young people in Azerbaijan and to support staff qualifications improvement in accordance with the needs of the labor market.

"The first phase of the project will be completed in November of this year. The signing of a contract to extend the second phase of the project is expected to take place in January 2019. The project aims to expand the integration between employers and vocational and technical education system. It is envisaged that the project will be extended until 2021. We started this project three years ago (in 2015) in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Development. At that time, the "Strategic Roadmap on the prospects of national economy of Azerbaijan", approved by the state to accelerate the process of forming an effective higher education system in the country, was not adopted yet," the vice president said.

Zeynalov noted that the establishment of close ties between entrepreneurs and higher education institutions is important for the development of national economy, and today a lot of work is being done at the state level to carry out reforms in the field of education aimed at supporting the expansion of the private sector.

The Confederation of Entrepreneurs (Employers) Organizations of Azerbaijan Republic (AEC) was established on March 5, 1999 in Baku and passed the official state registration.

The AEC unites in its ranks over 1000 business entities, including 35 associations and unions of socio-economic profile.Tehran, Iran, Oct. 22

Trend:

Over $4.5 billion worth of Iranian goods were exported to Iraq in the first half of the current Iranian calendar year (started March 21), a report said.

Some 9,618 tons of goods worth $4.56 billion were exported to Iraq in the first six months of this year, registering a 45 percent rise compared to the same period last year, according to the public relations office of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration on October 22.

Among neighbors, Iraq is the second large importer of Iranian goods.

The value of the Islamic Republics exports to Afghanistan over six months also stood at $1.6 billion, registering a 31-percent growth compared to the same corresponding period last year.

Iran exported 3,225 tons of goods to the neighing nation in six months.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Ilkin Shafiyev - Trend:

Azerbaijan plans to purchase and build about 50 new vessels until 2025, Rauf Veliyev, the Chairman of the Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping (AZCO) Closed Joint-Stock Company said Oct. 22 during an event dedicated to the 160th anniversary of the company.

He noted that 20 vessels have been purchased over the past five years.

"In the coming days, a contract will be signed with Baku Shipbuilding and Repair Plant (Baku Shipyard) LLC for the construction of four new tankers. I recall that two tankers and two Ro-Pax vessels are currently being built there. In general, it is planned to purchase and build about 50 new ships by 2025," Veliyev said.

The chairman of the company noted that AZCO continues to contribute to the development of the transport potential of Azerbaijan.

"In order to transform Azerbaijan into a regional transport and logistics center and to use the advantageous geographical position and transit potential of the country, we cooperate with the relevant organizations," Veliyev stressed.

He also noted that at present, 14 vessels are sailing in foreign waters under the Azerbaijani flag.

"Increasing the number of these vessels is one of our goals," the chairman of the company said.

The new logo of the organization has also been presented during this event.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

The first forum of women entrepreneurs from the Caspian countries is planned to be held in Astrakhan in April 2019.

This idea has already been supported by the Astrakhan region and the Azerbaijani side, the coordinator of women's entrepreneurship in the region Irina Bryntseva told reporters Oct. 22, TASS reported.

"The Azerbaijani side has already agreed; they are ready to become our strategic partner to attract neighboring countries and create even some kind of union - a union of women of the Caspian countries, which are united by business," Bryntseva said after the Astrakhan-Azerbaijan women's entrepreneurship forum.

She noted that the forum will help organize the exchange of information and will promote the development of trade relations and attraction of investments in the regional economies.

The Astrakhan-Azerbaijan Women's Entrepreneurship Forum, where about 350 people are participating, will be held during two days. Master classes, expert sessions and presentation of business projects by women entrepreneurs of the Astrakhan region are planned to be held in the event.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Taleh Mursagulov - Trend:

Appeals to the Banking Ombudsman in Azerbaijan have decreased, the Secretary of the Banking Ombudsman Elchin Hasanov told Trend on Oct. 22.

Hasanov said due to the fact that all the complaints of banks are already in the courts, appeals to the Banking Ombudsman have noticeably decreased in the last months.

In January-September 2018, 317 appeals were sent to the Banking Ombudsman and half of them were accepted for consideration, Hasanov said.

The Banking Ombudsman in Azerbaijan started activities in September 2017.

To date, 23 banks and one non-bank credit organization have agreements with the Banking Ombudsman of Azerbaijan.

The Banking Ombudsman in Azerbaijan is Ikram Karimov.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Matanat Nasibova - Trend:

The opening of the Star oil refinery once again demonstrated common priorities and interests of Turkey and Azerbaijan in the region and the world, a famous Turkish historian, professor Togrul Ismayil told Trend.

He emphasized that the Star oil refinery became the first project to receive a document on the promotion of strategic investments in Turkey after the Law on Promotion adopted by the Turkish parliament.

The opening of such a fundamental plant of strategic importance with the joint participation of the Azerbaijani side demonstrates readiness for continued and mutually beneficial cooperation of Turkey and Azerbaijan in the energy sector, he noted. In parallel, this event once again showed that our states play a major role in ensuring security and stability in the region. This is also confirmed by large-scale transport projects that are of strategic importance and aimed at ensuring the security of the region.

He noted that the joint implementation of major projects, and, in particular, the opening of the new oil refinery in Turkey, forms the energy and transport map of Eurasia, as well as enhances regional bilateral cooperation.

Togrul Ismayil added that the powerful projects that are being implemented by Turkey and Azerbaijan are aimed at supporting the strategy of unity of two fraternal peoples, which have great potential for the development of multilateral cooperation.

The opening ceremony of the Star oil refinery took place on October 19 in Izmir city of Turkey with the participation of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The total oil refining capacity of the refinery will be 10 million tons, and Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR is the main supplier of raw materials for the refinery. The refinery will significantly reduce the dependence of Turkey on imports of petrochemical products.

At the refinery worth $6.3 billion, built by SOCAR in the Aliaga district of the Turkish city of Izmir, on the territory of the Petkim petrochemical complex, 1.6 million tons of naphtha, 1.6 million tons of aviation fuel, 4.8 million tons of low-sulfur diesel fuel, 700,000 tons of petroleum coke, 420,000 tons of mixed xylene and 160,000 tons of sulfur will be produced.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Huseyn Veliyev - Trend:

In 2018, electricity produced from renewable sources will exceed 10 percent of the total energy generated in Azerbaijan, the Deputy Chairman of The State Agency on Alternative and Renewable Energy Sources of the Republic of Azerbaijan Jamil Malikov told Trend.

It is forecasted that this figure will reach 12 percent by 2020, and by 2030 it should reach 20 percent, Malikov said.

"This requires investment, appropriate regulatory framework and an optimal tariff policy. In 2017, the volume of electricity produced from renewable sources amounted to 9.8 percent of the total energy production. In alternative energy, the energy losses are very small, since production facilities are located in close proximity to the end user," Malikov said.

Malikov stressed that, in the production of energy from renewable sources, high-voltage lines are not used and when high-voltage lines are used, it is necessary to transform the voltage from high to low.

According to him, in 2018, the share of renewable energy will be higher than it was in 2017, and the prerequisite for this is that one large 50 megawatt wind farm "Yeni Yashma" and two small stations have been put into operation in the country.

"We hope that in the current year the share of renewable energy sources in the total electricity generation will exceed the ten percent level," the deputy chairman said.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @h_veliyevBaku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

Some 400 million kilowatt hours of electricity worth $17 million have been exported from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan, Podrobno.uz quoted Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Industry, Energy and Subsoil Use of Kyrgyzstan Aytmamat Kadyrbaev as saying.

First Deputy Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Kubatbek Boronov said in January-September 2018, the emergency cases in electricity supply decreased by 11 percent compared to 2017.

"To date, the electricity worth $17 million has been exported to Uzbekistan. Last year, 754 million kilowatt hours were planned to be exported, but 765 million kilowatt hours were actually exported. According to our calculations, it was planned to export 500 million kilowatt hours, but at a figure of 467 million kilowatt hours, the export was suspended," he said.

He also said that all reconstruction and repair work at Bishkek's Central Heating and Power Plant has been performed by 58 percent; the work will be completed by November 1.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Fikret Dolukhanov - Trend:

USM holding of Alisher Usmanov, Russian entrepreneur and philanthropist of Uzbek origin, has transferred the control over the Mail.ru Group to the company's top managers, Uzbek media reported referring to the press service of Mail.ru Group.

Thus, USM is no longer the sole controlling party of the Mail.Ru Group, and none of the shareholders alone controls the company through MF Technologies.

Control over the holding's share in Mail.ru Group has been transferred to Boris Dobrodeev, the company's general director.

According to Usmanov, he has been preparing this move for several years. He said that "high-tech companies should be lead by younger generations".

Usmanov added that he was leaving the management of the company "with a light heart."

He also said he plans to announce a charity program at the end of 2018 in the sphere of sports, culture and assistance to children.

He also intends to build the largest e-commerce company in Europe jointly with Alibaba and oust Amazon and eBay.

The main business of Mail.Ru Group is the sale of advertisements through the company's services (Mail.Ru, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks).

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Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanovBaku, Azerbaijan, Oct.22

Trend:

The leading IT solutions provider in Azerbaijan Cybernet held meetings with representatives of the state agencies and business community of Mongolia.

An export mission to Mongolia was organized by the Azerbaijan Export & Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) on October, 12-18, 2018. Cybernet and a number of other members of the Azerbaijan Innovations Export Consortium (AZINNEX) represented the IT sector of the country.

The delegation of Azerbaijan was headed by Deputy Minister of Economy of Azerbaijan Niyazi Safarov. As part of the export mission, the Azerbaijan-Mongolia business forum was held in Ulan Bator on October, 15. Officials and representatives of business circles of two countries attended the event. About 20 Azerbaijani companies participated at the business forum.

As part of the mission, general director of Cybernet Ilham Namazov and business development manager Fuad Akhmedov met with deputy commissioner of General Department of Taxation Z. Batjargal, director of Information Technologies Statistics Center G. Batsaikhan and project manager of Tax Administration Information System at Information Technology Center of Customs, Taxation and Finance B. Yadam. The company representatives also met with representatives of Mongolian Software Industry Association, General Authority for Health Insurance and Communications and Information Technology Authority.

The sides discussed further cooperation and development of mutual relations.

Established in 2004 Cybernet is the leading organization, engaged in creating and implementing IT infrastructures for enterprises, providing technical solutions, developing software of any level of complexities, both in the local market and in the countries of Central Asia. The company actively participates in a number of the state projects in Azerbaijan.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

The Azerbaijani Fund for Social Development of IDPs has announced a tender for construction of 13 residential buildings and other infrastructure facilities.

The tender has been announced for 21 lots. The cost of participation in the tender varies from 100 to 250 manats.

Those who wish to participate in the tender must submit applications until 18:00 on November 16, 2018, and tender offers until 18:00 on November 29, 2018. Opening of the tender packages will take place at 16:00 on November 30.

Address: 57D Tbilisi Avenue, Baku, Azerbaijan

Phone: (+994 12) 431-87-03

Contact person: Emma Mammadkhanova

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Follow the author on Twitter: @AzadHasanliBaku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

Trend:

Uzbekistan and Russia have signed three cooperation agreements at the end of the textile forum held within the First Forum of Interregional Cooperation between the two countries.

In particular, the agreement of mutual understanding has been signed between the "Uztextileprom" Association and the Government of the Ivanovo Region related to the issues of expanding the cooperation between the enterprises of the textile, garment and hosiery branches of the industry.

The "Uztextileprom" Association and the All-Russian public organization "Business Russia" have concluded an agreement on establishing closer contacts between the business entities of the two countries in the field of textile, garment and hosiery industries.

The Agency for Advertising and Marketing of Textile Products under the "Uztextileprom" Association and "Samara Textile Company" LLC have signed an agreement that will facilitate the establishment of cooperation ties during the implementation of export deliveries and the attraction of investments.

As a result, the total amount of the investments attracted in export supplies will exceed $ 15 million.A suspicious flying object has reportedly been seen over a sensitive area in the city of Ahvaz, southwestern Iran, IRNA reports.

The object was flying above the house of a senior cleric of the city Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Mousavi Jazayeri, said his offices representative Komeil Asakereh.



The governor of Ahvaz Jamal Alami also said that the identity of the unauthorized object is still unknown due to the darkness.



Alami added that the case is under investigation and the area is secure.



He also rejected rumors about heavy shooting in the area and stressed that the object flew away following warnings.Iran's foreign minister said that the issue of abduction of Iranian border guards, as well as measures to be taken, have been discussed with Pakistani officials, IRNA reports.

The embassies of the two countries, as well as their defense and interior ministers are closely following the issue of the abducted Iranian border guards, Mohammad-Javad Zarif said.



The terrorist group, calling itself Jaish ul Adl, has claimed the responsibility for kidnapping 14 Iranian guards on October 16.



The foreign minister also noted that the Pakistani government is responsible since the perpetrators fled into the country and the abductees are being kept in Pakistan as well.



The Pakistani government has said that Islamabad is willing to cooperate with Iran on the issue, the foreign minister added.



Zarif also said that the suggestion of increasing the number of Pakistani border guards was discussed, adding that Iran has a good presence at the common border.



He noted that following a previous incident on the shared border, Pakistan increased its forces, but it has vowed again to add the number.Italian ambassador to Tehran and Iranian deputy minister of culture in a meeting stressed strengthening art relations between the two countries, IRNA reports.

Italy is preparing to open a cultural center in Tehran, and along with Irans cultural attache to Italy, enables both nations to enjoy various artistic events, said Italian ambassador in Iran Mauro Conciatori.



He referred to the recent performance of the Italian artist Nicola Piovani in Tehran, and said that the Italian artist is interested to hold such concert again, like other Italian artist who have held concerts or exhibitions in Iran.



Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Art Affairs Mojtaba Hosseini, for his part, expressed Irans readiness to strengthen ties with Italy in different artistic fields.



He named Fajr International Film Festival as a great opportunity to resume the cooperation in aristic fields.



Hosseini also referred to the variety of folk costumes in Iranian southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan, and said that the cloth design college that has been recently established in that province is a place that Italian designers can be introduced to Iranian cloth design.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Elnur Baghishov - Trend:

Electricity is the best export item to support Irans national interests, Iranian Deputy Energy Minister Homayoun Haeri said, IRNA reported.

He said that in the power industry, raw materials are converted into electricity and exported. Therefore, income from electricity is the most valuable, he noted.

We have outlined 10 directions in order to make changes to the electricity industry development prospects, and one of the directions is to increase energy production without using fossil fuels, he said.

He added that another direction is to support the private sector and make maximum use of the existing financial capacity and potential.Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 22

By Jeyhun Alakbarov - Trend:

The bodies of three crew members who died as a result of mass poisoning at the Iranian Nazmehr dry cargo ship, were sent home on Oct. 21 night, Irans Embassy in Azerbaijan told Trend Oct. 22.

The embassy also said that eight crew members are still in Azerbaijan, and the dry cargo ship is also in Azerbaijans waters.

On October 18, a massive poisoning occurred among the crew members of the vessel sailing from Aktau to Baku. The incident occurred at a distance of 21 miles from the island of Pirallahi, in the central part of the Caspian Sea.

At 03:00 (GMT +4), a border patrol vessel approached the Nazmehr cargo ship, taking on board seven crew members. First aid was provided to them on the vessel, after which the patrol vessel headed for the Absheron port.

Doctors were called to provide emergency medical aid. Before their arrival, three members of the Nazmehr crew died (Akbar Mansoomi Kareem (born in 1989), Syed Mortaza Mir-Hossein (born in 1986) and Sajjad Sayed Fereidoon (born in 1990)).

The eight crew members were placed in the toxicology department of the Clinical Medical Center No. 1.Baku, Azerbaijan, October 22

By Azer Ahmadbayli  Trend:

During his visit to Tbilisi in late May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called Georgia a brotherly country. But is it really?

In a week, on October 28, presidential elections will be held in Georgia. The pre-election campaign of candidates is in full swing.

Various parties, movements and just individuals, who are well-known in the country, express their views through the media, creating an overall picture of sentiments prevailing in Georgian society.

In this regard, interesting is the address issues by the so-called Javakhk Diaspora of Russia - an entity of dubious origin created to, allegedly, promote interests of Armenian minority living in the Georgian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti, and which somehow managed to obtain state registration in the Ministry of justice of Russia.

Apart from generalities about the hope for fair and transparent elections, the Javakhk Diaspora of Russia calls on its compatriots to cast their votes for those candidates who have certain priorities included in their election program.

Here are a few of them:

- Decentralization and granting of greater self-government rights to Javakhk [Samtskhe-Javakheti region];

- Establishment of a demilitarized zone in the territory of Javakhk;

- Restoration of lost citizenship to ethnic Armenians of Javakhk and permission for dual citizenship;

- Granting the Armenian language status of regional;

- Return of Armenian churches and religious monuments confiscated during the Soviet period to the Armenian Apostolic Church;

What does, for example, establishment of a demilitarized zone in the territory of Javakhk mean?

According to international law, a demilitarized zone is an area, agreed upon between the parties of an armed conflict, which cannot be occupied or used for military purposes by any party to the conflict.

Why is it necessary to establish such a zone and on what basis would the future President of Georgia be able to do it?

This could all look pretty harmless if it weren't for lessons of history. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan had been initiated with similar claims.

The issues of separatist Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, as well as the return of hundreds of thousands of Georgian refugees there, remain the most painful problem for Georgia.

Since 2008, Armenia, being, as it says, brotherly country to Georgia, voted against the UN Security Councils several resolutions on the return of Georgian refugees to Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region.

Also, Armenia doesnt shy from raising the concern of opening transport corridors through the same separatist entities to Russia from time to time before the Georgian government.

Georgians still well remember that in Abkhazia the Armenian militants fighting alongside separatist troops were exceptionally atrocious against the civilian Georgian population.

Most of the Western audience, which oftentimes is affectionate towards Armenia, is not aware of these facts.

Its hard to explain to the Georgian people why it is necessary to grant greater self-government rights to the region or give back Georgian churches, which Armenians consider their own.

Zealous representatives of the Armenian nation have long been making provocative statements that the Georgian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti is actually one of the regions of the Greater Armenia, and that Armenians are being harassed there, and that in case of conflict Georgia will not be able to stop it.

Head of the Javakhk Diaspora of Russia, Aghasi Arabyan, openly speaks about that, trying to remove responsibility from Armenia in advance: many important issues for the indigenous Armenian population remain unresolved in Javakhk and, accordingly, the probability of a conflict remains. For its part, the Armenian leadership is trying to do its best in order not to stimulate and create conditions for provoking such things. However, if this had happened, the Armenian Diaspora, which is beyond the control of the authorities of the Republic of Armenia, will definitely join the conflict. Then the process will simply become irreversible and Armenia, with the best will in the world, will not be able to stop it.

All actions of the leaders of Armenian separatist minorities in the neighboring countries are coordinated from a single center  the capital city of Armenia, and are subject to a single scenario - the annexation of lands for the implementation of the so-called Greater Armenia project.

However, the instinct of self-preservation does not allow Armenia and the Diaspora to start the process of alienation of the Samtskhe-Javakheti region from Georgia right now, limiting themselves for the time being with claims that will help prepare fertile ground for this in the future.Georgia is strengthening trade relations with the European Union (EU), to where in January-September of 2018 exports from Georgia amounted to $533 million  13.2% higher year-on-year, Agenda reports.

In the reporting period imports reached $1.95 billion (21.5% higher), show the data from the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat).

Overall, in January-September 2018, trade turnover with EU countries increased by 19.6% y/y and amounted to $2.48 billion.United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres hopes that the United States and Russia will come to accords settling recently emerged disputes concerning the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the UN chief, said on Monday, TASS reported.

"The Secretary General is aware of the US comments regarding the INF Treaty and he still hopes that the two countries will be able to solve the disagreements," Haq told journalists.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty because Russia, in his opinion, was violating the terms of the agreement. At the same time, he did not rule out signing a new agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces with Moscow and Beijing if Russia and China provide guarantees of halting the development of such weapons.

The Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing a high-placed official from the US administration that the United States was also considering the option of revising the New START Treaty.A senior Australian official has proposed walling off major metropolises to new permanent migrants and offering incentives to migrants in Sydney and Melbourne to move to less population-dense locations, Sputnik reported.

Population Minister Alan Tudge said in a speech earlier this month that Australia's cities are getting too crowded and congested because of net migration from abroad, noting that 87 percent of skilled migrants in Australia go to Sydney or Melbourne for economic opportunity, the Tasmania Examiner reports.

"We are working on measures to have more new arrivals go to the smaller states and regions and require them to be there for at least a few years," the official said. "We want to have a more even distribution."

New migrants would have to live in less-populated areas of Australia for several years before moving to a metropolitan like Sydney under the official's proposal. The goal of the policy is to "match the skills of new migrants with the skill shortages in rural and regional Australia." By structuring the policy so that new migrants would have to live outside the major cities for a few years, Tudge says "the evidence suggests that many will make it their home for the long term."

Immigration officials may offer incentives to move out of big cities to 45 percent of permanent migrants, or the recipients of approximately 70,000 visas annually.

For migrants accepted into the country for humanitarian reasons, "regional populations are generally more welcoming," Ella Dixon, a migrant resource officer in Tasmania, told the Tasmania Examiner in a story published October 9.

New residents of Australia have flooded Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth in recent years. Between 2006 and 2016, "the combined population of Greater Capital Cities increased by 2.9 million," which accounted for 77 of the Australia's total population growth, according to the Australian Burea of Statistics.

"The major population problem that we have is that nearly all the growth is in Melbourne, Sydney and southeast Queensland, and there we have very rapid growth, and yet meanwhile the rest of Australia is growing very slowly," Tudge said in September, according to the Australian.

Liz Allen, a demographer at Australian National University, says the congestion and overcrowding is not due to permanent residents but instead is caused by an influx of foreign students studying at universities in Australia's bigger metro areas, the Australian Broadcasting Company reported October 9.Chinese authorities have dispatched rescue workers to save miners trapped after an accident at a coal mine in the eastern province of Shandong. Reuters reports citing Chinese state media.

A rock burst destroyed part of a water drainage tunnel in the coal mine, killing two and trapping another 20 workers, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The mine is owned by Shandong Energy Group Co Ltd and located in the provinces Yuncheng County, the report said.

Xinhua separately published on its official social networking services account images of a miner who was rescued from the mine.

The cause of the accident was still under investigation, Xinhua said, adding that the dangerous conditions at the mine are hampering the rescue efforts. More than 170 rescue workers are at the site, Xinhua said.Four more Chinese regions have been accused of faking efforts to rectify environmental problems and paying only lip service to the countrys war on pollution, according to reports published by the environment ministry on Monday, Reuters reports.

The provinces of Henan and Yunnan, as well as the region of Guangxi, were accused of superficial, fake or perfunctory rectifications, according to the latest reviews published by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE). Parts of Guangdong province near Hong Kong were also castigated for failing to take responsibility for violations.

To improve compliance with environmental rules, the central government has dispatched teams across China to ascertain how much has been done to rectify the thousands of problems identified during previous inspections. The teams responsible for Ningxia, Hebei and Jiangsu issued reports last week.

The MEE report noted that Henan province in central China failed to demolish illegal industrial operations in protected nature reserves. And, while the province had been allocated 87 million yuan ($12.55 million) by the central government to protect wetlands during the last two years, it only spent 5 percent of it.

Meanwhile, the southwestern region of Guangxi was accused of failing to curb illegal waste imports, and also saw air and water pollution worsen last year. It also failed to tackle pollution by livestock and poultry farms.

Yunnan province, also in southwest China, was still paying little more than lip service to rectifying violations, and continued to face huge problems curbing pollution from heavy metal production and livestock farming, inspectors said.

Only 15 of the 173 large-scale nonferrous metal producers in the province were included on a list of firms that complied with industry standards, and many smaller plants had expanded illegally and were discharging pollution without a permit, the MEE said.China will increase support for companies with financing issues and launch supporting measures for corporate bond issues, as part of wider efforts to ensure the healthy development of the private sector, the State Council said on Monday, Reuters reports.

The government aims to roll out more favorable policies to ensure the stable and healthy development of the private sector, such as by easing the tax burden, the State Council, or Chinas cabinet, said on its website.

The State Council unveiled the plans after a meeting led by Premier Li Keqiang, it said.Polands regional elections on Sunday bode well for the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party during a parliamentary vote next year, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said, Reuters reports.

We have won ... and this bodes well when it comes to the future, especially for the parliamentary election, Kaczynski said on Sunday after exit poll showed PiS had scored 32.3 percent in the vote for provincial assembly members.Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has expressed his concern over the US intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, he said on Monday at the foreign press association in Rome, TASS reports.

"Our government pays close attention to peace processes. I am concerned over the US decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, I will be in Moscow, I will meet with [Russian] President Vladimir Putin, and I hope to discuss that," Conte said. He noted that due to its traditions and history, Italy "is always ready to cooperate and contribute to peace processes."

On October 20, US President Donald Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty because Russia was violating the terms of the agreement. At the same time, he did not rule out signing a new agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces with Moscow and Beijing if Russia and China provide guarantees of halting the production of such weapons.

The INF Treaty was signed between the Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987 in Washington, DC. The US accused Russia of violating the agreement for the first time in July 2014. Later, Washington repeated the claims on many occasions, while Moscow rejected them, also accusing the US of developing and deploying missiles and missile defense elements prohibited by the treaty.Only 8,000 homes were purchased in August, 3% fewer than in August 2017 and 5% fewer than in July 2018, the Finance Ministry reports, Globes reports.

Only 8,000 residential real estate deals took place in August 2018, including 700 discounted homes in the framework of government programs (Buyer Fixed Price Plan and Target Price Plan). The number of deals was 3% fewer than in August 2017 and 5% fewer than in July 2018. Excluding discounted homes, the figures show a steeper decline in housing sales on the open market: 5% in comparison with August 2017 and 8% in comparison with July 2018. The number of deals in August was the fewest since 2014, which was affected by anticipation of then-Minister of Finance Yair Lapid's zero VAT plan. The figures are from a review of the real estate sector published today by the Ministry of Finance chief economist.

The August figures show that the real estate sector is still slowing down, with a downtrend in deals by investors and move-up buyers. The chief economist department writes that most of the decrease in housing sales occurred in sales of housing units at market prices, not in sales under the Buyer Fixed Price Plan.

The figures show that 2,400 new homes were sold in August, down 7% in comparison with July, but unchanged in comparison with August 2017. The chief economist department believes that most of the drop in sales resulted from increased sales of discounted homes under the Buyer Fixed Price Plan: "The change in sales by contractors at the monthly level was very likely affected to a large extent by sales in the framework of the Buyer Fixed Price Plan, especially when the current year is compared with the corresponding period last year, since the trend in annual pace of sales in the Buyer Fixed Price Plan framework is upwards. When these sales are excluded, we therefore find that sales by contractors at market prices were down 17% in comparison with August 2017. Note that since October 2016, the number of new housing deals at market prices has continuously fallen by rates in excess of 10%, except for May and June 2018, when the decline was 1% and 9%, respectively." The review added, "The rate of decrease in August is the greatest since the beginning of the year."

At the same time, the Ministry of Finance examined sales of new housing by contractors in the first eight months of the year. It was found that 13,500 new homes were sold during this period, 11% fewer than during the corresponding period last year and 40% fewer than in the corresponding period in 2016. The Ministry of Finance stated, "This is the lowest level of deals for new homes in the first eight months of the year since at least the beginning of the previous decade."South Korea said on Monday a project to develop a fighter jet with Indonesia was on track, and it will negotiate a way for Indonesia to pay its contribution, of which about $200 million is unpaid, Reuters reports.

Indonesia and South Korea agreed in 2014 to develop the KF-X fighter jet.

The project is estimated to be worth about $7.9 billion, and Indonesia had agreed to pay 20 percent of the development costs, but a senior Indonesia official said it was seeking lighter financial terms.

South Koreas arms procurement agency Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) told a press briefing the project was on track.

During the South Korea-Indonesia summit in September, it was agreed to continue developing the KF-X, the spokesman said.

About the contribution, we plan to negotiate additionally.

The spokesman confirmed that Indonesias unpaid contribution was about 230 billion won ($203.14 million), from between the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018.

Indonesias request on the financial terms of the deal comes as it is trying to support the rupiah, which is trading near a 20-year-low, and to reduce the use of foreign exchange reserves.

The Indonesian finance ministrys director general of budgeting, Askolani, told on Monday the government had decided to postpone a 2017 payment for the development of the fighter jet for further review. He did not elaborate.

Indonesias investment board chief Tom Lembong told reporters that Jakarta may seek to review its participation share in the project, the number of planes the military will buy, the delivery schedule and a flexibility for Indonesia to resell the aircraft.

Indonesia had committed to buy 48 of the fighter jets, Lembong said.

State news agency Antara reported in May that Indonesia was not allowed to sell the aircraft to other countries or produce components domestically, citing defense ministry spokesman Totok Sugiharto.Japan hopes that ultimately, the US will decide not withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), and thinks that this document plays a crucial role in the sphere of arms control, Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan Yoshihide Suga stated on Monday during a press conference in Tokyo, TASS reports.

"We attach great importance to the historic role of this treaty on the issues of arms control and disarmament. We would not like a situation when the US would really have to withdraw from the treaty. We hope that the situation will improve," he said.

Suga added that the changes in the global security situation "pose a serious problem for stability and peace in Japan."

On October 20, US President Donald Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty because Russia was violating the terms of the agreement. At the same time, he did not rule out signing a new agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces with Moscow and Beijing if Russia and China provide guarantees of halting the production of such weapons.

The INF Treaty was signed between the Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987 in Washington, DC. The US accused Russia of violating the agreement for the first time in July 2014. Later, Washington repeated the claims on many occasions, while Moscow rejected them, also accusing the US of developing and deploying missiles and missile defense elements prohibited by the treaty.Russian President Vladimir Putins meeting with US National Security Adviser John Bolton is still being prepared, Putins press secretary Dmitry Peskov said, TASS reports.

"This meeting is being prepared," he told reporters when asked whether Putins schedule has been changed following US President Donald Trumps statement that his country was withdrawing from the INF Treaty.

Bolton arrived in Moscow evening to have consultations with Russian senior officials on October 22-23.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) since Russia, in his words, was violating the agreements terms. According to The New York Times, Bolton has been commissioned to notify Moscow about Washingtons plans to begin preparations for the withdrawal from the INF Treaty.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has had a 90-minute meeting with visiting US National Security Adviser John Bolton, TASS reported.

The consultations were held behind closed doors, with the side making no statements either before or after the meeting.

Earlier in the day, Bolton had talks with Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. Later on, the US security official is planned to meet with Russian presidents foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov.

Apart from that, he is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, such a meetin is being prepared.

Boltons visit has a special importance on the background of his countrys plans to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).Turkey does not want the situation with the murder of Saudi opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to have a negative impact on relations between Ankara and Riyadh, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Monday, Sputnik reported.

"Nothing will be concealed from the public [regarding the Khashoggi case]. Our main goal is to investigate it thoroughly. We should work together with Saudi Arabia in order to avoid [investigation] gaps. But we do not want the situation to overshadow our relations with Saudi Arabia, with which we have many projects and cooperation fields. It is our fraternal country that is why the process is very sensitive," Kalin stated.

Khashoggi, who has been working as a columnist for The Washington Post, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Following more than two weeks of denials, Saudi Arabia admitted on Friday via state television that the journalist had been killed in a fight inside the consulate. According to Riyadh, 18 people have been arrested over their involvement in the incident.A U.S.-bound caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants whom President Donald Trump has declared unwelcome, crowded into the Mexican border city of Tapachula on Sunday, setting up impromptu camps in public spaces under a heavy rain.

Members of the caravan, exhausted from the hours-long trek on foot from the Guatemalan border, mostly ignored police offers to board buses heading to a migrant shelter because of suspicions they might be deported instead.

The migrants have defied threats by Trump that he will close the U.S.-Mexico border if the caravan advances, as well as warnings from the Mexican government that they risk deportation if they cannot justify seeking asylum in Mexico.

On Sunday, Trump said on Twitter that full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens, arguing that the migrants must apply for asylum in Mexico before attempting to petition U.S. authorities.

In southern Mexico, police in riot gear shadowed the caravans arrival along a southern highway, but did not impede their journey.

Among the throngs hiking into the center of the city was Roger Pineda, a 16-year-old Honduran.

I just want to find some food and a place to sleep, he said, explaining he joined the caravan last week with five family members and a group of friends from the violent city of San Pedro Sula.

I hope Trump allows us to make it to the other side, he said.

In Guatemala, local media reported that around 1,000 migrants were traveling north en route to the Mexican border.

A large column of people marched under a burning sun Sunday as a military helicopter circled low overhead. Many migrants said they were fleeing a toxic mix of violence, poverty and corruption in Central America.

Most said they felt safer advancing in a large group.The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has laid responsibility on Russia for the US decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), noting that Moscow 'highly likely' violates this agreement, NATO Spokesperson Oana Lungescu said, TASS reports.

"NATO Allies have repeatedly raised their concerns about Russia's lack of respect for its international commitments, including for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was concluded in 1987 between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the NATO Summit in July [in Brussels], Allies stressed that the United States is in compliance with its obligations under the INF Treaty, while a pattern of behavior over many years has led to widespread doubts about Russian compliance," Lungescu said.

The spokesperson also recalled that in its statement after the Brussels summit, NATO voiced concerns over Russias 9M729 missile system. "After years of denials and obfuscation, Russia recently acknowledged the existence of the missile system without providing the necessary transparency and explanation. In the absence of any credible answer from Russia on this new missile, Allies believe that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty," she said.

The alliance continues consultations on this issue, which was discussed at the NATO defense ministers meeting in October. The sides noted there that "allies have made efforts over many years to engage Russia on this issue, in bilateral and multilateral formats."President Donald Trump said Washington would withdraw from a landmark Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe because Russia was violating the pact, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow, Reuters reports.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, required elimination of short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.

Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement so were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out, Trump told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Nevada.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Sunday that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States would be very dangerous and lead to a military-technical retaliation.

Gorbachev, now a frail 87-year-old, said it would be a mistake for Washington to quit the treaty, and it would undermine work he and U.S. counterparts did to end the Cold War Arms race.

Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to? Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin would seek answers about the planned withdrawal when he meets John Bolton, Trumps national security adviser, for scheduled talks in Moscow this week.

U.S. authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development. China is not a party to the treaty.The United States has not sent additional troops to its border with Mexico, Pentagon spokesperson Col. Rob Manning told reporters on Monday, just hours after President Donald Trump said he had alerted the military that a caravan of refugees poses a national emergency, Sputnik reported.

"We have not received any guidance on any additional support required, but we certainly remain postured," Manning said, as quoted by Inside Defense.

Manning confirmed that 2,100 National Guard troops are already stationed along the southern US border, the report said.

In a series of tweets earlier on Monday, President Donald Trump said he had alerted the US military and Customs and Border Protection of a national emergency after Mexico was unable to stop the caravan.

The caravan, which the United Nations has said is made up of more than 7,200 Central Americans, has crossed into Mexico en route toward the US border, where the migrants hope to gain asylum.Speaking in Moscow, National Security Advisor John Bolton said that Washington's sanctions against Tehran have had an impact on the global oil market, and that both Russia and the US would benefit from US sanctions policy, Sputnik reported.

Saying that the US has increased its own oil production and exports, Bolton said that Russia too stood to benefit from the decline of Iranian output. "It's true that Russia as an oil exporter will benefit from rising oil prices. And we [also] benefit as oil producers. But in time, the market will level off," Bolton said, speaking to Russian radio station Echo Moskvy.

According to the senior US official, US sanctions against Iran are aimed at putting "maximum pressure on Tehran to change their behavior."

Commenting on other issues, including the possibility of another summit between Presidents Putin and Trump, Bolton said a one-on-one summit like the one that took place in Helsinki earlier this year was possible.

Regarding claims of Russian meddling in the US elections, Bolton said he told his Russian counterparts that such meddling, if it took place, was unlikely to have had any real impact.

As far as Russian-US arms treaties were concerned, Bolton said that Washington has yet to finalize its position on whether to extend the New START arms control treaty, and still has time to do so.

Bolton met with his counterpart Nikolai Patrushev on Monday in Moscow for discussions on issues ranging from the possible US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and the fight against international terrorism, drug-trafficking and illegal migration.

In addition to Echo Moskvy, Bolton also spoke to Kommersant, telling the Russian business newspaper that Washington has not yet decided whether it will deploy missiles in Europe if it goes ahead and withdraws from the INF Treaty. The US official also complained about the fact that China, another major nuclear power, is not a party to the INF Treaty, despite the fact that between one third and half of its ground-based ballistic missiles are in the short and intermediate range categories proscribed under the Russian-US treaty.

Calling the INF Treaty an "anomoly," Bolton noted that while the treaty prohibits the deployment of US ground-based cruise missiles in Poland, it does not prevent them from being deployed by US ships in the Baltic Sea. At the same time, he complained about Russia's alleged violations of the treaty.

On Saturday, President Trump announced that the US was considering withdrawing from the INF, a landmark 1987 arms treat aimed at reducing the danger of nuclear war in Europe. The announcement prompted Washington's European allies including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain to voice security concerns, with Russian officials warning that Moscow would do everything necessary to preserve strategic parity in case of a US exit from the treaty.

President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Iran nuclear deal in May, and promised to introduce several waves of tough US economic sanctions against Tehran, including restrictions targeting Iran's energy sector and sanctions penalizing foreign companies doing business with Iranian energy firms. After the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Russia, China, and the European signatories to the JCPOA have scrambled to try to salvage the treaty. This has included measures to bypass the impending US energy sanctions, set to go into effect next month.KYODO NEWS - Oct 23, 2018 - 08:07 | All, Japan, World

Japan will consider accepting more Asian refugees from 2020, with an eye to doubling the current annual ceiling of around 30 to strengthen its response to regional humanitarian needs, government sources said Monday.

The government will review its current policy of receiving refugees only from Myanmar under the UNHCR-led third country resettlement program, while promoting their settlement not only in Tokyo and surrounding areas but in other parts of the country, according to the sources.

Tokyo is expected to convey the idea to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, who is scheduled to visit Japan from Wednesday, the sources said.

Japan has accepted a total of 174 Myanmar refugees including some Rohingya Muslims from the western Rakhine State since 2010 under the third country resettlement program. They had been persecuted and moved to neighboring Thailand and Malaysia.

The government will consider encouraging refugees to live in areas other than major urban areas where support measures tend to be more widely available. The move comes as the government plans to accept more foreign workers to deal with a labor shortage in such industries as nursing and construction.

Japan has been known for its tight immigration policy. In 2017, the country accepted only 20 of about 20,000 people who applied for refugee status and allowed 45 to stay in the country on humanitarian grounds, according to the Justice Ministry.

Some critics view the plan to accept more foreign workers as a way to import cheap labor, given that foreigners from developing countries who receive on-the-job training under government programs are often found to have been made to work under poor conditions.KYODO NEWS - Oct 22, 2018 - 18:42 | All, World

The Japanese government expressed hope Monday that the United States will reconsider its plan to withdraw from the Cold War-era nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

"It is undesirable for the United States to have no other choice than to break away from the treaty and we hope (the withdrawal) would be avoided," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a press conference.

(Yoshihide Suga)

Tokyo will seek to exchange views on the matter with Washington, the top government spokesman said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he will scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, which limits the size of each nation's arsenal of missiles.

Washington has long argued that Moscow has been violating the deal by deploying a range of tactical nuclear weapons to intimidate former Soviet states that have aligned with the West.KYODO NEWS - Oct 22, 2018 - 11:46 | World, All

Railway service partially resumed Monday morning after a train derailed in northeastern Taiwan the previous day, killing 18 people and injuring about 190 others.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visited the site of the accident in Yilan County in the morning, telling reporters that the government aims to resume service fully within three days and will promptly investigate the cause of the derailment.

The Taiwan Railways Administration, at a late-night press conference, suggested that the express train may have encountered some mechanical trouble before the accident occurred, saying the driver had reported a lack of power.

Taiwanese media quoted a passenger as saying that before the derailment, the train had made an unscheduled stop at a station after the crew announced over the PA system that the train was experiencing a problem with its motor.

18 dead, 170 injured in train derailment in northeast Taiwan

The train, operated by the Taiwan Railways Administration since February 2013, uses cars made by Nippon Sharyo Ltd., a leading Japanese manufacturer of railway carriages.

A Nippon Sharyo representative declined to comment Monday, saying company staff in Taiwan were still gathering information.

The Puyuma Express, bound for Taitung in southeastern Taiwan from New Taipei with 366 people on board, derailed on a curve near a station in Yilan at around 4:50 p.m., leaving some of its cars overturned. Military personnel and firefighters worked overnight to rescue survivors and clear the wreckage.

The driver of the train has been hospitalized with injuries, and police are planning to question the driver later, according to local media.KYODO NEWS - Oct 22, 2018 - 03:53 | World, Urgent, All

Eighteen people died and about 170 were injured when a train derailed Sunday afternoon in northeastern Taiwan, according to government authorities.

Five cars of the eight-car Puyuma Express 6432 derailed shortly before 5 p.m. between Dongshan and Suxin stations in Yilan County in northeastern Taiwan, according to domestic media reports.

[Central News Agency/Kyodo]

Some 310 people were aboard the train bound for Taitung from New Taipei, and an estimated 30 to 40 people were trapped in the wreckage, reports said.

Most of those killed were in the first car, which flipped over, the Associated Press reported, quoting an unnamed government official.

Televised images of the crash site showed many of the train's carriages strewn about in a zig-zag pattern some distance from the tracks and a right-hand bend in the line.

A child aboard one of the cars that did not leave the tracks was quoted as saying that the train had braked hard immediately before the derailment.

But the precise cause of the derailment is not yet known.

The train was operated by the Taiwan government-run train system and its cars, purchased from Nippon Sharyo Ltd., a leading Japanese manufacturer of railway carriages, entered service in 2013.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has ordered 120 military personnel to the area to assist with the rescue and recovery operation.

[Central News Agency/Kyodo]KYODO NEWS - Oct 22, 2018 - 04:05 | All, World

The chief executive of MUFG Bank Ltd. will skip an investment forum in Saudi Arabia, the bank said Sunday, joining a list of figures who have decided to pull out following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The bank said it decided "comprehensively" on the cancelation of Kanetsugu Mike's plan to take part in the forum.

Mike, who was due to give a speech at the three-day Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh from Tuesday, will be replaced by Deputy President Eiichi Yoshikawa, who will not address the participants, the bank said.



(Kanetsugu Mike)

The unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. will also cancel a ceremony for the opening of its office in the Saudi Arabian capital, initially scheduled for Wednesday. The office will commence operation as scheduled from the same day.

Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, vanished after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

Saudi Arabia claimed Saturday that Khashoggi got into a fight with people he met at the consulate and died as a result. U.S. media have reported that Turkish investigators heard audio recordings that suggested Khashoggi was tortured and killed.

Known as "Davos in the Desert," the forum, like the annual meetings in the Swiss resort of Davos, brings together business and political leaders from around the world. But U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday he would not take part in response to the death of the journalist.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire have also decided to pull out.By Mohammad Gharebag, KYODO NEWS - Oct 22, 2018 - 23:21 | World, All

Iran is open to dialogue with the United States without preconditions, but such talks remain elusive so long as Washington fails to show Tehran respect, its Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Monday.

"We do not have preconditions, but we can say that what is required for dialogue is mutual respect, not mutual confidence," Zarif said in an interview with Kyodo News.

"Usually people (who) engage in negotiation do not necessarily have trust and confidence in each other, but it requires mutual respect," he added.

Zarif said the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump could smoothen the way for dialogue by adhering to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that it "illegally" pulled out of earlier this year, and by halting its unilateral sanctions imposed since then -- both things that he argued Washington is legally obligated to do.

Under the deal struck with six major powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

On May 8, Trump withdrew the United States from the accord, struck under his predecessor Barack Obama, and pledged "the highest level of economic sanction" against Iran, calling it "the leading state sponsor of terror."

After U.S. withdrawal, Iran has opted to stay in deal, at least for now, and cooperate with Europe to salvage it.

Zarif said if a new administration in Washington can suddenly abandon the fruit of two-and-a-half years of intensive negotiations, it brings into question whether the United States can be relied on to implement other international agreements reached with it.

"The United States has failed to respect its legal obligations, its treaty obligations," he said. "Unfortunately, the way that the United States has acted...has created conditions that would basically undermine the utility of negotiation."

On whether an Iranian withdrawal remains on the table as an option, Zarif said Tehran must determine for itself whether the economic and political benefits of staying in the deal exceed the costs.

"We will make (that) decision based on our own evaluation of (our) national security and interests," he said. "We are not working against any deadline."

Referring to efforts by Britain, France and Germany to salvage the deal through a mechanism to protect Iran's economy and ensure its oil exports and banking transactions, the foreign minister said "serious measures" must be taken in that regard before Nov. 5.

That is the date set by the United States for implementation of sanctions targeting Iran's oil exports, critical to its economy.

Zarif said the three European countries that signed the deal have made commitments and proposals, but some technical details still need to be worked out, and unfortunately there has been "U.S. massive illegal interference" in the process.

"For the time being, we are selling our oil (and) we are able to maintain our economy," he said.

Zarif expressed confidence that Iran will be able to overcome sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies, considering that "many countries have shown readiness to do business with Iran."

Besides the three European countries, other countries that attach great importance to the nuclear deal, including Russia, China and Japan, "are ready to implement their part."Officials in Kerala justified the letter, saying it was sent to ensure Tamil Nadu's cooperation in approving Kerala's long-pending demand for a new dam.Chandigarh. The fierce train incident that took place during the Ravana dhanan of Amritsar in Punjab on Friday night has also sank the world along with the countryside. Some leaders are doing politics about this incident. But the big leaders of foreign soil are constantly expressing their sympathy and grief over this incident. Sri Lankan Prime Minister has now joined this list.

Indeed, Sri Lankan President Maitripala Sirisena recently wrote a letter to President of India Ramnath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing his grief and sympathy for this horrible rail accident in Amritsar. He has also written in this letter that the Government of Sri Lanka and his country stand in solidarity with the people of India in this difficult time. We all pray for the people affected by this accident and their families.

It is noteworthy that before the Sri Lankan President, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Putin as well as Canada PM Justine Trudo have also expressed their grief on this incident. It is notable that this incident took place on Friday night in Amritsar of Punjab when the program of Ravana Dahan was organized here. During this time, many people were also present on the railway track, but suddenly, after two successive trains, hit two dozen people. In this accident, 61 people have died and 72 have been seriously injured.Munich, Germany, 22 October 2018 - Pre-operative treatment with a combination of the immune checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab and ipilimumab achieves major pathological responses in 100% of early-stage colon cancers with mismatch repair deficiencies, according to results reported at ESMO 2018 (1) from the first exploratory phase II trial to investigate this approach.

Restoring patients' immune response against cancer cells with checkpoint inhibitors is an established treatment strategy for several tumour types. These agents are of particular interest in mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) tumours because they have high mutational load and upregulation of immune checkpoints (2).

Checkpoint inhibitors have previously shown durable responses in metastatic colorectal cancers so the new study investigated whether neoadjuvant treatment in dMMR early-stage colon cancer would achieve clinically significant response rates.

The exploratory trial treated 14 patients with early-stage colon cancer with the checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab (two doses of 3mg/kg on day 1 and 15) and ipilimumab (one dose of 1mg/kg on day 1) before surgery. The two drugs act in different ways to restore immune responses: ipilimumab blocks cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) and nivolumab blocks programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1).

Results reported at ESMO 2018 showed that 100% (7/7) of the patients with dMMR colon cancer had major pathological responses (defined as <5% of viable tumour cells remaining). Four of these seven patients (57%) had complete responses.

In contrast, no major pathological responses were seen in pMMR tumours, however there were significant increases in T-cell infiltration.

The immunotherapy regimen was well tolerated and all of the patients underwent radical resection of their tumours without delays in surgery.

"This is the first study with immune checkpoint inhibitors in early stage colon tumours. Our data suggest that neoadjuvant immunotherapy in dMMR colon cancer warrants further research and has the potential to change the standard of care," said lead author Dr Myriam Chalabi, from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands. She commented: "The response we saw is much more dramatic than in metastatic disease, which we did not expect."

"For MMR deficient tumours, the results were amazing, with 100% of patients so far having either complete or near complete responses within the short timeframe of treatment, which is usually 4 weeks," she continued. "I think the finding will have implications for clinical practice in the future. At this stage, it's too early to call it practice changing but it could be if similar results are seen in larger studies."

Commenting on the study for ESMO, Dr Aurelien Marabelle, Clinical Director of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Centre, Villejuif, France, said: "The study positions immunotherapy at an earlier stage of the disease history for patient with localised disease, and, interestingly, in the neo-adjuvant setting as opposed to the adjuvant setting that is now approved in melanoma and non-small-cell lung cancer."

Marabelle cautioned that the study was small, not randomised and there was no control arm of patients not treated with immunotherapy. He said: "Limited data are available but if they show complete pathological responses in the neoadjuvant setting, this therapeutic strategy might become standard of care for dMMR colorectal cancer." He added that dMMR tumours are more frequent in localised cancers (~15% of patients) than at the metastatic stage (~5%).

Marabelle considered that the finding of some activity with immunotherapy in pMMR tumours in early colon cancer was also potentially interesting. He said: "pMMR CRC does not usually respond to immunotherapy in the metastatic setting. If the researchers find that immunotherapy improves tumour shrinkage preoperatively or reduces post-surgery relapse in patients with pMMR early stage colon tumours, this treatment strategy might be of broader interest and impact a lot of patients because of the high frequency of colorectal cancer."

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

Abstract LBA37_PR 'Neoadjuvant ipilimumab plus nivolumab in early stage colon cancer' by Myriam Chalabi during the Proffered Paper Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:45 (CEST) in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Sclafani F. PD-1 inhibition in metastatic dMMR/MSI-H colorectal cancer. Lancet Oncology 2017; 18: 1141-1142

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide.Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA37_PR - Neoadjuvant ipilimumab plus nivolumab in early stage colon cancer

M. Chalabi1, L.F. Fanchi2, J.G. Van den Berg3, G.L. Beets4, M. Lopez-Yurda5, A.G. Aalbers4, C. Grootscholten1, P. Snaebjornsson3, M. Maas6, M. Mertz7, E. Nuijten5, M. Kuiper1, M. Kok8, M.E. Van Leerdam1, T.N. Schumacher2, E.E. Voest1, J.B. Haanen8

1Gastrointestinal Oncology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2Molecular Oncology and Immunology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 3Pathology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 4Surgical Oncology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 5Biometrics, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 6Radiology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 7Bioimaging Facility, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 8Medical Oncology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Background: Programmed death 1 (PD-1) and CTLA-4 blockade demonstrated durable clinical benefit in patients with advanced mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) colorectal cancer. This is the first neoadjuvant study to test ipilimumab (anti-CTLA-4) plus nivolumab (anti-PD1) in early stage dMMR and MMR proficient (pMMR) colon cancers (CC).

Methods: Patients with resectable, early stage CC received ipilimumab 1mg/kg on day (D)1 and nivolumab 3mg/kg on D1+15. Surgery was planned a maximum of 6 weeks after informed consent. Primary endpoints were safety and feasibility. Secondary endpoints included: efficacy assessed by pathological response criteria, and associations between response and tumor mutational burden (TMB), interferon (IFN)y gene signatures, T-cell infiltration and T-cell receptor (TCR) clonality.

Results: So far, 14 patients with either pMMR (n=8) or dMMR (n=7) tumors were treated. Treatment was well-tolerated and all patients underwent radical resection of 15 tumors without delays in surgery. Major pathological responses (<5% viable tumor cells) were observed in 7/7 (100%) dMMR CC, with 4/7 (57%) complete responses. Four of these dMMR tumors were clinically stage IIIB/C before start of treatment. Even though no major pathological responses were seen in pMMR tumors, significant increases in T-cell infiltration, particularly CD8+ T-cells, were seen post-treatment in both pMMR and dMMR tumors, with a median fold change of 2.4 (p=0.018) and 4.8 (p=0.0009), respectively. Strikingly, in spite of the major difference in TMB between dMMR and pMMR tumors (p=0.008), pre-treatment TCR clonality and IFN? gene signatures did not differ substantially between these tumors. In contrast, post-treatment IFN? signatures increased the ability to distinguish responders (dMMR) from non-responders (pMMR).

Conclusions: Short-term, neoadjuvant ipilimumab plus nivolumab resulted in major pathological responses in 100% of dMMR tumors and did not compromise surgery. While dMMR status and TMB were associated with response, pre-treatment measures of tumor inflammation may have limited predictive value. Our data suggest that neoadjuvant immunotherapy in dMMR CC warrants further research and has the potential to change the current standard of care.

Clinical trial identification: NCT03026140

Legal entity responsible for the study: Netherlands Cancer Institute

Funding: Bristol-Myers Squibb

Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interestThe funds will support the creation of myAURA, an easy-to-use web service for epilepsy patients

The National Institutes of Health, under the National Library of Medicine's program on data science research, has awarded $1.55 million to an interdisciplinary team lead by Luis Rocha, a professor of informatics and the director of the NSF-NRT complex networks and systems program at the Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering.

The four-year project, a collaboration between the IU School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering and the IU School of Nursing, will employ innovative data- and network-science methods to produce myAURA, an easy-to-use web service for epilepsy patients.

This service will integrate practical, location- and patient-specific health-care information with electronic health records, targeted scientific literature, biomedical databases, social media, and epilepsy-related websites with information about specialists, clinical trials, drugs, community resources and more. The project builds on previous research conducted by Rocha's team and funded by Persistent Systems, which extracted big data about chronic conditions and drug interactions from Twitter and Instagram.

myAURA will be based on a large-scale epilepsy knowledge graph built by integrating data from social media, electronic health records, patient discussion boards, scientific literature databases, advocacy websites and mobile app data. The knowledge graph will, in turn, be used to fuel recommendation and visualization algorithms based on the automatic inference of relevant associations.

The inference will follow algorithms developed by Rocha's team to remove redundancy and extract factual information from large knowledge graphs as well as parsimonious network visualizations developed by Katy Borner, an IU Distinguished Professor in the IU School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering.

The project will also focus on user-centered development and pilot testing of myAURA to validate if and how it improves patient activation through a series of studies lead by Wendy Miller, an assistant professor at the IU School of Nursing.

"Our previous work on depression showed that it's feasible to look at social media for health-related issues," said Rocha. "The collaboration with Dr. Miller, who is an expert in epilepsy management, will allow us to translate our data and network science research, and develop personalized inferences useful to patients of this chronic disease."

Updated information on epilepsy treatment can be difficult for patients to obtain, and the team hopes to create a novel resource for patients.

"One of the problems in the United States is that most small towns--and even not-so-small towns--don't have epileptologists," said Rocha. "At best, patients might see a neurologist, who is not specialized in epilepsy, but most often, people just see a general practitioner. It often happens that they get prescribed older medications not ideally targeted to the patient's case, and follow-up often does not work very well.

"We think data science can help this situation. We came up with the idea to integrate data from social media, from electronic health records, from the published literature, from doctor databases, and from clinical trials into the large-scale knowledge graphs that enable myAURA, which is a personalized portal where people with epilepsy can manage their disease and find personalized information."

Rocha and his team will enjoy the cooperation of the Epilepsy Foundation of America, which manages epilepsy.com, the premiere site for sufferers of epilepsy.

Rocha hopes to expand the techniques used to create myAURA to develop web-based applications for other chronic diseases.

"Projects such as these are the perfect example of the ways big data, data science, network science and informatics can come together to solve important real-world issues," said Raj Acharya, dean of the IU School of Informatics and Computing. "This interdisciplinary work showcases the potential SICE has to impact lives."

###A technology revolution is coming, and the University of Delaware is on the leading edge as the recipient of a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to help develop the quantum electronics of the future. The funding is part of $31 million in quantum research projects announced Sept. 24 by NSF Director France Cordova at a White House summit on quantum information science.

"The quantum revolution is about expanding the definition of what's possible for the technology of tomorrow," Cordova said. "NSF-supported researchers are working to deepen our understanding of quantum mechanics and apply that knowledge to create world-changing applications. These new investments will position the U.S. to be a global leader in quantum research and development and help train the next generation of quantum researchers."

Many of today's technologies rely on the interaction of matter and energy at extremely small length scales. Quantum mechanics studies nature on such a scale -- many thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair -- allowing researchers to observe, manipulate and control the behavior of particles. Next-generation technologies for communication, computing and sensing will exploit these interactions with potentially profound benefits.

"The power of quantum science is that it offers totally new ways to develop electronic devices -- from computers to medical sensors -- with the promise of processing information faster and with greater accuracy and security than ever before," said Matthew Doty, associate professor in UD's Department of Materials Science and Engineering and lead investigator on the project.

A whole new set of rules

This new age of electronics will operate on a completely different set of rules than today's computers and smartphones.

Here are some of the basics:

As Doty explains, today's electronics are based on data encoded in bits. A bit is the smallest unit of information, and it exists in one of two states: 0 or 1. In the hardware of traditional electronics, the 1 state is represented by a high voltage, say 5 volts, and the 0 state by no voltage. Transistors manipulate these bits, for example, flipping the state of bit A if bit B is in the 1 state, but leaving bit A alone if B is in the 0 state.

Now, let's consider quantum devices. They are based on quantum bits, also called qubits. Weirdly enough, these qubits can exist in "superposition states" that are a mixture of both 0 and 1 at the same time. This would make a quantum computer essentially capable of processing many possible scenarios simultaneously instead of just one at a time.

"Let's say you want to search for a piece of information in a large database," Doty said. "A conventional computer has to go through millions of entries, one by one, to see if each entry is a good match. But a quantum computer can look at all of those entries simultaneously and figure out, based on probabilities, which one is the best match. That's why Google is so interested in quantum computing."

Toward quantum computing

The potential of quantum computing has been known for decades, but scientists face two extremely difficult fundamental challenges in building the hardware for quantum computers with thousands of qubits, Doty said. First, because the superposition states of the qubits are so fragile, they can "collapse" due to interactions with the atoms in the environment around them. Somewhat like creating the perfect kitchen for a restaurant where the specialty is souffles, the entire computer architecture has to be built to extend the life of the superposition states and perform operations faster than the qubits collapse.

Second, while conventional computers have tools to deal with inevitable errors, quantum computers can't use such tools because each qubit state is a little bit different. Amplifiers in today's computers, for example, can be used to push a 4-volt signal back up to 5 volts because the hardware knows 4 volts must still correspond to a bit state of 1, Doty said. But such a tool would destroy the fragile superposition states in a quantum computer.

Doty will lead a research team from UD, Virginia Tech and Stanford in exploring a new approach to making a quantum device. Their approach is based on "inverting the design paradigm." Instead of trying to create thousands of identical qubits -- a nearly impossible task -- they are redesigning the hardware so that each qubit is tunable from the get-go.

The researchers are using gallium arsenide, a common semiconductor material, as their platform. Embedded within the gallium arsenide will be indium arsenide quantum dots, each about 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Each quantum dot is like a teeny container that can hold a single electron. The spin of that electron, pointing up or down, will be the logical basis (0 or 1) of the qubit. The interactions between the qubits will be controlled by light propagating in tube-like waveguides on a chip.

In addition to Doty, the UD team includes Joshua Zide, professor of materials science and engineering, and Stephanie Law, Clare Booth Luce Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Zide is an expert in growing the gallium arsenide crystals that serve as the foundational material, and Law has expertise in developing semiconductor meta-materials that will be used to create the waveguides.

At Stanford, Jelena Vuckovic, an expert in photonic devices, will develop the new structures for the waveguides. And at Virginia Tech, Sophia Economu, a theorist in quantum information science, will design the algorithms needed to make the device operations work.

"This is a fundamentally different way of putting these devices together," Doty said. "Quite a few projects have gotten a few qubits talking to one another, but those experiments have required heroic efforts to overcome differences between the qubits. Our device will have the tuning needed built-in. The next step would be to repeat the pattern over and over on a chip to build a quantum computer with hundreds or even thousands of qubits. That is still an enormous engineering challenge, but this is a crucial first step."

All of the device fabrication will be done in the UD Nanofabrication Facility, which Doty directs. This so-called "machine shop of the 21st century," which opened in 2016, provides world-class capabilities for developing technologies at the atomic level. It's already a bustling place, with dozens of academic and industry users, and destined to get much busier as "quantum" moves into everyday parlance -- and more deeply into the academic curriculum.

Complementing the research, the team is planning a summer experience in quantum science for a dozen underrepresented high school students. Slated to launch in 2020, the two-week program will engage students in making actual quantum devices in UD's Nanofabrication Teaching Lab, offering an exciting introduction to a new field that will drive the workforce of the future, Doty said.

###Nothing defined the disco era and debauchery in the late 70s in New York more than the legendary night club Studio 54. In its infamous heyday, celebrities, socialites, the straight, gay and the beautiful danced, drank, got high, and most importantly, got seen. It was where the underground became mainstream, where inhibitions were left at the door, and what happened inside Studio 54 mostly stayed inside Studio 54. Located at West 54th Street, a then-seedy part of town, Studio 54 was the brainchild of Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two college buddy entrepreneurs from Brooklyn who, over the course of 33 months, became the kings of New York - and then lost it all due to greed.

With unprecedented access to Ian Schrager, the normally reclusive, quieter co-owner of Studio 54, the other being the more outgoing Steve Rubell ( who died of complications from AIDS in 1989), we hear the whole unvarnished story for the first time. With a treasure-trove of rare footage, celebrity interviews, a glorious portrait of a disco-era phenomenon the film takes the audience past the red velvet ropes, recalling an unforgettable place in an unforgettable time. But no one can dish out the dirt like the people who actually worked at Studio 54, and as a special treat, we have an amazing panel comprised of the staff who saw it all and are happy to share it all: Myra Scheer, executive assistant to Rubell and Schrager, Marc Benecke, doorman, Gerard Renny, VIP doorman, Scottie Taylor, bartender and Chuck Garelick, head of security. This is a great panel to get up-close and personal with!

Running Time: 98 Minutes

Guest Speakers for Q&A: A panel of staff from Studio 54! Myra Scheer and Marc Bedeck are also the hosts of

on

! The moderator for what should be a very exciting Q&A will be Tom Needham, host of

on

's own

radio station!

And for your enjoyment, pre-screening music by THE MARC AND MYRA SHOW, STUDIO54 RADIO - SIRIUS XM will be provided!

*Individual General Admission Advance Tickets available for $8 at:

**Tickets will also be sold at the door (no credit cards, please).Alaska Air Group (ALK) Q3 Earnings: What's in the Offing? Strong demand for air travel is likely to boost Alaska Air Group's (ALK) top line in Q3. High fuel costs, however, are anticipated to limit bottom-line growth.

Alaska Air Group, Inc. ALK is scheduled to unveil its third-quarter 2018 results on Oct 25, before the market opens.

In the second quarter of 2018, the carrier delivered a positive earnings surprise of 1.8%. Results were aided by low fuel costs. Quarterly earnings, however, declined on a year-over-year basis mainly due to high fuel costs. Meanwhile, revenues increased year over year backed by strong demand for air travel.

The company also has an impressive history with respect to earnings per share. It surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters, with an average beat of 7.2%.

Given this backdrop, lets delve deep to unearth the factors likely to impact the carriers third-quarter 2018 results.

High fuel costs are expected to limit bottom-line growth in the third quarter of 2018, as has been the case over the past few quarters. Fuel price per gallon for the soon-to-be-reported quarter is expected to be $2.32 per gallon, reflecting an increase of 28.9% year over year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the metric is pegged at $2.26 per gallon, mirroring a 25.6% year-over-year increase.

Non-fuel unit costs are envisioned between 8.36 cents and 8.41 cents, up 4.1%. Apart from high costs, the lack of capacity discipline is hurting the stock significantly.

Nevertheless, strong demand for air travel is expected to boost Alaska Air Groups top line in the soon-to-be-reported quarter. Revenue per available seat miles (a key measure of unit revenues) is projected to either remain flat or decline up to 2% on a year-over-year basis.

Alaska Air Group, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Alaska Air Group, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise | Alaska Air Group, Inc. Quote

What Does Our Model Say?

Our proven model too does not show conclusively that Alaska Air Group will beat earnings estimate in third-quarter 2018. This is because a stock needs to have both  a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold)  for this to happen. However, that is not the case as highlighted below.

Story continues

Earnings ESP: Alaska Air Group has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% as both the Most Accurate Estimate is in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.80 per share. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Alaska Air Group carries a Zacks Rank #3. However, that alone is not enough to secure an earnings beat.

Note that we caution against stocks with a Zacks Ranks #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing a negative estimate revision.

Stocks to Consider

Investors interested in the broader Transportation sector may consider Union Pacific Corporation UNP, Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. ODFL and C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. CHRW as these stocks possess the right combination of elements to come up with an earnings beat in their next releases.

Union Pacific has an Earnings ESP of +0.57% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company will report third-quarter earnings on Oct 25. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Old Dominion Freight Line has an Earnings ESP of +0.69% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company will release third-quarter 2018 results on Oct 25.

C.H. Robinson has an Earnings ESP of +0.56% and a Zacks Rank of 2. The company will announce third-quarter financial figures on Oct 30.

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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment ResearchHarris Corp. (NYSE: HRS) and L3 Technologies (NYSE: LLL), two of the most underappreciated companies in the defense sector, are planning to come together in hopes of better competing against the much larger primes. There was a lot for investors to like about each of these companies prior to the deal. Post-merger, the new L3 Harris Technologies looks like it could be a winner.

On Oct. 14, Harris and L3 said they would combine in an all-stock deal that would create a $33.5 billion market cap defense electronics company with about $16 billion in pro forma annual revenue and EBIT of $2.4 billion. L3 CEO Chris Kubasik said the deal would move the two companies closer to becoming an "innovative non-traditional 6th Prime," though the company would still fall well short of industry leaders Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing in terms of annual sales.

A graphic rendition of some of the radomes made by L-3 for naval customers.

IMAGE SOURCE: L-3 TECHNOLOGIES.

Though Harris holders would own a slight majority of the shares in the combined company, the deal is structured as a merger of equals. Post-deal, the board would consist of six members from each side, and Harris CEO William Brown plans to stay in that role for two years before making way for Kubasik.

Can 1 + 1 = 2+?

The two companies are a lot alike, with each focused on military electronics and communications. Both have been pushing to increase the amount of business they do directly with the Pentagon instead of serving as a subcontractor, with Harris focused on battlefield management, aircraft communications, and increasing its classified space work and L3 making a range of sensors and night-vision equipment and developing unmanned vessels.

They both have customers adjacent to the military, with Harris perhaps best known for its Stingray cellphone trackers used by U.S. law enforcement and L3 the vendor behind the full-body scanners used for airport security.

The combined company would generate about 67% of revenue from prime contracts, with the rest from subcontractor work. The U.S. Air Force, the combination's largest customer, would account for just 26% of revenue, with international, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, commercial work, and civil government agencies each accounting for more than 10%.

Story continues

A chart showing the complementary nature of L-3 and Harris businesses serving different government areas.

Image source: Harris/L3 joint presentation.

Harris' Brown said the deal "unlocks additional growth opportunities" by allowing the combination to offer more end-to-end solutions to a broader range of U.S. and international customers. It also creates the scale needed to pursue bigger opportunities and, hopefully, make combined operations more cost competitive, with the companies predicting at least $500 million in annual gross cost synergies.

They also expect to generate $3 billion in free cash flow within three years.

It can be dangerous to take corporate synergy predictions at face value, but Harris has done well to extract more than $200 million in gross costs out of Exelis, which it bought in 2015, and should have similar opportunities here to not just to combine back-office and public company functions but also streamline similar facilities.

What's next

The deal continues a pattern of large-scale consolidation among government contractors. Last year, Northrop Grumman paid more than $9 billion for Orbital ATK, expanding its exposure to space, and United Technologies agreed to buy Rockwell Collins for more than $30 billion.

So far in 2018, General Dynamics bought government IT contractor CSRA for $7.2 billion, Science Applications International has agreed to buy Engility Holdings for $2.5 billion, and just last week TransDigm agreed to buy Esterline Technologies for $4 billion.

More deals could follow. Analyst attention after the Harris/L3 announcement turned to Textron (NYSE: TXT), a multi-industry conglomerate active in aerospace via its Bell helicopter and aircraft division and through its work on unmanned systems, electronics, and military land vehicles. The company has been pressured at times to spin off some of its military-focused operations and could attract significant interest if it put some or all its aerospace operations on the block.

CACI International and ManTech International, two of the few remaining companies in a rapidly shrinking middle tier in the government contractor sector, are both believed to be on the prowl. CACI bid for both CSRA and Engility.

Is the new company a buy?

Across the corporate landscape, more often than not, mergers seem to go awry, and these companies, if nothing else, will be distracted until the deal closes in mid-2019 and for some time after as the integration plan is executed. That said, I have high hopes for this merger and the new L3 Harris.

Prior to the deal, these were two of the defense sector's more intriguing buys, and their portfolios are complementary enough that it is a wonder they didn't move toward a combination sooner. Brown has earned a reputation as a strong operator at Harris, and Kubasik, the one-time COO and heir apparent at Lockheed Martin, is a well-respected leader who has done well during his first year at the helm at L3.

L3, carved out in the late 1990s from Lockheed Martin, has been discussed for more than a decade as a potential sixth prime. Post-merger, L3 Harris would have the portfolio to compete for business in areas like communications, sensors, and space, which are expected to see an outsize share of future Pentagon spending.

Mergers inherently come with risk, but this is a deal worth buying into.

More From The Motley Fool

Lou Whiteman owns shares of Harris and TransDigm Group. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends TransDigm Group. The Motley Fool recommends Textron. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.In this Oct. 13, 2018, photo, a sign marks the entrance to the Tesla Gigafactory in Sparks, Nev. A population inrush to Nevada has been driven by people seeking more affordable housing and a growing tech industry around Reno. (AP Photo/John Locher)

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The Republicans running in Nevada's hotly contested races for governor and U.S. Senate are taking aim at a common target as they try to maintain GOP control of the seats: California.

As more Californians have poured across the state line over the past few years, many of them escaping sky-high housing costs, some Nevada Republicans fear a state that already has become a political battleground will begin to resemble its deep blue neighbor.

GOP candidates are appealing to conservative voters with warnings about life in California: sanctuary cities, crippling business regulations, out-of-control housing prices and a worsening homeless crisis.

Republican Sen. Dean Heller, who is in a tight re-election battle against Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, has highlighted his opponent's support from California billionaire Tom Steyer and Hollywood celebrities, while warning on Twitter that the state could become "CaliforNevada" if Rosen is elected.

Politicians on the right have for years demonized California as a conservative's worst nightmare. In 2003, as a joke, a Republican state lawmaker in Nevada requested a bill be drafted to rename the state "East California," along with making The Beatles' song "Taxman" the official state song.

The California-bashing takes on added weight in Nevada, which has seen a greater-than-normal wave of Californians recently as housing prices and rents have soared in the Golden State. At the same time, transplants from Silicon Valley have followed Tesla, Apple and other California-grown companies as they have expanded in the Reno area.

This year, with California emerging as a political bulwark against the Trump administration, the state has become a political bugaboo for conservatives around the country. They paint it as a cautionary tale of taxes, regulation, environmentalism and illegal immigration run amok.

In Georgia, Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp has cast his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, as a tool of "billionaires and socialists who want to turn Georgia into California." Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this summer declared that "California appears to have raised the leadership in the United States of America for socialism."

Story continues

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which works on electing Republicans to state offices around the country, declared in a campaign email that California has turned into a "liberal wasteland" of "garbage-strewn streets, never-ending tax increases, and lax immigration laws" that Democrats would replicate if they took control of state legislatures.

In Nevada, California has become a special source of angst.

Californians have long made up at least one-third of new residents to Nevada, but this year are on track to comprise 40 percent of new residents, according to drivers' license data from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

That influx comes as Nevada has been trending more Democratic in its politics over the last decade, swinging for the Democrat in the past three presidential elections and giving Democrats full control of the Legislature in 2016  the first time since 1992.

It's unclear whether the latest California influx will move the state firmly into the Democratic column this November.

Nevada's races are at the center of the political universe again this year: The U.S. Senate race is a pivotal one for determining whether Republicans maintain control of that chamber, and whichever party wins the governor's seat will have veto power over legislative and congressional redistricting following the 2020 Census.

"A lot of people left California because of what they didn't like, but then they got to Nevada and said, 'Oh, in California, we had this. Oh, in California we had that.' The things that they left, they want to bring here," said Chuck Muth, a conservative activist and blogger in Las Vegas.

"I think everybody has known about it, but now the candidates at the top of the Republican ticket are actually making a campaign issue out of it."

In the governor's race, Nevada's Republican attorney general, Adam Laxalt, has frequently included anti-California messages in campaign appearances and statements, even when endorsing other candidates.

Laxalt cites sanctuary cities and burdensome regulations as ill-considered California policies that Nevada should avoid.

"Do you think it should be a crime in a restaurant to give you a straw when you're trying to have a drink? How about cancer warnings on your coffee?" Laxalt said at a campaign appearance in May. "These are things we're seeing in our neighbor, California. These are the things I'm willing to fight against so Nevada does not become like California."

He told The Associated Press that while there's a concern that Californians moving to the state could import liberal politics, he meets new Nevada residents "all the time that have decided that they're utterly fed up with California" and "a lot of the just really extreme liberal policies that continue to flourish in that state."

He said his main worry is that Nevada progressives will see California as a model.

He cited the 2017 session of the Democratic-led Legislature as an example of the state "going the way of California." Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, a moderate, nearly set a state record by vetoing 41 bills.

___

Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Michelle Price at https://twitter.com/michellelprice

___

This report is part of a series on how California's struggles with soaring housing costs, job displacement and a divide over liberal policies are affecting the November election. See full coverage at: https://apnews.com/CaliforniaataCrossroadsBy David Ljunggren

OTTAWA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Canada is prepared to freeze a big arms deal with Saudi Arabia if it concludes the weapons have been misused, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday, amid increasing pressure to punish Riyadh for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trudeau's comments signaled Ottawa might halt a 2014 contract that the Canadian unit of U.S. weapons maker General Dynamics Corp won to supply light-armored vehicles. The deal is worth up to $13 billion.

"We strongly demand and expect that Canadian exports are used in a way that fully respects human rights," Trudeau said in Parliament. "We have frozen export permits before when we had concerns about their potential misuse and we will not hesitate to do so again."

The opposition left-leaning New Democrats, who will be competing for the same voters as Trudeau in 2019 elections, say Canada should not be arming the Saudis when they are attacking civilian targets in Yemen.

Trudeau condemned the death of Khashoggi and said Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland had been talking to allies to discuss the next steps.

On Monday, Trudeau convened a special meeting of government ministers and officials to discuss the matter, his office said in a statement.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday called the killing a "monstrosity" and vowed to halt German arms exports to Saudi Arabia until the case is cleared up.

Freeland said on Saturday that the kingdom's explanations on the death of Khashoggi at its consulate in Istanbul lacked credibility.

"There are very important questions about the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia that need to be asked," she told reporters on Monday.

Asked why Ottawa would go ahead with the arms deal given recent events, Freeland replied: "That is a very good question" but declined to be more specific.

Relations between Canada and Riyadh have been tense since a diplomatic dispute over human rights earlier this year.

In August, Saudi Arabia froze ties with Ottawa after Canada urged the release of jailed civil rights activists in the kingdom. A Canadian foreign affairs tweet was translated into Arabic and sent out by its embassy in Riyadh, angering Saudi authorities.

Interfering in the arms deal could hurt the Liberals politically, since the General Dynamics plant in question is in London, Ontario, an economically depressed town. The Liberals hold two of London's three seats in Parliament. (Additional reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto; Editing by Dan Grebler)BERLIN, Oct 20 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul and said explanations so far given of the circumstances of his death were inadequate.

"We condemn this act in the strongest terms," she and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a joint statement issued on Saturday. "We expect transparency from Saudi Arabia about the circumstances of his death ... The information available about events in the Istanbul consulate is inadequate."

Expressing deep sympathy to Khashoggi's friends and relatives, they said those responsible for his death must be held accountable. (Reporting by Thomas Escritt Editing by Richard Balmforth)By Sumeet Chatterjee and Clare Jim

HONG KONG, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Several global banks including Citigroup and Standard Chartered have asked their private banking staff to postpone or reconsider travel to China after authorities there prevented a UBS banker from leaving the country, sources said.

BNP Paribas and JPMorgan also asked their private banking employees to reconsider their China travel plans after the authorities' action against the UBS banker, two people said.

The Singapore-based UBS banker, who is a client relationship manager in the Swiss bank's wealth management unit, still has her passport, but was last week asked to delay her departure from Beijing and remain in China to meet with local authority officials this week. Her identity was not known.

The purpose of the meeting with Chinese authorities is not clear. UBS has declined to comment on the matter. However, the uncertainty has led the Swiss bank, and now several of its rivals, to require their private banking staff carefully consider trips to China, the sources said.

Their caution highlights the risks involved for the global private banks in pursuing what is arguably the biggest opportunity worldwide in the wealth management business.

China is the biggest growth driver of the wealth industry in Asia with its large and growing pool of millionaires and billionaires spawned by the country's booming technology sector, making it a key battleground for global private banks.

But its financial sector is under sharp scrutiny as Beijing attempts to lower high debt levels in the economy and rein in the flow of capital outside the country to shore up the yuan, meaning there is very little room for error by industry players.

UBS is unusual in having an onshore wealth management business in China as well as its offshore operations, but almost all other banks advise wealthy Chinese individuals from offshore locations mainly in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Most offshore wealth managers travel frequently to China for informal meetings with clients, but they are not allowed to either solicit onshore business or market widely offshore investments to onshore clients.

Citi asked staff in its Asia Pacific private banking team, via a brief email on Sunday, to postpone all China travel, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Story continues

JPMorgan has informally advised its private banking managers to review their upcoming China travel plans, three people said.

Bank of Singapore, the private banking arm of Singapore's OCBC Bank, has told staff they can continue with their ongoing China trips, but should be cautious in future travel to the mainland, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

BNP, Citi, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered and Bank of Singapore declined to comment. All the sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

UBS is the largest wealth manager operating in Asia, with $383 billion of assets under management, according to Asian Private Banker magazine, ahead of Citi, Credit Suisse, HSBC and Julius Baer.

The number of high net-worth individuals  those with at least $1 million to invest  rose by 12 percent last year in Asia Pacific, exceeding growth rates anywhere else in the world, according to consultant CapGemini. (Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Clare Jim; Additional reporting by Julie Zhu, Kane Wu and Anshuman Daga; Editing by Jennifer Hughes and Muralikumar Anantharaman)Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. Photo:Reuters

Investors around the world have pulled $1.1bn in funds from Saudi Arabia over the last week and the pain is unlikely to stop anytime soon as the diplomatic dispute over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi heats up.

Foreigners were net sellers in the Saudi market last week to the tune of SAR 4.0bn, equivalent to $1.1bn, said Arqaam Capital research director, Michael Malkoun told Yahoo Finance UK. This is the highest level of net foreign selling registered since the Tadawul (stock exchange) began to publish this data in 2015.

The Tadawul has a large domestic ownership as only 5% of the stocks are owned by foreign investors. This has largely allowed the Tadawul, which has a market capitalisation of $507bn, to avoid heavy losses and in fact see a flow of $1bn between the beginning of September and October.

However, fund managers are getting increasingly anxious over the diplomatic fallout over the emerging details of Khashoggis murder.

Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia said that Khashoggi was murdered but blamed a rogue operation for his killing. Saudis foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News the act was a tremendous mistake.

Khashoggi was a prominent critic of Saudis authoritarian regime and was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October. Al-Jubeir denied Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud had ordered the killing.

Meanwhile, several politicians and global business leaders have pulled out of an investment conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia next week amid a worldwide diplomatic dispute over Khashoggis disappearance.

READ MORE: Heres everyone who has dropped out of Saudi Arabias Davos of the Middle East

Saudi Arabias Future Investment Initiative, a conference that is widely known as the Davos of the Middle East, has provided a platform for business leaders and politicians to take a stand against the lack of information and transparency over what happened to Khashoggi.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, AOL founder Steve Case, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon are among the growing list of people that have cancelled their attendance at the conference.

Meanwhile, Siemens boss Joe Kaeser is under pressure from the senior German politicians to also withdraw from the event as he is yet to confirm his decision.

I hope that Joe Kaeser will rethink this, the leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), Andrea Nahles, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.Heres a look at some of the companies the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

Hasbro posted a big miss on earnings, as revenue slid 12%. Hasbro blames the Toys R Us bankruptcy, saying that took away a key touch point for customers. Hasbro will now reportedly trim about 10% of its workforce.

Another change at the top for CBS. Richard Parsons is stepping down as interim chairman of the board. He only took the job about 6 weeks ago, when chairman and CEO Les Moonves departed amid a sexual misconduct investigation. Parsons says hes fighting multiple myeloma, and doctors advised him to reduce his workload. Strauss Zelnick, from Take-Two Interactive, has been named the new chair.

American Railcar is being bought out for $1.75B, or $70 a share; thats about a 50% premium. The deal is being led by investing firm ITE Management, and the company will merge with its ITE Rail subsidiary. Itll mean a huge profit for Carl Icahn. His company owns 62% of American Railcars stock.

Food giant Hormel is thinking beyond meat for its future. Bloomberg says the company is considering launching plant-based options through its Applegate Farms brand. Applegates president says it loves selling meat, but that plant-based meat alternatives are an interesting space. Its not clear just when, or if, they plan to launch their own line.

Another legal marijuana stock is coming the New York Stock Exchange. Aurora Cannabis begins trading on the NYSE tomorrow, under the ticker ACB. Itll join Canopy Growth on the exchange. Aurora currently trades in Toronto, but has been under pressure, as a glut of legal pot hits the market in Canada, now that its been legalized there.Photo credit: EPA/INDONESIAN CONSULATE GENERAL OSAKA

From Popular Mechanics

An Indonesian teenager has been rescued from the ocean after spending 49 days adrift at sea. The 19-year-old Aldi Novel Adilang was rescued by a passing cargo ship and taken to Japan, where hes made a full recovery and returned home to Indonesia.

Aldi works as a lamp keeper, a type of fisherman common in southeast Asia. For months, Aldi and other lamp keepers would live on small rafts called rompongs, lighting lamps to attract and catch fish. Once a week, the company that employed Aldi would collect the fish and resupply his raft. He worked at this job for three years.

A typical rompong is moored so it stays in the same place, and as such has no motor, sails, or oars to maneuver. On July 14, a storm broke the moorings on Aldis rompong, setting him adrift. With only a weeks worth of supplies, he was quickly forced to resort to catching fish and drinking seawater filtered through his clothes.

Aldi drifted and survived this way for seven weeks, at times nearly giving up. Multiple vessels sailed past his raft, but none saw him or stopped. After nearly losing hope, he was spotted by the cargo ship Arpeggio and taken to Japan. He spent two days in the country before being handed off to the Indonesian consulate in Japan and put on a plane back home to Manado.

Aldis story is indeed dramatic, and we are thankful to all, the ships captain and the Japanese authorities that have been very helpful in ensuring Aldis return, said Indonesian consul general Mirza Nurhidayat.

Source: Newsweek

('You Might Also Like',)* Acquisition to double WorleyParsons earnings

* WorleyParsons EPS to grow by 50 pct post-synergies

* Strong growth seen in refining, petchem sectors

* Jacobs looks to expand in infrastructure (Adds WorleyParsons CEO comments)

By Sonali Paul and Jessica Resnick-Ault

MELBOURNE/NEW YORK, Oct 21 (Reuters) - U.S. firm Jacobs Engineering Group Inc has agreed to sell its energy, chemicals and resources business to WorleyParsons for $3.3 billion, in a deal that will double the size of the Australian engineering services firm.

The deal continues a shake-up of the engineering services industry, following Jacobs' $3.3 billion purchase of rival CH2M Hill Cos Ltd last year and the 2.2 billion pound ($2.9 billion) takeover of Amec Foster Wheeler by UK oilfield services firm John Wood Group.

It comes as WorleyParsons emerges from a three-year downturn following the oil price crash, and positions it to tap growth in the refining and petrochemical sectors, with countries like India building massive new plants.

"Hydrocarbons and minerals and metals are both coming off the bottom and are well below their peaks of 2013. We think this is an exciting time for the sector," WorleyParsons Chief Executive Andrew Wood told analysts on a conference call.

Jacobs, the largest service provider to the NASA space programme, said it would now focus on higher growth, higher margin lines of business including aerospace, technology and nuclear projects as well as buildings and infrastructure.

The acquisition would make WorleyParsons the world's biggest provider of professional services in energy and resources, it said, with a large footprint in Europe and North America, complementing its exposure in the Middle East and Asia.

The transaction will also expand its exposure to the refining and petrochemicals sectors, which Wood said was appealing as the revenue streams are less volatile than oil and gas exploration and production, where WorleyParsons is already a leader.

The deal would double the company's 2018 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) on a proforma basis to A$735 million ($523 million), and boost its earnings per share by 50 percent after achieving savings of A$130 million, Wood said.

Story continues

Jacobs said it would receive $2.6 billion in cash plus $700 million worth of shares giving it an 11 percent stake in the enlarged WorleyParsons.

"For Jacobs, this transaction marks an inflection point in our portfolio transformation focused on more consistent, higher-margin growth as a leader solving the world's critical challenges," Jacobs Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Demetriou said in a statement.

The deal has been approved by both boards and is expected to close in the first half of 2019.

WorleyParsons plans to fund the deal via a A$2.9 billion entitlement offer plus the share issue to Jacobs and new debt.

The issue to Jacobs will be priced at A$16.92 a share. The rest of the offer would be priced at A$15.56 a share, a 13 percent discount to WorleyParsons' close last Friday. WorleyParsons founder and chairman John Grill, the company's second-largest shareholder, will be tipping in A$100 million.

UBS, which advised WorleyParsons on the deal, is joint lead manager with Macquarie Capital on the share sale.

Perella Weinberg Partners LP is financial adviser to Jacobs. ($1 = 1.4061 Australian dollars) ($1 = 0.7649 pounds) (Reporting by Sonali Paul and Jessica Resnick-Ault; editing by Sandra Maler and Richard Pullin)Juniper Networks, Inc. JNPR is scheduled to report third-quarter 2018 financial results after the closing bell on Oct 23.



In the last reported quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 11.6%. However, it is unlikely to report higher revenues in either of the operating segments due to volatile demand and intense market competition.



Whether this will hurt its bottom-line growth for the quarter remains to be seen.



Factors to Consider



During the third quarter, Juniper introduced a 5G-ready firewall processing card to meet high security requirements. The companys SPC3 Advanced Security Acceleration card offers an 11x performance boost to its line of SRX5000 Services Gateways. The SPC3 Advanced Security Acceleration card enables cloud providers, service providers and enterprises to meet the growing security demands of multicloud, Internet of Things, 5G as well as enterprise edge.



The company has also launched a cost-effective cloud solution for service providers. Dubbed the Contrail Edge Cloud, the product offers a full-fledged secure cloud experience to the space- and power-constrained edge network, which includes base stations, hub sites and switching sites. The Contrail Edge Cloud solution provides automation, security and analytics features to facilitate service providers in deploying dynamic consumer and enterprise services in a cost and resource-efficient manner.



Furthermore, Juniper announced that it was selected by WorldLink  the largest Internet service provider in Nepal  to supplement its networking solutions in order to cater to the exponential growth of data traffic in the country. The move facilitated Juniper to develop the networking infrastructure of Nepal and enable its smooth transition to a high-speed 100GbE backbone network.



During the quarter, Juniper announced that Malaysia-based communications solutions provider TIME dotCom Berhad used its vSRX solution for rolling out the latters latest suite of virtual managed services for enterprise customers across the country. Also, the company announced that it was selected by Vodafone as one of its Software-Defined Wide Area Network vendors for its enterprise-focused SDN portfolio.



Top-Line Contraction



Despite the positive developments, unfavorable global macro environment and weak investment patterns among customers are likely to hurt Junipers revenue growth. Ongoing consolidation in the telecom market is also expected to weigh on the companys financials. Moreover, Cloud revenues, which are expected to be $279 million in the to-be-reported quarter, is posing challenges as it is passing through a transition phase.



For the third quarter, net revenues from Routing are expected to decrease to $478 million from $586 million a year ago. Net revenues from Switching are expected to increase to $244 million from $213 million and the same from Security is likely to improve to $81 million from $71 million.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues from the Product segment (comprising Routing, Security and Switching products), which accounts for the lions share of total revenues, is currently pegged at $798 million, down from $870 million reported in third-quarter 2017.



Revenues from the Service segment are expected to decline to $375 million from $388 million. Consequently, total revenues for the quarter are likely to decline to $1,174 million from $1,254 million reported in the year-earlier quarter.



What Our Model Says



Our proven model conclusively shows that Juniper is likely to beat earnings this quarter as it possesses both the two key components. A stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is exactly the case here as you will see below:



Earnings ESP: Junipers Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is +3.18% as the former is pegged at 46 cents and the latter at 44 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Juniper Networks, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Story continues

Juniper Networks, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise | Juniper Networks, Inc. Quote

Zacks Rank: Juniper has a Zacks Rank #3. This increases the predictive power of ESP and makes us reasonably confident of an earnings beat.



Note that we caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing a negative estimate revisions momentum.



Other Stocks to Consider



Here are some other companies that you may want to consider, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. HLX has an Earnings ESP of +8.33% and a Zacks Rank #1. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Arch Coal, Inc. ARCH has an Earnings ESP of +6.32% and a Zacks Rank #1.



Viper Energy Partners LP VNOM has an Earnings ESP of +1.57% and a Zacks Rank #1.



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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research"There is no intention," Khalid al-Falih told Russia's TASS news agency when asked whether there could be a replay of the 1973-style oil embargo.

It comes as the world's top oil exporter faces intensifying international pressure to explain exactly what happened to Jamal Khashoggi at a Turkish consulate earlier this month.

Top U.S. lawmakers ramped up the pressure on Saudi Arabia over the weekend, accusing the crown prince of orchestrating the killing of Khashoggi. However, President Donald Trump's administration has adopted a more cautious stance.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia does not wish to impose a 1973-style oil embargo on Western consumers, the country's energy minister reportedly said Monday, amid a deepening crisis over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi .

It comes as the world's top oil exporter faces intensifying international pressure to explain exactly what happened to Khashoggi at a Turkish consulate earlier this month.

On Friday, the kingdom admitted for the first time that Khashoggi  a prominent critic of Saudi leaders and former Washington Post journalist  had been killed. The statement comes after Riyadh initially said he had left the building unharmed on October 2.

Turkish authorities claim Khashoggi was murdered by a team of Saudi agents inside the consulate and say they have evidence to prove it.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has denied any involvement.

"There is no intention," Khalid al-Falih told Russia's TASS news agency when asked whether there could be a replay of the 1973-style oil embargo.

The 1973 oil embargo refers to an extraordinary move by Arab OPEC members to stranglehold oil markets. It was imposed on countries supporting Israel during that year's Yom Kippur war between Israel and several Arab states. As a result, the U.S was left with a crude shortage and oil prices quadrupled.

'This incident will pass'

Top U.S. lawmakers ramped up the pressure on Saudi Arabia over the weekend, accusing the crown prince of orchestrating the killing of Khashoggi. However, President Donald Trump 's administration has adopted a more cautious stance.

Story continues

Some U.S. lawmakers have even suggested punishing Saudi Arabia with economic sanctions , while Riyadh has promised to retaliate to any sanctions with "bigger measures."

"This incident will pass. But Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as (a) responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics," al-Falih said.

"My role as the energy minister is to implement my government's constructive and responsible role and stabilizing the world's energy markets accordingly, contributing to global economic development."

Saudi Arabia's energy minister also warned that if oil prices went up, it would most likely trigger a global recession. But added with the prospect of U.S. sanctions against Iran coming into effect early next month, there could be no guarantee of oil prices staying below triple digits.

"I cannot give you a guarantee, because I cannot predict what will happen to other suppliers," al-Falih said, when asked if the world could avoid crude futures jumping above $100 a barrel again.





More From CNBC

By Chris Prentice and Frank Jack Daniel NEW YORK/MEXICO CITY(Reuters) - The new North American trade agreement ends key legal protections for many U.S. businesses operating in Mexico, leaving their operations exposed to a risk they had avoided under the old trade deal: Mexico's court system. For thousands of U.S. firms, the change could add complications and uncertainty to doing business south of the border. Mexico is the third-largest U.S. trading partner. The previous trade agreement, NAFTA, included provisions that gave U.S. firms operating in Mexico and Canada the option to challenge government decisions at an international tribunal. A change in Mexican or Canadian regulations, for example, that had a material impact on a U.S. firm's operations, could be challenged through an international panel instead of local courts. The removal of the investment protection means firms would now be at the mercy of Mexico's courts, which are notorious for corruption, an energy industry source said. The provision has been part of numerous trade pacts to lessen risks for firms operating overseas. Its removal makes the new agreement an outlier, trade experts and industry sources in Washington said. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump took a negative view on the provision. U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer sees it as a subsidy for U.S. companies to invest in Mexico. A spokeswoman for USTR declined to comment for this story, referring to Lighthizer's previous statements, which essentially said the old provision encouraged companies to move operations overseas at the cost of American jobs. Trump blamed NAFTA for the loss of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico, where labor is cheaper. He threatened to end the free trade deal until Mexico and Canada agreed to more favorable terms. A revised pact was signed last month. A PHASE-OUT OF PROTECTIONS The new deal, officially called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), will phase out much of the old investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) protections over coming years. Lighthizer had initially wanted to remove all such protections, but agreed to some carve outs after pressure from Mexico and U.S. industry groups, Mexican sources said. "He took a more moderate position because Mexico wanted to preserve ISDS, because it is very important for investment," said Jesus Seade, lead trade negotiator for Mexico President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Republican lawmakers in the United States, including Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, also opposed Lighthizer's attempts to cut ISDS from the deal. He led other lawmakers to press Lighthizer to keep NAFTA's "robust investor protections" in a March letter. A spokeswoman for Hatch said he is still reviewing the deal and working to ensure it "will build on NAFTA's proven success". Under the new deal, the ISDS tribunal would only be an option for firms disputing a small number of issues, such as state expropriation of assets or discrimination against foreign entities. A handful of industries retain broader protections under USMCA. They are oil and gas, telecommunications, power generation and infrastructure sectors that have contracts with the Mexican government. But even those sectors face some uncertainty, industry sources said, because it is unclear if contracts with state-owned enterprises, such as oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) and state power utility Comision Federal Electricidad, would be covered. "This is a major degradation of investor protections," a business industry source in Washington said. Large U.S. firms have typically won these kinds of disputes, sources said. In 2009, agribusiness Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] won $77 million from the arbitration tribunal over trade barriers the company said Mexico erected against high-fructose corn syrup from 2002 to 2007. In 2015, Ottawa was forced to pay ExxonMobil Corp and Murphy Oil Corp $17 million in damages after the companies won a victory against a requirement to spend money on research and development. "The change to ISDS is certainly deliberate and signals what USTR will pursue in the future," said Inu Manak, a trade specialist at the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. USTR last week said it plans to open trade talks with the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan. "We'll have to see how far they push it in the coming year as more negotiations begin," Manak said. (Additional reporting by Anthony Esposito in Mexico City; Editing by Simon Webb and Bill Berkrot)Trump Plans to Pull Out of Nuclear Weapons Pact With Russia

President Donald Trump said he plans to pull out of a major arms control treaty with Russia, claiming the Kremlin breached the accord on intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

Were not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement, Trump said Saturday after a campaign rally in Elko, Nevada. Were going to terminate the agreement.

The U.S. has been warning Russia it could resort to strong countermeasures unless Moscow complies with international commitments to arms reduction under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a pact concluded in 1987 thats considered a landmark of Cold War detente.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers this month discussed concerns that Russia was developing a medium-range ballistic missile. The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, has said Russias non-compliance would compel the U.S. to match its capabilities to protect the interests of the U.S. and European allies.

NATO has credited the INF treaty with playing a crucial role in ensuring security for 30 years by ending the proliferation of ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

Russia Sees Ultimatum

Trumps comments on Saturday came as National Security Adviser John Bolton was headed to Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. In Moscow, hes expected to meet the Russian defense and foreign ministers as a follow-up to Trumps meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July.

Russia, which has repeatedly rejected accusations of breaching the Soviet-era treaty, expects substantive explanations from Bolton while hes in Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax news agency early Sunday.

For now, Russia views the U.S. position as an ultimatum and is calling for a balanced approach to the discussions, he was quoted as saying.

Trumps threat caused jitters in Germany, site of mass protests in the 1980s against the stationing of U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles to counter the threat of Soviet SS-20s.

The treaty must be upheld to prevent a nuclear arms race in Europe, Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the German parliaments foreign affairs committee from Chancellor Angela Merkels CDU party, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

Trump and Putin may meet next month in Paris during commemorations marking 100 years since the end of World War I, or at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires that begins Nov. 30, according to a U.S. official.Istanbul (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected Tuesday to reveal what he has said is the "naked truth" about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul -- a killing Ankara has said was "savagely planned".

His speech comes as US President Donald Trump said he was "not satisfied" with Riyadh's explanation of the Washington Post contributor's death in a case has tarnished the image of powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

A tough critic of the Saudi Crown Prince, Khashoggi, 59, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to collect a document for his upcoming marriage.

A few days later, a Turkish government source said police believed he was murdered by a team sent to Istanbul, and on October 17, a Turkish newspaper said he was tortured and decapitated inside the consulate.

After more than two weeks of near silence, Saudi Arabia admitted on Saturday that Khashoggi was killed in an altercation at the consular office -- an explanation rejected by friends and foes alike.

Trump, who had said he found Riyadh's initial explanations credible, told reporters at the White House Monday: "I am not satisfied with what I have heard" since then, and expected to know more "very soon".

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin meanwhile met the Crown Prince behind closed doors in Riyadh for talks while CIA Director Gina Haspel headed for Turkey, although details of her trip were not immediately clear.

White House advisor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner said he had urged Prince Mohammed to be "fully transparent" stressing that "the world is watching".

The case has shone the spotlight on the Crown Prince, who was credited with spearheading a reform drive but is now accused of having ordered Khashoggi's murder -- a claim Riyadh denies.

And as further details of the killing continued to seep out, CNN broadcast images showing a Saudi official playing a body double for Khashoggi, wearing the journalist's clothes, exiting the consulate.

Story continues

- 'Enemy of Turkey' -

Omer Celik, spokesman of Erdogan's ruling party, said the killing "was planned in an extremely savage manner," and that "there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this".

An Erdogan adviser, Yasin Aktay, wrote in the Yeni Safak daily that Riyadh's version of events "feels like our intelligence is being mocked".

The security official heading a team of 15 Saudis allegedly sent to Istanbul, called the head of Prince Mohammed's office, Bader al-Asaker, "four times after the murder", the adviser added.

Abdulkadir Selvi, whose Hurriyet newspaper columns are closely watched for indications of Erdogan's thinking, wrote that Khashoggi was slowly strangled to death before a Saudi forensic specialist cut his body into 15 pieces while listening to music.

"We cannot close this file until the crown prince is brought to account and removed from his post," said Selvi.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, a smooth former envoy to Washington, appeared on Fox News Sunday to blame a "rogue operation" by individuals who "exceeded their responsibilities" and then "tried to cover up for it".

With Khashoggi's remains still missing, Turkish police have found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate in an underground car park in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, state media said.

Erdogan has stopped short of directly pointing the finger at Riyadh. Analysts say he preferred to authorise the leak of incriminating information to pro-government media to put pressure on the kingdom.

He has twice held telephone talks with King Salman on the crisis, interpreted by some as sidelining the ageing monarch's son Prince Mohammed.

- 'Justice must be served' -

The timing of the controversy could not be worse for the crown prince as he prepares to host a key investment summit Tuesday, overshadowed by big name cancellations.

Dozens of executives from bankers Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to ride-hailing app Uber to Western leaders like International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde have pulled out of the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII), dubbed "Davos in the desert".

The chief executive of German industrial conglomerate Siemens Joe Kaeser was the latest to cancel, saying "for now, the truth must be found and justice must be served".

Petrol giant Total's head Patrick Pouyanne, however, said he will attend the meeting as "empty chair politics" do not advance human rights.

Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would not export arms to Riyadh "in the current situation," despite Germany's approval last month of 416 million euros' ($480 million) worth of arms exports in 2018.

burs/jah/jtaTrump's decision to pull U.S. out of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia and develop new weapons should make the prospects better for U.S. defense stocks.

President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from the landmark nuclear weapons deal signed with Russia in 1987 that banned both nations from owning, producing and test-flying nuclear missiles.

Trumps announcement last week caused Russia to retaliate; saying that breaking the treaty would be a very dangerous step. Trumps announcement comes at a time when U.S.-Russia relations are tumultuous over concerns of the latters superior S-400 missiles  its interference in the 2016 presidential votes and the imminent midterm elections.

The United States has been charging Russia of violating the arms treaty since 2014, stating that the country has been developing banned weapons. Russia has always denied the charges and accused the United States of infringing the contract instead.

While Trumps recent decision may not be a welcome move for Russia, it could be a new chapter for domestic defense companies in terms of developing nuclear weapons. Therefore, it might be a good idea to invest in some defense stocks that stand to benefit the most.

America to Develop New Weapons

The 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty was aimed at securing the United States and its European allies from the risk of nuclear attacks during the Cold War by making nuclear weapons out of bounds for the United States and Russia. The pact banned ground-launch cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges 500-5,500km.

But Russias S-400 missile, a surface-to-air missile system developed by the Almaz Central Design Bureau, poses serious threat to the United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members as none possess the means to destroy it. the United States had previously blamed Russia for developing 9M729, a cruise missile, which breached the nuclear weapons pact. Russias advanced weaponry has therefore given rise to the need for equally well-equipped military gears in the United States.

Story continues

Addressing a rally in Nevada on Oct 20, Trump said, Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years. And were not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and were not allowed to. The President added that it was unacceptable if Russia and China are developing weapons but the United States was abiding by the agreement. The treaty doesnt include China though.

Well have to develop those weapons. Were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out, Trump said.

While the geopolitical tensions, which triggered the nuclear arms pact in 1987, have long been over, the threat from Russias superior weapons remains to be addressed. As a result, the United States development of new weapons seems apt at a time when tensions with Russia have mounted not only over security and political issues, but also over conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.

Before we recommend the stocks that have direct exposure to nuclear weaponry projects in the United States and are well positioned to benefit, lets focus on a few companies that are involved in similar projects.

According to a report by dontbankonthebomb, Lockheed Martin LMT is responsible for the construction of submarine-launched Trident II D5 nuclear missiles and manufactures and maintains nuclear weapons for both the United States and United Kingdom. Boeing BA maintains about 500 Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles in U.S. weaponry and Honeywell HON conducts simulated nuclear tests and longevity programs for U.S. navys Trident II nuclear missiles.

Defense Stocks to Buy

Here are a couple of stocks that could gain if the United States starts developing new weapons.

Northrop Grumman Corporation NOC is a leading security company worldwide that provides products, systems and solutions in autonomous systems, cyber; command, control, communications and computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; strike; and logistics and modernization in support of global customers.

According to the dontbankonthebomb report, the company leads a joint project that produces and maintains Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles for the United States. Northrop Grummans earnings are expected to grow 27.1% for 2018. Over the last 30 days, the companys earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 0.2% higher. The stock carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Raytheon Company RTN is a leader in technology and innovations and provides its products and services to defense and other government markets worldwide. It develops technologically advanced and integrated products, solutions and services.

Last year, U.S. Air Force awarded Raytheon and Lockheed Martin with contracts worth $900 million dollars each to replace an ageing nuclear weapons system. The companies are developing a new long range stand-off weapon that demands advanced design concepts and technologies, according to WND. Raytheons earnings are expected to grow 30.3% for the current year and its earnings estimates havent changed for 2018 over the past four weeks. It also carries a Zacks Rank #2.

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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.Millions of voters braved Taliban attacks and organizational chaos to cast their ballots in Afghanistans third parliamentary election since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

The Taliban, however, are gloating over hampering the process by mounting more than 400 attacks on polling stations, staff, and Afghan security forces guarding the election.

The enemy [sustained] heavy human and material losses, destroying and closing down polling stations, killing and wounding tens of police and soldiers, Taliban spokesman Qari Muhammad Yousuf Ahmadi said in an October 20 statement. Up to 100 electoral commission workers [are] being detained. Except for a few cities, most people refrained from participating in all the provinces and districts.

Afghan and international media reports, however, suggest that many of the nearly 50 people killed during the two-day voting were civilians. Children, too, were among the victims.

Preliminary figures suggest some 4 million Afghans out of 8.8 registered voters cast their ballots in 32 of the countrys 34 provinces. Voting in the large southern province of Kandahar is scheduled for next week, while the Afghan election commission decided to cancel polling in the southeastern province of Ghazni due to insecurity.

The enthusiastic turnout suggests Afghans are largely refraining from backing the Talibans narrative, which portrays Afghanistan as an occupied country with a government lacking popular legitimacy.

Holding supposed elections in countries under occupations are only meant at deceiving the public, the Taliban statement said. Everything is financed, ordered, and works for the interests of occupying forces, and that is not acceptable to any Afghan with the slightest bit of conscience.

The United States, the country that insurgents frequently blame for occupying Afghanistan, is now seeking a negotiated solution to war in the country by supporting reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban. From a peak of 140,000 troops in 2014, the number of foreign forces in Afghanistan is currently less than 20,000.

Kabul is eager to underscore the importance of a relatively high voter turnout at a time when most international discussion about Afghanistan invariably turns to a bleak prognosis for the country of an estimated 30 million people. Kabuls ability to claim success is clouded by the fact that the Afghan state still depends on foreign support for most key functions such as maintaining Afghanistans 300,000-strong security forces.

Great people of Afghanistan, thank you! By casting your votes, you sent a message to the world that you do not want violence; you demonstrated your determination through democracy, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a televised address on October 21. You proved to the Taliban that this nation will not surrender to anyone.

For now, Kabul can be upbeat about the process. But if past elections are any precedent, Afghanistans strongmen and the various factions vying for power are likely to question the election results if their candidates fail to win.

Once again, Afghanistans political elites will be required to demonstrate whether they are ready to sacrifice personal and political interests over national interests.

So far, most of them have prioritized individual power, prestige and factional spoils over their countrys peace and stability.You have permission to edit this article.

Edit CloseThe flavor of a flipped 5th Congressional District apparently is pecans and peaches. If youre free Wednesday, you might get a taste.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream, unveiled Rocky Mountain Rose on Monday. They crafted the custom flavor for Stephany Rose Spaulding, the Democrat vying to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn.

Cohen and Greenfield teamed last month with MoveOn.Org, a national political nonprofit, to solicit flavor suggestions for seven Democratic congressional candidates across the country, including Spaulding.

Now Spauldings flavor and its title are settled, the pair announced in a television ad that will air this week on CNN, MSNBC and Comedy Central, said Edward Erikson, a consultant who works with Cohen.

This election is too important to sit out, so were helping out the best way we know how Cohen says in the ad.

By cranking up the old ice-cream freezer and making a flavor for Stephany Rose Spaulding: Rocky Mountain Rose, Greenfield adds.

Other candidates getting custom flavors would represent Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, California and Kansas.

If elected, Spaulding would be the first Democrat, first woman and first African American to hold the historically conservative 5th District seat.

Shes a pastor and a teacher whose motto is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God, Cohen said of Spaulding in the ad.

But Cohen isnt only pitching in to Spauldings campaign from afar. He's also looking to give local folks a taste of his new creation.

At 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, he'll start scooping free ice cream and rallying support for Spaulding at 24 E. Rio Grande St.Residents near Uintah and Chelton asked to shelter in place for police incidentAnyone who remembers what it was like the last time Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the House knows just how important it is to make sure she never gets that job back.

The radical agenda Pelosi pursued when she was the speaker previously is the reason voters across the country ran her out of office in 2010  and why theyve kept her out for nearly a decade since.

With the relentless attacks on the Trump pro-growth agenda and the acquiescent compliance by the mainstream media, though, Speaker Pelosi may be spoken through the halls of Congress yet again soon. And she will pursue her radical, left-wing agenda with reckless abandon worse than the last time she was the speaker.

Heres a glimpse of whats to come if Pelosi reclaims her throne:

No. 10. Increased health insurance premiums  If you think youre paying inflated prices for medical care now, just imagine what things will be like if the Democrats get another whack at the health care pinata. Pelosi said Obamacare is a liberation. But theres nothing liberating about being forced to pay 116 percent increases on expensive, low-quality health care.

No. 9. Emboldened labor unions  Teachers, federal employees, and state workers would be treated much differently than the average American worker under the Democrats. Part of the Democrats better deal means empowering powerful labor unions to such a point that firing incompetent employees would virtually become a crime.

No. 8. Subsidized college tuition  Speaking of unions Pelosis Democrats would love to make you pay for everyone in the country to attend college, tuition-free. And they wont much care whether students major in basket-weaving, so long as theyre exposed to a healthy dose of liberal propaganda from unionized professors with unlimited job security.

No. 7. Increased funding for Planned Parenthood  Pelosi is supercozy with the government-sponsored abortion provider Planned Parenthood and has a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice. She has even promised that we will have a pro-choice gavel when we win the Congress, and youd better believe her.

No. 6. Politically charged congressional investigations  Were you appalled at how the Democrats handled the Brett Kavanaugh investigation? Well, expect a weekly dose of political witch hunts and self-righteous grandstanding if Pelosi gets her hands on the House Oversight Committee.

No. 5. The war on coal: Part II  Like American energy independence? Not Pelosi. She supports a radical initiative that would shut down more than a third of U.S. coal plants by 2020.

No. 4 More and more regulations on business  Another Democrat favorite is imposing economy-strangling regulations. They love regulations as much as they hate successful businesses, and for many of the same reasons.

No. 3 Rampant illegal immigration  In Pelosis world, you have to play by the rules  but illegal immigrants dont. In fact, she wants to reward lawlessness through programs like DACA. You can forget about funding for a border wall if Pelosi wins back the speakers gavel, and immigration enforcement agencies will be under constant threat of elimination.

No. 2 Taxes, taxes, taxes  How else are you supposed to pay for free college, unlimited entitlements, and giveaways for favored Democrat constituencies? Pelosi puts even the most experienced pickpocket to shame when it comes to taking your hard-earned money. She thinks she can spend your money better than you, and thats exactly what she plans to do. She called President Trumps tax cuts crumbs, even though it brought 90 percent of Americans an increase in their take-home pay.

No. 1 Impeachment  Although she doesnt care to admit it now, Pelosi will undoubtedly succumb to pressure from her liberal base to start impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

The only question will be whether shell use Kavanaugh as a warm-up before setting her sights on the main prize.

Bottom line  If Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats retake Congress, our country will be locked into hyperpartisan gridlock. As theyve done from the start, theyll reflexively oppose any idea that comes from President Trump. Rather than trying to find solutions that are palatable to both sides and in the best interests of the American people, theyll spend their time passing extremist legislation that will be DOA when it gets to the presidents desk.

Tom Tancredo is a former U.S. congressman for Colorado.Ben Schmidt is Woodland Parks new city engineer. He was introduced at Thursdays city council budget work session.This image taken from CCTV video obtained by the Turkish broadcaster TRT World and made available on Sunday purportedly shows Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.Lithuanian English

Lietuvos Energija, UAB (hereinafter  the Company or Lietuvos Energija), legal entity code: 301844044, registered office address: Zveju st. 14, LT-09310 Vilnius.

The gross nominal value of the bonds issued by Lietuvos Energija, UAB, is EUR 600,000,000, ISIN codes  XS1646530565; XS1853999313.

As it has been announced earlier, by implementing the new strategy and gradually purifying and consolidating trade, supply of electricity and natural gas, as well as associated activities, on 8 October 2018 Lietuvos Energija approved conditions for the reorganization of Energijos Tiekimas UAB and Energijos Sprendimu Centras UAB under which the company continuing its activities, Energijos Tiekimas UAB, is merged with Energijos Sprendimu Centras UAB that will terminate its operation without the liquidation procedure.

Upon completing the reorganization of these companies, it is planned to initiate outsourcing the activity of optimizing the operation of electrical plants by Energijos Tiekimas UAB to a newly established enterprise. It is planned that the Groups new enterprise, Gamybos Optimizavimas UAB, would commence its operation on 1 January. Lietuvos Energija would own 100 percent of Gamybos Optimizavimas UAB shares.

Upon separating these activities, activities of Energijos Tiekimas UAB would be purified  the company would continue the sale of energy resources to customers as an independent supplier, whereas specific activity of optimizing the operation modes of electrical plants would be transferred to the newly planned company Gamybos Optimizavimas UAB. The planned separation of activities will have no effect on customers of Energijos Tiekimas UAB and all obligations assumed by Energijos Tiekimas UAB will be continued.

The company notes that currently, no decisions have been adopted by competent bodies regarding outsourcing the activity of optimizing the operation of electrical plants by Energijos Tiekimas UAB. The company will inform on any further actions under the procedure set out in the laws.

The Company will inform about its further actions in the manner set forth by laws.

More information: Head of Corporate Communications of Lietuvos Energija, Laura Sebekiene, +370 633 99940, laura.sebekiene@le.ltAn international consortium including AIT and DLR meets up with experts and fleet managers to better understand user needs.

Vienna (AIT): The shift to e-vehicles confronts fleet operators with major challenges, above all high investment costs. The recently launched research project EUFAL, standing for Electric Urban Freight and Logistics, aims at providing a platform of exchange as a decision support system for those operators. The platform includes tools and advice for companies at different stages of Electric Vehicle (EV) implementation, being the early planning of EV use, the implementation of EV use, and the optimization of the EV implementation. In the next weeks, national experts and practitioners come together in five workshops in in the five participating countries Austria, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Turkey. They exchange their knowledge to better address users needs in the further development of the platform.

The challenges of EV implementation in commercial fleets

Although it is commonly believed that EVs are suited to perform last mile deliveries especially in urban areas, only some companies make use of electric delivery vehicles. Up to now, electric vehicles have been considered as perfect substitutes of conventional vehicles, but the aligned problems still need to be solved: difficulties to deal with the inter-day variability of tour-lengths, problems to integrate EVs into existing fleets and working forces and missing own and reported experiences. However, the potential for EVs is much larger. In order to achieve this, logistics concepts and the usage of EVs have to be optimized jointly, taking the particularities of different spatial areas into account. EVs, integrated into mixed fleets, could be used in urban areas, while traditional vehicles could operate in surrounding areas. Alternatively, the use of micro-distribution centres in connection with urban distribution could be imagined.

Project coordinator Jens Klauenberg from DLR (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt) assures that Projects in the field of electric mobility in commercial transport have shown that there is a lack of information for decision makers and fleet managers concerning technical possibilities and costs of EVs. The EUFAL Platform of Exchange will address these needs.

The EUFAL platform: How to get decision makers and fleet managers working with it

To address user needs and subsequently guarantee the active and intuitive use of the platform, decision makers and managers of commercial fleets will be engaged in user requirement workshops and knowledge exchange events. On 23 and 24 October, their needs will be collected and discussed in the AIT premises in Vienna.

Jurgen Zajicek, Research Engineer at the AIT Center for Mobility Systems: EUFAL will support companies with information for their EV implementations at the best level possible. The aim is to have demonstrations of commercial EV fleets including all kinds of company owned cars at different stages of development. Learnings from the EV implementations and the integration of sharing solutions will help to improve the platform and provide the needed knowledge to future users to promote electric commercial transport.

Contracting entity: ERA-NET EME Electric Mobility Europe



The project EUFAL is co-funded by the ERA-NET Cofund Electric Mobility Europe (EMEurope) and national funding organizations. EMEurope is co-funded by the European Commission within the research and innovation framework programme Horizon 2020 (Project No. 723977).

The EUFAL platform: http://www.eufal-project.eu/



Project Consortium:

DLR, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt, Institute of Transport Research, Germany



AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Austria



Borusan Lojistik Dagitim, Depolama, Tasimacilik ve Ticaret A.S., Turkey



Copenhagen Electric, Denmark



DTU Management Engineering, Denmark



eM-Pro Elektromobilitat GmbH, Germany



Maritime University of Szczecin, Poland



AIT Austrian Institute of Technology

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austrias largest non-university research institute. With its eight Centers, AIT regards itself as a highly specialised research and development partner for industry. Its researchers focus on the key infrastructure issues of the future: Energy, Health & Bioresources, Digital Safety & Security, Vision, Automation & Control, Mobility Systems, Low-Emission Transport, Technology Experience and Innovation Systems & Policy. Throughout the whole of Austria  in particular at the main locations Wien Giefinggasse, Seibersdorf, Wiener Neustadt, Ranshofen and Leoben  around 1,300 employees carry out research on the development of those tools, technologies and solutions that will keep Austrias economy fit for the future in line with our motto Tomorrow Today.

Center for Mobility Systems

Mobility is a fundamental core element of our society. At the Center for Mobility Systems, around 100 experts are developing holistic mobility solutions for the future based on the interrelation of passenger mobility, mobility of goods, and transport infrastructure. Efficiency, safety, ecological sustainability and the human factor are at the heart of the research and development efforts. Leveraging comprehensive system know-how, scientific excellence, market knowledge, and many years of international experience, AIT experts are using innovation to lead industry and society into the future of mobility.

Contact:

Florian Hainz BA Bakk

Marketing & Communications

Center for Mobility Systems

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH

florian.hainz@ait.ac.at | www.ait.ac.at



T +43 (0)50550-4518 | M +43 (0)664 88256021

Mag. Ellen Fethke

Project Dissemination & Communication

Center for Mobility Systems

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH

ellen.fethke@ait.ac.at | www.ait.ac.at



T +43 (0)50550- 6623Dublin, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Automotive Blockchain Market by Application (Financing, Mobility Solutions, Smart Contract, Supply Chain), Provider (Application & Solution, Middleware, Infrastructure & Protocol), Mobility & Region - Global Forecast to 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The automotive blockchain market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 31.19% during the forecast period, and the market size is projected to grow from USD 0.35 billion in 2020 to USD 5.29 billion by 2030.



The automotive industry is a complex connected ecosystem with multiple transactions involved. There is a need for an immutable database to record these transactions with shared, secured, and highly restricted access. In response, many OEMs have initiated pilot projects on automotive blockchain to bring the transparency of information in the business network, which are accelerating the growth of the automotive blockchain market. For instance, French automaker Renault unveiled a new digitized car maintenance log prototype built using blockchain in July 2017. At the same time, uncertainty over regulations and low consumer acceptance can be major obstacles to the growth of the automotive blockchain market.



The market for application and solution providers is projected to hold the largest share in the automotive blockchain market



Application and solution providers are the real facets of the automotive blockchain to introduce the technology to the end consumers. The introduction of technologically advanced blockchain solutions has witnessed a certain level of adoption in the automotive applications such as car sharing, ride sharing, electric mobility, automotive title, and the supply chain management, thereby fuelling the overall market growth of the automotive blockchain. However, the front-end applications are costly and require a skilled workforce to create and maintain. With time, the functions/features of these applications/solutions will also increase, in turn, making them even costlier. The abovementioned reasons would result in applications and solution providers constituting the largest share in the automotive blockchain market.



Smart contracts is projected be the fastest growing application in automotive blockchain market



Smart contracts allow computer programs to execute records and store them on the ledger as a part of the transaction. Smart contracts have a significant number of applications in the automotive industry such as title transfer, dealership management, and B2B contractual agreements. For instance, the current process of vehicle ownership transfer from buyer to seller involves multiple middlemen, phases, and reconciliations to execute. Blockchain helps streamline this complex process by digitizing the titles' transfer process and reduce the time needed to authenticate and validate the transaction. According to secondary research and industry experts, more than 42 million used cars were sold in the US last year. With the rise in income levels and changing customer preferences, the market for used cars is increasing in developing countries like India and China. Hence, it would increase the market adoption of blockchain-based smart contracts.



Asia Oceania: The fastest growing region in the automotive blockchain market



Asia Oceania is projected to be the fastest growing region in the automotive blockchain market. The major factors driving the growth of the Asia Oceania market include fast-developing countries such as China and India and increasing expenditure on the development of advanced technologies. For instance, IBM partnered with India-based multinational Mahindra Group for the development of a blockchain solution aimed at the supply chain. In 2015, Chinese conglomerate Wanxiang Group, one of the largest auto parts manufacturers, invested USD 50.0 million in blockchain technology.



In July 2018, Tech Mahindra set up a blockchain center within its R&D arm 'Makers Lab' at its Hyderabad (India) facility to assist co-innovation in the space by developing enterprise-grade solutions for customers across industries globally. Additionally, the growing Asia Oceania automotive industry calls for an immutable database to record the multiple transactions between automotive ecosystems with shared, secured, and highly limited access. Hence, automotive blockchain market in Asia Oceania is expected to witness considerable growth during the forecast period. However, because of the slow pace of technological adoption in the region, the growth of the automotive blockchain market in this region is expected to be slow till 2024-2025.

The automotive blockchain market is dominated by leading technology players such as IBM (US), Microsoft (US), BigchainDB (Germany), Tech Mahindra (India), and carVertical (Estonia).



Key Topics Covered:



1 Introduction



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Premium Insights

4.1 Automotive Blockchain - Global Market Trends

4.2 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Application

4.3 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Provider

4.4 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Mobility Type

4.5 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Country

4.6 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Region



5 Market Overview

5.1 Introduction

5.1.1 Types of Blockchain

5.1.1.1 Private Blockchain

5.1.1.2 Public Blockchain

5.1.1.3 Hybrid Blockchain

5.2 Market Dynamics

5.2.1 Drivers

5.2.1.1 Increasing Focus on Reducing Data Leaks and Manipulations

5.2.1.2 Faster Transactions

5.2.1.3 Reduced Operational Costs

5.2.2 Restraints

5.2.2.1 Uncertainty Over Regulations

5.2.3 Opportunities

5.2.3.1 Higher Adoption of Automotive Blockchain for Payments, Logistics and Transportation, and Usage-Based Insurance

5.2.3.1.1 Payments and Mobility Services

5.2.3.1.2 Logistics and Transportation

5.2.3.1.3 Usage-Based Insurance

5.2.3.2 Increasing Cryptocurrency Market Capital

5.2.4 Challenges

5.2.4.1 Concerns Over Security, Privacy, and Control

5.2.4.2 Gaining User Acceptance and Lack of Technical Expertise

5.2.4.3 Limited Scalability



6 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Application

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Smart Contracts

6.3 Supply Chain

6.4 Financing

6.5 Mobility Solutions

6.6 Others



7 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Provider

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Middleware Provider

7.3 Infrastructure and Protocols Provider

7.4 Application and Solution Provider



8 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Mobility Type

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Personal Mobility

8.3 Shared Mobility

8.4 Commercial Mobility



9 Automotive Blockchain Market, By Region

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Asia Oceania

9.2.1 Australia

9.2.2 China

9.2.3 India

9.2.4 Japan

9.2.5 Rest of Asia Oceania

9.3 Europe

9.3.1 France

9.3.2 Germany

9.3.3 UK

9.3.4 Spain

9.3.5 The Netherlands

9.3.6 Rest of Europe

9.4 Americas

9.4.1 Brazil

9.4.2 Canada

9.4.3 Mexico

9.4.4 US

9.4.5 Rest of Americas

9.5 Middle East and Africa (MEA)

9.5.1 Middle East

9.5.2 Africa



10 Competitive Landscape

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Automotive Blockchain: Top Players

10.3 Competitive Situation & Trends

10.3.1 Competitive Situation & Trends: New Product Developments Was the Most Widely Adopted Strategy

10.3.2 Supply Contracts/Collaborations/Partnerships/Joint Ventures

10.3.3 New Product Developments

10.3.4 Expansions/ Mergers & Acquisitions



11 Company Profiles

11.1 IBM

11.2 Accenture

11.3 Microsoft

11.4 Carvertical

11.5 Helbiz

11.6 Tech Mahindra

11.7 HCL Technologies

11.8 Xain

11.9 NXM Labs

11.10 Carblock

11.11 Cube

11.12 Context Labs

11.13 Shiftmobility

11.14 Bigchaindb

11.15 Dashride

11.16 Consensys

11.17 Foam

11.18 RSK Labs

11.19 GEM



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wlcmkf/automotive?w=12

Did you know that we also offer Custom Research? Visit our Custom Research page to learn more and schedule a meeting with our Custom Research Manager.Highlights



1,818 KM2 area totaling 449,000 acres has been added to Strata-X Botswana CSG Portfolio.





Serowe CSG Project holdings now total 4,569 KM2, 1,129,000 acres.





Offsets existing Licenses in the CSG Fairway, increasing exposure within Highgraded area.





Additional acreage is expected to add to the 3.3TCF Prospective Resource certified to Strata-X through a pending resource update. (1)





Location selection is underway for two low cost vertical wells targeting bright coals located between 300-400 meters, scheduled for Q4 2018.

ASX disclosure note - 5.28.2 - The estimated quantities of petroleum that may potentially be recovered by the application of a future development project(s) relate to undiscovered accumulations. These estimates have both an associated risk of discovery and a risk of development. Further exploration appraisal and evaluation is required to determine the existence of a significant quantity of potentially moveable hydrocarbons.



DENVER, Colo. and BRISBANE, Queensland and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- STRATA-X ENERGY LTD - The directors and management of Strata-X Energy Ltd. (Strata-X or the Company) (TSX-V:SXE) (ASX:SXA) are pleased to announce that the Company has secured two new Prospecting Licenses for its 100% owned Serowe CSG Project covering 1,818 KM2 (449,000 acres). The new licenses offset those already held by the Company in the heart of the Botswana CSG fairway with a key portion falling within the Companys internally mapped highgraded area. With the addition of this acreage, the Company now holds 4,569 KM2 (1,129,000 acres) over the Serowe CSG Project.

With the completion of the Companys EGM as announced on August 21, 2018 Strata-X secured the necessary funding for two, low cost, vertical pilot wells, scheduled to commence in December 2018. The two well pilot appraisal programme will target coal seams that were targetted in historical tests identified in the Companys internally mapped highgraded area, where previously drilled wells flowed or bubbled fee gas from the targeted coal reservoirs  which can only occur from 100% saturated coal seams. The primary target is a bright coal that has been interpreted to average more than 10 meters in thickness. Deeper secondary targets are coals more than 20 meters thick that will be tested in subsequent drilling. The Company plans to conduct flow tests on one or both wells pending the results of wireline, nuclear resonance logging program (BMR), which is designed to measure coal gas content and permeability.

Negotiations are being finalized with local drilling and services companies for the appraisal program scheduled for December 2018. The response with contractors in developing a low cost well plan that will deliver the required technical data to move the project to the next phase of the appraisal has been very favorable.

On securing new tenements within the Botswana CSG Fairway, Ron Prefontaine, Strata-X Chairman stated, I am very pleased with Strata-Xs progress to date. The Company is working towards building momentum on the Serowe CSG project to prove sufficient gas resources to justify development. Securing new tenements within the CSG fairway and more importantly within the highgraded area positions the Company to magnify our shareholders upside. The highgraded area, in my opinion, has attributes similar to the Waloons CSG field in Queensland which has proven to be extremely profitable.

The Company continues to have discussions with key Botswana stakeholders in developing a market and development plan. Botswana imports all of its hydrocarbons and will benefit greatly with a domestic source of energy to supplement its current use of coal.

About Strata-X

Strata-X is a Denver, Colorado (USA) based company and is engaged in the business of oil and gas exploration and development with a variety of exploration opportunities in the States of California and Illinois in the United States of America and the Republic of Botswana. Strata-X has 81,201,984 common shares outstanding and trades under the symbol "SXE" on the TSX-V and "SXA" on the ASX.



For further information please contact:

Tim Hoops (USA) President +1 855-463-2400 info@strata-x.com

(1) Prospective Resources figures are from an audit report prepared by MHA Petroleum Consultant, a qualified reserves auditor, dated and effective 26 March 2018 following their audit in accordance with the COGE Handbook of the available technical data including the geological interpretation, information from relevant nearby wells, analogous reservoirs and the proposed program for the Project, prepared and presented to MHA by Strata-X. Prospective Resources are those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially recoverable from undiscovered accumulations by application of future development project. Prospective Resources have both an associated chance of discovery and a chance of development. A high level of uncertainty exists with the Prospective resources given the lack of historical drilling, available data and other productivity factors that limit the economic viability of coal seam gas deposits. The Report reviewed only Prospective Resources as the project is not sufficiently developed to assign Contingent Resources or additional Petroleum Reserves to it. Stated Prospective Resource figures are Best Estimate  undiscovered natural gas quantities and net of a royalty and are shown at a 100% working interest in the Project. The total costs associated with establishing the commerciality of this project are unknown at this time given the early stage of the Projects development. There is no certainty that any portion of the resources will be discovered, if discovered, there is no certainty that it will be commercially viable to produce any portion of the resources.NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES



HALIFAX, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NOVA LEAP HEALTH CORP. (TSXV: NLH) ("Nova Leap" or the Company), a company focused on the home health care industry, has completed the acquisition of the business assets of Living at Home SeniorCare (the Vendor) located in Amherst, New Hampshire. The execution of the definitive agreement and related information pertaining to this acquisition was previously announced on August 13, 2018. All amounts are in United States dollars (USD) unless otherwise specified.

The Transaction

Nova Leap incorporated a subsidiary, Armistead NH II, Inc., which has acquired the business assets of the Vendor, including customer contracts and intellectual property. The acquired business will begin to operate under one of Nova Leaps existing brands, Armistead Senior Care, which has operations in Vermont and New Hampshire. The acquisition represents Nova Leaps eighth investment in New England and third in New Hampshire. Nova Leap now has approximately 600 employees in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Nova Scotia.

We are excited to invite the former staff and clients of Living at Home SeniorCare into the Armistead Senior Care family, said Chris Dobbin, President & CEO of Nova Leap. We remain committed to expanding our home care services throughout New England as a preferred provider and valued partner.

Nova Leap Exceeds $15 million of Forecasted Annualized Recurring Revenue

The acquisition of the Vendor is expected to be immediately accretive. Nova Leaps forecasted annualized recurring revenue run rate is approximately $15 million following the acquisition of the Vendors business. Nova Leaps recurring client service hours are paid primarily by clients, the Department of Veteran Affairs or through long term care insurance plans.

The forecasted annualized recurring revenue run rate disclosed in this release is the expected annualized recurring revenue based on the Companys most recent months revenue for current operations multiplied by 12 plus the annual revenue based on the most recent financial information available for Nova Leaps two most recent acquisitions, Living at Home SeniorCare and Comprehensive Home Care.

About Nova Leap

The Home Care Providers industry is one of the fastest growing healthcare industries in Canada and the United States. Home care saves patients billions of dollars every year by treating them in their own homes instead of in hospitals. An aging population, the prevalence of chronic disease, growing physician acceptance of home care, medical advancements and a movement toward cost-efficient treatment options from public and private payers have all fostered industry growth. Nova Leap is focused on a highly fragmented market of small privately-held companies providing patients one on one care in their homes, facilities or hospice. Nova Leap's post-acquisition organic growth strategy is to increase annual revenue per location through a combination of increased employee investment, including training, focused sales and marketing efforts, billing rate increases, expansion of geographical coverage, and improved referral sources.



FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION:

Certain information in this press release may contain forward-looking statements, such as statements regarding the Companys plans for expansion in Nova Scotia, the increase in the Companys forecasted recurring client service hours and forecasted annualized recurring revenue. This information is based on current expectations and assumptions, including assumptions concerning economic and market conditions, the Companys ability to integrate its acquired businesses and maintain previously achieved service hour and revenue levels, that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking statements. Risks that could cause results to differ from those stated in the forward-looking statements in this release include regulatory changes affecting the home care industry, unexpected increases in operating costs and competition from other service providers. All forward-looking statements, including any financial outlook or future-oriented financial information, contained in this press release are made as of the date of this release and included for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those reflected in the forward looking-statements unless and until required by securities laws applicable to the Company. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com .

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT:

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.VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Colorado Resources Ltd. (Colorado or the Company) (TSXV  CXO) is pleased to announce receipt of permits for the construction of ten diamond drill platforms at its 100% owned, 178 sq. km Kinaskan-Castle property located 4 km west of the GT Gold Corps1 Tatogga Property1 in British Columbias prolific Golden Triangle. GT Gold Corp.1 (TSXV) recently announced newly discovered Au-Cu porphyry-style mineralization at their Saddle North1 prospect (GT Gold1 news September 10th and October 10th, 2018) in addition to high-grade Au-Ag mineralization at Saddle South1 (GT Gold Corp.1 news, September 4th, 2018), both located on the Tatogga Property. Regional geological mapping and airborne magnetic surveys demonstrate the continuity of geological, geophysical and topographic features between the Tatogga Property1 and Colorados Kinaskan-Castle claim blocks (see Map 1 and footnote 2, below).



At Kinaskan-Castle, work completed by Colorado during 2017 included geological mapping, geophysical studies, soil geochemical sampling and prospecting, resulting in the discovery of important gold- and copper-in-soils anomalies and high-grade gold mineralization in float samples (see Colorado press releases dated January 24th and June 6th, 2018). Additional induced polarization (IP) geophysical surveying completed by Colorado during August 2018 has revealed IP chargeability anomalies coincident with large gold and copper-in-soils geochemical anomalies which extend along an east-west trend for over 2,000 metres. The anomalies are interpreted to be sourced from underlying early Jurassic monzodiorite porphyry intrusive (+/-volcanic) rocks, potentially similar in age and lithology to those described at Saddle North1 by GT Gold1. At Castle, high-grade gold float samples were collected within the confines of, or bordering, the above described geochemical anomalies (see Map 2). Colorados porphyry-related gold-copper and high-grade gold anomalies have not yet been drill tested. Based upon geological-geochemical-geophysical information, and proximity to the Tatogga Property1, Colorado Resources recognizes good potential for the Kinaskan-Castle Property to host porphyry-style Au-Cu occurrences and/or high-grade Au (Ag) mineralization which may be similar to that recently documented at GT Golds1 Saddle North1 and Saddle South1, respectively.

Colorado President and CEO, Robert Shaw, states Compilation of Colorados technical studies completed in 2017 and additional regional geological information, combined with our 2018 IP surveys and the recent information published by GT Gold1 for the Saddle Zone1, has aided in the definition of numerous drill targets at Kinaskan-Castle. Now that Colorado has received diamond drilling permits, we can advance exploration within our advantageous land position in the emerging Saddle1-Castle district. Our Kinaskan-Castle drill permits are valid until March 31, 2023 and we are preparing to initiate our exploration program during the 2019 field season. In this context we want to thank the Tahltan Central Government and the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources for demonstrating their confidence in Colorados ability to complete these future exploration programs in a safe and socially - environmentally respectful manner.

Qualified Person

Bill Yeomans, P. Geo., is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 who reviewed the preparation of the technical data in this news release.

About Colorado

Colorado Resources Ltd. is currently engaged in the business of mineral exploration for the purpose of acquiring and advancing mineral properties located in the Golden Triangle British Columbia. The Companys main exploration projects within British Columbia include KSP, North ROK, and Kinaskan-Castle.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

COLORADO RESOURCES LTD.

Robert Shaw

Robert Shaw

President and Chief Executive Officer

For more information, please contact:

Colorado Resources Ltd.

Robert Shaw, President & CEO

T: (250) 768-1511

F: (250) 768-0849

TF (855) 768-1511

W: www.coloradoresources.com

NR 18-11

Cautionary Notes 1 and 2 release and figure

1 This news release contains information about adjacent properties on which Colorado has no right to explore or mine. Readers are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on the Companys properties.

2 The geophysical information displayed in Map 1 is public domain information available through the Geoscience BC Quest geophysical survey website at: http://www.empr.gov.bc.ca/Mining/Geoscience/MapPlace/thematicmaps/Pages/QUEST-Northwest.aspx

The data displayed in Map 1 represents a composite integration of geophysical surveys compiled by Quest, each with varying survey parametres including survey equipment, ground clearance, flight speed, flight line spacing and flight line orientation.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this news release, constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is used in applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and is subject to certain factors and assumptions, including: that the Company's financial condition and development plans do not change as a result of unforeseen events, that the Company obtains required regulatory approvals, that the Company continues to maintain a good relationship with the local project communities. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause plans, estimates and actual results to vary materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause the forward-looking information in this news release to change or to be inaccurate include, but are not limited to, the risk that any of the assumptions referred to prove not to be valid or reliable, which could result in delays, or cessation in planned work, that the Company's financial condition and development plans change, delays in regulatory approval, risks associated with the interpretation of data, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits, the possibility that results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, as well as the other risks and uncertainties applicable to mineral exploration and development activities and to the Company as set forth in the Company's Managements Discussion and Analysis reports filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information or statements, other than as required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fb4f0f63-fb60-4579-92db-e69edbed10a8

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/00ce4f66-52b7-4e27-891b-b63a9e32371eHosting ribbon cutting ceremony with Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce Oct. 29

NEWFIELD, N.Y., Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nexamp, Inc., a leading provider of solar energy solutions, along with the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce , is hosting a ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday, Oct. 29 to celebrate the completion of Nexamps first community solar project in New York. The event will be held on Millard Hill Road near the intersection of Puhalka Road in Newfield at 1 p.m. and will be followed by a tour of the solar farm.

Nexamp CEO Zaid Ashai will be joined by local officials to commemorate the completion of the 7.5 megawatt solar array, a big step toward achieving the states goal of 50 percent renewable energy by 2030. Members of the media interested in attending the event should email nexamp@matternow.com to secure their spot. Members of the public are also welcome to attend.

Were thrilled to celebrate the completion of our first community solar array in New York, which will deliver meaningful savings to ratepayers, Ashai said. Were on a mission to put the benefits of solar power within reach of far more individuals across the state, and this project is the first of many Nexamp will invest in in the coming months.

Using their fully integrated business model, Nexamp is dedicated to the community for the long term as they not only developed the solar project but will continue to own and operate the facility throughout its lifetime. We look forward to being a part of the Tompkins County community for years to come, said Ashai.

The Millard Hill community solar project features more than 23,000 solar panels generating over 9 million kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. More than 800 NYSEG customers in Tompkins County and surrounding areas have already enrolled to save up to 10 percent on their portion of the project for as long as they remain enrolled in Nexamps unique Solarize My Bill program. Subscribers can save over $2 million in electricity costs throughout the projects lifetime.

"Nexamp has shown a meaningful commitment to the Tompkins County community since before their construction started  so it is exciting to see such a community-minded company launch a beneficial product for both consumers and the environment in Tompkins County. The Tompkins Chamber is very happy to welcome Nexamp here," said Dominick Recckio, Director of Communications & Strategic Partnerships at the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce.

Supervisor Jeffrey Hart stated he was excited to see the Town of Newfield becoming more socially responsible and utilizing renewable energy sources for the Town of Newfield and its surrounding area, Councilpersons Michael Allinger, Joanne James, Christine Laughlin and Casey Powers all agreed.

With no signup costs, no credit checks, and no annual contracts, Nexamps community solar subscription model simplifies the enrollment process and greatly expands access to the benefits of solar to ratepayers across the Empire State. Interested NYSEG customers should visit solarny.nexamp.com to learn more.

About Nexamp

Nexamp is leading the transformation to the new energy economy with proven solutions for the deployment and operation of solar energy assets. Our comprehensive capabilities span the entire solar project lifecycle  from project development, design and construction, through financing, operations and maintenance. Our integrated, best-in class solutions make solar energy simple and profitable for our clients and partners and make an impact every day. With a rapidly expanding network of property owners, businesses, communities and residents benefitting from our growing portfolio of solar assets across the US, Nexamp and our partners are laying the groundwork for a cleaner, more secure energy future.Oct. 23 Event Marks the First P4 Language Community Gathering in Japan

TOKYO, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Barefoot Networks , a provider of high-performance and fully programmable networking solutions, today announced its participation in P4 Workshop 2018 Tokyo, a summit that brings internet technology elites, networking equipment manufacturers, and researchers to discuss programmable forwarding plane devices and the application of P4 language to the networking industry.

What: P4 Workshop 2018 Tokyo will be the first P4 event in Japan. The event features expert speakers who will present various solutions and use cases that can be realized by utilizing P4 and P4-programmable devices and systems.

P4Programming Protocol-independent Packet Processorsis a programming language designed to allow software developers to design and describe packet-forwarding. The P4 community is growing rapidly with more than 1,500 developers and thousands of commits to P4-based projects and repositories. P4 programming language is supported globally by a group of more than 100 organizations including Arista, AT&T, Baidu, Barefoot Networks, Cisco, Google, FOX, Kaloom, Microsoft, Net One Systems, and more. More on P4 can be found at: https://p4.org/ .

Why: P4 Workshop 2018 Tokyo is the premiere event for the industry to gain a comprehensive understanding of the P4 language, P4-targets and the growing P4 community.

Who: P4 Workshop 2018 Tokyo will feature speakers from the P4 community and foremost industry experts including:

Arista NetworksShishio Tsuchiya, Senior Systems Engineer; presenting Arista 7170 Introduction and Demonstration

Cisco SystemsShunsuke Sasaki, Technical Solutions Architect; presenting Cisco 3400 Introduction and Demonstration

Apresia SystemsHitoshi Kuwata, Advanced Technology Division Senior Manager; presenting Apresia and Edgecore: Wedge 100BF Switch Introduction and SRv6 Demonstration

Net One Systems Tastunori Shinbayashi and Kalooms Warren Kwok, Senior Solutions Architect; presenting Net One P4 Initiatives and Kaloom Software Defined Fabric Introduction

USIRobert Soule, Professor, Universita della Svizzera italiana Lugano, Switzerland; presenting P4 Tutorial

Barefoot NetworksEd Doe, Vice President Product and Strategy; presenting Programmable Data Plane, Haitao Kang, Customer Engineer; presenting Barefoot Products Introduction and Demonstration, Changhoon Kim, CTO of Applications; presenting Use Cases

When: Oct. 23, 2018; 9:40 a.m.- 4:35 p.m.

Opening remarks will begin approximately 10 a.m.

Where: 165 Marunouchi Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0005

Marunouchi North Exit Building; 15th Floor, Meeting Room C

Contact: Reporters interested in attending and interviewing Barefoot Networks may contact press@barefootnetworks.com

Barefoot Networks, the Foot Logo, Tofino, Capilano, Deep Insight, SPRINT, P4 Studio, and P4 Insight are trademarks of Barefoot Networks.

About Barefoot Networks

Barefoot Networks launched in 2016 after two years of developing technology that built switch silicon with a forwarding plane that is defined in software while not compromising on performance. Barefoot empowers network owners and their infrastructure partners to design, optimize, and innovate to meet their specific requirements and gain competitive advantage. In combining the P4 programming language with fast programmable switches, Barefoot has also created an ecosystem for compilers, tools, and P4 programs to make P4 accessible to anybody. Barefoot Networks is headquartered in Silicon Valley and is backed by strategic investors including Alibaba, Dell Technology Capital, Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, and Tencent, and by premier venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, and Sequoia Capital. For more information, visit https://barefootnetworks.com/ .

Follow us on Twitter: @barefootnetwork .

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barefootnetworks .

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/barefoot-networks .PriyankaPalit7 wrote:

Demographic experts predict that the global human population will reach its peak sometime in the middle of this century, after which it will begin to decline. Population growth is driven primarily by high birth rates in developing countries. It is known that when women have access to education and economic opportunities, they choose to have fewer children. Therefore, these experts propose expanding educational and economic opportunities to women in developing countries to bring about an earlier and smaller population peak.



Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest grounds to doubt that the experts' proposal, if adopted, will achieve its aim?



(A) The demographic experts proposing expanding opportunities for women in developing countries made the same recommendations over twenty years ago.



(B) The experts' prediction is based on realistic assessments of the educational and economic opportunities that can be made available to women in developing countries before that time.



(C) Many women in industrialized countries will continue to have four or more children despite access to a variety of educational and economic opportunities.



(D) The demographic experts fail to explain why an earlier and smaller population peak is preferable to a later and larger peak.



(E) Expanding opportunities to women in developing countries is generally considered a positive outcome regardless of its impact on population levels.



Veritas Prep GMAT Instructor



Learn more about how Veritas Prep can help you achieve a great GMAT score by checking out their KarishmaVeritas Prep GMAT InstructorLearn more about how Veritas Prep can help you achieve a great GMAT score by checking out their GMAT Prep Options > Signature Read More

Expert's Prediction: the global human population will reach its peak sometime in the middle of this century, after which it will begin to declineExperts' Proposal: expand educational and economic opportunities to women in developing countries to bring about an earlier and smaller population peak.We have to weaken the proposal. Something that says that expanding these opportunities will not being about an earlier and smaller peak.(A) The demographic experts proposing expanding opportunities for women in developing countries made the same recommendations over twenty years ago.Does not weaken the proposal. The proposal was made before just shows that it makes sense.(B) The experts' prediction is based on realistic assessments of the educational and economic opportunities that can be made available to women in developing countries before that time.The prediction is that the peak will be reached in the middle of the century. If this prediction is based on realistic assessment of opportunities that can be made available, it is unlikely that the opportunities can be expanded faster than what has been assumed to make the prediction. Hence, it is unlikely that the proposal of an earlier peak will succeed because it is not realistic. Correct.(C) Many women in industrialized countries will continue to have four or more children despite access to a variety of educational and economic opportunities.Number of children is not discussed in the argument. Fewer than before is the aim. This is a given premise - "It is known that when women have access to education and economic opportunities, they choose to have fewer children."(D) The demographic experts fail to explain why an earlier and smaller population peak is preferable to a later and larger peak.Irrelevant. Aim is an earlier and smaller peak. Why it is the aim is not relevant to our argument.(E) Expanding opportunities to women in developing countries is generally considered a positive outcome regardless of its impact on population levels.Though true, it doesn't weaken our proposal. It just provides all the more reason for the implementation of the proposal.Answer (B)_________________kksen18

ultraaristo18

Summary:

Q1: Multiculturalist relativism is the notion that there is no such thing as impartial or objective knowledge. The author seems to be grounding his criticism of this notion on



perceivers particular point of view

ideas are simply the expression of individual identity

Option (A) the clear evidence that science has indeed discovered truths that have been independent of both language and culture.

My explanation

Reason:

(B) the conclusion that relativism leaves one with no clear notions of any one thing that is true.

My explanation

Reason:

(C) the absurdity of claiming that knowledge of oppression is more valid than knowledge of scientific facts.

My explanation

Reason:

(D) the agreement among peoples of all cultures as to certain undeniable truthse.g., when the sky is clear, day is warmer than night.

My explanation

Reason:



(E) the fact that truth is not finitely definable and therefore that any discussion of impartial or objective truth is moot.

My explanation

Reason:Grand Old Partisan commemorates a civil rights advancement for the Old Dominion.

As a condition for re-admittance to the Union, the GOP-controlled 40th Congress had required new constitutions for secessionist states. It also mandated that African-Americans be allowed to vote for delegates and to be delegates.

This day in 1867, elections were held for delegates to a Virginia constitutional convention. Many former rebels declined to vote, so most delegates elected were the ones who favored extensive reforms. There would be twenty-four African-American delegates, Republicans all.

Presiding was John Underwood, an abolitionist Republican named a federal judge by Abraham Lincoln. African-American men were guaranteed the right to vote and serve on juries and hold public office. Voters statewide ratified the new constitution on July 6, 1869. It remained in effect until Democrats restricted voting to whites-only with their racist constitution of 1902.

Here is a Video Version of this article on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WCz_bluAcYU

Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.

Each day, his Grand Old Partisan blog celebrates more than sixteen decades of Republican heritage. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states so far.

Clarence Thomas cited Back to Basics for the Republican Party in a Supreme Court decision.

Buy the book at Amazon

See www.youtube.com/q?v=IzxKCiXc5Qc for a brief video of a Texas Republican praising Back to Basics for the Republican Party.

"This is the most amazing book about politics that I have ever read. The Overview should be required reading for anyone with even a minor interest in government. The remainder is an enthralling history lesson that I will never forget. For years, we have all been misled about the true nature of the GOP. This is the real deal! Read it and be proud!"

"Michael Zak wrote the definitive history of the GOP."

"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is the most significant contribution to the Republican Party in the last twenty years apart from Ronald Reagan."

"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is more important to our party now than ever before."

and

"one of the best books I ever read"



IceViking strongly condemns physical attacks and harassment directed towards them.





They are also often victims of the Islamic idea. This is true when it comes to the cruel and tragic treatment of Muslim women and children when it is in accord with the Koran, the example of Mohammed and Islamic law, Sharia, which may be applied regardless of where a Muslim male may find himself in the world, whether in a Muslim or non-Muslim country.





However, in no way, shape or form should one judge all Muslim men because of what is in Islamic scripture and what constitutes the Islamic law, Sharia.





"Race", ethnicity or basically anything that you are "merely" born with should never be a basis for bigotry and discrimination.





Apostates from Islam have been executed for 1400 years in accord with the Koran and the words and actions of the Islamic prophet Mohammed and Islamic law, Sharia.





They should be lovingly helped.





Furthermore, approximately as many as 11,000,000 Muslims may have been killed by other Muslims since 1948.





To quote the website The Religion of Peace (TROP), edited by Glen Roberts:





While it may be safe to say that a true Muslim would not intentionally kill another true Muslim ( 4:92-93 ), the Quran places no such value on the life of a Muslim who is not true. Consider verse 9:73 :

Strive hard against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh against them, their abode is Hell.

The Arabic for strive hard uses the same root as Jihad - and the context in this sura is holy war (see v. 86 and 91). Thus, there are two distinct classes of people that a true Muslim is to target with harshness: disbelievers and hypocrites.



A disbeliever obviously refers to a non-Muslim, so a "hypocrite" must be a Muslim of some sort. In fact, hypocrites are those who say they believe, but do not act as they should. In other words, they are "Muslims", but not true Muslims. They will go to hell just as unbelievers do, and so, according to the verse, their lives matter for naught.



The same sura says that a hypocrite can be recognized not just by lack of piety (reluctance to follow Sharia), but by fear of death ( 9:56 ), reluctance to fight ( 9:44-45 ) and even friendliness toward non-believers ( 9:67 ). A true Muslim would thus be a pious person who relishes martyrdom, is eager to fight, and shuns non-believers.



Even the Quranic passage that warns against killing "believers" ( 4:88-94 ) is more complicated than it first appears. It never says that a true Muslim is incapable of killing another Muslim, just that it should not be done. In fact, it makes exceptions for the unintentional killing of "believers" in war and mandates the killing of "hypocrites."



Verse 17:33 says, "Do not kill anyone which Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause" . The greatest cause of all is that Islam be superior ( 9:33 ), which is exactly what Islamic terrorists say is their goal. Thus believing Muslims are allowed to be collateral damage in the war on unbelievers.









There is sadly a phenomena that I`ve noticed in Sweden and elsewhere of people using true facts about Islamic doctrine and history as a cover for all sorts of irrational targeting of Muslims, ranging from xenophobia and racism to verbal abuse and physical attacks.





This is strongly condemned by this website and does not in any way serve serious criticism of orthodox Islam and other important work.





It`s also important that one tries to express oneself in a civilized way. Words matter.





In this bloggers humble opinion the root cause of the problem is the ancient doctrine of orthodox Islam.













In simple terms a non-Muslim is a Kafir.





" The Koran defines the kafir and kafir is not a neutral word. A kafir is not merely someone who does not agree with Islam, but a kafir is evil, disgusting, the lowest form of life."





An exact quote, as stated in the writings of Dr. Bill Warner in the article "Kafir" at http://www.politicalislam.com/kafir .





In the perfect Koran (Allah`s direct and literal word as revealed to Mohammed through the angel Jibril), Muslims are told 89 times to emulate Mohammed in all ways (see Koran 33:21 for instance).





Mohammed`s example, the Sunna, is found in the Hadith (stories of what Mohammed said and did) and the Sira (biographies of Mohammed).





Islamic law, Sharia , is directly derived from these unchanging scriptures. It is based on the Koran`s numerous commands to obey Allah and obey the Messenger, that is Mohammed (see Koran 4:59 for instance).









Islam is Sharia. Sharia is Islam.





It is a capital crime for Muslims to deny Sharia in any way.





A Muslim is someone who submits to Islam and submitting to Islam means obeying the Sharia of Allah.





Sharia law includes pronouncements for both Muslims and non-Muslims (Kafirs).









Islam is a "complete way of life", a "complete code of life", a "complete system of life".





Islam is not just a religion but also a comprehensive ideology.





Islam is a supremacist ideology.





Islam is a totalitarian and imperialistic ideology akin to Communism and Nazism.





Islam is a civilization.

Islamic law, Sharia, is a manual for a civilization.





Islamic law, Sharia, governs every aspect of life.

It has a say about every conceivable human act .





Non-Muslims are morally and legally inferior in Islam. Women are morally and legally inferior in Islam.

























The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS by Robert Spencer is the first one-volume history of jihad in the English language and a great book on the topic.





Allah guarantees Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for him (Koran 9:111).





A hadith depicts a Muslim asking Muhammad: "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." Muhammad replied, "I do not find such a deed." (Bukhari 4.52.44)





Muhammad himself said:

I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah, and he who professed it was guaranteed the protection of his property and life on my behalf except for the right affairs rest with Allah. (Sahih Muslim 30)









Freedom of speech, human rights, democracy, science and human lives are all at stake in the fight against the Islamic Jihad.



Greens are angry that the Department of the Interior modified a rule they wanted to use to attack energy and ranching.

How we long for the good old days! Thats the tone of some environmental industry leaders who are screaming bloody murder (literally, not figuratively) about Department of the Interior actions under President Trump. The Departments re-interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a case in point.

More HERE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Srinagar: Another civilian who was injured in a blast at the gunfight site in south Kashmirs Kulgam district succumbed late last night, taking the death toll of civilian to seven.

Reports said that the body of Javid Ahmad Lone was brought to his home in Hawoora village of the district late last night and laid to rest amid sobs today morning. Thousands of people attended his funeral, they said.

Lone, they said, was a truck driver.

Six civilians who had died in the blast at the gunfight site at Laroo were identified as Irshad Ahmad Pader and Tajamul Ahmad (both hailing from Shurat village); Talib Maqbool Laway and Mansoor Dar (both hailing from Laroo), Uzair Ahmad Dar from Reshipora and Ubaid Shah from Makenpora village.

Kulgam funeral of martyred157 years ago, a Hoosier from Monroe County wrote about fighting for the Union in the Civil War in a diary he kept almost daily. Peter Thomas Matthews was 20 years old when he enlisted in the army and served as a drummer in the 19th Indiana Regimental Band.

Follow along as we publish his diary entries in real-time on the day they were written.

Read the first entry here. Learn more about Matthews and read all former and future entries here.

Editor's note: We have left Matthews' words as he recorded them, which means spelling and punctuation may not conform to modern standards.

October 20, 1861

Sunday clouds and cool

after guard mount took a Walk to fort albany and took a view of the City of washington It is a Beautiful Sight from this side of the River

get back we had General Inspection after Dinner Rev Dale Preached a good Surmon

to Day was the first that female Voices have assited. Our singing the Col. Luit Col Adit & Dr. master were all here in Camp

Check back for the next entry on October 22.The NCRI notes that in 2018 there have been several misleading reports about the MEK on both media outlets, which led the MEK to write to Channel 4 and Al-Jazeera English on several occasions to correct this misinformation, which was gained by mullah-linked journos, but neither outlet has presented a retraction.

Importantly, former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian admitted in 2017 that the mullahs intelligence operatives often pretend to be journalists in order to conduct covert surveillance abroad.

If anything, they continued to present lies as facts, even fabricating evidence by altering letterheads to attribute statements to police departments. They claimed that the MEK was killing former members, creating fake social media accounts to advocate for their policies, and creating a government within a government. All things we know the Regime have done.

The NCRI also advised that the only sources named in the documents citing wrongdoing by the MEK were people that we know are paid mercenaries of the Iranian Regime, including:

 Ehsan Bidi (or Hasan Bidi), who surrendered himself to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and the Quds terrorist force at the MEKs Camp Liberty in Iraq, and was moved to Albania, supposedly as a refugee. He, in fact works for the Regime.

 Manouchehr Abdi, who was granted humanitarian refuge at the MEKs Camp Ashraf in Iraq in 2004. He was working for the Regime and even admitted it publically, after being kicked out.

 Saadollah Seyfi, who currently works at the Iranian Intelligence Centre in Kermanshah. He was expelled from the MEK in 2017, following his constant communication with the Iranian Regime.

 Bahman Azami, whom not much is known about other than his links to the Iranian Regime. Other mercenaries, including Adel Azami and Anne Singleton, briefed him in November 2017. When he was exposed, the Iranian Regime illegally trafficked him out of Albania.

This was all an attempt to play down (or even justify) the Iranian Regimes continued attack on the MEK and it must stop.

The NCRI wrote: During the transfer of Mojahedin to Albania, Gholam Hossein Mohammadnia, another veteran intelligence officer of the mullahs, was appointed to the regimes embassy in Albania.

The plot to bomb the Iranians large gathering in Villepinte on June 30 this year (2018) clearly showed that the diplomats of the clerical regime were the religious Gestapo murderers who were heavily involved in terrorist acts against the Iranian resistance.

At the same time as the Iranian regimes diplomat was extradited from Germany to Belgium, who is being prosecuted for participation and providing explosives for the bombing, the French government announced that the Iranian Intelligence ministry had issued the order.

The clerical regime intelligence agents in Albania should be tried and punished, or at least expelled.Seven civilians died and at least 25 were injured at an encounter site on Sunday.Srinagar: A photojournalist said he saw a youth with his ribs protruding out being removed from the explosion site. Another scribe talked about a heavily-built person whose left hand was ripped apart by the blast. The third injured had deep wounds in his head and neck. All of them died within half-an-hour of the explosion. The tragedy didnt end there.

By the time darkness enveloped the Valley, grief had filled the autumn air. The count of dead had risen to seven. Two of the injured, among 25, are battling for life in hospitals in the summer capital of Srinagar. All of them, the dead and the injured, were natives of Kulgam and had swarmed to a gun-battle site to douse the fire in a house where three rebels were killed by security forces in an early morning encounter on Sunday.

A doomsday

It was a doomsday, described freelance photojournalist Sameer Mushtaq. There were people lying around on the ground, some unconscious, a few of them already dead and others writhing in pain.

The horrific scenes of blood littered all around and people dragging out bodies from the site kept Mushtaq awake all night. The images kept coming in front of my eyes. I havent seen such horrifying scenes anywhere, he said.

The young journalist was part of a group of scribes who had rushed from Anantnag town to cover the gunfight in Laroo village of the southern district. The joint forces of army and J&K police had laid siege at around 4 am and the first contact between holed up militants and forces was established half-an-hour later.

Another photojournalist said the gunfight was over by 10 am, with the killings of three rebels, all locals, affiliated with Jaish-e-Mohammad. Then the forces left the site and that is when we moved in to take pictures. The house was up in flames and many people, mostly young, were trying to douse the fire suddenly there was a loud bang. We rushed towards the courtyard after a while and found at least seven persons down on the ground near the verandah. They were not making any movement, said the photojournalist who works with a local newspaper.

As we moved ahead there were more people lying flat on the ground, crying for help  blood on their faces, on their hands. A person had his two fingers hanging by skin, said the scribe.

Several videos of the tragedy that have gone viral on social media show the injured and the dead being evacuated on motorbikes or carried on shoulders amid cries for help. Women can be seen beating their chest, plucking their hair as the injured are being rushed through alleys. Oh God! Are we Kashmiris doomed to die like this, a middle-aged women cries aloud in one of the video.

Valley in mourning

Another video of the funeral of Ubaid Shah, one of the deceased from Makenpora village in Kulgam has heart wrenching moments captured in it. As Shah is being taken for his last journey, a woman (pehaps his mother) pleads with him to talk to me for one last time. Talk to me once. Speak a few wordslook at me. Please talk to me, she caresses his forehead.

The deaths have left the whole of Kashmir in mourning with no end in sight to decades of conflict which has taken a huge humanitarian toll.

In the corridors of Srinagars Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, desperate mothers and sisters waited anxiously to hear from doctors about the conditions of their loved ones injured in the explosion.

One of them was Daisy Jan whose son Auqib was preparing for Class X exams to be held later this month. Sixteen-year old Auqib was operated upon for three hours yesterday for severe injuries in his chest, abdomen and neck. He promised me that he wont leave his roomI dont know how he got there, Daisy said outside operation theater, tears in her eyes. A group of youth had rushed to her house to inform her that Auqib was critically injured and looking for her, at the blast site. She rushed to her son, barefooted. He was in pool of blood. He could not utter a word.

Another critically injured youth, who was removed to SKIMS hospital in Soura, had to be first shifted to another hospital to fix his badly shattered bones in legs. He continues to be in critical condition in SKIMS ICU.

As per data from hospitals a total of 25 persons were injured, some of them critically, in the explosion, and in forces action on protestors. Some of the injured have bullet and pellet injuries.

A youth shows empty bullets collected from debris of the damaged house where militants were hiding during an encounter, at Kulgam district of South Kashmir, Sunday, Oct 21, 2018. Credit: PTI

The killings have sparked fresh anger on the ground, with people observing a complete shutdown today on a call given by separatists, while two former chief ministers, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, warning that situation has become volatile.

Alienating people in the fight against militancy is a sure fire recipe for losing the fight. How long can we go on ignoring the ground realities and and living in denial about how bad things are in Kashmir, asked Omar Abdullah.

Was the SoP followed?

A statement issued by police said after the gunfight, a crowd entered the encounter site before it could be cleared of any explosive material. Localshad apparently fiddled with some stray explosive materials leading to the explosion, the statement said.

As per standard operation procedure the forces are required to sanitise the gunfight site before leaving it. But in case of Kulgam, as the forces hastily left after gun battle was over, hundreds of civilians from adjoining villages converged on the site.

The house was on the fire and there was stone pelting going on. It was not possible to sanitise area in such a situation. But before moving out of the area and lifting the cordon we made the announcements asking people not to go near the gunfight site till it is cleared, said a police official from Kulgam.

This isnt however an isolated incident of killing owing to explosion of unexploded material at encounter-sites. In the past too, Kashmir has witnessed such deaths and injuries at encounter sites, which are not sanitised and cleared in time.

According to human rights groups, more than 100 people, mostly children, have been seriously injured in such explosions since 2000. Many of them died.

In January this year, nine-year-old Musharraf Fayaz of Chandigund died when a shell he had picked up from an encounter site exploded in his hands. In August 2015, two brothers, Bilal Ahmed Reshi and Shakir Ahmad, aged ten and 12, were killed after an unexploded shell they were fiddling with went off in Ganderbal district.

Locals rushing to encounter sites to try and help militants trapped in a house escape, or later help house owners salvage whatever is left in the rubble after gun battle is a common sight in the Valley.

In the past, J&K police have issued multiple advisories asking people not to go near the sites of gunfights. Citizens are requested not to visit any encounter site until the site is sanitised by bomb disposal team. We seek cooperation of people in this regard for avoiding accidents of such nature, reads a fresh advisory issued by the police after Kulgam mayhem.

Mudasir Ahmad is a Srinagar-based reporter.Curfew re-imposed in Krishnanagar (Update)

The District Administration Office, Kapilvastu, re-imposed an indefinite curfew in the bordering town of Krishnanagar from 5 pm on Monday. The administration said the curfew was re-clamped considering the security threat during night time.- Gas price range from P58 to P61 pesos per liter and P49 to P51 for diesel

- For this reason, many Filipinos are complaining about the price hike

- A netizen uploaded a photo on Facebook to show the low price of oil just over two years ago

PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed

Many Filipinos nowadays are complaining about the rising fuel prices in the country.

KAMI learned that a new viral photo might make the complaining even worse.

The viral photo, shared on Facebook by a netizen named Raymond Alejandrino, shows the fuel prices of Shell a couple of years ago.

According to Raymond, the photo was taken in February 2016.

Here is the photo uploaded by the netizen. This might make you nostalgic for the "old days":

Here are some of the reactions from netizens who saw the photo:

Hindi mo na mababalik Ang nkaraan boss.

Kaloka.. ngayon 50 na diesel.

Sure kayo 2016 lang to? Baka mas mababa pang year.

PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data!

According to GMA-7 News, the major oil companies were able to cut back gas prices by P1.85 per liter and diesel prices by P0.90 per liter.

The price rollback started to be implemented at 6:00 A.M. today, October 22, 2018.

Prices of gas range from P58 to P61 pesos per liter and P49 to P51 for diesel, according to the Department of Energy.

Philippines tricky questions: can you answer these tricky questions? Today we are going to ask the Philippines strangers some very funny Tagalog tricky questions! Do you think you can answer them correctly? These individuals from the Philippines have their answers!  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.ph- There were three public officials who were involved in many criminal charges

- They faced cases like plunder, graft, corruption and rebellion

- However, they still made it back to the government

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Many politicians have been involved in many controversies and criminal charges. Some of them faced plunder, perjury or even rebellion. Despite being arrested and detained, they were still able to have a comeback in the government and continue their public service.

KAMI has listed three government officials who made it back to serve the country:

Joseph Erap Estrada

Photo from Inquirer

Source: Facebook

Former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada was impeached back in 2001 the first ever kicked out by the Congress. It was when EDSA II happened. He faced many charges with regard to plunder, bribery, corruption, perjury as well as violation of Philippine Constitution. He was arrested back in April 25, 2001 as reported by GMA News.

Estrada faced many allegations like receiving P130 million worth of kickback from tobacco farmers, receiving P545 million from jueteng operators, and another P189.7 million kickback from Belle Corporation.

After being detained for 6 years, in September 2007, he was charged guilty for plunder by the Sandiganbayan and was sentenced reclusion perpetua. However, in October 2007, Estradas vice president, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo granted him executive clemency as recommended by Department of Justice. Erap was finally released by the Sandiganbayan.

In 2013, Estrada won as the Mayor of Manila and has been serving the city until now.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Photo from Inquirer

Source: Facebook

Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became the countrys chief executive when former President Estrada was ousted. She assumed her post as the president in 2001. During the 2004 polls, she won the presidency against movie star Fernando Poe Jr.

Arroyo was also involved in the infamous Hello, Garci scandal which stated that Arroyo allegedly rigged the 2004 polls through a recorded phone conversation with elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. While still finishing her term as President, she ran as Pampaga 2nd Districts Representative.

As reported by ABS-CBN, in November 2011, Arryo was arrested for the rigging issue in Comelec. She was confined in St. Lukes Medical Center when the arrest warrant was issued. Arroyo went through hospital arrest at Veterans Memorial Medical Center. In 2012, Arroyo faced a plunder case filed by the Ombudsman for allegedly using the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) in a wrong way. The Sandiganbayan granted the arrest, still, under hospital arrest.

It was 2016 when Arroyo was acquitted from her plunder case. She also went back to serve in the Congress. During the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Rodrigo Duterte in 2018, Arroyo was announced to be the new House Speaker, in replacement of Pantaleon Alvarez.

PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data!

Antonio Trillanes IV

Photo from ABS-CBN News

Source: Facebook

Antonio Sonny Trillanes IV is a known opposition. He was involved in the Oakwood mutiny which happened back in 2003. He protested along with 300 soldiers, a group called Magdalo, to expose the corruption under former President Arroyo. The Department of Justice filed a non-bailable coup detat case to the mutineers. They were all arrested and detained in Taguig.

In 2007, during the hearing of their coup detat case, Trillanes walked out along with other soldiers and went to the Manila Peninsula to oust Arroyo. The siege lasted for 6 hours. There were gunshots fired and tear gas used. DOJ filed a rebellion charge to them. Trillanes was then detained at Camp Crame as reported by Rappler. Even if he was still in detention, Trillanes won in the Senatorial race.

In 2010, Trillanes was granted amnesty by former President Benigno Noynoy Aquino III. However, in 2018, President Duterte has revoked Trillanes amnesty as reported by KAMI.

As previously reported by KAMI, Trillanes was once again arrested when Makati regional trial court (RTC) Branch 150 issued an arrest warrant and hold departure order with regard to his coup detat case as petitioned by DOJ.

Kpop in public: Today we will try to repeat the dance moves of MOMOLAND girls from their famous music video "BAAM". But, of course, we will do it in very unusual places like a subway, a market, and right on the streets of the Philippines.  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.phDharahara reconstruction to kick off before Tihar

The reconstruction of Dharahara is set to begin as the National Reconstruction Authority has closed the deal with Raman Construction Pvt Ltd and its Chinese Joint Venture Partner GIETC.General Convention should be held in time: Shashank Koirala

Nepali Congress (NC) General Secretary Shashank Koirala has said that the party general convention should be held in time.Tom Angell reports here at Forbes on the introduction of a new piece of federal legislation that I consider long overdue. Here are the details:

The Marijuana Data Collection Act, introduced on Tuesday by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and a bipartisan group of cosponsors, would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to partner with other federal and state government agencies to study "the effects of State legalized marijuana programs on the economy, public health, criminal justice and employment."...

If the legislation is enacted, the National Academy of Sciences would carry out the research and publish initial findings within 18 months, with follow-up reports to be issued every two years after that.

So far, the bill's backers seem to consist solely of those who support marijuana law reform, a situation that legalization advocates decried. This is not a marijuana bill, it is an information bill," Justin Strekal, political director for NORML, said in an interview. "No member of Congress can intellectually justify opposition to this legislation. Our public policy needs to be based on sound data and science, not gut feelings or fear-mongering. Approving the Marijuana Data Collection Act would provide legislators with reliable and fact-based information to help them decide what direction is most beneficial to society when it comes to marijuana policy....

Gabbard held a Tuesday morning press conference with other supporters, including lead GOP cosponsor Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) and former U.S. Attorneys Barry Grissom of Kansas and Bill Nettles of South Carolina. Other original cosponsors of the bill include Reps. Don Young (R-AK), Darren Soto (D-FL), Beto ORourke (D-TX), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Dina Titus (D-NV), Charlie Crist (D-FL), Tom Garrett (R-VA), Lou Correa (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Salud Carbajal (D-CA).

Here are the specific data points the bill directs federal officials to track:

REVENUES AND STATE ALLOCATIONS

The monetary amounts generated through revenues, taxes, and any other financial benefits. The purposes and relative amounts for which these funds were used. The total impact on the State and its budget.

MEDICINAL USE OF MARIJUANA

The rates of medicinal use among different population groups, including children, the elderly, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. The purpose of such use. Which medical conditions medical marijuana is most frequently purchased and used for.

SUBSTANCE USE

The rates of overdoses with opioids and other painkillers. The rates of admission in health care facilities, emergency rooms, and volunteer treatment facilities related to overdoses with opioids and other painkillers. The rates of opioid-related and other painkiller-related crimes to ones self and to the community. The rates of opioid prescriptions and other pain killers.

IMPACTS ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The rates of marijuana-related arrests for possession, cultivation, and distribution, and of these arrests, the percentages that involved a secondary charge unrelated to marijuana possession, cultivation, or distribution, including the rates of such arrests on the Federal level, including the number of Federal prisoners so arrested, disaggregated by sex, age, race, and ethnicity of the prisoners; and the rates of such arrests on the State level, including the number of State prisoners so arrested, disaggregated by sex, age, race, and ethnicity. The rates of arrests and citations on the Federal and State levels related to teenage use of marijuana. The rates of arrests on the Federal and State levels for unlawful driving under the influence of a substance, and the rates of such arrests involving marijuana. The rates of marijuana-related prosecutions, court filings, and imprisonments. The total monetary amounts expended for marijuana-related enforcement, arrests, court filings and proceedings, and imprisonment before and after legalization, including Federal expenditures disaggregated according to whether the laws being enforced were Federal or State. The total number and rate of defendants in Federal criminal prosecutions asserting as a defense that their conduct was in compliance with applicable State law legalizing marijuana usage, and the effects of such assertions.

EMPLOYMENT

The amount of jobs created in each State, differentiating between direct and indirect employment. The amount of jobs expected to be created in the next 5 years, and in the next 10 years, as a result of the States marijuana industry.Long-time readers know that my interest in marijuana law and policy is based in my work and research concerning the criminal justice system. Stated differently, I think the marijuana reform movement is fundamentally a criminal justice reform movement. This new press release from Marijuana Policy Project announcing the hiring of Steve Hawkins as is new Executive Director serves, thought a personnel move, to highlight ways in which marijuana reform and criminal justice and racial justice can and should be connected. Here is a little from the press release:

The nations largest organization dedicated exclusively to marijuana policy, the Marijuana Policy Project, announced Tuesday it has hired Steve Hawkins to serve as its next executive director. The announcement comes after a months-long candidate search that included several exceptionally qualified candidates.

We are thrilled to welcome Steve Hawkins as the new executive director of MPP, said Troy Dayton, chair of the MPP board of directors. Steve has a strong track record in the field of criminal justice reform, and he knows how to build a movement toward meaningful social change. We were not only impressed by his expertise and experience, but also his strong convictions regarding the injustice of marijuana prohibition.

Hawkins has been at the forefront of the criminal justice reform movement for three decades as an advocate, policy strategist, nonprofit leader, and foundation executive. He has extensive experience overseeing campaigns to advance policy change through public education, stakeholder mobilization, engagement with government officials, and development of strategic alliances with business leaders, law enforcement officials, scholars, faith leaders, victims advocates, and other key voices. The country is moving in the right direction on marijuana policy, but there is still a lot of work to be done, Dayton said. Steve is the perfect choice to oversee that work and lead MPP into the future.

Hawkins began his career as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund challenging racial disparities in the criminal justice system. He later served as executive vice president of the NAACP, spearheading its efforts to end the police practice of stop and frisk in New York City and successfully encouraging the NAACP board of directors to adopt a policy in support of marijuana decriminalization. He also previously served as executive director of Amnesty International USA, as a program executive for the Atlantic Philanthropies, and as a senior program manager at the JEHT Foundation, where he directed early investments of substantial resources into advocacy efforts to end mass incarceration, including groups working to eliminate criminal penalties for marijuana possession. Most recently, Hawkins was president of the Coalition for Public Safety, the largest national bipartisan effort to reform the justice system at the state and federal levels. A more detailed biography of Hawkins is available on the MPP website.

Throughout my career, I have witnessed the counterproductive effects of the war on marijuana and its especially devastating impact on communities of color, Hawkins said. MPP has been at the vanguard of changing public perceptions and public policies surrounding marijuana, and I am proud to join this incredible team of advocates at such a critical moment in the movement to end marijuana prohibition.Saturday, October 20, 2018

The title of this post is the title of this impressive new report released this past week by the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center. This posting provides an overview of the 50+-page report, and here are portions of the executive summary:

In Alabama, a person caught with only a few grams of marijuana can face incarceration and thousands of dollars in fines and court costs. They can lose their drivers license and have difficulty finding a job or getting financial aid for college.

This war on marijuana is one whose often life-altering consequences fall most heavily on black people  a population still living in the shadow of Jim Crow. Alabamas laws are not only overly harsh, they also place enormous discretion in the hands of law enforcement, creating an uneven system of justice and leaving plenty of room for abuse.

This year in Etowah County, for example, law enforcement officials charged a man with drug trafficking after adding the total weight of marijuana-infused butter to the few grams of marijuana he possessed, so they could reach the 2.2-pound threshold for a trafficking charge.

Marijuana prohibition also has tremendous economic and public safety costs. The state is simply shooting itself in the pocketbook, wasting valuable taxpayer dollars and adding a tremendous burden to the courts and public safety resources.

This report is the first to analyze data on marijuana-related arrests in Alabama, broken down by race, age, gender and location. It includes a thorough fiscal analysis of the states enforcement costs. It also exposes how the administrative burden of enforcing marijuana laws leaves vital state agencies without the resources necessary to quickly test evidence related to violent crimes with serious public safety implications, such as sexual assault. The study finds that in Alabama:

 The overwhelming majority of people arrested for marijuana offenses from 2012 to 2016  89 percent  were arrested for possession. In 2016, 92 percent of all people arrested for marijuana offenses were arrested for possession.

 Alabama spent an estimated $22 million enforcing the prohibition against marijuana possession in 2016  enough to fund 191 additional preschool classrooms, 571 more K-12 teachers or 628 more Alabama Department of Corrections officers.

 Black people were approximately four times as likely as white people to be arrested for marijuana possession (both misdemeanors and felonies) in 2016  and five times as likely to be arrested for felony possession. These racial disparities exist despite robust evidence that white and black people use marijuana at roughly the same rate.2

 In at least seven law enforcement jurisdictions, black people were 10 or more times as likely as white people to be arrested for marijuana possession.

 In 2016, police made more arrests for marijuana possession (2,351) than for robbery, for which they made 1,314 arrests  despite the fact that there were 4,557 reported robberies that year.

 The enforcement of marijuana possession laws creates a crippling backlog at the state agency tasked with analyzing forensic evidence in all criminal cases, including violent crimes. As of March 31, 2018, the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences had about 10,000 pending marijuana cases, creating a nine-month waiting period for analyses of drug samples. At the same time, the department had a backlog of 1,121 biology/DNA cases, including about 550 crimes against persons cases such as homicide, sexual assault and robbery....

And, as the human toll discussed throughout this report falls disproportionately on black people, legalization offers an opportunity to begin to address the disproportionate harms that Alabamas criminal justice system causes to its African-American population. Its time for Alabama to join an increasing number of states in taking a commonsense, fiscally responsible approach to marijuana policy.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/marijuana_law/2018/10/alabamas-war-on-marijuana-assessing-the-fiscal-and-human-toll-of-criminalization.htmlAs reported in this USA Today piece, headlined "Landmark California marijuana legislation gives residents chance to 'reclaim their lives'," last night finalized some exciting news for those eager to see marijuana reform greatly impact criminal justice reform. Here are details:

Hailed by advocates as a chance for people to reclaim their lives, a new California law will soon make it easier for people with past marijuana convictions to get their records expunged completely, or their sentences significantly reduced. Assembly Bill 1793  passed by overwhelming majority in the California state Legislature and signed into law Sunday night by Gov. Jerry Brown  will streamline a previously tedious process that made it difficult for residents with a prior cannabis-related conviction to clear their names.

This is transformative, said Rodney Holcombe of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York City-based national organization that advocates for human rights-driven drug policies. This creates an opportunity for people to reclaim their lives."

California is not the first state to retroactively allow those with cannabis convictions a chance to reduce or completely remove their past; that distinction goes to Oregon, which legalized recreational weed in 2014. Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, plus the cities of San Francisco, Seattle and San Diego, have laws similar to Oregons, where individuals convicted of some marijuana-related crimes  like possession, cultivation or manufacturing  can work to get their records sealed or expunged.

But California is the first state to automate the system, which lawmakers and bill supporters hope will be a game-changer for thousands of residents who have limited access to student loans, housing and jobs because of their criminal records. The Judicial Council of California estimates at least 218,000 residents would benefit from the new law. The failed war on drugs has, in so many ways, wreaked havoc, damage, pain and anguish on so many Californians, said Assemblymember Ron Bonta, D-Oakland, who proposed the measure. This is where government can step in and make it better.

Pot convictions disproportionately affect communities of color, according to a 2016 study from the ACLU and Drug Policy Alliance. That study found that while white people consume marijuana at similar rates to black people  and more than Latinos  communities of color are more likely to be targeted by law enforcement for low-level marijuana possession infractions. In 2010, for example, black people were 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people nationwide.

The measure is California's latest effort to help those with marijuana charges move on with their lives. Two years ago, Californians passed Proposition 64, which legalized recreational marijuana use for adults 21 and over and allowed for those with criminal convictions to request to have their records erased. But the process was lengthy and convoluted, requiring people to petition the courts to reduce their sentence for prior convictions, back when cannabis was illegal. It could also be an expensive process, with costs spanning court fees, hiring a lawyer (to walk people through paragraphs of confusing legal jargon) and time spent away from work and home....

The Drug Policy Alliance tries to educate the public on what it calls collateral consequences, the side effects that stem from a sometimes decades-old conviction, Holcombe said. Those collateral consequences can include not being able to acquire student loans, find meaningful employment or access good housing, among other issues.

Under the new law, the state will do the work to clean up people's records  even if they didnt know they were eligible. Some individuals will be able to completely clear their record, while others will see their crimes significantly reduced. Possession with the intent to sell, for example, will now be reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Here's how it will work: Starting Jan. 1, 2019, the Department of Justice has seven months to review all marijuana cases and send potential petitions to county district attorneys. DAs will have one year to challenge or grant the petition to change residents' marijuana-related convictions. Priority will be given to those currently serving time. Prop. 64 provided redemption and rehab and a chance to rebuild those lives  these expungement and reductions are a big part of that, Bonta said. I wanted to make sure that the promise in Prop. 64 was kept....

Holcombe and the DPA are hopeful that if California's landmark law is successful, other states could adopt similar measures. Popular opinion has changed so much, Holcombe said. Lots of support has already been generated around the folks who have been convicted and are still burdened by these collateral consequences  and theres growing interest in remedying that.The question in the title of this post is the headline of this new Rolling Stone article that effectively summarizes the lengthy memo circulated yesterday by Representative Earl Blumenauer written to House Democratic Leadership outlining his plan to legalize cannabis in the next Congress. Here are excerpts from the article:

In honor of Canadas first day with legal adult-use marijuana, an optimistic Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) sent a letter to House Democratic leadership Wednesday outlining a plan to advance federal legalization measures with the goal of federally legalizing cannabis by the end of 2019. Congress is out of step with the American people and the states on cannabis, he wrote. There is no question: cannabis prohibition will end. Democrats should lead the way.

Blumenauers plan would begin as early as next January, when he says the key to advancing some of the 37 cannabis bills sitting in Congress is to have the individual issues evaluated by the distinct congressional committees. For example, the House Judiciary Committee could hold a hearing on descheduling marijuana; the House Veterans Affairs Committee could hold a hearing on veterans access to medical pot; the House Financial Services Committee could discuss the current barring of cannabis businesses from federally backed banks; and the House Ways and Means Committee could have a hearing on the unequal taxation of pot businesses.

Additionally, Blumenauer writes that these committees should start marking up bills in their jurisdiction[s] that would responsibly narrow the marijuana policy gap  the gap between federal and state marijuana laws, using examples like the protection of employment, protection of private property from civil asset forfeiture and the removal of barriers to marijuana research. He also includes, most importantly, the need to address the racial injustices that resulted from the unequal application of federal marijuana laws  or, in other words, a social-justice element that could begin to correct the racist tide of the 40-year-old War on Drugs.

By August, Blumenauer believes, the House can pass a package of marijuana laws to address these concerns, and the bills can move to the Senate. The Oregon representative hopes that, given the increasing public support for marijuana  he cites a poll that 69 percent of registered voters support legalizing pot  the public will be able to pressure the senior body of Congress into passing the bill....

On a call with reporters, Blumenauer said that he believes key members of the prohibitionist movement  including Texas Rep. Pete Sessions and House Majority Leader Paul Ryan  wont be returning next session, and with those opponents gone, the cannabis movement will be able to advance. He has been speaking with senior members of the committees, he said, and is confident that some will be able to get these specific areas of cannabis law on the agenda next year. The outline is ambitious, Blumenauer admitted. Its aspirational, but its entirely within our capacity.The title of this post is my weak attempt to make a play on the phrase "Go West, young man" to capture Manifest Destiny concepts combined now with this new AP article about marijuana reform efforts this election year. The AP piece is headlined "Marijuana backers look for Midwest breakthrough in November," and here are excerpts:

Michigan and North Dakota, where voters previously authorized medical marijuana, will decide if the drug should be legal for any adult 21 and older. They would become the 10th and 11th states to legalize so-called recreational marijuana since 2012, lightning speed in political terms.

Meantime, Missouri and Utah will weigh medical marijuana, which is permitted in 31 states after voters in conservative Oklahoma approved such use in June. Even if Utahs initiative is defeated, a compromise reached last week between advocates and opponents including the Mormon church would have the Legislature legalize medical marijuana.

Weve kind of reached a critical mass of acceptance, said Rebecca Haffajee, a University of Michigan assistant professor of health management and policy. She said the country may be at a breaking point where change is inevitable at the federal level because so many states are in conflict with U.S. policy that treats marijuana as a controlled substance like heroin. Generally, people either find a therapeutic benefit or enjoy the substance and want to do so without the fear of being a criminal for using it, Haffajee said....

In Michigan, surveys show the publics receptiveness to marijuana legalization tracks similarly with nationwide polling that finds about 60 percent support, according to Gallup and the Pew Research Center.

The Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project was the driving force behind successful legalization initiatives in other states and has given at least $444,000 for the Michigan ballot drive. The electorate is recognizing that prohibition doesnt work. Theres also a growing societal acceptance of marijuana use on a personal level, said Matthew Schweich, the projects deputy director. Our culture has already legalized marijuana. Now its a question of, How quickly will the laws catch up? added Schweich, also the campaign director for the Michigan legalization effort, known as the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.

Midwest voters have considered recreational legalization just once before, in 2015, when Ohio overwhelmingly rejected it. Supporters said the result was more back lash against allowing only certain private investors to control growing facilities than opposition to marijuana.

Proponents of Michigans measure say it would align with a new, strong regulatory system for medical marijuana businesses and add roughly $130 million annually in tax revenue, specifically for road repairs, schools and municipalities. Military veterans and retired police officers are among those backing legalization in online ads that were launched Tuesday.

Critics say the Michigan proposal is out of step and cite provisions allowing a possession limit of 2.5 ounces (71 grams) that is higher than many other states and a 16 percent tax rate that is lower. Opponents include chambers of commerce and law enforcement groups along with doctors, the Catholic Church and organizations fighting substance abuse....

In North Dakota, legalization faces an uphill battle. No significant outside supporters have financed the effort, which comes as the state still is setting up a medical marijuana system voters approved by a wide margin two years ago.

The medical marijuana campaign in predominantly Mormon Utah, which has received $293,000 from the Marijuana Policy Project, was jolted last week when Gov. Gary Herbert said he will call lawmakers into a special postelection session to pass a compromise deal into law regardless of how the public vote goes.

Medical marijuana also is on the ballot in Missouri and while the concept has significant support, voters may be confused by its ballot presentation. Supporters gathered enough signatures to place three initiatives before voters. Two would change the state constitution; the third would amend state law. If all three pass, constitutional amendments take precedence over state law, and whichever amendment receives the most votes would overrule the other.

An organizer of one amendment, physician and attorney Brad Bradshaw, said it is unclear if having three initiatives could split supporters so much that some or all of the proposals fail. A lot of people dont really even have this on the radar at this point, he said. Theyre going to walk into the booth to vote and theyre going to see all three of these and say, What the heck? You just dont know how its going to play out.The question in the title of this post is my domestic reaction to the big international marijuana reform news of Canadian marijuana legalization efforts becoming a reality. This new Politico article, headlined "Members of Congress, businesses push for homegrown weed," reports on some of the US echoes of what has transpired in the country up north this week, and here are excerpts:

Washington just got some major peer pressure to embrace the bong. Its vast northern neighbor Canada legalizes the retail sale of marijuana nationwide Wednesday. The Canadian cannabis sector is already estimated to be worth $31 billion and upstart marijuana companies have soared on the New York Stock Exchange.

But Americas patchwork of state laws  and federal ban on marijuana  put American pot companies at a high disadvantage. It's unclear whether the push to liberalize U.S. marijuana laws will get very far: Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declared war on marijuana, though his efforts have been dampened by a not-so-hostile White House. Yet Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said last week that the White House plans to address cannabis reform following the midterms.

Rohrabacher's efforts are bolstered by a chorus of congressional and business voices calling on the Trump administration to respond with an America First policy on pot. A publicly traded U.S. cannabis company bought a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday with a message to President Donald Trump: Canada will take over the U.S. marijuana market if we don't legalize soon....

A bipartisan group of American lawmakers fumed last month when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency gave the green light to importing Canadian marijuana for research purposes. The 15 lawmakers, many of them representing states that have legalized recreational cannabis, protested to the DEA and Sessions that dozens of American companies already requested permission to produce marijuana for study. They wrote that allowing the University of California, San Diego, one of the applicants, to import marijuana capsules from Canada-based Tilray, Inc., was adding insult to injury.

Noting that Trump had issued a "Buy American" executive order, the lawmakers urged the administration to ensure that the domestic need for cannabis research be met by American institutions. The concerns are not just limited to medicinal marijuana. Recreational use is gaining a foothold in U.S. states. Voters in North Dakota and Michigan will vote on ballot initiatives on legalization on Election Day.

Already, nine states and the District of Columbia, have legalized pot, and 31 others allow medical marijuana. I think it frankly cries out for a federal solution, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), now challenging Democrat Heidi Heitkamp for her Senate seat, told POLITICO. And this is tough stuff  this is hard stuff to talk about  because Im a law-and-order congressman, but its impossible to ignore whats going on.  If the federal government itself doesnt do something to sort of at least provide the banking system that allows for greater oversight and regulation, I think were just setting ourselves up for a bit of a rogue industry rather than a highly regulated one.Krishnanagar under curfew after unrest

The District Administration Office in Kapilvastu imposed a curfew in Krishnanagar on Sunday after tension flared at a market place near the Nepal-India border over the immersion of Durga idols.

Scientists in Australia want to build what they describe as a downward looking telescope to look for mineral wealth under the Earths surface.

The telescope is really a project aimed at increasing understanding of the geology, or physical structure, of Australia.

Scientists want to combine different kinds of geological information and create a three-dimensional (3-D) map of the Earths interior. Their hope is to show details of rocks and minerals to a depth of at least 300 kilometers under the surface.

The Australian Academy of Sciences released details of the project earlier this month. It is part of a 10-year plan for increasing geological science research.

The Academy said in its report that geoscience is very important for Australias education system and economy.

The plan recognizes the importance of mobile technology, renewable energy and other technologies, like those needed for electric vehicles. Researchers say development of these technologies will lead to a huge increase in demand for some minerals. They include copper, cobalt, gold and what are called rare-earth elements.

Many other important minerals are also believed to exist, hidden beneath Australia.

Sue OReilly is with the Australian Academy of Sciences. She described the mapping project this way.

We can map the geology of the interior of the Earth just like we currently map the surface of the Earth by walking over it and physically looking at the rocks that we see.

OReilly said the map will be put together virtually by using powerful computers. When completed, she believes it will help scientists predict where to look for geological formations and mineral resources. OReilly said 90 percent of the work will be done with computers and computer modelling of geological processes.

The project would bring together very different kinds of information about the Earth. It would include measurements of seismic waves made by earthquakes. Scientists also would use information about the electrical and magnetic qualities of rocks deep underground. Other sources would include samples from volcanoes and satellite imaging data.

All this information would then be combined with computer and experimental models.

Minerals needed for future industry

Australian scientists believe that by 2030, worldwide demand for the mineral cobalt will be almost 50 times greater than it was in 2016. They are concerned that if Australia cannot produce enough of the metal for its own industries, the country will face shortages, delays and very high prices.

Cobalt is important to the production of long-lasting batteries that power electronic cars and other devices. It is estimated that about 300 companies around the world are searching for new supplies of cobalt.

OReilly said that future demand for Australias mineral resources requires an increased knowledge of geoscience.

The plan provides evidence of the weakness of geoscience studies in Australias education system, and the need to develop a new generation of scientists.

The Academy also noted the need to expand Australias national computing capability so that the country can continue to develop its geological computer models.

Im Mario Ritter.

Phil Mercer wrote this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted his story for Learning English with additional information from the Australian Academy of Science report. George Grow was the editor.

_________________________________________________________________

Quiz

Quiz - Australian Scientists Propose a Telescope to Look Deep Underground Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

_________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

dimensional  adj. of or related to a measurement in any one direction

interior  n. an inner part or area

mobile  adj. being moved; changeable in purpose

virtually  adv. existing or occurring on computers or the internet

seismic  adj. of, relating to, or caused by earthquakes

battery  n. something that produces electric current

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.Close to 70 percent of the world's population will live in cities by the year 2050. That prediction comes from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

U.N. officials predict that another 2.5 billion people could be living in the worlds cities by the middle of the century. Experts warn that population growth will worsen housing crises in some areas.

Large cities around the world, from Los Angeles to Mumbai, already struggle with housing issues. In some neighborhoods, rising housing prices have forced the very poor from their homes. Many poor people now live in simple, temporary shelters or on the street.

Kevin Klowden directs the Center for Regional Economics and California Center at the Milken Institute. He notes that people are moving to large cities not just for high paying jobs. He said that many are also looking for the chance to live and work with other people, career advancement and access to better resources.

Some countries have built new capital cities to help ease overcrowding. Nigeria, Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Tanzania have all moved their administrative centers in recent years. Egypt is building a new capital east of Cairo. Klowden says these efforts help, but do not solve the problem.

A U.N. report released in May noted that 37 million people live in Tokyo, the worlds largest city by population. New Delhi follows with 29 million, and Shanghai with 26 million. Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing and Dhaka are each home to about 20 million people.

The report predicted that by 2030, the world will have 43 very large cities, each with more than 10 million people. The reports adds that some smaller cities will also have major population growth. By 2020, Tokyo's population is expected to begin to decrease. India, China and Nigeria will be responsible for one-third of the world's predicted urban expansion by 2050.

Eric Heikkila directs the Office of Global Engagement at the University of Southern California's Price School of Public Policy. He says that in many cases, population growth takes place before there are plans to deal with that growth. He added that land use rules sometimes are outdated.

People may be displaced by conflict, lack documents proving ownership of their land or have no lenders willing to help them buy a home. The World Bank says only 30 percent of land use rights are registered or recorded worldwide.

Tjada McKenna is chief operating officer for the aid group Habitat for Humanity International. She says that the ability to own a home in many countries is often difficult, especially for women and minority groups.

Private organizations, like Habitat for Humanity, are helping. It asks volunteers to build homes. The group has provided housing for more than 13 million people since its creation in 1976.

Habitat for Humanity also has loan programs for people living outside the United States. McKenna said, Were allowing families to make their homes livable. With those (loans), people are installing toilets or cook stoves or other things.

Eric Heikkila noted that every city is different in dealing with development issues. Each one has its own economic forces at work, its own institutions at play and its own history, he said.

Experts say that answers to the housing crisis and other issues must be developed city by city.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Mike Sullivan reported this story for VOA News. Jonathan Evans adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

advancement - n. the act or result of making something better, more successful, etc.; the act of being raised to a higher rank or position

access - n. a way of getting near, at, or to something or someone

resources - n. a supply of something, such as money, that someone has and can use when it is needed

urban - adj. of or relating to cities and the people who live in them

toilet - n. a large bowl attached to a pipe that is used for getting rid of bodily waste and then flushed with water

institution - n. a custom, practice, or law that is accepted and used by many peopleChinese computer maker Weibu showed off a couple of upcoming laptops at the Global Sources fair in Hong Kong last week, and Notebook Italia got a look several models featuring Intel chips and one featuring a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor.

That makes the Weibu H133W-MY one of the few Windows 10 computers powered by that ARM-based processor.

Its interesting to see this model introduced at a time when other device makers are switching to the newer, more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor.

A Weibu representative suggested that the company adopted the Snapdragon processor due to a shortage of Intel Gemini Lake chips. But in my experience, Windows devices with Snapdragon 835 chips are significantly slower than models with recent Intel Celeron or Pentium chips. And they also tend to be more expensive although theres no word on how much Weibu plans to charge for this laptop.

The Weibu H133W-MY features a 13.3 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 5,000 mAh battery.

It has USB Type-A and Type-C ports and a headphone jack. And like most other Windows-on-ARM computers, it features a fanless design.

Theres no word on if or when youll be able to buy this model outside of China, or why youd want to but I suppose its good to see that PC makers around the world are experimenting with alternatives to Intel chips. Competition is generally a good thing in the chip space since it drives companies like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm to improve performance, reduce prices, or find other ways to make their technologies more attractive to users.

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The president of the Court of Final Appeal, Sam Hou Fai, stressed that the past judicial year (2017/18) was likely to become the judicial year which has received the most attention from all sectors of society and media since the handover, in terms of the operations of judicial organs and of judicial decisions.

Sam made these remarks on Friday during a speech at the ceremony marking the start of the 2018/19 judicial year.

As Sam explained, some of the cases that went to court did not only have a long history, but also involved huge and complex interests or were even related to the interests of thousands of citizens and corporate legal persons, [and] chose to resort to the judicial proceedings and seek judicial relief.

Sam also pointed out that in recent years, there have been some disturbing phenomena surrounding trials of certain cases. For instance, some people have deviated from the basic requirements of fairness and justice, have accused judges of mechanical justice, and even openly asked the main judicial officer of the relevant cases to adjust the mainstream judicial opinions in order to accommodate different interests. Others have tried to impact the police system regarding the relationship of the main organ of state power stipulated in the Basic Law through legal proceedings or trials.

Sam also put forward requirements for the integrity of judicial personnel. He hoped that the judges and judicial assistants of the courts at all levels could bear in mind that honesty is the foundation of fair justice.

According to the president of the Court of Final Appeal, the three levels of the courts registered a total of 21,765 cases, a decrease of 2,747 cases from the previous judicial year, representing a drop of 11.21 percent.

However, the total number of cases remained high, as it has now exceeded 20,000 cases for four consecutive years.

The total number of concluded cases exceeded the number of cases registered by the courts for the first time, with 23,426 cases concluded in total, 557 more than in the previous judicial year.

Additionally, 11,954 cases remained unresolved, 1,662 fewer than in the previous judicial year.

During a speech at the opening of the judicial year, Chief Executive Chui Sai On pledged the government would strive to ensure the creation of conditions to allow dedicated infrastructure to support judicial institutions when formulating overall plans for the citys new urban reclamation areas next year.

Additionally, the CE pledged the Macau governments full support in enhancing operations of the citys judicial system, in a bid to improve the efficiency of the judiciary and of the citys prosecutors.

Chui said the government would strive to optimize Macaus legal system according to the specific needs of the judicial system.

According to Chui, an example of the governments support was an amendment to the Judicial Organization Framework Law  based on opinions gathered from the judiciary  which had been submitted for readings at the Legislative Assembly.

Macau courts and the Public Prosecutions Office were respectively vested  by the Basic Law  with the ability to exercise their various powers independently and free from any interference, Chui stressed in his speech.

The Government has, as always, paid great attention to training a greater number of judicial professionals and building more facilities to cope with development of the judicial system.

Approximately 300 officials and guests attended the event.Billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, delivered another USD25 million to help Republicans try to hold control of the U.S. Senate in the Nov. 6 election, adding to the more than $87 million they previously gave to bolster the GOPs midterm campaign.

The Las Vegas Sands Corp. chief executive officer and his wife were among the big-dollar donors who lavished tens of millions on political committees during September ahead of the first national elections of Donald Trumps presidency.

The couples latest contribution was to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super political action committee affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Federal Election Commission filings show.

They have already surpassed the $82.5 million they gave to conservative causes and candidates in the 2015-16 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For that cycle, the couple ranked second in the U.S. for individual donors, behind liberal billionaire Tom Steyer.

The national parties and some of the super PACs spending most heavily on the campaign are required to file information with the FEC on their September fundraising and spending by midnight Saturday. Some groups filed well ahead of that deadline.

The two parties and their allies are furiously raising and spending money as the 2018 campaign for control of Congress enters its final stage. Democrats are threatening to overturn the Republican majority in the House, while Republicans are positioning to hold control of the Senate. The election will determine whether Trump can continue to push his agenda or be challenged by congressional investigations during the second half of his first term.

Against that backdrop, political organizations shored up their bank balances for dozens of House and Senate races thought to be competitive.

Other top donors to the Senate Leadership Fund included Andrew Beal, a Texas banker and real estate investor who contributed $1 million during September. Billionaire Robert Rowling and his company, TRT Holdings Inc., each gave $1 million.

The House Majority PAC, which backs Democratic candidates, reported raising $14.9 million during September. It spent $12.5 million and started October with $34.6 million.

Billionaire James Simons, the founder of hedge-fund company Renaissance Technologies LLC, gave $2.7 million to the group. Other top donors included the daughters of the late Melvin Simon, the billionaire shopping mall and real estate developer. Deborah Simon and Cynthia Simon-Skjodt each contributed $1 million. Hollywood mogul David Geffen gave $500,000.

Simons also gave $2 million to the Senate Majority PAC, which backs Democrats. The group raised $17.7 million during the month and started October with $38.9 million in the bank after spending $8 million in September. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz gave $1 million. Marsha Laufer, a speech pathologist and the wife of Henry Laufer, who is a director of Renaissance Technologies, also gave $1 million.

Former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg gave $1.5 million to the super-PAC arm of Planned Parenthood. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. He has pledged to give millions of dollars in 2018 to help Democrats retake control of the U.S. House and told the New York Times that hes considering a campaign for president as a Democrat.

Jennifer Allan Soros, the daughter-in-law of billionaire George Soros, gave $400,000 to Planned Parenthood Votes, which raised $3.9 million in September and ended the month with $7.1 million cash on hand. It spent $2 million.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which supports the partys House candidates, out-raised and outspent its Republican counterpart for the seventh straight month. The DCCC brought in $22.2 million, spent $61.3 million and started October with $30.7 million. The National Republican Congressional Committee started the month with more cash in the bank, at $44 million, but raised only $12.5 million and spent $33.1 million.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee brought in $23.4 million, spent $19.5 million and started October with $15.6 million in the bank. The committee also received $12 million in new lines of credit after restructuring loans taken out from the Chain Bridge Bank, a Virginia-based financial institution that services Republican committees.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $10.6 million, spent $20.7 million, and started October with $22.4 million in the bank. John McCormick, Bill Allison, BloombergMan rapes 7-year-old girl

Police have arrested an 18-year-old man from Kamalbazar Municipality-5 in Achham district for raping a minor girl and attempting to rape another.Australias ruling coalition was forced into minority government on Saturday after a massive swing against its senior partner, the Liberal Party, in a by- election for the seat of the prime minister the party itself had dismissed.

In a stinging backlash from the electorate after the fourth toppling of an Australian leader by internal party vote in just eight years, a swing of more than 20 percent against the sitting Liberals propelled independent candidate Kerryn Phelps to a decisive victory.

The result cost the conservative Liberal-National party coalition its one-seat majority in the House of Representatives, forcing Prime Minister Scott Morrison to rely on deals with independent lawmakers to guarantee confidence in his government, enact legislation and ensure money supply.

The next general election is due in seven months, and there was no immediate talk Saturday that it would be held any sooner.

With Phelps saying she has no intention of bringing down the government, and other independent lawmakers also vowing to support Morrisons administration, it would seem unlikely that any no-confidence motion brought against the government between now and the election would succeed.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. projections hailed Phelps as the winner after just 9 percent of votes had been counted, forecasting she would gain a 57 percent share of votes on a two-party preferred basis.

Liberal candidate Dave Sharma conceded defeat soon afterward, saying: Tonights result has been over a little sooner than I expected. Im certainly glad I kept my day job.

Of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, the Liberals now hold 75, including that of the speaker. The opposition Labor Party holds 69 seats, while independents have six.

The by-election was triggered when Malcolm Turnbull quit politics after being deposed as prime minister in August.

There was no comment from Turnbull on the election result as of late Saturday night.

Its the first time in their 117-year history the Liberals have lost the Wentworth seat, showing the depth of voter reaction to Australias latest change of leadership without the people having their say.

Morrison said that while the loss was not unexpected given opinion polls, his party had received a loud message from voters.

They have looked at Canberra and the Liberal Party has paid a big price tonight for the events of several months ago, he said, before adding defiantly, But as a party, we will continue to rise again.

Morrison pledged that his government would continue as usual  even without a majority  when Parliament returns today, promising to work closely with independent lawmakers.

We will work constructively with all of those who sit on the cross bench as we always have, he said.

Speaking to reporters, Phelps declined to say how she might vote should a no-confidence motion be moved in Parliament against the government, but indicated she wants the government to run its full term, which expires next May.

Phelps, a doctor and former head of the Australian Medical Association, said the result should count as a warning to lawmakers.

People have been concerned about the direction of government for a very long time and weve seen a lack of decency, a lack of integrity, and we have to look at what the House of Representatives is about, Phelps said. It is about representing the people and the people have spoken loud and clear.

The by-election campaign, in a seat with a large Jewish population, drew international attention this past week when Morrison raised the prospect of following the United States by relocating Australias embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Morrison said the idea was suggested to him by Liberal candidate Sharma, a former Australian ambassador to Israel.

Slammed by critics as a cynical bid to garner Jewish votes in the by-election, Morrisons statement was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but sparked concern among Palestinian officials and leaders in Indonesia, the worlds largest Muslim-majority nation. Trevor Marshallsea, Sydney, APA fraudulent mobile base station which was sending out messages to people near the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridges Macau entrance, has been uncovered by the Judiciary Police (PJ). Three local male residents, aged 19, 20 and 21, have been arrested. In total, four different operational sites were cracked down on and 15 sets of equipment were seized. The group is believed to have been operating for a minimum of five months. Two suspects claimed they were paid RMB10,000 and RMB12,000 for the job. The PJ is still looking for the mastermind.

Transport, storage sector records MOP22.3 billion revenue in 2017

Macaus transport and storage sector revenue grew by 11.7 percent year-on-year to MOP22.33 billion (approx. USD2.77 billion) in 2017, the SARs statistics service said on Saturday. The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) showed that the increase was mainly generated by passenger transport (MOP9.58 billion) and services rendered (MOP8.15 billion), up by 7.9 percent and 20.3 percent respectively. The number of establishments in the sector increased by 101 year-on-year to 3,054. The number of persons engaged went up by 9.7 percent to 19,489, while those in land transport and auxiliary transport activities rose by 19.1 percent to 8,120 and 6.1 percent to 7,957 respectively.

HK-Macau shuttle bus adult fare set at HKD65 and HKD70

The adult fare for the Hong Kong-Macau bus route across the soon-to-be inaugurated Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge is to be HKD65 during daytime and HKD70 during nighttime. Half-fare concessions are offered to children, and disabled and elderly passengers, according to Hong Kongs deputy commissioner for Transport. The shuttle bus will be the key transport mode linking the three ports, Hong Kong-Zhuhai and Hong Kong-Macau. It operates 24 hours daily and passengers can buy tickets in the departure hall or through its website in advance. The facilities offering boundary crossing services for passengers and vehicles travelling between Macau and Hong Kong will be open 24 hours a day once the bridge is open. The headway will be maintained at an interval of less than five minutes during peak hours, 15 minutes during off-peak hours and 15 to 30 minutes at night (midnight to 6 a.m.). The Macau government will introduce two new bus routes once the bridge is launched. Route 101X links the HKZMB Macau port to Macau Peninsula, and 102X links the HKZMB Macau port to Taipa. Route 101X will be available 24 hours a day, and the headway will be maintained at an interval of eight to 30 minutes. Route 102X will be available from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and the headway will be maintained at an interval of 12 to 20 minutes.

Kiang Wu stops receiving phone call appointments

Starting from November, the Kiang Wu Hospital will no longer accept appointments made by phone call, the hospital announced. At the beginning of the year, Kiang Wu started an online appointment service. The hospital said that this service received positive feedback from the public and that it has also helped to reduce the number of appointments made by telephone. The online service further solved the longstanding problem in the hospital regarding appointment difficulties. After canceling phone call appointments, Kiang Wu will arrange for specific helpers at the hospital to instruct the public on how to make an online appointment.

Second batch of special taxis starts operations in Q3

A second batch of 100 special taxis will be put into operation, at the earliest, in the third quarter of 2019, the Transport Bureau (DSAT) announced last week. The DSAT also announced the results of the tender for the operation of 200 radio taxis. In total, five companies submitted their tenders to the DSAT in order to obtain a license. All these vehicles, which are required to be electric, will start their service by 2020. The DSAT will consider whether more special taxis are needed based on market demand.Chinas propaganda machine has taken aim at American soybean farmers as part of its high-stakes trade war with the Trump administration. The publication last month of a four-page advertising section in the Des Moines Register opened a new battle line in Chinas effort to break the administrations resolve. U.S. farmers are a key political constituency for Trump, and Beijing has imposed tariffs on American soybeans as retaliation for Trumps tariffs on hundreds of billions in Chinese imports.

China regularly disseminates propaganda in the West through its China Daily newspaper to try to influence public opinion. But the advertorial in the Register was unusual for deploying not a national publication in New York or Washington but a newspaper in the farm state of Iowa.

Its the first time Ive ever seen anything like this in a heartland city, said Matt Schrader, who edits the China Brief newsletter for the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington research institute that monitors Chinas actions.

The Iowa newspaper section was explicitly labeled a product of China Daily, Chinas official English language newspaper. The articles were clearly geared to try to soften the image of China and its president, Xi Jinping. With headlines ranging from Dispute: Fruit of a presidents folly and Book tells of Xis fun days in Iowa to Kung Fu skill helps light up life path and China seeks pacts on robotics, the message was a not-very-subtle one about the friendly way Beijing wants to be seen in the farm belt.

Ken Doctor, a longtime media analyst, noted that newspapers have been struggling to replace revenue lost from declining subscriptions and print advertisements moving online. He suggested that when publications run propaganda like the China Watch sections, they should take care to be fully explicit about the source.

Id like to see newspapers that run this include an editors note to be transparent about what this is, said Doctor, who runs the Newsonomics website.

Many experts say they doubt the propaganda drive in the United States will likely succeed. Chinese officials are used to operating at home, where the central government controls all major media outlets.

U.S. farmers and manufacturers are smart enough to understand their self-interest, said Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations. They dont need a Chinese newspaper insert to tell them how to think about the relationship between tariffs and their exports to China.

Stanley Chao, a business consultant who has written a book called Selling to China, said its not entirely surprising that China would try to take its trade arguments directly to American farmers, whose crops have been hit by Beijings retaliatory tariffs.

This is the norm for the Chinese propaganda machine, Chao said. Chao noted that when a Chinese dissident won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize  chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee and an embarrassment for Beijing  China responded by placing propaganda ads in Scandinavian newspapers.

In addition to its connection to the tariffs China imposed on American soybeans and other crops, Iowa is also home to Terry Branstad, a former governor of the state who is now the U.S. ambassador to Beijing. And in the past, President Xi has visited Iowa, whose caucuses serve as the first contest in every presidential election year.

Trump tweeted a photo of the China Watch edition that ran in the Register, calling it propaganda and asserting that Beijing was trying to interfere in U.S. elections.

Chinese officials defended the advertising section and said it didnt violate any U.S. laws. Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, said the Chinese government doesnt interfere in other countries internal affairs or elections.

I think there has been a long-standing effort to influence Americans across the United States, said Sarah Cook, a research analyst with the Freedom House watchdog group. Just this particular form of influence  the China Watch paid supplement  may only be appearing in places like Iowa now.

Other countries, like Saudi Arabia and Taiwan, typically hire public relations firms and place ads to try to improve their images, in contrast to Chinas more direct approach of placing ads in newspapers or posting videos online. The 2016 elections brought attention to foreign influence after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had meddled in the elections. Federal prosecutors have charged a Russian firm with interfering through bogus Facebook posts.

Its not yet clear whether or how much Beijing will continue to try to shape public sentiment in the farm belt states.

I imagine we will see some additional efforts by the Chinese government to directly influence public opinion in the heartland, said Walter Hutchens, a global business professor at the University of Redlands in California. However, it seems more likely their economic muscle, rather than their clumsy PR efforts, will have actual impact. Josh Funk, Omaha, APA local female resident has been arrested on suspicion of arson, according to the Judiciary Police (PJ).

The incident occurred on October 12. The suspect is a Thai Macau resident aged 41 years old, who was once a croupier.

The incident took place in a residential house located in Rua de Miguel Aires. Five people inside the house were taken to hospital due to distress caused by the fire.

The house belongs to the suspects former superior.

According to the PJ, the suspect was moved from her dealer position to the catering department within her company. Unhappy with the change, and having also been involved in unpleasant situations with her superior at the catering department, she went to his residence to set it on fire.

The suspect bought two bottles of alcohol from a supermarket near the house and one lighter. Afterwards, she lingered for about 10 minutes.

The fire burnt more than 10 umbrellas. The suspect denied the accusations, declaring she had only been drinking alcohol in front of the house.

However, the PJ believes that there is strong evidence to suggest that the suspect had a plan to commit to the crime.The loud crack rang out from the fog above the Baishui No. 1 Glacier as a stone shard careened down the ice, flying past Chen Yanjun as he operated a GPS device.

More projectiles were tumbling down the hulk of ice that scientists say is one of the worlds fastest melting glaciers. We should go, said the 30-year-old geologist. The first rule is safety.

Chen hiked away and onto a barren landscape once buried beneath the glacier. Now there is exposed rock littered with oxygen tanks discarded by tourists visiting the 4,570-meter- high blanket of ice in southern China.

Millions of people each year are drawn to Baishuis frosty beauty on the southeastern edge of the Third Pole  a region in Central Asia with the worlds third largest store of ice after Antarctica and Greenland thats roughly the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.

Third Pole glaciers are vital to billions of people from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Asias 10 largest rivers  including the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, and Ganges  are fed by seasonal melting.

Youre talking about one of the worlds largest freshwater sources, said Ashley Johnson, energy program manager at the National Bureau of Asian Research, an American think tank. Depending on how it melts, a lot of the freshwater will be leaving the region for the ocean, which will have severe impacts on water and food security.

Earth is today 1 degree Centigrade hotter than pre-industrial levels because of climate change  enough to melt 28 to 44 percent of glaciers worldwide, according to a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Temperatures are expected to keep rising.

Baishui is about as close to the Equator as Tampa, Florida. And the impacts of climate change already are dramatic.

The glacier has lost 60 percent of its mass and shrunk 250 meters (820 feet) since 1982, according to a 2018 report in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Scientists found in 2015 that 82 percent of glaciers surveyed in China had retreated. They warned that the effects of glacier melting on water resources are gradually becoming increasingly serious for China.

China has always had a freshwater supply problem with 20 percent of the worlds population but only 7 percent of its freshwater, said Jonna Nyman, an energy security lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Thats heightened by the impact of climate change.

For years, scientists have observed global warming change Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the Chinese province of Yunnan.

One research team has tracked Baishuis retreat of about 30 yards (27 meters) per year over the past decade. Flowers, such as snow lotus, have rooted in exposed earth, says Wang Shijin, a glaciologist and director of the Yulong Snow Mountain Glacial and Environmental Observation Research Station, part of a network run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Nestled into a suburb of Lijiang, population 1.2 million, the station is home to Wang and his team: geologist and drone operator Chen, postgraduate glaciology student Zhou Lanyue and electrical engineer Zhang Xing, a private contractor.

After breakfast, the team heads off by van for the days mission. A cable car carries them up to a majestic view of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

The team shuffles past a line of tourists __ many in red ponchos, most sucking oxygen canisters, a few vomiting from altitude sickness __ before descending to replace a broken meteorological station.

The team operates remote sensors that collect data on temperature, wind speed, rainfall, and humidity. Other sensors measure water flow in streams fed by melted ice. Cold, downpours, rock slides, gales and glacier movement break the equipment.

It is not easy to encounter good weather here, Wang said.

This weather will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater while other glacier loss poses serious risk of drought across the Third Pole, he said.

The next day, the team wore crampons while repairing more sensors scattered across the glaciers crags.

Where were at right now was back in 2008 all covered with ice, Wang said. From here to there at the side, the glacier shrank about 20 to 30 meters. The shrinking is very remarkable.

The team forded streams and jumped crevasses in search of long iron bars they previously embedded in the ice. GPS tells them how much the bars, and thus the glacier, have moved. They also measure how much height the glacier has lost during the summer.

Back on the viewing platform, Che launched a buzzing camera drone over the white expanse. The photographs help tell a story of staggering loss. A quarter of its ice has vanished since 1957 along with four of its 19 glaciers, researchers have found.

Changes to the Baishui provide the opportunity to educate visitors about global warming, Wang said.

Last year, 2.6 million tourists visited the mountain, according to Yulong Snow Mountain park officials.

On blustery day recently, hundreds of tourists climbed wooden stairs through grey fog to snap selfies in front of the glacier.

Hou Yugang said he wasnt too bothered over climate change and Baishuis melting. I dont think about it now because it still has a long way to go, he said.

To protect the glacier, authorities have limited the number of visitors to 10,000 a day and have banned hiking on the ice. They plan to manufacture snow and to dam streams to increase humidity that slows melting.

Security guard Yang Shaofeng has witnessed a warming world melting this mountain, which his local Naxi minority community considers sacred.

Yang remembers being able to see the glaciers lowest edge from his home village. No longer.

Only when we climb up can we see it, he said sadly, as tourists lined up to have their names engraved on medallions bearing the glaciers image.

The etching is already outdated. Sam McNeil, Olivia Zhang, APEuropean and Japanese space agencies said an Ariane 5 rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft carrying two probes into orbit Saturday for a joint mission to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

The European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the unmanned BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and was sent into orbit from French Guiana as planned to begin a seven- year journey to Mercury.

They said the spacecraft, named after Italian scientist Giuseppe Bepi Colombo, was in the right orbit and has sent the first signal after the liftoff.

ESA says the 1.3 billion- euro (USD1.5 billion) mission is one of the most challenging in its history. Mercurys extreme temperatures, the intense gravity pull of the sun and blistering solar radiation make for hellish conditions.

The BepiColombo spacecraft will have to follow an elliptical path that involves a fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself so it can slow down before arriving at its destination in December 2025.

When it arrives, BepiColombo will release two probes  Bepi and Mio  that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury. The probes are designed to cope with temperatures varying from 430 degrees Celsius (806 F) on the side facing the sun, and -180 degrees Celsius in Mercurys shadow.

The ESA-developed Bepi will operate in Mercurys inner orbit, and JAXAs Mio will be in the outer orbit to gather data that would reveal the internal structure of the planet, its surface and geological evolution.

Scientists hope to build on the insights gained by NASAs Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year orbit of Mercury. The only other spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASAs Mariner 10 that flew past the planet in the mid-1970s.

Mercury, which is only slightly larger than Earths moon, has a massive iron core about which little is known. Researchers are also hoping to learn more about the formation of the solar system from the data gathered by the BepiColombo mission.

Beyond completing the challenging journey, this mission will return a huge bounty of science, said Jan Worner, ESA Director General, in a statement.

JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa, who earlier managed the project, said, We have high expectations that the ensuing detailed observations of Mercury will help us better understand the environment of the planet, and ultimately, the origin of the Solar System including that of Earth.

It is the second recent cooperation between the Europeans and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. JAXAs Hayabusa2 probe dropped a German-French rover on the asteroid Ryugu earlier this month. APChinese officials urged Hong Kong media to help prevent external forces from challenging Beijings authority, in the latest sign that the Communist Party was laying the ground for a tough new security law.

Hong Kong media executives received the warning during a visit to Beijing in the wake of the citys decision not to renew the visa of a Financial Times editor who hosted a Foreign Correspondents Club speech by a pro-independence activist.

Huang Kunming, the partys propaganda minister and a member of the 25-seat Politburo, said last week that he hoped the media would help prevent external forces from turning the city into a base for interfering with the mainland. The comments were relayed by Siu Sai-wo, a Hong Kong newspaper publisher who led the media delegation to the Chinese capital.

Zhang Xiaoming, the director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, defended the comments during a subsequent meeting Thursday, Siu said.It is nothing unusual for state leaders to send out kind reminders that Hong Kong should not be used as an anti-China and anti-Communist Party base, Siu cited Zhang as saying.

The comments highlighted the growing pressure on Hong Kongs media in the Beijing governments widening campaign to limit dissent in the former British colony.

While the pro-Beijing officials have long complained about the influence of external forces  presumably U.S. and U.K. organizations  the warnings carry greater weight after the citys rare decision not to renew Financial Times journalist Victor Mallets work visa.

Underscoring such concerns was a controversy over Sius account of Huangs remarks. The newspaper executive initially said Huang had warned the media against becoming a base itself for foreign interference, only to later retract and revise the comment. The Hong Kong Journalists Association released a statement Wednesday demanding participants explain what Huang had said.

Still, the remarks fanned concerns that President Xi Jinping intends to use the controversy to pressure Hong Kong to enact security legislation that could put new limits on freedom of speech guaranteed before the citys return to China.

The legislation, known as Article 23, requires the administration to enact laws that prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the region.

In his meeting with media executives, Zhang noted Hong Kongs failure to pass Article 23, as required by the citys Basic Law. He also expressed support for Hong Kongs visa decision, which the city has so far declined to explain.

They are laying the framework for Article 23, said Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The citys leader Carrie Lam last week said she wants to create a favorable social environment before advancing the legislation. The government abandoned plans to enact the laws in 2003 after half a million people took to the streets in protest.

Beijing and the Hong Kong administration have invoked the specter of foreign interference in attempts to undercut local opposition before. During mass pro-democracy protests in 2014, then-Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said without producing evidence he was convinced foreign forces had been meddling in the citys politics. BloombergMost of the casualties in a train disaster that killed dozens of people in northern India were migrant workers, a former state government official said Saturday.

R.C. Yadav, former chairman of Punjab states Workers Welfare Board, said that many of the 60 killed and dozens injured when a speeding train ran over a crowd celebrating the Hindu festival of Dussehra on Friday night had left their families in neighboring states to work in factories and shops in Punjab.

Most of those killed are these poor workers, Yadav said, adding that some earned as little as 7,000 rupees (USD95) per month. A local branch of the Indian National Congress party had organized the event at a clearing near the railway tracks on the outskirts of Amritsar.

Organizers erected a huge LED screen for the hundreds of people who gathered to watch the burning of the effigies of Ravana and other demons, said Yadav, who lives just a kilometer from the disaster site. As the fireworks started, the crowd moved backward onto the tracks for a better view when two trains crossed in opposite directions, giving people little opportunity to escape.

Police are investigating whether the organizers had a permit for the event and at what speed the train that ran over the crowd was traveling, said Amritsars police commissioner, S.S. Srivastava.

Navjot Kaur Siddhu, a local Congress party politician who was the chief guest at the religious function, said Friday that the celebrations take place in the area every year and railroad authorities are alerted to run the trains at slow speeds. A large number of people live in the area with homes on both sides of the railroad track, she said. Ashok Sharma, New Delhi, APThe head of Beijings liaison office in Macau has died after a fall in his home, in what central authorities yesterday implied was a depression-related suicide.

The 59-year-old Zheng Xiaosong, who replaced Wang Zhimin as the head of the Liaison Office of the Central Peoples Government in the Macau SAR about one year ago, was said to have been suffering from depression, according to a statement from the Beijing- based Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO).

The office said that Zheng died on Saturday from a fall from his Macau residence [] because he suffered from depression. The statement did not elaborate further on the circumstances surrounding the officials death, but did show that Zheng met with the head of a think tank the day before his death.

Officials in both Macau and Hong Kong sent their condolences to Zhengs family over the weekend, including Chief Executive Chui Sai On, who issued a statement to express his deep regret.

It was with deep consternation that I received word of the directors death, wrote Chui in the statement. On behalf of the Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region, I offer the deepest regret and our heartfelt condolences to your family.

According to the South China Morning Post, Hong Kongs top official, Carrie Lam, said she met Zheng years earlier when he served in a previous post in Fujian province. He was previously the vice governor of the province, before being appointed liaison office head just last year.

His death comes as the long-anticipated Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge opens tomorrow and senior officials from the mainland  possibly including Chinese President Xi Jinping  travel to neighboring Zhuhai.

It is not yet known whether local police authorities deem the as death suspicious, nor whether they intend to investigate.

Professor Lau Siu-kai, who sits on think tank the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, told the SCMP that he doesnt think the circumstances of Zhengs death are suspicious.

I dont think there is anything suspicious, he said, but added that it might dampen the celebratory mood of tomorrows bridge inauguration.

In October 2017, anti-corruption authorities on the mainland placed Li Gang, former head of the Macau liaison office, on year-long probation, citing severe violations of party discipline. Li had been suddenly transferred back to Beijing in 2016. He was replaced as liaison office head by Wang Zhimin.Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, about 2,000 Central American migrants swam or rafted across a river separating that country from Guatemala, re-formed their mass caravan in Mexico and vowed to resume their journey toward the United States.

The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, gathered on Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to come join them.

We are going to reach the United States, said Erasmo Duarte, a migrant from Danli, Honduras, despite warnings to turn back this week from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought to make the caravan and border security in general into a campaign issue a little over two weeks before midterm elections.

The decision to re-form the migrant caravan capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some of them. Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.

But many became impatient, and circumventing the border gate, swarmed across the river on rafts, swimming or wading in full view of the hundreds of Mexican police manning the blockade on the bridge. Some paid locals the equivalent of USD1.25 to ferry them across the muddy waters. They were not detained on reaching the Mexican bank.

We couldnt wait because we had already waited too long and they only told us lies, said Duarte, who joined the caravan with his wife and children six days ago.

Sairy Bueso, a 24-year old Honduran mother of two, was another migrant who abandoned the bridge and crossed into Mexico via the river. She clutched her 2-year-old daughter Dayani, who had recently had a heart operation, as she got off a raft.

The girl suffered greatly because of all the people crowded on the bridge, Bueso said. There are risks that we must take for the good of our children.

Group leaders said the caravan, which will be smaller than the original one, would strike out Sunday morning for the city of Tapachula.

Where easily 3,000 people were on the bridge the previous day, the crowd had thinned out considerably by Saturday. In addition to those who crossed the river, immigration agents processed migrants in small groups and then bused them to an open-air, metal-roof fairground in Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.

Each time a small side gate opened to allow people to pass for processing, there was a crush of bodies as migrants desperately pushed forward.

Scarleth Cruz hoisted a crying, sweat-soaked baby girl above the crowd, crying out: This girl is suffocating. Cruz, 20, said she was going to ask for political asylum because of threats and repression she faced back in Honduras from President Juan Orlando Hernandezs governing party. Why would I want to go to the United States if Im going to be persecuted there as well, she said.

Mexicos Interior Department said in a statement that it had received 640 refugee requests by Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.

At least half a dozen migrants fainted. Some tore open a fence on the Guatemala side of the bridge and threw two young children, perhaps age 6 or 7, and their mother into the muddy waters about 40 feet below. They were rafted to safety in on the Mexican bank.

Mexican workers handed food bottled water to the migrants on the bridge. Through the bars, a doctor gave medical attention to a woman who feared her young son was running a fever.

Sustenance also came from Guatemalan locals  for Carlos Martinez, a 24-year-old from Santa Barbara, Honduras, the plate of chicken with rice was the first bite to eat hed had all day.

It is a blessing that they have given us food, Martinez said. It gives me courage to keep waiting, as long as I can.

Migrants cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the worlds deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reasons for joining the caravan.

One cannot live back there, said Fidelina Vasquez, a grandmother traveling with her daughter and 2-year-old grandson, standing next to the main border gate.

The caravan elicited a series of angry tweets and warnings from Trump early in the week, but Mexicos no-nonsense handling of the migrants at it southern border seems to have satisfied him more recently.

So as of this moment, I thank Mexico, Trump said Friday at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona. I hope they continue. But as of this moment, I thank Mexico. If that doesnt work out, were calling up the military  not the Guard.

Theyre not coming into this country, Trump added.

The Mexican Government is fully engaged in finding a solution that encourages safe, secure, and orderly migration, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday, and both the United States and Mexico continue to work with Central American governments to address the economic, security, and governance drivers of illegal immigration.

After an emergency meeting in Guatemala, presidents Hernandez of Honduras and Jimmy Morales of Guatemala said an estimated 5,400 migrants had entered Guatemala since the caravan was announced a week ago, and about 2,000 Hondurans have returned voluntarily.

Morales said a Honduran migrant died in the town of Villa Nueva, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Guatemala City, when he fell from a truck.

Some Hondurans were weary of the journey and disappointed by the violence at the crossing, and just wanted to head home.

We thought the caravan was passive but there were unruly people, I was disappointed, said Gonzalo Martinez, a 37-year-old farmer, as he boarded a bus in Tecun Uman, Guatemala to take him back to Honduras. Mark Stevenson, Sonia Perez D., APMyth of stability

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez made a distinction between demagogues and pedagogues stating that demagogues were populists who embrace extremism of either the right or the left; pedagogues have vision and a mission for steering the country by following a more centrist role that can bridge differences and create conditions for positive change.Gunmen killed nine members of a farmers group who occupied part of a privately owned sugarcane plantation in a central Philippine province, police said yesterday.

The victims were resting in a hut Saturday night when about 10 gunmen opened fire, police said. At least four farmers survived the attack at the plantation in Sagay city in Negros Occidental province, which has a history of bloody land feuds.

There are groups fighting over that land, Sagay police Chief Inspector Roberto Mansueto said.

At least two of the victims may have fired back at the attackers because spent pistol and shotgun casings were found in the area, Mansueto said.

Witnesses say they heard only a few initial shots. Apparently the victims were just being threatened, Mansueto told reporters. But later there seemed to have been an exchange of fire.

The National Federation of Sugar Workers condemned the killings of its members, who included four women and two minors. The group said the victims were forced to plant vegetables and root crops to feed their families on idle land thats covered by the governments land reform program but remained undistributed to poor farmers.

Two other peasant leaders belonging to the federation were killed in Sagay city last December and in February this year by suspected pro-government forces, the group said. It said that about 45 farmers asserting their land rights have been killed on Negros island under President Rodrigo Dutertes administration.

Instead of offering an effective land reform program, Dutertes government red baits those who assert their rights to the land, the group said, referring to pronouncements by civilian and military officials linking protesting farmers to communist guerrillas.

There was no immediate government reaction. Regional police chief Superintendent John Bulalacao condemned Saturdays attack and said everything was being done to ensure the rapid arrest of the killers.

In September 1985, government forces opened fire on protesters, many of them farmers, in Negros Occidental province as they were commemorating the 1972 declaration of martial law by then-President Ferdinand Marcos. Several died in an event that left-wing activists still mark each year. APThe Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, Augusto Santos Silva, toured Macau over the weekend and met with several local representatives, including Chief Executive (CE) Chui Sai On as well as Portuguese representatives in the region and other community representatives.

During his visit the Portuguese official highlighted the constant development and furthering of relations between Portugal, China and Macau.

When questioned by TDM Radio during his visit to the 23rd Macao International Trade and Investment Fair (MIF) on Saturday, Santos Silva commented on the lack of Portuguese representatives in the Forum for Economic and Trade Co-operation Between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries (Forum Macao). We have at the moment the Deputy Secretary General of the Forum (Rodrigo Brum), which represents the Portuguese-speaking countries. He is Portuguese, Santos Silva said, noting that the Portuguese Trade and Investment Agency (AICEP) delegate in Macau, Maria Joao Bonifacio, also works very closely with the Forum and we are progressing and consolidating, also in [regards] to the human resources need.

During his visit, the minister also announced that President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is planning a trip to China and Macau soon, although he declined to provide a more concrete date for said visit. Santos Silva also announced five projects between Portugal and Macau related to consumer law, the creation of a joint fund to finance scientific and technological projects, as well as the furthering of Portuguese companies presence in the region and the continuation of tertiary education exchange relations.

Santos Silva co-chaired the fifth meeting of the Macau-Portugal Joint Committee, which was held Saturday morning at Government Headquarters. During the meeting, Chui said that the local government would encourage more young business people from Macau to explore opportunities in Portugal regarding innovation and entrepreneurship.

Regarding the promotion of the Portuguese language, it was said that Macau has the capabilities and experience to become the best training base in Asia for Portuguese language skills. Macau authorities pledged to establish more courses and academic entities focusing on the Portuguese language. RMThousands of pro- independence demonstrators gathered in Taiwans capital on Saturday to express their disapproval with Chinas stance toward their island.

China cut off contact with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wens government shortly after her inauguration in 2016 and has been ratcheting up diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taiwan in a bid to compel her to agree to Beijings insistence that the self-governing island democracy is a part of China.

I want to loudly say no to China, said 43-year-old demonstrator Ping Cheng- wen, who is self-employed. I just dont agree with Chinas rhetoric. We have our own sovereignty, and Taiwan is a country.

Another demonstrator at the rally in Taipei, Kuo Jung-min, an 85-year-old Presbyterian church pastor and Hebrew language professor at Taiwan Theological College and Seminary, said pro-unification advocates should move to China if they think it is a better place to live.

We have to be real Taiwanese, not fake Chinese, Kuo said. There is no use being Chinese. Those who advocate pro-unification still live in Taiwan. If China is that good, why dont they just move to China?

In an Oct. 10 National Day address, Tsai called on China not to be a source of conflict and pledged to boost Taiwans defenses against Beijings military threats. Tsai said the best way to defend Taiwan was to make it indispensable and irreplaceable to the world, while remaining nonconfrontational in its attitude toward China.

China and Taiwan separated amid civil war in 1949 and China considers the island part of its territory to be taken control of by force if necessary. APNidhi blames Poudel, Sitaula for making NC a hostage of indecision

Nepali Congress (NC) Vice President Bimalendra Nidhi said the party has become a hostage of indecision because of senior leaders Ram Chandra Poudel and Krishna Prasad Sitaula.Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain.

Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred.

For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here.Police bust fake currency racket

Fake currency with a face value of Rs 351,000 and the equipment to print them were seized after the arrest of five people involved in the racket, police said on Sunday.Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A fast-acting, polio-like illness has sickened 62 young children, with an average age of 4, in 22 U.S. states so far this fall.

Acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, starts out as a respiratory condition and may quickly progress to physical disability within hours. Some patients experience long-term paralysis requiring ongoing care, but others may fully recover, according to Carlos Pardo-Villamizar, a neurological disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who recently authored a paper on AFM published last month in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology.

The cause of AFM is unclear, leaving parents wondering how to protect their children. Pardo-Villamizar and other experts from Johns Hopkins have been sharing what they know about the outbreak and prevention with news outlets recently.

The chief takeaways? Wash your hands, cover your sneezes and coughs, and contact a doctor if your child experiences muscle weakness in the arms or legs.

What is AFM and what are its symptoms?

Acute flaccid myelitis is a rare condition that attacks the nervous systemspecifically the area of the spinal cord called gray mattercausing muscles and reflexes to weaken, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Patients may suddenly experience weakness in their arms and legs, drooping of the face and eyelids, and slurred speech, along with difficulty breathing, moving their eyes, or swallowing. "In very rare cases, it is possible that the process in the body that triggers AFM may also trigger other serious neurologic complications that could lead to death," according to the CDC website.

What causes AFM?

AFM could be caused by one or more viruses, Pardo-Villamizar told HealthDay, with Enterovirus D68a virus from the same family as polioas the chief suspect. That virus was closely linked to the 2014 outbreak, he says.

The damage caused by AFM could also be caused by the immune system, Pardo-Villamizar says in an interview with Kaiser Health News. "At this moment, we don't know if it's a virus that is coming and producing direct damage of the gray matter in the spinal cord, or if a virus is triggering immunological responses that produce a secondary damage in the spinal cord."

Does AFM have a season, like the flu?

AFM outbreaks coincide with cold and flu season, so it can easily go undetected at first, says Aaron Michael Milstone, an associate epidemiologist and an associate professor of pediatrics at Hopkins.

"Just about every parent who has a young child, sometime in October or the winter, their child will have some cold or low-grade fever or something," Milstone told HuffPost.

"They're presenting with weakness in some part of their body. It could be an arm, it could be a leg, it could be more." he says of the patients' symptoms. "Sometimes it stops there, sometimes it progresses. And as you would expect, it's very scary for parents."

Is AFM a new disease?

No, though the number of confirmed cases has generally been on the rise 2014. From August 2014 through September 2018, the CDC confirmed a total of 386 cases of AFM across the U.S.120 cases in 34 states in 2014, 22 cases in 17 states in 2015, 149 cases in 39 states in 2016, and 36 cases in 16 states in 2017.

"AFM has been occurring in waves about every two years," according to infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in an interview with SELF. "It always ends up being a new news story. But this isn't something people have been ignoring. It's something they've been actively investigating since 2014."

More than half of all U.S. states have had confirmed or possible cases this year. The states reporting confirmed cases are Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin.

States reporting suspected cases or cases under investigation are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Washington.

How concerned are health experts?

As alarming as the news is, AFM is still unusual. The CDC estimates that less than one out of every 1 million people in the United States will get AFM each year. Pardo-Villamizar told HealthDay that most children who contract an enterovirus only suffer an upper-respiratory infection.

Priya Duggal, a genetic epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who is studying whether some patients may have a genetic vulnerability to the virus, told Science that AFM is "pretty rare, but it's pretty devastating. And it appears that it's cyclical. It's not going away."

What can parents do to protect their children?

There is no vaccine to prevent AFM. Experts suggest employing the same good hygiene habits used to fight off colds and flu: frequent hand-washing and covering coughs and sneezes. Parents should also watch their sick children for any signs of weakness in the arms or legs, Pardo-Villamizar told HealthDay.

"If children develop an upper-respiratory infection and there is any hint of muscle weakness, those patients need to be evaluated rapidly by a pediatrician and an emergency department," he says. "They need to be followed very carefully, because this is a very aggressive disease. In a matter of hours, the children are paralyzed. They may need respiratory support."

Explore further Rare polio-like illness has US health authorities on alert

More information: Eliza Gordon-Lipkin et al. Comparative quantitative clinical, neuroimaging, and functional profiles in children with acute flaccid myelitis at acute and convalescent stages of disease, Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology (2018). Eliza Gordon-Lipkin et al. Comparative quantitative clinical, neuroimaging, and functional profiles in children with acute flaccid myelitis at acute and convalescent stages of disease,(2018). DOI: 10.1111/dmcn.14030(HealthDay)Caffeine intake from coffee is inversely associated with the risk for incident rosacea, according to a study published online Oct. 17 in JAMA Dermatology.

Suyun Li, Ph.D., from the Qingdao University in China, and colleagues conducted a cohort study involving 82,737 women in the Nurses' Health Study II to examine the correlation between the risk for incident rosacea and caffeine intake.

The researchers identified 4,945 incident cases of rosacea during 1,120,051 person-years of follow-up. Increased caffeine intake was inversely associated with the risk for rosacea after adjustment for other risk factors (hazard ratio for the highest versus the lowest quintile of caffeine intake, 0.76; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.69 to 0.84; P < 0.001 for trend). For caffeinated coffee consumption, there was also a significant inverse association (hazard ratio, 0.77 for those who consumed at least four servings/day versus less than one per month; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.69 to 0.87; P < 0.001 for trend); no correlation was seen for decaffeinated coffee (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.56 to 1.14; P = 0.39 for trend). There was no correlation between increased caffeine intake from foods other than coffee and decreased risk for rosacea.

"Our findings do not support limiting caffeine intake as a preventive strategy for rosacea," the authors write. "Further studies are required to explain the underlying mechanisms of observed associations."

Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Explore further Obesity may be tied to higher rosacea risk in women

Copyright  2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.There is growing evidence that drugs approved for the treatment of breast cancer in women are also effective and well tolerated in men, according to the largest real-life study yet to investigate treatment and outcomes in men with breast cancer and two further studies to be reported at ESMO 2018. Credit:  European Society for Medical Oncology

There is growing evidence that drugs approved for the treatment of breast cancer in women are also effective and well tolerated in men, according to the largest real-life study yet to investigate treatment and outcomes in men with breast cancer and two further studies to be reported at ESMO 2018 (2,3).

Approximately one in every 100 cases of breast cancer (1%) occurs in men. However, there have been few prospective studies in men, and clinical trials of breast cancer treatments have often excluded men so treatment recommendations are largely extrapolated from the results of clinical trials in women.

To learn more about the treatment of breast cancer in men researchers analysed clinical data collected by the Epidemiological Strategy and Medical Economics Metastatic Breast Cancer (ESME MBC) platform between January 2008 and December 2014. This national database collects real-life data from 18 French Comprehensive Cancer Centers for all patients newly diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer starting at least one treatment.

Researchers retrieved the data for men with metastatic breast cancer included in the database and compared their treatment and outcome with those in women. They found 149 men from the total of 16,701 patients (0.89%). The men were slightly older than the women (mean age 68.1 years vs 60.6 years, p<0.0001). Just over three-quarters of the men (105/149; 78.4%) had hormone receptor positive (HR+)/ human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) negative breast cancer, which was a slightly higher proportion than in women (65.6%, p=0.0019).

Results showed men received similar treatments to women with metastatic breast cancer. Just under half of those with HR+/HER2-negative breast cancer (45/105, 42.9%) received frontline hormonal therapy: tamoxifen (20/45), aromatase inhibitor + luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) analogues (18/45) or others (7/45).

Their median progression-free survival was 9.8 months, which was similar to that seen in a matched group of women (13.0 months, p=0.8) with the same age, breast cancer histology and grade, location of metastasis and adjuvant treatment.

One in four men with HR+/HER2- breast cancer (29/105, 27.6%) were treated with front-line chemotherapy. Their median progression-free survival was also similar to a matched group of women receiving chemotherapy (6.9 months vs 6.3 months, hazard ratio 1.24, 95% confidence interval 0.69-2.23). Overall survival for the whole population of men included in the database was also similar to that for women (41.8 months vs 34.9 months, p=0.745).

"We have reported on one of the biggest series of men with metastatic disease, with comprehensive data on their management and outcome with different types of treatment," said study author Jean-Sebastien Frenel, from the Institut de Cancerologie de l'Ouest, Nantes, France. "We found that most of the men with HR+/HER2- metastatic disease had received frontline chemotherapy and around 40% had received hormonal therapy. Most of the patients receiving hormonal therapy were treated with tamoxifen and the remainder received aromatase inhibitors. But few patients received aromatase inhibitors plus LHRH analogues despite some guidelines recommending that they should be given in combination."

Frenel reported: "The progression-free survival provided by chemotherapy or hormonal therapy was similar in men as in women." In terms of clinical implications, he suggested: "Hormonal therapy should be given to men with HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer in the absence of visceral crisis." He added that oncologists should be aware that aromatase inhibitors should not be given without LHRH analogues. The study is continuing and will next assess the prevalence of BRCA mutation in the patient population.

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Agnes Jager, medical oncologist and associate professor at Erasmus Medical University Cancer Institute, Rotterdam, The Netherlands said: "A recent study looked at tumour characteristics and outcome in a large cohort of men with primary breast cancer but such extensive data on advanced breast cancer in men was missing until now." She added: "This new study shows the prognosis of men and women is similar, which is of great value as this justifies our current clinical practice. We currently treat men with breast cancer in a similar way to women, which is now supported by these data."

Jager noted that although the largest study of its kind, the number of men with breast cancer was still small and data were lacking on the extent of advanced disease, BRAC mutation status and type of chemotherapy. However, she said: "More detailed information and longer-term follow-up will indicate whether there are characteristics or prognostic factors that are specific for men, which will allow us to change practice in the future."

Hormonal treatment

Results from the first prospective randomised trial to assess different hormonal treatments in men with breast cancer showed that levels of estradiol, a form of the hormone estrogen, decreased steeply with a gonadotrophin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) plus tamoxifen or the aromatase inhibitor exemestane but increased with tamoxifen alone measured after a 6 months' treatment period.

More than 90% of male breast cancer patients have HR+ disease. Tamoxifen is currently the standard of care hormonal therapy but there is limited data on its efficacy and safety in men and little information on other hormone blocking treatments.

The Male-GBG54 trial randomised 55 men with breast cancer to hormonal therapy with one of three regimens as adjuvant or metastatic therapy for six months: tamoxifen (20mg per day); tamoxifen + gonadotrophin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) (subcutaneous every 3 months); exemestane (25mg/day) + GnRHa.

Tamoxifen blocks estrogen from attaching to hormone receptors on cancer cells while exemestane is an aromatase inhibitor that inhibits estrogen synthesis. The use of GnRH analogues in men with breast cancer is controversial but is based on reducing levels of testosterone when used in combination with aromatase inhibitors or antiandrogens (6).

Results reported at ESMO 2018 showed the median level of estradiol increased by 67% at three months and by 41% at six months in men treated with tamoxifen alone. In contrast, estradiol levels decreased by 85% after three months in men treated with a GnRH analogue plus tamoxifen and by 73% in those receiving a GnRH analogue plus exemestane. Estradiol levels continued to be decreased at six months with GnRH analogues plus tamoxifen or exemestane. These therapies were well tolerated with no safety signals.

The researchers also assessed the impact of treatment on quality of life and sexual function in men with breast cancer treated with hormonal therapy for the first time, using a validated questionnaire (Aging Males' Symptoms Scale Questionnaire) and assessment of erectile function (International Index of Erectile Function). Results showed that tamoxifen had little impact on health-related quality of life or erectile function in men with breast cancer while the combination of GnRH analogue plus exemestane had a major adverse effect on both measures.

Lead author Mattea Reinisch, from Klinikum Essen-Mitte, Essen, Germany, said: "We observed a deep and stable decrease of estradiol in patients receiving the combination of tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor plus GnRH for six months of therapy within the Male trial. The suppression of peripheral estradiol is a necessary condition for a therapeutic benefit of endocrine therapy in men with breast cancer when receiving an aromatase inhibitor plus GnRH analogue. Within the tamoxifen monotherapy arm, the estradiol values increased. These changes are known from female breast cancer patients and were expected."

Reinisch added: "Tamoxifen monotherapy should be kept as standard hormonal therapy for men with breast cancer. The side-effects are moderate, hardly impairing sexual behavior. The combination with GnRH influenced patients' well-being and erectile function profoundly."

Commenting on the study, associate professor Agnes Jager said: "The authors are to be congratulated with a randomised trial in such a rare study population, which must have been a real effort. However, it is regrettable that the estradiol suppression at 3 months was the primary endpoint. Although it is relevant to know whether and to what extent E2 levels change over time during different endocrine treatment strategies, as far as I know E2 suppression at 3 months is neither a validated nor a clinically useful surrogate endpoint for the efficacy of endocrine treatment."

Jager added: "The finding that tamoxifen without an LHRH agonist led to a pronounced increase of E2 levels after 3 and 6 months of treatment is not new, although the degree of the increase is somewhat unexpected." But she cautioned that the endpoint used in the study did not answer the question of whether an LHRH agonist should be added to tamoxifen in men and further research is needed on this. "Due to the severe side-effects of LHRH agonists in men and the negative impact on quality of life, clarity about this is of great clinical importance."

Prolonging sensitivity to hormonal therapies

The cyclin dependent kinase 4 and 6 inhibitor (CDK4/6 inhibitor) ribociclib plus the aromatase inhibitor letrozole has comparable safety and tolerability as first-line therapy in men with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer to that seen in women, according to preliminary results from an international phase 3 trial reported at ESMO 2018 (7).

Most patients with HR+ breast cancer become resistant to hormonal therapies over time so there is a lot of interest in finding treatments to prolong or restore sensitivity. Inhibiting the CDK4/6 has been identified as a potential target for overcoming or delaying resistance to hormonal therapy in advanced HR+/HER2-breast.

The CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib is approved for use in combination with an aromatase inhibitor for treating postmenopausal women with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer who have received no previous treatment for advanced breast cancer based on results from a trial showing significantly prolonged progression-free survival. However, men were not included in the study.

The international CompLEEment-1 trial included 20 men with HR+, HER2- advanced breast cancer in the first 1008 patients enrolled who completed 56 days of follow-up or discontinued before data cut-off. They were treated on an open-label basis with ribociclib (600mg per day, 3 weeks on/1 week off) plus letrozole (2.5mg/day). Male patients also received concomitant goserelin (3.6mg subcutaneous implant every 28 days). A pre-planned interim analysis was conducted approximately 15 months after the first patient's first visit for the primary outcome of safety and tolerability.

Results reported at ESMO 2018 showed the most frequent adverse events in men were hot flushes (30.0%), neutropenia (20.0%) and constipation (20.0%). Adverse events of grade 3 severity or higher included neutropenia (4 patients, 20.0%), increased alanine aminotransferase (2 patients, 10%) and increased aminotransferase (1 patient, 5.0%). QT prolongation was infrequent, occurring in 3 men (15.0%) and all events were grade 1 or 2.

Just over one-third (35.0%) of men required dose reduction or interruption due to adverse events, while two men discontinued treatment due to adverse events.

"We can conclude in this sub-population of men that the tolerability and the expected toxicity with ribociclib in men is no different to women. And this increases our confidence in data obtained in large trials with women in order to translate the results and the applicability to men," said lead author Claudio Zamagni, Head of Breast and Gynaecological Medical Oncology, Sant'Orsola Malpighi Hospital, Bologna, Italy. The combination of hormonal therapy plus ribociclib should be considered as an option also for male patients with metastatic HR+ HER2- breast cancer," he suggested. He noted that this was the first study to assess the safety of a CDK4/6 inhibitor in men, adding that efficacy data will be reported with longer-term follow-up in the future.

Commenting on the study, associate professor Agnes Jager considered that limitations were the small numbers and the lack of efficacy data at the time of reporting. She said: "As expected, there were no major differences in safety compared to previously published toxicity data for women, with the exception of the prevalence of neutropenia." This was less frequent compared with female breast cancer patients in the MONALEESA 2 study (grade 3/4: 20.0% in men vs 59.3% in women).

Jager suggested that if similar results were shown in other studies, this could be of interest from a mechanistic point of view. "One of the explanations might be that there is a gender-dependent toxic effect on bone marrow. Alternatively, it could be a reflection of different plasma concentrations of ribociclib in men and women," she suggested. If this were the case, efficacy could be lower in man. She continued: "The first step forwards is to compare the outcome between the men and women within the CompLEEment study, as well as cross-comparing with other studies in women."

Summing up the three studies, Dr. Stefan Zimmerman, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Switzerland, said: "Male breast cancer patients seem to benefit from endocrine therapy to a similar degree as women. Furthermore, these research results add to the current literature suggesting that the addition of GnRH analogues might improve on tamoxifen alone, but studies with clinical endpoints are needed. Lastly, it is urgent that strategies that have proven effective in defering resistance to endocrine therapy in women are explored in men with advanced breast cancer as well, including CDK4/6 inhibitors."

Explore further Older breast cancer patients in England less likely to survive

More information: 1 Abstract 294PD_PR 'Management and outcome of metastatic breast cancer in men in the national multicenter observational ESME program ' will be presented by Junien Sirieix during the Poster Discussion Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:15 (CEST) in Room 14b - ICM. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 1 Abstract 294PD_PR 'Management and outcome of metastatic breast cancer in men in the national multicenter observational ESME program ' will be presented by Junien Sirieix during the Poster Discussion Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:15 (CEST) in Room 14b - ICM., Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 2 Abstract 273PD_PR 'Final analysis of the Male-GBG54 study: a prospective multi-centre phase II study evaluating endocrine treatment with either tamoxifen +/- gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) or an aromatase inhibitor + GnRHa in male breast cancer patients' will be presented by Mattea Reinisch during the Poster Discussion Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:15 (CEST) in Room 14b - ICM. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 3 Abstract 293PD_PR 'Ribociclib (RIBO) + letrozole (LET) in male patients (pts) with hormone receptor positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer (ABC) and no prior endocrine therapy (ET) for ABC: preliminary subgroup results from the phase 2 CompLEEment-1 trial' will be presented by Claudio Zamagni during the Poster Discussion Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:15 (CEST) in Room 14b - ICM. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Journal information: Annals of OncologyPET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer's disease. Credit: public domain

Pioneering research into the mechanisms controlling gene activity in the brain could hold the key to understanding Alzheimer's disease and might help identify effective treatments in the future.

An international research team led by scientists at the University of Exeter and the University of Essex have uncovered a link between indicators of gene activity and the disease, which could unlock exciting new avenues of research.

The study is published in Nature Neuroscience and was co-funded by the United States National Institutes of Health, the European Union and the Medical Research Council.

The group investigated changes to the activity of genes which are not caused by variation in the actual genetic code. It is an exciting avenue for research because unlike the DNA sequence, these so-called epigenetic processes can potentially be altered by environmental factors, providing a possible future avenue to influencing their activity.

The researchers studied a type of epigenetic modification called histone acetylation that marks regions of the genome that are active. In cells, DNA is packaged by structures called histones which can be modified to control gene activity. The team quantified levels of histone acetylation across the genome using brain tissue from deceased patients with and without Alzheimer's disease.

Both increases and decreases in histone acetylation were found across regions of the genome, identifying genes involved in Alzheimer's disease. Strikingly, they found differences in regulatory regions controlling the expression of both amyloid and tau, two proteins known to be involved in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease.

This research is the first genome-wide study to investigate histone acetylation in Alzheimer's disease, and provides a framework for studying histone modification studies in other diseases affecting the brain.

Professor Jonathan Mill, who co-led the study, of the University of Exeter Medical School said: "Our study provides compelling evidence for widespread changes in histone acetylation in Alzheimer's disease. Although more work is needed to explore whether altered histone acetylation is a cause or a result of the condition, it is interesting that drugs modifying histone acetylation are among the most promising new treatments for Alzheimer's disease."

Fellow co-lead Professor Leonard Schalkwyk, from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Essex, said: "Alzheimer's affects millions of lives and has been extensively studied but we still haven't got to the bottom of why and how it happens. This is our second large-scale study on the chromosomes of the most-affected parts of the brain, to find different epigenetic differences in how genes are expressed in Alzheimer's disease compared to an unaffected brain. This is helping to tie different strands of our understanding of the disease together."

Dr. Sarah Marzi, from King's College London and Queen Mary University of London, who was part of the research team added: "Changes influencing the activity of many genes were found to be robustly associated with the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. Interestingly, our results suggest there are common mechanisms both hereditary and isolated forms of this terrible illness."

The paper, A histone acetylome-wide association study of Alzheimer's disease: neuropathology-associated regulatory variation in the human entorhinal cortex, is published in Nature Neuroscience.

Explore further Programming synthetic molecular codes to turn genes 'on'

More information: A histone acetylome-wide association study of Alzheimer's disease identifies disease-associated H3K27ac differences in the entorhinal cortex, Nature Neuroscience (2018). www.nature.com/articles/s41593-018-0253-7 Journal information: Nature Neuroscience A histone acetylome-wide association study of Alzheimer's disease identifies disease-associated H3K27ac differences in the entorhinal cortex,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-018-0253-7Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Heart patients are being advised to move around every 20 minutes in a bid to prolong life following a study presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress (CCC) 2018.

CCC 2018 is being held 20 to 23 October in Toronto, Canada. Visiting experts from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will participate in joint scientific sessions with the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) as part of the ESC Global Activities programme.

Heart patients spend most of their waking hours sitting, lying down, and watching television Previous research has shown that being sedentary for long periods could shorten life but taking breaks to move around may counteract the risk, particularly if it means burning more than 770 kcal a day. This study investigated how many breaks, and for what duration, are needed to expend 770 kcal.

"Our study shows that heart patients should interrupt sedentary time every 20 minutes with a 7 minute bout of light physical activity," said study author Dr. Ailar Ramadi, postdoctoral fellow, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. "Simple activities such as standing up and walking at a casual pace will expend more than 770 kcal in a day if done with this frequency and duration."

The study enrolled 132 patients with coronary artery disease. The average age was 63 years and 77% were male. Participants wore an armband activity monitor for an average of 22 hours a day for five days. The activity monitor recorded the amount of energy spent during breaks from inactivity, the amount of inactive time, and the number and duration of breaks during each sedentary hour.

Dr. Ramadi said: "There is a lot of evidence now that sitting for long periods is bad for health. Our study suggests that during each hour of sitting time, heart patients should take three breaks which add up to 21 minutes of light physical activity. This will expend 770 kcal a day, an amount associated with a lower risk of premature death."

Regarding limitations of the research, Professor Joep Perk, ESC Prevention Spokesperson, noted that this was a small, observational study with no control group. "A randomised controlled trial is needed before this can become a firm recommendation," he said. "Nevertheless, regular physical activity is key to achieving a healthy life, whether you are a cardiac patient or not."

Dr. Michelle M. Graham, Scientific Programme Committee Chair of CCC 2018, said: "We are delighted to have innovative studies such as that by Ramadi and colleagues being presented at CCC. Their novel work has very practical implications, not only for patients with cardiovascular disease, but for improving prevention by altering how people work in sedentary environments."

Professor Jeroen Bax, Past President of the ESC and course director of the ESC programme at CCC 2018, said: "Sedentary lifestyles affect more than half of the world's population. ESC guidelines on the prevention of cardiovascular disease recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week. Any activity is better than none and more activity is better than some."

Explore further Heart patients advised to move around every 20 minutes to prolong life

More information: Karjalainen JJ, Kiviniemi AM, Hautala AJ, et al. Effects of exercise prescription on daily physical activity and maximal exercise capacity in coronary artery disease patients with and without type 2 diabetes. Clin Physiol Funct Imaging. 2012;32:445454. Karjalainen JJ, Kiviniemi AM, Hautala AJ, et al. Effects of exercise prescription on daily physical activity and maximal exercise capacity in coronary artery disease patients with and without type 2 diabetes. Clin Physiol Funct Imaging. 2012;32:445454. Ramadi A, Stickland MK, Rodgers WM, et al. Impact of supervised exercise rehabilitation on daily physical activity of cardiopulmonary patients. Heart Lung. 2015;44:914. Healy GN, Matthews CE, Dunstan DW, et al. Sedentary time and cardio-metabolic biomarkers in US adults: NHANES 2003-06. Eur Heart J 2011;32:590597. Healy GN, Dunstan DW, Salmon J, et al. Breaks in sedentary time: beneficial associations with metabolic risk. Diabetes Care.2008;31:661666. Dunstan DW, Kingwell BA, Larsen R, et al. Breaking up prolonged sitting reduces postprandial glucose and insulin responses. Diabetes Care. 2012;35:976983. Judice PB, Silva AM, Sardinha LB. Sedentary bout durations are associated with abdominal obesity in older adults. Journal Nutr Health Aging. 2015;19:798804. Manini TM, Everhart JE, Patel KV, et al. Daily activity energy expenditure and mortality among older adults. JAMA. 2006;296:171179. Piepoli MF, Hoes AW, Agewall S, et al. 2016 European Guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention in clinical practice. Eur Heart J. 2016;37:23152381. Journal information: Diabetes Care , Journal of the American Medical AssociationProf Barbara Burtness, Yale School of Medicine and Co-Director, Development Therapeutics Research Program, Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, US, study author. Credit:  European Society for Medical Oncology

Immunotherapy with pembrolizumab improves survival in patients with head and neck cancer that has recurred or metastasised, according to late-breaking results from the KEYNOTE-048 study reported at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich.

The current standard treatment for metastatic or recurrent head and neck cancer is platinum-based chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil (5-FU) with cisplatin or carboplatin) plus the EGFR inhibitor cetuximab. Around 35% of patients respond to treatment, which leads to a median survival of just over ten months.

The phase III KEYNOTE-048 study examined whether the anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody pembrolizumab could prolong survival and slow cancer growth compared to standard treatment. KEYNOTE-048 enrolled patients with head and neck cancer who had not received prior chemotherapy or biologic therapy for recurrent or metastatic disease. Patients were randomly allocated in a 1:1:1 ratio to: 1) standard treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy (5-FU with cisplatin or carboplatin) and cetuximab (the control group); 2) pembrolizumab alone; or 3) a novel combination of pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy.

At ESMO 2018 researchers presented results on pembrolizumab alone compared to standard treatment in patients expressing PD-L1, a marker of immune activity, and on the novel combination compared to standard treatment in all patients regardless of PD-L1 expression.

In the first comparison, 301 patients received pembrolizumab and 300 patients had standard treatment, with median follow up of 11.7 and 10.7 months, respectively. The patient demographics and disease characteristics were similar between the treatment arms.

In patients with tumour and/or surrounding cells expressing PD-L1 (combined positive score [CPS] >20), overall survival was significantly longer with pembrolizumab (14.9 months) than standard treatment (10.7 months, hazard ratio [HR] 0.61, p=0.0007). Some 23.3% responded to pembrolizumab and 36.1% responded to standard treatment. Median response duration was longer with pembrolizumab (20.9 months) than standard therapy (4.5 months). There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 0.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.75-1.29).

"Patients with PD-L1 expression live longer when they have initial treatment with pembrolizumab," said first author Prof Barbara Burtness, Yale School of Medicine and Co-Director, Development Therapeutics Research Program, Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, US.

The results were similar in patients with a lower cut point of PD-L1 expression (CPS >1). Overall survival was significantly longer with pembrolizumab (12.3 months) compared to standard care (10.3 months, HR 0.78, p=0.0086). Some 19.1% on pembrolizumab responded to treatment compared to 34.9% on standard chemotherapy. Median response duration was longer with pembrolizumab (20.9 months) than standard chemotherapy (4.5 months). There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 1.16, 95% CI 0.75-1.29).

In the second comparison, 281 patients received the novel combination of pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy and 278 received standard treatment, with median follow-up of 13.0 and 10.7 months, respectively. Patient demographics and disease characteristics were similar between treatment arms. Overall survival was prolonged with the combination (13.0 months) versus standard care (10.7 months, HR 0.77, p=0.0034). Response rates were 35.6% for the pembrolizumab combination and 36.3% for standard treatment. There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.77-1.10).

Side effects in the three treatment groups were as expected. Pembrolizumab alone was less toxic than standard treatment. Pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy and standard treatment had similar toxicity.

Burtness noted that compared to standard care, pembrolizumab alone had a lower response rate and numerically shorter progression-free survival, but significantly longer overall survival. She said: "Pembrolizumab appears to prolong life even when the cancer continues to grow, suggesting that it should be a first line therapy in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer. Whether pembrolizumab is given alone or with chemotherapy may depend on PD-L1 expression and we are conducting analyses to answer this question."

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Dr. Tanguy Seiwert, Head and Neck Cancer Programme Director, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, US, said: "This is the first study to show superior overall survival over the decade-old standard of care, platinum-based chemotherapy and cetuximab, and establishes PD-L1 CPS as a valid marker for head and neck cancer that should be routinely measured in these patients."

But he added: "The challenge is that treatment benefit is not equally distributed but depends on a biomarker. Hence, PD-L1 CPS expression will likely inform our choice between the two new optionspembrolizumab alone, with a favourable side effect profile, and pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy, which may be used in a larger group of patients. Higher PD-L1 expression is associated with more benefit but the exact cut points have to be determined, and individual patient characteristics will play an important role as well. Separate analyses are needed in patients who have tumours with low or absent PD-L1 expression, where there is potentially less benefit."

Regarding the need for further research, Seiwert said: "The usefulness of other biomarkers to select patients for treatment, such as tumour mutational burden, should also be examined."

Explore further Immunotherapy effective as first-line treatment for advanced head and neck cancer

More information: Abstract LBA8_PR 'First-line pembrolizumab for recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC): interim results from the phase 3 KEYNOTE-048 study' will be presented by Barbara Burtness during the Presidential Symposium 3 on Monday, 22 October, 16:30 to 18:00 CEST in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Journal information: Annals of Oncology Abstract LBA8_PR 'First-line pembrolizumab for recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC): interim results from the phase 3 KEYNOTE-048 study' will be presented by Barbara Burtness during the Presidential Symposium 3 on Monday, 22 October, 16:30 to 18:00 CEST in Room 18 - Hall A2., Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018Radiotherapy to the prostate improves overall survival in men newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer who have a low metastatic disease burden but not in those with higher burden of disease, according to results from a pre-planned analysis of a large comparison study reported at ESMO 2018.

"Standard treatment for men newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer is currently drug treatment alone," explained the lead author Dr. Chris Parker, Clinical Oncologist, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton, UK. "Although outcomes have improved, men still typically die from metastatic prostate cancer within around five years, so there is a need for more effective treatment. We wanted to know if radiotherapy to the prostate might not only improve local control but also slow progression of metastatic disease."

The multi-arm, multi-stage STAMPEDE study included a randomised phase III comparison to test whether radiotherapy to the prostate improves overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer. This was based on the hypothesis that primary tumours, which are the original or first tumours occurring in a patient with cancer, could contribute to overall disease progression and shorter survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer.

The study included 2061 patients (median age 68 years) from the UK and Switzerland who were newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. They were randomly allocated to standard of care (SOC) treatment consisting of lifelong androgen deprivation therapy plus early docetaxel from 2016 or to SOC plus radiotherapy to the prostate. The radiotherapy schedule was 55Gy/20f daily over 4 weeks or 36Gy/6f weekly over 6 weeks.

Results showed that prostate radiotherapy improved failure-free survival (hazard ratio [HR] 0.68, 95% confidence interval 0.68, 0.84) but not overall survival (HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.80, 1.06) in the whole group of patients.

Prespecified subgroup analysis showed that radiotherapy to the prostate improved overall survival by just over one-third (32%) in the 819 men with a low burden of metastatic disease (HR=0.68, 95% CI 0.52, 0.90). In contrast, overall survival was not improved with radiotherapy in the 1120 men with higher metastatic burden. Higher burden of disease in prostate cancer is defined as four or more bone metastases with at least one outside the axial skeleton and/or visceral metastases .

Radiotherapy to the prostate was well tolerated with 5% of patients having grade 3-4 adverse events during treatment and 4% following treatment. "There was a small increase in risk of bladder and bowel side-effects but these were modest. The side-effects are certainly outweighed by the survival benefit," said Parker.

"Prostate radiotherapy improves the survival of men with metastatic prostate cancer who have a low disease burden," reported Parker. He recommended: "Prostate radiotherapy, in addition to drug treatment, should now be a standard treatment option for men with oligometastatic disease."

Parker noted that prostate radiotherapy is a simple technique that is widely available and relatively cheap, so he considered that it can be implemented easily. He added that the study results are also relevant to men with pelvic node positive but non-metastatic disease (N1M0) where addition of radiotherapy to drug treatment could be curative.

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Prof. Karim Fizazi, from the Gustave Roussy Institute, University of Paris Sud, France, said: "For the first time, this study provides evidence that treating the local primary tumor is associated with improvement in overall survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer and minimal disseminated disease." He added that the finding that there was no significant increase in overall survival in men with higher burden of disease was in line with the previously reported HORRAD trial.

Considering the implications for clinical practice, Fizazi suggested: "For men with newly diagnosed oligometastatic prostate cancer, it is quite likely that this data is practice changing." Looking to the future, he said: "For men with higher burden of disease more data are needed regarding whether upfront local treatment improves or prevents local symptoms, which, by itself, may justify its use in the absence of an overall survival benefit."

In terms of limitations, Fizazi noted that although the study was a large, randomised phase 3 trial only 18% of the patients had received early docetaxel and none had received early abiraterone, although these treatments are now part of standard treatment in fit men.

Explore further Cancer trial shows treating the prostate with radiotherapy improves survival

More information: Abstract LBA5_PR 'Radiotherapy (RT) to the primary tumour for men with newly-diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer (PCA): survival results from STAMPEDE (NCT00268476)' will be presented by Chris Parker during Presidential Symposium 2 on Sunday 21 October, 16:30 to 18:10 (CEST) in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018Police lob teargas shells after local clash over hospital construction in Bara

Police lobbed 10 rounds of tear gas canisters to contain the situation after a clash broke out between two groups in Benauli village of Pachaurata Municipality, Bara on Monday.The right common carotid artery of post-natal day 7 mice was permanently occluded (ischemia). After 2 hours of recovery with the dam, the pup was exposed to 8% O2 air (hypoxia). At post-natal day 21, NPCs were transplanted in the corpus callosum. Credit: Rumajogee et al., eNeuro (2018)

Neural stem cells can repair damaged parts of the brain and restore motor impairments in mice that display features of cerebral palsy, according to new research published in eNeuro. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using stem cells to address the underlying brain injuries responsible for this group of common movement disorders.

Michael Fehlings and colleagues induced a mild brain injury in young male and female mice that reproduces features of cerebral palsy and injected neural precursor cells into the corpus callosumthe dense bundle of nerve fibers connecting the left and right sides of the brain, in which myelination is significantly impaired.

With this approach, the researchers demonstrated recovery of lesions in the corpus callosum as well as the hippocampus and the cortex and improved walking and limb use.

Although further research is needed to better understand the mechanisms underlying this recovery, the study suggests that neural precursor cells may build a "bio-bridge" that enable the brain's own oligodendrocyte cells to repair myelination lost as a result of the injury.

Explore further Study of monotreme and marsupial brains suggests hemispheres communicated before development of corpus callosum

More information: Exogenous Neural Precursor Cell Transplantation Results in Structural and Functional Recovery in a Hypoxic-Ischemic Hemiplegic Mouse Model, eNeuro, DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0369-18.2018 Exogenous Neural Precursor Cell Transplantation Results in Structural and Functional Recovery in a Hypoxic-Ischemic Hemiplegic Mouse Model,Killer T cells surround a cancer cell. Credit: NIH

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat and is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Now, Sidney Kimmel Cancer CenterJefferson Health and Lankenau Institute for Medical Research scientists find that a gene involved in the immune system called IDO2 plays a significant role in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common type of pancreatic cancer. The discovery may help physicians provide better treatment options for patients.

"The findings could point to a therapeutic target or an important prognostic biomarker," said George Prendergast, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) of Main Line Health who co-led the study with Jonathan Brody, Ph.D., Director of the Research Division and Professor of Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University, both of whom are members of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer CenterJefferson Health.

The team published the new work September 28 in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

The IDO2 gene, which was first discovered by LIMR researchers in 2006, produces an enzyme that helps manage the immune system. During pregnancy, IDO2 and a related gene, IDO1, tone down the mother's immune system so it will not attack the fetus, for example. Cancer, however, hijacks the IDO genes' function. It uses IDO1 and 2 to conceal itself from the immune system. The researchers thought that shutting down the IDO enzymes could make the cancer visible to the immune system, thereby allowing the body's defenses the opportunity to fight the cancer. In fact, in previous research, the team found that mice lacking the IDO genes did not develop pancreatic cancer in a rodent model of the disease. The results suggested IDO genes are essential to pancreatic cancer progression.

Now, Drs. Brody and Prendergast find IDO2 spurs the formation of PDAC tumors. When the researchers induced the development of pancreatic cancer in mice, they found nearly 30 percent of rodents developed the invasive cancer. In mice that lack the IDO2 gene, however, the cancer grew in only 15 percent of the animals. Strikingly, all the mice lacking IDO2 that developed cancer were male. The results suggest IDO2's involvement in pancreatic cancer may affect females differently from males.

The researchers knew that many people in the general population have inherited, or germline, alterations in the IDO2 gene that turn off the gene's ability to mediate the immune system. So the scientists examined the IDO2 gene in a subgroup of pancreatic cancer patients from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Genetic testing is easy and cost effective, since researchers need only a sample of blood or cheek swab to detect this DNA.

"Besides IDO2's involvement in development of pancreatic cancer, we wanted to know whether IDO2 affects how patients respond to treatment," said Dr. Brody.

When the team compared patients' IDO2 genes with their prognosis, they found that patients with defunct IDO2 genes had more favorable outcomes.

"The patients in our small cohort actually do better in specific treatment settings," said Dr. Brody. "They have improved disease-free survival when they receive radiotherapy."

Patients with nonfunctional IDO2 who also received adjuvant radiation treatment lived cancer-free for almost twice as long as patients with a working version of the gene, the researchers found. The results suggest that people with a specific IDO2 gene status may respond better to radiotherapy for their disease. In fact, patients who had deficient IDO2 gene status and received radiotherapy had a markedly improved survival. Patients with a functioning IDO2 gene who had received radiation treatment did not demonstrate such benefits and nor did patients with an inactive IDO2 gene who did not receive radiotherapy.

Together, these initial findings suggest that IDO2 gene status has the potential to influence pancreatic care decision-making (i.e., precision therapy). In the future, physicians may be able to use the gene's status as a biomarker to inform their treatment recommendations.

"Developing new strategies to refine therapeutic options has been a top priority of our nationally recognized pancreatic cancer team at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center," says cancer researcher Karen Knudsen, Ph.D., Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer CenterJefferson Health. "This breakthrough in understanding lays the foundation for determining what patients might most benefit from radiotherapy, and represents a major step forward toward the goal of precision oncology."

Although the researchers are excited about these findings, Dr. Brody suggests a lot of work needs to be done to validate the study in additional, larger cohorts, and ultimately, in a prospective clinical trial. If confirmed, Brody states, "With a simple blood test, physicians could determine a patient's IDO2 gene status and determine whether they should go on radiotherapy."

Explore further IDO2 an active enzyme to target in pancreatic cancer

More information: Avinoam Nevler et al, Host IDO2 gene status influences tumor progression and radiotherapy response in KRAS-driven sporadic pancreatic cancers, Clinical Cancer Research (2018). Journal information: Clinical Cancer Research Avinoam Nevler et al, Host IDO2 gene status influences tumor progression and radiotherapy response in KRAS-driven sporadic pancreatic cancers,(2018). DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-0814The first report of a large international clinical trial shows that, for men who show signs of prostate cancer after surgical removal of their prostates, extending radiation therapy to the pelvic lymph nodes combined with adding short-term hormone therapy to standard treatment can extend the amount of time before their cancer spreads. The findings, presented today at the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), were so encouraging exceeding rigorous threshold criteriathat the results were released by the research team ahead of schedule.

Men with prostate cancer who are initially treated with prostatectomysurgical removal of the prostate glandoften face signs of recurrence, usually signaled by a rise in the level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in the blood. Radiation therapy to the region of the prior prostate surgery (surgical bed) is standard but only effective at keeping PSA low longer than five or more years in 60 to 70 percent of patients, said the study's lead author, Alan Pollack, MD, Ph.D., Chair of radiation oncology at the University of Miami and deputy director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

While a rise in PSA after prostatectomy signals that the cancer is still present, it does not indicate where the cancer is located. The NRG Oncology/RTOG 0534 SPORRT clinical trial is the first randomized trial to show that radiation therapy to treat the pelvic lymph nodes in addition to standard prostate bed results in significant incremental gains for these patients.

"We looked specifically at men with prostate cancer who began to show signs that the cancer was not completely eradicated after prostatectomy," said Dr. Pollack. "Adding hormone therapy and pelvic lymph node treatment substantively increased the proportion of patients who remained free from disease progression, to the point that we could report the data after an early interim analysis. The degree of the effectiveness of the combination is surprising, but makes sense when you consider other more contemporary evidence using newer PET scanning methods showing that pelvic lymph node recurrences are more common than previously appreciated."

The SPPORT trial enrolled 1,792 men at centers in the U.S., Canada and Israel from 2008 to 2015. Eligible patients had persistently detectable or rising PSA levels and evidence that some cancer cells were left behind after prostatectomy in the prostate bed, pelvic lymph nodes or elsewhere in the body after prostatectomy. The median patient age was 64 years (range 39-84), most patients (87 percent) were Caucasian, and the men had generally favorable performance status.

Patients in the SPPORT trial were randomly placed into three treatment groups: prostate bed radiation therapy (PBRT) alone, PBRT plus short-term androgen deprivation (hormone) therapy (STAD), and PBRT plus pelvic lymph node radiotherapy (PLNRT) plus STAD. Hormone therapy consisted of four-to-six months of androgen deprivation to reduce levels of testosterone, a driver of prostate cancer.

The trial was designed to assess freedom from disease progression at five years following treatment. Findings from a scheduled interim analysis when 1,191 patients had been followed for five years triggered the early release of the findings, explained Dr. Pollack. "The level of significance reached at this point was considerable, making it unlikely that the results will change substantively with longer follow-up, although outcomes such as the rates of distant metastasis and survival require much more patient follow-up, " he said. "Releasing the data at this juncture is important for physicians treating patients with a rising PSA following prostatectomy. The strategy of combining prostate bed and pelvic lymph node radiation therapy with short-term hormone therapy should be much more strongly considered in routine clinical practice than it is currently."

At five years following treatment, freedom-from-progression (FFP) rates in the interim analysis group were 71.7 percent for PBRT alone, 82.7 percent for PBRT+ADT and 89.1 percent for PLNRT+PBRT+ADT. The FFP rate was highest for the arm combining all three treatments (p<0.0001). Freedom from progression was defined as a PSA nadir of +2, clinical failure or death from any cause.

Rates of cancer spread were also significantly different between treatment arms. In all eligible patients followed for up to eight years, distant metastases were found in 45 patients in the PBRT-only arm, 38 patients in the PBRT+ADT arm and 25 patients in the PLNRT+PBRT+ADT arm. Distant metastasis rates were significantly lower following the three-treatment approach compared to PBRT alone (Hazard Ratio 0.52, 95% CI: 0.32-0.85) and compared to PBRT+ADT (HR 0.64, 95% CI: 0.39-1.06).

"While it is common practice to treat the lymph nodes in men with higher-risk prostate cancer treated without prostatectomy first), this study is the most convincing level-I evidence to demonstrate a benefit," noted Dr. Pollack. "To be seeing differences in distant metastasis with relatively short follow-up speaks to the robustness of the impact, suggesting that the results will be sustained with longer follow-up."

Another key finding of the SPPORT trial is that short term hormone therapy (also called androgen deprivation therapy or ADT) is a key component of the management of patients with signs of recurrence after prostatectomy. SPPORT is only the second trial to look specifically at adding short-term hormone therapy to radiation for men following prostatectomy, added Dr. Pollack. "There are a lot of data showing a benefit from adding short-term hormone therapy in men whose prostate hasn't been removed, though only one other randomized trialGETUG 16has shown significant improvements after prostatectomy. Our study confirms that adding STAD to PBRT following surgery extends the time to progression."

Rates of severe side effects (grade three or higher using CTCAEv3.0) were low across treatment groups. During treatment, the main additional severe effects from PLNRT were in relation to blood/bone marrow events. For long-term effects, blood/bone marrow events were also slightly higher in the PLNRT arm, but only for grade 2+ events (4.1 percent), not grade 3+ (1.1 percent).

Additional analyses of the SPPORT trial will focus on the magnitude of difference between the experimental treatment arms to isolate the impact of pelvic lymph node treatment relative to androgen deprivation therapy. The research team also described preliminary data that for those with a very low PSA on study entry, there was no improvement from PLNRT+PBRT+STAD over PBRT+STAD; although, this was an unplanned analysis.

"It's now a question of management, of whether a PSA threshold or other factors can be used to identify a patient group in which pelvic lymph node treatment is not as beneficial," concluded Dr. Pollack. "Moreover, the role of newer PET tracers that identify pelvic lymph node involvement earlier in this decision process remains a key question. We still need more data, but we've taken a significant step forward with this study."

The abstract, "Short term androgen deprivation therapy without or with pelvic lymph node treatment added to prostate bed only salvage radiation therapy: The NRG Oncology/RTOG 0534 SPPORT trial," will be presented in detail during a news briefing and an oral abstract session at ASTRO's 60th Annual Meeting in San Antonio.

Explore further Combo therapy of prostatectomy plus radiotherapy may improve survival in prostate cancerStates with poor access to a comprehensive trauma center have more deaths occurring before injured patients' arrival at a hospital, compared with states that have better access. Furthermore, this frequency of prehospital deaths contributes to higher overall trauma-related mortality, according to new research findings presented today at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress 2018. Overall, more than half (28 states) have an above-average prehospital death burden, reported researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston.

"We know faster transportation time to a trauma center saves lives, but we didn't know about the regional differences in trauma center access," said Zain G. Hashmi, MD, who helped conduct the study as a research fellow at Brigham and Women's and is now a general surgery resident at Sinai Hospital, Baltimore. "Despite a major decline in in-hospital mortality for high-risk trauma since 1970, there has been little emphasis at the national level on improving the prehospital death rate due to trauma."

Timely access to a trauma center is critical to achieve the goal of "Zero Preventable Deaths After Injury," recommended in a 2016 report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM)1 and championed by the American College of Surgeons. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), trauma is the leading cause of death in Americans younger than age 45, and 214,000 people die from injuries each year.2

Under the direction of senior investigator Adil H. Haider, MD, MPH, FACS, Dr. Hashmi and colleagues sought to obtain more information about what Dr. Hashmi called "the big black box" of prehospital trauma care. They analyzed 1.95 million trauma deaths in U.S. adults (ages 15 and older) reported to the CDC between 1999 and 2016, nationally and by state. Restricting trauma to blunt injuries (such as those due to falls, motor vehicle collisions, or assault with a blunt object) and penetrating injuries (gunshot and stab wounds, punctures, and so on), the investigators excluded trauma deaths due to drowning, burns, and other causes.

The researchers compared the frequency of deaths occurring in-hospital with those occurring before hospital arrival. Using previously published data,3 they also calculated the proportion of each state's population with timely access to a Level I or Level II trauma center, which is equipped and staffed to provide 24-hour care for patients with life-threatening injuries. They measured access to the trauma center by ground or air transport within 45 minutes of injury and within the more conventional "golden hour," a limited timeframe for getting a trauma patient to definitive care within an hour of the injury for the best chance of survival before shock causes damage to organs.

To estimate access and proximity to a trauma center, the research team developed a novel metric called the prehospital:in-hospital death (PH:IH) ratio, which is the number of prehospital trauma deaths divided by the number of in-hospital trauma deaths. States with a higher-than-average PH:IH ratio and age-adjusted mortality rate received the classification of "high prehospital death burden."

Overall, the largest percentage of trauma deaths occurred before hospital arrival (49 percent), compared with 42 percent of in-hospital deaths, according to the study abstract. (The remaining 9 percent were dead-on-arrival, nursing home, and hospice deaths, which the researchers excluded from analysis.) The national average PH:IH ratio was 1.18, and the average age-adjusted mortality rate was 44.4 per 100,000 population based on U.S. census data.

An association existed between states with a high prehospital death burden and a lower proportion of the state's population with 1-hour access to a Level I or II trauma center, Dr. Hashmi reported. Only 63.2 percent of the population in high prehospital burden states had timely access to care versus 90.2 percent among the remaining states.

If all states had the same PH:IH ratio as did the states in the quartile with the best trauma center access, 7,601 prehospital trauma deaths could be prevented per year, the researchers estimated.

The 28 states identified as having a high prehospital death burden are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

The reasons why these states have worse prehospital death burden are unknown but likely varied, Dr. Hashmi said.

Senior investigator Dr. Haider said two major themes emerged from this study. "First, there is tremendous potential for saving lives by improving prehospital care and access to trauma centers. Second, to undertake these improvements, we need high-quality, detailed data from the point of injury through recovery and rehabilitation," he said. "That's where we can make the greatest impact in saving lives and ensuring meaningful functional outcomes after injury."

The researchers recommend that states with a high prehospital death burden improve their access to care, such as by shortening patient transport times, optimizing placement of trauma centers, and by improving the quality of prehospital care.

They also agreed with the NASEM recommendation1 to establish a national integrated trauma data repository that can track individual patient outcomes across the continuum of trauma care, including prehospital data, and efforts by the ACS Committee on Trauma to meet those recommendations. These efforts include establishing a national trauma system that links data across the continuum of injury care, from the prehospital phase to rehabilitation. As many of the states affected by this issue have a large rural population, an innovative solution to optimize access to care in an inclusive trauma system with high quality prehospital care will be critical.

Explore further More americans DOA from gun, knife wounds

More information: 1. Berwick D, Downey A, Cornett E, eds; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. A National Trauma Care System: Integrating Military and Civilian Trauma Systems to Achieve Zero Preventable Deaths After Injury. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2016. 1. Berwick D, Downey A, Cornett E, eds; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. A National Trauma Care System: Integrating Military and Civilian Trauma Systems to Achieve Zero Preventable Deaths After Injury. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2016. www.nap.edu/23511 . Accessed September 4, 2018. 2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Key injury and violence data. www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/overview/key_data.html. Updated May 8, 2018. Accessed September 4, 2018. 3. Branas CC, MacKenzie EJ, Williams JC, et al. Access to trauma centers in the United States. JAMA. 2005;293(21):2626-2633. Journal information: Journal of the American Medical AssociationDepiction of the 3D structure of an enzyme (exobetamannosidase) that cleaves one of the bonds in the innermost part of the N-glycan, the so-called glycan nucleus. Credit: PLOS One

Researchers in Sweden have discovered how acne-causing bacteria feed off their human hosts. The study, which was performed at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, could make it possible to find effective ways to treat severe acne.

The research team worked out the details of how the common bacterium, Cutibacterium acnes, a natural habitant of human skin microbiota, feeds on certain carbohydrate chains on its way to becoming pathogenic and causing what we know as acne  a condition where hair follicles become clogged with dead skin cells and oil.

"Our results can provide a clue to why acne is so difficult to treat," says Christine Divne, a researcher in structural biology at the Department of Industrial Biotechnology at KTH.

They report the discovery of special enzymes in acne bacteria that together form an enzyme system with the ability to break down N-glycans, which are carbohydrate chains that are linked to human proteins. Like other oligosaccharides, which are polymer compounds containing simple sugars, N-glycans play an important role in the body, for instance in the immune system. As part of the body's immune response, N-glycans modify certain proteins in the body, such as antibodies, to ensure the correct structure and function in fighting antigens such as viruses and bacteria.

However, Divne says the findings suggest that the C. acnes metabolism not only enables the bacteria to make a nutritious meal of N-glycans but could also produce a mechanism that allows it to circumvent the human immune system.

"The reason that the bacterium breaks down N-glycans can be for nutrition or for overriding our defense against the bacterium," Divne says. The researchers examined the three-dimensional atomic structure of the enzymes to get experiment support for its hypothesis, which they will continue working with.

Co-author Henrik Aspeborg says there is still more to examine. "So far, there is still very little known about how bacteria break down and metabolize human glycans," he says.

"In a few years, when we hopefully have a more complete picture of how the acne bacteria metabolizes our N-glycans, we will be in a great position to fight back against serious forms of acne."

Explore further Researchers working on vaccine for acne

More information: Tom Reichenbach et al. Structural and biochemical characterization of the Cutibacterium acnes exo--1,4-mannosidase that targets the N-glycan core of host glycoproteins, PLOS ONE (2018). Journal information: PLoS ONE Tom Reichenbach et al. Structural and biochemical characterization of the Cutibacterium acnes exo--1,4-mannosidase that targets the N-glycan core of host glycoproteins,(2018). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204703Credit: Pixabay/FirmBee

TU Wien and the Lower Austria Chamber of Labour have conducted a study into smartphone use. The lines between work time and free time are often blurred.

You might check in the evening to see if the boss has sent an email. Or, perhaps, go through the numbers for the meeting over breakfast. Maybe you reach for your phone when you need to quickly find out some information on the weekend. For many people, heavy smartphone usage means that there is no longer a clear boundary between working hours and their private life. TU Wien and the Lower Austria Chamber of Labour have conducted a study that examines the effect that smartphone use has on work. Being constantly available can intensify stress, irritability and rumination about work. It is recommended that people make a conscious effort to create space in their life, during which they can leave the workaday world behind.

Combination of surveys and objective usage data

"One of the crucial advantages of our study is that we combined two types of datasets," says Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler from the Institute of Management Science at TU Wien. "For one, we evaluated surveys and short diary entries. For the other, we were able to refer to data that was recorded on the participants' phones; this was done using the smartphone app 'YLVI', which was developed at TU Wien by the research group Industrial Software (INSO, led by Thomas Grechenig) specially for the study." This way, it was possible to check whether the participants' self-assessments corresponded to their actual usage behaviour.

Using the app, it was possible to show how big a role the smartphone now plays in our lives: on average, the test subjects looked at their phone 84 times a day  that's an average of once every 13 minutes during waking hours. The phones were also unlocked an average of 44 times per day.

More stress, more hassle, more neck pain

The participants could be divided into three categories  those with moderate, medium and heavy smartphone usage. Some significant differences between the groups did emerge, however, "those who use their phones less are more satisfied  and that applies both to work days and days off," says Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler. "If you are constantly having to look at your phone, it becomes an additional source of stress, which can be burdensome." Heavy smartphone users are less capable of immersing themselves in their work yet, interestingly, they feel bored more often. On days off, they are more likely to indicate that they feel under time pressure or that they are stressed; they also feel irritated or annoyed more often. However, it is not possible to fully settle the question of cause and effect using the data: does heavy smartphone usage affect satisfaction? Or do people reach for their phone more often because they are less satisfied? "We need to carry out further studies into this, over a longer period of time. We suspect that both sides influence the other. We have already planned intervention studies with the aim of examining this subject area," says Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler.

All groups were equally happy with their health  that said, those who use their smartphone heavily complained of chronic neck pain much more frequently.

Creating space

Despite the potential negative effects of the blurring of the lines between career and private life, Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler doesn't necessarily advocate a strict separation. "Sometimes, day-to-day organisation is easier if the lines are not too strictly drawn. Some people report that they are better able to enjoy their free time once they have quickly dealt with an important matter that needs to be addressed," says Hartner-Tiefenthaler. However, she does recommend being aware of your smartphone usage. She also recommends setting very specific email and smartphone-free times, and clarifying with your employer in what way they expect you to be available. This helps reduce stress and aggravation.

Explore further Why we fail to understand our smartphone useLeisha Emens, M.D., Ph.D., co-leader of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program. Credit: UPMC

Patients with an aggressive form of advanced breast cancer can benefit from immunotherapy when used in combination with chemotherapy as first-line treatment, according to the results of a large international Phase III clinical trial published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and led by a researcher at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The study is the first large clinical trial to support the use of immunotherapy in treating triple-negative breast cancer and establishes a new standard of care in PD-L1+ patients, senior trial investigator and study author Leisha Emens, M.D., Ph.D., co-leader of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program, explained. Results were presented today at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Munich, Germany.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with an estimated 2 million new cases diagnosed in 2018 alone. About 10 to 20 percent of patients have triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of breast cancer that has a higher chance of recurrence and metastasis, and lower survival.

"While chemotherapy is the current standard of treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, there is an urgent need for newer, more effective therapies," said Emens. "The results of this trial showed that adding the immunotherapy drug atezolizumab to chemotherapy was well-tolerated and resulted in a clear increase in clinical benefit for some patients with triple-negative breast cancer."

The IMpassion130 trial was designed to evaluate whether atezolizumab, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat both bladder cancer and non-small cell lung cancer, could be used along with chemotherapy to improve clinical outcomes in patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Atezolizumab belongs to a class of immunotherapy medications known as checkpoint inhibitors. The drug targets the PD-L1 protein, which in triple-negative breast cancer patients is found mostly on immune cells that infiltrate the tumor. Blocking PD-L1 reinvigorates these immune cells, allowing them to attack the tumor.

The trial enrolled 902 patients with either metastatic or locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer that could not be surgically removed. Patients were enrolled at 246 sites in 41 countries across the world and were randomly assigned to receive either atezolizumab or a placebo, along with the chemotherapy drug nab-paclitaxel.

Both progression-free survivalthe length of time the patient lives after receiving the therapy without the tumor growing or spreading, and overall survivalthe length of time the patient survives from the start of the trial, were recorded.

In the overall patient population, the researchers found a statistically significant increase in progression-free survival in patients treated with both nab-paclitaxel and atezolizumab7.2 months when compared to 5.5 months in patients who received chemotherapy alone. In the group of patients who expressed the PD-L1 protein on tumor-infiltrating immune cells, the combination treatment had a more significant impact on progression-free survival7.5 months versus 5 months.

Overall survival was 21.3 months in the combination treatment group as compared to 17.6 months with chemotherapy alone, though this did not reach statistical significance in this first analysis. In the group of patients who expressed PD-L1 on their tumors, the difference in survival was greater, with overall survival of 25 months, in contrast to 15.5 months in patients treated with nab-paclitaxel alone.

"This improvement in progression-free and overall survival is clinically meaningful in patients with advanced PD-L1+ triple-negative breast cancer," Emens said. The researchers continue to follow the patients to determine overall survival over a longer time period.

The adverse events observed were similar to the known adverse event profile of the two drugs. Patients who received both immunotherapy and nab-paclitaxel experienced a higher frequency of adverse events that were potentially immune-related, than those who received chemotherapy alone, at 7.5 percent versus 4.3 percent, respectively.

The trial was funded by F. Hoffmann-La Roche/Genentech, which provided atezolizumab and placebo and collaborated with an academic steering committee regarding the trial design and data collection, analysis and interpretation. Celgene provided nab-paclitaxel and had no role in the trial design, data collection or analysis, but did review the manuscript.

A complete listing of the authors and their affiliations, along with the financial disclosure forms provided by the authors can be found with the article online.

Explore further Some patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer live longer with immunotherapy

More information: Peter Schmid et al, Atezolizumab and Nab-Paclitaxel in Advanced Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, New England Journal of Medicine (2018). Journal information: New England Journal of Medicine Peter Schmid et al, Atezolizumab and Nab-Paclitaxel in Advanced Triple-Negative Breast Cancer,(2018). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1809615A new approach to treating advanced anal cancer is safer and more effective than the most widely used current treatment, according to the first ever randomised clinical trial in this group of patients.

Around 1,300 people are diagnosed with anal cancer each year in the UK and this number is rising by around three per cent per year. Due to small patient populations, there is very limited evidence to guide treatment decisions, and international consensus among clinicians is lacking. The findings from this study will set a new standard of care for this rare type of cancer.

The international randomised phase II trial, led by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and presented today (Monday 22 October) at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2018, analysed data from 91 patients in four countries, including the UK, Norway, the US and Australia.

The researchers found that a chemotherapy combination of Carboplatin and Paclitaxelwhich is primarily used to treat other cancers, including ovarian, womb and lung cancerperformed better overall compared to chemotherapy treatment with Cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil.

In the trial, endorsed by the International Rare Cancer Initiative (IRCI), Carboplatin and Paclitaxel performed better both in terms of survival rates and safety. Until now, when anal cancer had spread or come back after treatment, doctors had considered Cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil to be the preferred first-line treatment option.

Study Chief-Investigator Dr. Sheela Rao, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden, said: "The results of this study will immediately change patient care. While treatment with Cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil was generally considered a reasonable option for advanced anal cancer, we now know that carboplatin and paclitaxel is more effective and better tolerated. In our study, these patients lived seven months longer overall.

"Around 30 per cent of people with anal cancer will develop advanced disease which cannot be treated surgically, and all of these patients are eligible to receive this chemotherapy combination."

Professor David Sebag-Montefiore, a study co-author and Cancer Research UK anal cancer expert, said: "Making progress in rare cancers is incredibly difficult, so it's very exciting to see these results which, in my opinion, are practice changing. This important research informs both patients and their cancer teams that the combination of the chemotherapy drugs carboplatin and paclitaxel should be first line treatment for advanced anal cancer.

"This study also shows the benefit of international collaboration within the International Rare Cancer Initiative (IRCI) - it can deliver results in rare diseases that individual countries cannot achieve on their own."

Professor David Cunningham, Director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "These findings set a new standard of care and highlight the importance of international collaboration for advances in the treatment of rare cancers. We now have the backbone for future trials into novel treatments for advanced anal cancer, including immunotherapy."

Explore further Women may experience more side effects than men during gastric cancer chemotherapy

More information: ESMO 2018 abstract - LBA21 - "InterAACT: A multicentre open label randomised phase II advanced anal cancer trial of cisplatin (CDDP) plus 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) vs carboplatin (C) plus weekly paclitaxel (P) in patients (pts) with inoperable locally recurrent (ILR) or metastatic treatment naive disease - An International Rare Cancers Initiative (IRCI) trial" - will be presented by Dr Sheela Rao on Monday 22 October.

Provided by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation TrustVolunteers on the Hospital for Special Surgery's LupusLine/Charla de Lupus (Lupus Chat) counsel callers with lupus. Credit: Hospital for Special Surgery

Conventional wisdom has it that volunteering is good for you, and a study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) shows that to be true for people with lupus volunteering in a peer support and education program.

The study, "The Effect and Psychosocial Impact of a Longstanding Telephone Peer Counseling Service on Volunteers with Systemic Lupus Erythematos," was presented at the American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals annual meeting on October 22 in Chicago.

"Previous studies have demonstrated the value of peer counseling programs for people living with lupus and other chronic health conditions. In the current study, we set out to assess the impact on the volunteers themselves," said Priscilla Toral, LCSW, program manager of LupusLine/Charla de Lupus (Lupus Chat) at Hospital for Special Surgery. "We found that similar to the way the service helps callers, the counselor role positively impacts volunteers' ability to cope with and manage lupus and reduces isolation."

LupusLine offers peer support and education to people with lupus and their families. Established in 1988, the service is available to the public with a toll-free phone number. In addition to the United States, volunteers have counseled callers from Canada, Europe, South America, Jamaica, China and India.

The study found that in addition to having the opportunity to help others, counselors gained valuable knowledge about lupus from the 18-hour volunteer training program. Monthly seminars helped them work through challenges and provided a space for them to reflect on their illness.

"While having lupus may affect one's self-esteem adversely, being able to use this experience to help others can be empowering," said Roberta Horton, LCSW, ACSW, assistant vice president, Department of Social Work Programs at Hospital for Special Surgery. "Volunteers also benefit from the feeling of mutual support, personal development, and further lupus knowledge gained through ongoing group meetings, educational seminars and individual supervision."

For their study, researchers distributed a 43-item online survey to volunteers. The counselors, all female, ranged in age from 30-79, with 30% between the ages of 60 and 69. They had served as a counselor for an average of 12 years.

The researchers reported the following findings:

In terms of satisfaction, 91% of counselors indicated they were very satisfied with their role.

The top reasons for becoming a counselor included an opportunity to help others affected by lupus (100% of respondents) and enhancing personal growth/development (73%).

When asked about their reasons for continuing as a counselor, 82% said it was to meet others impacted by lupus and 73% identified the support of program staff.

Most respondents (73%) reported that they had a better understanding of lupus since becoming a counselor.

In relation to coping, 64% indicated that they have coped better with lupus since becoming a counselor.

The majority of counselors (73%) reported feeling less alone since volunteering.

Almost half of the volunteers (46%) reported feeling less depressed since becoming a peer counselor.

When asked if monthly seminars help them to better cope with lupus, 78% agreed, and 89% of counselors reported that the seminars provide a space for them to reflect on their disease.

The volunteers indicated that the most rewarding part of their role was "educational information that helps me understand lupus better" and "the opportunity to be outside of my own illness and connect with others."

"The study reinforces the two-way flow of psychosocial support received by counselors through their support of callers and ongoing connections with peers and program staff via monthly seminars," said Toral. "Our findings also highlight the continued relevance of a phone support service to people with lupus and opportunities for further research on the volunteer impact of peer-staffed programs."

Explore further Study shows lupus support line has positive impactAhead of his first debate with Democrat Andrew Gillum Sunday, GOP governor nominee Ron DeSantis had some strong words  for CNN.

DeSantis campaign went off on the network for releasing a misleading poll hours before the 8 p.m. event showing Gillum up 12 points in the race for governor. The poll, conducted by SSRS, showed Gillum with 54 percent support to DeSantis 42 percent, with a margin of error of 4.2 percent. It also had U.S. Senator Bill Nelson leading Gov. Rick Scott by a 50 to 45 margin.

Both results are outliers in what otherwise have been shown as tight races.

A Real Clear Politics average of polls in the U.S. Senate race has Nelson ahead by 1.3 points. In the race for governor, Gillum has been consistently ahead in public polling. Yet polls over the last three weeks have shown Gillum ahead by only one or two points, and DeSantis campaign said Sunday that their own internal polling has the Republican up two.

DeSantis campaign released its internal numbers along with a lengthy statement Sunday ripping CNN for releasing what it called a questionable and misleading poll attempting to portray DeSantis as trailing Gillum by double digits. Spokesman Stephen Lawson alleged that CNN hoped to give Gillum an advantage.

Simply put, this CNN survey is not worth the paper it is written on because the sample and weights do not reflect a Florida election, said Lawson. That CNN takes this poll seriously enough to blast it out to their viewers right before a debate on their network is why so many Americans believe that CNN peddles fake news.

Click here to read the rest.Process begins to sack suspended police officers

The government has started the process to dismiss the then Kanchanpur Police chief SP Dilli Raj Bista for his negligence while investigating the July rape and murder of 13-year-old Nirmala Pant.Thanks for visiting !

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Thank you for your support!Rukums largest hydropower project nears finish line

Simrutu River Small Hydropower Project, a micro-hydro located in Rukum district has reached the final stage of construction. The biggest hydro power project of the district is on the verge of completion, ten years after construction started.The South African Police Service and Stats SA recently published the countrys crime statistics for 2018, which showed an alarming increase in murder, cash-in-transit heists, rape, and bank robberies.

This, however, only tells part of the story. Stats SAs latest Victims of Crime Survey reveals that only a small number of crimes are reported to the police.

In a recent article, economist Mike Schussler argued that criminals roam free without a big chance of being caught and convicted.

In contrast, honest and hard-working people live in fear, and have to bear the cost of crime on the economy.

Schussler said the cost of government corruption also sits at around R240 billion per year, with irregular expenditure adding another R100 billion to that figure.

The cost of violent crime in South Africa is even higher. The 2018 Global Peace Index said the cost of violence in the country is 24% of GDP and totals an astonishing R1.2 trillion per year.

The impact of crime is felt across all sectors of society, and has an extremely negative impact on economic growth, attracting and retaining skills, and agriculture to name a few.

The impact of crime on telecoms

Crime has a particularly big impact on telecommunications in South Africa and has forced companies like Telkom to change their strategy to compensate for high levels of criminal activity.

In 2016 Telkom revealed that copper theft cost it over R200 million in repair costs and security services.

The high level of services interruptions caused by cable theft forced Telkom to roll out LTE networks in areas with repeated incidents.

But not even mobile networks are safe from criminals, who cause tremendous damage to mobile base stations to steal batteries and copper cabling.

The images below show the damage caused by criminals to mobile base stations and telecoms networks in South Africa.

Crime preventing fibre rollouts in SA

In a particularly disturbing trend, criminals are now targeting fibre operators who are either rolling out fibre networks, or are trying to repair damaged fibre infrastructure.

Last year the FTTH Council Africa said crime targeting South African fibre installers has reached a critical point.

The council said fibre contractors are being robbed at gunpoint, hijacked, and having their equipment taken.

Peoples lives were threatened and gunshots fired while workers were attending to maintenance tasks next to public roads, said FTTH Council Africa.

In August, Vumatel said it had to stop work in KwaZulu-Natal due to intimidation and threats against workers.

This means that until the issues have been resolved, the contractors will be unable to attend to civil work or reinstatements, Vumatel said.

In the latest incident, Openserves restoration of a major fibre route in Bishop Lavis was stopped after technicians and their security escorts were forced out of the area by residents.

The work will now only continue after the police give the green light that it is safe.

The video below shows two members of a fibre installation team being held up at gunpoint while thieves make off with their belongings.Fibre ISP Cool Ideas has gone live on the new South Atlantic Cable System (SACS), which gives it direct paths to South America and North America.

SACS, which connects Angola and Brazil, is owned by Angola Cables and has been designed with 100Gbps coherent WDM technology on an end-to-end solution.

With four fibre pairs, it offers a total design capacity of 40Tbps between Fortaleza in Brazil and Luanda in Angola.

SACS launched commercial services in September. The lower cable distance and more direct routing means that it can offer the lowest latency for Internet traffic from South Africa to the United States.

Angola Cables said SACS offers a high quality of service and improved latency of up to 60% over current routing options.

The cable will also contribute to reductions in data traffic costs between South America and Africa, it said.

Cool Ideas customers to benefit from SACS

SACS is now offering Cool Ideas customers lower latency to South America and the United States.

The traceroutes below show the difference which SACS offers over WACS, which links South Africa with the United Kingdom.

Trace to Fortaleza (Brazil) via WACS

Tracing route to 138-36-3-214.texnet.net.br [138.36.3.214] over a maximum of 30 hops:

4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 154.0.4.101

5 159 ms 160 ms 161 ms 154.0.1.106

6 164 ms 166 ms 163 ms 195.66.226.95

7 265 ms 265 ms 267 ms 170.238.232.41

8 257 ms 223 ms 223 ms pe2-nc022.br.ftz.as37468.angolacables.ao [170.238.232.38]

9 225 ms 233 ms 225 ms pe1-nc013.br.ftz.as37468.angolacables.ao [170.238.232.81]

10 223 ms 222 ms 222 ms 170.238.235.18

11 223 ms 224 ms 225 ms 187.120.30.6.cliente.primelinelatam.com.br [187.120.30.6]

12 332 ms 332 ms 332 ms 192.168.128.38

13 223 ms 223 ms 229 ms 192.168.128.54

14 334 ms 337 ms 333 ms 138-36-0-38.texnet.net.br [138.36.0.38]

15 223 ms 222 ms 223 ms 138-36-3-214.texnet.net.br [138.36.3.214]

Trace to Fortaleza (Brazil) via SACS

Tracing route to 138-36-3-214.texnet.net.br [138.36.3.214] over a maximum of 30 hops:

4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 154.0.3.114

5 24 ms 24 ms 24 ms 154.0.1.246

6 24 ms 31 ms 24 ms 154.0.4.162

7 23 ms 23 ms 25 ms 102.130.64.13

8 65 ms 57 ms 57 ms pe2-nc028.ang.sgn.as37468.angolacables.ao [197.149.151.194]

9 116 ms 116 ms 116 ms 170.238.232.145

10 124 ms 116 ms 124 ms pe1-nc013.br.ftz.as37468.angolacables.ao [170.238.232.81]

11 115 ms 115 ms 117 ms 170.238.235.18

12 116 ms 116 ms 117 ms 187.120.30.6.cliente.primelinelatam.com.br [187.120.30.6]

13 114 ms 114 ms 115 ms 192.168.128.38

14 230 ms 230 ms 230 ms 192.168.128.54

15 119 ms * 116 ms 138-36-0-38.texnet.net.br [138.36.0.38]

16 116 ms 116 ms 115 ms 138-36-3-214.texnet.net.br [138.36.3.214]

Trace to a server in Miami via WACS

Tracing route to 199.189.198.122 over a maximum of 30 hops:

3 14 ms 2 ms 2 ms c1-backbone.coolideas.co.za [154.0.2.1]

4 3 ms 2 ms 3 ms 154.0.3.110

5 164 ms 164 ms 166 ms 154.0.4.254

6 159 ms 161 ms 160 ms v1000.core1.lon3.he.net [216.66.80.169]

7 164 ms 174 ms 174 ms 100ge14-1.core1.lon2.he.net [184.105.64.237]

8 249 ms 229 ms 230 ms 100ge13-2.core1.nyc4.he.net [72.52.92.166]

9 237 ms 234 ms 234 ms 100ge16-1.core1.ash1.he.net [184.105.223.165]

10 245 ms 245 ms 245 ms 100ge8-2.core1.atl1.he.net [184.105.213.69]

11 245 ms 244 ms 244 ms 198.32.132.88

12 246 ms 248 ms 246 ms 208.67.164.74

13 257 ms 253 ms 253 ms 208.67.165.102

14 271 ms 265 ms 266 ms 208.67.165.121

15 264 ms 267 ms 264 ms 208.67.164.145

16 262 ms 262 ms 262 ms 208.67.167.93

17 266 ms 265 ms 271 ms 208.67.164.148

18 265 ms 268 ms 271 ms 170.55.61.42

19 265 ms 264 ms 264 ms 199.189.198.122

Trace to a server in Miami via SACS

Tracing route to 199.189.198.122 over a maximum of 30 hops:

3 2 ms 4 ms 2 ms c1-backbone.coolideas.co.za [154.0.2.1]

4 3 ms 3 ms 2 ms 154.0.3.114

5 24 ms 22 ms 24 ms 154.0.1.62

6 28 ms 26 ms 24 ms 154.0.4.162

7 30 ms 30 ms 28 ms 102.130.64.13

8 58 ms 58 ms 58 ms pe2-nc028.ang.sgn.as37468.angolacables.ao [197.149.151.194]

9 119 ms 122 ms * 170.238.232.149

10 178 ms 180 ms 180 ms 170.238.232.37

11 224 ms 223 ms 236 ms m1070-miauflws-jm120a-ge203.fplfn.net [198.32.124.213]

12 225 ms 224 ms 224 ms 208.67.164.158

13 224 ms 224 ms 225 ms 170.55.61.42

14 222 ms 222 ms 222 ms 199.189.198.122Tollbooth workers will not lose their ...Todays impatient audiences demand pictureswe want high-quality, high-resolution photos, infographics, charts and screenshotsto help tell a story.

It shouldnt come as a surprise then, that Googles search engine results pages (SERPs) deliver as many results from images as from text.

If youre upgrading your websites SEO value but ignoring the images on your site, you could be missing out on an important source of organic traffic.

Its time to start adding alt tags to your images

Also called alt text and alt descriptions, alt tags are the written copy that appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load.

This text helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers and allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website. Optimizing image alt tags creates a better user experience for your visitors.

Be accurate, be descriptive

A good rule of thumb: Think about what someone would see if he/she pulled up a page and couldnt see the actual image for whatever reasonjust the alt tag descriptor.

Lets say were looking at a photo of Steph Curry shooting a 3-pointer in an overtime win against the Boston Celtics.

A good alt tag: Oakland Warriors Steph Curry scores a 3-pointer in overtime to beat the Celtics. Think of this as a little formula.

Here are some best practices for writing effective alt tags

Be specific.

Use both the image subject and the article context as guides.

Keep alt tags within 125 characters.

Were all used to character limits these days, so keep it brief and relevant. Screen-reading tools stop reading alt tags at 125 characters, cutting off long-winded alt descriptions.

Forget about starting alt tags with Picture of or Image of.

Dont use up your character limit on these unnecessary descriptors. Screen-reading tools will already have identified the object as an image from the source code.

Use your keywords sparingly.

Include your articles target keyword or keyword phrase if its easily included in your alt tags.

Consider semantic keywords or just the most important terms. Google is smart and understands semantics.

If we go back to our Steph Curry model, we would likely use curry 3-pointer in our alt tag because the article is going to be about how this shot was critical to the Warriors win.

Dont cram your keyword into every single images alt tag.

If your blog contains a series of images within the blog, include your keyword in at least one of those images.

How to add alt tags to your images

It varies by platform, but in WordPress, open Media, click on an image and it will bring up a window where you can create/edit each alt tag.

I find it handy to open two screensone for the Media file and one for the article associated with each image because it provides the context that will influence the alt tag.

Could you use some help identifying alt tags for your website? Give me a call.

Contact Janet at 510-292-1843 or jpeischel@top-mindmarketing.com.OAKLANDTwo recently orphaned mountain lion cubs from different locations in Northern California are now playing and bonding at Oakland Zoo, zoo officials said Monday.

The cubs, a male and a female, are both 9-10 weeks old and are being tended around the clock by Oakland Zoo veterinarians, zoo officials said.

The female cub was found last month in Lake County after a property owner heard chirps that sounded like a bird for about a week. The cubs make the chirping sound when they are calling for their mother, according to zoo officials.

The property owner finally reported the cub to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife when its health seemed to be deteriorating.

The severely dehydrated cub was emaciated and covered with parasites and burrs. It was initially placed with Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue.

Officials believe a car about 5 miles away may have killed the cubs mother.

While we dont know for sure what caused this female cub to become orphaned, we do know that one of the biggest threats to mountain lions in California is traffic, with 107 animals killed by automobiles in 2016 alone, said Amy Gotliffe, director of conservation at Oakland Zoo.

The female cub was transferred to the Oakland Zoo on Oct. 11, and was carefully introduced to the male cub, which had arrived in late September.

The male cub was orphaned after its mother was fatally shot by a property owner under a legal kill order, because the animal was killing sheep in the area, officials said.

The male cub is now at 20 pounds and the female cub is smaller at 8.4 pounds. The zoo has released video and photos of the two animals wrestling, playing and sleeping together.

Were happy that these two cubs are doing very well, although its heartbreaking they were orphaned, said Dr. Karen Emanuelson, the zoos director of veterinary services. We saw first-hand how much our now-older mountain ions enjoyed, needed and bonded with each other as orphaned cubs themselves, so we are very glad these two cubs are providing companionship to each other as well.

Because the two cubs were orphaned too young to have survival skills to be released, they will be permanently placed at a facility when they are strong enough, according to the zoo.A shouting match erupted inside the White House between two of President Donald Trump's top advisers. While angry arguments are typical in the world of stressful, high-stakes White House decision making, this one has true revelatory potential: It opens a window on a big, festering lie at the very core of Trump's worldview.

That lie is actually two, interrelated lies. The first is that immigration to the U.S. is fundamentally a malicious, destructive force that Americans should feel taken advantage of or menaced by. The second is that it can be dealt with primarily through "toughness." Those lies feed each other: If immigration represents a zero-sum threat, in which migrants or their countries of origin are merely driven by a desire to prey on Americans and America, then a "tough" response will overwhelm that predatory motive. Respond "weakly" and you're a sucker, a victim.

Bloomberg reports that White House chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton got into a furious argument over immigration on Thursday. Bolton sided with Trump, who has raged at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for failing to stop families trying to cross the border. Kelly defended her.

The New York Times adds this crucial detail: "The two men also differed over how aggressively to push Central American countries to do more to discourage their citizens from seeking refuge in the United States."

Trump has been in a seething fury over a recent spike in migrant families trying to cross the border, and more specifically over a caravan of Central American migrant families moving north through Mexico. Trump has accused Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador of waging an "assault" on the U.S. and absurdly threatened to use the U.S. military to "CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!"

We cannot be sure of the particulars of the Bolton-Kelly dust-up. But it appears Bolton agreed with Trump that DHS is to blame for failing to stop the migration, and that more must be done to force those countries to prevent it.

Some Trump advisers are cynically feeding his ugliest instincts

The backdrop for all this is the argument raging inside the White House over the rise in migrating families. As The Washington Post has reported, hard-liner Stephen Miller has been telling Trump that the U.S. is being taken advantage of - whether by child smugglers or countries herding immigrants northward isn't clear - to push Trump to reinstate some form of the family separations he canceled amid intense blowback.

Trump has come to believe that those family separations are the only thing that has worked - in other words, that a tough deterrent is the only answer. Except that this is highly questionable. The New York Times obtained new internal administration numbers:

"The data . . . shows that 16,658 people traveling in families were apprehended at the border last month, the highest single-month total, and a total of 107,212 have been apprehended over the last year, the highest ever for families. That is substantially higher than the previous year-end total of 77,857 in the 2016 fiscal year."

Family crossings were much higher over the last year - during which the separations were implemented - than the year before. What's more, Dara Lind took a close look at the data and found that during the separations, attempted family crossings did not drop. As Lind concluded, there is "no evidence" that "harsh treatment" has a "deterrent effect."

A core assumption of Trump's immigration agenda is that making life as horrible as possible for immigrants - either those trying to cross the border, or those living undocumented here - will reduce the flow of immigration and the size of that undocumented presence. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents now target longtime undocumented residents not just to remove them, but also to spread fear and misery so more "self deport."

This latter policy, too, has been justified with lies. Trump regularly claims undocumented immigrants here means more crime, but much research contradicts this. Low-skilled immigration does not have a meaningful impact on Americans' economic prospects. And do we even know if "self-deportation" is actually on the rise? I've seen nothing demonstrating that. Unleashing cruelty may not even be having that desired effect.

And on the question of whether making life more miserable for would-be migrants deters them, the verdict is in - it doesn't. The explicitly stated goal of threatening the horrifying prospect of getting separated from your child is deterrence. But such migration is incredibly complicated and driven by all kinds of tangled causes. Alicia Caldwell's in-depth reporting illustrates that these mainly include terrible conditions in origin countries, from severe deprivation to political unrest to crime and corruption and violence. This phenomenon is cyclical.

This is why Caldwell, too, concluded that "attempts to increase deterrence . . . haven't been effective." What is actually needed is more comprehensive regional solutions to those underlying causes, as the Obama administration (which, in fairness, also experimented with much tamer deterrence) at least tried to implement. But as Lind points out, this is made harder when Trump lashes out at those countries - which was at the core of the Kelly-Bolton dispute.

As Sabrina Siddiqui of The Guardian has written, Republicans are running dozens of ads across the country that paint undocumented immigrants as violent criminal invaders. Trump tweets regularly that countries to our south are deliberately unleashing them on us. This latter idea is foundational to Trumpism: In his announcement speech, he didn't merely slime Mexicans as rapists; he also repeatedly said Mexico is sending them, which is why he vowed to get revenge by forcing Mexico to pay for a wall.

Those vows of retribution - and the vow to build that wall - continue today. If migrants are merely predators, and their origin countries are suckering us by unleashing them northward, then you will of course believe that being "tougher" will both cause the immigrant predators to slink away and bully those countries into refraining from taking advantage of us.

These claims, we are told, will energize the Republican base in the midterms. If this is so, then the GOP base is fully in thrall to this terrible misreading of the situation. But, while public opinion on immigration is complicated, and while many Americans surely have legitimate objections to certain aspects of the globalizing order, majorities are now increasingly inclined to see immigration as a positive force, in direct contradiction of this zero-sum worldview.

The problem is that far too much of our policy response to this complex problem is now springing from that very worldview. And we all have to live with that.

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant  what you might call opinionated reporting from the left. He wrote this for The Washington Post.I was more than excited when I learned that one of our own, home-grown Jeff Dodd, had chosen to run for the Napa Valley College Board of Trustees. He is precisely the type of citizen our community needs to help guide our community's most important resource.

I have known Jeff his entire life, and have had the privilege of following his many successes at Justin-Siena, Napa Valley College, U.C. Santa Barbara, McGeorge Law School and into the business world. He is a prime example of how valuable our community college is  as it was the bridge that propelled him to attend one of the leading public universities in America and onto continued success  ultimately returning to Napa Valley to serve our community. His firsthand knowledge and appreciation of this valuable resource and the importance it plays within our community cannot be over emphasized.

Jeff truly understands that investing into Napa Valley College is an investment into our community and into our future. He is committed to ensuring that Napa Valley College, its students and faculty will always have the resources needed to either propel students towards four-year degrees or provide them the technical skills needed to succeed in todays economy. He believes that education is the key to success, and that a healthy community college fosters a healthy community as most graduates return to work and serve within our valley.

I strongly believe that Jeff Dodd will be able to help the college forge new public-private partnership that will be needed to ensure both the short- and long-term legacy of excellence that Napa Valley College has achieved.

Please join me in supporting our local son, Jeff Dodd, for Trustee at Napa Valley College.

Gary Rose

Trustee  Napa Valley College Foundation

Former Faculty Member Napa Valley CollegeRuling party rules out re-election chances

A Central Secretariat meeting of the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) on Sunday decided not to accept the resignation tendered by Rambir Manandhar, a lawmaker who won the Kathmandu-7 federal parliament seat.



It also does not reflect the views of the Firm of which the Author is working for.





Since the inception of this blog, the Author has avoided writing views and opinions of his clients or views and opinions which third parties has paid him to write.





The Author has maintained editorial independence since Day One.





Any individual or group affected by the opinions and views of the Author can write the author thru mangubat.patricio@gmail.com.

Opinions and views expressed in this blog are personal views of the Author and does not involve organisations and companies being serviced by the Author as part of his profession as a Strategic Communications professional.There is investment activeness in Syunik Province, says Armenia economy minister

Minister on Armenia economic growth: We are from optimistic realist to optimist

Armenia President, Singapore deputy PM discuss avenues for expanding bilateral cooperation

Ombudsman: Armenophobia, propaganda of enmity have reached extremist fascism in Azerbaijan (VIDEO)

Russia peacekeepers carry out round-the-clock monitoring of ceasefire in Karabakh

1 more person dies of coronavirus in Artsakh

Armenia premier: There is no Syunik Province settlement that is under blockade

Office of Armenia commissioner for diaspora, SADA Global Delivery Center sign memorandum of cooperation

Armenia government approves 2021-2026 action plan

Armenia PM: Russia MOD made proposals on preparatory phase of border delimitation with Azerbaijan

1,019 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Senator calls for end to US military aid to Azerbaijan

Armenia is elected to UNESCO Executive Board

Whose body is brought from Baku to Yerevan by Russian Southern Military District deputy commander?

Armenia MOD: Azerbaijan opened random fire at some directions of Tavush Province late Wednesday evening

World oil prices still dropping

Newspaper: Armenia has set task to change its foreign policy vector, Russia analysts say

Newspaper: Coronavirus death statistics in Armenia are incomplete

Armenian immigrant couple in California sentenced to prison for $20M fraud

EEU countries PMs to arrive in Yerevan for intergovernmental council meeting

Armenian army commander: Azerbaijan wants corridor, leader of Armenia gave consent to that, but refused later

Armenia FM holds phone conversations with Russian counterpart, Karen Donfried and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office

MTS launches inspection of its 'daughter' operations in Armenia upon request of U.S.

Armenia MOD: Defense minister receives Rustam Muradov, who brought body of deceased Armenian soldier to Yerevan

Taliban call on US Congress to ease sanctions and unfreeze Afghanistan's assets

Armenia PM: The meaning of being captured and the circumstances of captivity need to be investigated

Moscow, Ankara agree to not release details about joint manufacturing of S-400s

OSCE Chairperson-in-Office welcomes ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan after Russian mediation

Armenia Ombudsman discusses Armenian captives' issue with acting Head of ICRC Delegation

Armenia PM refutes possibility of giving order 'to not open fire' when it comes to homeland defense

Armenian PM tries to clarify situation regarding use of names "Eyvazli" and "Chayzami"

IAEA Director General to visit Iran

Armenia PM: Our goal is to sign a peace treaty

Rustam Muradov brings body of one Armenian serviceman

Reuters: UAE's high-ranking delegation to visit Tehran soon

James Langevin: Azerbaijani government again unleashed a volley of unprovoked violence against Armenia

Ambassador to the Holy See: Armenia calls on its international partners to condemn Azerbaijan's actions

Armenia President provides Singapore PM with information about Azerbaijan's aggressive actions

Armenia PM: Trilateral task force's work is not interrupted

Armenia Police's Educational Complex has new head

Jackie Speier: We're witnessing Aliyev's attempted land grab in real time

Mass media: Rustam Muradov bringing bodies of Armenian soldiers to Yerevan

Yerevan to host subsequent session of Eurasian Intergovernmental Council

Earthquake hits Turkey

Zakharova on possibility of enforcing Armenia-Russia Treaty, says consultations are being held

NEWS.am 17.11.21 digest: Latest on Armenia-Azerbaijan border situation

European People's Party issues statement on recent hostilities on Armenian-Azerbaijani border

Opposition 'Armenia' Alliance MP: Resistance movement will help get rid of this catastrophe, namely authorities soon

Armenia PM explains why he appointed new defense minister

Opposition MPs remind Armenia PM about treason, get into dispute with ruling party deputies

Armenian PM: There are territories of Soviet Azerbaijan that are under Armenia's control

Armenia ruling party MP Andranik Kocharyan continues to talk about creation of professional army

Armenia and Russia Security Councils' Secretaries discuss regional security issues

Armenia Security Council Secretary: Azerbaijan fails to maintain ceasefire and isn't implementing reached agreements

Cavusoglu blames Armenia 'for terrorist attack against Azerbaijan'

Opposition 'Armenia' Alliance: Authorities' goal is to stay in power through ongoing concessions

Armenia PM: Our proposals are in effect, including proposal for start of delimitation and demarcation

Resident of Armenia's Shaki village panic when they hear the Azerbaijanis' gunshots

Armenia ruling party MP: Enemy can't achieve any success in Syunik Province

Armenia PM and ministers answering MPs' questions (LIVE)

Ambassador: Armenia Security Council Secretary will probably have separate meeting with Nikolai Patrushev

Armenia health minister: Kapan and Goris will have additional SUVs for paramedics

Armen Sarkissian presents situation on Armenia's borders at Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore

Armenia FM: International community reaction to Azerbaijans provocative, aggressive actions was not targeted, proper

Armenia Prosecutor General receives Egypt Ambassador

Council of Europe Secretary General concerned about tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Armenian Assembly of America: Russian-brokered ceasefire is not enough

Armenia Security Council secretary: Yerevan expects diplomatic, military assistance from Moscow

Turkey and US hold talks on defense and security issues

Peskov: Moscow calls for restraint to parties to conflict on Armenia-Azerbaijan border

CSTO chief: There is still tension on line of contact between Armenian, Azerbaijani sides

Kremlin: All parties consent is necessary for contact between Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders

Russia deputy FM, EU representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Armenia health minister: We are at reduction phase of Covid cases

2 more persons die of coronavirus in Artsakh

Biden bans members of the Nicaraguan government from entering US

168.am: Ex-commander of Russia peacekeepers in Karabakh is urgently sent to Armenia

Ambassador to Russia: Not ruled out that Armenia may apply to CSTO for assistance

Armenia, Azerbaijan attending annual meeting of CIS Security Councils' Secretaries

Ambassador: Yerevan continues contacts with Moscow regarding situation on border with Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan reports 7 military casualties during recent aggression against Armenia

Spokesperson: Armenia MFA has informed UN Security Council President on situation

Armenian captives continue to be 'tried' in Azerbaijan

Armenia MFA: Pashinyan, Putin discussed possible joint steps enshrined in bilateral legal framework

982 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Erdogan and Zelenskyy discuss bilateral relations

US Congressman: Azerbaijan must acknowledge, respect Armenia sovereignty

Adam Schiff: US must deter Azerbaijans ongoing aggression, show support for Armenian peoples sovereignty

Armenia legislature observes minute of silence in memory of fallen soldiers

Police forces being brought to Armenia parliament ahead of PM's visit

Armenia representative addresses UN Security Council discussion, speaks about Azerbaijan military aggression

World oil prices falling

Armenia MOD: Situation on eastern border relatively stable

Newspaper: Armenia Constitutional Court is tool in hands of executive branch of power

Russia peacekeepers deliver over 300 tons of humanitarian cargo to needy Karabakh residents in one year

Newspaper: Russia's obligations before Armenia, border situation

Frank Pallone: Azerbaijan's escalation of violence on Armenian soil is unacceptable

Blinken urges Armenia, Azerbaijan to take immediate concrete steps to reduce tensions

Canada FM calls Armenia, Azerbaijan for de-escalation of situation

Contract soldier Meruzhan Harutyunyan died in hostilitiesThree local rebels were killed in a gunbattle with Indian government forces in disputed Kashmir on Sunday, and six civilians were killed in an explosion at the site after the fighting was over, officials and residents said, ABC News reported.

Meanwhile, three Indian army soldiers and two suspected militants were killed in a gunbattle along the highly militarized line of control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

The fighting erupted after troops cordoned off a village in the southern Kulgam area on a tip that rebels were hiding there, India's military said. The exchange lasted for several hours, and three militants were killed and two soldiers injured, the military said.

Residents said soldiers blasted a civilian home with explosives while fighting the rebels, a common charge by Kashmiris who deeply resent the Indian army's presence.

As the fighting raged, anti-India protesters tried to reach the site of the standoff. They threw stones at government forces hoping to help the trapped rebels escape. Government forces fired shotgun pellets and tear gas at the protesters, leaving at least 35 injured.

As counterinsurgency police and soldiers hastily left the place after the fighting was over, hundreds of civilians converged on the site. An explosion occurred as people tried to extinguish a fire at the blasted house, residents said, killing at least one civilian and wounding 10 others who were hospitalized in critical condition. Five other civilians died at hospitals.Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Sunday the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was a "huge and grave mistake" and promised his family that those responsible will be punished, Daily Sabah reported.

"This is a terrible mistake. This is a terrible tragedy. Our condolences go out to them. We feel their pain," Jubeir said in an interview with Fox News. "Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this."

Saudi Arabian officials do not know details of how dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in their consulate in Istanbul or where his body is, Jubeir said.

He said Khashoggi was approached by a "Saudi security team" when he entered the consulate and their account of what happened after that differed from that of Turkish officials, which prompted the Saudis to investigate.

Asked about the location of the body and whether it was cut up, Jubeir only said that "we are working on this" with Turkey.

"He was killed in the consulate. We don't know in terms of details how. We don't know where the body is," Jubeir said. "We are determined to uncover every stone. ... We are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder."

"We are not an authoritarian government, we are a monarchy," he said, promising checks and balances would hold those responsible to account and vowing they would be punished. He called the death of Khashoggi at the consulate in Istanbul a "criminal act" but an "aberration."Six dead, 16 injured in bus accident

Six people died and 16 others were injured, two critically, when a passenger bus met with an accident near Arunkhola along the East-West Highway in Nawalparasi East on Sunday morning.Taiwan train crash kills 18 in deadliest rail tragedy in decades

Eighteen people died and 175 were injured when a train derailed in northeastern Taiwan on Sunday, authorities said, in the islands worst rail disaster in more than three decades.The Central Electoral Commission of Armenia has publicized the preliminary results for Sundays snap mayoral elections.

Accordingly, non-partisan Gevorg Parsyan has won the election in Kapan town. He received 54 percent of the votes cast.

Diana Gasparyan, who was nominated by the Civil Contract Party, has won the mayoral election in Armenias Vagharshapat (Etchmiadzin) city.

Sevak Mikaelyan, the son of National Assembly Way Out (Yelk) Faction member Sasun Mikaelyan, has won the election in Hrazdan city.

David Khudatyan, who was nominated by the Civil Contract Party, has won the mayoral election in Armenias Armavir town.

The Eurasian Week annual business forum of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has gotten underway Monday in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia.

The event will bring together sectoral deputy PMs and ministers of the governments of EAEU member and partner countries, as well as the heads state-owned corporations and leading businesses.

An important event of this forum will be the exhibition of the EAEU export and cooperation potential. More than 120 companies will participate in this exhibition.

The Eurasian Week will conclude on Wednesday.

The Eurasian Economic Union comprises Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

The former mayor of New York, US cybersecurity adviser Rudy Giuliani paid a visit to the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan.

Rudy Giuliani placed a wreath at the genocide monument and planted a tree on Memorial Memory Alley.

Armenian Genocide is a historical fact, a former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani told reporters at Armenian Genocide Memorial complex.

I certainly would recognize it. I think it is a historical fact, but I am not here in my capacity as a private lawyer for President Trump, I am here as a private citizen, he said.

According to him, it is for the Trumps administration to draw conclusions on this issue.

A man has fallen from a building and died Monday in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia.

At 12:31pm, the 911 emergency hotline received a report that a person had fallen while carrying out construction work at a high-rise in downtown Yerevan, and died.

A fire and rescue squad was dispatched to the scene, the Ministry of Emergency Situations informed.

The rescuers found the dead body of an about 50-year-old unidentified person, near the said building.

US President Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades, The Guardian reported.

Well have to develop those weapons, the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. Were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out.

Speaking to reporters in Nevada, Trump said: Russia has violated the agreement. Theyve been violating it for many years and I dont know why President Obama didnt negotiate or pull out.Story Highlights Support for legalizing pot at new high of 66%

Majority support across regional, age and political party groups

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sixty-six percent of Americans now support legalizing marijuana, another new high in Gallup's trend over nearly half a century. The latest figure marks the third consecutive year that support on the measure has increased and established a new record.

Legalizing the use of pot was an unpopular idea when Gallup first asked Americans about it in 1969 -- just 12% at that time said it should be made legal. Support grew in the 1970s but stagnated in the 20% range until the new millennium, when momentum for legalization picked up again. Since 2000, support for legalizing marijuana has trended steeply upward, reaching majority support for the first time in 2013 -- a year after Colorado and Washington voters legalized recreational use of marijuana via ballot initiatives, making them the first states to do so. Marijuana use continues to be illegal at the federal level.

The Oct. 1-10 Gallup poll was conducted before Canada last week became the second country in the world to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. In the U.S., voters in four states are voting this year on measures to allow for recreational or medical use of marijuana.

Support for legalization in the U.S. has continued to grow, even as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pledged to crack down on marijuana at the federal level. But Sessions' own department has done little to actually carry out his demonstrated opposition to legal marijuana, and states have continued to legalize it since Sessions took on his role. Moreover, President Donald Trump undermined his attorney general's pledged mission over the summer when he indicated he would likely support a bill to allow states to determine their own marijuana policies.

Among Republicans, Newfound Majority Support for Legalization Remains

Sessions' opposition to legalization is further undercut by shifts in attitudes among his own political party. Gallup found last year that a slim majority of Republicans supported legal marijuana for the first time, and this year's figure, 53%, suggests continued Republican support.

Views that pot should be legalized have also reached new peaks this year among Democrats (75%) and independents (71%). Democrats reached majority-level support for legalization in 2009, and independents did so in 2010.

Majority of Older U.S. Adults Now Support Legal Pot

Among Americans aged 55 and older, views that marijuana should be legalized now surpass the majority level, with 59% support, up from 50% last year.

Meanwhile, solid majorities of younger adults have supported legalization for several years. Support is strongest among adults aged 18 to 34, at 78%, while nearly two in three adults aged 35 to 54 (65%) approve of legalizing marijuana.

Across All U.S. Regions, About Two in Three Support Legalizing Pot

In 2009 and 2010 -- before any state had legalized pot -- support for legalization reached the majority level in only one U.S. region -- the West, at 56%. And in most polls since, residents in the West, along with Eastern residents, have led the remaining regions in favoring legalized pot.

But attitudes about legalization have changed more recently: In 2017 and 2018, support for legalization of marijuana is about even in the East (67%), Midwest (65%), South (65%) and West (65%).

Support for Legal Marijuana by Region, 2009-2010 vs. 2017-2018 Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not? 2009-2010 2017-2018 Change % Yes, legal % Yes, legal (pct. pts.) East 46 67 +21 Midwest 40 65 +25 South 41 65 +24 West 56 65 +9 Gallup

Bottom Line

Like support for gay marriage -- and in prior years, interracial marriage -- support for marijuana legalization has generally only expanded, even if slowly, over the course of multiple decades -- raising the question of where the ceiling in support might be. As the percentage of Americans who favor legalizing pot has continued to grow, so has the number of states that have taken up legislation to allow residents to use the substance recreationally. States that permit use of medical marijuana are even more prevalent in the U.S. than states allowing recreational pot are.

After this year's elections, recreational pot use could be allowed in two more states, depending on what voters decide in North Dakota and Michigan. Both of these states border Canada, whose adult residents now have access to legal marijuana nationwide. Meanwhile, state lawmakers in New Jersey are moving closer to passing legislation to legalize pot, and neighboring New York might not be far behind after the state's health department conducted a study that led to its recommendation that marijuana be legal.

But even as many states take action to legalize pot, to date, no Midwestern or Southern states permit legal recreational use -- though medicinal marijuana is allowed in a few of these states. Now that public support is consistent across U.S. regions, legalization could spread to new areas in the future.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.Posted by Mark Williams | October 22, 2018

After two days of rain-soaked test drives of 57 qualifying pickup trucks, SUVs and crossovers, the Texas Auto Writers Association selected the new 2019 Ram 1500 as the Truck of Texas.

The overall prize is typically the most coveted of several awards presented by the professional organization, which this year included 69 journalists choosing 24 category winners. In addition to the Truck of Texas overall award, the 2019 Ram 1500's Limited trim scored a win in the Full-Size Pickup Truck category, the Laramie Longhorn variant won for Luxury Pickup Truck, and the Rebel won for Off-Road Pickup Truck.

Ram parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles had an especially good year this time around. The 2019 Maserati Levante GTS won the SUV of Texas and Full-Size Luxury SUV category, while the 2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio took home the CUV of Texas as well as winning the Luxury CUV category.

"Being named the Texas Auto Writers Association's Truck of Texas is the highest honor in the world's largest pickup market," said Reid Bigland, newly appointed head of Ram brand and U.S. sales and chairman, president and CEO of FCA Canada. "The all-new Ram 1500 offers the best combination of class-exclusive features, refinement, capability and efficiency. Winning this award is a challenge, but the Ram 1500 is well-suited to the hard-working needs of Texas truck buyers."

Other FCA winners included the 2018 Jeep Wrangler Sahara (Mid-Size SUV), 2019 Dodge Durango SRT (Full-Size SUV), 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee Summit (Mid-Size Luxury SUV), 2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon (Off-Road Utility Vehicle), 2018 Ram 2500 Power Wagon (Heavy-Duty Pickup), Uconnect 4C with a 12-inch screen (Best Technology) and Ram's eTorque mild-hybrid unit (Best Powertrain).

It's worth noting that this year's competition did not include any Ford or GM (Chevy or GMC) products because each of those manufacturers decided not to attend this year's event.

Manufacturer image (above); Kevin McCauley/@capturingthemachine photo (below)

Home | News | General | After leaving APC, Shehu Sani reveals fresh plans to contest 2019 election

- Senator Shehu Sani has disclosed that he will still contest the 2019 senatorial election

- He said he will announce his new party in the next two days

- The outspoken senator resigned from APC on Saturday, October 20

Shehu Sani, the senator representing Kaduna Central in the Senate, on Sunday, October 21, said he would contest the forthcoming election despite resigning from the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Senator Sani had on Saturday, October 20, announced his resignation from the APC after the party put forward Uba Sani, an ally of Governor Nasir El-Rufai, as its candidate for the constituency.

In a statement he posted to his Facebook Page, the senator said: This is to thank all my supporters and friends for the show of solidarity and assurances of support over my decision to exit the APC.

READ ALSO: EFCC to arraign Fayose in Lagos on Monday October 22 (full list of charges)

I assure you that in the next two days you will be informed of my new party. And be rest assured I will contest in the upcoming elections Insha Allah.

It, however, remains unclear which political party Sani will join, and which position he plans to contest.

According to INECs schedule of activities for the 2019 elections, the submission of lists of candidates and personal particulars of contestants closed on October 18 for presidential and national assembly candidates.

Political parties, however, have up till November 2 to submit lists of their candidates for governorship and state houses of assembly positions, Premium Times notes.

Legit.ng gathers that the political parties also have till November 17 to withdraw or replace candidates for president and National Assembly elections, and up till December 1 for governorship and state Houses of Assembly candidates.

Thus, it is possible Senator Sani is talking with one of the small political parties to use him to replace one of their candidates so he could contest the Kaduna Central slot once again.

Senator Sani and Governor El-Rufai fell out shortly after both men were elected senator and governor respectively in 2015, and have been at daggers drawn ever since.

Despite being of the same party, they have both attacked each other publicly including using uncouth language.

At the peak of party defections and due to the lingering crisis with his state governor, many had expected the senator to leave the APC but he was reportedly persuaded by national leaders of the party including Oshiomhole not to do so.

A Facebook user, Solomon Akhimien, reacted to Sanis post thus:

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Kabiru Adjoto, the speaker of the Edo state Assembly and other lawmakers had filed a legal suit against the APC over the outcome of the partys primaries.

The aggrieved lawmakers accused the party of stealing their mandates during the recently concluded polls.

The speaker, who represents Akoko Edo constituency (1) in the state assembly, filed the action at the Federal High Court Aduwawa, Benin City on Thursday, October 18.

Nigeria Latest News: Buhari Reacts To APC Senators Betrayal | Legit TV

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | 2019: Fresh trouble for Atiku in southeast as Ekweremadu, governors allegedly weigh options

- Atikus choice of Peter Obi as running mate has reportedly continued to generate crisis in the southeast PDP

- Unconfirmed reports claim that by picking Peter Obi as his running mate, Atiku has violated one of the alleged agreements he has with the southeast leaders

- The PDP presidential candidate allegedly had some preconvention agreements with the leaders which made them support him during the primary

- One of the alleged agreements was an offer of the VP slot to deputy Senate president Ekweremadu

Fresh trouble is reportedly brewing in the southeast for the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, as the zones political leaders are allegedly accusing him of reneging on some pre-convention agreements.

The Nation reports that the alleged breach of the agreement is the cause of the bad blood generated in the zone by Atikus choice of former Anambra state governor Peter Obi as the running mate for the 2019 election.

Legit.ng gathers that the deputy Senate president Ike Ekweremadu and some state governors are particularly displeased by the alleged breach of agreements.

Associates of the deputy Senate president and some PDP leaders in the southeast have allegedly started putting pressure on Ekweremadu to review his status in the party.

His options are to defect from the party or remain in PDP to fight for survival.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Shehu Sani quits APC

The alleged agreements include consultation with southeast leaders on how to pick vice presidential candidate; consensus on other positions conceded to the zone; finding a meeting point with the zone on Atikus idea of restructuring; need to spend one term in office and cede power to the southeast in 2023; the offer of the VP slot to Ekweremadu (Right of First Refusal) before any other candidate.

Atiku had allegedly offered Ekweremadu the vice presidential slot a year ago.

Sources said the deputy Senate presidents response had always been: let us get the ticket first. I am interested in the southeast being in the mainstream of power equation in Nigeria.

It was gathered that the southeast PDP leaders worked for Atiku during the partys presidential primary, against Governor Nyesom Wikes preferred candidate, Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, because of the alleged agreements.

However, within a week of Atikus emergence as PDP presidential candidate, he named Peter Obi as the running mate, causing bad blood in some political quarters in the zone.

The reports stated that Obi himself has since launched a mission to douse the tension, moving round the zone to talk to those that matter.

Sources that spoke with The Nation Newspaper, however, said the issue has continued to be a source of worry for Atiku in the southeast.

All our leaders have no grudges against Obi but they are just unhappy about how Atiku reneged on some of the agreements reached with him especially the essence of carrying stakeholders along, an anonymous source was quoted to have said on Saturday, October 20.

Shortly after he emerged as the PDP candidate, he has stopped consulting Ekweremadu, southeast governors and leaders.

The painful thing is that he bowed to pressure from outside the southeast to pick Obi and he did not care to revert to these leaders and governors on his choice.

For instance, Ekweremadu (the highest ranking political office holder in the southeast) was not briefed and has not been briefed till today on why Obi was picked.

Yet, it was Ekweremadu who coordinated and delivered the block votes from the southeast to Atiku at the convention.

The assumption is that if Atiku can treat southeast leaders and governors in this manner as a candidate, what if he becomes the president. It is just a matter of trust. When in need, he offered Ekweremadu the position of running mate. Courtesy demands that he should have also confided in Ekweremadu before choosing Obi.

Another source confirmed that following pressure from his associates and PDP leaders in the southeast, Ekweremadu has started weighing options on his next step; either to remain in PDP or defect to prove a point that he is a force to reckon with.

The third option mentioned by the source is allegedly to remain in PDP and sabotage Atiku by entering into an alliance with President Muhammadu Buhari on a good deal for the southeast if he is re-elected.

The source added: From the look of things, it seems there is a conspiracy within PDP to alienate Ekweremadu.

Apart from Atiku, the national chairman of PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, has not deemed it fit to call the deputy president of the Senate on why Ekweremadu was not invited to the meeting where Obi was nominated. Even after the nomination, Secondus has not met with Ekweremadu on the choice of Obi.

The party and Atiku went ahead to constitute the Presidential Campaign Council without any input from Ekweremadu. This is an insult.

Some powers that be are angry with Ekweremadu for backing Atiku and the same presidential candidate does not care a hoot about Ekweremadu.

It is regretful that we all betrayed Wike and now Atiku is abandoning our leaders.

Responding to a question, the source added: With the choice of Obi, Atiku is going about as if he has the southeast in his pocket. Far from it, the scenario may be different during the presidential election.

Atiku needs to sit down afresh with Ekweremadu and other leaders to win votes from the zone. These are matchmakers in their own right.

"The unfinished business includes the following: reaching consensus on other posts to concede to the zone; finding a meeting point with the zone on Atikus idea of restructuring; need to spend one term in office; and Ceding power to the Southeast in 2023.

Without definite answers to these demands, Atiku should forget the backing of the Southeast, the source said.

It was also gathered that Senate president Bukola Saraki, who is the director-general of the PCC, has waded into the complaints of the southeast leaders.

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Earlier, Legit.ng reported that Peter Obi, the vice presidential candidate of the PDP had embarked on a peace mission to meet with the leaders of the party in the south east, including governors, over his nomination.

Obi visited the leaders to seek support from them ahead of 2019 presidential election. He payed homage to Enugu state governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, on Friday, October 19.

Obi visited Ebonyi state governor, Dave Umahi, and Abia state governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, as well as deputy Senate president, Ike Ekweremadu.

Nigeria Latest News: Buhari vs Atiku - 2019 Elections | Legit.ng TV:

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Full list of all the charges EFCC will file against Fayose on Monday October 22 (details)

- EFCC has finally filed file an 11-count charge against ex-governor Fayose

- The former governor will be arraigned before a Lagos high court on Monday, October 22

- Fayoses media aide had earlier said that EFCC does not have any evidence to prosecute his boss in court

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will reportedly file an 11-count charge against Ayodele Fayose, former governor of Ekiti state, on Monday, October 22.

According to TheCable, the charges include receiving illegal monies to fund his 2014 governorship campaign in Ekiti state and benefitting from proceeds of money laundering.

Legit.ng gathers that Fayose will be arraigned before Justice Mojisola Olatoregun on 11 counts bothering on financial fraud and embezzlement.

An official of the commission had reportedly said that Fayose was served with charges in the evening of Friday, October 19.

READ ALSO: 2019: Fresh trouble in southeast for Atiku as party leaders accuse him of violating pre-convention agreements

Below are the charges in full:

COUNT 1

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE and MR ABIODUN AGBELE (now facing another charge) on or about 17th June, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, took possession of the sum of N1,219,000, 000.00 (One Billion, Two Hundred and Nineteen Million Naira) to fund your 2014 gubernatorial campaign in Ekiti state, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) and (4) of the same Act.

COUNT 2

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE on or about 17th June, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, without going through the financial institution received cash payment in the sum of $5,000,000 (Five Million Dollars) from SENATOR MUSILIU OBANIKORO, the then Minister of State for Defence, which sum exceeded the amount authorised by law and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Sections 1 and 16 (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 16 (2) (b) of the same Act.

COUNT 3

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE on or about 7th April, 2015 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did retain in your fixed deposit account No: 9013074033 with Zenith Bank Plc, the sum of N300,000,000.00 (Three Hundred Million Naira) which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 4

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE and SPOTLESS LIMITED between 17th June, 2014 and 4th August, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, took control of an aggregate sum of N317, 000, 000.00 (Three Hundred and Seventeen Million Naira) by depositing same into the Zenith Bank Plcs Account No: 1010170969 belonging to SPOTLESS INVESTMENT LIMITED, a company controlled by you and members of your family and which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 5

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE between 26th June, 2014 and 27th August, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, took control of an aggregate sum of N305,760,000.00 (Three Hundred and Five Million, Seven Hundred and Sixty Thousand Naira) in your Zenith Bank Account No: 1003126654 which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 6

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE between 18th June, 2014 and 23rd June, 2014 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did procure DE-PRIVATEER LIMITED and one ABIODUN AGBELE to retain in their Account No: 1013835889 domiciled with Zenith Bank Plc, Apapa branch, Lagos, an aggregate sum of N719,490,000.00 (Seven Hundred and Nineteen Million, Four Hundred and Ninety Thousand Naira) on your behalf, which sum formed parts of proceed of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18 (c) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 7

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE and SPOTLESS LIMITED on or about 4th August, 2014, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use the sum of N270, 000, 000.00 (Two Hundred and Seventy Million Naira) to acquire a property at Plot 1504, Yedsema Street, Maitama, Abuja from one RABI KUNDILI, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 8

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE between 12th November, 2014 and 20th August, 2015, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use an aggregate sum of N1,151,711,573 (One Billion, One Hundred and Fifty One Million, Seven Hundred and Eleven Thousand, Five hundred and Seventy Three Naira) to acquire chalets 3 and 4, 6 and 9 of the property situate at Plot 100 Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island, Lagos in the name of JJ TECHNICAL SERVICE, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 9

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE between 23rd April, 2015 and 30th April, 2015 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use an aggregate sum of N200,000,000.00 (Two Hundred Million Naira) to acquire a property known as No. 44, Osun Crescent, Maitama, Abuja in the name of MOJI OLADEJI (your elder sister), which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 10

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE between 23rd April, 2015 and 30th April, 2015 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use an aggregate sum of N270,000,000.00 (Two Hundred and Seventy Million Naira) to acquire a property known as Plot 1504 Yedseram Street, Maitama, Abuja in the name of SPOTLESS INVESTMENT LIMITED, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 11

That you MR AYODELE FAYOSE on or about 30th January, 2015 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did procure STILL EARTH LIMITED to retain in its account with First City Monument Bank (FCMB), the sum of N132,500,000.00 (One Hundred and Thirty Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand Naira) for your benefit, which sum formed part of the proceeds of your unlawful activity, to wit: gratification which you received from SAMCHASE NIGERIA LIMITED and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18 (c) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

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Meanwhile, Lere Olayinka, the aide to Fayose, has debunked report in the media that his principal who is currently being held by the EFCC has confessed.

Olayinka, who released his statement after a report in some section of the media that the former governor has confessed to the N1.3bn fraud allegation against him, said this was a plot by the anti-graft agency to ruin Fayose's image.

Top Nigeria Corruption Scandals: Joshua Dariye, Olisa Metuh and Sambo Dasuki | Legit TV

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Boko Haram insurgents kill 12 farmers, displace 1,300 in Borno - NEMA

- Twelve farmers have been killed by some Boko Haram terrorists in Borno state

- Also, 1,300 people were said to have been displaced by the terrorists group

- The attack was confirmed by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA)

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on Sunday,October 21, said 12 farmers were killed and 1,300 others displaced in separate attacks coordinated by the Boko Haram insurgents in Borno.

Bashir Garga, NEMAs northeast zonal coordinator, made the disclosure in a statement in Maiduguri.

Garba said the insurgents hacked 12 farmers to death while working on their fields on Saturday, October 20, afternoon at Kalle village, 17 kilometres away from Maiduguri.

They used machetes to kill their victims who were working on their farms; as confirmed by members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF).

READ ALSO: Breaking: Abductors of Kaduna monarch releases wife

So far, we recovered 12 dead bodies from the fields and nearby bush.

Three persons were injured in the raids. The insurgents had guns, but did not use them so as not to attract the attention of troops in the nearby Molai village, he said.

Garga said that the Boko Haram insurgents stepped up attacks on farmers and loggers in recent years because they accuse them of passing information to the military.

The Coordinator disclosed further that one person was killed and 1,300 others displaced when the insurgents sacked three communities on Saturday night in Jere Local Government Area of the state.

READ ALSO: APC exit: Kaduna youths protest against Governor El-Rufai in Kaduna

Garga listed the affected communities to include Dala-Malari, Fuguri, and Femari.

He called on the people to be vigilant and report suspicious movements and persons to security agents.

Attacks on soft targets is the hallmark of the insurgents due to increased military clampdown that has curtailed their activities.

Humanitarian partners were being mobilized to cater for the victims as soon as possible, he added.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that 31 soldiers were reported dead, 19 injured and some others yet to be unaccounted for as Boko Haram insurgents allegedly invaded a base of the Nigerian Army in Borno state on Thursday, August 30.

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The incident said that scores of Boko Haram fighters carried out the attack on the base located at Zari, a small community north of Maiduguri and near the border with Niger.

The insurgents stormed the base in 12 gun trucks while some others came on foot in the early evening of that day.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | President Buhari reacts to killings in Kaduna

- President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the killings in Kaduna

- The president said the violence that claimed about 55 persons' lives is unacceptable

- He commended the Kaduna state government for the effort made so far to curb the violence

President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday, October 21, condemned the violence in Kaduna state and commended the state governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, for efforts made so far to prevent total breakdown of law and order.

The president, in a statement released on Sunday, said the killings which started on Thursday, October 18, said he frowned against the disregard for the sanctity of human life as exhibited in the Kaduna crisis.

READ ALSO: Amosun addresses defection rumour after meeting with Buhari

He said: "The violence in Kaduna, which has resulted in the deaths of 55 innocent people, is condemnable. The police have been authorized to do everything possible to restore calm. A Special Intervention Force has been deployed to the flash-points, and the Inspector General (IG) will provide regular updates.

"The disregard for the sanctity of human life is unacceptable. Violence is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good. I appeal to community leaders and citizens to always choose dialogue, patience and tolerance, to prevent crises from escalating into violence.

"Let me also commend the Kaduna state government for its rapid response to the crisis. The federal government and its law enforcement agencies will work with the state government and community leaders to ensure the full restoration of peace and security."

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that the Kaduna state government on Sunday, October 21, said the imposition of a 24-hour curfew on Kaduna metropolis and environs was a preemptive measure to avert breakdown of law and order.

Samuel Aruwan, Senior Special Assistant on Media to Governor Nasiru El-Rufai said in a telephone interview that the action was based on the advice of security chiefs in the state.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Amosun speaks on defection rumour after meeting with Buhari

- Governor Ibikunle Amosun has debunked the report that he was planning to leave the APC

- Amosun, after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari said he is not defecting from the party

Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun has dismissed as mischief the insinuation that he had defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) or planning to dump the party over political developments in the state.

Amosun stated this when he fielded questions from State House correspondent of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) after a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Sunday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that prior to Sundays meeting with the president, Amosun had visited the presidential villa for over four times within the past three weeks where he met separately with the president and the Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo.

READ ALSO: Police arrest woman leading daredevil kidnap, robbery gang

The APC National Working Committee is believed to have forwarded the name of Prince Dapo Abiodun to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the partys governorship candidate in the 2019 general elections.

Abiodun was declared winner of the Ogun state APC governorship primary by the APC NWC panel sent to conduct the primary in the state.

This declaration was against Gov. Amosuns preferred candidate, Abdulkabir Adekunle Akinlade, who was elected as the governorship candidate of the party in another primary conducted by the states APC officials.

Amosun had allegedly accused some political interest group of `misinforming President Buhari about `political equation in Ogun.

But, the governor pledged his political loyalty to the president and vowed to support his political ambition in 2019, saying, however, he would hand over the mantle of leadership to his preferred candidate, Adekunle Akinlade, in 2019.

Amosun, who was accompanied on Sundays visit to the presidential villa by the Alake of Egbaland Oba Adedotun Gbadebo III and a former Minister, Senator Iyabo Anisulowo, renewed his allegiance to the APC.

He said: We will stick with (President Buhari) him. So, I want them to know that we are not going anywhere.

Im going to be with the APC, we are in the APC and even after his second term, which by the grace of God and the support of all Nigerians he will win.

Oba Gbadebo, who also spoke after the meeting, said his visit to President Buhari, whom he described as his boss in the army, was a routine one.

Anisulowo, one-time minister of state for education, said the people of Ogun would vote massively for President Buhari and all APC candidates in 2019.

Ogun is very peaceful and is a very progressive state. Ogun is Baba Buharis state and we cannot allow anything to happen contrary to our wishes for him for his second term in office, she said.

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Recall that Legit.ng earlier reported that Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun state allegedly threatened to defect from the All Progressives Congress (APC) if the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party fails to uphold the candidacy of his preferred governorship candidate, Abdul-Kabir Adekunle Akinlade.

The governor reportedly issued this threat during a meeting with some party leaders and his loyalists across the 20 local government areas of the state held at his private residence located inside Ibara GRA, Abeokuta.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Why we imposed 24-hour curfew on Kaduna - Government

- The Kaduna state government said the curfew declared in the state would prevent further breakdown of law and order

- The government said the advice to declare the curfew came from security chiefs in the state

- About 55 persons were killed in a violence that erupted in the state on Thursday, October 18

The Kaduna state government on Sunday, October 21, said the imposition of a 24-hour curfew on Kaduna metropolis and environs was a preemptive measure to avert breakdown of law and order.

Samuel Aruwan, Senior Special Assistant on Media to Governor Nasiru El-Rufai told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in a telephone interview that the action was based on the advice of security chiefs in the state.

He said that the government would give details on the security situation later.

READ ALSO: Amosun addresses defection rumour after meeting with Buhari

NAN reports that 55 people were on Thursday killed in Kasuwan Magani, Kajuru local government area of the state, which also prompted the government to impose curfew there.

A check by NAN reveals that the latest crisis was said to have began at Mararaba Rido, and spilled over to Sabon Tasha, Tudun Wada, Central Market and Ahmadu Bello way, the city center.

A resident of Mararaban Rido, Mrs Hanatu Simon said that the issue began at a Church in the area where a man was caught suspiciously recording the pastors sermon with his phone.

Simon said that the church officials reported the matter to the police and the man was arrested and taken away by the police.

However, around 3 pm we heard gun shots around the market area with people running in all directions, houses were being burnt and everyone was running for his life.

Although military and police officers are all over the place, we still hear gun shots all over the place, she said.

Another residents, Julius John said: I dont know what is happening, I am in my house, but all I can here is gun shots with people shouting and running.

At Sheikh Abubakar Gumi Market, a trader, Ibrahim Yau said that it was a spontaneous reaction as people just started running when they heard there is crises in town.

Most traders quickly close their shops to prevent hoodlums from taking advantage of the situation to steal our goods.

Some youths who reportedly blocked the busy Nnamdi Azikiwe Expressway and Ahmadu Bello Way burning tires, were later dispersed by security agents.

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In the pandemonium, a car ran over my brother, a fruit seller at Lagos street. We are trying to get the police to help us take him to the hospital, a resident, Malam Abubakar Abdullahi, told NAN.

In Janruwa community, a resident informed NAN that the youths there had barricaded the road, stopping and searching vehicles coming from both direction.

Stranded commuters from across the city were seen trekking to their destinations as vehicle owners kept off the roads.

NAN however reports that the city is calm after the initial pandemonium, with security agents deployed to strategic areas of the metropolis keeping vigil to avert further crisis.

Legit.ng earlier reported that the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Ibrahim Idris, deployed the assistant inspector-general of police in charge of Zone 7, Taiwo Lakanu, to lead a police intervention force to Kaduna to ensure that normalcy return to the area.

Acting DCP Jimoh Moshood, the force public relations officer, disclosed this while addressing newsmen on the violence on Sunday in Abuja.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Breaking: Abductors of Kaduna monarch releases wife

- The wife of the Adara of Kachia local government area in Kaduna has been released by her abductors

Victoria Galadima was released on Sunday, October 21

- Her released was confirmed by the Kaduna police command

The abducted wife of the Chief of Adara in Kachia Local Government, Kaduna State, Mrs Victoria Galadima has been freed in the early hours of Sunday, October 21.

Confirming her release, Kaduna Police Command Public Relations Officer, DSP Yakubu Sabo said the woman is currently under medical examination at Kachia General Hospital.

According to him, efforts are being intensified to secure the release of her husband, Dr Maiwada Galadima, who is still being held hostage alongside his driver, identified as Timothy.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Police arrest woman leading daredevil kidnap, robbery gang

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that four people including a policeman were killed by the abductors on Friday before taking away the monarch, his wife and driver.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Kaduna state government has imposed a 24-hour curfew on on Kaduna town and environs.

The curfew, the state government said will begin with immediate effect.

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A short statement released by the media office of Governor Nasir El-Rufai stated that the decision was taken in the best interest of the state.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Breaking: Police arrest woman leading daredevil kidnap, robbery gang

The police have arrested a woman, Hawa Yinusa said to be the leader of a vicious gang specialising in kidnapping and robbery in Nasarawa-Abuja-Plateau axis.

Hawa was arrested along with two other suspects, Nura Dahiru and Buhari Hamisu. One other gang member was killed in the exchange of fire with the Inspector General of Police Strike Force.

Police said they recovered from them three AK47 Rifles, 38 bullets and a Honda Hennessey car belonging to one of their latest victims, a businesswoman identified as Aisha Haruna.

READ ALSO: NLC, ULC threaten nationwide strike November 6 over minimum wage

Hawa, from Masaka in Nasarawa state was arrested when she went to Aisha Harunas bank, owner of the Honda car, to withdraw Aishas money.

Hawa Yinusa, right, and her gang members. Credit: NAN

Source: Instagram

The police in a statement made available to Legit.ng said Aisha was killed by the gang and her body abandoned in the bush at Uke town in Nasarawa. The bales of clothes in the car were stolen as well.

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The statement read in full:

"Arrest of vicious and notorious kidnap for ransom gang led by a woman, Hawa Yunusa from Masaka, Nasarawa state who has no means of livelihood but leads so many kidnapping gangs; for several kidnappings of prominent Nigerians, including one Aisha Haruna (a business woman) referred to as Zainab by her family and friends who was kidnapped and later killed and abandoned by this gang in the bush at Uke town, Nasarawa state.

"The victims car, Honda Hennessey was robbed after killing her including her stock of clothing inside the car. The suspect, Hawa Yinusa further went to court and sworn to an affidavit claiming that the victim was her sister before she died and was in the process of withdrawing from the Bank about One Million Naira (N1,000,000.00) belonging to the victim before she was arrested.

"The two last suspects Nura Dahiru a.k.a Ula and Buhari Hamisu a.k.a wiseman were mobilized into the criminal gang by Hawa Yinusa. One (1) of the suspects died during a shootout with the IGP Strike Force and the three (3) AK47, Thirty Eight (38) Rounds of AK47 Ammunition, and One (1) Big Cutlass used in killing some of their victims to death were recovered from their possession.

"The suspect, Hawa Yinusa and her gangs have carried out several kidnappings between Abuja, Nasarawa and Plateau States. They have also been involved and confessed to other forms of kidnappings of innocent people, collecting their ATM Cards and withdrawing their money before releasing them. Some of their victims have come forward to the Police investigator and identified them. They will be charged to court on completion of Investigation," the police said.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Ibrahim Idris, deployed the assistant inspector-general of police in charge of Zone 7, Taiwo Lakanu, to lead a police intervention force to Kaduna to ensure that normalcy return to the area.

Acting DCP Jimoh Moshood, the force public relations officer, disclosed this while addressing newsmen on the violence on Sunday in Abuja.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | NiMet predicts sunny weather, thunderstorms for Monday, October 22

- NiMet has predicted cloudy and sunny weather conditions with localised thunderstorms over most parts of the country

- The agency predicted that northern states would experience partly cloudy to sunny conditions

- It also predicted southern states will experience partly cloudy to cloudy during the morning hours except Portharcourt, Calabar and Eket

The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has predicted cloudy and sunny weather conditions with localised thunderstorms over most parts of the country on Monday, October 22.

NiMets Weather Outlook by its Central Forecast Office (CFO) on Sunday, predicted partly cloudy to cloudy morning over the central cities with localised thunderstorms over Jalingo and Manbila.

READ ALSO: Police arrest woman leading daredevil kidnap, robbery gang

It added that localised thundery showers are expected over the region in the afternoon and evening hours with day and night temperatures of 27 to 33 and 15 to 24 degrees Celsius respectively.

The agency predicted that northern states would experience partly cloudy to sunny conditions during the forecast period with day and night temperatures of 32 to 38 and 22 to 25 degrees Celsius respectively.

According to NiMet, southern states will experience partly cloudy to cloudy during the morning hours except Portharcourt, Calabar and Eket where localized thunderstorms are expected.

Later in the day, there are chances of scattered thunderstorms over the region in the afternoon and evening hours with day and night temperatures of 30 to 33 and 20 to 23 degrees Celsius respectively.

Cloudy to partly cloudy conditions with chances of thunderstorms and rainfall activities are expected over some parts of the country in the next 72 hours, NiMet predicted.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | APC stakeholders planning to pass no-confidence vote on me - Oshiomhole

- Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has raised an alarm over plans to impose a no-confidence vote on him

- The APC national chairman gave the hint in a statement sent to journalists

- The former Edo state governor says party supremacy is sacrosanct as he presides over the ruling party

Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has raised an alarm over plans to impose a no-confidence vote on him by some influential stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Oshiomhole raised the alarm via a statement sent to journalists by his chief press secretary, Simon Ebegbulem, on Sunday, October 21.

The former governor of Edo state who stated that the party is in safe hands under his watch, noted that some members of the party who cherished and supported the status quo, before he assumed the leadership of the party, would cave in easily under the magnitude of the current political revival that he spearheads.

According to the statement, while the progressives are enamored of change, the conservatives find it difficult to embrace it. That is the current reality in the deliberate effort to rebrand the APC.

READ ALSO: APC exit: Youths protest against El-Rufai in Kaduna over Shehu Sani

The statement further noted that what is being witnessed in the APC tat the moment is Comrade Oshiomholes adroit management of the strains and pains that accompany the birth of a resuscitated governing party.

The statement also alleged that, some stakeholders have thrown selfish political agendas into the mix to threaten the building of institutional capacity for the APC, adding that there are cooked-up narratives being sponsored by some influential stakeholders in their respective states that Comrade Oshiomhole is responsible for all the problems in the APC at the moment.

These influential stakeholders, according to grapevine, have begun to mobilise to pass a no-confidence vote in the leadership of Oshiomhole, having failed to impose their preferred candidates on the party in the nomination process.

Rather than resort to needless perfidy at the threshold of a general election, we call on them to imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship, bolstered by the fact that the Oshiomhole leadership is propelled more by its interest in propriety in which victory for the party could be grounded.

The crime committed by Comrade Oshhiomhole's leadership is its disdain for impunity and circumvention of due process perpetrated in some of the states at the pleasure of some influential stakeholders, the statement noted.

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Recent media reports had indicated that some members of President Muhammadu Buharis kitchen cabinet and a host of governors are plotting against Oshiomhole.

Disturbed by their inability to have their way in the recent party primaries, 15 APC governors, along side their allies in the presidency are reportedly plotting Oshiomhole's ouster as soon as possible and replaced with someone more amenable to their demands and interests.

According to the report, their disaffection with the former Edo state governor stems from their inability to impose their candidates on the party to fly its flag in various elective positions.

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Breaking: NLC, ULC to embark on nationwide strike November 6 over minimum wage

Following the inability of the federal government and labour unions in Nigeria to arrive at meeting point over new minimum wage, the NLC has resolved to commence a nationwide, indefinite strike from November 6 if government does not meet their demands.

This was disclosed by president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, and that of the United Labour Congress, Joe Ajaero, in a press statement on Sunday, October 21.

The labour unions are unhappy at governments claim that no amount was agreed with the labour leaders at a meeting of a tripartite committee and also the FG's stance that it could only increase the minimum wage from the current N18,000 to N24,000.

According to the labour unions, they agreed to N30,000 during the negotiation.

READ ALSO: EFCC to arraign Fayose in Lagos on Monday October 22 (full list of charges)

Read the full statement made available to Legit.ng

"It has become imperative at this time that Nigerians recall the events that led to the last nation-wide strike which forced the federal government to return to Negotiation table that they had earlier abandoned. Nigerians should not forget the promises made by the same Government while pledging to return to the negotiation table leading to the suspension of the strike action.

"These are also within the context of the difficulties; the tortuous journey that have trailed the renegotiation of a new national minimum wage since the expiration of the last one in 2016; ranging from the refusal of the government to commit to its renegotiation even after the 16-Man technical committee had concluded its work and it became necessary to set up and inaugurate a tripartite committee to commence work on a new one. All the foot-dragging of the federal government to allow the committee to begin its work should also be remembered and the pressures that had to be brought to bear on them to allow the committee commence its work after inauguration. Every step of the way has been one pot hole or the other.

"All these are clearly not pointers to a party whose negotiation motives are in good faith but expressly demonstrate to all Nigerians that this party was unfortunately willing from beginning to play games on a life and death issue like a new national minimum wage for Nigerian workers.

"Thus far, the path to a new national minimum wage has been expectedly littered with betrayal, resistance, half-truths and now almost outright sabotage. That is why it has become urgent that Nigerians are informed of the insistence of the federal government to deliberately create confusion and make the negotiations for a new national minimum wage inconclusive as usual.

"It is not true that we proposed N30,000 as the new national minimum wage. It is also not true that the committee did not agree on a figure during its last sitting. We accepted N30,000 as a compromise to demonstrate the willingness of Nigerian workers to make sacrifices towards nation building.

"Anything to the contrary no matter the quantum and character of the din or how well couched it may appear cannot be true. Resorting to Goebbelsianism at this time of national emergency which requires men and women of integrity is rather unfortunate and cannot suddenly make the brazen falsehoods truths.

"We believe that it has become necessary for the Organised Private Sector (OPS) as represented in the Tripartite Committee to speak up on this matter. Keeping silent in the face of this apparent mischief does our nation no good. It can only help mischief, dishonesty and impunity to grow. At this time the OPS does not have any other choice but to rise to the occasion by telling Nigerians what transpired in the meeting..

They should tell Nigerians whether::

there was a motion that was seconded on a final figure

there was a document signaling this agreement that had already been signed by some parties?

the N30,000 figure was ours or a compromise figure based on proposed scenarios?

"As far as Nigerian workers are concerned and as represented by us, we shall no longer negotiate on a figure for the new minimum wage having reached an agreement on this during the last sitting of the tripartite committee. We cannot continue discussing a figure that has already been agreed procedurally within the committee.

"What we are waiting for is for the federal Government to immediately set in motion the necessary machinery for turning the agreement into a Bill for onward submission to the NASS where we expect the Presidency to work together with the Legislators to make it a law so that it can be implemented.quickly.

"We are not amused by the feeble and laughable attempt the federal government is making to intimidate and cow the trade union movement and its leadership in the country all in a bid to subjugate the will of Nigerian workers over the national minimum wage.

"The pronouncements of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) as it concern trade union operations in the country are very unfortunate. We see it as another step down the road to fascism as this Government continues to demonstrate high-handedness and rabid insensitivity to the plight of the citizens and any other opposing views.

"A nation where governments owe its workforce several months in arrears of unpaid salaries has not sought ways to eliminate it is rather seeking ways to gag same workers from protesting this crime against them and their families. It is akin to beating a child and denying him the right to cry Has the Government considered No Pay, No Work? Has it considered criminalizing non-payment of workers; salaries? Has it considered paying arrears of salaries with interests? Of course, it has not! They are only interested in No Work, No Pay Seekiing ways to constantly gag and put workers in a strait jacket has always been their pastime.

"The trade union movement in Nigeria is one of the most policed and governed sectors in Nigeria and has sets of laws and conventions that govern its operation. We are sure that the Minister of labour understands this and we are also sure that he understands the implications and wretchedness of those statements in the light of these.

"We have been law abiding and will remain law abiding despite these provocation by the honourable minister of labour. He should remember that we have a very deep history of attempts by past administrations to suppress and castrate the trade union movement but we have remained strong. Just like the others failed, this one will also fail.

"We are worried that instead of the minister of Labour being more concerned with the welfare of Nigerian workers and making enabling laws that would guarantee safety and a dignified workplace, he is focused more on seeking ways of emasculating workers and their organisations. We had thought that the FEC and the ministry of Labour would have been more concerned about the huge Job losses being experienced in the country thus seek ways to create jobs but they are shamelessly seeking ways to impoverish and pauperize the remaining workforce. We had thought that a responsible government would seek to work for the people.

"We had thought that FEC should devote more time to grapple with the wanton poverty that has reduced Nigerians to hunger and suffering in their own nation. We had felt that the FEC should tell us about how to get this nation out of the specter of squalor and granting Nigerians more access to nutrition and public utilities rather they waste public resources in a meeting to make pronouncements directed at shackling the citizens especially Nigerian workers from expressing their democratic and fundamental rights.

"It is indeed a shame that the FEC will seek to muzzle freedom of expression and democratic dissent as a weapon for governance in a democracy. We had expected the Government to have respect and honour for dialogue rather than its continued show of disdain and contempt for civil conversations. Resorting to the use of power as a means of relating with the citizenry has a deep and dangerous portend not just for Industrial relations in Nigeria but for governments tolerance of opposing views and democratic norms. This leaves us worried about governments thinking and mindset towards the 2019 general elections.

"Nigerians are no longer surprised why governance in the nation seems to have become a huge joke if this is how they tackle other serious national issues. Imagine Governors forum that has 6 representatives in the tripartite committee jumping in to make excuses after its representatives had made their submissions in the committee! We shall consider any Governor saying that he is unable to pay as unpatriotic and, an enemy of Nigerian workers and masses. We shall vote them out in 2019.

"We the organized labour in Nigeria having not seen any sign that this government is willing to demonstrate honour and integrity in relating with Nigerian workers and masses have resolved to as follows:

"Organise a A day of National Outrage and mourning which will be used to sensitize Nigerians on our plight and on the issues at stake. This shall take place in all states of the federation including Abuja on Tuesday, the 30th day of October, 2018

"A meeting of various organs of the Unions will hold as appropriate

"On Friday, the 2nd day of November, 2018, a Joint Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting of all the Labour Centres in Nigeria shall hold to receive reports and make final preparations for our ultimate engagement with the federal government on this matter. This is the first time in the history of this nation in recent times that such meeting will take place and this goes a long way to show the seriousness with which Nigerian workers and its leadership hold this matter

"If nothing is responsibly done by the federal government to meet our demands, on Monday, the 6th day of November, we shall embark on a nation-wide strike to compel this government to show more sensitivity to the plight of Nigerians and the suffering that is decimating our people on daily basis.

"We urge all Nigerians and workers not to be discouraged as it has become obvious that this government does not care neither for the workers nor for the citizenry. It would always prefer the use of force to silence and subdue our cries of anguish rather than show feelings of brotherhood especially when our strength of logic and argument has overwhelmed their feeble attempts and propaganda. Let us today remember those who deny us and let us collectively demonstrate our position at next years polls.

"Let us all gird our loins to assist this government correct its ways so that our nation would be more inclusive where majority of the citizenry will find space to freely unleash their creative potentials and reap the reward of their labour because we truly deserve the reward of our labour."

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that following the federal government's failure to agree on minimum wage for workers in the country, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) promised to make their position known.

The NLC made this known through its general secretary Peter Ozo-Esan while answering questions from journalists. Ozo-Esan said the congress, in what was unanimously accepted by its members, concluded on N30,000 minimum wage.

Lets Talk About Salaries of Nigerian Senators | Legit.ng TV

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralWomen farmers strike gold with herb farming

A group of women in Beldandi Village of Shuklaphanta Municipality, Kanchanpur, are becoming financially with the success they struck in herb farming.Home | News | General | 2019: Learn from APC, PDP primaries, UPU urges INEC

By Onozure Dania

Urhobo Progress Union, UPU, led by Olorogun Joe Omene and the National Secretary, Martins Ahweyevu, has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to learn from the presidential primaries conducted by the All Progressive Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

President Buhari presenting the Party Flag to Osun APC Gubernatorial Candidate Gboyega Oyetola accompanied by other party leaders during the Grand Finale of APC Gubernatorial Campaign Rally in Osun State on 18th Sep 2018

The union while congratulating the presidential candidates of the APC, President Muhammadu Buhari and that of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, applauded the National Executive Committees, NEC and chairmen of the two political parties for conducting the primaries.

The union said UPU will in due time decide which of the two parties to support in the presidential and governorship elections consider the party manifesto that will address the socio-political and economic yearnings of the Urhobo nation.

The union also said that organisation should ensure to adhere strictly to the provisions of the Electoral Act and its guidelines, and should resist intimidation and cheap blackmail from political actors and their paid sycophants during this period, and should refrain from politicizing the current security challenges in the country, as it could aggravate the already unseemly situation.

It said, UPU will in due time decide between the party, PDP and APC, the Urhobo nation would support for the presidential and governorship elections, especially as it relates to which of the political party that is determined and committed to addressing the socio-political and economic yearnings and aspiration of the Urhobo nation and its people.

Knife fights as party democracy

The union said it recognises the failure of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, to effectively meet its interventionist objective in the Niger Delta region, serving the interests of the political class instead of the larger interest of the people, challenging both candidates to bring the intractable issues of underdevelopment and age-long neglect of the people to the front burner of their campaign.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Fake news: Ask Nigerians for forgiveness, PDP counsels APC, FG

By Dirisu Yakubu

ABUJA The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, yesterday, advised All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Federal Government to seek forgiveness from Nigerians for allegedly spreading fake news in the land.

The party tasked the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to lead the government and the ruling party to do the needful, instead of the lame attempts at whitewashing the government and his party, even when Nigerians know that they are behind the escalation of fake news in Nigeria.

PDP said Nigerians are aware that the phenomenon of fake news exploded to the current frightening proportion in Nigeria due to the desperation of the APC, whose spokespersons deliberately promoted outright lies, hate speech, insults and threats of violence as tools to gain political power, during the run-up to the 2015 general elections.

Bayelsa: When defectors returned to their roots

The statement read in part: The PDP counsels the Minister of Information and Culture, the Presidency and the APC to immediately apologise to Nigerians for purveying fake news and discontinue their shameless enterprise of beguiling the unsuspecting public with impunity.

The APC and Federal Government misled and have been misleading the media and the public by stating outright lies, half truths and fabrications in their statements and claims about governance, individuals and the opposition.

Herders/farmers clashes, killings are being fuelled by fake news  Lai Mohammed

Nigerians are witnesses to several false performance claims by the APC-led government including phony political cum economic recovery and infrastructure development claims, which they project to be factual, even when the reality points to the contrary.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | MfBs request Lagos State to create special court to address bad loans

Stories by Providence Emmanuel

THE National Association of Microfinance Banks, Lagos State Chapter, NAMBLag, has written to the state government requesting for the creation of a special court to address the challenges of Non Performing Loans, NPL, among the customers who are mainly small businesses.

FG seeking investors to revamp oil, gas infrastructure  Kachikwu

Akinwunmi Ambode

Speaking at the associations eighth Annual General Meeting/Election in Lagos, Chairman, NAMBLag, Mr. Omololu Fatunbi, said that the letter has been submitted to the office of the commissioner for Justice and Attorney General, Lagos State. According to him, the letter is receiving special attention adding that NAMBLag still has about 200 members despite revocation of licenses of some of them by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, last month.

World Bank commits US$120m to 3rd Regional Disease Surveillance Project

Fatunbi stated: This perhaps is a strong signal to the strategic importance of Lagos State in the delivery of sustainable financial inclusion of the under-banked and the active poor in Nigeria as at today. The executives have not for once stopped to sensitize the public especially our customers on the importance of enrolling on the platform of Bank Verification Number, BVN as means of positively contributing to the financial inclusion agenda of the CBN. Our member banks have prioritize the BVN enrolment in their various banks, even though quite a number of the unbanked are yet to benefit from the BVN registration of customers and other areas of our operations is ongoing.

Meanwhile, the association has elected new executives to direct its affairs for the next two years, retaining its Chairman, Fatunbi; Mrs. Mojisola Garber as Vice Chairman. Mr Obinna Onunkwo, General Secretary; Pastor Ayo Olusola, Assistant General Secretary; Mr Cheta Agbo, Financial Secretary; Mrs Oladejo Taiwo, Treasurer and Princess Adeola Ilozobhie, Public Relations Officer were also elected.

In his remark, former National President, NAMB, Mr. Valentine Whensu, said that the sub sector is a sector that sows seeds willingly due to its nature of empowering people both socially and financially. Financial involves making it sustainable why social is really empowering people by bringing them out of poverty, Whensu said.

Also, Managing Director, Capestone Microfinance Bank, Mrs. Betty Oluwasina, who received award of excellence in the sub-sector, commended those that started microfinancing in 2006 and the new entrants that have the boldness to come in despite all the happenings in the sub sector.

Surviving in the microfinance industry in Nigeria is tough and for those that started it in the 2006 and the new entrants that have the boldness to come in despite all the happenings in the sub sector, I commend you. It has been a tough ride. Over the years, new policies have come up and the best so far is the BVN.

The PAR of most MfBs have reduced drastically, when we first started in my bank, PAR was 90 percent but today it is less than one percent, Oluwasina said.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Logistics problem impeding export of solid mineralsNEXIM Bank boss

Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Nigeria Export Import Bank (NEXIM), Mr. Abba Bello was part of the Nigeria delegates to the recently concluded annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group meeting in Bali, Indonesia. In this interview held on the sidelines of the meeting, he spoke on efforts of NEXIM to address challenges to boosting non oil exports, and efforts of the management to reposition the bank for improved performance. Excerpts

YOU recently assumed the leadership of the Global Network of Eximbanks and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) G-NEXID, what does this imply for Nigeria?

G-NEXID was set up in 2011 and the main purpose is to facilitate trade investment within the South-South cooperation. Now what we found out is that the objectives of the founding fathers, which was driven by India EXIM bank and AFREXIM bank, was trade. What we found out was that South South cooperation countries in organisations like the World Trade Organisation and the likes, we dont have a voice. Why because the size of our trade is very small compared to the developed countries. So, the group network to bring the South South countries together so that they would have a bigger voice. That is the first purpose. The second one is to be able to facilitate trade between the South South countries.

Yesterday, AFREXIM President was saying in the 1990s, Nigeria for instance or Africa as a whole, total trade with South South countries was about 17 percent of the total trade between them. But certain initiatives that have been taken has seen the growth that today, the South South is the biggest trading partner of Africa and it is about 54 percent today.

Mr. Abba Bello, NEXIM Bank MD

Even for oil, you will notice that India is the biggest buyer of Nigerian oil and you know how China has taken over. Now, this South South trade is even now more driven by India and China. So G-EXID in its own little way has also facilitated trade within south south. Who are the members of G-EXID? The biggest economies that are in G-EXID or EXIM banks that are in G-EXID, China is part of us but they hardly participate, but India, Brazil, currently Indonesia have joined but we have most of the other African countries as part of the G-EXIM network. Nigeria didnt just get the presidency. The presidency was given to Nigeria even before I came. But almost immediately after the presidency was given to Nigeria, my predecessor, not the acting MD/CEO, but Mr Roberts Orya, held it for just a brief period. So when he left, there was like a hiatus, so when I came in, I just took over. I probably have less than 8 months left. I have held it now for close to a year and a half. It is usually for a period of two years.

It has been six months since you assumed duty as MD/CEO of NEXIM Bank. What are strategic measures introduced to reposition the bank?

In the first instance when I resumed, I did not find NEXIM in the state where I can meet the press and start making statements. We found a lot of things wrong. I do not like saying how bad it was but we found it in a state that it was partly wrong. Our loan portfolio was in a state of mess. The loans were not performing. So the first thing we did when we came in was to try and aculturise the bank. Get people to know that, see, look at yourself more as professional bankers than public service employees because you are a bank. Aside from being a bank, you are an international organisation. We belong to so many international affiliations that professionalism now becomes very key. We cant keep relying on government to fund us. Most EXIM banks have lines between themselves. We get lines from other multinational institutions. And one of the key things they want to know apart from your financials is how professional that institution is run. So, we set out a strategy, we had to go back to the drawing board, rework our strategy and then set out deliverables for ourselves on what needs to be done. I would say since we came in, it has been quite successful.

Another matter we found out was that the bank was almost insolvent when we came in so we couldnt even lend. So, we adopted two approaches to get liquidity into the bank. One was to go on a massive recovery drive. Some of the loans that were given, though the objective was good, but a lot of them were given without proper procedures followed, proper collaterisation. It was like they were in a hurry to just give loans, may be pressure from government, I dont know, I dont know what the issues were.

We had to do a lot of works to try and, one, recover the ones we know are not working, two, restructure the ones we think are noble enough and commercially viable and then three, those that we thought had some fraudulent motives and handed them over to a presidential panel that is called SPIB for recovery. But then, concurrently with that, we set out to also try to get funding for the bank which was successful. We got the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to reintroduce the intervention for export which is N500 billion line and they even also refunded the bank with N50 billion which is what we call the export development fund. And since then, we are engaged because in all honesty, when we first came, we looked at the total customers of the bank, there was no significant exporter from Nigeria that was being funded by NEXIM. CBN, every quarter publishes a list of the top 100 exporters of Nigeria. We looked at our books, we found only two, and even the two were at the bottom of the top 100. So, for us, while we want to support Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to grow into major exporters, we looked at it, what are the low hanging fruits? Dont forget we took over when the country was in recession and there was this drive to now diversify sources of revenue-international revenue, foreign exchange revenue. So for us, the low hanging fruit is for us to now see how we can expand the business of exporters that are already in it.

The risk of non-performance would have been mitigated because they know the risk, they know how export is done out of Nigeria. Which is majorly what we have been doing now, so we look at the top 100 and say this is where we want to put our money in but concurrently, we also have one of the pillars of our strategy, is that we should encourage processing. We still should not be taking out primary products into the global market. That is why we are susceptible to international shock of prices which by the way, as producers of those raw materials, we have no control over.

There is a statistics that the President of Africa Development Bank (AfDB) likes to give: He says Africa, West Africa specifically, produces 75 percent of global cocoa with Cote divore, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon. But we only control less than 2 percent of global cocoa market which is from beans to chocolate. The current market size, global size is about $137 billion. So what it means is that Africa does less than three or four billion from that size. How? It is because we do not, at primary production level, for primary product trade, we have no control over price. You can have your cocoa and they will just tell you we are not buying and there is nothing you can do. If it stays on the high sea for some times, it starts getting spoilt. So, we are at the mercy of global trading. So, what we have put as one of our fundamental objectives is to encourage processing.

Another one I like giving example of is Sheer nuts where we are one of the worlds largest producers of Shear nuts but prior to last year, the first produced shear nuts was exported from Nigeria this year. But prior to that industry, there was no processing plant in Nigeria. The only processing that was done was by micro enterprises, that do it in the traditional way. But guess what happens to Nigerias shear, people come in from Ghana and India, buy up the shear and take it to Ghana for processing because they have three processing plants. So, we now said why, it doesnt register as trade in Nigeria because it is bought in small small quantities. So, now we have got one. That is the Ikene you are supposed to follow us to. There is Lagbu, it is now processing shear nut into butter and exporting. We have done two or three exporting already.

There are two other plants, Niger state is the largest producer of shear nuts, that we are trying to set up in Niger state. We are trying to also resuscitate some of the cocoa plants. Most of them have had their own issues, largely management related. But we think a lot of them have learnt their lessons. We would get better value if we process cocoa, at least into butter in the first instance. Now, what we are doing right now is, before we get the processing plants back to life, we will finance the trade of primary products. If you recall, when we had the meeting with the governor, the governor said he will give a window of two years for those that are doing raw cocoa, cashew and sesame to now set up processing plants. We have an acronym, PAVE-Produce, Add value and then Export, and that is our focus now. Like cocoa, total processing capacity that is working in Nigeria now is somewhere around 65,000 tonnes. And we produce anything between 200,000 and 250,000 tonnes. But there is installed capacity well above 65,000 tonnes only that it is not working. One by one, we are trying to bring them up.

Multi-Trex for instance, we are working assiduously with Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) to see how we can revive it. That plant alone can process 65,000 tonnes. Immediately, it will double the processing capacity of cocoa. Incidentally, most of the cocoa plants were financed by NEXIM at some point. So, a lot have been privatised, some were government owned, south western states, but we need to upscale and retool them to get them to production.

What is the bank doing in the area of logistics to boost solid minerals?

Other thing we are doing that is key to diversification is development of solid minerals. Now, we know there are solid minerals in Nigeria but what is the major problem apart from policy, there is also the problem of logistics.

For instance, we are aware that Nigeria is losing somewhere between $1 billion of trade opportunity from Ghana for our coal because Ghanaian power plants are powered by coal. Our coal is one of the best in the world but the problem is getting it to Ghana. Coal is very heavy. And if we use trucking, by the time it gets to Ghana, it will become uncompetitive. Another example is Itakpe iron ore, has close to a million tonnes of iron demand from China but transporting it is a major problem.

Just to tell you how large that is, 1 million tonnes is 35,000 trailers. One of the problems that fertilizer distribution has is that there are not enough trailers to even take them around. So what are we doing in all these? Part of our mandate as a bank is also export or trade facilitation, not necessarily financing only. So, one of the things we are doing is to create the logistics, infrastructure to get some of the solid minerals, especially to the ports.

We are talking first of all, with inland water ways. In fact, we have reached agreement with them to give us the inland ports which incidentally are all near where the solid minerals for coal and iron ore are and also the railways. You know these days, you have seen how the current administration has resuscitated a rail line that most of us didnt even know existed, which is from Itakpe to Warri. Now, it is working but we need it to carry cargo. And to carry that cargo, it cant go to Warri port because the draft of Warri port is just four meters. Now you cant dredge it again because there are pipelines. So, that railway line terminated about 23km from Warri. So, we are talking to Power China, one of the companies we are talking to, to extend it not to Warri but to Burutu which is a deep sea port. Now, the concessionaire is also our customer, we are working together to ensure that we can get the rail line which is about 50km because you can only do that logistics by rail. So, we are going to do the port which will help. The Niger is being dredged. We already have indications, going hand in hand with another initiative that we are promoting which is the sea link initiative where we are going to put vessels along West Africa and Central Africa ports to facilitate the intra-Africa trade.

So, from different angles, despite the limited resources we have, we are trying to make an impact on Nigerian trade of non-oil commodities. And so far so good, I think sea link before the end of the year, we keep shifting the date, our target was before the end of third quarter but we have shifted it to end of year. We have signed all the papers, we have vessel owners, the major problem with sea link in the past is that we try to run it as a company where shareholders will come and invest but there has been inertia in investment and why? Because there is nothing on ground, you are inviting people to come and invest in nothing, that they cannot see physically. So, when we came in, we also know that a lot of vessels are idle now. So, bring your vessel into sealink. We are going to run it as a pilot in the Gulf of Guinea between Nigeria, Cameroon and the other smaller countries there. Let investors see it working. We need badges for inland water ways. So, we already have interest where twelve badges have been committed. We have three or four different vessel owners who have indicated interest in bringing their vessels.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Osun election: Omisore denies negotiating for political office with APC

- Senator Iyiola Omisore has clarified the rumours going round over his inability to get an APC senatorial ticket

- Omisore was said to have negotiated with the APC to get a senatorial ticket before the re-run governorship election in the state

- The former deputy governor of the state has given insight into his negotiations with the ruling party

The governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) during the Osun governorship election, Senator Iyiola Omisore, has clarified the rumours going round over his inability to get an All Progressives Congress (APC) senatorial ticket in the 2019 general elections.

Omisore was said to have negotiated with the APC to get a senatorial ticket before the re-run governorship election in the state.

A condition he reportedly gave the ruling party before openly supporting the party's candidate during the election, Gboyega Oyetola.

READ ALSO: 2019: Buharis men, governors plot against Oshiomhole

In a message via his social media pages, Omisore said his alliance with the APC was not about negotiations for political offices.

He said the negotiation with the ruling party, centered on good governance, prompt payment of workers salaries and other things that can make life meaningful for the entire people of Osun state.

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Senator Omisore had earlier contended that he decided to place the collective interest of Osun people above his ambition to become the governor.

According to him, the working relationship and understanding that evolved between the SDP and APC before the rerun election was completely devoid of any financial term, but good governance of the state.

We went into negotiation with a very clear mind that Osun must be first and this state must be salvaged from the winkles of destruction. We are convinced that we must come to the reality of time, he said in a message to his supporters.

Osun 2018: I have evidence that they added to APCs votes - PDP Chairman On Legit.ng TV

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Atiku promises to revamp Nigerian economy, fight corruption  PDP

- PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar has promised to revamp the Nigerian economy

- Abubakar also pledged to fight corruption if elected as the president in 2019

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, will revamp the Nigerian economy through the creation of qualitative employment for the youths if elected into government in 2019.

The party gave the assurance in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan on Sunday in Abuja.

The party said that Abubakar would also implement the political and economic restructuring of the nation in a manner that would engender unity, inclusiveness in governance and uplift the general standard of living for all.

READ ALSO: President Buhari reacts to killings in Kaduna

Ologbondiyan added that if elected Abubakar would immediately commence the marketing of Nigeria to the international business community, as well as providing a clement environment for businesses to thrive in Nigeria.

Abubakar will open a system-wide fight against corruption as soon as he is elected into office by strengthening the institutions empowered by our laws to do their jobs.

He will do this while he also concentrates on the onerous duty of governance and rescuing our people from hunger, starvation, bloodlettings and wanton killings.

Ologbondiyan assured that rebranded PDP would ensure that all those looting the national treasury, would definitely face the wrath of the law and go to jail.

He added that Abubakar administration would not only fight poverty but will also uncompromisingly fight corruption.

Ologbondiyan said that a combination of Abubakar and his running mate, Peter Obi, known internationally for their forthrightness, hardwork, ingenuity and managerial competencies, would liberate Nigeria from the economic wastage and notoriously incompetent.

Abubakar comes with the Nigerian resilient entrepreneurial spirit to once again open up our economy, attract investments, create jobs and unite our citizenry for a more productive nation.

He added that as a successful entrepreneur, Abubakar had perfected an economic template that would reduce the cost of governance, plug wastages, tackle corruption, and channel resources for the welfare of the people.

Ologbondiyan said what Nigerians earnestly desire now was a resourceful President.

Our youths are earnestly seeking for an in-charge President, not one who rules by proxy. They look forward to a president who will give hope in the face of a consuming despair and one, whose words resonate with their aspirations in life.

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He said that the 2019 election was, therefore, a direct referendum on the determination of Nigerians to choose a new leader who would rescue the nation from hunger and starvation.

The 2019 election will never be about character assassination or mouthing some worn-out sloganeerings about corruption but will be about a demonstrable capacity to deliver on the mandate, he said.

Legit.ng earlier reported that Atiku distanced himself from an online grant scheme that purports to disburse grants to unsuspecting Nigerians.

In a statement, the Atiku Presidential Campaign Organization (APCO), said that neither the candidate nor his organization was in any way involved with the scheme or any other in such manner.

2019 Election: Is Atiku the right man to defeat Buhari? - on Legit.ng TV:

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Ambode's aide dismisses rumours of impeachment threats

- A source close to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has dismissed the rumours of impeachment threats

- The source said the governor has consistently preaching a message of forgiveness and unity after he lost the APC guber ticket

- He stated that the governor has since declared support for the APC governorship candidate

A source close to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has dismissed the rumours of impeachment threats that has dominated the Lagos political scene in the last one week.

Speaking to ThisDay, the unnamed source who is a member of the Lagos state cabinet, said the governor has consistently been preaching a message of forgiveness and unity after he lost the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship ticket.

He stated that the governor has since declared support for the APC governorship candidate, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, hence the issue of impeachment should not arise.

He further stated that Ambode has been working with the APC leaders at different levels to ensure that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not take advantage of what happened during the primaries to take over the state.

READ ALSO:Senator Shehu Sani quits APC

According to him, just after the process that threw up Sanwo-Olu, Ambode had been taking different steps to reunite party chieftains, principal officers of the House of Assembly and members of the State Executive Council (SEC), among others.

He said at the first EXCO meeting after he lost the return ticket,Ambode devoted quality time to preaching a message of forgiveness and unity, asking all the council members to work in support of the governorship candidate.

The cabinet member quoted Ambode as saying, The primaries have been concluded at all levels. We must forgive one another irrespective of what happened before the primaries. As a Christian, I will never be vindictive to any person for opposing my re-election.

Apart from Ambodes message of forgiveness and re-dedication at the meeting, an APC chieftain disclosed that Ambode had already collapsed the Ambode Mandate Support Group (AMSG) into the Sanwo-Olu Campaign Council.

Specifically, the APC source disclosed that Ambode appointed a five-man contact team under the leader of the Coordinator of AMSG, Hakeem Sulaimon, to hold a meeting with the Director-General of the Sanwo-Olu Campaign Council, Mr. Tayo Ayinde, on how to work together now that the primaries had been concluded.

In addition to Ambodes decision to set up the contact team that met with the Sanwo-Olu Campaign Council, the APC source explained that the governor had directed his supporters across the 20 local government areas and 37 LCDAs to begin grassroots campaign for the APC governorship candidate.

Immediately after the primaries, according to the source, Ambode sent the message to all his supporters and support groups to ensure that the PDP did not win the state, for the sake of continuity and President Muhammadu Buhari.

To demonstrate the commitment he made in his concession speech, the APC source revealed that Ambode also held a meeting with principal officers of the House of Assembly also with a message of forgiveness and peace.

He noted that all the principal officers attended the meeting during which the governor pleaded with them to work for the peace and progress of Lagos state irrespective of what happened before and during the primaries.

The source further stated that Ambode had made it clear that he was going to do everything to win the state for the APC, including giving financial support to Sanwo-olu and even campaigning for him.

He harbours no ill feelings towards anybody, as a matter of fact, he has repeatedly thanked the national leader (Tinubu) for choosing him from millions of able and capable people, eligible to be the governor in 2015. So I see no reason for the impeachment, he added.

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Impeachment rumours of the governor had reared its head after the Private Sector Partnership (PSP) officials in Lagos were ordered by the state House of Assembly to resume work immediately across all local government areas and councils.

The order was given by Mudashiru Obasa, the speaker of the House, on behalf of lawmakers on Thursday, October 17, during plenary.

Governor Akinwunmi Ambode had earlier disengaged most of the PSP operators from operating in the state after the introduction of a new environmental initiative through the Visionscape Sanitation Solution Limited.

The lawmakers also ordered the clerk, Azeez Sanni, to invite the commissioner for environment, Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti to appear before the House on the matter soon.

Lagos Governor: Is Sanwoolu a better candidate than Ambode?| Legit.ng TV

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | I am not a magician - Fayemi

- Governor Kayode Fayemi has warned Ekiti state residents not to expect a sudden transformation in the state

-The governor promised to do his best to develop the state but warned that it would take time and effort

Ekiti state governor, Kayode Fayemi, has warned residents of the state not to expect a miraculous transformation of the state within a short period.

The new governor promised to do everything to address the challenges facing the state but urged the residents to be patient with him.

Fayemi, who spoke at a thanksgiving mass held for the inauguration of his government at the Saint Patricks Cathedral Church, Ado-Ekiti, on Sunday, October 21, said some people believe that all the challenges facing Ekiti state will disappear in a day.

READ ALSO: President Buhari reacts to killings in Kaduna

He said: Yes, we know there are huge expectations from the width and breadth of the state and we wont disappoint them.

"However, I am not a magician but a child of the Almighty God because some people believe all the challenges facing Ekiti state will disappear within a day. Yes, by Almighty Gods grace, it will surely disappear.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that the new governor of Ekiti state, Kayode Fayemi, on Friday, October 19, dissolved the boards of government agencies, parastatals and corporations in the state.

Fayemi was sworn in as governor of the state on earlier this week on Tuesday, October 16.

Governor Fayose Warns Nigerian Youths Ahead of 2019, Tells Them What to Do | Legit.ng TV:

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Fayose lands in Lagos ahead of his arraignment by EFCC (photo)

- Ayodele Fayose has been spotted leaving Abuja for Lagos ahead of his trial

- Fayose was seen at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja

- He was seen seated with an operative of the EFCC at the airport

The past governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose, on Sunday, October 21, landed in Lagos ahead of his arraignment before a Federal High Court in Ikoyi.

The spokesperson to the governor, Lere Olayinka in a tweet said Fayose arrived the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja in a relaxed mood.

According to Olayinka, the governor was in the company of an operative of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) at the airport.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Abductors of Kaduna monarch releases wife

They duo were said to have flown via Max Air Flight Number VM1643.

Olayinka said: "Fayose in a relaxed mood with an official of @officialEFCC at the Abuja Airport en-route Lagos for arraignment at Federal High Court, Ikoyi tomorrow.

He arrived Lagos a few minutes ago via Max Air Flight Number VM1643," Olayinka added.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Fayose was expected to be moved to Lagos by the EFCC ahead of his trial.

EFCC had confirmed on Friday, October 19, that Fayose has been served charges and trial notice.

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The ex-governor is facing trial in connection with N1.299 billion and $5.3 million allegedly allocated to him by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) from N4.65 billion slush fund allegedly shared by ONSA.

Oby Ezekwesili's Presidential Ambition In 2019 | - on Legit.ng TV

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Stop using my name for your political gains - Okonjo-Iweala warns politicians

- Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has warned Nigerian politicians against using her names for their personal benefits

- The former minister urged the public to disregard fake quotes and comments attributed to her in the media

The former minister of finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has warned Nigerian politicians to desist from using her name for their personal benefits.

The minister claimed that her words were being edited and distorted by politicians trying to use her name and reputation for advance their objectives.

In a statement signed by her Media Adviser, Paul Nwabuikwu, the former minister said that fake newspaper articles, quotations and audios were being circulated in her name and that the public should disregard them.

READ ALSO: Amosun addresses defection rumour after meeting with Buhari

She said: In spite of several rebuttals and clarifications that we have issued over the past months, some groups and individuals are still misusing the name of former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to further partisan political objectives.

We would like to alert Nigerians that this unfortunate practice has increased significantly in this political season.

This misuse of the ministers name comes in many forms. There are fake newspaper articles published under her name. Fake quotations canvassing certain views which are falsely attributed to her. Even fake audios in which someone pretends to be the former finance minister have been going round. Most of these are typically disseminated on WhatsApp and other forms of social media.

In one recent example, a video of the minister was cleverly edited, leaving out crucial information and context to give a totally false impression. These shenanigans are designed to give the impression that she supports one particular political interest or position or the other. We urge Nigerians to ignore these mischievous antics by political peddlers of fiction.

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is very capable of speaking for herself if and when she wants to and does not need the help of anyone to do that.

In this political season of forged and fake news, we urge the media and the public to crosscheck the authenticity of any quotations, articles, audios and videos attributed to Dr Okonjo-Iweala before giving them credence or going public with them. If it does not come directly from Dr Okonjo-Iwealas twitter account, then kindly discount it.

PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app

Legit.ng earlier reported that Former president, Goodluck Jonathan, congratulated Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for her appointment into the board of twitter.

Jonathan in a message to the former minister congratulated her on her appointment, noting that she performed excellently in her capacity in Nigeria. He also expressed confidence in her ability to perform well in her new appointment.

Lagos Governor: Is Sanwo-Olu a Better Candidate Than Ambode?| Legit.ng TV

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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General1. Yes. Council members appear to have taken time to review each section carefully.

2. Yes. The council has set up town halls and a public hearing to inform the residents.

3. No. The council should have set up a charter review committee, including residents.

4. No. Some of the items proposed so far benefit the council more than the community.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say until after the public has had more opportunities to weigh in.

Vote

View ResultsHome | News | General | 2019: Atikus SGF promise good for South-West  Ogunlewe

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Adeseye Ogunlewe, on Monday commended the partys presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, for promising to give the South-West the Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF) slot, if elected.

Ogunlewe, a former Minister of Works, gave the commendation in an interview with the Newsmen in Lagos.

The Director-General of the Atiku Campaign Organisation (ACO), Chief Gbenga Daniel, had revealed Atikus SGF plan to newsmen on Sunday in Lagos.

The South-West is at present not yet visible in PDPs power equation for 2019 as the presidential candidate is from the North-East, while his running-mate, a former Anambra State governor, Mr Peter Obi, is from the South-East.

Also, the National Chairman of the party, Chief Uche Secondus, is from the South-South.

Among present top government officials who are members of the party, the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, are from North-Central and North-East respectively.

Ogunlewe said PDP leaders in the South-West were satisfied with the promised slot, as the SGF is the fulcrum of government.

We thank our presidential candidate for the promised SGF slot. We are very satisfied with it and we are happy about it.

You see, the office of the SGF is not just another office. It is the fulcrum of any government; it is the engine room. So, for our candidate to have promised the region the office, it means he holds us in high esteem.

The promise is a just and fair move, we are impressed and we are pledging our total support to Atiku Abubakar to emerge as our president next year, he said.

Ogunlewe said the selection Obi as Atikus running mate was fair and strategic, as it would guarantee an Igbo presidency after Atiku, if PDP wins.

The former minister argued that the people of the South-East had contributed significantly to the development of the country, saying it was only fair they be allowed to produce a president soon.

Ogunlewe said apart from the SGF slot, the South-West PDP was particularly glad by Atikus promise to restructure the country.

The former minister said restructuring was the panacea to the avalanche of challenges facing the country, as it would empower federating units and institutions to function optimally for development.

Ogunlewe said the All Progressives Congress had failed to deliver on their electoral promises to make the country better for citizens.

He said the PDP had been rejuvenated and expressed the confidence that Atiku would win the presidential election.

The former minister also boasted that the PDP governorship candidate in Lagos, Mr Jimi Agbaje, would win the state for the party in 2019 .

We are going to win in Lagos in 2019.We are going to set the state free from APC ; we have a candidate who can do it. Agbaje is a man of vision and he will deliver.

He is a true indigene of Lagos with the interest of the people at heart. The people of Lagos want him and we are so confident it will be victory for the PDP in 2019, he said.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Breaking: Police fire teargas at protesting NHIS workers

By Anthony Ogbonna and Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA  WORKERS at the headquarters of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, early morning today clashed with the Police allegedly protecting the suspended Executive Secretary of the scheme, Prof. Usman Yusuf who showed up at office.

Workers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) protesting at the gate of the schemes headquarters as police stop them

The police, however, fired teargas canisters at workers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

At NHIS headquarters this morning, heavily armed police men escorted the suspended Executive Secretary of NHIS Prof. Usman Yusuf into his office. Yusuf was suspended by the governing council of NHIS last but ignored the resolution of the council. #Nigeria #Health #corruption pic.twitter.com/onIR2NxQP1  Kingsley Jeremiah (@kingpsalmist) 22 October 2018

The workers had taken over the place at about 8am but a team of police officers tried to dispel the workers as they led the suspended Executive Secretary to his office.

The protesting workers were over powered by the police who fired teargas canisters in the air to dispel them.

Some of the workers sustained injuries as the scampered in different directions after inhaling the tear gas.

Nwokike, now NCCs Public Affairs Director

Yusuf was, last week, suspended by the schemes governing board for allegedly inflating the schemes 2018 budget.

Salary arrears: Adode lauds Okowa over N5bn payment

In a press briefing last week, the board said it suspended Yusuf for fraudulently inflating the cost of biometric capturing machines attempting to illegally execute N30 billion in federal government bonds.superfluous arrogation of project vehicles among others.

It had also accused Yusuf of embarking on travels in defiance to council directive.

Prof Yusuf was suspended by the Minister of Health in July, 2017 but was called back by the presidency in February, 2018.

Chairman of the governing council, Dr Eyantu Ifenne, at a briefing in the schemes headquarter on Thursday last week said, based on the review of various documents on allegations leveled against him, they have resolved to constitute an administrative panel to investigate and submit their report in the next three months.

She said, The ES is suspended indefinitely to pave unfettered space for the committee to do thorough investigations into the matter.

Dr Efene added that approval was gotten from the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole.

The council has also resolved that Dr Abubakar Sadiq Adamu immediately step into the acting capacity of the ES to allow activities to run smoothly.

However, Yusuf had, last week, rejected his suspension by the board and had said that he would resume his normal duties today.

But the workers, who come out earlier today, had blocked the entrance of the office in Abuja to prevent Yusuf from gaining access into the premises.

Organised labour tasks FG on workable power supply policies

However, Yusuf was able to gain entrance into the NHIS headquarters with the aid of some men of the police force who shot teargas canisters to disperse the protesting workers.

Soon afterwards, heavy security personnel took over the premises, with some seen at the gate.

Moreover, while the drama went on, some staff members loyal to the executive secretary succeeded in breaking the keys to the gate, thereby gaining access.

As at the time of filing this report, the protest was still on.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralBy Emma Amaize

ASABA- DETECTIVES in Delta Command have swooped on suspected kidnappers, capturing 14 and liberating 10 victims without ransom in 10 separate incidents involving a Senior Special Assistant to the Delta State Governor, pastor, retired naval officer, housewife and others at different parts of Delta State in the last few weeks.

However, a victim died in the hands of the abductors, three released on payment of ransom, while police were still searching for a staff of Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Lagos, Dr. Chris Awele, 38, kidnapped and whisked away in his car by four armed men on September 24.

2 years after, Air Peace to resume Lagos-Asaba route flight Oct. 8

Commissioner of Police in the state, Muhammad Mustapha, told Vanguard: Acting on intelligence, a team of Special Anti-Kidnapping and Cyber Crime Squad, SAKCCS, operatives stormed Bonsacc area of Asaba and rescued 19-year old Miracle Malije, abducted along Federal Technical College Road, Asaba.

The team also arrested one of the suspects and is assisting the police to ensure the arrest of other members of the gang at large and possible recovery of their arms and ammunition, he added.

Mustafa disclosed though five armed men, who seized a housewife, Mrs. Eucharia Ofuonye at her Medicine Store in Okwe,bear Asaba, released her after payment of undisclosed ransom, the police arrested two suspects, Edwin and Kenneth, who confessed to the offence and kidnap of one Dr. Anozie Uchechukwu.

Dr Uchechukwu was rescued by men of the Anti-Kidnappaing Squad on October 11 following their confession, while Pastor Bawo Atumu, abducted with six others were released without ransom after serious pressure exerted on the hoodlums by the police, he added.

According to the commissioner, While following up the kidnap case of Benedicta Okeme kidnapped at Ogbeke Square, Asaba and other kidnap cases, SAKCSS operatives arrested additional suspects, Anayo and Ugonnaya, along Benin-Asaba express road and also recovered a stolen Lexus Jeep.

Also, eight suspects who were alleged to have planned to kidnap a Senior Special Assistant to Delta State Governror, Chief Godwin Emebiwor, aka Nuruddeen Abort, were arrested by the Inspector General of Police, IGP team of IRT operatives based in Asaba.

Two suspects, Okumo, 36 years and Daniel , 31 years, who kidnapped 80 year-old retired naval officer, Stephen Okumu, one of them his nephew were arrested by men of Oleh Division and SAKCCS operatives led by the Divisional Police Officer, DPO at a house in Olomoro, where they kept the victim, who was lying on a bed in the room dead.

Guarding the room was one Daniel and he was arrested with a cut to size single barrel gun. The corpse was deposited at the General Hospital mortuary, while the two suspects were detained, he disclosed.

Concerning a family that was kidnapped on October 13, he said Mrs. Victoria Esikie was kidnapped with four or her children, Nyore, Rukevwe, Ejoke and Jowho on Ughell/Agbarha Otor road in her Prado SUV, but the kidnappers later dropped the four children at Afiesere road, Ughelli, and left only with Mrs. Victoria Esike.

Efforts are ongoing by operatives and IGPs IRT to track and arrest the kidnappers and rescue the victim unhurt, the police boss assured.Home | News | General | Breaking: Fayose pleads not guilty, denied bail as trial adjourned till Wednesday

By Anthony Ogbonna

The Justice Mojisola Olatoregun-led Federal High Court in Lagos has, Monday, denied the immediate past governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose bail in an 11-count charge bordering on money laundering, abuse of public office, criminal breach of trust and stealing, up to the tune of N6.9bn preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

Read also: Alleged N4.7bn fraud: Fayose arrives court for trial

Fayose in court

Fayose who arrived the court this morning, around 8:30 am, was brought in by officials of the EFCC.

Fayose: We are taking steps to enforce his fundamental rights  Ozekhome

Fayose has been in the detention of the EFCC for the past 5 days.

When the charges were read to him, he pleaded not guilty.

His counsel, Kanu Agabi, filed a bail application on behalf of his client but the presiding judge, Mojisola Olatoregun rejected his bail application and ordered that Fayose should remain in EFCC custody till Wednesday.

The case was adjourned to Wednesday.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | Bulgaria seizes $14.3 million in fake bills

Bulgarian Authorities raided a print shop on Monday that was making counterfeit cash, and seized fake euro and dollar bills worth more than 14.3 million dollars, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

The Special forces which combat organised crime stormed a basement in an hotel in the Black Sea resort of Sunny Beach and seized some 100-euro and 500-euro notes and 50-dollars bills, the ministry said.

Ikpeazu visits Osisioma pipeline explosion site

From the print shop and from different hideouts, over 11 million fake euros and over 1.7 million dollars were seized, some stockpiled ready and some unfinished, the statement said.

Aba residents give EEDC 14-day ultimatum over poor electricity supply, crazy bills

The raid at the print shop, is the biggest to be discovered for 11 years, as well as some other 30 sites in the Balkan country, followed a 10-month investigation supported by Europol and U.S. intelligence.

The print shop has sophisticated presses making very high quality bills, prosecutors overseeing the operation said, adding that four people were arrested.

NAN

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | News | General | NFVCB mourns Nollywood producer Chris Ekejimbe

Mr Adedayo Thomas, Executive Director of the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) has expressed sadness over the death of veteran Nollywood movie producer Chris Ekejimbe.

Ekejimbe reportedly died on Saturday at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), after a few weeks of illness.

Thomas, while reacting to the sad news, told the Newsmen on Monday that the producers demise was a big loss to the entertainment industry and Nollywood in particular.

It is with a heavy heart that I received the sad news of the demise of Mr Chris Ekejimbe.

Late Chris Ekejimbe

Nollywood has lost yet another of its best, because he died when the wealth of his experience and contribution was most needed in the industry.

My prayers and thoughts are with his family, and may God grant us all who knew him the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss, he said.

Avoid misinformation, disinformation through fact-checking, news agencies charged

Ekejimbe, a foremost Nollywood filmmaker, was a member of the board of the Association of Nollywood Core Producers, ANCOPS.

He was the owner of 4Screams Production Company and founder of notable Nollywood social media group, Film4Life.

His death came four months after his friend and creative partner, Bambino Anachina, also passed on.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: GeneralHome | World | Africa | Mnangagwa introduce performance dashboards for ministries

The government is set to introduce performance dashboards to monitor and keep in check progress being made by ministries as well as performances of provinces as devolution takes shape.

While President Emmerson Mnangagwa has committed that his government will soon implement the devolution concept, indications are that performance dashboards will be used to measure and rate production across all sectors ranging from health, education and economic development.

Speaking during a provincial education merit awards ceremony in Marondera, Mashonaland East Minister, Appolonia Munzverengi said performance of government ministries will also be tracked to evaluate and identify areas needing further development.

"The government will soon introduce a dashboard that will be used by President Mnangagwa to monitor and rate performances of government ministries and provinces. This will be effected to push for best results," she said.

Late last year, the government hinted that it was set to introduce wholesome changes to the national governance architecture by comprehensively decentralising and devolving power and authority, including fiscal, investment and economic responsibilities to each of the country's 10 provinces.

Harare Metropolitan Province will be Zimbabwe's ICT nerve centre, while Bulawayo will be the country's industrial hub.

Manicaland Province will host the diamond beneficiation centre, with Midlands the iron and steel value-chain beneficiation centre.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: AfricaHome | World | Africa | Chiwenga slams fake prophets

Vice President Retired General Constantino Chiwenga has urged Zimbabweans to be united in building the country's economy which has been distorted by unscrupulous individuals bent on profiteering.

The Vice President was speaking to thousands of people from Wedza who gathered at his homestead in Chigondo area for a thanksgiving mass.

Let us all unite and build our nation which has been destroyed by some selfish individuals who are bent on profiteering," he said.

Chiwenga also took a swipe at false prophets who are concentrating on fake prophesies mainly to do with people's health and deaths at the expense of preaching peace and love.

"I see there are some people who are specialising on false prophesy like one called Talent who should be stopped. Let them be warned," he said.

The public appearance of Dr Chiwenga, who has not been well but has since recovered and looked fit speaking for over half an hours, was welcomed by the Zanu PF leadership from Mashonaland East led by Politburo member, Dr Sydney Sekeramayi.

The thanksgiving mass was conducted by Father Willie Muzondiwa of the Mt. St. Marys Parish and Father Riberio from Highfield, Harare.

Dr Chiwenga took part in the entire service and later laid wreaths at the family shrine in memory of his family members.

The service was attended by several cabinet ministers, the Deputy Chief Secretary Presidential Communications George Charamba, close family members, legislators from Mashonaland East Province, political leaders and traditional leaders from the province as well as Masvingo and Matabeleland.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: AfricaHome | World | Africa | Fresh bid to nullify Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC election

A fresh bid to nullify the election of President Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC leader is under way, with unhappy party members claiming that Ramaphosa was elected by bogus Mpumalanga branches at the party's national elective conference in Nasrec, southern Johannesburg, in December.

This is the latest development as sharp divisions within the ANC continue to hinder Ramaphosa's unity project and weaken the party further ahead of next year's general election.

Concerned ANC members, including unsuccessful presidential candidate Mathews Phosa's former campaign manager, Ronnie Malomane, submitted supplementary documents to the Mpumalanga Circuit Court of the Pretoria High Court last week on Friday in a bid to have the party's Mpumalanga provincial executive committee (PEC) disbanded and a task team appointed.

The court postponed the case to December 13. If the court action succeeds, this could have far-reaching implications for Ramaphosa's legitimacy as ANC leader. Delegates from Mpumalanga played a critical role in his election.

Concerned members allege that the PEC was elected illegally because bogus branches were allowed to participate at the provincial conference in 2015. At that conference David "DD" Mabuza, who is now the country's second-in-command, was re-elected for a third term as the provincial chairperson.

They are complaining that "illegitimate" branches held general meetings in preparation for the list conference to select candidates for the provincial legislature and National Assembly.

He said this meant the credentials that were adopted at the ANC's national elective conference in Nasrec were illegal, as bogus branches participated at the conference.

"Mpumalanga came to the Nasrec conference with 508 branches; 108 bogus branches participated in the Nasrec conference. I fear that something bad is going to happen. We have been talking to Luthuli House but they are dilly-dallying," he said.

Malomane warned that the ANC would be disappointed if the issue was not resolved amicably.

"They say we must talk to the province. How do you talk to a perpetrator? We are now pulling the trigger. The court will help us," he said.

The ANC's national executive committee member deployed in Mpumalanga, Gwen Ramokgopa, said the issue would be approached in a "comradely" manner.

"All I can say now is that we facilitated a process of dialogue and identified areas of dispute. We trust the process will be approached in a comradely manner to ensure that all constitutional obligations are met and to foster unity," Ramokgopa said.

She said the ANC had to focus more on improving services to ordinary citizens.

The ANC in Mpumalanga is still battling to fill vacancies that were created within the PEC after Mabuza, his former deputy Violet Siwela and PEC member Mashego Dlamini were elected on to the ANC national executive committee at the party's national conference in December.

Malomane accused Mabuza of imposing his own successor on the ANC in the province.

"Currently ANC provincial leaders are conflicted. Remember DD Mabuza said he wanted Mandla Ndlovu to succeed him. We don't have a chieftaincy in the ANC. Mandla can't lead us. He can't even make his own decisions. We have nothing against Mabuza, we just want him to stop controlling the province remotely," he said.

Malomane said they were backing former PEC member Peter Nyoni to become the provincial chairperson.

ANC Mpumalanga acting secretary Lindiwe Mabona-Ntshalintshali said the party would respond at an "appropriate" time.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: AfricaHome | World | Africa | How Mugabe survived assassination in Gutu

Kenny Constantine Mabuya, whose Chimurenga name was Cde Kenny Ridzai, makes stunning revelations about their confrontation with the British authorities after they had been sent as the advance team for the Zanla delegation to the Lancaster House talks in London. He talks about deputising Cde Rex Nhongo as part of the contingent team that had been sent by Zanu to start ceasefire talks with Lord Soames in 1979.

He then narrates how President Mugabe narrowly escaped death in Gutu after some Rhodesian soldiers fired at him as he was addressing a rally. The drama as they escaped will make a blockbuster war movie.

SM: Finally, we are reaching the conclusion of your intriguing narration Cde Kenny. We want to thank you so, so much for your time. Now, let's continue your journey from 1977.

Cde Kenny: Thank you for this opportunity to record my history. I hope it will inspire future generations. I think around August 1977, some commanders who were at the war front were ordered to come back to the rear so that they could go for further military training. I was chosen to lead this group that was going to Nanking in China. We went to Nanking for about six months and came back in 1978.

We were about 50 comrades. We were now receiving training in using special weapons like anti-air machine guns, how to operate tanks and so on. By this time, we knew that hondo yakura and anytime tinogona kuenda kumusha. This was a sort of a commanders' course. After this training, we came back to Mozambique and I continued my duties of receiving recruits from home and reinforcements from several training camps. The war had spread all over the country and kwese kwakanga kwazara magandanga.

By this time, some comrades were already thinking of coming to Salisbury. They wanted to come and fight the Smith regime right here in Harare. If you remember that's the same time that those comrades came and destroyed petrol tanks in Salisbury.

In 1979, that's when we heard about the Lancaster House talks. As someone who was in the security department, I was chosen to be among the first advance group to go the Lancaster. Our task was to choose the places of accommodation for our Zanu delegation. We were seven in this advance group.

SM: Do you remember the names of the other comrades?

Cde Kenny: Umm, I can't remember them. When we got to London, our first option was that the Zanu delegation would stay at Castro Hotel but we later discovered that it was not appropriate. The set-up was just not good. For example, on your way to your rooms you would pass through the dining-room and we said this was not safe. We started looking for accommodation somewhere but the British insisted that our delegation should stay at that hotel. We told them of our security concerns but they remained adamant. I think ipapo they had arranged to kill VaMugabe. That's my thinking.

SM: Why do you say that?

Cde Kenny: So many things that were happening at that time got me worried. For example, after they insisted, we came up with another route that the leaders of our delegation could use to go to their rooms without passing through the dining-room but they refused. They insisted that our delegation should pass through the dining hall munenge makazara vanhu. Aiwazve, munhu anopfurwazve. There were silencers during that time and we were afraid VaMugabe or other members of the delegation could be shot. Even if you read the book, "See You in November", there is confirmation that there was a plot to kill President Mugabe.

They knew he was the die-hard among the leaders. We told our leaders of our concern. We stayed in that hotel for just a week. We even refused to eat the food from the hotel. There were so many Zimbabweans living in London who would bring food but the hotel staff said we could not eat the food inside the hotel. We even told the hotel staff that VaMugabe vanoda sadza ravo remhunga or zviyo and so on but they insisted kuti hazviiti. There was a big fight over the issue.

Takabva tatsvaga dzimba dzemasupporters emusangano. I remember there was Cde Gwanzura, Cde Frederick Shava, Witness Mangwende, Kombayi and others who had properties in London. We identified some house which was secure tikati President vanogara pano. We said tinobva tese from this house going to Lancaster House.

SM: While the President was staying at this house, where were you staying?

Cde Kenny: Taipinda neyedu.

SM: Tell us how the situation was when President Mugabe arrived with his delegation.

Cde Kenny: Umm, it was quite something. There was a big crowd because many people wanted to see Mugabe wacho akaita sei. Despite the big crowd, tiri seven kudaro we would push people away. We would push some people vachiwira kwakadaro uko. We had to do that otherwise the delegation would not go anywhere. Of course, we got assistance from the British officers. So President Mugabe stayed at this house until the end of the Lancaster talks. After the Lancaster we came back and started preparations for ceasefire.

Cde Tongo and President Mugabe then said there must a contingent force that should be go into Rhodesia and start working with Lord Soames. I was part of this force and I remember our secretary was a lady called Linda. We went to Beira and we were addressed by President Mugabe. He said ndiri kutumira my first contingent yeZanla kuSalisbury to go and work with Lord Soames. He said the team was to be led by Rex Nhongo with Kenny Ridzai, meaning me as his deputy. I know Webster Shamu still has this cassette when President Mugabe was making this address. He was in the publicity department. After this address, we left Beira around 3pm. The arrangement was that our plane was supposed to land in Harare before the Zipra plane. However, for some reason ndege yedu yakambonzi haimhari so takambotenderera mudenga. That unsettled us but after a while we got assurances that all was well. The plane carrying the Zipra comrades landed then we followed.

SM: How was the situation like at the airport?

Cde Kenny: Umm, panga pakaipa. There were just too many people. Pakanga pane mabhazi akawanda zvisingaiti. Vamwe vakakwira pamusoro pemabhazi vamwe papi. It was just chaotic. Paiva nemapurisa anembwa but you know vanhu vaibaya imbwa nemapanga just to see us. Pakaitika nyaya on that day. After landing, I was the first one to come out of the plane ndakasimudza AK47 and waving flag yeZanu. Ahh, the people went wild. Povho yakaita kupenga chaiko. They destroyed the whole fence at the airport and killed many police dogs. I think we spent about two hours from the airport to Mushandirapamwe Hotel before going to the University of Zimbabwe. There were cars and people everywhere. The excitement was just too much. The welcome was just electric.

SM: In this excitement, were you not afraid that the Rhodesian soldiers could put you into some trap?

Cde Kenny: Ahh, we were ready for them. Takanga tine pfuti dzedu and we were ready. Even when we were at Mushandirapamwe, pfuti taigara takabereka. We were there for about two weeks. Even though we carried our guns, we were very disciplined. Hapana kana one day rekuti takamboridza pfuti. Some comrades vaidhakwa mumabhawa but there was no incident yekuridza pfuti.

From Mushandirapamwe, we went to the University of Zimbabwe. That is when the talks started nana Lord Soames and Peter Walls. We had a feeling that Walls was up to no good. His soldiers had surrounded us at the University. One evening we sneaked out tikaenda kunotora pfuti hombe getting ready for war. We then mounted our guns right round the University just to show him that we were ready for anything. Sometimes the Rhodesian soldiers would drive convoys towards the University and appear like they were taking positions. We would also take our positions to show that we were not afraid. We were staying at the University with our Zipra comrades but not using the same residence. They were staying with other side of the University. Lord Soames was staying at State House.

When the talks started, that's when we really travelled a lot going to Assembly Points and so on. We would go and talk to comrades to go to Assembly Points. Sometimes some comrades would resist and we would talk to them kusvika vanzwisisa. Kumwe vaitorova hondo chaiyo and we would go to investigate. Dzimwe nguva taitoramba kuenda nemahelicopter because taitya kuti some of our comrades would shoot at the helicopters. Towards the end of 1979, maShef akatanga kuuya into Rhodesia. They were staying at different houses in Salisbury. During the evenings, mabhunu aifamba nemudhudhudhu vachikanda grenades into these houses. They would first shout "you bloody son of " then throw the grenades. Cde Kangai ndivo vakaita zvekuridzirwa bazooka chairo pamba pavo rikapinda nepahwindo. Akatiza akapinda muwardrobe. When I arrived, ndakatowana arimo muwardrobe akahwanda. After attending to this attack, that is when I was moved by Cde Nhongo from the army to lead the group of comrades that was providing security padzimba dzemashef. When the President came, ndakabva ndaiswa to be part of his motorcade. I was part of his security and we would go together to all the rallies, including in Masvingo kwatakaridzirwa pfuti.

SM: What exactly happened?

Cde Kenny: Pakaridzwa pfuti and President vakatora cover. We were at a rally when this happened. Before this incident, we had received information that there were some suspicious people roaming around. So we had gone to Dzapasi Assembly Point and came with some reinforcements. We planted some of the comrades mumakomo around the area. I think pane pamwe patakasiya and I don't know takapasiya sei. Ndipo paiva nevanhu vaida kupfura President ipapo. So as the President was speaking, we just heard gun- shots coming in our direction. Aah, patoipa, President pasi.

SM: You mean President Mugabe taking cover?

Cde Kenny: Yes, ivava President Mugabe. Vakaburuka pastage tikati shef let's go. We were kwaGutu. This is different story from the story inotaurwa kakawanda yekuti he was in the Benz. That one was in Masvingo. I am talking about the attack kwaGutu. Pfuti dzakarira tichitori parally chaipo. Chop-chop tatora cover, Cde Mnangagwa was there, paita commotion yeye what what. Tapinza President mumota. We had left our Dakota near some airstrip that was nearby. We decided against going to the Dakota and we left Gutu for Masvingo by road.

We said let's leave Dakota because these people vanogona kuridzira Dakota racho. President vachingopinda muBenz it was wasara-wasara. The driver then was a comrade, Cde Shumba. Ahh, munhu airova mota iyeye. When we got to Masvingo ndipo patakati Dakota ngaitevere ikoko. That day it rained heavily and the Dakota couldn't land in Masvingo. It flew to Salisbury, tikati inozodzoka the next day.

Cde Mnangagwa then assigned me and some comrades kuti Cde Kenny go kwaGutu and investigate what exactly had happened. When we got back to Gutu we discovered that some of those comrades we had taken from Dzapasi Assembly Point are the ones who saved us. While in their positions mumakomo they saw where the enemy fire was coming from and they fired towards the enemy position. They actually killed two Rhodesian soldiers.

There was a nearby Integration Camp where the different armies  Zanla, Zipra and Rhodesian army  where being merged into one army. This is where these soldiers had come from. When we went to the camp, we found Zanla comrades vachivava zvakaoma. They wanted to attack the Integration Camp. They had carried these two Rhodesian soldiers to the camp and they were demanding answers who was behind the attack. Other Rhodesian soldiers said hativazivi and this is where the problems started because these dead Rhodesian soldiers were dressed in army uniform. We got there and calmed things down. Nyaya yacho yakangopera like that. I stayed as part of the President's security until 1982. I went back to the army.

SM: What a journey? When you look back at your contribution during the liberation struggle, do you have any regrets?

Cde Kenny: Not at all. I went to liberate the country and we did exactly that. I never thought I would come back alive but here I am. I didn't even have plans kuti kana nyika yasununguka tichaita this and that. I was fighting to liberate the country.

SM: When you came back from the liberation struggle, did you conduct any ritual?

Cde Kenny: Yes, I did. We did with my family. I went kumusha and said ndadzoka because kunonzi munhu anogezwa. So pakabikwa doro, vanhu vakawungana vakapembera. Ndakatorwa ndikayendwa neni kusango ndikanogezeswa ikoko.

After this I later went to that family yandakambogara nayo during the war. You know up to this day number dzangu dzechitupa it appears like ndiri wekwaMakuni. I said I want to go and see that old man. I bought some groceries.

Grocery rakawanda stereki. I was saying I really want to thank that person because he saved my life. You can imagine Rhodesian soldiers vaimubaya nepfuti vachiti iwe mudhara taura gandanga riri kupi but he never sold me out. He said gandanga handirizivi ndine vana vangu chete pano.

Unfortunately, ndakawana mudhara wacho ava netwo years ashaya. But his wives and those two boys were still alive. They were surprised to see me.

Vakawunganidza vanhu and I told them my story. Vanhu vakachema. I also cried. Mumwe mukomana wacho ndakawuya naye ndikatomutsvagira basa. It really was a touching and emotional moment.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: AfricaHome | World | Africa | Black market dragnet targets bigwigs

President Emmerson Mnangagwa will invoke the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act to introduce tough regulations to bring currency manipulators to book.

In his weekly column, Mnangagwa said it was inconceivable that rampant black market activities were thriving without complicity of high-ranking State officials.

Information gathered so far, he said, indicated that "an intricate network of currency speculators mostly in high places and in places of trust".

Further, a police spokesperson informed this publication that they had made arrests of illegal currency dealers who were linked to prominent people, and would soon make the findings of their investigations public.

In his column, President Mnangagwa said: "Considering that more than $9 billion is passing through different electronic platforms and leaving an electronic trail', it is inconceivable that these illicit transactions have and can ever go on undetected or unnoticed. It simply cannot be."

Speculative activities, especially illegal foreign currency trading, have caused a marked depreciation of bond notes and RTGS balances against the United States dollar, triggering hikes in the prices of basic commodities, panic-buying and product shortages.

President Mnangagwa revealed he had tasked his top legal advisors to craft comprehensive legislation to plug loopholes that allowed black marketeers to operate with impunity.

"Currently, we have no legislation to deal with currency manipulators. We therefore need urgent and robust measures to deal with this financial menace.

"Accordingly, I have now instructed the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs to work closely and expeditiously with the Attorney-General in order to produce a new set of regulations which will be promulgated under temporary law-making powers which I, as President, am allowed by the Constitution.

"These regulations will remain in force for a statutory period of six months, during which a Bill will have to be processed for consideration by our Legislators," President Mnangagwa said.

The new law will be in line with international best practices, where suspicious transactions are automatically flagged and investigated.

Jurisdictions such as the United States also trace if such transactions are being taxed.

In a "cash-lite" economy like Zimbabwe's, such a dragnet would quickly dredge speculators as most transactions are e-based. Yesterday, Zimbabwe Republic Police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyati said they had made arrests in connection with illegal currency trading linked to bigwigs.

"We can confirm that we have made some arrests with regards to some of the prominent people who are behind the illegal currency deals.

"You are aware of the Government position to deal with such deals which are causing economic damage to the country. Very soon, we are going to release full details of some of these culprits and the nature of the crimes," he said.

Attorney-General Advocate Prince Machaya added: "Some time at the end of last year we attempted to address it through a Statutory Instrument that we introduced, read together with the Exchange Control Act."

Statutory Instrument 122A of 2017 empowers police to seize money from people suspected of illegal currency dealings.

Part of the SI reads: "In relation to any dealing in currency, an authorised officer or a police officer acting to enforce any order (a) may, for the purpose of holding the currency as an exhibit in a subsequent prosecution, seize any currency upon a reasonable suspicion that the possessor thereof is dealing in it unlawfully, that is, in contravention of any order or any provision of the Act or these regulations by virtue of which the order is made."

Lawyer Mr Jonathan Samkange accused monetary authorities of sleeping on duty by failing to detect suspicious transactions.

"It is well within the mandate of the (Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe) to track all suspicious transactions, or at least watch over the banks so that they can follow up on such transactions.

"The law empowers them to have such oversight. It appears that they are not doing so and the question that has to be asked is why are they not?

"It's the norm across the world for any huge transactions to be accounted for. For example, I have a daughter who is at university in a foreign country and whenever I pay fees for her, I have to justify such a transaction.

"If other countries can raise alarm on such transactions, why do our monetary authorities choose to remain quiet when millions of dollars are moved every day?" he questioned.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: Africa"FINANCE and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube, who is 42 days into his new job, says it is only fair to judge him after six months, adding that he expects the benefits of austerity measures to start coming through around March 2019," reported Bulawayo24.

"Economic structural reforms, he said, were unavoidable. The Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) through to December 2020 has secured the backing of the World Bank Group and IMF."

This is infuriating! When have the people of Zimbabwe ever had a voice in even life and death matters? The country has just gone through an elections results were not "traceable, verifiable and the whole process was not transparent" and a senior government official is wittering of people "judging" as if he does not know that Zanu PF does as it pleases, period.

Minister Ncube is doing one other thing the Zanu PF regime loves to do - blame other people for its own mess. In the 1990s Zimbabwe had two back to back five-year IMF and WB sponsored Economic Structural Adjustment Programs (ESAP). Both programs failed to deliver an meaningful economic recovery because Zanu PF cherry picking, the regime implemented some reforms but left out all the important ones. President Mugabe went to town blaming the programs for the nation's economic problems and blamed the IMF and WB for forcing the country to adopt them in the first place.

To hear Mugabe blubbering on and on about ESAP one would be forgiven to think IMF and WB had force Zimbabwe to accept the programs at gun-point. It was an excuse for not servicing the country's mountain of debt. The IMF hit back by turning off all financial assistance to Zimbabwe.

It is doubtful if the IMF would have ever agreed to this TSP's 2% tax on all electronic transactions clearly aimed at hitting the 75% of Zimbabweans living on US$1.00 or less a day! No doubt the regime will use the revenue to buy new cars for chefs, charter planes for Grace Mugabe, etc. The tax epitomises what is wrong with Zanu PF's warped economic reforms and policies; they all hit the poor hard to subsidize the extravagant lifestyles of the filthy rich ruling elite.

The IMF and WB are not going to bankroll this regime's doomed program and they have a good excuse - ZDERA. Minister Ncube is going to USA to see if he can talk the American government to lift the sanctions. The sanctions were confirmed following Zanu PF's failure to hold free, fair and credible elections. No one worth his/her salt can deny the elections were rigged.

Even if the American government was to lift the sanctions this will not guarantee the IMF and WB would want to bankroll this regime's voodoo economic policies and programs. There is the issue of clearing the US$2 billion debt charges which Minister Ncube says he will pad in the next 12 months. All from the same 2% tax on the poor because the regime is not going to attract any local and foreign investors. By rigging the elections the regime shot itself in the foot, it scarred away would-be investors. No one wants to invest in a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs.

People were very pleased with the appointment of Professor Mthuli Ncube as Minister of Finance, given his impressive qualification and wide-ranging experience. Sadly, it is now clear he has no common sense. None! He has already made two very important policy blunders he said Zimbabwe was phasing out Bond Notes and then that he would allow the Bond Notes to float. He made U-turns on both but when the damaged was already done!

But his worst blunder is dragging the nation through years of economic hardship in pursuit of this TSP when it is clear there will be a lot of pain but no gain because there will never be any meaningful economic recovery whilst Zimbabwe remains a pariah state!

Minister Ncube; what Zimbabwe needs to revive its comatose economy is cash injection from the foreign and local investors not the last cents wringed out of the poorest of the poor, the regime has milked to death already!

Zanu PF has dragged this nation into this hell-on-earth and yet remains in power regardless. It is bad enough that you are dragging us through this hell for nothing; please do not insult our intelligence by pretending you do not know that Zanu PF rigs elections and therefore is democratically untouchable! "Judge me in six months!" Yeah right, as if anyone has ever done that!On July 1, 2018, Vice President Chiwenga exhorted people at a rally in Hatcliffe to stop paying rates until the council improved services like refuse collection, water supply, and sewer reticulation.

While the Vice President was accused of political expedience, his wise advice presents the biggest challenge to all Zimbabweans of worthy to take care of their affairs. It has been three months since the VP said those wise words and the councils have not done anything to improve your services and no one has stopped paying rates.

This leaves me with a question: Why are we still paying rates to city councils? There is no running water in most Harare suburbs anywhere so even if the councils threaten to switch off the water, what does that matter? The water is not running anywhere.

People of Zimbabwe, the right behaviors, and the right reaction make all the difference. Growing up, I used to hear this slang that people who live in Harare were magen'a, meaning people from Harare were smart and people in rural areas mabharanzi, meaning us people from the rural areas were dumb. I wonder where the smartness is when varume vakuru nevakadzi vakuru vakachena everywhere are being manipulated by kombi and tucks hop people.

Why would people queue for bread honestly? And all the fuel queues are always along the highways. If you observe carefully, the fuel queues are not simultaneously in Mutare and Masvingo road; it is always one or the other. What are people missing? Can't you see this is stage-managed? Why are there no bread queues in Borowdale?

Magen'a take hid, importantly listen to the wise words of VP Chiwenga, stop being manipulated by mahwindi, stop making unnecessary queues, and don't buy from the streets or tuck shops. Let the businessmen keep their products and you and you keep your money, no amount of regulations will help you.Russia developing nuclear weapons that can target any city on the planet

Russia seems to be leaving no room for anyone to escape. News from the Russian Ministry of Defense reports that the country is test launching a missile that can hit a target anywhere on the planet with great accuracy.

The report comes via a video produced by the Russian government itself. It tells of the test launch of an RS-28 Sarmat missile, a thermonuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) designed to replace the SS-18 Satan missile that Russia developed way back in the Soviet period. The RS-28 carries enough liquid fuel to travel anywhere in the world.

Russia says the missile can carry up to 10 nuclear warheads, more than any other missile currently in operation. As it is, the RS-28 has enough power to decimate an area the size of Texas or France. Each missile carries an onboard flight control system that allows it to engage long-distance targets with multiple flight trajectories.

The missiles uniquely cross-functional combat platform allows the use of all types of individually targeted warheads, including ones which are still on the drawing board, said Russias Strategic Missile Forces Commander, Colonel General Sergei Karatayev. (Related: Russia set to test ballistic missile that could obliterate an area the size of France.)

The missile is just one among Russias ever-expanding arsenal of highly advanced weaponry. Another one of these is Avangard, a hypersonic glider that can travel as fast as 20 times the speed of sound. The U.S. military has admitted that it currently does not have the technology to stop the Avangard should an attack occur. Both Sarmat and the Avangard are slated to be ready by 2020.

The country is also expanding its might to the sea by building similarly high-tech naval armory. It is developing the Poseidon system, composed of an entire fleet of drone submarines. Each of these unmanned submarines is equipped with a nuclear-capable torpedo.

How to protect your home from nuclear fallout

Considering the ever-present threat of a nuclear attack, it is important that you are prepared for the worst at all times. According to experts, the average bomb can vaporize almost everything within a half-mile radius around the site of impact. If you are situated up to three miles away, you may end up uninjured from the blast, but then youll have to worry about the fallout.

Nuclear fallout is a rain of toxic radioactive material. It is so destructive that it is expected to kill more people than the actual blast. While some survival experts recommend driving away and putting as much distance between you and the impact site, you may not have the chance to do so. In this case, it is important to stay at home and take shelter from the toxic rain.

Needless to say, you will need to make the necessary preparations to fortify your home from the fallout. Seal off all windows, doors, and vents and add as much mass as possible by reinforcing these areas with sandbags. Close your chimney if you have one. If you have temperature control systems that require air from the outside, turn them off.

Assign a section of your home thats separate from where you and your family are. When people come in from outside, this area is where they can decontaminate. They will need to take off their clothes and shower immediately.

The basement will be the most secure part of your house in the event of a nuclear attack. If you dont have a basement, go to the central part of your house and put up as many barriers as you can. If this isnt possible, you can go to the part of your house thats the farthest away from prevailing winds.

See more stories on military technology at MilitaryTechnology.news.

Sources include:

LadBible.com

TheOrganicPrepper.comI thought it wasn't working for me until I started crying so fuck me I guess.

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I just finished watching this at work. Cried like a damn baby. Absolutely beautiful episode. One of the best episodes since Vincent and the Doctor.



Edited at 2018-10-21 10:30 pm (UTC)

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i stopped watching during some point when eleven was still around, never watched any of twelve, but i'm interested in watching now. would i be able to get back into the series and be fine?

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Yeah, it's a new doctor, new companions and a new showrunner so it feels like a wonderful fresh start. I ditched before Matt Smith had done two seasons and I'm absolutely loving it!



In response to the post, I loved this episode and I thought the moment with the companions discussing modern day racism was particularly powerful <3

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It's basically a soft reboot so you should be fine.

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Absolutely! It definitely feels like a soft reboot of the series, much needed by the way. I don't think you'd have any problems starting back up with this season.

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Yes! Theyve sort of made a clean slate, so everyone can jump in.

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I recommend in the future watching Twelve, Season 8 is a bit all over the place, but Season 9 and 10 were fantastic, a large part because of Peter Capaldi himself who was way to good for the show. The episode Heaven Sent has been critically regarded as one of the best (if not the best) episode of Doctor Who, and one of the best episodes of all television in general in a while. It's truly fantastic.



But yes, this is a soft reboot, in the same way Season 5 was, so you can watch from this season and not be lost whatsovever. And Jodie is BRILLIANT! You won't regret it

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Absolutely. And its worth it, the new companions are lovely and Jodie Whittaker is a joy to watch.

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I stopped watching at the same point as you, and have been loving the new series and Thirteen so far. Jump back in bb!

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Tbh, i dont think we have seen the last of his grandma.

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The actress that plays Grace/Ryan's Nan, Sharon D. Clarke, was listed as a recurring star this season, so I really do think we will be seeing her again in one or two more episodes

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Im actively mad about Grace. She was so memorable and so fantastic, I need more of her.



(They need to do more with Yaz too, imo.)

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Trust the best episode the show has ever delivered (according to all the people who texted me, and my mum) to be on the night I had to move in to hospital accomodation at my new 6 week placement 3 hours away, without tv or wifi!!!



Counting down the seconds to leeching library wifi tomorrow lunchtime to watch.

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How is this season? I really loved this show but Moffat's writing made me check out of it completely. I haven't watched since Clara was a leaf on the wind or whatever, and only caught only a couple of 12/Bill eps.

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I'm really liking this season so far! The visuals and cinematography are FANTASTIC, this definitely isn't 2005 cheesy CGI Doctor Who. It truly looks a like a typical BBC1 or Netflix drama, and I mean that in a good way.



It's not as whimsical as before, especially in Moffat's era, and really focuses more on the characterization echoing RTD era. I'm not the biggest fan of Chibnall's writing in Doctor Who to be honest, I don't know if he can handle the sci-fi aspect particularly well compared to Moffat, but he does write drama well. It feels a lot more grounded which I like, even though some of the writing is a bit too on the nose.



Jodie is WONDERFUL! Normally with Doctors it takes everyone a little bit to get used to them, but from the moment she appeared on the Screen she was the Doctor and you could not deny it. She is fantastic, as well as the companions. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season

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Thanks for the detailed review! LOL.

I think I will give this a chance. I low-key miss the cheesy early 00's who, but the one thing I will give Moffat-Who is that the cinematography was always on point, even when literally every other aspect of the show was suffering.

And tbh, what Who has been sorely lacking the last few seasons is grounded, character-driven writing. The "I am the Doctor, destroyer of worlds, most specialest being in the universe" mythologizing is pm what ruined the show to begin with.

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Does anyone have any links to the episode? I watched a BBC One Stream earlier today but it kept cutting out, and I refuse to watch on BBC America/Space lmaoo



But from what I'd seen, the episode was amazing all around. A lot of people are complaining about the song at the end, and how it's pop, but act as if pop music hasn't been used in Doctor Who when Murray Gold was on SEVERAL times, including in the end of Vincent and the Doctor.

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Besides Vincent and the Doctor, and that time the Master decimated the world population, i can't recall any other uses of pop songs.

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On the top of my head, along with those you mentioned Britney Spears' "Toxic" as well as "Tained Love" during End of the World back in season one, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division in the first episode of Season 10, Little Mix during season 10 in the Knock Knock episode, "Turn to Stone" and "Mr Blue Sky" by ELO in Love and Monsters, Supermassive Black Hole by Muse, "Feel the Love" by Rudimental.... I'm sure there's more too. Maybe people didn't like it, which is fine but I'm tired of people saying pop music shouldn't be in Doctor Who, or they don't like the new composer because of it when Murray Gold did it plenty of times.



I mean during the very First Doctor's period, they had the Beatles in there in the 60's.... Doctor Who isn't above it lmaoo

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I haven't watched this episode yet, but I'm so glad to hear so many good things about it. Doctor Who can be a mess, but I'll always respect when an episode can take a real historical figure and treat them with the type of dignity that they deserve.



I still love Vincent and the Doctor because they handled Van Gogh's situation with more respect than you ordinarily see in media outside of biopics. It may not have been the most accurate portrayal of him, but they didn't make jokes at his expense. It may not mean a lot to other people, but Vincent is a subject very close to my heart personally and it meant a lot to me. This episode could be that to a lot of other people, and I'm so glad it turned out well. I can't wait to watch it later tonight when I get home.

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ugh, people are trying to talk up Timeless in the tweets. so annoying.

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So everyone's saying this new season is great so far and the synopsis for this episode sounds awesome and makes me want to watch, but like... level with me, gang, how do they actual handle the regeneration? Do they switch to all female pronouns and the like? Because them equating sex and gender that way (like they did with the Master/Missy) is just messy and doesn't sit well with me at all. Is it at least handled better than that switch and is the rest of it good enough to make up for it?



Edited at 2018-10-21 11:26 pm (UTC)

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I've only watched the first two so far. It does look like they've just switched to female pronouns to a point, but there was a touch in the second episode where the Doctor instinctively identified as male before switching, and then sort of shrugging it off. I think they are following a more loose "I can be both, I can be neither" idea. Either way The Doctor is The Doctor. Which I don't mind.



It's NOT anywhere near as gross and heavy handed and weird as I found the Master/Missy situation. Where essentially the Master lost their entire personality and it was replaced with evil female tropes 101.

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others use female pronouns for 13 but 13 uses both and uses other typically male termsin reference to themselves sometimes as well as repeated confusion when others call her she or disiking being called miss

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this episode was incredible and ike tweets say im so glad they didnt take rosas story from her or have her be inspired by the doctor and co. it was all rosa and i loved it



THEY STILL NEED TO BRING BACK MY QUEEN AND GODDESS SHARON D CLARKE THO

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ugh i sobbed through it, especially the last ten minutes. chibnall you're doing amazing sweetie.

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ryan calling rosa parks and martin luther king jr by their full names was the cutest thing.

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Damn. I'm downloading this now then.

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LinkLibyas oil production could rise by several hundred thousand barrels daily when BP and Eni resume production at a shared field, the head of the countrys state oil company told Bloomberg.

Mustafa Sanalla said Libyas current oil production was more than 1 million bpd despite local security challenges adding that BP and Eni planned to restart their exploratory drilling operations at a field near the Libyan border with Tunisia in the first quarter of next year. They could then fast-track production, Sanalla said.

The two majors decision about Libya is an indication of a relative confidence in the ability of the local authorities to keep disruptions under control, it seems. After all, just last month armed gunmen attacked the headquarters of the National Oil Corporation, killing two and injuring 25 people. Later, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. Related: Chinas Oil Addiction Is Its Main Weakness As A Superpower

Separately, field, pipeline and export terminal blockades have turned Libya into one of the market swingers in oil: its regular production rate is high enough and so is the degree of uncertainty regarding outages that could affect OPECs total. In fact, Libyan production outages were among the reasons OPEC could not live up to its promise to raise combined oil production by 1 million bpd in response to buyers calls for reining in prices by boosting production.

Despite this uncertainty, NOC is holding talks with international oil companies that could result in increased investment and production in Libyas oil industry, if security across the country improves, Sanalla recently told S&P Global Platts. The country still has plans to raise its oil production to 2 million bpd and more by 2022, the official said. That would be higher than the production rate from before the civil war that resulted in the ousting of Muammar Gadaffi. Prior to the 2011 conflict, the Northern African country pumped some 1.6 million bpd.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), is not worried about Saudi Arabia retaliating with reduced oil supply in response to potential sanctions after the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Saudi Arabia admitted last week that Khashoggi is dead, but said that the reason was a quarrel and a brawl at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where the journalist was last seen entering on October 2.

Speaking to Reuters on Monday, IEAs Birol said, when asked about the oil market concerns over Saudi Arabia possibly retaliating in response to potential sanctions by the global powers over the killing of the journalist that There are many geopolitical, non-energy related issues, which could also have further impact on the oil markets.

Saudi ArabiaOPECs biggest producer and de facto leaderis unlikely to reduce oil production, Birol told Reuters, but asked for common sense amid geopolitical events that could affect the oil market.

Theres a strong challenge for the key producers to increase production and comfort the markets. I appeal to all the producers and consumers to have common sense in the very difficult months we are entering, Birol told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Japan. Related: Goldman Sachs: Oil Unlikely To Reach $100

Although Birol isnt worried about the Saudis cutting oil supply, he said that he was concerned about the market because of the crumbling oil production in Venezuela and falling supply from Iran, while demand growth is still strong.

In its Oil Market Report from October 12, the IEA welcomed OPECs efforts to boost supply. The Paris-based agency, however, noted that with Irans exports likely to fall by significantly more than the 800,000 bpd so far, and the ever-present threat of supply disruptions in Libya and a collapse in Venezuela, we cannot be complacent and the market is clearly signaling its concerns that more supply might be needed.

In an interview with Russian news agency TASS published on Monday, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said There is no intention when asked if there would be a repetition of the 1973 oil embargo amid the international outcry over the killing of the Saudi journalist.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:Saudi Arabia and Russia could formalize a strategic partnership that would last indefinitely, potentially marking a new era for the oil market.

In a wide-ranging interview with TASS, Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih said that he hopes to setup an official OPEC+ governing body, including a Secretariat, likely to be based in Vienna. The proposal could be finished by December.

To date, OPEC+ has been a somewhat informal group, or at least a provisional one, intended to address the supply glut that emerged following the 2014-2016 market bust.

This past June, the group all but declared mission accomplished, watering down the production targets by agreeing to a vague increase in collective production by 1 million barrels per day (mb/d). Without the urgent need to balance the market, the purpose of the OPEC+ agreement following the June meeting already started to become unclear.

Al-Falih wants to put together an official governing structure that would preside over oil market coordination going forward. [W]e want to sign a new cooperation agreement that is open-ended. That does not expire after 2020 or 2021. We will leave it open, al-Falih told TASS. He said that the purpose of OPEC+ would not be aimed at a fixed production target, but to coordinate production levels as they see fit.

But, of course, this has always been the mission of OPEC. The objective of establishing a permanent OPEC+ body raises the question of what is supposed to happen to OPEC. Al-Falih suggests that OPEC+ could work closely with OPEC. It seems confusing, since all of the OPEC members are in OPEC+, while OPEC+ contains a bunch of additional countries. How will these two bodies interact and to what degree will they overlap? That much remains unclear.

The one certainty is that there is somewhat of a changing of the guard, with OPEC giving way to a governing structure dominated by just two countries. Saudi Arabia seems keen on forgoing the struggle of working with more than a dozen countries to build consensus, preferring a co-presidency of sorts with Russia.

I think, Russia will have to take the leadership, al-Falih said when asked about who will be the driving force behind establishing a formalized OPEC+ Secretariat. Russia is a heavy weight both in terms of production and in terms of political influence. So Russias leadership for OPEC+ is indisputable. Thats why I expect Russia would play a key role. Related: The Biggest Winners In The Mediterranean Energy War

The rest of OPEC, or OPEC+ for that matter, no longer carries the weight they once did. Several OPEC members suffer from instability and volatile production levels, some are presiding over declining output. Aside from Kuwait and the UAE, no one else has the ability to add or subtract supply from the market based on strategic or political calculations. Just about every other member is trying to produce as much as possible.

Al-Falih even alluded to the fact that most of the power to manipulate oil market conditions is concentrated in Saudi Arabia and Russia. He said the new OPEC+ would still nominally adhere to the one country, one voice philosophy, but he also seemed to suggest that the groups two largest producers would really be in charge. Yes, we ultimately want everybody to be on board. But my experience is that countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia with bigger scale and bigger impact ultimately carry more weight, al-Falih said. Because people know that if we agree to cut five percent, as we did, our volumes are hugeSo when we sit around the table, our voice carries more weight. He even suggested that formal voting would not really be the focus, but convincing other members.

Translation: Saudi Arabia and Russia will set the agenda, and the rest of OPEC+ will follow their lead.

So, what does OPEC+ have in store for the next few months? In the near-term, even as many in the oil market are concerned about supply shortages as Iranian production goes offline, al-Falih had his eye on demand risks. He noted that the strong dollar combined with currency weakness in emerging markets could curtail demand. A global economic slowdown more generally could slow consumption. He also was concerned about declines and outages in several OPEC and non-OPEC countries, including Venezuela, Iran, Mexico, Libya and Nigeria, which would require action from Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, the rate of growth from U.S. shale is still up in the air. Related: Chinas Oil Addiction Is Its Main Weakness As A Superpower

With so many mixed signals, the trajectory of the oil market is not clear. So, al-Falih wants to take a wait-and-see approach. In fact, an internal OPEC report suggests the group is worried about a seasonal lull this winter. As refineries enter maintenance periods, crude demand could soften, which could lead to increases in inventories. The buildup, amid the upward trend in US crude oil production, could be a bearish factor for oil prices in the coming few weeks, the OPEC report said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

[I]f supply is too long, we should be able to cut. If supply is short, we have to be able to respond. We would like to do it in a coordinated way. We do not want to confuse the market and surprise the market, he told TASS.

Another question that is concerning the market is the true extent of global spare capacity. Al-Falih said that Saudi Arabia has 1.3 mb/d of spare capacity, assuming current production levels of 10.7 mb/d. Saudi Arabia has never demonstrated sustained production about 10.6 mb/d, so the ability to produce up to 12 mb/d is still unproven.

I can say that we can go up, if necessary, to 12 mln bpd. This I can assure, al-Falih said.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:Supermajors have had a great year so far, and their third-quarter results, to be released over the next couple of weeks, are likely to strengthen this impression. But this does not necessarily mean that investors will reward them. Investors have become a lot more careful in the past few years, and chances are they will want to see more proof of post-crisis flexibility and strict cost discipline before stock prices reflect an increase in trust.

On the face of it, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and their likes have everything going for them: oil prices are higher, free cash flow is coming in at higher rates, and there have even been a few discoveries, most notable among them Exxons 4-billion-barrel elephant off the coast of Guyana. But Big Oil still needs to be cautious.

In a recent article for 24/7 Wall Street, its senior editor Paul Ausick noted the heightened prospects of even higher oil prices after a Reuters report revealed that OPEC has been having trouble lifting production by the promised 1 million bpd. From May to September, the cartels combined production plus Russias had fallen well short of that figure because of production declines in Venezuela, Iran, and Angola, among others. These, the internal OPEC document that Reuters saw, offset some substantial output hikes from Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait.

What this means is that there seems to be less spare capacity than optimists believed. This, in turn, means prices are likely to climb further, despite a fresh assurance from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that traders have already factored in the U.S. sanctions against Iran. Mnuchins warning that Washington will insist on importers cutting Iranian crude imports by more than 20 percent most certainly has not helped rein in prices, though its effect has yet to be fully acknowledged.



Related: BP CEO: $80 Oil Is Unhealthy For The World

For Exxon, Shell, and Chevron, as well as the rest of the Big Oil club, higher prices are not something to be too happy about. There are already warnings from economists that Brent at US$80 has dampened demand from some major consumers including India. If the international benchmark adds another few dollars, the impact on demand will be more severe, and any negative price impact on oil demand will affect the supermajors. In other words, oil prices, which boosted the industrys earnings in the first half of the year and is more likely than not to continue boosting them in the third quarter, could push these lower if they rise enough.

Another thing investors are watching, Ausick noted in his review of Exxon and Chevrons expected performance, is cost control. This is still big on the agenda of investors - even if Big Oil itself is slowly slipping back into the deep rut of the cycle: spending big when prices are high and cutting costs when prices drop. For now, this return to the industry norm has been very gradualoil stocks have been underperforming oil prices consistently and companies are wary of scaring investors offbut if prices continue to be strong, risk appetite is bound to increase for both investors and companies.

Big Oil, in other words, is being tested in a context of super volatility in prices brought about by uncomfortable uncertainties surrounding the worlds spare oil production capacity and demand prospects in emerging economies where growth is slowing down. Third-quarter figures might provide some indication as to how things stood at the end of September, but the situation is so dynamic right now they might tell us nothing about the next three months.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:There is no intention in Saudi Arabia of imposing a 1973-style oil embargo on the West, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told TASS in an interview in response to a question citing predictions that the Kingdom may cut its supply of crude for global markets by half a million barrels daily because of the tensions that arose following the disappearance and death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Our government through political channels is addressing this issue. But Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics. So lets hope that the world would deal with the political crisis, including the one with Saudi citizen in Turkey, with wisdom, Falih told TASS.

Khashoggis disappearance and the subsequent statement from Riyadh that he had indeed died at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul pitted the two allies, the United States and Saudi Arabia against each other, with several U.S. lawmakers insisting on penalties against Riyadh. Earlier this month some called for sanctions against Saudi Arabia, which prompted a response along the same lines, with an unnamed government official from Riyadh telling Saudi media that they will respond to any sanctions with bigger measures.

Naturally, everyones first thought in this context would be of the 1973 Arab oil embargo that followed Israels victory in yet another war and that unveiled the Wests heavy dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

As for the worry around global supply, after an internal OPEC document seen by Reuters revealed the cartel is finding it hard to boost production quickly enough, Falih said Saudi Arabia will soon hit the 11 million bpd mark and could raise it further to 12 million bpd, but that would be the maximum. We have relatively limited spare capacities and we are using a significant part of them, the official said.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:For decades, the U.S. was so reliant on foreign crude oil imports that it dictated much of the countrys foreign policy spanning numerous presidential administrations. As far back as the 1970s, especially after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo that threatened economic survival, foreign policy decisions became increasingly subservient to OPEC, and mostly Saudi oil imports. This dynamic can still be felt currently as yet another president, this time Donald Trump, juggles another Middle Eastern geopolitical dilemma with no easy answers over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi likely at the hands of Saudi agents inside Turkey.

Now, however, the U.S. has positioned itself among the top three global oil producers, and it has also removed the vulnerability that saw the U.S. embroiled in several middle eastern conflicts. Additionally, it still has the U.S. Navys 5th fleet guarding oil exports leaving the Middle Eastern region, including the volatile and strategic strait of Hormuz.

While the U.S. still has to figure out its game plan going forward amid a record 11 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil production, and the increasingly complex relationship with long term key ally Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, China is now also finding itself in an increasingly vulnerable spot as it relies more on both foreign crude oil and natural gas imports to fund its growing economy.

Gas thirst

Just the numbers coming out of China should be cause for concern for Beijing energy planners. First, Chinas gas consumption in 2017 soared to new record highs, reaching 235.2 billion cubic meters (bcm), marking an increase of 17 percent or 34 bcm from the previous year. However, the real story has been Chinas LNG demand spikes. China bypassed South Korea last year to become the worlds second largest LNG importer, after Japan, while Chinas LNG demand increased by more than 50 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year to around 38 million tonnes. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) said earlier this year that China will become the worlds top overall imports of natural gas sometime in 2019.

In its Gas 2018 annual report, the IEA said Chinese demand for natural gas will rise by almost 60 percent between 2017 and 2023 to 376 bcm, including a rise in its LNG imports to 93 bcm by 2023 from 51 bcm in 2017. Last week, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie said that China already accounts for 50 percent of overall growth in global LNG demand.

Oil majors, particularly forward-thinking Royal Dutch Shell, the worlds largest LNG producing company, are going long again on projected LNG demand and China's gas thirst. As a consequence of that growing demand, Wood Mackenzie now predicts 2019 will see a record number of final investment decisions on new LNG projects in Russia, the U.S., Qatar and Mozambique. Related: Leaked Document: OPEC+ Struggling To Lift Oil Production

Chinas LNG demand will also shorten the ongoing supply overhang in LNG markets by several years from a previously predicted time frame of 2022-2023. Moreover, China's gas demand has also seen it blink in the fact of ongoing trade tensions with Washington as it lowered a possible LNG tariff to 10 percent from as high as an initial 25 percent.

Oil addiction

Even as Chinas growing dependency on imported gas continues, both in the form of LNG and pipeline gas, its oil thirst is even more problematic. In 2017, China's apparent oil demand rose 5.5 percent year on year to 11.77 million bpd. So far this year, in-spite of a bitter trade war with the U.S. and other economic headwinds, refinery throughput in China, the world's largest oil importer, increased in September to a record 12.49 million bpd, government data showed earlier this month. A CNBC report said that the refinery throughput data feeds hopes about oil demand in China, even though economic growth slowed in the third quarter to its weakest since the global financial crisis.

While ongoing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing could dent Chinese oil demand in the short term, long term demand will nonetheless continue to grow in lock step with the countrys economic growth, projected above 6 percent per annum for the next several years. And, its this very economic growth that will see China increasingly reliant on crude oil imports from friend and foe alike, including greater reliance on lighter sweet crude imports from U.S. shale producers once ongoing trade tensions recede. Related: China Cant Get Enough Of The Worlds Cheapest Crude

The correlation between foreign oil dependency and national security will be one of Beijings greatest and most complex issues as the next decade approaches. It will increasingly dictate the governments foreign policy decisions as it juggles both its own hegemony goals in the Asia-Pacific, extending to Africa and beyond.

Lessons from U.S. oil dependency

Just since the late 1970s, U.S. oil dependency dedicated American foreign policy, ranging from Washingtons response to the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s, American support of Baghdad in the Iran-Iraq war for most of the 1980s, Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent two Gulf Wars, while financing the second Gulf War is in large part to blame for the countrys now massive national debt.

Though Beijing will likely not be as heavily involved in geopolitical affairs as the U.S., it will nonetheless find itself hampered by its own oil needs, while its rapidly growing blue ocean navy may one day also be called on to defend global shipping lanes just as the U.S. has done for decades.

Several years ago Washington think-tank the Brookings Institute said that amidst the many uncertainties looming over Chinas future political and economic circumstances, one thing is evident: whatever the pace of economic development may be, China must address its rapidly growing demand for natural energy and resources. Oil will be at the top of this list.

By Tim Daiss for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:The Ethiopian government has reached a peace deal with a rebel group active in a gas-rich region that the authorities had classified as a terrorist organization, Reuters reports, citing government officials.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front sought the secession of the Somali Region, or Ogaden, in the eastern part of the country, but it has apparently come to an agreement with the government to drop this plan. After a number of armed clashes, earlier this year the Ethiopian government changed tack and tried the peaceful approach, which seems to have worked. ONLF declared ceasefire two months ago.

The region that ONLF wanted to secede contains oil and gas resources estimated at about four trillion cu ft combined, according to the Ethiopian government. A Chinese company, China Poly Group, has been producing gas in the region since 2013 and earlier this year began pumping oil from a field in Ogaden. At the time, Bloomberg reported, the Ethiopian government had estimated the initial income from the project at US$1.2 billion annually.

Bloomberg also cited government estimates that put the Ogaden oil and gas reserves at double the figure reported by Reuters: 8 trillion cu ft. The annual income from the exploitation of these reserves could reach US$7 billion at peak capacity, Ethiopias Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, told local media in June.

Ethiopia is the fastest-growing economy in Africa, and the current government, which came into office this April, has big plans including the dissolution of state monopolies in aerospace and telecoms. Developing its nascent oil and gas industry is also a priority for the new cabinet, and the peace deal with ONFL is doubtless part of efforts to address this priority. Another part of these efforts is a plan for a natural gas pipeline from landlocked Ogaden to the Red Sea coast of neighboring Djibouti. Exports via this pipeline are slated to start in 2021.



By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned this weekend that countries importing Iranian crude that want to continue importing it will need to reduce their intake of Iranian crude by more than 20 percent to win a sanction waiver. In an interview with Reuters, Mnuchin also said Oil prices have already gone up, so my expectation is that the oil market has anticipated whats going on in the reductions. I believe the information is already reflected in the price of oil.

The 20-percent reference number is the reduction in Iranian oil imports that the Obama administration required in the previous round of sanctions to provide waivers. Mnuchin did not say exactly how deep the cuts would need to be now, saying only that he would expect that if we do give waivers it will be significantly larger reductions.

The official also said he was confident of the success of the zero-import policy pursued by the Trump administration. I dont expect we will get to zero in November but I do expect we will eventually get to zero, he told Reuters. There have been already very significant reductions in advance of this date.

Japan and South Korea are the two countries that stopped importing Iranian crude ahead of the sanctions, which enter into effect in two weeks. Yet China, at the same time, has taken in a lot more than usual, part of it probably shipped to the Dalian port for storage.

In its push against Iran, Washington has also turned to SWIFT, the cross-border transaction settlement service. Mnuchin said that the United States is in negotiations with the company to cut Iran out of its network. Washington tried to get SWIFT to cut out Tehran back in 2012 as well.

I can assure you our objective is to make sure that sanctioned transactions do not occur whether its through SWIFT or any other mechanism. Our focus is to make sure that the sanctions are enforced, Mnuchin said.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:The United States warned Russia to not even consider helping Iran to evade the U.S. sanctions on Tehrans oil, a senior U.S. Administration official told the Financial Times.

Iran might be pushing the idea of Russia selling their oil on the world market to evade sanctions, FT quoted on Sunday the senior official as saying.

I would discourage Russia from even considering this. It would be in Russias best interests not to facilitate Iranian evasion of US sanctions, the official noted.

Russia and Iran reportedly agreed last month to a deal allowing Iran to evade the U.S. sanctions on Tehrans oil exports, Israels Hadashot TV news reported earlier this month, citing a document by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as warning.

According to the secret Israeli document, carried by Hadashot TV and later reported by The Times of Israel, at an Iran-Russia-Turkey summit in Tehran in Septemberhosted by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and attended by Russias President Vladimir PutinIran and Russia cut a deal, under which Iran would export crude oil to Russia via the Caspian Sea, Russia would refine the oil in its refineries, and then export the products worldwide.

In return for the crude oil supplies from Iran, Russia would provide unspecified trade and service benefits to Tehran, according to the Israeli document, which makes clear that the purpose of this deal is to help Iran to evade the U.S. sanctions on its petroleum industry that will snap back in early November.

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in an interview with Reuters over the weekend that it would be more difficult for Iranian oil customers to get waivers from the sanctions than it was during the Obama administration.

I dont expect we will get to zero in November but I do expect we will eventually get to zero, Mnuchin said of the U.S. Administrations efforts to bring Iranian exports down to zero.

There have been already very significant reductions in advance of this date, Mnuchin told Reuters.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan on Monday became the most senior Beijing official to visit Israel in 18 years, as the two countries look to bolster their growing business ties. Wang headed to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of the most sacred sites in Judaism, after touching down at the start of his four-day trip, Israel's foreign ministry said. The visit to the Jewish state is the highest-level Chinese arrival since then president Jiang Zemin came in 2000, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Wang was set to meet Netanyahu, who visited Beijing last year, later on Monday and will also host a meeting of a joint innovation commission with the Israeli leader. The Chinese official is due to travel to Ramallah on Tuesday to hold talks with Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah, according to the official programme. China and Israel, a firm US ally, have stepped up trade and business ties in recent in years and launched free trade talks. Chinese firms have made major inroads in Israel, including the takeover of local food giant Tnuva in 2014 and deals to manage the key Haifa and Ashdod ports. But the growing Chinese involvement has also sparked scepticism, with a former intelligence head warning of dangers from Beijing's involvement in sectors vital to Israel's security. Israeli media reported that these concerns led to the finance ministry rejecting attempts by Chinese firms to take over two of the country's major pension funds.CEBU Archbishop Jose Palma has urged the faithful to pray for the blessings they received in 2018 and for President Rodrigo Duterte.He appealed to the public not to cheer on the chief executives unflattering

THE steady influx of Chinese visitors and investors to the Philippines bodes well for the countrys real estate industry.

David Leechiu, chief executive officer of Leechiu Property Consultants, said the 1.4 billion Chinese market will play a significant role in the expected rise in the property market across all segments.

The Philippines is in a tremendous beginning of what could be another 15- to 20-year boom, not just in the economy, but specifically in real estate if China comes into play, which we should all be excited about, said Leechiu at a BPI press briefing yesterday.

He said that when China enters the market in a meaningful way, it will bring the countrys property market to 20 years of boom, as it has done in Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Real estate players in Cebu have already reported high buying of real estate products from Chinese buyers.

Real estate service provider Santos Knight Frank identified China as one of the top markets that purchased bulk condominium units.

Listed company Cebu Holdings Inc. (CHI) said it expects heightened buying of condominium units among foreign buyers, particularly from the Chinese market.

CHI president Aniceto Bisnar Jr. noted an increase in buying activity from foreign buyers, such as Chinese for both office leases and residential condo projects, which were previously marketed to overseas Filipino workers.

The Chinese market is supporting the growth of the real estate industry, he said.

Chinese buyers now account for majority of sales among foreigners, said Ayala Land Inc. (ALI), in its previous disclosure. CHI is an affiliate company of ALI.

Another developer, HT Land Inc., the company behind Mandani Bay, also reported a growing number of investors from mainland China buying residential condominium units.

We saw Chinese buyers from mainland China for our phase 1 project. I believe that the warming ties between our country and theirs has translated into buying of real estate products here. For the Chinese, our condominium units are so cheap for them, said Mandani Bay project director Gilbert Ang.

Story continues

Cebus average residential price is at US$1,997 per square meter, according to Colliers International Philippines.

Chinas average residential price is at $8,186.

Aside from buying real estate properties in the Philippines, Chinese investors are also eyeing possible acquisition or joint venture deals with local property players.

Colliers International Philippines research manager Joey Roi Bondoc said Chinese investors do not only acquire properties but at the same time explore potential partnerships to ride the countrys growth momentum.

They are eyeing all properties from hotel, mall, commercial office, residential developments, said Bondoc, adding that such high interest to pour in money in the country was a result of the warming ties between China and the Philippines.Fiat Chrysler said Monday it was selling its Italian auto parts unit Magneti Marelli to Japan's Calsonic Kansei (CK) in a deal worth 6.2 billion euros. It said the merged company will rank in the top 10 auto parts suppliers globally with annual sales of 15.2 billion euros ($17.6 billion). There will be a multi-year supply agreement with Fiat Chrysler. This agreement will underscore "the combined entity's commitment to maintain Magnetti Marelli's operations in Italy and sustain its industrial footprint and employment levels," a joint statement said. The deal should be closed in the first half of 2019, it added. CK is controlled by US investment house KKR. Fiat Chrysler said earlier this year that it planned to hive off its auto parts unit. Mike Manley, the new head of Fiat Chrysler, said the deal will boost growth at Magneti Marelli which will remain one of the group's most important business partners. Unions welcomed the deal. "It is a great opportunity for growth," said Fim-Cisl's Marco Bentivogli. "The guarantee on all current employment in our country is important," he added. Magneti Marelli, founded in 1919, employs some 43,000 people and operates in 21 countries. Sales last year came to 8.2 billion euros.Thousands of Honduran migrants heading to the United States -- a caravan President Donald Trump has called an "assault on our country" -- stopped to rest Tuesday after walking for two days into Mexican territory. Sleeping on cardboard boxes or plastic bags, the migrants set up a massive, impromptu camp in the southern town of Huixtla, 70 kilometers (45 miles) from the Mexico-Guatemala border. Many nursed bleeding feet mangled by 10 days of walking nearly 800 kilometers in plastic shoes or flip-flops. "They're exhausted," said migrant rights activist Rodrigo Abeja, of the group Pueblos Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders), which is accompanying the caravan. "They're going to rest here today and tonight," and then continue their journey north, he told AFP. More than 7,000 people have now joined the caravan, according to the United Nations, including some Central Americans who were already in Mexico. Many of the migrants are fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence. - Politically loaded - The caravan has become a politically loaded issue, with only two weeks to go before the United States votes in key midterm elections. Trump has taken to attacking it regularly -- both on Twitter and on the campaign trail -- firing up his conservative base with the anti-immigration rhetoric that helped get him elected in 2016. On Monday, he said the US would start cutting aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador for failing to stop the migrants, called the caravan a national emergency and alleged it was infiltrated by "Middle Easterners" and members of the ultra-violent gang MS-13. Adding to the political tempest, Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday that according to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, the caravan "was organized by leftist groups in Honduras financed by Venezuela and sent north to challenge our sovereignty." US Customs and Border Protection meanwhile said it had apprehended a record 16,658 people who arrived in the country illegally in families last month, up 900 from August and nearly 12,000 from September 2017. A senior administration official called the surge a "crisis." Mexico vowed not to bow to outside pressure to halt the caravan. But activists accused the country of violating the migrants' rights by detaining anyone who tried to apply for asylum. Mexican authorities said they had registered 1,699 asylum applications from caravan travelers who opted to enter the country legally. Another 495 migrants have voluntarily asked to be returned to Honduras, they said. - Swelling numbers - Late Monday, Mexico allowed about 400 migrants to enter the country after they spent days packed onto a bridge over the Suchiate River, which forms Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. The caravan had stormed through a series of border barriers Friday and flooded onto the bridge, but hundreds of Mexican riot police blocked their passage. Most of the migrants then swam or took rafts across the river, but one group had remained camped out on the bridge. Another group of about 1,000 Hondurans meanwhile started a separate march Sunday across Guatemala, headed for Mexico and then the United States. - Dangerous journey - Migrants in the main caravan -- which set out on October 13 from San Pedro Sula, Honduras -- have been traveling on foot or hitching rides on passing cars and trucks, often crowding onto them precariously. Two migrants have been killed when they fell off vehicles that let them hitch a ride, according to authorities in Mexico and Guatemala. Caravan members also face the threat of being robbed, kidnapped or killed by Mexican gangs that extort migrants on their journey. - Caravan of children - Humanitarian organizations estimate that one-fourth of the caravan's members are children, a representative of Save the Children told AFP. Guadalupe Del Carmen, 29, who is traveling with her nine-year-old son, recounted the difficulty of the journey -- such as the moment her son started to cry, "Mommy, I don't want to do this anymore" while crossing the Suchiate River on a raft made of inner tubes. "He wanted to go back to Honduras. But I explained we can't go back, that the situation in our country is too difficult and that's why we had to run away," she said quietly. With a homicide rate of 43 per 100,000 citizens, Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world. burs-jhb/watCEBU Archbishop Jose Palma has urged the faithful to pray for the blessings they received in 2018 and for President Rodrigo Duterte.He appealed to the public not to cheer on the chief executives unflattering

PHILIPPINE National Police Chief Oscar Albayalde said Monday, October 22, that they have not seen an overflow of illegal drugs in Metro Manila as claimed by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Director Aaron Aquino.

As of this time, wala nga kaming nakikita na talagang overflowing yung supply of shabu lalo na dito sa Metro Manila. What we see is the normal supply pang araw-araw, he said.

(As of this time, we have not seen an overflowing supply of shabu in Metro Manila. What we see is the normal supply every day.)

Earlier, Aquino said prices of shabu on the streets went down from at least P6,000 per gram from July to P1,400 as of October.

He said it was due to the one ton of illegal drugs contained in the magnetic lifters that allegedly slipped past the Bureau of Customs and were discovered in a warehouse in GMA Cavite on August.

Although the said magnetic lifters were found empty, Aquino suspected that they also contained illegal drugs worth P6.8 billion, as PDEA also intercepted such item at the Manila International Container Port with at least P4.3 billion worth of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu).

He said such report is still being validated and once confirmed, Albayalde said there is nothing else they can do but to double their effort to curb the continuous problem on illegal drugs.

If PDEA will be able to substantiate their allegation, then okay, walang problema sa amin yan, but kami as of this time, wala kaming nakikitang ganun (...there's no problem with it, but as of this time, we have not seen it). So we cannot connect on what they are saying actually. Let them substantiate their statements, said Albayalde.

Basta on our part, we will double time our effort kung pwedeng marecover lahat yung tone-toneladang sinasabing nakalusot yan (We will double our effort to recover those tons of drugs). If we have to triple time our effort, we will do it, he added. (SunStar Philippines)Credit: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Monika Aidelsburger uses a special type of optical lattice to simulate quantum many-body phenomena that are otherwise inaccessible to experimental exploration. She has now been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to pursue this work.

Over the past decade, researchers led by Professor Immanuel Bloch, who holds a Chair in Experimental Physics at LMU, have developed several techniques and strategies to probe the secrets of the quantum world. Much progress has been made, but many phenomena of interest remain unexplored, and theoretical schemes are often difficult to test. Bloch's team is primarily interested in quantum interactions that can be modelled using ultracold gases trapped in optical lattices formed by laser beams. Dr. Monika Aidelsburger, leader of a research group in Bloch's department, has now been awarded a highly endowed Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) to extend this line of work. Her aim is to use ultracold ytterbium atoms trapped in optical lattices to simulate models of quantum behavior in condensed matter on a scale that is three orders of magnitude larger than in real solids.

Indeed, Aidelsburger, who is also part of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, hopes to take this strategy further, and use it to simulate 'lattice gauge theories', which describe fundamental interactions between particles in terms of 'gauge fields'. In these models, matter fields (substance particles) are depicted as points on a fictitious lattice, and the force fields that act on them are represented by the links between these nodes. Lattice gauge theories are of fundamental significance in many branches of quantum physics. Not only do they form the basis for the Standard Model of particle physics, they can also be applied to the physics that underlies the behavior of strongly interacting electrons in solids, and can account for important phenomena in quantum electrodynamics. Therefore, Aidelsburger's experimental approach to simulating lattice gauge theories in optical lattices would provide a link between classical and quantum physics, and allow analogous simulations of phenomena observed in settings other than solid-state physics. Aidelsburger's research has so far focused on simulating the effects of magnetic fields. "This is because magnetic fields too can be described in terms of gauge fields," she explains. Physicists hope to extend these ideas and apply them to other quantum many-body phenomena that have remained largely inaccessible.

Two long-lived states

The experimental platform is currently being designed and soon the optical tables in Aidelsburger's laboratory will be arrayed with carefully positioned lenses and mirrors, lasers and optical fibers. Controlled manipulations of ultracold atoms in optical lattices have already been successfully used to probe and simulate quantum phenomena that have been observed in condensed-matter systems. These experiments were carried out under conditions in which the atoms can 'tunnel' between lattice sites, although their collective motions are influenced by the global parameters of the lattices. Extension of the strategy to lattice gauge theories will require site-specific control over the motions of the atoms in the lattice.

Setting up such an experiment is extremely demanding, because the symmetries inherent to gauge theories must be precisely reproduced. "A successful implementation necessitates the use of completely new approaches," says Aidelsburger. "This carries a high risk, but having a working quantum simulator of such a model would constitute a tremendous advance." Bloch's team has learned a lot about how to keep quantum gases at temperatures only a smidgen above absolute zero, generate and manipulate optical lattices and control the motions of atoms of various elements such as rubidium, sodium and lithium, to name only a few. Aidelsburger's experiments will use yterrbium (Yb) atoms, because they exhibit two long-lived quantum states, which make them particularly useful for the planned simulations. Strongly focused laser beams will be employed to site- specifically control the motions of the atoms within the lattice. In the simulation, the two atomic states will play both the roles of the matter particles and the particles that mediate the forces that act upon them.

It is technically feasible to couple the motion of the two long-lived states of Yb atoms in the lattice. "This local coupling allows us for the first time to experimentally represent the fundamental building blocks of simple lattice gauge theories in an experimental setting," says Aidelsburger. Moreover, the technique can be straightforwardly extended to larger lattice structures and higher dimensions. This would allow researchers to simulate lattice gauge theories that play an important role in both condensed-matter physics and quantum electrodynamics using tractable experimental procedures. That would be a truly ground-breaking achievement. "Our strategy opens up entirely new experimental opportunities to explore certain phenomena and develop ideas for new theories," says Aidelsburger.

The fine adjustments

The prospect of being able to work for the next few years in Immanuel Bloch's department as a tenure-track professor was one reason why she decided to return to Munich after her spell as a postdoc at the College de France in Paris. "Young researchers need such longer-term perspectives," she says, "especially if they wish to carry out such a complex and demanding experimental task." The design and construction of a new system can take up to three years. One begins with simple models, and asks whether their simulation produces results that agree with those obtained with theory, or are compatible with predictions derived using well established numerical methods, such as Monte Carlo simulations. These tests serve as a calibration scale for experiments  and allow researchers to adjust conditions appropriately and gradually increase the level of complexity of the experiments. In addition, the experimental systems must be constantly checked to ensure that they provide a correct description of the phenomena they set out to describe. "This is where close collaboration with theorists in other fields is especially important," says Aidelsburger. "The risks involved are considerable, as this is largely unknown territory for us all. We have to bring very different areas of physics together. It is my fervent hope that the initial experiments with simple models will yield results that find an echo in diverse disciplines."

In the simplest models, the Yb atoms can adopt either of two defined states, the ground state and a single metastable excited state. The aim is to progressively add further states to the system, allowing more complex interactions to be implemented. This would be an important step toward the ultimate goal of using ultracold atoms to simulate the strong nuclear force  the interaction between quarks (the fundamental constituents of atomic nuclei) and gluons (the force particles that hold atomic nuclei together). The latter task will require the implementation of far more complex lattice gauge theories.

Individual cells in two-dimensional optical lattices consisting of 100  100 atoms can now be addressed and their occupancies controlled, allowing dynamical effects to be observed in detail. Thus, it is possible to determine whether or not a particular lattice cell is occupied under specific conditions, and the state of every atom in the lattice can be probed practically in real time. With these achievements under their belts, physicists are well on the way to realizing the idea of a quantum simulator that the famous American physicist Richard Feynman formulated in the 1980s. "We hope that our set-up will pave the way to experimentally investigate fundamental issues in quantum chromodynamics," says Aidelsburger  before adding an emphatic qualifier: "But we are still at the very beginning."

Explore further Physicists realize exotic quantum system robust to mixing by periodic forcesArtist impression of BepiColombo in front of Mercury. Credit: German Aerospace Center (DLR)

The European-Japanese planetary mission BepiColombo lifted off from the European spaceport in French Guiana at 03:45 Central European Summer time on 20 October 2018 (22:45 on 19 October local time), on board an Ariane 5 launch vehicle. "Not only is the mission designed to investigate the planet Mercury, it will also deliver new insights into the Solar System," explains Walther Pelzer, Executive Board Member for the Space Administration at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). "Once again, by rising to this immense challenge, Japan is proving to be a dependable aerospace partner for Europe." The spacecraft's cosmic journey through the inner Solar System will last approximately seven years.

Two spacecraft will investigate Mercury together

BepiColombo is the most comprehensive European project to explore a planet in the Solar System to date. The mission consists of two orbiters that will circle Mercury  the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). While MPO is designed to investigate the surface and composition of the planet, MMO will analyse its magnetosphere. Other mission objectives include investigating the solar wind, the inner structure and the planetary environment of Mercury, as well as its interaction with the environment nearest to the Sun. The scientists hope that this will also deliver new insights into the formation of the Solar System.

During the voyage, both orbiters will travel on board the Mercury Composite Spacecraft (MCS), which will supply them with power and, thanks to a special shield  the MMO Sunshield and Interface Structure (MOSIF)  protect them from the extreme temperatures that vary between 430 degrees Celsius on the planet's day side and minus 180 degrees Celsius on the night side.

BepiColombo at the European spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana). Credit: German Aerospace Center (DLR)

MERTIS and BELA  Use of sensors under extreme conditions

Of the 16 instruments on board the two spacecraft, three were primarily developed in Germany: BELA (BepiColombo Laser Altimeter), MPO-MAG (MPO Magnetometer) and MERTIS (Mercury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer). MERTIS is an infrared imaging spectrometer and radiometer with two radiation sensors that will operate in the wavelength region of seven to 40 micrometres. Once in orbit, MERTIS will study the surface and interior of Mercury aboard MPO. With a spatial resolution of 500 metres, it will identify rock-forming minerals on the surface in the mid-infrared range.

Knowledge of the mineralogical composition allows scientists to make statements about the evolution of the planet. In addition, an integrated micro-radiometer will provide data on the surface temperature and thermal conductivity of Mercury. Thanks to an innovative instrument concept, MERTIS is extremely compact and energy-efficient. "Both MERTIS sensors are unique," says the DLR experiment manager Jorn Helbert and adds: "The imaging channel uses a so-called uncooled microbolometer  the first to be space-qualified in Europe  using a sensor measuring only three by one millimetre, which was made from one piece of silicon and also serves as a slit for the spectrometer. These are just two of a number of innovative technologies developed specifically for this experiment." The team is headed by scientists from the University of Munster and the DLR Institute of Planetary Research. The experiment is managed by the DLR Institute of Optical Sensor Systems, which designed and developed MERTIS. The operation is carried out under the direction of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, while the scientific evaluation of the data is carried out with the University of Munster.

The BELA laser altimeter provides information about the global shape, rotation and topography of the planet closest to the Sun. Every second it sends 10 laser pulses towards Mercury and receives the signal reflected from the surface in a fraction of a second. The higher a landscape point is located, the shorter the time required for the laser pulse to travel to the surface and from there to BELA's sensor. From the duration of millions of laser pulses, a 3-D model of the entire surface of Mercury will emerge in the course of the mission. "In addition, we can use the shape of the reflected pulses to determine the surface roughness, which helps us better understand the physical and geological processes shaping the planet," explains Hauke Humann, scientific project manager of BELA. Sophisticated protective measurements and comprehensive heat and light protection prevent the instrument from overheating or radiation damage to occur due to the extreme temperatures on the planet. BELA was developed and built by DLR in collaboration with the University of Bern, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia and industry. The operation and scientific evaluation of the data takes place under the direction of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research.

The MPO-MAG experiment is a high-resolution digital magnetometer. As already discovered by the Mariner 10 probe, Mercury is surrounded by a magnetic field with a strength that corresponds to one percent of the Earth's magnetic field. In MPO-MAG, two sensors are used on one of the MPO's arms to investigate Mercury's magnetic field. One of the goals is also the exploration of the internal structure of Mercury. Karl-Heinz Glameier from the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics (IGEP) of the Technical University of Braunschweig is scientifically responsible.

False colour image of Mercury. Credit: German Aerospace Center (DLR)

The long journey through space

It will take BepiColombo approximately seven years to reach Mercury. During this time, the spacecraft will perform several swing-by manoeuvres past Earth and Venus and even six at Mercury itself before being directed into its final orbital trajectory at its destination planet. During these swing-by manoeuvres, the spacecraft uses the gravitational force of celestial bodies to gather momentum for its continued travel through space, or, and also, to decelerate. For an orbit to be achieved, the probe must not only greatly reduce its velocity at Mercury, but also counteract the Sun's enormous gravitational pull. MERTIS will already be performing measurements during the swing-bys of Earth and Venus. Once it has arrived at Mercury, BepiColombo will collect data for approximately one year.

Mercury  Our 'unknown' neighbour in the Solar System

Mercury is more than just the smallest planet. With a diameter of 4878 kilometres it is barely larger than the Moon. It is also the least researched of the Solar System's Earth-like planets in our solar system. Above all, this is due to the fact that it is the closest neighbour to the Sun, which blasts the surface with radiation six times higher than on Earth, causing temperatures to rise to as high as 430 degrees Celsius during the day, before cooling down to even minus 180 degrees Celsius at night. Only two spacecraft have visited Mercury in the past: NASA's Mariner 10 performed three fly-bys past Mercury in 1974 and 1975, while the NASA probe MESSENGER performed three fly-bys and circled our neighbour while approaching the northern hemisphere of our planetary neighbour on an exploratory mission between 2011 and 2015. BepiColombo will complement the Messenger mission perfectly, as the southern hemisphere can now be captured accurately as well. At the same time, completely new investigations will be carried out. No instruments on MESSENGER observed the planet in the mid-infrared range. Therefore, MERTIS will supply a completely new dataset.

Close European-Japanese cooperation

ESA is responsible for the overall mission, and the agency was also responsible for developing and building the Mercury Planetary Orbiter. The Japanese space agency JAXA contributed the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The German part of the BepiColombo mission was coordinated and largely financed by DLR Space Administration using funds provided by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). The two instruments BELA and MERTIS, which were largely developed by the DLR Institutes of Planetary Research and Optical Sensor Systems in Berlin-Adlershof, were essentially financed from means provided by DLR Research and Technology. The mission also received support from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Gottingen, the University of Munster and TU Braunschweig. A European industrial consortium led by the firm Airbus Defence and Space is contributing the industrial part of the spacecraft.

Explore further Video: BepiColombo mission to Mercury

Provided by German Aerospace Center (DLR)Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The water crisis in Flint is the most egregious example of environmental injustice in recent U.S. history, according to a founder of the movement who has studied the issue for three decades.

Paul Mohai, a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, began studying environmental justice in the late 1980s, just a few years after the movement began.

At U-M, Mohai and emeritus SEAS professor Bunyan Bryant organized the 1990 Michigan Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards, and they were part of an influential group of scholars that became known as the Michigan Coalition.

Since those early days, numerous studiesincluding several by Mohai and Bryanthave revealed a pattern across the country: Certain communities are disproportionately burdened by environmental contamination and health risks. Like Flint, those places tend to be locations where poor people and people of color are concentrated.

"They are also places where residents are not given meaningful say in the decisions that affect their communities and quality of life, where their concerns about pollution and the health impacts are minimized, discounted or dismissed, and where residents are treated disrespectfully and shown they have little influence or clout," Mohai writes in an article published Oct. 19 in the Michigan Sociological Review.

Flint fits that pattern, and the scale of what happened there "has made environmental justice a part of the American consciousness," he wrote.

"Given the magnitude of the disaster in Flint, the role that public officials' decisions played that led to the poisoning of the city's water, their slow pace at acknowledging and responding to the problem, and the fact that Flint is a city of almost 100,000 people indeed makes this the most egregious example of environmental injustice and racism in my over three decades of studying this issue."

Over the years, several definitions of environmental justice have been advanced, including one from the Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies, according to the EPA definition.

The Flint crisis began when a state-appointed emergency manager decided in June 2013 to switch Flint's water supply to the Flint River as a cost-cutting measure. When the switch was made in April 2014, the river water was not properly treated to guard against corrosion, which allowed lead and other contaminants to leach into residents' water.

Flint residents noticed the change in water quality almost immediately, and started to complain about it. The response by state officials was to publicly dismiss those concerns and to issue what turned out to be false assurances to the residents, Mohai wrote. It wasn't until October 2015 that the state officially acknowledged Flint's water contamination.

Several types of environment injustice are on display in Flint's water crisis, according to Mohai. They include serious shortcomings related to distributive justice, procedural justice, corrective justice and social justice.

Distributive justice. The concentration and overrepresentation of poor people and people of color in a space that also suffers from environmental contamination is "a classic characteristic" of a community suffering from environmental injustice, Mohai wrote. "Furthermore, that Flint residents' concerns were dismissed and that the government was slow to respond, even when it finally acknowledged the problem, is also a classic pattern that communities suffering from environmental injustices face."

Procedural justice means that residents are given a meaningful voice in decisions that affect their communities and their lives. "Perhaps the single most important violation of the principle of procedural justice in the case of the Flint Water Crisis was the imposition of Emergency Managers," Mohai wrote.

"Flint's Emergency Managers were not elected by the community, were not accountable to the community, and did not live in the community.  The lack of local representation, the ignoring of resident complaints, the discounting of the scientific evidence, the disrespectful treatment of the residents concerned about the water quality and health impacts are all evidence that the principle of procedural justice in Flint was violated."

Corrective justice. Achieving corrective justice in Flint would require repairing the harms experienced by residents and compensating them for their losses. Those harms include health and property impacts as well as psychological trauma, Mohai wrote. "In addition to the above, corrective justice means that upon finding out about the harm, prompt action is taken to abate further harm. Indeed, the slow response by government and knowing failure to address the ongoing harms is one of the most egregious aspect of the Flint Water Crisis."

Social justice. Environmental injustices are embedded in a larger social context where inequalities exist at many levels and are interconnected. "That the number, variety and interconnectedness of the sources of injustice are recognized, yet not acted on, highlights the degree to which cities such as Flint are neglected by those in decision-making positions," Mohai wrote.

The Michigan Sociological Review paper, "Environmental Justice and the Flint Water Crisis," is based on a keynote address Mohai delivered to the Michigan Sociological Association last year.

"What stands out about the Flint Water Crisis  is the apparent indifference and lack of concern that harm might be created," Mohai wrote. "And even after the harm was created and finally acknowledged, there has been and apparent lack of sense of urgency to fix the problems.

"A fear I have is that the longer they remain unresolved, the more likely what has happened in Flint will become a precedent and model for how similar catastrophes are handled by State and Federal governments in the future. The Flint Water Crisis and its aftermath should serve as a wakeup call for us all."Foot-binding ended 100 years ago and people have long assumed that its demise was due to reform-minded efforts. But a study by Harvard's Melissa Brown raises questions about that assumption. Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Depending on whom you ask, foot-binding was everything from a bizarre cultural fetish that placed male ideas of beauty ahead of women's health and well-being to a brutal tradition intended to keep women subservient to men.

But a new study led by Melissa Brown, the managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, suggests that its real underpinnings may have been economic

Based on interviews with thousands of elderly women who experienced foot-binding, the study suggests it was used as a way to keep girlsin some cases as young as 5on task producing handicrafts, such as spinning thread or weaving cloth, which could be sold to support their families. The study is described in a September paper published in PLOS ONE.

"One thing this paper shows is that foot-binding wasn't an exotic custom about sex and beauty," Brown said. "That's important because it's often used in high school and college text books as an example of the way in which ideas of sex and beauty can override economic interests. Well, this shows that's not true.

"But the bigger story I'm interested in  is how families managed the labor and earnings of wives and daughters," she continued. "The fact is that Chinese daughters contributed a whole lot more economically than they've ever been given credit for. They were feeding themselves and more than one family member in addition. In doing so, they contributed enormously to their households."

Believed to have begun around the 10th century, the practice ended by the mid-20th century. A girl's feet were usually bound when she was between five and six years old, when cloth strips usually applied by either her mother or grandmotherwere wrapped tightly around the foot.

Over time, the smaller toes, which were forced to fold under the foot, often broke, and in the most extreme cases, the arch of the foot was broken, resulting in a dramatically arched foot that in some cases could be as small as just 10 centimetersonly slightly larger than a standard credit card. If the arch was not broken, then the foot could eventually be unbound.

When they set out to document the practice, Brown and colleaguesjust like many of the women who suffered through itbelieved it was likely connected to marriage.

"It was clear that the women we spoke with believed the purpose was marriage," Brown said. "And I think that's probably what their mothers believed as well. Mothers bound their daughters' feet because they thought it would help their daughters have a better marriage  which meant they'd be able to eat regularly."

The evidence, however, suggested otherwise.

"About two-thirds of the women we interviewed had ever had bound feet, and only about one-third were still bound at the time they were getting married, but 99 percent of them got married," Brown said. "So they didn't need bound feet to marry. Of the 28 counties we looked at in our 2012 paper, there was a correlation between foot-binding and marrying up economically in only two. For the vast majority of women, foot-binding didn't make any differenceit didn't mean they couldn't marry and it didn't mean they married better, but that's what they believed."

So why did families keep binding their daughters' feet? And why did the practice persist in some rural, inland areas for so long? Brown said that the current study suggests one of the central reasons was probably economic.

By the turn of the 20th century, opinions on foot-binding had begun to change, with many Chinese and Western reformers pointing to the practice as a symbol of China's backwardness or arguing that it undermined the nation's economic strength.

The custom ended 100 years ago in China's coastal and urban regions, and people have long assumed that its demise was due to reform-minded efforts. But the current study raises questions about that assumption.

"Foot-binding ended in China's urban and coastal areas at the same time that textile mills were being built in these areas, and thread and cloth were being produced industrially," she said. "So it's not clear whether urban Chinese stopped binding because people were telling them they shouldn't do it, or because machine-spun thread and cloth were underselling hand-produced goods, and girls had to stop making home-based handicrafts and find a different way of contributing to the household income. For women who wound up doing heavy laboreither agricultural or factory workwhere they were going to be standing for long periods of time, foot-binding was problematic. It's not that they couldn't do it. Most foot-bound women we interviewed did some agricultural labor, but it was more painful."

In rural areas, however, the economics were reversed, and the practice persisted for decades, continuing even into the 1950s in a few isolated areas.

"The areas where we were interviewing women were inland, rural areas," Brown said. "One of the sites I visited had been two days' walk from the nearest textile mill during the 1930s, and it was toward the mountains, so there wasn't any kind of railroad that went there.

"That meant machine-produced cloth and thread had to be carried in on someone's back, on a shoulder pole," she continued. "That made machine-produced cloth more expensive than hand-spun, so in those rural areas it was still economically viable for people to have their daughters spinning thread or weaving cloth."

Girls producing handicrafts for sale or exchange were more likely to have been foot-bound than girls who were not. "In the current study, we looked at cotton spinners more closely. We found that Chinese girls, working in their homes for commercial sale or exchange, spun more cotton than Chinese girls spinning only for domestic use (within the household). We also compared the Chinese spinners with African-American girls and women enslaved at Thomas Jefferson's plantations, using similar technology. In some counties, foot-bound Chinese commercial spinners spun more cotton than the average amount spun by the enslaved Americans, who were pushed to produce as much as possible."

What stopped foot-binding in rural areas, Brown suggested, wasn't social pressure, but the construction of a road or railroad that brought cheap, machine-produced goods, which could be sold for less than handmade items.

"That sounds crass, but you have to remember that most of the families we interviewed were people who had struggled to put enough food on the table," Brown said. "If you look at agricultural societies, kids don't usually produce enough to feed themselves until they're in their teens. For hunter-gatherers, they don't produce what they eat until they're around 20.

"By comparison, the Chinese commercial handicraft producers we interviewed were probably feeding themselves by eight years old. And many girls contributed much more. There was one woman I interviewed who would weave hemp into grain bags," she continued. "Her uncle would walk them into Wuhan (a major city in central China), where he sold the bags for enough money to bring back about 100 pounds of rice. She was feeding her entire family."

Chinese families held onto commercial spinners longer, waiting later to arrange marriages. The woman who made grain bags was married six years later than average. "These girls were putting food on the table. These contributions may have been the difference between the family eating meat once a month instead of three times a year."

Explore further Foot binding and a biological approach to the study of Chinese culture

More information: Melissa J. Brown et al. Economic correlates of footbinding: Implications for the importance of Chinese daughters' labor, PLOS ONE (2018). Journal information: PLoS ONE Melissa J. Brown et al. Economic correlates of footbinding: Implications for the importance of Chinese daughters' labor,(2018). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201337An investigator's belief that a person is guilty may be the reason innocent people get convicted, according to a recent study.

Research by Florida International University legal psychologist Steve Charman found that detectives and police officers who believe a suspect is guiltybased on their knowledge of certain evidencetend to view additional evidence as more incriminating than it actually is, further increasing their belief in the suspect's guilt.

"We found police officers' evaluations of evidence were related to their initial beliefs in a suspect's guilt," Charman said. "The more likely they were to believe the suspect was guilty, the more incriminating they perceived subsequent ambiguous evidence to be, creating a bias snowball effect."

This is the first study to examine this bias snowball effect on the evaluation of evidence among experienced police officers.

Participants read about a crime that contained either incriminating, exonerating or neutral evidence against a suspect. They were asked how likely the suspect was to be guilty and then evaluated four pieces of evidence: the suspect's alibi, a comparison of handwriting samples, an informant's testimony, and a comparison between a facial composite and the suspect.

Results showed the more strongly the police officers initially believed the suspect to be guilty:

The more they believed an informant's testimony;

the more similar they thought the suspect looked to a facial composite of the criminal;

the more similar they thought the suspect's handwriting was to a handwriting sample left at the crime scene.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been 2,285 exonerations since 1989. Of those, 52 percent were due to misconduct by police, prosecutors or other government officials while 24 percent were due to false or misleading forensic evidence.

Steven Avery is one of those exonerated.

Featured in the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, Avery's story captured viewers in 2015 with the first installment of the series. After serving 18 years in prison for sexual assault and attempted murder, Avery was exonerated by DNA evidence in 2003. Two years later, he and his nephew Brendan Dassey were arrested and later convicted of the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. Part one of the series suggested serious misconduct by investigators and raised questions about the validity of the convictions. Part two is now available on Netflix. It challenges the prosecution's case by pointing out suspects who were overlooked, questioning evidence that may have been planted and meticulously reviewing forensic evidence.

Charman's study supports prior research which suggests that certain people in the legal system, such as forensic examiners, should be kept blind or unaware of certain case details in order to eliminate bias. However, his study showed this bias also exists in police officers and detectivesinvestigators who cannot reasonably be kept blind to case information. Charman says more research is needed to develop strategies that may mitigate these biases instead of just identifying them, especially for police officers and detectives.

In total, 89 law enforcement officers with an average of 20 years of experience from police and sheriff's departments across the United States participated in the study via an online survey. A comparison sample of 227 college students also participated. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.

Explore further Feeling sleepy? You might be at risk of falsely confessing to a crime you did not commit

More information: Steve D. Charman et al. Cognitive Bias in the Legal System: Police Officers Evaluate Ambiguous Evidence in a Belief-Consistent Manner, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (2017). Journal information: Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition Steve D. Charman et al. Cognitive Bias in the Legal System: Police Officers Evaluate Ambiguous Evidence in a Belief-Consistent Manner,(2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.02.001HD 87240. Credit: Digitized Sky Survey.

European astronomers have conducted a chemical study of the star HD 87240, a member of the open cluster NGC 3114. The new research, which determined the abundances of several elements in HD 87240's atmosphere, suggests that the object is a chemically peculiar star showcasing an overabundance of heavy elements. The finding is reported in a paper published October 10 on arXiv.org.

Located some 7,200 light years away in the constellation Carina, NGC 3114 is a sparse, young (about 160 million years old) open cluster. Although the cluster is very difficult to study, due to the high number of field stars from the Galactic disc, it has been a subject of numerous observations since 1963.

Now, a team of astronomers from Paris Observatory and Space Research Institute of Austrian Academy of Sciences, has performed a chemical study of one of NGC 3114's stars, namely HD 87240, which was classified by previous observations as an Ap Si star  a magnetic chemically peculiar star (CP star) with an overabundance of silicon (Si).

For their research, the astronomers used the data collected by European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. HD 87240 was observed by VLT's Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) in its high-resolution mode on October 26, 2017.

"We have used the code ATLAS9 to compute a model atmosphere for HD 87240 for the effective temperature and surface gravity derived from Stromgren's photometry A grid of synthetic spectra has been computed using SYNSPEC49 and adjusted to the UVES spectrum of HD 87240 to determine the abundances of several chemical elements using the latest critically evaluated atomic data from NIST," the researchers wrote in the paper.

Analysis of UVES data allowed the team to determine chemical abundances for 39 elements in the atmosphere of HD 87240. The astronomers found that this star is significantly overabundant in heavy elements, especially when it comes to platinum (Pt) and mercury (Hg)  about 10,000 times the solar abundances.

Moreover, HD 87240 was found to be unusually rich in silicon (around 10 times the solar abundance) an in the so-called rare-earth elements like cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr) and neodymium (Nd)  at a level of at least five times the solar abundances.

HD 87240 also displays solar abundances of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, as well as scandium (Sc) and vanadium (V). However, the star turns out to be underabundant in light elements such as helium or sulfur.

According to the paper, the derived chemical abundances suggest that HD 87240 should be reclassified as a chemically peculiar late B star with overabundances of silicon, platinum and mercury.

"The derived abundance pattern of HD 87240 departs strongly from the solar composition which definitely shows that HD 87240 is not a superficially normal late B star but is definitely a new CP star. () Hence we propose that HD 87240 be reclassified as a Bp SiPtHg star (not as an Ap Si as it currently is)," the researchers concluded.

Explore further Chemically peculiar star HR8844 could be a hybrid object

More information: Elemental abundances of HD 87240, member of the young open cluster NGC 3114, arXiv:1810.04540 [astro-ph.SR] Elemental abundances of HD 87240, member of the young open cluster NGC 3114, arXiv:1810.04540 [astro-ph.SR] arxiv.org/abs/1810.04540

 2018 Phys.orgThe fungus known in Asia as "Himalayan Viagra"seen herehas no scientifically proven benefits, but people believe it cures everything from impotence to cancer

A prized caterpillar fungus that is more valuable than gold and is nicknamed "Himalayan Viagra" in Asia, where it is seen as a wonder drug, is becoming harder to find due to climate change, researchers said Monday.

People in China and Nepal have been killed in clashes over the years over the elusive fungus "yarchagumba," known formally as Ophiocordyceps sinensis.

Although it has no scientifically proven benefits, people who boil yarchagumba in water to make tea or add it to soups and stews believe it cures everything from impotence to cancer.

It is "one of the world's most valuable biological commodities, providing a crucial source of income for hundreds of thousands of collectors," said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.

In recent decades, the fungus has skyrocketed in popularity and prices have soaredit can fetch up to three times the price of gold in Beijing, researchers say.

While many have suspected overharvesting was the reason for its scarcity, researchers wanted to find out more.

So they interviewed around four dozen harvesters, collectors and traders of the prized fungus.

They also examined previously published scientific literature, including interviews with more than 800 people in Nepal, Bhutan, India and China, in order to understand its apparent decline.

Weather patterns, geographic factors and environmental conditions were also analyzed to create a map of yarchagumba production in the region.

"Using data spanning nearly two decades and four countries, (we) revealed that caterpillar fungus production is declining throughout much of its range," said the report.

The finding "is important because it calls attention to how highly valuable species, like caterpillar fungus, are susceptible not only to overharvesting, as is often the focus, but also to climate change," lead study author Kelly Hopping told AFP.

"This means that even if people start reducing the amount that they harvest, production will likely continue to dwindle as a result of ongoing climate change," said Hopping, who conducted the work while a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University and is currently assistant professor in Human-Environment Systems at Boise State University.

The prized caterpillar fungus is a hot commodity across Asiahere, it is sold in the Chinese city of Gannan, in Gansu province, in June 2013

Researchers were unable to tell which factoroverharvesting or climate changehad a larger impact on the fungus.

"To do so would require access to better harvest records, but monitoring of it is very limited throughout most of the areas where it grows," Hopping said.

Particular temperatures

The cone-shaped fungus is only found above an elevation of 9,800 feet (3,000 meters), and forms when the parasitic fungus lodges itself in a caterpillar, slowly killing it.

To grow, it needs a specific climate with winter temperatures below freezing but where the soil is not permanently frozen.

"Such conditions are typically present at the margin of permafrost areas," said the PNAS report.

"Given that winter temperatures have warmed significantly from 1979 to 2013 across much of its range, and especially in Bhutan, its populations are likely to have been negatively affected."

The warming trend has particularly affected Bhutan, with average winter temperatures "increasing by 3.5-4 degrees Celsius across most of its predicted habitat (+1.1 Celsius per decade, on average)," added the study.

Researchers have previously found that vegetation on the Tibetan plateau "did not shift upward in response to climate warming from 2000 to 2014," suggesting that the caterpillar fungus will be unable to simply move up the mountain to colder habitats as the climate warms.

This spells trouble for harvesters who sell the fungus in order to survive, according to Hopping.

"Communities throughout the Himalayan region have become very financially dependent on collecting and selling caterpillar fungus, and so this study could serve as a warming of what many harvesters already realize," she said.

"That decreasing availability of this fungus will be devastating to local economies, and that these communities need other viable livelihood options."

More information: Kelly A. Hopping el al., "The demise of caterpillar fungus in the Himalayan region due to climate change and overharvesting," PNAS (2018). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Kelly A. Hopping el al., "The demise of caterpillar fungus in the Himalayan region due to climate change and overharvesting,"(2018). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1811591115

 2018 AFPIn this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Justin Sours carries a beehive after a tree was knocked down by winds from Hurricane Michael in Wewahitchka, Fla. Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Hurricane Michael toppled beehives and stripped flowering plants across Florida's Panhandle, threatening tupelo honey production in a tiny community that is the primary source of the sweet delicacy.

Tanker trucks of corn syrup and tens of thousands of pounds of synthetic pollen are being rushed to beekeepers from the Gulf of Mexico to the Georgia state line to feed surviving bee colonies that also pollinate crops such as watermelons, cantaloupes and blueberries.

"Just feeding my bees is the biggest concern," said Gary Adkison, a Wewahitchka beekeeper. "There's no nectar."

Adkison, who named his Blue-Eyed Girl Honey for his granddaughter, lost about 50 of his 150 hives to the storm, each containing 30,000 to 40,000 bees. Unlike other beekeepers who move their colonies to pollinate crops as far away as California, Adkison keeps his hives local year-round.

"To be honest, I didn't expect this much damage," he said.

About 500 beekeepers are registered in Florida's Panhandle, with more than 1.2 billion bees in their colonies, according to the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. They range from hobbyists to mom-and-pop businesses to large commercial operations.

Although Florida also produces honey from orange blossoms, gallberries and wildflowers, the honey from white tupelo gum trees ranks highest in price and flavor.

In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Ben Lanier, left, and Justin Sours inspect a beehive after several trees were knocked down by winds from Hurricane Michael in Wewahitchka, Fla Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

The trees grow in remote swamps in northwestern Florida and southern Georgia, but are most profuse along the Apalachicola River in Florida's Gulf County. The heart of tupelo honey production is Wewahitchka, a one-stoplight town about 15 miles (25 kilometers) inland from where Michael made landfall Oct. 10 with 155-mph (250-kph) winds.

"Everybody has a jar of it on their kitchen table," Adkison said.

Now, he added, everyone worries how Michael would affect the star of the annual Tupelo Honey Festival, which draws thousands of people in May.

Van Morrison's song about a girl "as sweet as tupelo honey, just like honey from the bee" captures its distinct nature: True tupelo honey is bottled more or less straight from the hive, without heating or blending with other honeys. It does not crystalize, remaining a smooth, golden liquid.

In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Justin Sours looks at bees in a hive after a tree was knocked down by winds from Hurricane Michael in Wewahitchka, Fla.Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

"It's got a fruity, floral burst of flavor," said Brian Bertonneau, owner of Wewahitchka-based Smiley Honey. "It's just a happy dance in your mouth."

The trees bloom for only three weeks starting in mid-April.

Beekeepers and business owners like Bertonneau, whose operations shut down without electricity or internet access after Michael, are anxious to find out what kind of spring harvest they should expect.

"The blossoms are so fragile, they're like little snowballs," Bertonneau said. "A heavy wind or rain will knock them off the tree."

In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Ben Lanier uses smoke to calm down bees near a hive after a tree was knocked down by winds from Hurricane Michael in Wewahitchka, Fla.Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Michael's toll on tupelos is as yet unclear because the trees are difficult to reach except by barge and considerable debris remains to be cleared.

David Westervelt, a state apiary inspection supervisor, said damaged trees might take two or three years to start blooming again.

"We haven't ever had a storm hit like that, so we don't really know," Westervelt said.

The 2018 harvest was especially rich in flavor, though not particularly high in volume, beekeepers said. Westervelt estimated not quite 1 million pounds (0.45 million kilograms) of tupelo honey were produced last year, selling for about $6 and up per pound.

In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Ben Lanier walks between beehives after trees were knocked down by winds from Hurricane Michael in Wewahitchka, Fla.Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Two days after Michael made landfall, an Associated Press photographer found Ben Lanier tending to his hives in spite of fallen trees and other debris in Wewahitchka bee yards kept in his family for three generations.

L.L. Lanier and Sons Tupelo Honey has been in business since the 1890s, and in a Facebook post Thursday, Lanier and his wife said the hurricane would not shut them down.

In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, a bottle of Tupelo honey is shown in Wewahitchka, Fla. Hurricane Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

"The bees were all over the place and our house is almost a total loss," the post said. "It has been very hard to get generators and gas, but one way or the other we will get back in business."

Adkison said all he could do was focus on feeding his surviving bees.

"We are small-time," he said. "If we have a bad year, I'll just have to take care of my bees and wait until the next year."

In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, beehives are damaged after a tree was knocked down near the hives by winds from Hurricane Michael in Wewahitchka, Fla. Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, In this Friday Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Justin Sours, left, and Ben Lanier check on a beehive after a tree was knocked down by winds from Hurricane Michael in Wewahitchka, Fla.Michael's devastation could threaten the tupelo honey production in the tiny community that is the main source of the sweet delicacy.(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Explore further Beekeepers Work Hard For The Honey

 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.Analyses of statistics from 17 countries shows that the introduction of industrial robots has led to higher wages for employees, while production has increased. Credit: Andrey Armyagov/mostphotos.com

In addition to increasing productivity, the introduction of industrial robots has increased wages for the employees. At the same time, industrial robots have also changed the labour market by increasing the number of job opportunities for highly skilled employees, while opportunities for low-skilled employees are declining.

The study "Robots at Work," written by Georg Graetz, a researcher at the Department of Economics, Uppsala University, and Guy Michaels, London School of Economics, examines the impact of industrial robots on jobs, productivity and growth. The study, an empirical analysis of the economic effect of industrial robots, is based on statistics from 17 countries from 1993 to 2007 in 14 different types of industries.

Industrial robots are programmable and are widely used for assembly, packaging, inspection and agricultural harvesting. During the period under study, use of industrial robots increased sharply, while the price of the robots declined by about 80 per cent, taking into account increased quality.

Job opportunities and wages

"We can see that industrial robots increase employee wages and increase productivity and that the number of jobs for low-skilled employees, and also to some extent for the medium-skilled, decreases, while job opportunities for the highly skilled increase," says Georg Graetz.

In other words, the analysis shows that industrial robots increase wage levels for the employees.

"Most likely the profits realised through the introduction of robots are divided among the company and its employees."

The composition of the labour market is changing towards a higher proportion of highly educated employees, while at the same time the study suggests that the total number of jobs is not affected by industrial robots.

Increased productivity

Industrial robots increased the annual growth in GNP in the countries surveyed by 0.37 percentage points, and labour productivity increased by 0.36 percentage points.

"This means that without industrial robots, growth in labour productivity would have been about 5 per cent lower during the 14 years we have studied."

The contribution of robots to the economy is comparable to the economic importance of the railways in the 19th century or the more recent contribution from information and communication technology.

"In this context, it is interesting to note that industrial robots account for only 2 per cent of capital, which is much less than technological driving forces for growth in the past."

Of the surveyed countries, the number of robots increased most in Germany, Denmark and Italy. Countries that had a more rapid increase in the number of robots also had a greater increase in labour productivity.

Continued increases in productivity likely

The results of the study suggest that an increasing number of robots produces a reduced increase in productivity  that is, there is a limited potential for utilising robots in production. But researchers still believe that robots will continue to contribute to an increase in growth and productivity.

"Industrial robots are evolving and will be able to do more. At the same time, new types of robots are coming, such as medical robots that can perform surgery or different types of robots for transport. This development will contribute to continued growth and production increasesThe relationship between climate change, environmental degradation and modern slavery needs to be better understood in order for the interconnected crisis to be tackled, according to a new report.

The report, which is released today by experts from the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab, Royal Holloway University of London and the UK's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner (IASC), critically reviews what is currently known about the relationship and assesses the academic research that has already been done.

The Rights Lab is a University of Nottingham Beacon of Excellence that brings together over 100 scholars to deliver research that helps to end global slavery by 2030.

The new report, led by Dr. Doreen Boyd at the Rights Lab, and Professor Katherine Brickell at Royal Holloway, working with the IASC, suggests that there is a two-way, potentially cyclical nexus between climate change, environmental degradation, and modern slavery.

The authors argue that a better understanding of this relationship is vital so that all three can be tackled as part of an integrated strategy.

The intersections between modern slavery, environmental destruction, and climate change have been identified in a limited number of industry sectors and are also geographically focused on particular hotspots. The report identifies four key sectorsfisheries, field, forests, and factories.

Dr. Boyd says: "From our research, we can clearly see that the nexus between modem slavery, climate change and environmental degradation tends to emerge sectorally or in geographical locations. Our review also shows that what is happening in one sector is, directly or indirectly, influencing what is happening in another sector, often connected with flows of climate-induced migration."

The report highlights a specific link between over-fishing, the environmental decline of fish stocks, and the exploitative labour practices on fishing boats.

Dr. Boyd says: "The fishing industry in Thailand is a clear example of how climate change and modern slavery are connected. The demand for cheap seafood is leading to worsening abusive and exploitative conditions for fishing labourers, often in the form of debt bondage, as well as leading to further overfishing and ecosystem decline in fisheries, often as part of illegal and pirate fishing networks."

The report also looks at recent research which emphasises the vulnerability faced by agrarian communities in the Global South because of current and future climate change impact  such as the rise of and severity of droughts and flooding, as well as increasing sea levels and temperatures.

Small farming communities, with declining state support and facing increased marketisation in agriculture are more vulnerable to exploitative labour practices and human trafficking.

The research into forest areas has shown the destructive nature of the logging industry, leading to debt-bonded labour and deforestation, mainly in Brazil. Other studies have also highlighted the dependency in Brazil and Indonesia on expensive charcoal, cattle and palm oil industries upon an exploited workforce.

This shows that debt-bonded labour is entangled with deforestation and large-scale clearing of the Amazon, Sumatran and Bornean forests.

New research featured in the report from Royal Holloway explores the lives of debt-bonded workers on brick kilns, and the trajectory that led them there from rural villages across Cambodia.

The 'blood bricks' study ( www.projectbloodbricks.org ) has shown that in the majority of cases, debt-bonded brick workers originate as farmers, who became indebted through taking on loans from local micro-finance institutions (MFIs) to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Climate change deepens the income insecurity of small farmers, leading them to acute indebtedness, and in turn, debt-bonded labour.

Professor Brickell says: "We see this review as a starting point for more research into this area. Practitioners, NGOs, intergovernmental agencies and experts need to come together to gain a better understanding of the two-way relationship between modern slavery, environmental destruction and climate change, only then can we plan future interventions."

Explore further New online toolkit to tackle modern slavery

More information: Modern Slavery, Environmental Destruction and Climate Change: Fisheries, Field, Forests and Factories: Modern Slavery, Environmental Destruction and Climate Change: Fisheries, Field, Forests and Factories: tracking.vuelio.co.uk/tracking  a6g2oEbasGKgTFCebfE1By Ivan Ssenabulya.

The public service minister who also doubles as the Budyebo county Member of parliament Wilson Muruuli Mukasa has commended Rotary Club Uganda, for its efforts in helping government improve the health sector.

He said this while launching a three day medical camp at Nakayonza health Center 111 in Nakasongola district where they renovated and equipped the facility with water and solar services.

He however asked the organization to consider improving the education sector also, adding a lot still remains.

The president of the rotary club of Lugogo Mango tree Eng. Francis Alul said this was done in honor of this years family health day.

Health camps to be held countrywide.Pakim's Pond, one of many test locations. Credit: Thomas Belton, research associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

A new way of measuring the relative habitability of freshwater environments for fish and aquatic insects suggests that New Jersey's water monitoring and treatment standards could use a boost.

Using a standard they created for measuring potentially damaging nutrient levels in freshwater streams by measuring the prevalence of single-celled algae, called diatoms, researchers from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University analyzed environmental data from 95 river and stream sites in six ecological regions of New Jersey.

The team's findings revealed that New Jersey's current allowable threshold for dissolved nutrients in its streams is likely too high.

These nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, frequently find their way into bodies of water from surface runoff from agricultural areas and direct discharges from municipal sewage treatment plants.

In aquatic environments, high nutrient levels can have harmful effects, including algal mat growth and low dissolved oxygen levelswhich make the environment uninhabitable for fish and macroinvertebrates, like freshwater clams and aquatic insects.

Based on their newly developed approachusing diatoms as a water quality indicatoras part of the standard Biological Condition Gradient system, the researchers found New Jersey's total phosphorus parameter of 100 micrograms per liter will not protect sites from becoming ecologically impaired. Their research suggests that the threshold for a healthy body of freshwater in New Jersey should be no higher than 50 micrograms per liter, in order to maintain, or restore, most sites to an unimpaired condition.

The research, which used the diatom Biological Condition Gradient the team developed just over two years ago, was published in Ecological Indicators. Coauthors Donald Charles, Andrew P. Tuccillo, a former researcher at the Academy, and Thomas Belton, a research associate at the Academy but who formerly worked at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, conducted the research. Don Charles, Ph.D., the principal author is a senior scientist at the Academy and former professor in Drexel's Department of Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"We've learned from previous studies that the diatom Biological Condition Gradient (BCG) can identify nutrient concentration gradient differences to classify unimpaired from impaired sites," Charles said. "And now we can use the diatom TP (total phosphorus) and TN (total nitrogen) metrics we developed in previous studies that, when partnered with BCG level assignments, can determine if nutrient criteria are met in a particular body of water."

"Under the Clean Water Act, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and/or the states must develop water quality criteria for pollutants to ensure that ambient water is fishable, swimmable and safe to drink," said Belton. "New Jersey is one of only a handful of states with 'numeric criteria' for nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen. The original New Jersey criteria was an educated guess developed in the 1970's based on an analysis of existing water quality monitoring data."

To adhere to the Clean Water Act's call for the restoration and maintenance of the "biological integrity of the nation's waters," the U.S Environmental Protection Agency created the Biological Condition Gradienta scale of six "conditions," used to categorize the relative quality of a body of waterlevel six is the most ecologically stressed and level one is "pristine."

The scale is meant to create a standard for the use of aquatic organisms as an indicator of the health of freshwater environments. State regulatory bodies use the BCG to grade and monitor their water in a comparable manner.

"While biological condition gradients exist for fish and macroinvertebratesthis is the first BCG scale that uses diatoms," said Charles. "Diatoms have a silica, glass-like infrastructure and exhibit a great deal of ecological sensitivity, which is what makes them the best indicator of nutrient pollution."

Diatoms are by far the most common group of algae in rivers and streams. And, as a food base for fish and macroinvertebrates, they are very important to the maintenance of healthy ecosystems.

The Academy-based team determined that the prevalence of diatom species correlated with New Jersey's water quality standards per the BCG systemand that this correlation was consistent across a variety of ecoregions in the mountainous north and sandy southern coastal plains. Which means that a statewide adjustment to the acceptable level of nutrients in water would be appropriate.

Their findings can now be used as a resource for state policymakers to address water quality assessment and enact the necessary adjustments for better monitoring and treatment of streams and rivers.

"Most States only have 'narrative criteria' which cautions against levels of nutrients in streams that result in 'objectionable amounts of algae' but, don't specify what levels those might be," said Belton. "But, our study does exactly that."

There could be some resistance to changing the existing numeric criteria for water qualityas it will entail limiting the discharger of nutrients, such as those originating from municipal sewage treatment plants. These industries would need to put in place more advanced and expensive treatment processes to meet the more stringent standard.

The researchers conclude that "there is a potential wide-spread applicability of the BCG approach to develop nutrient criteria and to monitor compliance across the U.S. using diatom assemblages."

Explore further Tiny algae ideal for sniffing out nutrient pollution in water

More information: Donald F. Charles et al, Use of diatoms for developing nutrient criteria for rivers and streams: A Biological Condition Gradient approach, Ecological Indicators (2018). Donald F. Charles et al, Use of diatoms for developing nutrient criteria for rivers and streams: A Biological Condition Gradient approach,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.08.048Advocates of floating offshore wind platforms say they are cheaper to run and install, less disruptive to sea life, and have greater output than near-shore alternatives. Credit: WindFloat

As wind turbines become increasingly familiar sights along shorelines, developers of offshore floating platforms, which harness the powerful winds further out to sea, are seeking to establish their technologies as a major viable source of clean energy.

Bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines  with foundations in the seabed  face depth constraints and can only be used in relatively shallow coastal waters.

Floating offshore platforms can instead be built and installed in almost any marine environment. They are cheaper to run and install, more environmentally friendly to sea life, and have greater output, according to those behind the technologies.

What's more, positioning the turbines well offshore exposes them to the generating power of stronger winds.

"The further you get from the coast, the more wind you normally get," said Jose Pinheiro, project coordinator of energy company EDP Renewables.

Commercial viability

The energy company is part of the WindPlus consortium, set up by Energias de Portugal, REPSOL and Principle Power Inc., which has secured a 60 million loan from the European Investment Bank under the InnovFin Energy Demonstration Projects instrument.

This will allow it to scale up a pilot demonstration project, WindFloat, and take it out to deeper water.

"With this WindFloat technology you have the ability to harness the wind where you have it most," Pinheiro said, adding that this meant there were many more potential sites than are available for bottom-fixed wind power.

A 2017 study showed that wind power generation over some ocean areas can exceed power generation on land by a factor of three or more. However, the technology is mostly still at testing phase as the bases of floating turbines need to be engineered differently from their near-shore counterparts.

Pinheiro said the new financing for the WindFloat Atlantic project, to be installed at a site off the northern coast of Portugal, is crucial to showing the commercial viability of the technology. It is also a long-term test of its technical attributes in tough conditions.

The three-column, semi-submersible platform will be mounted with an 8.4 megawatt turbine, floating in waters 85 to 95 metres deep. It is anchored at three points, as is common for oil and gas production facilities in deep water.

"Scaling up can reduce the unit costs a lot, so we are really contributing to showing that offshore floating can achieve the targets that have been set for it," Pinheiro said. "It can also show the convergence of the technology with business opportunities around the globe."

WindFloat Atlantic seeks to take advantage of onshore construction and assembly to reduce costs, and it is not alone in choosing that path.

Hybrid float

Ocean Flow Energy, based in northeast England, leads the FLOWSPA project to develop a novel offshore wind support platform  Starfloat  based on two well-known platform systems used in offshore oil and gas production.

Project coordinator Graeme Mackie says their design consists of a floating spar, a structure used in deep water oil production that looks 'like a tower that floats (vertically) in the sea' which is moored by chains and anchors in the seabed.

Normally, spars have to be immersed in extremely deep water, so to reduce this requirement, the team has added a semi-submerged buoyancy 'collar' made up of several floats that surround the neck of the spar at the waterline and keep it raised. This hybrid satisfies stability and motion demands even in harsh environments.

FLOWSPA engineers devised an assembly strategy that allows the platform to be readily built at existing onshore shipyards, and enlists the local economies, which have been in decline in many parts of the world. The turbine is then towed out to deep water.

The simplicity of the design, the use of existing shipbuilding facilities and nearby assembly rather than the on-site construction of fixed installations, as well as the cheaper deployment of the complete platform, all contribute to reducing costs, Mackie said.

Their target is to generate electricity at about 60 euros per megawatt-hour  competitive with current inshore wind farms  for a large-scale facility.

'(This) is achievable if you build these devices in serious production," Mackie added.

To get deep sea wind platforms up and running quickly, the Spanish SATH project has taken a different approach to its design, which comprises a twin hull with submerged plates, and is built mostly from concrete, rather than steel.

It is built and assembled onshore and then towed to its final position and hooked up  at a single pointto pre-installed mooring chains.

"It can rotate around, so it is always facing the wind," said David Carrascosa, chief technology officer at Saitec Offshore Technologies, coordinator of the project. "The mechanical connection (for the mooring point) is through a bearing, and the electrical connection through a rotating electrical swivel."

Having a single connection point and power transmission cables out at sea allow the platform to be quickly connected to the mooring infrastructure.

Being able to construct onshore and rapidly install the platforms mean that SATH bypasses the costly weather problems that can disrupt more time-consuming and complicated installations.

Carrascosa said the platform's materials and construction approach, using local resources, means it can be mass-produced at sites around the world, close to where the wind turbines will be deployed.

Sea life

With lower capital and operating expenses come major cost savings over the lifetime of the platform, particularly in depths greater than about 50 metres.

"By making offshore floating wind production more competitive, we can see a big market ahead, and that is a goal for all of us," Carrascosa said.

Despite the projects' different approaches to engineering and materials, all say they have embraced methods of construction and installation that reduce their impact on sea life, compared to fixed installations.

With much of the construction and assembly done onshore or nearby, the projects can minimise the noise levels that researchers cite as a major problem for marine mammals. Carrascosa said that disruption is also reduced by avoiding the need to embed major structures in the seabed.

"People (in the industry) are really aware of these issues affecting the mammals and that is something you can avoid by using floating solutions," he added.Credit: Matt_Williams, Shutterstock

What do microplastic filters, fertilisers and fish feed have in common? They can all be produced using jellyfish. At least, that's what one research team has set out to prove as they look into reducing the plastic waste in our oceans.

The quality of our seas and oceans is deteriorating at an alarming rate. One major problem is plastic pollution. According to estimates, more than 150 million tonnes of plastic have already accumulated in the world's oceans, and up to 12.7 million tonnes are added every year. To top that, our marine environments also have to contend with rising water temperatures, ocean acidity and overfishing, all of which affect marine life. One affected sea creature is the jellyfish, which these conditions seem to favour, leading it to congregate in large masses, called blooms. Jellyfish blooms have an adverse impact on tourism, aquaculture, fishing industries and the prosperity of coastal communities.

The recently launched EU-funded project GoJelly is tackling the problems of plastic pollution and jellyfish blooms through a single ingenious approach. It's using one problem  the proliferation of jellyfish  to solve the second problem of microplastic waste in the world's oceans.

A filter for microplastic waste

Microplastic particles, tiny particles of plastic less than 1 mm in size, come from two main sources. They're either produced industrially for use in consumer products or break down and fragment from large plastic items. The degradation process can happen in the sea or on land, and also through the natural use of plastic products. In the marine environment, dense plastics sink to the bottom of the sea, making them more difficult to remove. Further exacerbating the problem, even buoyant microplastics  in fact more than 90 % of them  end up on the seabed. They're either eaten by other organisms and transferred to the ocean floor, or get caught up in other particles and carried there.

GoJelly intends to mitigate the problem of microplastic pollution using the mucus produced by jellyfish. Taking advantage of the ability of jellyfish mucus to bind microplastic, the GoJelly researchers plan to use it to develop a microplastics filter for commercial and public use. The biofilter created will be used in wastewater treatment plants and in factories where microplastic is produced. This could help prevent much of the microplastic particles from getting into marine systems.

Other commercial uses for jellyfish

Besides using their mucus to develop a biofilter, the project partners are also researching other sustainable uses for jellyfish. Options include their use as fish feed in aquaculture, as agricultural fertilisers and the use of their collagen in cosmetic products. Jellyfish can even be used as food, something that the GoJelly project intends to promote by publishing a cookbook with dishes prepared using jellyfish.

"We hope that not only we will widen our knowledge about jellyfish and their lives, but also lay the groundwork for innovative and environmentally friendly new products that will eventually create new jobs," says Dr. Jamileh Javidpour from Germany's GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, in a news item posted on the project coordinator's website.

The next stages of GoJelly (GoJellyA gelatinous solution to plastic pollution) include testing various plastic particles and harvesting jellyfish from the sea. Once developed, GoJelly biofilters will be tested and demonstrated in the Norwegian, Baltic and Mediterranean Seas by a broad range of stakeholders, including commercial fishers and industry partners.

Explore further Turning jellyfish from a nuisance to useful product

More information: GoJelly project website: GoJelly project website: www.gojelly.eu/A staff survey by the biomedical Francis Crick Institute, whose central London building is pictured, found that 75.5 percent agreed the impact of Brexit on UK science would be very negative

Thirty-five Nobel and top mathematics prize winners have warned British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker that scientific research will suffer a serious setback without a good Brexit deal.

Their statement coincides with the publication of a staff survey of Europe's biggest biomedical research centrelocated in Londonshowing immense concern about Brexit's impact on research in both the UK and the EU.

The 29 Nobel Prize winners in science and six recipients of the Fields Medalone of the most prestigious awards in mathssaid open European borders had helped the continent make up ground lost to US researchers in the wake of World War II.

"Creating new barriers to such ease of collaboration will inhibit progress, to the detriment of us all," they said in a letter released to the media late Monday.

The 35 academics also wrote that the damage must now be minimised through a Brexit deal that maintains as much cooperation as possible after Britain leaves the European Union in March.

"The challenges we face must be tackled in a manner that benefits everyone and those challenges are better faced together," the letter says.

"Only a deal which allows the closest possible cooperation between the UK and the EU, now and in the future, will make that possible."

Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize-winning head of the biomedical Francis Crick Institute in London, is among leading researchers warning that a Brexit deal must maintain as much cooperation as possible between the UK and Europe

One of the signatories to the letter is Paul NurseNobel Prize-winning head of the biomedical Francis Crick Institute, whose survey showed tremendous anxiety about the future of science among its staff.

The poll, which had 1,053 respondents, found 75.5 percent agree that the impact of Brexit on UK science would be "very negative." Another 21.3 percent said it would be "negative".

And 82 percent said it would be either "negative" or "very negative" for EU research, while around a fifth of them said Brexit had already negatively or very negatively impacted their work.

Nurse told AFP in 2016 that EU funds accounted for about 5 million a year ($6.5 million/5.7 million euros) of his annual budget.

The sum represents around five percent of the funds available to the world-renowned institute.

The survey showed only 10 percent of Crick staff are confident in the future of UK science as a whole after Brexit.

Explore further UK group warns hospitals could run out of drugs post Brexit

 2018 AFPThe dots in this picture aren't stars, they're millions of proteins as seen through a microscope. Each protein stands up like a blade of grass with only the tips visible as we look down from above. Proteins are chains of amino acids, so each dot is just the amino acid on the tip. Of the 20 flavors of amino acids that make up proteins, one type is tagged yellow, another is tagged pink, the other 18 aren't tagged, they're black. By removing one amino acid from each protein, taking a new picture and then repeating many times, researchers can record a sequence of amino acids for each protein in a sample of millions simultaneously. Credit: University of Texas at Austin

A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has demonstrated a new way to sequence proteins that is much more sensitive than existing technology, identifying individual protein molecules rather than requiring millions of molecules at a time. The advance could have a major impact in biomedical research, making it easier to reveal new biomarkers for the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases, as well as enhance our understanding of how healthy cells function.

The team published the results of their proof-of-concept study today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

"We have created, essentially, a DNA-sequencing-like technology to study proteins," said Edward Marcotte, professor of molecular biosciences and co-inventor of the new technology.

Work on this project began more than six years ago when Marcotte and colleagues first envisioned adapting the methods of next generation gene sequencing to protein sequencing. Next generation gene sequencing is a set of techniques that have made sequencing the entire genome of any living organism fast, accurate and affordable, accelerating biological researchand for the rest of us, enabling at-home genetic testing for ancestry and disease.

In the same way that these earlier advances provided quick and comprehensive information about thousands of genes that influence human health, the new technology provides for rapid and comprehensive information about tens of thousands of proteins that play a role in healthy functioning or in diseases. In many disorderssuch as cancer, Alzheimer's, heart failure and diabetescells produce proteins and other substances that act as unique biomarkers, akin to fingerprints. Better detection of these biomarkers would help researchers understand the causes of disorders or provide earlier, more accurate diagnoses for patients.

An ultra-sensitive new method for identifying the series of amino acids in individual proteins (a.k.a. protein sequencing) can accelerate research on biomarkers for cancer and other diseases. Credit: David Steadman/University of Texas at Austin

The current laboratory standard for sequencing proteins, using a tool called mass spectrometry, is not sensitive for many applicationsit can detect a protein only if there are about a million copies of it. It also has a "low throughput," meaning it can detect only a few thousand distinct protein types in a single sample.

With this new method, called single molecule fluorosequencing, researchers can now sequence millions of individual protein molecules simultaneously in a single sample. Marcotte believes with future refinements the number of molecules that could be detected in a sample could reach into the billions. With higher throughput and much greater sensitivity than existing technology, the tool should allow for greater detection of biomarkers of disease and would also make it possible to study things such as cancer in a whole new way. For example, researchers could look, cell-by-cell, to understand how a tumor evolves from a small mass of identical cells to a soup of genetically divergent cells, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Such insights could inspire novel ways to attack cancer.

Explore further A chemistry pioneer works to improve a flawed test for a common cancer

More information: Highly parallel single-molecule identification of proteins in zeptomole-scale mixtures, Nature Biotechnology (2018). www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4278 Journal information: Nature Biotechnology Highly parallel single-molecule identification of proteins in zeptomole-scale mixtures,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/nbt.4278Credit: Rich Carey, Shutterstock

Researchers are developing an autonomous system to monitor coastal and deep waters for fish stock. Their technology could enhance marine environment protection.

Overfishing, pollution, habitat loss and climate change are the major threats affecting marine life and fisheries. To address some of these challenges and help the efficient implementation of marine and fisheries policies, the provision of accurate and timely data on the diversity and abundance of marine species is crucial.

Under the EU-funded SYMBIOSIS, researchers are developing a prototype of a non-invasive system for the characterisation, classification and biomass evaluation of key pelagic fish species. It integrates acoustic and optical technologies without human intervention. The prototype consists of acoustic sensors, a network of cameras, sophisticated data processing units and an energy component permitting autonomous activity.

Quoted in a news item, project coordinator Dr. Roee Diamant at the University of Haifa's School of Marine Sciences said: "The system will be environmentally friendly, not only in its operation which will be non-invasive and won't impact the marine ecosystem, but more importantly because it will provide reliable information about the condition of marine fish stocks." Dr. Diamant emphasised that currently, "it's virtually impossible to collect such information without investing enormous resources."

The system developed by SYMBIOSIS will collect underwater data in real time over long periods and transmit this information  including the size and movements of the fish stock  to a coastal centre. As stated on the project website: "The system will be completely autonomous and will withstand three-month deployment without recharging."

According to the news item, the SYMBIOSIS monitoring process begins with the acoustic discovery and classification of fish, based on their typical speed and movement characteristics. Acoustic sensors also measure the size of the fish and the total biomass of the fish in the area. After identification of one of the six target species, the optical system is activated. This component includes several cameras and can process sophisticated data with various image identification algorithms using deep learning. "When the optical system confirms the identification of one of the six selected species, it transmits the information via underwater acoustic communications, and then by radio communications to a coastal station."

The ongoing SYMBIOSIS (A Holistic Opto-Acoustic System for Monitoring Marine Biodiversities) project aims to test the performance of its prototype system in three different marine environments: shallow Mediterranean, deep Mediterranean and a tropical environment in the Canary Islands. The six selected large fish species covered by the project are especially in high demand by the fishing industry. They include two species of tuna, scad (Trachurus mediterraneus), Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus), mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) and swordfish (Xiphias gladius). Team members note in the news item that SYMBIOSIS "will offer novel solutions to the distributed and large-scale monitoring of the underwater environment, with a positive impact on marine biology research, conservation, and policy making for fisheries in Europe and worldwide."

Explore further Innovative autonomous system for identifying schools of fish

More information: SYMBIOSIS project website: SYMBIOSIS project website: symbiosis.networks.imdea.org/ Innovative Autonomous System for Identifying Schools of Fish: www.networks.imdea.org/whats-n  tifying-schools-fishDickinsonia costata, an extinct soft-bodied organism representing one of the first complex metazoans in the fossil record.Total length 53.5?mm. Credit: Scott Evans

Hundreds of millions of years before there was a chicken or an egg to debate, the first complex animals were evolving in parallel with Earth's rising oxygen levels.

But what came firstanimals or oxygen?

That question is the central theme of a special issue of Emerging Topics in Life Sciences published Sept. 28 by Portland Press. Titled "Early Earth and the Rise of Complex Life," the issue was edited by UC Riverside's Timothy Lyons, a distinguished professor of biogeochemistry, along with UCR professor Mary Droser and postdoctoral researcher Kimberly Lau, and Susannah Porter, a professor at UC Santa Barbara. Several of the 18 articles included in the collection were authored or co-authored by UCR researchers.

While geological and fossil records suggest the formation of complex life and oxygenation of the planet progressed hand-in-hand, the details about the possible cause-and-effect relationship are still murky and debated. Did rising oxygen levels in the oceans and atmosphere drive the formation of complex life, were they unrelated, or did the eventual emergence and proliferation of complex life instead cause a rise in oxygen?

"While those questions remain largely unanswered at this time, this curated collection offers an up-to-date look at the relationship between early organisms and their environments through the lens of a diverse group of scientists using a variety of cutting-edge methods," Lyons said.

Oxygen began to accumulate in the oceans and atmosphere 2.3-2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxidation Event. By 1.8 billion years ago, oxygen levels had fallen to intermediate levels, where they remained stable for another billion yearsdubbed 'the boring billion' by scientists. Around 800 million years ago, the levels likely increased again, and the first animals evolved soon after.

A paper by Scott Evans, a graduate student in Droser's lab, presents evidence suggesting another rise of oxygen catalyzed innovation in animal life. By studying fossil animals from between 550-560 million years ago, during the so-called Ediacaran era, Evans showed that Earth's early animals, which were ocean-dwelling creatures that "breathed" by diffusion, evolved to be larger. This meant a lower fraction of their cells came in contact with the surrounding waters during a period of increased oxygen and became smaller again during a transient decrease.

"This relationship suggests that a rise in oxygen levels may have provided the environment necessary for the diversification of complex body plans and energetically demanding ecologies," Lyons said.

Not everyone in the series agrees that a rise in oxygen was key to our early ancestors' success. Daniel Mills at the University of Southern Denmark cautions the relationship between the evolution of complex life and increasing oxygenation remains open to question. Perhaps, he suggests, the emergence of animals might have been based on "internal developmental constraints," meaning the time it took for animals with sophisticated cellular machinery governed by complex genetics to evolve independently of environmental changes.

"Readers will not leave this collection with a clear single answer," Lyons said. "Instead, our goal was to give them an up-to-date view of the key debates about evolving early complex life and environmental change, the full context that lies behind the questions and uncertainties, and the work left to do."

Explore further Understanding of the evolution of Earth's ecology as oxygen levels changed

More information: Timothy W. Lyons et al, Early Earth and the rise of complex life, Emerging Topics in Life Sciences (2018). Timothy W. Lyons et al, Early Earth and the rise of complex life,(2018). DOI: 10.1042/ETLS20180093Alex Greenwood (left) and Myriam Cotten pose with a newly delivered probe for the large NMR magnet in Small Hall in the background. New probes are necessary for their study of biomaterials. Credit: Joseph McClain

It's hard to think of a fish with a higher across-the-board value than the striped bassor rockfish, as it's known in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Morone saxatilis is esteemed by anglers who fish in freshwater as well as saltwater. It's a valuable commercial species, and therefore earns a top listing in the seafood section of many a restaurant menu and fishmonger's stall.

A team of scientists at William & Mary led by Myriam Cotten is investigating yet another virtue of the striped bass: The fish contain biomolecules that have shown promise for therapeutic use in human medicine.

Cotten, an associate professor in the university's Department of Applied Science, is a co-author on a recently published paper, "Copper regulates the interactions of antimicrobial piscidin peptides from fish mast cells with formyl peptide receptors and heparin," in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

She explained that the peptides studied in the paper are varieties of the molecular weapons used by an animal's immune system, and produced by mast cellsspecialized white blood cells. In this case, the subject animal is a fish, and so they are "piscidin" peptides.

The paper notes that fish are subject to a barrage of pathogensbacterial, viral, parasitic and fungal. Fish, of course, swim and breathe in what sometimes can be a soup of pathogens. Some 65 percent of infections get their start in biofilms and to stay healthy, fish have evolved powerful immune systems to fight off infection.

Cotten says she often works with other scientists, particularly when it comes to in vivo examinations: "I do the fundamental researchI love that! But I don't do in vivo," she explained. "That's why this is collaborative work."

For instance, she said that in 2015, after studying them for a decade, she found that her peptides could bind copper. It was an important discovery.

"Copper ions form radicals, and radicals can attack neighboring biological molecules, latching on and damaging certain chemical bonds," Cotten explained.

She collaborated with Hao Hong at the University of Michigan, who tested her copper-charged peptides in vivo applied to a cancer tumor on a mouse. The results, while preliminary, are promising, Cotten added.

The copper-charged radicals could be an important new weapon in the wars against tumors and infections, and the mechanisms described in the J. Biol. Chem paper are the necessary next steps on the route to clinical trials. The paper describes the peptides as Swiss army knives that not only directly attack bacteria but also activate the immune cells of the host organism to help fight infections.

As she works toward better understanding of the biochemical mechanism of piscidins and other biomolecules that could one day be used to fight off infections in humans, Cotten appropriately describes herself as a biophysical chemist.

"That means I study biological systems with physical tools," she explained. Crystallography is one of the go-to physical tools for chemists, but Cotten studies biological membranes and notes, "Everything that has to do with a membrane, that binds a membrane, that targets a membrane, is very hard to study with crystallography when it is bound to that membrane."

Therefore, Cotten's own go-to tool is nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR. She is continuing her investigation in the NMR lab in Small Hall on the William & Mary campus, working with a group that includes research scientist Dr. Alex Greenwood, an NMR specialist, and supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

"NMR happens to be one of the best techniques to interrogate samples that do not crystallize," Cotten said. "When you are looking at an antimicrobial substance that is very likely attacking membranes or maybe has internal targets, like DNA, there's really no atomic-level method other than NMR that can study non-crystalline samples."

Nuclear magnetic resonance is a sensitive and exacting techniqueor rather set of techniques. Long before she came to William & Mary, Cotten was familiar with the NMR work going on here, particularly the work of Robert Vold, a former member of the faculty in the physics and applied science departments.

"When I was a graduate student, I was in awe of the work of Professor Vold, " Cotten said. "I still have stacks of his papers that I printed 20 years ago. And I never met him until I got the job here."

Cotten began to work in the big magnet lab at Small Hall, using the 17.6-tesla, 750 megahertz magnet that Vold used. But she could not just walk up and put her samples into the magnet. Vold, along with Gina Hoatson and a number of other users of the big magnet, had been using it to study non-biological samples. Cotten's work involves examination of biological membranes.

"When I came here, the instrument was set up for materials. I had to buy new probes to do NMR here," she explained.

NMR users like to compare the magnet to a drill and the probes to drill bits: A drill can use any number of bits, depending on the materials. The type of "bits" Cotten needs to study membranes are called static probes. One of her collaborators, Peter Gor'kov of the National High Magnetic Field Lab at Florida State, built the new probes for her.

The samples are oriented on glass plates and then they go into the throat of the magnet, the coil. The magnet zaps the sample with a magnetic field. The atomic nuclei in the sample have their own electronic environment and resonate at unique frequencies within the magnetic field.

The probe sits inside the magnet, about two feet, using radio waves to pick up the transfer in energy level in a signal that, once it's decoded, can yield up a great deal of detail about the molecular structure of the sample.

Cotten says she is "deeply passionate" about using NMR because it allows for the study of the movement of molecules, not just their structure. And molecular movement is quite important to her understanding of phenomena associated with membranes.

"Molecules don't work by being frozen in space. Molecules move," she explained. "If you have a substance that's antimicrobial, it needs to move to a site where it attacks a cell. When it's there, it needs to change the structure of what it's bound to in order to damage that site. It's very dynamic."

Cotten and her team are working to install the new biomolecule-friendly probes in the NMR lab to continue study of the fish peptides, which show promise for an ever-widening array of clinical applications.

Explore further Fishing for new antibiotics

More information: So Young Kim et al. Copper regulates the interactions of antimicrobial piscidin peptides from fish mast cells with formyl peptide receptors and heparin, Journal of Biological Chemistry (2018). Journal information: Journal of Biological Chemistry So Young Kim et al. Copper regulates the interactions of antimicrobial piscidin peptides from fish mast cells with formyl peptide receptors and heparin,(2018). DOI: 10.1074/jbc.RA118.001904By Ritah Kemigisa.

The Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi known to many as Bobi Wine has asked people not to boycott any of the Uganda crane matches at Namboole stadium following the cancellation of his Kyarenga album launch that was due on s 9th November.

The show was canceled after FUFA wrote a letter to the management of Namboole contesting this event saying the stadium was going to host an international match between Uganda and Cape Verde on 17th November.

This angered many Ugandans and have since vowed to boycott Uganda cranes matches with social media users starting up the trending hashtag #boycottugandacranes.

However the Kyarenga star has called for calm and asked Ugandans to keep the love and support the Uganda cranes team.

He says the national team should be the prideMy great-grandfather Samuel Feins emigrated from the Old Country, in his case, Russia, in 1899. He came through Ellis Island and then quickly made his way to Massachusetts. Fifteen years later he was firmly established as the proprietor of the New Hat Frame Company of 55-63 Summer Street, Boston. He was a milliner, a hat maker, noting in The Millinery Trade Review that 1916 would be a big season for satins, velvets, and flowers. But not feathers.

While feathers and even taxidermied birds had been for many years a way to make a fashionable womans hat sing, plumes and whole avifauna as a fashion statement were going out of style. Thanks to Boston Brahmins who took an interest in nature, birds and feathers as decoration would soon be outlawed.

By 1918, the efforts of Boston and New York society ladies and their allies led to the passage of the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the centennial of which has been celebrated in 2018 as The Year of the Bird. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act broadly provides that it shall be unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner, to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture, or kill, possess, offer for sale, sell, offer to barter, barter, offer to purchase, purchase, deliver for shipment, ship, export, import, cause to be shipped, exported, or imported, deliver for transportation, transport or cause to be transported, carry or cause to be carried, or receive for shipment, transportation, carriage, or export, any migratory bird, any part, nest, or egg of any such bird, or any product, or not manufactured, which consists, or is composed in whole or part, of any such bird or any part, nest, or egg thereof.

Its worth quoting the language to see how comprehensive it is, a reminder of the seriousness with which supporters and, ultimately, lawmakers took bird protection. With few exceptions, some 800 species are covered by the law. With only minor modification in a century, the act is a keystone in American environmental legislation. Every Pennsylvania bird covered in this column enjoys the protection of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Every species in Pittsburgh is protected by (yes, American Crows!), or purposefully exempted from the act (no luck for European Starlings and House Sparrows, both ubiquitous invasive species imported to the States).

The National Aviary is our local tribute to the wonders of avian life, unique in the nation for being the only non-profit indoor zoo dedicated to birds, recognized by Congress with honorary national status, in 1993, and focused on avian education and conservation of birds. If you arent one of the 100,000-plus annual visitors to the aviary, I encourage you to make a visit to this feathery gem on the North Side. Five hundred individuals of 150 species large and small call the aviary home, and a walk through their habitats and an examination of the birds up close is one of the best ways to appreciate the living descendants of dinosaurs. Whether you go to see a Bald Eagle, American Kestrel, or Snowy Owlall birds of Western Pennsylvania at one time of year or anotheror one of the many exotic, non-native birds resident in the aviary, developing some aviphilia can start this fall with a stop right here in Pittsburgh, perhaps the national capital of birds.1 hour ago

3 Stocks to Buy for a Santa Rally

Consider Adding These 3 Stocks for an End of Year Santa Rally Over the years, investors and traders will pick up on certain trends that tend to play out time and time again. This experience can really pay off in the long run, as patterns repeat themselves in financial markets more often than not.

Read Article



By Jung Min-ho







First Boracay in the Philippines, then Maya Bay in Thailand. Now another famous Thai tourist destination, Similan islands, appears to have become a victim of its own success.





In recent years, a huge influx of visitors to the Similan islands has polluted once-crystal-clear waters and seriously damaged marine ecosystems.





To tackle the problem, the Thai government announced last week that it would ban tourists from staying overnight on the islands from Oct. 16 except tours operated by licensed deep-sea diving companies, according to local media.





Eighty kilometers north-west of Phuket, the 11-island Similan archipelago is one of the most famous tourist destinations in the Andaman Sea.





Before the ban, more than 5,000 tourists visited there a day to enjoy pristine beaches and swim amid colorful coral reefs.





"The limit on the number of tourists will remain in effect. We have no thoughts on changing this," Similan National Park Chief Ruamsilp Manajongprasert told The Phuket News, a local English-language paper.





"The main aim is to reduce damage to corals and the environment by tourists, tour operators and divers."





The measure follows the closure in June of Maya Bay, which became world famous after the 2000 Hollywood movie, "The Beach" was filmed there.





The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation initially planned to close it for only four months, but after confirming extensive damage, it later decided to extend the period indefinitely.





In April, the Philippines government also shut down the popular tourist island of Boracay for six months because of environmental problems.

Lunaticoutpost.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program , anaffiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.Amazon, the Amazon logo, MYHABIT, and the MYHABIT logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.Don't be a pest to the forum.No profanity in thread-titles or usernamesNo excessive profanity in postsNo Racism, Antisemitism + HateNo calls for violence against anyone..This website exists for fun and discussion only. The reader is responsible for discerning the validity, factuality or implications of information posted here, be it fictional or based on real events. The content of posts on this site, including but not limited to links to other web sites, are the expressed opinion of the original poster and are in no way representative of or endorsed by the owners or administration of this website. The posts on this website are the opinion of the specific author and are not statements of advice, opinion, or factual information on behalf of the owner or administration of LunaticOutPost.Com. The owners or administration of this website can't be hold responsible for content hosted on sites that posters link to in; including, but not limited to, posts, signatures, private messages and such. This site may contain content not suitable for minors and if you feel you might be offended by such content, you should log off immediately.This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Users may make such material available in an effort to advance awareness and understanding of issues relating to civil rights, economics, individual rights, international affairs, liberty, science & technology, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.In accordance with industry accepted best practices we ask that users limit their copy / paste of copyrighted material to the relevant portions of the article you wish to discuss (no more than 50% of the source material) provide a link back to the original articleIf you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe a post on this website falls outside the boundaries of "Fair Use" and legitimately infringes on yours or your clients copyright please contact [email protected] This website is owned by :Marco ZwaneveldDrijfriemstraat 522516 XR The HagueNetherlands.I will not rent, sell, share or otherwise disclose your personal information to any third party.We might contact you from time to time regarding your purchases or the services (like forums and announcement lists) you have subscribed to.Some of the 3rd party advertisers on lunaticoutpost.com may use cookiesto track peformance and/or to serve relevant ads.If you wish to read more and/or opt out of such cookies, please visit: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/Not only does America have milkits got a surplus of over 8 million metric tons, forcing dairy farms to shutter and farmers to simply start dumping millions of gallons of milk that far exceeds domestic and foreign demand.

Declining consumption, increased production, retaliatory tariffs and lower prices in the face of increased costs have been walloping American farmers for some two years now, according to the Reedsburg Times Press.

Northeastern states are the most affected by the glut. The State of Wisconsin has seen a net loss of more than 400 dairy farms this year alone, and in December last year, the states farmers dumped a record 160 million pounds of skim milk they couldnt sell. Thats three times the amount they were forced to dump in 2012, according to CSMonitor.

By July, farmers in the Northeast had dumped 145 million pounds of milk, and 23.6 million pounds of that was dumped in July alone, according to Bloomberg.

Much of the blame will be laid on Canada, which moved last year to implement its own supply management by restricting dairy trade from the U.S.

But the blame isnt all about Canada, and you have to follow some less direct paths to the end of this glut.

For instance, the European Union has also seen a surge in its exports of dairy, and because Russia in 2014 largely banned all dairy exports from the EU, the EU has tapped up other markets, pushing out American dairy.

Nor is it just about exports.

Americans, while enjoying a brief flirtation with a yogurt craze, are now weaning themselves off milk, which has always been the dairy farmers top revenue generator.

But American farmers arent necessarily like other industries from an operational perspective. They milk cows whether the market wants them to or not. They keep producing, even when supply is at the glut level. Then, its either shut down or find another way to put all the milk to use.

Dairy farmers are free-market guysthey dont want to be told how much to produce, Richard A. Ball, commissioner of New Yorks Department of Agriculture and Markets, told Bloomberg. Its a lot more fun to talk about how to increase demand than restrict what theyre doing. Related: $100M Saudi Payment For Syria Fails To Help Davos in the Desert

One potential light amid all this dairy darkness is the New NAFTA agreement reached at the end of September, replacing NAFTA with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which will give the U.S. greater access to the Canadian dairy market. In other words, dairy farmers from New York and Wisconsin, most notably, will be able to sell more of their product to Canadas protected dairy market. In figures, it means opening up the Canadian market to American dairy farmers by 3.6 percentor, accessing 3.6 percent of Canadas $16-billion dairy market.

According to the Wisconsin Agriculturalist, prior to the new trade deal, Canada had a 7.5-percent tariff on milk exports that were within quotas. Once it fell outside of quotas, that tariff became 241 percent. For blended dairy powder, over-quota tariffs were 270 percent.

So the new deal is a potential lightbut not enough, say some. And while it might have somewhat of a stabilizing effect, its not enough to raise prices for American farmers.

Other milk deals with top trading partners Mexico and China will have to be realized for American farmers to see prices increase at alland this is where Trumps tariffs still really hurt. Last year, U.S. producers sold $1.31 billion in dairy products (cheese, mostly) to Mexico, and $576 million to China. Both are now levying new tariffs on American dairy.

According to a study commissioned by the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), retaliatory tariffs by China and Mexico could lower dairy exports by $2.7 billion and depress dairy farmers' revenues by $16.6 billion over the next several years.

And a little good news on the domestic front wouldnt hurt, either. Milk is being vilified by food gurus and health figures.

There are plenty of other domestic enemies to the American dairy farmer, too. According to Public Opinion Online, more than 100 farmers have seen their supply contracts canceled by Dean Foods to make way for Walmart to start producing its own milk and attempt to dominate the supply chain. And from a price point, the retail giant is facing a win-win situation. While the national average for a gallon of milk is around $3.23, Walmart is selling its own brand for $2.

By Fred Dunkley for Safehaven.com

More Top Reads From Safehaven.com:China wants to launch a world-first man-made moon over the southwestern city of Chengdu by 2020 to help illuminate the city at night.

If the first artificial moon experiment is successful, China will launch three more moons in space in 2022, potentially saving electricity and conserving energy, China Daily reports.

The man-made moon that will be orbiting the Earth will have a reflective coating designed to deflect sunlight back to the earths surface similar to the shining of the Moon, Wu Chunfeng, head of Tian Fu New Area Science Society in Chengdu, told China Daily in an interview.

The artificial moon will actually be an illumination satellite that will complement the shining of the Moon at night. But the man-made moon is expected to be eight times brighter than the Moon, Wu told China Daily.

The brighter shining will be due to the much closer orbit at which the illumination satellite will stayaround 500 kilometers (311 miles) from Earth, compared to the average distance of the Moon to the Earth of 380,000 kilometers (236,120 miles), the scientist said.

But this is not enough to light up the entire night sky, Wu told China Daily. Its expected brightness, in the eyes of humans, is around one-fifth of normal streetlights, he noted.

The scientists behind the project expect that the artificial moon could replace some street lights in the urban area in Chengdu.

According to Wu, the city of Chengdu could save US$173 million (1.2 billion yuan) every year if its artificial moon illuminates 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) of the city. Related: Supply Issues Weigh On Pot Stocks As Canada Goes Legal

The moon may also be turned off, if needed, the scientists expect.

However, a lot of work and testing on this man-made moon still need to be done, including in the scientific feasibility and business model departments, Wu told China Daily. There are also concerns about how a new moon hanging up in the sky would affect people and animals day and night routines, including sleep.

When the satellite is in operation, people will see only a bright star above, and not a giant moon as imagined, Wu told China Daily.



By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Safehaven.com:Monday, October 22, 2018

Stocks continue to slide. The Italian Prime Minister tried to reassure the markets, vowing not to leave the Eurozone. Italy is in a standoff with Brussels over its budget, which is not in line with European fiscal rules. Italy expects the European Commission to reject the proposed budget on Tuesday, which would be the first time such a confrontation has ever occurred. On Monday, Moodys downgraded Italys debt to one notch above junk status. Meanwhile, Chinas Shanghai Composite Index rebounded sharply, easing concerns about the global fallout of a Chinese slowdown.



(Click to enlarge)

- Gold prices rallied over the past few weeks, rising from under $1,190 to over $1,220 per ounce.

- Investors liquidated their short positions on gold this month, which helped fuel the price increases. Net short positions more than halved in the week ending on October 16.

- Gold is trading at just shy of $1,230 per troy ounce as the new week begins, which puts it above the technically important 100-day moving average. This could give rise to technical follow-up buying, Commerzbank said in a note. That said, given the extent of the position squaring, we would have expected the gold price to rise even more sharply.

Markets

Saudi Arabia sees capital flight. The international reputational damage to Saudi Arabia continues, with Riyadh admitting to the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia is now seeing investors flee the country. Saudi saw investors sell $1.1 billion in stocks last week. The record amount of the sell-off really shows the gravity of the situation, Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets UK, told Bloomberg. The Saudis have suffered a major setback, and it is going to take a very long time and hard work for them to gain the same kind of confidence. On Monday, Saudi Arabias main stock exchange, the Tadawul All Share Index, fell more than 2 percent.

Related: Chinese E-Commerce Giant Eyes Aggressive Expansion

Disappointing corporate profits. U.S. corporate profits in the third quarter are looking a little disappointing, raising fears that the economic boom is coming to an end. Cautious consumer spending, rising costs and a strong dollar are a few of the reasons that the corporate sector is reporting smaller profits. According to the Wall Street Journal, an estimated 35 percent of the 85 companies in the S&P 500 that have announced earnings have missed analysts expectations.

France says EU financing vehicle could be expanded. The European Union is setting up a special purpose vehicle to help European companies continue to trade with Iran even as U.S. sanctions take effect. The vehicle would help companies evade U.S. sanctions. Frances foreign minister said last week that instead of merely focusing on the narrow issue of Iran sanctions, the financing vehicle could be expanded to help Europe more broadly free itself of the constraints placed on it by the U.S. Treasury. It aims to create an economic sovereignty tool for the European Union beyond this one case. It is therefore a long-term plan that will protect European companies in the future from the effect of illegal extraterritorial sanctions, a spokeswoman for the French foreign minister said.

Commodities

Metals prices up. The rebound in Chinese stocks is helping to fuel price increase for commodities. Metals prices are getting off to a good start to the new week and are gaining by as much as 2%, Commerzbank said in a note. The Chinese government is preparing a package of tax cuts, which amounts to a shift in political focus away from deleveraging and towards a growth-oriented approach, Commerzbank said.

Low water levels disrupt trade on Rhine. Historically low water levels on the Rhine River is curtailing shipments of key materials in Europe. Further shipping restrictions are expected on inland barge routes along the Rhine corridor, as the water subsides, wrote JBC Energy. Heating oil prices in Northwest Europe will be vulnerable to spikes over the next couple of months. The Rhine is a critical artery supplying Europe and beyond with coal, fuel, chemicals and raw materials.

Canadian cannabis prices need two years to stabilize. Canada legalized cannabis this month, establishing a nationwide legal market. Prices could fluctuate for two years before the market reaches some sort of stability, according to Calgary-based Cann Standard, which collects public price listings for cannabis and aggregates the numbers. Of course, new product types are coming in within that two-year window so it will be hard to tell, Brad Martin, director of Cann Standard, told Global News.

Energy

Saudi-Russia cooperation open-ended. Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih said that the Saudi-Russian cooperation on steering the oil market could be open-ended. In an interview with TASS, al-Falih said that the cooperation will not be based on a specific period of time or a production target, but will be ongoing for regular coordination. He also said that they want to establish an OPEC+ Secretariat to formalize the institution in Vienna, with a proposed agreement potentially revealed in December. Al-Falih also said that Riyadh has no wish to repeat the 1973 oil crisis by engineering a price spike.

OPEC struggles to add capacity. An internal OPEC document seen by Reuters finds that the cartel is struggling to add supply. After promising 1 million barrels per day of additional output in June, the group has only managed to increase net production by 428,000 bpd since May. It is a work in progress, OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said earlier this week.

Related: CME Bitcoin Futures Surge As Bullish Sentiment Grows Louder

U.S. shale industry facing problems. Schlumbergers (NYSE: SLB) Paal Kibsgaard said that U.S. shale growth could disappoint forecasts because of operational and supply chain problems. Kibsgaard said that growth was becoming more difficult because old wells are maturing and new wells are focused on less desirable acreage. The well-established market consensus that the Permian can continue to provide 1.5 million barrels per day of annual production growth for the foreseeable future is starting to be called into question, he said.

Cryptocurrencies

EU advises regulating cryptocurrencies under existing financial rules. A group that advises the European Securities and Markets Authority has recommended regulating cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs) just like financial securities, using existing financial tools available to regulators. The report said that the risks related to cryptocurrencies are similar to those of traditional financial markets.

Bitcoin trapped in limbo. Bitcoin prices are trapped in a relatively narrow range between $6,400 and $6,600. A technical analysis suggests there are supports at these price thresholds. Price volatility has been low as of late, but in the past such periods have often preceded more dramatic price movements.

Only 20 percent of stolen cryptocurrencies recovered. A series of high-profile hacks and attacks on cryptocurrencies sullied the image of the industry over the past year. Worse, a low percentage of stolen funds from cryptocurrencies is ever recovered. Sometimes victims decline to report the theft because they have little confidence in the ability to recover stolen funds. According to CipherTrace, only 20 percent of stolen cryptocurrencies are recovered.

By Josh Owens for Safehaven.com

More Top Reads From Safehaven.com:Over the last two decades, the world has made huge gains in the control of the HIV epidemic. But now, these gains are at risk of stalling.



This is because advances in HIV testing and in improving the lives of people with HIB are not spread evenly across countries and age groups. One group frequently struggling to access these advances is young people.



Older teens and young adults are the most likely to become infected and tend not to go for testing, so they are delayed in getting onto treatment. Of the 1.8 million new HIV infections in 2017, the highest number were in sub-Saharan Africa, with young women accounting for a quarter of all new cases, most of them being infected through the ongoing pattern of transmission from older males.



The theme of this years World Mental Health Day was Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World. Young people living with HIV face high levels of stigmatisation, and fear of peer-rejection is at peak in this age group. Therefore, they are at greatest risk of poor outcomes and are less likely to disclose their HIV status or stick to treatment regimens.



Early adulthood is also the peak age for emergence of mental disorders. The risk of acquiring HIV goes up for people living with conditions like depression, anxiety, alcohol misuse and substance use disorders, and for people who have experienced trauma. At the same time, once a person acquires HIV, their risk of developing a mental disorder increases. This adds up to a critical situation: psychiatric care for young people at risk of acquiring, or already living with, HIV must improve.



Another factor adds to the burden. Countries with the highest HIV burdens often have chronic shortages of psychiatrists and psychologists. Poor mental health and poor engagement in HIV testing often go hand-in-hand. So, what can be done?



One major barrier to increasing the number of people undergoing HIV testing is fear: fear of receiving a positive diagnosis, of being judged by peers, of a lack of confidentiality, and of death. Yet life expectancy for someone who tests positive for HIV and sticks to anti-retroviral therapy is close to normal, and an undetectable viral load makes their HIV virtually untransmittable to others. Mental health specialists could advocate for testing programmes that address such fears and increase understanding.



Another barrier is lack of mental health treatment options in many of the countries with the highest HIV burden. Mental disorders, if left untreated, are some of the chief reasons why people living with HIV give up on their antiretroviral therapy, leading to a surge in their viral load, loss of physical health and the risk of infectiousness to others.



Our work in Zimbabwe has shown that global mental health specialists can train and support non-specialist health workers, so they can assess and treat common mental disorders in people living with HIV. Having a cadre of community workers in poor countries could be a game changer in widening access to mental health care.



Through the Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe, we have trained grandmother health workers to screen people for depression and for local manifestations of stress such as thinking too much. We have found that these wise, kind and committed older women, with supervision, can provide effective talking therapy for common mental disorders for people living with HIV, a therapy they term Opening Up the Mind.



Early results indicate that young people are as comfortable as older adults to open and talk to these trained grandmothers. We have also found it feasible to train counsellors working in HIV clinics in Zimbabwe to use more motivational and collaborative approaches with patients who dont take their prescriptions properly, which has better results than relying on finger-wagging approaches or scare tactics.



Global mental health specialists could also urge governments, NGOs and the pharmaceutical industry to roll out modern drug treatments for those with severe mental disorders. This should be combined with routine inquiries about intimate relationships, provision of sexual health care and behavioural interventions for reducing risky sexual behaviour.



Syringe exchange programs are effective in managing HIV transmission for those at risk and should be scaled-up. Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) is an important part of achieving epidemic control. Once it becomes accessible in resource-limited settings, it will be critical that mental health treatment and additional behavioural support are made available, because of the risk of poor adherence to PrEP for someone with a co-existing mental health condition.



UNAIDS has the 90-90-90 goal. By 2020 the aim is for 90% of people living with HIV to know their status, 90% of these to receive antiretroviral therapy and 90% of those receiving antiretroviral therapy to be virally suppressed. These goals can only be achieved if mental health specialists are contributing to sustainable, culturally appropriate healthcare programmes.

The NATO military command center should be fully operational in 2023, every member states will contribute with its cyber capabilities to the military hub.

The new NATO military command center should be fully operational in 2023, among its tasks the defense of the critical infrastructure of member states and the ability to carry out cyber attacks according to rules of engagement still to be defined.

NATO alliance is aware of growing threats in the cyberspace and the new NATO military command center aims to respond them.

Each member of the alliance will contribute to the offensive cyber capabilities of the new military hub.

While NATO does not have its own cyber weapons, the U.S.-led alliance established an operations center on Aug. 31 at its military hub in Belgium. The United States, Britain, Estonia and other allies have since offered their cyber capabilities. reported the Reuters.

This is an emerging domain and the threat is growing, said Major General Wolfgang Renner, a German air force commander who oversees the new cyber operations center, or CYOC, in Mons.

We have to be prepared, to be able to execute operations in cyberspace. We have already gone beyond protection and prevention, he told Reuters during a NATO cyber conference.

A team of 70 cyber experts will be the pillar of the new NATO military command center that will gather and share information on various threat actors, including cybercrime syndicates, nation-state attackers, terrorists, and hacktivists.

According to the NATO Communication and Information Agency, the NATO communication and computer networks face hundreds of major attacks every month., China, North Korea, and Russia continuously target the infrastructure of the alliance with cyber espionage purposes.

Recent cyber espionage campaigns attributed to Russia have raised the debate inside the alliance about an urgent response to the aggressive cyber strategy of the Kremlin.

The European Union earlier last week discussed various responses to the attackers, including economic sanctions to countries that mounted the cyber attacks.

Our ultimate aim is to be completely aware of our cyberspace, to understand minute-by-minute the state of our networks so that commanders can rely on them, said Ian West, chief of cyber security at the NATO communication agency.

Lets remind that NATO has recognized cyberspace as the fifth element of warfare, so the alliance could respond with conventional weapons in case of a powerful cyber attack.

NATO has warned that in the future any cyber attack against a member state could trigger a military response according to the alliances Article 5, mutual defence clause.

Our concept of operations, a toolbox for short-notice decisions about how to respond, is not in place yet. This is one of the challenges we face, Renner said.

If NATO can agree cyber warfare principles, the alliance hopes to integrate individual nations cyber capabilities into alliance operations, coordinated through the Mons cyber operations center and under the command of NATOs top general, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACEUR. continues the Reuters.

That could allow the top general to take quick decisions on whether to use cyber weapons, similar to existing agreements for NATOs air defenses and its ballistic missile shield, where a commander has only minutes to decide what action to take.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs  NATO military command center, Information warfare)

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Share On Some recent criminal justice highlights from Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform | Main | "Larry Krasners Campaign to End Mass Incarceration" 

Gallup has released here the results of its latest polling on the death penalty under the headline "New Low of 49% in U.S. Say Death Penalty Applied Fairly." Here are excerpts from its reporting of the numbers:

The percentage of Americans who believe the death penalty is applied fairly continues to decrease, falling below 50% this year for the first time. Forty-nine percent now say the death penalty is applied fairly and 45% say it is applied unfairly.

The 49% who say the death penalty is applied fairly is, by one percentage point, the lowest Gallup has measured since it first asked the question in 2000 and reflects a gradual decline of this view over the past decade. Meanwhile, the percentage who say capital punishment is applied unfairly has edged higher, with this year's four-point gap marking the smallest difference between the two views in Gallup's polling.

These latest data, from Gallup's annual Crime poll, were collected Oct. 1-10 -- just before the Washington state Supreme Court on Oct. 11 struck down that state's death penalty, saying it had been unequally applied across racial groups. In its decision, the court cited evidence that "black defendants were 4  times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly situated white defendants." The decision makes Washington the 20th state to outlaw the death penalty.

The decline in Americans' belief that capital punishment is applied fairly is largely the result of a sharp drop in this view among Democrats. Thirty-one percent of Democrats this year say the death penalty is applied fairly, similar to the low of 30% in 2017 but down significantly from 2005 and 2006, when slim majorities held this view. Meanwhile, 73% of Republicans say the death penalty is applied fairly, and the percentage holding this view has been fairly stable over time -- typically in the low 70s...

Americans remain most likely to say the death penalty is not imposed enough (37%), while smaller percentages say it is imposed "too often" (29%) or "about the right amount" (28%). While belief that the death penalty is not imposed often enough is still the most common view, the latest 37% is down from a high of 53% in 2005 and is by one point the lowest reading since 2001....

Historically, Americans have been generally supportive of the death penalty as the punishment for murder. In all but two polls (in 1965 and 1966), Americans have been more likely to say they are in favor of than opposed to use of the death penalty. However, support for capital punishment too has been trending downward since peaking at 80% in the mid-1990s during a high point in the violent crime rate. Currently, 56% of U.S. adults favor capital punishment -- similar to last year's 55%, which marked the lowest level of support for the practice since 1972, when the constitutionality of the death penalty was being challenged.GlobeNewswire

Paris, France  November 18, 2021 - Atos today announces the launch of Atos OneCloud Sovereign Shield, a set of solutions, methodologies, and operational cloud services that is unique on the market, enabling clients across the world to meet the challenges of managing their data in the edge to cloud continuum, in line with the highest jurisdictional data governance requirements. Part of the Atos' OneCloud initiative, Atos OneCloud Sovereign Shield is a comprehensive edge to cloud platform ecosystSINGAPORE (Oct 22): The 380 participating investors who enrolled for the Singapore FinTech Festivals deal-making platform, MATCH, are planning to invest US$6.2 billion ($8.5 billion) in Asean enterprises next year, and an additional US$6 billion over the subsequent two years, announced the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Powered by EY, MATCH or Meet Aseans Talents and Champions, is a platform curates and matches Asean enterprises with global private equity and venture capital.

MATCH is a new component in this years FinTech Festival and has generated more than 17,000 matches between 380 investors and 840 enterprises.

In a Monday media release, MAS says investors showed most interest in startups and growth-stage enterprises, with 60% of the intended Asean investment allocation for next year concentrated in the areas of FinTech, healthcare, medical technology, and the information and communications technology or ICT sectors.

The matchmaking exercise was conducted from May to Sept. And to facilitate deal-making, MAS and EY co-hosted the inaugural Deal Day on Oct 5, which saw more than 400 meetings to match-make enterprises and investors.

Apart from MATCH, another new component that the Singapore FinTech Festival will be introducing this year is the Global Investor Summit, which will be held on Nov 13-14. The summit, targeted at investors and enterprises, features themes such as capital-raising strategies, building businesses across borders, investors outlook and India, China and Asean leaders dialogues.

Jacqueline Loh, deputy managing director of MAS, says, The 2018 MATCH exercise demonstrates the upward momentum in both the supply of and demand for growth capital in Asean. The interest of the global investment community in our region is promising. MATCH presents a great opportunity to ensure that private capital is deployed towards the development of promising Asean enterprises. MAS is committed to supporting this process.

The Edge Singapore is an official media partner for the 2018 Singapore FinTech FestivalOct 22 (Reuters) - People's Insurance Group of China Co Ltd :

* APPLICATION MADE TO STOCK EXCHANGE FOR RESUMPTION OF TRADING IN SHARES FROM 9:00 A.M. ON OCT 22

* DETERMINED THAT NUMBER OF SHARES TO BE ISSUED UNDER A SHARE OFFERING SHALL BE NO MORE THAN 1.8 BILLION SHARES Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:Egyptian authorities on Sunday denied reports of alleged organ theft after the body of a British tourist who died suddenly while on holiday was returned home without some organs. David Humphries, 62, died in the seaside resort of Hurghada on the shores of the Red Sea on September 18. His body was returned to the UK where a second post-mortem ordered by a coroner discovered that his heart and some other organs had been removed, a British media outlet said in a report. Accusing the UK media of publishing "flawed reports", the Egyptian state information service (SIS) said allegations of "organ theft are unfounded". The statement said that samples were taken and the heart, parts of the liver, kidneys and other organs had been removed in order to establish the cause of death. It did not give an explanation as to why they had not been replaced. The service said the tourist had probably died of a heart attack, citing the medical report. It also quoted his daughter Anita Goodall as saying that she did "not accuse anyone of having a hand in the death of her father". In another case in Hurghada on August 21, travel operator Thomas Cook moved all its clients to another hotel after a British couple died in what their daughter called "suspicious" circumstances. Egyptian authorities say John and Susan Cooper, who fell ill and died suddenly while staying at the five-star Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in the resort, succumbed to the effects of an E. coli infection.Haiti's President Jovenel Moise removed two top government officials Monday as part of a purge of people linked to a corruption scandal that has ignited mass protests. The cabinet chief and the secretary general of the presidency were removed from office along with 15 government advisers, an official announcement said. "To have a healthy process, the president has decided to rid the environment of people linked to Petrocaribe without admitting they are guilty of anything," Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant said at a news conference. "The courts will say who is guilty and who is not." The move came five days after tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Port-au-Prince and other cities to protest corruption. Investigations by the Haitian Senate in 2016 and 2017 concluded that nearly $2 billion from a Venezuelan aid program called Petrocaribe were misused. Through Petrocaribe, Venezuela for years supplied Haiti and other Caribbean and Central American countries with oil at cut-rate prices and on easy credit terms. A dozen former cabinet ministers were implicated, including the two officials removed from office on Monday. The Senate's findings, however, led to no legal or government actions, prompting the rise of a civil protest movement called Petrocaribe Challenge demanding that the government explain what happened to the money. "We are going to create an independent commission to investigate the truth of Petrocaribe," Ceant told journalists. He said a foreign firm will be chosen by the commission to trace the Petrocaribe funds and find out what happened to the money and how to recover it.Hong Kong policeman found guilty of theft attempt on MTR train after sergeant catches him out

A Hong Kong police officer was found guilty on Monday of attempting to steal from a Nepali woman on a crowded MTR train.

Kowloon City Court heard how Leung Hung-kei, 32, had hung his jacket over his left forearm before slipping his right arm under the garment to conceal his fingers as they unzipped the womans backpack during a train ride from Admiralty to Tsim Sha Tsui on February 6.

His act was seen by a sergeant out of uniform, who had been observing his suspicious conduct since before Leung boarded.

When confronted, Leung fled the scene.

He argued at trial that he had been framed by the sergeant, with whom he had allegedly exchanged hostile looks after accidentally bumping into the fellow policeman, who was on duty at the time.

Rather than attempting to steal, Leung had merely been holding his arms to his chest to protect and balance himself on the train, he explained.

He had decided to run, he said, because he was worried the misunderstanding would affect his career.

But Deputy Magistrate Frances Leung Nga-yan found the defendants claim he had been framed to be unreasonable, and rejected his evidence.

The court believes the defendant was not an honest witness, she said.

Officer Leung had a clear record before he was found guilty of attempted theft on Monday.

His former supervisor, who testified as a character witness, said he was a responsible employee and performed excellently at work.

Eternal vigilance needed to uphold Hong Kongs rule of law, judge says

Letters submitted by the defendants wife and sister in mitigation further painted him as a loving husband and a responsible father to two young children.

Defence counsel Bruce Tse Chee-ho said the policeman of 12 years was expected to lose his job, his family living quarters and hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong dollars in pension payments.

That in itself is a punishment, the counsel said. He will have a difficult road ahead.

The magistrate said she would have to consider immediate imprisonment because one is typically jailed for this offence.

Story continues

However, she also observed that the defendants conduct appeared out of character for no reason.

Sentencing was adjourned to November 5, pending reports on the suitability of community service.

The defendant was remanded in custody.

This article Hong Kong policeman found guilty of theft attempt on MTR train after sergeant catches him out first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.FILE PHOTO: Cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan, chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), speaks after voting in the general election in Islamabad, July 25, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo

By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan left for Saudi Arabia to attend an investment conference boycotted by other leaders over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Khan told an interviewer before leaving he was concerned at Khashoggi's death but could not skip the conference because "we're desperate" for possible Saudi loans to shore up Pakistan's economy.

It is Khan's second visit to Saudi Arabia in just over a month, but he has not succeeded in securing significant financial assistance to stave off a looming balance of payments crisis.

Khan told the Middle East Eye in an interview published on Monday that he could not pass up the invitation to meet Saudi leaders again.

"The reason I feel I have to avail myself of this opportunity is because in a country of 210 million people right now we have the worst debt crisis in our history," he was quoted as saying.

"Unless we get loans from friendly countries or the IMF (International Monetary Fund), we actually won't have in another two or three months enough foreign exchange to service our debts or to pay for our imports. So we're desperate at the moment."

Islamabad has already asked the IMF to open negotiations for the country's second potential bailout in five years.

Khan, who took office in July, still has been seeking alternatives to the tough conditions the IMF is likely to impose for loans, limiting his vision of an Islamic welfare state.

The central bank's foreign reserves dropped this month to $8.1 billion, a four-year low and barely enough to cover sovereign debt payments due through the end of the year. The current account deficit has swelled to about $18 billion.

Khan has blamed the previous government's policies for the ballooning current account deficit.

He told the Middle East Eye that he was concerned over the "shocking" death of Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Story continues

"The Saudi government will have to come up with an answer... We wait for whatever the Saudi explanation is," he was quoted as saying. "We hope there is an explanation that satisfies people and those responsible are punished."

Khan also called on Washington to abandon its push for new sanctions against Iran, Saudi Arabias regional rival, saying the move could lead to wider conflict.

"The last thing the Muslim world needs is another conflict. The Trump administration is moving towards one," he told the newspaper.

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Nick Macfie and Toby Chopra)Indonesian police patrol cars are arrive at Wijayapura port, which is the entrance gate to Nusakambangan prison as Indonesia prepare for third round of drug executions on July 27, 2016 in Cilacap, Central Java, Indonesia. According to reports, Indonesia is likely to resume executions of 14 prisoners on death row this week. Fourteen prisoners, including inmates from Nigeria, Pakistan, India, South Africa, and four Indonesians, have been moved to isolation holding cells at Nusa Kambangan, off Central Java.

Aspiring female police officers in Indonesia were subjected to virginity tests, what is sometimes referred to as the two-finger test, as part of the polices morality or physical examination, according to ABC News.

The tests are not recorded or listed as a requirement for becoming part of the police, they are still administered throughout the country, according to reports.

The test, as its name suggests, involves inserting two fingers into a womans vagina to see if her hymen is still intact  in an effort to determine whether one is a virgin or not  a method that has long been proven unreliable and incredibly invasive.

According to Andreas Harsono of Humans Rights Watch, the practice is justified by Indonesian police because they feel Indonesian society would not accept a female officer who potentially has an active sex life.

The logic is that they only want good girls to be police officers, he said.

Click here to continue and read more...The Japanese government on Monday ordered Facebook to improve protection of users' personal information following data breaches affecting tens of millions of people worldwide. Facebook said early this month that hackers accessed the personal data of 29 million users in a breach at the world's leading social network first disclosed late September. The company had originally said up to 50 million accounts were affected in a cyberattack that exploited a trio of software flaws to steal "access tokens" that enable people to automatically log back onto the platform. Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission on Monday demanded the social media giant investigate why the personal data was hacked and draw up preventive measures. Facebook told Japanese authorities the 29 million people hacked in the latest attack may include Japanese users, top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga has said. Facebook also acknowledged earlier this year that tens of millions of users had their personal data hijacked by Cambridge Analytica, a British political firm which worked for Donald Trump in 2016. Up to 100,000 Facebook users may have been affected in Japan in that scandal, the commission said. "It is the first time that the commission, which investigated the data leak with British authorities, has issued warnings to Facebook," an official told AFP. The commission also ordered Facebook to communicate better with users and respond to them promptly, for example when they request their accounts be deleted. Facebook pledged to "promptly inform users if the platform was inappropriately used and cooperate with the commission and other countries' regulators" on its website.Singapore Supreme Court (Yahoo News Singapore file photo)

A 32-year-old law graduate who defaulted on his national service (NS) obligations for almost 13 years was on Monday (October 22) sentenced to 13 months jail, after the prosecution successfully appealed against his 10 month prison term handed down by a district judge.

Douglas Tan Chin Guan, who has dual Malaysian and Singapore citizenship, had earlier pleaded guilty to remaining outside Singapore without a valid exit permit for 12 years, 11 months and 19 days  from 12 March 2003 to 29 February 2016.

Tan, who was born in Singapore, also failed to register for NS for 11 years, 5 months and eight days  from 24 September 2004 to 1 March 2016. This charge was taken into consideration in sentencing.

Tan, who has since completed his full-time national service with the Singapore Civil Defence Force, had also filed an appeal against the 10-month sentence, seeking for a fine instead.

Tan said he lived most of his life in Malaysia, and claimed that his parents neither told him about his Singapore citizenship nor of his NS obligations.

Disagreeing with Tans claims in the High Court on Monday, Justice Hoo Sheau Peng, who heard the appeals, said, In my view, it could not be said that the accused had been unaware of his NS liabilities, or that he had believed that his parents had resolved the matter for him.

The accused resided in Singapore for two years while studying at the Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) in 2000 and 2001 (at the age of 14 to 15) without the need for a student visa. He paid the subsidised rate of school fees for local students, and took up a Music Elective Programme scholarship which is open to Singapore citizens only, she said.

Further, it is in my view inconceivable that, having studied in Singapore for two years in an all-boys school, he would not have been exposed to the fact that male Singapore citizens have to serve NS, she added.

The court earlier heard that Tans Singaporean mother and Malaysian father left Singapore when he was three weeks old. He grew up in Malaysia, with a Malaysian passport and identity card.

Story continues

Tan asserted through his lawyer Koh Kok Kwang that his parents became aware their son was a Singaporean and liable for NS in 2004, when a registration notice was sent to them  while he was studying in the University of Nottingham. But Tan said he only learnt of his obligations in December 2008 when he was 22.

In his appeal, Tan said he voluntarily surrendered and served his NS with distinction. His surrender also carried huge costs, including the risk of losing his Malaysian citizenship and being guilty of treason in his own country.

As for the prosecutions appeal, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ho Lian-Yi said, the evidence suggests that the accused and his parents had blatantly and knowingly gamed the system to take advantage of the accuseds dual citizenship in Singapore and Malaysia.

Tan paid subsidised fees while studying in Singapore, the DPP pointed out, adding that his mother had admitted to sending him to study here because his parents wanted him to experience life in Singapore so that he could decide eventually on where to make his permanent home.Global early stage startup competition for emerging markets Seedstars World made its debut in the kingdom

Logistics startup Joonaak has been named as the winner of the inaugural Seedstars Cambodia in Phnom Penh on Sunday.

Selected out of 10 finalists, Joonaak is a startup that provides delivery and warehousing services for small businesses.

In addition to winning a US$500,000 equity investment, the startup will also participate at the Seedstars Asia Summit in Bangkok later this year and compete at the Seedstars Global Summit in Lausanne in April 2019.

This event is all about taking risks and the willingness to try  Every entrepreneur knows that we should go out of our comfort zone, doing something weve never done before, but in reality there are things that just seem out of reach. Put your heart and soul into it, trust your team, believe in what you are doing is something that people also value, and it is very important, Joonaak Co-Founder and CEO Soliya Kong told e27.

The startup plans to use the funding to support their national expansion, with a long-term plan to expand to other Southeast Asian market. It will also use the funding for product development.

To prepare for the next rounds of the competition, the startup plans to polish their presentation, business model, and revenue generation model.

Also Read: Cambodias Meal Temple raises 6-figure round to grow food and delivery platforms

Apart from Joonaak, the competition also named Demine Robotics and Nham24 as second and third prize winners.

Using a patented technology, Demine Robotics build robotics solutions for governments and non-government organisations to remove landmines in former conflict areas. The solution aims to provide a safer and cost effective mean to clear out landmines, and the startup has already secured a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Nham24 is a food delivery service that helps customers save time with their meal booking. The app offers cash-on-delivery payment method and helps food businesses in Phnom Penh gets online.

Story continues

The competition featured finalists working in various industries from gaming, beauty, B2B, edutech, to non-government sector.

Its panel of judges consist of Gaby Fernandez Scala (Seedstars Asia), Pahrada Sappasert (500 TukTuks), Bora Kem (Mekong Strategic Partners), Zoe Ng (Raintree), Sopheap Seng (NIPTICT), and Feiruz Ikhwan (Smart Axiata).

A budding startup ecosystem

Prior to the winner announcement, Seedstars Cambodia ran a two-day bootcamp session for the participating startups.

During the bootcamp, participants have the opportunity to attend workshops and one-on-one mentoring sessions with both local and international mentors such as Pahrada Sapprasert (500 TukTuks), Toshiya Matsuo (Ookbee Mall, Transcosmos), Joseph de Leon (Gravitas Prime), Nichapat Ark (Openspace Ventures), and Paul Ark (Digital Ventures).

Also Read: Cambodia to launch youth tech centre to develop local talents

Adriana Collini, from the Seedstars investment team, told e27 that she was positively surprised by the quality of the participants.

They said that this is the first time they have ever participated in such event, because they do not have the time to look up from their work  I feel honoured that they feel this is valuable enough for them to leave their office for, she said.

They are very active, and they willingly share [their experiences]. It seems like the ecosystem is very collaborative, she added.

When asked about the challenges that these startups are facing in preparing their pitch for the competition, Collini said that many startups need to work on validating their ideas by using the proper methodology.

What they need is the right tools. For example, if you have a lot of ideas, where should you start? she said.

Also Read: Cambodias IG Tech forms insurtech JV with Malaysias Aetins

The result of a partnership with Smart Axiata; National Institute of Posts, Telecoms and ICT; and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Seedstars Cambodia was held in conjunction with the inaugural Cambodia Tech Summit.

The summit also saw the launch of a tech startup ecosystem report by Mekong Strategic Partners and Raintree Development, which revealed a 140 per cent increase in startup funding announcement in the kingdom in 2018.

The post Logistics startup Joonaak wins Seedstars Cambodia 2018 appeared first on e27.The multibank supply chain finance platform collaborate with Privasia to offer digital supply financing to its ProcureHeres customers

Malaysian fintech company focusing on supply chain finance CapitalBay announced a collaboration with e-procurement platform by Privasia, ProcureHere.

With the collaboration, ProcureHeres users can bridge their cash flow gap using CapitalBays service, in which both parties  the buyer who makes and the supplier receiving the order  will be able to apply for supply chain finance from CapitalBay via ProcureHere.

With the arrangement, ProcureHeres users will get paid earlier for their invoices and buyers have the option to pay later.

Also Read: Singapore Airlines unveils open platform initiative to improve customer experience

In terms of SME financing, the partnerships between the two companies will be improved using CapitalBays credit risk-scoring engine with machine learning technology. Trade history, relationship, and performance data courtesy of ProcureHere will also be considered.

The new partnership is a key part of CapitalBays mission to broaden its reach across Malaysia and provide meritocratic financing to businesses of all sizes, said Ang Xing Xian, Chief Executive and Co-founder of CapitalBay.

Also Read: Hong Kongs TNG Fintech acquires Indonesias digital payments company WalletKu

We look forward to solving the problem in supply chain process for both the buyers and suppliers. Buyers would be able to receive goods faster, while suppliers enjoy early payment on delivery all with better cash flow, said Puvanesan Subenthiran, Chief Executive and Managing Director of Privasia.

Privasia Technology Berhad is a Malaysian ICT and business process outsourcing player. The Groups principal business activities include provision of an IT spectrum, wireless broadband infrastructure and satellite-based network solutions.

Through its cloud-based procurement platform ProcureHere, Privasia claimed to have facilitated over 50 clients worth over RM5 billion (US$12 million) in purchasing

Story continues

CapitalBay is a multibank supply chain finance platform based in Malaysia that seeks to achieve financial inclusion by providing structuring financing solutions for the underserved.



The post Malaysian CapitalBay to supply chain-financing ProcureHeres customers appeared first on e27.ORTENBERG, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul a "monstrosity" and vowed to halt all German arms exports to Riyadh until the case is cleared up.

Merkel, in her harshest comments to date, decried what she called "the monstrosity there in the Saudi consulate in Turkey" during a campaign rally in the town of Ortenberg before a regional election in the state of Hesse on Sunday.

"It must be cleared up. As long as it's not cleared up, there will be no arms exports to Saudi Arabia. I assure you of that very decidedly," Merkel said.

Riyadh has given multiple and conflicting accounts on what led to Khashoggi's death on Oct. 2. On Sunday, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called the killing a "huge and grave mistake" but sought to shield Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince.

Merkel first called for a stop to arms exports on Sunday, raising questions about whether that would also affect deliveries that had previously been approved. Her spokesman told reporters earlier on Monday the question was being reviewed.

Norbert Roettgen, a member of Merkel's conservatives and head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said it was clear that all deliveries of weapons to Saudi Arabia should be halted, even those approved before Khashoggi's death.

"Even those deals that were already approved cannot happen now, as long as the case has not been resolved, and as long as there have been no substantial consequences in Riyadh," Roettgen told broadcaster ZDF. "We would completely lose our credibility."

Economy Minister Peter Altmaier earlier had called on other European Union member states to follow its example in stopping arms exports to Saudi Arabia to increase pressure on Riyadh over the Khashoggi case.

Riyadh's explanations so far had not been satisfactory, Altmaier told broadcaster ZDF, adding, "The government is in agreement that we will not approve further arms exports for the moment because we want to know what happened."

Story continues

So far this year Berlin had approved weapons exports worth more than 400 million euros ($462 million) to Saudi Arabia, making it the second-biggest recipient of German arms after Algeria.

Asked whether Germany would roll back previously agreed arms deals with Saudi, he said a decision would be made very soon. The EU needed a unified position to avoid some countries filling the gap, he added.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Ortenberg and Andrea Shalal and Maria Sheahan in Berlin)Israels 50-Year Time Bomb, Pushing Palestinians to the Edge

Why Is the Trump Administration Compounding Palestinian Distress?



In the quest to change Israel's very nature, the Netanyahu government is pushing Palestinians to an edge - with the support of the Trump White House.



Recently, a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that deepening rifts between key stakeholders and surging violence in Gaza further imperil prospects for peace. That should not come as a surprise anymore.

While economic and strategic polarization is steadily deepening between Israel and the Palestinians, the "peace initiatives" of the Trump White House are undermining half a century of American diplomacy and pushing the region closer to an abyss.In the past, the Netanyahu government has vehemently opposed all parallels with South African apartheid. Unfortunately, new data suggests that under apartheid South African blacks had more to hope for than Palestinians today.

Unsettling parallels



Between 1994 and 2017, Israeli GDP per capita, adjusted to purchasing power parity, increased by 150%; in West Bank and Gaza, the comparable figure was 160%. Yet, the Palestinian starting-point is so low that progress in living standards is largely fiction.



In 1994 - amid the peace talks in Oslo - Palestinian living standards were only 6.4% ($1,526) of the Israeli level ($23,693) (Figure a). At the time, the hope was that peace would bring increasing stability, which would foster prosperity and rapid catch-up growth  until the radical-right assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin triggered still another cycle of violence.



Last year, Palestinian living standards were about 7.3% ($2,494) of the Israeli level ($34,135). After more than two decades of new wars and friction, terrorism and restrictions, the catch-up has amounted to less than a percentage point.



Lets set aside political debates about the causes and only focus on economic facts; i.e., changes in income polarization. And let's compare the last two decades of apartheid South Africa with the past two decades between Israel and Palestinians. In the mid-70s, black South Africans annual per capita income relative to white levels was about 8.6%; that is, two percent higher relative to the Palestinian level vis-a-vis the Israelis. By the time apartheid came to an end with the formation of a democratic government in 1994, black South Africans per capita income relative to the whites had climbed to some 13%. In contrast, the comparable Palestinian level was half of that figure last year (Figure b).

Figure Unsettling Comparisons

GDP Per Capita PPP: Israel Vs West Bank and Gaza (1994-2017)

Living Standards: Palestinians/Israelis and Black/White South Africans

Source: a. World Bank. b. Palestinians/Israelis: World Bank. Black and White South Africans: OECD.

Ironically, South African apartheid was more conducive to economic progress in its last two decades than life in the West Bank and Gaza in the past two decades.



Moreover, the Netanyahu governments economic policies have also dramatically increased economic polarization in Israel. In the early 1990s, the Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, was around 35 in Israel, at the level of Portugal and Italy. Closer to 43 today, it is among the highest in OECD countries, and at the level of Nigeria and Zimbabwe. But there may be still worse ahead.

Undermining Israeli Constitution



Protests in Gaza ahead of, and turbulence since Israels Independence Day and the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in May, mark the most serious escalation since the 2014 war. With his decision, President Trump departed from the decades-long U.S. executive branch practice not to recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem.



Meanwhile, a steep decrease in Palestinian Authority and external funding to Gaza since 2017 has worsened already dangerous humanitarian conditions there. According to the World Bank, Gazans real per capita incomes have fallen by one-third since 1994, owing largely to the West Bank-Gaza split and to Israels and Egypts tight controls on goods and people transiting Gazas borders.



Instead of seeking to alleviate acute distress in the region, the White House has given de facto support to the new nation-state law, which defines Israel as a Jewish nation-state, despite a significant Arab minority. Unsurprisingly, the new law has been opposed by demonstrations and a high-profile petition by Israeli intellectuals - including Amos Oz, David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, Eshkol Nevo, Etgar Keret and Orly Castel-Bloom - who demand the Netanyahu government to abolish it: "The nation-state law, according to which the State of Israel is the national state of the Jews only, expressly permits racial and religious discrimination, nullifies Arabic as an official language alongside Hebrew, does not mention democracy as the foundation of the country and does not mention equality as a basic value."



In this status quo, Trump's indiscriminate support for the Netanyahu government effectively nullifies any remaining impression about the U.S. as a neutral arbiter in the peace process. What makes the moment even more dangerous is Netanyahu's inclination to ignore the warnings of Israel's highest defense authorities, the willingness of the Trump administration to embolden these fatal shifts, and the erosion of any remaining hope on the Palestinian side.

50 years of missed warnings



At the eve of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when I toured the West Bank and Gaza, what was most striking was the apparent calm on the surface and the lingering tensions behind the official facade. It was this odd mixture of hollow expectations and raw realities that accounted for the nightmares that ensued.



After the Yom Kippur War, the Labor coalition began to expand the boundaries of Jerusalem eastward, which encouraged a group of Messianic settlers to create a foothold in the West Bank, including Maale Adumim by the Gush Emunim which sparked a protest by the Peace Now movement. I was there, as was my good friend Amos Oz, the famous Israeli author and one of the leaders of the peace movement. The concern was that if the settlers were permitted to create a substantial de facto presence, it might be legitimized over time with de jure measures, which would undermine Israels foundations, polarize the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, while fostering cycles of terror and conflicts.



Despite a relatively broad popular opposition against the settlements, successive Israeli governments failed to contain them, despite Egyptian President Sadats bold peace initiative. Once again, the writing on the wall was ignored and the 80s wars in Lebanon ensued, along with the first large-scale Palestinian uprising against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza at the turn of the 90s. Thats when the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the subsequent Oslo Accords offered a glimpse of an alternative future scenario  but one that perished after Rabins assassination.



Today, half a century has passed from the Six-Day War and the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and Gaza. According to the Peace Index by the Israel Democracy Institute, last July three out of every four Israelis (74%) viewed the chances of Trumps peace plan being a success as low or very low. According to the most recent survey, 89% of Israeli Jews do not see peace in the horizon. Almost half of Israeli Jews believe the Palestinians should have a state of their own. More think the two-state solution would be impossible to implement. After a generation of increasing bitterness, the share of the skeptics is relatively higher in younger age groups.



The message is fairly clear. Most Israelis believe that President Trumps initiatives are undermining peace in the region. Most support a two-state plan. But since Washington is not seen as a neutral arbiter, a lasting peace plan is not enforceable.



As the U.S. provides one-third of the annual budget of the UNRWA, the vital relief agency for Palestine refugees since 1948, and has refused to make further contributions, some 5.4 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria find themselves in a new situation.



Reportedly, Israel supported only gradual reduction of the UNRWAs funding and no reductions in Gaza until Netanyahu changed course without consulting his own security officials. Meanwhile, leading Israeli defense authorities have suggested that steep UNRWA cuts could further radicalize Gaza and destabilize the West Bank.



As the IMF data suggests, the status quo is entering an entirely new stage, in which economic agony could result in a failed state before an actual state is formed, while militarization of the crisis and the absence of hope on the Palestinian side could unleash even more desperate waves of terror internationally.



Half a century of policy mistakes should be an adequate warning.

Dr Steinbock is the founder of the Difference Group and has served as the research director at the India, China, and America Institute (USA) and a visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more information, see http://www.differencegroup.net/

 2018 Copyright Dan Steinbock - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

Dan Steinbock Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.



By Doina Chiacu and Kylie MacLellan

WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Sunday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate a "huge and grave mistake," but sought to shield its powerful crown prince from the widening crisis, saying Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware.

The comments from Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir were some of the most direct yet from Riyadh, which has given multiple and conflicting accounts about Khashoggi's killing on Oct. 2, first denying his death and later admitting it amid an international outcry.

The weeks of denial and lack of credible evidence in the face of allegations from Turkish officials that Khashoggi had been killed have shaken global confidence in ties with the world's top oil exporter.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said Saudi Arabia's admission that the Washington Post columnist was killed in a fistfight was a "good first step but not enough," though he added it was premature to discuss sanctions against Riyadh.

Three European powers - Germany, Britain and France - pressed Riyadh to provide facts, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would not export arms to Saudi Arabia while uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persisted.

Late on Sunday, the Saudi Press Agency said both Saudi King Salman and Prince Mohammed had called Khashoggi's son, Salah, to express condolences.

Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, had extended condolences to Khashoggi's family earlier on Sunday.

"This is a terrible mistake. This is a terrible tragedy. Our condolences go out to them. We feel their pain," Jubeir told the U.S. broacaster Fox. "Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this."

He said the Saudis did not know how Khashoggi, a Saudi national and U.S. resident, had been killed or where his body was. He also said Prince Mohammed was not responsible.

Story continues

"This was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had. They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it."

Khashoggi vanished after entering the consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

After two weeks denying any involvement in the 59-year-old's disappearance, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, died during a fight in the building. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold.

"Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Germany, Britain and France said in their joint statement.

"There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened ... beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible."

Reflecting international scepticism over its account, a senior Saudi government official laid out a new version that contradicts previous explanations.

The latest account includes details on how 15 Saudis sent to confront Khashoggi had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and killed him in a chokehold when he resisted. A member of the team dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.

ERDOGAN TO SPEAK

Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate by the Saudi agents and his body cut up. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting Khashoggi's murder.

In a speech on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to suggest he was getting ready to release some information about the Turkish investigation, and would do so at his weekly speech to members of his ruling AK Party in parliament.

Erdogan has remained largely silent on the case, although Turkey's pro-government newspapers have released information about events at the consulate.

"I will make my statements about this issue on Tuesday at the party group meeting," Erdogan said.

Turkey's Anadolu agency said early on Monday that Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump had spoken on the telephone and agreed that "all aspects" of the case needed to be cleared up.

For Saudi Arabia's allies - particularly in the West - the question will be whether they believe that the prince, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability. King Salman, 82, has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to him.

"I am not satisfied until we find the answer. But it was a big first step, it was a good first step. But I want to get to the answer," Trump told reporters this weekend, when asked about the Saudi investigation and Riyadh's firing of officials over the incident.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said that "obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies."

A leading Republican U.S. senator said he believed the crown prince was behind the killing, adding that the Saudis had lost all credibility in their explanations of his death. "Yes, I think he did it," Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN, referring to the crown prince.

King Salman ordered the dismissal of five officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court adviser seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohammed, and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed Asiri, Saudi state media reported on Saturday.

The king also ordered a restructuring of the intelligence service, to be led by Prince Mohammed, suggesting the prince still retained wide-ranging authority.

Some governments and prominent executives have said they would pull out of a forthcoming investment conference in Saudi Arabia. Among the latest, the government of New Zealand said it would not attend, as did the head of the main banking unit of Japanese financial group MUFG.

According to the senior Saudi official, the Saudi team rolled up Khashoggi's body in a rug, took it out in a consular vehicle and handed it to a "local cooperator" for disposal.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Kylie MacLellan in London, Laurence Frost in Paris, Taiga Uranaka in Tokyo, Praveen Menon in Wellington, Omer Berberoglu and Yesim Dikmen in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Sandra Maler)One of Africa's oldest leaders Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist since 1982, won a landslide victory Monday in a controversial presidential election, as the government tightened security and gunfire erupted in the volatile Anglophone region. The Constitutional Council, dominated by Biya loyalists, on Monday said the 85-year-old leader had won 71.3 percent of the ballot in the October 7 election, marred by allegations of widespread fraud, a low turnout and violence in the poll run-up. The Council's head Clement Atangana said opposition challenger Maurice Kamto, was a far second with 14.2 percent of the vote. "Today, we cannot imagine a scenario where Mr. Biya will quit power normally," said political expert Stephane Akoa. "If Mr Biya thought about alternating power or democracy, he would not have put in place this machinery ... whose main task is modify the results in such a way that Mr. Biya is the inevitable winner," he said. Voting was disrupted in Francophone Cameroon's two English-speaking regions, where a separatist movement has unleashed a brutal government crackdown. Turnout here was below five percent, according to the International Crisis Group think tank. Witnesses on Monday told AFP of gunfire during the morning in Buea, capital of the English-speaking Southwest region, which has been rocked by violence for months. The Constitutional Council had 15 days after the vote to weigh up objections filed concerning the election. It rejected all 18 complaints. The final results can no longer be challenged. Biya notably won 79.7 percent of the vote in Adamaoua, 71.1 percent in the Centre and 90.4 percent in the East, the Council said. AFP journalists reported tight security around the main post office in the capital Yaounde after calls on social media for a protest rally against the results. Anti-riot police trucks and security forces were deployed across the area. Authorities on Sunday had banned an opposition march in the commercial capital Douala called to denounce the "shameful and massive fraud" in the election. About 30 people were arrested on the spot, AFP journalists reported. Kamto, who pronounced himself the winner of the vote before even the first results were announced -- leading the government to brand him an outlaw -- has alleged that six of the 11 members of the Constitutional Council were biased in Biya's favour. Kamto was Monday declared the winner in the Littoral province -- the only one not won by Biya -- where he got 38.6 percent of the vote. The province is home to the country's commercial capital Douala. Biya's main challenger has also called for the vote to be annulled in seven of the country's 10 regions, citing "multiple irregularities, serious cases of fraud and multiple violations of the law". - 'We heard a lot of gunshots ' - In English-speaking Buea, a resident said shooting took place in the Mile 16 and Great Soppo districts of the city. "We heard a lot of gunshots this morning," another resident said. But a security source told AFP there had been no clashes in Buea on Monday. The army has been deployed in the Southwest and the other Anglophone region, the Northwest, to hunt down the scattered groups of separatists who seek the independence of these territories. The historic opposition party based in the west, the Social Democratic Front, has long stood against Biya. The party's failure to demand outright independence has roused calls of "treason" among hardliners. Biya became prime minister in 1975, but precisely how he was anointed to succeed Cameroon's founding president Ahmadou Ahidjo in November 1982 remains a mystery. Unlike more fiery and flamboyant peers in the club of long-standing African leaders, critics say Biya -- who is nicknamed "The Sphinx" -- is a quiet autocrat. In a rare moment of candour, he once warned of his sweeping powers telling a Cameroonian journalist in 1986: "Just a little shake of my head and you'll be reduced to nothing."Three arrested as Hong Kong police seize estimated HK$42 million worth of drugs from Yuen Long flat

Police seized an estimated HK$42 million (US$5.4 million) worth of illegal drugs in a raid on a manufacturing plant operating from a flat in Hong Kongs New Territories.

Three suspects were rounded up in an operation by the polices Narcotics Bureau at a low-density private estate in Yuen Long on Friday night.

Acting on intelligence, a man, 40, and woman, 25, were stopped by officers hiding outside the flat, police said. Cocaine was seized from the man. Inside the flat, a larger haul of drugs was found.

In the raid, a total of 34kg of cocaine, 2kg of crack cocaine, 1.6kg of heroin and 500 grams of ketamine worth an estimated HK$42 million was recovered.

Drug making equipment and packaging materials were also seized.

Another man, 40, was arrested inside the flat.

The three suspects were each charged with one count of drug manufacturing and one count of drug trafficking and would appear in Tuen Mun Court on Monday.

Trafficking in a dangerous drug carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and a HK$5 million fine.

Separately, customs at Hong Kong International Airport recovered about 2.2kg of liquid cocaine with an estimated market value of HK$2.6 million from two female visitors on Saturday.

The pair, aged 36 and 38, arrived from Sao Paulo, Brazil, through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They were found to be acting suspiciously while clearing customs and were escorted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei. The women discharged the drugs, packed in small bags, from their bodies.

The pair were detained.

According to official statistics, local authorities seized 355kg of cocaine across the city in the first six months of this year, a 97.2 per cent rise from 180kg in the same period last year.

This article Three arrested as Hong Kong police seize estimated HK$42 million worth of drugs from Yuen Long flat first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.Terengganu area police were shocked when a woman in a frail state appeared at a police station with the remains of her recently aborted baby with her.

Already 20 weeks pregnant with the child of her former fiance, the woman alleges that he pressured her to seek an abortion. Procedures of this nature are not legally available in Malaysia, and will only be carried out by doctors if the mothers health is in danger. Instead, the woman ordered ten abortion pills via Facebook, paying RM600 (US$144) for the lot. On Friday, the woman ingested two of the pills, put the remaining eight inside her vagina, and also began drinking large volumes of carbonated water.

New Straits Times writes that the woman was alone at the time of the incident, and began to feel intense pain after one hour of having taken the pills. At approximately 11pm that night, the woman entered into induced labor, and gave birth the a stillborn male fetus, weighing just over 300 grams.

Deciding the next morning to go to a nearby medical clinic after what we can only imagine was a traumatic night, the staff at the facility gave her the contact for funeral arrangements, but told the woman to report the death to police first. Along with the babys remains wrapped in a towel, and inside the carried basket of her bike, the woman rode to a Gong Badak police station and told the authorities what she had done. Appearing weak, and still in need of medical attention despite having visited a clinic, they sent her to a nearby hospital for further treatment.

It is unknown whether the woman was aware that her actions were criminal, and she is now being investigated for intentionally preventing the birth of a child, a conviction which could carry up to ten years in prison.

The post Woman induced labor at home to abort baby, takes remains to police to report death appeared first on Coconuts.Page Content

Natural disasters can hit at any time, and California employers need to be preparedand help their workers be ready as well. Before a disaster strikes, employers should plan ahead and tell their employees about the benefits and resources available to help them recover from natural disasters. Here are some tips for employers on how to handle workplace safety, plan for emergencies and give workers information about government assistance after a disaster.



1. Review Cal/OSHA standards.

Every employer has a legal obligation to provide and maintain a safe and healthy workplace for employees. Employers should be familiar with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration's requirements and recommendations and plan for any safety hazards or health risks that natural disasters can pose. For example, smoke from wildfires may contain chemicals, gases and fine particles that can be hazardous to employees who breathe in the smoke. To protect workers exposed to wildfire smoke, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) recommends that employers take specific precautions, including offering approved respiratory protective equipment for employees working in outdoor locations.

2. Develop an emergency action plan.

Employers are required to comply with Cal/OSHA's disaster planning standard, and it is critical that they plan ahead. Implement mandatory procedures for responding to wildfires and other natural disasters, and communicate those procedures to employees in writing. These policies and procedures should:

Describe the actions to be taken to protect employees from fires and other emergencies.



Explain how employees should respond during a fire.



Let employees know when they canor shouldwork from home or an alternative workplace.



Additionally, employers should designate in advance personnel who is authorized to make the final decision to shut down the workplace.

3. Inform workers about government resources.

Employers should be aware of and inform their employees about federal, state and local assistance that is available during or after a natural disaster.

The California Employment Development Department (EDD) provides disaster-related services to individuals and businesses in California. The EDD may offer unemployment insurance benefits to employees who are displaced from their positions. Such benefits are generally available for up to 26 weeks but can be extended in certain circumstances. The EDD also assists displaced employees with the filing of benefit claims, job searches and other resources.

If the governor issues an emergency proclamation for a specific disaster area, additional benefits may be available for businesses and employees. Governor emergency proclamations typically waive the one-week waiting period for benefit payments. If waived, eligible employees can be paid benefits for the first week they are unemployed due to the emergency.

Additionally, California employers in areas that are directly affected by a disaster may request extensions for filing and paying state payroll taxes.

Federal disaster unemployment assistance (DUA) may also be available to supplement state and local aid. DUA provides temporary unemployment benefits to workers who lose their jobs as a direct result of a presidentially declared major disaster. Benefits will be paid to workers who:

No longer have a job.



Are unable to reach their workplace.



Can't work due to damage to the worksite.



Can't work because of a disaster-incurred injury.



Are seeking a job because the head of their household died during the disaster.



In addition to state and federal resources, aid may be available from city or county agencies. Employers should check the applicable local government's website to see what resources are provided.

Patrick J. Wingfield and Kavin A. Williams are attorneys with Murphy Pearson Bradley & Feeney in San Francisco.Guillermo del Toro is known for rendering monsters whose brutal forms overlay a piercing and kind sincerity. He even declared in a recent awards acceptance speech, Since childhood Ive been faithful to monsters. Ive been saved and absolved by them because monsters are the patron saints of our blissful imperfections. So it feels right that Del Toro is retelling the story of Pinocchio, a deformed creature whos strongest desire is to be seen as human. Netflix has described a forthcoming stop-motion animated musical as Del Toros lifelong passion project and the director himself made his love for the mythic character clear, stating, No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio.

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It also follows that Del Toro will set the film in Italy during the 1930s when Benito Mussolini was consolidating control of the country. Interested in excavating ugliness rather than providing audiences with a fantastical escape from it, the director has historically used fairytales as a lens for portraying the encroachment of fascism on peoples lives. Both Pans Labyrinth and Devils Backbone are set against the backdrop of the emerging Franco regime in Spain, and both trace the manifestation of this darkness within individual acts of cruelty and the consciousnesses of children who witness them. And while his recent Best Picture-winning The Shape of Water focuses on companionship, starry-eyed romance and ever-present sexual undertones (often involving eggs), the film finds its tension when these elements are threatened by a cold, controlling and violent brand of American militarism during the Cold War.

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Del Toro might be best suited to re-make the story of Pinocchio but he is certainly not the only creator currently fascinated by the dark fairytale. Numerous other filmmakers have shown interest in the story, including producer Jeremy Thomas, who has reportedly teamed up with acclaimed Italian director Matteo Garrone for a remake, and Robert Downey Jr., who has reportedly been working with American Beauty producer Dan Jinks. The story also received a stage adaptation last year.

Del Toros version, which he is producing, directing, and writing, will be co-produced by Jim Henson and will go into production this fall. This is Del Toros most recent collaboration with Netflix since Dreamworks award-winning Trollhunters.Saturday Night Lives Pete Davidson talked about his recent breakup with pop star Ariana Grande during a standup set at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles on Saturday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The occasion was Judd & Pete for America, a benefit show for SwingLeft.org featuring Davidson and director Judd Apatow. Davidson cancelled a scheduled appearance at Temple University on Wednesday, citing personal reasons, but made the trip west for the pre-election fundraiser.

Davidsons place in the lineup was less than ideal: He went onstage to do standup right after Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers played a set that ended with American Girl, so the comedian opened by (quite correctly) complaining that no one should have to follow a performance of American Girl before joking about recent developments in his personal life:*

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Who the fuck wants to follow that? Am I not going through enough that I have to fucking follow that?  Well, as you can tell, I dont want to be here. Theres a lot going on. Anybody have any open rooms? Anybody looking for a roommate?

Davidson, who is now a walking reminder that couples tattoos are a bad ideahe got at least six Ariana-Grande-themed tattoos over the course of their whirlwind romance, while Grande may have gotten as many as seven of her ownmentioned the ink-related fallout, while alluding to the fact that he had to cover up a tattoo of his previous ex, Cazzie David, before proposing to Grande:

Ive been covering a bunch of tattoos, thats fun. Im fucking 0-for-2 in the tattoo department. Yeah, Im afraid to get my mom tattooed on me because shed leave.

Besides Apatow and Tench, the non-Davidson part of the nights lineup included Tig Notaro, Pete Holmes, and Darren Criss. On Oct. 27, Largo will present Judd & Beck for America, a similar event, this time organized by Norman Lears People for the American Way. Neither Judd Apatow nor Beck have broken up with Ariana Grande or Pete Davidson, but theres still plenty of time.Despite being locked in a pretty close race, Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum had never met in person before Sundays gubernatorial debate in Florida. Lets just say they didnt hit it off. The CNN-hosted event made clear that the two men have little in common, disagree on nearly everything, and have little respect for one another.

Andrew is a failed mayor, DeSantis, a former GOP congressman, declared roughly 50 seconds into the debate, before Gillum even had the chance to introduce himself. Hes presided over a crime-ridden city. Hes involved in corruption. Hes not the guy to lead our state.

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Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, seemed a bit taken aback by that early broadside but soon began launching attacks of his own. At different points during the night, Gillum suggested that DeSantis had been an obstructionist congressman who achieved nothing of consequence during his time in office, has been bought and paid for by some of the biggest polluters in this state, and is now trying out to be the Trump apprentice.

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While the state-level race wont factor into which party controls Congress next year, the battleground contest has nonetheless become a proxy for the larger political fights playing out across the country this yearwhich is to say, the Florida gubernatorial election has become a referendum on Donald Trump and the electability of unapologetic progressives in places where Democrats have traditionally run toward the center. DeSantis was one of Trumps earliest congressional supporters and remains one of his staunchest defenders. Gillum, meanwhile, has been calling for Trumps impeachment since at least late last year, and paired that #Resistance badge of honor with a policy agenda Bernie Sanders could love: Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage, and hiking corporate taxes to better fund public education. One recent major outlier excluded, the two have been running neck and neck in polls for the past month, in a state Trump won by a little more than 1 percentage point two years ago.

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DeSantis made his allegiance to Trump clear throughout the night, although it wasnt quite as steadfast as youd expect from a man who cut a primary ad in which he jokingly indoctrinates his kids into the world of MAGA. The Republican curiously refused to say whether he thought Trump was a good role model for children, instead answering that question by lauding the presidents decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

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Gillum made sure to highlight that non sequitur when it was his turn to answer by getting the moderator to repeat the question. Thats what I thought, Gillum responded, drawing laughs from the audience.

Trump served as the nights most obvious dividing line, but it was far from the only one. DeSantis and Gillum traded cherry-picked stats concerning crime in Tallahassee, a topic DeSantis brought up at least a half-dozen times during the course of the night. And they also clashed on pretty much every policy issue that came up, from global warming to health care.

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On the former, DeSantis declined to say whether he accepts the scientific consensus about man-made climate change, while Gillum promised hed be a governor who believes in science. On the latter, Gillum hit DeSantis over his repeated votes to repeal Obamacare, which would scrap many protections for people with pre-existing conditions, while DeSantis went after Gillum for his stated support for Medicare for all, which would create a single-payer system. (Interestingly, Gillum avoided giving a full-throated defense of that plan and instead focused his remarks on expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income Floridians.)

The disagreements also spilled into the personal. DeSantis repeatedly attempted to wield an ongoing FBI investigation involving Tallahassee city government as a weapon against Gillum, who he suggested accepted illegal gifts including a trip to Costa Rica in exchange for political favors. (Gillum has said he paid his own way and its not clear how much that trip even factors into the FBI probe, since the agency will not discuss ongoing investigations, but ethics watchdogs were rightfully irked when they learned of the vacation.) Gillum, who would be his states first black governor if elected, eventually shot back: I dont take free trips from anybody. Im a hardworking person. I know that may not fit your description of what you think people like me do, but I worked hard for everything that Ive gotten in my life.

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Soon after, Gillum was more explicit. The congressman let us know exactly where he was going to take this race the day after he won the nomination, he said in reference to DeSantis post-primary dog-whistling remarks that voters shouldnt monkey this up by voting for Gillum. The monkey up comment said it all. And he has only continued over the course of this campaign to draw all the attention he can to the color of my skin.

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Gillum ended the night with a closing remark that stood out for its relative optimism in a debate that had skewed negative. In Trumps America, weve been led to believe that weve got to step in our neighbors shoulder and their face and their backs in order to get ahead, Gillum said. Well, I reject that. And we have an opportunity on Nov. 6 as a collective, as a state, to say we deserve better. We want better. We want better schools, access to health care, a clean economy, a restorative justice system that works where hand in glove the community and law enforcement work together for all of our benefit.

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Democrat Andrew Gillums closing statement: We want better I'm asking you all for the only thing in life that my mother ever told me to ask for and thats a chance. I want to be your governor. Let's bring it home. #FLGovDebate https://t.co/2k8aILDzDU pic.twitter.com/LAqQimLDjE  CNN (@CNN) October 22, 2018

Watching from afar, Trump was of course unimpressed. He took to Twitter to declare a great debate victory for DeSantis and to warn voters that Gillum, if given the chance, would make Florida the next Venezuela! Back in Florida, Gillum responded by saying the president had simply proved his point for him:

AdvertisementNational security adviser John Bolton is heading to Moscow this week to announce that President Donald Trump will pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, Treaty, the landmark 1987 arms control accord, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, that marked a key step toward the end of the Cold War.

Two things are worth noting:

First, the Russians have been cheating on the treaty for at least the past four years, the main impetus for Trumps withdrawal.

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Second, pulling out of the treaty is a silly move, rewarding the Russians for their violations rather than punishing themand handing them a propaganda victory, as Vladimir Putin will no doubt blame the U.S. for killing the treatywhile doing nothing for the security of the U.S. or its allies.

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A little historical background is necessary to understand whats going on here. By the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union had signed arms control treaties allowing them parity in strategic nuclear armsweapons with the range to strike each others territory. But then the Soviets started deploying a new type of missile, the SS-20, which, when launched from the USSR, could hit targets in Western Europe. They had long had this capability, with old SS-4 and SS-5 missiles, but the SS-20 was new and mobile, and each missile carried three warheads.

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Meanwhile, the United States had no missiles that could hit the Soviet Union from Western Europe. Many strategists argued that this didnt matter: The U.S. had treaty obligations to protect the NATO nations; if the Soviet Union attacked them, we would respond as if theyd attacked our own territory, even by firing our strategic nuclear weapons at the USSR.

For at least a decade, some Western European leaders had expressed doubts that an American president really would risk New York for Paris, as they put it. These doubts reached alarmist levels in 1977, when President Jimmy Carter took office. German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt particularly distrusted the new president, so in October, he gave a speech, insisting that the principal of parity, or equal level of armaments, must apply to all weapons. The Soviets were fielding the SS-20san intermediate-range weaponin fairly large numbers; therefore, the U.S. needed to field intermediate-range weapons, too.

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Almost no one, either in NATO or in the Carter administration, thought that such weapons would have military utility; but they thought Carter had to do something to shore up political confidence in the NATO allianceand, maybe, serve as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Soviets. So, in 1979, the U.S. decided to buildand the NATO nations agreed to hosttwo new types of weapons, in large numbers: 464 ground-launched cruise missiles and 108 Pershing II ballistic missiles, both of which had the range to strike the USSR. The Soviets would build 654 SS-20s.

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In 1981, soon after taking office, Reagan proposed a zero solution, in which both sides would remove all intermediate-range systems from Europe. The idea sprang from the Pentagon, where clever hawks figured the Soviets would reject the proposal and thus make Reagan look good for offering it. Then, in 1985, Gorbachev rose to the helm of the Kremlin. A genuine reformer, he needed foreign investment and the free exchange of ideas to save the Soviet system, and he needed a relaxation of tensions to facilitate both. To everyones astonishment, Gorbachev revived the zero solutionand accepted it. In December 1987, he and Reagan signed the INF Treaty, banning all cruise and ballistic missileswhether they had conventional or nuclear warheadswith a range between 500 and 5,000 kilometers.

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Bolton has long been hostile not only to this treaty but to all arms control treaties the U.S. has signedto the very idea of international treaties

The Senate ratified the treaty, 935. Its terms were enforced. Other treaties followed. Warm relations ensued in all spheres. The Berlin Wall came down two years later. The Soviet Union imploded two years after that.

Cut to the present day. Relations are tense. Russian President Vladimir Putin waxes nostalgic for days of empire and, to the (very limited) extent he can, is trying to revive them. In any case, he has been modernizing his nuclear arsenalincluding intermediate-range missilesto an extent that some deem threatening and others find puzzling. Among the Russians new weapons is a cruise missile that they call the 9M729, and they have certainly tested it at a range that exceeds 500 kilometersand that violates the treaty.

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One reason for the new Russian nukes may be to compensate for NATOs superiority in conventional weaponsjust as, during much of the Cold War, we put thousands of nuclear weapons in Europe to compensate for the Soviets superiority in tanks and troops.

But another reason has to do with China. One catch in the INF Treaty is that its restrictions are globalit bans the development, testing, and deployment of these sorts of missiles anywhere on Earthbut they apply only to the United State and Russia. The treaty does not apply, for instance, to China, which possesses a few models of intermediate-range missiles. Russia has long wanted to deploy INF missiles to counter those.

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In recent years, some U.S. naval officers have also wanted to counter the Chinese buildup by once again building our own intermediate-range missiles, but they cant as long as the treaty is in placenot if the missiles are based on land.*

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Bolton, who seems to be spearheading the move to pull out of the treaty, has been exploiting this desire as a way of building bureaucratic support, but one knowledgeable source says the Navys interests are not driving his campaign. At least since 2014, Bolton has been raising alarms about Russias violations of the INF Treaty and calling on the United States to cancel the deal. He has long been hostile not only to this treaty but to all arms control treaties that the U.S. has signedto the very idea of international treaties and, for that matter, international law. In the seven months since Trump brought him to the White House, he has also tried to rouse suspicions about Russia, in order to snap Trump out of his infatuation with Putin.

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In this case, though, Bolton has a point. Each year since 2014, the State Departmentthree times under President Barack Obama, twice under Trumphas complained that the 9M729 is in violation of the INF Treaty. Both administrations have brought the matter to the Special Verification Commission, a bilateral panel created by the treaty to deal with issues of complianceto no effect.

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It would be fine with me if Bolton were to go to Moscow, formally declare the Russians in breach of the treaty, and give them a certain span of time to rectify matters, warning of consequences if they dont.

But simply to pull out of the treaty is the wrong way to go about it. First, the treaty doesnt quite allow it. Article XV gives each side the right to withdraw with six months notice, if extraordinary events related to the subject matter of the Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. Its a stretch to claim that a couple dozen 9M729 missiles have jeopardized the United States supreme interests. But let us stipulate, as most legal scholars have, that presidents can withdraw from a treaty for whatever reason they want.

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Second, and more to the point, withdrawing would give the Russians exactly what they want. When George W. Bush was president, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov implored Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld several times to make a deal allowing both sides to get out of this treaty, which Russian officers had never liked. Rumsfeld ignored the request, knowing that there was no appetite in the U.S. or NATO for bringing back the ground-launched cruise missile or the Pershing II. In other words, a joint pullout would help only the Russiansand do nothing for the U.S. or the West. Trump is now about to commit the mistake that Rumsfeld avoided.

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Third, regardless of what naval officers in the U.S. Pacific Command may want, there is no military justification for building land-based intermediate-range missiles in Asia just because China has a few types of missiles of that range. The notion that the principle of parity must apply to all weapons, as Helmut Schmidt put it back in 1977, has never made much senseand we have plenty of other weapons, nuclear and conventional, that would deter a sensible Chinese leader from aggression against vital U.S. interests. (If the Chinese leader isnt sensible, then all principles of deterrence are null and void anyway.)

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Fourth, if Schmidt was right, and if the Pacific Command officers are justified in wanting INF missiles to counter Chinas, then they can deploy these missiles on ships or submarines without violating the treaty as it isfor the INF Treaty bans only land-based missiles of that range. In fact, the Nuclear Posture Review, signed by Secretary of Defense James Mattis earlier this year, mentioned the possibility of reviving the production of old Tomahawk submarine-launched cruise missiles precisely as a way of matching Russias intermediate-range missiles and thus of prodding the Kremlin back into compliance with the INF Treaty.

Finally, if this were any other administration, an official could justify a withdrawal by saying that, for the sake of diplomatic norms and protocols, the U.S. cannot let another country get away with ignoring an international treaty. But Trump has no standing to make this argument, having pulled out offor no reason other than his own whim, prejudices, or misunderstandingsthe Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord, and a number of trade treaties.

What action should an administration take against Russia for violating the INF Treaty? There are a number of possibilities: economic sanctions, diplomatic ousters, travel bans, the freezing of assets, and, yes, possibly the deployment of Tomahawk submarine-launched cruise missilessomething that makes them pay a price. Trump is preparing to give them a bonuswith no benefits to us. Then again, what else is new?On Nov. 6, Louisiana voters will decide the fate of a Jim Crowera law that allows juries to convict people on felony charges with only 10 of 12 jurors agreeing on a guilty verdict.

Constitutional Amendment 2, the ballot initiative that would repeal the controversial law, would require unanimous verdicts for such convictions. If the amendment passes, Louisiana will join the ranks of 48 other states and all federal courts in requiring unanimity in criminal cases.

There is absolutely no coherent reason why Louisiana should differ from 48 other states in how we prosecute criminal cases, said state Sen. J.P. Morrell, DNew Orleans, the author of the bill that has given voters the power to revise the law. It makes our state look like a backward, ridiculous, uneducated bastion [of something] that other states mock us for.

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Roughly 2,000 inmates are currently serving life sentences as a result of nonunanimous verdicts in Louisiana. The law that allows for these verdicts is a tragic vestige of a system explicitly designed to marginalize black jurors and punish black defendants. It is long past time for it to go, and Louisiana might finally have realized that.

Dwayne LeBlanc is just one of the many black inmates who have been imprisoned because of this questionable practice. LeBlanc was sentenced to 150 years of hard labor in 1998 on one count of second-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer. In LeBlancs trial, only 10 of 12 jurors deemed the evidence in his case sufficient to warrant conviction.

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The two shootings at the heart of LeBlancs case took place in New Orleans infamous 9th Ward in 1994. Richard Borden, a local who allegedly stole a bag of crack cocaine from a drug dealer, was shot dead as he attempted to flee. When police officers reported to the scene of the shooting, the drug dealer once again opened fire, hitting one of the officers in the hand before retreating into the night. Because no fingerprint, hair, or DNA evidence was ever recovered, investigators had to rely on a tip from a local woman pinpointing a young man nicknamed Twin as the shooter. LeBlanc, an 18-year-old resident of the neighborhood who shared the nickname with his identical twin brother, fit the bill.

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LeBlanc quickly became the sole suspect in the case. What investigators failed to account for was the other set of identical twins who lived in the neighborhood. Those twins shared the Twin moniker; bore a striking resemblance to the LeBlanc twins; were, according to one affidavit, known to have been drug dealers; and had been accused of a violent assault.

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Casting more doubt on the case was LeBlancs claim that he was in California living with his brother and attending school at the time of the crime. School attendance records showed that he was in California on the Friday and Monday surrounding the Saturday shootings. When he was ultimately detained more than a month after the incident, it was California police officers who were tasked with arresting him.

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Even though the evidence in LeBlancs case only convinced 10 of 12 jurors of his guilt, he was nevertheless convicted, joining the ranks of thousands of other Louisianans whose experiences call the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt into question.

At the constitutional convention where the law was instituted, its proponents made their motivation abundantly clearwhite supremacy.

Now, two decades after his conviction, LeBlanc is still serving his sentence at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center. (Update, Oct. 24, 2018: Amendment 2 will not on its own grant the opportunity for parole to those like LeBlanc who are already incarcerated at the hands of split juries.)

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The public debate surrounding Louisianas nonunanimous jury law is a relatively recent one. Ed Tarpley, a criminal defense attorney in Alexandria, Louisiana, and former district attorney for the 35th Judicial District in Grant Parish, played a large role in launching that discussion.

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In June 2016, Tarpley authored a resolution adopted by the Louisiana State Bar Association calling for the Legislature to restore unanimous criminal jury verdicts. This paved the way for the bill introduced by Morrell, and ultimately next months vote.

Like most attorneys in Louisiana, Tarpley did not give Louisianas nonunanimous jury law much thought throughout most of his career. It was not until he read Thomas Aiellos Jim Crows Last Stand, a book that details the racially motivated origins of the law, that he committed to doing all he could to see it repealed.

The split-jury rule was adopted in 1898 in response to the equal protection rights awarded to black citizens by the 14th Amendment. To minimize the influence of black jurors, lawmakers made the change. At the constitutional convention where the law was instituted, its proponents made their motivation abundantly clearwhite supremacy.

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Our mission was, in the first place, to establish the supremacy of the white race in this state to the extent to which it could be legally and constitutionally done, reads an excerpt from the conventions Official Journal of Proceedings.

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[The law is] generally slated to disenfranchise black people, for the most part, said Matthew Valasik, an assistant professor of sociology at Louisiana State University. If you only have a few black jurors and they disagree with the majority, you can just ignore them.

While Constitutional Amendment 2 has garnered substantial bipartisan support in the Legislature, it does have some powerful opponentsparticularly Attorney General Jeff Landry and a number of prosecutors throughout the state. Landrys argument, according to his chief deputy, Wilbur Stiles III, is that the amendment would result in a higher frequency of hung juries, rendering Louisianas criminal justice system much less efficient.

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A few of the states most prominent district attorneys, though, have publicly supported the amendment, including Hillar Moore III, Paul Connick, James Stewart Sr., and Keith Stutes. But most prosecutors have remained silent on the issue.

Although the Louisiana District Attorneys Association is officially neutral on the amendment, some individual district attorneys have expressed their opposition. In a particularly heated exchange during the House Administration of Criminal Justice Committees hearing on the measure in April, Calcasieu Parish District Attorney John DeRosiers comments on the laws origins drew the ire of committee members who considered his remarks racially insensitive.

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You hear a lot about this being a vestige of slavery, DeRosier told the committee. No doubt that is true, but it is what it is, and that was 138 years ago.

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Sabine Parish District Attorney Don Burkett, who also vocalized his opposition to the measure during the hearing, said he does not view the issue as a racial one. According to Burkett, Louisianas nonunanimous jury law serves to lessen the impact of jurors who are predisposed to distrust the government, regardless of race. He also harbors many of the same concerns expressed by Landry, who believes that Constitutional Amendment 2 will make the jobs of prosecutors much more cumbersome.

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I have no reason to believe that unanimous jury verdicts are any more reliable than nonunanimous jury verdicts, Burkett said.

Morrell, however, considers this argument, shared by many who oppose the amendment, inherently defunct.

The efficiency argument is complete junk to me, Morrell said. It just means that they will have to actually screen cases properly and charge people accurately. If their argument was a correct one, then every other state in the country would have worse criminal justice outcomes than us. Statistically, its the opposite.

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Despite wide bipartisan support for the restoration of unanimous criminal jury verdicts, proponents of Constitutional Amendment 2 still have one major obstacle left to overcomelow voter turnout. Unlike other states with much more at stake, Louisianas Nov. 6 midterm election offers little to entice prospective voters.

The only reason why there is not overwhelming support is because the public, for the most part, doesnt know that its a problem, Morrell said. Once you educate voters on what the law is and how it differs from 48 other states, they support requiring unanimous jury verdicts in almost every instance.

While many voters may be unaware of the amendments implications, for thousands of Louisianans whose entire lives have been uprooted by a regressive criminal justice system, the election offers hope for a long-overdue change.This weekend, the New York Times reported that McKinsey & Company, the famed consulting firm, had compiled a report identifying Twitter users opposed to the Saudi governments policies. As the Times piece noted:

Three people were driving the conversation on Twitter, the firm found: the writer Khalid al-Alkami; [Omar] Abdulaziz, the young dissident living in Canada; and an anonymous user who went by Ahmad. After the report was issued, Mr. Alkami was arrested, the human rights group ALQST said. Mr. Abdulaziz said that Saudi government officials imprisoned two of his brothers and hacked his cellphone, an account supported by a researcher at Citizen Lab. Ahmad, the anonymous account, was shut down.

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In response to the story, McKinsey issued a statement saying, We are horrified by the possibility, however remote, that it could have been misused in any way.  We have seen no evidence to suggest that it was misused, but we are urgently investigating how and with whom the document was shared. This is the firms second scandal in recent months, following its disastrous dealings in South Africa, where it was accused of complicity in government corruption and eventually repaid money it had made on overcharges.

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To talk about McKinsey and its history, I spoke by phone with Duff McDonald, the author of The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business. (His most recent book, about Harvard Business School, is called The Golden Passport.) During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed how McKinseys practices have changed over the years, whether the company gives thought to working with repressive regimes, and how it managed to stumble upon a perfectly amoral business model.

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Isaac Chotiner: McKinsey said it is worried the report it compiled might have been misused. What, exactly, does that mean? And why would it be compiling a list for the Saudi government?

The thing about the consulting industry is that its never their fault. Well, whose fault is it? Who takes responsibility for the work that you do?  Duff McDonald

Duff McDonald: I havent seen the report, so were both guessing here. But that did not sound terribly novel to me. If you follow the people who do reputation management online and do brand-management services for big corporations or brands, they do follow sentiment on social media, and they even have little dashboards that will show you: Are you trending up or down?

What I think is interesting is that one would think the people compiling said reports might take this one further step and wonder what might happen with that information. Following Twitter sentiment is not new to McKinsey. Everybody does it. The question for these guys is: Whatd you think was going to happen to that information?

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Theres not thinking about it or not caring about it, and I think that theyre similar but distinct. What does your knowledge of the company tell you about how they would approach or not approach the possible issues and consequences?

In The Firm, I talk about what I think is one of the Achilles heels of the business model, which is power and influence without responsibility. In their typical strategy work, they gave advice and made no representations about implementation. So if a strategy that McKinsey offered someone went horribly wrong on the implementation level, their response was always, We have nothing to do with this. We simply gave them some ideas.

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Its been the central pillar of the business model since day one. If you dont feel responsibility for what is done with the content of your work once you hand that work over, then do you open yourself up to carelessness? Apparently so. Is this a new thing? No. This is the business model. Are we seeing the limitations of that business model, right now, in real time? It appears so.

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This has followed the South African scandal, which seems like its probably the biggest scandal in the companys history. (For people who havent read about it, go read itits pretty astonishing.) Do you attribute this happening now to the leadership getting worse? That you cant get away with this stuff in the same way? That the firm has lost its way, either because of leadership or something else?

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There are clearly questions of leadership here. At some point, institutional responsibility has to land somewhere, and its getting kind of tiring to hear from one of the most influential institutions on the planet that they had no idea that they were having influence. One of the points I make in The Firm too is near the end of the book: I look into the future and say, OK, what is it the future holds for this firm? The biggest threat, I concluded, was not from outside competition, which is the answer youd have for a lot of institutions. I concluded that the biggest threat to McKinsey was themselves, whether with the success theyve had and the increasing size theyve had, whether the center holds. And what does that mean? If your business is, essentially, dealing in influence, you need to be concerned about rogue actors out on the edge.

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When Rajat Gupta, the former managing director, was arrested for insider trading, that was probably the biggest scandal in their history. I spoke to some CEOs, and their clients all said, This is not good, but this is one individual. This is not an institutional failure. This is a personal failure of someone giving in to something, on a purely individual level. But when you start looking, you see, OK, we have South Africa. In the U.S., theres alsotheyre being sued for violations in the federal-bankruptcy system. And the [Wall Street] Journal has covered a bunch of this, including the possibility that they were advising on a bankruptcy that they were also an investor ina clear conflict of interest. And then you get to this Saudi Arabia thing. Again, is this institutional rot? If it isnt, then it may very well be a failure of leadership, right? Because at some point, you cant keep saying, This isnt our fault, even though this is us.

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The thing about the consulting industryat least in the management-consulting industry, this goes back to the business-model thingis that its never their fault. Well, whose fault is it? Who takes responsibility for the work that you do? They threw one guy under the bus in South Africa. I dont know what theyre going to do with this one.

You have a quote in the book where a McKinsey guy says, We are advisers, and it is managements job to take all the advice they receive and make their own decisions. Not to say that McKinsey told me to do this.  Whenever someone in McKinsey tells me they think they know how to run a company, I tell them to go do it. Because thats not what were doing here. Im very far from an expert on McKinsey, but it seems like theres this weird dichotomy where they like to think of themselves as the best and give the best advice, and they have this incredible reputation as the most famed consulting firm. And yet they dont want to take responsibility for anything.

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At the same time, one thing they dont do is run around trying to take credit for ideas that worked out. If they give a company good advice, the last thing the CEO wants is for McKinsey to be saying, Oh, by the way, that was our idea. So thats the deal that they make. They sell the client credit for their ideas, but at the same time, in the process of making that sale, they also disclaim any responsibility. I might have even said that this is a perfect business model, right? If you dont have to be responsible for the quality of your own ideas, then where do I sign up? Ill sell my ideas all day long. I think where it gets interesting here, with both South Africa and Saudi Arabia, in South Africa it was a corrupt regime, the government. They had to have had their heads in the sand to not realize that, and from the reports that came out afterward, there was clearly some internal hesitancy about doing any of the work at all. But they went ahead and did it anyway, until they didnt.

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In Saudi Arabia, this reminds me of Michael Porters Monitor Group in Libya. We were all aware that even if [the ruler of Saudi Arabia] is talking progressive reform, one of the first moves he did after consolidating power was to kidnap a huge chunk of the wealthiest people in the country and hold them under detention until they signed over their fortunes, right? So what kind of guy did you think you were dealing with? What is your plausible deniability of responsibility here? Sure, lets take them at their word that they were not compiling a list of critics for the monarch to silence, right? [But] what did you think was happening?

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And this goes back to your first questionapparently no one was thinking about that at all, or not for enough time to say to themselves, Huh, is this the similar kind of work we would do for Pepsi-Cola? If we were measuring their brand against Coca-Cola? This is the brand of a repressive monarchy.

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Do you have some larger sense whether, over the past hundred or so years since the companys founding, the culture of the company at the top has changed? Is there some sort of shorthand to try to understand it?

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So there was Marvin Bower, whos the spiritual godfather of the place, right? He was not the founder, but effectively he founded the idea of McKinsey as we know it. A couple of people followed him: Ron Daniel, who operated sort of in his likeness. If you ask people who worked at McKinsey when the culture shifted, it was when it shifted on Wall Street during the 90s and the internet boom. Part of that came about because they were suddenly competing with both Wall Street firms, who were paying higher and higher salaries and bonuses, and also Silicon Valley.

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So even though McKinsey had long been able to stand outside of the complete frenzy of Wall Street and tech compensation, they couldnt withstand it anymore, and some of the principles by which McKinsey had long been run started to go by the wayside. They started taking stakes in companies that they were advising. Basically, its the Rajat Gupta era.

Every business needs revenues, right? Otherwise youre not in business. So theyve been chasing fees since day one. And the question is: Has the nature of that chase changed irrevocably for them? It appears that they may be willing to do whatever, you know  [the] standards for the kind of work that they will get involved in dont appear to be holding up.Mexican efforts to stop the caravan of migrants from Central America at the border with Guatemala failed and their number keeps growing. As of Sunday, the numbers of migrants taking part in the caravan had swelled to anywhere from 5,000 people, according to the Associated Press to 7,000, according to the Los Angeles Times. Most of those taking part in the caravan that has turned into a rallying cry for President Donald Trump ahead of the midterm elections are from Honduras.

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The size of the caravan was a startling development, notes BuzzFeed, pointing out that it didnt seem to have more than 4,000 people last week. The Associated Press also notes it wasnt quite clear where the additional travelers came from but it did point out that people have been joining and leaving the caravan daily, some moving at their own pace and strung out in a series of columns.

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Trumps threat of closing the border on the caravan is not deterring the migrants, most of whom say they are escaping economic and humanitarian hardship in their home countries. An effort by the Mexican police Friday to prevent the migrants from crossing the border failed spectacularly and while Mexican authorities are keeping close watch on the thousands of migrants they are not preventing them from making their way north.

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As of Sunday it seemed only a small fraction of the migrants were planning to apply for asylum in Mexico with the vast majority saying they plan to try their luck crossing into the United States. Although Mexico had previously said that anyone who didnt apply for asylum would be deported, that plan seems to have been abandoned in part likely due to the sheer size of the caravan.

Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther Border. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2018

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The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2018

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Trump continued his attack on the caravan Sunday, writing on Twitter that full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens. The president warned that anyone who doesnt apply for asylum in Mexico first will be turned away. Making clear that the caravan had turned into a key campaign issue, Trump said that the caravans were a disgrace to the Democrat Party. On Friday, Trump had said that some members of the caravan were hardened criminals. When a reporter asked what evidence he had of that, Trump dismissed the question as ridiculous: Oh, please. Please. Dont be a baby, OK?

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AdvertisementTwo weeks away from the midterms, Donald Trumps nativist rhetoric has reached fever pitch. Perhaps encouraged by the knowledge that an astounding 75 percent of potential Republican voters consider illegal immigration to be a very big problem for the United States, Trump has quite literally bet the house on anti-immigrant fearmongering. His most recent boogeyman is the Central American caravan that has gathered thousands of potential refugees fleeing unspeakable violence, mostly from Honduras.

Trump has threatened to cut off aid to the regions northern triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador while praising Mexico for a series of punitive measures that delighted the president and various voices in conservative media. Apparently, though, it wasnt enough for Trump, who on Monday morning berated Mexican Police for not doing enough to stop the caravan. The president then reached deep into the nativist bag of scares and implied the Central American group included unknown Middle Easterners and called the caravan a national emergency for the United States.

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These tweets require detailed parsing.

Trump lies when he suggests Mexico hasnt done enough to contain the present immigrant caravan or the steady influx of potential refugees slipping through the countrys southern border. In fact, outgoing President Enrique Pena Nietos administration jumped on the punitive bandwagon years before Trump, focusing mostly on containment and deportation rather than granting due process to asylum-seekers. COMAR, Mexicos agency for refugee protection, is grossly underfunded and understaffed, with an annual budget of just under $2 million, while the INM, the countrys equivalent to ICE, gets 80 times that.

Mexico anticipated and has now dutifully taken on the Trump administrations punishing approach to immigration.

It should come as no surprise. Since 2014, when Mexico unveiled a program called Frontera Sur, focusing on security, the country has deported more Central Americans than the United States. It has done so with an efficiency so cruel that it contravenes the countrys most basic commitment to due process and human rights. Amnesty International reports that the Mexican government is routinely failing in its obligations under international law to protect those who are in need of international protection. The organization found that 75 percent of asylum-seekers from Central America were not informed of their right to seek asylum in Mexico, while 69 percent said Mexican immigration officials never asked for the reason the potential asylee had left his or her country of origin. Amnesty International also found that almost 60 percent of the Mexican authorities interviews with Central American immigrantsagain, people who are fleeing the fear of deathlasted less than 10 minutes.

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For all practical purposes, then, Mexico anticipated and has now dutifully taken on the Trump administrations punishing approach to immigration, falling in line with a strategy repeatedly laid out by Gen. John Kelly in his time at the Department of Homeland Security. The Mexican governments recent display of force along the Guatemalan border, during which hundreds of federal police fought back immigrants with tear gas, is just the latest example. The heartbreaking pictures, which have made a mockery of Mexicos commendable history as a safe harbor for refugees, were seen the world over.

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Of course, none of this has placated Trump, whose interpretation of diplomacy is nothing short of complete acquiescence.

Trump also grossly exaggerates the caravans potential threat. The U.S. governments own numbers have proven that the percentage of Central American migrants who make their way to Americas southern border and have confirmed ties to gangs like the MS-13 is actually minuscule. The vast majority of the current group is made up of families trying to escape what has now become an untenable situation in their countries of origin. It is no romantic flourish to say that they are not seeking a better life but merely trying to find a way to survive. Karla Zabludovsky, BuzzFeeds Mexico bureau chief, told me the caravans migrants want jobsthey want to feed their families. American foreign correspondents currently following the caravan on the ground routinely file stories that detail the very specific misery the migrants flee from. Some are trying to get back to the lives they left behind after being deported. They are all part of a tragic humanitarian crisis with no easy answers, not a mob threatening the stability of the United States or Mexico.

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Which bring us to Trumps most brazen attempt at fearmongering: the idea that, mixed in among the Central American refugees, one could find Middle Easterners (with obvious implications). To suggest that the Central American refugee crisis is some sort of Trojan horse for terrorism is irresponsible and baseless. Zabludovsky, who has been following the caravan so painstakingly that President Trump himself retweeted one of her postsTo see Trump twist the information I put out there to feed his venomous, politically motivated rhetoric was very upsetting, she told mesaid she found it unlikely that there are people from the Middle East among the migrants. According to her, Most people are from Honduras. Its a small place where people tend to know each other somehow. The migrants would have likely already singled out anyone foreign. They know its in their best interest for the caravan to be clean and stay out of trouble. A Mexican government official told me, There is currently no information to suggest that citizens of the Middle East have joined the caravan. In any case, the source added, Mexico and the United States have always worked together to reduce that specific risk.

The migrant caravan has become the perfect example of the challenges facing American democracy and, frankly, the countrys moral mettle. In Trumps binary, purely adversarial logic, the plight of thousands of desperate men, women, and children has become a political bounty to be exploited in times of electoral need. About 3 out of 4 Republican voters seem ready to take the nativist bait. For the rest of the country, though, facts should matter. Its time to make a case for sanity.President Donald Trump continued his regular habit of fulminating at Central American migrants, warning Monday morning of criminals and unknown Middle Easterners; threatening again to cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and saying that it was the Democrats fault.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

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Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

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It is true that there is a sizable group of people who have fled, mainly from Honduras, and who are currently making their way through southern Mexico, but nearly everything else Trump is suggesting is unproven, implausible, or wont happen. It is all designed to ramp up the sense of threat and lawlessness on the border with Mexico and scare people away from voting for Democrats.

For one, the military cant simply enforce immigration law in the United States. Foreign aid is generally determined legislatively (and the massive aid in question is less than $200 million in planned spending). There is no evidence of unknown Middle Easterners in the migrant caravan (this is a frequently deployedand debunkedmeme ). And while Democrats have opposed Trumps efforts to make immigration law more harsh and restrictive, the harsh bills hes endorsed werent able to get enough Republican support to pass even the House.

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Meanwhile, the group of migrants has grown from a few thousand to about 7,000, according to the Los Angeles Times. While they were stopped at an official border crossing with Guatemala, over the weekend, thousands crossed the Suchiate River and entered into Mexico. Of the group, more than 1,000 caravan members already have entered legally and applied for refugee status in Mexico and are being detained while their applications are processed, the Times reported.

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The group, which includes hundreds of women and small children, some in strollers, are largely fleeing violence in Honduras as well as seeking out economic opportunity in the United States.

Im only just realizing the massive scale of this caravan as they march north into Mexico. Its several thousand people. Just look. pic.twitter.com/aRuoLNYTZg  Kate Linthicum (@katelinthicum) October 21, 2018

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The caravan is more than two miles long. People near the end are stumbling. Its 23 miles to Tapachula and its so hot  90 degrees  today.  Kate Linthicum (@katelinthicum) October 21, 2018

The previous migrant caravan, while smaller at around 1,500, had fewer than 200 people when it arrived at the border between the U.S. and Mexico last spring.As excruciating details have leaked over the past two weeks about the killing and reported dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi government agents, the most high-profile public backlash has come in the form of defections from a glittery upcoming conference, the Future Investment Initiative, planned by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, along with dozens of other politics, business, and media figures, have pulled out of the so-called Davos in the Desert because of scrutiny around the case and the crown princes likely involvement. They dont want to be associated with an event designed to bolster the image of (and enrich) a brutal regime and prince that might kill a dissident and barely try to hide it. Go figure.

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But for me, theres another annual gathering in Saudi Arabia that comes to mind. Its an essential and religiously required journey for Muslims: the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. My mom told me it was the greatest moment of her life when she went. In Arabic, my father asked me to pray for him when I make it. At 29, I still havent been able to afford it, but I remember the look in my parents eyes after I told them I was saving my money for the expensive trip. It was pure emotiona clear affirmation of their parenting. Personally, Ive always dreamed of converging with fellow Muslims on the location believed to be the birthplace of our final prophet, and where the first words of the Quran were revealed: Iqra. Read.

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Now Im starting to wonder how I can go at all. And Im also wondering why more Muslims dont question the powers that control our most sacred siteand how the Saudis have already twisted it to their own political and financial ends.

The Saudi regime itself has politicized the pilgrimage, using it as a bargaining chip with other Muslim-majority countries.

In some ways, its absurd that the alleged murder of one journalist is what has sparked a high-level reckoning with the kingdom, or finally caused my own doubts to spill over. To participate in one of our religions most important rites, we shouldnt have to look past the Saudis merciless, brutal campaign in Yemen. We shouldnt have to look past decades of notorious and flagrant human-rights abuses. Personally, I shouldnt have had to look past the hate-filled, Saudi-peddled textbooks that the kingdom has distributed to children in Islamic schools in America, including mine.

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But whatever the catalyst, the moment seems finally to have arrived, if President Trump doesnt manage to help the Saudis talk their way out of it. Although various investigations into Khashoggis murder continue, it doesnt seem too early to ask how any Muslimparticularly one in pursuit of a profound religious dutycould not be troubled by such horror and corruption. Should we not hold the guardians of Islams holiest sites to a higher standard? This kind of flagrant thuggery and extrajudicial murder does not belong in this century, and were complicit if we line the pockets of those responsible. The Quran teaches, O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witness to Allah, even if it be against yourselves, your parents, and your relatives, or whether it is against the rich or the poor   The message isnt ambiguous. Saudi Arabias violent disregard for basic human rights isnt either.

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The Saudi regime itself has politicized the pilgrimage before, using it as a bargaining chip to put pressure on other Muslim-majority countries. Earlier this year, Qatar accused the Saudis of withholding access to hajj from its citizens. For a while last year, it also wasnt clear whether Iranians would be allowed to visit, because of long-standing tensions between the countries. And in many other places, angry protests sought to remind the kingdom of the weight of its religious duty as immoral prices surged out of control. Only God has the right to forbid anyone to go on Hajj, not Saudi Arabia, one Indonesian organization said.

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In practice, of course, thats not true. The time has come to change it. Muslims have more power over the royal family than we think. Make no mistake: Mecca is big business for the Saudis. Hajj and umrah revenues are estimated to surpass $150 billion by 2022. Thats a lot of money to collect from Muslims, many of whom have been selling their belongings and saving money for years to afford the trip. If we can harness the anger at the kingdoms arrogant violence and abuses, it wont have a choice but to notice. Executives dropping out of the Future Investment Initiative and some high-profile business cancellations have already rattled the royals there and raised questions about the crown princes future. Muslims should stand up to the regime now, when its abuses are finally too glaring and inescapable that they can no longer be ignored. We can do it by staying home until something changes.

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As with most Muslims, my desire to complete the hajj carries an intense emotional and spiritual weight. It isnt just a ritualits a foundational and indispensable pillar of my religion. I cant say Ill never go. I must. But I do know I cant focus on my hajj while Saudis make a mockery of the journey and corrupt Islam without consequences. Im still putting money away in an accountI got married last year, and I dream of bringing my wife with me so we can complete our religious obligation together. But for now, Im going to keep that money far away from Saudi Arabia.DALLASThe morning after his second and final Senate debate with Rep. Beto ORourke, Ted Cruz was happy to see me. Late the night before, I had published an assessment of the debate, crediting Cruz with getting the job done but also mocking his over-the-top, fearmongering portrayal of Texas under Democratic control, delivered in that famously smug voice thats riled up millionsnot all of them Democratsfor the past five years.

Cruz said he liked the piece.

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I probably shouldnt say that, he added. I should say I hated it.

But he didnt hate it. And I bet I know why: For all the contempt directed at the Texas senator and the now baked-in assumption that hes an insufferable jerk, Cruz knows that his smarmy, dripping calculation, so off-putting to his enemies, is his greatest strength as a politician.

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Ted Cruz is on track to win his re-election on Nov. 6. Despite the national frenzy surrounding his opponentan inspirational figure whose campaign is more like a movementCruz is leading the race comfortably, by about 5 to 10 percentage points on average. And cutting against the narrative, put forward even by some of his close friends, that he has a likability problem relative to the charming ORourke, he now has a higher favorability rating in Texas than the congressman from El Paso, as Cruz refers to ORourke in a way that sounds, somehow, like an insult.

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You can imagine a world in which the Republican candidate running against Beto ORourke would feel overwhelmed by the sheer force of the energy on the opposite side. Thats not Ted Cruz. Hes created his advantage ruthlessly, defining the previously little-known ORourke as too liberal for whats still a red state. Its the only message he has time for, and he does not stray. Even when the polls were closer, even when he appeared to be in trouble, even when a normal candidate would have felt a little distraught about being portrayed as a pathological demon to ORourkes authentic angel. Some candidates allow themselves, fatally, to answer questions directly, while others only stay on message begrudgingly, perhaps after having touched the hot stove a time or two before. Cruz is the only politician Ive seen who appears to enjoy the act of staying on message as one of politics, or lifes, grand pleasures.

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When Cruz complimented my debate write-up, it was just before his press conference at the San Antonio Police Officers Association, where he had been participating in a roundtable. Last nights debate, he said to the press, presented a stark contrast. It is night and day. Every Texan can see the choice in this election. Congressman ORourke made clear hes for higher taxes. Im for lower taxes. Congressman ORourke made clear hes for more job-killing regulations, especially pounding oil and gas and Texas energy. Im for lower regulations. I want to see the energy industry and the Texas economy continue to boom. He went on like this for a while, on every issue. It was deeply boring. But as Cruz knows, the candidates primary role in a campaign, outside of fundraising, is a single, repetitive routine: getting talking points aired on local television and radio stations.

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My fascination with Cruzs unbreakable discipline began when I followed him around New Hampshire during the 2016 presidential primaries. Not a single word, syllable, inflection, or chuckle would change between stump speeches. If a new syllable did enter the 20-minute speech, it wouldnt be because he decided to riff, or loosen up, or just got too tired to keep it together. It would be because his data showed there were X number of voters in a particular county or town who put special emphasis on a particular issue. He does not say things that he has not calculated the pros and cons of saying. And he cannot be broken. Ask senators like Wisconsins Ron Johnson or Tennessees Bob Corker the same question three or four times, and they will eventually say something. Not Cruz.

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At the San Antonio press conference, one reporter tried to ask about Cruzs relationship with Donald Trump. The president has previously insulted your wife, he said that youve done nothing for Texas, the reporter said. Do you view him as a reliable advocate for you in this race?

Well, listen. Cruz responded, in his trademark condescending tone. I appreciate the media wanting to focus on political attacks from a campaign that was two years ago. Im focused on the people of Texas. Im focused on what were accomplishing for the people of Texas. Texas is booming. Were seeing an economic boom that is incredible for the state of Texas, with a  And on and on.

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Cruzs relationship with Trump during the 2016 presidential primaries was the one moment that made me question whether he could not be calculated, and whether he, like a mere mortal, might be prone to allowing his anger to briefly cloud his political judgment.

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For a while after hed dropped out of the primaries, Cruz seemed to have trouble shaking a genuine loathing for Trump. It ran deep enough that, months later, he would put his career on the line during the GOP convention, refusing to endorse the president in his keynote speech on the conventions penultimate night. Why? The morning after that speech, he would tell the irate Texas delegation that Trumps tweet mocking the looks of his wife, Heidi, months earlier was behind his non-endorsement.

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Did Ted Cruz really allow a personal wound to define his political decision-making, this one time?

Maybe not. A recent profile of Heidi Cruz in the Atlantic offers a much different reaction to the tweet than the one the Cruzes offered publicly. These things dont bother Ted, Heidi told the Atlantic. Hes not saying, Oh, I feel so bad; they think my wifes ugly. Youre so pretty, Heidi. Youre not ugly.  Instead, she said of her husbands reaction to Trump, Hes like, Hah! That was the worst move hes ever made. 

If Cruz was, in fact, gleeful that the president made fun of his wife, that returns us to the common thread of any move Cruz makes: that rejecting Trump was a calculation. It does not seem crazy to think that Cruz believed Trump would lose the general election, badly, to Hillary Clinton, and that the senator who refused to endorse him on the convention floor would stand out brightly during the de-Trumpification of the party, putting himself on course for the 2020 presidential nomination. It was a rare bad bet Cruz has made in his political career. His numbers among Republican voters in Texas collapsed, endangering his 2018 re-election bid. He sold off his position and endorsed Trump in September. On Monday, Trump and Cruz will appear together at a MAGA rally in Houston.

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Two days after the debate and one day after meeting with the San Antonio Police Association, Cruz was in Dallas, meeting with the Dallas Police Association. There, I asked him to speak about how he and Trump were able to reconcile after the fireworks of 2016. He started nodding halfway through the question, and saying, Sure, as he does, before recording a nonanswer for the local television affiliates about how exciting it was to see to see the president visit the state.

Eventually I followed up, asking, specifically, how he and Trump had buried the hatchet. He gave something in the ballpark of an answer.

Its very simple. When President Trump was elected, in November of 2016, I got on a plane. I flew to New York the next week to Trump Tower. And I sat down with the president, I sat down with his senior team. Spent 4 hours there. And I told him, I said, Mr. President, this is an historic opportunity. It is rare. History teaches that it is rare to see a Republican White House, Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Its happened four times in the last 100 years. We cant waste this opportunity. 

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Cruz and Trump may have completely different political styles, each annoying to their antagonists in their own way, but there is one move they share in common. The personal rapport they may enjoy with individual journalists disappears the moment they move to a setting where its political advantageous to trash the media under questionable pretenses.

So it was last Friday, at the Fort Worth stockyards, where Cruz was holding a rally.

Weve got some journalists here, Cruz said, looking directly at the press pen, where there were only a few of us. There used to be something called reporting of facts, he continued, making his case that the media has not been fair to him over a tax issue. (If the media is saying that hes been misleading, then the media has been fair.)

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Facts matter, he said to uproarious cheers. And even when the media are being little puppy dogs that repeat what you say, you dont get to just make up facts.

Then, just like Trump, Cruz transitioned from self-assured media criticism to a call for his audience to own the libs on Election Day.

How many of you are familiar with Hippie Hollow? Hippie Hollow is the nude beach on Lake Travis, he said, talking about a lake near Austin. But on Election Day, Im going to make a prediction right now, that Hippie Hollow will be empty, as every leftist in Austin is down at the polls voting. So we need Tarrant County to counterbalance that to keep Texas red. (By the way, he observed, have you ever noticed at a nude beach, the wrong people always show up?)

If the polling is correct, Cruz will defeat the denizens of Hippie Hollow and earn his second term. Democrats in Texas andperhaps even more sonationally will be crushed, bewildered that the state with the handsome young guy on a skateboard could possibly re-elect such a nauseating, calculating, lyin, amoral phony. Cruz will soak it up, knowing that he triumphed because of those traitsthat what his detractors see as a giant, festering liability is how he wins.Jerk watch: Jim Newell, who has been in the Lone Star State following Ted Cruz as he campaigns against charismatic congressman Beto ORourke, thinks that many people misunderstand the Texas senator: Unlike his charming challenger, Cruz is smug, smarmy, and calculating, but thats not an obstaclethats why hell win.

Erasure: A report that the Trump administration is seeking to redefine sex in a narrow, trans-exclusive fashion is not surprising to Evan Urquhart. Republicans have been saying all along that theyd rather trans people not exist. But this is a moment of truth: Will liberals take a stand, or are they willing to declare human rights negotiable?

The Prince and I: Looking at Saudi Arabias repressive regime, Aymann Ismail decides to boycott hajjthe Muslim holy pilgrimage that takes place in, and financially benefits, Saudi Arabiauntil needed changes come to the country. Meanwhile, Isaac Chotiner talks to the author of a book on McKinsey & Co. about the consulting firms controversial partnership with the kingdom, and Charles Kenny discusses whether tech companies with Saudi funding should refuse these investments.

For fun: The Cringe, a spooky song about the horrors of social anxiety.

As haunting as any ghost,

AbbyBefore starting his trip to Houston to campaign for Lyin Beautiful Ted Cruz, President Trump promised that he and Republicans in Congress would deliver a middle income tax reduction of about 10 percent, through a resolution before the midterm elections in a few weeks.

This isnt the first time hes mentioned this idea, even though theres no legislative text concerning it and Congress is out of session. During a speech in Nevada on Saturday, Trump said there would be a very major tax cut, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the New York Times that there would be a more formal plan, developed with House Ways and Means chair Kevin Brady shortly.

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Late last month, the House of Representatives voted to extend some of the individual provisions of the 2017 tax cuts, which were scheduled to expire in 2025 while the big reduction in corporate taxes from 35 to 21 percent was permanent. But Trump seems to be talking about a bill that hasnt been written or voted on yet. While no one knows exactly what specifically Trump is referring to  if anything  it seems to be an acknowledgment that while the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been great for corporations that saw their tax rates slashed, it has not been a potent issue on the campaign trail for incumbent and aspiring Republican house members and senators.

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But just wanting there to be more tangible tax policy for voters in an upcoming election doesnt make it so. CNNs Phil Mattingly said that senior Republicans in both chambers have no idea what [Trump] is talking about, and that there wasnt any bill text for it. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today that representatives for Brady and Speaker Paul Ryan, who would both play a crucial role in any tax legislation, were referring any questions back to the White House, which wouldnt further elaborate on the presidents comments over the weekend.

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The bill that ultimately became the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also had a similiarly confused genesis. Trump, early in his administration, promised that the White house would come out with a tax plan over the next two or three weeks. Steven Mnuchin and then economic advisor Gary Cohn wouldnt come out with a sketchy outline for that plan  which didnt even include basic information like at what levels of income would to the new tax rates apply to  for more than two months.

Were putting in a resolution sometime in the next week or week-and-a-half, two weeks, Trump said Monday.The Trump administration is preparing an escalation in its unrelenting assault on the rights of LGBTQ Americans. According to a New York Times report, the Department of Health and Human Services is circulating a memo proposing a new federal definition of the word sex thats designed to strip protections for gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans under civil rights laws. This definition would be implemented through four major executive branch agencies, removing safeguards that currently bar anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, employment, and health care.

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Protesters across the country demonstrated in opposition to the memo on Sunday and Monday, asserting that the Trump administration plans to deny the existence of transgender people. In fact, the memo goes much further than that: It is an effort to rewrite federal law to exclude certain disfavored minority groups from civil rights protections. These proposals would undo decades of precedent by shrinking the scope of civil rights statutes to legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination. To understand just how radical the memos legal vision really is, its important to recognize the legal developments that the Trump administration is seeking to erase.

What does sex mean?

The Trump memo revolves around the word sex as its used in three major federal laws. Title VII of the Civil Rights of Act of 1964 bars sex discrimination in the workplace; Title IX bars sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds; and the Affordable Care Act bars sex discrimination in health care. Dozens of federal courts have interpreted these provisions to encompass discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or both. The Obama administration issued federal rules and guidance clarifying that all three laws prohibit discrimination against transgender people.

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Trump wants to change all that. The draft memo seeks to define sex as a persons status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth. It states that the sex listed on a persons birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a persons sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.

This definition may have some specious appeal. But it flies in the face of a growing judicial consensus that sex means much more than the gender youre assigned at birth. It was the Supreme Court itself that kicked off this progression.

Sex stereotyping as sex discrimination

Its true that there is no federal law that explicitly bars anti-LGBTQ discrimination in employment, education, or health care. But a 1989 Supreme Court decision has persuaded myriad lower courts that existing laws do protect LGBTQ people.

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In the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins decision, that court ruled that sex discrimination encompasses sex stereotypingpunishing individuals for their failure to conform to gender norms. The application of this logic to transgender people is obvious. When an employer discriminates against a transgender woman, he is punishing her for her failure to conform to the sex she was assigned at birth. The employer believes she should present in a stereotypically masculine fashion. He is, in short, discriminating on the basis of sex stereotypes, which is illegal under Price Waterhouse.

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Many courts have developed another theory as to why anti-trans discrimination constitutes discrimination because of sex. When an employer mistreats a transgender worker on the basis of her identity, he is inherently taking her sex into account. He demands that she present as the sex assigned to her at birth and dislikes her refusal to do so. It is impossible to make this judgment without considering her sex, and so his discrimination is quite literally because of sex.

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Armed with this reasoning, the Obama administration issued guidance protecting LGBTQ people throughout the country. Most famously, the Department of Education notified schools that it could not discriminate against transgender students under Title IXs bar on sex discrimination. Under Donald Trump, the Department of Education rescinded that guidance and rejects complaints from transgender students denied access to the correct bathroom at school. The draft memo proposes rules that would formalize this policy. And if a transgender student demanded access to a certain bathroom, a school could justify its discrimination through genetic testing, treating her in accordance with biological markers rather than her gender identity.

Sex stereotyping and sexual orientation

A number of courts have also extended Price Waterhouses logic to gay and bisexual people. The 2nd and 7th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, for example, have held that anti-gay discrimination constitutes sex stereotyping because it reflects a belief that men should only be attracted to women, and women should only be attracted to men. Gay people represent the ultimate case of failure to conform to [sex stereotypes] in a country that views heterosexuality as the norm, the 7th Circuit wrote last year.

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Both courts also held that, apart from sex stereotyping, sexual orientation discrimination is clearly discrimination because of sex for two reasons. First, anti-gay bias must take sex into account. For instance, an employer who mistreats a gay man punishes him for his attraction to other men; if he were a woman, he would not face discrimination. The gay persons sex lies at the heart of the discrimination he suffers.

Second, anti-gay bias punishes an individual for intimate association with people of the same sex. Consider a comparison to Loving v. Virginia. There, the Supreme Court held that interracial marriage bans constitute race discrimination because they take the race of each partner into account. Similarly here, when an employer discriminates against a gay person, it is objecting to his intimate association with someone of the same sex. Change the sex of one partner and there would be no discrimination. Per the 7th Circuit, this reveals that the discrimination rests on distinctions drawn according to sex.

What does the Trump administration say?

In legal filings, the Trump administration has largely justified its anti-LGBTQ position by claiming that Congress did not consider LGBTQ people when it passed various civil rights laws. That may be true, but its a pretty weak argument, because our modern conception of sex discrimination is far removed from what Congress had in mind when it passed these landmark statutes.

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Take sexual harassment. Today, there is near-universal agreement that laws which bar sex discrimination prohibit sexual harassment. But when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, it did not expressly outlaw sexual harassment, and no lawmaker expressed a clear intent to outlaw inappropriate sexual behavior at work. As late as 1975, a federal judge ruled that victims of harassment dont face discrimination because of their sex, so they have no legal recourse. Feminist lawyers and scholars pushed the courts to abandon this archaic reading of the law. They argued that the phrase because of sex represented an effort to eradicate all sex-based mistreatment that perpetuates gender inequality in employment.

It worked. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 1986 that sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination. And in 1998, the court also held that harassment between members of the same sex also qualifies as sex discrimination. No one seriously argues that the Congress of 1964 thought about male-on-male sexual harassment when it passed Title VII. But as Justice Antonin Scalia explained for the court, statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.

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To get around precedents involving sex stereotyping and sexual harassment, the Trump administration has concocted some bizarre arguments. Most notably, it has claimed that true sex discrimination is always rooted in the belief that one sex is inferior to another. This hypothesis makes little sense. The Supreme Court has never said that a victim of sexual harassment must prove that her abuser believed women to be inferior. It has never said that some inferiority analysis plays any role in a sex discrimination lawsuit. And the text of these laws says nothing about inferiority. The Trump administration is not interpreting statutes; it is rewriting them.

What the Trump memo would do

The draft memo encourages the Departments of Justice, Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services to adopt its narrow definition of sex through the formal rule-making process. These agencies have offices of civil rights that adjudicate claims of unlawful bias. By reading LGBTQ people out of civil rights laws, these agencies would close their doors to any victim of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

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To get around precedents involving sex stereotyping and sexual harassment, the Trump administration has concocted some bizarre arguments.

If a gay student faced harassment, for example, she could not file a Title IX complaint. If a transgender patient was denied insurance coverage for gender dysphoria, she could not seek recourse from HHS. If a gay employee of a federal contractor faced homophobia on the job, he would receive no help from the Department of Labor.

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For LGBTQ employees, the impact is different. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces workplace discrimination laws, and it is an independent agency which the Trump administration cannot boss around. In 2012 and 2015, the EEOC has recognized that sex discrimination encompasses anti-LGBTQ discrimination. It is currently battling the Department of Justice, which, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has taken the opposite stance. For now, at least, the EEOC will still represent LGBTQ employees.

How all this ends

Ultimately, the task of resolving this dispute will fall upon the U.S. Supreme Court. There are already several cases pending before the court involving anti-LGBTQ discrimination. If the justices agree to hear them, they will settle this matter by next June. Now that Justice Brett Kavanaugh has replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, many LGBTQ advocates are pessimistic about their odds at the court. It is quite possible that the reconstituted Supreme Court will eventually affirm Trumps anti-LGBTQ theories, even though doing so would require the justices to overrule years of precedent.

In its report on the memo, the New York Times contended that the Obama administration had loosened the legal concept of gender, a change the Trump administration wishes to reverse. That is not correct. The Obama administration embraced the Supreme Courts expansive definition of sex so that it no longer arbitrarily excluded gender and sexual minorities. Trump wants to revive those categorical exclusionsand add new ones. His administration is not tightening the definition of sex. It is changing the meaning of the word to tell LGBTQ people that they are not equal under the law.The Republic of Turkey currently ranks as the worlds leading jailer of journalists, with 73 behind bars at the end of 2017. Since a failed coup in the summer of 2016, the government has pursued a massive and brutal crackdown against thousands of its critics and opponents, both real and probably imagined. This has included U.S. citizens: Pastor Andrew Brunson was finally released after two years in custody on laughable terrorism charges earlier this month. Former NASA scientist Serkan Golge remains in prison.

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Turkeys dragnet has extended beyond its borders from Kosovo to Mongolia, sometimes with little respect for local laws. The U.N. has accused the Turkish military of killing thousands and razing entire neighborhoods in the southeast of the country in recent years as part of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign against Kurdish militants.

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So its a little strange to note that for the past few weeks, American outrage over the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggiwhich has led to rare public scrutiny of Saudi influence in Washington, U.S. support for the war in Yemen, and the seven-decade-old U.S.-Saudi relationshiphas been driven in large part by that very same Turkish government.

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Ever since Khashoggi disappeared into the consulate on Oct. 2, Turkish government sources been steadily dripping out the grisly details of what happened inside. This strategy has worked brilliantly to keep the anger over the story boiling and overwhelm the efforts of the Saudi regime and its enablers in Washington to contain the scandal. Now, Erdogan has promised that in a televised speech on Tuesday, he will reveal the complete Turkish account of what happened to Khashoggi in full nakedness. There have also been reports that Turkish authorities possess recordings of Khashoggis killing, which would presumably contradict the shifting Saudi accounts of how he died.

Its telling that the Turks have not yet released this evidence and appear to be giving the Saudis an opportunity to make it worth their while not to release it. But Turkish officials have so raised expectations for what theyre going to a reveal that its hard to imagine they can simply brush it all under the table to give the Saudis an out.

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Given the Turkish governments penchant for conspiracy theories, the lurid reports, of whats on these recordings, usually sourced to anonymous officials or state-run media outlets, should be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, none of the major Turkish reports have been disproven so far, and shifting and laughable Saudi explanations have hardly cast doubt on them.

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Erdogan was a personal friend of Khashoggis, but of course its unlikely his government is acting solely out of concern for the dissident writer. Theyre certainly not motivated by concerns about press freedom or human rights. Turkish relations with Saudi Arabia as well as its ally, the United Arab Emirates, have been frosty for a while now. Erdogan was a strong backer of the Arab Spring protests and Egypts short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government, against strong Saudi and Emirati opposition. When the two Gulf States began a blockade of their neighbor, Qatar, last year, in part over its military cooperation with Turkey, Ankara responded by sending additional troops.

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At the same time, U.S.-Turkish relations, which had reached a nadir in July when Trump announced sanctions in response to Brunsons continued imprisonment, have shown signs of improvement lately after the pastors release and some recent agreements over contentious issues in Syria. In that context, Erdogan was unlikely to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

None of this context should interrupt this unexpected moment of soul-searching over just how much the U.S. should be willing to compromise its values to preserve a strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, the strategic benefits of which are a lot less obvious than they used to be. This moment is welcome and long overdue, but it isnt happening in a vacuum. The moment of questioning the relationship with one unreliable longtime U.S. ally with an atrocious record on freedom of speech and the rule of law may serve to benefit a different one.The World Economic Forum, whose annual conference in Davos, Switzerland is generally just referred to as Davos, would very much like it if people stopped referring to other gatherings of business and political elites as Davos.

The organization expressed its concern in a statement released today:

The World Economic Forum objects to the proliferation of the use of the Davos brand for events that have nothing to do with its own activities. The Forum, together with the City of Davos, will use all means to protect the Davos brand against illicit appropriation. The Forum also draws attention to its policy not to organize conferences on behalf of a specific government, always preserving its independence and impartiality.

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While it didnt call out any specific Davos-manque, this was a clear shot at the media for referring to the upcoming, and now substantially reduced, Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh as Davos in the Desert.

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Western technology, financial, and political luminaires like Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were all scheduled to attend the event, hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, before dropping out following the disappearance of and apparent killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, the conference will be primarily attended mainly by less prominent banking executives as well as more attendees and speakers from Russia and friendly Arab countries.

The Saudi conference isnt the only global gathering thats been labeled Davos: theres the Oslo Freedom Forums Davos of human rights as well as the Bloomberg sponsored Davos rival New Economy Forum in Singapore next month (which includes Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan, the head of the Saudi Public Investment as a founding partner)

While Davos-Davos almost requires the presence of people with not-exactly-sterling human rights records in order to maintain its title as the premier convocation of the worlds elite, it also prides itself on precisely not existing on behalf of any particular national or corporate influence. The World Economic Forum, as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation, is not related to any political, commercial or personal interests, it said in its statement. It is, after all, in Switzerland.On Oct. 12, about a week and a half after Jamal Khashoggi went missing in Turkey, journalist Anand Giridharadas wrote in the New York Times about Silicon Valleys Saudi Arabia problem. Saudi Arabias $250 billion Public Investment Fund invests a portion of the countrys oil revenues in companies and projects worldwide. Recently, under the influence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a lot of that money has been invested in tech companies including Uber, DoorDash, and Slack. Giridharadas argued that Khashoggis disappearance was a reason for Silicon Valley to live up to its change the world and do the right thing rhetoric by returning that money.

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This would be a new form of international boycottone that involves refusing to accept cash rather than the more traditional approach based on refusing to hand it over. And because many of the tech firms that have benefited from Saudi investment are private, it would be relatively straightforward for them to implement compared with companies listed on stock exchanges, where firms cant dictate who sells their shares to whom. While it seems an unlikely course for rapidly growing, cash-hungry Silicon Valley firms to take unless they face pressure from their customers, if any country should be a test case for an inward-investment boycott, Saudi Arabia is probably top of the list.

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The Saudi governments murder of a Washington Post columnist has drawn attention to the countrys many other misdeeds. It has been committing war crimes in Yemen for years (using U.S.-made weapons and support to commit them). It has been operating gender apartheid for far longer, with a considerable legal apparatus designed to constrain womens abilities to travel outside the home or to work. Its treatment of people who hold dissenting views involves floggings and beheadings. Conversion to another religion from Islam carries the death penalty, as does atheism, which is considered an act of terrorism. Its gross and systemic abuse of human rights at home and abroad surely justifies condemnation and sanction.

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A boycott would require widespread consumer outrage and threats to abandon Uber for Lyft or Slack for email and actual work.

And the Saudi regime would be a relatively easy and powerful target of government-imposed smart sanctions on the financing and activities of particular individuals. For example, the Saudi royal family enjoys a life of global luxury supported by a significant property empire. Salman recently purchased the worlds most expensive house, the Chateau Louis XIV in Louveciennes, France. The U.S. could lead an international effort to freeze the global resources of the House of Saud and deny its members entry except for short trips on official business. Being corralled without parole in the Stalinist theocracy they have created would be a suitable punishment and a significant lever for change.

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But then there is the oil: In 2017, Saudi Arabia was only second behind the U.S. in global production, providing 13 percent of the worlds supply. And theres the U.S. and Saudi Arabias shared distaste for Iran alongside comparatively warm relations with Israel. And the arms purchases: Saudi Arabia is the worlds largest customer for U.S. weapons. And the military and intelligence cooperation. Not to mention a considerable lobbying operation: A 2016 report in the Intercept listed recent payments to a long roster of firms including Qorvis, BGR Government Affairs, the Podesta Group, DLA Piper, and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. And, of course, the countrys generous investments and payments to the Trump business empire.

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All of that makes the idea of government-led sanctions an unlikely prospect in the near term, which is where consumer and institutional boycotts come in as an alternative. The traditional model is to refuse to buy or invest. The South African apartheid regime was hit with boycotts that began with a public campaign to refuse to purchase South African fruit, cigarettes, and other goods and moved on to calling for disinvestment from South African companies. More recently, people have been urged not to spend on brands from Chipotle to Chevron. And a growing number of institutions are refusing to invest in fossil fuel companies, which the group Go Fossil Free estimates involves 991 institutions controlling more than $7 trillion in assets.

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But refusing to buy or invest doesnt work that well with Saudi Arabia. Consumers dont know where their gas comes from when they pump it at the station, and anyway, little Saudi gas oil makes it to the U.S.only about $18 billion worth each year. Investment boycotts aimed at Saudi domestic firms dont mean much in a country that is desperately trying to find investment opportunities for its surplus cash. Regardless, investment boycotts on Saudi firms would face the challenge that many of the organizations most likely to take part are already disinvesting from the fossil fuel companies that would be the biggest targets.

So that leaves Giridharadas proposed strategy: refusing to take money rather than refusing to hand it over. Theres already some evidence of that trend emerging. Riyadh bankrolls a number of Washington think tanks, many of which are reconsidering their decisions to accept the support. Pushing companies to refuse Saudi investment is an obvious next step, because there is a lot of investment to stop thanks to the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

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The fund has been rapidly expanding its tech portfolio, much of it in privately held firms. It provided 45 percent of the cash behind SoftBanks $100 billion Vision Fund and may invest another $45 billion in a follow-up fund. Teslas CEO Elon Musk suggested over the summer that he might take the company private using Saudi cash, although he had to walk back the statement. (The country has now invested $1 billion in Lucid, a Tesla competitor.)

A number of Silicon Valley CEOs have expressed concern about Khashoggis death by pulling out from the Public Investment Funds Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh due to take place later in October. But that is a considerable difference from refusing Saudi cash. That would probably take widespread consumer outrage and threats to abandon Uber for Lyft or Slack for email and actual work, as it might be. And theres little sign of a mass movement yet. But every further outrage committed in the name of the Saudi king should bring it closer.This story was originally published by Mother Jones and has been republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Heres the most important thing to know about climate politics in this critical election year: How fast we act decides the future we get.

Of course, climate politics seems to be about many things, things that this administration has been hell-bent on sabotaging: strong emissions rules, carbon pricing, fuel-economy standards, international treaties, cuts to fossil fuel subsidies, and respect for science and scientists in federal decision making. Yet at its heart, climate politics is simple. Its all about speed.

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I dont mean that the climate fight is urgent, though of course it is. I mean that the climate fight is itself a fight about tempo, about how fast high-carbon industries will fall apart. The question is not whether well see bold climate action, but when, and how much more it will cost us in blood and treasure if we wait.

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That suggestion seems absurd to many Americans. Fossil fuels are everywhere in this country, and what is ubiquitous always feels permanent.

Its not. Powerful forces strain against this status quo, and torque is building for a snap forward in climate action. Novembers election, it turns out, could be the breaking point. To understand why, we must consider the shifting global politics of the climate crisis, the unprecedented acceleration of the clean economy, and the carbon bubble we live in.

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Most Americans care about climate change. Many Americans know the climate crisis will only grow more urgent the longer we fail to act boldly to cut emissions. Many of us even recognize that as our scientific understanding of our planets climate and biosphere has sharpened, the anticipated consequences of failure have grown grim.

Indeed, the alarm calls seem to be working: Hundreds of thousands of people read an academic paper warning of a Hothouse Earth future, a nightmare future where melting permafrost, burning forests, and souring seas lead to a hotter and hotter climate, likely beyond the capacity of humanity to repair. This summer of megafires, heat waves, and freak storms seems to have driven home the warning. Americans are worried.

When the carbon bubble pops, the ability of fossil fuel industries to set political agendas will be deeply compromised.

We think nothings being done, though. This is understandable, living, as we do, in the country with arguably the worlds least-effective national climate policies, a nation run by the GOP, which has made climate denialism practically an article of faith, with broadcast media outlets that rarely cover the link between climate change and extreme weather events. Heck, even the Democratic National Committee recently reversed its position swearing off fossil fuel money. From Washington, climate politics appeared to be a slag heap of failure even before Donald Trump took power.

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Here, then, is the second thing you need to know about climate politics: Action on climate is inevitable, and momentum is already far stronger than most of us understand.

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The planetary crisis driven by climate change threatens lives, livelihoods, and regional economies worth many times the value of the entire fossil fuel industry, and it threatens them existentially. The only true human analogue is war. Whole nations, huge and powerful industries, cultural and religious leaders, and hundreds of millions of ordinary people around the world see high-carbon industries as a threat to their highest principles and most-fundamental interests.

And they have been taking action: the Paris accord and the Kigali agreement, the global divestment movement, the spread of carbon-pricing mechanisms, legal cases trying to hold fossil fuel companies liable for the harm theyve caused. Even here in the United States, the We Are Still In movement has gathered more than 3,500 businesses, city governments, and universities pledging to abide by the Paris climate accord. This summer, California became the second state to commit to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. People are being drawn to action, and that action is already having effects.

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We can judge those impacts by the swelling crowd of experts concerned about the carbon bubble.

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The carbon bubble is the mismatch between the declared value of fossil fuel reserves (and thus of the energy companies that own them) and societys willingness to suffer the consequences of burning those fuels. Put simply, if we dont want to trigger planetary catastrophe, well need to leave most of the worlds coal, oil, and gas unburnedindeed, climate policy is, at its most fundamental core, the question of how much well leave in the ground.

If those fuels wont be burned, theyre not worth much. But fossil-energy companies are some of the worlds biggest companies precisely because they have these huge reserves, and these reserves are valued as if they will all be burned. That makes these companies not just overvalued, but massively overvalued. It makes fossil fuels a financial bubble, one thats bound to burst.

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The risks of the carbon bubble popping and triggering a global financial crisis are serious enough that some of the worlds largest financial institutions (including the national banks of England, France, and the Netherlands, the World Bank, and the Financial Stability Board) have begun looking at ways to avoid a repeat of the 2007 subprime crisis.

When the carbon bubble pops, the ability of fossil fuel industries to set political agendas will be deeply compromised. Like many bubbles, this one will pop not when it physically cant go on but when profits no longer look certain. The world doesnt even have to achieve bold action to pop the bubble. Simply the loss of confidence in the ability of fossil fuel companies to develop and profit from their reserves could cut the companies worth enough to guarantee that those assets will become stranded.

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Heres the third thing you need to know: The clean economy is getting exponentially more competitive.

The next decade is lining up to be a golden age for sustainable innovation, entrepreneurship, and civic leadership. Just 10 years ago, talk about decarbonizing the economy was aspirationalgoing carbon zero was a goal toward which we were moving, not a capacity we possessed. Clean energy was too expensive. Energy-efficiency technologies were too limited. Batteries and electric vehicles were too constrained. Green building was seen as too esoteric. Green urbanism was too controversial. Climate restoration of natural systems was too theoretical. Sustainable design was in its infancy.

Ten years, it turns out, can change everything. We now live in an era when the costs of clean energy drop almost every year. When battery innovations have drastically improved and electric vehicles look primed to crash through the automotive industry. When superinsulated green homes are about as cheap to build as conventional structures. We already live in the last decades fantasies of what sustainable innovation might one day look like.

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Clean energy and batteries, in particular, are on steep learning curves. As we build more, the price drops; as the price drops, the number of situations in which wind and solar out-compete coal and gas grows. It took humanity all of history to install the first terawatt of wind and solar energy. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates the second terawatt will arrive by mid-2023 and be 46 percent less expensive than the first one. Follow that sort of learning curve through another doubling (from two terawatts to four), and it will be cheaper to build and run wind and solar plants than to continue running existing fossil fuel power plants. There will literally not be a business case for burning coal, oil, or gas to generate electricity.

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The clean economy will eventually put the dirty economy out of businessbut just how soon this will happen is the crux of the climate fight.

The carbon lobbys agenda is not to winfew investors seriously think fossil fuels are in for boom times aheadbut to lose slowly, to stall for time, to maintain the appearance of unshakable ubiquity (and thus profitability).

Looking at the building global political momentum on climate, the growing competitiveness of the new economy, and the rising financial risks facing fossil fuel companies, we begin to see just how vital the Trump administration and the GOP Congress are to slowing action on climate. They (and Russia) are working as essentially the only strong counterforce to rapidly accelerating climate action. They are the core constituency for predatory delay.

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Their power to delay, though, is fragileand this Novembers election could break it. If the American people send a Congress to Washington thats ready to challenge the presidents stall tactics, that Congress could, of course, undo much of the damage of the past two years. But more importantly, the very election of that Congress would send a global signal that the United States will no longer be the land of delay and deniala signal that climate action has not been checked, that clean-economy acceleration will continue, and that now would be a great time to get your money out of high-carbon investments.

The tide of climate politics could turn on such an election. Indeed, we may soon be able to look at these years as the high-water mark, when a flood of greed and insanity crested, stopped, and rolled back faster than we ever imagined possible.In 1918, an influenza pandemic swept the world, causing more deaths in a year than any event in human historya rather broadly estimated 50 million to 100 million, or 3 to 6 percent of the worlds population. The flu, which killed around 20 percent of those who contracted it, became known as the Spanish flu or the Spanish Lady. The name spread, well, like influenza and has persisted to this day.

But just as Chinese checkers wasnt invented in China, Australian shepherds arent from Australia, and freedom fries arent French, the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain nor did Spain bear the brunt of it. In fact, of the millions of influenza deaths, less than 260,000 took place in Spain.

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The misnomer, according to an episode of the podcast BackStory, came about as a result of geopolitical forces. When the pandemic broke out during World War I, neither side wanted the other to find out they were sicknor did they want their own troops to lose morale or their publics to panic. News of the outbreak was suppressed or heavily underplayed in Germany, France, the U.K., and the U.S. But Spain, like Switzerland, was neutral in the war, and its media had no qualms about covering the contagious outbreak weakening its population, creating the false impression that this was a Spanish disease. As virologist John Oxford put it: And the rest of the world I think looked around and said, Whats going on in Spain? And so since that time, much to the annoyance of the Spanish and much to the annoyance of Spanish virologists, I can tell you, weve all called the Spanish flu ever since.

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An article in a 2008 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases tracks the extensive flu coverage in the uncensored Spanish media. It first appeared in a headline in Madrids ABC newspaper in May 1918 and was blamed on Madrids annual holidays, which saw people gathered in close contact in ballrooms and parties. Soon King Alfonso XIII became ill, as well as the prime minister, and la epidemia reinante (the prevailing epidemic) became daily news fodder. Though the flu was striking people ill in a dramatic fashion, mortality was initially low, and the flu became known as the Soldado de Napoles, named for a catchy Spanish song popular at the time. It soon became clear, however, that this flu was no laughing matter.

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The fairer name in the blame game would probably be the World War Fluor the Politicians Flu.

Though Spains relatively free press and great interest in the flu led to its association with the flu, the country was far from the hardest or the first hit. Spains mortality rate (120 per 10,000 people) trailed both Italys and Portugals among the European countries included in a 2009 paper published in Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses. In fact, though cases were reported in May, Spains official pandemic period didnt even begin until June 1918, while Finlands began in January, and Germanys, Bulgarias, and Portugals in March. To this day, its still not agreed where exactly the 1918 H1N1 virus originated. Previous research has suggested China, France, and even Kansas as potential sources, but according to the aforementioned study of European mortality burdens, it likely wasnt Europe: The authors conclude that the synchrony of the mortality waves in the different countries  pleads against a European origin of the pandemic, as was sometimes hypothesized. These days, the flu is believed to have reached Spain via France.

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The fairer name in the blame game would probably be the World War Fluor the Politicians Flu. As Oxford points out on BackStory, politicians hold much of the blame for the flus millions of deathsit wouldnt have been so deadly had it not been for the war and the large number of troops concentrated in Europe. I myself put it at the feet of politicians, he said. If it had not been for that war, the pandemic would not have arisen. When the war came to an end and troops began returning to their various corners of the globe, the flu came with them, spreading exceptionally rapidly for 1918. While its still unclear where exactly it originated, the war was clearly to blame for its range. Furthermore, wartime censorship meant it took communities by surprise, while wartime conditions of lowered nutrition and sanitation likely inflated the death rate.

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Europe was hit hard and early, but truly, the whole world suffered. The U.S. actually fared better than most: According to the Europe mortality burden report, estimates of the American death toll range between 400,000 and 675,000as little as 0.47 percent of the population (as compared with Europes 1.1 percent). Other countries were not so lucky. The flu killed somewhere between 902,400 and 2,431,000 Iraniansbetween 8 and 21 percent of the total population of Iran. According to estimates, the pandemic killed up to 17 million people in India; 1.5 million in Indonesia; 400,000 in France; 390,000 in Japan; 250,000 in Britain; and 100,000 in Ghana. One of the hardest hit areas was about as far away from the war as one could get: Pacific Islanders had among the highest mortality rates, with Tonga, Tahiti, Nauru, and Western Samoa losing large swaths of their populations in a space of months (Western Samoa lost 20 percent of its population in less than two months). This, along with the tragically high death rate among Maori and Native American populations, is suggested to be in part due to lower rates of previous exposure: their naive immune systems.

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What does all this mean for the next global pandemic, which many scientistsincluding members of this upcoming Future Tense panelconclude is inevitable? The world is far more connected than it used to be, both physically and technologically, but will globalism hurt or help us? In some ways, were in good shape, and in some ways, were in really bad shape, said Rebecca Katz, a Georgetown global health professor and a pandemic consultant to the Department of State. She points out that over the summer, we had one of the busiest travel days in history, with more than 202,000 flights. We move around the world pretty fast, which means that anything that emerges from one part of the world can be anywhere else within 24 to 36 hours. Katz adds that our highly urban and aging society, as well as increased population and food trade, also add up to make todays world particularly vulnerable to a deadly respiratory virus. But its not all bad. On the plus side, our medical care is much more advanced, our ability to produce medical countermeasures is much more advanced, our ability to treat the secondary bacterial infections is much more advanced, she added.

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There really isnt, however, any way to contain the spread of something like the Spanish flu in todays world. (In a piece for Future Tense, Bina Venkataraman explores the history, inefficacy, and stigmatization of forced quarantines.) When the next deadly flu strikes, very few places on Earth will be immunewhen I ask Katz where would be the safest place if a global pandemic were to break out tomorrow, she suggests the moon. Hopefully, unless World War III breaks out, such a flu wont be known by whichever countrys press was free enough to cover it first. Wherever it starts, and whatever it is known by, one things for sure: The 1918 pandemic will always be known as the Spanish flu. Sorry, Spain.It is a popular fiction that despite its many foibles, the Trump administration has been successful in dismantling environmental regulations. Given the sheer number of attacks levied on energy and environmental regulations involving the coal, oil, gas, and automotive industries, casual observers might reasonably conclude that the administration is deploying a successful deregulatory strategy.

It is not. The administration has made multiple efforts to put Obama-era regulatory requirements on ice, but these efforts have largely failed. With its delay tactics in tatters, the administration is now taking a different approachinstead of just stopping old regulations, its surfacing new replacement rules that would let industry walk away from environmental and public-health and safety obligations that have solid evidentiary support and broad appeal. But having squandered half of its four-year term, the White House faces an uphill climb in developing and finalizing many of its major environmental rollback initiatives, and getting them past now-skeptical courts, before the clock runs out.

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The efforts to roll back the oil and gas industrys obligations to reduce methane emissions specifically illustrate this reality. Trumps Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department tried, first, to quickly sideline methane regulations. The gambit failed. Progressive state attorneys general and environmental groups pounced, and won, exposing an impulsive administration that had failed to do its legal homework.

The Trump administration targeted two specific methane rules that the Obama administration had finalized before it left office: the EPAs New Source Performance Standard, or NSPS, and the Interior Departments methane-waste reduction rule. The Obama administration finalized the EPA methane rule in June 2016. It focuses primarily on detecting and repairing methane leaks for new oil and gas drilling activities. In May 2017, former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a 90-day delay for a key compliance deadline for the NSPS. Three weeks later, the EPA proposed a bare-bones suspension rule that sought to delay implementation of the existing rule for two years.

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Many of the Trump administrations efforts to remove regulations that it complains are burdening the energy industry remain at the starting gate.

State attorneys general and environmental groups immediately petitioned for court review, arguing that the EPA had no authority to nullify key compliance requirements by administrative fiat. The District of Columbia Circuit Court agreed. It moved swiftly to strike down the EPAs compliance delay, ruling that an agency issuing a legislative rule is itself bound by the rule until that rule is amended and revoked through a formal, substantive notice and comment process. This ruling sent the EPA back to the drawing board for 14 months.

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A similar pattern applies to the Interior Departments restrictions on methane emissions for oil and gas operations conducted on public lands. The department promulgated the methane waste prevention rule in November 2016 in response to evidence gathered by the Government Accountability Office and other watchdog groups that some oil and gas drillers were wasting valuable, publicly owned assets by venting and flaring large quantities of unwanted methane in violation of the Mineral Leasing Act.

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Like its efforts to sideline the EPAs methane restrictions, the Trump administration tried to nullify the Interior Departments methane-waste reduction rule. Initial efforts included a failed attempt to overturn the rule under the Congressional Review Act and an unsuccessful petition in the normally friendly U.S. District Court of Wyoming to enjoin operation of the rule. In June 2017, Interior Secretary Zinke announced that the department was delaying industry-compliance requirements under the rule. This effort also failed. A federal court in California agreed with Californias and New Mexicos attorneys general, Xavier Becerra and Hector Balderas, that the Interior Department must complete a full rule-making process under the Administrative Procedure Act, or APA, before it can set aside the Obama rule. The court also noted that the Interior Department could not justify its change in direction by myopically focusing on the rules compliance costs to industry. It also must consider the benefits of the rule, such as decreased resource waste, air pollution, and enhanced public revenues.

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Undeterred by its failures, Zinkes Interior Department moved forward with a suspension rule that purported to put off the waste-reduction rule for a full year. Californias and New Mexicos attorneys general sued again, arguing that the suspension rule represented an unlawful attempt to circumvent the APAs substantive notice-and-comment rule-making process. In February, Judge Orrick in the Northern District of California agreed, noting, The BLMs reasoning behind the Suspension Rule is untethered to evidence contradicting the reasons for implementing the Waste Prevention Rule.

After suffering one defeat after another in its repeated attempts to suspend or delay Obama-era methane regulations, the Trump administrations leadership at EPA and the Interior Department is finally taking on the much harder task of developing and justifying entirely new rules, instead of just rolling back the rules we have. Whether or not they will be successful in turning back the inevitable judicial challenges is murky at best.

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The EPA recently proposed a replacement for the NSPS rule that would roll back inspections and repair requirements and drop requirements for third-party validation of leak-detection and repair activities. The new rule identifies modest cost savings to industry but offers no clear, fact-based rebuttal to the Obama administrations analysis of the benefits of the previous rule. Assuming that the EPA pushes forward to a similar final rule, it will confront a strong challenge to the foregone benefits associated with its weakened rule when it faces judicial scrutiny.

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The Interior Department also is now moving forward with a replacement rule after the courts rejected the Trump administrations initial efforts to sideline its methane-waste reduction rule. More specifically, it promulgated a new final rule last month that purports to completely remove restrictions on the oil and gas industrys wasting of methane through excessive venting and flaring activities. Within hours of its release, attorneys general Becerra and Balderas challenged the final rule in federal court. In order to succeed in the rules implementation, the Interior Department must overcome the substantial administrative record that addressed the necessity of regulations proposed in the old rule. (When overturning the departments attempted suspension of the methane-waste reduction rule, Judge Orrick emphasized the Supreme Courts teachings that new administrations cannot simply overturn policies that had been legally established by previous administrations and that the high court requires a more detailed justification for overturning existing regulations than what is required for the creation of wholly new regulations from scratch.)

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Meanwhile, state attorneys general have put the EPA on the defensive on other methane-emissions-related developments. A coalition of state attorneys general sued the EPA in April for failing to comply with its obligation under the Clean Air Act to restrict methane emissions from existing oil and gas drilling operations. (The NSPS standards apply only to new oil and gas operations.) Eight state attorneys general also sued the EPA in May for failing to enforce compliance deadlines set forth in a separate rule that applies to methane emissions from landfills. Those suits remain pending.

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The same pattern seen in the Trump administrations efforts to roll back EPA and Interior Department requirements to reduce harmful methane emissions is playing out in other environmental and energy contexts. In recent weeks, federal courts struck down attempts by the administration to delay implementation of Obama-era rules protecting workers and first responders from exposure to dangerous chemicals during accidents in industrial chemical facilities as well as delays by the EPA in banning the use of a dangerous pesticide, chlorpyrifos, on food crops.

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In all of these matters, Trumps initial deregulatory efforts failed. Some, like the Administrations decision not to enforce the 2015 ozone rule, are being dropped entirely. Others are wending their way forward, typically with a cloudy future in terms of their ultimate deregulatory success. Even very high-profile deregulatory matters like the Clean Power Plan and car-tailpipe emissions requirements are only now getting underway in earnest. While the Supreme Court stayed enforcement of the Obama administrations Clean Power Plan in 2016, EPA did not propose a replacement rulethe so-called Affordable Clean Energy Planuntil two months ago. It will be many months more before the replacement rule is finalized and subjected to judicial scrutiny. The same is true for the administrations proposed rules rolling back emissions reductions for cars and light trucks.

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In short, many of the Trump administrations efforts to remove regulations that it complains are burdening the energy industry remain at the starting gate. In the coming months, courts will have an opportunity to weigh in and, for at least some of the new rules, send the administration back to the drawing board.

None of this is to say that the administrations onslaught against common-sense regulations and other protections that benefit the environment and public health and safety is not doing real harm. Agencies are taking actions outside the rule-making context, through guidance documents, lack of enforcement, and other administrative actions, to put industry interests above the public interest. But the clock is ticking on many of the administrations most serious rollback efforts, and increasingly, time is not on Trumps side.It all makes sense once you realize they want to kill us, by Mike Whitney - The Unz Review : 'It is now apparent that these products in ...Bratislava is the best, while the Kosice, Presov and Banska Bystrica Regions fared the worst.

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When testing fifth grade pupils in Maths and the Slovak language, big differences among the most and least developed regions were confirmed, the Monitor of Education and Professional Training from 2018, published by the European Commission (EC) on October 16, shows.

Bratislava students placed best

The Monitor states that the worst results have been recorded in the Kosice, Presov and Banska Bystrica regions, while students from Bratislava fared the best.

Students from socially disadvantaged groups achieved about half the points compared to their peers from socially more favourable environments, the Monitor reads, as quoted by the Sme daily.

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Read also: PISA tests: Slovak pupils lag behind in collaborative task solving Read more

The Education Ministry reacted for the TASR newswire by saying that to reduce the impact of social-economic environments on pupils results, the National Programme of Education and Training (NPRVaV) foresees the introduction of an obligatory pre-primary education in kindergartens for each child before the start of obligatory schooling.

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Read also: EC: Funds for education still low Read more

This change should be introduced by 2020.

 Further measures include a new form of support for pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and support for inclusive education  with better material conditions and more expert staff in schools, the Ministry added.

Huge differences in level of education

The published results suggest that there are some enormous differences in the level of education, and social-economic environment is cited as one of the crucial affecting factors.

The EC points out that despite some gradual improvement in the position of teachers and educators, it is still not desirable, especially when it comes to salaries. Notably in the capital and in western Slovakia, teachers salaries are not competitive with other professions, read the statements about Slovakia.

Also, the investments in education are deeply below the EU member states average, the Monitor finds.

However, both the EC and the NPRVaV programme expect additional expenses for individual measures to be implemented in 2018-2027, amounting  according to the Slovak Ministry  to 15.6 billion.

The Monitor of Education and Professional Training is the seventh edition of this annual report by the EC which follows the development of education and professional training in EU member states, looking at six goals, and predicting their outcome until 2020.

Grohling: Results are this cabinets shame

The latest results of the Monitor published by the EC show that education in Slovakia keeps declining each and every year, and fails to keep pace with the rest of the world, opposition SaS MP, Branislav Grohling said, as quoted by Sme. He pointed to the many flaws in the Slovak education system cited by the EC -regional differences, low investments in education, low salaries of teachers, impact of social environment on pupils education, but also the insufficient civics.

Grohling deems the results the shame of the current government. He also points to the increasing share of pupils with insufficient levels in all three spheres monitored - mathematics, natural literacy and reading literacy, covered by the PISA testing. Also, the share of young Slovaks who dropped out of obligatory schooling prematurely increased from 6.7 percent, to 9.3 percent. Slovakia has set the goal of decreasing this figure to six percent, but instead, it has kept increasing for many years, he summed up, according to Sme.The Slovak Foreign Ministry is still waiting for a reply from Vietnam following a meeting of foreign affairs ministers from both countries in New York.

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Trinh Xuan Thanh, the abducted Vietnamese citizens, stands trial in his homeland, facing a life in prison. (Source: AP/TASR)

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Until Slovakia receives a credible explanation from Hanoi of how the kidnapped Vietnamese citizen got to Vietnam, bilateral relationships between the countries will be frozen, said spokesman for the Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry, Boris Gandel on October 19, in reaction to a call by the opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party to expel the Vietnamese ambassador.

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Read also: Dennik N: This is what the Vietnamese kidnapping looked like Read more

The ministry has not yet received an answer from Vietnam following the meeting of the two countries foreign affairs ministers in New York, Gandel said, as cited by the TASR newswire.

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Read also: Kiska: Vietnamese abduction is an international scandal Read more

Slovakia is a serious country and will take stringent diplomatic action against the Vietnamese when the very serious suspicions currently held against the Vietnamese party are fully and officially confirmed, the spokesman said.

Opposition slams Vietnamese abduction, Slovak reaction

Earlier in the day, the SaS called on Foreign Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajcak (a Smer nominee) to downgrade Vietnamese representation in Slovakia by expelling the countrys ambassador.

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Read also: Political scientist: Vietnamese kidnappers maybe did not care about being exposed Read more

The Vietnamese government flagrantly misused Slovakia to kidnap Vietnamese national Trinh Xuan Thanh, using our territory and even the Slovak governmental plane to transport him. Although the Vietnamese Government is unable to explain how Trinh Xuan Thanh got from Germany to Vietnam, its been systematically misleading both the Slovak government and the Slovak public via its ambassador, as it refuses to accept responsibility for the abduction, said SaS MP Martin Klus, as quoted by TASR.

Read also:Hossu, charged with killing the expat in the centre of the Capital, withdrew his request for release from pre-trial custody.

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The man charged with killing the Filipino Henry Acorda borught to court hearing. (Source: TASR)

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Juraj Hossu, charged with killing Henry Acorda, remains in custody.

The accused man withdrew his request to be released from custody, spokesman for the Regional Court in Bratislava, Pavol Adamciak said, as cited by the Sme daily. The court accepted this, which in effect means that it did not rule on the matter.

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Read also: Bratislava called for justice for Henry Acorda and an end to violence Read more

Juraj Hossu had asked to be released from pre-trial custody. On the morning of October 19, the Bratislava I District Court was to decide on his request at a non-public session.

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Read also: Man who killed expat in Bratislava is behind bars Read more

Hossu, aged 28, from the southern-Slovak district of Dunajska Streda, allegedly attacked the Filipino who tried to prevent him from harassing two women in Obchodna Street in Bratislava early on the morning of Saturday, May 26 . The expat who worked in the Capital died of injuries sustained in the attack.

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Read also: Slovak cities paid tribute to killed Filipino expat Read more

The police charged the attacker with homicide. The Judge allocated to the preparatory proceeding at Bratislava I District Court took him into so-called preventive custody, citing fears that he may continue in criminal activities.Cherry Roast, Denvers premiere barista competition for womxn, gender queer, non binary, [gender nonconforming], and trans folx, is back! Now in its fourth year, Cherry Roast is returning for another round of inclusivity-forward coffee competing on November 12th at Copper Door Coffee.

Started by Amethyst Coffees Elle Jensen, Cherry Roast is a chance to experience barista competition in a safe space for all women, transmasculine, genderqueer, and gender nonconforming baristas of all skill levels, as Sprudge contributor Ben Wiese described it from his coverage of the 2017 event. Cherry Roast works a little differently than most barista competitions; it puts baristas through four rounds of multi-disciplinary rigmarole that includes triangulation, brewing, latte art, dialing in, order fulfillment, and signature drinks. And while details of what exactly the 2018 event entails, organizers are promising a more organized, less rowdy (but still party-forward), more inclusive, cleaned up version of our favorite coffee competition, per the Instagram post announcing the event.

If this sounds like the sort of ringer youd like to be run through, Cherry Roast is currently accepting registration. Interested parties simply need to email CherryRoast@gmail.com with their name, preferred pronoun, and employer to get signed up. The cost to compete is $20and heres the cool partbut the fee will be sponsored by co-organizer Breezy Sanchez for anyone that provide evidence of an active voter registration (I dont think we need to rehash how important the upcoming elections are). But for those without proof of registration or who just want to chip in, all proceeds are being donated to the Milkrose Coffee Farm.

Details about Cherry Roast 2018 are still being rolled out, so to stay informed, follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Top image via Cherry RoastHedge Fund Dogs

In April 2008, a longtime investment adviser named Chris Tobe was appointed to the board of trustees that oversees the Kentucky Retirement Systems, the pension fund that provides for the states firefighters, police, and other government employees. Within a year, his fellow trustees named Tobe to the six-person committee that oversees its investments, becoming the only member of the committee with any actual investment experience. It was an experiment in fiduciary responsibility that ended badly. I started asking questions when things werent sounding right, Tobe said. And a secret session was held where they voted to kick me off.

Several weeks after he was removed, the remaining members of the committee approved a $200 million investment in a hedge fund called Arrowhawk Capital Partners. Tobe, though he remained a trustee, only learned about the deal after the fact, while reading the magazine Pensions & Investments.

Former Kentucky Retirement Systems trustee Chris Tobe, photographed at his parents house in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, on Oct. 19, 2018. Photo: Luke Sharrett for The Intercept

In the years since that big Arrowhawk play, Kentuckys public pensions have descended into financial crisis, a crisis that threatens to have ripple effects across the state. Poor, rural counties in Kentucky have two major economic drivers, state Rep. Jim Wayne explained. One is the school system and the other is the courthouse. Most of them have no other industry. Of the 120 counties in Kentucky, Wayne said, government jobs is the No. 1 employer. By 2016, the credit rating agency Standard & Poors declared Kentuckys the worst-funded state pension system in the country. At that point, the state was meeting only 37.4 percent of its funding obligation  half the national median of 74.6 percent.

Tobe had never heard of Arrowhawk, and he quickly figured out why: Arrowhawk was a new fund whose first investor was the Kentucky Retirement Systems, or KRS. During his tenure as a trustee, KRS staff had proposed moving 5 percent  roughly $650 million  of the pensions total holdings, then invested almost entirely in a mix of stocks and bonds, into large, established funds of funds  vehicles that allow investors to buy a basket of hedge funds, rather than risking everything on a single fund. Instead, the staff had steered the investment committee in 2009 to a startup fund with no track record. Tobe pressed the issue at several public meetings of the KRS board and eventually, in 2010, an internal audit revealed that Arrowhawk paid more than $2 million to a middle man named Glen Sergeon to land Kentucky as a client. KRSs chief investment officer resigned during the course of the investigation (only to land a private-sector job as a managing director at a giant investment consulting firm). Bad publicity, along with mediocre performance, sealed the fate of Arrowhawk, Tobe wrote in his self-published book, Kentucky Fried Pensions. Two and a half years after Kentucky selected the firm for its first-ever hedge fund investment, Arrowhawk shut its doors.

Glen Sergeon attends the 10th Annual DREAMYARD Benefit in New York City on May 4, 2010. Photo: Patrick McMullan via Getty Image

More hedge fund investments followed, and Sergeons fingerprints were again on more than a few. In all, according to a subsequent probe by the state auditor, seven money management firms paid Sergeon a combined $5.6 million to persuade officials at KRS to entrust them with retirement dollars. That included Crestview Partners, another relatively new hedge fund, which paid Sergeons firm $1.1 million. Critics charge that the success of many placement agents, as intermediaries such as Sergeon are called, depends on their willingness to engage in various forms of pay to play, whether that means by contributing to the political campaigns of public officials with influence over a pension or by offering them lucrative jobs, consultancies, or loans. But in Kentucky, as in most states, its perfectly legal for hedge funds or private equity firms to employ placement agents  so long as they arent caught violating a fairly recent rule that bars them from giving campaign donations or financial benefits directly to public officials while those officials are in a position to send hundreds of millions of dollars to their clients.

Tobe suspected placement agents of bending the rules in Kentucky. In 2010, he filed a formal complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission about the undue influence of placement agents in the state. The internal audit showed that in this one medium-sized state, in just five years from 2004 to 2009, placement agents were paid nearly $12 million to steer KRS business to clients. One placement firm, the Park Hill Group, until 2015 a subsidiary of Blackstone, a giant of the private equity world, collected $3.8 million in fees from 2005 to 2008. Together, Blackstone and Park Hill employ six lobbyists in Frankfort, the states capital. In all, according to the probe by the state auditor, placement agents secured $1.3 billion in investments for its Wall Street clients. And yet, Tobe said, these early investments didnt produce anything like the returns people were promising.

A cautionary tale, perhaps. But it failed to give Kentucky pension officials pause. Despite scandals and poor performance, the staff, with the trustees blessings, shoveled even more of the states pension dollars into alternative investments, including hedge funds and private equity. The planned 5 percent for hedge funds doubled to 10 percent; additional funds were gambled on private equity. Today, 29 percent of KRSs funds are invested in alternatives  well above the national average.

The most important thing we do as fiduciaries is diversify our assets, said Richard Robben, KRSs interim chief investment officer. To Robben, alternatives add variety to a $17 billion pension fund that otherwise would have all of its money in stocks, bonds, or money market accounts. Its like grandma said, Dont put all your eggs in one basket.

Yet Kentuckys heavy reliance on alternatives has come at a steep cost. Hedge funds and private equity typically charge 2 and 20  2 percent of every dollar invested, plus a 20 percent share of any profits. That works out to fees roughly 10 times what a pension fund would pay to invest in a plain vanilla stock fund. In 2009, the year it began investing in hedge funds, KRS paid $13.6 million in annual management fees. Five years later, that figure had ballooned to $126 million, according to a study KRS itself commissioned  more than twice as much as it had publicly disclosed in its 2014 filings. And that higher figure still didnt capture all the millions of dollars in those 20 percent performance fees that hedge funds and private equity collect  sometimes many years into the future, after the sale of a successful venture  before distributing profits to investors. That same study underscored a second cost: Kentuckys gamble on alternatives has proven a lousy investment. Had KRS simply matched the performance of the median pension fund in the five years ending in December 2014, the pension would have produced an additional $1.75 billion in earnings. If it had invested in a basic index fund matching the Russell 1000 (the countrys 1,000 largest public companies), KRS would have earned another $9 billion. Even investing the entire pension fund in a long-term bond fund  as safe an investment as there is, short of leaving it all in cash  would have meant hundreds of millions of dollars in additional profits during those five years.

Yet, incredibly, KRS kept investing massively in alternatives. It was only in 2017 that the KRS board voted finally to trim its holdings of hedge funds. Yet the fund continues to invest heavily in private equity. Theres definitely been a Hail Mary attitude in Kentucky, Tobe said, a strategy of taking greater risks in the hope of making up yawning pension deficits. But to me what it really boils down to is political corruption. Hes hardly alone in that view. Former Goldman Sachs banker Susan Webber, writing as Yves Smith on the financial website Naked Capitalism, described KRS as a contender both [for] the title of the most corrupt and the most incompetent public pension fund in the U.S. Smith argues that Kentuckys pension fund is so deeply underfunded in no small measure to its dodgy relationships with placement agents, which in turn appear to have played a role in Kentucky Retirement Systems having invested in private equity and hedge fund dogs.

Then-Kentucky Retirement Systems Executive Director William Thielen, right, and Thomas K. Elliott, left, who presides over a Kentucky Retirement Systems board of trustees meeting on April 21, 2016, in Frankfort, Ky. Elliott took his seat at the head of the board table in defiance of Gov. Matt Bevins order removing the chairman, saying one of the countrys worst-funded public pension systems needed a fresh start. Photo: Bruce Schreiner/AP

A Mark for Wall Street

Chris Tobe was in his mid-30s, 11 years out from earning his MBA, when the state auditors office approached him about a job investigating Kentuckys public pensions. Tobe had been working in Louisville as a portfolio manager at a regional bank, where he advised the very wealthy and large institutional investors. But he had also gotten involved in local Democratic politics and jumped at the chance to work in state government.

The Kentucky Retirement Systems is really three pensions in one. The state police have one pension, city and county employees another, and state employees a third. Teachers belong to a separate plan called the Kentucky Teachers Retirement System, or TRS. (Judges and legislators have another separate plan.) I believe I was the first outsider ever brought in to give an assessment of how both KRS and the TRS were investing their money, Tobe said, adding with a laugh, I wrote my first report in 1997. Im in my 21st year of being told Ive been exaggerating the pension crisis.

Tobe concluded that TRS was well run, at least back then, but he uncovered trouble at KRS, including a decision to bail out a large, Kentucky-based real estate firm teetering on default  which left KRS with a range of bad assets on its books from other parts of the country.

There were a lot of crooked deals going on, Tobe said. But, really, it was nothing compared to what I saw happening once the hedge funds and private equity got involved.

When Tobe left government in 1999 to return to the private sector, each of the pension funds had enough money to meet its financial obligations to retirees.

Politics in the state, however, were shifting. In 2000, Republicans gained a majority in the state Senate for the first time since the Great Depression  just as the country was entering a national recession, triggered by a bursting of the dotcom bubble. Revenues fell, demand for government services increased, and the state began to shortchange its pension fund. In 2003, Kentuckians elected their first Republican governor in nearly four decades. Five years later, the globe was hit by its worst financial crisis in 80 years. Then we really didnt have the money to fund pensions, said Rep. Jerry Miller, co-chair of the legislatures Public Pension Oversight Board.

We couldnt raise taxes. The Senate wouldnt allow it, explained Miller, a Republican who represents a slice of Louisville and its suburbs. And we couldnt cut services. The House, [controlled by the Democrats] wouldnt let it. Everything became a battle between the two houses and the state pensions became a casualty. The retirement system for Kentuckys city and county workers was 59.7 percent funded in 2015; by 2017, that figured had dropped to 51.6 percent. There was a similar drop in recent years in Kentuckys pension for state workers. A fund that was 21.9 percent funded in 2015 fell to 16.3 percent by 2017. The shortfalls were due primarily to government underfunding, rather than poor investments. But the greater the funding gap, the more the state became a mark for Wall Streets more aggressive sharks.

Not every public pension in Kentucky is the same. By comparison, the retirement fund established for members of the state legislature is 85 percent funded. Dont even say it, Miller said, holding up a hand during our breakfast at a Panera outside of Louisville. Trust me, Ive already heard it  from teachers, from firefighters, from others scared about whats going on with their pensions.

Gov. Steve Beshear at a news conference to announce his plan to reform the states pension system in Frankfort, Ky., on Feb. 21, 2008. Photo: Ed Reinke/AP

A Corrupting Influence

Tobe wasnt primarily elevated to the KRS pension board for his investment experience. He supported a progressive Democrat for governor in 2007 and developed his pension platform. His candidate dropped out and endorsed fellow Democrat Steve Beshear, the eventual winner. Part of the deal was my guy got some appointments out of it, Tobe said. I was one of them. Beshear named Tobe a KRS trustee in the spring 2008, just as the stock market was beginning to swoon.

The funds investments in mortgage-backed securities lost more than half of their value, the result of recklessness and widespread fraud by bankers; total losses for the year neared $2 billion. Public pensions across the country faced heavy losses. Yet pension managers in Kentucky and elsewhere responded to the hit by piling more money into exotic investments. Broadly speaking, you saw public pension across the country swiftly move to bail out Wall Street after 2008, said Ted Siedle, a former SEC lawyer and pension consultant. Just when they could least afford it, given big losses, they dramatically increased their holdings in the most expensive, highest risk investment products that Wall Street had to offer.

I met Tobe at a Starbucks near his home in a wealthy suburb of Louisville. Hes a well-fed son of Kentucky with a round face and blue eyes, who rarely finishes one sentence before launching into the next one. I go in 100 different directions, he said. He confesses to voting yes when the staff recommended to the investment committee that they move 5 percent of the KRS portfolio into hedge funds. He found them a generally competent and experienced group, if also terribly overworked. (KRSs chief investment officer has just four staff to help guide the systems investments.) They sold it to us as a diversifier to hedge against risk, but it really didnt matter what they said, he said. Everybody was just rubber-stamping what they were told. After he was stripped of his committee assignment, he used whatever pull he had in Frankfort to push for legislation that would require the committee to include at least one investment expert. In anticipation of that rule change, he was reinstated to the investment committee several months later. (Today, the committee must include at least two people with an investment background.)

In July 2009, the SEC proposed banning placement agents as a corrupting influence, sparking a debate that split pension fund officials across the country. The selection of investment advisers to manage public plans should be based on merit and the best interests of the plans and their beneficiaries, not the payment of kickbacks or political favors, then-SEC Chair Mary Schapiro said in proposing the ban.

The Third Party Marketers Association, a trade association for placement agents, sought to cast its members as a vital part of the public pension ecosystem  marketers there to help public pensions choose among competing funds. Tobe made his own view clear with an op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader: KRS needs placement agents like a dog needs ticks, he wrote.

Tobe, at his parents house in Floyds Knobs, Indiana on Oct. 19, 2018. Photo: Luke Sharrett for The Intercept

By that point, Tobe had already pressed the KRS staff about its use of placement agents. He first brought up the issue at a public meeting in April 2009. But the staff denied any involvement with them, he recalled, and he took them at their word. I knew there was pay-to-play going on, he said  that the big funds were giving money to the right people to ensure that they received a share of pension dollars. But at that point, I didnt suspect placement agents because I couldnt believe KRS would outright lie to me. Four months later, the board, at Tobes urging, passed a placement agent disclosure policy. There were still no disclosures. Tobe later learned that during 2009, starting right around the time he first brought up the issue, the staff cut five deals with Sergeon, who was paid $4.4 million by hedge funds in just seven months to secure Kentucky investments. (What Sergeon might say for himself is a mystery. Sergeon, who died in 2013, told Forbes a couple of years earlier, I dont talk to reporters, and hung up the phone.) When the staff finally acknowledged, in August 2010, that KRS had been working with placement agents for years, the disclosure was buried in a 50-plus page document, Tobe said. That same month Tobe filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC.

The state auditors report, released in 2011, found no evidence of a pay-to-play scheme but documented several troubling aspects regarding the use of placement agents, including an unusually close working relationship between KRSs chief investment officer and Sergeon, who set up appointments and made travel arrangements on the officers behalf. The officer resigned before the report was even out. KRS fired its longtime executive director and replaced its longtime board chair. It appeared to be a moment of reckoning.

Yet two months after the auditors report appeared, KRS committed another $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion to hedge funds  a set of investments so disastrous that a group of retirees filed a class-action lawsuit last December accusing the trustees and pension staff of failing in their fiduciary responsibilities.

Among the investments the suit singles out: the roughly $400 million KRS committed to Blackstone that year, over Tobes objections, and even though the firm was at the center of the placement agent probe. The investment was in Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, or BAAM, a fund of funds containing a range of hedge funds. That diversity came at a price. Buying into BAAM meant paying the fund-of-fund manager (typically a 5 percent share of profits plus a 1 percent management fee, according to Chicago Booth Review) on top of the already outsized expenses charged by each participating hedge fund. Investing in BAAM also meant owning a piece of SAC Capital, the infamous hedge fund operated by Steven Cohen that would later pay $1.8 billion in fines for insider trading and other crimes. Today there are 21 public pension funds in BAAM (but no longer Kentucky), according to Preqin, a research firm that specializes in alternative investments. This is whats happening nationwide, Tobe said. Kentuckys just a little worse than others.

Yet the SEC backed away from its plan to ban placement agents. Instead, the agency simply barred placement agents and money managers from making political donations to public officials with sway over a pension fund. But the agents could still legally contribute to PACs and Super PACs not associated with any specific elected official. Ive always assumed a portion of these fees somehow make it into campaign funds, said Miller, the state representative. Democrats and Republicans alike, theres so many avenues for funneling them money. The Supreme Courts Citizens United made such giving even more opaque, Tobe said. So youve created this system with a big, gaping corruption hole in it.

Kentuckys House passed a placement agent ban in 2011, as New York, Illinois, and other states had done, but the bill never became law. Instead, the state merely required placement agents to register as lobbyists.

After Tobe served his four-year term as a trustee, he wasnt reappointed. He was already a former trustee when he learned, in 2013, that his whistleblower complaint had failed: The SEC, despite the millions of dollars placement agents were paid to steer KRS investments to their clients, announced that it would take no action against anyone involved.

In 2016, Tim Longmeyer, who served as a trustee with Tobe, was sentenced to nearly six years in jail after pleading guilty to accepting kickbacks in exchange for government contracts while serving as Governor Beshears secretary of personnel. One of his co-conspirators, a former Democratic political consultant named Larry OBryan, testified in a separate bribery trial that Longmeyer had once tried unsuccessfully to get him appointed to KRSs board of trustees because there were billions of dollars on that board.

Thousands of public school teachers and their supporters protest against a pension reform bill at the Kentucky State Capitol on April 2, 2018 in Frankfort, Ky. Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

Whats Even in These Deals?

Randy Wieck, a high school social studies teacher in Louisville, had already been feeling nervous about the systematic underfunding of his pension when he discovered Tobes book. His future is in the hands of the states Teachers Retirement System, not KRS, but Kentucky Fried Pensions alarmed him. You cant bet your way out of the problem, Wieck said. But thats exactly what Kentucky is trying to do. Teachers, like any other public employees who dont have Social Security withheld, are not eligible for Social Security benefits; even if they earn Social Security by working a side job, those benefits are adjusted downward based on their pension income. In Wiecks case, his pension would be his main source of government support once he retired.

Wieck was the building rep for the local teachers union, yet he says union leaders brushed off his worries about the great risks the trustees were taking with teachers pensions and how little information the trustees seemed to be sharing with those relying on it for their retirement. They tell me, Yeah, were on top of it, were OK, dont worry about it, Wieck said. I was pretty much out there on my own, said Wieck, a Louisville native with a graduate degree from the London School of Economics. So I call Chris Tobe. I tell him, You dont know me from Adam, but I can use your help. The two met at a cafe outside of Louisville and had a conversation that inspired Wieck to press for more answers.

Wieck filed his first lawsuit against the TRS board of trustees in state court in November 2014. Lacking money to hire a lawyer, he typed up the complaint on his own and listed himself as the sole plaintiff in a class action charging the TRS trustees with failing to protect the pension from habitual underfunding  and making bad investments. When that suit was dismissed over jurisdictional issues, he refiled in federal court. A corrupted system and KTRSs mismanagement, he wrote, had resulted in the worst-funded teacher pension in the country. Where once they contributed 9 percent of their salary to the retirement fund, teachers were now contributing nearly 13 percent. The local school districts were putting up their share each year. The state, however, was typically meeting only a half to three-quarters of its annual obligation, depending on the year. This time Wieck named two other plaintiffs and added four large money managers, including the Blackstone Group and KKR, as defendants. An underfunded retirement system, he charged, had inappropriately risked nearly $600 million with those firms during the previous eight months. That suit was dismissed on grounds that governments are generally immune from civil liabilities. (TRS has declined comment in reports on the suit, citing Wiecks history of suing the agency.)

Wieck tried other avenues to expose what he saw as TRS abuses. He sent open records requests to TRS, which sent them along to several money managers, who claimed that the information was proprietary. One was KKR, which wrote requesting TRS to remind staff that their contract with the firm exempted them from sharing that information with anyone else, even beneficiaries of the fund. KKR, its representative wrote, considered all contracts, offering documents, and side deals with placement agents to be proprietary information. Hedge funds and private equity firms typically require investors to sign such confidentiality agreements even though, as Bloomberg Business Week reported in 2015, much of what the industry wants to keep hidden has as much to do with high fees, weak oversight, and conflicts of interest as it does with business strategies or other trade secrets.

Its so hard to know whats even in these deals, Tobe said of alternative investments. A lot of this stuffs offshore. You dont even know what country your assets are in. You dont know if they are even real. The potential for corruption, given this lack of transparency, is extreme, Tobe argues. A case in point: In 2015, the manager of Camelot, a New York-based private equity fund holding $24 million of KRSs money, confessed to falsifying financial records in order to embezzle $9.3 million. Tobe estimates that between them, KRS and TRS have 150 or more contracts with hedge funds and private equity firms all of them operating without normal monitoring safeguards in place. I have to pay into this fund from the first day I started working, said Wieck, and then they turn around and say we have no right to know what theyre doing with my money.

I think hedge funds are fine for individuals, but when it comes to public dollars, Im leery, state Sen. Joe Bowen, a Republican representing a district in western Kentucky, said. When dealing with public money, we need to put those in the safest harbor you can find. He has a similar view of private equity. Investing 10 percent of the states pension in dollars in alternative maybe made sense, Bowen said, but certainly nothing near 25 percent.

Sylvia Moore, who worked as food services director for the public schools in Mercer County, a rural county in central Kentucky, retired from the job in 2013. Moore, now 55, receives around $2,700 a month from the state, which includes her TRS pension and a small payment from KRS, the plan formerly associated with her position. Like Wieck, she lives in fear of any minor reduction to her modest retirement. You pay into the pension all these years and just assume they know what theyre doing, Moore said. Shes come to fear that actually theres a big pot of money sitting there and nobody watching it.

Wieck is no diplomat. He has harangued union officials for failing to join his fight and they pushed back. It turned personal with at least one fellow teacher and led to a failed attempt to have his teaching license revoked by the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board. Im very much a pariah, Wieck said. Im blocked on many websites. On Facebook, on Twitter. As far Im concerned, I think we need to be in the street with pitchforks and torches. But a lot of my colleagues want to believe what theyre told.

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin makes a statement to the press after a meeting of the National Governors Association at the White House on Feb. 27, 2017. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

You Write Your Checks to My Guys

Kentucky elected a new governor, Matt Bevin, in 2015. A tea party favorite, Bevin had bested two establishment Republicans in the gubernatorial primary to become only the second Republican in 40 years to be elected governor. Bevin stood out in a second way: He had been a partner in Waycross Partners, a Louisville-based hedge fund. The country has three private equity governors, Tobe said, referring to Bruce Rauner in Illinois, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, and Gina Raimondo in Rhode Island. But only Kentucky has a hedge fund governor.

Bevin signed an executive order requiring staff and trustees of KRS to use money managers who agreed to comply with a code of conduct created by the CFA Institute, a global association of investment professionals. The order also required KRS to post all its contracts and offer documents online. They were important strides toward ethics and transparency  except both new rules have been routinely ignored, Tobe said. Many investment manager contracts are not yet publicly available, and KRS staff continues to invest in all these private equity guys and hedge funds not on the list. (The Bevin administration declined repeated requests for comment.)

Other reforms were troubling on their face. Calling for a fresh start and more transparency, Bevin disbanded the 13-member KRS board of trustees and replaced it with a new 17-person board of directors. By statute, the old board included six trustees who represented stakeholders independently elected by plan members  just shy of half the votes. Now the board would have four additional members appointed by Bevin. His picks included William Cook, who had recently retired from a job at KKR, and Neil Ramsey, a co-founder of the hedge fund BHR Capital, who now chairs the pensions powerful investment committee. The Louisville Courier-Journal later reported that Ramsey had invested $300,000 in a business part-owned by the governor and had recently sold him a house in the Louisville suburbs for $1.6 million, hundreds of thousands of dollars below its assessed value. Bevin also fired the chair of the board of trustees, Louisville banker Thomas Elliott, a decision he enforced with armed state troopers to the next KRS meeting. To me, that was a signal to Wall Street, Tobe said, that you dont write your checks to Tommy anymore, you write your checks to my guys.

But a new board also represented a shift inside KRS, said David Eager, who took over as the funds executive director in 2016. KRS pulled back on its hedge fund investments and has become more selective about the private equity funds in which it put its money. The new board hates paying fees, Eager said. He also said in his two years as executive director, hes yet to hear from a single official about a potential investment. I cant speak to political influence in the past, but it sure as hell is not happening now.

Reform efforts in the legislature have proved equally frustrating to Tobe. In 2016, Bowen introduced legislation that required pensions to use an open process  complete with requests for proposals  when selecting money managers. Competitive bidding is one of the basic principles of government, Tobe said. Except private equity and the hedge fund industry have taught every state and city government in the country that theyre above RFPs, that they should feel lucky that were willing to take your money. In the end, private equity and the hedge funds got their way. The final bill Bevin signed into law last year included transparency rules and a code of conduct that both Tobe and Jim Wayne, a liberal Democrat from Louisville who has been pushing for pension reform for years, both described as watered down. And the RFP provision was dropped entirely. Thats just how the sausage making works, Bowen told me. The point was driven home to me that we werent going to get into the best deals if we adopted an open process. Even with the weaker disclosure rules, two financial firms have announced that they will no longer do business with KRS, including a New York-based hedge fund that in June cited the states transparency laws as its primary motivator.

As a candidate, Bevin had vowed to end public pensions altogether. Under his proposal, new employees would be enrolled in a defined contribution plan, like a 401(k), where the employee shoulders all of the risk  a substantial downgrade from the existing pension system, where KRS is responsible for paying out set benefits regardless of returns. In late 2017, he tried to mobilize a special session of the legislature focused on pension reform, but the GOP leadership couldnt agree even on the outlines of a plan. Months later, and with no opportunity for debate, language was attached to a sewer bill, passed late one evening in March 2018, that ended pensions for teachers who are new hires in 2019, replacing them with defined contribution plans.

Randy Wieck got his teachers in the streets, carrying placards, if not pitchforks  finally angry in large numbers about their pensions, part of a national wave of teacher protests from Arizona to West Virginia. Thousands showed up at the Capitol, where Bevins counterattack made national news: I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today, he told reporters, a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them.

Kentucky Public school teachers protest outside the Kentucky House Chamber to pressure legislators to override Kentucky Governor Matt Bevins recent veto of the states tax and budget bills on April 13, 2018 in Frankfort, Ky. Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

The states attorney general, Andy Beshear  the son of Bevins predecessor and an announced challenger in 2019  sued, arguing that the law that the governor had just signed violated the inviolable contract that the state has with its workers. A judge struck down the law on procedural grounds, as the bill, passed six hours after it had been introduced, failed to receive the required three readings any new bill needs under Kentucky law. The dispute is now in the hands of the Kentucky Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in September.

Other pensioners in the state have also finally risen up, filing a class-action suit last December against a long list of plaintiffs, including KRS officials, the consultants they hired, and a veritable whos who of Wall Street. The suit named the firm KKR and also its top two executives, Henry Kravis and George Roberts, along with Blackstone and its CEO, Stephen Schwarzman. The lawsuit charges that in 2011, KKR, Blackstone, and a third firm, PAAMCO or Pacific Alternative Asset Management, another deep-pocketed giant of the hedge fund world, sold KRS extremely high-risk, secretive, opaque, high-fee and illiquid vehicles that produced poor returns and ultimately losses, despite excessive fees. The hedge funds had sold the investments as an absolute return strategy that would help KRS meet or exceed its then stated goal of a 7.75 percent annual return on investment. Instead the investments had cost KRS millions of dollars in lost returns. Instead, the suit charges, there were steep losses due to breaches of fiduciary and other duties by those in charge who allowed themselves to be to be taken advantage of by sophisticated Hedge Fund Sellers. Though nominally a defendant in the suit, the KRS board voted unanimously to commend the plaintiffs for their suit, adding in a public statement, a recovery in this litigation could go a long way in supporting the significantly underfunded retirement system.

Don Coomer, a retired Louisville firefighter living in a modest suburb of Louisville, is one of the eight named plaintiffs. He first became a firefighter at age 19 and says he cant remember a time when he wasnt working a second job. The 67-year-old Coomer, whose shaved head, glasses, and gray goatee give him a Walter White look, says he was earning a salary of $50,000 when he left the department just short of his 30th anniversary. I stayed for the pension, he said, which works out to around $43,000 a year. Coomer qualifies for Social Security for those side jobs he worked all those years, but because of his pension, that benefit is only $387 a month, rather than closer to $1,000 he would otherwise receive. It scares me to death that Ill basically be making the same money Im making today 20 years from now, he said. Thats a big concern.

Asked why he got involved in the suit, Coomer said he wanted to do his part to help fix a system so broken that a practically bankrupt fund still wastes tens of millions of dollars on fees. I dont want just cash, he said. I want safeguards, to make sure people are doing a better job of watching over the money. We have to stop paying these crazy fees into the hedge funds.

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, where Gary Rivlin is a reporting fellow.This site focuses on Republican politicians and conservatives that rip off their constituency. We have the Tea Party, fundamentalist churches, the corruption of ALEC and other special interests groups. But the site also supports progressive Democrats and the local Democratic Socialist of America. We must have ideas on how to replace regressive and corrupt politicians with something better. For comments steveotto2001@yahoo.com or ottozero2001@yahoo.com.Can I Start an Organization as a Non-Canadian?

My first workshop as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Toronto Reference Library was full of excellent people and ideas, though I was surprised the most common question wasnt about funding. The most frequent question both during and after was:

Can I start an organization if Im not a citizen/permanent resident of Canada?

For-Profit Businesses



I found a recent article by Susan Ward from The Balance Small Business does a great job of answering this question in this article and this one, especially considering for-profit business.

My understanding is (and while of course Im not a lawyer and this isnt legal advice), if you dont have official immigration status, youll probably need to partner up with a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, either forming a partnership or corporation. Which isnt too bad - partnering often takes a bit longer, but can make your business much more successful!

Not-for-Profit Organizations



Corporations Canada confirmed that you dont need to be a citizen in order to start a nonprofit or charity in Canada. So, if your business has a social/environmental mission, you may be able to consider this as a structure. It will open you up to different opportunities such as grants.

Shared Platforms



I also suggest if you have a social/environmental goal, seeing if you can find whats called a shared platform or other partner who is more established - they can help with the admin stuff like payroll and insurance, and you can focus on making your idea a reality!

Canadas most well-known shared platform is Tides Canada, a charity focusing on supporting environmentally focused organizations.

Resources and Opportunities



If you missed the workshop, dont worry! I have a link to the handout from last week's workshop here.

Plus:

Newcomer Entrepreneur in Residence Iqbal is hosting a workshop with a similar topic on November 2nd: Business Structures Help Us Organize Our World

, 2pm at Agincourt branch

Special guest, Benjamin, provided this link to Community Legal Education Ontarios Nonprofit Law Resources

Finally, you can book one-on-one sessions with myself, Nesh, or Iqbal if you sign up before 31st of October to really discuss the best option for your organization! See below for details.

Take care of yourself, the world around you, and have fun making things happen this week!



Submission Details for One-on-One Sessions

Victoria Alleyne, Nesh Pillay or Iqbal Khan will review your submission and meet with a select number of applicants to review their plans, provide feedback and recommendations, and point out available resources that may be beneficial. Each meeting is a 30-45 minute one-on-one session at no cost.Mountain Shadows in Wayanad is just the place for a dreamy vacationNational flag carrier Vietnam Airlines has received a go-ahead from the government for its plan to sell a 25 percent stake in a privatization drive, with an initial public offering (IPO) of shares slated for the end of November, an official said Thursday.

The government approved the Vietnam Airlines privatization on Wednesday, Nguyen Trong Dung, head of the business reform department, under the Government Office, told delegates at a seminar held by the Saigon Securities Inc. in Ho Chi Minh City.

The event, titled Gateway to Vietnam 2014, hosted discussions by major investors on seeking new investment chances in the country.

The revelation of the Vietnam Airlines IPO plan immediately became the hottest topic of the day.

Dung said that once privatized, the flag carrier will maintain its name, while the government will retain a 75 percent stake in the Hanoi-based airline.

Vietnam Airlines has a registered capital of VND14 trillion (US$661 million). It will sell a 20 percent stake to strategic partners, while the remaining five percent will be sold to other investors, according to the official.

The airline will issue 1,410,184,000 shares in the IPO, scheduled for late November.

Dung said Vietnam Airlines is required to be listed after privatization to create liquidity. The government will eventually reduce its stake in the airline to 65 percent at a suitable time, Dung said.

The government has assigned Minister of Transport Dinh La Thang to determine the starting price for Vietnam Airlines shares in the IPO, as well as to set criteria to choose strategic partners, according to sources.

The transport ministry is also tasked with deciding when the government will lower its stake in Vietnam Airlines.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!Military-run Viettel has officially launched its nationwide 4G campaign, becoming Vietnams first-ever provider of the fourth-generation wireless mobile telecommunications technology.

The company claims 95 percent of Vietnams population can now enjoy Viettel 4G, with 36,000 transmission stations installed across the country over the last six months.

More than 3,000 stations are located in Ho Chi Minh City alone, allowing the 4G network to cover every one of the citys 24 districts including the island district of Can Gio.

Viettel boasts a speed band of 30 to 50 Mbps for its 4G service, seven to ten times faster than the current 3G.

The telecom company said it would provide different 4G data plans at prices 40-60 percent lower than 3G services, along with the ability for subscribers to exchange their current 3G SIM card to 4G at no cost.

A Viettel subscriber changes into 4G SIM

Speaking at the launch ceremony on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam hailed Viettel for its effort in launching the 4G service nationwide with only six months of preparation.

Vinaphone and Mobifone, the countrys other two leading mobile carriers, are also working quickly to release their own 4G networks to the public.

Vinaphone is testing their network in certain cities and provinces, and is set to offer the 4G service in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and ten other provinces by the end of April. By the end of 2017, Vinaphone will have countrywide 4G coverage, one company representative said in late March.

The latest player, MobiFone, has plans to offer 4G in 53 out of 63 provinces and cities by the second quarter of this year.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!State-owned carrier Vietnam Airlines has plans to adopt a new strategy from November that involves reducing business-class seats on its planes while increasing the number of economy seats, sparking rumors the airline will soon offer low-cost options on its otherwise full-service flights.

The change will come with Vietnam Airlines addition of new Airbus A321neo planes to its fleet in late October and early November, an airline leader told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

More economy seats will also pave the way for introducing a broader range of fare options for cost-conscious flyers, he added.

Offering more choices in economy class is a common practice in the aviation industry, he said, stressing that Vietnam Airlines is focused on improving service quality and satisfying customers needs.

The plan is not yet final, as its still being considered, the airline leader added.

Even if were committed to making it happen, it will not be a simple task. The change arises from customers needs and will not affect the quality of our service, he said.

Some Vietnam Airlines flights currently depart with empty business-class seats, so rolling out more economy options and promotions to improve occupancy rate is an understandable move, he added.

Nevertheless, some have described the plan as the flag carriers first step in offering low-cost options on its otherwise full-service flights.

However, the Vietnam Airlines leader dismissed the suggestion, saying that the airline does not aim to tap into the low-cost market, as it is not in line with its brand positioning.

The national flag carrier already holds majority stake at budget airline Jetstar Pacific, which it acquired in February 2012.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!Tran Anh, a Grab user based in Ho Chi Minh City, woke up on Monday to an empty balance of her GrabPay Credits account, a cashless payment option on her favorite ride-hailing app.

Many other users also took to social media to express their shock that the balance in their GrabPay Credits accounts too had vaporized overnight.

What angers them even more is that they have no choice but to activate a new payment method to be able to continue using the money left in the ride-hailing app.

GrabPay is the in-app mobile wallet that is linked with users' credit/debit card while GrabPay Credits is a top-up prepaid account for those who do not want to share their card information with the app.

Just like Anh, N.Thuy, a regular Grab traveler residing in Ho Chi Minh Citys Binh Thanh District, was stunned to see she could not pay for a recent ride with money from her GrabPay Credits account, which she had topped-up with nearly VND500,000 (US$21.5).

I was in a rush at the time, so I did not try to find out the reason and opted to pay in cash, Thuy told news website Zing.vn.

Thuy added that her husband faced the same problem, and the couples accounts were collectively worth nearly VDN1 million ($43) before they both vanished without a trace.

Thuy contacted Grab and got to know that the money was not lost but moved to the ride-hailing apps new in-app e-wallet called GrabPay by Moca.

The [Grab] staff told me the amount will be immediately available after my activation of GrabPay by Moca right in the Grab app, she said.

But the response from the ride-hailing service did not erase Thuys displeasure as the female customer said she felt like she was forced to use the Moca mobile payment while she did not have a need to do so.

Thuy added that her colleagues were also subject to this change.

This screenshot from the Grab App urges users to activate GrabPay by Moca

New e-wallets disadvantages

GrabPay by Moca is a cashless payment solution provided by Moca, a Vietnamese mobile payment provider established in 2013.

Anh confirmed to Tuoi Tre News that she was prompted by the Grab app to activate her GrabPay by Moca account in lieu of the erstwhile GrabPay Credits.

Any previous balance you had with Grab will be available after activation, Anh said, citing a message from the app.

Anh said she had heard of the switch to Moca before, but did not expect that she would be forced to use the new cashless payment option.

I still have money in my [GrabPay Credits] account, so basically, I have the right to use it up as that amount was added before Grab changes to the new payment method, Anh told Tuoi Tre News.

Moreover, it is the choice of the customers whether to use GrabPay by Moca or not.

The customer suggested that Grab should only force new customers or those who are about to top up new amount to their account to use Moca.

The irritation did not stop there as customer continued to be asked to link the new in-app payment method with their bank accounts upon their Moca activation, which make they feel risky in the context of several data breaches recently reported.

In addition, the mobile wallet only supports eight banks - BIDV, Vietcombank, Vietinbank, Sacombank, ACB, SCB, VPBank and Timo.

Grab and Moca shall facilitate such linking by way of using ATM card details and customers cannot link VISA/ MasterCard/ Amex/ JCB debits cards, unless they are issued by Vietcombank, the notification in the second step to activate GrabPay by Moca reads.

This is also the reason why L. Phuong, a Binh Thanh District, has hesitated to complete the activation and kept using cash in the meantime.

Now that I am using a service of another big and prestigious bank which is still not on the list of banks that can be linked [with GrabPay by Moca], I do not know how to continue to activate, L. Hoa, an officer worker in District 1, told Zing.

This screenshot from an introduction video by Grab shows the Vietnamese banks supported by GrabPay by Moca

Many customers who dont own an ATM card from supported banks like me will have to go to the banks to open more ATM cards, wont we? Hoa questioned.

The answer to Hoas question turns to be a yes as the app informed in a guide that it highly recommends you to open one so that you can activate the GrabPay by Moca wallet, top up balance and start to unlock its interesting features.

Reassurance

Grab first introduced the cashless payment method GrabPay by Moca earlier this month, asserting that the new feature will bring customers swift, seamless and secure cashless payment experience on its app.

Grab says that it will prioritize the linking of ATM cards and stops the top-up process through Internet Banking from October 10.

According to the ride-hailing app, the launch of GrabPay by Moca is being rolled out to all users and the process will complete by the end of this month.

However, unlike what it promised, hundreds of complaints and asks for help related to the new e-wallets troubles have been constantly posted to Grab's official Facebook page.

It appears that Grab has yet to provide any further assistance to all these problems rather than the activation instruction and reassurance.

In case customers do not use ATM card issued by banks in cooperation with Moca, at your request the current balance in your GrabPay Credits (if any) will be refunded or converted to promo codes with the same value, Grab reassured on its website.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!The sixth session of Vietnams lawmaking National Assembly commenced in Hanoi on Monday morning and is scheduled to last about a month, with its agenda including an election for the countrys new state president.

Running from October 22 to November 21, the sitting is chaired by National Assembly chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.

According to the agenda of the session, which was approved at the preparatory meeting before the opening, delegates were scheduled to vote for the new state president on Monday afternoon.

The result of the election is expected to be announced at 3:00 pm on Tuesday.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong was previously nominated for the post during the eighth plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee in early October. No other candidates have been proposed for the job.

The new head of state will replace Tran Dai Quang, who passed away due to serious illness at the age of 62 on September 21.

If approved, General Secretary Trong will hold two leading titles.

Within the first week of the gathering, the legislature will also approve the dismissal of Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan and appointment of Nguyen Manh Hung for the post.

During the session, the lawmaking body is anticipated to adopt nine bills, one resolution, and give opinions on six other bills.

Delegates will also discuss and make decision on many important socio-economic issues of the country.

They will examine reports on the three-year implementation of the legislatures resolutions on the 2016-20 socio-economic plan, economic restructuring, national finance and mid-term investment.

The socio-economic and state budget performance in 2018 and plans for 2019 will also come under scrutiny.

Three days will be dedicated to questions-and-answers session, with a focus on the governments performance since the beginning of its tenure, the causes of uncompleted tasks, and solutions to address existing problems.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!Read what's in the news today, October 22, 2018.

Politics

-- The 14th National Assembly of Vietnam on Monday convened its sixth plenum, during which the lawmaking body is expected to cast a vote to confirm Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong as Vietnams next president following the death of former State President Tran Dai Quang in September.

-- Pope Francis has thanked the Vietnamese government and authorities at all levels for facilitating activities of the Catholic Church in Vietnam as he received Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh over the weekend during the latters working trip to Vatican.

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Sunday held talks with his Danish counterpart Lars Lkke Rasmussen and witnessed the signing of agreements between the countries in Copenhagen on the final leg of his Europe tour.

Society

-- Police in the south-central city of Nha Trang on Sunday arrested a Vietnamese couple, who are alleged members of a drug ring responsible for smuggling narcotics from Cambodia into Vietnam, and confiscated 2.86 kilograms of crystal meth, the largest ever seized by the local police force.

-- Two health ministry-developed hospitals in the northern province of Ha Nam, around 60 kilometers south of Hanoi, welcomed their first patients on Sunday and are expected to go into full operation in March, helping to reduce the workload at top hospitals in Hanoi.

-- Southern Vietnam will experience less rain but more severe tidal flooding this week, as weather forecasts warn a peak flood level of up to 1.6 meters will be observed from Tuesday in provinces and cities in the Mekong Delta region.

Business

-- Over 77,000 enterprises in 16 Vietnamese provinces and cities that contribute to the national budget have unpaid tax debts that amount to more than VND33.7 trillion (US$1.45 billion), according to a report compiled by the General Department of Taxation.

-- State-owned carrier Vietnam Airlines has announced it would adopt a new strategy from November that involves reducing business-class seats on its planes while increasing the number of economy seats, sparking rumors the airline will soon offer low-cost options on its otherwise full-service flights.

-- A plastic company in the south-central province of Phu Yen has been fined VND400 million ($17,200) for importing more than 3,300 metric tons of scraps from foreign suppliers and recycle them into plastic resins.

-- Vietnamese hospitality company Muong Thanh has finished removing the top three floors of a hotel it built in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa after the building was in August found to be exceeding the height limit.

-- Vietnams Ministry of Information and Communications has announced it may start allowing mobile network operators to use a separate radio frequency band for their 4G services, instead of the same frequency band as 2G, from November, significantly boosting data speed in the country.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!Leaders of Ho Chi Minh City have joined hands to clean up a local canal to mark the beginning of a large-scale environmental campaign across the southern Vietnamese metropolis.

Secretary of the municipal Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan, Chairman of the Peoples Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong, and other high-ranking officials participated in a clean-up at the Lang Canal in Binh Thanh District on Sunday.

The activity was part of the kick-off ceremony of a years-long campaign that encourages citizens to stop littering along streets and canals, and which is aimed at keeping the city clean and alleviating inundation.

The campaign will conclude in October 2020.

Leaders of Ho Chi Minh City attend the kick-off ceremony of the environmental campaign on October 21, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

At the event, chairman Phong called on all residents to start protecting the environment by such simple activities as limiting the use of plastic bags and tidying the public space in front of their houses.

Each citizen should contribute to a more civilized and modern city with better living conditions. This is how we show our love to the city, the leader remarked.

Environmental pollution, especially waste-related problems, is one of the challenges to the socio-economic development of the metropolis, Phong continued.

People clean up the Lang Canal on October 21, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The chairman tasked the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment, in collaboration with district-level administrations, with adding more recycle bins across the city, raising awareness among young students, and preventing garbage to pile up in residential areas.The issue arose from poor awareness among residents and lack of coordination between competent authorities in dealing with the situation, he added.

Following the ceremony, a group of volunteers joined hands to redecorate old tires and used them to build a childrens playground.

Residents in Ward 12, Binh Thanh District were also gifted new recycle bins as part of the event.

People clean up the Lang Canal on October 21, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

People clean up the Lang Canal on October 21, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Design of a childrens playground made from old tires and other recycle material. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Volunteers decorate old tires to build the playground. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!Police in Ho Chi Minh City are searching for the suspect behind the death of a college student driving for Grab last week.

Around 10:20 am on Friday, a resident in Binh Chanh District found a young man lying immobile at a deserted area along a local road, the law enforcement said.

He was wearing a green Grab jacket, with blood on the body.

The local at the same time noticed another man in a white shirt with spots of blood running away on a motorbike.

Upon arriving at the scene, officers determined that the lying man was dead and could not find his identification, wallet and motorcycle around.

The deceased was later identified as 20-year-old Le Nhat Hao, a student at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport 2. Autopsy results show that he was killed by a stab wound in the neck.

The student, who went to the southern metropolis to attend college from his hometown in the south-central province of Binh Thuan, had worked part-time as a GrabBike driver for nearly two years.

He recently used the money saved from the job to buy a new motorcycle, which was taken away in the tragic incident.

His mother also left Binh Thuan for the city to earn more money for him by doing various manual jobs.

She said despite the driving work, the son never neglected his studies and he promised to take care of her in over half a years time so that she would not have to work any longer.

The university said he had a good academic performance.

A Grab Vietnam representative confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that Hao was its GrabBike partner.

The ride-hailing company expressed its sincere condolences to his family, adding it had helped cover funeral costs, and required an insurance company to handle the case.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!A female driver under the influence of alcohol crashed her BMW into multiple motorbikes waiting for traffic lights at one of the busiest intersections in Ho Chi Minh City late Sunday night, claiming one life and leaving many others injured.

The incident at the Hang Xanh Intersection in Binh Thanh District took place at around 11:10 pm, when the driver lost control of her vehicle as she was heading from Dien Bien Phu Bridge to Saigon Bridge, according to initial information gathered by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

The car rammed into five motorbikes at the traffic lights and did not come to a complete halt until after it crashed a taxi.

One motorbike driver was killed on the spot, while many others were hospitalized with multiple injuries.

Multiple motorbikes are seen at the scene of accident in Ho Chi Minh City on October 21, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The BMW driver locked herself in the car for a while after the incident, before she was taken to a local police station for a breath test and investigation.

The driver was identified as Nguyen Thi Nga, 46, a District 12 resident, Huynh Van Cuong, head of the Hang Xanh traffic police unit, told Tuoi Tre at 11:55 pm.

Nga admitted to police officers that she had drunk heavily during a party at a restaurant on Pasteur Street, and that she was too drunk and drowsy to be able to control the vehicle.

Nga is in custody at Binh Thanh police.

The scene of incident was blocked until 1:30 am on Monday morning.

The BMW is seen after the accident in Ho Chi Minh City on October 21, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The BMW is seen after the accident in Ho Chi Minh City on October 21, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The BMW driver Nguyen Thi Nga. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Nga is taken to the police station. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!Vietnamese police have arrested three suspects who had allegedly blackmailing more than 100 officials at the offices of the local National Assembly delegations in multiple localities in an attempt to extort their money.

The latest suspect to be arrested, Tran Quang Nam, a 28-year-old resident in Ho Chi Minh City, was nabbed by officers under the Ministry of Public Security on Monday.

Officers previously apprehended Ngo Xuan Tung and Le Van Thanh, who are both 30 and residing in Ho Chi Minh City, on Friday last week for the same offense of threatening the officials via text messages.

Ngo Xuan Tung is held at the police station. Photo: Ministry of Public Security

Initial investigation showed that the three suspects had been working together to blackmail nearly 100 officials who work at offices of the local National Assembly delegations in various provinces and cities from north to south.

The localities include Hanoi, the north-central province of Ha Tinh, and the Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang.

All messages had the same content, stating that the victims would be assassinated for VND100 million (US$4,305).

Tran Quang Nam is held at the police station. Photo: Ministry of Public Security

If you give me VND100 million, I will let you know who is trying to harm you, along with other evidence, the SMS messages read.

The suspects also included their bank account number for the money transfer.

Following the arrest, officers also found a yearbook listing the names of members of the legislature, government, and local Peoples Committees and Peoples Councils for the 2016-21 tenure. The book is published by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!"In the United States, a bipartisan group of senators triggered global Magnitsky Act sanctions procedures two weeks ago, forcing Trump to determine possible punishments against Saudi Arabia or Saudi officials over Khashoggis killing. If the United States imposed sanctions on Saudi Arabia, other major arms exporters such as Britain would probably also be forced to take similar measures. But in Berlin, top officials hope that their move to suspend future sales could pressure other European allies into following suit, even if the United States refrained from doing so.

Germanys export stop will have little impact if at the same time other countries fill this gap, Merkels ally Altmaier acknowledged Monday."

--------------

Germany has gone "anti-medieval" on Saudi Arabia. Who knew this would happen?

This should be an example for all the neocons and hyper-nationalists in the US. The wahabbiyeen are playing them for suckers over the promised contracts. So far the "contracts" are just promises of contracts. That is not an unusual way to proceed in big business contracting; first the promise, then the contract, but nevertheless, the contracts do not exist as yet.

We can survive without Saudi money. So can the rest of NATO. If the Russians and/or the Chinese really want to be stuck with this Tar Baby, let them try it on!

But! But! The Iranian threat! The Iranian threat!

Threat to what? Israel? pl

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/22/germany-its-allies-well-halt-future-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-until-we-have-clarity-khashoggi-so-should-you/?utm_term=.58c7030d046bHeres one for conspiracy theorists.

Netflix is denying it is sneakily promoting its content to African-American audiences with poster imagery that misrepresents the degree to which black actors appear in them.

One subscriber pointed out that images shown to her were dominated by black performers even when they werent prominent in casts, suggesting it was a trick to lure her into viewing.

Just did another cursory scroll of suggested watches and the posters they gave me. pic.twitter.com/VoCFJQfWaK  stacia l. brown (@slb79) October 18, 2018

Other users found different imagery for the same titles including Like Father, Jason Bourne and Monster in Law.

Omg its true! Except it got it wrong and thinks my fiance is black when I am! His account and mine show different pictures! #Netflix @NetflixUK err why?? pic.twitter.com/d0wdfjRzlI  Charlotte Lakin (@CharlotteALakin) October 21, 2018

But Netflix says imagery is not determined by personal demographics and its algorithm is based on personal behaviour during a users experience.

We dont ask members for their race, gender or ethnicity so we cannot use this information to personalise their individual Netflix experience. The only information we use is a members viewing history, it said.

On its tech blog, Netflix goes into some detail to outline its imagery strategy.

Someone who has watched many romantic movies may be interested in Good Will Hunting if we show the artwork containing Matt Damon and Minnie Driver, whereas, a member who has watched many comedies might be drawn to the movie if we use the artwork containing Robin Williams, a well-known comedian, it notes.

A member who watches many movies featuring Uma Thurman would likely respond positively to the artwork for Pulp Fiction that contains Uma. Meanwhile, a fan of John Travolta may be more interested in watching Pulp Fiction if the artwork features John.

Via: SBSChinas central internet regulator has issued strict rules targeting blockchain companies and entities operating in China.

The Cyberspace Administration of China has published draft regulations on Friday demanding blockchain-based information service providers to register users using real names, national identification numbers, censor postings and store user data.

The regulations follow an open letter posted by a Chinese student activist on the web in April regarding an alleged cover-up of sexual harassment on blockchain, which cannot be deleted or altered. The letter was posted on Ethereum blockchain that attracted censors on WeChat, Weibo and other leading social media platforms in the country.

The draft regulations by the nations internet censorship watchdog, is open for public consultation until November 2, a recent report by South China Morning Post states.

The draft regulations stated that:

The implementation of blockchain information services within the territory of the Peoples Republic of China shall comply with these Provisions.Where there are other provisions in laws and administrative regulations, such provisions shall be followed.

According to the norms, the blockchain information service provider should fill in the registration form through the National Internet Information Office service management system. This should be done within 10 working days from the date of providing the service, it stated.

Also, the blockchain startup has to establish an inspection of users and their identities and provide the companys real documents.

A Beijing-based lawyer Xu Kais perspective on the draft rules stated that the norms dis does not address blockchain technologys immutable feature and that this nature is in conflict with Chinese laws on user data, SCMP added.

The recent draft rules are in line with existing regulations on blockchain media platforms, that was implemented after a sweeping cybersecurity law in 2017 that has raised privacy concerns, the report said.

Story continues

Though the Chinese government issued a ban on ICOs and cryptocurrencies, the applications of blockchain tech are still under development. Also, the government of China has invested more than $3 billion in blockchain-focused funds, despite its heavy crackdown on cryptocurrency publications, events, and trading.

The countrys president Xi Jinping also recently reaffirmed that blockchain will remain as one of the core technologies the country will focus on in the years to come. These decisions have shoes hope in the countrys intent to further blockchain innovation.

Recently, the countrys Electronics Standardization Institute (CESI), under Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), has planned to release three blockchain standards for smart contracts, privacy and deposits in order to improve the countrys development of the blockchain industry.

Featured image from Shutterstock.



The post Chinas Internet Agency Regulator Has Strict Demands For Blockchain Startups appeared first on CCN.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Ukraine has launched complaints at the World Trade Organization to challenge anti-dumping duties imposed by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan on certain types of Ukrainian steel pipes, documents published by the WTO showed on Monday.

Ukraine said the two countries, both members of the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union, should have phased out duties that were "higher than necessary, erroneous and based on deficient rulings, procedures and provisions".

Ukraine has already lodged a similar WTO complaint against a third member of the customs union, Kazakhstan. Countries accused of breaking the WTO rules have 60 days to settle the matter or Ukraine could ask the WTO to adjudicate.

(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by David Evans)



Heres a daily overview of the top business and economic developments the Yahoo Finance UK team is monitoring in the UK, Europe and abroad:

European stocks in focus

European indices are mostly rising on Monday as earning updates continue to roll in and investors await further developments on Brexit negotiations and Italys contentious budget.

The Dax index in Germany led the main indices higher with a gain of 0.5% in morning trading.

This comes after Asian markets surged, with the Shanghai Composite rising by 4.1% over the course of the day. Chinese stocks swung higher based on Beijings pledge to support the economy and companies.

Although the positive momentum from Asia has seeped into European markets, gains remain threatened by fragile risk sentiment. With investors bombarded by geopolitical factors such as trade tensions, Italys budget woes and Brexit-related uncertainty, caution is set to prevail this week, warned Lukman Otunuga, research analyst at FXTM.

Ryanair shares lift off

Shares in Ryanair (RY4C.IR) are surging by about 4% on the Irish stock exchange after the airline reported its financial results for the last six months.

Ryanair said on Monday it hopes to conclude its remaining labour issues by Christmas, signalling a possible end to damaging strikes and flight disruptions that have dragged on its shares.

The Irish low-cost carrier reported a 7% drop in profits over the period due to high fuel costs, excess capacity and damage to bookings caused by a wave of strikes.

It also said it may have to cut its capacity further this winter due to high oil costs and intense competition.

Italy-EU clash in the spotlight

Investors are closely monitoring the back-and-forth developments between Italy and the European Union on Monday.

Italys budget woes with the European Union enters a critical phase today as Rome faces a noon deadline to explain why it is in breach of EU fiscal rules, said Otunuga. With the Italian government bracing for the EU to reject its 2019 budget on Tuesday, the euro is likely to take a hit. Uncertainty in Italy remains one the major geopolitical factors weighing on global sentiment and denting investor confidence.

Story continues

The European Commission sent a warning letter to Rome last week saying the Italian governments budget appeared to be in particularly serious non-compliance with EU rules.

Saudi investors take flight

Foreign investors are getting out of the Saudi stock market, according to a weekly update from the Saudi stock exchange, Tadawul.

Foreigners were net sellers in the Saudi market last week to the tune of SAR 4.0bn, equivalent to $1.1bn, said Arqaam Capital research director, Michael Malkoun. This is the highest level of net foreign selling registered since the Tadawul (stock exchange) began to publish this data in 2015.

The selling comes after Saudi Arabia on Sunday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate a huge and grave mistake.

The comments from foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir were some of the most direct yet from Riyadh, which has given multiple and conflicting accounts about Khashoggis killing in early October, first denying his death and later admitting it amid an international outcry.

With files from ReutersFILE PHOTO: Steam escapes from the cooling tower of the Tihange nuclear power station, one of the two large-scale nuclear power plants in Belgium, August 7, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File photo

Thomson Reuters

By Daphne Psaledakis

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium's energy production is plunging as its nuclear reactors are taken offline for repairs, with the power shortfall this winter seen as a test of the country's ability to cope when the reactors are phased out from 2022.

Four nuclear reactors at Doel near Antwerp and three at Tihange in Liege, all operated by Electrabel, part of France's Engie , produce about half of Belgium's electricity when they are fully operational.

Six of the seven -- all built between 1975 and 1985 with an original lifespan of 40 years -- are currently closed for repairs and maintenance, reducing their combined 6 gigawatts (GW) capacity by nearly two-thirds. They are expected to come back online between late November and June.

Grid operator Elia has warned it may have to ration electricity during the high-demand winter months, while fears of a supply shortage that could see lights go out and trains stand still have pushed power prices to record highs.

The Doel 1 and 2 reactors were shut down in the spring for repairs to their water-cooling systems, while Tihange 1 went offline on Oct. 13 for refueling and regular maintenance.

Tihange 2 and 3 and Doel 4 are closed while concrete degradation in bunkers close to the reactor buildings is investigated and repaired. Similar concerns led to a shutdown last year at Doel 3, the only reactor scheduled to remain online through November.

Engie built a new roof for the bunker at Doel 3 and will do the same at the other reactors with concrete degradation, deputy director general Pierre Mongin told a briefing on Thursday.

Belgium's nuclear regulator FANC has said problems in the concrete structures surrounding the four reactors are classed as the lowest level of severity, with no impact on the population or the environment.

PROBLEMS

This year, Belgium extended the area within which it distributes free iodine tablets for use in a nuclear emergency to all its territory and parts of Germany and the Netherlands, although it said there was no specific risk from the reactors.

Story continues

John Large, an independent nuclear engineer and analyst, said fixing the concrete degradations could take months longer than Electrabel has projected.

Based on the problems at the other reactors, he said the year-end finish targeted for the repairs at Doel was optimistic, adding: "I would expect them to go into, very certainly into the mid of next year before they can come back online."

Electrabel spokeswoman Anne-Sophie Huge told Reuters the dates given for restarting the reactors -- which will need permission from FANC -- were its best estimate given the information it has.

RISK OF POWER CUTS

Elia estimates it will need about 1,700 megawatts (MW) of additional capacity for the winter because of the outages, of which 700-900 MW has yet to be found.

To help make up the loss, Engie has fired up old gas plants and brought in diesel generators, as well as paying heavy industrial consumers to curb their use, Mongin said.

Grilled by lawmakers this month, Engie Electrabel's chief nuclear officer Thierry Saegeman said it would work with Elia to find power but that its first priority was safety.

If shortfalls persist, an eight-stage load-shedding plan devised by Elia could see daily power cuts in rural areas, Danielle Devogelaer of the Federal Planning Bureau told the hearing.

Trains could not operate beyond the first stage of load-shedding, Thomas Baeken, spokesman for rail operator Infrabel, told Reuters -- halting passengers and freight within Belgium, a major transport hub for goods coming from Asia to Europe.

Energy minister Marie Christine Marghem said imported power would help avoid blackouts. "The month of November, which was critical, is now a lot more secure. For the rest of winter we will continue working," she told Reuters.

A deal to free up capacity on Belgian interconnectors, through which much renewable electricity produced in northern Germany reaches southern Germany, will allow more imports.

Elia CEO Chris Peeters told lawmakers that France would supply 1,000 MW in November and December. Belgium's liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from overseas are at high levels, with six tankers due to arrive within days. [LNG/TKUK]

But Peeters was "less positive" about January and February, especially if a cold winter limits the energy neighboring countries can export.

France, for example, has issues with energy availability in winter due to safety concerns at its own nuclear reactors.

Many European reactors are reaching the end of their lives and showing defects that ultimately cannot be fixed.

FUTURE OF POWER

The struggle to meet energy demand this winter has raised questions about how Belgium will cope after its nuclear reactors are decommissioned.

A law passed in 2003 extended the lifetime of the oldest reactors to 2025, with phasing out due to start in 2022.

Energy expert Devogelaer told Reuters Belgium is likely to rely on natural gas, while an Elia spokeswoman said it expects to make up the loss from nuclear with gas and renewables such as solar and wind, plus higher imports.

The grid operator said in 2017 that at least 3.6 GW of new build adjustable (thermal) capacity would be needed to "cope with the shock of the nuclear exit".

Belgium has an LNG terminal and by 2020 will have interconnectors with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Britain and Germany. But it has yet to begin building new gas-fired power plants.

"It would require the construction of between six to eight gas-fired generators in Belgium to replace the nuclear capacity," said Pierre Georges, lead EMEA utilities analyst at S&P Global.

"The problem is that as of today, no one is willing to build a gas power plant without a market design that would make them profitable."

A Belgian government plan to subsidize investment in gas plants is being reviewed to ensure it meets European Union competition rules, Marghem said.

But the clock is ticking.

"Time is up now, so if we have learned anything from this situation, it is that we should not linger on, we should really go ahead with the construction," Devogelaer told Reuters.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Additional reporting by Nina Chestney in London and Bate Felix in Paris; Editing by Catherine Evans)

See Also:By Kylie MacLellan and William James

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May urged restive lawmakers to back her in the final stages of Britain's exit from the European Union, saying talks were in their most difficult phase even if a deal was close.

After facing some of the fiercest attacks to date over her Brexit plans since again failing to clinch a deal at an EU summit last week, May tried to calm passions in parliament where her strategy has angered eurosceptics and EU supporters alike.

"Serving our national interest will demand that we hold our nerve through these last stages of the negotiations, the hardest part of all," May told parliament.

Financial markets seized on the possibility that May could be toppled as prime minister by rebels in her Conservative Party, driving sterling below $1.30 to its lowest since Oct. 4.

With just over five months until Britain is scheduled to exit the EU, talks have stalled over a disagreement on the so-called Northern Irish "backstop", an insurance policy to ensure there will be no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland if a future trading relationship is not agreed in time.

But May's attempt to unlock the talks by considering an extension to a status-quo transition period beyond the current proposed end date of December 2020 has further riled both pro- and anti-EU factions in her deeply split Conservative Party.

May again dismissed the EU's proposed backstop as unacceptable and she set out two options for Britain to choose from: an extension to the transition period, or a temporary UK-EU customs territory which was first outlined earlier this year.

May said the EU had made a substantial shift on the latter option. EU sources told Reuters negotiators were looking at ways to promise Britain a customs deal that could stretch Brussels Brexit red lines but might break a deadlock.

In an attempt to highlight how much progress has been made in more than a year of talks with the EU, she told parliament the government has reached agreement on everything from Gibraltar to future security over the last three weeks.

Story continues

"Taking all of this together, 95 per cent of the Withdrawal Agreement and its protocols are now settled," she said.

"VASSAL STATE"

But the deal - the terms of Britain's divorce - cannot be signed off until the two sides settle on future management of the border between Northern Ireland and EU member state Ireland.

British and EU leaders are committed to avoiding obstacles at the border, a crucial aspect of the 1998 Good Friday peace deal that ended decades of Irish sectarian bloodshed.

The EU proposal for Northern Ireland to remain in the bloc's customs union has been rejected by May as it would potentially create barriers to trade with the rest of Britain - something ruled out by Northern Ireland's DUP party, whose 10 votes in parliament prop up May's government.

At an EU summit in Brussels last week, any agreement seemed just as far off as it did months earlier, with EU officials and diplomats saying that May had offered nothing new to ease the deadlock.

Since then, her proposal to extend the transition period has stoked anger among Conservative eurosceptics, who fear she is leading Britain into a deal that will make Britain a "vassal state" indefinitely - unable ever to fully leave the EU or to forge its own free trade deals with other countries.

Critics of May used Britain's Sunday newspapers to rhetorically savage the British leader, with unnamed rivals using phrases such as "assassination is in the air".

However, that approach looked to have backfired as even May's harshest critics condemned the violent nature of the comments, tempering any confrontation with their leader.

A vote of no-confidence in May would be triggered if 48 Conservative lawmakers submit letters to the chairman of the party's so-called "1922 Committee" of backbenchers to demand such a vote. The Sunday Times said 46 had now been sent, but Reuters could not verify that number.

However a planned show of strength among the Brexiteers, who intended to rebel at a vote on Northern Ireland legislation in parliament later this week, was called off by the leader of the rebellion, former minister Steve Baker.

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Toby Chopra)By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia signed a peace deal on Sunday with Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels from its Somali Region, whom it had previously outlawed as a "terrorist group," officials said.

The ONLF launched its bid for secession of the Somali Region, also known as Ogaden, in eastern Ethiopia in 1984. In 2007, Ethiopian forces launched a large-scale offensive against the group after the rebels killed 74 people in an attack on a Chinese-run oil facility.

Earlier this year, parliament removed the ONLF from a list of banned movements as part of a reform drive being led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has extended an olive branch to opponents. The ONLF declared a ceasefire in August.

The agreement, seen by Reuters, stipulates that both sides would end hostilities and that the ONLF would "pursue its political obligations through peaceful means".

The two sides will now form a joint committee to discuss the root causes of the conflict, the agreement said.

The Ogaden region contains four trillion cubic feet of gas and oil deposits, the government says. China's POLY-GCL Petroleum has been developing two gas fields there since 2013.

Abiy, who took office in April, is presiding over a push to shake the Horn of Africa nation of 100 million people from decades of security-obsessed rule.

He has acknowledged and condemned widespread abuses by the security forces, likening the situation to state terrorism, and he has worked to forge peace with Eritrea, with which Addis Ababa has been locked in a military standoff since a 1998-2000 border war in which 80,000 people are thought to have died.

(Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

See Also:BERLIN (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Monday he was optimistic that Britain and the European Union will be able to reach a last-minute agreement on the terms of Britain's departure from the bloc despite remaining differences.

"I still want to express my optimism somehow that we can do it somehow in the last minute," Scholz said during a panel discussion on the future of Europe.

"The pressure that there is no other way now, this usually leads to a solution - although this is very complicated, especially because of the question what are we actually going to do with the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland."

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber, editing by Riham Alkousaa)Sky News

Boris Johnson will unveil a long-delayed integrated rail plan for the Midlands and the north of England today, billed as the largest ever investment in rail infrastructure, with 96bn pledged to improve existing routes. The plan is expected to confirm that HS2 will be curtailed - with its eastern leg extending to Leeds cancelled - and the Northern Powerhouse trans-Pennine route scrapped, despite the prime minister having publicly promised to deliver both in the last two years. In a press release that contained no details of the plan, the Department of Transport said the new plan had been drawn up "after it became clear that the full HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail schemes as originally proposed would not enter service until the early to mid-2040s".MADRID (Reuters) - One African migrant died and three others were injured when around 300 stormed the border fence separating Spanish enclave Melilla from Morocco on Sunday, the local authorities said.

About 200 migrants managed to scale the seven-meter high metal barrier and were taken to a reception center in Melilla where officials started the process of identifying them.

The man died of a suspected cardio-respiratory arrest despite being treated by emergency services, the Spanish government's local delegation said in a statement.

More than 6,000 migrants have made it to Melilla and Spain's nearby territory Ceuta so far this year, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. In some places, the fences around the enclaves are topped with razor wire.

On Sunday, wooden-handled hooks and shoes fitted with spikes to help the climb were left behind, along with a bloodied t-shirt.

More than 40,000 have arrived by sea on Andalucia's southern coast since January, making Spain Europe's top destination for migrants which the European Union has failed to agree on how to handle.

The routes have changed as Italy clamped down on rescue ships to dock at its ports, and a deal between the EU and Turkey eased flows across the Aegean Sea to Greece.

The vast majority of arrivals in Spain are men, primarily from Guinea, Mali and Morocco, the UNHCR says.

On Saturday, Spain returned to Morocco 24 migrants who reached the Chafarinas islands, another Spanish territory off the North African coast, under a bilateral agreement signed in 1992, under which citizens of third countries who have entered illegally can be returned within a certain time frame.

This agreement was very rarely used until this summer, when 116 men who stormed the Ceuta fence were turned back. Spain's Interior Ministry says it is being used now thanks to good bilateral relations.

(Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

See Also:ISTANBUL (AP)  The latest on the fallout from the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul (all times local):

12:08 a.m.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has met with Saudi Arabia's embattled crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The meeting took place as the crown prince faces growing international criticism over the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Kashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry posted a photo of the meeting on its Twitter account late Monday, on the eve of a glitzy three-day investment conference in Saudi Arabia. Mnuchin has said he would not attend the conference but would discuss counter-terrorism efforts with Saudi officials.

Saudi Arabia has said Kashoggi, a critic of the Saudi royal family, was killed Oct. 2 in a "fistfight" with officials sent to encourage him to return to the kingdom. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was killed and dismembered by a 15-man Saudi hit squad.

___

10:10 p.m.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called an emergency meeting with Cabinet ministers and senior government officials to discuss what he called the "horrible murder" of writer Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Trudeau's office said Monday the Saudi explanations lack "consistency and credibility."

Trudeau called an "Incident Response Group meeting," which his office says is convened during a national crisis or during incidents elsewhere that have major implications for Canada.

Trudeau said in Parliament he wouldn't hesitate to freeze arms export permits but didn't say if Canada would cancel a 2014 multi-billion-dollar deal to supply light-armored vehicles to the Saudis. Canada's previous government made the deal.

Saudi Arabia had a diplomatic dispute with Canada this summer over the Saudi arrest of women's rights activists.

Story continues

___

10 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he's not satisfied with the explanations he's heard about the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi royal family living in Virginia in the United States, died Oct. 2 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Saudi Arabia said Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight" with officials sent to encourage him to return to the kingdom. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was killed and dismembered by a 15-man Saudi hit squad.

Trump said he's spoken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since Khashoggi's death. Speaking to reporters Monday on the South Lawn, Trump said: "I am not satisfied with what I've heard" regarding Khashoggi's death.

___

8:40 p.m.

A rights group is calling on the United States, Turkey and other nations to reject what it says is an attempt by Saudi Arabia to "whitewash" the killing of Saudi dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi.

In a statement on Monday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Saudi Arabia's claim that Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul appeared to be an attempt to "insulate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from further scrutiny and to prevent full accountability" for the journalist's death.

The group renewed a call for the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into the killing.

On Saturday, Saudi authorities said Khashoggi died in a brawl involving visiting officials, an account that has drawn widespread skepticism. Riyadh also said 18 Saudi suspects were in custody and intelligence officials had been fired.

Michael Page, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said "demotions of senior officials as scapegoats" would not exonerate the crown prince.

___

8:30 p.m.

A video shared by a television channel that is close to Turkey's government appears to show three men burning documents in the Saudi Consulate's backyard a day after Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed.

A Haber news channel said the surveillance camera video  allegedly showing "evidence" being burned inside a drum  was recorded on Oct. 3.

Saudi Arabia announced Saturday that Khashoggi died as a result of a "fistfight" at the Consulate. That claim was met with international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew into Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would enter the consulate to get a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside, the Saudis killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer, according to Turkish media reports.

___

7:45 p.m.

A Pakistani rights group is objecting to Prime Minister Imran Khan's decision to attend a Saudi investment conference in the wake of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The Independent Human Rights Commission said Monday that the prime minister's decision "ignored the sentiments" of many people and the international outcry over the Saudi writer's death.

It says the government should have taken a clearer stand on Khashoggi's killing, and that "business interests" should not undermine the "right to dissent" and freedom of expression.

Several international companies and leading investors decided not to participate in the Saudi investment conference in the wake of Khashoggi's killing. The conference, which begins Tuesday, is intended to rally world support behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's economic reforms.

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7:40 p.m.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has asked that Saudi Arabia provide a complete account of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death and hinted at possible punitive measures.

Speaking Monday during a joint press conference with his Tunisian counterpart Khemaies Jhinaoui, Le Drian said "what happened is extremely serious. It is a murder against a journalist, and moreover, a murder that was not confessed at the start."

Le Drian said France is waiting for the results of the investigations into the journalist's death before taking "necessary measures, if required." Le Drian did not elaborate on the measures France could implement.

Jhinaoui condemned the murder as "unacceptable," but praised Saudi Arabia for its decision to open a "thorough investigation" and insisted the country "should not be targeted with the aim of threatening its security and stability."

Le Drian said France is asking for "the utmost clarity on this murder, which is not the case today."

___

7:10 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman says Saudi Arabia remains an important "brotherly and friendly country" and that Turkey does not want ties with Riyadh to be harmed.

Briefing reporters following a Cabinet meeting on Monday, Ibrahim Kalin said Turkey was obliged to investigating any killing that takes place within its borders, referring to the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

He said: "The approach of our president from the beginning has been extremely clear: that nothing concerning this incident remains a secret."

He added that "Saudi Arabia is an important country for us. It is a brotherly and friendly country, and of course we would not want this to be harmed."

Kalin added: "Rather than making it an issue between the two countries, there has been a determination for the incident to be brought to light."

___

7:05 p.m.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who last week announced he would not attend an investment conference in Saudi Arabia, is planning on making a stop in the country to discuss efforts to combat terrorist financing.

Mnuchin confirmed his visit to Riyadh during his first stop on a six-country Middle East tour in Jerusalem over the weekend. Mnuchin will spend a week in the region. In addition to Israel and Saudi Arabia, Mnuchin is scheduled to visit Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Jordan and Kuwait.

Last Thursday, Mnuchin announced that he would not attend an investment conference scheduled to be held in Saudi Arabia from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25. Mnuchin's announcement came after a White House meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss the investigation into the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

___

7 p.m.

Italy's prime minister says he is awaiting "credible answers" about the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Premier Giuseppe Conte told foreign reporters in Rome on Monday that Italy takes the case very seriously, "but we would like to have all the elements before evaluating them with our international partners."

Saudi Arabia finally acknowledged the writer's death early Saturday in what it described as a "fistfight" at its consulate in Istanbul. The German government said Riyadh's explanation of Khashoggi's death is insufficient and called for a common European position on the matter.

Asked whether Italy was satisfied with the Saudi explanation, Conte said: "We are still waiting for credible answers to be provided because this is a really worrisome case. ... This case cannot be closed without satisfying answers."

___

6:30 p.m.

The website of the Saudi investment conference set to open this week appears to have been hacked.

The Future Investment Initiative, hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was intended to showcase the kingdom's economic reforms, but several big-name investors and companies have withdrawn in the outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The site's home page displayed the message "404 Not Found" on Monday.

Twitter users meanwhile posted screen grabs of the conference's home page showing the crown prince standing over a kneeling Khashoggi with a flaming sword. A black flag that is used by Islamist militants is unfurled in the background.

Saudi Arabia said Saturday that Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight" inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked by a 15-man Saudi team that cut off his fingers and decapitated him. Analysts say it's unlikely such an operation could be carried out without the knowledge of the crown prince, who oversees the country's security services.

___

5:30 p.m.

Turkish crime-scene investigators have arrived at an underground car park in Istanbul where authorities earlier found a vehicle belonging to the Saudi Consulate.

A large police van arrived at the car park in Istanbul's Sultangazi district on Monday. News reports say the car was left there two weeks ago.

Investigators looking into the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had last week searched other consulate vehicles, along with the consulate building and the consul general's residence.

Saudi Arabia said Saturday that Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight" inside the consulate. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked by a 15-man Saudi team that cut off his fingers and decapitated him.

His remains have not yet been found.

___

5:15 p.m.

Turkey's state-run news agency says authorities have found a vehicle belonging to the Saudi Consulate at an underground car park in Istanbul.

Anadolu Agency says Monday the vehicle with diplomatic license plates was discovered at the car park in Istanbul's Sultangazi neighborhood, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) away from the consulate building, where Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed.

The agency says authorities need to obtain permission from the consulate as well as the Istanbul chief prosecutor's office before searching the vehicle. Other Consulate vehicles were searched last week, along with the consulate building and the consul general's residence.

Police sealed the entrance to the car park, the agency reported.

Saudi Arabia acknowledged Khashoggi's death on Saturday, saying he was killed in a "fistfight" inside the consulate. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked by a 15-man Saudi team that cut off his fingers and decapitated him.

___

4:20 p.m.

A senior Turkish official says surveillance footage showing a man wearing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's clothes leaving the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul indicates that his death was a pre-planned killing and that efforts were made to cover it up.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkey's ruling party, denied as "immoral" suggestions that Turkey was delaying announcing the findings of its investigation into Khashoggi's death because it was engaged in an alleged "bargaining" process with Saudi Arabia.

Celik said: "We are faced with a situation in which it was a brutally planned (killing) and efforts were made to cover it up."

The official said Turkey was leading a careful investigation to ensure that "nobody is falsely accused" and that the incident is not covered up.

"God willing the results will be brought into the open, those responsible will be punished and no one will dare think of carrying out such a thing again."

Saudi authorities said last weekend that Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight" with Saudi officials at the consulate on Oct. 2, after initially insisting they knew nothing of his whereabouts.

___

3:45 p.m.

The chief executive of German industrial conglomerate Siemens says he won't be going to this week's investment conference in Saudi Arabia. He's the latest to pull out of the event in the aftermath of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was slain at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul.

Joe Kaeser wrote in a LinkedIn post Monday that he had "received hundreds, if not thousands, of emails and social media posts urging me not to attend the Future Investment Initiative Conference."

Kaeser said Siemens has been "a reliable partner" to Saudi Arabia for decades "but for now, the truth must be found and justice must be served" in the case of Khashoggi. He stressed that "it's not a decision against the kingdom or its people."

He defended leaving his decision until late, and said that "blaming companies for keeping the lines of communication open and for protecting people and jobs is simply cutting it too short."

___

1:35 p.m.

Newly leaked surveillance footage from the killing of Jamal Khashoggi appears to show a man walking around in the writer's clothes in Istanbul after his killing.

CNN aired the footage on Monday, citing a Turkish official as describing the man as a "body double" and a member of a 15-man Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer.

CNN says the man walked out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then took a taxi to Istanbul's famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public bathroom and changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Khashoggi's clothes.

___

12:40 p.m.

The French presidency says France's President Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump shared their concerns about the circumstances that led to the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The statement, calling the journalist's death "tragic," says the two presidents had a telephone call on Sunday, without providing more details.

Saudi authorities acknowledged on Saturday that Khashoggi was killed Oct. 2 at the consulate under still-disputed circumstances.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that details of Khashoggi's killing will be revealed in a speech that Erdogan will give in parliament on Tuesday.

___

12:35 p.m.

Indonesia's president is "deeply concerned" about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and wants a transparent investigation.

President Joko Widodo met with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Monday at the presidential palace in the West Java city of Bogor. Widodo's concerns were relayed by Indonesia's foreign minister following the meeting.

The minister, Retno Marsudi, told reporters that "the president is deeply concerned with the Khashoggi case and Indonesia hopes that the ongoing investigation will be transparent and meticulous."

Al-Jubeir is on a two-day visit to Indonesia and has a separate meeting with Retno on Tuesday. Retno said the visit was scheduled after the Saudi monarch visited Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, in March last year.

___

12:05 p.m.

Turkish officials say the Turkish president and his American counterpart have spoken over the phone and discussed the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The officials say Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump agreed during their call late on Sunday that the journalist's case "should be brought to light in all aspects."

Saudi authorities have said Khashoggi died in a fight with Saudi officials at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Turkish officials and reports have suggested that a team of Saudi agents was sent to assassinate him.

Erdogan and Trump also took up the issue of American pastor Andrew Brunson who was freed after some two years of detention in Turkey, cooperation in the fight against terrorism and the situation in Syria.

The Turkish officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations.

Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey;

___

11:50 a.m.

A pro-government Turkish newspaper is reporting that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office from the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul the day Jamal Khashoggi was killed.

The report by Yeni Safak on Monday cited no source for the information. However, pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Khashoggi's killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces.

The newspaper says the calls went to the head of the crown prince's office, as well as a number in the United States.

Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. The kingdom acknowledged Khashoggi's death on Saturday, saying he was killed in a "fistfight." Turkish media and officials meanwhile say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked by a 15-man Saudi team that cut off his fingers and decapitated him.

___

9:45 a.m.

A top German official is pressing for a joint European Union position on Saudi Arabia after Berlin backed a freeze on arms exports to the kingdom following the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has said Riyadh's explanation of Khashoggi's death is insufficient. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined Monday its position that "we won't at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened."

Altmaier told ZDF television that a joint EU position is needed "because only if all European countries agree, this will make an impression on the government in Riyadh." He said "it will have no positive consequences if we, as we are doing, currently don't pursue our arms exports if at the same time other countries fill this gap."

___

8:20 a.m.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has called the son of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by officials that allegedly included a member of the royal's entourage.

King Salman likewise called Khashoggi's son, Salah.

That's according to statements published early Monday by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. The statements said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed "expressed his condolences"

Khashoggi was killed Oct. 2 at the consulate, where he had gone to get paperwork to be married.

For weeks, Saudi Arabia insisted the Washington Post contributor had left the consulate. The kingdom finally acknowledged his death early Saturday in what it described as a "fistfight."

Turkish media quotes officials saying a team of 15 Saudis removed Khashoggi's fingers, killed him and dismembered him.People celebrate after Israel delays eviction of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, in the occupied West Bank October 20, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

Thomson Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday his decision to delay the demolition of a Bedouin village in the West Bank was a brief reprieve while efforts are under way to reach a relocation deal for its residents.

Israel's decision to raze the village of Khan al-Ahmar in Israeli-occupied territory has drawn international concern, including from the United Nations and the European Union. The International Criminal Court prosecutor has said the eviction and demolition of Khan al-Ahmar could constitute a war crime.

But an official in Netanyahu's office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday the eviction had been postponed and an alternative relocation plan was being considered, in coordination with the Palestinian Authority. [nL8N1X00WE]

In remarks to reporters on Sunday, Netanyahu said the eviction would eventually go ahead.

"I have no intention of postponing this indefinitely, despite reports to the contrary, but for a short time," he said.

"The amount of time we allocate for evacuating it under an agreement will be set by the security cabinet. I will convene it today. We will set (the timetable). It will be short and I believe it will be done with consent."

Originally residents were to be relocated to an area about 12 km (seven miles) away next to a landfill in the Israel-occupied territory. The authorities were expected to send in bulldozers in at any time after an Oct. 1 deadline for the villagers to demolish their own homes expired.

Israel, which has long sought to clear the Arab nomads from tracts of land between the Jewish settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim, said Khan al-Ahmar was built without the required permits.

Palestinians, who lost an Israeli Supreme Court appeal against the evacuation, say such documents are impossible to obtain.

The Palestinians say razing the village's tents and tin shacks is part of an Israeli plan to create an arc of Jewish settlements that could effectively cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank, areas occupied by Israel since a 1967 war.

Story continues

Most countries consider settlements built by Israel on land it captured in 1967 as illegal and say they reduce and fragment the territory Palestinians seek for a viable state. Israel disputes this.

The United Nations, the EU and rights groups have urged Israel not to raze the village, citing the impact on its community and prospects for peace.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

See Also:By Jeff Mason and David Dolan

WASHINGTON/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was still not satisfied with what he has heard from Saudi Arabia about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, but did not want to lose investment from Riyadh.

Trump spoke with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the world's top oil exporter, on Sunday. He told reporters on Monday that he has teams in Saudi Arabia and Turkey working on the case and would know more about it after they returned to Washington on Monday night or Tuesday.

CIA Director Gina Haspel was travelling to Turkey on Monday to work on the Khashoggi investigation, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

"I am not satisfied with what I've heard," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I don't want to lose all that investment that's been made in our country. But we're going to get to the bottom of it."

He later told USA Today that he believed the death was a "plot gone awry."

Trump has expressed reluctance to punish the Saudis economically, citing the kingdom's multibillion-dollar purchases of U.S. military equipment and investments in U.S. companies.

Prince Mohammed met in Riyadh with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and discussed "the importance of the Saudi-U.S. strategic partnership," Saudi state media said. Mnuchin's spokesman said on Twitter the two discussed the Khashoggi investigation as well as Iran sanctions and Saudi economic issues.

Mnuchin cancelled his speaking engagement at a high-profile Saudi investment conference on Tuesday, as did two dozen other top speakers.

Hundreds of bankers and company executives were still expected to attend the Future Investment Initiative, which aims to help the country curb its economic dependence on oil exports. But Khashoggi's killing has tarnished an event that last year attracted global business elites and won the moniker "Davos in the Desert."

Story continues

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Prince Mohammed who lived in the United States, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

Saudi Arabia initially denied knowledge of his fate before saying he had been killed in a fight in the consulate, an explanation that drew scepticism from several Western governments.

Following the global outrage prompted by the journalist's disappearance, Trump's comments have varied from playing down Riyadh's role to warning of possible economic sanctions. He has repeatedly highlighted the kingdom's importance as a U.S. ally and said Prince Mohammed was a strong and passionate leader.

For Saudi Arabia's allies, the question will be whether they believe that Prince Mohammed, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability. King Salman, 82, has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to the 33-year-old prince.

'WORLD IS WATCHING'

Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the consulate by Saudi agents. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting the killing of the 59-year-old.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said he will release information about the investigation in a speech on Tuesday.

Earlier on Monday, Trump's son-in-law, White House adviser Jared Kushner, said in an interview on CNN that he had urged the crown prince to be transparent about Khashoggi and told him "the world is watching" Riyadh's account of the journalist's disappearance.

Kushner has cultivated a personal relationship with Prince Mohammed and urged Trump to act with caution to avoid upsetting a critical strategic and economic relationship, a senior administration official said.

Several countries, including Germany, Britain, France and Turkey, have pressed Saudi Arabia to provide all the facts. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would not export arms to the kingdom while uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persisted.

Omer Celik, the spokesman for Erdogan's AK Party, said that the truth of the case would eventually come out.

"We are facing a situation that has been monstrously planned and later tried to be covered up," he told reporters. "It is a complicated murder."

SHIFTING STORIES

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said Khashoggi had died in a rogue operation. But some of his comments did not match previous statements from Riyadh, marking yet another shift in the official story.

Jubeir said the Saudis did not know how Khashoggi had died. That contradicted the public prosecutor's statement a day earlier that Khashoggi died after a fistfight with people who met him inside the consulate. It also contradicted two Saudi officials' comments to Reuters that it was a chokehold that killed him.

A Saudi official has said that a member of the team dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate. Support for that strand of the account appeared to come from footage aired by CNN showing a man dressed as Khashoggi walking around Istanbul. CNN described the images as law enforcement surveillance footage.

On Saturday, Saudi state media said King Salman had fired five officials over the killing carried out by a 15-man hit team, including Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide who ran social media for Prince Mohammed. According to two intelligence sources, Qahtani ran Khashoggi's killing by giving orders over Skype.

In Moscow, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said talks were continuing with the Saudis about the incident.

"We want to get the truth, and not just talk. First of all, we need to know why he died. Who killed him? We want to get the full lowdown," Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy quoted Bolton as saying during a visit to Moscow.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Doina Chiacu, and Susan Heavey in Washington; Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Daren Butler in Istanbul; Maxim Rodionov in Moscow; and Maher Chmaytelli in Dubai; Editing by Alistair Bell, Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O'Brien)Surveillance video has emerged of a Saudi operative wearing Jamal Khashoggis clothes, fake glasses and a beard while leaving the building where the journalist was murdered.

As international accusations of a Saudi cover-up intensify, extraordinary footage appeared today showing a man wearing the Washington Post columnists clothes, leaving the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where Khashoggi was killed.

Images obtained by CNN show a member of the reported 15-man Saudi hit squad leaving the consulate by the back door, as an apparent decoy shortly after Khashoggis murder.

Newly leaked footage appears to show a man walking around in Jamal Khashoggis clothes in Istanbul after his killing. (CNN)

Jamal Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 (Picture: PA)

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to detail Mr Khashoggis killing in all its nakedness, raising international pressure on Saudi Arabia.

The kingdoms claim on Saturday that Mr Khashoggi died in a fistfight was met with international scepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on October 2, knowing Mr Khashoggi would arrive to pick up a document he needed in order to get married.

Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, reports also claimed the Saudis accosted 59-year-old Mr Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, then killed and dismembered him.

CCTV shows Mr Khashoggi entering the consulate (Picture: AP)

CNN broadcast surveillance footage showing a man in Mr Khashoggis dress shirt, suit jacket and trousers. It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a body double and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer.

The man is seen in the footage walking out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then taking a taxi to Istanbuls famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public toilet, changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Mr Khashoggis clothes.

In the days after Mr Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said that he had left the consulate.

Story continues

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After Turkish authorities and the media were allowed to inspect the consulate building in its entirety, the accusations changed to the outrageous claim that he was murdered, in the consulate, during business hours, and with dozens of staff and visitors in the building, Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote on October 8.

I dont know who is behind these claims, or their intentions, nor do I care frankly.

The report in Yeni Safak said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate.

The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammeds office. It said another call went to the US.

Closed doors: An official at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Monday as cover-up allegations intensified. (PA)

Pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Mr Khashoggis killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces.

Yeni Safak reported last week that Saudi officials cut off Mr Khashoggis fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate while his fiancee waited outside.

Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mr Mutrebs presence in Istanbul. It has also not explained how a forensics and autopsy expert was also on hand ahead of Mr Khashoggis arrival at the consulate.

Last week, a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage showed Mr Mutreb at the consulate, just before Mr Khashoggi arrived there.

Freelance journalists in Indonesia hold demonstration in front of Saudi Arabia Embassy in Jakarta last week in protest against Mr Khashoggis death. (Rex)

Mr Mutrebs name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Mr Khashoggis son, Salah, early on Monday morning.

Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences over Mr Khashoggis death.

A Saudi friend of Mr Khashoggi said that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his fathers criticism of the government.

Five Turkish employees of the consulate also gave testimonies to prosecutors, Turkish media reported.

Saudi Arabia insists Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman did not order Mr Khashoggis killing (Picture: PA)

Istanbuls chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give evidence.

Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time Mr Khashoggi disappeared.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News that Mr Khashoggis killing was a rogue operation and that we dont know where the body is.

He added: The individuals who did this, did this outside the scope of their authority.

There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government.BEIJING (AP)  "Both ignorant and malicious" was how the official China Daily newspaper recently described comments by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, offering a stinging insight into the current bitter tone of discourse between the two countries. The White House's move to expand Washington's dispute with Beijing beyond trade and technology and into accusations of political meddling has sunk relations between the world's two largest economies to the lowest level since the Cold War. A major speech by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Oct. 4 was the clearest, highest-level sign that U.S. strategy was turning away from engagement to confrontation.

ZHUHAI, China (AP)  China has opened the world's longest sea-crossing bridge linking Hong Kong to the mainland in a feat of engineering that carries major economic and political significance. Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the ceremony in the city of Zhuhai to cut the ribbon on the 55-kilometer (34-mile)-long bridge linking it to the semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The $20 billion bridge took almost a decade to build. It includes an undersea tunnel allowing ships to pass through the Pearl River delta, the heart of China's crucial manufacturing sector. It's opening will cut travel time across the delta from several hours to just 30 minutes.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP)  A prominent lawyer and newspaper publisher who is tied to Bangladesh's political opposition has been arrested on a defamation charge amid concern the government is acting tough on dissent ahead of national elections. Dhaka Metropolitan Police official Mahbub Alam said early Tuesday that detectives arrested Moinul Hosein after raiding an opposition leader's home in Dhaka, the nation's capital. Alam said Hosein was arrested after a court in northern Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant on Monday in a case involving a recent comment in a television talk show where Hosein called a female journalist "characterless" after she asked him if he represented the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

Story continues

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Investigators say excessive speed was the main cause of the derailment of a train in Taiwan that killed 18 people and injured scores. The official Central News Agency says a Cabinet task force found the train entered a curve at 140 kph (87 mph), almost twice the speed limit for the section. CNA said the train's driver has been placed under investigation for negligence, including disabling the automatic train protection system that would have caused it to brake. The 6-year-old trains were built to travel at 150 kph (93 mph) to ease transportation on rugged parts of the mountainous island's east coast.

SYDNEY (AP)  Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered a formal apology Monday to Australia's victims of child sex abuse, saying the nation must acknowledge their long, painful journey and its failure to protect them. Morrison's emotional speech given in Parliament before hundreds of survivors followed the conclusion of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the nations' highest level of inquiry. "Today as a nation we confront our failure to listen, to believe, and to provide justice," he said, adding: "We say sorry." Abuse survivors gathered in Parliament's Great Hall cried, yelled and applauded as Morrison read the apology.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  The two Koreas have completed removing land mines planted at their shared border village as part of efforts to disarm the area located inside the world's most heavily fortified border, South Korean officials said Monday. The announcement came following a meeting among military officers from the Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command at the border's Panmunjom village earlier Monday. It's the second such trilateral meeting to examine efforts to demilitarize Panmunjom, the most well-known place inside the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long Demilitarized Zone that bisect the two Koreas. Disarming the village was among a set of tension-reduction agreements signed by the Koreas' defense chiefs on the sidelines of their leaders' summit in Pyongyang last month.

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Pentagon says two U.S. Navy warships have passed through the politically sensitive Taiwan Strait without incident. The 100 mile-wide (160 kilometer-wide) strait divides the island nation from mainland China. Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway Chinese province and objects to U.S. defense support for self-governing Taiwan. A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Rob Manning, says the USS Curtis Wilbur and the USS Antietam sailed in international waters in what he calls a routine transit Monday. The Curtis Wilbur is a destroyer. The Antietam is a cruiser. Another Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Chris Logan, says the most recent previous U.S. Navy transit of the Taiwan Strait was in July.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  An Afghan soldier opened fire on coalition forces on Monday, killing a Czech soldier and wounding two others. The Czech military said their car was attacked at a base in the western Herat province, without providing further details. NATO said in a statement that "initial reports" indicate the attack was committed by a member of the Afghan security forces. No one immediately claimed the attack, which was the second deadly attack by Afghan forces against allied NATO and U.S. forces in less than a week. On Thursday, an elite guard of the governor of Kandahar killed two senior Afghan officials, including Kandahar's powerful police chief, Gen.

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  A Philippine court on Monday rejected a petition by President Rodrigo Duterte's administration to have his fiercest critic in the Senate arrested, in a legal setback for Duterte that the senator called a victory for democracy. Regional Trial Court Judge Andres Bartolome Soriano denied the government's petition to have opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV arrested after Duterte voided his 2011 amnesty for his role in past mutinies as a former navy officer. Soriano debunked Duterte's premise that Trillanes never formally applied for amnesty and acknowledged guilt for his role in the failed coup attempts. "The rule of law won and democracy won," a beaming Trillanes told a news conference at the Senate, adding that he was prepared to be arrested.

SALEM, Ore. (AP)  With the sun bearing down, Norm and Kathy Daviess stood in the shade of a prison wall topped with coiled razor wire, waiting for three immigrants to come out. It's become an oddly familiar routine for the Air Force veteran and his wife, part of an ad hoc group of volunteers that formed in recent months after the Trump administration transferred 124 immigrants to the federal prison in rural Oregon, a first for the facility. The detainees were among approximately 1,600 immigrants apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border and then transferred to federal prisons in five states after President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy left the usual facilities short of space.Chi-Hsuan Catterson's passion for the Chinese language helped begin a trend at the University of North Georgia (UNG).

Born and raised in Taiwan, Catterson started UNG's Chinese language program when she came to the university in 2006 on a part-time basis, becoming a full-time employee the next year. Driven by student interest, Chinese quickly grew from being a minor to a major. In 2011, UNG became a Chinese Language Flagship, one of just a few schools in the country to offer the program.

The Chinese Language Flagship allows students to study the language for four years at UNG, then have a capstone year abroad. Catterson, now a senior lecturer of Chinese at UNG, serves as the academic director of the flagship program.

Some of her friends joked that she was doubling the population of Chinese people in Dahlonega, Georgia, when she moved there. But what she found flew in the face of that stereotype.

"I was surprised that Chinese has been received so well," Catterson said. "We found hard-working students who wanted to know this language and were fascinated by it."

Catterson believes learning Chinese opens doors for students to go abroad and learn a different way to think while experiencing another culture.

"The more we understand each other as nations, as people, the better we are able to get along," Catterson said.

A turning point for Catterson came in 2008 when she started the first Summer Language Institute (SLI) at UNG, helping students take Chinese courses in a condensed format during the summer. Having students come in with zero knowledge of the language and convincing them they could be successful was a rewarding process.

"I had never done that before. With a lot of people's support, somehow they trusted I could do it. And as I started doing it, I learned that I could do more with them. I learned how to revise my curriculum," Catterson said. "I learned how students learn, how students think and what kind of struggles they have encountered."

Catterson earned a pair of master's degrees  in English as a second language and then East Asian language and literature  from the University of Hawaii and taught there before teaching briefly at Boston University. Catterson taught Chinese at a prep school in Hawaii for eight years before coming to UNG.

Even when she had 10 to 12 students in some of her early Chinese classes, Catterson said she always had strong support from Dr. Brian Mann, head of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages; Dr. Christopher Jespersen, dean of the College of Arts and Letters; and Dr. Billy Wells, senior vice president for leadership and global engagement.

"I feel I'm blessed to work in an environment where institutional support is always very strong," Catterson said.

She said UNG has gained a more international flavor in her decade-plus at the school.

"You look around the campus and you see more and more Chinese people, more and more Asian people," Catterson said. "It's just unbelievable. It's amazing. It can only be good."

Catterson said the study abroad programs remain a cornerstone of the Chinese program at UNG.

"We can't just keep ourselves focused on this community only anymore," Catterson said. "If we want our students to be competitive globally, we have to find a way to let them go out."The BepiColumbo, a Euro-Japanese spacecraft, launched from French Guiana on Friday October 18, starting its seven year journey to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. The ship's path will fly by Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury six times. The multiple flybys slow the shuttle down enough to be pulled in by Mercurys gravity. It is scheduled to arrive in 2025. The spacecraft will be the third in history to make the trip.

What is the BepiColumbo?

The BepiColumbo, named after Italian scientist Giuseppe Columbo (nicknamed Bepi), is actually two spacecraft that will break off from one another once they have reached Mercury.

The two will then orbit the planet in separate directions and are designed to collect different data.

The Japanese craft, called Mio, will measure the interactions between Mercurys magnetic field and the particles being emitted by the sun.

The European craft, officially titled the European Mercury Planetary Orbiter, is carrying instruments that detect gamma rays and X-rays from radioactive materials in the planet and measure the amount of different types of gases in the atmosphere. There is also a camera to map landforms on the surface. These instruments are similar to the ones carried by NASA's Messenger spacecraft that traveled to Mercury in 2004. The new European craft's tools will have higher resolution and will add on to data taken from the previous mission.

Both rockets also have magnetometers and will measure the magnetic field of the planet at two locations simultaneously. These two data readings will give an analysis of the field around the entire globe at one time.

Why is Mercury important?

Mercury is mostly made of rock like Venus, Earth, and Mars, but has an unusually large iron core.

Discuss this news on Eunomia

Scientists have theorized that the planet underwent exposure to extreme heat and pressure while the solar system was being formed, which caused the denser iron core. However, previous expeditions revealed that the chemical composition of the planet still has lighter elements that would have evaporated under such an ordeal.

Understanding the outlier of Mercurys core could help lead to greater understanding of how the planets in our solar system started to form, as well as how planets in other solar systems were created.

Studies of how the solar wind affects Mercurys atmosphere can also give a basis for how planets outside our solar system that are close to their own suns are likely to behave. This can help predict if these planets can support life.

This topic will be the key step in future science, the habitability at the exoplanets, said Go Murakami, a Japanese scientist involved with the mission, in an interview with the New York Times.

The BepiColumbo will be in orbit around Mercury until 2027, with a possible one-year extension to 2028.BROOKLYN, N.Y.  The Catland bookstore that hosted the Oct. 20 hex action against Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh found itself the target for an exorcism. According to reports, Father Gary Thomas, the exorcist for the Catholic Diocese of San Jose, California, scheduled two masses prior to the hex event in order to stop it. Father Thomas told The National Catholic Register that he has witnessed people in the satanic world becoming bolder. He said that the more confident these so-called Satanists become, the more the general public will be more accepting of the demonic. Thomas said that this is not about free speech or religion, its about conjuring of evil. He added, Satanic cults often commit crimes; they murder and sexually abuse everyone it their cult (sic).

Despite the media attention, protests outside the store, and the threats of exorcism, the owners of Catland books continued with their hex action. The ritual was live streamed over Facebook, and has had over 17,000 views and 137 shares as of publication. According to reports, there were 60 people in attendance and more tuned in over the internet. The owners reportedly considered their work a success.

* * *

CANADA  According to several reports, there has been continued fallout from a blog post published in September by Sarah Anne Lawless. Sam Wagar, who was named in the article, has announced and tendered his resignation from the University of Alberta. Wagar served as a Wiccan Chaplain, helping students with the spiritual needs. Although Wagar continues to deny the allegations, he says that he is resigning to protect the good work that he has done there and to protect the Chaplains Association from this mess.

In addition, the longtime leaders and co-founders of the Wiccan Church of Canada have stepped down from their positions. Richard and Tamarra James created the organization in 1979 and have been running it ever since. They reportedly decided to step down after Mr. James made several unpopular statements within the comment section on the Lawless post. Despite the alleged conflicts over those words, the couples resignation still came as a shock to the Canadian Wiccan community. Based in Toronto, the Wiccan Church of Canada will now be run, in the interim, by the High Priestess Janice Cardie of the Hamilton Temple of the Wiccan Church of Canada and Ross Carter.

Carter and Cardie told The Wild Hunt, We are all saddened by the resignation of Tamarra and Richard as the leaders of the WCC. They will still be active within the Church and the greater Pagan community and for that we are all grateful. New Leading Priesthood of the WCC will be elected within the next two months. The strong foundations and love of the Gods and our community that Tamarra and Richard have instilled in many, will serve us well as the WCC moves forward to a new chapter in its existence. We cant thank them enough. A member vote for new leadership will take place Dec. 9.

* * *

DETROIT  The administrators of the Michigan College Fund have announced that, as of Oct 31, the fund will have new managers. Wolf Run Wildlife and Spiritual Sanctuary (WRWSS) will take over the management of the fund from Gordon Ireland. Ireland, who retired from public work last year, said, WRWSS brings a devoted group of individuals, a 501c3 and a desire to give to our Pagan community. They draw folks from across the spectrum of Pagan paths. The WRWSS group continuously endeavors to work together within the community towards Education, Understanding, Acceptance and Equality for all Pagan spiritual paths and to be a positive enduring presence statewide.

The fund awards a $500 scholarship to a Michigan-based Pagan student each year. The 2018 winner was Kristen Newcombe.

In other news:

Reports have been coming in that author and Pagan Wendy Griffin is making steady and slow improvements after she suffered a major stroke. Griffin is the former dean of academics at Cherry Hill Seminary. According to sources close to Griffin, she has moved from ICU to a rehabilitation facility that will enable her to continue making progress on recovery. Friends and colleagues reportedly continue to send prayers and hold healing rituals toward her benefit.

Circle Cemetery will be the host of the memorial and burial for Welsh Bardic Priestess Kathryn Hinds. The ceremony will be held Sunday, October 28 at 11AM. Rev. Selena Fox will facilitate the ritual, assisted by Arthur Hinds and others present. According to Circles reports, the ritual will include a blessing of her grave, a burial of some of her ashes, and the dedication of her memorial marker.

The Religious Studies project site has posted an interview with Aine Warren about the Dark Goddess and how she has become a contemporary Pagan feminist figure being fed into by women from all over the world and from many religious backgrounds.

Peter Bebergal, author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, has a new book coming out that looks at technology and the supernatural. Strange Frequencies, as the book is titled, is a historical journey of how artists, scientists, and others have tried to communicate with other worlds through the use of technology from cameras to radios and beyond.

Tarot card of the week with Star Bustamonte

Deck: The Vampire Tarot by Nathalie Hertz, published by U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

Card: Temperance, Major arcana XIV (14)

This week has the potential to be transformational, but will require focus and the ability to find the balance point. Moderation is the key. If a situation that is unclear or confused presents itself, take a step back, review the facts, and choose to respond rather than react.For anyone following the tragic story of Gough Island, youll know that the islands unique seabirds are in a dramatic decline and that predation from invasive non-native mice is the primary cause. But until now we havent known the true extent of the damage mice are causing. Below, my colleague Laura Beasley reports on new research highlighting the scale of mouse predation on seabirds.

------------------------

A new study by our colleagues at universities in the UK, the Republic of Ireland and South Africa has been published today measuring the number of seabirds killed by mice on Gough Island every year.

On first look, Gough Island is an idyllic uninhabited UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic. The World Heritage Site is home to 22 stunning nesting seabird species: a birders' paradise.

But look closer and youll see a heart-breaking story unfold.

Since mice were brought to and populated the island, seabirds have become their prey. With no natural defences against mice, chicks endure horrific attacks for up to three nights in a row before they succumb to their injuries. And its no surprise then that numbers of seabirds are plummeting; for example as few as 14% of Tristan albatross chicks are surviving to fledge each year. The situation is only escalating, mice have now been observed scalping the chicks and this year, for the first time on Gough, an adult Tristan albatross was found dead from the wounds of mice attacks.

Sailing up to Gough Island in the South Atlantic  2,600km from Cape Town (G. Rosin).

Previous estimates of the number of seabirds lost to mouse predation each year have suggested one million. By comparing breeding success of species on Gough to comparable species on a predator-free island this new study shows the true number to be much higher. In fact, were losing almost two million of Goughs seabirds each year because of mice.

The study found that those species whose chicks fledge latest in the winter, when there is less food available on Gough, are the worst affected by mice. That includes small burrowing petrels such as the Atlantic petrel, the recently discovered McGillivrays prion, and winter-breeding birds such as the iconic Tristan albatross. Many more species could not be quantified in this study due to their now scarcity on Gough, strongly suggesting the number of birds lost to mice could easily exceed three million annually.

But we have a plan to stop this through The Gough Island Restoration Programme. In one of our most ambitious projects to date well eradicate the mice, save species from extinction and restore Gough to the seabird haven it once was. The shocking results of this latest study are a reminder of why weve taken on this challenge, and the scale of impact it could have.

The value of island restoration projects is becoming better understood all the time, with recent successes on the Antipodes Island and South Georgia making headlines. The return on investment in these projects cannot be underestimated.

With our partners the Tristan da Cunha Government, the Department for Environmental Affairs, BirdLife South Africa and Island Conservation, we established the Gough Island Restoration Programme in 2015. The team are feeling shocked at these figures, but its mixed with the heightened sense of the projects conservation value and the responsibility on our shoulders.

We now know that after years of planning this three-month operation could save two million seabirds each year and prevent the extinction of a number of species.

This project is bold, ambitious and, if successful, will save the Critically Endangered native Tristan albatross from extinction; having a major global conservation impact. It is safe to say that The Gough Island Restoration Programme encapsulates what the RSPB is all about.

The heart-wrenching moment a MacGillivrays prion returned to its nest to find its chick dead  eaten alive by invasive non-native mice (Jaimie Cleeland).

This is one of the largest projects the RSPB has ever undertaken, and we need your support to make it a success and put an end to this horror.

You can donate directly to the project, and help save Critically Endangered species from extinction.

And if you have five minutes today, please read this powerful blog from one our 2017/18 Field Assistants. It may be hard to face the reality of this environmental catastrophe, but there is a solution that you can help us to realise.

Thank you for your support.

To find out more visit:

www.goughisland.com

Facebook

Twitter

The endemic and Critically Endangered Tristan albatross population has declined by 96% in three generations (Jaimie Cleeland).

Acknowledgement

The study was carried out by staff at University College Cork, Ireland; Queens University Belfast, UK; The RSPB, UK; Conservation Solutions, UK; University of Cape Town, South Africa; Stellenbosch University, South Africa; and The Natural History Museum, UK.

The Gough Island Restoration Programme is being carried out by the RSPB in partnership with Tristan da Cunha, BirdLife South Africa, the Department of Environmental Affairs in South Africa, Island Conservation, BirdLife International, the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute, the Zoological Society of London, the World Land Trust, the Royal Zoological Society of London, the Durrell Institute and the Rothschild Foundation.

The programme is part-funded by the RSPB, the UK government, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, John Ellerman Foundation, Ludwick Family Foundation, Jephcott Charitable Trust and other generous individuals and organisations.by Joseph Shieber

1. Bored, and with little to occupy their time, two cousins, Elsie, who was 16, and Frances, who was 10, decided to play around with photography. At a river near where they lived, they manipulated an image so that it looked as if they were interacting with little, magical winged creatures  fairies.

The photo was believable enough that they fooled a number of adults  including world-famous writers. The girls produced a number of other photos, using the same methods. The media was ablaze with discussions of the images and of whether they provided proof of the existence of fairies.

This all happened in 1917.

I was reminded of this case  the case of the Cottingley fairies  by the recent interest in the phenomenon of deepfakes.

Deepfakes are incredibly realistic manipulations of video and audio. Here, for example, is a video of President Obama uttering something that President Obama never said  made by swapping in the actor Jordan Peeles mouth and voice.

If you believe the hype surrounding deepfakes, this technology threatens not only the collapse of reality, but also the falsification of our memories. While the threat is real, the problem isnt actually with the deepfakes  its with us.

Actually, the discussion of deepfakes can help us to see two different problems that we face. Solving those problems, however, doesnt really involve technological solutions.

2. Heres the first problem: were not good at handling complexity. We want simple, easy-to-understand, answers. 1+1=2, rather than P(A|B) = (P(B|A) x P(A))/P(B).

The unstated premise in the widespread panic over the rise of deepfakes is that, prior to this technology, video evidence was supposed to be the gold standard for evidence, practically guaranteeing the truth of what it depicted.

This, however, is absurd. There is no gold standard, no single piece of evidence that can guarantee the truth of the information it conveys.

Let me be clear what I mean by that.

By saying that there is no single piece of evidence that can guarantee the truth of the information it conveys, Im not one of those post-truth types who is trying to argue that there is no such thing as truth  nor, even, that there is just no such thing as truth anymore.

There is truth. Black holes exist. So does human-caused climate change. Vaccines dont cause autism. John Lennon didnt really bury Paul McCartney.

Instead, what Im saying is that we dont discover the truth by means of a single, glaring piece of evidence that removes all doubt. On the contrary, we only get at any truth  or at least any truth worth arguing about  by gathering and weighing evidence.

3. In the case of deepfakes in particular, there seem to be two difficulties with the idea that video evidence was ever the sort of knockdown, infallible evidence that the moral panic over deepfakes suggests.

The first difficulty is that, even prior to the existence of deep fakes, it was already possible to manipulate events so that they suggested an underlying narrative that wasnt accurate. Here are two examples, one drawn definitively from the realm of conspiracy theory, the other  well, who knows?

Heres the first example. Some people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, set up to be a fall-guy as the lone gunman who assassinated John F. Kennedy. Many of those who argue in that way arent trying to suggest that Oswald wasnt in the Dallas Book Depository or that he didnt have a sniper rifle or that he didnt fire it at Kennedys motorcade. Rather, theyre saying that Oswald didnt succeed in killing Kennedy, that there were other, hidden gunmen who actually committed the assassination, leaving Oswald to take the blame and to provide a convenient story to deflect a more comprehensive investigation.

The Oswald example, of course, is the stuff of conspiracy theories. The fact that the case is even possible, however, suggests that the threat that seemingly dispositive evidence might not offer an ironclad guarantee is not a threat that is new to the deepfake era.

So you dont like evidence drawn from tinfoil-hat level conspiracy theories. I get that. Heres a case that came to life more recently that might seem a bit more plausible.

In a recent piece for the Atlantic, James Fallows suggests that the evidence that brought down Gary Hart as a serious contender for the 1988 presidential election might have been a set-up initiated by Lee Atwater.

To anyone who didnt follow politics in the 1980s, the names Gary Hart and Lee Atwater might not mean very much. But if you did follow politics in the 1980s, they mean a great deal.

Hart was everything that many Democratic voters thought they needed after the debacle of Reagans obliteration of Mondale in the 1984 election. Hart was young. He was from the West (Colorado, to be exact). He was strong on national security. He was brainy. He was handsome. In short, many thought he would be a very serious challenger to George H. W. Bush if the then-Vice President Bush decided to run on the Republican ticket in 1988.

Hart also had a reputation as a womanizer.

Heres where Lee Atwater comes in. Atwater was responsible for many of the dirtiest of dirty tricks that led to Republican victories in the 1970s and 80s, including  perhaps most famously  the Willie Horton attack ad. That ad, against the person who actually ran against George H. W. Bush in 1988, Michael Dukakis, was an overt smear attack on Dukakis as being soft on crime. Implicitly, however, the ad was a racist dog-whistle intended to tie the image of Dukakis, a bespectacled former professor who had served as Governor of Massachusetts, to that of Horton, whose picture is a mugshot of a menacing African American man found guilty of multiple murders.

Atwater died of a brain tumor in 1991. Before his death, he repented all of the smears that he had perpetrated on his political opponents. For example, he called Michael Dukakis and apologized for the Horton ad.

And, as it now turns out, he also called a high-level Democratic operative who was working on a possible 1988 Hart presidential campaign to apologize for the incident that eventually caused Hart to bow out of the race.

Heres the short version of that incident. Hart was photographed with a bikini-clad woman named Donna Rice sitting on his lap, aboard a sailboat with the suggestive name Monkey Business. Some weeks later, Hart and Rice were photographed entering Harts Washington, D.C. townhouse. After the photos emerged and led to persistent questions about Harts marital fidelity, Hart left the race.

According to Atwaters confession, many of the elements of that incident: that Rice was on the sailboat with Hart, that she happened to be sitting on his lap at the precise moment the photo was taken, even the name of the sailboat  Monkey Business  all of those elements were orchestrated by Atwater.

That isnt to say that the events didnt occur; they did. Nor is it to say that the photos were faked; they werent. It is to say that all of the aspects of the incident that made it catnip for the Washington press at the time  who fools around on their spouse on a boat NAMED Monkey Business, for goodness sake?!  were the result of Atwaters machinations.

What this demonstrates is that, even before it was possible to falsify photo or video evidence convincingly, it was already possible to manipulate events so that the photo or video evidence would seem to fit a narrative that served the manipulators purpose.

4. Thats the first difficulty with the current deepfakes panic and our naive expectation of overly simplistic explanations. It has always been possible to manipulate events so that they suggested an underlying narrative that wasnt accurate. Heres the second difficulty.

Its one that is easy to appreciate if youve ever seen virtually any theater  whether high tragedy or low comedy. Its at the root of tropes like Its not what it looks like! More generally, its the problem of misunderstanding through a failure to appreciate context.

Heres a made-up example of what I mean. Consider a case in which two soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines. The enemy is particularly cruel and vicious; any soldiers that they capture will be tortured before being killed. One of the soldiers becomes so badly injured that there is no chance of survival, and is too heavy for the other soldier to carry back to their own troops. Knowing about the enemys reputation for cruelty, the injured soldier begs to be killed and, in order to prevent the injured soldier from falling into enemy hands  and certain torture, the uninjured soldier agrees to perform a mercy killing. Unbeknownst to the two of them, however, someone has taken a photo of the moment at which the uninjured soldier fires the fatal shot to put the injured soldier beyond the reach of the enemy.

If someone later were simply to see the photo, they would see one soldier killing a comrade soldier, seemingly in cold blood. Yet this is a case that would have involved no manipulation  neither manipulation of the image itself nor of the events leading up to the fatal shot.

This difficulty, in other words, is distinct from the first difficulty because it doesnt involve outside manipulation. Its enough that life is complex. Situations often arise that can easily be misinterpreted if you lack the proper context. And the problem is that any individual representation of that situation will be limited. It will leave out some of the context that might well be needed accurately to understand the situation: either the before-and-after, or the world beyond the scope of the lens and out of range of the microphones.

5. In other words, the first problem posed by the phenomenon of deepfakes is actually a more general problem that we face whenever we have to evaluate evidence  even evidence that hasnt been faked. Its that were generally bad at dealing with complexity, context, and subtlety.

The second problem is that almost all solutions discussed for dealing with the first problem involve individualistic approaches. Almost universally, writers on the problem of deepfakes have suggested that the challenge of new media technologies will require greater analytical skills on the part of media consumers. (For a recent example, see Gerald Dworkins piece in 3QD here.)

This suggestion that appealing to individual consumers of information to be more vigilant, more analytic, and more rational is utterly bizarre but almost omnipresent. Heres why its bizarre. The suggestion is that the solution to the problem that humans are bad at individual rationality is simply to implore humans to be better at individual rationality! Its about as effective as asking the kids at Chuck-E-Cheese to eat more salad while piling the table with ever more and different varieties of pizza and cupcakes.

Many now recognize that the answers to systemic problems like gun violence, climate change, and the spread of infectious diseases cannot be found simply in appeals to individuals virtues, but will involve systemic and institutional approaches. Surprisingly, many of those same thinkers fail to acknowledge that the problem of misinformation and distrust of the media is also a systemic problem. Like those others, it also demands systemic and institutional solutions.

6. If the solution to the problem of media manipulation and misinformation cant be found in individualistic appeals to  and unrealistic demands on  the rationality of lone media consumers, where might a solution be found?

The answer that I favor involves socially distributed cognition  collective information-seekers and decision-makers whose abilities to filter out inaccurate information exceed those of individual thinkers. In other words, the answer involves the sorts of systems and institutions studied by the nascent field of social epistemology, among others.

7. One of the worrisome aspects of the socially distributed approach that I favor is that it doesnt provide any knock-down arguments against someone who would challenge me that the social systems in which Im embedded  the networks of news, science, and academics from which I derive my information  are in fact reliable sources of information.

The problem is that accurately assessing the effects of systems and institutions is messy. Think about analyses of gun violence or disease spread or climate change: although there are often accounts and explanations of such phenomena that are widely accepted, there will always be room in the data for alternate explanations, no matter how fringe.

Analogously, the devotee of the Drudge Report or Fox News or QAnon could question my reliance on news sources like The Guardian, the Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. I can explain that reliance, but of course it wont be an explanation that will satisfy the committed Fox News viewer.

At most one of us is relying on accurate sources; neither of us has an account of that reliance that will convince the other.

8. Returning to the problem of deepfakes, my preferred solution is this. We  people like me, who prefer NPR to Breitbart News  need to strengthen the sorts of media and other institutions that have the resources to find out which evidence is reliable and which is fake. We need to influence discourse by expressing our preference for conducting discussion and debate on the basis of that sort of evidence. We need to elect public officials  beginning at the local level with school boards and town councils  who share our commitment to evidence-based decision-making, in which the evidence is drawn from the sorts of sources in which we have confidence.

In short, we need to work to shore up and invest in institutions that put a priority on accuracy and truth. (And yes, I write that with the understanding that those who disagree with me will have their own understandings of what the words accuracy and truth mean. Again: at most one of us will be correct. Im betting on me.)

9. There is some connection between this discussion and a pair of posts that recently drew attention on 3QD (see here and here). The difference, though, is that the discussion of QAnon and skepticism in those posts largely involved evaluations of individual rationality.

If my discussion here is apt, however, the better diagnosis would be at the level of collective rationality. On that diagnosis, the correct response to QAnon isnt along the lines of engagement and rational argument; rather, the strategy should be more along the lines of Dont feed the trolls.by Hari Balasubramanian

A bit of self indulgence  also a kind of preface to all the 3 Quarks Daily essays Ive written.

Ive always thought of myself as someone who is more drawn to the humanities than to math or the sciences. This can seem very puzzling to someone who looks at my career details: degrees in engineering and a career in academia in a branch of applied mathematics called operations research. Even I am stumped sometimes  how did I get so deep into a quantitative field when all my life Ive held that literature (literary fiction in particular), history and travel are far better at revealing something about the human condition than any other pursuit?

Some follow an ambition stubbornly wherever it takes them and whatever the consequences. I did not have that kind of resolve. Growing up in west and central India, I read a lot English and American fiction  Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, Alistair Maclean  and decided that I must become a writer (English only of course for the mentally colonized, why would I write in Tamil or Hindi?). The ambition was strong enough to have a grip on my thoughts for the next two decades, but never strong enough to counter practical concerns. Like many middle class families, my parents felt I had to get into an engineering or medical college since both offered the promise of financial stability. I simply went along, following what high school friends around me were doing. After toying with majors as diverse as electronics and metallurgy I finally settled on something called production engineering. In 1996, I left home and attended what was then called the Regional Engineering College, twenty kilometers from the south Indian city of Tiruchirappalli: a semi-industrial, semi-rural middle of nowhere kind of campus where teenagers from far flung states of India came and lived in packed hostels for four years.

The ambition to become a writer, meanwhile, bided its time. All you had to do was write one breakthrough novel, something like Arundhati Roys The God of Small Things, become famous, then write full time: that was the naive worldview that sustained me for a long time.

In college, I largely ignored the engineering curriculum  one semester I was ranked 32 in my class of 40  instead I spent time typing up verbose short stories and poems that sounded as if I was preparing for the GRE (which I was). In any case, from the very first year conversations in hostel corridors centered not on the laws of thermodynamics or how an antenna worked but on salaries at recruiting multinational companies, the boom in software jobs, MBAs, and funded scholarships at American universities. College was a passageway to prosperity but the curriculum itself seemed secondary.

It did not occur to me then that learning technical material required patience and curiosity in the classroom and labs, working out problems carefully, allowing a difficult concept to slowly seep into you. If you persist, you finally touch the mystery that lies at the heart of an equation or natural phenomenon, and this keeps you coming back for more. Four years in college gives you time to persist with the difficult concepts of engineering and mathematics  I missed my chance and now its hard to catch up. I am able these days to read a complex literary work like Tolstoys War and Peace, or get deep into the historical details of a particular place or people, but I find it difficult to open a physics, math or biology textbook and learn things on my own  even if the text is Feynman Lectures on Physics, written by one of the best science communicators of the 20th century.



In August 2000, a few months after finishing college, I arrived in Arizona State University for graduate school. My major was something called Industrial Engineering. As before, this wasnt a decision that considered my true interests; I was only following the steps of my college friends, and the thousands of students across India, who were headed to American universities. In retrospect, it seems that we were all willing pawns, flung across continents by the forces of globalization. I was neutral to what I specialized in; my only goal at the time was to travel abroad because I feared that if I took a job in India I would never get chance to see another country. Yes, such silly ideas can inform important decisions!

Industrial engineering is the odd one among engineering majors in that it is not based on physical laws. It uses instead a combination of mathematical methods, algorithms, economics and management techniques to improve systems: that nebulous, catch-all term that could mean anything  a supply chain, an assembly line, a transportation network. These methods, generally pitched for executives, managers and administrators, were and still are considered indispensable in any organization. In all the textbooks and classes, there was an unabashed focus on efficiency, reducing costs, and maximizing profit which I found dispiriting; it seemed diametrically opposed to the lyricism, beauty and open-endedness that I sought in literature. I noticed there wasnt a close questioning of the effects of cutting costs and maximizing profits  how it produced a harried culture where everyone was overworked, everything had to be obsessively quantified, and there was little time to reflect on what was happening.

What kept me going, though, was the mathematics  the mathematics itself (when I could understand the notation: it never came easily to me and I still struggle with it) was neutral to everything, it had a puzzle-like quality that drew me in and kept me intrigued. The methods of teaching were very different from India: American professors were engaging, you could bring text books to exams, an intuitive understanding of the material was encouraged and nothing had to be memorized. For the first time, I began to pay attention during classes. I wrote a masters thesis and decided to stay for a doctoral degree. It was a big decision that I was very casual about, but I wasnt interested in joining the corporate world and staying on at the university was more comfortable than doing anything else. I lived in shared apartments for six years and got by easily on a monthly stipend of $800-1200.

I liked graduate school because it gave me sufficient time, after all the coursework and research, to read and write. At the time, I thought of fiction as the highest form of creative expression; nothing else was worth it. But I had hardly read anything; I had just begun to catch up on what is thought of as serious literature: Faulkner, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie. I thought Rushdies Midnights Children was astonishing in its inventiveness; it held me in its spell for years. I dreamed of doing something similar. I tried my best to write regularly but was not successful. My short stories were not coming out well; I found myself agonizing over authenticity, what kind of narrative voice to use, plot devices, dialogue. I discovered why fiction is so hard: the sheer number of possibilities, the many directions in which you can take a story can exhaust you.

The idea that literary fiction is the pinnacle of creative expression started to fade in August 2004, when I read Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel. GGS asks very grand questions: why did history turn out the way it did? why are some parts of the world more developed (have more cargo) than others? what explained the significant differences between how colonialism and demographic realities played out in Asia and Africa as opposed to Americas and Australia? GGS filled gaps in my historical understanding in a manner that no other book had done  it explained how geographic connectedness to other regions and ecological factors favorable to agriculture and domestication of animals had given certain parts of the world a head start in creating complex societies and dominating others. I was also startled at how diseases previously absent in one continent can suddenly appear and, in combination with relentless conquest and ethnic cleansing, wreak demographic havoc, as they did in the Americas and Australia. From mundane everyday stuff like chilies which I thought were Indian but are actually Mexican, to more sobering facts such as why there are now as many Indian Americans as American Indians in the United States, GGS opened up a new eco-geographic way of looking at history that had been absent in all the dry dynasties-kings-and-empires history Id learned. (Although Diamond gets a lot of credit for GGS, it must be said that he was only putting together ideas that had already been articulated, but not in such a bestselling way.)

Around the same time, I happened to read VS Naipauls essays and books based on his travels to India, Iran, Pakistan, Ivory Coast, Congo, United States, and Indonesia. GGS and Naipauls books  and later Charles Manns 1491  seeded the idea that perhaps I too could combine travel with history, both cultural and ecological, and write something that had a new perspective. I certainly found it a lot easier than writing fiction. I traveled to American Indian reservations and to Latin American countries, hoping to write a book that contrasted the indigenous pre-Columbus history of the Americas  a theme that had intrigued for a long time  with what had happened on the Indian subcontinent. The book never materialized, it was all too abstract and weakly conceived, but the travel and research I voluntarily took on matched or even exceeded the effort I put into my doctoral studies in engineering.



This then was the dual life I led: on the outside, I was an Indian engineer in the US, working on his PhD, and this is what most people saw; inside I saw myself as some kind of literary person, traveling, reading and writing, and eventually making this my primary identity. But the only writing that was receiving any external recognition was my academic work; my research papers, which I gave little importance to and even ridiculed, kept getting published. In May 2008, I was offered an assistant professor position in Industrial Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I accepted it. I rationalized it with the thought that academia is the place where Id have time to do what I wanted, particularly during the summer and winter breaks when there were no classes. Indeed, despite the pressures of tenure  publishing, writing research grants, teaching and mentoring doctoral students  I set off in my early years on trips to Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, countries that, unlike Canada and US, still had large indigenous populations. Bolivia in particular fascinated me since, in 2006, it had elected an Aymara, Evo Morales, as president for the first time in its history. I hoped to collect the travel material in a book or a series of essays.

But academic life had other plans for me and began to affect me in an unexpected way. Teaching in particular had a huge influence; I took a real liking to it. Tolstoy defined art as that human activity which consists in one persons consciously conveying to others, by certain external signs, the feelings he or she has experienced, and in others being infected by those feelings and also experiencing them. Teaching a mathematical concept, by this definition, is an art: you have to first feel the force or beauty of that concept internally within you; then, in the classroom  which Ive come to regard as a stage where one performs  you have to convey what you feel so that your students get infected and can experience it too. I wasnt always successful at it, but the more I taught, the more I felt drawn to concepts in probability and mathematics.

I also became a lot more curious about science and engineering, the very stuff that I had ignored in college. Maybe it was the campus conversations with academics and nerdy types, or frequent visits to the Harvard and MIT bookstores, where books on science had an equal footing with everything else. For the first time I had the chance, while reading Brian Greenes The Elegant Universe, to let the immensity of Einsteins theories of relativity sink in  I had only known about Einsteins fame not why he was famous. The biologist Edward Wilsons research papers on the organization of ant colonies, biodiversity and conservation, collected in the book Nature Revealed, instilled a new curiosity about the natural world. Until then, I had thought of nature as beautiful, but not as something that possesses a structure that can be analyzed. Because I now lived in a small western Massachusetts town surrounded by woods and swamps, there was a chance to observe patterns in nature more closely. Then in 2009, I started following 3 Quarks Daily and was instantly taken by the seamless blending together of content in science, economics, politics, literature and art.

A consequence of all this was that the part of me that was drawn to literary fiction, history and the humanities no longer considered itself adversary to the part that was now drawn to certain types of mathematics and science. I read Russian literary classics during these years with the same enthusiasm that I read a text on probability or a book on evolution. When I became a guest columnist on 3QD in 2014  what a thrill it was to be selected!  I decided I would not focus on one theme, but allow all my interests to express themselves. This is why my columns have drifted unevenly across many topics, without a center or focus: Ive written on the science of queueing and concepts in statistics, then suddenly shifted to topics such as linguistic diversity and the ecological impact of beavers, and yet other times returned to travelogues based on trips to Ecuador or Turkey. The pieces didnt always turn out the way I wanted, and sometimes they took on too dry or academic a tone, but the act of researching and writing each piece, immersing myself in one topic then hopping to something else altogether, has been very satisfying.

So thats where I find myself now  a lot more comfortable with this arbitrary mishmash of interests than those years when there was always a tension to switch full time to literary writing. Its a turn of affairs that an older, purist self would have found unsatisfactory but that self is long gone! Thanks to the accident of a career that I never really wanted and a longstanding interest in the one I did want, aspects of both the sciences and humanities have started to come together  and I hope it continues to be that way.by Shawn Crawford

Why do we stay? We lack the resources or the opportunities. We remain faithful to a place given to us through an accident of birth. We rage and complain but never wander very far, the reasons a cipher to ourselves. Even in America, a land of nomads and self-fashioning, most of us eventually find a place that is our Place, and feel compelled to return again and again. I continually meet people that define where they are merely in terms of where they left. We stay even in our absence.

The exodus of Irish writers from their country in the early 20th Century, most notably James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, would influence all of literature for the rest of the century. Before both could create, they would have to come to terms with an Irish culture that offered both a deluge of artistic tradition and a stifling insularity that threatened to eat every beautiful creature Irish writers produced. But they would become exiles in very different ways, although Beckett would work as Joyces literary secretary for a time, until he left to find his own identity and narrative path.

Joyce never left Dublin no matter how far he roamed. He occupied Dublin in his mind, obsessed over its topography, demanded to know of every change from friends, wrote of no place else his entire career. But Beckett would succeed by leaving in the most astonishing manner: not only would he leave Dublin in his work to inhabit a place that was Everywhere but Nowhere, he would leave English and begin writing exclusively in French. Moving to another language would give Beckett the order, discipline, and what he called the impoverishment needed to find his own voice and literature. He would create as close to the bone as possible and find the heart of modern human existence. And then he would put the work back together again in an English stripped of all flourishes.

While Beckett and Joyce would grow into titans of modern literature, another Irish writer would stay in Dublin, laboring to survive while producing a body of work both utterly brilliant and utterly unknown today except for a devoted cult following. That man was Flann OBrien.

OBrien, born Brian ONolan, did not flee Ireland as so many artists did in the years of Revolution and Independence. I will not begin to try and describe the desperate poverty and repressive culture the Irish lived under. Get yourself a copy of Angelas Ashes. I once heard Bob Geldof, growing up in the tail end of those years, speak about his ferocious need to escape that world, a place he described as always cold and him always shivering, and head to London in his teens so he could make a life and music.

Although he was a brilliant student, mastered several languages, and could write anyone into the ground, OBrien stayed in that trying world. We know little about OBriens private life, but he seemed to stay to care for his eleven brothers and sisters; he seemed to stay because he thought it was his Ireland too; he stayed and became a sort of trickster and folk hero and sage all in one. He died young like Joyce, virtually unknown even to those that loved his writing because of the masks he had to wear to stay and survive.

Faced with caring for his family after the early death of his father, OBrien chose to stay in the only profession that offered any hope of a certain income and a dependable pension: the Irish Civil Service. But the service required its employees to stay above politics and government disputes, so to pursue his writing Brian ONolan became Flann OBrien and a host of other pseudonyms. He once carried on a literary feud with himself and a host of other Irish writers by sending countless letters under various names to the Irish Times, sometimes supporting his previous position and sometimes railing against it. The dispute proved so entertaining OBrien would write a regular column under his other great pen name Myles na gCopaleen.

OBrien lived his life speaking fluent Irish at home and English in public. He could think in Irish, unlike other writers who often just dallied with Gaelic, and it gave him an authority and voice beloved by both the local literary crowd and the barman reading Myles in the Irish Times. OBrien refused to romanticize the Irish peasant the way so many expats and Yeats did; he knew the brutality of trying to survive and wrote a satiric novel about such mythologizing of Irish rural life called The Poor Mouth. Fittingly, it was composed in Irish and only translated into English years later.

In 1939 OBriens masterpiece, At Swim-Two-Birds was published under the urging of the English author Graham Greene. Some critics will argue the book not published during OBrienss life, The Third Policeman, should receive the greater praise, but those critics are ninnies and should be slapped about the face and shoulders with the NYRB.

Let us go then, you and I, and ponder At Swim-Two-Birds. To wit, a student in Dublin embarks upon a novel about a man named Trellis, himself an author of Westerns set in Dublin. The characters in the novel live a rich and full life outside the book while the author sleeps and begin to plot how to do away with him for good. In between there occur digressions, a sub-plot with Irish heroes such as Finn MacCool, Mad Sweeny, and my personal favorite, the Pooka MacPhellimey, who likes to argue luck, philosophy, kangaroos and the importance of numbers because evil is even, truth is an odd number, and death is a full stop. If you are confused, just remember that for your sake I am leaving out a many other good bits for clarity.

OBrien inhales all of Irish folklore and the conventions of the modern novel, rearranges them, satirizes them, exaggerates them, out-styles their style, and says, Top that. And to my mind no one ever has. Once you read At Swim-Two-Birds you realize how a movie like Being John Malkovich owes everything to it without surpassing its brilliance. The ability to point out and disassemble what you are doing at every turn while simultaneously entertaining the audience watching the performance has been the great enterprise of postmodern art. That for the most part these efforts just turn into a lot of winking and nudging and boredom testifies to the genius of OBrien. Producing mediocrity and then justifying the mediocrity by proclaiming our self-knowledge of said mediocrity (Get it? Get it! I know it sucks, too. Hilarious. Now lets make a sequel) is still just mediocrity.

Enjoy OBrien in his own habitat. At one point in the novel we are notified by a press release that Trellis has managed to deliver a full-grown man without aid of conception through a process called Aestho-autogamy. Trellis gives credit for his success to Mr. William Tracy, a fellow writer of Westerns. Mr. Tracy felt many problems could be solved if issue could be born already matured, teethed, reared, educated, and ready to essay those competitive plums which make the Civil Service and the Banks so attractive to younger breadwinners of today. The article ends by informing us that

Mr. Tracy succeed, after six disconcerting miscarriages, in having his own wife delivered of a middle-aged Spainard who lived for only six weeks. A man who carried jealousy to the point of farce, the novelist insisted that his wife and the new arrival should occupy separate beds and use the bathroom at divergent times. Some amusement was elicited in literary circles by the predicament of a woman who was delivered of a son old enough to be her father but it served to deflect Mr. Tracy not one tittle from his dispassionate quest for scientific truth.

Despite his many guises, the true identity of OBrien and gCopaleen was known to most of his Dublin admirers. Eventually his scathing wit, especially about Irish politics and government, would lead to his forced retirement from civil service. OBrien would continue writing on a host of subjects and in many genres, including script work for radio and television (he once wrote a ballet for radio), until his early death, on April Fools Day, in 1966, at age 55.

In 1954, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the events in Joyces Ulysses, OBrien and his friend John Ryan embarked upon the first Bloomsday celebration. You heard me right; OBrien helped invent Bloomsday. The crew consisted of OBrien, Ryan, the poet Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, AJ Leventhal, and Joyces cousin Tom Joyce. Horse drawn cabs ferried the men about the city, retracing the path of the book. Each man played roles from the novel, and in suitable fashion the project had to be abandoned halfway through at the Bailey pub, owned by Ryan, due to drunkenness and general mayhem. Only an Irishman could manage to be thrown from his own premises. This fact alone makes OBrien a constellation in the Irish firmament.

The romantic in me wants to see OBrien as a great hero, the man that stayed and attended his responsibilities and remains in relative obscurity for his efforts, ending his short life as an angry and somewhat broken alcoholic. I think about OBrien when I see a yammering head ensconced in a New York studio claim to know what life is like here in the heartland, in the Oklahoma, as parochial and impenetrable as OBriens Dublin, where I have chosen to stay. He doesnt even speak our language, understands nothing of our daily existence, our joys and sorrows and above all fear, a fear that seems bent on consuming everything I love in the here here.

Perhaps all artists are exiles. All of them give up Life in some way to create beauty and truth for us, not because we deserve it, but because they cannot exist without such toil. You cannot gaze upon their creations without wanting to weep for their sacrifice and rejoice for what they have wrought.by Joan Harvey

Even though I knew better, when I was told I could get free magazine subscriptions with my minimal airline miles that would otherwise expire, I succumbed. Of course I didnt need any more reading material, and I was fully aware of the waste theyd create, but I allowed myself to be lured by the idea that getting something was better than getting nothing. So I got Food and Wine, with recipes that I could never make, and Conde Nast Traveler, with glamorous photos of places Ill never go. And I got Vogue, with, naturally, clothes I will never wear. Ive always enjoyed fashion. But I found the first issue I received, August, disturbing. I was astonished at how covered up all the models were. Almost no skin anywhere. Necklines were high, so high that there were turtlenecks even on summer dresses. Turtlenecks even on the beach. Long coats over full length body suits on the beach. Gigi Hadid, of Dutch and Palestinian heritage (I suppose to avoid issues of cultural appropriation) is shown in a head scarf and a coat the same green as the sister wives in The Handmaids Tale. And, naturally, she too is wearing a turtleneck. There are also almost no legs to be seen in the issue. Dresses are shapeless and long. Even bare arms are rare. Hair is cut short or covered up. The September Vogue was not much different. More long dresses, more head scarves, more turtlenecks on the beach. Though in this issue we do get some shots of Beyonces legs.

An article in the September Vogue by Lynne Yaeger asks: Is there seduction in concealment? The models in the photos accompanying her essay have not just their bodies, but their faces covered as well. What is the meaning of this peekaboo? Yaeger writes. Is this desire to cover up which manifested itself in the all 2018 collections not just with covered heads but with modest necklines and voluminous long sleevesa reflection of the #MeToo moment, a rage against the sexual-objectification machine? . . . Or perhaps the new visibility of women in the Middle East, and they way that hijabs are finding their way into the fashion vocabulary, is playing a role? Or could it just be that in an age of Instagram vainglory the allure of literally covering up, of not being so endlessly available, has its own currency?[1]

This being a fashion magazine, Yaeger does not answer her questions, but continues on to discuss the kind of makeup that goes best with headscarves. But her questions are worthwhile. Fashion is, of course, about commerce. A long coat brings in more than a bikini (and the coats this year are David Byrne Talking Heads huge). Fashion always goes through cycles, hemlines rise and fall. But this particular trend seems more unsettling because were one 71-year-old, misogynist, abusive, dotard away from a religious prude who famously wont be alone with a woman not his wife. This is a time when The Handmaids Tale seems all too close, when two conservative Catholic men who will doubtless be effective in removing abortion rights have just been put on the Supreme Court, when women who supported Dr. Blasey Ford have been openly shamed and ridiculed and harassed.

True, a woman in an oversized sweater, long skirt, tights and boots, is not showing much more skin than the models in the magazine, but she can look natural or sexy or naturally sexy, whereas these clothes displayed with no flowing hair and no curves visible anywhere seem quite different. A similar trend now being pushed has been dubbed Prairie Chic. The prints are Laura Ashley-esque micro-florals, calicos and gingham, the necklines are high, sometimes there is a bib or apron, there is usually at least one ruffle.[2] Really? Women want to wear this? Why? It turns out that Batsheva Hay, one of the main forces behind the prairie dress look, is, no surprise, a convert to Orthodox Judaism and was married in a ceremony in which men and women were separated from each other. In a piece in the New Yorker, Hay muses on the effortless confidence projected by Amish and Hasidic women.[3] A woman wearing one of her dresses sent a photo to a friend who wrote back: I cant tell if I love it or if its your Big Love Halloween costume, followed by a still of Chloe Sevigny from the HBO show about Mormon fundamentalists, wearing almost the identical ensemble, down to the ruffled collar and oxen tongue pink color.[4]

It is troubling to see how quickly fashion has seemed to embrace a new prudishness with religious undertones. Of course, in longing for religion, people long for community, for being told what to do; its now often said that Western Liberalism has failed. Religion has such a pull, Neil MacGregor writes because of the power of narratives that articulate an ideal, that offer fulfillment in the context of a community, make demands on everyone, and  above all  hold out hope. It may be a matter for regret, it may represent a failure of secular politics, but it should certainly be no surprise that so many societies now see in such narratives of faith their best way.[5]

This all seems to be part of a nostalgia for fitting in, for having a place, for the comforts of home and rules and hierarchies. In Bavaria millennials are embracing dirndls and lederhosen, a trend with some frightening undertones. But, as with MAGA, we cannot go back to some imagined better time. Perhaps the wealthy women wearing these expensive prairie dresses feel so liberated and confident that they know their butter churning fantasies wont impinge on their work lives, that theyll still have equality at home; maybe the dresses just make them feel more feminine, or maybe they find it kinky to play pioneer virgin. Theres something a little Marie Antoinette about it. But it seems dangerous to embrace an aesthetic of prudery with religious signals when that is also being pushed on women from the outside. As if women had taken it upon themselves to make their bodies unsexual, constrained, hidden, both to reduce what is seen as too sexual, and, because men supposedly cant restrain themselves.

A young woman, Hailey Gates, who wears Batsheva prairie dresses, remarks that she heard someone describe a Batsheva design as the perfect dress for the #MeToo movement, which I found truly asinine. People still seem to believe that the amount of clothing a woman wears dictates whether she will be assaulted or not.[6] And, from what Ive read, in Islamic countries where women are far more covered up than we are, harassment and groping still go on in public places.

I confess that after Vogue I was relieved to find that the college girls in my town were almost all still wearing short shorts and the streets were filled with long bare tanned legs. What a shame it would be for young women at the height of their beauty and sexuality to miss sun and air on their skin and freedom of movement and the ability to show themselves off. Im with Nora Ephron who famously said, If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and dont take it off until youre thirty-four.

Naturally, it is hard to address this subject without opening the whole question of freedom of choice in what one should be allowed to wear or not. I understand that it would be as hard for a woman used to wearing a headscarf to take it off, as it would be for me to put one on. I want to completely respect each womans choice to wear what feels right. An Iranian-American friend of mine, who has never worn a hijab recently considered putting one on in reaction to the racism she experienced both at work and from the President. Eventually she chose not to do this. But I understand her sentiment. On the other hand, I think its worth reading Mona Eltahawys book Headscarves and Hymens for an insiders view of the issue. It took Eltahawy many years to have the courage to remove her headscarf. But she supports the ban on the face veil. Im disappointed with the left wing in Europe for not speaking up and declaring that the niqab ban has everything to do with womens rights; we are fighting against an ideology that does not believe in womens rights. This is why I support the bans on the face veil that have been imposed in France, Belgium, and some parts of Barcelona, Spain. It is why I question why so many Muslim men jump to defend the niqab and the right to wear it. (pp. 62-63) The veil, she writes, be it the hijab or the niqab, is a white flag raised to signal our surrender to the Islamists and their conservatism. (p. 47) When Westerners remain silent out of respect for foreign cultures, they show support only for the most conservative elements of those cultures. Cultural relativism is as much my enemy as the oppression I fight within my culture and faith. (p. 28) Implicit in the criticism of my essay was the charge that I want the West to rescue us. Only we can rescue ourselves. I have never implored anyone else to rescue us from misogyny; it is our fight to win. I implore allies of the countries in this part of the world to pay more attention to womens rights and to refuse to allow cultural relativism to justify horrendous violations of womens rights. This is very different from calling on anyone to rescue us. I insist on the right to critique both. (p. 28-29).[7]

Eltahawy quotes the feminist Khadija Riyadi: Laws help to change mentalities. We dont wait for mentalities to change on their own.

Some years ago I was in Turkey in a place called Patara, a beautiful beachfront wildlife preserve where sea turtles came to lay eggs. It was a somewhat depressed area, unlike the fancy Russian and English resorts further down the coast. On the beach at that time European women went naked, American women wore bikinis, wealthy Turkish women wore burkinis, and the poorer local women went in the water fully dressed in their long skirts and blouses and headscarves. But the men all wore little black speedos, no matter what the women with them were wearing. If there was something liberating about being completely covered up on a hot beach, wouldnt men leap to it?

In Patara we stayed in a little pension run by a wonderful man named Kazim who spoke excellent English; his wife and mother wore headscarves and did the very delicious cooking; unfortunately (and this speaks to the different education and status of women all over the world), unlike Kazim they did not speak English. It was 2008, when Erdogan was Prime Minister and not yet President, and at that time, as a holdover from the days of Kemal Ataturk, women were not allowed to wear headscarves when attending university. Kazim said he thought it was important that the rule be kept. Because, he said, once headscarves were allowed, it would soon be taboo not to wear them. Kazim was right. Under Erdogan the rule has of course been changed and photos show most of the women in classes with hair covered. In the past five years, secular Turkish women say they find themselves judged by an increasingly conservative society.

This is of course true in many places. The nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy tells us that in Pakistan, Increasing conservatism among Muslims has led to uncovered faces being regarded as sinful. Once upon a time there was no burqa on campus except maybe the odd one here or there. But today most women at my university  where I have taught for 44 years  are either in burqa or hijab. He also mentioned an incident in which the head cleric of an institution next to his University  our ex-student  had threatened that his female students would throw acid on the faces of QAU female students unless they covered their faces. https://newint.org/features/2018/05/01/pervez-hoodbhoy

In America Im sure this austere covered up look will be just a phase, and probably not a popular one.Were too used to our streamlined, comfortable, efficient clothes, and we spend far too much on hair products, on exercise, on learning to appreciate womens bodies of all shapes and sizes, to start to hide everything. I personally dont know any women who would put on a prairie dress, but I live in the sticks, and ironically it is city dwellers who have apparently taken up the look. Though on a recent trip to New York I didnt see one woman covered head to toe in ruffles and gingham. I recently had coffee with a friend, a beautiful, very politically active woman in her mid-sixties. She was wearing a simple short sleeveless dress in a deep purple t-shirt material. It was comfortable and elegant and revealed legs, arms, and neck. It set off her white hair and she looked stunning in it. $10 from Costco, she said. I mentioned how the fashion now seemed to be covering women completely. You mean those prairie dresses, she said. Give me a break.

This year there were sexy handmaids costumes advertised for Halloween, though theyve since been removed from the websites. Great, a sexy keep-me-as-a-slave-and-rape-me-until-Im pregnant costume? We are, I think, very confused. But, more to the point, the women protesting Kavanaugh included women who were appropriately dressed as handmaids. And, on a somewhat optimistic note, the majority of the womenangry, vocal, distressedwho were protesting Kavanaugh wore t-shirts and jeans, clothes that arent about hiding, but rather about freedom of movement. These women arent going back. They arent embracing patriarchal religions that find womens lives secondary to those of their husbands and offspring. Instead, these women are exposing the truth, and are in the front lines fighting against those who want to cover it up.

[1] Yaeger, Lynn. (2018, September). Cover Story, Vogue, September, p. 587.

[2] 1 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/style/prairie-woman-style-batsheva-doen.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

[3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/10/batsheva-hay-rethinks-the-traditions-of-feminine-dress

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/style/prairie-woman-style-batsheva-doen.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/05/belief-is-back-societies-worldwide-faith-religion

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/style/prairie-woman-style-batsheva-doen.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

[7] Eltahawy, Mona. (2016) Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.En espanol | One of the many photos adorning the walls of the new National Veterans Memorial and Museum (NVMM) in Columbus, Ohio, depicts a woman and young girl bounding joyfully across an airfields tarmac toward their just-returned loved one. He's Air Force Captain Thomas Moe, a fighter pilot with the 366th Fighter Wings returning from Vietnam, where he'd been captured and held for more than five years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison, enduring starvation and torture. When hed last seen his daughter, she was still an infant.

Moes moving story is just one of dozens told at the NVMM, set for a grand opening on October 27, and open to the general public beginning on October 31. The original concept was for an Ohio statewide veterans center based in Columbus, then a committee headed by the late John Glenn recommended  and Congress approved  its expansion to encompass veterans nationwide. It's now the only museum nationwide honoring the service and sacrifice of all veterans in every branch of the armed forces and in every conflict since the Revolutionary War.

Its goal is to take visitors on a narrative journey, with the stories of individual veterans meant to illustrate the universal experiences shared by men and women in the U.S. armed forces.Warrants sought T. Denny Sanford's email and data records

The Argus Leader and ProPublica went to court to win the release of public information.Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

The balm is green and possesses a vaguely herbal odor. When massaged on the hand, theres a slight cooling effect  or perhaps its just this reporters imagination.

When people come into the store and complain about plantar fasciitis, I tell them to rub this on their feet, said Cassie Eaton, manager of Natures Secret CBD and Oils.

CBD stands for cannabidiol, a cannabis-derived substance that can be found in both hemp and marijuana plants. Unlike the compound THC, which is also found in both plants (though in very small quantities in hemp), CBD is non-psychoactive, meaning it doesnt create a high or affect brain function. Still, many who sell CBD-laced products claim it can be used to help alleviate anxiety as well as pain, inflammation and a host of other conditions.

At Natures Secret, products run from $5 (a CBD lollipop) to $300 (a solution infused with thousands of milligrams of CBD). Because Natures Secret isnt a licensed cannabis dispensary and sells items with either no or only trace amounts of THC, customers can make purchases without a medical marijuana card. The store opened in January, and Eaton says customer demand has boomed in recent months: what was once being purchased by the business in a pack of 20 now must be ordered in a pack of 40 to stay in stock, and theres a waitlist for several items.

The Journal identified 12 stores in Albuquerque that sell CBD products to the public at large that are not licensed dispensaries. Many products can also be purchased online from a variety of retailers. While estimates on the size of New Mexicos CBD market are hard to come by, Vincent Galbiati, executive director of the newly-formed New Mexico Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, says the CBD market within the state and elsewhere is positioned for phenomenal growth. Thats in line with a report from market research firm Brightfield Group, which projects that the hemp-derived CBD industry in the U.S. will grow to $1 billion by 2020.

And its not just cannabis advocates who are intrigued by the substances potential: Coca-Cola recently confirmed it is closely watching the expanding market for CBD-infused beverages.

Its only for its public perception that (CBD) hasnt become more mainstream, and were starting to see that turn happen, said Galbiati.

But is the promise of CBD  medically, legally and economically  borne out by the facts?

Not a panacea

A World Health Organization report published this year described cannabidiol as a substance that is generally well-tolerated with a good safety profile. The report states that clinical trials have shown CBD is an effective treatment for some forms of epilepsy, and theres a variety of early-stage research exploring the substances anti-inflammatory, antipsychotic, neuroprotective and other properties. However, this research is considerably less advanced than for the treatment of epilepsy, according to the report.

There are numerous CBD products . . . that are being manufactured and distributed without regulatory oversight and often with unverified contents, the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence wrote in the report. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued two major series of warning letters to manufacturers for fraudulent medical claims . . . and fraudulent production claims.

Its that lack of oversight that concerns Rachael Speegle, a registered nurse and the chief operating officer at the Verdes Foundation, one of the states 35 licensed non-profit medical marijuana producers. Vendors who sell CBD products over-the-counter to the public dont fall under the New Mexico Department of Healths jurisdiction unless they are licensed through the medical marijuana program, so they arent subject to the same product testing and dosing requirements mandated by the state.

CBD at a tanning salon isnt being sold under the same requirements as the cannabis industry here, and that concerns me as a nurse because I dont know what people are taking, said Speegle.

And while CBD is more accessible to the public than medical marijuana, it is not a replacement for it, according to Speegle. She said shes seen individuals respond well to CBD when they are seeking help with inflammation, damage to the peripheral nerves and certain autoimmune issues, among other conditions. But patients seeking relief from severe chronic pain or other acute conditions that would qualify them for the states medical marijuana program are often better candidates for products that also contain THC, according to Speegle.

Speegle has other concerns as well: topical applications have a limited effect because skin only has so many relevant receptors, and individuals taking massive quantities of CBD will eventually produce fewer natural cannabinoids, she said. Finally, its possible that person could test positive on a drug test for THC if the product contains trace amounts of the substance. She said she encourages her patients to consult with their medical providers, and to research their CBD products and vendors carefully, particularly if they are, like many New Mexicans, struggling to make ends meet.

Its not a panacea . . . We have to make sure we dont exploit the power of suggestion and the placebo effect, she said. If someone is spending $50 on a product today, what are they not spending that on $50 on tomorrow?

A game changer

In June, the federal government issued a decision Galbiati described as the biggest game changer in the industry: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Epidiolex, an oral CBD solution used to treat two rare and severe forms of epilepsy. It is the first prescription drug made from marijuana ever approved by the agency, though the FDA has previously given approval to drugs that contain synthetic versions of THC.

Marijuana advocates believe the decision makes an intergovernmental showdown over the legality of cannabis products increasingly likely, a showdown they believe could be decided in their favor. Though nine states have legalized recreational use of marijuana and another 31 states have medical marijuana programs, CBD and other cannabis products  with the exception of Epidiolex  remain illegal under federal law.

When this gets resolved, its going to mean a lot of good things for job creation, economic development and patient care in New Mexico and the rest of the country, said Galbiati.

The legal issues are complicated within New Mexico as well. A few weeks before the approval of Epidiolex, the states Department of Health sent a letter to New Mexicos licensed producers and dispensaries warning against selling CBD products made from plants grown outside of the state. The department argued those sales were a violation of the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act, the 2007 law that created the states medical marijuana program. Under that legislation, any licensed producer who obtains or transports cannabis outside New Mexico is in violation of federal law and could be prosecuted by the state.

In a letter to the Health Department, the New Mexico Cannabis Chamber of Commerce contended that interpreting the law in that manner would lead to a severe shortage of CBD, as the limited number of plants they are permitted by the state makes it impossible . . . to be self-reliant in producing sufficient quantities of CBD. Others complained that the warning unfairly targeted licensed entities, because it was not sent to retailers outside the departments jurisdiction.

A Health Department spokesman told the Journal that the agencys position on the issue remains unchanged.

Back at Natures Secret, Eaton described the New Mexico cannabis community as a family, not a competition. With a standard business license, the store continues to serve a diverse clientele, which she said includes military personnel, the parent of a young child with a seizure disorder, and people looking to calm their pets during a long car ride. Eaton said the store is rigorous about the quality of their inventory, is careful to not describe possible effects in terms of cures, and refers customers to licensed dispensaries as appropriate.

Were here to educate people, to help them learn more about their health, she said. Retail is not the most important thing we do.LAS VEGAS  Patricia Lugo rattled off a string of fierce adjectives describing life under the Trump administration  ugly, bad, terrible.

She joined a cluster of other Latinos in a Las Vegas shopping center in listing grievances against the president that included referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists and separating parents from children at the border.

Lugo is determined to support Democrats as they fight back, but shes alarmed that a handful of friends and family have given up on voting.

They say it doesnt do anything, said Lugo, 56, a promoter for a footwear chain. And it doesnt matter who votes because (politicians) do whatever they want anyway.

Trump rode to his improbable victory in 2016 by winning a troika of Rust Belt states where there are relatively few Latinos. This was supposed to be the election Latinos struck back.

Many Democrats presumed that Latinos, who are largely clustered in a handful of states, would be better-positioned to flex their muscles and punish the president for his actions and rhetoric targeting Latino immigrants  most recently when he pledged to send troops to the border to block a northbound caravan of Central American migrants.

Latinos had been poised to play a prominent role in several House races in California and Senate races in Florida and the southwest.

But as Election Day nears, polling shows its more affluent and predominantly white college-educated women with whom Democrats have made the most inroads, while Latinos havent fully turned against Trump and his Republican Party.

Donald Trump is the most hostile president to Hispanics in American history, yet Donald Trump has between a 25 percent and 35 percent approval rating among some Hispanics  higher than 40 percent in Florida, said Fernand Amadi, a Florida-based Latino pollster.

About 25 percent of Latino voters are reliable Republicans, but others seem willing to support the GOP amid the solid economy.

From their perspective, this Trumps crazy and a bigoted loudmouth, but we deal with people like this in every day of our lives, Amadi said.

The relatively tepid showing for Democrats so far from some Latino voters was evident this month when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which supports House candidates, trimmed its financial support from candidates trying to oust Republican congressmen in one west Texas district and another in Californias Central Valley.

In Texas, polls indicate enough Latinos are sticking with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz that he is likely to fend off a challenge from Democratic Rep. Beto ORourke. And in Florida, Arizona and Nevada, Democrats remain neck-and-neck with Republicans in Senate races.

Still, there are positive signs for Democrats among Latinos.

Gil Cisneros, a former Naval officer and philanthropist, more than doubled Latino turnout when he won the June primary for a formerly GOP open House seat in Southern California. Democrats report initial signs that Latinos are requesting ballots at a higher clip in California  home to several competitive House races  and that early Latino voting is strong in a district in southern New Mexico that has long been held by the GOP.

Democrats predict there will be a significant bump in Latino turnout, but theyre not sure itll be enough.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending $25 million to reach out to Democratic voters who normally sit out midterms, including Latinos. Rep. Ben Lujan of New Mexico chairs the organization. Executive director Dan Sena says the group understands that Latinos need extra attention and candidates they can believe in.

You can show up to vote against the president, but you also need a candidate who shares your values, Sena said.

The politics of Latinos are diverse, ranging from older, GOP-leaning Cuban emigres in Florida to newly naturalized Democratic-leaning Mexican immigrants in the Southwest, to families in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado that have lived in the country for generations.

Politically, they have one thing in common: They vote less in midterm elections. Latinos lag behind blacks and whites in turnout and their participation typically plummets in non-presidential years.

In 2014, for example, only 27 percent of eligible Latinos cast a ballot compared to 46 percent of whites and 41 percent of blacks. Polls show elevated excitement about voting in November among all groups, but Latinos still lag.

Were younger. We havent voted as much. Theres an intimidation factor, said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who noted the average age of a typical Latino eligible to vote is 27, while the typical white is 40. Rocha and other Latino Democratic strategists worry the party has taken the community for granted rather than wooing them with the intensity with which it has targeted white college-educated women.

Trump can contribute to Latinos reluctance to dive into politics. Multiple Democrats said in interviews that the presidents hardline immigration policies and dalliance with white supremacists can demoralize Latinos.

Ive seen it firsthand in focus groups  the visceralness of the reaction to his face and his picture, where I have Latino voters who wont even read the mailer, Rocha said.

Matt Barreto of the Hispanic polling firm Latino Decisions said Trumps immigration policies are sowing fear among Latino voters, many of whom have members of their extended family threatened by the presidents attempts to deport immigrants. That doesnt necessarily mean these voters will automatically turn out at the polls.

Theres a fine line between voter anger, which can be mobilized and lead to people wanting to take action, and alienation, where people feel the system doesnt work for them and they withdraw, Barreto said. We are observing both this cycle.

Alma Landaverde feels anger and alienation clashing in her constantly, but anger has won out. The 31-year-old hotel worker is a legal immigrant from El Salvador with four U.S.-born children, but other members of her family rely on temporary protected status to remain in the country  a protection Trump is trying to end.

Landaverde cant vote, but after seeing images of children the Trump administration separated from immigrating parents and placed behind bars, she started canvassing for the Culinary Union, a powerful pro-Democratic union of which she is a member.

I imagine it happening to one of my kids, Landaverde told a crowd of workers at a union hall. I feel like I want to do more  but I cant because if I say something theyll arrest me.

Landaverde overcame her fear and now canvases for her union but can still feel afraid when she talks to minority voters.

Some people say, because of all the racism, Im scared,' Landaverde said. But when they see you believe in something, they say yes, Im a voter.'

Nevada is a state where Democrats must turn out Latinos to win. Latinos delivered the state for President Obama twice, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and former Sen. Harry Reid, who won a surprise victory against an immigration hardliner in 2010. To many Latino Democrats, Reids victory is a case study in how the party needs to appeal to the demographic. The senator invested early in continuous contact with the community and promised concrete actions, in his case, introducing pro-immigration bills.

But even in Nevada, Latinos sometimes dont turn out. In the 2014 midterm elections, their participation rate plummeted and Democrats were wiped out, losing a congressional seat in a majority-minority Las Vegas district and all statewide races.

This year the state is the site of one of the hottest Senate races in the country. Republican incumbent Dean Heller is facing Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen. In Hellers last race, in 2012, he barely survived in a presidential year when Barack Obama won Nevada with heavy Latino turnout.

Heller softened his tone on immigration in that campaign, but in a reflection of how midterm Nevada electorates are less Latino, he has now embraced Trump and the presidents tougher rhetoric.

Heller and the president have Latino supporters in Nevada.

Were not all Democrats, said Laura Nowlan, a Latina who runs a staffing firm in Las Vegas and is staunchly opposed to abortion rights  like Heller and Trump.

Still, Las Vegas diverse neighborhoods are the heart of the states Democratic party, and there are plenty of voters like Klaudia Chavez, a 58-year-old grocery worker who registered to vote for the first time in 2016 to cast a ballot against Trump.

Shes ready to do so again by opposing Heller and any other Republicans.

We kind of woke up a bit, said Chavez, whos already made plans to vote with her daughter and mother.SNELLVILLE, Ga.  Two teen-aged suspects, including one who is still being sought by police, were charged in connection with the fatal shooting of a George police officer who was killed while responding to a suspicious vehicle parked near a middle school, authorities said Sunday.

Authorities said they believe 18-year-old Tafahree Maynard fatally shot Officer Antwan Toney on Saturday afternoon in the Snellville area, Gwinnett County Police said in a statement. Maynard remained at large early Sunday and should be considered armed and dangerous, police said.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault related to a separate incident following Toneys fatal shooting, police said.

Both suspects are from Snellville.

Toney died at a hospital from his injuries, police said. The 30-year-old from Southern California had been with the Gwinnett County Police Department for nearly three years. It was his first police job.

The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community, Gwinnett County Police Chief Butch Ayers said.

According to police, Pretlow drove the vehicle from the scene following the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants. An officer who was searching the area later encountered Pretlow about 3 p.m. Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots. Pretlow was not hit and fled into a wooded area. He was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals about 11:30 p.m.

The shooting happened near Shiloh Middle School, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. At least one officer returned fire.WASHINGTON  House Democrats are expected to re-open the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election if they win the majority in November. But they would have to be selective in what they investigate.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, has said his party would have to ruthlessly prioritize the most important matters first.

The Republican-led Intelligence Committee was the only House panel to investigate Russian meddling, and its investigation is now closed. Republicans say they found no evidence of collusion between Russia and President Donald Trumps campaign.

Democrats say Republicans ignored key facts and important witnesses and want to restart parts of the investigation if they win the House. But some Democrats also worry that there could be a political cost if they overreach.

Schiff and other lawmakers say they are closely watching special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation and the Senates Russia probe to look for gaps that they could fill. And if Mueller issues any findings, their investigative plans could change.

My sense is that we want to be precise, says California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic member of the intelligence panel.

Heres a look at what Democrats are likely to investigate if they take the House majority.

___

MONEY LAUNDERING

Schiff has repeatedly said a priority for Democrats would be investigating whether Russians used laundered money for transactions with the Trump Organization.

Trumps businesses have benefited from Russian investment over the years. Schiff said he wants to know whether this is the leverage that the Russians have over Trump.

Other committees might also want to look into money laundering, including the House Financial Services panel.

Its unclear whether Mueller is probing money laundering related to the presidents business.

___

MORE WITNESSES

The Democrats issued a list in March of several dozen people whom the committee hadnt yet interviewed when the Russia investigation was shut down. Democrats would want to call in some  but probably not all  of those witnesses. Former Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos are among them. They all pleaded guilty to various charges in the Mueller probe and have cooperated with prosecutors.

Important witnesses whose credibility Democrats have questioned might also be called back. That includes Trumps former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in federal court in August to campaign-finance violations and other charges, and prominent Trump supporter Erik Prince, who met with Russians during the campaign. Prince was defiant in an interview with the intelligence panel in December.

I believe there are those who were less than candid with us, says Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democratic member of the committee, referring to Cohen and Prince, among others.

Democrats have said they also want additional documents that Republicans refused to subpoena.

___

PUBLIC HEARINGS

House Republicans limited their Russia investigation to the intelligence panel, which traditionally conducts most of its business in secret. Democrats would probably spread the investigation over several other committees, opening it up and allowing for public hearings with top Trump officials.

Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democratic member of the intelligence panel, says they would try to be more transparent. The Republican investigation was a way to keep everything behind closed doors, he said.

Democrats would also push to provide interview transcripts to Mueller, a step Republicans had resisted. The committee recently voted to make most of its Russia transcripts public, but its unclear when that will happen.

___

DONALD TRUMP JR.

Democrats have pushed for more information about the presidents son, Donald Trump Jr., and communications with his father and other aides related to a June 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer.

According to phone records he provided to Congress, Trump Jr. had a call with a blocked number several days before the meeting took place; he said he didnt recall with whom. Democrats want to subpoena additional phone records because Trump Jr. has insisted he didnt alert his father to the meeting beforehand. They also want more information about his communications with former Trump communications aide Hope Hicks.

Democrats may also look into direct messages on Twitter between Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks, the website that released emails from top Democratic officials during the 2016 campaign. Trump Jr. has released those direct messages, in which the website urged him to publicize its leaks.

___

TRUMPS TAXES

Democrats in the majority would probably push for the release of Trumps tax returns, a task that would be up to the House Ways and Means Committee. Trump broke a decadeslong tradition by declining to release his returns during the campaign. The Republican House and Senate have declined to ask for them.

Lawmakers hope that access to Trumps taxes would reveal information about his financial entanglements with other countries, among other things. But getting them may not be easy. The tax-writing committees in Congress can obtain tax records from the IRS under the law, but it is possible the Trump administration would refuse to hand them over, prompting a court fight.

___

ISSUES RELATED TO COLLUSION

Since Republicans closed the Russia investigation earlier this year, Democrats on the intelligence panel have conducted some of their own investigations despite not having subpoena power. They have made some progress in probing Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm once employed by the Trump campaign that improperly gained access to data from millions of social media profiles. They have also investigated Republican operative Peter W. Smith, who worked to obtain Democrat Hillary Clintons emails from Russian hackers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Smith died shortly after talking to the paper.

___

PROTECTION FOR ROBERT MUELLER

A Democratic House would probably try to move legislation to protect special counsel Mueller. Trump has repeatedly criticized Mueller and his investigation, calling it a witch hunt. Prompted by concerns that Trump may try to fire Mueller, the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation in April that would give any special counsel a 10-day window to seek expedited judicial review of a firing. The bill would put into law existing Justice Department regulations that a special counsel can only be fired for good cause.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take up the bill in the Senate. But House Democrats would be expected to pass their own special counsel protection bill if they take the majority.Last week Sunday, Pope Francis sainted Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. The pope was wearing Romeros bloodstained rope belt, the one Romero wore when he was assassinated on March 24, 1980. The day before he was killed, the archbishop gave a sermon that commanded El Salvadors soldiers to disobey the orders of their superiors:

I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, Thou shalt not kill.  He went on, In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression.

Matt Eisenbrandt, human-rights lawyer and the author of Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Oscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice, described that sermon on the Democracy Now! news hour: You can hear on the audiotapes of the radio broadcast the way that that applause built as he led up to that line saying, Stop the repression. That then echoed throughout the radios around the country into every corner of El Salvador.

A day later, at a hospital chapel, a gunman shot Romero once in the heart, killing him.

Archbishop Oscar Romero gave that sermon as the U.S.-backed military violence against civilians that ravaged Central America in the 1980s and early 1990s was growing in intensity and brutality. Death squads allied with the right-wing Salvadoran junta dumped bodies on city streets nightly. Romeros assassination shocked the world and helped galvanize a global solidarity movement.

In 1980, one year after the revolutionary Sandinistas overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator in nearby Nicaragua, the Pentagon and the CIA intensified clandestine support for violent right-wing governments, arming and training their militaries and paramilitaries. Sadly, with the support of President Ronald Reagan, a reign of terror and mass slaughter swept the region, from Guatemala to Honduras to El Salvador, with hundreds of thousands of civilians tortured and killed, and countless villages razed.

Liberation theology, a movement within the Catholic Church, had been growing for decades, seeking to empower the masses to escape poverty and inequality. This was seen as a threat to the ruling elites, who began a campaign of assassination against priests advocating for liberation. Months after Romeros assassination, four U.S. Catholic Church women were raped and murdered by Salvadoran soldiers. In 1989, the military killed six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter.

All of these cases, along with the thousands of others, they have been graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), Father Roy Bourgeois said on Democracy Now! The SOA  now called WHINSEC, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, new name, same shame, Bourgeois told us  is a military training program at the U.S. Army base in Fort Benning, Ga. Bourgeois has led a vigorous protest movement against the SOA. One night in 1981, Bourgeois climbed a tree on Fort Benning grounds, outside barracks housing 525 Salvadoran troops, and blasted an audio recording of Romeros last sermon. For that protest, Father Bourgeois served a year and a half in prison. The organization he founded, SOA Watch, held annual protests for years outside Fort Benning. SOA Watch now rallies each November at the U.S.-Mexico border, as Bourgeois says, in solidarity with our migrant brothers and sisters.

Father Roy Bourgeois sees a direct connection between the violence in Central America in the 1980s and the massive number of refugees fleeing the region today: The militarism of the School of the Americas, with 70,000 Latin American soldiers trained in the art of killing, coupled with U.S. economic policies today, is an important part of the root cause of why so many flee their countries, he told us. They are doing what we would do in their situation. If they stay, they die.

(c) 2018 Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.Change. I have often said in my work the only constant is change, referring to the need for us all to accept lifes unpredictable challenges. Some changes are unavoidable, out of our control and the result of a chain reaction much bigger than ourselves. Other changes are the results of conscious decisions, put into motion by the very choices we make.

Personally, change excites me; the limitless possibilities change promises are powerful. I am not scared of change; I welcome its new perspective and fresh opportunities. Purposeful, well-informed change can be transformational.

There is a difference between purposeful well informed transformational change and hasty uninformed unnecessary change.

I believe the call to abandon accountability measures currently in place in education in the state of New Mexico is hasty, uninformed and unnecessary  its only purpose to create the appearance of change. The reality is that all of these measures are mandated by federal law and supported by best practice in our field. Abandoning PARCC, NMTEACH and school report cards would be an unfortunate setback to the progress we are making to improve our educational system.

Standardized testing is a federal mandate. If we abandon PARCC, it would only be replaced by some other standardized assessment that looks a whole lot like PARCC. It would take years to transition, cost millions of dollars we dont need to spend, and undermine the hard work our educators have done to familiarize ourselves and our students with this tool. Instead of setting our students back years by requiring the implementation of a new tool, lets embrace where we are and engage in the innovative ways we can prepare our students to perform proficiently on the tool we have invested in for years!

Teacher accountability in the form of teacher evaluations is a meaningful process which champions the best and provides a starting point to intervene in all of the ways we are currently failing our students. As teachers we know the importance of evaluation and feedback! They are cornerstones to the learning process. We must learn to engage in the same reflection and growth we are asking for from our students. Lets not forget teacher accountability is also a federal mandate, which means we would have to replace it with something similar! Our current system is not ideal, but it is a solid start and through intentional continuous training and development it has the potential to evolve into the systematic improvement of our profession. Meaningful accountability is the only way we are going to get better!

I still have multiple issues with various components of our school report cards. I dont believe we have developed a fair and transparent measure  YET. But I do believe we have a significant foundation, and I am engaged with the Public Education Department to voice my concerns and advocate for a better balance. Using data to identify schools meeting the standards of a good education and those that are not is the first step in providing the support failing schools need and recognizing those places that can model the strategies that are working. How are we ever going to get better if we do not have an accurate understanding of what we need to change? I can NOT understand why anyone would consider radically undermining the vital step of transparent school evaluations in improving our education system.

Unless the person advocating for that change is acting hastily only to gain momentum politically. Unless the person suggesting we abandon these best practice and federally mandated systems is really uniformed about education in general. Unless this person is suggesting change just for the sake of change.Today, going to college is not a luxury, its a necessity. According to the Center for Higher Education and the Workforce Center at Georgetown University, 65 percent of jobs available in the U.S.  more than six out of every 10 jobs  will require at least some post-secondary education by 2020. Thats less than two years away.

A college degree can be a good indicator of employment. As the United States has steadily transitioned from a manufacturing to a knowledge economy, the U.S. Bureau of Statistics reports people with an associates degree are twice as likely to be employed as those with only a high school diploma, and people with a bachelors degree are three times more likely to be employed.

This year, voters throughout New Mexico have the opportunity to help our states public colleges, universities and specialty schools ensure our students receive the education they need to succeed by voting in support of General Obligation Bond D for Higher Education (GO Bond D).

Near the end of the ballot, voters will be asked to approve up to $136 million in vital funding without any increase in their property taxes. This is possible because the proposed 2018 bonds would replace 2008 bonds being retired after a 10-year term.

Bond D funding is earmarked for specific safety and energy efficiency improvements to buildings, technology upgrades, and critical improvements to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs, the fastest growing occupations in the United States. At community colleges, bond funding will be used to grow high-skills, high-wage programs graduating in-demand technicians in the automotive, welding, and healthcare industries as well as upgrades to popular programs that contribute to our quality of life.

For example:

 Bond funds will support Eastern New Mexico campuses in Portales, Roswell and Ruidoso, providing renovations to the Roosevelt Science Center, doubling the capacity of a welding-automotive facility and better utilizing educational space.

 The University of New Mexico will use bond funding to modernize a 65-year-old chemistry building on our main campus and promote synergistic learning and leadership through Phase I of a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) center. In Taos, bond funding will be used to build a College to Pathways Career Center to benefit students in Taos and a 50-mile radius.

 In Socorro, the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, or New Mexico Tech, will use bond funding to renovate Brown Hall, our main administration building that was constructed in 1929. We will make necessary safety and energy efficiency improvements throughout the campus that will also benefit the community.

 Central New Mexico Community College, or CNM, will utilize bond funding to relocate and improve art facilities, including a new kiln room and four new art studios, as well as make much-needed infrastructure repairs at multiple campuses, including energy-efficient HVAC upgrades, roof replacements and improved parking lot lighting for safety.

GO Bond Funding is critical because in many cases it is the only source of funding our colleges, universities and specialty schools have to make needed investments, renovations and upgrades in our existing facilities and programs.

Support for GO Bond D is also an important economic driver in many communities since it will create an estimated 1,300 jobs in construction, architecture and other related fields.

Additionally, GO Bond D funds can help us develop the capacity to attract top faculty and use state-of-the-art technology to deliver quality online education.

A strong system of higher education is something all New Mexicans should support. A vote for GO Bond D will prepare students and give them the skills and knowledge they need to become our next generation of leaders  without raising taxes.

Support your community, our students and a better future for all New Mexicans by voting yes on GO Bond D. For more information about specific projects around the state and how passage of GO Bond D will have a positive impact on New Mexico, visit www.NMBondD.com.

J.S. Elwell has been president of Eastern New Mexico University since April 2017. Garnett S. Stokes has been president of the University of New Mexico since March 2018. Stephen G. Wells has been president of New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology since July 2016. Katharine Winograd has been president of Central New Mexico Community College since 2007.Journal endorsements continue with contested state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals races, several of which have two qualified candidates. For candidates answers to questions, go to ABQJournal.com, click on Voter Guide.

State Supreme Court: Gary Clingman

We need diverse voices on the state Supreme Court, and Gary Clingman, a Republican from Hobbs appointed to the high court earlier this year, fits that bill. Currently, hes the only justice from outside Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

That said, a troubling incident from Clingmans past has come to light. He was fired from the Odessa police department for mishandling of a prisoner. The man, who is black, told the Journal he lost teeth and suffered a broken wrist and other injuries in the incident, which involved Clingman and his partner. Clingman says he jumped in when his partner, who is now deceased, got into two separate altercations with the prisoner. He said he was fired because he was the senior officer on the scene. Its worth noting the incident occurred nearly 40 years ago and since then Clingman has had a distinguished legal career, including 21 years as a respected judge in the 5th Judicial District. The Journal recommends voters keep Gary Clingman on the N.M. Supreme Court.

Court of Appeals, Position 1: Stephen French

Judge Stephen French, a Republican, has served on the Court of Appeals for nearly three years and authored the unanimous opinion that sent the Nehemiah Griego case back to a District Court judge for a hearing that could land him in adult prison. Griego killed his parents and three siblings five years ago and was about to be released until the Appeals Court correctly intervened and sent the case back to a judge for further proceedings.

Before he was appointed to the Court of Appeals, French served as a mediator, prosecutor, defense lawyer and civil trial attorney both in state and federal courts. He attended the California Western School of Law. His opponent is Democrat Kristina Bogardus, who is also well qualified for the position. But because French has several years experience on the court and has served the public well in that position, the Journal recommends voters pick Stephen French for Court of Appeals, Position 1.

Court of Appeals, Position 2: Jacqueline Medina

Jacqueline Medina, a Democrat and Taos native, worked in the criminal appeals division of the Attorney Generals Office for 17 years for the last three attorneys general. She handled more than 160 appeals and has even briefed in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. She currently reviews officer-involved shootings for the Second Judicial District Attorneys Office. The UNM law school grad has worked in public service for more than 24 years.

This is another race that has two eminently qualified candidates. Medina is running against Republican incumbent Hank Bohnhoff, who was named to the court earlier this year. But due to her vast experience in public service, the Journal recommends voters pick Jacqueline Medina for Court of Appeals, Position 2.

Court of Appeals, Position 3: Briana Zamora

Briana Zamora, a Democrat and UNM law school graduate, has presided over more than 150 jury trials, including at least 85 felony cases. She has served as a Second Judicial District Court judge since 2012, handling adult criminal cases. Zamora was also a Metropolitan Court judge for four years.

As an attorney, she litigated criminal and civil cases in both the public and private sector. She is running against Republican incumbent Emil Kiehne, who is also well qualified. Medinas perspective as a criminal trial judge would be a good addition to the court. The Journal recommends voters put Briana Zamora on the Court of Appeals, Position 3.

Court of Appeals, Position 4: Daniel Jose Gallegos

Republican Daniel Gallegos is a former military prosecutor who worked at the Court of Appeals as a staff attorney for five years before being appointed to a judgeship in the court in January. Prior to that, he prosecuted crimes against children, DWI and domestic violence cases in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties. He also spent years as an active duty and reserve Navy Judge Advocate Generals Corps officer. Gallegos, who graduated from Notre Dame Law School, was appointed to the Court of Appeals in January. He clearly has the edge in this race when it comes to experience. The Journal recommends voters pick Daniel Gallegos for Court of Appeals, Position 4.

Judge of the Court of Appeals, Retention: J. Miles Hanisee, yes

J. Miles Hanisee, a Republican who earned his law degree from Pepperdine University, has 24 years of legal experience and has served on the Court of Appeals since 2011. He has done a solid job on the court and has played a role in modernizing processes. The Journal joins the New Mexico Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission in recommending voters retain Hanisee on the bench.

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.Theres nothing like having some hot, fresh asphalt delivered.

Especially when you arent paying for it.

That happened on San Mateo Boulevard last week as part of Dominos Paving for Pizza campaign. The pizza giant had cooked up a community outreach effort last spring and based it on the universal truth that the only thing worse than hitting a pothole is hitting a pothole and having your pizza ruined.

Potholes, cracks, and bumps in the road can cause irreversible damage to your pizza during the drive home from Dominos, the company announced on its website. We cant stand by and let your cheese slide to one side, your toppings get un-topped, or your boxes get flipped. So were helping to pave in towns across the country to save your good pizza from these bad roads.

And Albuquerque drivers took notice.

The Journal featured the campaign in this column June 25. And last week Johnny Chandler, spokesman for the citys Department of Municipal Development, announced that Albuquerque was selected after the community in Albuquerque went online and nominated our city and helped save taxpayers money as part of the Dominos Paving for Pizza Campaign. Dominos Pizza gave $5,000 to the Department of Municipal Development street maintenance division, and we filled three potholes on San Mateo just south of Montgomery.

Chandler had said back in June that while the city of Albuquerque has plenty of funds to fix potholes, and we are continuously working on improving the conditions of Albuquerques roadways, if residents want to attempt to get grant money from Dominos to help with funding to improve our roads, why not? Any additional money that saves taxpayer funds can only help.

Chandler said Albuquerque filled 9,272 potholes in 2017, with material and wages costing around $310,900 or approximately $33.53/pothole. So just as a large ExtravaganZZa (14 inches of pepperoni, ham, Italian sausage, beef, fresh onions, fresh green peppers, fresh mushrooms and black olives topped with extra cheese, according to Dominos.com) fills a lot of tummies, that $5K should help fill a lot more potholes.

Mayor Tim Keller said in a news release that though this is a relatively small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, its still a $5,000 saving for the city of Albuquerque that we can utilize in other ways. 

And that should be a topping every Albuquerque driver and resident can agree on.

Editorial page editor DVal Westphal tackles commuter issues for the Metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; dwestphal@abqjournal.com; or P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, N.M., 87103.Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

Crime and behavioral health needs are top on the minds of the two Tijeras residents vying to represent District 5 on the Bernalillo County Commission.

District 5 covers the East Mountains, Four Hills and part of the Northeast Heights.

A mental health therapist in private practice with a bachelors degree in psychology and masters degrees in sociology, public health and community counseling, Democratic nominee Charlene Pyskoty said she wants to lend her expertise to the countys behavioral health initiative as well as work to improve the behavioral health and criminal justice systems.

The criminal justice system cant focus on the bad actors  the people who need to be in there, Pyskoty said. I feel like by separating out these systems and letting them focus on who they were meant to focus on, it would be a much more functional way to treat and support people who need (the behavioral health system), but also having the criminal justice system work for people who need that system.

Republican nominee James Smith, a retired teacher who represented the East Mountains and Placitas in the state House of Representatives for seven years before his appointment to an open seat on the Bernalillo County Commission earlier this year, said crime is his top priority. He said he intends to support the sheriffs office with the means to fight crime, which would include hiring more deputies.

I want to work very closely with the sheriffs office and make sure that hes fully funded, that he has the technology tools that he needs and that he has all the deputies and staff to go out and fight crime for us, Smith said. Thats my primary goal.

Also on both candidates list of priorities: economic development.

Whatever we can do to promote job growth in Bernalillo County would be great, Smith said. I work very closely with Bernalillo County Economic Development. Were always trying to attract new businesses and help the ones already here to grow.

Pyskoty said her experience as a small business owner will help her in a commissioner post.

The majority of businesses in Bernalillo County and in New Mexico overall are small businesses, Pyskoty said. I would love to help small business owners be successful.

Early voting for the general election at voting centers starts Oct. 20 and ends Nov. 3. Election day is Nov. 6.

Q-and-As online: To find out these candidates positions on key issues, go to ABQJournal.com/election2018. The site also includes links to Journal stories on statewide, legislative and county-level races, district maps, key election dates and other voter resources. It will be updated regularly with new candidate profiles, stories and other information.



Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

Homegrown startup 3D Glass Solutions will invest $23 million in a new Albuquerque facility to build components for mobile communications and other markets with funding from the state and private investors.

The company, which uses a proprietary ceramic glass to make semiconductor chips, will receive $2 million in Local Economic Development Act assistance to move from its current 5,000-square-foot facility to a 16,000-square-foot space in the North I-25 industrial corridor. Its also closing on a new $12 million round of private investment to ramp up production of high-tech radio frequency components needed for next-generation high-speed mobile communications.

The company expects to grow from 16 employees now to about 150 over the next five years, with average salaries of more than $60,000 a year, said 3D Glass CEO Mark Popovich.

Were out of space and electric power at our current facility, Popovich said. We have to move to a place where we can ramp up production and plan for long-term growth.

Gov. Susana Martinez announced the LEDA funding Monday at Central New Mexico Community Colleges Workforce Training Center, near the companys new facility. The exact location remains confidential, because 3D Glass is still concluding lease negotiations.

Were proud to see another world-class technology company expand in New Mexico as we continue to grow our thriving science and technology sector, Martinez said in a prepared statement.

Apart from LEDA funding, the company will receive Job Training Incentive Program assistance, which can pay up to 25 percent of a newly hired employees salary for up to a year.

Its also negotiating Industrial Revenue Bonds with Bernalillo County. The county would act as the fiscal agent for the LEDA funds if the County Commission approves next month.

At an administrative meeting Sept. 25, commissioners had announced their intent to vote on the proposal on Nov. 13. But until now, the companys identity remained confidential, with public documents referring only to Project Oryx under a non-disclosure agreement signed by commissioners.

Public documents said the company wanted about $25 million in IRBs, but the exact amount is still unclear. The company would be responsible for repaying the bonds, which provide it with property tax abatements.

Such local and state incentives are critical for diversifying the economy with high-tech, high-wage companies, said Economic Development Secretary Matt Geisel.

3D Glass is a true economic success story, Geisel said in a statement.

The company has slowly laid the foundations for long-term growth with homegrown technology that could help facilitate a range of next-generation products in the communications, automotive, defense and aerospace industries, among others.

It created a glass ceramic material it calls APEXGlass that allows the company to easily etch three-dimensional electronics components into chips at the microscopic level in a way thats difficult to do with things like silicon or laminates that are traditionally used in semiconductor chips. That allows 3D Glass to make much smaller components at lower cost, while improving component and device operations.

Thats because glass is a much more efficient conductor than other materials, said Jeb Flemming, a former Sandia National Laboratories scientist who founded the company and now serves as chief technology officer.

The industry is widely looking to replace silicon with glass, positioning 3D Glass as a key player in emerging markets like 5G communications. The company is directly targeting that industry with components for high-speed wireless products.

3D Glass will start out occupying about 10,000 square feet in its new facility, expanding to 16,000 square feet as demand for its products grows, Popovich said.

The company is now closing on a $12 million round of private investment, led by two strategic Asian investors. That brings the companys total private investment to about $20 million since it launched in 2006.

Santa Fe-based Sun Mountain Capital, which manages the State Investment Council investments in local companies, is also participating.

Its our first investment in 3D Glass alongside other strategic investors, Sun Mountain partner Lee Rand said. They have exciting technology that fits well in the 5G cellular rollout market and in other industries.A registered sex offender from California charged with groping young girls as they shopped with relatives at Coronado Center just before Christmas last December pleaded guilty Monday to three counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor, the District Attorneys Office said.

Michael Chavarria, 47, also pleaded guilty to a failure to register charge and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and attempted aggravated burglary in separate incidents, according to a news release.

A judge sentenced him to the maximum of 12 years in prison, the top end called for in his plea arrangement, Monday afternoon.

Albuquerque police responded to a call at the shopping center in Uptown Albuquerque about 3:30 p.m. Dec. 23, about a fight started after Chavarria groped an 11-year-old girl inside Claires jewelry shop, according to the criminal complaint.

Chavarria came up behind the girl looking at necklaces, grabbed her rear end and said, Hey sweetheart, according to police.

The visibly upset girl told detectives she felt violated.

Detectives then were alerted to incidents involving two other girls at the mall who said they also had been touched and followed by Chavarria.

One of the girls told detectives Chavarria came up behind her and said Oh, my God before touching her rear end.

The girl told detectives she thought it was accidental and didnt tell her family at first. Chavarria allegedly followed her to three stores before her mother confronted him. He then ran away.

Court records show Chavarria is a registered sex offender from California sentenced to six years in prison for lewd and lascivious acts upon a child in 2001. After moving to Albuquerque, he failed to keep up with his required registrations as a sex offender.Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Locked in tight races with Election Day just two weeks away, New Mexico Republicans Steve Pearce and Yvette Herrell are getting a boost from the White House.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence plans to make a stop in Roswell on Friday to campaign for Pearce and Herrell, who are running for governor and for an open southern New Mexico-based congressional seat, respectively.

Both candidates announced Pences visit on Monday via social media and email messages to supporters.

Democratic leaders have taken New Mexico for granted, Republican Party of New Mexico chairman Ryan Cangiolosi said in a Monday statement. Now, just two weeks before Election Day, Republicans are going all in to deliver a win in the governors race, in the 2nd (congressional) District and down the ballot.

Pence previously served in the U.S. House with Pearce, before being elected Indianas governor in 2012. After being selected by Donald Trump as his running mate in 2016, Pence made stops in Roswell and Albuquerque to stump for Trump.

His upcoming campaign stop in Roswell could represent an attempt to stir up GOP voter support and excitement in a traditionally Republican stronghold in the state.

Longtime New Mexico political observer Brian Sanderoff told the Journal the intent behind the vice presidents visit is clear, as Democrats have so far outpaced Republicans in terms of early voting totals statewide.

Pence isnt coming to Roswell to change anybodys mind  hes coming to town to energize the Republican base, said Sanderoff, the president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc.

Pearce is running for governor against Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has outraised her Republican opponent and had a lead in the race as of early September, according to a Journal Poll.

As for Herrell, she is trying to keep the 2nd Congressional District in GOP control  Pearce is vacating the seat to run for governor  but is facing a spirited challenge from Democrat Xochitl Torrres Small in a race that has seen significant spending from outside groups.

Other Republican candidates could also attend the Friday event, which will be held at a hangar adjacent to the Roswell International Air Center.

Lujan Grisham has linked Pearce to Trump in recent political TV ads, and her campaigns spokesman said Monday the president, vice president and GOP gubernatorial nominee are too extreme for New Mexico voters.

Its not surprising that Donald Trump would send Mike Pence to try to bail out Tea Party Republican Steve Pearce as his campaign battles corruption scandals, Lujan Grisham campaign spokesman James Hallinan said.

Meanwhile, other national figures are also expected to make campaign stops in New Mexico in the run-up to the Nov. 6 general election.

For instance, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jaypal, D-Wash., will appear in Albuquerque on Thursday to campaign with Democratic congressional candidate Deb Haaland, who is running for the open 1st Congressional District seat.SNELLVILLE, Ga.  A police officer on Monday shot and killed an 18-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another officer near a school in the Atlanta area over the weekend, police said.

Tafahree Maynard was one of two men charged in the fatal shooting Saturday of Gwinnett County police Officer Antwan Toney. Police believe Maynard shot Toney, and had launched an area manhunt as he faced charges of aggravated assault and felony murder.

Police received credible information Sunday night that Maynard was still in the area and dozens of officers were mobilized to search for him, police said in an email Monday. They said a SWAT team was called to clear multiple locations because of the potential threat Maynard posed.

Police got a credible tip on Maynards whereabouts about 3 a.m. Monday, said Gwinnett County police Chief Butch Ayers.

Two officers searching a shed behind a house that belonged to someone Maynard knew encountered Maynard about 11 a.m. Monday, police said. Maynard refused to surrender and failed to comply with verbal commands to show his hands, police said.

One officer fired his stun gun, which didnt incapacitate Maynard, police said. Maynard then pulled out a lawnmower blade and moved aggressively toward officers, prompting the second officer to fire his gun, striking and killing Maynard, police said.

I would like to say that the danger to the community is over, Ayers said at a news conference, adding that police would continue to investigate any potential charges against people who may have provided assistance to Maynard during his attempt to escape justice.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault. According to police, Pretlow drove the suspicious vehicle away after the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants. An officer searching the area later encountered Pretlow around 3 p.m. Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots, according to police. Pretlow was not hit and fled into some woods. He was subsequently taken into custody around 11:30 p.m. Saturday by U.S. Marshals.

No officers were injured in the encounter with Maynard. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating, which is standard procedure for shootings by police.

Toney was responding to a call around 2:30 p.m. Saturday about a suspicious vehicle near Shiloh Middle School in the Snellville area, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. When he and his partner approached, someone inside the vehicle fired from inside and Toney was hit, police said. The vehicle sped off.

Toney died at a hospital from his wounds, police said. The 30-year-old from Southern California had been with the Gwinnett County Police Department for nearly three years, serving in his first police job.

Services for him were announced Monday. The funeral is set for 11 a.m. Wednesday in Lawrenceville.

The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community, Ayers said.Hellboy actress Selma Blair turned to Instagram on Saturday to reveal to the world that she has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

What began as a caption lauding costume designer Allisa Swanson on Netflixs upcoming sci-fi series Another Life quickly revealed itself to be so much more as Blair expounded on all the ways that Swanson assists her with the minutiae of getting dressed.

She carefully gets my legs in my pants, pulls my tops over my head, buttons my coats and offers her shoulder to steady myself, Blair explains before revealing why. I have #multiplesclerosis.

Blair went on to share that she is currently suffering from an exacerbation  or flare-up  of the disease, which she was diagnosed with on Aug. 16.

Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system that sparks the immune system to attack the protective myelin sheath covering the nerves. The resultant damage disrupts the bodys ability to communicate with itself.

An exacerbation can last for days, weeks or months in the relapsing-remitting form of MS. Blair said shes had symptoms of the currently incurable condition for 15 years.

I am disabled, the actress stated. I fall sometimes. I drop things. My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken GPS.

But we are doing it, Blair continued. And I laugh and I dont know exactly what I will do precisely but I will do my best.

The post from the Cruel Intentions actress, captioning a selfie from a costume fitting earlier in the week, spurred an outpouring of support from friends and fans alike, garnering more than 90,000 likes and almost 7,500 comments.

Representatives for Blair did not immediately respond to The Times request for comment Monday morning.HOUSTON  President Donald Trump escalated his immigration rhetoric at a midterm rally in Texas on Monday, falsely accusing Democrats of encouraging millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders and overwhelm our nation.

With weeks to go before Election Day, Trump is seeking to drive Republican turnout with his hard-line immigration policies. He cast the November choice in stark terms before the Houston rally for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, saying Democrats have launched an assault on the sovereignty of our country.

Trump spoke before a massive crowd on behalf of his former foe, who faces a strong challenge from Democratic Rep. Beto ORourke. When the two competed in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump would frequently deride his rival as Lyin Ted but said in Texas that their relationship had come a long way.

Nobody has helped me more with your tax cut, with your regulation, Trump said, also attacking ORourke, as a stone-cold phony.

With the midterms drawing near, Trump has emphasized immigration, targeting a migrant caravan heading to the U.S. southern border. The presidents focus on immigration politics comes as he seeks to counter Democratic enthusiasm in November. Trump believes that his campaign pledges, including his much vaunted  and still-unfulfilled  promise to quickly build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, are still rallying cries.

Trump is betting that his latest focus will further erode the enthusiasm gap that began to close during the debate over Brett Kavanaugh, Trumps nominee for the Supreme Court. But the approach offers both risks and rewards.

The hard-line rhetoric may be popular among the red-state rural Republicans who will play an outsized role in the top Senate contests. But it may further alienate the moderate Republicans and women in the overwhelmingly suburban races that will decide the House majority  including several in Texas, California and Florida that feature large Hispanic populations.

On Monday night, Trump called the caravan an assault on our country and suggested, without citing evidence, that Democrats had something to do with it. He added: We need a wall built fast.

Earlier Monday, Trump said the U.S. will begin cutting off, or substantially reducing aid to three Central American nations because of the caravan.

In Texas, an enthusiastic crowd packed into Houstons Toyota Center, wearing red Make America Great Again hats and waving signs, including some with the presidents new catchphrase, Jobs vs. Mobs.

Speaking before Trump took the stage, Cruz made clear that their conflict was behind them and that the two were working together. His biggest applause came when he predicted that in 2020, Donald Trump will be overwhelmingly re-elected.

A series of elected state officials were among the warmup speakers, as well as Trumps daughter-in-law Lara Trump and son Eric Trump, who told the audience that we are driving the Democrats absolutely nuts.

Trump gleefully used his latest attack line against Democrats, saying, Democrats produce mobs, Republicans produce jobs. He declared Democrats would be a big risk to the American family, and went after some of his favorite targets, including Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Rep. Maxine Waters, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The president stressed tax cuts, the strong economy and the hurricane response in the state. He repeated his pledge for a new middle-income tax cut of about 10 percent, though he offered few details on the plan. Trump said they would be putting it in next week, though Congress is not in session.

Trump also criticized so-called globalists, declaring, You know what I am? Im a nationalist.

Trumps Texas stop is part of a campaign blitz that is expected to last until Election Day.

Although political relationships tend to be fluid, Trumps appearance for Cruz is notable, given that the two were bitter enemies during the 2016 primaries. After Trump insulted Cruzs wife and father, and Cruz refused to endorse Trump at the Republican convention, it was far from clear that the two would ever put it all behind them.

But they started rebuilding in the closing days of the campaign and have worked together since Trump took the White House.

The White House views Cruz as a loyal vote for his agenda. Trump promised he would come to Texas after the Senate race grew closer than expected, with ORourke out-fundraising Cruz and drawing large and enthusiastic crowds around the state. Cruz, who is leading ORourke in the polls, said over the summer that he would welcome Trumps support, though he has brushed off any suggestion hed need Trump to win.

During the 2016 Republican primary, Trump assailed Cruz as a liar and dishonest politician, insulted his wifes appearance and promoted unsubstantiated claims that Cruzs father had links to President John F. Kennedys assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Trump on Monday did not voice any second thoughts about labeling Cruz the son of a presidential killer, telling reporters, I dont regret anything.

Cruz gave back as good as he got in 2016. He savaged Trump as a pathological liar, an amoral bully and a sniveling coward. After Cruz lost the primary, he gave a speech at the Republican National Convention in which he did not endorse Trump and instead called on Republicans to vote your conscience, drawing boos from the crowd. But he announced his support about a month before Election Day  and won points in Trumps camp for not withdrawing after the Access Hollywood tape was released in which Trump bragged about groping women.

___

Associated Press writer Steve Peoples contributed to this report from New York.Spiders spin their silk out of proteins and promise. The fibers are tough, flexible and environmentally friendly, and entrepreneurs and scientists envision them woven into a host of products: spider silk sutures, sweaters or even footbridges.

To get there, experts have to figure out whats in the stuff. A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals the building blocks of these fibers within the glands of black widow spiders, Latrodectus hesperus.

The researchers observed that globs of proteins aggregate into never-before-seen complex structures. Theyre tiny aggregations, some no more than 200 nanometers in diameter. But when spiders squeeze these teensy globs through their faucet-head-like nozzles, called spinnerets, at the base of their abdomen, the clumps become fibers that stretch for foot after foot.

Spider silk materials are better than any of the polymers we have in terms of their material properties, said Gregory Holland, an analytical chemist at San Diego State University and one of the authors of the new report. These materials are completely biodegradable, he said, and have the potential to replace plastic any place you see it.

Spider silk devotees have long tried to yoke the spider to the spinning wheel. Pound for pound, loops of spider silk are tougher than Kevlar, the material in bulletproof jackets. The trouble is scale. An 11-foot spider silk tapestry, unveiled at New Yorks American Museum of Natural History in 2009, required four years, 80 weavers in Madagascar, a million golden orb spiders and about $500,000. In the early 2000s, a company bred transgenic goats that produced silk in their milk. It failed to deliver a consumer product and went bankrupt in 2009 (most of the spider-goat herd wound up at the University of Utahs farm).

Holland has worked with black widow spiders for years, and he considers their silk to be some of the strongest, even among spiders. Despite the black widows deadly reputation, the shy animals have not bitten any of the 200-some scientists and students who have passed through his lab, he said. Holland recently teamed up with Northwestern Universitys Nathan Gianneschi, who uses electron microscopes to study nanomaterials.

Scientists knew the makeup of the individual protein molecules in silk. And you and I can see the long strands of spider silk. The spot in the middle was a mystery. Theres this space between that knowledge and when we see a spider web, Gianneschi said.

Together, the scientists and their colleagues used advanced imagery techniques to examine the silk proteins, before they became fibers, within the black widow guts. Gianneschi and Holland credited two research scientists, Northwesterns Lucas Parent and David Onofrei at SDSU, with much of the labor-intensive imaging work.

Holland deals with spider silk on an atom-by-atom basis, using a technique called nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR  the same principle behind an MRI machine. Gianneschis lab uses cryo-electron microscopy. Large molecules suspended in liquid are flash-frozen in place. This keeps the molecules and their natural shape intact while scientists scan the samples with ultrapowerful microscopes. (Three biophysicists won the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing cryo-electron microscopy.)

This work connected the two techniques. Were making sure what were seeing at room temperature in NMR and what hes seeing after flash-freezing, it is telling us the same thing, Holland said.

Researchers predicted that silk proteins while floating loose in the spider glands might clump together in bubbles called micelles. The authors of the new report found something more complex. They described the structures as nanoscale hierarchical assemblies. Put another way, they found bubbles, as predicted, but the bubbles had clumped together in an unexpected fashion.

Nature uses hierarchical assemblies all the time. Gianneschi offered a simplified example: This would be almost like looking at a single petal on a flower. The single individual petals have structure, and theyre very interesting on their own, but when we see them in nature, we see them as an array. If a micelle was a petal, the assembly was the flower.

The chain of events, then, goes something like this: A spider eats prey and digests its meal into the most basic parts, amino acids. The spider builds those amino acids into proteins, builds proteins into micelles, micelles into assemblies, and assemblies into fibers and webs. And that process is reversible  spiders can eat their own webs and reuse the same amino acids in new silk strands.

Currently, researchers can synthesize spider silk proteins, which are purified into a powder. These proteins are mixed with liquid, like adding water to cake mix. The trick is trying to spin the protein batter into fibers as strong as a spiders.

In early 2017, a team of researchers announced that it had created a process to spin long artificial spider silk fibers. The technique could produce strands a kilometer in length. Janne Johansson and Anna Rising, scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who helped develop the method, wrote a joint statement to The Washington Post to evaluate the research released this week: This study paints a more detailed picture of how spider silk proteins go from a dissolved substance in the glands to a fiber, Johansson and Rising said.

Even with this study, scientists wont be able to create better spider silk tomorrow. But it will definitely provide models which the research community now can use to formulate new hypotheses for how to design [spider proteins] that can be produced in the laboratory and how to treat them and spin them, Johansson and Rising said.

The new report potentially offers guidance on how to improve the artificial protein batter. The study authors plan to collaborate with the people whove made synthetic spider silk protein powders to check whether the nano-assemblies appear in the goop. Weve just opened a new door to explore, Holland said.Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

The president of the United States says its OK to grab women by their private parts.

Thats what federal agents say a Florida man told them after he was accused of groping a woman on a flight from Houston to Albuquerque Sunday afternoon. He was apparently referencing the 2005 Access Hollywood tape, on which Donald Trump could be heard bragging about grabbing women by their genitals because when youre famous you can do anything.

Bruce Michael Alexander, 49, of Tampa, Fla., was arrested when the plane touched down at the Albuquerque International Sunport and is charged with abusive sexual contact, which could result in a maximum of two years in prison.

According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, Alexander grabbed the woman sitting in front of him near her bra line.

The woman told investigators she had fallen asleep shortly after takeoff and the first time she felt a touch on her sweater she thought it was an accident.

Then, she said, about 30 minutes later she was grabbed and groped again, this time attentively.

After she felt the second touch, she rose from her seat, turned around and told the passenger behind her that she didnt know why he thought it was OK (to touch her) and he needed to stop, the agent wrote in the complaint. (The woman) then asked a Southwest Airlines crew member to be reseated to another section of the aircraft.

She was moved to a seat in the back of the plane.

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines said flight attendants asked customer service personnel and local law enforcement officers to meet the flight at the airport when it arrived in Albuquerque due to reports of a customers alleged inappropriate behavior onboard.

When federal agents interviewed Alexander, he denied the allegations and said he had slept most of the flight and was not drinking alcohol or taking sleep medication.

However, agents noticed his thick fingers with dirty nails and dark hair matched the description the woman provided of the hands she said had groped her, according to the complaint.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney for the state of New Mexico said Alexander is being held in federal custody pending a preliminary hearing and a detention hearing set for today.

This is the second such incident involving Albuquerque in the past week.

On Oct. 16, federal agents say, Justin Riley Brafford, 29, of Texas was on a flight from Los Angeles to Dallas and he wouldnt stop touching a woman, playing footsie with her and asking her to go out on a date. The pilot ended up diverting the plane to the Sunport because flight attendants said he was yelling at them after they let the woman change seats.

Brafford is being held in jail until his trial.The Otero County Board of Commissioners is suing a major Albuquerque-based law firm for legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty and breach of contract.

The county claimed in district court filings that Sutin, Thayer & Browne provided an inaccurate tax opinion when the firm served as the underwriter for a municipal bond sale in 2002. The bonds were sold by the county to raise money for what is now the Otero County Detention Center, which houses federal detainees and is privately operated.

Specifically, the county claims the law firm issued an opinion letter stating that interest on the bonds would be exempt from federal income tax for those who held the bonds. In 2016, according to the complaint, the Internal Revenue Service made the opposite determination: that the interest was indeed taxable income.

The county wrote in the filings that, as a result of such negligence, Otero County incurred damages which include, but are not limited to, the costs of responding to the Internal Revenue Service audit, the cost of converting the interest on the bonds to a higher taxable rate as required by the IRS . . . the additional taxable interest costs incurred by the county . . . and such other damages as may be proved at trial.

Ben Thomas, president and CEO of Sutin, Thayer & Browne, denied the allegations and said he was confident the firms attorneys had acted appropriately.

Daymon Ely, an attorney for the county and a state representative, said the county chose to file the lawsuit now because of issues surrounding the statute of limitations.

The IRS agency determined that the bond interest was taxable because, among other issues, the detention center is operated by the private contractor Management & Training Corp. in a net profit agreement, according to what appears to be a partial version of an IRS letter included in the filings. Such a relationship results in private business use and makes the bonds ineligible for tax exemption, according to the letter.

Management & Training Corp. did not respond to a request for comment late Monday.

The county is seeking unspecified damages, fees, costs and expenses and interest.A Pacific trough moving over the state today and Wednesday will interact with increasing moisture to produce showers and storms across New Mexico, meteorologists from the National Weather Service in Albuquerque said Monday.

Widespread moderate to heavy rainfall will move from the southwest to the northeast part of the state today through Wednesday morning, said Roger Smith, a meteorologist with the service in Albuquerque, with localized heavy rain, and minor flooding in arroyos and small streams possible.

(Today) well see widespread coverage of rain and some embedded thunderstorms, Smith said. The likelihood for heaviest rain will be across west central, the southwest and even portions of south central New Mexico. We could see up to an inch in some of the stronger cells.

Smith said areas east of the central mountains could see some mid-level moisture this afternoon from the remnants of Hurricane Willa, which is expected to make landfall on the Mexican Pacific Coast today, then weaken and accelerate northeast. No direct impacts are expected across New Mexico.

Six inches to one foot of snow are possible above 11,500 feet in the Sangre de Cristo mountains today through Wednesday morning.

In metro Albuquerque, showers are likely today, with a high temperature in the low 60s.

On Wednesday, isolated showers are possible in the metro area under mostly cloudy skies and a high in the lower 60s.

Rainfall activity should depart New Mexico from west to east during the afternoon and early evening hours Wednesday. Drier air will filter in from the west late Wednesday, with drier and warmer weather on tap for Thursday and Friday.

A weak backdoor front could impact eastern New Mexico on Sunday, but forecasters anticipate no significant impacts or cold air.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he is deeply troubled by the reported confirmation of the death of Jamal Khashoggi.

A tweet posted by the Saudi Foreign Ministry on Friday states that the missing Saudi journalist, a columnist with the Washington Post newspaper, was killed, claims reportedly echoed on Saudi State TV.

The tweet says that discussions that took place with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi during his presence in the Consulate of the Kingdom in Istanbuldid not go as required and escalated negatively which led to a fightwhich aggregated the situation and led to his death.

In a statement released on Friday, the Secretary-General extended his condolences to Mr. Khashoggis family and friends and stressed the need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Khashoggis death and full accountability for those responsible.

Mr. Guterress comments were part of a chorus of concern and condemnation over Mr. Khashoggis disappearance from UN officials and independent UN human rights experts.

Over the last few days, statements regarding Jama Khashoggis disappearance have been released by the offices of UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, the Chair of the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, Bernard Duhaime, and the Chair of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, Dante Pesce.

On Saturday Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), firmly condemned the brutal killing of Khashoggi, and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, adding The killing of Jamal Khashoggi reminds us of the need to fight for press freedom, which is essential to democracy. Accountability for these crimes is non-negotiable.Chico, Calif.-- What a beautiful Sunday across the North State!

A few clouds out there, but otherwise, nothing but sunshine and just a few degrees above normal for this time of year.

High pressure continues and it's going to dominate the forecast across the western states, moving eastward to the north of a weak & rain-free low pressure area over Southern California.

For your Monday morning, you won't notice much of a change, likely just a few degrees cooler.

As that low to our South moves over the Great Basin Tuesday, another one drops down from the Gulf of Alaska and into the Pacific northwest late at night.

So, we'll see a nice flow through the Delta at the start of the week, keeping temperatures in the 70s for the valley on Tuesday and Wednesday with 60s in the mountains.

Temperatures at night will continue to cool into the 40s for most valley locations with mid 20s to lower 30s for the mountain valleys.

Another weak system will move through the Pacific Northwest on Thursday, but it's looking like any rain would be too far north to impact most of us, likely closer to the Oregon border.

Friday and Saturday, high pressure ridging brings another warm-up next weekend.

That lasts for a couple of days, then a weak system will flatten out the ridge and drop temperatures again for the following work week.UPDATE 11:32 a.m. Monday, Oct. 22, 2018 - The deadline to reach an agreement is Nov. 1.

Enloe Medical Center is still in contract negotiations with the insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross.

Customers insured by Anthem Blue Cross may lose their policies on Nov. 1 if an agreement is not reached.

Anthem Blue Cross sent the medical center an email saying the company is working on a new proposal for the hospital.

Stay with Action News Now for the latest updates as they become available.

---

CHICO, Calif. - Enloe Medical Center has announced that it is cutting ties with Anthem Blue Cross, an agency that insures thousands of people across Chico.

CEO of Enloe Medical Center, Mike Wiltermood, says that the move is a bargaining tool rather than a full termination notice. Additionally, to be fair, Enloe Medical Center also gave Anthem Blue Cross notice of intent to terminate back in May.

Two weeks ago, the medical center received an email from Anthem Blue Cross that the agency was preparing a rate proposal. However, the center has been frustrated by the pace of the negotiations, he said.

One of the main motivators behind the proposed change is the lack of compensation for physicians.

He says that it's only fair and reasonable that if Anthem Blue Cross pays physicians in Sacramento that they should pay a certain amount here in the North State so that Enloe can recruit and retain physicians.

"When there are physicians in a given specialty getting 150-200 percent of Medicare, while our physicians are getting medicare rates that are below, it's not fair and it's not sustainable for us," Wiltermood said.

Enloe Medical Center is just looking for a fair agreement, he said, and they are highly motivated to reach a deal.

There are currently 3,400 Enloe Medical Center employees and roughly 300 City of Chico employees that are insured by the agency, not to mention thousands of employees at Chico State as well.

Stay with KHSL Channel 12 and actionnewsnow.com for the latest updates as they become available.YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -The photographer visiting Yosemite National Park who captured a couple's special moment on his camera is still trying to find out who the people in the photo are.

A marriage proposal is one of life's most special moments. That is the moment it appears Michigan photographer Matthew Dippel captured with his film when shooting the majestic mountains and cliffs in Yosemite from Taft Point, west of Glacer Point.

The photo was taken on Oct. 6. According to CNN reporter Candese Charles, Dippel told her after shooting the photo he rushed to find the couple, asking several people in the park that day if they knew the man and woman. However, he was not able to find them.

Dippel then put the photo on the internet, in hopes of finding the couple by reaching out virtually. But thousands of likes and retweets later, the photographer still has no idea who the people are.

He says he will not give up until he finds them, hoping to share the "Will you?" photo with the couple that may soon say "I do!"

If you have any idea who the couple is, you can reach out to Dippel on twitter. His handle is @dippelmatt.Publicis.Sapient, the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe, today launched a short film, #PeopleNotLabels, in partnership with The Humsafar Trust, Indias oldest LGBTQ organization. The film aims at building awareness of the constant obstacles encountered by trans people in Indian society.

Set in the city of Bengaluru, the film gives a brief view into the life of Sowmya Shri, a transwoman and Christy Raj, a transman, uncovering commonalities in which people, irrespective of their gender, love and care about each other. Through unique, unheard stories of the two protagonists, the film reveals the harsh realities of mental and physical trauma, gender dysphoria, accompanied with misguided labelling and appearance-bias that exists against the transgender community across the country.

At Publicis.Sapient, we have always believed in equal opportunities and have been a strong proponent of diversity and inclusion. Our efforts to enable transformation through this philosophy also extends beyond our own organization into the work we do as part of our corporate social responsibility initiatives. Through TRANScend, a pioneering social impact project, we are working in partnership with the Humsafar Trust to enhance the socio-economic inclusion of trans people into the society in India. Sowmya and Christys story is inspirational and heart-warming, and Im glad the world gets to hear their story of love and care, said Sanjay Menon, Managing Director, Publicis.Sapient, India.

#PeopleNotLabels is an initial step towards generating awareness about the hardships the 4.8 million individuals (acc. to 2011 India census) in the community face. Their rights are being largely compromised in the country, leaving them in a state of isolation, within households, communities and institutions. As per a recent study by the National Human Rights Commission, about 96% of transgenders are denied jobs and are forced to take low paying or undignified work for livelihood; 50-60% of them have never attended schools, and out of those who did, 18% are physically abused, while 62% are verbally abused in school.

Speaking on the biases faced by the transgender community, Vivek Anand, CEO, The Humsafar Trust, said The transgender communities are among the most marginalized groups of our society. They become victims of violence and discrimination and despite a positive judgement from the Supreme Court in April 2014, they are still not accepted as part of the society. We are yet to traverse a long road towards acceptance and equality of the Trans communities. The TRANScend project is a small step towards bringing TG communities in the fold of mainstream society and creating opportunities that will empower them to lead a life of dignity and respect.

Film credits:

Editor: Nitin Sharma

Scriptwriter: Snigdha Bhattacharjee

Creative Producer : Shivang Chopra

Creative Director : Luis Roy

Production : Little Lion Films

Associate Producer: Karan Nigam

Visualizer : Amit RawatAdvertising veteran and RK Swamy Hansa Group Chairman, Srinivasan Swamy, took over as new Chairman and World President of the International Advertising Association (IAA) at a board meeting held in Bucharest, Romania on 4th October 2018. He takes charge from Felix Tataru, who served as the World President and Chairman of the IAA from 2016.

Swamy is the first Indian to hold the prestigious seat at the 80-year old institution, which is considered the worlds most influential network of marketing and communication leaders. He will lead a team of 25 Committee members from a host of countries, including India, the US, UK, Italy, the UAE, Australia, Malaysia, Russia, the Netherlands, Iran and Nepal, among others.

New appointments in the IAA Executive Committee following the recently concluded elections include:

Joel Nettey - Founder and Chief Executive, Ninani Group (Innova DDB Ghana, Touchpoint Magna Carta, ReZultz Advertising, Interactive Digital, Brand Alert and Innova Liberia) takes over Srinivasan Swamy as the Senior Vice President

Beatrice Cox-Riesenfelder - Managing Director/ CFO, ORF Enterprise, is the new General Secretary of the IAA

Fredrik Borestrom - Interim Head of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, DACH is appointed as the Vice President, Corporate Members

Venanzio Camarra - Founder & Managing Partner of Aldabra Consulting and Founder & CFO of Cardigan Srl Milan Italy, is set to serve his second term as Treasurer of IAAVolocopter plans to start urban flight testing of its electric vertical take-off and landing air taxi in Singapore between January and July next year.

According to the German company, its electrically-powered 2X aircraft can fly two people up to 27km (17 miles) on a single charge with a cruise speed of 70km/h (43mph). It has been designed to remain stable in urban areas, despite the micro turbulences that may occur around tall buildings. The company also claims the aircraft is so quiet it cannot be heard over the typical background noise of a city.

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The 2X, which can piloted or remotely controlled, performed an unmanned test flight in Dubai in September 2017. The flight tests in Singapore are designed to validate and verify operation in an urban environment and will culminate in a series of public demonstration flights.

Volocopter and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) are working together to establish the scope of the flight trials and ensure that the necessary safety requirements are met before flight tests commence. The company also plans to set up a product design and engineering team in Singapore.

Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter, said, Were getting ready to start implementing the first fixed routes in cities and Singapore is a logical partner. We are confident this is another exciting step to make air taxi services a reality.

Ho Yuen Sang, director of aviation industry at the CAAS, said, There is potential for air taxis, or eVTOLs, to transform mobility and logistics in urban cities. Volocopter is at the forefront of such new and innovative technology in the aviation industry. CAAS is pleased to work together with Volocopter to study the technical capabilities and develop appropriate operational guidelines to facilitate such trials in Singapore.

Volocopter has held a preliminary permit to fly from the German authorities since 2016 and is working with the European Aviation Safety Authority to obtain a full commercial license Volocopter conducted the first test flight of its VC200 aircraft at the end of 2015.Schools EVERYWHERE in the world are dealing with exploding special education numbers, huge behavioral and sensory issues, self-harm, violence, and anxiety. Were now used to horrific rates of neurological/behavioral disorders profoundly affecting CHILDREN.

I have now compiled over 3,000 stories since January 2017 on the declining health and performance of children.

What really stood out to me was the fact that all the problems his mother described are now common in American schools. Issues long associated WITH AUTISM are increasingly recognized in kids WITHOUT an ASD diagnosis.

It also described a system thats broken. This mother is at the end of her rope. She faces endless waiting lists and constant worry about her sons actions, especially his anger issues affecting the whole family.

This story talked about depression, autism, suicide attempts, anxiety, mental illness, meltdowns, sensory processing disorder, dysregulation disorder (and head and stomach pain)all in one little boy!

I couldnt get over the number of things affecting this child that were mentioned in this piece.

The first article I found on Saturday, October 20 th made me stop my news search. It was about a 10 year boy in County Cork, Ireland and the desperate situation faced by him and his family.

The solution has been to hire more school psychologists and counselors, bring in therapy dogs, add sensory rooms, isolation areas and yoga classesall to keep kids calm and functioning. Theyre screening for mental health problems and dyslexia, hiring security people, adding metal detectors, and training teachers to recognize students with a potential for violence. (And I dont have the time to thoroughly look into the growing number of students with chronic health problems like allergies, asthma and seizure disorders. They have also changed modern education.)

What will it take for people to wake up to the end of childhood?

No politician or health official is talking about whats happening in our schools. Somehow all these changes are things we just have to live with. Of course thats impossible.

Eventually the whole system will collapse when there isnt a normally functioning child left. I wonder how much time we have.

Oct 20, 2018, (Ireland) Dublin Irish Sun: SUICIDAL BOY'S NIGHTMARECork mums heartbreaking plea for help after son, 10, leapt in front of car in bid to kill himself and was sad he didnt succeed

A YOUNG lad leapt in front of a car in a bid to kill himself and was sad he didnt succeed  but his desperate mum cant get the help he urgently needs.

Troubled Sean Hurley, ten, has also told teachers that he plans to stab himself  and every morning mum Jennifer wakes up worrying hes killed himself overnight.

Now Jennifer, from Mallow, Co Cork, is begging Health Minister Simon Harris to help save her suicidal sons life.

He is currently being assessed by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, which helps families with mental health problems.

But Jennifer says her autistic lad has deteriorated so much in the past few months that he needs to be put under the care of a psychiatrist. 

Jennifer is begging Health Minister Simon Harris to help save her suicidal sons life. 

He is after telling his teachers he is going to stab himself. He had a meltdown last week at home and said he was going to throw himself out the bedroom window. 

Concerned Jennifer said the lads condition is not just down to his Aspergers and autism  and believes he has serious mental health issues that need to be addressed.

If this was an adult he would be diagnosed with depression or some other illness but how do you define a child who wants to kill himself, who just doesnt want to go on living.

Mum-of-four Jennifer says Sean has got so bad that he will hit her and hurts his siblings.

Jennifer's email to Irish Health Minister Simon Harris:

IT is with a heavy heart, sore eyes and a lost soul I write you this email.

Im a 29-year-old mother of four. The reason for this email is my first born  my ten-year-old son.

Im not anyone special nor am I fully educated but I can clearly see a system that is failing my son as a person and us as a family.

My son is now ten, he is suicidal and has attempted suicide. 

Im fully aware you dont know my son and hes just another number on waiting lists but to us he is our world.

But, Minister Harris, what happens when your world crumbles in front of you and you cannot fix it?...

My son is crying out for help. He is not coping and the days are getting worse, nights are longer and hope could not be further away.

My son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of six (2014). I was given information on this and sent home with a report for myself and for his mainstream school.

Recently, he was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder. It is now 2018 and my son has been left in limbo, for the want of a better word

Hes had two OT (occupational therapy) appointments in four years and not one full nights sleep in almost 10 years.

His meltdowns are more frequent with no self regulation  all the visuals Im using barely help. He has shut off and shut down.

He is linked in with CAHMS, which only took a year by the way, but they cant promise me tomorrow. Neither can you but at least if we had a good mental health system that could give me hope and not have me uttering false promises to my son that things will be okay he will learn to cope.

Minister Harris, broken children end up being broken adults . . . that is if they make it to adulthood.

The mental health system is neglecting my son, the services are neglecting him. This system, your system, is failing him.

Therefore I as a mum end up failing my child. We as a country are failing our children as I know Im not the only mother up worried and crying about my child tonight.

The system, your system, is failing to give him his basic needs.

At ten he is constantly angry, constantly crying, constantly upset, he doesnt want to be here.

Jennifer is desperate for help from Health Minister Simon Harris

She said: I do not know how it is going to play out. I want people to take the finger out and help.

The Cork woman said Sean is on sleeping medication and since Thursday is on an antipsychotic.

She added: I know he is genuinely mentally ill. I just think his needs have been neglected since the age of six when he was diagnosed.

There was no early intervention. I was sent home with a report. .

He is suffering from anxiety and has pains in his head, in his stomach. I just want someone to help my boy get his life back and to be happy.

Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.

JB Handley's event at Third Place Books has been cancelled, the books on order for sale RETURNED to the publisher. This is a BEST SELLING book that swept through Amazon.



Bookstores sell books. Brick and mortar bookstores don't sell nearly as many books as they did in the pre-Amazon era. Independent bookstores don't sell nearly as many books as a large chain like Books a Million or Borders and Barnes and Noble back in the day. Independent bookstores are usually magical gems in a community. They offer talks, programs, children's hours and many special touches that set them apart from the big box stores and create a community. I love independent bookstores, and I'd probably love shopping at Third Place books.



Third Place Books touts its community role on their site. But those of us with vaccine injured children and autism are not considered part of the community." It's sad. It's lonely. Yet again, vaccine injury is treated as the third rail. Do not touch. Musn't get burned, it might burn the books.



###

Third Place Books is the deliberate and intentional creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, we opened a store in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle in 2002, and another in the Seward Park neighborhood in 2016. Third Place Books is a general interest bookstore with over 200,000 new, used, and bargain books in Lake Forest Park and over 40,000 books in Ravenna. It is a fun, comfortable, and safe place to browse, linger, lounge, relax, read, eat, laugh, play, talk, listen, and just watch the world go by.

Why Third Place?

Sociologist Ray Oldenberg suggests that each of us needs three places: first is the home; second is the workplace or school; and beyond lies the place where people from all walks of life interact, experiencing and celebrating their commonality as well as their diversity. It is a third place. In his celebrated book, The Great Good Place, Oldenberg discusses how the cafes, pubs, town squares, and other gathering places make a community stronger and bring people together.

From Informed Choice Washington's FB page

###

We regret to announce that the event J.B. Handley & Stein in Conversation: How to End the Autism Epidemic at Third Place Books has been cancelled. Please watch for news of alternative plans.

While we are dismayed by the actions of Third Place Books, we are not daunted. We remain resolute in our mission to continue to inform the public and elected officials on the very real dangers of the current vaccine system, to work for the incorporation of emerging science in vaccine policy making, to move toward a personalized approach to vaccination, and to shine a light on the corruption in and capture of the vaccination program by pharmaceutical interests in our state and the U.S. as a whole.

If you were planning to attend November 5th, keep your calendar open. We will announce an alternative plan soon.

Hear JB speak this coming Saturday at Healthy Immunity: From Birth to Old Age

#theautismbook #readthebookSaudi Energy Minister Monday told Russian news agency TASS that the kingdom will not use oil embargo as it did in 1973 to ward off international pressure and demands of sanctions against it in the case of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Pressure is actually increasing on Saudi Arabia over the death of critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Riyadh on Friday confirmed the death of the journalist who had vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

There is no intention of repeating the 1973-1974 oil embargo against the United States, said Khalid Al-Falih.

This incident will pass. But Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics, he was quoted as saying.

The journalist who left the kingdom last year to settle in the United States was confirmed dead by Saudi Arabia Friday.

A tweet posted by the Saudi Foreign Ministry on Friday states that the missing Saudi journalist, a columnist with the Washington Post newspaper, was killed, claims reportedly echoed on Saudi State TV.

According to the Saudis, he died in a brawl inside the diplomatic mission.

Khashoggi had gone missing since October 2 after entering the Saudi consulate as he sought to get official documents that will allow him to remarry.

Turkish media and security authorities repeatedly indicated the 59-year old was killed inside the mission by a squad dispatched from Riyadh and connected to the Crown Prince.

Several politicians in Washington and several US senators have been calling the senate and President Donald Trump to cut off ties with the kingdoms leadership, to apply sanctions against the Saudi royal establishment and even replace Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman after Turkish media and The Washington Post tied the Saudi de facto ruler to Khashoggis death.

President Trump several days ago talked about severe consequences if it transpires that MbS is linked to the horrible crime.

Riyadh reacted angrily to the threat, indicating that it will respond with greater action, with many believing that the OPEC member and world largest oil exporter could use its resource to bend its critics.

State-owned Al Arabiya channels General Manager Turki Aldakhil warned that imposing sanctions on Riyadh could spark global economic disaster as oil could jump to $200 per barrel, Reuters reports.

My role as the energy minister is to implement my governments constructive and responsible role and stabilizing the worlds energy markets accordingly, contributing to global economic development, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih however said.

If oil prices go too high, it will slow down the world economy and would trigger a global recession. And Saudi Arabia has been consistent in its policy. We work to stabilize global markets and facilitate global economic growth. That policy has been consistent for many years, Falih said.

OPEC in 1973, dominated by the kingdom who was leading several Arab oil producers, slapped an oil embargo on Western supporters of Israel in its war with Egypt. Oil prices soared record high.When Brian and Megan Pruitt moved to Aiken, they were new faces in an unfamiliar community. They were busy with work and children. All the signs pointed to one thing: they werent getting out for a date night anytime soon.

"When we first moved here, I was ready to give birth to our second child," said Megan Pruitt, co-owner and co-founder of Night in Boxes. "Brian was scouting with the St. Louis Cardinals. We had no family here, no sitters...The odds were not in our favor."

Megan told her husband, fellow co-founder and co-owner Brian Pruitt, they should deliver date nights to people's doors in boxes. Although the idea started as a joke, the couple had stumbled upon a unique and successful business opportunity.

The Pruitt's founded Night In Boxes not long after. Their company delivers everything couples need for stay-at-home dates in boxes. The boxes have their own unique, developed themes.

"Were selling an experience that creates a memory and a connection with your loved ones, which isnt something that has been done in a subscription box business before," Megan said.

They started operating out of their home. Brian described boxes overflowing out of the dining and living rooms of their ranch house with their children constantly stepping on crinkle paper from the packaging.

Their first month in business, they gained 34 subscribers. Their second month, they gained over 2,000.

The Pruitts had no idea their business would experience such explosive growth, or that they had stumbled upon a marketing product for a niche even global companies had difficulty reaching. Now, two years since their founding, Megan said they serve around 10,000 subscribers. That number is expected to grow, conservatively, to 30,000 by the Holiday season.

"When Amazon called, and Google and Facebook, and you kind of think oh, this is some kind of scam," Megan said "...Then you get on the phone and Amazon tells you that youre a category creator, or when Google told us the amount of monthly searches, which was millions. Their representative was like, 'You're sitting on a gold mine.'"

They expanded from working out of their home to a 1,500 square foot warehouse outside of town, and later to their current, larger location on Richland Avenue.

In addition to getting calls from Google and Amazon, the Pruitt's also began receiving media attention. Night In Boxes has been featured in Cosmopolitan, BuzzFeed, NBC, ABC, and more.

They now have 10 full-time employees, independent contractors, and a customer service team in Texas.

The Pruitts make a point of providing work opportunities to people with disabilities, such as those with conditions like autism, brain injuries, and spinal injuries. They partner with the Tri-Development Center of Aiken County to hire those people to help pack the boxes.

Given the digital side of the Pruitt's marketing business, which includes social media, graphic design, and photography, they are also bringing young people and young families from across the country to Aiken to work at their company.

"We're hiring millennials that are fresh out of college that align with our brand vision and things of that nature," Megan said.

Although their workforce is growing with many of their new employees, Megan and Brian said they do not plan on setting up a large chain of stores, but will continue to grow and expand in Aiken.

In addition to expanding their workspace, the Pruitt's have also expanded the business idea itself.

As parents, Megan and Brian saw a number of families struggle to find activities for their children, so they developed Kids Night In. It's based off of the same concept as the date night boxes, but provides activities, games, and learning experiences for children.

The Pruitts said the ideas for the boxes, whether they are family-friendly or date-night fun, come from their own experiences as spouses and parents.

"The box is basically inspired off of our lives and challenges that we had when we moved, because jobs take you everywhere now," Brian said. "Its not the 1940s anymore where you come back from war and go to work in the same neighborhood where you grew up...You go to school and after school you go where the job is."

Kids Night In is partnering with Art Nook School and Studio to throw a Halloween family event for children ages 4-8 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m on Oct 26. The event will include dinner, a dance party, and other activities. For more information visit artnookaiken.com.

To learn more about Night in Boxes, visit nightinboxes.com, or visit the group's Facebook page under Date Night In.Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier?

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Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page.CAIRO  My son cannot read or write in Arabic, even though he is Egyptian, K.R., an Egyptian journalist living in Texas, told Al-Monitor. This is one of the most important problems I face in the States. There are no Arabic teaching centers near my house. He's pinned his hopes on an initiative Egyptian Minister of Immigration and Expatriate Affairs Nabila Makram Ebeid launched earlier this month that may just bridge the gap.

Ebeid said in an Oct. 8 press conference that the Speak Egyptian initiative targets Egyptian children abroad, aiming to entrench Egyptian identity by teaching them the Arabic language and Egypt's dialect, history, values, customs and traditions. The initiative is run in partnership with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood and Nahdet Misr Publishing Group.

Alaa Bakr, a member of the council, told Al-Monitor that the initiative will involve web-based educational programs that rely heavily on images and graphics to explain Egypts history, geography and culture. They will be available for download free of charge from the Ministry of Immigration and Expatriates Affairs' website.

Bakr said, If the applications can be properly advertised to the target group  parents abroad  it will have tangible success.

Dalia Ibrahim, the chairman of Nahdet Misr's board of directors, explained that the initiative suits the organization's educational and cultural mission and coincides with the 80th anniversary of its founding.

She explained that the programs and applications will be available on the ministry's website in a month or so. The first phase of the programs and applications will be for children from two to eight years old. The initiative primarily targets the third and fourth generation of children born and residing abroad, she added.

A source familiar with the Department of Sustainable Development at the Ministry of Immigration and Expatriates Affairs told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity in line with civil service regulations, The ministrys joined the initiative in response to the directives of President Abdel Fatal al-Sisi, who stressed the need to preserve the authentic Egyptian identity.

The source pointed out that social media and the internet in general have exposed Egyptian nationals to different cultures and points of view, with both benefits and drawbacks. Egyptians have become torn between radical Islamic ideas [that reject ancient Egyptian history as pagan beliefs] and call for violence, terrorism and intolerance on one hand, and extremist secular cultures that deny the great history of Islamic Egypt and call for disintegration and chaos on the other, he said.

He continued, Meanwhile, some Egyptians have become influenced by cultures hostile to our modern history. These cultures underestimate Egyptian achievements such as the [1973] October War. Those who are under the influence of [Western] cultures imitate the heroes of American movies and [prefer English] to the Arabic language.

The source added that the target group is Egyptian children abroad who do not learn the history of Egypt and know nothing about the values of Egyptian society. These children cannot read about Egypt and discover their country from an Egyptian point of view.

Journalist K.R. told Al-Monitor that his young son knew nothing of what children of his age living in Egypt know about their Egyptian history. He rather has a sense of belonging to the US culture and history. K.R. fears the situation will have a negative impact on his son if he decided to return to Egypt. My son should know more about his native country and his mother tongue so as not to feel alienated if he ever returned home, he said.

N.M., who works in marketing for an UAE company in Dubai, has a different problem with her two sons. She told Al-Monitor that her children feel estranged in their own home. They see the culture, ideas and values of their father and I as alien to them. This creates a psychological barrier between them and my family back in Egypt.

She wants the Speak Egyptian initiative to succeed, but fears Egyptian children abroad will be unimpressed by its technological offerings.

Al-Monitor talked to Hossam Amara, a psychiatrist in Cairo who believes the campaign may offer solutions to cases like N.M.'s, in which childrens inability to speak their mother tongue creates a psychological barrier between them and Egyptian society.

Hassan Shehata, a professor at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, told Al-Monitor that he supports the ideas, principles and objectives of the initiative. He said the biggest challenge is to convince parents to get their children to take advantage of it.

Shehata explained that many Egyptian parents abroad are either themselves unaware of the importance of connecting their children with their roots or too occupied with their hectic daily lives abroad to help educate their children on Egyptian language, history and culture.The international outcry against Riyadh for murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi may be heating up, but that didnt stop Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin from meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh today. According to a Saudi statement, the pair stressed the importance of the Saudi-US strategic partnership and the future role of this partnership in accordance with the kingdoms Vision 2030. Bilateral relations were also reviewed on both the trade and investment sides and the opportunities for their development.

Why it matters: Mnuchin had already planned the visit as part of a weeklong trip to the region before Khashoggis death. He had been set to address Tuesday's investment conference, billed as Davos in the desert, as part of Prince Mohammeds Vision 2030 plan to modernize and diversify the Saudi economy. But after a deluge of withdrawals from high-profile investors, media outlets and other international leaders, Mnuchin followed suit. Still, the US Treasury secretary kept the rest of his itinerary intact, pointing to the need to attend a terrorism financing summit this week. Despite reports indicating that Prince Mohammed personally targeted Khashoggi, President Donald Trump has been trying to preserve the US-Saudi alliance as he relies on Riyadh for his hard-line Iran strategy and his still unannounced Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

Vision 2030: Mnuchin's visit and its focus on Vision 2030 shows the Trump administration still backs the controversial crown prince, who denies involvement in Khashoggis murder. The Saudis have fired two high-profile associates of the crown prince, but it remains to be seen if they are among the 18 individuals Riyadh arrested for the murder and what sort of punishment they will face. The US administration has previously propped up Prince Mohammeds economic reform agenda, with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross saying it could generate more wealth for the kingdom than even the discovery of oil.

Whats next: Turkey continues to investigate the Khashoggi murder and has continually spoon-fed details to pro-government media. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to address the investigation in remarks before parliament tomorrow, the same day the Saudis host their investment conference.

Know more: Read Barbara Slavins latest article to find out how Khashoggis murder undercuts Trumps campaign against Iran. And click here for all the latest updates on the Khashoggi investigation.

- Bryant HarrisIn an attempt to stamp out economic crimes, Irans judiciary has once again resorted to its most severe punishment: the death penalty. On Oct. 21, Irans Supreme Court confirmed death sentences for Vahid Mazloumin, known as the Sultan of Coins in Iranian media, and Mohammad-Ismael Ghassemi.

According to Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the spokesman for Irans judiciary, the death sentences for the two men were upheld and would be carried out soon. From the first day of the trial to the confirmation of their death sentences, it took just 43 days to convict and sentence Mazloumin and Ghassemi  a point noted by Mohseni-Ejei when highlighting the judiciarys speed in confronting economic corruption.

Mazloumin and Ghassemi were part of a group of 15 defendants charged with corruption on Earth through disturbing the economic system and creating illegal financial networks for coins and currency. Their sentencing comes after Irans currency experienced unusually high levels of fluctuation in August and September.

Morteza Tork, a representative of the prosecution, said Sept. 8, at the beginning of the trial, that Mazloumin had sources within the economic decision-making centers that he used to create disturbances, specifically in the fluctuation of gold coins and currency prices.

Mohseni-Ejei said that the judiciary hopes to reach conclusions for the other economic corruption cases soon. He also thanked the police, the Intelligence Ministry and the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for helping in the case. The sentence, he said, is a warning for opportunists to not create more economic pain for the livelihood of people under the current pressure of the enemy.

The charge of corruption on Earth carries the death penalty in Iran and can be applied in a variety of cases. According to the lawyer representing a group of environmentalists arrested in February, some of the defendants recently had their charges changed from spying to corruption on Earth. Their lawyer, Mohammad Hossein Aghasi, said the charge was changed after the prosecutors office received a letter from the army, though it is not clear what the letter stated or if it even demanded anything of the judiciary.

The Intelligence Organization of the IRGC is currently holding eight environmentalists: Saam Rajabi, Amir Hossein Khaleghi, Hooman Jokar, Sepideh Kashani, Niloufar Bayani, Taher Ghadirian, Abdulreza Kohpayeh and Morad Tahbaz. Canadian-Iranian environmentalist Kavous Seyed Emami was among those originally arrested. He died in prison Feb. 8. Authorities claim Seyed Emami committed suicide. His family has rejected the claim and has unsuccessfully sought answers from the authorities.

While President Hassan Rouhani might, under normal circumstances, be vocal about judiciary cases, especially ones involving such severe charges against activists, he is currently consumed with another Cabinet shuffle involving his economic team. In his latest move, Rouhani has appointed Farhad Dejpasand as the minister of economic affairs and finance; Reza Rahmani as the industry, mines and trade minister; Mohammad Eslami as the roads and urban development minister, and Mohammad Shariatmadari as the cooperatives, labor and social welfare minister. The nominees will have to be approved by parliament.Attorney Yair Nehorai is legal counsel for the group Rabbis for Human Rights. Together with the Israeli Alliance headed by Shai Cohen, he has raised about 60,000 shekels ($16,000) in a crowdfunding campaign to petition the Supreme Court to stop the state from funding the Bnei David Military Preparatory Academy in the settlement of Eli in the West Bank. They still have about a month and a half left to reach their goal of 200,000 shekels ($54,000). Their plan is to appear before the Supreme Court with thousands of testimonies, video clips and documents proving that the school poses a threat to Israeli democracy and that it plans to take over the Israel Defense Forces as a springboard to the heart of Israeli society, in a process that would lead to a religious revolution and the establishment of a Jewish theocracy in all the Land of Israel. This is their messianic vision.

The military preparatory academy in Eli was founded in 1988 by two rabbis, Eli Sadan and Yigal Levenstein. Two years ago, Sadan was awarded the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the chair of HaBayit HaYehudi.

The school is considered the most prestigious of the religious military preparatory academies, with graduates holding senior command positions in the IDF and the Israeli security establishment. Among its most prominent alumni is Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter, a decorated officer who was recently appointed military secretary to Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. A former commander of the Givati Brigade, Winter caused a scandal during Operation Protective Edge when he distributed a commanders statement to his troops, describing the operation in Gaza as a religious operation and the fulfillment of Gods will. He prayed for his soldiers, God, Lord of Israel, make our mission successful, as we are about to battle for your people, against an enemy which curses your name."

Other senior IDF officers from the Eli academy include Col. Avi Balot, who was recently appointed military secretary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Col. Ilan Dickstein, chief of the 91st (Northern) Division.

In the 30 years since it was founded, 24 alumni have fallen in battle, including Lt. Col. Emmanuel Moreno of the elite Matkal Commando Unit. Today, some 12 years after his death in the Second Lebanon War, his photo still cannot be published because of the secret operations he was involved in. Hadar Goldin, who was killed during Operation Protective Edge and whose body is still being held by Hamas, was also a graduate of the academy.

Now, Nehorai and the Israeli Alliance are engaged in battle against the academy. They want to prove to the Supreme Court and the Israeli public at large that the school, which receives some 10 million shekels ($2.7 million) per year from the Ministry of Education and additional funding from the Ministry of Defense, teaches messianism while trampling on the core principles of Israeli democracy.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Nehorai explained, The Eli military preparatory academy follows the teachings of Rabbi Z.Y. Kook that the creation of the State of Israel was an integral part of the process of redemption under the Messiah son of Joseph, who is charged with laying the foundation for the Messiah son of David. The academy is called Bnei David (Sons of David) in the belief that the Messiah son of David will soon arrive to institute the rule of God on Earth.

He claims that academy's administration wants to reach the heart of Israeli society by seizing senior positions in the army. At the same time, they see the IDF as an ideological greenhouse, ideally suited to changing the minds of secular youth. The academys leadership and alumni have already taken over the Military Rabbinate and the IDFs Jewish Awareness Division, which runs workshops and lectures for combat units. The division has caused political scandals in the past for distributing lesson plans to combat units on matters of religion and morality, or in other words, messianic religion and religious ethics as they see them.

Nehorai makes a point of following all the school's publications and classes, which can be accessed easily on its website. He shares them with the media and on his own Facebook page Shutting Down the Eli Military Academy. The quotes posted there have already caused a commotion throughout the country. Examples include rabbi Yosef Kalner telling his students, All secular Jews are traitors and the state can do anything to sanction them, including putting a bullet through their heads. He has not been prosecuted for general incitement, nor for incitement to commit murder. Levenstein was quoted as saying that there is no place more harmful to women than the IDF and calling the LGBTQ community perverts who are ripping the country apart. Rabbi Eitan Cooperman stated, The IDF is the tool through which Gods might acts in the world.

According to Nehorai, the generous government funding that Bennett provides to the academy ensures its prestigious stature within the religious Zionist community and allows it to act against the core principles of Israel democracy. Eli is at the forefront of a cancer spreading throughout the entire country, he said. Do you see these people? They are in hesder yeshivas [a program combining Talmudic studies with military service], in religious IDF Nahal units and in government positions, and no one really knows what their positions are. They talk about love of Israel, but they want to eliminate democracy.

He believes that the petition to the Supreme Court that he and the members of the Israeli Alliance plan to submit will help expose and publicize the grand plan of the academys founders, which is the inculcation of a messianic ideology throughout Israel by seizing positions of power in the army and government. So far, the school staff has responded that their comments were taken out of context and that Nehorai is inciting the public against them personally and against an educational institution that they consider proud and patriotic.US student Lara Alqasem was denied entry into Israel upon her arrival at the Ben Gurion Airport on Oct. 2. Alqasem had received a student visa to attend the Hebrew University, but authorities argued that she was a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activist against Israel. Alqasem then petitioned the court, with the Hebrew University joining her action.

The decision of Hebrew University Rector Barak Medina to support the fight of Alqasem was not only motivated by a desire to protect a student of the University. The significance and importance of his decision was in pitting the Hebrew University, the leading Israeli academic institution founded 100 years ago, against the governments policy, which is viewed by the university leaders as rejecting basic human rights, most of all freedom of expression.

Alqasem had been active in the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization that works to boycott Israeli academics and applies the boycott doctrine of BDS. Despite her activity in the group, she visited Israel a year ago, and following her visit applied to study for an international master of arts in human rights and transitional justice at the Law Department of the Hebrew University. She received a student visa from the Israeli Consulate in Miami, but upon her arrival, she was interrogated by representatives of the Interior Ministry and representatives of the Ministry for Strategic Affairs. Then the visa she had received was nullified.

The decision to ban her entry was based on the Law of Entry to Israel, which was amended in 2017 to stipulate that a visa would not be granted to anyone who called for boycotting Israel or participated in such a boycott. The amendment particularly targeted supporters of the BDS movement. Upon her detention at the airport, Alqasem initiated a legal battle to reverse the decision, but the Tel Aviv District Court determined that she met the standards the law set to deny entry to Israel.

Alqasem did not give up, and appealed to the High Court, which deliberated the case with a panel of three judges. On Oct. 18, the High Court accepted her appeal, ruling that she was entitled to enter the country. Judge Neil Handel wrote in the decision that the fact that Alqasem wishes to learn in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University does not support the thesis that she is a covert boycott activist. Judge Anat Baron said Alqasems past actions did not provide sufficient justification for the states decision. And so the impression was given that the decision to deny her visa was made because of Alqasems political views. Baron stated that if this was indeed the case, This would be an extreme and dangerous step that could lead to the crumbling of the foundations of Israeli democracy. The three judges agreed with the position of the Hebrew University that denial of the visa greatly damages its battle against the academic boycott.

The High Courts ruling was apparently motivated by the instructions formulated by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs for implementing the revised law. Al-Monitor has learned that these restrictions on implementing the law  especially the one determining that it would apply only to people working consistently and continuously in significant action to boycott Israel  were established after two meetings of representatives of the Hebrew University with Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan and his staff. The meetings were initiated by the university administration and Medina many months before the Alqasem incident in the interest of an active policy of university involvement in the life of the state on issues of principle, values which Medina, who is also a law professor, preaches to students.

Medina, who represented the position of the Hebrew University in the case, is considered one of Israels top experts on human rights. He was a candidate for the High Court and was recognized in 2015 as a knight of quality government by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel for his public activity for human rights and against corruption in civil service.

Medina told Al-Monitor that the deportation from Israel of a person accused of supporting the boycott could lead colleagues who might otherwise take no action in the matter to boycott Israel in a show of solidarity. He said that in recent months, and following the Alqasem incident, international academic bodies have expressed great concern at the governments policy on the prohibition of entry to boycott activists. Medina said he personally supports the entry even of boycott activists, and here I would argue with them and show them the other side of the issue. But in my role as rector I work in the public and national interest and because I know that Alqasems deportation would greatly harm the battle against the academic boycott of Israel.

This position was bolstered by the support of two of the most prominent supporters of Israel in the United States, and anywhere, Abe Foxman, director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League, and attorney Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University professor emeritus.

In an emergency meeting of senior faculty at the Hebrew University on Oct. 17, an incident was mentioned where Italian archaeologist Barbara Bolognani, who works as a researcher at the Hebrew University, was detained when she left Israel two weeks ago for a conference abroad and her laptop was confiscated. The university says that incidents such as these damage academic freedom and aid critics of Israel abroad.

But there were also academics who oppose Medinas and the universitys positions. At the same emergency meeting, some were concerned that the universitys position would lead to a worsening of the governments general criticism of the university. Such criticism has been expressed lately by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who said at an Oct. 14 government meeting that the university cartel was broken. He was referring to data about a decline in the number of students registered at older universities, compared with the increase of number of students registered at other higher education institutions.

While the Hebrew University received no response when it called on other universities to join and support it, it seems theres a growing trend in which various public organizations launch battles of principle against government policy. Thus, Israeli municipalities, among them Rishon LeZion or Herzliya, petitioned recently against the Supermarket Law (limiting the opening of businesses on Saturdays). Another such battle is the public campaign conducted against a bill advanced by Culture Minister Miri Regev, enabling her to withdraw state support from cultural institutions she considers disloyal to the state. Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said in an interview with Reshet Bet Radio on Oct. 21 that municipalities in Israel must fight against the loyalty bill introduced by Regev, whom he called the minister of censorship.

Huldai said, We will stand as a bulwark against anyone who violates freedom of speech.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Sunday said he will reveal on Tuesday naked truth of the investigations into the death of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul after Saudi Arabia, following days of denials, admitted that the 59-year old prominent journalist was killed but in a brawl inside the diplomatic mission.

We seek justice and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth. This is not an ordinary case. I will make statements on Tuesday at the AK Party parliamentary group meeting. The incident will be revealed entirely, said Erdogan at a ceremony in Istanbul.

The comments came following Saudi official statement on Friday saying that Khashoggi, who went missing since 0ctober 2 after entering the Saudi consulate for official papers to allow him to remarry, died in a fistfight at the consulate.

Saudi Arabia has sought to check the fallout of the gruesome death by arresting 18 people suspected of killing Khashoggi, dismissing two top officials and claiming the journalist and government critic died accidentally after being put in a chokehold.

The kingdom had repeatedly rejected Turkish officials stance that the journalist who fled the Gulf country last year and sought refuge in the US was in the consulate and probably killed by a hit-man squad that arrived in the diplomatic compound few hours before the dissident figure entered for paperwork

Why did these 15 people come here (to Istanbul), why were 18 people arrested (in Saudi Arabia)? These need to be explained in detail, Erdogan said.

Erdogans statement to the AK Party parliamentary group will coincide with the opening of a major investment conference in Riyadh that has seen several world and business leaders pull out as the scandal around Khashoggis death grows.

Turkish investigators are reportedly in possession of audio tapes of Khashoggis alleged torture and killing. According to the audios leaked to Turkish media, the journalist who was very critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MbS) was butchered by the squad whose members are tied to the Crown Prince.

On Saturday, Turkish media, Yeni Safak close to the central government, revealed that MbS spoke on the telephone with Khashoggi before he was killed and dismembered.

Khashoggi was detained by the Saudi team inside the consulate building. Then Prince Mohammed contacted Khashoggi by phone and tried to convince him to return to Riyadh, the Turkish media said.

Khashoggi refused Prince Mohammeds offer out of fear he would be arrested and killed if he returned. The assassination team then killed Khashoggi after the conversation ended, it added.

The report debunked Saudi claims, which whitewashed MbS.

The media since the beginning of the crisis has revealed details of investigations without providing its source.A mandatory Palestinian social security law due to take effect Nov. 1 faces an uphill struggle, with various groups calling for it to be postponed or at least made optional for a time.

At a mass demonstration Oct. 15 in Ramallah, protesters said they do not believe the Palestinian government is stable enough to guarantee such a huge economic and administrative project, which will be entrusted with a portion of workers money. The demonstrators called for the resignation of Labor Minister Mamoun Abu Shahla, who is also in charge of the Social Security Association.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said Oct. 15 in a public ceremony that the law must take effect as planned, but there is room for negotiations and amendments.

Different Palestinian groups, including the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, opposed the law in its original form when it was first signed by President Mahmoud Abbas in March 2016. Since then, several changes have been made in an effort to appease the opposition.

Bassam Salhi, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, told Al-Monitor, The social security law has gone through three stages. The first stage was reached with the initial 2016 law, which we and others opposed. This led to the second stage, in which we held serious dialogue for over six months, which led to some important changes to the original text.

Salhi said that positive changes were approved, and the law was amended to improve the rights of workers and the disabled. In October 2016, Abbas signed the amended version of the law, which provided a two-year period before the law was to be implemented, to allow companies and workers enough time to prepare.

Salhi said he is proud of the changes, which included reducing to 7% (from 7.5%) the amount of money workers have to contribute, and increasing the monthly contribution of employers to 9% (from 8.5%). "Owners and the private sector agreed to the changes," he said.

The third and final stage, according to Salhi, is the current one, in which various groups are demonstrating and again stating their opposition  often with ulterior motives. Some proponents of the law argue that the protests were largely initiated by employers, who will lose the most if the law is implemented; they will have to pay all end-of-service compensations (severance pay) in addition to the 9% monthly contributions for every employee. Wisam Rafidi, a social science professor at Bethlehem University, said in a column published Oct. 16 on the Watan TV website that there is plenty of evidence that various factory owners and other businesses were a major force behind the demonstrations.

Salhi concedes that there are legitimate reasons for opposition and that not everyone is able to get what they want, but he said this version of the law is the best that could be negotiated.

My own daughter, a lawyer, is opposed to it and she would have liked to reduce workers' contributions to 5% and raise employers contributions, but this would have meant that the employers would have walked out of negotiations.

Inam Zaqout, a Palestinian economist who runs the Asala organization for microfinancing, told Al-Monitor that the vague nature of the law will cause major problems. There is little being done to educate the public about the new law and how it will benefit the worker.  People dont feel they're aware of what they're getting into, Zaqout said. Some of the issues that concern them are how the funds will be managed and what guarantees will be implemented to ensure transparency of how the money is used.

Raed Elayan, an outspoken opponent of the social security law, wrote on his Facebook page that he isn't convinced it's a good idea to implement the law and then make amendments, as the prime minister has suggested.

The solution is simple: Make the law voluntary and let people see its values and agree to join it if they are convinced of its benefits, Elayan said.

Suheir Ismael, director of TAM, a Bethlehem-based nongovernmental organization, told Al-Monitor that while she favors the law for its benefits to workers, she feels the workers' required contribution is very high. I am with the social security law and I dont think it should be stopped. But charging workers 7% is a lot," she said. "It would make sense if that contribution was around 4% or 5%.

But Ismael, whose NGO trains women in media skills, insists that it makes no sense to make the law optional. It must be mandatory because employers contributions are a big part of the law, and if it's optional, most employers won't join in," she said.

While most of the discussion focuses on the lack of confidence in the Palestinian government, a major incentive to pass and implement the law is the billions of dollars that are in play. The 1994 Paris economic agreement includes a clause that allows for the end-of-service compensation of some Palestinian workers in Israel to be transferred to a Palestinian fund.

Mohammad Rajoub, anchor of a morning program on Ajyal Radio Network, told Al-Monitor the issue involves millions of dollars that the newly established Palestinian Social Security Fund will be able to invest. It's not clear how much has been put aside in Israel. Rumors say the amount is at least 10 billion shekels ($2.7 billion as of Oct. 19) and some say it is as high as 50 billion shekels. While retired employees have received their compensation, this amount represents the money set aside to compensate those still working.

This large sum of money that will soon become available to the Palestinian Social Security Fund is also causing competition between banks. The new law stipulates that the funds should be deposited in local banks and not in banks headquartered outside of Palestine.

Banking sources told Al-Monitor that this clause has caused major problems with the Arab Bank, which was established in Jerusalem in 1930, but has become a major regional bank based in Amman, Jordan, and is thus disqualified as a host for the money coming from Israel and earmarked for the Social Security Fund.

Palestinian media sources in Ramallah told Al-Monitor that Abbas and the chairman of the Arab Bank, Sabih al-Masri, have discussed the issue of banks roles and their ability to benefit from the new Social Security Fund.

The implementation of a worker-friendly social security law will have long-term economic effects on the Palestinian population and especially on the working class. While many people have legitimate reasons to worry about the stability and longevity of the Palestinian government, such a law will go a long way toward helping to stabilize and empower the government and promote its economic independence.ALEPPO, Syria  Syrians in the country's opposition-controlled north are demanding the dissolution of the Syrian High Negotiations Committee (HNC), claiming the negotiators are making too many concessions to the regime and even Russia and Iran.

Activists accuse the HNC, headed by opposition leader Nasr al-Hariri, of giving up too much and failing to implement items stipulated in the Geneva I conference, which include forming a transitional government in Syria and releasing detainees from regime prisons.

The HNC was established in November 2017 in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, during the oppositions second Riyadh conference. It has 50 members representing the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, the Moscow and Cairo platforms, Free Syrian Army factions and a number of independent opposition figures.

On Oct. 5, Syrians took to the streets of opposition-held Idlib and the countrysides of Aleppo and Hama. They are calling their movement The HNC Does Not Represent Us." (Another name considered was "Normalization with Assad is Treason.")

Figures representing the HNC, including Hariri, criticized the movement's demands and even its name. Hariri told al-Arabiya news that the regime, on the other hand, likes the new group's name, and will no doubt be pleased that a movement is rising to challenge the HNC.

Demonstrators called for dissolving the HNC and holding it responsible for what's happening in Idlib and other opposition-held areas. The protesters raised banners attacking the HNC, stressing that it has failed to provide any benefits to the Syrian revolution and the liberated areas. Their signs conveyed the messages: The revolution shall continue until our victory is achieved and The political solution begins with overthrowing the regime and prosecuting its figures."

Activists explained that the protest movements name is a strong message from the revolutionary street to energize all opposition-affiliated institutions and forces. This will force politicians to seriously reconsider the situation and discuss reform.

Hariris statements and his criticism of anti-HNC protesters in the north have angered many," said Yahia Nanaa, head of the Association of Free Syrian Engineers in Aleppo and a member of the Political Body of Syrian Revolutionary Forces. "Syrian activists in opposition-controlled areas in Idlib and Aleppos countryside vowed to carry on with their movement, demanding the dismissal of the HNC.

He told Al-Monitor, The HNC wasn't at the level we expected it to be. It worked to achieve international interests rather than revolutionary ones. We, as the Syrian opposition, are in dire need of restructuring the HNC and creating change that guarantees the interests of the national revolution. We need to eliminate mercenaries, those who benefit from them and who don't work for the revolution.

Mohammed Shakib al-Khaled, also a member of the Political Body of Syrian Revolutionary Forces in Idlib, told Al-Monitor the group considers HNC an illegal representative of the opposition.

Every military, political or other opposition institution must serve the objectives of the Syrian revolution, and if it fails to do so, then it does not represent the opposition in any way. The HNC is supposed to be an opposition-affiliated institution representing the Syrian revolution and defending it in international forums. However, we were surprised to see that some members of the HNC still consider Bashar al-Assad to be a legitimate president, treating the oppressor as the victim. In addition, certain independent figures that no one knew about have for some reason joined the HNC.

Khaled noted that the Cairo and Moscow platforms are two Syrian gatherings that were announced in Egypt and Russia in 2014, claiming to represent a spectrum of Syrian opposition. However, the opposition in northern Syria believes that these platforms are close to Russia and the regime, and have different orientations and objectives than those of the Syrian revolution. He explained the opposition is convinced Russia has worked to deliberately involve the Cairo and Moscow platforms in the HNC.

Abu al-Ala al-Halabi, an activist in northern Aleppo province, told Al-Monitor, There's a real problem within the HNC. It doesn't serve the Syrian revolution, nor does it care for the peoples demands. This is why [the HNC] needs to be changed. Reform should be established in all other political institutions affiliated with the opposition as well. They must be restructured so as to serve our people in the best possible way and always put Syrias interests above all else.

On Oct. 15, controversial HNC Vice Chairman Khaled Mahameed submitted his resignation, one day before the Syrian opposition candidates to the Constitutional Committee met in Riyadh. He said he resigned because he was under a lot of pressure.

HNC members would not answer Al-Monitors questions about Mahameed and refused to comment on the demonstrations.

Opposition to Hariri and HNC has been building for some time. When Hariri visited al-Bab in July, dozens of opposition activists demonstrated in front of the citys local council demanding his dismissal. Protesters held banners rejecting the HNC and accusing its members of visiting their area to promote reconciliation with the regime.With President Donald Trumps support among evangelicals sliding ahead of next months mid-term elections, the White House is seeking to energize the Republican base by highlighting his administrations special treatment of Middle Eastern Christians and Israel.

Shortly after a Reuters poll last month revealed that Trumps approval among white evangelicals had fallen from 73% at the beginning of his presidency to 62% in August, Vice President Mike Pence warned a crowd of fellow evangelical Christians that they must surpass the energy of the American left and their enthusiasm and passion as Democrats threaten Republican control of Congress.

As part of his pitch to the socially conservative Family Research Councils annual Values Voter Summit in September, Pence touted efforts to secure the release of pastor Andrew Brunson from Turkish custody, the Jerusalem embassy move and direct aid for Iraqi Christians. The lineup also included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback and Jacqueline Funari, Brunsons daughter.

After Turkey finally released Brunson after two years in custody earlier this month, Trump hosted the pastor at the White House. During a 30-minute on-camera meeting in the Oval Office, Brunson knelt by the president in prayer and said that he had voted for Trump via absentee ballot from a Turkish prison. The political optics could not have been better for Trump, whose evangelical base has long pushed for Brunsons release.

No one  has been as kind and thoughtful to the persecuted Christians [in the Middle East] as this administration has been and thats just the truth, pastor Michael Youssef, the Egyptian-American leader of an evangelical megachurch in Georgia, told Al-Monitor in an interview. Hes willing to risk some economic losses just to bring one pastor  Brunson  back.

But the priorities of Trumps evangelical base do not always mesh well with those of persecuted Christian communities in the Middle East.

Last month, for example, Trump discussed the importance of religious liberty and progress in the treatment of Egypts Coptic community during his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the margins of the UN General Assembly summit in New York, according to a White house readout. Some Copts however are critical of both leaders.

Overall I do not think [Trump] has improved the situation, said Lindsay Griffin, the advocacy director of Coptic Solidarity, a US-based group advocating for equal rights for Egyptian Copts. Griffin contends that Trumps uncritical embrace of Sisi and the continual release of an annual $1.3 billion in military aid despite Egypts poor human rights record has given the Egyptian president a free pass.

At first Copts were very supportive of [Sisi] because obviously they were happy to see [former President Mohamed] Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood go, Griffin told Al-Monitor in an interview. Sisi has been giving free rein to the Salafis, who ideologically are just as extreme, if not more so.

That did not stop Youssef and a delegation of American faith leaders on Trumps evangelical advisory board from dispatching a delegation to meet with Sisi last year. The delegation resulted in a laudatory video on the Christian Broadcasting Network that Griffin called cringe-worthy.

But the evangelical leaders defended Sisis record, praising him for outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood after his coup against the democratically elected Morsi.

The Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated every area of life, so its going to take more than four or five years, said Youssef. There never used to be a single province governor who was Christian. Now [Sisi] has two.

Middle Eastern Christians have also split with evangelicals over Trumps decision to relocate the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. After the move, Egypts Coptic Pope Tawadros II cancelled a meeting with Pence.

Trump is the kind of man who says when I give you my word, Im going to keep it, said Youssef. And even though some people really didnt like it  they can see hes nevertheless a man of his word.

Many American evangelicals believe that modern Israel must expand its territory into its biblical-era boundaries, including the West Bank and Jordan, in order for Jesus Christ to return to Earth. As such, advocacy groups like Christians United for Israel have long pushed Washington to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem.

Trump is the kind of man who says when I give you my word, Im going to keep it, said Youssef. And even though some people really didnt like it  they can see hes nevertheless a man of his word.

This belief is not shared by most of their Middle Eastern counterparts.

Jerusalem will only have peace when it is a capital for two states  West Jerusalem as a capital for the state of Israel and East Jerusalem as a capital for the state of Palestine, Munib Younan, a bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, told Al-Monitor in an interview during a visit to Washington last month.

Palestinian Christians have also objected to Trumps decision to eliminate economic aid to the West Bank and Gaza. The funding has jeopardized Palestinians in need of cancer treatment at Augusta Victoria Hospital, which is run by Younans church, and five other hospitals providing specialized medical treatment in East Jerusalem.

Even as Trump cuts aid for the Palestinians, he has fulfilled another promise championed by both American and Middle Eastern Christians  an increase in direct aid to Iraqi Christians. Advocates have been urging the United States to implement this policy since the Barack Obama administration, and they have found a champion in the current vice president.

Under President Trump, the United States is no longer funding ineffective programs at the United Nations, Pence said at the Values Voter Summit. He noted that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is now providing funds directly to Iraqi Christians and persecuted religious minorities to help them rebuild communities of faith in that ancient land.

Iraqi Christians have long complained that US aid streams through the UN have been ineffective in rebuilding their communities in the mass displacement that ensued after the Islamic States genocidal campaign in 2014. Earlier this year, the United States made $75 million of its contribution to the UN Development Program, which oversees Iraqi stabilization aid, contingent on increased UN funding for Iraqi minorities.

Cardinal Louis Sako from Iraqs Chaldean Catholic Community, however, told USAID Administrator Mark Green during a meeting at the Vatican this week that little progress has yet been made. But some advocates contend that aid has slowly started to trickle out after Green appointed Max Primorac as special representative for minority assistance programs.

And just this week, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan met with Iraqi Christian leaders in Baghdad. Soon after, the State Department announced another $178 million in direct assistance to Iraqi Christians and Yazidis, bringing the total to nearly $300 million.

Other Middle Eastern minority groups have also sought to capitalize on the strong evangelical influence within the Trump administration.

Lobbying disclosure forms reviewed by Al-Monitor indicate that the Syrian Democratic Council, a Kurdish-dominated opposition group, met with Brownback and Gary Bauer earlier this year. Bauer previously led both the Family Research Council and the Christians United for Israel Action Fund before Trump appointed him to the US Commission on Religious Freedom.

The outreach landed the Syrian council a coveted spot at the State Departments July Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, allowing them to tout religious tolerance in Kurdish-controlled Syria.

But the ministerial was equally notable for countries that were not on the agenda. Griffin, who attended the summit, said rights violations in Egypt and Saudi Arabia were not addressed.

We cant give some people a free pass, which is really what I think happened [with] Egypt, said Griffin. I think the message the administration is sending is we dont really care about human rights that much. Its collateral damage to their main objective.

In the middle of the ministerial, Pompeo released $195 million in Egyptian military aid, which his predecessor had held up over human rights concerns.Turkey is cranking up pressure on Saudi Arabia over the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, leaking a fresh batch of incriminating information that clearly indicates that it was premeditated. It comes a day before Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to reveal what happened in all its nakedness, as he put it when he addresses the parliamentary group of his ruling Justice and Development Party.

It remains unclear whether Erdogan shared any of the details with US President Donald Trump in a phone call Sunday. It was the first such conversation between the pair since North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson was freed from house arrest in the Aegean city of Izmir and allowed to fly back home on Oct. 12. The Turkish presidency said in a statement the leaders had agreed that the Khashoggi case needed to be illuminated in every way.

Todays leaks included surveillance footage shared by Turkish officials with CNN that showed a man dressed in Khashoggis clothes and wearing his glasses and a fake beard leaving the consulate where Khashoggi was killed on Oct. 2 by the back door. The individual, who matched Khashoggi in height and girth, was later captured on tape milling around the Blue Mosque in the crowded touristic Sultanahmet district. Soon thereafter he appears beardless and wearing his own clothes. The man, identified as Mustafa al-Madani, was allegedly part of the 15-member hit squad implicated in Khashoggis death.

Separately, the pro-government A Haber broadcast footage of alleged Saudi consulate officials burning documents a day after Khashoggi disappeared.

The footage is squarely at odds with Saudi authorities' differing versions of how Khashoggi died and leaves no doubt that his murder was pre-planned, if clumsily executed. On Friday they said it was the result of a fistfight. A Saudi official then told Reuters Khashoggi had died when one of his interrogators placed him in a chokehold as he resisted abduction.

The most recent description came from Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who claimed that the killing was a tremendous mistake carried out by rogue officers overstepping their authority. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely thought to have instigated the botched operation, had not had prior knowledge of it, Jubeir told Fox News.

European leaders and members of the US Congress have aired skepticism and fury over the Saudis meandering explanations. The United Nations has called for an independent investigation to be carried out by a team of international experts.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio expressed his indignation in a tweet today: The #KhashoggiMurder was immoral. But it was also disrespectful to Trump & those of us who have supported the strategic alliance with the Saudi's [sic]. Not only did they kill this man, they have left @potus & their congressional allies a terrible predicament and given Iran a free gift.

Turkey appears bent on tightening the noose around the omnipotent prince, who is openly hostile to Ankara over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar. It is doing so through a steady flow of incriminating information relayed to the international and domestic media by unnamed Turkish officials. Western governments have so far not offered a counter narrative, creating the impression that Turkeys story is true and leaving the press dependent on whatever tidbits are on offer from Turkish officialdom on any given day.

The Turkish media is near wholly controlled by Erdogans cronies, and with whats left of Turkeys political opposition in disarray, few if any are challenging the grisly accounts. Turkish officials claim to have recorded much of it on an 11-minute audio tape, which in turn suggests they were spying on the Saudi Consulate.

Hilal Kaplan, a columnist for pro-government Sabah, suggested that the future Saudi king's fate hinges on this tape. "How President Erdogan decides to approach this matter is of a magnitude that will influence both near and long-term developments in the region," she wrote.

Meanwhile, Turkish crime scene investigators arrived at an underground car park in Istanbuls Sultangazi district northwest of Levent, where the Saudi Consulate is located and close to the edge of forested land where Khashoggis remains may have been dumped. A Mercedes sedan with diplomatic license plates that was parked outside the Saudi consulate the day Khashoggi entered the building was found in the garage. Khashoggi's remains have yet to be found.

Critically, neither Erdogan nor members of his government have publicly or privately named the prince in their statements about Khashoggi. This omission is likely because Turkey wants the Saudis themselves to give him the shove. This in turn can only happen if Trump concludes that MBS, as he is known, is beyond salvage, so Turkish thinking goes. Erdogans speech in the parliament tomorrow should shed some light on whether Washington and Ankara are on the same page. If so, by allegedly ordering Khashoggis killing, MBS may have inadvertently triggered his own political demise.As speculation continues to swirl around the mysterious case of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkish homicide investigators are pursuing leads and believe they are getting a better handle on the events that took place Oct. 2 in Istanbul. Forensic specialists are searching for Khashoggi's body in possible burial sites in Istanbul and its vicinity.

Monday, investigators located a Saudi Consulate vehicle at an underground car park in Istanbul and were seeking permission from the consulate to search the car, Turkeys state-run Anadolu Agency news outlet reported.

Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and permanent resident of the United States, was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul around 1 p.m. local time, according to camera recordings. An outspoken critic of the Saudi government, Khashoggi is presumed by many experts and observers to have been tortured, assassinated and dismembered on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia initially denied knowing anything about Khashoggi's disappearance, but on Oct. 19 said Khashoggi had been killed at the consulate during a fistfight.

Turkish officials believe that there's much more to the story and that it's only a matter of time before the truth is known.

There is no perfect murder, said a security person in Istanbul speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. That person is but one of many diverse, credible sources Al-Monitor spoke with about the Khashoggi case.

The conviction is growing in Turkey that the execution was planned directly by Riyadh, as more information is gathered from the locations where an alleged hit squad operated, and from their telephone calls.

On Oct. 21, for the first time, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented about Khashoggi's death, stressing that Ankara is looking for justice and is determined to uncover all facts. Erdogan said that on Oct. 23, he will reveal some significant findings about the case. Many in Ankara say Erdogan will shoot down Riyadhs narratives on the death and will damage the reputation of the crown prince Muhammad bin Salman. According to recent leaks to the Turkish media, there are some telephone recordings proving the crown prince was personally involved in the death.

If Riyadh did plan an execution, what made the government confident enough to carry out such an operation in another country? Wouldnt it have preferred a low-profile option? This tells us that Riyadhs first choice would have been to have Khashoggi returned to Saudi Arabia alive  or dead, if he proved too troublesome. It's obvious Riyadh didn't calculate the affair would become an international issue in such a short time.

Authorities know a 15-man team flew Oct. 2 from Riyadh to Istanbul Ataturk Airport on two Gulfstream IV private jets and checked into a hotel. They went to the consulate at 12:30 p.m., about a half hour before Khashoggi entered. Officials believe the team was divided into three groups: interrogators, executioners and "fixers" charged with cleaning up the scene and trying to remove any evidence of a crime.

Around 3 p.m., a vehicle with blacked-out windows drove from the consulate to the consulate residence. Istanbul police are investigating if Khashoggi was executed and then taken to the residence, or if the alleged execution was carried out at the residence.

Detailed investigations conducted Oct. 17-18 at the consulate complex, inside and out, and its sewage system, are likely to provide the answer.

Because Khashoggi hadn't come back out from the consulate, fears about his fate were first reported by Turkish media around 6 p.m., followed by international news after 8 p.m. Yet officials now know that between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., the Saudi team quickly split up and headed to Riyadh on private jets or scheduled flights. How were they able to leave Istanbul despite the media reports?

There was confusion between police and intelligence units about whether Khashoggi was considered "missing" or "kidnapped/detained" under Turkish laws. This confusion, the government's delay in setting up a special investigation team and the lack of coordination among intelligence units gave the team 3 hours to leave the country. Experts told Al-Monitor that if even one member of the squad had been apprehended and questioned, the investigation would have been much different. Istanbul police are convinced the men didn't take Khashoggis body with them.

So where are his remains? Experts cite two possibilities: Either the body parts were dissolved with chemicals and disposed of in the sewer system, or they were buried in different parts of Istanbul. Bearing in mind the short time the supposed hit squad had, experts think it is likely that at least his bones were buried in different locations of Istanbul. This is why officials have been checking hundreds of closed-circuit TV cameras to determine the routes of all consulate vehicles on Oct. 2.

Many people took notice that Saudi Consul General Mohammed al-Otaibi hastily departed for his country on the first available flight after he heard his residence was to be searched. Security sources told Al-Monitor that if the consul had not left so quickly, he might have been summoned for questioning as, at the moment, he is the most important potential witness. Officials fear he may not live long enough to answer questions, if he is still alive.

Turkish media are reporting there is an audio recording of Khashoggi's alleged murder in which the consul general's voice is heard, followed by someone telling him to shut up if he wanted to return to Saudi Arabia alive.

Ankara's worries about the diplomat's safety may be justified, because on Oct. 18, media reports surfaced saying a member of the alleged hit team, air force Lt. Meshal Saad al- Bostani, had died in a mysterious traffic accident in Saudi Arabia. Now questions are being asked about the fates of other members of the team and the consul general.

Istanbul investigators may well discover evidence to back up, at least in this case, the axiom that there is no perfect murder. But do flawless murders perhaps exist in the diplomatic arena? How much will be disclosed to the public? This will be determined by ongoing bargaining among Ankara, Riyadh and Washington. In the meantime, Khashoggi's disappearance will have myriad ramifications and is a direct blow to the dignity of the Turkish state and a violation of its sovereignty.Despite reports from several British newspapers, Alabama native Connie Simpson, better known as Nanny Connie, will not help Meghan Markle and Prince Harry take care of their first baby, due next spring.

Hartzog Consulting, the PR firm representing Nanny Connie, released this statement:

"Over the past week, reports have surfaced indicating that Connie Simpson, better known as Nanny Connie, has been hired as a nanny by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. There is no truth to these reports, and any quotes supposedly made by Nanny Connie saying otherwise are fabricated. She wishes them the very best during this exciting time.

"On behalf of Nanny Connie, we thank you for your continued support and interest in her endeavors."

Connie Simpson grew up in Mobile and worked in several different jobs before she found her calling as a nanny. She started working for well-to-do families in Mobile and Baldwin counties and was passed from one sorority sister to the next, she said in an April interview with AL.com.

Amal and George Clooney are among the celebrity clients who have hired Nanny Connie over the years, including Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, and Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel.

Earlier this year, Nanny Connie released her first book, "The Nanny Connie Way: Secrets to Mastering the First Four Months of Parenthood." She said she wrote the book after being told by her clients over the past 20 years that they wished she could bottle her magic way with babies.

Editor's Note: This story originally stated that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had hired Nanny Connie, based on British newspaper reports. This story was updated at 7:54 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, to reflect that she has not, based on a press release from Hartzog Consulting.The Alabama Academy of Honor inducted five new members today, recognizing them for achievement in civil rights, civic leadership and business.

The academy, created by the Legislature in 1965, includes 100 living members, plus the living governors of Alabama. The academy elects new members.

The five new members are civic leader Walter A. Bell; former U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon; Ann D. Florie, former executive director of Leadership Birmingham; D. Paul Jones, Jr., former chairman and CEO of Compass Bank; and W. Stancil (Stan) Starnes, CEO of ProAssurance Corporation.

The new members were recognized and spoke at an induction ceremony today at the State Capitol.

Here is some of the biographical information on the new inductees included in the program at todays ceremony:

Walter Bell speaks at a ceremony at the State Capitol where he was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

Bell was born in Buena Vista, Alabama, son of a third-generation farmer who moved the family to Mobile during World War II. Bell graduated from Central High School.

After high school he attended community college in California and served for six years in the California National Guard and was deployed during the Watts riot in Los Angeles and the People Park riot in Berkeley.

Bell moved to Indiana in 1973 and became community relations director for the Indianapolis Urban League. He wrote news articles and speeches, hosted two weekly radio shows and a monthly television show. In 1976, he produced a stage play, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

Bell returned to Mobile in 1978 and founded the Mobile County Urban League, launching a 40-year career of involvement in civic, charitable, educational and economic programs.

Gov. Bob Riley appointed Bell to serve as Alabama Insurance Commissioner. From 2008 to 2015, Bell was chairman of the Swiss Re America Holding Corporation, a $17 billion subsidiary of the Swiss Reinsurance Company.

Bell graduated from Spring Hill College and served as a trustee there for 13 years. Bells son, W. Kamau Bell, is host of the Emmy-winning CNN show, United Shades of America.

Clemon was born in Fairfield in 1943, the son of sharecroppers who migrated from Mississippi.

As a student at Miles College, he participated in the Birmingham campaign for civil rights launched by Martin Luther King Jr., the campaign that led to confrontations with Police Commissioner Eugene Bull Connor. After obtaining a law degree from Columbia University, he represented black plaintiffs in major civil rights litigation against the Jefferson County school board, United States Steel Corporation, Pullman Standard Corporation and the city of Birmingham.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Clemon in 1980 to be Alabamas first African-American judge. He retired from the bench in 2009 and resumed practicing law.

Ann Florie speaks at a ceremony at the Alabama State Capitol where she was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

Florie, a native of Weldon, Ark., received a bachelors degree in political science from Newcomb College of Tulane University.

Florie was the founding executive director of Region 2020, which promoted cooperation and citizen involvement in a 12-county area in affordable housing, education, arts and culture, transportation and land use.

She served as executive director of Leadership Birmingham. Florie is an appointed member of the Jefferson County Personnel Board and serves on the executive committee of the Birmingham Business Alliance and the board of directors for the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama.

She was on the Mountain Brook Board of Education for 10 years.

Former Compass Bank Chairman and CEO D. Paul Jones Jr. speaks at the state Capitol as he and four others are inducted in the Alabama Academy of Honor.

Jones, born in 1942, received degrees in business and in law from the University of Alabama. He began practicing law with the predecessor to the Birmingham law firm Balch & Bingham in 1967.

In 1978, Jones joined Compass Bancshares (then Central Bancshares) as senior vice president and general counsel. He served as president of the Alabama Bankers Association. Jones was a director for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta from 1993 to 2009.

Jones became chairman and CEO of Compass in 1991, a position he held until his retirement in 2008. Compass grew under his leadership to operate 622 offices in seven states and was ranked as the 26th largest bank in the nation based on deposits.

ProAssurance Corporation CEO Stancil Starnes speaking at a ceremony at the State Capitol where he and four others were inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

Starnes graduated from Shades Valley High School in 1965 at the age of 16. He obtained a business degree from the University of Alabama. In 1972, Starnes graduated first in his class with a law degree from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University.

In 1975, Starnes and his father established the law firm now known as Starnes Davis Florie. Starnes defended physicians and others in health care cases, including national and international clients. He wrote the Alabama Medical Liability Act, passed by the Legislature in 1987, as well as amendments to the law.

In 2007, Starnes was named chairman and CEO of ProAssurance Corporation, an insurance company that operates in all 50 states and focuses on health care issues.A Georgia man has been arrested in Alabama on sex crimes involving a juvenile girl.

Auburn police on Monday announced charges against 22-year-old Isaiah Emmanuel Smith. He is from Midland, Ga.

Smith is charged with first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy. Authorities said his arrest stems from an investigation into a sexual assault that was reported to police on April 16. The victim told investigators she was sexually assaulted over a period of time by a family acquaintance at a home in Auburn.

Detectives began an investigation into the incident, identified Smith as the individual responsible and obtained warrants for his arrest.

Smith was arrested by the DeKalb Police Department in Georgia on Oct. 12 on the outstanding rape and sodomy warrants. He was taken into custody and held at the DeKalb County Jail to await an extradition hearing. Smith subsequently waived extradition back to Alabama and was taken into custody by Auburn Police.

He was then booked into the Lee County Jail on $125,000 bond. Police said additional charges are expected and the case remains under investigation by the Auburn Police Division and the Lee County Department of Human Resources.The commission that votes on environmental regulations in Alabama and oversees the Alabama Department of Environmental Management got a dramatic overhaul this month, as three new commissioners sat on the board for its October 19 meeting.

One of the new commissioners, engineer Thomas Walters, was named in September. The other two new commissioners were appointed by Gov. Kay Ivey two days before Fridays meeting, according to ADEM Director Lance LeFleur.

Ruby L. Perry joined the Commission Friday in the boards chemist/veterinarian position. Perry is the dean of Tuskegee Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine and has been a professor of veterinary medicine for more than 30 years. According to a biography provided by ADEM, Perry received her Doctor in Veterinary Medicine from Tuskegee in 1977, a Masters degree in microbiology from Michigan State University and is completing a PhD in Education this year. She is board certified in veterinary radiology and is Tuskegees vice-provost for undergraduate education.

Perry replaces Craig Martin, DVM on the commission. Martin, a veterinarian practicing in the Birmingham area, said the governor chose not to appoint him to another term on the commission, but he has no hard feelings about it.

My term went through September and the governor had the option to appoint someone new, Martin said. "I dont really have an opinion either way, its just her prerogative.

I fulfilled my term and the governor just decided to go with someone else.

Kevin McKinstry was named to the wildlife biologist position on the commission. McKinstry, from Tuscaloosa is a certified wildlife biologist/recreation manager for the Westervelt Company, which coordinates and implements comprehensive hunting lease programs on over 500,000 acres of corporate and over 100,000 acres of privately owned timberland.

McKinstry earned a bachelors degree in forest resources and conservation from the University of Florida in 1983 and is a member of the Alabama Wildlife Federations board of directors.

McKinstry replaces former commissioner Terry Richardson, who LeFleur said decided to step down from the commission when his term expired in September.

Commissioner Mary J. Merritt was reappointed to her position as the boards member at large.

There was also a shakeup on the commissioners' leadership roles, as Dr. Samuel Miller assumed the role of commission chairman. Previous chairman, attorney H. Lanier Brown II, is now vice-chair. LeFleur said Brown had maxed out the number of terms as chairman under commission rules.

Iveys office did not immediately respond to inquiries as to why she decided to shake up the commission. The commission and ADEM were widely criticized after revelations in the U.S. v. Gilbert bribery trial this summer that a former commissioner, Scott Phillips, was working as a consultant to help Drummond Company oppose listing a polluted Birmingham neighborhood as an EPA Superfund site. Drummond Vice President David Roberson and attorney Joel Gilbert were convicted of bribery and wire fraud charges related to their efforts to oppose the listing. Phillips resigned from the commission in 2017.

Miller, Brown and Merritt are the last remaining commissioners from 2017 on the board. In addition to the new appointments for the October meeting, John (Jay) Masingill III joined the commission before its June meeting as the boards professional geologist.

LeFleur thanked the outgoing commissioners at Fridays meeting.

Serving on the commission is truly an act of public service, LeFleur said. "It requires many hours of preparation before the meetings. It requires engaging with sometimes hostile advocates, often from several sides of an issue. At times you are required to make unpopular decisions that are publicly second guessed and criticized. Your only reward is the satisfaction of knowing you are making a difference.

I thank Dr. Richardson, Dr. Martin and each of you for your service to our state and your wise counsel to me.

LeFleur said commissioners receive only a per diem for the bi-monthly commission meetings that represents far less than they would typically earn for a days work.

I cannot think of another board or commission that pays $100 per meeting and asks its participants to do as much as they do, he said.

Martin said his time on the commission was an educational experience.

I learned a lot about how environmental management works and things that they do to help the citizens, Martin said. "I had a client who told me when I joined just remember who your client is, and its not a certain group or industry. Its the citizens of Alabama.

I thought that was good advice and that was my goal on the commission was to do whats right for the citizens of Alabama.

The commissions makeup is defined in Alabama state law to include an attorney, a physician, a wildlife biologist, a chemist/veterinarian, a certified well-driller or geologist and a member at large. The commissioners are appointed to six-year terms by the governor but must be confirmed by the Alabama Senate.

The four commissioners who were appointed to the board this year will have to be confirmed by the Senate in the next legislative session.Murder charges against a central Alabama teen in the shooting deaths of his parents during an apparent dispute over a house party and drugs have been dismissed.

Jesse Holton, then-17, was charged as an adult in the slayings of his father, former Eclectic mayor Mike Holton, mother, April Holton. Both were 37.

The shooting happened on a Sunday in September 2016. Mike Holton was pronounced dead on the scene. April Holton later died at the hospital from severe brain trauma.

Authorities at the time said the parents were away and returned home to find their house in disarray after a party that apparently included drugs. The father called the sheriffs department Sunday afternoon, and an officer arrived at the house to find that the father had handcuffed the son. Mike Holton told the deputy he planned to sign a juvenile warrant the next morning against the teen.

The deputy left on another call, but a neighbor called about 30 minutes later to say the teen showed up claiming his parents were fighting. A deputy went back to the house and found Mike Holton dead of a gunshot wound to the head and April Holton critically wounded.

The teen told lawmen at the time that his father shot his mother and then turned the gun on himself. Sheriffs investigators at the time said the physical evidence didnt match the teens account.

The youth, then a senior at Elmore County High School, told detectives he gets "easily agitated" if he doesn't have access to marijuana and Adderall, and witnesses told investigators the teen has anger problems. He was arrested and charged as an adult in his parents deaths. Two younger siblings were placed into the care of relatives.

Elmore County District Attorney Randall Houston on Monday announced the dismissal against the son, who turned 19 in August. As prosecutors, our job is to find the truth and do justice, Houston said in a prepared statement. When we cannot find the truth, it is impossible to do justice.

Jesse Holton on Monday pleaded guilty to an underlying felony charge that is unrelated to the deaths of parents. Houston did not identify that charge and court records show the teen was granted youthful offender status so that information will not be made public.

The district attorney said the forensics report stated the case was a homicide and that position has been maintained, he said. The medical examiner was expected to testify that the case could not be classified as a homicide beyond a reasonable degree of medical certainty.

From the beginning, this case has been open to interpretation as to what is actually the trutheither Jesse Holton killed his father and mother; the father of Jesse Holton killed Jesses mother then Jesse killed his father; or the father of Jesse Holton killed Jesses mother and then killed himself.

My office has reason to believe any of these three scenarios could have occurred, but we have no proof to support any of the three theories beyond a reasonable doubt, Houston wrote. Therefore, we are ethically obligated to dismiss the murder charges against Jesse Holton. The Elmore County Sheriffs Office has left no stone unturned in this case, and I thank them for their relentless search for truth and justice.A police officer on Monday shot and killed an 18-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another officer near a school in the Atlanta area over the weekend, police said.

Tafahree Maynard was one of two men charged in the fatal shooting Saturday of Gwinnett County police Officer Antwan Toney. Police believe Maynard shot Toney, and had launched an area manhunt as he faced charges of aggravated assault and felony murder.

Police got a credible tip about Maynard's whereabouts around 3 a.m. Monday, Gwinnett County police Chief Butch Ayers told reporters. Dozens of police officers went door-to-door in a search for him, knocking on doors and interviewing people.

Two officers searching a shed behind a house encountered Maynard, who failed to comply with verbal commands, Ayers said. Maynard initially had his hand behind his back and when he showed his hand, he was holding an "edged weapon" in his hand, the chief said.

One officer fired a stun gun at Maynard and the other fatally shot him from about 5 or 6 feet (1.5 meters or 1.8 meters) away, Ayers said.

"I would like to say that the danger to the community is over," Ayers said at a news conference, adding that police would continue to investigate any potential charges against people who may have provided assistance to Maynard "during his attempt to escape justice."

Toney was responding to a call around 2:30 p.m. Saturday about a suspicious vehicle near Shiloh Middle School in the Snellville area, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. When the officers approached, someone in the vehicle opened fire and Toney was hit, police said. Then the vehicle sped off.

Toney died at a hospital from his wounds, police said. The 30-year-old from Southern California had been with the Gwinnett County Police Department for nearly three years, serving in his first police job.

"The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community," Ayers said.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a gun at an officer during the pursuit after Toney's fatal shooting, police had said earlier.

According to police, Pretlow drove the vehicle away after the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants. An officer searching the area later encountered Pretlow around 3 p.m. Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots, according to police. Pretlow was not hit and fled into some woods. He was subsequently taken into custody around 11:30 p.m. Saturday by U.S. Marshals.Authorities have released the name of a man shot to death outside his Hoover apartment Sunday afternoon.

The Jefferson County Coroners Office identified the victim as Darryl Lavon Seay. He was 23.

Hoover police responded to a report of gunshots at 4:49 p.m. to the Park at Hoover, said Capt. Gregg Rector. Once on the scene in the 2300 block of Rime Village Drive of Lorna Road, they found Seay suffering from a gunshot wound in front of the 2300 building where he lived.

Witnesses said he was shot in the neck, but police have not confirmed that. He was taken to UAB Hospital by Hoover Fire and Rescue where he was pronounced dead at 5:20 p.m.

Lt. Keith Czeskleba said evidence at the scene suggests the shooting possibly involved a drug transaction. Court records show in 2014, he pleaded guilty to robbery, breaking and entering a vehicle, and fraudulent use of a credit card in Baldwin County and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was only recently released.

Police said witnesses reported seeing shots being fired from a silver or grey SUV, possibly a Jeep. The suspect vehicle struck another vehicle in the parking lot as it was fleeing the scene and it may have damage to the driver's side front bumper.

No arrests have been announced.

The slaying is Hoover's third homicide this year. The other two happened when two men shot each other in May, also at an apartment complex off Lorna. The victim is the 131st in all of Jefferson County so far in 2018.

"We believe that there are individuals associated with the victim that have information about this case and we're asking them to come forward,'' Rector said.

Anyone who has any information concerning this case is asked to call Detective Drew Mims at 205-739-7274. Tipster who wish to remain anonymous and qualify for a cash reward can call Crime Stoppers of Metro Alabama at 205-254-7777.A judge has ruled the Democratic candidate for a Jefferson County circuit judgeship is not eligible to run, but did not address whether her votes can be counted in next months election.

Fayette County Circuit Judge Samuel Junkins ruling Monday afternoon stated that candidate Linda Hall was not eligible to run in the Nov. 6 election for Circuit Court place 16 due to residency requirements. Hall is currently the Democratic nominee for the seat, which is part of the Tenth Judicial Circuit, and is running against Republican incumbent Circuit Judge Teresa Pulliam. A lawsuit filed last month by a Jefferson County voter states Hall lives in Shelby Countywhich isnt part of the Tenth Judicial Circuit like Jeffersonand hasnt lived in Jefferson County for the required 12 months.

Junkin, however, did not issue an injunction - at the request of the plaintiff - that would have prevented Halls votes from being counted.

The present situation is entirely of Halls making, Junkin wrote. Rather than attempt to address the injunctive remedies available to plaintiff, this court opts to await further briefing and arguments from the parties' counsel before deciding what injunctive relief is appropriate based on Halls clear ineligibility.

The judge also stated that the second-place finisher in the Democratic Primary election, Peter J. Davis who is seeking to be awarded Halls votes if she were disqualified, has until Oct. 26 to show why his request should not be dismissed.

Junkin was appointed to preside over the case, after all Jefferson County judges recused themselves. He held a trial Friday.

The ballots for the election, which is 15 days away, have already been printed and absentee ballots have already been sent out. The lawsuit states the only available remedy is for Junkins to rule that Halls votes not be counted.

During trial, Hall testified about her living arrangements for the past 18 months and said she would not have ran if she was aware she had lived in Shelby County. She said she is aware of the requirement that a person must live in the county in which theyre campaigning in for at least 12 months prior to the election.

Hall said she lived in the Park at Callington apartments until early 2016, when mold infested her unit and she had to move out. From there, Hall moved in February 2017 to apartments on Kenley Waywhich was the address she provided on her declaration of candidacy forms with the Alabama Democratic Party. According to her testimony, Hall provided the zip code 35219, which doesnt match the Kenley Way address, because she didnt know the correct zip code. Hall said the 35219 zip code matched her P.O. box address in Homewood where she received all of her mail.

Documents shown in court also show Hall provided the Kenley Way address, along with the incorrect zip code, on forms submitted to the Alabama Ethics Commission.

Over the course of 2018, Hall said she has lived in four different apartments because of various issues with mold, foul odors, and smoking neighbors. Hall said the complexes of Kenley Way, Cahaba Grandview, and Inverness Cliffs all advertised they were in the city of Birmingham. Parts of Birmingham overlap into Shelby County, but Hall said she never inquired about the county she was residing in.

Her latest apartment, which Hall said she moved into in early October, is in Jefferson County.

Hall also testified that she lived in St. Louis, MO, between August and December 2017. In St. Louis, she lived in several extended stay hotels.

When asked why Hall claimed in a recent court filing that she resided at her office, Hall said she spent more time there than she did at her various apartments. For the purpose of residence I spend more time at my office, she stated. Im there more than Im at home.

Hall is also the focus of a death row inmates appeal, where his new lawyers have said Hall was mentally unstable during the time she represented Randy Lewis during his capital murder trial in 2007.

Hall is represented by Kearney Hutsler and Everett Wess; the complaining voter is represented by Barry Ragsdale and Meghan Salvati.

Ragsdale said Monday, This is a victory for the citizens of Jefferson County and the rule of law. It is a shame that this trial had to take place and even more of a shame that Ms. Hall  a lawyer who should know better  would try to conceal her true place of residence in order to cover-up her ineligibility for this judgeship.

If she is a person of honor, Ms. Hall should immediately withdraw from this race and concentrate on getting her personal and professional life in order. She has no business being a judge, he continued.A search is underway for a man who robbed a Hoover bank Monday morning.

The holdup happened at 11:18 a.m. at Regions Bank on Montgomery Highway. Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rector said police officers arrived at the bank within two minutes of the Hoover 911 Center receiving the alarm, but the suspect had already fled.

Police said the white male presented a note to the teller, demanding money. He implied that he had a gun, though one was not displayed. He took an undetermined amount of cash and was last seen on foot walking southbound.

The suspect is described as 5-feet, 5-inches to 5-feet, 8-inches tall, He has gray hair, a medium build and is possibly in his 50s. He was wearing a white or light gray Under Armour t-shirt and jeans.

Anyone with information is urged to call Lt. Keith Czeskleba at 205-739-6795. Tipsters who wish to remain anonymous and qualify for a cash reward can call Crime Stoppers 205-254-7777.A former Drummond Company executive and a former partner at Balch & Bingham will both be sentenced Tuesday after being convicted this summer for their roles in a bribery scheme involving the Environmental Protection Agency and its efforts in north Birmingham.

David Roberson, former Drummond Vice President of Government Affairs, and Joel Gilbert, former Balch lawyer, are set to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon. Gilberts sentencing is set for 9 a.m., while Robersons is set for 1 p.m. The two men were tried together, although jurors were told to consider their cases separately.

Each man was convicted of six criminal charges-- conspiracy, bribery, three counts of honest services wire fraud, and money laundering-- after a four-week trial in July.

Sentencing memorandums filed in court show the U.S. Attorneys Office is asking for Gilbert to be sentenced to 97 months in federal prison, be fined $250,000, and serve three years of supervised release following his release from prison. The government also asked that as a special condition of supervised release, Gilbert be ordered to perform 250 hours of community service in the north Birmingham community every year.

Prosecutors have asked Roberson be sentenced to 78 months in prison, and also be fined $250,000.00, and ordered to a period of three years of supervised release. The government has also asked Roberson be required to perform 250 hours of service in the north Birmingham community annually.

Defense teams for each man have filed their own sentencing documents, as well. Gilberts lawyers are requesting a sentence of one year and one day in prison and a supervised release term of one to three years, with the first six months served under home confinement. His lawyers also requested Gilbert complete 200 court-ordered hours of community service.

Robersons attorneys have asked the court to impose sentence without prison time.

According to prosecutors, Roberson and Gilbert bribed former state legislator Oliver Robinson to oppose the EPAs Superfund expansion from north Birmingham into Tarrant and the plans to put the listing on the groups National Priorities List. If Drummond was found responsible for the polluted soil in the Superfund site, the company would have had to pay for the expensive cleanup.

Prosecutors said Gilbert and Roberson formed a contract through Balch with Robinsons nonprofit organization to pressure state officials to oppose the EPA, to meet with EPA representatives, and vote on a joint resolution in the legislature to denounce the expansion and NPL proposal.

Robinson testified during the trial and said his nonprofit, The Oliver Robinson Foundation, received a check from Balch in February 2015 for $14,000. After that date, Robinson said his monthly payments increased from $7,000 to $20,000. Of that money, some was paid out to his daughter and the several employees working for him. In total, Robinson said he was paid approximately $375,000 for his work with Drummond and Balch.

During the four weeks of testimony, dozens of witnesses took the stand to talk about their conversations or relationships with Gilbert and Roberson. Scores of billing records from Balch, which showed Gilbert and other lawyers logging hours working on Drummond matters, were shown in court, along with emails between Gilbert and Roberson.

Robinson took the stand during the trial, saying he was first approached by Roberson in 2014 and asked if he would be interested in working with Balch and Drummond on the EPA matter. Robinson met with Gilbert and a contract between his organization and Balch was signed in early 2015. Days after the contract was signed and Robinson picked up a $14,000 check from Balch, Robinson said he went to an Alabama Environmental Management Commission meeting and spoke on behalf of Balch and Drummond, using talking points he said Gilbert wrote.

Gilbert and Robersons lawyers said no one forced Robinson to go to that meeting, and the check was for community work--not the AEMC meeting appearance. Defense teams for both men said Robinson acted alone, and the contract with his foundation was for legitimate community outreach work. They said Robinsons allegations about Gilbert and Roberson shouldnt be trusted.

Robinson pleaded guilty to several federal charges and testified during Gilbert and Robersons trial. He was sentenced in September to a total of 33 months in prison.Morgan County Sheriff Ana Franklin is accusing a local blogger of misleading sources and the courts as part of a plot against the sheriff and her office.

In a counterclaim filed last week, the sheriff and three deputies allege that blogger Glenda Lockhart has defamed them on her website the Morgan County Whistleblower. For years, Lockhart has used her blog to accuse the sheriff and her office of wrongdoing and illegal activity. Lockhart has also filed multiple lawsuits against the sheriff.

It is born out of resentment, and is nothing less than vengeance, says the counterclaim, which was filed in response to a lawsuit Lockhart is pursuing against the sheriff. In fact, Glenda Lockhart hates Ana Franklin, (and the three deputies) Bob Wilson, Blake Robinson, and Justin Powell, and everything they stand for.

In one claim, Franklins filing says Lockharts blog made reference to ... a bizarre theory that Sheriff Franklin was participating in some elaborate plot, along with the Morgan County Commission, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Vice President Mike Pence to assassinate President Donald Trump." A search by AL.com found no such blog post.

The filing says anonymous comments on the blog on Sept. 6, 2018, imply Franklin was offering sexual services to Vice President Pence, in exchange for help in Morgan County."

The 61-page counterclaim was filed in federal court by Birmingham attorney William Gray. The document alleges defamation, fraud, conspiracy, trespassing, invasion of privacy and more.

This is crazy, said Lockharts attorney Brandy Lee in a phone interview with AL.com. This, to me, is the sheriff trying to shut down Ms. Lockharts free speech.

The counterclaim alleges Lockhart has deceived her sources  including ousted jail warden Leon Bradley  into sharing sensitive information, including law enforcement documents and health records regarding sheriffs office employees.

The counterclaim also alleges that Lockhart has filed frivolous lawsuits and deceived a judge.

The keylogger

Earlier this year, Morgan County Circuit Judge Glenn Thompson ruled that Franklin, along with deputies Blake Robinson, Robert "Bones" Wilson and Justin "JP" Powell, acted criminally during an investigation into the fired jail warden and Lockhart. Thompson in April dismissed a misdemeanor case against Bradley, who had been arrested by the sheriffs office.

After hearing testimony from 11 witnesses during a two-day hearing, Thompson wrote in a scathing order that the sheriffs office provided a keylogger to a confidential informant who "unlawfully" installed it on Lockharts computer. A keylogger is a spy software that records keystrokes and allows for the capture of a persons computer activity and passwords.

The sheriffs counterclaim says that Thompsons order was procured by fraud.

it was premised upon the falsified belief that one or more personnel from the (sheriffs office) conspired to install keylogger software, when, in fact, Glenda Lockhartinstalled keylogger on her own computer.

The sheriffs office got search warrants from Thompson in October 2016 when they were investigating whether Bradley, the former warden, had leaked sensitive information to Lockhart for publication on her blog.

The warrants  which authorized the search of Bradleys home and Lockharts business  were issued based on information the sheriffs office gathered from a confidential informant. The informant was Lockharts grandson, who worked at her Falkville, Ala. business, Straightline Drywall.

Thompson wrote that Franklin and Robinson "deliberately misled" the court to get the warrants. Specifically, the judge wrote, the sheriff's office "intentionally withheld" the fact they paid and threatened their confidential informant.

At the hearing, Daniel Lockhart  the confidential informant and Glendas grandson  testified that he installed the keylogger software on his grandmothers computer. Deputy Powell admitted under oath that he gave Daniel the keylogger.

In the counterclaim, the sheriff says computer experts have found no evidence that a keylogger was ever installed on Lockharts computer. Instead, the counterclaim says, the woman installed keyloggers on two other computers in her own office to mislead the court.

This is the silliest thing Ive ever heard in my whole life, Lockhart told AL.com. Its absolutely ridiculous.

While the counterclaim says a keylogger was never installed on Lockharts computer, it also alleges that the computer was wiped shortly before the sheriffs office served their search warrant.

The claims

The counterclaim requests a jury trial on nine counts, including invasion of privacy, trespassing, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud and deceit, and defamation. The counterclaim doesnt specify how much the plaintiffs are seeking in damages. It asks for an amount to punish and deter (Lockhart) from any such future conduct.

Lockhart has intentionally and knowingly published false information about Franklin and the three deputies, the document says.

On the blog, Lockhart repeatedly referred to the sheriff and deputies as thugs, and accused of them of illegal and immoral activity. The lawsuit says all of the claims are false.

However, the sheriff was held in contempt of a federal court order last year after it was revealed she invested $150,000 of the jail's inmate food fund in a now-bankrupt crooked used car lot that was co-owned by a convicted federal felon. On the Whistleblower blog, Lockhart published checks that publicly proved Franklin had used the inmate food money as a loan to the car lot, Priceville Partners

The items that Ms. Lockhart has posted on her blog, many of them have come to fruition, Lee said.

The sheriffs counterclaim accuses Lockhart and her associates of spying on Franklin and her deputies, trespassing on Franklins home property, installing GPS trackers on sheriffs office vehicles and surveilling employees.

The counterclaim says Lockhart even hired a private plane to fly over a lower Alabama farm because Lockhart believes the sheriff used illegal funds to purchase the property. Aerial photos of the property were posted on Lockharts blog. The sheriff denies all allegations of wrongdoing.

The FBI

The sheriff and her office have been the subjects of investigations by local, state and federal authorities. Franklin didnt seek re-election this year. She will be replaced in January by Hartselle police Chief Ron Puckett.

Lockhart and her associates have openly said they are sharing information with the FBI and other law enforcement.

The counterclaim alleges Lockhart obtained secret information by misleading people to believe she was working as part of a federal and state criminal investigation.

I have never presented myself as an FBI agent, Lockhart told AL.com. I have given people the FBI telephone number and said if they wanted to share with the FBI, they were free to do so.

From the beginning

Lockhart began blogging about Franklin after being arrested by the sheriff's office in 2011 on a charge of obstructing government operations. Also arrested was Lockhart's husband, Hal. The charges ultimately were dismissed, but the Lockharts sued the sheriff for unlawful arrest. The lawsuit was settled privately, and Lockhart has told AL.com she can't discuss details of the settlement.

The sheriff's office was called to help when the Lockharts' son, who was mentally ill, gained possession of a gun, according to testimony given in a deposition. The call was made from the son's home on the family property in Falkville, but deputies responded to the Lockhart home, which is located at a different address on the property.

Lockhart said deputies spent hours at her home, searching the house, property and a garage -- instead of assisting with the call at her son's home. The couple was arrested because they asked deputies not to continue searching the home without a warrant, Lockhart said.

"If this could happen to us, she could do this to anyone," Lockhart told AL.com for a 2017 story. "It was really devastating."

After that incident, Lockhart said she became concerned about how Franklin's office was policing the county and decided to investigate, publishing her findings on the blog. That included publishing details of Franklin's use of the inmate food money to make a loan to Priceville Partners.

The blog is a way, Lockhart told AL.com in 2017, to be a voice for the people who really feel like theyve been done wrong by the sheriffs office.

The sheriffs counterclaim says Lockhart has been embittered ever since the arrest.

The apparent animus and malicious hatred verbalized by (Lockhart)is born of nothing less than resentment and a vindictive intent towards the counter-plaintiffs for performing their sworn duties to enforce the laws of this state and Morgan County, the counterclaim says.A 25-year-old woman who died in northeast Alabama last week was hit or run over by a car, authorities said today. Samantha Frison of Bridgeport, Ala., died from trauma, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office said.

Chief Deputy Rocky Harnen said a preliminary autopsy indicated an automobile impact killed Frison. Harnen said the sheriff's office and state troopers are still investigating whether the impact was accidental or intentional.

Jackson County Sheriff Chuck Phillips said the fatal incident happened Oct. 16 around 10 p.m. in Bridgeport, a tiny town near the Alabama-Tennessee border. The sheriff initially said Frison died after being "severely" cut.A 25-year-old Selma man pleaded guilty Monday to the 2015 killing of a Demopolis man during a car break-in.

Devontae Jiles pleaded guilty to capital murder and attempted murder, said Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson. Jiles trial was set to begin this week.

The shooting happened March 14, 2015 in the Old Town community in Selma. Authorities said 28-year-old Jimmy Hudgens was in town visiting his uncle when he was killed early that Saturday morning. He had been shot in the face.

Police responded that morning to the home in the 500 block of Dallas Avenue. Hudgens uncle told officers that he and his nephew heard something outside and Hudgens went to investigate. The uncle then heard his nephew say, What are you doing back here? The suspect pointed his shotgun at Hudgens and fired.

Hudgens was airlifted to a Montgomery hospital where he later died. The uncle said he found the suspects had broken into his Mercedes which was parked in the garage.

Kendarius Brown

Police quickly received a tip identifying the suspects as Jiles and his cousin and co-defendant Kendarius Brown, who is now 24. Brown, according to police reports, later confessed to the car break-in and the deadly shooting. He said Hudgens had pointed a gun at them first. Jiles later said he fired the shot because he was afraid Hudgens was going to shoot his cousin.

Jackson said Jiles will be sentenced after Browns trial, which has not yet been set. This gunslinger was the shooter in this murder and attempted murder, Jackson said. He showed remorse today, but this cold-hearted, dastardly act has caused a gaping hole in the Demopolis and Selma communities.A controversial campaign flier claiming Gov. Kay Ivey supports President Trumps Make America White Again agenda that uses images of Trump, the Confederate flag and the Ku Klux Klan has made the rounds in central Alabama, and the groups that purportedly paid for the mailing have not filed the expense with the secretary of states office, records show.

This flier featuring images of President Trump, the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederate flags has been injected into Alabama's election.

Gov. Ivey, Attorney General Steve Marshall and Republican legislators are strong supporters of Trumps plan to Make America White Again, the flier reads. Their efforts to kill Obamacare, food stamps, criminal justice reform, college programs, voting and civil rights can be stopped!! By your vote on Nov. 6, 2018.

According to the literatures disclosure, it was paid for by three organizations, including the Alabama New South Alliance, a black Democratic organization whose political arm endorsed Iveys rival, Democrat Walt Maddox, in May.

The Alabama New South Alliance registered as a political action committee with the Alabama secretary of states office in July 2013 but has never reported any financial activity. Committees are required to report campaign expenditures every week in the four weeks leading up to an election.

The groups sister organization, the Alabama New South Coalition, is backing Maddox in the governors race.

The two other groups that purportedly paid for the flier with racist imagery  Vote or Die and S.O.S. Movement for Justice & Democracy  have not registered with the secretary of states office, according to campaign finance records.

Speaking to reporters at UABs homecoming game at Legion Field on Saturday, Maddox said he did not see the flier but said Ivey is not a racist. Maddoxs campaign spokesman, Chip Hill, emailed AL.com on Monday to say the literature does not say Ivey is a racist.

I dont think thats appropriate in this election in the least bit, the Tuscaloosa mayor said Saturday. This election needs to be about our plans to move Alabama forward, and thats certainly what I will continue to move on. Neither side needs to be in the position of saying things that are not accurate and dont represent our values.

But Maddox said the governor supports positions that harm blacks at a higher rate than other populations in Alabama.

I dont think she supports racists policies, but I do think her policies themselves impact African Americans disproportionately. I think that is an accurate statement. You look at the [Confederate] monuments legislation, you look at the lack of Medicaid expansion, you look at the lack of public education investments  that in and of itself impacts African Americans disproportionately.An Iraqi refugee remembers the day when 12 of his relatives, including a six-month-old, died in the Battle for Mosul.

Lesbos, Greece  At 5am on October 1 last year, Mohamed set foot on a boat for the first time in his life, beginning a five-hour voyage in a small dinghy from the Turkish coast to the Greek island of Lesbos.

The smugglers had kept their charges  who were huddled together in the cold darkness  in limbo since midnight, waiting for the lights of the patrolling Turkish coastguard vessels to disappear.

It was one of the hardest days of my life, said the 22-year-old. I was crying so much.

Mohamed was lucky. The trip was uneventful and he arrived safely.

By midday, he was waiting to be processed in Moria, Lesbos main refugee camp.

We had to wait nine hours in the cold. I hadnt slept in days. My clothes were still soaked from the boat trip. I was shivering, he said. They didnt give us anything. Only a small bottle of water and a few olives. I thought to myself, Why did I come to this terrible place?'

Born and raised in Iraq, Mohamed  who declined to give his last name or allow his face to be depicted to protect his anonymity  was eight years old when the US invasion began.

In 2014, he was a teenager when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) took his hometown of Mosul in 2014.

And he was 20 when the Iraqi army, with the aid of a US-led coalition, violently took it back.

He finally fled the only home he had ever known and made his way to Europe.

The suffering caused by the violence he has witnessed and experienced, both in Iraq and on Lesbos, now shapes his ambition.

It is my dream to help people, he said. I want to be a volunteer my whole life. I want to go wherever there is war, so that I can help people.

Mohamed spends his days as an Arabic translator in a medical clinic that serves refugees, working for free. In the evenings, he rushes off to a shift at another facility, where he translates until 2am.

Sitting on a wooden bench outside the one-room clinic where he volunteers, he is able to take a break. None of the patients waiting to be seen speaks Arabic; they are all Africans, mainly Congolese and Cameroonians.

US forces made a lot of mistakes and a lot of people died from these mistakes. They would try to bomb an ISIL hideout, but they would miss and hit a house nearby. Sometimes, nine or 10 innocent people would die. Mohamed, Iraqi refugee in Greece

He looks down as he starts to talk about the events leading to December 26, 2016, and his voice trembles.

I lost everything on that day, he says, my whole life.

In 2014, Mohamed watched as ISIL fighters captured Mosul, with leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaiming the formation of an Islamic caliphate. The ISIL occupation was brutal.

On one occasion, he says, ISIL fighters held him in captivity and tortured him for 10 days.

In October 2016, the Iraqi army mounted an offensive, supported by coalition air raids, to take back the city.

The battles in Mosul were described by Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the top coalition commander, as some of the most intense urban fighting since World War II.

The Associated Press states that between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were killed, with at least 3,200 lives lost as a result of coalition aerial bombardment, artillery fire or mortar rounds.

Mohamed is not surprised to hear these statistics.

They (the US forces) made a lot of mistakes, he says, and a lot of people died from these mistakes. They would try to bomb an ISIL hideout, but they would miss and hit a house nearby. Sometimes, nine or 10 innocent people would die.

On December 26, a Monday, fighting was still raging.

I was staying with my grandfather, who was sick at the time. His house was a few metres from my fathers.

In the morning, Mohameds mother told him that ISIL had installed a sniper on his fathers roof. The sniper instructed the family not to leave.

[The sniper] knew that the US would target the house if they thought there were no civilians inside, Mohamed says. Thirty minutes later, I heard an enormous explosion. I knew it was close.

For three days, he was too frightened to check on his family.

ISIL was still shooting at our neighbourhood. I was so scared. I couldnt leave my grandfathers house.

After the Iraqi army announced that ISIL had left the area, it was safe for Mohamed to go outside.

When I went to my fathers house, I saw that everything was completely destroyed. The building was nothing. When I saw that, my life stopped. My life stopped completely. I lost my whole family. I lost everything.

All of Mohameds immediate family perished in the bombing: his father, 65, his mother, 53, his three brothers, 28, 25 and 19, and his three sisters, 32, 30 and 21.

He also lost his two sisters-in-law, 22 and 16, a one-year-old nephew, and a niece, six months.

Mohamed had been staying at his sick grandfathers house when US forces bombed his familys home [Jawahir Hassan Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

A US Army spokesman told Al Jazeera he was unaware of the bombing of Mohameds house.

While he expressed sympathy for the innocent victims of the war in Mosul, he placed the blame for their deaths squarely on the shoulders of ISIL.

The Coalition applies rigorous standards to our targeting process and takes extraordinary efforts to protect non-combatants. In many instances, we called off strikes if we saw any civilians around. Unfortunately, [ISIL] brutally used Mosul citizens as human shields and snipers against those trying to escape, the spokesman told Al Jazeera.

In 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis, Lesbos was the main gateway to Europe for close to a million refugees and migrants.

A 2016 European Union agreement with Turkeyreduced the numbers, but the flow of those seeking refuge and asylum remains steady.

Until now, I ask myself every day, why am I still alive? Why did I not die with my family? Mohamed, Iraqi refugee

Today there are roughly 10,000 refugees on the island, 8,000 of which have been crammed into Moria, a facility that was originally built to house 3,000.

The situation here in Moria is so bad, says Mohamed. There is no hot water. Ive been living in the same tent with 13 other people. The food is so bad here. People get sick from it all the time. And you have to wait for hours in line to get it. There is only one toilet for every 70 people. And there is so much fighting.

Many outside observers agree with Mohameds assessment.

Amnesty International called the camp an open wound for Europe and human rights. Luca Fontana, the field manager for Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF), recently told Al Jazeera that Moria was worse than any camp hed worked at in Central African Republic or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ive never seen the level of suffering that we are witnessing here on a daily basis, he said. Moria is the worst place Ive ever seen, he says.

Mohamed says conditions at Moria, the refugee camp on Lesbos, are impossible [Jawahir Hassan Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

Yonda Poslavsky, a Dutch psychologist who has worked in Moria on several occasions, believes it is no place for those who, like Mohamed, have already experienced trauma in their home countries.

In Moria, many people have severe psychological problems, especially post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Most of the people who have PTSD suffer from re-experiences, panic attacks and nightmares, she told Al Jazeera. Because Moria is not safe and there is no psychological help, there is no space to deal with trauma they have experienced previously. There is a lot of re-traumatisation.

In July, Mohamed got a positive response to his application for asylum. He will receive a three-year permit to remain in Greece. He was also recently accepted onto a degree programme to study psychology at a university in Athens, staring late October.

Although Mohamed has already surmounted numerous obstacles, Poslavsky warns that trauma is hard to overcome.

It will be very difficult to feel secure, she said. There might be issues of attachment with others, and there will be deep and irresolvable feelings of grief and sadness. There will be a high risk for PTSD, depression and anxiety disorders.

Mohamed speaks excitedly about attending university, but his thoughts often return to his loved ones.

Until now, I ask myself every day, why am I still alive? he says, Why did I not die with my family?Esquipulas, Guatemala  Small groups of Honduran migrants and refugees are continuing to make their way to through Guatemala, following in the foot steps of an initial caravan that left San Pedro Sula on October 13. The initial group grew to several thousand before it reached the Mexico border with Guatemala on Friday en route to the United States.

The groups have been met with tightened security at the border and within Guatemala. Many walked along the Guatemalan Route 18 towards Chiquimula, where they planned to rest for the night before setting out for Guatemala City and the border.

Entire families picked up what they could carry and set out on the journey to the US in search of a work and to flee insecurity.

The journeys come as US President Donald Trump ramps up his threats to cut off aid to Central American countries and send the military to the border.

On Monday, Trump tweeted the US was beginning to cut off or substantially reduce aid, adding that he has alerted Border Patrol and the Military.The 1987 treaty was not perfect, but President Trump is unlikely to secure a better deal that can make the world safer.

On October 20, US President Donald Trump announced that he intends to withdraw the United States from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Moscow. This means the 31-year-old landmark nuclear weapons agreement will soon be thrown into the dustbin of history like two other major deals aiming to keep nuclear powers from annihilating life on Earth: the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that was meant to keep Russia and the US from creating missile defences (the US pulled out in 2002); and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was meant to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons (the US pulled out in May this year).

A major turning point in the Cold War

The 1987 treaty, signed by the then-US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, prohibited Washington and Moscow from possessing, producing or test-flying ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500km. The missiles banned through this agreement were capable of destroying enemy targets and, collaterally, tens of millions of civilians, in the time it takes to make a cup of tea.

The INF treaty was the agreement that broke the deadlock of the Cold War arms race, from which all future progress followed. It not only prohibited an entire class of deadly nuclear weapons but also brought about in-depth verification protocols that ensured compliance. In practice, this agreement eliminated the once very real possibility of Europe becoming ground-zero of an unprecedented nuclear show-down.

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President Trump says he decided to quit the landmark agreement because he believes Russia is already violating it. He also says China, which possesses its own short and intermediate range land-based nuclear weapons, should also be party to such an agreement limiting the nuclear capabilities of Russia and the US.

Did Russia really violate the deal?

The US believes Russias land-based, nuclear-capable Novator 9M729 missile system, dubbed SSC-X-8 by NATO, is a violation of the 1987 deal because it has a range of over 500km  the threshold set by the INF treaty. The Russians, on the other hand, say that their new missile system has a much shorter range, well beneath what is allowed under the INF treaty. But, most crucially, Moscow does not offer any evidence to prove this. So far, neither the US nor NATO seems to be satisfied with Moscows denial. Moreover, even if the Russians are telling the truth, and their new missiles are technically legal, it can easily be argued that the creation of this missile system clearly breaches the spirit of the agreement and gives Washington reason to be very concerned.

However, Russias alleged violation does not fully legitimise Trumps decision to withdraw from the deal. Under the 1987 treaty, the verification procedures to ensure compliance were extensive. Although these have been used in this instance, they had not yet been exhausted. The Trump administration could keep using these and additional diplomatic means to push Russia into complying with the conditions of the treaty. But now that it chose to abandon the deal, it has no way of pressuring the Russians into compliance.

Moreover, for their part, Russians say it was the US and not them that first violated the treaty, by deploying missile systems across Europe and triggering an escalation.

Indeed, the first time US really voiced its concerns about Russias possible violations was in 2014, but a year earlier, it had announced its decision to deploy anti-ballistic missile defences in Europe. These missile defences may have made Americans feel safer, but they simultaneously made Russians feel vulnerable. To remove that vulnerability, Russia likely felt the need to develop ways to destroy that missile shield if required, and the intermediate range nuclear missiles it is now accused of possessing appear to be ideal for that job.

What next?

Regardless of who should be blamed for the demise of the INF treaty, it is clear that Russian-American relations entered a new phase with President Trumps October 20 announcement.

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Relations between the two countries have already been going downhill since Russias 2014 intervention in Ukraine. Moscows alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections and its alleged attempt to assassinate a former spy in Britain using a chemical weapon also did not help the situation.

From here, three things are likely to happen:

Firstly, the ongoing arms race between Russia and the US is likely to pick up pace. Both Russian and American weapons designers are likely already racing to invent new nuclear weapons to help their nations gain the utmost advantage from the lifting of restrictions.

Second, once the next generation of short or intermediate land-based nuclear weapons is developed, or modified from existing sea or air-based platforms, the push will be to redeploy them back around Europe. Moscow, already busy expanding its stockpiles and performing the largest military games in decades, will relish the chance to openly move such weapons back to its Western borders. Once Russian missiles are in place, the Americans and the Europeans will be forced to respond in kind and deploy short or intermediate-range nuclear weapons in their own backyards and point them eastward. This will cause a repeat of the tense situation witnessed in the 1980s, in which European communities were made into targets in a game of dare between the US and the Soviet Union.

Finally, there will likely be murmurings about the value of keeping the supplementary conventional arms and confidence-building agreements that supported the 1987 treaty and made Europe safe by effective arms reduction, transparency and compliance measures. The merit of still adhering to the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the US and Russia, which set numerical limits on the number of long-range missiles and launch platforms, may also be questioned. President Trump already appears sceptical of this 2010 treaty, likely because it was drafted under the guidance of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Turning this situation around and avoiding a new, intense arms race between Russia and the US will be very difficult.

Can Trump pull of a new deal that includes China?

President Trump appears to be planning to solve this problem and avoid a dangerous arms race by signing a new, better deal with Russia that would also include China.





However, it is unlikely that he will manage to make China sign a deal on short and intermediate land-based nuclear weapons, especially at a time when the two countries are in the middle of a raging trade war, the North Korea negotiations hang in the balance and dangerous disputes in the South China Sea are bubbling.

To convince the Russians to sign a deal similar to, never mind better than, the 1987 deal is not going to be any easier. The Russians would only come to the table if the Trump administration understands their reasons for creating the Novator 9M729 missile system and agrees to negotiate a way forward that would make both parties feel safe.

To even begin this journey, and sign a deal with both China and Russia that could rival the landmark 1987 treaty, Trump will need unprecedented levels of trust and confidence, both of which are currently in very short supply.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.Muslim Advocates found 80 instances of clear anti-Muslim rhetoric employed by political candidates in 2017 and 2018.

Washington, DC  Republican candidates claiming that Islam is a political ideology rather than a religion. Super PACs broadcasting a slew of television ads linking Democratic candidates to terrorism. Anti-Muslim campaign fliers sent out in areas across the country.

With the US midterm elections slated to take place on November 6, a new pre-election report blasted these types of anti-Muslim campaigning tactics as a losing strategy.

Published on Monday by the Muslim Advocates civil rights group, Running on Hate describes a swell of anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric throughout the era of US President Donald Trump.

It documented 80 instances of clear anti-Muslim rhetoric employed by political candidates in 2017 and 2018, adding that 64 percent of the candidates held office before or enjoyed a presidential endorsement.

Scott Simpson, the public advocacy director of Muslim Advocates, explained that anti-Muslim candidates have vied for every level of government office in every region of the country in the past two years.

Behind the world view pushed by these candidates is something very troubling: Muslims and non-Muslim allies are conspiring to take over the government to replace the constitution with Sharia law, he told Al Jazeera.

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Republicans comprised all but two of the 73 cases in which the report identified party affiliation, and more than a third of the candidates listed alleged that Muslims are innately violent or pose a physical threat.

These conspiracy theories have had a constituency within the Republican Party for years, Simpson said, adding: Trump is an important part of this, but he didnt originate it.

Backfiring?

But with only 11 to 14 percent of the candidates listed in the report forecast to win, Simpson argued that targeting Muslims has proven to be an ineffective electoral strategy.

The vast majority of them are losing or are projected to lose in November, he said. What we saw in this report, and what we see every day, is counter to the conventional wisdom about this: The assumption that most Americans dont like Muslims is incorrect.

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In Californias 50th district, embattled Republican House incumbent Duncan Hunter accused his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, of attempting to infiltrate Congress as part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot. Campa-Najjar, a 29-year-old Palestinian-Mexican-American, is a Christian.

Mike Harrison, Hunters spokesperson, previously told Al Jazeera that the national security concerns surrounding Campa-Najjar are unrelated to his Palestinian heritage.

It has absolutely everything to do with the fact that Ammar Campa-Najar has current, existing relationships with the [Palestine Liberation Organization] and [the Council on American Islamic Relations], he said, the latter referring to the Muslim civil rights group.

Earlier this year, failed South Dakota congressional candidate Neal Tapio, who lost in the Republican primary vote, claimed the founder of a Sioux Falls mosque was potentially linked to the Palestinian organisation Hamas.

The evidence? Tapios ad said the mosque founders scarf looked like one worn by Hamas members. The video concluded: Should we be concerned?

During the 2016 presidential race, Trump promised to ban Muslims from entering the US and suggested a database to keep track of Muslim Americans.

The following year hate crimes targeting Muslims spiked by 15 percent, according to a Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) report.

Yet as anti-Muslim rhetoric balloons and hate crimes grow, a record number of Muslim Americans have entered political races across the US.

Once in office, Trump implemented a travel ban, restricting travel to the US for nationals of six Muslim-majority countries.

Trumps travel ban restricts entry to the US for nationals of six Muslim-majority countries [Patrick T Fallon/Al Jazeera]

Prompted to run, in part, by Trumps anti-Muslim policies and comments, around 90 Muslims ran for office on the local, state and national levels in 2018, according to a Jetpac report published earlier this year.

Alia Salem, a North Texas-based Muslim American and social justice activist, explained that civic and political organising among Muslims were already on the rise during former President Barack Obamas time in the White House, during which the number of anti-Muslim hate groups grew massively.

With respect to the growing tension that Muslims from every different part of our community  conservative, liberal and beyond  feel, a switch was flipped, especially since Trumps election, she told Al Jazeera.

Its not just about voting any more, she said. We need to actually write policy and be on the front lines of supporting people who advocate for our community.An exclusive interview about the situation in Iraqs Kurdish region, a year after the failed independence referendum.

Editors note: Below is an abridged version of the interview with Bafel Talabani, which was conducted a day before the electoral commission announced the final results of the September 30 parliamentary vote in Iraqs Kurdish region.

Sulaymaniyah, Iraq  Over the past year, Iraq has seen a number of major political developments, including the fallout of the Kurdish independence referendum, the May national elections, and the September parliamentary vote in the Kurdish region.

Earlier this month, after a delay due to intra-Kurdish disagreements, Barham Salih, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) was elected president of Iraq (a position reserved for an ethnic Kurd) by the newly formed Iraqi parliament.

Currently, important negotiations are being held between different political powers regarding the formation of a new Iraqi government, a new Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), and the future of Kirkuk, which was taken over by forces loyal to the Iraqi government in Baghdad from the KRG in October 2017.

The PUK, which is seen as being close to Iran, and one of its leaders, Bafel Talabani (the son of the late Jalal Talabani, one of the founders and long-term leader of the party), have played a key role in all of these events.

In this exclusive interview, Al Jazeera talks to Mr Talabani about the political situation in the Kurdish region of Iraq, a year after the failed independence referendum, the KRGs relations with Baghdad, and the US-Iran rivalry in the country.

Al Jazeera: Why did it take so long to elect a president after the parliamentary elections?

Bafel Talabani: I think if you look over the last few elections we have had, its always taken a long time.

There are a lot of different groups jockeying for different positions. Lots of deals that have to be made and partnerships to be formed. I dont think it took a particularly long time, to be honest.

Al Jazeera: But there were negotiations happening between your party, the (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Talabani: Yes, there were.

Al Jazeera: And there seemed to be disagreements along the way.

Talabani: There was a little disagreement along the way but perhaps not as big a disagreement as its being shown in the media.

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We think really there was not enough time to make a decision. We used to have a strategic alliance with the KDP and the strategic alliance was that the KDP would have  or one of the parties  would have the regional president and in return, the other party would have the president in Baghdad.

This became complicated the position of president in the north has been put on hold.

As the position has been put on hold, the powers of the president have been spread among the prime minister and certain other places. So it seemed difficult for us, as the PUK, to have both presidents in effect with the KDP.

So what we wanted to do was make some kind of an arrangement where Dr Barham [Salih], the PUK candidate, was the candidate of the Kurds as a whole.

Unfortunately, there didnt seem to be enough time to manage these negotiations with the KDP. So, what happened was, both parties ended up going to Baghdad with two different candidates.

This saddened me a great deal because I would have preferred the Kurds to have made their own decisions before going to Baghdad.

Al Jazeera: So what is the situation now between the two parties?

Talabani: The situation between the two parties I think is not so difficult to overcome. There have been issues between the KDP and the PUK for a few years. And to be fair a lot of those issues have been caused more by the PUK than the KDP.

The PUK has had problems internally. Imam Jalal [Talabani] became sick and then, sadly, passed away. The PUK had lots of issues amongst itself, issues of confidence, issues of direction, issues of unity. And because of this, its been very difficult to make concrete and strategic deals with the KDP, with Gorran [Movement].

But now a more unified and cohesive PUK is able now to make the appropriate agreements and alliances with all the political parties that it needs to do.

Al Jazeera: How are negotiations going for the new Kurdish regional government (KRG)?

Talabani: I think we will have soon a Kurdish government. What happened was that the elections had gone ahead and there were complaints from many different parties about certain irregularities. So, its up to the commission and, if necessary, the court to look at this and make a final decision.

I dont think its taking a particularly long time. And what Im aware of in the next few days, the results will be made [public].

Al Jazeera: Another issue that seems to cause a lot of disagreement between the two major Kurdish parties is Kirkuk. Currently the governor there was appointed by Baghdad but he has been elected to parliament, so there needs to be a new governor.

So, are there negotiations or even a competition for who will take this governorship?

Talabani: I dont think its necessarily fair [to say] there is a competition for the governorship. What I would like to see happen is for the PUK and KDP to sit down together and work through these issues.

I think with one voice, we would be much stronger in our position to influence things in Kirkuk and Baghdad. And in fact, weve already reached out to the KDP.

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When our team was in Baghdad for government formation, the first person we called was the KDP delegation and offered to sit together and help each other get the ministries we want. And the same thing has happened regarding Kirkuk.

We reached out to the KDP and said, Look we want to have a meeting of all parties where we can sit down and discuss Kirkuk and the best way to move forward.

Again, I really want to stress: unity, unity, unity. And I think if we can do that, we can get past the other issues holding us back. I really think we can move Kurdistan forward in the next four years.

Al Jazeera: What are these other issues? What is the biggest problem between the KDP and the PUK?

Talabani: Honestly, I think the biggest problem is bad experiences of the past, of deals and contracts and negotiations that havent been fulfilled. And youd speak to most people and they would say  they did it, we did it. I think the reality of the situation is that both parties are responsible.

Both parties have made errors. Im optimistic for our partnership with the KDP. The friendships in the PUK and the KDP are very deep.

Some of the people I most respect politically and as people are members of the KDP, people like Nechirvan Barzani, obviously Kak Masoud [Barzani] himself, Kak Masrour [Barzani], etc.

Al Jazeera: Are there negotiations going on between the caretaker KRG and Baghdad on resuming the production of oil in Kirkuk?

Talabani: I couldnt actually answer you on this one with any kind of authority or information. Its not something Im dealing with and to be honest, not something I want to deal with.

But I would be very surprised if somebody wasnt talking about how this pipeline is going to be.

Al Jazeera: Over the past year, there have been quite a few deals made with Russias Rosneft, which has taken over the oil pipeline. Are these deals in the interest of the KRG?

Talabani: I would be very surprised if the KRG did things, after all this investigation and communication, that wasnt good for the KRG. Whether Baghdad sees it as good for the KRG, I cant really speak for.

Again, the only way to get past this is for Baghdad and the KRG to sit down together and see what areas are disputed.

Al Jazeera: There seems to be anger at least in certain quarters in Iraq about Iranian influence or interference in the affairs of the country. How do you see that?

Talabani: Its unrealistic to expect other countries not to want to influence this situation. But the solution is very simple.

I think the Iraqi political parties and the Iraqi people have to simply do whats best for Iraq and not get involved in external struggles.

Kurdish voters cast their ballots during the Iraqi parliamentary elections at a polling station in Erbil in May 2018 [File: Gailan Haji/EPA]

Al Jazeera: You are known to have good relations with both Iran and the US.

What are your relations right now, under the Trump administration, with the US and how do you see continuing US presence in Iraq?

Talabani: Id like to think our relations are very good. The United States of America have been a strategic ally for us for many, many years in the fight against terrorism, etc. Id like to see the relationship get stronger. Id like to see a US presence here for many, many years to come.

I think we have some trips planned soon to the United States and things will become clearer then. But everybody we are currently in contact with here, Brett McGurk, the ambassador, the general consul  the relationship has been very, very good. There have been trying times of course. The issue with the referendum strained things a little, but I think, in general, we have a very good relationship with the United States  something we wish to keep.

Al Jazeera: But the Trump administration is building an anti-Iran coalition here in the region attracting a number of political forces here to join that coalition against Iran.

Where does the PUK stand on this?

Talabani: I think the PUK really has no desire to become involved in regional conflicts.

We have enough financial, security, and stability issues in Kurdistan. We have a long relationship with Iran going back many years. And many times, Iran has helped us and many times, Iran has hindered us. I think its unrealistic to expect the PUK, or any other Kurdish party or any other Iraqi party, to cut ties and political relations with Iran.

The reality of the situation is we have hundreds of kilometres of borders with Iran. The majority of trade in the Sulaymaniyah region is with Iran.

Al Jazeera: Should the Kurdish region have one unified armed force rather than forces loyal to different parties?

Talabani: Id love to see that happen. I think we are slowly moving in that direction. But every time we have some kind of political setback. I think if you want the honest truth, I think people are afraid. People are afraid of something new and its a huge change for Kurdistan.

But I would really like to see that, to see one untied Kurdish security apparatus, military apparatus, etc. And I think we can move towards that and I think it would help the political process here. It would help normalise Kurdistan. It would change the dynamic of the region, I think, for the better. Its something I wish to try to work on over the next four years.

Al Jazeera: This year, its 20 years since the end of the civil war between the two Kurdish parties and some Kurds worry that the tensions between the KDP and the PUK can escalate into an armed conflict.

Is this possible?

Talabani: Over my dead body. And over the dead body of many, many Kurds. This is just not something that will happen. I think nobody is willing to do that any more. Those days are long gone. We are still paying the price of that internal conflict.

Kurds will not, should not, and absolutely must not be allowed to kill Kurds. We need to be able to resolve our issues politically.

I think this is the absolute doomsday scenario that every Kurd with a single brain cell would do everything in their power to make [sure] this never, never happens and I cant see it happening.

Al Jazeera: Do you think the Kurdish political elite has failed its people?

Talabani: I think to say that it has failed its people is a little harsh. But if we are very honest with each other, we could have all done better.

Saddam [Hussein] hasnt been in Kurdistan for decades now. When I look at Kurdistan, I think the situation with electricity still isnt as good as it should be. The situation with sewage still isnt as good as it should be.

The situation with roads and infrastructure still isnt as good as it should be. But some of it is also down to the curse of oil. Kurdistan is very mineral-rich.

Cityscape of Erbil, Kurdish region of Iraq [Getty Images]

Al Jazeera: Some say that politics in Iraq is run like a family business. What do you say to that?

Talabani: I think you could make that argument.

You could make that argument to a lesser degree in the United States, you could make that argument in many, many countries. I think that nobody in any family should be in a position of power just because they are in that family and they are in that position of power.

But on the opposite of that, I dont think someone should be held back from politics if they are working in the party and are doing well and are trying to improve the situation. A family name shouldnt be held against them.

Al Jazeera: And this sense, then do you support the cause for this next government of Iraq to be technocratic?

Talabani: I think that the government of Iraq needs a mixture of everybody.

We need some technocrats but we also need some strong political figures that can hold everything together.

This is, after all, Iraq and it has its unique set of problems and its difficulties.

Al Jazeera: Is the PUK after specific posts within that cabinet?

Talabani: No, its not.

I think the PUK has always been part of the solution for problems in Iraq and we want to be back to being there. We want to part of the solution, not to be part of the problem.

I would like the PUK to work more with Baghdad, increase its presence in Baghdad, ideally side-by-side with the other Kurdish parties because, if you look at our seats in Parliament, we are so strong in Baghdad if we are united.

Thats what I would like to see happen and I think itll happen.

Al Jazeera: So is the future of the Kurdish region within the borders of Iraq? Is independence out of the question?

Talabani: I dont think independence is out of the question and I dont think its an issue that needs addressing now. We have so many current problems, we have so many issues that we need to overcome.

We need to be part of Iraq, the strength of the region for now for us is through Baghdad. And I think every Kurd wants an independent Kurdistan, but the reality of the situation is that this cannot happen unilaterally.

Baghdad, some of the surrounding countries have to agree to this and we have to make movements towards that very carefully in a considered diplomatic manner.

Al Jazeera: What are your personal ambitions and where do you see yourself? Do you see yourself taking leadership of the party?

Do you see yourself staying a military man?

Talabani: Id like to see a unified PUK. For me, frankly, whos in charge is not important. But Id like to see a unified strong PUK with the other Kurdish party moving Kurdistan forward.

Id like to see many different policies implemented for the good of the people. Some anti-corruption policies.

We need to change the way we hold our elections. We need to move forward together with all the parties. My personal ambitions are that.A week before presidential runoff, far-right candidate promises a cleansing never seen in the history of Brazil.

Sao Paulo  The frontrunner in Brazils presidential election  far-right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro  gave a fiery and confrontational speech to supporters on Sunday in which he said he would purge the country of left-wing criminals.

We are the majority. We are the real Brazil. Together, we will build a new nation, he said. These red criminals will be banished from our homeland.

The speech pleased supporters but sent a chilling message to political rivals and raised further concerns about how Bolsonaro would rule in Brazil.

Bolsonaro is doubling down on his campaign strategy, said Matias Spektor, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo. This is an election about change and anger.

Brazil was ruled by a brutal and repressive military dictatorship from 1964 through 1985 during which hundreds of political opponents were murdered and thousands tortured.

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Bolsonaro  an outspoken advocate of the military dictatorship, who has previously spoken in favour of torture and extrajudicial police killings and has a history of making disparaging remarks about women, the LGBT community and other minority groups  currently leads opinion polls and is expected to win a comfortable victory during the October 28 presidential runoff against the Workers Partys Fernando Haddad.

In the case of Bolsonaro (different from other candidates), we dont know what kind of relationship he will establish with the democratic institutions, said Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at Sao Paulos Insper business school.

In the very minimum, it creates a sense of insecurity.

Deeply-divided country

Brazil is bitterly divided and racked by increasing episodes of political violence. Bolsonaro himself was the victim of a near-fatal stabbing in September during a campaign rally.

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Bolsonaro made Sundays 10-minute speech via mobile phone from his home in Rio de Janeiro. A video was transmitted live to thousands of supporters at a demonstration on Sao Paulos main thoroughfare Avenida Paulista. Supporters demonstrations were also held in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. Rallies against the far-right candidate were held a day earlier.

Of Brazils popular former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who led opinion polls until he was barred from running due to his imprisonment for a corruption conviction, Bolsonaro said: You will rot in jail! to which supporters were heard chanting Legend! Legend! Legend!

Haddad will be there with you soon, but not to visit, Bolsonaro said of his centre-left opponent Haddad, who took over Lulas candidacy.

You can get out of here! You wont have any more chance in our homeland, Bolsonaro said, It will be a cleansing never seen in the history of Brazil.

After the speech, Haddad tweeted: We must defend the democratic state of law. How will people feel safe if they threaten anyone who thinks otherwise?

Demonstrators take part in a protest against Brazilian right-wing presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo, Brazil [Nelson Almedia/AFP]

PT congressman Paulo Pimenta called the speech the hardest attack on Brazilian democracy since the dictatorship ended in 1985.

Bolsonaro also labelled the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper the biggest fake news in Brazil, saying he would cut government advertising revenue to the newspaper.

Last week, the newspaper published an article alleging companies and Brazilian businessmen were financing a fake news network on the messaging application Whatsapp to favour the far-right candidate. Police have opened a probe into the allegations.

Supporters of Brazilian far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro attend a rally in Copacabana beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [Carl de Souza/AFP]

Separately on Sunday, a video of Bolsonaros politician son, Eduardo  who was recently re-elected to Congress  from July went viral in which he spoke about closing Brazils Supreme Court with a corporal and a soldier, if the court blocked his fathers victory.

Court ministers including court president Dias Toffoli hit back on Monday, calling an attack on the judiciary an attack on democracy.

Bolsonaro blasted the comment as that of someone who should go to a psychiatrist and said he warned his son, local media reported.US national security adviser to face questions in Moscow over Trumps threat to withdraw from arms-control deal.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton is facing two days of tense talks with Russia following criticism from Moscow over US President Donald Trumps threat to unilaterally withdraw from a decades-old nuclear arms-control deal between the two countries.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin will seek clarification about Trumps plans at respective meetings with Bolton on Monday and Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

Peskovs comments came as Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned Trumps pledge to terminate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty would be a very dangerous move.

[Withdrawal] wont be understood by the international community, but [instead] arouse serious condemnation of all members of the world community, who are committed to security and stability and are ready to work on strengthening the current regimes in arms control, Ryabkov said on Sunday, according to Russias state-owned Tass news agency.

Historic pact

The INF, which banned all nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km, was signed in 1987 at a Cold War-era Washington summit between then-US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Washington and Moscow have traded barbs over the accord since, accusing one another on several occasions of breaching the terms of the landmark treaty.

US officials believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear attack on Europe at short notice.

Russia, meanwhile, has claimed that parts of the US missile defence shield, specifically equipment hosted by its NATO allies in Europe, contravene the agreement.

On Saturday, Trump said Russia had violated the INF for many years and vowed to pull the US out of the pact. Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it has contravened the treaty.

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Were not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [while] were not allowed to, he said.

Gorbachev, who, as the last president of the Soviet Union prior to its dissolution in 1991, introduced a series of reforms which helped bring about the end of the Cold War, said Trumps move was not the work of a great mind, however.

Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements, Gorbachev said, according to the Russia-based Interfax news agency.

Gorbachevs comments were echoed by a number of Russian legislators, with the head of the foreign affairs committee in Russias upper house of parliament Konstantin Kosachev warning Washingtons withdrawal would mean mankind is facing full chaos in the nuclear weapons sphere.

International concern

Several international powers also expressed concern over Trumps comments.

On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Beijing was opposed to a US withdrawal from the pact.

Unilateral withdrawal will have a multitude of negative effects, Chunying told reporters at a press conference.

Chunyings comments came after French President Emmanuel Macron urged Trump not to quit the deal during a phone call with the US leader on Sunday.

The President of the Republic underlined the importance of this treaty, especially with regards to European security and our strategic stability, Macrons office said in a statement on Monday.

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Germanys chief diplomat, meanwhile, said Washingtons move was regrettable,

The treaty  has for 30 years been an important pillar of our European security architecture, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement on Sunday.

We have often urged Russia to address serious allegations that it is violating the agreement. We now urge the US to consider the possible consequences, Maas added.

US ally Britain, however, said it would stand absolutely resolute alongside Washington over the issue.

UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson told UK newspaper the Financial Times that Russia was to blame for endangering the INF treaty and called on the Kremlin to get its house in order.

We, of course, want to see this treaty continue to stand but it does require two parties to be committed to it and at the moment, you have one party that is ignoring it. It is Russia that is in breach, Williamson said.

Domestic response

Trumps announcement drew mixed opinion among his Republican Party legislators in Washington.

Senator Rand Paul said withdrawing from the pact would be a big, big mistake, while Senate colleague Lindsey Graham praised the US president for taking absolutely the right move, adding the Russians have been cheating.

The US last withdrew from a major arms treaty with Russia was in 2002, when then-President George W Bush abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

The ABM pact banned Washington and Moscow from deploying nationwide anti-ballistic missile defence systems.Relations between Rome and Paris hit new low as rights groups accuse France of mistreating migrants at Italian borders.

Relations between Italy and France hit a new low this week, with Rome accusing French border guards of illegally crossing the border to dump unwelcome migrants inside Italian territory.

On Monday, a delegation from the Italian interior ministry was expected in the Italian mountain village of Claviere, 80km north of Turin, to investigate increasing reports of illegal crossings by French officers.

The French are trespassing, dumping migrants at their pleasure  but Italy is no longer the refugee camp of Europe, said Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, as he ordered a fresh military deployment to check the border on Sunday.

Italian authorities claim that French officers disregard the frontier line as well as standard refoulement procedures for migrants, often dropping them in the woods between Claviere and the French town of Montgenevre.

To defuse the tensions, Christophe Castaner, the newly-appointed French interior minister, said he wished to improve border cooperation but called for more stringent measures against undocumented immigration, supposedly in Italy.

We have to be more efficient in the expulsion procedures of illegal migrants or those whose asylum request have already been denied, he told Journal du Dimanche.

Salvini, who is also a deputy prime minister and the head of the far-right League party, did not wait long to issue a sharp retort.

I am happy Castaner shares my views about illegal migrants. When I spoke of expulsions I was labelled a racist, even by the French. Better late than never.

The Italian governments hard line on migration has come under fire by French President Emmanuel Macron, but Castaner has tried to refrain from engaging in a spat with Salvini.

Macron, however, has not hidden his antipathy for Salvini and his anti-migrant policies, describing the interior ministers approach as nauseating.

The two have engaged in a tit-for-tat, with Salvini replying by calling Macron a hypocrite disguised as a humanitarian who invokes solidarity while pushing away migrants, including children.

Amnesty accuses France of inhuman treatment

Perhaps paradoxically, Salvinis accusations are now finding an echo in the opposite camp of human rights watchdogs.

On Wednesday, Amnesty International and 12 other charities accused Frances authorities of mistreating refugees and migrants, including children, at the borders with Italy in what they described as the inhuman and hypocritical behaviour of the French authorities.

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The allegations came after a task force of 60 human rights lawyers and activists conducted a two-day mission at the French border town of Briancon, not far from Claviere.

The list of violations is long, and we join our voices to those of local NGOs so that the French government stops turning a deaf ear and stops these illegal and degrading practices, said Agnes Lerolle, coordinator of the French-Italian task force.

This inhuman and hypocritical behaviour is unacceptable in a state of law.

Amnesty said the violations include obstruction of asylum requests, neglect of unaccompanied minors, mistreatment, harassment and denial of emergency healthcare and humanitarian assistance.

The attitude of French border control authorities is appalling, Riccardo Noury, a spokesperson for Amnesty told Al Jazeera. The use of threats, scornful and aggressive behaviour towards defenceless people, especially migrant children, is deplorable.

Amnesty denounced a systematic violation of the rights of migrants to request asylum. Under international law, migrants should always be granted the right to request asylum and unaccompanied children should be provided immediate protection, regardless of their status.

France is violating both principles, Noury said.

The French Ministry of Interior did not respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment on the alleged abuses.

Denial of medical care and child protection

In one documented case, an Ivorian migrant was denied medical care after sustaining an injury during a chase by French guards in the woods.

Border police threatened to shoot him down if he didnt stop, said Noury. He received medical attention only after being taken back into Italy.

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An unaccompanied minor from Ivory Coast told Amnesty the French border police refused to acknowledge his age, saying all migrants claim to be minors.

I was told, I cannot live in France if I am not a French citizen and I can never hope to become one, the minor told the UK-based rights group.

In just two days, the task force witnessed 26 cases of migrants pushed back into Italy, eight of whom were unaccompanied minors. According to Amnesty, at least 11 of these refoulements were illegal and its lawyers have appealed to the Tribunal of Marseilles for their annulment.

In June, Oxfam, Intersos and other human rights watchdogs condemned French methods  especially towards minor children along the southern border with Italy.

They said minors as young as 12 were being held without food or care, put on trains or left at the border without any assistance despite their requests to remain in France.

The charities accused French police of falsifying the birth dates of migrant children travelling alone in an attempt to pass them off as adults and send them back to Italy, as well as cutting the soles off their shoes to prevent them from trespassing again.

Ping-pong game of migrants

But while France is allegedly violating the fundamental human rights of migrants, Italy has also come under criticism for its inability to implement a strict registration system of refugees arriving on its soil.

The country has been unable to sustain a proper registration process for asylum seekers, who at times arrive by the thousands on Italian shores. Most migrants centres are near collapse.

There is no mechanism in place allowing for an integration process and stranded refugees remain exposed to the web of illegal labour and human trafficking at the hands of criminal organisations.

In this ongoing ping-pong game of migrants between France and Italy there is a fundamental international norm that is being violated: the right to asylum, said Noury.

The Dublin Accord has turned the countries of the south, like Italy and Greece, into parking lots for human beings, because it lacks a solidarity principle of redistribution of migrants.

The accord stipulates that a migrant should file their asylum request in the country of entry. The evaluation process can last many months and its acceptance is not granted. In the meantime, the host nation is left to bear the migrants costs indefinitely.

Southern countries such as Italy and Greece say refugees and migrants should be distributed among European states. Many also believe that the Dublin system pushes migrants to choose illegal ways to reach the north of Europe, thus increasing human trafficking.

According to estimates with the Italian Ministry of Interior, out of 82,000 asylum requests examined in 2017, some 52.4 percent were not eligible. Today, there are an estimated 600,000 undocumented migrants in Italy.

There is consensus over the fact that Dublin needs to be changed, but we are stuck, Hanne Beirens, acting director of the Migration Policy Institute Europe, told Al Jazeera.

In the absence of a politically acceptable solution, countries are now adopting these ad hoc measures at the borders, like stopping secondary movements of migrants within Europe.State newspapers denounce criticism that Chinas Belt and Road initiative is creating debt traps in other countries.

Chinese state media sharply criticised US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday after he made comments in Latin America warning about the hidden risks of seeking Chinese investment amid a growing battle for influence in the region.

China has been gaining ground in resource-rich Latin America, raising American concerns the worlds second-largest economy is building up influence amid a tense trade war between the two countries.

Pompeo was on a Latin America tour at the end of last week, meeting heads of state in Panama and Mexico. Pompeo told reporters, When China comes calling its not always to the good of your citizens.

When they show up with deals that seem to be too good to be true its often the case that they, in fact, are, he said on Thursday in Mexico City, according to comments posted on the US Department of States website.

In an editorial on Monday, the state-run China Daily newspaper said Pompeos comments were ignorant and malicious and criticism that its ambitions Belt and Road infrastructure initiative was creating debt traps in other countries was false.

President Xi Jinping has been pushing the plan to expand trade corridors along a modern-day Silk Road linking Asia, Europe and Africa, pumping credit into building roads, railways and ports in a trillion-dollar infrastructure initiative.





The creditor imperialism fallacy is, in essence, a deliberate attempt by India and Western countries to denigrate the Belt and Road Initiative, which exhibits their envy of the initial fruits the initiative has produced, the editorial said.

Predatory economic activity

China is eager to bring Latin American countries on board as well, though the initiative has started to face rising scepticism as some countries, such as Sri Lanka, have become saddled with debt that they are struggling to repay.

Pompeo said the United States welcomed competition from China, but criticised a lack of transparency at its state-owned enterprises and what he called predatory economic activity.

In comments in Panama, he said countries should have their eyes wide open when it came to Chinese investment.

Its simply the case that in parts of the world China has invested in ways that have left countries worse off, and that should never be the case, he said.

Disappointed

Chinas state-owned Global Times said in an editorial on Monday that Pompeos comments were disrespectful, adding the US was trying to drive a wedge into growing Sino-Latin American relations.

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China criticised Pompeos predecessor, Rex Tillerson, in February after he said Latin America does not need new imperial powers, and that China was using economic statecraft to pull the region into its orbit.

While the United States has traditionally had strong political influence in the region, China has become a major trading partner for many Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Most countries are disappointed with the US and want to shed themselves of US dependence, the Global Times said.

Almost 200 years after the Monroe Doctrine speech in 1823, does the US still view itself as the instructor of Latin American countries?Authors wife says policemen who arrived at their home said arrest was in connection with book seized by authorities.

A previous version of this article stated Sisi came to power in 2014. That is incorrect. Sisi took power in a military coup in 2013 and was elected president in 2014.

Egyptian police have arrested economist Abdel Khalik Farouk after the publication of his book in which he is critically analysing the countrys economic and social crises, the authors wife and a lawyer said.

Farouks detention on Sunday came days after local media reported that copies of his book  titled, Is Egypt really a poor country?  were seized by authorities from a publisher.

Farouqs wife told the Reuters news agency that three policemen who came to their home said the arrest was in connection with the book.

She was later allowed to deliver food, medicine and clothes to him at a local police station, she said.

He was officially arrested and will be presented to the state security prosecutor tomorrow because of this book, the AFP news agency cited Gamal Eid, a lawyer, as saying.

According to Eid, who heads the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the prosecutor would specify the main charges against Farouk on Monday.

Since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2013, human rights groups have accused Egyptian authorities of muzzling all dissent.

The authorities say they aim to fight against terrorism and the spreading of false information.Perpetrators use tiny devices to film women in public places, such as toilets or changing rooms, and later sell footage.

South Korea is in the grip of a spycam epidemic with covert footage of sex, nudity, and urination posted online in what amounts to a social death penalty for thousands of female victims.

The footage may be taken surreptitiously by boyfriends or captured on covert devices as small as car keys. Daily camera checks are now part of life for cleaners in many public toilets.

The spy camera phenomenon has reached such epidemic proportions in tech-savvy South Korea that tens of thousands of women have taken to the streets to march for action.

Under fire for moving too slowly, the government enacted a slew of measures, including the formation of a taskforce to help victims and increased inspections in risky public places.

In April, the 16-member task force launched a free service to help victims remove illicitly filmed footage from the internet  the team has been inundated. So far, it has handled some 15,000 requests to remove footage and counselled 3,000-plus victims.

The situation is getting out of hand, said Ryu Hye-jin from the government-backed Womens Human Rights Institute of Korea, which oversees the taskforce. Since the establishment of the task force, many victims have called and reached out to us.

Social death

Perpetrators typically use tiny devices that can easily film women in public places, such as toilets or changing rooms, and later sell the footage to pornography sites for profit.

The footage shows women undressing or having sex and can be sold for up to 100,000 won ($90).

In many cases, the filming is done by partners  with or without consent  at homes or in hotels, and later used as a form of revenge if the relationship turns sour.

It sends the victims into depression because there is no end to it. It is on the internet forever. Its a social death penalty, said Ryu.

Women who fall victims to the hidden camera have previously turned to digital laundries, private firms that remove the videos for a fee, giving rise to a lucrative, new industry. However, the new task force now offers the same services for free, and has taken over the bulk of such work.

The number of spycam cases jumped to nearly 6,500 in 2017, from about 2,400 in 2012, according to Yonhap news agency.

Campaigner Park Soo-yeon said many victims were not even aware they were the subject of such videos, and were reluctant to speak out when they did find out, cowed by social stigma.

These are the people who are trying to hide themselves as much as possible, Park, who always carries a hidden camera detector, said at her office in the suburbs of the capital Seoul.

A fierce government critic, the 22-year-old activist founded the group Digital Sexual Crime Out in 2015 and was credited with bringing down a notorious porn website, Soranet, in 2016.

The illicit website, set up in 1999 and which had claimed more than a million users, had hosted thousands of videos of women that were filmed without their consent.

What we need to tell people is that this is a crime, this is sexual violence, this is not porn, said Park, who called for the sales of hidden cameras to be tightened and regulated.

Never gone

It is virtually impossible to wipe all online traces of illicit images.

These websites are all over the world and every country has different laws. It is really hard to get to a point where we can punish all the perpetrators, said Song Eugene, a counsellor at the taskforce.

She said it has been difficult for victims to speak up about the issue in South Korea, where discussions about womens rights are still sometimes seen as taboo in a male-dominated society.

Its important for women to speak up about the issue to create awareness about the pain that has been inflicted.

Ryu said there was no way to stop such crimes so long as women were routinely seen as sex objects. What we need is to change the way our society treats our women, she said.ICC trial of LRA leader only part of search for justice in Uganda

At the ICC, a commander of a Ugandan group linked to 100,000 deaths is standing trial, but observers worry that only rebels are facing justice for crimes during the brutal civil war.Palestinian shot dead near Ibrahimi Mosque in the centre of Hebron, after allegedly trying to stab an Israeli soldier.

Israeli forces have shot dead a Palestinian man in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank after he allegedly tried to stab an Israeli soldier, Palestinian WAFA news agency said.

The Palestinian was identified by local media as 42-year-old Moammar Arif Refaey al-Atrash from Hebron.

The Palestinian health ministry said the Israeli military had informed the Palestinian District Coordinating Office of the killing, without formally identifying the victim.

Palestinians living in the area reported hearing shots and then seeing a Palestinian man motionless on the ground surrounded by soldiers before he was taken away in an Israeli ambulance.

The Israeli army said in a statement it had killed the Palestinian after he tried to stab an Israeli soldier.

An assailant attempted to stab a soldier adjacent to the Cave of the Patriarchs, lightly injuring him. The soldier and other forces at the scene responded with live fire, the armys statement read.

Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian youth in the center of herbron city / west Bank#breaking_news pic.twitter.com/jweO8nl1Er  #GreatReturnMarch (@aoroaman) October 22, 2018

A series of deadly incidents have increased tensions in the West Bank this month.





On October 15, a Palestinian was shot dead after allegedly stabbing an Israeli soldier in the northern West Bank, while a few days earlier, Aisha Al-Rawbi, a 47-year-old Palestinian mother of eight was killed after Israeli settlers threw stones at the car she was travelling in.

The West Bank was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Palestinians want the territory as part of their future state.Authorities impose curfew, deploy troops as deadly clashes between Muslims and Christians spread to Kaduna city.

Authorities in Nigeria have deployed special police forces to northern Kaduna and declared a 24-hour curfew in the states capital following communal violence that killed dozens of people.

President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the deployment on Sunday, as the regional government imposed the measure in Kaduna city after violence broke out on its streets.

The clashes followed violence that broke out on Thursday between Muslim and Christian communities in the Kasuwan Magani area of southern Kaduna which left at least 55 people dead.

The violence in Kaduna  is condemnable. The police have been authorised to do everything possible to restore calm. A Special Intervention Force has been deployed to the flashpoints, Buhari said on Twitter.

The federal government and its law enforcement agencies will work with the state government and community leaders to ensure the full restoration of peace and security, Buhari said in another message.

The disregard for the sanctity of human life is unacceptable. Violence is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good. I appeal to community leaders and citizens to always choose dialogue, patience and tolerance, to prevent crises from escalating into violence.  Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) October 21, 2018

Police said the special force deployed on Sunday will carry out stop and search patrols, raid suspected criminal hideouts and make arrests in areas that have been flashpoints or considered to be at risk of violence.

Local people, who described unrest in both Christian and Muslim areas of the state capital, said troops were also seen on the citys streets.

A spokesperson for Governor Nasir El-Rufai, in a statement on Facebook, appealed to the citys residents to do their best to uphold the peace.





Ahmad Abdur-Rahman, the state police commissioner, told reporters on Friday that 22 people had been arrested in connection with the clashes.

Kaduna was plunged into communal violence after fighting erupted between Hausa Muslim and Adara Christian youths in Kasuwan Maganis market following a dispute among wheelbarrow porters.

Two people were said to have been killed in the initial market fracas on Thursday.

The violence then dramatically escalated when Adara youths later attacked Hausa residents, burning homes and killing dozens.

Most of the killings were done in the second attack which took the Hausa community off guard, Muhammadu Bala, a Kasuwan Magani resident who lost his home, told AFP news agency over the weekend.

Kaduna state is where Nigerias predominantly Muslim north meets the predominantly Christian south and has seen previous bouts of communal violence.

In February, clashes left at least 10 people dead and hundreds of homes and businesses burned. Major bouts of sectarian rioting in 2000 and 2002 killed thousands.

Last year, troops and additional police officers were deployed to the state in response to an outbreak of violence.New Delhi  A multibillion-dollar deal for 36 Rafale French fighter jets has got the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition in India at loggerheads.

Over 100 left-affiliated organisations will hold week-long protests across the country beginning Monday against what they allege is a corrupt deal favouring one of Indias richest industrialists.

Demonstrations and sit-ins, under the banner of Jan Ekta Jan Adhikar Andolan (Peoples Unity and Rights Movement), are being organised by left-backed outfits at state and district-levels to raise awareness about the scam from October 22-28.

As India gears up for what is expected to be a tightly contested general election in a few months, the protests are seeking to highlight the alleged wrongdoings of the ruling right-wing government.

In 2016, Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed an $8.7bn deal for 36 Rafale fighter planes from France, the countrys first major acquisition of combat planes in two decades.

But it has since faced criticism from Indian opposition parties who allege severe wrongdoing in one of the countrys biggest defence deals.

Opposition parties like the Congress and the Left say India overpaid for the planes and are also questioning why a private firm with no experience in the defence sector, tycoon Anil Ambanis Reliance Defence Ltd, was awarded the contract instead of the state-run manufacturer, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.

Former French President Francois Hollande, who approved the deal when he was in office, created a stir last month when he revealed that the Narendra Modi government in New Delhi forced Dassault Aviation to choose Ambani for the deal.

We had no choice. We took the partner that was given to us, Hollande was quoted as saying in an explosive interview to French investigative news service, Mediapart.

Modis BJP denied the allegations.

Massive scam

On Monday, Hannan Mollah, organiser of the left-backed demonstrations and former legislator from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said the protests will help build public opinion.

We are demanding a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the deal. This is a massive scam. Why has the number of planes decreased to 36 from the earlier planned 126? Why has the agreed price of the jets increased three-fold since 2014? Who is responsible for the final amount we are paying for the jets? Mollah told Al Jazeera from Bengaluru city.

The government rejected the state-run defence firm HAL and forced France to give the contract to a private player, a businessman friend of the government. This is a sweetheart deal, he said.

The opposition will counter the governments lies through protests at the grassroots level, the left leader said.

We will not let the government run away, we are taking it to the people. Ninety percent of the people are unaware that public money has been looted, they have to be told. There is also a strange silence from the Indian media which is not holding the powers accountable, Mollah said.

Several members of the BJP denied the charges, saying the opposition was undermining national security in their bid to target Modi.

A lie repeated a hundred times cannot become the truth. The CAG (Indias official auditing agency), which will audit the deal, is already looking into it. They will file a report with the Parliament. Lets wait for the report, Sudhanshu Mittal, spokesperson of the BJP party, told Al Jazeera.

Reliance Defence did not respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

A week ago, Indias Supreme Court asked the government to furnish details of the controversial deal with France. The top court ordered the government to explain the process followed while inking the deal.

Last week, as the row escalated, a French aviation blog published details of a meeting between two trade unions at Dassault, the private company that began developing the jet in the mid-1980s.

The documents purportedly state it was imperative and obligatory for Dassault Aviation to accept Reliance Aerospace in order to obtain the contract.

Mr Modi and his ministers have abused their authority as public servants by changing an almost completed deal. The final deal does away with the need for transfer of technology and also increased the prices of the jets. That is an abuse of power to benefit an indebted industrialist Ambani, Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

Dassault will be forced to say whatever they need to save the deal now. An impartial investigation will reveal everything. We intend to file a petition in the top court for an independent probe, Bhushan added.

Defamation notices

Meanwhile, caught in a political storm over the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, Ambanis Reliance sent defamation notices amounting to millions of dollars to several Indian opposition politicians and media outlets, including leading private broadcaster, NDTV.

The Reliance group has asked the media group to cease and desist from levelling allegations against it in connection with the Rafale deal.

In a statement emailed to Al Jazeera, NDTV said it will argue in court that it is a heavy-handed attempt by Anil Ambanis group to suppress the facts and prevent the media from doing its job  asking questions about a defence deal and seeking answers that are very much in public interest.

Political heat over the controversial deal continues as leaders from different political outfits plan to gather in New Delhi on Wednesday to boost the opposition chorus for a probe.Kremlin bids to save landmark arms-control deal as US National Security Adviser John Bolton reaches Moscow for talks.

Russia has warned US President Donald Trumps push to withdraw from a landmark anti-proliferation weapons deal could spark a new arms race between Moscow and Washington and make the world a more dangerous place.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russia would be forced to act if the United States pulled out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.

Because what does scrapping the INF treaty mean? It means that the United States is not disguising, but is openly starting to develop these systems in the future, Peskov told reporters at a press conference in the Russian capital, Moscow.

And if these systems are being developed, then actions are necessary from other countries, in this case Russia, to restore balance in this sphere, he added.

Peskovs comments came ahead of talks between US National Security Adviser John Bolton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

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Bolton, who arrived in Moscow on Monday for a two-day summit during which he will also meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, is expected to face intense inquiries from Kremlin officials over Trumps plans for the deal.

The INF, which banned all nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km, was signed in 1987 at a Cold War-era Washington summit between the then-US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Treaty tensions

Washington and Moscow have traded barbs over the accord since, accusing one another on several occasions of breaching the terms of the landmark treaty.

US officials believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice.

Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations that it has contravened the treaty, instead claiming that elements of the US missile defence shield hosted by its NATO allies in Europe contravene the agreement.

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On Saturday, Trump said Russia had violated the deal for many years and pledged to abandon US involvement in the agreement.

Several international powers  including China, Germany and France  expressed concern over Trumps comments. Britain, the US long-time ally, said it would stand absolutely resolute alongside Washington over the issue, however.

In Russia, meanwhile, several senior legislators and former Soviet Union leader Gorbachev lambasted the US presidents stance.

Gorbachev, who, as the last president of the Soviet Union prior to its dissolution in 1991, introduced a series of reforms which helped bring about the end of the Cold War, said Trumps move was not the work of a great mind.

Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements, Gorbachev said, according to the Russia-based Interfax news agency.

On Monday, Peskov said Russia remained committed to the INF treaty and would never inflict a first strike attack. Russian President Putin has previously said any Russians killed in a nuclear attack on the country would go to heaven as martyrs.Vehicle carrying four civilians struck in Bani Hassan district of Abs province in Hajjah, local media reports.

Yemens Houthi rebels say at least four civilians, including a child, have been killed in an air raid by a Saudi-led coalition that struck a vehicle as it travelled through the countrys northwest.

The attack reportedly took place on Sunday in the Bani Hassan district of Abs province in Hajjah, some 200km west of the capital, Sanaa.

Al Masirah, a TV channel affiliated with the Houthis  a group of rebels who control most of north and central Yemen  said all four of the passengers were killed.

It published photos on its website of a bombed-out vehicle and the dismembered body of two of the victims.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the claims.

Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen since March 2015 after the Houthis swept across the country and toppled the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also carried out bombing campaigns in an attempt to reverse their gains and has deployed more than 1,000 Emirati troops throughout the country.

Saudi air raids have repeatedly struck civilian targets during the three-year war, with the Yemen Data Project, an independent monitor, reporting more than 50 air raids against civilian cars and buses this year.

Its findings have also revealed that nearly one-third of the 16,000 air raids carried out on Yemen since March 2015 have struck non-military sites, including weddings, funerals, hospitals as well as water and electricity plants.

The Saudi-UAE military alliance has acknowledged mistakes in air operations but has mostly defended its record.

It has denied deliberately targeting civilians but has faced mounting criticism following a recent air attack on a school bus that killed 40 children.

The United Nations has repeatedly criticised the alliances bombing campaign and last year placed it on a blacklist of child rights violators.

Blame King Salman and his heir





According to the UN, more than 10,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the war, a death toll that has not been updated in years and is certain to be far higher.

Last month, Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Abdelaziz  one of the few remaining sons of the founder of Saudi Arabia  told a group of protesters in Britains capital that the wider royal family should not be blamed for what was happening in the region.

There are specific people that are responsible. Dont blame the entire family, the prince said.

In Yemen and elsewhere, our hope is that the war ends today before tomorrow.

Asked who these individuals were, the prince said it was the king and his heir apparent, in reference to Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Campaigners have accused bin Salman, who also serves as defence minister, of being the chief architect of the Yemen war, which has led to what the UN has described as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis.

The world body has warned some 8.4 million people are a step away from famine.Deadly crash was the islands worst rail accident in a quarter century as officials launch an investigation.

Taiwans president pushed for a swift investigation on Monday after an express train derailed on a coastal tourist route, killing 18 people as it sent sleeping passengers flying.

The crash on the popular east coastline injured another 187 people Sunday and left the Puyuma Express lying zig-zagged across the tracks in the islands worst rail accident in a quarter century.

Video footage of the aftermath of the crash, broadcast on local Taiwan television, showed passengers smashing a window from inside and kicking it through to escape.

Tung Xiao-ling, 43, sobbed as she told the Reuters news agency how she lost eight of 17 family members  aged nine to 67  who were returning from her sisters wedding celebrations.

No one can accept that one day you are a bride and the next day you are mourning a family member, said Tung, who was not on board the train when it crashed. I hope they find out what happened as soon as possible.

Horrible scene

Local resident Huang Chang-han, 61, told the AFP news agency he had been at a nearby hillside temple with a group of people who rushed to help.

There was a big bang, and black smoke, the scene was horrible, beyond words, he said. We rushed to the scene to help carry the kids and elderly people. There was blood all over.

All eight carriages derailed and five had flipped onto their side.

Among those who died, the youngest was nine years old. Two students aged 12 and 13 from a junior high school in Taitung  where the train was headed  were also killed, according to the transport ministry.

Everyone is concerned about the cause of the incident and Ive asked prosecutors to clarify the situation  and the cause soon, President Tsai Ing-wen told reporters as she visited the scene.

A task force and forensic units will determine whether the derailment was an accident or human error prosecutor Chiang Jen-yu said as investigators combed through the wreckage for evidence.

Crashing sound

Passengers who survived the accident recalled how the train had been shaking intensely during the journey and was going very fast before it derailed.

The train stopped twice and we were told that there were problems that needed repair, but the train restarted not long after, one passenger who identified herself as Mrs Chiu told reporters.

We felt that the speed was too fast, then there was a crashing sound and we flew off [from the seats], she said, adding many passengers were sleeping at the time.

An official from the Taiwan Railways Administration said the train driver reported a pressure device used for braking had malfunctioned 30 minutes before the accident, but that it should not have caused the train to go too fast.

Officials said the search for victims had ended at the accident site in the northeastern county of Yilan and no more passengers had been found in the carriages.

At this difficult time, let us all pray for the injured and hope the deceased can rest in peace, said President Tsai.

The crash was the worst rail accident in Taiwan since 1991, when 30 passengers were killed and 112 injured after two trains collided in Miaoli in western Taiwan.Question of the Irish border remains a major hurdle as London and Brussels seek to agree the terms of UK withdrawal.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said Britains divorce deal with the European Union is 95 percent settled but admitted the problem of the Irish border remained a considerable sticking point.

Addressing the British parliament on Monday, May said that the United Kingdom might ask for a short extension of a planned transition period to ease its exit from the European Union, or Brexit, which is due to take place on March 29, 2019.

There are some limited circumstances in which it could be argued that an extension to the implementation period might be preferable if we were certain it was only for a short time, May told legislators in London.

The prime minister was updating parliament on a summit of EU leaders in Brussels last week, where she attempted to make progress on an agreement on the terms of the UKs withdrawal from the bloc.

She reported progress on some issues including in areas of security, defence and Gibraltar, noting that 95 percent of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled.

Gibraltar, a British overseas territory located at the tip of the Iberian peninsula and regularly claimed by Spain, will leave the EU along with the UK.

The hardest five percent

But May also admitted that the question of how to avoid a so-called hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland remained a major, unresolved challenge.

There is one real sticking point left, but a considerable one, she said, referring to the Irish question.

When Britain leaves the bloc, some form of border will have to be drawn between Northern Ireland  which is part of the UK  and Ireland  which is an EU member  to allow for customs controls on goods, produce and livestock.

Both the UK and the EU are keen to avoid a hard border, which would be policed and involve stops and checks at crossing points.

The two sides accept that a backstop solution is desirable in the case that the UK leaves the EU without a comprehensive withdrawal agreement, although they disagree on what the backstop would entail.

The EU has proposed a backstop that would involve Northern Ireland remaining in the EU customs union and large parts of its single market.





This solution would effectively re-draw the border between the UK and EU in the Irish Sea, an outcome that London is keen to avoid.

May has proposed that the whole of the UK should remain in the EU customs union. Brussels is currently considering this but has not been prepared to accept the proposal so far.

The EU has also volunteered to extend the post-Brexit status-quo transition period by one year. Currently, the transition period is due to close at the end of 2020.

May said last week that she was open to an extension, a move that drew fierce criticism from members of her Conservative party.

On Monday, she reiterated the position, stating that the UK might need to ask for a short extension as an alternative to the backstop.

I have not committed to extending the implementation period, she said. I see any extension, or being in any form of backstop, as undesirable.

Reporting from London, Al Jazeeras Nadim Baba said Mays position as leader of the party seemed to be in jeopardy, amid rumours of leadership challenges.

It seems to be getting ever more precarious, he said. We are hearing that centrist Conservative MPs are now joining dozens of others who have sent letters to the party chair, asking them to basically trigger a leadership contest.

Baba added that May is expected to hold a cabinet session on Tuesday, before possibly meeting backbenchers a day later.

Weve had rumours of challenges before and theyve gone nowhere  but the clock really is ticking, he said.

Many people say that this is just to add pressure on her not to give in to Brussels in terms of that transition period.Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam  Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of Vietnams ruling Communist Party, is expected to be chosen as the countrys next president when the one-party states rubber-stamp National Assembly meets on Monday, making him the first person since founding father Ho Chi Minh to hold both posts.

Trong, 74, is the only candidate to succeed Tran Dai Quang, who died last month following a serious illness.

Under Vietnams political system, the country follows what it calls balanced leadership with no overall leader and the general secretary, president, prime minister and National Assembly chairperson all acting as a check and balance on each other.

Nevertheless, while the presidency is a largely ceremonial position, it is likely to strengthen Trongs political clout at a time when he is leading a crackdown on high-level corruption that has snared business people, state executives, and even a member of the politburo.

Very confident

The Communist Partys General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in Hanoi in April [Nguyen Huy Kham/Reuters]

If it (merging the presidency and the general secretary role) is going to be permanent, that says that Trong is very confident, not just in his own power, but in the power of getting his protege to be the next general secretary, said Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington, DC, who specialises in Southeast Asian political and security issues.

If there was any doubt in his mind, he would keep these positions separate.

Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh is currently the countrys acting president and Vietnams first female head of state, but she has not been put forward as a candidate in the election, which will be decided by a secret ballot of the assembly. The new president will be sworn in immediately afterwards with the ceremony broadcast live on television.

The likelihood of Trong becoming both general secretary and president has drawn comparisons to Chinas Xi Jinping, who has amassed unparalleled power and was appointed as president with no term limit in March this year. Xi has also pursued an aggressive campaign against corruption.

Legitimate concern

Its a legitimate concern, said Le Hong Hiep, a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, adding he was surprised that Trong had been nominated for the presidency given his age and a supposed lack of interest in the role.

Obviously, one person holding two positions will have much more power than just one position, but I think the system in Vietnam is different. Even when you have one person in two positions, that person will not be as powerful as Xi. Here in Vietnam, they are more consensus-based, more pluralistic, and Trong will have to consult with his colleagues in the Politburo.

Trong became party leader in 2011 and secured a second term in 2016, reportedly facing down influential prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who was subsequently forced out of government in an internal struggle for power.

The last couple of years have seen a noticeable crackdown on dissent. At least 119 people were in jail as of January for criticising the government, taking part in peaceful protests, or joining political groups seen as rivals to the Communist Party, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Independent political parties and unions are banned in Vietnam.

Vietnams government remains one of the most intolerant in the region, Phil Robertson, HRWs deputy Asia director said earlier this month.





Congress in 2021

Nicholas Chapman, a research fellow at the International University of Japan who focuses on Vietnamese politics, said Trongs nomination would likely help cement his power within the party and country for years to come.

The current prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, is allied with Trong, Chapman said. But Trong is wary of the future. You might get another Dung coming along, and being president would give him a bit more influence and more of an ability to drive home the anti-corruption campaign hes taken on.

Political decision-making within the Communist Party is notoriously opaque, but analysts say it is possible the decision to have Trong hold both positions may only be temporary. The next National Congress will take place in 2021 when a new government and party leaders will be chosen.

He will have more power but I dont think that will have a lot of significant implications for either the economy or the political system, Hiep said. We have to observe whether this arrangement goes beyond 2021 or not. If it does, then we will talk more about the implications.About the show

A weekly programme that examines and dissects the worlds media, how they operate and the stories they cover. Watch The Listening Post every Saturday at 0830GMTThe singer was taken into custody from his home in Sanliurfa over alleged links to banned Kurdish militia, sources say.Caravan refers to, A group of travelers, as merchants or pilgrims, journeying together for safety in passing through deserts or hostile territory. Conjuring up images dating back to biblical days of people braving hardship during their travels, the media has coopted the term for political benefit to describe a horde of illegal immigrants heading to the U.S. just ahead of a major election.

They are neither merchants nor pilgrims. I doubt they are facing severe hardship during their journey as most of their basic needs are being met courtesy of wealthy benefactors.

The current caravan is a group of four- to seven-thousand Hondurans, traveling from Honduras to the United States. Google Maps shows the distance between San Pedro Sula, the large city in Honduras where the march started, and Brownsville, Texas, the most logical border city, as about 1,408 miles, a 500-hour trek on foot.

Fox News screenshot

Assuming generously that the caravan walks 10 hours a day, it will take the group 46 days to reach the U.S., long after the upcoming midterm election. Its also safe to assume that they are riding most of the way, on trucks or busses.

Interestingly, the caravan consists primarily of military-aged men, as opposed to women and children, as this photo from the Daily Mail demonstrates. Women and children are few, and mainly being used as photo props. The migrant hordes entering Europe from the Middle East were also primarily young men.

Screenshot from Fox News

What the media is surprisingly incurious about is who is paying for this journey. Thousands of adults and children on a 45-day trek, need food, water, bathroom facilities, first aid, and other services that all cost money. The New York Times was all over the false story of United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley ordering extravagant new drapes, but they are uninterested in funding of this enormously costly caravan.

The timing is also suspicious. This caravan is making its move in October, the month of surprises ahead of a major election. Two years ago, it was the Access Hollywood tapes. This October brought us last-minute Justice Kavanaugh accusations, Senator Elizabeth Warren unsuccessfully attempting to prove herself Native American, a suspicious murder in Turkey implicating the Saudi royal family, and now this supposedly spontaneous migrant caravan.

The only common denominator is an upcoming election, one of the utmost importance to Democrats, on political life support, desperately trying to regain power and relevance. These events are not coincidental, instead all are preplanned and part of an electoral strategy.

The migrant horde, at least 4,000 in number, seek better socio-economic opportunity in the United States, something lacking in their home country. They are not alone. Some 150 million adults worldwide would migrate to the U.S. if they could. Bringing their children, parents, and extended families could double this number, and double the U.S. population if they all actually came here. That would fulfill Barack Obamas dream of fundamentally transforming America although not in a good way.

Without language or other skills necessary to be productive in the U.S. (and Central American nations rank the lowest in the hemisphere for English), most would be enjoying the health, education, and welfare benefits of the U.S. courtesy of already overtaxed US citizens. What else might they be bringing?

How about diseases, particularly those common in their home countries, but not in the U.S.? Ive written about drug-resistant TB, scabies, chicken pox and hepatitis crossing the border with these migrants. Chagas disease is the latest regional scourge turning up in the U.S. Terrorists could also easily join the caravan, bringing in weapons and ideologies of mass destruction to the U.S. Already, the president of Guatemala has stated he's found such terrorists in his country. This, in addition to run of the mill criminals  thieves, murderers, rapists, gang members, and the like. Remember Kate Steinle?

Interesting that 100 ISIS terrorists were caught in Guatemala at the same time the caravan moved toward the U.S. How many were not caught and remain within the caravan? Democrats and the media seem non-plussed about this clear and present threat to America.

Recently there has been an uptick in acute flaccid myelitis, a polio-like neurologic illness affecting mostly children, untreatable, and often leading to permanent paralysis. Polio has been mostly eradicated but is still prevalent in Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It has also returned to Venezuela, a side benefit of their full-on socialism.

Could any of these caravan migrants be from these countries and carrying a polio-like illness? Does everyone entering the U.S. receive a physical exam? Is the recent outbreak of acute flaccid myelitis a coincidence or is it related? The CDC is mum on the subject, so we can only speculate and try to connect the dots.

Democrats hope the caravan will hurt President Trump. Images of the U.S. military turning away migrants from the border will dominate the news cycle. All thats necessary is for a Democrat brown-shirt activist, inserted into the caravan, attempting to trigger a violent response from the military or an ICE agent, captured and edited by preplaced media operatives, all to damage Trump and Republicans ahead of the midterms.

Trump is wisely encouraging Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico to stop the caravan, wielding a big economic stick as he makes these countries an offer they cant refuse. After two years, they already know not to cross Trump, especially on his signature issue of border security. So far, Mexico is listening to Trump, attempting to stop the caravan on their southern border.

I have a better idea. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell should call their respective houses of Congress into emergency session to vote on completely funding the wall on the U.S. southern border. After all, this is a matter of national security and urgency.

Let every member of Congress go on record as for or against border and national security. Then load up all illegal immigrants currently in U.S. detention centers into busses and send them to the local campaign offices of all members of Congress, regardless of party, who voted against protecting and securing our borders.

Drop them off in San Francisco, Manhattan, Portland, and Seattle, at the district offices of those voting 'no' on the wall. Let these Representatives and Senators contend with illegal immigrants in their neighborhoods and districts. How will the voters like a small migrant caravan in their towns? Perhaps they can then ask their elected officials why they refuse to do anything to stop or prevent this? What a good question to ask a few days before an election.

Let the Democrats defend opening our country to those disrespecting America, as this photo of two migrants burning the American flag on the Guatemala-Mexico border illustrates.

Honduran's show respect for the migrant caravan by burning our American Flag in front of the embassy. Outrageous! Wrong! #SponsoredInvasion #StopTheCaravan #StopTheInvasion pic.twitter.com/zL9cQB52YH  Maria  (@GUSMAR80) October 21, 2018

Those virtue signaling over the plight of illegal immigrants can live with the consequences of their virtue. If the immigrants are all law-abiding, hard-working, productive members of society, then these communities should be delighted with their new residents. If they are something else, then too bad.

Elections have consequences. Vote for a party that wants open borders and unlimited immigration, then live with the results of that decision, but at home, in their backyard, not somewhere else. Its only when voters and legislators have to live with the consequences of their votes do the votes seem to matter.

How would that be for an October surprise, this time for the Democrats.

Screenshot, Fox News

Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Images credit: Fox News screenshotsMore than 7,000 political action committees (PACs) operate on the election playing field, and most are diligent, effective, and transparent. But as in any industry, from auto repairs to wedding photographers, there are operatives out to make a fast buck.

The business of a PAC is to invest monies from contributors directly to campaigns, and some conduct independent expenditure efforts to oppose candidates or advocate issues that impact voters.

Some slick players are evidently running PACs to simply line their own pockets. For instance, meet Jack Daly. From January 2017 to July 2018, Daly, who serves as chairman and treasurer of the Draft Sheriff David Clarke for Senate PAC, was paid over $585,000 for his services. Thats about 30 percent of the organizations total income, but there was even more spent on fundraising expenses. One hitch, however: the Wisconsin sheriff and conservative activist has called the PAC a scam. He explained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, they dont need my permission to [fundraise]. Every time I talk to people and say, No, Im not running for Senate, hang onto your money.

So, what does the Clarke for Senate PAC actually do? In 2016, Dalys group spent $5,000 on tickets and expenses for President Trumps inauguration. His PAC also paid $12,000 to be a sponsor of the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, incurring another $10,000 or more in expenses, including $1,000 for meals and lodging at the Trump International Hotel.

One of the most notorious political profiteers is Scott Mackenzie. In the 2016 election cycle, he served as the treasurer of no less than 22 political action committees. Some of the organizations affiliated with Mackenzie include the Black Republican PAC which, since 2012, has raised $2,512,759, while donating $134,605 to candidates. Over the last four years, his Conservative Strikeforce PAC raked in a whopping $11,114,614 but dedicated less than seven percent of that nest egg on political action.

According to political investigative site Open Secrets, one of Mackenzies groups, Freedoms Defense Fund, paid 69 percent of its income to firms linked to Mackenzie.

Sham PAC vendors cash in on the racket too. InfoCision, a robo-call agency, has worked for many conservative campaigns and causes including presidential candidate Ben Carson, Citizens United, National Right to Life PAC, and something called the Committee to Defend the President. During the past five years, political committees have paid InfoCision at least $24.8 million to send recorded messages to prospective donors, keeping more than half for their services. Former employees have alleged the company preys on elderly people, and an investigation by Bloomberg Markets Magazine revealed that the company held onto 78 percent of the donation money it collected on behalf of the American Diabetes Association. At one point, the American Cancer Society reported that InfoCision kept 100 percent of what raised plus charging them more than $113,006 in fees for services.

Political profiteers are not just fleecing donors from one side of the spectrum. In the last four years, 21st Century Democrats have raised $7.1 million from donors, and blew through $5.2 million of it on salaries, overhead, and fundraising expenses. The group asserts that it funds a diverse array of candidates who show unusual promise to advance our progressive goals, and contributes in some of the most competitive races. However, it gave $11,847 to candidates (.0015 percent of its gross) but spent more than 30 times that amount on promoting itself in the media.

Last year former MSNBC host Krystal Ball created the Peoples House Project to help Democratic candidates. So far, the group has raised $734,419 and paid its founder and staff almost half if its income ($339,300); candidates were allotted about 10 percent, and the rest, incredibly, covered the cost of doing business.

And heres a huckster who does business on a bipartisan basis: Brian Hampton, treasurer of Put Vets First PAC, uses veterans issues to solicit funds. Since 2016, his group has raised over $4 million, but only $14,000 (.0035 percent) has been used to help Democrat and Republican candidates. Over $1.7 million was paid to one vendor, Outreach Calling, a telemarketing company which has raised more than $118 million on behalf of a dozen charities  two of which have been forced to close by New York regulators. According to New York state government records, Outreach Calling keeps 90 percent of the money it brings in.

Yet another PAC associated with Hampton, the Center for American Homeless Veterans, was the target of a 2017 consumer warning by the St. Louis Better Business Bureau and early this year became subject to investigation by the Virginia attorney general's office and several U.S. House committees.

There is some good news in all this. Campaigns & Elections magazine quotes Republican strategist Tony Marsh as saying: The rise of scam PACs has created new energy for federal investigators. Last May, the FBI raided the offices of Scott Mackenzie, and Outreach Calling executives have been banned for life from fundraising in New York. In January, InfoCision agreed pay $250,000 to settle a civil complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission.

Again, almost all political action committees are professionally run and have above-board business practices. They represent the legitimate interests of conservatives, liberals, farmers, chiropractors, defense contractors, labor unions, and more. But just as a consumer checks the ingredients and not just the labels in a supermarket, political donors must remember caveat emptor when spending money on politics.

Peter B. Gemma is an award-winning freelance writer whose articles have appeared in the DailyCaller, the Washington Examiner, and Military History.VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT

Project Manager: Aviation TransportReform

(   )

Application deadline: 16 November 2018

Please download an application form here.

1. Objective(s) and linkages to Reforms

A Reform Support Team (RST) at the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine (MoI) is a group of Ukrainian professionals (non-civil servants) funded on a temporary basis by the donors that provides targeted technical support and assists in the design and implementation of priority reforms. The RST will assist in filling the capacity gaps in the design and implementation of priority reform strategies and programs, while strengthening links and partnerships between the Ministrys priorities and relevant donor support.

RST is funded by the EBRD managed Ukraine Stabilization and Sustainable Growth Multi-Donor Account (MDA). The contributors are: Denmark, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

The Aviation Transport Reform is focused on:

 reviewing and development of the relevant legislation, plans and policies

 development and periodical review of aviation transport strategy of Ukraine

 development of action plan for creating attractive aviation market conditions to stimulate new Ukrainian airlines establishment and foreign airlines to enter Ukrainian market

 incorporation of EU aviation legislation into Ukrainian legislation in accordance with the requirements of Association Agreement and Common Aviation Area Agreement with EU

 identification of amendments to be made to the Air Code of Ukraine and number of Aviation Rules to be adopted in order to bring Aviation Regulations in conformity with EU aviation legislation

A Project Manager on Aviation Transport is vitally needed to support the Government of Ukraine and in particular MoI in the fulfillment of the reforms.

2. Duration and proposed time frame:

Total duration of current assignment is till December 2019 (subjected to availability of the donor funding), two-month probation period should apply to the successful candidate

3. Main Duties and Responsibilities:

Coordination and facilitation of reform implementation process

- developing the aviation transport reform agenda and work planning

- development, update and support of realization of the Aviation Transport Strategy of Ukraine

- contributing to the Action Plan to the National Transport Strategy of Ukraine development and update and participation in the aviation reform work groups

- promoting aviation transport market access simplification and market liberalization

- development of action plan for creating attractive aviation market conditions to stimulate airline business establishment and development in Ukraine

- incorporation of EU regulations and directives into Ukrainian legislation (according to draft Ukraine - EU Common Aviation Area Agreement (CAA)

- supporting implementation of Airports Development program 2023

- engagement of relevant stakeholders (experts, government officials, donors, etc.) to the RSTs activities

- developing KPIs and monitoring and benchmarking for the sector efficiency improvement

- monitoring the project implementation and preparing reports and presentations

- straightening the efficiency and transparency in the aviation transport sector

- identification of amendments to be made to the Air Code of Ukraine and number of Aviation Rules to be adopted in order to bring Aviation Regulations in conformity with EU aviation legislation

- Developing legal acts for the provisional implementation of EU Common Aviation Area Agreement

- Participation in the public discussions with the Members of Parliament, Government and private sector experts on reforms related legislation

4. Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

Qualifications and skills:

- Bachelors degree in finance, economics, law, business administration, engineering

- Strong organizational management, communication and presentation skills

- PC literacy (PowerPoint, Project, Excel, Word; Visio is an asset)

- Fluency in Ukrainian and English

- Preferably more than 10 years of professional experience (minimum 5 years) in project management, public or business administration, business consulting

- Preferably 5 (minimum 3) years of experience in aviation industry

- Experience in the transport sector related entities is an asset

- Proven knowledge and professional experience in public finance management is a plus

- Experience with the reform implementation in Ukraine, especially as related to aviation sector and infrastructure is a plus

- Experience with government entities and their mandate and processes is an asset

- Experience in leading multidisciplinary teams is an asset

5. Assignment Value

The estimated monthly value of this consultancy position is in the region of EUR 1,100  1,400. The funding source of this assignment is the EBRD-Ukraine Stabilization and Sustainable Growth Multi-Donor Account. Please note selection and contracting will be subject to the availability of funding

6. Submissions

Submissions must be prepared in English and delivered electronically by November 16, 2018 to the following address: hr@rst.mtu.gov.ua

All submissions must include:

 Filled Application Form;

 At least one professional reference letter (from a supervisor / manager);

 Applicants CV;

Only applicants who have submitted the full package of documents will be considered.

7. Selection Procedure

Following the evaluation of all applications received, selected candidates will be invited to a brief written test in Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine (Peremohy ave, 14) covering both general and technical questions in both English and Ukrainian. Short-listed candidates will be invited to interview. The successful candidate will be required to provide a written professional reference (original in English, or Ukrainian with English translation) together with the contact details for two further referees who can attest to the professional and/or educational background of the candidate. Successful reference check will be a pre-condition to contractingThe political class has endured a massive setback. The election of President Trump sent shockwaves throughout liberal circles. A new crop of outsiders has emerged. Among them is a businessman named Harry Arora.

Arora is challenging Jim Himes for his Connecticut congressional seat. Arora has an impressive website. On it, he demonstrates a solid grasp of the most important issues.

On economic growth, Arora promises to "Promote Pro Growth policies to reverse Connecticut's economic decline." In addition, Arora seeks to curtail excessive red tape. The Trump economy is booming. Arora embraces the president's economic vision.

Like our president, Arora is in favor of fair trade. He supports the America First approach to trade deals.

As a first-generation American (he was born in India), Arora knows firsthand the importance of merit-based immigration. In Arora's words, "I grew up with little and am blessed to have attained the American dream." He supports an immigration system where American citizens take priority.

Arora is no career politician. He has "worked as an investment manager and analyst for 20 years, researching and investing in commodities and currency markets." He is a businessman, not a man of the political class. He can bring economic success back.

Arora's values are American values. He is a man of faith. He also believes in freedom, opportunity, and compassion.

Arora is not beholden to special interests. Connecticut has the opportunity to elect an outsider.Journalist Carl Bernstein said on CNN Sunday that the Trump White House is considering a plan to delegitimize the midterm elections if the Democrats take control of the House.

Washington Examiner:

During an appearance on CNN, Bernstein said his sources relayed this information to him on Friday, warning that Trump has talked about a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate. "I talked to people ... in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election's been illegitimate," Bernstein said after being asked if Trump's challenge to fraudulent voters was a form of voter suppression. "That is really under discussion in the White House," he added.

I cannot imagine Bernstein's "sources" being in a position to know the mind of Trump or his closest aides. What Trump confidant in his right mind would talk to Bernstein in the first place?

But let's take Bernstein's thesis at face value: that Trump is going to say the Democrats stole the election if Republicans lose. This would be typical Trump blather, but hardly relevant. First, all states have laws governing close elections, including recounts. A candidate can challenge the results in court if he doesn't get a recount, but most judges will laugh him out of the courtroom unless he has ironclad proof that voter fraud took place.

Second, Trump can scream and whine about the illegitimacy of the election all he wants; it won't change the outcome. As for "accepting" a Democratic victory, just as soon as Democrats "accept" Trump as president, I'm sure Republicans will embrace the election results.

Questioning the legitimacy of an election is exactly what Democrats did in 2016. I didn't hear Bernstein warning about the Apocalypse then, so he doesn't have a moral leg to stand on today.To hear the left tell it, the vast Honduran migrant caravan, as many as 10,000 strong now, crawling up to the U.S. border to illegally enter the U.S. couldn't possibly have criminals in its ranks.

Get a load of this exchange between President Trump and a mainstream media minion, as reported by the Daily Mail:

At one point during the briefing, Emily Cochrane, a reporter for The New York Times, asked Trump: 'What evidence do you have that these are hardened criminals that are coming to the United States?' Trump appeared agitated. 'Oh please. Please, don't be a baby, OK,' the president said. 'Take a look, just take a look, look at what's happening, look at the Mexican soldiers that are laying on the ground. 'Take a look. These are hardened  I didn't say in all cases but in many cases these are hardened criminals. 'These are tough, tough people. 'And I don't want them in our country and neither does our country want them in our country.'

Maybe it was a sincere, if naive, question. But Trump doesn't have to really prove anything, given that the migrants seem to be hell-bent on breaking immigration law even if they really are just the sweet little daisies portrayed by the press. However, on Twitter, the evidence is mounting that Trump is right: we are already seeing evidence that the marching group is acting like an invading army, with crimes such as assault and robbery as the horde snakes through Mexico northward.

For starters, the migrants threw rocks and beat up Mexican cops as they busted their way through the country's southern border. Here's an irate Twitter user's tweet with a photo:

@LoriLandRich

"Migrants" bloodied this Mexican policeman.Perhaps lethal force at the US border in order. No catch and release.Back to your sh#t hole countries or a slab in our morgues. https://t.co/ltINm9I65H  Mazeppa (@maltanite) October 22, 2018

Now we have reports of robbery of Mexican shops, along with a video, posted for all to see by other tweeters. The report looks fairly credible:

The reality is, people who leave their homes often have good reasons for leaving, and those reasons are not always pretty ones. Crooks often are the first people to leave home for a fresh start, and they're actually a vanguard of sorts in mass migrations. Read anything by Eric Hoffer to understand the key role of the misfit in mass movements and migrations, and this Honduran long march looks like both. Hoffer understood the dynamic perfectly.

But such realities do spoil the media's "narrative," which has been to focus solely on pictures of the few toddlers being subject to marching in that rabble (which looks like child abuse, the more we see of this bunch) and reporting immigration issues solely in terms of sob stories, massaged for maximum pity-party effect. Fact is, most migrants are not the poorest of the poor as depicted, but the lower middle classes of these countries, and people with savings and cash to pay smugglers, in search of bigger benefit packages.

For real refugees, you have to look south to the horrors of Venezuela, where migrants don't march in organized groups with paychecks to boot, let alone wave the Venezuelan banner, burn the flag of the country they claim to be desperate to live in, or break down borders by beating up cops. Some among them, for sure, are robbers, as happens in all mass migrations  the Brazil border incident revealed that for certain. But they're also people like this, desperate to escape socialism, running to first and second countries of refuge such as Peru, and not waving or burning any flags. Nor are they looking to vote more socialism in.

Somehow, there seem to be more criminals among the less desperate populations of military-aged young men from Honduras heading northward on the logic that they have a right to enter.

Make no mistake: if they get in, the crime that makes their countries so miserable in the first place will flow here.

Image credit: Fox News, YouTube screen shot.Talk about being politically incorrect.

The New York Times, for one, is aghast to report that the Trump administration is considering a legal definition of sex as immutable and fixed at birth. The so-called "newspaper of record" bases its exclusive reporting on a leaked memo written by the Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services. The nub of the change, according to NBC News, is:

If enacted as written in the memo, the legal definition of sex under Title IX, which prevents gender discrimination, would be determines as male or female based on the genitals a person was born with as listed on the person's birth certificate. Disputes would have to be settled by genetic testing, according to the Times.

This is exactly the sanity that America so badly needs. Too often, Americas have sat by as the radical left has run amok in defining terms and attitudes for society. Things such as redefining marriage and transgenderism spring to mind. And what did the country's political leadership do while this cultural destruction was happening? For their part, the Democrats defended and even encouraged these changes, while the Republicans hid under their desks for fear of being criticized by the liberal media. Trump obviously is a different animal.

Now look at the potential political dimension of Trump's gender initiative. Naturally, the Democrats and the other usual suspects will be vociferously opposed to this biological definition of gender. However, the key elements of the Democrat coalition  blacks and Hispanics  will not be in accord with their party's wacky definition. Should Trump push this commonsense initiative, it will be another wedge between the Democrats and their minority base. And as we all know, if the Democrats lose not all that much of the minority vote, they are toast.

Bit by bit, Trump has not only co-opted the Republican Party, but also is engaged in the dismantling of the Democratic Party. It's a sight to behold.

Image credit: Dustin Perry, U.S. Joint Base San Antonio, public domain military.Posted on: October 22, 2018 4:46 PM

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was in the Turkish capital Istanbul on Friday for a cordial and informal meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople  the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Churches. The meeting took place as the International Commission for AnglicanOrthodox Theological Dialogue (ICAOTD) was concluding its annual week-long meeting in Cyprus. During their meeting, Archbishop Justin and Patriarch Bartholomew discussed the situation surrounding the Orthodox Church in Ukraine  a situation which resulted in Dr Valentin Vassechko, from the Patriarchate of Moscow, unable to attend the ICAOTD meeting.

Earlier this month, the Ecumenical Patriarch announced that the Holy and Sacred Synod had decided to grant autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine and to restore the hierarchical or priestly rank to the leaders of two non-Canonical Orthodox Churches in Ukraine.

In the 1990s, as the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine gained its independence, three competing Orthodox Churches emerged in the country: The official Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), and two independent Orthodox Churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kiev Patriarchate) led by Patriarch Filaret Denisenko; and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, led by Metropolitan Makariy Maletych.

There had been growing demand in the country for the situation to be regularised and these increased following Russias invasion and annexation of the Crimean peninsula and parts of eastern Ukraine. But the Ecumenical Patriarchs decision to do so has angered the Russian Orthodox Church. Its leader, Patriarch Kirill, announced last week that the Church was severing all relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Today (Monday) his spokesman said that the Church would restore dialogue if Constantinople recognises the fallaciousness of its actions and decisions and apologises for causing significant damage to the entire Orthodox world, the Moscow Times reported.

The canonical issues that arise in Ukraine are matters for the Orthodox Church to address, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said. Whilst it is not for me to offer any opinion on the rightness of any side in the debate, I assure the whole of the Orthodox Church and the clergy and people of Ukraine of my prayers for peace and unity within the Church of Jesus Christ.

In a statement, a Lambeth Palace spokesperson said that the Archbishop heard from the Patriarch about his understanding of the situation surrounding the Church in Ukraine, and also in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This follows on from a meeting between the Archbishop and His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow, in Moscow in November 2017 where the Patriarch told the Archbishop about his understanding of the Ukrainian situation.

On Friday, Archbishop Justin and the Ecumenical Patriarch also discussed the important issues of modern slavery, human trafficking and climate change  reaffirming their commitment to the dignity of all people and the importance of care for Gods creation, the Lambeth Palace statement said.

They rejoiced in the various ways that Christians work together across different churches in addressing and combating actions that mar creation and people created in Gods image.

As the Archbishop and Patriarch were meeting, members of the ICAOTD ecumenical dialogue group were meeting in Larnaca. Underpinned by daily prayer and worship in both traditions, the Commission continued to develop its work on the theological understanding of the human person, according to principles in the document In the Image and Likeness of God: A Hope-Filled Anthropology, the agreed statement completed at Buffalo in 2015.

Members of the International Commission for AnglicanOrthodox Theological Dialogue at their meeting in Larnaca, Cyprus, last week.

Photo: ICAOTD

The focus this year was to further its work on the practical implications of the Buffalo Agreed Statement, for the complex and pressing issues surrounding the environment and ecology as well as the end of human life, they said in their communique.

As agreed in Malta in 2017, first drafts of two agreed statements that addressed these issues were prepared by two members and reviewed by a small drafting group that met at the theological school on the holy island of Halki, Turkey, in June 2018, they said. The revised draft on the environment, Stewards of Creation: A Hope-filled Ecology, was discussed in plenary sessions where further critical reflections ensued in a constructive manner.

The Commission was gratified to find substantial convergence in our views on care for creation as well as opportunities for joint action.

Preliminary consideration was given to the draft statement on the end of human life, Euthanasia: the Christian approach to Life and Death.

They expressed their sadness at the ongoing pain and suffering caused by the occupation of the north of Cyprus and prayed for a speedy, just and peaceful resolution to this situation, the Commission said.

They will meet again in October 2019 in Canterbury, England.Posted on: October 22, 2018 7:51 AM

The Church of Englands Clewer Initiative is taking its fight against modern slavery into primary and secondary schools, with lesson plans, assembly guides and a fun song, which it is encouraging schools to sing as part of a national competition. The project is based on the premise that the tools to tackle modern slavery already exists in local communities; and that the Church  present in all those communities  has the primary responsibility to lead the efforts to tackle it.

The resources were launched last week during a reception in Lambeth Palace  the official residence and offices of the Archbishops of Canterbury in London. Although the subject matter is dark and serious, the writers of the resources hope the lessons will be delivered in a fun and non-scary way. They have launched a singing competition, inviting schools to send in recordings of a new Freedom Song  the winning school will receive a prize of 1,000 GBP and a day in a professional recording studio.

The educational resources are the result of a partnership between the Clewer Initiative and the Just Enough charity, which is also working to tackle modern slavery. The charitys Head of Education and Training, Ele Girling, told the Anglican Communion News Service that the resources have been written to ensure that they are not frightening.

When we look at modern day slavery with primary schools we focus on the ideas of who we can turn to and what we can do to protect ourselves, she said. We dont go into the details of things such as sexual exploitation because it can be very scary; but to help the children understand the signs of when somebody might be trying to convince them to do something that they are not meant to be doing; or if somebody is going to contact them online; or in terms of what might happen with those sort of aspects of it; because the idea of what we talk about in the lessons is about empowering children and making sure they know how to protect themselves and what to do, rather than getting scared and shocked.

We never scare and shock the children, that is never the idea, she said. It is about telling them what is happening and what they can do about it and giving them that safe space to talk to their teachers [and] to talk to their parents.

The recently retired Bishop of Derby, Alastair Redfern, has been leading the C of Es fight against modern slavery for a number of years. He now chairs the Clewer Initiative and is passionate about the schemes importance.

Children are vulnerable by definition, but they are particularly vulnerable to trafficking, he said. A third of the people trafficked in 2017 were children. Ten million children worldwide are in slavery. So it is happening. Many people dont notice it and in the school environment there are tragic cases of young people being abused, being oppressed, but going to school and nobody noticing.

Estimates suggest that almost 41 million people worldwide are in slavery. But the figures vary widely: estimates say that within the UK there are between 13,000 and 136,000 such victims. Exact figures are impossible to obtain because  as the campaign says  many victims are hidden in plain sight in local communities.

Last year, some 5,145 victims of modern slavery were found in the UK. One third of them were under 18. The campaigns message to them is simple: we see you.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, is supporting the initiative and encouraging schools to sing for freedom. He said: In my work with young people I am always amazed and encouraged by their passion and commitment to working towards a better world. I am delighted that this song competition, and the accompanying modern slavery schools resources, will enable young people to bring their enthusiasm and dedication to this urgent topic.

The C of Es anti-slavery initiative takes its name from the Clewer Sisters, a community of Anglican nuns which was established in the 19th century to help women out of prostitution. The Community is now down to two remaining residents; but they are putting the Communitys resources behind the initiative as a way of continuing the work for which the order was founded.

All in all, it has been a very good way of giving money which is working in todays world in the way the sisters worked when there was lots of sisters and they could all help with the work, the communitys Sister Anne said.With airports in the UAE still expecting passenger traffic to continue its upwards trajectory to 90 million in 2018 at Dubai International Airport alone, air traffic in the region must continue to evolve to meet this demand.

Air traffic in the Middle East has grown 50% in the past eight years, according to Dubai Air Navigation Services (dans), and shows no indication of slowing down, with IATA predicting that rising demand for air connectivity will see the Middle East market grow by an extra 258 million passengers each year to 2036.

Global Air Traffic Management (GATM) 2018 will aim to equip attendees with the required knowledge to meet this growth, by providing an insight into new technologies and how they will affect the industry, in addition to safety and future recruitment. Dubai Air Navigation Services (dans), Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) and Dubai Airports have all given their support for the event which takes place 5-6 November at Roda Al Bustan, Dubai.

The event will bring together experts from the region including Mohammad Al Dossari, Director Air Navigation & Aerodromes Department, GCAA who will present a keynote speech detailing regulations and government projects for the UAE; Jesper Skou, CEO, GAL Air Navigation Services, speaking about the privatisation of air traffic control; and Carlos Cirilo, Regional Director Safety and Flight Operations, IATA who will look at the impact on the GCC of international developments.

Brett Weihart, CEO, Scandinavian Mountains Airport will share the experience of revolutionising air traffic management through digitisation, while a panel discussing accelerating collaborative airport decision making will include Murat Demirbilek, Vice President of Ground Operations, Pegasus Airlines; Aleksandrs Saveljevs an independent A-CDM and airline operations expert and Asim Rizwan, Head of ATM Planning and Performance at Abu Dhabi Airports.

Ryyan Tarabzoni, President of Saudi Air Navigation Services (SANS), will take part in the ANSP Leadership Panel, alongside Mohammed Althuwaini, Facilitation General Aviation Superintendent, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) of Kuwait; Attila Simon, Director of Business Development of HungaroControl and Sharon Cooke, CEO of Airways International.

Air traffic management is the hub of an airports operations, said Rachel Sturgess, portfolio director of organisers Tarsus F&E LLC Middle East. The Middle East airports are some of the busiest in the world, and still growing. With technology progressing at such a rapid rate in this sector, now is the perfect time to bring the MENA air traffic industry together to discuss the latest developments.

She added: The market need for this event is demonstrated not only through the support we have received from industry leading companies, but also in the broad range of countries represented at the event. GATM 2018 will feature speakers from the UK, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Scandinavia as well as several countries throughout the Middle East. Were proud to bring such a calibre of international speakers to the UAE for GATM 2018.Les lunettes de marque ne sont pas ce qui manque dans les commerces. Il y en a de toutes les sortes dont les lunettes de []Bruno Raberg Trio, Tailwind (Red Piano Records)

Rabergs bassat once relaxed and penetratingis at the heart of a collection of his compositions. The sole piece written by someone else is Jimmy Van Heusens Heres That Rainy Day, a feature for the leaders seductive bowing. Raberg follows the Van Heusen with his own Rainy Day Farewell, which he may have conceived with Jamaica and Harry Belafonte in mind. Adam Cruzs drum pattern supports that notion. Throughout, Cruz and pianist Bruce Barth back Raberg with sensitivity and close attention to his harmonic departures. That unity is particularly effective in Tailwind, the albums title tune. Into the structure Raberg builds what we might call rolling interludes that enhance the pieces forward motion.

The ballad A Closer Look, dating back more than three decades, is a piece that Raberg and Barth played together in their early years In Boston, not long after the bassist arrived in the United States from Sweden to attend the New England Conservatory. Rather than a peaceful survey, the energy of Paris Window might portray a busy excursion down the Champs Elysees. On the other hand, Lone Tree Hill is as peaceful as its title indicates, Barths rippling runs and full chords contrasting with Cruzs chattering drums and cymbals before the track falls slowly away. Each of the two takes of Le Candide has its own lively personality, the first driven by the conversational interchanges between Raberg and Cruz, the second dominated by the masterful variety in Barths piano choruses. As usual when listening to Barth, one wonders why he isnt mentioned more often in discussions about major pianists.Do it yourself if you can We accept  in principle  that private equity can deliver (somewhat) excess returns over most other asset classes. But there are a lot of qualifications attached to that, and most of them are very relevant to whether and how pension funds should invest in private equity.Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Changan Automobile announced on October 19 that its wholly-owned subsidiary Chongqing Changan New Energy Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd. (Changan NEV Technology) plans to bring in no less than 3 new strategy investors to accelerate the deployment of the Mission Shangri-La new energy strategy.

According to the announcement, the transaction will be put on the public market and achieved by means of enlarging the shares by increasing capital in cash. After the capital increase, the equity held by new investors should account for no less than 51% of the company's total registered capital, thus Changan Automobile's equity proportion will be no more than 49%.

Changan Automobile said the new investors, whose main businesses should closely associate with the Changan NEV Technology's shareholders, is required to cooperate with the Changan's NEV subsidiary in strategic resources. Some well-known investment companies or large industry funds with rich investment and operation experience are also allowed to join the transaction.

On October 19, 2017, Changan Automobile announced its Mission Shangri-La new energy strategy that includes four strategic actions--One Hundred Billion Action, R&D by Ten Thousand People, Partner Program and Absolute Comfortable Experience. Based on the NEV strategy, the automaker aims to complete three NEV platforms 2020 and entirely stop the sales of fossil fuel-powered vehicles and electrify the whole product lineup by 2025.

Founded in May, 2018, Changan NEV Technology works on the R&D, production, processing, sales as well as consultation services of NEV vehicles and auto parts. Changan Automobile claimed on August that the board of directors decided to transfer its NEV-related businesses to Changan NEV Technology.Lelectricite est devenue, de nos jours, un besoin dune importance majeure, et cela, dans tous les domaines dactivite. Que ce soit dans les maisons ou []Stressed-out judges in the UK are getting more support from the government.

The judiciary has confirmed to the Law Society Gazette that a support framework is in the works in the UK, with some parts already live.

Judicial officials can already access a 24/7 confidential hotline that offers practical and emotional support given by trained personnel. Face-to-face counselling is also available when needed.Webster has headed several judicial review cases for asylum seekers before the Federal Circuit Court and the Federal Court. She has supported the Maddocks Refugee Legal program, Justice Connect, and the Human Rights Law Centre.

The young gun was a member of a team that assisted with a special leave application to appeal a decision of the Supreme Court of Nauru to the High Court of Australia on behalf of an asylum seeker. This experience has led her to help draft a guide for law firms assisting in asylum seeker appeals to the High Court of Australia from the Supreme Court of Nauru.

Tamsin's desire to apply her considerable skills to benefit those who most need them is clear from her impressive pro bono record, said Law Council of Australia President Morry Bailes. Her extensive pro bono efforts are made all the more impressive through the fact that she has simultaneously been running a full-time practice in Maddocks employment, safety and people team.

Those who have had the benefit of her efforts speak highly of her and with genuine affection, Bailes said.

The Law Council president said that the awards judging panel was also impressed by Websters pivotal role in mentoring and leadership in Maddocks pro bono program.We submitted our Partnership Visa application back in November 2016.



DIBP have just started to process it now, after 23 months of nothing, just leaving us hanging.



In the meantime our Police Checks expired, and we had to pay out again to get new ones when IT IS NOT OUR FAULT!



Not only that, my partner has to go to all the trouble and expense of getting a new Police Check done in Egypt. It is going to take 8-12 weeks, and DIPB has given us 28 days! My partner had a Police Check done 1 week before he left Egypt in January 2016. He has not been back to Egypt as he is now not allowed to leave Australia while on BVA. Why this insistence on a new check when he's not been in Egypt?



My question is how do I deal with these people. I am at my wits end with them. They are asking again for information we have already uploaded. Don't they read the applications? We applied onshore and our application is being processed in Jakarta!!



I have emailed several times asking them to review our application and advise what ADDITIONAL information they need. There is no point uploading all the same documents again.



We don't have a joint bank account as my partner has been unemployed a greater part of his time in Oz. I pay most of the bills and happy to do so until we are settled. Bills are in my name as I get discounts on some due to being on the pension. While I am supporting two of us, it makes sense to try and hold on to the discounts while we can. He has had some casual work, and does buy food etc, when he has some money. But how do I explain this to DIBP in words of one syllable that they might understand.



We don't have lots of photos of us with friends etc, we keep forgetting to take some when out and about, and we tend to hang out with the same few people who are close friends.



Likewise we don't have loans, leases, etc, nor a formally recognised relationship. I have changed my will in his favour, but he does not have a will. What has he got to leave me? He came with nothing but his clothes.



We are not members of clubs, sports etc. We can prove joint travel together.



This is such high stakes stuff, and we can't afford to mess it up. We get one shot at it, and that's it. If we fail, it is devastation, and I know what the consequences of failure will be with my partner if he has to go back to Egypt.



Finally, has anyone had success or at least positive help from involving their local MP in the process. Ours has a person in their office to look after immigration matters apparently.



Sorry for the long post, but I am anxious and frustrated. Thanks for reading.Palmdale, CA (93550)

Today

Some sun in the morning with increasing clouds during the afternoon. High 73F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 43F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.On Oct. 19, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental organization that sets standards for countries to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, gave Iran an extension until February 2019 to implement its plan to address strategic deficiencies in these areas.

Why it matters: The U.S., which currently holds the FATF presidency and wants to impose unprecedented financial pressure on Iran, almost certainly opposed the extension. Washingtons inability to carry the debate demonstrates the diplomatic shortcomings of its unilateral approach to Iran.

The background: Iran was on FATFs blacklist and subject to countermeasures that all but shut Iran off from licit international finance from 2008 through 2016. For much of that time, Irans only company was North Korea, though many of Irans shortcomings were more comparable to those of Pakistan, a country that moved on and off the much less effectual gray list over the same period.

In 2016, FATF gave Iran one year to implement an action plan to address terrorist financing, during which time they would stay on the blacklist but without countermeasures. FATF also gave Iran access to international bank transactions that were difficult and expensive, but not impossible.

That grace period has been extended repeatedly as Iran makes slow progress on its action plan. Most recently, the government won parliamentary approval for a new law to counter terrorist financing. But FATF will not complete its evaluation of the law until it is ratified by Irans top clerical council.

Whats next: Even if the new law is ratified, Iran will face deep skepticism from other FATF members, as it's thought unlikely to take steps  either in law or practice  that discourage providing financial support to long-time terrorist clients such as Hezbollah. The intense opposition FATF has encountered from Iranian hardliners does suggest, however, that the proposed reforms could have some real bite if implemented.

Reality check: After the Iran nuclear deal led to sanctions relief, Tehran realized that it needed FATF liberalization to foster business with Europe and elsewhere. But now that the U.S. is re-imposing sanctions, Iran will struggle to sustain trade regardless of what FATF does. Europe is offering political support and a modest trade channel if Iran continues to meet its nuclear deal obligations, but that support will be harder to sustain if Iran slips back into the FATF countermeasures category.

Jarrett Blanc is a senior fellow in the Geoeconomics and Strategy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Around the world, people are having kids later in life than they used to, and in the next several decades, most babies in the Western world are projected to be born to 30-somethings, according to the 2017 United Nations World Population Prospects.

Why it matters: Already, demographers and economists are concerned about the falling rate of children being born in many countries, which could ultimately cause economic instability. Having kids later in life typically leads to having fewer kids, and women who wait until their 30s and 40s are at greater risk of infertility or pregnancy complications, according according to UNFPA.

In Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Spain, the average age at first birth for women has already surpassed 30, according to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund.

"Theres no way the fertility rate is going to go up significantly unless the average age of first child birth comes back down a bit. And thats hard to see."

 Richard Jackson, president of the Global Aging Institute told Axios,

How we got here: As with many of the recent changes in fertility trends, increased education and empowerment of women has caused the average age of first-time parents to rise. Women are more likely to wait longer to focus on their pursuit of education or careers or increased financial stability before having kids.

"People really try to make a living first . You try to get more security, finish education. It takes longer and longer," Michael Herrmann, a senior adviser for economics and demography at UNFPA, told Axios.

. You try to get more security, finish education. It takes longer and longer," Michael Herrmann, a senior adviser for economics and demography at UNFPA, told Axios. He added that in some cases people are worried about the cost of having and caring for children, especially with rising education prices.

In Korea, for example, the high cost of education and immense pressure on parents to provide expensive tutoring to ensure their child's success has contributed to the decline in fertility rates there, according to Jackson.

for example, the high cost of education and immense pressure on parents to provide expensive tutoring to ensure their child's success has contributed to the decline in fertility rates there, according to Jackson. The decline in teen births in places such as the U.S. and Eastern Europe has also been a significant factor in the rising average age of childbearing women.

Go deeper:Thousands of Honduran migrants made their way into Mexico on Sunday as their controversial caravan considers continuing toward the United States, reports the WSJ.

Details: Many of the migrants who made it to Mexico illegally crossed the Suchiate River while others in the caravan decided to return to Honduras or legally apply for asylum in Mexico. The caravan is set to camp in the Mexican city of Tapachula to decide if it will try to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. President Trump has been vocal about the caravan on Twitter, blaming the "onslaught of illegal aliens" on Democrats in a series of Sunday afternoon tweets.National Security Adviser John Bolton has relayed to his Russian counterpart President Trump's "strong, clear and precise words" on the Nevada tarmac on Saturday: "Were going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out" of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, according to a senior official accompanying the U.S. delegation in Moscow.

Behind the scenes: In a meeting in Moscow on Monday morning, Bolton made it his first agenda item to convey the Trump administration's intention to the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev.

Why it matters: The INF treaty was formed out of an historic 1986 meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The treaty banned nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The agreement was viewed as an important, confidence-building step in reducing the risk of the Cold War turning into a nuclear holocaust.

But Russia has been violating the treaty for years and the agreement is now preventing the U.S. from deploying new weapons to counter China's arms build-up in the Pacific.

The NYT's David Sanger and William Broad mention the consequences of the U.S. leaving: "The question is whether the decision to leave [the treaty] will accelerate the increasingly Cold War-like behavior among the three superpowers: the United States, Russia and China."

What's next? Bolton is in Moscow for a continuation of the talks kicked off at the Helsinki summit during the summer. Bolton met with his Russian counterpart last month in Geneva  and they're trying to find areas of mutual interest that the U.S. and Russia can work together on, amid a backdrop of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Go deeper:

Editor's note: This piece has been clarified to better reflect the fact that Bolton reiterated Trump's comments during his tarmac appearance Saturday when speaking to his Russian counterpart.At minimum, the future of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman seems likely to be a significant weakening of his signature policy  a reform of the Kingdom's economy. And he will lose many of his hard-won friendships abroad, a casualty of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the widespread suspicion that he either ordered or was aware it would occur.

What to watch: Now the question is whether the Crown Prince maintains his hold on the throne as successor to his father, King Salman. That may hinge on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a regional antagonist, who says that he will reveal everything his country knows about the murder tomorrow.

If Erdogan does so, and it includes tapes that Turkish officials say they possess of what they call a 7-minute murder, MBS  as Prince Mohammad is known  may find his sure grip much-weakened.

Until last year, it was assumed that then-Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef had an unassailable hold on the succession, notes Helima Croft, a former CIA officer and an expert on Saudi Arabia with RBC Capital Markets.

But then Salman sidelined Nayef for his son.

"If the crisis deepens (for example if the alleged audio tapes comes out), then his internal position may grow more precarious," Croft tells Axios. "The internal workings of the house of Saud are very opaque, but the family seems to place a high premium on self preservation."

An MBS exit is "very plausible if Trump is forced to suspend arms sales because of congressional and public pressure and U.S. business also comes under continuing public pressure or thinks the risks are too high," the Atlantic Council's Mathew Burrows tells Axios. "There are a lot of other princes who could take over."

Be smart: Erdogan might release the tapes if, after a long crackdown against journalists, he likes finally being seen internationally as a good guy.

Others speaking with Axios on MBS's fate:Top of the Morning

In December 2013, three private equity investors were jailed in Uruguay over a privatization gone bad. One of them remained there until May 2015, despite never being charged with a crime.

Now, Uruguay could face legal trouble of its own.

Background: The three investors were co-founders of Leadgate, a distressed investment firm that had first experienced success in Uruguay by turning around a local dairy company. In 2007 they won the privatization auction for a 75% stake of national airline Pluna for $15 million, with the Uruguayan government remaining the other 25%.

By most measures, Leadgate turned Pluna around. Revenue tripled, losses shrunk and, by 2010, Canadian airline Jazz bought into Pluna at a valuation of $60 million.

Then it faced several outside challenges, including a currency crisis in Argentina, a key Pluna market, and a 2011 Chilean volcano eruption that caused off-and-on flight cancellations in the region for months.

But the biggest obstacle for Leadgate arguably was its government partner, now led by a new president, whose adverse actions included the state-owned oil company changing demanding earlier payments. Plus, the government board members blocked a new debt issuance, which would have helped alleviate a growing cash crunch.

Leadgate turned its 75% stake back over to the government in mid-2012, for zero dollars, after which Pluna filed for bankruptcy and then liquidated. Even though the Leadgate partners had indemnity agreements, they were arrested after returning to Uruguay, ostensibly to testify in an investigation into the airline's failure.

Go deeper: An airline investment becomes a Catch-22

Inside of Uruguay, the Pluna affair was an enormous scandal.

The Leadgate partners were viewed as arrogant outsiders, who may have skirted corners as Pluna went into a tailspin.

Ultimately, however, their "crimes" were viewed more about being on the losing end of a political fight, rather than actually committing criminal acts.

It also seemed to be over.

But Leadgate, which believes it was extorted to sell its Pluna stake for no compensation, this past February quietly transferred any remaining legal rights to Tenor Capital Management, a New York hedge fund that buys into situations where it thinks there could be international arbitration claims.

Tenor is a serious player. Last year it successfully won an award of more than $1 billion award against Venezuela, related to a gold mine nationalization.

An entity called Latin American Regional Aviation Holding Corp. last week sent a non-public letter to Uruguay, claiming that Pluna was expropriated in alleged violation of international law. Tenor is not explicitly mentioned in the letter, which has been obtained by Axios, but LARAH appears to be a front for Tenor Capital (which isn't commenting).

LARAH, officially domiciled in Panama to take advantage of a Panama-Uruguay treaty, plans to soon commence legal proceedings, possibly via a World Bank arbitration body called ICSID. And it's expected to seek exponentially more than the $15 million that Leadgate originally paid for Pluna.

Bottom line: One of the past decade's strangest private equity sagas is making a comeback, and Uruguay's government looks to be on defense this time around.Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih told Russian state media that the kingdom has "no intention" of cutting off oil supplies akin to the 1973 embargo. He also told Russia's state-owned TASS that his country plans to boost its production from 10.7 million barrels per day to 11 mbd in the "near future."

Why it matters: The comments published Monday come amid global condemnation and pressure on the kingdom over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

They come a week after OPEC's dominant producer issued a veiled threat to use oil as a weapon if the U.S. imposes sanctions or other measures.

Few expected the Saudis to make good on that threat, but the new remarks are further evidence of backing off that idea.

Quoted: "Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics," al-Falih said.

Go deeper:President Trump has announced his intent to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibits U.S. and Russian land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

The big picture: Trump does have grounds to withdraw  Moscow has violated the treaty by deploying the 9M729 intermediate-range cruise missile  but doing so now is a mistake. Washington had unused tools that could have been employed to encourage Russian compliance.

Military pressure is one approach Russia would surely have noticed. The U.S. could have deployed conventionally armed Joint Air-to-Surface Strike missiles to Europe and increased the presence of warships carrying conventionally armed sea-launched cruise missiles in European waters. These steps could have been taken quickly and without violating U.S. treaty obligations.

Trump could also have turned up the political heat on the Kremlin, by urging NATO leaders and other allies such as Japan to take up concerns about Russia's treaty violations directly with President Putin.

Would these steps have achieved a change in Russian policy? Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, we will not know if Trump decides to abandon the agreement. It is not evident that the administration tried hard to save the treaty, perhaps because National Security Advisor John Bolton has long favored ditching it.

Why it matters: Withdrawal entails significant costs for U.S. and Western security. Russia will be free to deploy without constraint the 9M729 and other land-based intermediate-range missiles, for which the U.S. military currently has no counterpart. The decision has already sparked controversy within NATO, with officials in Berlin, Rome and Paris criticizing Trumps announcement. Finally, absent a strong public case regarding the Russian violation  that information is highly classified  Washington will widely be seen as responsible for the INF Treatys demise.

Steven Pifer is a William J. Perry fellow at Stanford and nonresident scholar with the Brookings Institution.President Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron last month that he's ready to put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept his upcoming Middle East peace plan, four Western diplomats briefed on the meeting tell me. Trump specifically mentioned the fact the U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in aid every year.

Why it matters: We havent previously heard Trump say anything about his willingness to put pressure on Netanyahu, perhaps his staunchest ally around the world. Three days after the meeting with Macron, which happened on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Trump met with Netanyahu in New York and announced for the first time his support for the two state solution. In the same meeting, Trump said he was planning to present his peace plan in two to four months.

According to the four Western diplomats, Macron told Trump he has the impression Netanyahu doesnt really want to move on the peace process "because he loves the status quo." Trump said he was very close to reaching the same conclusion.

Then Macron asked Trump why he only puts pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the Western officials, Trump said he has been tough with the Palestinians because they dont want to talk to the U.S. "peace team," and this is unacceptable. Then Trump explained he will be willing to pressure Netanyahu, if needed, when the moment comes.

Trump added that he has given Netanyahu a lot  like moving moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Trump even mentioned that every year the U.S. gives Israel $5 billion in military aid (the correct figure is $3.8 billion).

"I can be as tough with Bibi as I have been with the Palestinians."

 Trump to Macron, according to four Western diplomats.

The White House did not deny this account. A White House official told me: "The President believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to pursuing a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians."OLYMPIA, Wash.  The political landscape is ripe for this progressive state to approve a carbon price after a decade of failed attempts, fueled by disgruntlement with President Trump and a uniquely broad coalition.

Why it matters: If voters approve a ballot initiative this November imposing a fee on carbon dioxide emissions, it would reinvigorate liberal leaders despondent over Trumps anti-climate change policies. If the measure fails, itll reinforce a prevailing notion that carbon prices are politically unpopular.

If we are going to move toward more state-driven climate policies, the question of whether a state could adopt a carbon price is pretty significant.

 Barry Rabe, University of Michigan professor

The big picture: Putting a price on carbon emissions is considered an essential piece of addressing climate change, but it also makes energy products that run our lives more expensive  most notably prices at the pump.

Flashback: Two years ago, Washington voters rejected a similar ballot initiative that had more support among conservatives. A lot has changed since 2016, so there are signs that this years proposal has a higher chance of passing, despite deep uncertainties about the policy and a more aggressive opposition than last time.

Trump

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat flirting with a 2020 presidential run, says a vote against the proposal is a vote for Trumps anti-climate change positions. Thats a leap in logic, but it could be effective messaging to discontented voters in the mostly blue state of Washington.

"Let me tell you, if youre voting against the [ballot] initiative, youre going to be voting with Donald Trump, who is a climate denier, Inslee told me in an interview at the governors mansion in Olympia last month.

Broad coalition

Organizers of the proposal have convened a coalition larger and more progressive than the last effort. Backers include billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and an array of environmental groups.

The money raised from the carbon fee  technically its not a tax  would fund clean-energy investments and other causes (clean energy would get 70%). Thats a more progressive policy than the 2016 initiative that lowered other taxes.

Clean-energy investments would drive most of the emission reductions because the fee is too low to change consumer behavior on its own, said Inslee, who has been fundraising for the proposal on his personal time.

The price begins at $15 a ton in 2020 and rises $2 each year for the next 15 years.

The policys goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 million tons  about 25%  by 2035.

Backers of the proposal estimate the policy would add at most $10 a month in costs to the average family.

Opponents estimate the monthly cost closer to $440 a year (about $37 a month).

Moneyed opposition

Washington is Americas fifth-largest refining state, so it's not surprising opposition is coming largely from petroleum companies. The industry was mostly neutral on the 2016 proposal, reflecting that measures more conservative and industry-friendly cred.

Led by Phillips 66, BP and Andeavor, this year's opposition campaign has raised

Organizers have raised

The current grand total has some observers predicting it will be

Support has dropped as the opposition campaign has ramped up. In July, backers of the carbon fee found 63% support with their own private polling, according to those involved. As of early October, that was down to 50%, according to public polling.

The companies main reasons for opposing it now are that it exempts several other sectors, such as aluminum manufacturers and a cement plant. The state considers them vulnerable to losing business to other countries if they face higher energy costs. Another reason is the uncertainty about how to spend the money.

Policy uncertainty

The proposal doesnt get into details about how the money would be spent other than dividing it into general categories. The policy authors say those details will be filled in upon passage. Experts worry it could lead to unintended consequences, political favoritism and/or no actual emission reductions.

You certainly want to avoid a situation where the money is being spent for political reasons, said Noah Kaufman, an economist at Columbia University who recently reviewed

The vagueness surrounding the revenue is the top reason Cliff Mass, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington well known throughout the state, is opposed to the measure

Accountability on the funding was also why The Seattle Times recommended a no vote on the proposal over the weekend.

Whats next: If it passes, expect other states to replicate it, says Rabe, the University of Michigan professor. If it doesnt pass, Inslee says hell keep fighting  in the state legislature and at the ballot box. He might even pursue it from the White House, if he follows through with a 2020 run.

The bottom line: I dont think failure to pass is necessarily the kiss of death for other states or nationally, Rabe says. But, it would further underscore the political difficulty of doing this.YouTube's chief executive on Monday told the site's network of content creators that they should fight a proposed European copyright rule that imposes new burdens on platforms.

Why it matters: YouTube, along with other platforms like Twitter and Facebook, was built in an environment where it assumed essentially no liability for what users posted. Article 13, as the rule is known, has substantial implications for them because it could create new responsibilities to filter content for intellectual property violations.

What they're saying: "This legislation poses a threat to both your livelihood and your ability to share your voice with the world," said Susan Wojcicki in a letter to the content creators who use the platform.

"The proposal could force platforms, like YouTube, to allow only content from a small number of large companies," she said. "It would be too risky for platforms to host content from smaller original content creators, because the platforms would now be directly liable for that content."

She urged the site's content creators to protest the proposal.

What's next? A final form of the proposal is expected to be voted on next year.Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused Armenias outgoing parliament of sabotage on Monday after it voted down major amendments to the Electoral Code drafted by his government for snap general elections expected in December.

The amendments formally approved by the government on October 16 are aimed at facilitating the proper conduct of the elections. They would, among other things, change the existing legal mechanism for distributing seats in the National Assembly which many believe favored Serzh Sarkisians Republican Party (HHK) in the last parliamentary elections held in April 2017.

Under Armenias constitution, any amendment to the Electoral Code must be backed by at least 63 members of the 105-member parliament. Only 56 lawmakers voted for the government bill.

Pashinian was quick to accuse the parliament majority of sabotaging the work of his cabinet. They hope that in this way they will manage to turn the fresh parliamentary elections into an instrument for revanche, he said. But I want to make clear that even if the elections are held under the existing Electoral Code that will not change anything because the victory of the people is inevitable and cannot be stolen by anyone.

There will be no return to the past, Pashinian added, urging supporters to get ready for completing regime change in Armenia.

The bill was essentially blocked by the HHK, which still has the largest parliamentary faction.

The former ruling party officially voiced its opposition to the proposed changes in a statement released earlier in the day. It said that they were submitted to the parliament at a very short notice and that the lawmakers therefore did not have enough time to look into them.

The HHK also accused the government of ignoring a number of alternative proposals that were jointly made by the four political forces represented in the current National Assembly.

The HHKs stance was denounced by other parliamentary forces. Naira Zohrabian, a top representative of Gagik Tsarukians Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), called it an act of political sabotage.

The HHKs deputy chairman, Armen Ashotian, remained unrepentant, however, saying that the electoral system must not be changed less than two months before the anticipated elections. It is simply absurd to build democracy in the country with undemocratic methods, Ashotian told reporters.

In the 2017 elections, Armenians voted for not only parties and blocs as a whole but also their individual candidates running in a dozen nationwide constituencies. The individual races greatly helped the HHK to score a landslide victory at the time. Wealthy HHK candidates relied heavily on their financial resources and government connections to earn both themselves and their party many votes.

The bill put forward by Pashinians government also envisages safeguards against vote rigging and other major changes such as a lower vote threshold for winning seats in the parliament.

Gianni Buquicchio, the president of the Council of Europes Venice Commission, said on Friday that the draft amendments pursue legitimate aims and seem mostly positive. In a statement, he also noted the specific situation in Armenia, which requires the holding of early elections.

Buquicchio said at the same time that the commission still has reservations about the proposed change of the electoral system. He stressed, though, that these reservations are less relevant if there is consensus among political forces about the change.

The government is allowed to reintroduce the bill to the parliament and force another urgent debate on it in the coming days. Pashinian did not say whether the government will do so.U.S. President Donald Trumps personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani met with Armenias Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan and visited the Armenian genocide memorial in Yerevan on Monday during what he described as a private trip to the country.

Giuliani, who served as mayor of New York City from 1994-2001, was invited by Ara Abrahamian, a pro-Kremlin leader of the Armenian community in Russia, to take part in an international forum in the Armenian capital organized by the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led trade bloc.

Giuliani was accompanied by Abrahamian when he visited the Tsitsernakabert memorial to pay his respects to some 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War.

As New York mayor, he had repeatedly issued statements recognizing the genocide and attended commemorations of the genocide victims organized by Armenian-American advocacy groups.

Speaking to RFE/RLs Armenian service at Tsitsernakabert, Giuliani was asked whether he believes Trump should also publicly describe the 1915 mass killings as genocide. I certainly recognize it, he replied. I think its a historical fact. But Im not here in my capacity as a private lawyer for President Trump. Im here as a private citizen.

So its up to the administration to make its own conclusion about that, he added.

Like his predecessors, Trump avoided using the word genocide in his statements issued for the annual April 24 commemorations of genocide anniversary in the United States. He spoke instead of one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century.

Giuliani was also careful not to comment on U.S.-Armenian relations, saying that its up to the two governments to develop them. Again, Im here as a private citizen just to learn some facts in my first time in Armenia, he said. I know the Armenian community in America well but this is my first time here.

Giuliani met with Tonoyan later in the day. A statement by the Armenian Defense Ministry said the minister briefed him on the security environment around Armenia. The two men also exchanged views on a number of regional and international issues, added the statement.

Giuliani, 74, is known for his hawkish views on Americas relations with Iran, a key neighbor of Armenia. He has strongly supported Trumps controversial decision to pull out of an international deal on Irans nuclear program and to re-impose economic sanctions on Tehran.

Like the other world powers that signed it -- France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China -- Armenia continues to support the 2015 deal. It has made clear that it will press ahead with joint economic projects with the Islamic Republic.

Trumps national security adviser, John Bolton, is due to arrive in Yerevan later this week as part of a tour of Russia and the three South Caucasus states.By Trend

Logistics companies of Kazakhstan and Romania have joined the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), Javid Gurbanov, chairman of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC, told reporters in Baku Oct. 22.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a regular meeting of the TITR International Association.

He said that Russian companies are also showing interest in the route.

He noted that for the efficient operation of transport corridors, a great number of participants of these corridors, transparency and uniform tariffs are necessary.

Gurbanov added that the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, which is important for the work of the TITR, has already been commissioned.

Today [at the meeting] we discussed new tariffs and considered issues of price adjustment to market conditions, Gurbanov said. In the future, this will be useful for us.

On October 22, Baku hosted the meeting of the TITR International Association. The event was attended by 15 participants, including representatives from Kazakhstan, Turkey, Georgia, Romania, Poland and others.

TITR is an initiative by transport and logistics companies from China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to transport goods from China to Europe.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Laman Ismayilova

French jazz trio "Initiatives" brilliantly performed at Baku International Jazz Festival.

The concert took place at the Rotunda Jazz Club on October 20 with the support of the French Embassy in Azerbaijan and the Institut Francais Azerbaidjan, Azertag reported.

The musicians held a press conference before the concert.

French Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Aurelia Bouchez, highly appreciated the Baku Jazz Festival and said that such events have a positive effect on the development and strengthening of cultural ties between the countries.

"France and Azerbaijan are cooperating in many areas, in particular, in the sphere of culture and art. Todays evening is an example. Our musicians come to this grand festival from year to year, show their skills. I want to thank the festival organizers for this musical holiday, which they present to us every year. I want to note that, in turn, Azerbaijani musicians also come on tour to France and enjoy great success," the ambassador added.

The leader of the jazz band, pianist Jean-Christophe Cholet, brought to the attention that besides him, the trio includes bassist Gildas Bokle and drummer Simon Bernie.

"We are visiting Baku for the first time, I am delighted with your capital. It is a very hospitable and beautiful city, it reminds me of Paris with its romance. We are honored to take part in such a wonderful festival, everything is organized at a high level. Were are very pleased that the Baku public appreciates jazz music and understands this genre. I am sure that our performance will also please the listeners," the musician concluded.

The organizer of the Baku International Jazz Festival Leyla Efendiyeva noted that in the future a large number of projects are planned together with French jazz performers. She expressed gratitude to the French Embassy for its assistance in hosting the festival.

Then the concert of the "Initiatives trio took place. Throughout the evening, the musicians delighted the audience with melodic compositions and improvisations.

The Baku Jazz Festival is a forum and musical festival including education (seminars, master classes), competition ("Best Jazz Performer"), a "Kids jazz day", art and photo exhibitions, jam sessions and jazz concerts with the participation of best performers of the world of jazz. It has become a member of the Europe Jazz Network, which brings together 115 members from 34 countries.

Each year the festival prepares programs of great interest and diversity. The festival features extensive and diverse program.

Nurlan Abdullazadeh and Afgan Rasul will perform at the Rotunda Jazz Club on October 22.

Moreover, Elvin Bashirov's band will perform a concert at Landmark.

Rotunda Jazz Club will also host a concert of Can Canakkaya and Kagan Yildiz (Turkey) on October 23.

A concert of Kodaly Spice Jazz band will be held at Landmark as well.

Martin Salemi Trio (Belgium) will perform at the Rotunda Jazz Club on October 24.

Helge Lien Trio (Norway) will delight you with their fascinating music at the Rotunda Jazz Club on October 25.

A concert of Michael Pipoquinha (Brazil) await jazz lovers at the Rotunda Jazz Club on October 26.

Belgian Ruben Hein trio will perform at Rotunda Jazz Club on October 27.

The final concert will be held at the International Mugham Center. Famous U.S. musicians Gregoire Maret and Christie Dashiell will perform at International Mugham Center on October 28.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

During his visit to Tbilisi in late May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called Georgia a brotherly country. But is it really?

In a week, on October 28, presidential elections will be held in Georgia. The pre-election campaign of candidates is in full swing.

Various parties, movements and just individuals, who are well-known in the country, express their views through the media, creating an overall picture of sentiments prevailing in Georgian society.

In this regard, interesting is the address issues by the so-called Javakhk Diaspora of Russia - an entity of dubious origin created to, allegedly, promote interests of Armenian minority living in the Georgian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti, and which somehow managed to obtain state registration in the Ministry of justice of Russia.

Apart from generalities about the hope for fair and transparent elections, the Javakhk Diaspora of Russia calls on its compatriots to cast their votes for those candidates who have certain priorities included in their election program.

Here are a few of them:

- Decentralization and granting of greater self-government rights to Javakhk [Samtskhe-Javakheti region];

- Establishment of a demilitarized zone in the territory of Javakhk;

- Restoration of lost citizenship to ethnic Armenians of Javakhk and permission for dual citizenship;

- Granting the Armenian language status of regional;

- Return of Armenian churches and religious monuments confiscated during the Soviet period to the Armenian Apostolic Church;

What does, for example, establishment of a demilitarized zone in the territory of Javakhk mean?

According to international law, a demilitarized zone is an area, agreed upon between the parties of an armed conflict, which cannot be occupied or used for military purposes by any party to the conflict.

Why is it necessary to establish such a zone and on what basis would the future President of Georgia be able to do it?

This could all look pretty harmless if it weren't for lessons of history. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan had been initiated with similar claims.

The issues of separatist Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, as well as the return of hundreds of thousands of Georgian refugees there, remain the most painful problem for Georgia.

Since 2008, Armenia, being, as it says, brotherly country to Georgia, voted against the UN Security Councils several resolutions on the return of Georgian refugees to Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region.

Also, Armenia doesnt shy from raising the concern of opening transport corridors through the same separatist entities to Russia from time to time before the Georgian government.

Georgians still well remember that in Abkhazia the Armenian militants fighting alongside separatist troops were exceptionally atrocious against the civilian Georgian population.

Most of the Western audience, which oftentimes is affectionate towards Armenia, is not aware of these facts.

Its hard to explain to the Georgian people why it is necessary to grant greater self-government rights to the region or give back Georgian churches, which Armenians consider their own.

Zealous representatives of the Armenian nation have long been making provocative statements that the Georgian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti is actually one of the regions of the Greater Armenia, and that Armenians are being harassed there, and that in case of conflict Georgia will not be able to stop it.

Head of the Javakhk Diaspora of Russia, Aghasi Arabyan, openly speaks about that, trying to remove responsibility from Armenia in advance: many important issues for the indigenous Armenian population remain unresolved in Javakhk and, accordingly, the probability of a conflict remains. For its part, the Armenian leadership is trying to do its best in order not to stimulate and create conditions for provoking such things. However, if this had happened, the Armenian Diaspora, which is beyond the control of the authorities of the Republic of Armenia, will definitely join the conflict.

All actions of the leaders of Armenian separatist minorities in the neighboring countries are coordinated from a single center  the capital city of Armenia, and are subject to a single scenario - the annexation of lands for the implementation of the so-called Greater Armenia project.

However, the instinct of self-preservation does not allow Armenia and the Diaspora to start the process of alienation of the Samtskhe-Javakheti region from Georgia right now, limiting themselves for the time being with claims that will help prepare fertile ground for this in the future.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

Settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict depends directly on the parties to the conflict, Sarunas Liekis, the Lithuanian political analyst, a board member of the Vilnius Institute of Political Analysis, who is in Baku, told Trend.

The OSCE Minsk Group can only stabilize the situation around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he said. The Group can make recommendations and maintain the status quo.

Liekis noted that with the coming of the new government to power in Armenia, it is possible to expect constructive changes in the countrys position on the settlement of the conflict.

The unresolved conflict keeps Armenia in isolation, and the country cannot participate in significant international projects, Liekis said. Armenians themselves are also dissatisfied with the situation in the country. This conflict negatively affects the overall development of the region.

Nevertheless, Liekis believes that the status quo will continue.

There are always chances in international politics, and sometimes you have to wait for a long time for a conflict to be resolved, he said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the inauguration of a new distributary channel of the Araz River in Imishli.

The head of state made a speech at the event.

Following the ceremony, Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev and Chairman of Irrigation and Water Management Open Joint Stock Company Ahmad Ahmadzade informed the head of state of the work carried out under the project, and the future plans.

The head of state pressed the key to launch the new distributary channel of the Araz River.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the inauguration of Imishli-Otuziki-Garagashli highway.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Azerbaijan Highway State Agency Saleh Mammadov informed the head of state of the work done.

President Ilham Aliyev cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the road.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

As part of his visit to Imishli, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening of the ASAN Hayat complex.

The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the complex.

While touring the complex, President Ilham Aliyev was informed of the work done there.

The head of state then launched the Imishli ASAN xidmet center.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

The outlook on Brent oil is broadly bullish, driven by rising constraints on the supply side, according to the report of Fitch Solutions Macro Research (a unit of Fitch Group).

"Loss of exports from Iran, low inventories, limited spare capacity and continued under-investment in the sector will drive the market into deficit from 2019. That said, we note rising risks to demand, as emerging markets start to feel the pain of a stronger dollar, tighter liquidity, higher oil prices and rising protectionism," said the reported obtained by Trend.

Fitch Solutions expects prices to average higher y-o-y in 2019 and 2020, driven up by the loss of exports from Iran and chronic declines in Venezuela.

Other OPEC+ will raise their output, but this will be insufficient to keep the market in balance, according to the report.

The company believes that normalized inventories and shrunken spare capacity will leave prices exposed to any shock on the supply side.

"Demand will rise, with growth swinging back from developed to emerging markets. However, a more challenging external environment poses downside risk to the forecast. We are holding to our current oil price forecast this month and look on target to meet our annual average of $75 per barrel for Brent," said the report.

For 2019 and 2020, Fitch Solutions forecasts prices to rise to an average of $82 per barrel and $85 per barrel respectively.

"We expect heightened volatility in the coming weeks and months as the market grapples with myriad and high-level risks to both supply and demand  not least export losses from Iran and mounting headwinds for the global economy. Our data indicate that the global crude balance will be in deficit next year," said the report.

That said, the deficit is small and within the margin of error, according to the company. "The outlook on the market is highly uncertain and there is a marked lack of consensus not only as to the level, but also the direction of future prices."

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

The opening of the Star oil refinery once again demonstrated common priorities and interests of Turkey and Azerbaijan in the region and the world, a famous Turkish historian, professor Togrul Ismayil told Trend.

He emphasized that the Star oil refinery became the first project to receive a document on the promotion of strategic investments in Turkey after the Law on Promotion adopted by the Turkish parliament.

The opening of such a fundamental plant of strategic importance with the joint participation of the Azerbaijani side demonstrates readiness for continued and mutually beneficial cooperation of Turkey and Azerbaijan in the energy sector, he noted. In parallel, this event once again showed that our states play a major role in ensuring security and stability in the region. This is also confirmed by large-scale transport projects that are of strategic importance and aimed at ensuring the security of the region.

He noted that the joint implementation of major projects, and, in particular, the opening of the new oil refinery in Turkey, forms the energy and transport map of Eurasia, as well as enhances regional bilateral cooperation.

Togrul Ismayil added that the powerful projects that are being implemented by Turkey and Azerbaijan are aimed at supporting the strategy of unity of two fraternal peoples, which have great potential for the development of multilateral cooperation.

The opening ceremony of the Star oil refinery took place on October 19 in Izmir city of Turkey with the participation of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The total oil refining capacity of the refinery will be 10 million tons, and Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR is the main supplier of raw materials for the refinery. The refinery will significantly reduce the dependence of Turkey on imports of petrochemical products.

At the refinery worth $6.3 billion, built by SOCAR in the Aliaga district of the Turkish city of Izmir, on the territory of the Petkim petrochemical complex, 1.6 million tons of naphtha, 1.6 million tons of aviation fuel, 4.8 million tons of low-sulfur diesel fuel, 700,000 tons of petroleum coke, 420,000 tons of mixed xylene and 160,000 tons of sulfur will be produced.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

Turkmenistan, which has embarked on the industrialization and diversification of the economy, welcomes the investment activity of Japanese partners, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said at a government meeting, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper wrote.

A meeting of the Turkmen-Japanese Committee for Economic Cooperation and a joint business forum will be held in Tokyo, the message says.

This issue was discussed at the government meeting.

Noting the importance of expanding partnership with Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), with whose participation major investment projects in the oil and gas and chemical industries and other industries were implemented in the country, the head of state addressed a series of specific instructions to the leadership of the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs of Turkmenistan (Turkmenvnesheconombank).

It was emphasized that Japan is one of the reliable business partners of Turkmenistan. The portfolio of cooperation with Japan includes the implementation of work for construction of industrial complexes in the Balkan region of Turkmenistan including the enterprises for the production of urea fertilizers in Garabogaz, polyethylene and polypropylene - in Kiyanly, the plant for the production of gasoline from natural gas in Akhal region.

In its commentary, the state news agency Turkmen Dovlet Khabarlary paid particular attention to the agreements reached after the summit talks held in 2009 and 2013 as part of official visits of the President of Turkmenistan to Japan, and in 2015, during the official visit of the Prime Minister of Japan to Turkmenistan.

It was reported earlier that JBIC also expressed its readiness to finance the project of construction of a gas-turbine power plant with a capacity of 432 megawatts in the Charjew district of the Lebap region of Turkmenistan.

In 2013, a number of agreements and contracts were signed between the Turkmengaz, Turkmenkhimiya and Turkmennebit (Turkmenoil) state concerns with Japanese Sojitz, Chiyoda, Nippon, ITOCHU, JGC, Kawasaki, TOYO, Mitsui, Tsukishima, Mitsubishi Sumitomo companies. The total cost of the joint projects slated for implementation was estimated at $ 10 billion.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

Georgia is strengthening trade relations with the European Union (EU), to where in January-September of 2018 exports from Georgia amounted to $533 million  13.2% higher year-on-year, Agenda reports.

In the reporting period imports reached $1.95 billion (21.5% higher), show the data from the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat).

Overall, in January-September 2018, trade turnover with EU countries increased by 19.6% y/y and amounted to $2.48 billion.

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By TrendBy Trend

Iran's foreign minister said that the issue of abduction of Iranian border guards, as well as measures to be taken, have been discussed with Pakistani officials, IRNA reports.

The embassies of the two countries, as well as their defense and interior ministers are closely following the issue of the abducted Iranian border guards, Mohammad-Javad Zarif said.



The terrorist group, calling itself Jaish ul Adl, has claimed the responsibility for kidnapping 14 Iranian guards on October 16.



The foreign minister also noted that the Pakistani government is responsible since the perpetrators fled into the country and the abductees are being kept in Pakistan as well.



The Pakistani government has said that Islamabad is willing to cooperate with Iran on the issue, the foreign minister added.



Zarif also said that the suggestion of increasing the number of Pakistani border guards was discussed, adding that Iran has a good presence at the common border.



He noted that following a previous incident on the shared border, Pakistan increased its forces, but it has vowed again to add the number.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Abdul Kerimkhanov

A pension agreement between Russia and Uzbekistan may be signed in the future.

As part of the state visit, a memorandum on cooperation in the social and labor sphere was signed between the Russian Ministry of Labor and Social Protection and the Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations of Uzbekistan.

The memorandum on cooperation in the social and labor sphere, which was signed by Russian Minister of Labor and Social Protection Maxim Topilin and Uzbek Minister of Employment and Labor Relations Sherzod Kudbiyev, implies cooperation in several areas.

These areas include analysis and monitoring of the labor market, promoting employment and organized recruitment of foreign labor, protection of labor rights and more. Joint advisory bodies will be created, reciprocal visits of employees in the field of employment will be organized for exchange of experience.

Maxim Topilin stressed, the citizens of Uzbekistan, who legally worked in the Russian Federation and made the appropriate deductions, could qualify for certain payments.

He added that Uzbekistan also proposes to create on its territory a special center that would grant patents and permits to work in Russia.

Moreover, Uzbek side intends to create of a special center in the republic that would grant patents and work permits for migrant workers before they leave for Russia, the minister said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin completed his official visit to Uzbekistan on October 21.

During the visit and forum, Uzbekistan was visited by the leaders of 18 constituent entities of the Russian Federation, about 800 agreements totaling more than $ 27 billion were signed, road maps to organize 79 joint ventures and 23 trading houses were developed.

Among the documents signed are the economic cooperation program of the two governments for 2019-2024 and a plan for its implementation. Russia and Uzbekistan also decided to create a Russian-Uzbek commission to improve cooperation in the economic sphere.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Abdul Kerimkhanov

The new Strategy of the State Tourism Agency envisages opening of foreign offices in Arab countries with the aim to further strengthen Arab tourists' interest in Azerbaijan.

Last week, the capital hosted a landmark event - the first National Tourism Summit organized by the State Tourism Agency and the Tourism Bureau of Azerbaijan. More than 1,500 representatives of government agencies, the diplomatic corps, the tourism sector, local and foreign partner organizations, and the public took part in the event. There, the strategy of the State Tourism Agency was announced, a national tourism brand was presented.

Chairman of the Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA) Nahid Baghirov told Day.Az that the country leads in Arab tourism, adding that the prospects for the development of tourism are promising.

He noted that the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan is steadily growing.

"In a short period of time, starting from 2016, we understood who a tourist is. We did it. People didnt think about it, did not believe. You can see for yourself what a large flow of tourists Azerbaijan has received since 2016. But we must continue to work on this, not to 'relax'. For example, new tourist destinations are opened every year, and thus we have competitors. This is a cruel world where there is competition. Therefore, you cannot sit still, you need to invent something new," said Bagirov.

As for Arab tourism, the Association is working together with the Ministry of Tourism in this direction.

"According to the new Strategy, it is planned to open offices in Arab countries. This is very important if we want to continue to see Arab tourists," the head of AzTA said.

Bagirov named Turkey, Central Asia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand fierce competititors to Azerbaijan in this area.

"We need to take into account that countries spend big money to attract tourists. We need to do something new so that tourists come to Azerbaijan. In addition to advertising the country abroad, everything must be done inside so that tourists do not get bored, spend their time in an interesting way. We need to develop the infrastructure. Considering that many come with families, it is necessary to open more places to entertain children. We must work hard. Azerbaijan has a great potential for the development of this sphere," he concluded.

In January-September this year, 2,208,600 foreigners and stateless persons from 193 countries arrived in Azerbaijan, which is 6.4 percent more compared to the same period last year.

Some 31.2 percent of those who arrived in Azerbaijan are citizens of Russia, 19.8 percent - Georgia, 10 percent - Turkey, 9.2 percent - Iran, 3.3 percent - the United Arab Emirates, 3 percent - Saudi Arabia, 2.7 percent - Iraq, 2 percent - Ukraine, 1.5 percent - Israel, 17.2 percent - other countries, 0.1 percent - stateless persons.

In total, 467,800 people arrived from the countries of the Persian Gulf, that is, almost every fifth tourist was a citizen of these countries.

During the period, the number of tourists from EU countries increased by 8.9 percent, reaching 88,900 people, from CIS countries - by 4.7 percent, reaching 813,700 people.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzThank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.How to find your voting location: The Kern County Elections Division has an online tool available to look up your polling location using your address. Go to https://www.kernvote.com/Voting/ and click on "Go to a Polling Place." Then type in your address.A Ride of Random Loveliness: Oregon Coast Stretch Perfect In All Weather

Published 10/21/2018 at 5:54 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff





(Yachats, Oregon)  There are times when  ahem  the weather does not cooperate on the Oregon coast.

One sure bet for foul weather fun is a good car ride  just a small jaunt via horseless carriage down a stretch of Highway 101. A host of incredible viewpoints lie just south of Yachats, where you can zip down the road with your view of the beaches largely unimpeded by trees. Along this great beachy way are perhaps a dozen little gravel pullouts, where you can enjoy the scenic wonders from behind the dryness of your rain-soaked windshields. Or in the case of sunnier times, these beaches hold many rewards when explored. (See full info on the Upper Lane County stretch at the virtual tour).

All this is especially perfect for storm watching too as these gravel pullouts are usually not very far above the chaotic breakers. You can not only watch the watery melee from safety but its a great seat in the house.

Then, if the weather does clear up suddenly  as its wont to do along the Oregon coast  you can dart out and do a little wandering before the next squall comes in.

From the southern end of Yachats to Florence its about 25 miles, and along the way there are loads of incredible sights in any weather. You start out at the southern end of Yachats and soon find the towering pullout near Cape Perpetua, where you can look down and then beyond the rocky shoreline to what seems like forever.

About another mile or so away and youve rounded the bend to Cape Perpetua and the Devils Churn. Head up the winding road to the top of Perpetua and you get some astounding views en route as well as at the top, a vantage point some 600 feet above it all.

South of there you have the paved pullout of Cooks Chasm and the fiery water pyrotechnics of this incredible place. The waves hit these rocks with frightening ferocity at times  so stay off them. Thors Well is here and far too many have had either close encounters or actually been killed here trying to get a good shot of the big, watery hole.





Besides, the best part of Cooks Chasm is the spouting horn, which makes a bizarre hissing noise as it fires water up into the air. If you position your car just right, you can watch this through the open section of railing in the parking lot  if things are too stormy to head outside.

At this point youve entered Lane County and just left Lincoln County. From here, the road is straighter most of the time and it allows you to take in the scenery better if youre in the drivers seat.

You catch sight of the northern part of Neptune State Scenic Viewpoint and its various rocky slabs. The southern access is a mere blip of a sight as you zip over the bridge, but the parking lot (the southern side is more clearly marked as Neptune) offers inspiring beach scenes from your car.

Strawberry Hills wild wonders are not visible from the road as much as they are from the slightly hidden parking lot of the state park.

Next up: the cobblestone surrealism of Bob Creek Wayside, where at low tide, weird mushroom-like rocks emerge that are covered with crusty marine life and starfish. Directly above the park is a stunning pullout that shows off all sorts of things from an aerial perspective  called Brays Point.

Stonefield Beach has a quaint parking lot from which to watch the waves, and then another wondrous pullout happens about milepost 173, called Tokatee Klootchman.

At Rock Creek Campground and Roosevelt Beach, there's sand and small sea stacks, with a patch of basalt that cradles an idyllic, babbling brook. A bit south of there, spots like Muriel O. Ponsler Wayside are all sand, and it's about where the landscape flattens out to seemingly endless beaches.

Just north of Florence, you'll hit the incredible views near Heceta Head Lighthouse and Sea Lion Caves, where a myriad of pullouts allow you to gaze in awe at the wildlife covered cliffs and dramatic waves slamming into bulging structures at the bottom. Lodgings in Yachats - Where to eat - Maps and Virtual Tours

More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging.....

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All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permittedLines at polling places, packed parking lots and a palpable energy coming from residents characterized the first day of early voting in Jefferson County.

By 2:30 p.m. Monday, the county had already surpassed turnout totals from the last midterm election and gubernatorial race, four years ago, with 3,290 voters. In 2014, 3,131 ballots were cast the first day.

RELATED: Early voting expected to draw crowds in Jefferson, Orange, Hardin counties

"It's definitely going to surpass the first day of early voting in 2014, which isn't surprising because of all the attention midterm elections have been given this year and the importance of them  Democrats versus Republicans fighting to maintain or obtain seats in Congress," Jefferson County Clerk Carolyn Guidry said.

Guidry, who started work at 5:45 a.m. Monday, said she and other election workers could feel a new energy coming at the polling places. Voters were ready to make their voice heard and are passionate about issues on the ballot.

Jefferson County isn't alone in above-average turnout, as voters across the state turned out in record numbers. Harris County residents set a new record for the first day of early voting in a midterm election, as 63,188 went to the polls to cast ballots.

The turnout smashed the previous mark, set in 2010, by more than 35,000 votes, and came on the same day both major party candidates for the U.S. Senate, Gov. Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump campaigned in downtown Houston.

Guidry said she is optimistic that momentum will continue because this election is attracting more than just the residents who always vote. As of Friday, 148,495 people were registered to vote in Jefferson County  2,500 more voters than were registered in 2014.

"All people have a vested interest in this election," she said.

Makisha Barbin is one of the new voters.

The 23-year-old Beaumont resident said she used to "not take (elections) seriously," but as a mother of two young children, she said she wants to set an example that "every vote counts."

"We may not be the richest family," Barbin said. "But everyone is equal at the polls."

For Barbin, who is unemployed and looking for another job, it was "the message" of one of the candidates and a lack of good jobs open to her that contributed to her decision to vote for the first time.

She said it felt like she had to choose between working in fast food, where she hasn't always been treated well, or one of the area's refineries, which she said were too far for her vehicle.

"Everywhere you go, people need a job," she said.

William Fortenberry, 50, said he came out to vote Monday afternoon because he believes "economy is so good" and he wants it to stay that way, pointing to the low unemployment rate and availability of jobs.

William Eichelberger, 64, nodded in agreement as they joined the dozens of voters in line.

Eichelberger said this year's midterm elections would be his first to vote straight down the ballot.

"I've voted all my life for the person, not the party," Eichelberger said. But this year, he's voting straight Republican because he's tired of "Democratic shenanigans."

Eichelberger wasn't the only person who used his vote in part to block ideas he doesn't agree with.

Greg Jackson, 63, who voted in Port Arthur, is unsatisfied with increasing "socialist tendencies" that he says are leading the country in a "bad direction."

As a result, he said it was imperative that he voted for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in this election.

That's also why Jackson felt an urgency to vote Monday instead of waiting until later in the election season like he usually ends up doing. He didn't want anything to stand in the way of him casting his vote.

"I couldn't stand the thought of not voting if Be-to (O'Rourke) had won," he said.

Barbara James, 62, was also concerned about the "state of the world." But she said she voted for candidates that will put value on human rights, common courtesy and a care and concern for others.

Guidry said in addition to the buzz surrounding statewide and national issues on the ballot, part of the increase in first-day turnout could still be coming from Tropical Storm Harvey  giving residents an opportunity to grade their elected officials on response.

"Our county in particular has been hit so hard by natural disasters, the hurricane and flooding," she said.

"I think that's energized a lot of people who are looking for hope and a government that will help them rebuild."

The 12-day early voting period in Southeast Texas kicked off Monday. Elections officials in Orange, Hardin and Jefferson counties all were expecting stronger turnout during the early voting period that ends Nov. 2.

In addition to the closely watched Ted Cruz-Beto O'Rourke race, Jefferson County voters are also casting ballots to determine their top county official.

Incumbent Jeff Branick and challenger Nick Lampson are competing for that seat.

Phoebe Suy in Beaumont and Zach Despart in Houston contributed.WASHINGTON - In recent weeks, a grand jury in Washington has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and FBI technicians have pored over gigabytes of electronic messages as part of the special counsel's quest to solve one burning mystery: Did longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone - or any other associate of the president - have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release hacked Democratic emails in 2016?

While outwardly quiet for the last month, Robert S. Mueller III's investigators have been aggressively pursuing leads behind the scenes about whether Stone was in communication with the online group, whose disclosures of emails believed to have been hacked by Russian operatives disrupted the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the special counsel probe.

Stone, who boasted during the race that he was in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said since that his past comments were exaggerated or misunderstood. Both he and WikiLeaks have adamantly denied they were in contact.

However, prosecutors are closely examining both public comments and alleged private assertions that Stone made in 2016 suggesting he had a way to reach Assange, the people said.

Last month, Randy Credico, a onetime Stone friend, told the grand jury that the Trump loyalist confided during the 2016 campaign that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In a series of interviews with The Washington Post, Stone said his only connection to the group was through Credico, a liberal comedian who had hosted Assange on his New York radio program in 2016.

The special counsel's prosecutors have also zeroed in on Stone's relationship with conservative journalist and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, examining whether he served as a conduit between Stone and Assange, according to another person familiar with their interest. Corsi appeared before Mueller's grand jury last month, and FBI agents have recently been seeking to interview Corsi's associates, according to the person.

In addition, investigators have scrutinized Stone's communications with Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks, according to people familiar with the probe.

One apparent line of inquiry: whether Stone lied to Congress about his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks during the presidential race, according to the people.

The question of whether Trump associates were in contact with WikiLeaks is at the heart of Mueller's inquiry. According to charges filed by the special counsel in July, Russian military intelligence officers used an online persona called Guccifer 2.0 to distribute hacked Democratic emails through WikiLeaks. The Russian operatives also used Guccifer 2.0's Twitter account to send messages to Stone, who has said the exchanges were benign.

The online organization has said it had no contact with Stone. "WikiLeaks & Assange have repeatedly confirmed that they have never communicated with Stone," the organization tweeted in March 2017.

Stone told The Post that Credico "was my principal source regarding the allegedly hacked emails published by WikiLeaks," a claim Credico has denied. Stone added that one of his remarks in 2016 predicting that WikiLeaks was about to release information related to Clinton was informed by a another journalist's tip that he was forwarded by an associate.

Stone called Mueller's investigation illegitimate and said the special counsel, who has interviewed at least seven of his associates, is trying to pressure him to flip on President Trump.

"The special counsel pokes into every aspect of my social, family, personal, business and political life, seeking something - anything - he can use to pressure me, to silence me and to try to induce me to testify against my friend Donald Trump," Stone said in a recent videotaped fundraising appeal. "This I will not do. When I say I won't roll on the president, what I mean is I will not be forced to make up lies to bring him down."

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Questions about Stone's possible connection to WikiLeaks were stoked by encouraging comments he made after the group released thousands of hacked emails from key Democratic figures, beginning on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in July 2016.

The following month, Stone began predicting that WikiLeaks would strike again before the election. In a widely reported speech to a Republican group in South Florida in early August 2016, Stone boasted: "I actually have communicated with Assange."

Then, on Aug. 21, he tweeted, "Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta's time in the barrel." Six weeks later, WikiLeaks began posting online emails stolen from the account of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Stone now says his tweet was a reference to opposition research he got from Corsi about the business dealings of Podesta and his brother, Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta.

Two days after his Podesta tweet, Stone appeared on Credico's radio program. Credico asked whether an "October surprise" was coming and stated that Stone had "been in touch and indirectly with Julian Assange," according to a clip obtained by CNN.

"I don't want to intimate in any way that I control or have influence with the Assange because I do not," Stone responded on the show. "We have a mutual friend, somebody we both trust and therefore I am a recipient of pretty good information."

Stone now says he was referring to Credico. "I certainly couldn't out Randy on his own radio show, but the person I refer to is of course him," he told The Post. "He is in on the joke from the beginning."

As Election Day neared in 2016, Stone continued his predictions. On Sunday, Oct. 2, he tweeted, "Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #WikiLeaks." When there was no release on Wednesday, Oct. 5, he tweeted, "Libs thinking Assange will stand down are wishful thinking. Payload coming #Lockthemup."

Two days after Stone's "payload" tweet, WikiLeaks published the first tranche of Podesta's emails - and then dropped new batches nearly daily before the November vote.

When Stone came under scrutiny for his comments about WikiLeaks after the election, he said had no advance knowledge of the hacking and was just conveying information he had received from Credico.

In a letter to the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017, Stone also identified Credico as his source on WikiLeaks, according to a person familiar with the communication.

Credico has repeatedly denied passing any information from WikiLeaks to Stone. Rather, he said he may have speculated about the group's tactics when he was with Stone. Credico has told allies that he believes Stone used him as a "decoy" to try to explain his claims of having a back channel to Assange.

Mueller's efforts to unentangle the conflicting accounts of Stone and Credico are complicated by the fact that both men are voluble showmen. They became friends in the early 2000s through a shared interest in liberalizing New York drug laws but have split bitterly amid scrutiny from the special counsel.

Stone said he believes Credico had sources connected to WikiLeaks and said Credico offered to get information from Assange's circle for him.

Two Stone associates, filmmaker David Lugo and attorney Tyler Nixon, also told The Post that Credico acknowledged in conversations last year being the source of material for Stone's statements and tweets about WikiLeaks.

Nixon said he would be willing to testify before the grand jury about a dinner in which Credico fretted that his liberal friends would be displeased that he was a source for the arch-conservative Stone. Lugo provided The Post with text messages in which Credico said: "I knew Rodger [sic] was going to name me sooner or later and so I told you that I'm the so-called back Channel."

An attorney for Credico declined to comment on Lugo and Nixon's claims.

For his part, Credico said he recalls that Stone claimed in a September 2016 conversation that he had a mystery WikiLeaks contact. Credico said that he wasn't sure at the time whether to believe him.

"I remember saying, 'Roger, I thought you had a back channel,'" Credico said. "He said something to the effect of, 'Yes, but I can't use him all the time.'" Credico relayed that account to the grand jury last month, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

Stone at first denied Credico's claim that he suggested having a conduit to reach WikiLeaks, calling his old friend a "perjurer" and saying he'd relish the opportunity to confront Credico in court.

Later, Stone acknowledged to The Post that he "obliquely" told Credico in an email that he had "a second source" of WikiLeaks information besides the New York comedian.

He told The Post that person was not a direct conduit to WikiLeaks. He said he was referring to information another associate passed to him from a journalist who wrote in a July 2016 email that he had heard WikiLeaks would be releasing information related to the Clinton Foundation.

Stone has also said that he was getting information about the Clintons in 2016 from Corsi. He told the House Intelligence Committee that his Podesta tweet was "based on a comprehensive, early August [2016] opposition research briefing" from Corsi.

Corsi gave a similar account in a March 2017 Infowars column in which he named himself as Stone's source for the Podesta tweet and confirmed Stone's timeline, saying they'd had detailed conversations about Podesta from Aug. 14, 2016, through Aug. 31, 2016.

Mueller is now examining their exchanges.

Corsi's attorney, David Gray, said in an interview last month that Corsi had been subpoenaed by the special counsel, who indicated he was interested in Corsi's communications with Stone in 2016 and 2017. Gray declined to comment last week.

Stone said he first encountered Corsi around 2015, when the author was writing about presidential politics for World Net Daily, a conspiracy-theory-oriented website. Later, both contributed to Infowars, where Stone still hosts a program streamed live over the Internet.

In an interview, Stone suggested that the special counsel may actually be interested in Corsi's relationship with Trump.

Corsi was a leading proponent of birtherism, the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In 2011, he wrote the book "Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President."

Around that time, Trump took up the conspiracy theory, questioning Obama's citizenship and demanding that he release his birth certificate.

Stone said that during a conversation with Trump in 2011, "he said to me, 'Who is this guy, Jerome Corsi?'" Stone recalled.

Stone said he asked Trump why he was inquiring about Corsi.

"I've been talking to him," Stone recalled Trump saying.

Stone said that Corsi also met with Trump during the 2016 campaign. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow declined to comment.

Mueller, Stone added, may have been "more interested in those meetings than anything to do with me."

- - -

The Washington Post's Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.Jefferson Co. Sheriff's Office

A Port Arthur man was sentenced Monday to 50 years in prison for his role in a 2013 double murder.

Demetrius Bernard Glenn, 22, pleaded guilty to killing Demario Polk and Carlos Lowe on June 6, 2013, according to information from the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office.Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Denise Cobb, PhD, has named Timothy Staples, EdD, as interim executive director of the SIUE East St. Louis Center (ESLC) Grant Programs.

In July, Staples returned to SIUE to serve as director of the new Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion (CSDI). An East St. Louis native, Staples is an alumnus of the ESLCs Upward Bound program and SIUE. Staples steps into the role vacated by Jesse Dixon, who resigned effective Oct. 15 to pursue a new professional opportunity.

Dr. Staples realizes the critical role the Centers programs play in East St. Louis and the region, and shares a passion for meeting the needs of the families, adults and children the Center serves, Cobb said. He is dedicated to working with the Centers leadership and program directors to strengthen the infrastructure, enhance cohesion and facilitate a more fully integrative and collaborative vision for the Center. Importantly, he will also work to reframe the relationship between the Edwardsville campus and the ESLC to improve collaboration and enhance our connections to serve our common purposes.

Additionally, former SIUE Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Lora Miles will serve as a consultant. I am enormously grateful that Lora is bringing her wealth of experience, expertise and connections to this role, Cobb said. She has more than 30 years of experience in supporting effective fiscal officer training, serving as a human resources liaison, and managing a complex series of budgets within SIUE. Her consultation will be a valuable resource in strengthening the connections between the ESLC and Edwardsville offices.

In association with these appointments, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Jeffrey Waple, PhD, has appointed SIUE Director of Counseling Services Courtney Boddie, PhD, as CSDI interim director. Boddie joined SIUE in July 2017 and has an extensive history of serving the needs of diverse students, having worked in higher education for the past decade in instruction, disability affairs, tutoring and counseling.

Waple has also selected Jessica Ulrich as interim director of counseling services. She will step into this role for the third time.

Cobb expects to begin an open and inclusive search for the executive director search in late 2018 or early 2019. At the conclusion of his interim appointment, Staples will return to SIUEs CSDI.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provides students with a high quality, affordable education that prepares them for successful careers and lives of purpose to shape a changing world. Built on the foundation of a broad-based liberal education, and enhanced by hands-on research and real-world experiences, the academic preparation SIUE students receive equips them to thrive in the global marketplace and make our communities better places to live. Situated on 2,660 acres of beautiful woodland atop the bluffs overlooking the natural beauty of the Mississippi Rivers rich bottomland and only a short drive from downtown St. Louis, the SIUE campus is home to a diverse student body of more than 13,000.

-SIUE-

Photo: Timothy Staples, PhD, interim executive director of the SIUE East St. Louis Center Grant Programs.Oct. 21, 1938: Control of acreage under the government program intensifies the drought hazard of farming in the semi-arid Plains region of West Texas, where wheat and cotton meet.

Mrs. Elouise Fulton will be leader of a B.A.U. program Sunday evening at the First Baptist Church on "Meeting Moral and Religious Difficulties."Ty Tippets, the administrator of St. George (Utah) Surgical Center, spoke to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about rising healthcare costs, and how ASCs can help mitigate the problem, St. George News reported.

Here are the key details to know:

1. During his testimony, Mr. Tippets talked about his surgery center's cost transparency initiative, which bundles surgery fees and makes prices available on their website.

2. Making prices easily accessible to consumers will allow them to be more informed, which may lower healthcare costs due to free market competition, Mr. Tippets said.

3. Mr. Tippets told the committee when physicians and insurance companies refer patients to ASCs over more expensive hospital outpatient departments, it can help reduce the cost of healthcare.

4. ASCs save Medicare about $2.5 billion a year, private patients $40 billion and Medicare beneficiaries $1.5 billion, according to the St. George News.

5. Mr. Tippets said consumers should also look at the quality of services and patient safety when making healthcare decisions, adding that higher cost doesn't translate to higher quality.Louis Krenn, MD, chief medical information officer at Springfield, Mo.-based CoxHealth, discusses the importance of population health management tools and healthcare's shift to a value-based system.

Responses are lightly edited for clarity and length.

Question: What do you consider your No. 1 priority as CMIO? How do you ensure you're successful?

Dr. Louis Krenn: My No. 1 priority is to improve the usability of our EHR. The EHR is integral to how we practice medicine, and it has been criticized as a major factor in physician burnout. My goal is to use all the tools available to improve the usability and performance of our EHR. To do this, we are replacing traditional subjective complaints with objective data to guide our project list and measure improvement to prove we are truly making a difference in our providers' practice.

Q: What is the vision for your team in 2019? How will you approach your role and meeting your goals?

LK: Consistent with top priority, my vision for 2019 is to create a more efficient and effective EHR for CoxHealth. Starting with primary care, we will systematically review workflows and processes that can be improved along with enhancements made to the EHR to facilitate a more efficient practice, improving provider and staff satisfaction while providing a more streamlined experience for our patients.

Q: Where do you see the biggest need for innovation to improve the healthcare system in the future?

LK: Our biggest need for innovation is around chronic disease management and population health. While these buzzwords have been around for a while, the tools and processes needed to manage groups of patients efficiently are still relatively immature. Companies are investing heavily in population health management tools, but most are still in early stages of development. As healthcare shifts to a value-based system, these tools will become extremely important in assisting with lowering costs and improving the quality of care.

Q: How did you become a CMIO? What is your background and what advice do you have for aspiring CMIOs?

LK: I have no formal background in information technology or informatics. I have grown into the role as many of my colleagues have. I started as a physician champion during residency, which grew into a formal position as EHRs matured and became more important to health systems and clinical practice.

The role of CMIO is ever changing and evolving so those looking to become a CMIO in the future should be prepared for an uncertain job description and remain fluid in their role and responsibilities. I maintain a clinical practice, and I believe it is important for a CMIO to do so to remain connected to physician colleagues.

To learn more about clinical informatics and health IT, register for the Becker's Hospital Review 2nd Annual Health IT + Clinical Leadership Conference May 2-4, 2019 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register.

To participate in future Becker's Q&As, contact Jackie Drees at jdrees@beckershealthcare.com.Deborah DiSanzo is out after serving as general manager of IBM Watson Health since 2015, according to STAT News.

The circumstances of Ms. DiSanzo's departure are unclear, according to the report. Several past and current employees told STAT that John Kelly III, PhD, senior vice president for cognitive solutions and IBM Research, will become acting general manager. An IBM spokesperson confirmed Dr. Kelly's assumption of the role.

"John Kelly will continue leading Watson Health as we continue to grow and scale this successful business," the spokesperson said.

Ms. DiSanzo will reportedly join IBM Cognitive Solutions as part of its strategy team.

The shift in executive leadership comes as IBM faces declining revenues and challenges from other industry leaders in recent years. IBM Watson's flagship cancer software, which uses artificial intelligence to recommend patients' treatment courses, has drawn criticism from some physicians in the industry. Earlier this year, the health division announced it would be scaling back its efforts with hospitals and discussed plans to lay off a substantial number of employees.

IBM released its third-quarter 2018 earnings Oct. 16, which illustrated declining revenues from Watson and its other cognitive offerings.

Before joining Watson Health, Ms. DiSanzo led Philips Healthcare, a healthcare informatics company, and has held executive roles at Hewlett-Packard and Apollo Computer, according to her biography page on IBM Watson Health's website.

To access the full report, click here.Chattanooga, Tenn.-based CHI Memorial appointed Michael Sutton market CFO.

Here are five things to know:

1. Mr. Sutton most recently served as vice president of finance at CHI Memorial.

2. He joined CHI Memorial in 2001, prior to which he was a senior auditor for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee in Chattanooga.

3. Mr. Sutton is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and Healthcare Financial Management Association.

4. He earned an MBA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

5. He succeeds Troy Hammett, who took on the role of CFO for the southeast division of Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, CHI Memorial's parent.Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) has proposed a new policy that would allow women to receive birth control pills over the counter at pharmacies, according to The Hill.

Ms. Reynolds said that abolishing the prescription requirement for female contraception could help increase access to family-planning resources, particularly in underserved areas such as rural communities.

"I think this is the direction we should go," Ms. Reynolds told The Des Moines Register. "I think by eliminating some of the barriers and making it available through a pharmacist, it will help reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies and abortions."

Under the plan, women would be required to complete a form acknowledging the potential risk of taking birth control and agree to meet with a physician every two years. Ms. Reynolds modeled the plan after similar initiatives in Oregon and Utah.At least six other employees at Syracuse, N.Y.-based SUNY Upstate Medical University  including its former chief nursing officer  were reportedly offered paid off-campus assignments similar to the one given to the hospital's ex-CEO to make him "disappear," according to documents obtained by syracuse.com.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, syracuse.com obtained copies of off-campus agreements the hospital entered into during the past five years. Six individuals were reportedly given agreements similar to that of former hospital CEO John McCabe.

According to copies of the agreements, the six individuals kept their titles and annual salaries ranging from $106,000 to $180,000, and agreed to off-campus assignments that lasted from three to 12 months. Under the agreements, the six individuals were banned from working on hospital property, were told to quit their jobs after completing of their off-campus assignments, and were made to promise never to sue the institution and to keep their agreements secret.

One of the six individuals who received such an agreement was Katharine F. Mooney, RN, the hospital's former CNO. Ms. Mooney received an off-campus assignment in 2014 that reportedly involved her serving in an advisory capacity to Mr. McCabe "on matter related to the business of SUNY Upstate," the documents show. She was kept on the state payroll for roughly 12 months after receiving the assignment, and continued to receive her annual salary of $205,000.

All six former employees were reportedly required to file reports describing their assignments and duties. However, the university hospital did not provide syracuse.com with documents for Ms. Mooney and three other employees.

The university hospital provided syracuse.com with heavily redacted reports for two of the six employees. One of the reports was for James H. Watson, the former executive director of the university's biotech accelerator. His three-month off-campus assignment reportedly involved him telling companies that used the accelerator that his job was being eliminated.

Another report for Mary Wasilewski, a former human resources manager, showed her assignment was to provide short, biweekly reports on HR issues of her choosing.

The remaining three employees were Cynthia Dowd-Greene, a former associate vice president; Catherine North, a former nursing administrator; and Lynette Pittinger, the former clinical director of Upstate Women's Health Network.

In May, syracuse.com reported on the off-campus agreement given to former hospital CEO Mr. McCabe. He reportedly received a 14-month off-campus assignment that involved no work, but allowed him to receive $660,500 during the length of the assignment. The deal is under investigation by the offices of the New York comptroller, the state inspector general and the Onondaga County district attorney, the report states.

SUNY Upstate Medical University did not respond to syracuse.com's requests for comment.

To access the full report, click here.

Editor's note: Becker's Hospital Review reached out to SUNY Upstate Medical University for comment and will update the report as more information becomes available.Becker's Hospital Review has reported the following hospital-union events  including protests, contract agreements and legal issues  since Sept. 25.

1. Nurses from 2 Arizona hospitals vote to unionize

Registered nurses from St. Joseph's and St. Mary's hospitals in Tucson, Ariz., voted to join National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United.

2. Healthcare workers to deliver petitions to Kaiser Permanente executives over job outsourcing

Healthcare workers in California announced plans to present employee-signed petitions to Kaiser Permanente executives in Pasadena, Calif., over job outsourcing.

3. University of California healthcare workers schedule strike

Patient care technical workers at University of California campuses plan to strike Oct. 23-25 at UC medical centers.

4. Nurses from 17 HCA hospitals reach tentative labor deal

Registered nurses at 17 hospitals affiliated with Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare reached tentative labor deals.

5. Nurses at Hackensack Meridian hospital lose bid to decertify union

Nurses at Southern Ocean Medical Center in Manahawkin, N.J., will not vote on whether to remain unionized.

6. Michigan Medicine nurses approve contract with pay raises of 3% to 4%

Nurses ratified a contract agreement with Ann Arbor-based Michigan Medicine.

7. Battle heats up between Stanford Health Care, union over hospital charge initiative

Stanford (Calif.) Health Care and an employees union are at odds over a November ballot initiative to place a 15 percent cap on hospital charges in Palo Alto, Calif., The Stanford Daily reported.

8. Tenet hospital in Michigan accused of unfair labor practices

The National Labor Relations Board has charged Commerce Township, Mich.-based Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital with multiple labor law violations.

9. Pottstown Hospital nurses ratify labor deal

Pottstown (Pa.) Hospital nurses voted Oct. 8 to ratify a three-year contract agreement.

10. UPMC workers strike; nonunion hospital workers launch political action committee

Dozens of UPMC hospital workers in Pittsburgh went on strike Oct. 4 in support of their right to form a union, according to a Tribune-Review report.

11. Kaiser Permanente, Alliance of Health Care Unions reach tentative labor deal

Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance of Health Care Unions reached a three-year tentative agreement after about five months of negotiations.

12. UVM Medical Center nurses ratify labor deal

Nurses ratified a contract with University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.

More articles on human capital and risk:

Johns Hopkins still interfering with union efforts despite NLRB case, nurse says

Oklahoma union to sue state health department over employee terminations

Essentia to continue mandatory flu shot policyFrom a physician charged with 26 counts of healthcare fraud to Minnesota suing three insulin makers, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines.

1. 2 physicians, 3 nurses sentenced to prison for role in $11M billing scheme

Two physicians in Dallas and three nurses were sentenced to prison Oct. 16 for their roles in an $11.3 million Medicare fraud scheme.

2. USC proposes $240M settlement of gynecologist sexual abuse case

The University of Southern California in Los Angeles reached a $240 million settlement in principle to resolve sexual abuse allegations against George Tyndall, MD, a former USC gynecologist, according to attorneys representing USC students and alumni.

3. Physician charged with 26 counts of healthcare fraud

A Florida physician faces 26 charges of healthcare fraud related to claims submitted to the government and commercial insurers dating as far back as 2014.

4. 7 pharmacies indicted in $1B telemedicine fraud scheme

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee unsealed a 32-count indictment charging four individuals and seven companies in a more than $1 billion healthcare fraud scheme on Oct. 12.

5. Aetna to pay $4.3M in attorney fees related to HIV privacy breach

Aetna agreed to pay $4.3 million to attorneys who represented plaintiffs of a class-action lawsuit concerning an inadvertent disclosure of their HIV status.

6. 20 generic drugmakers must answer price-fixing lawsuit

A Pennsylvania federal court judge rejected motions from 20 generic drugmakers to toss out a lawsuit accusing them of engaging in unlawful schemes to fix, maintain and stabilize prices for certain generic pharmaceutical products.

7. Minnesota sues 3 insulin makers, alleges price-gouging of diabetes patients

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson is suing three major pharmaceutical companies that make insulin in the U.S.  Sanofi-Aventis, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly  for the alleged price-gouging of people with diabetes who need the lifesaving drug. Minnesota is the first state to take legal action over the issue.

8. Former healthcare company CEO to face sentencing in $150M fraud scheme

A former healthcare company CEO pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money- laundering charges for his part in a $150 million fraud scheme that federal prosecutors say involved the unnecessary prescription of millions of opioids and the administration of medically unnecessary, harmful injections.

9. Sutter Health seeks pricing information in antitrust case

Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health confirmed it seeks pricing and payer contract information from other area hospitals to defend itself against antitrust allegations.

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

Texas hospital co-founder admits bribing physicians as part of $200M billing scheme

Kentucky hospital's ex-chief of staff fails to halt $361M sale to Baptist Health

Hospital management company CEO wants money, property released amid investigationMaryland Attorney General Brian Frosh is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a state law designed to combat price-gouging of generic drugs.

He specifically seeks to reverse the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' April decision that the law violated the U.S. Constitution by attempting to regulate trade outside of Maryland, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Mr. Frosh said the generic drug prices have "skyrocketed."

"We are fighting to ensure Marylanders continue to have access to the essential generic medicines they need," he said.

The law, which, according to Reuters, allows the state to sue generic drugmakers who implement sharp price hikes on medications, passed in 2017. The pharmaceutical industry challenged the law, but it still took effect for a short time after a federal judge declined to block it. The law was put on hold after the appellate court decision.

A spokesperson for the Association for Accessible Medicines, which challenged the law, told The Baltimore Sun it continues to support the appellate court decision.

"We believe the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals correctly determined that the state of Maryland lacks authority under the commerce clause of the Constitution to regulate transactions that occur outside of its borders," said Jeffrey Francer, the group's senior vice president and general counsel. "The Maryland law would harm patients by damaging the national market for more affordable generic medicines."

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

Texas hospital co-founder admits bribing physicians as part of $200M billing scheme

Kentucky hospital's ex-chief of staff fails to halt $361M sale to Baptist Health

Hospital management company CEO wants money, property released amid investigationHospitals in Panama City, Fla., and the state health department have expanded medical care options since Hurricane Michael, The News Herald reported.

Five things to know:

1. Bob Bush, vice president for physician services at Bay Medical Sacred Heart in Panama City, told the News Herald the hospital opened clinics at undamaged locations in Panama City Beach. That includes Bay Medical Family Practice in Magnolia Plaza and Bay Medical Family Practice Ocean Park.

"We've taken all of our primary care providers and surgeons that have been displaced and are rotating them in Panama City Beach. We are open to anyone, not just our patients," said Mr. Bush.

2. The clinics, which serve privately insured, Medicare and Medicaid patients, are open Monday through Saturday. They offer primary care physicians, as well as services such as flu shots, tetanus shots, general surgeries, obstetrics and orthopedic surgeries, according to Mr. Bush. Patients may also refill their medications at the hospital and clinics if they aren't narcotics.

3. Bay Medical's main emergency room in Panama City and its freestanding emergency room in Panama City Beach also remain open.

4. Heather Kretzer, spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health in Bay County, told the News Herald her office offers tetanus shots for people with cuts or open wounds from hurricane cleanup, as well as vaccines for hepatitis A, "if they've been in floodwaters or plan to go into floodwaters."

Additionally, the main health department office offers emergency diabetes supplies, and Ms. Kretzer disclosed plans for the health department to partner with nonprofit Americares for primary care and pharmacy services.

5. Panama City-based Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center's emergency room remains open, and the medical center has a federal disaster medical assistance team on-site, according to the report.

Access the full report here.

More articles on patient flow:

DC mayor gets power to stop Providence Hospital closure

'Hallway admissions' abound at overcrowded Montefiore ER, nurses say

More hospitals cut obstetrics as deliveries decline23:20

US President Donald Trump said Monday that his administration will cut off aid to three Central American nations for their failure to stop a migrant caravan of thousands of people from moving towards the US with the aim to enter America illegally.





The caravan comprising thousands of people was formed in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. It crossed into Guatemala where one of its coordinators was detained. The other members of the caravan are advanced through Guatemala with hopes of reaching the US border.





"Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," Trump said in a tweet.





His announcement comes days after he had issued a warning to the three countries.





Thousands of people from these poor Central American countries are moving in the shape of a caravan towards the US so that they can enter the country illegally.





Once inside the US, they hope to get jobs, even illegally, so as to have a better future.





Every year, thousands of people enter the US in a similar fashion and take advantage of the "catch and release" humanitarian policy of America for illegal immigrants.





Trump is seeking an end to this policy, which he argues has been responsible for hundreds and thousands of people entering the US illegally and ending up being a drain on US economy.





-- PTIPrivate health insurers now manage Medicaid programs in 38 states, according to Kaiser Health News. However, studies and government reports have failed to prove this model improves care quality or generates greater cost efficiencies.

Here are five things to know:



1. Today, more than two-thirds of Medicaid beneficiaries, or more than 54 million recipients, get their benefits through privately managed Medicaid plans. Thanks in part to the ACA's Medicaid eligibility expansion, this is up from less than 20 million people in 2000.



2. States pay Medicaid insurers about $300 billion each year to manage the benefits, up from $60 billion a decade ago. But when privately run Medicaid programs are reviewed by regulators, lawmakers and auditors, managed care insurers often can't account for their dollars spent or ensure necessary care is administered and provider networks aren't too narrow, the report states.

3. A lack of oversight may be part of the issue. Andrew Bindman, MD, former director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a professor at the University of California-San Francisco, told KHN: "We haven't been holding plans to the level of scrutiny they need. This system is ripe for profit taking, and there is virtually no penalty for performing badly."

4. The stock price of one private Medicaid insurer, Centene, climbed 400 percent since the ACA's Medicaid expansions took place. Centene CEO Michael Neidorff earned $25 million in 2017, the highest among any health insurance CEO, according to KHN.

5. In California, two of the state's most profitable insurers, Centene and Anthem, received the poorest quality scores, the report states. Commenting on California's managed Medicaid program and its inefficiencies, Carolyn Yocom, a healthcare director at the Government Accountability Office, told KHN: "You simply cannot run a program this large when you can't tell where the money is going and where it has been."

For the report, click here.Two shareholders are requesting Cardinal Health's executive pay not be insulated from legal costs associated with ongoing opioid litigation, according to a Sept. 26 proxy statement.

Cardinal Health is facing over 300 lawsuits from local and state governments for its role in distributing painkillers. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters General Fund and Rhode Island Employees' Retirement Systems Pooled Trust presented the proposal to the board.



"We believe the opioid emergency presents a heightened level of risk for Cardinal investors. We also believe Cardinal is well positioned to incentivize senior executives to mitigate these risks by ensuring their compensation is tied to effective management of this crisis," the shareholders said. "As it is structured now, Cardinal may insulate senior executives from legal risks by removing associated costs from the metrics that determine their incentive compensation."

Cardinal's board of directors urged shareholders not to adopt the proposal.



"We believe this type of broad and indiscriminate restriction reflects an inappropriate standard that could apply far beyond its stated objective of preventing senior executives from being 'insulated from legal risks,'" the board members said.



The proposal will go up for vote at Cardinal's annual shareholder meeting scheduled for Nov. 7.After a patient sued Layton, Utah-based Davis Hospital & Medical Center in June, claiming a nurse may have exposed her to hepatitis C, another patient is suing the hospital and the nurse, according to the Standard-Examiner.

The nurse, Elet Neilson, faces criminal charges for allegedly diverting drugs and infecting patients with hepatitis C.

State authorities and federal prosecutors say Ms. Neilson exposed patients to hepatitis C at Davis hospital and Ogden, Utah-based McKay-Dee Hospital. In 2015, the hospitals sent letters warning 7,200 former patients of potential hepatitis C exposure.

In the most recent lawsuit, the second patient, Daniel Harger, claims the hospital failed to prevent Ms. Neilson from tampering with patient medication, reusing syringes and exposing patients to disease.

Ms. Neilson administered two doses of morphine to Mr. Harger when he went to the emergency room in 2011, according to the lawsuit.

During unrelated medical treatment in November 2017, Mr. Harger tested positive for hepatitis C virus genotype 2b, which was the same strain linked to Ms. Neilson, according to a 2016 investigation by the Utah Department of Health.

Attorneys for the hospital and Ms. Neilson have separately filed answering documents denying Mr. Harger's allegations.

More articles on clinical leadership and infection control:

21 hospitalized in 29-state antibiotic-resistant Salmonella outbreak

First pediatric flu death reported in 2018-19 season

6 kids diagnosed with measles in New York

Breastfed infants develop gut bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics and therefore boost the infants' over all immune system to antibiotic resistance, according to a study published by Nature Communications.

Here are four things to know:

1. For the study, researchers from the University of Helsinki in Finland sequenced the bacterial DNA found in the milk and fecal matter of 16 mother and infant pairs in which infants were born vaginally at full term and did not receive antibiotics during the first six months of life. Eight mothers received penicillin or Cephalothin during labor, while 10 took probiotic supplements containing various bacterium two months before and after their delivery.

2. Researchers found infants who were breastfed for at least six months had a smaller number of resistant bacteria in their gut than babies who were breastfed for a short time or never breastfed.

3. Infants whose mothers took an antibiotic treatment during delivery had a larger amount of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their guts.

4. Researchers found breast milk samples contained bacteria resistant to antibiotics, which mothers were more likely to pass on to the babies through their milk. However, researchers concluded breastfeeding still proves beneficial for infants, as the sugars in breast milk help good bacteria thrive in infants' guts.

"As a general rule, it could be said that all breastfeeding is for the better," study author Katariina Parnanen, a microbiologist and PhD student at University of Helsinki, told Science Daily.

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2 types of interventions likely to help control opioid prescribing postop

4 independent patient risk factors for acquiring C. diff

Connecticut reports 1st flu death of seasonDeming, N.M.-based Mimbres Memorial Hospital is offering free flu vaccines for its annual drive-thru flu clinic Oct. 27, according to the Deming Headlight.

Residents can receive free flu shots at the clinic from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the hospital's front entrance.

The clinic is hosted by the Mimbres Memorial Hospital and Nursing Home, Mimbres Valley Medical Group, the Deming Police Department, county health department and county office of emergency management.

The CDC recommends a seasonal flu vaccine by the end of October for anyone 6 months and older.Emmanuel Menga, MD, assistant professor in the department of orthopedics and rehabilitation at the University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center, discusses his biggest concerns for the spine field and best opportunities for growth in the future.

Dr. Menga is a featured speaker at the Becker's 17th Annual Future of Spine + The Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference, June 13-15 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register. For more information about exhibitor and sponsor opportunities, contact Maura Jodoin at mjodoin@beckershealthcare.com.

Dr. Menga was recently named to the inaugural "20 Under 40" list by the North American Spine Society's publication, SpineLine.

Question: What are the biggest concerns for your practice today? What keeps you up at night?

Dr. Emmanuel Menga: I manage all facets of spinal pathology including in degenerative spinal disease, spinal trauma and spinal deformity. My area of special interest [is] complex spinal deformity including idiopathic, congenital and degenerative spinal deformity. Spinal deformity surgery is associated with high complication rates. My biggest concern and what keeps me up at night is making the right decision on risk stratification and optimizing patients for these surgeries in order to minimize their risk for complication.



Q: What are you most excited about in terms of technology advancement in the spine space? Where do you see the best opportunity for growth?

EM: Over the past decade, great strides have been made towards spinal navigation surgery and disc arthroplasty. There is promising evidence to support using navigation to perform both minimal invasive surgeries and complex spinal deformity surgeries. There is opportunity for further research and for expanding the indications and use of these new technologies in our practices.

Q: Where do you see your practice growing or evolving in the next five years? What is the next step or evolution in your career?

EM: As we continue to engage in clinical and basic science research and patient-reported outcome measures to evaluate our successes and failures in patient care, I believe our findings will provide more valuable information and improve our decision-making towards nonsurgical and surgical treatment of various spinal pathologies.

Learn more about the big trends in spine at the Becker's 17th Annual Future of Spine + Spine, Orthopedic & Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference in Chicago, June 13-15, 2019. Click here

To participate in future Becker's Q&As, contact Laura at ldyrda@beckershealthcare.com.Brett Braly, MD, director of orthopedic spine surgery at Oklahoma City-based Community Hospital, discusses where his practice will head in the future.

Dr. Braly operates out of The Spine Clinic of Oklahoma City and focuses his practice on minimally invasive spine surgery. He performs lateral surgical procedures and earned board certification from the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery.

Dr. Braly was recently named to the inaugural "20 Under 40" list by the North American Spine Society's publication, SpineLine.

Question: What are the biggest concerns for your practice today? What keeps you up at night?

Dr. Brett Braly: Although individual patient complications tend to be the reason I'm staying up at night, I think the biggest concern my practice faces today stems largely from the economics of healthcare. Hospital and insurance administrators directing patient care puts our patients at risk. I'm very fortunate to have a facility that still values physician autonomy in case selection and instrumentation. I can't imagine what a patient would think to know that the screws placed in their back may not be the surgeon's preferred system.



Q: What are you most excited about in terms of technology advancement in the spine space? Where do you see the best opportunity for growth?

BB: We have been fortunate to get involved with lateral lumbar fusions early in practice. To achieve the benefits of an ALIF (large graft footprint, increased fusion rates, better sagittal correction) through a 3 to 4 cm incision is revolutionary. New advances in lateral L5-S1 ALIF have made a tremendous impact for our patients' early mobilization and recovery. This is also allowing for single position surgery, minimizing OR costs and anesthesia time all without sacrificing outcome.

Q: Where do you see your practice growing or evolving in the next five years? What is the next step or evolution in your career?

BB: I would hope that five years from now my practice is very similar to its current version, continuing to push for minimally invasive options in spine care and developing both professionally and personally as I learn to care better for patients. I'm honored now to be able to teach some surgical techniques and would love to continue to improve as a teacher and learner. We will continue to push for patient experience and outcomes as our chief goals, learning as we go!

Learn more about the big trends in spine at the Becker's 17th Annual Future of Spine + Spine, Orthopedic & Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference in Chicago, June 13-15, 2019. Click here

To participate in future Becker's Q&As, contact Laura at ldyrda@beckershealthcare.com.Three spine surgeons weigh on how the midterms may impact the spine arena.

Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. We invite all spine surgeon and specialist responses.

Next week's question: What are the key leadership skills successful spine surgeons cultivate?

Please send responses to Anuja Vaidya at avaidya@beckershealthcare.com by Wednesday, Oct. 24, at 5 p.m. CST.

Question: What effect will the midterms have on the spine industry?

Richard Kube, MD. Founder and CEO of Prairie Spine & Pain Institute (Peoria, Ill.): I do not anticipate there being much change. One of two things will happen. The legislature will remain controlled by the Republican party, in which [case] we will continue to see more of the same from Washington. Conversely, the Democratic party may gain control in the House, Senate or both, at which point we will see gridlock, and even less will happen.

Brian R. Gantwerker, MD. Founder of the Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: This is something no one will know for sure. Whether the blue wave cometh or not, expect more of the same from CMS and the payers. Unfortunately, we have to assume getting paid will get more and more difficult. Expect patients to shoulder more and more of the cost and doctors to get paid less and less. Until the medical societies and hospital associations convince D.C. where the problem truly lies with healthcare, we will suffer the misgivings.

Christian Zimmerman, MD. Spinal Neurosurgeon at Saint Alphonsus Medical Group and SAHS Neuroscience Institute (Boise, Idaho): My opinion is, using past history as a guide, the midterms are usually unkind to the governing majority  once again a proclamation of our constitution's enduring potentiality for balance and fortitude. That being said, after so much repugnant discourse and execrable public displays, my prescience longs for more civility and honor returned to the governance we hold in reverence and need.

My observation is that spine companies have already priced policy risk/change into the drug/device distributor's shares, which seemingly follows Medicare's perennial plan for reimbursement cuts to both facilities and providers. Since the medical device excise tax (prosthetics and orthotics are non-taxable) suspension from the ACA took its effect a number of years prior, repealing this action with a newly imposed form of taxation is highly unlikely under current circumstances. Business friendly seems to be the lean, and implant companies will continue to reap the benefits of the current policies. Pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, may receive more unwanted attention.Brexit is being used as a smokescreen for fundamental flaws in Northern Ireland's skills supply chain, a Belfast-based workforce specialist has claimed.

Stephen Rice's tech company Upskill Enterprise is set to launch a new web-based tool in the USA to help businesses understand their workforce and direct them to affordable and relevant interventions.

He said the valuable data will enable state and federal agencies to set the right skills agenda.

Mr Rice said that while the problems are on a much bigger scale in the United States, parallels can be drawn with Northern Ireland.

The chief executive said fundamental changes must be made to what he labelled an outdated, excluding and expensive education and skills system here.

"There is no doubt Brexit and the free movement of labour will have a massive impact on businesses specifically within the agri-food, hospitality, health and construction sectors," he said.

"Part of the reason for this is that migration of labour has served as a sticking plaster over the poor supply chain from education into our labour market."

Pointing the finger at the Northern Ireland Skills Strategy, Mr Rice said: "The skills barometer is largely measured on academic achievement and is based on labour market intelligence gathered from mostly bigger businesses who represent 1.1% of the local economy.

"We are encouraging and recruiting students on academic achievement not relevant to the labour market needs.

"Plus the strategy covers a 10-year period in a world where skills needs can change on a quarterly basis."The Irish Foreign Minister has urged businesses in Northern Ireland to speak out about the dangers of a hard Brexit.

Tanaiste Simon Coveney has called on the business community here to become more vocal about the potential detrimental effects of a no-deal scenario before it is too late to take action.

Mr Coveney said it was not about 'Project Fear', but 'Project Truth', adding: "I think business needs to be more vocal.

"What we don't want in six months' time is to have a no-deal scenario or a deal that is damaging to business, and then to have business leaders coming out and saying, 'Why didn't we come out and say this earlier?'

"Now is the time to speak up."

He made the comments in an interview with the Sunday Business Post, conducted at a hotel in Monaghan which was hosting a Brexit Ready event last week. His appeal comes as the negotiations for withdrawal reach their final stages, with the issue of the Irish border proving the biggest hurdle, causing major headaches for Prime Minister Theresa May.

Last week, the deputy leader of the DUP, Nigel Dodds, issued a stark warning to Mrs May that his party will withdraw support for the Conservatives if they are unhappy with the exit deal reached with the EU.

Meanwhile, Micheal Martin is standing by a pledge to prop up Leo Varadkar's government until a Brexit deal is concluded.

That's despite what the Fianna Fail leader termed a "chronic lack of planning and preparation around Brexit".

However, Mr Martin left the door open for a General Election in the immediate aftermath of a Brexit deal, stating the review of his party's Confidence and Supply arrangement with Fine Gael will govern that.

He reiterated it would be "reckless" to have an election in the midst of such volatility in the UK.

He also appeared to dismiss the suggestion of extending the deal to 2020 with an agreed election date as "Leo's agenda".

Speaking after he delivered a speech at the party's annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration, Mr Martin indicated that his offer for an amnesty until after Brexit - which he described as "reasonable" - still stands.

Negotiating teams from both parties are to meet in the coming days to begin a review process of the Confidence and Supply deal that has facilitated the minority Fine Gael government since 2016.08:24

United States President Donald Trump has said he was "not satisfied" with the response of Riyadh over the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

The president also said a group of US officials are in Saudi Arabia and another group of investigators in Turkey are trying to gather information on this issue.

"I am not satisfied with what I've heard," Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for an election rally in Texas Monday.

"We will know very soon. We have tremendously talented people very well. They're coming back tonight or tomorrow and I will know very soon," he said responding to a question.

Khashoggi, a writer for The Washington Post, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, where he had gone to collect some papers related to his marriage.

For the first two weeks, the government of Saudi Arabia had said Khashoggi left the consulate through the back door.

Following a global outrage, a few days ago, the Saudi government in a statement acknowledged that Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight inside the consulate and noted that an interrogation went wrong.

Except for Trump administration officials, lawmakers and think-tanks are saying that the Saudi explanation is not credible.

Trump had told reporters that he has spoken to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who wields the real power in Saudi Arabia after the King.

"We have people over in Saudi Arabia now. We have top intelligence people in Turkey. We're going to see what we have.

"I'll know a lot tomorrow, they'll be coming back either tonight or tomorrow morning," the US president said.

Responding to questions, Trump said he was against making any move on the USD 110 billion mega arms deal with the Saudis.

"I don't want to lose all of that investment that's being made in our country. I don't want to lose a million jobs, I don't want to lose USD110 billion in terms of investment, but it's really USD450 billion So that's very important," he said.

However, "we're going to get to the bottom of it", Trump said. -- PTIThe UK Government must explain how policy for Northern Irelands farmers will be drawn up without an Executive ahead of Brexit, its been claimed

The UK Government must explain how policy for Northern Irelands farmers will be drawn up without an Executive ahead of Brexit, its been claimed.

A committee of MPs has said the approach by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in Westminster (DEFRA) to date had been insufficient.

In a report today, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee said that after more than 600 days without a devolved administration, urgent challenges and opportunities of Brexit run the risk of being overlooked.

With agriculture a devolved matter, the MPs said the local farming community may be left adrift without a dedicated, devolved policy framework when the UK leaves the European Union.

Brexit brings both opportunities and threats to farmers and growers in Northern Ireland, said the chair of the committee, Dr Andrew Murrison.

My committee is calling on the UK Government to provide clarity and confidence for the Northern Ireland agricultural sector by making plain how a post-Brexit agricultural policy for Northern Ireland will be devised if the political impasse continues into the new year.

The report said the farming industry here had distinctive characteristics compared with the rest of the UK.

The MPs said they were concerned over DEFRAs limited engagement with farmers here when drafting post-Brexit policy, concluding there had been insufficient recognition of key differences between Northern Irelands agriculture sector and that of other parts of the United Kingdom. Dr Murrison added: We are concerned that its uniqueness, challenges and vulnerabilities have not been fully hoisted in by ministers.

We heard evidence about DEFRAs lack of engagement with Northern Irelands Civil Service and with the sector. We were left with the impression of drift and delay at a critical time and an over-reliance on the much hoped for restoration of an Executive.

Days after DEFRA secretary Michael Gove suggested that the Barnett formula will no longer be applied to agricultural budgets, the report said a funding system designed for England could have a serious impact for farmers here, where subsidy payments remain a crucial source of income.

The report said 899.5m worth of food and live animals crossed the border last year.

The committee called on the Government to introduce necessary exemptions to avoid significantly harming Northern Irelands agricultural sector, which exports thousands of live animals to the Republic each week. It also heard evidence that farm produce could be left sitting at the border in a no-deal scenario.The UK has said it will only relent to extending the Brexit transition period if the demand for the Irish 'backstop' is dropped.

The backstop - essentially an insurance policy to prevent the emergence of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic - has become a final sticking point in the Brexit negotiations.

Brexit Minister Dominic Raab said any extension to the transition period would only be considered as an alternative to the backstop.

"We must have a finality to any backstop, whether through a time limit or a mechanism that enables the UK to leave," he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph.

Mr Raab later said the exit agreement must be finalised by the end of next month to allow new laws to be put in place in time for exit day.

He suggested a transition extension could run for three months, but said the move would have to "solve" the Irish backstop issue.

Irish European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee accused Mr Raab of attempting to introduce "new red lines".

The commitment to a backstop has been given repeatedly by the UK, Ms McEntee said.

"To have essentially a new red line introduced saying that 'we won't move forward if the backstop is there or if it doesn't have a time limit to it', that's really not how negotiations work," she told RTE Radio One.

Negotiators in Europe are looking at the idea of a UK-wide customs "shared space" as a means to break the stalemate in talks. The idea is being proposed in addition to the backstop however, rather than a replacement for it.

A spokesperson for Tanaiste Simon Coveney said the progress needed to get a deal across the line would not be achieved in the media.

"What we need now is for the negotiators to get back to work in Brussels and finish the final 10% of the withdrawal agreement," he said.

"Ireland wants a close future trading deal with the UK but at this point the commitments already made need to be honoured."

Meanwhile, Theresa May will today insist the Brexit deal is 95% complete as she faces MPs after a weekend of vicious attacks from within her own ranks.

In a Commons statement following talks with EU leaders in Brussels the Prime Minister will say the "shape of the deal across the vast majority" of the withdrawal agreement is now clear.

She will tell MPs that since last month's fractious summit in Salzburg "important progress" has been made on issues like security, transport and services.

Protocols have been developed on how Brexit will impact Gibraltar and the UK's military base in Cyprus.

"And all of this from the last three weeks alone is in addition to the agreements we had already reached," she will say.

Mrs May will tell the Commons that "taking all of this together, 95% of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled".

But she will add: "As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.

"I do not believe that any UK Prime Minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not."

Furious backbenchers warned the Prime Minister she is "drinking in the last chance saloon" after tensions flared over her negotiating strategy following a Brussels summit.

Senior Brexiteer Theresa Villiers criticised "disturbing" anonymous briefings to Sunday newspapers, including claims the PM was entering the "killing zone".

But Brexit Minister Suella Braverman said her colleagues were "free to express themselves in the way they wish" and repeatedly refused to say she would back Mrs May in a confidence vote.

Labour, meanwhile, has warned Mrs May it will not back her Brexit blueprint when it reaches the Commons.

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said there is a "real lack of confidence" that Mrs May can bring back "anything by way of a good deal".

Elsewhere, former Brexit Minister Steve Baker is attempting to block the backstop with changes to legislation being heard by Parliament.

His proposed amendments to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill would make it a legal requirement for the Stormont Assembly to agree to any plan to treat Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the UK.

The Bill is due to go before the House of Commons on Wednesday.A fire which broke out at a Northern Ireland hotel appears to have been started accidentally.

The Fire Service attended the blaze at the Fir Trees Hotel in Strabane in the early hours of Monday morning.

Four fire engines plus an aerial appliance were sent to the scene just after midnight.

The fire was found on the first floor of the two-storey building and in a roof space. It's thought no one was injured in the incident.

"Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus extinguished the fire," a Fire Service spokesman said.

"The cause of the fire is under investigation however appears to be accidental. The incident was dealt with at 2.43am.

The extent of the damage is not yet clear. No one could be reached at the hotel for a comment.

SDLP MLA Daniel McCrossan praised the response of the emergency services.

"Very sorry to hear that our local Fir Trees Hotel was on fire last night," he said.

"Ive been in contact with Johnny and the Kelly Family to offer my support. Thankfully, both the public and all the staff vacated the hotel safely and no one was hurt.

"Can I put on record my appreciation to the Northern Ireland Fire Service, the PSNI and to Johnny and his staff for getting everyone out safely."Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Emergency services at the scene of a collision on the Upper Lisburn Road close to the Blacks Road junction on October 21st 2018 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

A man and and a four-year-old child are in hospital after being knocked down in Dunmurry.

The incident took place on the Upper Lisburn Road, Dunmurry at around 3.50pm on Sunday.

The man, in his 80s, was taken to Royal Victoria Hospital with what are described as serious injuries.

The child was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children but his injuries are not believed to be serious.

A 37-year-old man is currently assisting police with their enquiries.

A Northern Ireland Ambulance Service spokesman said two rapid response paramedics, two A&E crews and a doctor attended the scene. The Air Ambulance was also seen in the area.

Police have appealed to anyone who witnessed the incident or who may have dash-cam footage available to contact police on 101 quoting reference number 947 21/10/18.Rhea the dog after she fell down a cliff at Mussenden Temple

The rescuers who abseiled to her aid

A dog who jumped over a wall bordering a sheer drop of more than 100 feet beside Mussenden Temple has lived to tell the tale after Coastguard rescuers heroically abseiled to her aid.

On Saturday, Maria Weimer (22) was visiting the Co Londonderry beauty spot for the first time with her husband Bryce (24), brother Sean Mackin (23) and two-year-old Sheltie dog Rhea, when the terrifying accident occurred.

Maria told the Belfast Telegraph she believes that Rhea, who she says normally never ventures from her side, may have been chasing birds when she jumped up onto the narrow wall bordering the steep cliff face overlooking Downhill Beach.

"I didn't want to look over the edge when it happened - when she disappeared I thought that she had fallen right down," Maria said. "My brother and husband tried to spot her and she was on a ledge about 20 feet below.

"I looked over and she was looking up at me.

"My heart stopped, I was so relieved."

Little Rhea had managed to land on a narrow ledge, which Maria says was covered in soft, thick grass which she thinks cushioned her fall.

The family called the emergency services and the helpless hound was stuck on the outcrop for two hours as the rescue mission unfolded.

"I had to keep talking to her so she wouldn't move, she could have slipped and plummeted to the beach below," Maria added.

"Rhea can be nervous with strangers, but the Coastguard took it in stages - one guy abseiled down with the rescue bag, and as soon as he got to her she started licking his fingers.

"She was completely zipped into the bag, clipped onto the belt and carried up."

Miraculously, despite her dramatic fall, Rhea was unharmed.

"She was so happy when she got up, they checked her over but she is totally fine," Maria said.

"She was exhausted and she slept in the car on the way back, but when we got home she wanted her ball.

"She had a good night's sleep and was fine and dandy the next morning. She is part of the family, I don't know what I'd do without her."

Maria extended her thanks to the rescuers who returned her beloved pooch.

"I want to thank the Coastguard," she said. "It shows that no matter how obedient your dog is you can never be too careful."

Posting on social media, Coleraine Coastguard, who worked with Ballycastle Coastguard on the rescue, asked the public to keep dogs on leads when walking near cliffs.A 24-year-old man who prevented the burial of his neighbour whose body lay undiscovered in her west Belfast home for over two years has been jailed for a year.

Robert Sharkey appeared at Belfast Crown Court, sitting in Downpatrick, on charges linked to his neighbour Marie Conlon (68), whose remains were discovered in an extreme state of decomposition in the bedroom of her Larkspur Rise home in October 2017.

Knowing his neighbour was dead and stealing both cash and her bank card, Sharkey - who had lived in the flat above Ms Conlon for around five years - used the card fraudulently online for a period of two years.

As well as paying Ms Conlon's rates bill in a bid to avoid detection, Sharkey ordered the same nine-inch pepperoni and anchovy pizza and two tins of juice for delivery from Dominos Pizza every day between 4pm and 6pm for two years - earning him the nickname 'the fish guy' from staff at the eatery and racking up a near 6k bill.

Handing Sharkey a two-year sentence, which will be divided into 12 months in custody following by 12 months on licence upon his release, Judge Piers Grant told the 24-year old that his criminal behaviour was both wicked and an outrage to any decent-thinking person, and said: "You had many opportunities to stop what you were doing and disclose her death to the authorities."Former Economy Minister Simon Hamilton turned down an offer of a free Christmas turkey from Moy Park, new evidence submitted to the RHI Inquiry has revealed.

DUP MLA Mr Hamilton and Sinn Fein MLA and former Finance Minister Mairtin O Muilleoir - both of who held their positions when the failings of the RHI scheme came to light - are due to appear before the RHI Inquiry on Tuesday.

Written evidence from both has been published on the RHI Inquiry website on Monday night.

Mr Hamilton became Economy Minister in May 2016, and during his tenure he assumed responsibility for putting cost controls on the scheme.

Moy Park, one of Northern Ireland's largest businesses, has had their role in the RHI scandal scrutinised as part of oral evidence given to the Inquiry.

Appearing last month, former DUP adviser Andrew Crawford admitted removing a reference to the poultry industry from draft paper seeking to close the scheme in February 2016.

The RHI Inquiry also heard last month that the chief executive of Moy Park had sent an email to officials congratulating them on successfully lobbying to have the botched green energy scheme extended.

In his written evidence, Mr Hamilton was asked about meeting with Moy Park in January 2017.

Mr Hamilton says he did not meet with the poultry giant, but that company executive Mike Mullan attempted to contact him at his constituency office.

"While not unprecedented for people to contact my constituency office on Departmental business, I thought, on this occasion and in the circumstances, this was inappropriate, especially given their express intention was to discuss RHI," says Mr Hamilton in his evidence.

Mr Hamilton says there was contact from Moy Park before Christmas in December 2016, at which time he was offered a turkey - which he declined as he felt it would be "inappropriate".

Sinn Fein's Mr O Muilleoir is the first and only member of his party to appear before the Inquiry.

He gave approvals to plans put forward for cutting the cost of the scheme in January 2017.

In his evidence, Mr O Muilleoir critiques a breakdown in relations between his party and the DUP.

The RHI Inquiry is set to hear evidence from 9.45am tomorrow, with this being the final week of oral evidence.An Alliance party MLA has hit back at the claim from Karen Bradley a second EU referendum would result in a bigger majority for the Leave side.

Branding the claim "laughable", South Antrim MLA John Blair said Brexit was "one of the biggest acts of self-harm facing the UK, with Northern Ireland in particular facing significant damage to our economy and social cohesion".

The remarks from the Secretary of State were made during an address at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in London - an event Mr Blair is also attending.

Outlining her opposition to a second vote on Britain leaving the EU, Mrs Bradley said: "I personally think, from my knocking on doors, there would be a bigger vote for Leave.

"The fact is the people spoke. We had a people's vote."

Mrs Bradley said much of what the European Union has put forward regarding the Brexit backstop are "not acceptable" to the unionist community in Northern Ireland or the British government.

"To suggest a People's Vote would result in a bigger Leave vote is simply laughable," said Mr Blair.

"People have seen the lies spun by the leave campaign during the referendum, the breaking of the law, the failure to follow through on promises such as money to the NHS and questions remaining over 'dark money', and I have absolutely no doubt the majority of voters would back Remain, just as they did in Northern Ireland."

After last week's crunch meeting between EU leaders and Theresa May, there were positive noises about progress towards a deal - although the border on the island of Ireland remains an issue of contension.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, the Prime Minister claimed the terms for Britain leaving the EU were 95% agreed, but that the border remained a "considerable sticking point".Why to consider traveling solo  and how to get started

As Heather Gibson sat in the airport, about to embark on a long-anticipated adventure, one thought echoed through her mind: What the hell was I thinking?

The University of Florida professor was on her way to Germany to join Semester at Sea, where shed spend nearly four months teaching while circling the globe. Now the reality of boarding a ship full of strangers was hitting home.

Embracing the unknowns of solo travel, however, can have long-lasting benefits for women, Gibson says. She should know: A sociologist in UFs College of Health and Human Performance and the associate director of UF's Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute, Gibson pioneered the study of women travelers and authored a seminal paper about solo travel in 1998. Many of the challenges women faced twenty years ago  from safety concerns to the objections of family and friends  still remain.

I see a lot of the same issues today, she said. Ill ask my students how many will travel by themselves, and only a few will.

She encourages women to do their planning, reassure their loved ones, and venture out.

Resisting the social script is very powerful, she said. Thats not to say you dont need to be aware of your surroundings, but pushing back against social boundaries is where women get empowerment.

If youre considering a solo trip, heres why Gibson thinks you should go for it, and some tips to get started.

Look to the experts.

When Gibson began her research, there werent many sources of travel guidance for women. Now women can turn to a universe of websites, blogs, YouTube channels and Instagrammers for tips, inspiration and answers to specific questions about your destination.

Give yourself time to adjust.

It might take a few days to warm up to traveling solo. Feeling comfortable with your own company takes practice.

Use smartphones to ease awkwardness.

Gibsons research shows that eating out, especially at dinnertime, could be uncomfortable for women traveling alone. Some women in her study felt so conspicuous dining alone that they ate in their hotel rooms. Browsing or keeping in touch with loved ones on your phone while eating out  or any time along the way  can soothe those lonely feelings, not to mention making it easier to make and change bookings, navigate new cities or get notified of flight delays.

Start small.

Your first foray doesnt have to be a month backpacking across an unfamiliar country. It can be a weekend in a city thats well within your comfort zone, or a group tour that you join as a solo traveler. You could tack a solo jaunt onto a work trip by adding a few days of exploration on your own, as Gibson recently did in before a conference in Helsinki.

Make new friends.

In many hostels, you can book a private room  no bunking with strangers  but still take advantage of common areas where you can meet people from all over the world and discover places you might like to explore. During Semester at Sea, Gibson formed a group with other solo travelers that the crew nicknamed the Spice Girls. They remain close today. Those are friendships I wouldnt have if I hadnt been traveling on my own, she said.

Embrace your freedom.

When contemplating a solo trip, we tend to focus on the companionship well be missing if we venture out alone. But whats hard to appreciate until youve tried it, Gibson says, is the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want. In a group, youre always negotiating what other people want to do and when. Someones bored, someones tired, someone needs the bathroom. When you travel alone, youre on your own time.

Explore your identity as a badass problem-solver.

Yes, challenges will arise. There will be times when you feel overwhelmed or uncertain. And plenty of people will tell you youre foolish to even consider traveling solo. Overcoming those barriers makes women feel powerful, Gibson said. The effects last long after the trip has ended.The man was arrested in connection with a paramilitary style attack in Londonderry on October 5. (Paul Faith/PA)

A 51-year-old man arrested under the Terrorism Act on suspicion of carrying out a paramilitary-style attack in Londonderry has been released unconditionally.

The man was arrested by detectives from PSNI's Terrorism Investigation Unit on Monday.

He was arrested in the Creggan area of the city on suspicion of carrying out the attack on October 5.

Police later confirmed he had been released unconditionally.

Individuals arrested under the Terrorism Act must be charged, released pending report to the Public Prosecution Service, or released unconditionally.

Bail is not permitted under the legislation.

The arrest followed a search on a property on Thursday evening which resulted in the seizure of a number of items as part of an ongoing investigation into dissident republican activity.

The suspect has been taken to Musgrave Serious Crime Suite for questioning.

Speaking about the arrest, Detective Inspector Heaton said: This arrest comes after a vicious paramilitary-style attack on a man in the Creggan area earlier this month.

Paramilitary-style attacks are barbaric and despite claims from the groups responsible that they are protecting their communities, they are only ever about people cementing their own status and control over their communities.

"We are committed to tackling all types of violence linked to paramilitaries and will continue to work in partnership with local agencies, residents and community representatives to keep people safe.The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson described as "unacceptable" the mocking of a Ulster Unionist MLA over his attendance at a reception for the Pope earlier this year.

Lagan Valley MLA Robbie Butler told The Irish News two senior DUP MLAs mocked him for his attendance. He said one "wagged his finger" telling him he had made a mistake before saying "you know he's the antichrist". While another crossed himself in a mocking gesture as he passed the politician in a corridor at Stormont. Mr Butler said he was left stunned.

Read More

"It was a throwback to the 1970," said Mr Butler who did not disclose the identity of those MLAs.

Responding, the MP Jeffrey Donaldson said he wanted to get to the bottom of the allegations.

He said he took the MLA on his word the incidents happened.

"I will be happy to speak to Robbie, I know him very well. And if Robbie wants to pass on the details of what happened then we can look at that," he said.

"That kind of behaviour is not acceptable."

Thousands descended on Dublin for the Pope's first visit in over 30 years. All the main Northern Ireland parties - Sinn Fein, Alliance, SDLP and UUP - sent a representative to the event, bar the DUP.

Arlene Foster said she could not attend as she was away on a family holiday. The event also clashed with the annual Black Saturday parades.

Mr Butler, attended as his party leader Robin Swann could not. He said he had made the right decision in attending the event and enjoyed the occasion. He said he was, however, disappointed in the Pope did not go further in addressing the legacy of clerical child abuse.

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(Stefano Rellandini/Pool Photo via AP) AP Pope Francis at the Phoenix Park, Dublin for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA Pope Francis at the Phoenix Park, Dublin for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and President Micheal D. Higgins awaiting Pope Francis arrival at the Phoenix Park, Dublin for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA Pope Francis is greeted by a delegation of clergy and representatives from Ireland West Airport as he arrives at the airport in Knock in County Mayo, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pilgrims wait for the arrival of Pope Francis at Knock Holy Shrine, in County Mayo where he will view the Apparition Chapel and to give the Angelus address, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives to attend the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis is greeted by a delegation of clergy and representatives from Ireland West Airport as he arrives at the airport in Knock in County Mayo, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis during a visit to Knock Holy Shrine, in County Mayo to view the Apparition Chapel and to give the Angelus address, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA A gust of win blows Pope Francis' cape as he speaks at the Knock Shrine, in Knock, Ireland, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2018. Pope Francis is on a two-day visit to Ireland. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) AP Pope Francis during a visit to Knock Holy Shrine, in County Mayo to view the Apparition Chapel and to give the Angelus address, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Audrey Elliott with the signed Co Mayo jersey by Pope Francis at Ireland West Airport, Knock in County Mayo, which she hopes will lift the Mayo 'curse' so the team can win an All-Ireland title. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. The Co Mayo curse dates back to the last All-Ireland winning Mayo team of 1951 who were said to be cursed on their victory drive home from Dublin with the winning cup. See PA story IRISH Pope Airport. Photo credit should read: Cate McCurry/PA Wire PA Pope Francis during a visit to Knock Holy Shrine, in County Mayo to view the Apparition Chapel and to give the Angelus address, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis with pilgrims at Knock Shrine, County Mayo, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA Pope Francis at Knock Shrine, County Mayo, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA People gather in Dublin's Phoenix park ahead of the arrival of Pope Francis for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope Colour. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Orlagh McGlade, from Armagh, in Dublin's Phoenix park ahead of the arrival of Pope Francis for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope Colour. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Members of the Garda Siochana - the police service of the Republic of Ireland - in the rain await Pope Francis to board his plane to depart from the airport in Knock in County Mayo, after a visit to Knock Holy Shrine, in County Mayo, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Clerical sex abuse protesters assemble at the General Post Office (GPO) on O'Connell Street in Dublin, prior to marching to the Garden of Remembrance to hold a protest to coincide with the Papal Mass at Phoenix Park, before walking to the site of a nearby former Magdalene laundry, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Clerical sex abuse protesters assemble at the General Post Office (GPO) on O'Connell Street in Dublin, prior to marching to the Garden of Remembrance to hold a protest to coincide with the Papal Mass at Phoenix Park, before walking to the site of a nearby former Magdalene laundry, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Clerical sex abuse protesters assemble at the General Post Office (GPO) on O'Connell Street in Dublin, prior to marching to the Garden of Remembrance to hold a protest to coincide with the Papal Mass at Phoenix Park, before walking to the site of a nearby former Magdalene laundry, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA A message to Pope France is tied to the fence of the former Tuam home for unmarried mothers in County Galway, where a mass grave of around 800 babies has recently been uncovered, during the visit to Ireland by the pontiff. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Childrens toys are place at Scoil Mhuire primary school in Tuam, Co Galway in protest to Pope Francis visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes was set up following claims of mass burials of hundreds of children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrive to attend the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA An aerial view of the crowd at Phoenix Park in Dublin as Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives to attend the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA An aerial view of the crowd at Phoenix Park in Dublin as Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA An aerial view of the crowd at Phoenix Park in Dublin as Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA An aerial view of the crowd / Pope Francis at Phoenix Park in Dublin as Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrive to attend the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Sex abuse victim William Gorry (left) showing emotions as he joins clerical sex abuse protesters at the General Post Office (GPO) on O'Connell Street in Dublin, prior to marching to the Garden of Remembrance to hold a protest to coincide with the Papal Mass at Phoenix Park, before walking to the site of a nearby former Magdalene laundry, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Bed sheets with names of deceased children tied to the fence of the former Tuam home for unmarried mothers in County Galway, where a mass grave of around 800 babies has recently been uncovered, during the visit to Ireland by the Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis speaks at the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives to attend the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA An aerial view of the crowd at Phoenix Park in Dublin as Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People hold up names of children as they gather to protest at the site of the former Tuam home for unmarried mothers in County Galway, where a mass grave of around 800 babies has recently been uncovered, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA The Stand4Truth protest at the Garden of Remembrance to coincide with the Papal Mass at Phoenix Park, before walking to the site of a nearby former Magdalene laundry, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA People hold up names of children as they gather to protest at the site of the former Tuam home for unmarried mothers in County Galway, where a mass grave of around 800 babies has recently been uncovered, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA People hold up names of children as they gather to protest at the site of the former Tuam home for unmarried mothers in County Galway, where a mass grave of around 800 babies has recently been uncovered, during the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives to attend the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis at the Phoenix Park, Dublin for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA Pope Francis at the Phoenix Park, Dublin for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and President Micheal D. Higgins awaiting Pope Francis arrival at the Phoenix Park, Dublin for the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday August 26, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis joins an audience of 82,500 at Croke Park Stadium in Dublin during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. Photo credit: Brian Lawless/PA Wire. PA Cardinal Kevin Farrell (left) and Pope Francis enjoying the performances at Croke Park in Dublin, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis speaking at Croke Park in Dublin, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis speaking at Croke Park in Dublin, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis waves to the audience as he leaves Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, after attending the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Pope Francis prays at Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis prays at Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis speaks to the audience at Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Performers at Croke Park in Dublin, prior to the arrival of Pope Francis who will join an audience of 82,500 and hear five testimonies by families from Ireland, Canada, Iraq, and Africa, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Crowds and performers at Croke Park in Dublin, in preparation for the arrival of Pope Francis who will join an audience of 82,500 and hear five testimonies by families from Ireland, Canada, Iraq, and Africa, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis waves to the crowd as he arrives at the Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. Pope Francis is on a two-day visit to Ireland. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) AP Pope Francis joins an audience of 82,500 at Croke Park Stadium in Dublin during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives at the Croke Park stadium for the Festival of Families, in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. Pope Francis is on a two-day visit to Ireland. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) AP Crowds and performers at Croke Park in Dublin, in preparation for the arrival of Pope Francis who will join an audience of 82,500 and hear five testimonies by families from Ireland, Canada, Iraq, and Africa, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA People hold up lights at Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, as Pope Francis joins an audience of 82,500 where he will hear five testimonies by families from Ireland, Canada, Iraq, and Africa, during the Festival of Families event, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Pope Francis waves to the waiting crowds on Christchurch, Dublin as he travels in the Popemobile during his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis waves to the waiting crowds on O'Connell Street, Dublin as he travels in the Popemobile during his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pauline Gallagher (right) with her daughters Amelia and Alana after seeing Pope Francis on College Green, Dublin, as he travels in the Popemobile during his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Pope Francis greets Aidan Walsh, during a visit to the Capuchin Day Centre on Bowe Street in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis shakes hands with Br Kevin Crowley as he arrives for a visit to the Capuchin Day Centre on Bowe Street in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis speaks during his visit to the Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. Pope Francis is on a two-day visit to Ireland. (Tiziana Fabi/Pool Photo via AP) AP Pope Francis during a visit to St Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis during a visit to St Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis waves to the waiting crowds on Christchurch, Dublin as he travels in the Popemobile during his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis meets with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at Dublin Castle as part of his visit to Ireland. Photo credit: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis meets with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, right, as he arrives at Dublin Castle, Ireland, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. Pope Francis is on a two-day visit to Ireland. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) AP Pope Francis signs a guest book as he meets with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. Pope Francis is on a two-day visit to Ireland. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) AP Pope Francis arrives for a visit to St Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin to meet with recently-married couples, and couples preparing for the Sacrament of Marriage, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Stephen O'Brien selling bottles of holy water from the St Mary's Pro Cathedral on Talbot Street, Dublin, during the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives for a visit to St Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin to meet with recently-married couples, and couples preparing for the Sacrament of Marriage, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Pairs of baby shoes hang from the railings on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin in memory of the children who died at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway, during the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Supporters wait to see Pope Francis outside Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Sean McDermott Street, Dublin, the resting place of Matt Talbot, on the first day of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis at St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin, prior to his speech, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis kisses a young girl at the end of his meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, in Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. Pope Francis is on a two-day visit to Ireland. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) AP Priests await the arrival of Pope Francis to St Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin, where he will meet with recently-married couples, and couples preparing for the Sacrament of Marriage, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Crowds wait for Pope Francis at College Green, Dublin, prior to him travelling through Dublin in the Popemobile during his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Pope Francis delivers a speech in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis (left) shakes hands with Taoiseach Leo Varadakar after his speech in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis speaks with President Michael D Higgins in his study during a visit to Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis (left) shakes hands with Taoiseach Leo Varadakar after his speech in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis (centre right) arriving at St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin, with Taoiseach Leo Varadakar (centre left) after his speech, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis (centre right) leaves St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin, with Taoiseach Leo Varadakar (centre left) after his speech, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis speaks with President Michael D Higgins in his study during a visit to Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: WMOF18/Maxwell Photography/PA Wire PA Pope Francis delivers his speech in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Pope Francis presents Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with a gift as they meet at Dublin Castle during his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis signs the arrivals book as he meets with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at Dublin Castle as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA The Hassoun family, (left to right not given) Saif Eddin Hassoun, Sanaa Edris, Mohmoud Al A'Araj, Hasba Hassoun, Lana Al A'Araj (six), Aala Al A'Araj, (four) and Tala Al A'Araj (one), wait to meet Pope Francis following a tree planting ceremony at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives for tree planting ceremony during a meeting with Irish President Michael D Higgins, at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives for a meeting with Irish President Michael D Higgins, at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. Photo credit: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis receives a bouquet of flowers from five-year-old Annalise, daughter of Foreign Affairs minister Simon Coveney, as he arrives at Dublin International Airport, at the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives for a meeting with Irish President Michael D Higgins and wife Sabina , at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives for a meeting with Irish President Michael D Higgins, at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Protestors wearing baby shoes, to signify the children who died in mother and baby homes in Ireland, protest in Dublin ahead of the start of the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives for a meeting with Irish President Michael D Higgins and wife Sabina , at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis arrives for a meeting with Irish President Michael D Higgins and wife Sabina , at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin, as part of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Danny Lawson/PA Wire PA Pope Francis is greeted by Archbishop Eamon Martin as he arrives at Dublin International Airport, at the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis as he arrives at Dublin International Airport, at the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis as he arrives at Dublin International Airport, at the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis as he arrives at Dublin International Airport, at the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis as he arrives at Dublin International Airport, at the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis is greeted by members of the clergy, representatives of Government and the local County Council, as he arrives at Dublin International Airport, at the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Bishop Eamon Martin waits for the arrival of Pope Francis at Dublin International Airport, for the start of his visit to Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday August 25, 2018. See PA story IRISH Pope. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pope Francis waves as he boards an airplane at Rome's Fiumicino international airport, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. The pontiff is traveling to Ireland for a two-day visit on the occasion of the 2018 World Meeting of Families. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) AP / Facebook

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Whatsapp Pope Francis prays inside St Mary's Pro Cathedral during his visit to Dublin, Ireland. (Stefano Rellandini/Pool Photo via AP)

"If you can't be a good neighbour, you can't expect to have good neighbours," he said.

"I went to Dublin as Christian, Protestant and unionist and came back as Christian, Protestant and unionist."

Doug Beattie - UUP MLA for Upper Bann added: "Youll not find a more honourable man in NI politics than Robbie Butler - those that mocked him or criticised his actions need to understand you are dragging unionism down by your lack of inclusion."The health service is taking a sticking plaster approach to cancer treatment in Northern Ireland, a campaigner said.

Melanie Kennedy, 41, from Bangor, Co Down, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 and crowd-funded to pay for drugs privately.

She met an influential Westminster committee of MPs on Monday and its chairman expressed shock at disparities in treatment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The health service is taking a sticking plaster approach to cancer treatment in NI, campaigner Melanie Kennedy from Bangor said. @PA pic.twitter.com/c7gCxNYWzE  michael mchugh (@mmchugh02) October 22, 2018

Ms Kennedy said: We need to start providing treatments that are available in other parts of the UK and the world, I would argue, so that people are living longer and surviving longer.

We also need to invest in prevention and taking care of people after primary treatment so that maybe their outcomes are better and they dont re-present.

Funding is dished out short term, everything is a sticking plaster approach really, trying to fix problems after they occur instead of thinking we may need this 10 years down the line, lets start planning for this now.

She started her campaign after she was initially unable to access the same drugs as patients from other parts of the world.

She added: But then we were awarded this drug in the end and it has kept me here now for 18 months and very, very well.

I ended up having the best scan results that I have had since this whole thing started on this drug.

A year ago today  but there are 26 drugs still not available here , affecting 32 ( if not more ) patients and their families a month ! Its a ridiculous situation that we will never stop trying to change - No Price On Life ! https://t.co/ktinQRujEC  NI Cancer Advocacy (@AdvocacyCancer) July 14, 2018

It just shows the absolute massive difference it makes to cancer patients.

She has founded a charity, the Northern Ireland Cancer Advocacy Movement, and urged Stormonts politicians to get back to work.

Not only have they (services) stalled, they are getting worse, because there is nobody here guiding and leading us.

Northern Ireland needs a cancer strategy, cancer is not going anywhere, it is only going to be on the increase and we need to stop having a short-term approach to it and have a long-term strategic plan so that we catch up with the rest of the world.

She said there was a massive shortage of staff in oncological and radiological services.

I am shocked by your account of the difference in quality of service you have received and that which would generally be expected in the rest of the UKAndrew Murrison

An alarming amount of people are crowd-funding and self-funding to get treatment quicker because it is faster.

It is becoming a two-tier system. I believe in the NHS and that is happening a lot faster than in other parts of the UK.

We need to be having the same access to treatments as the rest of the UK, because prognosis and survival rates in Northern Ireland are definitely not as good as the rest of the UK and that would be part of the reason why.

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of MPs travelled to Stormont to hear her account.

Its chairman, Andrew Murrison, said: I am shocked by your account of the difference in quality of service you have received and that which would generally be expected in the rest of the UK.

I think it is true to say, from what you have said today, that there are real concerns about that disparity.Self-confessed murderer Fred McClenaghan - who was serving a life sentence for gunning down his former girlfriend in a Portstewart laundrette - has died in hospital.

Cold-blooded killer McClenaghan was being treated in the intensive care unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, but lost his fight for life yesterday.

It comes less than a year after McClenaghan, from Magherafelt, was handed a 13-year minimum sentence for the murder of his former girlfriend Marion Millican.

The Prison Service last night confirmed the death in custody of a 57-year-old prisoner who was being held at Magilligan Prison.

It said McClenaghan's next of kin had been informed and, in line with standard procedure, the PSNI, Coroner and Prisoner Ombudsman have been informed.

Ronnie Armour, Director General of the Prison Service, said: "On behalf of the Northern Ireland Prison Service I would like to extend my sympathy to the family of the prisoner."

It is understood McClenaghan died from natural causes after falling ill at Magilligan Prison where he was serving the remainder of his sentence.

It emerged last year that the cost of bringing McClenaghan to justice was in excess of 800,000 after he consistently denied his guilt.

He only admitted his crime during a third trial.

He was previously twice convicted of murder, but both convictions were quashed on appeal and McClenaghan faced his third trial last year when he finally admitted murdering Mrs Millican.

The mother-of-four was blasted in the chest at point-blank range by McClenaghan when he went to the Portstewart laundrette where she worked on March 11, 2011.

He consistently claimed he had intended to kill himself in front of Mrs Millican.

However, the court was told that their relationship had earlier broken down when he became violent towards her.

Mrs Millican had begun a relationship with McClenaghan after splitting from her husband in September 2009.

She ended the new relationship in December 2010, and was in the process of a reconciliation with her husband, Ken, just months before she was shot dead.

Speaking last year after McClenaghan finally admitted his guilt, Mrs Millican's best friend, Pamela Henry, refuted McClenaghan's claims that her death was accidental.

The friends were having lunch when McClenaghan walked into the shop with a shotgun and asked Mrs Millican to come with him before firing a shot at the floor.

"I just thought that both of us were going to get it - I was glad to get out alive," Ms Henry said at the time.

"Marion was so lovely - very kind, and a loving wife, mother, aunt and granny. She had a good personality, she spoke to everybody, and Fred McClenaghan destroyed that."A child's honesty box which sold eggs was destroyed by a firework. Credit: PSNI

Police in Enniskillen have slammed "mindless idiots" who destroyed a child's honesty box by taping a firework to an aerosol.

The child had been trying to earn money by selling eggs.

Police have appealed for help in tracking down a car with two males in it believed to have been involved in the incident.

A PSNI officer, posting on the force's Fermanagh Facebook page, said: "Last night around midnight, some mindless idiots decided to destroy this child's honesty box.

"Why anyone would want to destroy a child's efforts to earn a few pounds selling some eggs is beyond me

"They taped a firework to an aerosol can in order to do so. Which is both stupid and dangerous, not to mention frightening for children, pets and elderly residents."

Anyone with information should contact police on 101 and quote incident 412 22/10/18.Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London

More than 1,000 people attending a pro-Remain rally in Belfast have been told that Europe is a force for peace in Northern Ireland and around the world.

A crowd waving EU flags and carrying anti-DUP placards converged outside Belfast City Hall on Saturday afternoon.

Speaking at the event, Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said: "We have the EU to thank for the longest period of peace and stability on the continent of Europe in history.

"The EU forced nations to compromise, forced people to come together on the big issues like climate change.

"It underpinned the peace.

"The EU spent money underpinning the peace right across Europe, from the fall of the Berlin Wall, which could have been chaotic, right through to the former Yugoslavia.

"Nowhere did it do that more so than right here."

Meanwhile, Belfast Lord Mayor Deirdre Hargey said the hard Brexit agenda being pursued by the DUP and Conservative Party was plunging Northern Ireland into the greatest political uncertainty and constitutional challenge for a generation.

"That is reckless and in direct contravention of the democratically expressed will of the majority of people here," she said.

"In that context, there is an onus on progressive and pragmatic parties to represent the wishes of the majority and to defend the progress that has been made in this society.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Event organisers Sorcha Eastwood and Seamas de Faoite Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union. Matt Mackey / Facebook

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Whatsapp 20th October 2018 - Picture by Matt Mackey/Presseye.com People from across Northern Ireland gathered in Belfast on Saturday afternoon to show their opposition to Brexit. The Rally for Remain at Belfast City Hall saw activists gather at a crucial time during negotiations around the UK's exit from the European Union.

John Barry, a Queen's University professor associated with the Green Party in Northern Ireland, also attacked the Brexiteers.

He said: "They are drunk on magical thinking around making England great again and continuing the border with science fiction technology and an exaggerated sense of their importance in the world and they show no signs of sobering up."Police have appealed for information after the armed robbery in Ardglass (Paul Faith/PA)

Members of staff at a shop in Co Down have been left badly shaken after being threatened by a knife wielding man during an armed robbery.

The incident happened at around 6am on Monday when it was reported a man armed with a knife entered the premises on Downpatrick Road in Ardglass.

The man threatened staff and made off with a sum of money and a quantity of cigarettes.

He left the premises on foot towards the Ardglass Road/Strangford Road direction.

No one was injured during the incident.

The suspect is described as 59 in height, wearing a green jacket with fur on the hood, dark jeans and dark trainers with white soles.

Detective Sergeant Bell said: Enquiries are continuing and we would appeal to anyone who saw anything suspicious in the area to contact detectives on 101, quoting reference number 178 22/10/18.

"Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime.A teenage male has been arrested after a suspected armed robbery in a Co Down village in the early hours of Monday morning.

It happened at a business premises on the Downpatrick Road in Ardglass.

An 18-year-old was later arrested in the Ardglass area on suspicion of robbery and remains in police custody at this time.

Detectives are appealing to anyone who saw anything suspicious in the area to contact detectives on 101, quoting reference number 178 22/10/18.

Alternatively the public can contact independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.Most parents want their kids to stay out of trouble, do well in school, and go on to live successful lives as adults.

And while there isnt a set recipe for raising successful children, psychology research has pointed to a handful of factors that predict success.

Unsurprisingly, much of it comes down to the parents. Keep reading to take a look at what parents of successful kids have in common.

Drake Baer contributed to a previous version of this article.

They make their kids do chores

If kids arent doing the dishes, it means someone else is doing that for them, Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of How to Raise an Adult said during a TED Talks Live event.

By making them do chores  taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry  they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life, she previously told Business Insider.

Lythcott-Haims believes kids raised on chores go on to become employees who collaborate well with their coworkers, are more empathetic because they know firsthand what struggling looks like, and are able to take on tasks independently.

They teach their kids social skills

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University and Duke University tracked more than 700 children from across the US between kindergarten and age 25 and found a significant correlation between their social skills as kindergartners and their success as adults two decades later.

The 20-year study showed that children who could cooperate with their peers, be helpful to others, understand their feelings, and resolve problems on their own were far more likely to earn a college degree and have a full-time job by age 25 than those with limited social skills.

Those with limited social skills also had a higher chance of getting arrested, binge drinking, and applying for public housing.

This study shows that helping children develop social and emotional skills is one of the most important things we can do to prepare them for a healthy future, said Kristin Schubert, program director at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research, in a release.

From an early age, these skills can determine whether a child goes to college or prison, and whether they end up employed or addicted.

They have high expectations

Using data from a national survey of 6,600 children born in 2001, University of California at Los Angeles professor Neal Halfon and his colleagues discovered that the expectations parents hold for their kids have a huge effect on attainment.

Parents who saw college in their childs future seemed to manage their child toward that goal irrespective of their income and other assets, Halfon said.

The finding came out in standardized tests: 57% of the kids who did the worst were expected to attend college by their parents, while 96% of the kids who did the best were expected to go to college.

This falls in line with another psych finding: The Pygmalion effect, which states that what one person expects of another can come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the case of kids, they live up to their parents expectations.

They have healthy relationships with each other

Children in high-conflict families tend to fare worse than children of parents that get along, according to a University of Illinois study review.

A nonconflictual single-parent family is better for children than two-parent families with conflict, according to the review.

But, conflict between parents before and after a divorce can affect children negatively.

Another study in this review found that 20-somethings who experienced divorce of their parents as children still report pain and distress over their parents divorce ten years later.

Theyre educated

A 2014 study from the University of Michigan found that mothers who finished high school or college were more likely to raise kids that did the same.

Pulling from a group of over 14,000 children who entered kindergarten from 1998 to 2007, the study found that higher levels of maternal education predicted higher achievement from kindergarten to eighth grade.

A different study from Bowling Green State University suggested that the parents education levels when a child is 8 years old significantly predicted the education and career level for the child four decades later.

They teach their kids math early on

A 2007 meta-analysis of 35,000 preschoolers across the US, Canada, and England found that developing math skills early can turn into a huge advantage.

The paramount importance of early math skills  of beginning school with a knowledge of numbers, number order, and other rudimentary math concepts  is one of the puzzles coming out of the study, coauthor and Northwestern University researcher Greg Duncan said. Mastery of early math skills predicts not only future math achievement, it also predicts future reading achievement.

They develop a relationship with their kids

A 2014 study of 243 children born into poverty found that those who received sensitive caregiving in their first three years did better in academic tests in childhood than those who did not receive the same parenting style.

Those children also had healthier relationships and greater academic achievement.

This suggests that investments in early parent-child relationships may result in long-term returns that accumulate across individuals lives, coauthor and University of Minnesota psychologist Lee Raby said.

They value effort over avoiding failure

Where kids think success comes from also predicts their attainment.

Over decades, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has discovered that children (and adults) think about success in one of two ways. Over at Brain Pickings, Maria Popova says they go a little something like this:

A  fixed mindset  assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens that we cant change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled.

 assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens that we cant change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled. A growth mindset, on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of un-intelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities.

Dwecks mindset theory has attracted valid critiques over the years, but the core tenant of believing that you can improve at something is important to encourage in children.?

The moms work

According to research out of Harvard Business School, there are significant benefits for children growing up with mothers who work outside the home.

There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother, Harvard Business School professor Kathleen L. McGinn, who led the study, told Working Knowledge.

Daughters of working mothers went to school longer, were more likely to have a job in a supervisory role, and earned more money  23% more compared to peers raised by stay-at-home mothers.

The sons of working mothers also tended to pitch in more on household chores and childcare, the study found.

But, working mothers arent necessarily spending every waking minute outside of work with their children

Women are more likely to feel intense pressure to balance child rearing with workplace ambitions. Ultimately, they spend more time parenting than fathers do.

A 2015 study found the number of hours that moms spend with kids between ages 3 and 11 does little to predict the childs behavior, well-being, or achievement.

In fact, the study suggests that its actually harmful for the child to spend time with a mother who is sleep-deprived, anxious, or otherwise stressed.

Mothers stress, especially when mothers are stressed because of the juggling with work and trying to find time with kids, that may actually be affecting their kids poorly, study co-author and Bowling Green State University sociologist Kei Nomaguchi told The Washington Post.

It could be more beneficial to spend one fully-engaged hour with a child than spend the whole evening half-listening to your kid while scrolling through work emails.

They have a higher socioeconomic status

One-fifth of American children grow up in poverty, a situation that severely limits their potential.?

Its getting more extreme. According to Stanford University researcher Sean Reardon, the achievement gap between high- and low-income families is roughly 30% to 40% larger among children born in 2001 than among those born 25 years earlier.

As social scientist Dan Pink wrote, the higher the income for the parents, the higher the SAT scores for the kids.

Absent comprehensive and expensive interventions, socioeconomic status is what drives much of educational attainment and performance, Pink wrote.Robin Swann (second right) poses for a selfie at the conference

The billboard on the street outside the Armagh City Hotel boasted that a funfair was in town.

It didn't signpost the location but it most certainly wasn't inside the three-star hotel at the Ulster Unionist Party conference, where they were in no mood for a carnival, instead lining up the DUP in the sights of their verbal shooting gallery.

Read More

Speaker after speaker had Arlene Foster's party in the firing line over RHI, foreign holidays, legacy issues, "shambolic" government, bullying and Brexit. And that was only the half of it.

Robin Swann was sniper-in-chief. After taking flak last year over his first leader's speech for having fired too many blanks at the DUP it was clear he didn't want to make the same mistake again.

He took aim at his rivals with almost every utterance. But not all his shots hit their target.

His laid-back, laconic delivery isn't tailor-made for rousing audiences, but that's never been his style say his allies who denied that his 38-minute speech, broadcast live on television, had failed to wound the DUP.

Other speakers didn't miss their rivals and hit the wall. UUP elder statesmen Jim Speers, who attended his first conference 56 years ago, didn't actually spell out the letters DUP but he said it was evident to "a man on a galloping horse" that "other unionists" were only interested in themselves.

He branded the DUP a party of corruption. Former UUP leader Lord Empey said the DUP were like "kids in a sweetie shop who couldn't keep their hands out of the jar" and mocked Nigel Dodds as a Che Guevara figure over his threats to the British Government about Brexit.

It was clear, however, that the Ulster Unionists - who now have no MPs and only 10 MLAs - have been stung by criticism that they are yesterday's men and women. Which explained why they gave the floor to so many of their young guns, five of whom are heading up local councils.

Among the newbies on the podium were David Trimble's son Nicholas, who is a councillor in Lisburn, and local government election hopeful Louise McKinstry, who was seen by millions of TV viewers recently on the Eat Well For Less show.

A more seasoned UUP councillor, Mary Hamilton from Londonderry - she didn't like the 'Derry' in her introduction - fought back tears as she spoke about the passing of party members in her city including her husband and council colleague Ernie.

Other addresses hit raw unionist nerves with condemnation of an Irish Language Act and of the Raymond McCreesh play park in Newry, but the most emotionally charged speeches centred on the "DUP/Sinn Fein-inspired" legacy proposals.

There were standing ovations after passionate denunciations of the plans from justice spokesman Doug Beattie and the Rev Alan Irwin from Fermanagh, who lost his father and uncle in IRA attacks.

Following the conference Mr Swann was asked if he could lead the UUP from the wilderness of electoral setbacks to challenge the DUP for supremacy among unionist voters.

"The Unionist Party think I'm the man for the job," he responded.Michael D Higgins gives his lecture at Queens in May

The Irish President should "apologise for the embarrassment caused to the PSNI" if his claim it couldn't provide him with an escort from the border to Belfast turns out to be wrong, an MLA has said.

North Down Assemblyman and former RUC reservist Alan Chambers spoke out after Michael D Higgins said that "for security reasons I couldn't be picked up at the border" during a visit in May, and he had to fly to Belfast in the government Learjet instead. A car drove from Dublin to pick President Higgins up at the airport.

Mr Higgins is running for re-election as the Republic's Head of State. Voting takes place on Friday.

In May Mr Higgins gave a speech at Queen's University on the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement around the concepts of remembering, forgiving, forgetting, and imagining.

In response to Mr Higgins' comments about his travel arrangements during a televised presidential debate on Wednesday evening, PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd said: "It is a long-established policy of the PSNI not to comment on the security arrangements made for individuals.

"The PSNI routinely work with visiting Heads of State and other key figures visiting Northern Ireland and make full provisions for their safety in line with their requirements. We have nothing further to add at this time."

Mr Chambers, who was in the RUC for 15 years, said Mr Higgins' comments "very disappointing" and queried why he had not raised concerns at the time.

"If the PSNI couldn't provide a dignitary coming over the border with protection that's disappointing, and if for some reason the President is clutching at straws to justify the use of the plane, then that's very disappointing, as he would be using the PSNI as a scapegoat," he said.

"I think that, on reflection, he might have wanted to handle it differently. I think Alan Todd made a fairly robust rebuttal.

"Using a plane seems a bit extravagant, but we don't know the circumstances."

However, Mr Chambers added that he was "not sure if it is fair to blame Higgins".

"If there has been a breakdown in communication it may not be anything to do directly with the President. You wouldn't expect him to come with ashes and sackcloth to PSNI headquarters," he said.

"My personal feeling is it has just been a gaffe made behind the scenes.

"I can understand the embarrassment it has caused to the police and it needs to be put to bed one way or another. If he is wrong he needs to apologise."

A spokesperson for the President said yesterday: "For logistical reasons, and on security advice, the President did use the government plane to travel to Belfast in May to deliver the Harri Holkeri lecture.

"The President has made many visits to Northern Ireland by car and is grateful for the support received from the security services. It would not be appropriate to further comment on the detail of security arrangements."Theresa May has slapped down anonymous MPs who used violent imagery to describe a possible coup to unseat her (Henry Nicholls/PA)

Theresa May has slapped down anonymous MPs who used violent imagery to describe a possible coup to unseat her.

Weekend newspapers reported Tory backbenchers saying the Prime Minister would be knifed and that she should bring her own noose to a meeting with MPs to discuss her Brexit plans.

The PMs official spokesman said Mrs May expected those in public life to avoid dehumanising and derogatory language.

I dont intend to dignify those specific anonymous comments with a response, the spokesman told a regular Westminster media briefing.

Personal vitriol has no place in our politicsPrime Minister Theresa May's official spokesman

The Prime Minister has always been very clear that we must set a tone in public discourse that is neither dehumanising nor derogatory.

Personal vitriol has no place in our politics.

The vicious attacks marked the start of what is expected to be a tough week for the Prime Minister, with some observers speculating that the number of MPs calling for her removal may reach the 48 figure which would trigger a vote of no confidence.

Mrs May was due to tell MPs that the UKs Brexit deal is 95% complete and that important progress has been made on issues like security, transport and services since last months fractious summit in Salzburg.

In a Commons statement after talks with EU leaders in Brussels, the Prime Minister will say the shape of the deal across the vast majority of the withdrawal agreement is now clear.

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Protocols have been developed on how Brexit will affect Gibraltar and the UKs military base in Cyprus.

And all of this, from the last three weeks alone, is in addition to the agreements we had already reached, she will say.

Mrs May spoke with Cabinet colleagues in lengthy telephone conference calls over the weekend, which Downing Street described as a chance to give an update on the negotiations.

She will tell the Commons that taking all of this together, 95% of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled.

But she will add: As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.

I do not believe that any UK prime minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not.

Furious backbenchers warned the Prime Minister that she is drinking in the last chance saloon after tensions flared over her negotiating strategy following a Brussels summit.

But senior Brexiteer Chris Grayling called for calm, warning of the danger of Britain leaving the EU without a deal.

Asked about a possible no-confidence vote, the Transport Secretary told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: This is really a moment for calm, level heads.

We have got to get through the last bit of negotiation. There will be a vote in Parliament that follows.

The reality is that, if the deal on offer is something that cant get through Parliament, we will end up in a no-deal situation, so it is in everyones interest, the European Union and us, to make sure that what we agree is something that both sides can accept.

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Whatsapp Transport Secretary Chris Grayling was among Cabinet ministers who discussed Brexit with the Prime Minister in a conference call over the weekend (David Mirzoeff/PA)

Former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson denied undermining the Prime Minister after meeting the EUs chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, in Brussels.

Mr Duncan Smith said: We are presenting some ideas which we think are constructive and we had a constructive discussion.

Now we are going to go back and talk to the Government about it.

He added that whoever briefed in violent terms about he Prime Ministers future needs to have the fullest weight of the Conservative Party upon them.

It has nothing to do with our politics, it has nothing to do with this issue, he told reporters in Brussels, adding that Mrs May had his full support.

Asked if the EU was making contingency plans for a change of political leadership in the UK, European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said: As to political developments in Whitehall, this is for Whitehall, not for the Berlaymont (the ECs Brussels HQ).

Labour has warned Mrs May that it will not back her Brexit blueprint when it reaches the Commons.

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said there is a real lack of confidence that Mrs May can bring back anything by way of a good deal.Irish President Michael D Higgins has claimed that he had to travel to Belfast by private jet following advice from his office on security issues.

Mr Higgins said he was grateful for the statement released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) which disputed his earlier claims that he travelled by jet because police in Northern Ireland could not provide security for him by road.

He said: As far as I am concerned I am very happy with the official PSNI statement. I welcome it, I agree with it and I am happy to reciprocate to it by again expressing my thanks for their co-operation and courtesy.

Mr Higgins was asked for clarity over his previous comments that his staff were advised that for security reasons I couldnt be picked up at the border during last Mays trip.

He made the comments during a televised presidential debate on Wednesday evening.

I have visited Northern Ireland many times in the last seven years and I take the advice from my office and my office judges these trips in terms of - the considerations they take into account are logistics and securityMichael D Higgins

I have visited Northern Ireland many times in the last seven years and I take the advice from my office and my office judges these trips in terms of  the considerations they take into account are logistics and security, he added.

Mr Higgins was speaking as he launched his Shared Ireland, Shared Island initiative at the Droichead Arts Centre on Monday, days before the public go to the polls for the presidential election.

Helping him launch the campaign was one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, Seamus Mallon.

The former SDLP deputy first minister introduced Mr Higgins and praised him for his previous seven years in office.

Sinn Fein presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada said she sent Mr Higgins a letter calling for him to respond to a number of serious questions ahead of Tuesday nights televised debate.

She posted on her Twitter account: It is my strong view that discussing these issues publicly is the only means left to reassure our citizens that public finances are being properly used, particularly at a time of huge difficulties for many families.

Mr Higgins told the crowd at Droichead Arts Centre, which included SDLP leader Colum Eastwood and former leader Mark Durkan, that he was operating the campaign under the constraints of being a president in office.

He said that if he is re-elected, he will launch a new initiative which he hopes will spark an inclusive, respectful discussion on how all of us can live together and how we can treat our differences with respect.

In our interpretation of the past, we do so in a way recognising that it bears on how we are living in the present and what we might do together in the future, he added.

We must differ, yes we will differ but we must do so with the necessary courtesies of a republican discourse.

On Monday morning, presidential candidate Peter Casey posted a video on his Twitter account which criticised the presidents Bernese mountain dogs and claimed that the president was using public money to cover grooming costs.

I cover the costs of my dogs, be it their food or veterinary or grooming. I would recommend people get a dog, it's a good thingMichael D Higgins

Mr Higgins said he wanted to assure the Irish public that his dogs are well.

I walked with them last night and they were looking particularly well, he added.

I cover the costs of my dogs, be it their food or veterinary or grooming.

I would recommend people get a dog, its a good thing.

Mr Mallon introduced the president and used the opportunity to hit out at the ongoing Brexit negotiations.

He said that the Good Friday Agreement defines the British governments role as to provide for agreement between the people of Northern Ireland.

At the heart of it is two sovereign governments dealing with a problem which has been with us for at least five centuries, he added.

He blamed Brexit and a limping British government for the breakdown of relations between Ireland and the British government, saying the relationship has almost disappeared.

It is very low indeed because the British government has chosen not to work the Good Friday Agreement in terms of the British Irish Governmental arrangements, he added.

It has chosen not to copper-fasten that relationship with the island of Ireland but to replace a sovereign Irish government with eight members of the DUP.Ms Bradley was addressing a meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in London (Victoria Jones/PA)

A second EU referendum would deliver an even bigger majority for Leave, the Northern Ireland Secretary has predicted.

Restating her opposition to a so-called peoples vote on the ultimate Brexit deal Karen Bradley, who voted Remain in 2016, insisted it would undermine the democratic process.

Ms Bradley, who was addressing a meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in London, said the people had already spoken.

I personally think, from my knocking on doors, there would be a bigger vote for Leave, she said.

The fact is the people spoke. We had a peoples vote.

During her meeting with the gathering of British and Irish parliamentarians, Mrs Bradley was also challenged on the potential of violence if Brexit saw physical infrastructure return to the border.

Irish Senator Frank Feighan said: We would be very concerned at any border, any installation, that the people of Ireland would absolutely tear down that border with their own hands.

Thats whats coming from people, not from me, but from people on the ground.

The fact is the people spoke. We had a people's voteKaren Bradley

The Secretary of States appearance at the plenary session of the BIPA came amid the ongoing impasse between the UK and EU on how to maintain a free flowing border post-Brexit.

Last December, both sides agreed to have a backstop position that would avoid a hard border even if a wider trade deal failed to be struck.

But negotiators are at loggerheads on how this pledge will be translated into a legally binding commitment.

The EU wants Northern Ireland to continue to operate under a European customs and regulatory framework, but the Government, under pressure from the DUP, is opposed to any move that would see Northern Ireland treated differently from Great Britain.

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has suggested the UK could agree to extending the transition phase  the period when the UK continues to abide by EU rules post-Brexit  as a way to replace the need for an Irish backstop.

This suggestion has been rejected by the Irish Government, with deputy premier Simon Coveney insisting there can be no Brexit deal without a backstop.

Meanwhile, a Conservative MP has stepped back from a bid to amend legislation that would have meant the Stormont Assembly would have to vote to agree to any backstop mechanism.

Steve Baker had hoped to bolt the proposal onto a bill being taken through Westminster by Ms Bradley focused on making it easier for civil servants to take major decisions in Northern Ireland in the ongoing absence of devolved ministers.

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Whatsapp MP Steve Baker stepped back from calls to amend legislation (UK Parliament/PA)

On Monday evening, Mr Baker tweeted that he was withdrawing the amendments, but he added: The substantive issues of the Union remain of concern.

Asked about Mr Bakers amendments earlier on Monday, Ms Bradley insisted the bill was not designed to change policies.

She also told the plenary meeting of the assembly the Government remained committed to last Decembers joint report with the EU.

A suggestion has been put forward last week at the European Council regarding an extension of the implementation period as a way to deal with the border, she said.

Now, we are looking at that. It is early days. It is a suggestion that has been put forward by the EU.

And I want to be clear that we are committed to everything that we have agreed to in the joint report and we will ensure that there is no border on the island of Ireland.

Ms Bradley said the Government wanted the UKs new trading arrangement with the EU to begin, as planned, in January 2021.

Thats when we want this to be, so that there is no need for any backstop, or extension of implementation period, or anything else thats been put forward, she said.

We want this to be a new relationship that starts on January 1st, 2021.

The Northern Ireland Secretary added: In any situation we will not allow there to be a border on that island.

There are two communities in Northern Ireland, and much of what the European Union has put forward in terms of suggestions around the backstop are not acceptable to the Unionist community in Northern Ireland, and they arent acceptable to the British Government, so thats why we are working to find a backstop that works for everyone.Officials have called for the recommendations of an inquiry into Westminsters bullying culture to be adopted in full (Tim Ireland/PA)

MPs should be barred from determining the outcome of bullying or sexual harassment claims made against their Commons colleagues, Westminster officials have said.

In an unprecedented letter, dozens of serving and former clerks and other officials  along with several MPs  called for the recommendations of an inquiry into Westminsters bullying culture to be adopted in full.

The officials said that, as well as MPs being stripped of a role in determining allegations about colleagues, the complaints procedures should also be amended so historic claims can be investigated.

Full text of the letter sent by current and former House of Commons staff calling on the House of Commons Commission to allow historic allegations of bullying to be investigated and remove MP involvement in the process of determining complaints, as recommended by Dame Laura Cox pic.twitter.com/6AED8mGHmX  Hannah White (@DrHannahWhite) October 22, 2018

The letter comes after High Court judge Dame Laura Cox lifted the lid on a toxic environment in Westminster, which included staff having their bottoms and breasts touched in an atmosphere fuelled by ready access to alcohol.

Her report found that a culture of deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence had allowed the mistreatment of staff in the House of Commons to thrive.

The report heaped pressure on Commons Speaker John Bercow, who has himself been the subject of bullying allegations, which he denies.

In their letter to the ruling House of Commons Commission, the former officials said we have personally experienced, or seen first-hand, bullying or harassment by Members of Parliament left to go unchallenged.

Dame Laura Coxs report has exposed Westminsters open secret  a minority of parliamentarians have been allowed to get away with this behaviour for years.

Its unprecedented for staff to speak out in this way - they are used to working invisibly to make the Commons function and help MPs do their jobsDr Hannah White

Dr Hannah White, a former senior clerk who signed the letter, said: The significance of this letter should not be under-estimated  its deeply counter-cultural for House staff to speak out in this way  it demonstrates the depth of their frustration with MPs response to the Cox Report.

Its unprecedented for staff to speak out in this way  they are used to working invisibly to make the Commons function and help MPs do their jobs.

But they see this as a matter of HR, not politics, and are writing to the commission to urge them to implement the report.

Expand Close John Bercow has faced calls to quit following the report into Westminsters bullying culture (Rick Findler/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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The commission meets on Wednesday to discuss the Cox Report, with independent member Jane McCall chairing the panel rather than Mr Bercow.

Dr White, now director of research at the Institute for Government, said there is concern that the commission may resist or delay implementing the recommendations of the Cox Report for personal or political reasons, instead of seizing the opportunity for reform.

Mr Bercow has faced calls to quit following the publication of the report.

Tory former minister Maria Miller, who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, told him: The report is clear that there needs to be a complete change in leadership at the most senior level, including you, Mr Speaker, as chief officer, if we are, in Dame Lauras words, to press the reset button.Scottish Conservatives are calling for 13 secret briefings on a second independence referendum to be published (Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire)

The Tories are appealing a decision by Scotlands Information Commissioner in a bid to force the publication of more than a dozen secret government briefings on a possible second independence referendum.

It comes after a freedom of information request confirmed 13 such documents existed  but exemptions to the law prevented the release of them.

The Conservatives have now submitted an appeal to Information Commissioner Daren Fitzhenry to determine if the exemptions were correctly applied.

The original request asked for details of any briefings by civil servants or documents provided to ministers on a second independence referendum in 2017 or 2018.

The Information Commissioners office said 13 documents were identified as being within scope of the request, adding these were provided from civil servants to ministers as part of their normal duties supporting ministers.

However it said: We are unable to provide these items because of the exemptions.

The response added: I acknowledge there is a public interest in the topic of a second independence referendum and in disclosing information as part of open, transparent and accountable government, and to inform public debate.

However, I am satisfied that after taking account of all of the circumstances of the case, there is a greater public interest in ensuring high quality policy and decision-making by government, and this is achieved through allowing ministers and officials the private space they need to consider all available options and to debate those rigorously and to fully understand their possible implications before a final position can be reached.

The Tories branded the production of the briefing papers as irresponsible government, arguing Scotlands position as part of the UK had been settled in the 2014 independence referendum.

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Chief whip Maurice Golden said: These secret briefings prove that the prospect of a second independence referendum is never off the SNPs table.

The question was settled in 2014. Yet, in the years afterwards, civil servants were still churning out briefings for ministers so they could continue banging the drum for separation in front of the cameras.

That is irresponsible government.

Mr Golden added: The Nationalists should have been putting all their efforts into improving schools, hospitals, infrastructure and the economy.

The SNP government clearly deemed it necessary for taxpayer-funded civil servants to produce these highly-political briefings.

As such, they should now be published, as part of the SNPs so-called commitment to open and transparent government.

A spokesman for Constitutional Relations Secretary Michael Russell said: The stench of hypocrisy from the Tories is overpowering  not only have they blocked the release of official papers on the first independence referendum, they have also slapped gagging orders on business and charity leaders to prevent them talking about Brexit or UK Government welfare cuts.

The Scottish Government has every right to discuss independence  something (Scottish Conservative leader) Ruth Davidson has described as perfectly honourable.Willem-Alexander and Maxima at the wedding of Prince Albert II of Monaco (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

The King and Queen of the Netherlands are making a state visit to the UK.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima are staying with the Queen at Buckingham Palace for two days from Tuesday.

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But who exactly are the Dutch royals?

The King

In his younger days, Willem-Alexander, who became monarch in 2013, had a reputation as a partying royal and a bit of a Romeo.

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He studied in Wales for a few years in the 1980s and, as a young man, after being snapped clutching a pint of beer, was nicknamed Prince Pils  and the nickname stuck.

As a boy, he once shouted All press, piss off at a royal photo session, and used to deploy his catapult against photographers who followed the family when on ski holidays.

Known to his friends as Alex, the fast car-loving royal once drove his own vehicle into a ditch.

He settled down, marrying Maxima in 2002, and they now have three daughters, Princesses Catharina-Amalia, Alexia and Ariane.

Willem-Alexander worked part-time for more than 20 years as a guest pilot with KLMs fleet of Fokker 70 planes.

The 51-year-old monarch and his family live at Villa Eikenhorst in the forested De Horsten estate in Wassenaar near The Hague, a former royal hunting ground which covers around 400 acres.

Hollands royal family enjoy a relaxed relationship with the people of the Netherlands.

They released a series of modern portraits to mark the Kings fifth anniversary on the throne, showing the King, Queen and their children walking in line, mid stride.

The Queen

Gregarious and vivacious Queen Maxima is a popular figure in the Netherlands.

The Argentinian is a former investment banker and her financial background has led to her becoming the UN Secretary Generals special advocate for inclusive finance.

The 47-year-old has learnt Dutch, been involved in domestic debates on immigration and integration, and is a prominent supporter of gay rights.

She once donned a wetsuit and plunged into the freezing canals of Amsterdam for a charity swim.

Expand Close The then Princess Maxima arriving for the wedding of Prince Albert II of Monaco (Dominic Lipinski/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook

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There was initially uproar over her relationship with Willem-Alexander.

Maximas father Jorge Zorreguieta had been a senior minister during Argentinas brutal junta regime which ruled from 1976 to 1983 and under which thousands of people were killed or disappeared.

Willem-Alexanders mother Queen Beatrix supported the couple, praising Maxima as an intelligent, modern woman when the couples engagement was announced.

On the orders of the Dutch government, Maximas father stayed away from their 2002 wedding ceremony, watching it on television instead.

Maxima is proud of her Latin heritage, once saying: I am Latin and I will continue being Latin. I dance, I sing and I will keep on dancing and singing.

But she said of her husbands dancing ability: I keep trying to push him. His hips are a little rigid.

The Queen Consort is known for her stylish and sometimes flamboyant fashion choices.

She was left devastated after her sister Ines killed herself in Argentina earlier this year.

The abdications

Abdications are the norm for the Dutch royals.

King Willem-Alexander became monarch in 2013 when his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicated in favour of her son after a 33-year reign.

Beatrixs mother Queen Juliana of the Netherlands abdicated in 1980 on her 71st birthday.

Whats the Dutch royal familys connection to the British Royal Family?

The British Royal Family are related to many of Europes royal houses and they have similar ties with Dutch royalty.

Queen Beatrix is a distant cousin of Elizabeth II and they are fond of one another, always greeting each other warmly with a kiss on the cheek and large smiles.

The King and Queen were also invited to the Remembrance Day parade in London in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands following the end of the Second World War.

The Duchess of Cambridge met King Willem-Alexander when she visited Holland in 2016 for her first solo overseas visit.Nadim and Tanya Ednan-Laperouse with their son Alex outside West London Coroners Court (Jonathan Brady/PA)

Environment Secretary Michael Gove will meet the parents of a girl who died after eating a Pret A Manger sandwich to discuss changing laws around allergen labelling.

Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, from Fulham, west London, collapsed on board a flight to Nice in 2016 after eating a sandwich she bought at Heathrow Airport containing sesame seeds, which she was allergic to.

She was later pronounced dead in hospital.

The packaging of the artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette did not mention that the product contained the seeds and Natashas father Nadim said at an inquest held earlier this month that she died because of inadequate food labelling laws.

Nadim and Natashas mother Tanya said in a statement on Monday that they look forward to meeting Mr Gove.

We are extremely pleased by his reaction so far on this issue, they said.

The meeting will take place on Tuesday afternoon.

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Mr Gove said earlier this month he had instructed civil servants to investigate a law change after Natashas death highlighted the importance of acting urgently.

The Environment Secretary said the family was absolutely right to say the law needs to be changed, adding: I think their case is compelling and we need to act quickly in order to ensure that we have the best possible protection in place.

Michelle Victor, a lawyer for Leigh Day, which is representing the family, said: The law in this country needs to change and the reaction of this Government has been extremely positive thus far in relation to labelling to safeguard people with allergens.

We hope that this meeting will lead to real change for the thousands of people who have a food allergy.

Pret announced earlier this month that it will include full ingredient labelling on all of its products.File photo dated 04/10/17 of a Ryanair plane, the budget airline has issued a profit warning after suffering the effects of recent crew strikes and rising fuel prices.

A Ryanair passenger who launched a racist tirade may get away with it due to the airline wanting to get the plane off the ground, a shadow transport minister said.

The man was filmed by a fellow passenger calling the elderly woman in the seat next to him an ugly black b******, and shouting dont talk to me in a foreign language you stupid ugly cow.

Ryanair sparked outrage after apparently failing to remove the man, with Labour MP for East Hull Karl Turner saying the airline failed spectacularly.

The footage was recorded on October 19 on Ryanair flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted by Kent resident David Lawrence, who uploaded it on to social media.

Mr Turner, who is a qualified barrister and was once Labours shadow attorney general, tweeted: Suspect the pressure to turn this aircraft around quickly and get it airborne meant that they have allowed this alleged offender to remain on the aircraft. He may now get away with it.

.@Ryanair have failed spectacularly here. Suspect the pressure to turn this aircraft around quickly and get it airborne meant that they have allowed this alleged offender to remain on the aircraft. He may now get away with it. https://t.co/zEnCtCcz17  Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) October 21, 2018

He added: @Ryanair failure to deplane the alleged racist offender, handing him over to the Spanish authorities probably means that he isnt now prosecuted.

#1 @Ryanair failure to deplane the alleged racist offender, handing him over to the Spanish authorities probably means that he isnt now prosecuted. https://t.co/kRanokMwJJ  Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) October 21, 2018

He added: Unfortunately because @Ryanair is registered in Dublin not in the UK the alleged offence could only be tried by UK authorities if it was in flight to the UK. Section 92(1) Civil Aviation Act s.92(4) defines in flight.

If this incident had have happened on an alternative airline under British Control or it was already in flight to the UK the prosecuting authorities could have prosecuted.

#2 Unfortunately because @Ryanair is registered in Dublin not in the UK the alleged offence could only be tried by UK authorities if it was in flight to the UK. Section 92(1) Civil Aviation Act s.92(4) defines in flight. https://t.co/JtilnPJb6H  Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) October 21, 2018

#3 If this incident had have happened on an alternative airline under British Control or it was already in flight to the UK the prosecuting authorities could have prosecuted. https://t.co/nIAz8Pjz2H  Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) October 21, 2018

Footage shows the man shouting at the woman to move seats while her daughter tries to stand up to him, telling him her mother is disabled.

He replies: I dont care whether shes f****** disabled or not  if I tell her to get out she gets out.

The man then calls her an ugly f****** c*** and tells staff to move the woman to another seat, adding: if you dont go to another seat Ill push you to another seat.

Staff on the flight seemed to do little to silence the man during the footage, leaving a passenger in the row behind to try and deal with the situation.

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The cabin crew can be heard to say: Dont be so rude, you have to calm down while other passengers call for the man to be thrown off the flight.

The victim can be heard telling the man he stinks and needs a wash, before asking to be moved so she can sit next to her daughter.

The daughter of the woman who was targeted said she believed if a black person had behaved in the same way they would have been thrown off the flight immediately.

The woman, 53, told the Huffington Post the row had started because her 77-year-old mothers arthritis meant it took her some time to move out of the way so the man could reach the window seat.

The daughter said she had taken her mother, who is a Windrush Generation migrant who came to the UK from Jamaica in the 1960s, on holiday to mark one year since the death of her father.

My parents were married over 50 years. Shes been feeling really down and depressed, so I thought the trip would raise her spirits.

She continued: I know that if I was behaving like he was or any other black person for that matter, police would have been called and we would have been kicked off the flight.

The woman said that when she had complained to cabin crew they denied hearing any racial slurs and they told her to ring customer services on Monday.

The budget airline tweeted on Sunday that it had seen the footage and reported the incident to Essex police.

It added: As this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further.

A spokeswoman for Essex police said: This incident, which we were made aware of this morning, is believed to have taken place on a plane at Barcelona Airport.

Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.

We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation.The passenger launched a racist tirade against the woman in the seat next to him (David Lawrence/PA)

A man who filmed a racist incident on a Ryanair flight said he chose not to intervene so he could publicise what happened.

David Lawrence, who filmed a man subjecting a woman to a tirade of racist abuse, said that in the age of social media visual is important and now the world knows what happened.

He told BBC Breakfast: I had to make a difficult decision at that time because if I had stepped in I dont think you would have seen the footage that I captured.

Prime Minister Theresa Mays official spokesman declined to comment on the specific case, but told reporters: When people are travelling and going about their public life, no-one should be subjected to intimidation or any form of abuse.

The Prime Minister has always been clear that racial abuse is abhorrent.

In relation to this particular case, theres obviously an investigation being conducted by Essex Police and its right that I dont comment specifically on that.

The video, recorded on October 19 on flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted before the plane had taken off, shows a man shouting at a woman telling her to move seats while her daughter tries to stand up to him, telling him her mother is disabled.

He said: I dont care whether shes f****** disabled or not  if I tell her to get out she gets out.

In the video the man can be heard calling the elderly woman an ugly black b******, and shouting dont talk to me in a foreign language you stupid ugly cow.

He was not confronted by any other passengers, Mr Lawrence added.

In fact, one of the passengers whilst I was filming basically said to me dont you think youre being a bit childish by filming this, he said.

Statement: We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police  Ryanair (@Ryanair) October 21, 2018

Ally Murphy, a former cabin crew supervisor who also appeared on the show, said Mr Lawrence made the right call in deciding to film the incident.

It is great that David did film that, she said. This happens every day in the community and people need to step forward and say this isnt right.

But as a cabin crew member it is not great when people pile in and try to take things into their own hands, she added.

Ryanair tweeted on Sunday that they had reported the incident to Essex Police.

It added: As this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further.

A spokeswoman for Essex police said on Sunday: Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.

We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation.A majority of businesses in Scotland have called for the Scottish Government to be a world leader in tackling climate change (John Giles/PA)

A majority of companies in Scotland believe climate change poses a risk to their business, a new poll suggests.

The study, commissioned by WWF Scotland, found nine in 10 large companies are concerned by the issue.

The poll indicates 85% of large businesses and small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) want the Scottish Government to be a global leader in tackling climate change.

It comes following the release of an IPCC report earlier this month warning there are only 12 years left to contain global temperatures from rising by a maximum of 1.5C.

Our response is for Scotland to continue to take a world-leading roleDr Sam Gardner, WWF Scotland

Dr Sam Gardner, acting director at WWF Scotland, said: These findings make it clear climate change is no longer a concern of a few green businesses.

The risks and opportunities are on the agenda in boardrooms across all company sizes, and rightly so.

The best way for Scotland to minimise the threat posed by climate change and maximise the opportunities arising from our response is for Scotland to continue to take a world-leading role as businesses across Scotland clearly seem to understand.

Matt Lancashire, director of policy for the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, said: Scotlands businesses are facing big issues, from Brexit to the fourth industrial revolution, of which climate change is undoubtedly one of the most significant.

Charandeep Singh, head of external relations for the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said: Scotlands expertise places us in pole position to reap the economic and social benefits of a modern, greener economy and we encourage more businesses to explore the new market opportunities of a low-carbon economy.

Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said : With Scotlands emissions having almost halved since 1990, our low carbon transition is well under way and this is an economic opportunity for businesses in Scotland.

Our Climate Change Bill proposes to increases Scotlands ambition in direct response to the Paris Agreement and will mean that Scotland will have the worlds most ambitious statutory climate targets for 2020, 2030 and 2040, and will be carbon neutral by 2050.

Being at the forefront of the global transition to carbon-neutrality means Scotland is well placed to benefit from new and emerging low-carbon marketsFormer British soldier Dennis Hutchings, who has been charged over the fatal 1974 shooting of a man in Northern Ireland, takes part in a protest to call for an end to prosecutions of veterans who served during the Troubles, on Horse Guards Parade, London.

A Northern Ireland veteran charged with attempted murder has reportedly turned down medical treatment so that he can appear in court.

Dennis Hutchings, a 77-year-old former member of the Life Guards regiment, is accused in relation to the fatal shooting of a man with learning difficulties in 1974.

The Daily Express reported that he is refusing treatment for kidney disease for fear it would get his case dismissed on medical grounds.

Expand Close Dennis Hutchings in September 2017 when a bid to halt the prosecution of the former British solider was rejected (Gareth Fuller/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Mr Hutchings told the newspaper: I will fight them to the death. This is not about me any more. Its about all the others behind me.

As long as I can keep fighting it, it will hopefully end up with somebody making a commonsense decision and drawing a line under it all.

He added: I want to prove my innocence and show the nonsense behind these legacy cases. Somebody has got to stand up and fight this lot.

Mr Hutchings, from Cawsand in Cornwall, is due to stand trial in Belfast charged with attempted murder and attempted grievous bodily harm with intent. He denies the charges.

John Pat Cunningham, 27, was shot in the back in Co Armagh as he ran away from an Army patrol. His family argued that he ran across a field because he feared men in uniform.

Mr Hutchings told the Express: I have thought about going to one of those clinics in Switzerland. I have chronic kidney disease and an aneurysm which is growing. If that bursts I am dead anyway.

Last week I was diagnosed with the early stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and I have problems with a valve in my heart which they cannot fix.Plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds could be banned in a years time.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove has launched a consultation on the Governments plan to ban the items, which he said can devastate the worlds oceans and wildlife.

The ban could be put in place at some stage between October next year and October 2020, the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs said.

The consultation will consider exemptions to make sure people who need plastics to deal with medical conditions or accessibility issues are not affected.

Today we step-up our efforts to turn the tide on plastic pollution and ensure we leave our environment in a better state than we inherited itMichael Gove

Under Government plans, pharmacies would still be able to sell plastic straws and restaurants, pubs and bars could stock the items to be used on request.

It is estimated that 4.7 billion plastic straws, 316 million plastic stirrers and 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds are used each year in England.

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Mr Gove said the ban would be a boost to efforts to turn the tide on plastic pollution.

He said: Our precious oceans and the wildlife within need urgent protection from the devastation throw-away plastic items can cause.

In England we are taking world-leading action with our ban on microbeads, and thanks to the publics support have taken over 15 billion plastic bags out of circulation with our 5p charge.

I commend retailers, bars and restaurants that have already committed to removing plastic straws and stirrers. But we recognise we need to do more.

Today we step-up our efforts to turn the tide on plastic pollution and ensure we leave our environment in a better state than we inherited it.

Around 10% of cotton buds are flushed down toilets, often ending up in waterways and oceans, the Government said.

It is hoped millions of pounds could be saved annually on clean-up efforts of used plastics, which can take years to break down.

Greenpeace UKs political adviser Sam Chetan Welsh commended ministers for doing the sensible thing, but urged big companies to do more by cutting down on plastic packaging.

He said: Our societys addiction to throwaway plastic is fuelling a global environmental crisis that must be tackled.

Ministers are doing the sensible thing by looking to ban single-use plastic items that can be easily replaced with better alternatives or that we can simply do without. But this should be just the start.

If we are to protect our oceans from the scourge of plastic, the flow of waste needs to be cut off at the tap. And that means the companies producing and selling all this packaging must take responsibility for it and cut down the amount of plastic ending up in our shopping baskets.

Kate Nicholls, CEO of UKHospitality, welcomed the consultation, saying many restaurants and hotels have already begun taking action to cut down on plastics.

She said: We wholeheartedly welcome this consultation on an issue of vital importance and one which hospitality has already taken significant action.

Since UKHospitalitys Unpack the Future of Hospitality summit in the spring, thousands of pubs clubs, restaurants and hotels across the UK have changed their straws and stirrers to biodegradables, or adopted policies that cut or eliminate their use in their venues.

The Government is seeking views on how we can cut plastic waste and we look forward to continued engagement to play a part in achieving that goal.The UK has condemned the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and promised a thoughtful and considered response to the appalling brutality.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Saudi Arabias official claim that Mr Khashoggi died in a fight at the Gulf kingdoms consulate in Istanbul was not credible.

Prime Minister Theresa May condemned the killing in the strongest possible terms and added we must get to the truth of what happened.

Labour stepped up calls for a boycott on arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the horrific murder.

Mr Hunt acknowledged that the UK had close security and business links with Saudi Arabia but if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true the UK will act accordingly.

He told MPs: We have an important strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia involving defence and security co-operation which has saved lives on the streets of Britain. We also have a trading partnership that supports thousands of jobs.

So whilst we will be thoughtful and considered in our response, I have also been clear that if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true, they are fundamentally incompatible with our values and we will act accordingly.

Indeed such reports are also incompatible with Saudi Arabias own stated goal of progress and renewal.

That is why the extent to which Saudi Arabia is able to convince us that it remains committed to that progress will ultimately determine the response of the UK and its allies  and we will continue to convey our strength of feeling on this issue to every level of the Saudi leadership.

Saudi Arabia admitted on Friday that Washington Post columnist Mr Khashoggi, a vocal critic of Riyadh, was killed at its Istanbul mission.

Mr Hunt said the Turkish-led investigation needed to establish:

 Who authorised the dispatch of 15 officials from Saudi Arabia to Istanbul

 When the Riyadh government first learned of Mr Khashoggis death

 Why there was a delay in allowing investigators into the consulate

 Why Mr Khashoggis death was not disclosed until October 19, some 17 days after it happened.

Mr Hunt said: The actions Britain and our allies take will depend on two things: firstly the credibility of the final explanation given by Saudi Arabia, and secondly on our confidence that such an appalling episode cannot  and will not  be repeated.

Expand Close A security guard at Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul, where Jamal Khashoggi disappeared (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson urged a robust response to Saudi Arabia over Mr Khashoggis death.

Britain should refuse to turn a blind eye to the death of the dissident journalist and pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the brutal civil war in Yemen, Mr Johnson said in his Daily Telegraph column.

Mr Johnson said we cannot just let it pass, and, while the UK has crucial trade and security links with the Gulf State, the UK and the US must lead other countries in holding Saudi Arabia properly to account.

Turkish government sources have claimed that Mr Khashoggi was tortured and murdered by a hit squad flown in from Riyadh.

The Saudis initially dismissed the allegations as baseless, without providing an explanation as to how the writer disappeared after entering the consulate on October 2.

A number of Saudi nationals have since been arrested, while deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have been dismissed, state TV reported.

Labours leadership seized on the events in Istanbul to call for arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be halted.

In the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn said condemnation is not enough from the Government.

Will they now end arms sales to Saudi Arabia? he asked.

The UK should "look again into selling arms to Saudi Arabia" and "make sure that there's an independent investigation" about the kingdom's actions, says Shadow Foreign Secretary @EmilyThornberry #r4today pic.twitter.com/cFqE4wMfSi  BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) October 22, 2018

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: These are supposed to be our friends. Its up to them to change their behaviour, its up to us to stand up to them and it is up to us to make it clear that we do not accept this behaviour and they need to change their ways.A Bhutanese woman casts her vote for the nations parliamentary election (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File)

The centre-left Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa party has won the most seats in parliamentary elections in Bhutan.

The Election Commission of Bhutan says the party had won 30 National Assembly seats and the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa party had secured 17 seats in the October 18 elections.

The commission says that turnout was about 71% with about 313,000 eligible voters casting a ballot.

Expand Close A Bhutanese polling official puts the indelible ink mark on the finger of a voter before she proceeds to cast her vote (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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The elections were only the third since Bhutan transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy in 2008.

Party leader and Prime Minister-elect Lotay Tshering campaigned on a pledge to reduce income inequality.

The World Bank measuring inequality in 2013 ranked Bhutan after Cambodia and before Ghana.An extraordinary succession of newspaper articles reveal starkly how in this century successive governments - British and Irish - sacrificed morality for pragmatism when it came to settling issues that remained after the killing stopped.

It was the pursuit of a quiet life at all costs that had the Blair regime sacrifice moderate nationalism and unionism, the well-being of innocent Troubles victims and the reputation of courageous and effective security forces to get Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams to do a deal that gave both what they wanted: tribal dominance.

Being top unionist dog was enough for Paisley, who seems to have been blithely unaware or unbothered that Sinn Fein was playing a much longer game that involved subverting truth to present a perverted and shameless narrative of the past.

Initially it sought moral equivalence for the IRA and the police and soldiers who saved Northern Ireland from dissolving into civil war.

That particular pass was sold on Paisley's watch as the definition of victim became no longer restricted to those killed or injured by criminal acts or accident.

Killers were on their way to securing from the State parity of esteem with those they murdered or injured.

In her article last week Daphne Trimble told the story of the Northern Ireland Memorial Fund (NIMF), an independent charity set up in 1997 with 1 million from the Government "to promote peace and reconciliation" by giving practical help and support to "those individuals and families that have suffered as a result of the Troubles in Northern Ireland".

In December 1998, in Oslo for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to John Hume and her husband David Trimble, she and Pat Hume decided jointly to offer their help and joined the board with the "underlying aim to assist in healing the wounds of our deeply divided society, by focusing on the needs of those most closely touched by the Troubles, the injured and their carers, and the bereaved".

Using the strapline 'Peace, Reconciliation, Support', the NIMF, whose board members were unpaid, over several hard-working years channelled 20m to ordinary people for vital equipment like better prosthetics and mobility aids, support services like respite care, pain management and counselling, and help with education and training of the young.

The reconciliation work included bringing together the bereaved from both sides of the community.

"Did we define a victim? No." But "in the early years, under the light-touch regulation of the NIO we were firm in our resolve to exclude perpetrators".

All that changed under an Executive led by the DUP and Sinn Fein when responsibility for NIMF moved to the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, whose bosses were Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, assisted by their junior ministers Ian Paisley jnr (who had to resign in February 2008 and was succeeded by Jeffrey Donaldson, Robin Newton and Jonathan Bell) and Gerry Kelly, who soldiered on until succeeded in 2011 by Martina Anderson.

The NIMF was told to abandon reconciliation work and instructed that unless it included perpetrators, all its funding would be cut.

In 2012 it was subsumed into the Victims and Survivors Service, which depended on Stormont for all its funding and presumably did what it was told.

In the most recent essay, 'The peace process has destroyed the ability to deliver for victims', retired Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan forecasts an inevitable slide "into a one-sided process that focuses on those who try to prevent the violence, rather than those who murdered", which is partly a result of "an imbalance in legal and political representation when it comes to demands for investigations, which are overwhelmingly from one side of the community".

How has this happened?

"Government made the mistake years ago of letting the term 'collusion' be perverted from all real sense of meaning and then weaponised for political ends," he said.

"It must not be allowed to do the same with 'justice' itself."

Outraged academics, clergy, journalists, lawyers, politicians, victims and others have been queuing up to contribute to the Legacy Scandal series. Anyone who cares about truth and justice should read it.The disappearance of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may seem far away from our own daily concerns, but in a broad sense it affects all of us.

Khashoggi, who had inside knowledge about the darkness of the Saudi regime, was a columnist with The Washington Post. His death in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul has been a deeply-troubling episode that is posing questions for the West and its relationship with the kingdom.

The savage conduct of the Saudi authorities has been deeply disturbing, but hardly surprising. At first they insisted that Mr Khashoggi had left the consulate unharmed, but since then they have been shifting their story in the face of international pressure.

The Saudis are now offering a highly implausible version that the journalist died as the result of a fight, whereas the Turkish authorities are claiming that he was tortured and beheaded, and that his body was dismembered and smuggled out of the consulate.

The Turks are still searching for his remains and have promised to release the details of the entire horrific episode.

The Saudis' behaviour points to an over-arching arrogance where they believed they could literally get away with murder, in this case the death of a high-profile critic in one of their consulates.

This attitude is partly the result of past examples where the world at large, including leading European nations, turned a blind eye to the excesses of the Saudis on their own soil, and their involvement with the internal affairs of neighbouring states.

However, attitudes are changing in an era of State-sponsored executions, including the recent attempt by Russia to assasinate one of its enemies on British soil.

The reluctance, thus far, to react to Saudi excesses was because the West makes huge profits in selling arms to Saudi Arabia, and also the economic power of Riyadh, based on its huge reserves of oil.

In his chaotic and self-serving response, US President Trump has been quite explicit that any action against the Saudis will stop short of costing jobs, though this crisis is far from over.

The West, including Trump, must not shirk the task of holding the Saudis to account for the vile murder of Mr Khashoggi.

With other rogue states looking on, the free world must send out a clear message that this flagrant breach of international relations must not, and will not, be tolerated.Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 20th October 2018 - Party leader Robin Swann MLA pictured at the Ulster Unionist Party Conference 2018 in the Armagh City Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

UUP leader Robin Swann faced a trio of difficult tasks at his party conference on Saturday: attacking the DUP in a way that resonated with ordinary unionists; articulating the means of revival for his own party; and stopping television viewers from flicking to Chelsea versus Manchester United.

Criticising the DUP was the relatively easy part. The conference faithful had already been entertained by some knockabout from Lord Empey.

The former leader derided how the DUP had turned moderate nationalists into republicans and mislaid unionism's majority.

Empey scorned Nigel Dodds's new "Che Guevara guerrilla war" role at Westminster. Empey wondered whether the new guerrillas should be called the "Red Berets" or "Clontibret Fusiliers" in tribute to the antics of two previous DUP leaders. Swann was much more serious in his criticisms, claiming there was a "battle to save the Union from the DUP". Its antics, he claimed, had alienated a very wide range of people - unionists, nationalists and British taxpayers.

In a neat dig at Arlene Foster, he insisted the DUP was both "accountable and responsible" for its actions. Yet, on Brexit, there were no differences of substance between the UUP and DUP.

Swann slammed the backstop idea for turning Northern Ireland into an "EU protectorate" in language that will surely be repeated by Foster, Dodds et al at their own conference next month.

And the UUP leader's demand that the Taoiseach stop "poking unionists in the eye" and to "step away from the microphone" drew some of the loudest applause.

So, the tough part for the UUP leader was articulating a clear vision that would make DUP or non-voting unionists switch to the UUP.

This is even more difficult given there is no chance to operationalise that vision anyway. Devolution appears over for now, so any DUP misdemeanours at Stormont cannot be directly punished by voters.

The UUP cannot really display its own claims to governing competence. Swann called for the appointment of ministers to run Northern Ireland, seemingly recognition that he has called time on the Bradley-esque fiction that devolution is restorable.

Insofar as we got a clear sketch of the UUP's unionism, Swann's denunciation of "sectarianism, racism and homophobia" was as good at it got.

His insistence that anyone who supported such things was in the wrong party was well-received. But in the five Assembly votes on same-sex marriage, 94% of UUP MLAs voted against the legalisation.

They would certainly distinguish between their defence of traditional marriage and homophobia (as do DUP MLAs), critics might not.

Swann's vision of unionism is of the contractual, non-religious, common bonds with England, Scotland and Wales variety.

He derided the pledge of Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald to "allow" unionists to remain British, arguing that what is fixed and innate does not need permission. So not much rapprochement there.

The UUP leader therefore talked up next May's elections as a "battle about what type of unionism you want".

Curiously, Swann talked up UUP chances on the basis of a 7% increase in his party's vote in the Carrick Castle by-election.

He presumably hoped that no one had noticed that the DUP captured the seat with a near 12% increase in vote share?

Overall, Swann's speech reflected the man: sincere and committed.

He faces an enormous task rebuilding the electoral fortunes of his party, which declined under its four previous leaders.

This competently delivered speech was perhaps a start.

And he finished in time for the second half of Chelsea vs Man United.

Jon Tonge is professor of politics at the University of Liverpool. The Ulster Unionist Party: Country Before Party? by Tom Hennessey, Maire Braniff, Jim McAuley, Jon Tonge and Sophie Whiting (Oxford University Press) appears this December.Two child rapists are living in adjacent flats in a quiet corner of Belfast - sparking panic among parents.

Leo Hoad (40) and David Page (46) are holed up in the same apartment block in south Belfast, just yards away from a nursery and two primary schools.

Furious locals contacted Sunday Life after seeing them out and about together, casually shopping in a local supermarket.

One said: We understand sex offenders have to be put somewhere, but its madness to put them in the middle of a residential area surrounded by schools.

Both of them were convicted of raping children. There has to be more suitable places.

At least if they were in some sort of bail hostel we know they would be monitored. Having them in flats with no probation staff about is asking for trouble.

Because Hoad and Page are child rapists and the subjects of Sexual Offences Prevention Orders (SOPO), they must stay indoors for a period in the morning and afternoon when kids are going to and leaving school.

But they are free to come and go as they please at any other time of day, and are often seen out and about together.

Page has also been spotted attending sex offender group therapy meetings in the area. His pal Hoad, originally of Enniskillen, has a girlfriend and is now a father.

Our source added: Everyone wants them out of this area. As parents, we are at our wits end. People are afraid to let their kids out to play knowing they are knocking about.

A spokeswoman for the Probation Service said: Stable accommodation is a significant factor in preventing re-offending and reducing the risk offenders present.

Offenders live in the community unless prevented from doing so by conditions imposed by the court or as part of licence conditions.

They are subject to multi-agency monitoring. If there are specific concerns about an individual these should be passed to the police.

Hoad is considered one of Northern Irelands most dangerous paedophiles, having admitted 11 charges of rape and two indecent assaults against two children. He was 13 when he started an eight-year sex assault campaign against his victims, who were aged just seven and eight.

In 2012 Hoad, who is on the sex offenders register for life, was sentenced to seven years prison and a further three years probation.

In 2016 he was jailed again for breaching the terms of his early release, but freed a second time the following year.

David Page, originally from Lurgan, has been abusing kids for more than 25 years, with his first conviction occurring in 1991.

In 1997 the paedophile was sentenced to seven years behind bars for child rape. His most recent court appearance was in 2014, when he was caged for three years for pouncing on a six-year-old girl as she walked to a friends home. Page took her into his house and sexually abused her.Christian persecution is on the rise across the world, and in far too many countries, the authorities either turn a blind eye to the rising body count or tacitly encourage the persecution. Some Christians, however, are fortunate enough to see their attackers brought to justice. Egypt recently tried and sentenced 17 Islamic radicals to death for their roles in one of several massacres that specifically targeted Coptic Christians for slaughter.

The verdict against the 17 extremists came with the approval of the Grand Mufi, Egypts top religious authority. In addition to the 17 who were sentenced to death, a further 19 extremist were given life sentences, one radical was given a 10 year sentence and nine others were sentenced to nine to 15 years in prison. The extremists were convicted of belonging to ISIS and plotting terror attacks against Christian churches and security forces. The specific attacks the radicals were connected with included a suicide bombing inside a chapel adjacent to St. Marks Cathedral in Cairo which killed at least 25 people in December 2016. The extremists were also connected to the 2017 Palm Sunday massacres which killed a total of at least 45 people.

Christians have long complained about facing discrimination in the Muslim-majority nation. Christians make up roughly 10 percent of the Egyptian population and say that the authorities often turn a blind eye to sectarian attacks or intimidation. As such, many are happy to see that there is justice being handed down to the extremists who murdered so many of their Christian brothers and sisters. That said, others are hesitant to applaud the ruling, not because of the sentence or crime, but because they do not want to endorse the military courts in which the trial was held. According to Najia Bounaim, the head of the North African section of Amnesty International, Egypts military courts are known for considering confessions extracted through torture as admissible evidence. As such, some Christians are conflicted about the verdict. They are thrilled to see that some manner of justice is being done rather than the authorities continuing to turn a blind eye to the slaughter of Coptic Christians, but Christians are also aware of the dark side of the military courts. It makes for a bittersweet reaction to the verdict, but the fact that the extremists were found guilty has lent many Christians a sense of hesitant hope that other murderers of Christians will eventually face justice as well.Sen. Antonio Trillanes speaks to reporters outside his Philippine Senate office after a judge denied the justice departments request for an arrest warrant against him, Oct. 22, 2018.

A Philippine court on Monday rejected a government-requested arrest warrant against an opposition senator who has become the most vocal critic of President Rodrigo Duterte.

Regional Trial Court Judge Andres Bartolome Soriano denied the governments petition for Sen. Antonio Trillanes arrest. He also junked Dutertes claim that Trillanes never formally applied for amnesty and failed to express guilt  two elements required by law before one can receive pardon.

The rule of law won and democracy won, Trillanes, 47, told reporters at the Senate after the courts ruling.



They should be prepared now that I have been able to rest, he said, smiling. There is no more possibility that I will be arrested again.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told reporters the government would appeal.

Trillanes, a leading critic of Dutertes drug war that has left thousands dead, was a navy officer when he led more than 300 troops in a 2003 mutiny, during which they demanded military reforms and the resignation of then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.



The daylong siege in the countrys financial district ended swiftly and the soldiers surrendered and were jailed. Arroyo, a known ally of Duterte, had promised to look into their allegations, and her successor, Benigno Aquino III, pardoned Trillanes in 2010.

But Duterte revoked that pardon last month and ordered Trillanes arrest.

On Sept. 25, Trillanes turned himself in on a separate rebellion charge and a different court allowed him bail. The senator had termed his legal troubles as the death knell of democracy under Duterte, whose drug war since becoming president two years ago has been condemned internationally.

At least 4,500 suspected drug addicts and dealers have died in the anti-drug campaign, according to the national police. Authorities say those deaths took place during legitimate gunbattles with law-enforcement officers, putting the blame on unidentified vigilantes for thousands of other killings. Rights groups estimate the death toll at 12,000.

Since taking office, Duterte had been consolidating his power base by naming retired generals to his cabinet. He also challenged the military to mount a rebellion against him and has claimed that Trillanes and other political opponents had been plotting with communist rebels to oust him.

Earlier this year, Duterte cited an intelligence report of a foreign country as basis for his statement without offering any other proof.Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, will America become the most taxed nation on earth?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesThis MoU is valid for two years to provide the necessary services according to the needs of patients.

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) and Qatar Diabetes Association (QDA), a member of Qatar Foundation, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to co-operate in supporting and assisting diabetes patients in the country.

The MoU was signed by the Executive Director of Qatar Diabetes Association Dr Abdullah Omar al-Hamaq and Executive Director of QRCS Yousef Abdullah al-Sada.

The MoU reflects the interest of the QRCS in co-operation and partnership with various State institutions, especially as it places medical and health services at the top of its priorities in the development of the community through a variety of programmes and activities.

This MoU is valid for two years to provide the necessary services according to the needs of patients, in order to achieve a healthy, comfortable and safe environment by covering the costs of treatment of those unable, based on social case studies to determine their eligibility for assistance.Reciba en su email: noticias de ultima hora, analisis tecnicos o el cierre de mercado

Email no valido Nombre requerido Recibira las informaciones mas relevantes del dia en tiempo real Que informacion desea recibir? Noticias de Ultima hora Boletin Cierre de Mercado Boletin analisis tecnico Boletin Fundsnews Debe seleccionar un tipo de boletin Acepto la Politica de privacidad Debe aceptar la politica de privacidad Responsable EMPRESAS DEL GRUPO WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Finalidad La remision de informacion, novedades y promociones Establecimiento o mantenimiento de Relaciones Comerciales. Legitimacion Consentimiento del interesado. Interes legitimo en el desarrollo de la relacion comercial Destinatario Empresas del Grupo WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Derechos Acceso, rectificacion, supresion, limitacion, oposicion y portabilidad Informacion adicional Politica de Privacidad de nuestra pagina Web + INFORMACIONPR Newswire

DUBLIN, Oct. 22, 2018

DUBLIN, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global stem cell and regenerative medicine market reached USD 10,200 Million in 2016 by registering a CAGR of 4.8% across the globe. Moreover, the market is expected to garner USD 14745.7 Million by the end of 2024.

The global demand for stem cell and regenerative medicine is increasing due to the increase in old age population globally. Further, growing awareness towards stem cell and regenerative medicine is key growth driver for global stem cell and regenerative medicine market over the forecast period.

North America is slated to account for a leading share of 39.7% by 2024 in the stem cell and regenerative medicine market. The growth in the region can be attributed to presence of well-established healthcare industry along with expanded funding from the governments organizations. Besides, in 2015, U.S. health care spending increased 5.8% to reach USD 3.2 trillion which is also expected to impel the growth of stem Cell and regenerative medicine market in the North America. U.S. is the prominent market driving the growth in the region.

Additionally, U.S. stem cell and regenerative medicine market reached USD 3442 Million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD 5056.4 Million by the end of 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 4.9% over the forecast period i.e. 2017-2024. U.S. stem Cell and regenerative medicine market is expected to achieve Y-o-Y growth rate of 5.6% in 2024 as compared to previous year.

Europe market is expected to expand at a significant CAGR of 4.9% during the forecast period i.e. 2017-2024. Growth and expansion of pharmaceutical industry in the region is expected to be the key factor behind the growth of stem Cell and regenerative medicine market in the Europe region. Further, increasing application of stem Cell and regenerative medicine is expected to fuel the growth of Europe stem Cell and regenerative medicine market during the forecast period. France & Germany are the major contributor to the growth of stem Cell and regenerative medicine market.

Global stem cell and regenerative medicine market is segmented on the basis of product into adult stem cells, human embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and very small embryonic like stem cells. Among these segments, adult stem cells segment (82.9% share in 2016) occupies the largest market of stem cell and regenerative medicine across the globe. Further, global adult stem cells market is anticipated to reach USD 12,290.1 Million by the end of 2024 from USD 8,456.6 Million in 2016. Moreover, this segment is anticipated to flourish at a CAGR of 4.9% over the forecast period. In addition, wide scale application of adult stem cells in the cell regeneration of various diseases is expected to supplement the growth of global adult stem cells market.

In end-user segment, the pharmaceutical industry segment is estimated to remain highest during the forecast period. This segment contributed around 82.9% market share of total stem Cell and regenerative medicine market in 2016. Further, this segment is projected to capture 83.1% market share by 2024. Further, pharmaceutical industry segment is projected to achieve Y-o-Y growth rate of 5.5% in 2024 as compared to previous year.

STEMCELL Technologies Inc., AMAG Pharmaceuticals Inc., Osiris Therapeutics, Inc., are some of the prominent players of stem cell and regenerative medicine market.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

2. Research Methodology

3. Risk Analysis

3.1. Demand Risk

3.2. Supply Risk

4. Top Countries with Highest demand for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine - By Region

4.1. North America

4.2. Europe

4.3. Asia-Pacific

4.4. Middle East & Africa

5. Global Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Market Size (USD Million) and Forecast, 2016-2024

6. Market Dynamics & Its Impact Analysis

6.1. Growth Drivers

6.2. Challenges

6.3. Trends

6.4. Opportunities

7. Global Market Segmentation Analysis

7.1. By Product Type Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.1. Adult Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.1.1. Neural Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.1.2. Hematopoietic Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.1.3. Mesenchymal Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.1.4. Umbilical Cord Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.1.5. Epithelial Stem cells and Skin Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.1.6. Others Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024ers

7.1.1.7. Human Embryonic Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-20247.1.2. Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.3. Very Small Embryonic Like Stem Cells Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.1.4. Market Attractiveness By Product Type

7.1.5. BPS Analysis By Product Type

7.2. By Application Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1. Regenerative Medicine Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1.1. Neurology Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1.2. Oncology Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1.3. Cardiovascular & Myocardial Infraction Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1.4. Diabetes Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1.5. Hematology & Immunology Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1.6. Orthopedics Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.1.7. Others Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.2. Drug Discovery and Development Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.2.3. Market Attractiveness By Application

7.2.4. BPS Analysis By Application

7.3. By Technology Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.1. Cell Acquisition Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.1.1. Bone Marrow Harvest Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.1.2. Umbilical Cord Blood Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.1.3. Apheresis Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.1.4. Others Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.2. Cell Production Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.2.1. Therapeutic Cloning Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.2.2. IVF Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.2.3. Cell Culture Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.2.4. Isolation Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.3. Cryopreservation Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.3.4. Expansion and Sub-Culture Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.4. By End Use Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.4.1. Hospitals Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.4.2. Medical Industry Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.4.3. Research Institutes Market Size (USD Million) & Y-O-Y Growth Analysis (%), 2016-2024

7.4.4. Market Attractiveness By End Use

7.4.5. BPS Analysis By End Use

7.5. By Region Market Size (USD Million), Y-O-Y Growth & Share Analysis (%), 2016-2024

8. Porter's Five Force Model Analysis

9. Competitive Landscape

9.1. Competitive Positioning of Major Players in Global Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Market

9.2. Company Profiles

9.2.1. Sangamo Therapeutics

9.2.2. Pluristem Therapeutics

9.2.3. BIOTIME, Inc.

9.2.4. Takara Bio Inc

9.2.5. Cellular Engineering Technologies Inc.

9.2.6. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

9.2.7. Athersys Inc.

9.2.8. Osiris Therapeutics, Inc

9.2.9. STEMCELL Technologies Inc

9.2.10. AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/g6jlbd/global_stem_cell?w=5

Did you know that we also offer Custom Research? Visit our Custom Research page to learn more and schedule a meeting with our Custom Research Manager.

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

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SOURCE Research and MarketsPR Newswire

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 22, 2018

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The annual Philadelphia Magazine Whiskey & Fine Spirits Festival will take place Thursday, Oct. 25, at Lincoln Financial Field. Admission for VIP ticket holders begins at 5:00 PM, while the Grand Tasting will be held from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM.

The event will feature more than 250 premium distilled spirits, including whiskey, scotch, vodka, tequila, gin, rum, cordials, and handcrafted cocktails.

Special guest Robert Irvine, world-class chef, fitness authority, author, and philanthropist, will be on hand to host a meet and greet featuring cocktail demonstrations and sign purchased bottles of Boardroom Spirits. Irvine discovered Boardroom Spirits at a charity fundraiser in Philadelphia and fell in love with the quality of the product and the brand. He is now a co-owner of the company. Festival participants 21 years of age and older can sample the following spirits:

Festival-goers can also visit a variety of interactive "spirit lounges" highlighting handcrafted cocktails in settings from a tropical oasis to a moonshine distillery to the southern jazz scene. Visual artist, musician, and activist Laolu Senbanjo will appear as a special guest at the Belvedere Vodka Lounge to greet fans and sign limited edition bottles of his Afromysteric-inspired design.

Many of the spirits offered for tasting will be available for purchase at the onsite Fine Wine & Good Spirits store. Food from local restaurants will also be available so attendees may enjoy responsibly. Attendees must be at least 21 years old and provide valid identification to enter.

VIP tickets  which include exclusive tastings of ultra-premium spirits, early access to the tasting floor, and a $15 token for the onsite Fine Wine & Good Spirits store  are available for $175. Grand Tasting tickets are $115, and group discounts are available. Designated driver tickets are $30 each. All tickets may be purchased online at http://www.phillymag.com/whiskeyfest/. A portion of ticket proceeds will benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter.

The PLCB regulates the distribution of beverage alcohol in Pennsylvania, operates more than 600 wine and spirits stores statewide, and licenses 20,000 alcohol producers, retailers, and handlers. The PLCB also works to reduce and prevent dangerous and underage drinking through partnerships with schools, community groups, and licensees. Taxes and store profits  totaling $16.5 billion since the agency's inception  are returned to Pennsylvania's General Fund, which finances Pennsylvania's schools, health and human services programs, law enforcement, and public safety initiatives, among other important public services. The PLCB also provides financial support for the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, other state agencies, and local municipalities across the state. For more information about the PLCB, visit www.lcb.pa.gov.

MEDIA CONTACT: Shawn M. Kelly, 717.783.8864

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/world-class-spirits-to-be-poured-during-annual-philadelphia-magazine-whiskey--fine-spirits-festival-300735082.html

SOURCE Pennsylvania Liquor Control BoardProponents of the idea say the bridge will cut journey times between the cities from three hours to 30 minutes, which they say will enable commuters and tourists to easily move around the region.

The total cost of the project is $20 billion, according to The Guardian newspaper.

The world's longest sea-bridge connecting Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China will be launched October 24, at a time when Beijing seeks to tighten its grip on its territories. "But this bridge is very visible ... you can see it from the plane when you fly in to Hong Kong, and it's breathtaking", lawmaker Claudia Mo told CNN earlier in the year.

Zheng was director of China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, and was a member of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) top-level Central Committee.

Hong Kong's secretary for transport and housing, Frank Chan Fan, said: "The bridge is not just a mega transport infrastructure jointly built by Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau".

For China, it is a plan to develop its Greater Bay Area in terms of technological innovation and economic success.

Chinese President Xi Jingping visited the bridge in July of previous year, and is expected to attend the opening ceremony on Tuesday. "There's a clear symbolic value of being the world's longest bridge re [garding] nationalism and state-building".

Like Hong Kong, Macau is a semi-autonomous region with a separate legal system from mainland China.

"By making Hong Kong an integral part of the Greater Bay area, it will bring Hong Kong closer to mainland China, notwithstanding the official commitment for the "one country, two systems" model", said Tsang. Most drivers will have to park at the Hong Kong port, switching to shuttle bus or special hire cars.The Hamas-led committee organizing the riots released a video marking the 30th week since the "March of Return" campaign was launched with the slogan: "Together Gaza rises up and the West Bank unites."The video calls the Palestinians to attend Friday's riots in droves".

However, Israeli defense officials said it was the quietest protest since the "March of Return" events began earlier this year.

Since March, Palestinians have moved right up to the border fence every Friday and occasionally breached it, leading to clashes in which more than 200 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed.

The militant Hamas group praised the turnout as a challenge to Israel, which was mulling a large-scale military response after a rocket was sacked from Gaza on Wednesday and destroyed a house in southern Israel.

According to the ministry, two of the injured were in a serious condition. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed "very strong action" if attacks continued.

The IDF said protesters broke through the fence in three locations before immediately returning to the coastal enclave, with Israeli soldiers opening fire at the suspects in one case.

On Wednesday, a Palestinian rocket then destroyed a home in southern Israel.

Israeli fighter jets struck 20 Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip after a Grad rocket fired from Gaza hit a house in Beersheba, 40 kilometers (25 miles) away, causing extensive damage to the building..

Much may depend on the scope and intensity of a planned Palestinian protest at the border with Israel on Friday, where often violent demonstrations have been held over the past six months. Egypt and the United Nations have attempted to negotiate a truce between Israel and Hamas for weeks in a bid to ease tensions in the beleaguered Gaza Strip. Israel retaliated with airstrikes and has beefed up its military forces along the border.

Following the Israeli announcement of an intensified crackdown, witnesses at the Friday protests reported the deployment of many armored vehicles.

PA spokesman Yusuf al-Mahmoud essentially stated in his own remarks that Israel deserves any violence directed toward it, which Palestinian officials routinely define as a "natural response" to Israeli "crimes". One Israeli soldier has died.DeGeneres eventually chimed in, "You're welcome, Naomi". And Jordan, being the nice guy he is, responded to Osaka, congratulating her on her win over Serena Williams. "But seriously I want to invite you to the Creed 2 premiere as a bday present", Jordan tweeted alongside another shirtless photo of himself and asking her to accompany him to the premiere.

Ellen DeGeneres has done everything she possibly could to help Naomi Osaka bag a date with Michael B. Jordan, and now her constant meddling has finally paid off. But the birthday message Jordan tweeted for Osaka is what really captured fans' attention. Who knows - what started as a joke from DeGeneres could turn into an actual relationship. Because public thirst is always embarrassing, Osaka was quick to jokingly reply, "pls block me". DeGeneres first tried to play matchmaker by sending a selfie of herself and Osaka to Jordan. If not, she'll make sure it is, it seems. "The way you carry yourself with such humility and grace, it's really wonderful to see".

But apparently that wasn't the last time the two would interact.

"I'm just trying to help", DeGeneres insisted, after telling the athlete she'd try and set them up right away.A suspect has been arrested after hospital staff reported a man attended on Sunday with a stab wound to his back, police said.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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A suspect has been arrested after hospital staff reported a man attended on Sunday with a stab wound to his back, police said.

Hospital staff reported the injury to police, who attended to Brandon Regional Health Centre and learned the victim was at First Street and Richmond Avenue when an unknown suspect grabbed him from behind and stabbed him.

The victim then walked to the hospital for medical assistance.

Police then learned the suspect had gone to the Brandon Police station and turned himself in for stabbing the victim.

The 20-year-old man from Rolling River First Nation was arrested for aggravated assault and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and was lodged at Brandon Correctional Centre. He will appear in court on Oct. 22.

 The Brandon SunBy Tom Tuite

Vodafone Ireland has been fined 2,000 for unsolicited marketing calls to customers.

Vodafone and PC World owners DSG Retail Ireland Ltd were the latest companies to be prosecuted at Dublin District Court by the Data Protection Commissioner for breaking e-marketing regulations through unsolicited spam emails and marketing calls.

Vodafone's two unsolicited marketing calls led to it being fined and an unwanted email from DSG Retail Ireland Ltd cost that company 1,500.

In evidence, Assistant Data Protection Commissioner Tony Delaney told Judge John Brennan that on May 17, 2018 and the following day a complainant had four missed calls from the phone company and on the fifth time he answered.

He told the tele-sales staff member he did not want any more marketing calls and he also received email confirmation of that.

In June, however, he had more calls from Vodafone about renewing his contract.

Mr Delaney learned the error happened as a result of Vodafone upgrading their system for GDPR. Aside from the customer's complaint, Vodafone also self reported the breach to the Data Protection Commissioner.

Some 22 people had been affected by the issue, Judge Brennan heard.

Mr Delaney said the second Vodafone complaint came from a man who had received frequent calls in May about a broadband offer which he did not want. An incorrect code was entered into the Vodafone system which indicated he wanted a call-back instead of stopping the calls.

Prosecuting solicitor Aoife O'Carroll told the court Vodafone had prior data protection convictions in 2011 and 2013.

Gavin Woods, the phone company's solicitor, said the first breach was a system error, ironically involving the obligations to comply with data protection, however, it has been fixed.

He explained that the second breach was human error and since then staff have had further training. The firm had also agreed to pay prosecution costs, he said.

Judge Brennan noted the firm's co-operation and that it had apologised to customers however he described the offences as particularly annoying and fined Vodafone 1,000 on each of the two charges.

Mr Delaney said DSG Retails Ireland's case related to a spam email to a woman in November 2017 offering Christmas deals from Currys and PC World.

The woman had given her email address only for the purpose of getting a copy of a receipt for a television but she had not consented to marketing emails.

The firm had no prior convictions, the court was told.

Defence solicitor Adrian Lennon told the court it happened as a result of a technical bug and measures have been taken to prevent it happening again. Judge Brennan noted DSG Retail Ireland had also paid prosecution costs.

He said it was very irritating and annoying that a customer's wishes were ignored.

He told the company that if it donated 1,500 to the Peter McVerry trust he would spare them a conviction and strike out the case.

Adjourning the case until a later date in November he said that otherwise he would record a conviction and fine it 2,500.Khashoggi vanished on October 2 after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul seeking paperwork for his planned marriage to Cengiz.

In a sign of growing pressure on Saudi Arabia, Turkey said it will announce details of its investigation into the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Tuesday and US congressional leaders said the Gulf kingdom - in particular its crown prince - should face severe consequences for the death of the writer in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Asked why the government's version of Mr Khashoggi's death kept changing, the official said the government's initial account was based on "false information reported internally at the time".

Saudi Arabian officials do not know details of how dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in their consulate in Istanbul or where his body is, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir said on Sunday. The president has raised the possibility of imposing sanctions but said halting an arms deal would "hurt us more than it would hurt them".

"That is unacceptable in any government". He adds Saudi officials do not know the whereabouts of Khashoggi's remains.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she backs a freeze on arms exports to Saudi Arabia following the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi. "There obviously was a tremendous mistake made, and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up".

"Do I think he did it?"

Barring an unlikely "confession" from Prince Mohammed, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff said Sunday, "the president is going to accept the crown prince's denials like he's accepted Mr Putin's denials and Kim Jong Un's denials".

"Corker tells CNN's "State of the Union" that the crown prince has "now crossed a line and there has to be a punishment and a price paid for that".

"Let's let this play out, but my guess is that at the end of the day the United States and the rest of the world will believe fully that he did it", Corker said.

After denying any involvement in the disappearance of Mr Khashoggi, 59, for two weeks, Saudi Arabia on Saturday morning said he had died in a fistfight at the consulate.

"I agree with all those who say when it comes to our already limited arms exports (to Saudi Arabia) that they can not take place in the current situation", she told reporters at her party headquarters. Trump added that he has yet to be shown any evidence by intelligence officials that would make him believe MBS had any direct role.

The EU said the continuing investigation should bring "proper clarity on the circumstances of the killing and ensuring full accountability of all those responsible for it".

Several senior members of US President Donald Trump's Republican Party said they believed Prince Mohammed was linked to the killing, and one called for a "collective" Western response if a link is proved. Speaking late Saturday after a campaign rally in Nevada, Trump said he needs to learn more about the killing and will be working with Congress on the USA response. That explanation has sparked allegations of a cover-up meant to shield the powerful crown prince.

Trump said: "We'd like to find out where it is and what happened".By Ann O'Loughlin

Judgement has been reserved at the Supreme Court on an appeal over whether An Bord Pleanala breached its obligations in how it approved the first phase of tech giant Apples planned 850m data centre in Co Galway.

While Apple is not proceeding with the Athenry project, the courts decision is likely to affect the Boards consideration of similar data centre developments.

The five judge Supreme Court heard an appeal today by two objectors arising from the High Courts dismissal of their challenge over how the Board dealt with the companys proposal.

The appeal was brought by Sinead Fitzpatrick, who lives close to the planned development, and Allan Daly, of Athenry.

The proposed Athenry project which Apple are no longer proceeding with

It was opposed by the Board and the State but Apple was not involved.

The central issue concerns the manner in which the Board was required by law to have regard to the potential expansion of the data centre project from one data hall to the possible construction of a total of eight data halls.

The Supreme Court will also consider whether a point of law arises concerning the application of broad general principles of EU law in particular cases which should be referred to the Court of Justice of the EU.

Michael McDowell SC, for the appellants, argued the Board radically misapplied the law in the way it granted permission for the first phase.

The Board cannot permit a salami style slicing and dicing of major projects to avoid hard questions and a genuine environmental impact assessment (EIA) of such projects, particularly the impact of their energy demands, he argued.

Eight data halls would increase the total demand on the national grid by between six and eight per cent but the Board conducted an EIA for just one hall, not eight, he said.

Without assessing whether this was a sustainable development from an energy point of view, the Board inspector took the view employment considerations outweighed whatever doubt exists on the energy front, he said.

The Industrial Development Authority had claimed about 300 construction workers would be engaged and the project would involve total investment of about 850m over the estimated 15 years it would take to build all eight halls.

If jobs are to be weighed against energy issues, there must be an effort to balance out the two but there was no effort here to show how 300 jobs justifies a 6 per cent increase in energy requirements, Mr McDowell argued.

Apple had said the centre would be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy but the inspector had concluded the best that could be secured was average renewability figures over the 15 years, he added.

Nuala Butler SC, for the Board, said it was required to take into account as far as practicable the potential build out of the Apple masterplan for eight data halls.

The Board took the masterplan into account on a broad level but disputed an EIA on the entire masterplan was required, she said.

There was no deliberate project splitting and nothing curious about how Apple applied for permission. The Board had conducted no EIA on the masterplan because it was not granting consent for the masterplan, she said.

All eight data halls were not intended to come on stream until some time between 2030-35 and it would have been completely inappropriate for the Board to decide in 2015 what was going to happen in 2035.

Energy demands were considered and while Apple could not show it would use 100 per cent renewable energy, that situation but could be different in 2035, she added.

James Connolly SC, for the State, supported the Boards position and also maintained there was no requirement to carry out an EIA on the entire project.By Ann O'Loughlin

The law was radically misapplied by An Bord Pleanala in the way it granted permission for the first phase of tech giant Apples planned 850m data centre in Athenry, Co Galway, the Supreme Court has heard.

The Board cannot permit a salami-style slicing and dicing of major projects so as to avoid hard questions and a genuine environmental impact assessment of those, particularly the impact of their energy demands, Michael McDowell SC argued.

While Apple has since decided not to proceed with the Athenry centre, a five-judge Supreme Court today began hearing an appeal by two objectors addressing a range of legal issues arising from how the Board dealt with the companys proposal.

The court's decision is expected to impact on how the Board deals with similar projects.

The appeal is by Sinead Fitzpatrick, who lives close to the planned development, and Allan Daly, of Athenry.

It is opposed by the Board and the State but Apple is not involved.

The Supreme Court is considering a range of issues arising from the High Courts rejection of the objectors' case.

It will consider whether a point of law arises concerning the application of broad general principles of EU law in particular cases and, if so, whether it should refer issues to the Court of Justice of the EU.

The central issue concerns the manner in which the Board was required by law to have regard to the potential expansion of the data centre project from one data hall to the possible construction of a total of eight data halls.

The objectors have claimed eight data halls would increase the total demand on the national grid by between 6% and 8% and the overall grid connection planned at Athenry would have a footprint equal to Dundrum town centre.

In submissions, their counsel, Mr McDowell, said, despite accepting its own inspectors report the data centre would be unsuitable for the Athenry site unless all eight proposed data halls were built, the Board conducted an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for just one hall, not eight.

Without assessing whether this was a sustainable development from an energy point of view, the inspector took the view the employment considerations outweighed whatever doubt exists on the energy front, he said.

The government has set no national guidelines in relation to sustainable energy requirements, he noted.

The court was told the Industrial Development Authority had claimed about 300 construction workers would be engaged on the project and it would involve total investment of about 850m over the estimated 15 years it would take to build all eight data halls.

If jobs are to be weighed against energy issues, there must be an effort to balance out the two and there was no such effort here, Mr McDowell argued.

While Apple had said the centre would be powered by 100% renewable energy, the inspector had concluded the best that could be secured was average renewability figures over the 15 years.

The issue remains relevant for reasons the Sustainable Energy Authority says we must reduce energy consumption and other data centre developments are proposed, he added.

The appeal continues.Draculas origins in Dublins North Inner City were revealed for the first time today at the unveiling of a plaque and mural to Bram Stoker in Buckingham Street.

The fact that Bram Stoker had lived in this area had remained unknown until this year, said Lord Mayor of Dublin Nial Ring, who unveiled the plaque.

"Stokers time here had a big influence on much of his work, notably his classic, Dracula," he said.

The inspiration for his Dracula creation included the nearby Suicide Plot on Clonliffe Road where people who took their own lives were buried with a stake driven through their hearts to ensure they would not return as vampires.

Stories also abounded about people being buried alive to stop the spread of disease during the 1834 cholera epidemic. During Stokers time here, there was a campaign to close down an abattoir across the road which emitted rivers of blood down the street.

In celebration of its former resident, the theme for this years Big Scream Halloween Community Festival in the city is Dracula.

Over the years, anti-social behaviour has become synonymous with Halloween in the north east inner city. The Big Scream Festival will celebrate this culturally rich community and also create an alternative focus for those who could get involved in dangerous anti-social behavour. It will help create a safe environment in which to celebrate Halloween.

"When I was growing up in the North Inner City our focus at Halloween was on bonfires, Trick or Treat (or as we to say "help the Halloween Party") and getting off our homework ("apples are nice, nuts are better, please Mr Murphy, let us off our ekker"!)" commented the Lord Mayor.

Now the emphasis is also on fun, safe and inclusive events with some subliminal education thrown in for good measure!

The week-long programme of events in Ballybough, North Strand, Summerhill, North Wall, Sean MacDermott and Sheriff Street are designed to ensure that everyone in the community is included with talks, films, theatre, afternoon teas and individual events for the communities  not forgetting torchlit Gothic walking tours tracing the route of Stokers local influences.

Dracula (David Hurlihy) with the Lord Mayor of Dublin Nial Ring.

"The Big Scream Festival has an ethos of community engagement, participation and empowerment at its core and it aims to give people an enhanced sense of pride in this area," said festival chairman, Peter OConnor.

The goal is for the community to take control the Halloween, to create an event that the young people in the community can engage with without then also engaging in anti-social activities that are linked to illegal bonfires.

The culmination of the festival on Halloween Night will be a Spooktacular on pedestrianised Sean MacDermott Street and Killarney Street with free fairground rides and attractions - and two haunted houses.

The highlight for Dracula fans will be a chance to enter the Bram Stoker house which will bring to life some of the elements of the Gothic horror novel.

Enter if you dare!By David Raleigh

The Late Late Christmas Toy Show kicked off the first leg of its madcap nationwide auditions tour in Limerick City today, with host Ryan Tubridy heralding in the festive fun with a trumpet, and wearing one of his trademark toy show Christmas jumpers.

Tubridy, who will present his tenth Toy Show on November 30, joked that the competition between those vying for a place on the show, is vicious.

Its like the Hunger Games with tinsel.

People want to do whatever they can to get onto this programme, because for whatever reason, people seem to like the joviality, the shenanigans, and the goof. The world needs more of that, because the place has gone very serious.

Anna Doody, (11), from Newcastle West, Co Limerick, who performed ABBA disco hit, Dancing Queen, was in awe.

I can't sleep at night thinking about it all the time. I think Ryan is hilarious he's so funnyHe looks like Dermot Bannon," she said.

Anna was then gobsmacked when introduced to another hero, All-Ireland winning hurler Shane Dowling, making a guest appearance with the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

Drumming troupe, Drumadore, from Headford in Galway made themselves heard with a cacophony of swirls and beats. Former Saw Doctors stickman, Eimhin Cradock, who runs the group said:

They love a bit of flaking the drums. Everyone comes together and theres a great social aspect to it.

Headfords answer to Keith Moon and Ringo Starr - brothers Jack and Danny Gibbons - said it is great craic.

We perform at all the Connaught (rugby) games. The drumming is a good stress reliever, they added.

Ryan Tubridy pictured with auditionees, Anna Doody, Scoil Mhuire Ballincollig Choir, Rebel Brass Jazz group and Drumadoir Drummers.

Members of Cork brass band, Rebel Brass, had fingers clicking, hips swaying, and feet tapping, with their New York jazzy sound, and even managed to coax Tubridy into unsuccessfully auditioning for a role in their trumpet section.

Eleven-year old Eileen Siobhan Creedon, was one of 35 pupils who travelled from Scoil Mhuire, Ballincollig, Cork, to audition with a medley of Mary Poppins songs.

It is amazing fun. I had such an amazing experience with all my best friends doing what I find passionate to me, Creedon said.

Last years show highlighted the plight of children caught in the trap of homelessness, and this years programme will once again shine a soft light on the struggles of many of Irelands vulnerable children.

Pausing from the fun and frolics of the auditions at the Strand Hotel, Tubridy said the show now has a place to deliver a non-invasive message to convey something important to an enormous amount of people in the kindest way possible.

All-Ireland winner, Shane Dowling, had the last laugh on Tubridy after the presenter compared walking out in front of a live TV audience, to walking out on Croke Park on All-Ireland Final day.

Yeah, but you're getting well paid, Dowling joked.

I cant argue with you on that one, laughed Tubs.

The toy show team travel to Tullamore and Dublin for further auditions before a decision is made on the shows line up.

Self-confessed child at heart, Tubridy, parted with a final note of advice for those taking part in auditions:Brexit is to be discussed at today's meeting of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly in London.

The event promotes co-operation between political representatives in Ireland and Britain.Brian Rattigan, a well-known criminal from Drimnagh in Dublin, has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Declan Gavin in August 2001.

His 2009 murder conviction was overturned on appeal and his plea to the lesser charge was accepted by the DPP this morning.

Declan Gavin was stabbed to death outside Abrakebabra in the Crumlin Shopping Centre in the early hours of 25 August, 2001.

His killing was the first in what was to become the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud  a gangland feud that would claim 15 more lives.

In 2009, a jury found Brian Rattigan guilty of Mr. Gavins murder but his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court last December.

A retrial was ordered for early next year but when he was arraigned this morning, his plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter was accepted.

His barrister Brendan Grehan told the court his client wanted to say sorry to the Gavin family and anyone else hurt by his actions.

His sentence hearing will take place in December.

Mr Rattigan is still serving a sentence for organising a 1m heroin deal from prison, but he has also appealed that conviction and is awaiting judgement.

Digital DeskRetaining the word blasphemy in our constitution would send out a very negative message to the international community.

Amnesty International and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) have issued a joint call for a Yes vote in the blasphemy referendum on Friday.

Both groups say that removing the crime of blasphemy from Irish law would support freedom of expression without impacting the rights of followers of religion.

Liam Herrick, director of the ICCL, says Ireland should disassociate itself from countries that persecute those of religious minorities.

Why you should vote yes to remove blasphemy from the Constitution on the 26th of October.



Learn more here: https://t.co/YNswvh03Tl#BlasphemyRef pic.twitter.com/b5jPWUfVOs  Amnesty Ireland (@AmnestyIreland) October 21, 2018

"Freedom of expression is at the heart of our democracy and that must include allowing all speech that challenges, or even ridicules, ideas or institutions," said Mr Herrick.

"Criminalising blasphemy has no place in a modern democracy such as ours. Irish people dont want criminal prosecution for those who call into question the authority of religious teachings.

"This is not to mention the fact that the courts are not equipped to arbitrate what is, or is not, a genuine religious teaching."

Joint ICCL press conference with @AmnestyIreland and Gina Menzies calling for a YES vote in the #BlasphemyRef. @Colmogorman kicks off reminding us freedom of religion protected by Article 44 of the Constitution pic.twitter.com/Odwvg0IRAy  ICCLtweet  (@ICCLtweet) October 22, 2018

Colm OGorman, Amnesty International Ireland Executive Director said: "This referendum is about valuing freedom of expression, not eroding freedom of religion or belief.

"Religious freedoms are protected in a different Article of the Constitution, Article 44.2.1. A Yes vote would mean that simply offending people is not a crime.

"Inciting hatred on religious grounds would still have to be prohibited in law.

"The government would still have to ensure people can practise their religion without discrimination, threats or violence."

Digital DeskBy By Fiona Ferguson and Brion Hoban

A would-be burglar who told the occupants of the house he entered that someone was after him and replied "good" when they told him gardai were on the way, has received a partially suspended sentence.

James Smith (35) of Mostrim Oaks, Ballymahon Road, Edgeworthstown, Longford, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to trespass with intent to commit an offence at Bloomfield Avenue, Dublin, on October 4, 2015.

Judge Pauline Codd sentenced Smith to three and a half years imprisonment, but gave him credit for 17 months he had already spent in custody and suspended the remainder of the sentence.

Garda Kevin Carthy told James Dwyer SC, prosecuting, that the homeowners were woken in the early hours of the morning by a noise downstairs. They shouted down the stairs that gardai were on the way.

The man shouted back up the stairs that he needed help and this was good because someone was after him. He appeared to be confused by a curtain at the door downstairs but was directed by the family to open the door to gardai when they arrived.

Smith was arrested and told gardai that he had broken into the house to steal things he could sell. He said he needed money fast and did not know there were people in the house.

He had smashed a kitchen window with a plant pot. He said he had taken drugs and was very sorry.

Gda Carthy agreed with Mr Dwyer that Smith had significant psychological issues and was a drug user. He agreed with Sandra Frayne BL, defending, that nothing was taken from the house.

Smith has 116 previous convictions which include 17 convictions for burglary.

Judge Codd said the aggravating factors in the case were the number of previous convictions, that Smith had smashed a window during the incident and the negative impact on the family.

She said the mitigating factors were Smith's guilty plea, his difficult personal circumstances including brain damage and his history of addiction.

Judge Codd suspended the remainder of the sentence on condition that Smith engage with probation services, attend drugs counselling, and keep the peace and be of good behaviour for a period of two years.By Ann O'Loughlin

A farming couple have been given permission by the High Court to challenge a Bord Pleanala decision over the use of a laneway beside their home which has been at the centre of a long running row over access by a rowing club to a lake.

Cornelius and Suzanne Dennehy, who live and farm near Fossa village in Co Kerry, want the court to quash an August 30 last decision of the board declaring that a gate they erected at the entrance to lands they own is not exempted development.

The lane leads down to the shore of Lough Leane and links to the N72 Killarney-Killorglin Road. It also provides access to a number of houses and to the Loch Lein Country House Hotel, owned by Donal Coffey.

Today, Mr Justice Seamus Noonan granted the Dennehy's lawyers permission to bring judicial review proceedings against the board, the Minister for Housing Planning and Local Government and the State over the board's decision. Mr Coffey is a notice party.

Mark de Blacam SC, for the couple, said the land in question is owed by the Dennehys and their neighbour Maurice O'Connell who, up until 1989, was supportive of the Fossa Rowing Club using the lane to access the lake

Mr Dennehy also allowed them to use it up until 1993 until some members of the club exceeded their permission and insisted they had a right to use it.

No trespassing signs were erected but by 2012 there were increasing incursions which became confrontational and gardai had to be called, counsel said. Mr Dennehy was on one occasion assaulted, he said. Local boat groups were now asserting a public right of way even though it was private land, he said.

In 2011, Circuit Court proceedings brought by the rowing club and by Mr O'Connell seeking the removal of the gate and declaration of a right of way were dismissed. An appeal by the boat club against that decision was discontinued. Mr Coffey, the hotelier, gave evidence in that case on his own behalf and that of the club.

Mr Coffey then made an application to Kerry Co Council under the Planning and Development Act for a decision on whether the erection of the gate was exempted development and did not require planning permission.

The council referred it to the board who, following a second referral after the board agreed to a quashing of the first decision, made the decision that it was development. Among the board's reasons was that the gate was "habitually open to or used by the public" during the preceding ten years it was a means of access to the lake.

It was their case that it was irrational and that the board misconstrued the regulations and the decision was not in accordance with law, he said.

In making its decision, the board purported to make a finding of the existence of public rights which can only be made by the courts, the Dennehys say.

They also say the Minister for Housing, in attempting to introduce into Irish law a concept of habitual use and access to private lands by the public, at the expense of private landowners, has unlawfully entered into the judicial sphere and has attacked the Dennehys' constitutional rights.

Mr Justice Noonan also placed a stay on the decision of the board and said the matter could come back in December.By Ann O'Loughlin

The High Court has overturned the rejection of an award for psychological suffering and shock by the Hepatitis C compensation tribunal to the daughter of a man who died from HIV infection from contaminated blood products

The tribunal had described his death as one of the worse cases" before it.

Mr Justice Bernard Barton ordered the matter be sent back to the tribunal "for assessment and award".

He said it was hard to reconcile making of an award to the mans wife in 2009 over what it said were the horrific circumstances of the death, and then not find in favour of the daughter for circumstances that were also horrific.

The daughter, who was a teenager when her father died and is now 44, had appealed to the court against the Minister for Health and Children, with the Hepatitis C and HIV Compensation Tribunal as a notice party, over the tribunal's February 2015 decision to dismiss her claim.

Her father suffered from severe Haemophilia A, a genetic deficiency in the body's natural clotting system which causes increased bleeding and usually affects males.

He was one of more than 100 haemophilia sufferers who received blood transfusions which were contaminated. He contracted HIV and died from complications from the disease in 1989, at the age of 40.

In 2009, the tribunal made an award to his wife over the shock she suffered as a result of the circumstances leading up to and after his death.

"He had a very great number of serious, often very painful illnesses and a very hard death. He was completely shattered, obviously, by the knowledge that he had HIV," the tribunal said.

At the time (1989), there was little appreciation by medics and hospitals as to how to deal with HIV patients or how to deal with their families, the tribunal said.

The manner in which his corpse was dealt with left his widow with a lasting shock

He and his wife went of considerable lengths to keep his condition secret.

"This is one of the worse cases which we have dealt with", the tribunal said.

Mr Justice Barton, in dealing with the daughter's claim, said that despite her mother and fathers efforts at secrecy, in the small house the family lived in, privacy was difficult to achieve. Conversations and noises - including uncontrolled bouts of crying by the husband - were easily overheard.

At the time of his death, he was only the seventh known AIDS sufferer to die in Ireland and the first in his home town, the judge said.

The stigma which attached at the time to death in such circumstances was not just social, but medical, he said.

Patient isolation, face masks, hand washing and the way in which the corpse was dealt with - the body was not laid out but zipped up in body bag and put in a sealed coffin - were examples of that.

Mourners at the funeral questioned the circumstances and were overheard by the daughter, the judge said.

The mother created an elaborate fiction to ensure the cause of death remained hidden by telling everyone he died of cancer.

Despite knowing what was really going on, the daughter hid it from her mother and went along with the socially acceptable explanation. Her mother did not know this, or if she did, chose to believe otherwise, the judge said.

The daughter started to smoke and to drink alcohol in her teens to help her cope with a progressively deteriorating situation.

She partially took on the role of looking after her younger siblings after her mothers health collapsed. She managed to complete her education and get a good job but she ended up with a child in a hopelessly unsuitable marriage, the judge said.

The daughters own health deteriorated. She became seriously depressed, and was admitted to hospital in 2006 with the illness which she continues to suffer from.

While the tribunal was not satisfied she had met the requirements for shock-induced illness, the judge accepted her evidence about the impact of the death on her psychologically.

The judge allowed her appeal and remitted the matter back to the tribunal "for assessment and award".Firefighters are urging parents not to buy illegal fireworks for their children this Halloween.

A city-wide safety campaign has been launched in Dublin, with authorities cracking down on stockpiles of bonfire materials.By Gordon Deegan

The planned new State-funded injecting centre for chronic heroin and cocaine addicts in Dublins inner city is to cater for around 60 addicts each day and is to open at 6.30 each morning.

Earlier this year, Merchants Quay Ireland won the tender from the Health Service Executive (HSE) to operate the Medically Supervised Injection Facility (MSIF) and the organisation has now lodged plans for the contentious facility with Dublin City Council.

The centre - which is the first of its kind in Ireland consisting of seven injecting rooms - is to be housed in the basement of Merchants Quay existing Riverbank building at 13/14 Merchants Quay, Dublin 8 which is located in close proximity to a local primary school, St Audoens National School.

The centre already provides a range of homeless, healthcare and drug services and the centres Community Engagement & Liaison Plan refers to the proximity of the centre to the school when it states: We fully appreciate the concerns raised by staff and parents of children at St Audoens National School. No one wants children exposed to the sight of drug use and drug litter. We believe that the MSIF can provide an effective response to the concerns raised. Research from abroad have shown a reduction in public injecting and drug litter.

In the area comprising of the seven injecting booths, sterile injecting equipment will be distributed while resuscitation equipment will be located in this area and the individual injecting will be monitored in order to provide emergency care in case of overdoses or other adverse reactions.

The Operation Plan states: Clients have to be possession of their own drugs, obtained elsewhere, before entering the facility and will not be permitted to obtain or share drugs with other clients while in the vicinity. Clients must inject themselves - staff will not be allowed to inject clients.

Objectors to the development have until November 12th to lodge objections and already, the proposed facility has attracted two objections.

Shane Cahill operates the Four Courts Hostel on Merchants Quay and has urged the Council to refuse planning permission.

In his objection, Mr Cahill states: With the services being offered by MQI come a host of anti-social behaviour such as dealers working shifts along the quays on a 24 hour basis, beatings between them, assaults and muggings on the public, public vomiting/urine, defecation, delivery of drugs by car/taxi/bicycle to name but a fraction of the daily occurrences that we see in the area. It is volatile to say the least.

He said: The area has become increasingly dangerous for the public and I believe that the area would be far safer if MQI not only found another suitable location for the MSIF but also reduced the current services that they offer.

Mr Cahill also stated: There has been a chronic decline in the safety and comfort for citizens in the area and this will only continue if the MSIF was to go ahead.

In a separate objection, Pat Coyne from Arran St East, Dublin said: It is unacceptable that the possession of hard drugs will be allowed within a specified small radius of this centre without any sanction.

The Operations Plan for the centre states that it will open Monday to Friday 6am to 10am; 2.30pm to 5.30pm and 7pm to 9.30pm.

The facility will operate 6am to 10am and 3.30pm to 9.30pm at weekends and the plan states that the 6am opening is to facilitate drug users who will require the service early in the morning post rough sleeping or those exiting the Night Cafe and emergency hostels.

On each shift, the MSIF will employ two security workers; eight project workers, a clinical nurse manager, a nurse and the availability of a GP over 30 hours of the week.

Documents lodged with the application state that pregnant women who are injecting drug users will not be excluded from the service and the MSIF will have a dedicated staff member with expertise in the area.

The Operations Plan states evidence does not support concerns that injecting facilities encourage drug use, delay treatment entry or aggravate problems with local drug markets.

The plan states: Instead, they facilitate safer drug use, increase access to health and social services and reduce public drug use and associated nuisance.

It adds that these services do not result in higher rates of drug related crime.President Michael D Higgins has claimed that he had to travel to Belfast by private jet following advice from his office on security issues.

Mr Higgins said he was grateful for the statement released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) which disputed his earlier claims that he travelled by jet because police in Northern Ireland could not provide security for him by road.

He said: As far as I am concerned I am very happy with the official PSNI statement. I welcome it, I agree with it and I am happy to reciprocate to it by again expressing my thanks for their co-operation and courtesy.

Mr Higgins was asked for clarity over his previous comments that his staff were advised that for security reasons I couldnt be picked up at the border during last Mays trip.

He made the comments during a televised presidential debate on Wednesday evening.

I have visited Northern Ireland many times in the last seven years and I take the advice from my office and my office judges these trips in terms of - the considerations they take into account are logistics and security

I have visited Northern Ireland many times in the last seven years and I take the advice from my office and my office judges these trips in terms of  the considerations they take into account are logistics and security, he added.

Mr Higgins was speaking as he launched his Shared Ireland, Shared Island initiative at the Droichead Arts Centre on Monday, days before the public go to the polls for the presidential election.

Helping him launch the campaign was one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, Seamus Mallon.

The former SDLP deputy first minister introduced Mr Higgins and praised him for his previous seven years in office.

Sinn Fein presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada said she sent Mr Higgins a letter calling for him to respond to a number of serious questions ahead of Tuesday nights televised debate.

She posted on her Twitter account: It is my strong view that discussing these issues publicly is the only means left to reassure our citizens that public finances are being properly used, particularly at a time of huge difficulties for many families.

Mr Higgins told the crowd at Droichead Arts Centre, which included SDLP leader Colum Eastwood and former leader Mark Durkan, that he was operating the campaign under the constraints of being a president in office.

He said that if he is re-elected, he will launch a new initiative which he hopes will spark an inclusive, respectful discussion on how all of us can live together and how we can treat our differences with respect.

In our interpretation of the past, we do so in a way recognising that it bears on how we are living in the present and what we might do together in the future, he added.

We must differ, yes we will differ but we must do so with the necessary courtesies of a republican discourse.

On Monday morning, presidential candidate Peter Casey posted a video on his Twitter account which criticised the presidents Bernese mountain dogs and claimed that the president was using public money to cover grooming costs.

I cover the costs of my dogs, be it their food or veterinary or grooming. I would recommend people get a dog, it's a good thing

Mr Higgins said he wanted to assure the Irish public that his dogs are well.

I walked with them last night and they were looking particularly well, he added.

I cover the costs of my dogs, be it their food or veterinary or grooming.

I would recommend people get a dog, its a good thing.

Mr Mallon introduced the president and used the opportunity to hit out at the ongoing Brexit negotiations.

He said that the Good Friday Agreement defines the British governments role as to provide for agreement between the people of Northern Ireland.

At the heart of it is two sovereign governments dealing with a problem which has been with us for at least five centuries, he added.

He blamed Brexit and a limping British government for the breakdown of relations between Ireland and the British government, saying the relationship has almost disappeared.

It is very low indeed because the British government has chosen not to work the Good Friday Agreement in terms of the British Irish Governmental arrangements, he added.

It has chosen not to copper-fasten that relationship with the island of Ireland but to replace a sovereign Irish government with eight members of the DUP.

- Press Association

Earlier: President Michael D Higgins says his own office advised he use a government jet to visit Belfast and not the PSNI.

The incumbent had said he had to fly to Northern Ireland last May as the Northern Irish Police Service could not provide the required security by road.

This claim was disputed by the PSNI over the weekend.

On Saturday, the PSNI told the BBC: It is the long-established policy of the PSNI not to comment on the security arrangements made for individuals.

Assistant chief constable Alan Todd added: The PSNI routinely work with visiting heads of state and other key figures visiting Northern Ireland and make full provisions for their safety in line with their requirements.

Speaking in Drogheda today, President Higgins clarified that he used the jet on the advice of his office.

"I have visited Northern Ireland many times in the last seven years and I take the advice from my office," said the President.

"And my offices judges these trips in terms I think of the considerations that they take into account are logistics and security."

Earlier today, presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada revealed she has sent a letter to Mr Higgins asking

Read More:

The Sinn Fein MEP says the incumbent has serious questions to answer before the final debate of the campaign tomorrow night.By Aoife Nic Ardghail

A Dublin drug addict who was tackled to the ground after breaking into a retired fire officer's home has been jailed for six years.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard William Deans (57) struggled with the then 73-year-old home owner and two neighbours while lashing out and threatening to infect them with AIDS.

In his Victim Impact Statement, Michael Hempenstall paid tribute to his neighbours and said if bravery medals are available to members of the public then these should be distributed to them.

He detailed how he had to move from his home of 21 years to be closer to his daughter as the offence had changed his life forever.

He said he had been very content and happy but began to feel fear and trepidation in his home. He described how a physical condition brought on by stress from the offence had hospitalised him for six weeks and prevented him from swimming until everything healed.

Deans, of Rutland Cottages, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty to trespass, theft and assaulting Mr Hempenstall causing him harm at Clonliffe Avenue, Ballybough, Dublin 3, on January 8, 2016.

He also pleaded guilty to damaging a door at the injured party's home on the same date.

Deans has 111 previous convictions, including dangerous driving causing death, burglaries, robberies, assaults and drugs offences.

Garda Eamon Honan told Dara Hayes BL, prosecuting, that Mr Hempenstall had come home from visiting his daughter and grocery shopping, when he noticed his front gate open.

The injured party later told gardai that when he put his shoulder to his front door, it just swung open and he could see a man running downstairs repeating where's the money?

The intruder claimed there were three other men in the house and then he pushed Mr Hempenstall into the living room and onto the couch.

During the struggle, the injured party was able to open a window and call for help. Deans started throwing punches and kicks at the homeowner and the fight continued into the kitchen where a neighbour joined in.

All three men ended up on the ground with Deans still kicking and lashing out. Mr Hempenstall managed to phone his daughter and tell her to call gardai.

The court heard Deans threatened to kill Mr Hempenstall and his neighbour before kicking and smashing the glass door in the kitchen.

Deans threatened that he had AIDs and would infect Mr Hempsentall. Gda Honan said the injured party later told gardai that the intruder tried to bite his hand.

Another neighbour arrived on the scene and the men held Deans on the ground until gardai arrived shortly after.

Gda Honan said Deans was abusive in the patrol car after arrest and possessed items, including pay slips, glasses and cuff links taken from the house. Gda Honan agreed with Fiona Murphy SC, defending that her client's behaviour on arrest was consistent with his history of drug abuse.

The garda further agreed that Deans had written a letter of apology which had been forwarded to Mr Hempenstall.

Ms Murphy submitted to Judge Melanie Greally that her client had a very heavy heart from his behaviour and was ashamed and disgusted with himself.

She further submitted that Deans was now drug free. She said her client was abusing medication on the day and genuinely believed he was helping Mr Hempenstall with his shopping.

Judge Greally noted the assault on Mr Hempenstall, which included sustained violence, threats and attempting to bite him, was at the upper range.

She noted the injured party's age and vulnerability, but also accepted that Deans had been making efforts to rehabilitate while in custody.

She imposed a seven and a half year sentence with the final 18 months suspended. She backdated this to May this year to give Deans credit for the five months he has already spent in custody on the matter.By Louise Roseingrave

A 79-year-old man was out to dinner with his family when he choked and died suddenly, an inquest heard.

John Loftus of Griffith Avenue, Whitehall, Dublin 9 made no gesture or facial expression to indicate he was in difficulty, Dublin Coroners Court heard.

He was seated at the head of a table with his wife, son and grandchildren at the White House bar and restaurant in Baldoyle, Dublin 13 when he collapsed suddenly on February 19 2017.

His wife Connie Loftus said he had been in good form all day and always enjoyed his food.

I saw my husband stand up at the other end of the table and then sit down again for no reason. He didnt show any signs of distress. Then he just collapsed, Mrs Loftus said.

"He made no gestures, his colour didnt change, he just sat down and passed away peacefully, Mrs Loftus said.

Her husband had a stroke 17 years previously and his health had deteriorated in the six months prior to his death, the court heard.

Family and others at the restaurant rushed to his aid when he collapsed.

Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was begun and an ambulance called.

Paramedic Dermot Walsh said the man had no pulse when he arrived at the scene shortly after 7.25pm.

The man was rushed to Beaumont Hospital where he arrived at 7.57pm.

He received three further rounds of CPR in hospital before he was pronounced dead at 8.07pm.

An autopsy conducted by Dr Maeve Brennan revealed a large particle of food measuring 4cm lodged in the mans upper airway.

There were more particles of food found in the oesophagus, lower in the windpipe and in the lungs.

The autopsy also revealed Mr Loftus had 80% narrowing of the coronary arteries.

Deputy Coroner Dr Crona Gallagher said the cardiac condition had been a precipitating factor in the man's death, given the evidence from his wife.

The blockage to his airway is still the primary cause of death but he has an abnormal finding in his heart, Dr Gallagher said.

The number one cause of death is food bolus obstruction but a sudden cardiac arrhythmia is a significant contributor. I think something caused this, I think the food came up from his stomach after hed finished eating.

Its a choking incident but its not the normal choking incident where the food goes against a person and they cough and splutter. This was secondary to another event, the coroner said.

The cause of death was food bolus blockage to the airway secondary to a coronary event.

Dr Gallagher returned a narrative verdict and extended her sympathies to the family.

Im sure it came as a terrible shock. This was a very sudden and unexpected death, the coroner said.By Natasha Reid

A father-of-five, who shot his friend dead and dismembered his body, had previously worked as a butcher.

Paul Well Snr had told gardai about his past when questioned, but said that he hadnt seen Kenneth OBrien for several days before the 33-year-old went missing.

The unemployed truck driver described himself as loyal, when arrested on suspicion of murdering Mr OBrien with a firearm. However, he said that Mr OBrien was devious, lacked empathy, had a roaming eye and had got carried away with the bright lights of Perth.

The contents of his garda interviews were being read to the jury today during the 50-year-olds Central Criminal Court trial.

Mr Wells of Barnamore Park in Finglas has admitted shooting dead fellow Dubliner Kenneth OBrien and dismembering his body.

However, he has pleaded not guilty to murdering him at his home in Barnamore Park on 15 or 16 January, 2016. He claims that the deceased had wanted him to murder Mr OBriens partner so that he could take their child back to Australia, where he had previously lived

Detective Garda Declan OBrien testified that the accused had told him that he had met the deceased in 2007 in the middle of controversy.

He was having an affair at the time, said Mr Wells. We struck up a friendship and became very close.

The court had already heard that Mr OBriens affair had come out when he crashed a car carrying himself and the other woman.

Kenneth was reckless, devious as well, he suggested.

Kenneth had a roaming eye, he said, adding that his partner had felt betrayed.

I dont condone that behaviour, he told his interviewers. Im with the same girl for 33 years and married for 30 of them.

He said the deceased had been messing around in Perth.

He had no empathy, yet if you asked him to do something, pull out an engine, hed do it, he explained. He got carried away with the bright lights of Perth. He didn't want to come home.

He quoted Mr OBrien as saying: Why the f**k would anyone want to live here?

He had everything over there. He lived like a king, he said, telling the detectives that he hadnt sent much too money home to his partner.

He obvs had better things to spend his money on, he added.

He was asked when he had last seen him and he replied that it had been the Monday before he went missing.

He was asked if Mr O'Brien would have any enemies.

I would think so yeah, he replied. He was volatile with drink. He would pick on the biggest fella in the room.

D Sgt Martin Long said that in a later interview he described himself as being an elder brother figure to Mr OBrien.

He also said that he had worked in a butchers about 30 years earlier, but had left when he sliced the top off his finger.

The trial continues.By Ann O'Loughlin

A radiographer has been struck off the register of radiographers for professional misconduct after allegedly engaging in sexual acts in relation to a female patient who went for a MRI scan.

Jomin Jose was also alleged to have told the woman she had a "nice pussy".

What happened here involved a gross breach of trust and the patient, a woman in her sixties who was ill and who went to get a scan to assist her diagnosis, was entitled to be treated in a manner other than she was, the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly said.

He made the comments when cancelling the registration of Mr Jose, a native of India with an address in Tralee, Co Kerry.

Mr Jose, who was not in court and not represented, is prohibited from applying to re-register here for seven years.

The orders, made under the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005, were sought by J.P. McDowell, solicitor for the Health and Social Care Professionals Council, known as CORU.

Mr McDowell said a forensic psychiatrist had rejected claims by Mr Jose he was experiencing a "psychotic" episode at the time of the alleged events in the Bon Secours Hospital in Tralee on a date in September 2016.

This claim was inconsistent with the evidence and with Mr Jose having told gardai the alleged acts were consensual, he said.

Mr Jose was employed by Alliance Medical in September 2016 and its Human Resources director made a complaint arising from the alleged events at the hospital.

In his ruling today Mr Justice Kelly noted an investigation was carried out into the complaint Mr Jose had behaved inappropriately to a patient committed to his care.

The complaint alleged, while working as a radiographer on a date in September 2016, Mr Jose had engaged in sexual acts, including penetration by the penis of the anus, of a patient in his care, and digital and/or manual contact and/or rubbing of the genitals of the same patient.

Following an inquiry, the Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) found, on the basis of unchallenged evidence of the female patient and another person, those allegations were proven and this amounted to professional misconduct.

The matter ultimately came before the High Court when the Council asked it to cancel the registration of Mr Jose and prohibit him applying for seven years to re-register.

Mr Justice Kelly noted the PCC had found professional misconduct of the most serious sort. It had described the conduct as sexual and inappropriate conduct of the "most egregious" sort involving a fundamental abuse of Mr Jose's position and it was also satisfied the conduct caused grave harm to the patient.

The PCC rejected his claims of a psychotic episode or a lack of capacity on the date in question, the judge noted.

While the PCC said the circumstances were "unusual", it was satisfied the incident involved "opportunistic" conduct by him for reasons including he had referred to an absence of cameras, took the patient into a cubicle and referred to her as having a "nice pussy". He also asked for her phone number and told her to ask for him by name if she needed another MRI scan.

The PCC had considered it was "not remotely likely" a psychotic episode would last only a few minutes and was satisfied from the evidence Mr Jose had full capacity on the day, the judge noted. Mr Jose had not appealed the finding of misconduct, he added.

Trust "reaches across all professions" and what occurred here was such a gross breach of trust that Mr Jose's registration must be cancelled, the judge ruled. He also directed that Mr Jose's home country be notified of the court's ruling.

Earlier he noted, unlike the two stage fitness to practice procedures for other healthcare professionals, the procedure for investigation under the 2005 Act involves three stages. He said that appeared "wasteful" as it cost additional time and money.A Spanish student who was repeatedly raped by a young homeless man after being lured to his tent in July 2017 says she thought he was going to kill her.

Eoin Berkeley, previously of Hamptonwood Way in Finglas, will be sentenced next week.

The young womans visit to Ireland in the summer of 2017 was the first time she had ever travelled alone.

After picking up some gifts from a souvenir shop on July 15 that year, she was approached by Eoin Berkeley on the Liffey boardwalk, who offered to take her to the beach.

The court heard he then lured her to the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend where he bound her hands with a dog lead and raped her three times in various tents over a 21-hour period.

She told Gardai he threatened to kill her and told her he had already killed six people. He also produced a small yellow saw and told her he would cut her hands off if she didn't stop moving.

She made a run for it after he fell asleep on the beach and her father outlined the distress of taking a call from her as she made her escape.

In her victim impact statement, she said she thought she was going to be killed and still has nightmares about what happened.

Mr J Michael White described her ordeal as horrific and said he will pass sentence on Thursday week.

- Digital DeskBy Aoife Nic Ardghail

A Wicklow resident who beat his partner in an episode of extreme rage which left her in hospital has received a three year jail term.

Garda Kevin Murphy said construction worker Lukasz Drozdziel (24) had had an argument with his ex-partner while drinking with her and her flatmate in her home.

The woman later told gardai that Drozdziel just lost the plot. She said Drozdziel left after a first beating in the hall, but returned by breaking through the front door while she was trying to escape out a window.

Gda Murphy said the woman was later treated in hospital for three slashes to her abdomen and a cut on her head.

Drozdziel, of Tuskar Courtyard, Marina Village, Arklow, Co Wicklow, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting the woman causing her harm at her home at Marino, Dublin on August 5, 2017.

He also pleaded guilty to damaging the front door of her property on the same date. Drozdziel has four previous convictions all dealt with at District Court level.

Today Judge Melanie Greally commented that this was an episode of extreme rage.

She said that the head and abdomen injuries required the woman to be hospitalised and that the emotional and psychological effects were greater than her physical scars.

At the sentence hearing, Gda Murphy told the court that Drozdziel knocked his ex-partner to the ground in her hall and that she went into shock when she saw blood coming from her head.

The woman recalled that Drozdziel would hit her each time she tried to get up and that he had smashed a wine bottle off the floor.

Drozdziel left the house and the woman's flatmate took her to his room and phoned emergency services. The woman then heard Drozdziel bashing the glass on the front door, but she didn't recall whether he attacked her again.

The flatmate later told gardai that he roared at Drozdziel to stop punching the woman once the attack started. He said the woman was covered in blood and shaking.

Gda Murphy told Tom Neville BL, prosecuting, that Drozdziel was highly intoxicated on arrest and claimed his partner had been dragging out of him like a mad thing.

The garda said Drozdziel admitted at some stage that he had pushed her to the ground. The woman's Victim Impact Statement was not read out in court.

Gda Murphy agreed with Kim Moloney BL, defending, that her client had intended to gather compensation for his ex-partner.

Ms Moloney submitted that her client had over 3,000 in court as a gesture of remorse, knowing it wouldn't make up for his actions.

Ms Moloney submitted that Drozdziel has been alcohol free for five months and had issues with conflict and anger management.

Judge Greally noted that Drozdziel claimed the violence on the night was linked to the deaths of his father, as well as a former crew mate who fell overboard on a fishing vessel.

The judge said the assault was at the upper end of the scale for offences of its kind and she imposed a three year sentence with the final nine months suspended.

She ordered that Drozdziel undergo 18 months post release supervision and complete a domestic violence perpetrator programme.Update: The three people arrested under the Public Order Act after they refused to leave the council chamber in Cork City Hall have been released without charge.

Gardai say files will be prepared for the DPP in due course.

UPDATE: The council chamber 3 have been released without charge. Gardai say files will be prepared for the DPP in due course #Cork  Eoin English (@EoinBearla) October 22, 2018

Earlier: Three arrested after refusing to leave Cork city council chamber

Three people have been arrested under the Public Order Act after they refused to leave the council chamber in Cork City Hall.

The two men and a woman who are now in custody in the Bridewell Garda Station were among four people who occupied the room from 11am until just after 3pm.

Gardai have confirmed this afternoon that they arrested three people who failed to leave when requested to by gardai.

A garda spokesman said enquires are ongoing.

It is understood that gardai were called after council management made a formal complaint alleging trespass.

Housing campaigners are due to stage a protest outside City Hall before tonights city council meeting.

Update 3.50pm: Gardai remove four housing activists occupying Cork City Hall

Gardai have removed four housing activists who were occupying the council chamber at Cork City Hall.

It is reported that the four are being taken to the Bridewell Garda Station.

UPDATE: Gardai have removed 4 housing activists who were occupying the council chamber at City Hall #Cork. The four are being taken to the Bridewell garda station....MTF  Eoin English (@EoinBearla) October 22, 2018

The city council announced on social media this afternoon that public access to this evening's council meeting will be restricted.

Public access to tonight's council meeting will be restricted #corkcc  Cork City Council (@corkcitycouncil) October 22, 2018

More to follow...

Earlier:

Cork's Housing Action Group have begun an occupation of City Hall as they are calling on the city council to declare the housing and homelessness crisis an emergency.

Tony Walsh, the group's chairperson, condemned the "waste" of public money on projects that are not essential.

"Council seems more concerned with corporate image and large-scale development projects than with delivering on housing rights  millions are being wasted on a bridge that no one wants and on other such extravagant waste," Mr Walsh said.

To spend 300,000 on a logo is insulting to those families in social housing who badly need repairs made, for damp proofing and insulation

"There seems to be an attitude in City Hall which finds money for such costly non-essential schemes but claims to be hands-tied when delivering services to people."

The group who began their occupation at 11am this morning are calling on Cork City Council to declare a National Emergency on housing and homelessness and also to write to the Government requesting that a National Emergency Committee be established to deal with it.

A public protest will take place outside City Hall this evening at 5pm.

In a statement released this morning, the group said that "the rally will hear a significant announcement on the escalation of the campaign".By Patrick Flynn

A transatlantic flight has made a U-turn over the ocean and returned to Dublin Airport after the crew declared a medical emergency.

American Airlines flight AA-209 departed Dublin at around 10.15am bound for Chicago in the US.

The aircraft was about 500 kilometres west of Shannon when the crew declared a May Day and turned around.

At the time, the crew had been in radio contact with air traffic controllers at the Irish Aviation Authoritys (IAA) North Atlantic Communications Centre at Ballygirreen in Co Clare.

The crew of the Boeing 787-800 Dreamliner requested emergency medical services to be standing for their arrival.

It is understood that a passenger complained of a suspected cardiac issue and was treated with oxygen while the flight returned.

It is also believed there was at least one medical professional on board who assisted cabin crew with treating the patient.

The crew made a U-turn shortly after 11am and routed back towards Dublin advising air traffic controllers that they need to land as soon as possible.

The flight was granted priority clearance back to Dublin.

Inbound aircraft to Dublin were advised that they might be slightly delayed to allow priority landing for the emergency aircraft.

Airport fire and medical crews were standing by for the aircraft when it landed at around 12.15pm almost two hours after first departing.

It is understood the patient was assessed at the scene before being removed to hospital.

The flight is expected to continue to Chicago shortly.Migration topped the agenda of a meeting between Interior ministers of Morocco and Spain Abdelouafi Laftit and Fernando Grande-Marlaska who both stressed on Saturday in Madrid the need for promoting legal migration as Spain became the main gate for illegal crossings to Europe.

The Spanish minister told the press following the meeting that both countries face mounting migration pressure and that the EU should do more to help Morocco address the challenges linked to illegal migration

The EU has pledged to increase aid to Morocco to 140 million to help it manage migration pressure.

Spain has urged the EU to increase its aid to Morocco following the example of Turkey where 6 billion in EU aid helped seal the Balkan route, the main entry to Europe in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis.

On Sunday, some 300 migrants attacked a fence separating the Spanish occupied city of Melilla from Morocco. One migrant died and 200 made it to the enclave in the jump over.

More than 43,000 migrants have made the crossing to Spain since the start of the year, including around 38,000 by sea, according to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM).How do superheroes spend their downtime?

The answer is dishing out free helicopter rides. That is, if you're Marvel's hammer-wielding god of thunder.

On Monday, Chris Hemsworth posted a video of himself and his personal trainer, Luke Zocchi, arriving at Brisbane Airport and the clip has since gone viral - because this was no ordinary airport run. (The Hollywood star has returned to Australia after filming wrapped for the new Men in Black film.)

While driving out of the international terminal, Hemsworth and Zocchi - his close friend and the man we have to thank for Hemsworth's physique - decided to pick up a random hitchhiker.Activists are calling on the government to cancel Charlie Sheen's visa, arguing the actor's warts-and-all tour sends the wrong message about violence against women.

The former Two and a Half Men star is due to arrive in Australia next month as part of a speaking tour where he'll address everything from his spectacular fall from grace to being blackmailed over his HIV diagnosis. Earlier this year, Sheen claimed he couldn't afford his child-support payments because Hollywood had "blacklisted" him.

Activist group Collective Shout, which campaigns against the sexualisation of women and girls in advertising and pop culture, is now calling on Immigration Minister David Coleman to cancel Sheen's visa due to his past run-ins with the law.

Caitlin Roper, Collective Shout's campaigns manager, said Sheen shouldn't be allowed in Australia due to his "extensive history" of violence against women.Morocco has made of diversifying partners at the international level a pillar of its active diplomacy as it continues winning allies in Latin America, with Paraguay joining the list of Moroccos friends in the region.

At the end of the first session of Morocco-Paraguay political consultations in Asuncion, attended by Moroccos state secretary to the foreign minister Mounia Boucetta, the two countries issued a joint statement underscoring their shared willingness to cooperate at the economic level and promote joint investments.

They also agreed to foster political consultations and convened to hold a joint committee next year in Rabat.

On the Sahara issue, Paraguays deputy minister for foreign affairs Hugo Saguier Caballero reaffirmed that his country backs Moroccos position over the regional dispute that has lasted for four decades.

Morocco can always rely on Paraguays support in order to reach a peaceful solution to the regional dispute, he said.

The Polisario front, which by the past used ideological rhetoric to delude South American leaders, is now on the demise in Latin America where only failing states are still attached to promoting separatism.

Actually, the Polisario has been dealt severe blows in South America in recent years. In August 2017, a Uruguayan court turned down a request to seize a phosphates shipment originating from the Sahara following a similar rejection by Panama to a similar request early June the same year.

In September 2017, Peruvian authorities declared Polisario official Khadijatou El Mokhtar persona non grata and proceeded to her deportation manu military to Madrid.

The increasing withdrawals of recognitions deal the Polisario severe blows. An increasing number of states are coming to terms with viewing the Polisario as totalitarian organization fed by an ideological anachronism peculiar to the Cold War era.

Over the last years, support for the Algerian-sponsored separatist thesis in the Moroccan Sahara has been waning as 43 countries have withdrawn their recognition of the SADR entity out of 80 that previously recognized it in a Cold War context.

As relic of the cold-war, the Polisario remains obedient and dependent financially and diplomatically on its paymaster, Algeria, which uses it to achieve regional hegemony to the detriment of regional stability.On the first day of 2018, the New York Post trumpeted a headline: "Taylor Swift's 'Reputation' tour shaping up to be a disaster." The piece quoted an anonymous music industry insider who called sales "a mega disappointment" and detailed how fans were upset about the high ticket prices.

Swift, of course, never responded to the nay-sayers. She didn't need to. When the tour kicked off in May, she posted Instagram photos after nearly every concert, showing stadiums packed to the brim. In August, Billboard announced that after 27 dates, it was already the highest-grossing U.S. tour by a female artist, raking in nearly $200 million. The previous highest-grossing amount was by ... Swift, whose 1989 World Tour previously broke the record in 2015.

Taylor Swift.

As usual, Swift  the master of hidden messages and small gestures filled with meaning  said a lot without saying much at all. That has been true for the majority of the "Reputation" era, which is starting to wind down. The North American leg of the tour ended last weekend, with two sold-out nights at AT&T Stadium near Dallas. The tour continues in Australia next week and concludes in Japan in November. At the American Music Awards on Tuesday, Swift accepted the trophy for favourite pop/rock album for Reputation.

"I always look at albums as chapters in my life, and to the fans, I'm so happy that you like this one," she said. "But I have to be really honest with you about something: I'm even more excited about the next chapter."It warned that any route that wasn't covered by this plan would "require information that is much more detailed than that which appears to be currently contemplated by the ACT government before a decision could be made". Committee chairman Ben Morton, a Liberal MP, said the ACT government could still choose to use the Barton route, and any suggestion this prevented them from doing so was "ludicrous". "However, should the ACT government choose to pursue a route alignment that is only partially consistent with the National Capital Plan, this will unavoidably add further complexity, time, and cost to the project," he said. "The committee has recommended that in that case, the ACT government should work with the National Capital Authority to ensure Commonwealth approval of the route, by amending the National Capital Plan. This should be done before undertaking the full works approval application and other Commonwealth approval processes." The report said if the ACT government remained committed to its proposed route, there would have to be a two-stage Commonwealth approval process.

The planned route for light rail stage 2. Credit:Transport Canberra "The first stage would comprise working with the NCA and other relevant Commonwealth agencies to definitively determine whether the proposed route is feasible. The NCA has advised that this would require the ACT government to provide the results of an initial rapid heritage assessment," it said. "It is only after these matters have been addressed and the proposed route has the approval of the Commonwealth, that the second stage should commence." The second stage involved works approval and other Commonwealth approvals. "The committee is concerned that if the ACT government chose to invest in the development of detailed designs, heritage assessments, and an Environmental Impact Statement without prior Commonwealth approval of its proposed route alignment, there is a significant risk that this investment could be wasted," it said.

Mr Morton said the committee wanted to ensure the simplest possible Commonwealth approval process for the light rail project. "It is not the committees intention to slow or hinder the approvals process, but rather to provide certainty for the ACT government and the people of Canberra, and to ensure that time and money is not wasted pursuing a route that is not endorsed by the Commonwealth and therefore not feasible," he said. The report noted the authority's concerns that the project had "not adequately demonstrated sensitivity to the importance of the central national area or parliamentary zone". Loading

"The development of light rail amenity must not come at the cost of the long-term character and heritage of the national capital area and the parliamentary zone," it said. Transport Minister Meegan Fitzharris told ABC Radio this was not the end of the Barton dogleg and government would apply for the National Capital Plan amendment. "We've always known this route requires this amendment," Ms Fitzharris said. She said variations to the plan were "by no means unique" but the challenge for the project going forward would be getting the federal minister and federal parliament to make a "timely decision". However Mr Morton said it was not certain the ACT government would get the amendment approved.

The Public Transport Association of Canberra said the two-step approval process was "the most appropriate way forward" and the report provided "much-needed certainty" for the project. The committee also said the ACT government appeared not to be heeding the advice of the NCA on the need for wire-free running through designated areas. The current proposal features wire-free running from Alinga Street to Sydney Avenue, and again in Woden from the Phillip Oval stop to the Woden Town Centre. The NCA told the committee it had advised the ACT government that these designs are not consistent with the previously stated requirement. However the government said the use of overhead wires and poles in some designated areas would be unavoidable due to the limitations of existing technology.Schools in the ACT "trail the nation", according to a report by a leading think tank.

Over two years, ACT students are at least two to three months behind comparable students nationally in numeracy, reading and writing, according to Measuring student progress: A state-by-state report card, published by the independent Grattan Institute.

The researchers take into account factors like how privileged an area is - by how many highly educated parents live there - and then make adjustments to factor this privilege out in their assessment of performance.

Education standards in the ACT are under the microscope. Credit:Fairfax

Once that's done, the authors conclude: "The ACT is the worst performer. On a like-for-like basis, its students make two to three months less progress (in two years) than the national average in both primary and secondary school."Union bullies will usually say, release the delegates or we will take out the whole workforce and you will lose production for the day. Which would you prefer? The protest day will also be dressed up as trade union training leave or leave to attend trade union activities. But it is not trade union activities  it is political protesting, for which unions want employers to pay. And they will be joined by the usual suspects from the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and other fringe groups to pad the numbers. But Australians do not want the rules being thrown out and anarchy being brought in. It is indeed fortunate that most Australians have no memory of industrial strife of the last century when nationwide or rolling strikes would shut down our ports, trams, trains and airlines, and our power generators.

Industrial action before the modern era of reform was 44 times higher than today in a much smaller population. Loading This is because successive federal governments  both Labor and Liberal  have made a series of important reforms to our industrial relations system that have seen Australia move towards more co-operative, productive and fair workplaces. For example Laurie Brereton and Paul Keating deserve credit for their legacies, achieved with bipartisan support from the Coalition, that ended economy wide arbitration in favour of enterprise bargaining. Reforms introduced by John Howard and Peter Reith on the Liberal side of politics, including freedom of association, simplification of awards and effective remedies against industrial action, were not supported by Labor at the time, but were thankfully retained by subsequent Labor governments. The massive drop in strike activity in Australia has been of enormous benefit to the lives of working Australians and the Australian economy.

Australians dont like it when their childcare centres, schools and hospitals are disrupted. They dont like losing pay for no apparent reason. And they dont like it that the cost of construction is 30 per cent higher than it should be. To put the illogicality of this campaign into context, the ACTU wants to put a wrecking ball through the Fair Work Act  a framework that was introduced only a few years ago by Julia Gillard. As Minister for Jobs and Industrial Relations I acknowledge some of the work done by my recent predecessors; I dont agree with everything obviously. But the past few decades of industrial policy have been marked by one common denominator  a shared belief that the industrial landscape should be directed towards an economy that supports co-operation, good, well-paid jobs and safe workplaces. This is now at risk with the ACTUs Sally McManus pitch to Bill Shorten that the rules need to be thrown out.

To date it seems Mr Shorten has given every indication he will give in to those demands. Sallys Law  which is that there should be no law, will become Bills Law. A modernising industrial relations system has been a major contributing factor to Australias long trajectory of economic prosperity and strong jobs growth, particularly over the past few years. But the ACTU, which has seen its membership wither on the vine over the same period, now wants to overturn all that, putting at risk jobs and damaging thousands of small and medium sized businesses.But Balnaves, displeased at coughing up the sop, brought in Watson Mangioni lawyers. (Just think of all the wonderful things Kaldor Public Arts Projects could do with the cash!) Much like Ardents share price, that Land and Environment Court lawsuit crashed and burnt. We wonder how much the Balnaves Foundation will have to shell out to Watson Mangioni and the Planning Departments legal team? At least the common folk of Dover Heights will get their (half) shed. Packer turnout packs a punch

James Packer's right-hand man Mark Arbib at the launch of Damon Kitney's book on the billionaire. Credit:Nick Moir James Packer may be far away in Argentina but there were plenty of old friends packed in to the HarperCollins headquarters on Elizabeth Street for the launch of the long-awaited biography of the man by The Australian newspapers Damon Kitney. (A threat of legal action put a competing tome from Australian Financial Review deputy editor Aaron Patrick on ice.) Former Publishing and Broadcasting Limited chief executive Peter Yates, now the deputy chairman of the Myer familys investment vehicle, led the pack. Sam McKay, the Consolidated Press executive now running Point King Capital with former Westpac man Harvey Carter was also there, along with Consolidated chief financial officer Michael Johnson and his Crown colleague Ken Barton.

(We would name all the corporate spin doctors there but wed run out of space.) Former News Corp boss Kim Williams' phone interrupted proceedings. Also in the room, Williams' successor Michael Miller, News Corp executive Siobhan McKenna and The Australian's new editor-in-chief Chris Dore. So was Packers first wife Jodhi Meares. And while former Rudd government minister turned Packer lieutenant Mark Arbib circulated the spinner and journo-heavy room, who was sat downstairs at Bambini Trust?

None other than former prime minister turned author Kevin Rudd, no doubt on his way to Canberra where former Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis will launch his book on Tuesday. Perhaps hed misplaced his invitation. Keeping it in the family NSW Labor general secretary Kaila Murnain's sister was to run for a Queensland seat at the next federal election. Credit:Peter Braig

Weve heard of factional warfare, but how about of the interstate variety? NSW Labor general secretary Kaila Murnain likes to keeps a tight leash on things locally. (Meanwhile, her predecessor Jamie Clements was on Thursday given a three-year backdated suspension from the party  after improperly accessing the electoral roll to help union mate and fraudster Derrick Belan  which means hell be back in May 2020.) But over in Queensland, they have other ideas. Having preselected Murnains sister Michelle Dracoulis to run against Liberal National MP Ted OBrien for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax, factional players have now hounded her out.

Dracoulis, a small business owner, quietly pulled out of the race for Clive Palmers old electorate (which OBrien was heavily favoured to win anyway) two weeks ago. And while CBD sits miles (and miles and miles) south of the Tweed River, we can hear the anger from Queensland Labors Right faction even from here (even if Dracoulis was in the Left). PMO staffer jumps ship Prime Minister Scott Morrison, pictured during the Wentworth by-election, has lost policy advisor Cath Patterson. Credit:Chris Pavlich Few Malcolm Turnbull staffers survived Scott Morrisons shift into the Prime Ministerial Suite, but Home Affairs Minister Peter Duttons former chief-of-staff Cath Patterson did."The real problem, however, was that the story wasnt true. Nonetheless, the briefing of the story was a clever play by those who had done so, given that Hartcher had long been seen in the press gallery as close to me. Whatever the truth of my relationship with Peter Hartcher  and it was infinitely more complex than that  the impression had been given that someone close to me had deliberately leaked the story." Later in the book, Rudd calls my article, co-bylined with Phillip Coorey, now political editor at The Australian Financial Review, "spectacularly damaging" and "spectacularly inaccurate". Gillard was prime minister the next day. Loading Rudd calls it "the coup that killed politics". He says that Australian politics has yet to recover as it lurches madly from one prime ministerial coup to another eight years later. So if my story was the catalyst for so momentous a change in national politics, I should address his claim that it was false. The piece, published on a Wednesday, began: "When Kevin Rudd talked confidently on Monday about the strength of Labor support for his leadership it was not based solely on bravado - he has been discreetly checking that his party is still behind him.

"The Herald has learnt from a number of MPs that the Prime Minister's most trusted lieutenant, his chief of staff, Alister Jordan, has been talking privately to almost half the caucus to gauge whether Mr Rudd has the support of his party." The story went on to say that Jordan's soundings had been "conducted in the past month with Mr Rudd's knowledge". My sources for the piece have always been the subject of intense speculation. Each side has always blamed the other for "leaking" or "briefing" the story to me. I have never discussed the sourcing with anyone. That's because I spoke to my sources in confidence, agreed to protect their identities, and have kept my word. One Labor MP, Michael Danby, who is closely aligned with Bill Shorten, years ago claimed to another newspaper that he had been a source for my story. I have never commented. Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit: I will, however, make these observations. Politicians generally are given to tribalism and conspiracy. So they assume that journalists are tribal and conspiratorial, too. And some are, though these are usually people that are not considered journalists by the profession at large but are regarded as political or ideological provocateurs and campaigners.

Most Canberra press gallery reporters are professional and strive for objectivity. The truth in this case is unexcitingly straightforward. The story was not "leaked" or "briefed" by one side to the exclusion of the other. You can reasonably assume that, on a story such as this, an experienced reporter would check with sources on both sides, among Rudd's loyalists as well as Gillard's. Which is exactly what I did. Both sides provided supporting evidence. In support of his claim, Rudd cites an ABC documentary on his downfall, The Killing Season. This program's researchers said that they called many members of the caucus to ask if Jordan had talked to them to test support for Rudd. They reported that "only two out of 72 caucus members we contacted described having a conversation" along those lines with Jordan. This is a ridiculous exercise. Consider this. You are a Labor MP. An ABC TV researcher whom you probably have never met calls you out of the blue one day. He or she asks if you would like to admit to being a possible source for the story that was used to destroy a first-term Labor prime minister and set off years of bitter recriminations. Illustration: Andrew Dyson Credit: What would you do? Say yes? Or politely decline to comment? The only surprise here is that two caucus members did confirm the conversations to an unknown ABC researcher.Rupert Murdoch's Nationwide News "destroyed" the reputation of actor Geoffrey Rush in a series of articles claiming he behaved inappropriately towards a female actor during a Sydney Theatre Company production and its reporter was "desperate" for a "Weinstein story", the Federal Court has heard.

Mr Rush, 67, is suing the publisher for defamation over two reports in The Daily Telegraph and a newsagent poster in late 2017 which alleged "inappropriate behaviour" towards a female cast member during a 2015-16 production of King Lear. He has vehemently denied the claims.

Geoffrey Rush arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday. Credit:Nick Moir

Flanked by his wife, Jane Menelaus, Mr Rush appeared in court on Monday for the first day of the hearing and started giving evidence. The high-stakes legal battle is slated to run for three weeks.

In his opening address to the court, Mr Rush's barrister Bruce McClintock, SC, said the articles and poster served to "smash and destroy" his client's reputation and he had a "very substantial claim for loss of income".Deputy Premier John Barilaro says the states farmers would absolutely benefit from being able to export through a container terminal in Newcastle  an outcome made more difficult by his own governments policies.

The NSW Nationals leaders public support for a container terminal in the Hunter pitches him into a long-standing controversy over the terms under which his government privatised the operation of Sydneys Port Botany and the Illawarras Port Kembla.

The terms of that 2013 privatisation include a clause entitling the lease holders to compensation from the Port of Newcastle if more than 30,000 containers were transported through the Hunter.

Critics say Sydney's Port Botany container terminal is restricted from competition by clauses in its privatisation deed. Credit:Peter Rae

According to the operators of the Port of Newcastle, itself privatised in 2013, this clause prohibits investment in port facilities at Newcastle capable of mass-handling containerised freight.An urgent call for repairs to Brisbanes footpaths has been rejected by a majority of the citys councillors, despite the wait for some repairs being two years.

Opposition councillor Steve Griffiths (Moorooka) called on lord mayor Graham Quirk and the LNP councillors to support a motion for the list of footpaths awaiting repair and reconstruction to be publicly released and for the dangerous, damaged and unsafe paths to be reconstructed by December 31.

Damaged footpath at Durack Street, Moorooka Credit:Twitter - Steve Griffiths

The call followed a 69-year-old resident falling on a footpath waiting repair on Durack Street in Morooka in September and breaking her wrist.

Independent councillor Nicole Johnston (Tennyson) said she also had residents in her ward fall on damaged footpaths and badly hurt themselves.A man was rushed to hospital in a critical condition after a car smashed into a tree in Brisbane's south-west on Monday.

Emergency services were called to Brookfield Road about 4.30am when a Toyota Aurion sedan crashed.

Police closed the road at the intersection with Aronia Street and diverted traffic via Mirbelia Street, until the road reopened about 7.45am.

Queensland Ambulance Service acting senior operations supervisor Andrew Blumson said two men in their 30s were pulled from the wreckage with the help of firefighters.In a sign of a frail social peace, Algeria is on the brink of a new language war as Amazigh population in the Kabylie announced the boycott of the Arabic language at school and in the administration in response to the rejection of their language in other provinces.

Many students in Algerian regions rejected learning the Amazigh language, which has a constitutional status in Algeria.

Such a negative stand towards the Amazigh language (Berber) has pushed large segments of the Kabylie population to announce the boycott of the Arabic language.

In Tizi Ouzzou, several high school students protested at what they considered as a despise of their language by their fellow countrymen holding banners saying if you refuse Amazigh we will refuse Arabic.

Last April, the Amazigh in Kabylie took to the streets to demand the independence of the mountainous region on the anniversary of the Berber Spring, marking the bloody crackdown by the Algerian regime in 2001 killing at least 116 protesters.

The 2001 bloody events triggered the birth of a movement for the self-determination of the Kabylie region (known by its French acronym MAK), which continues to gain ground among the Kabyles in Algeria and in France where a large diaspora lives.

The MAK invokes a series of grievances the Kabylie region witnessed after the independence of Algeria. They blame the Algerian regime for seeking to eradicate their linguistic and cultural particularities by imposing an arabization policy coupled with economic marginalization.

The MAK was founded by Ferhat Mhenni, who leads a provisional Kabyle government in exile. The movement identifies itself as a pacifist movement seeking autonomy from Algiers as a prelude to founding an independent Kabylie state.

Human Rights Watch, EuroMed Rights, Amnesty International, and Front Line Defenders have condemned in the strongest terms Algerias discrimination against the Amazigh minority and called for dropping all charges against Kamaleddine Fekhar, a leading human rights activist and his 40 co-defendants.A teenage boy who hit power lines with a pole and suffered an electric shock during the storm clean-up in the Moreton Bay region has been rushed to hospital.

The Queensland Ambulance Service said paramedics were called to Station Street in Petrie about 9.40pm, with a critical care paramedic also responding to the triple zero call.

The view of the severe storm from The Gap, in Brisbane's north-west, as it moved offshore.

The boy, aged in his early teens according to QAS, was taken to Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in a serious but stable condition.

Meanwhile, two adults and a child were winched off Mt Glorious, about 40 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, after being cut off by floodwater.Bourke Street accused James Gargasoulas told a psychiatrist it was God's will that he ran down pedestrians in Melbourne's CBD, and believes a comet will strike Earth if he has to stand trial for murder, a court has heard.

Mr Gargasoulas' delusions and paranoid schizophrenia were on Monday scrutinised as part of a fitness to plea hearing in the Supreme Court, where a jury must rule on whether he stands trial at a later date on criminal charges.

Accused Bourke Street driver James Gargasoulas at the Supreme Court earlier this year. Credit:AAP

The 28-year-old, dressed in a grey top and black pants and with a goatee beard, nodded in the dock as a psychiatrist outlined to the jury Mr Gargasoulas' foundation for driving a car into people in central Melbourne on January 20 last year.

Mr Gargasoulas faces six counts of murder and 28 of attempted murder, but his lawyers argue he is so mentally unwell he could not participate in a trial. The jury selected on Monday is focusing solely on the fitness issue and if it finds he can stand trial, he will appear before another jury.Joseph Esmaili arrives at the Supreme Court in Melbourne on Monday. Credit:AAP

A man accused of fatally punching a Melbourne surgeon felt pressured by a dispute over a smoking ban and that the doctor was "up for" a confrontation, a defence lawyer has told the Supreme Court.

Jurors were on Monday shown CCTV footage of the attack at Box Hill hospital as part of the trial for Joseph Esmaili, 24, who is charged with one count of manslaughter over the incident in May last year.

Dr Patrick Pritzwald-Stegmann, 41, died in June 2017 when his life support was turned off four weeks after the alleged assault.

Mr Esmaili, then 22, was turned in to police by his own father, who saw him in footage on the news. He was interviewed by police the next day.Premier Daniel Andrews. Credit:Simon Schluter

A sky rail to Melbourne airport is one of the options being considered by the Victorian government, the nation's lead infrastructure adviser has revealed.

Infrastructure Australia's acting chief executive Anna Chau told a federal government Senate estimates hearing on Monday that elevated rail for the $15 billion airport rail link could be an option.

In response to questions from the Greens' transport senator Janet Rice about whether elevated rail was being considered, Ms Chau said: "I understand thats one of the options."

"There could be potentially different construction options, whether it's at grade, tunnel or elevated," Ms Chau said.Victoria might boast of being the education state but a new analysis of NAPLAN data shows our schools are not doing enough to stretch high-achieving students.

High-achieving students in Victoria are not improving, according to the Grattan Institute Credit:Craig Abraham

It turns out that the state where a student attends school has a greater impact on how they learn than the school's location, size or sector, according to a blunt assessment of state-by-state results released by the Grattan Institute.

High-achieving students in Victorian secondary schools made three months less progress in numeracy than their peers in NSW.

But Victorian schools were the star performers when it came to supporting disadvantaged students, who made four months more progress than the national average from years 7 to 9.Prime Minister Scott Morrison addresses Parliament House in Canberra to issue a national apology for the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse that was enabled by institutions.A West Perth builder who failed to meet fire safety and building standards at an $11 million East Perth development has been forced to pay $5000 by the Building Services Board.

Rodney Obeid, employed by Nazero Constructions WA as a contract supervisor, was fined after City of Perth officers inspected the six-storey apartment building and found that it didnt comply with standards.

Building and Energy inspected the property in October 2017 and found that it didnt have appropriate fire safety measures installed, including a non-compliant fire door and lack of disability access in the rooftop common area.

Nazero Constructions was deregistered by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in December 2017 after Mr Obeid, director of Obeid Group, personally paid specialised subcontractors to address the issues.

At its November meeting, the board found Mr Obeid breached the Building Services (Registration) Act 2011 by failing to properly manage and supervise building work because building standards had not been met.Why did those who know cover it up? Why were the cries of children and parents ignored? Why was our system of justice blind to injustice? Why has it taken so long to act? Why were other things more important than this, the care of innocent children?

Why didn't we believe? Today we dare to ask these questions, and finally acknowledge and confront the lost screams of our children. While we cant be so vain to pretend to answers, we must be so humble to fall before those who were forsaken and beg to them our apology. A sorry that dare not ask for forgiveness.

A sorry that dare not try and make sense of the incomprehensible or think it could. A sorry that does not insult with an incredible promise. A sorry that speaks only of profound grief and loss. A sorry from a nation that seeks to reach out in compassion into the darkness where you have lived for so long. Nothing we can do now will right the wrongs inflicted on our nations children.

Even after a comprehensive Royal Commission, which finally enabled the voices to be heard and the silence to be broken, we will all continue to struggle. So today we gather in this Chamber in humility. Not just as Representatives of the people of this country, but as fathers, as mothers, as siblings, friends, workmates, and in some cases, indeed as victims and survivors. Ngunnawal means meeting place. And on this day of apology, we meet together. We honour every survivor in this country, we love you, we hear you and we honour you. No matter if you are here at this meeting place or elsewhere, this apology is to you and for you.

Your presence and participation makes tangible our work today  and it gives strength to others who are yet to share what has happened in their world. Elsewhere in this building and around Australia, there are others who are silently watching and listening to these proceedings, men and women who have never told a soul what has happened to them. To these men and women I say this apology is for you too. And later when the speeches are over, we will stand in silence and remember the victims who are not with us anymore, many too sadly by their own hand. The House of Reps listens during Mr Morrison's address. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen As a nation, we failed them, we forsook them. That will always be our shame.

This apology is for them and their families too. As one survivor recently said to me, "It wasnt a foreign enemy who did this to us  this was done by Australians." To Australians. Enemies in our midst. Enemies. In. Our. Midst. The enemies of innocence. Look up at the galleries, look at the Great Hall, look outside this place and you will see men and women from every walk of life, from every generation, and every part of our land.

Crushed, abused, discarded and forgotten. Loading The crimes of ritual sexual abuse happened in schools, churches, youth groups, scout troops, orphanages, foster homes, sporting clubs, group homes, charities, and in family homes as well. It happened anywhere a predator thought they could get away with it, and the systems within these organisations allowed it to happen and turned a blind eye. It happened day after day, week after week, month after month, and decade after decade. Unrelenting torment.

When a child spoke up, they werent believed and the crimes continued with impunity. One survivor told me that when he told a teacher of his abuse, that teacher then became his next abuser. Trust broken. Innocence betrayed. Power and position exploited for evil dark crimes.

A survivor named Faye told the royal commission, "Nothing takes the memories away. It happened 53 years ago and its still affecting me." One survivor named Ann said, "My mother believed them rather than me". Loading I also met with a mother whose two daughters were abused by a priest the family trusted. Suicide would claim one of her two beautiful girls and the other lives under the crushing weight of what was done to her. As a father of two daughters, I cant comprehend the magnitude of what she has faced.

Not just as a father but as Prime Minister, I am angry too at the calculating destruction of lives and abuse of trust, including those who have abused the shield of faith and religion to hide their crimes, a shield that is supposed to protect the innocent, not the guilty. And they stand condemned. One survivor says it was like "becoming a stranger to your parents." Mental health illnesses, self-harm, and addictions followed. The pain didnt stop with adulthood. Relationships with partners and children became strained as survivors struggled with the conflicting currents within them.

Parents and siblings felt guilt and sadness for what they had missed, for what and whom they chose to believe, and for what they did not see. While survivors contemplated what could have been. A survivor named Rodney asks the question so common to so many survivors, he wonders about "the person I may have become, or the person I could have become if I didnt have all of this in my life." Death can take many forms. In this case the loss of a life never lived, a life denied. Another survivor, Aiden spoke of not getting justice because his abuser had died. He said, "I was bereft because I was robbed. I was robbed of my day in court. I wanted to tell the world what he did. That was stolen. That was him again, taking control."

Mr Speaker, today, as a nation, we confront our failure to listen, to believe and to provide justice. And again today, we say sorry. To the children we failed, sorry. To the parents whose trust was betrayed and who have struggled to pick up the pieces, sorry. To the whistle-blowers who we did not listen to, sorry.

To the spouses, partners, wives, husbands and children who have dealt with the consequences of the abuse, cover-ups and obstruction, sorry. To generations past and present, sorry. Mr Speaker, as part of our work leading us to this day, I recently met with the National Apology Survivors Reference Group, as did the Leader of the Opposition, who are with us here today. I want to thank this wonderful group of people and brave people. Many are survivors; they have all worked so hard to make today a reality.

They said to me that an apology without action is just a piece of paper and it is. And today they also wanted to hear about our actions. It is a fair call. In outlining our actions, I want to recognise the work of my predecessors, former Prime Minister Gillard, who is with us here today, and I thank you for your attendance. Former Prime Minister Rudd, the Member for Warringah, who continues to serve us here in this place, and the former Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull. I want to thank them for their compassion and leadership as they also confronted these terrible failings. The foundations of our actions are the findings and recommendations of the Royal Commission, initiated by Prime Minister Gillard. The steady compassionate hand of the Commissioners and staff resulted in 17,000 survivors coming forward and nearly 8,000 of them recounting their abuse in private sessions of the Commission.

We are all grateful to the survivors who gave evidence to the Commission. It is because of your strength and your courage that we are gathered here today. Many of the Commissioners and staff are also with us today and I thank them also. Mr Speaker, acting on the recommendations of the Royal Commission with concrete action gives practical meaning to todays Apology. The Commonwealth, as our national government, must lead and coordinate our response. The National Redress Scheme has commenced.

I thank the state and territory governments for their backing of the scheme. The Scheme is about recognising and alleviating the impact of past abuse, and providing justice for survivors. The Scheme will provide survivors with access to counselling and psychological services, monetary payments, and, for those who want one  and I stress for those who want one  a direct personal response from an institution where the abuse occurred. It will mean  that after many years, often decades, of denials and cover-ups  the institutions responsible for ruining lives admit their wrongdoing and the terrible damage they caused. The National Office of Child Safety is another big step forward to ensuring the prevention and detection of child abuse, wherever it occurs.

It was announced as part of our governments response to the Royal Commission and was established from July 1 of this year within the Department of Social Services. As Prime Minister, I will be changing these arrangements to ensure that the National Office of Child Safety will report to me. It will reside within the portfolio of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as it should. The Minister for Social Services will assist me in this role, including reporting to me on the progress of Royal Commission recommendations and the activities of the Office of Child Safety. The Office has already begun its work to raise awareness of child safety and to drive cultural change in institutions in the community  to ensure that the systemic failures and abuses of power that brought us here today are not repeated. Importantly, children themselves are being empowered to participate in these initiatives  because our children must be heard, and when it comes to the work of safety, it must be approachable and child friendly. They must know who they can tell, and they must be believed, and they must know where they can go. All Australian governments are now working together to establish a national database, to ensure higher standards for working with children and that data about peoples ability to work with children is shared nationally.

And our work does not stop at our borders. We are ensuring children across the world are protected by stopping child sex offenders from travelling overseas without permission, which will disrupt, prevent and investigate the abuse of children globally. And we recognise that as survivors age, those who were abused in or by an institution, have real fears about entering into aged care facilities. Its an understandable fear given what happened during childhood, and we will work with survivor groups about what we can to do alleviate those fears and indeed the work of the Royal Commission into aged care will be able to address this as well. And to assist with lasting change we recognise that there are many more survivors who were abused in other settings such as their own homes and in their communities, who will not be covered by this redress scheme.

These survivors also need to be heard, and believed, and responded to with services to address their needs. So today, I commit to fund the establishment of a National Centre of Excellence, and I call on the states and territories to work as partners in this venture. This Centre will be the place to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse, to deal with the stigma, to support help seeking and guide best practice for training and other services. All of this is just the start. The Australian government has not rejected a single recommendation of the Royal Commission. We are now actively working on 104 of the 122 recommendations that were addressed to the Commonwealth. The 18 remaining are being closely examined, in consultation with states and territories. Today we commit that from December this year, we will report back to the Australian people, through the Parliament, to be held accountable each year, each year, on the progress we are making on the recommendations over the next five years and then beyond.

We will shine a spotlight on all parts of government to ensure we are held accountable. And the institutions which perpetrated this abuse, covered it up and refused to be held accountable, must be kept on the hook. Already, many of those organisations have made their own apologies and have signed up to be a part of the National Redress Scheme, as they should. But there are others yet to join, and today I simply say that justice, decency and the beliefs and values we share as Australians, insists that they sign on. Today I also commit to establishing a National Museum, a place of truth and commemoration, to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse.

We will work with survivor groups, to ensure your stories are recorded, that your truth is told, that our nation does not turn from our shame, and that our Nation will never forget the untold horrors you experienced. Through this we will endeavour to bring some healing to our nation and to learn from our past horrors. We can never promise a world where there are no abusers. But we can promise a country where we commit to hear and believe our children. To work together to keep children safe, to trust them and most of all respect their innocence. Mr Speaker, I present the formal apology to be tabled in this Parliament today, which will be handed to those in the Great Hall shortly. It reflects all of the sentiments that I have expressed on behalf of the Australian people, this Parliament and our government.Claims by Environment Minister Melissa Price that she did not accuse a respected Pacific leader of money-grabbing have been cast into doubt after it emerged her adviser later shared a taxi with the man and sought to allay concern over the remarks.

Ms Price has been accused of disrespecting former Kiribati president Anote Tong in a conversation where she accused the Pacific region of "always" seeking cash from Australia to address climate change.

The new cabinet minister is also said to have told Mr Tong, a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, that she had her "chequebook" ready.

The exchange between Environment Minister Melissa Price and former Kiribati president Anote Tong occurred in a Canberra Italian restaurant. Credit:

Ms Price has strenuously denied making the slurs at a restaurant in Canberra last Tuesday, telling Parliament she "100 per cent" disputed the allegations.All refugee children waiting for high-level medical treatment have been transferred off Nauru after 11 kids were flown to Australia on Monday night, bureaucrats have revealed.

But in a Senate Estimates hearing on Monday night, the Australian Border Forces top medico acknowledged there was recently an unprecedented jump in medical cases as refugees or asylum seekers hit the five-year mark in offshore detention.

Refugee children waiting for high-level medical treatment have been transferred off Nauru. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The arrival of the 11 children in Australia about 6pm on Monday evening leaves 52 kids on Nauru - all recognised as refugees.

But Department of Home Affairs officials confirmed all children who had been clinically referred for treatment in Australia had now been flown off the Pacific island, which lacks certain top-level medical facilities including some paediatric care.Algerian Louisa Ighilahriz, a prominent resistance figure, has announced her resignation from the upper house of parliament, citing her opposition to President Abdelaziz Bouteflikas plan to run for a fifth term in office in 2019.

I refuse this because he is not the actual ruler. Other people are ruling in his name, she told Algerian media, noting that her credibility before the people pushed her to quit this charade at parliament.

I do not want to play a role that I no longer believe in. The president is sick and unable to run the country. Members of his close circle are really the ones who are ruling in his name, but they are operating behind the scenes, she added, making reference to the Presidents brother and senior aide Saeed Bouteflika and to the Chief of Staff Ahmed Gaid Salah.

According to press reports, these two powerful men are believed to be behind the military purge carried out to retain control as the president braces for another election mandate.

Mme Ighilahriz, 82, is a writer and a former member of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). She was born in Oujda, eastern Morocco, to a Berber family and her family moved to Algiers in 1948. She joined the FLN under the codename Lila to work as a courier, smuggling information, weapons and bombs across Algiers in bread baked by her father.

On 28 September 1957 while traveling with a FLN party, Ighilahriz was ambushed by the French paratroopers at Chebli and captured.Western Australia could be on the verge of abandoning its decades-old "tough on drugs" attitude to illicit substance addiction after both sides of parliament backed a plan to examine the decriminalisation of drugs.

A high-powered parliamentary committee, to be chaired by Greens MP Alison Xamon with representatives from the Labor, Liberal and National parties, will look at "alternate approaches to reducing illicit drug use".

This will include looking at jurisdictions around the world which have decriminalised or legalised drug use.

WA's politicians might be on the verge of putting away the "tough on drugs" rhetoric when examining new drug laws. Credit:File

Ms Xamon said the committee, which would run for 12 months, would also inquire into the decriminalisation of illegal drugs in Portugal.The flight attendant then asks the woman whether she would like to sit elsewhere. "Put her to another seat!" the male passenger shouts, before turning to the woman. "I tell you this. If you don't go to another seat, I'll push you to another seat!" The elderly woman says something back at him, prompting the man to retort angrily: "Don't talk to me in a f---ing foreign language, you stupid ugly cow!" and then: "Ugly black bastard!" The shouting had a mixed effect on surrounding passengers. One man, wearing a black T-shirt and sitting in the row directly behind, physically tried to intervene, sticking his hand between the seats in front of him and telling the irate passenger to keep his voice down. "Stop," the man in the black shirt pleads. "There's no need for that at all. Just stop. It's really easy to close your mouth."

Lawrence, while recording the video, can be heard saying, "Throw him off the flight. Throw him off the flight. Get rid of him!" Eventually, the elderly woman asks to sit next to her daughter and begins to move out of the row, visibly fed up. To his surprise, Lawrence said, the flight took off shortly afterward, with no apparent repercussions for the male passenger, who effectively enjoyed "extra leg room" in a row to himself. "I thought the flight attendant was going to call someone and escort the man off the flight," Lawrence said. "They moved the woman instead of moving him. That was shocking to me." He decided to upload his video to Facebook the following day out of frustration.

"It was just so disturbing," Lawrence said. "Because there was no response from the other passengers on the flight at the time, I thought, OK, well, somebody needs to know what happened here. That's why I kept the video running and captured as much as I could." Over the weekend, the video garnered nearly 3 million views and has been shared tens of thousands of times. Lawrence later uploaded the video to YouTube, where it has more than 100,000 views. Scores of commenters expressed outrage over how the matter was handled and demanded to know why Ryanair's flight crew didn't remove the male passenger before the plane took off. Representatives for Ryanair did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday. However, the Dublin-based budget airline company said in a Twitter post on Sunday that it was aware of the video and had reported the incident to Essex Police. "We operate strict guidelines for disruptive passengers and we will not tolerate unruly behaviour like this," Ryanair told BBC News. "We will be taking this matter further and disruptive or abusive behaviour like this will result in passengers being banned from travel."

Essex Police confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it was investigating and encouraged people with information to contact them. "Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported," the police department told the news site. "We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation." The woman's unnamed daughter told HuffPost UK that her mother, identified only as "Mrs Gayle", is a 77-year-old retiree who immigrated to Britain from Jamaica in the 1960s. They were returning from a vacation to mark the anniversary of the death of Gayle's husband, the daughter, 53, added. "She's been feeling really down and depressed, so I thought the trip would raise her spirits," Gayle's daughter told the news site. "The underlying reason behind the man's abusive behaviour comes down to the fact that my mum is a black woman and he didn't want her sitting next to him. He says it in the video." Gayle's daughter said the encounter left her outraged and her mother "upset and very stressed, on top of the grief that she's already experiencing".

Lawrence said that he spoke to the mother and daughter after the flight and said they were both disappointed and disgusted. His parents were also part of the "Windrush generation", immigrants who moved from the Caribbean to Britain from 1948 to 1971, so Lawrence said he could understand why the elderly woman agreed to switch seats rather than escalate the situation. "The racism they suffered on a daily basis is historic. Our parents have learnt over the years - because they have never received any kind of justice - they've just learnt to live with it," he said. "They kind of have this attitude, like, 'Well, what can we do?' sort of thing. The lady was, like, this has happened so many times. I just want to go home." Lawrence has since posted multiple more times about the incident on social media, urging people to put pressure on Ryanair for turning "a blind eye to racial discrimination". The airline's acknowledgment of his video was hardly a sufficient apology, he said. "It's not good enough," he said. "It certainly falls so short of what we expect an airline to provide for, in terms of protecting their customers. It's shameful. It's shameful."Moscow: US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from a nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia has drawn sharp criticism from one of the men who signed it  Mikhail Gorbachev, who called the decision reckless and not the work of "a great mind".

In announcing that he would withdraw from the treaty, Trump cited Russian violations of the pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was signed in Washington in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev.

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 2016. Credit:AP

Gorbachev, who is now 87 years old, cast Trump's decision as a threat to peace.

"Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements," he said. "Is it really that hard to understand that rejecting these agreements is, as the people say, not the work of a great mind."Washington: Ministers in Detroit are criticising a radio ad running in the city that supports John James' US Senate campaign and attempts to link US Senator Debbie Stabenow's support of abortion rights with what the ad calls "black genocide," the Michigan publication Bridge Magazine reported on Monday.

US President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Senator Debbie Stabenow during a signing ceremony. Credit:Bloomberg

Stars and Stripes Forever PAC, which is based in northern Virginia and is sponsoring the radio ad, did not immediately return an email for comment. Meanwhile, James, a Republican businessman and abortion rights opponent whom the ad touts as the better candidate, said through his campaign that he did not consent to or approve of the ad and suggested campaign laws should be reformed to stop such ads.

Stabenow's campaign said she had no comment.

The political action committee - which has been linked to white conservative John Philip Sousa IV and ran ads in black-majority markets in 2016 and pushed Ben Carson's presidential campaign that year - claims in the spot that "61 per cent of black deaths are caused by abortion" and that "African-American pastors said it's black genocide." It also claims "more than 1800 black babies are aborted each day."Washington: The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a US government-wide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and healthcare, recognising gender largely as an individual's choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

Now the US Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable. The agency's proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by the Times. Any dispute about one's sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.Latest News New electric vehicle loans the talking point as lender celebrates first profit 183% growth at lender as they set their sights on specialist market segment

$530m funding deal to see Pallas Capital team up with Credit Suisse New trust to offer cheaper cost of funds for major commercial real estate deals

A mortgage brokerage has celebrated its top performers at an annual conference and awards gala.

For its third event, MoneyQuest held its National Conference on the Gold Coast, with a theme of Its Time.

The two-day event included workshops and sessions, with speakers from a whole range of industries, including ALIs Huy Truong, NABs Colin Howe and CBA business development manager Stephen Marsh.

At an awards gala event, awards were handed out to the groups top brokers. The Rising Star Award went to MoneyQuest Mont Alberts Nick Reid.

Franchise of the Year in terms of highest volume settled went to MoneyQuest Cheltenham. Mortgage Broker of the Year, also for highest volume settled, went to MoneyQuest Glen Waverleys Nizar Hamid.

Managing Director Michael Russell said, Our National Conference is the perfect opportunity to recognise our champion performers and celebrate their success.

Now in our third year, we find ourselves surrounded by an amazing group of franchise owners who love what they do and care deeply for their clients.

Following the announcement of the winners at the Gala Awards Dinner, Russell told attendees how thrilled he has been with the growth of the franchise over the past year.

He also praised the ongoing commitment from franchise owners to provide client experiences that are creating thousands of walking, talking billboards for the brand.

He added, The quality of franchise owners who are continuing to join our brand sees us well placed in becoming the premium challenger brand for residential, commercial and asset finance across Australia.Latest News New electric vehicle loans the talking point as lender celebrates first profit 183% growth at lender as they set their sights on specialist market segment

$530m funding deal to see Pallas Capital team up with Credit Suisse New trust to offer cheaper cost of funds for major commercial real estate deals

A non-major is celebrating being named top of its category at the renowned Australian Mortgage Awards.

Bankwest was awarded with the MSA National Non-Major Bank of the Year at last Fridays event, held at The Star.

The Western Australian institution also bagged top spot in the Most Effective Online Presence  Lender category at the ceremony.

Bankwest head of third party banking Ian Rakhit paid tribute to his team after picking up the award.

He said, I couldnt be more proud of the team Im lucky enough to work with every day at Bankwest.

These two awards are a sign of how hard we work to make brokers lives more simple and easy and are testament to the work being done behind the scenes as well.

Were on a journey to create a world-class home loan experience, making it simpler and easier to support brokers in servicing customer needs.

Its such an exciting time to be leading third party banking at Bankwest as we continue to bring digital tools to market to help brokers improve the service they provide to customers.

On the night Bankwests customer outcome owner James Stewart picked up the award for the Most Effective Online Presence  Lender category.

He said, As we so often say, brokers needs, and the needs and expectations of our customers and the broader community, are changing rapidly and as a result were evolving and improving the digital services and products we offer.

Its great to see were clearly hitting the nail on the head in terms of our digital services with this award.

Rakhit added,Im also aware that third party banking is about building relationships and maintaining trust and thats something Im very proud of and passionate about.

Bankwest was one of the first institutions to step into the brokering world and through this careful balance of digital and real people support, Im looking forward to seeing Bankwest continue to work closely with brokers to meet customers changing needs in the future.Sign up for our PoliticsNY newsletter for the latest coverage and to stay informed about the 2021 elections in your district and across NYC

Chemotherapy and radiation are common treatment options for people who have been diagnosed with cancer. While radiation may be targeted at specific areas, chemotherapy is systemic. This means it affects the entire body. As a result, as chemotherapy kills fast-growing cancer cells, it also kills or slows the growth of healthy cells, including hair cells, that divide and grow quickly, explains the National Cancer Institute.

When chemotherapy treatment is completed, the body is typically capable of regenerating new hair, but that can take some time. Women who consider their hair a large part of their identity may have strong concerns and fears regarding hair loss and what their hair may look like when it begins to regrow. Understanding what to expect and what they can do to facilitate the regrowth of hair can help women better handle what lies ahead.

New hair typically begins to grow within one to two months of the last chemo treatment. Breas tcanc er.org says people who have undergone chemotherapy may notice soft fuzz forming on their head roughly two to three weeks after the end of chemo. This will be followed by real hair growing at its normal rate one month afterward. Two months after the last treatment, an inch of hair can be expected. How hair grows back elsewhere on the body, such as the eyelashes, eyebrows and pubic area, varies from person to person. Experts at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Centers Dermatologic Care Center at Northwestern University in Chicago recommend speaking with a doctor if hair is not regrowing quickly, which can be the result of low levels of iron or zinc or even thyroid problems.

To help the process along, some doctors suggest the use of supplements like biotin. The National Institutes of Health says biotin is a B vitamin found in many foods that helps turn carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into energy. There is some evidence that taking biotin can help thicken and speed up the growth of hair and nails, but more research is needed. Rogaine, the baldness treatment, also may be advised, as its been shown to speed hair regrowth in breast cancer patients who have lost their hair, advises Health magazine.

It is not uncommon for hair grown after chemotherapy to look and feel different from hair prior to treatment. Someone who once had straight hair may develop a wavy mane afterwards. While drastic changes are not common, blonde hair may darken.

As hair grows in, certain areas on the head may grow faster than others. Working with an experienced stylist can help a person achieve a look that is evened out and stylish at any length. Rosette la Vedette, a headwear retailer and cancer resource, suggests making a first trip back to the salon a special experience with a glass of champagne. Cutting hair wont make it grow faster, but it can help a woman return to a sense of normalcy.

It can be nerve-wracking to wait for hair to regrow after chemotherapy. But patience and understanding the road ahead can assuage any fears breast cancer patients may have about regrowing their hair.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 Brooklynite and two other men face up to 15 years in prison for allegedly smuggling more than a million out-of-state cigarettes into the borough as part of a criminal scheme that swindled the city and state out of roughly $426,000 in tobacco taxes, according to charges filed by New York States top prosecutor.

Attorney General Barbara Underwood on Friday announced she indicted the three men following a months-long investigation by federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies dubbed Operation Sidestep, which found that the suspects snuck more than 6,200 cartons of cigarettes from Virginia, where the tax per package is 30 cents, into Brooklyn, where city and state taxes combined total $5.75 per pack  the highest in the nation.

As we allege, the defendants ran a criminal trafficking ring that funneled over 1.25 million untaxed cigarettes into New York  while cheating New Yorkers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes, Underwood said. These traffickers put legitimate, law-abiding businesses at a disadvantage.

Investigators also seized several firearms, three vehicles, and more than $312,000 in cash in their probe, in addition to 341,000 untaxed smokes recovered from a Brooklyn warehouse.

New York States exorbitant tobacco taxes, which lawmakers enacted to curb smoking and promote good health, have led to the creation of a massive black-market economy, and bad actors smuggle more outside cigarettes into stores across the Empire State than in any other state in the country, think tank the Tax Foundation reported in 2017.

In 2015, for instance, more than 56 percent of all cigarettes purchased in New York State were smuggled in from elsewhere, totaling more than $1.6 billion in unpaid tax revenue, according to a New York Post report analyzing the Tax Foundations 2017 study.

The defendants arrested in Operation Sidestep, who include two Maryland residents in addition to the local man, received a top charge of criminal tax fraud, were arraigned in Kings County Supreme Court on Oct. 19 and 11, and are expected to return to court in December.

A spokesman for the attorney generals office did not immediately comment on the cost of Operation Sidestep to taxpayers.Local Problems, Global Tech Photo: picture alliance via Getty Image

Long before talk of Russian trolls and foreign manipulation dominated daily headlines, social media seemed to promise a utopia. The theory, so it went, was that mobile phones  with free social media and the internet  would provide disenfranchised communities all around the world with the platform to speak their minds, create online communities, and use the power of free speech to oppose oppressive governments the world over. Through the power of retweets and shares, tyrants would surrender and democracy would rise from the pyre social media helped burn. The tools for this freedom were called liberation technologies. The problem is: that never happened.

Take, for example, the long-term effect of the Arab Spring. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen were among the places where social media companies like Facebook and Twitter were credited with allowing protestors the means to organize against their respective regimes. In Egypt, thousands of revolutionaries made the leap from Twitter to Tahrir Square, eventually resulting in the ousting of dictator Hosni Mubarak.

But nearly a decade later, autocrats have returned, and this time theyre using social media to disenfranchise dissenters. In Egypt, fake news laws are being used as a pretext to jail people who have more than 5,000 followers. All across the Arab world, dictators are using wide-reaching surveillance technologies to actively monitor citizens.

These tactics stretch past the Middle East, over a thousand miles northeast of Egypt, to Azerbaijan, where government officials and state-backed trolls weaponize social media against political dissidents. Freedom House, an NGO tasked with gauging state repression, recently gave Azerbaijan a freedom score of 12 (with 100 being most free). Attacks on speech are so severe that in 2010, a satirical Azerbaijani blogger disguised as a donkey was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for posting this video:

Katy Pearce understands how the Azerbaijani government abuses social media better than most. Currently an Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Pearce has spent over 20 years researching and understanding the intersection of technology and politics in post-Soviet Union democracies. Her research in Azerbaijan and Armenia sheds some critical insight on the harsh realities dissenters face across developing democracies. New York spoke with Pearce to discuss the tools and methods autocratic government use to target dissent online. Whether through the spread of defamatory memes, insidious cartoons, or fake articles, these government leaders are melding classic Soviet censorship tactics with 21st-century tools.

The following conversation was conducted over the phone and has been edited for clarity.

In your research, you mention how the government of Azerbaijan hires tech-savvy political technologists to create pro-government propaganda. Can you explain that?

In the former Soviet Union, it was very common for there to be these people [who were] kind of like PR advisers, kind of like strategists. Like Karl Rove types. One of the tools in their tool kits is the youth wings of the ruling party. Basically those organizations are for [the] upward mobility of young folks who want to get into politics. They want to get into the government because it is the best path to success. So those people are eager to please, they know a lot about technology. So their pipeline is through these political technologists.

What type of content are they creating?

Usually, the first thing that happens is there is a major slam article that comes out in [the] kind of tabloid press that is highly associated with the regime. So this slam article comes out that has kernels of truth. When there are kernels of truth, we mentally start thinking that maybe this other stuff is true. Because everything is so hazy it is like everything is plausible. [Then] they start a campaign of harassing them online. This could be spreading rumors about them, making cartoons about them, making memes about them. It could just be saying bad things about them. As you can imagine, your government making memes about you is pretty unpleasant, and then people wonder, What should I do? Should I defend myself? Should I ignore it? We have this saying, Dont feed the trolls, but who do you feed when [the trolls are] your government? In my experience and in talking with other people, the social media companies are rarely helpful with this sort of thing. One of the tools that they [government trolls] like to use is to report somebodys account so many times that the social media company freezes or shuts down their account. So then it is like, who does Facebook believe?

So if you are the target of this kind of government smear campaign, and are having memes made about you and are being defamed, and you dont know if you can turn to Facebook  what do these people end up doing?

A lot of things hinge on your family. In Azerbaijan, and in a lot of authoritarian regimes, really how they hit you is through your family. If they say, Hey, dissident, we are going to fire your father or brother  because everything is really kind of tied to the government  obviously that is a big deterrent. In general, people who are willing to engage in dissent, online or off, tend to be biologically available. They have less people depending on them, they have less to lose. If you are feeding your family, you are probably not going to engage in dissent. People rely on you to eat. You have to assume, especially with more blackmail-oriented stuff, people will shut up.

I dont know if this is measurable, but how much of this harassment is directly related to regime trolls and how much of it is planting a seed for other non-government users to jump in?

It is hard to say because it is usually a hop or two away. There is a link. It is possible that there are some young people who are sitting in their living room and harassing this person of their own free will. It is possible. Even if Ivan was the one who chose to do it, and nobody directed him to, he still knew the message was, We are attacking this person right now. So it is difficult and that is the beauty of it: They [the government] can sit a couple steps away.

Are there any emerging technologies, or activists using technologies in Azerbaijan, that give you hope?

Well, the people [who] are living in exile. They have done a good job of hosting themselves [on] sites that cant be blocked as easily. So the links are directly to some Amazon web server. They also do a really good job of spreading information through WhatsApp. They are being really smart, finding ways to get information to people. Its challenging though, because sometimes they will have stories that are not really what a typical journalistic outlet would post. Also, young people in the U.S. really are not using Facebook anymore. It will be interesting to see what kind of social media transformation will happen in other places. Young people moving to Instagram or Snapchat is going to happen as well, and we will be keeping an eye on what the governments response to these other sites will be. Are they going to have to invest more in surveillance? We dont know how that is going to play out.Sign up for our PoliticsNY newsletter for the latest coverage and to stay informed about the 2021 elections in your district and across NYC

This jeweler got rocked.

Some savvy snake stole thousands in baubles from a designers jewelry-dispensing vending machine inside a Williamsburg park by using fraudulent credit cards to trick the gadget into spitting out trinkets without actually paying for them, cops said.

The thief swiped the fake plastic around 1:15 pm on Sept. 20 to score approximately $13,000 worth of jewelry from designer Marla Aarons vending machine inside the privately owned but publicly accessible Vale Park next to the swanky William Vale Hotel on Wythe Avenue between N. 12th and N. 13th streets, according to authorities.

Aaron brought her machine  which sold pieces from her eponymous line that features such baubles as an $165 silver-link chain and an $1,588 lock necklace  to the green space in June, after debuting it at the Brooklyn Museum last year, and this summer told the Brooklyn Paper that she wasnt concerned about thievery, because the gadget is equipped with cameras and weighs hundreds of pounds.

It weighs a ton  literally, she said.

The jeweler previously said she planned to keep the machine in the park until sometime this month, and it was no longer in place as recently as Sunday, according to a New York Daily News report. Police Department spokesman Sgt. Vincent Marchese could not confirm if Aaron or authorities moved the machine following the theft, however, citing a lack of that information in the complaint report.

Cops are searching for a suspect in his twenties or thirties, who is about 5-feet-10-inches tall, and 220 pounds, according to police.

Aaron did not immediately return requests for comment.

Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 5778477. The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at www.nypdcrimestoppers.com or by texting tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. All tips are strictly confidential.Dear Reader,

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Digital EditorGoldman Sachs Group Inc has named veteran banker Todd Leland as its investment banking head for Asia Pacific excluding Japan, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters, adding to leadership changes at the bank with CEO David Solomon taking over this month. Leland, an American who joined Goldman in 1992, will replace Andrea Vella and Kate Richdale who were appointed co-heads of the unit in 2015. Vella and Richdale will remain in the region to become the co-chairs of the unit, said the memo sent to the bank staff and seen by Reuters on Monday. Leland was named a ...Local Problems, Global Tech A girl in Kandal province, Cambodia, rows a boat through a flooded village. Photo: Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images

Sometimes, tech that helps the world literally helps the entire world, or at least a big chunk of it. Weve covered some of those  a counterfeit-pill detection service already serving millions, a treatment for worldwide desertification, drones that deliver blood to people in rural areas. Those are all huge projects with worldwide potential impacts. But there are also plenty of very small, humble projects, no less important for their specificity. A flood-sensing project called Tepmachcha, created as a collaboration between the American DAI Maker Lab and the Czech-based NGO People in Need, is one of those. The whole world doesnt need more than 25 of these things, says Rob Ryan-Silva, DAI Maker Labs director. But that doesnt mean that the world doesnt need it at all.

Tepmachcha  its the Khmer name for the fish form taken by the Hindu god Vishnu to warn of a flood  is an example of how global technology manufacturing can be used to solve incredibly local problems. Developed in mid-2016, the project is a fully open-source flood detector designed for Cambodia, which has been particularly prone to disastrous floods in recent years. The particulars of the tech situation in Cambodia mean that this specific project is really only suited for very low volume.

Flood warnings are often pushed out through mobile alerts, but there are hurdles in Cambodia. Cell-phone access isnt the problem; Cambodia has more cell-phone subscriptions than people. (The U.S. does, too.) The coverage, says Ryan-Silva, is surprisingly robust and reliable. But in rural areas, illiteracy rates are around 25 percent, quite high. And while cell phones are common, internet connectivity is not. Another problem: The Khmer language is not supported by some of the most popular low-cost Nokia phones used in rural Cambodia. Khmer text just shows up as those Unicode confused white boxes, so even if the phones owner can read, the phones wont necessarily be able to display the text.

One solution is something called Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, which is basically robo-menus. Press one for yes, that kind of thing. But far from being annoying, these IVR systems are essential for both conveying and collecting data, given the problems with text-based communication in Cambodia.

The Tepmachcha system is an open-source project on GitHub: Its a complete shopping list of hardware components (there are links to the specific ones that work with the software; AliExpress is helpful), plus software to make it all work. The end product is a box containing a sonar detection system, a microprocessor similar to an Arduino, a solar panel, a battery, and a chip to communicate with cell networks. The box is dangled over a stream (usually off of a bridge, to be in the middle of the stream), with the sonar pointing downward. It bounces that sonar off of the surface of the water to detect the water level; if the level rises too high for that particular stream, it sends an alert to People in Need, which sends out an IVR call. Within minutes, people downstream of a dangerous stream can get a warning they can understand.

Its an opt-in system, one of many operated by People in Need. They currently have about 72,000 subscribers, and 16 Tepmachcha units in the field. (More are coming; shipping components from China to Cambodia can sometimes mean long waits while packages clear customs.) Its hard to know exactly how many subscribers for this kind of service are even out there, given its specifics: Target users would have a phone without internet access or Khmer language compatibility, live in a rural area, and maybe have limited literacy. But 72,000 is a pretty huge number given the low cost of the project.

Only in the past decade or so has this kind of low-volume project been remotely feasible economically. Typically, the big factories in China that churn out iPhones and Rokus and Samsung TVs wouldnt touch something like this; to make a profit, they have to assemble gadgets by the tens or hundreds of thousands. But now they dont have to; these individual components are already made, and made cheaply, and can be assembled by someone with very little engineering training. The total cost of each of these boxes, says Ryan-Silva, is only $305. And theyll last indefinitely; a couple of the first ones ever built, which were supposed to be just pilot testers, are still functioning. In the meantime, Ryan-Silva tells me that local coders have already started improving the firmware.Bangladesh will evaluate cautiously a recent Indian offer asking the country to use its Kolkata and Haldia ports for transshipment to make coastal shipping more cost-effective for bilateral trade, officials and reports said on Monday.

Bangladesh is yet to approve India's proposal which was floated several months ago.

The Financial Express newspaper carried a report saying Bangladesh's shipping ministry officials decided to evaluate the proposal "warily" as its own Chittagong and Mongla seaports were upgrading their capacity.

Shipping Secretary Abdus Samad said Bangladesh would take a decision on the proposal after a thorough consultation with the government and non-government stakeholders.

"If the stakeholders recommend, we will discuss on this proposal," shipping secretary Abdus Samad told the newspaper.

Other officials concerned said they would review the decision keeping in mind the interests of Chittagong and Mongla as their capacity was rising.

They, however, said the issue was likely to be discussed in the upcoming shipping secretary-level talks scheduled for October 24-25.

India said the initiative would shift cargo from the costly land route and create an opportunity for Bangladeshi garment exporters to reach European and American markets avoiding congestion at the Chittagong port.

Currently, ships are allowed to transport only bilateral cargos from Kolkata and Haldia ports, while they are barred from carrying international cargos under a coastal shipping agreement.

Both Kolkata and Haldia have ample capacity to handle the volume but the Chittagong and Mongla ports were constructing several terminals as well to enhance its capacity.

Bangladesh Cabinet last month approved a draft agreement to allow India to use Chittagong and Mongla ports to transport cargo to its northeastern states.

Bangladesh readied the draft for signing the deal with India, while officials said Nepal and Bhutan could be included in the agreement if they wished to use the two ports.

The two countries had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the use of the two ports during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Dhaka in June, 2015.

India-Bangladesh trade grew 38 per cent to USD 9.1 billion over the last four years while on a year-on-year basis, the trade grew 24 per cent in 2017-18.

This was followed by nearly 22 per cent growth in April-July 2018 while officials said keeping in tune with the trend, bilateral cargo movement through coastal shipping was also rising.The CBI claims to have analysed nine phone calls immediately after middleman Manoj Prasad was held in the alleged bribery case against its Special Director to allege that there was panic after the middleman's brother got "wind" of the arrest, officials said Sunday.

The investigative agency has registered a case against Asthana on the basis of claims made by a businessman Sathish Sana, probed by him in a separate case, that he was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 50 million by Manoj Prasad, an investment banker based in to get relief from repeated summons and a clean chit in the case, they said.

Surprisingly, Asthana who is second in command in the agency had intimated the nearly two months back that Sana had allegedly paid a bribe of Rs 20 million to (CBI) Chief to get relief in the case.

The agency, however, claimed on Sunday that Sana had appeared before the Magistrate where he had stated that he made payments between December, 2017 and October, 2018 to a middleman who had cited his purported connection with Asthana to arrange relief for him.

On the basis of his claims, the agency arrested Manoj Prasad on October 16 when he was returning from to allegedly collect installment of the agreed bribe.

No where in the statement which is now part of the FIR, made public nearly five days after registration, Sana had mentioned any direct meeting, interaction, or payment of bribe to Asthana.

According to the call data analysis done by the CBI, the phone calls were allegedly exchanged between Asthana and a senior officer of another intelligence who wanted to confirm the details, the middleman and the senior officer, wife of middleman with the senior officer and others, an officer claimed.

The sources claimed that call data records show that four calls were exchanged between Asthana and the senior officer on October 17, 2018, a day after the arrest.

They claimed that Somesh Prasad, brother of middleman Manoj Prasad, "somehow" got news of the latter's arrest on October 16, 2018 and immediately called his contact, the senior officer of the intelligence agency on the same day.

A call was then made by the officer to Somesh within a minute, they claimed.

Next day, the intelligence agency officer allegedly called Asthana to purportedly know the situation.

Three more calls were exchanged between the two, the agency claimed.

The officer of the intelligence agency also spoke to the wife of Somesh Prasad, they claimed.

In addition to the call exchanges, the agency is also depending heavily on the Whatsapp messages recovered from Manoj Prasad's phone, they claimed.With diesel becoming costlier than petrol in Odisha, the ruling Biju Janata Dal and the opposition Congress Sunday blamed the "faulty" policy of the central government for the rise in price of diesel.

A litre of diesel cost 12 paise more than that of petrol in Bhubaneswar on Sunday with diesel being sold at Rs 80.69 per litre while petrol cost 80.57 per litre.

Utkal Petroleum Dealers Association general secretary Sanjay Lath said that this was the first time that the price of diesel surpassed that of petrol in Odisha.

Lath said while other states have different VAT rates for petrol and diesel, Odisha charges a uniform 26 per cent VAT on both.

He claimed that there has been a decline in sale of diesel in Odisha because of the high prices of the fuel.

Odisha Finance Minister S B Behera said, "This imbalance is mostly due to faulty policy of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre ... There could be a tactical understanding between the central government and oil marketing companies."



Behera feared that the prices of essential commodities will also go up because of the increase in diesel price.

Senior Congress leader Arya Gyanendra said, "There is an inefficient government at the Centre which failed to regulate fuel price, particularly diesel ..."



BJP state general secretary Prithviraj Harichandan said, "Finance minister (Behera) should be judicious while making a statement on an important issue. Every body in the country knows the reason behind the rise in the prices of fuel. While 13 states have reduced VAT on the fuel, Odisha government is yet take a decision in this regard."Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who is from Odisha, Sunday again asked the state government to reduce the rate of VAT to give relief to people.

Odisha Byabasai Mahasangha secretary Sudhakar Panda too feared that the price of essential commodities in the state will go up due to high rate of diesel.A small intervention to increase early literacy had a big impact on families that received pediatric care at a clinic in San Francisco.

That was the major finding of a study that examined the Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing program , which is an early literacy intervention led by Too Small to Fail , an initiative of the Clinton Foundation .

Researchers with the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco , conducted the study, which was released this month. It looked at the program between August 2016 and May 2017.

Too Small to Fail partnered with doctors and nurse practitioners at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospitals Childrens Health Center, an outpatient pediatric clinic, to provide information and materials encouraging parents of children from birth to age 3 to talk, read, and sing to their children.

The healthcare providers helped the parents to see how interacting with their children supported the childs brain development.

Dr. Neeti Doshi works as a pediatrician at the clinic and took part in the program.

Supporting early-childhood development is kind of at the crux of pediatrics, said Doshi. Its what brought me into pediatrics. Pediatricians appreciate and understand the importance of early literacy as a component of promoting development and ensuring overall child well-being.

Increase in Positive Parent-Child Interactions

Researchers interviewed 370 parents immediately before and after the Talking is Teaching intervention and then again eight to 12 weeks later. They also conducted four focus groups with 26 of the parents.

After talking with their health care provider and receiving a toolkit, 80 percent of parents reported talking, reading and singing more to their children.

To us, this signals a huge potential for growth and reinforces the importance of this simple intervention, said Patti Miller, the CEO of Too Small to Fail.

Within four months, 84 percent of parents reported seeing a change in their childs behavior.

If they are seeing a difference in their baby, it means that they are interacting more with their child, and that carries so much weightespecially for a young babys brain and especially for many of our families who are living in a lot of psychosocial stress, said Doshi, who noted that San Francisco General only sees patients who are uninsured or on MediCal, Californias Medicaid program.

The researchers found that many of the parents in the study were already talking (87 percent) and singing often to their children (81 percent) prior to the intervention. But the number of parents who reported reading to their children regularly was much lower, at 47 percent.

Keys for Spanish-Speaking Parents

Nearly 70 percent of the parents who took part in the study spoke Spanish. Parents could choose to receive materials in either English or Spanish.

The study revealed some statistically significant differences between Spanish-speaking parents and English-speaking parents. Spanish-speaking parents were less likely to read to their children regularly than English-speaking parents (41 percent versus 59 percent). They were also more likely to report that they learned something new from their doctors (59 percent) compared to English-speaking parents (28 percent).

Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital recently announced that it planned to expand the program to every family that gives birth at the hospital. Starting this month, each newborn discharged from the hospital will receive materials, including books and tip sheets that encourage parents to engage in quality interactions from birth.

Image by GettyThe intensity of the midterm battle remains very high. Photo: John Lund/Corbis via Getty Images

While polling in individual congressional races is all over the place, the big picture 15 days before Election Day (and after early voting has already begun in 28 states), is stable if still somewhat hazy. The polls continue to indicate a strong (if hardly certain) likelihood of a Democratic takeover of the U.S. House. The Senate, with its insanely pro-Republican landscape, remains an uphill slog for Democrats with time running out and a couple of negative trends manifesting themselves.

The key national indicator, the generic congressional ballot (which typically asks respondents which party they would prefer to control the U.S. House of Representatives), has been solidly on the borderline between a sure Democratic House takeover and just significant Democratic gains. Democrats lead by 7.7 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling averages; it has varied from 6.6 percent to 9 percent over the last two months. At FiveThirtyEight, which adjusted poll findings for partisan balance and also weights the results for poll quality, the Democratic generic lead is currently at 8.6 percent, and has ranged from 7.7 percent to 9.1 percent over the last two months. This period has featured a gradual switchover from looser adults or registered voter samples to likely voters. In recent midterms that has invariably improved the GOPs numbers. Not so much this year, as John Harwood reports:

[In] the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll just two weeks before Election Day Republicans narrowed their double-digit September deficit for control of Congress to seven percentage points among all registered voters.

But among the smaller group considered likely voters, the Democratic advantage grows to nine points, 50 percent to 41 percent.

Its something Ive never seen before, said Bill McInturff, the veteran Republican pollster who conducts the NBC/WSJ survey with Democratic counterpart Peter Hart. The likely voter model tips toward the Democrats.

There are likely-voter models based strictly on past voting behavior that arent showing this sort of result, but in this particular election, they probably arent going to be very accurate.

There is no way to know with great specificity how large a generic ballot lead Democrats would need to pick up the 23 net seats needed to flip the House, for two reasons: first, like any other polls, the generic ballot polls are subject to modest margins-of-error (during the last two wave midterm elections in 2006 and 2010, the winning party significantly undershot its generic ballot advantage) and second, the way votes are distributed in individual districts makes the outcome highly variable. The most commonly cited target for Democrats on the generic ballot is seven points. Emory Universitys Alan Abramowitz thinks a 4 percent edge might be large enough, but the Brennan Center for Justice estimated that Republican gerrymandering meant Democrats might need an 11-point national advantage to get the job done.

Another much-cited indicator, the presidents job approval rating, has been relatively stable as well once it returned to the low-40s after a swoon into the 30s last autumn. Theres been a buzz about a recent rise in Trumps popularity since the Kavanaugh saga, much of it based on eyebrow-raising numbers in individual polls (e.g., 47 percent in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal survey). The polling averages for Trump are at 44.2 percent at RealClearPolitics and 42.7 percent at FiveThirtyEight. The average House midterm losses for presidents with approval ratings below 50 percent has been 37 seats. Yes, Democrats only lost 13 seats in 2014 when Obamas approval rating was at 44 percent, but thanks to their 2010 disaster (when Democrats lost 63 seats while Obamas approval rating was at 45 percent), they were far less exposed than Republicans are this year.

A large battery of individual House polls conducted by the New York Times in conjunction with Siena College has reinforced the impression that Democrats are doing best in suburban swing districts while Republicans are holding their own in strongly pro-Trump districts with large white working-class (and in some cases, Latino) populations. In the former category, Democrat Sharice Davids was leading incumbent Kevin Yoder in suburban Kansas City, Kansas, 51/43; Katie Porter was leading incumbent Republican Mimi Walters in Orange County, California, 48/43; and Jennifer Wexton was leading incumbent Republican Barbara Comstock in Northern Virginia, 48/41. But at the same time Republican Pete Stauber had a big (49/34) lead over Joe Radinovich in a Democratic-held open seat in Minnesotas Iron Range; and Republican incumbent Will Hurd led Gina Ortiz Jones 53/38 in a majority-Latino district in Texass Rio Grande Valley.

The Cook Political Reports House specialist David Wasserman summed up the overall trend:

Blue Wave in a nutshell: Democrats are doing really, really well anywhere thats within like a 20 minute drive from a Whole Foods Market.  Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 19, 2018

That reflects a growing consensus that while Democrats are still favored to flip the House (FiveThirtyEight gives them a 6 in 7 chance of reaching that paramount goal), the odds of a huge 45-vote switch are lower than at some points in the cycle. But the much larger number of Republican districts under assault (by Cooks calculation, there are competitive races in 66 Republican-held districts and only five Democratic-held districts), and the many indicators of high turnout, keep a stronger-than-expected Democratic wave on the table.

The Senate is another matter altogether, with Democrats, not Republicans, defending far more turf (26 of 35 seats at stake) and many key races taking place in states that are redder than average. Late polling is beginning to dim hopes of a Democratic Senate breakthrough in Tennessee (Republican Marsha Blackburn now leads centrist Democrat Phil Bredeson by 6.5 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling averages), and in Texas Ted Cruz leads Democratic fundraising sensation Beto ORourke by seven points in the RCP averages. Two other Republican-held Senate seats where Democrats long held leads also seem to be trending red: in Arizona Republican Martha McSally has pulled even with Kyrsten Sinema, as has incumbent Republican Dean Heller in his race against Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada. And although Democratic incumbents in states Trump carried in 2016 are on average over-performing impressively, North Dakotas Heidi Heitkamp has trailed Kevin Cramer in every recent public poll  some by big margins  and Floridas Bill Nelson, Missouris Claire McCaskill, and Montanas Jon Tester arent out of the woods yet.

All in all, the odds of Democrats picking up the two net seats they would need to flip the Senate have declined in recent weeks. FiveThirtyEight gives Republicans a 7 in 9 chance of maintaining control, and Charlie Cook says a Republican net gain of a seat or two seems most likely.

In the final 15 days of this intense cycle, poll findings will become complicated in many states by early voting indicators, which may mean one party is doing better than expected, or (as happened in some crucial states in 2016) one party is simply banking votes they would have won in any event, exposing an Election Day deficit. Its unlikely that the final results will be as shocking as those two years ago, but theres a possibility it could all go into overtime, with a runoff in Mississippi and late mail ballots from California and Washington determining control of Congress. If you have bad nerves and care a lot about politics, you might want to find something distracting to do on November 6, once your vote has been cast.on Monday said the flood situation in Yarlung Tsangpo river has returned to normal, which had arisen due to the formation of an artificial lake created by a landslide and blocking its main steam in Tibet, posing a threat to India's northeastern states.

also said it will continue to share the flood data with India.

People living along the banks of in Pradesh were moved to safer places after informed India about the landslide, which occurred on October 17, blocking Yarlung Tsangpo river in leading to the formation of the artificial lake.

Chief Minister on Saturday had also directed authorities in districts bordering Pradesh to "remain alert" for possible flash flood and take all possible steps to prevent any major catastrophe.

The Yarlung Tsangpo river is known as the Siang after it enters India at Pradesh from the Tibetan region and is called the once it reaches

"By October 20, the river section of the barrier lake has returned to normal. We will keep close monitoring of the landslide situation and maintain close communication and cooperation with the Indian side through the existing channels," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing here.

She said the Chinese hydrological department had informed India about the situation immediately after the landslide and also launched the emergency reporting mechanism.

"Up to October 22, we have provided seven bits of hydrological information and 110 bits of statistics. We also reported the Indian side of the flow of barrier lake," Hua said.

China has resumed sharing of hydrological data on the from May 15 after a gap of one year. It had stopped sharing the data with India last year soon after the Doklam stand-off, stating that its hydrological stations in were being upgraded and that the data couldn't be shared.



India and China have established Expert Level Mechanism (ELM) in 2006 to discuss various issues related to trans-border rivers.

The data is important for predicting floods in basins of the rivers. gets severely flooded during monsoon months affecting Northeast India and Bangladesh.

Under the existing bilateral agreements, China provides hydrological information of Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) and Sutlej (Langqen Zangbo) to India during the flood seasons.

As per the arrangement, China provides data of the Brahmaputra river between May 15 and October 15 every year. This year the data sharing was extended due to the barrier lake in the river.

China has been building major dams on the Brahmaputra river to generate electricity. While the dams raised concerns of water shortages in India and Bangladesh, China maintains that its dams were aimed at generating power and not storing water.Japanese-born biologist Osamu Shimomura, who won the in chemistry, has died. He was 90.

His alma mater Nagasaki University said Monday that Shimomura died Friday of natural causes.

Shimomura and two American scientists shared the 2008 for the discovery and development of a jellyfish protein that later contributed to studies.

Shimomura was born in northern Kyoto in 1928 and studied in Nagasaki, where he survived the Aug. 9, 1945, U.S. atomic bombing at age 16. His high school education was cut short during World War II as he was mobilized to work at a munitions factory.

He eventually earned chemistry degree in 1951 from Nagasaki College of Pharmacy.

In 1960 he moved to Princeton University, where he isolated the protein in samples of thousands of jellyfish taken from the U.S. West Coast, often with the help of his wife Akemi.

The protein known as Green Fluorescent Protein lets off a glow when it is illuminated with ultraviolet light and has become a key tool in studying biological processes in cells.

Shimomura was based in the U.S., but had moved back to Nagasaki to be close to his relatives, Nagasaki University officials said.

The devastation from the atomic bomb that killed 70,000 in Nagasaki, left a lasting impression on Shimomura and he often mentioned his experience and called for nuclear weapons ban in his lectures later in life.Yet another woman in the "barred" age group made a futile attempt Monday to reach but was forced to retreat by agitated protesters, while security was tightened at the shrine amid reports that more women of menstruating age could try to visit the temple before its doors close tonight.

Bindu, a Dalit activist, who was proceeding to Pamba at the foothills of temple from where devotees undertake an arduous 5 km trek to the shrine, was given police protection at her request, officials said.

However, when the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus she was travelling on with police personnel was about to reach Pamba, a group of BJP workers and those opposing the entry of girls and women aged between 10 and 50 years into the temple, blocked the road and forced her to alight.

She was then escorted to safety in a police jeep, officials said.

Nearly a dozen women have been turned back by angry protesters while attempting to visit the shrine of Lord Ayyappa, the presiding deity of temple considered "naishtika brahmachari" (eternally celibate), since its door opened for a five-day pooja on October 17.

No pooja was performed on the first day of the opening of the temple. The doors to the shrine will close at 10 pm Monday.

Hundreds of devotees are camping at the Sabarimala Sannidhanam temple complex to prevent women of menstruating age group from reaching the shrine situated in a dense forest.

Despite clamping of section 144 CrPC at Sabarimala Sannidhanam, Pamba, Nilackal and Elavumkal, hundreds of Ayyappa devotees have prevented women of the "barred" age group from visiting the shrine.

Police have tightened the security at Sannidhanam and other areas following reports that some women could try to visit the temple.

Inspector General of Police S Sreejith, deputed to ensure security of women devotees, offered prayers at the temple Monday morning.

Visuals of the officer offering prayers with tearful eyes before the deity were telecast by the local media.

Sreejith had faced the ire of the devotees for taking activist Rehana Fathima to the temple under police security.

However, police could not facilitate her entry into the main temple because of strong protests by Ayyappa devotees.

Six women were prevented from entering the Sabarimala temple Sunday alone.

Amid high drama, the devotees, up in arms against the Kerala government's decision to enforce the order lifting the ban on the entry of women in the 10-50 age group blocked the six -- all Telugu-speaking women -- from reaching the famed shrine.A memorial commemorating the contribution of Indian armed forces in the is being built in and will be inaugurated by an Indian dignitary next month, an ex-serviceman overseeing the project said Monday.

Squadron Leader Rana Chhina, the secretary of the United Services Institution of India's Centre for Armed Forces Research, said the memorial is being built in Villers-Guislain, a village in northern

It will be inaugurated on November 10, which also marks the centenary of the armistice announced during the

"This will be first battlefield memorial to be built by the Indian armed forces, which will be dedicated to the Indian soldiers who lost their lives in during the World War I," Chhina said.

There is another war memorial in Nueve Chappelle, but it was built by Commonwealth War Graves Commission in honour of the Indian soldiers who died in France and Belgium.

The memorial is likely to be inaugurated either by President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

The location is also the place where the Battle of Cambrai took place between the German and the British forces.

The 500-square metre land was given for the memorial for 1 Euro by Villers-Guislain, Chhina added.

"The memorial is being built by noted sculptor Ram Sutar and has an Ashoka Chakra over it," he said.

Nearly 1.5 million Indian soldiers participated in the as part of the then British Indian Army, of which 1.3 million fought overseas in places such as Flanders (Belgium), East Africa, Gallipoli, Aden, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Persia and China, Chhina said.

Some 74,000 Indian soldiers lost their lives, he added.

From November 9-11, there is also an elaborate programme scheduled to commemorate the centenary of the World War I.

On November 9, there is a joint Indo-UK international seminar, titled 'India and the Great War in Research, Memory and Commemoration'. On the next day, there will be a joint Indo-UK military band concert, followed by a joint reception at the British High Commissioner's residence.

On November 11, there will be World War Remembrance Service at the Delhi War Cemetery.Union shipping minister on Monday urged domestic investors to pump their money into the various programmes undertaken by his ministry and promised them every assistance to them to improve waterway connectivity.

The minister said the country's economic viability has improved and this is the right time for investors to enter the structural construction projects.

"We have come up with many innovative models. The Sagarmala project has opened huge investment opportunities to the private sector. We also have plans for RoRo services, hovercraft, catamarans, seaplanes among others where we want domestic companies to come forward and invest," he told a panel discussion on 'coastline - engine & wheel of economic growth,' here this evening.

Talking about the ambitious Sagarmala project, said it has a potential of nearly Rs 16 trillion of which around Rs 4.53 trillion is expected to come into port mechanisation and port modernisation.

The minister also said government is undertaking projects worth Rs 2.35 trillion under the Sagarmala project in alone.

He said projects worth over Rs 1.50 trillion are in various stages of implementation, while the work on remaining Rs 85,000-crore projects is yet to begin. But he was quick to add that work on these projects, starting with preparation of detailed project reports, will be initiated soon.

The minister also said government is planning to have water-way connectivity to the airports in the megapolis on the similar lines of the system in Venice inIT industry body Monday said it has signed a letter of intent with the Hiroshima government to work together in creating Japan-India IT corridor to facilitate partnerships between companies from both nations.

"The Hiroshima government will co-invest with in creating India IT Corridor that could be at the forefront of promoting B2B cooperation and talent transfer from India to Japan," said in a statement.

This project will be formally initiated by early 2019 on mutual consent, it added.

Both parties will undertake a process of thorough due diligence with assistance of relevant partners and local companies, focused on talent availability; local demand potential and; policy benefits and funding support to determine the mutual viability and long-term feasibility of setting up an IT corridor in Hiroshima, the statement said.

"Both parties agreed to setup IT corridor in Hiroshima with incentive package that could be extended to the Indian tech companies that come forward to adopt this platform while forming partnership with Japanese companies," the statement said.

It added that the IT corridor will allow Indian companies -- with their prowess in software services -- help Japanese manufacturing firms adopt digital transformation and create innovative product and solutions lines.

The partnership is also expected to help create IT jobs in Hiroshima and India as well as facilitate talent transfer from India to

"For achieving sustainable growth in Hiroshima, what we lack is a cluster of IT and software industry," Atsuhito Uemaru, Chief of Innovation Promotion, Hiroshima Prefectural Government, said.

Uemaru added that through the collaboration, Hiroshima would like to serve as a gateway for Indian companies to enter the Japanese market and vice versa and "to build an ecosystem beneficial for the growth of both Indian and Hiroshima companies".

Gagan Sabharwal, Senior Director (Global Trade Development) at Nasscom said the alliance will act as a "building block" towards strengthening the Indo- relationship.Moody's Investors Service on Monday said the profitability of is "distinctively weak" compared to those in nations, but it will improve from next financial year as asset quality stabilises.

On capitalisation, Moody's said it is the "weakest" for with a tangible common equity ratio of 8.7 per cent at the end of 2017.

"System-wide asset quality in India is weak due to stressed public sector banks, which dominate the sector. Government capital infusions will boost weak public sector banks' capital ratios," it said.

"The system as a whole is unprofitable due to high credit costs at dominant state-owned (Indian) banks," Moody's said, adding the profitability is "distinctively weak" for than others in the five-nation bloc.

By contrast, Brazilian and South African banks have the highest return on assets (ROA).



"Indian banks, despite having a similar level of pre-provisioning profitability to Chinese banks, have a negative ROA because of high credit costs at public sector banks, which dominate the system. Their profitability will remain under pressure for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2019, as provisions for credit losses will remain large. Indian bank's profitability will improve from the next fiscal year as asset quality stabilizes," it said.

The Moody's report on banks in countries said Indian lenders had the second highest non-performing loan (NPL) at 2017-end, followed by banks in Brazil, South Africa and China. Russian banks had the highest ratio of 11.8 per cent.

Brazilian banks had an NPL ratio of 3.5 per cent at the end of 2017, compared with 2.9 per cent for South African banks and the lowest of 1.5 per cent for Chinese banks.



"Indian banks also had a double-digit (NPL) ratio at the end of 2017. However, the recognition of stressed assets is largely complete and new non-performing loan (NPL) formation will moderate in the next 12-18 months, helped by on-going deleveraging by corporates and stable macro-economic conditions. Furthermore, reported NPL ratios will gradually decline as a result of stressed asset resolution," Moody's said.United we stand? Photo: Junfu Han/TNS via Getty Images

A pernicious force was hollowing out American democracy. It had neutered Congress, and lobotomized the electorate. Lawmakers had become incapable of taking action on many of the days most pressing issues  and voters incapable of holding their representatives accountable for their incapacity. The connection between an Americans substantive beliefs, and her decisions in the ballot booth, was razor-thin and ever-fraying. If our nations noble experiment with self-rule was to be salvaged, the leadership of both parties would need to take responsibility for their role in perpetuating this destructive force  which is to say, they would need to admit that theyd taken bipartisanship much too far.

This is only a slight exaggeration of the consensus view among American political scientists, circa 1950. And although their perspective might look alien from a Trump-era vantage point, its quite comprehensible from a Truman-era one.

In the middle of the 20th century, America was home to liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. The most important fault-lines in Congress werent partisan but regional; on many issues, southern Democrats and western Republicans united in battle against northern (and typically, liberal and/or labor-aligned) members of their respective caucuses. On economics, the two parties agendas were distinct, but far less disparate than they are today. On civil rights and immigration, the divisions within each side of the aisle were more important than those between them.

This utter dearth of partisan polarization undermined democratic accountability. A liberal could vote for Democratic candidates in New York, and unwittingly empower arch-segregationists in the Senate; many voters had no clear heuristic telling them which party would best represent their interests and ideological goals, nor which one was to blame for Congresss failure to advance such aims.

In response, the American Political Science Association (APSA) released a report in 1950 that called on Republicans and Democrats to heighten their contradictions, arguing that popular government in a nation of 150 million people requires political parties which provide the electorate with a proper range of choices between alternatives of action.

Sixty-eight years later, weve done just as the APSA advised.

Todays party system offers voters a wide  and clearly labeled  range of alternatives. While myriad policy debates remain stifled by bipartisan consensus (the proper size and role of the U.S. military, for example), it is nevertheless the case that Democrats and Republicans now provide the electorate with stark choices on health care, taxation, social spending, immigration, racial justice, abortion, environmental regulation, labor rights, and other issues. It has rarely, if ever, been more clear what  and whom  each party in the U.S. stands for.

And rarely, if ever, has popular government been a worse misnomer for what transpires in our nations state and federal capitals.

In 2018, polarization still looms large in the discourse on our democracys failings. But these days, its seen less as an elixir than a cancer. In fact, some pundits and political scientists regard it as the root of all the Trump eras evils. In this new telling, our republic may be suffering from a variety of disfiguring illnesses, but all trace back to the damage that hyperpartisanship did to its immune system: Our president may be a kleptocratic conspiracy theorist who oozes contempt for Americas highest ideals (and ignorance of high-school civics)  but only because conservative voters came to despise the Democratic Party more than they loathe self-proclaimed pussy-grabbers. Congress might be barely able to fund its own paychecks, let alone find consensus solutions to policy challenges  but voters only tolerate such gridlock because theyve come to see compromise as a synonym for their sides defeat. And Americans might be losing confidence in public institutions, the integrity of their nations elections, and the value of democracy itself  but this is largely because so many of them have decided that one of their nations two political parties poses an existential threat to their bedrock ideals.

This sea change in expert opinion on polarization raises a pair of related questions: Why did the reality of polarized politics fall so far short of the APSAs mid-century ideal? And if America lacked popular government before the parties polarized  and still lacks it today  can polarization really be the name of our affliction?

Polarization would be more productive if Americans werent so united.

In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason offers a compelling answer to that first question: In contemporary American politics, she writes, our conflicts are largely over who we think we are rather than over reasoned differences of opinion. By this, Mason means that our nations partisan divisions are not rooted in the severity of red and blue Americas ideological disagreements, but in the extremity of their social animosities.

Polling data offers a mountain of evidence for the first half of that thesis. While Democratic and Republican voters earnestly (and vehemently) disagree on plenty of issues, surveys suggest these disputes are hardly more numerous or severe than they were three decades ago (when bipartisan comity was still alive and well on Capitol Hill). When asked to opine on discrete questions of public policy, the American electorates preferences have remained relatively stable over time  while policy ideas with broad, bipartisan support have remained abundant.

In an exhaustive study of the 2016 electorate, Vanderbilt political scientist Larry Bartels found that a majority of Democratic and Republican voters endorse government efforts to regulate pollution, provide a decent standard of living for people unable to work, and ensure access to good health care. Those conclusions are buttressed by the past two years of policy polling, which has consistently found Democrats and Republicans seeing eye-to-eye on a wide range of economic issues. To name just a few: At least a plurality of voters in both parties want the government to increase federal spending on health care, preserve the ACAs Medicaid expansion, guarantee affordable health insurance to people with preexisting conditions, subsidize tuition at public colleges, provide a public option for the internet  and keep taxes on the wealthy and corporations at least as high as they were before the Trump tax cuts passed.

Crucially, the possibilities for consensus legislation are not limited to bread-and-butter issues. Even on our culture wars bloodiest killing fields  i.e., on the subjects of immigration, guns, and abortion  there is plenty of room for Republicans and Democrats to find common cause. In August of this year, a Fox News poll found that 69 percent of Republicans favor a pathway to legal status for all law-abiding, undocumented immigrants currently working in the United States (and that finding is consistent with broader polling on the subject). On gun policy, a wide variety of proposals routinely attracts majority support from red and blue Americans  while universal background checks and (the substantively bad idea of) barring Americans on the no-fly list from purchasing firearms boast the backing of over 75 percent of voters in either camp. On abortion rights, recent surveys have shown that a majority of both parties voters want the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade, and thus, preserve a constitutional right to abortion services. (Of course, there is far less consensus on these issues among the two parties most politically engaged elites, activists, and interest groups.)

And yet, these myriad areas of agreement have been no bulwark against hyperpartisanship: Ordinary Republican and Democratic voters dont disagree about public policy much more than they used to, but they still fear and loathe each other more than at any point in our nations modern history.

We were apes before we were ideologues.

To see why we all cant get along, lets turn to the second half of Masons thesis. Drawing on insights from social psychology, Mason argues that human beings are hardwired for tribalism. We compulsively (and unconsciously) divide the social landscape into ingroups and outgroups; selectively process information that affirms the virtues of the former and the vices of the latter; and allow our self-esteem to rise and fall with the status of our team.

These habits of mind have been with us since the dawn of our species, if not long before. The left-to-right ideological spectrum, by contrast, derives from seating arrangements during the French Revolution. It is therefore unsurprising that ordinary voters view politics through the lens of group identity, not ideology: Most Americans do not develop an intellectual attachment to some abstract philosophy of government, and then join the party whose platform best represents their theory of the state. Rather, the average voter is born into a variety of social groups (a religion, a race, a class, etc.), and then joins whichever party appears to best represent her people.

Contrary to many a pundits belief, this is not a new development; electoral politics has always been identity politics. What is new is how cleanly the two-party system currently divides Americans along lines of racial, religious, and regional identity. In recent decades, whites, devout Christians, and rural dwellers have become increasingly Republican  while nonwhites (and racially liberal whites), the irreligious (and/or non-Christian), and urbanites have become increasingly concentrated beneath Team Blues tent.

Mason argues that the polarization of these social identity groups is largely responsible for our hyperpartisan politics. The motley party coalitions that reigned in the mid-20th century might have undermined democratic accountability by obscuring the stakes of elections; but for much the same reason, they also dampened partisan strife. Animosity between whites and blacks (specifically, directed by whites toward blacks), or fundamentalist Christians and atheists, or country folks and city slickers was no less powerful in the America of the 1950s than it is in our own. But at a time when African-American trade unionists shared a party with white southern planters  and secular, urban professionals shared one with Bible-thumping Western farmers  voters social prejudice and vitriol was decoupled from their political choices.

On the one hand, this state of affairs prevented either party from aggressively pursuing civil rights for African-Americans; or reproductive freedom for women; or the lifting of race-based restrictions to immigration. On the other, since voters did not receive clear cues about their partisan ingroups and outgroups, they did not treat their fellow citizens as enemies simply because of their party affiliation, Mason writes.

This made it easier for Congress to pass legislation in times of divided government, and made partisans more comfortable with the bedrock norms of liberal democracy not least, the presumptive legitimacy of elections won by the other side. More counterintuitively, Mason contends that this depolarized political environment actually made lawmakers more accountable to voters  at least, in one important way.

Back when the major party coalitions were more socially heterodox, there were far more cross-pressured voters in the electorate; which is to say, voters who identified with one social group that was typically associated with Republicans (say, Protestants), and one that was linked to Democrats (say, union members). These cross-cutting social identities made it far less psychologically difficult for such Americans to respond to their partys failures of governance  or candidate selection  by swinging to the other side: At least one important aspect of their self-conception was already pulling in that direction.

By contrast, few rural white Evangelical Christians can vote for a Democrat in 2018 without betraying all of their definitions of who their people are. And since a human beings self-esteem is partially tied to the status of the social groups to which she belongs, when all of a persons social identities are aligned behind one party, the desire to see that team win electoral affirmation can overwhelm all substantive concerns.

Through an elaborate analysis of survey data, Mason shows that the strongest partisans in the United States today are not the voters with the most conservative or liberal policy opinions  but rather, those with the strongest attachments to social groups that are uniformly associated with one major political party. As all of ones social identities line up behind one party or the other, they all win and lose together, Mason writes. The humiliation of loss is amplified. Victory, then, becomes more important than policy outcomes. Even when both sides hold the same policy positions, the priority is often to make sure the dirty shirts dont win.

Mason points to the government shutdown of 2013 as a paradigmatic example of this phenomenon. As weve seen, a plurality of Republican voters want the federal government to expand Medicaid and protect individuals with preexisting conditions. And yet, a plurality of Republican voters also wanted their elected representatives to shut down the government  and thus, inflict economic damage on their own country  on the outside chance that doing so would prevent Barack Obamas plan to expand Medicaid and protect people with preexisting conditions from ever taking effect.

Still, there are worse things than hyperpartisanship; bipartisanship, for example.

For Mason, and many other critics of polarization, the fundamental problem with the phenomenon is not that it has made political conflict in the United States bitter and divisive. On many policy questions, America really is bitterly divided; bipartisan comity in this country has typically been built atop a foundation of disregard for the rights of marginalized social groups (African-Americans invariably among them). To the extent that social polarization has enabled such groups to win meaningful representation, it has been a laudable development.

But Mason contends that, in minimizing the overlap  and thus, personal contact  between Democratic and Republican voters, social polarization has also amplified our tribal biases, and thus, led partisans to exaggerate the severity of their genuine divisions; overlook the myriad areas where consensus policymaking is possible; and tolerate substantive betrayals from their own partys leadership. When individuals participate in politics driven by team spirit or anger, the responsiveness of the electorate is impaired, Mason argues. If their own party  linked with their race and religion  does something undesirable, they are less likely to seriously consider changing their vote in the ballot booth.

This analysis is persuasive. But as an account of why the United States lacks responsive government, it is deeply inadequate. Partisan prejudice might give legislators greater freedom to betray their constituents substantive aims  but it does not explain why so many of our elected officials choose to exercise that liberty. Social polarization, therefore, is not the cause of unresponsive government in the U.S., so much as a condition that facilitates it.

This distinction has important, practical implications. If the fundamental obstacle to popular sovereignty in America isnt hyperpartisanship, then reducing the latter will not necessarily bring us closer to the former; in fact, it is possible to imagine conditions in which depolarizing American politics could lead us even farther from that ideal.

To see why this is, consider one of Masons prescriptions for how our republic can be healed:

If the parties themselves had any interest in reducing levels of partisan prejudice, they could likely do so simply by encouraging the prominent flag-bearers of the party to loudly and freely discuss partisan opponents in an unprejudiced wayWhat if the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties decided to take on a tolerant rhetoric toward the opposing team? What if party prototypes started discussing real differences rather than demonizing their opponents? What if party opinion leaders (of both parties) started talking about politics by commending compromise and acknowledging the humanity and validity of the opposing team?

Mason is no naif; she stipulates that there is no reason to believe that this will occur in the near term, particularly in the Republican Party. But the trouble with her proposal goes beyond its implausibility. The reciprocal, rhetorical disarmament she describes would likely reduce partisan hostilities  but whether it would make government more responsive depends entirely on the terms of the two parties reconciliation.

For example, if Democratic elected officials and opinion leaders had commended compromise during last years health-care debate; acknowledged the validity of the Republican Partys attempt to throw millions of low-income Americans off of Medicaid to finance tax cuts for the rich; and supplied the votes necessary for gutting federal health-care spending (in defiance of the wishes of a majority of both parties voters), then our politics would have become less polarized  and less responsive to the popular will  at the same time.

And this is not all-that fanciful a hypothetical. More than a few times in recent decades, Democrats have sought bipartisan compromise by acquiescing to unpopular (and unwise) conservative policy goals. It wasnt wrenching social divisions that led the government to cut the capital gains tax rate in the 1990s, in defiance of a majoritarian preference for higher taxes on the wealthy  it was Bill Clinton. Similarly, it was Barack Obama, not partisan prejudice, that brought Congress to the cusp of passing unpopular cuts to Social Security in 2011; in fact, partisan prejudice arguably prevented those cuts from passing.

Which is to say: Even in our hyperpartisan times, the two major parties can sometimes unite behind a policy that a broad, bipartisan majority of the public opposes. Social polarization cannot explain such failures of popular government; but the immense political power of reactionary elites in an economically polarized society can.

The biggest barrier to popular sovereignty has always been economic inequality.

In truth, the most formidable obstacle to responsive government in the U.S. is  and always has been  the disproportionate power that economic elites wield over its political system. Influencing elections and legislative processes requires investments of time, money, and attention. Wealthy individuals and corporations can easily shoulder such expenses; ordinary voters cant. This simple reality  that economic power is easily converted into the political variety  is an inherent constraint on popular sovereignty in all (capitalist) democracies. But its a constraint that can be more or less restrictive, depending on how unequally wealth is distributed, how easily large masses of ordinary people can organize politically, and how effectively outsize political spending is regulated or socially stigmatized. More concretely, policymaking tends to be more responsive to popular concerns in nations with strong labor unions, as such institutions help secure workers a larger share of economic growth, while also enabling working-class voters to collectivize the costs of political engagement.

In the contemporary United States, however, unions are on the verge of extinction; the richest 0.1 percent of the population commands as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; and legal restrictions on political spending are effectively nonexistent. The Koch Network plans to spend $400 million electing its preferred Congress this November; corporate America is poised to spend upwards of $2 billion lobbying it next year. Given these conditions, one wouldnt expect policymaking to reflect popular preferences, no matter the social makeup of the nations two political parties.

After all, the last time organized labor was this weak and wealth, this concentrated, it was the Gilded Age. And that era was plagued by governance so unresponsive to public needs, the average height and life expectancy of ordinary Americans declined during it, even as their nation grew immensely wealthier. It is true that Democratic and Republican voters were bitterly divided and socially isolated in this period. But few would cite a dearth of cross-pressured voters as the principal reason why the federal government did not provide more relief to the unemployed during the Panic of 1893; or immiserated small farmers with deflationationary monetary policies throughout the late 19th century; or routinely massacred striking workers. The disparate economic power  and political organization  of corporate elites and ordinary workers is a much more intuitive explanation for the governments failures in that period. It remains so in ours.

Political tribalism is bad. But government by and for the rich is worse.

Now, there is reason to believe that social polarization contributes to such disparities. Countering the inherent imbalance of political power between the superrich and working people requires the latter to organize around their class interests. And a population that is bitterly divided by Colin Kaepernick and the phrase Happy Holidays  or, in the Gilded Age context, a recent Civil War and a de jure racial caste system  is going to have a hard time making common cause.

But if social polarization abets the power of reactionary plutocrats in the United States, reactionary plutocrats return the favor. In the industrial Midwest, labor unions once functioned as a (modestly) effective bulwark against racial polarization  unionized white workers were far more likely to remain Democrats (which is to say, in a political coalition with a majority of the African-American electorate) than their non-unionized peers, amid the white backlash of the late 1960s.

But over the ensuing decades, a political movement bankrolled by conservative elites implemented a variety of policies that weakened organized labor  and consciously worked to increase the political salience of Americas racial and and cultural divisions.

Of course, the Republican Party did not invent Americas social conflicts. The white South didnt require Barry Goldwaters permission to recoil from the Civil Rights Act; blue-collar whites in the North didnt need Richard Nixons blessing to deplore forced busing or the anti-war movement; white Evangelicals didnt need Reagans encouragement to revile the sexual revolution. To some unknowable  but doubtlessly significant  degree, the social polarization of the American electorate was an inevitable response to events that no Republican strategist ever dictated.

But it remains the case that the GOP, and its associated institutions, have spent much of the past half-century actively trying to polarize the electorate along racial lines, and mobilize the Christian right through appeals to its most paranoid, millenarian instincts. This is no partisan conspiracy theory; it is basic political history. In the late 1960s, Republican operatives realized that an America in which the electorate was split along racial lines would be one in which the party least dependent on African-Americans would thrive. Some spelled out this theory explicitly, in best-selling books. John Ehrlichman, Nixons top domestic aide, summarized the spirit of his bosss 1968 campaign as, Well go after the racists  adding, in his memoir, The subliminal appeal to the anti-black voter was always present in Nixons statements and speeches. And that appeal has been a fixture of Republican political rhetoric in the United States ever since. (Anyone who doubts that the conservative movement still seeks to exacerbate social polarization would do well to spend an evening with Fox Newss prime-time lineup.)

One major appeal of polarization (or hyperpartisanship) as a framework for understanding our democracys dysfunction is that it does not implicate any one party or political movement: We are all subject to cognitive biases; impersonal, sociological forces have strengthened those biases; and thus, we have lost our collective capacity to find common ground.

But this universalism is also the frameworks fatal weakness. In the real world, the conservative movement  and the economic elites that it serves  have an interest in perpetuating both social polarization, and the unresponsive governance that it produces. And for a very simple reason: The interests that unite most members of Americas fractious social groups tend to be those that derive from their common identity as people who must work for a living. Which is to say, they tend to be class interests: An overwhelming, bipartisan majority of the American public wants their government to raise taxes on the wealthy, create jobs for the unemployed, expand access to subsidized health care, and prevent corporations from poisoning their air and water. The conservative movement wants Uncle Sam to do none of those things.

Any serious program for combating unresponsive government in the United States must be concerned with increasing the political salience of (non-billionaire) Americans common material interests.

For this reason, any serious program for combating unresponsive government in the United States must be concerned with both increasing the political salience of (non-billionaire) Americans common material interests, and reducing the political power of the conservative movement. Achieving those objectives will require bridging Americas social divides (to whatever extent that that can be done without acquiescing to unjust hierarchies of race, gender, and religion). But it will most definitely not entail the pursuit of a depolarized, dispassionate partisan politics as an end in itself.

Unfortunately, Masons framework leads her to prescribe something dangerously close to the latter.

In her books penultimate chapter, Mason analyzes survey data on the attitudes and policy preferences of American political activists  and observes that even these high-information voters tend to be motivated less by rational policy commitments, than strong social identities. Our actual opinions  the intensity of our attitudes  cant compel the same sort of political activism that our simple sense of social connection can, Mason writes. We take political action, potentially making real political changes, because we feel close to particular groups of people and want them (and therefore ourselves) to be winners.

From this, Mason concludes that the recent uptick in political activism in the United States is undesirable, as it is motivated by blind tribal instincts, not rationality, and an electorate that is emotionally engaged and politically activated on behalf of prejudice and misunderstanding is not an electorate that produces positive outcomes. Therefore, a less-mobilized electorate  one that viewed politics with enough emotional detachment to shift its partisan allegiances in response to events  would produce better government.

But the notion that politically ambidextrous voters are vital for responsive policymaking  while cognitively biased political activists are not  is both myopic and ahistorical. It ignores the political systems innate bias toward serving elite interests, and thus, the inadequacy of competitive elections as a vehicle for realizing popular sovereignty. Cross-pressured voters did not break the stranglehold that big business held over American politics in the Gilded Age  mass, class-based political activism did. Without (cognitively biased) Americans mobilizing against their outgroup class enemy (or perhaps a caricatured and prejudicial image thereof), we would not have the weekend, or child labor laws, or what remains of the New Deal bargain.

The fact that mass political activism is generally motivated by group identity  as opposed to ideology, or pure reason  is not an argument against mass political activism. Rather, it is an argument for the vital importance of cultivating group identities that are conducive to progressive change.

Tribalism may be a threat to democracy; but the tribe that the poorest 99 percent of Americans do not belong to is a bigger one.Many MPs expressed their anger over the very personal nature of the abuse by Brexiteers unhappy with the ongoing negotiations with the European Union (EU) within her own Conservative Party. Over the weekend, a number of unnamed MPs were quoted in the media as saying that the British PM was set to be "knifed" over her failure to clinch a Brexit deal and would be "entering the killing zone" ...

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Digital Editorwill visit three 'friendly countries' -- Saudi Arabia, and -- where he is likely to seek monetary help of up to $13 billion for his cash-strapped government, a media report said on Monday.

Quoting sources, the Dawn newspaper reported that Khan would leave for on Monday and embark on a two-day visit to on October 28 and to early on November 3.

In the next two weeks Prime Minister Khan will visit three 'friendly countries' where he is likely to seek monetary assistance, the report said, days after Islamabad formally sought a bailout from the Monetary Fund (IMF).

A member of the Khan's Cabinet said the prime minister was likely to take up the issue of financial aid with his hosts in the three friendly countries because Pakistan badly needed assistance to ease the current economic crisis.

He said the government immediately needed $12 billion to $13 billion to ease the financial crisis and retire foreign debt.

"We need $8 billion to retire foreign debt and $5 billion to run the affairs of government," the unnamed minister said.

"If we get good monetary support from our friendly countries then there is a possibility that we will not require support of the IMF," he added.

Pakistan formally approached the IMF on October 12 for a bailout to tide over the economic crisis.

But some tough talking by IMF Managing Director and the US on Pakistan's bailout plan, demanding absolute transparency on the country's debts, including those owned by under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has upset Islamabad.

Pakistan Finance Minister last week said the government don't want to fully rely on the IMF. He said the loan programme with the IMF is almost final, but the government will have to see that the IMF does not place any "undoable conditions" for Pakistan in return.

According to Pakistan's Foreign Office, Prime Minister Khan is going to on the special invitation of King Salman bin Abdel Aziz to participate in the Future Investment Initiative conference being held there from Tuesday to Thursday.

Interestingly, some countries are boycotting the conference in reaction to the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Cabinet minister said the prime minister would visit for two days (Oct 28 and 29) and would meet his Malaysian counterpart Mahathir Mohamad and other government functionaries, the report said.

In his recent telephonic conversation with Mahathir, Khan had expressed his desire to learn from Malaysia's experiences.

Khan would embark on an official visit to China on November 3 during which there would be discussions in detail on Pakistan-China strategic ties, the report said.

During his meetings in the friendly country, Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of the CPEC, said the sources.

Under the previous government there was an emphasis on infrastructure schemes, but the current government wanted projects involving agriculture, job creation and foreign investment take centre stage, the report said.

The $60 billion CPEC is the flagship venture of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at enhancing Beijing's influence around the world through China-funded infrastructure projects.

Cash-strapped Pakistan has already announced plans to cut $8.2 billion railway project between the Karachi and Peshawar, the biggest under the CPEC, by about $2 billion to reduce the debt burden.

The Trump administration has been critical of China's Belt and Road Initiative, saying that it has saddled some developing countries with debts they cannot afford to repay.Saudi Arabia has no intention of using its oil wealth as a political tool in the controversy over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the kingdom plans to boost crude output again soon. "For decades we used our oil policy as a responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics," Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said in an interview with Russias TASS news agency published on Monday. "So lets hope that the world would deal with the political crisis, including the one with a Saudi citizen in Turkey, with wisdom," he ...

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Digital EditorSears Holdings Corp Chairman Eddie Lampert is in discussions with at least one potential partner to contribute to a $300 million bankruptcy loan the US retailer is seeking, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday. Lampert's hedge fund, ESL Investments Inc, has held discussions with Cyrus Capital Partners LP, an investment firm that holds some of Sears' existing debt, about sharing the burden of funding portions of the $300 million loan, which would be separate from another $300 million bankruptcy loan that Sears' banks have offered to provide, the sources ...on Sunday described as "a mistake" the death of in its Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this month.

In an interview with Fox News, Saudi Foreign Minister Abel Al-Jubeir said that this was a "rogue operation".

"They made a mistake and killed Jamal Khassoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it," Al-Jubeir said.

Khashoggi, and columnist for The Washington Post, had been missing since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

A joint Turkish-Saudi team completed an investigation into the case on Thursday after searching the residence of the Consul General as well as the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The kingdom acknowledged early Saturday that Khashoggi died in a brawl in its consulate, but did not give any explanation on the cause of his death.

As of now, 18 Saudi suspects have been taken into custody in connection with the incident and two senior Saudi officials fired.It took five months since Iraqs national elections, but the country finally has a new prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi. In truth, however, neither he nor new President Barham Salih nor the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose alliance won the most parliamentary seats in May, will likely have the greatest influence over whether Iraq can make the reforms necessary to become a stable and prosperous country.

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Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

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Digital EditorWhos the boss? Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Kingdom Council/Andalou Agency/Getty Images

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump lamented the corrupting influence of foreign money on American foreign policy, in general  and Americas posture toward the Saudis, in particular. The mogul derided Hillary Clinton for running the State Department like her own personal hedge fund [by] doing favors for oppressive regimes, and allowing her foundation to accept tens of millions of dollars from countries that treat women horribly  and countries that kill gays. Meanwhile, the GOP candidate suggested, multiple times, that the D.C. Establishment secretly knew Saudi Arabia had orchestrated the September 11 attacks.

Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasnt the Iraqis, it was Saudi  take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents, Trump told Fox & Friends. Later, he promised supporters that if he won, you will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center, cause they have papers in there that are very secret. You may find its the Saudis, okay? But you will find out.

In the two-and-a-half years since Trump made these remarks, his views on the U.S.Saudi alliance have shifted ever so slightly. Now, the president no longer believes that the Saudis investments in D.C. have corrupted the American political class and ensnared the U.S. into an alliance with a totalitarian Islamist regime thats complicit in thousands of American deaths  but rather, that the Saudis investments in D.C. are so important to the American economy, the U.S. cant afford to hold them accountable for murdering and dismembering an American journalist:

When President Donald Trump explained over the past two weeks why he was reluctant to damage the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia over the disappearance and murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, he kept coming back to one reason: jobs.

I dont want to hurt jobs, Trump said in an interview with 60 Minutes that aired last weekend, explaining that there are other ways of punishing.

Who are we hurting? Its 500,000 jobs, he told Fox Business on Wednesday.

Id rather keep the million jobs, and Id find another solution, he said at a defense roundtable in Arizona on Friday.

Trumps (ever-increasing) estimate of the number of Americans whose jobs depend on the Saudi alliance is, of course, ludicrous. Yes, American arms manufacturers do make a lot money off meeting Riyadhs (insatiable) demand for bombs to drop on school buses. No, Raytheon will not be forced to lay off 1 million workers if the U.S. cuts off arms sales to the kingdom. (There are plenty of other brutal autocracies that have a taste for American weaponry.)

But the president isnt just baldly lying about the quantity of jobs of Saudi investment supports  hes also tacitly misleading the public about the kind of jobs that outrage over Jamal Khashoggis murder has put in jeopardy.

Judging by Trumps rhetoric, youd think that there were countless Rust Belt towns whose only source of stable employment was a Saudi-funded think tank. In his populist, America first framing, D.C. elites might have the privilege of clutching their pearls at the brutal murder of an American resident  but out in the heartland, millions of working-class policy analysts and lobbyists cant afford to indulge the swamps moral vanity. After all, if the Center for Strategic Studies shutters its Youngstown division, how will they support their families? Fabricating an American national interest in maintaining Riyadhs regional hegemony is all they know!

In some respects, Trumps defense of the Saudi alliance is more honest than that of his Republican allies. The geopolitical case for obsequiousness toward the Saudis has made little sense since (at least) the end of the Cold War. The most coherent argument for pretending that the Saudi leadership did not order Jamal Khashoggis death is, probably, that doing so would threaten American jobs. Its just that the jobs at stake are concentrated in the D.C.-based, doing favors for oppressive regimes industry.At least 29 personnel of the 8th battalion of Tripura State Rifles were injured on late Monday night in a bus accident in West Tripura district.

The accident took place in Baramura hills area when the team of Tripura State Rifles were on their way to Chhattisgarh for their election duties.

Two of the injured personnel have been shifted to Kolkata, while others have been admitted to GB Pant Hospital in Tripura.

"Out of all the injured, two are serious. Doctors have decided to refer them to Kolkata. All of them are conscious. A train was leaving from Agaratala tomorrow for Chhattisgarh for election duty. They were a part of the battalion which was leaving tomorrow," Director General of Police (DGP) of Tripura Akhil Kumar Shukla told ANI.

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Deb, Health Minister Sudip Roy Barman, and other senior officials rushed to the hospital and visited the injured.

"Doctors are looking after them, I believe they'll be fine soon. Chief Secretary , Director General of Police and other police officers are here," the Chief Minister said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A group of North Korean officials left for Russia, amid mounting speculations that the leaders of the two countries will hold a bilateral summit, the North's state media said on Monday.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that Ryu Myong-son, vice department director of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea led a delegation to Russia from Pyongyang on Monday. It did not provide more details on the nature of the visit, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported.

The KCNA, in a separate report, said that a group of Russian officials, led by a deputy director of its foreign ministry had arrived in Pyongyang without elaborating much on the visit.

The simultaneous trips made by the officials of North Korea and Russia comes after media reports surfaced that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is planning to embark on a visit to Russia this month or next month and hold a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Earlier, Moscow confirmed that the two leaders will have a summit this year.

Ever since assuming power as the Supreme Leader in 2011, Kim has intensified his diplomatic outreach by visiting China thrice this year, meeting President Xi Jinping in all the three occasions. He also met with United States President Donald Trump in their first-ever meeting between the leaders of the two nations and several other dignitaries in Singapore.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Punjab's Local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Monday pointed out loopholes into the October 19 train accident while accusing the Indian Railways and the central government responsible for the tragedy.

Sidhu told ANI, "Why and how was the driver given a clean chit within six hours? Why has his name not been revealed as yet? The place where the incident took place belongs to the Centre, the tracks, railway engine, police and guards are also under the jurisdiction of the central government and it is the Centre which has lodged the FIR also."

His wife, Navjot Kaur Sidhu, was a chief guest at the event where the incident took place. Clarifying his stance on the matter, he said: "Yes, she was the chief guest there. She had many events lined up on that day. This was the fourth one and she had to leave for another event following this. As soon as the effigy was burnt, she left. She was on her way to another event when she came to know about the incident and she wanted to return to the spot but the police commissioner asked her not to as the incident had already taken place. That is why she went to the hospital."

The minister accused the Indian Railways of negligence. He said, "One eyewitness told me that the light of the train was not working, if that is the case then how was the train allowed to go on track? If that is not the case then the light of the train gives a vision of three kilometers. More than 500 people were present there and were taking pictures, obviously there was light from their phones and an LED light was also there. How did no one see that? What was the guard doing?"

Sidhu also claimed that the Ravana effigy burning has been happening at that particular place for the past 50 years and 21 Ravanas were burnt in Punjab along the railway line. Further sharpening his attack, he said: "Ravana effigy is not installed in a few seconds. Why did no one raise an objection then? Out of the 21 places, I can tell you more than 18 would not have had permission. Does the Railways have no responsibility?"

"Loss of life is irreparable. I urge those doing politics over dead bodies to stop. No compensation can bring a lost life," said Sidhu.

The accident took place in Choura Bazar near Jhoda Phatak area of Amritsar after a train ran over the crowd, standing along railway tracks, to watch an effigy of Ravan being burnt. In the incident 59 people dead while 57 sustained injuries in the tragedy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat along with his team on Monday visited poll-bound Telangana, to review poll preparedness for upcoming Assembly Elections in the state.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) team held a meeting with recognised political parties in Telangana. Each political party was given 10 minutes to represent their party voice on the preparations for upcoming elections.

Most of the political parties mainly suggested the commission to look after the voters list, where names of thousands of voters have been repeated. They also urged the CEC and his team to look into the matter where a huge amount of money and liquor is being used to tamper the electoral process.

The ECI member also held a review meeting with police Nodal officers.

Telangana is scheduled to go to polls on 7th December. Counting of votes will be done on December 11.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Honduran migrants rest in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico. Photo: JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP/Getty Images

The caravan of migrants marching north toward the U.S. ballooned to at least 5,000 on Sunday, as thousands of desperate men, women, and children trudged through brutal heat in search of a better life.

Under intense political pressure from President Trump, Mexican authorities attempted to slow the migrants at the Mexican-Guatemalan border earlier in the weekend. They used tear gas and contained hundreds on a bridge between the two countries, allowing 45 people at a time to cross.

For many, it was not worth waiting. Thousands of migrants crossed the muddy Suchiate River on raft or on foot and continued their journey into Mexico, where locals cheered them on.

Maria Teresa Orellana, who lives near the Guatemalan border and handed out sandals to migrants, told the AP, Its solidarity. Theyre our brothers.

According to the Los Angeles Times, most of the migrants plan to continue on to the U.S., despite Trumps warnings about using the military to shut down the border. Heres why theyre coming:

My goal is to find work for a better future for my daughters. Besi Jaqueline Lopez, a jobless business administration graduate, left Honduras with her 4-year-old Victoria and 3-year-old Elisabeth.

They were going to kill him or kill us. Ingrid Andino left Honduras after a local gang began pushing her 16-year-old son to sell drugs.

I can do this. Ive made highways. Olivin Castellanos, of Honduras, is going to the U.S. in search of work.

There are risks that we must take for the good of our children. Sairy Bueso, a Honduran mother of two, told The Guardian she began the difficult journey to the U.S. for the sake of her childrens future.

The migrant caravan marching in Mexico this evening. pic.twitter.com/kw2JC41p1X  Kate Linthicum (@katelinthicum) October 20, 2018

I have to do this for his future. Paola Oviedo left Honduras with her 18-month-old son after her ex husband began threatening to kill her.

I want to go to a place where people respect me. When Cesar Meijia came out as gay, his family sent him to a psychologist and the local gang threatened to kill him, the L.A. Times reports. Now hes searching for the freedom to be himself.

I miss my PlayStation. I miss Buffalo Wild Wings. I miss my car. Ramon Izaguirre, who lived in Phoenix until he was deported, wants to return to the life he knows best.

There is no work back home. No future. William, a 20-year-old from Honduras, told CNN that hes just looking for a job.

Its time for me to go back to the United States. Its a country where I can live my life, unlike Guatemala. Job Reyes, who went to school in Los Angeles, is attempting to return to the U.S. after 14 years back home, he told the Washington Post.

I loved the beaches in Florida. And the Chinese food buffets. Evin Mata is attempting to return to the U.S. three months after being deported.Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has expressed confidence about Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweeping the upcoming state assembly elections as he kicked off Janashirvad rally from Indore on Sunday.

Addressing a gathering of party workers, Chouhan said, "We have taken the state of Madhya Pradesh forward but we will have to make it the best state in the country. We have to abolish poverty from the state in the next five years, build houses for poor.. I am confident that the BJP will again come to power in Madhya Pradesh."

Madhya Pradesh assembly polls will be held on November 28 to elect representatives of the 230 constituencies. The counting of votes will take place on December 11.

Earlier on Sunday, while addressing a rally in Bhopal, Chouhan targeted the Congress party and said that when the BJP formed the government in 2003, the condition of the state was "miserable".

"In 2003 when we formed government, the condition of Madhya Pradesh was miserable. Congress had pushed the state in darkness. We have put our efforts into the development of the state. The economy that had sunk was strengthened and revived by us," Chouhan said at a rally here.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Congress on Monday sought Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's resignation claiming his daughter Sonali and son-in-law Jaiyesh Bakshi, allegedly received a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi.

Congress leader Sachin Pilot, while addressing a press conference along with party colleagues Rajiv Satav and Sushmita Dev, accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government of conniving with fraudsters. He alleged, "Arun Jaitley, being Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, his daughter Sonali Jaitley and son-in-law Jaiyesh Bakshi proceeded to accept a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from Mehul Choksi's fraudster company Gitanjali Gems Ltd in December 2017."

Attacking further, Pilot said: "On January 4, 2018, Mehul Choksi escaped India. On January 31, 2018, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) lodged FIR against Mehul Choksi and others for bank frauds. A second FIR was lodged by CBI and against Mehul Choksi on February 15, 2018. The Enforcement Directorate has recorded evidence that Mehul Choksi was making sale of his all immovable properties since Nov. 2017."

"On February 20, 2018, Finance Minister's daughter and son-in-law, Sonali Jaitley and Jaiyesh of 'Jaitley and Associates' redeposited Rs.24,00,000 in ICICI Bank, Bandra (Mumbai) A/cs of Gitanjali Gems Ltd," read a statement of the three leaders.

"Is this not a clear-cut case of Collusion, Connivance' & 'Conflict of Interest' on part of FM Arun Jaitley? Why were FM Jaitley, his daughter and son-in-law neither summoned nor questioned by CBI/ED/SFIO?" the three leaders asked in the statement. "Is it not a fit case to sack Arun Jaitley and conduct a full independent investigation?" they added.

The leaders questioned as to why no action was taken against Choksi, Nirav Modi, Geetanjali Gems Ltd and others, despite FIRs and multiple complaints.

"Why did Finance Ministry/ED/CBI/SFIO wait until January 31, 2018, helping them escape on January 6, 2018? Who protected them?" the leaders asked.

"Why were daughter and son-in-law of FM Arun Jaitley paid Rs 24 lakh by Mehul Choksi's Gitanjali Gems Ltd. without doing any work, as admitted by them? Who else are the clients of 'Chambers of Jaitley and Associates' paying retainership of lakhs of rupees and why should their names not be made public, including amounts received?" the statement from the Congress leaders read.

"As people who owed money to Mehul Choksi/Nirav Modi came forward and deposited the money with Government after their (Choksi, Modi) fraudulent escape, why did FM Jaitley's daughter and son-in-law redeposit Rs 24 lakh in the account of a company that had defrauded the banks and people of Rs. 26,306 Cr? Why did they hide it?" it added.

Pilot alleged that in the 44 months till January 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi government has witnessed an unprecedented 19,000 'bank fraud cases' involving Rs 90,000 crore.

He further claimed that 23 bank fraudsters have left India under the central government's watch.

The Congress party alleged that Prime Minister Modi-led government is not a guardian of "public money" but a "travel agency" facilitating "fraud, fleece and fly to foreign shores" of willful bank defaulters like Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.

"Successive escapes of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and others reflect that the Modi government is not a guardian of public money but a travel agency facilitating fraud, fleece and fly to foreign shores by willful bank defaulters," the statement of the three leaders read.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary Ram Madhav said that the Congress party deliberately ignored the freedom fighters only to promote the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Speaking to ANI, Madhav said that before criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi should know about its own history as to how it neglected the contribution of freedom fighters in order to promote one family.

"Before criticising Prime Minister Modi, Rahul Gandhi should learn the history of his own party. From Sardar Vallavbhai Patel, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar including many such leaders were completely brushed under the carpet by the Congress party only to promote only family," Madhav said.

Madhav further said that it is the BJP that is reviving the country's history, unlike the opposition Congress who distorted it.

"We are re-writing the country's history. It is the Congress who only tried to distort it in order to promote one family," he said.

Earlier on Sunday, after unfurling the flag at the iconic Red Fort to mark the 75th anniversary of the Azad Hind government founded by Subhas Chandra Bose, Prime Minister Modi said that "several good sons of the Nation like him (Bose) as well as Ambedkar (B R Ambedkar) and Patel (Vallabhbhai Patel) were forgotten in the favour of one family."

Soon after this statement, Congress party hit back at Prime Minister Modi and said that it was unbecoming of the Prime Minister to resort to politicking even at such an auspicious occasion.

"The Prime Minister holds a constitutional post and talks about 24/7 and blames others. Was it right for him to talk about that on an auspicious day like today?," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Sourabh Madan Mithu, who organised the Dussehra event that ended with the death of 59 spectators on a railway track in Amritsar, on Monday cried foul and said that he had taken all preventive measures and permissions before organising the event.

Mithoo, released a video narrating his ordeal. He also alleged that a conspiracy is being hatched to defame him.

In a one and a half minute long video message recorded from an unknown location, Mithoo clarified that he had alerted people standing on the railway tracks to vacate the premises, but the announcements in the connection was over looked by the spectators who were engrossed in watching the Dussehra fireworks.

Grieving the loss, Mithoo said that the accident was 'an act of god'.

In his video message, he said, "I am deeply pained. We celebrated Dussehra and took all the permission required. Keeping in mind the safety of people we also demarcated a 20 feet safety area around the Ravan's effigy. We did not miss anything from our side. About 100 policemen of Punjab police were also deployed at the spot. Water tanker and fire brigade were also made available."

"Two- four miscreant people are taking out their personal grudges by trying to defame me. We have also made announcements for 5-7-10 times requesting people to not to stand on the railway track. I request everyone with folded hands that I and my whole family are deeply pained with the incident," he added.

In his video he also underscored that the Dussehra celebrations were organised within the boundary of the Dhobi Ghat ground, which was separated from the railway tracks by a 8-10 feet wall.

"We had organised the Dussehra festival on the ground within the boundary and not at the railway tracks. It was not as if we had put chairs on the railway tracks, then it could have been right to blame us. The Dhobi Ghat ground where the Dussehra celebrations were happening is separated from the railway track by an 8-10 feet wall. The people were standing on the railway track to watch Dussehra and no one realised when the train came. It was more of an act of God and I have no fault in it," he said.

At least 50 people lost their lives and as much as 57 sustained injuries in the accident that took place in Choura Bazar near Jhoda Phatak area of Amritsar after a train ran over the crowd, standing along train tracks, to watch an effigy of Ravan being burnt.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Brother of Kerala nun, who had accused former Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal of rape, on Monday alleged that the sudden demise of eye-witness Father Kuriakose Kattuthara is a "pre-planned murder".

Speaking to ANI, the nun's brother demanded a thorough investigation into the death of Father Kattuthara.

Father Kuriakose Kattuthara was found dead in Punjab's Jalandhar on Monday. The exact cause of death is yet to be ascertained .

"I am shocked to hear the sudden demise of Father Kuriakose Kattuthara as he was one of the witnesses and was, in fact, the first witness in the case. I think it is a pre-planned murder. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara had said that his life was under threat. A thorough investigation should be conducted into his death without any political interference. All witnesses should be given police protection," he said.

The nun's brother further underlined that Father Kuriakose Kattuthara was living in fear since Franco Mulakkal was released on bail.

"Earlier he was absolutely well but was in fear since Franco Mulakkal came out on bail. He was in immense tension after knowing that Franco Mulakkal got bail from the court. After the mysterious death of Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, the court should cancel Franco Mulakkal's bail," he said.

Bishop Mulakkal was released from Kottayam jail on October 16, a day after being granted conditional bail.

Bishop Mulakkal is facing allegations of repeatedly raping a nun of his own congregation, a charge that he denies.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A fire broke out in two garment warehouses on Rama Road in Delhi last night.

Ten fire tenders were rushed to the spot to douse the flame. However, no casualty has been reported as yet.

In another incident, a fire broke out at Bhalswa landfill site in Delhi. Around 2,700 tonnes of garbage is dumped per day at the 40-acre landfill.

Located in northwest Delhi, Bhalswa is the largest landfill of the capital that caters to nearly 50 per cent population of Delhi, including Jahangirpuri, Civil Lines, Kirti Nagar, Model Town and old Delhi's Chandni Chowk.

Earlier in 2016, a major fire had broken out at the trash mountain site that remained up in flames for weeks.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jairam Thakur on Monday asserted that the state government is not considering the proposal to rename Shimla as Shyamala.

He, however, confirmed that a suggestion in the connection was received by the Himachal government.

Thakur told ANI, "Let me make it clear that the government is not considering a proposal to rename Shimla as Shymala. We had received a suggestion to rename Shimla and it is our duty to hear all suggestions."

The on the issue of changing the name of capital town Shimla to Shayamala had warmed up in the state after the health minister of state Vipin Singh Parmar and the chief Minister had given statements in this regard and later the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) had submitted a proposal to the state government through District Administration, Shimla.

Historian Raja Basin commenting on the issue had said, "Shimla's identity is as Simla or Shimla and there is not even a single person mispronouncing it and misunderstanding it. There is no logic behind changing the name".

Former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh Virbhadra Singh also spoke against the idea of changing the name of the capital city.

"VHP had brought this issue to the government during his time also but was rejected as it has no significance," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was charged with multiple sexual assault charges, left his infamous couch.

Several photos have shown that the three-seater sofa is located just a few steps away from Weinstein's old desk, reported Page Six.

The middle seat of the sofa is seemed to have been turned over to possibly hide the stains from Weinstein's alleged sexual conquests. Page six further confirmed it is "the original casting couch".

Weinstein's sofa came up in #MeToo claims against him, as Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez told police authorities that she happened to be sitting there in 2015, while she had to, unfortunately, withstood unwelcome sexual advances by the former.

In a pending sexual harassment suit filed by the model, Weinstein's former assistant Sandeep Rehal revealed that Battilana had to clean up his semen on the couch every single day.

Weinstein's wood-arm sofa sits inside a historic building that houses Robert De Niro 's restaurant.

More than 80 women, including the actresses Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Rose McGowan have opened about similar stories against Weinstein.

Some accused him of using physical force to compel them to have sex, while others said he tried to exchange parts in movies for sex or threatened to ruin their careers if they did not fulfill his demands.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday co-chaired the first India-China High-Level meeting on Bilateral Security Cooperation with State Councilor and Minister of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, Zhao Kezhi in Delhi.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest, including bilateral counter-terrorism cooperation, and welcomed increased cooperation between India and China in the area of security cooperation.

An Agreement on Security Cooperation between the Ministry of Home Affairs of India and the Ministry of Public Security of China was also signed by the two ministers. The Agreement will further strengthen and consolidate discussions and cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, organized crimes, drug control and other such relevant areas.

Zhao Kezhi is on a bilateral visit to India from October 21 - 25 during which he will also visit Mumbai.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India and Croatia on Monday signed two agreements to facilitate cultural exchange and diplomatic cooperation.

The agreements were signed and exchanged by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Croatian counterpart Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

The two leaders discussed stepping up cooperation in political, trade and investment, health and pharmaceuticals, science and technology, tourism and culture. They also exchanged views on multilateral cooperation.

Buric, who is on a one-day visit to India, is the first Croatian foreign minister to visit the country after 17 years.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Photo: pixelfit/getty/Getty Images/iStockphoto

If youve ever used a drone, you know: Its so much fun. If you havent used one, either because of lack of opportunity or abundance of disinterest, just give it a shot. The latest drones are much easier to pilot and theyre less bulky compared to the earlier versions. Plus, you can find a good one for not too much money. We tapped a collection of experts to help you cut through the clutter and find the best drone to meet your needs.

But first: Before buying a drone, be sure that you know the requirements, and potential restrictions, involved. You must register your drone with the FAA if youre going to be operating it in the USA and it weighs more than 250 grams  about a stick of butter, says Josh Ziering, founder of Kittyhawk, a drone companion app that tells you if your airspace is permissible to fly in. The next-most-important thing is knowing whether or not you can legally fly in a certain area, says Sally French, a drone expert and the creator of TheDroneGirl.com. Property owners can set their own rules, so its perfectly valid for, say, a college campus to ban drone flights, she says. Operating a drone responsibly also means having situational awareness. For example, you cant ever fly in certain areas  like Washington, D.C.  or if there is a temporary flight restriction, Ziering says.

The less expensive drones are more portable but lack advanced features, which makes them harder to fly. But thats okay, because beginners will want to take these drones out to practice their piloting ability. Another big trade-off for smaller drones is their weaker battery, so dont expect to go on longer excursions. If you spend a little more money, expect features like GPS, longer battery life, better photo and video capability, and flight stabilization. This makes it much easier to fly, Ziering says. A drone without flight stabilization is like driving a stick-shift car while juggling.

Here are our experts favorite picks.

The best all-around drone

The best beginner drone

Ryze Tello Drone $99 I recommend you always start by flying something you can afford to lose. You dont want to fly $1,000 into a pool or tree by accident, French says. Chris Fenton, Technical Director and Pilot at Octovision Media, recommends the Ryze Tello. The Tello has all the components for beginners: easy to fly and safe to fly. Still, he suggests starting inside to let yourself get the hang of things. It will bounce off a wall with the propeller guards on without issue and can even be programmed to fly autonomously by coding, he says. And in case you decide to try your hand at drone photography, the camera shoots 12-megapixel photos, which isnt enough for a serious photographer, but it should be good for a beginner. French also points out that, although Tello is made by Ryze, it was created in partnership with DJI. DJI is far and away the market leader in drones. So getting DJI tech for less than $100 via the Tello is a win,she says. $99 at Amazon Buy $99 at B&H Photo and Video Buy

The best portable drone

DJI Mavic Mini $399 now 13% off $349 The next step up from the Tello is the Mavic Mini, French says. I LOVE this drone. It has a higher price tag, but you get superior video quality, and it includes DJIs automatic flight modes. They have goofy names, but theyre useful: For a mode called Dronie, the drone flies backward and upward, with the camera tracking you, a la a selfie, she says. No matter how good of a pilot you are, those flight modes are almost always going to be precise  getting you that perfect circle or evenly straight line. Brooke Holm, a photographer, also recommended the Mavic series. They fold up quite small, so they are the most portable option, and the video quality is great, Holm says. DJI drones come with built-in safeguards (like obstacle sensors) that are mostly fool-proof, so for beginners, this is extremely helpful. $349 at Amazon Buy $399 at B&H Photo and Video Buy

The best photography drone

DJI Mavic Air 2 $799 Nowadays, safe flying comes together with high-quality photography, says Karolis Janulis, a drone photographer. The Mavic Air 2 is small and easy to transport, offers 48-megapixel photos, which gives you the possibility for larger cropping, and it is easy and safe to fly, he says. It can also shoot 4K video and has a battery life of 34 minutes. According to French, the Air also has many more improved features, including rear- and front-facing obstacle-avoidance sensors, which can be useful in cutting down on crash potential. $799 at Amazon Buy $799 at B&H Photo and Video Buy

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Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission.India and Myanmar signed a pact for the appointment of a private port operator for the operation and maintenance of Sittwe Port, Paletwa Inland Water Terminal and associated facilities that are part of the Kaladan Multi-Model Transit Transport Project, in an effort to strengthen bilateral cooperation.

The agreement was signed during Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale's one day visit to Myanmar on Monday, where he met Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Communications, U Win Khant.

Foreign Secretary Gokhale also called on the State Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. All matters relating to bilateral cooperation as well as matters pertaining to international and regional matters of common interest, including developments in Rakhine state were discussed during this meeting, a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs read.

The Foreign Secretary also called on Union Minister, Ministry of Transport and Communications U Thant Sin Maung, and discussed matters related to connectivity and transport infrastructure being developed by India in Myanmar.

The MoU signed is a significant step in the implementation of India's Act East Policy as its signing will enhance Myanmar's connectivity including with India and add to the development of the whole region, particularly in the Rakhine and Chin states of Myanmar. It would also add to local infrastructure capacity and help in creating more job opportunities for the local people, the statement added.

Foreign Secretary Gokhale also earlier called on the Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Defence Services, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. All matters relating to border security, bilateral cooperation, Myanmar's peace process as well as the situation in Northern Rakhine state were discussed during the meeting.

"The Foreign Secretary conveyed the message in all his engagements that India valued its relationship with a close neighbour like Myanmar and would continue to deepen its cooperation with it in the areas of connectivity, security, people to people relation and economic and commercial cooperation," the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Muttahida Qaumi Movement's (MQM) founder leader Altaf Hussain has said that Pakistan's judiciary and military establishment should treat all citizens especially the oppressed alike and should discard the policy of crushing and eliminating them.

Hussain also remarked that, unfortunately, there are courts in the country sans spirit of justice and hence the courts without the spirit of dispensing justice should be removed as these have no meanings or purpose of existence.

He made these remarks in his weekly address that was spread to the corners of the globe through the social media means and was watched and heard live by millions of his followers.

He said that the new generation in Pakistan is unaware of their heritage particularly their ancestors who played a pivotal role in conceiving the country.

"The new generation hardly knows now about their legends such as Sir Syed Ahmed khan, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Maulana Shaukat Ali Jauhar, Nizam of Hyderabad, Raja Sahab Mahmoudabad, Abul Hassan Esphahani, Sir Adamji and Sir Ziauddin, etc" he said.

He emphasised that these were the people who actively participated in the struggle for Pakistan and offered tremendous funds for the newly founded state so that it could run and live and forgetting them would be tantamount to deleting the real history of Pakistan. These are being removed from the curricula because they all hailed from Shiite sect of Islam.

He continued and said that there are factories established in Pakistan at the behest of foreign master which engineered and promoted a specific thought of declaring the Shiites Muslim as infidel forgetting that the founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his sister Madre-e Millat (mother of the nation) Fatima Jinnah also belonged to Shiite sect of Islam. In Pakistan, Shiite scholars, engineers, doctors and lawyers were all butchered mercilessly. It is high time that all the Shiite scholars should set aside all the compromises and call a spade a spade. They should protest on discrimination with our legends and ancestors.

He said that in Pakistan, Mohajirs are readily handcuffed and chained in the garb of an act of breach of law but at the other hand Punjabi culprits are treated with respect despite their involvement in heinous criminal acts.

Hussain also remarked that the ex-Senator Syed Faisal Raza Abidi has been chained and jailed because he dared to speak the truth but the same the Chief Justice ignored Maulana Khadim Hussain Rizvi who called names to him and the judiciary. Likewise, the CJ took immediate notice of handcuffing Punjabi academicians but has not yet taken any notice of cold-blooded custodial murder of a Mohajir academician, Prof. Dr Hassan Zafar Arif.

In his address he further said that conversely, the CJ became very active on water scarcity issue but he avoided seeing at the sealed residence of his, Nine-Zero, extrajudicial executions of thousands of innocent Mohajir youth and MQM affiliates, enforced disappearances of thousands of Mohajirs and he ignored the call for speedy justice to the affected Mohajir families. The CJ claims to be the custodian of the constitution but he is predominantly engaged in works that are beyond his constitutional limits and though he has failed to ensure the dispensation of justice he is more interested in the construction of dams, which is not his job.

Hussain further said that Pakistan has a judicial system but does not have justice system. The judiciary in Pakistan is lame and rather paralysed and hence such a limping and paralysed judiciary should be removed.

He said that the army chief General Qamar Jawed Bajwah had promised to help Naqeeb Ullah Mehsood's family get justice but he has not fulfilled his promise and the killer cop Rao Anwar is still not brought to justice box. On the other hand, he visited Mehsood's but did not visit Prof. Arif's because he was a victim Mohajir. The COAS and the CJ have never remedied the wounds of Mohajirs and Balochs.

General Bajwah has not yet questioned his predecessor General Rahil Sharif who immediately after his retirement joined the Saudi-led military coalition for money while there was a constitutional binding on him to have waited for two years after retirement.

"It is very unfortunate that in every developmental plan and project, Punjab's interests are held above all."

He said that since there are premonitions that Sindh and Balochistan would sooner or later become separate and independent states then Punjab would become a landlocked territory and hence they are very keen on the construction of dams for Punjab.

Hussain also cast light on the role of Pakistan's armed forces in detail. He said that Pakistan's army had always fought with the people of the country, Mohajirs and Balouchs and Pashtoons. Punjabi army butchered them mercilessly and the acts of genocide are still rampant.

He said that the army has a predefined job to do and it is to protect the country's boundaries but the ghoulish army of Pakistan is running like a commercial institution and its span of variety of commercial enterprises include banks, property business, gas filling stations, meat and poultry farmhouses, marriage halls and fruits and veggies businesses.

MQM founder Hussain said that "Pakistan's ghoulish and coward army had waged war on India for five times but was defeated in all five wars." Late air vice martial Asghar Khan's statement on Pakistan army's defeat is on record, he quoted.

He said that the army is emotionally exploiting the countrymen on Kashmir since past seven decades but does not have the courage to enter a combat with the Indian army on Kashmir.

"At the contrary, Pakistan's army under the command of Dictator Zia had butchered 20, 000 innocent Palestinians in 1970 in Jordan and the Palestinians remember that massacre as "Black September'." Dictator Zia was at that time a Brigadier and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General. Likewise, ex-COAS of Pakistan army General Rahil Sharif is butchering the innocent people of Yemen at the behest of Saudi Arabia and as a result, people of Yemen are facing acute starvation.

Hussain said that the first Pak-India war was started on October 22, 1947, and it was Pakistan that waged that war against India. Pakistan army did not use its regular troops but used people of tribal zones of Pakistan, instead. Tribesmen had reached inside Kashmir, which was then a Princely state under the rule of Maharaja Hari Sindh. British rule had approved of choice for him about whether to join Pakistan or India or keep an independent status of the region. Maharaja Hari Singh had on Oct 26, 1947, chosen to join India. The war that Pakistan had waged lasted until Jan 5, 1947.

Similarly, Pakistani troopers in plain clothes along with tribesmen invaded the Indian Territory again in 1965. Pakistan violated the Line of Control. In reaction, Indian forces repelled Pakistani troops and entered into Pakistan from Western Border and then reached Lahore. Pakistan then approached the United States of America for a cease-fire and the later did it.

Hussain further talked about erstwhile two parts of Pakistan and said, in 1971, Pakistan had two parts, Eastern and Western Pakistan with 56% and 44% of the population respectively. However, East Pakistan was deliberately deprived of its due shares. Bengalis were denied of their due rights and thus they had joined Sheikh Mujeeb Ur Rehman and won the elections with a majority in 1970. However, General Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had launched a genocidal military crackdown against Bengalis in which millions of Bengalis were killed and millions of Bengali women were gang-raped by the Pakistani troops. India then came forward and helped Bengalis rid of Pakistani troops' tyranny and then Pakistani troops had surrendered shamelessly. Lastly, Pakistan was cut into two pieces as two separate states.

Hussain said that Pakistan People's Party fraudulently makes tall claims of being country's largest Democratic Party but the facts are that PPP's founder Bhutto was reared and groomed in the laps of General Iskandar Mirza and General Ayub Khan. Bhutto used to call General Ayub as his Daddy. Bhutto conspired against Pakistan in 1971 in connivance with General Yahya and he was the co-planner of the creation of East Pakistan as independent Bangladesh. Mohajirs had sided with Pakistani troops in 1971 but Pakistani troopers who had surrendered had returned to Pakistan after two years but those Mohajirs are still in camps of Red Cross in Bangladesh. Military Dictator Ziaul Haque had called those Pakistanis as Beggars.

He said that Pakistan army's wrong policies had led Pakistan to get cut into two separate states, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1971. Unfortunately, same policies are still at work and the army is crushing the innocent Mohajirs, Pashtoons, Balouchs, Seraikis, Hazarwals and other oppressed communities.

He advised the judiciary, establishment and the military of Pakistan should stop their wicked policies towards the oppressed communities and should treat them equally as they treat Punjabis. The honest military officers and troopers should step forward to save Pakistan from the ghoulish Generals.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday voiced his support to the raging #MeToo movement in India, saying that he fully supports genuine cases.

The former chief minister further underlined that false allegations should not be levelled against anyone.

Speaking to ANI, Gogoi said, "This was happening first in America and now across the world. I totally support the genuine cases, but no false allegations should be levelled against anyone. Even I was accused by a woman once, but later it turned out to be fake and politically motivated."

He added, "Whatever are truthful (in the cases), I support 100 per cent. But if there is any untruth, then it should be exposed."

The MeToo movement gained momentum in India after Bollywood actor Tanushree Dutta accused Nata Patekar of allegedly misbehaving with her during a film shoot in 2008.

Since then, scores of women have come out to speak about their ordeals on social media, including actors, musicians, journalists, and politicians.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India on Monday strongly condemned Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's tweet, where he accused Indian security forces of allegedly killing innocent Kashmiris.

In response to a media query regarding Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan tweet, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said that instead of making comments on India's internal affairs, Pakistan Prime Minsiter should look inwards and address its own issues.

"The remarks made by Pakistan's Prime Minister in his tweet today are deeply regrettable. Instead of making comments on India's internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues. Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours. Pakistan's deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world," said Kumar.

The MEA's remarks came after Pakistan's Prime Minister Khan took to Twitter and wrote, "Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris by the Indian security forces. It is time India realise it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UNSC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people."

Pakistan Prime Minister's statement came a day after six civilians were killed after an explosive went off at an encounter site in Kulgam district of South Kashmir.

The incident took place when some civilians rushed to the encounter site despite security personnel prohibiting them citing the search and combing operation at the spot.

Just then the explosives, laid by the terrorist, went off killing six civilians and injuring several others in the southern district of Kulgam in Jammu and Kashmir.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Monday launched a scathing attack on Congress-led Punjab government and said that they are on mission to cover-up the Amritsar train accident.

Badal said, "Congress senior leaders including ministers are involved in this case. With the attitude of the government, it looks like they are on a mission to cover-up. There is no remorse, no regret and no seriousness in Punjab Government."

He also outlined Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh's visit to Israel and termed it as unfortunate.

"Such big unfortunate state had happened in the state and CM has gone abroad to Tel Aviv which shows their seriousness. Senior leaders who organised the event ran away immediately after the accident, rather than helping people. It is very unfortunate," he said.

Badal also criticised Punjab government for not registering a case against any named individual in connection with Amritsar train accident and said, "The whole case looks like a cover-up. As many as 60 people have died but there is no one named in the case. Filing case against unidentified people means they are doing a cover-up. People who are fighting for justice, the people who were protesting, on those cases of 307 have been registered."

59 people were killed after a train crushed Dussehra revellers while they were watching an effigy of Ravana being burnt near Dhobi Ghat ground in Amritsar.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Russian Ambassador to India, Nikolay R. Kudashev, on Sunday said that the cultural ties between New Delhi and Moscow will not only strengthen the bilateral relations between the two nations but will also promote peace.

The statement from Kudashev came while he was attending an event commemorating the 114th birth anniversary of Svetoslav Roerich, Russian artist and founder of International Roerich Memorial Trust.

"No doubt, the Roerichs legacy is one of the brightest examples of our common heritage that continues to bring Russians and Indians together. I am confident that Russian participation in Kullu festivities will contribute to this trend," he said.

Giving out more details about the event, Amarjeet Anand, Organiser, told ANI that both Indian and Russian national flags were unfurled and children from the two countries participated in dance and painting competitions.

"We have organised dance and painting competition for Russian and Indian children. We have also unfurled the flags of both the countries," he said.

This is not the first time Kudashev visited Kullu for the cultural event. On May 3, he participated in the festive events dedicated to the 90th Anniversary of the Roerichs' setting in the region.

During the visit, the Russian Ambassador met Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jairam Thakur, Kullu District Administration, as well as Head of Naggar Panchayat, Sushma Sharma.

Their conversations touched upon the issues of further strengthening of interregional cooperation, the importance of broader interaction in agriculture, education, and tourism. The idea of Naggar joining the federation of the most beautiful villages of the Earth was also proposed.

Special attention was also paid to the issue of preserving the unique heritage of the Roerich family, while the significance of the efficient functioning of the International Roerich Memorial Trust was also stressed. Not only The plans to transform the Roerich Estate into a cultural and scientific centre of international standards were also discussed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday as to when it would hear fresh petitions (writ and review) regarding entry of women in the age group of 10 to 50 years in Kerala's Sabarimala Temple.

At least 19 review petitions are pending before the top court in connection with the issue.

Kerala Police officials had earlier told media in Sannidhanam and Pamba to vacate the area as the cops had inputs of a targeted attack being planned on journalists.

The Sabarimala Temple witnessed strings of protests by devotees and priests as few female belonging to the age group tried to reach the holy shrine following the top court's ruling that females of all age group could enter the temple. The apex court verdict came on September 28.

The Ayyappa temple will close this evening after it opened for five days as a monthly ritual in the Malayalam month of Thulam.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former world number one Saina Nehwal, who settled for a silver medal in the recently-concluded Denmark Open, has thanked her entire team for supporting her throughout the tournament.

The 28-year-old shuttler posted a picture of her team on Twitter, expressing happiness over the results.

"I would like to thank the team for the amazing week I had in Denmark open ???? ... Happy with result here and ready to fight again next week at the French open . @ArvindDNigam4 @parupallik #siyaduth... also would like to thank Gopi sir and kiran sir (physio) for their efforts," she wrote.

Nehwal had slumped to a 13-21, 21-13, 6-21 defeat at the hands of Tai Tzu-Ying of Taiwan in the final of the Denmark Open.

She will next appear in the 2018 French Open starting October 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the plea of self-styled godman Daati Maharaj against the Delhi High Court order of transferring the rape case against him to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Last week, Daati Maharaj had moved the Supreme Court arguing that he was not heard before passing the order to transfer the case to the CBI.

The High Court on October 3 allowed the alleged victim's plea seeking transfer of the case to the CBI, saying that the manner in which the Delhi Police carried out the probe "casts a shadow on the investigation."

Previously, the probe was being helmed by the Delhi Police Crime Branch.

Daati Maharaj is accused of raping a disciple two years ago and was booked under Sections 376 (rape), 377 (unnatural sex), 354 (molestation) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). However, he has maintained that he is being framed in a false case.

The 25-year-old complainant had alleged that she was raped at Gurukul Ashwasan in Rajasthan's Bal Gram, adding that she did not file a complaint earlier as she felt intimidated by the self-styled godman.

On June 7, a complaint was filed against Daati Madan Lal alias Daati Maharaj and on June 11 an FIR was registered.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Afghanistan's National Unity Government's CEO Abdullah Abdullah said on Monday that Taliban's thoughts and ideas have been rejected, as people came out to vote for Saturday's parliamentary elections despite threats by the group.

The CEO stated, "The Taliban wanted to build a bloodstream, but the Taliban were defeated and the Taliban's thoughts and ideas were rejected," according to TOLOnews.

"Our old men and females, youths and their enthusiasm, standing in line to vote, all that shows that people do not want Taliban ideology, but the Afghan people want a system based on the people's vote, and in fact, we have witnessed a historical moment," further claimed Abdullah, who also stated that the Afghans have proved that they reject the sound of violence, terror and the return to the dark days of the past.

Meanwhile, he also outlined that there were lapses during Saturday's polls. Referring to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), he said, "The people's demand from these commissions is that their complaints should be addressed and the shortcomings that have taken place should be resolved and people have the right for their complaints to be addressed."

He further dismissed rumours that held NATO-led Resolute Support responsible for the attacks in Kandahar's governor's house which left the province's police chief General Abdul Raziq dead.

Abdullah said, "The rumors that the action (attack on Raziq) was done by Resolute Support is just helping the enemy."

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani termed the elections as a "historic success" for democracy, while thanking the people for their active participation, despite threats by the Taliban.

"The great people of Afghanistan, thank you! By casting your votes, you sent a message to the that you do not want violence, you demonstrated your determination through democracy. You proved to the Taliban that this nation will not surrender to anyone," Ghani stated in a speech on Sunday.

He further thanked the women of the country for participating both as candidates and voters. "I thank these women and their families. Their participation is a historic success for Afghanistan's democracy and it is a great beginning for our new generation. I hope that you participate in the presidential elections in such a large scale," he said.

Ghani also extended his gratitude to all the candidates who participated and helped mobilise the people.

"I thank you (candidates), you participated in a credible and healthy competition and mobilized the people. You have a deep root among the people. Because of you, there was enthusiasm and movement among the people. From among 2,500 candidates, only 250 will go to the Wolesi Jirga (lower house of parliament), we do not have losers or winners here, all of you are the winner of democracy," he said, according to TOLOnews.

The IEC Chief, Abdul Badi Sayyad also lauded the Afghan people, and said, "I thank the Afghans for their large turnout in the elections, it rejected the rumors around allegation of ghost registration. this helps Afghanistan to further develop democracy and democratic institutions. I also thank political parties and civil society who mobilized the people to participate. I also thank the Afghan government leaders who supported us and encouraged us. Elections were at 4,500 polling centers, except Kandahar, and were held at 276 centers today."

Sayyad further mentioned that vote counting has been completed by 80 percent of the polling stations. The IEC has stated that over three million Afghans voted in the parliamentary elections.

Elections are yet to take place in the provinces of Kandahar and Ghazni, as elections were postponed. The recent attack in Kandahar governor's house which claimed the life of the region's police chief let to the postponement in Kandahar, while security reasons and disagreements on reducing constituencies led to the deferral of elections in Ghazni.

Afghans voted for the Wolesi Jirga, or the lower house of the parliament during Saturday's polls which are being viewed as a precursor for the 2019 Presidential elections in Afghanistan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Photo: Williams-Sonoma

Stemless wineglasses can be somewhat  divisive (though less so now than they used to be). Some elitists still believe theyre somewhat gauche, says Zach Jones, wine director at the Chicago restaurant Pacific Standard Time. Thats because stemmed wineglasses not only aerate wines (letting them interact with the air and release more complex flavors), they also give people something to hold that wont warm up their wine. Over the past few years, however, more and more restaurants have begun to use less traditional wineglasses at the table in an attempt to give dining out a laid-back feel.

At home, where even a nice dinner party neednt be white-tablecloth fancy, stemless wineglasses are certainly a good fit. With limited shelf space and you as the only dishwasher on hand, theyre more practical and less fussy. Plus, as many experts we spoke to pointed out, a stemless wineglass also works for Aperol spritzes, sangria, a nightcap of something brown, or even just water. If you arent worried about potentially raising the temperature of your wine (or impressing your guests with ultraelegant stems), we asked more than a dozen wine experts, restaurant owners, beverage directors, and frequent party hosts to recommend their favorite stemless options.

The best overall stemless wineglasses

Riedel O Cabernet and Merlot Stemless Wineglasses $30 for 4 Austrian glassware company Riedel, which has been around since 1756, is the perennial favorite wineglass-maker. Its O series of stemless glasses  around half of the pros interviewed for this story raved about them  were introduced as tumblers in 2004. This particular style is technically intended for Cabernet and Merlot red wines. Cedric Nicaise, wine director at Eleven Madison Park, likes them because there are relatively few compromises compared with a traditional stemmed style. They still provide great aromatics, and the glass is very thin so smelling and drinking wine are great experiences, Nicaise says. (Although he warns about using them for cocktails: The glass is delicate, so be careful when putting in ice.) $30 for 4 at Williams Sonoma Buy

The best dishwasher-safe stemless wineglasses

Duralex Picardie Clear Tumbler $20 now 20% off $16 Okay, so theyre not technically wineglasses, but Victoria James, beverage director at the New York Korean steakhouse Cote, suggests this sturdy style for at-home drinking. This tumbler brings me back to brasseries and vineyards in France, where these are used for a simple casse-croute, she says. The thickness of the glass allows you to grip it and not heat up the wine too much, which is an issue with thin stemless tumblers, and they are dishwasher safe, stackable, and last forever. She says to use these for a casual Tuesday-night bottle: Theyre meant to be used for everyday, glou-glou wine, something you would gulp alongside a sandwich. $16 at Amazon Buy $21 at Williams Sonoma Buy

Toyo Sasaki 7 oz. Stacking Glass (Set of 6) $33 for 6 $33 for 6 Chris Leon, owner and wine director of Leon & Son in Brooklyn, loves these Tokyo-made glasses for wine. My wife and I had our honeymoon in Japan and came back super-inspired by the functionality of everything there, he says. Theyre stackable, so you can store and carry a bunch at once. Theyre dishwasher safe. They look really nice on a shelf and table, too, but theyre not too precious. $33 for 6 at Jinen Buy

Peugeot 250201 Esprit Casual Tasting Glasses $56 for 4 You can also opt for a slightly more squat style. This glass is classic and elegant while still looking modern, and it feels comfortable in your hand, says Thom Neil, beverage director at the former Ribbon Midtown in Manhattan. Neil discovered the style while researching glassware and spotted a brand I didnt know made glasses, which piqued my interest, he says. The glass has a very balanced weight, and they are sturdy enough to handle a dishwasher. $56 for 4 at Amazon Buy $56 for 4 at Amazon Buy

Schott Zwiesel Tritan Crystal Burgundy Red Wine Glass (Set of 6) $60 now 10% off $54 These angular glasses intended for wine or cocktails wont chip or break, and they have a nice, thick base. Ive always been a big fan of Schott Zwiesels products: Theyre not the most inexpensive wine glasses out there, but theyre aesthetically beautiful, functional, and generally more durable than their closest competitors, Jones says. Although different versions are available for red or white wines, Jones suggests using these for any grape. Its wide enough at the base to be considered proper for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but the overall shape is sleek and vertical, like a Bordeaux glass, so its perfectly suitable for Sauvignon Blanc or rich reds like Cabernet Sauvignon or Zinfandel. $54 at Amazon Buy $60 at Bed Bath & Beyond Buy

The best bodega wineglasses

Bormioli Rocco Bodega Tumbler $20 for 12 Yvette Leeper-Bueno, owner of Harlem restaurant Vinateria, uses only stemmed glasses at her restaurant but loves these short bodega-style glasses for at-home drinking. When I was traveling in Spain, I saw them everywhere in Barcelona, she says. The culture of drinking there is so casual and fun, which goes with the informality of these flat-bottomed glasses. Theyre not technically perfect for wine, as they dont let it breathe, so anything too special might not be a good fit for these glasses, Leeper-Bueno says. But they are easy to hold and stackable. Jill Bernheimer, owner of Domaine in Los Angeles, agrees (only they transport her to a Parisian bistro instead of Spain). I reserve these glasses for chilled reds, pet-nats  the less complicated (but no less delicious) wines, she says. $20 for 12 at Target Buy

Pottery Barn Stemless Bodega Wine Glass $10 now 60% off $4 Pottery Barn also stocks a bodega glass, which Ariel Arce, owner and restaurateur of Airs Champagne Parlor and Tokyo Record Bar, likes for their short, stout shape, so you cant knock them over, she says. Arce was tipped off to the beauty of the bodega glass by friends who went to Spain and started drinking txakolina, the sparkling white wine that comes from the Basque region. They had a dinner party where they served wine in these glasses, and I fell in love, she says. $4 at Pottery Barn Buy

The best plastic stemless glasses

Govino Wine/Cocktail Glasses $42 for 4 Govino is the only stemless glass I tend to use, says Steven Grubbs, wine director at Atlanta restaurants Empire State South and Five & Ten, who uses them for casual, rugged, and outdoor portable drinking. He adds, I believe if youre in a scenario where stems are too precious or dainty, then actual glass is probably a liability there too; enter good, smart, effective plastic wine cups. Thomas Pastuszak, wine director at the NoMad (and founder of Empire Estate, a winery in the Finger Lakes region), uses the 12-ounce ones, too. Its a super-versatile size, great for sparkling, white, or red wine, and it also nicely fits cocktails on ice, like an Aperol spritz, he says. Theres a really convenient dimple on the bottom and side of the glass, for an even more stable grip. $42 for 4 at Amazon Buy $42 for 4 at Amazon Buy

The best stemless wineglasses to splurge on

Saint Louis Crystal Folia Medium Tumbler $145 Philanthropist Jean Shafiroff frequently hosts dinner parties (in addition to many charity galas), and when entertaining at home, she opts for glassware that looks as fancy as possible. I love Saint Louis wineglasses; they make whatever youre drinking look expensive, she says. This handcrafted crystal tumbler is from the French brand, which dates back to the 16th century. $145 at Saks Fifth Avenue Buy

Land of Belle Laguna B Blue-and-White Endless Summer Collection Wineglass $145 Another work of art masquerading as a stemless wineglass: this gorgeous handblown Murano-glass style, which Jenny Vorhoff of design company Studio Riga uses at home. I have a few sets of six in various colors, and they look even more chic and collected when mixed together, she says. They are actually quite sturdy and feel heavy in the hand, like crystal. Stemless wineglasses have a subtle but important purpose when entertaining at home, as they tell my guests that dinner is going to be relaxed, and relaxed dinners are the most fun, she adds. $145 at Land of Belle Buy

Additional reporting by Alexandra Ilyashov.

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Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission.Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday briefly broke down and publicly apologised to the victims of child sexual abuse in institutions.

Speaking at the Australian Parliament, Morrison said that the distressing experience suffered by the victims from church orphanages to youth groups and schools had been "hiding in plain sight for too long", CNN reported.

"We honour every survivor in this country, we love you, we hear you and we honour you," he said.

The Australian leader also rued that victims affected by physical, sexual and mental abuse had to commit suicide due to the trauma they endured for years. He also urged the victims to come forward and make their revelations.

Morrison expressed hope that the apology would "give strength to others who were yet to share what happened."

"Today Australia confronts a trauma, an abomination, hiding in plain sight for far too long. Today we confront a question too horrible ask, let alone answer, why weren't the children of our nation loved, nurtured and protected?" he added.

Morrison's apology comes after a recent probe on institutional sexual abuse in Australia, spanning five years, shockingly revealed thousands of such cases, the CNN report said.

Earlier this year, Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had come out with a report of sexual abuse of children at different institutions dating back to decades.

Costing 500 million Australian dollars, the government had prepared the report after hearing the horrific ordeals of thousands of victims over five years, while warning that children were still being sexually assaulted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav's son Abhijeet Yadav, who was found dead on Sunday, was strangulated by his mother.

Superintendent of Police (SP) of East Lucknow Sarvesh Misra on Monday informed that Abhijeet's mother confessed her crime and has been arrested.

The woman said that the deceased came drunk on Saturday night and was arguing with her, following which she committed the crime, Misra said.

Initially, during the investigation, the family had claimed that it was a natural death and was reluctant to have a probe. Later, an autopsy revealed that 22-year-old Abhijeet died of strangulation.

He was found dead on Sunday at his residence in the Hazratganj area of Lucknow.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday warned that the United States decision to unilaterally pull out from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) would have multiple negative effects.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced the country's withdrawal from the INF treaty over the alleged violations of the agreement by Russia.

"The INF is an important agreement on arms control, reached by the United States and Russia during the Cold War. The treaty has played a significant role in stabilising international relations, supporting the global strategic balance and stability ... The [US] unilateral withdrawal from the agreement will have multilateral negative effects," the ministry's spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told a briefing.

The spokeswoman added that Trump's reference to Beijing when justifying his decision to pull out of the INF Treaty was erroneous. "It must be stressed that the reference to China in this matter is completely erroneous," Hua said.

The US president argued on Saturday that it was "unacceptable" for Washington to continue to adhere to the agreement while both Russia and China were allegedly developing weapons prohibited under the treaty.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Sunday that Washington had no reasons to accuse Moscow of violating the agreement, adding that the United States had been breaching the treaty for years. He noted that withdrawal from the agreement benefited certain political forces in Washington that wanted to continue acting in violation of the INF treaty.

The INF Treaty was signed by former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and then-US President Ronald Reagan in 1987 amid the Cold War crisis. The two sides reached a historic agreement to cut their nuclear arsenals and pledged to destroy all cruise or ground-launched ballistic missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,400 miles.

According to the terms of the agreement, the treaty has an unlimited duration and each side can terminate it by providing compelling evidence to substantiate its decision.

Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev said the US plans to withdraw from the INF are aimed at moving the US weapons to the borders of Russia and China.

"The destruction of the INF Treaty is aimed at moving the relevant class of US weapons to the territory of potential and, maybe real, enemy. That is primarily Russia and, secondly, China," Kosachev, the Russian upper house's International Affairs Committee head, said on Sunday.

The lawmaker described the US possible invitation for the further talks on the issue as a deceit. Kosachev pointed out that Russia should respond to specific steps of the United States after the exit from the treaty, not to the withdrawal itself.

From the lawmaker's point of view the United States had been preparing for the withdrawal from the INF treaty since 2014. He noted that the US claims about alleged Russian violations of the treaty were absolutely unfounded.

"The United States continues these games because the real aim of these moves is not to detect Russian violations and make Russia stick to the treaty, but to destroy the agreement using contrived pretexts," Kosachev added.

Meanwhile, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Monday that the country would closely follow the situation around the US decision to withdraw from the INF.

"Taking into account the role of the treaty in the control over arms and disarmament as well as the role it may play in ensuring the regional security, we are going to closely follow the US and Russian moves," Suga said.

He pointed out that Tokyo and Washington used to exchange information in the sphere of security and nuclear disarmament. "I think they [the consultations] will be continued," Suga added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Senior advisor to Donald Trump, Jared Kushner has said that the Trump administration is still in the "fact-finding phase" regarding journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death.

"Right now as an administration we're more in the fact finding phase," Kushner told CNN at a conference held here on Monday (local time).

The advisor, who is also US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, said, "We're getting as many facts as we can, then we'll determine which facts are credible."

He further outlined that it is imperative to maintain the US-Saudi relationship. "We have to be able to work with our allies and Saudi Arabia has I think been a very strong ally in terms of pushing back on Iran's aggression," he added.

Kushner also stated that the USA was dealing with Saudi Arabia's explanation behind the scribe's death with "their eyes wide open".

"I think the president is focused on what's good for America-what are our strategic interests, where do we share interests with other countries, let's work toward those," stated the advisor at the conference.

"We have to be able to pursue our strategic objectives. But we also have to deal with what is obviously a terrible situation," Kushner said while adding that he had advised the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to maintain transparency during the investigations into Khashoggi's death.

Kushner also praised Saudi reforms, while stating that they helped in advancing American interests. "A lot of the reforms they've been making there to help us track down the terror financing and also to push back against the people who are perverting the religion, have been very historic over the last year. So we're hopeful we can keep pushing forward with a lot of the initiatives that further American interests and that push back Iran's aggression, so we're going to stay focused on that," he said.

At least 18 people have been detained and several officials have been fired in relation to Khashoggi's killing by Saudi authorities.

The Saudi royal family had also called up deceased journalist Khashoggi's son, Salah Khashoggi, to extend their condolences on Monday.

The journalist went missing on October 2 after cameras captured him walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey before being declared dead by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia's Attorney General confirmed that preliminary investigations indicated that the journalist died inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul after a brawl within the premises.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The market was hovering in a narrow range in afternoon trade. At 13:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 136.10 points or 0.40% at 34,451.73. The Nifty 50 index was up 36.40 points or 0.35% at 10,339.95. Sentiment was boosted by upbeat mood in global markets.

Domestic stocks trimmed gains after a firm start on steady buying demand in index pivotals. Volatility struck bourses in morning trade as the key benchmark indices once again regained strength soon after erasing almost entire gains posted in early trade. Stocks hovered in small range with positive bias in mid-morning trade. Benchmarks turned range bound in afternoon trade.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.40%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index was off 0.92%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was negative. On the BSE, 965 shares rose and 1410 shares fell. A total of 145 shares were unchanged.

ICICI Bank (up 3.24%), NTPC (up 3.21%), Bajaj Auto (up 2.16%), Vedanta (up 1.87%), Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone (up 1.81%) and Maruti Suzuki India (up 1.70%), were the major Sensex gainers.

IndusInd Bank (down 2.82%), Yes Bank (down 2.18%), ONGC (down 2.14%), Reliance Industries (down 1.65%), Tata Motors (down 1.32%) and Bharti Airtel (down 1.27%), were the major Sensex losers.

HDFC Bank rose 1.59% after net profit rose 20.59% to Rs 5005.73 crore on 21.2% rise in total income to Rs 28215.15 crore in Q2 September 2018 over Q2 September 2017. The result was announced on Saturday, 20 October 2018.

The bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) stood at Rs 10097.73 crore as on 30 September 2018 as against Rs 9538.62 crore as on 30 June 2018 and Rs 7702.84 crore as on 30 September 2017. The ratio of gross NPAs to gross advances stood at 1.33% as on 30 September 2018 as against 1.33% as on 30 June 2018 and 1.26% as on 30 September 2017.

The ratio of net NPAs to net advances stood at 0.40% as on 30 September 2018 as against 0.41% as on 30 June 2018 and 0.43% as on 30 September 2017. The bank's provisions and contingencies rose 23.29% to Rs 1819.96 crore in Q2 September 2018 over Q2 September 2017. Provision coverage ratio of the bank was at 70% as on 30 September 2018.

Overseas, shares in Europe were trading higher on Monday as investors focus mostly on corporate earnings with several big firms announcing their latest results. However, investors will keep an eye on politics. Italy is reportedly expecting the European Commission to reject its draft budget on Tuesday and ask for a new plan, given the planned increase in public spending.

Most Asian stocks rose, led by Chinese stocks after Beijing's pledge to support the economy and tackle market volatility. Chinese stocks advanced after top officials continued to express support for the nation's struggling private sector.

Over the weekend, President Xi Jinping vowed unwavering support for non-state firms, while the country's stock exchanges committed to help manage share-pledge risks. China also released its widely-expected plan to cut personal income taxes after data showed the nation's economy grew at the slowest pace since 2009.

US stocks closed mostly lower on Friday, 19 October 2018 as weak housing data overshadowed solid corporate earnings. On the data front, existing-home sales fell 3.4% in August, according to the National Association of Realtors, the lowest level since November 2015.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Biocon rose 3.20% to Rs 679.50 at 11:04 IST on BSE after CHMP issued a positive opinion recommending approval of Ogivri, a biosimilar to Roche's Herceptin.

The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 19 October 2018.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 91.24 points, or 0.27% to 34,406.87.

On the BSE, 1.25 lakh shares were traded in the counter so far compared with average daily volumes of 1.48 lakh shares in the past two weeks. The stock had hit a high of Rs 683 and a low of Rs 668 so far during the day. The stock hit a record high of Rs 718.35 on 26 September 2018. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 343.50 on 27 October 2017.

Biocon and Mylan N.V. announced that the European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has issued a positive opinion recommending approval of Ogivri, a biosimilar to Roche's Herceptin (trastuzumab). The CHMP positive opinion will now be considered by the European Commission.

The decision on approval is expected by the end of 2018. Ogivri is indicated for treatment of patients with HER2 positive early breast cancer (EBC), metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and metastatic gastric cancer (MGC). Under supervision of the relevant healthcare professional it can be prescribed as either monotherapy or in combination with other medicines dependent on the relevant diagnosis.

Ogivri was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2017 and is the first FDA-approved biosimilar for Herceptin in the US Additional regulatory approvals have been secured in 35 countries around the world.

Herceptin had brand sales of approximately $1.9 billion in Europe for the 12 months ending 31 July 2018, according to IQVIA.

Mylan and Biocon are exclusive partners on a broad portfolio of biosimilar and insulin products. Ogivri is one of 11 biologic and insulin products co-developed by Mylan and Biocon for the global marketplace. Mylan has exclusive commercialization rights for the product in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and in the European Union and European Free Trade Association countries. Biocon has co-exclusive commercialization rights with Mylan for the product in the rest of the world.

On a consolidated basis, Biocon's net profit rose 47.23% to Rs 119.70 crore on 21.18% increase in net sales to Rs 1123.80 crore in Q1 June 2018 over Q1 June 2017.

Biocon is a fully-integrated, innovation-led global biopharmaceutical company.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)One migrant was killed and 13 Moroccan soldiers were injured when some 300 illegal Subsaharan African migrants forced their way to the Spanish enclave of Melillia, the Moroccan Interior Ministry announced on Monday.

The ministry said in a statement that 141 illegal migrants were arrested when the Moroccan authorities intervened to foil their attempt to storm the border fence separating Spanish enclave Melilla from Morocco on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Thirteen soldiers were wounded during this operation and were rushed into a hospital in the northern city of Nador to receive medical treatment, the statement said.

While climbing the fence of the occupied city of Melillia, one person died after falling from the top of the fence and 22 assailants were injured by barbed wire before they were transferred to the hospital, it added.

"Following these illegal acts, the Moroccan authorities decided to repatriate all the participants in this assault to their countries of origin in accordance with the law," the ministry said.

Morocco has become a hub for African migrants who seek to reach Europe for a better life. Thousands of migrants try to flee poverty and unrest in Africa each year via Morocco to Europe, either by land into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla or by sea often in flimsy vessels.

Between January and August, Morocco thwarted at least 54,000 attempts to smuggle illegal immigrants into Europe, compared with 39,000 attempts a year earlier, according to the Moroccan government.

--IANS

soni/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The number of individual taxpayers with income above Rs 1 crore has gone up by 68 per cent in the last four financial years, the Income Tax Department said on Monday.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said that during the same period, the number of assessees filing income tax returns has grown by 80 per cent.

"The number of individual taxpayers disclosing income above Rs 1 crore increased during the period under reference from 48,416 to 81,344, which translates into a growth of 68 per cent," a CBDT statement said.

"While 88,649 taxpayers (corporates, firms, Hindu undivided families among others) had disclosed income above Rs 1 crore in assessment year (AY) 2014-15, the figure was 1,40,139 for AY 2017-18, which is a growth of about 60 per cent."

The tax authorities said there has been a sharp increase of more than 80 per cent in the number of returns filed in the last four fiscals.

"There is a growth of more than 80 per cent in the number of returns filed in the last four financial years from 3.79 crore in 2013-14 (base year) to 6.85 crore in 2017-18," the statement said.

The CBDT also said the average income of salaried, non-salaried and corporate taxpayers has risen over the last three years.

"During a three-year period, the number of salaried taxpayers has increased from 1.70 crore (AY 2014-15) to 2.33 crore (AY 2017-18). This is a rise of 37 per cent. Also, the average income declared by the salaried taxpayers has gone up by 19 per cent from Rs 5.76 lakh to Rs 6.84 lakh," it said.

There has also been a growth of 19 per cent in the number of non-salaried individual taxpayers during the same period, from 1.95 crore to 2.33 crore, and the average non-salary income declared has increased by 27 per cent from Rs 4.11 lakh to Rs 5.23 lakh, it said.

About the corporate taxpayers, it said the average tax paid by this category of assessees "has increased from Rs 32.28 lakh in AY 2014-15 to Rs 49.95 lakh in AY 2017-18, which is a growth of 55 per cent.

"The average tax paid by corporate taxpayers has increased from Rs 32.28 lakh in AY 2014-15 to Rs 49.95 lakh in AY 2017-18 (growth of 55 per cent)," it added.

CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra said that the Direct Tax-GDP ratio of 5.98 per cent achieved in the last fiscal is the best in the last ten years.

He also said while the department will ensure that the honest taxpayer is facilitated, strict legal action will be taken against tax evaders.

"We are using a lot of data analytics and non-intrusive ways to check tax evasion. The department is committed to bringing more and more of ease and transparency for the taxpayers while dealing with the department," Chandra said.

According to CBDT, the number of persons filing tax returns has also increased by about 65 per cent, from 3.31 crore in 2013-14 to 5.44 crore in 2017-18.

--IANS

bc/prs

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)At least eight passengers were killed when a private bus in which they were travelling rammed into a stationery truck on the Pune-Aurangabad highway, on Monday, an official said.

According to Ahmednagar Police Control official Riyad Inamdar, the incident occurred at around 5.20 a.m. when the bus was speeding from Aurangabad to Pune.

When the bus approached the Wadegavhan area, it suddenly lost control and banged into the truck parked beside the highway.

The victims died on the spot while over a dozen injured have been rushed to hospitals in Shirur, Inamdar said.

--IANS

qn/ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday announced the formation of frontal organisations - a youth wing and a senior citizens wing - to expand its reach ahead of the 2019 general election.

Ramesh Matiyala will be the President of the Youth Wing, while AAP's Chairperson of Grievance Cell, Suresh Gupta, will head the party's senior citizens wing, AAP's Delhi Convenor Gopal Rai told reporters here.

Describing the structure of the frontal organisations, Rai said that at the top of these organisations will be a team of the state. "The state team will be followed by a Lok Sabha officer, district officer, Vidhan Sabha officer, ward officer, Mandal officer and a booth officer."

The AAP leader said that his party's youth wing will restore the faith of Delhi's youngsters, who have been "disappointed by the Narendra Modi government". "Our youth wing will revive the hopes of development in the country," he said.

--IANS

sd/shs/sed

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)With #MeToo movement, many women are coming out in the open to talk about the sexual harassment they have faced by people in power across different fields, including Bollywood. Actress Radhika Apte is "loving" it and she feels everyone should come together to create safe workplaces where any kind of abuse is neither exercised nor tolerated.

"There are a lot of people in the industry who are trying to come together and find a way of forming a system which is going to be more apt to deal with the abuse or misuse of power within the industry," Radhika told IANS in an e-mail from Mumbai when asked about her take on #MeToo.

"I think it is very good that people are coming out and speaking about such things. It is extremely essential and I completely support the movement. I hope that we can all constructively come together and formulate a structure where everyone can feel safe sooner rather than later.

"I genuinely love that this movement is coming here," added the actress, who is the face of new campaign of Daniel Wellington watches in India.

The #MeToo movement in India started after actress and former beauty queen Tanushree Dutta in September recalled an unpleasant episode with veteran actor Nana Patekar from the sets of "Horn 'OK' Pleassss" in 2008.

After that, a slew of controversies surrounding Vikas Bahl, Sajid Khan, Anu Malik, Anirban Blah, Alok Nath, Chetan Bhagat, Gursimran Khamba and Kailash Kher have emerged.

Radhika, who not only broke the stereotypical image of the Bollywood heroine with her roles in films like ""Phobia", "Badlapur" and "Manjhi - The Mountain Man", but is also vocal about her strong opinions on social issues. She says Bollywood should stand up and raise voice on such issues.

Radhika said: "I think it's high time, not only in Bollywood, but in all industries that we stand up and raise awareness and speak about these issues.

"I personally feel that any kind of abuse should not be exercised or tolerated and there should be systems in place that will allow people to speak about it fearlessly. There is nothing worse than having that lack of a safe foundation that results in a person being fearful to speak up and living life suppressing what happened because they fear some consequence to talking about it. Nothing can be worse than that."

Daniel Wellington, the Swedish watch brand, celebrated the onset of the festive season in Mumbai with an exclusive Diwali celebration. Radhika, along with Sander Van Der Stroom, General Manager, Daniel Wellington India, graced the occasion.

Enthusiastic about the association with Daniel Wellington, Radhika said: "Yes, I adore their watches and their new bracelet cuffs. The pieces are easy to wear and very versatile with timeless designs. They can be worn throughout the years on for any occasion."

When one talks about time, how important is punctuality for her?

She said: "Professionalism and punctuality are extremely important, especially in the career path I've chosen. Being on sets, film schedules can be very stringent and tight. They are sometimes at odd hours in various locations. Being there when you're called, just ensures that the day starts smoothly."

Has her time in Bollywood, especially the starting years, been easy?

"I had to struggle a lot to get to where I am today and it is appreciated more because people are aware of my work much more so there's more talk about it. But at the same time I don't think the struggle has ended because in any freelance industry there is a constant struggle with constant rejections, constantly trying to maintain a level of work as well as challenge yourself and bring something different to every project you do," she said.

With the success of "Andhadhun", would she says she has arrived now?

"I honestly never think that I have ever 'arrived'. It's all a process to me. Today I am lucky enough to be getting a lot of work that I'm passionate about, but one can never know what the future has in store," she said.

(Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in)

--IANS

nv/rb/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India's involvement in the World War I will be highlighted by commemorative events to mark the centenary of the Armistice Day next month with new research bringing out the human and social angles of the participation of soldiers from the sub-continent in the conflict that shaped the history of the world.

Addressing a joint media briefing here, Lt Gen P. K. Singh (retd), Director, United Service Institute of India (USI), said the India's participation in the war also "contributed to the Indian story" and India was a signatory to the formation of the League of Nations though it had not gained Independence.

The media briefing was also addressed by Squadron Leader (Retired) Rana T.S. Chhina, secretary of the Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research (USI-CAFHR). Brigadier Mark Goldsack, Defence Attache at the British High Commission and British Deputy High Commissioner Jan Thompson.

Lt Gen Singh said India and Great War centenary commemoration project was launched in 2014 and will conclude on the centenary of the Armistice Day on November 11, the day the conflict ended.

"The project highlights the oft-forgotten role of India in the First World War and explores India's engagement from a variety of perspectives including strategy, tactics, race, gender and inter-cultural aspects," he said.

He said as part of commemoration, a joint Indo-UK international seminar "India and the Great War in Research, Memory and Commemoration" will be held on Nov 9. A WW I remembrance service will be held at the Delhi War Cemetery on November 11. A joint Indo-UK military band concert will also be held on November 10 at India Gate besides a joint Indo-UK reception.

Sqn. Leader Chhina said during the project they engaged with a wide spectrum of partners from government to individuals, including descendants of veterans of the war from both India and Pakistan.

"For many, it was the first time in living memory that the contribution of their forebears was being recognised or remembered," he said.

He said they discovered a number of invaluable hitherto unknown first-person accounts written by Indian veterans of war and preserved by their families.

Lt Gen Singh said that as part of the project, they wanted to have a shared experience.

"Of course there is strategy, tactics but there is more to war than just the tactics. The aim of our project was to look at human angle, social angle. People had experiences to share but not a platform. We were trying to give that platform. We got everybody to recount their experiences," he said.

He said though Indian soldiers were fighting for the British empire, it did contribute to the Indian story.

"When the League of Nations was formed, did India get a place on the table. Yes. We signed on as India. We were among the founding members of the League of Nations because of contribution of Indian forces. That also goes for creation of United Nations. The course of world history would have been different without the Indian Army's contribution," he said.

Lt Gen Singh said the seminar in November will focus on the new findings of the "Indian voice".

India made a huge contribution to Britain's war effort in World War I. Almost 1.5 million men were part of the Indian Expeditionary Force, which saw fighting on the Western Front, in East Africa, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Gallipoli.

British estimates say around 50,000 died, 65,000 were wounded, and 10,000 were reported missing, while 98 Indian army nurses were killed. India also supplied 170,000 animals, 3,7 million tonnes of supplies, jute for sandbags and a huge loan to the British government.

The "India and the Great War" project has been supported by the External Affairs Ministry and partnered by the British High Commission.

--IANS

ps/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)At least 60 organisations, including the Congress, have called a 12-hour Assam bandh on Tuesday to protest against a meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee with the Ministries of Home and External Affairs over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016.

The bill seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, drawing opposition from several organisations in Assam.

The BJP government in Assam, led by Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, has made adequate preparations to maintain peace and normalcy in the state.

The bandh called by the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) is supported by at least 60 organisations and pressure groups in Assam.

The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which is a partner of the BJP-led alliance government in the state, is organising a rally in protest against the JPC's proposed meeting with the MEA and MHA on Tuesday. The AGP said that at least 50,000 people will participate in the rally.

The organizations have called the bandh against the JPC meeting with the officials of MHA and MEA without visiting Assam for a second time to take on board every shade of opinion. Although the JPC, led by BJP MP Rajendra Agrawal, had visited Assam in May this year, not all organisations and leaders could meet it.

Sonowal on Monday held a meeting with senior ministers and BJP leaders to discuss the bandh called by different organisations. The government also issued directives to employees to report for duty on Tuesday.

Police have been asked to arrest the bandh supporters, and traders told to keep shops and business establishments open, failing which their trade licences will be cancelled.

The BJP leaders who met the Chief Minister on Monday also urged the government not to accord permission to a November 17 meeting of Bengali organisations in Guwahati, supporting the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016.

"The proposed meeting on November 17 is likely to result in law and order issues. We will not allow the November 17 meeting," said Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

He said that according to a Gauhati High Court order, calling a bandh is illegal. "The court has termed the bandh as illegal. We have to follow the court's order. Those calling a bandh will have to pay for the damages that they cause," he added.

The KMSS clarified that the organisation does not support calling bandhs, but a bandh call on Tuesday was necessitated as the BJP-led government in Assam is behaving in a dictatorial manner. "We cannot allow the government to make Assam a second Jammu & Kashmir or a Tripura, where the indigenous people have become a minority," said KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi.

--IANS

ah/shs/sed

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten made a "national apology" in the parliament to thousands of victims affected by acts of paedophilia and other abuse when they were under care of national institutions.

Later, the prime minister also apologised to the hundreds of child sex abuse victims that had gathered in Parliament House for the occasion.

It is the first time an Australian Government acknowledged the failures of government's faith-based institutions and other organisations to keep children and young people safe.

Morrison told the victims: "We believe you, your country believes you."

The prime minister paid tribute to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard for setting up the Royal Commission inquiry saying it was a day to confront the failure to listen to believe and provide justice.

The Opposition Leader Bill Shorten told the gathering "our nation let you down. Today we offer our nation's apology with humility, with honesty, with hope of healing now and with a fire in our belly to ensure that our children will grow up safe in future."

Morrison asked those gathered in the Great Hall to join hands as he relayed the apology to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. "Today we say we are sorry. Sorry you are not protected. Sorry you are not listened to. We are sorry for refusing to trust the words of children, for not believing you."

He said the nation was sorry that the perpetrators of abuse were relocated and shielded, rather than held to account, that records were withheld and destroyed and accountability avoided.

The Royal Commission that investigated the institutions' response to sexual abuse of minors presented its final report in December last year with more than 400 recommendations that included compensation for the victims.

(Rekha Bhattacharjee can be contacted at vijaybhatta56@gmail.com)

--IANS

Rekha/hs

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Australian Prime Minister on Monday apologized and asked for forgiveness on behalf of the nation to the thousands of victims affected by acts of paedophilia and other abuse when they were under the care of national institutions.

"Today, we apologize for the pain, the suffering and trauma inflicted upon victims and survivors as children, and for its profound and ongoing impact," Scott Morrison said in Parliament House.

The Royal Commission that investigated the institutions' response to sexual abuse of minors presented its final report in December last year with more than 400 recommendations that included compensation for the victims.

This followed events that the Commission described as a national tragedy.

--IANS

mr/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Amid the bickering at the top in the CBI that saw the agency arrest one of its senior officials, anti-BJP parties in West Bengal on Monday accused the Modi government of reducing the agency into a "political tool".

The internal war within the CBI took a new turn on Monday with the agency arresting its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar following bribery allegations against CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana, the number 2 who is at war with Director Alok Verma.

"If such is the situation in the country's top most independent investigating authority, then who will the common people rely on? If the government attempts to take control of an independent agency, such a situation is bound to arise," West Bengal Congress President Somen Mitra said.

The state's ruling Trinamool Congress, whose leaders were previously interrogated and arrested by the agency in several cases including the Saradha ponzi scam, termed the chain of events within the CBI as "laughable".

"Those who raise questions on others' integrity and credibility are found to be corrupt themselves. I saw a news headline that said CBI raids CBI office. It is like a thief is going to catch another thief. There is nothing more laughable than this," Trinamool Congress MP and party supremo Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee said.

Left leaders also accused the BJP of using CBI for its political benefit.

"CBI is being used as a political tool. It is quite evident if you see the progress in the Saradha and Narada probe. The CBI sends notices to the accused when elections approach and then goes off to sleep when the elections get over," CPI-M MP Mohammad Selim said.

The arrest of CBI official Kumar on Monday comes a day after the agency registered an FIR against Asthana and several others for allegedly accepting bribes to settle a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, who is facing multiple cases of money laundering and corruption.

The CBI has alleged that bribes were given at least five times in December 2017 and October 2018.

--IANS

mgr/ssp/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A Trinamool Congress leader from West Bengal's Birbhum district, who was hospitalised with bullet injuries, died on Monday, the hospital sources said.

Dipak Ghosh, the party's block president of Birbhum district's Khayrasole, was allegedly shot at by unidentified persons on Sunday while riding a motorcycle with a fellow party worker. He was rushed to a private hospital in the district's Durgapur.

"Dipak Ghosh was admitted to the hospital with two bullet injuries on Sunday. He died today. The body will be sent for an autopsy," an official from the Mission Hospital, Durgapur said.

Police said they have arrested seven persons.

The district Trinamool Congress president Anubrata Mondal condemned the incident and accused the BJP of orchestrating the attack.

"I knew him very well. He was an active party leader. The goons of BJP killed him. They fired five bullets at him yesterday. He had been attacked by the BJP workers before but managed to survive," Mondal said.

The BJP has, however, refuted the allegation and claimed that Ghosh's death was a result of Trinamool Congress' faction fight over the spoils of coal mining in the area.

"Our party is not involved in this. There has been incidents f violence and deaths in Khayrasole before but no one accused BJP for that. Local Trinamool leaders there are fighting each other over the possession of coal mines. Ghosh was killed in his party's faction fight," said state BJP President Dilip Ghosh.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A 70-year-old woman's tongue was chopped off after she was branded a witch in a Bihar village in Rohtas district, police said on Monday.

Rajkali Devi was attacked in Redia village with traditional weapons and a part of her tongue was cut off leaving her seriously injured, Tilauthu police station in-charge Pramod Kumar said.

The Dalit widow was admitted to a hospital and a First Information Report was registered on Sunday on the complaint by her granddaughter.

The granddaughter, who was sleeping with Rajkali Devi, at the time of the attack said three villagers forcibly entered their house late on Saturday and chopped off her grandmother's tongue accusing her of practicing witchcraft.

A man hunt was underway to nab the culprits.

Branding women as witches and torturing them -- often to death -- continues to prevail in parts of rural Bihar.

The Bihar Human Rights Commission had been asking the government to expedite probes and trials in cases related to offences under the Prevention of Witch Hunting Act, 1999.

--IANS

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(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.)The rift in the top in CBI took a serious turn on Monday when a Deputy Superintendent of Police was arrested for alleged falsification of records in the bribery allegations against Special Director as Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepped in amid the fracas between the top two officials.

The PMO summoned CBI Director and Asthana in an apparent bid to put a lid on the open war between the two officials, who had levelled bribery allegations against each other.

There was no official word on what the officials discussed with the higher-ups in the Prime Minister's office, but it is understood that the two officials have been told to make amends as the image of the organisation has taken a beating in the public eye, a point opposition parties made in their criticism.

During the day, the agency arrested its Deputy Superintendent Devendra Kumar, who was earlier the investigation officer in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, on a charge of "falsification of records".

Kumar's arrest comes a day after the agency registered an FIR against Asthana and several others for allegedly accepting bribes to settle a case of meat exporter Moin Qureshi, who is facing multiple cases of money laundering and corruption. The CBI has alleged that bribes were given at least five times between December, 2017 and October this year.

"Kumar, who has been the investigation officer in the Qureshi case, has been arrested on the allegation of falsification of records," the agency said in a statement.

It said Kumar had fabricated the statement of Sathish Sana, a witness in the Quershi case, showing he recorded the statement on Septemebr 26, 2018 in Delhi.

"However, investigation revealed that Sana was was not in Delhi on September 26. He was in Hyderabad on that day and joined the investigation only on October 1, 2018," it added.

The CBI said "It was found that Kumar had fabricated the statement as an after-thought to corroborate the baseless allegations made by Asthana against CBI director to "

An CBI official said that Sana's statement was recorded on October 3.



He said the agency was also probing the role of other officers of the CBI Special Investigation team (SIT) then supervising the Qureshi case.

The official said the agency during the searches at Kumar's residence and his office at the agency's headquarters in south Delhi's Lodhi road. The CBI seized eight mobile phones, one iPad and documents pertaining to Qureshi case.

The statement said the role of Kumar became suspect as the fabricated statement signed by Kumar on September 26 quoted Sana as saying that during June 2018, he had discussed his case with one of his old friends C.M. Ramesh, a Rajya Sabha member who assured him of that he would take tp the concerned Director.

"Subsequently, when met with Ramesh, he told that he had met CBI Director personally regarding my case and examination by CBI. Ramesh also informed that I will not be called by again in this case. Since from June onwards, Iwas not called by CBI. I was under the impression that investigation against me is completed," the statement said.

The official further said that during investigation it was revealed that Sana was detained on September 25 at Hyderabad International Airport.

Asthana, a 1984 batch Indian Police Service officer of Gujarat cadre, is accused of accepting a bribe of Rs 2 crore from a businessman who was under probe in the Qureshi case in order to "wreck" the investigation. The case was being examined by a special investigation team (SIT) headed by Asthana.

When asked about did the agency take permission from the government under section 17 (A) of Prevention of Corruption Act while filing a case against Asthana, the official replied that as the matter of bribery was not related to policy making, the agency can register a case.

Asked about the allegations pertaining to CBI Additional Director A.K. Sharma's family having shell companies in partnership with undesirable contact men (UCM), the official said that he has no comments to offer as was already looking into those charges.

Asthana had mentioned about it in his August complaint to CVC, the official said.

According to CBI sources, Manoj Prasad who was also arrested on October 16, had met Chetan Sandesara in London.

He said, however, the CBI has no information when and where this meeting took place in London.

Chetan along with his brother Nitin Sandesara are promoters of Sterling Biotech which had duped banks to the tune of Rs 50 billion. They are being investifgated by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.Commuters in the national capital had a rough Monday following multiple strikes by fuel pumps, auto-rickshaw and taxi unions and Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) contractual employees.

A total of 400 petrol pumps went on strike protesting the Arvind Kejriwal government's refusal to reduce VAT on fuels. The Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA) which called the strike said the AAP government's inaction was hampering their business.

The strike by DTC contractual employees demanding salary revision and 'equal pay for equal work' led to buses being prevented from plying in several routes.

Compounding the commuters' misery, auto-rickshaw and taxi unions also observed a day-long strike against the Delhi government's policies on cab aggregators.

"A few of the auto-rickshaw and taxis playing are charging exorbitant fares. Because of the strike by fuel pumps, many people did not bring their cars leading to increase in the demand for public conveyance," said a commuter.

The DTC has ordered action against the striking employees.

"Some employees obstructed plying of buses despite orders. This seriously affected the public transport, which is an essential service," the DTC said in a statement.

DTC Chief General Manager Subhash Chandra said all regional and depot managers have been directed to initiate action against the striking employees.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam on Monday accused Maharashtra's Minister for Cooperatives Subhash Deshmukh of fraudulently withdrawing funds from the government, and asked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to sack him immediately.

The Mumbai Congress chief said that Deshmukh and his son Rohan duped the state government of more than Rs 24 crore using fake documents.

Nirupam said that Deshmukh got a sanction for Rs. 24.81 crore from the Ministry of Agriculture under the National Agricultural Development Programme.

"This amount was sanctioned by the Minister in the name of setting up a milk chilling and milk powder manufacturing plant in Solapur. However, the minister and his son Rohan withdrew Rs 5 crores in two phases for their firm, Lokmangal Multi-State Cooperative Society Ltd.," Nirupam alleged.

The Minister submitted several forged and fabricated documents from various government departments, Nirupam said.

"However, when the concerned officials of these departments were asked to provide copies of permissions issued by their offices, they said that no licences, permissions or orders of any kind were issued by them to the Minister's Lokmangal Group," Nirupam said.

Citing information received under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, he added that four plants run by the Lokmangal Group are non-functional while one plant doesn't exist at all.

When contacted by IANS, an aide to the Minister declined to comment.

"Why is the CM hesitant in taking action against this corrupt Minister if he is not hand-in-glove with him," Nirupam asked.

Nirupam said that a few years ago, the Lokmangal Group had been barred by the Securities & Exchange Board of India for mobilizing around Rs 75 crore from more than 4,700 investors between 2009 and 2012 in violation of the Companies Act.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)In the wake of Kerala Police filing a sexual abuse case against former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and others, the BJP on Monday said that the Congress should not mock at her party over its commitment to save the girl child.

"Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (save daughter, educate daughter) is a very serious campaign to protect the girl child in the country. And the government is doing its part on the campaign," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi told reporters here.

She said that due to this campaign the cases of female foeticide in many states have come down in recent years as the government has taken up the initiative sensibly.

Slamming the Congress for making fun of the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' campaign, Lekhi said, "The Congress and its President Rahul Gandhi should not criticize it and nor they should mock at it as the character of their party is well known to the people of the country."

Referring to former Kerala Chief Minister and other party leaders who have been named in a case of sexual abuse arising out of the solar scam, the BJP MP from New Delhi said, "The Kerala Police has registered a case against Chandy and others for sexually abusing the lady."

The BJP leader said that the CPI-M government in the state has registered a case against Chandy and a former Minister of the then UDF government in Kerala.

She also said that the cases of the sexual harassment and rapes should be handled sensitively and the political parties should not show insensitivity towards it.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)In the wake of the CBI registering a corruption case against its Special Director Rakesh Asthana, the Congress on Monday indicted the Narendra Modi government for the probe agency's credibility and integrity being questioned.

Leading the attack, Congress President Rahul Gandhi termed the CBI as a "weapon of political vendetta" under the Modi regime.

"The PM's blue-eyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer, of Godra SIT fame, infiltrated as No. 2 into the CBI, has now been caught taking bribes," Gandhi tweeted referring to Asthana.

"Under this Prime Minister, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta. An institution in terminal decline that's at war with itself," he added.

Addressing a media conference, Congress leader Sachin Pilot blamed "vested interests" within the Modi government for the "power-play" within the CBI.

"The power-play and blame game at the top level of the CBI is very alarming. Much is happening within the CBI which is unwanted and people are accused of corruption at the highest level. This internal war within the CBI is alarming.

"How do we trust the CBI to look at corruption issues when their top people are themselves involved and allegations are flying thick and fast," Pilot told the media here.

"When top CBI officers are accusing each other of massive corruption where is the credibility and sanctity of this government and the CBI to function in an unbiased and transparent way.

"We think there are vested interest within the government and the CBI which has brought the agency to such a passe. Today the credibility and integrity of the CBI is under huge question mark," added Pilot.

The CBI on Sunday announced filing the case against Asthana for allegedly accepting a bribe to settle a case of meat exporter Moin Qureshi, who is facing multiple cases of money laundering and corruption.

Earlier, Asthana had filed a complaint against CBI Director Alok Verma accusing him of interfering in the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation corruption case involving family members of Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot on Monday welcomed the verdict of the High Court allowing the government to purchase 500 standard-floor buses with hydraulic lifts to help the differently-abled people easily board and deboard.

"I welcome the verdict. We now hope to augment the fleet of buses at the earliest to strengthen public transport," he said in a tweet.

The Delhi High Court on Monday allowed the state government to purchase 500 standard-floor buses that can ply on the city's outskirts where the roads are in a poor condition.

The Supreme Court, in its interim order on August 2, had allowed the Delhi government to purchase 500 standard-floor buses, out of the 1,000 proposed, to improve the woefully inadequate public transport system in the city.A

The top court had left it for the high court to decide on the remaining 500 standard-floor buses.

The government has said the decision was taken considering the urgent need to augment the existing bus fleet, particularly on rural routes.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The European Commission on Monday called on the US and Russia to maintain a constructive dialogue with the aim of keeping intact a crucial Cold War-era treaty limiting the use of intermediate and short-range nuclear missiles.

US President Donald Trump had announced on Saturday that Washington would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), signed in 1987 by then-US President Ronald Reagan and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union at the time, Mikhail Gorbachev.

"We believe that the US and Russia need to remain engaged in constructive dialogue to preserve the treaty and to ensure its full and verifiable implementation, which is crucial for European and global security," said the Commission's foreign affairs spokesperson Maja Kocijancic at a press briefing.

"Thanks to this treaty, almost 3,000 missiles with nuclear and conventional warheads have been removed and verifiably destroyed," Kocijancic was cited as saying by Efe news.

"It's also an important contribution to disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

She added that "the treaty contributed to the end of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, while it has been one of the cornerstones of European security architecture since it entered into force 30 years ago".

Trump claimed that his administration was being forced to unilaterally withdraw from the INF because Russia had allegedly violated the agreement. However, he didn't provide any evidence other than Russia's development of a new cruise missile, which Moscow contends does not break the INF.

"We'll have to develop those weapons," Trump said. "We're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out."

Russian officials slammed the move, with the Foreign Ministry describing it as "blackmail" and "a very dangerous step".

--IANS

soni/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has questioned the intelligence behind US President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from a key Cold War nuclear weapons treaty.

Gorbachev, who signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said on Sunday that Trump's move is a reversal of efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament, the BBC reported.

Trump said Russia had been "violating (the INF) for many years". He said the US would not let Russia "go out and do weapons (while) we're not allowed to".

The US insists the Russians have, in breach of the deal, developed a new medium-range missile called the Novator 9M729 -- known to Nato as the SSC-8, the BBC said.

It would enable Russia to launch a nuclear strike on Nato countries at very short notice.

Russia has denied the accusation and condemned the plans. It even threatened to retaliate.

"I don't know why President (Barack) Obama didn't negotiate or pull out," Trump said earlier in a campaign rally in Nevada last week. In 2014, Obama had accused Russia of breaching the INF after it allegedly tested a ground-launched cruise missile.

The New York Times reported on Friday the US was considering withdrawing from the treaty in a bid to counter China's expanding military presence in the western Pacific.

However, he chose not to withdraw from the treaty under pressure from European leaders, who said such a move could restart an arms race.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin would be seeking an explanation from visiting US National Security Adviser John Bolton, the BBC reported.

"This would be a very dangerous step that, I'm sure, not only will not be comprehended by the international community but will provoke serious condemnation," Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

He also told the news agency RIA Novosti that if the US continued to behave "clumsily and crudely" and backed out of international agreements, "then we will have no choice but to undertake retaliatory measures, including involving military technology". "But we would not want to get to this stage," he added.

Analysts told the BBC Russia sees the Novator 9M729 as a cheaper alternative to conventional forces.

The last time the US withdrew from a major arms treaty was in 2002, when President George W. Bush pulled the US out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Germany was the first US ally to criticise Trump's latest move, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urging Washington to consider the consequences both for Europe and for future disarmament efforts.

The INF had banned ground-launched medium-range missiles, with a range of between 500 and 5,500km.

It was signed near the end of the Cold War -- a period between 1945 and 1989 marked by intense international tension due to the quality of relations shared between the two super powers -- the US and USSR -- and overshadowed by the threat of nuclear conflict.

In the past five decades the US and Russia have signed a range of joint agreements to limit and reduce their substantial nuclear arsenals, the BBC report said.

Gorbachev was the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union who was appointed in 1985. His domestic reforms and nuclear disarmament deals helped end the Cold War. He resigned as Soviet president in 1991 after Soviet republics declared independence.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has questioned the intelligence behind US President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from a key Cold War nuclear weapons treaty

Gorbachev, who signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said on Sunday that Trump's move is a reversal of efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament, the BBC reported.

Trump said Russia had been "violating (the INF) for many years". Russia has condemned the plans and threatened to retaliate.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin would be seeking an explanation from visiting US National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Germany was the first US ally to criticise the move, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urging Washington to consider the consequences both for Europe and for future disarmament efforts.

The INF had banned ground-launched medium-range missiles, with a range of between 500 and 5,500km.

It was signed near the end of the Cold War -- a period between 1945 and 1989 marked by intense international tension due to the quality of relations shared between the two super powers -- the US and USSR -- and overshadowed by the threat of nuclear conflict.

In the past five decades the US and Russia have signed a range of joint agreements to limit and reduce their substantial nuclear arsenals, the BBC report said.

Gorbachev was the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union who was appointed in 1985. His domestic reforms and nuclear disarmament deals helped end the Cold War. He resigned as Soviet president in 1991 after Soviet republics declared independence.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Tripura government on Monday resumed the supply of food and relief material to Mizo refugees, sheltered in camps in the northern parts of the state for the past 21 years.

Following a four-partite agreement in Delhi on July 3, the supply of food grains and relief material was stopped from October 1, ostensibly to compel the Reang tribal migrants to return to Mizoram from where they had fled in October 1997.

The refugees, comprising 5,907 families, have been staying in Tripura's Kanchanpur and Panisagar sub-divisions following ethnic tension after a Mizo forest official was killed.

Tripura Education and Law Minister Ratan Lal Nath, accompanied by Tripura Assembly Deputy Speaker Biswabandhu Sen, two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs, North Tripura District Magistrate Raval Hamendra Kumar and other officials formally restarted the supply of foodgrains and relief material to the refugees on Monday.

"The Central government has agreed to resume the supply of rations and relief material to the refugees. It would continue until January 15, 2019. Within this period the refugees have to return to their homes in Mizoram," Kanchanpur Sub-Divisional Magistrate Abeda Nanda Baidya told IANS on the phone.

According to an official of the Tripura Relief and Revenue Department, over Rs 366 crore have been spent to provide relief and basic services to the refugees since October 1997.

Nath, while addressing a gathering of the tribal refugees, said that life in the makeshift refugee camps was not good, specially for the younger generation.

"After the Union Home Ministry stopped the supply of relief to the refugees, Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb talked to the Home Ministry to resume the supply of rations and other services immediately," Nath said asking the refugees to return to their homeland.

"The government wants to repatriate the refugees to their home land through democratic process. Do not create any ethnic or any other administrative problems. Try to solve your problems through mutual discussions with the officials and elected leaders.

"Your life, culture, socio-economic condition, education of children would be affected to a large extent if you stay for long in refugee camps."

The Reang tribals, locally called "Bru", on October 9 urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to restart the supply of relief and other basic services.

Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF) General Secretary Bruno Msha said the refugees were keen to return to their villages but nine most basic and vital issues must be resolved before the repatriations.

The issues are opening of bank accounts, issuing of Aadhaar cards, distribution of ration cards, enrolment of the refugees' names in Mizoram's electoral lists and identification of villages where these refugees would be settled post-repatriation.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)French Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer on Monday advised schools to ban the use of cellphones if their presence was creating problems.

Blanquer made the recommendation following a case last week in which a 15-year-old pupil allegedly pointed a fake gun at a teacher so she would mark him present after he arrived late to class, an incident that was filmed on a phone and shared online, reports Efe news.

"We will restore order," the Minister told French daily Le Parisien in an interview in which he "encouraged" schools that faced "abnormal" situations to make use of a new law allowing phones to be banned, adding that last week's incident "had shown we have the right to systematize the ban on telephones at schools and colleges".

He said school directors should organise disciplinary councils when necessary, pointing out that one would be taking place at Edouard-Branly de Creteil school in Paris' southeastern suburbs following the fake gun incident there.

Blanquer condemned the act and vowed that disciplinary action would be taken against the student.

The student involved was charged with aggravated violence and released pending disciplinary procedures.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Ghaziabad police on Monday arrested three criminals for taking vehicle loans by producing fake documents. Thirteen vehicles have been recovered from them.

During the interrogation they confessed to opening bank accounts on fake documents and preparing bogus statements of accounts for the last one year to take loans from private finance companies, police said.

They used to make downpayments slightly higher than the prescribed limit in order to convince the companies of their bona fides.

They were selling the brand new vehicles at half the price.

--IAN

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi on Monday said the Home Ministry has considered her request to revise the visa application process to check foreign nationals visiting India with criminal record of child abuse.

"Our request to the ministry was based on complaints of serial child sexual abuse offenders managing to visit India," Maneka tweeted. "The ministry has accepted our request to revise the visa application process for foreign nationals," Gandhi said.

The revised visa application will have a separate questionnaire about child sexual abuse, Maneka said.

"It has now been decided that an appropriate questionnaire and a declaration will be incorporated in the visa application form which will have to be filled by visa applicants/ foreign nationals," she added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)After over a decade of flip-flops and litigation, a multi-million dollar hydropower project was re-allotted on Monday by the Himachal Pradesh government to state-run Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd (SJVNL).

The Cabinet, led by Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, allotted the 960-MW Jangi-Thopan-Powari project in Kinnaur district to SJVNL, the company operating the 1,500 MW Nathpa Jhakri plant, India's largest hydro project in the state.

The generation capacity of the Jangi-Thopan-Powari project has now been reduced to 780 MW to meet the newly framed environmental laws, a government official told IANS.

This hydropower project, one of the most viable ones, requires an investment of over Rs 10,000 crore and aims to generate 4,000 million units per year. It was to be commissioned by 2017.

The project was originally allotted to Netherlands-based Brakel Corp. It later included Adani Power as a consortium partner in the project.

But the Himachal Pradesh High Court annulled it on October 7, 2009, on a plea by Reliance Infra, one of the bidders.

Brakel moved the Supreme Court but withdrew the petition to pursue remedies suggested by the apex court in its order on April 1, 2014.

The previous Congress government in the state had forfeited Brakel's up-front premium of Rs 280.69 crore and the damages of Rs 2,717 crore levied on it for causing a loss to the state exchequer by delaying the project.

Brakel had clarified that Adani Power -- which was included as a consortium partner in the project -- had deposited the upfront premium.

The upfront premium of Rs 280.69 crore is still lying with the government.

The state government had signed an agreement with Brakel in 2008, two years after the project was awarded to the Dutch company, for starting the pre-construction activities for the project.

The government, as per the pact, was entitled to earn Rs 250 crore annually by selling the free power provided by the project.

Officials say if all goes well, it will require another nine years for the project to go on stream. That would take it to 2027.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Indian Air Force (IAF) crew has begun training on Apache attack helicoptors in the US, officials said on Monday.

The Boeing Apache is a twin-turbo shaft attack helicopter with tandem cockpit for two persons and will enhance the combat capability of the IAF, they said.

The Defence Acquisition Council had last year cleared a proposal to buy six more Boeing Co Apache attack helicopters for the Indian Army at a cost of around Rs 4,168 crore.

The order had followed India's previous purchase of 22 Apache and Chinook helicopters from Boeing in 2015.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday condemned "the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris" in Jammu and Kashmir and said that the solution to the region's dispute lay in dialogue.

Khan in a tweet said: "Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris... by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people."

His remarks came after seven civilians were killed in an explosion in Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam district on Sunday shortly after a gunfight had left three militants dead.

Separatists under the banner of Joint Resistance Leadership, a conglomerate headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yasin Malik called for a valley-wide protest on Monday in protest against the deaths.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India and China on Monday signed a first-ever agreement on security cooperation which will strengthen and consolidate assistance in counter-terrorism, organised crimes, drug control, human trafficking and exchange of information, marking a new beginning between the two countries.

The agreement was signed by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and China's State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi, a move that came just a year after the two-month-long border stand-off between the Indian Army and the China's People's Liberation Army at Doklam on the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction last year.

The agreement followed the first high-level meeting on bilateral security cooperation co-chaired by Rajnath Singh and Zhao, who was heading a delegation of over 30 Chinese diplomats. Zhao is on a visit to India from October 21 to 25 during which he will also travel to Mumbai.

A Home Ministry statement said the two sides discussed counter-terrorism cooperation, and welcomed increased cooperation between the two countries in the area of security during the meeting.

"Had a fruitful meeting with the State Councilor and Minister of Public Security of China, Zhao Kezhi in New Delhi today," Rajnath tweeted after the two-hour meeting.

The India delegation included Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Intelligence Bureau Director Rajiv Jain and other senior officials of Ministry of Home Affairs and other departments concerned. Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju was present during the signing ceremony.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held an informal summit in Wuhan, China, in April this year which helped repair bilateral ties.

While Rajnath Singh is the head of eight central armed police forces with a combined strength of about 10 lakh personnel, Zhao is responsible for day-to-day law enforcement in China and commands about 19 lakh personnel.

Officials in the Home Ministry said there had been a Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries earlier between 2005-2015.

The agreement followed by the high-level meeting may lead to a future India-China agreement on exchange of sentenced prisoners, the official said.

Currently, India does not have an extradition treaty with China, nor a pact to exchange each other's sentenced prisoners.

The Chinese delegation earlier in the day also met National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Central Reserve Police Force Chief R.R. Bhatnagar.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)As India seeks to reap its demographic dividend and foster innovation and skills for its aspirational young, Australia's global UNSW university is keen to step up its engagement by forging a strategic partnership and become the country's pre-eminent destination for Indian students and research partners.

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, ranked 45th in 2018 QS World University rankings, is looking at opportunities to build landmark research and partnerships in India amid efforts by the Indian government to improve both quality and access of higher

UNSW has an investment portfolio of AUS$1 billion to attract up to 1,000 academics from across the world over the next decade to ensure it is positioned as "a globally leading institution of higher learning".

Its 2025 strategy seeks to reinforce pillars of "strong teaching and robust research" with a plan to rope in the best 5-10 per cent researchers from around the world, including from emerging economies like India.

Laurie Pearcey, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) at UNSW, told IANS that the 2025 strategy is based on the pillars of academic excellence, social engagement and global impact.

"As part of our strategy across all three pillars, India is such an important and an obvious partner for the university to focus on," he said.

UNSW opened its India Centre in New Delhi in July this year as part of its efforts to build a strong presence in the country and strengthen India-Australia relations.

"To build engagement with India in the long-term, it is essential that we become part of the academic and research ecosystems and be an active partner in building India's intellectual and social capital," Pearcey told this visiting IANS correspondent.

He said when the university launched its India strategy three years ago, it had around 300 Indian students. "Today, we have close to 1,200, and we see that growth set to intensify. We intend to have 4,500 Indian students by 2025," he said, adding that there will also be an increase in tie-ups and partnerships.

As part of its increased India focus, the university has started the Future of Change India Scholarships.

Pearcey said has been identified by the Australian government as a flagship sector to guide the next wave of the bilateral relationship with India.

"So the timing of government's economic strategy really coincides beautifully with everything we are doing at UNSW," Pearcey explained.

He said the possibilities in India are really unlimited as it has the world's most rapidly growing economy in terms of GDP and also offers phenomenal social challenges at the same time.

"India is a place that really offers everything. We see a country which is able to offer something that's really quite extraordinary," Pearcey said.

Amit Dasgupta, UNSW's India Country Director, said that the university pays a lot of attention to the twin pillars of teaching-pedagogy and research and there is no compromise between the two unlike in many institutions.

"At UNSW there is a focus on how do we transform lives, how do we create a just society? A just society impacts many things -- from health, inclusion and economic areas -- that guide UNSW's collaboration with India in a variety of development areas," Dasgupta told IANS.

The areas of collaboration include public health, sustainable building policies, solar energy and e-waste management.

Dasgupta said about half of the 3,000-plus faculty at UNSW is from outside Australia and that makes it a truly global university.

"Additionally, students from 130 countries provide a multicultural experience that is hard to match. Exposure of this kind is not offered even in the best of Indian colleges and universities," he pointed out.

Pearcey buttressed this, saying UNSW is "Australia's global university since 1952" when it welcomed the first cohort of international students. Today, It has over 21,000 international students.

Dasgupta, who is a former diplomat, said even with high demand for quality education in India, there are not enough seats. "Whether it is the IITs or other institutions, the student intake has an upper limit and they are not able to guarantee quality education should they suddenly enhance the capacity."

Citing estimates, he said India needs new universities, polytechnics and a huge faculty to achieve a gross enrollment ratio of 30 per cent by 2020.

"So, two scenarios are likely to emerge. One, there will be a push factor where in students will go abroad to study. Second, we could see the creation of dodgy institutions with sub-standard education. An aspirational middle class with the capacity to pay will look at opportunities to go abroad to study.

He said that the US and UK, which were preferred destinations for Indian students seeking overseas education, were slowly losing their appeal because of uncertainty and confusion.

"That's where Australia comes in," he said, adding that students look at factors such as quality of life and education, rankings and employability factor before making a choice of university.

Dasgupta said Indian students have primarily been enrolling for post-graduate programmes at UNSW but enrollments in undergraduate programmes was rising rapidly because of India's demand-supply gap.

He said Australia has an edge looking at the exchange rate of the Indian rupee with respect to the US dollar.

(Prashant Sood was in Sydney at the invitation of UNSW. He can be reached at prashant.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India and Myanmar on Monday reviewed all matters related to their bilateral ties, including the Rohingya refugees crisis, and signed a crucial memorandum of understanding for the appointment of an operator of port that will boost connectivity.

According to a statement issued by the External Affairs Ministry, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale called on Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi during the course of which all matters relating to bilateral cooperation as well as matters pertaining to international and regional matters of common interest, including developments in the Rakhine State, were discussed.

A new crisis erupted in August last year following an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group that led to a violent response by the Myanmar Army in Rakhine.

This resulted in an exodus of Rohingya refugees from Rakhine in Myanmar to Bangladesh.

New Delhi has sent relief material for the refugees in both Rakhine and Bangladesh.

The Rohingya people do not enjoy citizenship status in Myanmar and are sparingly given refugee status in Bangladesh.

In December last year, India and Myanmar signed an MoU to develop Rakhine state.

After meeting Suu Kyi, Gokhale called on Transport and Communications Minister and discussed matters related to connectivity and transport infrastructure being developed by India in Myanmar.

Following the meeting, Gokhale and U Win Khant, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Communications, signed the MoU for the appointment of a private port operator for the operation and maintenance of Sittwe Port, Paletwa Inland Water Terminal and associated facilities that are part of the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport Project.

The project connects Sittwe Port with Mizoram state in northeastern India.

"This is a significant step in the implementation of India's Act East Policy, as its signing will enhance Myanmar's connectivity including with India and add to the development of the whole region, particularly in the Rakhine and Chin states of Myanmar," the ministry statement said.

"It would also add to local infrastructure capacity and help in creating more job opportunities for the local people."

Following this MoU, the process of identifying bidders to maintain these facilities will be initiated by floating a request for proposal.

During the course of his visit, Gokhale also called on the Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Defence Services, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

"All matters relating to border security, bilateral cooperation, Myanmar's peace process as well as the situation in northern Rakhine state were discussed during the meeting," the statement added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Ace fashion designer Manish Malhotra says Indian fashion designers are today seen in a different light in the world, with many of them showcasing and presenting their collections at international fashion shows.

Malhotra has been in the industry for about 28 years as a costume designer and has owned the Manish Malhotra label for 13 years.

In these almost three decades, he has seen changes in the fashion industry.

"Like every other industry, the times of rapid change call for a different way of doing things in fashion as well, and the fashion industry in India has definitely gone through transformations.

"People are becoming vocal with their opinions on craftsmanship and the designs we showcase or the national and international influencers we dress," Malhotra told IANS in an email interview.

"Indian fashion designers are today seen in a different light in the world with many of us showcasing and presenting at fashion shows across the globe. My addition to the Academy Awards as a jury member is a testament of our work."

He feels the consumer landscape is truly changing, thanks to social media.

"Luxury is today as much about the experience or the story as it is about the product. I see many people dressing according to their personality and owning up to their aesthetics. There is a lot more individuality, with a great mix of style and fashion. However, I continue to see a lot of global influences in fashion," he pointed out.

He also believes that the conservative mindset surrounding "accepted" fashion no longer exists.

"The fashion industry in India has evolved tastefully, especially in the last decade. If you ask me what is coming back, it is bell-bottoms. It has been a classic style and we have seen a surge of it on the ramp and in real life. Fashion is about knowing what works for you and how you carry it with confidence."

The designer to stars like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Kajol and Katrina Kaif likes to enjoy spreading his knowledge to people who are eager to learn and indulge themselves in fashion. And so, he started his online fashion design course this year.

"I feel that if my experience can benefit the designers of the future then why not share it with them. Currently, I do not have any plans to set up a fashion institute, but would also not rule out that option completely," he said.

As a designer, he is always enthusiastic about stepping outside his comfort zone to explore newer frontiers of design.

"Collaborations are always exciting, even if they are outside the realm of clothes. For instance, my collaboration with ALCHYMI by Hindware has been a great experience for me.

"While creating this collection, I started with my love for modern and chic designs with clean lines, which is reflected in the creations for ALCHYMI bathroom suites. Together, we curated bathrooms suites that are unique in colour and shapes such as black and earthen brown, which are not just contemporary, but also in line with my own design philosophy.

"Combining textures such as marble finish with ceramics or having an aroma slot in your basins and water closets to enhance your experience in the bath space, working on ALCHYMI has helped me challenge my own notions of fashion and design."

Malhotra, who visited 'Jiyo! Live It!' -- an exhibit-cum-outreach programme by The Asian Heritage Foundation in Delhi -- earlier this month, has also collaborated with wine brand Chandon to create two limited edition bottles for Chandon Brut.

(Natalia Ningthoujam can be contacted at natalia.n@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Cooperation in the and in the defence and security sector will be high on the agenda when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart will hold their annual bilateral summit this month, Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu said on Friday.

Modi will be visiting Japan on October 28-29 in what will be his third visit for the annual bilateral summit.

India is the only country with which Japan holds an annual bilateral summit while India holds a similar summit with Russia too.

Speaking at a briefing organised by the think-tank Brookings India here, Hiramatsu referred to Modi's statement that Japan is the cornerstone of India's

He recalled the joint statement issued following last year's annual bilateral summit in India which called for a free, open and prosperous

"I am sure in the (upcoming) meeting, the two leaders will discuss the region in more concrete terms," Hiramatsu said.

Last year, a quad comprising India, Japan, the US and Australia was revived that seeks to work for peace and prosperity in the

"The quad had a second meeting in June this year and the process is steadily growing," the Ambassador said.

He also said that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) regional bloc has to play a central role in the Indo-Pacific region, a view that India also holds.

Regarding cooperation in the defence and security sector, Hiramatsu said that India and Japan, along with the US, regularly hold the Malabar naval exercise.

"From November 1 to 14, the ground-based defence forces of Japan and the Indian Army will hold a joint exercise in Mizoram that will also include counter-terrorism exercise," he said.

He also that the air defence forces of Japan and the Indian Air Force too will also hold a join exercise soon.

Stating that India has shown interest in Japanese submarines, he said that talks are going on for this though there has been no outcome as yet.

"We are also discussing a Japanese high tech amphibian aircraft also and I hope there will be progress made in this regard (during the summit)," Hiramatsu said.

He also indicated that a mutual logistics support agreement might be signed following the summit.

On the strong trade and investment relationship between the two countries, he said that Japan is the largest investor in the infrastructure sector in India.

"We will continue with our Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) programme in India," Hiramatsu said.

"Last year, the highest financial aid was provided under the ODA."

Stating that Japan is working on key connectivity projects in northeastern India, the Ambassador said that work is on on national highways in the states of Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

"Another road is being developed connecting the Assam-Bhutan border with the Meghalaya-Bangladesh border," he stated.

He also said that India offers a lot of business opportunities to Japanese companies.

"Prime Minister Abe says a strong India is in Japan's best interest," Hiramatsu said.

Regarding the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he said that Indian is an important partner for Japan during the discussions going on for this.

RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 Asean member states and the six states with which this regional bloc has existing free trade agreements - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

--IANS

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In 2015, the couple had set up a Facebook page "Gay Bandung Indonesia", with more than 4,000 members.

West Java police spokesperson Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko told Efe news that the two were arrested on Thursday and that investigations by the public prosecutor's office were underway.

Once they are formally charged under the Law on Electronic Information and Transactions (EIT), the two could face a maximum of six years in prison and a fine of up to one billion rupiah ($66,000) if convicted.

According to Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch Indonesia, this was the first time that the EIT law was being used against the LGBT community.

It was earlier used to crack down on pornography, he added.

Aceh, in Sumatra island, is the only province in Indonesia where homosexuality is illegal.

The arrests are being seen as yet another assault on the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community in the country.

In February, the country's Information Ministry had blocked more than 200 mobile applications and websites with content related to homosexuality.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Indonesia on Monday called for a transparent and thorough investigation into the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo conveyed his concern regarding the case to Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in a meeting at the presidential palace in the city of Bogor, 50 km south of Jakarta, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir told Efe news.

After the meeting, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters that Indonesia hoped that investigation into the alleged assassination would be conducted in a transparent manner.

On Saturday, Saudi authorities had said that Khashoggi, who was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 for paperwork needed for his planned marriage, died during a "fight" with state agents, who had accosted him for an interrogation.

Riyadh had earlier claimed that the journalist had left the consulate in Istanbul alive, rejecting allegations that he was killed there.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Software major Infosys on Monday jointly unveiled the 4.0 version of Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework for industry, utilities and infrastructure enterprises, with Finland-based consulting and engineering firm Poyry plc.

"The Kriti 4.0 version AI framework addresses lifecycle management challenges industry, utilities and infrastructure enterprises face in operational technology (OT) systems," said the city-based IT behemoth in a statement here.

The Vantaa-based Finnish firm serves clients globally in energy and industrial sectors and provides engineering services in its core markets.

"The new version applies AI, cognitive/machine learning and Machine to Machine (M2M) capabilities to the industrial environment by identifying critical enterprise systems and assets and provides better understanding of their behavior to create value for their customers," said the statement.

Infosys AI platform executes complex, advanced analytics and machine learning models, exchanging information with Poyry's RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability, safety) methodology.

Launched in April 2017, the Nia software collects an enterprise data from people, processes and legacy systems into a self-learning knowledge base and automates repetitive business and IT processes, freeing human role in solving customer problems.

The new framework also empowers decision-makers with real-time knowledge for operating and maintaining their OT systems, using predictive and prescriptive analytics.

The new platform also reduces system maintenance costs and operation shutdowns and improves reliability, employee and environmental safety.

"In digital world, our clients need to leverage their assets to create tangible RoI (return on investment) in a short time. Our IoT services are focused on impacting top line and bottom line, leveraging capabilities to remote-monitor products and assets, prevent breakdowns and analyse data to optimise performance across the production system," said Infosys engineering services head Nitesh Bansal.

Poyry's energy business group president Richard Pinnock said in Krti, real-time data from critical assets was converted to information with computing and business intelligent algorithms, enabling proactive prescriptive decision-making.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Jharkhand High Court on Monday ordered a CBI inquiry into an alleged fake encounter in 2015 in Palamu, in which security forces killed 12 people after branding them as Maoists.

Justice R.A. Mukhkhopadhaya ordered the probe on a petition seeking an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the incident. The court observed that the investigation was not going in the right direction, petitioner lawyer Jawahar Yadav said.

People's faith in the judicial system has been dented due to the police and CID investigation. To restore the faith of the people in the judicial system, a CBI probe is ordered, Yadav said, citing the court order.

The case was being probed by the state Criminal Investigation Department, which gave a clean chit to the police officials involved just before the High Court was to hear the case on Monday.

Police had claimed that 12 Maoists were killed in a gunbattle at Bakoria in Palamu district on June 8, 2015.

Those killed included a temporary teacher and a 10-year-old boy. The family members of the victims had termed the encounter as fake. They alleged that innocent people were branded as Maoists.

Jawahar Yadav had filed a case in the Jharkhand High Court seeking a CBI probe into the matter.

The role of at least three IPS officers, besides their subordinates, had come under scrutiny.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) on Monday said it would mediate and hold a reconciliation meeting between Kannada actress Sruthi Hariharan and actor Arjun Sarja, who she had accused of sexually harassment.

"The members of KFCC has met over the sexual harassment allegations. We will soon hold a meeting between Arjun and Sruthi to resolve the issue," KFCC president S.A. Chinne Gowda told reporters after the film body's meeting.

The film association will address all the sexual harassment complaints that are brought to its notice, Gowda said.

The 29-year-old actress on Saturday shared in a Facebook post that the 54-year-old multi-lingual south Indian actor had sexually harassed her on the sets of a film in 2016.

"During a (film) rehearsal, we delivered our lines and Mr Arjun hugs me. With no forewarning or permission, he runs his hands intimately up and down my back. He pulls me closer with my body taut against his and asks the director if we could use this idea of foreplay in the scene," the actress had stated in her post.

Former KFCC president Sa Ra Govindu, however, asked why it took the actress two years to raise the issue.

"Sruthi should have brought the incident to our attention long ago," Govindu said.

Earlier in the day, Arjun's father-in-law and senior Kannada actor Rajesh had lodged a complaint against the actress with the KFCC for defaming the actor (Arjun).

A few women also staged a protest in front of the film chamber's office in the city centre during the day, demanding a "ban" on Sruthi in the Kannada film industry.

Arjun, popularly known as 'Action King' and acted in over 150 movies across Tamil, Telugu and Kannada languages, had, however, dismissed the allegations as "false".

The actor had said he would soon file a defamation suit against Sruthi.

Bengaluru-based Sruthi, who has acted in several Kannada and Malayalam films since 2012, had said the incident left her "aghast" and that she could not raise the issue when it happened as there was no internal complaints committee in the film industry.

The ongoing #MeToo movement has given her courage to speak up, the actress said addressing media on Sunday.

Several Kannada actors and directors have also expressed their support to the actress.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "negative approach" on the needs of the state, which is slowly picking up pieces after a devastating flood in August.

"I fail to understand why the Centre and the Prime Minister has taken such a negative approach to our needs. When I had met him (Modi), he was very considerate. I told him that the state's ministers were trying to meet the Kerala diaspora settled abroad for help," Vijayan told reporters here after returning from an official tour of the United Arab Emirates.

"At that time, Modi reminded me that he had done a similar exercise when earthquake struck his state and the Gujarati diaspora came forward to help."

Vijayan described his 4-day trip to the UAE as successful.

Vijayan said that was the last positive vibe from the Centre. When the Kerala government sent a list of ministers with their respective plans to travel abroad, only the CM's tour was approved.

"We have no idea why the Centre has taken such a stand against Kerala," said Vijayan.

He said that his trip to the UAE was a huge success and members of the Kerala diaspora as also the Emirates Red Crescent have promised help to the flood-ravaged state.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The two Koreas and the UN Command (UNC), led by the US, agreed on Monday to withdraw firearms and guard posts from the Joint Security Area (JSA), the only part in the Korean Demilitarized Zone where troops from the three sides stand face to face.

It was part of the results of the second round of working-level talks among the two Koreas and the UNC which took place at the Freedom House, a South Korea-controlled building at the truce village of Panmunjom, Yonhap news agnecy reported.

In accordance with the inter-Korean military agreement clinched in September, Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to disarm the JSA, and the first trilateral meeting to discuss ways for its implementation was held last week. The UNC oversees activities inside the Demilitarized Zone.

"The two Koreas and the UNC agreed to take measures of withdrawing firearms and military posts from the JSA by October 25, and for the following two days, the three parties will conduct a joint verification," the Ministry of National Defence in Seoul said in a release.

The three parties also "confirmed and evaluated the official completion of the demining operations", the ministry said, vowing "continuous efforts to fulfil the JSA disarmament goal without a hitch". Last week, the two Koreas finished their 20-day mine clearance work.

At Monday's talks, the South and the North were represented by Army Col. Cho Yong-geun and Army Col. Om Chang-nam, respectively. The UNC's delegation was headed by US Army Col. Burke Hamilton, the Military Armistice Committee secretary.

Separately, the two Koreas' militaries decided to hold general-grade talks to discuss the enforcement of their recent military agreement at Tongilgak, a North Korean building in Panmunjom, on Friday.

At the talks, the two sides will also discuss how to form and run a joint military committee tasked with checking the enforcement of the agreement. In addition, they will touch on the plan to conduct joint research on the Han River estuary where civilian access has been restricted due to inter-Korean tensions.

Seoul first made the proposal for the talks, which Pyongyang later accepted, officials said.

Major Gen. Kim Do-gyun will lead South Korea's delegation, while the North Korean side will be represented by Lt. Gen. An Ik-san.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday said that India enjoyed a warm and friendly relationship with Croatia, and that the two countries needed to engage more purposely.

Mahajan's remarks came after a Croatian delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Marija Pejcinovic Buric met her in the Parliament House.

Buric hoped that the ongoing visit would further strengthen the bilateral relationship. She also invited Mahajan to visit Croatia.

Buric earlier met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and discussed boosting cooperation in trade and investment, health and pharmaceuticals, science and technology, and tourism and culture.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Members of two communities resorted to stone-pelting after an argument during a 'Sai Palki' procession here, police said on Monday.

Three people received minor injuries in the incident that took place Sunday night.

The police have arrested 30 people involved in the incident.

Indore's Deputy Inspector General of Police Harinarayan Chari Mishra told IANS: "The Sai procession was being taken out Sunday night through the Mhow police station area, when members of two different communities got into an argument. The police acted swiftly, and arrested 30 people, bringing the situation under control."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)PBS Frontline delves into the challenges facing underfunded teacher pension plans in Tuesdays episode. With a focus on Kentucky, correspondent Martin Smith starts off by visiting the 2018 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs and making a $100 bet (to win) on a horse with a name tailor-made for the topic: Promises Fulfilled.

Although the horse started strong, Promises Fulfilled finished 15th in a field of 20 in the Derby last May. That gives Smith a metaphor for his report on the complex topic of public pensions.

This is a story about gambling and making bad bets, the correspondent says. Its about having your retirement that you thought was secure go south.

What follows in The Pension Gamble, airing Oct. 23 at 10 p.m. Eastern (Check local listings), is a detailed look into Kentuckys retirement systems, which have long offered traditional defined-benefit retirement plans to the states teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees and was doing well with keeping well-funded for its obligations until the 2008 recession.

Randy Wieck, a high school history teacher in Louisville, tells Frontline about the basic deal underlying the teachers pension plan, known as Teachers Retirement System Kentucky.

One of the reasons we accept the low salary is that we wont have to despair for our retirement, Wieck says. That there will be some form of a safety net for us when we get too old to trundle into the classroom. Its a promise.

But as many teachers and other public employees across the country are learning, they increasingly have placed their bets on a horse called Promises Unfilfilled.

Frontline delves into management issues and controversies involving the Kentucky Retirement Systems, which oversees the pension plans for public employees besides teachers, as well as recent political battles in the state. As Education Weeks Daarel Burnette II and Madeline Will reported last spring , Kentuckys pension crisis has sparked teacher walkouts, lawsuits, and raucous protests at the state capitol in Frankfort.

Kentuckys teachers retirement system was cited by Standard & Poors last year as the worst-funded in the nation, Barnette and Will reported. The state is $14.5 billion short of what it will need to cover the retirement costs for its 71,000 current teachers and 51,000 retirees over the next 30 years.

Frontline interviews Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, who has bolstered state payments into the system but is still a target of criticism by teachers for backing plans to move new teachers out of the defined-benefit pension plan into more of a hybrid cash-balance plan, which is more of a mix of a defined-benefit plan and 401(K)-type retirement savings plan.

The state legislature adopted such a plan last spring that affects teachers hired beyond the start of 2019 and requiring school districts to contribute 2 percent of teacher salaries to their pension plans.

Im trying to save a system that needs to be saved, Bevin says in the episode.

With interviews with lawmakers, finance experts, other teachers, and Kentucky reporters who have covered the pension systems woes for years, as well as colorful footage of teacher protests and confrontations with legislators, Frontline makes the complex topic of public pension woes pretty lively.Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla on Monday unveiled a book 'The Principles of Law of Contract' that details the general principles about whether or not formal and informal contracts are legally binding, the authors said.

Co-authored by law educators and practitioners Ramesh Chandra Srivastava and Ashutosh Pathak, the book (Bloomsbury/Rs 495/353 pages) also explains the Indian Contract Act, 1872.

"When you enter into a contract, it may or may not be legally binding. It could be as simple as an employee not performing a task assigned to him/her. But, the question is, is that legally punishable?

"The book is a general read for everyone, not just law students, since we all enter into contracts," Srivastava, a retired law professor at Gorakhpur's Deen Dayal Upadhyaya University, told IANS.

Pathak, a Supreme Court lawyer, said the book also contains day-to-day examples, making it easier for people outside the legal fraternity to read it.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A fire broke out behind the canopy of the West Bengal government-organised Durga Puja carnival in central Kolkata's iconic Red Road on Monday evening, even as security was heightened a day before the colourful road show.

"A minor fire broke out on Monday evening in a light post behind the canopy, built to host the Durga Puja carnival on Red Road (Indira Gandhi Sarani) on Monday evening. It seems a short circuit may have caused the fire," a fire official said.

"Three fire tenders were rushed to spot. The fire has been put out without any injury or major damage to property," the official added.

Security arrangements have been beefed up in and around the venue of the carnival where the Idols and tableaux from 75 prominent community pujas from the city and suburbs will take part in a road show on Tuesday evening before the immersion.

The carnival, a brainchild of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, is set to be held in a big way with several additional features, including musical and cultural performances, in its third edition this year.

"Around 3,000 personnel will be posted on the Red Road, accompanied by personnel of the Special Task Force of the city police during Tuesday's event. Members of Rapid Action Force (RAF), Quick Response Team (ORT) and Bomb Squad will also be present at the venue with sniffer dogs," a senior Kolkata Police officer said.

A number of watch towers and several CCTV cameras have been installed in the area to monitor the situation during the road show, police said.

The carnival will have seating arrangement for 20,000 people this year, with 1,500 seats reserved for foreign dignitaries.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday greeted Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah on his 54th birthday, saying his rigour and hard work were "great assets for the party".

"Greetings to BJP President Amit Shah on his birthday. Under Amit Bhai's leadership, the party has expanded significantly across India. His rigour and hard work are great assets for the party. I wish him a long and healthy life," Modi tweeted.

Besides Modi, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal also greeted Shah.

"Warm birthday greetings to Amit Shahji, my party colleague and esteemed President of the Bharatiya Janata Party. May he be blessed with good health, long life and a successful year ahead," Jaitley tweeted.

Goyal said: "Under his leadership we have become the world's largest political party. I pray for his long and healthy life so that he can further contribute to nation building and development of India."

Rajnath Singh also greeted the Rajya Sabha MP, saying: "Amitji is known for his hard work and amazing organising skills. Under his leadership the party has risen to new heights. I pray for his healthy and long life."

Shah was born on October 22, 1964, in Mumbai.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday honoured senior advocate Fali Sam Nariman with Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration and said Nariman was one of the best eminent jurists in India.

"We are all seeing the turbulence in the legal fraternity including the judiciary. We have seen what happened in the recent days. Keeping all these in mind I call upon the young law practitioners to stand for justice," Naidu said after felicitating Nariman at his official residence.

"He is was one of the best eminent jurist in India and this felicitation doesn't add any glory to him. Instead this honour makes younger generation to take him as an inspiration" he added.

Naidu said that Nariman had always displayed an impeccable sense of justice, a deep sense of duty and profound concern for his fellow human beings.

Nariman is a distinguished Indian Constitutional jurist and senior advocate to the Supreme Court of India. Over the years, he has been the recipient of several honours and awards, both at national and international levels.

Remembering former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Naidu said that his integrity, wartime leadership and role in shaping of the Green and White Revolutions remain an inspiration for the entire country.

The Vice President also asked the youth to follow the values of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

"Your ideologies may be different but one should follow the values of Gandhi and Nehru whose ideas were to serve the poorest of the poor" he added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) on Monday said it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Dubai Internet City (DIC) to facilitate expansion of Indian businesses in the Middle East.

The agreement, the first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, is aimed at attracting Indian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

To boost the SME ecosystem in the UAE, the leading technology community in the region, as part of the MoU, will provide opportunity to the members of the non-profit trade association by offering support and a platform to expand in the MENA region.

Commenting on the potential outcomes of the pact, Ammar Al Malik, Managing Director of DIC and Dubai Outsource City (DOC) said: "The Middle East offers tremendous growth opportunities for innovative tech firms, with huge untapped potential. The $8 billion UAE tech industry is growing rapidly."

The Dubai-based leading technology business community in the region serves as a natural launch pad for Indian technology businesses looking to expand their operations into the region, he said.

Kamal Agarwala, SME Council Chair, Nasscom, said: "As the apex body for the $154 billion Indian IT BPM industry, we have strived to ensure the continued growth of the sector, facilitate partnerships, and fuel expansions. We firmly believe that this MoU will serve as a major catalyst for Indian businesses to expand into the region."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The NITI Aayog on Monday hosted the fourth edition of its annual lecture series here which focused on leveraging artificial intelligence for inclusive growth.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the lecture in which the keynote address was delivered by NVIDIA Corporation's President and Co-Founder Jensen Huang. The address was followed by a panel discussion.

However, the contents of the lecture were not made available to the public or the media.

"I congratulate Jensen Huang, Founder, President and CEO of NVIDIA for an insightful talk on 'Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Inclusive Growth' at the NITI Aayog lecture earlier this evening," Modi tweeted after the lecture.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)With $1 billion domestic sales and exports and 15 per cent growth annually, India tops the chart for US-based multinational conglomerate Honeywell International, says a top company official.

A $40 billion company, Honeywell last year registered a growth of six per cent in organic sales globally.

"In India, we are actually growing at two times the rate of GDP growth. Our goal is to grow 2-3 times the GDP growth rate. We feel very confident that we will be able to achieve it," Akshay Bellare, Vice President and General Manager, Honeywell Technology Solutions, India, told IANS.

The company is going aggressive on developing smart products as these are driving higher growth for it.

"We are very aggressive on this front and, in fact, this is a topic that goes all the way up to our CEO. He is tracking performance of 'India for India' products because it is an important growth driver for us as a company," he added.

Honeywell, which began the transformation to be a software industrial leader two years ago, is revamping legacy products to make them smart and connected.

"We have an unmatched ability to combine advanced software with great physical products to provide value to our customers across verticals," Bellare noted.

Honeywell is focusing on emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Blockchain, incorporating a few of these in its offerings to drive additional value for its customers.

A reflection of this focus is also showing in Honeywell's overall performance.

"While historically, our growth was similar to most industrial companies, in the last three quarters, we are registering about 5-6 per cent growth. This extra boost is coming from all the software offerings," Bellare emphasised.

Bellare believes India's contribution to Honeywell's global operations is much more than sales.

"We have 7,000 engineers in India out of a global engineering team of 23,000. So, almost one-third of our engineering and technology function is based out of India. A significant portion of Honeywell's growth is from new products and a large part of the engineering work being done in India," the executive told IANS.

One of the company's five technology centres is located in Hyderabad which is a significant innovation hub for Honeywell not only in India but globally.

Honeywell is playing a big role in the smart cities segment.

"Our technologies are at play in more than 65 smart cities and towns that include the city surveillance projects in Aurangabad, Maharashtra and the Ujjain 'Simhastha Kumbh' event requiring security management for a gathering of 70 million devotees in Madhya Pradesh, among others," informed the executive.

Focusing on the "mass mid segment", the company believes products developed for this segment will not only work for India but also for countries in the Asean region, the Middle East or Africa.

(Mohammed Shafeeq can be contacted at m.shafeeq@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Pakistan has reopened the friendship gate at the Afghan border in Chaman, resuming trade activities, Nato supplies and transit trade between the two countries, the media reported on Monday.

Pakistan had closed the border at Chaman and Torkham on Friday in connection with parliamentary elections in Afghanistan that had suspended trade activities in the border town Chaman and Spin Boldak, reports Dawn news.

Hundreds of trucks carrying Nato supplies and transit trade goods crossed into Afghanistan after reopening of the border on Sunday.

Pakistan had closed the border soon after the Kandahar Police chief, the governor and intelligence chief of Kandahar and a cameraman were killed in the firing in the Governor House.

--IANS

ksk/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The infiltration bid on the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district that claimed the lives of three Indian soldiers and two intruders a day ago, was actually an attempt by the Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT), top sources said here.

"A group of five to seven Pakistani BAT members attacked a patrol of the army in Sunderbani sector in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday.

"Alert troops reacted immediately, killing two intruders while the others managed to sneak back into the Pakistani side of the LoC.

"They were all dressed in Pakistani army fatigues. Three of our soldiers were killed in the operation," the sources said.

They also said the Indian Army has issued a stern warning to its Pakistani counterparts against similar action in the future.

BAT operations by Pakistani intruders have taken place in the past as well, most of them in the Rajouri and Poonch districts of the Jammu region.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)To control the air-quality from becoming lethal a day after Diwali this year, the Union Ministry on Monday initiated Green-Diwali campaign to create awareness.

In 2017, the ministry initiated the campaign following the dangerous after-effects of Diwali in 2016. However the situation was only controlled after the Supreme Court stepped in and banned sale of crackers in Delhi and NCR in 2017.

The ministry in a statement acknowledged the low pollution level during the festival in 2017 against 2016.

"The above campaign was extremely successful and the air quality had not deteriorated post Diwali in 2017 unlike what was experienced in 2016," the ministry said.

"Crackers contain combustible chemicals that include potassium chlorate powdered aluminum, magnesium, salts of barium, copper, sodium, lithium, strontium etc. and emit smoke on combustion of these chemicals along with sound. This smoke and sound have health impacts on children, aged people and also animal and birds" said a Ministry statement.

The "Harit-Diwali" campaign aims at creating awarness among people and discouraging use of crackers, especially the students.

In 2016, PM2.5 or particles with diameter less than 2.5mm, levels in some areas of Delhi increased to 1,238 on Dieali, which was about 50 times higher than the internationl standards and 20 times the national standards.

The World Health Organization recommends that PM2.5 is kept below 10 as an annual average, as exposure to average annual concentrations of PM2.5 of 35 or above is associated with a 15 per cent higher long-term mortality risk.

Later in October 2017 the Supreme Court imposed a ban on the sale of firecrackers in Delhi.

Follwing this, pollution levels in Delhi were found to be lower in Diwali 2017 as compared to that during Diwali in 2016, a Central Pollution Control Board report found.

In 2017, the air quality index ranked Delhi's level as "very poor" at a 322 value, while in 2016, the city's air quality levels were ranked at a "severe" level with an index value recording of 431.

--IANS

kd/prs

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram has said the party has not declared its President Rahul Gandhi as the Prime Ministerial candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

"Congress has not officially said Rahul Gandhi is its Prime Ministerial candidate," he said in an interview to News18 Tamil TV channel.

The former Union Finance Minister said the party wants an alliance to be formed and win the elections and the alliance partners could then decide on who should be the Prime Minister, Chidambaram said.

He said the Prime Minister's post was not an issue for the Congress and the party has asked its leaders not to speak about it.

According to him, the prime agenda is to remove the Bharatiya Janata Party government and provide a progressive government that does not indulge in tax terrorism, take away human rights, does not threaten the people but provide security to women and children and gives a remunerative price to farmers for the farm produce.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Monday marked a rare, twice-yearly solar alignment in Egypt when the sun's rays reach the inner sanctum of the Great Temple of Abu Simbel and briefly illuminate the stone face of the Pharaoh Ramses II - and hundreds of tourists were on hand to witness the spectacle.

The event has taken place at dawn for over 3,000 years each February 22, the King's birthday, and on October 22, the day marking his coronation, reports Efe news.

Monday also marked the 50th anniversary of the completion of a far more modern feat of engineering on the west bank of the Nile.

During the 1960s, the entire Abu Simbel temple, its massive outer statues standing 20 metres high and the sandstone cliff in which it was carved were all moved piece by piece to higher ground, saving them from being submerged in the rising waters behind the newly-built Aswan High Dam.

Though Abu Simbel now sits just beside the reservoir, the temple was rebuilt at exactly the right orientation so that the sun continues to shine on Ramses II, a fitting tribute to one of the greatest examples of ancient Egyptian art.

Located over 850 km south of the capital Cairo, and only around 30 km from the present-day border with Sudan, Abu Simbel was "rediscovered" in 1813.

--IANS

ksk/sed

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)South Africans have been urged to fight gender-based violence in the guise of and faith.

Minister of Women in the Presidency Bathabile Dlamini made the appeal on Monday, reports Xinhua news agency.

"We condemn the acts of gender-based violence that occurred in the guise of and faith," Dlamini said at the trial of Nigerian Pastor Timothy Omotoso and two co-accused in the Port Elizabeth High Court, Eastern Cape Province.

Dlamini, along with Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane and Eastern Cape Premier Phumullo Masualle, attended the trial, indicating the high attention the government was attaching to the case.

"This is a turning point for everyone to ask themselves what they have done to protect women, especially the justice system," Dlamini said while addressing the public outside court.

Omotoso is charged with rape and human trafficking, while the two co-accused women are accused of recruiting girls from all over the country for purposes of sexual exploitation.

The three are facing more than 60 charges that include racketeering and rape.

The 58-year-old televangelist allegedly trafficked more than 30 girls and women who were from various branches of his church to a house in Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, where he allegedly sexually exploited them.

Omotoso was arrested on April 20 last year. According to prosecutors, some of the alleged victims were as young as 13 years old.

The case has sparked public interest in South Africa, where there is a history of so-called holy men taking advantage of their congregations.

"Today we find adults who took children to places of worship who are accomplices since they also contributed to the grooming of these children as sex slaves," Dlamini said.

"We condemn the hijacking and use of our own buildings and sites for illegal religious practices," she said. "What is happening in these places of worship is human trafficking...

"These abuses can be in churches, in synagogues, in mosques, on mountains, under the sea and in heaven above," she said.

--IANS

mr/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court will on Tuesday decide on hearing of a batch of petitions seeking recall of a Constitution Bench verdict permitting women in the age group of 10 to 50 years entry into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjay Krishan Kaul said the bench-led by former Chief Justice Dipak Misra that pronounced the landmark verdict on September 28 has to be reconstituted.

A review petition is normally considered by the judges of the same bench that had delivered the verdict.

A call on hearing the plea would be taken up, the Chief Justice said after the National Association of Aayappa Devotees sought an early hearing of their review pleas.

There are 19 petitions before the top court seeking the recall of the verdict that had junked the centuries old practice prohibiting the entry women who are in the of menstruating age.

Contending that religious practices cannot be "tested on the basis of rationality", the petitioners have sought a recall of the verdict raising points of procedural error in the judgment.

The five-judge Constitution Bench headed by then Chief Justice Misra had junked the age old tradition of the Lord Ayyappa temple by a majority verdict of 4:1.

It said that the ban on women in menstruating age group, whose presence at the Sabarimala temple was considered to be "impure", violated their fundamental rights and constitutional guarantee of equality.

The review plea by the Nair Service Society, one of the petitioners, said "without holding that the questions raised related to matters of religion which are not within judicially manageable standards, the majority decision in substance effectively has the effect of holding that the character of the deity can be altered based on individual faith and belief, in violation of the tenets of a particular religion and or religious sect".

The petitioners have also argued that besides "patent legal errors" in the verdict, the assumption that the temple practice is based on notions of menstrual impurity is "factually erroneous".

Pointing to massive protests against the verdict by women worshippers, the petitioners have contended that "the subsequent events that transpired after the judgment clearly demonstrate that overwhelmingly large section of women worshippers are supporting the custom of prohibiting entry of women..."

--IANS

pk/in/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The brief pilgrimage season in Sabarimala failed to make history as women in the 10-50 age group were kept away by protests against their entry despite the Supreme Court order allowing women of all ages to pray at the Lord Ayyaappa temple.

The sanctum sanctorum of the famed temple closed at 10 pm on Monday, a day that saw five women making an unsuccessful effort to pray at the hill temple, where tradition had barred women aged between 10 and 50.

Bindu, a woman from Kozhikode in Kerala, appeared before the police at Erumely, one of the entry points to the temple route, but the police refused permission to her after checking her antecedents.

After that, she was put on a bus to Mundakayam but angry protesters literally took her out of the bus. Following the timely intervention of the police a crisis was averted.

Likewise, at the Pamba entry point, four women from West Godavari district were stopped from going ahead as angry protesters got around them shouting Ayyappa slogans forcing them to retreat.



Starting Wednesday last week, Kerala was on the edge, after the temple opened for its customary monthly pujas, the first time after the September 28 Supreme Court verdict which overturned a practice that barred women of menstrual age from entering the hill temple.

Celibate deity Lord Ayyappa is worshipped at the where on Monday at 7 pm the last pilgrim went up the hill.

None of the dozen women who tried to have a darshan in the last five days succeeded in entering the temple for prayers as thousands of devotees were determined not to allow them.

The police appeared most relieved for the time being as they had a tough time in trying to implement the apex court's orders in the face of strong protests which at times turned violent.



Given the present situation, they may have a tougher time when the temple again opens for its annual two-month-long pilgrimage season which begins on November 17.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who was away on tour for the past week and returned in the wee hours of Monday, faced a flurry of questions about the incidents at Sabarimala. He told the media in the state capital that he would rather wait some more time to reply.

"I will speak to you about Sabarimala tomorrow (Tuesday)," said Vijayan.

But state Minister for Devaswoms Kadakampally Surendran made no bones of the fact about what happened during the past few days starting from Wednesday last week and said the government was caught between the devil and the deep sea.

"On the one side there is the apex court directive and on the other side is those opposing it, especially the BJP/RSS, and the state government was in between these two," said Surendran.



A Padmakumar, president of the Travancore Devasom Board (TDB), custodian of the Sabarimala temple, said they were definitely concerned about the devotees' rights and also the traditions of the temple and all of what happened would be conveyed to the Supreme Court.

The TDB Commissioner is reaching Delhi on Tuesday when the apex court will take a decision on 19 different petitions seeking a review of the September 28 verdict.

The leadership of the Congress party that met in the state capital on Monday decided to make amends after a feeling that the BJP appears to have got a slight edge in leading the protests against the state government.

State Congress President Mulappally Ramachandran told the media that on November 15, four vehicle jathas originating from different parts of the state will converge at Pathanamthitta, the headquarters of the district where the is located to explain its position.



And in a related development, Rahul Eashwar, activist and member of the tantris family, who was arrested last week during the protest against the state government, got bail on Monday evening as did 19 others.Intensifying its attack on the Modi government over bank frauds, the Congress on Monday demanded sacking of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for "allowing" bank frauds to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore and "letting" fraudsters like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi to flee the country.

Calling for Jaitley's resignation, Congress President Rahul Gandhi alleged that the Finance minister's daughter Sonali Jaitley was "on the payroll" of fugitive Mehul Choksi, wanted in Rs 13,500 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

"Arun Jaitlie's daughter was on the payroll of thief Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile her Finance Minister daddy sat on his file and allowed him to flee. She received money from ICICI a/c no: 12170500316," Gandhi tweeted.

Taking the fight to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Jaitley, Congress leader Sachin Pilot said that under the Bharatiya Janata Party government "an unprecedented 19,000 bank fraud cases involving Rs 90,000 crore" have taken place.

"At least 23 bank fraudsters have left India under their watch after duping the country by over Rs 53,000 crore.

"The successive escapes of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and others reflect that the Modi government is not a guardian of public money but a travel agency facilitating fraud, fleece and fly to foreign shores by wilful bank defaulters," Pilot told the media here.

Pilot questioned as to why Sonali Jaitley's legal firm accepted retainer fee from Choksi despite the Prime Minister's Office, the Finance and Corporate Affairs Ministry as well as various investigative agencies being aware of the fraud by Nirav Modi and Choksi.

"Sonali Jaitley and son-in- law, Jaiyesh Bakhshi proceeded to accept a retainership from Choksi's fraudster company in December 2017. A sum of Rs 24,00,000 was also received by them.

"This amount was redeposited on Feb 20 2018, well after both Nirav Modi and Choksi had fled the country," said Pilot.

"These are the people (Modi and Jaitley) who were officially helping the fraudsters, legally safeguarding them and politically protecting them to escape and run away," said Pilot demanding both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister to speak up.

Alleging it to be a clear-cut case of "collusion, connivance and conflict of interest", the Congress questioned why Jaitley, his daughter and son-in-law have not been summoned or questioned by CBI and other agencies probing the scam.

The Congress demanded to know why action was not against Choksi and Nirav Modi despite multiple FIRs and complaints and also who facilitated their escape from the country.

Prime accused in the PNB fraud case, Nirav Modi and Choksi are under probe by both the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate.

--IANS

and/prs

(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.)Actor Samir Kochhar will be funding a documentary which revolves around the life of people from the LGBTQ community.

Some students from a university in Ranchi approached Samir with the idea of funding the documentary. It will be about how people from the community deal with their issues after the Supreme Court decision to de-criminalize homosexuality.

"I think in today's time people have become more receptive and open about such topics. I believe what matters is a story and this is something which needs to be told. I feel proud to be part of this change and help them get the recognition they deserve," Samir said in a statement.

"I can't talk in detail about it right now. But all I can say is that this is basically an effort to bring a small change in the life of people after the decision on Section 377 (of the Indian Penal Code) by highlighting their stories and struggles through that phase so they get their place in the society," he added.

Samir feels that "change has already taken place".

"The fact that people are now openly accepting their relationships and rights is a sign that it is only moving forward. And now they can claim their rights and don't have to be shy about anything. Also, such documentaries can add up to this in a big way," he added.

--IANS

sug/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Veteran actor Jackie Shroff has praised actor Sanjay Dutt, with whom he will be sharing screen space in the upcoming remake of Telugu film "Prasthanam" and said that he is one of the finest actors in Bollywood.

Jackie has previously worked with Sanjay in movies including "Khalnayak", "Mission Kashmir", "Kartoos" and "Eklavya - The Royal Guard".

Asked about working with the "Munna Bhai M.B.B.S" star, Jackie told IANS: "Have known Sanju before the films. Right from day one till now he remains the same. His child-like quality to make people laugh in the most adverse situation and when it comes to work hes one of the finest actors we have."

He added: "Always a pleasure to share screen space with him whether it be 'Khalnayak', 'Mission Kashmir', 'Kartoos' And now 'Prasthanam'."

To be produced by Sanjay Dutt Productions, the film is being remade in Hindi by director Deva Katta, who also helmed the original.

The film also stars Manisha Koirala, Ali Fazal and Amyra Dastur.

--IANS

dc/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The King of Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince sent their condolences to a son of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who died at his country's consulate in Istanbul, Saudi state reported.

The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said on Sunday that the Monarch, Salman bin Abdulaziz, and his son, Mohammed bin Salman, telephoned Salah Jamal Khashoggi to express their condolences, reports Efe news.

Salah thanked the king and expressed his "sincere gratitude" to Prince Mohammed for the calls, according to separate press releases published by the SPA.

Saudi Arabia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said in an interview with US television channel Fox on the same day that Prince Mohammed had no knowledge of Khashoggi's death.

In that interview, al-Jubeir described the death of Khashoggi as "a grave mistake" and said that those responsible will be held to account.

The Saudi authorities at first denied the death of the regime-critical journalist.

On Saturday, the Saudi authorities said that Khashoggi died in the course of a "fight" with agents who were trying to interrogate him in the legation.

The UK, France and Germany said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia's version of Khashoggi's death needs to be supported by "facts" to be considered "credible".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the suspension of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia on the grounds that they cannot be done under the "current circumstances", in reference to the Khashoggi case.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that he will reveal details about the Turkish investigation of the alleged murder of the journalist on Tuesday.

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had been missing since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

--IANS

mr/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)One person from the 15-member team suspected to be behind the death of Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was captured on surveillance cameras around Istanbul on the day the journalist was killed, CNN reported on Monday citing a senior Turkish official.

The TV channel said it obtained exclusive law enforcement surveillance footage, part of the Turkish government's investigation, that appeared to show the man leaving the Saudi consulate by the back door, wearing Khashoggi's clothes, a fake beard and glasses.

The Turkish official identified the man in the video as Mustafa al-Madani, who was allegedly part of what investigators said was a hit squad, sent to kill the journalist at the Saudi consulate during an appointment on October 2 to get papers for his upcoming wedding.

The same man was seen in Khashoggi's clothing, according to the Turkish case, at the city's famous Blue Mosque hours after the journalist was last seen alive entering the consulate.

After weeks of denying involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance, Saudi Arabia has given a shifting narrative of what happened to the journalist.

The Kingdom admitted last week that Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's policies, was killed in the Istanbul consulate, saying his death was the result of a "fistfight".

Later, a Saudi source close to the royal palace told CNN that the Washington Post journalist died in a chokehold.

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir described Khashoggi's death on Fox News as a "murder" and a "tremendous mistake".

According to the Turkish official, Madani, 57, of similar height, age and build to Khashoggi, 59, was used as a decoy for the journalist.

Another senior Turkish official told CNN that the video showed that Madani was brought to Istanbul to act as a body double.

"You don't need a body double for a rendition or an interrogation," the official said. "Our assessment has not changed since October 6. This was a premeditated murder and the body was moved out of the consulate."

US President Donald Trump said there had been "deception" and "lies" in Saudi Arabia's explanation, having previously said he found their narrative to be "credible".

The UK, France and Germany issued a joint statement expressing shock at the death and demanding a full explanation, saying: "Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms."

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would reveal the "naked truth" of the matter in Parliament on Tuesday.

Turkey has so far stopped short of officially blaming Saudi Arabia for the killing, though its investigators say they have audio and video evidence which shows Khashoggi was killed by a team of Saudi agents inside the consulate.

--IANS

soni/sed

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Expect a chaotic start of the week today as over 400 petrol pumps operating in Delhi will remain closed for the next 24 hours. These petrol pumps will neither purchase nor sell petrol, diesel or CNG in protest against the Arvind Kejriwal government for not slashing Value Added Tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel. In a statement, the Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA) has said that all petrol pumps, including those which offer compressed natural gas, will be closed as a mark of protest from 6am onwards on October 22 till 5am on October 23. Reports suggest taxi operators, including some cab aggregators like Ola and Uber, may also not operate in the city due to the petrol pump owners' strike. Besides, several thousand auto-rickshaws that ply on the city roads every day, would also face a major difficulty in getting fuel supply.

"The central government had slashed the rate of petrol and diesel by Rs 2.50 per litre each on September 4. This was followed by reduction of VAT (value added tax) by various states including neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, bringing relief to their residents. But, the Delhi government refused to reduce VAT on fuel both petrol and diesel resulting in fuel becoming more expensive than bordering Haryana and Uttar Pradesh." In comparison to Delhi, fuel rates in bordering states like Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are cheaper," DPDA President Nischal Singhania said.

People had a sigh of relief after the central government announced Rs 2.50 cut in petrol and diesel on October 5, while also asking state governments to announce cuts on similar lines. Following suit, 10 BJP-ruled states, including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, had also cut Rs 2.5 VAT on petrol and diesel, passing the total benefit of Rs 5 per litre on to people. Before that, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal had also announced cuts in VAT amid rising fuel prices. However, the Delhi government had decided against slashing VAT on fuel.

Petrol pump owners are quite unhappy with the Kejriwal government. The neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are selling cheaper fuel than Delhi (due to VAT cut), resulting in a huge drop in revenue of petrol pumps in the national capital. According to Nischal Singhania, due to difference in prices, there has been a sharp drop of 50-60 per cent in sale of diesel in Delhi and 25 per cent in petrol in this quarter.

Another reason for the pan-Delhi strike is the festive season, especially Diwali. The city sees a manifold increase in social travelling due to vacations and shopping, but the costly fuel means a huge fall in revenue for them. They are hoping that their protest could force the Delhi government to address their concerns. "DPDA urges the Delhi government to immediately reduce VAT on petrol and diesel and encourage commuters to buy euro VI fuel and save the livelihood of employees and owners of petrol pumps of Delhi and also save state's revenue loss," the DPDA statement said.

Edited by Manoj SharmaThe Supreme Court on Monday asked regulatory bodies -- Press Council of India, News Broadcasting Standards Authority, Editors Guild of India and Indian Broadcasting Foundation -- if they have reported to police about persons or organizations who have divulged the identity of rape victim in violation of statutory prohibition.

"You have to function under law, and the law says such persons (who disclose the name of a rape victim) will be prosecuted," said the bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta.

The court today asked the regulatory bodies to file an affidavit stating whether they have informed the police about such cases and, if not, then why they did not inform police about such offenders.

"If publications commit criminal offences, they should be prosecuted. Somebody has to prosecute them. You have not prosecuted even a single person," the court said, comparing the approach to a "velvet fist in velvet glove. "

Asking the counsel appearing for the regulatory bodies why they did not take steps to inform the police, the court asked them if they thought that disclosing the identity of a rape victim was a penal offence.

Admitting that disclosing the name of a rape victim was a violation of law, the media regulatory bodies said they have to function under the norms.

Brushing aside the claim by a counsel that they have a robust system to deal with such cases, the court mockingly said you claim that the "complainant is satisfied after ten years, and you say you have a robust system."

The matter is rooted in the hearing of a plea against Patna High court order prohibiting media from reporting Muzaffarpur shelter home rape cases.

--IANS

pk/prs

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a PIL seeking to lower the marriageable age of a male from 21 years to 18 years and imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 observing that no public interest was involved in it.

The Public Interest Litigation was moved by advocate Asok Pande. The court was unmoved as Pande repeatedly urged it to waive the cost of Rs 25,000.

"If any 18-year-old person approaches us with this kind of plea, we will give him the cost deposited by you," Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said.

Pande has contended that when 18-year-old can vote in elections and choose their representatives, then why there should be such a higher age bar for marriage.

He cited the provisions of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, the Special Marriage Act and the Hindu Marriage Act which provide for the marriageable age for men and women and contended that they were violative of fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution.

--IANS

pk/prs

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Life across the Kashmir Valley was adversely affected on Monday by a separatist-called shutdown against six civilian deaths in an explosion in Kulgam district a day ago.

With authorities also imposing restrictions in Khanyar, Rainawari, Nowhatta, Maisuma and M.R. Gunj to prevent the shutdown, shops, public transport, businesses and educational institutions remained closed.

Only a skeletal stream of private vehicles were seen on city roads.

The Kashmir University and the Board of School Education in the state have postponed exams scheduled on Monday.

Train services have also been suspended between Baramulla and Bannihal towns.

Six civilians were killed and around 40 others injured when a blast ripped through a gunfight site in Laroo village in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday.

Security forces had killed three Kashmiri militants in Laroo. It was immediately followed by a civilian protest. Just as a large crowd gathered at the encounter site a massive explosion occurred.

Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), conglomerate headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yasin Malik called for the valley-wide protest.

Heavy police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deployements were made in all sensitive areas, as well as those placed under restrictions.

--IANS

sq/in/ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Taliban key commander Mullah Mansoor, the military operational chief of the outfit, was among 21 armed insurgents who were killed in Afghanistan's Kunduz province in a crackdown, officials said on Monday.

Army spokesman Ghulam Hazrat Karimi told Xinhua news agency that about 30 more militants were injured and the Taliban militants were expelled from several villages in Imam Sahib district over the past several hours.

Meanwhile, Mahboubullah Sayedi, the Governor of Imam Sahib district said three security forces were killed and six others injured since the clash erupted in the district late on Sunday.

However, according to villagers, four civilians were killed, including women and children and five others were injured due to the ongoing fighting in Imam Sahib district.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)is the fastest growing language in the US, says a study by an American think tank.

The number of US residents speaking rose by 86 per cent between 2010 and 2017, according to an by the

But Telugu, the fourth most spoken language in India, is still outside the top 20 of the most widely-spoken languages other than English in the US, reports the

The video referred to a study by the US-based Centre for Immigration, which analysed census data to look at the pace at which languages were being spoken in

The study on languages spoken in the US used data from the American Community Survey and compared the number of people who said they spoke a language other than English at home in 2010 and 2017, the said.

Last year there were more than 400,000 speakers in the US - nearly double the number in 2010. Out of the top 10 fastest-growing languages in America, seven are from

The rise of Telugu was connected to the links forged between and the US engineering and technology industries, Prasad Kunisetty, founder of the Telugu People Foundation, a non-profit organisation in the US, was quoted as saying.

The rapid growth of IT in the mid-1990s led to a huge demand for software engineers, he said.

Many were recruited from Hyderabad, which sends students to the US in large numbers.

Down the years, Telugu-speaking Americans have continued to hire software engineers from and Telangana, the said.

Notable US-based Telugu speakers include the first Indian-American Miss Nina Davuluri and the current

Of the more than 60 million people that speak a language other than English out of the total population of about 320 million, the vast majority speak Spanish.

Out of the most commonly spoken South Asian languages, Hindi is first, followed by Urdu, Gujarati and then Telugu.

(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.)Hundreds of migrants remained at the Rodolfo Robles bridge crossing point over the Suchiate river on the Guatemalan border on Sunday, waiting to cross into Mexico to continue their journey to try and reach the US.

On Friday, a large group tried to enter Mexico by breaking down the gate at the frontier. A number of the unarmed Mexican police stationed at the site were injured when the hundreds of migrants stormed the gate and pushed into Mexican territory, reports Efe news.

The Guatemalan government said on Sunday that it has repatriated a total of 953 of the migrants to Honduras, most of them by bus but a few by air, according to its special plan to return them to their country.

Of the approximately 5,400 migrants who set out from Honduras a week ago, some 2,000 have returned to Honduras but 3,000 more are continuing with their plan to get to the southern US border.

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that his administration was doing all it can to prevent the migrant caravan from crossing the border into Mexico, warning that his government would not allow them to enter the US.

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our southern border. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the US will turn them away. The courts are asking the US to do things that are not doable!" said Trump on Twitter.

"The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!" the President wrote in another tweet.

Earlier on Sunday, thousands of Honduran migrants who left their country in a caravan heading north resumed their journey after fulfilling Mexico's migration requirements to ensure that the US southern neighbor did not deport them if they had entered that country illegally.

According to officials with Mexico's Civil Protection service, more than 3,000 migrants are en route along the 40-km stretch between Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where they announced that they intend to spend Sunday night.

A force of more than 600 state and federal police have set up a roadblock some 5 kilometres outside Tapachula, apparently with the aim of halting the massive caravan before it reaches the city.

--IANS

mr/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council chairman Ramesh Yadav's wife Meera Yadav was on Monday arrested for killing her 23-year-old son Abhijit Yadav, police said.

She was detained late on Sunday for interrogation, during which she broke down and accepted strangulating her own son.

Abhijt Yadav was found dead in the official Darulshafa legislators flat on Sunday. Preliminary reports called it a "cardiac arrest".

Meera Yadav told family members and neighbours that her son had come back drunk late on Saturday. He was restless through the night. She had applied soothing balm on his chest when he complained of pain on his left arm.

He never woke up, she told neighbours.

The son's body was on its way to the cremation ground when the police intervened after some family friends alleged foul play.

Lucknow's Senior Superintendent of Police Kalanidhi Naithani ordered an autopsy which confirmed "strangulation" as the cause of death.

Meera Yadav, who is the second wife of Ramesh Yadav, also kept changing her accounts of the tragedy which spiked police suspicion.

Sarvesh Mishra, superintendent of police (SP-East) said the accused told the police that her drunk son misbehaved with her. In a fit of rage, Meera Yadav then strangulated him.

The MLC's wife had quit her job at the state Tourism Department not long back. She was living at the Darulshafa flat with her two sons Abhishek and Abhijit.

--IANS

md/in

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The US Embassy along with TiE Global launched two programmes on Monday to provide mentorship to 30 young, innovative women from across India to help them scale up their enterprises.

During an event "Women Entrepreneurs Conclave 2.0 - Engaged and Empowered" held in the national capital, the Embassy announced that top-three scale-up fellows will be sponsored for a visit to the US as AIRSWEEE Global Fellows and will be mentored by a host US organisation that will provide them a window to global best practices.

According to the Embassy, the All India Roadshow on Women's Economic Empowerment through Entrepreneurship (AIRSWEEE) Scale-Up Fellows programme will be funded by the US State Department.

"Economies where women have greater equality are those that thrive. To get there requires a strong, visible push to level the playing field," MaryKay Carlson, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy, said at the event.

"AIRSWEEE has engaged members of TiE globally and drawn into sharp focus the significant multiplier effect that can be created by investing in women," said Vijay Menon, Executive Director, TiE Global.

--IANS

som/shs/sed

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)US National Security Adviser John Bolton met Russia's Security Council on Monday for the first round of talks to address the deteriorating bilateral relations between both nuclear powers after Washington said it intended to withdraw from the landmark nuclear arms control treaty.

Bolton was on a two-day visit to meet Russian authorities after US President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that Moscow had violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and Washington planned to withdraw as a result.

Russia has dismissed Trump's claims.

The nuclear disarmament treaty was signed on December 8, 1987 by then US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachov.

Bolton met his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev here prior to a meeting on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Efe news reported.

The top US official also had plans to meet Yury Ushakov, an adviser to Putin and with Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Ushakov said that the talks would examine the current state of bilateral relations, according to Russia, were "in a terrible state".

The treaty banned both nuclear powers from owning, producing or deploying medium-range nuclear weapons including cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km.

Prior to Bolton's arrival, Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kremlin expected that the US NSA will provide an explanation for Trump's move.

"The breaking of the INF Treaty's provisions forces Russia to take measures on ensuring its own security," he said, noting that in the future Washington could start directly developing the systems banned under the treaty.

"If this system is developed, steps from other countries, and in this case of Russia, on restoring balance in this sphere are needed," he said. The Russian President has stated this many times, Peskov said.

The Kremlin spokesman stressed that the US was in violation of the treaty, while Russia remained committed to the document.

Moscow expected Bolton to "clarify the issue concisely and in a professional manner", said Deputy Minister Serguei Riabkov.

--IANS

soni/sed

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)US President Donald Trump said on Monday that his country will begin cutting off or reducing aid to three countries in Central America, citing migrant caravan heading to the US border.

"Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US," said Trump in a morning tweet, Xinhua reported.

"We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," the US President added.

Regarding the incident as a "national emergency," Trump said in another tweet that he had alerted the US Border Patrol and Military as "it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States."

Over the weekend, thousands of migrants, mostly from Honduras, have swarmed into Mexico after passing the Guatemalan border. Media reported that Mexican police, watching vigilantly alongside, did not disturb the migrants' journey.

It was the latest among Trump's tweets warning against serious consequences about the migrant people who were heading toward the United States, seeking asylum.

Official data showed that the Trump administration has sharply slashed aid to the three countries in Central America, projecting a roughly 40-percent plunge in aid in the financial year of 2019 compared with that of 2016.

--IANS

ahm/sed

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)As it battles financial crisis, Jet Airways has decided to trim its workforce and operations further. Jet Airways asked 15 managerial level employees from departments such as engineering, security and sales to leave in October. A Jet Airways official said that there was a lull in September but the pink slips have begun again, as mentioned in a report in The Economic Times. Additionally, the airline has also grounded eight of its planes at the Chennai and Mumbai airports.

The official said that engines have been dismounted from these planes. It essentially means that these planes may remain grounded for six months or more. There have also been speculations that Jet is struggling to meet lease payment obligations. The affected planes include an Airbus A330, a Boeing 777, two Boeing 737s and three ATR turboprops.

The airline, however, told the daily that it regularly evaluated fleet requirements. Jet Airways said that they regularly review its network to address its capacity exposure to routes, markets and airports. It did not comment on the workforce pruning. Jet Airways said that external factors such as crude price, rupee devaluation and pricing environment necessitate change in the airline's operations. It said that they are also rightsizing the ATR network to align capacity and demand.

According to the daily, 8 to 10 planes undergo regular maintenance every day, which means that at any given point, 16 planes are out of service, adding that it may increase to more than 20. Currently Jet Airways has 124 planes, as mentioned on its website.

Jet has also replaced its wide-body aircraft on certain domestic routes as well as international short-haul routes with its narrowbody fleet that includes the fuel-efficient B737 MAX aircraft.

Jet Airways' salary expenses rose by 53 per cent in the past five years surpassing plane lease payments as its second-biggest expense. Fuel still accounts for the airline's biggest expense.

The daily mentions that when CEO Vinay Dube joined a year ago, he was handed a list of 100 senior to mid-level executives, managerial level and above who are needed to be given "gracious exits". Forty such employees had left till August. In August, Jet's senior management was asked to take a 25 per cent pay cut. Pilots and technicians were asked to take similar pay cuts but they refused.

Credit rating agency, ICRA had also downgraded Jet Airways' long-term borrowing programme. The airline is also facing investigations by Ministry of Corporate Affairs over complaints of irregular transactions.

(Edited by Anwesha Madhukalya)Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who had given statements against Kerala nun rape accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district on Monday, police said.

Kattuthara's family in Kerala suspects foul play.

The Punjab Police said a probe is underway into the 62-year-old priest's death. "Our team has gone to the spot and is investigating the matter," a Dasuya police official said.

Kattuthara was found dead in a room in the St. Mary's Church in Dasuya town, around 180 km from Chandigarh. He was under the Jalandhar diocese which is headed by Mulakkal.

Kattuthara had openly given statements against the Mulakkal after the Kerala nun accused the latter of raping her.

Jose Kattuthara, the brother of the deceased, has complained to the police in Alappuzha in Kerala raising suspicion about the circumstances in which the priest was found dead.

The deceased priest's cousin K.Johnny told the media in Kerala that he got a call from Punjab that Father Kuriakose Kattuthara was not responding to the knocks on his door.

"When they forced open the door, he was found dead," Johnny said, adding that his cousin was not sick. However, he was suffering from lifestyle diseases.

"Ever since he took a position against Bishop Mulakkal, he feared something bad might befall him," said Johnny.

The deceased priest, in some interviews, had already expressed apprehension about his fate after openly supporting the victim nun and speaking against the bishop.

Mulakkal was arrested in September 21 on charges of raping a nun repeatedly between 2014 and 2016. He was sent to two-week judicial custody on September 24.

Mulakkal secured bail on October 16 from the Kerala High Court and left for Jalandhar the same day after walking out of the Pala sub-jail near Kottayam.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A team headed by Chief Election Commissioner would be meeting nine recognised political parties Monday evening here.

The team comprising 11 members will be in the city for three days to review the poll preparedness and leave for the capital on October 24, an official release said.

"The OP Rawat team will be meeting nine recognised political parties in the evening between 4.30 and 6 pm at Hotel Taj Krishna. Each party will be given 19 minutes to voice its views.

Later the team will have meeting with the Chief Electoral officer Rajat Kumar and police nodal officers," it said.

Election Commissioners and would also be coming here as part of the team, Rajat Kumar had earlier said.

"They would review the preparedness for the polls. If there anything that their attention is drawn then they will look into that also," Kumar had told PTI.

The is the first visit of the EC after the election schedule for the state was announced.

The team would meet all the electoral officers and Superintendents of police of all the districts on Tuesday, the release said.

On Wednesday, it will hold meetings with Senior officials of Income Tax Department, Railways, Airport and various Banks.

On October 24, the Rawat team is expected to meet with the Chief Secretary SK Joshi and DGP Mahendar Reddy.

It would leave for the capital on the same day after addressing a press conference in the afternoon, the release added.

The (EC) had on October 6 announced the election schedule for five states, including Telangana, which will go to the polls on December 7.

The assembly polls in were originally scheduled to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections next year, but the Assembly was dissolved on September 6 as per a recommendation by the state cabinet.Congress President on Monday attacked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, alleging that his daughter had received money from Mehul Choksi, the absconding accused in the Bank (PNB) scam.

He said the media was not highlighting this because it is being "threatened and suppressed".

Gandhi was addressing a farmers' rally in Raipur as part of the party's campaign for the Assembly elections in in November.

"You must have heard about and Mehul Choksi, who had stolen Rs 350 billion of the country. Choksi deposited lakhs of rupees in the bank account of FM Arun Jaitley's daughter," the Congress leader claimed at the rally.

He said the Finance Minister "did not take any action against Choksi following which he fled the country.

He said Congress leaders held a press conference in Delhi on Monday, giving "details" about bank account of Jaitley's daughter "but unfortunately none of the major media houses carried this story.

It is sad because the work of the media is to bring out the truth." Gandhi said the responsibility of the media is to protect the truth, like the army secures the borders.

Targeting Prime Minister over the fighter jet deal, the Congress chief alleged that he (Modi) had snatched a contract related to the aircraft agreement from the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and given it to a private company which has never made an aeroplane.

The UPA government had prepared the contract for purchase of 126 fighter aircrafts, according to which the price for each jet was around Rs 5.26 billion.

"But after becoming prime minister, ji goes to France along with and purchased each jets at Rs 16 billion per piece, he said.

He said under the UPAs agreement, Bengaluru-based HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) was to manufacture the fighter jets which would have ensured technology transfer and jobs to local youths.

"But Modi ji himself snatched the contract from HAL and allotted it to Anil Ambanis company which was newly-formed and had no experience in manufacturing aeroplanes. Ambani would not have even made a plane of paper, Rahul mocked.

Ambani has already rejected Gandhi's allegations.

The Congress chief said Modi "is not a 'chowkidar' (watchman) of farmers and youth but of Ambani." Attacking Chief Minister Raman Singh over his son's name allegedly finding mention in the Panama Papers,Gandhi said even Pakistan's former Prime Minister (Nawaz Sharif) was jailed for the same case "but no action has been taken against Singhs son Abhishek Singh." Speaking about the problems of the farmers, he said the Congress party will address all those after coming in power in

He promised waiver of farmers' pending loans within 10 days, if his party comes to power in the state.

Farmers are being seen as a major vote bank in the state by the ruling BJP and Opposition Congress - the two dominant players in the state

Gandhi also promised to set up food processing units in each district of the state where farmers would get better returns for their produce besides generating employment opportunities.

Better health and education facilities will be provided at nominal rates, if the Congress comes to power, he assured.

Gandhi said the state government had diluted all the laws enacted by the Congress to protect interest of tribals and farmers.

"If the Congress forms government in the state, all those laws will be strictly implemented for the welfare of farmers and tribals," he added.

Encouraging party workers to reach to the people at the ground and inform them about the misrule of BJP government, he said candidates for next month's polls will be as per the choice of party workers and nobody "dropped from parachute" will be given ticket.

This was the Gandhi's first visit to the state after the poll code came into effect on October 6.

Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in two phases on November 12 and 20.

Counting of votes will be taken up on 11 December.Eleven people, including two children, were killed and ten injured in two accidents in Andhra Pradesh Monday.

In a major mishap at Gollaprolu in East Godavari district, seven womend and a boy were killed when the mini-van they were travelling in was hit by a speeding lorry, a senior police officer said.

Eight others were injured, the officer said.

The victims belonged to Makavarampalem in Visakhapatnam district and had come to Kakinada in East Godavari district to attend a house-warming function.

The accident occurred when these people were on their way back home, police said.

Six people died on the spot and two others succumbed to their injuries in hospital.

Eight others have been admitted to hospitals at Pithapuram and Kakinada, local Inspector Appa Rao said.

The lorry driver fled the scene soon after the accident and police have launched a hunt to nab him.

In another mishap in the Agency area of Visakhapatnam district, three members of a family were killed when the autorickshaw they were travelling went out of control and overturned near a culvert.

Two women died on the spot while a six-year-old girl died en route to hospital, police sources said.

Two others, who sustained injuries, were shifted to King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam.

One of the injured was said to be in a critical condition.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Thirteen members of a family who were on their way to pilgrimage were among the 20 people killed when two buses collided head on in Pakistan's Punjab province that also left 30 others injured, officials said on Monday.

The accident happened on Sunday night in the D G Khan district of Punjab when a bus coming from Multan collided with another passenger bus coming from the opposite direction.

Twenty people including women and children were dead. The dead included 13 members of a family from Multan. The members of the family were going to Karachi to visit shrines of Sufi saints in Sindh, said Deeba Shahnaz, spokesperson of Rescue 1122, an emergency service that serves the Punjab Province.

According to Rescue 1122, some 30 passengers suffered injuries and of them the condition of 10 passengers is stated to be critical.

Citing witnesses, Shahnaz said that the accident happened when driver of the bus coming from Multan collided in an attempt to save a motorcyclist.

"The accident was so horrific that its collision sound was heard several kilometers away, she said.

People rushed to the spot and on their own started the rescue efforts and were later joined by the rescue officials who cut the buses and shifted the injured to hospitals.

President Dr Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed grief and sorrow over the tragic incident, expressing sympathy and condoled with the bereaved families.

He also directed to provide the best medical assistance to the injured passengers.

Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar also condoled over the loss of lives in the tragic incident.

He has sought a report from the officials on the accident at the earliest, Geo reported.

Road accidents are common in Pakistan. Most of the mishaps are caused due to reckless driving and bad roads.

In early August, at least 18 people, including women and children, were killed in a collision between a passenger bus and a tanker.

Similarly, in July, 11 passengers were killed and several others sustained injuries in a three-vehicle crash near Nawabshah in Sindh province.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Two passenger buses collided head on in Pakistan's Punjab province, killing 19 people and injuring over 40 others, police said on Monday.

The accident happened on Sunday night near Ghazi Ghaat area.

Nineteen people, including 13 from same extended family of Multan were killed in the tragedy, police said.

The injured were shifted to various hospitals by the rescue teams.

According to the police, the immediate cause of the accident was not known.

Road accidents are common in Pakistan. Most of the mishaps are caused due to reckless driving and bad roads.

Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed grief and sorrow over the tragic incident, expressing sympathy and condoled with the bereaved families.

He also directed to provide the best medical assistance to the injured passengers.

Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar also condoled over the loss of precious lives in the tragic incident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Military officers from the two Koreas and the US-led UN Command met again at the Koreas' border village Monday to examine an ongoing effort to disarm the area.

Demilitarising the Panmunjom village inside the Koreas' heavily fortified border was among many agreements the Koreas struck in September to lower military tensions between the rivals.

Under the deals, troops from the Koreas began clearing mines from Panmunjom earlier this month before withdrawing weapons and guard posts there. They eventually plan to have 35 unarmed personnel from each side guard the village.

Monday's trilateral talks are the second in kind in about a week. Officially, the village is jointly overseen by North Korea and the UN Command, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The talks are to review the demining work and discussing future steps in the area, South Korea's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

As part of the September agreements, the two Koreas are removing mines from another frontline area where they plan their first-ever joint searches for the remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War.

The Koreas also plan to establish buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries, and a no-fly zone above the border.

General-level officers from the Koreas are to meet at Panmunjom on Friday to discuss more details about how to implement the tension-reduction deals, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.

Also Monday, officials from the Koreas separately met at their recently launched liaison office at the North Korean border town of Kaesong for talks on how to cooperate in forestry sectors.

Seoul's liberal government is pushing for greater engagement with North Korea, but US officials say such moves should be in tandem with global efforts to denuclearise North Korea.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Two militants of NDFB (Ranjan Daimary) faction were thrashed by local people while they were trying to extort money from a contractor in Assam's Kamrup district Monday, police said.

When the cadres of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB-RD) were demanding money from one of the staff of the contractor engaged in construction of road at Hiragata the local people reached the spot and caught the duo and started thrashing them, officer-in-charge (OC) of Rangia police station, Ratan Das.

The local people also damaged the motorcycle in which the two militants had came to the village.

The local people then handed over the two militants to the police, the OC added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Twenty-eight women from Nepal, who were allegedly being trafficked on the pretext of jobs in gulf countries, were rescued Monday from two flats in Ghaziabad's Indirapuram, police said.

Based on a tip-off, raids were conducted and the Nepali women, in the age group of 20-30 years, rescued from two flats in Sarjan Vihar society of Nyay Khand II in Indirapuram, they said.

They were lured on the pretext of employment in gulf countries, police said, adding that a man, named Kedar, and five others have also been arrested in this connection.

Senior Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Krishna said the women were kept here for the last two and a half months.

Two of them, managed to free themselves from the flats and reached Geeta colony in Delhi, the SSP said.

Both the women then narrated their ordeal to their sister who works as a domestic help. The sister, then reached the police station and handed over a few mobile numbers and informed the police about the confinement.

The Delhi Police had alerted the Ghaziabad police about trafficking of the Nepali women after which the flats were raided and women rescued.

Apart from investigating a sex racket angle into the case, police are also probing the roles of the arrested suspects, SSP Krishna said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)In a bid to give a major boost to rural innovation sector, two-day 3rd Himachal Pradesh Science Congress began at IIT, Mandi on Monday.

During the event, scientists and researchers will discuss recent progress and future trends in technologies/ products relevant for rural transformation.

The event was jointly organised by Himachal Pradesh Council for Science, Technology, and Environment (HIMCOSTE) and IIT, Mandi on the theme "Rural Upliftment through Science and Technology Interventions".

Indian Statistical Institute director Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay presented her research on micro RNA and the significance of computational biology in addressing critical diseases and drug research and development for the same.

She emphasised on the need for machine learning in understanding biology.

Talking about the recently launched Vigyan Gram Scheme in five districts of Himachal Pradesh, HIMCOSTE member secretary Kunal Satyarthi urged the students and the scientists to contribute their research for rural upliftment.

"Let's transform these villages identified under this scheme into model Villages using science and technology," he added.

The Science Congress will feature popular lectures on contemporary issues by eminent scientists and paper presentations by researchers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)It could be a windfall gain for Arundhati Bhattacharya, the former chairperson of State Bank of India, who is set to join the Board of Reliance Industries.

Reliance Industries is one of the few companies that offer high commissions to its independent directors. In 2017-18, non-executive directors of the company earned a minimum of Rs 1.59 crore in remunerations (including sitting fee and commissions) for a full year of directorship.

Arundhati Bhattacharya, who retired as chairperson of SBI, the country's largest bank, on 6 October 2017, is also likely to draw a similar compensation as she joins the RIL board.

This would be a massive jump from her Rs 28.96 lakh full-year salary at SBI in 2016-17. In 2017-18 till 6 October 2017, she drew a salary of Rs 14.7 lakh. Even if RIL continues to pay the same kind of salary to its non-executive directors, Arundhati Bhattacharya may see her take-home salary jump by 5 times more than what she was earning every year as SBI Chairperson.

This jump in salary is possible even if she joins only the board of Reliance. By law she can be on the board of seven listed companies as an independent director.

Already there are reports that she may join Piramal Enterprises and ChrysCapital.

OP Bhatt, the former SBI chairperson, received Rs 3.92 crore as commission and sitting fee for being on the board of three Tata group companies - TCS (Rs 2.05 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 1.8 crore) and Tata Motors (Rs 7.2 lakh) - in 2017-18.

Independent directors' remuneration has always been an issue of debate among advocates of corporate governance. Some people say such high commissions can dilute the independence of independent directors.

Independent directors, based on their experience, expertise and network, are paid in two ways -- sitting fees and commission. The sitting fee can be up to Rs 1 lakh for every board meeting or committee meeting attended.

While sitting fees are nominal sums, it is the commission, which some companies pay to the independent directors that can influence their functioning on the board.

A committee formed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, has recommended a cap on independent director's remuneration, to ensure 'independence' of such directors on the board of a company.

The committee, which was formed to review penal provisions of Company Act 2013, has recommended imposition of a cap on independent director's remuneration, in terms of percentage of income, in order to prevent any material pecuniary relationship, which could impair his independence on the board of the company.Around 500 Japanese business leaders will accompany Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when he visits Beijing this week, amid an ongoing China-U.S. trade feud that is hurting industries on both sides.

A Japanese government official speaking Monday on routine condition of anonymity said Abe's three-day visit starting Thursday will mark a further step in returning bilateral relations to a "normal trajectory" following a 2012 spat over ownership of uninhabited East China Sea islands.

China is Japan's biggest trade partner and that relationship has taken on added importance following President Donald Trump's decision to raise tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods. Beijing responded with its own tariff hikes on $110 billion of American imports.

The official said North Korea will also be among the issues the two leaders discuss. China is the North's most important ally, but has enforced economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council aimed at forcing Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile tests.

The official said Japan also wants North Korea to address the issue of Japanese citizens it is suspected of abducting as a condition for improving relations with Tokyo.

He said China and Japan were in agreement on the need to keep pressure on North Korea, including strict limits on fuel imports that ban transfers between ships at sea that are a method of evading sanctions.

While Abe visited China in 2016 to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing, this week's visit will be the first formal one by a Japanese prime minister in seven years.

High-level exchanges were frozen in 2012 after Japan nationalized the islands claimed by Beijing, setting off violent protests in China.

That caused tourism and investment in China by Japanese companies to nosedive, and Chinese coast guard vessels continue to make regular incursions into Japanese waters around the islands.

The improvement in relations was marked by a May visit to Japan by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the ruling Communist Party's second-ranking official. President and party leader Xi Jinping is also expected to visit Japan at a future date.

The Japanese official said the sides were considering cooperation on infrastructure and other economic projects in third countries, possibly including Thailand. Japanese trade with China runs to about $300 billion per year, as opposed to $200 billion with the US and Japanese companies from carmakers to food processors are major players in the Chinese market.

While the official said Japanese firms share their European and American counterparts concerns about Chinese trade and technology practices, he said Tokyo prefers to pursue dialogue and engagement with Beijing rather than hiking tariffs as Trump has.

The Trump administration imposed tariffs this year on imports of steel and aluminum from Japan among other countries, and is also threatening tariffs on Japanese autos and auto parts.

Japan's growth is dependent on exports and any slowdown in pan-Pacific trade would hurt sentiment. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods also affect supply chains and other economic considerations for Japanese companies, the official said.

"We don't want to see U.S.-China trade frictions damage the international system," the official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Members of the 'Save Our Sisters Action Council', which had recently protested against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, accused of raping a nun, Monday met chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan seeking protection for the victim and those who supported her.

The members met Vijayan and informed him that the victim and the other nuns who supported her feared for their lives and sought protection for them.

The protest was held recently in Kochi demanding the Bishop's arrest, they said.

In a release, Fr Augustine Vettoly, convener of the action council, said they also wanted the probe to be conducted in a time-bound manner, a special court to be set up for trial proceedings and special prosecutor appointed.

The members also met Kerala Assembly Speaker P Sreeramakrishanan and wanted P C George, MLA, who had made several allegations against the victim, to be removed from the ethics committee and debarred, the release said.

The action council's move seeking protection for the nun came on a day when Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, a key witness in the Kerala nun rape case who testified against accused Mulakkal, was found dead under "mysterious circumstances" in Dasuya in Punjab's Hoshairpur district.

In her complaint to the Kottayam Police in June, the rape victim alleged that Mulakkal raped her at a guest house in Kuravilangad in May 2014 and later sexually exploited her on several occasions.

However, Mulakkal denied the charges as "baseless and concocted," insistingshe levelled those as the Catholic order had rejected her demand for favours.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Embattled Afghan election officials on Monday vowed to investigate the mishandling of the weekend's problem-plagued legislative ballot, as voters prepare to wait weeks for the results.

Initial figures show around four million voted in the long-delayed election that was extended by a day after many polling centres opened late or not at all due to glitches with biometric verification devices and missing or incomplete voter rolls.

That is less than half of the nearly nine million voters who had registered to participate in the parliamentary election, though many suspect that a significant number of those were based on fake identification documents that fraudsters hoped to use to stuff ballot boxes.

The turnout figure does not include those who voted on Sunday, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said.

A final number would be released after voters go to the polls in Kandahar province on October 27, it said.

Thursday's Taliban attack on a high-level security meeting forced Afghan officials to delay the ballot.

Elections also are pending in the southeastern province of Ghazni.

"Bearing in mind that nine million Afghans had registered, turnout can hardly be said to have been good," Afghanistan Analysts Network said in a report.

Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission said earlier it had received "thousands of reports of problems" over the weekend.

"We have assigned a commission to investigate the mismanagement and violations, including the late opening of the centres and use of biometric devices," IEC chief Abdul Badi Sayyad told reporters on Monday.

"Anyone who has neglected or is involved in shortcomings will be punished."



The IEC has been heavily criticised over the chaotic vote which was marred by scores of militant attacks that an AFP tally showed killed or wounded nearly 300 civilians and security forces -- more than four times the figure provided by the interior ministry.

Long queues of men and women were seen outside polling sites across the war-torn country, despite the Taliban's repeated threats to attack the ballot. More than 2,500 candidates, including mullahs, journalists and sons of warlords, competed for 249 seats in the lower house.

Preliminary results are scheduled to be released on November 10.

The IEC's chronic mishandling of the vote, which was three years late and largely funded by the international community, has all but dashed hopes it can competently organise the presidential ballot, scheduled for April.

The IEC had "many lessons to learn", Pierre Mayaudon, head of the European Union Delegation in Afghanistan, told AFP.

"In some polling stations everything went very well, in others it was a disaster.

"If we want the presidential election to be a success we must document the mistakes made to correct them as soon as possible.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Senior AIADMK leader and Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker M Thambidurai on Monday claimed DMK was in an understanding with the BJP and hence was not ready to project President as the Prime Ministerial candidate of its alliance.

"Is the DMK ready to announce as the Prime Ministerial candidate before the Lok Sabha elections? DMK is not ready to project as prime ministerial candidate, because of their understanding with BJP," he alleged.

Talking to reporters here, he said it would only be a political drama if the DMK said the alliance would select the prime minister only after the elections.

Thambidurai has been making the allegation that DMK was in touch with BJP in the backdrop of the arch-rival accusing the ruling AIADMK of being subservient to the central government.

Replying to a question, he said AIADMK was not bothered about the verdict in the case of 18 disqualified MLAs, loyal to ousted leader TTV Dhinkaran.Three women entrepreneurs from across India will be selected as part of a fellowship programme announced Monday that will allow them to visit the US and get hands-on experience on the working of a globally successful start-up in that country, officials said.

As many as 450 entrepreneurs were selected as part of the All India Roadshow on Women's Economic Empowerment through Entrepreneurship (AIRSWEEE) 2.0 this year and 125 from its previous edition in 2016.

The AIRSWEEE is TiE Global's marquee women's entrepreneurship programme, supported by the US Embassy in India, that seeks to not only economically empower women but also promote gender equity and boost their self-confidence.

"A pool of 575 women entrepreneurs drawn from 125 Tier-II and Tier-III cities of India have been trained by mentors from both the countries as part of the two editions of AIRSWEEE, spanning nearly 20 states. From this pool now, 30 candidates would be selected to shadow a successful start-up in their respective regions to gain exposure in the industry," Seema Chaturvedi, chairperson of Project AIRSWEEE, said.

A former TiE Global Board member, Chaturvedi said, from the group of 30, eventually three women entrepreneurs would be selected to visit the US on a sponsored trip, and they would experience from close the workings of a globally successful start-up there.

She was speaking at the opening of the two-day 'Women Entrepreneurs Conclave 2.0 - Engaged and Empowered' held here at the India Habitat Centre, where 25 candidates selected from stage two of the AIRSWEEE 2.0 participated.

The two programmes -- AIRSWEEE Scale-Up Fellows and AIRSWEEE Global Fellows -- were launched Monday by the TiE Global in partnership with the US Embassy in New Delhi and its four consulates in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Kolkata, the Embassy said.

MaryKay Carlson, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy, in her keynote address, said, US-India ties are "24x7, 365 days and 360 degrees".

"If there is a big pie chart, and we divide it into every realm of human endeavours, and put a spin dial to it... the dots on it may represent combating tuberculosis or combating terrorism, or entrepreneurship and women empowerment, security collaboration, education, environmental issues," she said.

"And, no matter where that dial lands, for US-India, every field is important. We never get to that point where we have to say, spin it again, we are such strong, natural allies," Carlson said.

On AIRSWEEE, the deputy chief of mission said the US government supported programmes that promoted women entrepreneurs because these programmes "benefit both our countries".

She added Indian entrepreneurs were not only solving problems in India but also in the US and around the world.

"What I find so impressive about entrepreneurs is the motivation, the vision, the guts to break stereotypes, break mould, get out there and try new ideas to improve the world," Carlson said.

Chaturvedi said most of the entrepreneurs were in the age bracket of late 20s and 30s.

"There was one 60-year-old entrepreneur too selected from Coimbatore, who had worked on organic products. And, a young 22-year-old from Bhubaneswar participated



in the event today. A woman we had earlier selected had suffered domestic abuse and entrepreneurship became a way out of it. So, our aim is to not just economically empower them but also promote gender equity and boost their self-confidence," she said.

The event also hosted an 'elevator pitch' session for 25 AIRSWEEE 2.0 mentees, chosen from cities, including Lucknow, Patna and Bhubaneswar. The 60-second pitch was judged by Erik Azulay, director of NEXUS programme, a business incubator housed at the American Center here.

"Funded by the US State Department, AIRSWEEE Scale-Up Fellows programme will provide mentorship to 30 young, innovative women from across India to scale up their enterprises through hands-on industry mentorship. The top three Scale-Up Fellows will be sponsored for a visit to the US as AIRSWEEE Global Fellows and will be mentored by a host US organisation that will provide them a window to global best practices," the Embassy said.

Chaturvedi said, the process for the fellowship programme is likely to be announced early December.

Anna Roy, adviser at NITI Aayog, urged women entrepreneurs to join the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) that was launched on the Women's International Day (March 8) to realise their entrepreneurial aspirations, scale-up innovative initiatives and chalk-out sustainable, long-term strategies for their businesses.

She said the NITI Aayog was open to lending support to the AIRSWEEE, but added, "We need to have deliverables chalked out, which should be timely monitored, before committing to having any entity as a partner onboard".

"We are also working on a chatbot and an app for the WEP," she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday welcomed Israeli investments in his state in areas like infrastructure development, housing, energy, water supply, and hospitals.

Singh, kicked off his official engagements with a meeting with officials of Israel's Tyros International Group Ltd to discuss investments opportunities in the Punjab's infrastructure sector.

In a tweet following the meeting, the Chief Minister said that he discussed "investment opportunities in Punjab's infrastructure development, including housing, energy, water supply, sewage treatment and hospitals".

He later went to visit facilities of NaanDan Jain Irrigation, accompanied by officials of the state, to witness latest technology deployed in precision farming and horticulture.

NaanDanJain Irrigation Ltd. is the leading global producer and provider of tailor-made irrigation solutions.

He will also be visiting several facilities and institutions working in sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, dairy and waste water management to tap opportunities that can address Punjab's requirements, and boost the state's internal security apparatus.

"Look forward to some fruitful discussions over the next three days," Singh tweeted following his arrival to Israel.

The company offers a wide range of cost-effective and customised technologies across more than 100 countries worldwide. Its expertise drives higher crop yields, minimising risks and saving precious non-renewable resources



Ahead of his visit, the Punjab chief minister had said his government was keen to tap Israeli technological advancements.

On Tuesday, a seminar, "Investment Opportunities in Punjab" has been organised to attract investments in the state from Israel.

The Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) will be signing MoUs with the Tel Aviv University and the Galilee Institute for cooperation in the field of agriculture.

Another MoU will be signed in the field of water conservation by the visiting delegation.

Singh has emphasised that farmers in Punjab should diversify their crop pattern and get out of the paddy-wheat cycle, replicating the latest practices of drip irrigation and hydroponics in view of the depleting water table in the state.

During a meeting with an Israeli delegation ahead of his visit, he had evinced interest in adopting Israeli know-how to boost the dairy sector.

He had also expressed interest in visiting Israeli orchards and nurseries to secure first-hand knowledge of the technological advancements in hybrid production of plants.

Punjab is also seeking Israeli assistance in improving the quality of citrus fruits as the state is a leading producer of Kinnow and wants to go for mass plantation of sweet oranges, which finds a remunerative market.

The delegation will be also given a presentation on Israeli expertise in the homeland security sector and will visit the academy of a leading Israeli security company during the trip.

Security officials from the state are said to have also made trips earlier to Israel to tap state-of-the-art technology and gain expertise in intelligence and homeland security to boost Punjab's security apparatus.

Singh is scheduled to call upon Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel and Minister of Energy and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz during his trip.

He will be also visiting the cemetery of Indian soldiers who laid their lives during the War of Liberation of Haifa in 1918.

Haifa celebrated the centenary year of its liberation by Indian cavalry units in September paying warm tributes to the courage shown by them in what is considered by most of the War Historians as the "last great cavalry campaign in history".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Amid a blame-game over the Amritsar tragedy, a case was filed in a Bihar court on Monday holding organisers of the Dussehra event and chief guest Navjod Kaur Sidhu responsible for mowing down of several revellers by a passing train, while the NHRC served notices to the Railways and the Punjab government.

Congress MP Sunil Jakhar and Punjab minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, however, came forward in defence of Sidhu and sought to put the blame on the Railways officials for the tragic incident in which nearly 60 persons, including for migrants from Bihar, had died while watching the Dussehra celebrations from across the tracks on Friday evening.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who has gone to Israel, reviewed the situation through video-conference with the state government officials and asked them to expedite the process of providing relief and compensation to the families of those dead and to the injured.

People angry over the train accident had pelted stones and clashed with security personnel on Sunday. They sat on the railway tracks, where the accident happened, and protested. They were later removed by authorities.

During the review meeting, the officials also told Singh that all victims, except one, had been identified.

Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, meanwhile, returned from the US, with officials attributing the delay in his return to non-availability of tickets and problem of connecting flights.

Goyal, who had gone to the US for an award ceremony, had said soon after the incidend that he was cancelling all his engagements there to immediately return to India. On his arrival, Goyal was briefed about the latest developments regarding the incident.

Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued notices to the Railways and the Punjab government, observing that it cannot be called a "sane act" for people to sit on railway tracks, but the "negligence on the part of the district authorities is apparent" as well in this "bizarre and horrific incident".

While it is rare for such a large number of revellers getting mowed down by a train in a single incident, nearly 50,000 people have lost their lives between 2015 and 2017 on railway tracks after being hit by trains, according to official data from the Indian Railways.

Detailed reports have been sought from the state's chief secretary and from the chairman of the Railway Board in four weeks, an NHRC spokesperson said.

"It seems that the local authorities and the organizers did not properly manage the crowd, gathered to watch the Dussehra celebrations. It was the responsibility of the State to provide proper safety and protection to the citizens during the event," the NHRC said while taking suo motu cognisance of media reports about the incident.

The railway authorities have stated that they cannot be blamed, as they were not informed about the event, while Punjab government has ordered a magisterial probe.

In distant Muzaffarpur, Bihar, a complaint case was filed in a court against Navjot Kaur Sidhu, seeking registration of a case against her.

The complaint claimed that Sidhu and organisers of the Dussehra event were solely responsible for the tragedy and the court should order a trial against her.

The case was filed by a social activist in a Chief Judicial Magistrate's court, which fixed November 3 as the date of hearing.

The complainant contended that a large crowd had gathered there due to Sidhu's presence and her emotive speech led to a surge in the crowd that spilled over to the railway track.

Besides, all the security personnel present at the venue were engaged in providing safety and security to Kaur, instead of controlling the crowd, members of which mere mowed down by a train near the Joda Phatak, when they were watching the burning of a Ravan effigy while standing on the railway tracks, the complaint said.

Hashmi alleged that Kaur, who was a doctor by profession, instead of helping the victims, fled the scene and made a false alibi that she was not present at the site when the accident occurred.

The footage of the incident shown on television had hurt him deeply, the complainant said, while praying for initiating a case against Navjot Kaur Sidhu under Indian Penal Code sections 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class), 336 (act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) among others.

If held guilty, the accused could be sent to jail for three months to two years.

Amid calls from opposition parties Akali Dal and BJP for action against the Sidhu couple, Congress MP Partap Singh Bajwa sought government job for family member of each victim who lost life in the incident.

Punjab minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, however, defended Sidhu, saying she was not at fault and blamed the railway gateman for the incident. He also rubbished the Shiromani Akali Dal's demand of removing her husband Navjot Singh Sidhu from the cabinet over the incident.

Earlier, Navjot Singh Sidhu had also targeted the Railways, asking how a "clean chit" was given to the loco-pilot of the train within "one day".

Defending his wife, the Congress leader had said as soon as she got to know about the incident, she went to the hospital to visit the injured.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Uttarakhand government informed the Supreme Court on Monday that it was contemplating an amendment to restore the provision of anticipatory bail, as done by Uttar Pradesh, to enable its citizens to get pre-arrest relief.

It told a bench comprising Justices S A Bobde and L N Rao that the state's high court had last month held that section 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which provides for grant of bail to persons apprehending arrest, would be applicable in Uttarakhand.

"438 CrPC is applicable. Provision of anticipatory bail is there in Uttarakhand now," the state's counsel said while referring to the high court's order.

The counsel said the state "in principle" agrees that the section should be available to the citizens.

The Uttar Pradesh government too had recently informed the apex court that the state Assembly has passed an amendment to re-introduce the provision for anticipatory bail, scrapped during the Emergency in 1976, and it was awaiting assent of the President.

The apex court was hearing a plea which has sought re-introduction of provision of anticipatory bail in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

During the hearing, the bench noted that section 438 of CrPC was rendered inapplicable in Uttar Pradesh by virtue of an 1976 amendment and Uttarakhand, which was carved out from Uttar Pradesh in November 2000, continued with this position.

"As far as Uttarakhand is concerned, we are informed by the deputy advocate general of Uttarakhand that the state was contemplating an amendment similar to the amendment passed by the state legislature of Uttar Pradesh (to re-introduce provision for anticipatory bail)," the bench noted.

The petitioner has sought restoration of the provision of anticipatory bail in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, saying its absence was "discriminatory" to the people of these states.

The top court had in 2008 recommended to the Uttar Pradesh government to take appropriate steps and bring an ordinance to restore the provision for anticipatory bail in the state.

Uttar Pradesh government had in 2010 brought an amendment in the law to include the provision for anticipatory bail.

The court had also asked Uttar Pradesh as to why it had not placed before the Assembly 'The Code of Criminal Procedure Uttar Pradesh (Amendment) Bill, 2010' after the President had withheld the assent and sent it back in September 2011.

In 2010, Uttar Pradesh had brought amendment to restore the provision of section 438 of the CrPC. In August that year the state Assembly had passed the Amendment Act to restore the provision.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)An export promotion organisation under the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has facilitated export of fresh bean from Guwahati to London on a trial basis to boost exports from the North East region, a release said Monday.

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) facilitated trial shipment of fresh beans, commonly known as hyacinth bean or lablab bean from Assam last week, the APEDA release said.

APEDA is working with various stakeholders to bridge the gaps for exports and to link produce of North East to the international market.

Earlier, successful trial shipments of fresh pineapples and oranges was done by APEDA, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)President and co-founder of US-based technology firm NVIDIA Corporation Jensen Huang Monday said artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to democratise innovation by commoditising software.

He was speaking at the fourth edition of the NITI Lecture Series, which among others was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"At the 4th #NITILecture, Mr Huang of @nvidia explained how AI's power like in automating the process of automation itself. How it can write code for complex use-cases by learning from examples. He emphasised how #AI can democratise innovation by commoditising software. #AIForAll," the Niti Aayog said in a tweet.

"The panel discussion during the 4th #NITILecture emphasised how since #AI is heavily context dependent, it is important to evolve India-specific nuanced & inclusive solutions. Discussions also included topics such as the explainability & ethics surrounding #AIForAll," it added.

According to the government think tank, the 2018 theme for the lecture series 'AI for All: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Inclusive Growth' was part of the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence aimed at evolving a robust ecosystem in India for AI research and adoption.

Union ministers, policy makers, experts from different walks of life along with Niti Aayog vice chairman, CEO, members and other senior officials were also present on the occasion.

The Union Budget 2018 had mandated the Niti Aayog to come up with a national programme on employing artificial intelligence towards national development and since the Aayog has published a National Strategy for artificial intelligence (AI).

The Aayog has also signed statements of intent (SoI) with industry leaders such as Google, Microsoft and IBM to leapfrog India into global arena of future technologies and enable use of AI in key, high gain sectors of social development -- healthcare, agriculture, smart mobility, education and infrastructure.

The first key note address 'India and the Global Economy' was delivered by the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

Bill Gates, Co-Founder, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered the second lecture in November 2016, and in May 2017, Michael Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, had delivered the third lecture of the series.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)As part of its initiative to pressure the Centre to enact a law to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders Monday met Gujarat Governor O P Kohli.

A delegation comprising leaders from Gujarat, led by VHP's joint general secretary Surendra Jain, called on the governor in Gandhinagar and handed him a memorandum.

In the memorandum, they urged Kohli to convey to the Centre the VHP's demand that the NDA government bring a legislation in Parliament for constructing a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, said state VHP secretary Ashok Raval.

Prior to his meeting with the governor, Jain told reporters in Ahmedabad that the decision to launch such a campaign was taken during a meeting in Delhi on October 5.

Jain said the ruling BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "committed" to building the Ram Mandir.

He said a law in Parliament for the construction of the temple was the only solution.

"There were three solutions for building the Ram Mandir. One was talks with various parties, another was (through) court and third was a law. Though talks were held several times in the past, it yielded no result," said Jain.

"We are in court since 1950 over this issue. But, we only received dates till now. We can't wait now. We don't know when the judgement would come. Thus, we strongly feel that bringing a law is the only solution left" said Jain.

He said, apart from meeting state governors and asking MPs to clear their stand on it, the VHP would hold rallies on the matter.

"This movement by the VHP should not be seen in view of the upcoming Lok Sabha election. On January 31 and February 1, the outcome of this nationwide movement will be presented in the Dharm Sansad at Prayag. Saints will take a call after studying the outcome," Jain said.

"Even the BJP has said several times that they are committed to building a Ram temple through any legal means, which include legislation. We trust the BJP on this issue," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Assam government has instructed all district magistrates and superintendents of police to take all measures to maintain the public utility services on Tuesday in view of the bandh call given by a bunch of organisations against the Citizenship Bill.

A government communique in this regard said that all necessary pre-emptive and preventive measures to thwart the bandh call must be taken in view of the judgement of the Gauhati High Court.

The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) have called the 12-hour statewide bandh Tuesday to protest against the Centre's bid to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, in the Winter Session of Parliament.

Political parties, including the Congress, have extended their support to the bandh in the interest of Assam and its indigenous people.

The state government has directed all district administrations to ensure that there is no bandh, with all deputy commissioners issuing orders that all shops, business establishments, educational institutions remain open, transport facilities should function normally and all government officials should attend to their duties, official sources said.

KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi said this was the first time that they had called a bandh and they would not call it off as the very ''existence of the Assamese and their identity was at stake by the Bill".

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was introduced in the Lok Sabha to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to grant Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who fled religious persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan and entered India before December 31, 2014.

Earlier in the day, Finance and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the Gauhati High Court had ruled that calling a bandh was an illegal act and so the statewide bandh called by 46 organisations on Tuesday cannot be allowed.

"All shops and business establishments should remain open while government employees must report for their duties or else it will be treated as a contempt of court," he added.

The Gauhati High Court had banned bandhs in the state and termed them "unconstitutional and illegal".

The ruling BJP's alliance partner, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), though not supporting the bandh, has called a separate rally Tuesday to protest against the proposed Bill, party president and Agriculture Minister Atul Bora said.

A team of AGP ministers, MLAs and leaders also went to Delhi to meet the members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Bill.

The All Assam Students' Union (AASU) is also not supporting the bandh as the students' body has a policy of not calling bandhs but "others have the democratic right to protest", AASU General Secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi told PTI.

"We are, however, opposed to the Bill and will in no way accept it", he added.

Assam Congress president Ripun Bora said the party has extended its support to the bandh on this issue.

"If the Bill is passed, it will go against the provisions of the historic Assam Accord", he added.

The All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) has also extended its moral support to the bandh called by the organisations on the issue of the Bill, a party release said.

The finance minister further said that following an assessment of the prevailing law and order situation in the state, permission will not be granted for the November 17 convention organised by the Citizen Right Protection Forum, Assam (CRPFA), a conglomeration of 26 Bengali organisations, in support of the Citizenship Bill.

Meanwhile, various district administrations in Assam have asked all the essential service providers to continue their services on October 23 and to renounce the bandh call of different organisations.

"The Police Commissioner of Guwahati, Pradip Chandra Saloi, assures that adequate security measures will be taken to ensure law and order in the district during the bandh," a release issued by the Kamrup Metro district administration said.

Police Commissioner Sri Saloi and Deputy Commissioner Virendra Mittal asked the members of different business organisations to keep their establishments open on October 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday made an emotional national apology to thousands of Australian victims of institutional child sex abuse for failing to protect them from the "evil dark" crimes committed over the decades and voiced his anger at those who have misused the "shield of faith and religion" to hide their misdeeds.

The formal apology followed a national investigation into institutional sexual abuse in Australia, which spanned five years and stunned the country with revelations of thousands of cases of shocking abuse in institutional settings like churches and orphanages.

In a speech which was broadcast live across the country, Morrison said the trauma suffered by the victims had been "hiding in plain sight for too long."



"To the children we failed, sorry. To the parents whose trust was betrayed and who have struggled to pick up the pieces, sorry. To the whistleblowers, who we did not listen to, sorry. To the spouses, partners, wives, husbands, children, who have dealt with the consequences of the abuse, cover-ups and obstruction, sorry. To generations past and present, sorry," Morrison said.

"Silenced voices. Muffled cries in the darkness. Unacknowledged tears. The tyranny of invisible suffering. The never heard pleas of tortured souls, bewildered by an indifference to the unthinkable theft of their innocence."



He said it was a sorry that dare not ask for forgiveness but rather "seeks to reach out in compassion into the darkness, where you have lived for so long" and assured them: "I believe you, we believe you, your country believes you."In a rare show of emotions, Morrison briefly broke down and fought back tears when he talked of meeting leading author and advocate Chrissie Foster.

"As a father of two daughters I can't comprehend what she has faced," Morrison said.

Two of Foster's three daughters, Emma and Katie, were repeatedly abused by a local school Catholic priest near their home in Oakleigh, Melbourne.

Morrison listed the many institutions where abuse has taken place.

''For too many years our eyes and hearts were closed to the truths we were told by children. For too many years governments and institutions refused to acknowledge the darkness that lay within our community. Today we reckon with our past and commit to protect children now and into the future,'' he said.

"I am angry too at the calculating destruction of lives and the abuse of trust, including those who have abused the shield of faith and religion to hide their crimes, a shield that is supposed to protect the innocent, not the guilty," he further said.

"We can never promise a world where there are no abusers but we can promise a country where we commit to hear and believe our children."



The Prime minister also noted the work government was doing in response to the royal commission, especially the national redress scheme.

The apology follows the release of last year's report by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse last year.

The apology comes 10 months after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse issued a damning final report into the abuse of children at a wide spectrum of institutions reaching back decades.

The report warned that children were still being sexually assaulted.

Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten both agreed to cancel Monday's Question Time in the House of Representatives out of respect for those affected by abuse.

Among the survivors watching the apology was 96-year-old Katie, who was abused at the Sisters of Saint Joseph orphanage at Gore Hill, on Sydney's north shore.

As one of Australia's oldest survivors of child sexual abuse, she said the apology seemed "very sincere".

The national apology was a recommendation from the royal commission, which held nearly 60 public hearings and 8,000 private sessions.

In its final report, the commission estimated the number of child victims in the tens of thousands, saying their abusers were "not just a few rotten apples".

Morrison announced that the Government would also set up a museum, to collect the stories of survivors, and fund a research centre to raise awareness about child abuse.

Shorten also condemned institutions that covered up abuse.

"It was never your fault," he told survivors. "Not then, not now. You have nothing to be ashamed of. There was nothing wrong with you and you did nothing wrong."



Shorten said the apology belonged to people whose lives had been ruined by their abuse and the royal commission was a singular opportunity to act for them.

"We have the power, the authority and the responsibility to turn these recommendations into actions, without caveats or compromise.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)"Bring your own noose" as you enter the "killing zone" -- anonymous briefings against British Prime Minister Theresa May are nothing new, but the ferocity of the latest batch sparked a fierce backlash Monday.

Many of May's critics and her allies rounded on unnamed pro-Brexit members of her Conservative party who used violent language to attack her Brexit strategy in the weekend newspapers.

One MP was quoted as saying that she should "bring her own noose" to a meeting later this week of Conservative lawmakers.

Another newspaper quoted an MP as saying that May was entering the "killing zone", with another adding: "Assassination is in the air".

A former minister reportedly said: "The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted. She'll be dead soon."



The comments drew a chorus of outrage from fellow Conservative MPs, with pro-Europeans through to ardent Brexiteers condemning them as "totally unacceptable".

Senior lawmaker Robert Halfon said it was "a shame on the Conservative party".

Opposition Labour MP Yvette Cooper said it was "dehumanising" and "normalising violence in public debate", noting the 2016 murder of her colleague Jo Cox by a far-right sympathiser.

Conservative MP Mark Francois, a member of a hardline eurosceptic group, said the language was "unacceptable".

But he told the BBC: "The problem is that there is a lot of frustration on the backbenches at the moment, both among Leavers and Remainers, at the general state of play." Fellow Brexiteer Conservative Andrew Bridgen warned: "At the moment that (language) is unhelpful. It won't persuade colleagues to back a change of leadership.

"It's actually going to be counter-productive at this point." The prime minister's spokesman refused to comment on anonymous briefings, but said: "Personal vitriol has no place in

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Bangladesh police on Monday arrested a prominent critic of the government who recently helped the country's embattled opposition parties forge an alliance amid fears that dissent is being stifled in the South Asian nation.

Police said Moinul Hosein, a top lawyer and a publisher of an English daily, was detained from Dhaka's Uttara neighbourhood hours after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina slammed him for his comments against a pro-government female journalist.

"He has been arrested after a warrant of arrest was issued against him", a senior Dhaka Metropolitan Police officer told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hosein, 78, who does not belong to any political party, emerged as a top critic of the government in recent months and was a key organiser of the recently formed alliance between the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other centrist parties.

Premier Hasina on Monday attacked Hosein for his comments against the woman journalist whom he described as "characterless", accusing him of collaborating with Pakistan during Bangladesh's war of independence against the Islamic republic, the state-run BSS agency reported.

She asked female journalists to protest Hosein's remark and urge them to file cases against him.

"Lodge cases against him, the law enforcement agencies and the government will do whatever necessary in this regard," she said, according to BSS. Hosein has apologised for the remarks.

of the arrest comes as Bangladesh opposition parties accuse the government of a massive crackdown against their members.

The BNP says police have arrested at least 4,000 of its activists including a prominent former minister on trumped-up charges since September.

Earlier this month the acting head of BNP Tarique Rahman, who now lives in exile in London, was sentenced to life in prison over charges he plotted a grenade attack on Hasina in 2004 when she was the leader of the opposition.

With a general election due in the next three months, Hasina expects a tough fight from the regrouped opposition, unlike in 2014 when the BNP and other parties boycotted the poll over fears of vote-rigging.

Bangladesh's parliament recently ratified a new and stringent digital security law, despite widespread criticism by journalists and rights groups.

The law was enacted weeks after top Bangladeshi journalist and activist Shahidul Alam was arrested during massive student protests in the capital Dhaka for making "false" and "provocative" statements on Al Jazeera and Facebook Live.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's demand for a law to construct a Ram temple in Ayodhya "proves" that the organisation would never change howsoever it tries to to improve its image by inviting prominent people at Sangh events, former finance minister Yashwant Sinha said Monday.

In an apparent reference to the government take-over of the debt-laden firm IL&FS, Sinha said the country was facing a "payment crisis" because public money is being "misused" to "bail out" banks and NBFCs through Life Insurance Corporation (LIC).

Addressing a press conference en route to Akola where he would address a rally of farmers Tuesday, the former BJP leader questionned the legitimacy of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief's demand for a Parliamentary law.

"How can an act of Parliament be passed when the issue (title suits for the disputed land in Ayodhya) is being heard in the Supreme Court.

"This (Bhagwat's statement) means that you want to prevent the apex court from giving the order. Though I had left the BJP, but (I know that) the BJP's stand is that this issue be resolved either through consensus or through the decision of court," he said.

"As the issue is being heard in the apex court, they should wait for the court's decision," he said.

In his annual Vijayadashmi address in Nagpur on October 18, Bhagwat said the government should clear the path for construction of the Ram temple through an appropriate and requisite law.

He had said the temple construction was necessary from the "self-esteem point of view" and it will also pave way for an atmosphere of goodwill and oneness.

Sinha said, "RSS invited former president Pranab Mukherjee, (industrialist) Ratan Tata and others (to address swayamsevaks in Nagpur) as a part of its image makover exercise. However, the RSS chief's statement proves that it (the organisation) will never change".

While Mukherjee, a Congress veteran, had attended the RSS event in June this year, Tata shared the stage with Bhagwat in August.

Sinha, who floated a front to take up the issues of farmers after quitting the BJP, said the BJP and Congress would face a tight contest in forthcoming Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh assembly polls.

"It is difficult to say who will win," he said.

Responding to a query on his prediction about the BJP's prospects in the party-ruled Rajasthan, which is going to polls in December, Sinha cited conversation he had had with a resident of that state.

"That person opined that the BJP will lose in Rajasthan," he said.

When asked if he would campaign for Congress or AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) in the forthcoming elections, Sinha said he would think over it if invited.

He also attacked the government on a string of issues including the current turmoil in the CBI.

"The government is finishing autonomy of independent institutions like the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and Reserve Bank," he said.

Referring to filing of an FIR by the CBI against its own special director in connection with an alleged bribery scandal, Sinha said the development was embarrassing for the investigating agency.

"What has happened to these organisations," he questioned.

Sinha said the country was facing a huge "payment crisis" and cited the IL&FS takeover.

"The government is misusing money invested by people in Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to bail out the banks and other financial institutions. The government is bailing out IL&FS and other NBFCs (Non-Banking Financial Corporations).

"The government is spending money of people parked in the LIC, thinking that it is its own money. The government is misusing the people's money to bail out banks and other financial institutions," said Sinha.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)BJP general secretary and Chhattisgarh MP Saroj Pandey Monday took a dig at Congress president Rahul Gandhi over his meeting with NGOs in Raipur, saying he shuns national organisations working for tribals and encourages those working against the country.

Gandhi should also speak to nationalist NGOs, she told reporters, responding to the Congress president's campaign in the poll-bound state, whose several districts have been badly hit by naxalism.

The Congress president should answer why the UPA government had employed somebody like Binayak Sen, who was accused of sedition and helping Maoists, and had helped NGOs which used foreign donations running into thousands of crores for "anti-national" activities.

"Is he going to the Naxal-hit Chhattisgarh with some hidden agenda," Pandey, a Rajya Sabha member from the state, asked.

In a swipe at Gandhi, she said he has been meeting farmers who remember the "anti-farmer" government the Congress has run under Ajit Jogi before the BJP came to power in 2003.

"There was a scam of over Rs 52,000 crore in the name of farmers' debt waiver, and the CAG had raised questions about it. Why has Rahul Gandhi been silence about it?" she said.

Farmers and tribals were exploited by the Congress government in the state, Pandey said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam Monday accused Maharashtra Cooperation Minister Subhash Deshmukh of fraudulently withdrawing government funds for a milk plant and duping the state exchequer of Rs 24 crore.

Nirupam shared documents related to the organisations in Solapur which he said are controlled by the minister.

"Subhash Deshmukh got a sanction worth Rs 24.81 crore from the Ministry of Agriculture under the National Agricultural Department Programme (NAFD).

"This amount was sanctioned to the minister in the name of establishing a milk chilling and milk powder manufacturing plant in Solapur," alleged the Mumbai Congress chief.

Deshmukh was not available for comments.

He said Deshmukh and his son Rohan withdrew funds in phases on behalf of their firm Lokmangal Multi-stage Cooperative Society Ltd.

"They withdrew Rs 2 crore in the first phase and Rs 3 crore in the second phase,"Nirupam claimed.

The Congress leader also alleged that Deshmukh had submitted "forged and fabricated documents" of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (Pune), Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (Solapur), Industrial Security and Health Department (Solapur), Food and Drug Administration (Solapur) and a fraudulent letter from Deputy Divisional Engineer, PWD (North Solapur) to avail the funds.

"However, officials from these departments clearly stated that no licences, permissions or orders of any kind were issued from their offices to Subhash Deshmukh's Lokmangal Multi-state Cooperative Society Ltd," Nirupam claimed.

He said four of these plants under the Lokmangal, located in different parts of Solapur, are in non-working condition while one plant doesn't exist.

"All the information is sought under the RTI from several departments concerned which stated that Deshmukh had submitted forged documents of several permissions," Nirupam alleged.

"Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis should either ask the corrupt minister to resign or sack him at the earliest," he demanded.

Fadnavis had earlier assured stringent action under MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) against builders involved in illegal construction activities, he said.

"Why isn't the CM taking any action against his own minister now who has encroached upon a piece of land reserved for the fire brigade"? he questionned.

The CM's hesitation in taking action raises the possibility of his involvement in this entire scam and many others committed by Subhash Deshmukh, alleged Nirupam.

"If the CM is not working hand in glove with the minister, he should take stringent action," he demanded.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The killing of a BJP and a TMC worker in two separate incidents in Birbhum district of West Bengal has triggered a fresh round of battle between the two parties with both blaming each other for the killings.

The body of BJP worker Tapas Bagdi was found hanging from a tree in Dwaraka village of Birbhum district, while TMC block president Dipak Ghosh was shot dead by unidentified assailants in the Khayrasole area of the same district Sunday night, police said.

Bagdi's family members said he had left the house after lunch. As he did not return home by night, his family started searching for him and found the body hanging from a tree.

The BJP Birbhum district leadership claimed Bagdi was a party worker.

Ananda Bagdi, father of the deceased, lodged a complaint at the Labhpur police station against five local TMC workers alleging that they killed his son, police said.

The district TMC leaders denied the allegations and said, "Our workers were not at all involved in this case."



Superintendent of Police (SP), Birbhum, Kunal Agarwal said the cause of Bagdi's death would be known only after a postmortem.

"We are now treating it as a case of unnatural death. We don't know whether the person was affiliated to any political party," the SP said.

On the Dipak Ghosh murder case, the SP said seven people have been detained for interrogation.

BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said the TMC had let loose a "reign of terror" across the state and was trying to annihilate BJP workers.

"The TMC is trying to kill our party workers. Our party workers are either harassed, threatened or killed just because they are associated with the BJP. This is really shameful," he said.

The incident brought back memories of two BJP workers found hanging in West Bengal's Purulia district on June 2 and May 31, respectively, just after the panchayat polls concluded in the state.

The central BJP unit had hold nation-wide agitations to protest against the killing of two Dalit workers. BJP national president Amit Shah had also held a rally in Purulia to protest against the killing and had called for defeating the TMC in the state.

TMC Khayrasole block president Dipak Ghosh who was shot at Sunday night by unidentified persons passed away at a private hospital Monday, police said.

Ghosh was riding a motorcycle with a party worker when unidentified persons fired at him near Khayrasole village. Ghosh received bullet injuries to his shoulder and the lower parts of the body.

Birbhum district TMC president Anubrata Mondal alleged that goons hired by the BJP attacked Ghosh.

BJP district president Ramkrishna Roy denied the allegations and claimed that the killing was a result of the TMC's infighting.

Roy's views were endorsed by BJP state president Ghosh who claimed that Birbhum district had over the years turned into a battlefield due to the TMC's infighting.

"The allegations against our party are completely baseless. The TMC leadership should first answer why so many incidents are being reported regularly about infighting within the party," he said.

Senior TMC leader and state minister Firhad Hakim termed the allegations of infighting as baseless and accused the BJP of killing TMC workers in the state.

"Just for the sake of power, the BJP is trying spread violence in various parts of the state. They are trying to terrorise us by killing our party workers. But we are soldiers of Mamata Banerjee and we won't let the divisive politics of the BJP succeed in the state," Hakim said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)As the 400-odd petrol pumps and CNG dispensing units in the capital remain shut Monday in protest against the Delhi government's refusal to reduce VAT on fuels, Chief Minister accused the BJP of "threatening" petrol pump owners to go on strike against the AAP dispensation.

"BJP people have threatened petrol pump owners of Income Tax raids if they did not go on strike. The oil companies also stated that tough action will be taken against petrol pumps not on strike," he said in a tweet in Hindi.

The AAP supremo said oil prices were the "lowest" in Delhi among four metro cities, adding petrol pumps were not on strike in Mumbai despite the oil prices being "highest" there "because the BJP was ruling in Maharashtra".

Kejriwal had on Sunday said that petrol pump owners told him "privately" that the strike was "BJP-sponsored" and "actively supported" by oil companies.

A call of strike was given by the Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA) to all the 400 petrol pumps along with linked CNG dispensing units in the capital in protest against the AAP government's refusal to reduce VAT on fuels.

The chief minister also reiterated his government's demand to bring petrol and diesel within the ambit of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

He also claimed that the prices of petrol and diesel rose because of "arbitrary taxes" levied by the Modi government at the Centre which should be reduced to provide relief to the people.

"Arbitrary taxes were imposed on petrol in the past four years by Modi ji and not us. Modi ji should reduce taxes to give respite to the people," Kejriwal said in another tweet.

In Delhi, petrol now costs Rs 81.74 a litre and diesel is priced at Rs 75.19 per litre. In Mumbai, petrol is sold for



Rs 87.21 per litre and diesel at Rs 78.82.Govt to give relief package for drought-hit Tharparkar: Imran Khan

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday directed authorities concerned to prepare a relief package for drought-hit Tharparkar.



A comprehensive report pertaining to the worsening state of drought stricken Tharparkar where malnutrition has claimed lives of a number of children was presented to PM Imran Khan.



Through the report, the premier was apprised of the terrible circumstances inside the Sindhs district.



Premier Khan expressed his serious concerns over the matter and directed relevant authorities to prepare a relief package for the famine-ridden population of Thar.



Earlier on Sunday, two more children succumbed to malnutrition in Mithis Civil Hospital, taking the toll of deaths up to 31 in this month, and 531 for the year so far. Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on October 19 directed the Health Department to set up medical camps in every district so as to deal with the health issues as a result of drought-like situation in Tharparkar.BJP's Tamil Nadu unit president Tamilisai Soundararajan Monday said her party would never have an alliance with corrupt parties and expressed confidence that it would win 'considerable seats' from the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

BJP had not yet started the process on forming alliances for the elections and a decision would be taken at the appropriate time, she told reporters here.

The party which was ruling in 22 states would "definitely win considerable seats" in Tamil Nadu and would not enter into alliance with corrupt parties, she said replying to a question.

In a veiled dig at AMMK leader T T V Dhinakaran, she went on to add that BJP would certainly not have any tie up with those "who had given Rs 20 as token" to voters.

She was apparently referring to the allegations that Dhinakaran's supporters had distributed Rs 20 currency notes to the voters as tokens of future bribe money for voting for him in the RK Nagar by-election held in December last year.

Dhinakaran, who then won as an independent from the constituency held by late chief minister Jayalalithaa, has denied the charge of bribing voters.

On the national political scene, Soundararajan claimed none of the allies of Congress was willing to accept its president Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate.

"Rahul Gandhi lacks the mass appeal and not a match to Modi... people will not not accept him as prime minister," she maintained.

When asked whether BJP was playing with Lord Ram in the north and Lord Ayyappa in the south, she said building Ram temple in Ayodhya was the party's declared policy.

The party wanted the tradition (on bar on the entry of women in menstrual age) in Sabarimala to continue, she added.

On Union Minister and party leader Pon Radhakrishnan's critical view of the "MeToo" movement, the state BJP chief said it could be his personal opinion.

Radhakrishnan has last week said the #MeToo movement was started by "people with perverted minds" and wondered if it was fair to level accusations over incidents that happened years ago.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Britain's politicians from across party lines on Monday condemned the increasingly "vitriolic" attacks on Prime Minister Theresa May over her Brexit strategy.

Many MPs expressed their anger over the very personal nature of the abuse by Brexiteers unhappy with the ongoing negotiations with the European Union (EU) within her own Conservative Party.

Over the weekend, a number of unnamed MPs were quoted in the media as saying that the British PM was set to be "knifed" over her failure to clinch a Brexit deal and would be "entering the killing zone" this week.

"This morning I've seen quotes from Tories to the effect that PM is 'entering the killing zone', faces 'assassination' and should take 'her own noose' to a meeting. Few disagree with her more than I do, but language like this debases Get a grip, Tories," tweeted Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister.

Opposition Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the influential Commons Home Affairs Committee, said the unnamed Tory backbencher who made such comments should be publicly named to stop them from doing it again.

"This is vile and dehumanising language towards a woman MP, towards a prime minister who, no matter how much you might disagree with her, is someone who is doing a job in public life," she said.

"Nobody should be subject to that kind of violent language, which I think is normalising violence in public debate at a time when we lost Jo Cox," she added in reference to the killing of Labour MP Cox by a constituent in June 2016.

From within May's own party, Conservative MP Heidi Allen said that whoever used such harsh language should be "thrown out the party", with many others saying that it was not reflective of healthy

"I don't intend to dignify those specific anonymous comments with a response," a Downing Street spokesperson said.

"The prime minister has always been very clear that we must set a tone in public discourse that is neither dehumanising nor derogatory. Personal vitriol has no place in our politics," the spokesperson said.

The attacks came as May addressed the House of Commons on Monday to update Parliament on the recent European Council meeting in Brussels, which had failed to break an impasse between the two sides over a so-called divorce deal.

She sought to stress on "significant progress" that had been made and claimed that the UK's withdrawal agreement with the EU was 95 per cent complete.

"There is agreement on 95 per cent of the deal with one real sticking point left, and a considerable one, which is how to guarantee no return to a hard border in Ireland," she said.

It has already been agreed the UK will maintain the status quo of the EU membership between the date of Brexit on 29 March next year and 31 December 2020 as part of a transition phase.

However, in an attempt to try and navigate the complex issue of keeping an open border on the island of Ireland, after UK territory Northern Ireland has officially left the EU, recently opened the possibility of the transition period being extended beyond the agreed 21-month mark.

This has been seen as further concession by the hard Brexiteers within the ruling Conservative party and added to the constantly building pressure on Theresa May's leadership.

In her statement on Monday May said that both an extension and a so-called "backstop", which would see Northern Ireland remain within the EU Customs Union while the rest of the UK was not, are "undesirable".

She said that while the best outcome would be that a future arrangement is in place by December 2020, an extension to the transition phase may be necessary only as an insurance policy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday called for the "truth" over the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

"I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms. We must get to the truth of what happened," May told parliament.

May was the first European leader to address the issue after Saudi Arabia on Saturday admitted that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate in what it said was a "brawl".

She was speaking the day before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to address ruling party lawmakers in an address he has vowed will reveal the "naked truth" about the case.

Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate on October 2 and Riyadh initially said that he had left and was missing. Saudi authorities later admitted he was killed in the building and 18 Saudi nationals had been detained.

In a joint statement, Britain, France and Germany on Sunday said Riyadh must clarify how Khashoggi died and its account must "be backed by facts to be considered credible".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The CBI has arrested its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving its Special Director and second-in-command Rakesh Asthana, officials said Monday.

Kumar, who was earlier the investigation officer in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, has been arrested on the allegations of forgery in recording the statement of Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in the case, they said.

It is alleged that a statement of Sana was purportedly recorded on September 26, 2018 by the investigating team headed by Asthana, but it emerged in the CBI probe that on that given day the businessman was in Hyderabad, they claimed.

In his statement, Sana had purportedly said that he had in June this year discussed his case with Telugu Desam Party's Rajya Sabha member C M Ramesh who, after speaking to the CBI Director, had assured him that he would not be summoned again.

"From June onwards, I was not called by the CBI. I was under the impression that investigation against me is complete," he is believed to have said.

The CBI has now alleged that Kumar had fabricated this statement as an "afterthought...to corroborate the baseless allegations made by Asthana against CBI Director Alok Verma to the CVC (Central Vigilance Commissioner)", they claimed.

They said the agency was also looking into the alleged role of other members of the special investigation team headed by Asthana.

Asthana, who was booked by the agency on bribery charges in an unprecedented action, had complained against CBI Director Verma on August 24, 2018 that he had taken bribe of Rs 2 crore from Sana to give him relief in the matter.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Fair trade regulator CCI Monday approved the acquisition of sole control of Gist Brocades International and Singapore-based DSM Sinochem Pharmaceuticals by BCPE Max Dutch Bidco.

According to the Competition Commission of India (CCI), BCPE is a company registered in the Netherlands and is indirectly controlled by Bain Capital Europe Fund, while Dutch firm Gist, through its subsidiaries, is engaged in the supply of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs).

Besides, DSM is primarily engaged in the business of providing management, corporate, administration, financial and other services to its group companies.

The CCI "approves acquisition of sole control of Gist-Brocades International BV and DSM Sinochem Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd by BCPE Max Dutch Bidco BV, the regulator said in a tweet Monday.

In a notice pertaining to the summary of the combination, CCI had earlier said there is no horizontal or vertical relationship between the parties in India. The only product relevant for the combination is API Amoxicillin Trihydrate. Therefore, the relevant market may be considered as the upstream market for API Amoxicillin Trihydrate.

However, the precise definition of the market can be left open, the regulator had added.

Amoxicillin Trihydrate is a penicillin antibiotic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Accusing the Centre of discriminating against Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan Monday said denying permission to ministers from the state to go abroad for raising funds for flood relief works was the latest example of its bias.

Denying permission to the ministers and other stands taken by the Centre regarding flood relief works could only be seen as "moves" against Kerala, Vijayan, who returned early Monday morning after a five-day visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), told reporters here.

Charging the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government with discriminating against Kerala, the chief minister said the Centre should not create hurdles for any state.

Noting that disasters had struck other states also, he said when Gujarat was hit by natural calamities, permission was granted for accepting foreign aid.

"If Kerala was allowed to take assistance from other countries, it would have been able to raise a huge amount. But the central government did not allow it.

"It was in continuation of this stand that the Centre turned down the plea of the state to send its ministers abroad to mobilise funds from expatriates," Vijayan added.

He further said it was no secret that the UAE government had promised a Rs 700-crore aid for flood relief works in Kerala.

Following his visit, the state was hoping that it would be able to mobilise much more assistance, the chief minister said.

The issue of acceptance of aid from the UAE had triggered a row, with the Centre deciding not to accept it for relief work, even as the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the opposition Congress in Kerala had come out against the government's move.

While the Centre had approved Vijayan's foreign trip, it had declined permission to 17 of the 20 ministers from Kerala, who had also planned to visit different countries in the Gulf and Europe to mobilise funds.

Kerala had suffered massive damage in the torrential rains that lashed the state in August, claiming 493 lives and leaving a trail of destruction.

The LDF government in the southern state had decided to raise Rs 15,900 crore as loan from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other funding agencies to rebuild the prime sectors of the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma Monday said any move to rename Shimla as Shyamala will be "absurd and totally unacceptable".

He said Shimla was the summer capital during the colonial era and has witnessed many historic events during the freedom struggle and hence, changing the name the city would be unjustified.

"It is absurd and totally unacceptable," he said, reacting to a campaign by some right-wing Hindu groups to change the name of the city to Shyamala.

The former Union minister said Shimla has a very rich legacy of the freedom struggle as it was the summer capital of the colonial empire and was established by the British.

"There is no historical evidence to justify any change in its name," he said.

Himachal BJP leader and state Health Minister Vipin Singh Parmar has said the state government might consider a proposal to rechristen Shimla to Shyamala if the people wanted such a move.

A campaign has been launched by some right-wing Hindu groups demanding that the capital of Himachal Pradesh be renamed.

Sharma, who hails from Shimla, said the town is also a heritage zone where building and monuments of the British period are being restored as part of a national heritage project.

"During the freedom struggle, many important meetings took place in the city that include the Simla Summit and the Simla Accord after the liberation of Bangladesh.

"It is a city identified with history and the freedom struggle. It has a rich legacy of the freedom struggle," he said.

The Congress leader said history could neither be rewritten nor be misrepresented but, "It has to be recognised".

"It is unfortunate that this government is in the habit of rewriting history.

"Instead of showing anything of its own achievements and accomplishments, renaming places has become a favourite pass time of this government," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)China's first private research university has been officially inaugurated in Zhejiang Province's Hangzhou city, official media here reported on Monday.

The university which was inaugurated on Saturday would push forward national higher- reform, state-run Global Times quoted experts as saying.

China's educational institutions are mostly state-owned and governed by ministry of Autonomy for top educational institutions has been a long-standing demand of the Chinese academic community.

Five Nobel laureates, including physicist Chen-Ning Yang and more than 70 representatives of domestic and overseas universities attended the founding ceremony of Westlake University in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province.

Westlake has 68 research group leaders, 139 students under joint supervision at the top Chinese institutes of Fudan University and Zhejiang University and 159 key researchers, the report said.

Schools of natural science, engineering and life sciences are located on a campus that can hold 120 independent laboratories and 2,000 research fellows, it said.

Another campus to be completed in 2021 will accommodate 300 labs and 3,000 doctoral students, said the website.

The university aims to be an explorer of China's higher- reform and a world leader in frontier technology, Westlake University President Shi Yigong, a biologist and former vice president of Tsinghua University in Beijing, said at the ceremony.

"We expect that the university will be a new research university that attracts world attention in 10 or 20 years, and advances human progress and world civilisation in its own way," Shi said.

In April Qian Yingyi, school board chairman, suggested the university president be granted maximum freedom in management, and teachers be given "maximum freedom in teaching."



Zhu Qingshi, former president of Shenzhen's South University of Science and Technology of China, told the Global Times that removing bureaucratic obstacles is difficult in practice and he hoped Westlake could succeed.

Donations to the university lack stability and continuity, and "higher-education will be difficult without national expenditure and support," Zhu said.

Westlake University's financial resources are raised by the non-public Westlake Education Foundation from high-profile business executives including Tencent Holdings Chairman Pony Ma Huateng and Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin, according to the university.

Its fundraising model was borrowed from universities such as Harvard and Yale, which are partly supported by social funds and by alumni, Shanghai-based site thepaper.cn reported.

Reduced bureaucracy will aid research, said Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow at the National Institute of Education Sciences in Beijing, "but how much it can achieve depends on local government.

Donations account for less than two percent of university funds in China while at top US universities they form over 30 percent, Chu said.

Unclear ownership and unpublished financial reports of Chinese universities discouraged donors, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A UN-backed fund has approved $43.4 million for enhancing climate resilience for millions of people living in India's coastal communities as part of its efforts to combat extreme impacts of

The grant is a part of more than $1 billion approved by the for 19 new projects to help developing countries tackle

The new project will be supported through the Development Programme (UNDP), and is an essential step for India in reaching its goals outlined in the and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

These global compacts call on every nation to end poverty and hunger by 2030, and to take strong action to ensure no one is left behind in protecting vulnerable people from the extreme impacts of

The 21st meeting of the (GCF) Board ended Sunday in Bahrain's capital Manama, approving over one billion dollars of new projects and programmes to support climate action in developing countries, and formally launching its first replenishment, a statement released by the fund said.

The 19 new projects amount to a total investment from GCF of $1,038 million, and including co-financing the projects will channel over $4,244 million of climate finance for low-emission, climate-resilient development.

At the end of the four day meeting, the Board decided to launch the process for the Green Climate Fund's first formal replenishment, marking a key moment in the development of the world's largest dedicated fund for climate action.

Funding approved at the meeting in Manama includes projects linked to geothermal energy in Indonesia and greener cities in Europe and the Middle East.

Under the project, over 1.7 million people are expected to directly benefit from livelihoods support, with another 10 million indirectly benefitting from improved shoreline protection, the UNDP said in a statement.

In reaching the for gender equality and reduced inequalities, the project is focused on providing tangible benefits for women, female-headed households, young people and the elderly, and members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes.

Over 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 will be sequestered through restored ecosystems over the next 30 years.

"India's coastal areas are quite vulnerable to climate change and this project focuses on selected vulnerable areas of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha states. The new project, with GCF assistance, will not only help enhance resilience and adaptability, but also lead to emissions reduction while providing support to local communities for their livelihoods," said Ravi S. Prasad, Joint Secretary, Climate Change, Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, Government of India.

The Government of India will finance an additional $86.8 million toward the new project to mainstream and accelerate the impacts of the grant, it said.

ALSO READ: Climate change and ethics

To protect life on land and below water as outlined in the 2030 Agenda, project activities will focus on the restoration and conservation of over 15,000 hectares of mangroves, coral reefs, seagrasses and saltmarshes. Communities, including local youth, will be trained to work with scientists in monitoring ecosystem health and coastal ecology, the UNDP statement said.

"In addition to helping communities establish more climate-resilient livelihoods, this multi-dimensional project will contribute to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 will be absorbed through restored ecosystems," said Francine Pickup, Country Director at UNDP India.

"It will also have considerable long-term environmental benefits including healthier ecosystems, better biodiversity conservation and improved buffering against climate change-driven extreme weather," said Francine Pickup, Country Director at UNDP India," Pickup said.

To strengthen climate risk-informed coastal management and infrastructure planning, the innovative project will create an online decision-support tool available via mobile phone for use by government officers, academic institutions, community members and scientists. The project will also build local knowledge of climate change and the associated risks via training and public education programmes.

India's coastline is expected to be among the regions most affected by climate change globally. The Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are both predicted to be subject to extreme climate variability, with the frequency and intensity of cyclones and extreme weather events projected to increase, particularly on the eastern coastline, the statement said.

According to a report from the World Bank, an increase in global mean surface temperatures of 2C will make India's monsoon highly unpredictable, while a 4C increase would result in an extremely wet monsoon (which currently has a chance of occurring only once in 100 years) occurring every 10 years by the end of the century.

India has about 6,740 km2 of mangroves, including some of the largest mangrove forests in the world. Mangrove cover along India's coastline has decreased by 50 per cent in some areas, largely because of human pressures, including alteration of flow of freshwater from upstream. Sea-level rise is predicted to result in further reductions, it added.A code of conduct for people in public life is very much necessary, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu said Monday, as he hailed former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri for his "integrity and moral uprightness".

Naidu, while addressing a gathering at the presentation ceremony of the 19th Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration to eminent jurist Fali S Nariman, also said there was a need to revisit the education system and highlight the contributions of "great" leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Shastri.

Urging people to follow the example of Shastri, he said, "Even after 52 years of his demise, we still remember him for his values, commitment, courage, and also dedication."



What made Shastri a unique politician was the fact that he did not have two sets of principles -- one for public consumption and the other for personal life, Naidu said.

"You will be surprised to know that he got a code of conduct (published) for those who are in public life. I feel it is very much necessary even today. More necessary and more relevant to have a code of conduct for the people in public life...which is lacking," Naidu said.

"Lal Bahadur Shastri was an exemplary leader, his humility, courage, determination, integrity and moral uprightness were legendary," the vice president said, lauding the former prime minister.

After presenting the award to Nariman, Naidu said the eminent lawyer and jurist was truly an example to be emulated by practitioners of law around the world.

"Younger generation, particularly from the legal fraternity, are all seing the turbulences in the legal fraternity...the fall of standards, including in the judiciary, we have seen what happened in the recent days," Naidu said, without elaborating.

He urged youngsters to emulate the example of great personalities such as Nariman.

Noting that several great rivers were named after women, the vice president also called for going back to traditions set by great people and treating women with respect.

"What is happening...even if they are isolated incidents, they are a national shame. We should all go back to our history, traditions set by great people," he said, in an apparent reference to incidents of violence against women.

Naidu also said that there was a need to revisit the education system.

"I wonder how we had a history lesson Robert Clive the great...A person who is an invader who ruled and ruined us. Lal Bahadur Shastri is great, Jawaharlal Nehru is great...We have so many people who are great people -- Rajguru, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, they should be part of our syllabus," he said.

Naidu stated that Shastri's 19-month prime ministership was quite eventful and described his various achievements from promoting green and white revolutions to steering India successfully during the turbulent times of the India-Pak war of 1965.

Beneath a gentle and soft exterior, Shastri carried an iron-clad will power, the vice president said.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Chairman of Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management (LBSIM) Anil Shastri and the institute's Director D K Srivastava, among others, were present at the ceremony.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Imran Khan strongly condemned killings of innocent Kashmiris

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan strongly condemned on Monday the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris by Indian security forces in occupied Kashmir.



The premier took to Twitter and stated, It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.



Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people.



Three of the martyred got killed when the troops blasted a house. The rest were killed in troops firing and in an explosion while people were removing the debris of the house. The incident followed a cordon and search operation by the occupation forces in the district.



The troops used bullets, pellets and teargas shells against the protesting youth. Doctors at Kulgam and Islamabad district hospitals said that they had received 44 injured youth. Some critically injured were shifted to hospitals in Srinagar.



Soon after the killings, the authorities suspended Internet services and imposed curfew-like restrictions in Kulgam district. Meanwhile, four Indian soldiers were injured in two separate attacks in Kulgam and Pulwama.Congress and BJP Monday raised the issue of alleged discrepancies and bogus voters in the Electoral Rolls in Telangana with Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat, who began a three-day visit to the state to review prepardeness for the December 7 assembly polls.

At a meeting held by Rawat, who is heading a 11-member Election Commission team, with nine recognised political parties in the state, Congress claimed there were about 68 lakh 'discrepancies' in the rolls released on October 12.

Senior Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy, who attended the meeting, said he conveyed the party's stand to the EC team that the "discrepancies" should be removed.

"I pointed out that there is a case pending in the high court on the issue. Now this becomes a court-monitored electoral roll. If the EC tries to go ahead and conduct polls on the basis of such flawed electoral rolls with full of discrepancies running into lakhs it will be the greatest disservice to democracy in this country," he told PTI.

He said the Congress with the help of a team of experts had identified the 'discrepancies' in the voters list after the draft roll was published on September 10.

"We still believe that there about 68 lakh discrepancies in the list released on October 12, Reddy added.

He also alleged that the EC officials misguided the Hyderabad High Court over the discrepancies during the hearing of the petition filed by the Congress.

The petition seeking to declare as illegal the special revision of voters in the state is scheduled to come up for next hearing on October 30.

The court had earlier restrained the EC from publishing the roll but gave the go ahead on October 11 after the commission informed that claims and objections can be submitted even after the rolls were released.

Senior BJP leader Indrasena Reddy said his party made a complaint about bogus voters that are still existing in the electoral list.

He also said his party suggested that ambulances and vehicles, which are used to refill cash in ATMs, should also be subjected to checks to control illegal money flow.

CPI Telangana Secretary Chada Venkat Reddy said the EC should keep tabs on the illegal money and liquor flow for free and fair elections.

All nine parties, including ruling TRS, attended the meeting.

The is the first visit of the top EC officials after the election schedule for the state was announced.

According to an official release issued ahead of the visit, the team would meet all the electoral officers and Superintendents of police of all the districts on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, it will hold meetings with Senior officials of Income Tax Department, Railways, airport and various banks.

On the last day of its visit, the team is expected to meet Chief Secretary SK Joshi and DGP Mahendar Reddy and address the media before leaving for Delhi.

The EC had on October 6 announced the election schedule for five states, including Telangana.

The polls to the 119-member Telangana assembly were originally scheduled to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections next year, but the house was dissolved on September 6 as per a recommendation by the state cabinet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Congress has never said "officially" that its president Rahul Gandhi should be the prime minister if an opposition alliance formed the next government, senior party leader P Chidambaram said Monday.

He insisted the Congress' focus was on dislodging the BJP government and bringing in a "progressive" alternative.

Chidambaram said the decision on who will be the prime minister in the event of an opposition alliance winning next year's Lok Sabha poll will be taken by its constituents.

"The Congress party has not officially said Rahul Gandhi should be installed as prime minister. When one or two persons spoke about it, the AICC leadership asked them not to discuss the issue," he told 18 Tamil TV channel.

"We don't have an issue over prime ministership," he said.

The former union finance minister said the Congress' primary focus was on removing the BJP government and replacing it with a progressive alternative.

"We want a government that doesn't snatch human freedom, one that doesn't intimidate citizens, one that doesn't impose tax terrorism on traders and entrepreneurs," he said.

Safety of women and children should be a key characteristic of such a government which would strive to ensure that farmers do not lose their livelihood, he said.

"That is our intention. The Congress party never said the prime minister should be from the party. Rahul Gandhi never said so. An alliance should take shape, that alliance should win, and the alliance parties will decide who will be the prime minister," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress MLA Hmingdailova Khiangte resigned from the membership of the Mizoram house on Monday becoming the fourth legislator of the ruling party to do so ahead of the November 28 state assembly poll.

With the resignation, the Congress' strength in the 40-member house has come down to 30, while that of opposition Mizo National Front (MNF) stands at 6. Four seats are vacant.

Mizoram is the only state in the north east under the Congress.

Khiangte submitted his resignation to Speaker Hiphei at his official residence, Assembly secretariat sources said.

When contacted Khiangte said that he would announce the reason behind his decision as well as the future course of action on Tuesday.

Resignations from the Congress began when R Lalziriliana, the state home minister and second-in-command of Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla's council of ministers, stepped down as minister on September 14 protesting against the government's refusal to create a separate Saitual district comprising his home turf Tawi seat.

Lalzirliana was expelled from the post of vice-president of the Mizoram Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) and the primary membership of the party on September 17.

He resigned from the party on October 12 and joined the opposition Mizo National Front on October 15.

Former health minister Lalrinliana Sailo had resigned from the state assembly on October 3 and also stepped down as the member of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), general secretary of the state Congress committee and primary member of the ruling party on the same day. He later joined the MNF.

Founded by legendary Mizo leader Laldenga in 1959, MNF is being headed by former chief minister Zoramthanga. The party is a member of the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Another Congress legislator Buddha Dhan Chakma, who was the former fisheries minister had resigned from the state legislature on October 16 and had joined the BJP in the presence of the visiting party chief Amit Shah the next day.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A Congress worker was allegedly stabbed to death, reportedly over a post on social media, in suburban Ghatkopar here in the wee hours Monday.

Manoj Dubey (45) was stabbed by two or three unidentified assailants near Asalpha Metro Station around 1.30 AM, a police official said.

A police team took him to hospital where he was declared dead on arrival, the official added.

Asked about some media reports which said a political post he had written on social media could have led to the killing, the official stated that the exact reason for the attack was yet to be ascertained.

A case of murder has been registered, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)An Uttar Pradesh policeman Monday bowed down and apologised to state cabinet minister Satish Mohana after hitting his car only to be shooed away by the vexed minister.

The policeman was driving one of the cars in Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's convoy when the accident occurred near Moti Jheel in Kanpur.

The CM was in the city to address the state working committee of Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha (BJYM)-- the youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

As the minister got out of his car, the policeman apologised and bent down to touch his feet but an angry Mohana took a few steps back and rebuked him publicly. Gesturing with his hand, he then asked the policeman to leave.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A on Monday sent son of former BSP MP Ashish Pandey, who was arrested for brandishing pistol at a five-star hotel here, to 14-day judicial custody.

Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmendra Singh sent the accused to jail till November 5 after the police said that he was not required for further custodial interrogation.

The court had earlier rejected his bail plea and issued a non-bailable warrant against him.

A video of the incident which occurred on October 14 went viral on resulting in public outrage. It prompted the police to step in and launch a hunt for the accused who had gone missing after the incident.

An FIR was filed on October 16 at R K Puram police station under various provisions of the IPC and the Arms Act relating to criminal intimidation and misuse of fire arms.A Delhi court on Monday sent son of former BSP MP Ashish Pandey, who was arrested for brandishing pistol at a five-star hotel, to 14-day judicial custody.

Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmendra Singh sent the accused to jail till November 5 after the police said that he was not required for further custodial interrogation.

The court had earlier rejected his bail plea and issued a non-bailable warrant against him.

Pandey had allegedly brandished a pistol at guests of a five-star hotel here threatening them in the foyer, a video of which went viral on the social media.

He hails from Lucknow and is the son of former Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Rakesh Pandey. His brother, Ritesh Pandey, is an MLA in Uttar Pradesh.

A plea was filed by Delhi Police which had registered an FIR on the complaint of the assistant security manager of The Hyatt Regency alleging that one person was flagging pistol in his hand in the porch area of the hotel after a tiff with a guest.

A video of the incident, which occurred early on October 14, went viral on social media resulting in public outrage. It prompted the police to step in and launch a hunt for the accused who had gone missing after the incident.

An FIR was filed on October 16 at R K Puram police station under various provisions of the IPC and the Arms Act relating to criminal intimidation and misuse of fire arms.

Pandey was booked under Sections 25 and 27 of the Arms Act and Sections 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

If convicted, Pandey may be awarded maximum seven years jail term along with fine for offences under the Arms Act.

He can also be given maximum sentence of one month's jail along with fine and a maximum jail term of seven years for the offences of wrongful restraint and criminal intimidation, respectively, under the IPC.

Pandey who had been dodging the arrest despite joint efforts by Delhi and Uttar Pradesh police, had on October 18 surrendered before a Delhi court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Nigerian authorities declared a 24-hour curfew Sunday in Kaduna after clashes between young Christians and Muslims left at least 55 people dead.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai posted a statement on Facebook from his spokesman stating: "The state government has declared a curfew in Kaduna metropolis and its environs to manage the situation."



"The governor appealed to all residents to do their best to uphold peace," the statement added.

Kaduna was plunged into communal violence this week after fighting broke out between Hausa Muslim and Adara Christian youths in the town of Kasuwan Magani's market following a dispute among wheelbarrow porters.

Two people were said to have been killed in the initial market fracas on Thursday.

The violence then dramatically escalated when Adara youths later attacked Hausa residents, burning homes, and killing dozens.

"Most of the killings were done in the second attack which took the Hausa community off guard," Muhammadu Bala, a Kasuwar Magani resident who lost his home, told AFP over the weekend.

Kaduna state police commissioner Ahmad Abdur-Rahman told reporters on Friday 22 people had been arrested in connection with the violence.

Kaduna state is where Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north meets the predominantly Christian south, and has seen previous bouts of sectarian violence.

In February clashes left at least 10 people dead and hundreds of homes and businesses burnt.

Major bouts of sectarian rioting in 2000 and 2002 killed thousands.

The latest outbreak prompted President Muhammadu Buhari to express concern that Nigerians were too frequently resorting to violence over misunderstandings that could be resolved peacefully.

"No culture and religion supports the disregard for the sanctity of life," he said, adding that "peaceful coexistence is necessary for the progress of any society and its wellbeing".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Born in a red-light area in abject poverty, she was married to an abusive man when she was 16 and fought a four-year battle to get custody of her son. The odds were stacked impossibly high, but Uma Das fought back and is today a much sought after dance teacher.

Just 25, she also manages a unit to make sanitary napkins in Munshiganj, the red-light area in West Bengal's capital Kolkata.

Walking firmly on the path towards independence and empowerment, Uma Didi, as she is known, is a beacon of hope for other young women in Munshiganj who, like, her, refuse to be sucked into the vortex of flesh trade.

My mother was sold to a brothel. I was born in a red-light area. All my life, I have seen fear in the eyes of young girls. My mother fought tooth and nail to protect me from the flesh trade, Uma told PTI in a telephonic interview from Kolkata.

When she was 19, Uma witnessed a sex worker being burnt alive by a customer over a paltry sum of money and decided she would not allow young lives go up in flames.

The activist saw hope in dance and used it as a potent tool to hit back at patriarchy and poverty.

She joined Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a charitable trust. Apne Aap was founded by 22 women from Mumbai's red light district, with a vision of a world where no woman could be bought or sold.

Undeterred by threats from pimps, brothel owners and others, Uma uses dance therapy to help girls of the red-light area choose a life of dignity.

She teaches Rabindra Sangeet Nritya, a classical based dance form invented and devised by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, to girls in the area.

Uma learnt the dance form at Kolkata Sanved, an NGO which uses Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) as an alternative approach to counselling, psycho social rehabilitation, self-expression and empowerment.

The unique therapy model is designed to heal and empower individuals from marginalised communities, including survivors of gender-based violence and at-risk children and youth.

"I always wanted to dance. It is my salvation. Today, as a part of Apne Aap, I teach dance to girls of my area. We also run a sanitary pad making unit. Girls are also taught to make jute bags. These girls are often scoffed at for the work they do, but what they need is an avenue to earn their livelihood with dignity, Uma asserted.

Uma is also an international celebrity of sorts. Held out as an example for others, she has met former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and American actor Ashley Judd.

I met Hillary Clinton in 2012 when she visited Kolkata. I tied a band with the line Cool Men Don't Buy Sex' on her wrist. We met Ashley Judd last year when she visited my house as part of an initiative by Apne Aap, she said.

Uma, who helped show many young women the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, has waged a long, often lone battle against power.

When I started out, I was a nobody. I got threats from pimps, brothel owners and middlemen. I have led many raids in brothels and rescued young girls. Small kids are lured with the promise of chocolates and sweets. They are then sold off. We worked hard to create an effective circle of discreet informers who tip us off about any immoral activity, she said.

She continues to live in Munshiganj and strives to empower the girls of the area.

Discussing personal life, she said her mother has been a pillar of strength for her.

I survived an abusive marriage. I married a boy from our neighbourhood when I was 16 against my mother's wishes. I want to forget that phase of my life as it was a big mistake.

"I fought a long custody battle for my eight-year-old son. I have now filed for divorce. My strength in all these phases was my mother. She never lost confidence in me.

An Apne Aap worker praised Uma's determination and courage to fight the odds.

Uma today is in charge of Apne Aap's sanitary pad making unit in Munshiganj. She gets a stipend from Apne Aap. Five girls from the red-light area work under her. They make around 250 to 300 sanitary pads daily. The girls are usually paid Re 1 per sanitary pad. The unit was started in 2015.

It requires a lot of courage to stand up to power when you are a nobody. Uma strived to change her destiny and today she is a force to reckon with, she said.

Moving away from an unhappy past to a brighter future, Uma dreams big.

I want to raise my son by giving him a good education. I still remember that horrible day when a sex worker was burnt alive, I hope no life goes up in flames. I will continue to protect young girls from the flesh trade, just the way my mother protected me.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey Monday said the decline in Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) in the past three years has been the highest in several decades and it has come down by 37 points.

His colleague in the ministry Anupriya Patel said India has achieved impressive results in terms of accessibility and quality of services which resulted in reduced deaths of mothers, newborns and children, and improved health outcomes.

The ministers were speaking at a one-day national workshop for orientation of officials of 'aspirational districts' on health and nutrition, organised by the Union Health Ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Choubey said this is a first-of-its-kind initiative by identifying 117 districts under the 'Aspirational Districts' Programme with an aim to quickly and effectively transform them.

India has made great progress in the context of health indicators and have practically achieved Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets.

"The decline in MMR has been the highest since the last several decades which has declined by 37 points from 167/lakh live births in 2011-13 to 130/lakh live births in 2014-16 within a span of just three years. This accounts for an impressive 22 per cent reduction in MMR since 2013," he said.

An e-Mitra mobile application, designed to complement the Aspirational District Programme and offering a one-stop solution to access the Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A) programme related statistics from different sources through a combination of approaches, was also launched by the ministers.

Patel said that the government is committed to achieving the goals of the National Health Policy 2017 and of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

"We have achieved impressive results in terms of accessibility and quality of services which resulted in reduced deaths of mothers, newborns and children, and improved health outcomes overall," she said.

Patel said that in order to address the disparities, which are largely located in pockets within states, the government has identified 117 Aspirational Districts.

"It is expected that sustained and intensive efforts in programme implementation, monitoring and support will improve health and nutrition indicators and ensure that all people have equal access to high quality health care," she said.

The Prime Minister has coined the nomenclature of aspirational districts, thereby affirming a commitment to improvement in key indicators of these districts, to achieve the vision of a New India by 2022, she said.

V K Paul, Member, NITI Aayog, said that there is a profound responsibility as Aspirational Districts represent 20 per cent of the geographical area and 20 per cent of the population of the country.

Paul stressed the need for making more interventions in these districts and said that it requires a people's movement.

Around 117 districts have been identified for rapid transformation and inclusive growth and the RMNCH+A programme is an important pillar which will be strengthened under the programme.

The operational guidelines on aspirational districts will provide a framework for implementing action to be undertaken for various health initiatives to guide the state, district, block programme officers and other stakeholders in organising various activities, the ministry said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Imran Khan to visit friendly countries

ISLAMABAD: In the next two weeks Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit three friendly countries where he is likely to seek monetary assistance, according to sources.



Mr Khan would leave on an official visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday (today), said the sources. He would embark on a visit to Malaysia later this month and to China early next month.



A member of the federal cabinet said the prime minister was likely to take up the issue of financial aid with his hosts in the three friendly countries because Pakistan badly needed assistance to ease the ongoing economic crisis.



He said the government immediately needed $12 billion to $13bn to ease the financial crisis and retire foreign debt. We need $8bn to retire foreign debt and $5bn to run the affairs of government, he said.



If we get good monetary support from our friendly countries then there is a possibility that we will not require support of the International Monetary Fund [IMF], he added.



According to the Foreign Office, Prime Minister Khan is going to Riyadh on the special invitation of King Salman bin Abdel Aziz to participate in the Future Investment Initiative conference being held there from Tuesday to Thursday.



Interestingly, several countries have announced their decision to boycott the conference in reaction to the death of a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. But it is believed that the Riyadh conference, dubbed Davos in the desert, will still be attended by many leading businesspersons, investors, representatives of industry and media outlets.



The cabinet member said the prime minister would visit Malaysia for two days (Oct 28 and 29) and would meet his Malaysian counterparts and other government functionaries.



In his recent telephonic conversation with Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Mr Khan had expressed his desire to learn from their experiences. He had also accepted the veteran leaders invitation to visit Malaysia.



Prime Minister Khan wants to see the two countries collaborate with each other in various fields, according to the sources. It is expected that bilateral ties and cooperation between the two countries will be strengthened as a result of the visit.



Prime Minister Khan would embark on an official visit to China on Nov 3. There he will discuss in detail the strategic relations between the two countries.



During his meetings in the friendly country, Mr Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), said the sources.



Under the previous government there was an emphasis on infrastructure schemes, but the present government wanted projects involving agriculture, job creation and foreign investment take centre stage.



Reports, meanwhile, have said that due to suspension of funding to CPECs infrastructure projects, the National Highway Authoritys (NHA) road projects worth over Rs1 trillion have been adversely affected. Many projects in the energy sector have also been hit.



The affected projects include the 210km Dera Ismail Khan-Zhob road, the 110km Khuzdar-Basima road and a 136km portion of the Karakoram Highway.



In a recent meeting about his visit to China, Prime Minister Khan said that early implementation of the CPEC projects would help realise the true potential of the economic ties between the two countries.A delegation of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile Monday called on Himachal Pradesh Governor Acharya Devvrat at Raj Bhavan here and expressed their gratitude to the government and people of India for being an amiable host to the Tibetan refugees.

The delegation included the Members of the exiled Tibetan Parliament, Dawa Tsering, Jampal Tenzin, Tashi Dhondup and Samten Choedon.

On the occasion, the Governor said that there has been a history of co-existence and cultural exchanges between Tibet and India.

He expressed happiness that during the 60 years of exile, the residence of the religious leader Dalai Lama and the centre of Central Tibetan Administration has been set up in Himachal.

The delegation also presented their five-point request letter to the Governor and apprised him of the deepening crisis inside Tibet, seeking his serious consideration.

Tibet has received considerable global support in their freedom movement, but seek to garner more political backing and solidarity from Indian Parliamentarians and state legislatures, the delegation said.

They further urged the Centre to include the issue of Tibet in its discussions with China.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A Delhi court on Monday allowed the plea of Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash seeking direction to conduct the prosecution through the counsels nominated by the Delhi Police and not through lawyers empanelled by the AAP government.

The court allowed the prosecution to be conducted by an officer of Delhi Police not below the rank of Additional Commissioner of Police who has not been connected with the investigation of this case in any manner.

"Further, Siddharth Aggarwal and V Madhukar Advocates are permitted to conduct the prosecution on behalf of the officer of Delhi Police so appointed in this regard," it said.

"Let the Commissioner of Police, Delhi, assign the prosecution of this case to some officer not below the rank of Additional Commissioner of Police," it added.

The court further said that the investigating agency should supply the copies of charge-sheet and documents to the officer appointed so that he can conduct the prosecution from the next date of hearing.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal agreed with the submission that the accused named in the assault case include the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister of the Delhi government and prosecutors may be influenced, and hence unable to conduct the prosecution of the present case in a "fair, impartial and independent manner".

It said that an independent and impartial prosecutor is a boon not only for the State but also for the accused and it his duty has to keep the interest not only of the State secured but also that of the accused.

The court said that the request of the complainant (Prakash) for permitting the prosecution to be conducted by the Police can be allowed under section 302 CrPC and a senior officer may be appointed for this purpose, who may conduct the prosecution either himself or through his pleaders.

Under section 302 CrPC, any magistrate inquiring into or trying a case may permit the prosecution to be conducted by any person other than a police officer below the rank of Inspector; but no person, other than the Advocate-General or Government Advocate or a Public Prosecutor or Assistant Public Prosecutor, is entitled to do so without such permission.

The court said that in the present case, there is no doubt that the regular cadre prosecutor, who work under the state will have to prosecute the highest functionary of the state that is the Chief Minister of State.

"There is further no doubt that the Complainant has not been able to show any actual bias on the part of the Prosecutor of this Court. However, the genuineness of Complainant's apprehension of bias can also not be doubted for the aforesaid reasons," it said.

It added that both the sides claim the regular Cadre of Prosecutors are administratively subordinate to other and in that event, in order to dispel any apprehension from the mind of both the sides, an independent Prosecutor is all the more necessary.

Prakash had told the court that the Delhi Police had nominated three well reputed and experienced counsels for appointment as Special Public Prosecutors and their consents had also been obtained.

Despite recommendation by the officers of the Home Department, the request of the Delhi Police was rejected by the Home Minister, GNCTD on grounds that the case did not disclose any special features, he said.

The Home Minister, GNCTD also gave clear directions that the case would only be prosecuted by government prosecutors and such action, who is a Cabinet colleague of the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister, gives rise to apprehensions that a deliberate attempt was being made by the accused to retain control over the prosecution of the present case, he alleged.

The plea was opposed by the Delhi police claiming that the complainant (Prakash) has not shown any "actual bias" but only an unfounded apprehension of bias and the other cases of similar accused persons have been conducted regular prosecutors and no biasness has been reported.

It was submitted that the prosecutors come under the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi and the complainant as one of the highest functionary of state is also in a position to influence the prosecution.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Delhi Minister Imran Hussain Monday expressed serious concern over the fire at Bhalaswa landfill site and directed civic authorities to ensure such incidents do not recur, officials said.

The minister convened a meeting of senior officials of the department and the three corporations, representatives from various agencies, including the Delhi Fire Services and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), to review the preparedness of the municipal corporations in handling the incidents of any fire at the sanitary landfill sites at Bhalaswa, Ghazipur and Okhla.

"The commissioners of the three municipal corporations did not attend the meeting," the department said in a statement.

"The minister expressed serious concern at the fire breaking out at Bhalaswa, since Delhi is already bracing itself with the adverse impact of stubble burning in the neighbouring states which is likely to aggravate air quality of Delhi in the coming days," the statement said.

Hussain emphasised that in such a situation, all stakeholders, departments and agencies in Delhi must ensure that local factors do not adversely impact the air quality of Delhi.

The minister enquired about the action taken by the NDMC in extinguishing the fire at Bhalaswa landfill site.

Officers of the EDMC said that so far as management of Ghazipur landfill site is concerned, they have prohibited the entry of ragpickers, including children into the site. There is posting of adequate staff for round-the-clock monitoring of the site for preventing any unauthorised entry, the statement said.

In addition, the site is being monitored with CCTVs, the officers said.

Officers informed that a dedicated fire tender has been kept on stand by to meet with any untoward incident. In addition, the EDMC is also working on slope stabilisation for averting sliding of the garbage.

He asked the NDMC and SDMC to make necessary arrangements for fencing the sites, preventing entry of ragpickers and children inside the sites, provision of high mask lights within 15 days, posting of adequate staff for round-the-clock supervision of the sites.

"All the municipal corporations were also directed to regularly maintain logbooks for recording the incidents of breaking out of fire and action taken thereon," the statement said.

"The officers of the three corporations also informed that the three sites are primarily not scientifically designed and all of them have exceeded their prescribed garbage storage capacities," it said.

They are in the process of developing new sanitary landfill sites and waste-to-energy plants for better disposal and processing of waste.

The minister directed officers of Delhi Fire Services to deploy one fire tender exclusively for putting out fire at Bhalaswa site.

The DPCC was asked to coordinate with all the three municipal corporations, efforts to prevent fire incidents.

The minister also asked for speedy development of scientifically engineered landfill sites and for installation of waste-to-energy plants by municipal corporations so that the ever increasing garbage quantum is properly disposed, processed and managed, the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Delhi's air quality showed signs of improvement Monday as it moved from 'very poor' to 'poor' category, but experts said it might deteriorate in the coming days due to the toxic air coming out of a fire at Bhalaswa landfill site.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) recorded the overall Air Quality Index (AQI) of Delhi at 272 in the evening.

An AQI between 0 and 50 is considered 'good', 51 and 100 'satisfactory', 101 and 200 'moderate', 201 and 300 'poor', 301 and 400 'very poor', and 401 and 500 'severe'.

However, a fire has been raging at the Bhalswa landfill site here since October 20. Three fire tenders were working to douse the blaze, which was finally "almost" brought under control by 7.30 PM on Monday, a Delhi Fire Service official said.

A North Delhi Municipal Corporation official said, "We always keep a fire tender stationed there in case any fire occurs. In today's case, we do not know yet if the fire occurred on it own or some cigarette or 'bidi' triggered it. We are on stand by."





The Centre-run System of Air Quality Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) reported an AQI in the 'very poor' category.

On Sunday, the AQI had oscillated between 'poor' and 'very poor' categories.

Faridabad and Gurgaon recorded 'poor' air quality; Noida and Greater Noida too reported 'poor' air quality while Ghaziabad reported 'very poor' category.

The Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), under which a host of measures to control pollution is taken, is already in force in Delhi after the air quality had dipped to 'very poor'.

Meanwhile, Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain expressed serious concern over the fire that broke out in Bhalaswa, since Delhi is already bracing itself with the adverse impact of stubble burning in the neighbouring states, which is likely to aggravate air quality in the city in the coming days.

He directed officials of the Delhi Fire Services to depute one fire tender exclusively for putting out the incidents of fire in Bhalaswa landfill site.

In a meeting, which was convened by Hussain to review the preparedness of the municipal corporations in handling such incidents at the three sites -- Bhalaswa, Ghazipur and Okhla -- was informed that the three sites were not equipped to handle situations.



The three municipal commissioners did not attend the meet, the Delhi government said in a statement.

"The officers of the three municipal corporations also informed that the three sites are primarily not scientifically designed and all of them have exceeded their prescribed garbage storage capacities. They are in the process of developing new sanitary landfill sites and waste to energy plants for better disposal and processing of waste," an official statement said.

Hussain asked the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) to coordinate the efforts for preventing fire incidents with all the three municipal corporations.

The minister also asked for speedy development of scientifically-engineered landfill sites and also for installation of waste to energy plants by the concerned municipal corporations so that the ever-increasing garbage quantum is properly disposed, processed and managed.

The experts pointed out that the air quality is likely to be affected due to such fires.

Anumita Roychowdhury of CSE said, as winter approaches, toxic air emanating out of such landfill fires is likely to affect the air quality.

"If the wind speed is lower and the temperature dips, the polluted air coming out of the landfill fires will get trapped, which would severely affect the air quality," she said.

She said the municipal bodies should try and mitigate the damage to environment by applying slope stabilisation measures for landfill sites.

Civic bodies in east and south Delhi have already been working on stabilisation of Ghazipur and Okhla landfill sites.

"They must do it quickly as winter is close by, and fires during winter will make matter worse. Bhalswa fire cam recur so, civic authorities must take action urgently," she said.

On Saturday, a haze had engulfed the capital and the worst air quality of this season was recorded at 324.

An official had then said the air quality of Delhi might deteriorate to 'severe' category in the coming days as the air becomes heavier and results in the formation of smog.

The Supreme Court-appointed Environment Protection Control Authority (EPCA) Friday had held a meeting with officials of Punjab, Haryana and the Delhi governments to discuss the pollution situation in the capital.

An EPCA member Friday said stock of the situation was taken and it was decided that special attention would be given to vulnerable hotspots where 'poor' or 'very poor' air quality was observed.

The PM2.5 (presence of particles in the air with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres) was recorded at 134. The PM2.5, also called fine particulates, can be a matter of more serious health concern than PM10.

The PM10 level (presence of particles in the air with a diameter of less than 10 micrometres) in Delhi stood at 280, according to the CPCB data.

A CPCB official said a number of factors were responsible for the deteriorating air quality, including vehicular pollution, construction activities and meteorological factors like direction of wind, which is now flowing from the stubble burning areas.

Satellite imagery by NASA Sunday showed countless spot fires already burning in Haryana and Punjab.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Friday warned that Delhi would become a "gas chamber soon" as the Centre, Punjab and the Haryana governments were doing "absolutely nothing" for farmers involved in stubble burning.Dengue cases crossed the 1,000-mark in Delhi this season, with nearly 540 people being diagnosed with the vector-borne disease in October only, according to a municipal report released Monday.

Also, 411 cases of malaria and 109 of chikungunya have been reported this season till October 20, the report said.

The report says at least 539 of the dengue cases came to light in the first three weeks of October, which accounts for over 52 per cent of the total cases reported this season.

Of the 1,020 dengue cases this year, 374 were recorded in September, 58 in August, 19 in July, eight in June, 10 in May, two in April, one in March, three in February and six in January.

Two malaria cases were reported in February, one each in April and March, 17 in May, 25 in June, 42 in July, 82 in August, 138 in September and 103 till October 20, according to South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), which tabulates data on vector-borne diseases for the city.

A senior doctor at a government-run facility advised people to take all precautions like wearing full-sleeves and not allowing the breeding of mosquito larvae inside their homes.

"Water coolers should be dried up when not in use as dengue infection carrying mosquitoes breed there a lot. Mosquito nets should be used at home," the doctor said.

The cases of vector-borne diseases are usually reported between July and November, but the period may stretch to mid-December. No vector-borne disease case was reported till January 13.

The report said domestic breeding checkers found mosquito breeding in 2,10,241 households in the city till October 20. It said 1,69,512 legal notices have been served for various violations and "24,104 prosecutions initiated".

As a pro-active measure, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal had a few months ago directed local bodies and other agencies to intensify vector-control measures.

He had also asked for regular meetings at the level of district magistrates with all stakeholders to review the situation in their respective districts.

According to SDMC, 10 people died due to dengue in Delhi last year, of whom five were not residents of the national capital.

Overall, the vector-borne disease had affected 9,271 people in the city last year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi Monday claimed that the developments in CBI, with a case being booked against its second in command, is a poor reflection of the BJP-led NDA government's functioning.

The "internal civil war" that is going on in CBI shows the weakness and helplessness of the government, he told reporters here.

"Number one is registering FIR against number two. It has to be asked who is fighting against corruption," the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief said.

The CBI has arrested its deputy superintendent of police Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving its special director and second-in-command Rakesh Asthana, officials said Monday.

Owaisi, Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad, also hit out at the BJP over union minister Giriraj Singh's reported comments that Muslims should support the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)- Ethiopian doctors extracted over a hundred iron nails and other sharp objects from the stomach of a patient in the capital Addis Ababa at the weekend.

Dawit Teare, a surgeon at St. Peter's Specialised Hospital, said the 33-year-old patient suffers from mental illness and had apparently consumed the items, including 122 four inch (10 centimetre) nails, four pins, a toothpick and pieces of broken glass.

"The patient has been suffering from mental illness for the last 10 years and had stopped taking his medication two years ago, one probable reason he started consuming inanimate objects," Dawit told AFP after the two-and-a-half hour operation.

"I'm guessing he consumed the objects with the help of water, however he is a lucky person that those sharp objects didn't cut his stomach. That could have led to serious infections and even death," he said.

The surgeon said that while he had dealt with other cases in which people with mental illness had swallowed multiple sharp objects, he had never encountered a case on this scale.

Dawit added that the patient was recovering well.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Democratic Republic of Congo's ruling coalition spokesman said Monday his house was sprayed with bullets overnight in the capital Kinshasa, just two months ahead of a key vote.

"At around one in the morning, my residence came under heavy fire from unidentified men travelling in a Toyota IST," said Andre-Alain Atundu, a spokesman for the ruling coalition of President Joseph Kabila.

"Nobody was hurt but there was heavy damage. The roof was damaged and my two cars were riddled with bullets," he told AFP.

An AFP journalist also saw the traces of gunfire.

Atundu, who was the country's former security chief, is also currently a top official at the national electricity company.

Tensions are mounting ahead of the vote. Kabila, who has held office since 2001, has said he will not run again in the long-delayed December 23 ballot.

Months of speculation about Kabila's plans, marked by protests that were bloodily repressed, ended in August when he clearly said he was not contesting and threw his weight behind his designated successor Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary.

A candidate list finalised at the end of last month included opposition figures Felix Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe but confirmed the exclusion of former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and regional baron Moise Katumbi -- a move that raised protests from their powerful blocs of supporters.

On Sunday, Kinshasa police carried out searches for arms on Toyota IST vehicles, the capital's police chief Sylvano Kasongo said.

The cars, widely used as taxis in the sprawling city of 10 million, are often used by bandits and kidnappers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Eight more people have been arrested in connection with a recent clash between two communities in Jharkhand's Palamu district, a police officer said on Monday.

Prohibitory order clamped under Sec 144 CrPc on Chando village and its vicinity, in the aftermath of the violence, continues to remain in force, he said.

One person was killed and five people, including three policemen, injured on Friday after members of two communities clashed at the village in Chainpur police station area of the district over a route being taken for a religion procession on the occasion of Vijayadashami.

The warring groups ransacked half-a-dozen vehicles and set shops on fire in the area.

All eight of them arrested on Sunday in connection with the violence have been sent to jail, officer-in-charge of Chainpur police station, Sunil Kumar, said.

"Six people were apprehended and forwarded to 14-day judicial custody, a day after the clashes. Eight more were held on Sunday, taking the number of those arrested in the case to 14," he said.

Talking to PTI, Palamu Deputy Commissioner Shantanu Kumar Agrahari said the situation was under control and measures have been taken to thwart any attempt to foment trouble in the area.

"Adequate police force has been deployed in and around Chando village to ensure maintenance of law and order. The prohibitory order will continue to remain in force till further orders," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Bombay High Court Monday directed the special National Investigating Agency (NIA) court here to ensure that the trial in the Malegaon 2008 blast case is conducted without delay.

Six persons were killed and over a 100 injured when an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in Maharashtra, on September 29, 2008.

A bench of Justices SS Shinde and AS Gadkari Monday directed advocate Sandesh Patil, who appeared for the NIA, to ensure that the agency did not seek any adjournment on Friday, October 26, the next date of hearing in the case.

The special court is likely to begin framing of charges against the accused persons on October 26.

The bench was hearing a plea filed by Sameer Kulkarni, one of the accused in the case, seeking that the trial be expedited and that the special court be directed to conduct daily hearings in the matter.

The bench, however, refused to grant Kulkarni's plea for a day to day hearing. Instead, it noted that since there already existed a 2015 order of the Supreme Court directing that the trial in the case be conducted expeditiously, the special court must "ensure" that the order was implemented.

"The high court also said that the NIA must not seek any adjournments and let the framing of charges begin as scheduled on October 26. We gave our word to the court that we will not be the reason for any delays in the hearing. Besides, all parties and the NIA court have to implement the SC order and conduct the trial expeditiously," Patil told PTI.

The accused persons in the case are Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, and Sudhakar Chaturvedi.

All the above persons will face trial under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and other sections of the Indian Penal Code, including murder and criminal conspiracy.

The special court had, last week, rejected their pleas on the applicability of UAPA against them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)We offer wood pellets of Ukrainian origin for export. To meet your requirements, an inquiry with specifications needed: material, diameter, ash, moisture, packing and terms of supply.: The Central government Monday expressed hope exports would touch an all-time high in 2018-19.

Commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan underlined the commitment of the government to address concerns of labour- intensive leather and textiles sectors.

"Our exports will reach a record figure both in rupee and US dollar terms," he told reporters here after an interactive session with exporters, but did not quantify the figure.

He said the government would address the concerns such as easier availability of credit from banks and boosting schemes like the merchandise exports from India scheme, in the wake of the challenges in a global environment.

The commerce secretary said the export scenario in the region, especially in Tamil Nadu, was healthy, and lauded exporters for their performance despite protectionism and unilateralism.

"Despite the challenges, the exporters have been doing well over the last two-and-a-half years and we've since been having a steady growth," he said.

On the country signing a free trade agreement with the European Union, he said,"It is on the table and we will do our best to expedite it (pact).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Roger Federer has revealed that he has been suffering with a hand injury since the summer, but said the problem is no longer a worry as he heads into his home Swiss Open starting on Monday.

The 20-time Grand Slam winner told Germany's Sonntag Zeitung of the problem which began when he trained for the grasscourt season.

"I hurt my hand training at the start of the grass season," Federer told the newspaper.

"It's had more consequences than I thought. I dragged this pain for about three months.

"It's not an excuse and we're not going to make a fuss over it." He added:



"(Sometimes) I felt pain during the first ten minutes of a match warmup. But now I can let go of my forehand normally without thinking of it."



The 37-year-old Federer will start his bid for a ninth Basel title on Tuesday when he plays Serbia's Filip Krajinovic and could face a revenge match in the second round if he and John Millman both advance.

The 33rd-ranked Australian shocked Federer in the US Open fourth round in September.

The Swiss, who will be playing only his second ATP tournament since the US Open, has a huge reputation to live up to at home, having won the trophy in three of the last four editions.

The defending champion, ranked third in the world, takes the top seeding with German Alexander Zverev seeded second after losing in the first round in his only previous appearance here four years ago.

Marin Cilic, the Basel winner in 2016, takes the third spot and starts against Canadian teenager Denis Shapovalov while Zverev plays Robin Haase in the opening round.

Stefanos Tsitsipas, who on Sunday became the first Greek winner of an ATP tournament when he triumphed in Stockholm, makes his Basel main draw debut as fourth seed and faces off against Frenchman Jeremy Chardy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court Monday fixed November 15 as deadline for the Centre to finalise a standard operating procedure (SoP) for a cyber police portal to handle complaints regarding child pornography, child sexual abuse, rapes and obscene content on the Internet.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit noted that first version of the SoP was prepared on June 18 this year and it was subsequently revised on July 12.

The bench also noted the submissions of the counsel appearing for the Centre that the document had undergone some changes and comments were being received from various state governments.

It said that since these comments, improvements and suggestions from the state governments may be a continuous process, "we are of the opinion that a cut-off date must be fixed for finalising the standard operating procedure. Accordingly, we fix November 15, 2018 as the date for finalising the standard operating procedure".

"Of course, this does not mean that improvements cannot be made from time to time and as and when necessary," it said, adding that copy of SoP be given to all the parties involved in the matter pending before it so that they could make their suggestions to the Ministry of Home Affairs by November 9.

"This deadline should be communicated to the state governments also. We are constrained to fix this deadline because the Union of India has already had more than two months of experience in working the standard operating procedure and the portal and there must be some finality to the process," the court said.

During the hearing, the counsel appearing for the petitioner said that in some cases there was no response from the concerned nodal officer about the steps taken when a direction was given to the intermediaries to take down some objectionable content.

"It is pointed out that as per the information given by Additional Solicitor General 43 notices have been issued as on October 22, 2018, but the total number of take down orders passed is only 21. There is no clarity with regard to the balance 22," the bench noted.

"Similarly, the total number of complaints received are 630, but the number of complaints taken up for enquiry is only 355. It is again not clear what has happened to the balance complaints," the court noted in its order.

It asked the Centre to file an affidavit indicating the number of complaints received, the action taken in a tabulated form so that there was clarity on the action taken in this regard.

The counsel appearing for the Centre said they were contemplating having some grievance redressal mechanism which might require some time but efforts were being made.

The counsel said that names of all the nodal officers would be put up on the portal so that public was aware of the person with whom they can get in touch with in case any objectionable material was placed on the internet.

"In the meanwhile, an officer superior to the nodal officer may be identified so that in case of any disagreement with the views of the nodal officer, some sort of an appeal can be preferred to the higher authority," the bench said.

The apex court posted the matter for further hearing on November 22 and asked the Centre to file a fresh status report before it.

The court was hearing a matter following a letter sent in 2015 to then Chief Justice of India H L Dattu by Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala, along with two rape videos in a pen-drive.

The court had on its own taken cognisance of the letter and asked the CBI to launch a probe to apprehend the culprits.

The NGO's letter had also mooted the idea of maintaining a national sex offenders' register which should contain details of persons convicted for offences like eve-teasing, stalking, molestation and other sexual assaults.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A fire raging at site in Delhi since October 20, which has raised concerns about the air quality in the capital region further deteriorating, has been "almost" brought under control by evening on Monday, said a Delhi Fire Service officer.

The official said firefighting was still going on at the site.

Three fire tenders were engaged and the fire has been "almost" brought under control, he said.

The fire has raised concern that the pollution levels in Delhi might further rise.

Delhi's air quality showed signs of improvement Monday as it moved from 'very poor' to 'poor' category, but experts said it might deteriorate in coming days due to the toxic air coming out of the fire at Bhalaswa landfill site.

Meanwhile, Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain has expressed serious concern over the fire, since Delhi is already fighting the adverse impact of stubble burning in neighbouring states.

He directed officials of the Delhi Fire Services to depute one fire tender exclusively to put out future incidents of fire at site.

A North Delhi Municipal Corporation official said, "We always keep a fire tender stationed there in case any fire occurs. In today's case, we do not know yet if the fire occurred on its own or a cigarette or 'bidi' triggered it. We are on stand by."



Anumita Roychowdhury of the Centre for Science and Environment said toxic air emanating out of such landfill fires is likely to affect the air quality in Delhi as winter approaches.

"If the wind speed is lower and the temperature dips, the polluted air coming out of the landfill fires will get trapped, which would severely affect the air quality," she said.

She said the municipal bodies should try to mitigate the damage to the environment by applying slope stabilisation measures for landfill sites.

Civic bodies in east and south Delhi have already been working on stabilisation of Ghazipur and Okhla landfill sites.

"They must do it quickly as winter is close by, and fires during winter will make matter worse. Bhalswa fire can recur so, civic authorities must take action urgently," she said.

site falls under the jurisdiction of the NDMC. The nearly 50 metre-high heap at Bhalswa is already saturated way beyond its capacity.

(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.)Five persons were killed when a private bus rammed into a truck in Ahmednagar district of western Maharashtra early Monday morning, police said.

Sixteen others were injured and four of them were serious, a police official said.

A bus of Bhavana Travels, going to Pune from Aurangabad, hit a truck loaded with steel bars from behind near Ralegan Siddhi, 41 km from here, around 5.30 AM, said inspector Hanumant Gade of Parner police station.

While two of the deceased were identified as Amjad Shaikh (35) and Pramod Uttam More (30), both from Aurangabad, the names of other victims were not known yet, he said.

The injured were shifted to government hospitals in Pune and Shirur, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale on Monday called on Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi here and discussed issues related to bilateral cooperation as well as topics of common interest, including developments in the strife-torn Rakhine state.

He also signed an MoU that would add to local infrastructure capacity and help in creating more job opportunities in Myanmar.

"All matters relating to bilateral cooperation as well as matters pertaining to international and regional matters of common interest, including developments in Rakhine state were discussed during this meeting," said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi.

Gokhale also called on Union Minister of Transport and Communications U Thant Sin Maung and discussed issues related to connectivity and transport infrastructure being developed by India in Myanmar, it said.

After the meeting, Foreign Secretary Gokhale and U Win Khant, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Communications, signed an MoU for the appointment of a private Port Operator for the operation and maintenance of Sittwe Port, Paletwa Inland Water Terminal and associated facilities that are part of the Kaladan Multi Model Transit Transport Project.

"This is a significant step in the implementation of India's Act East Policy as its signing will enhance Myanmar's connectivity including with India and add to the development of the whole region, particularly in the Rakhine and Chin States of Myanmar," the statement said.

India has an overall commitment of USD 1.75 billion for developmental programmes in Myanmar.

Gokhale also called on Commander in Chief of the Myanmar Defence Services Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and discussed issued related to border security, bilateral cooperation, Myanmar's peace process as well as the situation in Rakhine state.

Over 720,000 of Myanmar's Muslim minority have fled villages in Rakhine state following a military crackdown in August last year, taking shelter in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

During his meetings, Gokhale conveyed the message that India valued its relationship with a close neighbour like Myanmar and would continue to deepen its cooperation with it in the areas of connectivity, security, people to people relation and economic and commercial cooperation, the statement said.

Myanmar is one of India's strategic neighbours and shares a 1,640-km-long border with a number of northeastern states including militancy-hit Nagaland and Manipur.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Myanmar in 2014 to attend the ASEAN- India Summit and then again travelled to the country in 2017 on a bilateral visit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Four members of a family, including two women, were charred to death after their house caught fire at Banapata village in Odisha's Jagatsinghpur district, a police officer said on Monday.

Nabaghana Sahu, his wife Kamala Sahu and son-in-law Harekrushna Mallick died on the spot on Sunday night, while daughter Rubina succumbed to her injuries at a hospital in neighbouring Cuttack district early Monday, Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) S C Mallick said.

Local residents, on noticing the smoke and flames, pulled the four members out of their house before informing the police, he said.

"It is not known as to what led to the fire at Sahu household in Kujanga police station area of the district on Sunday, but police are probing the case from all angles," the SDPO said, adding that the bodies have been sent for post-mortem.

A villager, however, claimed on condition of anonymity that Rubina Mallick, in her dying statement, said her husband set the house on fire following a dispute with Sahu and his wife.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A memorial commemorating the contribution of Indian armed forces in the World War I is being built in France and will be inaugurated by an Indian dignitary next month, an ex-serviceman overseeing the project said Monday.

Squadron Leader Rana Chhina (retd.), the secretary of the United Services Institution of India's Centre for Armed Forces Research, said the memorial is being built in Villers-Guislain, a village in northern France.

It will be inaugurated on November 10, which also marks the centenary of the armistice announced during the World War I.

"This will be first battlefield memorial to be built by the Indian armed forces, which will be dedicated to the Indian soldiers who lost their lives in France during the World War I," Chhina said.

There is another war memorial in Nueve Chappelle, but it was built by Commonwealth War Graves Commission in honour of the Indian soldiers who died in France and Belgium.

The memorial is likely to be inaugurated either by President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

The location is also the place where the Battle of Cambrai took place between the German and the British forces.

The 500-square metre land was given for the memorial for 1 Euro by Villers-Guislain, Chhina added.

"The memorial is being built by noted sculptor Ram Sutar and has an Ashoka Chakra over it," he said.

Nearly 1.5 million Indian soldiers participated in the World War I as part of the then British Indian Army, of which 1.3 million fought overseas in places such as Flanders (Belgium), East Africa, Gallipoli, Aden, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Persia and China, Chhina said.

Some 74,000 Indian soldiers lost their lives, he added.

From November 9-11, there is also an elaborate programme scheduled to commemorate the centenary of the World War I.

On November 9, there is a joint Indo-UK international seminar, titled 'India and the Great War in Research, Memory and Commemoration'. On the next day, there will be a joint Indo-UK military band concert, followed by a joint reception at the British High Commissioner's residence.

On November 11, there will be World War Remembrance Service at the Delhi War Cemetery.

Chhina said battlefield tourism was already popular in Europe and sustaining local economies in places such as northern France and Belgium. This concept, he said, was gaining prominence in India.

This year, he said, defence personnel of India and UK undertook a "staff ride" of Delhi to understand the 1857 freedom struggle.

"Such visits were important to understand military perspective of any event," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A 34-year-old woman, a cousin of gangster Neeraj Bawana, was injured after being shot at her residence in Bawana area on Monday, police officials said.

The incident comes almost a fortnight after her live-in partner was killed and she had escaped with a bullet injury.

The woman, Jyoti, was in a live-in relationship with one Amit, who was killed on October 6 by some unidentified assailants, the officials said.

Jyoti was also injured in that attack and a bullet had pierced through Amit's chest and hit her in the waist, they said.

On Monday, two men on a motorcycle stopped outside her home and asked her 16-year-old son whether she was present at her residence, they said.

While one of them stayed outside, the other man entered the house and shot at her.

Jyoti was shot in her cheek in the presence of her 12-year-old daughter, the officials said.

She is currently undergoing treatment at the Maulana Azad Medical College, they said, adding that police are probing all angles, including that of honour killing.

It is suspected that Amit and she were targeted because they were in a live-in relationship, the police officials said.

Jyoti has two children from her first marriage and she left her first husband Satpal nine years ago, they added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Trump administration is considering a move to define the concept of sex under Title IX in a way that could essentially deny the existence of transgender people, including transgender students in the nations schools , the New York Times reports.

The report sparked outrage among advocates for transgender students Sunday.

Sex means a persons status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a memo, according to the Times. The sex listed on a persons birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a persons sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.

The agency is working to align the interpretations of Title IX among the federal departments that enforce it. Such a move would restrict civil rights enforcement by the agencies related to transgender issues. But transgender people could still take discrimination cases to court and challenge the administrations gender definition, a move advocacy groups quickly vowed to take Sunday.

According to the report, the proposal would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about ones sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

Advocates for transgender students have argued that the concept of sex in Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools, was intended to refer more broadly to the concept of gender. Several federal judges have sided with that argument, ruling that the law protects the rights of transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

In one of her first moves as U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos teamed with Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withdraw an Obama-era civil rights directive on Title IX that called on schools to recognize transgender students by using the appropriate pronouns, protecting them from harassment, and allowing them to use the facilities that align with their gender identity.

The Trump officials declined to take a position on Title IX and transgender students, saying it was up to schools to interpret the law. But the agencies civil rights arms have declined to take up claims of discrimination in the time since.

Some conservative groups whove opposed allowing transgender students access to restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity say it creates privacy and safety concerns for other students.

But school districts that have accomodated transgender students say they have faced few or no problems. And parents of transgender students have testified in state and local hearings that their children face great fear at school about issues as simple as going to the bathroom. Some students even refuse to drink water at school, dehydrating themselves to avoid the stigma they feel, their parents said.

Catherine Lhamon, who helped write the Obama-era guidance on transgender students in her previous role as leader of the Education Departments office for civil rights, responded to the report Sunday.

Trump Administration racing to narrow civil rights protections, explicitly trying to get ahead of court decisions that protect Americans. This move reflects a broader goal to redefine civil rights law by fiat rather than deferring to Congress to pass law https://t.co/RLU4mBUXXv -- Catherine E. Lhamon (@CatherineLhamon) October 21, 2018

The National Center for Transgender Equality also responded to the report.We produce sunflower oil for export at our plant with capacity approximately 600 tons per day, with raw material extraction.

Contact for details.Union minister and senior BJP leader Giriraj Singh Monday sought renaming of Bihar town Bakhtiyarpur supposedly named after Afghan military general Bakhityar Khilji, who is said to have invaded and conquered



the region nine centuries ago.

Situated on the outskirts of Patna, Bakhtiyarpur is the place where Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was born and had spent his childhood.

The town is believed to have been named after Bakhityar Khilji, who is said to have invaded Bihar upon the direction of the then Sultan of Delhi Qutbuddin Aibak.

Singh's comment met with strong disapproval from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) which shares power with the BJP in the state, as well as opposition parties like the RJD and the Hindustani Awam Morcha.

The minister also wanted the name of Akbarpur in his Lok Sabha constituency of Nawada, so christened after Mughal emperor Akbar, be changed.

He, however, did not suggest alternative names for these places.

"I hail Yogi Adityanath for renaming Allahabad as Prayagraj. If somebody captures your house while you are down then there is no reason why you should not reclaim it once you gain some strength.

"There are hundreds of such places across the country, including in Bihar which need to be changed. Bakhtiyarpur is a case in point, Singh told reporters here.

The Union minister, whose utterances over issues like Ayodhya and rise in Muslim population have stirred controversy in the past, was responding to queries about the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to change the name of the historic city of Allahabad.

The Union minister's demand for change of name of Bakhtiyarpur drew flak from ally JD(U).

JD(U) spokesman Sanjay Singh expressed strong displeasure over the BJP leader's remarks, calling him a darling of the media who loves to keep issuing controversial statements to remain in

Before speaking about Bakthiyarpur, he should have gained some knowledge about the history of the place, he said.

Giriraj Singh's statement was also mocked by RJD spokesman and MLA Bhai Virendra, who said can he rename his parents.

"He needs to remember the country belongs to both Rama and Rahim. Attempts to polarize voters in the name of Mughals and invaders would not succeed," Virendra said.

Former Bihar Chief Minister and HAM president Jitan Ram Manjhi, who was with the NDA till a few months ago, also disapproved of Giriraj Singhs statement.

He charged that the BJP government at the Centre has been a failure and was trying to deflect public attention by making provocative statements.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A class nine student alleged that she raped by four persons in her home in Bihar's Muzaffarpur town but police Monday said the medical examination of the minor has "not confirmed" gang rape.

Senior Superintendent of Police, Manoj Kumar said that medical examination of class nine student has "not confirmed" the gang rape with her.

Earlier in the day, the girl had alleged that she was raped by four persons in her house located at Imli chowk under Mithanpura police station area on Sunday.

An FIR was registered by the police on the basis of the victim's statement, the SSP said adding that police are investigating the matter as why did she name the four persons as accused in the alleged rape case.

Four persons, one of them the owner of a carton factory, forced their way into the girl's house, beat up her family members, tied their hands and gagged them before committing the alleged crime, the girl had said in her police complaint.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Budget carrier GoAir, which started its international operations recently, will make Phuket as its Thailand hub and fly to the beach island from eight more Indian cities by next year-end, a top company executive said Monday.

The Wadia group-promoted carrier currently flies to Phuket and Male in Maldives from Mumbai and New Delhi as part of its overseas route network.

It had commenced its international operations with flight services to Phuket from New Delhi on October 11.

"We announce that Phuket is our first international route...we are making Phuket our Thailand hub. We already have routes from Mumbai and Delhi to Phuket, and by the end of next year, we will increase this to 10 cities flying direct to Phuket," GoAir managing director Jeh Wadia was quoted as saying in a release by Royal Phuket Marina.

With the introduction of these flights, GoAir aims to amplify and replicate its domestic success story, he added.

GoAir, which launched its domestic operations in November 2005, was granted rights in August 2016 to operate to nine countries, including China, Vietnam, Maldives, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among others.

The city-based carried had qualified for overseas flights two years ago when it took delivery of its 20th aircraft, which was also its first Airbus A320 Neo.

The no-frills carrier at present operates over 1,550 weekly flights across 23 domestic and two international destinations, with a fleet of 41 Airbus A320 planes, including 22 A320 Neos.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)High tariff duties coupled with an increasing gap in gold prices between India and Myanmar has led to an upsurge in smuggling of the yellow metal across the international border, a report compiled by anti-smuggling unit of Imphal customs division has said.

Manipur shares a 398-km-long porous international border with the neighbouring country.

An official of the customs division feels facilitating "free movement" of citizens for a stipulated period from Manipur's border town of Moreh to adjacent Namphalong market in Myanmar has made the conflict-ridden state "more prone to illicit trafficking of contraband gold".

India and Myanmar border have a Free Movement Regime (FMR) which allows people living along the border to travel 16km across the boundary without visa restrictions.

"This unhindered movement across the border and lure for easy money have made Manipur a soft target for smugglers," the official added.

Last year, the anti-smuggling unit report stated, a whopping recovery of 137.4 kg gold, worth around Rs 40 crore, was made in Manipur alone.

The recovery from the entire northeast region amounted to 267.2 kg of gold, worth Rs 84.12 crores.

In 2016, the customs division had seized 16.15 kg gold, valued at Rs 10 crore.

"The report suggests that Manipur accounts for 45 per cent of the total contraband gold recovered from the region last year. The seized gold often finds its way to the state and other parts of the country as it has no markings to indicate the place of origin," the customs official said.

As of September this year, 42 cases have been registered and contraband gold worth Rs 12 crore recovered, RK Darendrajit, Assistant Commissioner, Imphal Customs Division, told PTI.

In November, last year, an individual was apprehended from Lokchao area in Tengnoupal district with 26.6 kg gold.

"Unlike other security agencies which make contraband gold recoveries through random frisking, we rely on intelligence inputs to make arrests and recoveries," Darendrajit stated.

Pointing out that "those arrested in the border area mostly act as carriers for a commission of around Rs 2000", he said it was hard to trace the kingpins as the highly-organized rackets operate very cautiously.

The "carriers", in order to deceive the security agencies, often conceal gold bars in their body parts to avoid detection on the Imphal-Moreh National Highway, another official, who did not wish to be named, told PTI.

"In August this year, two men were apprehended with 12 gold biscuits worth Rs 62 lakh inside their rectum," he said.

Interestingly, some of them even paint the valuable yellow metal in silver to hoodwink the customs division sleuths, he said.

Nonetheless, the consignments bound for mainland India, including metropolitan cities of Delhi and Kolkata, reach destinations as the demand for gold never wanes, the official added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The government has freed a set of spectrum in the 5 Ghz band from licensing for providing and partially services by

No permits would be required for the spectrum in the range of 5150-5250 megahertz band, 5250-5350 Mhz and 5725-5875 Mhz, according to an official notification.

"No licence shall be required under indoor and outdoor environment to establish, maintain, work, possess or deal in any wireless equipment for the purpose of low power wireless access systems, including radio local area networks operating in the frequency band 5150-5250 MHz; 5250-5350 MHz; 5470-5725 MHz; and 5725-5875 MHz," the government notification said.

The move is seen to push setting up of services in the country and facilitate development of ecosystem.



"The frequency range 5.1-5.3 Gigahertz and 5.7-5.8 Ghz is used for services all over the world. It is a highly appreciable move from government to de-licence these bands. The frequency range between 5.3-5.7 Ghz can be used for services," SN Gupta, secretary general, APT foundation of India under International Telecommunication Union told PTI.

The 5 Ghz spectrum frequency can be used for short range communications like for coverage within an apartment or shopping centres.

The government under Bharat Net project is planning to roll out 1 crore wifi hotspots in the country in rural area.

Besides, it is in discussion with telecom operators to roll out wifi in urban centres too.



Freeing of spectrum 5 Ghz range will also facilitate indoor communications services and reduce load on telecom networks.

Besides, the government is also planning to start field trials of 5G services to develop its ecosystem in the country.

In the notification, the government has clarified the power of device or equipment that should be used for accessing the free spectrum.

According to the notification devices that use wideband digital modulation techniques and provide a wide array of high data rate in mobile and fixed communications for individuals, businesses and institutions can be used in the de-licensed spectrum range.

Gupta said that can use the de-licensed spectrum range for free.The Civil Aviation Ministry plans to allow aircraft operators to deploy employees of aerodrome operators and domestic airlines for security duties.

The proposal is part of amendments mooted for aircraft security rules and it also comes at a time when the passenger numbers are on the rise.

India is one of the fastest domestic aviation markets in the world, registering double-digit growth for more than three years.

According to the draft Aircraft Security Amendment Rules, a domestic aircraft operator can carry out search of his plane or of other airlines provided the operator has a contract for security service with the entity concerned.

The security search can be done before taking the aircraft to security restricted area and before boarding of passengers after disembarkation.

Further, the ministry has suggested that an aircraft operator shall engage only those personnel for security duties who are "whole time direct employees of aerodrome operator and domestic airlines operator" with whom there is a contract in place for security services.

Such people should have been employed after proper training, selection procedure and certification in accordance with national civil aviation security programme.

'Security' refers to a means a combination of measures, human and material resources intended to be used to safeguard civil aviation against acts of unlawful interference, as per the ministry.

Another amendment proposed relates to aerodrome perimeter.

"Every aerodrome operator shall provide perimeter wall or other structures as prescribed by ICAO from time to time around the aerodrome," the draft norms said.

This requirement would also be subject to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) ordering any changes to the specification of the perimeter wall or other structures.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is the UN aviation watchdog.

Under the current rules, every aerodrome operator shall construct a perimeter wall of the height of 2.438 metre (8 feet) with overhung fence of 0.457 metre (1.5 feet) around the aerodrome.

The draft norms have been put up for public consultations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Centre on Monday submitted in the Madras High Court that it has instructed all state governments and Union Territories to disaffiliate schools prescribing homework in subjects other than recommended by the National Council for Educational Research and Training for classes 1 to 5.

The Human Resource Development ministry informed the High Court that the instruction has been sent to governments through a communication dated October 5.

The submission was made on the plea moved by advocate M Purushothaman seeking direction to CBSE schools to follow only NCERT syllabus and not to give homework up to class II.

As per the communication, governments are mandated to formulate 'Children School Bag Policy' to reduce the weight of the school bags in line with the guidelines issued by Telangana and Maharashtra governments.

This apart, the state and Union Territories have been directed to form special squads to inspect schools and prevent use of non-prescribed books.

In addition to this, the Centre also informed the court that a national level committee has been constituted headed by Ranjana Arora, department head, curriculum development and research in school and teacher and teacher professional development, NCERT for framing of the 'children school bag' policy.

Recording the submission, Justice N Kirubakaran posted the plea to October 24 for further hearing.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The organiser of an ill-fated Dussehra event here which saw at least 59 of its spectators being mowed down by a train hurtling through the crowd spilling onto a nearby railway track, claimed Monday that he had the necessary permission to hold the function.

The event organiser, Saurabh Madan, purportedly made the claim in a video saying that he had the permission from the police to organise the event.

The son of Municipal Councillor Vijay Madan, Saurabh also claimed that several announcements were made from the stage of the event, warning people to vacate the railway track.

His family had gone underground ever since the incident occurred.

Expressing his heartfelt condolences to the family members of the deceased, Saurabh said, "The incident was highly unfortunate."



He also claimed, "Some people having animosity with him are blowing the matter out of proportion and trying to give political colour to the incident."



"On that day, the announcement were made five to ten times from the stage to vacate the railway track because any train could come any time," he said in the video.

Dushera was organised after obtaining necessary permission from the Police Department, he said.

Madan further said the event was very much in the notice of the Municipal Corporation and that was why the fire tenders were deployed there for the people's safety.

He said Dussehra event was organised within the four walls of 'dhobi ghat' ground while the railway track was at some distance from the site.

Moreover, the sitting arrangement for the public was made inside the ground and not on railway track, he said.

"Those people, who were mowed down by the train, were standing on the railway track. They were not present in dhobi ghat ground," he said.

"All happened within a minute," he said adding that this incident was not a deliberate act.

At the end of the video, he urged people with folded hands with tears in his eyes, seeking their help for his family to overcome the situation. He said his entire family was shocked.

Following the Amritsar train incident, some protesters had even attacked Madan's residence and broke windowpanes by pelting stones.

Thereafter, Madan family had gone to undisclosed location and their mobile phones were switched off.

The police force has been deployed outside his residence as a precautionary measure.Alleging "interference" by Union Ministry of Minority affairs in the workings of the Haj committe of India (HCI), it's member Syed Muhammad Maqsud Ashraf Monday announced his immediate resignation.

Ashraf alleged that the HCI was an autonomous body but its decisions, in the interest of the Haj pilgrims, were being "overruled" by the ministry.

"I am resigning with immediate effect as member of the HCI. My resignation is to express my concern and dissatisfaction with the management of the HCI as a result of interference by the ministry," Ashraf told reporters here.

Ashraf said the rate of Goods and Services Tax (GST) for Haj flights was 18 per cent while that for economy flights was just 5 per cent.

Similarly, the HCI had decided to accommodate all Haj pilgrims in Madian at Markazia but the proposal was not accepted by the ministry. Now, most pilgrims have to stay outside Markazia and pay higher charges, he alleged.

Ashraf said that he had brought his concerns to the knowledge of the ministry and the chairman of HCI.

"I regret to say that HCI is not allowed to function as an autonomous body in the interest of hajis. HCI decisions are overruled by the ministry and it has not role and autonomy in the management of Haj," he said in his resignation letter circulated to media at a press conference.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Protesting for the last seven days against the state government's decision to hire 700 private buses for Haryana Roadways, the state transporter's employees extended their strike Monday by three days.

The roadways employees extended the strike a day after their talks with the Haryana government failed Sunday with the protesters sticking to their demand for roll back of the government's decision to hire private buses, said a member of striking employees' union.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, however, ruled out Monday to roll back his government's decision to augment the state transporter's fleet to ease people's travels.

The striking employees extended their stir fearing that hiring private buses was a part of the government's plan to privatise state road transport corporation.

They also accused the government of trying to benefit some private transporters by hiring private buses for roadways, a charge which the chief minister refuted stoutly.

Talking to reporters here on Monday, Chief Minister Khattar dismissed the allegations by the Opposition and the roadways union leaders that the government's decision to hire 700 private buses was aimed at benefitting private transporters.

Khattar said the roadways union leaders should raise issues pertaining to the employees and must not interfere into the government's policy matters.

We have already said these 700 buses will be under the control of the Haryana Roadways and will be part of its fleet, we are not giving permits to private players, he said.

He said the addition of private buses, which would be plied on kilometre-basis, would not affect the roadways employees in any manner.

He said the categories of people entitled to free or concessional travel passes would continue to avail the same facility in private buses as well.

Asked about the peoples' inconvenience due to the ongoing stir by the roadways employees, Khattar said the government has made alternate arrangements and would shortly hire new drivers and conductors to ensure no one faces any hardship.

The striking roadway's employees decided to extend their stir Monday in their coordination committee meeting, a union member said.

The coordination committee meeting has decided to extend strike by three days till October 25. Government is not serious on our demand, they are bent upon privatising the roadways," said Balwan Sigh, a member of the coordination committee of the Haryana Roadways Employees Union.

"The talks broke down yesterday because of the government's rigid approach,he added.

"We are clear that we will not allow them to hire private buses even if we have to continue our stir for long," he said.

The employees have been on strike since October 16 against the state government's decision to hire 700 buses from private owners. The employees union has demanded cancellation of the tenders issued till now for hiring 510 private buses.

Main opposition INLD, meanwhile, expressed concern over the continuing strike by the roadways employees and urged the chief minister to find an amicable solution to the problem in consultation with the employees.

"As a first step ESMA cases against the striking employees should be withdrawn and new fleet of buses should be purchased for instead of hiring private buses for the roadways, Leader of Opposition Abhay Singh Chautala said Monday.

There are about 19,000 employees in Haryana roadways, having a fleet of 4,100 buses. The roadways caters to the need of 12 lakh passengers daily. Defying ESMA, the employees have been on strike since Tuesday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Delhi High Court Monday permitted the AAP government to procure 500 standard-floor buses fitted with hydraulic lifts to facilitate accessibility to differently-abled persons in the national capital.

The court said there was no reason as to why it should prohibit the Delhi government from procuring more buses in pursuance of a tender for 1,000 standard-floor buses (SFB).

"That also when the government agrees in the affidavit before us as also before the Supreme Court that all SFBs now to be purchased would be provided and filled with hydraulic/mechanical lifts to facilitate accessibility to differently-abled persons.

"Taking note of all these factors, we are of the considered view that for the present, no further directions can be issued," a bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao said.

The bench passed the judgement dismissing two PILs by a differently-abled person, Nipun Malhotra, who had challenged the Delhi government and the DTC's decision to buy 2,000 SFBs instead of low-floor buses (LFBs) for the national capital.

The petitioner had contended that SFBs were not disabled-friendly as they were mounted on truck chassis and their height prevented differently-abled persons from boarding them.

After pronouncement of the verdict, Advocate Jai Dehadrai, appearing for Malhotra, said they would soon move the Supreme Court challenging the judgment.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led government and the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) had earlier told the high court that the SFBs proposed to be procured were disabled friendly as they would have hydraulic lifts for easy access.

The court, in its verdict, noted that the affidavits filed by the authorities showed that in Delhi, there are 1,648 SFBs in addition to the present proposal to procure 1,000 more SFBs which will take their number to 2,648.

There are 3,781 LFBs and the percentage of LFBs is 69.6 per cent, before procuring 1,000 buses, and after procuring 2,000 SFBs the percentage would come to 50.9 per cent and there is a proposal for procuring 1,000 more low-floor electric buses which would take the percentage of LFBs in the fleet to 56.7 per cent, it said.

"If that be the position, we have no hesitation in holding that the contention of the petitioner that all buses to be procured should be LFBs is unsustainable and this is not made out on considering the judgement and law laid down by the Supreme Court earlier...," the bench said.

It said the mandate by the apex court law and the rules framed, which are statutory in nature, are that at least 10 per cent of the buses should be LFBs by March 2018.

Thereafter, further compliance and action to be taken was to be submitted to the Supreme Court which is monitoring the matter, it said.

"The petition filed by the petitioner cannot be considered and the mandamus/prohibition as sought for cannot be granted. The petition being devoid of merits stands dismissed," the bench said.

The apex court had on August 2 allowed the Delhi government to go ahead with procurement of 500 SFBs, out of the 1,000 proposed to be bought, and had said that the high court would decide regarding the remaining buses.

It had permitted procurement of 500 SFBs as an interim measure to take care of "pressing needs" of commuters using public transport in the city, after the Delhi government assured that hydraulic lifts would be installed in the buses to make them accessible by disabled persons.

The AAP government, represented through additional standing counsel Sanjoy Ghose, had earlier urged the high court to permit procurement of 500 SFBs for Delhi, saying that these vehicles were primarily meant for rural areas on the city outskirts where the roads were poor.

Advocate Aman Panwar, appearing for Congress leader Ajay Maken who had also opposed the procurement, had said that according to the DTC itself, LFBs were more advanced and safer than SFBs.

Malhotra's counsel had contended that lack of good roads in the rural areas cannot be a reason for buying SFBs as there would be disabled persons in the villages and the government was responsible for ensuring good roads.

He had also argued that as per the government's harmonised guidelines of 2016, LFBs with ramps were required, instead of SFBs with hydraulic lifts.

The contention of the petitioner was opposed by the Delhi government and DTC which claimed that procurement of SFBs was a "dire need" as its fleet of buses was facing a 40 per cent shortfall.

The DTC had also said that currently 66 per cent of its fleet was disabled friendly and after procuring of the 500 SFBs, the percentage would still be more than 50 per cent.

It had said that procurement of LFBs was not feasible economically as they were costly and their annual maintenance cost, as quoted by the supplier, was "unrealistically high".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Delhi High Court on Monday sought response of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation on a plea seeking quashing of an order that rejected a proposal to construct a health centre at a south Delhi locality.

The plea filed by a municipal councillor of the Congress claimed that no reasons were given by the standing committee of SDMC for rejecting his proposal to construct an Urban Public Health Centre (UPHC) and Maternity and Child Welfare Centre at Amar Colony in South Delhi.

Justice Sunil Gaur sought response of the municipal corporation on the petition and listed the matter for further hearing on January 23 next year.

The petition filed by Abhishek Dutt, councillor for a ward in Andrews Ganj in South Delhi, sought setting aside of August 31 order of the standing committee rejecting his proposal. It sought direction to approve the July 25 proposal issued by SDMC Commissioner.

The petitioner, represented through Senior advocate Sudhir Nandrajog, advocates Aman Nandrajog and Sumeer Sodhi, said the objective behind seeking the approval for the project involved the issue of larger public interest.

The plea said the proposal of construction of the health centre was initially proposed by Dutt before the authorities.

"In pursuance of the same, not only has the Health Department recognised the need and requirement of such a health facility at Amar Colony, the competent authority itself has granted all necessary approvals and permissions to further the cause of public.

"It may not be out of place to mention that even the work tender was issued and the bids were received for constructing the Health Centre at Amar Colony. All necessary procedure were followed and permissions were obtained...," the plea said.

It said that to give effect to the approved proposal of building the health centre, the SDMC commissioner had placed the ancillary proposal of disposing of the old structure of the senior citizen recreation centre, for the purpose of constructing the health centre, before the standing committee.

However, the standing committee, by "acting in an opaque and high handed manner" and without providing any reasons whatsoever, rejected the commissioner's proposal thereby stalling the entire scheme and progress of construction of the health centre.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Congress's Jammu and Kashmir unit Monday hit out at the Centre over the killing of soldiers by Pakistani intruders, saying "hollow rhetoric and directionless policies" of the Narendra Modi-led government has deteriorated situation in the state.

Three Army personnel were killed and another injured in a gunfight with Pakistani intruders along the Line of Control (LoC) in Sunderbani sector of Rajouri district Sunday.

Two heavily-armed intruders, believed to be members of a Border Action Team (BAT), were also eliminated in the gunbattle.

Paying rich tributes to the fallen soldiers of Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry regiment, Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee chief spokesperson Ravinder Sharma said, "There is a lot of anger amongst the people, especially in the border belt over the hollow rhetoric and directionless policies of the Modi government towards Pakistan and Kashmir as the result the situation is deteriorating in the state."



Strongly condemning Pakistan for its direct support to militants and continued efforts to send intruders to this side across the LoC, the Congress leader said Pakistan should be dealt "in the manner and the language it understands" in order to check the killings of security personnel.

"Unless a befitting response in a most effective and appropriate manner is given to Pakistan for its highly provocative and treacherous activities on the borders and in Kashmir, our innocent people cannot be secure and live in peace," he said.

Sharma questioned the Modi government for its "utter failure" to deal with Pakistan during the past four and a half years. Consequently, he said, people along the border have undergone heavy casualties and sufferings in the unabated Pakistani misadventures on borders.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which had stopped the supply of rations to six Bru refugee camps in North Tripura district three weeks ago apparently to put pressure for their repatriation to Mizoram, resumed it on Monday, officials said.

The supply was halted from October 1 as per the orders of the sub-divisional magistrates of Kanchanpur and Panisagar in the North district, Kanchanpur sub-divisional magistrate Abhedananda Baidya said.

It was resumed Monday following the MHA orders and will continue till January 15 next year, he said, quoting a communication from MHA Joint Secretary Satyendra Garg to Tripura Chief Secretary L K Gupta.

We were instructed by the MHA to resume ration supplies to the Bru internally displaced people's camps from Monday, the Kanchanpur SDM said.

At present there are more than 35,000 refugees lodged in six refugee camps.

Tripura Law Minister Ratan Lal Nath said at a programme at Naisinghpara refugee camp during the day that Bru refugees as citizens of India enjoy the fundamental right to food, clothes and residence.

"Everyone in Tripura has these rights and Bru displacement victims have also the same rights, he said.

Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb had taken up the issue with the MHA for resumption of supply to the camp dwellers and to ensure that not a single Bru refugee starves in relief camps in Tripura, he added.

Garg's letter, which was made available to press, said "...It was conveyed ... that assistance being extended to the Bru migrants in the form of food grains, cash doles will be available till 30th Sept, 2018."



"In view of the prevailing situation, it has been decided that the deadline for repatriation of these Bru migrant families be extended till 15th Jan, 2019. The assistance to them in the form of foodgrains and cash doles may also be continued till 15th January, 2019," it said.

So far, 40 families have returned to Mizoram from the six relief camps in Kanchanpur and Panisagar sub-divisions in North Tripura district. The repatriation process had started on August 25 and concluded on September 25 this year.

MHA Special Secretary (Internal Security) Rina Mitra, Joint Secretary Satyendra Garg and others had said in August that all refugee camps in Tripura would be shut down if the Brus failed to return to Mizoram within September.

The Brus had been lodged in the Tripura relief camps since late 1997 in the wake of a communal tension triggered by the brutal killing of Lalzawmliana, a forest guard, inside the Dampa Tiger Reserve in Mizoram on October 21, 1997, by Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) militants.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Thousands of Honduran migrants whose trek toward the United States has triggered a series of tirades from US President Donald Trump resumed their long march Sunday after crossing a river into Mexico.

Mexican authorities had managed to block the "caravan" of migrants on a border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala, but many later forged the river below using makeshift rafts -- regrouping early Sunday to march north. Trump said "full efforts" were underway to halt the caravan's progress toward the United States.

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther(n) Border," Trump tweeted.

"People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away." Nevertheless, around 3,000 people were marching in the caravan on the Mexican side, according to an estimate from a federal police commander whose forces were closely monitoring the migrants' progress.

About a thousand migrants, including women and children, were still stranded on a border bridge hoping to enter Mexico legally via Guatemala.

Mexican authorities insisted those on the bridge would have to file asylum claims one at a time in order to enter the country.

While the migrants on the bridge waited to be processed, those who had managed to get to the Mexican side were heading to Tapachula -- the next stop on a journey of at least 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) to the border between Mexico and the United States.

"No one is going to stop us, after all we've gone through," said 21-year-old Aaron Juarez, who was accompanied by his wife and baby and was walking with difficulty because of an injury.

"We are tired, but very happy, we are united and strong," added Edwin Geovanni Enamorado, a Honduran farmer who said he was forced to leave his country because of intimidation by racketeering gangs.

The caravan left San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras -- 700 kilometers to the south -- last weekend, following a call on social networks relayed by a former Honduran deputy.

The politician, Bartolo Fuentes -- a member of leftist former president Manuel Zelaya's Freedom and Refoundation Party -- told AFP he only reproduced a poster on his Facebook page.

The poster invited people on a "Migrant march" with a slogan: "We're not leaving because we want to, but because we are being expelled by violence and poverty."



The caravan has comprised between 3,000 - 5,000 people at various times as it moved through Guatemala, according to various sources.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said more than 5,000 migrants had entered Guatemala from Honduras, but that some 2,000 had since returned home.

Officials of the national disaster management agency, CONRED, told AFP that more than 1,000 Hondurans had left the caravan between Friday and Sunday, taken home on a fleet of buses laid on by the Guatemalan government.

On Saturday, Mexican authorities opened the border for women and children on the overcrowded bridge, taking them to a shelter in the city of Tapachula, about 40 kilometers from Ciudad Hidalgo.

Throughout Saturday, around 900 migrants -- tired of waiting on the bridge -- resorted to crossing the Suchiate River below on makeshift rafts and police did not intervene as they clambered up the muddy riverbank on the Mexican side.

Morales and his Honduran counterpart Juan Orlando Hernandez said after meeting on Saturday the march was "violating the borders and the good faith of the states." The Honduran president admitted however that social problems were a contributory factor: "Without a doubt, we have a lot to do so that our people can have opportunities in their communities. Migrants denied their motives were political.

"We decided to join those who were going," said Edgar Aguilar.

"This is not political. This comes from hunger, from the draught, it's for prosperity, for a better life. This is not political!" Another migrant, who gave his name as Jaled, said they were marching "because there is no work in Honduras, no education, nothing good. The cost of life increases every weekend."



The migrants are generally fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence.

With a homicide rate of 43 per 100,000 citizens, Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world, according to a Honduran university study.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Top nine property markets in the country saw 24 per cent increase in housing sales during July-September period, but new launches declined by 35 per cent resulting in a fall in unsold apartments, according to Corp-backed brokerage firm PropTiger.com.

Housing sales rose to 72,472 units during July-September 2018 from 58,470 units in the year-ago period across nine major cities. New launches dipped to 35,836 units from 54,170 units, while unsold stocks fell by 11 per cent to 7,80,424 units during the period under review, PropTiger said in its 'Realty Decoded' report for Q2 of FY19.

These cities are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurugram (including Bhiwadi, Dharuhera and Sohna), Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai (including Navi Mumbai and Thane), Noida (including Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway) and Pune.

"An increase in sales combined with a fall in launches is good for the industry. The resulting decrease in inventory is a harbinger of increased activity in the sector over the next 12 months and points towards an upward movement in prices going forward," PropTiger.com's CEO Dhruv Agarwala told PTI.

Ankur Dhawan Chief Investment Officer of PropTiger said that significant reduction in launches clearly indicates that developers are focusing on the completion of existing projects rather than launching new ones.

As per the data, Noida saw the maximum rise in sales by 59 per cent to 6,652 units, while launches fell by one-third to 1,617 units. Higher sales and lower new launches resulted in 20 per cent decline in unsold inventories to 69,953 units.

Sales in Mumbai region were up by 22 per cent to 22,969 units during the second quarter of this fiscal compared to the year-ago period. Launches fell sharply by 59 per cent to 11,603 units. Unsold stocks reduced by 8 per cent to 3,01,761 units.

Pune witnessed 50 per cent increase in sales to 13,833 units. New launches were down 44 per cent in this city to 6,248 units, while unsold stocks fell 12 per cent to 1,37,166 units. Old stocks fell by 12 per cent to 36,588 units.

Sales in Bengaluru rose by 27 per cent to 9,367 units, while launches were up by 30 per cent to 4,598 units. The unsold units fell by 14 per cent to 75,116 units.

Chennai saw 54 per cent rise in sales to 4,781 units. Launches jumped more than two-fold to 2,380 units. Unsold stocks in the city fell by 16 per cent to 33,852 units.

The apartment sales in Hyderabad rose by 49 per cent to 5,577 units, while launches jumped more than two-times to 3,296 units. Unsold stocks dropped slightly to 38,119 units.

Kolkata witnessed 6 per cent rise in sales to 3,915 units and 31 per cent increase in launches to 2,927 units. Unsold stock remained flat at 43,803 units.

Housing sales in Gurugram fell by 43 per cent to 3,332 units, but launches dipped by 46 per cent to 1,839 units. Unsold stocks fell 14 per cent to 44,066 units.

Ahmedabad saw 15 per cent decline in sales at 2,047 units, while launches fell by 28 per cent to 878 units. Unsold inventories fell by 12 per cent to 36,588 units.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court said on Monday that human-animal conflict, especially involving elephants, was a "problem" and the Centre should consider setting up a task force to ensure adherence to the guidelines on this issue.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta asked the Centre to consider this idea so that remedial and corrective steps could be taken and elephants in different parts of the country are not subjected to violence.

"There is a problem (human-animal conflict) and at some point of time, you have to solve that problem," the bench told Additional Solicitor General (ASG) A N S Nadkarni, appearing for the Centre.

"There are problems related to elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers. Either you can have some kind of a multi-purpose body or have specific bodies to deal with them," the bench said.

The apex court said that prayer of the petitioner for formulation of a task force and measures to deal with human and elephant conflict was not "something impossible" and it was rather for benefit of the country.

The bench said that 'Project Elephant', which was launched in 1992 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) to provide support to the states for protection of elephants and their habitats, might have been good but the issue was of its implementation.

"You may have this policy. It is okay. You can have a good policy but that policy has to be implemented. For implementation, you need to have a monitoring agency so that it can check that it is not violated. Why do not you think of setting up a task force?," the bench asked the ASG.

The ASG said that he would take instructions in this regard and get back to the court.

Nadkarni said that chief wildlife warden of state has to ensure implementation of guidelines.

"If somebody does not obey the order, surely the Union of India cannot say that we cannot do anything," the bench said.

The ASG told the court that the Centre has conducted inspections in some states, where spikes and fireballs were allegedly used to drive away elephants, and an affidavit in this regard would be filed soon.

The petitioner claimed in the court that West Bengal government had issued a tender last month for procuring oil to distribute it among the villagers to drive away elephants.

The counsel appearing for West Bengal said that oil was given to villagers so that they could light torch.

The bench, which said that the issue raised before it in the petition should not be treated as adversarial, has posted the matter for hearing after three weeks.

The apex court had earlier termed as "barbaric" the use of spikes and fireballs to drive away elephants and had directed the states to desist from using such methods.

The court's directions had come after it was told that these methods were being allegedly adopted in states including Karnataka, West Bengal and Jharkhand.

The court was hearing a petition which had raised the issue of tenders for procuring spikes and fireballs allegedly issued in these states.

The Karnataka government had earlier told the court that in July itself, the state authority had written letters to all the concerned officers to remove these spikes.

The counsel for West Bengal had said the state has issued guidelines that none of these harmful things would be used to divert the elephants.

Similarly, the Jharkhand government had told the court that they have not put any restriction on the movement of wild elephants in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Indian Air Force (IAF) is planning to set up a firing range at Khalia Top, a popular tourist spot close to the India-China border near Munsiyari in this district of Uttarakhand.

It will be the first major strategic infrastructure project to come up on the Indian side close to the border after the India-China war of 1962, officials associated with the proposal said.

"The IAF needs a firing range in this area because of security reasons and Khalia Top near Munsiyari town fits the bill with its perfect altitude," Air Marshal Devender Singh Rawat said.

Located at a height of 12,500 feet which is the standard parameter set for firing ranges, Khalia Top is the ideal site for the project, he said.

Rawat had visited thespot recently along with a team of IAF officers to get the feedback of locals on the proposal.

The aerial distance between Khalia Top and the



India-China border is around 41 km. Khalia Top, a meadow around 7 km from Munsiyari town, is the main attraction for tourists visiting the town.

However, locals have opposed the proposed project as they feel an IAF firing range will destroy the popular tourist spot and render hundreds of local youths jobless besides harming the Himalayan flora and fauna.

The locals, who met Rawat, said Khalia Top is the only tourist attraction in Munsiyari town that attracts over50,000 peopleeveryyear.

"Khalia Top is not just a tourist attraction, but home to over two dozen rare Himalayan animal and bird species," Ram Darmashaktu, resident of Munsiyari town, said.

The locals also told the IAF team thatthe tourism industry in Munsiyari was providing employment to over 3,000 persons from 41 nearby villages.

The IAF officer, however, maintained that the project will not be harmful to the ecology as target practice with



low-intensity dummy bombs, weighing only three kgs, will be carried out at the range for only two months (October-November) during the year.

Smoke emanating from these dummy bombs dissipates within seconds and will cause no harm to the ecology, the IAF team said.

"Only low-intensity dummy bombs are dropped during practice atsuch ranges that make noise like crackers and their smoke stays onlyup to five seconds. This practice of the Air Force willtake place only during the months of October and November," Air Marshal Rawat said.

Sub Divisional Magistrate, Munsiyari, K N Goswami said the IAF's proposal and the opposition of locals is being forwarded to the state government for clearance.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India should move to resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Monday.

His remarks came a day after six civilians were killed after an explosive went off at an encounter site in Kulgam district of South Kashmir.

"Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris....by Indian security forces," Khan tweeted.

"It is time India realise it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people," he said.

Three militants were killed Sunday in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam district, while six civilians lost their lives in a blast following the gunfight there.

It is not the first time Khan has spoken about Kashmir.

In September, New Delhi called off a meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, citing killings of Indian security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the release of Pakistani postage stamps "glorifying a terrorist and terrorism".

In his victory speech after the July elections, Khan expressed his willingness to improve Pakistan's ties with India and said that his government would like the leaders of the two sides to resolve all disputes, including the core issue of Kashmir, through talks.

He said good India-Pakistan relations will be beneficial for the entire region.

India maintains that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country and Pakistan is in illegal occupation of a part of the state's territory.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan would tell the Chinese leadership that his government wants a "significant shift" in the infrastructure projects under the controversy-hit China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in the country, according to a media report on Monday.

The $60 billion is the flagship venture of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of Chinese President aimed at enhancing Beijing's influence around the world through China-funded infrastructure projects.

The is a planned network of roads, railways and energy projects linking China's resource-rich Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with Pakistan's strategic Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea.

Prime Minister Khan is to embark on his first visit to on November 3 during which he is expected to call on President Xi as well as meet his counterpart Li Keqiang.

"During his meetings in the friendly country, Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of the CPEC," the Dawn newspaper reported, quoting unnamed sources as saying.

Under the previous government there was an emphasis on infrastructure schemes, but the current government of Khan wanted projects involving agriculture, job creation and foreign investment take centre stage, the report said.

Pakistan has already approached the Monetary Fund for a bailout to stabilise the economy.



The US has said that the huge Chinese debt was responsible for the economic challenges in Pakistan, adding that it will review Islamabad's bailout plea to the IMF from all angles, including the country's debt position.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said that the US thinks that part of the reason for Pakistan's financial crisis is Chinese debt.

India has protested to Beijing over the as it traversed through Pakistan-occupied

Cash-strapped Pakistan has already announced plans to cut a $8.2 billion railway project between the Karachi and Peshawar the biggest under the CPEC by about $2 billion to reduce the debt burden.

Meanwhile, the report also said that due to suspension of funding to CPEC's infrastructure projects, the National Highway Authority's road projects worth over Rs 1 trillion have been adversely affected. Many projects in the energy sector have also been hit.

The affected projects include the 210km Dera Ismail Khan-Zhob road, the 110km Khuzdar-Basima road and a 136km portion of the Karakoram Highway.

In a recent meeting about his visit to China, Prime Minister Khan said that early implementation of the would help realise the true potential of the economic ties between the two countries.

ALSO READ: IMF loan may come with a political cost for Pakistan PM Imran Khan

He emphasised the need for early establishment of Special Economic Zones in various parts of the country and hoped these zones would help the local industry grow, creating huge employment opportunities for the youth, the report said.A man appearing to wear Jamal Khashoggi's clothes left the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul following his killing there, according to a surveillance video, while a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office around the same time, reports said Monday.

The reports by CNN and a pro-government Turkish newspaper came just a day before Prince Mohammed's high-profile investment summit is to begin in Riyadh and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised that details of Khashoggi's killing "will be revealed in all its nakedness."



That yet again adds to the pressure Saudi Arabia faces over the slaying of the Washington Post columnist. The kingdom's claim on Saturday that Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" met international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on October 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married.

Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

CNN aired surveillance footage on Monday showing the man in Khashoggi's dress shirt, suit jacket and pants.

It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a "body double" and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The man is seen in the footage walking out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then taking a taxi to Istanbul's famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public bathroom, changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Khashoggi's clothes.

In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said that he had left the consulate, implying premeditation on the part of the Saudi team.

"After Turkish authorities and the media were allowed to inspect the consulate building in its entirety, the accusations changed to the outrageous claim that he was murdered, in the consulate, during business hours, and with dozens of staff and visitors in the building," Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote on October 8.

"I don't know who is behind these claims, or their intentions, nor do I care frankly."



A separate report by newspaper Yeni Safak said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed's office. It said another call went to the United States.

Yeni Safak cited no source for the information. However, pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Khashoggi's killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces. Yeni Safak reported last week that Saudi officials cut off Khashoggi's fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate as his fiance waited outside.

Officials in Saudi Arabia have not answered repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press in recent days, including on Monday. Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutreb's presence in Istanbul nor that a forensics and autopsy expert was also on hand for Khashoggi's arrival at the consulate.

Last week, a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage showed Mutreb at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival. Mutreb's name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early on Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggi's death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told the AP that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his father's criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion.

The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

Five Turkish employees of the consulate also gave testimonies to prosecutors on Monday, Turkish media reported.

Istanbul's chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony. Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday told Fox that Khashoggi's killing was "a rogue operation" and that "we don't know where the body is."



"The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority," he said. "There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government."



However, leading Republicans and Democrats in Congress are saying Saudi Arabia should face punishment over Khashoggi's killing.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)With the sun bearing down, Norm and Kathy Daviess stood in the shade of a prison wall topped with coiled razor wire, waiting for three immigrants to come out.

It's become an oddly familiar routine for the Air Force veteran and his wife, part of an ad hoc group of volunteers that formed in recent months after the Trump administration transferred 124 immigrants to the federal prison in rural Oregon, a first for the facility.

The detainees were among approximately 1,600 immigrants apprehended along the US-Mexico border and then transferred to federal prisons in five states after President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy left the usual facilities short of space.

Almost half of those sent to the prison outside Sheridan, an economically struggling town 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Portland, on May 31 are from India, many of them Sikhs part of an influx of Indian nationals entering the US in recent years. They also came from Nepal, Guatemala, Mexico and a dozen other countries.

"Zero tolerance" made Sheridan an unusual way station for migrants from around the world. Now, those who pass an initial screening and post bond are being released.

And Norm and Kathy Daviess, along with more than 100 other volunteers retirees, recent college graduates, lawyers, clergy have lined up to help.

"The best part of this is seeing the big smile on their face, to be out, to have this burden done with," said Kathy Daviess, 71, who wore a floppy white hat as she and her husband stood outside the prison on a recent afternoon.

As drivers, the two are ready to go to the prison, a half-hour from their hometown of Dundee, at a moment's notice and often wait there for hours as the detainees are processed.

The freed migrants generally travel onward in a day or two to other states where they have relatives or friends. The volunteers provide transportation, interpreter services, legal counseling, food, shelter and moral support.

They raised more than USD 12,000 to pay bonds for migrants who couldn't come up with the money themselves.

A Sikh temple in nearby Salem also offers the immigrants religious and other services, and a place to recover.

Many of the detainees made long, dangerous journeys to reach the US, and all either turned themselves in to seek asylum or were nabbed by border agents when they arrived. Since "zero tolerance" took effect in May, everyone who enters the country illegally is charged with a crime.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the crackdown is necessary to eliminate illegal immigration and because abuse of the asylum system has caused a surge in illegal border crossings.

"For those who crossed the border illegally, those were the consequences brought upon them," said Sheridan Mayor Harry Cooley, who worked at the Oregon prison for 21 years and is not among the volunteers. He was less certain about migrants who request asylum at points of entry, noting it isn't illegal.

"It would be unfathomable if they were detaining those people rather than just turning them away," Cooley said, but then added it seemed justifiable to detain the immigrants while their stories are verified. "The previous policy was catch and release, which I definitely don't agree with."



The prison is Sheridan's largest employer, though the town of 6,000 has paid little attention to the migrant issue, the mayor said.

The volunteers are mostly from other communities in the Willamette Valley, including Salem and Portland, Oregon's largest city.

Kathy Daviess said she got involved because "we've got a legal system, and it's supposed to apply to everyone." Her husband, who spent his career with the Air Force in uniform and as a contractor, felt the immigrants were being denied due process.

The migrants were granted access to lawyers after the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon filed a lawsuit alleging they were held largely incommunicado.

The detainees told federal public defenders they were initially confined to cells for up to 23 hours a day. "It's not right. We don't do that," Norm Daviess said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Kathleen Moss, from nearby Carlton, said it's been rewarding to coordinate around 60 drivers and people offering respite centres.

"It's kind of taken over my life," the nutritionist and advocate for foster children said.

To help the immigrants seek asylum, making a case that they fled dangerous conditions back home, Innovation Law Lab has "plugged in" 80 volunteer attorneys, legal assistants and other specialists, said Victoria Bejarano Muirhead, development director of the Portland group.

Volunteers have watched detainees emerge from the prison, surveying the nearby forests, hills and fields for the first time since they arrived.

One man borrowed a phone to make a video call to his wife in Nepal as Katy Mitchell, who manages Innovation Law Lab's operations in Sheridan, gave him a ride.

"I couldn't understand their conversation in Nepali, but I could understand the love and excitement in their voices seeing each other's faces and talking for the first time in many months," Mitchell said. "He sat there clutching his heart with the biggest grin on his face and she couldn't stop giggling with joy."



On a recent day, Carlos Marroquin, from El Salvador, and Abdoulaye Camara, from Mauritania, watched the countryside, tinged in autumnal colors, flash by as volunteer Cynthia McCracken drove them from the prison.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)on Monday asked to support the pending application in the UN to designate Pakistan-based JeM terror group as a global terrorist, officials said.

It also asked not to give shelter to hardline ULFA Paresh Baruah on its soil, they said.

The two key issues were raised at the first India- high-level meeting on bilateral security cooperation which was co-chaired by Home Minister and Zhao Kezhi, State Councilor and Minister of Public Security, China, in .

"The key concerns of both the countries were flagged and both the sides assured each other full cooperation," an official, who was part of the Indian delegation, said.

The key Indian concerns are China's objection to the application to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Azhar as terrorist under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Security Council, frequent visit of United Liberation Front Of (ULFA) Paresh Baruah to and smuggling of arms and narcotics to the Northeast, the official said.

A veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked the bid at the to list Azhar as global terrorist.

The official said that Chinese concerns included insurgency in Xinjiang by Uyghur extremists.

After two rounds of meetings, restricted talks between Singh and Zhao followed by delegation-level parleys, the said in a statement that the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest, including bilateral counter- cooperation, and welcomed increased security cooperation between and China.

An agreement on security cooperation between the and China's Ministry of Public Security was also signed by the two ministers. This was first ever India-China security cooperation pact.

"The agreement will further strengthen and consolidate discussions and cooperation in areas of counter-terrorism, organised crimes, drug control and other such relevant areas," the statement said.

Even though an MoU had ben signed by the two sides in the spheres of security years ago, it had lapsed a few years ago.

The Monday's pact may lead to signing of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty in future, another official said.

Zhao Kezhi is on a bilateral visit to from October 21 to 25 during which he will also travel to

The meeting comes just a year after a two-month-long border stand-off between the India Army and China's People's Liberation Army at Doklam on the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction.

Prime Minister and Chinese held an informal summit in Wuhan, China, in April this year which helped repair bilateral ties.

The Chinese delegation also visited the headquarters of the CRPF, country's largest paramilitary force, where they were given a presentation about the functions of the force.India has taken a lead over others in delivering equipment to France for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) research project which is aimed at generating energy through nuclear fusion.

India is one of the seven member entities including China, USA, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the European Union for the ITER, which is coming up in southern France.

"Of the total shipping load delivered so far, almost 40 per cent of load has come from India which is leading. As time progresses, loads will also reach from other countries. But at the moment, a very large number of delivery has been made form India," ITER-India project director Sirish Deshpande.

He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of the 27th International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference being organised here.

As per the agreement, India has agreed to make nine per cent of in-kind contribution for the project, which will require an investment of Rs 10,000 crore, he said.

"Out of this, various orders worth Rs 3500 crore have already been placed," said Deshpande.

ITER Director General Bernard Bigot, who was a key speaker at the event, told reporters that in the next three years, all large equipment required for the project will be delivered at the site for assembling.

He said 58 per cent of work towards the first plasma stage of 2025 stood completed by September this year, progressing at the rate of 0.7-0.8 per cent every month.

"India has agreed to supply nine per cent of the value to the construction cost. There are different components, and diversity of equipment. Due to their size and precision, some are pushing frontiers of knowledge, and some are very innovative," he said.

Bigot said India is doing very well in terms of delivery of equipment for the project.

"India is most advanced in terms of delivery. A large part of cryostat is complete, and India is doing very well on this front. The ITER agreement was signed in November 2006, when the breakdown of contributions was specified.

"It has been quite a large effort to pass from conceptual design to executive design and clearly for the first-of-the-kind equipment, we have many innovative technologies, so the cost has enlarged from when it was politically conceptualised," said Bigot.

"Up to 2015, many changes have been constituted. Since 2015, we have frozen the design, and it is my commitment to keep the cost under control. Since last three years, we have progressed at the rate of 0.7 per cent per month," Bigot said.

The EU's share among member entities in terms of construction and manufacturing is around 45 per cent while other six entities will contribute around 9 per cent each, he added.

ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion.

It is an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor that is being built next to the Cadarache facility in Saint-Paul-ls-Durance, in Provence, southern France.

The facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2025 and will start commissioning the reactor that same year. Initial plasma experiments are scheduled to begin in 2025, with full deuteriumtritium fusion experiments starting in 2035.

Nuclear energy all over the world is generated now by Fission technology which is generated by splitting atoms in controlled environment.

While, in nuclear Fusion technology, atomic nuclei are brought together to form heavy nuclei, in the process generating huge amount of energy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India and Myanmar on Monday inked a crucial MoU for the appointment of a private operator of the Sittwe Port that will boost connectivity and help in creating local job opportunities as the two sides discussed bilateral issues as well as topics of common interest, including developments in the strife-torn Rakhine state.

The MoU was signed by Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale after his meetings with Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and Union Minister of Transport and Communications U Thant Sin Maung here.

Gokhale called on Suu Kyi and discussed issues related to bilateral cooperation as well as topics of common interest, including developments in the strife-torn Rakhine state.

"All matters relating to bilateral cooperation as well as matters pertaining to international and regional matters of common interest, including developments in Rakhine state were discussed during this meeting," said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi.

He then met Union Minister of Transport and Communications U Thant Sin Maung and discussed issues related to connectivity and transport infrastructure being developed by India in Myanmar, it said.

After the meeting, Foreign Secretary Gokhale and U Win Khant, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Communications, signed the MoU for the appointment of a private Port Operator for the operation and maintenance of Sittwe Port, Paletwa Inland Water Terminal and associated facilities that are part of the Kaladan Multi Model Transit Transport Project.

"This is a significant step in the implementation of India's Act East Policy as its signing will enhance Myanmar's connectivity including with India and add to the development of the whole region, particularly in the Rakhine and Chin States of Myanmar," the statement said.

The Sittwe port in Myanmar will connect India's landlocked north-east region to the Bay of Bengal through Mizoram. It will also provide an alternate route to Kolkata.

India has an overall commitment of USD 1.75 billion for developmental programmes in Myanmar.

Gokhale also called on Commander in Chief of the Myanmar Defence Services Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and discussed issued related to border security, bilateral cooperation, Myanmar's peace process as well as the situation in Rakhine state.

Over 720,000 of Myanmar's stateless Muslim minority have fled villages in Rakhine state following a military crackdown in August last year, taking shelter in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

During his meetings, Gokhale conveyed the message that India valued its relationship with a close neighbour like Myanmar and would continue to deepen its cooperation with it in the areas of connectivity, security, people to people relation and economic and commercial cooperation, the statement said.

Myanmar is one of India's strategic neighbours and shares a 1,640-km-long border with a number of northeastern states including militancy-hit Nagaland and Manipur.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Myanmar in 2014 to attend the ASEAN- India Summit and then again travelled to the country in 2017 on a bilateral visit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Terming as "deeply regrettable" Prime Minister Imran Khan's remarks on Kashmir, India on Monday said that instead of making comments on internal affairs of another country, Islamabad should take "credible action" to dismantle terror infrastructure operating from its soil.

Pakistan's "deceitful stand" on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, "stands exposed" to the whole world, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar told reporters while replying to queries on Khan's remarks.

Referring to incidents of violence in Kashmir, Khan, in a tweet, said that time has come for India to realise that it must move to resolve the dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

"Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris....by Indian security forces," he tweeted.

Responding to Khan's remarks, the MEA Spokesperson said the leadership should look inwards and address its own issues. He said Islamabad should stop supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours.

"The remarks made by Pakistan's Prime Minister in his tweet today are deeply regrettable. Instead of making comments on India's internal affairs, leadership should look inwards and address its own issues.

"Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours," Kumar said.

It is not the first time Khan has spoken about

In his victory speech after the July elections, Khan expressed his willingness to improve Pakistan's ties with India and said that his government would like the leaders of the two sides to resolve all disputes, including the "core issue" of Kashmir, through talks.

He had said good India-Pakistan relations will be beneficial for the entire region.

A meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan was announced on the sidelines of the United General Assembly. However, in September, New Delhi called it off, citing killings of Indian security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the release of Pakistani postage stamps "glorifying a terrorist and terrorism".

India maintains that the entire state of Jammu and is an integral part of the country and Pakistan is in illegal occupation of a part of the state's territory.IndiaCast, the domestic, international and digital distribution arm of Viacom18 and TV18, Monday announced an organisational restructuring of its revenue management team.

Amit Arora, who was the executive vice-president earlier and was heading the domestic business for IndiaCast, has been elevated as president of India Affiliate Business, the company said in a release.

He will also drive the South Asia business along with linear distribution with telecom firms, it added.

The company has also promoted Govind Shahi, its senior vice-president, to head the international business.

Both Arora and Shahi will continue to report into Anuj Gandhi, group chief executive officer, IndiaCast.

Sachin Gokhale, who previously managed the Asia Pacific and business operations verticals, will now assume the new role of heading the Americas' business, while Debkumar Dasgupta, who handles the global syndication business, will take on the added responsibility of heading the Middle East and Africa region, it said.

"This organisational rejig allows us to leverage the existing capabilities and strengths of our leaders and their teams in growing revenues and to explore new opportunities across various technologies and markets globally," said Gandhi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The has asked the military to take back bodies of two "intruders" from that country who were killed in a gunfight along the Line of Control in Sunderbani sector of Jammu on Sunday, official sources said.

Two heavily armed Pakistani intruders and three soldiers were killed Sunday in the gunfight after the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the LoC.

The intruders were believed to be members of a Border Action Team (BAT) comprising Army jawans and trained militants, an Army officer said on condition of anonymity on Sunday.

The sources said the Army has been informed through established communication channels to take the bodies of its nationals, who were wearing combat uniform.

Army sources said a stern warning has been conveyed to the to restrain terrorists operating from its soil.

The incident on Sunday took place at around 1:20 PM.

The sources said five to six Pakistani intruders crossed the LoC and fired on patrol in the Sunderbani sector.

They said since the talks between DGMOs (Director General of Military Operations) of the two countries on May 29, the has been maintaining "utmost restraint" to uphold the ceasefire pact along the LoC despite regular provocative actions from across the border.

However, has been vigorously attempting to send terrorists across the LoC and seven infiltration bids have been foiled by the Indian Army since May 30, in which 23 terrorists have been killed.

Reports suggest concentration of a large number of terrorists in launch pads across the border and they are desperate to infiltrate into India before the onset of winter.The Army on Monday warned Pakistan to restrain the terrorists operating from its soil, a day after killing two heavily-armed Pakistani "intruders" in a gunfight in Sunderbani sector of Jammu on Sunday, official sources said.

They said the Army has also asked the Pakistan military to take back bodies of the two "intruders", who were wearing combat uniforms and believed to be members of Pakistani Border Action Team, they said.

Two heavily armed Pakistani intruders and three Army soldiers were killed Sunday in the gunfight after the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the LoC in Sunderbani sector.

The sources said Pakistan Army has been informed, through established communication channels, to take possession of the bodies of the "hostile Pakistani nationals" and that a "stern warning" was also conveyed to military of the neighbouring country to restrain the terrorists operating from its soil.

The incident on Sunday took place at around 1:20 PM.

The sources said five to six Pakistani intruders crossed the LoC and fired on Indian Army patrol in the Sunderbani sector.

Three soldiers of Eight Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (JAKLI) Havildar Kaushal Kumar of Nowshera (Rajouri), lance naik Ranjeet Singh of Doda and rifleman Rajat Kumar Basan of Pallanwala (Jammu) were killed while rifleman Rakesh Kumar of Samba suffered injuries in the gunfight.

The sources said since the talks between DGMOs (Director General of Military Operations) of the two countries on May 29, the Indian Army has been maintaining "utmost restraint" to uphold the ceasefire pact along the LoC despite regular provocative actions from across the border.

However, Pakistan Army has been vigorously attempting to send terrorists across the LoC and seven infiltration bids have been foiled by the Indian Army since May 30, in which 23 terrorists have been killed.

Reports suggest concentration of a large number of terrorists in launch pads across the border, desperate to infiltrate into India before the onset of winter.

Sources said the Army was ready to deal with any challenge along the LoC which has been witnessing frequent incidents of cross border firing since January.

The Indian Army has been adopting a "tough" approach in dealing with ceasefire violations and terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir in the last one year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A newly formed hurricane rapidly gained force off Mexico's Pacific coast on Sunday and forecasters said it could reach Category 4 status before hitting land by midweek A hurricane watch was posted for a stretch of shore between San Blas and Mazatlan. It's expected to near the coast by Tuesday night.

NHC reported torrential rains and flash-flooding as the 5-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale reading showed the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of approximately 130 miles per hour (209km). It was moving to the north-northwest at 6 miles per hour (9 kph), but a turn toward the north was likely during the night or Monday.

The hurricane centre forecast 12.5 to 25cm of rain across parts of western Jalisco, western Nayarit and southern Sinaloa states, with lesser amounts falling as it moves inland.

Se entrega funcionaria de Migraciones que habria ayudado a Hinostroza

Asimismo, el Poder Judicial dicto la orden de ubicacion y captura contra Bustamante Moretti , que es buscada por las autoridades.

The Dodgers Are Headed to the World Series! (Again)

They were lulled to a Game 3 loss, but prevailed in 13 innings in Game 4 and rode a dominant Kershaw in Game 5. The Dodgers, who lost to Houston in last years World Series, make their 20th appearance in the final.

FIFA World Cup: A tournament for everyone

There are just too many teams, too many leagues, and too many competitions to keep up-to-date with all the major events and news. You can catch the best players, you can catch those players notorious for on field antics and also off field antics.

The hurricane heading toward Mexico's Pacific coast was labeled "life-threatening" by the US National Hurricane Center (NHC), potentially causing damage to some of the country's popular tourist areas.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Vicente appeared to be a less potent threat further south. Forecasters said it could near the central Pacific coast late Tuesday.

Playa Perula to San Blas has a Tropical Storm Warning with the conditions expected within 36 hours. Rip currents and large swells will affect beaches in Mexico's southwest.India has no dearth of talent but a large number of students lack access to quality that could meet the demands of the modern times, Super 30 founder and mathematician Anand Kumar has said.

Kumar, who is presently in for an upcoming biopic on his life starring Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan, was felicitated in the Silicon Valley over the weekend in recognition of his effort to help poor children to get admission into the prestigious IITs.

"In India, there is a huge craving for education, but quality is not accessible to all of them. Today, technology can make it happen. online classes can do what is not otherwise possible," Kumar said.

" is changing fast, as the requirements are changing. This calls for new approach to education," he said while speaking at the golden jubilee function of 'Indian for collective action' organised in San Jose, California, on Saturday.

Observing that there is no dearth of talent in India, Kumar said equal opportunities in terms of quality education and modern-day requirements often eluded a large number of students.

"Today, there are opportunities to fill this void through technology. You people can make it happen through small contributions from your side in your own way to make a big difference," he said.

Anand runs Super 30 educational programme to mentor 30 students free off cost through a year-long residential programme for India's prestigious IIT-JEE exam.

In its 17-year, Super 30 has helped hundreds of students, mostly from poverty-stricken background, successfully chase their IIT dream.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)An Indonesian man has been arrested for running a Facebook page that catered to the gay community, police said Monday, under a sweeping Internet law criticised by rights groups.

The administrator -- whose name and age were not released -- was arrested Thursday along with his boyfriend in Bandung city after an Internet user reported to police that the page contained pornographic content, including selling sexual services.

The man was charged with violating Indonesia's electronic information law, which critics say is vague and open to misuse.

He could face a maximum six years in prison and a one billion rupiah (USD 66,000) fine if found guilty, police said.

The suspect's boyfriend was still being questioned as a witness over the Facebook page, which had been operating since 2015 and had more than 4,000 members, authorities said.

It mainly operated as a hangout platform for the gay community in Bandung, a city east of the capital Jakarta, but police said they also found adult content and massage services on offer.

"Anyone can be punished if they commit something that is against the law," West Java police spokesman Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko told AFP on Monday.

Homosexuality and gay sex are legal in Indonesia -- except in conservative Aceh province, which is ruled by Islamic law -- but same-sex relationships are widely frowned upon and public displays of affection between gay couples almost unheard of.

Rights activists say police have bolstered a campaign to crack down on the Southeast Asian nation's small LGBT community.

In January, two Indonesian men were arrested for allegedly uploading a video of themselves having sex to social media.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The proposed industrial policy may suggest leveraging of blockchain technology to digitise land records to enable MSMEs to access easy loans against assets or properties, an official said.

Use of blockchain technology to digitise land records would enhance ease of asset-based lending to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the official said.

Property records are generally used as collateral for loans by MSME units and it requires lot of efforts to scrutinise those records.

The official said that several states and municipalities are digitising land records but there is no common format or security standards.

Blockchain technology can be used to digitise land records across the country as it would simplify the process of proving loans against property for MSMEs, they added.

The policy may also suggest other ways to ease the process of lending to these units.

Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu earlier this month had stated that the policy was ready and would soon be approved by the Cabinet.

The commerce and industry ministry in August last year floated a draft industrial policy with an aim to create jobs for the next two decades, promote foreign technology transfer and attract USD 100 billion foreign direct investment (FDI) annually.

The proposed policy aims at promoting emerging sectors and modernising existing industries. It will also look to reduce regulatory hurdles and encourage adoption of frontier technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchain.

The ministry is also considering to set up industrial health clinics to deal with ailing MSMEs as part of the proposed policy.

The new policy will replace the industrial policy of 1991 which was prepared against the backdrop of balance of payment crisis.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Central Bureau of Investigation Monday told a special court that it has sought sanction from Gujarat government for the prosecution of retired police officers D G Vanzara and N K Amin in the Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter case and was awaiting its reply.

The CBI told the court of special judge J K Pandya that the central agency has sought sanction to prosecute the two officers under Section 197 of the CrPC.

The CBI sought a month's time to get back to the court on the matter, after which the matter was posted for next hearing on November 22.

While rejecting the discharge applications of the two former police officers, the special court had in August asked CBI to apprise it if the state had given sanction to prosecute the two officers.

Former Gujarat DIG Vanzara had sought discharge on the ground of parity with former Gujarat in-charge DGP P P Pandey.

Pandey was discharged in the case in February this year for want of evidence against him.

Amin, who retired as superintendent of police, sought discharge on the ground that the encounter was genuine and that testimonies of witnesses produced by the CBI were not reliable.

Jahan, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra near Mumbai, and three others Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed by the police in an "encounter" on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

At that time, the police had claimed that the four had terror links and had plotted to kill then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Leading Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, charged with raping two women in France, claimed Monday that he had consensual sex with both of them after previously denying any physical contact.

Ramadan, a well-known TV commentator, has strongly denied accusations that he raped the women in hotel rooms as an attempted smear by his opponents.

His lawyer Emmanuel Marsigny said the Swiss academic had changed his account of what happened on the basis of text messages that have emerged between him and his two accusers.

The messages "show that the plaintiffs lied and that the sexual encounters were wanted, consensual and even sought again afterwards", Marsigny said.

The unearthing of these messages "has allowed him to acknowledge that he had sexual relations" with the women, Marsigny said.

Ramadan, accused of raping the women in 2009 and 2012, has been in custody since February 2.

He previously insisted he had no sexual contact with his two accusers, feminist activist Henda Ayari and a disabled woman known in media reports as "Christelle".

Ramadan was a professor at Oxford University until he was forced to take leave when the rape allegations surfaced at the height of the "Me Too" movement late last year.

The married father of four, whose grandfather founded Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, has repeatedly sought bail arguing that being in prison is making it difficult to treat his multiple sclerosis.

The courts have so far rejected his requests, ruling that he can receive adequate treatment in the prison hospital at Fresnes in the southern Paris suburbs.

Last month a computer expert working on the investigation retrieved 399 text messages between Ramadan and Christelle, whom he is accused of raping in a Lyon hotel room in 2009.

The text messages detailed his violent sexual fantasies ahead of the alleged attack.

Afterwards, the records show that he wrote to her: "I sensed your unease... apologies for my 'violence'." Ramadan previously claimed he was involved in a "game of seduction" with Christelle, online and on the telephone.

But he said their only face-to-face contact was a drink in the hotel bar, describing her as a "compulsive liar".

Ramadan's lawyers have also provided details of his exchanges with Ayari, whom he is accused of raping in a Paris hotel in 2012.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Private carrier Jet Airways Monday said it has cancelled its proposed deal with TruJet for wet leasing of some of its regional jets over the latter's failure to meet with the deadline on terms of agreement.

Earlier in the day, a source had said that the deal for wet leasing of up to seven ATR planes to TruJet by the Jet Airways had hit air pocket due to regulatory issues and pilots problems.

"Jet Airways has called off the proposed agreement with a regional carrier (TruJet) as the terms were not met within stipulated timelines," a Jet Airways' spokesperson told PTI in response to a query on the deal.

The two carriers had attempted to strike a deal on ATR planes earlier last year as well, but even after months of back and forth, Jet Airways failed to phase them out.

The Naresh Goyal-owned private carrier, partially owned by Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi, has been battling cash crunch following two quarterly back-to-back losses.

Amid financial distress, Jet Airways has been delaying payments to its various vendors and has still not paid the September salary to its senior management, pilots and engineers.

The airline has also reportedly asked 15 managerial level employees from various departments including engineering, security and sales, to leave the carrier this month, besides grounding eight of its narrow and wide body planes.

"The plan to wet lease up to seven ATRs from Jet Airways is on hold as of now. If it comes back to the negotiation tables at all, it will be only next year," the source had said.

Currently, Jet Airways has 15 ATRs in its fleet.

TruJet, which operates its services on regional and Udan routes from Hyderabad to various destinations, has an all-ATR fleet.

"Jet Airways is not in a position to provide adequate number of ATR pilots along with the aircraft as a number of pilots have quit the carrier in the recent past. Instead, it wants TruJet to dry lease these planes, which is an economically viable proposition for the regional carrier," the source said.

A wet lease is an arrangement under which one airline provides an aircraft, its complete crew, maintenance and insurance.

As against this, in a dry lease the lessor gives out only aircraft to a lessee airline or operator.

TruJet spokesperson was not available for comments.

"Leasing in an ATR from the market is not an issue but getting trained pilots for this type of aircraft is certainly a problem. So, a dry lease does not make economic sense at all," the source said.

TruJet had in August said that the carrier was working on options to induct up to seven aircraft from Jet Airways.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Beleaguered carrier Jet Airways' plans to lease up to seven of its regional jets to TruJet has hit air pocket due to regulatory issues and pilots' problems, a source has said.

The two carriers had attempted to stitch a deal on ATR planes earlier last year as well, but even after months of bak and forth, failed to phase them out.

The Naresh Goyal-owned private carrier, partially owned by of Abu Dhabi, has been battling cash crunch following two quarterly back-to-back losses.



"The plan to wet lease up to seven ATRs from is on hold as of now. If it comes back to the negotiation tables at all, it will be only next year," an industry source told



has called off the proposed agreement with a regional carrier as the terms were not met within stipulated timelines, the spokesperson said.

Currently, Jet Airways has 15 ATRs in its fleet.

TruJet, which operates its services on regional and Udan routes from to various destinations, has an all-ATR fleet.

"Jet Airways is not in a position to provide adequate number of ATR pilots along with the aircraft as a number of pilots have quit the carrier in the recent past. Instead, it wants TruJet to dry lease these planes, which is an economically viable proposition for the regional carrier," the source said.

A wet lease is an arrangement under which one provides an aircraft, its complete crew, maintenance and insurance.

As against this, in a dry lease the lessor gives out only aircraft to a lessee or operator.

TruJet spokesperson was also not available for comments.

"Leasing in an ATR from the market is not an issue but getting trained pilots for this type of aircraft is certainly a problem. So, a dry lease does not make economic sense at all," the source said.

The source also said that TruJet will have to make an upfront payment of over Rs 35 crore to Jet Airways towards the "advance" lease rentals, adding that the full-service carrier is also facing certain regulatory approvals in wet leasing its planes.

"However, considering the deteriorating financial health of the carrier, certain apprehensions around its future remain. This is another reason for deferring the deal at this stage," as per the source.

A TrueJet spokesperson had in August old that the carrier was working on options to induct up to seven aircraft from Jet Airways.

TruJet had earlier said that it is planning to acquire five to seven ATRs and expand the network to 20 more routes by the end of FY19.

Amid financial distress, Jet Airways has been delaying payments to its various vendors and has still not paid the September salary to its senior management, pilots and engineers.

The airline has also reportedly Jet Airways asked 15 managerial level employees from various departments including engineering, security and sales to leave the carrier in October besides grounding eight of its narrow and wide body planes.A jihadist group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of 12 Iranian security personnel near the border with Pakistan, Iran's semi-official agency ISNA reported Monday.

"The terrorist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice in Arabic) has posted two photos... claiming that those in it are the forces abducted" on October 16, ISNA said.

Jaish al-Adl, formed in 2012, is a successor to the Sunni extremist group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) which has carried out a spate of attacks on Iranian security forces in recent years in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

The photos show seven members of the elite Revolutionary Guards force and five police commandos, all in combat gear, according to state agency IRNA.

The Iranians, including intelligence offices, were abducted near Lulakdan, a village 150 kilometres (90 miles) southeast of Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchistan.

They were "made unconscious" by a "single infiltrator" and then kidnapped and taken to bases inside Pakistan, said Guards commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, quoted by IRNA.

The photos also show a haul of automatic weapons and sniper rifles, rocket launchers, machine-guns, grenades and ammunition, apparently seized from the Iranian forces.

Sistan-Baluchistan has long been a flashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and jihadists carrying out regular cross-border raids against Iran.

The province has a large, mainly Sunni Muslim ethnic Baluchi community which straddles the border.

A delegation led by the Guards' ground forces commander Mohammad Pakpour visited Pakistan on Monday to follow up on efforts to free the Iranians, the force said on its website.

Pakistan said last Wednesday that it has launched "active" efforts to locate the missing men.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has blamed the kidnapping on "our common enemies unhappy with the existing close, friendly relations between Pakistan and Iran".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)About Me Scott Because prophetic scriptures are found throughout the bible, it is obvious that a comprehensive, systematic approach would be useful, if not necessary, for the understanding of prophecy. Past prophecies have been fulfilled in a literal manner, as confirmed by the dating of these writings and historical records of confirmation. These past prophecies also serve as a model of how to interpret future prophecies. A literal view of prophecy clearly indicates a certain sequence of events will occur within a single generation, concluding with the Tribulation and Second Advent and these events will be obvious. The prophetic signs appear to be present in this generation and we believe these signs are revealed in the news from around the world. View my complete profileFather Kuriakose Kattuthara, a key witness in the Kerala nun rape case who testified against accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was on Monday found dead under mysterious circumstances in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, police said.

Kattuthara, 62, was found unconscious in his room in the catholic church premises in Dasuya, 40 km from Hoshiarpur town, this morning and was taken to a local hospital where he was declared brought dead, they said.

Police said the cause of the death would be known after postmortem.

According to police, no visible injury marks were found on the body.

"There was vomit in the room, said Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) A R Sharma.

"The viscera will be sent for examination which will throw light on the cause of the death," he added.

Sharma said the police was investigating the case from all the angles.

"The police is waiting for the family of the priest to come from Kerala. After they reach here, the postmortem of the body of the priest will be conducted," he added.

Sharma said the priest retired for the day after taking his meal last night.

"In the morning today, the room cleaner, who went to the room of the priest for cleaning, found the door locked from inside. After knocking on the door several times without success, he saw from the windowpane of the room the priest apparently lying unconscious on the bed. He immediately informed the school administration, which got the door opened and found the priest dead," he said.

Relatives of Kattuthara in Kerala said the priest was concerned about his safety after coming out openly against the bishop.

Kattuthara had testified against Mulakkal, they said.

Besides demanding a thorough probe into the death, the relatives want the postmortem to be conducted at the Alappuzha Medical College in Kerala.

Supporters of the rape victim urged the Kerala government to provide security to the complainant in view of the "mysterious death" of a key witness in the case.

Kattuthara was transferred 15 days ago to the church at Dharampur in Dasuya, police said. He was staying in the church premises which is also home to St. Paul Convent School. Earlier, he was serving in the church at Bhogpur. He had also served as a priest in the Jalandhar diocese.

Lawrence Chaudhary, National President, Christian Front, demanded a CBI inquiry into the death.

Meanwhile, the five nuns, who are staying with the rape victim at a convent in Kuravilangad near Kottayam, said they were not safe and that anything could happen to them.

"We are scared now. There is a mystery behind the death of the priest who had testified against Bishop Mulakkal.

"We and those who stood with us during our protest seeking arrest of Bishop Mulakkal are also in danger," Sister Anupama, speaking on behalf of all of them, told reporters in Kottayam.

In her complaint to the Kottayam Police in June, the rape victim alleged that Mulakkal raped her at a guest house in Kuravilangad in May 2014 and later sexually exploited her on several occasions.

However, Mulakkal denied the charges as "baseless and concocted," insistingshe levelled those as the Catholic order had rejected her demand for favours.

Mulakkal had received a rousing welcome from his followers and supporterswhen he returned to Jalandhar after being released on bail by a Kerala court last week. He had last month stepped aside as the bishop of the Jalandhar diocese.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The murder of Jamal Khashoggi should act as a wake-up call, Qatar's foreign ministry said Monday in the rival Gulf state's first official response to the killing.

Spokeswoman Lolwah al-Khater said Qatar had faith in the Turkish probe into the death of Washington Post contributor Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been locked in a bitter diplomatic crisis since June 2017.

Since then Qatar has been cut off by Saudi Arabia and its allies, which accuse Doha of supporting terrorism and being too close to Riyadh's arch-rival Iran -- charges Qatar vehemently denies.

At Chatham House, the Royal Institute for International Affairs think-tank in London, Khater was asked about the state of relations between Doha and Riyadh in light of Khashoggi's death.

"I don't think anything has changed dramatically. We're just hoping that there is a wake-up call for everyone," she said.

"And of course, our condolences go to the family and friends of the journalist." Khater was speaking in a discussion entitled "Qatar's foreign policy: balancing new alliances in a contested region".

Asked what she thought Britain and other European countries should do in response, she added: "There was a joint statement that the UK, France and Germany issued and I think this statement, for the time being, summarises all the actions that everyone wants to see."



The three countries on Sunday said Saudi Arabia must clarify how Khashoggi died, and its account must be "backed by facts to be considered credible".

"We would like to see a transparent investigation," said Khater. "We have faith in the legal system in Turkey and I guess everyone is anxiously waiting to hear what is going to be announced tomorrow."



Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to reveal the "naked truth" about the case on Tuesday.

After more than two weeks of near silence, Riyadh has admitted Khashoggi, a prominent critic of powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the consulate, after he entered on October 2 to obtain some documents.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)In recent months, the Trump administration has repeatedly put off the release of its long-awaited Mideast peace plan. Now, the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents may put the plan into a deep freeze.

Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was meant to be the linchpin of the plan, providing key diplomatic cover to both Israelis and Palestinians.

But with the Saudi prince's credibility facing serious questions following Khashoggi's death, President Donald Trump may soon have to rethink his Mideast strategy.

"It definitely complicates their plans to release their proposal, if indeed they have one," said Dan Shapiro, who served as President Barack Obama's ambassador to Israel.

Trump took office promising a new approach to peace making between Israel and the Palestinians.

Criticising decades of failure by his predecessors, he named a Mideast team headed by his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner. The team has deep ties to Israel and the West Bank settler movement.

The Trump administration notably refused to endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state, distancing itself from the two-state solution favoured by the international community for more than two decades.

Instead, Kushner's team turned to the Saudis, hoping that the kingdom's deep pockets and prestige in the Arab world could somehow help bring the Israelis and Palestinians together.

Kushner struck up a special relationship with the crown prince, portraying him as a swashbuckling force, a leader who could help modernize a troubled region. Last year, Kushner paid a secret visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss his strategy for Israel and the Palestinians.

But long before the current crisis over Khashoggi's death, the peace plan ran into in trouble.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was invited to Saudi Arabia twice last year to talk to Prince Mohammed about the emerging American proposal.

Palestinian officials say that in briefings with the Saudis, Abbas raised objections after concluding the plan would fall far short of his goal of establishing an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Aides say Abbas believes the Americans want to keep him quiet by attracting large sums of money from Gulf Arab investors to develop the Palestinian economy. With the Palestinian front quiet, the United States could then proceed with the broader aim of creating an Israeli-Saudi alliance to serve as a regional counterweight to Iran.

In the meantime, his relations with the Americans have deteriorated. Abbas severed ties with the White House after the US recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December and then moved its embassy to the holy city. Relations worsened as the US cut hundreds of millions of dollars of direct and indirect aid to the Palestinians.

Amid this backdrop, Abbas has already said he will not accept the White House initiative, arguing that Trump is unfairly biased in favour of Israel.

At the same time, Prince Mohammed's credibility has taken a beating with a series of questionable decisions in recent months. He has pushed for an unsuccessful blockade of Qatar, led a bloody and unpopular war in neighbouring Yemen and abruptly cut off ties with Canada after its foreign minister criticised Saudi Arabia.

Although the prince has not been directly implicated in the death of Khashoggi at a Saudi Consulate in Turkey, the slaying has raised further questions about his suitability to lead.

A US official familiar with the peace effort said the team remains committed to its plan and does not expect the crisis surrounding the Khashoggi killing to affect it.

The official added, however, that the team has not yet discussed the matter since the Saudis confirmed Khashoggi's death over the weekend, and plans a discussion in the coming days.

He said it remains unclear when the proposal will be made public. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.

Israel and the Palestinians, wary of antagonizing the Saudis, also have said little about Khashoggi's killing.

Israel has not commented, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week boasted in speeches about improved behind-the-scenes ties with moderate Arab countries, an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia. Abbas, meanwhile, expressed his "absolute confidence" in the Saudis last week.

Shapiro, the former US ambassador, said that even if Trump agrees to work with the Saudis, the weakened Prince Mohammed is not in a position to "break taboos" and push the Palestinians into making concessions that are unpopular in the Arab world.

And on the international stage, he said other actors, including the US Congress and the Europeans, will have deep misgivings about engaging with the crown prince, who is known by his initials MBS.

"That Saudi partner needs to be predictable, needs to be reliable, needs to be responsible. What this incident tells us is that that's not the Saudi partner we have right now," he said. "None of them are likely to sit with MBS anytime soon to strategize on regional matters and he will be seen as a pariah."



Mkhaimer Abusada, a Palestinian analyst, said he thinks the Khashoggi killing will have a "huge effect" on the crown prince's own behaviour as well.

"I think from now on, he is going to count his steps carefully and stop being that impulsive," he said. "The Palestinians will reject the U.S. peace plan when it's officially on the table and MBS will not be in any good position to wield any pressure on the Palestinians to accept it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner on Monday exuded confidence of achieving a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestine.

"I think people are tired of the situation. I think this has gone on for too long. I think the status quo is not acceptable. It's just getting worse and worse. And so, at some point, you know, leaders have to be able to take the bold step and make a compromise. And we're hopeful that we'll find leadership that'll be willing to do that," Kushner told CNN.

Kushner was responding to a question on the Middle East process and the advancement made on the issue.

"One thing about this file is there's about 1000 ways to fail. And one thing that we determined very early on is that if we are going to fail, we're not going to fail doing it the same way that people have done it before which is why we've taken the approach we have," he said.

As such he and his team have taken a different approach to resolving this decades old problem.

"I've gotten to know the Palestinian leadership. I've gotten to know a lot of Palestinian leaders who are not, necessarily, in the existing leadership," he said.

"But our sense is that, when we put our plan out, if there's reasonable leadership, and if it's a reasonable plan then they'll come to the table and try to fight for how to create the best opportunity, and the best outcomes for their people," Kushner said.

The powerful son-in-law of Trump said that the US has made a lot of progress towards the Middle East peace process.

"The president's done a very good job of not allowing the old ways of thinking to constrain his actions, not just in the Middle East but even here at home in the way he's dealt with a lot of the issues," he asserted.

Kushner said he spoke to a lot of people in the region and past negotiators.

"What I realised very quickly was that we've been fighting about the same thing for the last 25 years in the conflict, but not a lot's changed," he said.

"So what we did is we took an approach where we thought we would create a very in-depth document that goes through the issues and we thought something much more prescriptive," he said.

Referring to his business experience, Kushner said he has always found that with conflicts, when one is fighting over a concept it's much easier to disagree than when one is fighting about specifics.

"We are hopeful that we can at least isolate where the disagreements really are. And then, see if we can make progress. I think that what we'll put forward will, hopefully, be something that people realise there's a lot more reasons to be for it than reasons to be against it," Kushner said.

There is a bigger gap between the negotiators than there is between the people, he said.

"People want to have a better life. They want to have better opportunity. And I think that what we're working on will allow, both, the Israelis to have - have the security they want, and to allow the Palestinian people to have the opportunity that they want, while respecting a lot of the bigger issues," he said in response to a question.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The US is still in a "fact-finding phase" about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said Monday as he advised the Saudi regime to be fully transparent in the investigation of the Saudi dissident journalist's death.

Khashoggi, 60, was brutally killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, according to Turkish investigative agencies, who claim to have audio files with them of the incident.

"Right now, we're more in a fact-finding phase and we're obviously getting as many facts as we can from the different places and then we'll determine which facts are credible," Kushner told CNN in response to a question.

After days of conflicting statements, Saudi Arabia last week said that Khashoggi died in a fist fight inside the consulate during an interrogation.

The US has called for a detailed investigation into the killing of Khashoggi, who was an open critic of the current ruling establishment in Saudi Arabia.

President Trump has said that there would be consequences for this but has opposed the idea of cancelling major arms sale worth USD 110 billion to Saudi Arabia.

The US lawmakers have demanded severe action against Saudi Arabia. They allege that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was behind the killing of Khashoggi, who used to write for The Washington Post.

The White House, including President Trump, has said there is no concrete evidence about it. Media reports say that the crown prince and Kushner, both in their 30s, are close friends.

"The world is watching," Kushner said was his advice to the Saudi crown prince, the defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia.

"This is a very, very serious accusation. A very serious situation. To be sure you're transparent and to take this very seriously."



"We'll see" if he takes that advice, Kushner said.

He said the Trump administration is approaching Saudi explanation for Khashoggi's death with "our eyes wide open". He was responding to a question on the death of the Saudi journalist that has sparked a global outrage.

At the same time, Kushner praised the Saudi crown prince for the series of reforms that he has initiated inside the conservative country.

"A lot of the reforms they've been making there to help us track down the terror financing and also to push back against the people who are perverting the religion, have been very historic over the last year," he said.

"So we're hopeful we can keep pushing forward with a lot of the initiatives that further American interests and that push back Iran's aggression, so we're going to stay focused on that," he said, indicating that the Trump Administration is doing a balancing act between its national interest and the Saudi killing of Khashoggi.

Kushner described Saudi Arabia as a critical partner in the fight against terrorism.

"We have to deal with the long-term ideology of extremism and Saudi Arabia is a critical partner in that," he said.

"I think the President is focused on what's good for America. What are our strategic interests. Where do we share interests with other countries, let's work toward those," he said.

He defended the decades-old US-Saudi alliance.

"The Middle East is a rough place. It's been a rough place for a very long time. We have to be able to pursue our strategic objectives. But we also have to deal with what is obviously a terrible situation," he said, and asserted that it is important to maintain the US-Saudi alliance.

"We have to be able to work with our allies, and Saudi Arabia has, I think, been a very strong ally in terms of pushing back on Iran's aggression."



Kushner said he does not spend a lot of time in dealing with the critics. Instead, he is focused on making the country during the short period of time he is in the government.

"I don't respond to the critics. I think that my job is to everyday focus on what are the objectives I have to accomplish. Things come up everyday that can make that mote challenging. But we have to work through it and you look at all the different projects I've worked on from the start. In prison reform, we've had set backs. Some were self inflicted, some were not," he said.

In Mexico and Canada trade deal, he said, there were a lot of setbacks.

"Some were self inflicted, some were not. But again, there's a short period of time that you're serving in government and what we have to be doing is figuring out how do we leave our government much better off than we found it," he said.

"I come in every day trying to figure out how do we push forward to accomplish the objectives that will make the American people better off. So I don't really spend a lot of time worrying about the critics. If it's somebody who knows me, somebody who I respect and they want to give me advice or tell me something I'm doing wrong, I want to hear that. But if it's just critics out there, I don't pay a lot of attention to that," Kushner said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A superstitious burglar, who used to strike only on Tuesdays and during the day because of his poor vision, has run out of luck as he along with his associate landed in the police net Monday.

Mohammed Sameer Khan and his accomplice Mohammed Shoaib were involved in a spate of robberies in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, police said.

Gold weighing about 700 gm, worth about Rs 21 lakh, was recovered from the two, commissioner of police, Hyderabad, Anjani Kumar told reporters here.

"Mohammed Sameer Khan, whose ancestors belong to Afghanistan, has poor eyesight. Hence, he committed the thefts only during the day.

Besides, he believed he will be successful if he struck only on Tuesdays and committed the crime along with his aide, who belongs to the city, every Tuesday ," the police official said.

The two would go around on a motorcycle and target locked houses. One would wait outside a house while the other would break in and get whatever he could within a span of five to 10 minutes, the official said.

The duo has been involved in over 30 cases in Telangana and in Bengaluru, he said.

They first met each other at a jail here, according to police.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Online travel firm MakeMyTrip Monday said it has signed a global partnership agreement with Best Western Hotels & Resorts as India's outbound travel gathers pace.

Under the partnership, Best Western Hotels & Resorts will enter the online distribution partnership for its global properties with MakeMyTrip, the company said in a statement.

MakeMyTrip, however, did not provide any financial details of the partnership.

Commenting on the development, Ritwik Khare, chief business officer, International Hotels & Global Key Accounts at MakeMyTrip.com said: "Through this alliance, we are now adding 8,000 international hotels in our portfolio that will enable us to further extend our reach in the market".

The company aims to provide the best accommodation options to meet travellers' needs, be it domestically or internationally, he added.

"In our ongoing commitment to meet the needs of today's travellers, expanding our distribution through MakeMyTrip provides travellers in India with convenient access to Best Western's global portfolio of hotels and resorts," Best Western Hotels & Resorts Chief Marketing Officer and Senior VP Dorothy Dowling said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Union Minister for Communications Manoj Sinha on Monday named a pre-Independence period cultural centre of the Postal department in the heart of the capital city after freedom fighter Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya.

He also unveiled Malviya's statue in its premises.

Addressing a function on the occasion, Sinha said it was part of an effort to give appropriate place to such personalities in the history.

Built in 1930, the centre has been now named as "Madan Mohan Malviya Dak Sankritik Kendra".

In his adddress, Sinha, minister of state for Communications (Independent charge), said that "it is my privilege that we are paying tribute to a great personality by naming a building after him."



Directing the postal officials to pay special attention to the Kendra as it has been named after Malaviya, Sinha said that "we want to make it one of the best centres of Patna and funds will not be any problem in developing the centre as the centre would give the money it required."



Setting up of Kashi Hindu Vishwavidyalaya was one of the many good works Malaviya did in his life, the minister said.

"The country has not produced a great person like Malaviya jee...Malaviya jee played instrumental role in carrying forward India's industrialisation in true sense as he set up engineering college within the Vishwavidyalaya which produced most numbers of engineers in the country," he added.

Stating that the time is now changing, Sinha said that "efforts are being made to give such personalities appropriate place in the history".

Earlier in the day, Sinha, who is also Minister of State for Railway, inaugurated two escalators at Patna junction built at a cost of Rs 2 crore.

Union Minister of state for Rural Development Ram Kripal Yadav, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, Bihar BJP chief and MP Nityanand Rai, Bihar ministers Nand Kishore Yadav, Rana Randhir, MLAs Sanjiv Chaurasia, Nitin Navin and Chief Post Master General were also present on the occasion.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A private bus en route to New Delhi from Agra met with an accident here in the early hours on Monday resulting in the death of a minor girl and injuries to 14 passengers, police said.

The incident was reported around 3 am, when the bus carrying around 45 people rammed into a divider near the Mahamaya Flyover, a police official said.

"The driver of the bus was drowsy and prima facie, this led to the accident," Station House Officer (SHO), Sector 39 police station, Amit Kumar Singh said.

"A 10-year-old girl was killed in the incident, while 14 passengers were hospitalised with injuries," he said.

Most of the injured, including the driver, were admitted to the district hospital in Noida, while some were rushed to the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, Singh added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former chief minister and Mizo National Front (MNF) president Zoramthanga will contest from Aizawl East-I assembly constituency, according to the list of candidates released by the party for the November 28 poll on Monday.

The MNF declared that it would contest all the 40 seats in the upcoming election to the state legislature, but announced names of 39 candidates sans Tuichawng assembly seat within the Chakma autonomous district council (CADC) area where the NGO Coordination had appealed to all the political parties not to field candidates belonging to the Chakma community.

MNF though is a constituent of North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) formed by BJP in 2016 as a political coalition along with regional parties, but both the parties are contesting the state assembly poll separately.

Robert Hmingthansanga, an advocate has been fielded at West Tuipui seat in south Mizoram's Lunglei district, the constituency where Chakmas are a majority.

The announcement of the candidates was held at Vanapa Hall in Aizawl.

Senior Vice president of the MNF Tawnluia, former army chief of the erstwhile underground Mizo National Army (MNA) and former home minister in the Zoramthanga government from 1998-2003 and 2003-2008 would contest from Tuichang seat in Myanmar border Champhai district while vice president of the party Dr. R Lalthangliana would file his nomination from south Tuipui seat in Lunglei district.

The party treasurer, former Lok Sabha member and present opposition group leader Vanlalzawma would try his luck again from Aizawl West-III seat.

R Lalzirliana, who resigned as a minister from the Congress ministry headed by chief Minister Lal Thanhawla on September 14 last, would contest as MNF nominee from his home Tur-Tawi constituency in Aizawl district.

Another former Congress minister Lalrinliana Sailo, who resigned as legislator on October three would contest from Chalfilh seat in Aizawl district.

The youngest candidate in the MNF list is Robert Lalhmingsanga, who was born on October two, 1980 and will be in the field from West Tuipui while the eldest candidate K. Sangthuama, the sitting legislator and former minister was born in 1940.

Among the MNF candidates, four have doctorate degrees and two medical degree holders.

The MNF is fielding 17 first timers in the coming polls.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Strengthening of ties in key areas of defence, trade and infrastructure will top the agenda when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Japan next week, the country's envoy Kenji Hiramatsu said Monday.

At an interaction at the Brookings India think tank, Kenji said talks are on between the two sides on strengthening maritime cooperation, including the signing of the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement.

"We are also expecting to sign agreement between Indian Navy and Japan's Naval Defence Force with regard to maritime domain awareness and security issues. We would like more cooperation in this domain too," he said.

Kenji said the two sides are hoping to start a formal negotiation process on the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement.

"Also defence equipment and technology cooperation, we have agreed to have joint research activities with regard to unmanned vehicles and robotics," he said.

The envoy, however, added that he cannot "predict what will happen" during the visit and anything concrete can come out only after discussions between the two prime ministers.

The defence forces of the two countries share a robust security cooperation with the two sides participating in bilateral and trilateral drills.

He said for the first time the armies of the two countries will participate in a joint military drill in Mizoram next month, while Japan will be an observer in 'Cope India' -- an Air Force drill between India and the US.

Modi will be in Japan on October 28 and 29 for the annual summit between the prime ministers of the two countries. It will be the fifth annual summit between Modi and Abe and their 12th meeting overall since 2014.

"Under the framework of the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan, the two leaders will have wide-ranging discussions over two days on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest," the Ministry of External Affairs said on the visit last week.

Responding to a question on India wanting to procure the Soryu-class submarine from Japan, Kenji said, "We are in the process of discussing (the matter) between the Japanese government and private sector," he said, adding that there is no final decision on collaborating with India for the project yet.

With regard to US-2 amphibious aircraft, he said discussion is on with the Indian side on the project and some progress will be made in due course.

India and Japan are collaborating on high-speed railway, which has been planned between Mumbai and Ahemdabad. The project has been facing resistance over acquisition of land.

Japan is also funding the project and Kenji said the first tranche of loan has been transferred.

Responding to a question on the topic, he said the initiative is "very symbolic" between the two countries, and Modi and Abe had decided to go ahead with "this very important project".

He exuded confidence it "will be completed on time as scheduled".

Land acquisition, he noted, is a very important aspect of the project and the Japanese and Indian team is working very closely.

Kenji said he has "100 per cent trust" on the Indian team dealing with high-speed railway and hoped that the Centre and the state government will find way to ensure the project is completed.

He said that to boost connectivity, India has identified several infrastructure projects in the northeastern states that would eventually help in connecting India with neighbouring countries.

Kenji noted that Japan was the biggest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to India and will continue to do so.

Asked about the Asia-Africa growth corridor, a joint initiative of India and Japan, he said the two countries and their private companies are trying to identify concrete projects and collaboration prospects.

Speaking on Quad, a grouping of India, Australia, Japan and the US to promote the shared vision on Indo-Pacific, he said the process is steadily growing.

He added that there are other formats such as Japan-India-USA trilateral dialogue and Japan-India-Australia trilateral dialogue and many avenues to achieve common goal.

"Quad is not sole mechanism to promote this," Kenji said.

Both countries have "convergence" of views on Indo-Pacific, he said. The Indo-Pacific region has been witnessing growing assertiveness of China.

Kenji said maritime cooperation was very important in the region and India and Japan are looking at ASEAN countries, including Indonesia and Vietnam, for a trilateral cooperation. He, however, added that there was nothing concrete to elaborate further on the matter.

On the progress made after the signing of India-Japan nuclear deal, he said Japanese firms are interested in providing high-technology equipment to India and discussions have begun on this.

When asked on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he said ministers and negotiators are working very hard for this. At the bilateral level, he said, there have been lots of discussion to address each other's concerns.

The RCEP is an ambitious proposal which intends to bring in the three largest economies of Asia -- China, India and Japan -- into a regional trading bloc, along with ASEAN member-countries Australia, South Korea and New Zealand.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Greeting BJP president Amit Shah on his birthday on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his rigour and hard work were great assets for the party.

Shah, who turned 54, said in his reply that every Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker is working tirelessly under Modi's "inspiring leadership" to realise his dream of a "new India".

"Under Amit bhai's leadership, the party has expanded significantly across India. His rigour and hard work are great assets for the party," Modi tweeted, wishing him a long and healthy life.

"Thank you Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for your kind wishes. I assure you that every BJP karyakarta, under your inspiring leadership, is working tirelessly to realise the dream of a #NewIndia," Shah said.

Several leaders of the BJP and its allies took to Twitter to wish the party president on his birthday and hailed his leadership.

Home Minister and former BJP president Rajnath Singh said the party has risen to new heights under Shah who, he added, is known for his hard work and "amazing orginising skills".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Maharashtra State Election Commission will organise an international conference titled "Better Elections for Healthier Democracy" to celebrate the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution of India, state Election Commissioner J S Saharia said Monday.

It will be held in Mumbai on October 25-26 and will involve discussions on reforms in electoral procedures, he added.

He said that representative from various democracies across the world, officials from other election commissions and state legislators will participate in the conference.

Saharia was speaking Monday at the release function of the logo of the international conference.

He said the five themes of the conference are "Public Ownership of Democracy", "How to Check Misuse of Money Power", "Inclusiveness", "How to Control Menace of Social Media and Fake News" and "Role of Various Stakeholders".

Maharashtra governor C Vidyasagar Rao and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will address the conference, he informed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Some office-bearers of Mumbai Youth Congress have expressed unhappiness over the style of functioning of their chief Ganesh Yadav, according to a letter sent to the higher leadership in the party.

The office-bearers, including a vice president, six general secretaries and four secretaries of the Mumbai Pradesh Youth Congress have written a complaint letter to Krishna Allavr, who is incharge of Indian Youth Congress, urging him to save the "future of the organisation".

The development comes weeks after some mebers of Mumbai Congress reportedly demanded ouster of Mumbai's party unit chief Sanjay Nirupam.

The trigger of the letter was apparently the "Bharat Bachao Andolan" organised by local youth congress leaders in Andheri yesterday.

The complainants alleged that Yadav "manipulated the programme unconstitutionally to favour his pet candidate, for his vested interest", by targetting the elected district president Bharat Solanki, an SC leader.

"We all office-bearers are of the opinion that today's event attended by IYC (Indian Youth Congress) president (Keshav Chand Yadav) and Vice-president (Srinivas) was organised and conducted unconstitutionally and against the party's ideology," the letter reads.

It alleged that Yadav "without taking everyone into confidence, manipulated" the programme to "favour his favourite candidate for his vested interested deliberately."



The letter says that Yadav targeted Bharat Solanki, who is an elected member from the SC community and he was sidelined from the event.

"This form of dictatorship puts a big question mark on the future of the organisation," it added.

When contacted, Yadav said he was not aware about such a letter written against him.

"I am not aware about any such letter. Even if there is one, then it is our internal matter and can be sorted out with the intervention of our senior leaders," Yadav told PTI.

Interestingly, Yadav is among those leaders who had written to the top leadership of the Congress, demanding ouster of Nirupam from the post of Mumbai Congress chief.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu Monday took stock of the party's preparations for the December 7 Assembly elections in Telangana.

Naidu, who is now based in Vijayawada where AP's capital city is coming up, held meetings with members of the Telugu Desam Party's (TDP) polit bureau, central committee, district unit presidents and other party leaders in Telangana.

TDP is part of the "grand alliance" of opposition parties, comprising Congress, TDP, CPI and TJS, for the assembly polls.

Naidu was briefed about the party's preparations for the elections, including talks with CPI and TJS and also the party's manifesto for the elections, TDP polit bureau member Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy told reporters after the meetings.

He was also told about the common minimum programme (CMP) proposed by alliance partners for the elections,he said.

Naidu asked the leaders to strive hard for the alliance's victory in the elections, Reddy said.

Naidu favoured an alternative at the national level, Reddy said and quoted him as saying that the Modi government allegedly "worked for a few corporates and troubled the common people."



The Modi government has not brought any scheme that people can remember and that demonetisation, GST and the "Rafale scam" have become a burden on the people, Reddy quoted Naidu as saying.

TDP's Telangana unit president L Ramana and former party MP Nama Nageswara Rao were holding talks with alliance partners on seat-sharing which is based on the number of seats each party would contest, the constituencies to be fought by a particular party and finally the candidate to be fielded, Reddy said.

The talks are currently being held on the number of seats to be contested by each party, he said.

Naidu said all aspirants in the party would not get the opportunity to contest elections. Those who do not get the chance would be given recognition appropriately, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)NASA scientists have devised a new set of 21 modern gamma-ray constellations and named them after fictional characters such as the Hulk and Godzilla.

The constellations, constructed with sources visible through its gamma-ray telescope, were devised to celebrate the completion of 10 years of operations of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

The new constellations include a few characters from modern myths.

Among them are the Little Prince, the time-warping TARDIS from 'Doctor Who,' Godzilla and his heat ray, the antimatter-powered U.S.S. Enterprise from 'Star Trek: The Original Series' and the Hulk, the product of a gamma-ray experiment gone awry.

"Developing these unofficial constellations was a fun way to highlight a decade of Fermi's accomplishments," said Julie McEnery, the Fermi project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in the US.

"One way or another, all of the gamma-ray constellations have a tie-in to Fermi science," said McEnery.

Since July 2008, Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) has been scanning the entire sky each day, mapping and measuring sources of gamma rays, the highest-energy light in the universe.

The emission may come from pulsars, nova outbursts, the debris of supernova explosions and giant gamma-ray bubbles located in our own galaxy, or supermassive black holes and gamma-ray bursts -- the most powerful explosions in the cosmos -- in others.

"By 2015, the number of different sources mapped by Fermi's LAT had expanded to about 3,000 -- 10 times the number known before the mission," said Elizabeth Ferrara, who led the constellation project.

"For the first time ever, the number of known gamma-ray sources was comparable to the number of bright stars, so we thought a new set of constellations was a great way to illustrate the point," said Ferrara.

The 21 gamma-ray constellations include famous landmarks -- such as Sweden's recovered warship, Vasa, the Washington Monument and Mount Fuji in Japan -- in countries contributing to Fermi science.

Others represent scientific ideas or tools, from Schrodinger's Cat, to Albert Einstein, Radio Telescope and Black Widow Spider, the namesake of a class of pulsars that evaporate their unfortunate companion stars.

Researchers developed a web-based interactive to showcase the constellations, with artwork from Aurore Simonnet, an illustrator at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California, and a map of the whole gamma-ray sky from Fermi.

Clicking on a constellation turns on its artwork and name, which includes a link to a page with more information. Other controls switch on the visible sky and selected traditional constellations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Mohamed Nasheed, who is planning to return to Maldives on November 1, has hailed the outcome of the landmark election outcome with the exiled former president saying the "sun is again shining" on the strategically vital Indian Ocean island nation.

Nasheed, the country's first democratically elected president, also said there was a cold war brewing between India and China and Maldives can be a "solution" to it and to South Asia's security issues.

In an address just before he left his base in London where he was in exile, the founder-member of the recently victorious Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) in the country's presidential polls described India as a "friend" which can help solve a lot of issues for the beleaguered nation.

"There is a cold war brewing between India and China. In my view, Maldives can be part of the solution in the region. An attempt to play one against the other would be silly and very outdated politics," said Nasheed at an event titled 'Defending Democracy from Exile: The Maldives Opposition 2012-2018' at the South Asia Institute of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London last week.

"We occupy the most navigable parts of the Indian Ocean. We are not a small country, we are big ocean state. We are 1,000-km from north to south. Our territory is bigger than Saudi Arabia. We have been traditionally Indian friends," he said.

Nasheed was jailed for 13 years in March 2015 in the Maldives in a case deemed to be politically-motivated and was granted political asylum in the UK in January 2016 after being allowed to travel there for medical reasons.

He had earlier urged Indian intervention to ensure free and fair elections in the Maldives, which last month resulted in the defeat of outgoing pro-China President Abdulla Yameen's Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and threw up a victory, by 58.4 per cent of the vote, for Oppostion MDP's Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

"I didn't ask for military intervention. I asked for an Indian official backed by its military to go there and sort it out. There are instances when higher officials can go into other countries and speak. That would have solved many issues at that time. It can still solve a lot of issues," said Nasheed, while welcoming the outcome of the polls.

"The election results were so overwhelming on our side. We all know that when people come out and speak, President Yameen cannot go on. He dropped the catch when he couldn't fix the election," he said.

On Monday, Yameen's party lost a Supreme Court petition calling for the annulment of the September 23 election results.

Nasheed is now preparing to make a return to the Maldives on November 1 and is currently based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, before his planned return.

"For me, home is within you. You always carry it in your heart. For the past two years, my home has been here in London. Now, I must take leave. It's time for me to go home because far away, across the Indian Ocean and over the Maldives, the sun is again shining," he said.

In February, Yameen jailed the chief justice and another Supreme Court judge after accusing them of trying to topple him.

Yameen had initially suspended the court, parliament and the Constitution and declared a state of emergency when legislators were about to impeach him.

China, which has invested millions of dollars in different projects in the Maldives, is weighing its options in the country as Yameen has been trounced by Solih, widely regarded as a pro-India leader.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Dubai Internet City (DIC) has signed an MoU with NASSCOM with an aim to attract and encourage Indian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the UAE.

"To boost the SME ecosystem in the UAE, DIC, as part of the MoU, will provide NASSCOM's SME members the opportunity to develop their operations by offering support and a platform to expand in the MENA region," a NASSCOM statement said on Monday.

The MoU was signed by Ammar Al Malik, Managing Director of DIC and Dubai Outsource City (DOC) and NASSCOM SME Council Chairman Kamal Agarwala.

Dubai has welcomed an increasing number of Indian businesses over the past few months, which are aimed at strengthening bilateral trade that is on track to clock USD 100 billion by 2020.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)State-owned NBCC Monday said it has awarded a contract worth Rs 837.77 crore to Girdhari Lal Construction for redevelopment of Ayur Vigyan Nagar campus of AIIMS in the national capital.

It also gave Rs 538.76 crore contract to Ahluwalia Contracts for redevelopment of Charbagh, Lucknow railway station, NBCC said in a BSE filing.

Girdhari Lal Construction would build residential towers and commercial towers, social infrastructure buildings, external development works and allied works on design, Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) basis for a total contract value of Rs 837.77 crore, it said.

Ahluwalia bagged the project to develop/redevelop Charbagh, Lucknow railway station and adjoining land parcels on EPC basis.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The National Conference (NC) Monday asked the Centre to "see the writing on the wall" and initiate a time-bound inclusive political process, saying the solution to Kashmir lies only in dialogue.

"NC is of the firm belief that the solution to Kashmir lies only in dialogue.We will make every possible effort to get the state out of the morass of uncertainty and chaos," NC general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar said after meeting senior party functionaries at the NC headquarters at Nawa-e Subah here.

Seven civilians were killed Sunday in a blast at an encounter site in Laroo village in Kulgam district, after the gunfight with security forces in which three militants were also eliminated, had ended.

On the death of civilians in Kulgam, the NC leader said, "What happened in Kulgam has shaken us to the core and I am sure all the right thinking people in the country have certainly expressed regret over the barbaric killing of seven youth there."



Sagar said New Delhi has been "serving catchphrases and slogans as conciliation" but the current situation demands sincere conciliatory process.

"New Delhi is irresolute about the gravity of situation and if the current phenomenon of uncertainty persists, it can morph in a much dire situation," he said.

Expressing anguish over the loss of lives, Sagar said civilians come in line of fire everyday and add to the severity of the situation.

"I express my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the mayhem that was unleashed at Kulgam the other day. I also pray to almighty for the speedy recovery of those who were injured. In this hour of grief, our party stands in unison with the distressed families," he said.

The NC general secretary said it was expected that the incumbent administration would embalm the people and lessen their woes by making amends to whatever bad was done in the former PDP-BJP coalition government.

"The iron fist strategy won't yield anything. It will push (the) already aggravated youth to wall. Central government should view writing on the wall and initiate a time-bound inclusive political process," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A leading opposition politician and critic of Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari appeared in court on Monday on corruption charges, less than a week after he stepped down as state governor.

Peter Ayodele Fayose pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of criminal breach of trust and theft totalling nearly USD 18 million.

The Federal High Court in Lagos was told that Fayose, 57, and his company, Spotless Limited, took the cash to fund his 2014 campaign to become governor of the southwestern state of Ekiti.

The case was adjourned until Wednesday and Fayose was remanded into the custody of Nigeria's main anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Fayose is one of the most prominent members of Nigeria's main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and tried to secure the ticket to run against Buhari at elections next year.

He stepped down as governor on October 16 after a controversial election for his successor that was mired in claims of vote-buying by the PDP and the ruling All Progressives Congress.

As governor, he had immunity from prosecution.

He has been held and questioned since last Tuesday, when he voluntarily turned up at the EFCC's offices in Abuja with a crowd of supporters, wearing a T-shirt saying: "EFCC I'm here."



The latest prosecution is part of Buhari's pledge to root out corruption in Nigerian politics, which has led to PDP claims of a witch-hunt as most of those charged are its members.

Before the 2015 election, Fayose claimed Buhari was terminally ill with prostate cancer, was too old to be president and would die in office.

He more recently called for the 75-year-old head of state to resign and criticised his decision to be treated abroad for an undisclosed illness that kept him out of Nigeria for months.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Bombay High Court on Monday refused to direct a lower court to examine social activist Anna Hazare as a prosecution witness in the 2006 murder case of Congress leader Pawanraje Nimbalkar, saying it has not found anything to show that Hazare's evidence would be useful to the case.

Justice Mridula Bhatkar dismissed an application filed by Nimbalkar's widow Anandidevi challenging an April 12 order passed by the sessions court exempting Hazare from being examined as a prosecution witness in the case.

The application claimed that Hazare was an important witness as he was aware of the conspiracy hatched by the prime accused and former state minister Padamsinh Patil to kill Nimbalkar.

The application alleged that Patil had also conspired to kill Hazare.

Justice Bhatkar on Monday said Hazare's evidence was only hearsay and that it was not direct evidence of the alleged conspiracy.

"There is nothing on record to show that Hazare had direct knowledge of the conspiracy. There is no direct evidence. This court does not find anything to show that Hazare's evidence would be useful to this case," Justice Bhatkar said.

"He (Hazare) does not seem like a necessary witness," Justice Bhatkar said, adding she does not find any reason to order that Hazare be examined as a prosecution witness in the case.

The court said the claim that a conspiracy was hatched to murder Hazare does not form part of the charges framed by the trial court against Patil and the other accused.

"Regarding Hazare being threatened in 2002 allegedly by Patil and other accused is a separate offence. There is no relation to this case," Justice Bhatkar said.

In the trial court, the CBI had filed an application seeking permission to include Hazare as a prosecution witness and for his evidence to be recorded.

The CBI claimed that Hazare, who was also threatened by Patil, was a prime witness who could prove the motive behind the crime.

Patil has been accused of hatching a conspiracy to murder Nimbalkar due to political rivalry. Patil allegedly hired killers for Rs 30 lakh to eliminate Nimbalkar, who, along with his driver, was shot dead on June 3, 2006 at Kalamboli in Navi Mumbai.

Patil was arrested and later released on bail.

Other accused in the case include Latur-based businessman Satish Mandade, corporator Mohan Shukla, Parasmal Jain, former state excise inspector Shashikant Kulkarni, Bahujan Samaj Party worker Kailash Yadav as well as alleged shooters Dinesh Tiwari, Pintu Singh and Chote Pandey.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)With a variety of cuisines, refreshing cultural programmes, and discussions on important issues including the NRC list of Assam, the sixth edition of the popular North East festival is all set to begin on October 26.

The festival, which will be held at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), promises to be "a colourful extravaganza, greater spectacle, bringing together the magnificent North East under one forum".

The North East festival will hold a special seminar titled 'NRC - Untruth, Half-Truth and Truth', featuring some of the most noteworthy voices from the region, leaders from various tribes and communities who will delve deep into the National Register for Citizens and its significance.

The Supreme Court-monitored NRC process aims at identifying illegal immigrants, who came to Assam after March 25, 1971, the cut-off date fixed as per the Assam Accord.

The final draft of NRC, published on July 30, this year, identified 40 lakh people as the ones who did not have valid documents to prove citizenship of India.

"The biggest positive of the North East Festival is that it has been able to connect with Delhi and helped in bridging the gap. It has helped in giving a platform for North Eastern people to showcase their talent to the people of Delhi. This year, the festival promises to be even bigger," Shyamkanu Mahanta, founder and chief organiser of the festival, said.

The multitude of cuisines from the region will be one of the main attractions of the festival with more than 40 food stalls from Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Arunachal, Sikkim, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya.

"The region's food is famous for the herbs and their health quotient, which will be showcased in plenty. Another attraction will be a presentation of organic fruits and vegetables of the region," the organisers said.

The vibrant fashion from the north east will also find prominent place at the festival with designers like Yana Ngoba, Barsha Aditya Singh, Rupert Lynrah, and Escape Engmoiya among others will showcase their creations.

The annual event will also witness 25 of the top rock bands of Delhi's colleges fight it out in a competition.

Exhibitions of art and photography will present a canvas of colours from the north east in the festival.

The three-day event will also feature dance forms of the region including Hojagiri dance of Tripura, Naga Warrior dance, and Bamboo (Cheraw) dance.

The North East Festival Rock Battle which will see 25 of the top rock bands of Delhi's biggest colleges fight it out in a competition.

The evenings will be equally enthralling with popular names from music industry such as rapper Khasi Bloodz, classical Rock band Still Waters, Naga folk band Tetseo Sisters, Arunachali folk band Omak Komut Collective, and brand ambassador of North East festival, Zubeen Garg, performing at the event.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Citing a Gauhati High Court ruling, a senior Assam minister said the 12-hour Assam bandh, called by 46 organisations Tuesday, cannot be allowed.

The High Court in 2013 had banned bandhs in the state and termed it "unconstitutional and illegal".

The organisations have called the bandh to protest against the Centres bid to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, in the winter session of Parliament.

Political parties, including the Congress, have extended their support to the bandh, led by the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP),



Assam Finance and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said Monday that Gauhati High Court had ruled that calling a bandh was an illegal act and so the bandh called by 46 organisations cannot be allowed.

The High Court had ruled in 2013 that calling of bandh was illegal and as such "we have to follow the court's order and ensure that there is no bandh Tuesday," Sarma told reporters here.

"All shops and business establishments should remain open while government employees must report for their duties or else it will be treated as a contempt of court," he said.

KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi said that this was the first time that they had called a bandh and would not call it off as the very "existence of the Assamese people and their identity is at stake".

Sarma also said that following an assessment of the prevailing law and order situation in the state, permission will not be granted for the November 17 convention organized by the Citizen Right Protection Forum, Assam (CRPFA), a conglomeration of 26 Bengali organisations, in support of the Citizenship Bill.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was introduced in the Lok Sabha to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to grant Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who fled religious persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan and entered India before December 31, 2014.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Odisha government said on Monday that it will capture tigress 'Sundari', who has allegedly killed a lot of people in Angul district, and keep it in an enclosure.

Major political parties and local people have demanded the shifting of the big cat from the Satkosia Wildlife Sanctuary in Angul district.

A 60-year-old man was mauled to death allegedly by the tigress on Sunday morning and on Monday it killed a bullock, officials said.

Earlier, the tigress had allegedly killed a woman on September 12, they said.

"Safety of the people is our priority. The state government has decided to capture the animal and keep it in an enclosure in Satkosia area," PCCF (wildlife) Sandip Tripathy told reporters here.

Tripathy said two teams are ready to start tranquillisation of the tigress which was translocated from Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh to Satkosia.

"We have already taken up the matter with the authorities of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun," he said.

Seeking cooperation from the local people, Tripathy said the teams are unable to enter the forest due to prevailing tension in a nearby village.

"I appeal to people to cooperate with the forest department," Tripathy said.

All the major political parties in the state have demanded the shifting of the tigress from the area.

"I have requested the chief minister and the central government to shift the tigress from Satkosia area," BJD's Atthmalik MLA Sanjeeb Kumar Sahoo said.

In a statement issued here, Odisha Congress president Niranjan Patnaik alleged that the tigress had killed two people.

"It is now assumed that the state government has let the people be killed, by not taking the situation seriously. The animal should immediately be shifted to some other place or it might be kept in an enclosure," Patnaik said.

The BJP also demanded shifting of the tigress as it has become a threat for the locals.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)With a message of environmental awareness, the 16th edition of 'Eco Pad-Yatra', led by Buddhist spiritual leaders Gyalwang Drukpa and Drukpa Thuksey Rinpoche of Hemis Monastery, will start from Bhubaneswar on Wednesday.

In its 13th year, the 140-km yatra will see participants including over 350 monks travel by foot through five important Buddhist sites -- Bhubaneswar, Udayagiri, Dhauli, Lalitgiri and Ratnagiri.

"In ancient times the Buddha walked with his disciples and taught them through his physical actions as well as verbal expressions.

"Similarly, through this 'Eco Pad Yatra', we are communing with one another through action, drawing inspiration from the Buddhist heritage of Odisha, and spreading an urgent environmental message along with it," Gyalwang Drukpa said.

During the course of the yatra, the pilgrims will offer daily prayers for peace and compassion, perform large-scale cleanings of the terrain along its route, he added.

The event, undertaken by Drukpa lineage, also claimed to promote awareness about the Buddhist heritage sites of Odisha, where cultural relics and monastic structures have been preserved for hundreds of years.

The yatra is set to conclude on October 31 in Ratnagiri, Odisha.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Opposition parties Monday attacked the Modi government over the feud between the CBI director and his deputy, with Congress president alleging that the probe agency was being used as a "weapon of political vendetta" under the current dispensation and was in "terminal decline".

The feud between CBI Director Alok Verma and his deputy turned murkier with the arrest of Devender Kumar, a deputy superintendent of police in the special investigation team headed by Asthana.

The Congress said there is a serious credibility crisis in the CBI with its top officers accusing each other of massive corruption and blamed "vested interests" within the government for bringing the agency to "such a pass".

Gandhi alleged the CBI was being used as a "weapon of political vendetta" under the Modi government and that the premier investigation agency was on a terminal decline and "at war with itself".

Taking to Twitter, he cited a media report in which the Central Bureau of Investigation's second-in-command, Asthana, has been named as an accused in a bribery case.

"The PM's blue-eyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer, of Godra SIT fame, infiltrated as No. 2 into the CBI, has now been caught taking bribes (sic)," Gandhi tweeted.

"Under this PM, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta. An institution in terminal decline that's at war with itself," he said.

Terming the issue "very serious", Congress leader Sachin Pilot accused the government of interference in the CBI and asked why it was silent on the issue.

"How do we trust the CBI to look at corruption issues when their top people are themselves involved and allegations are flying thick and fast? The fact that it has reached this point tells you how long and how deep the rot may be within this government," Pilot told reporters at the Congress headquarters.

The CBI's top officers are accusing each other of massive corruption, he said, questioning the sanctity and the credibility of the government and the CBI to function in an "honest, unbiased transparent way".

"So there are serious credibility issues and I think there are vested interests within the government and within the CBI that have brought this agency to such a pass," Pilot said.

As far as the internal functioning of the CBI is concerned, it is apparent that there is "power play and a blame game going on", he said.

Later Congress leader Anand Sharma tweeted: "Under the watch of PM Modi it is a rotten Affairs of state. CBI, ED & DRI were reduced to compliant political tools to target political opponents. Politicisation and institutional corruption is total. New twist in CBI saga finally destroys it's credibility."



"Every institution including intelligence agencies have been compromised or undermined. Remember only last week all institutional sanctity was destroyed with Cabinet Secretary, Army Navy Airforce Chiefs, IB and RAW all subordinated to a political appointee NSA. A power hungry PM has inflicted a lasting damage to India's Institutions," he claimed.

The Congress has been attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the appointment of Asthana as CBI special director.

In an unprecedented move, the agency has booked its special director Asthana for allegedly receiving bribes from middlemen to give relief to a businessman being probed by him in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, officials had said Sunday.

Responding to the developments, the CPI said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should clarify the situation in CBI as the credibility of the premier investigation agency is at stake.

CPI secretary D Raja said questions are being raised over CBI's functioning after Asthana was booked by the agency last week.

Asthana, too, had written about 10 cases of alleged corruption and irregularities against CBI Director Alok Verma in his letters to the Cabinet Secretary and the Central Vigilance Commission about a month ago.

Samajwadi Party spokesperson Ghanshyam Tiwari, in a tweet, said, "Governments that run like a Mafia also fight like a Mafia! Watch the #MafiaWar that BJP has led CBI into... #CBIVsCBI (sic).Pakistan has released Afghan Taliban's former deputy chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar on the intervention of Qatar, a move which could facilitate the peace process in the war-ravaged country, according to a media report on Monday.

Mullah Baradar, one of the four top commanders who formed the Afghan Taliban in 1994, was captured by the Pakistani security agencies in Karachi in 2010.

He has been finally released from jail on the solicitation of the government of Qatar, The reported Monday, citing its sources.

Mullah Baradar, who is in his 50s, is believed to be the highest ranking Afghan Taliban prisoner freed so far.

Recently, a high-level delegation of Qatar visited Islamabad and met senior leadership of Pakistan, the paper said.

It did not give any details of his whereabouts after the release. It was also not clear whether he will be handed over to Afghanistan or stay in Pakistan.

It was reported a few times that Mulla Baradar has been released in Pakistan to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban but he couldn't be freed due to unacceptable conditions imposed by the Afghanistan government, the paper said.

"It is believed that Mulla Baradar's release would help persuade Afghan Taliban to lay down arms and negotiate in new peace talks," it added.

In recent months, the Trump administration has increased pressure on Pakistan to limit the freedom of the Taliban leaders, forcing them to join the peace talks.

Recently, senior American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, tasked with helping find a way to end the war in Afghanistan, has met with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar.

In a statement, the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said early this month six of their representatives met with Khalilzad.

"They talked about the end of occupation and a peaceful resolution for the Afghan issue," Mujahid said. "Both sides agreed to continue their meetings in the future."



Mulla Baradar held several senior positions in the Taliban government before its fall in 2001. He was once considered the most influential Taliban leader after Mullah Muhammad Omar.

Born in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, Baradar fought in the war to expel Soviet troops from Afghanistan in the 1980s. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, Baradar became deputy defence minister.

After the Taliban regime was toppled by the US-led forces in 2001, hundreds of Taliban hardliners fled over the border to Pakistan. Baradar was among them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Pakistan Army on Monday handed over the administrative control of the restive Swat district to the civil authorities, ending its decade-long military operation to flush out the Pakistani Taliban militants and restore peace in the home town of Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai.

The Army was first sent to the picturesque Swat district of the Khyber-Pakthunkhwa province in 2007 when a local cleric and chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Maulana Fazlullah challenged the writ of the state and set up his Sharia courts.

Taliban later launched an organised movement and extended its network to the adjoining districts. They imposed several restrictions, including banning girls' education, making mandatory wearing of burqa for women and keeping beard for men, among others.

In 2009, the government launched a major military operation against the TTP, during a large number of people were forced to abandon their homes in Swat, Buner and other districts.

Malala, who shared the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, was shot at by Taliban in 2012 for advocating for girls' education, which was forbidden under the militants' rule over Swat. The 15-year-old was flown to Britain for better treatment and further education. In March, she visited her home town for the first time after being shot at.

The Army handed over the symbol of authority to the Commissioner, Malakand Division and Regional Police Officer (RPO) at a ceremony, which was attended by Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mehmood Khan, Corps Commander Peshawar, Lieutenant General Nazir Ahmed Bhut, Inspector General of Police (IGP) Salahuddin, General-Officer-in-Command Swat Major General Khalid Saeed, officials said.

The elders' of the area and other civil and military officers also attended the function, during which a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of administrative authority was handed over the Chief Minister, they said.

Hailing the Army for successfully launching the operation against terrorism and restoring peace in Swat, Khan said, the military has made a history by transferring the administrative powers back to the civil authorities.

The Chief Minister, who hails from Matta tehsil of Swat district, said that terrorists wrecked havoc with lives of innocent people.

He said he himself was an eye witness to the Taliban's barbaric acts in 2009. He recalled that terrorists did not spare even the educational institutions and destroyed their buildings.

Khan said that the cowardly and gruesome acts of the terrorists could not deter the resilient people of Swat and they were subsequently defeated by the Army, police force and other law enforcement forces and lasting peace was achieved.

Addressing the gathering, Lt Gen Ahmed said that 3.5 million people were dislocated in Swat district when militants tried to take control of the administrative affairs of Swat district.

The Army, he said, launched successful operations and eliminated terrorists in four month from the district and other areas of Malakand Division and rehabilitated the displaced people.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Punjab government Monday disbursed the compensation amount of Rs 5 lakh each to the 21 families of the Amritsar train accident victims.

On the occasion, Punjab Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, whose wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu was the chief guest at the Dussehra event when the accident occurred, announced that the couple will adopt all the children who had lost their parents on the fateful night.

In the first phase of the disbursal of compensation amount, an event was held at circuit house Amritsar, in which a total amount of Rs 1.05 crore was distributed to 21 families of the deceased, as per press release issued here.

Nearly 60 people were killed on Friday evening after a crowd of Dussehra revellers that had spilled onto railway tracks while watching the burning of a Ravana effigy was run over by a train near Joda Phatak in Amritsar.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Brahm Mohindra said compensation to the remaining families of the victims would be disbursed in the next two days.

Although, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh was abroad on an official visit, he was regularly taking stock of the situation over the phone, Mohindra said.

He is personally ensuring that every wounded person is getting the best medical treatment, he added.

Talking about the financial security of train accident victims, Sidhu said, "In my personal capacity I and my wife hereby announce the adoption of all the children who have lost their parents."



"Their education in good institutions and all other expenses will be borne by us. Women who have lost their husbands will also be extended all required finical help," Sidhu said.

Mohindra further said that after the rail tragedy occurred, the first task of the district administration was to take all the injured persons to the hospital for urgent medical care.

After this task was over, the administration worked day and night to console the victims' families and they prepared a list of the legal heirs of the deceased.

"It is such a depressing time for the families of the victim, the Punjab government is standing rock solid with the aggrieved families. On the instruction of the chief minister, I am camping at Amritsar to personally monitor the relief and rehabilitation work," said Mohindra.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)IT firm Cyient Monday said it has appointed Peter F Longo as the chairman of its business unit, Cyient Inc.

Besides, it has also appointed Vikas Sehgal as an independent director to the board of Cyient, it said in a statement.

Both appointments are effective October 1, 2018, it added.

"With Longo's induction, the Cyient, Inc board will be further strengthened to provide fiduciary, operational and strategic guidance to the management of Cyient, Inc, which is the largest subsidiary of the company," the statement said.

Longo recently retired from United Technologies Corporation (UTC), where his last role was as the senior vice president of operations.

"As Cyient grows, we will greatly benefit from his guidance and support on maturing our systems and processes to be in line with the best in the world. Peter also brings significant experience in operations and supply chain management which are an important part of our S3 strategy to design, build and maintain products and solutions," Cyient Executive Chairman BVR Mohan Reddy said.

With Sehgal's appointment as an independent director, Cyient Ltd's board will expand to 10 directors, six of whom serve as the independent directors, it added.

Sehgal is the executive vice chairman of Rothschild Global Advisory for South and South East Asian region. Since January 2016, he has been an advisor to the Indian government, working closely with the office of the Prime Minister of India, the Ministry of Heavy Industries and the Ministry of Trade and Commerce.

He has previously served on the board of Cyient from 2012 to 2014.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Several motorists were caught unaware as petrol pumps across the national capital were shut Monday in protest against the Delhi government's refusal to cut Value-Added tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel.

Deepak Tripathi got to know about the strike only after reaching a pump in central Delhi.

"I had to go to Noida for a meeting and had halted at a petrol pump. I was informed that the pump was shut. I parked my car at a metro station and decided to take the metro," he said.

Another motorist, Nikhil, had a similar tale to narrate. Nikhil was supposed to go to Gurugram, but had to return home after he got to know the petrol pumps were shut.

Yatan Mittal, a corporate executive, missed an office meeting since he was not aware of the one-day strike.

"After three days of holiday, I went to a petrol pump to get my fuel tank refilled as I had to go to office in Chhatarpur from Mayur Vihar, but to my dismay, I could not find a fuel station that was open. I parked my motorcycle at a metro station, from where I boarded the metro. I reached office late by over an hour and could not attend an important meeting," he said.

Some drove all the way to Noida or Gurugram to get their fuel tanks refilled.

Meanwhile, there was a barrage of posts on social media platforms, in which the users expressed their anger and dismay over the issue.

"Petrol prices hikes or strikes of petrol pump it's always common people who suffers. Politicians always play blamegame they doesn't care about other people. #Delhi #PetrolPump #petroldieselprice #Strike (sic)," one of them wrote on Twitter.

Another said, "No more #Petrol in Delhi now.. #petrol #pumps on strike.. try to use #bicycle now.. #go #green #Delhi #chaka #jam #trouble #Strike."



All the 400 petrol pumps and linked CNG pumps shut operations from 6 am Monday and will remain closed till 5 am Tuesday, Delhi Petrol Dealers' Association (DPDA) president Nishcal Singhania said.

The DPDA said the Union government had, with effect from October 5, slashed the petrol and diesel prices by Rs 2.50 per litre by way of a cut in the excise duty and asking the State-owned oil firms to bear the subsidy. This was matched by several states by reducing VAT.

Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, which border the national capital, had reduced VAT, Singhania said, adding, "But the Delhi government refused to reduce VAT on petrol and diesel, resulting in fuel becoming more expensive than bordering Haryana and UP.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A 60-year-old pilgrim died after apparently suffering a cardiac arrest on way to the Shivkhori shrine in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Monday.

Shambu Prasad, a resident of Varanasi, fell unconscious at Ransoo en route the cave shrine Sunday evening, a police official said.

Prasad was rushed to a local public health centre and later referred to Pouni for further treatment but was declared brought dead by doctors at the medical facility.

The body of the deceased was handed over to his family for last rites.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Prime Minister Narendra Modi Monday greeted BJP chief Amit Shah on his birthday, saying his rigour and hard work are great assets for the party.

Shah turned 54 today.

"Under Amit bhai's leadership, the party has expanded significantly across India. His rigour and hard work are great assets for the party," the PM tweeted.

The prime minister also wished Shah a long and healthy life.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Puducherry Chief Minister's parliamentary secretary K Lakshminarayanan and government whip R K R Anandaraman Monday urged Narayanasamy to demand a CBI probe into the mobilisation of funds from private companies by Lt Governor Kiran Bedi, to desilt water bodies here.

Jointly addressing reporters here, Lakshminarayanan and Anandaram alleged that Bedi has been 'misusing' her position and authority by seeking funds from the companies under the corporate social responsibility (CSR) scheme.

They claimed that there was a committee with guidelines set up by the Centre to mobilise funds under the CSR but Bedi ignored the panel and allegedly set up a desk in her office to contact the private organisations for funds.

"Misusing the authority itself is a clear case of corrupt practice and irregularities," they said.

How many water bodies have been identified for desilting?, how much money has been raised and who the contractors were to press into service earthmovers for the desilting? they asked and said only the CBI could bring to light the truth.

The chief minister had written to the union home minister Rajnath Singh seeking a judicial enquiry into the matter.

The CPI(M) too had taken exception to the alleged 'arbitrary style of functioning' of Bedi and said the party would picket her office Raj Nivas on October 25.

Secretary of local unit of the party, R Rajangam said funds were earmarked in the budget for desilting so there was no need for Bedi to evolve projects and seek the funds.

He demanded a white paper on the issue and urged the central government to recall Bedi since she had been at loggerheads with Narayanasamy on various issues from the day she assumed office.

AIADMK also had urged the Centre to order a probe into the charges against Bedi over the issue of raising funds for the desilting project.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor, who is on his maiden tour of Bihar after his appointment as the national vice-president of JD(U), Monday interacted with hundreds of young party activists here.

The party meeting was held at 7, Circular Road



adjacent to the official residence of the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is the JD(U)s national president where Kishor listened to feedbacks from young men and women about the partys ground-level situation and offered them tips in return.

According to party sources, Kishor who had joined the JD(U) only last month sought to underscore before the party cadres that unlike other political parties, theirs was not a family-driven one and youngsters with talent and ambition could aspire to reach the top.

Kishor, who hails from a non-political family, cited his own example besides those of a number of other leaders in the party who were said to have been given preference over more conventional candidates in the last Lok Sabha and assembly elections, the sources said.

Earlier, on Sunday, Kishor had inducted nearly 200 young men and women into the party, who were selected after a professional screening process that included submission of bio-data followed by interviews.

The party sources also said that some of the young JD(U) workers complained about "high-handedness of the bureaucracy".

Kishor assured them that their grievances would be looked into but made it clear that they must remain committed to pursuing as a means of public service and not get swayed by the glamour of power.

Kishor had first come into the limelight when he managed the poll campaign of Narendra Modi then the BJPs Prime Ministerial candidate for the Lok Sabha elections held in 2014. He parted ways with the BJP later on and worked for Kumar, who returned to power with a thumping majority the following year.

Kishor is said to have played the important role of a go-between for Kumar and his arch rival Lalu Prasad, both of whom had fought the 2015 assembly polls as alliance partners.

With the NDA grappling with the thorny issue of seat-sharing in Bihar, mainly between the major partners BJP and JD(U), Kishor is also expected to put to use his analytical skills in helping the parties arrive at a formula that could ensure maximum electoral success.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Opposing the bail applications of five prominent activists arrested in June for their alleged links with Maoists, the prosecution Monday submitted "intercepted email communications" exchanged between top CPI(Maoist) fugitive leader Ganapathy and Varavara Rao.

These were exchanged after the arrest of the five activists, the prosecution told court.

Public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar Monday continued her argument before Sessions Judge K D Vadane opposing the bail applications of activists Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj.

She told the court that the email communication reveals that the top leaders in CPI (Maoist) Central Committee (CC) were concerned after the arrest of the five and Chandrashekhar alias Ganapathy, who she claimed was the general secretary of CPI (Maoist), had asked Rao how the letters were leaked.

While quoting the content of the email, which she claimed was written to Rao by Ganapathy, Pawar said, "The CC has received a news-clip of some communication that was leaked immediately after the arrests. The point of great concern is how exactly the letters were leaked and how the letters got in the hands of police. We need to put efforts to understand the full scale of this breach and the methods of the intelligence agencies."



Pawar said the sender of the email also asked Rao to ensure the confidentiality of the communication channel.

"Please ensure the confidentiality of this communication channel and any report or message sent outside of the secured network through the micro chip must be encrypted with password," said Pawar, quoting the mail.

She added that Ganapathy in the mail told Rao that the committee is seeking a report from him.

Quoting the contents of the letter, Pawar said, "It is better to use multiple keys for the future correspondence. The CC also expects your report on the assessment of the the damage caused by the police action."



Pawar said, in the email, that Ganapathy told Rao that after the recent arrests from Delhi and Maharashtra, CC is concerned and said that the "urban movement" is facing a lot of difficulties for last several years.

"In the backdrop of all these events, the CC wants your suggestions to formulate short and long term action plan," Pawar said while quoting the email.

Quoting the email conversation, Pawar said, "The five arrests have caused a lot of damage to the movement and some urgent steps are needed to boost the morale of the cadre."



Citing this email communication, Pawar told the court that the defence has been constantly claiming that these seized letters are fabricated.

"This email communication of banned outfit showing concerns about the actions proves that the seized letters are genuine," she added.

In order to support her claim, Pawar also cited some more details of the same email communication, where the sender has asked Rao to delete this mail permanently after reading.

Pawar also cited another email communication which she claimed was Rao's reply to Ganapathy.

"This mail was written to Ganapathy by Rao in response to the earlier communication that he had received from Chandrashekhar on July 4, 2018. This mail was sent on July 14, where he is asking Ganapathy to maintain extra caution in the view of blanket raids," she said.

"In coming days, I will send a detailed reply along with my own assessment of a serious breach. I agree that any comrade must be secured. Unfortunately I do not know how to set up multiple PGP keys but I will take the help of one of the students," said Pawar, quoting the email content.

PGP is "pretty good privacy" which is an encryption programme to provide cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication.

Pawar said that Rao wrote in the mail that he will put rules in place for using personal mobiles and computers.

Pawar added that Rao had expressed concerns about how the intelligence agencies managed to access a confidential file by the name of "final dispatch.pgp" containing the details of the arms to be smuggled through Nepal, Manipur and Kolkata corridors.

District Judge K D Vadane is currently hearing bail applications of activists Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj, arrested in June and August this year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who is on a five-day official visit to Israel, Monday held a series of interactions with Israeli business leaders to seek investments in the state and assess potential for collaboration in infrastructural, agricultural and water management sectors.

The meetings laid the ground for strong collaborations between the two sides in some of Punjab's most vital areas of development, and gave a boost to the close economic and historical ties between Punjab and Israel, as per government release issued here.

At a meeting with officials of Tyros International Group Ltd, the Chief Minister discussed possibilities of investment by the Group in the areas of energy, water, affordable housing, construction schools and hospitals.

The officials briefed the Punjab delegation led by the Chief Minister on the work being done by the Group, which specialises in impact investments and projects, in India, where it has decided to open an FDI Fund dedicated for impact assessments as part of its future plans.

Amarinder discussed with the officials the investment that the Group could make in Punjab, which now offers immense potential for global investment and capital fund companies, given his government's strong focus on industrial and infrastructure development.

During his tour of NaanDanJain Irrigation farms, the Chief Minister lauded the work being done by the 80-year-old company which was recently acquired by a leading micro-irrigation based Indian company, in the field of precision agriculture and horticulture, in order to boost productivity.

The Chief Minister studied the latest technologies being used by the company on its farms to improve the quality and yield of various vegetables and fruits, including brinjal/eggplant avocado and citrus varieties.

NaanDanJain has been present in Punjab since 1993 through various completed and ongoing projects, including a Crop Diversification Farmfresh (Farm to Home) project for food and spice processing industries, as well as a Water Conservation Resource to Roots) project



During the first day of his Israel trip, the Chief Minister also visited The Dan Region Wastewater Treatment Plant (Shafdan) and met officials of Mekorot, Israel's National Water Company.

The Shafdan is a complex inter-regional system that collects, treats and reclaims municipal wastewater in high density urban areas and industrial zones, and is the largest wastewater treatment plant in Israel.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Punjab Congress Monday demanded a transparent probe into the Amritsar train tragedy that claimed nearly 60 lives, as it stepped up attack against the Railways for "running away" from an investigation.

Nearly 60 persons had died here after being mowed down by a train while watching the Dussehra celebrations from across the tracks on Friday evening.

"We are demanding a transparent probe in Amritsar train tragedy by Indian Railways. Why they are running away from probe? They themselves are creating suspicion that they are trying to save somebody," Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar said while addressing media here.

Jakhar questioned how a "clean chit" was given to the loco-pilot of the train, which ran over nearly 60 people watching a Dussehra event in Amritsar and leaving scores of others injured.

"The haste in which they gave the clean chit to the driver raises suspicion," he said.

Jakhar wondered why Commission of Railway Safety did not initiate any probe into the accident.

"May be this is the first case in the country where Commission of Railway Safety is not holding any inquiry. In the normal course, every train related accident is probed," Jakhar said.

He said the probe by the Railways could highlight why the loco-pilot was running train at a high speed.

Jakhar, who is also Gurdaspur MP alleged that the loco-pilot did not bother to slow down the train when a large number of people were standing on rail tracks.

He rubbished the reported loco-pilot's version that he had applied emergency break and slowed down the train but crowd resorted to stone pelting and he again sped it up to save passengers.

Jakhar also targeted the Government Railway Police, saying they did not take notice of the crowd present at the railway tracks.

Union Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha had already said there was no negligence on part of the Railways.

Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, who was accompanied by Jakhar at a press conference, accused the railway gateman of giving green signal to train despite the presence of large number of people at railway tracks.

He alleged that the railways even did not bother to question loco-pilot and conducted his medical check-up "which indicated that all the circumstantial evidences were destroyed in order to save him".

Sidhu also showed a video of some DMU train, saying it usually runs at low speed to press his point that the ill-fated DMU on Friday evening was running at high speed.

Sidhu had on Sunday targeted the Indian Railways, raising several questions about its functioning and asked how a "clean chit" was given to the loco-pilot of the train.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The quality of provided at private colleges is "a bit superior" to that imparted at ones run by the state, Union minister Nitin Gadkari said Monday, adding the government's job was to make policies and not run institutes.

Speaking at an event to felicitate former Bihar Governor and educationist D Y Patil on his 83rd birthday here, Gadkari also said governments have limitations in effectively taking to the people.

He suggested governments to encourage more individuals with "managerial skills, vision, entrepreneurship and social responsibilities" to enter the field of

Gadkari recalled that when the Vasantdada Patil dispensation in Maharashtra (in the 1980s) encouraged opening of private engineering colleges in the state, the move was criticised by some who argued that the quality of education may decline as non-government institutes would mushroom.

"But we have observed that the quality (of education imparted) at private colleges is a bit superior when compared to government universities, colleges or engineering colleges," Gadkari said.

"One thing stands proved that the success rate has been more wherever the government's interference has been less. Hence, the government should do (the) policy-making job. It should be understood that it is not the government's job to do business or run an institute," he said.

Gadkari also pitched for encouraging farmers to produce fuel from crops to check their financial backwardness.

Former President Pratibha Patil, former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Congress leader Sushilkumar Shinde, former chief ministers Manohar Joshi and Prithviraj Chavan, Union minister Ramdas Athawale, Maharashtra minister Pankaja Munde and former Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay also attended the event.

Former President Patil praised D Y Patil for leaving a "special impact" on the education field, while Gowda said the presence of all-party leaders at the event showed "how much D Y Patil is loved by them".

Pawar praised D Y Patil for helping students from weaker sections to undertake education at his institutes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Home Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart on Monday held delegation-level talks which was also attended by union minister Kiren Rijiju, an MP from Arunachal Pradesh, the border state over which India and China are locked in a territorial row.

Rijiju was part of the Indian team led by Singh but his name later apparently did not figure for talks with the Chinese delegation, led by Zhao Kezhi, China's Minister of Public Security, said an official in the Ministry of Home Affairs privy to the development. The official did not want to be identified.

However, as the restricted meeting between Singh and Zhao was in progress, a message was sent to Rijiju, who was at his residence, to reach North Block, which houses the Home Ministry and where the delegation-level talks was supposed to be held in minutes, the official said.

After receiving the message, the junior home minister rushed to North Block and attended the delegation-level meeting between the two sides, where an India-China security cooperation agreement was signed, the official added.

A home ministry spokesperson declined to comment.

Rijiju hails from Arunachal Pradesh, which China considers as a "disputed" territory. China does not issue regular visas to people from Arunachal Pradesh but gives staple visa, which India has been protesting strongly. India considers Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of the country.

It was not immediately not known whether, at the restricted meeting, Singh informed his Chinese counterpart about Rijiju's participation in the delegation-level talks held shortly afterwards.

During the visit of the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh in April 2017, China warned it would take "necessary measures" to defend its territorial sovereignty and interests, saying India "obstinately" allowed the Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the "disputed" parts of the Northeastern state, causing "serious damage" to the bilateral ties.

China routinely protest visits of Indian leaders to Arunachal Pradesh.

In November 2017, China objected to President Ram Nath Kovind's visit to the northeastern state, saying India should refrain from "complicating" their border dispute when bilateral ties were poised at a "crucial moment".

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Arunachal Pradesh in February 2015, China said it has never recognised the state and is "opposed" to the prime minister's visit to the "disputed area".

A similar protest was also lodged by China when Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had visited Arunachal Pradesh and Beijing said her tour of the "disputed area" is not conducive to peace in the frontier region and asked New Delhi to create an "enabling environment" to resolve the border row.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The woman who was raped allegedly by a relative and was tortured inhumanly with an iron rod inserted in her private parts has been operated upon in a government hospital here and is in a serious condition, hospital sources said Monday.

Doctors operated on her at the sadar hospital here on Sunday night and the woman is in the intensive care unit, the sources said.

She is being administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. "She is a serious condition but is stable," doctors treating her said.

Meanwhile, the accused relative and another person who allegedly helped him in the crime were produced before a local court on Monday and Judge H Bhattacharya granted the police request and remanded them to police custody for two days.

The two had been detained by the police on Sunday and arrested in the evening after interrogating them.

The tribal woman's husband, a labourer, was away from home during the incident which took place on Saturday near their home at Niranjan Pat locality under Dhupguri police station area of Jalpaiguri district.

Police said that the alleged relative had confessed to his crime during interrogation and had said that he had committed it out of personal anger.

The man is locked in a land dispute with the woman's family, the police said.

He had called the 35-year-old woman, a mother of three, out of her home on the pretext of resolving the land dispute, raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron road in her private parts, the Jalpaiguri superintendent Amitabha Maiti told newsmen today quoting her.

Two other persons accompanied the accused but they did not rape or torture her, the SP said adding he had spoken to the woman after her operation.

Maiti said that police is on the look out for the third person, who is absconding.

A rickshaw-puller had found her and taken her home that night, the police said.

The incident brought back memories of the ghastly Nirbhaya rape case of 2012 in which a woman was gangraped inside a moving bus in New Delhi and one of the accused inserted a rod in her private parts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office from the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul the day Jamal Khashoggi was killed there, a pro-government Turkish newspaper reported Monday.

The report comes just a day before Prince Mohammed's high-profile investment summit is to begin in Riyadh and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promises that details of Khashoggi's killing "will be revealed in all its nakedness."



That yet again adds to the pressure Saudi Arabia faces over the slaying of the Washington Post columnist. The kingdom's claim on Saturday that Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" met international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married.

Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

The report by Yeni Safak on Monday said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed's office. It said another call went to the United States.

Yeni Safak cited no source for the information. However, pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Khashoggi's killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces. Yeni Safak reported last week that Saudi officials cut off Khashoggi's fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate as his fiance waited outside.

Officials in Saudi Arabia have not answered repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press in recent days, including on Monday. Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutreb's presence in Istanbul nor that a forensics and autopsy expert was also on hand for Khashoggi's arrival at the consulate.

Last week, a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage showed Mutreb at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival. Mutreb's name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early on Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggi's death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told the AP that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his father's criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion. The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

Five Turkish employees of the consulate also gave testimonies to prosecutors on Monday, Turkish media reported. Istanbul's chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony. Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday told Fox that Khashoggi's killing was "a rogue operation" and that "we don't know where the body is."



"The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority," he said. "There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government."However, leading Republicans and Democrats in Congress are saying Saudi Arabia should face punishment over Khashoggi's killing. President Donald Trump also had talked about possible punishment but said he didn't want to halt proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia because, he maintained, it would harm U.S. manufacturers.

Britain, Germany and France issued a joint statement condemning the killing of Khashoggi, saying there is an "urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened." In a statement Sunday, the governments said attacks on journalists are unacceptable and "of utmost concern to our three nations." They said the "hypotheses" proposed so far in the Saudi investigation need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that she supports a freeze on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined that point Monday, calling for a joint European position as Germany "won't at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Rescuers searched through wreckage Monday after one of Taiwan's fastest passenger trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, killing at least 18 people and injuring more than 180 others.

The Puyuma express ran off the tracks late Sunday afternoon as it went around a bend, throwing train cars into a zig-zag pattern with five left lying on their sides. There was no immediate word on the cause.

Survivors interviewed by Taiwan's official Central Agency said the driver had applied emergency brakes multiple times before the train derailed.

Most of the deaths were in the first car, and it was unclear whether other people were trapped in the train, according to a government spokesman, who spoke on the customary condition of anonymity.

Some passengers were crushed to death, Ministry of National Defense spokesman Chen Chung-chi said. "Their train car turned over. They were crushed, so they died right away," Chen said.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen visited the crash site in Yilan County in the island's northeast early Monday morning and said her government had instructed the authorities to work quickly to investigate the cause of the derailment.

The train had been carrying more than 360 passengers from a suburb of Taipei in the north to Taitung, a city on Taiwan's southeast coast.

Earlier, the government put the death toll as high as 22, but the National Fire Agency, citing the Cabinet spokesman's office, later reduced that figure and blamed a miscalculation.

Local television reports said passengers tried to escape through windows and bystanders gathered to help before rescuers arrived.

One of the eight cars tipped at about a 75-degree angle, with its entire right side destroyed.

Fearing people may be trapped beneath the car, firefighters with lights on their hard hats peered underneath as a crane prepared to upend it. The firefighters were joined by soldiers and Buddhist charity workers who gathered on both sides of the tracks.

Soldiers removed bodies to identify them, but nightfall complicated the rescue work.

On a live feed provided by Taiwan's United Daily News, rescuers could be seen carrying what appeared to be a body wrapped in white plastic away from the site.

Searchers walked through an upright car with flashlights. The search-and-rescue work was to continue until early Monday to make sure everyone aboard was accounted for, Premier William Lai told reporters shortly after midnight.

"The underlying cause should be investigated to the maximum extent to avoid anything like this happening in the future," Lai said. "We will make the whole thing transparent." Ensuring that rail traffic goes back to normal is also a priority, he said.

Most people who were seriously hurt suffered head injuries and one was bleeding internally, said Lin Chih-min, deputy director of Luodong Boai Hospital, where four people were in intensive care. The hospital had treated 65 people total.

The Puyuma was launched in 2013 to handle the rugged topography of Taiwan's east coast. It is distinct from the high-speed rail that runs on the west coast. The Puyuma trains travel up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) per hour, faster than any other in Taiwan except for the high-speed rail.

The train that derailed had its most recent inspection and major maintenance work in 2017, Taiwan Railways Administration Director Lu Chie-shen said at a televised conference.

Sunday's derailment was at least the third deadly rail accident in Taiwan since 2003.

A tourist train overturned in the southern mountains in 2011 after a large tree fell onto the rails. Five Chinese visitors were killed.

A train on a test run ignored a stop sign and crashed into another train in northeastern Taiwan in 2007. Five people were killed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A retired Army personnel was shot dead by two unidentified gunmen in his residence at Khatowal Gaon, in Assam's Nagaon district Monday, police said.

The two gunmen came in motorcycle to the residence of Dipen Nath in Khatowal Gaon area at around 7 pm and shot him dead from point blank range and fled away, they said.

Officer-in-Charge (OC) Nagaon Sadar police station, said investigations are on.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Railway Minister Piyush Goyal returned from US on Monday, two days after 59 Dussehra revellers watching the burning of a Ravana effigy on the tracks near Amritsar were mowed down by a train, with officials attributing the delay to non-availability of tickets and problem of connecting flights.

"The minister had rushed to the airport but there were no tickets available. In fact, he has come back after taking multiple flights and even halted at one airport for 12 hours. He really tried his best to get back. In the meantime, he has been briefing us, guiding us and monitoring the situation on the ground continuously," said a senior official.

Goyal who was on a trip to the United States to collect an award for rural electrification returned here in the wee hours of the morning, the official told PTI, adding he then participated in an event organised by Niti Ayog which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Cabinet.

The minister had tweeted around two hours after the Amritsar tragedy announcing that he was cancelling all his engagements in the US and returning immediately to India.

"May God give strength to the bereaved and injured. Railways is providing all possible assistance at the site. I have cancelled all engagements in USA and immediately returning back to India," he tweeted at 9:45 pm on October 19.

Officials said the minister did not attend any of the events planned for his visit there after he got the of the tragedy.

On his arrival in the country, he has also been briefed about the latest in the case, the official added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Russia has denounced Canada's cannabis legalization, which took effect last week, calling it "unacceptable" and contrary to international laws, and saying it will lead to increased trafficking abroad.

"We are convinced that this legislation goes against international law on drug control," the Russian embassy in Ottawa said Monday in a statement.

According to Moscow, Canada is violating major drug control treaties including the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

"By consciously torpedoing the international drug control regime, the Canadian government is creating the world's largest drug market, which, despite all the claims and measures being contemplated to prevent the export of cannabis across national borders, will certainly result in a considerable increase in its trafficking to other states," said the Russians.

The embassy said "Russia and other countries will probably have to take additional measures to prevent possible attempts to smuggle cannabis and its derivatives from Canada." On October 17, Canada became the first major economy to legalize cannabis -- fulfilling a 2015 campaign promise by Prime Minister Justin



Trudeau, which he has defended as intended to protect young people and to shut down the black market.

Richard Walker, a spokesman for its foreign ministry, told AFP that Canada remains "a strong supporter of the international drug control framework" and will continue to "combat drug trafficking."



"The legalization of cannabis does not change our commitment to meeting the overarching goals of the UN drug conventions -- protecting the health and safety or our citizens -- and Canada will continue to work with its international partners to advance these objectives," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A Russian Army contingent arrived here on Monday to take part in the third edition of a joint bilateral military training exercise, the Pakistan Army said.

The two armies will be holding joint military drills in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan which will continue till November 4.

This will be the third joint military drill between Pakistan and Russia under the bilateral training cooperation agreement, according to a statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan Army.

"Russian Army Contingent arrived in Pakistan to participate in the Pak-Russia Joint Training Exercise 'Druzhba-III'," the statement added.

The Army did not provide any further details about the drills.

Earlier, the Russian army said that drill will be held at the training range in Nowshera district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and over 70 soldiers from Russia's southern military district will participate.

The servicemen from the two countries' armed forces will perform tasks at the altitude of 1,400 meters above the sea level.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Army said that the third exercise was part of the Pak-Russia bilateral training cooperation.

The two sides are trying to bolster defence ties and in August this year they inked an agreement allowing Pakistani troops to train in Russia.

The agreement was signed during the visit of Deputy Defense Minister of Russia Colonel General Alexander Fomin to Islamabad to participate in the first Russia-Pakistan Joint Military Consultative Committee (JMCC) meeting on security and defence.

Russia and Pakistan have been holding the 'Friendship' drills since 2016. In October 2016, they held their first-ever joint military exercise in Pakistan. In 2017, over 200 servicemen took part in the drills, hosted by Russia at Minralney Vody in the North Caucasus at an altitude of 2,300 meters above sea level.

Pakistan's defence ties with Russia have moved past the bitter Cold War hostilities in recent years and the chill in the relations between Pakistan and the US has further pushed the country towards Russia and China.

Pakistan has shown eagerness to build defence level ties with Russia.

Russia has over the past three years provided four Mi-35M combat and cargo helicopters to Pakistan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The doors to Sabarimala temple closed Monday night, six days after opening for the first time since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on entry of women of menstruating age, but climbing the 18 "sacred steps" leading to the sanctum sanctorum proved a tall order for them.

Valiant attempts by around a dozen women, including activists and journalists in the 10-50 years age group to script history came to nought as frenzied devotees of Lord Ayyappa, the eternally celibate deity, heckled and hassled them and forced them to retreat.

Yet another woman in the "barred" age group made a futile attempt Monday to reach Sabarimala but was turned back by agitated protesters.

Bindu, a Dalit activist, who was proceeding to Pamba at the foothills of Sabarimala temple from where devotees undertake an arduous 5 km trek to the shrine, was given police protection at her request, officials said.

However, when the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus she was travelling on with police personnel was about to reach Pamba, a group of BJP workers and those opposing the entry of girls and women aged between 10 and 50 years into the temple, blocked the road and forced her to alight.

She was then escorted to safety in a police jeep, officials said.

'Melsanti' or the head priest and other priests stood on both sides of the idol of Lord Ayyappa and recited divine song "Harivarasanam" and began putting off the lamps in the sanctum sanctorum halfway down the rendition.

As the last line was sung, the doors were closed and locked, shutting out, at least for the time being, spirited women of menstruating age from offering prayers to the deity.

The iron gates to the shrine were opened on Wednesday and every day since then women of the "barred" age group made brave but futile attempts to enter the shrine. Six women were prevented from entering the temple Sunday alone.

Kerala women's rights activist Rehana Fathima and Hyderabad journalist Kavitha Jakkal, wearing helmets and khaki, and surrounded by a police contingent, could manage to go up to Valiya Nadappandhal, the queue complex located a few metres away from the holy 'pathinettam padi', the 18 sacred steps, but not beyond.

Several people, including journalists, were injured on Wednesday as police cracked down on protesters who were up in arms against Kerala's Left Front government for its decision to enforce the Supreme Court order.

Hindu fringe groups called a strike the next day and both the Congress, the main opposition party in Kerala, and the BJP, which is desperately seeking to expand its footprint in the state, lent support to the agitation.

Meanwhile, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages Sabarimala temple, is meeting on Tuesday to discuss how to make an intervention in the Supreme Court while protecting the "interest of devotees".

"The TDB has the legal responsibility to protect the interest of devotees. We also have to look at the rituals and customs of the temple. The board will make its intervention in Supreme Court without harming this," its chief A Padmakumar told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

He said the meeting would decide the "nature" of the report to be submitted to the apex court.

The Supreme Court Monday said it would decide tomorrow as to when the petitions seeking a review of its Sabarimala verdict will be listed for hearing. In all, 19 review petitions are pending before it for hearing.

The state's Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran welcomed the TDB's decision to approach the Supreme Court with a comprehensive report about the recent developments in Sabarimala.

"It's a good decision...the TDB's move is to bring to the notice of the Supreme Court the difficulties faced by the real devotees," Surendran said.

He conceded that the LDF government was caught between the "devil and the deep sea" while executing the apex court order.

The Congress-led UDF has decided to hold a series of foot marches, vehicle rallies and meetings across the state to explain to people its stand on the issue and "expose" the ruling CPI(M) and BJP's "hidden agenda".

The temple will open briefly on November 5 evening for the next day's 'Chithira Attavisesham' to celebrate the birth anniversary of Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the last king of Travancore.

The doors of the shrine will open on November 17 for the three-month-long Mandalam Makaravilakku celebrations when lakhs of devotees from the country and abroad visit the place every year.

If the Supreme Court does not stay or overturn its own verdict by then, enforcing its historic order may prove to be a daunting task for the Kerala government.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The board managing the Sabarimala temple, in the eye of a storm over entry of women of menstrual age, Monday said it has the responsibility of protecting the faith of devotees and traditions of the shrine and would decide Tuesday its stand to be taken in the

The Travancore Devaswom Board would meet here Tuesday and take a decision on its legal course to be taken in the court where review petitions have been filed against its recent order lifting the centuries-old ban on entry of women in 10-50 age group into the Lord Ayyappa temple, its chief A Padmakumar said here.

"The TDB has the legal responsibility to protect the interest of devotees. We also have to look into the rituals and customs of the temple.The board will make its intervention in without harming this," he told reporters.

His remarks assume significance in the wake of the Monday saying it would decide tomorrow as to when the petitions, seeking review of its verdict on Sabarimala, will be listed for hearing.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice S K Kaul stated this after submissions by lawyer Mathews J Nedumpara that his petition seeking review of the constitutional bench's judgement last month be listed for urgent hearing.

The famous Sabarimala temple, which opened for monthly puja on October 17 for the first time after the apex court order, has been witnessing a stand-off over the issue with angry devotees preventing at least a dozen women in the 'barred' age group from entering the shrine.

Padmakumar said Tuesday's TDB meeting would decide the nature of report to be submitted at the apex court.

"Discussions are going on with the legal experts. The TDB is viewing the issue with utmost seriousness," he added.

Last week, the TDB had decided to approach the apex court and submit a report on the situation prevailing in the state in the backdrop of intense protest by devotees of Lord Ayyappa after the LDF government decided to implement the order on entry of women.

The Sabarimala issue has snowballed into a major political row with the opposition, Congress and BJP extending solidarity with the believers and supporting the agitation by devotees, who included a large number of women.

Meanwhile, state Devaswom (religious institutions) Minister Kadakampally Surendran Monday welcomed the TDB's decision to file a comprehensive report in the apex court about the present developments in Sabarimala.

"It's a good decision...the TDB's move is to bring to the notice of the Supreme Court the difficulties faced by the real devotees," he said.

Attacking the BJP, he said the LDF government was caught between "the devil and the deep sea" in implementing the court order.

"While on one hand, the Central home ministry is putting pressure on the state to implement the court verdict, on the other hand, BJP workers in devotees' garb are trying to unleash violence against its implementation," he alleged.

BJP wanted to drag the issue till the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, he claimed.

The Congress-led UDF decided to launch a series of foot marches, vehicles rallies and meetings across the state to explain its stand on the issue and 'expose' the ruling CPI(M) and BJP's 'hidden agenda' on the Sabarimala issue.

The Congress said the party would campaign for protecting the interest of devotees.

Hitting out at Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Mullappally Ramachandran alleged he was playing "caste politics" on the issue.

In a related development, activist Rahul Easwar and 19 others, arrested in connection with the protests in Sabariamala temple complex on October 18, were Monday released on bail by a magistrate court in Ranni.

State DGP Loknath Behera warned of stringent action against people who make false propaganda against senior police personnel in connection with the Sabarimala issue on the social media.

"There is no justification for the cyber attack on IG Manoj Abraham and S Sreejith, who are in charge of the security arrangements in Sabarimala," he said referring to certain comments against them.

The temple will close tonight after five-days-monthly poojas. It will open on November 17 for the three-month-long Mandalam Makaravilakku celebrations, during which the hill shrine used to witness lakhs of devotees converging from and outside the country.The Congress Monday accused the Modi government of conniving with fraudsters who had escaped the country and claimed "conflict of interest" to demand the sacking of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying his daughter and son-in-law, both lawyers, allegedly received a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from fugitive Mehul Choksi.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi alleged Jaitley's daughter was "on the payroll" of Choksi, the main accused in the multi-crore PNB fraud case.

Separately, addressing a joint press conference with party colleagues Rajiv Satav and Sushmita Dev, Congress leader Sachin Pilot claimed that in the 44 months till January 2018, the Modi government witnessed an unprecedented 19,000 'bank fraud cases' involving Rs 90,000 crore.

He said 23 fraudsters escaped India under the government's watch after duping the country of over Rs 53,000 crore.

On Twitter, Gandhi alleged that Jaitley "sat on the file and allowed him (Choksi) to flee". The Congress chief claimed that the media had "blacked out" the story but the people of the country would not.

He gave an ICICI bank account number from which money was allegedly transferred to Jaitley's daughter.

"Arun Jaitlie's daughter was on the payroll of thief Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile her FM daddy sat on his file and allowed him to flee (sic).

"She received money....

"It's sad that media has blacked out this story. The people of India won't," he tweeted, using the hashtag 'ArunJaitlieMustResign'.

The Congress has alleged that Jaitley's daughter and son-in-law, both lawyers, allegedly received a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from Choksi.

However, Jaitley's son-in-law had issued a statement stating that his law firm had returned the retainership the moment they came to know that the company was involved in a scam.

Pilot said that this government came to power 4.5 years ago and made tall claims and tried to spread misinformation.

"But the fact is that the country's prime minister and finance minister and its entire structure is working to protect economic terrorists. This government provides protection to absconders and provides them safe passage," he alleged.

"The three Cs collusion, connivance and conflict of interest of the finance minister with Mehul Choksi now stands exposed," he said.

He wondered how those who defrauded the banks and the country have fled so easily and said the facts that have come out on who helped them escape, this government has no answers.

"Why were fraudsters allowed to flee the country when agencies were on red alert and when the prime minister and the finance minister were aware of the goings on," he asked.

"These are the people who were officially helping the fraudsters, legally safeguarding them and politically protecting them to help them escape and run away," said Pilot, demanding that both the prime minister and the finance minister speak up on the issue.

Sushmita Dev said there is very old saying that 'Ceaser's wife must be above suspicion' and in this case, there are three people who are in the "position of Ceaser's wife Shri Arun Jaitley Ji, his son-in-law Jaiyesh, who is a partner in Jaitley & Associates, and his own daughter Sonali".

"We request Shri Arun Jaitley and Prime Minister Shri Modi to come clean. You promised the nation a 'zero tolerance' for corruption, you promised the people that you are their watchman. Finance Minister has consistently taken a high moral ground. Now we want to see as to what bluff is he going to put forward in his blog to protect his own 'Damaad', his own 'Beti' and his own 'Karobar'," she asked.

"Successive escapes of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and others reflect that Modi government is not a guardian of 'public money' but a 'travel agency' facilitating 'fraud, fleece and fly to foreign shores' of willful bank defaulters," the three leaders said in a statement.

"Arun Jaitley, being Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, his daughter Sonali Jaitley and son-in-law Jaiyesh Bakhshi proceeded to accept a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from Mehul Choksi's fraudster company Gitanjali Gems Ltd in December 2017," Pilot alleged.

"Is this not a clear-cut case of Collusion, Connivance and Conflict of Interest on part of FM Arun Jaitley? Why were FM Jaitley, his daughter and son-in-law neither summoned nor questioned by CBI/ED/SFIO," the leaders asked in the statement.

"Is it not a fit case to sack Shri Arun Jaitley and conduct a full independent investigation?" they added.

Pilot and the other leaders also sought to know why no action was taken against Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi, Gitanjali Gems Ltd and others, despite FIRs and multiple complaints.

"Who protected them?" they asked.

Addressing the press conference, the Congress leaders said the Modi government was more loyal to "conmen" than to the common man as "it not only helped them escape the country after defrauding banks worth crores, but also provided them protection and legal protection".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the son of Jamal Khashoggi, the kingdom announced early Monday, to express condolences for the death of the journalist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by officials that allegedly included a member of the royal's entourage.

King Salman similarly made a condolence call as international pressure on the kingdom continues to rise, even after it acknowledged on Saturday that the Washington Post journalist was killed Oct. 2 at the consulate under still-disputed circumstances.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that he will "go into detail" about the Khashoggi case in a speech in parliament Tuesday, the same day a glitzy investment forum in Riyadh spearheaded by Prince Mohammed is to take place.

Saudi Arabia's explanation that Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight" and 18 Saudis have been detained has been met with international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up designed to absolve Prince Mohammed of direct responsibility. Turkish media reports and officials say a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul, laid in wait for Khashoggi at the consulate and then cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

"Why did these 15 people come here? Why were 18 people arrested? All of this needs to be explained in all its details," Erdogan said.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed express their condolences for his father's death.

The call comes after a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage shows Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival.

Mutreb's name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutreb's presence in Istanbul nor that of a forensics and autopsy expert, also on hand for Khashoggi's arrival at the consulate.

Istanbul's chief prosecutor summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony on Monday, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported. Prosecutors have previously questioned consulate staff; some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Turkish agency Anadolu Agency reported Sunday that Khashoggi's fiance, Hatice Cengiz, has been given 24-hour police protection.

Also Sunday, images that were obtained by TRT World, a Turkish channel that broadcasts in English, showed Khashoggi as he arrived at a police barrier before entering the consulate on Oct. 2. The images, taken from security camera video, show the writer being searched before continuing toward the building.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Fox that Khashoggi's killing was "a rogue operation" and that "we don't know where the body is.'" "The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority," he said.

"There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government." However, a leading U.S. Senate Republican said the Saudi explanation, which followed initial denials from the kingdom that it knew anything about Khashoggi's fate, wasn't credible.

Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday on CNN's "State of the Union" that he believed Prince Mohammed, the heir-apparent of the world's largest oil exporter, was behind the killing.

The crown prince has "now crossed a line and there has to be a punishment and a price paid for that," Corker said. He also urged Turkey to turn over purported audio recordings of Khashoggi's killing inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The existence of such evidence has been reported in Turkish media in a series of leaks, though Turkish officials have yet to confirm they have recordings.

"The Turks have been talking more to the media than they have (to) us," Corker said of the NATO ally.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court Monday refused to entertain a PIL seeking to stop misuse of religion for electoral gains and debarring candidates as also de-registering political parties for taking undue benefits in the name of religion.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi dismissed the PIL filed by BJP leader and lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay seeking issuance of direction to the poll panel and the Centre to take appropriate steps to restrict misuse of religion by the candidates and political parties.

"We are not inclined. Dismissed," the bench, which also comprised Justice S K Kaul, told senior lawyer Amrendra Sharan who was seeking issuance of notice on the PIL.

The plea also sought conferring the Election Commission of India (ECI) with the power to refer complaints related to such corrupt electoral practices to investigation agencies, much in line with the recommendation of the Goswami Committee on Electoral Reform.

In its 1990 report, the Committee had suggested some parallel recommendations including giving ECI the power to refer any matter for investigation to any agency specified by the Commission, it said.

The petition said religious statements are made during elections to support particular political parties and candidates, which is against democracy.

"It has been observed, particularly, since 2000 onwards, not only the Parliament and State Assembly General Election, even in the by-election; religious statements are made to support particular political parties and candidates, which is against the basic dictum of democracy and free and fair election in spirit of Article 324 of the Constitution," it said.

It said that using religion for electoral gains was violative of Articles 14 (right to equality)and 19 (freedom of speech and expression) of the Constitution.

The petition also submitted that the law be amended so as to effectuate the Liberhan Commission recommendations which had proposed taking swift action against parties that misuse religious sentiments, or else as an alternative, the Election Commission be directed to frame guidelines for the same.

Under Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act, appeal on grounds of religion, race and promotions of feelings of enmity between different classes, constitute corrupt practice but it cannot be a subject of enquiry before the ECI when the election is in progress, the plea said.

"Ironically, these provisions will have application only during the period of election and there is no provision to challenge the corrupt practice of the candidate who lost the election," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court Monday stayed the order of National Green Tribunal (NGT) which had cleared the ambitious 'Chardham Mahamarg Vikas Pariyojna' that proposes to provide all-weather connectivity to four holy towns of Uttarakhand.

The four towns of the hilly state to be connected by all-weather roads are: Yamnotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath.

A bench of Justices R F Nariman and S Abdul Nazeer issued notice to Centre and Uttarakhand and sought their reply.

It posted the matter for further hearing on November 15.

During the hearing, Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for Centre, said that the green tribunal had already passed an order with regard to the project.

Advocate Sanjay Parikh, appearing for petitioner NGO 'Citizens for Green Doon', said that the order was passed by a bench of tribunal which was not as per the apex court order of August 27.

The bench, then stayed the order of tribunal and sought response from the Centre and state government by November 15.

On September 26, the green tribunal had constituted a committee to monitor the ambitious project while giving its nod with some safeguards in view of the larger public interest and the country's security in the construction of highway.

"We are of the view that all environmental concerns can be addressed by having a responsible and independent oversight mechanism which may monitor the environmental safeguards during the execution of this project," the tribunal had said.

It had said that the statutory environmental impact assessment under the Protection Act, 1986 was not required in view of exemption granted through notification dated August 22, 2013.

The tribunal constituted a committee headed by former Uttarakhand High Court Judge Justice U C Dhyani to oversee the implementation of Management Plan (EMP) of the project.

The NGT had directed the authorities to devise a mechanism to provide pedestrian pathways for devotees who undertake to do 'padyatra' to the religious places viz Yamnotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath.

It also asked the concerned authorities to devise a policy whereby diesel vehicles which are more than 10 years old and petrol vehicles which are over 15 years old are prohibited to ply along the entire road length of the project.

"The Chief Secretary, Uttarakhand and the Uttarakhand Administration shall devise a policy by way of introduction of E-vehicles and CNG buses in a time bound manner," the green panel had said.

The apex court had on August 27, asked the NGT chairman to accord "one clear day" to an original bench, which had heard petitions dealing with environmental clearance issues related to Chardham highway project.

The top court had clarified that since the issue appears to be a complex one and has been heard over several days by the original bench, the re-hearing can only be done by NGT on some finer aspects.

The petitioner NGO had said that the clearance was must for the project and the ongoing work was "blatantly illegal".

It had said the trees and mountains are also of national importance and it is the government's duty to protect and preserve them.

The Environment Ministry had earlier informed the NGT that it has received no proposal for environmental clearance of the project and hence the question of an environment impact assessment (EIA) study of such a project does not arise.

The ministry also said that under the 2006 EIA notification, only new national highways and expansion of highways over 100 km need to get prior environmental clearance.

The submission was made in response to a plea of the NGO which said that the 900 km project in the hilly state was being carried out without any environment impact assessment.

The petition of the NGO also contended that the Centre has allegedly deliberately broken it into small stretches to do away the requirement for obtaining environment clearance.

It had alleged that the road widening work to connect Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri in Uttarakhand was being carried out in violation of environmental laws.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court Monday took note of over 5,000 vacant posts of judicial officers in lower courts across the country and sought information from all the 24 high courts as also states, terming the extent of vacancies as "wholly unacceptable".

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi exercised the extra-ordinary powers of the apex court under Article 142 (power of the Supreme Court to seek enforcement of its orders) under the Constitution and directed all the 24 high courts and 36 states and Union Territories to apprise it of issues like vacancies and the time frame within which they can be filled up.

The bench, also comprising Justice S K Kaul, considered the communication between the apex court's registry and registries of all the high courts. It said there were 22,036 posts of higher and lower judicial officers in lower courts in the country and, as on date, 5,133 posts are vacant.

"The information collected by the Registry of this court from the Registries of different High Courts indicates that recruitment process/processes to fill up 4,180 posts are presently underway and the said recruitment processes are poised at different stages in different states," it said, adding that the information also indicated that recruitment processes have not started to fill up 1,324 posts.

"The existence of vacancies to the extent indicated is wholly unacceptable. The Registry of this Court is, therefore, directed to register a suo motu writ petition," the bench said.

In its order, the top court has sought information as to when the process for appointment into "Higher Judicial Service" and "Lower Judicial Service" had been initiated in various states and by which time, the processes would be over.

Referring to an earlier order by which the apex court had fixed the time frame for appointments, it has asked the high courts and the states to provide the information as to whether the time limits have been adhered to or not and the expected time line for completing the recruitment drive.

"If the time taken has exceeded the Schedule fixed by this Court the reasons therefore be furnished by the Registries of such High Courts/concerned authorities of the state where the recruitment is done through the Public Service Commission(s) which are in default," it ordered.

It has also asked states and the high courts whether the time expected to be taken to complete the on-going process can be "shortened" and said the time-schedule spelt out in the earlier order for filling up the vacancies would be understood to be "indicating the outer time limit and not the minimum period for completion".

"Whether the infrastructure and man-power available in the different states is adequate if all the posts that are borne in the cadre are to be filled up," the court asked, adding that these information be made available to the Secretary General of the apex court on or before October 31 and listed the matter for hearing a day after.

The top court appointed senior advocates Shyam Divan, K V Vishwanathan, Vijay Hansaria and lawyer Gaurav Agrawal as amicus curiae and asked them to assist it in dealing with the case.

Divan would deal the vacancies and the processes needed to fill them up in states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and the North-Eastern states.

While Vishwanathan would assist the top court in dealing with the vacancies in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Kerala, Hansaria would deal with Madhya Pradesh, Madras, Odisha, Patna and Punjab and Haryana.

Agrawal would render assistance to the top court in dealing with the issue of vacancies in states of Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura and Uttarakhand.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A priest in central France accused of sexually assaulting a minor committed suicide in his church, Catholic authorities said Monday, the second French priest to take his life over abuse claims in a month.

Pierre-Yves Fumery, 38, hanged himself in his presbytery in the town of Gien in the Loire valley. His body was found on Saturday.

The public prosecutor for the area, Loic Abrial, told AFP he had been questioned last week by police about allegations of sexual assault involving a child under the age of 15.

Fumery had not been formally charged but was under investigation because of reports from the community about his behaviour, prosecutors said.

Orleans bishop Jacques Blaquart, whose diocese includes Gien, called it a "moment of suffering and a tragic ordeal".

Blaquart said some members of Fumery's parish had brought attention to the priest's "inappropriate behaviour" towards children aged 13, 14 and 15, including a girl "that he took in his arms and drove home several times."



The bishop said the nature of the claims did not require the diocese to report the priest to the authorities and that he had told Fumery to "take a step back", seek counselling and leave town for a little while.

The priest took his advice and returned to Gien after a short break but had not yet resumed his duties, Blaquart said.

He is the second priest in over a month to commit suicide in similar circumstances. On September 19, Jean-Baptiste Sebe, also aged 38, hanged himself in his church in the northern city of Rouen after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her adult daughter.

No formal complaint had been made at the time of his death.

The Catholic Church has been shaken by a string of paedophile scandals over the past 25 years.

The most senior French Catholic cleric to be caught up in scandal is Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who is to go on trial in January for allegedly covering up for a priest accused of abusing boy scouts in the Lyon area in the 1980s.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Two Paytm employees, including a woman, were among three persons arrested on Monday for allegedly trying to extort Rs 20 crore from the e-wallet giant's founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma after threatening to leak stolen personal data and information, Noida Police said here.

The arrested woman, who allegedly masterminded the extortion bid, is the secretary of Sharma and the trio had threatened to leak the data and misuse the information to cause the firm loss and dent its public image, officials said.

The three employees of the Noida-headquartered e-commerce and wallet firm were arrested late Monday afternoon by a team from the Sector 20 police station, while their fourth accomplice is still at large, a senior official said.

According to the police, those arrested are Sharma's woman secretary (identity withheld), her husband Roopak Jain and another Paytm employee Devnedra Kumar. The fourth accused, Rohit Chomal, is a resident of Kolkata and had allegedly made the extortion call to Sharma's brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma.

The owner of Paytm had made a complaint with the police that their employees, a woman and her aides, had stolen some data from the company and were blackmailing. They were demanding Rs 20 crore for not leaking it, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ajay Pal Sharma said.

Taking immediate action on it, an FIR was registered and three persons, including the woman, arrested. They are being probed about the data and their modus operandi. Police will share the facts as they are unearthed, Sharma said.

The SSP said they will seek their custody to interrogate them further and gather more details. Police were not clear as to what kind of data was stolen.

He said that the local police are in touch with their counterparts in Kolkata to track down Chomal, who allegedly made the extortion call to Sharma's brother.

The FIR was registered at Sector 20 police station and the accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections 381 (theft by clerk or servant of property in possession of master), 384 (extortion), 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt), 420 (cheating), 408 (Criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant) and 120 B (party to a criminal conspiracy).

Charges under the provisions of the Information Technology Act have also been pressed against the accused, the police said.

When contacted, Paytm confirmed in a statement that the Noida Police have arrested three people, including one female employee of Paytm, in the case of extortion.

The employee along with two other accomplices attempted to extort money from Vijay Shekhar Sharma on the pretext of leaking his personal data.

We are standing by our colleagues till the police enquiry reaches its meaningful conclusion, the company said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Seniority, an RPG Group's shopping destination for senior citizens in the country, reported a 500 per cent growth this year, the company's co-founder Ayush Agarwal said Monday.

With a curated products portfolio of over 4,000 products ranging from medical to lifestyle, the company, started in 2016, aims to provide a seamless experience through its online website and its retail store, focusing on making every day lives easier for senior citizens, he said.

On the sidelines of opening a Seniority store here, the first in South India and second in India after Pune, he told reporters as on August last, the company has over 1.7 lakh customers across the country.

The store has been opened in association with Covaicare, one of the oldest and senior brands in India, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Seven policemen were injured when a mob attacked them after an altercation over bursting of crackers during an immersion procession in West Bengal's Nadia district, a senior police officer said Monday.

The policemen on duty at Poragaccha Jahutala ghat on Sunday night told an immersion procession not to burst crackers. An altercation broke out and the mob attacked the policemen, the officer said.

Seven policemen including two officers were injured in the attack, he said, adding the police arrested eight persons for attacking the cops, the officer added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court Monday asked the self-styled preacher Daati Maharaj, accused in a sexual assault case, to move Delhi High Court with his grievances over the alleged concealment of information from that court by the victim.

The top court, however, granted liberty to Maharaj to approach it after the matter is finally adjudicated by the High Court.

A bench of Justices N V Ramana and M M Shantangoudar asked senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Daati Maharaj to move the high court which had ordered CBI probe into the sexual assault case against him.

Rohatgi said that the petitioner before the high court on whose plea the CBI probe was ordered had concealed the information that a criminal writ filed by the same set of lawyers was dismissed by the high court, and even a petition was withdrawn from the Supreme Court.

"They committed a criminal contempt by playing fraud upon the court. They have not disclosed that a petition for CBI probe was already dismissed by the high court and a similar plea was withdrawn from the apex court," he said.

The bench said that Daati Maharaj can raise his grievances before the high court which is seized of the matter.

Rohatgi then sought permission to withdraw his petition and said that liberty should be granted to approach the apex court after high court finally adjudicate the matter.

The bench said that the petition is dismissed as withdrawn and granted him liberty to approach against the final order of the high court.

Maharaj had challenged the Delhi High Court's order transferring the matter to the CBI.

Rohatgi said during the arguments today that the first petition was dismissed by the high court in July and the petitioners then moved the apex court seeking CBI probe. However, that plea was withdrawn in September.

He further said that the petitioner, who claims to be victim, then moved the high court in second round by filing a fresh petition on the civil side, in which the court had now ordered CBI probe in the case.

"This information was concealed by the petitioner woman to the high court and the court ordered CBI probe in the case," he said.

The high court had on October 3 pulled up the Delhi Police for not arresting Daati Maharaj in the case and had transferred the matter to the CBI.

A complaint was filed against Daati Madan Lal alias Daati Maharaj on June 7 and an FIR was registered on June 11.

On June 22, police had questioned the accused, who has been charged with alleged rape of a disciple at his ashrams in Delhi and Rajasthan.

The accused has claimed he was being framed in the case.

The complainant has filed the case against the preacher, his three brothers and a woman at the Fatehpur Beri police station in South Delhi.

The case was later transferred to the Delhi Police's Crime Branch.

The high court, while transferring the case to the CBI, had said the manner in which police had carried out the probe "casts a shadow on the investigation".

The high court had said police did not arrest the accused in the case even after recording of the complainant's statement before a magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

The police had claimed before the high court that arrests were not made in the case as there were discrepancies and contradictions in the woman's statement.

It had also alleged that other women, who according to the complainant were also assaulted by the accused, have denied such allegations when they were questioned.

A trial court had earlier taken strong exception to the manner in which probe was being conducted in the case, saying the investigating officer had not been able to explain the efforts made to ensure that the accused does not abscond during the investigation.

It had directed the deputy commissioner of police (Crime Branch) to monitor the probe and ensure that a status report is filed before the court every week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Congress Monday said it will not defend or protect anybody and the law should take its due course after a case was registered against former Kerala chief minister Oomen Chandy and Congress MP K C Venugopal on a complaint of sexual misconduct filed by Solar scam accused Saritha S Nair.

Congress spokesperson and Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev said an FIR has been filed and the women have every right to file it and the police has every right to investigate.

"The law must take its due course. We are not here to defend or protect anybody against whom there is an allegation. She has every right to file an FIR. Police has every right to investigate. It does not matter whether it is Oomen Chandy or anybody else," she told reporters here when asked about the charges against Chandy.

The Crime Branch of the Kerala Police has registered cases against Chandy and Venugopal on a complaint of sexual misconduct filed by Nair.

Director General of Police (DGP) Loknath Behara said the cases against the two leaders were lodged on the basis of a complaint from Nair.

"Let the law take its own course," he told reporters here.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Superintendent of Police (SP) Abdul Karim, was constituted to probe the cases, the DGP added.

Reacting to the development, Chandy said they were prepared to face the cases legally.

He claimed the cases were "politically motivated".

By lodging the cases now, the attempt of the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in the state was to deflect the attention of the people from the Sabarimala issue, Chandy told reporters.

Nair has alleged in her complaint that Chandy had sexually exploited her at Cliff House, the official residence of the chief minister in 2012, while Venugopal had raped her at Rose House, the residence of then state minister A P Anil Kumar.

The previous United Democratic Front (UDF) government had formed the G Sivarajan Commission when the allegations against Nair and Biju Radhakrishanan that they had duped several people of crores of rupees by offering them solar panel solutions had surfaced.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Days after Arunachal Pradesh was put on high alert for possible flash floods after China informed India about the formation of an artificial lake in Tibet, a senior district official has allayed the fears of any eventuality.

Upper Siang Deputy Commissioner Duli Kamduk said no damage was reported in the district and the Siang river was flowing at the normal level.

This was also corroborated by Health and Family Welfare Minister Alo Libang, who is also the Yingkiong MLA.

Round-the-clock monitoring by senior district officials and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams is on.

However, the erosion of 50 metres of land by the river was reported from the Mebo area on Sunday.

The erosion by the river was still continuing, Mebo MLA Lombo Tayeng told PTI over phone.

People living along the banks of the Siang river were moved to safer places after China informed India about possible flash floods in the north-eastern state, officials had said Saturday.

The first rush of water had reached Pasihgat, the headquarters of East Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh, at around 7.30 am Saturday.

Chinese Embassy spokesperson Counselor Ji Rong had said his country had activated the "Emergency Information Sharing Mechanism" with India, following the landslide Wednesday morning near Jiala village in Milin County in the lower ranges of the Yaluzangbu river in Tibet.

The reason cited behind the landslide was "natural causes".

The Yaluzangbu river is called Siang when it enters Arunachal Pradesh and Brahmaputra in Assam.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The chief executive of German industrial conglomerate Siemens Joe Kaeser said Monday he would withdraw from a Saudi investment summit, after days of media and political pressure over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"It's the cleanest decision but not the most courageous one," Kaeser wrote in a post on social network LinkedIn of his choice not to attend the Future Investment Initiative (FII).

The Siemens boss insisted the move was "not a decision against the Kingdom or its people," recalling that "Siemens has been a reliable partner to Saudi Arabia for decades." "But for now, the truth must be found and justice must be served," Kaeser said.

German politicians and media had urged him to withdraw from the FII - dubbed "Davos in the desert" after the Swiss haunt of the rich and powerful.

"I personally wouldn't take part in an event in Riyadh at the moment," Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Saturday.

Business daily Handelsblatt intoned last week that "now is not the time to be talking about future business projects at an investors' forum." Dozens of executives and International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde have pulled out of the pow-wow since Khashoggi's disappearance at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Riyadh at first denied all knowledge of his whereabouts before admitting by inches that he had died on the premises.

By Sunday, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in an interview with Fox that "individuals... (acting) outside the scope of their authority" were responsible for the "murder" of Khashoggi.

Britain, France and Germany have urged Riyadh to clarify how Khashoggi died, while US President Donald Trump accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing, saying in an interview "their stories are all over the place".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A special POCSO court here Monday remanded a man arrested in connection with the rape and murder of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl here to police custody till October 30.

The victim had gone missing from her house in Godadara locality of Surat, and her body was later recovered from a locked building in the vicinity on October 16.

The court of special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) and Atrocity judge P S Kala remanded Anil Yadav, who was arrested by Surat police Friday last week from Bihar's Buxar district, in police custody till October 30.

Yadav lived on the ground floor of the building where the victim's family lived.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The board of directors of The Hindu Publishing Group has appointed senior journalist Suresh Nambath as editor of The Hindu with effect from March 1 next year.

He will succeed Mukund Padmanabhan, who has been editor of the prominent newspaper since March 2016, the group said in a statement on Monday.

It said the directors of the group were unanimous in appointing Nambath, who has been working with the newspaper for the last 22 years, to the top post.

"Over the past 22 years Mr Nambath has engaged himself in various aspects of bringing out an iconic newspaper, which is now 140 years old. He has played a coordinating and leadership role on the as well as editorial and opinion sides," the group said in a statement.

Nambath joined The Hindu as principal correspondent covering Tamil Nadu politics in October 1996 and served as the newspaper's Tamil Nadu bureau chief between July 2006 and February 2012. He was promoted as senior associate editor and coordinating editor in March 2014.

He has been national editor of The Hindu since October 2015 and has been deputising for the editor in his absence.

"The Board of Directors of The Hindu Publishing Group, commending Nambath's leadership capabilities, particularly his integrity, sharp political perspective, and many-sided journalistic experience, recognises that he is best placed to steer The Hindu editorially to a bright future. The Board wishes Nambath the very best," the group said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former Union finance minister Monday claimed a meeting between external affairs ministers of India and had been cancelled because "did not take" the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) into confidence.

The government had last month called off the meeting in New York, within 24 hours after agreeing to it, by citing the brutal killings of three policemen in and Islamabad releasing postage stamps "glorifying" Kashmiri militant

Accusing Prime Minister of centralising the decision making, Sinha cited a newspaper report to claim that the engagement was cancelled because "External Affairs Minister did not take the into confidence before the meeting (scheduled between herself and her counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi)".

"This proves that Swaraj's voice is not heard. This is the reason she is sometimes referred to as a Twitter minister," he told reporters here.

Sinha also alleged that senior ministers, who are part of the (CCS), are being kept in the dark about important decisions.

"The Home Minister didn't know when the BJP withdrew its support to the PDP (Peoples Democratic Front)-led coalition government in and the Governor's rule was imposed.

"Similarly, the Finance Minister was unaware about demonetisation (which was announced by the prime minister in November 2016). I think the minister came to know about the note ban only at a Cabinet meeting. The (then) defence minister did not know when the Rafale deal was going to take place or whether it had already happened," Sinha claimed.

The former BJP leader also said that he singled out the four ministers because they are part of the important CCS.

"Why I am mentioning these four ministers is because they are the members of all important mantri parishad committee that is the If (the voice of) the ministers of Home, Defence, Foreign Affairs and Finance portfolios is not heard then who is left in that committee," asked Sinha.

He said only the prime minister has a say now in the decision making.

"All the important decisions are being taken by the and others merely follow the orders. The working culture of Cabinet, as defined by the Constitution, is finished now," he alleged.holding company has written off its entire investment of Rs 286.5169 billion in loss-making telecom arm Tata Teleservices, according to a regulatory filing.

is in the process of transferring the consumer mobile business of Tata Teleservices to Bharti Airtel and hiving off the enterprise segment to merge with the group's networking arm

"The company has considered it appropriate to write off the entire investment of Rs 28,651.69 crore (Rs 286.5169 billion) in Tata Teleservices Limited," said in a filing.

The effect of impairment was reflected on Tata Sons' consolidated net profit, which dropped to Rs 43.79 billion at the end of 2017-18 from Rs 184.32 billion in 2016-17.

On a standalone basis, the net profit of Tata Sons increased by 6 per cent to Rs 8.73 billion in 2017-18 from Rs 8.24 billion in 2016-17.



ALSO READ: Bharti Airtel shareholders approve merger proposal with Tata Teleservices

According to the filing, Tata Teleservices recorded an impairment loss of Rs 168.9128 billion, including Rs 12.6581 billion pertaining to the prior period, on the consumer mobile business assets based on an assessment of its recoverable value.

Tata Sons has also made a provision for claims of Rs 43.9345 billion for the year ended March 31, 2018, after considering various factors, "including the without prejudice discussions with the relevant counterparties".

The filing said that a subsidiary company had evaluated the recoverable value of spectrum that Tata Teleservices acquires in March 2015 and recorded an impairment loss of Rs 9.0541 billion around the same.

Taking the factors at Tata Teleservices into account, Tata Sons said that "the company considered inappropriate to write off the entire investment of Rs 28,651.69 crore (Rs 286.5169 billion) in the subsidiary company in its standalone financial statements."



Tata Teleservices suffered a jolt after its three licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court in 2012 for irregularities in spectrum allocation to the company and several other new entrants.

Following the development, Tata Teleservices ran into a tussle with its partner which decided to withdraw its investment in the telecom firm.

Tata Teleservices became subsidiary of Tata Sons from an associate firm with effect from February 2017 after its arrangement with ceased.

The heavy tariff war triggered by the entry of Reliance Jio in 2016 led to Tata Sons signing a pact with Bharti Airtel to hive off consumer mobile business of Tata Teleservices without any debt transfer to the Sunil Bharti Mittal-led firm.

(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.)Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi Monday lambasted leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Tejashwi Yadav for visiting the native village of jailed mafia don-turned-politician Mohd Shahabuddin.

The senior BJP leader was reacting to the RJD heir apparent's interaction with family members of the former Siwan MP, who is currently lodged at the Tihar jail in New Delhi in a double murder case.

"Enacting a farce in the name of a tour aimed at saving the Constitution and ensuring justice for all, Tejashwi Yadav met the family members of Shahabuddin, who used to be synonymous with terror in Siwan. He even shared the stage with Shahabuddin's wife at a public meeting", the Deputy CM tweeted referring to the RJD leader's visit to Pratappur village in Siwan earlier in the day.

"Tejashwi, however, did not care to meet Chanda babu for the murder of whose three sons Shahabuddin is lodged in the Tihar jail. He did not consider it necessary to meet the bereaved old man. The objective of Tejashwi's yatra appears to be singing paeans to criminals patronized during the period Bihar was ruled by his parents", Sushil Modi added.

Tejashwi's parents Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi had served as Chief Ministers of Bihar from 1990 to 2005.

Shahabuddin, who has represented Siwan in the Lok Sabha many times, was also elected to the RJD's national executive a couple of years ago but dropped later and replaced by his wife Hina Shahab.

Meanwhile, the RJD has issued a press release alleging that the JD(U)-BJP government in the state was trying to obstruct Tejashwi Yadav's state-wide "samvidhan bachao nyay yatra" by not making adequate arrangements at his public meetings.

The party alleged that a stampede-like situation had arisen at his public meeting in Siwan on account of "lack of adequate administrative arrangements" and that his rally in neighbouring Saran district a day ago was affected due to absence of power supply.

"The ruling NDA is jittery over the tremendous response that Tejashwi Yadav's yatra is receiving. The JD(U) and BJP can feel the ground slipping from underneath their feet. Hence they are trying to indirectly obstruct his public meetings", the press release issued by state RJD spokesman Chitaranjan Gagan said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Viola Davis looks back on "The Help" as a "missed opportunity".

The actor, who received a Best Actress Oscar nod for her role as maid Aibileen Clark in the 2011 period drama, says though the film transformed her life, it did not do justice to the people of colour.

"'The Help changed my life in a lot of different ways. First of all, the friendships that I got - that experience is something I know I'll never have again. And Tate (Taylor, the director) is a great collaborator. I don't want them to feel that I am blasting them in any way.

"It has nothing to do with the players. It has something to do with the culture - that I don't feel that people want to see, want to hear that voice in that time period. Because what it will become is an indictment, and it shouldn't be. I look back at that movie as a missed opportunity, Davis told The Guardian in an interview.

The Oscar winner had recently said that "at the end wasn't the voices of the maids that were heard" in the film.

Reiterating her point of view, Davis believes "The Help" was "just too filtered down".

"I know Jim Crow (the racial caste system), I understand that time period. It's a 100-year time period that was rife with lots of violence and anger, and people with lost dreams and hopes. I wanted the frustration and that anger to be more palpable, she said.

An adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same name, the film recounts the story of young white woman and aspiring journalist Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan and her relationship with two black maids, Aibileen and Minny Jackson, during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 Jackson, Mississippi.

"The Help" also starred Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard and Allison Janney.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Three more persons tested positive for virus in Jaipur Monday, taking the total number of such cases to 126, a government official said.

Out of the 126 patients, 41 of them pregnant women, around 111 have recovered after treatment, he said.

According to the latest report, out of the total 1,32,872 houses searched, 84,580 were found positive for mosquito breeding.

The Rajasthan health department formed a five-member committee Saturday to investigate, examine, and track virus disease in pregnant patients of first trimester. The committee will submit the report to the public health director from time to time, an order said.

Fogging and anti-larvae activities were carried out Monday in colonies of ward 23 and 82 in the morning whereas similar activities were done in the evening in ward 79.

The department has appealed people to keep the doors of their residence, shops open and asked those with breathing difficulties to remain at bay during fogging activity.

Most of the cases which have been reported are from Shastri Nagar area in Jaipur where fogging and other anti-larvae activities are being carried out to prevent the spread of the virus.

The virus, transmitted through the aedes aegypti mosquito, causes fever, skin rashes, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain. It is harmful to pregnant women, as it can lead to microcephaly, a condition in which a baby's head is significantly smaller in newborns.

In India, the first outbreak was reported in Ahmedabad in January 2017 and the second in Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri district in July that year. Both these outbreaks were successfully contained through intensive surveillance and vector management.

The disease is under surveillance of the Union Health Ministry although it is no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern under WHO notification since November 18, 2016.The toll in the coal mine accident in eastern China has rose to three following the death of one of the two rescued miners during treatment, local authorities said on Monday.

Two miners had died while 18 other remain trapped after a rock burst ripped through a coal mine of the Longyun Coal Mining Company Ltd in Yuncheng county of Shangdong province on Saturday.

Two miners were rescued Sunday afternoon. They were undergoing treatment at a hospital in Shangdong.

Around 334 people were working underground at the time of the accident, of which 312 were lifted to safety.

"One of the two miners rescued after a rock burst accident at a coal mine died in hospital in East China's Shandong province on Sunday night, taking the death toll to three," local authorities were quoted as saying in the state-run China Daily.

Eighteen workers were still trapped in the mine, it said, adding around 170 rescue workers were taking part in the rescue operation which continued on Monday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Trump administration through its aggressive trade policy is seeking to protect the US industry and have a balanced and fair trade with other nations, President Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said on Monday.

Kushner said the President believed in bilateralism and not multilateralism.

President Trump has been for a longtime very consistent on his ideology and believes trade deficits matter, Kushner said at a CNN event.

"If trade deficits don't matter then why is it that I have not met another country that wants to have one? People criticise a lot of things we're fighting for, saying that they're protectionist. But if the things are so bad, then why are the other countries working so hard not to give them up?" he asked.

"A lot of what we're doing is working to protect American industry. So, what the economists will say is free trade is a great thing because it lowers the cost of goods. And what I've come to observe, seeing all the different parts of our economy is that the benefits of free trade are much more distributed," he explained in response to a question.

Kushner said once there was a free trade agreement, everyone's cost of a t-shirt goes down by a dollar or whatever it is.

"But the costs of it are much more concentrated. So you'll have in a place like, Baltimore, a steel mill will go out of business," he noted.

As a result people will have a hard time finding jobs late in their career, he added.

"We are doing a lot of things on worker retraining, but we haven't done that in the past. Some people on to commit crimes, some people get addicted to drugs: but that goes to the next generation. So we have seen some areas that have just been decimated because of the trade, and I think that that cost is quite great," he said.

Kushner said Trump was trying to reverse the world order that emerged after the World War II.

"I think that the world order that the president is really trying to reverse is that of the post Second World War, we basically were the richest nation on the planet and we said let's open our markets to everybody and let's come up with a way we can protect everybody to keep the peace because nobody wanted to go to war again," he said.

"What we should have done is, probably about 30 years later when people caught up is readjusted some of these deals that were intentionally one-sided at the time. I think that now we're getting to a place where it's just not a sustainable situation to be paying for everyone's defense and then also giving everyone asymmetric access to the American market," Kushner said.

He said Trump was trying to rebalance these agreements so that Americans have a fair relationship with many countries they are trading with and making it fairer.

Responding to a question, Kushner said Trump wanted to conclude a trade agreement quicker rather than the usual route of three-four years.

"The thing about trade agreements is normally they take three to four years. And the president did not have three to four years' for this one. So, he really pushed us very aggressively to try to come to an outcome quickly," he said.

The new approach was adopted in conducting the new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, which is now known as US Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA).

"The goal was really to come up with a win-win, how do we create something where we want to move a lot of jobs back to America, but we want to figure out how the other countries could do well from it as well," he said.

"We wanted to deal with a lot of issues in the modern economy, like IP and digital trade. We also wanted to deal with the assault a lot of our markets are under from non-market economies that deal with currency manipulation, manipulation of state on enterprises, and a lot of other issues," Kushner noted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)President Donald Trump said Monday the US will start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolled on regardless toward the US border.

Trump kept up his almost-daily Twitter attacks on the approaching caravan, calling it a national emergency and said he had alerted the US border patrol and military.

"We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid" that the United States provides to the three Central American countries, he said.

Mexican authorities had managed to block the "caravan" of migrants on a border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala, but many later crossed the river below in makeshift rafts before marching north.

The caravan of around 3,000 migrants was heading Monday to the town of Huixtla, around 40 kilometres further on from Tapachula in Chiapas State where they slept Sunday night.

"Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in," Trump said in one tweet.

"I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy (sic). Must change laws!" Activists say the journey through of at least 3,000 kilometres through Mexico to the US border could take a month.

"We are well aware that this country (Mexico) didn't receive us as we expected, and they can return us to Honduras, and we also know there are drug traffickers who kidnap and kill migrants," Juan Flores, one of those migrants, told AFP.

"But we live with more fear in our country, so we carry on forward," he added.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also warned that the migrants "may be victimised by human smugglers or others who would exploit them."



"We also are deeply concerned by the violence provoked by some members of the group, as well as the apparent political motivation of some organizers of the caravan," Pompeo said in a statement.

About a thousand migrants, including women and children, were still stranded on a border bridge hoping to enter Mexico legally via Guatemala.

Mexican authorities insisted those on the bridge would have to file asylum claims one at a time in order to enter the country.

And another separate group of about 1,000 Hondurans started their own march across Guatemala, headed for Mexico and then the United States. The group of men, women and children gathered in Esquipulas before setting out on foot.

"No one is going to stop us, after all we've gone through," said 21-year-old Aaron Juarez, who was accompanied by his wife and baby and was walking with difficulty because of an injury.

Honduran farmer Edwin Geovanni Enamorado said he was forced to leave his country because of intimidation by racketeering gangs.

"We are tired, but very happy, we are united and strong," he said.

Britany Hernandez added: "We have sunburn. We have blisters. But we got here. Our strength is greater than Trump's threats." Mexico's President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called for fair treatment of the migrants.

"We don't want them to face what (Mexicans) face when they need to look for work in the United States," he said on Twitter.

The caravan left San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras more than a week ago. It has comprised between 3,000 and 5,000 people at various times as it moved through Guatemala, according to various sources.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said more than 5,000 migrants had entered Guatemala from Honduras, but that some 2,000 had since returned home on a fleet of government-chartered buses On Saturday, Mexican authorities opened the border for women and children on the overcrowded bridge, taking them to a shelter in Tapachula, about 40 kilometers from the border.

Plenty of migrants, however, are sleeping in the streets for fear that immigration officials could arrest them if they are in a shelter.

Around 900 migrants -- tired of waiting on the bridge -- resorted to crossing the Suchiate River below on makeshift rafts and police did not intervene as they clambered up the muddy riverbank on the Mexican side on Saturday.

Morales and his Honduran counterpart Juan Orlando Hernandez said after meeting that the march was "violating the borders and the good faith of the states."



The Honduran president acknowledged that social problems were a contributory factor.

"Without a doubt, we have a lot to do so that our people can have opportunities in their communities," he said.

The migrants are generally fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence.

With a homicide rate of 43 per 100,000 citizens, Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world, according to a Honduran university study.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)President Donald Trump said Monday that his administration will cut off aid to three Central American nations for their failure to stop a migrant caravan of thousands of people from moving towards the US with the aim to enter America illegally.

The caravan comprising thousands of people was formed in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. It crossed into Guatemala where one of its coordinators was detained. The other members of the caravan are advanced through Guatemala with hopes of reaching the US border.

"Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," Trump said in a tweet.

His announcement comes days after he had issued a warning to the three countries.

Thousands of people from these poor Central American countries are moving in the shape of a caravan towards the US so that they can enter the country illegally.

Once inside the US, they hope to get jobs, even illegally, so as to have a better future.

Evert year, thousands of people enter the US in a similar fashion and take advantage of the "catch and release" humanitarian policy of America for illegal immigrants.

Trump is seeking an end to this policy, which he argues has been responsible for hundreds and thousands of people entering the US illegally and ending up being a drain on US economy.

Trump's efforts are being opposed by the Democrats in the Congress, who argue that this is important for humanitarian purposes.

On Monday, Trump accused the Democrats again ahead of the mid-term polls next month.

"Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally," he said.

Referring to the thousands of people moving towards the US, Trump said that he had alerted the military, asserting that it is a national emergency.

"Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergency. Must change laws!" Trump said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US was closely following the migrant caravan, in which thousands of migrants from Honduras and other countries continue to make a dangerous journey through Guatemala and into Mexico.

"Many migrants are attempting to transit these countries and in the process are violating their sovereignty, their laws, and their procedures. As President Trump has stated, consistent with US law, the United States will not allow illegal immigrants to enter or remain in the US," he said.

Pompeo expressed concern that these migrants may be victimised by human smugglers or others who would exploit them.

We "also are deeply concerned by the violence provoked by some members of the group, as well as the apparent political motivation of some organisers of the caravan," he said.

"We understand Mexico will detain and repatriate migrants who enter Mexico in violation of Mexican law, and in instances where migrants apply for asylum, process the requests in accordance with Mexican law. We also understand that those who do not qualify will be returned in a safe and orderly process, consistent with Mexican law," Pompeo said.

"While we closely monitor the caravan crisis, we must remain mindful of the transnational criminal organisations and other criminals that prey on the vulnerabilities of those undertaking the irregular migration journey," said US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristen Nielsen.

This caravan's arrival comes nearly six months after another caravan consisting largely of Honduran immigrants reached the US-Mexico border.

Its formation also comes ahead of the high-stakes midterm elections in the US, in which many Republican candidates have been echoing President Trump's message of boosting border security and cracking down on illegal immigration.

Trump has been a fierce advocate of building a border wall with Mexico to tighten the US' immigration controls.

He believes border security is a serious national issue and the lack of it poses a substantial threat to the "sovereignty and safety" of America and its citizens.

During his campaign, Trump tapped into the immigration concerns of many Americans who worry about loss of economic opportunities and the threat of criminals and terrorists entering the country.

His call for the construction of a border wall was one of his most popular proposals and helped the billionaire tycoon to galvanise masses.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Turkey on Monday said that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was "savagely planned" as pro-government media published new claims targeting powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing.

Upping the pressure on Riyadh, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to reveal the "naked truth" on Tuesday about the Khashoggi case.

The Washington Post contributor, 59, was murdered almost three weeks ago after stepping inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

After over two weeks of near silence, Saudi Arabia finally admitted Khashoggi was killed in the consulate but the kingdom's explanations are seen by friends and foes alike as contradictory and evasive.

The case has shone the spotlight on Crown Prince Mohammed. He has spearheaded a reform drive for the kingdom but now faces a stream of allegations -- denied by Riyadh -- that he ordered the killing of Khashoggi.

CNN International broadcast images it said showed a Saudi official playing the role of a body double for Khashoggi, wearing his clothes while leaving the consulate in an apparent bid to falsely show the journalist had left safely.

US President Donald Trump, who has resisted pressure to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia, initially said Riyadh's version of events was credible but then accused the kingdom of lying.

The spokesman of Erdogan's ruling party Omer Celik said the killing "was planned in an extremely savage manner".

It was the first official indication that Ankara believes a murder plan was coordinated in advance. "We are faced with a situation where there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this," he complained.

One of Erdogan's advisors, Yasin Aktay, wrote in the Yeni Safak daily that the Saudi version given so far "feels like our intelligence is being mocked".

Turkish pro-government media kept up a steady stream of allegations, which analysts see as a tactic to increase the pressure on Riyadh by showing the evidence Turkey possesses.

Yeni Safak said Saudi security official Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, head of a team of 15 Saudis sent to Istanbul for the task, called the head of Prince Mohammed's office, Bader al-Asaker, "four times after the murder".

Abdulkadir Selvi, whose Hurriyet newspaper columns are closely watched for indications of Erdogan's thinking, wrote that Khashogghi was slowly strangled to death for eight minutes and a Saudi forensic specialist then cut his body into 15 pieces while listening to music.

"We cannot close this file until the crown prince is brought to account and removed from his post. For 50 years we cannot live with a crown prince who is an enemy of Turkey," said Selvi.

Meanwhile with Khashoggi's remains still missing, Turkish police found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate in an underground car park in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, state media said.

Erdogan has stopped short of directly pointing the finger at Riyadh. Analysts say he preferred to authorise the leak of incriminating information to pro-government media to pressure the kingdom.

He has twice held telephone talks with King Salman on the crisis, with some analysts arguing Erdogan was seeking to preserve Turkish-Saudi relations through the ageing monarch while sidelining his headstrong son Prince Mohammed.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, the smooth former envoy to Washington and fluent English speaker, on Sunday appeared on Fox to blame a "rogue operation" by individuals who "exceeded their responsibilities" and then "tried to cover up for it".

"We are determined to find out all the facts. And we are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder," he said, denying any link to the crown prince.

Saudi's official agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed had phoned Khashoggi's son Salah to express their condolences.

Khashoggi went to the consulate on October 2 to get documents for his wedding to his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. She has now been given 24-hour protection, according to Turkish state media.

The timing of the controversy could not be worse for the crown prince as he prepares to host a key investment summit on Tuesday, overshadowed by big name cancellations.

Dozens of executives from bankers Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to ride-hailing app Uber to Western leaders like International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde have pulled out of the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII), dubbed "Davos in the desert".

Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would not export arms to Riyadh "in the current situation", despite Germany's approval last month of 416 million euros (USD 480 million) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on Monday urged European nations to take a joint stance on whether to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Riyadh's Istanbul consulate was "savagely planned", Turkey's ruling party spokesman said on Monday, the first official indication from Ankara it believes a plot was hatched in advance.

"This was extremely savagely planned, and we are faced with a situation where there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this," Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesman Omer Celik told reporters in Ankara.

"This is a very complicated murder," Celik said, warning that the Turkish government would not be drawn into speculation. "Everyone (else) can speculate but we cannot speculate," Celik added.

He also dismissed claims of "bargaining" between Saudi Arabia and Turkey as "immoral".

Riyadh said on Saturday that Khashoggi, a former regime insider turned dissident, died during a "brawl" inside the consulate after a visit on October 2 to get documents.

It added 18 Saudis were arrested in connection with his death and two top aides of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as three other intelligence agents, were fired.

Before Riyadh's admission, Turkish sources said a team of 15 Saudis were sent to Istanbul and killed Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince who moved to the United States last year and wrote for the Washington Post.

Turkish pro-government media has said the team interrogated, tortured and decapitated Khashoggi but a pro-government columnist Abdulkadir Selvi on Monday wrote in Hurriyet daily that Khashoggi was strangled to death before he was cut up into 15 pieces.

Celik pointed to CCTV footage published by CNN on Monday, which the American broadcaster claimed showed one of the Saudi officials acting as a body double for Khashoggi and leaving the consulate.

A senior Turkish official quoted by CNN said that the Saudi was "brought to Istanbul to act as a body double" for Khashoggi, adding: "This was a premeditated murder and the body was moved out of the consulate."



In the video a man, named by CNN as Mustafa al-Madani, left the consulate by the back exit wearing what appeared to be Khashoggi's clothes -- although the shoes do not match those the journalist appeared to be wearing in CCTV footage of him entering the consulate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to reveal within days the "naked truth" over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as Riyadh said it did not know the whereabouts of his body and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been unaware of any operation to murder him.

The Turkish leader's statement came the day after Saudi authorities conceded Khashoggi had been killed inside their diplomatic compound in Istanbul.

"We are looking for justice here and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth," Erdogan told a rally in Istanbul.

In his strongest comments to date on the affair, President Donald Trump accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who fell out of favour with the ultraconservative kingdom, as pressure built on the US administration to strike a tougher line.

The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, on Sunday described the killing as a "tremendous mistake" and said it had been a "rogue operation" by individuals who "exceeded their responsibilities" and then "tried to cover up for it".

Jubeir insisted in an interview with Fox that the operation was not ordered by the crown prince known by his initials MBS, also adding that "we don't know where the body is".

Erdogan, who has not yet directly blamed Saudi Arabia, held a telephone call with Trump on Sunday where the two leaders agreed the Khashoggi case needed to be clarified "in all its aspects," a Turkish presidential source said.

Erdogan is expected to make a full statement to his party's MPs in parliament at around 0800 GMT on Tuesday.

Turkish officials have said they believe that 15 Saudi men who arrived in Istanbul on two flights on October 2 were connected to Khashoggi's death.

Riyadh reacted by claiming one of the 15 had died in a car accident years ago. Saudi officials originally said Khashoggi, who stepped inside the doors of the diplomatic mission on October 2, had left unharmed, before announcing he was killed inside the building in what they described as an altercation.

The kingdom has since admitted Khashoggi died in a "brawl" inside the consulate and said it has fired five top officials and arrested 18 others in an investigation into the killing.

Khashoggi, who would have been 60 this month, sought refuge in the United States after fleeing his native Saudi Arabia after the 2017 appointment of strongman Mohammed bin Salman as heir to the throne.

The journalist, who had espoused both Islamist and liberal views throughout his decades-long career in the press, was engaged to a Turkish woman.

His killing has further soured relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, already at loggerheads over Qatar, with which Riyadh cut ties in 2017 and to which Ankara has deployed aid and troops.

Turkish officials now believe Riyadh carried out a state-sponsored killing and dismembered the body, with pro-government media in Turkey reporting the existence of video and audio evidence to back those claims.

As the Turkish leader is expected to reveal all details into the journalist's killing, Trump has stepped back from his stance that Saudi Arabia's latest explanation over the death was credible amid mounting pressure at home.

"Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies," he said of the shifting accounts of Khashoggi's death offered by Riyadh.

"Their stories are all over the place."



Several senior members of Trump's Republican Party said they believed Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, was linked to the killing, and one called for a "collective" Western response if a link is proved.

Trump has stopped far short of calling for the prince to be replaced, emphasising as he has before how important the US-Saudi relationship is to Washington's regional strategic goals.

He described the 33-year-old prince as a "strong person; he has very good control."



"He's seen as a person who can keep things under check," added Trump.

The controversy has put the kingdom -- for decades a key ally in Western efforts to contain Iran -- under unprecedented pressure.

It has also blown up into a major crisis for Prince Mohammed whose image as a modernising Arab reformer has been gravely undermined.

Britain, France and Germany have shown a united front, demanding Saudi Arabia clarify how the journalist died inside its Istanbul consulate backed by "credible" facts.

Late Sunday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed "the circumstances" around Khashoggi's "tragic death" in a phone call, without offering further details.

Australia, Canada, the UN and the EU have also demanded greater clarity around Khashoggi's death.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel added that Berlin would not export arms to Saudi Arabia "in the current situation".

Germany last month approved 416 million euros (USD 480 million) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018.

In the past, military exports by Berlin to Saudi have mostly consisted of patrol boats.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A boy and girl aged six, both twins, died here Monday due to dengue at a state-run hospital, taking the total number of deaths due to the disease to four this month in Tamil Nadu, health authorities said.

A senior health official told PTI the total number of deaths due to H1N1 (swine flu) infection from October 1 till Monday, was four, including two from southern Tamil Nadu.

Between January 1 and October 22, 11 deaths were attributed to H1N1 and five to dengue, the official said.

Director of Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children, Dr A T Arasar Seeralar said the twins were admitted on Saturday, after five days of fever and following the manifestation of some 'dangerous' symptoms including vomiting.

The children died in a gap of a few hours early this morning despite best treatment and care, he said.

"The boy died of dengue hemorrhagic shock and the girl due to dengue shock," he said.

He said "Currently, 27 children, who have tested positive for dengue, are being treated at a special fever ward of the hospital," one of the biggest state-run hospitals and attached to the Madras Medical College.

Earlier this month, a seven-year-old boy had died of dengue in the hospital.

Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan inspected the ICH and interacted with the patients and their parents.

Speaking to reporters, the official said all measures have been taken to address the situation arising out of fever cases.

To tackle dengue, he said source eradication of breeding sites of mosquitoes that cause the illness was being done by involving multiple government agencies.

Notices have been given by civic authorities to about 1,000 establishments to remove items like unused tyres and trash bins that could help breed mosquitoes.

"Fever camps are being held across the state...416 mobile hospitals and 770 medical teams (in jeeps) are being deployed," he said.

He urged people to get proper treatment at a government hospital "within the first 48 hours," of the manifestation of fever symptoms so as to avoid complications.

All state run hospitals have proper treatment and diagnostic facilities, he said.

As of now, approximately 5-20 people were testing positive per day for H1N1 in Tamil Nadu and most get discharged following treatment for about five days, the official said.

For dengue, 25-50 people per day get treatment from about 2,800 hospitals in the state, he said.

He urged those visiting other states to get proper treatment on time if they have fever symptoms.

About 1.5 lakh more vaccines were being procured apart from the currently available 50,000 for H1N1, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Two people died on Monday after a boat carrying illegal migrants sank off Turkey's southwestern coast, the Turkish coastguard said.

Seventeen others were rescued after the boat ran into trouble 50 metres off the coast of Bodrum district in Mugla province, it said in a statement.

Intially 20 people were taken to hospital including three who managed to reach the shore without assistance but two later died.

Search and rescue efforts were continuing, the coastguard said.

The boat, believed to be carrying nearly 30 people, had been on its way to the Greek island of Kos, NTV reported.

Officials did not give details of the migrants' nationalities. However, Turkey hosts over three million Syrian refugees and up to 300,000 Iraqis.

It is also one of the transit countries used by migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to try and reach Europe.

The number of migrants coming to Europe has declined since the influx hit a peak in 2015 when more than a million people landed in Greece from Turkey, mainly via boats.

Turkey and the European Union agreed a deal in 2016 to stem the flow of migrants, with Ankara agreeing to take back migrants landing on Greek islands in exchange for incentives including financial aid.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A policeman was shot dead by unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants on Monday in the northwest Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, police said.

Police constable Muhammad Nadeem, working as a Naib court, was on his way to join his duty when assailants opened fire on him near Zafarabad colony of Dera Ismail Khan district, they said.

A critically injured Nadeem was rushed to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A US army general was among those injured in a Taliban attack on top US and Afghan security chiefs inside a highly secure compound last week in Kandahar province, a military spokesman confirmed.

US Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley, in charge of NATO's military advisory mission in Afghanistan, suffered at least one gunshot wound in Thursday's attack, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

A gunman wearing an Afghan security forces uniform opened fire on a group including General Scott Miller -- the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan -- and powerful Afghan police chief General Abdul Raziq as they ended a meeting in the southern city of Kandahar.

Raziq, an anti-Taliban strongman and key US ally who was credited with keeping a lid on the insurgency in the south, was killed along with Kandahar's provincial intelligence chief and an Afghan journalist.

Colonel David Butler, spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, initially confirmed on Twitter that three unidentified people were injured: one US service member, one US civilian and a coalition contractor.

Later, in tweets discussing US media reports that named Smiley, he confirmed he was wounded.

That the Taliban could mount a deadly insider assault in such a secure location rattled Afghanistan, a country long used to high-profile targeted killings and violence.

It was also an unusual incident for the US military, whose generals seldom face attack and are rarely wounded.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The United States has said that voting irregularities in Cameroon cast doubt on the credibility of strongman Paul Biya's latest victory as it urged a peaceful way forward.

A council dominated by Biya loyalists said that the 85-year-old leader won 71.3 percent of the vote, after authorities banned an opposition march called to denounce allegedly widespread fraud.

"While we welcome the Cameroonian Election Commission's demonstrable improvement over the 2011 elections, there were a number of irregularities prior to, during and after the October 7 election," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Monday in a statement.

"These irregularities may not have affected the outcome but created an impression that the election was not credible or genuinely free and fair," she said. Amid tight security in the capital Yaounde and gunfire in the restive English-speaking region, the United States called for dialogue moving forward.

"We urge all parties -- including the government -- to respect the rule of law, resolve peacefully any disputes through established legal channels and avoid hate speech," Nauert said.

The United Nations similarly called for Cameroon to rely on "legal channels" to resolve disputes over the re-election of Biya, who has ruled the country since 1982.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres "reiterates his encouragement to all stakeholders to prioritize dialogue as the surest path to social cohesion and national unity," a UN statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday held closed-door talks in Riyadh with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has faced a global backlash over journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder.

The official Saudi Press Agency said they stressed "the importance of the Saudi-US strategic partnership" in a meeting on the eve of a key investment conference in Riyadh.

Mnuchin is a among a wave of Western political leaders who pulled out of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) amid global outrage over the journalist's murder in Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate.

Trump said on Monday he was "not satisfied" with Riyadh's explanation of how Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, died inside the Saudi consulate. Mnuchin's withdrawal from the investment conference came after top financial, trade and foreign officials from Britain, France and Germany also dropped out.

The Saudis have said they plan to move forward with the conference, scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday, despite a wave of cancellations by business titans and media giants.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath Monday asked the BJYM members to use social media as a "weapon" to "expose" the opposition and popularise central and state governments' welfare schemes among people.

Addressing the inauguration session of the state working committee of Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha (BJYM)-- the youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) here, Yogi advised them to interview the beneficiaries of government schemes in the state and share them on social media.

"The youth should work on popularising central and state government schemes among people. The young generation should make social media their weapon," Yogi said.

Noting that "every youngster has a mobile", the chief minister stressed that there was a need to highlight the benefits of government schemes like Centre's Ujjwala Yojana and Saubhagya scheme and the state government's farmer loan waiver scheme among others.

"They should interview the beneficiaries and upload it on websites and social media. The opposition will get exposed by this," he said.

He further asked the BJYM to ensure that the saffron party has 3 crore members in the state so that the opposition-- Congress, Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) suffer a humiliating defeat in the 2019 general election.

"We all have to work together to increase the number of BJP workers to 3 crores before the Parliamentary election... if we succeed in doing that then Akhilesh Yadav (SP), Rahul Gandhi (Congress) and Mayawati (BSP) will not be able to even open their accounts in the state," he said.

Yogi further boasted that the state's security had improved under the BJP regime and youngsters, especially women were no longer afraid of venturing out at night.

"One and a half year ago... our sisters and daughters used to be scared of the dark... All those places are illuminated now, the CM claimed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Vote counting has started in Afghanistan following chaotic parliamentary elections marred by violence, technical glitches and unprecedented delays.

Despite attacks that killed 50, including many children, roughly 4 million Afghans out of 8.8 registered voters cast their ballots over the two-day voting.

In southern Kandahar province, voting is to take place next Saturday, after polls there were postponed for a week following an attack that killed two senior Afghan officials, including the powerful provincial police chief, Gen Abdul Raziq.

Unofficial election results are not expected before mid-November and official results sometime in December.

In other developments, Afghan forces raided a village in eastern Nangarhar province on Monday, saying seven insurgents were killed.

Locals said five civilians died.

The governor, Hayatullah Hayat, promised an investigation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu Monday said the country's system needed a "complete overhaul" as it was producing students with degrees instead of individuals with critical minds and employable skills.

Emphasising on restoring India as the prime destination of quality higher education, Naidu said the number of educational institutions must increase to cater to the growing demand of students who want to pursue higher

Naidu also asked private universities to earmark certain percentage of seats for students belonging to the poor section as quality private sector has become out of bounds for marginalised sections.

"Majority of our colleges have become mere breeding centres for producing students with degree certificates rather than individuals with critical analytical skills and innovative thinking," Naidu said while addressing the convocation of Lovely Professional University here.

"Most of the times, students passing out of colleges do not possess employable skills. It is a matter of concern that we are turning out lakhs of students each year from the portals of our colleges with emphasis only on theoretical knowledge. We are merely adding numbers and not individuals with critical minds,," he added.

There is a need to completely overhaul our education system. We cannot allow the status quo to continue. We need to change the system and the change has to be for good, he said further.

The Vice-President said the time had come for universities to forge organic links with industries and impart skills to the students in accordance with the requirements of the industry.

Although, some universities are acting in this direction, it is not enough and there is a need for a paradigm shift in teaching and learning methodologies of our universities to enable the students face global competition effectively and with confidence," he said.

Naidu emphasised that the Indian education system faces many challenges and that there was a need to increase the number of institutions and universities to meet the growing demand of students seeking higher education.

"But simply an increase in numbers without ensuring quality would be detrimental to national interests. We need to restore India's ancient glory as a prime destination of quality higher education, he said.

He said private sector will also have to play a vital role in meeting the demands of higher education.

The private sector must find ways to cross subsidise the education for the poor and the needy. Unfortunately, quality private sector education has become out of bounds for the poor and marginalised sections," he said.

"Why should not private universities earmark certain percentage of seats for the students belonging to poorer sections and subsidise their education? Our challenge is to ensure the spread of knowledge to every section and every corner of our country, he added.

Naidu also said the regulatory mechanism should facilitate educational institutions to improve quality and ensure minimum standards for excellence in higher education.

To take Indian education to the next level, the regulatory bodies need to be open to new ideas and systems, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Supreme Court on Monday asked media bodies, including the Press Council of India (PCI), as to why no prosecution proceedings were launched against media houses and journalists who disclosed the identity of victims of sexual assaults.

A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said that the offence of disclosing the identity of victims of sexual assaults has criminal liability, and if the law has been violated, action must be taken.

"How many people have you punished?" the bench asked the counsel appearing for PCI.

The PCI counsel said in cases related to disclosure of identity of such victims, the power of the Council was limited to censure such publication and they also send their orders to the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP).

"If a publication has committed this criminal offence, it has to be prosecuted. Somebody has to prosecute them. Forget about DAVP. What about prosecution? You tell the police that there is violation of law and you prosecute them," the bench said.

"There is no point in saying that we have told the DAVP. Nobody knows it. You have to function under the law and the law says such persons (who discloses identity of victims of sexual assaults) have to be prosecuted," the bench said.

The court also said that documents filed by the Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) have "nothing" and it was quite clear from the affidavit filed by the authority that no prosecution has been launched against any of the alleged offenders.

It asked PCI, NBSA, the Editors Guild and the Indian Broadcasting Federation to file their affidavit on the issue within three weeks.

"We would like to know specifically whether these bodies can inform the police about such offence and if so, why they have not informed the police about prosecution of alleged offenders," the bench said.

During the hearing, the counsel appearing for PCI said that they have to function as per the norms of journalistic ethics and standards and they have to identify which standard have been violated.

The counsel representing NBSA said that they have also imposed penalty in such cases.

"But you do not want to prosecute. Some lady has been raped and her identity is disclosed and you are saying that complaints are closed," the bench said, adding, "the law says that you prosecute the persons if law is violated".

The bench also referred to the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault levelled by women across various fields under India's #MeToo movement.

The counsel appearing for Editors Guild and Indian Broadcasting Federation said they would file their affidavits.

At the fag end, the PCIs counsel said that prosecution should be launched in such cases but the Council needed "some more teeth".

The top court had earlier issued notices to these four media bodies to assist it in the matter which deals with alleged non-compliance of statutory provisions about disclosure of identity of victims of rape and sexual abuses by the media.

The issue had cropped up when the court was hearing a plea related to the Muzaffarpur shelter home where over 30 girls were allegedly raped and sexually exploited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The police on Monday arrested Mira Yadav, the wife of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav for murdering their 22-year-old son Abhijeet Yadav.

Abhijeet's body was found under mysterious circumstances at the official residence of Ramesh Yadav in Darul Shafa here on Sunday, police said.

The police claimed that Mira had confessed to her crime, however, she insisted that her son had committed suicide and that she was being framed.

ASP Sarvesh Kumar said that the body had marks on the neck and the post-mortem report confirmed death by strangulation.

According to police, the family members had tried to cremate Abhijeet's body but it were stopped due to their timely intervention.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who was a witness in the rape case filed by a nun against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was Monday found dead under "mysterious circumstances" in Dasuya in Punjab's Hoshairpur district, police said.

Kattuthara, 62, was found unconscious in his room this morning and was taken to a local hospital where he was declared brought dead, they said.

Police said the cause of the death would be known after postmortem.

According to police, no visible injury marks were found on the body.

There was vomit in the room, said Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) A R Sharma.

The viscera will be sent for examination which will throw light on the cause of the death, the DSP said.

Father Kattuthara was transferred 15 days back to the church at Dasuya, police said. He was staying in the premises of the church. A school is also located in the church premises at Dharampur in Dasuya.

When contacted, Hoshiarpur Deputy Commissioner Esha Kalia said, Police were investigating the matter.

Relatives of the priest in Kerala said Kattuthara was concerned about his safety after coming out openly against the bishop.

Besides demanded a thorough probe into the death, the relatives want that the postmortem be conducted at the Alappuzha Medical College.

Priest Kattuthara had testified against Bishop Mulakkal, who is facing allegations of raping a nun.

In her complaint to the Kottayam Police in June, the nun had alleged that Bishop Mulakkal raped her at a guest house in Kuravilangad in May 2014 and later sexually exploited her on several occasions.

However, Mulakkal has denied the charges as "baseless and concocted," insistingshe levelled those as the Catholic order had rejected her demand for favours.

Bishop Mulakkal had received a rousing welcome from his followers and supporterswhen he reached Jalandhar after being released on bail by a Kerala court last week.

He had last month stepped aside as the bishop of the Jalandhar diocese.

Supporters of the victimised nun Monday urged the Kerala government to provide security to the complainant in view of the alleged "mysterious death" of a key witness in the case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who was reportedly a witness in a case related to the rape of a nun from Kerala, was found dead Monday morning at Dasuya in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, police said.

Kattuthara was found unconscious in his room, police officials said.

The priest was transferred 15 days ago to a Catholic church in Dasuya, police said. He was staying in the church premises.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal is facing allegations of raping a nun.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A 35-year-old woman died of injuries after she was thrown off the third floor terrace of an apartment here by an acquaintance following a heated argument, police said Monday.

The incident took place in the Lok Priya Vihar colony area on Sunday afternoon and the victim succumbed to injuries at a private hospital here at night, City Superintendent Police (SP) Shlok Kumar said.

An FIR was registered against the accused, Shahid, based on a complaint filed by the husband of the deceased, he said.

During investigation, it was learnt that the accused had come to meet the victim, Imrana, around 2 pm Sunday when her husband was away at work and the duo went to the terrace where they had an heated argument, following which he threw the victim off the terrace and fled from the spot, officials said.

Imrana was rushed to a hospital with severe injuries where she died, they said.

The victim and her husband, Murtza, a native of Muzaffarpur in Bihar, had rented the flat just 20 days ago and was living with the couple's three children.

Murtza said in his complaint that Imrana and Shahid used meet each other, which he disliked and hence, decided to leave Delhi and move to Khoda here, police said.

The body of Imrana was sent for autopsy and a search operation was launched to nab Shahid, they added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Woody Allen is unfazed by the resurfacing of the sexual assault allegations levelled against him by Dylan Farrow and the filmmaker says he would go about doing his business irrespective of the industry's criticism.

Dylan, Allen's adopted daughter with former wife Mia Farrow, accused the director of sexually abusing her in the early 1990s while she was a child.

Asked if bad publicity would drive Hollywood stars to not work with, Allen told Page Six, "I'm a writer. It's what I am. What I do. What I always will be. I'll write. Since I continually have ideas it'll be new ideas and I'll write new things."



Last week, actor Javier Bardem had said he disagrees with the "Vicky Christina Barcelona" director's "public lynching" over the years old allegations and would love to collaborate with Allen if he called him.

The claims against Allen had caught steam in the wake of the #MeToo uprising.

Last month, Allen's wife Soon-Yi Previn broke her decades-long silence, calling the allegations "unjust" and said that her adoptive mother Mia had "taken advantage of the #MeToo movement".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Filmmaker Monday said writers should receive the maximum remuneration for a film as they are the backbone of any project.

Hirani said Bollywood writers often tend to work on several scripts simultaneously as there is no guarantee which one will be backed by a production house.

"I think writers need to be respected a little more, financially. They are the foundation of every film. Unless you pay the writers, probably the maximum amount of money in your film, you won't find good writers. It's a big struggle for them.

"People here write four scripts at the same time because they aren't sure which one will start and which one will work. You cannot write four scripts at the same time," he said.

The "Sanju" director was speaking at the announcement for second edition of Cinestaan script contest.

"An initiative like this is extremely encouraging. I hope more people in the country write scripts, so that someday we have better cinema than we have today," he said.

Hirani, who has often collaborated with writer Abhijat Joshi, said filmmakers are on the lookout for stories as they cannot always write one.

"We need many more scriptwriters. I strongly believe stories come from the small towns. People have more exposure to life there. In big cities, especially like Mumbai, all the time goes in travelling.

"I grew up in a small town and we could just walk into a neighbour's house. Here, we don't have the time to even meet our friends. Stories out there and it's just that they have to be found. Talent needs to taught in a way that the stories turn into proper screenplays," he added.

Also present at the event were jury members Anjum Rajabali and Juhi Chaturvedi.By Chris Prentice and Frank Jack DanielNEW YORK/MEXICO CITY(Reuters) - The new North American trade agreement ends key legal protections for many U.S. businesses operating in Mexico, leaving their operations exposed to a risk they had avoided under the old trade deal: Mexico's court system.For thousands of U.S. firms, the change could add complications and uncertainty to doing business south of the border. Mexico is the third-largest U.S. trading partner.The previous trade agreement, NAFTA, included provisions that gave U.S. firms operating in Mexico and Canada the option to challenge ...By Seng Li PengSINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asia's petrol margin fell to more than a two-year low late last week due to ample supplies, and the October average is now expected to be the worst for the month since 2013, based on Thomson Reuters data. Petrol margins against Brent crude fell 63 percent from the start of the month to $3.04 a barrel on Thursday, the lowest since Aug. 1, 2016, before recovering to $3.55 a barrel on Friday. However, Friday's bounce was merely a reflection of easing oil prices, rather than a sign of better things to come, trade and industry sources said."Weaker demand in ...GENEVA (Reuters) - Brazil has launched a complaint against China with the World Trade Organization to challenge Beijing's restrictions on sugar imports, a filing published by the WTO showed on Monday.Brazil said it was challenging China's "safeguard" measure on imported sugar, the administration of its tariff-rate quota, and its "automatic import licensing" system for out-of-quota sugar.Brazil's recourse to the WTO, confirming a move approved by its foreign trade chamber CAMEX on Aug. 31, is a response to a plunge in Brazilian sugar exports since China imposed an additional 45 percent sugar ...BEIJING (Reuters) - China has dropped a ban on rapeseed meal imports from India as the government seeks to diversify sources of protein used in animal feed, the customs administration said on Monday. Rapeseed meal shipments from India can resume from Monday if they meet certain inspection and quarantine requirements, the General Administration of Customs said on its website. China was the top buyer of Indian rapeseed meal before the ban was imposed in 2011 over quality concerns. (Reporting by Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton; editing by Darren Schuettler)(This story has not been edited by ...By Tom ArnoldDUBAI (Reuters) - The former chief executive of Banque Saudi Fransi has left Saudi Arabia after the lifting of a travel ban imposed in the wake of an investigation into alleged misuse of a staff bonus scheme, say sources familiar with the matter.Patrice Couvegnes, a French national, was placed under a travel ban linked to an investigation of alleged irregularities that emerged last year in an employee incentive programme at the kingdom's fifth-largest bank by assets.That ban was lifted in the last few weeks and Couvegnes had exited the country and returned to France, the sources ...Moscow court registers bankruptcy applications against Urban Groups subsidiaries

 TASS, Mikhail Dzhaparidze

10:59 22/10/2018

MOSCOW, October 22 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Commercial Court has registered bankruptcy applications against three more subsidiaries of the Urban Group development company, RAPSI has learnt in the court.

Russian capital bank has filed an application seeking bankruptcy of separate Urban group firm headed by the Urban Group owner Alexander Dolgin. Also, in November the court will hear claims against Urban capital and Urban designing.

In September, the Tenth Commercial Court of Appeals has upheld ruling of a lower court declaring five more subsidiaries of the Group bankrupt.

In August, the Moscow City Court has upheld arrest in absentia for ex-CEO of Urban Group development company Andrey Puchkov charged with abuse of office.

Puchkov was put on the international wanted list and arrested in absentia in early August. The defendant appealed the ruling, but the appeal was dismissed.

According to the defense, investigative activities against ex-Urban Group CEO were conducted in violation of law, and the case was launched against him for weak reasons.By Costas PitasLONDON (Reuters) - British carmaker Aston Martin is considering flying in components and moving more parts through ports other than Dover if there is any border friction after Britain leaves the EU, its boss told Reuters.London and Brussels hope to reach an agreement soon but the automotive sector is worried that port and motorway snarl-ups could disrupt production, affecting the movement of thousands of components and vehicles to and from the continent every day.Aston, which earlier this month became the first British carmaker in decades to list on the London Stock Exchange, ...By Harry Brumpton and Joshua Franklin(Reuters) - Constellation Brands Inc, the U.S. producer of Corona and Modelo beers, is looking to sell some of its U.S.-based wine brands, in a deal that could be worth more than $3 billion, according to four people familiar with the matter.Constellation's review of its wine portfolio underscores the family-controlled company's gradual shift to beer and cannabis products that target a younger demographic. Founded as a small wine producer in upstate New York in 1945, Constellation has grown to be worth more than $40 billion thanks to bets on offerings such ...By Axel Bugge and Sergio GoncalvesLISBON (Reuters) - Eurogroup head Mario Centeno said on Monday the latest messages from Rome and the European Commission over Italy's 2019 budget are "very positive" and he expects agreement to be reached on the blueprint."That is what I expect," Centeno told Reuters in an interview, referring to a likely agreement between Italy and the commission over next year's budget. Italy told the commission on Monday it would stick to its contested 2019 budget plans in defiance of European Union fiscal rules, but promised not to inflate its deficit any further in the ...By Sumeet Chatterjee and Clare JimHONG KONG (Reuters) - Global banks including Citigroup and Standard Chartered have asked their private banking staff to postpone or reconsider travel to China after authorities there prevented a UBS banker from leaving the country, sources said.BNP Paribas and JPMorgan have also asked their private banking employees to reconsider their China travel plans after the authorities' action against the UBS banker, two people familiar with the matter said.Swiss private bank Julius Baer, which manages assets worth $390 billion globally, has asked staff to be cautious ...By Sumeet Chatterjee and Clare JimHONG KONG (Reuters) - Several global banks including Citigroup and Standard Chartered have asked their private banking staff to postpone or reconsider travel to China after authorities there prevented a UBS banker from leaving the country, sources said.BNP Paribas and JPMorgan also asked their private banking employees to reconsider their China travel plans after the authorities' action against the UBS banker, two people said.The Singapore-based UBS banker, who is a client relationship manager in the Swiss bank's wealth management unit, still has her ...By Aishwarya Venugopal(Reuters) - Toymaker Hasbro Inc missed analysts' expectations for quarterly revenue and profit on Monday, as the demise of major retail partner Toys 'R' Us hurt sales in Europe and the United States, sending its shares down as much as 8 percent.The company and rival Mattel Inc have scrambled to find new avenues to sell their products following the sudden collapse of Toys 'R' Us, once the world's largest standalone toy retailer, a year ago."As we go into 2019, we certainly believe we'll continue to make up for the Toys 'R' Us difference," Chief Executive Officer Brian ...By Manoj Kumar and Promit MukherjeeNEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) - The new board of debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) will come up with a revival plan for the lender that could include selling stakes in some of its businesses, an Indian government official said.The official, who declined to be named, ruled out any budgetary support for IL&FS, an infrastructure financing and building company, which has 348 businesses and debts of 910 billion rupees ($12.39 billion). State-owned firms own nearly 40 percent of the company. In a court-led process, the government this ...MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's groundnut output from summer-sown crop is likely to fall 29.2 percent from a year ago to 3.74 million tonnes as scanty rainfall hit yields in the top producing western state of Gujarat, a leading trade body said on Monday.The drop in output could force the world's biggest edible oil importer to raise overseas purchases in the 2018/19 marketing year starting from Nov. 1.In Gujarat, groundnut output halved from a year ago to 1.6 million tonnes, the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) said in a statement.Gujarat received 28 percent lower rainfall than normal ...By Danilo MasoniMILAN (Reuters) - European shares fell at the end of a choppy trading session on Monday, as relief over Moody's decision to keep Italy's sovereign rating outlook stable proved short lived and the focus turned to Europe's response to Rome's budget plans. The pan-European STOXX 600 index suffered its fourth straight daily decline to close down 0.3 percent. The European benchmark index had risen as much as 0.7 percent in early deals after the agency on Friday kept Italy's outlook at "stable" even as it cut the country's rating to one notch above junk status, because of concerns ...By Gavin Jones and Giselda VagnoniROME (Reuters) - Italy told the European Commission on Monday it would stick to its contested 2019 budget plans in defiance of EU fiscal rules, but promised not to inflate its deficit any further in the years ahead.In a letter to the Commission, Economy Minister Giovanni Tria said he recognised that the budget, which is set to hike next year's deficit to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), was not in line with the EU Stability and Growth Pact. However, looking to silence growing alarm from EU allies, he said the government had to respond to years of ...Attorneys of ex-FSIN director Reimer seek to lift seizure of his assets

 RIA Novosti, Valery Melnikov

15:59 22/10/2018

MOSCOW, October 22 (RAPSI)  Attorneys of Russian Federal Penitentiary Services (FSIN) ex-head Alexander Reimer sentenced to 8 years in prison as part of a fraud case are seeking to lift seizure of his assets so he can be released early, RAPSI correspondent reports from the Moscow City Court.

The court is considering appeals filed by the attorneys as well as FSIN against a ruling of a lower court upholding seizure of 1.7 million rubles ($26,000). According to the attorneys, these assets are required to pay the damages so Reimer can ask for early release in the future.

However, a representative of the Penitentiary did not attend the court hearings and the case will be reviewed later.

On August 22, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow ruled to recover over 2.2 billion rubles ($32.5 million) from Reimer and his accomplices convicted of embezzlement.

In June 2017, the court sentenced Reimer to 8 years in a penal colony for embezzling funds allocated for procurement of ankle bracelets, fined him 800,000 rubles (about $12,000), and stripped of his General rank.

Convicted ex-deputy of FSIN Nikolay Krivolapov and an ex-director of FSINs Information and Technical Support Center Viktor Opredelyonov received 5 years and 8 months and 6 years in prison respectively. Krivolapov was fined 600,000 rubles ($9,000) while Opredelyonov got a 700,000-ruble fine ($10,300).

Lawyers of the defendants asked to repeal or soften the sentences. A lawyer representing Reimer said that the Zamoskvorestsky District Court issued a ruling with numerous violations and that it did not study some of the case documents.

According to investigators, Reimer, Krivolapov and Opredelyonov conspired with businessman Nikolay Martynov to embezzle monetary funds from the Russian state budget.

Between 2010 and 2012, Reimer and his accomplices stole money allocated for the purchase of ankle bracelets for persons placed under house arrest. The procurement was pursued at an enormously overvalued price. Damage allegedly caused to the state budget was estimated at no less than 2.7 billion rubles ($40 million at the current exchange rate).

The defendants have been charged, depending of their role, with abuse of office and embezzlement committed through abuse of office. Krivolapov was additionally charged with illegal possession of ammunition. They pleaded not guilty.

A case against Martynov was reviewed separately as he fully admitted his guilt in large-scale embezzlement. The businessman cooperated with investigators and announced that he is going to compensate the government with delivery of 7,000 new ankle bracelets. Martynov is a head of NPF Meta company that was supplying bracelets for prison inmates.TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's government on Monday told U.S. technology firm Facebook Inc to better protect its users' personal data following lapses this year affecting tens of millions of people globally.The government asked the world's largest social media network to fully communicate security issues to users, increase surveillance of providers of applications on its platform, and inform regulators of any change in security measures.The request comes after Facebook this month said attackers stole data from 29 million user accounts. That followed the April revelation that personal data of ...By Amanda CooperLONDON (Reuters) - Oil edged above $80 a barrel on Monday, lifted by nervousness over a worsening diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and the West, just two weeks before U.S. sanctions potentially choke off Iranian crude supplies. Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih told Russia's TASS news agency that his country had no intention of unleashing a 1973-style oil embargo on Western consumers, but rather was focused on raising output to compensate for supply losses elsewhere, such as Iran.Several U.S. lawmakers have suggested imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia over the ...DUBAI (Reuters) - The government of Oman has hired banks to arrange a global investor call ahead of a planned sale of dollar-denominated sukuk, or Islamic bonds, a document issued by one of the banks leading the deal showed on Monday.Gulf International Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan, KFH Capital and Standard Chartered Bank have been mandated as joint lead managers and bookrunners for the potential sale.Oman, rated Baa3 by Moody's, BB by S&P and BBB-(minus) by Fitch, plans to sell seven-year benchmark sukuk, according to the document. Benchmark bonds are generally meant to be upwards of $500 million. ...Marlboro cigarette maker Philip Morris International PM.N drew accusations of hypocrisy on Monday after using a four-page newspaper advertisement to urge smokers to quit cigarettes.The wraparound advertisment covering Monday's Daily Mirror tabloid is part of Philip Morris's 2 million pound ($2.61 million) "Hold My Light" campaign, in which the world's biggest international tobacco company is pushing a 30-day challenge for people to give up smoking.The campaign also features a video and a website where smokers can sign up for the challenge and gain information to help them to kick the ...By Toby SterlingAMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch healthcare technology company Philips missed estimates for core profit in the third quarter on Monday, sending its shares to their lowest in more than six months.The company, which makes products ranging from electric toothbrushes to medical imaging systems selling for millions of euros, cited "currency headwinds" for the shortfall, though some analysts said underlying growth was subpar.Philips said core earnings rose 6.8 percent to 568 million euros ($863 million) from 532 million a year before. Analysts polled for Reuters had seen adjusted ...PARIS (Reuters) - Sarah Behbehani, previously head of liquefied natural gas (LNG) trading at Shell, has joined JERA, the world's biggest buyer of LNG where she will head the company's LNG operations.Behbehani will initially support the integration of JERA's and EDF Trading's LNG activities into JERAT and once operational, she will lead the LNG commercial activities, JERA said in a statement on Friday.JERA and France's EDF formed an LNG trading joint venture in July. The deal is expected to be completed by early 2019. (Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and David ...By Dmitry ZhdannikovLONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has no intention of unleashing a 1973-style oil embargo on Western consumers and will isolate oil from politics, the Saudi energy minister said on Monday amid a worsening crisis over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. "There is no intention," Khalid al-Falih told Russia's TASS news agency when asked whether there could be a repeat of the oil embargo. Top U.S. lawmakers turned their ire on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday and said they believed he ordered the killing of Khashoggi, although the ...DUBAI (Reuters) - State-run Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma'aden) plans to build a third ammonia plant in at a cost of about 3.35 billion Saudi riyals ($893 million), according to a bourse statement on Monday.Ma'aden said it signed a contract with South Korea's Daelim Industrial and its Saudi unit for the engineering, procurement and construction of the plant in Ras al-Khair, on the kingdom's Gulf coast. Works will take over 38 months, the statement said.The ammonia plant is one among multiple plants Ma'aden plans to develop to for a third phosphate complex that is estimated to cost 24 ...DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian oil output cannot be replaced by other oil producing countries if Tehran is hit by sanctions by the United States in November, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told the Ministry's website SHANA on Monday."As I have repeatedly said there is no replacement for Iranian oil in the market. Saudi Arabia and Russia's output is near their highest level ever and they have no spare capacity to pump more to replace Iran's oil," he told SHANA. Washington is pushing allies to cut imports of Iranian oil to zero and will impose a new round of sanctions on Iranian oil sales in ...BERLIN (Reuters) - Siemens's chief executive said on Monday he would not attend a three-day Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia after the country admitted that journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been killed in its consulate in Istanbul.The German engineering giant was one of the last companies to decide against sending its top executive to the conference after Riyadh sought to cover up Khashoggi's Oct. 2 death before admitting to a "grave mistake". "Siemens is a reliable and committed partner of the kingdom and its VISION 2030. But for now, truth needs to be found out and ...Moscow court puts president of major Russian IT company under house arrest

 TASS, Sergey Porter

17:19 22/10/2018

MOSCOW, October 22 (RAPSI)  The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow on Monday put president and co-owner of Compulink, one of Russias largest group of IT companies, Mikhail Lyashch, under house arrest as part of a criminal case over embezzlement of 55 million rubles ($842,200), his attorney Mikhail Kuznetsov told RAPSI.

Previously, the defendant stayed in detention.

Lyashch was arrested on September 21 on suspicion of large-scale embezzlement. Following his arrest, Compulink released a statement saying that law enforcement authorities got interested in personal investment of Lyashch in the IT industrys projects, specifically, putting up of about 90 million rubles ($1.4 million) in the Internet telephony developer Simbiotel.

The amount of misappropriated assets has not been disclosed.

The Compulink group of companies provides a full range of IT and consulting services. It is one of Russias largest company specializing in managing integrated projects in construction of communication networks, industrial and civil purpose facilities involving use of innovative construction monitoring process, according to the companys website.GENEVA (Reuters) - Ukraine has launched complaints at the World Trade Organization to challenge anti-dumping duties imposed by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan on certain types of Ukrainian steel pipes, documents published by the WTO showed on Monday.Ukraine said the two countries, both members of the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union, should have phased out duties that were "higher than necessary, erroneous and based on deficient rulings, procedures and provisions".Ukraine has already lodged a similar WTO complaint against a third member of the customs union, Kazakhstan. Countries accused of ...DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian oil output cannot be replaced by other oil producing countries if Tehran is hit by U.S. sanctions in November, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told the Ministry's website SHANA on Monday ."As I have repeatedly said there is no replacement for Iranian oil in the market. Saudi Arabia and Russia's output is near their highest level ever and they have no spare capacity to pump more to replace Iran's oil," he told SHANA. In May, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Iran and announced sanctions against OPEC's third-largest ...In his testimony before Congress this year, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, addressed concerns about the strategically disseminated misinformation known as fake news that may have affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Have no fear, he assured Congress, a solution was on its way  if not next year, then at least over a five- to 10-year period. The solution? Artificial intelligence. Mr. Zuckerbergs vision, which the committee members seemed to accept, was that soon enough, Facebooks A.I. programs would be able to ...Trading in the stock market to be guided by the ongoing quarterly earnings season, with some blue-chips like Wipro and Bharti Airtel scheduled to announce their results ahead of F&O expiry.

Key factors such as the movement of the rupee and crude oil prices would also be keenly watched for further cues.

Meanwhile, rupee settled 29 paise higher at 73.32 against the US dollar on Friday, amid a weakening greenback.

ICICI Bank, Asian Paints, Maruti Suzuki, HCL Technologies, Dr Reddy's Labs, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Bharti Infratel, Bajaj Auto, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, UPL and ITC are among the other companies slated to announce their quarterly numbers this week.

Nifty fell 1.6 per cent during the previous week to end tad above 10,300 levels on October 19.

The fall was caused by sell-off in the later part of the week due to liquidity and asset quality concerns in non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), weak global cues on growth worries, mixed corporate earnings and consistent outflow from foreign institutional investors (FIIs). But stability in crude oil prices and the rupee led support to the market.

GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian share markets fell anew on Monday as investors braced for the peak of the U.S. earnings season while angst over Saudi Arabia, Italy and Brexit kept geopolitics front and centre. Adding to the air of nervousness was an early 0.4 per cent drop in E-Mini futures for the S&P 500, while safe-haven Treasuries caught a bid.

MSCIs broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.25 per cent. Japans Nikkei slipped 1.0 per cent and South Korea stocks lost 0.7 per cent.

This week is the peak period of the U.S. earnings season and companies reporting include Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Caterpillar.

Top-level exits continue at Infosys, the countrys second largest company in information technology services.

The latest one being Ken Toombs, global head of consulting at the Bengaluru-based entity. Highly placed sources said he is presently serving out the mandatory notice period.

Toombs resignation would be the fifth among high profile ones since Salil Parekh took charge in January as chief executive officer (CEO).

Why Toombs decided to go could not be ascertained. In an e-mail reply, Infosys said, We dont comment on speculation.

Toombs, a former CEO of Capgemini Consulting, had joined Infosys in June 2016. His initial mandate was to restructure and run the companys North America consulting business, before taking on a global mandate for the business as a managing partner. One of the largest service lines for Infosys, its consulting business has around 3,000 staffers across the world.

Tata Sons has increased its stake in Tata Motors at a time when its market capitalisation is eroding and valuations dipping amid uncertainties facing Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), its UK subsidiary.

At the end of the quarter ended September, the Tata Group holding company increased its stake in the flagship firm to 34.2 per cent from 33.3 per cent in June, according to the latest shareholding data shared by the company. The shareholding of Tata Industries, another group holding company, was maintained at 2.5 per cent. A Tata Sons spokesperson declined to comment for the story.

While foreign portfolio investors and domestic institutions have seen a reduction in their holdings, market experts are positive that the promoter is raising a stake.The raging battle between South Korea's Samsung and China's Xiaomi for the top slot in the hyper-competitive Indian smartphone market tend to hog the headlines, but it is another Chinese player, BBK Electronics Corp, that might turn out to be a dark horse. According to The Economic Times, the mushrooming sales of its brands Oppo and Vivo may have helped BBK strengthen its position as the number two smartphone maker by revenue in the country in FY18.

In the latest regulatory filings of Oppo and Vivo with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), the combined India revenue of these two brands stood at Rs 23,173 crore for the last fiscal, up from Rs 14,343 crore in FY17, when BBK emerged the second-largest phone maker. Both these brands crossed the Rs 10,000-crore sales milestone in the Indian market in FY18 - India is the largest market for them outside China. Oppo Mobiles India's gross revenue rose 49% to Rs 11,994.3 crore, while that of Vivo Mobile India surged 78% to Rs 11,179.3 crore.

Moreover, analysts told the daily that BBK's FY18 position is likely to improve further since numbers for its other brand OnePlus are yet to be factored in. OnePlus, which overtook Apple and Samsung to emerge the largest brand in the premium segment in Q1FY19 as per tracker Counterpoint Research, hasn't declared India revenues yet. India is the largest market for OnePlus, accounting for about 30% of global revenue, which was pegged at $1.4 billion in 2017.

Although the latest figures for BBK's competitors in the smartphone market aren't available with the RoC yet, the FY17 data can help understand the lay of the land. Top cat Samsung had posted FY17 sales of Rs 34,261 crore while Lenovo India's revenue stood at Rs 11,950 crore, Apple's at Rs 11,704 crore and Xiaomi's at Rs 8,379.33 crore.

However, Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple are all profitable in India unlike BBK's largest brands. Oppo's net loss increased to Rs 357.8 crore in the year ended March against Rs 41.9 crore in the previous financial year, while that of Vivo jumped 5% to Rs 120.4 crore in the same period. Industry insiders say the losses for both brands spiked in the last fiscal since they're spending big on marketing and retail expansion to gain market share.

According to Nipun Marya, Vivo India brand strategy director, the brand is investing in India for the long haul. "While the full impact of these investments will take a few years to emerge, the fact is that our investment has already started showing results," he told the daily. Meanwhile, RoC filings show that Oppo India plans to borrow about $500 million in the form of external commercial borrowing to support business operations and expansion.

Edited By Sushmita Choudhury AgarwalS K Birla Group-owned Digjam Ltd. today announced the temporary closure of its Jamnagar mill due to cash crunch. Digjam is one of the biggest exporters of woollen and worsted fabrics in India.

The company said it has stopped the manufacturing of woollen and worsted fabrics "in view of extremely tight liquidity and working capital position".

Digjam exports its products to US, Canada, Middle East, Far East, Japan, Australia, U.K, Italy, Germany and other European countries.

In its latest quarterly disclosure, Digjam incured a loss of Rs 10.12 crores during the quarter ending June 30, 2018. As of June 30, 2018, Digjam suffered from a working capital crunch of Rs 74.77 crore.

The company was posting weak financial results since the last 3 financial years. In FY18 Digjam posted a loss of Rs 32.11 crore while in FY17 and FY16 the losses were Rs 22.16 crore and Rs 9.86 crore respectively. Moreover the revenues were also displaying a downward spiral. the revenue in FY 18 was just 59.01 crores, which is 37 per cent lower than FY16 revenue.

In 2016, UK's luxury fabric maker Holland & Sherry had partnered with Digjam to launch operations in India. The monogrammed pin-striped suit that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wore during the India visit of former US President Barack Obama was reportedly made using Holland & Sherry fabric.

As per Digjam's latest annual report, Digjam Limited faced substantial challenges arising out of economic slowdown in its key export destinations Europe and USA and also due to corporate restructuring by a few major US customers besides the downtrend in the demand cycle. This has been compounded by increased competition from China. These operational challenges resulted in significant losses.

Digjam has a market capitalisation of Rs 45 crores. Digjam took a beating on the stock exchanges today. The company's stock was down by 4 per cent and trading at Rs 5.14.

The closure comes at a time when winter season is just about to begin. When the demand for woollens and worsted fabric spikes.

For four consecutive years Digjam has been the conferred with highest exporter award by the Export Promotion Council of India. Its Jamnagar mill was the first mill to be honoured with "Accredited mill" status by internationally renowned Dupont.British Prime Minister Theresa May is ready to agree to a fallback arrangement for the border between the United Kingdom and Ireland which does not have a time limit, to speed Brexit talks, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.

Arrangements for the United Kingdom's only land border with a European Union state have proven the biggest sticking point as London and Brussels seek to hammer out a transitional deal before Britain leaves the European Union in March next year.

Britain's Brexit minister, Dominic Raab, said just a week ago that the so-called backstop designed to prevent a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic ofIreland, must be finite, short and time-limited.

However, Bloomberg reported that May and her team of Brexit advisers now accepted the EU's point that it must be open-ended, for an "enduring" solution, citing an unnamed person familiar with the talks.

Brexit supporters in May's government are concerned any temporary arrangements with the EU that lack a clear time limit may become permanent solutions over time.

Sterling strengthened by around a quarter of a cent against both the U.S. dollar and the euro after the report's publication.

May's office had no immediate comment on the report. Earlier on Friday she told businesses that other EU leaders wanted to reach a Brexit deal as soon as possible, and that any Northern Irish backstop would only be temporary. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ieMinister of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Richard Bruton TD, and CEO of IDA Ireland, Martin Shanahan, joined Citrix EMEA Senior Vice President Sherif Seddik to officially open Citrixs expanded office space in North Dublin today.

The expansion is part of a 6.7 million investment and will be the largest Citrix European centre within EMEA. This revamped 49,500 sq ft centre, home to functions including technical support, consulting services, HR shared services and a new EMEA digital sales hub, has state of the art digital tooling designed for collaboration as well as world class data analytics.

Citrix is also adding 30 new roles on top of the 150 roles previously announced in April 2017, which will come online with immediate effect. The Dublin facility has a potential future capacity of over 400 employees.

The company is looking to hire a broad range of talent to fill roles across a range of functions including network engineering, technical support, finance and sales.

The company, which first came to Ireland in 1999, has developed close links with Irish universities and Institutes of Technology to support its growth and give young people the digital skills to propel their careers on the international stage.

Its newly established Sales Academy will promote the development of junior sales talent, with the aim of preparing them for more senior roles with the company in the future.

Speaking at the announcement, Minister of Communications, Climate Action & Environment Richard Bruton said, "I am delighted to join Citrix in Eastpoint today to celebrate the opening of the companys expanded Dublin office. This is an important centre for Citrix and positions Dublin as a strategically important location from which the company can serve and grow its customer base."

Senior Vice President, Sales & Services, EMEA at Citrix, Sherif Seddik added, "Together with our partners, Citrix is accelerating to win the journey to the Cloud. The 6.7m investment in our newly expanded Dublin centre is of strategic importance to our evolving go to market strategy, where we will deliver superior customer sales and support across our client base, with the best talent from across Ireland."

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New German depositary receipts (GDRs) issued by appliance giant Qingdao Haier Co. Ltd. received a chilly reception from local investors ahead of a Wednesday trading debut when they will become the inaugural listing under a new program for Chinese companies in Germany.

Haier, one of Chinas most successful global brands, priced its GDRs at 1.05 euros ($1.21) apiece, near the bottom of its previously announced range of 1 euro to 1.50 euros, according to a company announcement provided to Caixin by the China Europe International Exchange AG (CEIEX), which is hosting the listing. It raised about 278 million euros through the offer, or about half of the amount it had previously targeted.

Haier said the D-shares will trade under the international securities identification number CNE1000031C1.

The float will make Haier the first company to be listed in Frankfurt under CEINEX, a joint venture set up in late 2015 by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, German stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse, and the China Financial Futures Exchange. The program aims to help Chinese companies with worldwide aspirations raise their global profiles, and also to tap international financial markets. It dovetails with a broader Chinese push to make its own stock markets and publicly listed companies more accessible to foreign investors.

One observer pointed out that Haier could be meeting with weak demand partly because it is the first company to list under the program. Others pointed out that such brands have often traded at lower valuations in offshore markets where their names are less familiar to local investors.

The offering at a discount is normal, Citic Securities analysts Wang Hao and Chen Junbin said in a research note. The main reasons are liquidity and lower familiarity with Haier (among German investors) than in China.

TF Securities said that Haiers Shanghai-listed A-shares could come under pressure due to lower valuation for the new German listing. But it pointed out that shares traded in Germany only account for a relatively low 4.3% of Haiers total share count.

We expect the future pricing power of the companys stock price to remain in the hands of A-share investors, since the A-share price is the anchor of the stocks trading price, TF Securities said.

Haier is one of Chinas most successful companies in terms of building a global brand and developing overseas operations. The company made headlines earlier this month when it announced it will purchase Italian washing-machine maker Candy SpA for 475 million euros. Its largest purchase to date saw it buy the appliance unit of U.S. rival General Electric Co. for $5.58 billion in 2016.

Contact reporter Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com)(China Watch)  Chinese leaders and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are expected to chart a new course for the bilateral relationship amid a complicated global situation during the latter's visit to China this month, the former Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda says.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and of Chinas reform and opening-up.

Beijing announced Abes visit on Friday, the first by a Japanese prime minister in seven years, from Oct. 25 to 27. President Xi Jinping met Abe in Russia in September, and Premier Li Keqiang made an official visit to Japan in May.

Fukuda, talking to China Watch, forecast that a chance still exists that the worsening trade friction between China and the United States will ease.

During Abes visit, talks are expected to touch on various important issues, said Fukuda during an interview in Beijing on the sidelines of the fourth round of dialogue between Chinese and Japanese entrepreneurs and former high-level officials.

The basic theme should be in what direction cooperation between Japan and China will develop, he said.

Fukuda, a longtime bridge-builder between China and Japan, said the direction of the relationship will be important not only for China and Japan but also for all countries in East Asia and the rest of the world.

Here is the full text of the interview:

Q: This year marks the 40th anniversary of Chinas reform and opening up, accompanied by the 40th anniversary of Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China. What do you think about Chinas reform and opening up over the years? With Prime Minister Abe visiting China shortly, what do you foresee for Sino-Japan relations?

A: The Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed 40 years ago. At the time, although it was signed in Beijing, the treaty still needed to go through the approval process in Japan. It was not valid until the completion of the corresponding procedures to deposit the instruments of ratification. Therefore, it can be seen that the treaty came into force when the two sides exchanged the approval letter.

In order to exchange this document, Deng Xiaoping came to Japan with his wife, and an exchange ceremony was held, which I attended. Deng took action immediately after the treaty came into force. He visited international companies in Japan, met company heads and raised hopes that there could be collaboration, and he reached agreements. The two decision-makers of Japans representative companies, Nippon Steel and Matsushita Electric, warmly accepted Dengs invitation of collaboration and in turn promised maximum cooperation.

Chinas reform and opening up has made substantial progress since then.

There is no doubt that Deng did a particularly important job in Japan. And this ought to be commemorated not only as a beginning to reform and opening up, but also for pushing it into a substantive implementation stage. So from our perspective what he achieved was remarkable.

These large Japanese companies also honored their promises and translated the agreements into action. We believe all of this played a critical role getting Chinas reform and opening up underway. For 40 years since then China has adhered to such a policy and has continuously promoted the process of reform and opening up to become the worlds second-largest economy. So I believe the treaty signed between the two countries 40 years ago is of great significance.

So is the visit of Prime Minister Abe. In terms of his coming trip to China, I think that in talks between him and President Xi Jinping important issues will be discussed. The basic theme should be in what direction collaboration between Japan and China will go. This issue is of course crucial for the two sides, and agreement on it affects not only Japan and China, but other countries in Northeast Asia as well. Thus it has a great impact on the whole of Asia. In my view the China-Japan relationship is critical to the overall stability of Asia. This visit should be a process of confirming that recognition, in which there is symbolic meaning.

Q: At the beginning of Chinas reform and opening up in 1978 Japan participated and gave China a lot of help. That generation of Chinese has many memories of Japanese products and brands. Today, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has embarked upon a new era, even as reform and opening up enters a new phase. In what way would Japan like to take part in this round of reform and opening-up?

A: It is amazing that China has grown so rapidly. From the perspective of the economy as a whole, it has developed into a very large country in a short time. However, some problems have also been encountered.

For example, President Xi has said the challenge now is to enhance overall quality. Last year, at the Party Congress, the goal was to improve the living standards of each citizen. This should be what China deals with now, and the direction of development in the future as well. It is possible that everyone is able to experience and witness this evolution. Chinas central and western regions and rural areas will progressively thrive before long, which is desirable and deserves attention.

We understand the goal of Chinas development and its implications. From a Japanese perspective this kind of trend is understandable. For instance, in order to improve quality we hope to be supportive from a variety of angles that are closely related to everyday life. So we need to continue concentrating on certain areas for China to achieve a more robust economy.

Q: The Sino-U.S. relationship has become more complicated this year. As a politician known internationally, how do you think this can be dealt with? As the worlds three most important economies, in what way do you think the U.S., China and Japan should work together? And what kind of influence do you think Sino-Japan collaboration has on the prosperity of the Asian-Pacific region?

A: Based on the status quo, the friction between China and the U.S. should be viewed as a trade war, with both sides at loggerheads. But if the aim is to remain level-headed and look for solutions, all they can do is sit down and talk with each other and not ignore the problem. Of course, no one really wants a fight. If you don't want to step into war, you are supposed to stay patient and go back to the negotiating table. It may be that the problem cannot be totally resolved immediately and needs many rounds of talks. Tremendous patience is likely to be needed in such a process. Moreover, the negative impact of such a process on other countries should be minimized, and a sense of responsibility should drive the will to talk and negotiate.

I hope the leaders of both the U.S. and China are now reflecting on the influence any dispute between them has on other countries. Of course, we very much hope for a good outcome as soon as possible through dialogue. The possibilities for that still exist.

There may be meetings in Argentina next month, but progress before that would be better. Telephone calls and video conferencing make things very easy. I hope everything will be done as soon as possible in the search for a solution.

In relation to the triangular relationship between Japan, the U.S. and China, as you know, these countries together account for 40 percent of the world economy, and it is certainly no good for there to be disputes, which could even lead to a global economic collapse.

From that point of view the three countries need to maintain good communication and work with one another daily. They need to constantly communicate to ensure that world economic stability is maintained.

In this context, when we look at the economic share of the two countries from the perspective of Japan and China alone, if the two can maintain economic stability, then the rest of Asia may gain in confidence as well. If tension emerges between Japan and China, then Asian countries will start to nurse fears. We should not strike fear into anyone.

So I believe that against that backdrop there is no confrontation between Japan and China. We need to act in a way that pays heed to the influence of what we do on the world and our neighbors. In that regard the relationship between the U.S. and China is critical. China and the U.S. also need to pursue detente and maintain good relations that benefit the whole world.

This article was originally published by China Watch.The China-U.S. trade war has created an opportunity for the EU to restart its own trade negotiations with China. Photo: VCG

Global trade tensions have steadily increased since U.S. President Donald Trump took office at the beginning of 2017. Initially, the U.S. president seemed to want to confront U.S. allies and China alike. But the tensions between the U.S. and the EU have recently calmed, while the U.S. focus has moved squarely toward China.

So far, this has culminated in the announcement of 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from China, and the threat of increasing those tariffs to 25% if China does not end its unfair trading practices. China, in turn, has announced countertariffs on some $60 billion worth of imports.

Many political motivations on the part of the U.S. administration can be seen behind this move: an attempt to contain Chinas rise, including as a technology leader in the context of Chinas Made in China 2025 strategy; a clear perception that since Chinas entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO), many jobs were lost in sectors exposed to Chinese competition; and a realization that the EU remains a long-standing ally of the U.S.  despite its trade surplus. The successful negotiations of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has also helped to ease the EU-U.S. tensions, though the truce remains fragile.

Given this picture, could Europe benefit from the U.S.-China trade tensions, and if so, how?

As a first principle, trade wars are not only easy to lose for the sides involved but they also have negative effects for companies in third countries due to globally integrated supply chains. Daimler, for example, blamed a recent profit warning on the China-U.S. trade war, as exports of cars and components would become more expensive.

But trade wars also create opportunities for some companies and sectors in third countries. Most immediately, one might see European exports to China increase, for example, because China needs to replace agricultural imports from the U.S.. There may also be trade gains in other sectors where tariffs limit imports. But the more sophisticated the products get, the more global supply chains will play a role. But I could still see a number of European companies, for example, delivering consumer goods, benefiting from rising export opportunities to the U.S.

But the real opportunity for Europe lies elsewhere. As China feels the pressure from the U.S., it is trying to make new allies. True, China may be less vulnerable to a trade war now than it was a few years ago thanks to the rebalancing of its economy away from exports. But China is still worried to see a united front of Japan, the U.S. and EU, such as seen with the recent declaration on forced technology transfer that was clearly targeted at China.

China is therefore actively reaching out to the EU, trying to advance talks on bilateral investment, aiming to start negotiations on a trade agreement. China would also like to see the EU as a strategic partner in the WTO.

Europe should actively pursue that opportunity and negotiate with China, but it needs to be realistic on what it can achieve. Europes key interests are clear: China needs to open up its markets to more sectors. European investment in China has been falling for a number of years because market access has become more difficult. Europe needs to ensure that China treats European companies on an equal footing with their domestic ones. Also, China needs to remove unfair subsidy programs through state-owned banks and other state-owned companies. Of course, China will not fundamentally alter its economic model. But will it be ready to make some concessions to European firms? The EU should certainly explore this opportunity.

Finally, as China has found it more difficult to invest in the U.S., particularly in key technological sectors, it has moved its investment efforts to Europe. Chinese investment in key European industrial technology sectors, such as Industry 4.0, has increased substantially.

European companies and politicians have observed this rise with mixed feelings. Of course, Chinese investment is welcome and can increase corporate profits, especially when access to Chinese markets is improved. But there is a clear worry that China uses market manipulation and subsidies to buy companies at unfair prices.

Whats more, the industrial policy implications of Chinese investment are increasingly the focus of public debate. Does Europe lose out on key technologies? Arent some technologies too sensitive from a security perspective to be exposed to China? The EU clearly needs to define its red lines on Chinese technology acquisition and has the leeway to enforce them more vigorously.

The overall upshot is clear. Europe will benefit from U.S.-China tensions with increased exports in specific sectors, but will lose in others. But the main opportunity lies in restarting negotiations with China. The EU needs to now clearly formulate a unified strategic position and embark on a constructive discussion with China.

Guntram Wolff is the director of Bruegel, a European think tank specializing in economics. His research focuses on the European economy and governance, fiscal and monetary policy, and global finance.

To read more about China-U.S. trade tensions, click here

If you want to submit an opinion piece to Caixin Global, please send an email to gangwu@caixin.com.Chinas foreign exchange regulator imposed 14.6 million yuan ($2.1 million) of fines Monday in 20 cases of violations of foreign exchange regulations involving banks, companies and individuals.

Included were the first two citations by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) involving special purpose vehicles (SPVs), the foreign shell companies that domestic companies or individuals set up for return investment back into China.

The companies penalized over SPVs are Goldstone Packaging Jiaxing Co. Ltd., a producer of aluminum foil film packaging materials, and Bright Sound Electric Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., a Shenzhen-based electronics company. They were fined for failing to disclose information on the actual controllers of their SPVs.

Goldstone made illegal remittances of $2.9 million and Bright Sound, $3.18 million, according to SAFE spokeswoman Wang Chunying. Goldstone was fined 950,000 yuan and Bright Sound, 1.05 million yuan.

Under a document issued in 2014 concerning the management of cross-border investment and financing and return investments through SPVs, the vehicles must register with SAFE before they set up a wholly foreign-owned company in China. If they fail to register, domestic residents or companies are not allowed to remit profits from foreign SPVs back to domestic use, and any transactions between the wholly foreign-owned companies and their overseas parent companies is illegal.

While SAFE is strengthening its punishment of substantial violations, especially malicious, false and fraudulent transactions, it will also safeguard normal transactions and allow a certain degree of tolerance for acts with a true trade background but only procedural violations, Wang told Caixin.

Among typical malicious, false and fraudulent transactions are false re-exports and false trade financing, which are common channels used for illegal activities such as cross-border arbitrage and illegal outflow of funds.

A branch of Hong Kong-based Nanyang Commercial Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinas state-owned bad debt manager China Cinda Asset Management, was fined 1.27 million yuan for conducting a re-export payment business based on clients false contract and bills of lading. A branch of Bank of Communications was fined 1.6 million yuan for conducting trade financing based on clients false contracts and bills of lading.

Five other banks were fined for violations of rules on individual forex purchase quotas and violations of onshore guarantees for offshore loans.

Seven individuals were fined for using underground banks and using other peoples annual foreign exchange quotas to remit money abroad. Most of the remittances were for buying property overseas. Beijing grants every individual an annual $50,000 foreign exchange quota, and buying beyond that amount requires special approval from SAFE.EU/ Poland wants a more equal distribution of funds for research and innovation

Poland is demanding the introduction of mechanisms that will guarantee a more equal division of funds for research and innovation between Member States in the new EU multi-annual budget. Polish Minister for European Affairs Konrad Szymanski spoke about this issue in Luxembourg.

According to the draft presented in May, the European Commission wants to spend 100 billion euros on research and innovation between 2021 and 2027. The new `Horizon Europe` will be the most ambitious programme in history.

On Tuesday, during the General Affairs Council meeting, the EU`s Ministers or European Affairs held another discussion on the new multiannual financial framework.

Szymanski told reporters that the Polish approval of a larger co-financing of this and other programs depends on the arrangement of the entire budget architecture, in particular in the area of cohesion policy and the common agricultural policy. The cuts proposed by the EC in these two areas are particularly painful for Poland.

Horizon belongs to the programs that will be managed centrally by the European Commission. There are no national envelopes, and researchers receive funds based on the evaluation of "research excellence" of their applications. Poland is rather weak in this area, which is why most of the money goes to Western European countries.

"The way these programs are managed today, the vast majority, up to 90% of this money is concentrated in literally a handful of Member States, which is unacceptable" - Szymanski said.

In his opinion, it is impossible to realistically think that centrally managed programs would have more resources without a guarantee of a better division between all EU countries. The minister stipulated that this would not involve national envelopes but better management mechanisms. "The current ones do not work, they have produced a very bad, unbalanced effect" - he said.

In recent decades, innovation has been the driving force of around two-thirds of economic growth in Europe. The EC expects that the program "Horizon Europe" will result in more technologies and have a positive impact on economic growth, trade and investments. According to Brussels estimates, each euro invested in the programme can bring a return of up to  11 of GDP over a 25-year period.

Europe, inhabited by only 7 percent of the world population, generates 20 percent global investment in research and development. Despite that, the Old Continent is lagging behind in many areas. EU companies spend less on innovation than their competitors (1.3 percent GDP in Europe compared to 1.6 percent in China, 2 percent in the US, 2.6 percent in Japan and 3.3 percent in South Korea) .

From Luxembourg, Krzysztof Strzepka (PAP)

stk/ ulb/ kar/ agz/ kap/

tr. RLCameroun: Pangolin scales traffickers to appear at Bonanjo Court :: CAMEROON

The third hearing of the case against against six traffickers arrested with over 700kg of pangolin scales, shall be heard at the Bonanjo Court of First Instance in Douala, on October 26. During the first two hearings, the case was adjourned because three of the six traffickers failed to attend the hearing following their arrest and release on bail in August 2018.

Their failure to appear in court raised the possibility of their escape as two of the three main traffickers were from the Central African Republic where the majority of the pangolin scales were smuggled into Cameroon shortly before their seizure in Bonanpriso, Douala. One of the traffickers had boarded a plane from Bangui to Douala for the transaction before his arrest.

Officials shall be finding out if the traffickers shall appear in court after failing to do so on two occasions with anger clearly rising in some quarters involved in the matter. It should be noted that during a crackdown operation, it took severalhours for a full team of police officers from the judicial police and wildlife officers to track and arrest the 6 traffickers who belong to an international syndicate of pangolin scales trafficking.

The traffickersdemonstrated elaborate planning to avoid arrest while some attempted to run away but were stopped by the team. These efforts may have been in vain, if suspicions are confirmed that the traffickers have slipped back to the Central African Republic. And it equally raises the question as to why some of the bail bonds are very soft and provide no deterrence that may force the accused to appear in court. Some wildlife law enforcement experts argue that it is dangerous to grant bails in cases concerning flagrant delicto or persons caught red handed because they simply return to their trade, trafficking in wildlife species, whereas they should have been behind bars.

Majority of the scales that were confiscated in Douala were from the giant pangolin which is an animal that is threatened with extinction, The operation that led to the confiscation, was technically assisted by LAGA, a wildlife law enforcement support body that assists government in the application of the wildlife law. Prior investigations showed the traffickers were linked to rhino horn and lion trophies trafficking.

In January 2017, the Bonaberi Court of First Instancesentenced two Chinese nationals who were arrested with over 5 tons of pangolin scales ready for illegal exportto a jail term of3 months. This decision was considered in many quarters as an extremely weak punishment for people who had been responsible for the killing of thousands of pangolins, destroying the countrys endangered wildlife in the process.These rulings and other decisions at the level of the judiciary is becoming a matter of concern for conservationists because the traffickers may simply return to running their illegal business, at the expense of the countrys endangered wildlife.CAMEROUN :: SECESSION IS NOT AN OPTION THEY CANNOT WIN THE WAR: MAURICE KAMTO, THE LEGALIST! :: CAMEROON

Anyone who listened to Maurice Kamto on Equinox TV would have heard these words: secession is not an optionthey cannot win the war. For those Ambazonians who were hoping that the struggle could be cut short by the victory of one of La Republique du Camerouns legal minds, they would be disappointed. They had thought that Kamto knows the facts and being a supposed legal mind, would accept the rule of law. Is Maurice Kamto not said to be jurist magistral? Is he not thought of as one of the best legal minds of La Republique du Cameroun?

These words, coming from his mouth, tell us that you can be a legal mind, but not necessarily believe in the rule of law; you can be a judge but still be a fraud. What has separated Ambazonians from La Republique du Cameroun (LRC) is that Ambazonians want the rule of law, but LRC wants to live in fraud and anarchy; Ambazonians want justice, but the other people want crockery!

Anyone who knows the history of the two countries, as we suppose Kamto knows, knows that the history has been a history of systematic fraud on the people of the Southern Cameroons. First, La Republique du Cameroun voted against Union with the Southern Cameroons in Res. 1608(XV) of 21 April 1961 and today, it is clinging to the Southern Cameroons; next, LRC unilaterally debated and adopted the so-called 1961 federation, which the Southern Cameroons parliament never passed into law. But La Republique is the one talking of an alleged 1961 federation. Then as a blindfold to Southern Cameroonians, LRC put in Article 47(1) of the so-called federal constitution the guarantee of indissolubility of the federation, only to abolish it a few years down the road, still with fraud. The abolition of the federation was an act of fraud against Southern Cameroonians in that it was a violation of the constitution; the federation was instituted only to protect Southern Cameroonians; you could not then ask those for whom the federation was never intended whether it should be abolished or not. Thus putting the referendum question to the entire population, of which Southern Cameroonians formed only a quarter, whether to abolish the federation or not, was a forgone conclusion and an act of fraud. Moreover, the questions on the paper in the Southern Cameroons were Oui or Yes, another act of theft. Of course, some can argue that changing the constitution required a referendum, but then not on a matter that did not concern the entire population. The federation was a protective measure for Southern Cameroonians, not for the people of Republique du Cameroun. So its abolition by the population of LRC could not be justified. And the reasons for changing the federation were never debated by the nation. But even more, after fraudulently abolishing the federation, they then instituted the one and indivisible Cameroon which they claim is not subject to debate today! We can all see that all of these systematic acts of fraud were premeditated to annex the Southern Cameroons!

How legal minded is Kamto when he pretends that he is not aware of these frauds or does not intend to undo them? He mentioned that he knows that there were mistakes in Foumban and that we can go back to revisit them, but as a legal mind, he equally knows that Foumban was an illegality to Southern Cameroonians. Why? Because under the Southern Cameroons Constitution Order in Council governing the Southern Cameroons then, Foncha had no jurisdiction over foreign affairs, defence and taxation. He was in Foumban on his own! Foumban was not the conference called for in para 5 of UNGA Res. 1608(XV) of 21 April 1961!

Here is Kamto who wants Biya and his Constitutional Council to do justice, but even before he has taken over, he is not prepared to do justice to the people of the Southern Cameroons! He has closed his eyes to the uncountable instances of systematic fraud against the people of the Southern

Cameroons! He has taken a stand even before he has bothered to fully understand the root causes of the Ambazonian crisis. So how different will Kamto be from Biya as far as the rule of law is concerned? Is he willing to respect any law with regard to this issue? Is he willing to publish the instruments of international law on the basis of which he is laying claim to the territory of the Southern Cameroons? Is he even willing to agree to mediation under international auspices? Is he willing to accept a UN-organised referendum on the matter of the Ambazonian crisis? Or has he made himself the law and decreed that secession is not an option?

See Kamtos mind: the words secession is not an optionthey cannot win the war tells you clearly that for Kamto, he will not submit to the rule of law for a solution; war is his solution! And since he believes Ambazonians cannot win the war, he will win the war and steal the Ambazonian territory! His idea is to ignore all the legal arguments, continue Biyas unjust war, conquer Ambazonia by war and own it! Too unfortunate for Africa that those struggling to win power are more imperialist than the imperial powers! Too bad for Africa that it is its own sons who have become the new colonial masters over weaker neighbours. Too bad for Africa that it will remain in conflict, devastation and war because its own supposed best minds are not willing to live by the rule of law! Too bad, in fact, that Africas struggle against colonisation cannot help it not to become colonial masters! Who then can blame Biya if Kamto is promising to be just as lawless? The two are exactly the same to Ambazonians! Why will they not call Africans shit whole countries? Why will Africa not receive the worst insults, when its own so-called educated minds are the brains behind the subjugation and domination of other Africans?

Yes, Mr. Kamto, while you fight for justice, know that all human beings love justice, even Ambazonians! Accept to do justice also, even to Ambazonians! You say we should give up the struggle because we cannot win the war. How easily have you found it to give up the struggle at the Constitutional Court? We say our struggle will continue because it is just and holy, and you know it! Slaves did not get liberated because they became more powerful than their masters; Africa was not free from colonial occupation because it was more powerful than European powers or could win European powers at war. Yes, we may not win the war, but you will not seize our space of existence on earth by fraud and theft. We shall win, the same way as Africa won its struggle against colonisation. If you become the president of neighbouring Cameroon, we invite you to sit down with Ambazonians and understand them; but never to tell us to give up our country to your own! We invite you to remember your own struggle before the Cameroon Constitutional Council for justice and then know the demand of Ambazonians for justice from Cameroun also! We are willing to talk in peace with you and appeal to you not to promise to be so unjust and cruel to Ambazonians even before you have taken power. Our allegiance is to our own country, Ambazonia, not to La Republique du Cameroun! We want to fly our own flag; sing our own anthem, live under our own laws, not the laws of colonial Cameroun! We have never been one country, and you know it! The same tokens by which La Republique du Cameroun declares itself a sovereign country are exactly the same tokens by which we claim our external self-determination. You know it and we know it. Let us live and let live.CAMEROUN :: Cameroon : Professor Maurice Kamto refuses to recognise the victory of incumbent Paul Biya

Professor Maurice Kamto refuses to recognise the victory of incumbent Paul Biya, as he makes first public statement after the proclamation of Oct. 7th Polls by the Constitutional Court.

The CRM candidate went on to present results figures, showing that he came first in the elections, followed by incumbent Paul Biya in second position

He claims that he won the elections with 39.74 % and promises to defend the mandate given him by the people through their votes.

The videonews, latest-news

The Barr government says it will still take light rail from Civic to Woden via Barton, despite a federal parliamentary committee warning any deviation from Canberra's main avenues will cause delays and cost blowouts in getting the project approved. The Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories published its report on the territory government's plan to send the tram from Civic to Woden on Monday. It has indicated it is likely to make the territory seek further approval before giving the final go ahead because the ACT government's proposed route is partially inconsistent with the National Capital Plan. It also warned the government's proposed route would "unavoidably add further complexity, time, and cost to the project". The National Capital Plan allows for an intertown public transport system along Kings and Commonwealth Avenues and State Circle but not to cut across the Parliamentary Triangle, like the ACT government's preferred route does. Transport Canberra officials told the committee the government had chosen to take light rail through Parkes and Barton as it would pass more employment hubs and cultural institutions, meaning more people would use the system. Transport Canberra director-general Emma Thomas told the committee the other more direct route "was not actually the easier or cheaper route, because it goes so close to Parliament House and because there are more bridges involved and there are greater difficulties in providing pedestrian access to the light rail system". She also referenced a survey from last year that showed 75 per cent of the 4437 respondents preferred the Barton alignment to one that travelled past Parliament House onto Adelaide Avenue. However the National Capital Authority told the committee the National Capital Plan, which could be considered as "in-principle" approval for light rail routes, did not cover Barton. It warned that any route that wasn't covered by this plan would "require information that is much more detailed than that which appears to be currently contemplated by the ACT government before a decision could be made". Committee chairman Ben Morton, a Liberal MP, said the ACT government could still choose to use the Barton route, and any suggestion this prevented them from doing so was "ludicrous". "However, should the ACT government choose to pursue a route alignment that is only partially consistent with the National Capital Plan, this will unavoidably add further complexity, time, and cost to the project," he said. "The committee has recommended that in that case, the ACT government should work with the National Capital Authority to ensure Commonwealth approval of the route, by amending the National Capital Plan. This should be done before undertaking the full works approval application and other Commonwealth approval processes." The report said if the ACT government remained committed to its proposed route, there would have to be a two-stage Commonwealth approval process. "The first stage would comprise working with the NCA and other relevant Commonwealth agencies to definitively determine whether the proposed route is feasible. The NCA has advised that this would require the ACT government to provide the results of an initial rapid heritage assessment," it said. "It is only after these matters have been addressed and the proposed route has the approval of the Commonwealth, that the second stage should commence." The second stage involved works approval and other Commonwealth approvals. "The committee is concerned that if the ACT government chose to invest in the development of detailed designs, heritage assessments, and an Environmental Impact Statement without prior Commonwealth approval of its proposed route alignment, there is a significant risk that this investment could be wasted," it said. Mr Morton said the committee wanted to ensure the simplest possible Commonwealth approval process for the light rail project. "It is not the committees intention to slow or hinder the approvals process, but rather to provide certainty for the ACT government and the people of Canberra, and to ensure that time and money is not wasted pursuing a route that is not endorsed by the Commonwealth and therefore not feasible," he said. The report noted the authority's concerns that the project had "not adequately demonstrated sensitivity to the importance of the central national area or parliamentary zone". "The development of light rail amenity must not come at the cost of the long-term character and heritage of the national capital area and the parliamentary zone," it said. Transport Minister Meegan Fitzharris told ABC Radio this was not the end of the Barton dogleg and government would apply for the National Capital Plan amendment. "We've always known this route requires this amendment," Ms Fitzharris said. She said variations to the plan were "by no means unique" but the challenge for the project going forward would be getting the federal minister and federal parliament to make a "timely decision". However Mr Morton said it was not certain the ACT government would get the amendment approved. The Public Transport Association of Canberra said the two-step approval process was "the most appropriate way forward" and the report provided "much-needed certainty" for the project. The committee also said the ACT government appeared not to be heeding the advice of the NCA on the need for wire-free running through designated areas. The current proposal features wire-free running from Alinga Street to Sydney Avenue, and again in Woden from the Phillip Oval stop to the Woden Town Centre. The NCA told the committee it had advised the ACT government that these designs are not consistent with the previously stated requirement. However the government said the use of overhead wires and poles in some designated areas would be unavoidable due to the limitations of existing technology. "Due to the curves and gradient, traffic intersections, and the distance between the stops, the Sydney Avenue to Hopetown Circuit section may require more energy than can currently be stored on board the LRVs [Light Rail Vehicles] using technology available today," the government said. Nevertheless, the committee has recommended there be no poles and wires on Commonwealth Avenue, Kings Avenue, State Circle, Brisbane Avenue, Sydney Avenue, Canberra Avenue to Manuka Circle, Hobart Avenue, Melbourne Avenue and Adelaide Avenue to Kent Street.

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A Canberra man will fight allegations of drug dealing after police found a book titled the Cocaine Diaries in his apartment last Wednesday. The book contained Blackberry device codes, documents tendered in court on Monday allege. During the raid on James Coles Phillip flat police also allegedly found a handwritten drug recipe, cocaine, Inositol (a known cutting agent for cocaine), knuckledusters and more than $100,000 in cash. There was no one home at the time of the raid but Mr Cole, 34, was arrested at Canberra Airport after getting off a flight on Sunday. On Monday, he pleaded not guilty to the charges in the ACT Magistrates Court. He told police he works as a mechanic. Mr Coles application for bail was opposed by prosecutors but his lawyer, Michael Kukulies-Smith, argued for Mr Coles release while he answered the charges. He was granted bail by Special Magistrate Margaret Hunter. Mr Cole is charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and possession of a prohibited weapon. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He is due back in court in January.

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A serial criminal and long-term drug addict has admitted he did not stop taking drugs after killing university student Clea Rose, rehabilitation, time in jail, with family support or after the birth of his son. However, at a sentence hearing on Monday for breaking a prison guard's neck while high on the drug ice the 27-year-old man told the court he was now off drugs. "I've been able to deal with a lot this past year," the man said, "I think I'm in a position where I can change my life." The Canberra Times has chosen to refer to the mans role in the death of student Clea Rose - in which he stole a car and during a police chase struck the woman - and so cannot name him because he was a child. The man was most recently on trial in the ACT Supreme Court where he was found guilty of a threat to kill, assault and causing grievous bodily harm after an incident in his prison cell. The trial heard one guard had been taken to hospital and had surgery on a shattered nasal bone, spending days in hospital. The base of his skull and a vertebrae had also been fractured. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and had not returned to work. The 27 year old offender gave evidence at the hearing on Monday, telling the court he was sorry and did not mean to hurt the guard. He was on ice during the incident and told the court he had been in a psychosis. He said he was now off drugs and looking towards the future. But in cross-examination he agreed that he had not been able to stop taking drugs even after killing Ms Rose, rehabilitation, time in jail, with the support of his mother, or after the birth of his son in 2015. The prosecutor Anthony Williamson asked the man what was going to make him stop. "I think for some people the penny just drops and I feel like that's happened," he said, "Now I know how rewarding it is to put in effort ... [and] reconnect with family." The man agreed in response to the prosecutor's questions that he was remorseful, but said he did not believe he should spend a significant amount of time in prison for the assault. "I think I'm in a position where I can change my life." He denied that he was not genuine in his remorse, and denied he was just saying what the judge wanted to hear. Chief Justice Helen Murrell sentenced the man on Monday to four years and seven months in jail, setting a non-parole term of two years and five months. He will be eligible for parole February 2020.

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If Defqon.1 takes up the Greens' offer to move to the ACT, it won't be the first exiled NSW festival to find refuge in the territory. However with clashes between locals and event organisers, a police report about human faeces on the side of the road and a letterbox ignited in mysterious circumstances, the shift of Psyfari to the nation's capital was anything but smooth. ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury courted controversy when he invited the music festival where two people died last month to Canberra, saying it would open up the prospect of pill testing at the event. Defqon.1 promoters Q-Dance are yet to respond to Mr Rattenbury. Chief Minister Andrew Barr's spokesman would not endorse the invite, and said pill testing was not a tool to attract events to the ACT. He also said finding a venue for an event that size that wasn't Commonwealth-controlled and didn't negatively affect nearby residents would be a "significant challenge". Psyfari resurfaced in the ACT in 2018 after taking a year off. NSW Police had told festival organisers to cancel the 2016 event after the deaths of three festivalgoers in a horror crash in the Blue Mountains a year earlier. The carload of young men was returning home to Sydney's northern beaches after the festival at a rural property near Lithgow when the car spun into oncoming traffic on the Bells Line of Road at Bilpin. The driver was jailed for 4 years last year, after a court found he was coming down from the drug ecstasy when he crashed the car. NSW Police were also concerned the isolation of the event posed a risk to patrons, as there was no mobile phone coverage and unreliable emergency radio communications. Now police reports obtained by The Canberra Times under freedom of information laws show the full scale of the backlash the festival experienced when it shifted to Canberra. The Psyfari that came to Caloola Farm near Tharwa was a scaled-back version of former festivals, limited to about 2000 tickets (formerly 5000) and three days (previously five). Organisers hired a community liaison officer and had a zero drugs policy, with harm minimisation group Dancewize on site to offer help and advice to festivalgoers. Despite this, Caloola Farm's neighbours' echoed the concerns of NSW Police about Psyfari, with the event to be the sixth "bush doof" at the farm in 18 months. ACT Policing had expressed serious concerns about past events at the farm, even warning serious injury or death was "expected" if the events continued "unchecked and unregulated". ACT Policing would not say whether they sought advice from NSW Police on Psyfari when it moved to Canberra, but given the distance of Caloola Farm from support services, police deployed "contingency measures" to allow effective policing of the event. Police were also aware of the animosity between locals and proponents of the festival. Tensions hit a flashpoint the day before the festival began when a ute entered the farm and its occupants allegedly made threats to festival volunteers. The police report says: "Staff became scared of the males as they appeared intoxicated. The males ran the ute into the back of the [complainant's vehicle] then drove away. [Complainant] was unable to get any names or rego details of the ute or driver." Staff rang police, who arrived half an hour later to find their person of interest arguing with someone on a motorcycle about a sign he'd placed on public land saying "not welcome", targeted at festivalgoers. The police records suggested the man later appeared in court. Two days later, police were called out to the area after a report a mailbox had been blown up with explosives. Police and forensics went out an hour later to find the mailbox had been deliberately lit on fire, not blown up. No forensic evidence was found. Officers went to Caloola Farm to speak with people there, who were unaware of the incident. They also did a drive-through of the incident but couldn't identify any suspects. Later that day, a man also called police alleging a van tried to run him off the road with his young son in the car. The complainant was unable to get the licence plate of the van. A complaint was also made to police that someone had "defecated by the road and left it there, toilet paper and all". No further details were given. Police ran a four-day traffic operation in the area, where they breath-tested 1025 drivers (only one tested positive for alcohol) and roadside drug-tested 155 drivers (11 swabs were sent away for further analysis after returning positive readings). Officers also patrolled the festival and reported the crowd had been largely well behaved. On the second day of the festival, police were called to help security after a heavily drug-affected man assaulted and bit a staff member and a Dancewize volunteer. Notes from an officer said the man was "highly aggressive and attempting to sexually assault people". The man was handcuffed until paramedics arrived. A police officer had to drive the ambulance to the Canberra Hospital so both paramedics could treat the man for a compromised airway. Police recommended the matter not proceed to prosecution because of the "transient" nature of the offender, the victims and the witnesses. The next day emergency services were called back to deal with two violent people who'd overdosed on drugs. It took 45 minutes for police to get there given the distance and road condition because it was raining. On arrival, security had restrained one man who'd become aggressive and tried to kick and bite staff. Another ambulance had to be called for a woman in a similar state. Initial inquiries suggested the pair had taken LSD, which interacted poorly with existing mental health conditions. Defqon.1 is more than six times the size of Psyfari and when confronted with the difficulties this smaller festival faced in coming to Canberra, Mr Rattenbury said he recognised there were challenges associated with holding a major festival. Broadly speaking, the sensible approach here is to engage event organisers  as was successfully realised here in Canberra  to bring about a safer environment for our young people. This would mean talking to organisers and residents alike about how we could bring about a festival environment that is safe, fun and a welcome addition to our festival calendar," Mr Rattenbury said. [Defqon.1] happened last month, leaving 11 months until the next event. That leaves plenty of time to have a conversation around public health, environmental and safety implications, as with any number of major events that take place." Canberra Liberals legal affairs spokesman Jeremy Hanson said the government needed to ensure events in Canberra were safe "The Liberals are not against festivals, but they've got to prove they can be safe before we should be allowing these activities to go ahead. Obviously Defqon.1 has big issues, but whatever event it is the government has got to do its due diligence to make sure young people's lives are not at risk," Mr Hanson said. An ACT Policing spokesman would not comment directly when questioned if police were concerned about the prospect of Defqon.1 coming to Canberra. "ACT Policing considers safety aspects whenever there is a gathering of people, whether the event is a music festival, a sporting event, a demonstration, or any other large gathering," he said. "When any new - or existing - event is in the planning stages, ACT Policing will work with event organisers to ensure the safety of attendees. This includes harm minimisation from drugs at the event, road safety for attendees before, during and after the event, and protecting crowded places from terrorism."

/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/03ce42ac-0093-4014-b0d0-6755d9dfcb5d/r3_0_1330_750_w1200_h678_fmax.jpgOur Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

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You are our people. You Care. We Care2.Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (HARTRON Ltd) has released an employment notification calling out aspirants to apply for the post of Communication Officer. Those interested can check out the eligibility, salary scale, how to apply and the complete details of the government job here.

Applicants with excellent oral communication and strong interpersonal skills will be preferred. Also, it would be an added advantage if the candidates have 3-6 months of talking experience in call centres or BPO operations. The role involves taking feedback from callers on a rating scale of 1 to 5. Selected candidates can earn up to INR 16,000 per month. The selection process is through a walk-in interview scheduled on Nov 12, 2018.

114 Engineering Apprentices Sought For IOCL Recruitment 2018

HARTRON Recruitment 2018 Vacancy Details

CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Communication Officer Organisation Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation Limited Educational Qualification Graduate degree in any discipline with proficiency in Hindi Experience Desirable Job Responsibilities Answer all incoming calls and collect primary information from the caller; interact and understand the message effectively Skills Required Communication, language and soft skills Job Location Haryana Salary Scale INR 16000 per month Industry Electronics Application Start Date October 22, 2018 Application End Date November 12, 2018

Maximum Age Limit: 35 years

Also Read: AIIMS Delhi Recruitment 2018 For 2000 Nursing Assistants

How To Apply For HARTRON Recruitment 2018

In order to apply for HARTRON Recruitment 2018, follow these steps:

Step 1: Open the application form from the HARTRON official website.

Step 2: Take a printout of the application form.

Step 3: Enter your details in the fields provided.

Step 4: Carry the application to HARTRON at the time of interview.

Venue

Bays No.73-76, Hartron Bhawan, Sector-2, Panchkula.

Follow the link - http://hartron.org.in/images/haryanait/10-2018/QualificationCriteria.pdf to read the detailed official notification.Indian Army is holding a rally for candidates to apply for the post of Soldier in various categories such as general duty, technical, nursing assistant, clerk, tradesman and sepoy pharma. Only the domiciles of districts such as Bageshwar, Nainital, Udham Singh Nagar and Almora will be eligible to attend the rally at the Military Station in Haldwani between Nov 24, 2018 and Nov 30, 2018. For queries, candidates may contact 7991606026 or 7991606027.

Selection Process

The selection process will be through three stages:

Written test

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Also Read: Indian Army Recruitment 2018 For Soldiers: Apply From Oct 7!

Indian Army Recruitment 2018 Vacancy Details

CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Soldier Organisation Indian Army Educational Qualification Class 10 or 12 passout Experience Freshers can apply Skills Required Physical fitness Job Location India Salary Scale Industry standards Industry Defence Application Start Date September 24, 2018 Application End Date November 9, 2018

Age Limit: 17 to 25 years

Also Read: Ministry Of Defence Recruitment 2018: Job Opportunities For Class 10 Passouts Available

How To Apply For Indian Army Recruitment 2018

In order to apply for Indian Army Recruitment 2018, follow these steps:

Step 1 Log on to the Indian Army official website. Step 2 Click on the button that reads, JCO/OR Apply/Login. Step 3 Click on the button that reads, Registration. Step 4 Read the instructions carefully. Step 5 Click Continue. Step 6 The registration form will open. Enter your details in the fields provided. Step 7 Read the declaration and click on the checkbox to agree. Step 8 Click Submit and complete the registration process. Step 9 Go back to the login screen. Enter your credentials. Step 10 Enter the captcha code. Step 11 Click Login and follow the subsequent pages to complete the application process.

Follow the link - http://www.govtjobs.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ALMORA_RALLY_NOTFN-13_Sep_18_Amended.pdf to read the detailed official notification.Bayern Munich and Germany midfielder Joshua Kimmich has not been vaccinated against COVID and is therefore isolated from other players.The...South Korean investors looking at DRC limestone deposit

ICR Newsroom By 22 October 2018

A group of South Korean investors visited the Bakwa Tshiluila limestone deposit in Kasai Oriental province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).



Their mission was to carry out feasibility studies in cement production, diamond mining and agriculture. Investors were interested in the quality of limestone but reportedly voiced concern over the power supply to the area.

Published underNew cement plant for Jamaica?

ICR Newsroom By 22 October 2018

Haiti-based Gilbert Bigio Group (GB) reportedly plans to build a cement plant in Jamaica to consolidate its footprint in the country, according to CPI Financial. At present it imports cement from its Domicem plant in the Dominican Republic and sells it via its Jamaican subsidiary Buying House.



Mauricio Pulido, GB Energy Jamaica country head, suggested that the Jamaica venture, for which a location yet has to be found, could be led out of Haiti through Kolos, a joint venture between Domicem and a group of Italian investors.



"We believe that Jamaica is in a very good time right now. The Government genuinely wants to make growth happen," he said. "We believe that to grow the country, we need to have more affordable materials to build. So, if you have a cheaper cement you can have more houses being built by the government and the private sector.

The GB Jamaica cement factory is expected to employ up to 100 workers at the plant, with many more jobs in distribution.

Published underBlack Friday deals and gift ideas. Who's on your list?

We've gathered gift ideas to help you buy smart and find the sweetest deals and best bargains.The Alabama Supreme Court approved the capital punishment of a man who killed his pregnant wife in 2009, stating that under Alabamas law, the value of the life of an unborn child is no less than the value of the lives of other persons.

According to Christian News, one of the Alabama justices is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade in light of this ruling since the landmark court case ruled that the right to abortion supersedes an unborn childs right to life.

I concur fully with the Courts rationale that unborn children are persons entitled to the full and equal protection of the law, Justice Tom Parker wrote in the decision released on Friday. I write specially to expound upon the principles presented in the main opinion and to note the continued legal anomaly and logical fallacy that is Roe v. Wade.

I urge the United States Supreme Court to overrule this increasingly isolated exception to the rights of unborn children, he stated.

The justice noted that the decision made in the 1973 case does not align with the criminal laws in many states that recognize unborn children as people. Alabama, for example, passed the Brody Act in 2006 after a pregnant woman was found shot and killed. The act declares that an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability is a person for the purposes of murder prosecutions.

The court used the Brody Act as a precedent in order to uphold the conviction and death sentence of Jessie Phillips, who killed his pregnant wife Erica in 2009, making Phillips guilty of not only killing his wife but also of killing their unborn child.

In Roe, the United States Supreme Court, without historical or constitutional support, carved out an exception to the rights of unborn children and prohibited states from recognizing an unborn childs inalienable right to life when that right conflicts with a womans right to abortion, Parker stated.

The judicially created exception of Roe is an aberration to the natural law and the positive and common law of the states. Of the numerous rights recognized in unborn children, an unborn childs fundamental, inalienable, God-given right to life is the only right the states are prohibited from ensuring for the unborn child; the isolated Roe exception, which is increasingly in conflict with the numerous laws of the states recognizing the rights of unborn children, must be overruled, he continued.

According to Christian News, Parker believes Roe is becoming further removed from the legal fabric of America as more states are working toward creating legal protection for unborn children.

A right created not from the language of the Constitution of the United States, but one abstracted from its supposed emanations and penumbras, the Roe exception stands as an indictment against the United States Supreme Court that our nation ceases to be governed according to the law of the land and instead becomes one governed ultimately by the law of the judges,' Parker lamented.

It is my hope and prayer that the United States Supreme Court will take note of the crescendoing chorus of the laws of the states in which unborn children are given full legal protection and allow the states to recognize and defend the inalienable right to life possessed by every unborn child, even when that right must trump the right of a woman to obtain an abortion, Parker concluded.

Photo courtesy: Devon Divine/UnsplashOn Saturday, 60 people showed up at a Brooklyn Witchcraft bookstore to put a hex on President Donald Trump, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This prompted a dozen Christians and exorcists to show up to protest the hex through prayer.

According to the New York Post, over 1,300 people initially planned to attend the hexing ritual but only some 60 people actually showed up. Still, Christians showed up to counteract the hex through prayer.

"We're praying against their hexes," one believer said.

The hexing ritual was organized and live streamed by a New York bookshop called Catland Books. According to the Christian Post, the organizers described the ceremony as "an act of resistance and resilience."

Dakota Bracciale, co-owner of Catland Books, told BBC News that the hex is "aimed at exposing Brett Kavanaugh for what he truly is, to cause him harm and see him undone."

On the witches alter one could see candles and photos of the President, Justice Kavanaugh and Senator Mitch McConnell.

The organizers told BBC that they expect to see results "as soon as possible," but added that "there's not a firm timeline on these things."

The hex comes following Justice Kavanaughs confirmation to the supreme court despite being accused of attempted rape by a California professor, Christine Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh maintained his innocence through his hearing processes with Ford and has continued to deny the allegations put forward by her and two other women.

Trump remained in support of his nominee throughout the process and successfully saw him confirmed to the Supreme Court.

According to the Christian Post, Bracciale and Catland Books have previously performed hexing rituals on public officials, including President Trump, which they believe have worked.

"We feel the rituals were a success as they sought to expose Trump for what he is, and that has happened on many levels; from the Russia probe to the expose on his finances to Stormy Daniels (the porn actress who says she had a sexual affair with Trump in 2006)."

In an article for The National Catholic Register, Roman Catholic exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, California, Father Gary Thomas said that priests are praying for Kavanaugh because witchcraft is a serious matter.

When asked about the announcement of the Hex, Thomas said he was appalled.

The Exorcist also noted that his colleagues felt the same way, "I sent this to a load of exorcists yesterday and their reaction was similar to mine. That shows this is not something that is make-believe," he added.

Thomas told The National Catholic Register that over the past several decades he has witnessed an increased boldness in people of the satanic world.

"They are more confident that the general public will be more accepting of the demonic," he claimed.

"This is a conjuring of evil  not about free speech," Thomas continued. "Conjuring up personified evil does not fall under free speech. Satanic cults often commit crimes; they murder and sexually abuse everyone in their cult."

Thomas made note that people in a state of grace are little affected by curses and hexes, but people who are not can experience serious symptoms such as physical illness, psychosis, depression, and demon attachment.

"The decision to do this against a Supreme Court justice is a heinous act and says a lot about the character of these people that should not be underestimated or dismissed," the priest said. "These are real evil people."

Photo courtesy: Freestocks.org/Unsplash

Video courtesy: CatlandJOS, Nigeria (Morning Star News)  Muslims attacked a market in Kaduna state, in north-central Nigeria, on Thursday (Oct. 18), killing dozens of Christians and burning a church building, sources said.

Area residents said a Muslim at the market in Kasuwan Magani, 36 kilometers (22 miles) south of the city of Kaduna, began yelling Thief! in the late afternoon in a move calculated to cause pandemonium ahead of an attack on Christians and their homes and businesses.

A Muslim raised a false alarm about a thief in the market, which caused stampede, and then other Muslims started chanting Allahu Akbar [the jihadist slogan, God is Greater], attacking Christians, burning houses and shops belonging to Christians in the town, area resident Kefas Mallam told Morning Star News.

The Rev. James Moore of the towns Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), told Morning Star News that the assailants burned down one church building belonging to the Cherubim and Seraphim movement.

There was an alert of a thief in the market, he said. When people heard Thief! Thief! they were confused and started running. Unknown to the people, it was a strategy by the Muslim youth to attack the people. They went into killings, looting and burning.

Moore, who is the area district secretary of the ECWA, said it was difficult to give a definitive casualty figure as the town was in complete lockdown following imposition of a 24-hour curfew the night of the attack. Kaduna Gov. Nasir El-Rufai visited the site in the Kajuru Local Government Area on Friday (Oct. 19) and said 55 people had been killed.



According to what the police have briefed me so far, 55 corpses have been recovered; some burned beyond recognition, he said.



Local press reported the violence began as an attack by young men attacking the market that escalated into a clash between two youth groups of different religion.

Gov. El-Rufai told reporters that the state government had imposed a curfew in the area and security agencies were restoring calm.

It cannot continue, we are going to deal decisively with anyone involved in this, he said. This country belongs to all of us; this state belongs to all of us. No one is going to chase anyone away. So, you must learn to live with everyone in peace and justice.

He added that the violence was totally unacceptable, and that anyone connected with or even observing the violence would be detained.

I have charged the security agencies and the authorities here, local and traditional, to ensure that everyone connected with this, whether as a participant, instigator, or even watching while it is going on, is apprehended and prosecuted, he said.

Area Muslims also attacked Christians on Feb. 26. Luke Waziri, a Christian community leader in Kasuwan Magani, told Morning Star News by phone that during the February attack, 12 Christians were killed.

And 67 other Christians arrested after that incident are currently facing trial in a court in the city of Kaduna, he added, lamenting that they were detained without cause by police under the direct control of a Muslim inspector general of police and a Muslim police commissioner.

The sad thing is that the police are aware that Muslims in Kasuwan Magani have accumulated weapons with the intent to continually attack us, but they are unable to arrest these Muslims, Waziri said.

Waziri, who is the national secretary of the Adara Development Association (ADA), a predominantly Christian ethnic group in Kaduna state, expressed sadness that while Christians had yet to overcome the trauma of the February attack, Muslims launched an assault on them again on Thursday (Oct. 18).

Christians make up 51.3 percent of Nigerias population, while Muslims living primarily in the north and middle belt account for 45 percent.

Nigeria ranked 14th on Open Doors 2018 World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most persecution.

If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews. org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved.Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

We say it all the time. Ideas have consequences, bad ideas have victims. Just look at the widows of China.

Seven years ago, Mrs. Wu's husband threw himself into a dam. He'd recently been diagnosed with liver cancer and could not afford to have it treated.

He left behind a wife and two small childrenand their story is an example of the terrible, continuing fallout of China's One Child Policy, begun 38 years ago.

Mrs. Wu began a pattern of overworking on the family farm. She knew she would likely never remarry: China's One Child Policy meant that she would not be allowed to have children with a second husband, so who would want her?

In time, Mrs. Wu's overwork led to health problems. Four years ago, she suffered a stroke, and is now confined to a wheelchair. Like millions of other Chinese widows, Mrs. Wu contemplated suicide.

Stories like these caught the attention of my friend Reggie Littlejohn, founder of Women's Rights Without Frontiers. Reggie has already done a great deal to expose forced abortion in China and to save the lives of baby girls, who are aborted in huge numbers because their families prefer sons. And now she is turning her attention to China's impoverished widows.

As Reggie explains, "My heart broke when I learned of the incredibly hard lives of the elderly widows in China's remote villages. They have nothing, and no one gives them anything."

Sadly, their children are not helping themsometimes because they are disabled themselves. These desperate widows exist on rice and vegetables, and often not enough of them.

How does the One Child Policy fit into this?

As Reggie put it, the policy "destroyed traditional Chinese family structure." Thirty-eight years ago, when the policy went into effect, China was largely rural. Farmers had large families so they would have help they needed to work the land. Those children, in turn, had many children, which meant that when their grandparents needed to be taken care of, the responsibility was "spread among many children and grandchildren, so that no one felt burdened."

Today, thanks to the One Child Policy, one young couple in China can be faced with supporting four parents and eight grandparentsplus their own children. It's not surprising that this can become an intolerable burden. And then when children move to the cities, elderly parents are often left alone. In a country where the elderly were once revered, all too often, they are now left to fend for themselves.

No wonder suicide among the elderly is skyrocketing in Chinaaccording to one report, in the last twenty years it has increased by 500 percent.

And this is where Reggie Littlejohn stepped in. Women's Rights Without Frontiers has just launched a Save a Widow Campaign. They send field workers to the homes of Chinese widows to assess their needs. They're given a monthly stipend so they will have enough to eatalong with hope, and the happy realization that they have not been abandoned.

In the case of Mrs. Wu, Reggie says, she "cannot believe that kind people from overseas are willing to help her ... without asking her to do anything." She wonders, "What kind of God do these people believe in? She wants to know this God, too."

The Save a Widow Campaign is echoing the approach taken by the early church. The book of Acts describes how the church assigned people to take care of widows who did not have enough to eat, distributing food to them every day.

I hope you'll consider taking part in the Save a Widow Campaign. We'll link you to it at BreakPoint.org.

It goes without saying that we should make sure the widows in our own families are taken care ofand know they are loved. But we honor God when we extend this concern to other needy widows, both in and out of the church.

Originally posted at breakpoint.orgEmail Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Mojtaba Hosseini, 30, was the leader of a fast growing house church movement in Iran until the authorities raided his church, arrested him, and sentenced him to three years in the notorious Evin Prison.

Like all Iranian Christians, Hosseini knew the risks involved with his underground activities, according to a report by Open Doors.

"Why didn't I stop my work for the church after I was first arrested?" Hosseini asked. "I don't really know. There was no logical explanation, but we felt that the Lord wanted us to continue. We knew this would mean we could get arrested at any moment."

In prison, Hosseini learned to pick up his cross daily. "I Corinthians 1:29 says that 'God did all this to keep anyone from bragging to Him," he said. "It's all about God, not about me."

For most of his prison term, he was in a block with murderers, robbers and drug dealers. "I felt a deep fear inside of me," he told a ministry partner with Open Doors. "And often, even though the Lord was close, I was sad about my situation. My hands were tied, my voice wouldn't be heard by human beings."

'IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU'

When his circumstances appeared hopeless and desperate, he turned to God in prayer.

"I prayed; that was all I could do," he said. "At first, they were prayers of repentance. I thought God was punishing me for my mistakes by putting me in prison." That was the moment, he says, he realized he was "nothing."

"Then the Lord spoke to me. He said: 'Stop being selfish Mojtaba, it's not about you; it's about Me. Look around you.'"

He began to look at the desperate people around him with a new set of eyes, as God sees them.

"I saw poor people, people who had committed the worst crimes. People that felt so alone."

Suddenly, Hosseini felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to share God's Word with the prisoners around him: "God spoke again to me, saying, 'It is time that you share Me with them. They need Me.'"

Then Hosseini received a valuable insight from God: "It's funny how God works sometimes. It would have been absolutely impossible for us to pass the big gates of prison to bring the gospel to those who needed him so badly inside. But God just placed me and other Christians inside the prison, among them to shine His light."

AN UNLIKELY SOURCE IN AN IRANIAN PRISON

Tentatively at first, the church leader began to share his testimony and the gospel with the other prisoners. Some received Jesus and were born again; others were happy to receive prayer, even if they continued to have doubts.

Hosseini did not have a Bible with him in prison and boldly began to request one from the guards.

"I didn't get one," he told Open Doors. "None of the Christians did."

But God heard his prayer and provided Scripture through one of the most unlikely sources.

MOREEmail Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Pat Robertson semi-regularly excites controversy with provocative comments, typically made on his daily television program 700 Club. Most recently he ignited widespread denunciation for seeming to minimize journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder by Saudi operatives. Robertson stressed the importance of USA arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Minimizing murder in exchange for profits from arms sales isn't a good look for a world renowned evangelical notable. One tweet from a Methodist minister pronounced Robertson is Antichrist. Other commentary has been less charitable.

Robertson is more accomplished and smarter than most of his critics. He founded a TV network, a university and expansive charities that've reached millions of needy people. His 1988 presidential campaign and founding of the Christian Coalition were key to mobilizing evangelical political activism across the last several decades. At age 88 he says and does what he wants.

But Robertson should be more careful. His seemingly ad hoc comments can discredit Christian political witness. State orchestrated murder should not be minimized, no matter how many arms sales are in question. His wider point, made across two days on700 Club, that Saudi Arabia is an important strategic partner in countering Iran, is far more legitimate.

Robertson could also have mentioned Saudi Arabia's frequent role in stabilizing global oil prices, sometimes increasing production to deflate Russian oil income and strategic reach. Saudi Arabia was a Cold War ally against the Soviet Union and later a key ally against Saddam Hussein.

Appreciating Israel's role in countering Iran, Saudi Arabia has become somewhat helpful in rerouting longtime Arab animosity against Israel. The USA embassy move to Jerusalem likely would've created more regional uproar absent Saudi and Gulf state focus on Iran.

Yet the Saudis' murder of a USA based journalist in a NATO country was uniquely brazen and appalling, both morally and as an affront to America, which is Saudi Arabia's primary patron. It's not in America's character or interest to ignore this crime. Nor would Saudi Arabia benefit if this murder is minimized by its most important strategic partner.

America of course has ignored far worse crimes by allies when necessary. When FDR learned of the USSR's murder of thousands of captured Polish officers, many of them at the Katyn Forest, he claimed to disbelieve it. Churchill believed it but likewise said nothing publicly. The Soviets were too important in defeating the Nazis.

Saudi Arabia is not as important as the Soviets then were. And America has more influence with the Saudis than it did with Stalin. Hence America has more moral culpability in this case. American interests also require working against a Saudi Arabia that is reckless and internationally lawless.

Whatever its domestic theocratic repressions, Saudi Arabia typically has been cautious and relatively proper in its international relations. Saudi Arabia is typically ruled by aged and cautious kings. But the current king has dementia and his designated 33 year old heir the Crown Prince has apparently decisive power.

Khashoggi almost certainly was slaughtered and dismembered at the direction of the Crown Prince, for whom the Saudis are constructing an unpersuasive cover story. The Crown Prince lacks the prudence and circumspection of older monarchs, foreshadowed by his virtual kidnapping of Lebanon's visiting premier last year. Khashoggi's murder evinces the Crown Prince is not just arrogant and paranoid but possibly a psychopath.

Saudi Arabia has hundreds of princes many of whom presumably are more qualified to rule than the current Crown Prince. We can pray that wiser heads within the royal family will realize how dangerous the Crown Prince has become.

And Pat Robertson, as evangelist, should remind his listeners not about the dubious imperative of arms sales but about divine sovereignty over all nations, including Saudi Arabia. He might recall words from Jeremiah: "But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and eternal King. The earth quakes at His wrath, and the nations cannot endure His indignation."Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

People can gain access to contraceptives and abortion pills without the government forcing religious and pro-life groups to provide them. But California, Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Virginia can't seem to accept that.

These state governments are challenging federal regulations that protect religious and pro-life non-profits who conscientiously object to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) abortion pill mandate.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing March for Life before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, asking that it uphold those protections.

Here's a little history on the HHS abortion pill mandate.

The previous Administration originally implemented the mandate in 2012. It forced employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide their employees with abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy financial penalties.

The mandate has been in court ever since. And really, its track record is not so great.

A number of religious business owners, including Hobby Lobby and our client Conestoga Wood Specialties, challenged the mandate and won at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014.

After that loss, the previous Administration made some changes to the mandate, claiming that it was addressing the moral objections of religious and pro-life non-profit organizations.

But it did not. The so-called "accommodation" still gave access to the objectionable drugs and devices through the employer's insurers and third party administrators  requiring the active participation of religious employers in the scheme to provide abortion pills. Because of that, many religious and pro-life non-profit organizations have continued to fight the HHS mandate in court.

In May 2016, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to the mandate in Zubik v. Burwell, which involved five Christian colleges and many other religious groups, including the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Court sent these cases back to the lower courts, vacating previous rulings against the religious groups. Put simply, the Supreme Court asked the Department of Health and Human Services to come to a resolution that did not burden the religious organizations while still serving the government's interests.

In 2017, the Trump Administration issued new HHS rules, freeing a number of non-profits from the abortion-pill mandate and paving the way for many of the pending lawsuits to finally be resolved (as many have been since).

That same day, however, California  later joined by Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Virginia  filed a lawsuit to block these new HHS rules, and keep religious and pro-life non-profits from receiving this relief. Unfortunately, a district court judge agreed to do so.

But ADF will continue to fight for the right of these organizations to pursue their missions consistent with their most foundational beliefs.

After all, the government shouldn't be forcing anyone to provide life-destroying drugs and devices against their conscience. The Supreme Court has made that clear.

But these states just can't seem to move on.

Originally posted at adflegal.org

Sarah Kramer is a digital content specialist at Alliance Defending Freedom. She graduated from Hillsdale College in 2013 with a degree in Political Economy and Journalism. She worked as an investigative reporter before joining the ADF team.CofE announces new Bishop of Ramsbury

Downing Street has announced the next Bishop of Ramsbury as Rev Dr Andrew Paul Rumsey.

Author of the highly acclaimed Parish  An Anglican theology of place, he is currently serving as team rector of St Mary, Oxted in Surrey.

The Bishop of Ramsbury has responsibility mainly for the Wiltshire parishes in the Diocese of Salisbury. The new bishop will also chair the diocese's Mission and Ministry Council.

Rumsey, 50, comes from a long line of parish clergy. He was educated first at the University of Reading and then at Kings College, London. He trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

He was vicar of Gipsy Hill in the Diocese of Southwark before being appointed rector of Oxted and Tandridge in the Diocese of Southwark in 2011, becoming team rector in 2014.

He is a musician with a longstanding interest in songwriting and popular music.

Both he and his wife have been involved in the Greenbelt festival for many years and have also attended New Wine.

He said: 'I am honoured and delighted to have been appointed as the new Bishop of Ramsbury.

'At a time of rapid change in our society, the enduring strength of the Church of England is its commitment to local communities, in all parts of the country. I greatly look forward to working alongside Bishop Nicholas and Bishop Karen, and to serving this purpose in the glorious county of Wiltshire.'

The Bishop of Salisbury, Rt Rev Nicholas Holtam, said: 'I very much look forward to Andrew's arrival in the diocese. As a parish priest he has worked in a variety of settings. As a person he has unusual breadth and depth and is an outstanding communicator of the gospel.'

Referring to the Salisbury diocesan vision, he said: 'He will love Wiltshire and help us develop what it means to Renew Hope across the Diocese of Salisbury.'

Rumsey is expected to take up his new position in January 2019 after being ordained to the episcopate by the Archbishop of Canterbury on Friday, January 25.

He succeeds Rt Rev Edward Francis Condry.Following Christ to show love to our neighbours

When I travelled to northern Iraq last year, I had the opportunity to meet with Christians and Yazidis whose lives have been devastated by the violence IS has wrought in the region. It was a humbling experience. Both communities were singled out by IS because of their religion or belief, and have experienced the most unspeakable violence.

As I reflect on the people I met on that visit, and the heart-breaking stories I heard, I am compelled to stand with and speak up for each of them, regardless of their creed.

Why? Simply put, because I believe it's what Jesus would do.

When we look deeply into the parable of the Good Samaritan, we are confronted by a picture of radical love for those in need.

It's a picture that lays a weighty, and sometimes challenging calling on us if we are to love our neighbour as Jesus teaches. We are presented not only with a command to 'be nice' to those around us, or a religious and moral obligation to do good unto others, but also with a compelling and Christ-like calling to transcend conventions and expectations by showing love to those who aren't 'like us'.

Our neighbour, as Jesus so clearly shows us, is the person who doesn't look or think like us, and may believe differently from us  and at times, someone with whom we may not agree. Societal conventions and cultural norms are swept aside by Jesus when he tells us to love our neighbour.

In the parable, those sharing the victim's religious and ethnic background pass him by in his moment of greatest need. Instead he was helped by someone from a totally dissimilar background who the victim and his community would ordinarily actively avoid, yet who went out of his way to care for him. We can never tell who God will send to help those in need, and we need to be ready to answer that call.

At CSW, we are doing just that.

We believe no one should suffer discrimination, harassment or persecution because of their religion, belief or non-belief. As Christians we stand with everyone facing injustice because of their religion or belief.

It's a weighty calling, not without its challenges, but one that we are privileged to answer.

Last year I visited Sinjar region where, in 2014, almost 10,000 Yazidis were killed or kidnapped when IS advanced on the region, in what has been officially recognised by the United Nations as a genocide.

As we approached Sinjar city, I saw clothes strewn across the mountainside. Our guide explained that when IS advanced on Sinjar, people fled, discarding their belongings as they did so. Those who survived are now living in harsh conditions in tents in a valley at the very top of the mountain range. They have nothing left  and many have lost all hope.

Sinjar city, which was also home to a large Christian community and two churches, was razed to the ground. We walked around what was left of the city. It is a ghost town. You could still see human bones and feel the suffering in the air.

Firouz, a 27-year-old Yazidi, and his family were living in Sinjar when IS advanced on the city. The family was forced to flee, taking only a few belongings and their personal weapons. Knowing what would happen to them at the hands of IS, the entire family agreed that the men would shoot the women and keep the last bullets for themselves if they were captured. As they fled, Firouz's youngest sisters begged him to shoot her. He promised he would. But before he could follow through with his promise, they were stopped at a mobile IS checkpoint. Knowing their fate if IS discovered they were Yazidis, the family pretended to be Muslim when the interrogations began. Suddenly Peshmerga fighters started firing heavily at IS, and when told to move their car, Firouz drove off quickly with IS fighters shooting at them. Unlike many others, they escaped unharmed.

For the Christian and Yazidi women captured by IS, unspeakable horrors awaited.

My heart was broken when I met Maryam and heard her story. Maryam, an Assyrian Orthodox Christian from a neighbourhood near Mosul, was captured by IS when they took Mosul in 2014. She told us she'd been sold 16 times in Iraq and six times in Syria. She recalled her traumatic experiences in detail: how she was tied to a pole in the street for people to inspect her before they 'bought' her. She fought every person who tried to violate her. Eventually Maryam was helped to escape, but when she returned home she was rejected by her family, and even by her church, for, in their eyes, bringing shame on them because of what had happened to her.

In the work that we do at CSW, we tackle injustice and suffering, and we promote the right to practise a religion or belief freely, without fear of being targeted because of it. We 'speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute'. We 'speak up and judge fairly; defending the rights of the poor and needy.'

If we are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, we must not stand by silently in the face of such suffering. As the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches, the Yazidis are as much our neighbours as Maryam is.

We will cross the road to help them both.

Mervyn Thomas is the founder and chief executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a Christian human rights organisations advocating for freedom of religion or belief around the world.



International Freedom of Religion or Belief Day is on October 27.How can Christians nurture sexual desire in marriage?

I wrote Seasons of Sex and Intimacy to help couples nurture sexual desire in marriage and to manage common sexual difficulties. It is specifically aimed at Christian couples, but as most of the information in the book is practical, it would be just as relevant for non-Christian couples or those with another faith.

The book specifically focuses on married couples because I wanted to consider what the wedding vows that we make during our ceremony actually mean in practice - and more specifically what they might mean for our sexual relationship with our spouse.

Historically, the Church has been seen as prudish and anti-sex. Religious teaching on sex has often been overlaid with a sense that sex is shameful. I think for many Christians this attitude has been absorbed through many generations. Sex is also simply not discussed, in both families and churches, and so unconsciously the message is absorbed that it is something to be hidden and certainly not celebrated.

Yet the Church of England marriage service advocates the opposite:

'The gift of marriage brings husband and wife together in the delight and tenderness of sexual union and joyful commitment to the end of their lives.'

If we are to really embrace this, we need to understand how we create and enjoy the 'delight and tenderness of sexual union'. What does that mean in real life? As Christians, we perhaps first need to throw off the damaging burden of restriction, shame and sadness with which the Church has saddled us.

There is another danger, however: the world's view of sex can be equally damaging. This suggests sex should always be spontaneous, mutually satisfying and our bodies should always respond as we expect them to. Films would have us believe that if we are not ripping one another's clothes off, having sex in acrobatic positions and climaxing at the same time after little or no foreplay, there is something fundamentally wrong. But this is not realistic, and if we set this up as the gold standard and compare it to our own sex lives, we are going to be disappointed. And it seems that some couples just give up on sex  the evidence shows that even young couples are increasingly living in sexless relationships and are accepting this as the status quo.

As Christian couples, we simply can't do this if we are to fully honour our wedding vows. There is a huge interest in the work of sex therapist Esther Perel, whose research has focused on how we can nurture desire in long term relationships. If there was ever a group that needed to grasp this concept, it is Christians. We have the greatest reason of all to do this: God created sex, it is good and designed to be right at the heart of our commitment to our spouse. We cannot afford to take this lightly. But how do we do this?

We have to be prepared to work at keeping desire alive. Just as the Bible tells us, we have to work at love.

'Work?' I hear you say. 'Sex is the one area I don't want to have to work at! Life is hard work enough - surely sex doesn't have to be too?' But if we want to nurture the flame of desire, we do have to think about it. Forget spontaneity: we have to be intentional, and there is an element of work to this.

Is this going to be harder for Christians than non-Christians? Are Christians worse at sex?

Christian couples come into marriage with varied sexual experiences and expectations. Both individuals may have made a conscious decision to wait until they get married to have sexual intimacy. Or maybe both partners have had sexual relationships in the past and bring this history into their marriage. It may be that one person has been sexually active but the other has not, introducing a different dynamic. Or perhaps both have been sexually active in the past but have chosen to wait until they are married to have sex together.

These varied experiences - as well as our beliefs about sex, shaped by our upbringing, school and church - can make sex more challenging. Good communication is essential. Talking about sex is not easy, especially if we have come from families where it was never discussed, but it is possible. It can feel scary and we make ourselves vulnerable but, if we learn to do it well, good communication will enable us to get our own needs met and to meet those of our partner, not just sexually but in every aspect of our relationship. We need to be able to talk about sex, to understand what our partner wants and enjoys, and so they understand what we want and enjoy. If it is good, we are more likely to keep doing it!

Over the last few years, I have met with a number of couples within my own church community and further afield who are struggling with sexual difficulties. I have not offered them long-term therapy because that would mix my professional and social boundaries, but I have chatted to them as I would with a friend and then we have worked out the best plan of action. Sometimes this has been implementing self-help strategies, or we may have recognised they need more professional help and they have sought therapy.

Many of the couples have said that it would have been incredibly helpful to have had this information early on in their marriage so they could have tackled these problems sooner, and possibly avoided a lot of the heartache that has resulted from emotional distance. Many couples have said they simply didn't know where to seek help and, because their faith was such a central aspect of their life, they wanted a resource that recognised this whilst also offering practical help.

I hope that Seasons of Sex and Intimacy will offer that support to many Christian couples. I also hope that the book will be embraced by non-Christian couples who recognise that perhaps Christians have something interesting to say about sex.

Emma Waring is a nurse and qualified sex and relationship therapist. For more about 'Seasons of Sex and Intimacy' click here.Saudi Arabia calls Khashoggi killing 'grave mistake'

Saudi Arabia on Sunday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate a 'huge and grave mistake' but sought to shield its powerful crown prince from the widening crisis, saying Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware.

The comments from foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir were some of the most direct yet from Riyadh, which has given multiple and conflicting accounts about Khashoggi's killing on October 2, first denying his death and later admitting it amid an international outcry.

'This was an operation that was a rogue operation. This was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had,' Jubeir said on the US broadcaster Fox.

'They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it,' he said.

The weeks of denial and lack of credible evidence in the face of allegations from Turkish officials that Khashoggi had been killed have shaken global confidence in ties with the world's top oil exporter.

US treasury secretary Stephen Mnuchin said Saudi Arabia's admission that the Washington Post columnist was killed in a fistfight was a 'good first step but not enough', though he added it was premature to discuss sanctions against Riyadh.

Three European powers  Germany, Britain and France  pressed Riyadh to provide facts, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would not export arms to Saudi Arabia while uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persisted.

Late on Sunday, the Saudi Press Agency said both Saudi King Salman and Prince Mohammed had called Khashoggi's son, Salah, to express condolences.

Jubeir had extended condolences to Khashoggi's family earlier on Sunday. 'Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this,' he told Fox.

Jubeir said the Saudis did not know how Khashoggi, a Saudi national and US resident, had been killed or where his body was. He also said Prince Mohammed was not responsible.

Khashoggi vanished after entering the consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

After two weeks denying any involvement in the 59-year-old's disappearance, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, died during a fight in the building. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold.

'Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,' Germany, Britain and France said in their joint statement.

'There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened ... beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.'

The White House said late on Sunday that US president Donald Trump had spoken to French president Emmanuel Macron and the two had discussed a range of issues including circumstances surrounding Khashoggi's death.

Reflecting international scepticism over its account, a senior Saudi government official laid out a new version that contradicts previous explanations.

The latest account includes details on how 15 Saudis sent to confront Khashoggi had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and killed him in a chokehold when he resisted. A member of the team dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.

Erdogan to speak

Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate by the Saudi agents and his body cut up. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting Khashoggi's murder.

In a speech on Sunday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to suggest he was getting ready to release some information about the Turkish investigation, and would do so at his weekly speech on Tuesday to members of his ruling AK Party.

Erdogan has remained largely silent on the case, although Turkey's pro-government newspapers have released information about events at the consulate.

Turkey's Anadolu agency said early on Monday that Erdogan and Trump had spoken on the telephone and agreed that 'all aspects' of the case needed to be cleared up.

For Saudi Arabia's allies  particularly in the West  the question will be whether they believe that the prince, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability. King Salman, 82, has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to him.

'I am not satisfied until we find the answer. But it was a big first step, it was a good first step. But I want to get to the answer,' Trump told reporters this weekend, when asked about the Saudi investigation and Riyadh's firing of officials.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said that 'obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies'. He had suggested last week that 'rogue killers' might have been responsible for Khashoggi's death, a comment critics called an effort to play down the crisis.

A leading Republican US senator said he believed the crown prince was behind the killing, adding that the Saudis had lost credibility in their explanations of his death. 'Yes, I think he did it,' Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN, referring to the crown prince.

King Salman ordered the dismissal of five officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court adviser seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohammed, and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed Asiri, Saudi state media reported on Saturday.

The king also ordered a restructuring of the intelligence service, to be led by Prince Mohammed, suggesting the prince still retained wide-ranging authority.

Some governments and prominent executives have said they would pull out of a forthcoming investment conference in Saudi Arabia.

According to the senior Saudi official, the Saudi team rolled up Khashoggi's body in a rug, took it out in a consular vehicle and handed it to a 'local cooperator' for disposal.A great collectors partnership: The Collection of Herbert and Adele Klapper

A look at highlights from the collection built by Herbert and Adele Klapper, which features works by Picasso, Monet, Pissarro and Degas, among other masters, and will be offered at Christies in New York

Across their 50 years of marriage, Herbert and Adele Klapper built an extraordinary collection of fine art. Threads of beauty and modernity run through each work the couple acquired, among them Claude Monets LEscalier a Vetheuil; Henri de Toulouse Lautrecs Danseuse; Pablo Picassos grand, neoclassical Femme accoudee and Buste de femme au voile bleu; an exceptional group of Edgar Degas bronze dancers; and Jean (Hans) Arps enigmatic Demeter.



Born in Brooklyn in 1926, Herbert J. Klapper was the son of a sewing machine salesman. His future wife, Adele, was born three years later, also in Brooklyn, to European immigrants. Mr. Klappers plans to study medicine were cut short by the onset of World War II, in which he served as a radioman in the United States Navy. After returning from military service, Mr. Klapper went to work at his fathers sewing machine sales company in Manhattans Garment District; nearby, Adele was employed at the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The two met in a chance encounter at a local luncheonette.

When it came to collecting art, the real meat of the matter involved discovering yet another passion that [the Klappers] fully shared  Gerard Haggerty

In the increasingly global market of the post-war era, Mr. Klapper transformed his fathers business into Superior Sewing Machine and Supply Corporation, the worlds leading purveyor of sewing machine parts and components. The business only continued to grow in the latter decades of the 20th century.

The Klappers made their initial foray into art almost by chance, after encountering prints by the American painter Will Barnet for sale at a Long Island gallery. When Mrs. Klapper told the gallery director that she would like to obtain a work by the artist, she insisted on not an edition, but a real one. The purchase of one of Barnets visionary canvases was followed by years of passionate collecting. For the couple, says Brooklyn College professor Gerard Haggerty, collecting art became both a monument to  and a conduit for  their deep and abiding love. The Klappers were soon seen at galleries and auction houses, fully embracing their newfound pursuit.

Collecting was a team sport for the Klappers, Haggerty explains. They often took turns acquiring works for their collection: Adele might make a selection one year, while her husband would suggest a purchase the next. He was a lightning-fast learner, art dealer Reese Palley has recalled of Mr. Klapper. In the beginning, we would look at pictures and he would ask me for judgements of quality. In very short order Herb stopped asking and started, with astounding intuition, to settle on truly great examples of the genre. For her part, Adele extended her own journey in art to higher education: in 1992 she obtained a degree from Long Islands Adelphi University, and in 1999 graduated from Adelphi with a Masters degree in Art History.

Beyond the art-historical importance of the Klappers collection was the deeply personal relationship Herbert and Adele held with each piece they acquired. When it came to collecting art, the real meat of the matter involved discovering yet another passion that [Mr. Klapper] and his wife fully shared, Haggerty explains. It involved him waking up in the middle of the night, wandering through the house, and standing in silent awe in front of things  things that he found to be indescribably beautiful, things that they had both claimed together.



Working with prominent gallerists and auction house specialists, the Klappers steadily acquired important examples of Old Master paintings, Impressionist and Modern art. The couple carefully focused on the very best by artists such as Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Arp, Monet, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Degas.

Pieter Brueghel II (1564-1637), The Flemish Proverbs, 1610. Oil on canvas. 47 x 64 in. Offered in Old Masters in December at Christies in LondonOffered in Magnificent Jewels on 27 November at Christies in Hong Kong, the 24-carat fancy yellow diamond that captivated Indian and Hollywood royalty

In 1953, the 24.04-carat pear-shaped, Fancy Yellow Moon of Baroda diamond was ready for its close-up at 20th Century Fox. To promote the release of the Howard Hawks film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe famously wore the Moon of Baroda while singing the films signature song, Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend.

Its gorgeous! Monroe is said to have gasped when first setting eyes on the stone, which was the largest diamond she ever wore in her lifetime. It was a moment that catapulted the Moon of Baroda to international fame.

But the diamond has a much longer story, even if  as with many historic gemstones  concrete evidence of its early history has disappeared. The Gemological Institute of America has recently determined that this historic diamond is from the legendary Golconda mines in India, which, until the advent of the 20th century, produced the finest and largest diamonds in the world.

Most historic stones, such as the Koh-i-Noor and the Grand Mazarin, as well as the Moon of Baroda, were probably discovered in this area between the 15th and 17th centuries. At one time, this alluring diamond may possibly have been part of the vast collection of the Gaekwads of Baroda, one of Indias wealthiest and most powerful ruling families.Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf ordered an immediate end Sunday to a Police Department policy that forced job applicants to agree to the disclosure of information about whether they had been sexually assaulted.

The mayors order came in response to a Chronicle story published Sunday revealing the practice, which legal experts said was highly unusual, discriminatory and possibly illegal.

Today I ordered the immediate removal of a waiver where OPD applicants authorize the release of confidential records, including those that would disclose whether they are victims of sexual assault, Schaaf said in a statement.

Additionally, the mayor said, I directed the department to partner with the Oakland Police Commission to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the departments recruitment and hiring process to ensure no other barriers discourage the hiring of women or minority applicants.

The department required applicants to sign a waiver authorizing other agencies to provide confidential information to Oakland police, including if I have been a victim of sexual assault. Other police forces use similar waivers, but Oaklands was unique in specifically asking for disclosure of sexual assault victimhood.

Oakland police officials said reviewing such records is appropriate and is standard practice in police hiring. They said the language in the waiver was included for transparency, to alert candidates that even the most sensitive records would be reviewed.

The practice is at best problematic, according to experts. Catherine Sanz, president of Women in Federal Law Enforcement Inc., said questions about a womans ties to home and her children have long been considered inappropriate, so one would think sexual assault would also be out of bounds.

I would look at it as an artificial barrier to eliminate candidates and particularly minority candidates, which is one of the biggest problems law enforcement has, said Sanz, adding that women make up only 12 percent of the law enforcement workforce. We know gender bias has a big impact on the policies and procedures that impact the recruitment, hiring, training and promotion of women in the profession.

The Chronicle checked with police departments in the 10 most populous cities in California and could not find any that ask candidates to authorize the disclosure of information about prior sexual assaults.

Oakland police officials said the requests were being made because they wanted to review all police reports in which applicants appeared. They insisted the candidates were not denied positions for being victims.

The recruits, according to the policy, had to sign and get notarized a form that allowed department staff to conduct background checks on them, authorizing the release of educational transcripts, credit history and other records.

The release form, which has been in use since at least 2011, says that among the information that will be reviewed by background investigators is the applicants local criminal history information ... including if I have been a victim of sexual assault.

Oakland officials were alerted about the problematic inquiry in 2013. Last month, another woman raised the issue in an email to Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and City Administrator Sabrina Landreth. Other officials, including Schaafs office, were included as recipients.

At least one former applicant told The Chronicle that she believes her response to the inquiry was the reason she was denied a position.

The woman, who first applied in 2013, was passed over for a job as an Oakland cop despite her minority status, fluency in multiple languages, advanced educational degrees and more than 10 years of experience as an officer in other police agencies.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, has an ongoing lawsuit against a former department saying another officer raped her. She has since filed a discrimination complaint against Oakland police with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

There is disagreement over whether the release form is illegal. Deborah Rhode, a Stanford Law School professor who studies equal protection and sex discrimination, said it may be peculiar, but is not necessarily illegal if it is applied equally to both men and women.

But Penny Harrington, a retired police chief in Portland, Ore., who was the first woman to lead a major city police force, expressed horror Sunday that such a requirement had ever been on the books.

Im really glad that (Mayor Schaaf) did that, but Im surprised that they havent been sued already, said Harrington, a longtime police consultant and expert on gender discrimination in policing. Not many things shock me about what police departments do, but that one really shocks me. Ive never known another police department that asks about that.

Harrington said the next order of business is to find out how many women missed out on a job because of this.

I think its clearly illegal on its face, she said.

Editors note: This story has been updated to make clear that the Oakland Police Department did not directly ask job applicants if they had been sexually assaulted, but rather asked them to sign a waiver allowing other agencies to turn over records related to sexual assaults in which they were victims.

Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimriteThe operation of the two branches in Ha Nam helped reducing patient overload of Bach Mai and Viet Duc in Hanoi and saving time for patients.

At the inauguration ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam congratulated the Ministry of Health, Bach Mai and Viet Duc hospitals requiring high quality treatment in the hospital branches. He added investment of the two hospitals shows governments attention to the health sector

Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said to peoples healthcare demand, the Ministry has petitioned to build five new hospitals in Ha Nam and Ho Chi Minh City which the government has approved.

Five hospitals include 1,000-bed second branches of Bach Mai and Viet Duc hospitals; 1,000-bed HCM City Children Hospital; 1,000-bed second branch of Tumor hospital and 500-bed Trauma and Orthopedics hospital.

The five facilities will provide high quality treatment and examination services, technique transfer and training helping to reduce pressure on big hospitals in inner cities and flock of patients going to abroad for treatment.

Bach Mai hospital second branch is located in the area of 123,000 square meter comprising of one basement and six floors to receive 5,000 patients a day. It is well-equipped with the state-of  the art devices in the field of cardiovascular disease, tumor, UTI, and respiratory disease.

The 1,000-bed second branch of Viet Duc in the area of over 125,000 square meter including one basement and nine floors can receive 3,500 patients a day. It specializes on surgery, bone trauma, brain, and spinal column.

By NGUYEN QUOC - Translated by UYEN PHUONGJohn Hammond has been named Houston division president of Lennar Homes and Village Builders, the two home-building entities of Lennar Corp. Hammond will retain his position as president of Friendswood Development Co., one of Houstons largest residential land developers and a subsidiary of Lennar Corp.

Energy lawyer Douglas Atnipp was named managing partner of the Houston office of global law firm Winston & Strawn.

David Bateman has joined Transwestern as a senior vice president on its healthcare advisory services team.

Alexandra Durham has joined Porter Hedges as an associate in the finance section. Her practice focuses on representing borrowers and lenders in a variety of commercial financings.

Blake Morris has joined Boxer Property as chief financial officer.

Frost-Houston announced the promotion of Jonathan Pursch to senior vice president, corporate banking, Sugar Land, Will Richardson to senior vice president, corporate banking, Main Place, Karen White to vice president, public finance, Post Oak, and Kristen Smith to vice president, corporate banking, Rice Village.

Dr. Gabriel Loor, the surgical director of the Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center Lung Transplantation Program, has joined the board of directors of Nora's Home, a haven for organ failure and transplant patients receiving care in the Texas Medical Center.

Angelina Wike has joined law firm of Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Aziz as an associate attorney.

Sentinel Trust Co. has promoted Phyllis L. Joe to vice president, lead wealth planner and Kelsey R. Giltner to vice president, senior relationship officer.

Josh Shishkoff has joined Orion Energy Partners as a senior associate.

katherine.feser@chron.com

twitter.com/kfeserEnthusiasm for oil is at its worst in a year as global financial woes and rising U.S. stockpiles dim the demand outlook.

Hedge funds cut bets on rising West Texas Intermediate crude prices for a sixth straight week, to the lowest since October 2017. Total wagers, long or short, were near the lowest in two years. Before a slight rebound on Friday, the U.S. benchmark sank 10 percent in little more than two weeks.

There are growing concerns in the market about demand growth stalling and that you could see new barrels come into the market to replace Iranian crude starting in November, said Gene McGillian, manager of market research at Tradition Energy. Thats forced some longs to lock in their profits.

OFFSHORE: BP starts up Thunder Horse expansion early in Gulf

Oil slipped to the lowest in almost a month last week as expanding American stockpiles overshadowed tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of a prominent kingdom critic. Meanwhile, trade tensions between the Trump administration and China and financials woes in emerging economies are clouding the picture for oil consumption.

Its amazing how strangely and quickly things have changed. I think the original move up to the mid $70s was completely not called for, said Phil Streible, senior market strategist at RJO Futures in Chicago. It was a lot of speculation over sanctions on Iran, Venezuela declining, Libya declining and who will pick up the slack.

Hedge funds WTI net-long position -- the difference between bets on higher prices and wagers on a drop -- fell 14 percent to 242,855 futures and options in the week ended Oct. 16, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Longs fell 7.1 percent, while shorts jumped 38 percent to the highest since November 2017.

THROWBACK: Saudi Arabia has no plans to repeat 1973 oil crisis, Falih says

Bullishness may return, though, when the impact of sanctions on Iran kick in next month.

This seems short term, said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital. You have to be concerned about the lost Iranian supply coming up. Were going to lose about 1 million, 1 million and a half thatll finally register. The selling now seems to be a temporary blip.

2018 Bloomberg L.P.Saudi Arabia has no intention of using its oil wealth as a political tool in the controversy over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the kingdom plans to boost crude output again soon.

"For decades we used our oil policy as a responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics," Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said in an interview with Russias TASS news agency published on Monday. "So lets hope that the world would deal with the political crisis, including the one with a Saudi citizen in Turkey, with wisdom," he said.

Falihs comments come just days after Saudi Arabia said Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the countrys consulate in Istanbul. While the official report won praise from U.S. President Donald Trump, many politicians and leaders in America and Europe questioned the official explanation that he was accidentally killed in an altercation. That contradicts details leaked by Turkish officials saying the journalist was murdered.

U.S. RIGS: Texas leads a drilling rig count jump

The incident has damaged the kingdoms image as a future investment hub, with global business leaders from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Uber Technologies Inc. distancing themselves from Prince Mohammed and scrapping plans to attend his business forum this week.

Production Promise

Last week, Saudi Arabia vowed to retaliate against any punitive measures linked to Khashoggis fate, fueling concerns of oil price hikes. Al-Falih said theres no intention of repeating the 1973 oil embargo, in which the kingdom and several regional allies squeezed supplies to the U.S. and Europe in retaliation for their support for Israel.

Saudi Arabia is ready to raise its output to 11 million barrels a day "in the near future" and has the ability to lift production as high as 12 million barrels a day if the market requires it, Al-Falih said. The world needs to show its appreciation of the efforts and multi-billion dollar Saudi investment that made this possible, he added.

There are limits to the kingdoms ability to respond, Al-Falih said. If the supply gap created by disruption in Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela -- as well as U.S. sanctions against Iran -- were to grow as large as 3 million barrels a day, Saudi Arabia would need to tap its oil reserves, he said.

WTI LIGHT: Permian drillers selling new, lighter crude oil grade

Joint work between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC oil producers needs to continue on a long-term basis, Al-Falih said. He expects the cooperation agreement, initially signed in late 2016, to be extended in December, at a meeting in Vienna. The deal "will allow us to intervene to rebalance the market in any appropriate time from January onward", he said.

After agreeing in late 2016 to cut production to eliminate a supply glut and boost prices, many OPEC members and allies including Russia are now increasing output to offset disruptions in Venezuela and Iran. Its still too early to say what strategy the group will adopt in 2019 given current uncertainties, said Al-Falih.

"If the supply is too long, we should be able to cut, Al-Falih said. "If supply is short, we have to be able to respond."

2018 Bloomberg L.P.Oakland police said they arrested a man who shot at a police officer.

The incident began at 3:10 a.m. Friday when an officer attempted to detain a man on the 2300 block of East 17th Street, according to the Oakland Police Department. Police did not disclose why they sought to detain the man.

A foot pursuit started when the man ran away from the officer, police said. The man then turned toward the officer and shot his firearm, police said.

The officer was not injured and did not discharge his weapon. There were no reports of any injuries.

Oakland police closed surrounding streets for several hours Friday morning to search for the man. He was found Friday evening and taken into custody.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavaniAll I wanted was a bowl of cereal.

So I did what anybody would do: I walked to the closest cafe, bought an iced coffee, chugged it and filled the empty cup with milk.

This is how much I hate grocery shopping. I will do anything, including pilfer, to avoid the task. As a result, my kitchen is so barren and spotless that you could eat off the floor  if I ever had food to serve on it, that is. Were it not for my roommate, Id probably unplug my fridge to save the energy.

Being a food writer, Ive always kept this dirty little secret to myself, afraid that colleagues and readers would label me a fraud because I didnt have one of those pristine, photo-ready pantries stocked with Maldon salt and $18 pickles.

But just because I despise the chore and (gasp!) actually hate to cook doesnt compromise my taste or make me unqualified to judge the quality of a meal. In fact, who better to critique a chef-prepared dish than someone who eats 600 of them a year?

I should acknowledge that its a luxury to be in a position where I can dislike grocery shopping and afford to eat out. I dont live in a food desert. Im a single woman with no family to feed, and I have disposable income to spend on dining out. I recognize that these things grant me a level of privilege not everybody experiences.

We have to appreciate how lucky we are to go grocery shopping every day, says Michael Ruhlman, author of Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America. This is a chore you should say, I know I dont like it, but Im very lucky to be able to do it.

Lucky as I may be, Im not budging on this.

I thought for sure that I could change my feelings about food shopping and cooking by linking them to things that I actually enjoyed: Ive volunteered with a number of food-related organizations, including one where I helped children learn how to cook. Ive also regularly delivered produce to the elderly who could no longer make it to the store. Alas, Im a grocery Grinch to the end.

My reasons are as varied as your supermarkets tomato-sauce selection: The lack of clocks and mazelike layout lead me to believe whoever designed the store is tricking me. Putting the milk all the way in the back? Nice try. Why make the trek when the coffee shop on my street keeps it right by the door? (In reporting for this story, Ive learned that grocery stores keep dairy in the back so they can more easily keep it cold off the delivery trucks, but Im still annoyed.)

Furthermore, stepping foot in a supermarket stokes nearly all of my anxieties: The number of options is crippling for someone who has a hard time making decisions; my internal Peter Pan is appalled that Im doing something so adult; and as a commitment-phobe, that little bag of baby carrots seems huge when I consider that Ill be stuck with them until I eat them all (or, more likely, let them rot).

If I dig deeper into my disdain, my upbringing probably has something to do with it. As the child of divorce with a dizzying joint-custody arrangement (Monday I was with Mom, Tuesday I was with Dad, Wednesday I was with Mom ), trips to the store were inconsistent and frenzied. My parents went to great lengths to make sure food was on the table every night, but proper meal planning was difficult when they were constantly making sure my bags were packed.

Its no surprise that this idiosyncrasy has affected my dating life. I tend to gravitate toward men who love to cook for me. Once I stayed too long with a man partly because his pasta e fagioli tasted exactly like my Italian grandfathers. (Who, by the way, if he were alive, would be mortified to learn that his granddaughter once paid $42 at a restaurant for a plate of spaghetti with clam sauce.)

In discussing my attitude with friends, Ive learned that Im not alone. I also learned that a number of them find joy in grocery shopping. My response: Tell me your secret.

Ever helpful, people in both camps have suggested I try alternatives to the typical bricks-and-mortar shop. And believe me, I have.

Take the farmers market. The addition of dogs and free apple samples makes shopping for food slightly more enjoyable, but for me the fun stops there. I cant get over the fact that a head of lettuce costs $7, or that at 9:30 a.m. the bagel stand is already sold out. Ive found it impossible to source a weeks worth of food there, partly because the prices are so exorbitant and partly because my abysmal cooking skills are not worthy of such beautiful produce.

Ive tried same-day grocery-delivery services, and though its relaxing to shop from home, Ive had mixed results. Once a store was out of mini gold potatoes, so my proxy purchased two 5-pound bags of russet potatoes. (In case youve ever wondered, mashed potatoes topped with hash browns eaten with a french fry instead of a fork make for a very filling meal.) Also, because Im not physically in the store to cruise the aisles, I tend to overlook crucial items, like that time I forgot to request hummus and spent a week dipping vegetables in ketchup (from a packet, naturally).

The closest Ive ever come to actually enjoying food shopping was at the secret (and very illegal) co-op in my neighborhood. In the basement of someones townhouse, its much smaller than the typical store, which helps quell a lot of my typical issues. The last time I visited the space  in operation for more than 40 years  one of the workers was sharing photos of her recent trip to Mexico with a customer. The vibe is beyond welcoming; I feel as if Im among friends.

Whats more, prices are jaw-droppingly low. Because theres less overhead and the owners work with local growers, organic avocados go for 79 cents and a jar of tahini is $2.13. Who cares that the olive oil is sold in an old peanut butter jar? The Department of Health, I suppose, but well keep this one our little secret.

Grocery stores know that such alternatives are bad for business. In response, operators are coming up with novel ways to make the experience more enjoyable. Last year, a Whole Foods in New York began offering shoppers a produce butcher who chops your fruits and vegetables for you. To cultivate a stress-free environment, another supermarket in Richmond, Va., introduced free meditation classes. And an increasing number of shops are building bars into their design to encourage lingering.

Grocery operators are asking themselves, How can we make it easier for you? says Rich Majors, chief operating officer at BRR Architecture, which specializes in grocery-store retail design. Theyre looking for intriguing ways to turn what was previously a chore into an enjoyable experience.

Well, Im not buying it. For me, nothing could be more enjoyable than letting someone else do the shopping  and, while theyre at it, the cooking, too.MIDDLETOWN  U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit Judge Susan L. Carney presided over a recent naturalization ceremony in an unusual location.

Calling it a beautiful, landmark day, Carney admitted, I dont usually have chandeliers in court, so Im delighted to be here for such a celebratory occasion at the Middletown Elks Clubs Crystal Ballroom.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., state Rep. Matthew Lesser, D-Middletown, and Common Councilman Gerald Daley were among dignitaries who gathered at 44 Maynard St. for the ceremony late last week.

Perhaps the greatest responsibility new citizens have is to uphold the mantle of freedom, and live that dream that is the American experience, Joseph M. Zackaricz, section chief of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Hartford, told close to 100 individuals in the audience.

In all, 52 people from 29 countries took the oath of allegiance. Because this years ceremony was dedicated to those serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, representatives of the citys numerous veterans groups filled the two front rows. They were joined by several dozen candidates, including four U.S. Army and two Marine Corps members, as well as their families and guest.

They were natives of Albania, American Samoa, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kosovo, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Congratulations on your reaching this momentous milestone in your immigration journey, Zackaricz said.

Middletown DAV Chapter No. 7 Commander John DiMauro led the new citizens and guests in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, the room grew silent as Coginchaug Regional High School senior student Kylie Toggio delivered a heartfelt rendition of the National Anthem as an American flag undulated on a television screen behind her.

Our nation has welcomed millions of immigrants to our shores: immigrants who have a profound impact, not only on the United States of America, but on the world as well. Immigrants who have strengthened the very fabric of our nation with their contributions to American society and prosperity, Zackaricz said.

Generations of immigrants like you have come to this country, seeking a place where democracy is not just an ideal but a reality: where opportunities are available to everyone, he added, urging those gathered to become active citizens and give back to the community.

Blumenthal, who spoke of his father, who in 1935 at 17 came alone to this country from Germany to escape persecution. He had not much more than the shirt on his back. This country gave him a chance to succeed, the states senior U.S. senator said. The soon-to-be Americans took a test that most other U.S. citizens could not pass, he added, as many laughed.

Many of you came from long distances, over many miles and seas, and you will never take for granted becoming a U.S. citizen. When I look across this crowd, what I see is America: different races, opinions, walks of life, backgrounds that make us great. Thats our strength and our virtue, Blumenthal said.

Lourdes Montalvo, director of state constituent services, spoke on behalf of Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, who had a last-minute meeting. You are going to be out there, making others understand, especially the newer generation, the importance of voting, to get engaged, and the importance of making democracy work, she said.

Daley stood in for Mayor Dan Drew, because he was out of town, he said, noting the Elks are particularly committed to serving young people and veterans.

Most of those gathered in the ballroom enjoy citizenship as a birthright, Daley said.

You earned your citizenship. You chose to become citizens. Its not about nationalism or ethnicity. Its about ideals, principles and democratic values that we uphold, honor and advocate for, not a bloodline, said Daley, whose great-grandparents emigrated from Ireland.

In 1790, the first naturalization laws passed. For 225 years, taking the oath of allegiance has led to citizenship, Zackaricz said.

Amita Srivastava is a Trumbull resident born in India. This calls for a celebration. Im a citizen now, said Srivastava, whose husband and children are naturalized.

William Currlin, the Elks chaplain in charge of the veterans committee, attended several of the prior ceremonies at City Hall, which took a two-year hiatus. He noticed cramped conditions in Council Chambers, and thought the ballroom would be a better, larger venue.

Its a heartwarming feeling to know these people want to be one of us, said Currlin, who has asked to host the ceremony again in 2019. Many people dont realize you can be in the military and not be a citizen. These guys are fast tracked when they are seeking citizenship. When I think of it, I get a tear in my eye, he said.

Bristol resident Esraa Badewy, who came from Egypt, said she is proud to be an American.

Already we have a new life, a new future. Its so exciting, said her husband Ahmed Abdelmawla.

Managing Editor Cassandra Day can be reached at cassandra.day@hearstmediact.com.The biannual DASH Fall Market will be held on Thursday, Nov. 1, through Sunday, Nov. 4, at Silver Street Studios, 2000 Edwards St., Houston.

DASH  which stands for Design, Art, Style, Home  was founded by Michelle Maresh, Angela Poujol, Lisa Erwin and Vanessa Sendukas after they realized Houstons need of a shopping market.

We would all go to Round Top and we have great memories there. We loved the girls day out feeling and we wanted to bring that to Houston, Poujol said.

Each Market event (one held in the fall, one in spring) partners up with local charities. This year DASH is benefiting Dwell with Dignity, a nonprofit organization originally formed in Dallas. Dwell with Dignity is in the process of expanding to Houston.

According to dwellwithdignity.org, the nonprofit is dedicated to creating soothing, inspiring homes for families struggling with homelessness and poverty. Dwell with Dignity designs and installs complete home interiors for families who desperately need an environment that will support health and wellness.

The women of DASH  they are a group of incredibly smart women that have game, said Suzanne Coppola, a member of Dwell with Dignitys Houston Planning Committee.

Suzanne has been with us since the beginning. She has been a sponsor of the show and a dealer, supporting what we do, Poujol said. She came to us and offered to work with us. It fits in well the design aspect. We try to support philanthropies that are near and dear to all of our hearts.

Dwell with Dignity has already finished one home installation for a family in Houston, with hopes to complete another one this fall.

Our very first install [in Houston] in July was for a woman and her two boys. It resonated with me. In this day and age, it is a tough world out there. She was dealing with the loss of her fiance. She ended up racking up debt. She was able to put herself through a masters degree though. I think lives can transform when someone takes the time to believe in them, Coppola said.

Dwell with Dignity partners up with local social services agencies that then nominate the families.

We think Houston has the potential to have the biggest impact over time. Families are still trying to get on their feet after Hurricane Harvey, Coppola said.

For more information, visit www.dwellwithdignity.org.

The DASH Fall Market will offer a Laurier Blanc Happy Hour on Saturday, Nov. 3, from 4 to 6 p.m. benefiting Dwell with Dignity. The happy hour will include live music, cocktails and a silent auction. Tickets are $10 and 100 percent of the advance ticket proceeds benefit Dwell with Dignity.

In addition to supporting the nonprofit, the DASH Fall Market will also feature a preview party on Thursday evening, workshops and a pop-up fitness class on Sunday.

The different dealers will feature furniture, ranging from antiques to contemporary styles, various kinds of art work, home decor and gifts.

We offer a little bit of everything for someone who is looking for that treasure, Poujol said.

In the future, the ladies of DASH hope to expand their dealers offerings to an online presence, which will start after the fall market.

We are always wanting to grow the market with good curated dealers and share with others what we like, Poujol said.

For more information, and to buy tickets, visit www.dashhouston.com.

rebecca.hazen@chron.comJacobs Engineering Group is selling its Houston energy and chemicals business to Australian construction and engineering firm WorleyParsons Ltd. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $3.3 billion.

The unit employs more than 2,000 Houston-area workers.

The deal represents a major shift in the energy engineering and construction sector with Jacobs essentially leaving oil and gas and WorleyParsons becoming a much bigger force in U.S. energy industry. The acquisition effectively doubles the size of WorleyParsons worldwide and makes it a larger player in Houston, where the company already has a hub in the Energy Corridor.

ANOTHER MOVE: Jacobs Engineering buying CH2M for $2.85 billion

Jacobs, headquartered in Dallas, will focus on its other two major business segments  aerospace, technology, environmental and nuclear, as well as buildings, infrastructure and advanced facilities. Both involve a lot more government work, especially with NASA. Jacobs will still employ more than 1,000 people in the Houston area after the deal closes.

Jacobs' main Houston office complex is in the Westchase area.

In a phone interview, Jacobs Chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou said Jacobs wasn't necessarily looking to sell. WorleyParsons, however, made a premium-priced offer as the energy industry grows again following the recent bust in oil prices, which bottomed out in 2016. With the energy sector becoming even more global, he said, so there was increasing push to either for Jacobs to keep growing in that area or to sell.

"We did this at the right time," he said.

The oil and gas sector has seen a wave of mergers in the engineering and construction space of late. Last year, the Scottish company Wood Group acquired Amec Foster Wheeler, of London, to create an even bigger player in energy engineering and construction. Just before that, Amec and Foster Wheeler had merged.

Paris-based Technip merged with Houston equipment manufacturer FMC Technologies to create TechnipFMC last year and give the company more breadth. And, this year, Houston's McDermott International acquired The Woodlands-based CB&I.

Jacobs relocated its headquarters two years ago from California to Dallas, but the firm already had a major Texas footprint, including in Houston.

The deal includes $2.6 billion in cash and $700 million in WorleyParsons stock. The sale is expected to close in the first half of 2019.Eddie Seal

Weatherford International said Monday it will sell its laboratory services business for $205 million to a private equity group led by Houston's CSL Capital Management.

The anticipated sale is part of financially struggling Weatherford's ongoing effort to reduce its debt and make the global oil field services company more competitive again.3 1 of 3 Michael Minasi, Photographer Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Val Clifton / The Sun Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Harris County Emergency District No. 9 has officially adopted its tax rate if 5.271 cents per $100 value after passing the tax rate during a special meeting held on Oct. 22. The meeting was moved from the previous set day of Oct. 18.

ESD No. 9, the entity contracting with Cy-Fair Volunteer Department, originally planned to raise the tax rate to 6 cents from 5.271 cents per $100 of taxable value and had two previous public hearings where citizens could voice their concerns and ask questions.From spiritual to spirits, Houstonians turned out to party at a wide range of events over the weekend.

Galveston's first-ever Vampire Pageant raised Halloween spirits Saturday night in a unique fundraiser for the Resource Crisis Center of Galveston County, which helps domestic violence and sexual assault victims.Friendswood police have charged a La Porte man with robbery in connection with an Oct. 12 bank robbery at ACU of Texas inside Kroger, 3135 FM 528.

Webster police reportedly found Brian Henry Hord, 42, on Oct. 16 at Oxford Inn and Suites, 915 W. Nasa Road 1. Officers detained him on outstanding Deer Park warrants while Friendswood police collected evidence from the hotel linking him to the bank robbery, according to a Friendswood Police Department press release.The good reputation and high standards of the Katy Bengal Brigade and Cheerleaders earned them an invitation to be the performers to open the 130th annual Tournament of Roses parade, said Patty Hensen, the KBBC director and Fine Arts Department chair.

Were practicing 24-7, said Katy High School senior Alexis Granhold. Were practicing a lot.

And theyre reviewing recent tapes of past Tournament of Roses parade performances to give them a better idea of what to expect. Key moves include leaps, turns and lots of motion, said Hensen. They spell out words, added Granhold.

Parade organizers will supply the team with the choreography members need to learn as well as the costumes. This years parade theme is The Melody of Life, referring to music.

The parade will begin at 8 a.m. PST Jan. 1 in Pasadena, Calif. Hensen said the team has a 2 a.m. call to practice the show until 5 a.m. Theyll go freshen up and then return for the parade.

This wont be groups first trip to California, though. Granhold and fellow Katy High senior Mallory Broussard were among group members who performed at Disneyland in the spring of 2017. But that trip was preceded by more planning and time to raise funds. Hensen said they were invited to participate about the first of September in the Tournament of Roses parade. The KBBC will be in California Dec. 28-Jan. 1.

The excitement is higher this time around for a trip to California, too. As Broussard, a cheerleader, explained, Were selected to go. Were going to be the first performers (in the parade). I get to dance.

While shes danced before, this will be the first time she dances with roses instead of the customary pom-poms.

Im really excited. I never thought Id have the opportunity come up like this to be on TV, said Broussard. My family gets together on New Years Eve. This year I get to do something different.

It will be a different way to bring in the New Year, agreed Rick Hull, Katy High principal.

Its only one of the biggest parades in the world, added Granhold. Its a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to go.

The parade follows a 5 route and lasts about two hours.

Participating in the parade is also special because its their last year as seniors at Katy High.

After graduation, Granhold plans to attend the University of Alabama to study neonatolagy. Broussard will be headed to Texas Tech and expressed an interest in becoming a teacher of social studies.

In addition to practice, the group members are focused on raising funds. Fundraising includes a gofundme website at https://www.gofundme.com/kbbc-to-tournament-of-roses. They sold spiritwear at the Katy Rice Festival. Also for sale are pies, baking rolls, holiday wreaths and honeybaked hams. Email kbbcbctreas@gmail.com for details or visit mickmanholidaygifts.com and enter the code KATYHSTX001 or visit https://honeybakedfundraising.com/fundraisers/KBBC_ HoneyBaked.

Were getting the community all involved, said Granhold.

The initial goal was to bring the entire team and cheerleaders or 36 people plus director and chaperones. Hensen said the cost per team member is $2,199. The gofundme goal totals $167,124 and Dec. 15 is when the funds are needed for the trip. Hensen said theyre looking at a reduced number of participants, based on those who want to go and have the ability to help fund their trip.

Hensen said some parents plan to go to California to view the parade. Parents are almost as excited as our kids.

We raised a lot of money for three years to go to California last spring break, she said. For this event, fundraising has been reduced to three months, she added. After team members learned they had been selected to participate, some of them wrote a letter and visited Katy-area merchants to raise funds and were quite successful, said Hensen.

Our community is so giving, said Hensen, who added that word has gotten out about the invitation and shes impressed upon the KBBC the example the members need to set in the community.

karen.zurawski@chron.comResidents of Precinct 3 in Fort Bend County will elect a justice of the peace this fall, the only precinct contest on a long Nov. 6 ballot that contains numerous countywide and statewide races.

Judge George Lawrence was appointed in October 2017 as Precinct 3 JP. The vacancy was created after Gov. Greg Abbott named JP Ken Cannata as district judge of the recently created 458th Judicial District Court in Fort Bend County. Early voting started Oct. 22.

Running to replace Lawrence are Republican Kelly Nicole Crow of Richmond and Democrat Michael Antalan of Katy. The office has a four-year term. Crow highlights her judicial experience and increasing court efficiency. Antalan highlights connecting communities and creating a relationship between the community and court to make people more knowledgeable about the criminal justice system.

Crow has worked in the Precinct 3 JP court. When Judge Cannata was appointed to the District Court bench and it became an open seat, I felt like I had the experience in law to be judge, she said. I know what funding is available. Id like to improve technology. Id like to bring more efficiency to the JP court. Im working in a paper heavy system. I can increase efficiency by increasing the use of technology.

Antalan said, Im running for JP because I would like to bridge the gap between communities. Right now, Fort Bend County is the No. 1 diverse county in the country. People think of a complete divide. I dont think that exists in Fort Bend County. For Fort Bend County and the rest of the country, Id like to show we live together and co-exist even with differences in parties.

With the population change and diversity in the county, people need to be represented and have someone understand their issues and how these issues are affected by the laws, said Antalan. Some people have lived in Fort Bend County for more than 30 years and never received a jury summons, he said, while some who have lived here less than five years have been summoned more than five or six times.

Crows 21 years of experience includes working as a prosecutor for the Fort Bend County District Attorney and in municipal courts in Missouri City and Sugar Land. In 2007, she started the Fulshear Municipal Court, where she continues to serve as municipal judge. Criminal law has been her focus and she said she likes to do criminal law. She taught judicial ethics at the Texas Municipal Courts Education Center and has conducted hundreds of jury trials as prosecutor and as judge. A strong pillar of my campaign when I ran in the primary was judicial ethics, she said.

Im a staunch believer in being a good steward of taxpayer dollars, said Crow. That takes on increased importance with added unfunded government mandates for the court, she said.

Im passionate about following the law as it is written and not to be creative writing law from the bench, said Crow. Until the law changes, its not my job to change the law.

She wants the JP court to be a place where attorneys are able to present their cases and to be able to be heard. I give everyone the right to be noticed and heard, said Crow. They may not always like my decisions but they cannot accuse me of not being fair.

She said the Precinct 3 JP court is among the busiest of the JP courts in Fort Bend County.

We average about 12,200 traffic citations per year and about 1,600 civic cases per year, said Carmen Pineda, court coordinator, Justice of the Peace Court Precinct 3. She added these figures apply to 2015-17. As of late September, the court had 13,289 traffic citations and 2,082 civil cases, she added. Our caseload fluctuates every year so there is not a consistent number, said Pineda.

Antalan wants to bring change to the court, including creation of truancy workshop. He said hes heavily involved with school systems, parents and first responders. The court would introduce young juveniles to local police officers and first responders. Workshops would include civic and criminal procedure law courses. We would teach them what the rules are and who they are dealing with and what type of people are out here in the community. So young people get an idea before they make harsh decisions that affect the rest of their lives. In my opinion, it would help some kids decide career choices as well as life choices.

In private practice since 2006, Antalan said his experience includes interning with the Fort Bend County DA while earning his law degree at Thurgood Marshall School of Law, working as a part-time municipal prosecutor and as a criminal defense attorney. An eight-year U.S. Navy veteran, he said he thinks that counseling and talking to people prior to them becoming first-time offenders could be helpful. It may not deter what happens but I believe it helps. If people know or even are taught what to do when theyre in a situation where theyre stopped and questioned, I think those situations would not escalate into further problems.

Antalan said he thinks the JP court also could be used for town hall meetings. He suggests a monthly meeting on issues of concern to the community. I think the JP office can be opened up for those discussions.After working to improve literacy rates in Guatemala, Memorial High School senior Susan Soh is one of just 10 girls chosen from 1.8 million nationally to be named 2018 National Gold Award Girl Scouts.

When Soh was six years old, she began traveling to a different Central American country each summer, so she and her younger brother could work on learning Spanish.

Soh said they would always stay in touristy areas. Years later when she saw pictures from SANA, a clinic, preschool and library started by a family friend in Santa Maria de Jesus, Guatemala, she was surprised that place was only a few miles away from where she had stayed on her first trip in Antigua.

Her seventh grade summer, Soh traveled there and thought young girls holding babies were their sisters but was informed they were actually their mothers. At 13, she was the same age as many of them. Asking why, Soh learned that the route of the problem was in the areas poor literacy rates.

Santa Maria de Jesus is a Mayan village where most residents speak only a Mayan dialect, Cakchiquel, and are illiterate, Soh wrote in a college application essay. Government schools are taught only in Spanish. Frustrated by a language they do not understand, girls drop out as early as second grade.

Soh learned about using audiobooks to help people read, but when she found they could be really pricey, she started recording her own using Garage Band and ITunes. Some of her bilingual friends and students from Communities in Schools started helping out, and together they recorded 60 audiobooks. Soh created an audiobook library in Santa Maria two years ago. Since then, the library has doubled its collection, and Soh said more than 400 children travel to the library each month to learn to read.

Although her work helped her get selected for the award, Soh said what matters most to her is that she positively affected peoples lives in Santa Maria.

But awards arent what make me proud. That would be Angel, a boy I met teaching SANA preschool who struggled in class. Determined for him to succeed in school, his illiterate parents sent him to SANAs library every day, she said. He used my audiobooks to practice reading. His reading advanced so significantly that upon testing to enter to public school, he skipped a grade. Now eight, Angels thriving in school.

Earlier this month, Soh traveled to New York to be honored for her award. She got to meet Michelle Obama and visit the TODAY show. She also participated in the United Nations International Day of the Girl session.

Soh first started in Girl Scouts as a Brownie in the second grade. She said the program has allowed her to perform enormous community service projects that I would have not been able to accomplish on my own and also meet girls with similar goals.

After earning her Gold Award, Soh now believes her role in Girl Scouts is to encourage other girls to finish theirs. She is currently applying to colleges and hopes to study business and international relations to continue working with different cultures and languages.

Soh said being a Girl Scout has built her character and given her experience and knowledge that will help her be successful as a future leader.

It taught me that I can attack a serious problem in a creative and innovative way. It taught me a lot about leadership, she said. Being a leader is not about bossing people around. Leadership is about making a plan and then adapting the plan when real-world problems occur.

tracy.maness@hcnonline.comFarm animals put on a show to save their stomping grounds in a family musical, Barnyard Follies, Oct. 26-27 at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in the Nassau Bay area.

Sixteen Bay Area performers in a group of young artists at Pitch Me This Productions play the characters, who include a Broadway composers crafty cat at the helm of the project.

They will be accompanied by The PMT Band, making this production especially exciting for Sam Carner, the New York City artist who wrote the shows book, music and lyrics.

Sam will be down here in Houston working with our students on the show, said Eduardo Guzman, PMTs founding artistic director. We hope it will be a great opportunity for students to hear from someone who writes shows. They can ask him questions and learn about the process from the beginning.

Carner said the show has been produced on the East Coast, but mainly with tracks in which actors sang along with an instrumental recording that was completed in a music studio.

It is going to be very cool to hear it with a band, said Carner, in a recent telephone interview.

Carner composed the score for piano, bass, woodwinds, banjo, guitar and drums.

It is a feel-good musical comedy, he said, in the tradition of Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney films in which characters are faced with what seems like a daunting problem until somebody cries, Hey, kids, lets put on a show! as a benefit to raise money.

More Information Want to go? What: "Barnyard Follies" Where: Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, 18220 Upper Bay Rd., Houston, TX 77058 When: 8 p.m. Oct. 26-27, 2:30 p.m. Oct. 27 Admission: $15 Information: www.pitchmethis.com See More Collapse

One aspect that I am really proud of is that Barnyard Follies offers a lot of performing opportunities for a variety of ages and levels of comfort onstage, Carner said.

One particular song, said Guzman, is representative of the shows theme of inclusiveness.

Why Cant a Rooster Love a Goat? has lyrics that teach a great lesson about connecting with people who are different from you, he said. Musical theater is a great way for children to learn that.

Carner said he peppered the script with jokes for the parents to laugh at, too, making the kids show entertaining for the whole family.

It is fun and a little ridiculous, said Carner.

The cast of Barnyard Follies includes: Emma Cole as Bessie, Garrett Cole (Harold/Gary Kane), Taylor Cole (Clara), Thomas Cole (Reynold Ruffy), Samantha Dusl (Bitsy/Sheila Schenker), Carly Fricke (Betsy Blythe) and Jonas Gibler (Farmer Del Dell).

Also in the cast are: Samuel Gibler (Royster), Kaitlyn Gilbreath (Farmer Belle Dell), Avery Graham (Poppy), Livy Kirtley (Felicity), Zoe Knea (Carmen), Emily Mayes (Clarice), Zoha Sahib (Gladys), Alex Slack (Colbert) and Alex Vonau (Derrick).

The production director for PMTs Young Artist Series (YAS!) is Shannon Nichols, a native of Deer Park.

The shows director is Whitney Zangarine of Pearland. The choreographer is Angela Hendrickson.

Monique VonDeylen of Friendswood is the music director.

The stage manager is Daniel Edwards, who attended San Jacinto College, with Cody Ray Strimple of Deer Park on crew.

Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be reached at donmaines@att.netEarly voting will begin Monday, Oct. 22, for the Nov. 6 general election, and local election administrators expect a large turnout.

John Oldham, Fort Bend County election administrator, said Thursday, We expect it to be extremely heavy based upon a number of factors.

His office processed 19,569 applications for new registered voters or for address changes since the first of October, he said. Oldham compares that to 2008 when his office processed 18,137 applications. Weve never seen anything like 2008 till now.

A second indicator of a heavy turnout, Oldham said, is the number of ballots requested by mail: 14,971. Oldham compares that to November 2014 when his office processed 9,942 ballots by mail. Friday, Oct. 26, is the deadline to apply for a ballot by mail, he said. Reasons to vote by mail include expected absence from the county during the voting period and Election Day, disability, 65 years of age or older and confinement in jail and not finally convicted of a felony. Ballots must be received by that date, not postmarked, according to https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/.

People applying for a ballot by mail may submit their request by mail, fax or email. Oldham noted that registered voters who apply by fax or email must also submit the hard copy of the application to his office within four days of their initial request. Visit https://www.fortbendcountytx.gov/ then select the link for Elections/Voter Registration for more information.

In 2010, Fort Bend County had 308,985 registered voters. Five years later, it had 373,832 registered voters. Total registered voters in Fort Bend County now number more than 432,000, he said.

He anticipates lines for voting on the first and last days of the early voting period. He thinks turnout will be more than for other off-year elections. He referred to the Nov. 2, 2010 where turnout totaled 45.42 percent of registered voters and was an election two years after the presidential election. I think well see numbers comparable to that, said Oldham.

Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart said he expects between 850,000 and 950,000 people to vote. We have capacity to handle a million voters.

Four years ago, 688,000 voted in the governors election, he said.  I look for significant increase over that number. Its all up to the voters. Were ready for them Monday morning at 8 a.m.

Fort Bend County

Fort Bend County has 21 early voting sites. Two are in the Katy area and one is in Fulshear.

The Katy-area voting sites are Tompkins High School, 4400 Falcon Landing, Katy, and the Cinco Ranch Library, 2620 Commercial Center Blvd. Early voting hours are both sites are 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Oct. 22-26; and 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Oct. 27 and Oct. 29 -Nov. 2. In addition the library will be open Sunday, Oct. 28, from noon-5 p.m.

The Fulshear site will be at the Irene Stern Community Center, 6920 Fulshear-Katy Road. Hours will be 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 22-26, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Oct. 27 and Oct. 29-Nov. 2 and noon to 5 p.m. Oct. 28.

The Fort Bend Votes website, https://tinyurl.com/yb82ubys, features a color-coded Google map that indicates the relative wait times to vote.

Harris County

In Harris County, early voting hours will be 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Oct. 22-26; 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Oct. 27 and Oct. 29-Nov. 2 and 1-6 p.m. Oct. 28.

Harris County has 46 early voting sites. Locations in west Houston include Harris County Municipal Utility District 81, 805 Hidden Canyon Road, Katy; Katy Branch Library, 5414 Franz Road, Katy; Lone Star College-Cypress Center, 19710 Clay Road, Katy; Living Word Church of Nazarene, 16607 Clay Road, Houston. Visit www.harrisvotes.com for more locations, a sample ballot and information.

This will be the last general election in which voters will be able to vote a straight-party ticket. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in June 2017 signed into law a bill that eliminates the straight-ticket voting option starting in 2020.

The https://www.harrisvotes.com website shows that Harris County had 2,285,881 registered voters for the Harris Country Flood Control District bond election.

For the Nov. 2, 2010 election, Harris County had 1,917,534 registered voters and a turnout of 41.67 percent. In the Nov. 3, 2015 election, the county had 2,054,717 registered voters and a turnout of 20.51 percent, according to the county website.

Waller County

Waller County has set up eight early voting sites. Two are in the Katy area.

The Katy Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9182, 6206 George Bush Drive, will serve as an early voting site from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 22-24.

The Waller County Library Brookshire, 3815 6th St., Brookshire, will serve as an early voting site from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 22-26 and Oct. 29-31; 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Oct. 27; and 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Nov. 1-2.

Email vote@wallercounty.us or call 979-826-7643 for information.

The website http://www.co.waller.tx.us shows Waller County had 31,004 registered voters for the Nov. 2, 2010 election with 34.28 percent turnout. Turnout for the Nov. 8, 2016 general election was 54.2689 percent with total registered voters of 31,495. For the May 22, 2018 primary runoff election, turnout totaled 1.43 percent with total registered voters of 39,275.

karen.zurawski@chron.comMontgomery County deputies will soon be growing out their beards  and for a good cause.

The Montgomery County Sheriffs Office will celebrate No Shave November next month to help raise awareness and money for cancer treatment, the sheriffs office stated Monday in a release.

The goal is to donate money that an individual would typically spend on shaving and grooming to educate about cancer prevention, save lives, and aid those fighting the battle, according to the release.

Some could say that things are about to get hairy around the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office, the release states.

Heres how it works: Throughout November, Montgomery County will encourage its deputies to grow out their facial hair  though they must still maintain their beards in a professional manner.

To participate, employees can write a $50 check to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of The Woodlands.

On Dec. 1, the fundraiser ends. Deputies will have to shave the beards off  and the Woodlands branch of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society gets a check.

We are proud to partner with the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society in the battle against cancer, said Scott Spencer, a spokesman for Montgomery County Sheriffs Office.

This is the first year that Montgomery County Sheriffs Office is celebrating No-Shave November, but the idea using the holiday to raise money for cancer is popular among law-enforcement agencies across the United States.

Last year, the Roman Forest Police Department helped raise money for the Mathew Hill Foundation, as the Courier previously reported.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is a nationwide organization founded in 1949 to support cancer research and lobby for patient access, according to the groups website.

The Woodlands branch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Early voting for the Nov. 6 general election started Monday at several locations across Montgomery County.

Early voting will be Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 29 through Nov. 2.More Americans than ever before say the death penalty is used unfairly, according to the latest Gallup Poll.

Less than half of survey respondents - 49 percent - thought the punishment was generally applied fairly, marking the first time most Americans did not deem the process equitable.

ON HOLD: Demonic hallucinations lead to execution stay

"That of course goes to the essential problem with the death penalty," said Kathryn Kase, a local capital defense lawyer and former executive director of Texas Defender Services. "As researchers have been pointing out for decades, no matter how we fiddle with the machinery of death, it still ends up being unfair."

But despite growing unease with the fairness of the process - a question pollsters started asking back in 2000 - more than half of Americans still voiced support for capital punishment, at a level just a touch above last year.

Nationally, executions and capital sentencing have been trending downward for years, and earlier this month courts in Washington struck down that state's death penalty statutes.

Why the Concerns

Though the latest survey didn't include questions about respondents' reasons for concerns of fairness in capital punishment, Gallup analysts offered suggestions based on previous years' findings.

"Some Americans' views on the subject may have been influenced by stories of people sentenced to death who were later found to be innocent," the nonpartisan organization wrote. "In a 2014 poll, Gallup found that about one in six people who were opposed to the death penalty said they were against it out of concern that the defendants might actually be innocent. Other news stories, such as a case in Alabama earlier this year involving a botched execution, may have influenced opinions on the issue."

READ MORE: Conservatives' distaste for death penalty sends support to 45-year low

But Kent Scheidegger, a death penalty supporter and legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, questioned claims of botched executions and pointed out that not everyone who gets off death row is actually innocent of the crime that put them there. Instead, he framed unfairness as a consequence of the downturn in use of the death penalty.

"The unfairness that I see is not being applied where it should be," he said. "I see hardly any cases of people being sentenced to death who should not be."

And, he said, some of the concerns about whether the process is fair could come from capital punishment proponents.

"A person can say, 'That's unfair and we need to fix it,' and still be fully supportive of the death penalty," he said.

But to Kase, the shifting public opinion is a reflection on a growing awareness of racial disparities throughout the justice system, and how those numbers play out on death row.

"The single biggest determinant is whether you kill a white person," Kase said. "If you kill a person of color you're highly unlikely to get the death penalty and that has to do with centuries of valuing white lives over black lives and brown lives and that's why, ultimately, I think the death penalty will be declared unconstitutional."

Still Supportive

The new findings, gathered as part of Gallup's annual crime poll and released on Monday, also show a slight uptick in support for the nation's harshest punishment. Last year, 55 percent of respondents voiced support for the practice; this year that figure edged up to 56 percent, though it's generally trended downward since the mid-1990s peak of 80 percent.

"This shows that the long-term movement away from the death penalty is holding even in the face of the current rhetoric from Washington," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Gallup findings mirror Pew's survey results published over the summer, which found that support for capital punishment was near historic lows despite a slight uptick over surveys from two years earlier.

Using results from polls conducted in April and May, Pew found that 54 percent of Americans favored capital punishment for convicted killers, up from 49 percent in 2016.

In addition to rising concerns about fairness and waning support, a growing portion of poll-takers took issue with how often capital sentences are doled out.

"More and more people believe the death penalty is being imposed too frequently even though we are at historic lows in the number of death sentences imposed," Dunham said. "For the question about how frequently it should be imposed, 57 percent of Americans think it is imposed at the right amount or too frequently - and that is with death sentences at historic lows."

Last year, the Lone Star State executed seven men and, for the first time in more than 30 years, none of them were from Harris County. This year has seen a slight increase in Texas, as 10 killers have already been put to death, including two from the Houston area.Houston Police Department

A motorcyclist has died a week after he was hit by an alleged drunken driver in the Meadowbrook area, Houston police said.

The victim, Ricardo Lozoya, 33, was taken to the hospital following the crash on Oct. 14. He died Sunday.Thousands of people were already camped out at a key early voting location in Houston on Monday morning, hours before voting was even set to begin.

Nearly 2,000 people stood in line outside of the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center on West Gray near River Oaks in a scene that looked more like a Black Friday shopping morning.

BETO IN THE BURBS: O'Rourke touts willingness to serve all Texans in Conroe visit

"This is one of the most important elections of our lifetimes," said Cody Pogue, who arrived at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday to make sure he'd be one of the first people to cast a ballot for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke.

Just moments later, O'Rourke was across the street firing up his supporters with a bullhorn.

"Are y'all ready?" O'Rourke said to a cascade of cheers. "Houston, I love you."

Karen Bard, who was in line more than an hour before the polls opened, said she doesn't normally vote in midterms, but O'Rourke changed that.

"It's not about me, it's about my kids," Bard said.

BRACING FOR THE PRESIDENT: Street closures in Downtown Houston for Trump's appearance

O'Rourke has a half-dozen rallies planned all over the Houston area on Monday to start early voting.

Those rallies come as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz brings in President Donald Trump for a rally to back his campaign at the 18,000-seat Toyota Center. Trump took to Twitter just as polls were opening in Texas.

"Big Night In Texas!!!!" Trump tweeted.

On Sunday, Cruz brought in Gov. Greg Abbott for a rally in Houston to boost GOP turnout. Both warned that O'Rourke represents a national Democratic Party trying to turn Texas into a liberal state.

"Now there are a whole bunch of national Democrats that want to turn Texas into California," Cruz said calling on his supporters to turn out in big numbers to push back against them.

Abbott said despite national Democrats wanting to turn Texas blue, he is convinced Cruz will prevail.

VITAL INFORMATION: When, where can I early vote in Houston? Here's everything you need to know

"Ted Cruz is going to win because Beto is hostile to Texas values," he said.

O'Rourke meanwhile objected to the partisan undertones in Abbott's and Cruz's message. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle on Sunday night in Sugar Land, he said this election isn't about Texas being red or blue.

"Who cares about the partisan color of Texas?" O'Rourke said. "I could give a damn about what party you are in."In an immersive, Halloween-season theatrical event, student actors at J. Frank Dobie High School will usher guests through a haunted house designed to bring to life ones worst nightmares, fears and phobias.

Enter, if you dare, the students warn, about their Oct. 26-27 creation, called Warehouse of Nightmares, which is behind the auditorium in back of the school, 10220 Blackhawk Blvd., Houston. Admission is $5. Funds will go to support the schools theater programs and productions.

We are treating this as a full production, said Santiago Sepeda, a Dobie technical theater teacher, who co-directed the show with the schools head theater director, Juliet Weigand.

We have three stage managers and 36 students on the tech crew alone, said Sepeda, who helped students craft spine-tingling scenarios for teams of actors to spin as they guide guests through eight rooms of the warehouse.

Going beyond the usual spiders and clowns

To spur their imaginations, Sepeda explained, I asked students, What are you guys afraid of? Along with common things like a fear of spiders or clowns, they revealed some personal, sincere fears that were really thought-provoking. I put pen to paper and brought those fears to life with character mockups. As their ideas materialized, you could see the students eyes light up, like, Oh. Oh!

A number of students expressed a fear of claustrophobia, so constriction comes up a couple of times in the tour, said Sepeda. The halls get a little skinny on you. In a particular room of the warehouse, the rooms size is going to change while youre in it.

Computer software enables other special effects, which play with lights, sound and projections.

Got the nerve? What: "Warehouse of Nightmares" Where: J. Frank Dobie High School, 10220 Blackhawk Blvd., Houston, TX 77089 (Warehouse is behind the auditorium in the back of the school) When: 7 p.m. Friday through Saturday, Oct. 26-27 Admission: $5 Information: The school advises that the production is rated "PG 13-plus" but that the performers can provide an altered version of the show for parents with children. 713-740-0370; @dobietheatre, Dobie Theatre on Facebook See More Collapse

We went all over the place with our music, said Sepeda. The kids worked really hard on making mashups. They have done an amazing job with the music.

Eight actors, cast as tour guides and bellhops, will tell guests a creepy story.

Every tour guide has their own bellhop, so every presentation is completely different. They make the same story come alive as a different experience, said Sepeda.

Twelth Night props turned evil

Students created the warehouse in the schools theater scenic shop, Building 800, way in the back of the parking lot of the school at 10220 Blackhawk Blvd., said Sepeda.

We maybe invested $300 along with leftovers from the set for Twelfth Night, which opened the fall season of Dobie Theatre.

In addition, assistant technical theater director Kelly Tomlinson worked with students on building original costumes and designing makeup for the actors.

Cast members include: Alesia Bill, Alvaro Naves, Alyana Silva, Angela Chapa, Annye Mendoza, Anthony Ho, Brooklyn Lathen, Caroline Salinas, Ceclia Salinas, Cyrae Washington, Damayanti Wilson, Ellie Ayala and Emma McKenzie.

Other cast members are; Erin Loosier, Erin Maslonka, Ethan Thomas, Gabi Bimms, Gabrella Campo, Hoan Doan, Jessica De La Cerda, Josh Cox, Kari Leija, Kayla Lawson, Kelly Hudson, Kenya Broussard, Makela Saperstein, Nadia Flores, Patric Ortega, Saschiana Munoz, Sebastian Comabella, Victoria Teny and Xavier Guiterez.

The event also will feature door prizes and a costume contest, said Sepeda.

Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be reached at donmaines@att.netThe Alan Parsons Live Project

Stafford Centre, 10505 Cash Road, will stage The Alan Parsons Live Project at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 24.

Texas Zombie Hunt

Step up to the zombie shooting gallery and walk the haunted trail on Fridays from 7-11 p.m. now through Nov. 2. Gates open at 6:45 p.m. at 22011 Southwest Freeway, Richmond. The evening includes face painters, food and movies. Visit http://www.bigman

adventures.com/ for fees and details.

Oct. 25-27

Clements stages

As You Like It

Clements High School thespians will perform and produce their version of William Shakespeares As You Like It, under the direction of Lucas Howland in the Clements High School Auditorium Oct. 25-27. Performances will be at 7 p.m. each day and at 2 p.m. Oct. 27. Tickets are $10 at the door.

Fall book sale

The Friends of Sienna Branch Librarys Fall Book Sale, the largest of the year, is scheduled for Oct. 25-27, at Sienna Branch Library, 8411 Sienna Springs, Missouri City. Highlights of the sale are boxed sets, fall and winter holiday items and buy one, get one free sale of DVDs and CDs. In addition, thousands of adult and childrens books, audio books and coffee table books are featured. Most sell for 50 cents to $1. Vintage items will be individually priced. Times for the sale: Thursday, Oct. 25, 6-8 p.m.; Friday, Oct. 26, noon-4 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 27, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Proceeds fund library programs. Email friendsofsiennalibrary@

yahoo.com for information.

Oct. 26

Magic in the Plaza

Imperial Sugar will sponsor Magic in the Plaza on Friday, Oct. 26, from 7-9 p.m. at Sugar Land Town Square, Texas 6 at U.S. 59. Magician Ted Schwank will bring The Worlds Greatest Illusions Grand Production Show & Plaza Party featuring an interactive DJ with games, prizes, strolling entertainers, face painting and giveaways.

Music on the Patio

features guitarist

Music on the Patio returns to Italian Maid Cafe at 6450 Cross Creek Bend Lane in Cross Creek Ranch. The cafe will stay open until 9 p.m. on Fridays. The American folk stylings of Mitch Marcoulier will fill the air Oct. 26. To reserve a table, visit www.IMCafe.us or call 281-341-1587. Visit https://www.crosscreek

texas.com for information.

Oct. 26-27

T3 Haunted House

The Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land, 13016 University Blvd., Sugar Land, will host a T3 Haunted House from 7-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 26-27. Admission is $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers. Visit www.hmns.org for information.

Wicked Weekend

Haunted House

Encore Arts will present a Haunted House with a Twist Oct. 26-27 from 8 p.m. to midnight. Visitors to the haunted house are asked to find six clues. Groups of six will be admitted every 10 minutes. Only 18 tickets are available for every half hour. The theater is located at 7926 FM 359 Road S., Fulshear. Visit https://www.kvpac.

org/product-category/

performance/ for details.

Oct. 26-28

Italian Film Festival

Umbria in Sugar Land, an Italian Film Festival, is planned Oct. 26-28. Film screenings will be at Sugar Land Auditorium, 226 Lakeview Drive, Sugar Land. Aperitivos will be at Lonnie Green Park, 130 First St. Registration is required. Email umbria@fortbendcc.org or call 281-566-2161 for information. Visit http://www.umbriain

sugarland.com/ for the film schedule.

Oct. 27

Trail of Treats

Travel the Trail of Treats and stockpile a haul of Halloween sweets at Harvest Green, noon-3 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 27. The free  and non-scary  event will take place at the communitys model home park, 618 Vineyard Hollow Court, where 11 spook-tacular model homes will open their doors. The event will include a deejay, free giveaways, face painting, local vendors and more. Parents must be present. Costumes are encouraged.

Light the Night Walk

Fort Bend Independent School District is forming a team to participate in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Societys Light the Night Walk, which will take place on Saturday, Oct. 27 in Houstons Hermann Square Park at City Hall. Visit https://pages.light

thenight.org/txg/Hou

ston18/FBISDLightUpthe

Night for information or to register.

Tricks, Treats & T-Rex

Celebrate Halloween at the Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land, 13016 University Blvd., Sugar Land, with Tricks, Treats & T-Rex from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27. Admission to the Magical Maze Festival is $3 for members, $12 for nonmember children and $15 for nonmember adults. The event will include carnival games, trick or treating, a pumpkin patch and face painting. Prizes will be awarded in the Grand Costume Contest. visit www.hmns.org for details.

Flying Saucer Beer Fest

Flying Saucers seventh annual Beer Feast will feature more than 50 breweries and 80 craft beers from 2-6:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27, at Sugar Land Town Square, Texas 6 at U.S. 59. Visit http://

www.saucerbeerfeast.

com/festival.php?loca

tion=sl for tickets and information. A portion of proceeds will be donated to Pints for Prostates.

A Victorian

All Hallows Day

George Ranch Historical Park, 10215 FM 762 Road in Richmond, will present a family friendly celebration of past Halloweens at two Victorian-era homes on Saturday, Oct. 27. Attend a Victorian Halloween Party at the 1860s Ryon Prairie Home. At the Davis Victorian Mansion, stop by the cemetery to make a gravestone rubbing and learn about traditions of Victorian-era funerals. Visit the 1830s Jones Stock Farm and the 1930s George Ranch House to trick-or-treat across the park. Visit www.georgeranch.org for information.

Bowling tournament

The Fort Bend Regional Council on Substance Abuses Fort Bend Corporate Challenge 2018 Bowling Tournament will be noon-3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27 at AMF Stafford Lanes, 4919 S. Main St., Stafford. Visit https://www.fort

bendcouncil.org for information.

Gathering of the Zombies 5K Fun Run

The Gathering of the Zombies 5K Fun Run will be Oct. 27 at 3831 Texas 36 S. in Rosenberg. Registration ends at 11 p.m. Oct. 26. The race will begin at 8:30 a.m. CDT. Visit https://runsign

up.com/Race/TX/Rosen

berg/GATHERINGOFTHE

ZOMBIES5KFUNRUN for details.

Oct. 28

Halloween Town

Sugar Lands annual Halloween Town will be 2-6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, at Sugar Land Town Square, Texas 6 at U.S. 59. Festivities will include a costume contest, festive crafts, coloring stations, a scavenger hunt, photo stations and food and beverages for purchase. Organizers ask that there be no blood or gruesome horror elements as they emphasize that the town is for friendly ghosts, goblins and ghouls.

National Cat

Day celebrated

In recognition of the unconditional love and companionship of feline friends, Fort Bend County Libraries Sienna Branch Library, 8411 Sienna Springs Blvd., Missouri City, will have a National Cat Day Celebration on Sunday, Oct. 28, from 2-4 p.m. Cat lovers can enjoy a purrrrfect Sunday afternoon by making DIY cat toys, discovering cat-treat recipes, watching funny cat videos, exploring cat-adoption opportunities and more. A cat-themed Story Time and activities will be available for children of all ages. This event is free. Call 281-238-2900 or 281-633-4734 for information.

Oct. 30

Sugar Land plans open house

Learn about Sugar Land's new single-member City Council districts and Hurricane Harvey drainage projects at the city's second Open House on Oct. 30. The event is open to the public and will be at City Hall, 2700 Town Center Blvd. North, from 6-8 p.m. City departments will staff tables explaining new projects and programs provided to citizens. Participants attending the event may visit with the mayor and City Council members; tour the city's new public safety mobile command post and other public safety vehicles, and get tips from crime prevention officers; For more information, visit www.sugarlandtx.gov or call 281-275-2304.Little by little, two projects spearheaded by The Woodlands Townships ad hoc Economic Development Committee continue to move forward.

Events admission tax funding distribution

In August, the township board received funding requests from nonprofits such as The Woodlands Childrens Museum and The Woodlands Arts Council.

The committee, however, deferred those requests  the funding for which would come out of the events admission tax  and instead requested that criteria be developed to ensure fair distribution.

At the meeting on Monday, Oct. 22, the committee looked at some examples for how to develop criteria.

Nick Wolda, president of Visit The Woodlands, presented to the committee information on how other areas, such as San Antonio, Evanston, Illinois, and West Hollywood, Calif., distribute such money.

The Woodlands is unique from these areas, however, because the funds would come from the events admission tax here, instead of from a hotel occupancy tax. Wolda said the amount generated from the admission tax per year is about $120,000.

Other criteria considered included that the funds must support cultural arts projects that seek to be self-sustaining after receiving the grant money, as well as projects that primarily serve residents of The Woodlands.

No official recommendation was given, but Wolda said that he would draft a document with specific criteria suggestions from committee members to review at their next meeting.

Cultural arts area creation

At the township Board of Directors meeting last week, the economic development committee was allocated $10,000 to internally brand its own cultural arts area. This comes after the committee decided not to pursue a state designated area.

At the EDC meeting on Oct. 22, the committee began to discuss boundaries and possible names for the area.

When it comes to boundaries, the committee seemed to agree that the area should not be too large, but at least include The Woodlands Waterway, Town Green Park, Hughes Landing and perhaps the Glade Arts Foundation museum.

A few possible names were reviewed, such as The Woodlands Arts Path, but no official recommendation was made.

Instead, Wolda said he would meet with committee Member Carol Stromatt and Elizabeth Eddins, the assistant director of Visit The Woodlands, to create formal suggestions and possible logos to review at the next meeting.

Whats going to be beneficial is names, but also what the look and the feel is. In straight type and bullet point, it really doesnt bring it out, Wolda said.

Wolda said he would also ask input from Amy LeCocq, who is on The Woodlands Waterway Arts Councils advisory council.

As long as were going to do it, lets do it right, said Ann Snyder, a committee member and member of the township Board of Directors.

Although committee member and fellow Director John McMullan was absent from the meeting, Stromatt and Snyder scheduled their next meeting for 3 p.m. on Nov. 28 to review suggestions for both projects.Despite the chilly mornings, thousands of Woodlands voters made their way to the polls at the South County Community Center and the George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Library for the first week of early voting.

As of Friday, Oct. 26, more than 18,000 voters made their way past the usual forest of campaign signs planted along the driveway to the community center this week, for what one called the most important election she can remember.

Adorned with a Barack Obama watch and a purse decorated with photos of Michelle Obama, resident Stephanie Cooper was one of the first people to cast her vote.

Im ready for a change, Stephanie Cooper said of the current state of politics. Im tired of waking up every morning to chaos.

Voters credited heavy campaigning from both Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his opponent, Rep. Beto ORourke (D-El Paso), with energizing them to get out and vote early.

Both Cruz and ORourke made stops in the south county over the Oct. 19-20 weekend  Cruz held a joint rally with U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-The Woodlands) in Montgomery on Saturday and is speaking with President Donald Trump at a rally in downtown Houston later on Monday. ORourke also spoke at the same venue early Monday, part of a half-dozen rallies the Democratic challenger to Cruz has planned in the Houston area to kick off early voting.

Early polling places across the Houston area have seen unexpectedly large numbers of voters since opening at 8 a.m. A community center in Houston had people lining up Sunday night and had a line of reportedly more than 2,000 voters early Monday morning.

I wanted to make sure I got my vote in, Cooper said, explaining why she arrived so early.

Early voting locations in Montgomery County North Montgomery County Community Center - 600 Gerald St., Willis Magnolia Community Building - 422 Melton St., Magnolia East County Courthouse Annex - 21130 Highway 59 S., New Caney Lone Star Community Center - 2500 Lone Star Parkway, Montgomery Lee G. Alworth Building - 207 W. Phillips St., Conroe South Montgomery County Library and Community Center - 2235 Lake Robbins Drive, The Woodlands George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Library - 8125 Ashlane Way, The Woodlands See More Collapse

For voter Mary Ellis Johnson, this years elections are do or die. She said she wants to see Cruz back in the Capitol, and her hopes are for Republicans to strengthen their majority in Congress  both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Were in danger of losing big, Johnson said, referring to what many across the nation have predicted as an impending blue wave of Democratic victories.

Officials running for re-election also took to the community centers crowded parking lot  Brady was joined by Conroe Independent School District board President Melanie Bush and The Woodlands Township Board of Directors Member Brian Boniface. All three candidates were on hand to speak with voters and encourage them to get to the polls.

Im getting face-to-face with voters, said Boniface, who is being challenged by former aerospace industry engineer turned stay-at-home mother Treva Taglieri. Its my commitment to the constituents.

In the first four days of early voting, more than 55,000 Montgomery County residents cast their votes, compared to 57,000 total in the 2014 midterm elections and 65,000 in 2010.

For many in the seemingly interminable line, voting was more than just about fulfilling their civic duty.

Roger Channing said he had never before voted in a mid-term or Senate race  but the candidacy of Beto ORourke changed that. Channing woke up early to see the state representative from El Paso speak at the community center.

I believe in the values of Beto and what he stands for, Channing said. I want to get out and support him and trying to make a change.

mrincon@chron.comNEW ORLEANS - An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in U.S. history.

Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. With no fix in sight, the Taylor offshore spill is threatening to overtake BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster as the largest ever.

As oil continues to spoil the Gulf, the Trump administration is proposing the largest expansion of leases for the oil and gas industry, with the potential to open nearly the entire outer continental shelf to offshore drilling. That includes the Atlantic coast, where drilling hasn't happened in more than a century and where hurricanes hit with double the regularity of the Gulf.

Tim Meko/The Washington Post

Expansion plans come despite fears that the offshore oil industry is poorly regulated and that the planet needs to decrease fossil fuels to combat climate change, as well as the knowledge that 14 years after Ivan took down Taylor's platform, the broken wells are releasing so much oil that researchers needed respirators to study the damage.

"I don't think people know that we have this ocean in the United States that's filled with industry," said Scott Eustis, an ecologist for the Gulf Restoration Network, as his six-seat plane circled the spill site on a flyover last summer. On the horizon, a forest of oil platforms rose up from the Gulf's waters, and all that is left of the doomed Taylor platform are rainbow-colored oil slicks that are often visible for miles. He cannot imagine similar development in the Atlantic, where the majority of coastal state governors, lawmakers, attorneys general and residents have aligned against the administration's proposal.

The Taylor Energy spill is largely unknown outside Louisiana because of the company's effort to keep it secret in the hopes of protecting its reputation and proprietary information about its operations, according to a lawsuit that eventually forced the company to reveal its cleanup plan. The spill was hidden for six years before environmental watchdog groups stumbled on oil slicks while monitoring the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster a few miles north of the Taylor site in 2010.

The Interior Department is fighting an effort by Taylor Energy to walk away from the disaster. The company sued Interior in federal court, seeking the return of about $450 million left in a trust it established with the government to fund its work to recover part of the wreckage and locate wells buried under 100 feet of muck.

Taylor Energy declined to comment. The company has argued that there's no evidence to prove any of the wells are leaking. Last month, the Justice Department submitted an independent analysis showing that the spill was much larger than the one-to-55 barrels per day that the U.S. Coast Guard National Response Center (NRC) claimed, using data supplied by the oil company.

The author of the analysis, Oscar Garcia-Pineda, a geoscience consultant who specializes in remote sensing of oil spills, said there were several instances when the NRC reported low estimates on the same days he was finding heavy layers of oil in the field.

"There is abundant evidence that supports the fact that these reports from NRC are incorrect," Garcia-Pineda wrote. Later he said: "My conclusion is that NRC reports are not reliable."

In an era of climate change and warmer open waters, the storms are becoming more frequent and violent. Starting with Ivan in 2004, several hurricanes battered or destroyed more than 150 platforms in just four years.

On average, 330,000 gallons of crude are spilled each year in Louisiana from offshore platforms and onshore oil tanks, according to a state agency that monitors them.

The Gulf is one of the richest and most productive oil and gas regions in the world, expected to yield more than 600 million barrels this year alone, nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. oil production. Another 40 billion barrels rest underground, waiting to be recovered, government analysts say.

About 2,000 platforms stand in the waters off the Bayou State. Nearly 2,000 others are off the coasts of its neighbors, Texas and Mississippi. On top of that are nearly 50,000 miles of active and inactive pipelines carrying oil and minerals to the shore.

And the costs are high.

For every 1,000 wells in state and federal waters, there's an average of 20 uncontrolled releases of oil - or blowouts - every year. A fire erupts offshore every three days, on average, and hundreds of workers are injured annually.

BP has paid or set aside $66 billion for fines, legal settlements and cleanup of the 168 million-gallon spill - a sum that the oil giant could, painfully, afford. But many companies with Gulf leases and drilling operations are small, financially at-risk and hard-pressed to pay for an accident approaching that scale.

One of them was Taylor Energy.

- - -

Taylor Energy was a giant in New Orleans.

Owned by Patrick Taylor, a magnate and philanthropist who launched an ambitious college scholarship program for low-income students, it was once the only individually owned company to explore for and produce oil in the Gulf of Mexico, according to his namesake foundation.

Taylor made what was arguably his most ambitious transaction in 1995, when he took over an oil-production platform once operated by BP. Standing in more than 450 feet of water, it was about 40 stories tall. Its legs were pile-driven into the muddy ocean floor and funnels were attached to 28 drilled oil wells.

At its peak, the oil company helped make Taylor and his wife, Phyllis, the richest couple in the Big Easy.

That investment was obliterated on Sept. 15, 2004, when Hurricane Ivan unleashed 145 mph winds and waves that topped 70 feet as it roared into the Gulf. Deep underwater, the Category 4 storm shook loose tons of mud and buckled the platform.

The avalanche sank the colossal structure and knocked it "170 meters down slope of its original location," researcher Sarah Josephine Harrison wrote in a postmortem of the incident.

More than 620 barrels of crude oil stacked on its deck came tumbling down with it. The sleeves that conducted oil from its wells were mangled and ripped away. A mixture of steel and leaking oil was buried in 150 feet of mud.

Less than two months after the storm, Patrick F. Taylor died of a heart infection at 67, leaving a fortune for philanthropy and a massive cleanup bill.

Taylor Energy reported the spill to the Coast Guard, which monitored the site for more than half a decade without making the public fully aware of the mess it was seeing. Four years after the leak started, in July 2008, the Coast Guard informed the company that the spill had been deemed "a continuous, unsecured crude oil discharge" that posed "a significant threat to the environment," according to a lawsuit between Taylor Energy and its insurer.

Taylor Energy made a deal with federal officials to establish a $666 million trust to stop the spill.

It would be a delicate, risky operation. Taylor and the contractors it hired were asked to somehow locate wells in a nearly impenetrable grave of mud and debris, then cap them. Failing that, it could create a device to contain the leak.

But they were forbidden from boring or drilling through the muck for fear that they would strike a pipe or well, risking the kind of catastrophe on the scale of the BP disaster a few miles south. That precaution slowed the pace of the salvage operation.

"We had no idea that any of that was going on," said Marylee Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.

Taylor Energy spent a fortune to pluck the deck of the platform from the ocean and plug about a third of the wells. It built a kind of shield to keep the crude from rising.

But no matter what it did, the oil kept leaking.

- - -

In 2010, six years after the oil leak started, scientists studying the BP spill realized something was amiss with the oil slicks they were seeing.

"We were flying to monitor the BP disaster and we kept seeing these slicks, but they were nowhere near the BP spill," said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network, which monitors the water from boats and planes.

Satellite images confirmed the oddity.

"It was there all the time, longer than the BP spill," said John Amos, founder and president of Sky Truth, a nonprofit organization that tracks pollution.

Under the Oil Pollution Act, companies are obligated to report hazardous spills to the NRC, which maintains a database of chemical pollution.

No law compels the companies or the federal government to raise public awareness, but the Clean Water Act clearly calls for citizen involvement.

Environmentalists took Taylor Energy to court.

In their lawsuit, the conservationists called the agreement between Taylor Energy and the federal government a secret deal "that was inconsistent with national policy."

That policy, they argued, was made clear in the Clean Water Act, which mandates "public participation in the . . . enforcement of any regulation." Citizen participation, the act says, "shall be provided for, encouraged and assisted."

Taylor Energy and the Coast Guard - which is part of a Unified Command of federal agencies that includes the Interior Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency - did not live up to the policy. In fact, the public wasn't made aware of the spill even after a private firm tested fish in the area and submitted an assessment to Taylor Energy in 2009 that said "there is an acceptable risk to humans if fish from the . . . area are consumed."

"Taylor has failed to provide the public with information regarding the pace and extent of the oil leaks and Taylor's efforts to control the leaks," the lawsuit said.

It would take another three years before the government revealed an even deeper truth. Taylor Energy had been playing down the severity of the spill. An Associated Press investigation in 2015 determined that it was about 20 times worse than the company had reported.

Taylor Energy had argued that the leak was two gallons per day; the Coast Guard finally said it was 84 gallons or more, and was almost certainly coming from any of 16 wells.

"There's a fine for not reporting, but none for underreporting," Amos said. "If it's only three gallons a day, who cares, that's a trivial problem."

- - -

Nearly a decade after the oil platform went down, the government determined that the actual level of oil leaking into the Gulf was between one and 55 barrels per day. Now, the new estimate dwarfs that: up to 700 barrels per day. Each barrel contains 42 gallons.

Despite that finding, NOAA is still in the early stages of a resource assessment of marine life that could explain the impact of the Taylor Energy spill, and is more than three years behind a deadline to issue a biological determination of the BP spill's impact on marine life.

In July, Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal organization that represents conservation groups, sued NOAA for failing to produce a timely study.

Like Eustis, Amos said Atlantic coast residents should be wary. But in that region, where beaches and tourism enrich nearly every state, distrust over offshore leasing and drilling is bipartisan.

Governors, state lawmakers and attorneys general lashed out at the administration's proposal. New Jersey passed a law that forbids oil and infrastructure in state waters three miles from shore, crippling any effort to run pipelines from platforms to the shore. Other states passed similar laws.

In the Carolinas, where Hurricane Florence's winds topped 150 mph and produced a monster 83-foot wave as it neared landfall, governors who represent both political parties implored Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to rethink the plan.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf, Taylor Energy was down to a single employee - its president, William Pecue.

At a 2016 public forum in Baton Rouge, Pecue made the case for allowing the company to walk away from its obligation to clean up the mess. Taylor Energy had been sold to a joint venture of South Korean companies in 2008, the same year it started the $666 million trust. A third of the money had been spent on cleanup, and only a third of the leaking wells had been fixed. But Pecue wanted to recover $450 million, arguing the spill could not be contained.

"I can affirmatively say that we do believe this was an act of God under the legal definition," Pecue said. In other words, Taylor Energy had no control over the hurricane.

But Ivan was no freak storm.

It was one of more than 600 that have been tracked in the Gulf since records were kept in the mid-1800s, according to NOAA.

Fourteen years after the Taylor spill, and 10 years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the federal government still doesn't know the spills' full impact on marine life. And there is no economic analysis showing the value of the oil flowing into the sea and potential royalties lost to taxpayers. Activists also want an analysis to determine if oil is ruining marshland and making its way to beaches.

"Even though oil did not reach a lot of these beaches [during the BP spill], the fact that the public heard about it, it killed the beach economy for quite some time," Sarthou said. "You don't want to go to a beach with tar balls or oil washing up."

At the time, Sarthou was unaware that Garcia-Pineda was conducting a study in the Gulf that would show the spill was far worse than imagined - up to 10 times worse than what the federal government was reporting.

As the saga in the Gulf plays out, wary officials on the Atlantic coast are anxiously watching President Donald Trump's proposal to offer federal offshore leases.

It would take at least a decade for Atlantic drilling to start. The industry would first want to conduct seismic testing to determine the amount of oil and gas in the ground. Depending on the results, companies would bid for the leases. Interior has yet to approve seismic testing, which some studies say harms marine life, including large mammals such as dolphins and whales.

Oil and gas representatives say energy development off that coast could provide South Carolina with $2.7 billion in annual economic growth, 35,000 jobs and potentially lower heating costs for residents struggling to pay their bills.

During a federal informational hearing in South Carolina to explain the Trump administration's plan in February, Mark Harmon, the director of a state unit of the American Petroleum Institute, stressed that point. "Ultimately, it means the potential for jobs and reinvestment in the community," he said.

Once the oil industry gains a foothold in a region, it's game over, said Chris Eaton, an Earthjustice attorney.

"A major part of the economy starts to change" as jobs with pay approaching $100,000 transform a tourism market to oil. "If it gets going, that train isn't going to stop," he said. "Let's talk about what's happening in the Gulf before we move into the Atlantic."AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  With Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. already visiting the state and the president himself coming Monday, Ted Cruz is convening a veritable parade of Republican powerbrokers in the final weeks of the Texas Senate campaign to ensure Democrat Beto O'Rourke doesn't upset him.

O'Rourke is countering with the opposite. He's blowing off the Democratic Party's political luminaries and instead cranking up the cool  rocking with Willie Nelson, securing shout-outs from star rappers and road-tripping with a 38-year-old Kennedy whose family name still has its mystique.

While their approaches seem divergent, both candidates are opting to sacrifice one goal to accomplish another. They're trying to fire up the loyalists they see as key to victory, even if it means slighting moderates and undecided voters  energizing the right and the left while ignoring the middle.

PREPARATIONS: Street closures in Downtown Houston for Trump's appearance

"There's a common misconception that elections are mostly decided by so-called 'swing voters,'" O'Rourke's campaign wrote in its "Plan to Win." Cruz has for months noted that there are more Texas Republicans than Democrats, so if he guards against conservative complacency, he wins.

Both may be onto something. A recent Quinnipiac University poll that showed Cruz leading the race by 9 points also found that, among likely Texas voters who could name a Senate candidate, 96 percent had made up their minds.

"There are many of us who argue there is no middle and there are no swing voters left," said Texas Democratic consultant Colin Strother.

O'Rourke hasn't completely written off non-Democratic voters, trumpeting bipartisanship at rallies. But he hasn't softened a platform of universal health care, gun control, decriminalizing marijuana and offering a $10,000-per-child federal grant for pre-kindergarten.

"Beto is saying, 'Hey look, you're all welcome here, but this is what I believe,'" Strother said.

After spending months hitting rural corners of the state that other Democrats gave up on decades ago, O'Rourke is now largely sticking to reliably blue venues such as college campuses, a Willie Nelson concert in Austin, a Houston show featuring rapper Bun B, Texas-Mexico border concerts and rallies and a Dallas sunrise jog.

DAY ONE: Shocking turnout for first day of early voting in Houston

The recent Austin City Limits festival was so choked with "Beto for Texas" T-shirts that it sometimes seemed the lanky Senate hopeful was headlining along with Metallica. And as R&B star Khalid won an American Music Award this month, he declared from the stage, "Shout-out to Beto."

"He's representing everyone and not just a certain group of people," said 18-year-old Anoosha Adtani, who joined a line of students snaking out the door when O'Rourke appeared at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Not on the schedule are ex-Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State John Kerry, though they've pitched in on Democratic campaigns elsewhere. Liberal powerhouses like Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also haven't stumped for O'Rourke.

Instead, he's brought in Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III, who is enough of a greenhorn nationally that Cruz has made fun of him, laughing about how Kennedy drove O'Rourke between events and saying, "It may be the first time in history anyone's ever asked a Kennedy to drive." That raised in peoples' minds the deadly, 1969 car crash on Chappaquiddick Island involving Sen. Ted Kennedy, Joe's great-uncle.

With his party controlling the White House and Congress, Cruz now touts a Republican status quo he attempted to torch as a tea party firebrand. In addition to the Trump administration's top brass, fellow Texan John Cornyn, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, hosted a Washington fundraiser for Cruz despite their past policy clashes. Fox News host Sean Hannity and ex-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, now Trump's secretary of energy, also campaigned for him this weekend.

Still, George W. Bush lives in Dallas but isn't hitting the trail on Cruz's behalf, underscoring how he'd rather have Trump supporters than traditional, country-club Republicans.

A three-term El Paso congressman, O'Rourke has stayed within striking distance despite his party not winning any of Texas' nearly 30 statewide offices for almost 25 years. His crunch-time strategy is to mobilize 5.5 million people who "are very likely to vote for Beto if they vote, but who might not vote unless we contact them." That means prioritizing those who moved to Texas from other states and often settled in urban areas, and millennials who are "the most diverse, most progressive generation in American history," according to his playbook.

Chairman James Dickey said the Republican Party of Texas has been similarly contacting new and past sympathetic voters for months, not just in the race's final weeks.

"We have a very clear process that has worked very well," Dickey said.

Texas added 1.6-plus million registered voters since 2014's midterm elections, with young voters helping to power that surge. But Austin Republican analyst Derek Ryan noted that four years ago, only about 14 percent of the newly registered voters under 20 wound up casting ballots.

O'Rourke, though, insists that courting youth is no fool's errand.

"Young people have been coming out to our events in record numbers," he said after the San Antonio event. "I'm going where the leaders are."

___

Sign up for "Politics in Focus," a weekly newsletter showcasing the AP's best political reporting from around the country leading up to the midterm elections: https://bit.ly/2ICEr3DChina called on the U.S. to reconsider pulling out of a three-decade-old arms control treaty with Russia, saying the move would generate "multiple negative effects."

President Donald Trump said Saturday he planned to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as INT, claiming that Moscow had breached the agreement on intermediate-range conventional and nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported the move was in part to enable the U.S. to counter a Chinese arms buildup in the Pacific.

"I want to stress that it is completely wrong to use China as an excuse for pulling out of the treaty," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Monday in Beijing. "We hope relevant countries can cherish the hard-won achievements over the years, prudently and properly handle issues related to the treaty through dialogue and consultation, and think twice about withdrawing from the treaty."

Without the restrictions of the 1987 treaty, China has had a free hand developing and deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles of its own, including missiles designed to take out U.S. aircraft carriers patrolling the waters of the Western Pacific. Exiting the accord would free the U.S. to deploy new weapons in the Indo-Pacific to respond to China's attempt to erode its post-World War II dominance.

"China hasn't signed the agreement and has been producing mid-range missiles and so-called carrier killers to asymmetrically increase the costs of an American-led naval containment strategy," said Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo. "The U.S. is likely withdrawing to send a message to Beijing that the U.S. can and will produce mid-range nuclear weapons that can erode away China's existing asymmetric advantage."

The prospect of a U.S. weapons buildup would underscore concern in Beijing that the U.S. is intent on thwarting China's rise, be it via a trade war or a systematic program of military containment. Since Trump's election U.S.-China relations have deteriorated on virtually every front, from trade to cyber-security to geopolitical flash points like Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Under the 1987 agreement, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union committed to eliminate all ground-based nuclear and conventional missiles with a range between 500 to 5,550 kilometers (310 to 3,420 miles).

China's collection of intermediate missiles -- including the recently developed DF-26s -- form the backbone of its offensive capabilities in the Asia Pacific and are designed to hit targets along the strategic "first and second island chains," according to Zhang Baohui, director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

The "first island chain" is a string of archipelagos stretching from Japan, past Taiwan to the Philippines -- all U.S. security partners. The "second island chain" runs southward past Guam toward Papua New Guinea. Guam hosts a major U.S. naval base for the Pacific Ocean.

"A China factor in the U.S. decision to withdraw from the treaty is highly plausible," Zhang said. "It is China, not Russia, that is possessing an ever-increasing number of medium and intermediate range missiles."

As it would take time to build new nuclear-tipped missiles, the U.S. was preparing to modify existing weapons, including its non-nuclear Tomahawk missiles, and was likely to deploy them first in Asia, the New York Times reported, citing officials who have been briefed on the issue. The weapons may be based in Japan, or at the U.S. naval base in Guam where it would face little political opposition, the Times reported.

"China would have little choice but to spend more on the military -- read less on the economy -- or come to the negotiating table to come to an agreement about mid-range systems," said Nagy. "This would have the effect of removing their existing anti-access area denial strategy."

- - -

Bloomberg's Dandan Li contributed.Precisely on cue with the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, anti-LGBT groups have filed lawsuits challenging LGBT rights that may in the near future serve to test the new justice on his position on the issue.

The complaints  two filed in federal court, one filed in state court  were filed in Texas and seek to challenge the City of Austins LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. agency charged with federal employment civil rights law, over its interpretation of Title VII to prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination in the workforce.

But Austins LGBT-inclusive ordinance has been on the books for some time and the EEOC has taken charge of anti-LGBT discrimination for years under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (The EEOC determined in the 2012 decision of Macy v. Holder that federal law bars anti-trans discrimination in employment and in the 2015 decision of Baldwin c. Foxx federal law bars anti-gay discrimination.)

Conspicuously, the two federal lawsuits were filed on Oct. 6, the exact date Kavanaugh was confirmed as a U.S. associate justice to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh wont have a chance to act on the newly filed lawsuits anytime soon, but they will likely percolate through the courts, giving anti-LGBT groups the opportunity to file petitions for review.

The newly confirmed justice, chosen by President Trump from a list of potential nominees backed by the Federalist Society and the anti-LGBT Heritage Foundation, could be the fifth and deciding vote on whether to preserve LGBT rights if the petitions in the federal cases come before the Supreme Court. (The lawsuit in state court raising state claims will be left to Texas state court. Kavanaugh or the Supreme Court wouldnt be asked to review the decisions.)

The federal lawsuit against EEOC asserts the LGBT protections violate the religious freedom of churches under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by forcing them to hire employee who are LGBT despite religious objections of the employer. (Current law doesnt require churches to hire pastors who are LGBT contrary to religious beliefs, but does prohibit religiously affiliated organizations from engaging in anti-LGBT discrimination for non-ministerial positions.)

Similarly, the federal lawsuit against Austins ordinance asserts a violation of the Free Exercise Clause under the First Amendment in addition to making religious freedom claims under the Texas Constitution and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

A shared plaintiff in the two federal lawsuits is the U.S. Pastor Council, a Houston-based community of Christian conservatives that also unsuccessfully pushed for the anti-transgender bathroom legislation in Texas. In the case against EEOC, the Houston-based Hotze Health & Wellness Center, a Christian-owned business in Houston that seeks to refuse to hire LGBT employees is a plaintiff. In the state lawsuit, Texas Values, a social conservative non-profit in Austin, is the sole plaintiff.

The religious freedom claims in the lawsuits may be seeking to capitalize on Kavanaughs remarks during his confirmation hearing, when Kavanaugh said in response to questions from conservative senators like Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that religious freedom should be protected in the public square.

The Framers understood the importance of protecting conscience, Kavanaugh said. Its akin to the free speech protection in many ways. No matter what God you worship, or if you worship no God at all, you are equally AmericanIf you have religious beliefs, religious people, religious speech, you have just as much right to be in the public square and to participate in public programs as others do. You cant be denied just because of religious status.

In response to these lawsuits, pro-LGBT groups may have to seek relief soon from either the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. The lawsuit against the EEOC was assigned to U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor, a George W. Bush appointee with a reputation for being hostile to LGBT rights. (OConnor issued a nationwide injunction against Obama-era guidance instructing schools Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires schools to allow transgender kids to use the restroom of their choice.) The other federal case against Austins LGBT-inclusive ordinance is pending before U.S. District Judge Robert Pittman, an Obama appointee.

Jonathan Mitchell, an Austin-based attorney whose law firm Mitchell Law PLLC filed each of the lawsuits, declined to comment on whether the timing of the lawsuits was intended to coincide with the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing a practice of not commenting on pending litigation.

LGBT legal experts were hesitant to ascribe the filing of the new litigation with the addition of the new conservative to the high court, but predicted they were the kind of lawsuits they would expect anti-LGBT groups to file in greater capacity in the aftermath of the confirmation.

Jon Davidson, legal director for Freedom for All Americans, said he isnt sure whether the lawsuits were timed to Kavanaughs confirmation, but foresees more aggressive litigation moves in federal courts by anti-LGBTQ forces due to the increasing number of appointments of federal judges with histories of opposition to LGBTQ rights and Justice Kennedys retirement.

I believe these lawsuits are a continuation of efforts by anti-LGBTQ organizations and politicians efforts to weaken, if not invalidate, local nondiscrimination protections in Texas and elsewhere, notwithstanding the history of local government regulation in this area, Davidson said. I further believe the lawsuits are a continuation of efforts to distort the concept of religious freedom from the right to believe a license to use religion to act in violation of others rights. All of us care about religious freedom  thats why its part of the Constitutions promise to all Americans. That will never be up for debate. But religious freedom should be used as a shield, not as a weapon, and its reach should not be distorted in order to harm LGBTQ people or anyone else.

James Esseks, director of the LGBT and HIV project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Kavanaughs test may come sooner given cases on LGBT rights were already waiting for the new justice before the Supreme Court prior to his confirmation.

Among them is a petition from Harris Funeral Homes in Michigan challenging a ruling from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals asserting it violated Title VII by terminating the employment of Aimee Stephens for transitioning. Two other petitions seeking clarification on whether Title VII applies to anti-gay discrimination are also pending before the Supreme Court.

A growing chorus of appeals courts  and a solid majority of the American people  agree that firing someone because they are LGBTQ is against the law, Esseks said. The high court may weigh in on whether laws prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace apply to discrimination towards LGBTQ people this term.A Japanese government commission on Monday issued an administrative directive to Facebook, Inc. following recent incidents involving the U.S. company, including a massive breach of users' personal data through its social networking platform.

Under the directive, the Personal Information Protection Commission demanded Facebook to take appropriate measures to thoroughly offer users easy-to-understand explanations and obtain their consent.

The commission has been gathering information on the Facebook data breach, working with regulatory authorities overseas.

When it comes to Facebook's handling personal data, it is suspected that data of up to 87 million people were improperly handed over to Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis company that served as an election consultant for Donald Trump's team during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.

It has also been found that in September hackers accessed personal data of about 29 million people.

In the wake of the series of personal information data breaches, the commission called for Facebook to draw up measures for preventing a recurrence.

Other instructions included thorough surveillance of apps developed by third parties on the company's service platform that allowed the breaches.

When a Facebook user browses a website with a "like" button, data such as the accessed website are automatically sent to Facebook even if the user does not press the button. Regarding this as problematic as well, the commission urged Facebook to give users thorough explanations.

The administrative directive stipulated that Facebook monitor the activities of apps developed by third parties. It also stated that the company should notify users, investigate the causes of the incidents and draw up measures for preventing a recurrence, as well as produce reports to the commission.One of our ancestors was apparently responsible for building this house between 1790 and 1800. His name was Henry Hines (born around 1750, my 5th great-g...

2 months agoA 15-year-old high school student is in police custody and facing criminal charges Monday after allegedly making online threats against two schools in Virginia, authorities said.

According to Manassas, Virginia, police, the threats were made on Instagram against Osbourn High and Baldwin Elementary schools. Police said because of the threats, there would be an increased police presence at both campuses Monday.

Police said in a statement the investigation is ongoing.

On Sunday evening, the police department said it had heard of the threats against the schools and was looking into them. Police said the threats were made on social media and directed to students at those two schools.

The threat involved "an image of an assault rifle" that was attached to a social media post, according to police.

Officials said the threats were found to be "not credible" and the suspect "did not have the means to carry out the threat," according to a statement.

"The photograph depicted in the threatening pose was not taken by the suspect and was obtained via the Internet," police said in a statement.

Detectives later identified and arrested the boy, who lives in Manassas. He faces charges of threats to commit serious bodily harm to people on school property.

The suspect is a ninth-grade student at Osbourn High School, police said. Officials said they determined the teen was acting alone. He is being held without bond.

On its website, Manassas City Public Schools officials wrote that school counselors were available for students who need assistance and thanked law enforcement for the "quick action in bringing this incident to closure."

The incident comes after Montgomery County, Maryland, authorities arrested a man who made threats of violence against Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md. Luis Amilcar Cabrera, 18, was charged with making a threat of mass violence at the school he once attended.

Officials said he posted a photo on social media of himself holding an assault-style rifle and threatening to "shoot up" the school, officials said.

His postings were spotted by students at the high school, and they reported what they saw to a police officer assigned to the school and to administrators. At one point, several students told police about photos showing Cabrera holding a rifle, and he had apparently written "I hate WJ" and "Ha, ha, I'm going to shoot up the school," according to Montgomery County police.WASHINGTON - After a cyberattack forced a local Alaska government to disconnect its computer systems from the internet this summer, employees were ready with a Plan B. They picked up pens and paper - and even resorted to typewriters - so that the government could continue its daily work, from collecting property taxes to checking out books at public libraries.

They had practiced for this kind of scenario, which helped ensure the multipronged malware attack did not grind public business to a halt, said Eric Wyatt, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough IT director. "Having these plans and being able to go to paper and pen and manual methods was very helpful," he said. "We could keep our doors open and continue to provide service to our citizens."

The focus of government cybersecurity has largely centered on developing cutting-edge solutions - and shoring up basic vulnerabilities - to prevent attacks on IT systems. But as more and more government business moves online, there's a growing call among security pros and government officials for a different, albeit slightly more fatalistic, approach. Public agencies, this cohort says, should just assume they will be hacked - and practice how to carry out essential functions without internet access or even computers in some cases.

"Assume the worst," said Suzanne Spaulding, who was undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate - the agency's cybersecurity arm - in the Obama administration. "Assume that your adversary has gotten through all of your defenses and has figured out how to cause this kind of disruption where you may, for example, lose access to all the things that you rely on in the networked world, and how could you proceed."

Kevin Mandia, chief executive of the cybersecurity firm FireEye, advocated for such an approach during a congressional hearing last month on homeland security threats.

Mandia wants senators to "require government agencies to develop and carry out continuity-of-operations plans that practice, even for just 24 hours, going without internet connectivity while continuing critical functions."

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee before which Mandia testified, told me in an email that his proposal was "worth considering." She said that seeking to thwart cyberattacks before they hit "should always be our first priority" but also acknowledged that "no defense system is invincible."

"Emergency preparedness including carrying out drills and real-life exercises can help save lives when terrorist attacks or natural disasters occur, and cyberattacks are no different," Hassan said. "Both the public and private sectors need to conduct trainings, simulations and planning for cyberattacks - and drills to practice not having internet access for 24 hours are worth considering."

Moreover, former U.S. cybersecurity officials said public agencies and businesses should not merely develop contingency plans in case of a cyberattack but carry out exercises to expose and fill security gaps in those plans. Mark Weatherford, a former deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity at DHS, said he worries that some government agencies might develop backup plans to operate in "degraded mode" but may not bother to test them.

"It's one thing to have a strategy written down in a notebook," said Weatherford, who now serves as senior vice president and chief cybersecurity strategist at the cybersecurity company vArmour. "It's another thing to pull that strategy out and say: 'We're going to actually walk through this thing.' "

Spaulding also called such exercises "critical" and stressed that contingency plans should involve tools that are completely offline to be fully immune from hacking.

"You need to make sure that you have thought about pre-internet ways of doing your business, and that you don't throw those things away when you move to take advantage of a networked world," said Spaulding, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Spaulding pointed to the restoration of power after a December 2015 cyberattack on the Ukrainian power grid as an example of the usefulness of manual backup measures. The attack caused power outages for about 225,000 customers for several hours. But, as E&E News reported, manual controls from the Soviet Union era allowed power to be restored manually.

"They got the power back on not by fixing the network, but by getting guys in trucks who knew how the grid was laid out, who went to the places where the breakers had been flipped and they moved those breakers back in place and got the power back on in six hours," Spaulding said.

And this issue could hit close to home for lawmakers. Mandia in his September testimony sought to stress how far-reaching and unpredictable the damage from a cyberattack could be - by emphasizing the threat to lawmakers themselves.

"Imagine if the U.S. Senate came offline for a day or two from the internet," he said. "What would happen? Would you be able to get into the parking garage? Would you be able to even make a phone call from your desk? Would you be able to buy lunch in the cafeteria downstairs? It has a lot of unintended consequences that people have not predicted in the past."WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi walked a fine line Monday when asked about her future as the top leader of House Democrats, refusing to put an expiration date on her tenure days after calling herself a "transitional figure" who might hand over power after a short second stint as speaker.

Pelosi was asked about those "transitional" comments, made last week to the Los Angeles Times, during a CNN-hosted event in New York on Monday. She suggested that she would serve at least through the 2020 elections.

"There has to be a transition at some point in all of this," she said Monday, adding: "I'm not going to make myself a lame duck."

The remarks come as Democratic candidates across the country continue to be blitzed with Republican attack ads featuring Pelosi as a symbol of liberal overreach in swing and Republican-leaning congressional districts. That has prompted dozens of candidates to put some distance between themselves and Pelosi; some have said outright that they won't vote to make her speaker again.

Those dynamics are playing out as younger Democrats inside the House have been moving to open up opportunities for a new generation of party leaders. Some have openly tried to unseat Pelosi, 78; others have called for a clear plan to open up the leadership table to younger members. But Pelosi, after 16 years leading Democrats in the House, retains strong support inside the caucus that she has built through years of legislative victories and campaign fundraising.

Should Democrats win back the House majority from Republicans, the idea of a "transitional" speaker could hold appeal for newly elected lawmakers who spent their campaigns calling for new party leadership but who want to avoid a messy shake-up that could set back the party's governing plans.

Rep. James Clyburn, S.C., the No. 3 Democratic leader in the House, also has floated the idea of having a transitional leader - but only if Pelosi is unable to secure support to return as speaker.

As she has said during several recent public appearances, Pelosi expressed confidence that she would be able to retake the speaker's gavel if the Democrats win a majority.

"It's up to them to make that decision," she said of her colleagues, "but I feel pretty comfortable."

"I think that I have a special understanding, institutional memory, knowledge of the substance, knowledge of the legislative process that holds me in good stead for now," she added, before hinting that her service beyond the next term would depend on what voters do in 2020. "We will see what happens in the presidential [election] coming up."

At another point, Pelosi said that she is routinely asked whether she will run for president but that she does not plan to do so. Instead, Pelosi said, she has encouraged outgoing California Gov. Jerry Brown, 80, to run.President Donald Trump said the U.S. will cut off foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as thousands of migrants continued to march from Central America toward the U.S. border.

"Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," the president wrote on Twitter.

Trump has sought to escalate undocumented immigration as an issue ahead of pivotal midterm congressional elections on Nov. 6, and he has blamed the so-called "caravan" of Central American migrants on Democrats. "Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!" he said earlier on Twitter.

Cutting aid isn't as simple as turning off a tap. Much of the money for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras was appropriated by Congress in the form of anti-corruption and good-governance programs. Those initiatives have broad support from lawmakers, who have already promised to put up a fight should Trump try to make good on his threat. A 1974 law prohibits the president from withholding money appropriated by Congress.

"Fortunately, Congress-not the President-has the power of the purse, and my colleagues and I will not stand idly by as this Administration ignores congressional intent," Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement emailed to reporters.

Trump could, however, cut funding in future budgets, though Congress would again have the final say. More immediately, he could order the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to redirect some money to other countries in the region. There is no indication so far that he's made that request, and the White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on any action Trump has taken to prepare for a cut-off of funds.

Last week, Trump said the U.S. would cut off "all" foreign aid to the Central American countries if the migrants -- most of them from Honduras -- weren't stopped. He said on Monday that the group includes criminals and "unknown Middle Easterners," without providing evidence for the claim.

The migrants began crossing into southern Mexico Saturday, avoiding Mexican migration authorities and federal police by jumping off the border bridge crossing the Suchiate river or by crossing the river in makeshift rafts made of tires and boards, according to images from El Financiero Bloomberg TV. Federal police focused on preventing the migrants from crossing the bridge rather than stopping them from circumventing it.

On the Mexican side, at a city park in Ciudad Hidalgo, residents greeted the migrants with food, water and live music. Men and women danced to the sounds of marimba music, celebrating having arrived to Mexico. Others sought rest at a nearby shelter, while some started to walk north on the Pan-American highway, toward the city of Tapachula.

Speaking on Sunday in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador repeated his call for the U.S. and Mexico to face the migration challenge by investing together in development projects in Central America, saying that people who leave their homes do so out of necessity.

The press offices of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray on Monday declined to comment on the progress of the caravan or Mexican efforts to halt it. Pena Nieto's office referred to a statement from the Foreign Ministry on Friday that Mexican authorities will deal with the situation on the Guatemala border with respect for human rights.

Trump said Monday that he had alerted the U.S. military that the caravan represented a national emergency. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, said Monday that the Defense Department hadn't been asked to provide additional support to border enforcement beyond National Guard troops deployed earlier this year under the command of border-state governors.

There are currently 2,100 National Guard performing support jobs that help to free up Department of Homeland Security personnel to patrol the border, Davis said.

Trump's tweets on Monday came after Fox News broadcast several images of the caravan, saying that the group of migrants had grown to 7,000.

The U.S. provided more than $175 million in foreign aid to Honduras in the 2017 fiscal year, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Guatemala received $249 million and El Salvador $115 million. Much of the money went to counter-narcotics and security, and critics of Trump's approach have said cutting off aid would damage the nation's economies, creating even more refugees.

Honduras and El Salvador have some of the highest homicide rates in the world, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Many migrants from the countries apply for asylum in the U.S. claiming they are fleeing violence or threats.

U.S. aid to the countries amounts to about 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent of their gross domestic product and was already expected to fall in 2019, according to Eurasia Group Latin America analyst Risa Grais-Targow. Cutting the aid wouldn't have a huge impact on their economies, she said, but would represent "additional headwinds" on top of Trump's broad immigration policies and his attempt to cancel a special immigration status for tens of thousands of Hondurans and El Salvadorans already in the U.S.

"Cutting assistance doesn't give leverage in terms of changing policies, and actually undermines the existing U.S. efforts to tamp down what we know to be the drivers of migration," said Jeremy Konyndyk of the Center for Global Development. "So it's wrong-headed on both fronts."

It's also unclear whether Trump will make good on his Twitter threat.

"We've seen this movie before," Konyndyk said. "We've seen the White House put out something really inflammatory that doesn't translate into policy outcome."

- - -

Bloomberg's Matthew Bristow contributed.Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme  La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza.



Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres.



Montgomery County residents who took advantage of the first day of early voting Monday may have noticed something unusual on their ballots: a lot more choices.

The Democratic Party, which has not been represented in elected office in the deep-red county since the early 1990s, is running its fullest slate in years. Democrats are on the ballot in races for county judge, Precinct 2 commissioner, district clerk, county treasurer, and four state legislative seats partially or fully within Montgomery County. Jay Stittleburg, an oil and gas industry project manager making his initial bid for elected office, is the first Democratic candidate for county judge since 1990.

Whether Stittleburg or other Democrats have a realistic chance at winning, of course, is another question. The number of contested races and robust fundraising by some of the Democratic candidates, however, is encouraging to those who have been adrift in the countys political wilderness for decades.

This is by far a stronger presence than weve had in the past, said Marc Meyer, the Montgomery County Democratic Party chairman. He attributed the larger slate in part to reaction to the policies of President Donald Trump, who carried Montgomery County by a 3-to-1 margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as those of Texas Republican leaders, such as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Meyers Republican counterpart, Dr. Walter Wally Wilkerson, said he and his colleagues welcome the increased competition, but he does not expect it to affect the outcome.

Were going to elect every Republican on the ballot in Montgomery County, said Wilkerson, who has led the county Republican Party for 54 years.

Split in candidates

The countys most meaningful local election continues to be the Republican primary, which this year featured a split between candidates favored by far-right tea party organizations and those considered more mainstream.

The tea party-favored candidate, Mark Keough, who served two terms as a state representative from The Woodlands, prevailed over incumbent Craig Doyal in a primary runoff for county judge, the countys chief administrative officer. Precinct 2 Commissioner Charlie Riley, however, won in a runoff against former Comal County Commissioner Greg Parker, who had the tea partys support in a campaign waged largely over the issue of toll roads.

Riley faces a Democratic challenge from Ron Keichline, an environmental health and safety professional. The other contested county races are those for district clerk, where Republican Melisa Miller faces Democrat John-Brandon Pierre, and county treasurer, with Republican Melanie Bush facing Democrat Mandy Sunderland.

The contested legislative seats partially or fully in the county are those of state Senate District 3, where incumbent Republican Robert Nichols faces Democrat Shirley Layton and Libertarian Bruce Quarles; House District 3, where GOP Rep. Cecil Bell Jr. is being challenged by Democrat Lisa Seger; House District 15, where Republican Rep. Steve Toth is being challenged by Democrat Lorena Perez McGill; and House District 16, where Republican incumbent Will Metcalf is opposed by Democrat Mike Midler.

Also on the ballot are two contested seats on the board of the Woodlands Township, the governing body in the master-planned community. In nonpartisan races, incumbent Brian Boniface faces Treva Taglieri for Position 2, while incumbent Bruce Rieser faces Francis Frank Dargavage for Position 4.

Fundraising totals

Some of the Democratic candidates have reported respectable fundraising totals  though generally below those of their opponents  despite their built-in disadvantage in a GOP-dominated county.

In the most recent reporting period, from July 1 through Sept. 27, Stittleburg raised $15,502, spent $39,210 and had $9,251 on hand, according to his campaign finance report. Keough, who borrowed heavily from his personal funds to finance a hard-fought primary campaign, raised $52,149, spent $20,873 and had $63,518 on hand.

In the House District 15 race, McGill, a lawyer, raised $38,735 from July through September, spent $41,895 and had $46,358 on hand. Incumbent Toth raised $65,756, spent $7,026 and had $56,896 on hand.

Stittleburg, who lives in Porter in eastern Montgomery County, said he is running in part because he believes residents are poorly served by single-party governance. In fact, he said, the county judge should not be elected on a partisan basis.

The county judge is an administrative job about transparent spending of tax dollars and doing the county business, he said. Abortion, immigration, gun control  we will never take a vote on those things in Montgomery County.

Keough did not return a call seeking comment.

Mark Jones, the political science fellow at Rice Universitys Baker Institute for Public Policy, said Wilkersons prediction another Republican sweep  probably is correct. By fielding an increased number of credible candidates, Jones said, the Democrats are at least laying the groundwork to begin to have success in Montgomery County.

mike.snyder@chron.com

twitter.com/chronsnyderAs Harris County goes, so go its judicial races.

In three of the last five elections, a single party has swept every Harris judicial contest, with two going to Republicans and one to Democrats, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones analysis. In 2008, one of the two non-sweeps, Democrats won 85 percent of Harris Countys judicial contests.

During most wave years in Harris County, courthouse races go to the party whose candidate wins the top-of-the-ticket contest  the presidency or U.S. Senate  within the county.

The trend could end after 2018, the last year Texas will allow voters to cast their ballots for every candidate from one party by checking a single box. Lawmakers nixed straight-ticket voting through a bill signed last year by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The end of the straight-ticket option makes 2018 critical for judicial candidates, who, if they win, will have four or six years to raise money and gain name identification before facing re-election. By then, their fates will rest less on their partys top-of-the-ticket performance and more on their own ability to draw support.

With some predicting a wave year for Democrats  or at least a favorable electoral environment  the party has a rare chance to avoid an electoral massacre during a midterm cycle.

Democrats want to use this as an opportunity to pick up seats and build a bench, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist. The opportunity here is massive.

Harris County Republican Party officials, recognizing whats at stake, have focused a big chunk of the partys energy on judicial races, hoping to boost their chances through a robust coordinated campaign.

The party also launched a website, republicanjudges.com, that claims, Special interest groups are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect unqualified Democrat candidates to ignore the will of the voters and impose failed liberal policies.

Courts on the Harris County ballot The Supreme Court of Texas The Supreme Court has the final say on civil and juvenile appellate cases, with most of its cases coming out of Texas' 14 courts of appeals. Its chief justice and eight justices are elected to six-year terms; three justice seats are on the 2018 ballot. Court of Criminal Appeals Comprised of a presiding judge and eight judges, this is the statewide court of last resort for criminal cases. If the state or a defendant appeals a trial court decision, that appeal goes to one of 14 courts of appeals; the Court of Criminal Appeals may then review those 14 courts' decisions. An exception: Death sentence appeals go directly to this court. The presiding judge and two judges are on the ballot this year. Courts of Appeals Two of Texas' 14 courts of appeals, the 1st and 14th, cover Harris County. These courts have jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases appealed from district and county courts. Both Harris appeals courts seat nine justices - one chief justice and eight justices - but others seat as few as three and as many as 13. Five justice seats from each court are on the ballot in 2018. State District Courts Harris County has 60 state district courts that handle civil, criminal, family and juvenile law matters. Thirty-six of those courts will be on the 2018 ballot. In general, district courts have original jurisdiction over cases including felony criminal charges, civil matters involving small amounts of money, divorce, disputes of title to land and election contests, among others. Judges serve four-year terms. County courts at law and justice courts Harris County has 16 justice of the peace courts, which cover a wide range of minor civil cases, as well as minor criminal cases punishable only by fine. Cases generally get appealed to the county's 16 criminal courts at law or four civil courts at law. County probate courts Probate courts handle estates, guardianships, trusts and mental health matters. All four of Harris County's probate courts are on the 2018 ballot. See More Collapse

Though it did not matter much during last elections Democratic courthouse sweep, Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson noted that Republican down-ballot candidates outperformed the top of the ticket the last two cycles.

We've spent a lot of effort making sure folks know about our candidates, he said.

Where that could matter is if 2018 looks like 2012, when the two parties share of the straight-ticket vote was separated by one-third of a percentage point. Buried near the bottom of the ballot, judges generally have little ability to sway the results of their individual elections  but in 2012, half the countys judicial races came down to margins of less than 1 percent, Jones found, putting just about every one in play.

For its part, the Harris County Democratic Party this year is mobilizing in large numbers too, running seven-day-a-week phone banks while looking to increase turnout instead of targeting moderates. The party has listed its judicial candidates on a section of its website that pulls together Harris County Democratic candidates.

Party officials also hope U.S. Senate candidate and El Paso Democrat Beto ORourke breaks up the straight ticket on the other side, Democratic Party Chair Lillie Schechter said.

We have the wind behind our sails instead of pushing into a headwind, which is something we've never had in a midterm in my lifetime, she said.

Both parties appear to be pooling donations from judicial candidates for a coordinated campaign, according to their campaign finance reports, with the Republican Party reporting $800,000 cash on hand through Sept. 27. The Democratic Party reported $386,000 cash but outspent the Republicans, roughly $194,000 to $6,000, after June.

Notably, Harris County has more judicial races than any other county in Texas, perhaps explaining why straight-ticket voting is especially popular here. From 2008 to 2016, 67 percent of Harris voters cast straight-ticket ballots, according to Jones, marking the third highest rate among Texas 20 biggest counties and six percentage points higher than those counties median rate.

Those who want to keep straight-ticket voting typically argue that removing the option will affect minority voters disproportionately. A federal judge in 2016 blocked Michigans ban on straight-ticket voting, saying it would lead to unreasonably long lines at the polls. The judge pointed to a strong correlation between black voter turnout and the use of straight-ticket voting.

Most observers of judicial elections agree that party affiliation says little about a candidates temperament, legal acumen or ability to show fairness  key traits of any judge. Perhaps for this reason, only one other state, Alabama, elects and re-elects judges in partisan elections while allowing straight-ticket voting, according to Jones.

Members of Texas legal community have spoken up, including Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, who said during last years State of the Judiciary address that in 2016, many good judges lost solely because voters in their districts preferred a presidential candidate in the other party.

Former civil trial and appellate lawyer Stephen G. Tipps wrote in the Houston Chronicle last month: Unlike candidates for executive and legislative offices, whose party affiliation often signals fairly reliably the policies that the candidates would pursue if elected, judicial candidates party affiliations say relatively little about how they would perform their duties as judges.

jasper.scherer@chron.com

twitter.com/jaspscherer3 1 of 3 Google maps Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Google maps Show More Show Less 3 of 3





A man was shot dead early Sunday in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the Edgebrook area, Houston police said.

The man, who police identified as 27-year-old Donald Ray Miles, was shot several times in the parking lot of Clearwood Villas, at 9445 Clearwood, between Interstate 45 and Almeda Genoa.Houston area residents must make it through a week filled with high chances of showers and thunderstorms before they don their Halloween costumes for parties this weekend.

Showers will be likely after 1 a.m. Tuesday with up to an inch of rainfall possible throughout the day, according to the National Weather Service in Houston. Thunderstorms could arrive by Wednesday, with showers expected to continue through Thursday.Eight self-proclaimed professional models, including Brooke Banx of Travis County, Texas, filed a lawsuit in a White Plains, New York, federal court against a Newburgh, New York, strip club.

According to Westfair Online, The Mansion Gentlemen's Club and Steakhouse allegedly took images of the women from their personal social media pages and altered them to create the false impression that the models endorsed or worked at the strip club.

The lawsuit filed earlier in October claims the photos were then used to promote the business without payment or permission.

RELATED: Undercover strip club sting involving lap dance from underage dancer questioned by club's attorney

The revised image of Banx, posted in 2016 to The Mansion's Facebook page, shows her scantily clad in a Pittsburgh Steelers top. The caption reads, "No sexier place to watch the Steelers vs. Broncos!! #Mansion."

The other models involved in the lawsuit are San Francisco Giants third baseman Evan Longoria's wife Jaime Edmondson-Longoria, a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader and Playboy Playmate of the Month; Alana Campos, who has posed for Playboy and done ads for Arden B and Target; and Jessica Hinton, who has appeared on an episode of TV's "Baywatch."

Former "Deal or No Deal" suitcase model Ursula Mayes; Jaclyn Swedberg, who was featured on the TV series "Badass"; Brooke Taylor-Johnson, who has been in Maxim Magazine and on Fredrick's of Hollywood billboards; and Tiffany Toth-Gray, who has also been in Maxim Magazine, are also part of the suit.

RELATED: Controversial Houston strip club reaches settlement with city, can reopen, for now

The women have declared themselves as world-renowned professional models whose earnings potentials have been compromised because companies and brands are less likely to hire them if they're thought to work as strippers.

They are asking the court to order the defendants to stop using their images. They are also requesting to be paid damages to be determined at a trial.

The Houston Chronicle reached out to the women's attorney, John V. Golaszewski of Casas Law Firm in Manhattan, who has yet to respond.

Marcy de Luna is a digital reporter specializing in social media, the famous, and food. You can follow her on Twitter @MarcydeLuna. Read her stories on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | Marcy.deLuna@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text messageVivid images on two T-shirts at the Donald Trump rally in Houston stood out among other souvenirs sold on the street.

In one image, a bikini-clad Stormy Daniels, who has become known for revealing a sexual encounter with Trump, flew off a motorcycle driven by the president. On the shirt, Trump wore a leather vest with the message "if you can read this, the snitch fell off."

A similar Hillary Clinton T-shirt took a slightly more aggressive approach.

"If you can read this, the b---- fell off," the shirt said.

RELATED: Trump supporters line up 24 hours ahead of Toyota Center rally

Thousands of Trump supporters arrived at the Toyota Center on Monday ready to see the president show his support for Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Throughout multiple long lines, they formed bright red streams of "MAGA" hats, pants and shirts, many of which depicted conservative fantasies and carried messages designed to provoke Democrats.

"Trump won, get over it !" declared on man's shirt.

"Deal with it," declared another.

Many children, some as young as nine years old, joined with the supporters on Monday. The mother of Jackson Sanchez, 9, said the boy liked Trump long before he appeared as the Republican front runner during the campaign. So they decided to pull him out of school for the event, the mother said.

"Trump 45  It ain't a mistake snowflake," Sanchez's shirt said.

Among the more cartoonish, yet popular, images at the rally was a depiction of Trump riding on an American-flag themed tank with a bald eagle flying in the background. Another image showed Trump urinating on the CNN logo.

RELATED: Trump is the star, but Cruz has rally attendees' vote

One street vendor took a particularly specific jab at Stormy Daniels. The vendor, Christina Britt, wore a horse mask while helping a friend sell T-shirts. Her getup referenced Trump's recent tweet calling Daniels a "horse face."

"I just like [Trump] because of his attitude and his money," Britt said.

Another attendee, Dan Chandler, drove to the rally all the way from Plano. Carrying an acoustic guitar with a "Trump" sticker, he said he was primarily there to pray with people. But he also attached a Confederate flag to his walker.

"I call this my snowflake trigger," he said.

Confederate symbols have been the source of controversy in mostly southern states over the last few years. Activist groups saying they represent racism in the country.

But Chandler said his flag simply represented a resistance to people telling him what to do.

View the gallery to see more pro-Trump messages aimed at Democrats at the rally.

Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text messageThe final report on what caused a rocket booster to fail on a Russian spacecraft headed to the International Space Station will be "approved" Oct. 30, less than three weeks after the incident.

"Having listened to reports of the experts investigating causes of the emergency, members of the emergency commission have approved, after a detailed examination, a draft report on causes of the incident and begun drawing up recommendations to prevent similar situations in the future," Russian state space corporation Roscosmos has told state-run news agency TASS.

THE INCIDENT: American, Russian astronauts safe after emergency landing of Soyuz MS-10

Earlier this month, NASA astronaut Nick Hague, 43, and his crew mate, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, were aboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft rocketing to the space station when the launch was aborted, forcing an emergency landing. It was the first aborted launch of a Soyuz spacecraft in 35 years. Both Hague and Ovchinin were safe and in good condition after the landing.

Russian officials have attributed the mishap so far to a collision of the rocket's first and second stages as they separated. The investigation initially was supposed to be complete this past weekend.

WHY IT HAPPENED: Russians say they know the cause of rocket booster failure

Since NASA's space shuttle program was shuttered in 2011, the U.S. has relied on Russia to ferry American astronauts to the station. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars on the space station in its 20-year lifetime, but NASA currently has no other way to reach the space station and therefore is grounded until Russia sorts out what happened.

Russia has not yet canceled the next flight to the space station, scheduled for Dec. 20. Roscosmos announced last week that officials would conduct three missions without a crew prior to a crewed launched to the space station, according to TASS.

Existing Russian rules require one launch without a crew before resuming human flights, Roscosmos's Manned Space Programs Executive Director Sergei Krikalyov told TASS.

"The Soyuz rocket will be launched only after the inquiry has identified the causes of the emergency and measures have been taken to prevent such situations in the future," Krikalyov said. Success launches of these uncrewed flights "will be more than enough to put the next crew in space."

One of those uncrewed flights will be the Russian cargo shop launch, scheduled for this month, he added.

AN END OF AN ERA: NASA's recent woes took root with loss of space shuttle program

In addition to the unusual aborted launch, Russian officials also are investigating the origin of a hole that caused a loss of air pressure discovered in a different Soyuz attached to the station. That investigation initially was supposed to conclude in November, but a spacewalk to examine the hole had to be rescheduled because Ovchinin didn't make it to the orbiting laboratory.

That spacewalk has been rescheduled for December.

'ONE WILD RIDE': NASA astronaut Nick Hague ready to fly again after aborted Soyuz launch

The failed mission earlier this month would have been Hague's first spaceflight since being tapped as an astronaut in 2013. NASA officials aren't sure when he will get to fly again, but Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roscosmos, tweeted a photo of himself Friday with Hague and Ovchinin, saying the duo would get to fly again in spring 2019.

How that would work remains unclear. The Soyuz' April 2019 launch already has an assigned crew and NASA has yet to offer insight into the development.

But Hague previously told the Houston Chronicle that he is "absolutely ready" to fly again.

Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.Hundreds turned out as U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke dropped by deep-red Montgomery County ahead of the start of early voting.

Rick Ghigna said he's listened to O'Rourke and supports his willingness to work with politicians on the other side of the aisle.WASHINGTON  Sen. Ted Cruz's relationship with President Donald Trump started with a non-aggression pact. But as the president arrives in Houston on Monday to campaign for his one-time nemesis, it is clear that it has grown into something much bigger than that.

Now allies on tax cuts, immigration, Supreme Court nominations and repealing the Affordable Care Act  still a work in progress  Trump now needs Cruz as much as Cruz needs Trump. With the Senate split 51-49, Republicans can hardly afford to take any chances with the surprisingly robust campaign of Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke.

Boarding Marine One on Monday on his way to Houston, Trump told reporters he has a new moniker for Cruz:

"He's not Lyin' Ted any more," Trump said. "He's Beautiful Ted."

In Trump's own telling, it all started with a phone call from Cruz in early 2015, asking for a meeting. Cruz had already embarked on his White House bid, and Trump had just joined the fray.

"Ted Cruz called me and I don't know why I'm meeting him, to be honest," Trump said in a television interview at the time. "But I do have respect for him."

At the time, Cruz was defending the former Reality TV star from criticism about remarks he had made equating Mexicans who immigrated illegally with criminals and rapists. He praised Trump's brashness. "One of the reasons you're seeing so many presidential candidates go out of their way to smack Donald Trump is they don't like a politician who speaks directly about the challenges of immigration," Cruz said at the time.

For subscribers: Ted Cruz as peacemaker? Senator walks a fine line embracing Trump

Cruz staffers described their July, 2015 encounter at Trump Tower as cordial. "Trump was gracious," then-Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told the Chronicle afterwards.

With Trump fast cutting into the Texan's support among Christian conservatives and other parts of the Republican base, Cruz saw no percentage in attacking the party's newly-minted maverick. Cruz strategists, like most others, were betting that Trump's star would soon burn out.

But it didn't.

Heading into the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, the relationship cracked.

Trump, outspoken in questioning former President Obama's birthplace, began to openly question whether Cruz, who was born in Canada, was legally qualified to be president. Cruz attributed the attack to his strong poll numbers in Iowa.

Cruz, for his part, began to publicly question whether Trump was fit to lead the country in a time of terrorism.

By December, 2015, with the presidential primaries rapidly approaching and Republicans looking for ways to blunt Trump's momentum, Trump turned decisively on Cruz, calling the senator "a little bit of a maniac," in an interview with Fox News.

Cruz's Iowa win on Feb. 1, 2016, coupled with accusations that his campaign had falsely spread rumors about Ben Carson's departure from the race, only served to further the breach with Trump.

"You are the single biggest liar," Trump said during a debate shortly after the Iowa caucuses. "This guy will say anything. Nasty guy. Now I know why he doesn't have one endorsement from any of his colleagues."

For subscribers: Ted Cruz allies double down, energized by O'Rourke's mountain of cash

Hence, the genesis of Trump's label for Cruz, "Lyin' Ted," a phrase that Trump employed repeatedly as the primaries wore on.

With the Super Tuesday primaries approaching in early 2016, and Trump marching steadily toward the GOP nomination, Cruz began to step up his own attacks, talking about Trump's "New York values," his failure to release his taxes, and even his possible ties to the Mafia.

"You know, maybe it is the case that Donald, there have been multiple media reports about Donald's business dealings with the mob," Cruz said on Meet the Press later in February, 2016. "Maybe his taxes show those business dealings are a lot more extensive than has been reported."

Trump's response: "Lyin' Ted Cruz is grasping at straws because he is so far down in the polls," he said in a statement. "He is a nervous wreck."

It got more personal ahead of the Utah primary, when a pro-Cruz Super PAC ad targeting Mormons showed a bare-naked photo of Melania Trump, in her modeling days, sprawled out on a bear-skin rug.

Trump, holding Cruz responsible, responded with a still mysterious threat to "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife, Heidi. Some took it as a reference to her past struggles with depression.

That was followed by a now-infamous Trump tweet showing the two wives side by side: One an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz with an angry facial expression; the other a glamour shot of Melania Trump. The text: "A picture is worth a thousand words"

Cruz's response was almost blood simple:

"It's not easy to tick me off," he told reporters. "I don't get angry often. But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that will do it every time. Donald Trump, you're a sniveling coward. Leave Heidi the hell alone."

Far from backing off, Trump followed that with open speculation about whether Cruz's father was involved in the JFK assassination, a further insult to his family.

By the time Cruz was forced from the race after a loss in the Indiana primaries in May, the epithets toward Trump were spewing forth: "pathological liar;" "utterly immoral;" "serial philanderer;" and a "narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen."

The low-point of the once budding bromance came at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where Cruz refused to endorse Trump and was all but booed off the stage.

Many Texas delegates, by then Trump acolytes, were furious at Cruz for letting it get personal. It took him the rest of the summer to get over it. But get over it he did.

Taking to Facebook  not on any stage  he announced that he would have to go with Trump, mainly because he found Hillary Clinton "wholly unacceptable" and because of Trump's "very strong list" of potential Supreme Court nominees.

A few weeks later, when the "Access Hollywood" tape came out with Trump bragging about groping women, Cruz stayed in line, sticking with the Republican nominee and avoiding a potentially harmful split of the Evangelical faithful.

With Trump's victory, the transactional relationship that characterizes so many Washington "friendships" was back on. The Republicans had unified control of the government, and Cruz was not going to be left outside the tent.

"There's no doubt it was a vigorous campaign. I campaigned hard, with all my might, and Donald Trump did the same," Cruz told the Chronicle a month after Trump's 2017 inauguration. "The campaign is over."

A month later, Cruz and his wife Heidi were invited to a family dinner at the White House with Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.

Now allies on tax cuts, immigration, Supreme Court nominations and repealing the Affordable Care Act  still a work in progress  Trump now needs Cruz as much as Cruz needs Trump. With the Senate split 51-49, Republicans can hardly afford to take any chances with the surprisingly robust campaign of Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke.

Boarding Marine One on Monday on his way to Houston, Trump told reporters he has a new moniker for Cruz:

"He's not Lyin' Ted any more," Trump said. "He's Beautiful Ted."Democrat Lizzie Pannill Fletcher swung early and often at Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, during their first and only debate Sunday, repeatedly assailing the incumbents record as he accused her of making false statements.

The debate, hosted by ABC 13/Univision 45 at the University of Houston, grew instantly contentious when Fletcher accused Culberson of failing to adequately prepare the district for Hurricane Harvey, saying he should have taken more aggressive action on mitigation through numerous storms.

Culberson shot back, saying Fletchers claims were simply not true as she had ignored his behind-the-scenes appropriations work.

ELECTION 2018: With more money than poll support, ORourke sharpens campaign against Cruz

You just dont see my name because I dont go looking for the headlines, Culberson said.

The debate focused heavily on health care, revolving around the topics of pre-existing conditions and prescription drug prices. Fletcher also jabbed at Culberson for voting to defund Planned Parenthood; the congressman responded that he is pro-life and believes taxpayer dollars should not fund abortions.

Fletcher, asked for her view of a single-payer universal health care system, said she did not support the idea and accused Culberson of making false claims about her position in TV ads. She linked the ads to public discontent with Congress.

Its one of the things that frustrates voters so much, that they cant rely on anything theyre hearing, Fletcher said.

Culberson stuck closely by his conservative principles, calling for Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with a high risk pool guaranteeing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

The best way to bring down the price of any product is competition, Culberson said, citing his support of prescription drug re-importration  something he said drug companies strongly oppose.

Fletcher pushed back on Culbersons claims that he supports coverage for pre-existing conditions, saying the GOPs replacement plan for Obamacare would have contained only a nominal provision with strict criteria and no cost prohibitions.

If your insurance costs you 20 times more than what you can afford, its not really available to you, Fletcher said.

Immigration has factored into the heavily contested race, and drew significant attention during Sundays debate. Culberson, asked what he believes Congress should do about people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, said none of them should have to worry about being deported.

Fletcher said that was the first time she had heard Culberson take that stance, and advocated for the passage of legislation granting a pathway to citizenship, otherwise known as the DREAM Act.

Culberson compromised in his support of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border backed by President Donald Trump, saying it makes sense at certain parts of the border based on input from Border Patrol sector chiefs. He also called for the use of drones and electronic surveillance.

Fletcher rejected the idea of a wall, calling it fiscally irresponsible and a waste of our very limited resources.

The debate, held on the eve of early voting, contained mostly recurring themes from the campaign trail. The well-funded candidates have traded sharp rhetorical blows in the media and through TV ads, with Fletcher attacking Culbersons record and the congressman casting his opponent as too liberal.

Culberson, elected to Congress in 2000 after a stint in the Texas Legislature, has coasted to re-election throughout most of his congressional career. Though he beat a perennial challenger in 2016 by 12 percentage points, Hillary Clinton narrowly won the rapidly diversifying district, encouraging Democrats to target the seat.

Fletcher, a Houston trial lawyer, beat out several opponents in the Democratic primary, including activist Laura Moser in a runoff. Since then, public polls have indicated that the race is effectively a toss-up.

Fletcher has far outraised Culberson, taking in $4.6 million this cycle to Culbersons $2.8 million haul. The incumbent Republican did not face a competitive primary challenge.

The debate was originally scheduled for Oct. 15, but Culberson called off the initial time to recover from surgery for diverticulitis, a type of intestinal inflammation or infection.Thank you so much for your even-handed treatment of all those running for office, and there are a lot of them running. There are too many, in fact, for us to know about each person individually.

Thank you for keeping the citizenry informed.

Victoria Swenson, Pasadena

Press freedoms

Regarding Arab world deserves more free expression (Outlook, Friday): Reading about Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggis final column was very emotional for me. Here in the United States we have always been able to obtain any information we could possibly want from a free and open press. We dont know anything else. Khashoggi was a powerful voice, advocating for people who are not allowed to know anything other than what their countries want them to know.

My fear is that Americans do not realize how close we are to living in a society much like counties ruled by authoritarian regimes. Every time President Donald Trump proclaims that our free press is the enemy of the people or encourages violence against reporters, we move that much closer to losing freedoms that countless human beings, veterans and citizens died to protect.

No one knows yet if the Trump administration knew about Khashoggis planned assassination, but one thing is certain, Trump detests negative press and Khashoggi was openly critical of him. Trump says frequently, Well see what happens and, hopefully we will.

Julie Rothermund, Magnolia

Action needed

Regarding No horsing around: Officer helps save pony in storm drain (City/State) Thursday: What a blessing that this pony was saved so fortuitously. Now, what is Harris County going to do about the pack of wild dogs that have killed so many livestock in that neighborhood?

Jeanne Calkins, FulshearThe Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over Lake Disappointment in northwest Australia. Found in one of the most remote areas of the country, it is believed to have been discovered by an early explorer called Frank Hann in 1897.

He was convinced that the series of creeks that he had been following in the east Pilbara area would lead to a freshwater lake and drinking water supply. Such was his disappointment to find a salt lake at the end of his journey, he gave the lake its memorable name.

Although the lake is dry most of the time, it is home to many species of water birds. When it is full, primarily during very wet periods, the lake retains water and allows no outflow and is hence classified as an endorheic basin.

In this false-colour image, the differences in the shades of blue in the lake reflect the depth of the water. The darker the blue, the deeper the water is. A higher concentration of salt might also explain the different colours of the water round the edges of the lake.

It is likely that the red lines spread across the top part of the image represent some form of vegetation in this predominantly arid area on the edge of the Gibson Desert. Karlamilyi National Park, Western Australia's largest and most remote national park, can be found north of the lake. The park spans over 1.3 million hectares between the Great Sandy Desert and the Little Sandy Desert.

Covering an area of almost 380 000 sq km, the Shire of East Pilbara, also to the north of the lake, is the third largest municipality in the world. The population was registered as only around 11 000 in 2017, with mining constituting the backbone of the local economy.

The Sentinel-2 mission for Europe's Copernicus programme is tasked with monitoring our changing lands. Designed specifically to monitor vegetation, it can also detect differences in sparsely vegetated areas, as well as the mineral composition of soil.

This image, which was captured on 1 April 2017, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

- Download the full high-resolution image.

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.New York Citys business improvement districts, which represent both small business owners and the landlords that provide them space, would seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the New York City Councils bill to increase regulation of commercial lease renewals. But the New York City BID Association, an umbrella group for the citys 75 BIDs, isnt waffling, saying it strongly opposes the Small Business Jobs Survival Act.

The bill, officially Int. 737-A and also known as SBJSA, was first introduced decades ago and is getting its first public hearing in nearly a decade on Monday afternoon. It is meant to level the playing field in commercial lease negotiations, taking power away from landlords in favor of lessees through measures including mandating a minimum six-month advance notice on lease renewals, requiring leases to last at least 10 years unless both parties agree on a shorter one, and giving renters the option of arbitration when they consider rent hikes exorbitant.

Leaders of the citys BIDs say that the bill is poorly written and that it doesnt even cover the biggest hurdles that small business face in the city. Some of their thoughts were conveyed in a statement from the BID Association, provided exclusively to City & State. The SBJSA is not a silver bullet, and may in fact be counter-productive with unintended, negative economic consequences, the association wrote. While this bill may help some businesses, it will also restrict the natural evolution of our commercial corridors which enables new products to come to market and new business owners  potentially immigrant and minority business owners  to gain a foothold. The statement went on to urge the city to conduct a thorough study of the citys vacant storefronts before taking action.

The bills supporters include many small business owners and preservationists. They argue that the bill will rein in exorbitant rents that help cause so-called high-rent blight where storefronts are left vacant while owners wait for the right high-paying tenant to come along  usually a bank branch or a luxury goods retailer rather than a deli or a hardware store. Bleecker Street in the West Village has become notorious for empty storefronts, and a 2017 report from City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal found nearly 12 percent of Upper West Side storefronts were empty.

Members of the BID Association went into more detail on their concerns about the bill, including its scope. The current iteration of the bill doesnt have any size restrictions, meaning it would apply to every commercial tenant in the city. The SBJSA has nothing to do with small businesses, said Jessica Lappin, president of the Downtown Alliance, a BID covering Lower Manhattan. It would apply to the bodega on the corner just as much as it would to American Expresss corporate offices.

Lappin fears the increasing regulation would actually further incentivize landlords to shy away from smaller businesses in favor of corporate tenants like Duane Reade or Starbucks. It will be easier in some sense to negotiate, and they have better credit, she said. So if theyre going to be unable to change the tenant maybe ever, you want somebody who you know has good credit.

Lappin had previously come out in opposition to the bill, along with the Grand Central Partnership and the East Midtown Partnership. The three BIDs represent some of the citys busiest commercial areas, full of corporate landlords leasing out space to hundreds of tenants, from white-collar offices towering over the skyline to small dry cleaners on the ground floor. The Downtown Alliances board of directors is largely made up of major property owners, from Brookfield Asset Management and RXR Realty to Trinity Wall Street and TF Cornerstone, making it no surprise that the group would oppose further regulation favoring tenants.

But BIDs represent commercial corridors across the city, from the Bronxs Fordham Road to Brooklyns Brighton Beach, with many having memberships that looks far different from the major landlords of the Financial District.

Take Tim Laughlin, president of the Lower East Side Partnership, who also sits on the executive board of the citywide BID Association. Many of his members are relatively small-time property owners, who have just one or two walk-up tenement buildings. But he also represents the interests of the areas thriving restaurants and bars that are leasing the neighborhoods valuable street-level space.

Im being careful with my words because its a tricky subject, he said at one point while explaining his calculus. Because, as Laughlin sees it, the issue is not just greedy landlords versus plucky tenants. Its not just mom and pop independent businesses that we need to worry about, he said. Its also mom and pop independent property owners that are increasingly becoming smaller and smaller in number, just because of the significant cost of operating these buildings.

Other BID Association members were quick to defend property owners, saying the difficulties small businesses face go far beyond high rents. Mark Caserta, executive director of the Park Slope Fifth Avenue BID and an executive board members of the BID Association, pointed to high property taxes, onerous city regulations and competition from online retail.

Caserta and the other BID managers werent short on criticism of the bill, but they all agreed, at least publicly, that they were happy to be getting the chance to talk about it. Discussing SBJSA makes Caserta think the city would be open to making other changes to help small businesses. The spotlight is on, the window is open, lets do something that makes sense and is really comprehensive that really helps these struggling small businesses, he said. We dont necessarily think this is the bill, but we think this is the time to do it.Late last week, after Saudi Arabia trotted out its farcical explanation for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the response from the American president was something we had come to expect.

Donald Trump had already offered a number of reasons in recent weeks why the medieval murder of a Washington Post columnist living in Virginia was not something that was worthy of his concern. Hed first denied that it happened, after chatting on the phone with the Saudi leadership, then fretted about what the controversy might mean for billions of dollars in (largely phantom) arms sales between the US and Saudi Arabia. Next, he equated Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, accused of assault during his nomination (innocent until proven guilty, Trump said). Finally, on Friday night, Trump settled on the stance that the Saudis had things under control and we should all move on.

It followed a familiar script for how Trump deals with controversy: Deny facts, frame them in financial terms, make it about himself, then finally, and reluctantly, concede the truth without admitting defeat. It is management by cowardice, and an ad hoc way for the president to run the country. But it is Trumps approach, fine-tuned over two yearsand a lifetimeof practice.

The Khashoggi case has brought Trump unusual global blowback, though, for a distinction that the president plainly does not see. We care about the Khashoggi case, at least in part, because Khashoggi was a journalist.

RELATED: USA Today under fire for Trump op-ed

Yes, his killing was horrific and barbaric and yes, it came at the hands of an American ally, which then lied about it. But the world has also been moved to respond because Khashoggi, as a journalist, represented something bigger than the man himself, something that leaders around the civilized world have come to value. He was a stand-in for a value we wanted to protect.

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Not so with Trump. It has been quite clear in his reaction to Khashoggis death that Trump assigned this scandal no merit because the dead man was a journalistand, in fact, it may even have taken the issue a notch down in Trumps priority list. (Recall the meeting in the White House when he seemed utterly perplexed by the preoccupation with the story. Khashoggi is not a United States citizen, Trump said.)

Trump doesnt care about a dead journalist because he doesnt care about journalism. The last two years of this presidency have shown that Trump sees a free press through a real estate developers smudgy lens: The truth, like an opening bid, is fungible and negotiable; the value of any single bit of information is entirely transactional, tied only to whether it helps or hurts him personally; rules and norms are for losers.

It is a worldview that puts Trump at odds with all of his Oval Office predecessors. Many US presidents have not liked reporterssome, like Richard Nixon, viscerally hated thembut even Nixon understood and embraced their bigger role and purpose.

That Trump places no value in the importance of a free press has been evident for most of these last two long years. He has done everything he can to denigrate both individual reporters and the institutions they represent. He has lied so often that fact checkers now are forced to use spreadsheets to track his claims. He has worked, in his rallies and on his preferred TV network, to seed the idea that there is a truth in the world that only he can speak (an anti-truth if ever there was one).

This is a sobering realization. We journalists, as individuals, are not special people. We have no unique right to support or sympathy. But the point is that we, collectively, represent something that our society has decided is worthy of protection. There is a core value here that is more important than whether you love or hate Jim Acosta.

We journalists, as individuals, are not special people. We have no unique right to support or sympathy. But the point is that we, collectively, represent something that our society has decided is worthy of protection.

That so many Americans seem to embrace Trump in spite of thisor, worse, because of itrepresents a fundamental challenge. Its not enough for us to simply do our jobs with unusual care and precision; we also must now become brand ambassadors for a free presssomething I, for one, never thought would be necessary in a country where freedom of the press was enshrined in our founding national document. Support for what we do is more fragile than we thought. Many Americans, led by an unusually insecure president in the White House, seem convinced that all would be just as well without a free press to challenge their leaders or take up their causes. Our job, through important reporting and fair and insightful analysis, is to show them why they are wrong.

Until the death of Jamal Khashoggi, it was possible to debate whether Trump was an opportunist or a showman or a poser, when it came to his public attacks against the media. They often had the feel of a twisted inside joke: He said one thing for the cameras, but was desperate for the medias attention and acknowledgement when they were turned off. Despite his constant whining about the media, the man seemed never to leave our TV screens.

But now we know the truth. Trump couldnt care less about journalism, which means a dead journalistor the five who died in the Capital Gazette newsroom earlier this yearhas no more or less value to him than anyone else. There is no symbolism here, no greater threat. For those of us in this business, the situation is more dire than we thought.

RELATED: The Trump administrations new method for cracking down on leakers

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Kyle Pope is the editor in chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, along with mounting evidence that the Saudi government was involved in his killing, has brought a fresh round of scrutiny to the kingdoms actions at home and abroad. Look no further than the front page of Sundays New York Times, where the entire above-the-fold space was dedicated to articles on Saudi Arabia. Its not as if there hasnt been good reporting on issues like the war in Yemen and the Saudi leaderships underhanded tactics in the past, but the Khashoggi incident has thrust those stories onto front pages and into national news broadcasts.

The Timess Declan Walsh and Tyler Hicks report from the front lines in Yemen, where the Saudi-led war has ground on for more than three years, killing thousands of civilians and creating what the United Nations calls the worlds worst humanitarian crisis. Walsh notes that it took the crisis over the apparent murder of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate two weeks ago for the world to take notice.

The media world is increasingly, if belatedly, taking notice of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans repression at home and misadventures around the globe as the fallout from the killing of Khashoggi, an American resident and Washington Post columnist, continues. This morning, the Posts front page features an in-depth look at the sophisticated Saudi influence machine that has shaped policy and perceptions in Washington for decades, batting back critiques of the oil-rich kingdom by doling out millions to lobbyists, blue-chip law firms, prominent think tanks and large defense contractors. Meanwhile, the crown princes detainment of the Lebanese prime minister, jailing of womens right activists in Saudi Arabia, and blockade of Qatar have received fresh attention as the world reconsiders the image of a man who cast himself as a youthful refromer.

RELATED: Why Trump doesnt care about Jamal Khashoggi

President Trump, who drew America even closer to the kingdoms leadership, has reacted to Khashoggis murder with wildly inconsistent responses, accepting on Friday the Saudi explanation that Khashoggi died after attempting to fight his way out of the consulate only to tell the Post on Saturday that obviously theres been deception and theres been lies. As he attempts to maintain the relationship an American ally, Trump faces a growing bipartisan consensus that the US must punish the Saudis for their role in Khashoggis death.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the crown prince was shocked by the backlash that has followed Khashoggis murder, and, as the Timess Maureen Dowd argues, he has reason to feel that way. The American alliance with Saudi Arabia has always been poisoned by cynical bargains, Dowd writes. Trump isnt the first US president to attempt to look the other way when Saudi leadership has been involved in an atrocity. It was accepted wisdom that it was futile to press the Saudis on the feudal, the degradation of women and human rights atrocities, because it would just make them dig in their heels, she continues. Why it took the murder of a journalist to spark more intense scrutiny of Saudi Arabias role in the world is a question worth asking, but the media spotlight is now clearly focused on the kingdoms leadership, and it does not appear to be dimming any time soon.

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Below, more on the coverage of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, and Jamal Khashoggi.

Other notable stories:

ICYMI: Midterm coverage beyond Trump

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Pete Vernon is a former CJR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter @ByPeteVernon.As an investigative journalist, my professional interests have a tendency to be niche. Ive pursued stories about the United Nations staff pension fund, the treatment of Cambodian asylum seekers by the American judicial system and the offshore wealth of government officials. As a freelancer, I accept as an occupational hazard that not every publication will share my interestswhich is why it was so refreshing when an editor at OZY.com enthusiastically commissioned a story on the business affairs of the foreign minister of a country so small most of their readers would struggle to find it on a map.

My excitement dissipated, though, when OZYs freelance contract arrived in my inbox. One of the ways I do my job is by poring over every contract and court record I can lay my hands on. What I found was a rights grab, shorthand for a move by publications of all stripes to demand full moral and intellectual rights to freelance reporters work.

In recent months I obtained copies of contracts and invoice templates issued by Vice, Mashable, and Politico Europe, all of which oblige freelancers to forgo all rights to their work. Conversations with international journalists point to the rights-grabbing phenomenon extending beyond the English-language press.

ICYMI: After journalists killing, NYT makes a bold move with Sundays front page

The UKs National Union of Journalists has been campaigning against rights grabs since 1996, according to Pamela Morton, the organizations national freelance coordinator. Weve always advised members to reply and object and try and not sign these contracts or ask for the offending clauses to be removed, Morton says. The union has even published a set of guidelines for editors, urging that they pay extra for uses of stories beyond first publication and that they never seek to buy ownership of copyright from non-staff contributors. This is bad practice.

In recent decades, as news has pivoted from print to digital, there has been a shift in the copyright terms freelance journalists are expected to work under. In the early 1990s, clauses began appearing in freelance contracts asking that authors grant publications the right to publish their work on CD-ROMs and websites. Since the majority of outlets didnt even have a web presence, this was more of a hypothetical than something meriting discussion.

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However, in the years since, rights grabs have become more aggressive, preventing freelancers from licensing their work to multiple publications, profiting from translations, or even from book or screen adaptations of their work, leaving them with fewer ways of supplementing their increasingly squeezed incomes. The shift has been driven in large part by a desire by publications to keep up with the digital age by securing the work they commission in perpetuity across a range of platforms and media.

Contracts for Vice and Mashable both require a total transfer of copyright and, more controversially, for journalists to waive their moral rights over their work. With their origins in the first half of the 20th century, moral rights establish writers prerogative to be identified as the author of their work and to object to it being altered against their wishes.

Jeffrey Hermes, deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center, a nonprofit providing legal support to content providers, tells me that under US copyright law, moral rights are generally only applicable to works of art, not journalism. This has led to the rise of work-for-hire contracts, under which all copyright for the story belongs to the publisher from the moment of creation until the end of time. The reason you use a work for hire is you never have to worry about the work being reclaimed, its simply yours to do with as you want, Hermes says.

RELATED: The most annoying thing an editor can do

[Should] journalists be asking for more money because theyre giving away more rights? Hermes asks. That starts to tie into questions about the consolidation of the media and how the industry has shifted.

Mashable did not respond to a request for comment for this article. However, Holly Robertson, the journalist who shared her contract with them, says she regretted signing it.

I didnt want to do it, obviously, but it was one of my first freelance assignments and at the time I was unwilling to push back in case it jeopardized the commission, Robertson says, noting that she believes it was Mashables standard-issue contract as it was sent direct from the human resources department.

A spokeswoman for Vice says the policy was a result of the global scale of their operation. While she would not go into further detail than a simple statement, she says the current Vice contract still asks that moral rights be waived.

In the summer of 2017, Politico Europe sent out an updated invoice template to its freelancers, adding a new sentence: With this invoice you agree to transfer to the POLITICO GROUP all intellectual property rights, including trademark rights and copyrights, pertaining to each article mentioned in this invoice.

Politico Europe Editor in Chief Matt Kaminski says that while the phrasing might have jolted some contributors, Our rights policy hasnt changed since the day we launched. Rather, he says, the new wording was merely an abbreviation of the companys existing policy.

RELATED: GQ gave a freelancer 2 days to produce 4-page section as an edit test. The mags response was a letdown, to say the least.

We dont want to unnecessarily constrain freelancers to make a living off their ideas and there is certainly room for discretion in how broadly we interpret this policy when it comes to turning stories into, for example, film pitches or books, he says.

(CJRs freelancer agreement contains no moral rights clause. It does seek exclusive rights for a year. The writer retains the copyright to the piece.)

While in the past freelancers would usually sell publications a license to print their article, today it is much more common for outlets to either buy an assignment of rights or the whole piece outright as a work-for-hire,says Hermes. The all-but-extinct licensing model gave freelancers access to much greater revenue streams, since it allowed them the option to sell the same work multiple times.

The new model, Hermes says, is less likely a product of a vulturous hunger for copyright on the part of publications, than it is a response to the fact that online publishers are by their nature international, and so require a broader set of rights to protect the work they buy.

Youre dealing with a situation where freelancers can no longer rely on the return on their work that they could recently, which means journalists are going to be in a tougher situation which can have all sorts of unfortunate knock-on effects, Hermes says.

There has been some pushback to the policies. A 2013 survey by Loughborough University, in England, found that 20 percent of newspaper freelancers and 37 percent of magazine freelancers had refused to sign contracts asking them to transfer their copyright to the publisher. In April, the Authors Guild won a $9 million settlement on behalf of 2,500 writers whose work was licensed to digital databases without their consent, although it took them 17 years.

Morton, of the UKs National Union of Journalists, wrote in an email that there has clearly been a trend away from publications buying first regional serial rights spurred on by the fact most outlets now have an online presence. The Guardian has taken the opposite approach, choosing to publish its full freelance terms and conditions online. Rather than grabbing all rights to a journalists work, they require exclusivity for the first three months, and that the author allow them to act as a reseller of the work, splitting any resulting revenue.

A Guardian spokesperson said via email that the charter came about in 1999 as the product of extensive talks with writers unions. [It] is intended to balance the rights of contributors as the first owner of copyright with the needs of Guardian News & Media as an international media concern, the spokesperson wrote.

In my interaction with OZY, I responded after reading the contract that while I would love to do the story for them, I could not under terms that included a work-made-for-hire rights grab, and a stipulation that I was to obtain written permission from OZY before ever writing on or being interviewed about a subject similar to the story ever again. Could their legal department tweak the contract, perhaps?

I fully understand your concerns about OZYs contract, but I also know those terms are not subject to revision, came their reply. We have so many freelancers writing for us, from Lithuania to LA, and the relationship is a happy, mutually beneficial one.

OZY has since not responded to multiple requests for further comment.

Camille Lavoix, a freelancer who reports from Africa and South America, says she frequently finds her work has been translated and reprinted without her consent, usually with a delay of between two weeks and two months between her original work being published and it turning up translated elsewhere.

One day I received a message on Facebook from a Portuguese guy saying hed read my article in a Portuguese paper. I told him I dont write in Portuguese and he said No, its front page, she recalls. I wrote [to the French publication] and they offered me thirty or fifty [British pounds]. They wouldnt answer my emails or take me seriously.

Obtaining copies of French papers copyright policies can be an arduous task, she says, and regardless she believes many of them in fact violate French laws, something she is in the process of retaining lawyers to challenge.

She believes journalists need to take a more active approach in challenging the status quo.

We should make them feel ashamed about what they do and expose them; thats what were about, writing about abusive practices, she says. We should speak out because thats our tool, were not lawyers but were journalists, so we can write about it.

ICYMI: A portrait of Trumps mental state by photojournalists

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Jack Davies is a British freelance journalist based in Belgrade, Serbia. Follow him on Twitter @jackoozell.Federal safety investigators have been unable to conduct a full examination of the limousine involved in a crash that killed 20 people nearly two weeks ago in upstate New York because local prosecutors are probing it as part of their case against the limo companys operator.

While a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman says it is working cooperatively with local officials, people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Thursday that investigators have privately expressed frustration over their inability to fully examine the limousine.

They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive conversations.

The limo remains in the possession of New York State Police after the limousine companys operator was charged four days after the crash with criminally negligent homicide.

A state police spokesman said it could be several more weeks before the NTSB is granted hands-on access to the limo. The NTSB would get in line behind state investigators and the lawyer for the limo companys operator.

The vehicle is the most important piece of evidence that will help ultimately determine the cause of the crash, and the extent of any criminal wrongdoing, spokesman Beau Duffy said in a statement. If the NTSB were allowed to handle evidence before it has been fully examined and processed by the state police and the defense, it would jeopardize the criminal case.

NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said investigators were able to look inside the limousine briefly and have not conducted a full examination. But he stressed that the agency is working closely with state police.

We anticipate getting everything we need in a timely fashion, Weiss said. They have a criminal investigation to do. We have to accommodate that.

The federal agency is charged by Congress to conduct independent probes and can make urgent safety recommendations to address specific issues discovered during an investigation. The NTSB expects to release a preliminary report on the wreck in the next several weeks, Weiss said.

The district attorney in Schoharie County did not immediately return a call from the AP seeking comment on Thursday.

The limousine loaded with 18 people on their way to a birthday party for one of the occupants ran a stop sign and crashed at the bottom of a hill in the town of Schoharie. Everyone in the limo died, including four sisters, along with two pedestrians.

Prosecutors allege the limousine companys operator, Nauman Hussain, allowed an improperly licensed driver to operate an unserviceable vehicle. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge and has declined to comment on the crash.

(Klepper reported from Albany, N.Y. Associated Press writer Mary Esch in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report.)

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Missouri Chiropractor sentenced in Police Bribery Scheme

A St. Louis, Mo., chiropractor has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $350,000 for a scheme that involved bribing police officers to get information used to solicit clients.

Mitchell Davis was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court. He pleaded guilty in December and has paid $696,000 in restitution to 12 insurance companies that overpaid for unnecessary and unauthorized services.

Federal prosecutors say Davis and his wife, Galina Davis, used nonpublic information from St. Louis police accident reports to solicit clients. Mitchell Davis pressured some clients into exaggerating symptoms to increase insurance payouts.

Galina Davis and two former police officers have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. Two other former officers are awaiting trial.

Investigators say the officers earned $5 to $15 for each report illegally provided to the couple.

Texas Pilot Gets More Than 5 Years in Insurance-Linked Fraud

A Texas pilot who survived a 2012 Gulf of Mexico crash and videotaped his time in the water must serve more than five years in prison and repay nearly $1 million for insurance-related fraud.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorneys Office said Monday that Theodore Robert Wright III must report to prison Nov. 8.

Wright last December pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and conspiring to commit arson. He was sentenced Oct. 4 in Tyler. Three co-conspirators received prison or probation for the scam to buy planes, boats and cars, then destroy the vehicles for insurance.

Wright in October 2012 appeared on NBCs Today show to describe the crash off Louisiana during a flight from Baytown, Texas, to Sarasota, Florida.

Hes a native of Port Kent, New York.

Man Accused of Arson, Fraud Found Competent for Trial

An Ohio man accused of setting his house on fire in 2016 has been ruled competent to stand trial.

The Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News reports a Butler County judge on Tuesday found Ross Compton capable of standing trial after a psychological evaluation.

The 60-year-old Middletown man whose arrest was based partly on pacemaker data has pleaded not guilty to aggravated arson and insurance fraud charges. Authorities say Comptons cardiac device showed data inconsistent with actions he reportedly took during the fire, including throwing belongings out a window and carrying them to his car.

Comptons attorney said he isnt withdrawing a motion for a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. That motion states Compton reportedly has a history of mental illness and cardiovascular disease that reduced oxygen levels to his brain.Preliminary stakes action was in full swing on Sunday (Oct. 21) at Fraser Downs, as the British Columbia raceway hosted third-leg divisions of both the Robert Murphy Breeders Stakes for three-year-old male pacers and the Betty Millbank Memorial Breeders Stakes for two-year-old pacing fillies.

The Robert Murphy action kicked off the card, as the dashes were programmed as Races 1 and 2 on the 12-dash docket.

The Debra McCarthy-trained and Kevin Anderson-driven One Small Favour ($5.30) got the job done in the first of the Robert Murphy dashes. The gelded son of Sportswriter went straight to the top from Post 5, cut all the fractions (:28.2, :58, 1:26.2), and came home in 28 seconds to post a head victory over the pocket-riding Canadian Pharoh (driven by Rod Therres) in 1:54.3. ACBC (Glenn White) finished third.

One Small Favour has now won five starts this season after 11 starts (he has only missed the board twice) and has banked $46,806 thus far in the campaign. The JJJ Stables homebred has now won five of his 17 career starts and banked $54,006 overall.

After being hammered at the windows, the Jim Marino-trained and driven Ron Bakardi ($2.60) left from Post 3, worked out a two-hole ride through the fractions (:27.1, :57.3, 1:26.1), and kicked home in 28 seconds to record a one-length victory in 1:54.4. The Serge Masse-driven Machitoutofthepark, who had cut the fractions, held on for second. The Carl Sibiga-driven Solongo finished third, two and three-quarter-lengths in arrears of the victor, after a second-over journey.

Marino co-owns Ron Bakardi along with JJJ Stables. The Badlands Hanover gelding has now won three of his six seasonal starts, banked $35,800 this season, and has missed the board just once in 18. Ron Bakardi has now won six of his 12 lifetime starts and has banked $117,050 overall.

Betty Millbank action directly followed the Robert Murphy prelims, as the juvenile pacing fillies took to the track for Race 3 and 4.

After having been sent postward as the publics 2-1 choice for the first Millbank split, the Rod Therres-trained and driven Ocean Wind ($6.20) went gate to wire (:27.3, :57.2, 1:26.4) from Post 4 and held on for a head win in 1:56.3. The John Chappell-driven Tough It Out did just that, as she closed hard from the backfield to just miss taking all the marbles (she finished second). After a rail start, the Richard Remillard-driven Raging Chihuahua, who had raced first-over, finished third, two and a half lengths in arrears of the victor.

Ocean Wind, who is a bay daughter of Sunshine Beach, broke her maiden with the Sunday victory. She now holds a record of 1-1-0 after three starts and has banked $12,000 for Therres and Veikko Pajunen, both of whom bred the filly.

The second of the Millbank splits was captured by the John Hudon-trained and Serge Masse-driven The Blue Yak ($2.60). The publics favourite started from Post 2 and paced to a gate-to-wire (:28.4, :59.2, 1:27.4) win in 1:56.1. The Big Jim filly notched a three quarters of one-length victory over the Paul Davies-driven Mrs Suhwiggins. The third-place finisher, Balare Fire Flight (Dave Hudon), was well back in third, as she finished more than 15 lengths in arrears.

The Blue Yak has now won three of her four career starts and has yet to miss the board. She has banked $23,256 for John Hudon, who also bred the filly.

Serge Masse steered his four-year-old Dragon Again gelding Da Magician to a 1:53.1 victory in the $12,000 Open Pace. Also owned and trained by Masse, the $11.80 winner pulled first over from third heading to three-quarters and slid to a length-and-three-quarter victory in the stretch.

To view the harness racing results for Sunday at Fraser, click the following link: Sunday Results  Fraser Downs.The ubiquitous black boxes on airliners  designed to capture the sometimes gruesome words and sounds leading up to crashes  need an upgrade, U.S. accident investigators say.

In too many cases, the current two hours of sound on the cockpit voice recorders hasnt been enough to aid investigations, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a recommendation posted to its website Thursday. The board cited several dozen instances in which the recorders were overwritten before they could be brought into the lab.

Investigators want the requirement to be increased to 25 hours of sound, and are seeking retrofits for current aircraft by 2024.

The 2017 case of an Air Canada flight that came within feet of striking other planes on the ground in San Francisco illustrates the issue. In that case, the planes black box recorders werent pulled immediately, so the potentially critical recording of the incident was lost, hampering the NTSBs probe.

In a 2009 case, after pilots on a flight to Minneapolis from San Diego went silent for more than an hour and flew past their destination, the recording device provided little help because the relevant portion was recorded over later in the flight, NTSB said. The crew said they became distracted, but the recording would have shed more light on what happened.

Investigators cited 34 cases from 2002 to the present in which longer recordings might have helped investigators. Data continue to be overwritten and are unavailable for safety investigations, NTSB said in a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The NTSB recommendations follow a similar effort in Europe, where the European Aviation Safety Agency will require larger airliner models to have 25-hour recorders by 2021.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.An employee that tripped and fell at work is owed workers compensation benefits despite his employers argument that the accident didnt arise our of and in the course of his work, according to a recent ruling by the New Mexico Court of Appeals.

David Grieco was employed as a maintenance technician by Jones Lang LaSalle, a contractor for Intel, and performed tenant service requests and preventative maintenance and repairs at an Intel job site. According to facts provided within the opinion, maintenance technicians at Intel walk up to 12 miles a day and average about 8 miles a day.

Due to the dangers of the facility, Intel has a policy of requiring a spotter to observe the maintenance technician and call for help, if needed.

Grieco was spotting another technician on July 6, 2015, when he tripped over his own foot and fell. He sustained a fractured humerus. Upon investigation it was determined there was no issue with the flooring or any evidence of a substance that caused his fall.

His employers workers comp insurer denied the claim, citing that his fall was not work-related. A workers comp judge affirmed the insurers determination, indicating Grieco wasnt entitled to workers compensation benefits. According to the order, no risk reasonably incident to Workers employment caused Workers fall or injury and the risk experienced by Worker was not increased by the circumstances of Workers employment.

Grieco appealed the order, citing that falling at work is a neutral risk that gives rise to a rebuttable presumption that the workers injuries are compensable.

The New Mexico Court of Appeals, in its review, indicated the issue was a narrow one  whether Griecos trip and fall arose out of and in the course of his employment. According to the opinion, camera footage at trial confirms that he fell for no reason. Because Grieco was required to walk long corridors as part of his job and was walking to get to the location where he was to perform spotting duties, the court concluded his injury was the result of the unexplained fall  considered a neutral risk under Larsons Workers Compensation Law  and arose out of his employment. Thus, his injury is compensable and the case was remanded to the Workers Compensation Administration for further handling.

The case is David D. Grieco v. Jones Lang LaSalle and the Hartford, No. A-1-CA-36072AKRON, Ohio - State Rep. Tavia Galonski, a Democrat from Akron, wants City Council's support for her push to extend a law offering additional paths to graduation for Ohio's high school students.

Without an extension of the temporary law passed in 2014, about 100 kids in each of Akron's high schools will not graduate in the spring, she told council members on Monday.

In May, Galonski submitted House Bill 630 a bill that would extend the law through the upcoming graduating class and beyond. But House Bill 630 has not been heard by the Republican-controlled House, she said.

She said people are worried the bill will not move through the House and Senate in time for the kids poised to graduate this spring.

"There's been some talk about a class-action lawsuit, which other states have done in similar situations," she said.

Some of the Ohio students at risk of not graduating have not tested well on one of the exams required for graduation, said Galonski, who sits on the state's education and career readiness committee.

The state graduation requirements mandate that students earn a minimum of 20 credits and earn a minimum of 18 points cumulatively on several state tests. Then they choose one of three paths, which include either passing various examinations or earning industry credentials, to show they're ready for college or a job.

Students who graduate this year would have been the first class to be held to the tougher requirements. But the temporary law granted them additional options for graduating.

But that law doesn't extend to the upcoming graduating class, and as a result many students won't meet the minimum requirements, said Galonski.

Galonski said she was contacted by one local high school student who said she is undergoing counseling for anxiety from retaking tests. Coventry Local Schools told the lawmaker 69 students will not graduate if the law is not extended, she said.

"They should not be held to having one test make all 13 years of school make the difference of wiping that out," she said.

The Ohio Board of Education, the Ohio 8 Coalition, a compact of the eight largest school districts, and educators across the state, are looking to state lawmakers to extend the alternative paths to graduation, she said.

At-large Councilwoman Linda Omobien said she didn't know what her test scores were, but they didn't reflect her ability to go to college and do well.

"This is absolutely ridiculous," she said. "You should have different ways of testing kids to see if they're ready to go to a different level of education, from high school to college or career ed or whatever they want to do."

Ward 6 Councilman Bob Hoch said he also supported extending the alternative paths to graduation.

"Some kids can't do that well on a test but they can do well otherwise," he said.

Ward 8 Councilwoman Marilyn Keith, a former educator, said she was concerned that the Ohio House had not had a hearing on HB 630 in the spring.

"It isn't about pass and failure, it's about success," she said. "What we do here in a few minutes, may have an impact. And let's hope it has a huge impact."

The council's Rules Committee voted unanimously to recommend to full City Council a resolution supporting extension of the alternative pathways.

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.AKRON, Ohio - Summit County seniors and disabled residents now have access to a comprehensive website, GettingWiser.org, with information to empower them to make better choices.

GettingWiser.org was launched by the Summit Senior Coalition, a group of nonprofits and agencies funded by Akron Community Foundation. The coalition helps county residents who are not being adequately served by existing systems.

A communitywide needs assessment in 2017 identified a strong need for senior-focused services and education in Summit County. The coalition learned that many seniors and disabled residents are unclear about what services are available and what's covered through Medicare.

Matt Reed, vice president of coalition member Direction Home, said in a news release that the coalition wants people to understand that "older adults can, in fact, age where they choose, whether that's in their own homes, a senior-based facility or where ever might be most convenient for them and their families.

"And they can do so in a positive way,' Reed said."The key is to do your homework and understand what is available. Getting Wiser helps people do that in a way that's entertaining, straightforward and easy to understand. We want people to access information and engage in their future, and not get overwhelmed by industry jargon, or too many resources, and end up not getting the help that they need."

Through GettingWiser.org, the coalition aims to help seniors, disabled residents, and caregivers locate the best services so residents can age positively and plan ahead. Through the website, the coalition also coordinates free assessments that result in a comprehensive plan of home and community-based care, based on each individual's needs.

The website also offers articles and educational information, as well as information on area events.

For more information, visit GettingWiser.org or send an email. For a free home assessment, call 800-421-7277.

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.CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio -- Animal at-large, Solon Road: "Maggie," wearing a collar stating "The World's Best Dog," got loose at 1:59 a.m. Oct. 12 while being walked by its owner. The woman said the dog is friendly, but will run if you try to catch it. Officers were unable to find it.

Found property, Franklin Park: A small leather purse found at 6 p.m. Oct. 14 on the sidewalk was turned over to police.

Fire, Hiram Trail: A haunted house employee smelled something smoldering at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 14 and called Chagrin Falls firefighters. The call was canceled when the cause was determined to be a lantern that had fallen onto a bale of hay and the danger of fire was eliminated.

Road hazard, Summit Street: Concrete slurry from the installation of a new driveway ran onto the road and made a mess on Oct. 12. Village workers cleaned it up and will bill the responsible party.

Dumping, East Washington Street: A business owner found a sofa stuffed into the Dumpster it rents on Oct. 9. The business is changing to one with a locking lid, and police will patrol the area more often at night.

Suspicious, North Main Street: Someone went through the trash behind Chagrin Cards and Gifts on Oct. 9, throwing garbage all over the parking lot.

Suspicious, Shopping Plaza: While loading groceries and her children into her parked car at 1:42 p.m. Oct. 10, a man wearing black clothing and calling himself "Hollywood Bob" came up close to her and gave her young daughter a rose.CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- In the song from the movie "Mary Poppins," Julie Andrews sings that "Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in a most delightful way."

Jesse Lange, the man directing this year's Cleveland Heights High School musical, which just happens to be "Mary Poppins," believes the large cast that makes up the production will be bringing that sugar -- and a lot more -- to the stage.

When asked to describe the production, which will be presented Nov. 1-4, Lange said: "It's like a kaleidoscope and candy, and kettle corn -- I like kettle corn. It's all things sweet and nice. It's for the entire family and people will have a great time."

Senior Olivia Sormaz, who is one of two actresses, along with Judea Lowe, playing the title role in the double cast, said audiences are sure to love "the tap dancing, the flying and the magic. We spent a lot of time learning to tap dance."

The "flying" to which Sormaz refers involves her character -- and the character of Bert (junior Will Davis and senior Manny Vaughn) -- rising above the stage, just as the characters flew using Mary Poppins' umbrella in the movie.

As for the "magic," Davis said, "That's the magic of the story."

One thing is certain: The stage will be a busy place during the play's run. Lange said the double cast includes about 150 high school students (and 30 crew members), another 100 or so middle school students, and approximately 400 Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District elementary school students providing song backing.

The beloved film "Mary Poppins" has enchanted children ever since its 1964 opening. It was set in the Edwardian England of 1910 and featured a memorable turn by Dick Van Dyke as Bert, and the music of Richard and Robert Sherman. Songs from the movie, including "Chim Chim Cheree," "Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious," and the above-mentioned "A Spoonful of Sugar," have become standards.

Its story tells of the magic and enchantment the nanny Mary Poppins brings to a home run by a staid British banker, Mr. Banks (played in the CHHS production by senior Zach Brust and sophomore Jackson Marshall), and including his wife, Winifred, and their children, Jane and Michael.

"I first saw the movie when I was 7 or 8," Sormaz said. "I absolutely loved it. I was really inspired by Julie Andrews. She's perfect. It was really cool to see how she completely changed an entire family."

Davis said he, too, first saw the movie when he was 7 or 8.

"I liked the character of Bert," Davis said. "He always seemed to be having such a good time."

Davis said he, too, likes to have a good time, so his biggest challenge in playing Bert was keeping up the Cockney accent with which he speaks while delivering his lines.

As for Lange, he sees something special in the character of Mrs. Banks (portrayed by junior Lila Schubert and sophomore Chip Vandall).

"She wants to be a mom," Lange said. "She needs Mary Poppins to convince her husband that her children need her."

Lange notes that those who see the CHHS play may also want to take in the Mary Poppins sequel movie -- coming to screens just in time for the holidays on Dec. 19 -- "Mary Poppins Returns."

It will star Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins and "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda as Bert. Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury will also appear in the film.

So, while movie-goers get set for that next bit of onscreen Mary Poppins magic, local residents of all ages can prepare by experiencing a bit of that magic live on stage at Cleveland Heights High School.

Cleveland Heights High School will present the musical "Mary Poppins" at 7 p.m. Nov. 1-3 and at 4 p.m. Nov. 4 at the school, 13263 Cedar Road. Tickets, at $8-$12, will be available at the door, or in advance at clevelandheightschoirs.com/purchase-tickets.html.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cuyahoga County judge who is a vocal critic of a sentencing reform initiative on the ballot for the Nov. 6 election has taken his opposition to residents forced to show up for jury duty at the Justice Center.

Multiple times in recent weeks, Common Pleas Court Judge David Matia has used the time usually reserved for a judge to welcome the hundreds of potential jurors to their mandatory civic duty to instead deliver a spiel in which he explicitly urged them to vote against Issue 1.

Administrative and Presiding Judge John J. Russo does not object to Matia's actions, which Matia insisted in a Monday phone interview did not violate any judicial ethics rules.

Judges are allowed to take public stances on issues that "directly affect the administration of justice," and it is up to a particular judge to determine when and where it is appropriate to make those comments, according to a 2002 advisory opinion by the Ohio Supreme Court's Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline.

"Whether it's a group of jurors or a bingo hall, it doesn't matter," Matia said. "The opportunity to educate the public should not be ignored by members of the judiciary."

But Matia's choice to deliver the message as part of the regular duties of his seat on the bench -- to a group of people with no choice to leave -- raises serious ethical questions, a legal expert said.

"He's got a right to announce his views," Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University, told cleveland.com. "What I don't like is he is using his judicial office as a vehicle for addressing a captive audience. That's where he's abusing the prestige of his judicial office."

Matia has been a fierce critic of Issue 1. He has appeared at the City Club of Cleveland and on radio shows and podcasts to voice his opposition to the measure. He is also far from the only judge to publicly come out against it.

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor has also spoken in opposition to the amendment, including in an editorial that cleveland.com published.

The judge that addresses the jurors usually gives a short speech thanking them for showing up and opining on the virtues of jury duty. Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court's 34 judges take turns addressing the room.

Matia said he has spoken to potential jurors three times. He said he has done so in addition to the judge on the schedule twice, and spoke on Wednesday in place of the judge who was supposed to address the room when that judge did not show up.

He said he hit the usual talking points he hits when he speaks in public about the issue, and urged a "no" vote.

"It's not a political issue," he said. "This is a matter directly affecting the administration of justice, and frankly it's our duty to educate the public on this issue and how it will affect the administration of justice."

Russo said in a statement through a spokesman that he "was made aware that his colleague has been speaking to jurors" about the measure.

"Judge Matia is an elected Cuyahoga County official and is speaking to constituents about an issue that impacts the administration of justice in the state," Russo said in the statement.

Rick Dove, director of the court's Board of Professional Conduct, said this situation is not explicitly spelled out in any judicial ethics rules, or addressed in any advisory opinions.

Dove pointed to the 2002 opinion, which came in response to a complaint filed over a judge's public endorsement of a proposed constitutional amendment that dealt with expanding the use of drug treatment in sentencing.

Judicial ethics rules bar judges and judicial candidates from making speeches on behalf of political organizations or publicly endorsing or opposing specific candidates for public office to prevent the judges "from abusing the prestige of judicial office to advance the interests of others."

The board wrote that judges could address certain legal issues that affect the administration of justice, and that it was not inappropriate for judges to do so in newspaper editorials, radio and TV ads, public forums and other mediums.

"No rule within the Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct, provides a list of appropriate forums for judicial speech," the board wrote. "A judge must exercise his or her discretion regarding appropriate forums for speaking to the public regarding the law, the legal system, and the administration of justice."

But Matia's advocacy did not occur at a forum or a public meeting where people came voluntarily to hear thoughts about the issue. It came inside the courthouse, to a group of people who had been summoned to perform a mandatory government duty.

Matia carried the authority of being a judge inside the courthouse and acted within the scope of his judicial office when he took the stance, all to an audience who was not free to leave, Geyh argued.

"He seems to be exploiting his role as judge to create this opportunity to vent his ideological point of view with respect to this view of legislation," Geyh said.

Matia called his advocacy at the courthouse "a non-issue, ethics wise." He sent a copy of the 2002 opinion to cleveland.com Monday in a text message after the phone interview for this story.

"Just remember to vote no on [Issue] 1," Matia wrote, adding a smiley-face emoticon.GRANGER TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- Bob Hummel has been a lifetime resident of Medina County and, during most of those years, has contributed his time and talents to the Highland Local Schools, Granger United Methodist Church and the Granger Historical Society

Hummel has been president of the Granger Historical Society since its founding in 1970.

"Every year, I ask for someone to take over. In 1970, I was the youngest person to get involved; now I'm the oldest. My biggest concern is who will take over the reins of the society when I retire," he said.

The historical society operates the Thompson-Work Museum at 1261 Granger Road, in a home donated to the township for use as a museum by Helen Thompson in 1966 with the understanding that she would have the use of the home for her lifetime.

In 1967, she made renovations and built on a museum room. She died in 1989 and the society took over the house. At that time, household goods that weren't historically important were sold at a huge garage sale, earning enough money to install a security system in the house.

In 1972, Judge Aldrich Underwood donated his library of 8,000 books, along with $10,000 to be used to build a building for a research library. The historical society built a 30-foot-by-40-foot building behind the Thompson home in 1974 to house those books and other research materials.

The Thompson-Work Museum at 1261 Granger Road was donated to the township for use as a museum by Helen Thompson in 1966. (Mary Jane Brewer, special to cleveland.com)

The museum and library are open the first Saturday of every month by appointment: Call 330-239-2380 or email grangertwp@grangertwp.org to arrange a tour.

Shortly after his birth in Granger Township in 1937, Hummel and his family moved to Wadsworth Township, where for eight years his dad bottled milk and delivered it in a horse-drawn wagon.

In 1946, they took over his mother's family's dairy farm back in Granger Township. Bob credits his good health and work ethic to the positive experiences he had on the farm.

Hummel graduated from Highland High School in 1955 and briefly attended Kent State University before transferring to The Ohio State University in 1956 during his sophomore year. There, he studied business, with a major in personnel management. During the summers, he returned to Granger to work on the family dairy farm.

Following his graduation in 1959, he joined the U.S. Army.

"I thought the Army was my ticket to Europe," he said.

Instead of Europe, he was stationed at a small post in the mountains of Puerto Rico. As a payroll clerk in the personnel office of the post of 100 people, he enjoyed the lovely weather and socializing with the townspeople.

"The post was like a small college campus. I ended up with several lifetime friends," Hummel said.

He left the Army in 1961 and briefly worked for an insurance company in Cleveland, but soon learned that that wasn't the job for him. He picked up a temporary teaching certificate from the University of Akron in 1963 and began teaching sixth grade at Sharon Elementary School.

While teaching, he earned a master's degree in educational administration from Akron U.

He then served as principal at Hinckley Elementary School for seven years before transferring to the principal's position at Sharon Elementary School in 1975, where he remained for 20 years.

During his time at Hinckley Elementary, he met his future wife, Phyllis, a Highland graduate who was teaching there. They dated for three months before marrying in 1971. The newlyweds honeymooned in Puerto Rico. They've been together now for 47 years.

In 1963, during his teaching years, he purchased his maternal grandparents' home in Granger, where he and Phyllis still live.

"It's a house where we can live on one level," Hummel said.

His grandfather bought the home in 1919.

Since his retirement from the Highland Schools in 1995, the Hummels have been very active in the care of their grandchildren, along with spending lots of time at the museum. His latest task was removing some tired old plants to make room for new landscaping there.

Although Hummel says, "my whole life is right in Granger," he and Phyllis took trips to Europe in 2007, 2009 and 2011. They traveled using Eurail passes and stayed in bed-and-breakfasts.

When he's not working at home or at the museum, Hummel keeps busy at Granger United Methodist Church. He serves as mission chairperson, sings in the choir and plays in the bell choir. He also plays in the chime choir at the Western Reserve Masonic Home.

The Granger community should be very happy that Hummel acquired that work ethic so many years ago.CLEVELAND, Ohio - In an industry dealing with changing regulations, evolving technologies and a greater emphasis on quality, physicians and other medical professionals are battling burnout.

Eric Hargan, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the federal government can play a role in addressing this problem, through a combination of regulatory reforms and other approaches.

Burnout is defined as persistent stress, emotional exhaustion and a lack of enthusiasm for the job.

"This is not an issue with a single source. It's not going to have a single solution," Hargan said Monday during the Cleveland Clinic's 2018 Medical Innovation Summit at the Huntington Convention Center. "It's not just the regulatory side of things. There's more to it."

Hargan said that while the federal government has informally investigated causes of physician burnout, it needs to approach the issue in a "more informed way" to find out the "key drivers" of the problem.

"Talking about the broader issue of physician and other provider burnout is something where I think we need to get together some leaders in the community," Hargan said.

Nationwide, as many as 42 percent of physicians experience burnout, according to a 2018 Physician Lifestyle Report published by Medscape, a news resource for medical professionals. Likewise, a recent report published by Cleveland Clinic doctors and researchers found that 35 percent of Clinic physicians surveyed met burnout criteria. And from 2011 to 2014, the national rate of physician burnout increased 20 percent, according to a survey by the Mayo Clinic.

"We've also struggled with this concept at the Cleveland Clinic," said Dr. Tom Mihaljevic, president and CEO of the Clinic.

The Clinic recently launched an office of caregiver experience focused on reducing employee burnout, improving wellness and career development. In the Clinic study on employee burnout, 44 percent of those who left the system were experiencing burnout.

Hargan said the government could look at how regulations affect burnout, as well as the burden electronic medical records place on physicians and other medical staff.

"Ten, 15 years ago, people thought electronic health records were going to prevent physician burnout," Hargan said. "It's the exact opposite."STRONGSVILLE, Ohio -- The Cleveland Southwest Safety Council hosted disaster expert Russell Decker during its Oct. 10 meeting, providing area businesses and first responders with important advice about handling weather disasters.

The Berea, Brook Park and Middleburg Heights chambers of commerce sponsored the business continuity preparedness event. It took place inside the Strongsville Holiday Inn -- coincidentally on the day that Hurricane Michael approached, and later devastated, the Florida coast.

Decker is deputy director of public-private partnerships for Ohio Homeland Security as part of the Ohio Department of Public Safety in Columbus. He emphasized the importance of the Ohio Public-Private Partnership initiative, also known as OP3, during disasters.

"FEMA has been tracking the impact of disasters on small businesses for more than 30 years," Decker told cleveland.com. "When you have a disaster like Hurricane Michael, one out of four small businesses won't survive it."

He emphasized that small businesses that endure after catastrophes are those that have business continuity plans in place and have made sure, for instance, that they have the right amount of insurance for anticipated losses.

Business owners also need to be aware, Decker said, that suppliers -- the key to making their products -- may also be severely impacted by natural disasters. Devastating environmental events include tornadoes, drought, windstorms, floods and even algae blooms and aging city infrastructures, he said.

"We're still recovering in Ohio from flooding in February, which impacted 22 southern counties," Decker explained to the large crowd. "In Toledo, they had to shut down their water system in 2014 due to Lake Erie algae blooms, and it impacted half a million people that counted on that water supply. That's a big deal."

The OP3 helps businesses monitor, stock up and prepare for imminent weather threats. Foresight can significantly save small businesses, with a 7-to-1 advantage against lost revenues experienced by businesses that do the work ahead of time, he said. A simple generator can mean the difference between a business that opens immediately after a disaster, and those that can't.

"The more we can have companies and individuals become self-reliant and self-resilient in a disaster, the faster the government can focus on big-picture items, like clearing the roadways and getting power restored," Decker said, adding that nearly 700 businesses and organizations are currently OP3 members.

For more information about free membership in OP3, contact Decker at RJDecker@dps.ohio.gov, or go to homelandsecurity.ohio.gov/OP3.Steve Williams, 60, the longtime, hands-on manager at White Birch Farm in New Jersey, passed away on Sunday morning (Oct. 21), reportedly suffering a heart attack. He had attended the Breeders Crown eliminations at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono the night before.

Williams was responsible for the foaling and raising of such champion harness horses as Bee A Magician and Captaintreacherous, and the pacing mare Darlins Delight. He had been enjoying watching the sons and daughters of Captaintreacherous on the track this year and was in Lexington to see White Birch see success in selling part of its yearling crop.

Trot Insider has received an obituary for Steve, which also states that a memorial service is in the works, but details have yet to be announced. The contents of the obituary appear below. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Steve Williams.

Steven F. Williams, White Birch Farms manager, passed away suddenly on October 21, 2018, while attending the Breeders Crown in the Poconos. Born 5/2/58 in Fairfield, Iowa, he is survived by his sons, Joseph D. Williams (21) and Steven J. Williams (20). He also is survived by his brother Jim Williams of Fairfield, Iowa and sister JoAnn Wray of Columbia, Missouri. He also leaves behind hundreds of friends in the Standardbred community and beyond.

Steve caught the harness racing bug and started his career at 18. Through the years he grew from a groom to a trainer developing top horses. At White Birch Farm as the farm manager he found a true passion bringing young horses into the world and overseeing their development. After the passing of his friend and farm owner Mike Parisi, Steve took on the responsibility of keeping the farm moving forward and he did just that. These past two years have been amazing for the farm and Steve had just returned home from the best sale in the farms history. With still 14 yearlings left to sell in two weeks, everyone could tell just how proud Steve was with his accomplishments! Although he was always most proud of his own boys, his equine children were something he could share with the hundreds of true friend he made along his journey.

ARRANGEMENTS

Joseph and Steven Williams have arranged an evening celebrating the life of their dad, Steve Williams.

It will be held November 17, 2018 at the Meadowlands Racetrack in the Skybox area from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. People will have a chance to share memories of Steve, in a place where he had many fond memories.

A website has been set up to share messages with Steves family and friends. To head to the website, click here.

(With files from harnessracing.com)ROBINSON, Texas -- Police say a 15-year-old boy grabbed a man who was attempting to sexually assault his mother and restrained him until officers arrived.

Now the suspect, John Wayne Morris, 37, has been charged with burglary of a habitation with intent to commit a felony other than theft-sexual assault, a first-degree felony, according to Fox 44.

Morris is accused of entering the home through an unlocked door at about 11:30 p.m. and went to the woman's bedroom, the Waco Tribune reports.

The woman told police she awoke to find the man on top of her and holding her shoulders down on the bed. When she screamed, the man claimed there was another person in the house and that he would kill her children if she didn't stay quiet.

But it was just moments later when her teen son came into the room and pulled the man off his mother. He then put his arms around the suspect's neck and held him until police arrived, reports say.

Police arrested Morris at the scene.

If you'd like to comment on this post, please visit the cleveland.com crime and courts comments section.NORTH RIDGEVILLE, Ohio -- In addition to the many state and county ballot issues on Nov. 6, as well as the election of a myriad of judges, there are two important issues on the ballot in North Ridgeville.

First is Issue 31, a 0.45-mill levy request to fund an aquatic center, a long-awaited amenity to the city. No one could be more excited about it than Mayor David Gillock.

"(The aquatic center ballot issue) will give our residents an opportunity to vote on this improvement," he said.

Gillock said surveys on the issue have resulted in the aquatic center being the second most requested amenity after a recreation center.

City information says the proposed center would include 13,500 square feet of water surface area, with 40,500 square feet of deck and grass areas. The total space needed -- including parking, access and open space -- is approximately five acres.

The total project cost for development of this facility is $5 million. Annual expenses are estimated at $385,000, with annual revenues estimated at $435,000.

The levy would cost the owner of a home valued at $100,000 an additional $15.75 in property taxes per year.

Also on the ballot will be Issue 32, which is a move to repeal Section 9.7 from the city's charter: Mandatory Referral of Rezoning to Electors, which was added to the charter in 1973.

The original charter section states that "an application to rezone property to multi-family, defined as anything more than a duplex, must first be approved by Planning Commission and then City Council. In the event it is approved by City Council, it then has to be placed on the ballot and approved by a majority of the city and in the ward in which the property is located," according to Gillock.

Gillock explains why he believes the change is needed.

"The first reason the city is asking for the change is the lack of clarity that the first sentence (in the section) presents," Gillock said. "The first sentence states: 'No parcel or parcels of land shall be rezoned for multiple family dwellings until the total of multiple family dwelling units equal 15 percent of all the dwelling units in the municipality on land presently zoned for such use.'

"That is a number that is almost impossible to calculate," he said.

"Secondly, this section ... prohibits residential dwellings as a permitted or conditional use in business districts. Because of (these reasons), the city cannot consider any 'mixed-use' development" such as Crocker Park, Gillock said.

Gillock said anyone who has questions about either ballot issue can be contact him at 440-353-0811.OLMSTED FALLS, Ohio -- Residents on Election Day will decide four charter amendments proposed by the Charter Review Committee.

If passed on Nov. 6, the most notable is Issue 56, which involves not only expanding City Council terms from two to four years, but also staggering council-at-large and ward council seat elections.

"There are pros and cons," Olmsted Falls Mayor James Graven said. "One good reason (for) staggering terms, obviously, is it would eliminate the possibility of seven new people being elected to Olmsted Falls City Council. Another pro is that someone can be there longer than two years and get a little more experience.

"On the other hand, some citizens want to be able to change council every two years. If this passes and citizens aren't happy with a person in office, they have to wait four years for a change."

City Council President Paul Stibich said that while four-year terms would provide more continuity, he questioned whether the time commitment might discourage some residents from running for office.

"I like a two-year term so voters can affirm their confidence in elected officials or make changes sooner if they see a better alternative," Stibich said.

If Issue 56 is passed, council-at-large seats would become four-year terms beginning with the 2019 election, while ward representatives would begin four-year terms with the 2021 election.

The Charter Review Committee -- Garry Thompson (chairman), Terry Duncan, Lori Jones, Brett Iafigliola, Laura Graham, Fran Migliorino, Jack Sadlon, Dave Humpal and David Neumann -- recommended the fall ballot issues.

The remaining charter amendments are more innocuous, with Issue 55 asking voters to decide whether the mayor or City Council president should run City Council meetings.

"I'm fine with however the people vote," Graven said. "The fact of the matter is the vast majority of the suburbs have the council president run the meeting. And it is called a City Council meeting. It's not called the mayor meeting."

Stibich said he's not in favor of Issue 55, because the mayor is chief executive of the city, a full-time position managing day-to-day affairs and performing tasks assigned by council.

"The mayor and staff are most in tune with issues that need to be addressed," Stibich said. "I believe the mayor is best suited to set the agenda and run council meetings."

Issue 57 is the direct result of last year's mayoral election in which none of the three candidates -- Graven, incumbent Ann Marie Donegan and Stephen M. Hoca -- received more than 50 percent of the required vote to be named winner. This required a runoff election.

If Issue 57 is passed, upcoming mayoral elections with three or more candidates would include a September primary.

"This is to save money, because when we had a runoff in December, Olmsted Falls was the only election on that day in the county," Graven said. "I'm in favor of anything that will save the city money."

Finally, Issue 58, if passed, would allow City Council in consultation with the law director to rearrange numbering and titles, correct typographical errors and delete obsolete language in the charter.

"I'm for taking care of obsolete language," Graven said. "This is really a housekeeping matter."

Olmsted Township levy renewal

In Olmsted Township, residents will be asked to decide operating levy renewal Issue 109, which brings in roughly $1.1 million a year and costs the owner of a home valued at $100,000 $137.12 annually.

"It's a five-year tax levy," Township Administrator Rebecca Corrigan said. "It's up next year, so we're just going to the ballot early.

"The operations levy was originally passed in 2014 and it helps all departments -- building, service, police and fire. This helps everything from leaf collection to staffing, so it's crucial," Corrigan said.CLEVELAND, Ohio - More than 150,000 Cuyahoga County voters have cast ballots early in person or have requested mail-in ballots.

The increase is 14 percent compared to 2014, the last midterm election, Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Pat McDonald said.

And increases are coming from Republicans and unaffiliated voters. But a new law that the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections began implementing in 2015 changed many Democrats' party affiliation to unaffiliated if they weren't voting once every four years.

The numbers counted are from the first day of early voting, which this year was Oct. 10, through Friday, which 18 days before the election.

McDonald said there are no lines if people vote early in person at the Board of Elections. Twenty people are operating the polls, he said.

This year, 3,012 people have voted in person, compared to 884 at the same time for the 2014 election.

Mail-in and in-person early voting 18 days out from the 2014 general election in Cuyahoga County:

Democrats: 75,675 voters (55 percent of the total vote)

Republicans in 2014: 33,964 voters (25 percent)

Unaffiliated: 26,854 (19 percent)

Total: 137,053

Eighteen days out in 2018:

Democrats: 68,760 (44 percent)

Republicans: 39,080 (25 percent)

Unaffiliated: 48,206 (30 percent)

Total: 156,251

While the number of Democrats in highly Democratic Cuyahoga County are down, the numbers of unaffiliated voters and Republicans are up.

Republicans appear to be energized after the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's unclear whether the unaffiliated voters are joining the "blue wave" that many people have predicted will occur in response to President Donald Trump, or if they're voting mostly Republican - or a combination of both.

Early voting in Cuyahoga County is not expected to reach the levels of presidential elections, when turnout is best. In a presidential election, it's typical for 40,000 people vote early in person. This year's numbers are nowhere close to approaching that level, McDonald said.COLUMBUS, Ohio--Another Ohio legislative candidate - this time, a Democrat - is taking his own party to task for a negative ad against his opponent.

Casey Weinstein, the Democratic nominee for House District 37 in Summit County, said in a release that he "condemns" a digital ad from the Ohio House Democratic Caucus against his Republican rival, Mike Rasor. He expressed his "frustration" in a letter to House Minority Leader Fred Strahorn asking that the ad be taken down.

The ad, which has been running on Facebook and other sites, claims "Mike Rasor wants to take away women's access to preventative care and affordable cancer screenings, including mammograms." To support that claim, the ad refers to a candidate survey in which Rasor stated he "strongly agrees" that abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood (which offers cancer screenings) should not receive funds from federal, state, or local governments.

Weinstein stated that Rasor asked him to denounce and pull the ad, but he can only do the former because he didn't create or place the ad.

"These negative advertisements do not reflect the values I strive for, not only as a [Hudson] City Councilman, but as a father," Weinstein said in a statement, "I've been the victim of deceptive attacks in the past, and it's why I've been dedicated to running a clean campaign."

However, House Democratic Caucus Executive Director Aaron Fisher defended the ad in an email and stated that the caucus is continuing to run it.

"While the Ohio House Democratic Caucus respects Casey Weinstein and the positive campaign he is running, we feel it is important that Ohio voters know exactly where Mike Rasor stands on the issues," Fisher stated. "Every word in this ad is true, and we stand by it."

Weinstein's letter comes after a Republican legislative candidate in suburban Columbus, Erik Yassenoff, asked the Ohio Republican Party to stop sending out attack ads against his House District 24 Democratic opponent, Allison Russo.COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State will return from its off week with a noon kickoff against Nebraska on Nov. 3.

The Big Ten announced the kickoff time on Monday.

The Buckeyes home slate this season will consist of four noon games (Oregon State, Minnesota, Nebraska and the Michigan finale), two games at 3:30 (Rutgers, Tulane) and one at 4 p.m. (Indiana).

Meanwhile there have been two road games at 7:30 (Penn State, Purdue) and one at 8 p.m. (the neutral site game in Arlington, Texas, down the road from TCU's campus).

The 7-1 Buckeyes have four games left: at home against Nebraska; then road games at Michigan State and Maryland where the times have not been set; and the Michigan game at home.Kennesaw State University Removes Restrictive 'Speech Zones' for Pro-Life Student Group

Contact: Alliance Defending Freedom Media Relations, 480-4440020

INDIAN TRAIL, N.C., Oct. 22, 2018 /Standard Newswire/ -- Through a lawsuit last February, the Kennesaw State University chapter of Ratio Christi Campus Apologetics Alliance has prompted KSU to change its "speech zones" policies. On several occasions, KSU had relegated Ratio Christi's pro-life displays to be presented in a "speech zone" that made up less than 0.08 percent of the 405-acre campus, stating the subject was "controversial," and denying the use of other available space on campus.

School administrators had told the group's students that they could only use the space they originally requested if the posters displaying the pro-life message were removed from the presentation. The university had often allowed student groups with other messages to use any space available on campus for presentations and to pass out materials.

Ratio Christi Campus Apologetics Alliance has nearly 200 chapters at colleges and universities in the U.S and abroad. These chapters -- many of which meet weekly -- provide a friendly venue for atheists, skeptics, and adherents to any religion to investigate the claims of Christianity, discuss religious beliefs, and seek truth without fearing reprisal. Ratio Christi's mission is to equip students and faculty to give historical, philosophical, and scientific evidence for following Jesus Christ. The organization also has an apologetics outreach to high school students.

Today, the KSU chapter of Ratio Christi and the University finalized a settlement agreement that will bring the case to a close. In this agreement, KSU has agreed to update two policies, eliminating the speech zone and making it easier for students to hold spontaneous activities on campus. In the settlement, the school also agreed to pay $20,100 to the Ratio Christi chapter for attorney fees and damages.

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Travis Barham, an attorney representing Ratio Christi, issued this statement:

"Public universities are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, where all ideas are welcome, not just those that university officials consider acceptable. Kennesaw State has done the right thing in ending the ability of officials to quarantine any student speech they deemed 'controversial' to a tiny, difficult-to-access part of campus. We hope that this settlement will prompt other public universities to eliminate similar unconstitutional policies. The First Amendment prohibits universities from restricting where students can speak, whether that restriction is based on what students intend to say or simply based on sparing the feelings of others who may disagree."

Ratio Christi is currently engaged in legal proceedings regarding religious liberty in universities across the United States. The President and CEO of Ratio Christi, Dr. Corey Miller, has previously stated: "In today's academic environment, Christian students and educators must not only defend our faith, but we must also defend our right to defend our faith."

Media representatives interested in more information about the settled case of Ratio Christi of Kennesaw State University v. Olens can contact ADF Media Relations at (480) 4440020 or ADFmedia.org.Alibaba opened two data centers in the U.K. on Monday, further expanding its cloud footprint in Europe.

The new facilities  both in London  are the Chinese tech giant's first in Britain, and will provide its business customers in the region with round-the-clock security and engineering support and real-time monitoring.

A spokesperson for Alibaba Cloud said the move was part of the cloud division's expansion into Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

"As part of our commitment to continue expanding into Europe and across EMEA, we are launching two U.K. availability zones in addition to the existing ones in Frankfurt and Dubai," the spokesperson said.

"Our decision on the location is driven by the rapidly growing customer demand in the U.K."

Alibaba said the benefit of having two data centers within one location was the ability to recover or maintain key IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster.

The move comes as the U.K. struggles to finalize the terms of its contentious divorce with the European Union. Brexit talks seem to be in limbo over the key issue of preventing a hard Irish border.

"The United Kingdom is one of the fastest growing European markets for Alibaba Cloud, and many of our customers are in key verticals such as retail, finance, media, education and research, and logistics," the Alibaba spokesperson said.

"We are also working with many global and local partners to make sure we are offering best-in-class technologies, services and consulting to customers."Asia Pacific markets mostly rose on Monday as major Chinese indexes leaped more than 4 percent.

The added 4.09 percent to close at around 2,654.88. Earlier in the day, the index saw gains of more than 4.5 percent.

Elsewhere, the Shenzhen composite gained 4.899 percent to close at about 1,325.73.

The moves followed Friday's rally in Chinese stocks as authorities took steps to support the market after the release of weaker-than-expected GDP data.

One market observer, however, voiced skepticism over the recent rally in mainland Chinese stocks.

"Eventually, at the end of the day, fundamentals will still rule," Vasu Menon, vice president of group wealth management at OCBC Bank told CNBC's "Street Signs" on Monday morning.

Menon pointed out there were lingering concerns over Beijing's trade war with Washington. "It doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon," he said.

"You see a rebound today, but does it mean that the markets have turned a corner and you know, will hit higher? I'm not sure. I don't think so," Menon said.

In Japan, the erased earlier losses to close 0.37 percent higher at 22,614.82 while the Topix index gained 0.15 percent to end the trading day at 1,695.31. South Korea's Kospi gained 0.25 percent to close at 2,161.71. In Hong Kong, the rose 2.22 percent in afternoon trade.Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will meet with independent lawmakers as early as Monday in a bid to shore up support for his government as it is poised to lose its one seat parliamentary majority.

The ruling Liberal Party saw a 20 percent swing against it at a by-election in Sydney, leaving the government reliant on support of five independents to survive.

Several independent lawmakers have so far offered only qualified support for Morrison to continue, warning that their backing would be conditional on the policy changes.

Cathy McGowan, a member of the ruling government who resigned to sit as an independent, said she expects a meeting between the five lawmakers and the prime minister to happen on Monday.

"Ideally, I'd like the government to go full term, but we, the crossbenchers, will have those discussions today with the prime minister, the treasurer and various other ministers," McGowan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Morrison must return to the polls by May 2019.

Sources familiar with the plans of the other independent lawmakers told Reuters no meeting has yet been scheduled though talks are ongoing. A spokesman for Morrison declined to comment.

Morrison's move to meet with the independent lawmakers comes as his Liberal Party candidate maintains a slim chance of victory in the electorate of Wentworth.

Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps has a lead of more than 1,600 votes, though several thousand postal votes are still be counted.

Morrison on Saturday surrendered the seat, vacated by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull after his retirement from politics following his ousting as leader in August, though he later admitted he may have conceded too soon.

The ballot was propelled into international prominence after Morrison's late attempt to garner support from Jewish voters, who account for 13 percent of Wentworth's electorate, by suggesting Australia could recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move its embassy there from Tel Aviv.Carl Icahn speaking at Delivering Alpha in New York on Sept. 13, 2016.

Activist investor Carl Icahn scored a big payday on Monday after shares of tanker car maker American Railcar Industries surged on news that the company will merge with a subsidiary of ITE Rail Fund.

Icahn owned 62.2 percent of American Railcar's shares outstanding as of June 30, according to FactSet, having first taken a majority stake in 2010. The stake was worth nearly $550 million through Friday's close. In a statement Monday, Icahn Enterprises said its investment in American Railcar has resulted in a profit of $757.2 million, including the deal.

American Railcar agreed to merge with the ITE subsidiary for $70 a share. The deal is valued at $1.75 billion, including debt. American Railcar's stock shot up 50 percent in trading on the news, to $69.75.

Monday's jump adds to what has already been a good year for American Railcar shares. Through Friday's close, the stock was up 11.2 percent. It is also up 17.8 percent in the past 12 months.

Both companies said the deal is expected to close this quarter.

"The sale demonstrates the value this company, its employees and shareholders have created," said American Railcar CEO John O'Bryan said in a statement. "We look forward to working with the ITE team to continue to improve our business and grow in the years to come."

O'Bryan also thanked Icahn Enterprises "for its support and guidance over the years."President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping Thomas Peter | Reuters

Chinese government leaders have a message for American investors: They're not afraid of a trade war with the United States. On Monday in Beijing, Zhang Qingli, a leading member of a Chinese committee tasked with forging alliances with other nations, told a small group of U.S. business leaders, lobbyists and public relations executives that China refuses to be intimidated by an ongoing trade war with the Trump administration. "China never wants a trade war with anybody, not to mention the U.S., who has been a long term strategic partner, but we also do not fear such a war," Zhang said through a translator, according to a meeting attendee who declined to be named. He also accused President Donald Trump's administration of going forward with tariffs even after making progress in trade talks. "The U.S. side has disregarded a consensus with China after multiple rounds of consultations, insisting on waging a trade war against China and continuing to escalate it. In response, China is left with no other option but to make necessary counter actions," Zhang said, according to the participant in the room at the time.

Zhang's harsh words echoed China's earlier statements about trade tensions with Washington. For the executives in the room on Monday, however, it showed there was no end in sight for the ongoing struggle between the two nations  and that the Chinese are taking a more tempered approach. The official's "assertion that China doesn't want a trade war but doesn't fear one either showed a tempered resistance to the bolder and more aggressive U.S. posturing," Dan Eberhart, who was one of the 25 corporate leaders in the room at the time, told CNBC in an interview. Eberhart is the CEO of oilfield drilling services company Canary LLC. Zhang serves on the Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, or CPPCC, a legislative body that's meant to forge and maintain alliances with other countries, including the United States. The meeting involved Zhang and 25 members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. The group is a sister organization of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, a nonprofit organization representing U.S. companies and individuals looking to invest into the region. AmCham China has over 3,300 individuals and 900 companies. AmCham China works directly with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the largest lobbying organizations in the world and an opponent of the tariffs. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the meeting was not an event sponsored by the organization and declined to comment further.

A representative from AmCham Hong Kong declined to comment. Representatives from AmCham China did not return a request for comment.



The White House, in a statement to CNBC, said the administration does not seek a trade war with China. "The goal of United States trade actions is not to harm China's economy or start a trade war, but to get China to follow through on allowing fair competition and stop their unfair trade practices that have been hurting the American workers for years," White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said. The strong words from the vice chairman of CPPCC comes just a month after Trump imposed $200 billion on Chinese imports on top of the $50 billion levy the administration piled onto the country earlier this year. The new trade barrier went into effect in September at a 10 percent rate and is expected to climb to 25 percent in 2019. China has retaliated with tariffs on up to $60 billion worth of U.S. items, numbering over 5,000. Trump has said he's considering ramping up the trade war with another round of over $257 billion worth of tariffs but that threat has yet to materialize. Although it is unclear who else attended the gathering, AmCham Hong Kong's executive committee is full of major players in various industries. Its chairman, Jack Lange, is a partner at the international law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, according to the group's website. Other notable members of AmCham Hong Kong include Citigroup, PayPal, FedEx and Universal Pictures.China's top representative to Macau died late on Saturday after falling from the building where he lived, the Chinese government said on Sunday.

Zheng Xiaosong, the head of China's liaison office to Macau, had been suffering from depression, the Hong Kong and Macau Office of the Chinese government's State Council said in a statement, adding representatives of the Beijing government visited Macau to offer condolences. The statement did not elaborate further on the circumstances of his death.

Zheng, 59, was appointed to the Macau post in September 2017 and is a member of the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee, the largest of China's elite ruling bodies. He was previously the vice governor of the southeastern coastal province of Fujian.

The liaison office in Macau serves as a bridge between the local government and Beijing and has become increasingly influential in local affairs.

Like neighboring Hong Kong, Macau operates under China's "one country, two systems" policy and is ruled by a chief executive, who is chosen via an election but must get approval from Beijing to formally take office.

Macau Chief Executive Fernando Chui said in a statement that he was "shocked" about Zheng's death and expressed condolences. Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam also issued a statement expressing "deep sorrow" for Zheng's death.

A statement published on Friday on the Macau liaison's office website showed that Zheng met with the head of a think tank the day before his death. During the meeting he emphasized the importance of supporting the local government and the one country, two systems policy to ensure Macau's continued development, the statement said.In this Feb. 1, 2015, file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a press conference in Manama, Bahrain.

CIA Director Gina Haspel will travel to Turkey Monday as part of the U.S. government's investigation into the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC news.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and frequent critic of the Saudi royal family, entered Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 and never emerged. Saudi Arabia's general prosecutor announced Saturday morning local time that Khashoggi was dead, walking back their earlier statements that insisted he left the consulate safely.

The Saudi government claimed Khashoggi died during a fight in the consulate, contrary to multiple other reports. Turkish officials told The New York Times that it has audio evidence which proves Khashoggi was tortured, killed and subsequently dismembered by a hit team of Saudi agents.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday as part of a previously scheduled talk to discuss fighting terrorism funding and Iran.

Mnuchin had previously withdrawn from the Future Investment Initiative conference taking place this week in the Riyadh due to mounting concerns over Saudi Arabia's role in Khashoggi's disappearance.Recent swings in the stock market don't make it an easy environment for individual investors, CNBC's Jim Cramer admitted as fears tied to earnings and geopolitical tensions drove many stocks lower on Monday.

"Those losses are substantial if you own anything connected to housing or to China, two problems that I regard as entirely man-made," the "Mad Money" host said. "Housing's being crushed by an overzealous Federal Reserve and China's getting slammed by the president's trade war."

Cramer worried that the escalating conflict between the United States and China over trade, with officials from the two countries continuing to trade barbs Monday, could have even more serious implications than many think.

If trade talks abruptly end, a distinct possibility considering both countries' increasingly tense exchanges, "we better get used to some serious collateral damage" to the stock market, Cramer said.

He noted that referring to China's government as the "Chinese Communist Party," as top White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow did in a Sunday interview with the Financial Times, could mean that the Trump administration is souring on reaching any kind of business deal with China.

"I think the president wants the economic equivalent of regime change," Cramer said. "Yep, not an economic war, but a cold war, with the Chinese once again playing the pre-Nixon role of worldwide nemesis. Needless to say, that is not what Wall Street wants to see."

A repeat of the Cold War  a time of political and economic hostility between the former Soviet Union and the United States and its allies that occurred after World War II  would weigh on a number of China-related stocks, Cramer warned.

The stock he was most concerned about was that of Rockwell Collins, an aircraft manufacturer set to be acquired by rival United Technologies in a deal at risk of being blocked by Chinese authorities.

Lately, the action in shares of Rockwell Collins has signaled "a tremendous amount of angst among the arbitrage community that are in this deal," Cramer said. "At the same time, United Technologies is taking it on the chin because of the holdup ... and, as long as the Chinese drag their feet, it makes the company's eventual breakup less likely."

Micron's stock could also take a debilitating hit if U.S.-China relations keep going south because the semiconductor maker gets roughly half of its sales from China, the "Mad Money" host said.

"Maybe the Chinese Communist Party wants to shut down their business in China. Maybe they want to make it harder for them to do business," he said. "Whatever's happening, it sent the stock into free-fall, and that's putting pressure on the entire chip cohort, including Applied Materials, the semiconductor capital equipment maker with a lot of business in China."

Some companies, like Apple, have strong enough relationships with China that stymieing their businesses would mean hurting the Chinese economy, Cramer noted. But he worried that too few U.S. companies have such ties.

"You have to be cognizant that the strongest stocks today were the techs that have no meaningful exposure to China, namely Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook," he said. "Bottom line? As mutual funds dump stocks of companies that trade with the enemy as part of their normal end-of-year selling, they've decided to swap that cash into the highest-growth tech stocks with no Chinese exposure and therefore there's a whole lot of FANG going on."European banks that are focused on one specific market or have limited cross-border activities will likely fare better than those that don't, the CEO of Austrian banking group Erste told CNBC Monday.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008 and the euro zone sovereign debt crisis of 2011, European banks have struggled to improve their balance sheets. According to Andreas Treichl, the CEO of Erste, they still have a long way to go before being in a "good shape."

"The issue is that the European financial system is just not in a really good shape yet," Treichl told CNBC's "Street Signs."

He noted that Scandinavian banks and others that have limited activity across Europe are in a stronger position. "If you look at certain banks, in certain countries, they are doing extremely well," he said.

"Most of them are actually non-cross-border banks. You look at Scandinavian banks or banks that are located in Spain but only have foreign business outside of Europe. They do a lot better than those banks that play a game on European convergence and that should give a really good story to European politicians," Treichl said.

European lawmakers have tried since the global financial crisis to reinforce rules and to integrate European banks further. Though the so-called Banking Union has evolved over the last couple of years, it is not yet complete. Some member states are cautious about integrating their banking systems with others in Europe given the discrepancies across the euro zone.Gibraltar's chief minister told CNBC that the British overseas territory needs a different Brexit solution to the rest of the U.K.

Speaking on CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe," Fabian Picardo said Gibraltar had different Brexit requirements due to its distinguished EU membership and geographical position next to Spain.

"We have a border with the Schengen territory of the European Union," he said. "(But) free movement issues are different for us than they might be for  Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, because they have a common travel area, something we don't presently have with the Schengen area."

Europe's Schengen Area is comprised of 26 states that have abolished passport and border control at their mutual borders.

Gibraltar's "differentiated membership" with the EU means the territory is not a member of the customs union that governs the trading of goods between member states. Picardo told CNBC that this meant Gibraltar was less focused on post-Brexit trade agreements with the bloc.

"The Chequers plan is not so relevant to us because (it) is primarily about the movement of goods," he said. "We haven't been in the common customs union in all of the period of membership of the past 46 years."

British Prime Minister Theresa May is continuing to push ahead with her so-called Chequers plan, which involves ending the free movement of people between the EU and the U.K. and establishing an independent trade policy.

Picardo also said negotiations had resolved the issue of maintaining Gibraltar's access to the U.K. market  where around 90 percent of its business is done  beyond the Brexit transition period, which meant economic security for the territory.

"People have realized that Gibraltar's a great place to access the U.K. market, they don't want to move, and I think that is going to give the certainty that the market needs," he said. "We're seeing more people come into Gibraltar, more corporates come into Gibraltar, more gaming companies, more insurance companies  they see a settled market and one that they want to form part of."

While Gibraltar was progressing with Brexit negotiations, Picardo said he could not envisage a solution to the Irish backstop problem.

"I don't understand how you get out of the backstop on Ireland, because it's an issue of logic," he said.

"If you have two separate systems of customs, how do you have a barrier that ensures the integrity of each of those systems? I think the problem is that when politics comes straight up against logic, words don't fix the problem."Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, criticized President Donald Trump's threat to withdraw from an international nuclear disarmament treaty, saying the move "is not the work of a great mind."

Trump announced at a rally Saturday that he will pull the U.S. from the "Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty," (INF) citing Russian violations of the deal, although he did not give further details.

The 1987 treaty prohibits Russia and the U.S. from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile having a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers or "to possess or produce launchers of such missiles."

Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991, had signed the treaty with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Now 87, Gorbachev said Trump's decision was "very strange" and a mistake.

"Do they really not understand in Washington what this can lead to?" Gorbachev told Russian news agency Interfax on Sunday, adding that the decision "will undermine all the efforts that were made by the leaders of the USSR and the United States themselves to achieve nuclear disarmament."

Gorbachev said that "Washington's aspiration to turn politics back cannot be supported, this must be declared not only by Russia, but by all who cherish the world, especially the world without nuclear weapons."

The treaty marked a historic shift in U.S.-Russian relations and came at a time of Gorbachev-led reforms in Russia  most notably, his policies of "perestroika" and "glasnost"  essentially, a series of political and economic reforms and "openness."

Gorbachev said Sunday that "all agreements aimed at nuclear disarmament and the limitation of nuclear weapons must be preserved for the sake of life on Earth."Kushner's comments reflected one side of a two-sided debate that is taking place within the Trump administration, over how forcefully to respond to Khashoggi's reportedly brutal and extrajudicial death. The killing has sparked international outrage at Saudi Arabia and at its powerful crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman.

"After that, the president and the secretary of State will make a determination as to what we deem to be credible and what actions we think we should take," said Kushner, who is also President Donald Trump's son-in-law.

"With regards to the situation in Saudi Arabia, I would say that right now as an administration, we're more in the fact-finding phase, and we're obviously getting as many facts as we can from the different places, and then we'll determine which facts are credible," Kushner told commentator Van Jones at a Citizen by CNN forum in New York City.

Senior White House advisor Jared Kushner on Monday sought to play down growing tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying that the Trump administration is still "more of a fact finding phase" than a response phase.

Kushner is the closest ally that the crown prince, often referred to as MBS, has within the Trump White House. Both Kushner and MBS are in their 30s, and extremely rich and powerful. Their relationship is based on both personal affinity and geopolitical opportunity.

Kushner also emphasized the importance of Saudi Arabia's role as a U.S. ally in the Middle East, and said that broader "strategic objectives" should play a role in determining America's response to Khashoggi's suspicious death inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

"We have to be able to work with our allies, and Saudi Arabia's been I think a very strong ally in terms of pushing back against Iran's aggression, which is funding a lot of terror in the region, whether it's the Houthis in Yemen or it's Hezbollah or Hamas, we have a lot of terrorism in the region," Kushner said. "We have to be able to pursue our strategic objectives, but we also have to deal with, obviously, what seems to be a terrible situation."

Asked by Jones what advice Kushner had for Mohammed bin Salman about how to handle the Khashoggi affair, Kushner advised the crown prince, "just to be transparent. Fully transparent. The world is watching. This is a very very serious accusation and a very serious situation. Just to make sure you're transparent and to take this very seriously."

But so far, transparency has been almost entirely absent from the Saudi response to Khashoggi's death on Oct. 2. For nearly two weeks, Saudi officials insisted that Khashoggi had walked out of the Saudi Consulate after a brief visit to apply for a marriage license.

Evidence quickly mounted to indicate that this was not what happened. Security footage and visa travel documents showed that more than a dozen Saudi intelligence officers arrived in Istanbul in the days before Khashoggi was killed, and left immediately afterwards. The Turkish government also said it had tapes showing Khashoggi was tortured, murdered and dismembered inside the consulate.

Turkish officials have yet to make any such tapes available to the public, but they offered a gruesome counter narrative to the Saudi version of events.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia completely changed its story and admitted for the first time that Khashoggi died inside the consulate. The kingdom claimed that a fight that broke out between the nearly 60-year-old writer and several Saudi intelligence operatives, and that Khashoggi was killed in the fight. Saudi officials also said that several people had been arrested in connection with the death, although they declined to identify them.A California judge on Monday ordered Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti to pay $4.85 million to an attorney at his former law firm, the first time the potential presidential candidate is being held personally liable in the case.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dennis Landin issued the ruling after turning down a request from Avenatti to have the matter moved to federal court, which the opposing side called a delay tactic.

Avenatti did not appear at the court hearing and never filed opposing arguments in the case.

The judge said Avenatti must pay the money because he personally guaranteed a settlement with Jason Frank, who had worked at his former firm.

Frank had alleged the firm misstated its profits and that he was owed millions.

Avenatti, who is toying with a possible 2020 presidential run, told The Associated Press on Monday that Frank owes him and the firm $12 million "for his fraud." He did not provide details.

The ruling follows a court ruling from a U.S. bankruptcy court judge who ordered Avenatti's former firm to pay $10 million to Frank in May. The $4.85 million is in addition to that judgment.

In July, the Justice Department accused Avenatti of making misrepresentations in the bankruptcy case and said his former law firm owed more than $440,000 in unpaid federal taxes.

Avenatti's lawyer said at the time that the matter had been resolved. The Justice Department insisted that settlement negotiations were continuing but the debt was still owed.

A federal judge last week dismissed Daniels' defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump, saying the president made a "hyperbolic statement" against a political adversary when he tweeted about a composite sketch that Avenatti has released.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued Trump in April after he said a composite sketch of a man she said threatened her in 2011 to keep quiet about an alleged affair with the real estate mogul was a "con job."

Avenatti has appealed the ruling.Khalid A Al-Falih, Energy, Indutry and Mineral Resources Minister of the Kingdom Saudi Arabia and Saudi Aramco Board Chairman, attends a plenary session titled 'Global Energy 2035 - Overcoming Barriers and Consolidating Opportunities' as part of the 2018 Russian Energy Week international forum at Moscow's Manege Central Exhibition Hall. Anton Novoderezhkin | TASS via Getty Images

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia does not wish to impose a 1973-style oil embargo on Western consumers, the country's energy minister reportedly said Monday, amid a deepening crisis over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It comes as the world's top oil exporter faces intensifying international pressure to explain exactly what happened to Khashoggi at a Turkish consulate earlier this month. On Friday, the kingdom admitted for the first time that Khashoggi  a prominent critic of Saudi leaders and former Washington Post journalist  had been killed. The statement comes after Riyadh initially said he had left the building unharmed on October 2. Turkish authorities claim Khashoggi was murdered by a team of Saudi agents inside the consulate and say they have evidence to prove it. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has denied any involvement.

"There is no intention," Khalid al-Falih told Russia's TASS news agency when asked whether there could be a replay of the 1973-style oil embargo. The 1973 oil embargo refers to an extraordinary move by Arab OPEC members to stranglehold oil markets. It was imposed on countries supporting Israel during that year's Yom Kippur war between Israel and several Arab states. As a result, the U.S was left with a crude shortage and oil prices quadrupled.

'This incident will pass'

Top U.S. lawmakers ramped up the pressure on Saudi Arabia over the weekend, accusing the crown prince of orchestrating the killing of Khashoggi. However, President Donald Trump's administration has adopted a more cautious stance. Some U.S. lawmakers have even suggested punishing Saudi Arabia with economic sanctions, while Riyadh has promised to retaliate to any sanctions with "bigger measures." "This incident will pass. But Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as (a) responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics," al-Falih said.

A police officer enters the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey  the last place that prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was seen entering before he disappeared on Oct. 2, 2018. Elif Ozturk | Anadolu Agency | Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump, with Defense Secretary James Mattis, speaks during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 8, 2018 in Washington, DC.

WASHINGTON  The Pentagon said Monday that Defense Secretary James Mattis is "completely aligned" with President Donald Trump's seemingly abrupt announcement to pull the U.S. out of an arms control treaty with Russia.

"The secretary of Defense has consistently said that Russia has not been in compliance with the treaty," Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said. "The secretary is completely aligned with the president, and he is in close contact with the president on this."

Earlier this month, Mattis told reporters in Brussels that any decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty would be done in consultation with NATO partners since Russian missiles pose an immediate threat to allies in the region.

"This will be a decision obviously made in concert with our allies by the president," Mattis said at the time. "We are trying to bring them [Russia] still back into compliance. And now is the time. It's gone on long enough."

When asked whether Mattis coordinated with NATO counterparts in the wake of Trump's announcement, the Pentagon directed the query to the White House. The White House has yet to respond to CNBC's request for comment.

Over the weekend, Trump said it was "unacceptable" for the U.S. to continue to adhere to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty while Russia and China pursue nuclear weapons.

The 1987 treaty, signed by Russia and the U.S., prohibits the production or testing of ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of approximately 300 to 3,400 miles.Facebook's response to its recent data breaches is like playing a game of "whack-a-mole" instead of addressing the root issues with its business model head-on, Elevation Partners co-founder Roger McNamee told CNBC on Monday.

The social network is "attacking individual problems as though they're isolated and unrelated to everything else," argued McNamee, an early Facebook investor and frequent critic. "That is never going to work."

Facebook came under fire once again for its data security practices on Monday when the Japanese government issued a statement pressuring the company to better protect users' personal data.

Last month, Facebook revealed that an attack on its network had exposed the data of 50 million users, the largest breach in company history. At the same time, the company is still reeling from the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier in the year, when it was discovered that the political consulting firm, which worked on President Donald Trump's campaign, had harvested data from up to 87 million profiles.

Without systemic change at the company, McNamee believes these problems will only continue. "Every time you turn over a rock, there's going to be something ugly under it," he said in an interview with "Squawk Alley."

"The problem is that Facebook has a systemic issue in the way its algorithms and business model work," McNamee said, reiterating his belief that Facebook's ad-based business model is inherently at odds with the need to protect user data.

"In order for this problem to go away, the business has to earn less money," offered McNamee, saying that investors might then push for changes.

Facebook shares tanked in July after the company warned investors of a revenue slowdown later in the year, partially caused by more investment into data protection. The stock is down about 11 percent this year.

With regards to the growing calls on co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to split his two roles of CEO and chairman, McNamee is unconvinced that the change would have much of an impact.

"You're not going to fix this with corporate governance. You have to change the product. You have to change the business model," he said.

Similarly, McNamee believes Facebook's potential acquisition of a cybersecurity firm, as reported over the weekend by The Information, is "not going to solve the problems."

Facebook did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.The South Bay Boardriders Club, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating the history of South Bay surfing culture, will donate the statue to honor the men and women who paddle 32 miles from Catalina Island to the Manhattan Beach Pier during...Shoppers walk past the entrance to the Polo Ralph Lauren clothing store on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

Ralph Lauren is working with London skater label Palace in the American brand's first streetwear partnership. Palace, known for its product "drops," where it launches a new collection without warning, and Ralph Lauren, famous for its traditional preppy-style Polo Ralph Lauren brand, announced the partnership via Instagram. "'Palace Ralph Lauren is a timeless collection that represents a love letter from a young London skateboard company to their favorite brand in the universe,'  Palace," wrote Polo Ralph Lauren on its Instagram account, next to a picture of its polo-player emblem and the Palace logo.

Polo Ralph Lauren's recent Instagram posts include images of its stores lit up in pink, in support of its Pink Pony cancer initiative, photographs of founder Ralph Lauren wearing his signature wide-lapel suits and all-American shots of the Lauren family. Palace's posts, meanwhile, show images shot by edgy photographer Juergen Teller where models wear smiley-face denim jackets and camouflage pants. The Palace-Polo logo also appeared on three billboards in Tokyo's Shibuya district, according to industry website Business of Fashion, with Palace founders Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis telling the site that the collection was inspired by pieces they have worn throughout their lives. "It's the only brand that you can wear to a board meeting, a funeral, and go to the football in  and all in the same day," Tanju said.Ryanair reported lower-than-expected profits in the second quarter of its fiscal year on Monday, as the airline struggles with weaker fares, higher oil prices and several strikes. It reported a net profit of 841.5 million euros ($968.61 million) for the second quarter, which was slightly below analyst expectations of 855 million euros, according to data firm Refinitiv. For the first half of the year, Ryanair reported a 7 percent drop in net profit to 1.2 billion euros. Here are the key highlights: Net profit: 841.5 million euros, versus 309.2 million euros in the first quarter.

Total operating expenses: 1.825 billion euros, versus 1.708 billion in the first quarter. Speaking to CNBC Monday, Ryanair's CEO painted a gloomy picture for the rest of the year. "The winter looks grim. We have a combination of rising oil prices; although Ryanair is very well hedged while competitors aren't; fares are falling, there's excess capacity in Europe ... We see a winter characterized by declining air fares," Michael O'Leary, CEO or Ryanair told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Monday. He predicted that amid such an environment, many airlines would struggle to operate. "You will see more failures this winter as we enter what is probably a four-five year downturn in the industry."

One of the big issues for Ryanair this year has been strikes and flight cancellations. "There's been a lot of misinformation about this. Firstly most of the strikes and the cancellations this year and across Europe have been air traffic control, mainly French and German air traffic control and the U.K. were understaffed. We, in the entire year so far, have had eight strikes," O'Leary told CNBC. "We have made very significant progress, we have done deals now in Ireland, in the U.K., Italy, we signed with Portuguese pilots last week ... But there's been very little disruption within Ryanair this year as rising from ... our own people," he said. The airline said that the different air traffic control strikes and staff shortages meant that 2018 will the "worst year on record" for European air traffic control disruptions. This has affected punctuality and schedules. Ryanair has said that it has increased its investment to ensure on-time departures. One of the initiatives it has taken is to change its handling provider at Stansted airport, near London, to avoid some of the delays seen over the summer due to short-staffing.

Brexit

Ryanair's management has been particularly worried about Brexit and what this decision might mean for its flights to and from the U.K. The company said in the last quarter that the danger of a no-deal is "being underestimated".Her son Jay O'Connor said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press that his mother, like many who reach their upper 80s, began to have challenges with her short-term memory. That made some public events more difficult. Hip issues have meant she now primarily uses a wheelchair. And she now stays close to her home in Phoenix, he said.

This summer she turned over an office she had kept at the Supreme Court to the court's most recently retired justice, Anthony Kennedy.

For more than a decade after leaving the court in 2006, O'Connor kept up an active schedule: serving as a visiting federal appeals court judge, speaking on issues she cared about and founding her own education organization. But the 88-year-old, for more than two decades often the deciding vote in important cases, is now fully retired. She made her last public appearances over two years ago.

"When she hit about 86 years old she decided that it was time to slow things down, that she'd accomplished most of what she set out to do in her post-retirement years, that she was getting older physically and her memory was starting to be more challenging, so the time came to dial back her public life," said Jay O'Connor. His mother is no longer doing interviews.

Over about the past year, Jay O'Connor and his brother Brian cleared out O'Connor's Supreme Court office and went through hundreds of boxes of files and other items she had in the building's basement. A gavel used at her 1981 confirmation hearing, her Presidential Medal of Freedom and T-shirts made annually by an exercise class she started at the high court are among the items O'Connor has now donated to the court's collection, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.

O'Connor was a state court judge before being unanimously confirmed to the Supreme Court at 51. She had graduated third in her class from Stanford Law School and was the first woman to lead the Arizona state senate. On the Supreme Court, her votes were key in cases about abortion, affirmative action and campaign finance as well as the Bush v. Gore decision effectively settling the 2000 election in George W. Bush's favor.

She was 75 when she announced her retirement from the court in 2005. It was a decision influenced by the decline in the health of her husband, John O'Connor III, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Her departure was a moment not unlike Kennedy's retirement this summer. The fellow Reagan appointees were moderate conservatives who often held the key vote in high-profile cases. O'Connor's retirement and replacement by Justice Samuel Alito shifted the court right, making Kennedy's vote the often-pivotal one. Kennedy's replacement by Justice Brett Kavanaugh is expected to shift the court right again.

For her part, O'Connor wasn't always delighted with the court's more conservative direction after she left. Asked at a 2009 event how she felt about the court retreating from or undoing rulings she was instrumental in shaping, she responded: "What would you feel? I'd be a little bit disappointed. If you think you've been helpful, and then it's dismantled, you think, 'Oh, dear.' But life goes on. It's not always positive."

After the court's 2010 Citizens United ruling allowing corporations to spend freely on elections for Congress and president, she told an audience: "Gosh, I step away for a couple of years and there's no telling what's going to happen." Still, that year she told an interviewer that she didn't "regret for one minute" retiring when she did.

O'Connor found other ways to make a mark off the court. In 2009, the same year her husband died, she founded the group iCivics, which promotes civic education in schools through free, educational online games. O'Connor has called it "the most important work I've ever done." Last year, the group's 19 games were played by 5 million students.

Even as she was championing iCivics, O'Connor was working on other projects. She wrote a children's book and a book about the history of the court. She served as a visiting appeals court judge, participating in more than 175 cases on appeals courts nationwide. And she campaigned to persuade states that judges should be appointed, not elected, to preserve judicial independence.

One of the last times O'Connor made public comments was in 2016, after Justice Antonin Scalia's death. Interviewed by an Arizona television station, O'Connor was asked what she thought about Republican senators' argument that the conservative justice's seat should be filled not by President Barack Obama but his successor because the vacancy happened in a presidential election year. She said she disagreed.

"I think we need somebody there, now, to do the job, and let's get on with it," she said, a recommendation Republicans didn't heed, holding the seat open until President Donald Trump could choose Scalia's successor, Neil Gorsuch.

Though O'Connor has stepped back from public life, the court's other retired justices have varying degrees of public presence. David Souter, 79, lives in New Hampshire but rarely speaks publicly. Kennedy, 82, has already started making post-retirement appearances. And Florida resident John Paul Stevens is still making appearances at 98.

Three women now serve on the Supreme Court, a development O'Connor approved of.

"It's all right to be the first to do something, but I didn't want to be the last woman on the Supreme Court," she said in 2012.An alleged Saudi plot to cover up the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi went awry after a suspected Khashoggi "body double" wore the wrong shoes, a diplomat familiar with the matter told The Washington Post, according to an article published Monday.

The report came shortly after CNN published footage that appeared to show a man exiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul Oct. 2 wearing a fake beard and glasses, as well as the pants, shirt and jacket that Khashoggi was seen wearing when he entered the building earlier in the day. The man was also captured on video at The Blue Mosque, a historic mosque and tourist attraction in the city.

The Saudi government has provided conflicting explanations for Khashoggi's killing. For more than two weeks, officials claimed to have no involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance. Over the weekend, state media reversed course, saying that Khashoggi was killed by accident in a fistfight involving a number of Saudi intelligence operatives.

A Turkish official told CNN that the body double was used as a decoy, posing as the journalist to bolster the country's case that it was not involved in Khashoggi's killing.

According to The Washington Post report, that plan was soured by a sartorial mishap. In the video footage, the purported body double, identified as Mustafa al-Madani, is wearing different shoes than Khashoggi wore when he entered the consulate.

"It was a flawed body double, so it never became an official part of the Saudi government's narrative," the diplomat told the Post.

Madani is suspected of working for a Saudi intelligence agency, the Post reported. He appeared in New York earlier this year ahead of a diplomatic visit from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The website promoting Saudi Arabia's upcoming investment conference was apparently hacked on Monday, briefly showing a doctored image of the kingdom's crown prince wielding a bloody sword over murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Dozens of business leaders, prominent speakers and media companies  including CNBC  pulled out of the second annual Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh following allegations that Saudi agents killed Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Saudi government on Friday acknowledged the Saudi operatives were behind Khashoggi's death, after initially claiming the journalist left the consulate alive. Saudi Arabia took 18 people into custody, including the 15 agents identified by Turkish authorities.

The kingdom has sought to distance Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from the slaying. Several of the accused killers have been linked to the king-in-waiting.

The image on the Future Investment Initiative website, captured by several news agencies before the website went down, depicts Prince Mohammed wearing a robe labeled ISIS and standing next to a gun-wielding figure who resembles a fighter aligned with the terrorist group. Khashoggi is depicted kneeling in front of the crown prince.Aerial view of a Honduran migrant caravan heading to the US, as it is stopped at a border barrier on the Guatemala-Mexico international bridge in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas state, Mexico, on October 19, 2018.

Thousands of migrants from Honduras slowly push north as they attempt to cross into Mexico via Guatemala, en route to the U.S. border. The migrant caravan is increasingly becoming a humanitarian crisis as the migrants battle heat, exhaustion and a dangerous passage.



The Mexican government has closed its southern borders indefinitely. President Donald Trump has threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border if the migrant caravan continues north.

But the migrants vow to keep pushing through, finding alternative routes north. The following are some of the harrowing scenes developing around the border between Guatemala and Mexico.

Pictured above: Aerial view of a Honduran migrant caravan heading to the U.S., as it is stopped at a border barrier on the Guatemala-Mexico international bridge in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas state, Mexico, on Oct. 19.More high school kids are smoking cigarettes as vaping surges, reversing a two-decade-long decline.

This year, 8.1 percent of high school students reported smoking cigarettes, up from 7.6 percent last year, according to federal health officials, who asked not to be named because the data haven't been publicly released. The increase is not statistically significant, but it is likely to fuel growing controversy about teen use of e-cigarettes.

Preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's annual National Youth Tobacco Survey also show e-cigarette use among high school kids surging by about 77 percent, numbers so staggering that Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is labeling youth use of e-cigarettes an "epidemic." The complete data set, which was reviewed by federal health officials, is expected to be released later this year.

Teen smoking rates have plummeted since peaking in 1997 when 36.4 percent of high school students surveyed in the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey said they regularly smoked cigarettes. In 2015, the National Youth Tobacco Survey identified a slight uptick  up to 9.3 percent from 9.2 percent in 2014  before falling again to 8 percent in 2016.

Critics have warned a surge in e-cigarette use may cause nicotine-addicted kids to migrate to conventional cigarettes. The new data suggest this may be happening.Philip Morris has launched a campaign encouraging people to stop smoking, with ads in several U.K. newspapers on Monday.

The Marlboro-maker's "Hold My Light" campaign claims to be a "new way to give up cigarettes," and links to a website where smokers can create a profile and have friends commit to help them quit. People who sign up agree to have Philip Morris contact them about its Smoke Free Future program.

Charity Cancer Research U.K. criticized the move. "This is a staggering hypocrisy from a tobacco company to promote its own smoking cessation products in the U.K. while continuing to promote tobacco cigarettes across the world," the charity's Tobacco Policy Manager George Butterworth said in an emailed statement.

"The best way Philip Morris could help people to stop smoking is to stop making cigarettes," he added. Philip Morris International (PMI) makes 800 billion cigarettes each year, according to its website.

Most cigarette advertising is banned in the U.K., and as of May 2017, they had to be sold in plain packaging with health warnings.

Philip Morris in the U.K. is an affiliate of PMI, which is focusing on iQOS, a device that heats tobacco instead of burning it, which it claims is less harmful. iQOS is sold in 43 countries, but PMI is waiting for a decision by the Food and Drug Administration on whether it can be sold in the U.S.

PMI has two applications into the FDA: one seeking permission to simply sell iQOS, and one seeking permission to market it as a safer alternative to cigarettes.

The company announced third quarter revenue of $7.5 billion last Thursday, surpassing Wall Street estimates of $7.17 billion.

PMI had not responded to CNBC's request for comment at the time of publication.Early voting in Texas started Monday, as Trump tries to stir up GOP enthusiasm and prevent a stunning upset. Despite his staggering cash haul and quick rise to national prominence, O'Rourke still appears to be an underdog. No recent independent poll has shown him closer than 5 percentage points behind Cruz.

O'Rourke rallied with supporters in Houston on Monday ahead of the president's rally for Cruz, who was one of the several Republicans who lost to Trump in the 2016 GOP primary. O'Rourke's campaign did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the president's visit.

An O'Rourke victory would alter the battle for control of the Senate, giving Democrats a much better chance of gaining control of the chamber than they otherwise would have. The GOP looks to keep or expand its 51-49 majority in the chamber.AS PART of the national response to last Thursdays observance of International Day of the Girl Child, Hon. Karen Malcolm has hailed the TCI as giving girls a platform to express themselves.





Malcolm, who is the minister of Education, Youth, Culture and Library Services, expressed the Governments delight in joining with the global community to celebrate the day (October 11) and the rest of the year in recognition of girls around the world.





"As minister with responsibility for youth affairs, I support all efforts being made to promote, educate and agitate for the girl child.





She added that while the world celebrates, the Turks and Caicos Islands should take particular pride in its strides to empower women.





"We celebrate the fact that 71.4 percent of our permanent secretaries are females and females hold several key positions in the country, namely the chief justice, premier, deputy governor and attorney general.





She noted that in spite of these successes, there is still much work to be done so that girls are able to maximise their full potential.





On December 19, 2011, the United Nations adopted a resolution to declare October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child, and since 2012, the day has been celebrated around the world.





This years observances are being held under the theme With her: A skilled girl force.





It is intended to highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face, while promoting the empowerment of girls and the unique fulfilment of their human rights.





Minister Malcolm stated that the Government has already taken the necessary steps to integrate skills education in the revised curriculum for classes from as early as infant one to grade two, and will include these skills as the curriculum is being developed for grade three to grade six.





"I agree with Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, that we need to equip girls with transferable and lifelong skills such as critical thinking, creativity and digital awareness.





"This is what we hope to achieve through the Caribbean Vocational Qualifications (CVQ) and the Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence (CCSLC) programmes.





"Our children will have a range of pathways and choices through which they will develop the necessary skills and competencies to transition smoothly in a world of work driven by technology and innovation.





She added that through child safeguarding, the child-friendly school framework and the Caribbean safe school initiative the Government will create an environment in which the TCIs children can thrive.





Other successes cited by the minister included the Youth Listening Tours, through which young people are given an opportunity to express themselves and share their concerns.





"During the sessions, girls across the Turks and Caicos Islands were not afraid to share their views and contribute to a national dialogue about the issues affecting them and the changes they would like to see.





She added that the well-being of young people, especially the girl child, is important to her.





"Let this International Day of the Girl Child be a reminder to all of us to make sure that our girls develop the skills they need to fully participate in the workforce, Malcolm advised.



WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump on Monday repeated his unsubstantiated claim that Republicans plan to unveil a middle-class tax cut before the midterm elections a little over two weeks away.

"We're putting in a resolution some time in the next week and a half to two weeks [and] we're giving a middle-income tax reduction of about 10 percent," Trump told reporters at the White House. "This is not for business, this is for middle income, and that's on top of the tax decrease that we've already given them."

Congress is in recess until after the election, but Trump dismissed the idea that he would try to use an executive order. "No, I'm going through Congress. We won't have time to do the vote. We'll do the vote after the election," he said.

But congressional leaders and White House officials who have spoken to several news outlets in recent days have all said they know nothing about any plans for a tax cut before the midterm election. This is not least because neither chamber of Congress plans to return to Washington until after the election.President Donald Trump on Monday escalated his attacks on the caravan of migrants making their way to the United States from Central America, calling the situation a national emergency and declaring without evidence that "Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in."

"I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy," the president wrote in the first of a series of Twitter posts about the caravan, apparently misspelling the word "emergency."

Trump also said that his administration would begin to cut off or reduce foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. He said the three nations "were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country."

The White House did not respond to a request for more details about the president's posts, and it's unclear if he would have the authority to carry out the threats without approval from lawmakers.

The president has the power to formally declare a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act but is required to follow formal procedures, and it is not clear if he has done so.

Congress has softened some of the president's previous demands to reduce U.S. foreign aid. The president's attempt to cut foreign aid in this year's budget was ultimately rebuffed by lawmakers. The administration then attempted to avoid spending the money allocated for foreign aid using a so-called "rescission" package, Reuters reported, but later dropped the plan.

Trump tweet

The president, who has made restrictive immigration a key campaign issue as well as a signature aspect of his foreign policy, again on Monday raised the specter of involving the U.S. military to halt the entrance of the migrants and redoubled his call to "change laws."

"Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally," Trump wrote.

The president has sought to make immigration a decisive issue in the upcoming November midterms and has leveraged the image of the migrant caravan while campaigning around the country in order to do so. Immigration remains a key issue for GOP voters, consistently polling alongside jobs and the economy as the most important issue for Republicans.

The president's Monday morning tweets mirror comments he made last week. On Thursday, the president wrote in a tweet that he would "in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught - and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!"

Trump campaigned for the presidency on an "America First" foreign policy platform and infamously launched his bid by claiming that Mexico was sending criminals, including murderers and rapists, into the United States. In April, at an event that was nominally about celebrating the Republican tax bill, the president referred back to his false claim.

"Everybody said, oh, he was so tough. I used the word rape," Trump said.

Since he took office, critics have called out as racist some of the president's immigration policies, particularly around the implementation of his controversial Muslim "travel ban." The Supreme Court upheld a version of the ban, which restricts immigration to the U.S. from a number of Muslim-majority countries, in a blockbuster ruling last term.

In January, the president reportedly railed against immigrants from African nations, Haiti and El Salvador in a meeting in the Oval Office.

"Why are we having all these people from s---hole countries come here?" Trump asked, according to The Washington Post. Trump, who denied using such harsh language, reportedly said the U.S. should have more immigrants from countries like Norway.

A spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office said of the remarks at the time that "there's no other word one can use but racist."

WATCH: Here are the businesses profiting from immigration enforcementJamal Khashoggi's killing has unleashed waves of criticism against Saudi Arabia's ruling family and has drawn fresh attention to the kingdom's vice grip on the press.

But even as Turkish officials, who blew the whistle on the journalist's death, pass gruesome allegations on to independent news outlets, experts say the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is far from a paragon of free information.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit free press advocacy group, Turkey has been the world's leading jailer of journalists for the past two consecutive years. Of the 262 journalists held behind bars in 2017, 73 of them  more than one in four  were jailed by the Turkish government, CPJ reported in its yearly prison census. Eighty-one journalists were jailed in Turkey in 2016, according to the group.

The scale of Turkey's crackdown on the press required CPJ to create a weekly blog to cover it all, Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch said in an interview.

Erdogan's regime has "overseen a massive decimation of the independent press," Radsch said, through actions such as government raids of news outlets, slapping travel restrictions on journalists and "forcing them to choose between jail and exile."

Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey are ranked near the worst countries on earth for a free and independent press in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index, a list compiled by European nongovernmental organization Reporters Without Borders. Out of 180 countries, Saudi Arabia comes in at number 169; Turkey is ranked slightly higher at number 157.

Kim Jong Un's regime in North Korea ranks at the very bottom, while Norway tops the list.

Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who had criticized the kingdom in columns for The Washington Post, had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States. He said at the time that he feared for his safety and did not "want to be arrested," the Post reported. He went missing after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, reportedly to collect a document for his approaching wedding, and never came out.

The Saudi government maintained for weeks that Khashoggi left the consulate shortly after he arrived, but Turkish officials, speaking to news outlets on condition of anonymity, refuted that narrative. The Turks claimed to have evidence that the Saudis sent a 15-man hit crew to the consulate that tortured, murdered and dismembered Khashoggi.

The Kingdom changed its story last week, saying Khashoggi died after a fight broke out inside the building.

Turkey's status as the "world's worst jailer" of journalists came in the wake of a failed 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan by Turkish military forces. Hundreds of people died in the struggle, which ended when Erdogan reasserted control over the country. He soon began a sweeping purge of journalists, teachers and other public workers allegedly involved in the coup.

But after Khashoggi's disappearance, unnamed senior Turkish officials have been actively providing information to American news outlets about the killing. They also claim to possess audio tapes that corroborate their allegations.

"Maybe this is an opportunity to refurbish its image" on press freedom, Radsch said of Turkey, while noting that the two nations have maintained a tense political relationship.

Here in the states, President Donald Trump has often called the press "the enemy of the people" and "fake news." CPJ says that such accusations have a tangible effect on more authoritarian leaders' actions.

Trump's language "serves to reinforce the framework of accusations and legal charges that allow such leaders to preside over the jailing of journalists," CPJ said.Members of a brigade headed by field commander Salah Bogheib and loyal to Khalifa Haftar -a retired general and former chief of staff for Moamer Kadhafi- hold up their guns as they fight alongside Libyan army troops against Islamist gunmen in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Abdullah Doma | AFP | Getty Images

Two OPEC members could soon determine whether oil prices spike back towards $100 a barrel  and those countries are not Saudi Arabia and Iran. With U.S. sanctions choking off Iran's exports and Saudi Arabia hiking output to fill the gap, it's crucial for other major producers to keep crude flowing in the coming months. That's why many analysts are paying close attention to Nigeria and Libya, two nations heading into high stakes elections and where output has swung wildly in recent years. In Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, a change of leadership threatens to unsettle the current government's arrangement with militants who wreaked havoc on the country's oil output two years ago. In Libya, it's uncertain whether elections meant to resolve a long-running dispute between rival governments will bring an end to more than four years of civil conflict that has frequently disrupted the nation's crude exports. The situation in the two countries could play a "big role" in determining the price of oil  which is trading near four-year highs  according to Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

"What I always worry about is the stories we should be watching, the unstable suppliers," Croft recently told CNBC's "Worldwide Exchange." RBC has warned clients that 500,000 barrels per day could be periodically lost from the two nations, and elections may bring additional unrest. Half a million bpd represents just half a percent of daily global demand, but a disruption of that scale would have an outsize impact given the anticipated loss of roughly 1 million barrels a day of Iranian crude in the coming months. Iran's exports are shrinking as oil buyers cut off purchases under threat of sanctions from the Trump administration. "If you're going to have Venezuela continuing to decline, a million barrels of Iran off the market, you can't afford to lose another big, major producer," Croft said. Washington is largely depending on Saudi Arabia, Russia and a handful of other producers to keep the market supplied and prevent an oil price spike as Iran's shipments dwindle. Traders recently sent Brent crude to nearly four-year highs above $86 a barrel, as fears that the Saudi alliance will fall short stoked concern about $100 oil. Investment bank Barclays does not think oil prices will hit triple digits, but the outcome of Nigeria's elections in February presents the biggest risk to that outlook, Michael Cohen, the bank's head of energy markets research, said in a recent note to clients. If Nigeria's political opposition unseats President Muhammadu Buhari, Barclays analysts believe the new leadership will probably have to renegotiate a deal with militants brokered by Buhari's government. During a political transition, militants might resume attacks on oil infrastructure, which caused Nigeria's output to plunge by about 400,000 bpd in early 2016. Analysts at Barclays say there's a growing chance that the opposition can present a credible alternative to Buhari, whose popularity is waning and who spent much of his presidency seeking medical treatment overseas. "Oil market participants ought to be more concerned about the possibility of disruptions in the Niger delta," Cohen wrote, referring to Nigeria's southern oil-producing region, a maze of waterways where militants staged daring attacks between 2006 and 2009 and again in recent years. Oil theft also remains endemic in the Niger Delta. This month, a pipeline blast believed to be caused by petroleum thieves killed dozens, sparking protests among locals who blamed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation for the explosion.

Meanwhile, Libya-watchers are concerned that presidential and parliamentary elections meant to unify the divided country could in fact spark a fresh round of infighting. Rival governments in the country's east and west have yet to agree to a new constitution, and elections slated for Dec. 10 now may not happen until next year. Libya's output has been a bright spot lately. In September alone, it jumped more than 100,000 bpd, helping to offset a 150,000 bpd drop in Iranian production. But while recent clashes have not impacted Libya's oil supplies much, "rampant insecurity" creates a high risk of serious disruptions over the next six months, said Hamish Kinnear, a Middle East and North Africa analyst at global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. Kinnear notes that the most recent supply outages have been caused not only by a high-level political standoff in June, but also kidnappings by armed groups in July. "Increased Libyan supply has been essential in replacing declining Iranian output over the last two months," Hamish told CNBC in an email. "Any disruption akin to the June and July outages over the next two months would leave a significant gap in supply and likely cause a spike in prices."Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST

Bazaar Corporate Radar

Bazaar Corporate Radar is your window into the minds of top CEOs, Boardrooms, global economists, fund managers and sector analysts. If it?s making news, you?ll find it on Bazaar Corporate Radar.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As law enforcement continues to battle for access to mobile devices, police are being advised to not even look at a suspect's phone. The idea is that a phone that authenticates via facial recognition could fail to unlock for the officer repeatedly and then default to password/PIN.

This advice, contained in a series of vendor slides accessed by Motherboard, refers to iPhone's security lockout, which kicks in after five failed biometric authentication attempts. On the one hand, this could be an issue with FaceID. Unlike finger scans, it's hard to determine when one facial-recognition ends and a second begins. If someone looks at the phone and looks away and looks again, does that constitute two attempts? What if the person just looks at the phone for a relatively long time? Will the phone eventually conclude this should constitute more than one failed authentication attempt?

On the other hand, this seems unlikely. With the phone locked, the detective isn't going to learn much by staring at the screen. Maybe he or she might glance again, but five times?

Note: The Motherboard story includes a BBC link to a story about British law enforcement officers waiting for a suspect to unlock the phone and then quickly grabbing it, being careful to continually swipe the screen so it won't time out and ask for reauthentication.

All of this is of interest because, when dealing with police, there have been suggestions that PINs/passwords cannot be compelled but biometric authentication can. The argument typically speaks to practicality, meaning that law enforcement can physically force a suspect's fingers onto a mobile device  or place the suspect's face in front of the screen  but officers can't force suspects to speak or type their password/PIN.

Even at the practicality level, I don't see this holding up. First off, sometimes law enforcement can get, how shall we say, hands on? Legal or not, with the ever-present threat of physical violence or prolonged detention, it's going to be a rare suspect who will stick with a refusal. Even if the suspect does consistently refuse, can the suspect be jailed until the password/PIN is revealed?

I find it unlikely that most law enforcement will ask for a PIN/password and, when told "no," will simply accept it with a shrug and a, "Oh well. I tried. Such is life." More likely, the phone will be confiscated and held for a remarkably long time.

What the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on is that a warrant is needed to search a phone. But a warrant isn't especially hard to get, so we're back to the core question: Does law enforcement have the right to search a phone's contents, even with a warrant? The answer appears to be yes, so the distinction of PIN/password versus biometric authentication will not ultimately make much of a difference.

Still, common advice is to deactivate biometric authentication when going into an environment where this issue will likely crop up, such as attending a demonstration or going to the airport for a visit to another country. It's an easy enough piece of advice, but I doubt it will offer protection for very long.

One good aspect to one legal ruling  a U.S. Supreme Court case called Riley v. California  is that it tried to draw a distinction between data stored on the mobile device and data stored in the cloud.

It's worth quoting from the Supreme Court decision itself:

"Treating a cell phone as a container whose contents may be searched incident to an arrest is a bit strained as an initial matter. But the analogy crumbles entirely when a cell phone is used to access data located elsewhere, at the tap of a screen. That is what cell phones, with increasing frequency, are designed to do by taking advantage of cloud computing. Cell phone users often may not know whether particular information is stored on the device or in the cloud, and it generally makes little difference. Moreover, the same type of data may be stored locally on the device for one user and in the cloud for another. The United States concedes that the search incident to arrest exception may not be stretched to cover a search of files accessed remotely  that is, a search of files stored in the cloud. Such a search would be like finding a key in a suspect's pocket and arguing that it allowed law enforcement to unlock and search a house. But officers searching a phone's data would not typically know whether the information they are viewing was stored locally at the time of the arrest or has been pulled from the cloud. Although the Government recognizes the problem, its proposed solutions are unclear. It suggests that officers could disconnect a phone from the network before searching the device  the very solution whose feasibility it contested with respect to the threat of remote wiping. Alternatively, the Government proposes that law enforcement agencies 'develop protocols to address' concerns raised by cloud computing. Probably a good idea, but the Founders did not fight a revolution to gain the right to government agency protocols."

This cloud issue is crucial, and it's still very much undecided. This is especially critical when the device at issue is a corporate-issued phone or, even more likely to be the case, a BYOD phone owned by the consumer but including extensive sensitive corporate files, whether partitioned or not.

Another possibility for protecting the phone is to indeed have two levels of phone. The first, accessed by a simple password, would be sanitized for all, showing innocuous messages. It would have enough innocuous messages and photos and audio files to look legitimate. But another password  a much longer password  would access the real data.

This operates on a similar premise to a security system's hostage alert, where the business operator or homeowner has two codes. Both codes shut off the alarm, but one silently sends a signal to police. This placates a burglar who orders the owner to deactivate the alarm.

One could envision an entire cottage industry, with companies creating elaborate fake environments to placate law enforcement (or a suspicious spouse) while in reality revealing nothing. Handset makers would need to get behind this approach, but I am guessing Apple and Google would have little resistance if it meant making their phones seem more attractive to consumers and businesses.

Alternatively, travel to the border with a throwaway phone. If they insist on a PIN, give it to them, since the phone seized will reveal little. But of course travelers on business will probably want to use their real phone.

To summarize, law enforcement can use brute-force attacks to try to guess your password, they can force you to open your phone biometrically, they can ask but not insist on a PIN/password, but they can seize your phone and keep you in detention until you provide it. And a judge could later insist on you revealing your PIN/password.

Bottom line: If there's something your company doesn't want to share with the government  local, state or federal  you better hope its never touched a mobile device. (Pause.) Yeah, that's what I thought.NAC unveils 5-year-plan to widen reach of arts in Singapore, support freelance arts professionals

Minister for Culture, Community, and Youth Grace Fu launched Our SG Arts Plan (20182022), which detailed the focus areas for Singapores literary, performing and visual arts sectors over the next five years.

It will serve as the blueprint for policies and initiatives over the next five years that will continue nurturing Singapores diverse and distinctive arts scene.

For one, the National Arts Council (NAC) will be looking into improving the quality of both free and ticketed events, while sustaining their quantity.

To expand the reach of arts events, more public spaces will also be freed up for the arts. The spaces will also include the heartland areas, Todayonline said in a report

Driving audience growth will be one of the key priorities for the next five years, said Mrs Rosa Daniel, Chief Executive Officer of NAC. "What we want to do is ensure that the audiences are there. So basically, to raise the demand to meet the supply. Rather than a strategy where you prune back supply, which isn't going to help us to grow the arts scene."

A new resource centre will also be set up next year  both online and a physical centre  to support the needs of freelance arts professionals. About half of those who work mainly in the arts do so on a freelance basis, according to a survey in 2016.

"Freelance arts workers contribute significantly to the arts sector in myriad ways, and in the age of the gig economy, their numbers will grow... There is concern that freelance arts workers may not have sufficient support to protect their interests in matters concerning contracts, long-term financial planning, and so on," the NAC noted.

"Through this centre, we will enhance access to shared services and information, as well as provide learning and development opportunities."

The report added that the council will also encourage employers in the arts sector to adopt the tripartite standard on contracting self-employed persons when engaging freelance workers. The standard, which was developed by the Ministry of Manpower, the National Trades Union Congress, and the Singapore National Employers Federation, aims to foster fair and progressive employment conditions for freelancers.

Ms Grace Fu, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, at the launch of Our SG Arts Plan at Our Tampines Hub.

Our SG Arts Plan is an important roadmap that will help us navigate the future and raise the profile of our art community locally and internationally," Ms Fu said at the launch of Our SG Arts Plan (2018-2022) at Our Tampines Hub.

"There is tremendous potential for the arts to bring people together, look past our differences, and project our common identity to the world. The Plan will see us provide better support for our arts professionals and make the arts more accessible to all. Lets make the arts an integral part of the lives of all Singaporeans.

The Plan was developed in close consultation with the arts community and other stakeholders through more than 40 engagement sessions.

From February to September 2018, NAC had reached out to over 700 people from diverse backgrounds  including arts practitioners, intermediaries and institutions, educators, volunteers, and representatives from the public and private sectors.

Their insights contributed towards the formulation of the draft Plan. Views from the wider public were also sought over a three-week period of public consultation in September 2018.Singapore urges New Delhi to start more flights to boost business

Singapore has urged New Delhi to start more flights between Singapore and cities in northern India to increase the flow of business communities and boost bilateral trade.

Minister-in-Charge of Trade Relations S Iswaran addressing Uttrakhand Investors Summit, offered to enhance air connectivity, promote tourism and develop Dehradun as a smart city. Photo courtesy: Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore

Singapores Minister for Trade & Industry S Iswaran said this while speaking at Uttarakhand Investors Summit 2018 held at Dehradun recently.

"Today, among the cities in the northern India Singapore carriers currently fly to Amritsar and Lucknow. I want our carriers to be able to fly more frequently, to more cities in the northern part of India so that we can enhance connectivity. We will soon be able to fly direct from Singapore to Dehradun, that will be a significant move," Iswaran said at the summit attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.

Singaporean minister Iswaran also met Indian PM Modi on the sidelines of the summit and discussed the scope to enhance air connectivity to support business flows.

Minister-in-Charge of Trade Relations S Iswaran (left) met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Uttrakhand Investors Summit and discussed ways to enhance air connectivity. Photo courtesy: Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore

In his address to the business delegations, ministers and industry leaders, Iswaran listed enhanced air connectivity among three areas of thrust between India and Singapore, besides building smart cities and promoting tourism

"I think [one area] we can work together is air connectivity. Today there are around 528 flights between India and Singapore. In just last month Indigo launched its latest weekly service to Singapore," the minister said.

Iswaran said he was glad that airlines carriers were expanding their capacities, recognising the growth and demand from many of the visitors from both sides from India and Singapore who are keen to make more connections between the two economies and also people to people level.

"We believe there is scope to do much more because when we enhance our air links, we enhance business opportunities and we also we also enhance the way our people can come together more frequently and closer," the minister said.

Recalling role of Singapore's expertise in working out urban solutions to aviation while developing Pune as a smart city, the minister said, "We can do something similar in Uttarakhand and Dehradun, in fact, is one of the smart cities that has been identified. We have some of our companies here who want to see what the opportunities are and how we can work together."

With 29,700 seats offered per week on each side and 17 direct flights, Singapore has the highest number of entitlement among the ASEAN countries. In addition to this, Singapore also has access to 18 additional Indian points open to ASEAN countries.

Among ASEAN capitals, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok top the paired connectivity between Indian metros and Tier-1 cities. In Tier-2 city of Gaya, only Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur are connected.

New Delhi had revised the Air Services Agreement of 1968 with Singapore in 2002 and 2005 followed by an MoU on bilateral air services in April 2013. Singapore Airlines holds a 49% stake in Vistara, a joint venture with Tata Group. As many as 1.09 million Indian tourists visited Singapore in 2016, making India the fourth largest source of tourists.Gareth Bacon is the Leader of the Conservative Group on the London Assembly

Sadiq Khans dreadful record at City Hall is becoming clearer by the day  crime is going through the roof, Transport for London is nearly a billion pounds in the red, and the homes the Mayor promised simply arent being built. Two and a half years in, Londoners can see that Khan is not delivering.

But Khan isnt just failing on policy, he is also failing to provide accountable and transparent leadership. A pattern is occurring: whenever the Mayor falls short, which he does on an alarmingly regular basis, he will always try to pass the buck, shirk responsibility or deflect.

The most recent Mayors Question Time took place on Friday, and my colleagues and I took the Mayor to task on this. We highlighted four examples where he has misled Londoners or shifted the blame to divert the attention away from his own inadequate record.

In London one of the main challenges we face is the severe lack of affordable family sized homes, yet unbelievably the Mayors Housing Strategy doesnt include a target for these types of properties. When my colleague Andrew Boff grilled him on this a few months ago, Khan claimed that the previous Housing Strategy, published in 2014, didnt include a target either. Yet this is not true  readers can see for themselves that page 29 of the 2014 Housing Strategy makes clear that 36 percent of discounted rented homes should be family sized. This is the worst side of Khan  when he is presented with cold hard facts which expose his failings he shamelessly resorts to misdirection, and occasionally  as in this case  plain untruths.

The Crossrail debacle has been well-covered in the press over recent weeks, and rightly so. Crossrail Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of TfL, which Khan chairs; make no mistake, this delay is Khans delay.

The Mayor has claimed that he didnt learn about the delay to Crossrail until two days before the public announcement. Yet the Transport Committee has seriously questioned whether this is true, saying that it was highly likely that the Mayor had been informed around six weeks earlier about very likely delays. It seems that Khan could have used semantics to try and avoid culpability, saying he only knew about the precise details two days before the announcement but omitting to admit that he knew that serious problems existed weeks before. Millions of Londoners were relying on Crossrail opening on time and businesses had made investments based on the plans, but Khans determination to avoid transparency means that Londoners found out about this delay weeks after they should have done.

Despite being Londons police and crime commissioner with a multi-billion-pound budget, Khan constantly blames government policy for the fact that crime is going through the roof in the capital. But he is clearly doing this simply to disguise his own failure to deliver on crime.

To take just one example, Khan announced, in February, an extra 5 million to recruit new police officers. Yet it wasnt until September  over six months later  that the recruitment drive started. Violent crime is one of the biggest problems in the capital, but the Mayor isnt acting with the urgency that is so desperately required.

Khan doesnt just shirk responsibility on the big issues of housing, transport and crime, but he shamelessly tries to dodge accountability when it comes to the trivial matters too. Before the famous Trump blimp hovered above Parliament Square, the Mayor said that it is not the Mayors or GLAs role to act as a censor or the arbiter of what is or is not a good protest and implied that the decision to allow the blimp to fly was an independent one taken by officers without outside interference. However, recent FOIs have shown that the Mayors close advisors intervened and managed to persuade the relevant officers to do a U-turn and allow the inflatable to fly.

This is just another example of the Mayor finding himself in a tricky position politically and, rather than honestly owning up and taking responsibility for his actions, choosing instead to pass the buck.

There is of course the chance that Khan doesnt mislead, point the finger and fail to take responsibility for his own petty political reasons. Perhaps he genuinely is incapable of using his huge power and a 16 billion budget to deliver what he promised for London. It could be the case that he is under the cosh and powerless in the face of his own officials and the Government.

Khan is either weak or deeply incompetent. Either way, Londoners deserve better.High Peak

The Conservative Association in High Peak (Labour majority: 2,322) has selected its candidate to take back the seat from Ruth George at the next election. The constituency was Conservative-held from 2010-2017, and will be high on the Tory target list as a constituency to regain.

The winner of the selection was Robert Largan.

A chartered accountant at Marks and Spencer, Largan grew up in Bury and contested Bury South for the Conservatives in 2017. He served as a Hammersmith and Fulham councillor from 2014-17, and worked in Parliament for Greg Hands MP, before returning to the North West.

Bury North

Continuing a theme, on Saturday Conservatives in Bury North (Labour majority: 4,375) met to choose their candidate. This is another seat that was seized in 2010, only to be lost again last year.

Their chosen candidate is Cllr James Daly (pictured, right).

A criminal defence solicitor by profession, Daly has been a Bury councillor since 2012, representing the North Manor ward, and is currently Leader of Bury Conservatives. At the end of 2015, he was selected as Conservative candidate for the Oldham West and Royton by-election, and he contested Bolton North East at the 2017 General Election.

Commiserations to the unsuccessful contenders, and congratulations to Robert and James.Lord Lilley is a former Secretary of State for Trade & Industy and for Social Security.

Language is important in politics. It can define accurately what we intend, but it can also be vague or innocuous to intentionally mislead people. Today, Global Britain has released a paper Chequers  the Single Market by another name to explain why the Single Market is not the success that is claimed, and how, by adopting the Chequers plan, we would be compounding its errors.

The evidence in the paper shatters the illusion that Single Market membership has been an irreplaceable boon to British manufacturing. That illusion lies behind the Chequers plan to keep the UK subject to Single Market rules on goods.

I confess that I bear some responsibility for nurturing this illusion. As the Trade and Industry Secretary who implemented the original Single Market programme I frequently lauded its putative benefits. Indeed, the initial idea was sensible. It involved mutual recognition of each member states product standards and removing those that were anti-competitive. So companies need make only one range for the entire Single Market, instead of 28 variants to conform to each member states rules.

But that benefitted American or Japanese manufacturers exporting to Europe as much as British or German firms exporting within Europe. European consumers benefitted through lower costs. European (and certainly British) firms gained little advantage. UK goods exports to original Single Market countries grew at under one per cent a year between 1993 and 2015, whereas our exports to countries we trade on WTO terms with grew three times as much at almost three per cent.

Sadly, the Single Market changed from mutual recognition to centralised, uniform and detailed regulation. This helped established firms to consolidate their grip on the market by making it harder for new-comers to enter  and burdened companies that only trade within their home markets in addition to those which export.

That may explain why continental industry, which started with a comparative advantage in manufacturing, captured such a strong share of the UK market that is now the EU27s biggest export market.

As the paper makes clear, British manufacturers do relatively much better exporting outside the Single Market. But our greatest comparative advantage lies in services. Over half the value-added that Britain exports is in services where we have a substantial surplus worldwide. But, again, our performance in the Single Market is disappointing. A lower proportion of UK service exports than of goods goes to Europe, where our surplus is modest compared to that with America.

Because services are much less important to other members than to the UK, the EU has made little progress in removing restrictive practices, despite endless promises. One exception is the creation of passports for financial services firms. As Financial Secretary to the Treasury, I negotiated the first directive creating a passport for banks enabling them to operate via a branch regulated by their home country regulator rather than setting up local subsidiaries. I was disappointed a few years later when my department could not find any British bank making use of passporting. However, since passporting was extended to a wider range of financial activities its use has become extensive.

Immediately following the EU referendum, concerns about the impact of the loss of passporting on financial services dominated the media. Interestingly, this has subsided. Banks did not protest when the Prime Minister acknowledged that passports would cease. And they scarcely uttered a whimper when Chequers offered to keep Single Market rules for products, but sought no continuing access for financial services. City firms have found work arounds for loss of passports and equivalence. More important, they and the Bank of England have concluded that the City will be better off making its own rules than remaining a rule taker.

That raises the question: would we not be better off being free to make our own rules on goods as well, rather than be a rule taker? We would not use such freedom to scrap rules wholesale. But many could be streamlined and, above all, made less of a barrier to new entrants.

The most frightening aspect of Chequers is that it commits Britain to accept all future rules. Yet Britain is particularly strong in emerging industries like bio-tech, fintech, AI and genetic engineering  where rules have yet to be set. Irrespective of any unnecessary backstop or extension to a transition period, Chequers would be an act of self-harm by allowing rules to be made by countries that lack such industries and often apply extreme versions of the precautionary principle that throttle new developments.

We promised to leave the Single Market. We should not use too clever-by-half language to disguise the fact we would remain tied to it without any say in its restrictive practices. Chequers cannot be the basis for any new relationship with the EU.We can all agree that the negotiations over the UKs departure from the European Union have been proving messy: where the responsibility for this should rest is a matter of greater dispute. But amidst the bad news, and the noisy blame-mongering, you may have missed some good news. There has been agreement that Gibraltars status and future well-being should not be put under threat.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Spain has signalled it will not veto any final Brexit deal after progress was made in negotiations between Madrid and London over Gibraltar. The European Union gave Spain the power to block the Brexit withdrawal agreement in March. Since then talks have been held between the two countries over what will happen to the Rock after Brexit. Spain has long contested the sovereignty of Gibraltar, which it views as a British colony, but that issue has not featured in the negotiations.

Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, said that Spain has dropped its demand for joint management of Gibraltars airport. He said:

The Gibraltar protocol is resolved, its been closed with the British Government. Given what we want above all is an agreement and to give stability to the people, elements where it is evident we are light years away from reaching an agreement with United Kingdom, like the shared use of the airport or [Spains] sovereignty over the Rock have been left out.

Good news is pretty much no news. But the comparison with Northern Ireland is striking. Imagine if the Irish Government had been as accommodating as the Spanish one? Perhaps the Gibraltar experience shows the benefit of the UK taking a very clear and firm stance and sticking to it. Spain ceded Gibraltar to the U.K. in perpetuity in 1713. In 2002, the residents held a vote on Spains proposal for joint sovereignty  it was rejected by 17,900 to 187. In that context, any concessions to Spanish opportunism would have been pretty outrageous.

Yet in the EU Referendum in 2016 the Remain Campaign made a great effort to highlight the perceived threat to the Rock that a Brexit vote would represent. The message was certainly taken seriously on Gibraltar itself. Its residents voted Remain by 95.1 per cent to 4.1 per cent. These are people so fiercely patriotic that they are known as more British than the British.

Was the supposed threat to Gibraltar just another case of Project Fear  albeit an exceptionally effective example? Perhaps. But older residents would point out that the stress and anxiety when Franco closed the border in 1969 was real enough. And in the immediate aftermath of the referendum two years ago Spain did demand joint control. So the vote to Remain to avoid a leap in the dark was understandable.

David Cameron went to Gibraltar, though his visit was cut short by the murder of Jo Cox. But Cameron did tell the Gibraltarians that EU membership was so crucial to your continued economic success, security and prosperity and that I believe well be stronger, well be safer, well be better off if we stay.

He was right about the economic success. Yet it is just that success which also gives Spain an economic motive not to cause disruption. As Laveen Ladharam has written:

Simply put, Gibraltar is a huge economic boon to southern Spain. The territory employs around 10,000 people living in Spain, mainly service sector workers. But there are also many young professionals: accountants, teachers and lawyers. These people bring nearly 100 million into Spain every year. Gibraltar also buys over 380 million in services from Spain and the quirky airport ensures thousands of British tourists have another way of getting to southern Spain.

Keeping open the land frontier between Gibraltar and Spain at La Linea is in everyones interests. So Spain will not revert to Francos policy  which, of course, failed to break the will of the people of Gibraltar. So on the island of Ireland, as with Spain, let us hope that there is agreement to allow life to continue as before, and that this story too has a happy ending.By Gemma Handy

OVERSEAS territories are currently facing a "much more hostile and less supportive relationship with British political leaders.





That was the claim from a leading analyst whose written submission to the Foreign Affairs Committees (FAC) inquiry was among the first evidence to be published this week.





Right-leaning leaders  traditionally seen as allies to the territories  "conveniently ignored OTs "strong preference to remain part of Europe during the Brexit referendum, associate professor of politics Peter Clegg asserted.





Meanwhile, those on the left have used the threat of direct rule from London to force OTs to "make radical changes to their financial services industries, he said.





"For many years there has been a high degree of consensus between the major political parties in terms of how the overseas territories should be managed and supported. But that has now changed, which has made their position more vulnerable, Clegg warned in his 2,300-word submission.





The FACs first inquiry in 11 years into Britains governance of its territories and how it envisages their future was announced in July. It came amid anxiety as to what the UKs exit from the EU might mean for the OTs.





On Tuesday (October 16), representatives of the Cayman Islands and Bermuda were the first to be called to address a parliamentary select committee and share their concerns in a highly charged opening to the proceedings.





Cayman is "happy overall with the constitutional relationship between the islands and the UK, Caymans London representative Eric Bush told the committee. "Being British is in our DNA, he added.





But things got heated when the subject of same-sex marriage was brought up by former OTs Minister Chris Bryant.





"There has been a long battle about whether or not you should have same-sex marriage in Cayman, said Bryant, who married husband Jared Cranney in 2010 in the first civil partnership ceremony ever held in the Houses of Parliament.





Bush replied that he felt it "inappropriate as a civil servant to give an opinion about Cayman government policy.





"It seems like you are having your cake and eating it. You want to be under the British umbrella, but you do not want to be part of the British way of life, Bryant retorted.





Dialogue also centred on what Brexit might mean for the Cayman Islands.





Bush said the territory had created a thriving economy through its health, tourism and financial services sectors.





"The risk lies in the realities of Brexit The UK is going to be more concerned about its own external affairs for the foreseeable future, he explained, adding that Cayman needed to be more "proactive in forming its "own international identity.





Former Governor to Bermuda George Fergusson was quizzed by FAC member Andrew Rosindell as to why Britains remaining territories chose to stay part of the UK.





Security, sovereignty and a need for financial assistance were cited as reasons, plus "an element of, if its not broken why fix it?





Rosindell also asked Fergusson, who served as Bermudas governor from 2012 to 2016, for his thoughts on how the OTs fit within the "overall British family.





"The Danish allow the Faroe Islands and Greenland to vote in the Danish Parliament. We are the only former colonial power that does not allow our territories any say at all, Rosindell said.





He added that he believed the British parliament should have a committee specialising in the day-to-day issues of the OTs.





"I am not sure it would be very busy. The day-to-day business is not enormous, Fergusson replied. "It is difficult to make the relationships too tidy, or much tidier than they are.





Rosindell also raised concerns over the way OT leaders were treated on official visits to Britain.





"For instance, when the premier of Cayman comes here, he is not given VIP treatment, even coming into the British parliament, he told the committee.





Bush replied that ambassadors and even their staff were "afforded certain privileges that territory premiers were not.





"When the premier comes into parliament as a guest for whatever reason, he is subject to the normal security checks, as is anybody off the road, he said.





"If those courtesies could be extended to  elected leaders of overseas territories, that would be most welcome, because then we could start to feel as if we are accepted as equals, Bush added.





EU funding

Also speaking on Tuesday was international human rights barrister Susie Alegre.





Alegre expressed concern about post-Brexit axing of EU funding for OTs.





"There is a cut-off of international funding that wont obviously be replaced from elsewhere, which is a very big deal in a small economy, she said.





"Whether or not the needs of Pitcairn, Tristan da Cunha or Turks and Caicos are going to be taken into serious account  is open to debate, Alegre continued.





She also chided OTs "lack of voice in the matter, saying there was an "urgent need to review and clarify the constitutional position of OTs with regard to decisions that the UK takes.





TCI Premier Sharlene Cartwright Robinson confirmed the Islands representative to London had also been invited to appear before the committee but did not provide further details, and the TCI Governments London office did not respond up to press time.





Governor John Freemans office also declined to comment except to confirm that the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices response to the FAC would be made public in due course.





FAC spokeswoman Estelle Currie told the Weekly News a "healthy amount of written evidence had been received and was likely to be published in the next fortnight.





"The team is working through it at the moment so its not possible to say how many [submissions] came from the Turks and Caicos Islands, she said.





"We hope further representatives from the OTs will join us to give evidence but there may still be some fluctuation to final arrangements.





"Depending on how the evidence goes, we would probably expect a few more oral evidence sessions, Currie added.





Full transcriptions can be found at www.parliament.uk



By Olivia Rose

A WORRYING 90 cases of breast cancer were diagnosed by the end of last year in the TCI, the Government has announced.





This figure was revealed by the Ministry of Health on Friday (October 12) as the territory joins the rest of the world to observe Breast Cancer Awareness Month.





Breast Cancer Awareness Month is observed annually in October to help increase attention and support, early detection and treatment as well as palliative care of the disease.





According to the TCIs National Cancer Society (NCS) which works in tandem with the health ministry, breast cancer is still the most prevalent cancer in the TCI, followed by prostate cancer.





President of the NCS, Rosemary Jolly, revealed that about 30 types of cancers are present in the TCI and women make up 54 percent of those diagnosed.





Providenciales, understandably, has nearly three quarters of all cancer patients while Grand Turk makes up 17 percent and the remaining percentage covers the less populated islands.





In terms of nationality, Turks and Caicos Islanders are 75 percent of those with cancer, Jamaica and Haiti combined are about 14 percent and the remaining 11 percent is made up of about 10 other nationalities.





Locally every year a cancer walk is organised to help bring more awareness to the disease.





Jolly told the Weekly News that this years walk was a huge success with more than 500 people participating.





Minister of Health Hon. Edwin Astwood, in a statement encouraged people to get screened early.





He said: "I would like to focus on the importance of persons making it a habit to go for regular screening for breast, cervical, prostate and colorectal cancers.





"There is good evidence that these cancers with early detection and treatment will be able to save lives.





"When there is detection and treatment in the early stages, there are better outcomes.





He emphasised that there has been an alarming increase in the diagnosis of cancer in the territory and the risk factors must be addressed at national and local level.





Astwood added that physical inactivity and poor nutrition are two of the major risk factors that must be addressed.





Internationally there are about 1.38 million new cases and 458,000 deaths from breast cancer each year.





It is the most common cancer worldwide in both developed and developing countries.





Although breast cancer mostly occurs among older women, in rare cases it does affect women under the age of 45.





About 11 percent of all new cases of breast cancer in the United States are found in women younger than 45 years of age.





All women are at risk for getting breast cancer, but some things can raise a womans risk for getting breast cancer before age 45.





Learning what factors increase a womans chance of getting breast cancer is an important first step in assessing risk.





Learning the symptoms of breast cancer will also help a woman know when to seek medical assistance.





Most deaths occur due to late diagnosis, therefore raising awareness and understanding breast cancer risks, early signs and symptoms and overall breast health is an important part of an effective public health approach.



The Oriana will leave the P&O Cruises fleet next summer and head for a new life in China, according to local media reports.

The 1995-built ship will head for a new Chinese local brand, loosely translated as Twinkle Travel Cruise, part of the China Travel Services (CTS) conglomerate. The venture also includes a partnership with COSCO Shipping Group.

Cruise plans have the vessel sailing short cruises from Chinese homeports to to Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia.On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service admitted to a breach in which attackers made off with the sensitive and personal information of 75,000 people. The anomalous activity was detected on October 13; the breach in Federally Facilitated Exchanges that agents and brokers use to help people signup for healthcare plans was declared on October 16. What exact sensitive and private info the hackers made off with was not explained, although people hand over a great deal of both types of information when signing up for healthcare.

Apple calls out Bloomberg; researcher calls out Apple

Apple CEO Tim Cook told BuzzFeed that Bloomberg needs to do the right thing and retract the story about Chinese spies managing to implant a malicious backdoor chip in a Super Micro motherboard server used by Apple. According to Bloomberg, Apple allegedly discovered the bugged hardware in 2015, cut ties with Super Micro and reported it to the FBI.

Cook, however, told BuzzFeed, There is no truth in their story about Apple. They (Bloomberg) need to do that right thing and retract it.

On a different front, Google Project Zero researcher called out Apple for failing to assign CVEs or publicly acknowledge flaws which were fixed in iOS 12. In my opinion a security bulletin should mention the security bugs that were fixed. Not doing so provides a disincentive for people to update their devices since it appears that there were fewer security fixes than there really were.

Apple did make it possible for you to request access to your data via its Data and Privacy page.

Ransom paid by Connecticut city

West Haven, Connecticut paid a $2,000 ransom demand to unlock 23 servers. According to the Associated Press, DHS said the attack was launched from a foreign country and an investigation is ongoing.

Flaws in 8 D-Link routers make it easy for remote hackers to gain full control

Security researcher Blazej Adamczyk disclosed three vulnerabilities in D-Link routers which, when chained together, makes it easy to gain full router control including arbitrary code execution.

The following eight D-Link models are affected: DWR-116, DWR-140L, DWR-512, DWR-640L, DWR-712, DWR-912, DWR-921, and DWR-111. He added that there were probably other vulnerable D-Link routers with the same type of firmware.

Despite contacting D-Link about the flaws back in May, he was told that only two (DWR-111 and DWR-116) and would be patched as the others were no longer supported. After hearing nothing more, he warned D-Link in September that it had one month to announce fixes or he would go public.

And so when D-Link failed to comply, he did reveal the flaws as well as post a proof-of-concept video showing a full takeover of vulnerable D-Link routers.

1.2 million email addresses in leaked file from 8 hacked adult websites

Ars Technica warned that a hack of eight adult websites led to a leaked 98MB file with IP addresses of those who visited, user passwords, names and 1.2 million unique email addresses  although it is not clear if the email addresses really belonged to users.

Hackers can access pictures, video feeds in vulnerable telepresence robots

There are five vulnerabilities in Vecna Technologies telepresence robots, which are often used by kid patients in hospitals. ZDNet reported that the flaws can be combined to allow an attacker full control over a robot, giving an intruder the capability to alter firmware, steal chat logs, pictures, or even access live video streams.

North Korean Lazarus hackers have stolen over half a billion dollars in cryptocurrencies

The state-sponsored North Korean hacking crew Lazarus has managed to steal a whopping $571 million in cryptocurrencies and is responsible for more than half of cryptocurrencies stolen since 2017.

Do Not Track ignored

If you think that taking the time to turn on the Do Not Track feature in your browser to demand privacy actually means something to companies, think again. Gizmodo reported that despite Do Not Track being used by millions, most sites opt to ignore your privacy preference. DuckDuckGo founder Gabe Weinberg suggested that unless there is a federal law to give DNT some teeth, then it should be removed from all browsers because it is otherwise misleading, giving people a false sense of security.

Other interesting security and privacy tidbits:

You can check out a comparison of messenger systems by security, privacy, compatibility, and features.

There is also on interesting interactive example of how Facebook leaked millions of access tokens and a blog post about how Facebook was hacked.State election officials have got to be stressed out. Almost none are cybersecurity experts, and they find themselves pulled hither and thither by partisan politicians on the one hand, and non-partisan security experts on the other hand. The good news is the US Senate just approved a second tranche of funding  this time for $250 million  to help the states secure their election systems.

So how are you supposed to spend that money? The $250 million does not include any security requirements or guidance for the voting machines states buy. Is this secure? Is it not? What should you buy? You can't trust the voting machine vendors either, as they have not been forthcoming on potential vulnerabilities in the past.

Senator Ron Wyden (D), one of the few cybersecurity-savvy members of either house of Congress, was critical of the funding bill. "This proposal is a joke," he said in a statement. "This amendment doesnt even require the funding be spent on election security  it can go for anything related to elections. Giving states taxpayer money to buy hackable, paperless machines or systems with poor cybersecurity is a waste."

If you're a state election official trying to do the right thingor a citizen who wants to know if your election officials are doing the right thing, this guide is for you.

How to secure our elections

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let's be clear: There is widespread agreement among security experts on how to secure elections. A new report on voting machine security from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine lays out the consensus opinion of dozens of leading experts. Voting machine security expert Matt Blaze's 2017 testimony before Congress painted the solution in vivid colors: use paper ballots, counted with optical scanners, and double-checked with risk-limiting audits. Oh... and avoid online voting and anything that uses the word blockchain.

Ready to put some nitty in your gritty?While Milano Wine Bar & Pizzeria has all the looks of a restaurant that has closed its doors, the proprietors of the downtown Bridgeport establishment say its only temporary.

From the bare outdoor seating area to the bottles of alcohol being loaded into boxes, the eatery at 281 Fairfield Ave. apparently shuttered over the weekend, though parties involved in the project insist it isnt permanent.

We are temporarily closed for rebranding right now, said Freddy Tomaj, whose brother, Peter, opened Milano in 2016.

A native of Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic, Peter Tomaj took over the space that formerly housed Two Boots, bringing more than a dozen specialty pizzas to a market without any clear rivals in the immediate vicinity at the time.

The restaurant celebrated its two-year anniversary last month.

Freddy Tomaj declined to comment on the reason behind the closure but said he and his family are working with landlord Phil Kuchma of Kuchma Corp. to figure out plans for the space and business moving forward.

Thats the plan for right now, said Freddy Tomaj.

Kuchma has been instrumental in reshaping Bijou Square over the last decade, with the opening of the Bijou Theatre and new apartments built along Lafayette Circle, with retail space at ground level. In that time, the area has seen several eateries come and go, including Two Boots and, down the block, a few restaurants in the space that now houses Eat Noodle.

Kuchma declined to comment on the fate of the pizzeria but said the space will remain under the Milano banner while plans unfold.

Milanos troubles appear to be a part of a larger issue facing business owners downtown, according to Kelvin Ayala, owner of Moes Burger Joint and membership chair for the Downtown Bridgeport Merchants Association.

No one is doing great in the downtown market and business owners are frustrated, he said, adding that restaurant closures arent new as merchants deal with high rents and lagging foot traffic.

While there have been new additions to the restaurant and bar scene this year, Ayala said there is some spillover from last years wave of closures that saw Amici Miei Cafe and Barnum Publick House shutter downtown.

In two years, we have not recovered from the loss of businesses and foot traffic, Ayala added.

Jordan.grice@hearstmediact.comSears Holdings will lay off nearly 70 workers in Milford in shutting its department store at the Connecticut Post mall, listing Dec. 31 as the closure date in a state regulatory filing.

Sears filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors last week, with the company to close more than 140 Sears and Kmart stores nationwide including another Connecticut Sears store at the Crystal Mall in Waterford.ANSONIA-The Ansonia-Derby School Regionalization Study committee will select their consultant tonight from a group of four firms they interviewed last month.

The committee is meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in Ansonia High School on Pulaski Highway. It is open to the public. However they will vote in executive session and then come out to announce their selection publicly.

I have found that the interview process has been open and fair and I was extremely satisfied with the caliber of firms that responded and the quality of their presentations, said Jim Gildea, who co-chairs the study committee with John Izzo, an Ansonia Board of Education member.

The four firms vying for the position are National Executive Service Corps, which has offices in New York, Stamford and Hartford; Area Cooperative Education Services, also known as ACES of North Haven; the PFM Group Consulting LLC, which has an office in Wallingford and District Management Group, located in Boston.

The selected consultant will assist the committee in beginning the background work necessary to meet the state statute and address all the topics associated with the planning of a regionalized school district. Gildea said.

He said they will generate a report that will be used by the committee to decide whether the concept should be advanced to the legislative bodies and ultimately the public for a multi town referendum.

The committee, which will sit for at least two years, has been meeting since June. They are looking for a consultant with experience developing and performing evaluations like crafting a single school district from separate entities. It must have a professional staff that can meet the project deadlines.

Among the more important aspects are creating a detailed five-year educational and budget plan which projects enrollment, staffing needs, transportation requirements and special education mandates.

The consultant also is responsible for assisting the committee in determining the pros and cons of establishing a regional school district, the buildings that will be used and the size and representation of a regional school board. They also must recommend a process and procedure to negotiate new union contracts.

The study committee is working with a $168,000 state grant. Their budget includes $37,500 or $10 per student in each district; $69,500 for professional delivery of services; $30,000 for architectural services and faculty programming and $31,000 for administration and public involvement, which includes the costs to conduct a referendum vote in both Ansonia and Derby.

Voters in both cities must approve regionalization before the two school districts are combined. However that process is at least two years away.BRIDGEPORT  A teen is accused of firing a bullet that ended up inside Dunbar School on Monday morning.

Police said 18-year-old Geijon Williams, upset at his mothers boyfriend, fired at the man shortly after 8 a.m.

The bullet, fired from 200 feet from the school, missed its intended target, but pierced a window in the school, Police Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said. School officials said the bullet was found in a room in the school.

Geijon Williams. 18, was charged with attempted first-degree assault, unlawful discharge, carrying a pistol without a permit, reckless endangerment and risk of injury to a child.

In addition, Williams was charged with possession of marijuana after a small quantity was found on him, Fitzgerald said. He said the gun was recovered at the scene.

Because the incident occurred as students were arriving at Dunbar, school officials said there an increased police presence, but no lockdown.OXFORD  Schools Superintendent Ana V. Ortiz announced in a letter to parents on Monday she intends to retire at the end of the 2018-19 school year.

Ortiz, 62, said that after 40 years in education, the last four-plus in Oxford, she is ready to move on.

This position is not an easy one, but I accepted the challenges and at the end, the accomplishments have been many, she said. As a team, we have moved the district forward.

In the last school year, Oxford had just under 1,900 students.

When reached on Monday, Ortiz said the decision was hers and not based on any particular reason.

No, I am not a quitter like that, Ortiz said. I just made my decision.

She added she would fully retire and not just move on to a new district when she leaves.

During her tenure in Oxford, Ortiz said, the school district added full-day kindergarten, a teacher of the year program and added a curriculum coordinator, Spanish for middle and high school students and an additional advance-placement high school class.

Before arriving in Oxford, Ortiz served superintendent in Windham, where her contract was not renewed. She started her career as a high school English teacher and was also once a member of the Air National Guard.STRATFORD  Bunnell High School will stage its second annual Veterans Day Luncheon on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018.

The event is open to all Stratford veterans. The luncheon will be served in the BHS Auxiliary Gymnasium, prepared by the BHS culinary students.

War memorabilia from various conflicts will be on display. Afterward, all Grade 12 and 10 students will participate in the hour-long ceremony honoring all military branches through song and presentations.

Greg Sperling, a BHS Alumni, will be the keynote speaker and additional remarks will be offered by Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson and the Mayor Laura Hoydick. The lunch will take place at 11:30 a.m., followed by a ceremony at 12:30.

Stratford veterans who wish to attend should RSVP to Kirsten Hardy, humanities department chairwoman, at 203-385-5734, or by emailing hardyk@stratk12.org

Reserved parking will be available at the front of the building, and assistance provided as needed. The school is located on 1 Bulldog Blvd., off of Huntington Road.

jburgeson@ctpost.comTHE LIFELESS body of 61-year-old woman was recently discovered among some bushes near a resort in Providenciales.





The upsetting discovery was made on Tuesday morning (October 16) at about 7am.





Police reported that the womans body was found lying in bushes in Leeward.





Emergency officials were called in and the woman was pronounced dead at 7.45am, when they arrived on the scene.





Police said they are currently awaiting the results of a post mortem examination to determine the cause of death, due on Friday.





They have also advised that details surrounding the womans death are unknown at this time, as their investigations are still in the preliminary stages.





No one has been arrested in connection with the death, the police press office has advised.





A report to this publication stated that the woman is a New York city resident.



BROOKFIELD  An East Hartford man who died after a boating accident Sunday was an avid fisherman who operated his own home improvement business.

Officials have identified Gary Hayes, 48, as the person who died after a boat capsized Sunday on Candlewood Lake. Officials received a report around 12:30 p.m. about an overturned vessel with two men on board.

Joseph Miranda, 29, of Manchester, was able to swim to shore despite the cold water temperatures and refused medical treatment. Hayes was located in the water and brought to Danbury Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Besides being a huge Red Sox fan, Hayes also had a passion for fishing and often post videos of his adventures on Facebook. The last video he posted was around 9 a.m. Sunday while fishing on Candlewood several hours before his death.

Were out here on this beautiful fall day, Hayes says on the video as the wind can be heard whipping through the air. If you look over there you can see white caps. Were in a spot thats sheltered but its still windy.

While the accident remains under investigation, authorities said the two were fishing on choppy waters when the boat was swamped with water and capsized. Neither man was wearing a life vest, officials said.

Winds on Sunday near the lake gusted as high as 40 mph with a sustained wind speed of about 20 mph, according to the Connecticut Weather Center. The water temperature was in the low 50s, which means hypothermia can develop in under half an hour, authorities said.

Its still windy, Hayes said in one of his last videos posted Sunday. We have a few fish so far on the boat. I want to wish you all a wonderful day. I hope you are all warm and safe in your beds.

Friends and family members of Hayes commented on Facebook about how much he would be missed.

He was full of life and was always smiling and loved fishing and of course the Red Sox, wrote Harold Flenke on the website. Every day I would get up and check my phone looking for his FaceBook live post when he was fishing and all of us that knew him knew he loved fishing.

The accident remains under investigation at this time by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protections Conservation Police.

Sundays fatality is not the first death on Candlewood Lake this year. This past summer, teacher Wanda Tirado, 38, was reportedly thrown from a pontoon boat and struck by that boats propeller. Tirado was a teacher at St. Marys School in Waterbury.

Gary Morrone, the boats pilot, was arrested and charged with first-degree reckless operation, failure to help a collision victim and failure to immediately notify law enforcement after reportedly fleeing the scene.

dperrefort@newstimes.comANSONIA  As budget restrictions have forced the citys schools to streamline their operation, several community groups and businesses have stepped forward to help, Ansonia Superintendent of Schools Carol Merlone said.

She also announced a new Ansonia High School program in collaboration with Griffin Hospital in Derby.

Before the start of the school year, the Valley United Way Corporate Volunteer Council provided school uniforms and supplies for 253 students in Mead and Prendergast schools, Merlone said. Christ Church of Ansonia provided a donation of school supplies to Ansonia Middle School.

Merlone said BIC donated 100 teacher supply kits filled with BIC products to the middle school, while the Prudential Group conducted a food collection and put together 500 bags of food to be given out to students at Mead School and Prendergast School.

Third-graders at Mead School were also given free dictionaries from the Rotary Club.

I know that we continue to ask more and more of everyone each year, as budgets get cut and expenses continue to rise, Merlone said. And I know that this year is the most challenging ever for our staff.

She and Paul Giansanti, the new principal at Ansonia High School, announced a partnership with Griffin Hospital in offering offer a Patient Care Technician program for 10 freshmen who are on pace to graduate in 2022.

For freshman to apply, they must have a 90 average in a freshman science course and a 3.0 grade point average, along with fewer than 10 unexcused absences. Applicants must also write a letter to administrators at Ansonia High and Griffin, expressing interest and their availability to volunteer for 50 hours every summer at the hospital, through graduation.

For students to continue in the program, they must take advance-placement biology in their sophomore year, honors or advanced placement chemistry in their junior year and anatomy and physiology in their first part of their senior.

In January 2022, the group is scheduled to begin a 17-week course taught by Griffin Hospital instructors.

Merlone, the Board of Education and the Ansonia Federation of Teachers say the city schools have fallen on hard time following the removal of $600,000 from their budget by the Board of Aldermen. The action has led to a lawsuit filed against the city and an investigation by the state Board of Education.

The aldermen claim the money was lent to the school board to help get it through the 2017-18 state budget crisis. When the school district got $1.8 million from the state, the Aldermen voted to withhold the $600,000 as a payback.

The lawsuit is headed for a summary judgment hearing Nov. 13 in Derby Superior Court.ANSONIA  The fate of where a 450-pound bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will find its forever home could be decided by the Board of Aldermen next month.

Ever since the MLK Bust Committee began its mission nearly two years ago to have a one-of-a-kind bust of the Civil Rights icon created, the plan was to have it installed at Veterans Memorial Park, next to City Hall.

However, resident Bill Phipps recently raised some concerns to the aldermen about an alternate location for the bust. Phipps, while not a veteran himself, is a staunch supporter of veterans and their causes. He is the brother of the late Brigadier Gen. Brian F. Phipps, a U.S. Army veteran, and longtime Ansonia police commissioner, who has a memorial bridge named in his honor that carries Route 8 over Hull Street. Brian Phipps served two tours of duty in Vietnam and earned a Bronze star for bravery under fire, among other combat medals.

Phipps told the aldermen he has no issues whatsoever with MLK and is not trying to disrespect the committees hard work, but believes Dr. Haddad Park, also downtown at the corner of Main and Bridge streets, is a more suitable location.

Veterans Memorial Park is a lasting memorial to members of our city who went to war and gave their lives for our country, Phipps told the board. The park was created for deceased veterans and should remain a place to remember those we lost and to be thankful for their service.

Phipps added he believes Haddad Park is more visible to both foot and vehicular traffic.

The Rev. Alfred Smith, pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church, was at the same meeting and asked the aldermen to strongly consider the committees wishes to place the bust at Veterans Memorial Park.

This (bust) will bring a new level of class to Veterans Memorial Parkand wont take away anything from the veterans, Smith said.

Aldermanic President Lorie Vaccaro said the board is slated to discuss and possibly cast a vote at a special meeting Nov. 20 at City Hall about the busts location.

These monuments are for the benefit of our residentsall residents, said Vaccaro. If the only objection is from Mr. Phipps, and as far as I know there have been no others, then we should respect the community that helped fund and create this project.

Vaccaro said the aldermen spoke to Rev. Smith and other committee members early on and had suggested Haddad Park as a possible location, due to its high visibility.

But that is not what the MLK Committee wants, Vaccaro added. We do have the final say and my colleagues are sympathetic to both groups. I have no doubt we will come up with a solution that will satisfy everyone.

The MLK bust project is slated to cost about $25,000 to $29,000, and is being created by artist/sculptor Vasil Rakaj, an Ansonia resident. The bust will be placed atop a 6-foot tall black granite base. The committee is hoping to complete the project with lighting and landscaping.

Ansonia will be only the second city in Connecticut to have a monument dedicated to King. The other one is in New Britain. Rakaj said Ansonias bust will be the first bronze one of King in the state.

jean.sos@snet.net.Last year was a great one for sales of hardback books, I was reading recently. After several years of decline, sales bounced back and more than 18 million hardbacks were sold in 2017. There is a similar trend in music, where despite the continued growth of streaming music, sales of vinyl records made up 14 percent of all physical albums sold in 2017.

Related: How to Turn Business Cards Into Business Relationships

It's not a trend that surprises me. I love technology, but for some experiences, physical products beat digital ones because they allow us to form an emotional connection.

I would bet that those vinyl buyers listen to streaming music, but the records they really care about are the ones they want to add to their physical music collection. Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised to see those hardback buyers reading a Kindle on the beach this summer; but when it comes to a book they love, they want to display a copy on the shelf. They want their friends to be able to take it down, flick through it and maybe even borrow it.

I understand that emotional connection because in the world of business cards it has never gone away. There have been numerous attempts to replace business cards with digital tools, from QR codes to "bumping" phones together. And yet 27 million business cards are printed daily.

Business cards originated in 15th-century China, where they were used to let locals know that a dignitary was due to visit. In 17th-century France, the upper classes used them to announce themselves when visiting. A particular etiquette grew up to govern their use and most large houses had a card tray where visitors could leave their cards.

Related: The Hidden Power of the Business Card

As the industrial revolution progressed, tradesmen used them as portable advertisements and, while their use in society declined, they became an essential business tool. Today, in Japan, business cards are still subject to precise etiquette that dictates how they should be delivered, received and read.

Today, people are still investing in their business cards, and while obviously extreme, the most expensive business card in the world costs $1,500 per card. While handing out cards may not happen as frequently -- for example, when everyone in the room is on the same email thread -- when one is handed out, we want it to be memorable. That's because business cards play an important role as a memento of a physical meeting.

A contact in your phone might come from an email, a social media site or a text message. If you have someone's business card, however, then it's likely that you met them in person, and the card will jog your memory.

It might not be the name that does it -- sometimes it's the logo or the color of the font. Contacts on your smartphone are styled by the app you use, rather than reflecting a personality. There are other physical cues that an on-screen contact list doesn't have -- different paper types, for example, or unusual sizes and shapes.

Even the state of the card can tell you something. Those dog-eared cards you still keep? They're the contacts that you keep coming back to. In a digital world of ever-increasing noise, business cards cut through.

Related: Why You Still Need Business Cards

The impression that your cards make might be more important than the information on them. After all, if given only your name and job title, most of your contacts could probably Google you and still get in touch. Your card should provide more than that, of course, but don't overload it. Does anyone need your company fax number? They might not even need your postal address.

It's tempting to add things like social media channels so that new contacts can follow you there, but consider whether that's appropriate. If your business is very formal and your Twitter feed is anything but, then leave that off. On the other hand, if your feed demonstrates how deeply you think about your work, then, by all means, include it.

Unique touches on a business card also make people more memorable -- as technology has advanced, it has allowed consumers to individualize their cards. A card with color and designs tends to be held onto 10 times longer than a standard white card. That means that if you're a designer, for example, you can showcase your work and share your details.

Business will always be about establishing relationships. Those relationships rely on personal contact and emotional connections -- and physical objects reflect those better than digital ones. That's why there will always be room for some books and records on our shelves and a few important business cards in the drawer.

Related:

Why Business Cards Will Never Go Away

8 Old-School Branding Techniques That Will Still Work for You Today

Why You Still Need Business Cards



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reservedBefore the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, Saudi Arabia had amassed one of the largest and well-funded influence operations in the United States. It had more than two dozen lobbying and public relations firms on its payroll. Its lobbyists lined congressional campaign coffers on the very same day they met with senators and representatives to discuss Saudi interests, and the Saudis were pumping cash into think tanks and elite American universities across the nation.

But now the Saudi's once seemingly invincible influence machine has started to malfunction. Four of Saudi Arabia's lobbying and public relations firms, and at least one think tank, have severed ties with the Saudis.

The question isn't why organizations are distancing themselves from Saudi Arabia now; the real question is why did Washington wait to sour on the Saudis? The short answer: the Saudis' extraordinary spending on influence in the United States.

The story of the rise of Saudi influence in Washington begins after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when it was revealed that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. In the next 10 years, the Saudis spent more than $100 million to reshape their image in Washington. They were so successful that the Obama administration - while negotiating the Iran deal that the Saudis opposed - offered Saudi Arabia $115 billion in arms sales, far more than any administration in U.S. history. These are the same arms deals that President Trump keeps falsely claiming credit for and is using as a completely misguided justification for not punishing the Saudis for Khashoggi's death.

While becoming the leading recipient of U.S. arms sales just 15 years after being implicated in the most devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil might seem surprising, the Saudi lobby was only getting started. In 2016, the Saudi government was fighting the Justice Against State Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which effectively would allow for the families of 9/11 victims to continue with a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. To fight JASTA, Saudi Arabia's longtime public relations consultant Qorvis/MSL Group, among others, orchestrated a campaign that reportedly duped U.S. military veterans into lobbying against the 9/11 victims' families in exchange for a trip to Washington, including a stay at the Trump International Hotel.

This was just the beginning of Saudi Arabia's courtship of the Trump administration and the dramatic expansion of their influence operation in Washington. Foreign Agent's Registration Act (FARA) records filed in 2017 show the Saudis spent nearly $27 million on lobbying and public relations firms, nearly triple their spending in 2016. Further analysis of 2017 FARA filings shows that these firms contacted members of Congress, the Trump administration, the media and various think tanks more than 2,500 times. And they made nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions to representatives and senators they'd contacted on behalf of their Saudi clients. Eleven of these contributions occurred on the exact same day the member was contacted on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

All of this paid off immensely for the Saudis as the United States, particularly Trump, either cheered or, at best, remained silent in a series of alarming events in the past two years.

Since 2015 Saudi Arabia has been indiscriminately killing civilians with U.S. bombs in the war in Yemen. Yet, just last month Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified that Saudi Arabia has been protecting civilians, and Trump has repeatedly defended the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Trump's first trip abroad as president was to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, reportedly at the suggestion of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who had become friends with Mohammed bin Salman, King Salman's son. Within a month of the trip, Saudi Arabia orchestrated a blockade of Qatar, home to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, and Mohammed launched a literal palace coupe to depose his cousin and become crown prince. Trump's reported response: "We've put our man on top!"

In November, MBS, as the crown prince is known, then kidnapped, held hostage and tortured some of the Saudi royals who had opposed his power grab, to which Trump tweeted he had "great confidence" in the Saudi king and crown prince.

But Khashoggi's murder by the Saudis has changed the equation. For the first time in the recent history of Saudi misdeeds, there are outcries from across the political spectrum. Some of the loudest voices opposing the Saudis are congressional Republicans who, along with many of their Democratic colleagues, have called for a host of punishments for the Saudis, including sanctions, blocking arms sales and ending U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.

One thing hasn't changed, however: The Saudis still have an army of lobbyists and public relations firms on their payroll. While some firms have dropped the Saudis as a client since Khashoggi's disappearance, another, Southwind Strategies, recently signed a deal with the Saudis, and more than two dozen FARA-registered firms continue to work for the kingdom. They're likely working tirelessly right now to help the Saudis come out of this unscathed.

We owe it to Jamal Khashoggi to not let them win. We owe it to him to silence the Saudi lobby and punish Saudi Arabia for what they have done.

- Freeman is the director and founder of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.The following editorial appeared in Monday's Washington Post:

Does America really have the capability to influence other nations toward the ideals of democracy, free markets, rule of law and respect for human rights? Often it seems not when dictators, strongmen and party bosses engage in abominable behavior, silencing critics and imprisoning civil society activists. But the case of Vietnam and the Trans-Pacific Partnership suggests that other nations, including the most authoritarian, do pay attention to U.S. prompts.

As Simon Denyer and David Nakamura reported in The Post this month, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation trade agreement that was the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's approach to Asia, was in trouble by late 2016. It was not yet approved by Congress, it faced serious opposition at home, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had signaled her intention to pull out of an agreement she once called the "gold standard" of trade deals.

But the pact had power in Vietnam, one of the signatories. The agreement secured promises from Vietnam's Communist Party rulers to make space for independent trade unions, outlaw child labor, give private firms more opportunity to compete with the state sector, strengthen environmental controls and allow an unfettered Internet. In exchange, the Vietnamese would gain greater access to the huge U.S. market. Also, one of Vietnam's regional rivals, China, was excluded. And TPP came at a time when a budding movement of brave Vietnamese activists was using social media to spread ideas about workers rights, transparency, accountability and democracy.

Then, in his first week in office, President Donald Trump withdrew from TPP on the dubious complaint that it was bad for U.S. businesses and workers. The impact in Vietnam was unmistakable. As former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius told The Post, "It pulled the rug out from under the reformers."

No longer bound by the TPP restrictions, Vietnam's rulers set out to punish the activists. The regime detained a blogger known as Mother Mushroom, whose real name is Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh and who wrote extensively about a big chemical spill in 2016 that devastated marine life and galvanized protests against the regime. In June 2017, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "conducting propaganda against the socialist state." (Last Wednesday she was released from prison and left for the United States.) The authorities also attempted to crush Brotherhood for Democracy, a group founded by lawyer Nguyen Van Dai. On April 5, 2017, a court in Hanoi sentenced him and five other activists to between seven and 15 years in prison for alleged subversion. Mr. Dai has since been sent into exile in Germany, while others remain behind bars. He told The Post that if the United States had remained in TPP, "it would have been a chance to change my country."

Change does not come easy. China never fulfilled the hopes of those in the West who thought freer trade would temper the authoritarian leadership. But abandoning the cause of democracy and human rights almost always will enable more repression, while championing these values can get results, however uneven and imperfect.The race for governor heated up Monday over a squabble about the states minimum wage.

Democrat Ned Lamonts campaign charged that Republican Bob Stefanowski plans to repeal Connecticuts $10.10 per hour minimum wage  a charge the GOP nominee immediately denied.

The Stefanowski camp then fired back that Lamonts support for raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would weaken already struggling small businesses across Connecticut. Needless to say, Stefanowski does not support the increase.

So how did this volley over the minimum wage begin?

The Lamont campaign held a mid-morning news conference on the Capitols eastern steps and called out the Republican candidate for supporting its repeal.

Eliminating the state minimum wage entirely is a radical idea that would drive people out of the state of Connecticut, Susan Bysiewicz, Lamonts running mate, said during the news conference.

As evidence of Stefanowskis position, the Lamont campaign uploaded a 31-second video to its YouTube account that shows the GOP nominee discussing the minimum wage at a campaign event in northeastern Connecticut.

The problem is the video opens with an unnamed individual asking Stefanowski about the prospect of raising the minimum wage, not about eliminating it.

Let the private sector decide what the right level to pay people is, not the government, Stefanowski responded. Weve got to get the government out of our life.

The unnamed questioner then tells Stefanowski that he supports no minimum wage at all, to which Stefanowski responds: Supply and demand.

Bob says nothing about a zero-dollar minimum wage, someone else does, Stefanowski spokesman Kendall Marr pointed out Monday afternoon.

But labor leaders and others charged Monday that Stefanowski has made his intentions clear, and that tens of thousands of minimum-wage earners in Connecticut would face a pay cut under his administration.

Repeal of the state minimum wage not only would likely drive wages for tens of thousands of Connecticut residents down to the federal base rate of $7.25 per hour, but would impose a disproportionate burden on minorities and women, Bysiewicz said.

About 41 percent of African-Americans and 54 percent of Latinos in Connecticut earn less than $15 per hour, she said, adding that women are 25 percent more likely than men to earn less than this key threshold.

Lamont isnt the only one to endorse a $15 per hour minimum wage. It also has the backing of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, many Democrats in the state Legislature and the Legislatures bipartisan Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness.

The commission recommended raising the minimum wage, though, as part of a holistic package of changes that also included a major reduction in state income tax rates, a $1 billion cut in the states annual operating budget, and installation of electronic tolling on highways to fund a major transportation infrastructure rebuild.

The GOP nominee has been consistent throughout the campaign, both in his opposition to raising the state minimum wage and in never calling for its repeal, Marr said.

This claim is consistent with a question-and-answer interview published online in the Fairfield County Business Journal on Oct. 21. In that interview, Stefanowski was asked about raising the minimum wage from $10.10 per hour to $15 per hour.

Thats bringing it up 50 percent, which will choke middle- and small-sized businesses, Stefanowski told the business journal. I think we should leave it where it is.

Marr added that Lamont and Bysiewiczs attack is a rather blatant misrepresentation of Stefanowskis position. Now is not the time to raise costs for our struggling small businesses that are already being taxed out of their minds and relocate to other states, he said.

Bysiewicz was joined in her news conference by Connecticut AFL-CIO President Lori J. Pelletier, state Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and Connecticut Working Families Party Executive Director Lindsay Farrell.

Bob Stefanowski fancies himself a builder, Pelletier said, referring to Stefanowski television ads showing the candidate doing odd jobs around the house. Well, the only thing hes going to build with this is more poverty.

This is a person who is not anywhere near the center of the political spectrum, Bronin, a Democrat, said of Stefanowski.

We know that wage growth equals economic growth, said Porter, who argued a $15 per hour minimum wage would help more working poor families get off various forms of state assistance. You want to cut spending? Give people the money that they need to take care of themselves.Homeownership signals another sweeping change in FLDS community of Colorado City

St. George News, Utah/October 19, 2018

By Cody Blowers

Colorado City, Arizona  An unprecedented Arizona real estate closing has opened the door for Colorado City residents to own the deed to their homes  a first in the towns 100-year history as an unparalleled shift continues throughout the area known as Short Creek.



After the Short Creek Subdivision was approved, paving the way for privatized home ownership, a celebration took place in the Mohave County Community College auditorium in Colorado City. The Oct. 12 event included two guest speakers  Mohave County District Supervisor Gary Watson and Arizona state Rep. Regina Cobb  who addressed a large crowd of community leaders, residents and officials.

Amid a crowd that filled the auditorium, several residents were presented with the deeds to the homes they have lived in for years, deeds previously owned by the United Effort Plan, a trust that was established in 1942 by leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to manage its properties and assets as a means to safeguard the material wealth of church members, including land assets.



Four families were presented the deeds to their homes during the celebration, symbolizing the monumental changes that continue to take place within the twin cities.



The parceling and sale of the properties came in the wake of a federal lawsuit in Arizona that was decided in June 2017. Once the application process started, it took more than a year to complete as it made its way through several Arizona state agencies for approval.



The delay was primarily due to the number of homes constructed below present building codes.

Basically the entire subdivision had to be grandfathered in, UEP board member Shirlee Draper said. This application was very unique, which made it difficult to process.

Draper is also one of the founding members of the Short Creek Community Alliance, a grassroots group of concerned citizens that launched in June 2016. The group has fueled many of the changes that have swept through the twin cities and continues to support the struggling communities.



The fact that these families can now get the deeds to their homes is exciting and opens up so many opportunities for this community, Draper said.



In the 2017 federal case, the court found that the Town of Colorado City and the City of Hildale engaged in a decades-long pattern or practice of police misconduct and housing discrimination. To provide expansive relief, the court ordered Colorado City to divide town blocks into multiple parcels that could then be sold to families as a way to remedy the violations and to prevent future discrimination.

Jeff Barlow, an attorney who has been tasked with managing the UEP trust under the direction of a local board of trustees, said that while the trust was not involved in the lawsuits, the judge understood that dividing the land into parcels and making the deeds available and allowing these families to own their homes would remedy the discriminatory practices that had gone on for years.

One of the first priorities of the UEP under Barlow has been to oversee the project of subdividing the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City and offering the properties back to those residents who poured their time and resources into the community while they were still in the church, even those families Warren Jeffs exiled from Short Creek years before.



With Arizonas approval, that objective is now possible for the 1,300 applicants the board is currently handling, Barlow said, adding that families already living in their homes are the first to be processed through.



Privatized home ownership has been taking place in Hildale for more than two years, after Utah 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg ruled that the communal property could be sold in October 2014.



In Colorado City, the situation was different since the City Council did not support the move and waited for the federal case ruling to be rendered in Arizona, Draper said, and only then did city officials comply with the courts.

From excommunication to coming back together



Until recently the UEP trust owned all of the property in both Colorado City and Hildale, and in turn, the communitys wealth placed in the trust was redistributed to FLDS members to fulfill their just wants and needs, according to the trusts founding documents.



That seemed to work well until 2002, when Warren Jeffs became the prophet of the FLDS church and took complete control of the financial, civic and religious infrastructure of Short Creek.



Over the subsequent five years, it is estimated that Jeffs was responsible for excommunicating hundreds of men. Those exiled from the church not only lost the connection to their families but also their homes, property and livelihoods.

Later, the exiles began organizing and filed a series of class action lawsuits against the church and the UEP to regain control of the land they earned through their labor.



The UEP, worth an estimated $114 million, was taken over by the state of Utah in 2005 when the courts determined the assets were being mismanaged, and a Utah probate court placed the UEP under the oversight of special fiduciary Bruce Wisan, who was not a member of the FLDS church.



Over the course of several years a majority of the lawsuits were decided in the favor of the exiles, who won the right to move back to Short Creek and reclaim their homes and property.



However, the 2005 Utah ruling also required the FLDS members still living in Short Creek to sign occupancy agreements, pay a $100 per month occupancy fee to cover the costs of administering the trust and to pay and keep current any property taxes, which some members refused to do.



While many families were evicted as a result, Barlow said many others worked with officials, complied with the occupancy requirements and remained in their homes.



Not all FLDS families refused. As a matter of fact, many families signed the agreement in 2007 and 2008, he said. Even now, more than 50 percent of those families who are delinquent on their taxes have reached an agreement to remain in their homes.



Relations drastically improved once the local board was put in place, Barlow said, and there has been a great deal of success. Many families have worked with the board to resolve the difficulties that stood in the way of their remaining in the community.

The communication is improving all of the time, he said, and we are working with these families so that they dont have to be uprooted and relocate, instead they can stay in their home.



Over the last year, a majority of FLDS members submitted letters of intent saying they will live in and maintain homes owned by the UEP, as well as pay the property taxes on their respective homes. Recently, many have signed the occupancy agreements.



Anyone who had made a contribution to the trust before it was taken over by the state in 2005 was eligible to apply for the deed to their property, based on the value of the property and their contribution to the trust.



The discount the family receives is contingent on their level of contribution made in the building of the trust properties, Barlow said, regardless of which property or project they helped to build.



There are still many FLDS families living here, and others have returned, Barlow said, but we are working on building the community now, and things are coming together.



Colorado City Mayor Joseph Allred was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.For Subscribers Who are the top 25 county boys high school athletes since 2001?

Wrestling champs and track, soccer, baseball, football and basketball stars, it's the top 25 athletes from Somerset County high schools this century.JustServe is making it possible for Tennessee Promise students to serve where they live. Tennessee Promise provides two years of tuition-free attendance at a community or technical college in Tennessee to qualifying students. Students may use the scholarship at any of the states 13 community colleges, 27 colleges of applied technology, or the eligible institution offering an associate degrees program.

To receive the scholarship, Tennessee Promise students must also complete and submit eight (8) hours of community service per term enrolled. JustServe helps make this happen for free. JustServe.org is an online space where organizations and volunteers can come together to do good things for the community. The site serves as a platform for organizations to post needs and for volunteers to search for places to serve. In other words, JustServe links communities with volunteers, and does not discriminate based on race, religion, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

JustServe is so popular that local and State governments are using it to promote service everywhere. The platform is even being used to help those affected by Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Florence. JustServe.org is provided as a service by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By providing this tool that operates with no cost or obligation to the organizations or the volunteers, the Church hopes to make it easier for everyone to find opportunities to do good in their communities.Nobody likes a spoilsport, but somebody has to say it. Those who joined the crowds at the Peoples Vote march at the weekend neednt have bothered, because it will turn out to have been a complete waste of everybodys time.

If recent history teaches us anything, it is that marching through London, waving flags and blowing whistles, is a cast-iron sign of a lost cause. Just ask the Aldermaston marchers of the 1960s, the anti-Cruise missile protesters of the 1980s or even the millions who marched against the war in Iraq in 2003.

In this case, the chances of success seem even more minuscule than usual. Not only has Theresa May explicitly ruled out a second referendum on our deal with the EU, but Jeremy Corbyn has shown no interest in having one either. Even in the event that our negotiations with the EU collapse, the chances of the Commons voting for a second referendum seem vanishingly small. But even if there were a chance of another referendum, I think it would be absolutely wrong to seize it.

Those who joined the crowds at the Peoples Vote march at the weekend neednt have bothered, because it will turn out to have been a complete waste of everybodys time

A second referendum would be a disgraceful betrayal of democracy and an insult to the 17.4 million people who voted in 2016  and I write that as somebody who voted Remain.

Almost everything about the so-called Peoples Vote effort is bogus. It claims to be a grassroots campaign, yet its headquarters are in Millbank Tower, the architectural embodiment of the Westminster establishment.

Far from being organised from the bottom up, it is actually a front for the lobby group Open Britain, a direct successor of the Remain campaign. It is backed by such grassroots Britons as Lord Mandelson, Sir Vince Cable and Sir Nick Clegg, while its online adverts rely heavily on millionaire celebrities such as Gary Lineker, Patrick Stewart and Steve Coogan.

The very name Peoples Vote is, of course, pure spin. We already had a peoples vote in 2016  the biggest in history. Yes, it was close. But thats democracy for you. In any case, what do the Peoples Vote campaigners actually want? They claim they want a vote on the deal, but this is blatantly not true.

If recent history teaches us anything, it is that marching through London, waving flags and blowing whistles, is a cast-iron sign of a lost cause

If they were honest, which they are not, they would admit that they really want to re-run the 2016 referendum. None of their major backers or celebrity supporters just wants to adjust the deal; they want to reverse the entire process.

Given that I voted Remain the first time, you might expect me to agree with them. Yet I believe a second referendum would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to British democracy. And in supporting one, however disingenuously, the Peoples Vote campaigners are exposing their own arrogance, snobbery and intolerance. Ever since the polls closed on June 23 two years ago, the ultra-Remainers have acted as if voting to leave the EU was an act of pathological insanity, ignorance and bigotry.

But the plain fact is that people have been arguing about our place in Europe since well before we joined the Common Market way back in 1973. Among those who argued that we should either stay out or leave were the likes of Clement Attlee, Hugh Gaitskell, Barbara Castle, Enoch Powell, Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Denis Healey, Nigel Lawson, Norman Lamont and David Owen. Were they all ignorant bigots? I dont think so.

Yet I have lost count of the number of times I have heard supposedly intelligent people, among them plenty of Oxford and Cambridge academics, insisting that the British people were too stupid or too prejudiced to decide correctly, and should be compelled to vote again until they get it right. Just imagine if Parliament agreed with them and passed a bill to require a second referendum. What message would that send to the millions who voted the first time?

Not only has Theresa May explicitly ruled out a second referendum on our deal with the EU, but Jeremy Corbyn has shown no interest in having one either

Wouldnt it suggest that the politicians see themselves not as the servants of the people, but as their masters, whose wishes must be obeyed at all costs? The Peoples Vote website claims that new facts have come to light about the costs and complexity of Brexit that no one could have known at the time. But this is a barefaced lie. Back in 2016, the Remain campaign insisted, again and again, that leaving the EU would be immensely expensive and difficult. And while it has shown a wobble or two, the economy has conspicuously failed to collapse in ruins, contrary to George Osbornes hysterical predictions. Despite apocalyptic warnings, 17.4 million people decided that it was worth doing anyway, because they considered it a price worth paying for separation from the EU.

At the time, official leaflets about the referendum explicitly promised that the Government will implement what you decide. Was that sentence worth nothing? Should it have ended as long as it isnt too difficult?

Ultra-Remainers often argue that Brexit is a special case, a unique act of national self-harm that simply must be reversed at all costs, no matter what the cost to democracy. But this argument is almost comically self-serving. By definition, losers always think the people have chosen badly.

If Britain elected Jeremy Corbyn, I might well think it a disastrous mistake that could blight our prospects for generations. But I would look like a fool if I painted my face and marched down Whitehall demanding that the voters be forced to choose again.

A second referendum would be a disgraceful betrayal of democracy and an insult to the 17.4 million people who voted in 2016  and I write that as somebody who voted Remain

Of course Brexit is different. Referendums come once in a generation; elections happen every five years. But everybody knew the rules before the campaign began. If the Remainers had won, they would have proclaimed the issue settled forever.

In a typical example of their disingenuousness, the Peoples Vote campaigners claim that another referendum would heal the divisions of the first campaign. But they surely know this is not true. In fact, dismissing the result of 2016s heated referendum would likely sow only more division.

The least they could expect would be an explosion of anger from the 17.4 million who voted Leave  as well as millions of Remainers who, like me, think democracy demands that you accept defeat with good grace instead of whining like a spoiled brat.

And if they did get a referendum and the result went their way  what then? Wouldnt that plunge us into greater chaos and uncertainty than ever? Do they seriously think the prospect of ever-closer union under Jean-Claude Juncker such a prize that it is worth alienating great swathes of the country and sacrificing the principle of democracy?

The truth is that another referendum would be a disaster. Nothing would be more likely to drive a deep wedge between the governors and the governed; nothing would be more certain to poison our politics for generations.Over the weekend the tensions between the worlds two nuclear superpowers reached a level not seen since the early 1980s.

On Saturday, President Trump told an election rally in Nevada that Russia was cheating on the 1987 arms control treaty which banned land-based cruise missiles in Europe.

The treaty had been agreed back in 1987 between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev  leaders who trusted each other enough to take a decisive step in ending the arms race which had been a key feature of the Cold War for the previous four decades.

Now Trump, in response to Putins cheating, is saying he will pull out of the treaty altogether. And the world is back to the hair-trigger situation faced before detente introduced arms control between East and West.

On Saturday, President Trump told an election rally in Nevada that Russia was cheating on the 1987 arms control treaty which banned land-based cruise missiles in Europe

The fact is that the new highly-mobile missiles which Russia has developed undoubtedly make the world a more dangerous place. And Donald Trumps aggressive chest-beating response risks making an already fraught situation worse.

To understand why, we have to look at how Putin has broken his treaty obligations.

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty banned Russia from having any land-based intermediate nuclear missiles with a range of more than 300 miles. Sea-launched missiles were allowed however  the theory being that they were more difficult for Russia to hide because the submarines and warships from which they were launched could be tracked by the West.

As a result, instead of the lumbering land-based SS20 missiles which worried the West so much in the 1980s, Russia has concentrated over the decades on developing much smaller missiles that can be launched from the sea. Such missiles, albeit without nuclear warheads, were used to devastating effect against rebels in Aleppo in Syria.

Historic: Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the 1987 treaty

What Putins technicians have now done is to adapt these Kalibr sea-launched systems to make land-based cruise missiles capable of being transported by small trucks. They can be moved across country at 50mph and it would be impossible to track every one of them  making a surprise attack technically possible.

And the missiles, which fly under the radar, have been fitted with supersonic boosters which makes them practically impossible to intercept. This puts huge numbers of Nato countries, including Britain, theoretically in the firing line.

Why this is so disturbing is that it fits into Putins tactical strategy. Todays Kremlin boss is ruthless, but worse he runs a Russia much less moribund than the wheezing Communist colossus of the 1980s. Putins armed forces are much leaner and meaner than in those days.

War in the 21st century has been practised already from Syria to Ukraine and in cyberspace. Putin knows he doesnt need two million badly-trained soldiers to be sacrificed in the trenches.

Trump, in response to Putins cheating, is saying he will pull out of the treaty altogether. And the world is back to the hair-trigger situation faced before detente introduced arms control between East and West

If it comes to war, hell need the best cyber-sabotage, the most effective special forces and, crucially, unstoppable medium-range nuclear missiles. Which he now seems to have obtained, despite the treaty.

This is why Trump has reacted so vigorously. Playing the tough guy also plays well to his core supporters, and he faces mid-term elections in two weeks time.

The trouble is that dropping the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) now might actually suit Russia better in the coming years than the US. While for America, the INF treaty has been a useful bulwark against nuclear escalation, Putins strategists have chafed at the restrictions INF imposed on them.

By ripping it up, Trump will be criticised by European leaders  Germany was the first US ally to do so, with foreign minister Heiko Maas urging Washington to consider the consequences both for Europe and for future disarmament efforts.

All of this will delight Putin because it plays into his divide-and-rule approach to Europe.

Without the trust between the US and Russian leaders that existed in Reagan and Gorbachevs day, diplomacy is on a hair trigger  as in the worst days of the Cold War

More worryingly, if Trump does dump the INF agreement, there will be nothing to stop Putins generals from building and refining as many of these new faster-than-sound land-based nuclear missiles as possible.

Other nuclear powers, especially China and probably India and Pakistan, will want to buy them if they cant build their own.

This technology is so easy to hide, swift to deploy and difficult to stop that it steeply increases the chances of a successful surprise nuclear attack. Worse still, without the trust between the US and Russian leaders that existed in Reagan and Gorbachevs day, diplomacy is on a hair trigger  as in the worst days of the Cold War.

President Trump has declared he wants to make America safer but my fear is that he has made the world an even more dangerous place.

Mark Almond is Director of the Crisis Research Institute, OxfordAt the end of a two-hour interrogation session in the Commons, Theresa May scrabbled at her feet.

Colleagues wondered what she had lost. I had my handbag down here somewhere, she said.

The Prime Ministers handbag had gone walkabout! Happily, it was located. But will she ever use it to biff Barnier?

Theresa May (above) came to the Commons on Monday to make a Statement, nominally about the recent EU summit. She uses these set-pieces to remind the House that she is Still Walking and to give little tilts of one or other wing

When Mrs May arrives at a scene these days, you sense the jagged strings of the Bernard Herrmann music used by Hitchcock in Psycho. So much that surrounds her is tense and murderous.

Many of the MPs who spoke yesterday took it upon themselves to attack, virtuously, the garish language used by an anonymous Tory MP about Mrs May at the weekend. Its nothing compared to what you hear said about the political elite by the voters, dearie.

Like many an expendable soul in horror films, Mrs May just goes about her daily routine, polishing her teacups, applying her lipstick, stepping into the road.

The viewer may be aghast at the thought of impending violence but it is hard not to keep watching. A black-and-white close-up of her jabbering lips, her porcelain neck, so slender and easily encased by fingers: shriek, shriek, shriek go Herrmanns violins.

Many of the MPs who spoke yesterday took it upon themselves to attack, virtuously, the garish language used by an anonymous MP

She came to the Commons to make a Statement, nominally about the recent EU summit. She uses these set-pieces to remind the House that she is Still Walking and to give little tilts of one or other wing.

If she favoured a side yesterday it was the Eurosceptics, to a very small extent. She used some of their recent language about how she did not want Britain to be caught in the limbo of a never-ending transition period.

Philip Hammond, Chancellor, arrived just after her and stood directly behind her by the Speakers Chair while the previous item of business neared its end. Mr Hammond allowed her to walk alone to her place on the front bench.

Perhaps he thought she deserved the hear-hears on her own. Not that there were many. She took her seat to a daunting lack of interest.

She was flanked by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and the Cabinet Offices David Lidington, the latter being prey to a tic in his left cheek. The Chief Whip was on parade and he looked sunnier, whispering with exaggerated secrecy to a sidekick, Pincher. Good name for a Whip.

With the House near full, this wanted to be an important occasion. Nothing she or anyone else said justified that bubble of expectation.

Her prepared remarks were sufficiently uninteresting for hardcore Remainer Dominic Grieve (Con, Beaconsfield) to slip out after a few minutes. Grieve wears a strange, glassy smile these days. He and Soubry & Co openly cackle and make the Brexiteers look statesmanlike.

Mrs May, seen above leaving through the back of Downing Street, yesterday claimed that she was unkeen on any extension of the process. I do not want to extend the implementation period. I see any extension as undesirable'

The main development at the summit was the idea of extending the implementation period (as No 10 calls transition) between our EU exit and the future relationship. Ministers speak of this future relationship in the way cathedral canons speak of the Trinity.

It is something they admire intellectually, even if the rest of us find it hard to believe.

The extension of that transition period was the stickiest problem for Mrs May yesterday. Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) quoted a constituent who asked simply: How can we drag a bad deal on for a year, just so it is watered down even more? Remainers seemed equally cold on any extension.

One of them, Phillip Lee (Con, Bracknell) earlier admitted that a Norway-style fudge on Brexit would not be what the referendum voters sought.

Mrs May yesterday claimed that she was unkeen on any extension of the process. I do not want to extend the implementation period. I see any extension as undesirable. Er, so who first suggested it? It would only be needed, she said, if the negotiating process was not quite ready.

Not quite ready? Made it sound like a baked egg. I put mine back in the Aga and in seconds the gooey centre has gone intolerably hard. V tricky.The runaway TV comedy hit when Weekend launched was Men Behaving Badly, which ran for seven series from 1992 and won the first National Television Award for Best Comedy in 1995.

It followed the antics of beer-guzzling flatmates Gary and Tony and their hilariously inept attempts at chivalry as they tried to woo their respective desires Dorothy and Deborah, but off screen the four main players suffered their own individual heartaches.

Neil Morrissey appeared as loveable rogue Tony, but found himself public enemy number one when he had a five-week affair with a young Amanda Holden, who was married to Les Dennis at the time.

Hes appeared in some of TVs biggest hits since, including The Night Manager, Line Of Duty and Unforgotten.

Weekend shared quotes from TV stars over the past 25 years. Pictured: Men Behaving Badly's Neil Morrissey, Leslie Ash, Martin Clunes and Caroline Quentin

Leslie Ash, who played Deborah, arguably had it worse than Neil.

She was viciously mocked when a procedure to plump up her lips went wrong, causing them to swell up grotesquely and earning her the nickname Trout Pout.

Then she spent months in hospital after contracting the MRSA superbug and was left using a walking stick.

Martin Clunes, who played loutish Gary, has become one of TVs best-known character actors and carved out a successful sideline fronting travel and wildlife shows, but hed been carrying a painful family secret around since his teens.

And Caroline Quentin, who was Garys long-suffering girlfriend Dorothy, was married to Paul Merton for six years while Men Behaving Badly was being made, but they divorced in 1998.

A year later she became pregnant by Sam Farmer, 12 years her junior, who was a runner on the show. They married in 2006.

In 2003 the four actors were all signed up to reunite for a new series of the show five years after it ended, but Caroline Quentin pulled out at the last minute without explanation.

Heres what theyve told us over the years...

NEIL MORRISSEY I suppose Ive been seen as nice for too long, he lamented in an interview with us in August 2000, three months after the affair with Amanda Holden came to light.

It was my turn to come under the cosh. But Im a bachelor, Im not married.

'Why was it all my responsibility? The worst thing was being hounded. It made me feel like a criminal.

Neil Morrissey said being hounded for his affair with Amanda Holden made him feel like a criminal

It was reported that Les Dennis had said he was glad that Morrissey had become a public hate figure, but Neil said, He might have been misreported, but Im sure if Les wanted to say anything to me he would have phoned me, though he never did.

'But it isnt just to do with me, its too complex. Its not my place to go into what was going on with Les and Amanda.

LESLIE ASH As my mother grew older her lips almost disappeared into her mouth, and I didnt want to end up looking like that, she told Lynda Lee-Potter in November 2003.

Id had the lip procedure done before and I was really pleased, so I decided to do it again.

'But this time the doctor gave me two extra injections, one under each nostril, and my body couldnt break the silicone down.

'Ive worked so hard and to be suddenly known for having injections in your lips is very upsetting. I thought, What have I done? Id let everyone down.

'I felt absolutely stupid that I could have destroyed myself like that. It took a while before I could talk about it. All the stuff in the papers hurt badly.

In 2004 she caught a strain of the superbug MRSA after she ended up in hospital when a sex session with her husband went wrong.

Leslie Ash claims the rug was pulled under her and her whole world flipped in the air after a sex session with her husband left her injured

The bug attacked her spine and left her permanently disabled.

Sometimes I wonder what I could have done thats so bad for this to happen to me, she told us in October 2009.

We were having sex and it was a horrible accident. I fell off the bed and when I tried to get up, I found it difficult to breathe.

'My lung had torn and it was filling up with fluid. The pain was unbelievable.

Im still on painkillers and will be for the rest of my life. Every day I think, Maybe Im back to normal, but I know Im not.

'Its taken me five years to get to this stage. Ive lived through being hoisted in and out of bed and not being able to sit up, being in terrible pain, being in wheelchairs, on crutches or with a stick.

'I had the rug pulled from under me and my whole world was flipped up in the air. The one big thing in my life was my career.

'Ive worked since I was 15. If there was any chance of getting that back in any way, shape or form, I wanted to do it.

'There will be things I wont ever be able to do  jump, run, dance. The one thing I can still do is act.

MARTIN CLUNES When I was about 18 I found out my father wasnt living at home when he died, he revealed to us in September 1998.

Hed left us. At the time I didnt know. Mum kept it from us. He was an actor, away lots, working in the evening, so there was always a degree of absenteeism there.

Martin Clunes recalled rushing back to his mother in hospital moments before she died. He believes the doctors kept her alive until he got to her

'But hed gone to Majorca. Cancer was diagnosed not long after, and soon after that he was dead. I did talk about it with Mum once.

'She said, I always thought he left me, meaning that it was in some way her fault. I said, Actually, he left us all, and that is what sucks to me.

Some years later his mother died, and Martin told how he almost missed her last breath.

Were all so familiar with the armoury of hospitals these days, arent we? All the machines, the lights.

'Id been sitting in intensive care looking at Mums lights, comparing them to everyone elses lights, and it all looked pretty favourable, in my expert opinion.

'I thought that even though the doctor had said things were grave, she was going to be OK.

'I gave her a kiss and said, Now, I will see you tomorrow, and she said, Well, I look forward to that.

I phoned my sister who was in the US on holiday, and said, Look, shes really ill, but shes all right. You mustnt come home.

'When I hung up there was a message from the ward saying, Come quickly. So I rushed back and they were working frantically on her.

'I think they were just keeping her alive until I got there. Im so glad they did.

'I held her hand, and that means something to me. I would have hated for her to be alone, to have felt abandoned. She probably wasnt even aware I was there, but still.

Caroline Quentin told Weekend that age hasn't been a problem for she and partner Sam

CAROLINE QUENTIN The age gap between me and Sam was never an issue for us, she told Weekend in January 2015.

It always seemed strange that other people even commented on it. Weve been together almost 17 years now so we must be doing something right.

'But we work at it, a happy marriage is about luck and timing. I met Sam when Id already been married once, so you learn from the mistakes youve made.

'You see couples looking at each other across the table thinking, What the hell am I doing with him? but thank God we dont.

'You have to pay attention. If there are problems, flag them up early on and get on with it.

Family always beats fame

Only Fools And Horses, which ran from 1981 to 2003, is the most popular British sitcom of all time and made stars of David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst. Both men rarely give interviews, but they told us how it affected them.

DAVID JASON If I went to the moon, a chap would pop up from behind a crater and say, Lovely-jubbly! he told us in March 2008.

Wherever you go, everyone knows you. Once I was relieving myself in the gents and a bloke said, Can I have your autograph? I didnt want to embarrass you out there. So he waited until I was mid-flow in the toilets? Unbelieveable!

David came late to fatherhood  he was 61 when his girlfriend (now wife) Gill gave birth to Sophie in 2001.

David Jason (pictured left with Only Fools And Horses co-star Nicholas Lyndhurst) revealed having a child changed his life

It changes your life. Its tiring; but kids make you laugh so much. He said modern childhood bewildered him.

Sophie had 20 mates to her seventh birthday party, and they have this thing at kids parties these days where they give the guests presents in bags to go home with.

'Bizarre! So Sophie spent half a day filling up bags with her mates names on them, just for turning up at a party.

Of the show, David told us in August 2017, It didnt occur to us it could go on like it did and still be held in such affection. It never entered our minds.

NICHOLAS LYNDHURST Rodney Trotter haunted Nicholas Lyndhurst too, as he told us in February 2005.

He was accosted in the street with Oi Rodders! and worse.

The papers loved it, they could say plonker now! Hed been seen as a commitment-phobe after two failed romances.

I had a recurring dream where Im walking up the aisle, catching up with a bride who was already at the altar.

'All around were people I knew. Id walk towards her, shed turn around and Id realise Id never met this woman.

Meeting wife Lucy Smith in 1992 was a coup de foudre, but being public property meant going to great lengths to ensure privacy for their wedding.

Nicholas Lyndhurst (pictured left with David Jason) revealed in 2005 a desire to narrate a children's series

We found a great place but our secret was out, he said.

So I gave it to OK magazine, knowing their security would be perfect. People asked why I acted so out of character  thats why.

When their son Archie was born in 2000, Nicholass life was complete. Family life is wonderful, he said.

I love being a daddy. Its the best thing Ive ever done. You know how children laugh so much that they cackle? I can get Archie to do that, and its the best feeling.

'Pretty much the only ambition I have now is to narrate a childrens series so I can show off to my boy!

The pain of my loss

Patricia Routledge had enjoyed a long and distinguished theatre career when she suddenly found herself elevated to national treasure status at the age of 60 with her glorious comic performance as Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) in Keeping Up Appearances.

The sitcom, which followed eccentric snob and social climber Hyacinth (right) in her attempts to appear superior, ran from 1990 to 1995, and as its final series aired Patricia told Lynda Lee-Potter of the sadness that had pervaded her life...

I did have my heart broken when I was young.

'It was a grand passion but it was complicated from the point of view that he was a married man and, of course, I felt very guilty.

Keeping Up Appearances' Patricia Routledge (pictured) shared her desire to meet the right person to share her home with

'I would gladly have lived with him and I wanted his children. But I couldnt do it. We were both quite moral beings I suppose.

About eight years ago I thought I was absolutely content, and I wasnt going to meet the right person who would make a marriage work.

'Then I was taken totally by surprise because out of left field this enchanting person appeared. He was a director, and of course good directors get inside you, as it were.

'He was a funny and delightful man, but he had a heart condition which I didnt know about for a while.

Then my brother was diagnosed with cancer. He told me on the phone he had a malignant melanoma behind his left eye.

'I woke up in the morning and I thought, I mustnt carry this into rehearsal with me.

'I went to rehearsal and the director had died in the night. This dear man was no more.

'I was distressed for him and my brother, just so hurt, so sore really with the pain of it, the pain of loss.

Yet she finished the interview with a surprise.

A corner of my heart is taken, she said. Ive got a sneaking feeling I might have almost everything in the end.

'Life is full of wonderful surprises if you keep your eyes open. Whos to know whats around the corner? Hes someone Ive known for years.

'Hes in theatre management but we hadnt seen each other for a long time and then we met again.

'Sharing my home with the right person would be lovely.Ever-evolving technology has meant that wildlife documentaries have achieved incredible new heights over the past quarter of a century.

Aerial photography, microscope lenses, drones and underwater cameras have brought viewers closer than we could have believed possible to the animals  often sharing their dens and burrows as they give birth and nurse their babies  and delivered some stupendous pictures like the ones on these four pages.

The intrepid camera crews, so skilful and patient as they wait for the perfect shot, have also brought about major changes in world opinion on vital issues including plastic pollution, poaching and conservation.

It truly is a golden age for animal telly.

Sir David Attenborough makes friends with a blind black rhino calf in his 2013 series Africa

Snow leopards are notoriously hard to capture on film, but the Planet Earth II team finally succeeded, with amazing camera trap footage shot in the Himalayas in 2016

In The Journey Of Life in 2005 on BBC1, Steve Leonard (pictured right, with a baby chimp) learned how were related to all 30 million species on Earth. Left picture: Theres nothing more loveable than a baby orangutan... especially if youre its mum

Sea otters, once plentiful on the west coast of the US, have been severely threatened. But conservation measures mean they are now making a comeback, as we saw in 2015s Big Blue Live. They preen constantly, as this one is doing: its important to stay waterproof when you spend your life floating

Last years stunning Big Cats series on BBC1 was the first to film the palmsized Rusty Spotted Cat, the worlds smallest wild feline, in its native habitat

This giant panda cub, in Chengdu, China, is a truly rare sight

Joanna Lumley met a tame cheetah while filming her 2009 documentary for ITV, Catwoman

The playful and highly intelligent bottle-nosed dolphin has starred in some of the most incredible documentary sequences, racing, hunting or just playing. These dolphins are chasing a boat off the Florida Keys

Something has really tickled this seals funny bone  a joke about fish, perhaps?

Almost invisible in the dry grass, this tiger in Assam, India, seems to have noticed the photographer

Twos company, especially for a pair of Eastern Screech owls in Texas. Birdwatchers say their relative, the Western Screech owl, looks almost identical but has a completely different call. Must be the Texan accent!

A Japanese macaque, or snow monkey, the worlds most northerly primate (apart from humans), plays with a snowball in Nagano

Botanist and presenter David Bellamy, 85, is rarely seen on our screens now but is still a keen conservationist. Here hes hugging an Indian elephant

Few creatures are more inquisitive than the Californian sea lion, and this pup has just discovered its first human being

A plains zebra nuzzles her calf in Etosha national park, Namibia

This pair of Emperor penguin chicks are waiting for their parents to bring food

Theres safety in numbers, something all meerkats find out when theyre still very young. These four are huddled near their burrow in the Kalahari

A bears pawshake is his bond, as all Paddington fans know. These two brown bears are doing a deal in Kamchatka, Russia

Presenter Gordon Buchanan is part of the pack in 2012s Land Of The Lost Wolves.

Baby elephants are more reliant on their mothers than almost any other creature, apart from humans. They spend around seven years inseparable from their mums  and aunties, big sisters and grannies, of course

Planet Earth II followed this mother pygmy three-toed sloth on the Isla Escudo de Veraguas, Panama, as she cared for her six-month-old baby

Now where did I leave those nuts?  a Cape Ground squirrel scratches his head in South Africa

Sometimes, its easier to focus the camera when you squint. A seal pup on Madeleine Island, Quebec, gives the photographer a lesson

Michaela Strachan feeds a hungry lion cub on CBBCs Really Wild Show in 2004Royal fans have been sent into a frenzy over the striking similarities between Prince Harry and his grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh.

Side-by-side snaps of the Duke of Sussex and a young Prince Philip attracted dozens of comments after they were shared on Instagram by Getty's royal photographer, Chris Jackson.

Mr Jackson, who is currently covering the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's royal tour of Australasia, explained he was struck by the resemblance between a recent photo of Harry, 34, and a 1957 magazine cover featuring Prince Philip, then aged 36.

The Duke wears the same Tropical Dress of the Blues and Royals on the magazine cover as his grandson wore to an ANZAC memorial on Saturday in Sydney with his pregnant wife, Meghan.

Royal photographer Chris Jackson explained he was struck by the resemblance between a recent photo of Prince Harry, 34, and a 1957 magazine cover featuring his grandfather Prince Philip, then aged 36, pictured. Mr Jackson shared the vintage magazine cover on Instagram

Prince Harry wore the same Tropical Dress of the Blues and Royals as he joined his pregnant wife the Duchess of Sussex to open an ANZAC Memorial in Sydney on Saturday, pictured. Harry and Philip sport very similar facial hair and look alike around the eyes

Mr Jackson shared the photo of Prince Philip alongside one taken of Harry at the engagement, pictured. He wrote: 'I spotted this beautiful 1957 vintage cover of a Paris Match magazine whilst visiting our wedding venue in France a couple of years ago. Who does it remind you of!?'

Fans were quick to agree, with one writing: 'Wow! Harry looks just like Prince Phillip,' while another added: 'I thought it was Harry for a second!'.

Agreeing, one follower wrote: 'They are so similar and their bond is undeniable. Harry gets his handsome looks from His grandfather. And his mother of course.'

'Wow! Who knew Prince Phillip was a ginger! Bravo, Harry, so much his own man, yet a bundle of look-alike heritage!' a surprised fan wrote.

Elsewhere another noted: 'He's identical, Copy & Paste', and one argued: 'I've been saying that for years! Both the Duke of Cambridge & the Duke of Sussex resemble Prince Philip in many ways!'.

Fans were quick to agree, with one saying the resemblance between grandfather and grandson is 'incredible'. Another said it was like a 'copy and paste' of the Duke of Edinburgh

Prince Harry's grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh is seen in Grimsby in 1958, the year after the magazine cover that's now being compared to the 34-year-old Duke of Sussex

The image of Prince Philip, which Mr Jackson speculated might have been colourised from a black and white negative, shows the young royal in the Tropical Dress of the Blues and Royals on a 1957 engagement.

His grandson Harry wore the same uniform - dubbed his 'Officer and a Gentleman' attire - donned the same uniform as he joined his pregnant wife the Duchess of Sussex to open an ANZAC Memorial in Sydney on Saturday.

In a photo taken by one of Mr Jackson's colleagues, the pair are seen with very similar facial hair and have a very similar eye and face shape.

Prince Harry paid tribute to Australian service members by opening a new wing of a war memorial on Saturday, pictured, on another busy day of royal tour engagements

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle left a touching handwritten note in a wreath laid at the unveiling of the refurbished war memorial in Sydney's Hyde Park

Prince Harry served in the Army for ten years, rising to the rank of Captain and undertaking two tours of Afghanistan. Pictured, the couple at the Sydney event on Saturday.

Remarking on their likeness, Mr Jackson wrote: 'I spotted this beautiful 1957 vintage cover of a Paris Match magazine whilst visiting our wedding venue in France a couple of years ago. Who does it remind you of!?'

Prince Harry paid tribute to Australian service members by opening a new wing of a war memorial on Saturday before opening the Invictus Games as he and wife Meghan continued their visit to Australia and the South Pacific.

A thus-far joyous debut royal tour by the couple, buoyed by news that they are expecting their first baby, turned solemn as the Duke of Sussex opened a long-awaited extension to the Anzac Memorial in downtown Sydney's Hyde Park on Saturday morning.London-based brand LF Markey provides work-wear staples with a feminine touch. Green polo, 130, lfmarkey.com

Providing work-wear staples with a feminine touch is the philosophy behind London-based brand LF Markey.

Before the label was born, its founder, Central Saint Martins graduate Louise Markey, spent time consulting for luxury fashion labels and designing for Burberry.

She launched her namesake label in 2014. Starting out designing work shirts, Louise has now expanded the brand to include a ready-to-wear collection of casual looks that are both practical and elegant.

From culottes with utility pockets (115) to denim boiler suits (from 98), the pieces are all imbued with the LF Markey work-wear aesthetic.It's not just the Duchess of Sussex's taste in fashion that has impressed people over the past seven days, but her glowing skin.

And Meghan Markle has always had a diligent approach to skincare, favouring one little-known Hungarian brand above all others.

Eminence has been a favourite among celebrities and dermatologists for many years now, with the Duchess of Sussex first turning to the brand for the first time during her acting days in Suits.

It's not just the Duchess of Sussex's fashion choices that have been impressing on the royal tour, but Meghan Markle's glowing skin (pictured earlier this month)

There is one little-known brand the 37-year-old has sworn by since her acting days in Suits (pictured in September)

Organic Skincare Citrus Exfoliating Wash, $61 (GBP 33)

Meghan loves to use Eminence's Citrus Exfoliating Wash (pictured) on her skin

Among the royal's favourites is the Organic Citrus Exfoliating Wash, which costs $61 (GBP 33).

Recommended for normal to oily skin types, the citrus blend contains a mix of fresh lime juice, silica and grapeseed oil - all of which work wonders for reviving the skin.

Meghan first used this along with two other Eminence products when she was acting on Suits and needed to keep her skin glowing during long film schedules.

All Eminence products are safe to use during pregnancy.

The Duchess also favours the brand's Firming Fluid (pictured) for hydration

Organic Skincare Bamboo Firming Fluid, $109 (GBP 59)

As one of the brand's bestsellers, the Organic Skincare Bamboo Firming Fluid is a hit with royalty as well as with regular beauty lovers.

The strengthening agents of bamboo and coconut deeply hydrate your skin, with the help of a Natural Retinol Alternative and Swiss Green Apple Stem Cells.

This product is brilliant for firming the skin, and plumping up your complexion.

Meghan (pictured) has long had a diligent approach to her skincare, first starting to get facials on the advice of her mother as a young woman

Organic Skincare Coconut Age Corrective Moisturiser, $109 (GBP 59)

Last on Meghan Markle's skincare essentials list if the Coconut Age Corrective Moisturiser, which costs $109 (GBP 59).

The Coconut Age Corrective Moisturiser (pictured) has a five star rating

The Duchess loves the coconut-infused product, which was formulated to help with moisture, firming and tightening the skin.

The hero product includes ingredients such as shea butter, vitamin C and coconut oil.

The product also boasts a five star rating online.

Speaking about her approach to beauty, the Duchess previously told Allure that she never wears 'foundation in real life'.

'My routine is very simple - I call it the five-minute face. It's just curled lashes, mascara, Chap Stick, and a little bit of blush. That is my favourite kind of look.'

She also wrote on her now-defunct lifestyle website The Tig that her mother, Doria, drummed into her from an early age how important it was to look after her skin.

'When I was 13 years old, my mom had me start getting facials in my hometown of Los Angeles,' she wrote.

'It seemed so silly at the time, trekking in my school uniform to see a woman named Anika who slathered my skin with Yon-Ka products and chatted away about the importance of eye cream.'

These days, Meghan sees celebrity facialist Sarah Chapman who claims to deliver results that are both 'dramatic' and 'instant'.Real time food delivery apps have become one of the most popular ways to enjoy a meal without having to leave the office or home.

And while the convenient services are mostly used by adults, it seems school students have also jumped on board the fad - much to the disappointment of their teachers.

Instead of taking their pocket money to the canteen, Australian students are now switching on their phones during meal breaks and ordering food right to the school gate.

Canley Vale High School, which is situated in Sydney's south-west near Cabramatta, released a statement on their Facebook page alerting parents and their children that a ban had been instated on UberEATS.

Instead of taking their pretty pennies to the canteen a number of students were firing up their smartphones and selecting any number of burgers, chips and sweets

'Dear Parents and Students, UberEATS is NOT to be purchased and delivered to the school,' the note began.

'The school does not permit food to be delivered to the school at any time. Students who are caught during the school day receiving food through the school fence will receive consequences.'

FEMAIL contacted the co-ed school was told by a spokesperson that the rule was implemented due to safety concerns.

'Children shouldn't be approaching someone at a gate,' they said.

The reaction has been mixed, with some people finding the post amusing, and others calling for more freedoms to be given to the students.

'If UberEATS was a thing when we were at school I'd be the face of the epidemic,' one person said, tagging their friends

'If UberEATS was a thing when we were at school I'd be the face of the epidemic,' one person said, tagging their friends.

'What a life! We were lucky to even get two dollars to spend,' another added.

Someone else said: 'These are the real issues of 21st century education...'

'What a joke. Stop this narcissistic ruling of non-freedom right now and let students have the right to decide how they live their lives,' said another.

This isn't the first time an Australian school has prohibited the food service, with Perth-based Ocean Reef Senior High School doing the same in 2017.

The online application is accessible for use by anyone over the age of 18.Mila Moursi is a 68-year-old 'skin legend' whose A-list client list reads like a who's who of Hollywood.

Her devotees include Jennifer Aniston, Sandra Bullock, Charlize Theron and Jane Fonda to name but a few.

The Parisian-born facialist not only heads up a prestigious Los Angeles-based spa but she also is the founder of her namesake brand of luxury skincare.

With over 40 years of experience treating all manner of skin, Mila understands the value of a beauty routine built on the fundamentals of proper cleansing.

'Being an aesthetician, these are the things you learn. You realise how important this first step really is,' she said in an interview with Mecca Australia.

Charlize Theron (pictured) is just one of many Hollywood stars who visit facialist Mila Moursi

Mila Moursi (pictured) not only heads up a prestigious Los Angeles-based spa but she also is the founder of her namesake brand of luxury skincare

To start, the expert explained the value of taking time to wash your face correctly and recommended at least a full minute be dedicated to this.

She believes a time-intensive process is necessary as skin tends to respond better to serums, essences and moisturisers after it has been properly prepared.

'Enjoy it, dont rush it,' she said.

Sandra Bullock (pictured) also uses the services of Mila Moursi to keep her skin glowing

Cleansing product also needs to be applied with care, the facialist advised.

She suggests working cleanser into your skin using tips of your fingers in circular motion rather than with the flat of your hands (the flats of your hands are better for tapping in serums).

'Go in and think about the makeup and dirt your cleanser is removing and dissolving. Really work it,' she said.

The expert also believes in the benefits of a double-cleanse - process deemed necessary to remove a buildup of pollution, sunscreen, foundation and oil.

According to Vogue, the first cleanse wipes away day's build-up without stripping the skin while the second cleanse purifies the pores and ready the skin for the treatment products to follow.

Mila suggests using a gentle product and recommends cleansing milk, priced at $110, for the first cleanse followed by something that will deep clean the pores for wash two.

Mila Moursi cleansing milk, priced at $110 (pictured left) is gentle enough to use for a first cleanse while her toner, priced at $124, should be used as a final step

When it comes to removing cleanser, the aesthetician advises against a hot shower as she says hot water can be drying.

'Remove the cleanser slowly, again in a circular motion, using with a warm washcloth,' Mila said.

She also advises using a clean cloth every time to avoid the spread of bacteria.

When it comes to removing cleanser, the aesthetician advises against a hot shower as she says hot water can be drying instead she suggests using a clean face cloth (stock image)

Depending on your level dedication, a toner may not factor as part of your routine.

However, Mila holds the view toner is an important step, one she says 'really completes the cleansing' as it helps to remove any leftover residue.

Not only that, the facialist said toner makes the skin more receptive to products to follow.

'After toner, your serums and creams penetrate deeper and do more, which if you think about it is saving you money on those serums and creams.'Pregnant Meghan donned a burgundy dress in Fraser Island that was strikingly similar to one worn by the Duchess of Cambridge earlier this week.

The Duchess of Sussex, 37, looked chic in the 89 printed frock by & Other Stories, which sold out within just minutes after she stepped out in it on the royal tour.

The midi dress from the High Street retailer, which is a sister brand of H&M, features a flattering knot detail around the waist, and cap sleeves.

Meanwhile, her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, 36, opted for a long-sleeve polka dot frock by British retailer Whistles, priced at 159, when she attended a reception for Radio 1's Teen Heroes of 2018 at Kensington Palace on Wednesday.

Meghan donned a printed burgundy dress in Fraser Island (above) that was strikingly similar to one worn by the Duchess of Cambridge earlier this week

Kate, 36, wore a long-sleeve polka dot frock by British retailer Whistles, priced at 159, at a reception for Radio 1's Teen Heroes of 2018 at Kensington Palace on Wednesday

Kate has long-been known to be a champion of High Street labels - including Reiss, Hobbs and Zara - while Meghan has previously been spotted wearing M&S, as well as a green shirt from & Other Stories.

Meghan wore the burgundy printed dress when she arrived in Fraser Island, off the coast of Queensland, today, with her glossy locks pulled back into a pony tail.

She finished off the stylish look with a pair of tie-up sandals by US brand Sarah Flint, and sunglasses by New Zealand designer Karen Walker.

The Duchess remained at the luxury resort where she and Harry are staying on the island, while the prince travelled into the rainforest.

Meghan wore the burgundy dress by & Other Stories, a sister brand of H&M, with a pair of tie-up sandals by US brand Sarah Flint, and sunglasses by New Zealand designer Karen Walker

The & Other Stories dress (pictured), which is now sold out, features a flattering knot detail around the waist, and cap sleeves

Aides explained Meghan - who is expecting her first child in the Spring - had missed the majority of today's engagements due to tiredness, and the bumpy terrain of the island.

Her choice of burgundy frock today was a rare example of a cross-over between her and the Duchess of Cambridge, who have quite different royal styles.

Kate wore her Margot spotted shirt dress from Whistles, which is sold out in most sizes, with a pair of gold earrings from London-based jeweller Cassandra Goad.

The Duchess, who returned from maternity leave earlier this month following the birth of Prince Louis, sported her trademark bouncy waves for the event.

The mother-of-three was joined by husband Prince William as they met with inspirational teenagers in an unannounced engagement for the couple.

The Duchess of Cambridge wore her burgundy polka dot dress from Whistles as she met inspirational teenagers at a reception at Kensington Palace on WednesdayPrincess Madeleine of Sweden has shared sweet snaps of her eldest children Leonore and Nicholas visiting a pumpkin patch ahead of Halloween.

The royal, 36, posted a number of photographs of Princess Leonore, four, and Prince Nicolas, three, enjoying the day out, captioning the pictures: 'Sunday Funday'.

The pictures show her two eldest children dressing up in witch and wizard hats as they visited the pumpkin patch.

It comes after Madeleine re-located to Florida earlier this year with her financier husband Chris ONeill, and their three children - including four-month-old baby Adrienne.

Princess Madeleine of Sweden has shared sweet snaps of eldest children Princess Leonore, four, and Prince Nicolas, three, visiting a pumpkin patch in the US

Young Nicolas (left) is seen showing off a cheeky grin in one of the snaps, while elder sister Leonore (right) pulls a funny face

Sharing the snap on Instagram with her 156,000 followers, Madeleine captioned the snap: 'Sunday Funday'

The family appear to be settling down well into American life, as they enjoyed the autumnal day out at the weekend, with Leonore and Nicolas even donning witches' hats to pose for one picture.

The Swedish royal palace announced that Madeleine would be moving out to the US with husband Chris and their three young children in August, after previously living in London.

A spokesperson said in a statement: 'The time and opportunity for the United States is good for the family when the children are still in pre-school age.

'Princess Madeleine has a great commitment to childrens rights and will continue working with the World Childhood Foundation and, through the move, be able to focus more on the activities in the United States.'

Madeleine re-located to Florida earlier this year with her financier husband Chris ONeill, and their three children Leonore, Nicolas and baby Adrienne (pictured at Solliden Palace, the Swedish summer residence, earlier this year)

The statement added: 'Mr. Christopher O'Neill has previously been working in the United States but will continue his business in Europe. The family thus leaves the accommodation in London.'

Christopher, 44, was born in London but has dual UK and US citizenship. Madeleine lived in New York from 2010, where she met her husband, with the pair moving back to Europe in 2014.

Despite the family appearing to have settled down well in Florida, other members of the royal family have admitted they are missing their presence.

Crown Princess Victoria described the 'awful' heartache of being so far away from sister Madeleine during a recent visit to US.

When asked whether she had managed to visit Madeleine during her trip, Victoria replied: 'I wish! It would have been great fun to meet both her and her family, but it may be another time.'

However, Madeleine - who is seventh in line to the throne - was reunited with her mother Queen Silvia at a World Childhood Foundation gala in New York earlier this month.Advertisement

She attended the wedding of pal Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank just a week earlier and on Saturday Bloomingdale's heiress Hayley said her very own I dos.

The heiress to the New York department store married her partner, lighting designer Dada Stileman, in a lavish ceremony in Santa Barbara, California over the weekend.

The couple wed in a traditional church ceremony before a guest list of society's elite before enjoying a reception at the Four Seasons hotel Biltmore where they partied into the night.

The London-based communications director at fashion website Modus Operandi was a predictably stylish bride in an ivory gown with a plunging lace neckline and a full chiffon skirt decorated with dozens of intricate flowers.

Heiress to Bloomingdale's department store Hayley Bloomingdale married her long term partner Dada Stileman, in a lavish ceremony in Santa Barbara, California over the weekend

The beach side celebrations saw the bride opt for a more casual hair do, keeping her blonde locks loose in a half up-do and even slipping out of her shoes to for a seaside photoshoot.

Sharing a snap of herself and her partner on Instagram, Hayley wrote: 'This total dreamboat is my husband!!'

Hayley, 32, chose to wear a veil, unlike Princess Eugenie, for her traditional ceremony although it appears that the couple did take some inspiration from the royal bride.

Hayley was accompanied down the aisle by a troupe of adorable flower girls and pageboys as Eugenie was the week before.

The stylish bride, pictured with close pal Indre Rockefeller, stunned in an ivory gown with a plunging lace neckline with a full chiffon skirt decorated with dozens of intricate flowers

Her bouquet appeared to have somewhat of a royal influence featuring sprigs of lily of the valley, seen previously in the posies of the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex

Like the princess Hayley did away with any adult bridesmaids and chose to have children only who were dressed in traditional blue and white ensembles for the celebration.

As expected the tots stole the show with many guests sharing snaps of the junior wedding party on Instagram and while they were mostly on their best behaviour, two cheeky pageboys could be seen removing their shoes before the official photographs.

It seems that there was further royal influence in the form of Hayley's bouquet which featured lily of the valley, a popular flower among royal brides having been seen in both the posies of Kate and Meghan.

The guestlist at the nuptials was also of a very high caliber, with many fashionable friends attending to toast the happy couple, including fashion designer Indre Rockefeller, Tatler editors Serena Hood and Emma Elwick-Bates, and designer Valerie Macaulay.

The couple are thought to have later enjoyed a dinner catered for by the resort.

Hayley does of course have her own royal connections having attended the wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank just a week before her own. Pictured: Hayley and Dada at the royal nuptials

Like the princess Hayley did away with any adult bridesmaids and chose to have children only who were dressed in traditional blue and white ensembles for the celebration

Pucker up! Hayley posed for several pictures with her adorable flower girls

Happy as can be: The bride was pictured laughing while holding one of her young flower girls in her arms

The Four Seasons offers an extensive menu including a cocktail hour reception menu that can be enjoyed ahead of the main meal.

Guests can enjoy a host of canapes including crispy panko halloumi, salmon poke bowls and lobster grilled cheeses costing $8 (6.14) per piece.

If the couple opted to have food stations at their buffet they could choose from a cheese and charcuterie table, a 'Harbour Market' spread and sushi with prices costing between $26-$48 (19.96-36.85) per guest.

When it comes to the main meal couples can opt for a traditional three course dinner which range between $90-$110 (69.09-84.44) per guest dependent on the menu.

Joyful: Hayley was walked down the aisle by her father, Robert Bloomingdale

VIP treatment: The bride's mother, Justine, was walked to her seat by two helpful gentlemen

The couple married in a traditional church service before moving on to their reception at the Four Seasons hotel

She was joined by a myriad of stylish guests, including designer Indre (second from right), Tatler editors Serena Hood (left) and Emma Elwick-Bates (second from left), and designer Valerie Macaulay (right), who were all dressed to the nines for the lavish ocean view reception at the five star resort

Foodie newlyweds also have the option to add further courses to their feast at the price of an extra $15 (11.51) per person per course.

Following their five star dinner guests at Hayley's wedding are sure to have enjoyed an evening of drinking and dancing with a five hour open bar coming in at $104 (79.84) per guest.

However, party goers would have to wind things down by midnight due to the hotel's strict curfew and no amplified outdoor music is permitted at any time.

While many guests will have now returned home the California-born bride is thought to have stayed on at the luxury resort where she and her new husband can enjoy one of the hotel's honeymoon packages.

The couple got engaged during a trip to the Lake District in February this year, meaning their wedding fell just eight months later.

Hayley shared one touching snap of her posing alongside her proud mother Justine following the ceremony

The hotel offers an extensive menu of nibbles and light bites to be enjoyed at cocktail hour including crispy panko halloumi, salmon poke bowls and lobster grilled cheeses costing $8 (6.14) per piece

When it comes to the main meal couples can opt for a traditional three course dinner which range between $90-$110 (69.09-84.44) per guest dependent on the menu

Announcing her engagement Hayley shared a snap of her dazzling engagement ring on Instagram in February captioning it: 'I said lets take a rock from the top to remember this ridiculous mountain you made me climb! ...turned out he had one in his pocket the whole time! (I still said yes even though he proposed to me while I was wearing hiking gear'.

Hayley grew up in the US state, but is now based in London, where she mingles with her very glamorous friends - including socialite Lauren Santo Domingo and fashion editor Martha Ward.

In June this year she was named a 'society swan' among other IT girls in society bible Tatler.

She hit headlines with her rather wacky Valentine's Day gift guide for Moda Operandi in February.

The heiress's suggestions included wearing a $1,195 Dolce & Gabbana Satin Bodysuit and $1,320 puffer jacket for a romantic meal in McDonald's, as well as giving a partner's grandma a $2,000 sexy robe.

She was last spotted at Princess Eugenie's wedding where she shared snaps of her enjoying the royal's fairground themed reception on her Instagram account.

The then bride-to-be looked surprisingly fresh having attended her own hen party the night before at the Mark's Club in Mayfair.

Hayley had her hen party at the Mark's Club in London's Mayfair the day before she attended Princess Eugenie's weddingIvanka Trump was spotted on Monday morning heading back to work in Washington, D.C.  having freshly returned from a New York escapade during which she attended Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner's nuptials.

The first daughter, 36, left for her morning commute a bit before 8 am, taking a call at the back of her SUV.

While Ivanka is often seen making the walk from her front door to her parked Secret Service vehicle, on that occasion she made a swift exit straight from her garage and was promptly whisked away to work.

Back to the capital: Ivanka Trump was spotted on Monday morning heading back to work in Washington, D.C. after returning from an escapade in New York

Commute: The first daughter, 36, was seen taking a call as she made a swift exit straight from her garage at the back of her Secret Service SUV, bundled up in a white turtleneck

The senior White House adviser had prepared for the 39-degree weather that greeted her on Monday, bundling up in a cozy white turtleneck sweater.

She wore her long hair down in a casual do and kept her make-up on the minimal side.

Ivanka, who shared her support for her brother-in-law Joshua and her new sister-in-law Karlie on social media, was smiling as she spoke on the phone at the back of her vehicle.

She took to Instagram over the weekend to share a photo of Karlie and Joshua's wedding, writing next to the snap: 'So much love for you both as you begin forever together.'

Joshua, 33, is the brother of Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner, 37  who didn't appear to be home on Monday morning.

Karlie and Joshua tied the knot on Thursday in a surprise ceremony after getting engaged in July.

While they hadn't publicly announced that they were set to tie the knot after a three-month engagement, there were hints that the wedding might be happening in the near future when Ivanka and Jared landed in New York City on Tuesday evening.

Ivanka was seen heading out of her Manhattan apartment on Thursday morning, ahead of the wedding, in a bright red blazer  a Dolce & Gabbana creation that originally retailed for $2664. 52. She paired her scarlet jacket with simple slim black pants and a matching purse.

Big day: Ivanka was seen heading out of her Manhattan apartment on Thursday morning ahead of Joshua Kushner and Karlie Kloss' wedding, which she attended

Change: The first daughter was spotted on Wednesday heading out in her second outfit of the day, a black pantsuit that she paired with matching heels

Jared, meanwhile, was seen that day heading out of their Upper East Side building looking very casual in a pair of brightly-colored Nike sneakers, which he paired with gray jeans and a short black puff jacket.

Ivanka was also seen in New York City on Wednesday  the first full day of her stay in her hometown  wearing two different outfits.

She cut a casual figure as she left her apartment in the morning, wearing a $450 black and green stretch-knit sweater by Isabel Marant, which she paired with simple slim black pants.

The first daughter was wearing black flat loafers from her now-defunct namesake brand, which feature the label's logo in golden metal at the back of the heel.

Later on Wednesday, Ivanka was seen heading out after an outfit change, cutting an elegant figure in a black pantsuit, which she paired with matching heels.

The White House adviser, who took a call as she left her building, shielded her eyes behind aviator sunglasses and finished off her outfit with hoop earrings as well as the same black purse she carried throughout her trip.

Ivanka and Jared were first spotted back in their old stomping grounds on Tuesday evening.

They were seen arriving at their home in Manhattan, stepping off the same vehicle and walking in the direction of their building.

Ivanka was wearing an all-black outfit featuring long sleeves, which she completed with matching patent leather slingback pumps. She kept her hair down in a casual 'do and finished off her look with simple hoop earrings.

Family: Ivanka was among a small group of guests that attended the intimate surprise wedding of her brother-in-law Joshua to model Karlie

The first daughter, who moved to D.C. to work in her father's White House, seemed thrilled to be back in New York City and smiled as she walked away from the car to reach the building's entrance.

Jared, meanwhile, was seen stepping off the same vehicle as his wife, dressed in a dark suit and a white button-down. The president's son-in-law looked slightly more casual than usual as he stepped out without a tie, carrying his belongings in a black bag.

Ivanka's attendance at the wedding, and her subsequent celebration of Joshua and Karlie's newlywed status on social media, sparked something of a frenzy on Twitter, as people came to the realization that the first daughter is now sister-in-law to the fashion star - who publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Shortly after the wedding, and Ivanka's congratulatory Instagram post shared in honor of the happy couple, dozens of people began posting on Twitter to voice their shock and amusement over the connection between the two women.

'I just realised that ivanka trump is now karlies sister in law YIKES,' wrote one.

'Imagine Karlie and Ivanka Trump having thanksgiving dinner together akajsnaxjnajznalzx,' wrote another.

'Why is no one talking about how Karlie Kloss and Ivanka Trump are sister-in-laws now?' one man asked.

Many posted GIFs to illustrated how they were feeling, while other particularly zeroed in on their different politics, as Karlie is a vocal Democrat.

'I have a real hard time dealing with my extended family members who voted for Trump but climate change/womens rights/gun control supporting Karlie Kloss being Ivankas future sister-in-law? Godspeed, girl,' wrote one.Actress Jenna Coleman is rumoured to have dated Prince Harry, but it appears she and the Duchess of Sussex share more than just their taste in men.

The pair have also worn the same 1,595 Emilia Wickstead dress to high profile events, eagle-eyed fans have noted.

Jenna, 32, star of ITV series Victoria, wore the designer's elegant Camila wool-crepe midi dress first, donning the design in white for an outing to the polo in Surrey June.

Jenna in June: Actress Jenna Coleman, 32, wore the 1,595 Emilia Wickstead dress first, donning the design in white for an outing to the Cartier Queen's Cup Polo in June, pictured

Meghan in October: Meghan, 37, who is expecting her first child with the Duke of Sussex next Spring, opted for the demure day dress in black for an engagement in Sydney on Saturday

And pregnant Meghan, 37, who is expecting her first child with the Duke of Sussex next Spring, opted for the demure day dress in black for an engagement in Sydney on Saturday.

The women both brought their own personalities to the frock with their choice of accessories, with Jenna choosing sky high black platform heels and a chic pink round handbag, and Meghan donning a black hat by milliner Philip Treacy and a clutch from go-to designer Givenchy.

New Zealand-born Wickstead, based in London, is a favourite of the royal family and has been chosen by the Duchess of Cambridge on a number of occasions.

Demure duchess: Meghan wore the Camila wool-crepe midi dress, pictured, for the opening of the ANZAC Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney, with husband Prince Harry on Saturday, pictured

Classic: Meghan accessorised with a black hat by milliner Philip Treacy and a clutch from go-to designer Givenchy, pictured

Jenna and Harry romantically linked back in 2015, after looking cosy following a charity polo match at Ascot.

They reportedly came face to face at the opening of Soho House in Amsterdam last month, which Meghan also attended.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, a source told how the prince, 34, looked 'uncomfortable' when he passed his rumoured former flame at breakfast.

Laid back: Jenna opted for a more relaxed look with black platform heels and a trendy round bracelet bag, pictured. Above, Jenna (far right) with l-r: Martha Hunt, Lily Collins, Neelam Gill, and a glamorous guest at the Cartier Queen's Cup Polo in June

'Harry had to walk straight past Jenna to get to his and Meghan's table,' the source said.

'It was pretty awkward and some of the other guests were commenting on it. Jenna looked down while Harry looked straight ahead, while Meghan didn't seem to notice.

'She sat through breakfast with a smile on her face, but Harry looked a bit uncomfortable. He'd been super friendly saying hi to everyone, but he didn't even acknowledge Jenna.'Queen Mathilde of Belgium put on a stunning sartorial display as she arrived in Lisbon for the first day of her state visit to Portugal.

King Philippe and his wife were greeted by Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Monday as the royal couple kicked off their three-day stay in the Iberian country.

Mathilde, 45, looked lovely in lace, teaming a lilac A-line dress with a statement hat as she and Philippe, 58, disembarked a private jet at Lisbon Military Airport.

The mother-of-four accessorised with a metallic clutch, low-heeled courts and a pair of diamond and pearl earrings, her blonde hair pulled back into a chignon.

After setting off from Melsbroek this morning, the royal couple were given a formal welcome ceremony at Lisbon's Praca do Imperio before joining the President at the National Palace of Belem.

Lovely in lace: Belgium's Queen Mathilde, 45, teamed a lilac A-line dress with a statement hat as she and husband King Philippe disembarked their jet at Lisbon Military Airport today

King Philippe, far left, and Queen Mathilde met with Portugal's Presidente Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, centre, on Monday as the royal couple kicked off their three-day stay in Portugal

During the ceremony, the royal couple and their host listened to their respective national anthems before Philippe and the President reviewed the guard of honour and finally, watched a military parade.

The trio then made the short walk to the Church of the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos for a wreath laying ceremony at the tomb Luis de Camoes.

Tonight the Belgian royals will be treated to a glittering state banquet at Ajuda Palace, before embarking on an action-packed itinerary in Lisbon and Porto.

The couple will depart on Wednesday 24 October, returning to their home at Royal Palace of Laeken on the outskirts of Brussels.

King Philippe, 58, ascended the Belgian throne following the abdication of his father, King Albert II, in July 2013.

Queen of style: Mother-of-four Mathilde accessorised with a metallic clutch, low-heeled courts and a pair of diamond and pearl earrings, her blonde hair pulled back into a chignon, as she arrived in Lisbon with her husband (centre) to kick off their Portuguese state visit

VIP visitors: Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, 69, greeted his guest with a courteous kiss on the hand after she and husband King Philippe arrived in Lisbon today

LR: King Philippe, President Rebelo de Sousa and Queen Mathilde in Lisbon this morning. Following their welcome ceremony (pictured), the trio then made the short walk to the Church of the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos for a wreath laying ceremony at the tomb Luis de Camoes

King Philippe, left, and Queen Mathilde were given a formal welcome ceremony at Lisbon's Praca do Imperio before joining the President at the National Palace of Belem (pictured)

Red carpet treatment: King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium during their welcome ceremony at Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon, Portugal this morning

During their welcome ceremony on Monday, the Belgian King and Queen and their host listened to their national anthems before Philippe and the President reviewed the guard of honour and watched a military parade (pictured here at Lisbon's Jeronimos Monastery)

Rolling out the red carpet: Belgium's royal couple were treated to a formal display of pomp and pageantry as Portugal put on a military welcome ceremony in Lisbon on Monday

He and Mathilde have been married for almost 20 years and are parents to Princess Elisabeth, 16, Prince Gabriel, 15, Prince Emmanuel, 13, and Princess Eleonore, 10.

Despite their busy schedule of royal duties, Mathilde and Philippe are also hands-on parents; and the Queen was recently spotted dropping two of her children off at the school gates on the first day of the autumn term.

She was pictured waving off Gabriel and Eleonore at the gates of Sint-Jan-Berchmanscollege in Brussels.

Thirteen-year-old Prince Emmanuel, who has dyslexia, is no longer enrolled at Berchmanscollege with his siblings - instead attending the Eureka school in Kessel-Lo.

Her eldest daughter, heir to the throne Elisabeth, recently flew the nest to start at a Welsh boarding school in the Vale of Glamorgan.A heavily pregnant mother who is expecting triplets tried to dance her way into labor, busting some serious moves with her husband and eldest child.

Cara Chatwin, 29, is about to welcome three new babies with her husband Darik Hunter Chatwin, 29. The pair, who lives in Utah, already has a daughter named Gemma, who is almost two  and the parents are clearly eager to become a family of six.

Thirty-two weeks into Cara's pregnancy, which is considered full-term for her, the mother decided to take part in the Baby Mama Dance Challenge  a social media trend that sees mothers who have reached the term of their pregnancy dance to see if the movement induces labor.

Busting some moves: Cara Chatwin, 29, is about to welcome triplets and took part in a social media dance challenge for pregnant mothers

Duo: Cara can be seen in a fun clip dancing with her husband Darik Hunter Chatwin, 29, while showing off her pregnant belly in an Adidas crop top

Cara can thus be seen in a fun video in black leggings and an Adidas crop top, her pregnant belly on full display, dancing along with Darik.

Gemma, who is 23 months old, joins in on the fun and can be seen playing with her toys next to her parents before her father picks her up for a bit of choreography.

In the two-minute video, Cara pulls off some impressive moves, at one point twerking with her husband.

She also manages to drop low towards the ground and mimes some of the song's lyrics throughout the video, fanning her face when the tune mentions taking a break and tossing some bills up in the air when it talks about making money.

The clip promptly garnered attention and has been viewed more than 39,800 times on YouTube, while hundreds of viewers took to the comments section to congratulate the couple on the upcoming birth  and on their dancing skills.

Family: The pair were joined in the clip by their 23-month-old daughter Gemma

Choreography: Cara and Darik dance hand in hand at some point during the clip

Impressive: The mother seemed to dance effortlessly despite her 20-pound belly

Dancing: Cara managed to drop low towards the ground as part of the dance challenge

Coordinated: She and Darik twerked together as they recorded their clip

While Cara joked that she was 'going into labor', the dance challenge was in fact not sufficient to induce the triplets' birth.

The mother is scheduled to give birth through a C-section during the first week of November unless she goes into labor naturally first.

While a pregnancy is usually considered to have reached its term around 40 weeks, triplets are often born by 32 to 34 weeks.

Cara recently took to Instagram to share a photo of herself and Darik posing for a mirror selfie, along with a post celebrating her 32nd week of pregnancy.

'TRIPLET BUMPDATE! 32 WEEKS! We made it!' she wrote. 'My feeling of accomplishment has never been so strong. 32 weeks was a dream / goal in the distant future for so long & I can't believe we are here.'

Still waiting: While Cara joked in the clip that she might be going into labor, the dance was in fact not enough to induce the birth and she's scheduled to have a C-section in November

Parents: Cara was originally told she was expecting only one baby, but found out during a later examination that she would be having triplets

She said that according to her last growth scan, each of the three babies  two girls and a boy  weighed approximately four pounds.

'My skin feels so thin and stretched, like it could burst at any moment,' she added.

'Unfortunately the dreaded stretch marks made their appearance over the last two weeks & the worst part is they freaking HURT!

'These babies are getting so heavy and my belly is weighing over 20 lbs. I'm so grateful for my body's capability to grow three little humans at once & for three thriving babies!'

Cara and Darik first opened up about their experience as parents expecting triplets in September, when they explained in a vlog that the mom was originally told she was expecting only one child.

She found out during a later examination that she and Darik would in fact be having triplets  meaning their family of three is set to double in size.Jared Kushner opened up about his marriage and family life during a sweeping interview on Monday morning  calling his father-in-law a 'great' grandfather and gushing in very candid terms about how much he loves his wife Ivanka Trump.

The White House adviser, 37, spoke for almost 44 minutes with CNN's Van Jones, 50, on Monday in New York City, and while most of the interview was spent discussing topics such as prison reform and Saudi Arabia, Jared also gave an insight about his family and how his three children have adapted to their new life in Washington, D.C.

Asked what it's like to have Donald Trump, 72, as a father-in-law, Jared told the CNN host: 'I can definitely say that he's a very special person and I've really enjoyed getting to know him over the last  I guess decade, since I met Ivanka.

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Opening up: Jared Kushner, 37, spoke for almost 44 minutes with CNN 's Van Jones, 50, on Monday in New York City

'Working with him for the last couple of years has been very interesting.'

Jared, who tied the knot with Ivanka almost 10 years ago, in 2009, called Trump an 'amazing father'.

He then praised the president's bond with his grandchildren Arabella, seven, Joseph, five, and Theodore, two  Ivanka and Jared's three children, who moved with them from New York City to Washington, D.C. when their parents started working in the White House.

'He's a great father to his children and a really great grandfather,' Jared said of his father-in-law.

'We work very long hours in the White House and early on my kids would come over to visit me for dinner some nights when I'd be staying late and he heard that they were there and I didn't bring them by and he said, "What's going on?" So every time they're there I make sure I bring them by the office.'

Jared revealed that Trump, who has a well-known love for junk food and has been pictured in the past enjoying meals from McDonald's and KFC, is already passing some of his dietary habits onto his grandchildren.

'He has a little candy drawer where he knows how to makes sure they get stuff their mom won't let them have,' Jared added. 'He really loves his family and he gets a lot of pleasure out of that.'

Trump has shown pride for his grandchildren in the past. Back in November 2017, he used Arabella's skillful command of the Chinese language to his political advantage by showing President Xi Jinping, 65, a video of the then-six-year-old singing in Mandarin and reciting ancient Chinese poetry  and playing it again during a state dinner.

In April that same year, Arabella sang in person in front of Xi when the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

When Joseph turned five in October, his grandfather wished him a happy birthday on Instagram and shared several photos, including one of the two of them sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Conversation: The White House adviser told CNN's Van Jones, 50, about his marriage with Ivanka Trump, 36, and how their children have adjusted to life in Washington, D.C.

'She's amazing': While Jared was gushing over his wife, Ivanka was at home in D.C. heading into the office for the day

Couple: Jared heaped praise on his wife Ivanka, pictured with him and their children Arabella, seven, Joseph, five, and Theodore, two

Asked about the 'power couple' he forms with his wife Ivanka, Jared was quick to give her all the credit, gushing: 'Anyone with Ivanka would be a power couple. She's really amazing.'

While describing his strong bond with his wife, he added: 'When we started dating I told her that if I wasn't so attracted to her she'd just be my best friend.

'And again, Ivanka's brilliant. We were always involved in each other's business and knew what was going on, but working together has given me an even greater appreciation for just how effective she is with everything she does.

'She puts her mind to accomplishing things and she's able to get them there. Everyone wants to work with her and she's a great team player.'

Jared's account contrasts with a reported incident found in Bob Woodward's book Fear: Trump in the White House, which came out last month.

According to the reporter, Ivanka once got into a screaming fight with Stephen Bannon, 64, after he called her a staffer, telling her: 'You're a goddamn staffer! You walk around this place and act like you're in charge, and you're not. You're on staff!'

Ivanka was reported to have replied: 'I'm not a staffer! I'll never be a staffer. I'm the first daughter.'

During his interview with CNN, Jared also praised Ivanka for managing to balance her work schedule with her family life, something he said he wouldn't 'be able' to pull of.

Praise: Jared called Donald Trump, 72, a 'great grandfather'. He is pictured with Ivanka and Jared's daughter Arabella, seven, in July this year

Stash: Jared revealed his father-in-law (pictured with Joseph in the Oval Office) keeps a candy drawer for his grandchildren

He acknowledged that his and Ivanka's combined roles in the administration have been a 'big strain' on their family, but insisted Arabella, Joseph, and Theodore have been 'great' throughout the changes.

'It's obviously challenging enough having one parent working in the White House, having two parents in the White House is a big strain obviously in the family,' Jared said.

'But [Ivanka] does a great job balancing it and I don't know how she does it because I wouldn't be able to do it. And the kids, you know  they've been great about it too.'

When Ivanka and Jared first moved to D.C. in 2017, they were said to be struggling to acclimate. They were referred to as 'exiles on Pennsylvania Avenue' by Vanity Fair in August that year, as part of a profile that stated they had been 'repelled by Washington's elite'.

The pair were also described as fearing that their current positions in the White House could prevent them from returning to the same social circles they had become a part of in Manhattan.

'What is off-putting about them is they do not grasp their essential irrelevance,' a political insider told the publication at the time. 'They think they are special.'

Asked on Monday whether he was having 'fun' working at the White House, Jared replied: 'l wouldn't say fun,' eliciting chuckles from the audience.

'I have a lot of joy in my life and I feel very blessed to be there every day fighting for the things I'm fighting for,' he added. 'It's a lot of responsibility to do the jobs that we have. I'd say more invigorated by it  it's obviously the challenge of a lifetime.'

Jared and Ivanka got the opportunity to spend a few days away from the White House and Washington, D.C. when they attended the wedding of Jared's brother Joseph to supermodel Karlie Kloss last week.

The couple were pictured in New York City before heading upstate for the nuptials.

Their attendance at the wedding caused something of a stir on social media however, with many people voicing their shock over the fact that first daughter Ivanka and Hillary Clinton supporter Karlie are now sisters-in-law.Advertisement

Resplendent in breathtaking ballgowns, the next generation of society beauties gathered to make their formal debut at the Tatler Debutante Ball in Moscow on Monday night.

The young women, daughters of some of the country's most influential movers and shakers, showcased their wealth in stunning couture and extravagant jewellery.

Guests included Polina Rybakov, daughter of billionaire entrepreneur Igor Rybakov, and Leonela Manturov, 23, daughter of Russia's Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov.

The next generation of society beauties gathered to make their formal debut at the Tatler Debutante Ball in Moscow on Monday night. The young women, accompanied by their dashing dates, were led out onto the floor by Maria Konchalovsky, daughter of film director Egor Konchalvosky, who looked beautiful in an elaborate lilac gown with intricate floral detailing

Vasilisa Karelina, daughter of retired Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin, emerges from a Bentley at the start of the glittering event

Guests included Polina Rybakov, daughter of billionaire entrepreneur Igor Rybakov, who has an estimated 925million ($1.2billion) fortune. Pictured left, Mr Rybakov poses with his daughter, right, and wife Yekaterina at the ball on Monday night. On the right is Maria, daughter of film director Egor Konchalovsky

Maya Semak (left) next to musician Sergei Mazayev's daughter Anna, and Vasilisa Karelina, daughter of Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin

The debutantes looked perfectly poised as they stepped out onto the dancefloor in the opulent Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions, pictured. They were accompanied by an orchestra that was conducted by the celebrated Vladimir Spivakov

Pictured from left, Vasilisa Karelina, a daughter of retired Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin; musician Sergei Mazayev's daughter Anna; composer Maksim Dunayevsky's daughter Polina; painter Valentin Serov's descendant Yekaterina Zolotareva; film director Egor Konchalovsky's daughter Maria; URALCHEM Board Chairman Dmitry Mazepin's daughter Anastasia; Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov's daughter Leonela; Technonicol co-owner Igor Rybakov's daughter Polina; painter Vladimir Dubosarsky's daughter Taisia; FC Zenit St Petersburg manager Sergei Semak's daughter Maya; singer Grigory Leps' daughter Yeva; and Uma2rmaN frontman Vladimir Kristovsky's daughter Yasmin

Arm in arm with their dashing dates, the debutantes looked perfectly poised as they stepped out onto the dancefloor in the opulent Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions.

They were accompanied by an orchestra that was conducted by the celebrated Vladimir Spivakov.

The event, launched by society bible Tatler in 2008, attracts Russia's mega-rich elite and follows in the tradition of British and American debutante balls.

However unlike international events, young women making their debut in Moscow are not required to wear white gowns.

Leonela Manturov, 23, centre, daughter of Russia's Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov, right, was the picture of elegance as she checked her diamond earrings on the side of the dancefloor. Mr Manturov attended with wife Natalya, left

Film director Egor Konchalovsky, centre, his wife actress Lyubov Tolkalina, left, and daughter Maria, right, pose for a photo before making their way inside the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions in Moscow on Monday night

Russia's Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov looked proud to be attending the ball with his wife Natalya, left, son Yevgeny, 20, and daughter Leonela, 23, who was making her formal debut into society at the glittering Tatler event

Swimmer Alexander Sukhorukov took to the dancefloor with his retired rhythmic gymnast wife Margarita Mamun, left, as they joined well-heeled guests at the event. Right, celebrated conductor Vladimir Spivakov leads the orchestra

The opulent Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions provided a stunning setting for the annual ball. The event, launched by Tatler in 2008, attracts Russia's mega-rich elite and follows in the tradition of British and American debutante balls

Many of them finished their ensembles with necklaces, bracelets and earrings heavy with diamonds and colourful precious gems.

The group was led onto the dancefloor by Maria Konchalovsky, daughter of film director Egor Konchalvosky, who looked beautiful in an elaborate lilac gown with intricate floral detailing on the skirt and train.

Like her fellow debutantes, the brunette beauty carried a delicate white lace fan in her right hand.

Unlike international debutante balls, young women making their debut in Moscow are not required to wear white gowns. Instead the group, pictured with filmmaker Egor Konchalovsky's daughter Maria at the front, wore an array of colours

Retired Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin with his daughter Vasilisa and wife Olga. On the right are Technonicol co-owner Igor Rybakov's daughter Polina Rybakova (turqoise dress) and Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov's daughter Lionela

Conductor Vladimir Spivakov, best known for his work with the Moscow Virtuosi chamber orchestra, added a sense of occasion to the Tatler Debutantes' Ball on Monday night

War Memorial Company President Oleg Shelyagov's wife Viktoria (left) and Fashion designer Alena Akhmadullina (right) at the ball

Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov's daughter Lionela attends the 2018 Tatler Debutantes Ball event held in the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions in Moscow

Maya, the daughter of FC Zenit St Petersburg manger Sergei Semak and Vasilisa Karelina, daughter of retired Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin

Elsewhere Miss Manturov opted for a green and pink strapless brocade gown, which she wore with three strings of diamonds around her neck and showstopping drop earrings.

Meanwhile Miss Rybakov, whose father Igor has an estimated 925million ($1.2billion) fortune, kept it simple in a silver satin number.

The father and daughter were the picture of happiness as they posed for a photo at the glittering event.

Anastasia Mazepina, daughter of Dmitry Mazepin, the core shareholder and chairman of Uralchem Integrated Chemicals Company

FC Zenit St Petersburg manager Sergei Semak with wife Anna and daughter Maya (left) and TV presenter Yekaterina Odintsova with her daughter, Dina Nemtsova (right)She delighted her hosts by whipping up a loaf of banana bread in Australia last week.

And it seems Meghan's recipe is already taking the UK by storm with shoppers flocking to try the dish at home.

Taking culinary inspiration from the duchess' homemade dessert, royal enthusiasts have been getting into the spirit by trying the recipe out for themselves.

According to Waitrose, searches for banana bread recipes on the site have increased by 52 per cent since Meghan made the dish.

Meanwhile a spiced banana loaf has proved particularly popular, seeing hits on the page increase by 137 per cent.

The Duchess of Sussex, pictured in Sydney on Saturday 20 October, has sparked a surge in interest for banana bread after whipping up the dessert in New South Wales last week

Meghan delighted her hosts by whipping up a loaf of banana bread in Australia last week for the Woodley family in Mountain View Farm near Dubbo, New South Wales (pictured)

Pregnant Meghan took the cake, packed with chocolate chips and a touch of ginger, to Mountain View Farm near Dubbo, New South Wales on Tuesday to meet the Woodleys, a five-generation farming family.

Nutritionists have hinted the addition of ginger could suggest the Duchess - currently in her second trimester - could be suffering from morning sickness and nausea.

An aide said last week: 'She loves baking and just decided to take something along with her on the spur of the moment.'

According to onlookers, the cake was three-quarters of the way gone before the couple had even left the farm.

Benita Woodley, 20, whose parents Scott and Elaine currently farm the 3,000-acre property, said it was delicious and 'such a nice and thoughtful thing for her to do'.

Giving her tips for a perfect banana loaf, Zoe Simons, senior innovation development chef at Waitrose told MailOnline: 'I always use over ripe bananas when making my banana bread, when their skins have turned dark brown they taste even sweeter.

Meghan, pictured with Harry on Fraser Island on Monday 22 October, could be suffering from morning sickness and nausea if her ginger-laden cake recipe is anything to go by

'I blitz them in the food processor to make a paste, put in a container and pop them in the freezer so they are ready whenever I want to make one.

'Toasted pecans and caramel make tasty additions to banana bread, and if its for a special occasion I'll make a miso caramel to swirl through the mixture.

'The umami flavour works really well with the sweetness of the caramel and the banana bread - I find white miso works best.'

This is not the first time Meghan has caused an item to fly off shelves; last week the subtle trick she used to disguise her baby bump caused a sudden surge in in purple folder sales overnight.Doctors could use artificial intelligence to diagnose dementia more accurately and give better treatment, scientists say.

Researchers have invented a computer algorithm which can analyse MRI brain scans and learn how to recognise different types of dementia.

They say that although many types of the brain-destroying condition have similar symptoms, they respond differently to treatment.

Being able to correctly identify which type someone has means patients could be helped earlier on in their illness or given more targeted therapy.

Experts say the research is 'pioneering' and has 'huge potential' in the future of treating dementia, expected to affect one million Britons by 2025.

Experts from University College London say their algorithm, SuStaIn, can recognise different types of dementia and pick up on them at an earlier stage than doctors might, meaning treatment could be started sooner

University College London researchers have come up with the algorithm SuStaIn, which stands for Subtype and Stage Inference.

As it processes MRI images it learns how to recognise different types of dementia as they develop, predict what will happen in patients' brains, and identify the illness in its earlier stages.

'Diagnosing dementia accurately can be a challenge,' said Dr Sara Imarisio, head of research at Alzheimer's Research UK.

'Particularly as many of the early symptoms may overlap with other health conditions.

'Machine learning is an incredibly powerful tool and we are only just beginning to realise its full potential to analyse vast and intricate datasets in dementia research.

'In this new study the value of machine learning is demonstrated through its ability to bring together brain scans to give in-depth insights into the subtle brain changes in Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia.'

Dementia is not an illness in itself but a term which describes symptoms caused by various diseases of the brain  by far the most common is Alzheimer's disease.

Scientists say studies into dementia treatments can be troubled because difficulty distinguishing between types of the condition means participants may not have exactly the same illness.

WHAT IS DEMENTIA? Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe a range of progressive neurological disorders  that is, conditions affecting the brain. There are many different types of dementia, of which Alzheimers disease is the most common. Some people may have a combination of types of dementia. Regardless of which type is diagnosed, each person will experience their dementia in their own unique way. Dementia is a global concern but it is most often seen in wealthier countries, where people are likely to live into very old age. HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE AFFECTED? The Alzheimers Society reports there are more than 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK today, of which more than 500,000 have Alzheimer's. It is estimated that the number of people living with dementia in the UK by 2025 will rise to over 1 million. In the US, it's estimated there are 5.5 million Alzheimer's sufferers. A similar percentage rise is expected in the coming years. As a persons age increases, so does the risk of them developing dementia. Rates of diagnosis are improving but many people with dementia are thought to still be undiagnosed. IS THERE A CURE? Currently there is no cure for dementia. But new drugs can slow down its progression and the earlier it is spotted the more effective treatments are. Source: Dementia UK Advertisement

Something which might work for Alzheimer's patients, for example, may not work for those with frontotemporal dementia, a less common type.

But using this AI to accurately group patients with the same diseases will mean trials are more likely to be successful, researchers say, speeding up drug development.

Professor Daniel Alexander, from UCL, said: 'This new algorithm has the unique ability to reveal groups of patients with different variants of disease.

'One key reason for the failure of drug trials in Alzheimer's disease is the broad mixture of very different patients they test; a treatment with a strong effect on a particular subgroup of patients may show no overall effect on the full population so fail the drug trial.

'SuStaIn provides a way to show treatment effects on distinct subgroups, potentially expediting treatments to market.'

In a trial, SuStaIn used a database of MRI brain scans from 365 volunteers from 13 locations across the UK.

The algorithm scanned the images for changes in the brain which were linked to the Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia and their progression.

It could successfully recognise the different types and stages of the two diseases and could aid a more accurate diagnosis of either.

Both cause dementia but they have different underlying causes and ways of developing.

And while both have unique symptoms their symptoms can often overlap as they get worse over time, making diagnosis even more difficult.

Spotting the types early on in the disease process using non-invasive MRI scanning means there is a better chance of identifying the best treatment for patients.

UCL neurologist Professor Jonathan Schott added: 'Understanding how different diseases evolve over time is critical if we are to design rational treatment trials and inform patients about prognosis.

'This is a major challenge for diseases that evolve over years, if not decades, and where there may be substantial differences in the underlying pathology and progression between patients.

'This work shows that it is possible to tease out different disease patterns  some hitherto unknown  from single MRI scans taken from patients with a range of different dementias.

'As well as providing new insights into dementia, this work demonstrates the huge potential of SuStaIn to delineate disease subtypes in a range of other medical contexts.'

The research was published in journal Nature Communications, and the team are exploring whether the technology could work for other chronic diseases such as those in the lungs.Superbugs will kill more people than cancer and diabetes combined by 2050 unless something is done to tackle antibiotic resistance, MPs have warned.

Despite drives to reduce prescription rates, British doctors are still doling out twice as many antibiotics as some of their European counterparts, a report has found.

Experts have warned that routine hospital operations could become too dangerous if common medications become ineffective.

They fear the antibiotics crisis is getting worse, with growing concerns the drugs are losing their effect and can no longer treat many infections.

It is estimated that drug-resistant strains of bacteria are responsible for 5,000 deaths a year in the UK and 25,000 a year in Europe.

But experts say the death toll could reach ten million a year globally within the next 30 years.

Clostridium difficile aka c. difficile, the superbug. Experts say superbug death toll could reach ten million a year globally within the next 30 years

The report by the House of Commons' health and social care select committee says the Government has not done enough to combat antimicrobial resistance and must make it 'a top-five policy priority'.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, England's chief medical officer, told the inquiry that failing to do so would mean 'modern medicine is lost'.

Cancer patients often depend on antimicrobial medicines to protect them while their immune systems are weakened by chemotherapy. However, the report warns that patients may soon face agonising decisions over whether or not to have cancer treatment or surgery because risk of death through microbial infection may outweigh the benefits of treatment.

Despite the growing threat, no new antibiotic classes have been developed for decades and research is declining because it is not profitable for pharmaceutical firms.

This is because new antibiotics would only be prescribed sparingly rather than as a first-line treatment like other medications.

The report suggests new ways of funding potential treatments are needed to make it worthwhile for drugs companies. This could involve changes to patent law and to the ways in which pharmaceutical companies are reimbursed for new antimicrobial medicines.

Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston, the committee chair, said: 'In six months we want to see tangible progress on implementing practical policies to reverse the worrying exodus from AMR research and development and both Government and industry should play their part in tackling this issue.'

The Government is aiming to half the number of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions by 2020.

Figures show doctors have cut prescription rates by 13 per cent in five years but these are still double those of the Netherlands, Sweden and the Baltic States. The report found digital health tools for clinicians and policymakers can dramatically reduce the threat of antimicrobial resistance. But it said there has been great variation in uptake of the tools.

It suggests a single organisation should be given responsibility for co-ordinating prompt evidence-based prescriptions of such medicines across the NHS.

Last month the committee heard that the problem had been a 'top-five' issue under David Cameron's government, but has since slipped down the policy agenda.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'We are committed to tackling the issue both at home and internationally.

'We have invested record amounts in research and development, and we will set ourselves challenging ambitions for the next five years.'Targeting the source of advanced prostate cancer with radiotherapy after the disease has spread can increase survival chances by 11 per cent.

Experts say the 'monumental findings' could change how advanced cancers are treated.

Patients whose prostate cancer has spread are typically given hormone therapy to reduce or stop the production of testosterone, as the molecule can encourage the cancer's growth.

Targeting the source of advanced prostate cancer with radiotherapy after the disease has spread could increase survival chances by 11 per cent (file photo)

But these findings suggest radio- therapy  which uses high-energy radiation to kill cancer cells  is also effective.

It was previously thought there would be little benefit in blasting the prostate tumour if the disease had spread to other parts of the body.

Professor Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: 'This is a monumental finding that could help thousands of men worldwide. Adding radiotherapy to current treatment shows clear benefit for this subgroup of men with prostate cancer.

'If we can understand exactly why these men benefit from the additional radiotherapy treatment, we could hopefully use this approach to benefit even more patients.'

The Daily Mail has campaigned for two decades to end needless prostate deaths through better diagnosis and improved treatments. Around 47,000 men are diagnosed with the 'forgotten' cancer every year in the UK, and over 11,500 men die from it.

In the study, scientists enrolled 2,000 men who were all at an advanced stage of the disease in the clinical trial. Half were given standard treatment while the other half received standard treatment and radiotherapy to the prostate  the site of the primary tumour.

Among men treated with additional radiotherapy whose cancer had spread to their lymph nodes and or bones nearby, researchers found that around 80 per cent survived for at least three years. This fell to 70 per cent of men who were given the standard hormone treatment. No benefit was seen among men whose cancer had spread further, according to the findings published in The Lancet.

Experts say the 'monumental findings' could change how advanced cancers are treated (file photo)

The research, presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Munich, Germany, suggests radiotherapy as well as hormone therapy should be standard care where prostate cancer has spread nearby.

Dr Chris Parker, lead researcher of the study based at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, said: 'Our results show a powerful effect for certain men with advanced prostate cancer. These findings could and should change standards of care worldwide.

'Until now, it was thought that there was no point in treating the prostate itself if the cancer had already spread because it would be like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. 'However, this study proves the benefit of prostate radiotherapy for these men. Unlike many new drugs for cancer, radiotherapy is a simple, relatively cheap treatment that is readily available in most parts of the world.'

Simon Grieveson, of Prostate Cancer UK, said he hoped it would lead to an immediate change in how patients are treated.

He added: 'These results show for the first time, that it could also be effective in treating some men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer whose disease has started to spread to the lymph nodes or nearby bones, when given in addition to hormone therapy.

'We now want to see the use of radiotherapy extended to this group of men without delay, providing them with an additional treatment option and precious extra time with their loved ones.'A breakthrough treatment for ovarian cancer slashes the chance of it returning, a study has found.

Two thirds of patients given the drug during a trial had not relapsed within three years, compared to a third among those who were given a placebo, which doctors described as exciting.

Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cancer in females in the UK, with around 7,300 new cases each year.

Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cancer in females in the UK, with around 7,300 new cases each year (stock image)

It is notoriously difficult to treat, as the majority of cases are not diagnosed until it has spread. Just over a third of women are still alive a decade after diagnosis.

Olaparib, the first in a revolutionary class of treatments developed in British universities, has already been found to extend the lives of severely ill women with the disease.

In the latest study, 260 women with the BRCA gene mutation were given the pill while 130 others were given a placebo. All also underwent surgery and chemotherapy, as is standard.

Olaparib, the first in a revolutionary class of treatments developed in British universities, has already been found to extend the lives of severely ill women with the disease (stock image)

Half of those given the treatment are still showing no signs of the disease returning since the trial began in 2013, according to the findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Professor Charlie Gourley, from the University of Edinburgh which led the British part of the international trial, said: The most exciting finding is that more than half the patients on the olaparib arm have not relapsed. This is unprecedented and raises the possibility that a number of these patients may be cured.

Olaparib, sold under the brand name Lynparza, is the first of a group of drugs called PARP inhibitors that exploit a weakness in cancer cells defences.

Because it is already used to treat women whose ovarian cancer has returned, it could quickly be approved for use.The world's biggest tobacco company is facing backlash after launching a 2million campaign encouraging smokers to switch to vaping.

Philip Morris International, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, are behind the initiative to encourage people to quit smoking for at least a month.

But health charities have slammed the move as 'staggering hypocrisy' and 'PR puff', saying the company is only interested in promoting its other products.

A Cancer Research UK spokesperson said: 'The best way Philip Morris could help people to stop smoking is to stop making cigarettes.'

Philip Morris International, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, has launched an initiative to encourage people to quit smoking for at least a month (pictured: the campaign)

But health charities have slammed the move as 'staggering hypocrisy' and 'PR puff', saying the company is only interested in promoting its other products

PMI says the Hold My Light campaign is 'an important next step' for the company's aim of helping people to go smoke-free.

The campaign has its own website and features video and newspaper advertising, suggesting people use e-cigarettes or heated tobacco instead.

Despite claims it wants to 'ultimately stop selling cigarettes', the company still produces more than 800billion cigarettes a year.

'This is a staggering hypocrisy from a tobacco company to promote its own smoking cessation products in the UK while continuing to promote tobacco cigarettes across the world,' said George Butterworth, Cancer Research UK spokesperson.

'The best way Philip Morris could help people to stop smoking is to stop making cigarettes.

'Smoking is the leading preventable cause of cancer and we encourage people to switch away completely from smoking, including through the use of e-cigarettes.

Peter Nixon, MD of Philip Morris Limited, the world's biggest tobacco company, is encouraging smokers to give up cigarettes and switch to vaping in a multimillion-pound campaign

The initiative has been launched by Philip Morris Limited, the maker of Marlboro, as part of a new strategy to switch smokers to their vaping products

'We would also advise smokers to fully give up and not continue to smoke tobacco whilst using an e-cigarette.'

The 2million campaign is aimed at persuading the UK's 7.4million smokers to go 'smoke free' with the help of family and friends.

Smokers are encouraged to give up the habit for a minimum of a month, based on Public Health England research that found smokers who gave up for 28 days were five times more likely to stop smoking completely.

The initiative has been launched by Philip Morris Limited, the maker of Marlboro, as part of a new strategy to switch smokers to their vaping products.

The firm cites Public Health England research which suggests vaping is 95 per cent safer than smoking cigarettes.

Hazel Cheeseman, director of policy at the charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said: 'This campaign is simply PR puff.

'A massively profitable global tobacco company is selling the line that they've turned over a new leaf in an effort to flog their latest gadgets.

'If they were serious about a smokefree world they wouldn't challenge tobacco legislation around the world but instead support regulations that will really help smokers quit and prevent children from taking up smoking.

'Instead they are putting out press releases and making bold claims about breaking new ground  doesn't look like there is much new to see here. '

More than 80,000 people die every year in the UK because of disease related to smoking.

The habit damages most parts of the body, including the brain, heart, lungs, and skin, and costs people an average of 1,696 a year, according to the NHS.

Peter Nixon, managing director of Philip Morris, said: 'This campaign breaks new ground, which is an important next step in our company going smoke-free and ultimately stop selling cigarettes.

'Our research has shown that smokers want personal support from friends and family if they are to give up cigarettes  and that is what Hold My Light is designed to offer.'

The Hold My Light campaign consists of a website, video and newspaper advertising campaign.

It is the first time a tobacco company has launched a smoke-free campaign directly aimed at encouraging UK smokers to give up cigarettes.An epileptic boy whose plight triggered the medicinal cannabis review now attends school every day and can even ride a bike due to the oil.

Alfie Dingley, seven, from Kenilworth, had his first seizure at just eight months old and went on to have thousands more, some as often as every 30 minutes.

Unsure how best to treat the youngster, his doctor pumped him with steroids that left him 'high as kite' and even caused him to suffer psychotic episodes where he would hit his four-year-old sister Annie.

After being told the medication itself could kill him or result in him being sectioned, the family moved to the Netherlands so Alfie could take part in a cannabis oil trial.

Just five weeks later, Alfie's seizures stopped, his mood improved and his cognitive abilities started to catch up.

When forced to return home and come off cannabis oil, Alfie's condition immediately deteriorated, which led to Home Secretary Sajid Javid issuing a special license for the youngster to be allowed the treatment.

With medicinal cannabis oil being available on NHS prescription from November 1, Alfie's mother Hannah Deacon said it has been a 'miracle' for her son. Cannabis oil contains THC, a compound that causes a 'high'.

'Today, Alfie is a happy and cheeky boy. He loves riding his bike and all of his cognitive development issues are much easier to deal with now,' she said.

Alfie Dingley was 'high as a kite' after his doctor pumped him with steroids to control his severe epilepsy. At risk of death or being sectioned after the medication turned him psychotic, the youngster has made a remarkable recovery and can even ride a bike due to cannabis oil

Alfie's mother Hannah Deacon (right) made the difficult decision to move her family to the Netherlands so he could take part in a cannabis oil trial. Just five weeks on, his condition improved remarkably, with his seizures stopping and him becoming a happy little boy

Speaking of how their ordeal began, Mrs Deacon said: 'Alfie was eight months old when I heard him scream from his cot and ran up to find he was having his first catastrophic seizure.

'He went on to have cluster seizures every half hour for three and a half weeks and ended up on life support at Great Ormond Street Hospital because he was so seriously ill and they didn't know if he'd make it.

'Even though he's gone onto have thousands more seizures since, I still cry every time I see it because it's horrendous to see someone you love having a seizure.

'It turns out he has a very rare form of epilepsy which only affects nine boys in the world.

Mrs Deacon, who is married to landscaper and builder Drew, added:'It's not genetic, it's just something that's happened spontaneously for him and we don't know the reason why.

'That means we don't know his prognosis or how it's likely to progress.'

With his treatment options being limited, Alfie's doctor prescribed him strong doses of intravenous steroids

'They made him aggressive and violent, causing him to hit his sister Annie because he was high as a kite on drugs all the time,' Mrs Deacon said.

'He was always hungry and his face was puffy.

'We dealt with him like [that] up until we saw a neurologist, who told us if we carried on like that Alfie would die or the drugs would make him psychotic and that he'd have to be sectioned.

'That was not acceptable.'

Desperate, Mrs Deacon took it upon herself to research alternative treatment options and came across cannabis oil.

After nine months of research, including talking to families who had benefited from the oil, Mr Deacon spoke to her son's neurologist.

'His words to me were "you don't have a choice" meaning we had to try to get it for Alfie,' she said.

'I will be forever grateful to him for supporting us with that.'

When the family returned home and Alfie came off cannabis oil, his condition deteriorated. He was therefore granted a special license by Home Secretary Sajid Javid to take the treatment. With the oil available on NHS prescription from November 1, Mrs Deacon called it a 'miracle'

MEDICINAL CANNABIS WILL BE PRESCRIBED ON THE NHS FROM NOVEMBER 1 Medicinal cannabis oil will be available on prescription from next month, the Home Secretary said on October 11. From November 1, UK laws will change to allow cannabis-based products for medicinal use to be prescribed in England, Scotland and Wales, according to a written statement from Sajid Javid. The dramatic change to policy follows several high profile cases of patients being denied products containing THC, the psychoactive compound that makes users 'high', came to light. Epileptic boy Billy Caldwell was even banned from taking cannabis oil that was prescribed to him abroad. He was given back the medicine after a high profile campaign spearheaded by his mother forced Mr Javid to grant a 20-day emergency licence for its use. Billy Caldwell's mother Charlotte (pictured together) had seven bottles of cannabis oil confiscated at Heathrow Airport customs, prompting a row over cannabis oil The Home Secretary has insisted today's change is not the first step towards the broader legalisation of cannabis. Mr Javid announced on 19 June that the Misuse of Drugs Regulations act of 2001 was being reviewed in a two-part investigation to allow for the prescription of medicinal-cannabis products. In the first part of the review, the chief medical advisor, Professor Dame Sally Davies, concluded there was evidence that medicinal cannabis has therapeutic benefits. The second part, carried out by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), recommended drugs that meet a clear definition of a cannabis-derived medicinal products should be placed in Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. Cannabis was previously considered Schedule 1. Drugs in this class are thought to have no medicinal value and therefore cannot be legally possessed or prescribed. Schedule 2 drugs, such as ketamine, are those that can be prescribed and supplied by doctors and pharmacists. They can also be legally possessed by anyone with a prescription. Advertisement

In 2017, when Alfie was just five years old, the family moved to the Netherlands so he could take part in a cannabis oil trial.

'Before we went we got the blessing of Alfie's paediatrician and our local MP as we wanted to do everything openly,' Mrs Deacon said.

'We're aware that some people don't do that but we felt we shouldn't have to break the law to keep our son alive.

'The doctors in the Netherlands started treating him with cannabis oil, which is administered as an oil under his tongue that is then absorbed by his bloodstream.

'He didn't respond to start with as it takes time for the cannabis oil to build up in the body. I was extremely worried that it wasn't going to work.'

But just five weeks into the treatment, Alfie's family began to notice a remarkable change.

'He stopped having seizures. He became happier. And his cognitive development started to improve,' Mrs Deacon said.

'He has learning and speech delay, and had regressed as a result of his epilepsy and the steroids, and only managing to do three weeks at school.

'Cannabis oil has been a miracle for Alfie.'

After five months of treatment in the Netherlands, Alfie's family felt they had all the evidence they needed to campaign for medicinal cannabis oil to be made legal in the UK.

'We returned and obviously had to take Alfie off cannabis oil. He became very unwell again,' she said.

'A lot of people got in touch via our Facebook page Alfie's Hope - and those messages kept me going.

'Our MP arranged a meeting with the Home Office in the March and we took a petition bearing 370,000 signatures to Downing Street where we met the Prime Minister Theresa May.

'We told her about Alfie and she said she would do all she could to help. We were pleased.'

Although backed by a lot of support, the family still faced challenges getting their voice heard.

'But then it seemed like we were faced with a pharmaceutical trial application - we weren't a big national drugs company we were just a family with a small child who desperately needed medication,' Mrs Deacon said.

'It became apparent by June that we weren't getting anywhere so I did an interview on Radio 4 where I talked about my meeting with Theresa May and how I felt I'd been let down.

'Soon after, home secretary Sajid Javid got in touch to say they were issuing Alfie with a licence and reviewing cannabis as a medication.

'We were delighted. Our doctor is now free to prescribe this medication for our son without worry of his career or any of his colleagues saying that he shouldn't.

'And, as soon as Alfie had cannabis oil back in his system, he started to do really well again.'

With his epilepsy now under control, Alfie can even ride a bike.

'It's absolutely amazing that he can do that,' Mrs Deacon said.

'We had tried to help him learn to ride his bike but he just sat there and pedalled backwards which is sad because every little boy should be able to ride a bike.

'He's now learnt how to ride a bike, which has been brilliant.

'His sister Annie is four now and has started school. His condition is not impacting on her now the way it was.'

Now his epilepsy is under control, Alfie is thriving. The youngster attends school every day and has learnt to ride a bike, which his mother says is 'absolutely amazing'

And the whole family have benefited, with Alfie no longer hitting his sister Annie (pictured being held by their father Drew) during his psychotic episodes

Mrs Deacon is speaking out ahead of an Epilepsy Action event on Thursday to raise awareness of the benefits of medicinal cannabis oil.

'Cannabis oil will be prescribable from November 1 2018,' she said.

'However, a lot more needs to be done so that doctors understand the medical uses of it.

'I feel people should have the right to use it but some doctors don't feel it's safe because it's not been tested in the same way as other drugs.

'But it's probably one of the safest medicines you can use.

'We produce cannabinoids in our bodies and this is the closest thing to our own make up.'

The body's cannabinoid receptors are part of the endocannabinoid system, which is involved in physiological processes including appetite, pain-sensation, mood and memory.

'Cannabis oil can be used for so many illnesses,' Mrs Deacon added.

'Doctors are used to having just one drug for one use but if your body is depleted in cannabinoids then cannabis oil can help the body neurologically with conditions like MS and Parkinsons.

'It can also help the auto-immune system and it's amazing for helping with pain relief, especially in conditions such as arthritis.

'It's good for lots of different symptoms so I believe it could help lots of people.

'It makes me very upset because it is could be so simple. But we're fighting 50 years of people believing cannabis is bad.

'We need to talk about it medically not recreationally. We need to raise awareness of it.'A mother's postnatal depression affected her so badly she threatened to kill herself and could not distinguish her dreams from real life.

Amy Potter, 26, had her daughter, Aurora, nine months ago and quickly spiralled into depression so bad she had to be stopped from abandoning her family.

Miss Potter had constant nightmares about the death of her own mother who had died the previous June, and they were so vivid she thought it was happening again.

On four occasions the sociology student, from Stoke-on-Trent, said she packed her bags and prepared to leave before her now-fiance, Mark Peart, 28, convinced her to stay.

After fighting off her depression, Miss Potter now says there should be more mental health support available and sufferers should know 'it's okay to speak out'.

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Amy Potter, mother of nine-month-old Aurora, suffered from postnatal depression so severely she threatened to kill herself and tried to run away from her family on multiple occasions

Miss Potter said: 'About a week after we got home from the hospital with Aurora, I was having really bad nightmares about mum passing away.

'The nightmares were every night. I couldn't separate reality from the horrific dreams. I was visioning my mum dying.'

Miss Potter's mother, Julia, died of cancer in June 2017, aged just 54.

And vivid dreams about what happened led the new mother to have suicidal thoughts and attempt to walk out on her own family.

'My mum was only 54,' Miss Potter said. 'It was vile watching her die and becoming so unhealthy. She went from 11 stone to just six stone.

'She had a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate] which I understood as cancer is a debilitating disease, she was going through chemotherapy and every treatment on offer. It wipes you out.

'I wanted my mum to be here when I had Aurora  she knew I was pregnant. I just felt like I had the weight of the entire world on my shoulders at the time.'

Miss Potter had a traumatic labour with Aurora in January and said she was already beginning to suffer from depressive thoughts just hours later.

She said: 'My labour was like every bone in my body was being broken  the amount of pain was horrible.

'Twenty-four hours after her birth, I got what's known as "the baby blues". It hit me so hard, I was still grieving for my mum.

Miss Potter said the birth of her first child, Aurora (pictured), felt 'like every bone in my body was being broken' and she started to feel depressed just hours afterwards

Miss Potter believes her postnatal depression was worsened because she was still grieving for her mother, Julia (pictured, the pair together), who had died of cancer aged 54 around six months earlier

Aurora is now nine months old and Miss Potter has recovered from her severe depression thanks to support from her partner, Mark Peart, and antidepressant medications

'After everything that had happened with my mum, everything came crashing down so hard.

'I even accused my partner, Mark, of cheating on me because he left me for 12 hours in the hospital.

'When I left the hospital, we were on a bit of a high because we knew we were coming home.

'People coming around all the time and it was so invasive. I wanted my own space.'

And Miss Potter said her nightmare continued at home as she spiralled into depression.

She had suicidal thoughts and attempted to leave her family behind on four separate occasions after the couple's relationship deteriorated at a rapid pace.

She said: 'One time, I went upstairs and packed Aurora's things ready to leave and Mark came and stopped me after realising how bad I was.

'I used to break down, whether I was doing the washing, eating or changing her.

Aurora was born in January and when the family went home, Miss Potter said she felt constant visitors made it harder for her to cope with her deteriorating mental health

Miss Potter and Mr Peart (pictured with their daughter, Aurora) are now engaged to be married after he helped her overcome her depression and convinced her to stay when she tried to run away  the mother-of-one says it's important for depressed people not to feel like they're alone

'One day, he asked me what I was going to do when he was gone, and I replied, "kill myself".

'He stood by me through it all and we're getting married soon.'

Miss Potter initially refused to seek medical treatment for her depression out of fear social services would take her daughter away.

But thanks to the support of Mr Peart, a site manager, and antidepressant medication, she has recovered and wants to reassure parents they are not alone.

She said: 'I was scared social services would take Aurora away  I told them I'd never neglect Aurora, she was always going to be okay.

'People need to know it's okay to speak out. Mental health makes us who we are. More funding should be pumped into the NHS for mental health.'A man who got two ball bearings stuck on his penis after putting them there for sexual pleasure nearly lost his member when it started to rot.

The unnamed 33-year-old had left the rings on the shaft of his penis for two weeks before visiting the hospital with pain and swelling.

After normal treatment failed, doctors resorted to using an industrial stone-cutting saw to hack off the metal rings in what they called a 'desperate measure'.

The medics at UCMS & GTB Hospital in New Delhi, India, described the unfortunate man's penis as 'engorged' and 'tender', and it appeared red raw in photos.

Thanks to their extreme efforts, however, the penis was rescued from getting gangrene and dropping off, and he was able to get erections again within a fortnight.

Doctors said they needed a desperate measure to fix a desperate situation: They used a circular saw designed for cutting marble to hack the steel hoops off the man's penis

The man went to the hospital complaining of progressive pain and swelling in his penis and told doctors the bearings had been there for two weeks.

He slid the ball bearings onto his penis 'for sexual gratification' and could not get them off again because they were so tight.

Pre-gangrene developed because the bearings were 'strangulating the root of [the] penis', the medics wrote, meaning his flesh was starved of blood and about to start dying.

Doctors tried giving the man injections to shrink his penis, using a pressure cuff to squeeze it, and using a small wire medical saw to cut the metal but they all failed.

Needing to act fast to stop gangrene setting in and causing irreparable damage, the doctors opted for a bigger power tool  a spinning circular saw used to cut marble.

In an illustrated article in the journal BMJ Case Reports, they wrote: 'To ensure penile salvage in desperate situations [it may be necessary] to use desperate measures that may be unconventional and are difficult to avoid.'

It took 15 minutes of cutting with the Bosch GDC 120 saw, the blade of which spins at up to 200 times a second, for the doctors to cut away the steel bearings.

During the procedure  which was done under anaesthetic  they had to drip cold water onto the man's penis to stop it being damaged by the heat of the cutting disc.

They successfully removed the metal and the man's swelling went down after a couple of days.

He was kept in hospital for a week before being sent home, and during a check-up after two weeks he said he regularly got erections in the night and in the morning.

The man is now being given counselling.

The doctors added: 'Penile strangulation by steel ball bearings can occur uncommonly secondary to their placement for sexual gratification.

'If left untreated they have the potential to cause penile gangrene, urethral injury and erectile dysfunction.'

And they said if other doctors find themselves in similar positions they should use 'extreme caution'.

'We do not promote the unauthorised use of any equipment,' they added, 'and advocatethe reader to exercise judicious care, extreme caution, follow all necessary procedures, training, credentialing and laws.'Scores more victims of the contaminated blood scandal will die before an inquiry discusses if support payments will rise, angry campaigners claim.

At least 2,500 have already died as a result of being infected with HIV or hepatitis C after being given blood products or transfusions in the 1970s and 1980s.

But Tainted Blood argue 112 more patients will die until officials look at financial support in 2020 and the issue is resolved.

Currently, victims in England, Wales and Northern Ireland can receive between 5,000 and 36,000 a year, depending on their condition.

More than 1,200 patients who had been infected with HIV were forced to sign a contract with government officials promising to drop all legal action (file picture)

However, patients affected by the scandal living in Scotland can get a lump sum of 50,000 and a further 37,000 in yearly support payments.

Tainted Blood has now written to Matt Hancock, the Health and Social Care Secretary, asking him to address the 'unacceptable delay' in dealing with support payments.

The letter, seen by the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme, calls for victims in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to receive a similar amount as those in Scotland.

Andrew Evans, chairman of the group, told the BBC: 'I believe it will be a matter of deep and future shame for this government if it fails to act, and act quickly.'

WHAT IS THE TAINTED BLOOD SCANDAL? The contaminated blood scandal is regarded as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. More than 7,500 patients were infected with HIV and hepatitis after being given contaminated blood by the NHS in the 1970s and 1980s. Victims include patients with the blood clotting disorder haemophilia, mothers who needed blood transfusions following childbirth or patients who required them after major surgery. A shortage of a blood clotting treatment, Factor VIII, meant that much of the blood had been imported from prison inmates in the US who were paid for their donations. Many were drug addicts, alcoholics or prostitutes suffering from serious illnesses, and their blood had not been treated to destroy any viruses before being used in Britain. By the mid-1980s, the blood was being heat-treated to kill viruses, but patients had already been infected. Wholesale screening of blood products only began in 1991. The Daily Mail campaigned for nearly 30 years for justice for the victims before Theresa May announced in July 2017 that there would be a full inquiry into what she called an appalling tragedy. It aims to determine whether members of the Government covered up the scandal as campaigners say senior Department of Health officials knew the blood was contaminated even while it was still being given to patients. The judge chairing the public inquiry, which starts next April and is expected to last two years, warned the scandal could be far more wide-reaching. Sir Brian Langstaff said estimates that up to 25,000 patients were affected may prove right - with thousands potentially still unaware they are infected. Up to 2,800 patients have since died and many others remain very seriously ill. Advertisement

Labour MP Diana Johnson argued there was 'no reason at all' why officials couldn't make a decision now to compensate the victims and 'pay them properly'.

The public inquiry into the scandal began last month and it is being chaired by a former High Court judge, Sir Brian Langstaff.

Over three days' of preliminary hearings, victims and relatives gave emotional accounts of how their ordinary lives had ended after being diagnosed with HIV and hepatitis.

The inquiry - expected to last at least two years - is now gathering evidence in the form of written documents and statements from witnesses.

It will begin hearing from victims at the end of April, followed by doctors and government officials.

Despite the scale of the scandal, none of the government officials, doctors nor drug companies responsible have faced criminal charges.

In France, which used the same blood products, up to 30 people have been prosecuted for charges including negligence and deception, including two who were jailed.

Up to 7,500 patients are now thought to have been infected with diseases after being given blood products or transfusions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Many had the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia and relied on regular injections of a medicine called Factor VIII, made from human blood.

Britain was running low on Factor VIII so imported supplies from the US where they had been donated by prisoners, the homeless and prostitutes for cash.

But they quickly became contaminated with HIV and hepatitis and they were never screened nor heat-treated before being administered.

The Mail yesterday revealed how victims of the scandal were made to sign away their legal rights without knowing they had a second deadly condition.

Up to 1,240 patients who had been infected with HIV were forced to sign a contract with government officials promising to drop all legal action.

Only after they had signed the contract in 1991 were they told that they had also been infected with hepatitis C.

Victims were paid a cash sum of about 24,000 each depending on their age, marital status and whether they had children.

Patients with both HIV and hepatitis C tend to die much more quickly than those with just one of the viruses as they override the immune system.More people die of injuries before even getting to the hospital in the Southern, Appalachian and Western regions of the US because there simply aren't trauma centers for many miles of where their accidents occurred, new research shows.

Trauma is the leading cause of death for Americans under 45, killing 214,000 people a year.

Not all states are prepared equally to treat these injuries however, and poor access is leading to higher overall trauma mortalities in large, under-served swaths of the US, new Brigham and Women's Hospital research reveals.

The new study highlights yet another critical health disparity between wealthier, more urban states and poorer, more rural ones like Wyoming, Mississippi and West Virginia.

Poor access to trauma centers costs 7,600 lives that could have been saved if trauma victims in rural states could get to equipped hospitals faster (red), new research reveals

The primary injuries a person sustains in a car accident or a serious fall or other trauma, even when severe, are often treatable in a hospital setting.

But the window of opportunity to save their life is brief.

Doctors refer to the first 45 minutes after a traumatic injury as the 'golden hour.'

During that period, blood loss has not yet reached a critical mass and adrenaline pumps through the patient's body, protecting their organs from shock and eventual failure.

It's crucial that she or he gets treatment during that window. After the 45th minute, survival rates plummet.

And that's where location becomes key. The furhter from a hospital you sustain an injury the longer it may take to get this treatment.

In the US, an average of eight crucial minutes tick by between a call for help and the arrival of an ambulance.

But that time stretches to 14 minutes - a third of the 'golden hour' - in rural areas.

And 10 percent of patients waited, helpless and dying for 30 minutes, according to a 2017 Reuters report.

Plus, even once an ambulance arrives, it may not be equipped to assess and treat all of a patient's injuries - and the nearest hospital might not be either.

What a patient needs in these dire moments is a trauma center.

As of 2002, there were 1,154 trauma centers - including all both levels - in the 3.8 million square miles of the US.

And according to the latest research, headed by Dr Zain Hashmi of Brigham and Women's, distance makes all the difference.

He and his team analyzed data on 1.95 million trauma deaths of adults in the US between 1996 and 2016.

They compared that information to the number of Level I and Level II trauma centers in the state, and determined how likely it was these patients had access to a trauma center within the golden hour.

Over half of US states had poor access to trauma centers. These included Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Overarchingly, 49 percent of all 1.95 million deaths happened before the patients even reached the hospital, with fewer (42 percent) happening at the hospital.

And they determined that states with the greatest number of pre-hospitalization deaths had the poorest access to trauma centers.

In states with higher percentages of deaths en route to hospitals, just 63.2 percent of patients were estimated to have had access to trauma centers within the golden hour.

By comparison, in the other states, where a lower proportion of deaths happened before hospitalization, 90.2 percent of patients could be swiftly transported to hospitals.

The researchers took this to mean that many deaths might be preventable.

In fact, about 7,600 deaths that happened before reaching trauma center could be avoided each year, according to their calculations.

'We know faster transportation time to a trauma center saves lives, but we didn't know about the regional differences in trauma center access,' said Dr Hashmi.

Overall, hospitals have gotten far better at saving lives after traumatic injuries since 1970, he said, but 'there has been little emphasis at the national level on improving the prehospital death rate due to trauma.'

This suggests that the only way to reach the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine's lofty ambition of reaching zero preventable deaths after injury is to make it a priority to ensure that as many Americans as possible can get the care they need within that crucial hour.A tailor-made experimental drug has appeared to reverse the symptoms in a seven-year-old girl with a rare and fatal inherited disease.

Mila Makovec, from Boulder, Colorado, was born happy and healthy and was hitting every developmental milestone until she started stuttering around age three.

She would hold books a little too close to her face, was walking with difficulty and lost the ability to see at age five.

Doctors diagnosed her in December 2016 with Batten disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that robs sufferers of their speech and mobility, and kills them before they are teenagers.

But her parents, Julia Vitarello and Alek Makovec, now have hope because thanks to a drug that has been tailor-made for Mila's genetic mutation, her symptoms appear to be reversing.

A tailor-made experimental drug has appeared to reverse the symptoms in Mila Makovec, from Boulder, Colorado, who has a rare, inherited neurodegenerative disorder called Batten disease. Pictured, left to right: Dr Timothy Yu, Mila, and Mila's mother Julia Vitarello

Mila, seven (left and right), was born healthy and happy and hit all her developmental milestones. But then she developed a stutter, began having trouble walking and became blind

Scientists say the development is exciting because while people with mutations of the disease have seen their symptoms slow down with drug treatments, none have seen this kind of reversal.

'It's very exciting,' gene therapy researcher Steven Gray, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, told the magazine Science.

'There couldn't be a stronger example of how personalized medicine might work in practice.'

Julia and Alek say that their daughter was a boisterous, cheerful child growing up - much like her younger brother Azlan, four.

'She had a huge vocabulary for her age. She was extremely active and talkative. She would sing all the words to every song,' Alek told The Denver Post last year.

'She would hike for hours on end, two-and-a-half or three hours. She climbed walls and fences. She was always up for anything. She liked trying new things.'

When she was around three years old, Mila started tripping over words when she spoke and one foot turned inward.

WHAT IS BATTEN DISEASE? Batten disease, also known as Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses, is a rare genetically-inherited disease. It is caused by waste buildup in the cells which creates neurodegnerative effects including: Blindness

Seizures

Personality changes

Dementia

Loss of motor skills and the ability to walk, talk and communicate Because it is a rare disease, it is often difficult to diagnosed and untested at birth. Ways to diagnose: Blood or urine tests

Skin or tissue sampling

DNA analysis

Electrical studies of the eyes There are 14,000 children worldwide that are diagnosed with the disorder. There is currently no known cure or treatment available for Batten disease. Advertisement

At four, she started to pull books in close to her face when she reading them.

At five, Mila started having trouble walking and would fall backwards.

Julia and Alek took Mila to neurologists, behavior specialists, ophthalmologists, but no one could provide them with a diagnosis.

'At least one doctor said: 'Relax, your daughter's fine',' Julia recalled.

When Mila lost her sight, her parents decided to go to Children's Hospital Colorado for answers. It was there that she was diagnosed with Batten disease.

Batten disease, also known as Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses, is a rare genetically-inherited disease.

The disorder is caused by waste buildup in the cells, which creates neurodegenerative effects including blindness, seizures, personality changes and difficulties with motor skills.

More severe symptoms as the disease progresses lead to a loss of mobility, inability to swallow, and eventually death.

Worldwide, approximately 14,000 children are diagnosed with Batten disease. Getting the diagnosis in the first place can be difficult as many physicians have never heard of it.

There is currently no known cure and no clinically approved treatments.

To cause Batten disease, a child needs two copies of a gene called, CLN7 - one from each parent - to be mutated.

CLN7 codes for a protein that helps transfer molecules across the membrane of lysosomes, organelles involved in digestion and waste removal.

To cause Batten disease, a child needs two copies of a gene called, CLN7 - one from each parent - to be mutated. Mila had one from her father, but not her mother. Pictured: Mila and her mother before her diagnosis

Dr Timothy Yu, a neurologist and neurogeneticist at Boston Children's Hospital, discovered the mutation Mila had from her mother had the right coding, but was being hidden, which caused her to have Batten. Pictured: Mila with her parents, Julia and Alek, and her brother Azlan

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But Mila's doctors at Children's Hospital discovered that only one copy, the one from her father, was defective, according to the magazine Science.

Julia and Alek launched Mila's Miracle Foundation to Stop Batten to raise awareness of the disease and funds for a clinical trial that might use gene therapy to slow down the advances of the disorder.

In January 2017, Julia wrote a post on Facebook asking for the help of doctors to look at Mila's entire genome to confirm that she had the CLN7 form of Batten, and quickly.

A physician at a hospital in Boston saw the post and put Julia in touch with Dr Timothy Yu, a neurologist and neurogeneticist at Boston Children's Hospital.

He told Science he discovered the mutation Mila inherited from her mother was called a retrotransposon, which is when a 2,000-letter stretch of DNA code has been moved around.

This extra DNA caused the RNA, which carries instructions from DNA to parts of the body that make proteins, to make a useless protein.

What this meant was Mila had the right coding to make the right proteins but it was being concealed by the retrotransposon.

That's when Dr Yu decided to try a new drug called antisense oligonucleotide that had recently been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Dr Yu put Mila (left and right) on a new drug new drug called antisense oligonucleotide. It binds to faulty RNA and hides it, which dupes cells into producing the right proteins

Mila (pictured) still cannot speak and needs help walking, but her seizures have lessened, she has some leg and torso strength and can swallow better

It binds to faulty RNA and hides it, which dupes cells into producing the right proteins.

In August 2017, he found a drug manufacturer that could make the drug for Mila's version of the mutation and in January 2018, with approval from the FDA, they began treatment.

Dr Yu told Science that there is no evidence so far that the drug is making the right proteins, but her Batten symptoms have lessened.

He says her seizures, which used to last 20 to 30 times a day for around two minutes, are now down to between five and 12 times a day for just a few seconds.

Mila has also regained some leg and torso strength and can swallow better, even though she still needs help walking and cannot speak.

Julia told Science that the small changes 'are huge for me' and that it gives her hope that her daughter 'might actually have a second chance at life'.A quarter of students found the 2016 so traumatic they now report symptoms of PTSD, according to a new study.

Researchers surveyed Arizona State University students around the time of President Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017, and some had stress scores on par with that of school shooting witnesses' seven-month follow-ups.

Twenty-five percent of the 769 students, who were an even mix of genders and races and socioeconomic backgrounds, reported 'clinically significant' levels of stress.

The most severe cases were seen among women, black, and non-white Hispanic students, who were 45 percent more likely to feel distressed by the 2016 run between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Lead researcher Melissa Hagan, an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, believes the 'divisive tone' about race, identity, and what makes a valuable American 'really heightened stress for a lot of people'.

Researchers gave Arizona State university students a psychological assessment around the time of President Trump's inauguration, a couple of months after he won the election over Hillary Clinton. The researchers found some had stress scores on par with that of school shooting witnesses' seven-month follow-ups

In January and February 2017, psychology students at Arizona State were given questions based on the Impact of Event Scale, which is used to assess distress in trauma victims.

Most (56.4 percent) of the students, who live in a state that voted for Trump, said they were not happy with the result - 20 percent somewhat dissatisfied, and 38 percent completely dissatisfied.

Meanwhile, 18.5 percent of the students said they were completely satisfied with the result, and 25 percent were somewhat satisfied.

In terms of how the election impacted their lives, 65 percent said there was no impact. Ten percent said they saw a positive impact.

But a quarter were so crestfallen their symptoms would be deemed a medical condition, severe enough to interfere with their work, social activities, and personal relationships.

White people were less affected than black and non-white Hispanic students. Women were 45 percent more likely to be distressed than their male peers. Non-Christians were far more distressed than Christians, the study found.

The election was dramatic, controversial, riddled with an FBI investigation, Russian meddling, the 'grab em by the p***y' tape, and an unexpected result.

Polls had Clinton winning with a probability of somewhere between 70 and 99 percent, according to Pew Research. On the night, outsider Trump took key states Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as the map went red.

The election also came amid soaring rates of stress and anxiety among young people, the generation who have grown up with social media.

Most of the students in the study said they consumed their election coverage via social media, which psychologists and pediatricians warn is usually the driving factor for millennial anxiety as it fuels extremist, angry pockets among like-minded groups.

Dr Hagan, whose study is published today in the Journal of American College Health, says that the social media factor cannot be ignored.

She also believes the shock factor - Donald Trump's win despite predictions of a Clinton sweep - took many Democrat voters by surprise.

She hopes the paper will shed light on the fact that, for some people, the election did 'constitute a traumatic experience' that may be interfering with their work and lives.

Dr Hagan conducted the study with Michael Sladek, PhD, of UCSF's psychiatry department, and University of Arizona psychologists Linda Luecken, PhD, and Leah Doane, PhD.The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is poised to approve a new opioid that is up to 1,000 times more powerful than morphine.

Though its advisory panel has given the agency the green light, many doctors are outraged and one group has published a letter - penned by the advisory committee's own chairman, who did not take part in the vote - urging the FDA to stop the approval process short.

Sufentanil, the drug in question, is currently used in an injectable form to treat patients with severe injuries in hospitals.

But now the FDA is on the verge of approve a single-dose dissolvable tablet form that experts warn could easily fall into the hands of the black market to become the next OxyContin - fueling yet another wave of the ongoing opioid epidemic.

The injectable opioid drug sufentanil is between 500 and 1,000 times stronger than morphine and now the FDA is poised to approve a tablet version - even as its advisory committee chair warns the tablet will only lead to more addictions, black market sales and overdose deaths

Opioid overdoses killed 72,000 people in 2017, shattering the previous year's record death toll.

Many states and individuals have sued Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the maker of OxyContin, after experts widely declared the advent of its blockbuster prescription opioid the birthplace of the opioid epidemic.

Now, regulators and advocacy groups are facing off, debating whether sufentanil could be the catalyst for history to repeat itself.

Sufentanil is currently given to hospital patients intravenously. It is typically used with anesthesia during surgery, during childbirth and to manage pain in severely injured hospital patients.

It is five-to-ten-times more powerful than fentanyl (which is itself far stronger than morphine, OxyContin and heroin), and doctors often use it to treat post-op pain in patients who have a high tolerance for (and often long term addiction to) opioids.

Anesthesiologists have been known to abuse injections of sufentanil, but it has not been the subject of rampant abuse, possibly in part because its form and uses make it less accessible.

But on October 12, the FDA's Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee voted 10-3 in favor of approving a tablet version of the drug that would dissolve under the tongue.

The drug's maker, AcelRx, claims the drug does not have the long-lasting metabolites that lend other opioids their euphoric and addictive qualities.

A study on the misuse of opioids and other drugs among anesthesiology residents, published in 2008, on the other hand, suggests that the 'metabolism of sufentanil is similar to that of fentanyl, and it is possible to detect the metabolite for a period of time that is longer than the interval for detection of the parent compound.'

The plan is for the tablet form of the drug to be given only in single doses and only within hospital walls or on the battlefield.

AcelRx chief medical officer Pamela Palmer told Buzzfeed, 'the Defense Department asked us for this drug' because Sufentanil reportedly is faster acting and better for amputees with poor blood circulation.

But opponents of the tablet, to be sold as Dsuvia, say that the tablet form is ripe for overdoses and diversion to the black market.

'Because the drug is used in a sublingual' - or under the tongue - 'form, it will be rapidly absorbed by the vasulature under the tongue,' Dr Raeford Brown, a University of Kentucky anesthesiologist, author of the Public Citizen letter and chair of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia, and Addiction Drug Products told Daily Mail Online.

HOW AMERICA GOT HOOKED ON OPIOID DRUGS Prescription opioids and illicit drugs have become incredibly pervasive throughout the US, and things are only getting worse. In the early 2000s, the FDA and CDC started to notice a steady increase in cases of opioid addiction and overdose. In 2013, they issued guidelines to curb addiction. However, that same year - now regarded as the year the epidemic took hold - a CDC report revealed an unprecedented surge in rates of opioid addiction. Overdose deaths are now the leading cause of death among young Americans - killing more in a year than were ever killed annually by HIV, gun violence or car crashes. Preliminary CDC data, published by the New York Times, shows that US drug overdose deaths surged 19 percent to at least 59,000 in 2016. This is up from 52,404 in 2015, and double the death rate from a decade ago. It means that for the first time drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years old. The data lays bare the bleak state of America's opioid addiction crisis fueled by deadly manufactured drugs like fentanyl. Advertisement

'Patients don't always do the right thing with a drug.'

Dr Brown worries that patients will chew the tablet and end up absorbing even more of the 30mg tablet even faster, or hide the drug for later use or to give someone else.

Plus, despite AcelRx's promises about the strict usage of the drug, 'just because a company says, "we're only going to allow the drug to be used in way X" doesn't mean it's true,' said Dr Brown.

'I learned that the hard way.'

Already, injectable fentanyl has poured out of the medical supply chain and onto the streets, and Dr Brown sees no reason to believe the same won't happen to tablet sufentanil (or isn't already).

'[The FDA] has put together a program that hasn't thus far found any reliable risk mitigation strategy that is effective in preventing misuse and diversion of these agents,' said Dr Brown.

Plus, he says that AcelRx has made no 'substantive' changes to Disuvia's formulation since the FDA's advisory committee turned away the company's previous approval application last year.

But when the committee voted this year, on October 12, Disuvia passed muster handily.

Dr Brown, who chairs the committee, was not present for that vote. He was already scheduled to speak at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists at that time. He estimates that about 10 other committee members were also attending the conference at the time of the vote.

Granted, the committee's vote is just a vote of confidence. The FDA can take its advice or ignore it as the agency sees fit.

In response to Daily Mail Online's request for comment, an FDA spokesperson said: 'The FDA's advisory committees provide independent, expert advice to the agency on a range of complex scientific, technical, and policy issues.

'They are a valuable resource and make an important contribution to the agencys decision-making processes. Although advisory committees provide recommendations to the agency, the FDA makes the final decisions.'

The agency has not made its decision on sufentanil yet, and Dr Brown has a stark warning for its officials.

'We are having a continuing problem in the US with fentanyl, and there is no indication I can see that we wouldn't have significant diversion of this agent, too.

'These are versions of fentanyl and sufentanil that cause death and I think it's incumbent upon the FDA to consider the public health consequences of allowing these potent opioids to be marketed.'A trip to Japan with my new boyfriend was a dream come true but, as the departure date drew near, I felt only fear.

It wasnt the thought of flying, or of getting around in a country where I didnt speak the language. What really worried me was how I would cope with the agony that sitting down for the long flight was bound to cause.

For me, at that time, spending any longer than an hour or so sitting would kick-start a burning sensation in my seat area that would grow in intensity until it felt akin to being cut by shards of glass.

The problem began spontaneously at the start of 2010 and quickly worsened over the ensuing weeks and months. By the time of my Japan trip in September that year, despite repeated visits to the doctor, I was still no clearer what was wrong with me.

Sufferer: Ruby Deevoy, 29, from Cheltenham, endured searing pain for years before diagnosis

Sure enough, the flight was manageable only with the help of painkillers and a few glasses of wine. Yet it wasnt only sitting that hurt  just standing would occasionally provoke the pain, as could sex.

It would take five years of to-ing and fro-ing to my GP surgery before I would finally get a name for my condition: vulvodynia  an unexplained, excruciating chronic pain condition of the vulva.

It is thought to be caused by inflammation of the nerves as a result of any number of triggers such as childbirth, the menopause or chronic thrush.

Few people have heard of it, yet it is quite common, affecting an estimated one in seven  more than eight million women  at some point in their lives.

About 16 per cent of women will experience it, says Dr Vivek Nama, a consultant gynaecologist and oncologist at Croydon University Hospital, yet many women hesitate to seek advice and practitioners are reluctant to make a diagnosis due to lack of expertise and effective treatment. Too many women are suffering in silence.

The condition can affect women of all ages. I had just turned 21 when it hit me and Dr Nama says it is most common in women of reproductive age.

However, I suspect many postmenopausal women have it but accept it mistakenly as a normal change of menopause, adds Dr Nama, who also works at The Womens Health Clinic in London.

Did you know? Few people have heard of it, yet it is quite common, affecting an estimated one in seven  more than eight million women  at some point in their lives

The main symptom is an intense burning sensation, which in some women can extend through the buttocks, thighs and upper legs.

Dr Nama says patients often describe their pain as like acid being poured on the skin or sitting on a crown of thorns. For some it occurs spontaneously, while for others it tends to worsen if pressure is applied to the area, for example when sitting down.

The pain may come and go and for some will disappear after weeks or months. For others it is more enduring. Some women have accompanying symptoms such as painful periods, irritable bowel syndrome or involuntary contraction of the muscles of the vagina.

The discomfort can be life-changing but the condition is hard to diagnose because a physical examination will find nothing wrong.

Most GPs are not very familiar with vulvodynia, says Dr Nama. They may have heard of it but not know how to diagnose it.

It is diagnosed by first excluding other potential causes of the symptoms, such as thrush. Doctors often screen for infections and when everything appears to be normal, they are lost and dont have the confidence to make a diagnosis or refer the patient to a specialist, says Dr Nama. Most vulvodynia patients I see are anxious and its often the delay in diagnosis that leads to depression and relationship issues.

The condition can be diagnosed on the basis of the symptoms and medical history. Another option is the cotton tip test, in which pressure is applied gently around the area to check pain levels.

When my symptoms began, I put the burning feeling down to cystitis or thrush. Time and again I saw my GP, only to be told there was nothing wrong. Yet the pain had begun to affect my daily life. Even tight trousers were uncomfortable.

Difficult: The discomfort can be life-changing but the condition is hard to diagnose because a physical examination will find nothing wrong

The pain often worsens over time, says Dr Nama. Most patients start with discomfort, which progresses until they are unable to lead a normal life. And the effects go beyond the physical. Sufferers can lose confidence in themselves and their relationships, says Clare Marshall, a clinical psychologist and integrative psychotherapist from Northamptonshire Integrated Sexual Health Service.

They may experience a sense of loss of sexual attractiveness and feel they are not normal or a proper woman.

Certainly, the dismissive attitude of doctors  as if I was imagining the pain  left me feeling incredibly depressed. The condition also put a strain on my relationship with my partner, Dominic.

And I might still be in the dark about my condition had I not come across an online forum where women were discussing cases like mine. Finding out that this was not in my head and did have a name gave me the confidence to visit a new GP surgery in Cheltenham after I moved house.

Simply receiving a diagnosis can help ease symptoms for women who have struggled for years, having been told its all in their mind, with failed tests and treatments Dr Vanessa Mackay

The delay in my diagnosis was not unusual. A report published last year by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Womens Health revealed that many women experienced a delay in diagnosis for a variety of gynaecological health conditions, with many saying they felt they were going mad after being continuously told there was nothing wrong with them.

The report included a survey of 2,600 women which found that 40 per cent had to visit their GP ten or more times before being referred to a gynaecologist.

Treatments for vulvodynia include pain medication such as gabapentin or pregabalin, and amitriptyline (an antidepressant also used to treat pain). Physiotherapy can help reduce tension in the vaginal muscles if that is an issue, and talking therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy may be offered.

Severe cases may be referred for surgery called vestibulectomy (to remove areas of tissue) but few women choose this, not least as the pain can re-occur. Another option is laser treatment, thought to help desensitise the nerves  but this is only available privately.

However, many cases respond well to simple measures such as wearing 100 per cent cotton or silk underwear, avoiding scented hygiene products and using a lubricant for sex.

Simply receiving a diagnosis can help ease symptoms for women who have struggled for years, having been told its all in their mind, with failed tests and treatments, says Dr Vanessa Mackay, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

I could not agree more. When my GP finally gave me a diagnosis and referred me to a gynaecologist, I felt almost giddy with relief. I was offered amitriptyline for the pain but chose instead to try acupuncture, which is suggested on some websites for vulvodynia.

My symptoms started to reduce almost immediately. I also think acupuncture has helped to regulate my irregular periods, clear up my acne-prone skin and even helped me have a child (now 19 months old) after five miscarriages. Whether all this was linked to vulvodynia, no one can tell me.

I also found that coming off the contraceptive pill helped reduce my symptoms  and Dr Nama says there can be a link, albeit a weak one.

There may be a thinning, drying and inflammation of the vaginal walls due to lack of oestrogen, he says. The Pill prevents the natural rise and fall of oestrogen.

Seeking sex therapy from Relate in 2015, both alone and with my partner  whom I am still with  also helped immensely.

Now, eight years on since those initial twinges, I still experience discomfort from time to time. But now I know what is wrong with me, I can talk to others in the same boat. No woman should have to suffer in silence or feel ashamed of this condition.

For more information visit: vulvalpainsociety.orgThe new Google Pixel 3 and Google Pixel 3XL are due to hit the shelves at the beginning of next month.

The smartphones are due to be released on 1 November in Britain but have been released already in the US and Australia - and reviews have started flooding in.

Available in pink, white and black, the phones are released just in time to compete with the new iPhone XS and XS plus, which went on sale last month, and the XR coming shortly.

With the new Google Pixel phones soon available, is it really worth the hefty price tag or is it better to buy an older model - that have many of the same features - for less?

The new Google Pixel 3 phones will be released at the beginning of next month for UK users

Competitors such as Apple and Samsung have brought out a number of different phones over the years that are still available to buy from new and are still widely used.

Although technology in the newer models is more advanced, a phone from a couple of years ago still retains many of the same features and styles.

With help from Broadband Choices, This is Money compares prices from the newest Pixel phones to older models to find out where you can nab the best deal.

Best Google Pixel 3 deals

The new Google Pixel 3 and 3XL comes with a minimum of 64GB storage, the same as its predecessors.

The best monthly deal for the Google Pixel 3 phone is with O2 via e2save and costs 18 a month.

However, it does come with a hefty upfront cost of 410, making a total of 842 for the first 24 months.

As a rule of thumb, the more you can pay upfront, the bigger the overall saving on total cost, as the table shows below:

TOP PAY MONTHLY GOOGLE PIXEL 3 DEALS (24 MONTHS) Provider Network Data, mins, texts Upfront cost Monthly cost Total contact cost Free gift e2save O2 1GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 410 18 842 10 off upfront cost with code 'EPICTEN' Mobiles.co.uk Vodafone 4GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 310 23 862 N/A mobilephonesdirect.co.uk EE 9GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 311.99 28 983.99 6 month YouTube Premium subscription e2save O2 15GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 175 34 991 10 off upfront cost with code 'EPICTEN' Mobiles.co.uk Vodafone 16GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 220 32 988 N/A mobilephonesdirect.co.uk EE 20GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 264.99 31 1,008.99 N/A mobilephonesdirect.co.uk O2 50GB, Unlimited, Unlimited - 43 1,032 O2 Priority mobilephonesdirect.co.uk O2 100GB, Unlimited, Unlimited - 49 1,044 132 Cashback by Redemption + 6 month YouTube Premium subscription Source: Broadbandchoices, correct as of 16 October 2018

The next cheapest deal is with Vodafone through mobiles.co.uk at 862 for 24 months. The monthly cost is higher at 23 but is offset by a lower upfront cost of 310.

This deal offers 4GB of data as opposed to O2's 1GB - dependent on how much internet you use, this could be a deal worth considering.

Many of the deals come with a free gift as an added incentive to opt for their network.

For example, EE is offering a six month YouTube Premium subscription, worth 11.99 a month itself.

Best Google Pixel 3XL deals

The best monthly deal for a Google Pixel 3XL is with Vodafone, via e2save, at 23 a month, again with a 410 upfront cost, making a total of 962 for the full 24 months.

Coming with 4GB of data and unlimited texts and calls plus 10 off the upfront cost with a code, the 3XL could be of more interest to big data users than the smaller sized equivalent.

TOP PAY MONTHLY GOOGLE PIXEL 3 XL DEALS (24 MONTHS) Provider Network Data, mins, texts Upfront cost Monthly cost Total contract cost Free gift e2save Vodafone 4GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 410 23 962 10 off upfront cost with code 'EPICTEN' Mobiles.co.uk O2 4GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 350 29 1,046 N/A Mobiles.co.uk Vodafone 16GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 310 32 1,078 N/A mobilephonesdirect.co.uk EE 20GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 376.99 31 1,120 N/A e2save O2 25GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 250 37 1,138 10 off upfront cost with code 'EPICTEN' mobilephonesdirect.co.uk EE 30GB, Unlimited, Unlimited 352.99 33 1,144.99 N/A mobilephonesdirect.co.uk O2 50GB, Unlimited, Unlimited - 43 1,032 O2 Priority mobilephonesdirect.co.uk O2 10GB, Unlimited, Unlimited - 60 1,200 O2 Priority + 240 Cashback by Redemption Source: Broadbandchoices, correct as of 16 October 2018

The second cheapest option is almost 100 more over the course of two years.

The provider is O2, through mobiles.co.uk, at 1,046 for 24 months, again with 4GB of data and unlimited calls and texts.

The upfront cost is less than Vodafone's at 350 but the monthly cost rises to 29.

Prices go all the way up to a whopping 1,200 with O2, via mobilephonesdirect.co.uk, with a 60 monthly cost and 10GB of data with unlimited texts and calls, but no up front cost.

What about the original Pixel?

The first Pixel phones, Pixel and the XL, were released in October 2016 and both have many of the technological features that are attracting new audiences to the 3.

These models come in either 32GB or 128GB.

Bizarrely, the best deal for a Google Pixel XL is 18 a month with a 429.99 upfront cost, totalling 861.99 for a 24 month contract, which is currently more expensive than the 3 model - and it is not clear why.

This deal is with O2, through www.mobiles.co.uk and comes with 1GB of data, unlimited minutes and texts.

While this is not the cheapest deal, it is still a popular phone and rated highly by experts.

Pixel 3: It is already available in Australia and the US - below is a review from Associated Press

Is the Pixel 3 any good?

Google's new Pixel 3 phone merely plays catch-up with Apple and Samsung on hardware, according to a review on Associated Press.

It goes on to add that it showcases Google's advances in software, particularly in artificial intelligence.

Google seeks to help you manage daily life, from screening unwanted phone calls to predicting what you'll type.

The software underscores how Google is tapping its strengths in personalisation - and perhaps making money in the process, AP says.

As impressive as Google's ambitions are, though, artificial intelligence is still new at the job of saving us from meaningless tasks.

Personalisation is front and center with the Pixel 3. It's for those already comfortable with trading privacy for convenience, the review concludes.

Older smartphone options...

If a Pixel phone is not on your wishlist, there are a number of popular smartphones that are a couple of years old but still good kit - and available to buy upfront or on contract from most phone stores and websites.

However, some come with varying storage so, in order to make a fair comparison, we looked at the current prices for the older phone models from 2016, all with 32GB of storage.

One option is the Samsung Galaxy S7, which was released in March 2016 and was one of the company's top selling models.

Whilst this version is only available with 32GB storage, it does have a memory card slot for a SanDisk card which would expand the phone's memory.

Popular: The iPhone 7 was launched in 2016 but is still widely used worldwide today

The cheapest option for this phone is 15 a month with a relatively small 143.99 upfront cost.

This is with EE via www.buymobiles.net.

Altogether, the price for a 24 month contract is 503.99 and that comes with 1GB of 4G data, unlimited minutes and texts.

This is hundreds of pounds cheaper than the Google Pixel 3's cheapest deal at 842.

A further alternative is Apple's iPhone 7, which was released in September 2016.

There is no 64GB option for the iPhone 7  either 32GB or 128GB or the much bigger 256GB.

From Carphone Warehouse, it is still possible to get an iPhone 7 for just 16 a month.

However, there is a 409 upfront cost, bringing the total to 793 in total, which is still cheaper than the new Google Pixel 3 at 842, but not by much.

Plus, it only comes with 500MB of data, 500 minutes and unlimited texts, which will be quickly swallowed up, even with moderate use.

Alternatively, if you are determined to get the newest phone, it is possible in many stores to trade in your old phone to get money off the newest model.

New phone vs old phone

If you are looking for the newest gadget, then the Google Pixel 3 or 3XL - or latest iPhone launches - will likely be your option and you'll do whatever it takes to get it.

After doing some shopping around, it is clear to see that whilst the Pixel's may be expensive, alternative smartphones from a couple of years ago aren't always much cheaper.

However, if you are worried about saving as much as possible, an older smartphone will still have all the apps, a decent camera and plenty of storage space and so could work best for you.

Cheaper and still reliable, an Apple iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy 7 both have great features that many people still opt for over the latest model.Ann Summers tycoon Jacqueline Gold

Saucy Ann Summers tycoon Jacqueline Gold, creator of the 'Rampant Rabbit', is this Sunday's Desert Island Discs castaway. Will the luxury item she chooses be suitable for the morning airwaves? All I know is Ms Gold, 58, is a canny broad who rarely lets a promotional opportunity go begging.

Nationwide boss Joe Garner claims he is not motivated by money. He opines: 'Money as an incentive narrows focus.' Quite so. Yet Joe, 48  not one of finance's swashbucklers  still negotiated a 2.3 million pay package last year, which many regard as OTT for a modest mutual. His 217,000 worth of perks is more than some FTSE 100 banking chiefs get.

Were obituaries of billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died last week aged 65, portraying him as a modest and mild-mannered sort of fellow, entirely on the money? Former Barclays director Baroness Wheatcroft recalls an Australian nanny who left her employ to work on Allen's yacht Meduse, and was instructed to scrub the decks with a toothbrush.

France's President Macron has suspended French dignitaries from visiting Saudi Arabia following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but the countries remain hugger-mugger business-wise. The Saudi-French business council held its 40th session in Paris last week, where plans were announced for France to become the Kingdom's biggest investor. The council is chaired by Dr Mohammed Bin Laden, father of the late global terror mastermind, and erstwhile habitue of London's clubland, Osama. Look out!

The self-aggrandising World Economic Forum is unhappy about descriptions of this week's controversial investment conference in Riyadh as 'Davos in the Desert'. WEF has issued a statement saying use of the term 'Davos' for any event other than its own annual meeting in the Swiss town is confusing, and will use 'all means' to protect it. I fear this may be one of those absurd press releases which should never have been allowed to leave the printer.

Question of the day came from CNN's Van Jones, who asked Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's senior adviser (and son-in-law): 'So, how did you get this job?'Ivan Glasenberg, the boss of Glencore

Glencore's boss will step down from the top job in three to five years.

Ivan Glasenberg has said he will quit the Switzerland-headquartered commodities trader and miner by 2023 and has begun training a number of people as potential successors.

The 61-year-old, who was born in South Africa and is also a champion race-walker, joined Glencore in 1984 and was named chief executive in 2002.

He is the second biggest shareholder in London-listed Glencore, holding 8.56 per cent.

A spokesman for Glencore declined to comment.Prosecutors are seeking fresh fraud charges against Barclays over a controversial fundraising in Qatar

Prosecutors are seeking fresh fraud charges against Barclays over a controversial fundraising in Qatar.

The lender has been accused of breaking the law over a 2.3 billion rescue by the Qataris in 2008, which allowed it to avoid a Government bailout during the financial crisis.

Barclays was previously due to go on trial in January, but the charges were dismissed by the High Court.

But the Serious Fraud Office is seeking to reinstate them and is making its case at the High Court this week. Four former bosses  including ex-chief executive John Varley  are already due to go on trial.The number of buyers paying in cash for property has slumped to the lowest proportion seen in more than a decade, analysis shows.

A 29.6 per cent share of home purchases in England and Wales in the first half of 2018 were made with cash rather than a mortgage, estate agent Hamptons International found.

It was the lowest percentage since its research  using Countrywide and Land Registry data - started in the first half of 2007 and compares to a peak of almost 38 per cent in 2008.

But the proportion of sales made to cash buyers changes dramatically by area, with West Somerset seeing 61 per cent of homes bought mortgage-free - more than double the national average.

West Somerset: The area - which included Minehead, pictured - has the most property cash buyers in England and Wales

Cash buyers in West Somerset need to match the average house price of 223,760 in the area, but their pockets need to be nowhere near as deep as those purchasing in another of the top ten hotspots, London's Kensington & Chelsea, where the average property price is 1.36million.

Home purchases with cash peaked in the second half of 2008, when 37.8 per cent of homes were bought without a mortgage.

The downward trend in the proportion of homes bought with cash reflects a drop-off in investor and developer purchases, Hamptons said.

Investors now account for 24 per cent house purchases in cash, down from 32 per cent in the first half of 2007.

Developers account for two per cent of homes bought with cash, a fall from six per cent in the first half of 2007.

Across England and Wales, the South West of England has the highest proportion of cash buyers, at 37 per cent in the first half of 2018, while London has the lowest at 21 per cent, the research found.

Regional cash sales Here are the percentages of house sales where homes were bought with cash in the first half of 2018 and the average house purchase price by cash buyers, according to Hamptons International: - South West, 37%, 249,220 - Wales, 35%, 150,420 - North East, 33%, 116,860 - North West, 32%, 145,830 - Yorkshire and the Humber, 31%, 152,240 - Scotland, 31%, 136,120 - East Midlands, 29%, 180,500 - South East, 28%, 307,480 - East of England, 28%, 273,670 - West Midlands, 26%, 166,160 - London, 21%, 503,560 Cash buyer hotspots Here are the top 20 cash buyer hotspots, with the percentage of house sales made to cash buyers in the first half of 2018 followed by the average cash buyer house purchase price: 1. West Somerset, 61%, 223,760 2. East Lindsey, 57%, 169,310 3. West Dorset, 56%, 285,360 4. North Norfolk, 55%, 254,100 =5. Kensington and Chelsea, 54%, 1,353,740 =5. Isle of Wight, 54%, 213,550 =7. Scarborough, 53%, 157,670 =7. East Devon, 53%, 279,060 =7. Torridge, 53%, 237,270 =10. Argyll and Bute, 52%, 138,850 =10. West Devon, 52%, 245,240

This map shows the percentage of homes being bought regionally with cash

Dipping: According to the data, the first half of 2018 marked the lowest proportion of cash buyers for more than a decade

A sizeable number of cash buyers tend to be older homeowners moving or downsizing in retirement, or when approaching it.

This is reflected in the fact that West Somerset was identified as the biggest cash buyer hotspot, with more than three-fifths of sales in cash in the first half of 2018.

But in central London, Kensington and Chelsea was also in the top ten - with 54 per cent of sales in cash in the first half of 2018 with a typical price tag of 1.3million. This reflects the wealthy nature of buyers there and the sizeable number of overseas purchasers.

Aneisha Beveridge, head of research, Hamptons International, said: 'Cash buyers have historically tended to be older generations downsizing by cashing in on equity gained from past house price growth.

'But recent slower price growth and higher stamp duty bills on new purchases have contributed to fewer downsizers, and as a result, fewer cash buyers.

'But not all cash buyers are older generations looking to downsize.

'Shifting investor sentiment has also contributed to the fall in cash buyers. Increased taxation for landlords and the prospect of weaker future gains has meant that investors accounted for just one in four cash buyers in (the first half of) 2018, down from one in three in (the first half of) 2007.'House sales in central London have dived to a record low as buyers are put off by sky-high stamp duty.

Just 70 properties are being sold each week in the heart of the capital, according to analysis by investment firm London Central Portfolio  down 16.8 per cent on a year earlier.

There are now fewer homes selling than at the height of the financial crisis in 2009.

House sales in central London have dived to a record low as buyers are put off by sky-high stamp duty

Experts blamed steep hikes to stamp duty for putting off buyers, who are unwilling to fork out hundreds of thousands of pounds in tax.

It is feared the slowdown will cause problems for the whole market.

If families at the top of the ladder are unable to move because of the tax, then people further down cannot climb up a rung.

Ultimately it means there are fewer homes on the market for first-time buyers.

Naomi Heaton, chief executive of LCP, said a rumoured tax on foreign property owners could make the problem even worse.

'This does not seem to be the right message for the Government to be sending to the outside world with Brexit looming,' she said.

Defying Brexit fears Average property prices have risen by 9 per cent since the Brexit vote  defying gloomy forecasts during the Project Fear campaign. The Treasury warned before the European Union referendum that prices would be 18 per cent lower after a vote to Leave. Dubbed the Dossier Of Doom, Treasury officials also claimed that demand for housing would drop because lending costs would rise. But a study by estate agent Haart found that, instead, average prices are up 9pc. Paul Smith, chief executive of Haart, said: 'EU or no EU, the need to move home will always be there.'

'It flies in the face of the 'open for business' slogan the Prime Minister previously used at the G20 summit in 2016.'

The average property price in Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea stands at 1.9 million, up 4.9 per cent on a year earlier. But there were just 3,606 houses sold in the 12 months to September 30, or 70 a week. This is lower than the depths plumbed in 2009, when 3,704 properties were sold.

The figure of 70 a week is down 45 per cent on 2014 when the market was booming.

But the then-chancellor George Osborne hiked stamp duty on expensive properties, pushing up the cost for anyone buying a house worth more than 937,500.

While those buying a 275,000 house saw their stamp duty fall by 4,500 to 3,750, the levy on a 1.5 million property jumped by 18,750 to 93,750.Two more energy suppliers, Neon Reef and Social Energy Supply, collapsed yesterday taking the total number of failed providers since September to 24. It means 2million domestic customers have lost their supplier in just three months. As a result, they, and millions more, face far higher prices with bills likely to increase by hundreds of pounds. It comes as inflation reached its highest level in nearly a decade with the CPI rate spiking to 4.2 per cent in October as a result of supply chain chaos, labour shortages and surges in energy costs. It's bad news for consumers as energy costs show no sign of slowing down with UK gas prices jumping 17 per cent today, with households being warned to brace for soaring bills. There has been extra concern after a German energy regulator suspended approval for a pipeline that would carry Russian gas directly across the Baltic to Germany and wider Europe. Wholesale prices subsequently shot up across Europe amid worries Russia will not increase deliveries of gas via alternative routes if the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is blocked.More small and medium sized enterprises will be able to settle legal disputes for free through the Financial Ombudsman Service after the city watchdog approved plans to extend its remit.

Under plans to raise qualifying thresholds, SMEs with an annual turnover below 6.5million, fewer than 50 employees, or an annual balance sheet below 5million, will be able to refer unresolved disputes with financial services firms to the Ombudsman service.

The changes to Ombudsman services eligibility criteria is set to come into force on 1 April 2019.

The city watchdog has come under increasing pressure to implement a redress service for SMEs that can't afford to take their grievances to court because of legal fees

At present, such firms can only pursue redress when firms have treated them poorly through the courts, but hefty legal fees makes it uneconomical for many to do so.

The Financial Conduct Authority estimates that an additional 210,000 UK SMEs will be able to complain to the ombudsman under the new rules.

Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the FCA said: 'We recognise it is vitally important for SMEs to have a mechanism to resolve disputes and we are clear the Financial Ombudsman Service is the right route for this.

'The changes we are making are as far as we think we should go within our powers, but they will provide access to the ombudsman service for a significant number of smaller businesses.'

The new rules will also introduce broadly equivalent eligibility criteria for charities and trusts.

Why has this happened?

Noel Edmonds is suing Lloyds Banking group over a scam involving staff at an HBOS office in Reading 10 years ago

The World Bank estimates that taking a dispute to court might cost an SME in the UK up to 44 per cent of its claim.

As a result, the City watchdog has come under increasing pressure to implement a redress service for larger SMEs that can't afford to take their grievances to court because of legal fees.

In addition, the change comes after a campaign by our sister publication the Mail on Sunday's Justice For Our Firms calling for a tribunal and an Ombudsman for small firms.

This followed a high profile case brought against Lloyds Banking Group by TV star Noel Edmonds over a scam involving staff at an HBoS office in Reading, which he alleges destroyed his business Unique Group a decade ago.

The fraud scandal saw corrupt financiers from HBoS jailed last year for the 245million scam which affected around 60 small business owners.

What is left outside the scope?

Disputes not covered include those involving SMEs above the new eligibility threshold for the ombudsman.

Larger SMEs will have the bargaining power, organisational resources and understanding of financial services to protect their interests in disputes with firms, according to the city watchdog.

In addition, the directors or former directors of a company in insolvency proceedings or that has been dissolved won't be able to refer complaints on its behalf to the ombudsman. This applies to micro-enterprises that are already covered by the FOS.

What can larger SMEs expect to get?

The ombudsman can recommend any amount of redress up to its binding and enforceable award limit of 150,000 (although the FCA has proposed increasing this to 350,000).

Any amounts above this limit are voluntary and it is up to firms whether or not they pay the higher amount.

How to complain to the FOS

The ombudsman says the first step is to give the business youre unhappy with a chance to put things right. They have to give their final response within eight weeks at the most, depending on what youre complaining about.

If youre unhappy with the firm's response, you can contact the ombudsman via phone, post and online. You can find more information here.Michael Stirling, 32, sobbed in court this afternoon as he pleaded guilty to killing Samantha Eastwood, 28, a midwife

The brother-in-law of Samantha Eastwood's ex-fiance has admitted killing the midwife in an 'intense rage' and dumping her body in a ditch after a 'long-standing affair.'

Appearing via video link dressed in a grey t-shirt and sporting a beard, landscape gardener Michael Stirling, 32, from Stoke-on-Trent pleaded guilty at Northampton Crown Court this afternoon.

Stirling, who is married to the sister of Miss Eastwood's ex-fiance John Peake, sobbed in court as he admitted killing the 28-year-old NHS worker.

The court heard how he wrapped his hands around her throat, mouth and nose as she lay on the floor after flying into an 'intense rage' during an argument.

Her body was found wrapped in a duvet cover with masking tape covering her face and eyes near the village of Caverswall, Staffordshire.

Charles Miskin QC, defending, told the court how there had been a background of 'growing tension' from a 'long-standing but not particularly intense affair.'

He said: 'On the afternoon of the killing various things were said and there was an argument.

Samantha Eastwood's body was found wrapped in a duvet cover with masking tape covering her face and eyes near the village of Caverswall, Staffordshire

Samantha Eastwood was found dead after going missing following a night shift. Michael Stirling, the brother in law of her former fiance, is accused of her murder

Floral tributes laid at the scene where Samantha Eastwood's body was found in Caverswall, Stoke on Trent

Samantha Eastwood (pictured left), leaving hospital. It was the last confirmed sighting of the missing midwife

Samantha Eastwood (pictured left to right), ex fiance John Peake, Katie Stirling and murderer Michael Stirling

'He became very angry and while she was on the floor he put his hands around her throat, her mouth and nose. As a result she died.

'During his intense rage he originally intended to cause her really serious bodily harm but after matters escalated he formed and carried out the intention to kill her.

'He panicked and buried her in an area of which he had some knowledge.'

Samantha's body was discovered during a police search of rural land near to a quarry at around midday on August 4.

She had been reported missing eight days earlier on July 27 after she failed to turn up for work at Royal Stoke University Hospital.

Michael Stirling, 32, leaving North Staffordshire Magistrates' Court in Newcastle-under-Lyme on August 6 this year

Samantha's ex-fiance John Peake is pictured arriving at Northampton Crown Court today (left) and her sister Gemma (right)

Her colleagues raised concerns at 7.20pm the same day after she failed to show up for her next shift which was described as being 'completely out of character.'

Mr Miskin added: 'He is absolutely horrified about what happened and he is deeply sorry.

'Not only for himself, but for all those others who are victims of this crime.'

Stirling - whose married wife Katie is the sister of Samantha's ex John Peake, 34 - was charged with murder on August 5.

Samantha Eastwood, pictured with her sister Gemma. Samantha was last seen leaving Royal Stoke University Hospital at around midday on August 4

Samantha and John had been due to marry in June but the wedding was called off in January and she put her wedding dress up for sale on Facebook.

The court also heard Stirling looked up ways of killing himself using antifreeze, carbon monoxide and suffocation two days before the murder.

Jonas Hankin QC, prosecuting, said: 'Stirling researched ways of killing himself on the internet using antifreeze, carbon monoxide and suffocation two days before the killing.

'He has a history of depression.'

The scope of the police search operation to find Samantha Eastwood, who disappeared after a shift at Royal Stoke University Hospital. Her body was later found in Caverswall, Staffordshire

Samantha's tearful family - including her mum Carole and sister Gemma - attended the hearing but did not wish to comment outside.

Speaking on the court steps, Detective Inspector Dan Ison, of Staffordshire Police, said the guilty plea had saved the family from enduring an 'emotional rollercoaster'.

He added: 'I'm very pleased that Michael Stirling has pleaded guilty to this offence.

'It will save a lot of heartache for the family. We would have had to have a trial which would be terrible for the family.

'They would have to hear some horrendous evidence. It has saved an emotional rollercoaster.

'The family are very emotional today, but relieved he has accepted what he has done.'

Previously released CCTV showed Samantha Eastwood driving towards her home in her Volvo (pictured)

Her sister Gemma Eastwood, 26, made a tearful appeal at a press conference when she went missing and said: 'Without her half of me has gone.'

Following the discovery of her body, her family paid tribute and thanked the public for their help in assisting with the search.

They said: 'The family of Samantha would like to ask that their privacy is respected at this terrible time.

'We would like to say 'thank-you' to all the people who followed Samantha's story and tried their best to help.'

Stirling will be sentenced at Stafford Crown Court on December 3 where he is expected to be be jailed for life.

Former Keele University student Miss Eastwood, from Baddeley Green, worked at the Royal Stoke Hospital, where staff described her as a 'much-loved and valued' colleague.

The court heard Michael Stirling, 32, had a history of depression and had looked up ways of killing himself, days prior to the murder

She was seen smiling as she left the hospital on Friday, July 27, after a night shift.

CCTV then showed her driving towards home in her Volvo XC60 SUV and she was not seen again.

Her body was found during a search of a disused salt quarry in remote woodland in Caverswall, near Cheadle, Staffordshire.

Liz Rix, Chief Nurse at University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, said: 'Our thoughts are with Samantha Eastwood's family and friends at this time.

'Sam, who had worked at Royal Stoke for six years, was a much loved midwife.

'We will continue to offer our full support to Sam's colleagues over the coming weeks and months following this news.'Dylan Jarrell (pictured), 20, of Kentucky, was arrested Thursday for allegedly threatening to shoot up multiple schools

Kentucky authorities believe they saved lives by arresting a heavily armed man as he was backing out of his driveway in a car full of guns, ammunition and detailed plans to attack schools before the end of the day.

Dylan Jarrell, who lives close to Anderson County High School in Lawrenceburg, possessed a firearm, more than 200 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof Kevlar vest and a 100-round high-capacity magazine, Kentucky State Police Sgt Josh Lawson said Friday.

Jarrell, 20, later was arrested on charges that included terroristic threatening.

'There's no doubt in my mind that as a result of this investigation, we saved lives,' state police Commissioner Rick Sanders said at a press conference in Frankfort.

'This young man had it in his mind to go to schools and create havoc.'

He added that Jarrell 'was caught backing out of his driveway with the tools he needed to commit this heinous act'.

'He had the tools necessary, the intent necessary. And the only thing that stood between him and evil ... is law enforcement,' Sanders said.

Evidence suggested Jarrell might have been headed to a school when he was stopped, state police said.

Jarrell, who lives close to Anderson County High School in Lawrenceburg, possessed a firearm, more than 200 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof Kevlar vest and a 100-round high-capacity magazine, Kentucky State Police Sgt Josh Lawson said Friday

Jarrell was charged with two counts of second-degree terroristic threatening and one count of harassing communications, state police said

Jarrell was stopped by authorities about 2.30pm Thursday, state police said.

That was shortly before students, parents and teachers would have been clustered outside at the end of the school day.

Anderson County schools end classes between 2.45pm and 3.05pm, local schools Superintendent Sheila Mitchell said.

Officials did not reveal what kind of gun he had.

Mitchell praised the work of law enforcement on Friday, saying in a phone interview: 'We're very blessed. I do think their efforts did avoid a disaster.'

State police, who worked with local and federal authorities, said they considered it a 'credible and imminent threat' against schools in Anderson and neighboring Shelby counties.

As a precautionary measure, Anderson County public school officials canceled classes districtwide Friday.

In Shelby County, the school system suspended activities at Shelby County High School.

Jarrell formerly attended Shelby County schools, and he had taken classes in Anderson County (high school pictured) to obtain his GED diploma, officials in both districts said Friday

The district was on fall break so regular classes were not in session. Both school districts later said after-school activities would go on as planned Friday.

Jarrell formerly attended Shelby County schools, and he had taken classes in Anderson County to obtain his GED diploma, officials in both districts said Friday.

Jarrell had been questioned by the FBI in May over social media threats to a school in Tennessee, Kentucky authorities said.

The investigation by Kentucky authorities began after they received a complaint that the man had sent harassing Facebook messages to a New Jersey woman.

During questioning, an FBI agent asked Jarrell about a past school shooting threat in which Jarrell had been a suspect, according to his arrest citation.

Jarrell admitted to making the threats and consented to a police examination of his phone, the court record said.

Jarrell posted several disturbing photos to Facebook, including this one which reads: 'I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees'

Another Facebook post showed two figures with the sentence: 'Society has failed to acknowledge the monster it has created'

The review found information pertaining to 'threats of bodily harm against multiple persons at a school,' it said.

A search of Jarrell's home turned up evidence 'corroborating the information that a threat was valid and imminent,' the citation said. It did not specify which school was threatened.

The search also turned up 'an Internet search history on how to successfully conduct a school shooting,' Lawson said. Jarrell was the only suspect in the case, he said.

Jarrell was charged with two counts of second-degree terroristic threatening and one count of harassing communications, state police said.

He was being held in the Shelby County Detention Center. Jarrell's arraignment was set for Monday in Anderson County District Court in Lawrenceburg. Court records did not list an attorney for Jarrell.

Sanders praised the teamwork of state, federal and local law enforcement but singled out the work of state police Trooper Josh Satterly, who responded to the initial report of a threat against the woman in New Jersey.Kylie Jenner is being sued by a makeup company which claims the 21-year-old mogul worth $900 million copied a range of eye shadow and used their name, DailyMailTV can exclusively reveal.

The lawsuit, filed today in federal court, alleges Jenner's company Kylie Cosmetics copied the Born To Sparkle glitter eye shadow palette that had been made 10 months earlier by Sheree Cosmetics.

Sheree Cosmetics launched its Born To Sparkle range in October 2017 shortly after the fledgling company from Spanish Fort, Alabama, began.

But in July 2018, Kylie Jenner posted to Instagram Kylie Cosmetics would be releasing a #21 collection of makeup products in August to mark her 21st birthday. This included Born To Sparkle liquid eye shadow.

Kylie Jenner, 21, is seen above wearing glitter liquid eye shadow called Born To Sparkle that is identical to one made by Sheree Cosmetics, a federal lawsuit filed today alleges

Kylie showed off her Born to Sparkle eye shadow (left) on instagram 10 months after Sheree Cosmetics had released its own Born To Sparkle range (right), the lawsuit claims

Jenner told her 117 million Instagram followers on Instagram, said, 'I can't believe I'm about to be 21. I also can't wait to share this collection with you guys. It's definitely the most-personal collection that I've done so I hope you guys love it.'

Kylie Cosmetics released the 'Born To Sparkle' eye shadow on August 6. Court documents show Sheree Cosmetics filed the trademark for 'Born To Sparkle' on August 30.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV, Sheree Cosmetics founder Tiffany Herrmann said she felt taking Kylie to court was the only option to protect her company.

Herrmann said, 'We feel the need to protect our business. We worked really hard for it and we just want to make sure we protect Sheree Cosmetics and our ideas.

Sheree Cosmetics founder Tiffany Herrmann tells DailyMailTV she felt taking Kylie to court was the only option to protect her company based in Spanish Fort, Alabama

'If you are an entrepreneur and you have an idea, and someone else takes that, stand up for yourself. I am a self-made woman and I just want to make sure everyone understands you need to keep an eye on your business and to protect it at all costs. You need to take a stand.

'I started this business from the ground up. It began in my kitchen and then I built a lab to make the products. I just want to protect what I've worked so hard for.

'We've been in business for just over a year. It's been so successful. We've seen our products used at the Oscars, the Emmys and New York Fashion Week. Model Rachel McCord is a huge fan of ours.'

Kylie Cosmetics first marketed Born To Sparkle Glitter Eyes gold makeup in July this year as part of the #21 collection to mark Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday in August

Herrmann fears Kylie's company may have damaged sales for Sheree Cosmetics' Born To Sparkle range.

She said: 'We are a truly self-made business and I wonder who was led to the wrong Born To Sparkle palette when searching for ours.

'As far as an outcome we just want to make sure that Born To Sparkle is protected and that what is right prevails.'

Sheree Cosmetics attorney Anthony M Verna III explained the complaint filed with the US Southern District of New York cites trademark infringement, trade dress infringement and false designation of origin.

Sheree Cosmetics founder Tiffany Herrmann says her product Born To Sparkle Glitter Palette was on sale in October 2017, ten months before Kylie Jenner marketed her eye shadow

Speaking from his office in Rye, New York, Verna said, 'On trademark infringement, we are claiming that because Sheree Cosmetics was first with this particular name, in this particular set of goods and services.

'False designation of origin is a little trickier to explain but basically we are stating Kylie Cosmetics falsely claimed their product came from Sheree Cosmetics. I certainly think we have some evidence of that as well.

'Lastly, for what we call trade dress, because the look and feel of the products are very similar, again confusing consumers.'

Verna said it could not yet be calculated how much his client is looking for in damages from Kylie.

He said, 'There are a lot of profits made off the mark that my client was first with, but it's impossible to know what those might be at this stage.'

In January 2017 there were reports Kylie Jenner settled with makeup artist Vlada Haggerty after Haggerty threatened to sue her for copyright infringement

Verna explained why the case was filed in a New York federal court when Kylie Cosmetics is based in California and Sheree Cosmetics is based in Alabama.

He said: 'Trademark law is normally a federal matter and we are filing it in New York because both companies do business here. There are a lot of cosmetics sold, there are a lot of fashion shows, there is a lot of promotional value for the cosmetic industry in New York.'

Representatives of Kylie Jenner told DailyMailTV they had no comment.

In July this year, Forbes magazine valued Jenner as being worth $900 million and said Kylie Cosmetics, which she founded in 2016, made up the majority of her fortune, valuing it at $800 million.

Forbes predicted she would become richer while still 21, making her the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has held that title since 2008 at age 23.Two of six critically endangered black rhinos have died of unknown causes five months after being flown from South Africa to Chad in a pioneering project to re-introduce the animals, officials said Sunday.

Rhinos in Chad were wiped out by poaching nearly 50 years ago, and the six rhinos were intended to establish a new population in the country after intensive anti-poaching measures were put in place to protect them.

'We can confirm that these two rhinos (a male and a female) were not poached,' the South African environment department and Chad government said in a joint statement. 'However, the exact cause of death is not yet known.'

In July, there was widespread outrage and a bitter row over responsibility when 11 black rhinos in Kenya died after being transferred to a new sanctuary, mainly due to toxic levels of salt in borehole drinking water.

The black rhinos were shipped over to Chad from South Africa as part of an ambitious plan to reintroduce the species there after poachers had wiped them out

The sedated black rhinos were shipped to Zakouma National Park in steel crates accompanied by vets

The rhinos in Chad had been roaming free in Zakouma National Park since late August after a gradual acclimatisation process that saw them first released into small enclosures.

The carcasses of the cow and bull were discovered on October 15.

The surviving four rhinos are being closely monitored, the statement said, adding that a specialist veterinarian had travelled to the park to conduct postmortems.

It said the cause of death would be announced as soon as possible.

In May, the six rhinos were sedated with darts, put in special ventilated steel crates and driven under police escort from Addo park in South Africa to Port Elizabeth airport.

They were then flown to Chad on a 3,000-mile (4,800-kilometre) flight, accompanied by a team of vets checking their stress levels.

The high-profile transfer, which took two years of planning, was hailed as major conservation breakthrough, with translocation organiser African Parks describing it as a 'truly hopeful story'.

All but one of 11 critically endangered black rhinos died soon after they were moved to their new home in Tsavo East National Park in Kenya earlier this year

The only black rhino to survive the relocation to Tsavo National Park in Kenya that killed ten others died after succumbing to injuries from a lion attack

There are fewer than 25,000 rhinos left in the wild in Africa due to a surge in poaching, and only 5,000 of them are black rhinos.

Black rhinos are rated as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Rhinos are targeted to feed a booming demand for rhino horn in China, Vietnam and other Asian countries, where it is believed to have medicinal qualities.

Northern white rhinos disappeared from Chad several decades ago and the last western black rhino was recorded there in 1972, after decades of poaching pushed both subspecies to local extinction.

Earlier this year, 11 tragic rhinos caught up in a bungled relocation to a Kenyan wildlife park all died from salt poisoning and stress.

Disaster struck in August when the critically endangered black rhinos were moved from the Nakuru and Nairobi national parks to Tsavo National Park.

Shortly after their arrival the rhinos began to collapse and die despite the round the clock efforts of veterinarians and the tragedy made headlines round the world.

One surviving rhino was thought to have escaped the fate of the others but two months ago it was attacked by a lion but had been left so weak it could not fight it off.Officer Antwan Toney, 30, was killed on Saturday in Snellville, Georgia

The manhunt continues for a suspected cop-killer whom Georgia state authorities say is 'armed and dangerous' as a raid on a home by SWAT team officers turned up empty.

Two teenage suspects, including one who is still being sought by police, are facing charges in connection with the fatal shooting of Georgia police officer Antwan Toney who was killed while responding to a suspicious vehicle parked near a school, authorities said Sunday.

Authorities said they believe 18-year-old Tafahree Maynard fatally shot Officer Toney on Saturday afternoon in the Snellville area, Gwinnett County Police said in a statement.

Maynard remained at large early Sunday and should be considered armed and dangerous, police said.

He faces charges of aggravated assault and felony murder.

'Tafahree Maynard needs to turn himself in,' Gwinnett County Police Chief Butch Ayers said at a press conference.

Police said Maynard wasn't found in a house in the county that was searched Sunday evening.

Authorities said in a statement that a SWAT team was sent to serve a search warrant for Maynard at the home 'but he was not there and is still at large.'

Isaiah Pretlow (left) was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. Tafahree Maynard (right) is still at large, but has been charged with felony murder and aggravated assault

The statement called on the public for help in finding the suspect.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a firearm at an officer during the pursuit after Toney's fatal shooting, police said earlier.

Toney died at a hospital from his injuries, police said. The 30-year-old from Southern California had been with the Gwinnett County Police Department for nearly three years.

It was his first police job.

Police flooded the area near a middle school after a police officer was shot

'The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community,' Ayers said.

Toney and other officers responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle near a school, police said.

When the officers approached, someone in the vehicle opened fire and Toney was hit.

Then the vehicle sped off.

According to police, Pretlow drove the vehicle from the scene following the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants.

An officer who was searching the area later encountered Pretlow about 3pm.

Toney (left and right) had been on the Gwinnett Police for three years. It was his first job as a cop - he had previously worked as a security guard and grew up in California

Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots.

Pretlow was not hit and fled into a wooded area.

He was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals about 11:30pm.

The shooting happened near Shiloh Middle School, about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta.Advertisement

Dozens of Jane Austen enthusiasts descended on an Italian hotel to celebrate the life of the Pride and Prejudice author.

The period-dressed 'Janeites', as they are dubbed, took to Hotel de la Ville in Monza, near Milan this week for the two-day event.

Janeites are devotees of the life and work of British novelist Jane Austen, and more generally of the Regency era.

These incredible pictures show the efforts the British author's most devoted fans will go to in an effort to relive the heyday of her life.

People dance in a ball room as they take part to a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville on October 20, 2018 in Monza

Fascinating pictures show the 'Janeites' dancing with raised glasses in the lavish rooms of the four star hotel while others, in a strange juxtaposition, show them taking selfies on their modern phones.

A weekend with Jane Austen, as the event is called, is organised by

Ms. Valeria Valenziano - administrator of the Facebook group 'Nel Mondo di Jane Austen' - or in English, 'In the World of Jane Austen'.

Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British at the end of the 18th century.

Austen's plots often explored the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security.

Her use of biting irony, along with her realism, humour, and social commentary, have long earned her acclaim among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike.

Fascinating pictures show the 'Janeites' dancing with raised glasses in the lavish rooms of the four star hotel while others, in a strange juxtaposition, show them taking selfies on their modern phones

A woman takes a picture with a mobile phone as she attends the meeting of Janeites - Jane Austen enthusiasts

People visit the Villa Reale di Monza as they attend a meeting of Janeites on October 21 in Monza near Milan in Italy

People chat as they attend a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville on October 20 as part of the two-day event

Modern technology and a bygone era collide as two Janeites look at the screen of an Iphone at the event

People visit the Villa Reale di Monza as they attend a meeting of Janeites - devotees of the life and work of British novelist Jane Austen

People dance in a ball room as they take part to a meeting of Janeites at Villa Reale on October 21

People dance in a lavish ball room as they take part in a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville in northern Italy

People dance in a ball room as they take part to a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville

Janeites are devotees of the life and work of British novelist Jane Austen, and more generally of the Regency era

These incredible pictures show the efforts the British author's most devoted fans will go to in an effort to relive the heyday her life

Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British at the end of the 18th century

A weekend with Jane Austen, as the event is called, is organised by Facebook group 'Nel Mondo di Jane Austen'

A young woman sits as she attends a meeting of Janeites at Villa Reale on October 21

People dance in a ball room as they take part to a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville on October 20

Austen's plots often explored the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security

Austen's use of biting irony, along with her realism, humour, and social commentary, have long earned her acclaim among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike

Two women in period clothing chat as they attend a meeting of Janeites at the plush Hotel de la Ville

Three well-dressed women sit on period chairs as they attend a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville

A couple sits as they attend a meeting of Janeites at the Hotel de la Ville two-day Jane Austen extravaganza

People dance in a ball room as they take part to a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville on October 20

This wide shot shows the expanse of the get-together and the extravagant surroundings in which the super fans gathered

A young boy joins two older women for classic English tea and cakes as they take in the splendid decor

A woman poses for a photograph as she attends a meeting of Janeites at Hotel de la Ville

Period paintings and plush decor line the walls as men dressed in period clothing show off their Austen enthusiasmDJ Charlie Sloth, self-proclaimed 'best-looking fat guy in the universe', was let go by Radio 1 after ranting to Edith Bowman

He bills himself as the voice of disaffected youth, born in the ghetto and playing up to a life of crime as he mingles with top hip-hop stars on his agenda-setting BBC rap show.

But Charlie Sloth, the host let go by Radio 1 this week after storming the stage at a music awards show to launch a foul-mouthed rant against Edith Bowman when she beat him to a prize, is today revealed as a father-of-three living in a sprawling 500,000 home in the heart of the English countryside.

And, at 37 years old, the self-styled 'best-looking fat guy in the universe' is six years nearer to middle age than his public profiles claim - a fact his image-conscious team seemingly go to extraordinary lengths to hide from his young fans.

In fact they try to hide a lot from his audience, with the brash DJ clamming up in interviews whenever his private life or family history is brought up.

So not much was known about the north Londoner when he took to the stage at the ARIA Awards to tell fellow DJ Edith Bowman 'f*** your life' when she scooped the best music specialist gong at the Audio and Radio Industry Awards, which he'd also been in the running for.

During the eyebrow-raising speech, he also took aim at his employers of ten years, saying: 'I just wanna say BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra, Saturday night rap show. F*** your life. God bless.' It led to the BBC cutting short the final shows he was due to host, and him leaving the station immediately.

It was the first fall from grace for streetwise 'Charlie', who was born Ian Rouillon in 1981, the second child of electrician Ian senior and his wife Sharon, who says she is a black cab driver.

Sloth bills himself as the voice of disaffected youth, born in the ghetto and playing up to a life of crime as he mingles with top hip-hop stars on his agenda-setting BBC rap show

Records show he lives in this sprawling 500,000 home in a leafy, affluent village in Northamptonshire

His Liverpudlian parents raised him and his two sisters in council houses in north-west London.

His Wikipedia page lists his hometown as Somers Town, a tough inner-city area in Camden.

The Source Magazine described 'Sloth' as having grown up in 'the closest place London has to a Ghetto'.

But records suggest that by his mid-teens he was living above a nail bar in a Camden Town council flat worth 600,000.

It was from there that he set out for stardom - becoming an MC in both the UK garage and hip hop scenes.

His profile first forged as a key member of two rap crews  Hype Squad and the Grimey Limeys.

In 2007 he started making his own records and created a solo Internet show called Being Charlie Sloth.

He was uploading the show weekly on YouTube and got picked up by WorldStarHipHop, a hip hop video site in the US, where it was soon averaging over a million hits a week.

Sloth would record the ups and downs of the life of an independent British rap artist while fusing documentary reportage, pranks, comedy skits and rap freestyles.

Companies House records suggest he spent his mid-teens living in this council flat above a nail salon in Camden Town

But somewhere along the way his age started dropping, likely to remain appealing to his young audience.

Companies House records show him to be aged 37, but you wouldn't know that from searching him on Google.

In every media report and interview, and even on his Wikipedia page, he's listed as having been born in 1987, which would make him 31.

It's part of his image that someone seemingly wants to protect.

The Source Magazine described Rouillon as having grown up in 'the closest place London has to a ghetto'. Here he's pictured in front of his fleet of cars

Over the weekend Rouillon's Wikipedia page was updated to include his true date of birth and legal name. But within hours it was changed back - by a user with an internet address registered in the Northamptonshire countryside... just a stone's throw from that 500,000 home listed in the DJ's name.

After the mystery intervention, Rouillon was Sloth again, and Sloth a youthful 31.

At some point in his twenties, as he was fine tuning his rap character, Sloth changed his name on legal papers from 'Ian' to 'Charlie'.

At some point in his twenties, as he was fine tuning his rap character, Sloth changed his name from 'Ian' to 'Charlie'

But some of his family members were still referring to the self-proclaimed 'best-looking fat guy in the universe' as 'Little Ian' on social media as recently as 2012.

Online records reveal the his most recent residence was that 500,000 home in the shadow of a seventh century church in a leafy, affluent, Northamptonshire village.

But even that might not be sufficient for a man of Rouillon's stature. More recent photos on his Instagram suggest he's upgraded to a larger, pricier abode elsewhere in the countryside.

And he poses freely outside it, showing off his collection of expensive cars.

He wasn't afraid to tell Bowman what he wanted to do to her life... but his young fans may raise an eyebrow about the life he leads, now he's swapped the streets for the village green.Millions of Australians have experienced a drop in household incomes, and almost one third feel they do not earn enough to live comfortably.

Almost six million people experienced income decreases between 2011 and 2016, according to analysis from The Australian Population Research Institute.

Queensland and Western Australia saw the largest drops in the country, while Victoria suffered the least.

Maps of each major metropolitan centre show the highest percentage of income earners who have experienced declines from 2011 until 2016.

Data revealing where Australia's incomes are being hit hardest has been revealed, showing which suburbs are feeling the financial strain (Pictured: New South Wales metropolitan area)

Almost six million people experienced a drop in household income between 2011 and 2016 according to analysis from The Australian Population Research Institute (Pictured: Victoria metropolitan area)

Queensland and Western Australia had the highest rates of decreasing income in the country, while Victoria had the least (Pictured: Melbourne)

In New South Wales, the Central Coast, Campbelltown, Cumberland, Fairfield, Hawkesbury and the Northern Beaches had the biggest decreases in household income since 2011.

In Victoria, Brimbank, Hume, Whittlesea and Melbourne experienced the most significant drops in incomes.

In Queensland, income declines were felt strongest in Somerset, the Lockyer Valley, Logan and the Redlands.

In Western Australia, Murray, Mandurah and Kwinana had the most personal earners whose incomes were declining.

Looking south, income decreases were seen in Onkaparinga, Adelaide, Salisbury and Playford.

Report author and Monash University research associate, David McCloskey, said retirement, divorce or having children did not explain the significant slide in incomes.

'The high numbers of losers in the Australian economy may help to explain the mood of the electorate, with high levels of uncertainty and anxiety about paying the bills now and surviving into the future,' he told the Herald Sun.

Income decreases were felt by both men and women, and spanned across all ages and jobs.

In total, income loss for the period between 2011 and 2016 was estimated at $1.9billion per week.

Report author and Monash University research associate David McCloskey said retirement, divorce or having children did not explain the significant slide in incomes (Pictured: Metropolitan Queensland)

In total, income loss for the period between 2011 and 2016 was estimated at $1.9billion per week (Pictured: Metropolitan Western Australia)

The Inequality Report in Australia 2018, conducted by researchers from the University of New South Wales and the Australian Council of Social Services, found top one per cent of earners make more in two weeks ($11,682) than the lowest five per cent earn in a year.

Professor Peter Saunders from UNSW said income gaps could have negative effects on Australian society, and were caused by policy decisions from the past 20 years.

'These instruments can be varied by governments to impact on inequality,' he said.

'From that point of view, the level of inequality that we have is our choice. We can either support the government or put pressure on the government, and we have the instruments we need to change inequality.'

Income decreases were felt by both mean and women, and spanned across all ages and jobs (Pictured: Metropolitan South Australia)

ACOSS chief executive Dr Cassandra Goldie said incomes could be increased if governments, businesses and unions worked together.

'We can work together to bridge the divide by lifting the lowest social security payments, removing tax loopholes that enable people with the highest incomes to avoid paying their fair share, creating a fairer system of pay bargaining, restraining executive salaries, ensuring education policies support children who struggle at school, and implementing effective strategies to improve housing affordability,' she said.

According to a report by the Productivity Commission, economic growth over the last 27 years has helped improve living standards for the average Australian.

A Committee for the Economic Development of Australia survey found just five per cent of people felt they had gained a lot during that time, while one-third found it difficult to live on their incomes.A rare deep-sea creature dubbed the 'headless chicken monster' has been filmed for the first time by Australian researchers.

The elusive Enypniastes eximia sea cucumber, which is usually only found in the Gulf of Mexico, was spotted in the Southern Ocean in the East Antarctic using camera technology developed by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD).

'Some of the footage we are getting back from the cameras is breathtaking, including species we have never seen in this part of the world,' AAD Program leader Dr Dirk Welsford said.

The footage marks the first time the sea animal (pictured) was spotted in East Antarctica, given that the elusive deep-sea cucumber has only been seen in the Gulf of Mexico before

The creature was filmed on the sea floor using camera technology developed by the Australian researchers (pictured)

The equipment used to house the camera had to be able to withstand extreme conditions, given that it would be exposed to pitch-black, high pressure waters.

'The housing that protects the camera and electronics is designed to attach to toothfish longlines in the Southern Ocean, so it needs to be extremely durable,' Dr Welsford said.

'We needed something that could be thrown from the side of a boat and would continue operating reliably under extreme pressure in the pitch black for long periods of time,' he added.

The data collected from the footage will be presented at an annual Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources meeting in Hobart, Tasmania on Monday.

Australian commissioner Gillian Slocum will push for a new East Antarctic Marine Protected Area.

Australian commissioner Gillian Slocum will push for a new East Antarctic Marine Protected Area (stock image)

'The Southern Ocean is home to an incredible abundance and variety of marine life, including commercially sought-after species, the harvesting of which must be carefully managed for future generations,' Ms Slocum said.

The 10-day meeting will also include proposals on how to respond to climate change.Four people have been rushed to hospital within hours of each other after a spate of snake attacks.

At least two on the attacks, which happened in Victoria on Sunday between midday and 3.30pm, were thought to be from deadly brown snakes, according to 7News.

The attacks come as snake catchers warned of a plague of snakes coming out of hibernation in order to find a mate.

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Four people have been rushed to hospital in a serious condition within hours of each other after a spate of snake attacks (stock)

A man in his 60s, who was bitten on his leg at Edi-Cheshunt Road in Whitfield, was transported to Wangaratta Base Hospital in a serious but stable condition (stock)

A man in his 80s was transported to Goulburn Valley Hospital in Shepparton in a serious but stable condition with an injury to his leg on Sunday afternoon.

A man in his 60s, who was bitten on his leg at Edi-Cheshunt Road in Whitfield, was transported to Wangaratta Base Hospital in a serious but stable condition.

A man in his 40s suffered a snake bite to his ankle on Camerons Road in Coimada. He was transported to Western Health in St Albans in a serious but stable condition.

A woman in her 30s was bitten by a snake on Seven Mile Road in Nar Nar Goon. She was transported to Casey Hospital at Berwick in a stable condition.

Tony Harrison, a snake catcher on Queensland's Gold Coast, has urged residents across the country to be vigilant this summer as reptiles emerge to get some sunlight after a long mating season.

The attacks come as snake catchers warn of the dangers of the spate of snake attacks as the weather warms up (stock)

Toddler Naish Dobson (pictured) miraculously survived a python five times his size locking its jaws around his arm and coiling itself around his tiny body

The infant's mother realised her son, who had been hidden out of view when the snake grabbed him, had been bitten (wounds and brusing pictured) and coiled around three times by the python

Mr Harrison said warm weather was when reptiles typically went out in search of companions for mating.

Mr Harrison said snakes were most active in summer and most likely to be seen emerging from bushland on hot days.

Just last week Naish Dobson was grabbed by a python while he was playing on the veranda of his home in Julatten, North Queensland.

The boy's grandfather Ron Rutland allowed him to stage a remarkable escape when he emerged with a knife and stabbed the python down the spine, the Cairns Post reported.

The snake loosened its grip on the one-year-old, but then turned its attention to Mr Rutland as well - forcing the grandfather to kill the defiant reptile.

The blade was still brutally effective and Naish was freed.

He was then taken to Cairns Hospital to be treated for the snake bites and bruising.

Incredibly the only victim of the ordeal was the snake - which died from its injuries.Advertisement

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will spend Monday on stunning Fraser Island, off the coast of Queensland, to officially dedicate the area's rainforest to the Queens Commonwealth Canopy.

During their time on the Island, the couple will be based at the luxurious Kingfisher Bay Resort, which boasts secluded beach houses, timber lodges surrounded by the bush, and eco-friendly hotel rooms.

The expecting Duchess of Sussex will forgo her royal duties for the day due to the rough terrain of the island, but there will be plenty for her to do even as a tourist.

Kensington Palace has confirmed Meghan will spend Monday relaxing at the resort, where the couple will spend the night, but she is hoped to be well enough for a meet and greet with the public in the afternoon.

The area is known for its whale watching opportunities, and, if she's looking for an even more relaxing experience, a day-spa which uses native ingredients and healing practices is a stone's throw away.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will visit Kingfisher Bay Resort (pictured) on Fraser Island, off the coast of QLD on Monday

While Prince Harry completes his royal duties, Ms Markle will be taking it easy, as she is not able to travel along the roads of the Island

The Duchess of Sussex might visit the resort's day spa, which features native Australian plants in its treatments

The couple are hoped to reunite at the end of the day, where they will walk along the jetty (pictured) together

While the resort has pristine beaches and clear waters, the royal couple will also have access to a pool surrounded by bushland and cushioned sun lounges.

Known to be a big foodie, Meghan Markle will also be able to indulge in cuisine featuring native bush tucker at the Kingfisher Bay Resort's restaurant, Seabelle.

The couple will be following in the Prince of Wales' footsteps, as the royal enjoyed a stay at the exclusive resort in 1994.

Prince Harry will have less time to soak up the spoils of the resort, as he will spend Monday unveiling a plaque for the dedication of the Forests of Kgari to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy.

His father, Prince Charles, added the Island to the Canopy in April this year during his visit to Bundaberg.

The Queens Commonwealth Canopy raises awareness of indigenous forests, and allows countries in the Commonwealth to exchange knowledge and ideas about the best practice for forest conservation.

Prince Charles stayed at the Kingfisher Bay Resort in 1994, and announced the nearby Forests of Kgari would be added to the Queens Commonwealth Canopy - which helps with conservation efforts - in April this year

The resort has been fully booked out, as have tickets to get to the Island for the day, indicating the Prince may have a big crowd awaiting him

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (pictured) recently announced they were expecting their first child, and the pregnancy has affected Meghan Markle's ability to participate in the entirety of the tour

While Meghan takes it easy on Monday, there will still be plenty for her to see and do, with pristine waterways and quiet beaches found in abundance on the island

Known to be a big foodie, Meghan Markle will also be able to indulge in cuisine featuring native bush tucker at the Kingfisher Bay Resort (pictured is a chef at the resort's Seabelle restaurant)

The Duke of Sussex will then head to Lake McKenzie, and meet with local elders to learn about the history of the island, before heading down to 75 Mile beach.

Prince Harry is expected to take particular interest in his visit to the beach, as it served as a training base for an elite Z Special Force Unit during World War II.

The unit used the area to prepare for jungle and amphibious training ahead of missions into Asia, and are credited with playing a major role in Australia's victory at Singapore Harbour.

The ruins of the Z Force Commando School remain on the western side of the island, nearby the resort.

Later, the Duke will head to Kingfisher Bay and walk along the jetty, hopefully with Ms Markle.

The couple are expected to be greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of fans, as tickets to cross to Kingfisher Bay have sold out for the day.

The resort is the largest sand island in the world, but is also home to a little-known part of Australian military history. The beach served as a training base for an elite Z Special Force Unit during World War IISaudi King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have called Jamal Khashoggi's eldest son to express their condolences over the journalist's death.

The rulers phoned Saleh Khashoggi more than two weeks after his father went missing having entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get papers so he could marry his Turkish fiancee.

Saudi Arabia only admitted the Washington Post journalist was dead after weeks of denying anything to do with his disappearance.

The government has claimed that Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Saudi rulers, died during a fistfight in the consulate. Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has since admitted the writer was murdered but that the killing was a 'tremendous mistake' by a 'rogue operation'.

US President Donald Trump has defended Prince Mohammed's leadership and praised him for having 'very good control'  but added in an interview: 'Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies. Their stories are all over the place.'

More than two weeks after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to his family. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs released this official image to announce the news

The image comes as it was revealed that Prince Mohammed was reportedly shocked by the backlash against Khashoggi's murder and Saudi Arabia's response to it

Saudia Arabia's royal court put out an official image, featuring both King Salman and Prince Mohammed's pictures, to announce the phone call to Saleh.

'The leadership extends condolences to the family of Jamal Khashoggi,' the headline of the image read.

'Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud extends condolences to the family and relatives of Jamal Khashoggi.'

'Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Vice President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Defense, has made a phone call with Saleh Khashoggi, in which he offers condolences to him and his family on the death of Jamal Khashoggi.'

The image comes as it was revealed that Prince Mohammed was reportedly shocked by the backlash against Khashoggi's murder and Saudi Arabia's response to it.

His royal court was 'relaxed' when news of Khashoggi's disappearance first broke, a source close to Saudi Arabia's royal family told the Wall Street Journal.

'Then it snowballed. When things started heated up in the States, everybody started getting worried,' the source added.

And no one was reportedly more surprised than the Crown Prince, who couldn't see why the story was 'such a big deal'.

'He was really shocked that there was such a big reaction to it,' added another source close to the royal court.

Prince Mohammed (pictured with Donald Trump in March) has continued to deny any knowledge over the journalist's murder and continues to receive support from Trump

Merkel: No arms for Riyadh while questions remain over killing Germany will not export arms to Saudi Arabia while the current uncertainty over the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi persists, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday. Campaigning for her party in a regional election, Merkel repeated to a news conference her earlier condemnation of Khashoggi's killing, which Saudi Arabia admitted had taken place inside its consulate in Istanbul. 'First, we condemn this act in the strongest terms,' she said. 'Second, there is an urgent need to clarify what happened - we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account ... As far as arms exports are concerned, those can't take place in the current circumstances.' Today, a top German official pressed for a joint EU position on Saudi Arabia after Berlin backed a freeze on arms exports to the kingdom. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined Monday its position that 'we won't at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened.' Altmaier told ZDF television that a joint EU position is needed 'because only if all European countries agree, this will make an impression on the government in Riyadh.' He said 'it will have no positive consequences if we, as we are doing, currently don't pursue our arms exports if at the same time other countries fill this gap.' Advertisement

'He feels betrayed by the West. He said he will never forget how people turned against him before evidence was produced.'

The furor surrounding Khashoggi's death has showed no signs of slowing down since he first vanished at the beginning of the month.

After weeks of denying they knew anything about Khashoggi's disappearance, the Saudi government confirmed he was dead.

On Sunday a Saudi official claimed that Khashoggi was killed by 'rogue' operatives who placed him 'in a chokehold position' to prevent him from leaving the consulate and calling for help.

The official said Mr Khashoggi after resisting attempts to return him to Saudi Arabia before his body was rolled in a rug and given to a local 'co-operator' to dispose of.

Eighteen men have since been detained by the government in connection with Khashoggi's murder.

Prince Mohammed was reportedly so astounded by the international response to Khashoggi that he even reached out to Jared Kushner.

He reportedly called Kushner on October 10 - eight days after Khashoggi disappeared - and asked him 'why the outrage', according to sources who were briefed on the phone conversation.

Kushner and National Security Adviser John Bolton then reportedly told the prince that he needed to 'get to the bottom of Mr Khashoggi's disappearance fast'.

Trump has since tried to downplay Kushner and the prince's friendship, telling reporters on Saturday that they are just 'two young guys' who are the 'same age'.

Prince Mohammed was reportedly so astounded by the response to the story that he called up Jared Kushner days after Khashoggi disappeared. They are pictured here together with Trump in May 2017

Trump has since tried to downplay Kushner and the prince's friendship, telling reporters on Saturday that they are just 'two young guys' who are the 'same age'

He also claimed that Kushner, 37, barely knows the 33-year-old prince, even though the two men have had several one-on-one meetings and are reported to communicate with each other via WhatsApp - a private messaging system.

Prince Mohammed and Kushner held their first White House meeting in March 2017. They have had additional face-to-face meetings at least four more times and are said to have bonded given their close ages and powerful positions within their families.

'They're two young guys. Jared doesn't know him well or anything. They are just two young people. They are the same age. They like each other, I believe,' the president told The Washington Post.

But behind closed doors, sources said Trump is frustrated that his son-in-law's close relationship with the Crown Prince has become a liability in the international crisis.

Meanwhile Kushner has been urging the president to stand by the prince and argues that he can survive this scandal just as he has with others in the past, according to The New York Times.

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, who was a fierce critic of his policies

And Trump seems to be listening to his son-in-law.

Even as he criticized Saudi Arabia's explanation for Khashoggi's death on Saturday, the president had no harsh words for the Crown Prince.

'Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies. Their stories are all over the place,' Trump told the Washington Post on Saturday.

But in the same interview, Trump defended Prince Mohammed's leadership and praised him for having 'very good control'.

He went on to say he had seen no evidence that the Crown Prince ordered, or even knew about, the killing of Khashoggi.

'Nobody has told me he's responsible. Nobody has told me he's not responsible. We haven't reached that point. I haven't heard either way,' Trump said.

'There is a possibility he found out about it afterward. It could be something in the building went badly awry. It could be that's when he found about it. He could have known they were bringing him back to Saudi Arabia.'

It comes as top US lawmakers turned their ire on the Crown Prince, saying they believed he ordered the killing of the Saudi journalist earlier this month.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir (pictured) insisted on Sunday that Prince Mohammed was 'not aware' of the killing and that the regime was still working on finding the body

An activist dressed as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman marches in front the White House during a demonstration calling for sanctions against Saudi Arabia on Friday

'Do I think he did it? Yes, I think he did it,' Republican Senator Bob Corker, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview with CNN.

Corker, who received a classified briefing on the case on Friday, said he was waiting for investigations to be completed and hoped that Turkey would share any audio tapes of the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.

Two members of the royal family claim that Prince Khalid al Faisal, an envoy of King Salman, has access to evidence that disproves Saudi Arabia's current story of how Khashoggi was killed.

They claim Prince Khalid al Faisal has an audio recording that proves Khashoggi was drugged, killed, and dismembered within minutes of walking into the consulate.

'The audio does not have this nonsense about a fight that broke after an argument,' one royal member told the Wall Street Journal.

'This is not what Khalid told the king and his friends. This is absolutely rubbish.'

CCTV video shows a black van in front of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, the day that Khashoggi was murdered

A journalist shoots video behind barriers blocking the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed

Corker made it clear that he believed the murder was directed by Prince Mohammed.

'Let's let this play out, but my guess is that at the end of the day the United States and the rest of the world will believe fully that he did it,' Corker told CNN.

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, a fierce critic of his policies.

His foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, went on US television to insist that the killing was a mistake, and sought to shield the powerful prince from the widening crisis.

'He was killed in the consulate. We don't know in terms of details how. We don't know where the body is,' the foreign minister told Fox News on Sunday.

'This was an operation that was a rogue operation, this was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding their authorities and responsibilities they had.'

'They made a mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it.'

Despite the controversy, Saudi Arabia's King Salman (pictured) granted his heir new powers over Saudi Arabia's intelligence bodies on Saturday

'We are determined to uncover every stone. We are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder.'

On Saturday, Trump joined European leaders in pushing Saudi Arabia for more answers after Riyadh changed its story and acknowledged that the journalist died at the consulate.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is traveling in the region, said on Sunday the Saudi explanation was a 'good first step but not enough'.

He said it was premature to discuss sanctions, in line with Trump administration efforts to censure a killing that has drawn international outrage while also protecting relations with the Saudis.

Despite the international controversy, Prince Mohammed isn't in danger of losing power anytime soon.

King Salman granted his heir new powers over Saudi Arabia's intelligence bodies on Saturday and sources say Prince Mohammed's power remains 'largely unchecked'.

Saudi hitman 'dressed in victim's clothes and glasses to pretend he'd left embassy'

By Larisa Brown, Middle East Correspondent for the Daily Mail

One of the Saudi hitmen dressed up in Jamal Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate, according to the country's latest explanation.

A senior official said operative Mustafa Madani also wore the 59-year-old's glasses and Apple watch and left through the back door.

He said the journalist had been placed in a chokehold during which he accidentally died  and then his body was smuggled out of the building in a rolled-up carpet.

On Friday the kingdom admitted Mr Khashoggi was dead after repeatedly claiming the high-profile critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had walked out of the consulate unharmed.

It said the journalist was killed in a 'fist fight' and that the government had fired five top officials and arrested 18 others as a result of the initial investigation.

CCTV footage shows journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his fiancee Hatice Cengiz together just hours before his death on October 2

Yesterday Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News: 'Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this.' He added: 'We don't know where the body is.'

It came after a senior Saudi official, who requested anonymity, contradicted previous explanations. He said the team of 15 Saudis sent to confront Mr Khashoggi on October 2 had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped, and then killed him in a chokehold when he resisted.

Madani then donned Mr Khashoggi's clothes, glasses and Apple watch before leaving the building to make it look like the journalist had left, it was claimed.

The body was then rolled up in a rug, taken out in a consular vehicle and given to a 'local co-operator' for disposal, he added. Forensic expert Salah Tubaigy tried to remove any trace of the incident, the official said.

Madani later went to the Sultanahmet district where he disposed of Mr Khashoggi's belongings, it was claimed. Asked about claims the journalist had been tortured and beheaded, the official said preliminary results of the investigation did not suggest so.

The government wanted to convince Mr Khashoggi, who moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views, to return to the kingdom as part of a campaign to prevent dissidents from being recruited by Saudi Arabia's enemies, the official said.

Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, (pictured) said he had handed her his two mobile phones and left instructions that she should wait for him and call an aide to Turkey's president if he did not reappear

But things soon went wrong as the team overstepped their orders and quickly employed violence, he added.

It was claimed Mr Khashoggi told one of the men, Maher Mutreb, that he was violating diplomatic norms and said: 'What are you going to do with me? Do you intend to kidnap me?' Mutreb replied, 'Yes, we will drug you and kidnap you,' in what the official said was an attempt at intimidation that violated the mission's objective. When Mr Khashoggi raised his voice, the team panicked. They moved to restrain him, placing him in a chokehold and covering his mouth, according to the government's account.

'They tried to prevent him from shouting but he died,' the official said. 'The intention was not to kill him.'

Asked if the team had smothered Mr Khashoggi, the official explained: 'If you put someone of Jamal's age in this position, he would probably die.'

The official said the team then wrote a false report for superiors saying they had allowed Mr Khashoggi to leave once he warned that Turkish authorities could get involved.

The Saudi authorities initially dismissed reports that Mr Khashoggi had gone missing inside the consulate as false and said he had left the building soon after entering. When the Press reported a few days later that he had been killed there, they called the accusations 'baseless'.

Turkish officials believe the Saudis may have dumped his remains in Belgrad Forest near Istanbul, and at a rural location near the city of Yalova, 55 miles south of Istanbul.

Yesterday Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would reveal the 'naked truth' about the killing at a briefing tomorrow.A group of vegan protesters have been kicked out of a steakhouse after storming into the restaurant with megaphones and abusing patrons.

Customers enjoying a meal at Outback Jacks, in Northbridge Perth on Saturday night, were shocked as members of the militant vegan activist group Direct Action Everywhere barged in to slam their love of meat.

One activist chanted 'it's not food' while the rest of the group responded, 'it's violence'.

About 15 vegan activists stormed into a Northbridge Steakhouse protesting against meat consumption

About 15 protesters continued to yell other chants as they walked through the restaurant with graphic posters of slaughtered animals.

Diners hoping for a peaceful meal with friends and family were shocked by the demonstration. However, others continued to eat their steaks as if nothing had happened.

Protesters yelled chants and held signs with bold slogans against eating meat, stunning diners

A nine-minute video posted on the group's Facebook page showed them being kicked-out by restaurant staff within minutes of entering.

'We are being peaceful,' one of the activists complains.

One restaurant staffer, who forced the protesters out, furiously told them to 'get away from our restaurant' and yelled 'go!'

As the protesters continued to linger outside, a staff member is seen pushing one of the protesters, urging the group to move on.

Activists who disrupted customers dining at the time appeared to infuriate one staff member

'They are serving many animals in that restaurant, many animals that did not want to die thrashed and screamed for their lives,' protester James Warden told Seven News.

Ray Strauss, owner of the family business, said they had families and elderly couples dining at the time.

'Next thing, they are pulling out a megaphone and yelling in everyone's face,' he said.

Animal rights activists from Direct Action Everywhere have protested in a number of restaurants serving meat, including fast-food chains McDonald's and KFC.Stephen Hawking was a cosmic visionary, a figure of inspiration and a global celebrity.

His unique status is reflected in an upcoming auction of some of the late physicist's possessions: It includes complex scientific papers, one of the world's most iconic wheelchairs and a script from 'The Simpsons.'

The online sale announced Monday by auctioneer Christie's features 22 items from Hawking, including his doctoral thesis on the origins of the universe, some of his many awards, and scientific papers such as 'Spectrum of Wormholes' and 'Fundamental Breakdown of Physics in Gravitational Collapse.'

Thomas Venning, head of Christies' books and manuscripts department, said the papers 'trace the development of his thought - this brilliant, electrifying intelligence.'

A book, signed with a thumb print by Stephen Hawking is one of the items being sold at the auction house

Christie's features 22 items from Hawking, including his doctoral thesis on the origins of the universe, with the sale scheduled for October 31 and November 8. A copy of his book is seen above

'You can see each advance as he produced it and introduced it to the scientific community,' Venning said.

Of course, Hawking's fame rests only partly on his scientific status as the cosmologist who put black holes on the map.

Stephen Hawking was a cosmic visionary, a figure of inspiration and a global celebrity who died this year in March

Diagnosed with motor neuron disease at 22 and given just a few years to live, he survived for decades, dying in March at 76.

The auction includes one of five existing copies of Hawking's 1965 Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 'Properties of Expanding Universes,' which carries an estimated price of $130,000 to $195,000 (100,000 to 150,000).

Venning said the thesis, signed by Hawking in handwriting made shaky by his illness, is both a key document in the physicist's scientific evolution and a glimpse into his personal story.

'He was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) just as he arrived in Cambridge to begin his Ph.D. studies,' Venning said. 'He gave up his studies for a time because he was so despondent.

The thesis was the fruit of him reapplying himself to his scientific work,' Venning said, and Hawking 'kept it beside him for the rest of his life.'

A bomber jacket given to Stephen Hawking is one of the items that will go up for sale

Documents and files by Hawking are up for auction ranging in price from $13,000 to $195,000

The disease eventually left Hawking almost completely paralyzed. He communicated through a voice-generating computer and moved in a series of high-tech wheelchairs.

One is included in the sale, with an estimated price of $13,000 to $19,500 (10,000 to 15,000). Proceeds from its sale will go to two charities, the Stephen Hawking Foundation and the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

Venning said the wheelchair became a symbol not just of disability but of Hawking's 'puckish sense of humor.'

He once ran over Prince Charles' toes - and reportedly joked that he wished he had done the same to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - and appeared in a 'Monty Python' skit running down fellow physicist Brian Cox.

Venning said Hawking 'very much thought of himself as a scientist first and a popular communicator second,' but accepted and even enjoyed his celebrity status. He appeared several times on animated comedy show 'The Simpsons' and kept a figurine of himself from the show in his office.

A poster advertising a Time Travellers meeting hosted by Stephen Hawking is one of the items up for auction

A book, written and corrected with handwritten annotation by Hawking will be up for auction

The sale includes a script from one of Hawking's Simpson's appearances, a copy of his best-seller 'A Brief History of Time' signed with a thumbprint and a personalized bomber jacket that he wore in a documentary.

Hawking's daughter Lucy said the sale gave 'admirers of his work the chance to acquire a memento of our father's extraordinary life in the shape of a small selection of evocative and fascinating items.'

Hawking's children hope to preserve his scientific archive for the nation. Christie's is handling negotiations to hand it over to British authorities in lieu of inheritance tax.

The items - part of a science sale that includes papers by Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein - will be on display in London for several days from October 30. The auction is open for bids between October 31 and November 8.Nick Clegg risks ruining his reputation unless he turns Facebook into a powerful voice for liberalism, Paddy Ashdown has warned.

The barbed comment about his fellow former Liberal Democrat leader came as MPs accused Sir Nick of hypocrisy for taking a top job at the web giant he has been so critical of in the past.

My good friend Nick Cleggs reputation as a powerful voice for liberalism and democracy will now depend on his ability to persuade Facebook to be a global campaigner for the same values, tweeted Lord Ashdown, who led the party between 1988 and 1999.

Book club: Sir Nick chats with his new bosses - Facebook's billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg

Sir Nick announced on Friday he would become the spin doctor for the social media giant, which has come under fire for allowing terrorist propaganda, far-Right hate speech and child sex abuse images. The former deputy PM, 51, starts as head of global affairs and policy in the seven-figure salary role this morning.

US media say he will be in the companys Menlo Park headquarters in California for a week before returning with his family full-time in January.

Sir Nick will report directly to Facebooks number two Sheryl Sandberg, who over the weekend described him as a thoughtful and gifted leader who understands deeply the responsibilities we have to people who use our service around the world.

A picture posted by Miss Sandberg on her Facebook page showed Sir Nick, billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg and herself deep in discussion.

Nick Clegg risks ruining his reputation unless he turns Facebook into a powerful voice for liberalism, Paddy Ashdown has warned

Sir Nick admitted he initially turned the company down but changed his mind after what insiders called months of wooing. The appointment has attracted widespread criticism  partly because of Sir Nicks past attacks on the Silicon Valley giant.

In a newspaper article two years ago, he wrote: Im not especially bedazzled by Facebook. While I have good friends who work at the company, I actually find the messianic Californian new-worldy-touchy-feely culture of Facebook a little grating. Nor am I sure that companies such as Facebook really pay all the tax they could.

Sir Nick, who served as deputy Prime Minister to David Cameron between 2010 and 2015, is likely to attract a salary of at least $1million (765,000), plus share options on top.

At a conference in London last November, he once again took a swipe at web companies. The big five [tech firms] are in danger of being seen in the same light as bankers or even politicians. Some of that anger, for example on tax, is in my view both predictable and legitimate. The big firms have much more to do to prove that they are good global citizens, he said.

But Sir Nick has since defended Facebook and claimed it was unfairly caricatured.

James Cleverly, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, responded to the news writing: I dont have a problem with Nick Clegg getting a high-paid job with Facebook. But he shouldnt pretend that its some form of noble, moral, higher calling.Pupils have been banned from talking when walking to and from lessons by a secondary school.

Those caught talking face being punished with a 20-minute detention.

The silent corridors policy is being introduced at Ninestiles School, an academy in Birmingham, when children return from half term in November.

The silent corridors policy is being introduced at Ninestiles School, an academy in Birmingham, when children return from half term in November

Ninestiles School, which educates 1,345 pupils aged 11-18 and is rated outstanding by Ofsted inspectors, wrote to parents about the change last week.

The letter said: All student movement including to and from assembly, at lesson changeover and towards communal areas at break and lunch will be carried out in silence. Students will leave school in silence following the conclusion of their last lesson.

Despite the talking ban, the school says pupils will be able to relax and socialise in allocated speaking areas.

Ninestiles School, which educates 1,345 pupils aged 11-18 and is rated outstanding by Ofsted inspectors, wrote to parents about the change last week

The move has angered some parents. A father of one pupil said: Why does the school want to teach children to be mute zombies? In workplaces people chat and speak to each other, why not at school? Its a place of learning and exploring ideas, not a North Korean gulag or a monastery.

Co-headteachers Alex Hughes and Andrea Stephens defended the policy and said: We know that students arriving to lessons ready to learn can be further supported by doing so in silence at certain points in the day. They said they would review the policy at the end of the term and consider any feedback.A teenage killer who murdered his ex-girlfriend to win a bet over a fried breakfast has finally confessed, it has been claimed.

Joshua Davies was jailed for 14 years after beating 15-year-old Rebecca Aylward around the neck with a rock near Bridgend, Wales, in October 2010.

Rebecca's mother Sonia Oatley said a victim liaison officer had informed her of Davies's confession almost eight years later.

Mrs Oatley said Davies, now 23, had 'enjoyed putting us through the ordeal' of a five-week trial after he pleaded not guilty to the crime, the Mirror reported.

Joshua Davies (left) was jailed for 14 years after beating 15-year-old Rebecca Aylward (right) around the neck with a rock near Bridgend, Wales, in October 2010

The 57-year-old mother said she had been called in to see the liaison officer who said: 'He's admitted it'.

Mrs Oatley said: I just sat there looking at her. I wasn't expecting it at all and was so shocked I couldn't say anything for a few minutes.

'Apparently, he'd said he needed to see his probation officer, and then said 'I did it  nobody else was involved  I am totally responsible'.

'By pleading not guilty he put us through the pain of a five-week trial where we had to listen to every gruesome detail of how Becca died.'

At the Crown Court trial the jury heard how the teenager's favourite point of conversation among his friends was the method by which he would kill Rebecca.

It emerged that one friend even promised to buy Josh a cooked breakfast if he carried out his threat.

Two days before the murder, Davies texted his friend. The message read: 'Don't say anything, but you may just owe me a breakfast'.

In court the boy who placed the bet told the jury he thought it was only a joke, and that the defendant 'was messing about'.

Rebecca's mother Sonia Oatley (pictured) said a victim liaison officer had informed her of Davies's confession almost eight years later

Davies and his teenage friends inhabited their own online world in which the line between fiction and reality often became blurred, the court was told.

They would use textspeak, jargon and symbols in a language so impenetrable that the jury had to be given translations.

After the killing Davies posted the Facebook status update: 'I enjoyed a rather good day and a lovely breakfast', in a clear reference to the bet he had made with his friend.

He also posted his own concerned messages on Facebook after Rebecca was reported missing, pretending he was genuinely worried.

Davies, who was 16 at the time of the trial, was given a life sentence at Swansea Crown Court and told he would serve a minimum of 14 years in prison.New EU rules could ban the UK from changing its clocks in the autumn and spring, a report warns today.

Brussels is planning to end the practice of daylight saving across the EU following claims that it is unpopular.

The move would mean EU countries having to choose to adopt permanent summer or winter time, leaving Belfast potentially having to decide whether to align itself with clocks in the Republic or the rest of the UK, peers warned.

The move would mean EU countries having to choose to adopt permanent summer or winter time, leaving Belfast potentially having to decide whether to align itself with clocks in the Republic or the rest of the UK, peers warned

It is not due to come in until after Britain has left the EU next year.

But a Lords committee report warns that, under the draft withdrawal agreement, the UK would have to adopt the change during the Brexit transition period.

Decisions beyond that would depend on the deal negotiated by Theresa May. Peers accuse Brussels of overstepping the mark, saying the proposal does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, which requires the EU to allow matters to be devolved to member states where possible.

The report also states that the European Commission has failed to adequately explain or justify the change.

Current rules mean every state has to switch to summer time on the last Sunday of March and back to winter time on the last Sunday of October. The move would ultimately remain each member states decision whether to go for permanent summer or wintertime (or a different time), the proposals state.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said millions believe that in future, summer time should be year-round, and thats what will happen.

The move needs the support of all EU countries and backing from MEPs.Advertisement

Prince Harry and Meghan held hands as they walked along a jetty on picturesque Fraser Island after the couple were reunited after spending the day apart.

The pregnant Duchess of Sussex had skipped today's royal engagements to take a well-earned break at the exclusive Kingfisher Bay resort.

Looking summery in a Reformation maxi dress and brown leather lace-up sandals, pregnant Meghan was glowing as she arrived by car to meet Prince Harry, having spent the morning at their hotel recuperating from the heavy schedule of the first week of their Commonwealth tour.

And it looked as if the morning's rest had done her the world of good as she appeared happy and relaxed cradling her baby bump when she took a stroll with her husband before meeting wellwishers.

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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex reunited after spending the afternoon apart, with Meghan wearing a thigh-high split maxi dress

After Meghan had greeted him at the end of the pier, the couple walked down together to meet the waiting crowds, smiling as they held hands

The loved-up couple cut relaxed figures as they walked down the jetty at Kingfisher Bay on Fraser Island on Monday

Meghan, 37, looked radiant wearing a thigh high split maxi dress, after skipping today's royal engagements

Prince Harry wore a dark buttoned shirt and beige chinos as he met up with his wife, after spending the day meeting locals

The couple walked hand in hand along a jetty and stopped to admire the view as Meghan cradled her baby bump

A royal aide said she took a break from engagements because of a 'tiring few days'.

The aide added: 'We were concerned about the road on the island which are incredibly bumpy and uncomfortable for anyone, let alone a pregnant woman.

'But the Duchess was very keen to re-join the Duke at the last engagement of the day to greet the people of the island.'

Harry arrived at Kingfisher Bay jetty by boat, having just visited the historic McKenzie's Jetty nearby.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, hold teddy bears as they greet members of the public in Kingfisher Bay on Fraser Island

Harry and Meghan share a laugh together as they receive a teddy bear from a member of the public

Prince Harry stopped to meet wellwishers and spent time chatting to them as he was joined by his wife

After Meghan had greeted him at the end of the pier, the couple walked down together to meet the waiting crowds, hand in hand.

They were greeted by the premier of Queensland before stopping to watch a Butchulla People dance group on the beach, surrounding by cheering well-wishers.

They stopped to chat to to Eliza Vitch, ten, and Grace Hommerman, eight, who caught their eyes with a sign that read: 'Harry and Meghan check us out! '

Pregnant Meghan was presented with a number of gifts including a baby changing mat, pictured

Meghan spent time talking to locals that had come to see them as they arrived at the Kingfisher Bay resort

They told the couple how they had held a royal wedding party to celebrate their marriage back in May.

'Oh my goodness, how sweet of you!' exclaimed Meghan.

As she left, the Duchess remarked, in a thoughtful nod to their sign: 'And now I have checked you out!'

The duke was also taken by a sign reading 'Rangas rule', an Australian slang reference to his ginger hair.

Jada Quinn, nine, said: 'My dad is a ranga and I'm a little bit a ranga and he appreciated the sign.'

Meghan and Harry appear deep in conversation as they stroll along a jetty as she placed a hand on her baby bump

The pregnant Duchess of Sussex, pictured holding her baby bump, had skipped today's royal engagements to take a well-earned break at the exclusive Kingfisher Bay resort

Harry and Meghan held hands as they walked along a jetty on picturesque Fraser Island after the couple were reunited after spending the day apart

Her sister, Ella, 12, said: 'It was a bit overwhelming, I started to cry a little bit. She was so kind and she shook my hand.'

Julianne, Ebony and and Lily Reid gave her a home-made baby changing mat. The expectant couple appeared utterly delighted by it. 'Does it have koalas on?' Asked Harry.

Indeed it did, as well as every other notable native Australian animal.

'They have got to the be the most beautiful couple I have ever met,' said Lily.

Meghan was later presented with a stuffed Echidna cuddly toy by a royal fan

The duke was also taken by a sign reading 'Rangas rule', an Australian slang reference to his ginger hair

The duchess held her left hand over her baby bump as the couple took time out from the duties to meet with royal fans

Harry admires the stuffed echidna cuddly toy (left) as the couple meet with royal fans who had come to Fraser Island to see them

Meghan also bent down to speak to Noeline Walk, 85, Fraser Island's oldest and longest-living resident at 45 years and counting.

'She asked me since I was local what I would suggest she have for tea,' Mrs Walk recalled.

'Seafood, of course! I told her. 'Oh, I'll have to give it a try', she said.'

Mrs Walk also recalled how she had got to meet the Queen on her first visit to Australia in 1953/54.

Aunty Joyce, 87, told Meghan that although her name was Joyce Owen, everyone called her Aunty.

'I told her a story about my father, which she loved, and I wished them every happiness in the world with their baby. She said thank you and that they were so happy.'

Prince Harry meets with youngsters on Queensland's Fraser Island, which the Butchulla People, the traditional owners of the land, call K'gari, meaning paradise

Earlier the Duke of Sussex took a separate boat to the island and took part in a traditional Welcome to Country smoking ceremony to ward off evil spirits by members of the Butchulla People, the traditional owners of the island, which they call K'gari, meaning paradise.

Aaron Henderson and Darren Blake wafted smoke from a bucket of burning Paper Bark and Blue Gum leaves towards him, while songman Fred Bulanyu Leone called out to their ancestors and tapped out a rhythm with a pair of bar gan - 'killer boomerangs' - traditionally used for hunting.

Prince Harry took off his shoes and had his feet brushed with leaves during the indigenous ceremony and later walked in the shallows of Lake McKenzie, splashing his face with the cool, clear water.

He also watched indigenous dancers and gave an address as he unveiled a plaque for the dedication of the Forests of K'gari to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy, which raises awareness of indigenous forests.

The Duke of Sussex is pictured with indigenous dancers while on a visit to Queensland's Fraser Island, or K'gari, on Monday

Prince Harry watched a traditional dance after attending a Welcome to Country smoking ceremony while on the island

The Duke of Sussex was met by the Butchulla People, the Traditional Owners of the island, shortly after his arrival on Monday

The Prince shook hands with the dancers on a day in which he unveiled a plaque for the dedication of the Forests of K'gari to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy

The Duke of Sussex said in a speech it was important to protect K'gari, 'because it is an essential part of our existence, and will continue to be for our children and their children's children'

His visit to the island's Pile Valley on Monday is part of a 16-day tour of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga

'This is actually the second time this plaque has been unveiled - which I know is highly unusual. The first time was by my father  The Prince of Wales  in Bundaberg earlier this year when he was visiting. I now have the privilege of unveiling it in situ,' Prince Harry said in his speech.

'I know that my father came to K'gari in 1994 for a ''day off'' during a Royal Tour so he has an appreciation of the importance of this place. Luckily we are both highly skilled when it comes to unveiling plaques.

'The Queen's Commonwealth Canopy is an opportunity for the Commonwealth to unite to protect one of the world's most important natural habitats  forests.

'Forty-two out of the 53 countries are now taking part and I hope that others will join soon. The programme is committed to raising awareness of the value of indigenous forests and to saving them for future generations. Put simply, without trees and forests, we don't survive. It is a symbiotic relationship, and one that so many people still fail to realise.

'As you all know too well, K'gari means 'paradise', and that is certainly what we've experienced today surrounded by the towering Kauri pines, 1000 year-old satinay trees and ancient giant ferns. It is up to us now to protect this paradise together  not just because it looks beautiful - but because it is an essential part of our existence, and will continue to be for our children and their children's children.'

The Duke of Sussex was left blushing after a pensioner told him he was 'much better looking in person' at the plaque unveiling.

Sassy Mally Clarke, 72, called out to the royal as he attended a ceremony on the island in the Pile Valley rainforest, with the father-to-be looking at his notes and saying 'I'll take that as a compliment!'

Asked by MailOnline why she said it, Mally, a Butchulla elder, said afterwards: 'Because he is! He is such a handsome man! He will stay in hearts and minds forever.'

Prince Harry, 34, was without his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, who was resting because of her pregnancy.

The pair travelled to Queensland together from Sydney for the next leg of their marathon Commonwealth tour on a military flight on Monday morning, before the royal couple went their separate ways - the Duke took the barge to the island, which was reportedly refurbished ahead of the occasion, while the Duchess, dressed in a maroon, polka-dot dress by And Other Stories, arrived on a whale watching vessel.

She then remained at their hotel while he travelled into the rainforest. Aides insist Meghan is not sick but simply tired. And the bumpy terrain of the World Heritage island, the largest sand island in the world, simply isn't suitable for an expectant woman.

The Fraser Island rainforest is home to the Island's satinay trees which, known for their hardiness in water, were used to build the London docks in the 1930s. The island has a total of 206,970 acres of protected forest and some trees are more than 1, 000 years old.

Meghan Markle arrives on Queensland's Fraser Island on Monday as part of her and Prince Harry's Australian royal tour

Meghan (pictured left and right) arrived on the island after travelling on a whale watching boat, separate to her husband, who was transported on a barge

The mother-to-be was presented with a bouquet of flowers to mark her arrival to Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island

The expecting Duchess of Sussex will forgo her royal duties for the day due to the rough terrain of the island

Meghan delighted the crowd of onlookers who turned out to see her arrival on Fraser Island, giving a wave to royal fans before she was taken to a luxury resort

The Duke gazed up in awe at the 1,000 year old Satinay trees as he was led into the forest to a clearing around a sacred Spirit Tree.

Butchulla Land and Sea Ranger Conway Burns explained: 'When we die, we go through an initiation.

'Our spirit goes through our body and through our sacred lakes and up to the sky. It returns to our people in these trees,' Burns explained.

'It's great to be standing here, where our people stood hundreds of years ago.'

'This is the best way to see these trees,' the Duke said, 'standing tall and not logged and chopped.'

Crowds had lined up along the Kingfisher Jetty to catch a glimpse of the couple as they stepped off their boats, with both the Duke and Duchess giving a wave to excited onlookers when they arrived on Fraser Island.

The Duchess of Sussex had earlier boarded a Royal Australian Air Force jet at Sydney Airport on Monday, bound for Queensland

Prince Harry was dressed in a navy blue shirt with grey trousers as he carried hand luggage on-board the aircraft

The royal couple are visiting the Island together but the Duchess will leave Prince Harry to explore the sights by himself

Fraser Island is the fourth Australian stop for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, after they visited Sydney, Dubbo and Melbourne

The couple head to Fiji and then on to Tonga after their visit to Queensland's Fraser Island on Monday as part of their first royal tour since they were married

The Duke was expected to take particular interest in his visit to the beach, as it served as a training base for an elite Z Special Force Unit during World War II.

The unit used the area to prepare for jungle and amphibious training ahead of missions into Asia and are credited with playing a major role in Australia's victory at Singapore Harbour.

The ruins of the Z Force Commando School remain on the western side of the island, nearby the resort.

Later, the Duke will head to Kingfisher Bay and walk along the jetty, hopefully with Meghan.

The couple are expected to be greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of fans, as tickets to cross to Kingfisher Bay have sold out for the day.

When Meghan arrived on the island, Hervey Bay Eco Marine Tours posted a photo of the Duchess on their Instagram page with the caption: 'VERY exciting day here today at the Marina. The glowing Meghan Markle passing through on her way to K'gari'.

Fraser Island is the fourth stop on the royal couple's Australian leg of their tour, after they visited Sydney, Dubbo, in the New South Wales central west, and Melbourne.

Following their visit to Fraser Island, the royal couple are heading to Fiji, then Tonga before a trip back to Sydney for the closing ceremony of the Invictus Games.

Their mammoth 16-day tour finishes in New Zealand.

A police boat patrols Fraser Island on Monday, the Queensland location which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are visiting

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will visit Kingfisher Bay Resort (pictured) on Fraser Island, off the coast of QLD on MondayFormer prime minister Malcolm Turnbull praised his politically-active son-in-law on Twitter but refused to endorse the Liberal Party's bruised Wentworth by-election candidate.

The day before voters in Sydney's wealthy eastern suburbs cast their ballots, Mr Turnbull retweeted an image of his daughter Daisy and her husband James Brown at the reopening of the refurbished ANZAC war memorial at Hyde Park.

The social media image of Mr Brown wearing his war medals was retweeted by the former PM from Singapore, after he had repeatedly refused to tweet an endorsement for the Liberal Party's Wentworth by-election candidate Dave Sharma, who suffered a 19 per cent swing against him on Saturday.

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Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull praised his politically-active son-in-law on Twitter (pictured) but refused to endorse the Liberal Party's bruised Wentworth by-election candidate

James Brown (pictured second right next to his father-in-law Malcolm Turnbull in July 2016) is a member of the Paddington branch of the Liberal Party in the Wentworth electorate

Mr Brown, a war veteran who did tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, last year became the President of the Returned and Services League in New South Wales.

The 33-year-old father of Mr Turnbull's two Australian-based grandchildren, Jack and Alice, last year also seized control of the Liberal Party's Paddington branch, in the Wentworth electorate.

A Liberal Party member in Wentworth, who handed out for Mr Sharma on Saturday, said it was widely speculated within the branches that Mr Turnbull wanted his son-in-law to eventually take over his old seat.

'There has been speculation for some time - even before Turnbull was rolled - that Turnbull wanted James Brown to succeed him in Wentworth,' a moderate faction source told Daily Mail Australia on Monday.

The former PM had repeatedly refused to tweet an endorsement for the Liberal Party's Wentworth by-election candidate Dave Sharma (right with Prime Minister Scott Morrison)

'The timing of the tweet in support of Brown, given he did not support Sharma, is ominous.

'It will be interesting to see if he puts his hand up.'

Dave Sharma is trailing high-profile independent Dr Kerryn Phelps, 51.1 per cent to 48.9 per cent, after preferences, updated Australian Electoral Commission figures showed.

The Liberal Party suffered a 19 per cent swing against it at the by-election in a seat that had only ever been held by Australia's major conservative party since it was created at Federation in 1901.

War veteran James Brown (pictured, second left with son Jack and wife Daisy) last year became President of the Returned and Service League in New South Wales

Malcolm Turnbull (pictured at Sydney airport with wife Lucy) declined to endorse Wentworth Liberal candidate Dave Sharma as he stayed in New York and Singapore

It was the biggest anti-government swing at a federal by-election since April 1992, when former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke's inner-Melbourne seat of Wills went to an independent.

Mr Turnbull rebuffed requests from his bitter Liberal predecessor Tony Abbott, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Mr Sharma to either tweet an endorsement of the Liberal candidate or record a robocall message.

'It was a disgrace that Malcolm Turnbull did not help Dave Sharma and there were many Liberal members that expressed their anger about this at the after-party, Saturday night,' the Liberal Party member said.

Former Australian Medical Association president Dr Kerryn Phelps, a Double Bay doctor, looks set to win Wentworth, which has been a conservative seat since it was created in 1901

Daily Mail Australia contacted Mr Turnbull and Mr Brown for a response.

Dr Phelps, a former Australian Medical Association president and campaigner for gay marriage, looks likely to become the first independent to have won a federal seat in Sydney since Ted Mack won North Sydney at the 1990 and 1993 elections, before retiring in 1996.

The Double Bay doctor was congratulated on Twitter by Malcolm Turnbull's Singapore-based son Alex, who had made a Facebook video during the campaign urging Wentworth voters to avoid supporting the Liberal Party.Not for the first time, Nick Clegg  sorry, that should be Sir Nicholas Clegg  has let down his admirers. To the consternation of those who, like him, have been campaigning to 'stop Brexit', the former leader of the Liberal Democrats has abandoned them to join Facebook.

Specifically, he starts work today as the social media company's 'head of global affairs'. That means the former deputy prime minister will be paid millions to lobby governments and public opinion to see things Facebook's way.

Mark Zuckerberg (L) meets former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg (C) and Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg (R)

We are told that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's dominant shareholder and chief executive, spent months 'wooing' Clegg to take up this job offer. Far be it from me to question Zuckerberg's business acumen, but if he thinks the British people would put any faith in what Clegg says (about almost anything), then the California-based billionaire must have been on the wacky baccy.

Misjudgment

Because Clegg  having achieved ephemeral acclaim during the 2010 General Election as the leader of a party that would 'keep its promises, unlike the two old parties'  became a byword for betrayal. The Liberal Democrats' principal campaign pledge  signed personally by every one of its MPs  was to scrap student fees: this was pitched to win the support of younger voters and it was mightily effective in constituencies with high student populations.

Then, within months of joining government, Clegg instructed his MPs to back the Conservatives in . . . tripling those same university tuition fees. Clegg's misjudgment  to put it politely  led to a cataclysmic drop in support for his party by those same young voters. Eventually, he issued a much-satirised apology on YouTube, saying how sad he was about it.

This was demolished by David Cameron's former policy director at No 10, James O'Shaughnessy, who tweeted: 'Clegg [is] talking crap on student fees. He wasn't between 'a rock and a hard place'. I was in the room when he decided to vote for it. He was keen.'

Not only was this a principal reason (not the only one) for the annihilation of the Liberal Democrats in the 2015 General Election, it contributed to Nick Clegg's ignominious loss of his own seat, in the university constituency of Sheffield Hallam, last year. He's been in need of a paid job ever since: he's certainly got a stonker of a salary now.

Ten years ago, Liberal Democrats leaflets were scattered across the length and breadth of the land, declaring: 'It's time for a REAL referendum on Europe'

To be fair, Clegg has not been idle since the electors of Sheffield handed out his electoral P45. He has written a book called How To Stop Brexit, a manifestation of his revulsion at the decision of the British people in a referendum to leave the European Union, which he has been determined to overturn.

As with other campaigners in that cause, Clegg argues that the British people had been fooled. Well, referendum campaigns, like general elections, involve propaganda and phoney figures on both sides. But the democrat accepts the outcome. You might think Clegg, above all, would accept that: after all, he was the first leader of a mainstream political party to advocate a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EU.

Ten years ago, Liberal Democrats leaflets were scattered across the length and breadth of the land, declaring: 'It's time for a REAL referendum on Europe.' And on each was a big photo of Nick Clegg, next to the words 'Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg: It's time to give the British people a real referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. Sign our petition today.'

When the then-Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, refused Clegg's demand for a parliamentary vote on his idea of an in-or-out EU referendum, the Lib Dem leader was so furious that he led his MPs on a stagey flounce out of the chamber in protest.

In the end, of course, Clegg got his wish for an in-or-out referendum, when the Conservative-led coalition government in which he served as deputy prime minister years later pushed through the necessary enabling legislation. When it eventually took place, his side  to his evident disbelief  lost.

And suddenly, it transpires this was not the 'real' referendum after all. No, that was all a terrible mistake. The 'real' referendum, designed to overturn the result of the very one Clegg demanded, is promoted as the 'People's Vote'  presumably to distinguish it from the one in 2016, which must have involved only non-sentient beings or zombies.

Thwart

Clegg was not among the hundreds of thousands of campaigners for the 'People's Vote' who marched in gloriously sunny London on Saturday. Presumably he was too busy preparing for his new Facebook job starting today or, indeed, applying for his 'Green Card'  the far from automatic permit for which immigrants are required to apply if they wish to work in the U.S. (not at all like the EU free movement system of which Clegg is such an advocate).

Instead, he could be found pontificating in the pages of the German newspaper Die Welt, in a joint article with former prime minister Tony Blair and former Conservative deputy PM Michael Heseltine under the headline: 'Blair, Clegg and Heseltine: we need another EU referendum'. I raised this with a friend of mine, who has spent some time on government business in the EU over recent months. I remarked to him that this piece was clearly intended to convince German readers that the British political establishment will do what it can to thwart the result of the 2016 referendum, but that surely the Germans must realise these three authors carry no weight whatsoever in the UK, being regarded here as has-beens, discredited, or both.

No, he replied: in the councils of Brussels, and in Berlin, the three are taken very seriously and such an article is read as evidence that there really is a good chance the British establishment will force a second referendum, to keep the UK in the EU. And, he added, it encourages Brussels and Berlin to be even more implacable in their negotiating stance, to add to the attractions of such a 'reconsideration'.

In fact, it was all along the view in the Chancelleries of Europe that the British people would discover what the peoples of Holland, Denmark and Ireland learned: that if they vote in a referendum against the way that the European Commission and the established parties want (remember that the leadership of all three main British political parties were for Remain), they will be made to vote again until they come up with the right answer.

Weakness

That view in Brussels will be strengthened by a disgraceful speech in Salisbury last week by the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers. This ex-Foreign Office man (he didn't work his way up the intelligence service, unlike previous occupants of that job) declared his support for a second referendum. And he asserted it was only because the UK had been 'weakened' by Brexit that Russia had dared to attempt to assassinate the British double agent Sergei Skripal: 'Russia was willing to treat Britain with contempt.'

Sir John Sawers has declared his support for a second referendum

So how does Sawers explain the fact that the same Russian government used equally deadly poison to assassinate another defector, Alexander Litvinenko, in London in 2006  ten years before the Brexit vote?

Perhaps this unprecedented intervention by an ex-MI6 chief is designed to impress on Berlin or Brussels that the UK is contrite at its voters' impertinence in wanting to leave the institutions of the EU: but Brexit supporters should be heartened that such an ill-thought-out argument is the best that a former so-called 'intelligence' chief can muster.

Indeed, it is a glaring weakness of the forces arguing for a 'People's Vote' that there is no one among its leading figures who commands widespread respect. Its main spokesman is Blair's former spin doctor-in-chief, Alastair Campbell; but the propaganda maestro behind the 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq endlessly complaining that Brexit was based on a false prospectus is almost beyond satire.

For similar reasons, those calling for a second referendum should actually be grateful that Nick Clegg is abandoning their cause. Everything he touches turns to ashes. If you have shares in Facebook, sell.A two-year-old boy has been rushed to hospital after being bitten by a deadly brown snake.

An ambulance was called to the Cabarita Beach area in north eastern New South Wales at 1.30pm.

Fearing for their son's safety, the boy's parents cancelled the ambulance and rushed to a nearby hospital themselves, Tweed Daily News reported.

A two-year-old boy has been taken to the hospital after being bitten by a deadly brown snake (stock image)

'It looks like the parents or someone related to the child has bundled them in their car and taken him straight to hospital,' the spokesman said.

'It looks like he's possibly gone to the Tweed Hospital'.

Information on the two-year-old's condition has yet to be disclosed.

The pseudonaja textilis, known as the common brown snake, is said to be the second most venomous snake in the world and the deadliest in Australia.

The brown snake, which can be found in eastern Australia, is known to be fast, aggressive and hot-tempered.

The pseudonaja textilis, known as the common brown snake, is said to be the second most venomous snake in the world and the deadliest in Australia (stock image)

If provoked, the snake forms an 'S' shape, with its mouth open and ready to strike. If bitten by the brown snake, it can cause paralysis and a collapse within minutes.

Brown snakes are responsible for more deaths in the country than any other group of snakes.A heavily tattooed bikie gang member has been caught on video brandishing a gun after stabbing one man and slashing another man's face in an unprovoked attack.

Kalwyn George Kershaw, 35, a member of the Head Hunter gang, had been drinking with other gang members at bar in Tauranga, on New Zealand's North Island, on the night of the attack.

There had been an altercation with rivals Greazy Dogs gang at the bar, the New Zealand Herald reported.

When Kershaw and other gang members left the bar they approached a group of men in the carpark who they believed had links to the rival gang.

Kalwyn George Kershaw (pictured), 35, had been at Flow Bar in Hamilton Street, where there had been an altercation with rivals Greazy Dogs gang earlier in the night

The attack, which was caught on CCTV footage, shows Kershaw walk into one of the men, when the group push back Kershaw pulls out a knife and slashes a man's face before stabbing another man.

He then pulled out a loaded gun.

The two men have no gang connections.

Kershaw and his posse left in a taxi but were caught a short time later by police.

The attack happened in May - just three weeks after his most recent stint in jail.

Detective Sergeant Darryl Brazier said it was lucky no one died.

'This man is a very angry man. He was clearly there to intimidate and probably hurt.'

'These guys thrive on intimidation. And that's what they do it.'

Kalwyn George Kershaw, 35, a member of the Head Hunter gang was caught on CCTV footage pulling a gun on a group in the carpark of a bar

Kalwyn George Kershaw (pictured), 35, a member of the Head Hunter gang, has a criminal record that boasts more than 100 convictions

Kershaw pleaded guilty to five charges from the stabbing in May this year, including assault with intent to injure, possession of methamphetamine and unlawfully carrying a firearm.

He was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court on Friday to four years and nine months behind bars.

His criminal record now boasts more than 100 convictions.Donald Trump has praised Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis for his 'debate victory' against Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum.



'Ron DeSantis had a great debate victory tonight against Andrew Gillum, a mayor who presides over one of the worst run, and most corrupt, cities in Florida,' the President wrote in a tweet Sunday night, declaring DeSantis the winner.

'Ron will build on the great job done by Governor Rick Scott. Gillum will make Florida the next Venezuela!'

The two scuffled on the economy, race and Trump, who came up when CNN's moderator Jake Tapper asked DeSantis if he thought Trump was a good role model for children.

Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, left, shakes hands with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum after a CNN debate, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018, in Tampa, Fla.

President Trump declared DeSantis the debate victor shortly after in a tweet Sunday night

A CNN poll found DeSantis trailing behind Gillum in the race to become Florida's next governor.

At the start of the debate, DeSantis came out on the offensive, calling Gillum a 'failed mayor' who was 'involved in corruption'.

'Well, that was a mouthful,' Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, responded after DeSantis' opening statement.

Tapper's question to DeSantis of whether he believes Trump is a good role model for children was based in part on a DeSantis primary ad featuring one of his children stacking toy blocks as DeSantis exclaimed, 'Build the wall!

DeSantis responded by saying he thought Trump did the right thing by moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

'I know Andrew didn't support that and doesn't think that's right,' DeSantis said.

It was one in a series of testy exchanges during the first debate between Gillum and DeSantis, who resigned his seat in the U.S. House to focus on the governor's race.

Gillum isn't a big fan of President Trump, but he said during the debate that he'd gladly work with the president to bring money to the state for needed projects.

'That's just not the way it works,' said Republican opponent Ron DeSantis, who won the nomination based on Trump's endorsement.

After DeSantis answered Tapper's question, Gillum looked at Tapper and said, 'I'm confused by the question.'

'The question was whether or not he thinks President Trump is a good role model for the children of Florida,' Tapper said.

'That's what I thought,' Gillum said, drawing laughter from the audience. 'No, he's not. Donald Trump is weak, and he performs as all weak people do. They become bullies, and Mr. DeSantis is his acolyte. He's trying out to be the Trump apprentice. At every turn he's tweeting him.'

The two scuffled on the economy, race, and, of course, Trump during the debate. DeSantis, who resigned his seat in the U.S. House to focus on the governor's race while Gillum is the mayor of Tallahassee

Gillum said that despite his disgust for Trump's behavior, he wouldn't turn down help from the president if it helped Florida.

'You need to be able to work with the president,' DeSantis said. 'Andrew can't do that. He wants to impeach Trump, he's always saying bad things about him ... I think I will be better positioned to advance Florida's priorities because I have a productive relationship with the administration.'

Gillum said doing what's best for the state shouldn't be about politics, noting that he's worked closely with Republican Gov. Rick Scott in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, which left most of Tallahassee without power.

'This is not Russia. You shouldn't have to kiss the ring of the president of the United States for the president to see to the goodwill of the third largest state in all of America,' Gillum said.

'This is a democracy. We can dissent, we can disagree and where it comes to working together, we can do that too. If you want to look for an example, look at how Rick Scott and I worked with each other in the aftermath of this hurricane.'

President Donald Trump stands with Ron DeSantis during the president's Make America Great Again Rally at the Florida State Fair Grounds Expo Hall on July 31, 2018 to endorse DeSantis

Gillum appeared calm, while DeSantis looked agitated, often shifting his eyes and moving his head from side to side and interrupting his opponent.

DeSantis said Gillum would hurt the state's economy by raising the corporate income tax and raising the minimum wage. And he repeatedly said that Tallahassee has the highest crime rate in the state, while Gillum repeatedly defended the city for being at a five-year low in crime.

Tapper brought up the fact that DeSantis said Florida voters shouldn't 'monkey this up' by electing Gillum as Florida's first black governor and refused to return money from a donor who called President Barack Obama the N-word on Twitter.

DeSantis brought up his experience as a Navy officer and his time served in Iraq.

'When we're down range in Iraq, it didn't matter your race. We all wore the same uniform, we all had that American flag patch on our arm and that was end of story,' he said. 'I'll be a governor for all Floridians.'

Gillum implied that DeSantis has aligned himself with racists through social media and speeches he's made.

'The monkey up comment said it all and he has only continued in the course of his campaign to draw all the attention he can to the color of my skin,' Gillum said. 'And the truth is, you know what? I'm black. I've been black I'll my life and as far as I know, I'll die black.'

Voters will decide between Gillum and DeSantis on November 6.The mother of an eight-year-old mentally disabled boy is speaking out after police handcuffed her screaming, kicking, and crying son when he walked off the campus of his elementary school.

Butte County Sheriffs Deputies handcuffed the boy after he wandered away from Chapman Elementary School in Chico, California on Thursday.

I was torn up, the boys mother, Meagan Ramey, told KRCR-TV.

It broke my heart. I started crying, and I'm going to start crying again.

The mother of an 8-year-old mentally disabled boy is speaking out after police handcuffed her screaming, kicking, and crying son when he walked off the campus of his elementary school

Butte County Sheriffs Deputies detained the boy after he wandered away from Chapman Elementary School in Chico, California on Thursday

Sheriff's deputies said they were concerned for the boy when they noticed he crossed a street on his own and appeared anxious and confused

The boy's mother said that when she arrived she was shocked to see her son kicking and screaming while his pants were beneath his bottom and his shoes were off his feet

I was torn up, the boys mother, Meagan Ramey (seen above), said. It broke my heart. I started crying, and I'm going to start crying again

Ramey said it is common for her son to walk away from the school and have the principal follow just a few steps behind.

He'll start walking off campus, the principal, we've talked about it several times, she said.

On Thursday, however, sheriffs deputies said they grew concerned when they noticed the boy cross a street and appear to be confused and anxious.

Deputies then began to approach the boy, but he kept walking away. The deputies feared the boy would wander into traffic.

So, at one point one of the deputies took him and restrained him and that ultimately resulted in him struggling and at one point even scratching the deputy, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said.

Ramey (above) says she and her husband intend on filing an official complaint. Once the complaint is filed, the sheriffs office will review bodycam footage and take interviews

The boy was then handcuffed. Honea said deputies decided not to put him inside a patrol car for fear he might try to harm himself.

Ramey arrived on the scene and noticed her son in handcuffs. The image shocked her.

Hands behind his back, his pants were past his bottom, shoes were thrown off, said Ramey.

He was screaming kicking and crying because he has asthma as well.

Amateur video of the boy under arrest was posted to Facebook, where it went viral.

The sheriff says he is aware that the image of an eight-year-old developmentally disabled boy in handcuffs does not reflect well on his department.

When you are restraining somebody, even when you are doing it so they don't harm themselves and they are screaming and yelling you know the optics of that aren't good, it doesn't look good, said Honea.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea insists that the boy was handcuffed for his own safety as deputies were concerned he may try to harm himself

My heart goes out to all of the people there, but based on what I can see their actions were motivated out of concerns for this young man.

Ramey said that despite the pain of seeing her son in handcuffs, she kept her composure.

When I saw him in handcuffs it tore me up, she said.

I wanted to lose it on them but at the same time I didn't want to get myself in trouble.

Ramey says she and her husband intend on filing an official complaint.

Once the complaint is filed, the sheriffs office will review bodycam footage and take interviews.

Ramey says she doesnt fault the school. She says her son was taken to a doctor for treatment on a bruised wrist.Hurricane Willa has been described as 'extremely dangerous' after it gained rapid strength on Sunday night and was upgraded to Category 4.

The hurricane heading toward Mexico's Pacific coast was labeled 'life-threatening' by the US National Hurricane Center (NHC), potentially causing damage to some of the country's popular tourist areas.

NHC reported torrential rains and flash-flooding as the 5-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale reading showed the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of approximately 130 miles per hour (209km).

Hurricane Willa gained dangerous strength on Sunday night as it churned toward Mexico's Pacific coast

Willa is expected to come ashore on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning

An estimated total rainfall between 5 inches and 15 inches (12.5 cm to 38.1 cm) could drench the states of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa, where the beach resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan are.

The Miami-based center believes Willa will come ashore on Tuesday afternoon or evening but also reported it could hit Wednesday with a storm surge as 'large and destructive waves' join the weather system.

By Sunday afternoon, Willa was about 225 miles (362 km) southwest of Cabo Corrientes, on the coast of Jalisco state.

Those concerned about the coasts of west-central and southwestern mainland Mexico were advised to follow the progress of Willa

NHC reported torrential rains and flash-flooding as the 5-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale reading showed the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of approximately 130 mph

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for San Blas to Mazatlan meaning tropical-storm-force winds that make being outside anywhere from difficult to dangerous could arrive within 48 hours.

Playa Perula to San Blas has a Tropical Storm Warning with the conditions expected within 36 hours.

A Tropical Storm Watch for north of Mazatlan to Bahia Tempehuaya meant tropical storm conditions were possible within 48 hours.

Those concerned about the coasts of west-central and southwestern mainland Mexico were advised to follow the progress of Willa.

Mexico's Pacific coast is home to some major tourist draws. Pictured is Mazatlan, Sinaloa

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for San Blas to Mazatlan (pictured October 21) meaning tropical-storm-force winds could arrive within 48 hours

A Tropical Storm Watch for north of Mazatlan (pictured October 21) to Bahia Tempehuaya meant tropical storm conditions were possible within 48 hours

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Vicente, which formed the day before in the Pacific off southern Mexico, showed signs of weakening and it lingered 230 miles (370 km) southeast of Acapulco.

The 22nd storm of the year had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (64 kph) and the NHC said the center of the storm was likely to remain off shore or near the coast.

It's predicted to weaken to a tropical depression status by Monday night before calming on Tuesday.

A map showed Vincente was a storm and Willa was a hurricane SundayA man has admitted to raping three woman and indecently assaulting a fourth that he met through online dating app Tinder.

Glenn Antony Hartland, 43, sobbed into tissues as he appeared in the County Court dock on Monday as the four charges were read to him.

'Guilty,' he replied in a weak voice, according to The Age.

A man has admitted to raping three woman and indecently assaulting a fourth that he met through online dating app Tinder

Glenn Antony Hartland, 43, sobbed into tissues as he appeared in the County Court dock on Monday as the four charges were read to him

The incidents happened across the Melbourne suburbs of South Yarra, Elwood, St Kilda and Prahran.

Hartland admitted raping two women in 2014, indecently assaulting a woman in 2015, and raping another woman in 2016.

He preyed on all the women via the dating app Tinder, where he was known only as Dylan by some.

At one point during the hearing he asked through sobs if he could be excused but Judge Meryl Sexton denied the request.

He was set to face trial next week after initially denying the accusations, however, changed his plea at the last minute.

One of the woman accused Hartland of raping her after a day of drinking not long after they met.

'He's a shape shifter. One minute he's a lawyer, the next he's a pro snowboarder,' said another of his victims.

Late last year, police put him in jail after they claim he stalked one of his accusers on the street while on bail, yelling at her, 'There's no point hiding, you liar'.

Hartland is to return to court in March for a plea hearing.Daniel Ricciardo made an explosive exit from the United States Grand Prix over the weekend, angrily punching a wall following a forced mechanical retirement.

The star Australian F1 racer, originally from Perth, had to retire prematurely on lap nine at the race in Austin, Texas - yet another crushing blow to his horror season.

His frustration came as no surprise given it was his fifth premature exit in 10 races, news.com.au reported.

Daniel Ricciardo (pictured) made an explosive exit from team Red Bull on the weekend, angrily punching his fist through a wall following a forced mechanical retirement

'He's just taken his frustration out on his room by putting his fist through the wall, which you can totally relate to,' Red Bull team chief Christian Horner said.

'It was an identical issue to that which he had in Bahrain where it was a complete shut down. It's a crying shame for Daniel, I feel so sorry for him.'

Ricciardo's team-mate Max Verstappen managed to finish in second place, while Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen took first.

Ricciardo will race just three more times before his tumultuous partnership with Red Bull ends and he joins Renault, where he will earn three times his current salary.

Ricciardo's team-mate Max Verstappen managed his way from 18th on the grid to finishing in second, while Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen finished first

The 29-year-old signed a secret two-year contract with the French team, which will see him earn more than $35 million a year onward from next season.

Mr Horner took a subtle jab at Ricciado's soon-to-be employer following the race, pointing out it was Renault that supplied engines to Red Bull cars.

'I'm sure he will have a word with his future employers about this because it's so frustrating losing him from races. He doesn't blame the team in any way, he knows we are doing everything we can, it's just one of those things,' he said.A teenage girl who claimed she was pulled into bushland and sexually assaulted after getting off a school bus made a false report, police say.

The girl, 14, told police she had been grabbed at knife-point off the Pacific Highway by a man aged 30-40 about 3.30pm on Wednesday after she got off the bus in Lake Macquarie, NSW.

She also claimed he had told her: 'If you tell anyone, I'll kill you'.

The claim was backed up by locals, one who told Daily Mail Australia her own daughter heard the attacker verbally threaten the teenage girl after carrying out the shocking sexual attack.

A teenage girl who was dragged into bushes (pictured) and sexually assaulted as she made her way home from school at Windale made a false report, police say

'No one really saw anything. My daughter was with a friend down the corner and she heard the man say something to the girl,' a local said.

'He said to the girl: "If you tell anyone I'll kill you".

'My daughter told me and then when police knocked on my door I told them, and we had to go and make a statement.

'I mentioned it to detectives and they said the girl who was attacked had told them the same thing.'

Officers from the local police station launched an investigation with help from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad.

Sex Crimes Squad commander Superintendent John Kerlatec told reporters at the time the attack was 'shocking' and the perpetrator was 'brazen'.

The girl had said she was walking along Yertala Close (pictured here) when she said she was pulled into the bushes at knifepoint and told 'if you tell anyone, I'll kill you'

'Its important that we identify this perpetrator and get him off the streets,' he said. 'Its particularly important for the young victim that she can see justice.

'Shes obviously very traumatised by this incident. I cant fully describe how it would be, I havent walked in her shoes.

'But I can say shes exceptionally strong, shes helping us with our investigation, shes being supported by her family and her friends.'

On Monday, police announced the sexual assault had not taken place.

'Following extensive investigations, including forensic examinations and speaking with a number of people, detectives have confirmed that the report was false,' a statement from NSW Police said.

The girl has been spoken to by police and offered support services, and a spokeswoman for NSW Police has confirmed no charges would be laid as a result of the false report.Julia Louis-Dreyfus made a veiled but unmistakable reference to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against Brett Kavanaugh, as she became the 21st person to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor for a lifetime in comedy Sunday night.

The actress, 57, recalled a high school performance of the play Serendipity in front of a star-studded audience in Washington DC, the same Maryland college prep in Maryland that Ford attended when she claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.

She recalled her ambition to become a respected dramatic actress as she appeared in the play at Holton-Arms School.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus received the 21st Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday in Washington DC

Louis-Dreyfus made a veiled but unmistakable reference to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against Brett Kavanaugh

She recalled her ambition to become a respected dramatic actress as she appeared in the play Serendipity at Holton-Arms School

Louis-Dreyfus was the guest of honor as the likes of Stephen Colbert and other comedy greats attended as guests

'I can remember every single aspect of that play that night, so much so that I would testify under oath about it. But I can't remember who drove me there or who drove me home,' she quipped in reference to the Kavanaugh case.

The veteran comedic actress also drew laughs by stopping mid-speech to deliver a monologue from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as she was recognized as one of the best-known comedic actresses of her generation.

As only the 21st person to receive the accolade, Jerry Seinfeld, Stephen Colbert and 2010 Mark Twain recipient Tina Fey rallied around to make fun of the funny-woman at the event to be televised November 19 on PBS.

Actress and honoree Julia Louis-Dreyfus walks the red carpet at the 21st annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at The Kennedy Center on October 21

Tina Fey arrives at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the 21st Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor presented to Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Sunday

Fey joked she'd lost her virginity to Louis-Dreyfus's husband Brad Hall (right)

Fey (left) received the award in 2010 and Jerry Seinfield (right) was also in attendance

Fey didn't hold back as she cracked a joke about following a similar career path after the honoree was discovered in 1982.

'We both started comedy in Chicago. We both moved on the Saturday Night Live. We both lost our virginity to Brad Hall,' she said, referring to Louis-Dreyfus' husband and former SNL cast-mate sitting next to the honoree.

Fey praised the 'secret precision' of Louis-Dreyfus' comedy and her willingness to make her Seinfeld character so flawed.

'Julia let Elaine be selfish and petty and sarcastic and a terrible, terrible dancer,' Fey said.

'Julia let Elaine be selfish and petty and sarcastic and a terrible, terrible dancer,' Fey said about her Seinfield character

Her work as Vice President Selina Meyer on Veep earned her six consecutive Emmy Awards. Here she is pictured May 2017

Louis-Dreyfus (pictured at the January 1994 Golden Globe Awards) has received 11 Emmy awards, eight for acting and three for producing - a record for any single performer

Late night host Colbert kicked off the ceremony with a reference to the center's decision to rescind the 2009 Mark Twain award from Bill Cosby, who was convicted of sexual assault earlier this year.

Colbert displayed a sign declaring '167 day's since the last Un-Twaining' on stage as he praised her.

'I sincerely believe that she is the funniest person on television. And I say that as someone who is on television right now,' he said. 'I think you'll be OK.'

Lisa Kudrow arrives at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the 21st Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

As celebrity guests arrived before the ceremony, Seinfeld recalled the first time he saw Louis-Dreyfus in action - and knew almost immediately she was a major talent.

His iconic sitcom, Seinfeld, was still in the planning stages and producer Larry David knew Louis-Dreyfus from their time together on Saturday Night Live.

Seinfeld said: 'We had just two short pages of script, and we sat down to read the dialogue together. As soon as she opened her mouth, I knew she was the one.'

Seinfeld also credited Louis-Dreyfus for having the confidence and strength of personality to hold her own on what he called 'a very male show'.

That confidence was evident very early for Louis-Dreyfus, who said she knew as a young child that she had a gift for comedy.

'The first time I really knew was when I stuffed raisins in my nose and my mother laughed. I ended up in the emergency room because they wouldn't come out!' Louis-Dreyfus said as she walked the red carpet.

Comedian and director Kumail Nanjiani grew up in Pakistan and never saw an episode of Seinfeld until he immigrated to the US as an adult.

'But I became a huge fan as soon as I moved here,' he said.

Co-writer of the movie The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani, and his wife Emily Gordon arrive

The co-writer of the movie The Big Sick particularly recalls her iconic, slightly convulsive 'Elaine Benes dance' on the show, which he credits to Louis-Dreyfus' gift for physical comedy.

'There are some comedians who think physical comedy is beneath them,' he said. 'But she was just fearless and ego-less.'

Keegan-Michael Key and Lisa Kudrow also graced the red carpet.

Later Key came onstage dressed as Mark Twain himself to roast many of the previous award recipients. When a picture of Cosby was briefly shown he quickly moved things along.

'Its OK, hes not watching,' he said before adding that he doubted PBS was a popular channel 'in the penitentiary'.

Keegan-Michael Key and his wife, Elisa Pugliese, arrive at the Kennedy Center

Louis-Dreyfus emerged from Chicago's famed Second City comedy troupe before joining the cast of Saturday Night Live. Her best-known role is her nine-year run as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld. More recently, her work as Vice President Selina Meyer on Veep earned her six consecutive Emmy Awards.

Louis-Dreyfus has received 11 Emmy awards, eight for acting and three for producing - a record for any single performer.

She has used her celebrity to draw attention to environmental causes as an activist with the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and other conservation causes.

Production on the upcoming seventh season of Veep was delayed as Louis-Dreyfus received treatment for breast cancer.

She revealed she was battling stage two breast cancer in September 2017.

And last week Louis-Dreyfus opened up about why she went public.

'First and foremost we had stalled Veep (her HBO hit show) productions because of my situation,' the actress shared during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. 'So a lot of people worked for me, so I knew I really couldn't keep it private because I had to tell everybody what was going on.'

Once Louis-Dreyfus made decision to go public, she also decided that she would take of the approach of attacking her situation with a sense of humor.

'I was really pleased with the reaction because I think it was buoying to people who are battling cancer,' the actress shared during an interview with ET.

And it had a sense of humor and it had a kind of kick cancer in the a** point of view.'A young woman who vanished while walking her dog has been found dead on an isolated beach in what police suspect could be a 'sexually related murder'.

Toyah Cordingley, 24, disappeared on Sunday between 2pm and 2.30pm after driving to Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, to walk her beloved dog.

She was found at the beach on Monday morning between the foreshore and the start of bushland, and her death is being treated as a murder, police have confirmed.

Toyah Cordingley, 24, was found dead on Wangetti Beach in northern Queensland on Monday morning

She had been walking her dog when she disappeared on Sunday afternoon

Detective Senior Sergeant Ed Kinbacher said investigators had 'no preconceptions' about whether the pharmacy worker knew her killer, 9 News reported.

'(But) if we're dealing with a potentially sexually-related murder, which commonsensically we may well be dealing with a male,' he said.

Kinbacher said the area she was found in was not highly frequented, and has asked for locals to come forward with any concerns about suspicious people on the beach.

The detective also said Cordingley would have stood out because 'she was with a large dog and long, blondish hair with a purple tint'.

'No young woman should go to the beach to walk their dog and have this happen to them,' he said.

Detective Senior Sergeant Ed Kinbacher said investigators had 'no preconceptions' about whether the pharmacy worker knew her killer (police pictured at beach on Monday)

The woman's family had been frantically searching for her (SES crews pictured on Monday)

The 24-year-old's parents are 'obviously devastated in regard to the circumstances', Kinbacher said. 'This is a shocking event.'

Friends remembered the 'amazing' young woman for her kind nature and friendly dog. Police are hunting for her killer and urge anyone with information to contact them

'She was 800m north of the southern access point, and there are only two access points at Wangetti,' he said.

'It's a quiet beach. I'm not aware of any historical problems with this area.

'Anyone who has had any concerns about people they've seen on the beach in recent months, please come forward.'

Cordingley's car, which she drove to the beach on Sunday, was found at the southern entrance to the beach, and her dog was also found nearby uninjured.

The young woman's family had been frantically searching for her, and her sister shared a photograph of her on Facebook with a desperate plea for information on her whereabouts.

Locals shared the post and fond memories of Cordingley, remembering her kind nature and friendly dog.

'I met her last week, her dog ran up to mine and we let them run together along the beach. She was such a nice girl,' one woman wrote.

After her death was publicised, grieving friends turned to social media to share the devastating news and pay tribute to the 'amazing' woman.

She was found at the beach on Monday morning between the foreshore and the start of bushland, and her death is being treated as a murder, police have confirmed

'No words could describe how amazing of a person you were,' friend Hayden Chalklin wrote.

'I can't believe you're gone. I can't believe I'm never going to see your smile again. I can't believe I'm never going to hear your voice again. I can't believe I'm writing this post.

'I don't know what to think, I don't know what to say. I'm going to miss you so much.

'You didn't deserve this and you will never be forgotten.'

Anyone with information is urged to call Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.A driver who was high on ice when he killed a nurse in a horror hit-and-run crash must serve at least eight years in jail.

Sebastian Kennett, 21, was unlicensed and driving at 160 km/h in a stolen car when he hit a hatchback driven by cardiac nurse Lydia Hansen, 53, in October last year.

Ms Hansen had slowed down to turn off Warrigal Road in Oakleigh - southeast of Melbourne - when she was struck.

Sebastian Kennett (left) was unlicensed and drove a stolen car when he hit a car driven by Lydia Hansen (right)

She had been driving home from dinner with a friend and died at the scene from chest injuries.

Kennett fled the scene, but was arrested after a three day search.

Kennett's stolen vehicle was doing 160 km/h before it hit Ms Hansen's hatchback

Kennett fled the scene but was arrested by police after a three day search

The 21-year-old pleaded guilty to charges including culpable driving causing death and theft of a motor vehicle.

County Court of Victoria Judge Frank Gucciardo sentenced Kennett to a total of 11 years in jail.

The court heard Kennett had been in and out of youth detention for years and only walked free from another stint a month before the horrific crash.

Judge Gucciardo said Kennett had been raised by drug dealing parents and suffered a brain injury in another car accident when he was 14.

Outside court, Ms Hanson's mother, Cecilia Elliot, described her daughter as 'a loving and compassionate soul' who 'had a heart of gold'.

Sebastian Kennett's mother (centre) sobbed loudly as her son's sentence was announced

Lydia Hansen's mother Cecilia Elliot (pictured) described her daughter as 'a loving and compassionate soul'

'We just hope he (Kennett) doesn't do it again,' Ms Elliot said.

In sentencing, Judge Gucciardo paid tribute to Ms Hansen.

'A worthy and loved person died,' he said.

'The life that was lost as a result of this particular offence was invaluable and immeasurable.'

Kennett's mother sobbed loudly upon hearing her son's sentence.

But the killer showed little emotion from the prison dock.

Ms Hansen's sister, Corinne Sommers, said she hoped no one else would have to go through the same pain as her family.

'The world needs more people like Lynda,' she said.The 19-year-old man accused of raping and murdering Eurydice Dixon will face another three charges.

Jaymes Todd appeared in Melbourne County Court via video link on Monday morning over the death of the 22-year-old aspiring comedian that shocked the nation.

Todd has now been accused of attempting to rape and and two counts of intentionally touching Ms Dixon in a sexual manner during the June 13 attack.

19-year-old Jaymes Todd (pictured), the teenager accused of raping and murdering Eurydice Dixon, will face another three charges he was told in court on Monday morning

Eurydice Dixon (pictured) was raped and murdered as she walked home from a comedy gig at Melbourne's Highlander Bar - her partially naked body was left in a field just a few hundred metres from her home

The court was told that Todd could potentially face more charges once pathology results were finalised and the 'extent of the assault' was identified.

The teenager was unaware of the new charges until today, The Herald Sun reported.

He also sat still and silent during the brief hearing.

Todd's defense lawyer asked for an adjournment until next week to further discuss the charges with her client.

The body of Ms Dixon was found on the Princes Park field at Carlton North (pictured) by a passer-by at about 3am on June 13

The body of Ms Dixon was found on the Princes Park field at Carlton North by a passer-by about 3am on June 13.

The Broadmeadows teenager is accused of raping Ms Dixon, then murdering her, as she walked home from a comedy gig at Melbourne's CBD Highlander Bar.

She was just a few hundred metres away from her home.As Scott Morrison issued an apology to institutionalised sexual abuse victims, Julia Gillard consoled the mother of two women who were raped by a paedophile priest.

The former prime minister held the hand of Chrissie Foster, mother of Emma and Katie, as Mr Morrison made the National Apology at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday.

Ms Gillard's role in setting up the Royal Commission into child sex abuse was noted by the crowd with her receiving several bouts of applause throughout proceedings.

As Scott Morrison issued an apology to institutionalised sexual abuse victims, Julia Gillard (left) consoled the mother (centre) of two women who were raped by a paedophile priest

Photos showed Ms Gillard holding the emotional mother's hand as they sat inside the House of Representatives alongside hundreds of abuse survivors and their families.

Ms Foster's daughter Emma suffered through eating disorders, drug addiction and self harm before overdosing on medication in 2008 and dying aged 26.

Her sister Katie became a binge drinker and was hit by a drunk driver in 1999. She was left physically and mentally disabled and requiring 24-hour care.

Ms Gillard listened to speeches in the chamber before the audience at a later ceremony in the Great Hall heckled organisers to briefly let her speak.

Ms Foster was spotted giving Ms Gillard a kiss on the cheek (pictured) at the conclusion of the National Apology in Parliament on Monday

Ms Gillard (pictured embracing survivor) listened to speeches in the chamber before the audience at a later ceremony in the Great Hall heckled organisers to briefly let her speak

In November 2012, Ms Gillard, then prime minister, announced the intention of the Commonwealth government to establish a major public inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

More than 17,000 survivors told their stories to the commission across a five year period, including about 8000 who recounted their abuse in private sessions.

By December 2017 the Royal Commission issued its final report, in which it made 409 recommendations.

Ms Gillard (pictured with Ms Foster) announced the intention of the Commonwealth government to establish a major public inquiry into sex abuse while PM in 2012

Ms Gillard's role in setting up the royal commission into child sex abuse was noted by the crowd with her receiving several bouts of applause throughout proceedings

Mr Morrison became emotional during his speech to parliament, telling victims, 'Today, we say we are sorry. Sorry that you were not protected, sorry that you were not listened to.

'We are sorry for refusing to trust the words of children, for not believing you'.

'We are sorry that the justice and child welfare systems that should have protected you, were at times used to perpetrate yet more injustices against you'.

He held an abuse survivor in a tight embrace as she wept into his shoulder following his poignant address.In a news cycle where Donald Trump continues to dominate the headlines, Robert Mueller's name has noticeably disappeared in the last month.

But Mueller's special counsel has continued to churn behind the scenes, specifically focusing in on longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.

The special counsel has spent dozens of hours trying to figure out if Stone really did have knowledge of Wikileaks' plans to released hacked Democratic emails before the 2016 presidential election.

Stone himself claimed during the presidential campaign that he was in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Robert Mueller's special counsel has spent dozens of hours trying to figure out if Roger Stone knew Wikileaks planned to released hacked Democratic emails before the 2016 election

In August 2016, Stone predicted that WikiLeaks would once again leaks thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic party.

'I actually have communicated with Assange,' he bragged to a Republican group in Florida that month.

A few weeks later, Stone tweeted that it would soon be 'Podesta's time in the barrel', seemingly referring to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.

Six weeks later, WikiLeaks unleashed dozens of stolen emails from Podesta's account.

On October 2, Stone seemed to send out another warning: 'Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #WikiLeaks,' he wrote.

When nothing came on that Wednesday - October 5 - Stone tweeted words of reassurance.

'Libs thinking Assange will stand down are wishful thinking. Payload coming #Lockthemup,' he tweeted.

Just two days later, the first batch of Podesta emails dropped and WikiLeaks continued to release more stolen emails almost every day before the election.

But while he may have been full of boasts in 2016, Stone is now claiming that all his information came from either onetime friend Randy Credico or conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.

Stone is now claiming that all his information came from either onetime friend Randy Credico (pictured) or conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi

Stone told the Washington Post that Credico, a liberal comedian, was his 'principal source regarding the allegedly hacked emails published by WikiLeaks'.

Credico discussed Stone's links to WikiLeaks on his own radio show, telling listeners that he had 'been in touch directly and indirectly with Julian Assange'.

'I don't want to intimate in any way that I control or have influence with Assange because I do not,' Stone, who was a guest on the show, interjected.

'We have a mutual friend, somebody we both trust and therefore I am a recipient of pretty good information.'

Now Stone is claiming that the 'mutual friend' was Credico, and that he was 'in on the joke from the beginning'.

Stone told the Post that he was receiving information about the Clintons in 2016 from Corsi (pictured), not WikiLeaks

'I certainly couldn't out Randy on his own radio show,' Stone said. 'But the person I refer to is of course him.'

In September 2017, Stone said Credico was his WikiLeaks source in a letter to the House Intelligence Committee.

Filmmaker David Lugo and attorney Tyler Nixon have also claimed that Credico claimed to be the source of Stone's information on WikiLeaks.

Lugo showed the Post one text in which Credico wrote: 'I knew Rodger was going to name me sooner or later and so I told that you I'm the so-called back Channel.'

But all of this has been denied by Credico, who believes Stone set him up as a 'decoy' to hide his own ties to Assange.

Credico told the special counsel in September that Stone told him in 2016 that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks.

'I remember saying, 'Roger, I thought you had a back channel,'' Credico recalled.

'He said something to the effect of, "Yes, but I can't use him all the time.'''

Stone initially denied he ever claimed to have a second WikiLeaks source and said Credico was a 'perjurer'.

Credico told Mueller's special counsel in September that Stone told him in 2016 that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks

But he later admitted to telling Credico in an email that he had a 'second source' to WikiLeaks.

Stone told the Post that he was receiving information about the Clintons in 2016 from Corsi, including information he said he based his Podesta tweet on.

Corsi has likewise named himself as Stone's source for the Podesta tweet and claimed the pair had conversations about Clinton's chairman from August 14 to August 31, 2016. The conversations are now being investigated by Mueller.

The conspiracy theorist appeared before the grand jury in September and the FBI may interview his associates in the ongoing investigation.

WikiLeaks and Assange have continued to deny that they have ever communicated with Stone.

And Trump's longtime friend has remained staunch in his defense of the president and his opposition to Mueller.

'The special counsel pokes into every aspect of my...life, seeking something he can use to pressure me, to silence me and to try to induce me to testify against my friend Donald Trump,' he said in a recent fundraising video.

'This I will not do. When I say I won't roll on the president, what I mean is I will not be forced to make up lies to bring him down.'A newlywed bride who suffered a series of strokes on the second day of her honeymoon in the United States has regained consciousness.

Francheska Bechara, 27, from Sydney, was rushed to hospital after she was found unconscious in a New York hotel gym on the second morning of her honeymoon.

The primary school teacher has opened her eyes for five to ten seconds at a time and is able to follow simple instructions such as squeezing a nurse's hand but is still unable to talk.

Francheska Bechara, 27, has regained consciousness after she suffered a series of strokes in a New York hotel gym on the second morning of her honeymoon

'Joe went outside for smoke break and she was in the gym training. He went back in and he found her unconscious,' her brother-in-law said

Joe and Francheska Bechara had set off for New York City on a three-week trip around the United States one day after getting married in Sydney on October 7.

Francheska's brother-in-law, Joe Toubia, has said that her breathing tube has been removed and she is now breathing with an oxygen mask.

He also said that doctors have warned that her recovery would be very slow.

'Joe went outside for a smoke break and she was in the gym training. He went back in and he found her unconscious. It looked like she had been trying to use her phone to call for help,' Mr Toubia told nine.com.au on Monday.

'She can't speak. They are happy with her progress but it will be a long period of time, three or four months, before they know her final condition,' he said.

She had suffered from multiple strokes and was put in an induced coma to undergo three major emergency brain surgeries at Mount Sinai Hospital in order to reduce swelling and save her life.

Her mother and mother-in-law have flown to New York to be at her bedside.

Mrs Bechara faces a four-month recovery in the United States - leaving the couple with huge medical bills soon after they purchased a new home.

Joe and Francheska Bechara set off for three weeks in New York City after getting married in Sydney on October 7

On the second day of their romantic getaway, Mr Bechara, 28, was devastated to find his new bride, 27, on the floor of a gym, and she was rushed to hospital

She had suffered from multiple strokes and had to undergo three major emergency brain surgeries at Mount Sinai Hospital in order to reduce swelling and save her life

A Go Fund Me page was set up to raise money for the couple.

'All the costs are upfront and we want to help Francheska and Joe get through this horrific time,' the page reads.

'We also want to make sure after this terrible event they won't struggle when they return home.

'We want to eliminate all the financial stress for this beautiful couple so they focus on Francheska's recovery.'

Mrs Bechara's brother-in-law Joe Toubia said his family - including her three sisters and one brother - are 'devastated', and are still in the dark as to what caused her sudden health problems.

The Becharas did have travel insurance, and their hospital costs are estimated to be about $20,000 per day.

Mrs Bechara's brother-in-law Joe Toubia said his family - including her three sisters and one brother - are 'devastated'

The couple have been together for eight years after meeting at their local church, where their romance began with 'love at first sight'

The couple had been together for eight years after meeting at their local church Our Lady of Lebanon, where their romance began with 'love at first sight'

The couple had been together for eight years after meeting at their local church Our Lady of Lebanon, where their romance began with 'love at first sight'.

'They have been working all these years to save for the perfect wedding,' the Go Fund Me page stated.

The couple were engaged in February 2016 at Cedars Restaurant in Ryde during a family celebration with more than 80 guests in attendance.

The fundraising page set a goal of $300,000, having raised $144,596 as of Monday afternoon.

A charity event and auction is being scheduled for late November or early December at La Montage in Lilyfield, Sydney to raise money for Mrs Bechara's recovery.

A charity event and auction is being scheduled for late November or early December at La Montage in Lilyfield, Sydney to raise money for Mrs Bechara's recoveryFormer prime minister Tony Abbott received a nasty surprise when he returned to his German luxury car in an upmarket suburb during a bad weekend for the Liberal Party.

A $112 parking ticket on the windscreen of his 1990s Mercedes-Benz C-class sedan soured his visit to Balmoral beach, on Sydney's lower North Shore.

The former Liberal leader had an open-mouthed expression on his face as he inspected the infringement notice on Sunday.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott received a nasty surprise when he returned to his Mercedes-Benz C-class sedan parked at Balmoral, on Sydney's lower north shore

An image of him wearing shorts and a blue jumper, on The Esplanade overlooking Middle Harbour, has been posted to social media.

The photograph was taken near the corner of Esther Road the day after the Liberal Party was defeated, following a 19 per cent swing, in his bitter leadership rival Malcolm Turnbull's old seat of Wentworth, across Sydney Harbour from Balmoral.

Mosman Council, which issued the ticket on Sunday, falls within Mr Abbott's federal electorate of Warringah, which he has represented since 1994.

Luckily for Mr Abbott, the parking ticket won't make him ineligible to remain in federal Parliament under section 44 of the Constitution.

The former PM (pictured with wife Margie and their daughters Frances, Louise and Bridget) was slapped with a $112 parking fine

He may, however, have weightier political issues on his mind.

With high-profile independent Kerryn Phelps look set to triumph in Wentworth, Mr Abbott could face a challenge from another independent, Northern Beaches Mayor Michael Regan, at next year's federal election.

Mr Regan, who presides over parking infringement matters, has previously indicated he would like to run against Mr Abbott to highlight climate change.

Advertising executive Jane Caro has also indicated a possible tilt at Warringah.

Under New South Wales law, drivers who overstay their welcome in a ticketed parking area incur a $112 fine.

As a backbencher who is yet to receive special entitlements as a former prime minister, Mr Abbott is paid $207,000 a year.

Daily Mail Australia on Monday contacted Mr Abbott's office and Mosman Council.Beloved family dog Pippy has been reunited with her family after she was was stolen from outside a supermarket in broad daylight.

Pippy, a two-and-a-half-year-old lagotto dog, was tied to a bench outside an IGA supermarket in Perth around 5.30pm on Sunday, October 14, when she was taken.

Police shared a video of the heartwarming moment Pippy was returned to the Vines family - a week after she was taken.

Pippy, a two-and-a-half-year-old lagotto dog, has been reunited with her family - a week after she was stolen from outside a supermarket in Perth

Beloved family pet Pippy has been reunited with her family after she was was stolen from outside a supermarket in broad daylight

Pippy can be seen excitedly running and jumping around before she is smothered in kisses from the family in the video.

Alex Vines can be seen hugging Pippy as other family members scratch her belly.

'Hi bubba. I can't believe you're home,' she says.

The Vines family spent two years saving up $2,500 for this particular, hypo-allergenic breed, as all three children in the family suffer from allergies.

Police managed to find the puppy at a home in Medina.

CCTV footage shows Pippy, a two-and-a-half-year-old lagotto dog, being tied up outside an IGA supermarket, in Nedlands, by her owner Hugh Vines, 14,

A man and woman are currently assisting police with their inquiries.

A couple had been caught on CCTV footage untying the puppy from outside the supermarket.

The man was seen running down the road with Pippy moments later.

This was the latest in a string of dog thefts in Perth and Western Australia police have warned the public to take extra precautions.

A man and a woman were seen approaching the dog and checking the door to the store - the man (pictured, left) then untied Pippy and walked off with her, while the woman (pictured, right) headed back to the carThe fiancee of murdered Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi has been given 24-hour police protection, according to reports in Turkey.

Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish national, waited for the journalist outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, where he was to get papers for their planned marriage. She alerted authorities after the 59-year-old did not emerge from the building.

Saudi Arabia confirmed on Saturday that he had died and yesterday admitted he was murdered, claiming it was a 'tremendous mistake' by a 'rogue operation'.

On Saturday Cengiz posted a heartbreaking Twitter tribute to her partner, saying: 'They took your bodily presence from my world. But your beautiful laugh will remain in my soul forever. My darling #jkhashoggi.'

She also posted a touching video of Khashoggi laughing during an interview after a cat unexpectedly jumped on to his lap.

Turkey's official Anadolu news agency reported that she was now in police protection with the decision made by the Istanbul governors office on Sunday. The report did not say why Cengiz was given police protection.

News of Turkey's decision to beef up security detail around Cengiz comes just as the House of Saud remains mired in damage control mode.

Turkeys official news agency says Hatice Cengiz (above), the fiancee of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, has been given 24-hour police protection. She is seen above outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 3 - a day after Khashoggi went inside and never came out

Cengiz also posted a touching video of Khashoggi laughing during an interview after a cat unexpectedly jumped on to his lap

On Saturday Cengiz posted a heartbreaking Twitter tribute to her partner, saying: 'They took your bodily presence from my world. But your beautiful laugh will remain in my soul forever. My darling #jkhashoggi.'

More than two weeks after his father was murdered, Saleh Khashoggi received a phone call from Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia's king and chosen heir phoned Jamal Khashoggi's eldest son on Sunday to express their condolences after the journalist was killed on October 2.

Khashoggi was at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get papers so he could marry his Turkish fiancee when he was killed.

Saudi Arabia only admitted the Washington Post journalist was dead after weeks of denying anything to do with his disappearance.

The government is claiming that Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Saudi rulers, died during a fistfight in the consulate.

More than two weeks after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to his family. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs released this official image to announce the news

The image comes as it was revealed that Prince Mohammed was reportedly shocked by the backlash against Khashoggi's murder and Saudi Arabia's response to it

Saudia Arabia's royal court put out an official image, featuring both King Salman and Prince Mohammed's pictures, to announce the phone call to Saleh.

'The leadership extends condolences to the family of Jamal Khashoggi,' the headline of the image read.

'Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud extends condolences to the family and relatives of Jamal Khashoggi.'

'Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Vice President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Defense, has made a phone call with Saleh Khashoggi, in which he offers condolences to him and his family on the death of Jamal Khashoggi.'

The image comes as it was revealed that Prince Mohammed was reportedly shocked by the backlash against Khashoggi's murder and Saudi Arabia's response to it.

His royal court was 'relaxed' when news of Khashoggi's disappearance first broke, a source close to Saudi Arabia's royal family told the Wall Street Journal.

'Then it snowballed. When things started heated up in the States, everybody started getting worried,' the source added.

And no one was reportedly more surprised than the Crown Prince, who couldn't see why the story was 'such a big deal'.

'He was really shocked that there was such a big reaction to it,' added another source close to the royal court.

Prince Mohammed (pictured with Donald Trump in March) has continued to deny any knowledge over the journalist's murder and continues to receive support from Trump

'He feels betrayed by the West. He said he will never forget how people turned against him before evidence was produced.'

The furor surrounding Khashoggi's death has showed no signs of slowing down since he first vanished at the beginning of the month.

After weeks of denying they knew anything about Khashoggi's disappearance, the Saudi government confirmed he was dead.

On Sunday a Saudi official claimed that Khashoggi was killed by 'rogue' operatives who placed him 'in a chokehold position' to prevent him from leaving the consulate and calling for help.

The Saudi official told ABC News that Khashoggi's body was then given to a 'local cooperater' for disposal in Istanbul and that the investigation continues.

Eighteen men have since been detained by the government in connection with Khashoggi's murder.

Prince Mohammed was reportedly so astounded by the international response to Khashoggi that he even reached out to Jared Kushner.

He reportedly called Kushner on October 10 - eight days after Khashoggi disappeared - and asked him 'why the outrage', according to sources who were briefed on the phone conversation.

Kushner and National Security Adviser John Bolton then reportedly told the prince that he needed to 'get to the bottom of Mr Khashoggi's disappearance fast'.

Trump has since tried to downplay Kushner and the prince's friendship, telling reporters on Saturday that they are just 'two young guys' who are the 'same age'.

Prince Mohammed was reportedly so astounded by the response to the story that he called up Jared Kushner days after Khashoggi disappeared. They are pictured here together with Trump in May 2017

Trump has since tried to downplay Kushner and the prince's friendship, telling reporters on Saturday that they are just 'two young guys' who are the 'same age'

He also claimed that Kushner, 37, barely knows the 33-year-old prince, even though the two men have had several one-on-one meetings and are reported to communicate with each other via WhatsApp - a private messaging system.

Prince Mohammed and Kushner held their first White House meeting in March 2017. They have had additional face-to-face meetings at least four more times and are said to have bonded given their close ages and powerful positions within their families.

'They're two young guys. Jared doesn't know him well or anything. They are just two young people. They are the same age. They like each other, I believe,' the president told The Washington Post.

But behind closed doors, sources said Trump is frustrated that his son-in-law's close relationship with the Crown Prince has become a liability in the international crisis.

Meanwhile Kushner has been urging the president to stand by the prince and argues that he can survive this scandal just as he has with others in the past, according to The New York Times.

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, who was a fierce critic of his policies

And Trump seems to be listening to his son-in-law.

Even as he criticized Saudi Arabia's explanation for Khashoggi's death on Saturday, the president had no harsh words for the Crown Prince.

'Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies. Their stories are all over the place,' Trump told the Washington Post on Saturday.

But in the same interview, Trump defended Prince Mohammed's leadership and praised him for having 'very good control'.

He went on to say he had seen no evidence that the Crown Prince ordered, or even knew about, the killing of Khashoggi.

'Nobody has told me he's responsible. Nobody has told me he's not responsible. We haven't reached that point. I haven't heard either way,' Trump said.

'There is a possibility he found out about it afterward. It could be something in the building went badly awry. It could be that's when he found about it. He could have known they were bringing him back to Saudi Arabia.'

It comes as top US lawmakers turned their ire on the Crown Prince, saying they believed he ordered the killing of the Saudi journalist earlier this month.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir (pictured) insisted on Sunday that Prince Mohammed was 'not aware' of the killing and that the regime was still working on finding the body

An activist dressed as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman marches in front the White House during a demonstration calling for sanctions against Saudi Arabia on Friday

'Do I think he did it? Yes, I think he did it,' Republican Senator Bob Corker, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview with CNN.

Corker, who received a classified briefing on the case on Friday, said he was waiting for investigations to be completed and hoped that Turkey would share any audio tapes of the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.

Two members of the royal family claim that Prince Khalid al Faisal, an envoy of King Salman, has access to evidence that disproves Saudi Arabia's current story of how Khashoggi was killed.

They claim Prince Khalid al Faisal has an audio recording that proves Khashoggi was drugged, killed, and dismembered within minutes of walking into the consulate.

'The audio does not have this nonsense about a fight that broke after an argument,' one royal member told the Wall Street Journal.

'This is not what Khalid told the king and his friends. This is absolutely rubbish.'

CCTV video shows a black van in front of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, the day that Khashoggi was murdered

A journalist shoots video behind barriers blocking the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed

Corker made it clear that he believed the murder was directed by Prince Mohammed.

'Let's let this play out, but my guess is that at the end of the day the United States and the rest of the world will believe fully that he did it,' Corker told CNN.

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, a fierce critic of his policies.

His foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, went on US television to insist that the killing was a mistake, and sought to shield the powerful prince from the widening crisis.

'He was killed in the consulate. We don't know in terms of details how. We don't know where the body is,' the foreign minister told Fox News on Sunday.

'This was an operation that was a rogue operation, this was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding their authorities and responsibilities they had.'

'They made a mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it.'

Despite the controversy, Saudi Arabia's King Salman (pictured) granted his heir new powers over Saudi Arabia's intelligence bodies on Saturday

'We are determined to uncover every stone. We are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder.'

On Saturday, Trump joined European leaders in pushing Saudi Arabia for more answers after Riyadh changed its story and acknowledged that the journalist died at the consulate.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is traveling in the region, said on Sunday the Saudi explanation was a 'good first step but not enough'.

He said it was premature to discuss sanctions, in line with Trump administration efforts to censure a killing that has drawn international outrage while also protecting relations with the Saudis.

Despite the international controversy, Prince Mohammed isn't in danger of losing power anytime soon.

King Salman granted his heir new powers over Saudi Arabia's intelligence bodies on Saturday and sources say Prince Mohammed's power remains 'largely unchecked'.Advertisement

The Duke of Sussex joked today that being skilled at unveiling plaques 'runs in the family' as he dedicated the Forests of K'Gari to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy during his tour of Australia.

Harry, without pregnant wife Meghan, was greeted by the Butchulla People and took part in a traditional Welcome to Country smoking ceremony on Fraser Island, which has the traditional name K'Gari.

Aaron Henderson and Darren Blake wafted smoke from a bucket of burning paper bark and blue gum leaves towards him, while songman Fred Bulanyu Leone called out to their ancestors and tapped out a rhythm with a pair of bar gan - 'killer boomerangs' - traditionally used for hunting.

The Duke of Sussex is pictured today with members of the Butchulla people, who are the traditional owners of Fraser Island

The Duke of Sussex poses for a photograph with the tribe of K'Gari at the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy in Australia today

Prince Harry meets children on Queensland's Fraser Island - which the land's traditional owners call K'gari, meaning paradise

The Duke met youngsters as he marked the forest's dedication to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy inititative

The Duke began his brief visit to Queensland with Meghan by heading into the pristine rainforest of Fraser Island

Prince Harry watched a traditional dance after attending a Welcome to Country smoking ceremony while on the island

The Duke was there to mark the forest's dedication to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy inititative, a growing area of protected forests across the organisation's 53 member states.

He gazed up in awe at the 1,000 year old Satinay trees as they led him into the forest to a clearing around a sacred Spirit Tree. Butchulla Land and Sea Ranger Conway Burns explained: 'When we die, we go through an initiation.

'Our spirit goes through our body and through our sacred lakes and up to the sky. It returns to our people in these trees. It's great to be standing here, where our people stood hundreds of years ago.'

'This is the best way to see these trees,' said the Duke, 'standing tall and not logged and chopped.'

Also present was Butchulla elder Aunty Nai Bird, who welcomed the Prince of Wales to K'gari in 1994, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszcuk, minister for trade, and Fraser Coast regional mayor George Seymon.

The Duke of Sussex is pictured with indigenous dancers while on a visit to Queensland's Fraser Island, or K'gari, today

The Duke of Sussex was met by the Butchulla People, the traditional owners of the island, shortly after his arrival today

Prince Harry was on Fraser, which is the world's largest sand island, boasting 206,970 acres of protected forest

Some 20 million trees are now being planted across Australia as part of the programme which Harry was raising awarness of

Harry unveils the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy plaque on Fraser Island's Pile Valley today

They emerged from the forest to cheers from a gathering of Butchulla descendants and after a welcome to country speech by elder Gayle Minniecon and words from Ms Palaszcuk, it was Harry's turn to speak.

As he approached the microphone, one woman Marilyn Clarke, 72, called out: 'He's better looking in person!'

Laughing, the Duke responded: 'I'll take that as a compliment.'

In his speech, father-to-be Harry said: 'K'gari means 'paradise', and that is certainly what we've experienced today surrounded by the towering Kauri pines, 1000 year-old satinay trees and ancient giant ferns.

'It is up to us now to protect this paradise together  not just because it looks beautiful - but because it is an essential part of our existence, and will continue to be for our children and their children's children.'

Harry dances with aboriginal man Joe Gala at McKenzie's Jetty on Fraser Island during his tour of Australia today

Harry poses for a photo with Joe Gala during his visit to Fraser Island today after they entertained onlookers

The Prince shook hands with the dancers on a day in which he unveiled a plaque for the dedication of the Forests of K'gari

The Duke of Sussex said in a speech it was important to protect K'gari, 'because it is an essential part of our existence'

His visit to the island's Pile Valley today is part of a 16-day tour of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga with Meghan

The Duke of Sussex met youngsters as he dedicated the Forests of K'Gari to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy today

The Queen's Commonwealth Canopy project was launched in recognition of Her Majesty's service to the group of nations

The Duke shook hands with all of the children today before heading to Lake McKenzie for further engagements

Harry also joked that the plaque he was to unveil, marking the dedication, had already been unveiled by his father in Bundaberg during his tour of Australia in April. He said: 'Luckily we are both skilled at unveiling plaques - it runs in the family.'

Fraser is the world's largest sand island, boasting 206,970acres of protected forest.

It became a Unesco World Heritage site in 1992 and earlier this year, the Prince of Wales announced its dedication to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy.

Some 20million trees are now being planted across Australia as part of the programme. Satinay trees are known for their hardiness in water and were used to build the London docks in the 1930s.For two paramedics who granted a dying woman's wish, compassion and kindness are just part of the day job.

Graeme Cooper and Danielle Kellam were taking the palliative care patient to hospital but took a detour so she could visit a beach for the last time.

Their touching act garnered international media attention and it seems word even spread as far to Kensington Palace.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were so moved by the actions of Mr Cooper and Ms Kellam they invited them to lunch.

The Hervey Bay ambos met the couple on Monday, presenting them with two paramedic teddy bears for the royal baby.

Prince Harry and Meghan agreed to pose for a photo with paramedics Danielle Kellam and Graeme Cooper. Also pictured is one of the gifts presented to the Royal couple

Meeting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was a moment Hervey Bay paramedics Graeme Cooper and Danielle Kellam will never forget

They also got the chance to mingle with the Royals during their meet and greet along Kingfisher Bay Jetty, where they shook hands and chatted for several minutes.

Dressed in white striped linen sundress and sandals, a relaxed and beaming Meghan gratefully accepted the adorable gifts.

Prince Harry and Meghan loved the adorable gifts for the baby from the paramedics

It was a moment the paramedics will never forget.

'It was so incredible,' Ms Kellam told 7 News.

'They both seemed sincere.'

They said the Royals were keen to hear more details about what happened at the time when the photo with the gravely ill patient was taken.

The pair also had their picture taken with the happy couple.

The paramedics made international headlines with this photo with a palliative care patient

'I have a sister with cancer at the moment who wanted me to get a photo,' Mr Cooper told 7 News.

'So when I asked for one, they said no problems. They were just so humble and wonderful. They took an interest in everyone they spoke to.'

Queensland Ambulance later posted the photo on social media.

Graeme and Danielle made international headlines late last year when a photo of a palliative patient they took to the beach was posted on the QAS Facebook page.

The pair earned international praise last November after Queensland Ambulance posted a photo to Facebook of them with a patient on a beach.

The paramedics were invited to join honorary guests at a special lunch on Fraser Island as part of the Royal visit

Mr Cooper and Ms Kellam decided to take the last-minute detour to the ocean after their gravely-ill patient began talking about her love of the water.

'She just wished she could be at the beach again,' Helen Donaldson, the officer in charge of Hervey Bay, wrote alongside the touching image of the woman's beach visit.

'Above and beyond, the crew took a small diversion to the awesome beach at Hervey Bay to give the patient this opportunity.'

The patient died two days later.

The paramedics also scored a photo with the Royal couple after Mr Cooper told them about his sister's current fight with cancer

The paramedics presenting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex with two paramedic teddy bears for the baby they're expecting next year

The pair said it was a great honour to be recognised by the royal family, with Mr Cooper citing all the great work Harry has done with the Invictus Games.

But recognition isn't why the pair get up and go to work every morning.

'If I lost my compassion for the public, that would be the day to hang my shirt up because I'd know I wouldn't have what I need to do the job,' Mr Cooper told The Courier Mail.

Meghan looked happy and relaxed at the meet and greet at Fraser Island's Kingfisher Bay Jetty

Meghan spent Monday morning resting while her husband attended a number of official engagements before she made an unexpected appearance for the meet and greet in the afternoon.

The royal tour will continue on Tuesday when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex fly to Fiji.

They will return to Sydney on Friday night for the final days of the Invictus Games, before finishing off with a visit to New Zealand.A Saudi minister has admitted for the first time that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered but that the killing was a 'tremendous mistake' by a 'rogue operation'.

The kingdom's foreign minister said the country does not know where the journalist's body is, amid claims it was rolled up in a rug and smuggled out of the consulate in Istanbul.

Adel al-Jubeir insisted on Sunday that the kingdom's crown prince was 'not aware' of the killing and the regime was still working on finding the body, saying Khashoggi had been killed in a 'rogue operation'.

A senior official had earlier claimed Khashoggi was killed in a chokehold and his body hidden in a rug so that a 'co-operator' could dispose of it away from the Saudi consulate.

Meanwhile a member of the 15-man 'hit squad' - allegedly sent from the kingdom to confront Khashoggi on October 2 - is claimed to have dressed in his clothes to make it look like he had left the building alive.

President Donald Trump yesterday accused the regime of lying and said he was not satisfied with Saudi Arabia's handling of the matter.

It comes as Saudi Arabia faces intensifying international scepticism over its story about the death of the journalist.

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Jamal Khashoggi (pictured) was killed in a chokehold and his body was rolled up in a rug and smuggled out of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a senior Saudi government official revealed

Foreign minister Jubeir said today: 'This is a tremendous mistake. This is a terrible tragedy. Our condolences go out to [his family]. We feel their pain.

'He was killed in the consulate. We don't know in terms of details how. We don't know where the body is.

'This was an operation that was a rogue operation, this was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding their authorities and responsibilities they had; they made a mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it.

'We are determined to uncover every stone. We are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder.'

After denying any involvement in the disappearance of Khashoggi, 59, for two weeks, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said he had died in a fistfight at the consulate.

An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold, which the senior official reiterated.

The latest account, provided by a Saudi official who requested anonymity, includes details on how the team threatened Khashoggi with being drugged and kidnapped and then killed him in a chokehold when he resisted.

In his strongest intervention yet, President Trump said on Saturday: 'Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies. Their stories are all over the place.'

The UK's Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said the Saudi explanation about Khashoggi's death in Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate is not credible and that the culprits must be 'held to account'.

But the UK government has faced a growing chorus of criticism from MPs calling on ministers to cut ties with the Saudis.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir (pictured) insisted on Sunday that the kingdom's crown prince was 'not aware' of the killing and the regime was still working on finding the body

CCTV footage shows journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his fiancee Hatice Cengiz together just hours before his death on October 2

Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens said in a joint letter it was 'hard to imagine what crime the Saudi government would need to commit' to earn a rebuke from Downing Street, the Guardian reported.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and and critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, went missing after entering the consulate on October 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

Days later, Turkish officials said they believed he was killed in the building and his body cut up.

But the Saudi official said it was rolled up in a rug and given to a 'local cooperator' for disposal.

Asked about allegations that Khashoggi had been tortured and beheaded, he said preliminary results of the investigation did not suggest that.

The Saudi official presented what he said were internal Saudi intelligence documents which appeared to describe an initiative to bring dissidents home to Saudi Arabia, including the specific one involving Khashoggi.

He also showed testimony from those involved in what he described as the 15-man team's cover-up, and the initial results of an internal probe.

CCTV video shows a black van in front of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2

A journalist shoots video behind barriers blocking the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi died

The official said all 15 team members had been detained and placed under investigation, along with three other local suspects.

However, he did not provide proof to substantiate the findings of the investigation and the other evidence.

This narrative is the latest Saudi account that has changed multiple times.

According to the latest version of the death, the government wanted to convince Khashoggi, who moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views, to return to the kingdom as part of a campaign to prevent Saudi dissidents from being recruited by the country's enemies, the official said.

To that end, the official said, the deputy head of the General Intelligence Presidency, Ahmed al-Asiri, put together a 15-member team from the intelligence and security forces to go to Istanbul, meet Khashoggi at the consulate and try to convince him to return to Saudi Arabia.

'There is a standing order to negotiate the return of dissidents peacefully; which gives them the authority to act without going back to the leadership,' the official said.

Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, (pictured) said he had handed her his two mobile phones and left instructions that she should wait for him and call an aide to Turkey's president if he did not reappear

'Asiri is the one who formed the team and asked for an employee who worked with (senior royal adviser Saud) al-Qahtani and who knew Jamal from the time they both worked at the embassy in London,' he said.

The official said Qahtani, who worked for the crown prince, had signed off on one of his employees conducting the negotiations.

According to the plan, the team could hold Khashoggi in a safe house outside Istanbul for 'a period of time' but then release him if he ultimately refused to return to Saudi Arabia, the official said.

Things went wrong from the start as the team overstepped their orders and quickly employed violence, the official said.

Khashoggi was ushered into the consul general's office where an operative named Maher Mutreb spoke to him about returning to Saudi Arabia, according to the government's account.

Khashoggi refused and told Mutreb that someone was waiting outside for him and would contact the Turkish authorities if he did not reappear within an hour, the official said.

According to the latest version of the death, the Saudi government wanted to convince Khashoggi (pictured), who moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views, to return to the kingdom

Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has told Reuters he had handed her his two mobile phones and left instructions that she should wait for him and call an aide to Turkey's president if he did not reappear.

Inside the consul's office, according to the official's account, Khashoggi told Mutreb he was violating diplomatic norms and said, 'What are you going to do with me? Do you intend to kidnap me?'

Mutreb replied, 'Yes, we will drug you and kidnap you,' in what the official said was an attempt at intimidation that violated the mission's objective.

When Khashoggi raised his voice, the team panicked.

They moved to restrain him, placing him in a chokehold and covering his mouth, according to the government's account.

'They tried to prevent him from shouting but he died,' the official said. 'The intention was not to kill him.'

Asked if the team had smothered Khashoggi, the official said: 'If you put someone of Jamal's age in this position, he would probably die.'

To cover up their misdeed, the team rolled up Khashoggi's body in a rug, took it out in a consular vehicle and handed it over to a 'local cooperator' for disposal, the official said.

The Saudi official said the local cooperator is an Istanbul resident but would not reveal his nationality.

Forensic expert Salah Tubaigy tried to remove any trace of the incident, the official said.

Turkish officials suspect the body of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (pictured arriving at Downing Street earlier this year), was cut up

Meanwhile, operative Mustafa Madani donned Khashoggi's clothes, eyeglasses and Apple watch and left through the back door of the consulate in an attempt to make it look like Khashoggi had walked out of the building.

Madani went to the Sultanahmet district where he disposed of the belongings.

The official said the team then wrote a false report for superiors saying they had allowed Khashoggi to leave once he warned that Turkish authorities could get involved and that they had promptly left the country before they could be discovered.

Asked why the government's version of Khashoggi's death kept changing, the official told Reuters the government initial account was based on 'false information reported internally at the time.'

'Once it became clear these initial mission reports were false, it launched an internal investigation and refrained from further public comment,' the official said, adding that the investigation is continuing.

Saudi authorities initially dismissed reports that Khashoggi had gone missing inside the consulate as false and said he had left the building soon after entering.

When the media reported a few days later that he had been killed there, they branded the accusations 'baseless.'

An activist dressed as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman marches in front the White House during a demonstration calling for sanctions against Saudi Arabia on Friday

Turkish sources say authorities in Turkey have an audio recording purportedly documenting Khashoggi's murder inside the consulate, but have not released it.

Turkish pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak published what it said were details from the audio. It said Khashoggi's torturers cut off his fingers during an interrogation and later beheaded and dismembered him.

Turkish officials have told Reuters that Khashoggi's killers may have dumped his remains in Belgrad Forest adjacent to Istanbul, and at a rural location near the city of Yalova, 55 miles south of Istanbul.

SAUDI ADMISSION SHOCKS CITIZENS WHO BELIEVED KINGDOM HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH KHASHOGGI'S DEATH Saudi Arabia's belated admission that journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in its consulate in Istanbul sent shockwaves through the kingdom - where many had believed the government's claims of having nothing to do with his death. Saudi authorities initially claimed Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed on October 2, and then that they were investigating his disappearance. But after a fortnight of denials, they admitted Saturday that the Washington Post columnist, a prominent critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed inside the diplomatic compound. Nevertheless, it has faced a growing chorus of incredulity over its explanation that he died after a fight broke out - as world powers demanded answers and the whereabouts of his body. Turkish officials have accused Riyadh of carrying out a state-sponsored killing and dismembering the body, with pro-government media in Turkey reporting the existence of video and audio evidence to back those claims. The admission stunned many in Saudi Arabia  who had believed the government's initial accounts  but others said they didn't believe the new narrative, Bloomberg reports. 'A very sad day for this nation, to see what the country had descended into,' one Saudi man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the Saudi government does not tolerate dissent, told the website. 'No country is perfect, but used to be proud that the country had a certain morality that aligned with Arabian values. We lost that forever unfortunately.' Another said: 'I'm so broken right now. I thought the Turks did it.' He was referring to rumours spread online by supporters of the Saudi government which alleged the kingdom's rivals  like Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood - were behind Khashoggi's disappearance. Another Saudi added that e 'hates when Saudi officials get carried away and torture people.' But a 24-year-old woman in Jeddah remained sceptical about the Saudi government's latest version of events. 'Why couldn't they say where they dumped the body?' she said. Advertisement

Turkish investigators are likely to find out what happened to the body 'before long,' a senior official said.

The Saudi official said investigators were trying to determine where the body ended up.

Riyadh dispatched a high-level delegation to Istanbul on Tuesday and ordered an internal investigation.

Meanwhile, sceptics have asked why so many people, including military officers and a forensics expert specialising in autopsies, were part of the operation if the objective was to convince Khashoggi to return home of his own volition.

The disappearance of Khashoggi, a Saudi insider turned critic, has snowballed into a massive crisis for the kingdom, forcing the 82-year-old monarch, King Salman, to personally get involved.

It has threatened the kingdom's business relationships, with several senior executives and government officials shunning an investor conference in Riyadh scheduled for next week.

Some US lawmakers are putting pressure on Trump to impose sanctions and stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

On Sunday, the UK's Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said there was a 'serious question mark over the account that has been given'.

Asked if he believed the Saudi government's explanation, Mr Raab said: 'No, I don't think it's credible.'

'I think it's a terrible case,' he told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show.

'We support the Turkish investigation into it and the British government wants to see people held to account for that death.'

But the Cabinet minister said the British government was not terminating its relationship with the state.

'We are not throwing our hands in the air and terminating the relationship with Saudi Arabia, not just because of the huge number of British jobs that depend on it but also because if you exert influence over your partners you need to be able to talk to them,' he said.

Mr Raab dismissed calls to ban arms sales to the kingdom.

'We have got one of the most rigorous export regimes in the world which makes sure arms are very carefully monitored.

'The problem with Labour's position is it would cost thousands of British jobs. So, what we would rather do is support the investigation, find out what happened.'

The Foreign Office on Sunday issued a joint statement from Britain, Germany and France condemning Khashoggi's killing, saying there is an 'urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened.'

In a statement, the governments said attacks on journalists are unacceptable and 'of utmost concern to our three nations.'

They said the 'hypotheses' proposed so far in the Saudi investigation need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

They stressed that more efforts are needed in order to establish the truth, and added that they reserve judgment until they receive further explanation.

'The violent death of Jamal Khashoggi, within the premises of the Saudi Consulate General in Istanbul had been feared for many days but its confirmation still comes as a shock,' the statement said.

'Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms. 

'Defending freedom of expression and a free press are key priorities for Germany, the United Kingdom and France.

'The threatening, attacking or killing of journalists, under any circumstances, is unacceptable and of utmost concern to our three nations.'

It added: 'Our thoughts are today with Mr Khashoggi's family, his fiancee, and his friends - who have worried about him for weeks, and to whom we extend our most heartfelt condolences.'

It added: 'We take note of the Saudi statement which gives their preliminary findings.

'Yet there remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened on October 2nd  beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

'We thus stress that more efforts are needed and expected towards establishing the truth in a comprehensive, transparent and credible manner.

'We will ultimately make our judgement based on the credibility of the further explanation we receive about what happened and our confidence that such a shameful event cannot and will not ever be repeated.

'We therefore ask for the investigation to be carried out thoroughly until responsibilities are clearly established and that there is proper accountability and due process for any crimes committed.'

'We will stay in close contact with our Saudi partners in that regard.

'The quality and significance of the relationship we have with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also rests with the respect we have for the norms and values to which the Saudi authorities and us are jointly committed under international law.'

A man accused of killing a surgeon with a single punch to the head after he was asked to stop smoking outside a hospital told police he didn't mean to hit him hard.

Joseph Esmaili, 24, faces the Supreme Court on Monday for trial, charged with one count of manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act.

'I wasn't trying to hit him hard. I shouldn't have hit him in the first place,' Esmaili told police during an interview recounted by prosecutors in court.

Patrick Pritzwald-Stegmann, 41, died in June 2017 when his life support was turned off, four weeks after the alleged assault at Box Hill Hospital in Melbourne's east.

Joseph Esmaili, 24, (pictured) is accused of killing a respected surgeon with a single punch after he was told to stop smoking outside a hospital

Esmaili said he felt pressured by a dispute over a smoking ban and that the doctor was 'up for' a confrontation.

'I felt he pressured me. I can't handle things like that,' Esmaili told police during an interview recounted by prosecutors in court.

The accused said in the interview he didn't mean to hit the surgeon hard and he shouldn't have done it.

'I kept saying get the f*** away from me,' Esmaili said to police.

Esmaili (pictured) is accused of knocking down respected surgeon Patrick Pritzwald- Stegmann with a single punch in Melbourne's Box Hill hospital foyer on May 30 2017

Chief prosecutor Brendan Kissane QC said in his opening the accused swore at Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann after the surgeon asked security to remove him and friends for smoking in a non-smoking area.

'The accused walked to the area and overheard Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann speaking to the reception staff and said 'how about you go get f***ed?',' Mr Kissane said.

The argument escalated near the lifts and Esmaili allegedly punched the surgeon and fled the hospital.

Footage of the alleged attack, captured on the hospital's CCTV cameras, was shown to jurors on Monday.

The then-22-year-old Esmaili was interviewed by police the next day after his father saw him on the news and dobbed him in.

Defence barrister John Desmond argued the doctor had been aggressive towards Esmaili and followed him several times in the hospital.

Esmaili was interviewed by police the day after the attack his father saw him on the news and dobbed him in

'My client is retreating,' Mr Desmond said referring to CCTV footage.

'It's the doctor who continues to pursue. He puts down his bag. He's up for it,' Mr Desmond told the court.

Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann suffered bilateral skull fractures and was seen bleeding from the nose and mouth after the attack, the court was told.

After receiving immediate treatment at Box Hill Hospital he was transferred to The Alfred and spent several weeks in a coma.

His life support was turned off on June 27 and he died a day later.

The jury is due to visit Box Hill Hospital to survey the scene on Tuesday morning and three witnesses are expected to give evidence in the afternoon.

It's alleged that after Dr Pritzwald-Stegmann (pictured) told Esmaili off for smoking in a no-smoking area, a brief altercation ensued, leading Esmaili to punch him in the back of the head from behind.A terrifying zombie knife was seized by police in London's east on Saturday, just days after new figures reveal knife crimes have soared by 12 per cent.

The large serrated blade which was covered in multiple layers of cling wrap was found by police after they were alerted of three men fighting on a Hackney street.

A police spokesman tweeted an image of the knife and hit back at knife possession being linked to self defense claims - when efforts were made to prevent DNA and fingerprint traces.

Police recovered a terrifying zombie knife (pictured) in Hackney last weekend. The serrated blade appears to be covered in multiple layers of cling wrap to prevent any fingerprints and DNA being traced

A police spokesman tweeted critiqued self defense being the main reason for knife possession

'If people arrested with weapons like this 'zombie' knife really only carry them for their own protection then why do they try to go to such great lengths to avoid having their fingerprints and DNA on them?' police asked.

'That's cling film wrapped around the handle,' he continued.

Police detained and arrested three men after the knife incident.

They believe the cling wrap was used to conceal any fingerprints and DNA linked to the perpetrator.

Police have issued a warning to those pursuing knife crimes.

They said Crime Scene Investigation specialists are equipped to obtain DNA and fingerprints despite perpetrators best efforts to cover them up.

Police have recovered multiple zombie knifes and weapons in the last week alone, according to a tweet by Hackney police

A zombie knife refers to a knife with a serrated edge. It often includes symbols and words that suggest it is used for violent purposes.

The knife seizure comes just days after a Daily Mail investigation found the number of murders and knife crimes has soared in the UK.

This Summer alone, there were 100 reported killings in Englands capital.

New crime statistics reveal a hike in the number of recorded robberies (up 22%), sexual offences (up 18%), vehicle-related theft (up 7%) and burglaries (2%)

New statistics, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), showed the number of homicides nationwide is up from 630 to 719, with overall recorded crime up by almost 10%.

The breakdown revealed a hike in the number of recorded robberies (up 22%), sexual offences (up 18%), vehicle-related theft (up 7%) and burglaries (2%).

The statistics of murders in London's capital found 55 happened in public places and 22 were gang-related violence.

Knife crimes were up to a staggering 39,332 in the last year - a record high since 2011.A horrified mum alleges her nine-year-old daughter was pricked by a sharp needle when biting into a strawberry.

Jessikah Davis, 28, said her daughter Ameliah, was left 'shaken up' after biting down into a sharp needle that was embedded inside a strawberry.

The stay-at-home-mum from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia claims to have purchased the Australian Strawberry Distributors packet of strawberries on Sunday afternoon from Woolworths, in Seaford, Victoria.



A nine-year-old girl (pictured, right) has hurt her mouth after biting into a fruit that was spiked with a needle

Jessika Davis, 28, alleges her daughter Ameliah was pricked by a sharp needle when biting into a strawberry

Jessikah said: 'I bought the strawberries yesterday afternoon and put them in the fridge straight away.

'Then last night just before bedtime my daughter yelled out to me if she could have some fruit. I said of course, and she must have grabbed some strawberries.

'The next thing I knew, she came running into my bedroom telling me she had been pricked on the mouth.

'I couldn't believe it. She pulled the needle out and showed me. It was huge.

'You could see the little mark on the roof of her mouth where it had pricked her. She said it hurt her a little bit, and was more shocked than anything.

'You can even see that the needle is bent from where she bit down on it.

Ms Davis bought the packet of strawberries from Australian Strawberry Distributors on Sunday afternoon from Woolworths, in Seaford, Victoria

Ms Davis (left) said her daughter (right) suffered a little mark on the roof of her mouth which hurt a little but she was more shocked than anything

Australian Strawberry Distributors General Manager Jim Ripepi said the company installed metal detectors following the contamination crisis

'It's frightening to think how bad it could have been if she had bitten down harder.'

Australian Strawberry Distributors General Manager Jim Ripepi cast doubt on the alleged incident.

He said: 'Due to the needle contamination recently in QLD, we have needed to install metal detectors in our packing shed.

'All ASD products are now being scanned through metal detectors and we are confident these issues are happening elsewhere within the supply chain.'

The latest allegation comes after the strawberry crisis reached its peak in late September when over 100 strawberries had been found to contain needles.

And as hysteria reached heightened levels, Australians were implored to cut into their strawberries before consumption.

The issue prompted a response on September 19 from Australian Members of Parliament, with controversial One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson branding strawberry sabotage 'a terror act.'

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said anybody who hid a needle in a strawberry was 'a coward and a grub'.

Ms Davis (left) said the incident should serve as a warning and hopes no one else has the same experience

'You are putting the livelihoods of hardworking Australians at risk, and you are scaring children,' Mr Morrison said.

'And if you do that sort of thing in this country, we will come after you, and we will throw the book at you.'

Jessikah said her incident should serve as a warning that the issue could be ongoing.

'I've seen it all over the news and so I've been chopping my strawberries up. But when she asked for a piece of fruit I didn't even think about the strawberries in there.

'I hope no one else has the same experience. It makes me sick to think someone is out there doing this.

'We're really cautious now. I won't be buying strawberries for a while. I thought this was all over, but it's obviously not.'

The strawberry needle crisis hit Australian farmers hard - with some affected being forced to dump their crops.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Woolworths for a comment.A game ranger miraculously escaped death after he was shot through the face with an arrow by an assassin as he hunted poachers in Kenya.

William Hofmeyr, 51, was on patrol when he saw a Maasai warrior sleeping under a tree and woke him up to warn him that there was a hungry pride of lions nearby.

He feared that the tribal spearman could become a feast for the predators.

William Hofmeyr (pictured) miraculously escaped death after he was shot through the face with an arrow

Seconds later, he felt an almighty thwack in the cheek as a black man lying in ambush fired an arrow from bushes nearby and hit him right in the face.

The razor shop arrowhead sliced through his right cheek and back out of his open mouth and lodged in his face and his mouth began filling with blood.

As he turned round, he saw his ambusher notching another arrow ready to fire again so he turned and sprinted back to his ranger truck parked under a tree.

Once at his specially modified Toyota Landcruiser known as The Beast he turned and saw the bowman about to fire a second arrow, so pulled out his pistol.

He fired two warning shots and the archer turned and vanished into the bush but the Kenya Wildlife Service ranger was determined to catch his would-be killer.

He jumped into the custom-built off-road vehicle and gave chase through thick bush crashing through undergrowth trying to run down his fleet footed attacker.

The 51-year-old game ranger was on patrol hunting poachers when he was ambushed

The razor shop arrowhead sliced through his right cheek and back out of his open mouth and lodged in his face and his mouth began filling with blood

William said: 'I was in agony because one end of the arrow in my mouth was sticking out the window and it kept hitting against every bush I drove through.

'The feathered end just kept whacking the bushes and my whole face was in agony.

'I couldn't call for reinforcements because I had so much blood in my mouth that I was not making any sense over the radio so I just had to go it on my own.

'To stop the arrow flapping about I had to bite down on the shaft - it may sound like something out of Rambo but I was bloody angry and upset he shot me.

'After 35 years serving in the army and the police and as a game ranger I have had a fair bit of metal shot into me so am used to it and this won't be the last.

'I chased him for an hour but he finally got away up a steep escarpment and the pain was pretty damn hectic so I decided to head back to go to a local clinic.

'When I walked in the doctors and nurses just had their mouths open. I don't think they had ever seen anyone walk in with an arrow through their mouth.

William said he pushed the arrow (pictured) straight out through his cheek and handed it to one of the nurses at the hospital

'They sat me down and started pushing and pulling on it and it just meant my mouth was filling up with more and more blood and it was getting annoying.

'In the end I told them I would do it and got hold of one end of the arrow and pushed it straight out through my cheek and handed it to one of the nurses.

'It was only then I could see how sharp and wicked the arrow head was - I guess I was pretty fortunate that it wasn't poisoned or else I would have been done.

'I have no doubt it was an assassination attempt as it is known that there is a contract out on my head and that of my deputy ranger Justin Mathews.

'We normally patrol together but due to circumstances I was alone and that will not be happening again now we know we have a 'friend' somewhere out there.

'A nurse put some disinfectant on the wound and told me I didn't need stitches so I got up and walked out and went back to work on the reserve' he said.

William Hofmeyr (pictured left, with his deputy Justin Mathews) has run the Olarro Conservancy Reserve in Kenya for six years

The next day William and his colleagues were tending a wounded elephant on the Olarro Conservancy Reserve in Kenya where he is the Head Ranger.

He has run the 21,000 hectare conservancy for six years and four years ago was shot in the right arm by poachers and had to undergo major surgery.

William said: 'The word out there in the bush is that there is a contract on me and my senior colleague and I have no doubt that this was a planned hit.

'He tried to kill me and then came after me for a second shot and you only have to look at that arrow head to know the bowman totally meant business.

'The sleeping Maasai warrior was not a part of it but the way I was shot and the way he came after me to finish it off after convinces me it was a kill job.

'Unfortunately for him he didn't finish the job and that's not good for him.'

Four years ago, he was shot in the right arm by poachers and had to undergo major surgery

William has set up a rapid reaction Tactical Response team and works closely in conjunction with the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Mara Elephant project.

His team have wiped out poaching on the Olarro Conservancy but so far this year 30 wounded elephants from other reserves have wandered onto his territory.

He said: 'They seem to sense it is safe here and a sanctuary and we find them and then patch them up and when they are ready they go off on their way again.

'I would just like to stress that it is extremely safe at Olarro and what we do is away from and does not affect the guest experience which is peaceful and wonderful.

'Our job is to sort out human/animal conflict and environment crime like poaching and as a Kenya Wildlife Ranger and I can cover any area I want to' he said.

The next day William and his colleagues were tending a wounded elephant on the Olarro Conservancy Reserve in Kenya where he is the Head Ranger

A spokesman at the Majimoto Police Post confirmed that a major investigation was under way and he said that a hunt for the hired archer is in full swing.

Married father-of-three William, from Grahamstown in Eastern Cape, South Africa, said the local Maasai community had come together to find his attacker.

The Olarro Conservancy is home to elephants, lions, leopards and buffalos and many other species protected by William and his team of 35 rangers.

He said proudly: 'We have had no animals killed by poachers in the last year thanks to our high vigilance and excellent rangers but it does makes us enemies.

'Being attacked is part of the job and getting shot at happens  deal with it.

'I was a little worried when I heard my mum found out but she phoned and said if I got shot by another arrow I would have a pair of knitting needles!'

The Olarro Conservancy adjoins the well known Maasai Mara game reserve.A woman jailed for helping two men kill four children when they torched a family home has launched a bid to be freed from jail.

Courtney Brierley appealed against her manslaughter conviction and 21-year sentence after an inmate serving with the 20-year-old said life behind bars has 'completely broken' her.

She was jailed for manslaughter earlier this year for helping then-boyfriend Zak Bolland and his accomplice, David Worrall - carry out the 5am petrol bomb attack on a family home in Walkden.

Demi Pearson, 15, and her siblings Brandon, eight, Lacie, seven, and Lia, three, were all killed.

Bolland and Brierley (both pictured) were both jailed for their parts in the killing of four children by arson in Walkden, Greater Manchester

The blaze (pictured) killed four youngsters and left a mother fighting for her life 10 months on from the fire, which left her in a coma

Brandon Pearson (left) and Lacie Pearson (centre) died in the blaze and their little sister, Lia (right) later died in hospital

Michelle Pearson (left), 36, was left in a coma after the attack. Right: Demi, 14, died in the blaze

Their mother Michelle, 36, was seriously hurt in the Greater Manchester fire. Brierley launched her appeal just weeks after Michelle's relatives revealed she was still fighting for her life ten months on from the fire.

The attack was the devastating climax to a feud involving Bolland and Kyle Pearson, Michelle's eldest son, who escaped the blaze. Bolland is serving life and has not lodged an appeal. Neither has Worrall.

Brierley (pictured) is appealing her 21-year sentence after being 'broken' by prison

It is understood Brierley is serving her sentence at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey which houses some of the nations most dangerous female prisoners, including Joanna Dennehy, who stabbed three men to death in 2013.

Brierley spent time on remand at the prison and is reportedly serving her jail sentence there, housed in the same block as about 80 other serious offenders.

One former inmate said: 'Courtney was very, very quiet, very broken. I didnt know what shed done until after Id left and I was horrified, you just would not have thought it of her.

'Courtney came straight in on remand and was put in a single cell which she rarely left. She was employed as a cleaner but was always being chased by senior prison officers to come and do her work.

'She always looked like shed been crying, was very, very quiet, didnt make friends with anyone, rarely ate.

'She was completely broken and received a lot of one to one time in her cell from the prison officers.'

Zak Bolland (left) and David Worrall (right) were both convicted of murdering the four children in an arson attack in Greater Manchester

When she was returned to the prison to begin her sentence following a period on remand there, Brierley was in a very bad way, the woman said.

Brierley has claimed her role in the arson was due to the fear of her violent and abusive boyfriend. She has said she did not realise exactly what he was about to do.

A Manchester Crown Court jury found her not guilty of murder but convicted her of four counts of manslaughter.

She was sentenced to 21 years in a young offenders institution and can apply for parole halfway through her sentence.

Mourners carry the four children's bodies out of St Paul's Church in Walkden, Greater Manchester, following the attack

Her legal team tried and failed to get the case against her thrown out mid-trial, arguing she had done little more than the prosecutions main witness Abigail Toone, who had unwittingly acted as the trios getaway driver.

Bolland, 23, of Worsley, was jailed for a minimum of 40 years after he was convicted of murder at the conclusion of that trial, which heard he threw a large petrol bomb into the house through a rear window as the family slept.

Worrall, 26, of Worsley, had thrown a smaller petrol bomb into the house but it had not caused significant damage. He was caged for a minimum 37 years after being convicted of murdering the children.Conservatives who made violent threats against Theresa May over Brexit should be identified and kicked out of the party, a leading Eurosceptic said today.

Steve Baker led condemnation of the abuse against the Prime Minister in the aftermath of last week's summit in Brussels.

Mr Baker - a ringleader of Brexiteer revolt against Mrs May's plans - said the anonymous MPs had 'thoroughly disgraced themselves' by claiming the PM would be 'knifed' and should 'bring her own noose' to a 'show trial'.

The Prime Minister defied the claims and defended her embattled Brexit plans in a major statement to the Commons.

She said a possible extension to the Brexit transition period beyond December 2020 - an idea loathed by Brexiteers - would only be done as a last resort in the national interest.

But she said if a full trade deal was close in late 2020 it would be better than making business change rules twice or falling into the Irish backstop - which Britain wants to be a UK-wide customs arrangement that could limit trade deals.

Theresa May told MPs 95 per cent of the Brexit deal was already finished in a statement to the Commons today (pictured)

The Prime Minister addressed MPs following a weekend of furious briefing against her that included violent claims she would be 'knifed' and 'assassinated'

Mrs May (pictured leaving Downing Street today) hailed a 'substantive' shift from the EU to ensure the so-called Irish backstop is UK-wide and not Northern Ireland only

Mrs May said the divorce deal was 95 per cent finished and hailed a 'substantive' shift from the EU to ensure the so-called Irish backstop is UK-wide and not Northern Ireland only.

Outlining the remaining issues, Mrs May said Britain needed agreement the Irish backstop would be UK wide.

She said she wanted the option to extend transition to avoid ever using the backstop if a trade deal is close in late 2020.

Mrs May said neither the backstop or extended transition period could be never ending - and vowed in all circumstances Northern Ireland's business would get guarantees on full access to the UK markets.

In her speech, Mrs May told MPs 'the shape of the deal across the vast majority of the Withdrawal Agreement is now clear.'

Mrs May said new agreements have been finalised on issues including the British base on Cyprus and with Spain on Gibraltar.

Steve Baker (pictured in the Commons today) led condemnation of the abuse against the Prime Minister in the aftermath of last week's summit in Brussels

The Prime Minister warned the final stage may be the 'hardest of all' as she attempts to finalise the deal on the Irish border and the so-called backstop for how it will work in the absence of a full UK-EU trade deal.

But vowing to defend her red lines on Northern Ireland, she said: 'The commitment to avoiding a hard border is one that this House emphatically endorsed and enshrined in law in the Withdrawal Act earlier this year.

'As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.

'I do not believe that any UK Prime Minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not.'

Ahead of Mrs May's statement, Brexit Minister John Glen - hauled to the Commons to answer questions on a possible extension to transition - played down the chance of Britain having to pay extra to the EU but deferred most questions to Mrs May.

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab insisted the Government was offering MPs a 'meaningful' vote on the terms of the deal - but said the outcome must be clear as he was accused of trying to halt amendments.

Eurosceptic former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson (pictured right and centre with David Trimble in Brussels today) declared their 'full support' for Mrs May today - despite travelling to Brussels to lobby for an alternative to her planned deal

The Prime Minister (pictured arriving at Downing Street today) will tell MPs later the divorce deal is 95 per cent finished with agreements now struck on issues including Gibraltar

Brexiteers hold 'constructive' talks with Barnier in Brussels Senior Brexiteers held 'constructive' talks with Michel Barnier in Brussels today - but denied undermining Theresa May. Former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, together with Lord David Trimble, held talks at the EU Commission in Brussels. They promoted the virtues of a Canada-style free trade deal for Brexit Britain, the policy of the Tory European Research Group. Mr Duncan Smith said: 'We are presenting some ideas which we think are constructive and we had a constructive discussion. 'Now we are going to go back and talk to the Government about it.' Mr Barnier has held a series of meetings with UK politicians, including groups of Remain supporters and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He insists he only negotiates with the Government and the meetings are for information on the talks only. Advertisement

The PM attempted to reassure Cabinet ministers on a conference call yesterday about proposal to extend the Brexit transition period and how a temporary customs union would work.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling admitted to disagreements today, but played down splits insisting 'we are not a set of clones. we don't always agree on absolutely everything'.

There was a growing backlash today at lurid claims Mrs May is in the 'killing zone' and faces being hung with her 'own noose' at a crunch meeting of Tory MPs on Wednesday night.

Writing in the Sun today before her statement to MPs later, Mrs May said: 'None of this is about me. It's all about you.

'That's why, when I'm confronted with tough choices during the Brexit negotiations, I don't think about what the implications are for me.

'Instead, I ask myself what it means for you, for your family and for the whole of the United Kingdom.'

Admitting the negotiations can seem 'never ending', Mrs May said: 'The Brexit talks are not about me or my personal fortunes.

'They're about the national interest and that means making the right choices, not the easy ones.'

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raan (pictured today in Downing Street) has urged critics of the Government to ignore the jitters and wait for the deal to be finalised

Home Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured in Downing Street today) specifically demanded to know whether Mrs May 'explicitly threatened the EU with no deal' in a Cabinet conference call

Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey (pictured in Downing Street last week) was 'devastated' by Mrs May saying the Brexit transition could be extended beyond December 31, 2020, it was claimed today

Mrs May moved to calm another Cabinet revolt last night amid alarm at concessions made during last week's summit in Brussels.

Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey was 'devastated' by Mrs May saying the Brexit transition could be extended beyond December 31, 2020, the Telegraph revealed today.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid demanded reassurance there would be a time limit on any 'backstop' for the Irish border in fear any temporary customs union would be allowed to drag on indefinitely.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox was also among those demanding reassurance.

Britain has proposed leaving the entire UK inside customs union rules in the absence of a backstop to meet EU demands the Irish border stays open after Brexit. Brussels had suggested this only apply to Northern Ireland but this would threaten the Union.

The backstop is only supposed to apply between the end of the transition and the start of a trade deal. Extending transition is intended to make it less likely it will ever be used.

The Telegraph said Mr Javid specifically demanded to know whether Mrs May 'explicitly threatened the EU with no deal'.

Amid a growing revolt and claims Mrs May could be ousted, former Brexit secretary David Davis published his own plans for finishing the negotiations

Mrs May will tell MPs later: 'The shape of the deal across the vast majority of the Withdrawal Agreement is now clear.

'The commitment to avoiding a hard border is one that this House emphatically endorsed and enshrined in law in the Withdrawal Act earlier this year.

'As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.

'I do not believe that any UK Prime Minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not.'

She will also say that the Government has agreed 'underlying memoranda' after discussions with Spain to resolve the issue of Gibraltar after Brexit, 'heralding a new era in our relations'.Helen Mirren is being investigated for breaching building regulations in southern Italy, after being accused of 'disfiguring the natural beauty' of the area by renovating her new beach house.

The Oscar-winning actress and her partner Taylor Hackford bought the derelict 860sq.ft cliff-top stone house in Tiggiano, Puglia, last year, with the aim to restore it.

However, police recently halted work at a sea-side property following complaints that the couple's builders were violating planning permissions.

Accused: Helen Mirren is being investigated by Italian police for allegedly breaching building regulations and 'disfiguring the natural beauty' of the area where her house is located

Disputed property: Ms Mirren and her partner Taylor Hackford bought the 860sq.ft house in Tiggiano, Puglia, last year, with the aim to restore it

The 73-year-old actress and her film director husband already own a larger farmhouse estate some ten miles from the cliff-top property.

'Helen saw the house while out at sea and fell in love with it,' her lawyer, Pietro Nuccio, told The Times.

'She wants to use it for private swimming, since those rocks are rather inaccessible to the public.'

Local media reports that the couple only had planning permission to re-enforce and restructure existing dry-stone walls on the property, however some have in fact been raised from 1.2 metres (4ft) to over 3metres (10ft).

The builders working for Ms Mirren and Mr Hackford are also accused of demolishing some walls and rebuilding them using cement, which would prevent water from draining from the cliffs into the Adriatic Sea below.

Stopped: Police recently halted work at a sea-side property following complaints that the couple's builders were violating planning permissions

Local activist: Ms Mirren is seen visiting a nearby town during her campaign to help save the Puglia region's olive trees

Nearby estate: Ms Mirren and her partner Taylow Hackford also this large farmhouse property nearby, which they have restored since this photo was taken in 2007

Farm life: As part of the restoration of the derelict farmhouse property, which is only ten miles from the beach house, Ms Mirren planted hundreds of pomegranate trees

Ms Mirren has long been involved in various campaigns to protect the environment and local flora in Puglia - in particular its famous olive trees - and has a large pomegranate grove on her estate.

Her lawyer told The Telegraph that the news of a potential breach of building regulations and allegations of 'disfiguring the natural beauty' had come as a complete shock to Ms Mirren and Mr Hackford.

He added that Ms Mirren had only intended to restore the crumbling stone house and surrounding walls and reinforce them to stop landslides.

'If cement has been used it will be taken off,' said Mr Nuccio. 'If the laws have not been respected we will find a solution.'

'If there is a small violation it can be solved. There is no damage to the natural beauty.'A man who travelled to Vietnam to help suffering children has been critically injured in a motorcycle accident.

Now, Luke Rampal's family are desperately trying to bring him home to Cairns.

Mr Rampal, 42, has been in Asia for three years where he volunteered for Blue Dragon Children's Foundation, which helps vulnerable children.

Luke Rampal (pictured) left Cairns to rescue children in Asia who had been trafficked for sexual slavery or labour exploitation

After three years, Mr Rampal was involved in a horrific motorcyle accident where he suffered a break to his C3 and C4 vertebrae

Mr Rampal was involved in a horrific motorbike crash on October 8, where he suffered a break to his C3 and C4 vertebrae in his spinal chord.

The 42-year-old has no feeling or movement in the right side of his body, minimal feeling on his left side and also broke his shoulder in the crash.

He was immediately medically evacuated to Thailand for surgery that would save his life.

Costs for Mr Rampal's care have already reached more than $95,000 since the accident, including medical evacuation, surgery and post-operative care.

Mr Rampal's family still have no idea how bad the injuries are and are desperately trying to return him home.

Once he arrives back to Australia, Mr Rampal will have to undergo further treatment.

The 42-year-old has no feeling or movement in the right side of his body, minimal feeling on his left side and also broke his shoulder in the crash

Mr Rampal's family still have no idea how bad the injuries are and are desperately trying to return him home

The family have created a website called Bring Luke Home, where they aim to raise money to help get the 42-year-old back to Cairns.

His family described him as a 'loyal, generous, loveable son, broker, uncle and friend'.

'Hes always been an active, physical person, living life by the tides,' they wrote.

'The immediate goal is to bring him home to Australia so he can continue to get medical care, surrounded by the love and support of his family, friends and community.'Advertisement

President Donald Trump renewed his claim on Monday that the sea of humanity inching its way north from Central Americato the United States is a pit of unsavory gangsters and terrorists.

Trump complained on Twitter that Mexico has been unable to stop the thousands of Hondurans and Guatemalans who have captured humanitarian interest while they've piqued his outrage.

'Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emerg[enc]y. Must change laws!' he tweeted.

The president also returned to his political messaging just 15 days before the midterm congressional election, saying voters who fear the impact of a mass influx of illegal immigrants should elect more Republicans.

'Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally,' he said.

Trump reiterated, too, his threat to pull foreign aid from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, an unprecedented consequence for the developing nations whose migrant exodus has largely been controlled by drug cartels and human traffickers, not government agencies.

The Department of Homeland Security is warning that Mexico's cartels will try to 'prey on the vulnerabilities' of migrants in the caravan, now 7,000 strong.

Caravan: As many as 7,000 people are now traveling in the caravan which was seen from the air in Tapachula, in southern Mexico - still 1,600 miles from the U.S. border

On the road: The migrant caravan was in Metapa, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, Monday, at the same time as Trump was tweeting that it was a 'national emergency' in the U.S.

On the move: Honduran migrants used a truck to get further into Mexico in Tapachula on Monday

On their way: Members of the caravan get on the back of truck as they try to make their way north from Tapachula

Assistance: These members of the caravan had crowded into the back of a truck to get to the city of Tapachula, after crossing the border from Guatemala into Mexico

The president said Monday that he has alerted the U.S. military about a national emergency

He reminded the governments of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador on Monday that the aid money they get from Washington could dry up

Cool down: Central American migrants use a fire hydrant in the main plaza of Tapachala, the city just across the Mexican border where as many as 7,000 are now gathered

Crossing to Mexico: Migrants are using rafts to cross the Suchiate River, the barrier between Mexico and Guatemala, to avoid military and borer patrols

Pressure: The city of Tapachula has seen Miguel Hidalgo Park become ground zero for members of the migrant caravan sleeping rough

Impact: In Tapachula public authorities are facing huge numbers of people sleeping outside, especially in Miguel Hidalgo Park

Emergency measure: Red Cross tents have been put in place in the arena used for the annual International Mesoamerican Fair in Tapachula

Sleeping rough: One of the Honduran migrants who has made it to the border at Tecan Uman, Guatemala, sleeps as he waits for his claim to be processed

On the road: Local trucks have been moving people who started in Honduras and are now in Mexico on their way to Tapachula

Ready for arrivals: These tents have been erected at the International Mesoamerican Fair's former venue in Tapachula in anticipation of even more people crossing the border

The caravan began its march in Honduras before crossing Guatemala and into Mexico at Ciudad Hidalgo. The migrants, who are said to number up to 7,000, rested in a town called Tapachula - around 20 miles from Hidalgo - on Sunday night, and are now continuing north towards the US

The Department of Homeland Security has vowed to crack down on Mexican cartels trying to help a caravan of thousands of desperate migrants cross from Mexico into the US (pictured, part of the caravan in Mexico)

Around 3,000 people have crossed from Guatemala into Mexico since arriving on Friday, down from around 5,000 after many gave up and returned home (pictured, migrants in Mexico)

Despite being stopped by Mexican border guards, many Hondurans either swam across a river or were helped across the border by Mexicans using pickups and trucks (pictured, migrants in Mexico having crossed the border)

The caravan continued to march across Mexico on Monday despite threats from President Trump to stop anyone who had not applied for legal asylum at the US border

Dozens of migrants rest in the main square in Tapachula, Mexico, on Sunday having walked from Ciudad Hidalgo, around 20 miles away on the border with Guatemala

Migrants wave a Honduran flag having crossed the border between Guatemala and Mexico, where they have vowed to continue on to the United States

A young Honduran girl eats in the main square in Tapachula, Mexico, after successfully crossing the border from Guatemala

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warned that criminals and people smugglers will be hunted down and 'prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.'

Nielsen spoke as thousands marched on through Mexico toward the U.S. on Sunday after evading fences and guards along the border with Guatemala.

Up to 7,000 people are now traveling in the caravan, according to the Los Angeles Times; the Associated Press reported 5,000 and AFP counted as few as 3,000.

Several thousand are thought to have returned home, some on buses provided by the Guatemalan government, after being blocked at the Mexican border.

But a new group of 1,000 Hondurans have begun the journey, vowing to following in the footsteps of the first.

Mexican officials say 640 people stopped at their border before applying for legal refuge, including 164 women, more than 104 children and teenagers, and many older and disabled people.

Of those who managed to cross the border most ended up in a town called Tapachula, around 20 miles from the border at Ciudad Hidalgo, where they rested on Sunday night before continuing their march.

President Trump has taken an unusually hard line against Central American countries ina bid to force them to retrieve their own people instead of allowing them to march north through Mexico

They now face a daunting slog of 1,600 miles across Mexico before reaching the U.S. border, where President Trump has vowed to turn them away.

Hefired off a tweet on Sunday afternoon, saying: 'Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Southern Border.

'People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!'

Mexican border guards initially drew praise from Trump for their hard line approach after stopping thousands of people from crossing into the country using riot shields and tear gas.

But many later crossed the river on makeshift rafts, or were helped across by sympathetic Mexicans who loaded them into pickups, vans and cargo trucks before driving across.

Speaking on Sunday about the group who had crossed into Mexico, Nielsen said: 'While we closely monitor the caravan crisis, we must remain mindful of the transnational criminal organizations and other criminals that prey on the vulnerabilities of those undertaking the irregular migration journey.

A pickup truck owned by a Mexican driver helps migrants to cross the border from Guatemala, followed closely by another driver doing the same thing (left)

Having already walked to Mexico from Honduras, almost 350 miles away, the migrants now face a trek of 1,600 miles across Mexico in order to reach the U.S. border

Paramedics check the blood pressure of a migrant in Tapachula, after he made his way across the border

Mexican medics treat a Honduran child in Tapachula after their family made the crossing from Guatemala at the weekend

Migrants on the Guatemalan side of the border wait to cross into Mexico after being stopped by guards

Guatemalan officials fumigate the main bridge between their country and Mexico which has been crowded by thousands of migrants in recent days

'We shall work with our partners in the region to investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all who seek to encourage and profit from irregular migration.

'We fully support the efforts of Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, as they seek to address this critical situation and ensure a safer and more secure region.'

Aaron Juarez, 21, a migrant walking through Mexico with his wife and baby while limping from an injury, vowed that 'no one is going to stop us' from getting into the U.S. '[Not] after all we've gone through.'

Honduran farmer Edwin Geovanni Enamorado said he was forced to leave his country because of intimidation by racketeering gangs. 'We are tired, but very happy, we are united and strong,' he said.

Britany Hernandez added: 'We have sunburn. We have blisters. But we got here. Our strength is greater than Trump's threats.'

Mexico's President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called for fair treatment of the migrants.

'We don't want them to face what (Mexicans) face when they need to look for work in the United States,' he said on Twitter.

Mexican officials question a migrant waiting to cross the border from Guatemala. Mexico says around 640 people have applied for legal asylum in their country

Central American migrants, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S, line up as they wait for the gate to open on the bridge that connects Mexico and Guatemala

The caravan left San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras more than a week ago, following a call on social networks relayed by a former Honduran deputy.

The politician, Bartolo Fuentes - a member of leftist former president Manuel Zelaya's Freedom and Refoundation Party - told AFP he only reproduced a poster on his Facebook page.

The poster invited people on a 'Migrant march' with a slogan: 'We're not leaving because we want to, but because we are being expelled by violence and poverty.'

Morales and his Honduran counterpart Juan Orlando Hernandez said after meeting that the march was 'violating the borders and the good faith of the states.'

The Honduran president acknowledged that social problems were a contributory factor.

'Without a doubt, we have a lot to do so that our people can have opportunities in their communities,' he said.

Migrants denied their motives were political.

'We decided to join those who were going,' said Edgar Aguilar. This is not political. This comes from hunger, from the drought, it's for prosperity, for a better life. This is not political!'

The migrants are generally fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence.

With a homicide rate of 43 per 100,000 citizens, Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world, according to a Honduran university study.Advertisement

The world's longest sea-crossing bridge connecting Hong Kong and Macau to Zhuhai, south-east China is set to finally open this week, nine years after construction began.

The much anticipated Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge will open to traffic on Wednesday 9am local time. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend an opening ceremony on Tuesday in Zhuhai.

Construction started in 2009 on the massive crossing, which includes a snaking road bridge and underwater tunnel, linking Hong Kong's Lantau island to the southern mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai and the gambling enclave of Macau, across the waters of the Pearl River Estuary.

Stretching across 55 kilometres (34 miles), it is 14 miles longer than the width of the English Channel from Dover in the United Kingdom to Calais in France.

An aerial view of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge in Zhuhai, Guangdong. The crossing is set to open this Wednesday

Chinese President Xi Jinping is reported to be attending an opening ceremony on Tuesday in Zhuhai, Guangdong

The project linking Hong Kong, Macau and China is 55 kilometres long and contains enough steel to build 60 Eiffel Towers

An interior view of the Hong Kong Port Passenger Clearance Building of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge

A shuttle bus attendant displays bus tickets at the Hong Kong Port Passenger Clearance Building of the crossing

The structure is the world's longest sea crossing and the sixth longest bridge on earth. Officials expect the bridge to be in use for 120 years and say it will boost businesses by cutting travel time by 60 per cent.

More importantly, it is a key component in China's plan for a Greater Bay Area covering 56,500 square kilometres (21,800 square miles) across 11 cities in south China.

It consists of a 22.9 kilometre oversea bridge and a 6.7 kilometre undersea tunnel connected by two artificial islands.

The bridge is a key component in Beijing's plan for a Greater Bay Area covering 21,800 square miles across 11 cities in China

The mega structure is the world's longest sea crossing and the sixth longest bridge on earth

The Zhuhai-Hong Kong-Macau bridge consists of a 22.9 kilometre oversea bridge and a 6.7 kilometre undersea tunnel

Officials expect the bridge to be in use for 120 years and say it will boost businesses by cutting travel time by 60 per cent

A total of 420,000 tons of steel was used in the project, equivalent to 60 times the steel used to build the Eiffel Tower, according to Xinhua.

Hong Kong's Secretary for Transport and Housing Frank Chan said travelling time between Zhuhai and Hong Kong International Airport would be shortened to about 45 minutes from four hours.

'It is envisaged that the collaboration between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao in terms of trade, finance, logistics and tourism will be strengthened,' he said at a press briefing on Friday.

However, the mega project has had its fair share of controversy. The bridge's construction has been dogged by delays, budget overruns, corruption prosecutions and the deaths of construction workers.

Travelling time between Zhuhai and the Hong Kong airport would be shortened to about 45 minutes from four hours

A general view shows of the East Artificial Island of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge last Friday

Immigration turnstiles in the departure hall of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge will be in operation this Wednesday

The total price tag for the project, which includes artificial islands, linked roads and new border-crossing facilities, is unclear but some estimates run to over 130 billion yuan (14 billion), leading critics to slam it as a costly white elephant.

Seven workers have died and 129 have been injured since construction began. Most of them involved accidents where they slipped or fell from a high point.

Supporters of the bridge promote it as an engineering marvel, while others see it as a costly political project designed to further integrate Hong Kong into the mainland at a time when Beijing is tightening its grip on the semi-autonomous city.

The total price tag for the project, which includes artificial islands, linked roads and new border-crossing facilities, is unclear but some estimates run to over 130 billion yuan (14 billion), prompting critics to slam it as a costly white elephant

Supporters of the bridge promote it as an engineering marvel, while others see it as a costly political project

The departure hall of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is seen during a press tour in Hong Kong last FridayDoctor Who delighted fans last night after the episode tackled the topic of racism in America as the Time Lord came face to face with civil rights hero Rosa Parks.

The episode began with the Doctor and her team landing in Montgomery, Alabama, where they experienced first-hand the brutal discrimination faced by the African American community during the 1950s.

It was written by author and former Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman, who has written over 60 books for children and young adults, including the Noughts and Crosses series and Pig-Heart Boy - which was adapted by the BBC in 1999.

It is believed to be the first episode in the show's 37 seasons to be written by a non-white person, and Blackman has become the sixth women to ever write an episode.

Fans were divided last night after Doctor Who tackled the topic of racism in America when the Time Lord came face to face with Rosa Parks just days before her bus protest

Whovians took to Twitter in their droves to discuss the episode during and after it aired, with many congratulating the writers for such a relevant and important episode celebrating the life of the prominent civil rights activist.

But some accused the writers of a 'boring' episode focusing on the historical rather than the sci-fi elements the show is best known for.

While the episode did have its alien element in the form of a time-travelling criminal messing with history, it predominantly centred around our gang keeping Rosa, played by Vinette Robinson, on-track to refuse to give up her seat on the bus and therefore changing history.

One wrote: 'Rosa' really might be the best episode of Doctor Who. It took me through the gamut of emotions and I'm still struck. I can't stop thinking about it. I'm insisting everyone watch it, fan or otherwise.'

Another said: 'Tonight's Doctor Who... I can't ever recall this show approaching social issues like this before. No metaphor, no dressing it up, just confronting the past head on and making clear that it's still relevant today. Show's grown up.'

Going down in history: Doctor Who tackled the topic of racism in America in its latest episode, as our gang came face to face with Rosa Parks just days before her bus protest

Another said: 'In 1963, #DoctorWho was conceived as a series designed to educate children by visiting significant historical events.

'In 2018, millions of children are learning about the heroism of Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement through the show. A story so relevant to here and now.'

But not everyone agreed. One viewer replied: 'Yes, all through the handy lens of BBC historical revisionism, showing us how racist we all are. The fanbase wants a proper Dr back. #NotMyDoctor.'

The episode began with the Doctor and her gang landing in Montgomery, Alabama, where they experienced first-hand the brutal discrimination faced by the African American community during the 1950s

Back in time: After accidentally landing in Montgomery, Alabama, we see the group experience first-hand the brutal discrimination faced by the African American community

In the episode, the Doctor is suspicious of why they were sent to America, especially as she picks up Artron energy that hints at an alien presence around Rosa.

At one point the team are asked to leave a restaurant, with the waitress saying they dont serve black people or Mexicans - although Yaz is not Mexican but of Asian descent.

The episode then introduces the villain - a leather-jacket clad figure following Rosa around, played by Josh Bowman.

But some accused the writers of a 'boring' episode focusing on the historical rather than the sci-fi elements the show is best known for

Fans were divided last night after Doctor Who tackled the topic of racism in America when the Time Lord came face to face with Rosa Parks just days before her bus protest. The villain was played by Josh Bowman

The gang soon figure out that this alien - Krasko - is trying to alter history so that Rosa doesn't refuse to give up her seat.

After dodging a suspicious police officer, sidekicks Yaz and Ryan candidly speak about the discrimination they still face today.

A large chunk of the episode was taken up by the group putting everything in place to make sure Rosa does get on that bus.

The episode was written by author and former Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman, who has written over 60 books for children and young adults, including the Noughts and Crosses series and Pig-Heart Boy - which was adapted by the BBC in 1999

Despite the gang saying they didnt want to get involved in history, for the plan to work they are forced to stay on the bus when Rosa is ordered to move - sparking a tense moment that mirrored the programme's opening.

But she does not move, and thus history follows its natural course with her arrest by police - beautifully scored by Andra Rays Rise Up.

The episode ends with the Doctor explaining what happened to Rosa, and in a Who twist reveals she named an asteroid after her years later.

Iconic: A large chunk of the episode is then taken up by our gang putting everything in place to make sure Rosa does get on that busJessica Hubbuch, teacher and the science department chair at The Howard School, is one of nine educators from across the state to be selected to participate in the inaugural Tennessee Teacher Ambassador Network during the 2018-19 school year. The Teacher Ambassador Network is a unique opportunity for teachers to advise and participate in the work of the Department of Education without asking them to leave the classroom.

As part of the program, each teacher ambassador will partner with specific division leaders within the state department based on interest and expertise so they can learn about key state-level work, share their experiences with state leaders to inform policy and practice and be equipped to share state-level communications with their peers.

I am thrilled to join the inaugural Tennessee Teacher Ambassador Network and represent The Howard School and Hamilton County Schools with this new initiative, said Ms. Hubbuch. I will be partnering with leaders in the Data and Research division of the Tennessee Department of Education to inform policy and practice while learning about key state-level work.

All educators participating in the network came highly recommended and were selected to be ambassadors through a competitive application process. In addition to the requirement of being current educators in Tennessee public schools with at least three years of experience, applicants were selected based on their impact on student and school success, leadership, insight based on school experience, communication skills, and capacity for the work of the network, including project management.

Divisions that will partner with Teacher Ambassadors for the 2018-19 school year include:

College, Career, and Technical Education (which includes early postsecondary opportunities like AP and dual enrollment)

Data and Research

School Improvement

Teachers and Leaders (which includes student growth portfolios and TEAM evaluation)

Special Populations (special education)

Teaching and Learning (early literacy, early learning, and RTI2)

In this unique partnership, I am excited to increase communication between teachers and state leaders and support continued progress towards our bold state educational goals, Ms. Hubbuch said.A sixth form has banned students from bringing bags to lessons after claiming they are injuring younger pupils.

Spalding Grammar School in Lincolnshire told youngsters that they can use bags to bring kit and books from home, but must carry books to classes by hand.

The ban was brought in as an edict claimed 'injury was being caused to younger students as a result of sixth formers carrying ever-larger bags on their shoulders'.

The new rule states: 'Bags of any size may be used to bring books and kit to and from school, but bags are not permitted in lessons during the day. Pupils are encouraged to carry books by hand for a maximum of two lessons at a time.'

But just days after the rule was enforced, sixth-former Hannah Catterall began a petition online and A-level student Jacob Ford protested the decision by using a microwave to carry his books between classes.

Jacob Ford (pictured) carried his books between classes using a microwave to protest the ban on sixth formers carrying bags from one lesson to another

The school in Lincolnshire (pictured) says that the new rule is being enforced as a result of injuries being caused to younger and smaller pupils

She said: 'Students have been forbidden to carry bags such as backpacks to take books and provisions to lessons, which would enable them to get the most out of their educational experience.

'Being in the sixth form increases the amount of work drastically compared to lower years and therefore we are required to carry more items.

'By not permitting backpacks students are unable to carry revision materials to and from school with ease and therefore grades may dramatically decrease.'

The petition was removed days later having gained 463 signatures. Many others, including parents, rallied round, calling the decision to ban bags 'pathetic', 'disappointing' and 'ridiculous'.

Bridget Allan, who has two children at the school, said: 'I was outraged when I heard about the ban. I think it is ridiculous.

'How can you even get to places on time with all the right books, let alone do things like sanitary towels. This is something all of the girls and female teachers are talking about.'

Sherry Grief said: 'The students have a lot to carry and if they get banned from having bags how many other sixth forms will follow suit.'

Noah Leatherland said: 'Looks like I got out just in time, what a truly ridiculous rule. If I hadn't had a bag to haul everything around, sixth form would have been 12 times less organised and 3000 times more miserable.'

Jacob, 17, also wrote a 3,000-word essay detailing his thoughts on the bag ban

Suzanne Brown added: 'I find this rule utterly ridiculous and it causes more stress for the children for absolutely no good reason.'

And Clair Thacker said: 'My son attends this school and I was completely unaware of this absurd rule. Bearing in mind most sixth formers either walk to and from school or get public transport, surely the staff would rather the work was kept safe and students have everything they need with them on a daily basis? Sort it out and put your students first, a bit of common sense would be a breath of fresh air at this school!'

Parents took to social media to slam the rules, which left many youngsters forced to transfer their books from a bag into plastic carrier bags for lessons.

Jacob Ford, 17, recently enacted a silent protest over the ban. The A-level student was suspended for two days after he took his stuff to school in a wicker basket and even a microwave to make a point.

He also outlined his thoughts in a 3,000-word 'document of defence' titled: 'Bags in Sixth Form - My Thoughts and A Potential Solution' that he gave to headteacher Steven Wilkinson and other members of staff.

In the document, Jacob chronicles the events leading up to the ban and reasons behind it as 'health and safety'.

He said: 'The reasons for them changing is for one reason and one reason only which has been hammered into all of our brains over the course of the several assemblies that we've had.

'Health and safety. Or more specifically, the year sevens and one member of staff.

'These people have been struck in the face or knocked backwards by our bags swinging around in the corridor.

'Once again, I do not doubt this ever happening. But is the best solution really to outright ban backpacks? Surely a compromise can be made.'

According to Jacob the rule stating that bags are not permitted to be carried into and used during lessons for over 25 years. However, it has never been enforced.

And staff now say rucksacks are a danger. Jacob claims the new bag policy forces students to risk their health and shell out cash.

He said: 'With most issues money is going to be involved, this case being no exception to that rule. I believe that paying for a new bag which fits the school's updated regulations is outrageous.

'Especially this close to the start of the academic year, when many students have recently paid for new rucksacks, not knowing of the rule changes.

'These bags are effectively part our school uniform and should be purchased once a year at a maximum. So me or my parents having to fork out around 40 for a new bag which fits with the school's policies is outrageous.'

Additionally he added that the school guidelines indicate carrying books on the back is the safest course.

He adds: 'The ban of backpacks leads to the question of whether the school is trying to make us have worse 'physical development' for suggesting we do not use these types of bags.'

Jacob's mother Tracy Ford, 48, said: 'I think Jacob's protest has been very peaceful and I believe he should have his say.

'At the end of the day, I believe in freedom of speech and so I'm very proud of him for standing up for something he believes in. Microwave or no microwave.'

The school has declined to comment or provide further details of the uniform policy. Its website outlines a uniform policy for sixth form for both male and female students, but does not mention bags at all.Steve Baker (file image), a senior member of the European Research Group, had tabled a series of amendments to emergency legislation seeking to make illegal EU proposals on the so-called backstop

Tory MPs have today called off their planned Commons revolt on the EU's controversial Irish backstop plan - blaming a lack of parliamentary time.

Brexiteer MPs had planned to rebel over emergency legislation on Northern Ireland in a show of force just days before the Budget.

The Government is rushing through laws to make it easier for the Northern Ireland Executive to reform if Sinn Fein and the DUP can settle a 22 month feud.

Steve Baker, a senior member of the European Research Group, tabled a series of amendments to emergency legislation seeking to make illegal EU proposals on the so-called backstop.

Mr Baker wants to outlaw any customs or regulatory checks down the Irish Sea and has the backing of more than 40 Tory MPs plus the DUP, which props up Mrs May in Parliament.

Some pro-Remain MPs were said to be considering the plan, as are Scottish Unionist MPs - raising the prospect of dramatic defeat if Labour abstain.

But today Mr Baker announced he is pulling the amendment because it risked delaying important reforms to help Northern Ireland function in the absence of a working executive - which has been suspended for nearly two years.

He stressed that MPs are still staunchly opposed to nay Brexit deal which would put a border down the Irish Sea.

A major rebellion would have been a significant warning shot to the Government just a week before crucial votes on the Budget which Mrs May must win.

The new laws are being subject to emergency procedures and are supposed to go through all stages of their parliamentary scrutiny on Wednesday but a major revolt threatens delay.

Mr Baker told MailOnline: 'The UK government and the EU jointly agreed in December that any distinct arrangements for Northern Ireland (NI) or new barriers to trade between GB and NI would require the democratic consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

'These amendments ensure that both the UK Government and EU respect these commitments and cannot use emergency powers to implement measures in the absence of the Assembly.

'Northern Ireland is an integral part of the UK. Creating barriers between NI and Great Britain, creating a separate regulatory regime or imposing EU laws on NI via emergency legislation does not respect NI's status in the UK.'

Downing Street has ordered legal advice on the amendments as it mulls whether Theresa May should fight the rebellion

Nicky Morgan, chairwoman of the Treasury select committee, told The Times: 'It seems a deliberate attempt to derail the government's negotiating position.

'I hope the government will think very carefully about how they handle the amendments.

'A lot of us would be very worried if the decision of No 10 was to accept them in order to buy more time.'

Wednesday will also be the scene of a crunch meeting of Conservative MPs.

Mrs May has been challenged to attend the 1922 Committee meeting in Parliament and explain her latest moves on the Brexit negotiations.

Her attendance is not yet confirmed amid claims it will be a 'show trial' to which she should 'bring her own noose'.A mother whose three-year-old son was rushed to hospital in Turkey is one of 22 people launching a legal fight after falling ill at a notorious hotel in Turkey.

Emma Longstaff was terrified when son Robbie began being sick during a stay at the five star rated Liberty Hotel Lykia in the Turkish resort of Oludeniz.

Their family holiday in June was ruined when Robbie from Pill in Somerset was diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis.

But as he began to recover after 24 hours in hospital Emma, 47, fell ill.

Both of them suffered diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain and severe dehydration.

Robbie with his mum Emma Longstaff, 47. Both Robbie and Emma fell ill at the five star rated Liberty Hotel Lykia in the Turkish resort of Oludeniz

Robbie was in hospital for 24 hours and suffered with severe symptoms of diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain and severe dehydration

Emma said: 'I was devastated to see how it affected Robbie.

'He was in such a bad way that I had no option but to try and get him to a hospital.

'I simply couldn't believe it when he was diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis  it was the last thing I expected to happen when we were on holiday.'

The hotel in the resort town has been at the centre of legal action every year for the last four years.

In 2016 more than 50 holidaymakers fell ill and earlier in 2010, 40 people got sick.

Now, Irwin Mitchell is taking a joint legal from 22 people who stayed there.

Although noticing a few issues at the hotel Emma was not aware of just how bad things were.

'I had noticed a few issues at the resort like unclean tables and hotel rooms, but did not think we were ever going to be at serious risk of illness,' she said.

Three-year-old Robbie was in hospital for a day after he fell ill in Turkey. His mother later found out the hotel she booked has been at the centre of legal complaints for the last four years

'It is shocking to think that we are far from the only ones as well.

'There is clearly a need for investigations into these issues and we are now desperate for answers as to what happened.

'I would not wish our illness problems on my worst enemy, so it is vital steps are taken to prevent it from ever happening again,' she added.

Jatinder Paul, the lawyer representing the 22 families, said he was keen to hear from anyone else who stayed at the hotel and were taken ill.

'We are concerned by the accounts once again provided to us by our clients and are already working hard to shed more light on the issues which have been raised with us,' he said.

'Cases of this nature highlight the very serious impact that gastric illness can have on holidaymakers. Not only do they ruin precious time abroad, but they can also lead to long-term health issues and often many need hospital treatment.

'We are advising a growing group of holidaymakers caught up in these problems. As part of our investigations we would like to hear from other guests who may have information about conditions at the hotel this summer.

Emma and Robbie's holiday to Turkey was ruined by sickness - now, they are suing Thomas Cook along with 21 other families

'We are determined to ensure that our clients' voices are heard on this and will fight to get them the answers they deserve regarding what has happened,' he added.

A Thomas Cook spokesperson said: 'We are aware that a number of customers have come forward to say they have experienced illness while staying at the Liberty Hotels Lykia in Turkey this summer. Our customers' health and safety is always our first priority and we are very sorry for any customers whose holidays have been spoiled, including Ms Longstaff and her son.

'The hotel is now closed for the winter and we'll be working closely with them to ensure that the highest standards of hygiene are maintained at all times and support them with any extra measures that need putting in place before customers return next spring.'A mother claims her newborn almost died from meningitis because she delayed taking him to hospital for fear of overreacting after a nurse remarked on parents bringing babies in for crying.

Leonie Colegrave, 25, was horrified when doctors told her that her baby George West might not pull through from the deadly disease at just 16 days old.

Despite knowing something wasnt right when her normally settled son cried relentlessly overnight, she delayed taking him to hospital because she was worried about wasting doctors time.

She claims her fear stemmed from a nurse telling her if I had a pound for every time a mother brought a baby for crying, I wouldnt need to work when shed rushed her older son, Jack, to hospital for an asthma attack.

Goerge West (pictured, left, in hospital) was left brain damaged after a meningitis attack, with mother Leonie Colegrave (pictured, right, with partner Jamie West) saying she was worried about taking him in following a nurse's remark

George West (pictured in hospital) almost died when meningitis struck him just days after he was born

But when George still had a temperature in the morning, Leonie took him to the GP who arranged for him to be rushed to intensive care with suspected meningitis.

Ms Colegrave and her partner Jamie West, 32, felt helpless when they saw their tiny baby son covered in wires and breathing through a ventilator. Now 12-week-old George is recovering well but has been left with brain damage.

She claims she would rather be a needy mother a thousand times over than sit at home and watch her son become that poorly again.

The Southampton parent said: 'Seeing my baby in intensive care like that, I dont think I could put into words how I felt even if I tried.

'It was overwhelming to see him because I wanted to pick him up. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to make him better.

'But it was out of my hands and all I could do was stand by his bed and hold his hand.

'It was almost like guilt because I needed to make him better because Im his mum and thats what mums should do. But there was nothing more I could do.

'I was really confused the night he started getting ill. When I was in A&E with my eldest after he had an asthma attack when he was two, there was a baby who was weeks old and was crying.

'I remember a nurse said, "if I had a pound for every time a mother brought a baby in when he was crying then I wouldnt need to work".

'That was playing in my mind when George was upset. I was thinking, can I really take my son to A&E because hes crying?

Ms Colegrave (pictured with George) says she was scared to take her crying son to hospital

'If theres nothing else wrong with him, can I really take him to A&E because hes crying?

'I didnt want to be that mum who seeks help for no reason because Im not really that type of mum.

'If my eldest is poorly I will give him calpol and cuddles but I wont rush him to the doctor if its not needed.

'I dont like to waste peoples time. Ill take him if he needs to go of course but if hes just got a cold and a cough then Ill treat it at home.

'George went from being absolutely fine to crying. He hadnt been poorly. Hed been as himself as he could be.

'There was nothing before that would make me think that he was poorly. He was having wet nappies and feeding.

'It was a split second moment where everything changed. He was fine. Even the health visitor saw him that very day and he was fine.

'But then he wasnt. He went from being absolutely fine to suddenly not being. You should always trust your instinct. Always trust it.

'Now, looking back, I would rather be fobbed off a million times for something viral than sit at home and think is there something wrong and watch them become that poorly.

'I was praised by every health professional who came to see George, from the neurologist to the nurses to the doctor to the consultant, for getting him in that quickly.

Jamie West is pictured in hospital with his son, George, as the infant recovered from meningitis

'But Ive always thought, what if I didnt? What if I didnt get him to the doctor? What if Id have waited until lunchtime or tea time to see what would happen? It could have turned out so much worse.'

George had seemed completely fine during his night feed on August 10, and Ms Colegrave had hoped he would settle back to sleep quickly like usual.

But when she laid her happy son back into his crib, he immediately started crying and the mother-of-two became concerned when he refused to settle.

After nearly two hours of crying, George finally stopped but instead started making strange grunting noises as he breathed.

George (pictured) has been left brain damaged by the meningitis

It wasnt until he refused to stir for breakfast two-and-a-half hours later that Ms Colegrave realised he had a temperature of 102.56F (39.2C) - but never suspected it could be meningitis.

The teaching assistant said: 'When youre pregnant, you worry about everything because its down to you to keep them safe and deliver them.

'Then when theyre born and you take them home, you dont ever expect that two weeks later youre going to be back there waiting to see if theyre going to live or die.

'Ive always known about meningitis. My older son is nearly seven and the amount of times Ive rolled a glass over him when hes had a heat rash is crazy.

'But I didnt really know what the extent of meningitis was. I didnt think it could be that because George didnt have a rash.

'I didnt know what to do. I thought, what do I do? The babys temperature is high, hes not very happy, but is that enough to seek medical advice?

'In the back of my mind I knew he wasnt well, but I was thinking there wasnt enough wrong with him to take him to the doctor.

'I rang my mum and she didnt know what to do, so then I rang 111. They said he needed to see a doctor in the next two hours.

'I rang Jamie and he said he would leave work and meet me there. So we went to the doctor who saw him at about 8:30am.

'He said, "I want to send him to the hospital for some tests. Ill ring through and let them know that youre coming".

'The doctor told us to take George straight into the pediatrics assessment unit. We walked through the door and there were four doctors and nurses waiting for us.

'Thats when I knew something was wrong because normally you have to wait an hour before anyone comes to call you, but I just thought that perhaps it was because he was so small.'

The nurse checked Georges temperature and bloods while Jamie held his hand and Ms Colegrave watched as if it was happening to someone else.

When his lumbar puncture showed his fluids were yellow rather than white, the tiny baby was rushed down to intensive care and doctors placed him under an induced sleep to rest his brain.

Leonie said: 'The nurse got the doctor who walked in, looked at George and felt his head and chest.

'Before even speaking to the nurse he said to us "were going to take your son down to intensive care because I think hes got meningitis and I would like to put him on the ventilator".

'Thats when it hit us. We looked at each other. I had no words. Thats probably the first time in my life Ive had no words.

'I said to the consultant, "can you just tell me if he is going to die?" It was probably the hardest thing Ive ever said in my life, asking if my child was going to die.

'He said, "I cant tell you no". But I pushed a bit harder because I needed to know. I needed to prepare myself.

'He said, "hes presented well, hes not had any seizures or stopped breathing. A lot of people only know that their baby has meningitis when they stop breathing". In the back of my mind I had to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.'

Doctors thought George had contracted a deadly strain of bacterial meningitis from Group B strep passed on to him during labour.

After spending nearly two days in an induced coma, George was finally allowed to wake back up and doctors were pleased with his progress.

But the following Monday an MRI revealed that the deadly bacteria had starved Georges brain of oxygen - and the family wont know how he has been affected until he grows up.

Ms Colegrave said: 'Its only a small amount of damage but it is damaged. No one can tell us what that will mean for George, how that will affect him.

'Ive done some research and it can cause ADHD and autism. Its that part of the brain that can control emotions.

'But Ive tried not to do too much Googling and research into it because every child is different and hes still very young.

'There will be days where what happened to him doesnt cross my mind at all and there will be days where I look at George and cry because of everything hes been through and how strong he is.

'Hes really happy. Hes only 12 weeks old so hes quite young, but hes cheeky. You can see hes going to be cheeky. Hes so smiley and so happy.'

By the time he was released from hospital two and a half weeks later, baby George had spent nearly half of his life inside the hospital.

Now Ms Colegrave wants to raise awareness of Georges story to urge other parents to not be afraid to seek medical advice.

'I know Georges brain has been damaged and that we dont know what that will mean for him,' she said.

'But that to me is a small price to pay because hes here and hes alive and healthy and we have him. There are so many people out there who havent got their children.

'It wasnt until the doctor said it was meningitis that it crossed my mind. I didnt realise how poorly he was. Thats why I want to raise awareness.

'When I was sat in intensive care watching him on a ventilator, watching something else breathe for my baby, I thought "there will be so many people out there who wont go to the doctor".

'They wont realise how poorly their child is just because their child has a temperature or isnt themselves. I decided I needed to tell people.'Brigadier General Jeffrey D. Smiley who was wounded in Thursday's insider attack in Afghanistan

Army Brigadier General Jeffrey D. Smiley was among the 13 injured in an 'insider attack' on a high level security meeting in the Kandahar province that left three top Afghan officials dead.

Smiley was wounded when a bodyguard opened fire inside the heavily fortified government compound Kandahar Palace on Thursday, killing Kandahar's police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq, top intelligence official Gen. Abdul Mohmin and an Afghan journalist.

Top American military commander in Afghanistan, General Austin 'Scott' Miller, who was also at the meeting, was not hurt but was forced to draw his handgun.

The lone insider gunman, thought to be part of the provincial Governor's elite security team, was shot dead by the US military, CNN reported.

Gen. Smiley's identity was not disclosed until yesterday.

Lt. Cmdr. Grant Neeley, a spokesman for the NATO-led training command 'Resolute Support' told ABC news on Sunday: 'I can confirm that General Smiley is recovering from a gunshot wound.

'He is being treated at a Resolute Support hospital in Kandahar.'

Gen. Smiley has been the commander of the Training and Advise and Assist Command-South (TAAC-South) since June. The former Us Marine, has served in the Army for 30 years, becoming a general last year.

Gen. Scott Miller, head of US and NATO forces in the country was present when an Afghan bodyguard shot dead an Afghan intelligence officer and police chief in a Taliban-credited attack

Gen. Abdul Raziq, the Kandahar police chief, who was killed in a targeted attack on Thursday. US US Defense Secretary James Mattis called his death the 'loss of a patriot'

The TAAC-South plays the leading role in advising Afghan security forces in the south of the country.

The decorated general, who has been honored with the bronze star medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and several commendations, is in command of the California National Guard's 40th Infantry, one of the leading units in Kandahar.

The province's Governor Zalmai Wesa was also wounded, along with another American civilian employee and an Afghan interpreter.

Gen. Miller, who is the head of US and NATO forces in the country, told the Tolo News Agency on Friday he believes the attacker was specifically targeting the Afghan officials.

'What happened in Kandahar was an attack on the security forces,' he said.

'My assessment is that I was not the target. It was a very close confined space. But I don't assess that I was the target.'

Col. Dave Butler from Resolute support said the attack was 'over in a matter of seconds', according to ABC.

The began shortly after Gen. Miller had attended a meeting with the top civilian and military officials in Kandahar.

Kandahar Gov. Zalmai Wesa (L) stands with the head of NATO troops in Afghanistan, Gen. Scott Miller (C), and a translator during a meeting in Kandahar, Afghanistan on October 18,

The insider began shooting while the group waited outside for Miller's helicopter and caught the American military by surprise.

Miller, who was not in the direct line of fire but was stood close by, drew his weapon along with the other US personnel, which Butler says is standard procedure.

'When there's a threat, we will draw our weapons,' he said. 'That's what we're trained to do and Gen. Miller is no exception.'

However, US military officials could not immediately the last time such a high-ranking US military officer had been forced to draw their weapon. Generals rarely find themselves under attack and even more rarely are they wounded.

Its appears to be the closest an American commanding general has come to being seriously injured in Afghanistan.

After the gunman was shot, American and Afghan forces secured the area and tended to the wounded, some of whom were treated on board Gen. Miller's helicopter.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they killed 'the notorious police chief' who was the main target.

In a video recorded from his hospital bed, wounded Kandahar Governor Zalmai Wesa said he was in a better condition but called Thursday's attack an act of terror.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Thursday that he had met the police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq and that he was a 'patriot.'

In a statement provided by the NATO-led coalition, Gen. Miller said: 'Today I lost a great friend LTG Raziq.

Military personnel held a photo of Gen. Abdul Raziq, Kandahar police chief, who was killed by a guard, during his burial ceremony on Friday, October 19

Gen. Smiley (center) has been the commander of the Training and Advise and Assist Command-South (TAAC-South) since June

'We had served together for many years. Afghanistan lost a patriot, my condolences to the people of Afghanistan.

'The good he did for Afghanistan and the Afghan people cannot be undone.'

Raziq was also dogged by accusations of serious human rights abuses - with the U.N. Committee against Torture calling for him to be prosecuted over allegations of torture and enforced disappearances.

Yet he was hugely influential in southern Afghanistan, where he was heralded as an anti-Taliban strongman credited with keeping a lid on the insurgency.

'While General Raziq had long faced accusations of human rights abuses, he was also arguably the most capable military commander in Afghanistan, and widely perceived as the main reason the Taliban have struggled in Kandahar in recent years,' Johnny Walsh of the United States Insitute of Peace said.

Raziq had previously survived multiple assassination attempts.

That the Taliban could mount a deadly insider assault in such a secure location has rattled Afghanistan, a country long used to high-profile targeted killings and violence.

It was also an unusual incident for the US military, whose generals seldom face attack and are rarely wounded.

Smiley was wounded when a bodyguard opened fire inside the heavily fortified government compound Kandahar Palace, Kandahar in Afghanistan

One thing is certain, that his death throws the region's future into uncertainty while the country is at a huge political crossroads.

Parliamentary elections held across Afghanistan over the weekend were postponed in Kandahar for at least a week.

The shooting was seen as a major coup for the insurgents and threatens to torpedo peace talks and destabilize the south, which is the Taliban's birthplace.

The Taliban, which controls or contests swathes of the war-torn country, has made significant territorial gains and threatened provincial capitals in recent months.

The increased aggression had been seen as an attempt by the group to strengthen its negotiating position in talks with the United States to end the 17-year war.

Taliban representatives have met with US officials at least twice in Qatar in recent months, most recently on October 12 with newly appointed US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, raising hopes for peace.

But analysts said Thursday's attack may have jeopardized those tentative efforts

Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani said Thursday that he had ordered his security officials to investigate the attack.

Kandahar has been relatively stable compared to other regions of Afghanistan, but the assassination of a key American ally will cast doubts over its future stability as the government prepares for the long-awaited elections.

More than 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in the lower house, including doctors, mullahs, and the sons of former warlords.

The election process has already been marred by bloody violence, with hundreds killed or wounded in recent months.

At least 10 candidates have been killed so far including Abdul Jabar Qahraman, who was blown up Wednesday by a bomb placed under his sofa in the southern province of Helmand.

The election is seen as a rehearsal for the presidential vote scheduled for April and an important milestone ahead of a UN meeting in Geneva in November where Afghanistan is under pressure to show progress on 'democratic processes'.Philip Hammond needs to find 100billion in next week's Budget to bankroll big ticket funding pledges, it has been claimed.

The Chancellor is under huge pressure to turn the spending taps on next Monday after Theresa May vowed to end austerity at the Tory Party conference.

While the Government has already announced massive cash injections, including a pledge to boost NHS spending by 83.6bn over the next five years.

This spending commitment alone means that Mr Hammond must find 7bn next year, 11bn in 2020, 16bn in 2021, 21bn in 2022 and 28bn in 2023, according to analysis by The Times.

Whitehall sources told the newspaper the Treasury is starting out 100bn 'in the red' before this year's tax and spend statement.

Philip Hammond (pictured in Downing Street last week) needs to find 100billion in next week's Budget to bankroll big ticket funding pledges

The Chancellor is also facing widespread calls to find another 2bn to bail out the Government's under-fire Universal Credit roll out.

The flagship welfare reform has been widely criticised amid claims that some of Britain's poorest families will be left 2,400 a year worse off under the shake-up.

While growing fears that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal mean Mr Hammond is also under pressure to find more cash for no deal Brexit planning.

The Chancellor will unveil his yearly tax and spend plans next Monday - but while calls for extra cash for public services are mounting, tax rises which fall on individuals will be hugely unpopular with Tory backbenchers.

He is reportedly set to increase the tax paid by offshore gambling companies as he desperately tries to find extra cash.

And he received a welcome boost last week when official figures showed that Britain's public sector borrowing has fallen to its lowest rate since the financial meltdown of 2007.

The Office for National Statistics said the UK borrowed 4.1billion in September, some 0.8bn less than the same month a year ago.

This is the lowest rate for 11 years when Europe and America were plunged into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The PM used her conference speech in Birmingham earlier this month to announce that austerity will end after she has delivered Brexit as she insisted the Tories can spell out a positive domestic agenda and not just rein in spending.

Mrs May has been heavily criticised by her own MPs for failing to come up with new domestic policies or the money needed to properly find schools, hospitals and local councils.

But in a radical departure, she said the spending taps would be turned back on after Brexit as 'after a decade of austerity, people need to know that their hard work has paid off.

Britain's public sector borrowing has fallen to its lowest rate since the financial meltdown of 2007, figures out last week from the Office for National Statistics reveal

She said: 'We are not just a party to clean up a mess, we are a party to steer a course to a better future.

'Sound finances are essential, but they are not the limit of our ambition. Because you made sacrifices, there are better days ahead.

'So, when we've secured a good Brexit deal for Britain, at the spending review next year we will set out our approach to the future.

'Debt as a share of the economy will continue to go down, support for public services will go up.

'Because, a decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off.'A man who 'had a talent for making ice' and his girlfriend were murdered after his drug boss suspected he staged a break-in at his Sydney meth lab, a Supreme Court jury has heard.

Dung Thi Ngo, 42, and Kevin Ly, 27, are each charged with two counts of murder after the bodies of Son Thanh Nguyen and Thi Kim Lien Do were found wrapped in bedspreads and dumped in Bankstown and West Hoxton respectively.

Both were allegedly murdered on April 10, 2013, but Ms Do's decomposed body wasn't found for nine months.

'Queenpin' Dung Thi Ngo, 42,(pictured leaving court on Monday) is charged with ordering a hit on drug dealer Son Thanh Nguyen and his girlfriend Thi Kim Lien Do

'Sonny Nguyen had a talent for making ice,' the prosecutor said.

Ngo allegedly instructed others in her group to 'lure' Mr Nguyen back to the lab and pressure him into owning up to the crystal methamphetamine theft.

'They weren't told at that stage there was any trouble brewing,' Mr Gilson said of the couple's return home.

In his opening address, crown prosecutor Ken Gilson said the jury would hear evidence Ngo - who headed an illicit drug group - suspected Mr Nguyen staged a break-in at the Canley Vale house she had leased for him that year to set up a meth lab.

He said a man at the house is expected to testify Ngo told Mr Nguyen to 'go out back and meet your new partner' before Ly and two men ran at him, while another assailant carrying a long kitchen knife ran after Ms Do.

Ly was seen putting a clear plastic hose around Mr Nguyen's neck and eventually 'the two of them ended up with their backs to each other' and the victim was lifted off the ground, the prosecutor said.

A wet cloth was put over his mouth and eventually he 'stopped struggling and his eyes rolled back', he said.

A Crown witness is expected to testify Ngo told Mr Nguyen 'if he returned the drugs, Lien Do would stay alive' but he continued to declare his innocence despite being held at gunpoint.

Kevin Ly, 27, (pictured leaving court on Monday) was allegedly hired by Ngo to carry out the chilling murders in 2013

Ngo allegedly instructed Ly and a compatriot to 'just do it' and handed over a large sum of money in a plastic case before leaving the property.

'Ly personally manually strangled Sonny Nguyen,' Mr Gilson said.

He said it was unclear when Ms Do was murdered that night, as no one witnessed her death, but she had denied knowing about any theft and pleaded for her life.

The prosecutor said Ngo is 'equally liable' for the murders as she encouraged Ly to kill each victim.

Ngo's barrister Ken Averre said there's no issue the couple were 'unlawfully killed' but the 'principal' trial issue is whether his client gave any order or made any request to their deaths.Blanket public sector pay rises are set to come to an end, the Treasury has told ministers ahead of next week's Budget.

Instead, pay hikes will be linked to how well staff perform and the cost of living where they live, it was reported.

The Government abandoned its long-standing 1 per cent public sector pay cap earlier this year after a growing clamour from staff who complained they had suffered years of squeezed wages.

It meant that the Treasury had to find billions pf pounds extra to fund across the board pay rises for soldiers, teachers and police officers.

But Chancellor Philip Hammond is said to be proposing a radical overhaul in order to make pay rises more 'flexible'.

Liz Truss, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, warned Cabinet last week that pay rises will be dished out according to the need to retain staff and incentivise good performance,The Telegraph reported.

Liz Truss, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, (pictured in Downing Street last week) warned Cabinet last week that pay rises will be dished out according to the need to retain staff and reward good performance

She told ministers that outside London and the South East - where the cost of housing is sky-high - public sector pay is far more competitive.

She said that pay could be tied to performance and a drive to make public services more efficient.

And she pointed out that independent pay review bodies that make recommendations only operate in an 'advisory' capacity.

George Osborne brought in a public sector pay freeze under the Coalition government in 2010, and in 2013 this changed to a 1 per cent pay cap.

But after years of austerity and squeezed wages, ministers finally scrapped the cap earlier this year.

Philip Hammond (pictured in Downing Street last week) needs to find 100billion in next week's Budget to bankroll big ticket funding pledges, including a promise to hike NHS spending by 20bn a year for the next five years

The move saw teachers get a 3.5 per cent pay rise, while military staff were handed a 2.9 per cent rise and police 2 per cent.

The proposed change comes amid reports Mr Hammond needs to find 100billion in next week's Budget to bankroll big ticket funding pledges.

The Chancellor is under huge pressure to turn the spending taps on next Monday after Theresa May vowed to end austerity at the Tory Party conference.

While the Government has already announced massive cash injections, including a pledge to boost NHS spending by 83.6bn over the next five years.

This spending commitment alone means that Mr Hammond must find 7bn next year, 11bn in 2020, 16bn in 2021, 21bn in 2022 and 28bn in 2023, according to analysis by The Times.

Whitehall sources told the newspaper the Treasury is starting out 100bn 'in the red' before this year's tax and spend statement.The Prime Minister's official spokesman said she would not dignify the specific quotes with a response

Theresa May condemned 'dehumanising and derogatory' language in politics today after anonymous Tories made a series of violent claims about her future.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said she would not dignify the specific quotes with a response.

But she warned violent language 'has no place in our politics' and is 'not something we expect to happen'.

The anonymous politicians who launched the vitriolic attacks on the PM faced a serious backlash today amid claims they should be unmasked and kicked out of the party.

The lurid quotes, given anonymously to several Sunday papers, came from MPs and former ministers - several of whom were cited as allies of former Brexit Secretary David Davis.

The graphic metaphors also included Mrs May being told to 'bring her own noose' to a 'show trial. A former minister is said to have warned the PM she faces being stabbed in the chest with a hot knife - that would then be twisted.

The violent claims about Mrs May's fate come just over two years after MP Jo Cox was assassinated on the streets of her Batley and Spen constituency and amid growing alarm at violent rhetoric in politics.

Tory critics of Theresa May (pictured today arriving at Downing Street) who claimed she was in the 'killing zone' and faced 'assassination' have been slammed for failing to learn from the murder of Jo Cox

Mrs May's spokesman said: 'I dont intend to dignify those specific anonymous comments with a response.

'The Prime Minister has always been very clear that we must set a tone in public discourse that is neither dehumanising nor derogatory.

'Personal vitriol has no place in our politics.'

Senior Tory Sarah Wollaston said: 'Shame on the spineless cowards on my benches who hide behind anonymity to use such disturbing and violent language about their own colleague and PM Theresa May.

'Totally unacceptable. Have they learned nothing following the assassination of Jo Cox?'

Tory MP Paul Masterton said: 'If I was told to ''bring my own noose'' to my next surgery, that I'd be ''knived'', or ''assassinated'', my staff would report it to the police.

'I don't really see why comments made by snivelling cowards on the back benches towards the Prime Minister should be treated differently.'

Conor Burns, a former parliamentary aide to Boris Johnson, endorsed the Tory whips identifying and de-selecting the sources of the quotes.

He said: 'Some of the language used about the PM supposedly from other MPs in today's press is totally unacceptable.

'Yes there are huge disagreements on principled grounds with her Chequers plan. But they should be debated with courtesy and mutual respect.'

The violent claims about Mrs May's fate come just over two years after MP Jo Cox was assassinated on the streets of her Batley and Spen constituency and amid growing alarm at violent rhetoric in politics

Senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary, warned against 'normalising violence in public debate'

Senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary, told the Today programme: 'This is vile and dehumanising language towards a woman MP, towards a prime minister who, no matter how much you might disagree with her, is someone who is doing a job in public life.

'Nobody should be subject to that kind of violent language, which I think is normalising violence in public debate at a time when we lost Jo Cox, we have had threats against Rosie Cooper, we have had other violent death threats against women MPs.'

Brexiteer Mark Francois said it was 'unacceptable' but said it was fuelled by a 'bunker mentality' in Downing Street.

He said: 'The problem is that there is a lot of frustration on the backbenches at the moment, both among leavers and remainers, at the general state of play.'

Senior Tory MP Sarah Wollaston condemned the 'spineless cowards' making violent threats about Theresa May in the Sunday papers

Dr Wollaston, chairwoman of the Commons health committee, questioned whether the people behind the quotes had 'learned nothing following the assassination of Jo Cox'

Conor Burns, a former parliamentary aide to Boris Johnson, endorsed the Tory whips identifying and de-selecting the sources of the quotes and said they were 'totally unacceptable'

Former Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers, a Brexiteer, said the comments about the PM in the newspapers were 'disturbing'.

She told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend: 'I think it's really unhelpful. We have got to trust the Prime Minister to do the job on the negotiations.

'I don't think a leadership election would be remotely helpful at this stage and I think it's important for this kind of speculation to stop.'

Asked about comments in the newspapers about Mrs May, Mr Halfon said: 'I say to the people giving those quotes, this is not the way to change things.

'This just confirms what many of the public think of us, that we are all potentially out for ourselves and not on the side of working people.'

SNP leader and Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: 'This morning I've seen quotes from Tories to the effect that PM is 'entering the killing zone', faces 'assassination' and should take 'her own noose' to a meeting.

'Few disagree with her more than I do, but language like this debases politics. Get a grip, Tories.'

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon condemned the violent language and warns it 'debases politics' (pictured is her statement on Twitter today)

Ms Sturgeon (pictured in London earlier this week) said few disagreed with Mrs May more than her but said her Tory critics should 'get a grip'

Labour MP Mary Creagh said: 'Violent dehumanising language of ''lame cockroach'' and ''bring her own noose'' to describe the PM by former Cabinet Minister deeply concerning.

'Brexit is corrupting the norms of public decency and public life.'

Another Labour MP Paula Sherriff tweeted: 'It won't come as a surprise to many that I wholeheartedly disagree with the PM on many things but the language being used across the media, including ''bring a noose'' to the 1922 committee is unnecessary, inappropriate and disturbing.

'It must stop.'

Rank-and-file MPs last night told the Mail on Sunday Mrs May that she was in the 'last chance saloon' and called on her to face them at their 1922 Committee meeting on Wednesday.

She was given the chilling warning that she should 'bring her own noose' to the showdown as rivals step up their campaigns to succeed her in No 10.

Former Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers (file image), a Brexiteer, said the comments about the PM in the newspapers were 'disturbing'.

A Cabinet minister told the Sunday Times the PM was 'endangering her own government' by refusing to take a different approach to Brexit.

They said: 'This is the first time I've thought it could fall over. She's not listening. That's kamikaze.'

An ally of David Davis told the paper Mrs May was in the 'the killing zone' while a wannabe leadership candidate said: 'Assassination is in the air.'

A former minister told the same paper Mrs May would be 'dead soon': 'There is a growing consensus that she's utterly hopeless.

'I'm not going to put a letter in but when I find myself in a private polling booth I just cannot see how I would vote for her.

'The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted.'

Labour MP Mary Creagh slammed the violent metaphors and warned 'Brexit is corrupting the norms of public decency and public life'Advertisement

A savvy couple turned an old bread lorry into their dream home on wheels for just 23,000.

Martin Hill, 38, and Iona Stewart, 27, brought an ex Hovis delivery truck to save cash on accommodation as they travel around Europe.

The couple picked up the lorry on eBay for just 3,600 and spent 20,000 on renovating the 28 feet box.

Their transformation of the five tonne truck went so well, they have moved in.

Martin has now sold his house and bar in Nottingham and says they will use it 'full-time'. At home in Nottingham house prices average at around 200,000 - ten times what Martin and Iona paid for their dream dwelling.

The pair met while doing a ski season in the French Alps, which they now return to every winter. Next year, they will be taking their home with them.

Martin said: 'About four years ago after a few too many beers I thought about buying a big American RV.

The pair started with a 28ft box after they spent 3,600 on the old Hovis bread lorry. They spent a further 20,000 making it into a home (Iona pictured)

Martin from Nottingham and Iona from Scotland spent months on their project which Mr Hill thought up over a beer

Before: The bright yellow lorry was transformed by the couple who met during a ski season. Their home on wheels is a former bread delivery truck

From the outside Martin Hill and Iona Stewart's home does not look very luxurious despite the improved paint work...

... But inside the couple have created a comfortable home for themselves including fitted furniture and a double bed

A sofa with a pull out bed and purpose built storage makes the living room, which joins onto the kitchen look like cosy

The couple have a purpose built home inside the lorry which includes both a living room and a bedroom on two separate levels

Travel companions Martin, 38, and Iona, 27, plan to live in their truck full time after Martin sold his bar and his home in Nottingham

Iona and Martin are currently travelling across Europe in the van they made a home from. They have updated their followers on social media as they take in stunning sights

The couple are currently travelling through Europe as they aim to spend as long as they can living in their five-tonne truck

There is a kitchen complete with an oven, a large fridge and plenty of space for cooking and storing supplies

The exterior of the old Hovis bread delivery lorry after it was transformed by Martin and Iona. The pictures have been liked hundreds of times on social media

'We bought the lorry in May this year. We spent four months working on it full-time.

'We are really lucky to not have to work and we did everything ourselves.

'It's amazing what you can do. We are not exactly slumming it.'

The former landlord said he did most of the labouring while Iona, a chef from Scotland, designed the interior.

The pair had their work cut out since the inside space is the size of 1.5 parking spaces - yet they managed to make it a home.

Pictures which have been shared and liked hundreds of times on social media, show the couple have created a split-floor kitchen and living area, bedroom and ensuite.

The kitchen appears to have all the mod-cons, including an oven and hob and a varnished wood work surface.

While an economical living area with a comfy grey sofa is complete with a wood-burning stove.

And just off the living room is a cosy bedroom with a fully fitted wardrobe and space for jackets and a storage unit.

The careful couple have included crafty storage boxes out of wood so they can store all of their belongings in the small home

After spending 20,000 doing up the lorry the couple have been travelling around Europe - and they do not have immediate plans to come back to the UK

The couple are currently moving through Savoie, France, as they get used to living in their luxurious self-made home

Artwork, trinkets, candles and soft furnishings make the camper look like many other homes around Britain - but this one is on wheels

The home even has its own heating with a small burner which has been built into the truck. The couple even built split-level flooring

Iona and Martin and their Hovis van have travelled to France where the couple plan to travel and work ski seasons

Current view: Martin and Iona are in France where they took the Hovis can to finish it off before they could really call it home

The couple finished the van in France and can move their dream home daily to catch the breathtaking views across France

Doors are installed inside the truck to separate the rooms and make it feel more like a home. The toilet is also in a small bathroom

The shower room inside the truck where the couple are now living. Martin and Iona have no plans to return to the UK at the moment

The Hovis truck will be put through its paces as it is driven by Martin and Iona across the mountainous landscapeIt might have been eight months ago that Britain was plunged into a deep freeze as the Beast from the East swept across the country.

But the effects of the prolonged cold snap are still in place now, with the price of key ingredients for a traditional Christmas dinner having soared.

Many farmers are reporting disappointing yields from their crops, with the wholesale cost of potatoes up by 186 per cent compared to this time last year.

A graphic shows how wholesale costs of vegetables have risen, compared to this time last year

Wholesale prices for other staples for Christmas meals such as carrots, parsnips and Brussels sprouts are all around 50 per cent up, while cabbage is up 8 per cent.

But there is better news for cauliflower lovers - with costs down 15 per cent, according to data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Meanwhile the average bottle of wine is already up by 10 pence this year  and could rise further when the Budget is revealed next Monday, reported The Times.

However, higher grain prices and labour costs following the national minimum wage increasing are behind a 6 per cent increase in the cost of turkeys.

The rises in the wholesale costs of vegetables will not necessarily be passed on at the same level to consumers in the shops  but some increase is now very likely.

The wholsale price of key ingredients for a traditional Christmas dinner has soared (file image)

Agricultural analyst Aidan Wright told the newspaper: 'A lot of the increase will be absorbed by suppliers who will see lower margins.

'Yes, we will see higher prices but the quality of the crop out of the ground is still unknown so we don't know the full impact yet.'

It comes after experts said the extreme weather this year will likely increase household food bills by an estimated 7.15 a month or 85.80 a year

The Centre for Economics and Business Research said in August that the unpredictable weather had put 'particular stress on farming costs and yields'.

The Beast from the East in late February and early March brought widespread travel disruption to Britain as heavy snow fell and temperatures fell to 11F (-12C).Advertisement

Massive chunks of hail and torrential rain battered Rome when a freak storm struck on Sunday evening.

The adverse weather blanketed streets with icy chunks and trapped many drivers in their cars in the city's eastern neighbourhoods.

Some drivers abandoned their cars in the middle of streets that became flowing rivers of ice and were pictured slowly making their way through hail-covered streets.

Elsewhere in the city, buses were stopped and cars were abandoned after some streets were left severely flooded due to the rainfall.

A video captured icy water and hailstones running down escalators into an underground train station in the city.

A man tries to reach a car that has been blocked by ice after a severe hailstorm hit Rome, Italy, on Sunday evening

Lightning flashes across the sky over the Pantheon monument during a hailstorm in downtown Rome on Sunday night

Firefighters responded to similar incidents in Florence and Pisa, which were also hit by severe storms on Sunday.

The storms reached Sicily on Sunday, where the eastern province of Catania was hit by torrential rain for the second time in three days, thelocal.it reports.

The severe weather also affected parts of northern Italy, including Milan, where strong winds toppled trees. In Bologna, the airport saw flights delayed due to difficult flying conditions.

Rome is set for a clear week with temperatures expected to peak at 18C on Monday and reach highs of 23C on Thursday, although a severe weather warning for wind remains in effect for the Italian capital until Tuesday.

After a sunny week, forecasters predict rainfall again this week - with some lightning also expected in the city on Sunday.

But while sun and clearer skies are expected for now in Rome and most of Italy, heavy rain and a thunderstorm is expected to hit Bari, a port city on the Adriatic Sea, later on Monday.

Torrential rain and thunderstorms struck parts of Italy after travelling east from the Iberian peninsula over the weekend and will continue moving.

Cars are blocked in a road covered with massive chunks of hail in Rome after a storm and torrential rain hit the area

The weather blanketed streets with icy chunks and trapped many drivers in their cars in Rome's eastern neighbourhoods

Hail covers the Piazza della Rotonda in front of the Pantheon in central Rome, following a hailstorm on Sunday evening

Large chunks of hail are seen covering the street in downtown Rome after torrential rain and storms struck the Italian capital

Flash floods caused by heavy rain in southern Spain left a Spanish firefighter dead on Sunday.

The firefighter went missing when his truck overturned on a flooded road overnight, according to emergency services in the southern region of Andalusia. Two other firefighters traveling with him were rescued, but he was swept away.

His body was found hours later on Sunday morning after a search.

Fast-flowing water flooded homes, streets and bridges in the southern province of Malaga. One train bridge was knocked down. At least six highways were closed and authorities suspended train services in the area.

Rome is set for a clear week with temperatures expected to peak at 18C on Monday following a wet Sunday night

A cold front moved from the Iberian peninsula towards Italy on Sunday, bringing with it torrential rain and hailstorms. Pictured, a weather forecast for Europe on Monday

Video from the Civil Guard showed a police helicopter airlifting a woman from a balcony of a house that was surrounded by muddy water.

Spain's weather service issued a red alert - its highest warning - for the area. Last week, 13 people died in flooding on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

Meanwhile, Britons can expect a 'shock to the system' this week as temperatures are set to dip sharply after a spell of unseasonably warm weather.

Parts of northern Scotland could even see sleet and flurries of snow, while further south the mercury is unlikely to go beyond single figures, the Met Office said.

London saw a balmy 21C on Saturday as hundreds of thousands took to the streets for the People's Vote march, but even the capital will feel chilly by the weekend.

Torrential rain and thunderstorms struck parts of Italy after travelling east from the Iberian peninsula over the weekend

A person walks past the Temple of Hadrian in downtown Rome during a hailstorm on Sunday

Rain pours over the Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland), the national monument to Italian King Victor Emmanuel II

Water floods the Trajan Forum after heavy rain fell in the Italian capital during a hailstorm on Sunday evening

An Italian policeman wades in a flooded street near an abandoned car, in Rome, late on Sunday evening

Several cars were stuck in flooded streets after torrential rain drenched the Italian capital on Sunday nightAdvertisement

The passenger train that derailed in north-east Taiwan yesterday was speeding at nearly twice the limit while travelling around a bend, preliminary investigations revealed.

However, it is yet to be determined whether the derailment was caused by human error or technical malfunction, Central News Agency reported citing Wu Tze-cheng, head of the task force set up to investigate the fatal accident that left 18 people dead and more than 180 injured.

A 12-second video of the crash in Yilan county shows the eight-car Puyuma Express carrying 366 passengers going around a bend before losing control and running off the tracks. It is seen striking and toppling a beam, ripping down metal structures from above the rail as it crashed.

Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen today pressed for a quick, transparent probe into the cause of one of the island's worst train crashes as the search of the derailed cars ended and crash investigators examined the wreckage today.

Footage has emerged showing the moment a passenger train derailed in north-east Taiwan yesterday, leaving 18 people dead

A damaged carriage of the Puyuma Express train is lift by a crane in Yilan County today following the horrific accident

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen listens to a briefing of a search and rescue team at the crash site at Xinma station today

The train was travelling between the cities of Shulin and Taitung when it derailed on the popular coastal line route just before 5 pm local time.

Wu told reporters that the maximum speed at the bend is 75 kmh (47 mph), but the train was travelling at nearly twice the limit at 140 kmh (87 mph) at the time of the accident.

At a news conference today transport ministry officials said they were looking into speed as a possible factor, as well as a report filed by the driver 20 minutes before the incident that said the air pressure in the train's brakes was 'too low', according to an earlier CNN report.

The train is seen striking and toppling a beam, ripping down metal structures from above the rail as it crashed

A general view shows overturned carriages of the Puyuma Express train in Taiwan's northeastern Yilan after the accident

At a news conference today transport ministry officials said they were looking into speed as a possible factor for the crash

All eight train carriages derailed in the incident, with five overturned in a zig-zag pattern to the left of the tracks

The wreckage had been cleared from the tracks and railway service was restored this morning

Among the dead were eight members of a family returning from a wedding, Taiwan's railway authority confirmed. They ranged in age from 9 to 67.

Of the total injured, seven were still receiving intensive hospital care this morning.

Tsai offered words of consolation during her visit to one of the four local hospitals treating victims.

She also joined Buddhist monks in prayer before an altar adorned with flowers next to the hospital, while nearby, relatives and friends of the victims wept as they sifted through battered suitcases recovered from the train wreck.

'We are really sorry ... you have to stay strong,' Tsai told Chen Yu-chan, 41, whose only daughter, a seventh grader, was killed.

Tsai offered words of consolation during her visit to one of the four local hospitals in Yilan treating victims

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen consoles family members of victims from a train derailment at a hospital in Yilan

Rescuers search the crash site for survivors and workers survey the aftermath of the train derailment yesterday

Among the dead were eight members of a family returning from a wedding, Taiwan's railway authority confirmed

'We will do everything we can,' she told another person, who was sobbing at the hospital.

Many of the casualties happened in a carriage at the front of the train, said one official, adding that the driver, surnamed You, has been moved out of intensive care, though his condition was still unstable.

'We will ask him what happened after he stabilises,' said Liu Can-huang, head of the car maintenance unit of the railways.

All eight train carriages derailed in the incident, with five overturned in a zig-zag pattern to the left of the tracks.

The train recorder, which tracks speed, among other data, had been sent to prosecutors to be examined, he added.

Many of the casualties happened in a carriage at the front of the train, said one Taiwanese official

The train recorder, which tracks speed, among other data, had been sent to prosecutors to be examined

The damaged Puyuma Express train is lifted in the air behind ghost money, yellow papers for the dead at the crash site

The Puyuma Express began operating in 2013 to negotiate the rough terrain of the east coast and can travel up to 150 kmh

The wreckage had been cleared from the tracks and railway service was restored this morning.

The fastest of Taiwan's regular trains, the Puyuma Express began operating in 2013 to negotiate the rough terrain of the east coast. The 6-year-old trains were built to travel at an especially fast 150 kmh (93 mph).

Taiwan Railways bought the Puyuma cars in 2011 from Japanese maker Nippon Sharyo for US$260 million (200 million). The seller said then that the trains were part of a US$46 billion (35 billion) upgrade of the line along Taiwan's east coast.

The train accident is the deadliest in Taiwan since 1991, when a collision in Miaoli County, in the island's north-west, killed 31 people.Advertisement

These are the scenes of devastation after raiders tried to blow up a cash machine outside a Post Office today.

Debris, including the shop's front door, was thrown across the pavement and the ATM was moved about a foot by the force of the blast in the early hours of this morning in the Spondon area of Derby.

The skirting boards in resident Jean Woolley's living room, directly above the shop, were ripped from the walls and her floor was raised by the blast. The explosion also left her personal belongings scattered across the floor.

The scene after an explosion during an ATM raid during the early hours of this morning at a Post Office in Spondon, Derby

Debris, including the shop's front door, was thrown across the pavement and the ATM was shifted by the force of the blast

A forensic officer collects evidence at the scene after the explosion during an ATM raid this morning in Derby

Ms Woolley said it 'felt as if a bomb had gone off' in her home, adding: 'I got out of bed and I was so shaken from it. It was like a firework just exploded. I don't remember a huge amount.

'I ran into my son's room and just asked him what the hell had happened. I'm still waiting for the fire service to come and see if I can go back into the home.'

Witnesses claimed they saw a BMW car, possibly with two men inside, smash into the Post Office as they attempted to seize the ATM  and nearby residents were shaken from their beds by the explosion.

The explosion was feared to have damaged the mains gas supply to scores of homes. Police raced to the scene this morning and sealed off the area, causing widespread disruption for people heading to work and school.

The raiders are believed to have fled empty-handed, but the repair bill will run into tens of thousands of pounds. Derbyshire Police said they were called to reports of the explosion at about 4.45am, but nobody was hurt.

Nearby resident Jack Lowsden, 42, said: 'Me and wife were asleep in bed when there was this almighty bang. We peered out of the window and could see smoke a couple of streets away where the post office is.

The raiders are believed to have fled empty-handed, but the repair bill will run into tens of thousands of pounds

Police raced to the scene this morning and sealed off the area, causing widespread disruption for people heading to work

Derbyshire Police said they were called to reports of the explosion in Spondon at about 4.45am, but nobody was hurt

'It was still dark and the next thing we knew, there were blue lights from police cars and loads of sirens. 'It woke everryone up - it was chaos.'

Kevin Woolley, 45, who lives in a flat above the Post Office, added: 'I woke up around 4.38am and I remember hearing a really fast beeping. It sounded like a metal detector.

'First it was quite fast, but then every few seconds it just went beep, beep, beep. I got up and looked at what time it was. As I put my foot on the floor there was a huge explosion. It was like a subsonic bang.

'It felt like a huge impact. It just felt like something hit me so hard. After I recovered, I got up and grabbed my phone and recorded it. The guys who did it drove away in a silver BMW 56 plate.

'I've been evacuated out of my flat now and I don't think I can even go back in. The police have put me in a hotel for the night but I don't know when I can get back in.

'It's just horrendous. They must have overcooked it because the post office is destroyed. You can see the brick at the back of the store. It's been gutted.'

These pictures show the devastation wreaked in Jean Wooley's flat after the raiders tried to blow up a cash machine

The skirting boards in resident Jean Woolley's living room were ripped from the walls and her floor was raised by the blast

The skirting board was raised following the blast which happened at the Post Office under Ms Wooley's living room in Derby

Hollie Miller, 21, who arrived for work at 7am at the Premier store in Spondon, said 'I've never seen anything like this before. When I came to work I was just so shocked that someone could do something like this.

'We have CCTV for the area so that might help the police but I bet whoever has done this is long gone.'

Engineers from Cadent, who look after the gas network, are currently at the scene but it's believed the area is safe and there are no leaks.

Jonathan Smale, who lives above the nearby Sue Ryder store, said: 'I was in bed and I just heard a huge explosion. I was scared. It was the first time that I generally felt unsafe in my entire life.

'It was the biggest explosion I've ever heard. Police have told me they are waiting for the fire service to attend to check the structures around the post office to see if they are safe.'

Sandeep Sarda (left), who is the owner of the Post Office, stands outside the scene as police investigated today (right)

Nearby residents were shaken from their beds by the explosion which moved the ATM about a foot across the ground

A police spokesman said: 'Officers were called to the Post Office on Chapel Street in Spondon this morning, to reports of an explosion. On arrival it was found that an attempt to steal the ATM machine had been made.

'We can assure the public this was no terrorist act or anything to do with gas or electricity. People in the area would have heard a loud bang but they can be assured they are safe.'

The Post Office confirmed no members of staff were inside the shop at the time. A spokesman said: 'We will be supporting the police in their efforts to apprehend those responsible.

'We would urge anyone with information to contact the police or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111. In the meantime, the branch is temporarily closed - we apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused.'A furious daughter has slammed a funeral director for leaving her mother's body in a panel van overnight.

Debbie Newman accused Terry and Shirley Goater of keeping her mother's corpse in in the vehicle, which was parked on an industrial site, in Moree, NSW.

Debbie was so incensed that she told A Current Affair she wanted to 'smash' Shirley Goater.

In one dramatic scene Debbie has to be restrained by the programme's bosses as she launched herself at Shirley's car.

The Goaters, who were paid $6,500 to conduct Judith Newman's funeral, have now applied for an Apprehensive Violence Order (AVO).

Scroll down for video

Great-grandmother Judith Newman (pictured), from Moree in New South Wales' north, had pre-paid funeral directors and married couple Terry and Shirley Goater $6,500 to conduct her service before her death in July

In footage captured by A Current Affair, Mrs Newman's daughter, Dianne, attended the Goaters' rented industrial site where a blow-up occurred

The Newman family were told Judith's body would be take straight from the nursing home to morgue, but according to the Goaters, there was nobody at the morgue.

The Goaters allegedly left the refrigerated van running before turning it off the following morning and attending the annual Bingara orange festival, after which, Mrs Goater shared videos on her Facebook page.

In footage captured by A Current Affair, Mrs Newman's daughter, Dianne, attended the Goaters' rented industrial site.

In a moment of rage she approached Mrs Goater in her car and demanded to see her mother's final mode of transport.

Mr Goater has since applied for an AVO against Dianne (pictured) following the blow-up. 'I just wanna smash her,' Dianne told A Current Affair

Ms Newman's other daughter, Kay, said she couldn't believe someone would leave her mother's corpse in a car overnight.

'I can't explain the hurt in here that somebody would do that to another human being,' Kay said.

'It's all I can think of, of a night time, is mum in the back of that van in a body bag.'

Mr Goater maintained he and his wife did nothing wrong by claiming Ms Newman's body was 'in transit' (pictured: Shirley Goater)

Mr Goater maintained he and his wife did nothing wrong by claiming Ms Newman's body was 'in transit'.

The couple said they never left the body unrefrigriated for more than eight hours, in accordance with the New South Wales Health Department.

The matter of the AVO will be heard in Moree local court next Monday.

Mr and Mrs Goater told Daily Mail Australia: 'This all came about after we picked Mrs Newman up, we were told by Thorleys (funeral services) who were to store the body that there was no staff at Inverell to store to accept the body at the time, as they live in Glenn Innes, but there would be someone at the funeral home the next day, so we had no other place to take Mrs Newman.

'As far as we are concerned, she was quite safe and comfortable as you can leave a body out of refrigeration for up to eight hours.'Dramatic footage has emerged of a shoplifter being slammed to the ground by a passing garbage truck driver who came to aid of store staff.

The incident happened on May 28 outside the Aldi store in Carrum in Melbourne's southeast, where a man appears to be in a struggle with two store staff.

Attempting to restrain the man and bring him back into the store to return the items, a garbage truck driver passing by sees what's happening and stops to intervene and assist.

The truck driver grabs the man from behind, lifts him in the air and body slams him into the ground in front of several shocked shoppers walking past as store staff grab the bag of allegedly stolen items.

Two male staff try to restrain the suspected shoplifter outside the Aldi store in Carrum in Melbourne's southeast while a female employee is in the background on the phone to police

Nellie, the woman who took the footage, told Daily Mail Australia that the man had been chased from the store by two staff after he allegedly stole a bag of groceries.

'I actually felt a bit sorry for the guy,' she said.

The footage went viral after it was posted on social media on Monday night and attracted more than 94,000 views

'A little bit of five finger shopping in the middle aisle of Aldi turns into a lesson in garbage disposal,' the Instagram post read.

The garbage truck driver (pictured second left) arrives at the scene to assist store staff

Social media reaction to the video was divided and ranged from amusement to anger and shock.

'Why are these checkout monkeys actin like a bunch of nightclub bouncers?' one person commented.

Another added: 'Definitely a man who likes his job of keeping the streets clean.'

Many felt sorry for the man while others believed the store staff and garbage truck driver did the right thing.

'If you steal, then you deserve whats coming to you. Doesnt matter if its a big corporation. Its a matter of principle,' one person commented.

'Unfortunately if everyone who was underprivileged walked into Aldi & helped themselves and got away with it then the flood gates open! Its a business get over all your heroic comments supporting a thief!'

Footage of the Good Samaritan garbage truck driver grabbing the suspected thief from behind and slamming him into the ground went viral online on Monday

A Victoria Police spokeswoman confirmed to Daily Mail that a 39-year-old Brighton East man was arrested after he allegedly stole a bag of meat from a Carrum supermarket on May 28, who was the held by staff and a passer-by until police arrived.

He was remanded to appear in Moorabbin Magistrates' Court the next day.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Aldi for comment.A British man who was 'deported' to Australia as a child, and subsequently suffered daily abuse from his foster parents, has demanded that Theresa May make a national apology to survivors.

Rex Wade, 59, was just 11 years old when he and his younger brother were sent from Cornwall, southwest England, to a foster home in Tasmania, an island state south of mainland Australia, in 1970 - three years after such 'deportations' officially ended.

Mr Wade said that while he welcomed today's apology from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to victims of child abuse, he was still waiting for Mrs May to do the same.

Rex Wade, 59, was 11 when he and his younger brother were sent from Cornwall to a foster home on the island of Tasmania in 1970 - three years after such 'deportations' officially ended

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison (centre) delivers a national apology to child sex abuse victims in Canberra today

Earlier today, Mr Morrison tearfully told the Australian parliament how thousands of victims of institutional sex abuse had been let down by the state, who utterly failed to stop 'evil, dark crimes'.

He also spoke of a history of exploitation, cover-ups and state failure and declared a new national credo for future allegations: 'We believe you.'

The apology was directed towards hundreds of Australians, but also to British citizens who, like Mr Wade, were sent to Australia under the Child Migrants Programme.

Transportation under the Child Migrants Programme began in the 1930s and was thought to have ended by 1967, but it later emerged that two boys from Cornwall were sent to Australia as late as 1970: Mr Wade and his brother Kevin.

Sent away: Rex Wade, left, is pictured age nine with his younger brother Kevin, two years before they were sent to Australia where they were abused in foster care

Happier times: Rex Wade, seen right aged five, and his brother Kevin had been taken into care in Cornwall and they are thought to have been the last British children send to Australia by authorities

Mr Wade and his brother had both been living in local authority care as their mother had been unable to cope following the death of their father.

The boys were told they were heading for a better life, but ended up suffering daily beatings and other physical and mental torment at a care home in Tasmania,

Mr Wade has spoken of being put to work as a farm hand despite his tender age of 11, and how he was ultimately imprisoned for trying to escape.

Before the journey: Mr Wade's passport photo from the time of his deportation

Despite the abuse he suffered, Mr Wade, who now lives in St Columb Major, Cornwall, said he has never been offered a penny from the British Government for what he went through.

He said: 'I am not a greedy person, but the government has been proven guilty of neglect and there has been no response whatsoever from them.

'There has been nothing from our prime minister, and nothing from any politician.

'Is the English government going to now apologise like the Australian PM has? Or are they just going to carry on only focusing on Brexit and sweep this all under the carpet?

'This needs to come sooner rather than later for the survivors as time is dragging on.

'They have known about this for a long time. I have been asking to meet Theresa May for a long time so she can physically see the people the government put through the system.

'We deserve to hear it before it is too late. What happened then was a scandal, but this is also a scandal.'

Mr Wade, who lives with his wife and three step-children, says he is still haunted by the brutal treatment he received at the hands of the couple who ran the care home.

He is still waiting for action after the first report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), ordered by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, was published in March, and said the UK Government should offer redress to victims of a 'fundamentally flawed policy'.

Family: Rex Wade, left, is pictured with his brother Bruce Wilton, and half sister Karon Wheller

Mr Wade said that while he welcomed today's apology from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to victims of child abuse, he was still waiting for Theresa May to do the same

The IICSA urged the government to establish a compensation scheme without delay and says it 'expects that payments should start being made within 12 months'. The inquiry says that it considers past, successive governments to have been 'primarily responsible'.

The IICSA report said the sum paid should be 'an equal award to every applicant', although no precise figure was stipulated.

A majority of former child migrants sent to Australia under the programme have passed away, and time is running out for the UK government to compensate those still alive.

Mr Wade added: 'Although I would welcome the apology from the Australian PM at the moment again it is just words. It is always just been words and never action.

'It also needs to be for more than just sexual abuse victims and must encompass everyone. All these apologies are going to come up but never any true action.

'Since the [IICSA] report came out 14 people have died - so that is 14 people less who are not getting what they were owed.

'At least the Australian PM is apologising to the families and link it to those in these institutions. My wife knows all about me and knows what it is like.

'How can we still be fighting for this after so many years? I don't know what is going to come, I am scared nothing will ever eventuate.'Russia says it will be forced to 'respond in kind' if America pulls out of a key nuclear weapons treaty and begins developing new missiles.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke out after Donald Trump threatened to quit the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty on Saturday, accusing Russia of violating it.

If the US and Russia make good on their threats, it would mark the first nuclear arms race between world superpowers since the end of the Cold War.

Peskov's comments came as National Security Adviser John Bolton - reportedly a key voice in calling for the deal to be torn up - met with Russian security chiefs in Moscow on Monday ahead of talks with Putin on Tuesday.

National Security adviser John Bolton met with Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev (right) in Moscow on Monday, as Russia raised the prospect of a new nuclear arms race

Bolton's visit comes after Donald Trump threatened to withdraw the US from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, saying that Russia had already violated it

Peskov accused America of making the world a more dangerous place and said Russia would be forced to act 'to restore the balance of military power'.

'This is a question of strategic security. Such measures can make the world more dangerous,' he said.

'It means that the United States is not disguising, but is openly starting to develop these systems in the future.

'If these systems are being developed, then actions are necessary from other countries, in this case Russia, to restore balance in this sphere.

'President Putin had repeatedly said that the demise of the treaty would force Russia to take specific steps to protect its own security.'

President Trump said on Saturday that Washington would withdraw from the treaty, which was signed by President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.

The pact bans either country from developing short or medium range missiles and was instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War.

America accuses Russia of violating the treaty by developing the Novator 9M792 missile (pictured center, rear), which is capable of striking Europe at short notice

Trump said that the US should be able to develop short and medium range missiles to respond to threats from Russia and China

America has accused Russia of breaching the treaty by creating the Novator 9M792, which has an estimated range of 3,000 miles.

But Peskov noted that Washington has not given official notice of leaving the treaty, and even once that has happened, there will be a six-month cooling off period.

That means the question of Russia developing its own new intermediate-range missiles was not 'for today or tomorrow,' he said.

Trump's national security adviser John Bolton is due to hold talks with senior officials in Moscow later on Monday and to meet Putin on Tuesday.

Peskov said Trump's decision to quit the pact would obviously be a subject for discussion and that Moscow was looking for a detailed explanation for why Washington had decided to turn its back on the treaty.

Russia denied U.S. accusations it had breached the treaty, said Peskov, alleging that the United States had been steadily undermining it.

'Putin has said many times said the United States de facto is taking measures that are eroding the conditions of this treaty,' said Peskov, referring to strike drones and anti-missile systems capable of destroying short- and intermediate-range rockets.CCTV images have emerged showing a Saudi intelligence officer dressed in a fake beard and Jamal Khashoggi's clothes and glasses on the day the journalist disappeared.

The man was captured on surveillance cameras leaving the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and walking around the city on October 2.

He is said to have been part of the 15-man Saudi team wanted for questioning over the death of journalist Khashoggi. The footage is believed to have been taken just hours after the writer was last seen alive entering the embassy.

The official in the clip has been named as Mustafa al-Madani, according to CNN, which said it had spoken to a senior Turkish official. The same man was seen in the writer's clothing at the city's Blue Mosque just hours after Khashoggi's disappearance, Turkish investigators say.

Reports in Turkey have claimed the Saudi team accosted Khashoggi in the building, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

CCTV images have emerged showing a Saudi intelligence officer dressed in a fake beard and Jamal Khashoggi's clothes and glasses (left) on the day the journalist disappeared

The footage is said to have been taken just hours after the writer was last seen alive entering the embassy (pictured)

Turkish officials say the Saudi team accosted Khashoggi (pictured) in the embassy, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer

A CCTV image purportedly showing Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi and his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz at an apartment building in Istanbul, Turkey, just hours before his death in the Saudi Arabian Consulate

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city today. Pictured is the man thought to have dumped the car

It comes as Turkish media reported that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office from the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul the day Jamal Khashoggi was killed there.

Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb made the calls to Bader al-Asaker, the head of the Crown Prince's office with another going to the United States, according to Yeni Safak.

In a separate report, the same website claimed Prince Mohammed himself spoke to Khashoggi by phone to ask him to return to Riyadh shortly before the writer was murdered.

The website claims that Khashoggi refused, fearing he would be arrested and killed in Saudi Arabia. After this, it is claimed, the writer was murdered in the consulate.

As a probe into the death continued today,

A leading Turkish politician said Khashoggi's murder was planned in a 'savage manner'

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate was found in Istanbul's Sultangazi district and will be searched for traces of the writer

Britain's former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said it was clear Khashoggi's death 'was authorised at the highest level'

An adviser to Turkish President Erdogan dismissed claims Khashoggi died in a 'fist fight'

Britain called for urgent clarification of the circumstances surrounding the journalist's death

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman called Khashoggi's son, Salah, to express their condolences

The kingdom's foreign minister admitted the writer was murdered but that the killing was a 'tremendous mistake' by a 'rogue operation'

White House adviser Jared Kushner said the US is still in a 'fact-finding' phase

Top business executives and global officials continued to drop out of a Saudi investment conference dubbed 'Davos in the Desert'

The website for the summit was hacked to show the Crown Prince appearing to behead Khashoggi

Today, CNN aired surveillance footage showing a man in Khashoggi's dress shirt, suit jacket and trousers. He was also seen wearing a fake beard suggesting the operation was likely pre-planned. Earlier at the city's airport and while entering the embassy, Madani was seen with just a moustache.

CNN cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a 'body double' and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The official said that 'Khashoggi's clothes were probably still warm when Madani put them on.'

Madani was seen at the city's airport earlier that day with just a moustache (pictured)

The man in the footage is seen walking out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then taking a taxi to Istanbul's famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public bathroom, changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Khashoggi's clothes.

In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said that he had left the consulate, implying premeditation on the part of the Saudi team.

'After Turkish authorities and the media were allowed to inspect the consulate building in its entirety, the accusations changed to the outrageous claim that he was murdered, in the consulate, during business hours, and with dozens of staff and visitors in the building,' Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote on October 8. 'I don't know who is behind these claims, or their intentions, nor do I care frankly.'

A senior Saudi official has already said that one of the 15-strong team dressed up in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.

The official said operative Madani also wore Khashoggi's glasses and Apple watch and left through the back door.

He said the journalist had been placed in a chokehold during which he accidentally died  and then his body was smuggled out of the building in a rolled-up carpet.

The footage also shows Madani wearing his own blue and white checked shirt and dark trousers

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city today. Broadcaster NTV and other local media said that police would search the vehicle

Turkish forensics enter an underground car park which was cordoned off by Turkish police today, after they found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate

Police said they will be searching the car, which was discovered three weeks after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi

Prime Minister Theresa May pictured in parliament today where she said: 'I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms. We must get to the truth of what happened.'

On Friday the kingdom admitted Mr Khashoggi was dead after repeatedly claiming the high-profile critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had walked out of the consulate unharmed.

It said the journalist was killed in a 'fist fight' and that the government had fired five top officials and arrested 18 others as a result of the initial investigation.

Yesterday Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News: 'Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this.' He added: 'We don't know where the body is.'

It came after a senior Saudi official, who requested anonymity, contradicted previous explanations. He said the team of 15 Saudis sent to confront Mr Khashoggi on October 2 had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped, and then killed him in a chokehold when he resisted.

Madani then donned Mr Khashoggi's clothes, glasses and Apple watch before leaving the building to make it look like the journalist had left, it was claimed.

The body was then rolled up in a rug, taken out in a consular vehicle and given to a 'local co-operator' for disposal, he added. Forensic expert Salah Tubaigy tried to remove any trace of the incident, the official said.

Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, (pictured) said he had handed her his two mobile phones and left instructions that she should wait for him and call an aide to Turkey's president if he did not reappear

Turkish media reported that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office from the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul the day Jamal Khashoggi (pictured) was killed there

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir (pictured) insisted on Sunday that Prince Mohammed was 'not aware' of the killing and that the regime was still working on finding the body

Madani later went to the Sultanahmet district where he disposed of Mr Khashoggi's belongings, it was claimed. Asked about claims the journalist had been tortured and beheaded, the official said preliminary results of the investigation did not suggest so.

The government wanted to convince Mr Khashoggi, who moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views, to return to the kingdom as part of a campaign to prevent dissidents from being recruited by Saudi Arabia's enemies, the official said.

But things soon went wrong as the team overstepped their orders and quickly employed violence, he added.

Did Saudi team take part of Khashoggi's body with them? Turkish officials fear part of Jamal Khashoggi's body was transported out of the country by one of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's bodyguards, it has been claimed. Middle East Eye says it has been told by sources that one member of the 15-strong team of Saudis who flew to Turkey on the day of the journalist's disappearance may have taken the body part out in a bag. The intelligence officer, named as Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, was seen boarding a private jet in Istanbul on October 2 at 6.20pm and 'appeared to be in a hurry', according to the source. The unverified claims come amid reports that Khashoggi was cut into pieces after entering the Saudi embassy in the city on the same day. Mutreb was a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year. Advertisement

It was claimed Mr Khashoggi told one of the men, Maher Mutreb, that he was violating diplomatic norms and said: 'What are you going to do with me? Do you intend to kidnap me?' Mutreb replied, 'Yes, we will drug you and kidnap you,' in what the official said was an attempt at intimidation that violated the mission's objective. When Mr Khashoggi raised his voice, the team panicked. They moved to restrain him, placing him in a chokehold and covering his mouth, according to the government's account.

'They tried to prevent him from shouting but he died,' the official said. 'The intention was not to kill him.'

Asked if the team had smothered Mr Khashoggi, the official explained: 'If you put someone of Jamal's age in this position, he would probably die.'

The official said the team then wrote a false report for superiors saying they had allowed Mr Khashoggi to leave once he warned that Turkish authorities could get involved.

The Saudi authorities initially dismissed reports that Mr Khashoggi had gone missing inside the consulate as false and said he had left the building soon after entering. When the Press reported a few days later that he had been killed there, they called the accusations 'baseless'.

Turkish officials believe the Saudis may have dumped his remains in Belgrad Forest near Istanbul, and at a rural location near the city of Yalova, 55 miles south of Istanbul.

Yesterday Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would reveal the 'naked truth' about the killing at a briefing tomorrow.

And this afternoon, Turkey's ruling party spokesman Omer Celik said Khashoggi's murder inside Riyadh's consulate was planned in a 'savage manner'.

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, who was a fierce critic of his policies

On Friday the kingdom admitted Mr Khashoggi was dead after repeatedly claiming the high-profile critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (pictured) had walked out of the consulate unharmed

Top executives and officials pull out of Saudi's 'Davos in the Desert' Top business executives, U.S. and European officials and others have continued to distance themselves from Saudi Arabia over the disappearance and killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Many have cancelled their attendance at this week's investment conference that the kingdom had hoped to use to boost its global image. With reports circulating of the writer's torture and killing in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, executives who have been doing business with Saudi Arabia for years are in damage control mode. What was at first a trickle of cancellations from the Saudi event, due to be held in Riyadh Tuesday through Thursday, later snowballed. The Future Investment Initiative was set up last year as a kind of 'Davos in the Desert' for the world's business elite to network, though it has no ties to the annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos. Saudi employees are pictured printing badges of participants in Riyadh today The Future Investment Initiative was set up last year as a kind of 'Davos in the Desert' for the world's business elite to network, though it has no ties to the annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos. At last year's inaugural event, Saudi Arabia announced the creation of a whole new city in the desert that would showcase new technologies, such as renewable energies. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been trying to refocus the Saudi economy away from its traditional reliance on oil by investing in more innovative industries, including big firms like Uber. The scale of the executives' cancellations, however, had raised questions whether the event would go ahead - and how that could affect longer-term business relations with Saudi Arabia. Executives and officials who have cancelled their attendance at the event: -U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; -JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; -Blackrock CEO Larry Fink; -MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga; -HSBC CEO John Flint; -Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser; -Standard Chartered CEO William Winters; -London Stock Exchange CEO David Schwimmer; -Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford; -Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi; -Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong; -New York Times Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin; -Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene; -Former AOL CEO Steve Case; -International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde; -Virgin Group founder Richard Branson; -Thrive CEO Arianna Huffington; -World Bank President Jim Yong Kim; -French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire; -Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra; -Britain's trade minister, Liam Fox; Companies that withdrew as media partners to the conference: -New York Times; -Financial Times; -CNN; -Bloomberg; Other organizations that have also cut ties with the Saudis in the wake of the Khashoggi case: -The Glover Park Group, The Harbour Group: Washington lobbying firms no longer representing Saudi Arabia; -Middle East Institute: Washington think tank to no longer take Saudi donations; Advertisement

'This was planned in an extremely savage manner, and we are faced with a situation where there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this,' he said.

It was the first official indication that Ankara believes a murder plan was coordinated in advance.

One of Erdogan's advisors, Yasin Aktay, wrote in the Yeni Safak daily that the Saudi version given so far 'feels like our intelligence is being mocked'.

Turkish pro-government media kept up a steady stream of allegations, which analysts see as a tactic to increase the pressure on Riyadh by showing the evidence Turkey possesses.

Abdulkadir Selvi, whose Hurriyet newspaper columns are closely watched for indications of Erdogan's thinking, wrote that Khashogghi was slowly strangled to death for eight minutes and a Saudi forensic specialist then cut his body into 15 pieces while listening to music.

'We cannot close this file until the crown prince is brought to account and removed from his post. For 50 years we cannot live with a crown prince who is an enemy of Turkey,' said Selvi.

Meanwhile with Khashoggi's remains still missing, Turkish police found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate in an underground car park in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, state media said.

The website for Saudi Arabia's 'Davos in the desert' summit was hacked on Monday to show Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appearing to behead Jamal Khashoggi.

Erdogan has stopped short of directly pointing the finger at Riyadh. Analysts say he preferred to authorise the leak of incriminating information to pro-government media to pressure the kingdom.

He has twice held telephone talks with King Salman on the crisis, with some analysts arguing Erdogan was seeking to preserve Turkish-Saudi relations through the ageing monarch while sidelining his headstrong son Prince Mohammed.

It comes as a car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city. Broadcaster NTV and other local media said that police would search the vehicle.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early on Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggi's death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told the AP that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his father's criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion. The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

More than two weeks after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to his family. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs released this official image to announce the news

As pressure mounted on Saudi Arabia today, the website for Saudi Arabia's 'Davos in the desert' summit was hacked to show Crown Prince Mohammed appearing to behead Jamal Khashoggi.

It came after a wave of corporate giants and policymakers distanced themselves from the Future Investment Initiative, due to begin in Riyadh on Tuesday.

Five Turkish employees of the Istanbul consulate, meanwhile, also gave testimonies to prosecutors on Monday, Turkish media reported.

Istanbul's chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony. Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

It comes amid reports that Turkish police fear the alleged 'hit squad' suspected of killing Khashoggi will be executed before investigators can reveal what really happened in the embassy.

According to the Middle East Eye, police fear the suspects will be rounded up and killed before they have the chance to question them.

Merkel: No arms for Riyadh while questions remain over killing Germany will not export arms to Saudi Arabia while the current uncertainty over the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi persists, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday. Campaigning for her party in a regional election, Merkel repeated to a news conference her earlier condemnation of Khashoggi's killing, which Saudi Arabia admitted had taken place inside its consulate in Istanbul. 'First, we condemn this act in the strongest terms,' she said. 'Second, there is an urgent need to clarify what happened - we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account ... As far as arms exports are concerned, those can't take place in the current circumstances.' Today, a top German official pressed for a joint EU position on Saudi Arabia after Berlin backed a freeze on arms exports to the kingdom. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined Monday its position that 'we won't at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened.' Altmaier told ZDF television that a joint EU position is needed 'because only if all European countries agree, this will make an impression on the government in Riyadh.' He said 'it will have no positive consequences if we, as we are doing, currently don't pursue our arms exports if at the same time other countries fill this gap.' Advertisement

In the US, leading Republicans and Democrats in Congress are saying Saudi Arabia should face punishment over Khashoggi's killing.

President Donald Trump also had talked about possible punishment but said he didn't want to halt proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia because, he maintained, it would harm U.S. manufacturers.

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son in law, said the US is still in a 'fact-finding' phase.

Asked about the credibility of a Saudi investigation of the killing that took place in their Istanbul consulate, Kushner told CNN: 'We're getting facts in from multiple places.'

Britain, Germany and France issued a joint statement condemning the killing of Khashoggi, saying there is an 'urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened.'

In a statement Sunday, the governments said attacks on journalists are unacceptable and 'of utmost concern to our three nations.' They said the 'hypotheses' proposed so far in the Saudi investigation need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that she supports a freeze on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined that point Monday, calling for a joint European position as Germany 'won't at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened.'

Britain on Monday called for urgent clarification of the circumstances surrounding the death today.

'There remains an urgent need for clarification of what happened beyond the hypotheses raised so far in the Saudi investigation,' Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman told reporters.

Mrs May said in parliament: 'I am sure the whole House will join me in conndemning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms. We must get to the truth of what happened.'

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a senior Cabinet minister during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was clear the death of Mr Khashoggi 'was authorised at the highest level'.

He warned Western states against repeating the mistakes of the 1970s when they ignored the Shah of Iran's human rights abuses before the 1979 Islamic revolution saw him overthrown and replaced with a hardline regime.

'I don't think you are going to have a revolution in Saudi Arabia but Mohammed Bin Salman is himself the architect of impending instability in Saudi Arabia and, yes, I think a deliberate aspect of the policy of the UK and the other European states, as well as hopefully the US, should be to weaken his power because this man has taken unto himself huge arbitrary power and made himself and Saudi Arabia potentially very unstable,' Mr Straw said.

Current shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has long pushed for arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be halted.

She told Today: 'These are supposed to be our friends. It's up to them to change their behaviour, it's up to us to stand up to them and it is up to us to make it clear that we do not accept this behaviour and they need to change their ways.'Families are finding it increasingly hard to budget their weekly finances as petrol prices hit a ten-year high.

Over the last week, fuel costs have become the largest weekly purchase for Australian families.

Base grade petrol hit a national average of $1.59 per litre, which is the country's highest petrol price since July 2008, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Over the last week, fuel costs have become the largest weekly purchase for Australian families (stock image)

In Sydney, prices hit an average of $1.65 a litre whereas in Melbourne it reached a concerning $1.66 a litre in September.

Chief economist of Commsec told the publication the elevated prices were hitting families the hardest.

'Filling up the car with petrol is now the single biggest weekly purchase for most families,' Mr James said.

'In capital cities with a discounting cycle, petrol prices could fall as low as $1.43 a litre but may still be as high as $1.70 cents a litre when the discounting cycle ends. Average Australian unleaded petrol prices will hold $1.50 to $1.60 a litre.'

The latest petrol monitoring report showed that higher global oil prices were the major factor for the rising price of petrol.

But Australian petrol retailers were also adding record-high gross retail margins.

Chief economist of Commsec told the publication the elevated prices were hitting families the hardest (stock image)

Fuel analysts Fueltrac said prices were so high due to Coles Express battling with its fuel supplier Viva Energy.

According to the analysts, the price of Coles' petrol is some of the highest in Australia.

Mr James said there may be relief in the future, as a strong Australian dollar could force petrol costs to go down.

'If prices hold at current levels, motorists could see relief of as much as eight cents a litre in the next one to two weeks,' he told the publication.A movie buff who bought a 16mm film reel from a second hand shop for a fiver has discovered it was a long-lost British horror flick, missing for more than 50 years.

Jeff Wells, 65, picked up the copy of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, a 20 minute film made in 1953, while rifling through a 'bargain box'.

He bought the British adaptation of the film in 1984 from a shop in Brighton, Sussex, where he was working as a nurse.

Jeff Wells (pictured) holding the 16mm reel of film of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, which was missing for more than 50 years

He bought the British adaptation of the film (pictured) in 1984 from a shop in Brighton, Sussex, where he was working as a nurse

But when Mr Wells moved to Drummore, near Stranraer, Dumfries and Galloway, in 2002, he stashed the film in the attic - not realising its significance.

Meanwhile Adelphi Films, who own the rights to the 1953 horror, was desperately trying to track it down to include it their archive at the British Film Institute (BFI)

The 65-year-old only realised their manager Kate Lees had been searching for the film for 12 years when he tried to sell it on eBay for 5.

Meanwhile Adelphi Films, who own the rights to the 1953 horror, was desperately trying to track it down to include it their archive at the British Film Institute (BFI)

He said: 'I bought the film in Brighton in 1984, along with some others in a bargain box for 5.

'At the time it was a hobby of mine to have these 16mm films.

'I didn't know the significance of it when I bought it, I just picked it up randomly.'

When he moved, Jeff took the film with him as it was 'particularly interesting' - but forgot about it, until October 2017.

Researching the one reel 16mm print he realised it was missing from Adelphi Films catalogue and contacted them to confirm the significant find.

Now, a year later, the film will be available for the public to view as the BFI has put it online.

Mr Wells said: 'Everything from the move just went in the loft and it wasn't until last year when I was clearing out some things I came across it again.

'I was going to try and sell it on eBay for 5 when I saw Adelphi Films was looking for it.

'And lucky I did because it would have been sad to lose or sell to someone else who didn't know the significance of it.

It will be accessible via the BFI Player from October 26 for two weeks so fans can peruse the previously lost film

'I was stunned when I saw it was the same one I had, I really couldn't believe it, I thought it can't possibly be the one I have they are looking for.

'Its discovery was a happy accident.'

In November, Adelphi Films manager Kate drove 400 miles from London to Jeff's home to collect the treasured film, to add to a collection preserved by the BFI.

The 16mm print and a digital copy of the restoration has been donated to the BFI, and the film will be accessible via the BFI Player from October 26 for two weeks.

The Tell-Tale Heart stars the Welsh-born actor and producer Stanley Baker as Poe's unnamed narrator in the film, which Kate described as 'not for the squeamish'.

Kate said: 'We are very excited to have found this film after searching for it for so long and had almost given up hope.

'It is a really excellent film and Stanley Baker is terrific.'

Josephine Botting, BFI Curator said: 'It's always exciting when a missing film comes to light and an addition to both the catalogue of British producer Adelphi and the filmography of Edgar Allan Poe is a wonderful discovery.

'We're delighted to be preserving the 16mm print and also to make the film available online to new audiences via BFI Player in time for Halloween.'A Catholic priest who had given evidence in a sexual assault case where a bishop has been accused of raping a nun, has been found dead in northern India.

Kuriakose Kattuthara had given evidence against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who was recently released on bail.

Father Kattuthara was found dead in a church in the northern state of Punjab earlier today, and police are investigating his death.

Allegations: Bishop Franco Mulakkal, pictured centre in white, is seen upon his arrest last month after a nun accused him of raping her repeatedly over a period of two years

The death comes as India's Christian community is reeling from a string of cases - including the arrests of five priests in August on allegations of sexual assault.

'There were no blood marks on his body, and we are investigating the cause of death,' said Achhru Ram, a senior Punjab state police official in the Dasuya region.

Mulakkal, bishop of the Diocese of Jalandhar in Punjab, was arrested in the southern state of Kerala last month on charges of raping the nun.

The Kerala nun had accused him of raping her repeatedly over a period of two years. Just before his arrest, the Vatican had accepted a request from the bishop to be temporarily relieved of his pastoral duties.

He is now out on bail.

Protest: Catholic nuns hold placards demanding Bishop Mulakkal's arrest during a public protest in Kerala last month

Neither Mulakkal nor his lawyers have made any public comment since his arrest though he has denied the charges in media interviews in the past.

He did not immediately respond to email requests seeking comment on Monday.

The diocese of Jalandhar said in a statement on its web site that Mulakkal had expressed sadness over 'the sudden demise' of Kattuthara.

Kerala police had said earlier that Kattuthara was a prosecution witness who had given them a statement.

Outside India, the Catholic Church is facing sexual abuse scandals in the United States, Chile, Australia, Germany and other countries.Alyssa Milano was hounded on Sunday over her friendship with controversial Muslim women's rights activist Linda Sarsour who has been accused of advocating antisemitism and Sharia law.

Milano was speaking at Politicon in Los Angeles on a panel with several other #MeToo figures when Laura Loomer, a former Project Veritas operative and conservative freelance journalist, confronted her.

She asked Milano to publicly condemn Sarsour, saying: 'I want to ask you right now to disavow Linda Sarsour because she is a supporter of Sharia law and under Sharia law, women are oppressed, forced to wear a hijab.'

Loomer was escorted out of the room as she tried to finish her questions while Milano and others yelled back at her in defense of Sarsour: 'No she doesn't.'

Alyss Milano, pictured at Politicon on Sunday, when she was confronted over her friendship with a controversial Muslim women's rights activist

Milano was questioned over her friendship with Linda Sarsour (left). The pair are pictured at a January protest calling for asylum for illegal immigrants. Sarsour has been accused of promoting Sharia law and antisemitism in the past

As Loomer was led out of the room to the jeers of the crowd, Milano said: 'If we don't know how to talk to one another we'll never evolve.'

When Loomer argued back, 'I asked you a polite question!', the actress said that she had applied a 'very distinct tone'.

She waved Loomer off saying: 'Thank you for your question. God bless you.'

Sarsour has been accused in the past of encouraging Muslims to wage jihad against President Trump.

Earlier this year, she was labeled anti-Semitic by Courtney Love and was accused of inventing stories to drum up support for her community by supporting a Somali woman who made a refuted claim that she was attacked by a group of white men in a violent hate crime.

Journalist Laura Loomer (shown at the microphone in a floral top) asked Milano (center in the row of speakers) to disavow Sarsour at Politicon on Sunday

Sarsour was thrown out of the room before being able to finish speaking. The crowd jeered at her and Milano criticized her 'very distinct tone'

Sarsour's alleged anti-antisemitism is linked to her support of Louis Farrakhan, leader of Nation of Islam whose repeatedly offensive remarks about Jews have been universally condemned, and her position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Laura Loomer, the conservative freelance journalist who confronted Milano

Sarsour is a Palestinian-American and leader of the Muslim grassroots movement MPower Change.

In previous speeches, she has called on Muslim Americans to support the Palestinian American cause and said they were 'complicit in murder' if they did not.

'If youre on the side of the oppressor, or youre defending the oppressor, or youre actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then thats a problem sisters and brothers, and we got to be able to say: that is not the position of the Muslim American community,' she said at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Convention in Houston in September.

She has compared 'right wing Zionists' and Blue Lives Matters campaigners to neo-Nazis and said that she would 'not be silenced' by them.

Linda Sarsour is one of the organizers of the Women's March and is a Palestinian-American activist. She is pictured in September at a protest against the appointment of the then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh

Sarsour has made controversial remarks in the past including supporting Saudi Arabia, which is prolifically behind on women's rights, by saying it puts the US to 'shame' with its maternity leave

Sarsour has also been criticized for supporting Sharia law. Above is a 2015 tweet

In 2015, she tweeted: 'You'll know when you're living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest free. Sounds nice, doesn't it?'

She has also been accused of supporting rock throwing for once posting a picture of a Palestinian child facing a row of police with rocks in his hands, writing: 'The definition of courage'.

Sarsour did not respond to DailyMail.com's inquiries on Monday morning when asked to make her position on Sharia law clear.

In previous speeches, she has insisted she is not antisemitic and said she is committed to ironing out all levels of racial prejudice including towards Jews.

The depths of her friendship with Milano are unclear.

The pair are united in their positions on migration and women's rights and have posed together at marches for each cause in the past.

Advertisement

More than 1,000 students took part in a giant annual foam fight at Scotland's oldest university.

Thousands of shaving foam cans were sprayed at first year university students as part of St Andrew's annual foam fight.

The hour-long foam festival on college lawns is part of the university's 'academic families' tradition where older students adopt first years as their children in a notorious initiation ceremony.

Ain't no party like a foam party! Thousands of shaving foam cans were sprayed at first year university students as part of St Andrews Universitys annual foam fight held on college lawns

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (pictured, left) had first met at St Andrew's University and would've also attended the annual foam party in their freshers year. (pictured, right) One first year student got on top of the shoulders of one of her mates and embraced the foamy mess while spraying the crowds below her with another foam can

Ouch! First years were slipping left, right and centre on the college lawns. One student said: 'I have foam in my eyes - it's quite painful'

Students dressed up in flamboyant costumes before they were showered in a sea of white foam on the lawns where Prince William and Kate once met.

The messy display marks the end of a weekend of festivities where first years say thank you to their senior mentors identified as their university 'parents.'

Fancy dress outfits included pirates, bananas, gnomes, bumblebees, fairies and even childhood favourites such as Thomas the Tank Engine.

What Is St Andrew's Raisin Monday tradition? Raisin Monday would traditionally see younger students, 'children', give their academic seniors, 'parents', a pound of raisins to thank them for welcoming them to the university. In return they would be gifted with a finely written Latin script, or Raisin Receipt, to prove that they had paid their due. In English it would read roughly as follows: I, __(parent's name)__ a third year/fourth year/graduate fellow member of this celebrated university of St Andrews who with great natural ability and toil studies __(degree)__ gives this to you, __(child's name)__ my beloved bejant, of tired and invalided mind, from __(town)__ who studies __(degree)__ and as thanks for this will accept from you one pound of raisins. In recent decades the tradition of raisin giving has diminished and celebrations now centre on the mass fancy-dress foam fight. However, parents are still typically expected to provide their children with a Latin Raisin Receipt, as well as devising a fancy dress costume for their child. The University of St Andrew's is situated in the Scottish town of St Andrew's and was attended by Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, as well as former first minister of Scotland Alex Salmond. Advertisement

Students can be seen smothering each other with shaving foam (pictured, left). A budding university couple embrace the mess and can be seen kissing on the college lawns while drenched head-to-toe in foam (pictured, right)

The hour-long foam festival on college lawns is part of the university's 'academic families' tradition where older students adopt first years as their children in a notorious initiation ceremony

Paloma Paige, 22, president of the St Andrews University Students' Association, said it's an event that everyone 'looks forward to' especially first year students

Raisin Weekend comes from a tradition of new students giving their academic parents a pound of raisins to say thank you

First years were seen slipping and sliding on the lawns while smothering each other with foam. But the fun and games came to an end when shaving foam got in their eyes and the mass cleanup had to take place.

One student said: 'I have foam in my eyes - it's quite painful.'

Paloma Paige, 22, president of the St Andrews University Students' Association, said it's an event that everyone 'looks forward to' especially all freshers.

'Everyone just gets covered from head to toe in foam. To see such a large group of people transform in to a big white blob is quite spectacular.

'The foam fight is a highlight of the year and everybody makes a big effort to be there.'

She added: 'I think it sums up a lot of the aspects of the student community that people really love.'

Raisin Weekend comes from a tradition of new students giving their academic parents a pound of raisins to say thank you for welcoming them in to the university.

Today, students often gift their university 'parents' with a bottle of wine.A schoolgirl who was allegedly gang-raped by four students at a boarding school in India has been denied a place at a new school because 'she will spoil the atmosphere.'

The 16-year-old became pregnant after she was assaulted by fellow students at a school in Sahasput in the city of Dehradun on August 14, NDTV reports.

School officials are accused of trying to keep the incident under wraps but it was reported weeks later after it emerged the girl had become pregnant.

Now, the girl's parents have filed a complaint claiming schools in the city are discriminating against their daughter by denying her admission.

A schoolgirl who was allegedly gang-raped by four students at a boarding school in India has been denied a place at a new school because 'she will spoil the atmosphere.' Pictured: Indian demonstrators hold placards during a protest in support of rape victims in Mumbai on April 15

One of the schools the girl applied to denied her a place because they felt her presence would spoil the atmosphere on campus, Senior Superintendent of Police Nivedita Kukreti said.

She said police are investigating the complaint and exploring what legal action can be taken in the case.

'We will send a team to the school concerned to take its version on Monday as it is closed for puja holidays,' she said.

'Meanwhile, we are also exploring the legal course of action to be taken in a case like this.'

The girl's parents are now considering sending her to school outside Dehradun.

The four students accused of raping the girl and five members of the boarding school's staff  including its director and principal - have been arrested, according to NDTV.

Staff at the girl's original school are accused of attempting to terminate her pregnancy with medicated drinks.

Sexual violence is rife in India, with nearly 40,000 rape cases reported in 2016 - although activists say this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The country has been the focus of international attention since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus sparked nationwide protests and highlighted its poor record on sexual violence.

The rising incidents of brutal sexual assaults against girls and women galvanised India, where such crimes had been quietly accepted in the past.

The government has increased punishment for rape of an adult to 20 years in prison.

India's government also approved the death penalty for people convicted of raping children under age 12.A husband has been told he faces life imprisonment for the murder of his wife after he admitted killing her and dumping her body in countryside.

A court heard company boss Christopher Kerrell, 35, of Knighton, Mid Wales, tried to cover his tracks by joining an online missing persons appeal for his wife Hollie, 28.

He previously denied being responsible for killing the mother-of-three, but this morning on the first day of his trial he pleaded guilty to her murder.

Company boss Christopher Kerrell, 35, tried to cover his tracks by joining a missing persons appeal for wife Hollie (both pictured). Her body was found four days later on farmland

Mrs Kerrell, a keen horsewoman, was last seen at her home in Knuckles, near Knighton, Mid Wales, at around 10am on Sunday April 22. She was reported missing to police the following Tuesday.

Mrs Kerrells friends appealed for information online. Prior to his arrest, Kerrell had joined in search parties. He also posted appeals on his Facebook page.

The couple had been married for five years and had three children together.

Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court heard this morning that Kerrell will be jailed for life.

A police search was launched for mother-of-three Hollie when she disappeared on April 22

It is understood the pair, who had three children, had recently separated and Kerrell had moved into rented accommodation nearby.

A huge police search was launched for mother-of-three Hollie when she disappeared in April this year.

Her body was discovered four days later at a countryside spot nine miles away from her family home. Specialist police teams found her body in farmland in Whitton.

Kerrell, of Knighton, was asked how he pleaded to the single charge of murder, he answered: 'Guilty'. His wife is pictured

When Hollie was reported missing Kerrell appealed on Facebook for people to join the search.

He shared her missing persons details and urged friends to 'get in touch' if they had seen her.

When Kerrell was asked how he pleaded to the single charge of murder today, he answered: 'Guilty.'

He was remanded in custody and will be sentenced next week.

Judge Mr Justice Morris, told him: 'You can expect a sentence of life.'

After her death, a tribute from her family said: 'Our beautiful Hollie loved life and lit up every room she was in.

'There was never a dull moment with our quirky, funny Hollie around.

'She was the glue that held our family together and she will be missed terribly.'A senior US military commander has called on the UK to take back two alleged Islamic State terrorists suspected of involvement in a series of beheadings.

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey are said to have been members of a brutal four-man cell of IS executioners in Syria and Iraq, nicknamed The Beatles because of their British accents.

They were responsible for killing a number of high-profile Western captives, including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

Now Major General Patrick Roberson, commander of US special ops, called on the UK to take back Islamic State fighters.

Alexanda Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh, right, are suspected of being part of the four-man ISIS execution cell nicknamed 'the Beatles' because of their British accents. The pair, currently held by Syrian forces, should be taken into British custody, according to US commander Major General Patrick Roberson

When asked whether Elsheik and Kotey should be repatriated to the UK, Maj Gen Roberson told the BBC: 'We would certainly like them to be.'

He added the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US were 'working very hard to make sure that the countries of origin get these foreign terrorist fighters back into their custody'.

Maj Gen Roberson said it was a decision for each country involved, but added: 'I think the SDF and us would certainly like them to be repatriated to where they came from.'

Kotey and Elsheikh are accused of belonging to the cell which also included Mohammed Emwazi - known as 'Jihadi John' - who was killed in a US air strike in 2015, and Aine Davis, who has been jailed in Turkey.

The 'Beatles' were responsible for the beheadings of British aid workers Alan Henning, left, and David Haines, right, who were both taken hostage by ISIS

The group is suspected of involvement in the beheading of 27 people in total, including US citizens James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig.

Emwazi was filmed carrying out a number of the murders and the videos were broadcast online.

Kotey and Elsheikh, who were raised in the UK, are believed to have been detained by Kurdish forces in Syria in January and have been stripped of their British citizenship.

They may face a federal trial in the US after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided there was 'insufficient evidence' for them to be tried in the UK.

Mohammed Emwazi, pictured, another of the 'Beatles', was filmed performing executions before he was killed in a drone strike in November 2015

Elsheikh's mother Maha Elgizouli has mounted a High Court challenge over the UK's sharing of evidence with US authorities under a 'mutual legal assistance' (MLA) agreement.

She says it was 'unlawful' for the Government to do so without obtaining any assurance the pair will not face execution if convicted in the US.

Lawyers for Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who is contesting Ms Elgizouli's case, said it was not yet known whether the pair will be charged in the US, but that there is the 'most powerful interest' in a proper investigation of their alleged crimes.

The case is being heard by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and Mr Justice Garnham, who are expected to deliver their ruling at a later date.Chris Grayling today said he is 'really sorry' for the chaos which gripped Britain's railways this year after a botched timetable overhaul.

The Transport Secretary was grilled by MPs about how the debacle - which saw 770 trains a day cancelled - could have been allowed to happen.

Thousands of passengers travelling on the southern Thameslink services and Great Northern lines were left stranded or on overcrowded trains amid the chaos.

Mr Grayling - who was dubbed 'failing Grayling' for the chaos - faced calls to quit, while a damning report said ministers, rail bosses and regulators were all to blame.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) blamed a lack of 'responsibility and accountability' for the botched timetable overhaul.

Appearing in front of the Transport Committee in Parliament today, Mr Grayling admitted passengers affected could still be slapped with higher rail fares in the new year.

He said: 'The frustration this summer is that a change that was supposed to be a positive - and indeed, if you look now you have longer trains...thousands of extra seats, extra trains in the peak hours, is providing a better service to passengers.

'It is just a real, real shame - and I am really sorry - it started so badly.'

Chris Grayling (pictured in Parliament today) today said he is 'really sorry' for the chaos which gripped Britain's railways this year after a botched timetable overhaul.

He added: 'It is better than it was. It is not perfect...but we are running more services.'

How did the Northern Rail and Govia Thameslink travel chaos happen? Here are the main event surrounding the railway commuter chaos May 20: Train operators across the country overhaul their timetables. Northern Rail and Govia Thameslink see the biggest changes to their timetables. Late May: The overhaul sparks chaos with hundreds of trains cancelled or delayed on a daily basis. Northern Rail faces calls to be stripped of its franchise while Manchester Andy Burnham accused Transport Secretary Chris Grayling of being 'asleep at the wheel'. June 4 Northern Rail and Govia Thameslink introduce an interim timetable to try to get on top of the crisis. The changes see hundreds of services axed from the timetable. Northern Rail apologise to its customers and says it will give them compensation. Advertisement

Mr Grayling was slammed as he tried to distance himself from the summer fiasco by saying that 'I don't run the raiways'.

Challenged over his responsibility for the chaos, he told the committee: 'I am also responsible for the success or failings of my department, as a secretary of state I take responsibility or that.

'If I am guilty of anything it is not moving fast enough to deliver change.'

He said that he thinks the railways need significant change to push through more integration of Britains fragmented rail network

Billed as the biggest ever, the timetable shake-up involved changing almost half of services to improve reliability.

But passengers endured weeks of disruption and thousands of delays and cancellations.

The ORR report lashed a string of failures across the railway system and said that passengers were 'badly treated' in the debacle.

The report, published last month, said: 'It was unclear who was responsible for what. Nobody took charge. The present industry arrangements do not support clarity of decision making.'

The report revealed the hardest hit were commuters across northern England, where more than 300 services on the northern network were cancelled every weekday.

In the South, 470 scheduled trains were cancelled every day by Thameslink and Great Northern services. Both are run by Govia.

The Transport Secretary (pictured today in Parliament alongside rail bosses ) was grilled by MPs about how the debacle - which saw 770 trains a day cancelled - could have been allowed to happen

Operators were forced to introduce emergency timetables and services are slowly returning to normal. In the Lake District, all trains were cancelled after the line was temporarily shut down.

Train fares could be based on the quality of service under new proposals Commuters are being asked whether they believe it should be cheaper to travel on routes with slower, less regular and more basic trains Train fares could be based on the quality of service under radical new plans being consulted on. The rail industry is looking at ways to overhaul ticket prices to make them fairer without spending any more money. Commuters are being asked whether they believe it should be cheaper to travel on routes with slower, less regular and more basic trains. While better services would become more expensive. Other possibilities include abolishing peak and off-peak fares so passengers are charged the same throughout busier and quieter periods. Or giving discounts to regular travellers and reducing prices for e-tickets but increasing them for paper tickets to reflect the difference in transaction costs. The consultation is being launched by the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), which represents the industry, alongside passenger watchdog Transport Focus. They will use the responses to produce a report containing proposals for governments to consider. The ticketing system is underpinned by regulations which are unchanged from the mid-1990s, and have not kept pace with technology or how people work and travel. Around 55 million different fares exist, including long-standing anomalies such as charging a peak-time fare when half a trip is on an off-peak service, and split ticketing, where it can be cheaper to buy several tickets for a single journey. RDG chief executive Paul Plummer said he wants to create 'an easier-to-use fares system'. He went on: 'Reforming the rules about how tickets are sold and bought has the potential to transform the buying experience for customers, making it easier for people to be confident they are getting the right ticket. 'These reforms support what the industry is already doing to make improvements to fares alongside record investment in new train carriages, upgraded stations and extra services.' Research commissioned by the RDG found that only one in three (34%) passengers are 'very confident' they bought the best value ticket for their last journey, and just 29% were 'very satisfied' with the ticket-buying experience. Advertisement

According to the report, passengers endured 'inconvenience, financial and emotional cost over a period of several weeks'.

But speaking today, Mr Grayling appeared to rule out a fares freeze for affected passengers.

He said: 'We have looked very carefully at the implication of freezing fares.

'The problem with a fares freeze is that if you're costs go up every year...then over a period of time you're sucking a cumulatively larger amount out of what you have to run the network.'

He said that if rail fares are frozen then taxes would have to go up to plug the blackhole, or services would have to be cut.

Mr Grayling said that GTR would face 'consequences' for its woeful performance this summer - but refused to spell out what sanctions it could face.

He slammed GTR for the chaos - saying they had told him on May 2 that they expected the timetable change to run pretty well.

He said: 'Clear assurances that things are on track from the people whose job it is to judge whether or not they are, haven't worked.'

The Transport Secretary said the sheer scale of the change was just too much for the railway lines to cope with.

He said: 'This was a bigger change than in the end the industry could cope withit conspired to create something that should have worked well but didnt.

Ministers have launched yet another review into into the railways, admitting they are 'no longer fit for today's challenges'.

Lilian Greenwood, chairwoman of the select committee, demanded to know how ministers and rail bosses failed to spot the problems down the track caused by the timetable change.

She said that Network Rail was 'hopelessly optimistic' about the likelihood they would be able to complete electrification work needed for the new timetable.

But the timetable slipped and they failed to meet their deadlines.

She said: 'The department new this was the biggest timetable change in a decade or more...shouldn't you have known that it needed somebody to be in control of all of this.

'I accept that as secretary of state you don't run the railways, but surely you should have known it was important to make sure that somebody did?

'And knowing that there was this huge timetable change, knowing it was contingent on a number of different infrastructure developments, weren't you asleep on the job in not having that in place?'

Mr Grayling hit back: 'Absolutely not.

'In my judgement, what we had all the way through was a process of assurance in the south a process of assurance in the north.'

He said that up until four days before the botched rollout, Northern Rail bosses were insisting that it would go well.

He said: 'Everybody was given the same message all the way through - it would be a slightly bumpy start but it will be fine.

Chris Grayling (pictured today at the Transport Committee hearing today) was accused of being 'asleep on the job' during the crisis which gripped the railway lines

'We have got minute after minute saying the industry would be ready.'

He added: 'We should have a trusted assurance processes to make sure that things are on track - and that we did even though it transpired that they weren't'....

'At no point did anyone involved in this say this is going to create the kind of problems we saw.'

He added: 'The truth is nobody saw this coming...there were no alarm bells about the May 20 timetables.'

The Cabinet minister said that he was given assurances - but they proved to be 'illusory'.Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has been seen out and about with a woman, thought to be his wife, for the first time since he was freed from jail.

The cleric was released from Belmarsh last week, half way through a five-and-a-half year term he was given for swearing an oath of allegiance to ISIS.

Authorities have moved him into a probation hostel while he is being monitored in a 2million security operation to ensure he cannot radicalise other extremists.

Choudary wore his trademark smirk as he met a woman, thought to be his wife Rubana Akhtar, not far from the bail hostel this morning.

Anjem Choudary was pictured enjoying his freedom as he went out shopping with a woman, believed to be his wife, Rubana Akhtar

Choudary's wife herself faced a police probe for alleged extremism, but that was dropped

The pair were seen outside a north London Marks and Spencer store this morning

The couple went for a walk, most of which his companion spent communicating on her mobile phone, before heading to the offices of a local law firm.

Choudary is thought to be working on a legal challenge to make his licence conditions less strict.

A source told The Daily Telegraph that he and his legal team are set to argue that the conditions breach his human rights and are 'disproportionate' for the crime he was jailed over.

His wife has refused to comment since her husband's release.

The 43-year-old has previously admitted leading the female wing of Choudary's banned terror group, Al-Muhajiroun.

She also faced an inquiry by Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command after she was caught on camera leading a secret group of British women supporting ISIS in 2015.

But the probe was dropped shortly before her husband was freed.

The hate cleric met the woman, who was carrying shopping bags, in a London side street

Choudary's companion spent much of their time together on her phone. He is wearing an electronic tag as one of the many measures to monitor him during his licence period

Fellow residents of the bail hostel where Choudary is being held say he has few friends.

One man who is living in the building: 'He's not made any friends yet. When you come to the hostel you got to keep quiet.'

The man said Choudary's room is near a communal kitchen on his floor's landing, and other residents were shocked that he had been placed there.

The man said: 'I found out from a reporter. Really they should put him somewhere else it's not the right place to be.'More than 80 staff who have worked in Parliament today signed an 'unprecedented' letter to demand an overhaul in how bullying and sexual harassment is tackled.

They are demanding the full recommendations of the Laura Cox report - a damning review which exposed a toxic culture at the heart of Westminster - are implemented.

They want MPs to be stripped of their current role in deciding the outcome of claims made against their colleagues in the Commons.

And they want the complaints system to be changed so that historic allegations of can be investigated.

Their highly unusual intervention comes after Parliament was rocked by revelations that staff have been bullied and preyed upon for years.

In her excoriating report published last week, Dame Laura said male MPs past and present have allegedly lunged, groped and propositioned women.

More than 80 staff who have worked in Parliament (pictured) signed an 'unprecedented' letter to demand an overhaul in how bullying and sexual harassment is tackled

The regime overseen by Commons Speaker John Bercow (pictured in Parliament) was hammered in the report as Dame Laura Cox blasted the 'institutional failings' in Parliament. The damning review has heaped fresh pressure on John Bercow to quit

She lashed the 'institutional failings' in the Commons and warned a culture of 'deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence' exists in Parliament.

Her review sparked fresh calls for Commons Speaker John Bercow - who has personally faced bullying allegations, which he denies - to resign.

In their letter to the ruling House of Commons Commission, the former officials said: 'We have personally experienced, or seen first-hand, bullying or harassment by Members of Parliament left to go unchallenged.

What are the claims of bullying and bad behaviour made against John Bercow? John Bercow has been hit by a number of bullying claims, all of which he denies. Here are the allegations: Andrew Sinclair, the former Speaker's Secretary: Said he left his post in 2010 after he was subjected to angry outbursts, foul- mouthed tirades and mimicry by John Bercow. He said was 'gagged' and stopped from speaking out about his time in the role as part of an 86,000 early retirement payoff. David Leakey, former Black Rod: Mr Leakey, who retired last year, said staff were terrified of the Speaker. Kate Emms, John Bercow's former private secretary: She took a job as Mr Bercow's private secretary in May 2010 but left her role less than a year later in February 2011 amid claims she was bullied by the Speaker. Her colleagues alleged that this was because of the behaviour of Mr Bercow after she told staff that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Colleagues told Newsnight that she was undermined by Mr Bercow in a range of ways  and he seemed to shout at her a lot. Advertisement

'Dame Laura Cox's report has exposed Westminster's open secret - a minority of parliamentarians have been allowed to get away with this behaviour for years.'

Dr Hannah White, a former senior clerk who signed the letter, said: 'The significance of this letter should not be under-estimated - it's deeply counter-cultural for House staff to speak out in this way - it demonstrates the depth of their frustration with MPs' response to the Cox Report.

'It's unprecedented for staff to speak out in this way - they are used to working invisibly to make the Commons function and help MPs do their jobs.

'But they see this as a matter of HR, not politics, and are writing to the commission to urge them to implement the report.'

The commission meets on Wednesday to discuss the Cox Report, with independent member Jane McCall chairing the panel rather than Mr Bercow.

Dr White, now director of research at the Institute for Government, said there is concern that the commission 'may resist or delay implementing the recommendations of the Cox Report for personal or political reasons, instead of seizing the opportunity for reform'.

Mr Bercow has faced calls to quit following the publication of the report.

Tory former minister Maria Miller, who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, used a highly charged session in the Commons last week to personally urge him to go.

She told him: 'The report is clear that there needs to be a complete change in leadership at the most senior level, including you, Mr Speaker, as chief officer, if we are, in Dame Laura's words, to press the reset button.'

Dame Laura's inquiry was launched after Parliament was rocked by a series of sexual harassment and bullying scandals which ended the Cabinet careers of two of the PM's closest ministers.

Sir Micheal Fallon quit as defence secretary after he was accused of making inappropriate sexual passes at women during his parliamentary career.

Damian Green was ousted as the PM's deputy after he was found to have made misleading statements about allegations that he looked at porn on his office computers.

In her excoriating report published last week, Dame Laura Cox (pictured) said male MPs past and present have allegedly lunged, groped and propositioned women in Westminster

He was also accused of making a sexual pass at Tory activist and classicist Kate Maltby, who is 30 years his junior.

Several Labour MPs were also accused of inappropriate sexual conduct, including Kelvin Hopkins who was suspended from the party over claims he sexually harassed a young party activist.

In a damning indictment of the culture at the heart of Westminster, Dame Laura said there is a 'palpable lack of protection' for those who dare to report sexual harassment or bullying.

And she said that while no workplace is immune to accusations of bullying, Parliament is a 'particularly serious case' where many 'disturbing' allegations have been made against MPs.

She said: 'Those present or former members of staff who came forward care very deeply that the place regarded as the heart of our democracy is failing to live up to the standards to be expected of any 21st century workplace.'President Trump is winning.

There is simply no other way to fairly interpret the fact that hes just hit a new high in his approval rating.

Even better for Trump, hes officially more popular than his predecessor Barack Obama was at the exact same stage of his first tenure as President.

According to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is now at 47% approval, compared to Obamas 45% two weeks before the midterm elections in 2010.

Trump is winning. There is simply no other way to fairly interpret the fact that hes just hit a new high in his approval rating. According to a new poll, Trump is now at 47% approval

Given all the fire, brimstone and perpetual outrage about Trump since he won the White House, this is a truly remarkable state of affairs.

Of course, Americas liberals will respond to the shock poll in the way they respond to all things Trump - with fury, incredulity and by sticking their collective heads in the sand.

HOW CAN THIS BE HAPPENING? they will wail, uncontrollably.

WHAT THE F**K IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHO LIKE HIM? they will howl into each others kale salads.

THIS IS THE END OF PLANET EARTH! they will sob, in their normal understated manner.

All of which will be music to the ears of Trump, a man who absolutely revels in liberal hysteria because he knows it works for him, as this new poll proves.

The more Trump-bashers scream abuse at and about him, the more it fires up his base  and indeed, the more it fires up Trump himself.

Obama's approval rating was only 45% at the same point in his tenure. The more Trump-bashers scream abuse, the more it fires up his base  and indeed, the more it fires up Trump himself

After all, at his heart, the Presidents a street-fighting New Yorker who loves a good scrap.

And in two weeks time, he may deliver the biggest knockout punch of his presidency.

Until recently, it was widely assumed the Republicans would lose control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

It was being depicted as a damning referendum on Trump and historically, most presidents  like Obama - take a whack in the midterms.

But now, Im not so sure.

In fact, Id say theres a very good chance the Republicans will hang onto the House, as well as the Senate, and Trump will move on empowered and emboldened to what could very well be an even bigger win in 2020.

Why is this happening?

Well first, the US mainstream media has become the boy that cried wolf.

Their constant collective outrage over every tiny thing Trump says, tweets or does  much of it driven by commercial self-interest - has had the inevitable effect of diluting the impact of that outrage.

Barely a week goes by without some supposed new Trump crisis fuelling wall-to-wall cable news coverage and dire predictions of impeachment or even jail time for the President.

Yet within a few days, each administration-threatening scandal dissolves into a giant nothing-burger.

Liberal celebrities are just as bad, relentlessly shrieking away on social media about their hatred for Trump  seemingly oblivious to the fact that nobody cares any more. We just assume all celebrities hate him because they think its cool to do so.

The effect of this endless hysterical cacophony, as I have repeatedly warned, has been to make Trump ever more popular with his base and with the GOP.

Each administration-threatening scandal dissolves into a nothing-burger. Celebrities are shrieking away about their hatred for Trump, but it just seems like its cool to do so. This endless hysterical cacophony has made Trump ever more popular with his base and the GOP

More significantly, as this poll suggests, its also begun to move moderates with no particularly animated view of Trump more to a place of tolerating him.

And thats terrible news for the Democrats, because their only game plan with Trump is to abuse him and rely on mockery and sneering as an election strategy.

Its the same flawed, arrogant and elitist mentality that led to Hillary Clinton branding Trump supporters a basket of deplorables in a speech that I still believe did more than anything else to lose her the election.

I look at the Democrats today and see a Party thats learned absolutely nothing about how to beat Trump.

And I see a President whos growing stronger by the day.

Trumps become a political Godzilla, crushing everyone who dares challenge him and bulldozing his way through an agenda that is beginning to pay real dividends.

In less than two years, Trumps got two nominees onto the Supreme Court, entrenching a Conservative majority.

Hes slashed taxes, and regulations  sparking a boom in the US economy that shows no sign of stopping, a surge in jobs and record low unemployment.

Trumps forged a peaceful dialogue with North Korea, launched a trade war with China that many think is long overdue, withdrawn from the obviously flawed Iran nuclear deal and Trans-Pacific Partnership, forced Mexico and Canada to update NAFTA, bullied NATO countries into paying their bills, and bombed ISIS out of Iraq and Syria.

Hes also clamped down hard on illegal immigration.

As I write this, a caravan of more than 7,000 Central American migrants  most of them from Honduras - is moving towards the Southern border.

They intend trying to enter the United States illegally.

Its hard to think of a more powerful image to vindicate Trumps much criticized demand for a new Wall, isnt it?

A caravan of more than 7,000 Central American migrants is moving towards the Southern border. They intend trying to enter the United States illegally. Its hard to think of a more powerful image to vindicate Trumps much criticized demand for a new Wall, isnt it?

As he tweeted: Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Southern Border The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!

Trump clearly believes this caravan will help Republicans in the midterms, and so do I. Expect to see the President down on that border very soon, playing Mr Tough Guy.

The combined effect of all these wins  obviously this is a subjective word if youre a Democrat - is that Trump enters this election in an increasingly dominant position as a President who is doing exactly what he said hed do.

I also think hes a President whos beginning to really enjoy himself.

When I saw him several months ago for an interview aboard Air Force One, I was struck by how relaxed and confident he seemed.

He exuded an air of someone whod worked out how Washington works  or rather, doesnt!  and how to play the broken, highly partisan system to his advantage.

As for Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian collusion, all the signs suggest this may soon deliver a massive damp squib.

Of course, Trump remains a hugely divisive and polarising figure with a penchant for flying loose with the truth and heavy on the inflammatory rhetoric.

But love him or loathe him, there is no denying that hes winning.

So once again, I can only advise the Democrats to stop their ridiculously self-defeating state of perpetual Trump outrage and work out how theyre actually going to beat him.

Because right now, Trumps kicking your a**.Senior Brexiteers held 'constructive' talks with Michel Barnier in Brussels today - but denied undermining Theresa May.

Former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, together with Lord David Trimble, held talks at the EU Commission in Brussels.

They promoted the virtues of a Canada-style free trade deal for Brexit Britain, the policy of the Tory European Research Group.

Brexiteers (pictured from left today) David Trimble, Owen Paterson and Iain Duncan Smith held 'constructive' talks with Michel Barnier about a trade deal today

Mr Barnier (pictured at the EU summit in Brussels last week) has also held talks with Remain supporters and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

Mr Duncan Smith said: 'We are presenting some ideas which we think are constructive and we had a constructive discussion.

'Now we are going to go back and talk to the Government about it.'

Mr Barnier has held a series of meetings with UK politicians, including groups of Remain supporters and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He insists he only negotiates with the Government and the meetings are for information on the talks only.

Asked if the EU was making contingency plans for a change of political leadership in the UK, European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said: 'As to political developments in Whitehall, this is for Whitehall, not for the Berlaymont (the EC's Brussels HQ).'

The EU has said in the past it is willing to give Britain a Canada-style trade deal after Brexit - but the proposal gives no solution on the Irish border.

Mrs May has previously said the model is not good enough for the UK because it would damage existing cross-Channel trade.

The group (pictured today leaving the EU Commission in Brussels said they would return to London and talk to the Government about the discussions

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith (pictured today in Brussels) said he had held 'constructive' talks with Mr Barnier

Later, the Prime Minister will face down her enemies in the Commons insisting the 'shape' of her Brexit deal was now clear.

Mrs May (pictured arriving at Downing Street today) has previously said the model is not good enough for the UK because it would damage existing cross-Channel trade

She will tell MPs she is sticking to her red lines on the Irish border but that 95 per cent of the divorce with the EU is done.

Mrs May's defiant message comes after another round of lurid claims she is about to be ousted and replaced by a hard Brexiteer.

Ahead of her speech, she warned her critics today the negotiation was not about her own interests but the fate of the nation.

Former Brexit secretary David Davis is the focus of rumours Mrs May could be replaced.

When she rises to speak in the Commons, Mrs May will say 'the shape of the deal across the vast majority of the Withdrawal Agreement is now clear.'

Mrs May will tell MPs new agreements are finalised on issues including the British base on Cyprus and with Spain on Gibraltar.

She will warn the final stage may be the 'hardest of all' as she attempts to finalise the deal on the Irish border and the so-called backstop for how it will work in the absence of a full UK-EU trade deal.A wild scene was caught on video at Orlando International Airport on Sunday evening when an irate passenger was pepper-sprayed after attacking a JetBlue Airlines employee.

An eyewitness recorded several videos on her cellphone at the terminal showing the violent confrontation and its eye-watering aftermath.

JetBlue Flight 801 from Orlando to Salt Lake City was scheduled to depart at 6.45pm on Sunday, but it did not leave the gate until 8.51pm, which apparently made one traveller very upset.

Rumble in Orlando: A traveler waiting for her delayed flight at Orlando International Airport on Sunday night recorded a drunk passenger clashing with JetBlue staff

The man in the white T-shirt was apparently drunk and got upset because his fight to Utah was delayed

The traveler, 45-year-old Brandon Strong, was pepper-sprayed by a responding police officer, who then pinned him to the floor for resisting arrest (pictured left and right)

A fellow passenger returning home to New Jersey captured the man in a white T-shirt and black slacks yelling and scuffling with JetBlue workers at Gate 3 on Sunday night.

She wrote on Twitter that the man was visibly drunk and that he flew into a rage over the two-hour delay.

The Orlando Police Department on Monday identified the suspect to DailyMail.com as 45-year-old Brandon Strong, of Layton, Utah.

The man's eight-year-old son, who was traveling with him, witnessed the entire incident.

Strong was booked into the Orange County Jail overnight on felony counts of battery on a law enforcement officer; depriving officer of means of protection or communication; resisting officer with violence; resisting officer without violence; neglect of a child; disorderly intoxication and battery.

Strong remained jailed this morning on bond totalling $6,500.

Strong reportedly ripped the radio off of the cop's vest and removed his two extra magazines

A group of bystanders assisted the responding cop until backup arrived and Strong was led away in handcuffs

One video recorded by the bystander at the terminal shows Strong yelling and scuffling with airline staff.

Another video shows the man being pinned down by a uniformed police officer and a group of Good Samaritans.

A third video shows people at the gate coughing and sneezing after being exposed to fumes from the pepper spray that was deployed against Strong.

Dailymail.com obtained a copy of an arrest affidavit detailing the incident that landed the passenger behind bars.

According to the document, an Orlando police officer responded to the terminal just after 7.20pm to a report of a drunk individual who had yelled at a female passenger and called her a 'c***.'

As the officer approached Brandon Strong, he instructed him to let go of his bags and follow him.

'I could detect the strong odor of the impurities of alcohol on his breath,' he later wrote in the report.

Travelers were left coughing and sneezing after being exposed to the pepper spray deployed against Strong

The incident took place near Gate 3 at the JetBlue terminal at the airport Sunday

Strong said nothing in reply and appeared to tighten his grip on his bags.

The officer then grabbed the passengers right wrist and informed him that he was being detained, to which Strong reportedly issued a threat that 'bad things would happen' if the cop did not let go of him.

The officer stated that Strong continued to resist his commands, which prompted him to warn the suspect that if he persisted, he would be pepper-sprayed, which is exactly what happened.

The officer then made an attempt to arrest Strong, but the 6-foot-tall, 180-pound man resisted the cops attempt to handcuff him. In response, the arresting officer conducted a leg sweep to take the man down.

But even lying prostrate on the floor Strong continued fighting back and was able to rip the cop's radio off of his bulletproof vest and remove two extra magazines from their holsters, according to the affidavit.

Strong (left and right) lives in Utah and works as president of a company specializing in defense contracts. He allegedly threatened to use his connections to go after the JetBlue staffer who confronted him

When backup arrived, Strong was escorted from the terminal to an awaiting patrol vehicle.

On the way there, the 45-year-old allegedly kicked the officer in the leg, which caused him to fall on his face.

He later refused to walk any further and had to be carried by three cops to the police car.

En route to the county jail, Strong reportedly referred to the JetBlue worker who initially confronted him at the gate as 'Paul Bart [sic] Mall Cop,' threatened to 'come after him with everything he's got' and mentioned that he has a concealed weapons permit and a gun, according to the document.

When the arresting officer asked Strong what he meant by that, he replied 'that he knows a lot of people in the White House from his work as a contractor at an Air Force base in Utah.

Strong's LinkedIn page indicates that he is the president of a company specializing in defense contracts called Strong Aerospace Consulting.

The affidavit stated that Strong's son witnessed his father's arrest and remained at the terminal until a family member arrived to make arrangements for the childs return to Utah, where he lives with his mother.Advertisement

Thousands of Trump supporters, some of whom had waited for nearly 24 hours, gleefully ran inside the Toyota Center in Houston on Monday afternoon, leaving behind camping chairs and sleeping bags, for a rally with the president that was still hours away.

For many it was their first time seeing the president in person who has campaigned in the city just once before and only six times in Texas including today.

'We love, love, love our president. He's saving America,' said one Texan, Maryanne Howard, who slept outside of the Houston rally on Sunday.

Howard arrived hours before the rally start time when Trump campaigned in Woodlands in 2016 but said she didn't make it in. 'So I knew you had to get in early,' she told DailyMail.com.

The Trump campaign transformed the scene into an all-day tailgate after roughly 100,000 people RSVP'd for a limited number of tickets to see the president speak in Texas in support of his one-time enemy Ted Cruz.

Thousands of Trump supporters, some of whom had waited for nearly 24 hours, gleefully ran inside the Toyota Center in Houston on Monday afternoon

The rally still hours away, Trump supporters lounged around in camping chairs - and even a blow-up loveseat

A Trump supports bats around a beach ball bearing the Trump slogan MAGA - Make America Great Again

For many it was their first time seeing the president in person who has campaigned in the city just once before and only six times in Texas including today

The Trump campaign transformed the scene into an all-day tailgate after roughly 100,000 people who RSVP'd for a limited number of tickets

Food trucks lined the arena and a sound stage was set up near the front of the line that wound up and down several city blocks and through a nearby park

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT: Many Trump supporters ditched their campaign chairs, lunch bags and overnight gear outside the rally

Leftover blankets and chairs are seen at what was once of the front of the line to get into Trump's Houston rally

Food trucks lined the arena and a sound stage was set up near the front of the line that wound up and down several city blocks and through a nearby park.

Jeff Beller, an Austin resident, said he arrived at 8:30 pm on Sunday after learning that five times the number of people RSVP'd for the rally as would be let in.

'If I'm going to go, I'm going to get in,' he said as he stood outside the Toyota Center on Monday.

Beller came to the rally alone but said he made friends on site.

'Everybody's helping each other out, watching your stuff, and going on food runs and everything. So it's been great,' he said. 'Very strong comradery here. It's kind of nice to kind of just sit and talk with people and feel comfortable sharing yourself and sharing your feelings, you know that we can't always do right now, these days in public.'

Supporters of the president began lining up outside of Houston's Toyota Center as early as 26 hours before the president was scheduled to speak following an announcement from Trump's reelection committee mid-day Sunday that more than 80,000 people who'd signed up for tickets would not be getting in.

The president is campaigning for Cruz  a man he once called Lyin' Ted  in the Republican senator's battle against Democrat opponent Beto O'Rourke.

The president signaled that he was amped up for the rally in support of Cruz, as well

The Trump campaign transformed a Monday night rally into an all-day tailgate after roughly 100,000 people RSVP'd for a limited number of tickets to see the president speak in Texas

Vendors sell knock-off 'MAGA' hats outside the president's rally

Trump supporters camped out overnight to reserve their seats, ahead of the tailgate that Trump's reelection committee announced mid-day Sunday

The Toyota Center, which is home to the Houston Rockets, can seat just over 18,000 people, according to the venue's website, and cram 1,000 more into the floor space

The Trump campaign says it's setting up big screens outside in an overflow area outside

Once booked for an arena in Houston that could seat 8,000 people, the event has changed venues and is now expected to reach maximum capacity of 19,000.

The Toyota Center, which is home to the Houston Rockets, can seat just over 18,000 people, according to the venue's website, and cram 1,000 more into the floor space.

Trump's campaign says it moved from NRG Arena to the large indoor space after a 'HUGE' and 'unprecedented' request for tickets that exceeded 100,000 responses.

'This will be an epic rally,' campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a tweet.

Parscale told Trump supporters, 'My great team is setting up the first ever TAILGATER for outside. So everyone come, room for everyone. Come see @realDonaldTrump inside or out!'

The Trump campaign says it's setting up big screens outside in an overflow area for unlucky supporters who showed up too late to watch the president's remarks tonight at 6:30 PM local time.

'Inside and out, the excitement at this Trump rally will be as big as Texas  its going to be epic,' Michael Glassner, the Chief Operating Officer for the campaign, said in a release.

The president signaled that he was amped up for the rally in support of Cruz, as well, tweeting on Monday morning: 'Big Night In Texas!!!!'

Trump's campaign says it moved from NRG Arena to the large indoor space after a 'HUGE' and 'unprecedented' request for tickets that exceeded 100,000 responses

Campaign manager Brad Parscale said in an update that the afternoon tailgate the campaign announced on Sunday would start at 9 am on Monday

Cruz campaigned on Sunday night in Houston, as well, his home city

Tonight is only Trump's second time campaigning in Houston, a major metropolitan in Texas that's home to more than 2 million people. It's his sixth time in Texas since he announced his candidacy in 2015 for president.

He promised earlier in the cycle to campaign for Cruz, an endangered incumbent, in Texas, despite their nasty 2016 rivalry, in the largest venue available months after endorsing his former opponent.

'I will be doing a major rally for Senator Ted Cruz in October. Im picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find,' Trump tweeted. 'As you know, Ted has my complete and total Endorsement. His opponent is a disaster for Texas - weak on Second Amendment, Crime, Borders, Military, and Vets!'

Houston is Cruz's hometown. He rallied supporters on his own in the city on Sunday evening.

For a state that's generally known to be conservative, Houston is known to be moderate politically. In other words, it's exactly the kind of audience that each candidate in the U.S. Senate race needs to reach in the campaign's final days.

Trump's rally coincides with the start of early voting in Texas, where O'Rourke is giving Cruz, a freshman senator who campaigned in 2016 for the GOP nomination for president, a run for his money.

The Trump campaign initially said the Oct. 22 rally would be held NRG Arena in Houston, Texas. The venue holds 8,000 people

Cruz holds an average lead of seven points over his opponent, per the latest Real Clear Politics assessment. But an Emerson poll from this month says the race is closer. It puts Cruz a mere five points ahead of O'Rourke, a three-term congressman.

As news networks covered the incredible turnout for the president at the Cruz rally on Monday morning, O'Rourke tried to keep up his momentum in the race, sending out an email to supporters that said, 'Im as encouraged, as hopeful, as Ive ever been.'

'The turnout at our rallies, the energy that we see in every community in Texas, the excitement and commitment that people from all walks of life are showing -- Democrats, Independents and Republicans -- its amazing,' the congressman said.

Video posted on Twitter on Monday am shows O'Rourke, 46, being mobbed by fans arriving just before early voting starts at the Metropolitan Multi-Services Center in Houston.

O'Rourke has clashed not just with his opponent but with the president in the Texas race in which he deployed Trump's 2016 nickname for Cruz  'Lyin' Ted'  in a recent debate. He infuriated the president at a town hall hosted by CNN last week when he said he believes that Trump's actions rise to the level of impeachment.

Trump responded in true form on Twitter with insults like O'Rourke is a 'lightweight' and 'a Flake' who isn't as qualified as Cruz, 47, to represent Texas.

Beto O'Rourke (left) attacked Ted Cruz in a raucous Texas debate on Tuesday evening in San Antonio, calling him dishonest and resurrecting the senator's nickname 'Lyin' Ted'

The president came to the defense of Cruz after the debate in tweets but did not attempt to walk back the remarks he made about the Republican at the height of the GOP primary two years ago

He derided O'Rourke in a Wednesday tweet as a 'Flake' who's 'not in the same league' as the the seat's incumbent

Video posted on Twitter on Monday am shows O'Rourke, 46, being mobbed by fans arriving just before early voting starts at the Metropolitan Multi-Services Center in Houston

O'Rourke declined to respond in kind in an interview that aired on ABC News on Sunday.

'The kind of bitterness and the name-calling and partisanship that has unfortunately defined so much of the national conversation,' he replied, 'you can add more to it or you can stay focused on the future.'

The El Paso native signaled in the town hall with CNN that he regrets going negative against Cruz in the debate at which he called him 'Lyin Ted' after running a positive campaign.

'Its not something that I feel totally comfortable with, and perhaps in the heat of the moment, I took a step too far,' he said. 'I dont know that thats the way that I want to be talking in this campaign.'

At the debate in San Antonio, his last face-off with Cruz of the campaign, O'Rourke said the Republican senator is 'dishonest' and would tell lies about his record.

'Its why the president called him Lyin Ted, and its why the nickname stuck  because its true,' he asserted.

Trump swatted back with a tweet that claimed 'ORourke would blow it all' for Texas.

'Ted Cruz has done so much for Texas, including massive cuts in taxes and regulations - which has brought Texas to the best jobs numbers in the history of the state. He watches carefully over your 2nd Amendment,' Trump proclaimed. 'ORourke would blow it all! Ted has long had my Strong Endorsement!'

Since 2016, the president and Cruz have formed a working relationship, with Trump leaning on Cruz - the former solicitor general of Texas - to help him nominate conservative judges.

But Cruz signaled that there's still bad blood in his own ABC interview on Sunday.

Cruz wouldn't call Trump a 'friend' - he referred to him simply as 'the president.'

'I work with the president in delivering on our promises,' he explained.

Cruz said it would be unprofessional of him to put his personal feelings about Trump ahead of what he believes is best for the nation.

'We need to put away our petty differences and stand shoulder to shoulder,' Cruz stated.

Trump is coming to Cruz's rescue even though the two men had an especially nasty fight on the campaign trail about Cruz's father, Rafael, in 2016, and Cruz's wife, Heidi

Trump said he would be campaigning for Cruz, whose Senate seat is endangered, in spite of their differences

Outside the rally, supporters of both Cruz and the president said that it was time to move on from the 2016 election.

'I don't think you have to be a friend,' said Kathy Aulson, one of the campers, said of the ABC News interview. 'Ted Cruz went to him and said, "I want to work with you."...That's what all the Democrats need to do, too. He is our president. We're gonna respect him and work with him while he's our president. Let him do it himself, what people put him office to do....They don't respect him.'

Still commenting on Cruz's remarks she said: 'And he's said he's the president, I mean I get that. He is. We need to work with him.'

Howard, a Kingwood resident, said of the rift, 'If he was not for our president, I would not be for Ted Cruz.'

She said that Trump does not need to apologize to Cruz for slamming him. 'I wonder what he lied about. But I don't think our president lied. He knows something. He doesn't make things up,' she said of Trump.

Woodlands resident Carol Jarrell, added, 'They're both Christian men, they're working together to "Make America Great Again." '

The two men had an especially combative relationship in 2016 that exploded, and Cruz once said was beyond repair, after Trump came after Cruz's father, Rafael, and wife, Heidi, on the campaign trail.

'His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being  you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,' Trump told Fox News. 'What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.'

Trump has taken the information from a National Enquirer story that claimed Cruz's father was friends with deceased President John F. Kennedy's murderer.

The president said of Cruz's father: 'I mean, what was he doing  what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?'

Cruz's campaign called it 'another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage' at the time of the attack.

At another point, Trump threatened to 'spill the beans' on Cruz's wife, Heidi, and retweeted an unflattering meme of her and his spouse, a former model, Melania.

Trump also asked how Cruz could be an 'Evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest' and called him 'Lyin' Ted' in repeated assaults.

In a desperate attempt to knock Trump out in the final days of the race, Cruz responded by calling him a 'serial philanderer,' a 'pathological liar,' a 'narcissist' and 'utterly amoral.'

He refused in a speech at the Republican National Convention to endorse Trump after he won the GOP's nomination, earning boos from attendees. He, like the rest of the field of failed candidates, had signed a pledge promising to endorse the GOP's final candidate.

'I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,' Cruz said the next day. 'That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander my wife that I am going to come like a servile puppy dog for maligning my wife and maligning my father.'

Trump said in response that he didn't want Cruz's endorsement and wouldn't accept it, even if the Texas senator offered it.

'Ted, stay home, relax, enjoy yourself,' Trump told him.Advertisement

These incredible images give an insight into the everyday life of a remote Pacific tribe living deep in the jungle in Indonesian New Guinea.

The Korowai people are thought to have been completely disconnected from the outside world until the 1970s, and later became known for their distinctive tree houses 140ft above the ground - a way of life now largely abandoned for villages on the ground.

Photographs taken by a visiting snapper from Russia shows them go about their daily life, chopping down palm trees and gathering food.

Their way of life: An elderly Korowai man is seen gazing into the camera in this photograph taken on Indonesian Papua

Male members of a Korowai tribe have felled a sago palm and are seen cutting away at it to get to the white starchy heart of the tree, which is turned into flour

The Korowai live in southeastern Papua, on the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea, and their first documented contact with the Western world was when a group of scientists met with members of one clan in 1974.

In 2006, tour-guide and reporter Paul Raffaele led an Australian TV crew to meet the tribe, and he would later go on to claim that they still practiced cannibalism - a claim which has since been disputed.

And while the Korowai previously lived in communal tree houses high up in the jungle canopy, the clans have increasingly moved into settled villages.

Earlier this year, the Korowai were the subject of a BBC mea culpa, when a film team following up on the 2011 series Human Planet discovered that the tree houses had been built for the benefit of the show - and were not lived in by the tribe.

Vanishing: There is now thought to be around 3,000 Korowai living in southeastern Papua, on the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea in the Pacific

Daily life: A woman carries her child in a net basket hung on her head, while manouvering through the jungle

Family is everything: An adorable young child stares into the camera while a Korowai woman is seen gathering palm heart in the background

Adventurer Will Millard is seen visiting the Korowai during BBC Two's My Year With The Tribe in April this year, where during a trip to a treehouse they tell him the raised houses 'are not our home' and that they were 'commissioned for filming'.

'What I found when we got to Korowai territory was that, actually, in the more contacted, accessible places, there was something of a Korowai tourist economy going on, where they were putting on a performance for the benefit of rich tourists,' Mr Millard said at the time.

The BBC later released a statement saying it 'breached editorial standards' by inaccurately portraying the life of the Korowai, which is now thought to number around 3,000 people.

On the lookout: The Korowai are hunter-gatherers and can be away for days hunting

A child is pictured lying over the crossed legs of their parent in Papua

Growing up: A boy looks straight into the camera in one photograph, as does a young Korowai man during a rainy day

This remarkable set of photographs were taken by amateur photographer Maxim Russkikh, 36, from Moscow, Russia.

'Korowai are skilled hunters and are sometimes away from their homes for days, hunting for rats, pigs, birds and fish. The staple for their prey consists of sago and bananas,' Mr Russkikh said.

'After the sago palm is cut down and split by men, the heart of the sago palm, which produces a starchy substance, is washed and kneaded or beaten by the women to get the sago flour.'

Mr Russkikh believes that the Korowai's way of life is threatened by Christian missionaries and the Muslim Indonesian government who wish to force their culture upon them.

'Christian missionaries, who have been making first contact with tribes all over the world for five hundred years, are still trying to do so today [with the Korowai],' he said.

Lunch is served: A Korowai man gathers grubs from a tree which is eaten by members of the tribe

Going down: A man gives everything he has got as he chops down a palm tree in Indonesian West Papua

Packed lunch: An elderly man wraps more than a dozen fat grubs in palm leaves to bring back home

'Korowai have managed to survive in the harsh environment of the rainforest over thousands of years keeping its traditional culture alive. And it seems like right now they are disappearing day by day.

'They are surrounded by the dozens of missionary villages supported by the Indonesian government with the only purpose to introduce the western culture and spiritual values.

'Hundreds of Korowai have moved already from the jungles to newly constructed missionary settlements and more are coming. Often believing that the tribes are 'primitive' and living pitiful lives 'in the dark', the missionaries' ultimate aim is to convert them to Christianity.

'There are less than a hundred uncontacted small tribes around the world and they need to be protected by international law. Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable people on earth, especially in West Papua, and they need to survive.'Police are asking the public to help identify this man who allegedly exposed himself at a gas station in South Carolina, while telling the female clerk to 'Have a blessed day'

Police are searching for a man in South Carolina who allegedly flashed a woman working in a gas station, as he told her to 'Have a blessed day.'

The disturbing incident happened at Dukes Oil in Orangeburg County. The woman who was flashed is the owner of the gas station.

She told police that she noticed the man walking past the walk-up window and to the side of the business with his back turned to the surveillance camera.

The suspect appeared to be adjusting his shirt but when he turned around the clerk saw he was exposing his genitals.

She told police that he then walked around toward the front of the business with his genitals exposed, while he was smiling at her.

According to a statement made by the victim in a warrant obtained by ABC Columbia News, the worker asked the man 'Can I help you?'

The disturbing incident was caught on camera at at Dukes Oil (pictured) in Orangeburg County

The suspect, still exposed, replied: ' I just wanted to tell you to have a a blessed day', before looking down towards his waist.

Police are hoping someone knows the man and can assist with is whereabouts.

They are asking anyone with information to call the Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office at (803)531-4647.President Donald Trump was telling crowds as recently as Saturday that Republicans are going to win nationwide in November  but he also is privately already arguing any losses won't be his fault.

'I like where we stand in the election,' Trump told a crowd of supporters in Elko, Nevada Saturday. 'We're gonna win all over,' he said.

He has also told crowds that he is on the ballot Nov. 6. But privately, Trump is expressing the view that the midterms are not a referendum on him, and that party leaders Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are on the hook for any defeats.

'I like where we stand in the election,' Trump told a crowd of supporters in Elko, Nevada Saturday. 'We're gonna win all over,' he said.

'These are their elections  and if they screw it up, it's not my fault,' Trump is saying, a person with knowledge of his talks told Politico.

Trump has clashed with McConnell in the past, but Trump hailed his handling of the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, and the clash may have positioned Republicans favorably in a few key states where Trump won in 2016.

There are also historical norms that Trump himself his cited favor the opposition party when a president's party controls congress during off year elections.

Trump is preparing to blame party leaders like retiring Speaker Paul Ryan if the elections go south

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) drove strategy for the successful confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, which may have helped a few Republicans in key Senate races

But Trump's own unpopularity nationally is part of what puts the House at risk of going Democratic. A RealClearPolitics average shows Trump's favorability hasn't topped an average of 45 per cent since it began keeping track in 2015.

Trump's slash and burn attacks on Kavanaugh's accuser Christine Blasey Ford, on immigration, might shore up his base support, but do not always play well in suburban districts where Democrats are trying to pick off remaining moderate Republicans.

President Trump will fault Republicans who failed to sufficiently embrace him, a person close to him predited

People vote on the first day of early voting at the Meadows Mall on October 20, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada

Trump has also slid comments distancing himself from the midterms into the public record. He told the AP some supporters are telling him: 'I will never ever go and vote in the midterms because you're not running.'

Nevertheless, Trump is throwing himself into campaigning in key races, keeping up a busy travel schedule that last week took him to Montana, Arizona, and Nevada, and on Monday takes him to Texas, where Trump is embracing Sen. Ted Cruz, who he branded 'Lyin' Ted' during the campaign as part of a push to keep the Senate Republican.

The president is well aware how his nominations  and the tenor of Russia and FBI probes  would fare under a Democratic as opposed to Republican Senate.

He is also using campaign trips as a way to ensure personal loyalty from lawmakers and settle scores. He said the reason he campaign in Montana was to get back at Democratic Sen. Jon Tester for helping kill the nomination of White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson to be secretary of Veterans Affairs.

One person close to the president predicted Trump would fault candidates for not tying themselves closely enough to him  although even those who have formerly voiced criticism of him, like Senate candidate Martha McSally in Arizona, fully embraced him on the campaign trail.

'The arc is gonna be he wasn't on the ballot, and people didn't fully appreciate his policies and [candidates] didn't tie themselves enough to him,' as well as blaming the media, a person close to Trump told Politico.A young woman shared a haunting Facebook post about women dying doing 'mundane things' months before her body was mysteriously found on an isolated beach.

Toyah Cordingley, 24, disappeared on Sunday between 2pm and 2.30pm after driving to Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, to walk her beloved dog.

She was found at the beach on Monday morning between the foreshore and the start of bushland, and her death is being treated as a murder, police have confirmed.

Toyah Cordingley (pictured), 24, was found dead on Wangetti Beach in northern Queensland on Monday morning

On June 17, Cordingley shared a haunting Facebook post - a screenshot of a tweet from human rights advocated Kon Karapanagiotidis

Police suspect the death could be a 'sexually related murder'.

On June 17, Cordingley shared a screenshot of a tweet from human rights advocate Kon Karapanagiotidis.

'I can only imagine the rage and fear women feel to see women die doing everyday mundane things like walking home, like they do to, only to then be told it's their fault and that they need to be more careful,' the tweet read.

'Stop Blaming Women Make Men The Issue.'

Mr Karapanagiotidis shared the tweet two days after Melbourne comedian Eurydice Dixon was raped and murdered on her way home from a gig.

Cordingley, an avid animal lover who worked at a Port Douglas animal shelter, also shared posts that critcised sexism and misogyny.

'I can only imagine the rage and fear women feel to see women die doing everyday mundane things like walking home, like they do to, only to then be told it's their fault and that they need to be more careful,' the tweet read

Cordingley, an avid animal lover who worked at a Port Douglas animal shelter, also shared posts that critcised sexism and misogyny

Detective Senior Sergeant Ed Kinbacher said investigators had 'no preconceptions' about whether the pharmacy worker knew her killer, 9 News reported.

'(But) if we're dealing with a potentially sexually-related murder, which commonsensically we may well be dealing with a male,' he said.

Kinbacher said the area she was found in was not highly frequented, and has asked for locals to come forward with any concerns about suspicious people on the beach.

The detective also said Cordingley would have stood out because 'she was with a large dog and long, blondish hair with a purple tint'.

'No young woman should go to the beach to walk their dog and have this happen to them,' he said.

Detective Senior Sergeant Ed Kinbacher said investigators had 'no preconceptions' about whether the pharmacy worker knew her killer (police pictured at beach on Monday)

The 24-year-old's parents are 'obviously devastated in regard to the circumstances', Kinbacher said. 'This is a shocking event.'

'She was 800m north of the southern access point, and there are only two access points at Wangetti,' he said.

'It's a quiet beach. I'm not aware of any historical problems with this area.

'Anyone who has had any concerns about people they've seen on the beach in recent months, please come forward.'

She had been walking her dog when she disappeared on Sunday afternoon

Cordingley's car, which she drove to the beach on Sunday, was found at the southern entrance to the beach, and her dog was also found nearby uninjured

Cordingley's car, which she drove to the beach on Sunday, was found at the southern entrance to the beach, and her dog was also found nearby uninjured.

The young woman's family had been frantically searching for her, and her sister shared a photograph of her on Facebook with a desperate plea for information on her whereabouts.

Locals shared the post and fond memories of Cordingley, remembering her kind nature and friendly dog.

'I met her last week, her dog ran up to mine and we let them run together along the beach. She was such a nice girl,' one woman wrote.

After her death was publicised, grieving friends turned to social media to share the devastating news and pay tribute to the 'amazing' woman.

The woman's family had been frantically searching for her (SES crews pictured on Monday)

She was found at the beach on Monday morning between the foreshore and the start of bushland, and her death is being treated as a murder, police have confirmed

'No words could describe how amazing of a person you were,' friend Hayden Chalklin wrote.

'I can't believe you're gone. I can't believe I'm never going to see your smile again. I can't believe I'm never going to hear your voice again. I can't believe I'm writing this post.

'I don't know what to think, I don't know what to say. I'm going to miss you so much.

'You didn't deserve this and you will never be forgotten.'

Anyone with information is urged to call Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.The fugitive son of infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Loera has been living a very lavish life as he brazenly shows off his wealth, guns and drugs on social media while his father languishes in a New York prison.

Jesus Alfredo Guzman-Salazar, who is one of the 10 most wanted fugitives on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's list, frequently shares photos on Instagram showcasing his luxurious lifestyle in Mexico.

The 35-year-old - commonly known as 'Alfredillo' - also regularly pays tribute to his drug lord father, praising him as his best friend and a 'great person' who 'helps the poor'.

In a series of posts on his private Instagram page, which boasts 35,000 followers, Alfredo has shamelessly shared photos of his collection of luxury cars, private jets and Gucci purchases.

El Chapo's son Jesus Alfredo Guzman-Salazar, 35, (pictured above) has been living a very lavish life in Mexico while his drug lord father languishes in a New York prison

The 35-year-old - commonly known as 'Alfredillo' - regularly pays tribute to his drug lord father on Instagram, praising him as his best friend and a 'great person' who 'helps the poor'

He also regularly shares photos of piles of cash spread out on the bed or floor, as well as containers of bullets and his high-powered rifles.

In one post, Alfredo even shared a shot of what appeared to be lines of cocaine on the cover of a book - Los Senores Del Narco - which has his father's face plastered on the front.

Despite being a fugitive, Alfredo regularly tags his location on Instagram including from as far as Italy. In one post taken in Verona, Italy, Alfredo captioned it: 'While they are looking for me as dogs in Mexico, one has fun'.

His social media profile pinpoints him as being located in the city of Zapopan near Guadalajara.

Alfredo has regularly praised his father on social media ever since the 61-year-old was extradited to the United States in January last year.

He is one of El Chapo's six sons from various marriages. His mother, Alejandrina Maria Salazar Hernandez, was El Chapo's first wife.

The 35-year-old - commonly known as 'Alfredillo' - posted this photo of what appears to be cocaine on a book cover featuring his father's face

The 35-year-old also regularly shares photos of piles of cash spread out on the bed or floor

Alfredo, who is one of the 10 most wanted fugitives on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's list, frequently shares photos of various private planes

The fugitive brazenly posts photos of his high-powered rifles while his drug lord father is locked up in a New York prison

Alfredo captioned this photo of a bag full of bullets as 'cartridge full'

'Sometimes it's sad to see pictures of the people you love most in the world and remember that you do not have them near, great memories of the Lord,' he wrote alongside a photo of his parents.

In a father's day post written in Spanish from June, Alfredo described his father as a 'great person'.

'Today father's day is for me very painful not being able to be next to that great human being called Joaquin Guzman Loera,' the translated post read.

'You know father that what you formed we will continue taking care of and it will continue being yours. You are my father and the best of my friends.

'A lot of people admire you... Many will say that you are a bad person but very few know what you really do to help poor people.

'I never forget those tips, those hugs, those cheers that you gave me when you were here, if you knew the desire I have to go out to ride together like we did when I was 8 years old.

'You're a great person daddy... I love you.'

In a series of recent posts on his private Instagram page, Alfredo has shamelessly shared photos of his collection of luxury cars and private jets

Alfredo shared this photo of his father and mother Alejandrina Maria Salazar Hernandez after El Chapo was extradited to the U.S., saying it was sad known he wasn't close by

Gucci and Louis Vuitton purchases make a regularly appearance on his social media feed in which of often refers to himself as a sugar daddy

Despite being a fugitive, Alfredo often tags his location on Instagram. He captioned this photo from Italy: 'While they are looking for me as dogs in Mexico, one has fun'

Like his father who evaded authorities for years, Alfredo was added to a list last month of fugitives sought by the DEA. The reward for his capture has been increased to $5 million.

He is wanted in Chicago on federal drug-conspiracy distribution charges after being indicted with his father and other leaders of the Sinaloa drug cartel back in 2015.

His last known location is listed as 'unknown' on the DEA's website.

Alfredo's father is accused of running the Sinaloa crime syndicate and has been held in New York since being extradited to the U.S. on January 19, 2017, after twice escaping from prison in Mexico.

He has been charged with 17 crimes, including leading the extremely dangerous Sinaloa drug cartel and transporting at least 200,000 kilos of cocaine to the US from Mexico.

El Chapo's trial is slated to start on November 5.

Alfredo tagged his location in this photo as being in the resort town of Mazatlan in Sinaloa

Alfredo shamelessly shares photos of his luxurious lifestyle while his father is in a New York prison awaiting his November trial

Despite being a fugitive, his social media profile pinpoints him as being located in the city of Zapopan near Guadalajara

El Chapo is accused of running the Sinaloa crime syndicate and has been held in New York since being extradited to the U.S. in 2017 (above), after twice escaping from prison in Mexico

El Chapo's wife has also been living the life of luxury while her husband remains behind bars.

Emma Coronel, a former Mexican beauty queen, regularly showcases her glamorous life in photos posted on her social media account.

In recent months, the 29-year-old has shared photos of herself beach-side in a bikini, soaking up the sun in Los Cabos and showing off her Prada purses.

In one photo on Instagram, Emma also posed alongside her twin daughters who were each brandishing designer handbags.

The mother-of-two made headlines just last month for the elaborate Barbie-themed birthday party she threw for their seven-year-old daughters, Emaly and Maria.

The party featured huge arches made of pink balloons and an abundance of Barbie paraphernalia.

A ballroom with a chandelier was redesigned to be a giant pink Barbie Dreamhouse, complete with pink cakes, candy and a large Barbie neon sign.

Some Mexicans reacted with fury after news of the lavish birthday party emerged as they accused the former beauty queen of using 'blood money' from her 61-year-old husband's drug empire.

El Chapo's wife Emma Coronel, a former Mexican beauty queen, regularly showcases her glamorous life in photos posted on her social media account

In one photo on Instagram, Emma also posed alongside her twin daughters who were each brandishing designer handbagsLynn Burge (pictured), 32, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly having sex with two students, ages 16 and 18

A Texas teacher was arrested on Thursday for allegedly having sex with two students, aged 16 and 18.

Lynn Burge, 32, who taught at Muenster High School, was accused of sending about five nude pictures of herself to the teenager via Snapchat last October.

According to News 12, the pair went 'backroading' together before she took him to her home, where she allegedly performed oral sex on him.

They had also been drinking before they had sexual intercourse, according to the arrest warrants.

Investigators interviewed the teen who recalled going to the woman's home to have sex.

The teen told authorities that Burge's family wasn't home at the time.

Burge claimed she didn't remember whether or not she had sex with the teen because she was highly intoxicated.

Burge, who is married and has two children, is also accused of having sexual intercourse with an 18-year-old student.

The second incident reportedly occurred on Burge's birthday in March while they were at her sisters home.

The first incident with the 16-year-old allegedly occurred between September and October 2017. The pair went backroading before going to Burge's (pictured) home where they reportedly had sex and drank alcohol

Burge esigned from her position at the Muenster High School last week. She taught Intro to Culinary Arts, Child Development and Principals of Human Services

That student told investigators that they had unprotected sex after they went backroading, according to the Gainesville Daily Register.

Burge was arrested after the Department of Family and Protective Services received an anonymous tip about her in September.

Last week, Burge reportedly told a Texas Ranger that she had sex with the 18-year-old and that she sent nudes to the 16-year-old.

Burge also resigned from her position last week after a little over a year with the Muenster district.

She taught Intro to Culinary Arts, Child Development and Principals of Human Services.

Burge faces two counts of improper relationship between educator and student, and one count of online solicitation of a minor.

If convicted, she faces up to 50 years in prison.Eleven children were moved off Nauru for medical treatment on Monday, Australian Border Force has confirmed.

The cohort was transferred hours before ABF bosses fronted a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night and coincided with a significant increase in medical transfers off the Pacific Island in the past few months.

Border Force originally said 16 were transferred but later clarified that 11 were moved on Monday to Australia for medical treatment.

They join more than 600 people in Australia on 'temporary transfers' from offshore detention.

Eleven children were moved off Nauru for medical treatment on Monday, Australian Border Force has confirmed

Multiple asylum seeker families have left Nauru and flown to Australia for medical reasons as pressure builds on the Morrison government to get children off the island

Border Force said 652 people, including 52 children and 107 families, remain on Nauru while 626 men are on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

The vast majority on both islands have been judged to be genuine refugees.

Border Force's surgeon-general and de-facto chief medical officer for offshore asylum seekers, Parbodh Gogna, said medical staff on Nauru had 'seen an unprecedented jump' in people presenting for medical care in the last couple of months.

Patients were treated for mental and physical illnesses but the reason for the uptick was unclear, he said.

But Dr Gogna said he heard anecdotes that years of detention, a break down of resilience and unwellness of parents transferring to children were factors.

He said Nauru has multiple medical facilities but lacked highly specialised health care for children.

The Home Affairs department said it had spent $480,000 in legal fees in just three months responding to applications to have refugees medically transferred to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru.

Medical staff on Nauru had 'seen an unprecedented jump' in people presenting for medical care in the last couple of months

The children join more than 600 people in Australia on 'temporary transfers' from offshore detention

The figure from July to September far outstrips spending for the entire previous financial year, with $275,000 spent on such legal fees in 2017-18.

The committee was told, for example, there were just five applications lodged between May and June this year.

Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo said permanent asylum in Australia wouldn't be granted to those transferred for medical treatment because it could incentivise 'perverse behaviours', including causing serious harm to instigate a transfer.

'Treatment in Australia is absolutely available for those who require it,' he told Senate estimates on Monday.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured)is under immense pressure to get sick refugee children and their families off Nauru

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is under immense pressure to get sick refugee children and their families off Nauru.

He has said he is willing to accept New Zealand's offer to resettle asylum seekers and their families from the Pacific island, on the condition they never come to Australia.

Labor frontbencher Tony Burke said his party was sceptical about the bill, which has been stuck in parliament for almost two years.

'There are deep, deep problems with that bill,' he said.

Three Liberal MPs - Russell Broadbent, Craig Laundy and Julia Banks - last week demanded Mr Morrison get children off Nauru.Elizabeth Smart - the woman who was kidnapped from her parents' home as a teenager in 2002 - has joined the appeal for missing Jayme Closs.

Smart posted a police Amber Alert to her Instagram on Saturday while urging people to contact officers if they have any information on Jayme's whereabouts.

The teenager has been missing ever since parents Denise and James, 46 and 56, were found shot dead at their Wisconsin home a week ago.

Elizabeth Smart - who was kidnapped from her parents' house aged 14 in 2002 - has joined the appeal for missing 13-year-old Jayme Closs after she vanished following her parents' murders

Jayme is believed to have been at home when father James and mother Denise were shot dead at their Wisconsin house a week ago, and has not been seen since

The FBI has placed Jayme at the top of their missing person's list, but say she is not a suspect in the homicides and is likely in danger herself.

Investigators have not yet said who they believe is responsible for the murders, though an FBI source told RadarOnline that the killer likely came to the home with the express purpose of kidnapping the teenager.

Police have revealed that Denise's phone was used to call officers around the time the murders and kidnapping took place.

While voices and shouting could be heard on the line, nobody spoke to the dispatcher, and when officers called back, the phone went to voicemail.

Officers are working on the assumption that Denise made the call from an upstairs bathroom where she hid when shooting broke out.

Smart, who was held captive by her kidnappers for nine months until being rescued, urged anyone with information on Jayme to contact police

It is thought that James, 56, was shot dead through his front door before Denise, 46, was killed as she hid in an upstairs bathroom and tried to call police

It is thought there was a knock at the family's front door before James went to answer and was shot through the woodwork.

The door was then kicked in before the killer went into the house, shot Denise dead and kidnapped Jayme, it is believed.

Smart's appeal came just a month after Wanda Barzee, the wife of her kidnapper Brian David Mitchell, was released from jail.

Mitchell broke into the home of Smart's parents in Salt Lake City in 2002 before kidnapping her at knife-point.

The couple then kept Smart in a compound in the woods for nine months where she was repeatedly raped and abused.

Smart was taken into public by the couple several times before she was eventually recognized and they were arrested.

Investigators have launched a nationwide appeal for information after a search of Jayme's house and the surrounding area turned up nothing

The FBI is leading the search and has placed Jayme at the top of their missing persons list, saying she is likely in danger

Mitchell, who claimed to be a religious prophet, is serving a life sentence.

Chris Fitzgerald, the sheriff of Barron County, where Jayme went missing, also appealed for information on Friday.

He said a search of her parents' house and grounds had failed to turn up any evidence, and detectives were trying to learn anything they could about the family.

'If you spent time with members of the Closs family recently or if you have ever had a misunderstanding with any members of the Closs family or know someone who has, please call the tip line,' he said.

Fitzgerald added that officers have already received hundreds of tips, but would not give any more information.

He insisted that Jayme had been kidnapped and is in danger, rather than simply running away, but said revealing anything more would compromise his work.

'I'm telling you, Jayme is missing and endangered,' Fitzgerald said. 'We want to bring Jayme home and put that smile back in her family's hands.'

'Is it a random attack or a targeted attack? I don't know that answer. That's why those leads are so important.'Rower Ben Farinazzo opened up about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder ahead of winning gold for Australia at the Invictus Games, on Monday.

Farinazzo, 44, was deployed to Timor in 1999 as part of the International Force - where around 1,400 civilians are believed to have died in a three-year internal conflict.

He was recently diagnosed with PTSD and also fractured his neck, back and rib in a bicycle accident, but showed true Aussie fighting spirit in Sydney on Monday as he claimed gold in the indoor rowing event.

Australian rower Ben Farinazzo has opened up about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder as he won gold on Monday in the Invictus Games (pictured)

He was recently diagnosed with PTSD and also fractured his neck, back and rib in a bicycle accident, but showed true Aussie fighting spirit in Sydney on Monday as he claimed gold in the indoor rowing event

His emphatic victory in the one-minute sprint event came as the military veteran spoke in detail about his experience of the crippling mental condition.

In an interview with the University of New South Wales Canberra, Farinazzo said his time in East Timor was the 'highlight of his military career' but also one that left him with deep psychological scars.

He also spoke open about his initial shock when diagnosed with the illness.

He said: 'I could not believe it when the doctor diagnosed me with PTSD.

'I thought I guess I'll just see it as a broken arm or something - I'll just look after it and get on with life.

'But she said "Ben Stop - it's not like that - it's more like cancer and if you don't address this thing properly you will die from it".'

The Brisbane native, who now lives in Canberra, said he has coped with the condition by learning to be more gentle with himself.

He said sport was an invaluable help too, and credited the 2018 Invictus Games for allowing him to reconnect with the veteran community in a supportive environment.

This year's games is the fourth itineration of the event, with the first event created by Prince Harry in 2014 - who is currently touring the south Pacific with his pregnant wife Meghan Markle.Advertisement

As a 32-year-old man became the latest to die while working in a sewer in India, activists are taking to the streets in protest.

The young and old men who work as manual scavengers have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.

They brave stench and filth in the most deplorable conditions imaginable when they descend into the gutters to risk their lives for a meagre pay of around 7,500 to 10,000 rupees (79 to 105) a month.

Private daily contractors can be paid as little as 500 rupees (5) for a day's cleaning.

Recent government statistics revealed that a manual scavenger has died every five days since the start of 2017 while cleaning sewers.

Joney, a 26 year-old sewer worker, is seen cleaning a sewer line in Ghaziabad in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, in July

Indian activists take part in a protest against the sewer deaths - with one placard dubbing them 'India's Holocaust' in New Delhi on September 25

Protesters spell out 'Stop killing us' while protesting the deaths of sewer workers at a demonstration in New Delhi, India

Recent statistics revealed that a manual scavenger has died every five days since the start of 2017 while cleaning sewers

A total of 573 people died between 2008 and 2018, data shows. A further 96 people died from January to September this year.

Then, on September 9, five men died while cleaning a sewer pit at DLF Capital Greens in Moti Nagar in Delhi.

Vishal, 20, Pankaj, 26, Sarfaraz, 19, Raja, 22, Umesh, 20, and Pradeep worked as maintenance workers and pump operators in a residential building.

But they were forced by their supervisor to go inside a septic tank to clean it  without any safety equipment or masks. Only Pradeep survived, while the others died after inhaling toxic gases while cleaning the tank.

Joney (pictured) is one of a number of workers who cleans the sewer lines by going inside the pits in Ghaziabad without any safety equipment except for a safety belt to hoist them up

Joney is seen being hoisted up by his safety belt after cleaning a sewer line in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

Workers like Joney risk their lives for a meagre pay of around 7,500 to 10,000 rupees (79 to 105) a month

Mange Ram (R) and Brijesh (L) throw the choked waste taken out from a sewer by Joney in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

Just a few weeks later, on September 17, a 28-year-old died while cleaning a sewer in West Delhi.

The death prompted activists to march in New Delhi a week later, with placards branding the deaths 'India's Holocaust.'

Despite their demand for better conditions, another man died on Sunday.

Doman Ray drowned while working inside a sewer tank of a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) sewage pumping station in Jahangirpuri in north Delhi, the Hindustan Times reports.

Joney, a 26 year-old sewer worker holds his safety belt as he prepares to go inside the sewer in Ghaziabad in September

Workers enter sewers with only a safety belt with which they can be pulled free if they become asphyxiated by the poisonous gases

Private daily contractors who work to clean sewers in India can be paid as little as 500 rupees (5) for a day's cleaning

Most of the sewer workers commonly suffer from eye problems, respiratory and skin diseases, according to one supervisor

Joney's supervisor Ratender Chauhan says workers are not provided with any sort of sufficient equipment to help protect them against the filthy environment

Many manual scavengers  like Joney  belong to Valmiki community, a sub-caste that is considered one of the lowest of the so-called 'untouchable' Dalit caste

Members of these communities have long carried out cleaning and sanitation work in Indian society

Although he was equipped with an oxygen mask and a safety belt when he was sent inside the tank to open a valve, he wasn't pulled out in time when drain water started gushing into the 30 ft deep tank, according to the newspaper.

Many manual scavengers  like Joney, Brijesh and Mange  belong to Valmiki community, a sub-caste that is considered one of the lowest of the so-called 'untouchable' Dalit caste.

Members of these communities have long carried out cleaning and sanitation work in Indian society.

Joney, Brijesh and Mange's supervisor Ratender Chauhan says workers are not provided with any sort of sufficient equipment to help protect them against the filthy environment.

Mohammad Hayul, the father of 19-year-old Sarfaraz who died while cleaning a septic tank, takes part in a protest last month

Sarfaraz was one of five men who died after they were forced by their supervisor to go inside a septic tank to clean it

Brij Mohan, a 52 year-old sewer worker shows the boils that have formed on his body due to his work in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

Three sewer workers wait to clean the sewer line in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India, on September 12

They enter sewers with nothing but a safety belt with which they can be pulled free if they become asphyxiated by the poisonous gases.

He says that most of the sewer workers working under him commonly suffer from eye problems, respiratory and skin diseases.

They work in the hope of eventually earning better salaries. But even if they do receive increased wages, much of that income will have to go to the health treatment their work will inevitably induce, Malkhan Singh and Brij Mohan say.

Both men are in their fifties and have worked as manual scavengers for more than two decades. And they have both sustained injuries from working in cramped drain pipes and have been poisoned or developed chronic respiratory conditions due to the toxic gases.

Rani, whose husband Anil died while cleaning a sewer line in New Delhi, performs the last rituals at the banks of the Ganges canal in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

Rani and her three children leave their house to perform the last rituals for 37-year-old sewer worker Anil in New Delhi, IndiaA registered sex offender shot and killed himself after leading cops on a high-speed chase across Florida.

Michael Sardinas, 29, from Hollywood shot himself on Floridas Turnpike near Stuart after he crashed his getaway.

He was taken to hospital where he later died, according to Miami-Dade Police.

The incident began when Sardinas was involved in a hit and run and fled the scene.

Twitter users posted video of the pursuit, as Miami-Dade Police zoomed by at a high speed

Michael Sardinas (pictured) led authorities in a dangerous chase across four counties that ended when he lost control of his car and fatally shot himself, police said

Sardinas was reportedly travelling at 150 miles per hour on the busy stretch of motorway.

Investigators told WPLG the suspects Chevy sedan took off and got on the Turnpike heading north.

Units from Miami-Dade Police, Florida Highway Patrol, Broward Sheriffs Office, Palm Beach Sheriffs Office and Martin County Sheriffs Office pursued the Chevy northbound.

Officials said the suspect shot at an officer through the rear windshield at some point during the pursuit. No officers were hurt.

Just before 6pm, the chase crossed Boynton Beach Boulevard.

Near mile marker 127 in Martin County, the suspect lost control of his car and it went into a 360-degree spin at around 6.30 pm.

Officers said they heard a gunshot shortly after. When they approached the vehicle, they found the driver slumped over the steering wheel and bleeding.

He was airlifted to an area hospital where he later died of what police described as 'a self-inflicted gunshot wound'.

Michael Sardinas caused a huge traffic pile-up when he eventually stopped his car (pictured)

Officers approach the car and found Sardinas suffering from an self-inflicted gunshot wound

The car is seen abandoned while investigating officers carry out a technical examination

On Saturday night, a fleet of Miami-Dade Police cruisers were parked on the left shoulder, near the suspects car, as some officers re-fueled the squad cars for the long drive back to South Florida.

Officials later identified him as Michael Sardinas of Hollywood, Florida. Sardinas, who had been on a felony release program and was listed as a 'high-risk sex offender'.

His father Patricio Sardinas said he was working to stay on the straight and narrow after serving time in prison for sexual battery.

He told 7 News Miami: Hes a mechanic like his father. He had a job to start on Monday. He was going to start a new job.

The family said Sardinas was at their home in Florida City celebrating his birthday a day earlier when he left to drop off his stepbrother at work.

Sardinas father Patricio (right) and stepmother Martha (left) said Michael ran from cops because he did not want to go back to prison after serving time for sexual battery

On the way there, police said Sardinas was involved in a traffic crash on US Route One and left the scene. His family insisted that the crash was minor.

They said that his fear of returning to prison led him to flee from the scene and even fire at officers as they pursued him from Miami-Dade to Martin County.

After officers performed a pit manoeuvre to stop him and Sardinas shot and killed himself.

Patricio Sardinas said his son told him that he'd rather die than go back to prison. His stepmother Martha Sardinas called the incident 'suicide by cop'.

Sardinas' father Patricio said his son ran because he did not want to go back to prison

'I know that he put a lot of lives in danger. Any time you go into a high speed pursuit you got people that are bound to get hurt.

You know, I do apologize for that, Patricio Sardinas said.

Officers found two semi-automatic pistols inside the suspects Chevy.

Martin County Sheriffs Office deputies shut down all northbound lanes near the Indiantown Road exit and continue to divert traffic.

They urged drivers to avoid the area and seek alternate routes. As of 11 pm, the northbound lanes remained closed to traffic.

Authorities in Palm Beach had closed the Turnpike in both directions at the Okeechobee Boulevard exit but have since reopened to roadway.

Twitter users posted video of the pursuit, as Miami-Dade Police and Florida Highway Patrol zoomed by at a high rate of speed.

Units from Miami-Dade Police, Florida Highway Patrol, Broward Sheriffs Office, Palm Beach Sheriffs Office and Martin County Sheriffs Office pursued the Chevy northbound.Jesus Montenegro-Posada, 35, also known as Melo, died in the early hours of Sunday morning

A drag racer died in a horror crash in the early hours of Sunday morning after filming his final minutes onInstagram.

Jesus Montenegro-Posada, 35, also known as Melo, died after wrapping his 1997 Honda Civic around a telephone pole in Queens, New York, during a race.

After slamming into the pole, the vehicle spun into the air and came apart before landing in a mangled heap with Posada still inside it, according to witnesses.

He was racing another car at the time but no more details have yet emerged.

Posada was well known in the underground racing community because of his ability to tune cars.

Shortly before he died, a video was uploaded to his Instagram story which showed two vehicles revving and speeding off.

It is unclear if the footage, which was obtained by The New York Post, showed him or if it was of a previous race.

This was what was left of the 35-year-old's 1997 Honda Civic after he crashed it into a telephone pole while racing in Sunnyside, Queens, on Sunday morning. Posada was killed instantly as the car hit the pole then split in to pieces

Parts of the car went flying over the street while he was stuck in the driver's seat at around 1am on Sunday

Posada was racing another driver at the time. Members of the racing world said he was talented and known for his ability to tune Hondas

The front half of the car was cleanly split off from the rest of it on impact. Police have not said how fast they think he was going at the time

The accident is being investigated by the NYPD. So far, no arrests have been made in connection to it.

Local officials however said it was indicative of the dangerous drag racing culture which is a problem for the area.

'We know how dangerous it is, and last night we saw how deadly it is.

Posada uploaded a video of cars racing to his Instagram story moments before he participated in the crash which claimed his life

'It's not going to stop, I fear, even with this tragic crash, unless measures are taken,' Queens City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer told NY 1.

Posada was an immigrant from Colombia.

Since his death, members of the drag racing community have paid tribute to him on social media and on a GoFundMe page set up to support his family.

They praised his talents and said he was a 'very intelligent', 'amazing' guy.Kerryn Phelps has refused to concede whether the lack of support from Malcolm Turnbull for Liberal candidate Dave Sharma played a role in her likely by-election win.

The doctor appeared on ABC's Q&A on Monday night in her first studio audience appearance since Saturday's by-election in the Sydney eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth.

The independent has all but secured the previously safe Liberal seat after a 19 per cent swing against the government, but will need to wait for final postal votes for confirmation.

Dr Phelps reiterated her stance on offshore detention and climate change - but was tight-lipped when pressed by host Tony Jones about former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Kerryn Phelps refused to answer questions about Malcolm Turnbull's lack of support for her Liberal opponent

Dr Phelps looked uncomfortable when quizzed whether she would have won had Mr Turnbull had expressed his direct support for Mr Sharma.

'Look, I don't want to get too deeply into the analytics,' Dr Phelps said.

'I've been focusing on the issues that are important to the people in Wentworth and to the people of Australia. We've got a bright future ahead of us as Australians, if we get this right.'

Mr Turnbull has been in missing in action since he sparked the by-election when he abruptly quit politics in late August after being unceremoniously ousted as prime minister.

His departure from politics hurt the party he once led, causing Mr Sharma to suffer a 19 per cent swing against him on primary votes, giving Dr Phelps a narrow 51 to 49 per cent lead after preferences.

Dr Phelps said people were more interested in seeing action on climate change, the treatment of asylum seekers, the future of the ABC and a national integrity commission.

Political commentators believe Liberal candidate David Sharma (pictured) would have won the Wentworth by-election if he had more support from the former prime minister

Dr Phelps looked flustered when show host Tony Jones pressed her again for an answer.

'I don't know. I can't really say. I mean, there was a lot of anger about the way Malcolm Turnbull was treated,' she said.

'He was a popular local member. A lot of people were disturbed about the way he was removed and that was certainly a big factor. Whether he had come back in and said all is forgiven and everything is fine, I think that's just fantasy.'

Nor would fellow panellist and New South Wales Liberal Party president Philip Ruddock be drawn into the debate.

'My view is he has to make his own judgement as to what he thinks was appropriate in all the circumstances,' the former immigration minister said.

'The only comment I would make is that I think we do in Australia treat former PMs appallingly.'

Despite the lack of support from the former prime minister, Mr Shama publicly paid tribute to Mr Turnbull when he conceded defeat on Saturday night.Barclays banker Nilesh Sheth who helped a hacking gang launder more than 16million

A Barclays banker who set up hundreds of bogus accounts to help a hacking gang launder more than 16million has been ordered to pay back just 62,000.

Nilesh Sheth, 54, used fake documents to set up 400 mule accounts for a network of cyber bandits while he worked as a personal banking manager.

He started the scam after criminals tempted him with wads of cash, which he stuffed behind sofa cushions and under the kitchen sink at his 850,000 home.

Seth used his Barclays office to meet with Romanian fraudster Iurie Mereacre, 38, an illegal immigrant who has been thrown out of the country five times.

He also held meetings there with Mereacre's associates Ryingota Gincota, 29, Lurie Bivol, 37, and Serghei Bivol, 32.

The gang moved money between the fake accounts to confuse investigators before it was transferred to crooks overseas.

Sheth, of Redwoods Close, Buckhurst Hill, Essex, admitted money laundering and possessing criminal property and was jailed for four years last November.

He returned to the Old Bailey today for a brief hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).

Sheth was spotted meeting up with the men in restaurants and car parks while he was being tracked by the National Crime Agency.

When officers raided his luxurious home in Essex on November 3, 2016, they found 16,000 in cash and nine mobile phones.

They searched Mereacres home in Woodford Green on the same day and discovered a hand-written step-by-step guide to money laundering and banking documents.

That enabled the group to access the mule accounts.

Sheth (left) meeting Romanian fraudster Iurie Mereacre, 38, an illegal immigrant who has been thrown out of the country five times

Gang members: Ryingota Gincota, 29, and Serghei Bivol, 32, who were jailed last year

The gang siphoned more than 16m to hackers based in Eastern Europe between 2013 and 2016, the Old Bailey heard.

Prosecutor Paul Cavin described their actions as a well organised, pre-meditated planned affair over a sustained period of time.

The Common Serjeant of London, Judge Richard Marks, QC, ordered Sheth pay 62,000 within three months or serve an extra year in jail.

He was the only gang member to face a confiscation hearing today.

Mereacre, of Woodford Green, east London, was jailed for 10 years in November 2017.

Iurie Bivol, from Moldova, was jailed for seven years, Serghei Bivol was jailed for three-and-a-half years and Gincota was jailed for three years and eight months.

Money recovered from Sheth's 850,000 home. He had been stuffing cash behind sofa cushions and under the kitchen sink

Sentencing the gang last year Judge Christopher Moss QC had said the fraud amounted to a wholesale attack on the integrity of the banking system.

He told Sheth: Although you cannot explain your involvement, I can only assume that you did so through greed.

The NCA said Barclays had worked closely with them on the investigation.

Mike Hulett, head of operations at the NCAs National Cyber Crime Unit, said: Sheth abused his position of trust at the bank.

Knowingly opening sham accounts for the network, providing a vital service which enabled them to launder 16 million worth of stolen cash.A woman passing by a park in northern Argentina found seven dead dogs, including two that were pregnant, hanging from a tree.

The gruesome discovery was made by Bravo Trotta and her friend who were walking near a field in the city of Santiago del Estero on Sunday.

Nearby, the pair found four live puppies - abandoned and trying to fend for themselves, Cronica reported.

Bravo Trotta and a male friend were walking near a park in Argentina when they came across seven dead dogs, including two that were pregnant (one pictured)

The gruesome site had seven dead dogs hanging from a tree and four puppies abandoned nearby

Bravo Trotta is looking to find homes for one of the four pups she found at the Argentina park

The pair alerted local police before they both made an attempt at reviving the pregnant dogs.

'What harm could these animals do?' Trotta wrote via her Facebook page, which contained the graphic images of the dogs.

The animal-loving Trotta did manage to rescue four puppies that were roaming around the horrific site.

Eduardo Groh Riemersma, an animal rights activist who manages a refuge center for dogs, told DailyMail.com he has offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of individual[s] involved in the heinous act.

Bravo Tratto shows off two of the four pups on Sunday she rescued at park in Argentina where she discovered two pregnant dogs hanging dead from a tree

A puppy was found roaming near the site where two pregnant dogs were found hung dead from a tree at a park in northern Argentina

A man at a park in northern Argentina is pictured trying to lower to the ground one of two dogs found hanging dead from a tree on Sunday

'We came back with 4 puppies that would surely have encountered the same fate,' Trotta said.

She also added she was looking for anyone willing to take in the friendly pooches.

'I need a definitive home or shelter for these babies, please,' Trotta implored.

'I ask because I don't have a place for them. I have eight big dogs and I don't have any room.'Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed spoke to Jamal Khashoggi by phone to ask him to return to Riyadh shortly before the writer was murdered by a hit squad, a Turkish news outlet has claimed.

Khashoggi, 59, was reportedly arrested by a 15-strong team of Saudi officials soon after entering the embassy building in Istanbul on October 2.

According to the Turkish news website Yeni Safak, he then spoke on the phone to 33-year-old Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who tried to convince the journalist to return to the kingdom.

The website claims that he refused, fearing he would be arrested and killed in Saudi Arabia. After this, it is claimed, Khashoggi was murdered in the consulate.

Yeni Safak is the same news site that earlier reported claims Khashoggi was tortured and cut into pieces in the building.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed phoned Jamal Khashoggi (pictured) at the consulate in Turkey to ask him to return to Riyadh shortly before he was murdered by a hit squad, a Turkish news outlet has claimed

Trump has since tried to downplay Kushner and the prince's friendship, telling reporters on Saturday that they are just 'two young guys' who are the 'same age'

A CCTV image purportedly showing Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi and his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz at an apartment building in Istanbul, Turkey, just hours before his death in the Saudi Arabian Consulate

Today, the website also reported that a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage made four calls to the royal's office from the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul the day Jamal Khashoggi was killed there.

Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb made the calls to Bader al-Asaker, the head of the Crown Prince's office with another going to the United States, the news outlet claimed.

It comes after it emerged that both Saudi King Salman and his son had called Jamal Khashoggi's eldest son to express their condolences over the journalist's death.

The rulers phoned Saleh Khashoggi more than two weeks after his father went missing having entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get papers so he could marry his Turkish fiancee.

Saudi Arabia only admitted the Washington Post journalist was dead after weeks of denying anything to do with his disappearance.

The government has claimed that Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Saudi rulers, died during a fistfight in the consulate. Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has since admitted the writer was murdered but that the killing was a 'tremendous mistake' by a 'rogue operation'.

US President Donald Trump has defended Prince Mohammed's leadership and praised him for having 'very good control'  but added in an interview: 'Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies. Their stories are all over the place.'

More than two weeks after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to his family. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs released this official image to announce the news

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city today. Pictured is the man thought to have dumped the car

Prime Minister Theresa May pictured in parliament today where she said: 'I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms. We must get to the truth of what happened.'

Saudia Arabia's royal court put out an official image, featuring both King Salman and Prince Mohammed's pictures, to announce the phone call to Saleh.

'The leadership extends condolences to the family of Jamal Khashoggi,' the headline of the image read.

'Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud extends condolences to the family and relatives of Jamal Khashoggi.'

'Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Vice President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Defense, has made a phone call with Saleh Khashoggi, in which he offers condolences to him and his family on the death of Jamal Khashoggi.'

The image comes as it was revealed that Prince Mohammed was reportedly shocked by the backlash against Khashoggi's murder and Saudi Arabia's response to it.

His royal court was 'relaxed' when news of Khashoggi's disappearance first broke, a source close to Saudi Arabia's royal family told the Wall Street Journal.

'Then it snowballed. When things started heated up in the States, everybody started getting worried,' the source added.

And no one was reportedly more surprised than the Crown Prince, who couldn't see why the story was 'such a big deal'.

'He was really shocked that there was such a big reaction to it,' added another source close to the royal court.

Prince Mohammed (pictured with Donald Trump in March) has continued to deny any knowledge over the journalist's murder and continues to receive support from Trump

Merkel: No arms for Riyadh while questions remain over killing Germany will not export arms to Saudi Arabia while the current uncertainty over the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi persists, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday. Campaigning for her party in a regional election, Merkel repeated to a news conference her earlier condemnation of Khashoggi's killing, which Saudi Arabia admitted had taken place inside its consulate in Istanbul. 'First, we condemn this act in the strongest terms,' she said. 'Second, there is an urgent need to clarify what happened - we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account ... As far as arms exports are concerned, those can't take place in the current circumstances.' Today, a top German official pressed for a joint EU position on Saudi Arabia after Berlin backed a freeze on arms exports to the kingdom. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined Monday its position that 'we won't at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened.' Altmaier told ZDF television that a joint EU position is needed 'because only if all European countries agree, this will make an impression on the government in Riyadh.' He said 'it will have no positive consequences if we, as we are doing, currently don't pursue our arms exports if at the same time other countries fill this gap.' Advertisement

'He feels betrayed by the West. He said he will never forget how people turned against him before evidence was produced.'

The furor surrounding Khashoggi's death has showed no signs of slowing down since he first vanished at the beginning of the month.

After weeks of denying they knew anything about Khashoggi's disappearance, the Saudi government confirmed he was dead.

On Sunday a Saudi official claimed that Khashoggi was killed by 'rogue' operatives who placed him 'in a chokehold position' to prevent him from leaving the consulate and calling for help.

The official said Mr Khashoggi after resisting attempts to return him to Saudi Arabia before his body was rolled in a rug and given to a local 'co-operator' to dispose of.

Eighteen men have since been detained by the government in connection with Khashoggi's murder.

Prince Mohammed was reportedly so astounded by the international response to Khashoggi that he even reached out to Jared Kushner.

He reportedly called Kushner on October 10 - eight days after Khashoggi disappeared - and asked him 'why the outrage', according to sources who were briefed on the phone conversation.

Kushner and National Security Adviser John Bolton then reportedly told the prince that he needed to 'get to the bottom of Mr Khashoggi's disappearance fast'.

Trump has since tried to downplay Kushner and the prince's friendship, telling reporters on Saturday that they are just 'two young guys' who are the 'same age'.

Prince Mohammed was reportedly so astounded by the response to the story that he called up Jared Kushner days after Khashoggi disappeared. They are pictured here together with Trump in May 2017

He also claimed that Kushner, 37, barely knows the 33-year-old prince, even though the two men have had several one-on-one meetings and are reported to communicate with each other via WhatsApp - a private messaging system.

Prince Mohammed and Kushner held their first White House meeting in March 2017. They have had additional face-to-face meetings at least four more times and are said to have bonded given their close ages and powerful positions within their families.

'They're two young guys. Jared doesn't know him well or anything. They are just two young people. They are the same age. They like each other, I believe,' the president told The Washington Post.

But behind closed doors, sources said Trump is frustrated that his son-in-law's close relationship with the Crown Prince has become a liability in the international crisis.

Meanwhile Kushner has been urging the president to stand by the prince and argues that he can survive this scandal just as he has with others in the past, according to The New York Times.

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, who was a fierce critic of his policies

And Trump seems to be listening to his son-in-law.

Even as he criticized Saudi Arabia's explanation for Khashoggi's death on Saturday, the president had no harsh words for the Crown Prince.

'Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies. Their stories are all over the place,' Trump told the Washington Post on Saturday.

But in the same interview, Trump defended Prince Mohammed's leadership and praised him for having 'very good control'.

He went on to say he had seen no evidence that the Crown Prince ordered, or even knew about, the killing of Khashoggi.

'Nobody has told me he's responsible. Nobody has told me he's not responsible. We haven't reached that point. I haven't heard either way,' Trump said.

'There is a possibility he found out about it afterward. It could be something in the building went badly awry. It could be that's when he found about it. He could have known they were bringing him back to Saudi Arabia.'

It comes as top US lawmakers turned their ire on the Crown Prince, saying they believed he ordered the killing of the Saudi journalist earlier this month.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir (pictured) insisted on Sunday that Prince Mohammed was 'not aware' of the killing and that the regime was still working on finding the body

An activist dressed as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman marches in front the White House during a demonstration calling for sanctions against Saudi Arabia on Friday

'Do I think he did it? Yes, I think he did it,' Republican Senator Bob Corker, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview with CNN.

Corker, who received a classified briefing on the case on Friday, said he was waiting for investigations to be completed and hoped that Turkey would share any audio tapes of the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.

Two members of the royal family claim that Prince Khalid al Faisal, an envoy of King Salman, has access to evidence that disproves Saudi Arabia's current story of how Khashoggi was killed.

They claim Prince Khalid al Faisal has an audio recording that proves Khashoggi was drugged, killed, and dismembered within minutes of walking into the consulate.

'The audio does not have this nonsense about a fight that broke after an argument,' one royal member told the Wall Street Journal.

'This is not what Khalid told the king and his friends. This is absolutely rubbish.'

CCTV video shows a black van in front of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, the day that Khashoggi was murdered

A journalist shoots video behind barriers blocking the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed

Corker made it clear that he believed the murder was directed by Prince Mohammed.

'Let's let this play out, but my guess is that at the end of the day the United States and the rest of the world will believe fully that he did it,' Corker told CNN.

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, a fierce critic of his policies.

His foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, went on US television to insist that the killing was a mistake, and sought to shield the powerful prince from the widening crisis.

'He was killed in the consulate. We don't know in terms of details how. We don't know where the body is,' the foreign minister told Fox News on Sunday.

'This was an operation that was a rogue operation, this was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding their authorities and responsibilities they had.'

'They made a mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it.'

Despite the controversy, Saudi Arabia's King Salman (pictured) granted his heir new powers over Saudi Arabia's intelligence bodies on Saturday

'We are determined to uncover every stone. We are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder.'

On Saturday, Trump joined European leaders in pushing Saudi Arabia for more answers after Riyadh changed its story and acknowledged that the journalist died at the consulate.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is traveling in the region, said on Sunday the Saudi explanation was a 'good first step but not enough'.

He said it was premature to discuss sanctions, in line with Trump administration efforts to censure a killing that has drawn international outrage while also protecting relations with the Saudis.

Despite the international controversy, Prince Mohammed isn't in danger of losing power anytime soon.

King Salman granted his heir new powers over Saudi Arabia's intelligence bodies on Saturday and sources say Prince Mohammed's power remains 'largely unchecked'.

Saudi hitman 'dressed in victim's clothes and glasses to pretend he'd left embassy'

By Larisa Brown, Middle East Correspondent for the Daily Mail

One of the Saudi hitmen dressed up in Jamal Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate, according to the country's latest explanation.

A senior official said operative Mustafa Madani also wore the 59-year-old's glasses and Apple watch and left through the back door.

He said the journalist had been placed in a chokehold during which he accidentally died  and then his body was smuggled out of the building in a rolled-up carpet.

On Friday the kingdom admitted Mr Khashoggi was dead after repeatedly claiming the high-profile critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had walked out of the consulate unharmed.

It said the journalist was killed in a 'fist fight' and that the government had fired five top officials and arrested 18 others as a result of the initial investigation.

CCTV footage shows journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his fiancee Hatice Cengiz together just hours before his death on October 2

Yesterday Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News: 'Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this.' He added: 'We don't know where the body is.'

It came after a senior Saudi official, who requested anonymity, contradicted previous explanations. He said the team of 15 Saudis sent to confront Mr Khashoggi on October 2 had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped, and then killed him in a chokehold when he resisted.

Madani then donned Mr Khashoggi's clothes, glasses and Apple watch before leaving the building to make it look like the journalist had left, it was claimed.

The body was then rolled up in a rug, taken out in a consular vehicle and given to a 'local co-operator' for disposal, he added. Forensic expert Salah Tubaigy tried to remove any trace of the incident, the official said.

Madani later went to the Sultanahmet district where he disposed of Mr Khashoggi's belongings, it was claimed. Asked about claims the journalist had been tortured and beheaded, the official said preliminary results of the investigation did not suggest so.

The government wanted to convince Mr Khashoggi, who moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views, to return to the kingdom as part of a campaign to prevent dissidents from being recruited by Saudi Arabia's enemies, the official said.

Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, (pictured) said he had handed her his two mobile phones and left instructions that she should wait for him and call an aide to Turkey's president if he did not reappear

But things soon went wrong as the team overstepped their orders and quickly employed violence, he added.

It was claimed Mr Khashoggi told one of the men, Maher Mutreb, that he was violating diplomatic norms and said: 'What are you going to do with me? Do you intend to kidnap me?' Mutreb replied, 'Yes, we will drug you and kidnap you,' in what the official said was an attempt at intimidation that violated the mission's objective. When Mr Khashoggi raised his voice, the team panicked. They moved to restrain him, placing him in a chokehold and covering his mouth, according to the government's account.

'They tried to prevent him from shouting but he died,' the official said. 'The intention was not to kill him.'

Asked if the team had smothered Mr Khashoggi, the official explained: 'If you put someone of Jamal's age in this position, he would probably die.'

The official said the team then wrote a false report for superiors saying they had allowed Mr Khashoggi to leave once he warned that Turkish authorities could get involved.

The Saudi authorities initially dismissed reports that Mr Khashoggi had gone missing inside the consulate as false and said he had left the building soon after entering. When the Press reported a few days later that he had been killed there, they called the accusations 'baseless'.

Turkish officials believe the Saudis may have dumped his remains in Belgrad Forest near Istanbul, and at a rural location near the city of Yalova, 55 miles south of Istanbul.

Yesterday Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would reveal the 'naked truth' about the killing at a briefing tomorrow.A senior murder detective racially abused a cleaner and threatened to urinate on the floor when he was told the toilets at a London train station were closed for cleaning at 1am, a disciplinary tribunal was told.

Detective Chief Inspector Glen Lloyd, from the Metropolitan Police Homicide and Major Crime Command, allegedly called Abdi Yare a 'f***ing n*****' during an argument outside the toilets at St Pancras station.

A misconduct hearing was told Mr Yare, from Somalia, was left 'scared for his life' when DCI Lloyd threatened to 'smash' him during the dispute.

The detective has accepted there was a dispute but denies using racist language. His lawyer suggested the cleaner made up the claims to cover-up his own aggressive behaviour.

A senior police officer is accused of racially abusing a cleaner at St Pancras station (pictured)

The officer, who 'has a significant amount of experience and expertise in respect of hate crime and diversity', denies the claim.

A disciplinary hearing was told the toilets were closed for cleaning when off-duty DCI Lloyd entered at around 1am on May 11, 2017 and ignored barriers which said the toilets were closed.

Giving evidence, Mr Yare said: 'I told him in a polite way that you can see the place is closed, there's a barrier in front of it, you're a big man, wait and use this other toilet.'

He added: 'He said to me "n*****, f***ing let me use the urinal or otherwise I will urinate on the floor".'

DCI Lloyd is also alleged to have called Mr Yare a 'n***** c**t' and insulted the cleaner's family.

Mr Yare added: 'He said I will smash you on the wall. I was scared for my life.'

The row broke out after DCI arrived at the station around 1am on a night in May this year

Representing DCI Lloyd, Heather Oliver asked Mr Yare if he made the allegation of racial abuse 'to divert attention' from his own aggressive behaviour.

The cleaner denied the allegation was made up.

He said: 'He's repeating the word n****r to me two or three times. It bothers me even now.'

Mr Berry told the panel DCI Lloyd did not deny there was a confrontation about him using the closed toilet, but said he was not racist.

He said: 'What's in dispute is the language that was used by DCI Lloyd to Mr Yare.'

Mr Berry said DCI Lloyd was 'of good character', adding: 'He has a significant amount of experience and expertise in respect of hate crime and diversity.'

The tribunal continues.The website for Saudi Arabia's 'Davos in the desert' summit was hacked on Monday to show Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as an ISIS executioner preparing to behead Jamal Khashoggi.

The summit, due to begin in Riyadh on Tuesday, has been overshadowed by growing global outrage over the murder of Khashoggi inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

A wave of corporate giants and policymakers have distanced themselves from the Future Investment Initiative over the killing of the dissident journalist.

Dozens of executives - from bankers JP Morgan to carmaker Ford and ride-hailing app Uber - scrapped plans to attend, prompting organisers to take down a list of speakers from its website.

Now, in further embarrassment to the regime, the summit's website was infiltrated by hackers accusing the regime of financing terrorism on Monday.

The website for Saudi Arabia's 'Davos in the desert' summit was hacked on Monday to show Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appearing to behead Jamal Khashoggi.

Hackers edited the event's poster to show the kingdom's powerful crown prince as an ISIS executioner wielding a bloody sword with Khashoggi kneeling before him.

The hackers wrote underneath the image: 'For the sake of security of children worldwide, we urge all countries to put sanction [sic] on the Saudi regime.'

'The regime, aligned with the United States, must be kept responsible for its barbaric and inhuman action, such as killing its own citizen Jamal Khashoggi and thousands of innocent people in Yemen.

'The medieval Saudi regime is one of the sources for #Terrorism_Financing in the world.'

The hackers also published what they purport is a list of 'a thousand terrorists and spies of the Saudi Arabia regime who perform malicious activities around the world' - complete with their phone numbers and email addresses.

The summit's website has since been taken down.

Top executives and officials have distanced themselves from the Future Investment Initiative over the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi (pictured)

The Future Investment Initiative was intended to draw leading investors who could help underwrite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's ambitious plans to revamp the economy. But after the wave of cancellations, it could instead highlight the kingdom's growing isolation and the damage inflicted on the prince's reputation - as well as potentially his political future.

The forum is the brainchild of the crown prince, whose lofty vision for the Saudi economy hinges on his ability to attract foreign investments and create enough jobs for the millions of young Saudis who will be entering the workforce in the coming years.

The prince, who is set to inherit the throne from his father, faces steep challenges. More than 4.5 million new working-age Saudis will be searching for jobs by 2030.

One estimate from consultancy McKinsey and Co. says the kingdom needs some $4 trillion in investment to create as many as 6 million new Saudi jobs by then. That's almost three times as many jobs as Saudi Arabia created in the decade leading up to 2013, when oil prices soared.

Without a comprehensive economic overhaul underpinned by trillions of dollars in investments, the unemployment rate for Saudi nationals could exceed 20 percent, McKinsey has warned.

As unemployment rises, household income would fall- two key triggers that contributed to public fury and revolts in other Arab countries nearly eight years ago.

Unemployment in Saudi Arabia has edged up this year to 12.8 percent. Currently, a third of Saudis seeking employment are between 25 and 29 years old. That number is expected to grow in coming years with half the population under 25.

Portraits of Saudi King Salman (R) and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) are displayed in Riyadh one day before the Future Investment Initiative FII conference

Saudi journalists collect their press badges at the press centre of the Future Investment Initiative

Saudi Arabia finally admitted on Saturday Khashoggi was killed in their Istanbul consulate after two weeks of near silence.

But the kingdom's explanations are seen by friends and foes alike as contradictory and evasive.

With reports circulating of the writer's torture and killing in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, executives who have been doing business with Saudi Arabia for years are in damage control mode.

What was at first a trickle of cancellations from the event the kingdom had hoped to use to boost its global image later snowballed.

The chief executive of German industrial conglomerate Siemens Joe Kaeser was the latest among dozens of global executives to withdraw from the summit, hosted by the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund.

EXECUTIVES AND OFFICIALS WHO DROPPED OUT OF SUMMIT Executives and officials who have canceled their attendance at the event: -U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; -JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; -Blackrock CEO Larry Fink; -MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga; -HSBC CEO John Flint; -Standard Chartered CEO William Winters; -London Stock Exchange CEO David Schwimmer; -Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford; -Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi; -Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong; -New York Times Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin; -Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene; -Former AOL CEO Steve Case; -International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde; -Virgin Group founder Richard Branson; -Thrive CEO Arianna Huffington; -World Bank President Jim Yong Kim; -French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire; -Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra; -Britain's trade minister, Liam Fox; --- Companies that withdrew as media partners to the conference: -New York Times; -Financial Times; -CNN; -Bloomberg; --- Other organizations that have also cut ties with the Saudis in the wake of the Khashoggi case: -The Glover Park Group, The Harbour Group: Washington lobbying firms no longer representing Saudi Arabia; -Middle East Institute: Washington think tank to no longer take Saudi donations; Source: AP Advertisement

'It's the cleanest decision but not the most courageous one,' Kaeser wrote in a post on social network LinkedIn of his choice not to attend FII.

'For now, the truth must be found and justice must be served.'

Ministers from the United States, Britain and France, which have huge defence deals at stake with Saudi Arabia, have already pulled out of the summit.

On Saturday, Australia withdrew its representatives, saying it was 'no longer appropriate' to attend, due to the Khashoggi affair.

Media powerhouses like Bloomberg, CNN and the Financial Times have also scrapped plans to attend.

But many Western firms have too much at stake to abandon the Arab world's biggest economy, and some are preparing to send lower-level executives to the summit.

Senior investment bankers from HSBC and Credit Suisse are planning to attend the conference even though their chief executives have cancelled their attendance, Bloomberg News reported.

Companies from China and Russia have shown little interest in withdrawing from the event, an organiser said.

Although several Western leaders like International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have pulled out.

But Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan will attend the forum as Islamabad continues to seek funding to plug its deteriorating finances.

Khan left for Saudi Arabia as planned on Monday to attend the investment conference boycotted by other leaders.

He told an interviewer before leaving he was concerned at Khashoggi's death, but could not skip the conference because 'we're desperate' for possible Saudi loans to shore up Pakistan's economy.

On Saturday, organisers said more than 120 speakers and moderators will participate. Last Monday, they had listed more than 150 speakers.

Organisers have taken down a list of speakers from its website and on Monday refused to confirm the number of attendees.

One government source said the list of speakers and moderators was not yet finalised as many continued to drop out at a 'rapid pace'.

The Future Investment Initiative was set up last year as a kind of 'Davos in the Desert' for the world's business elite to network, though it has no ties to the annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos.

The event seeks to project the historically insular kingdom as a lucrative business destination, in a bid to diversify its oil-reliant economy and set the stage for new ventures and multi-billion dollar contracts.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been trying to refocus the Saudi economy away from its traditional reliance on oil by investing in more innovative industries, including big firms like Uber.

At last year's inaugural FII - a star-studded event at Riyadh's glittering Ritz-Carlton hotel - the prince was lionised as a visionary as he wowed investors with talking robots and plans for a futuristic mega-city called NEOM.

Billed last year as an economic coming-out party for the conservative petro-state, the FII has now come to symbolise global outrage over the silencing of critics.

The scale of the executives' cancelations, however, had raised questions whether the event would go ahead - and how that could affect longer-term business relations with Saudi Arabia.

The Crown Prince (pictured), widely known as MBS, faces what the risk consultancy Eurasia Group calls 'an acute public relations crisis'

The prince, widely known as MBS, faces what the risk consultancy Eurasia Group calls 'an acute public relations crisis'.

Turkey could cast a fresh pall on the already downgraded summit after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to reveal the 'naked truth' about the case on Tuesday.

In the past weeks, Turkish media and officials speaking to international media have said audio recordings prove Khashoggi was tortured before being decapitated although no concrete evidence of their existence have emerged.

Khashoggi, who had criticised Prince Mohammed, was last seen walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

After weeks of vehement denials, the kingdom's assertion on Saturday that the journalist was killed in a 'brawl and fist fight' inside the diplomatic comppound - without revealing the whereabouts of his body - was met with scepticism around the world.Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law who serves as a senior White House adviser, dodged questions on journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's role in the murder on Monday.

'We're more in the fact-finding phase, and we're obviously getting as many fact as we can from the different places. And then we'll determine which facts are credible,' Kushner said at a CITIZEN by CNN event in New York City.

It was the first public remarks on the issue by Kushner, who has a close relationship with the crown prince and has been involved in the region's politics because of his work on the Middle East peace process.

But he brushed away a question on whether the U.S. can trust the Saudis to investigate themselves in the matter, saying once all the facts are in, they will 'determine what we want to believe.'

'We're getting facts in from multiple places. Once those facts come in, the Secretary of State will work with our national security team to help us determine what we want to believe,' Kushner noted.

He also defended Saudi Arabia as a strong ally to the United States in the Middle East, particularly in the fight on terrorism.

White House adviser Jared Kushner dodged questions on Saudi Arabia and its role in the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi

President Donald Trump, flanked by White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, meets with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh in May 2017.

'I'll also say that we have to be able to work with our allies,' Kushner said. 'And Saudi Arabia has been, I think, a very strong ally.'

He noted the administration is approaching the situation with 'our eyes wide open.'

'The Middle East is a rough place. It's been a rough place for a very long time,' he said. 'We have to be able to pursue our strategic objectives. But we also have to deal with what is obviously a terrible situation.'

But Kushner wasn't pressed by moderator Van Jones, a former Obama White House staffer turned CNN commentator, on any details about the location of Khashoggi's body or whether the crown prince lied to him.

He was asked if he worried the crown prince was deceiving him.

'I see things that are deceptive every day,' Kushner replied. 'I see them in the Middle East. I see them in Washington. Every day we deal with different people who are trying to deceive us in different way.'

Kushner, who has a close friendship with MBS - the Saudi crown prince is known by his initials - did say he advised him to be transparent on the investigation the Kingdom is conducting.

'Just to be transparent  to be fully transparent. The world is watching. This is a very very serious allegation,' he said is the advice he gave MBS.

And he gave a simple 'we'll see' when asked if the prince will heed his words.

Kushner also down played his role in the administration's foreign policy - a move that follows President Trump's attempt to down play the relationship between his son-in-law and Saudi prince.

'I don't have the Middle East,' Kushner said of his White House portfolio. 'I was given the Middle East peace process.'

He punted most of the administration's foreign policy prowess in that region to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.N Ambassador Nikki Haley.

'I have one small component of it,' he said.

Kushner and MBS became close when the president's son-in-law was working on the Middle East peace process and courted the crown prince in the hopes of getting Saudi backing for his plan.

Kushner was also key in arranging Trump's first foreign visit at president, which took place in May 2017 in Riyadh, where the president was welcomed with all extravagant displays of royal pageantry.

And Kushner visited Saudi Arabia on his own, including during a tour of the Gulf in June. MBS, in return has visited the White House, where's he had lunch with Kushner and the president.

Jared Kushner was key to Trump's first foreign visit as president, which took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in May 2017

Saudi Arabia admitted journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in their consulate but the details of the story have changed

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's role in Khashoggi is being questioned

Trump down played their friendship over the weekend.

'They're two young guys. Jared doesn't know him well or anything. They are just two young people. They are the same age. They like each other, I believe,' the president told The Washington Post.

Kushner is 37 and MBS is 33.

Saudi Arabia has admitted Khashoggi, the dissident writer who worked for The Washington Post, died in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul after days of denial.

Khashoggi entered the consulate on Oct. 2 and was never seen again.

But the details of what happened since he walked into the building have changed repeatedly.

Originally, Saudi officials said Khashoggi had left the consulate but later back tracked and admitted he died - although they claimed it happened in fist fight.

Turkish intelligence officials, however, said the journalist was tortured, killed and dismembered by an expert brought in by the Saudis.

The Kingdom has arrested 15 individuals in the matter and is still investigating.

Officials are questioning the versions of the story and the crown prince's role in the matter. Many intelligence officials believe Khashoggi could not have been murdered without MSB's knowledge.

The Kingdom has found itself at the epicenter of an international crisis on the issue as it launches its investigation, which MBS is leading.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News his death was the role of a 'rogue' operation and officials do not know where Khashoggi's body is.

'This was an operation that was a rogue operation. This was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had. They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it,' al-Jubeir said.

He claimed MBS had no prior knowledge of what would happen to Khashoggi when he entered the consulate to get the paperwork necessary to marry his Turkish fiance.

The White House has treaded carefully on the issue as international outrage against the Kingdom grows.

There are $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia on the table and Trump said last week he does not want to jeopardize jobs and business for Americans by punishing Saudi Arabia, if it was responsible, with sanctions that affect the purchase of weapons.A South African family living with albinism have spoken of how they are living in fear of persecution, following several gruesome murders of children with their condition earlier this year.

All five members of the Tyongose family have albinism, and father Themba, 54, reveals that even though South Africa is comparatively safe for people with the condition, they still suffer discrimination

Mr Tyongose lives with his wife Nokwanda, 35, and their three children Abongile, 15, Siphosethu, nine, and seven-year-old Linamandla, in a township outside Cape Town.

Themba Tyongose, 54, lives with wife Nokwanda, 35, and their three children Abongile, 15, Siphosethu, nine, and Linamandla, seven, near Cape Town, and they all have albinism

Rare condition: Siphosethu and Linamandla play with a rugby ball outside the family's house in the Khayelitsha township

Being different: Little Linamandla plays with one of her friends at the playground

He said that they have found happiness in Khayelitsha, said to be the biggest township in South Africa, in the face of adversity.

'I live a happy life in Cape Town because people here are more welcoming than other African countries, especially with the stories we hear from places like Tanzania.'

However, Mr Tyongose adds that people with albinism receive very little help from the South African authorities, and adds that 'there is more to be done by government.'

He said: 'For example if a child is born with albinism in a labour ward, nobody gives advise on what is supposed to be done.

'The only thing the midwife asks is "who else in the family looks like you".'

The photographs of the Tyongose family were taken last month, to mark Albinism Awareness Month in South Africa.

All together: Mr Tyongose reveals that people with albinism receive very little help from the South African government and don't get any advice on how to manage the condition

Family love: The two youngest children are seen having a laugh with their father while posing for the visiting photographer

Staying safe: The Tyongose children must cover up against the sun as their skin is sensitive

While persecution of people with albinism is more common in other sub-Saharan nations, there have been a number of murders of people with the condition in South Africa in recent years.

In early 2018, a 15-month old baby and a 13-year-old girl - both with albinism - were kidnapped and murdered by 'healers' in the eastern South African province of Mpumalanga.

Traditional beliefs and myths that albinism is a result of being cursed or possessed still lingers in some communities, and can result in discrimination or even physical violence of people with the condition.

Albinism is a rare and genetically inherited condition, which results in complete or partial absence of pigmentation in the hair, skin and eyes.

This leads not only to a change their appearance, but also makes them vulnerable to the sun's UV radiation which in turn leaves them more likely to develop skin cancer.

A lack of melanin also affects the eyesight, and many people with albinism are visually impaired or in some cases completely blind.This is the amazing moment a dog makes friends with a family of bears and playfully joins them for a walk.

Footage filmed on a drone captured the unlikely friendship as a Russian Laika dog joins the company of three brown bears near village of Ust-Kamchatsk in Russian region of Kamchatka.

The animated grey dog happily bounds alongside the bears as they make their way through a vast stretch of land.

A Russian Laika dog joins the company of three brown bears in Russian region of Kamchatka

The bears appear to be curious of the dog as they stop to examine the excitable creature

As they run along together the dog jumps up to them and tries to nibble at them them in a playful taunt.

At first the bears appear to be curious of the dog as they stop to examine the excitable creature.

At one point one of the bears stands on its hind legs to peer over the dog so it can take a proper look.

One of the bears can be seen rolling around with the dog in a playful embrace as it tries to chew its ear

But they soon become friends and one of the bears can be seen rolling around on the ground with the dog in a playful embrace as it tries to chew its ear.

The bear can be seen using its large paws to try and pin the dog down as it repeatedly jumps up and down on top of it.

The Laika dog continues to play follow the leader and hurriedly catches up with them as the bears amble on through the field.Philip Hammond (pictured today in Downing Street) is set to hike taxes on offshore gambling firms in next week's Budget as he scrambles to raise money

Philip Hammond is set to hike taxes on offshore gambling firms in next week's Budget as he scrambles to raise money.

The Chancellor is hoping to raise around a billion pounds through a new remote gaming duty. It would be paid by overseas firms which run online casino-type games.

Treasury gains will be limited by losses caused by a strict crackdown on fixed odds betting terminals in high street bookies. Maximum stakes have been cut from 100 to 2 meaning far lower revenues.

Mr Hammond could hike the remote gaming duty from 15 per cent to 25 per cent, the FT said.

Some bookmakers will be hit by both changes as they work in both jurisdictions, running high street shops and online games.

The report comes amid huge pressure on the Chancellor to turn the spending taps on next Monday after Theresa May vowed to end austerity at the Tory Party conference.

While the Government has already announced massive cash injections, including a pledge to boost NHS spending by 83.6bn over the next five years.

This spending commitment alone means that Mr Hammond must find 7bn next year, 11bn in 2020, 16bn in 2021, 21bn in 2022 and 28bn in 2023, according to analysis by The Times.

Whitehall sources told the newspaper the Treasury is starting out 100bn 'in the red' before this year's tax and spend statement.

The Chancellor is also facing widespread calls to find another 2bn to bail out the Government's under-fire Universal Credit roll out.

The flagship welfare reform has been widely criticised amid claims that some of Britain's poorest families will be left 2,400 a year worse off under the shake-up.

While growing fears that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal mean Mr Hammond is also under pressure to find more cash for no deal Brexit planning.

The Chancellor will unveil his yearly tax and spend plans next Monday - but while calls for extra cash for public services are mounting, tax rises which fall on individuals will be hugely unpopular with Tory backbenchers.

William Hill is one of several bookmakers to run an online casino (pictured) that is registered in Gibraltar and could be hit by higher offshore gambling taxes

And he received a welcome boost last week when official figures showed that Britain's public sector borrowing has fallen to its lowest rate since the financial meltdown of 2007.

The Office for National Statistics said the UK borrowed 4.1billion in September, some 0.8bn less than the same month a year ago.

This is the lowest rate for 11 years when Europe and America were plunged into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The PM used her conference speech in Birmingham earlier this month to announce that austerity will end after she has delivered Brexit as she insisted the Tories can spell out a positive domestic agenda and not just rein in spending.The four young Americans who died in a white water rafting accident during a bachelor party on Saturday have been pictured.

Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo and Andres Denis, all died after their raft flipped over on the Naranjo river shortly after 3pm.

It took rescue teams five hours to recover all of their bodies.

All four of the men were from Miami and were celebrating their friend Luis Beltran's bachelor party at the time. Local guide Kevin Thompson Reid also died.

Ernesto Sierra (left) and Andres Denis (right), two of the four American men killed in a white water rafting accident in Costa Rica on Saturday afternoon

Father-of-four Sergio Lopez (left) who was the groom's brother. Jorge Castro (right) was the fourth man who died

The four Miami men were part of a group of 14 which had been split into three rafts by their guides.

Their trip was delayed an hour by rain and wind on Saturday, but they were confident it would be safe when they got in the water.

Within minutes, all three rafts capsized in the overpowering currents.

Most of the men grabbed on to rocks to stop themselves from being carried away but the four who drowned could not fight strongly enough against the water.

Lorenzo, the groom's brother, was a father-of-four.

The others were young men who were about to embark on jobs after recently graduating from college, according to their relatives.

The men were part of a group of 14 who were in Costa Rica for Luis Beltran's bachelor party. Their full group is pictured before the tragedy. The groom survived

Now, the survivors from the bachelor party are fundraising to help their families deal with the cost of bringing their bodies home and laying them to rest.

Local Kevin Thompson Reid (pictured) also died

On a GoFundMe page set up by the group, they described fighting for their lives as the waters carried them out of their rafts.

'When we first arrived, it was windy and raining, and the professional tour guides advised that we wait a bit before going out on the water.

'Less than an hour later, we got the okay to head out, and the 14 of us separated onto 3 different rafts.

'Within five minutes of being out on the river, all three rafts capsized, and everyone ended up in the water.

'Everyone struggled to get back on the rafts, with some efforts being successful, but ultimately the rafts continued to capsize due to the immense current.

'Within minutes, all of us were careening down the river with life jackets and helmets just trying to stabilize and find something to hold on to.

Survivors are pictured after the men capsized. All 14 of them ended up in the water. The ten who survived clung to rocks to stop themselves from being dragged away. It took rescue teams five hours to find the victims' bodies

'Throughout the dangerous ride down the river, all of us struggled to stay above water, swallowing lots of it on the way down as our bodies ricocheted against the rocks in the water while struggling to survive.

'Most of us were ultimately able to grab hold of rocks or barriers in or around the water and await the rescue teams to get to us. Unfortunately, not all of us were so lucky,' the description said.

The page has raised $12,000 of its $100,000 target.

The rafting company involved has not been named but local police were seen raiding its offices in Quespos on Sunday.

At the time of the accident, there was a warning in place for possible flooding.

Costa Rica's president Carlos Alvarado Quesada expressed his sympathies for the victims' families on Twitter.

The police investigation into the accident continues.Advertisement

New Jersey's infamous Far Hills horse racing meet drew tens of thousands of raucous revelers at the weekend for its annual alcohol-fueled festivities.

The charity horse race, which marked its 98th year on Saturday, has become notorious for its booze-filled, drunken antics.

For the first time in the event's history, attendees were legally allowed to place bets.

But the drunken debauchery was as present as years gone by - even though some suggested it was slightly more tame than previous events.

Scroll down for video

New Jersey's infamous Far Hills horse racing meet drew tens of thousands of raucous revelers on Saturday for its annual alcohol-fueled festivities

The booze-filled antics were as present as years gone by with the event notoriously known for its drunken debauchery

Multiple women were spotted taking part on keg stand challenges as crowds of racegoers stood around chanting

Photos from the day show young adults chugging liquor through various mediums - including an ice luge

Police had promised to crack down on underage drinking this year with a multi-agency effort involving Falls Hills officers, New Jersey State Police and Somerset County Prosecutor's Office.

Some revelers were spotted receiving medical attention after passing out from the excessive alcohol consumption and partying, while others were visibly bloodied as they were taken into custody.

Authorities are still trying to pull together the exact number of arrests made on Saturday.

Droves of people arrived in SUVs and pickup trucks as they descended on the 230-acre Moorland Farm for the steeplechase race.

The alcohol was consumed in all ways imaginable - from beer cans, plastic cups and straight from the bottle to keg stands, ice luges and fancy beer bongs.

Multiple women were filmed carrying out keg stands as cheering crowds chanted around them.

A young woman chugs champagne from the bottle while attending the 98th Running of the Far Hills Race Meeting

Various ice luges were set up so revelers could drink hard liquor in front of cheering crowds

Majority of racegoers were spotted cradling bottles of hard liquor at the muddy event

A spectator laughs after jumping and breaking a table being used for drinking games on Saturday

The charity event often serves as a reunion day for college students, private school students and horse enthusiasts

Police promised to have a greater presence at this year's event but they have not been able to confirm how many arrests

Police were spotted speaking to a bloodied racegoer on Saturday as they drunken antics escalated

Members of a medical team assist a spectator who appears to have passed out at the races

A spectator assists a woman wearing a leg brace who fell during the party-like atmosphere

Partygoers packed their cars with alcohol for the event on Saturday and reveled in the muddy conditions

Vodka, champagne, whiskey and soda are lined up in front of men ready to drink on Saturday

Trash litters the grounds of Moorland Farm following the races as clean up crews prepare to sweep up the red cups

Others chugged champagne through dainty beer bongs.

By the end of the day, the crowds were noticeably worse for wear with some spotted lying on the muddy ground or stumbling around.

Police had warned prior to the event that there would be an increased presence this year as they conducted roving patrols throughout the day.

'The Far Hills Race is one of the oldest traditions that takes place each Fall here in Somerset County, I have attended the race myself over many years and have enjoyed the people and great atmosphere,' Prosecutor Michael Robertson said prior to the event.

'However, after evaluating last years event, law enforcement as well as the Far Hills Race Commission has serious concerns about the underage drinking problem that exists at this event.

'This problem has existed for some time.'

Since the 1950s, the event has raised funds for the Somerset Health Care Foundation with most being directed towards the hospital's cancer treatment center.

A woman drinks whiskey straight from the bottle while elevated with friends above the crowd

One woman is pictured practicing her acrobatic skills, performing keg stands while others hold her legs

Two women were spotted having alcoholic Jello shots at the event alongside tens of thousands of other revelers

A couple were spotted making out on the back of a pick up truck during the muddy racing event

Two men helped a woman carry out a keg stand during the racing event on Saturday

The 98th Annual Far Hills horse race saw throngs of spectators come out for a day of liquor and fun on Saturday

A man was spotted chugging wine at the event where drunken antics have become a draw card

Revelers packed the back of their vehicles with high-end liquor for the day long event

While the day tends to be more geared around drinking than the races themselves, once spectator tries to remember what the event is all about - horses

A group of young racegoers started a makeshift dance floor towards the end of the afternoonThe teenage cousin of Emmerdale actor Chris Bisson has been found after disappearing over the weekend.

Sophie Collins, 15, was last seen in Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland on 9am on Saturday and had not returned home.

The soap star's cousin was found in Cork after he issued an emotional plea to his social media followers.

Cousin of Emmerdale star Chris Bisson (pictured left) Sophie Collins, 15 (right) was last seen in Dingle, Ireland on 9am on Saturday but found earlier this evening

Chris Bisson is pictured as Jai Sharma in the ITV soap. He has had the role since 2009

Bisson, 43, who plays Jai Sharma in the ITV soap, begged his Twitter followers to help find her in a post earlier today.

He wrote: 'MISSING My cousin Sophie Collins was last seen in Dingle, Ireland 9am on Saturday.

'SHE IS BELIEVED TO BE IN BLACKPOOL AREA CORK She is only 15 years old If you know anything please contact us. Please RT'

His followers were quick to offer their support, sending their best wishes and promising to share the article.

He later tweeted: 'FOUND IN CORK! Thanks for all your help and RTs.'



Csaba Csomor, 51, forced women to work as prostitutes in 'pop-up' brothels. He was jailed for eight years

A father and his two sons have been jailed for trafficking women into the UK from Hungary and forcing them to work as prostitutes in 'pop up' brothels.

Csaba Csomor, 51, his son, also named Csaba, 31, and younger son Robert, 28, forced the women to work from hotel rooms over a four-year period.

The gang trafficked the victims into the country from their native Hungary with the help of sisters Edit Ruszo, 42, and Gabriella, 32.

A court heard they forced the women to work in 'pop-up' brothels in The Britannia Hotel in Nottingham.

They also rented out self-catering accommodation in Beeston and Netherfield in Nottinghamshire; Derby, Southport and Liverpool.

Csomor senior, of Beeston, was jailed for eight years after he was found guilty of two counts of human trafficking and one count of controlling prostitution.

The Ruzo sisters, from Nottingham, were also convicted of the same charges and were each jailed for six years.

Csaba's two sons, one also named Csaba (left), 31, and younger son Robert (right), 28, forced the women to work in hotel rooms across the UK over a four-year period

The gang trafficked the victims into the country from their native Hungary with the help of sisters Edit Ruszo (left), 42, and Gabriella (right), 32

Csaba junior - who called himself 'Il Capo dei Capo', Italian for 'boss of bosses' - was jailed for 13 years.

He was found guilty of modern slavery and also admitted four counts of human trafficking and one count of controlling prostitution for gain.

A sixth member of the gang, Julianna Varga, 49, of Derby, was found guilty of one count of human trafficking and was sentenced to two years in jail

His brother Robert, from Beeston, was jailed for eight years for human trafficking and controlling prostitution.

A sixth member of the gang, Julianna Varga, 49, of Derby, was found guilty of one count of human trafficking and was sentenced to two years in jail.

Nottingham Crown Court heard the gang ran their prostitution ring between 2013 and last year.

Detective Inspector Harry Dick, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Co-ordinator for the East Midlands Region, said: 'This result highlights that this crime is not something that the police and partner agencies take lightly.

'We will continue to work with other forces, regionally, nationally and internationally, and partners to gather intelligence, carry out enforcement and bring these offenders to justice.'This is the shocking moment a brazen thief strolls into a London pub and stuffs a Help for Heroes charity box into his hoodie before calmly walking out.

The man was caught on CCTV committing the vile act in The Bull pub in Romford on Saturday.

The footage shows him walk in to the quiet bar before having a look around to see if the coast was clear.

CCTV from behind the bar captured the shameless thief in the act on Saturday

The white man dressed in a hoodie and shorts is clearly seen stuffing the box into his jacket

He then appears to check how much is inside the box before swiping it from the bar.

The white man dressed in a hoodie and shorts is clearly seen stuffing the box into his jacket before making off.

The sickening act took place at 10:05 am and it wasn't until around an hour later staff noticed the box was missing.

An alternative CCTV view clearly shows the man walking into the pub this weekend

Assistant manager, Stephanie Hawkins, 24, made the shocking discovery when she checked the tapes to find out what happened.

Hawkins thinks that the man stole this particular box because the pub organised a charity fundraiser two weeks ago for Help for Heroes during which 2,500 was raised.

Despite rainy conditions, the pub hosted two tents outside that were used to collect funds for the charity.

Police have been contacted and are collecting the CCTV tapes today.

After the footage was shared online, people reacted with disgust as some staff from the pub shared the clips in a plea for information.

AP Wyatt said on Facebook: 'This theft has left me feeling quite hollow inside. Actually as an author I really can't type what I would do if I found this utter piece of scum.'

Ian Hayman branded the thief 'Low life scum'.A once top-secret ship built for the Royal Navy that can carry machine guns, a submarine and an attack helicopter is going under the hammer for a 8 million pounds.

The 320-foot-long ship, which is fit for a James Bond villain, was launched nearly twenty years ago to test a revolutionary trimaran design for military vessels.

Triton has three hulls, a top speed of nearly 20 mph and a 13,000 mile cruising range.

It could easily be converted into a luxury yacht but anyone dreaming of turning it to a home on the water would have to spend around 15 million to do so.

Triton which can carry a submarine and an attack helicopter is going under the hammer for 8 million pounds

For the last year the ship has been moored at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk but now super-yacht brokers Ocean Independence have put it up for sale.

Tim Quinlan, a marine broker said, : 'It is a unique vessel. It lends itself to a number of conversion options - among them as a ship for the very rich to explore parts of the world's oceans that ordinary boats can't reach. It was built to extremely high standards and designed to go anywhere. It can carry a helicopter, a small submarine, fast inflatable boats and guns can be fitted.

'For someone who is looking for a challenge this is an ideal opportunity to create a safe, secure comfortable ship that can go anywhere. She is ready to be reconfigured as a super-yacht. She is a very capable ship that has proved exceptional as a patrol or research vessel and we can offer a bespoke naval architect service to look at converting her.'

The ship, which was named after the maritime god of Greek mythology who carried a three-pronged spear, was built for the UK's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency to test the viability of triple-hulled ships.

The 2,000 tonne ship was built by British company Vosper Thorneycroft, with the intention of it being used as a 'technology demonstrator ship' for a possible use by the Royal Navy or for the US Department of Defense.

The 320ft ship has three hulls, a top speed of nearly 20 mph and a 13,000 mile cruising range

Triton was once was fitted with two.50 calibre heavy machine guns and carried up to 28 armed customs officers

Anyone who wishes to convert Triton into a comfortable yacht would have to spend around 15 million to do so

Triton was on show to the public for the first time at the International Festival of the Sea in 2001 in Portsmouth, although visitors were not allowed on board.

The ship underwent sea trials to evaluate things like performance, handling and sea-keeping behaviour.

It also carried out the first helicopter take-off and landing on a trimaran.

In 2006 the current owners. a Norfolk-based marine services agency, contracted Triton to the Australian Border Force marine unit to patrol the northern waters.

It was fitted with two.50 calibre heavy machine guns and carried up to 28 armed customs officers.

It was also equipped with two high-speed inflatable boats.

Below deck it was also altered to accommodate up to 100 people detained trying to get into Australia illegally.

It was originally designed to accommodate 14 crew and 28 personnel.

Currently it can host 48 people, many in en-suite cabins.Erick Castenada, 36, was driving home from work when the huge rock fell

A motorist was killed after a huge boulder fell from a cliff and landed on the roof of his car in Guatemala.

Erick Castenada, 36, was driving home from work near the city of Villa Nueva when the huge rock landed on the roof of his grey Honda, killing him instantly.

Photographs taken at the scene show how the huge boulder completely crushed the roof above the driver's seat of the car last Thursday.

Erick Castenada, 36, was driving home from work near the city of Villa Nueva when a huge rock landed on the roof of his grey Honda

The rock then became embedded in the body of the car - also destroying the windscreen and front door windows.

Mr Castenada had been driving back home from his job at the Agriculture Ministry to take part in a sporting event when the boulder fell.

Police spokeswoman Dalia Santos said the rockfall had been caused by heavy rain storms in the area.

Mr Castenada had been driving back home from his job at the Agriculture Ministry to take part in a sporting event when the boulder fell

Police spokeswoman Dalia Santos said the rock fall had been caused by heavy rain storms in the area

Firefighters were called to the scene to remove the boulder from the car but, by the time they arrived, Mr Castenada had already died.

The incident caused severe traffic congestion in the area as the road was closed to make way for emergency vehicles.

Villa Nueva is the second largest city in Guatemala Department, after Guatemala City, the national capital.A female New York Police Department sergeant in an embattled precinct is being investigated over allegations she smashed her lacy panties into a male subordinate's face.

Detective Victor Falcon claims that he and Sgt. Ann Marie Guerra were in the unisex locker room in Brooklyn's 72 Precinct on October 7. He complained to her about leaving her underwear lying around, which sent her into a tailspin, according to the Daily News.

The 38-year-old allegedly took her panties and rubbed them on Falcon's face, in an attempt to stuff them into his mouth and screamed at him 'They are f***ing clean!''

Afterward, Falcon filed a complaint against Guerra with the NYPD's Equal Employment Opportunity office.

Sgt. Ann Marie Guerra of Brooklyn's 72 Precinct is accused of taking her underwear and shoving it into her subordinates face while screaming at him 'They are f***ing clean!

Detective Victor Falcon (middle) made the allegations about the incident in the uni-sex locker room of the precinct to the NYPD's Equal Employment Opportunity office

Guerra is still working at the precinct despite the allegations

The NYPD said that the Detective Bureau was investigating 'an incident' between the two cops, but declined further comment.

Sources told the Daily News, Guerra has a reputation for aggressively joking about the size of her subordinates' manhoods.'

'She is a piece of work,' one source said.

'She is always emasculating men and commenting on the size of their anatomy. She's a bullying man-hater.'

'In the push for gender equality, she's made it  just not in a good way,' the source added.

Another source however said that parts of the complaint filed with the EEO are being disputed.

The source says she was not trying to gag Falcon with the panties

'She just put it up to his nose,' the source said, calling the incident 'exaggerated squad room banter.'

Guerra is in control of approving overtime and changing detectives' shifts.

A source says that in the complaint alleges that Falcon has been denied shift-change requests so he could make custody hearings about his autistic son and that she has delayed approving his overtime requests.

So far, Guerra is still on full duty and working at the 72.

'She's still there, poking fun at Falcon,' the source said.

The 72 Precinct in Brooklyn has been hit with a slew of other salacious allegations recently including a cop being involved in a prostitution ring and the Deputy Inspector being accused of shaking down a business for $80,000 in plane tickets

The precinct house has had its fair share of scandals recently.

Just last month, precinct Detective Manuel Rodriguez was accused of participating in a prostitution and gambling rung run by a former cop.

He was subsequently stripped of his gun and badge.

Meanwhile, the precinct commander, Deputy Inspector Emmanuel Gonzalez, was sued by a Sunset Park club owner who alleged the cop was shaking down his business to the tune of $80,000 for 11 round-trip tickets to Hurricane Maria-ravaged Puerto Rico.Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden says he does not feel safe living in Russia, but does not regret becoming a whistleblower.

The 35-year-old Snowden opened up about his life in exile on Thursday while participating via video conference at an event organized by the Management Center Innsbruck in Austria.

Snowden has lived in exile in Moscow since 2013, after leaking thousands of classified documents detailing the NSA's domestic surveillance and eavesdropping program targeting foreign nationals and Americans alike.

Leaker speaks: Edward Snowden speaks via video link to participants of the 'MCI alumni and friends' conference at the Congress Innsbruck on October 18 in Innsbruck, Austria

The former NSA contractor said he does not feel safe living in exile in Moscow and his future there is uncertain

'Russia is not my home; Russia is my place of exile,' Snowden told the audience at the private business college, as Huffington Post first reported. 'The United States will always be my first priority.'

He continued: 'as for the future in Russia and what will happen there, I cant say Im safe. I dont know.'

But Snowden added that he never had an expectation of safety and it did not factor into his decision-making.

I didnt come forward to be safe, Snowden said. If I wanted safety, Id be sitting in Hawaii right now, making a lot of money, spying on everyone.

Snowden, who currently heads the board of directors of the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that if he is 'pushed off a building or under a bus tomorrow,' it won't stop other activists from raising concerns about government surveillance.

On June 5, 2013, The Guardian in Britain published the first story based on Snowden's leaks, revealing that a secret court order was allowing the US government to get Verizon to share the phone records of millions of Americans.

It was reported last year that Russias President Vladimir Putin was considering sending Snowden back to the US as a peace offering to President Donald Trump (pictured together in Helsinki in July)

Later stories, including those in The Washington Post, disclosed other snooping and how US and British spy agencies had accessed information from cables carrying the world's telephone and internet traffic.

Snowden's defenders maintain that the US government has for years exaggerated the damage his disclosures caused.

If he ever returns stateside, Snowden faces espionage charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

Moscow has resisted US pressure to extradite Snowden, and last year his residence permit in the country was extended for another couple of years.

Around the same time, it was reported that Russias President Vladimir Putin was considering sending Snowden back to the US as a peace offering to President Donald Trump.

At Thursdays speaking engagement, Snowden reiterated that he has no ties to the Kremlin.A San Diego county is protesting the release of sexual predator, Alvin Ray Quarles (pictured in a 2018 mugshot), who terrorized the area in the 80s

A San Diego county is protesting the release of a man who was dubbed the 'Bolder Than Most' rapist after he terrorized the area in the 1980s.

Alvin Ray Quarles, 56, was granted parole by Judge David Gill on October 12.

He was 27 years old when he was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1989 for raping more than a dozen women.

Authorities believe Quarles was responsible for more than a dozen assaults throughout San Diego in the mid-to-late 1980s. Four victims were raped at knife-point.

Now, residents of San Diego, including one of Quarles' victims, are trying to fight his release into the Jacumba Hot Springs area of East County.

Mary Taylor told NBC that she is fighting for her rights and the rights of other victims.

'I'm here because every step along the way when decisions were made, the wrong decision was made,' Taylor said.

'I'm not accepting it anymore  I'm done with accepting it. It's time we tell the criminal justice system victims have rights,' she added.

Residents of San Diego, including one of Quarles' victims, Mary Taylor (right) are trying to fight his release into the Jacumba Hot Springs area of East County

Taylor said that she and other victims were not notified of his release, which is in violation of Marsy's Law. Marsy's Law provides additions rights to crime victims. Protesters are seen during a demonstration

Taylor said that she and other victims were not notified of his release, which is in violation of Marsy's Law. Marsy's Law provides additions rights to crime victims.

She has started an online petition to stop his release which has already gathered almost 600 signatures.

Taylor, who was victimized by Quarles in 1988, and other residents protested Quarles' release at Tio Leo's restaurant.

'I'm fed up with East County San Diego being used as a dumping ground,' said local resident Julia Bishop, who lives about 20 minutes from where Quarles will be released.

She said she was 'concerned for the safety of all of our residents that live in that area of East County.'

They are urging San Diego officials to consider keeping the rapist in a mental treatment facility.

According to NBC, Quarles was diagnosed with sexual sadism disorder, voyeuristic disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

Taylor is worried that he will re-offend when he's released.

Quarles (left and right) was a 26-year-old pipe fitter when he was arrested in connection of a series of rapes in 1988. The series of rapes and burglaries began in 1987

He is set to be released on November 30 and will be supervised in a conditional release program. He will be monitored with a GPS device. Quarles' new home is at 43050 Desert Rose Ranch Road (pictured)

She spoke in court earlier this month just moments before Judge Gill granted Quarles' parole.

'Not only has he not finished the treatment, but the people directly supervising told you [Judge Gill] he wasn't ready,' Taylor said on October 12.

Cynthia Medina, who was also assaulted by Quarles in the late 1980s, warned his release left her living in fear.

'He will re-offend. I fear for your daughter, your sister, your grandmother, your mother, your boyfriend, your son,' Medina told News 10.

Quarles was dubbed 'bolder-than-most' because he frequently attacked women when they were with a boyfriend or husband

He is set to be released on November 30 and will be supervised in a conditional release program.

Quarles was a 26-year-old pipe fitter when he was arrested in connection of a series of rapes in 1988.

The series of rapes and burglaries began in 1987.

The attacker was dubbed the 'Bolder Than Most' rapist because of the audacity of his demands and because he frequently attacked women when they were with a boyfriend or husband.

He also forced his victim's male partner to watch or take part in the sex crimes.

At least 16 of the sexual assaults occurred in San Diego, half of them at small motels.

Quarles is set to be released on November 30 and will be supervised in a conditional release program.

The location of the Quarles' new home at 43050 Desert Rose Ranch Road is far from where California placed convicted rapist and child molester Herman Smith in April.

He will be monitored with a GPS device.Paul Cleary, 25, of Everton, Liverpool, admitted two counts of rape carried out when he was aged 13.

A man who raped two sex workers when he was still a boy has been jailed - 11 years later.

Paul Cleary, 25, punched and kicked his victims in vicious attacks carried out either side of his 14th birthday in 2007.

Liverpool Crown Court heard he got away with it for more than a decade, due to police failings over forensic evidence.

Martine Snowdon, prosecuting, said the teen targeted the women just over a month apart in the Kensington area.

Cleary, of Everton, Liverpool, first struck aged 13 on April 11, 2007, when he took a woman to a disused warehouse, at around 9.30pm.

The victim agreed to sex for 30, but he started being 'rough', so she pushed him away and said she always used condoms.

Ms Snowdon said: 'She went to get a condom out of her handbag.

As she looked down he struck her to her head and continued to punch her with both hands.'

Cleary ignored her pleas to stop and said 'I want a s***' before forcing her head down.

She was crying and struggling to breathe, but did as she was told out of fear.

Cleary told the woman he was going to batter her, then ran off - and she flagged down a taxi driver, who called police.

She suffered bruising to her left arm and neck and recalled being in total fear and thinking he would kill her.

Cleary attacked his second victim on May 31, 2007, after meeting her at a bus stop at around 9pm.

He showed her a wad of money and she agreed to perform a sex act for 20, before they went to an isolated grassed area.

Liverpool Crown Court, above, heard he got away with it for more than a decade, due to police failings over forensic evidence

But as she took out a condom and knelt down, he punched her in the face and demanded a sex act.

He punched her again and out of fear she carried on, as he said: 'You dirty slag, youse are all whores, you deserve what you get'.

Cleary kicked her in the head and body, causing her to fall backwards, before leaving his DNA on her top.

The victim's mobile phone rang and he demanded it, but she pulled out a panic alarm and he fled.

The woman, who suffered bruising, said Cleary was a 'horrible monster' who made her feel worthless and 'scared of my own shadow'.

Forensic examination of her top revealed a DNA profile matching the first victim's jacket, but not any profile on Merseyside Police's database.

In 2009, Cleary committed an assault and his DNA was taken, but a system failure or 'human error' meant it wasn't processed properly.

Judge Smith said Paul Cleary, above outside court, threatened to attack the first woman even further and only stopped assaulting the second because she had a panic alarm

It was only when he was arrested again in February 2017 that the link was finally made.

Cleary was arrested in June 2017, then aged 24, when he accepted having previously had oral sex with sex workers.

He denied raping or attacking either victim, before confessing to punching the second woman once, saying he was 'so sorry'.

Cleary admitted two counts of rape ahead of a trial. His convictions since include assault causing actual bodily harm, shoplifting and racially aggravated harassment.

Robert Lancaster, defending, said Cleary suffered 'real trauma' leading to 'horrible anger' aged 11, when his mum died of a terminal illness.

Cleary twice came home from school and had to call an ambulance and his dad struggled to cope, drank to excess and became violent.

Mr Lancaster said: 'He became more distant from his son and was regrettably on occasion violent to his wife, who was at her most vulnerable. He was a witness to that.'

The lawyer said Cleary was close to his maternal grandparents, but they died and he turned to drink, when 'lost in grief'.

He said: 'He was enveloped in a pure anger and hatred, an anger at the world, at other people, to some extent at women.'

Mr Lancaster said Cleary was 6ft and heavily built at 12 and would have appeared a man and 'a terrifying proposition'.

A psychologist found his crimes were driven by anger and he developed regular epileptic seizures at 14, which he still suffers from.

Mr Lancaster said he was now in a stable relationship and worked in construction, but had post-traumatic stress disorder and 'self-loathing'.

He said Cleary felt genuine remorse and shame, was caring and kind 'with insight into the feelings of others', and posed a low risk of re-offending.

Mr Lancaster said: 'If he's deprived of his liberty today he will lose his family for a second time and will lose the second female rock in his life.'

Judge Rachel Smith said Cleary could have been identified in 2009 'but for some sort of failure' by Merseyside Police.

She said he did not plead guilty initially because he was 'under pressure from friends, your partner and extended family, who simply would not accept you were the perpetrator described'.

Judge Smith said: 'You persuaded two women - each of them was working as a prostitute - to go with you on the pretext you were a legitimate customer.

'You persuaded them to go with you for sexual services to what was inevitably an isolated location, where you used violence and verbal intimidation against them and perpetrated an oral rape of each.'

The judge said she must consider what his sentence would have been as a child, but could not lose sight of how serious the rapes were against vulnerable victims whose sexual health was endangered.

Judge Smith said he threatened to attack the first woman even further and only stopped assaulting the second because she had a panic alarm.

She said the facts of the rapes demonstrated 'a degree of culpability and maturity beyond your chronological age'.

Judge Smith jailed Cleary for three years, prompting female supporters in the public gallery to shout, with one yelling: 'Oh my God, really?'

Another shouted 'it's wrong, it's wrong' and one added: 'You're horrible. It's her fault, he was a teenager!'

One woman screamed: 'F*****s! It's all wrong, the justice system is wrong. You haven't got a clue about nothing.'Some 22 people were arrested following unrest, state police commissioner said

Sectarian violence in Nigeria has left 55 people dead, President Muhammadu Buhari (pictured) said

Sectarian violence sparked by a row between wheelbarrow porters at a market in Nigeria has left 55 people dead, President Muhammadu Buhari said.

Muslim and Christian youths clashed after an argument in the town of Kasuwan Magani in Kaduna on Thursday.

Two people were said to have been killed in the initial market row, but the violence then dramatically escalated. Adara Christian youths reportedly attacked Hausa Muslim residents, burning homes, and killing dozens.

Some 22 people were arrested following the violence, Kaduna state police commissioner Ahmad Abdur-Rahman said.

Presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu tweeted that Mr Buhari believed Nigerians were too frequently resorting to violence over misunderstandings that could be resolved peacefully.

He said: 'According to the President, No culture and religion support the disregard for the sanctity of life, adding that "peaceful coexistence is necessary for the progress of any society and its wellbeing."

'He noted that without communal harmony, the environment for the conduct of "our everyday businesses would be impossible to achieve."'

Muhammadu Bala, a Kasuwar Magani resident who lost his home in the violence, said the Muslim community was taken off guard by the second attack.

Muslim and Christian youths clashed after an argument in the town of Kasuwan Magani in Kaduna on Thursday

Presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu tweeted that Mr Buhari believed Nigerians were too frequently resorting to violence over misunderstandings that could be resolved peacefully

He said: 'Most of the killings were done in the second attack which took the Hausa community off guard.'

Nigerian authorities have now imposed a 24-hour curfew in the town, the BBC reported.

Governor of Kaduna State Nasir El-Rufai said on Facebook: 'The state government has declared a curfew in Kaduna metropolis and its environs to manage the situation.'

'The governor appealed to all residents to do their best to uphold peace.'

Kaduna State is where Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north meets the predominantly Christian south, and has previously seen bouts of sectarian violence.

In February, clashes left at least 10 people dead and hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed.President Donald Trump has been upping the number of jobs he claims the Saudi purchase of American weapons will bring to the United States.

His inflated figures come as some members of his own party are calling for a halt to the sales in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Originally offering a five figure jobs number, the president, over the past five months, has been increasing that tally - and the number is getting higher the more details that come out about Khashoggi's fate.

President Donald Trump has been upping the number of jobs he claims the Saudi purchase of American weapons will bring to the United States.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday said military sales don't equal jobs

On March 20, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was visiting the White House, Trump touted an arms deal that would generate 'over 40,000 jobs in the United States,' Axios noted.

Now, with a $110 billion arms deal at stake, Trump and other U.S. officials have been loathe to blame the Saudi kingdom and the crown prince for being behind Khashoggi's death.

On Monday Trump again reiterated his concern for the deal and job losses he claim will follow.

But Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday said military sales don't equal jobs.

'I don't think arms should ever be seen as a jobs program,' he said on 'Fox News Sunday.'

And, he said, because of that the armed sales should end and sanctions should be put in place against the Kingdom.

Finally he called on the crown prince to be replaced.

'I feel certain the crown prince was involved and he directed this and that's why I think we cannot continue to have relations with him. I think is going to have to be replaced, frankly. But I think that sanctions don't go far enough. I think we need to look at the arm sale,' he said.

Trump didn't agree with that, however.

'I agree with Rand on a lot of things. I don't want to lose a million jobs, I don't want to lose $110 billion. But it's really $450 billion if you include other than military. So that's very important,' the president said on Monday.

The million in jobs is the latest - and highest - number the president is touting.

Last Saturday - before Saudi Arabia announced Khashoggi was dead and was still claiming he left the consulate alive - Trump told reporters he does not want to jeopardize jobs and business for Americans by punishing Saudi Arabia, if it was responsible, with sanctions that affect the purchase of weapons.

And he increased his jobs number by thousands to 450,000 jobs.

'It's $110 billion. I believe it's the largest order ever made. It's 450,000 jobs. It's the best equipment in the world. But if they don't buy it from us, they're going to buy it from Russia or they're going to buy it from China, or they're going to buy it from other countries,' he said.

On Wednesday, Trump upped the number again, telling Fox Business's Stuart Varney it was half a million jobs.

'It's 500,000 jobs. It'll be ultimately $110 billion. It's the biggest order in the history of our country from an outside military. And I said, 'we're going to turn that down? Why would we do that?' So hopefully it's working out. We'll find out. We'll get down to the bottom of it. I hope that the King and the Crown Prince didn't know about it. That's the big factor in my eyes, and I hope they haven't,' he said.

Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday called for an end to an arms sale to Saudi Arabia

Jamal Khashoggi vanished after visiting the Saudi consulate on October 2; the Saudis later admitted he was murdered

On Friday, the number was up again - this time to 600,000.

'600,000 jobs, maybe more than that, and it would be very hurtful to this country if we said, oh we're not going to sell it to you,' Trump said in Arizona at a water rights memorandum signing.

Later Friday, after the Saudi Arabian government admitted Khashoggi was dead, the number was upped to 'over a million' total.

'I guess, if you add the whole thing up, because just for the military was 600,000 jobs. So now if you're talking about - that was $110 billion - you know, you're talking about over a million jobs. You know, I'd rather keep the million jobs, and I'd rather find another solution,' Trump said at an event at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.

On Monday, Trump stuck with his million jobs figure.

'I don't want to lose a million jobs, I don't want to lose $110 million,' he told reporters at the White House.

A Washington Post fact check of the president's job claim found that: 'The president is both exaggerating the number of jobs that would be created even if all of the $110 billion in purported sales were actually inked  and misleading about where they would be created. Many would end up in Saudi Arabia.'A suspect who went on the run after allegedly killing a Georgia cop on Saturday, has been shot dead by police after they found him hiding in a shed, armed with a lawnmower blade.

Gwinett Police Officer Antwan Toney, 30, was investigating a suspicious vehicle on Saturday when he was shot and killed by the occupants inside.

Two suspects fled but crashed just a mile away from the murder scene and one man was arrested within an hour of the shooting.

The second suspect, Tafahree Maynard, 18, remained at large until police received a tip that he had been seen in the Snellville area on Monday.

Tafahree Maynard (left) went on the run after he allegedly shot dead Gwinett Police Officer Antwan Toney (right) on Saturday

The officers found Maynard hiding in a shed and said he 'failed to comply' with an officer's verbal commands.

He was tasered by one officer, which revealed he was holding a blade behind his back - that led to a second officer firing his gun, according to Fox News.

Maynard, who was considered armed and dangerous, died at the scene.

Officer Toney was responding to a suspicious vehicle parked near Shiloh Middle School on Saturday when he was hit by a bullet from the occupants of the car.

The bullet missed his vest and struck him directly.

Isaiah Pretlow (left) was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on Saturday

'Other responding officers returned fire and pulled Officer Toney to cover,' police said Saturday. 'The suspect vehicle fled the scene; it is unknown if anyone in the vehicle was struck by return fire.'

Maynard remained at large after the shooting while a second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was arrested hours after the shooting. He was charged with aggravated assault.

Police Chief Butch Ayers said during a press conference Monday, what 'prompted Mr. Maynard to fire we may never know.'

However he noted there were four firearms and drugs found in his car Saturday.

Toney was rushed to Gwinnett Medical Center, where he died as a result of his injuries.

His friends and colleagues described the fallen officer as a 'shining, bright star' in the Gwinnett County Police Department.

'The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community,' added Ayers.

His sister Carla Johnson told FOX5 Atlanta that it had been her brother's life long dream to be a cop.

'Antwan knew he wanted to be a police officer since he was a child. He had cop figurines, police cars. He used to roll around the house all the time,' she said.

Johnson said her family had been devastated by the loss of Toney who had joined the department to try and bridge the gap between the police and the community.

The suspect's vehicle crashed about a mile away from the scene of the shooting and fled on foot.

Police flooded the area near a middle school after Officer Toney was shot on Saturday (pictured is the crime scene)

Toney (left and right) had been on the Gwinnett Police for three years. It was his first job as a cop - he had previously worked as a security guard and grew up in California

A witness at the scene was only able to describe one of the suspects, saying he was a black male standing about six feet, with long dreadlocks, wearing green sweatpants and a white T-shirt.

SWAT teams and K-9 units flooded the area, which consists of residential subdivisions and wooded areas.

Toney, originally from California, was just six days away from celebrating his third year with the Gwinnett County Police when he was shot. The 30-year-old, who celebrated his birthday a few days ago, had previously worked as a security guard.

It is the agency's fifth death in the line of duty. Snellville is about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta.

A vigil was held for Toney on Saturday and a funeral service will take place on Wednesday.

Several Georgia officials also paid tribute to the fallen officer.

Republican Rep. Jody Hice wrote they were 'deeply saddened' by the death of the officer 'who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.'

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Officer Antwan Toney, a two-year veteran of the Gwinnett County Police Department, who was killed in the line of duty this afternoon. May God continue to be with all who serve and protect.' added Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.A British Airways passenger claims his dream holiday to Jamaica was ruined when he sat down in his business class seat to find it was drenched in urine.

Andy Vicary, 52, was excited to settle down beside his wife with a glass of champagne for his 10-hour flight to Kingston.

But feeling damp underneath him, he stood up and realised his seat was saturated with urine, which ruined his 150 Armani trousers.

Mr Vicary, of Gloucester, was forced to move several seats away from his wife for the rest of the long-haul flight.

He is now planning to take British Airways to a small claims court, saying the incident wrecked his 5,000 dream holiday.

Andy Vicary, 52, of Gloucester, claims his dream holiday to Jamaica was ruined when his business class plane seat was soaked in urine

Branding the ordeal 'disappointing and disgusting', he said: 'We were on board the plane and made our way to our seats and so I sat down with a glass of Champagne and thought this is brilliant.

'Then I noticed that the pillow that I was sat on was a little damp and I stood up and then so were my trousers.

'I turned the pillow over and you could see that the pillow and the entire seat was saturated in urine.

'The cabin crew tried to take the seat cover off and it was disgusting as it had soaked right though.

'I had to move seats and I was not able to sit with my wife for the flight which was really disappointing as well.

'The cabin crew put my trousers in a plastic bag, but I was not able to wash them on holiday as there are no clothes washing facilities, so when I got back I just had to throw them in the bin.

'We travelled to the resort in Kingston and quite a few of the people that were on the flight with us were also staying at the resort.

He is now planning to take British Airways (file image of plane pictured) to a small claims court, saying the incident wrecked his 5,000 dream holiday. The airline has apologised and given him 40,000 air miles as an apology

'The whole holiday I had people coming up to me to ask me questions about what had happened.'

Mr Vicary was given 40,000 air miles by British Airways as an apology.

He added: 'The lady at British Airways who dealt with the complaint was very nice and everything but I really do not think that they were right to offer me air miles.

'For me, it just didn't seem enough to compensate what had happened.

'But as CEDR [Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution] were then dealing with the complaint from then on, they eventually deemed British Airways had offered a sufficient amount of compensation.'

The adjudicator stated as much as Mr Vicary found the situation distressing and uncomfortable, they deemed the offer to be fair from British Airways.

A British Airways spokesman said: 'We apologised to Mr Vicary, moved him to another seat and offered him and his wife enough Avios for an upgrade to business class the next time they fly with us.

'The independent dispute adjudicator CEDR found that we acted fairly and reasonably in this case and dismissed the claim against us.'

But Mr Vicary is still looking to get the compensation that he feels he deserves.

He said: 'The decision was just wrong. I walked past the courts the other day and I am going to take this to the small claims court to see if anything else can be done.'Saudi royal aide Saud Al-Qahtani ran social media for the crown prince, masterminded the arrest of hundreds of his country's elite and detained a Lebanese prime minister.

And, according to two intelligence sources, he orchestrated journalist Jamal Khashoggi's brutal killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by giving orders over Skype.

Khashoggi, a US-based Saudi journalist often critical of Saudi Arabia and its leadership, walked into the Istanbul consulate at around 1pm on October 2, to pick up some documents that would allow him to marry.

Saudi royal aide Saud Al-Qahtani ran social media for the crown prince, masterminded the arrest of hundreds of his country's elite and detained a Lebanese prime minister

A CCTV image purportedly showing Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi and his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz at an apartment building in Istanbul, Turkey, just hours before his death in the Saudi Arabian Consulate

Turkish security sources say he was immediately seized inside the consulate by 15 Saudi intelligence operatives who had flown in on two jets just hours before.

According to one high-ranking Arab source with access to intelligence and links to members of Saudi Arabia's royal court, Qahtani was beamed into a room of the Saudi consulate via Skype.

He began to hurl insults at Khashoggi over the phone. According to the Arab and Turkish sources, Khashoggi answered Qahtani's insults with his own. But he was no match for the squad, which included top security and intelligence operatives, some with direct links to the royal court.

A Turkish intelligence source relayed that at one point Qahtani told his men to dispose of Khashoggi. 'Bring me the head of the dog', the Turkish intelligence source says Qahtani instructed.

It is not clear if Qahtani watched the entire proceedings, which the high-ranking Arab source described as a 'bungled and botched operation'.

The Arab source and the Turkish intelligence source said the audio of the Skype call is now in the possession of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. The sources say he is refusing to release it to the Americans.

Al-Qahtani is just one of the fall guys as Riyadh tries to stem international outrage at Khashoggis death.

Turkish officials say the Saudi team accosted Khashoggi (pictured) in the embassy, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer

Turkish crime scene investigators arrive after a vehicle belonging to Saudi Consulate in Istanbul with a diplomatic number plate was found at a parking area in Sultangazi district of Istanbul,

On Saturday, Saudi state media said King Salman had sacked Qahtani and four other officials over the killing carried out by a 15-man hit team.

But Qahtani's influence in the crown prince's entourage has been so vast over the past three years - his own rise tracking that of his boss - that it will be hard for Saudi officials to paint Qahtani as the mastermind of the murder without also raising questions about the involvement of Prince Mohammed, according to several sources with links to the royal court.

'This episode won't topple MbS, but it has hit his image which will take a long time to be repaired if it ever does. The king is protecting him,' one of the sources with ties to the royal court said.

Qahtani himself once said he would never do anything without his boss' approval.

'Do you think I make decisions without guidance? I am an employee and a faithful executor of the orders of my lord the king and my lord the faithful crown prince,' Qahtani tweeted last summer.

Qahtani did not respond to questions from Reuters. His biography on Twitter changed in recent days from royal adviser to chairman of the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, a role he had held before.

Prince Mohammed had no knowledge of the operation that led to Khashoggi's death and 'certainly did not order a kidnapping or murder of anybody', a Saudi official said on Saturday. Officials in Riyadh could not be reached for further comment.

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city today. Broadcaster NTV and other local media said that police would search the vehicle

A car with diplomatic number plates and allegedly belonging to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul was found in an underground car park on Monday

As the crisis has grown over the past three weeks, Saudi Arabia has changed its tune on Khashoggi's fate, first denying his death, then saying he died during a brawl at the consulate, and now attributing the death to a chokehold.

A senior Saudi official told Reuters that the killers had tried to cover up what happened, contending that the truth was only now emerging. The Turks reject that version of the story, saying they have audio recordings of what happened.

The kingdom has survived other crises in the past year, including the fallout of the crown prince's short-lived kidnapping of Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri in 2017. Hariri, too, was verbally humiliated and beaten, according to eight Saudi, Arab and Western diplomatic sources. The man leading that interrogation: Saud al-Qahtani.

France intervened to free Hariri, but Western capitals did not take Riyadh to task for detaining a head of government - and Prince Mohammed emerged emboldened, according to these Saudi sources.

This time is different, with some Western capitals increasingly critical of the murder and the Saudi explanation.

Germany has announced it will stop arms sales, while Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement asking for an 'urgent ... clarification of exactly what happened Oct 2.'

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city today. Pictured is the man thought to have dumped the car

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left) meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh to discuss the Khashoggi case on 18 October

President Donald Trump has swung between saying he is unhappy with the Saudi investigation but also that he does not want to jeopardise U.S. arms sales to the country.

To stem the fallout of the Khashoggi killing, the crown prince, commonly known by his initials MbS, allowed Qahtani to take the fall, according to one source close to the Saudi royal court.

A second senior Saudi official said Qahtani had been detained following his sacking by royal decree, but he continued to tweet afterwards. The sources with links to the royal court said he was not believed to be under arrest.

Erdogan said on Sunday he would release information about the Turkish investigation during a weekly speech on Tuesday. Three Turkish officials reached by Reuters declined to comment ahead of that speech.

The senior Saudi official who laid out the official version of events - that Khashoggi had got into a fight - said he had not heard about Qahtani appearing via Skype, but that the Saudi investigation was ongoing.

Qahtani, 40, has earned a reputation at home as both a violent enforcer of princely whims and as a strident nationalist. In blogs and on social media, some liberal Saudi journalists and activists dubbed him the Saudi Steve Bannon for his aggressive manipulation of the news media and behind-the-scenes strategizing.

Qahtani wrote odes on Twitter to the royal family under the pen name Dari, which means predator in Arabic. Some of his opponents on social media call him Dalim, a figure in Arabic folklore who rose from being a lowly servant to much greater heights.

CCTV images have emerged showing a Saudi intelligence officer dressed in a fake beard and Jamal Khashoggi's clothes and glasses (left) on the day the journalist disappeared

The footage is said to have been taken just hours after the writer was last seen alive entering the embassy (pictured)

According to his biography on his Twitter account, Qahtani studied law and made the rank of captain in the Saudi air force. After launching a blog, he caught the eye of Khaled al-Tuwaijri, the former head of the royal court, who hired him in the early 2000s to run an electronic media army tasked with protecting Saudi Arabias image , according to a source with ties to the royal court.

Tuwaijri is under house arrest and could not be reached for comment.

Qahtani rose to further prominence after latching onto Prince Mohammed, who was part of his father Salman's court as Riyadh governor, then crown prince and finally king in 2015

Tasked with countering alleged Qatari influence on social media, Qahtani used Twitter to attack criticism of the kingdom in general and Prince Mohammed in particular. He also ran a WhatsApp group with local newspaper editors and prominent journalists, dictating the royal courts line.

When Riyadh led an economic boycott against Qatar in June 2017, Qahtani ramped up his attacks on the small Gulf state. Online, he urged Saudis to tweet the names of anyone showing sympathy with Qatar under the Arabic hashtag 'The Black List'.

The high-ranking Arab official and Saudi sources with ties to the royal court said Qahtani was MbS's 'bad cop' late last year when 200 people, including Saudi princes, ministers and business tycoons, were detained and put under house arrest at the Ritz Carlton in an anti-corruption sweep. Qahtani oversaw some of the interrogations, the Arab official said.

The extent of Qahtanis power is perhaps best illustrated by the kidnapping of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri last year, several of the Saudi and Arab diplomatic sources said.

Turkish forensics enter an underground car park which was cordoned off by Turkish police today, after they found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate

Police said they will be searching the car, which was discovered three weeks after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi

The Saudis were incensed at the inability of Hariri, a Sunni Muslim and a Saudi client, to stand up to their regional rival Iran and Hezbollah, the Shi'ite paramilitary movement that acts as Tehrans spearhead in the region. Hariri belonged to the same multi-party coalition government as Hezbollah.

The Saudis were particularly dismayed that Hariri had failed to deliver a message to a top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to stop interfering in Lebanon and Yemen. Hariri claimed he had delivered the Saudi message, but an informer, planted by Qahtani in Hariri's circle, gave the Saudis the minutes of the meeting which showed that he had not done so.

The Saudis lured Hariri to Riyadh for a meeting with MbS. Upon his arrival on Nov. 3, 2017, there was no line-up of Saudi princes or officials, as would typically greet a prime minister on an official visit. Hariri later received a call that the meeting with the crown prince would take place the next day at a royal compound.

When Hariri arrived, he was ushered into a room where Qahtani was waiting for him with a security team, according to three Arab sources familiar with the incident. The security team beat Hariri; Qahtani cursed at him and then forced him to resign as prime minister in a statement that was broadcast by a Saudi-owned TV channel.

'He (Qahtani) told him you have no choice but to resign and read this statement,' said one of the sources. 'Qahtani oversaw the interrogation and ill-treatment of Hariri.'

Another source said it was the intervention of French President Emmanuel Macron that secured his release following an international outcry.

Macron claimed credit in May for ending the crisis, saying an unscheduled stopover in Riyadh to convince MbS, followed by an invitation to Hariri to come to France, had been the catalyst to resolving it. Lebanese officials confirmed to Reuters that Macron's quick intervention secured Hariri's return.

Saudi officials could not be reached for comment about the sequence of events or Qahtani's involvement. French officials declined to comment when asked about Qahtani's role.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir (pictured) insisted on Sunday that Prince Mohammed was 'not aware' of the killing and that the regime was still working on finding the body

Turkish media reported that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office from the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul the day Jamal Khashoggi (pictured) was killed there

At least three friends of Khashoggi told Reuters that in the months after the journalist moved to Washington a year ago he received multiple phone calls from MbSs right-hand man urging him to return to Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi had balked, they said, fearing reprisals for his Washington Post columns and outspoken views.

Qahtani had tried to reassure the former newspaper editor that he was still well respected and had offered the journalist a job as a consultant at the royal court, the friends said.

Khashoggi said that while he found Qahtani gentle and polite during those conversations, he did not trust him, one close friend told Reuters. 'Jamal told me afterwards, 'he thinks that I will go back so that he can throw me in jail?'

The second senior Saudi official confirmed that Qahtani had spoken to Khashoggi about returning home. The ambush in Istanbul seems to have been another way to get him home.

How much did the crown prince know about his trusted aides plan to abduct Khashoggi?

Kushner tells Saudis to be transparent White House advisor Jared Kushner said Monday he had counseled Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to be 'fully transparent' with a probe into the murder of a journalist that has rattled the kingdom's ties with the West. Asked by CNN what his advice has been to Prince Mohammed, Kushner replied: 'Just to be transparent. To be fully transparent. The world is watching.' Kushner added that he told the crown prince, who faces accusations that he ordered the killing, 'to take this very seriously.' Asked if he thought the Saudis could be trusted to undertake their own investigation into Khashoggi's killing, Kushner answered that 'as an administration, we're more in the fact-finding phase.' Advertisement

Most of the 15 hit-man team identified by Turkish and Saudi authorities worked for the kingdom's security and intelligence services, military, government ministries, royal court security and air force. One of them, General Maher Mutreb, a senior intelligence officer, who is part of the security team of Prince Mohammed, appeared in photographs with him on official visits earlier this year to the United States and Europe.

The high-ranking Arab official and the Turkish intelligence source said it was Mutreb's phone that was used to dial in Qahtani while Khashoggi was being interrogated.

Reuters tried to contact members of 15-man team but their phones were either switched off, on voicemail or no longer in service.

The Saudi official said Deputy Intelligence Chief General Ahmed al-Asiri put together the 15-man squad from the intelligence and security forces. Asiri was one of the five officials dismissed on Saturday.

Another key figure was Dr. Salah al-Tubaigy, a forensic expert specialised in autopsies attached to the Saudi Ministry of Interior. His presence - equipped with a bone-saw Turkish sources say was used to dismember the journalist - is hard to explain in an operation Saudi officials now say was aimed at persuading Khashoggi to return home.

It is hard to imagine that the crown prince could have not known about such a delicate operation, the Saudi sources with ties to the royal court say.

The Saudi official who spoke on Saturday said an existing standing order provided authorisation to 'negotiate' with dissidents to return home without requiring approval, but that the team involved with Khashoggi exceeded that authorisation.

Another Saudi official close to the investigation said that Qahtani decided on his own to organise Khashoggis kidnapping and that he asked Asiri to get a team together, but that their plans had gone wrong.

Qahtani's final act may be to serve his boss by assuming the responsibility for the crisis that has hit Saudi Arabia since Khashoggi's murder. The Saudi king has sacked Qahtani and ordered a restructuring of the general intelligence agency.Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies, said on Monday he had engaged in 'sex games' with two women in France who accuse him of rape, but said the 'submissive-dominant' relationships were consensual.

It is the first time in the near one-year long case that the Oxford University professor, who has taken a leave of absence from the British institution, admits to having had sexual relations with the plaintiffs.

'He can finally speak freely, and he's relieved,' his lawyer, Emmanuel Marsigny, told reporters after Ramadan, the grandson of an Islamist thinker who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, was heard by investigators in Paris.

Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies, said on Monday he had engaged in 'sex games' with two women in France who accuse him of rape, but said the 'submissive-dominant' relationships were consensual

Ramadan faced one of the accusers during a 10-hour confrontation on September 18. The woman says Ramadan raped her in October 2009 in a hotel room in France.

Ramadan said he had 'relations akin to sex games of the submissive-dominant kind, but always in a consensual and knowing way,' his lawyer said.

'It has been one year now that Mr Ramadan's defendants have been playing tricks to save his cause. But the truth is that he lied from the beginning of this case by denying he had sexual relations and that it took one year to confess,' Jonas Haddad, a lawyer for the other plaintiff, told Reuters.

It is the first time in the near one-year long case that the Oxford University professor, who has taken a leave of absence from the British institution, admits to having had sexual relations with the plaintiffs (file photo)

'Will it take him another year to confess the rest?' he said.

Ramadan's lawyer said a series of text messages found in the two women's mobile phones showed the relations were consensual. He filed a request for Ramadan, in custody since he was notified of the French investigation on February 2, to be freed.

Married with four children, Ramadan is a grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna. He enjoys a substantial following among young Muslims and has challenged French restrictions on wearing veils.

He also faces a third criminal complaint for rape by a Swiss woman in Geneva. Ramadan also denies this claim.Withdrawal: Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, has left public life at 88, her son has revealed

Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, has stepped back from public life.

For more than a decade after leaving the court in 2006, O'Connor kept up an active schedule: serving as a visiting federal appeals court judge, speaking on issues she cared about and founding her own education organization.

But the 88-year-old, for more than two decades often the deciding vote in important cases, is now fully retired. She made her last public appearances over two years ago.

This summer she turned over an office she had kept at the Supreme Court to the court's most recently retired justice, Anthony Kennedy.

Her son Jay O'Connor said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press that his mother, like many who reach their upper 80s, began to have challenges with her short-term memory.

That made some public events more difficult. Hip issues have meant she now primarily uses a wheelchair. And she now stays close to her home in Phoenix, he said.

'When she hit about 86 years old she decided that it was time to slow things down, that she'd accomplished most of what she set out to do in her post-retirement years, that she was getting older physically and her memory was starting to be more challenging, so the time came to dial back her public life,' said Jay O'Connor. His mother is no longer doing interviews.

Over about the past year, Jay O'Connor and his brother Brian cleared out O'Connor's Supreme Court office and went through hundreds of boxes of files and other items she had in the building's basement.

A gavel used at her 1981 confirmation hearing, her Presidential Medal of Freedom and T-shirts made annually by an exercise class she started at the high court are among the items O'Connor has now donated to the court's collection, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.

O'Connor was a state court judge before being unanimously confirmed to the Supreme Court at 51.

Highest honor: Sandra Day O'Connor was awarded the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama, three years after her retirement from the bench.

Leaving public life: Sandra Day O'Connor's son Jay said that his mother dad decided about two years ago to step back and was now entirely retired. She appeared at the Seneca Women Global Leadership Forum at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington in 2015

She had graduated third in her class from Stanford Law School and was the first woman to lead the Arizona state senate.

On the Supreme Court, her votes were key in cases about abortion, affirmative action and campaign finance as well as the Bush v. Gore decision effectively settling the 2000 election in George W. Bush's favor.

She was 75 when she announced her retirement from the court in 2005. It was a decision influenced by the decline in the health of her husband, John O'Connor III, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Her departure was a moment not unlike Kennedy's retirement this summer. The fellow Reagan appointees were moderate conservatives who often held the key vote in high-profile cases.

O'Connor's retirement and replacement by Justice Samuel Alito shifted the court right, making Kennedy's vote the often-pivotal one. Kennedy's replacement by Justice Brett Kavanaugh is expected to shift the court right again.

For her part, O'Connor wasn't always delighted with the court's more conservative direction after she left.

Asked at a 2009 event how she felt about the court retreating from or undoing rulings she was instrumental in shaping, she responded: 'What would you feel? I'd be a little bit disappointed.

'If you think you've been helpful, and then it's dismantled, you think, "Oh, dear." But life goes on. It's not always positive.'

After the court's 2010 Citizens United ruling allowing corporations to spend freely on elections for Congress and president, she told an audience: 'Gosh, I step away for a couple of years and there's no telling what's going to happen.'

Still, that year she told an interviewer that she didn't 'regret for one minute' retiring when she did.

O'Connor found other ways to make a mark off the court. In 2009, the same year her husband died, she founded the group iCivics, which promotes civic education in schools through free, educational online games.

Nominee: Ronald Reagan made Sandra Day O'Connor his first Supreme Court nominee and with unanimous Senate approval, she became the first woman on the court

Taking office: Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in on September 25, 1981, by Chief Justice Warren Burger, with her husband John O'Connor III holding the two family bibles she used

O'Connor has called it 'the most important work I've ever done.' Last year, the group's 19 games were played by 5 million students.

Even as she was championing iCivics, O'Connor was working on other projects. She wrote a children's book and a book about the history of the court.

She served as a visiting appeals court judge, participating in more than 175 cases on appeals courts nationwide. And she campaigned to persuade states that judges should be appointed, not elected, to preserve judicial independence.

One of the last times O'Connor made public comments was in 2016, after Justice Antonin Scalia's death.

Interviewed by an Arizona television station, O'Connor was asked what she thought about Republican senators' argument that the conservative justice's seat should be filled not by President Barack Obama but his successor because the vacancy happened in a presidential election year. She said she disagreed.

'I think we need somebody there, now, to do the job, and let's get on with it,' she said, a recommendation Republicans didn't heed, holding the seat open until President Donald Trump could choose Scalia's successor, Neil Gorsuch.

Though O'Connor has stepped back from public life, the court's other retired justices have varying degrees of public presence.

David Souter, 79, lives in New Hampshire but rarely speaks publicly. Kennedy, 82, has already started making post-retirement appearances. And Florida resident John Paul Stevens is still making appearances at 98.

Three women now serve on the Supreme Court, a development O'Connor approved of.

'It's all right to be the first to do something, but I didn't want to be the last woman on the Supreme Court,' she said in 2012.Kim Jong-un has spent more than 3billion on importing luxury goods from China since he took power in North Korea.

The state imported at least 493million in the last year alone, despite UN sanctions outlawing such trade over the country's nuclear and missile programmes, a South Korean MP said.

'Kim has bought lavish items from China and other places like a sea plane for not only his own family, and also expensive musical instruments, high-quality TVs, sedans, liquor, watches and fur as gifts for the elites who prop up his regime,' opposition MP Yoon Sang-hyun said.

Kim Jong-un (pictured earlier this month) has spent more than 3billion on importing luxury goods from China since he took power in North Korea in 2011

Purchases of electronic products such as high-end TVs made up for more than half of the total transactions, worth 262million, followed by cars, worth 157million, and liquors worth 27million.

The 2017 luxury trade volume was down from the 2014 peak of 617million, but was only a 3.8 percent drop from 514million in 2016.

The luxury items accounted for 17.8 per cent of North Korea's entire imports from China last year which totalled 2.8billion, Mr Yoon said.

China's trade with North Korea from January to August this year tumbled 57.8 percent from the year-earlier figure to just under 1billion, China's customs agency said last month.

But Mr Yoon's analysis shows North Korea has funnelled more than 3billion into luxury shopping in China since Kim took power at the end of 2011.

Purchases of electronic products such as high-end TVs made up for more than half of the total transactions, worth 262million

The MP also accused China of loosening enforcement of sanctions, and criticised South Korea's recent request for UN and US exemptions to restart inter-Korean economic cooperation.

The US has urged strict implementation of sanctions as part of a 'maximum pressure' campaign which Washington has credited with bringing impoverished North Korea to the negotiating table.

But there have been signs the campaign has lost strength since North Korea suspended nuclear and missile tests and Kim Jong Un vowed to move towards denuclearisation in June.

Last week, Singapore charged a citizen, a North Korean, and three companies with supplying prohibited luxury items to North Korea.

The charges involve hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of perfumes, wines and watches, court documents show.House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said to 'follow the money' when looking at Donald Trump's attitude toward Saudi Arabia, implying on Monday the president has a financial interest at stake.

'I think we should follow the money when we look at what the attitude of the president is to Saudi Arabia,' Pelosi said at a CITIZEN by CNN event in New York City.

She went on to say she meant his Trump hotels and other businesses.

'His hotels and all the rest and god knows what else,' Pelosi said when asked to be more specific.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said to 'follow the money' when looking at President Donald Trump's attitude toward Saudi Arabia

President Trump's hotels have seen significant business from Saudi Arabia

Pelosi has vowed Democrats will subpoena the president's financial records should they retake control of the House of Representatives after November's election.

Demanding Tump's tax returns 'is one of the first things we'd do  that's the easiest thing in the world. That's nothing,' Pelosi toldThe San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board earlier this month.

At the CNN event on Monday she questioned how much separation Trump can have from the Saudis given their financial relationship.

Trump's business relationships with the Saudi government and its wealthy subjects go back to at least the 1990s, The Washington Post reported in early October.

Saudi lobbyists spent $270,000 last year to reserve rooms at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C., the newspaper reported. This year, Trump's hotels in New York and Chicago reported significant increases in bookings from Saudi visitors.

In 2001, Trump sold the 45th floor of his Trump World Tower, in New York, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $4.5 million.

But the Trump Organization has said while it's pursued new hotel deals in Saudi Arabia in the past, it has no current plans to do so.

'Like many global real estate companies, we have explored opportunities in many markets, that said, we do not have any plans for expansion into Saudi Arabia,' the company said in a statement to The Post.

Pelosi went on to say that the Trump's administration argument that Saudi Arabia is an important ally in the war on terrorism and in dealing with Iran in the Middle East are true - but noted the relationship between Washington and Riyadh is more complicated than that.

'Saudi Arabia has its own reasons to be contending with Iran, having nothing to do with President Trump,' she said, adding 'President Trump has many reasons to be dealing with Saudi Arabia and using Iran as an excuse - it's important, don't get me wrong it's important, but it doesn't explain this ridiculousness of it all.'

She went on to question the administration's relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

'What's so important about this prince  it's a big family, they have lots of princes,' she said.

Trump has met with the crown prince and a stop in Saudi Arabia was his first foreign trip as president.

'I think we should follow the money when we look at what the attitude of the president is to Saudi Arabia,' Pelosi said

That was arranged in part by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is a senior adviser in the White House. Kushner and the crown prince are said to have developed a close relationship, given their close ages and powerful positions in their families.

Kushner has been urging the president to stand by the prince, according toThe New York Times, arguing the crown prince can survive this just as he has survived past criticism.

The crown prince has promoted reforms in the Kingdom but his talk was met with skepticism in the wake of several critics in his country being imprisoned and tortured.

He was appointed crown prince in 2017 by a royal decree from King Salman, an aging ruler who is thought to be a figurehead.An Ecuadorean immigrant, who was detained by ICE while delivering pizza to an Army base in Brooklyn earlier this year, has been arrested for allegedly pushing and slapping his wife.

Pablo Villavicencio was facing deportation in June after he made the delivery to the Fort Hamilton Army Base.

But he was released from custody just over a month later and a judge ruled he could stay in America until he's exhausted all legal attempts to gain legal status, after his story captured the public's attention and gained the backing of Gov Andrew Cuomo.

The 35-year-old had applied to stay in the country after marrying his wife, US citizen, Sandra Chica.

But on Saturday, police were called to the couple's Long Island home over a domestic abuse call and Villavicencio was taken into custody on a criminal mischief charge.

Court documents state that Villavicencio pushed his wife against a wall and slapped her body. When she tried to call 911, but Villavicencio snatched her phone, PIX 11 reports.

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Ecuadorean immigrant, Pablo Villavicencio, 35, who was detained by ICE while delivering pizza to an Army base in Brooklyn in June, has been arrested for allegedly pushing and slapping his wife, Sandra Chica (both pictured)

Villavicencio allegedly pushed Chica (pictured with their two children), up against a wall and slapped her body

It is not clear who made the 911 call but when police arrived, they recovered Chica's phone from Villavicencios pocket.

Villavicencio, who is a citizen of Ecuador, was detained on June 1 at the Fort Hamilton Army Base after a background check revealed he failed to obey a 2010 order to leave the country.

He applied to stay in the country after marrying Chica, who is a US citizen

The father-of-two was released from an immigration detention facility in New Jersey 53 days after he was detained.

At the time, Judge Paul Crotty ruled that Villavicencio can remain in the US while he exhausts his rights to try and gain legal status.

At the time, Crotty said the father's release was necessary because his imminent removal from the US is no longer reasonably foreseeable.

When Villavicencio was finally released his daughters greeted him with gifts for Father's Day, which passed while he was being held in the Hudson County Correctional Facility.

Villavicencio, who is a citizen of Ecuador, was detained on June 1 at the Fort Hamilton Army Base after a background check revealed he failed to obey a 2010 order to leave the country. He's pictured during his release on July 24

The father-of-two (pictured with his family in July) was released from an immigration detention facility in New Jersey 53 days after he was detained

'We are extremely happy, there are no words that can describe what we're feeling now,' Chica told New York Daily News at the time.

The trouble for Villavicencio, who had been living with his family in Long Island, started because a new soldier was at the gate of the Army base that day.

'I have been there before and always go in and never have had any problems,' Villavicencio told the New York Post in June.

'They actually know me and the sergeant knows me for some time doing delivery.'

When Villavicencio was detained, he had shown the guard his New York ID card, which is an official form of identification recognized in New York City.

'There was a different security guard and he told me I needed to go get another pass to enter,' Villavicencio said.

'And I proceeded to do that. A tall man with dark skin started to ask me many questions. He asked me about why I didn't have any social security card.'

The man then called the New York Police Department, which informed him that Villavicencio didn't have a record and 'was clean'.

'But the man said "I don't care"', Villavicencio recalled. 'He said I need to keep waiting and he called ICE.'

Villavicencio's story won the support of numerous New Yorkers, many of whom arrived at the courthouse to protest for his release with 'Free Pablo' signs in July

Villavicencio was detained after delivering pizza to the Fort Hamilton Army base (pictured) in Brooklyn

Crotty questioned the government's handling of the case as he heard legal arguments in July.

'The powerful are doing what they must. The poor are suffering the most,' Crotty told Assistant US Attorney Joseph Cordaro in court.

'Is there any concept of justice? Or are we just doing what we want?'

Crotty went on to say that although Villavicencio had stayed in the US 'unlawfully', he has 'otherwise been a model citizen'.

'He has no criminal history. He has paid his taxes. And he has worked diligently to provide for his family,' the judge added.

Villavicencio's story won the support of numerous New Yorkers, many of whom arrived at the courthouse to protest for his release with 'Free Pablo' signs.

The case gained the attention of Gov Andrew Cuomo, who celebrated Villavicencio's release.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio both tweeted celebrating the judge's decision and Villavicencio's release over the summer

'This should have happened 53 days ago,' Cuomo tweeted at the time. 'Glad justice ultimately prevailed. I wish Mr Villavicencio and his family all the best.'

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also applauded the judge's decision while condemning the government for separating him from his family in the first place.

'I cannot imagine what Pablo went through the last few weeks,' he tweeted in July. 'He was separated from his family and his loved ones for delivering pizza in America in 2018.'

'Glad he's headed home, but it's unconscionable that he was ever detained.'Jacob Stockdale (pictured in his September mugshot a year after shooting himself in the head) will not face the death penalty for murdering his mother and brother if he is convicted

A former Wife Swap star accused of murdering his mother and brother will not be executed if convicted of their killings, a grand jury has decided.

Jacob Stockdale, 26, shot dead his mother Kathryn, 54, and younger brother James, 21, last June at their home in Beach City, Ohio.

The family appeared in an episode of the ABC reality TV series in 2008.

After killing his mother and brother, Stockdale shot himself in the head afterwards as police made their way into the home but survived and has spent the last year undergoing rehabilitation and medical treatment for his brain and head injuries.

In September, after recovering, Stockdale was charged with the murders and pleaded not guilty.

On Monday, it emerged that a grand jury had decided not to apply the death penalty in his case.

Stockdale remains in custody and is awaiting his next court date.

Jacob shot dead his 21-year-old brother Jason (left) and his 54-year-old mother Kathryn (right) last June then turned the gun on himself but survived

His attorney has been tight lipped about his defense but said at earlier this month when he pleaded not guilty to the crimes that he had 'ongoing medical issues'.

At the time that he appeared on the show, Jacob was just a teenager. His family was memorable because of their strict Christian faith and because they had formed a band together.

He is one of four but two of his brothers and his father were not at home when he opened fire last year.

Neighbors said they heard between 10 and 12 shots between at the family's 150-year-old farm.

The family was memorable because they had strict religious beliefs and had also formed a bluegrass band. Jacob is shown center and his brother Jason is next to him on the right. Their other two brothers were not at home at the time of the attack. Their father is shown, far right.

Jacob (right) is shown on the show with his mother and brother when he was 16

Jacob is pictured in a photograph taken before the shooting. His lawyer said last year that he is 'ongoing medical needs'. A motive has not been suggested by the prosecution

After the killings last year, Laurie Tonkovic, who looked after him on the show after trading places with Kathryn, said his strict upbringing caused him to 'snap'.

'When I switched the rules and I was going to let them have fun, let them have a television and video games, and experience life a little bit, [Jacob] ran outside crying.

'And when I went out after him, I asked him what was wrong, and he said that his mom and dad would tell him that he would "burn in hell."

'God gives you free will. Free will, they didnt have.

'They werent allowed to make choices. I think it just caught up to him,' she told TMZ.

Police arrived at the family home last year after receiving a 911 call from someone who hung up.

As they approached the property, they heard a gunshot. They then found Jacob lying inside in the doorway with a single gunshot wound to his head.

He was taken to the hospital and has been recovering ever since with the support of his father and two remaining brothers.Dramatic footage captured by a Ring video doorbell shows the moment that laser sights from officers' guns were pointed at Eddie Croasdell, 56, as he was put in handcuffs and dragged outside his home in St Albans, Hertfordshire. By the time that police realised Mr Croasdell was not the person they were looking for, the real culprit had escaped. In the raid, which took place on Sunday, nine armed officers and six other uniformed police attended, along with two vans, three cars and a dog unit. Mr Croasdell has now complained to the police watchdog and is said to be considering legal action. 'I was woken up to bashing at my door on Sunday morning at 8.30am to see what looked like a platoon of US Marines standing outside. Mr Croasdell said: 'I was completely, completely terrified. I opened up and was painted with laser targets and someone shouting, "Put your hands over your head". I thought, "S*** they must think I'm a terrorist. They are going to shoot me".' Mr Croasdell said he then tried to think if there was anything that he had done wrong which might explain the actions of the police.Police were called to do a welfare check on Susan Trott (above) at her luxury apartment in Manhattan's Upper West Side on Sunday

The murder of a Manhattan woman over the weekend has left residents across the city fearing for their safety.

Police are still searching for clues in the death of Susan Trott, who was found with her throat slit inside the bedroom of her luxury apartment building on Sunday morning.

They are also searching for the individual who managed to get in and out of her building undetected, despite the fact that there was a doorman on duty.

The 70-year-old copywriter was a major player in the advertising industry for decades, working for firms including BBDO, J Walter Thompson, McCann-Erickson, Satchi & Satchi and Y&R.

It was a friend and colleague of Trott who notified authorities, expressing concern over the fact that they had not heard from Trott in days.

Quick escape: The killer managed to get by her doorman and leave without any sign of a break-in (building above)

Once inside the residence police found a trail of blood which led into the bedroom, and no sign of a forced entry.

'Upon arrival police observed an unconscious and unresponsive 70 year-old female with a laceration to her neck,' an NYPD officer told DailyMail.com.

'EMS responded and pronounced her deceased at the location. There are no arrests and the investigation is ongoing.'

Police believe that Trott may have been dead for 24 hours at the time her body was discovered, and her last known communication had occurred on Wednesday.

There is no suspect or motive at this time, but Trott's building was outfitted with security cameras.

She had been married twice but was single at the time of her death and there are no records indicating that she had any children.

She wrote about her long career in advertising on her personal website, which also featured her work for brands like Levi's and Nickelodeon.

'I enjoy writing in a range of copy voicesfrom highly technical to upscale to street culture. I understand global strategy having worked in the UK, Europe and Asia, as well as US agencies. And have a strong visual sense, courtesy of my art background, a BFA in Communication Arts from Pratt Institute,' wrote Trott.

'Currently, I'm the lead strategist at Code Modern and creative consultant on a number of outside startupswith responsibilities that include TV /print ideas, digital, social, experiential and all the pieces that go with a 360 campaign.'

She split her time between London and New York, where she owned an apartment and a home upstate.Nearly 90 years before the US Supreme Court struck down all state laws prohibiting interracial marriage, a former slave and a former Confederate soldier quietly wed in rural South Carolina, less than a decade after the end of the Civil War.

The improbable love story of William Ramey, a white man who served as a judge, and his black wife and mother of his nine children, Kittie Simkins, has been documented by the couples seventh-generation descendant Paula Wright, who has collected hundreds of photographs and letters documenting her extraordinary family history.

Wright, who lives in Atlanta, first spoke to the New York Times about her ancestors unheard-off relationship, which began in 1860, when Ramey was 20 years and Simkins was just 14.

Love against all odds: Kittie Simkins (left) was a black woman born into slavery in South Carolina. in 1872, she married her long-time lover, former Confederate soldier William Ramey (right)

Simkins was 14 years and toiling away on the Edgewood Plantation six days a week in 1860 when she first met the then-20-year-old Ramey

Paula Wright is Ramey and Simkins' descendant who has been documenting her family history

Ramey was a scion of a prominent white family in the area of Edgefield, South Carolina, while Simkins toiled six days a week on the Edgewood Plantation of slave owner and future Confederate governor Francis Pickens, with whom Rameys father had business dealings.

Patriarch: William's father, Nathaniel Ramey, had six children

The Times reported, citing historians, that Ramey's father also owned a small number of slaves, but as a young man William took time to educate some of the men and women working his fathers land.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Ramey - one of six children - followed his older brothers into the Confederate Army fighting for the South.

After being wounded in Virginia, Ramey was sent home to recover from his injuries, during which time he began a love affair with Pickens' slave Kattie Simkins.

By the time Ramey returned to active duty in 1863, Simkins was expecting their first child together, a girl, whom Ramey got to meet while on furlough from the army the following year.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Ramey followed his older brothers into the Confederate Army, as seen in in a Muster Roll and a list of prisoners of war (left and right)

This undated family photo shows Ramey and Simkins' children and grandchildren gathered around their maternal grandmother (center)

The photo on the left shows Ramey and Simkins' youngest child as an elderly man (upper right). The one on the right shows Ramey and Simkins' grandchildren, Josephine, Ethel, Benny and Julian

Ramey survived captivity, returned to Edgefield after the war and resumed his love affair with Simkins, who by then was a free woman but remained on her former master's land because she lacked the means to go elsewhere.

Simkins later left the plantation and earned a living working as a housekeeper and seamstress, while her lover went on to become a lawyer and later a well-respected judge.

Ramey was briefly engaged to marry a white woman, but called it off.

He and Simkins welcomed their second child, a son, in 1870, and finally made their relationship official two years later, taking advantage of a brief window during which laws barring interracial marriage were suspended.

Wright and Tonya Guy, director of the Tomkins Library in Edgefield, both said that against overwhelming odds, Ramey and Simkins' marriage was accepted in the community, so long as they were discreet about it and avoided flaunting their legal status.

This is a letter from William Ramey typed on Election Day 1912 (he voted for Teddy Roosevelt)

Ramey passed away in 1912, aged 71. His obituary was published in The Advertiser

Ramey's sister was able to convince a court to name her the administrator of his estate, arguing in this letter that he left no widow or children

Ramey and Simkins' family home is pictured in 1970 - more than 40 years after the wife's death

In census record after census record dating from the late 1800s, Ramey listed his wife and children as servants in his home in an apparent effort to protect their family from scrutiny, but that changed in 1910, when for the first time he listed Simkins as his wife of 38 years.

Approaching the end of his life, Ramey sent his spouse and their brood to New York, and out of the reach of his sister who threatened to strip them of their assets after her brothers death.

Ramey passed away in 1912, aged 71, and his sister made good on her threat by convincing a judge to name her as the administrator of her late brothers estate by arguing that he had no widow or heirs. But by then Simkins and her children were long gone, along with the family's possessions.

Simkins lived another 17 years and passed away in 1929.

Anti-miscegenation laws barring people of different races from marrying one another remained commonplace in the South until 1967, when the landmark Supreme Court decision in the case of Mildred and Richard Loving vs the State of Virginia determined that the prohibition was unconstitutional.A California judge has ordered Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti to pay $4.85 million to an attorney at his former law firm.

This is the first time that the potential presidential candidate is being held personally liable in the case.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dennis Landin issued the ruling after turning down a request from Avenatti to have the matter moved to federal court, which the opposing side called a delay tactic.

Michael Avenatti - who is considering a 2020 presidential run - was ordered to pay $4.85 million to an attorney at his former law firm Eagan Avenatti yesterday

Avenatti, who is toying with a presidential run in 2020, did not appear at the court hearing and never filed opposing arguments in the case.

The judge said Avenatti must pay the money because he personally guaranteed a settlement with Jason Frank, who had worked at his former firm.

Frank had alleged that the firm misstated its profits and that he was owed millions.

However Avenatti told Dailymail.com on Monday: 'Any judgment issued against me will be deducted from the over $12 million that Jason Frank owes me and my law firm Avenatti & Associates as a result of his fraud.

'We look forward to receiving our check for over $7 million'.

Avenatti can appeal the ruling but since he never filed arguments about why he shouldn't have to pay the $4.85 million, any such effort would be 'dead in the water,' said Frank's attorney, Eric George.

'He's managed to delay this for ages,' George said. 'At the end of the day, this is money that's owed. No matter how you try to spin it, it comes back to the fact that he took money, it wasn't his and now there's a judgment saying it's owed to my client.'

Asked whether he thinks Avenatti will pay the sum, George said that 'it'll be important to keep an eye on him and sources of money that are coming in, see what his assets are, and take it from there.'

The ruling follows an earlier court ruling from a US bankruptcy court judge who ordered Avenatti's former firm to pay $10 million to Frank in May.

The $4.85 million is in addition to that judgment.

In July, the Justice Department accused Avenatti of making misrepresentations in the bankruptcy case and said his former law firm owed more than $440,000 in unpaid federal taxes.

Avenatti's lawyer said at the time that the matter had been resolved. The Justice Department insisted that settlement negotiations were continuing but the debt was still owed.

A judge on Monday ordered Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti to pay $4.85 million to Jason Frank, who had worked at his former law firm Eagan Avenatti

Avenatti has enjoyed rising fame since he began representing Stormy Daniels, even walking the red carpet at the MTV Video Music Awards in August

Less than an hour after his defeat in the Los Angeles lawsuit, the firm, Eagan Avenatti, suffered another setback at a trial after Avenatti and his staff were evicted from their suite at the Fashion Island mall for failing to pay the last four months of rent.

Avenatti is heading to New Hampshire for his third visit to the state that kicks off the 2020 presidential primaries.

He is exploring a run for the Democratic nomination, and his troubled financial history could emerge as a significant campaign issue if he joins the race.

The latest legal setback for Avenatti comes a day after published a report highlighting how he allegedly lived extravagantly - while owing millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

Avenatti hasn't been shy about his desire to go against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election - but now he will also have to deal with his money woes becoming very public

Avenatti has personally owed at least $1.2million in federal taxes and his law firm Eagan Avenatti once owed $2.4million in taxes, the Daily Beast reported.

The allegations may come as a surprise to those who at least knew of Avenatti and his second wife Lisa Storie-Avenatti.

The pair lived a lavish life full of multi-million dollar homes, private jets, and frequent trips to Cabo, the French Riviera, and Paris.

Avenatti has also found himself in legal trouble after he acquired Seattle coffee chain Tully's Coffee, which owes nearly $5million in federal taxes and $2million in state taxes

Details of the couple's spending habits came out after Storie-Avenatti filed for spousal and child support amid the pair's divorce.

The lawyer  who has become something of a celebrity critic of President Trump  was criticized by the commander-in-chief last week after a federal judge tossed out a defamation lawsuit brought by Avenatti.

'I just beat him in a big case.  Beat him badly. In fact, he has to pay me legal fees,' Trump told Fox Business' Trish Regan.

'I don't think he has any money, but he and [Stormy Daniels] have to pay me a lot of legal fees.'

Trump has denied the affair allegations but acknowledges a hush-money payment was made.

When Avenatti's case with Frank hit the headlines last year, Avenatti lashed out at the press for caring about the story and tried to turn the focus back to Daniels, Trump, and Michael Cohen.

'I'm disgusted by the press' fascination with my personal business and my personal life,' he said.

'Who cares? What does my personal business have to do with the case? Nothing.'

'Jason's claims are completely bogus,' he said. 'Regardless of what happens on Monday, Jason owes me and my law firm over $10million.'

Avenatti has claimed that Frank stole his clients, an allegation Frank's lawyer called 'delusional'.

On top of all this, in January the IRS claimed that Eagan Avenatti owed $2.4million in taxes.

It received $1.5million in March, but in July said the firm still owed $880,582 and claimed the firm and Avenatti himself had 'made misrepresentations to the detriment of the United States', the article states.

Lisa Storie-Avenatti said she and her former husband Michael spent nearly $20,000 a month on groceries, another $20,000 on clothes, $12,000 on nannies, and $27,000 for vacations and gifts

Avenatti said that 'the firm has paid everything' to the best of his knowledge.

The lawyer has recently been trying to separate himself from his former law firm, claiming he divested his interest in Eagan Avenatti in the last year and now operates under Avenatti & Associates.

It was the excuse he used last month when rental company the Irvine Company filed to evict Eagan Avenatti, claiming it owed $213,253 in rent for an 8,371 sq ft suite and three storage spaces.

'None of these obligations are my responsibility,' Avenatti told the Daily Beast.

But just last month Avenatti himself signed an answer to the Irvine Company's complaint, claiming the firm had made repairs to the suite and that they should be subtracted from the owed rent.

And in a July filing in the IRS bankruptcy case, Avenatti said he had 'ownership interest in two separate law firms', according to the article.

'One is EA. The other is not. I maintain both of my offices at EA's Newport Beach office,' he wrote.

And during a hearing in the bankruptcy case, Avenatti said Avenatti & Associates owned a 100 percent stake in Eagan Avenatti.

But Avenatti's disassociation with his own law firm seems to be a strategy he has used before.

In December 2012 Avenatti acquired Seattle coffee chain Tully's Coffee, partnering with Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey and forming Global Baristas.

By August 2013, according to The Daily Beast, Dempsey was suing Avenatti, claiming the lawyer obtained a $2million loan to help run the company - despite telling Dempsey he already had the funds to acquire and operate Tully's.

On top of all that, Avenatti had pledged Tully's assets as collateral for the loan.

The case was quickly settled, but the problems only continued.

There are nearly $2million in state tax warrants and nearly $5million in federal tax liens against Global Baristas, the report states. It also owes more than $350,000 in unpaid rent.

Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued Trump in April after he said a composite sketch of a man she said threatened her in 2011 to keep quiet about an alleged affair with the real estate mogul was a 'con job'.Mice brought to a remote South Atlantic island by sailors in the 19th Century which have evolved to two or three times the size of the average house mouse are killing up to 2million seabirds a year.

The predatory mice attack in groups and eat away at the flesh of chicks - leaving them suffering for days before the open wounds lead to their deaths, the RSPB said

The predatory mice attack in groups and eat away at the flesh of chicks - leaving them suffering for days before the open wounds lead to their deaths, the RSPB said

Giant mice on Gough Is have evolved to be 'two or three times larger' than the average house mouse and killing up to two million seabirds a year

Gough Island is part of the same territory as Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena, the island where Napoleon was exiled and died in 1821.

Gough Island is one of the world's most remote inhabited spots and receives about 310cm of rain every year, which falls about 16 to 23 days each month

This picture released by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds shows a pair of endangered Tristan albatross which have become food for the oversize mice

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said the rodents have proliferated on uninhabited Gough Island, part of a British overseas territory, and are killing two million birds every year.

In order to protect the birds, the RSPB and Tristan da Cunha government are teaming up with international partners to eradicate mice from Gough Island in 2020, using two helicopters laden with poisonous pellets.

Alex Bond, a researcher from the Natural History Museum in London, said in a statement released by the RSPB: 'We knew there were large numbers of chicks and eggs being beaten each year but the actual number being taken by the mice is just staggering,'.

The RSPB and Tristan da Cunha government are teaming up with international partners to eradicate mice from Gough Island in 2020. Pictured, an atlantic yellow nosed albatross chick on Gough Island

Among the prey for the giant mice on Gough Island are the critically endangered Tristan albatross, a British charity said on Monday.

Other threatened species endangered by the mice include the Gough bunting and Atlantic petrel, the RSPB said.

Gough Island is part of the same territory as Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena, the island where Napoleon was exiled and died in 1821.

It is one of the world's most remote inhabited spots and receives about 310cm of rain every year, which falls about 16 to 23 days each month.

The RSPB said the operation to eradicate the mice would be 'logistically complex' because staff and equipment would have to be shipped to the island, located 1,550 miles from South Africa.

Gough Island is one of the world's most remote inhabited spots. It receives about 310cm of rain every year, which falls about 16 to 23 days each month

The project is inspired by a successful eradication programme on the British overseas territory of South Georgia, where rats were introduced by sealing and whaling ships in the 19th century.

John Kelly, RSPB manager for the Gough Island mouse eradication programme, said: 'Restoring the island to a more natural state will prevent the deaths of millions of seabirds,'President Donald Trump said on Monday he's spoken to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and he is not satisfied with what he's heard on the matter but noted he expects more answers in the next few days.

'I am not satisfied with what I heard,' he told reporters at the White House before he left for a campaign rally in Houston.

'We're going to know a lot over the next two days about the Saudi situation,' he vowed.

'I am not satisfied with what I heard,' President Trump said of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death

President Trump said he's spoken to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about Khashoggi's death

Trump said the United States has officials in Turkey and Saudi Arabia looking into the situation, who will be reporting back soon on their findings.

'I spoke to the crowned prince. We have people over in Saudi Arabia now. We have top intelligence people in Turkey. We're going to see what we have. I'll know a lot tomorrow. They'll be coming back either tonight or tomorrow morning,' Trump said.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the call took place on Sunday.

She declined to address DailyMail.com's question on what specifics the president would ask from Saudi Arabia in regards to Khashoggi, particularly on the return of his body.

'The president has been clear. Hes been demanding answers, hes going to continue to do that and hell make a determination on what he wants to do when he feels he has all the information he needs,' she said.

The president, meanwhile, said a month is 'a long time' for Saudi Arabia to conduct its own investigation into what happened to Khashoggi, who entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and was never seen again.

Originally Saudi officials said the journalist left the building. But Turkish officials claimed Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered.

On Friday, Saudi officials reversed course and said the journalist died in the consulate after getting into a 'fist fight' with officials who wanted to bring him back to the Kingdom.

They have arrested 15 people and said they are conducting an investigation of what they call a 'rogue' operation that the government had no prior knowledge of.

But intelligence experts expressed doubt that anything could have happened to Khashoggi without the crown prince's knowledge, given his autocratic rule of the Kingdom.

Additional details have come out that have raised more questions than answers, particularly footage of a Khashoggi 'double' - a man identified as a Saudi official wearing the journalist's clothes and a fake beard who was seen coming out of the consulate after Khashoggi entered it.

Also at stake is the the relationship Trump built with Saudi Arabia - a relationship cemented during the first stop of his first foreign trip last year as president. The connection blossomed into a lucrative arms deal for the U.S.

Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 and was never seen again

The administration is walking a tightrope, dealing with international outrage against Saudi Arabia on the one hand and a $110 billion U.S. arms sale on the other.

On Sunday, Republican Sen. Rand Paul told 'Fox News Sunday' the U.S. should stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggi's murder.

Trump didn't agree with that, however.

'I agree with Rand on a lot of things. I don't want to lose a million jobs, I don't want to lose $110 billion. But it's really $450 billion if you include other than military. So that's very important,' the president said.Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has vowed to pursue sanctions against the Saudi regime if it is held responsible for the savage murder of Jamal Khashoggi by a 15-man hit squad.

The Foreign Secretary said Saudi Arabia's official claim that the journalist died in a fight at the Gulf kingdom's consulate in Istanbul was 'not credible'.

Mr Hunt acknowledged that the UK had close security and business links with Saudi Arabia but 'if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true' the UK 'will act accordingly'.

The Foreign Secretary told the Commons today that Saudi Arabia's official claim that the journalist died in a fight at the Gulf kingdom's consulate in Istanbul was 'not credible'

He told MPs: 'We have an important strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia involving defence and security co-operation which has saved lives on the streets of Britain. We also have a trading partnership that supports thousands of jobs.

'So whilst we will be thoughtful and considered in our response, I have also been clear that if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true, they are fundamentally incompatible with our values and we will act accordingly.'

Mr Hunt said he had been in talks with EU partners to extend the sanctions regime to individuals for human rights violations.

Hinting at the possibility that this could target Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman himself, Mr Hunt said: When we have full accountability for the crimes that have been committed, which have been described by the Saudis as murder, then that accountability must extend to the people who gave the order for the crimes to be committed, not just those who were there on the ground.

Prime Minister Theresa May condemned the killing 'in the strongest possible terms' and added 'we must get to the truth of what happened'.

Labour stepped up calls for a boycott on arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the 'horrific murder'.

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson (pictured on October 2) said Britain should 'refuse to turn a blind eye' to the death of the dissident journalist and pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the civil war in Yemen

Saudi Arabia admitted on Friday that Washington Post columnist Mr Khashoggi, a vocal critic of Riyadh, was killed at its Istanbul mission on October 2.

The Foreign Secretary said the Turkish-led investigation needed to establish:

Mr Hunt continued: 'The actions Britain and our allies take will depend on two things: firstly the credibility of the final explanation given by Saudi Arabia, and secondly on our confidence that such an appalling episode cannot - and will not - be repeated.'

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said Britain should 'refuse to turn a blind eye' to the death of the dissident journalist and pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the brutal civil war in Yemen.

Mr Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column that 'we cannot just let it pass', and, while the UK has crucial trade and security links with the Gulf State, 'the UK and the US must lead other countries in holding Saudi Arabia properly to account'.

Turkish government sources have claimed that Mr Khashoggi was tortured and murdered by a hit squad flown in from Riyadh.

The Saudis initially dismissed the allegations as baseless, without providing an explanation as to how the writer disappeared after entering the consulate on October 2.

A number of Saudi nationals have since been arrested, while deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have been dismissed, state TV reported.

Labour's leadership seized on the events in Istanbul to call for arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be halted.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry (seen in the Commons today) also spoke out against the Saudis on Radio 4's Today programme

In the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn said 'condemnation is not enough' from the Government. 'Will they now end arms sales to Saudi Arabia?' he asked.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'These are supposed to be our friends.

It's up to them to change their behaviour, it's up to us to stand up to them and it is up to us to make it clear that we do not accept this behaviour and they need to change their ways.'

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a senior Cabinet minister during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was clear the death of Mr Khashoggi 'was authorised at the highest level'.

He warned Western states against repeating the mistakes of the 1970s when they ignored the Shah of Iran's human rights abuses before the 1979 Islamic revolution saw him overthrown and replaced with a hardline regime.Increasing the minimum wage benefits workers with experience, but leads to fewer hours and job opportunities for people just entering the workforce, according to a new study that tracked Seattle's implementation of a higher minimum wage.

Following the introduction of minimum wage increases in April 2015 and January 2016, Seattle workers with job experience saw a modest decrease in their hours worked, but had an average earnings increase of about $10 a week, according to a study published Monday in the National Bureau of Economic Research.

'Seattle's minimum wage increase appears to have successfully increased the labor market income of the most experienced workers in low-wage jobs, arguably those for whom low-wage work most resembles the "dead end" archetype,' the authors wrote.

At the same time, people new to the workforce saw their hours slashed in favor of those experienced employees, offsetting any potential pay increase they might have received.

Increasing the minimum wage in Seattle helped experienced workers make more money, but resulted in fewer job opportunities and slashed hours for people just entering the workforce (stock photo)

An upside for businesses was that employers experienced an 8 percent reduction in labor turnover rates, as workers were more likely to stay in their jobs compared to other areas of Washington State.

Researchers didnt have demographic data on the age of workers, but said its likely that many of the people getting shut out of the job market are teenagers and college students who don't have much work experience.

'If were uncovering evidence that were helping the people in the dead end jobs at the consequence of closing off this temporary way station for people who are going to be fine anyway because theyre upwardly mobile, that could still be a policy worth pursuing,' said Jacob L. Vigdor, a public policy professor at University of Washington and co-author of the study, in an interview with DailyMail.com.

He suggested that younger, more inexperienced workers may be able to overcome obstacles to entering the job market through education or training.

However, some experts were critical of the study, saying some of its methodology and assumptions were problematic.

For example, the Seattle study excludes newly entering workers employed by chain businesses, which account for more than a third of low-wage employment in Washington State, which officials at the Economic Policy Institute said was a critical omission.

'At the same time, if you believe the findings of the study for these workers who already have jobs at the time of the minimum wage increase, all of them seem to be benefitting,' EPI Economist Ben Zipperer told DailyMail.com. 'Even the low-hours group (of workers) are making the same amount of money but working fewer hours.'

Supporters of an increase say that minimum wage jobs represent dead ends that make it impossible for low-skilled workers to support a family and many people get stuck in those positions for years without seeing meaningful pay increases.

Meanwhile, opponents argue that low-paying jobs exist as temporary entry points to the workforce for young people and workers with little or no experience  in other words, minimum wage isn't intended to actually support people financially.

More than half (58 percent) of Americans said they support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, while 41 percent opposed such an increase, according to a 2016 survey by Pew Research Center.

However, registered voters were more narrowly divided on the issue, with 52 percent of them in favor of such an increase and 46 percent opposed.

While researchers noted Seattle's experience was valuable in the ongoing conversation about minimum wage levels, they cautioned against drawing broad conclusions about how their findings should be applied in other states and at the federal level.

This graphic by HowMuch.net illustrates minimum wage in every state and the District of Columbia. States are color coded based on the value of their minimum wage, with the lowest in peach and darker shades of green indicating higher minimum wages

'In these years, Seattle was in the midst of an extraordinary economic boom driven by rapid expansion in the high-skilled workforce, which makes these results not fully generalizable,' they wrote.

The Seattle City Council passed a minimum wage increase in June 2014 with a plan to phase in the raises over several years  and requirements varied based on the size of employers and whether they offered workers health benefits and tips.

The first phase was in April 2015 when the minimum wage went up to $11 an hour from $9.47. It increased again, ranging up to $13 an hour, depending on an employer's size and offerings. It has since increase twice more, to range from $11.50 - $15.45 an hour, depending on the same factors.

Seattle now has one of the highest minimum wages in the country, though Washington's statewide rate is $11.50 an hour, according to HowMuch.net.

Minimum wage varies widely by state, with Washington ranking toward the top, just behind the District of Columbia, which requires workers be paid $12.50 an hour.

Other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago and Oakland, are also phasing in minimum wages that are higher than what the states and the District of Columbia currently offer.

At the low end of the spectrum, Georgia and Wyoming had the least generous minimum wage in the nation, at $5.15  however businesses in those states must pay the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

An additional 20 states have minimum wages set at the federal standard, while five others  Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee  have no minimum wage and therefore land at the default federal level.Advertisement

President Donald Trump greeted former foe Ted Cruz with a handshake and a hug on Monday night at a packed rally in Houston where he professed a belief that the caravan of Honduran migrants that's headed toward the state's southern border may have been organized by Democrats.

'You know how the caravan started? Does everybody know what it means? I think the Democrats had something to do with it, and now they're saying,"I think we made a big mistake." Because people are seeing how bad it is. How pathetic it is,' Trump stated without offering proof. 'That is an assault on our country.'

He again claimed that there are 'some very bad people' in the group of 7,000 that's defying his orders and making its way north.

'This will be the election of the caravan, Kavanaugh, tax cuts and common sense,' he said of the issue minutes later, making reference to his new Supreme Court justice.

Trump was in Texas to campaign for Cruz, someone he said had 'become a really good friend' after a rivalry that he admits 'got nasty' at the height of the 2016 primary.

'And then it ended. And I'll tell you, nobody has helped me more...then Sen Ted Cruz. Nobody,' he stated.

President Donald Trump greeted former foe Ted Cruz with a handshake and a hug on Monday night at a packed rally in Houston

Trump was in Texas to campaign for Cruz, someone he said had become 'become a really good friend' after a 2016 rivalry between the two of them that he admits 'got nasty'

'And then it ended. and I'll tell you, nobody has helped me more....then Sen. Ted Cruz,' he declared at the start of the rally

Trump said that Cruz's opponent is a 'stone-cold phony' as he mocked Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke for campaigning on nickname instead of his given name 'Robert'

Trump said that Cruz's opponent is a 'stone-cold phony' as he mocked Democratic Rep Beto O'Rourke for campaigning on his nickname instead of his given name 'Robert'.

'And he pretends to be a moderate, but he's actually a radical, open-borders left-winger,' Trump contended, painting him as a proponent of a 'socialist take-over of health care' who wants to 'take away your guns'.

Trump has attempted to make the midterm elections about a slew of so-called Democratic boogeymen such as California Reps Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, who could become speaker if Republicans lose the House, and progressive Sen Elizabeth Warren.

He again zinged Warren as 'Pocahontas,' although he says the taunt no longer makes sense 'because she has no Indian blood'.

'A sad thing happened last week. Because Elizabeth Warren was exposed as being a total fraud,' he said of a DNA test Warren took, which showed she likely had a family member six to 10 generations ago who was Native American.

'I can't call her Pocahontas. She doesn't qualify,' Trump continued.

The president joked about nominating Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court to get the media to investigate her emails and family foundation, once again using a rally to take aim at his former foe

Trump also proudly declared himself to be a 'nationalist', which quickly raised eyebrows across social media. He then encouraged the crowd to 'Use that word. Use that word'

'But if you don't mind I will anyway. Is that okay? We gotta keep her down.'

At the one and only rally he has planned in Texas this fall, a reliable red state where Cruz is facing an unusually strong challenge, Trump tried to make his claim stick that a radical, left-wing mob is trying to capture control of Congress.

Voters must make a choice to re-elect Republicans to office that will support his agenda, or 'let the radical Democrat mob take a giant wrecking ball and destroy our country and our economy,' Trump asserted.

The president also joked about nominating Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court to get the media to investigate her emails and family foundation.

'If you want the fake news to finally investigate Hillary Clinton, we will just have to nominate Hillary Clinton to the United States Supreme Court,' he told the crowd. 'How do you like that idea? Let's see how she does.'

Trump said, 'If Judge Kavanaugh had to go through what he went through. He is a fine man. Can you imagine Hillary up there?'

'That would take three to four years of questions,' he joked.

Trump did not mention the fact that Clinton once delivered 11 hours of testimony during a hearing on the 2012 Benghazi terror attack.

Trump also proudly declared himself to be a 'nationalist' - a descriptor that Democrats like former President Barack Obama has used to describe the sitting president in verbal assaults on his politics.

'You know, they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned. It's called a nationalist,' Trump told the crowd. 'And I say, "Really?" We're not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I'm a nationalist. Okay? I'm a nationalist.'

He then encouraged the crowd to 'use that word,' regardless of its negative connotations, as he railed against 'globalists' that he claimed never put America first.

Prior to his taking the stage, the president's daughter-in-law Lara delivered remarks in which she hit out at Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer

She then welcomed husband Eric to the stage as Trump's second eldest son gave a rare public speech at the political rally

'Radical Democrats want to turn back the clock. Restore the rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists,' he said.

'A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about our country so much. And, you know what? We can't have that.'

Prior to his taking the stage, the president's daughter-in-law Lara delivered remarks in which she told the crowd to vote for Republicans on November 6 to stop Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

'And don't forget about Maxine Waters, because she'll be steering the ship somehow,' the Trump campaign spokeswoman said.

Her husband Eric, the president's second eldest son, took the podium next and bragged: 'We are driving the Democrats absolutely nuts. They just don't know what to do anymore. It is so much fun to watch.'

'America is back. America has come back...And this is only after two years, imagine what he'll do over the next six years,' he said after claiming 'ISIS is gone'.

Eric bragged that 'ISIS is gone' thanks to his father, and said that Trump's administration was 'driving the Democrats absolutely nuts'

Cruz said he'd be right by the president's side in 2020 as the senator promoted himself as someone who has worked 'hand-in-hand' with the president he refused to endorse at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

'In 2020, Donald Trump will be overwhelming reelected as President of the United States,' he said. 'I am honored that President Trump is here endorsing and supporting my campaign, and I look forward to campaigning beside him in 2020 for his reelection as President of the United States.'

Moments later, Trump took the stage and candidly addressed his relationship with the failed presidential candidate who's asking the voters of Texas to send him back to the United States Senate.

'In 15 days, the people of Texas are going to re-elect a man who has become a really good friend,' Trump said of Cruz.

He admitted they had their 'little difficulties' while reminding the audience that it was 'love fest' at the beginning of the primary and noting they once even appeared at a rally together.

In a fiery speech Cruz said he 'worked hand-in-hand with President Trump to pass the biggest tax cut in a generation' and to slash regulations

Cruz also said he'd be right by the president's side in 2020 as the senator promoted himself as someone who has worked 'hand-in-hand' with the president he refused to endorse at the 2016 Republican National Convention

Supporters are pictured here looking on as Trump speaks to the crowd in Houston on Monday night in support of Ted Cruz

'And then it got nasty,' Trump said, laughing the confrontation off - which included a tweet in which Trump called Cruz's wife Heidi ugly.

He said earlier on Monday that he has a new nickname for Cruz, now that they're on the same side.

'He's not "Lyin' Ted" anymore. He's "Beautiful Ted,"' the president said as he left the White House to campaign for the Republican senator in Houston. 'I call him "Texas Ted.'"

Trump was stumping for his former foe at the Toyota Center on Monday for the first time ever after the acrimonious rivalry in 2016 that ended only after the businessman won the Oval Office.

'It became very nasty, and then it was over. And when it was over, we've gotten along great,' he told reporters waiting to see him off at the White House. 'No, I like Ted,' he added.

President Trump says he has a new nickname for Ted Cruz now that they're on the same side.

'He's not 'Lyin' Ted' anymore. He's 'Beautiful Ted,' ' the president said on Monday as he left the White House to campaign for the Republican senator in Houston. 'I call him 'Texas Ted' '

The president has never apologized publicly for the remarks he made about Cruz in the heat of battle, including claims that he's 'dishonest' and that his father was involved in JFK's assassination.

Cruz meanwhile said in an interview that aired over the weekend that Trump is 'the president' and has his full support in the US Senate.

He opened his rally remarks with a definitive endorsement of Trump, telling the audience that assembled mostly for the president and not him: 'God bless Texas, and God bless President Trump.'

'We are in extraordinary times. Do we embrace jobs or do we give into mobs?' he continued, echoing Trump.

In a fiery speech Cruz said he 'worked hand-in-hand with President Trump to pass the biggest tax cut in a generation' and to slash regulations.

'Beto O'Rourke wants higher taxes. Beto voted against the tax cut,' he asserted.

In El Paso, he said that O'Rourke supported a 'rain tax,' telling the audience of Trump supporters, 'I don't even know what that is. But here is Texas, we celebrate when it rains. We don't tax you for it.'

He went on to suggest his opponent is anti-Israel and hit him for an openness to getting rid of the federal government's deportation division.

'That is radical. That is reckless, and that is not the state of Texas,' he said.

O'Rourke also said he believes the president should be impeached. 'He said he would vote right now, today, to impeach President Trump,' Cruz claimed. 'Beto O'Rourke in this state is running to the left of Elizabeth Warren, to the left of Bernie Sanders, and state of Texas is not going to stand for it.'

O'Rourke has clashed not just with his opponent but with the president in the Texas race in which he deployed Trump's 2016 nickname for Cruz - 'Lyin' Ted' - in a recent debate. He infuriated the president at a town hall hosted by CNN last week when he said he believes that Trump's actions rise to the level of impeachment.

Trump responded in true form on Twitter with insults like O'Rourke is a 'lightweight' and 'a Flake' who isn't as qualified as Cruz, 47, to represent the Texas people.

Monday was the first time, however, that he's addressed the names he called Cruz during their election.

The president told reporters that he is unapologetic for the mean moniker and his claim in 2016 that Cruz's father was a Lee Harvey Oswald associate.

'I don't regret anything, honestly. It all worked out very nicely,' he said on Monday before his departure for Houston.

Trump said at the White House that he believes that Cruz will be the definitive winner of the race on Election Day.

'I think they wanted to see that I'm on his side, and I am, 100 percent,' he said of his Monday night appearance.

'I think Beto O'Rourke is highly overrated,' Trump added. 'What I heard about him, I figured he must be something a little special. He's not. I thought he got beaten badly in the debates. I think he's a highly overrated guy.'

Thousands of Trump's supporters, some of whom had waited for nearly 24 hours, were gleefully running inside the the Toyota Center in Houston as the president spoke in Washington, leaving behind camping chairs and sleeping bags, for the rally with the president that was four hours away from beginning.

'Taking the stage at the rally, Trump looked out and said, 'Wow.'

'I'm thrilled to be back. Well you treated me very well during a certain election two years ago,' he told the Texans.

Trump boasted that he had attracted a 'record crowd' and coyly remarked that 'it's true what they said: everything in Texas is just bigger.'

Thousands of Trump supporters, some of whom had waited for nearly 24 hours, gleefully ran inside the Toyota Center in Houston on Monday afternoon

The rally still hours away, Trump supporters lounged around in camping chairs - and even a blow up loveseat

A Trump supports bats around a beach ball bearing the Trump slogan MAGA - Make America Great Again

For many it was their first time seeing the president in person who has campaigned in the city just once before and only six times in Texas including today

The Trump campaign transformed the scene into an all-day tailgate after roughly 100,000 people who RSVP'd for a limited number of tickets

Food trucks lined the arena and a sound stage was set up near the front of the line that wound up and down several city blocks and through a nearby park

Supporters of the president began lining up outside of Houston's Toyota Center as early as 26 hours before the president was scheduled to speak on the first day of early voting.

Once booked for an arena in Houston that could seat 8,000 people, the event has changed venues and was expected to reach maximum capacity.

The Toyota Center, which is home to the Houston Rockets, can seat just over 18,000 people, according to the venue's website, and cram 1,000 more into the floor space.

Trump's campaign says it moved from NRG Arena to the large indoor space after a 'HUGE' and 'unprecedented' request for tickets.

'This will be an epic rally,' campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a tweet.

The president signaled that he was amped up for the rally in support of Cruz, as well, tweeting on Monday morning: 'Big Night In Texas!!!!'

The president signaled that he was amped up for the rally in support of Cruz, as well

The Trump campaign transformed a Monday night rally into an all-day tailgate after roughly 100,000 people RSVP'd for a limited number of tickets to see the president speak in Texas

Supporters of the president began lining up outside of Houston's Toyota Center a full 24 hours before the rally's start time

Trump supporters camped out overnight to reserve their seats, ahead of the tailgate that Trump's reelection committee announced mid-day Sunday

The Toyota Center, which is home to the Houston Rockets, can seat just over 18,000 people, according to the venue's website, and cram 1,000 more into the floor space

The Trump campaign says it's setting up big screens outside in an overflow area outside

Tonight was only Trump's second time campaigning in Houston, a major metropolitan in Texas that's home to more than 2 million people. It's his sixth time in Texas since he announced his candidacy in 2015 for president.

Trump promised earlier in the cycle to campaign for Cruz in Texas, despite their nasty 2016 rivalry, in the largest venue available months after endorsing his former opponent.

'I will be doing a major rally for Senator Ted Cruz in October. I'm picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find,' Trump tweeted.

'As you know, Ted has my complete and total Endorsement. His opponent is a disaster for Texas - weak on Second Amendment, Crime, Borders, Military, and Vets!'

Houston is Cruz's hometown. He rallied supporters on his own in the city on Sunday evening.

For a state that's generally known to be conservative, Houston is known to be moderate politically. In other words, it's exactly the kind of audience that each candidate in the US Senate race needs to reach in the campaign's final days.

Trump's campaign says it moved from NRG Arena to the large indoor space after a 'HUGE' and 'unprecedented' request for tickets that exceeded 100,000 responses

Campaign manager Brad Parscale said in an update that the afternoon tailgate the campaign announced on Sunday would start at 9 am on Monday

Cruz holds an average lead of seven points over his opponent, per the latest Real Clear Politics assessment. But an Emerson poll from this month says the race is closer, and Cruz is only five points ahead of O'Rourke, a three-term congressman.

O'Rourke had ran a mostly positive campaign until he went negative against Cruz at a debate at which he called him 'Lyin Ted,' following in Trump's footsteps.

'It's not something that I feel totally comfortable with, and perhaps in the heat of the moment, I took a step too far,' he said at a CNN town hall after. 'I don't know that that's the way that I want to be talking in this campaign.'

At the debate in San Antonio, his last face-off with Cruz of the campaign, O'Rourke said the Republican senator is 'dishonest' and would tell lies about his record.

'It's why the president called him "Lyin' Ted", and it's why the nickname stuck  because it's true,' he asserted.

After the president targeted him with name-calling, O'Rourke declined to respond in kind in an interview that aired on ABC News on Sunday.

'The kind of bitterness and the name-calling and partisanship that has unfortunately defined so much of the national conversation,' he replied, 'You can add more to it or you can stay focused on the future.'

The president came to the defense of Cruz after the debate in tweets but did not attempt to walk back the remarks he made about the Republican at the height of the GOP primary two years ago

He derided O'Rourke in a Wednesday tweet as a 'Flake' who's 'not in the same league' as the the seat's incumbent

Video posted on Twitter on Monday am shows O'Rourke, 46, being mobbed by fans arriving just before early voting starts at the Metropolitan Multi-Services Center in Houston

O'Rourke sits in a tent with college students who camped outside a polling place in anticipation of the first day of early voting in Houston, Texas

Trump's slams on Cruz have followed him to his current race for the U.S. Senate

Outside the president's rally, supporters of both Cruz and the president said they wanted the two Republicans to do the same.

The two men had an especially combative relationship in 2016 that exploded and Cruz once said was beyond repair, after Trump came after Cruz's family on the campaign trail.

'His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being - you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,' Trump told Fox News. 'What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.'

Trump has taken the information from a National Enquirer story that claimed Cruz's father was friends with deceased President John F Kennedy's murderer.

The president said of Cruz's father: 'I mean, what was he doing - what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?'

Cruz's campaign called it 'another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage' at the time of the attack.

At another point, Trump threatened to 'spill the beans' on Cruz's wife, Heidi, and retweeted an unflattering meme of her and his spouse, former model Melania.

Trump also asked how Cruz could be an 'Evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest' and called him 'Lyin' Ted' in repeated assaults.

In a desperate attempt to knock Trump out in the final days of the race, Cruz responded by calling him a 'serial philanderer,' a 'pathological liar,' a 'narcissist' and 'utterly amoral.'

He refused in a speech at the Republican National Convention to endorse Trump after he won the GOP's nomination, earning boos from attendees. He, like the rest of the field of failed candidates, had signed a pledge promising to endorse the GOP's final candidate.

'I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,' Cruz said the next day. 'That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander my wife that I am going to come like a servile puppy dog for maligning my wife and maligning my father.'

Trump said in response that he didn't want Cruz's endorsement and wouldn't accept it, even if the Texas senator offered it.

'Ted, stay home, relax, enjoy yourself,' Trump told him.How improbable it seems that Princess Dianas vivacious stepmother Raine, Countess Spencer, could ever be forgotten.

The only daughter of novelist Dame Barbara Cartland was nicknamed Acid Raine by her stepson Charles Spencer, who accused her of selling off 100 years of family history and damaging the family seat, Althorp in Northamptonshire, with ill-advised alterations.

Yet I can disclose that, two years after her death aged 87, the thrice-married Raine lies in a grave which still lacks a headstone.

Turbulent relationship: Princess Diana talking With Raine, the late Countess Spencer. Two years after her death aged 87, the thrice-married Raine lies in a grave which still lacks a headstone

There is just a small, weatherbeaten wooden cross, explains a visitor to North Sheen cemetery, South-West London, where Raine was interred two years ago.

Her eldest son, William Legge, 10th Earl of Dartmouth and independent MEP for South West England, is surprised by the hold up.

Good heavens! Henry and Charlotte are dealing with this, says William, 69, referring to two of his younger siblings.

They havent been in touch with me to discuss any delay. I must get in touch with them to find out whats happening.

Henry  the youngest of Raines four children by her first husband, Gerald Legge, 9th Earl of Dartmouth  says the family is eager to remedy the deficiency.

My sister Charlotte is dealing with commissioning a special gravestone for my mother  as she did for my father when he died, Henry, 49, a distinguished barrister, tells me. This is taking much longer than we anticipated.

Charlotte tells me: Raine was always a complete perfectionist and for that reason we have been taking the greatest care to find the best way to remember her.

How improbable it seems that Princess Dianas vivacious stepmother Raine, Countess Spencer, could ever be forgotten

We were advised that it takes a year for the earth where she was actually buried to fully settle and we are in the process of commissioning the right stone to make us all proud of a life well-lived and well remembered by all who knew and loved her.

Although her funeral was well attended, it was noticeable that none of Raines stepchildren by her second husband  Princess Dianas father, Johnnie, 8th Earl Spencer  was present.

Nor did any of them  Lady Sarah McCorquodale, Lady Jane Fellowes or Charles, 9th Earl Spencer  attend her subsequent memorial service at the Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair, where the congregation included Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.

All tights and lights for Mick's little son

Rock star or ballet dancer  which career would Sir Mick Jagger prefer for his son?

Mick Jagger's two-year-old Deveraux happily took to the stage with his mother, dancer Melanie Hamrick, at the Lincoln Centre in New York

However, the Rolling Stone may not have a say, as two-year-old Deveraux happily took to the stage with his mother, dancer Melanie Hamrick, at the Lincoln Centre in New York before her performance in the Symphonie Concertante.

Hamrick later shared an image of her own dramatic transformation from jeans and sweatshirt mum into a twinkle-toed ballerina.

It may be a bit too stage-mom of me, but I might try to get him on stage, Melanie has said of Deveraux. He loves it, especially the lights.

Melanie Hamrick in costume backstage at the Lincoln Center Theater in NYC

J.K, the beauty and the beast

Theres no denying that Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling is still on top of her game when it comes to conjuring up mythical wizardry  judging by this extra-ordinary image she has posted as her Twitter handle.

This extra-ordinary image was posted on Twitter by Harry Potter author J.K Rowling

With her face half-covered in the mask of a black beast and single horn, Rowling, 53, seems to have created a devilish new creature.

With Halloween approaching, the writer is clearly having fun with fantasy  either that, or she is researching a new character for a return to Hogwarts.

Mel Giedroyc, above, presented the former Bake Off [File photo]

Mel's kitchen hell

Former Bake Off presenter Mel Giedroyc is not immune to the occasional dinner party disaster.

I had a massive salmon and about 20 guests coming round, she says.

My older sister, whos a brilliant cook, said the best way to cook salmon for lots of people is to put it in the dishwasher.

But the salmon just wouldnt cook  so I sent everyone out to this really bad pub.

Maybe I had it on the wrong cycle?

Stunt Acquisitions fall

James Stunt pictured above in London [File photo]

Colourful businessman James Stunt was once described as a flash b****** by his ex father-in-law Bernie Ecclestone.

Yet while Stunt continues to enjoy an opulent lifestyle, his businesses are another matter. I can disclose that his art-dealing company, Stunt Acquisitions, has suffered another fall in its net worth, from 1.9 million to 1.3 million, according to latest accounts at Companies House  a loss for the year until May 2017 of almost 600,000.

This is well down on the 2.7 million it was worth in 2015.

Stunt Acquisitions was set up in February 2014 with the transfer of 3.5 million in works of art to the firm.

No chance of a K now then, Fogle

Prince Williams friend, TV adventurer Ben Fogle, seems to enjoy courting controversy: he says that people under 70 should never be given an honour.

Look at how many celebrity awards there are, he opines. Whats the point, when were all given enough adulation?

My adulation is when the bin man tells me he liked my show the other day. Thats my honour, I dont need to have a Sir.

Adds 44-year-old Fogle: People who are in their 30s and 40s, I dont think they have done enough to deserve an honour.

Presumably, Fogle would make an exception for his veterinarian father Bruce Fogle, who received an MBE aged 60.

After historian Sir David Starkey, 73, described BBCs Question Time as a dreadful flagship show, and called for it to be axed, he is resigned to never appearing on it again.

In fact, he thinks his chances of being invited on the BBC at all are narrowing by the day.

Im too controversial for the BBC, he sighs. The only old man you see on it is Sir David Attenborough  because he doesnt offend anyone.

Professor Mary Beard says she refuses to present programmes featuring excruciating historical reconstructions with B-list actors.

Does she mean Lucy Worsley, whose BBC programmes always seem to involve a raid on the dressing-up box?

Lucy trying clothes on is rather different, I think, says the historian and broadcaster, generously.Boko Haram terrorists are torching people's homes near the Nigerian town of Chibok where they kidnapped 276 schoolgirls.

Jihadis are currently setting fire to homes in the village of Mifa, five miles from Chibok in north eastern Nigeria.

Military sources confirmed the attack, with local media reports claiming the unrest started this evening.

The terrorist group took female pupils from the government secondary school in Chibok hostage overnight on April 14 2014.

It triggered a worldwide campaign and international pressure to release them, but 112 are still missing.

Boko Haram terrorists are torching people's homes near the Nigerian town of Chibok where they kidnapped 276 schoolgirls (school pictured in 2014)

The terrorist group are setting people's homes alight in Chibok where they took female pupils from the government secondary school hostage overnight on April 14 2014

Boko Haram also razed three villages in Borno state over the weekend, killing two and injuring several others, according to AFP.

The jihadists arrived in trucks to attack the neighbouring villages of Dala-Melari, Fuguri and Femari villages, 3.8 miles outside Borno state capital Maiduguri.

'The terrorists fired indicriminately and forced residents to flee,' said militia leader Ibrahim Liman.

Liman blamed fighters loyal to Boko Haram factional leader Abubakar Shekau for the attacks.

'Two people were killed and several injured. They completely burnt the villages after looting food supplies,' Liman said.

A resident, Modu Malari, said the jihadists invaded the villages around 10pm local time and 'spared nothing'.

'They stole all our food and burnt all our homes. They killed two of our men,' Malari said.

The attacks came hours after the jihadists hacked to death a dozen farmers working on their fields in Kalla village, three miles away.

Mothers of the kidnapped schoolgirls are pictured mourning four years after their daughters were abducted by Boko Haram militants

Liman blamed the same jihadists who killed the farmers for the village raids.

In recent days Boko Haram militants have increasingly attacked civilian targets in the region.

On Thursday, they looted and burnt a village in northeast Borno state after fighting off soldiers protecting it, a local official told AFP.

The jihadists believed to be loyal to Shekau invaded Kalli village outside the town of Damboa, 55 miles from Maiduguri.

'The terrorists attacked the village and forced residents and troops to flee after a fight,' a local official of Damboa local government said.

'They looted food and livestock and set the village on fire, burning it completely,' said the official speaking from Maiduguri.

Men are pictured taking part in a burial ceremony after further unrest caused deaths in Kalli, near Borno state capital of Maiduguri

Kalli lies on the fringes of the jihadists' Sambisa forest enclave from where the militants launched the attack, according to a civilian militia assisting troops in fighting the jihadists.

Boko Haram's nine-year violence has killed 27,000 people and displaced two million more, creating a dire humanitarian crisis.

The conflict has spilled into Nigeria's northern neighbours of Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

Today's violence comes after a row broke out between wheelbarrow porters at a market in the town of Kasuwan Magani Kaduna, leaving 55 people dead on Thursday.Jamie Don McKenzie, 41, has been arrested for drunk driving four times in the past. He is blamed for killing six people by driving under the influence in Utah on Friday

The Utah truck driver who has been blamed for killing six people by crashing into their Dodge pick-up truck last week has a long history of driving drunk and has spent time in prison for child sex abuse.

Jamie Don McKenzie, 41, was arrested on six counts of vehicular homicide and driving under the influence causing serious injury after the crash in Park City last Friday.

Police say he was driving with an open bottle of whiskey, four beers and prescription medication in his dump truck when he crossed the median and plowed into the smaller car which was carrying six people.

Three of them were thrown from their vehicle and three were stuck inside it but all six died on impact, according to police.

The driver has been identified as Efrain O. Cardenas, 62, but none of the other five men - who were all Honduran citizens - has been named.

McKenzie was taken to the hospital after the crash and told authorities that he remembered crashing but could not remember anything else.

When questioned about the open alcohol containers in his car, he said they were in his 'lunchbox' and that he had been drinking the night before but had not ingested any alcohol on the day of the crash.

McKenzie smashed his dump truck which was carrying dirt into a smaller, Dodge pick-up which had six people inside

Three of the victims were thrown from the Dodge and three were crushed when the vehicles collided

Records show that he was arrested for driving drunk three times in 1998 and again in July of this year but he never had his license taken off of him.

In 2002, he was arrested for sexual exploitation of a minor, a third degree felony for which he was given a probation sentence.

On Friday, several people called 911 to report him driving erratically before the crash occurred.

McKenzie was delivering dirt in a truck marked with High Mountain signage at the time.

The front of McKenzie's cab was smashed. He suffered minor injuries and told police he could not remember the collision. They found four open beers, an open bottle of whiskey and prescription medication in the vehicle

The crash impact was so severe that police are still working to identify everyone who was killed.

'In my 13-year career, this is probably the worst crash Ive ever seen,' Patrol Sgt. Lawrence Hopper told The Salt Lake City Tribune.

Two other people were injured when they crashed their Jeep while swerving out of the way.

They were both taken to the hospital with minor injuries but survived.Companies manufacturing electronic scooters are accused of 'gross negligence' and 'aiding and abetting assault' in a class -action lawsuit filed in California.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is against two of the largest e-scooter companies, Lime and Bird, as well as other e-scooter firms.

Filed on behalf of eight initial plaintiffs, the lawsuit states the companies' practices have contributed to injuries in multiple ways, San Francisco Gate reported.

A person riding a LimeBike( left)and Bird Rides scooter (right) shared electric scooters on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, California in April 2018

By 'dumping' scooters on public streets without an appropriate warning, the suit alleges e-scooter companies acted negligently and should have known that their devices would become a dangerous 'public nuisance'.

Three plaintiffs claim they were walking when e-scooter riders crashed into them from behind, resulting in severe injuries.

The suit alleges that e-scooter companies knew their riders were injuring pedestrians and - by failing to stop the collisions from occurring - assisted and encouraged scooter riders as they committed 'assaults'.

The suit also states that both companies' scooters contain defective electronics and mechanical parts, as well inadequate safety instructions for riders and that they have 'a wanton disregard for the safety of others'.

The risks posed by the devices, the suit states, 'were known and/or knowable' based on professional knowledge known within the transportation community.

The suit makes numerous claims about scooters' mechanical issues, but does not provide concrete evidence for those claims.

David Petersen, a 62-year-old street performer known as 'Davy Rocks,' alleges that he was severely injured after being struck by an e-scooter rider in June

He told CBS News that he was hit from behind by a man on a Bird scooter who fled the scene

The suit also names scooter manufacturers Xiaomi United States and Segway as defendants.

'While acting under the guise of the commendable goals of furthering personal freedom and mobility and protecting the environment, the Defendants, and each of them, are endangering the health, safety and welfare of riders, pedestrians and the general public,' the suit states.

The suit adds that 'scores of riders and pedestrians and members of the public have suffered, are continuing to suffer and will to continue to suffer egregious and avoidable injuries and damage to their person and property'.

Spokespersons for Segway and Xiaomi United States did not respond to a request for comment.

Lisa Beardslee (pictured) said she suffered torn ligaments and a hairline fracture in her arm when she was forced to jump off what she says was her malfunctioning bird scooter

A Lime spokesman said the company is in the process of reviewing the complaint.

While we don't comment on pending litigation, safety has always been at the very core of everything we do at Lime - as is our mission of reducing cars from city streets and making them safer and greener for pedestrians, bike and scooter riders alike,.

The spokesperson said that the company 'prides itself on taking proactive steps relating safety wherever we have a presence'.

In a statement released by Bird, the company pointed out that the complaint has been brought 'against the entire e-scooter industry'.

It said shared e-scooters have become an important transportation mode 'for hundreds of thousands of people in 100 cities worldwide'.

A Lime spokesman said the company is in the process of reviewing the complaints against it

'We believe that the climate crisis and our car dependency demand a transportation mode shift, and clean energy vehicles like e-scooters are already replacing millions of short car trips,' the statement said.

There is no evidence that riding an e-scooter presents a greater level of danger to riders than riding a bike.

'Cars remain the greatest threat to commuters, killing over 40,000 people in the US yearly'.

Since their sudden arrival in recent months, e-scooters have been linked to an increase in severe injuries in hospitals around the country, according to emergency-room physicians.

A person stands next to Neutron Holdings Inc LimeBike shared electric scooters in San Francisco

Two e-scooter riders -- one in Dallas and another in the District of Columbia -- have been involved in accidents that led to their deaths, authorities say.

Among the plaintiffs is David Petersen, a 62-year-old street performer known as 'Davy Rocks,' who alleges that he was severely injured after being struck by an e-scooter rider in June.

Dancing for onlookers near the Santa Monica pier in California, Petersen, clad in his trademark 'gladiator outfit', told CBS News that he was hit from behind by a man on a Bird scooter; the man fled the scene.

Petersen said the force of the collision knocked him down, but he managed to lessen the impact by catching himself with his right hand.

Petersen said he suffered a fractured arm and a severed biceps, an injury that caused him to miss weeks of work. The muscle had to be surgically reattached using a cadaver graft, he said.

When Bird launched in the Memphis in June, it did so under a temporary operating agreement until the Memphis City Council passed a Shared Mobility Ordinance, which it did in July.

Since launching in the city, Birds have become highly used in Downtown and Midtown Memphis, which are the two areas Lime is targeting as well. The scooters technically require riders to wear helmets, but most elect not to.

Both Lime and Bird scooters cost $1 to rent and 15 cents per minute to ride in Memphis.President Donald Trump vowed the U.S. would keep adding to its nuclear arsenal 'until people come to their senses' following his vow to pull out of a treaty and directly pointed his remarks and Russia and China.

Trump made his comments Monday after saying over the weekend he would seek to withdraw the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Reagan-era pact that got mid-range nukes out of Europe.

He also lashed at at nuclear powers Russia and China, and cast his move in highly personal terms, saying at one point: 'You can't play that game on me.'

President Donald Trump vowed the U.S. would keep adding to its nuclear arsenal 'until people come to their senses' after announcing his intent to withdraw from a nuclear forces treaty

'Until people come to their senses we will build it up,' Trump told reporters outside the White House Monday afternoon before taking off to a campaign rally in Texas.

'Until people come to their senses,' he repeated. 'Russia has not adhered to the agreement.'

'This should have been done years ago,' Trump said of his decision, which still requires Senate approval.

'Until people come to their senses, we have more money than anybody else by far,' Trump said, flexing the U.S. military and economic muscle.

This May 14, 2017, file photo distributed by the North Korean government shows the "Hwasong-12," a new type of ballistic missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea. North Korea claims it is in the final stages of preparing a plan to launch four intermediate-range ballistic missiles over Japan and into waters just off the island of Guam, where about 7,000 U.S. troops are based.Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this photo

'We will build it up. Until they come to their senses. When they do, then well all be smart and well all stop,' Trump continued. 'And well -- and by the way, not only stop, well reduce, which I would love to do. But right now, they have not adhered to the agreement,' he said of Russia.

Trump said Saturday the U.S. was withdrawing because Russia hadn't honored the pact.

'You can't play that game on me,' said Trump as he announced his vow to pull the U.S. out of a nuclear treaty

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated the entire category of medium range nuclear weapons from the nuclear arsenals of the US and USSR

Asked if his pledge to build up the nuclear arsenal was a threat, Trump responded: 'Its a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China, and it includes Russia.' Here China's President Xi Jinping (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 12, 2018

Asked if his statement should be taken as a threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump responded: 'It's a threat to whoever you want  and it includes China and it includes Russia and anybody else who wants to play that game,' Trump said.

Describing the decision in personal terms, Trump said: 'You can't do that, you can't play that game on me. Until people get, until they get smart, they have not adhered to the spirit of that agreement itself. Russia.'

Trump noted that China is not included in the agreement. It isn't a signatory. 'They should be included in the agreement,' Trump said.

'Until they get smart, there will be nobody even close to us,' he warned.

Trump also acknowledged he didn't speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin about his decision.

'I have not. I don't have to  I don't have to  I'm terminating the agreement,' Trump said. 'Because they violated the agreement. I'm terminating the agreement.'

Russia has responded to Trump's threat to pull out, saying: 'We need to hear the American side's explanation on this issue.' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added: 'Scrapping the treaty forces Russia to take steps for its own security.'

Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped hammer out the pact, warned pulling out risks life on the planet.

Gorbachev, 87, said Trump was showing a lack of wisdom. Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?' he asked.

Historic: Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the 1987 treaty

Is it really so hard to understand that dropping these agreements... shows a lack of wisdom? Getting rid of the treaty is a mistake. All the agreements aimed at nuclear disarmament and limitation of nuclear arms must be preserved to save life on Earth.

On Saturday, Trump said Washington would withdraw from a landmark Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe because Russia was violating the pact, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, required elimination of short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.

'Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out,' Trump told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Nevada.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Sunday that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States would be 'very dangerous' and lead to a 'military-technical' retaliation.

Gorbachev, now a frail 87-year-old, said it would be a mistake for Washington to quit the treaty, and it would undermine work he and U.S. counterparts did to end the Cold War Arms race.

'Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?' Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin would seek answers about the planned withdrawal when he meets John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, for scheduled talks in Moscow this week.

U.S. authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development. China is not a party to the treaty.

EUROPEAN BATTLEGROUND

The arms control accord, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in a ceremony at the White House, bans land-based medium-range nuclear missiles capable of hitting Europe or Alaska.

It ended a Cold War-era crisis, when the Soviet Union installed nearly 400 nuclear warheads pointed at western Europe. The United States had responded by stationing Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe.

But this provoked a wave of protests from anti-nuclear campaigners, who felt the deployment turned Europe into a potential nuclear battleground.

In the early 1980s, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Bonn, West Germany, and campaigners formed a protest camp at Greenham Common, in Britain, the site of Cruise missiles.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov, in comments reported by state-controlled RIA news agency, said if the United States withdrew, Russia would have no choice but to retaliate, including taking unspecified measures of a 'military-technical nature'.

'But we would rather things did not get that far,' RIA quoted him as saying.

TASS news agency quoted him as saying withdrawal 'would be a very dangerous step', and it was Washington and not Moscow that was failing to comply with the treaty.

He said the Trump administration was using the treaty in an attempt to blackmail the Kremlin, putting global security at risk. '... We will, of course, accept no ultimatums or blackmail methods,' Interfax quoted him as saying.

Asked about Trump's comments in Beijing on Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said a unilateral withdrawal would have a negative impact on many sides. She urged the United States to 'prudently' handle the issue and to 'think thrice before acting'.

'What needs to be stressed is that talking about China on the issue of unilaterally pulling out of the treaty is completely mistaken,' she said.

British defence minister Gavin Williamson, in comments reported by the Financial Times, said London stood 'resolute' behind Washington over the issue, and that the Kremlin was making a mockery of the agreement.

However, another NATO member, Germany, voiced misgivings.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that for 30 years the treaty had been a pillar of Europe's security architecture. 'We now urge the United States to consider the possible consequences,' of quitting the pact, Maas said on Sunday.

Trump has in the past threatened to tear up international agreements but in the event has not carried through.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, drew a parallel with the NAFTA trade pact, which Trump threatened to tear up, before a reworked version of the deal was brokered last month.

'This could be somewhat like the fact that they were going to end NAFTA, and then ended up negotiating some small changes,' Corker said on CNN's 'State of the Union.'

'So this could be something - just a precursor - to try to get Russia to come into compliance.' Corker said quitting the treaty had not come up in a talk with Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.A hitman made seven calls to the Saudi Crown Prince's private office on the day Jamal Khashoggi was killed, it was claimed last night.

Turkish intelligence agencies intercepted 14 phone calls by Major General Maher Abdulaziz Mutrib, a former diplomat who was once posted to Britain.

Seven of them were to the office of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman  the contents of which would be 'explosive' if leaked, a source claimed.

Mutrib, who was pictured outside Downing Street in March during the Crown Prince's state visit, was described as the 'spinal cord' of a Saudi death squad.

Major General Maher Abdulaziz Mutrib, pictured outside Downing Street in March during the Crown Prince's state visit, was described as the 'spinal cord' of a Saudi death squad

Left, on the way in: Mustafa al-Madani enters the consulate in a checked shirt. Centre, before the murder: Victim Mr Khashoggi. Right, later: Madani, now in Mr Khashoggi's jacket

Left - disguise: Madani, circled, was also wearing a fake beard. Right - Job done: The Saudi then changed back into his own clothes

It comes as US President Donald Trump (right) said he was 'not satisfied' with Riyadh's explanation of the Washington Post contributor's death in a case has tarnished the image of powerful Saudi Crown Prince (left)

The allegations are yet further evidence that point the finger at Saudi Arabia's de-facto ruler.

It comes after a top Saudi minister admitted for the first time that journalist Mr Khashoggi, 59, was murdered at his country's consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

He blamed a 'rogue operation' for the killing, which has sparked an international outcry and plunged the kingdom into a diplomatic crisis.

A source told online news service Middle East Eye that members of the hit squad sent Mr Khashoggi's fingers back to Riyadh to prove the mission's success and they were presented to the Crown Prince.

'MBS always said that he will cut off the fingers of every writer who criticises him,' the source said.

According to newspaper Yeni Safak, Mutrib spoke to Badr al-Asaker, head of the Crown Prince's private office, four times after Khashoggi was killed.

Last night, one Saudi and one Turkish intelligence source told Reuters that a Saudi royal aide sacked over the killing directed the murder by giving orders over Skype.

Saud Al-Qahtani, who ran social media for the crown prince, allegedly insulted the journalist after he was seized in the consulate before telling a hit squad 'bring me the head of the dog'.

He was sacked from his post on Saturday and was made chairman of the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, a role he had held before.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to reveal what he described as the 'naked truth' behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (pictured) at Istanbul's Saudi embassy

Erdogan (pictured) is expected to make an announcement today with Ankara having already said the journalist's killing on October 2 was 'savagely planned'

This morning, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said the investigation into the killing will produce the truth about what happened. Adel al-Jubeir also pledged that mechanisms will be put in place so that 'something like this can never happen again'

Today, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to reveal what he described as the 'naked truth' behind the killing.

Erdogan is expected to make an announcement with Ankara having already said the journalist's killing was 'savagely planned'.

A tough critic of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Khashoggi, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to collect a document for his upcoming marriage.

Saudi Arabia has acknowledged he died on October 2, during the consulate visit, but maintains he died in a fistfight.

Revealed: The Tiger Squad assassins Saudi Arabia's crown prince has a death squad tasked with covertly killing dissidents inside the kingdom and on foreign soil, it is claimed. The Firqat el-Nemr, or Tiger Squad, is made up of 50 of the country's best-skilled intelligence and military operatives who are loyal to their leader. It is supervised by Mohammed bin Salman, the de-facto ruler of the Gulf state, the Middle East Eye reported. He is alleged to have chosen five of his most trusted personal security team to serve in the squad. They are alleged to be among the 15 men sent to kill Mr Khashoggi, including Maher Abdulaziz Mutrib, Mohammed al-Zahrani and Dhaar al-Harbi. A source said: 'They [the Saudi leadership] have the belief that arresting critics will mount pressure on them so that's why they started assassinating them quietly.' It was named the Tiger Squad after Major General Ahmed al-Assiri, deputy chief of Saudi intelligence, who was sacked by Riyadh last week over Mr Khashoggi's death. The source added: 'Assiri is well known among his colleagues as the Tiger of the South.' Assiri and Saoud al-Qahtani, one of the crown prince's closest aides, who was also dismissed last week, are believed to be part of the command structure. Mutrib is described as 'the spinal cord of the Tiger Squad'. Mr Khashoggi's fingers were allegedly taken to prove the mission's success and they were presented to the crown prince. 'MBS always said he will cut off the fingers of every writer who criticises him,' the source said. Advertisement

This morning, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said the investigation into the killing will produce the truth about what happened.

Adel al-Jubeir also pledged that mechanisms will be put in place so that 'something like this can never happen again.'

He spoke on Tuesday in Indonesia, just hours before Turkey's president was expected to detail his own country's findings.

'I express the commitment (of the government)...to see to it that the investigation is thorough and complete and that the truth is revealed and those responsible will be held to account,' he told reporters after meeting with his Indonesian counterpart in Jakarta.

'And that mechanism and procedures are put in place to ensure that something like this can never happen again.'

On Sunday, he told Fox News the journalist was murdered, blaming a 'rogue operation'.

He said the act had been a 'tremendous mistake' and denied the Crown Prince had ordered the killing of Mr Khashoggi  a high-profile critic of the leader.

Mr al-Jubeir said: 'We are determined to find out all the facts and we are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder.' He said officials did not know where the body was.

He added: 'Even the senior leadership of our intelligence service was not aware of this.'

Mr Khashoggi's body is said to have been rolled up in a rug and taken out in a consular vehicle.

In a further development yesterday, police discovered an abandoned vehicle they believe belonged to the Saudi consulate. It was located in a private car park about ten miles away.

A spokesman for Turkey's ruling AK party yesterday said the murder was 'monstrously planned'.

Last night, a Turkish TV channel claimed Saudi officials burned evidence in the garden of the consulate the day after Khashoggi was killed.

Pro-government channel A Haber published footage of three men in suits putting papers into a burning mental barrel and claimed they were destroying documents relating to the journalist's death.

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city today. Broadcaster NTV and other local media said that police would search the vehicle

A car belonging to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was found in the Sultangazi district of the city today. Pictured is the man thought to have dumped the car

This image appears to show the man dumping the diplomatic car in the underground car park

A Turkish TV channel claimed Saudi officials burned evidence in the garden of the consulate the day after Khashoggi was killed

Smoke was seen billowing from the backyard of the embassy, the day after the journalist went missing

The TV anchor can be heard saying: 'This is an archaic way to destroy documents. They don't even use a document shredder. It is likely that they would like to completely destroy every evidence related to Khashoggi.'

Twitter users speculated the video was taken by a Turkish spy drone. The Turkish government has not commented on the footage.

It comes as US President Donald Trump said he was 'not satisfied' with Riyadh's explanation of the Washington Post contributor's death in a case has tarnished the image of powerful Saudi Crown Prince.

Trump, who had said he found Riyadh's initial explanations credible, told reporters at the White House Monday: 'I am not satisfied with what I have heard' since then, and expected to know more 'very soon'.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin meanwhile met the Crown Prince behind closed doors in Riyadh for talks while CIA Director Gina Haspel headed for Turkey, although details of her trip were not immediately clear.

White House advisor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner said he had urged Prince Mohammed to be 'fully transparent' stressing that 'the world is watching'.

The case has shone the spotlight on the Crown Prince, who was credited with spearheading a reform drive but is now accused of having ordered Khashoggi's murder - a claim Riyadh denies.

And as further details of the killing continued to seep out, CNN broadcast images showing a Saudi official playing a body double for Khashoggi, wearing the journalist's clothes, exiting the consulate.

Omer Celik, spokesman of Erdogan's ruling party, said the killing 'was planned in an extremely savage manner,' and that 'there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this'.

A tough critic of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Khashoggi, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate (pictured) in Istanbul on October 2 to collect a document for his upcoming marriage

CCTV images have emerged showing a Saudi intelligence officer dressed in a fake beard and Jamal Khashoggi's clothes and glasses (left) on the day the journalist disappeared

Khashoggi chatted to Crown Prince's brother months before murder Khashoggi met with Saudi US ambassador Prince Khalid bin Salman (pictured below) in the kingdom's Washington embassy in late 2017 or early 2018, a friend told NBC News on Monday night. The journalist was in the building for routine matters but was called up to the ambassor's office after staff recognised him. The friend asked if Khalid, 30, was threatening in the meeting and Khashoggi apparently replied: 'No, we just had a nice chat, and he was quite nice.' Advertisement

An Erdogan adviser, Yasin Aktay, wrote in the Yeni Safak daily that Riyadh's version of events 'feels like our intelligence is being mocked'.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday called the killing 'monstrosity' and vowed to halt all German arms exports to Riyadh until the case is cleared up.

Merkel, in her harshest comments to date, decried what she called 'the monstrosity there in the Saudi consulate in Turkey' during a campaign rally in the town of Ortenberg before a regional election in the state of Hesse on Sunday.

'It must be cleared up. As long as it's not cleared up, there will be no arms exports to Saudi Arabia. I assure you of that very decidedly,' Merkel said.

Britain's former foreign secretary Boris Johnson claimed Mr Khashoggi, who moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views, had been tricked into going to Istanbul.

It emerged that Mr Khashoggi had applied in the US capital for a document certifying that he had been divorced because he wished to marry his Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz.

But in a 'transparent ruse' the Saudi-born Washington Post columnist was told he had to travel to Istanbul to get it, Mr Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, (pictured) said he had handed her his two mobile phones and left instructions that she should wait for him and call an aide to Turkey's president if he did not reappear

The website for Saudi Arabia's 'Davos in the desert' summit was hacked on Monday to show Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appearing to behead Jamal Khashoggi.

More than two weeks after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to his family. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs released this official image to announce the news

Prince Mohammed has denied involvement with the disappearance of Khashoggi, who was a fierce critic of his policies

Did Saudi team take part of Khashoggi's body with them? Turkish officials fear part of Jamal Khashoggi's body was transported out of the country by one of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's bodyguards, it has been claimed. Middle East Eye says it has been told by sources that one member of the 15-strong team of Saudis who flew to Turkey on the day of the journalist's disappearance may have taken the body part out in a bag. The intelligence officer, named as Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, was seen boarding a private jet in Istanbul on October 2 at 6.20pm and 'appeared to be in a hurry', according to the source. The unverified claims come amid reports that Khashoggi was cut into pieces after entering the Saudi embassy in the city on the same day. Mutreb was a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year. Advertisement

In another day of high drama yesterday, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that members of the Saudi regime could face sanctions over the murder.

Condemning the 'appalling brutality', he said measures could ultimately include asset freezes and travel bans  which could target the Crown Prince himself.

Mr Hunt told the Commons: 'When we have full accountability for the crimes that have been committed, which have been described by the Saudis as murder, then that accountability must extend to the people who gave the order for the crimes to be committed, not just those who were there on the ground.'

Earlier, former foreign secretary Jack Straw said the killing could only have been 'authorised at the highest level'.

Meanwhile, today sees the opening to the so-called 'Davos in the desert' investment conference in Riyadh, which many officials have boycotted.

But in a fresh embarrassment for organisers, hackers targeted a website promoting the event and posted a mocked-up picture showing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman standing over Mr Khashoggi with a bloody scimitar sword.Immigration agents have rescued two dozen undocumented immigrants being smuggled over the border inside a truck's cargo area where temperatures hit more than 100 degrees.

The driver, a US citizen, raised suspicion when he drove his box truck through a checkpoint near the southwest city of Freer in Duval County, Texas, off State Highway 59, on October 12.

When agents signaled for him to pull over at a second inspection point, he sped off, leading officers on a high speed chase until they finally caught up with him two miles later.

Border Patrol agents who boarded the truck discovered 24 undocumented immigrants hunched over in the trucks sweltering main cargo area.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents rescued 24 undocumented immigrants (pictured) after they were led on a two-mile speed chase by a truck driver last week in Freer, Texas

Fortunately, none of the immigrants were in need of medical assistance despite the inhumane conditions they were subjected to.

The migrants and the driver were taken into custody. The case has been referred to Homeland Security Investigations.

The alert was first raised when the vehicle was inspected at a checkpoint set up by the border agents near the southwest city of Freer in Duval County.

A Border Patrol K-9 alertly picked up the scent of possible concealed contraband in the cargo area.

Border Patrol agents who boarded the truck discovered 24 undocumented immigrants hunched over in the trucks sweltering main cargo area (stock image)

They pointed the driver, a US citizen, to pull over in the secondary inspection point; Freer Station Border Patrol Station.

Instead, he put his foot down and sped away from the border.

The suspect led officers on a two-mile high speed chase down the highway before they were finally able to force the truck to pull over traveled north on State Highway 59, according to the Laredo Morning Times.

DailyMail.com reached out to the United States Customs and Border Patrol agency for additional comment.A man accused of murdering his wealthy grandfather so he can collect his inheritance says that the real killer could be a 25-year-old woman who spent a weekend with the 87-year-old days before his death.

Attorneys representing Nathan Carman want to interview Mistress Y about the time she spent with John Chakalos at Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut.

Chakalos is also said to have given her $3,500 for breast enhancement surgery, according to the Hartford Courant.

On the night Chakalos was killed, he and the woman spoke for about 19 minutes on the phone, according to court documents filed in Rhode Island.

Attorneys representing Nathan Carman (seen above in West Hartford, Connecticut probate court in August) want to interview a woman said to be the mistress of his late grandfather

Chakalos, a multimillionaire property developer, was fatally shot in his Windsor, Connecticut home on December 20, 2013.

Family members allege that his grandson, Carman, shot Chakalos several times in the back of his head at close range.

Carman has never been charged. Police view him as a suspect.

Police sought an arrest warrant charging Carman with murder, but the court rejected this, citing a lack of evidence.

Carman is alleged to own a Sig Sauer rifle that his aunts say was used to kill Chakalos. The weapon has yet to be recovered.

He has been accused of killing Chakalos by his three aunts, who are in a bitter court battle over the multi-millionaire property developer's estate.

His aunts filed a 'slayer action' against him, a legal instrument designed to ensure someone who kills cannot profit from their victim's estate.

But Carman, who has maintained his innocence throughout the bitter feud, says the generous financial support he had been receiving provided him with no reason to murder Chakalos.

Attorneys representing Carman want to interview Mistress Y about the time she spent with John Chakalos (seen right with wife, Rita) at Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. Chakalos is also said to have given her $3,500 for breast enhancement surgery

Carmans aunts - Valerie Santilli, Elaine Chakalos, and Charlene Gallagher - have also accused Carman of killing his mother by deliberately sinking his boat during a fishing trip off the coast of Long Island in September 2016.

Linda Carman has been presumed dead since the boat sank. Her son was rescued eight days after the boat sank.

He was found floating in a raft off the coast of Marthas Vineyard.

The aunts want a judge in New Hampshire to rule that Nathan Carman killed both his mother and grandfather.

They want the judge to deny him an inheritance worth millions of dollars from Chakalos estate.

Carmans lawyers are now putting forward an alternate theory about Chakalos death.

Days before Chakalos was found dead in his Connecticut home, he spent a weekend with 'Mistress Y' at Mohegan Sun casino (above) in Montville. The two also spoke on the phone for about 20 minutes hours before Chakalos was shot dead

They are seeking an interview with Mistress Y, who hasnt been named.

The woman in question allegedly met Chakalos while she worked for a property management company that tended to an apartment complex owned by Chakalos in Keene, New Hampshire.

Carmans lawyers are alleging that Chakalos gave the woman as much as $800 each time they met.

Dan Small, a Boston-based lawyer representing the three aunts, slammed the latest filing by Carmans attorneys.

Nathans shameful attack on his Grandfather today shows there is no depth to which he will not sink to avoid producing his gun, which is the probable murder weapon, Small said.

Now he is trying to cast blame on his own Aunt, even though she willingly took and passed a police lie detector test, while Nathan refused, and she cooperated fully and honestly with the police, while Nathan lied repeatedly, including about this very gun.

Every day that passes in these legal proceedings shows even more clearly that Nathan's behavior is calculated, evasive, and ultimately, guilty.

Carmans aunts - Valerie Santilli, Elaine Chakalos, and Charlene Gallagher - have also accused Carman of killing his mother by deliberately sinking his boat during a fishing trip off the coast of Long Island in September 2016. Carman is seen right with his mother, Linda Carman

A week before Chakalos murder, he spent the weekend with Mistress Y at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, Carmans lawyers allege.

After the murder, Connecticut police interviewed the woman. She told investigators that Chakalos gave her $3,500 for breast enhancement.

The woman denied that she had sex with him.

Mistress Y also told police that the day before he was killed, they had a 20-minute phone conversation that was sexual in nature.

She said they made plans to travel to New York City together over Christmas.

Carman claims that he left his grandfathers house just as Chakalos started talking to his mistress.

He said his grandfather even paused the conversation with the woman to say goodbye.

Carmans lawyers say that Mistress Y was aware that Chakalos liked to keep stacks of $100 bills around the house.

The lawyers say that the woman could have planned Chakalos death.

She also could have told someone else in passing about the money lying around the house, according to the court filing.

Linda Carman has been presumed dead since the boat sank. Her son was rescued eight days after the boat sank. He was found floating in a raft off the coast of Marthas Vineyard

Evidence from Mistress Y dramatically alters our pre-conceived notion of what 87-year-old grandfathers do with their spare time, Carmans lawyer, David Anderson, wrote in the court filing.

The fact of the matter is that living alone in a house in which he kept large amounts of cash placed John Chakalos at risk.

Mr. Chakalos lifestyle and activities prior to his death made him a target for a robbery and/or murder by some unknown person.

Aside from Mistress Y, Anderson also wants to depose Chakalos next door neighbor.

The neighbor told police she heard a loud bang at around 2am on the morning of December 20.

The neighbor said that an hour later, she heard tires from a car screeching as the vehicle drove away down the street.

This raises the possibility that Chakalos was killed at around that time.

Nathan Carman arrives in a small boat at the U.S. Coast Guard station in Boston on September 27, 2016. Carman spent a week at sea in a life raft before being rescued by a passing freighter

Investigators with Windsor police say that the murder took place sometime between 3 and 4am.

If Chakalos was killed at around 2am, this could exonerate Nathan Carman, who was seen on surveillance video at his apartment in nearby Bloomfield, Connecticut until 3am.

Simply stated if John Chakalos was shot at 2 a.m. then Nathan Carman clearly was not the murderer, Anderson wrote in the court filing.

Windsor police believe Nathan Carman is the main suspect in Chakalos murder.

Investigators said that Carman was the last person to see Chakalos alive.

They also allege that Carman removed the GPS system from his car as well as the hard drive from his computer the morning after the murder.

Carman has also refused to take a lie detector test.

Authorities also point to a missing Sig Sauer rifle that Carman bought weeks before his grandfathers murder.

When Linda Carman was declared presumed dead after the fishing boat sank, the insurance company refused to pay an $80,000 policy. The company argued in court that Nathan Carman caused the boat to sink. The image above is a file photo of the boat, which has not been found

The lawyers for the three aunts say that forensic results show the caliber of the bullet used in Chakalos murder matches the gun.

Connecticut investigators sent bullet fragments to a forensic lab for testing.

Experts found that at least two of the bullet fragments came from a .30 caliber class boat tail jacketed bullet, though they dont specify which gun could have been used.

Sig Sauer rifles can fire either .308 caliber bullets or a 7.62mm cartridge.

The legal proceedings in Rhode Island initially started as an insurance dispute.

When Linda Carman was declared presumed dead after the fishing boat sank, the insurance company refused to pay an $80,000 policy.

The company argued in court that Nathan Carman caused the boat to sink.

Carman acknowledged in court that he removed trim tabs from the boat and filled the holes with an epoxy.

The insurance company says that the changes he made to the boat caused it to sink.

Nathan and Linda Carman set out for the Atlantic Ocean in September 2016.

They planned to go tuna fishing on a boat that was docked in a Rhode Island marina.A Pennsylvania mother who drunkenly plunged two stories from a parking garage with her four-year-old daughter in the car received a jail sentence of 72 hours to six months on Monday.

Tarwinder Kaur pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and endangering her child during the April 24 crash in which she lost control of the vehicle and it flew from the second floor of her Pottstown apartment complex.

The 26-year-old is set to begin the sentence November 2, Judge Thomas C. Branca announced in court.

Scroll down for video

A scene from the April 24 DUI crash of Pennsylvania mom Tarwinder Kaur, 26, is shown

Kaur pleaded guilty this week to driving under the influence and endangering her child during the crash in which she lost control of the vehicle and it flew from the second floor of her Pottstown apartment complex

The Mercury reports that Kaur must also complete two years of probation as well as a drug and alcohol evaluation after parole.

Pottstown Officer Timothy Coffland said in the arrest affidavit that 'there was no proper child car seat inside of the vehicle.'

Under a plea agreement, the judge dropped charges of endangering the welfare of a child and operating a vehicle with an improper child restraint system.

The 26-year-old's car was seen on surveillance as it plunged about 20 feet from the garage and overturned.

Debris and bricks could be seen crumbling to the floor before the vehicle crashed front first.

The 26-year-old's car was seen on surveillance in April when it plunged about 20 feet down the garage and overturned

Debris and bricks could be seen crumbling to the floor before the vehicle crashed front first

Residents of the building heard the shocking crash and assisted the mom and daughter as they awaited paramedics

Residents told police at the scene the child helped herself out of the car - while the mother required their assistance as they awaited paramedics.

Both Kaur and her daughter suffered minor injuries.

A man who lives inside the building, Justin Cox, told Fox 29: 'I heard a loud bag, buildings shook a little bit, and then shortly after, the fire alarm went off and I didn't really know what was going on.

'The debris flying out, and then the car coming down, landing on its nose and flipping completely over,' one resident witness said

'The debris flying out, and then the car coming down, landing on its nose and flipping completely over.'

Coffland said in the arrest affidavit that Kaur was 'exhibiting slurred speech throughout our conversation' and 'at one point in the conversation, said it was all her fault because she was drunk.'

Kaur also mumbled under her breath: 'They are going to hate me.'

She had a reported blood alcohol level of 0.22 percent, nearly three times the legal limit.President Donald Trump revealed on Monday he'll push for a new round of tax cuts - this time a 10 percent cut for the middle class that he will pitch for a vote in Congress after the midterm election.

'This isn't for business; this is for middle,' Trump told reporters at the White House before he left on a campaign trip to Houston.

But his new plan, which he first mentioned at a campaign rally on Saturday, has been greeted with skepticism - mainly because Congress isn't in session to discuss it and it could be difficult to pass a tax cut after voters head to the polls if Democrats win control of the House of Representatives.

In fact, Trump back stepped his original idea - a tax cut to be voted on before November given that lawmakers don't return to Washington D.C. for work until mid-November.

President Donald Trump revealed on Monday he'll push for a new round of tax cuts - after the midterm election

Trump's announcement is likely designed to rally GOP voters ahead of the election

He is now saying a vote will happen when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill for business after the midterms.

And he brushed aside details of how and why he could get a new plan passed.

'We're putting in a resolution some time in the next week or week and a half, two weeks. We're giving a middle income tax reduction of about 10 percent,' he said on Monday.

'We won't have time to do the vote; we'll do the vote later. We'll do the vote after the election,' he added.

Even though a vote may come after the election, the president's comments were likely designed to rally his base ahead of November's midterm.

His move comes as more and more analysts are predicting Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives.

Trump originally suggested this weekend he would push for another tax cut - a move that caught GOP congressional leaders by surprise - especially when the president said a vote would come before November and Speaker Paul Ryan was working on it.

'We are looking at putting in a very major tax cut for middle income people. And if we do that it would be some time I would say just prior to November,' Trump said in Nevada on Saturday.

He noted the speaker and Rep. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, are working on a plan.

'Kevin Brady is working on it. Paul Ryan is working. Were all working now,' he said.

But questions arose immediately as Congress is not in session to vote on anything until mid-November and lawmakers' offices referred reporters to the White House for comment on the issue.

Despite the shock and awe, Trump is serious about pushing forward on the issue, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Monday.

'The president is serious about getting middle class tax cuts done. He's delivered on everything single thing he's set out to do. He's had a historic first two years and we're going to keep doing that,' she said.

Trump often touts his first round of tax cuts, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, as a major legislative victory.

That law was a tax cut on individuals and corporations.

But it hasn't proven much a selling point in the election as Republicans fight an uphill battle to maintain control of the House.

In the meantime, lawmakers are back home and on the campaign trail.

They won't return to Washington D.C. until after voters decide on whether or not to keep Trump's Republican Party in power on Capitol Hill.

A packed agenda, however, awaits Congress when it returns later this fall - government funding runs out on December 7 and that spending package could include funding for the president's controversial border wall.

Partisan battles will likely entail if Trump pushes ahead on the issue, particularly if Democrats win control of the House in the election and Republicans try to ram legislation through before they lose power at the end of the year.

No Democrat voted for Trump's first tax plan and Republicans may balk at the cost of such a package.They have thicker coats than most domestic cats, and impressive black rings around a big, well-furred tail. They have excellent night vision and their acute hearing allows them to get a precise fix on any sound.

If a squirrel rustles uneasily in the branches of a tree, these animals will know its whereabouts to an inch, even if they cant see through the thick foliage.

I am talking about wildcats. They are like a domestic cat with superpowers  as if your own beloved pet were to turn into Supercat.

Yesterday, the BBC broadcast some enchanting footage of three wildcat kittens filmed by a hill walker in the Cairngorms. But such sightings are extremely rare.

Because, until recently, the Scottish wildcat has been a member of the living dead. Thats the grim term naturalists use for a creature thats not yet extinct but does not have a long-term future. Now there is escalating support for a scheme to bring them back from the brink.

The wildcat population in Scotland has been estimated at around 35 (although some say the number is nearer 100)  so just a few animals that have been pushed back into the far north west. For such a tiny population there is no such thing as a small disaster: one ferocious winter, one virus, one change of policy in the way we manage our land could do for the lot of them.

But now there is a scheme to reintroduce wildcats into Britain  and its beginning to attract serious attention. The reintroduction would take place outside the current wildcat heartland: in the Galloway Forest, not far from the border with England. Should that happen, the cats would have every chance of moving south into the Kielder Forest in Northumberland and Ennerdale in Cumbria.

That would mean wildcats back in England  and the last time a wildcat was recorded south of the border was 1849. After 170 years, there could be English wildcats once again. It would be the healing of an ancient harm and a demonstration that, sometimes, it really is possible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The Galloway scheme is proposed by an organisation called Wildcat Haven. Wildcats fit in perfectly, helping to control species like rabbits and actively avoiding humans, says the organisations Dr Paul ODonoghue.

So where would the reintroduced cats come from? The wildcat in Scotland is the same species as the European wildcat, though it has been isolated here for 9,000 years. European wildcats can be found in Spain, Germany, Italy, across south eastern Europe and Turkey onto the Caucasus.

The Wildcat Haven plan is to release 15 animals  five each from Germany, Switzerland and Romania  to maximise the genetic diversity.

Yesterday, the BBC broadcast some enchanting footage of three wildcat kittens

The Scottish wildcat, or Highlands tiger, is a dark coloured subspecies of the European wildcat native to Scotland

This is a scheme that was always going to provoke passionate support, as well as opposition. After all, we love cats, dont we? Last year, Cats Protection, a charity for domestic animals, had an income of 63 million, which is enough to light up the cats green eyes in many wildlife charities.

Wildcats are not just loveable, they are also mysterious, and have been living in British forests since time immemorial. How can our hearts not thrill to such an idea?

I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me, says the cat in Rudyard Kiplings Just So Stories, and all cat-lovers feel a frisson at these words.

But these are not the hearth-rug snoozers of Britain, nor the half-tame bangers of cat-flaps, nor the feral cats  domestic moggies that live and breed in the wild  that haunt towns and suburbs and countryside.

They are real, authentic, full-on, uncompromising wild cats: cats that have hung on across the millennia in an increasingly hostile world. The idea of giving them a chance to dig themselves back into national life is extraordinarily attractive.

Until recently, the Scottish wildcat has been a member of the 'living dead'

That's a term naturalists use for a creature thats not extinct but has no long term future

Wildcats were hammered by persecution in Victorian times, an era when any creature that might look at a pheasant or a partridge with a hint of hunger had to be slaughtered. Wildcats were killed with immense enthusiasm: they became extinct in England and desperately scarce in Scotland.

In truth, wildcats are not much threat to any game-birds. They dont take many birds at all: rabbits, voles and squirrels are their main prey. Its likely they would fit very snugly back into the ecosystem.

With predators there is always a simultaneous desire to stress their ferocity and to minimise it. There are people claiming that wildcats are harmless things that wouldnt say boo to a pheasant: and at the same time revelling in the fact that theyre glamorous, impressive, ferocious  and truly wild.

Its range previously also included England and Wales, but it became extinct in these areas, as well as in southern Scotland, within the last 150 years

We humans lose a little rationality when the conversation turns to predators. So what is the truth?

Wildcats tend to be around 25 per cent bigger than domestic cats, though some can be almost twice as big. Still, a human could pick one up with one hand.

Theyve been said to be behave with ferocity when backed into a corner  like any animal, it will defend itself when attacked  and in defence of young. They are fierce, too, in the sense that theyre carnivores who must kill to eat. But theres no profit for them in turning their claws on larger creatures; and certainly theyll run a mile from a human.

There have also been proposals to reintroduce the lynx into Britain. They have met the usual polarising response, some predicting disaster, others saying its just what we need. So let us note that the lynx is a different species from the wildcat: a lynx can stand up to 30 inches at the shoulder and they have been known to take down young deer. Dont try to pick them up with one hand!

It follows that the idea of reintroducing much smaller wildcats is not restricted to fanatics. Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has been reported as being open to the idea. The Scottish Wildlife Trust is keen on improving the lot of the wildcats, but believes the current scheme needs more consultation.

Now there is a scheme to reintroduce wildcats into Britain  and its beginning to attract serious attention

Ben Goldsmith, millionaire environmentalist and non-executive member of the Defra board, has spoken up for wildcats: A national project to rehabilitate our rarest predator is long overdue, and would doubtless have the backing of the British public, he said, adding: We have a duty to put right the moral wrongs of the past.

Every proposed reintroduction has at first excited horror and fury from some quarters: but when the trouble has died down, the returned creatures fit back comfortably enough into the environment.

That has been the case with otters, beavers, pine martins, white-tailed eagles, cranes, great bustards and red kites: and there is little doubt that a revitalised population of wildcats would fit in with modern British life.

Fit in? Wed be lucky ever to set eyes on one, even if they were back to their former numbers. What they like is the dead of night and the depths of forest, silence, darkness and as few humans in their lives as possible.

However, we would all be richer for knowing there were wildcats out there living their secret lives just as it says in the Just So Stories  in the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees . . . waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.A Ryanair passenger who racially abused a Windrush immigrant on a plane will 'get away scot-free' because of the airline's profit-hungry tactics, MPs claimed last night.

Politicians said Ryanair staff 'failed spectacularly' by refusing to throw off the man or immediately report him to police despite watching his repeated abuse of Delsie Gayle, 77.

One MP said Ryanair's 'perverse' incentives mean that its staff are unlikely to hold up a departing flight even if a delay is to kick off an abusive passenger.

Politicians said Ryanair staff 'failed spectacularly' by refusing to throw off the man or immediately report him to police despite watching his repeated abuse of Delsie Gayle, 77. Pictured, a video of the incident.

Cabin crew seek to avoid delays because under the company's rules, they are paid only when flights have taken off.

The airline now faces the threat of a boycott over its handling of the incident on a flight from Barcelona to London last week.

Mrs Gayle yesterday expressed her disgust at Ryanair's failure to offer an apology and vowed never to fly with the airline again. 'They don't treat you with respect,' she said, suggesting staff would have reacted differently if a white passenger had been abused.

In a video of the incident filmed by a fellow passenger, Ryanair staff can be seen failing to intervene as the unidentified man calls Mrs Gayle a 'black b******' and an 'ugly f****** c***'.

The victim's family said yesterday that when they complained, Ryanair staff claimed they did not hear any racism.

Police in the UK were yesterday helping the Spanish authorities with an investigation into the incident amid calls for the abuser to face punishment in Britain.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'What we saw was totally unacceptable, and racist abuse of that kind is a crime.

'If a crime is committed, it should be dealt with appropriately. I would hope that the police would want to take action in such an extraordinarily unacceptable case.'

Twitter was flooded with people hitting out at Ryanair's treatment of the pensioner

But shadow transport minister Karl Turner said Ryanair's failure to act when the plane was grounded in Spain means the racist will almost certainly face no punishment. He added: 'He should have been removed immediately from the aircraft and handed over to the Spanish authorities.

'They are under an awful lot of pressure to get the aircraft turned around. They've clearly made the wrong decision  he should have been ejected immediately.'

Mr Turner, a qualified barrister who was once Labour's shadow attorney general, said: 'There's a real chance that he won't be prosecuted as a result. I think Ryanair failed spectacularly. It should have been dealt with. He has committed grotesque criminal offences. This isn't just unruly, it is criminal.'

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority said there was nothing it could do. Dublin-based Ryanair is regulated by the Irish Aviation Authority. Because the incident took place before take-off, Spanish police would be responsible if the plane's doors were open.

The CAA said if the doors were closed, then the flight had officially begun and any criminal probe would have to be mounted by police in the country where the plane was registered. It is unclear where the aircraft was registered but the company's base is in Ireland.

A criminal act on board could be dealt with by British police if it took place after the plane had taken off for the UK.

Mr Turner said: 'The Crown Prosecution Service are going to be coming back to the police once they've reviewed this and will be telling police that they are not in a position to prosecute because of the jurisdictional point.

'That means he will get away with it scot-free. He will be banned, but that's not really a punishment when you've been racially abusing an elderly woman.'

Graham Stringer, a Labour member of the cross-party Commons transport committee, said the company's pay structure may have been to blame.

'Ryanair is an appalling airline which does not look after its passengers the way they should,' he said. 'But it also treats its staff badly and has perverse incentives in the system which may discourage them to hold up flights to deal with bad behaviour.' Cabin crew are paid for time in the air but not on the ground.

Like all airlines, Ryanair is also under pressure to hit punctuality targets. Under EU rules, airlines must pay compensation for heavily delayed or cancelled flights. Ryanair said yesterday the claim that its procedures were to blame was 'nonsense'.

The airline added that it had referred the matter to Essex Police, although it is thought that this only happened after the video of the incident prompted widespread condemnation.

Ryanair also claimed yesterday that its customer care team contacted the Gayle family on Sunday, although they contest this.

The family criticised Essex Police last night for contacting them to take a statement over the telephone, rather than in a face-to-face interview. The police force would not say whether it had spoken to the male passenger.

Huw Merriman, a Conservative member of the transport committee, said: 'Ryanair's staff should have been standing up for this poor woman who was the victim of racial abuse.

'Cabin crew clearly need better training. Action should be taken and this man should be hauled up in front of the courts.'

Labour MP David Lammy has led criticism of the airline by calling for a boycott and likening Mrs Gayle's experience to that of American civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: 'Surely Ryanair should be contacting this woman and apologising for the racist abuse she suffered?'

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said: 'I hope that Essex Police are knocking on this vile racist's door this morning.'A grandmother has been left with a broken jaw and a fractured cheekbone after she was beaten for refusing to give two strangers cigarettes.

Maryann, 59, from Iran, was laying on the grass at Cottesloe Beach in Perth last Tuesday when a young man approached her asking for cigarettes for his friend.

When she refused because she thought they looked too young, she was attacked, Perth Now reported.

Maryann, 59, from Iran, was laying on the grass at Cottesloe Beach in Perth, last Tuesday when a young man approached her asking for cigarettes for his friend

Her bag, iPad, mobile phone and cigarettes were stolen before the men fled on foot to the train station.

Maryann, who does not speak any English, is on holiday from Iran but is now too afraid to explore the city.

Maryann's daughter told 9News her mother was still in a lot of pain six days after the attack.

'She eats everything through a straw. She can't move at night time, she lies straight on her back, it's the only way she can sleep.

'She's really depressed, she's sad, she's come here for a bit of a holiday and she doesn't want to leave the house, she doesn't want to be around anybody.'

A 59-year-old grandmother was laying on the grass at Cottesloe Beach (pictured) in Perth last Tuesday when two men attacked her

Maryann's daughter said her mother is still in a lot of pain and afraid to leave the house  six days after the attack

'She'll be leaving WA not only with the injuries themselves but also the psychological effect,' Fremantle detective Dan Bordoni said.

One man was arrested in the northern suburbs on Monday but no charges have been laid.

There are two men in police custody but police have urged anyone with information to come forward.Here are upcoming street closings:

Wednesday:



: Oak Street will be closed between Lindsay Street and Houston Street from 3-9 p.m.for the First Centenary United Methodist fall festival.

Friday:





Startup Week Parade: The westbound lane of East 11th St. will be closed between Market St. and Columbia St. from 5pm to 7pm for the Startup Week Parade lineup. At 5:30PM the parade will proceed north on Market St. from E. 11th St. to E. MLK Blvd, turn down Georgia Ave, and end at Miller Park. There will be police escorts stopping traffic as the parade moves through town. : The westbound lane of East 11th St. will be closed between Market St. and Columbia St. fromfor the Startup Week Parade lineup. At 5:30PM the parade will proceed north on Market St. from E. 11th St. to E. MLK Blvd, turn down Georgia Ave, and end at Miller Park. There will be police escorts stopping traffic as the parade moves through town.





City Hall Halloween Event: Lindsay Street will be closed between E 10th and E 11th Street and E 11th St will be closed between Lindsay St and Newby St on Friday, October 26 from 8:30AM until 4PM for the City Halloween Event.





Bitter Alibi Halloween Party: Houston Street will be closed between MLK Boulevard and Flynn Street from 5 p.m.-2 a.m. for this Halloween celebration. : Houston Street will be closed between MLK Boulevard and Flynn Street from 5 p.m.-2 a.m. for this Halloween celebration.





ChattaJack 31: Riverfront Parkway will be closed between Chestnut Street and Power Alley from noon on Friday, Oct. 26 to 11 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 28 for this stand-up paddle board race. : Riverfront Parkway will be closed between Chestnut Street and Power Alley from noon on Friday, Oct. 26 to 11 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 28 for this stand-up paddle board race.







West Village Out on 8th - W 8th Street between Pine Street and Chestnut Street will be closed on Friday, October 26th from 2 pm until 8 am on Saturday, October 27th .

W 8th Street between Pine Street and Chestnut Street will be closed on Friday, October 26th fromon





Saturday:





Paths to Peace: Tremont Street will be closed at the entrance to the Chattanooga Theater Centre on Saturday, October 27 from 10AM until 4PM. Tremont Street will be closed at the entrance to the Chattanooga Theater Centre on Saturday, October 27 from 10AM until 4PM.





2018 Tennessee Valley Heart Walk: One westbound lane of W. 3rd Street will be closed from Walnut Street to Power Alley, as well as all of Walnut Street from Aquarium Way to E. 3rd Street for this walk benefiting the American Heart Association. In addition, a single northbound lane of Market Street will be closed from E. 3rd Street to Frazier Avenue and a single eastbound lane of Frazier Avenue from Market Street to the Walnut Street Bridge.

: One westbound lane of W. 3rd Street will be closed from Walnut Street to Power Alley, as well as all of Walnut Street from Aquarium Way to E. 3rd Street for this walk benefiting the American Heart Association. In addition, a single northbound lane of Market Street will be closed from E. 3rd Street to Frazier Avenue and a single eastbound lane of Frazier Avenue from Market Street to the Walnut Street Bridge.

CSAS Book It! 5K Run/Walk: A single lane of E. 3rd Street and Mabel Street will be closed from 8AM to 10AM for this fundraising run and walk. : A single lane of E. 3rd Street and Mabel Street will be closed from 8AM to 10AM for this fundraising run and walk.





Chattanooga Mocs Home Game - Reggie White Boulevard will be closed from the entrance to the pavilion parking lot to W 19th Street; W 19th Street will also be closed, from 5AM until 11:30PM for the opening game of the Chattanooga Mocs. This closure will be in effect on: 8/30, 9/22, 10/6, 10/27, 11/10, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, 12/15 for the 2018 season. Please note that there will be no street parking available on Chestnut Street from W 17th Street to W 19th Street starting at 5AM on the days of the home games.





UTC Homecoming Tailgate: Chestnut Street will be closed between W 17th Street and W 19th Street from 11AM until 8PM.





Halloween on Station Street: Station Street will be closed between Market Street and Brinks Security from 4PM until 2AM for a Halloween celebration.





Ryanair is squeezing more than 6million a day in extra charges from passengers, it emerged yesterday.

A surge in the number of people paying extra just to reserve a seat or bring a second bag on board has enabled the budget airline to generate 1.15billion from add-ons in just six months.

In results posted yesterday, the Irish-based carrier revealed the amount it generated from ancillary sales soared by 27 per cent.

Ryanair is squeezing more than 6million a day in extra charges from passengers. Stock picture of a Ryanair aeroplane

It includes everything apart from the fare and baggage fee  ranging from priority boarding to seats with extra legroom, snacks and sandwiches and car hire.

This has pushed up the average amount paid in extras per passenger to around 15.

Ryanair blamed strikes by air traffic controllers, as well as higher fuel costs, for dragging down its profit by 7 per cent to 1.06billion. A controversial crackdown in January meant passengers had to pay between 6 and 8 for priority boarding if they wanted to take a second, larger bag  such as a wheelie suitcase  on board the plane.

Ryanair insisted it was purely to cut down on delays caused by passengers bringing on more luggage than could fit in the overhead lockers. The airline also doubled the cost of seat reservation charges earlier this year while hiking the cost of extra legroom seats.

Seat reservation fees increased from 2 to 4 per passenger for one journey  or 8 for a return trip. Reserving a seat with extra legroom rose from 11 to 15 per journey. Parents with children under 12 have to pay 6 to guarantee they can sit with them.

The Civil Aviation Authority has been investigating the price of tickets and add-on charges including booking and baggage fees.

One of the main focuses of the probe will be allegations some airlines are deliberately splitting families up unless they pay to reserve seats. The watchdog estimates this tactic is costing passengers up to 400million a year in fees.

Its initial findings show that on Ryanair more than one in three families are separated. The airline has strongly denied accusations it deliberately splits up families and says it allocates seats on a random basis.

But Guy Anker, managing editor at Moneysavingexpert, said: It is appalling if this is a deliberate tactic. He added: These charges are not hidden, but theyre still sneaky.

A Ryanair spokesman said: Customers may choose to purchase additional products and services, the prices for which are fully transparent and displayed throughout the booking process.Thomas Markle was seen in Rosarito, Mexico, running errands Monday

Thomas Markle has been spotted running errands in Mexico following his exclusive interview with the Mail on Sunday, in which he told of his elation at the news of Meghan's pregnancy.

The proud grandfather-to-be was pictured stepping out in Rosarito, Mexico, Monday where he lives.

The 74-year-old was seen driving his Volvo to get gas and picking up a few items from a local store just one week after news of that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expecting their first child.

In his interview, Mr Markle said: I was sitting in line waiting to cross the border when I heard the baby announcement on the car radio.

The first thing I thought about was holding Meghan in my arms as a newborn 37 years ago.

I thought, My baby is having a baby. It was a very proud moment.

I was filled with love, joy and happiness for both my beautiful daughter and my son-in-law. A new baby is a blessing and I look forward to seeing a little Meghan or a little Harry.

His spotting came after the Mail on Sunday published its exclusive interview with the grandfather-to-be

He revealed that he learned the news of Meghan's pregnancy over the radio

Markle is seen in his Volvo getting gas Monday in Rosarito, Mexico

Mr Markle became estranged from Meghan days before the Royal Wedding in May after hanging up on Prince Harry  the prince had called to chastise him for co-operating with the paparazzi on pictures which showed, among other things, Mr Markle being fitted for a wedding suit.

He was then unable to walk his daughter down the aisle at St Georges Chapel, Windsor, after suffering two heart attacks. In an interview with this newspaper  one of only three he has given  Mr Markle apologized for his lack of judgment in co-operating with the paparazzi.

It was, he said, a misguided attempt to improve his image after being hounded as he went about his daily business.

Mr Markle is yet to meet his son-in-law.

But he said: I dont want anyone to feel sorry for me. Me not getting a call is most likely a misunderstanding about my two back-to-back heart attacks and me missing the wedding.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex seen holding her baby bump while walking in Fraser Island, Australia on Monday

Meghan, 37, looked radiant wearing a thigh high split maxi dress, after skipping royal engagements

When Kensington Palace made the happy announcement on last week shortly after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex landed in Sydney for a 16-day Royal tour of Australia, New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji  a spokesman said: The Queen, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, and Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are delighted for the couple.

Ms Doria Ragland is very happy about the lovely news and she looks forward to welcoming her first grandchild.

It was not known at that stage if Mr Markle had been told. He has denied stories claiming that Doria revealed the news to him before the official announcement.

Meanwhile, Prince Harry and Meghan continue their tour of Australia as they were pictured holding hands as they walked along a jetty on picturesque Fraser Island after the couple were reunited after spending the day apart.

The pregnant Duchess of Sussex had skipped royal engagements to take a well-earned break at the exclusive Kingfisher Bay resort.

Pregnant Meghan was glowing as she arrived by car to meet Prince Harry, having spent the morning at their hotel recuperating from the heavy schedule of the first week of their Commonwealth tour.

And it looked as if the morning's rest had done her the world of good as she appeared happy and relaxed cradling her baby bump when she took a stroll with her husband before meeting wellwishers.Australians will finally be able to see how much they're overpaying on their power bills in a shake-up of the electricity industry.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor will outline new laws he's drafted on Tuesday morning, which will see a default price for electricity implemented in each state.

The default price will be used as a comparative tool for consumers, some of which are overpaying hundreds of dollars for electricity.

A report from the Australian Energy Market Commission revealed customers who stay with their providers, as opposed to shopping around, miss out on more than $800 worth of savings per year.

Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor (pictured) says he has a plan to save Australians $832 per year from exploitative electricity retailers

'The default offer will ensure customers are not being exploited by being loyal to a service provider,' Mr Taylor says.

HOW MUCH IS YOUR STATE OVERPAYING? - South Australian customers on standing offers pay $832 more than the cheapest deal on the market - Victoria: $562 - New South Wales: $411 - Queensland: $369 - ACT: $273 - Tasmania already has regulation Source: Australian Energy Market Commission Advertisement

The default price acts as a reference bill for each state, under which electricity retailers will be required to calculate and advertise their discounts using a common reference point.

This is designed to help customers clearly compare a range of providers to find the cheapest deal on the market.

The Energy Market Commission report found South Australian customers were getting ripped off more than anyone else in the country, paying up to $832 more per year than the cheapest deal on the market.

Next worst was Victorians, who paid $652 more, followed by New South Wales ($411), Queensland ($369) and Australian Capital Territory ($273).

Tasmania already has the benefit of a regulated standing offer.

Months of research shows New South Wales residents pay up to $832 more on their power bills than the cheapest deal on the market

Small businesses will also cash in on the new legislation, with savings of more than $3,000 predicted on a yearly basis.

Across the nation, the overspending by small businesses ranges for $969 to $3,457.

After the draft of the legislation is revealed on Tuesday morning, Mr Taylor will meet with state and territory counterparts in Sydney on Friday to discuss law changes.

Tuesday's announcement came only weeks after Mr Taylor said he had a plan to drop wind farm subsidies that would slash the price of electricity by $3.2billion.About 150,000 protesting union workers are set to shut down chunks of Melbourne's CBD, wreaking havoc on the city's public transport.

The Change the Rules rally taking place at 10.30am on Tuesday is calling for higher wages and better working conditions.

More than 150,000 protesters are expected to show up for the rally, which will begin at Trades Hall and move through the city.

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Hundreds of thousands of protesting union workers are set to shut down central streets in Melbourne, wreaking havoc on transport in the city (stock image)

The Change the Rules rally is calling for higher wages and better working conditions, and will be taking place in Melbourne at 10.30am on Tuesday

Protesters were spotted yelling as they marched in solidarity through the city

Workers came to the march wearing their uniforms and wielding large statement signs

Trams are being affected by the protest, with limited services beginning at 9.30am and stopping at the edge of the CBD until people clear the area at 12.30pm.

Drivers are being told to expect delays from 10am and to avoid the CBD altogether.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the protest was directed at the Prime Minister.

'Working people in Australia are demanding that the rules are changed,' she said.

Masses of people were spotted clogging the entrance to Flinders Street Station

A large flag for ETU Women was spotted among several others in the crowd of protesters

'This political protest is aimed at making Scott Morrison and Federal politicians listen - our wages are going backwards, families are struggling, too many people are stuck in insecure work.

'We need to bring back balance to the system so working people get fair pay rises.

'It is not right that profits are up, CEO bonuses are up, but our pay is not.'

Workers are also expected to take to the streets in Sydney, Wollongong, Gladstone, Cairns, Mackay, Darwin, Rockhampton and Townsville on Tuesday.

Huge amounts of people walked through the city protesting for change on Tuesday

One man representing ETU Victoria was seen punching his fist into the sky while carrying a giant Australian flagPresident Trump was asked to comment on a memo that was first reported on by The New York Times over the weekend which would essentially erase the definition of transgender

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the Department of Health and Human Services was circulating a memo proposing that gender be defined as an immutable biological condition determined by a person's sex organs at birth.

The proposal would define sex as either male or female, and any dispute about one's sex would have to be clarified through genetic testing, according to the Times' account of the memo.

When asked about this on Monday as he traveled to Houston, President Trump said: 'We're looking at it, we have a lot of different, ahhhhh...concepts right now. They have a lot of different things happening with respect to transgender right now. I want to protect our country. I want to protect everybody.'

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Avoidance: President Trump (above on Monday) was asked about the decision to define gender as an immutable biological condition determined by a person's sex organs at birth on Monday

This is just the latest attack on LGBT Americans by the Trump administration.

The transgender community has been the focus of a majority of the planned rollbacks, including a measure that sought to ban them from military service.

That was foolowed by a memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions which concluded that civil rights laws don't protect transgender people from discrimination on the job.

And there was also the scrapping of an Obama-era guidance encouraging school officials to let transgender students use school bathrooms that matched their gender identities.

President Trump has not revealed how his administration plans to proceed at this moment, but he has not denied any of the Times reporting.

It was acknowledged a few months ago that a federal rule that bars discrimination in health care based on 'gender identity' was being rewritten inside the administration.

That decision to come up with a new draft cited a federal judge's opinion that stated the original rule went too far in concluding that discrimination based on gender identity is a form of sex discrimination.

This link is crucial to the state of transgender rights as sex discrimination is forbidden by civil rights laws

The department said Monday it would not comment on the Times report but did acknowledge the some of the Obama administration measures were under review.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sat down for a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman amid the ongoing furor over the death of Jamal Khashoggi and President Trump's stated impatience with a Saudi investigation's timetable.

The Saudi foreign ministry tweeted out an image of the senior U.S. cabinet official and the crown prince, who is under fire for his close connection to the 15-member Saudi team that is accused of killing the Saudi dissident inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sat down to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi foreign ministry released the image

The two men met Monday night, after Trump has increased increasing dissatisfaction with a Saudi explanation he initially termed credible.

The caption with the picture of the two men made no mention of the brutal killing of Khashoggi or the streams of information leading to the crown prince.

The two men are pictured seating in large chairs while the crown prince gestures and Mnuchin listens, looking in his direction.

'#CrownPrince meets with the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and stresses the importance of Saudi-US strategic partnership, where it holds an important role in the future in line with the Kingdoms #Vision2030,' according to the tweet.

Nor did the tweet mention the vast commercial ties between the two nations, although President Trump has raised the issue of multi-billion defense purchases the Saudis have agreed to make from the U.S.

The tweet didn't mention the Khashoggi killing, although it is high on the agenda of U.S. and Saudi officials

Mnuchin said Sunday the explanation from the Saudi government was a 'good first step but not enough.' Critics have ridiculed the explanation, of a fight and an interrogation-gone-bad, for failing to state what happened to Khashoggi's body or why a team of Saudi's went to interrogate him.

President Donald Trump said on Monday he has spoken to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the death of Khashoggi, a dissident and Washington Post columnist, and he is not satisfied with what he's heard on the matter.

'I am not satisfied with what I heard,' he told reporters at the White House before he left for a campaign rally in Houston.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin caved to pressure on Thursday and said he would join a slew of CEOs in dropping out of a Saudi investment conference

'We're going to know a lot over the next two days about the Saudi situation,' he vowed.

'We have people over in Saudi Arabia now. We have top intelligence people in Turkey. And we're going to see what we have. I'll know a lot tomorrow. They'll be coming back either tonight or tomorrow morning. But we have people in Saudi Arabia and people in Turkey,' Trump said, without mentioning Mnuchin by name.

The president also said a month is 'a long time' for Saudi Arabia to conduct its own investigation into what happened to Khashoggi, who entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and was never seen again.

Originally Saudi officials said the journalist left the building. But Turkish officials claimed Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered.

Mnuchin is taking part in an anti-terror meeting in Saudi Arabia with Saudi security bigs despite the uproar over Khashoggi.

The meeting, which will include figures from the same security service linked to Khashoggi's disappearance, is separate from the 'Davos in the Desert' economic summit Mnuchin announced he was skipping after a parade of corporate and media figures backed out.

His meeting with the crown prince, known as MBS, was not announced in advance.

The Terrorist Financing Targeting Center in Riyadh Mnuchin would still attend would include security service members, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with Mnuchin's plans.

Mnuchin announced he would skip the other event following a White House meeting with President Trump, who has been criticized for his efforts to explain the Saudi position since Khashoggi disappeared Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Reporting since then has indicated members of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman security detail and Saudi intelligence services were part of a 15-man team that allegedly flew in into the country and killed Khashoggi.

The Treasury Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The moves comes after Mnuchin caved to pressure on Thursday and said he would join a slew of CEOs in dropping out of a Saudi investment conference.

'Just met with @realDonaldTrump and @SecPompeo and we have decided, I will not be participating in the Future Investment Initiative summit in Saudi Arabia,' Mnuchin said.

Mnuchin had been under intense pressure to drop out of the conference that the White House had cast as intrinsic to their effort to dry up funds for terrorists.

He had maintained until Thursday that he would participate, in spite of Turkish assurances that Saudi-born journalist Jamal Khashoggi was not missing but had been kidnapped and murdered by a Saudi Arabian hit squad.

The Dow fell sharply after Mnuchin revealed he was bowing out of the financial event Thursday. It dropped 327 points, or 1.3 per cent, throughout the whole day, but the slide accelerated as the news surfaced.

Mnuchin had been under intense pressure to drop out of the conference that the White House had cast as intrinsic to their effort to dry up funds for terrorists

The Dow fell sharply after Mnuchin revealed he was bowing out of the event. It dropped 327 points, or 1.3 per cent, throughout the whole day, but the slide accelerated as the news surfaced

After a meeting with Trump and the secretary of state, who was fresh off a trip to both nations, Mnuchin suddenly changed course.

President Trump admitted Thursday that Jamal Khashoggi is probably dead, as hope that the missing journalist would turn up alive dissipated.

'It certainly looks that way to me. It's very sad,' Trump told journalists as he prepared to board Air Force One for a flight to Montana. 'It's bad, bad stuff, but we'll see what happens.'

Trump said that the punishment would be 'severe' if he finds out that Saudi Arabia harmed the journalist.

The announcement came minutes after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced at the White House that Saudi Arabia deserves a 'few more days' to get to the bottom of the disappearance of Khashoggi amid a growing uproar about the alleged murder of the Saudi dissident.

President Trump admitted Thursday that Jamal Khashoggi is probably dead, as hope that the missing journalist would turn up alive dissipated

'We made clear to them that we take this matter very seriously, and they made clear to me that they too understand the serious nature of the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi,' he said. 'They also made clear that they will conduct a complete, thorough investigation of all of the facts surrounding Mr. Khashoggi, and that they will do so in a timely fashion.'

Pompeo spoke after he briefed President Trump on his meetings with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, where he warned the Saudi royal family they have 72 hours to finish the investigation into Khashoggi's disappearance.

Reports described a tough meeting between Pompeo and the crown prince, after smiling photos of the two men fed a narrative that the U.S. was willing to assist the Saudis in finding a cover for the killing.

Trump insisted on Wednesday that that wasn't the case.

'Im not giving cover at all,' he argued. 'With that being said, Saudi Arabia has been a very important ally of ours in the Middle East.'

The president had suggested earlier in the week that the suspected death was a 'rogue' killing that was not ordered by the Saudi kingdom after a conversation with the nation's king.The New South Wales Government has revealed the bizarre things unclaimed pokie winnings are spent on.

A Jackie Chan sci-fi thriller, a greyhound race, new school facilities and upgrades to to war memorials across the state are some of the unexpected ways which unclaimed prize money is spent.

Under the Department of Industry's policies, in charge of Liquor and Gaming NSW, unclaimed pokie winnings must be paid to Secretary of the Department of Industry, which is then transferred to the Community Development fund.

Jackie Chan's sci-fi thriller Bleeding Steel received the largest grant of $850,000 from unclaimed pokie winnings

A greyhound racing event was issued a grant of half a million dollars, which the Coalition attempted to ban two years ago

Jackie Chan's 2017 Chinese science-fiction film Bleeding Steel received the largest grant of $850,000 from the fund.

A spokesman for Liquor and Gaming NSW told the Sydney Morning Herald funding the film would lead to 'significant short and long-term economic and tourism benefits, particularly for Asia'.

'The project directly injected over $20 million into NSW economy and employed over 1100 staff, crew, cast and extras in NSW between May and September 2016,' the spokesman added.

The Million Dollar greyhound race series was given half a million dollars to fund the event - two years after the Coalition failed to ban the sport in the state.

30 separate grants have been given to war memorials across regional NSW for upgrades

The Back to Tracks grant program to promote greyhound racecourses and clubs across regional NSW received $400,000.

The Community Development Fund issued grants of $3.34 million for 52 projects to benefit the local community, which includes new school facilities.

At least 30 separate grants were given to war memorials across the state for upgrades.

Greens member of the legislative council Justin Field said the 'unusual' fund should be used for 'genuine' community projects to support victims of gambling.

Chinese video streaming company YouKu was awarded a grant after applying through a local productions company for financial assistance to film in Sydney.

According to the Gaming Machines Act 2001, grants are distributed for beneficial community projects considered appropriate by Secretary of the Department of Industry.

The fund established in 2001 has a current balance of more than $1million.Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has vowed to pursue sanctions against the Saudi regime if it is held responsible for the savage murder of Jamal Khashoggi by a 15-man hit squad.

The Foreign Secretary said Saudi Arabia's official claim that the journalist died in a fight at the Gulf kingdom's consulate in Istanbul was 'not credible'.

Mr Hunt acknowledged that the UK had close security and business links with Saudi Arabia but 'if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true' the UK 'will act accordingly'.

The Foreign Secretary told the Commons today that Saudi Arabia's official claim that the journalist died in a fight at the Gulf kingdom's consulate in Istanbul was 'not credible'

He told MPs: 'We have an important strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia involving defence and security co-operation which has saved lives on the streets of Britain. We also have a trading partnership that supports thousands of jobs.

'So whilst we will be thoughtful and considered in our response, I have also been clear that if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true, they are fundamentally incompatible with our values and we will act accordingly.'

Mr Hunt said he had been in talks with EU partners to extend the sanctions regime to individuals for human rights violations.

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson (pictured on October 2) said Britain should 'refuse to turn a blind eye' to the death of the dissident journalist and pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the civil war in Yemen

Hinting at the possibility that this could target Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman himself, Mr Hunt said: When we have full accountability for the crimes that have been committed, which have been described by the Saudis as murder, then that accountability must extend to the people who gave the order for the crimes to be committed, not just those who were there on the ground.

Prime Minister Theresa May condemned the killing 'in the strongest possible terms' and added 'we must get to the truth of what happened'.

Labour stepped up calls for a boycott on arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the 'horrific murder'.

Meanwhile, Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said Britain should 'refuse to turn a blind eye' to the death of the dissident journalist and pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the brutal civil war in Yemen.While Google's new $800 Pixel 3 handset may not be groundbreaking in terms of software, it really is one smart phone.

AI seems to permeate every part of its software, from the ability to answer calls for you to being able to almost perfectly predict your morning commute.

It's a great phone, with one caveat - to get the best out of it, you need to let Google collect a lot of data about you.

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It's a great phone, with every feature you could ask for, from wireless charging and a superb camera to a sleek design - and thankfully the smaller model forgoes the horrific notch on the bigger Pixel XL

We tried out the base Pixel 3, the smaller of the two new handsets Google announced.

It's a great phone, with every feature you could ask for, from wireless charging and a superb camera to a sleek design - and thankfully the smaller model forgoes the horrific notch on the bigger Pixel XL.

One of the most useful features, particularly for American owners plagued by robocalls, is a call screening feature.

When a mystery call comes in, just hit 'Screen call', and Google's voice assistant takes over and asks for a name and purpose of the call.

Transcribed responses appear in real time, so you can decide whether to pick up.

You can even request more information by tapping buttons such as 'Tell me more.'

While great in concept, the reality is a little disappointing - I often found it quicker to take the call and hang up.

However, one can definitely see the potential, if the system as able to screen calls without involving the user.

The Google Pixel 3, left, and Google Pixel 3 XL, and wireless charging stand in New York. Google's new Pixel 3 phone plays catch-up with Apple and Samsung on hardware. It's really designed to showcase Google's advances in software, particularly in artificial intelligence.

The cameras on the back of the Google Pixel 3 XL, left, and Google Pixel 3 smartphones: AI seems to permeate every part of its software, from the ability to answer calls for you to being able to almost perfectly predict your morning commute.

It is, however, also great for annoying friends and family by fobbing them off with a robotic voice (sorry mum!).

The camera also has some smart features, such as Google Lens, which can extract numbers from business cards, translate menus and even try to identify anything you point the camera at.

The new camera can even can capture multiple pictures to choose from

FILE- In this Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018, file photo New Google Pixel 3 smartphones are displayed in New York. Google's new Pixel 3 phone plays catch-up with Apple and Samsung on hardware. It's really designed to showcase Google's advances in software, particularly in artificial intelligence. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

It can also monitor your face, waiting for a smile of funny face to take the perfect selfie, and for regular shots, can capture multiple pictures to choose from.

It also boasts wireless charging, and placing the phone on an optional $79 Pixel Stand charging station, and it can display a rotating set of images from an album you choose, or pick what it thinks are your best snaps.

HOW GOOGLE'S PIXEL 3 CAN ANSWER THE PHONE FOR YOU Gogole boasts its AI will allow the Pixel 3 to answer calls for you. 'First, starting out in English in the U.S., Pixel 3's on-device AI helps you screen phone calls and avoid spam calls. 'Imagine you're at dinner with family or in a meeting at work and a call from an unknown caller comes in. 'Just tap on 'Screen call' to find out who's calling and why, as well as other information (as prompted by you). 'You'll immediately see a transcript of the caller's responses so that you can then decide whether to pick up, respond by tapping a quick reply (e.g., 'I'll call you back later'), or mark the call as spam and dismiss. The call screen feature allows the phone to answer calls for you when telemarketers call. The user is able to see the call transcribed in real-time on the device's screen 'Processing the call details on-device means these experiences are fast, private to you, and use up less battery.' Pixel users in the U.S. will also be the first to get access to an experimental new Google Assistant feature, powered by Duplex technology, which helps users complete real-world tasks over the phone, like calling a restaurant to book a table. This feature will initially be available later this year in New York, Atlanta, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area to help people book restaurant reservations and will roll out to other U.S. cities in the future. However, Google addressed the concenrs it coudl fool humans. 'As we develop new calling technologies, we believe its critical that we help people understand the context of the conversation. 'Well disclose to businesses receiving the call that they're speaking to an automated system, and we have developed controls to protect against spam and abuse, as well as the ability for a business to opt out of receiving calls. 'For Call Screen, we will also let the caller know that a screening service is being used.' Advertisement

Soon, you'll be able to let Google's facial-recognition technology just pick out photos of your family, including new shots as you take them (though not in the European Union, where privacy regulations are tighter.)

The stand also has some smart features, offering to set your alarms before bed.

It the morning , it can show you how your commute is going, and displays this on the always on screen, a hugely useful, if creepy, feature.

Overall, the Pixel 3 is a superb handset.

It's fast, sleek and everything a flagship device should be.

Pair that with Google's smartest version of Android , and it really does give the iPhone XS a run for its money - albeit with some lingering concerns of whether it has got a little too smart for its own good.A billion-dollar hydroelectric dam development in Indonesia is threatening the habitat of the world's rarest great ape.

The site of the dam in the Batang Toru rainforest on Sumatra island is the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan.

The newly discovered species numbers about 800 individuals and the $1.6 billion project will cut through the heart of the critically endangered animal's habitat.

The dam, which is expected to be operational by 2022, will flood an area that is also home to agile gibbons, siamangs and Sumatran tigers.

The move has sparked fresh concerns about the impact of China's globe-spanning infrastructure drive, as the country's government is partly financing the project.

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A billion-dollar hydroelectric dam development in Indonesia is threatening the habitat of the world's rarest great ape. The Tapanuli orangutan (pictured) is a newly discovered species that numbers just 800 individuals

Indonesian firm PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy is building the power plant with backing from Sinosure, a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) that insures overseas investment projects, and the Bank of China, company documents show.

Chinese SOE Sinohydro, which built the mammoth Three Gorges Dam, has been awarded the design and construction contract for the project.

The development is one of dozens being pushed by the government to improve electricity supply throughout the sprawling archipelago, parts of which are regularly plagued by blackouts.

But the Chinese-backed project has sparked fierce resistance from conservationists, who say the potential environmental risk has already seen the World Bank Group shy away from involvement.

Its Chinese backers appear undeterred, however, something critics say underscores the troubling environmental impact of Beijing's trademark 'Belt and Road Initiative', which seeks to link Asia, Europe and Africa with a network of ports, highways and railways.

'This issue is becoming in some ways the face of the Belt and Road initiative,' Professor Bill Laurance, director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Australia, told AFP.

'I think this crystallises in a way that people can understand what a tsunami of 7,000-plus projects will mean for nature.'

An aerial view shows land cleared for the hydroelectric dam in Indonesia's Batang Toru rainforest

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT SPECIES OF ORANGUTANS? Until recently, scientists thought there were only two genetically distinct types of orangutan, Bornean and Sumatran. But in 1997 biological anthropologist Erik Meijaard observed an isolated population of the great apes in Batang Toru, south of the known habitat for Sumatran orangutans. Scientists began to investigate if it was a unique species. Researchers studied the DNA, skulls and teeth of 33 orangutans killed in human-animal conflict. They then concluded that they had discovered a new species, giving it the scientific name Pongo tapanuliensis or Tapanuli orangutan. The newly discovered species numbers about 800 individuals and is critically endangered. Advertisement

Until recently, scientists thought there were only two genetically distinct types of orangutan, Bornean and Sumatran.

But in 1997 biological anthropologist Erik Meijaard observed an isolated population of the great apes in Batang Toru, south of the known habitat for Sumatran orangutans, and scientists began to investigate if it was a unique species.

Researchers studied the DNA, skulls and teeth of 33 orangutans killed in human-animal conflict before concluding that they had indeed discovered a new species, giving it the scientific name Pongo tapanuliensis or Tapanuli orangutan.

The 510-megawatt dam, which will supply peak-load electricity to North Sumatra province, will flood part of the ape's habitat and include a network of roads and high-voltage transmission lines.

Critics say it will fragment the three existing populations, who are living in a tract of forest less than one-fifth the size of the greater Jakarta region, and lead to inbreeding.

Until recently, scientists thought there were only two genetically distinct types of orangutan, the Bornean and Sumatran

Dr Meijaard said the dam would be the 'death knell' for the animal.

'Roads bring in hunters (and) settlers -- it's the start, generally, of things falling apart,' he told AFP.

But the plight of the cinnamon-furred ape seems to have been given little attention in the environmental impact assessment by PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy, according to conservationists and scientists who have seen the document.

In August, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) filed a legal challenge against the environmental permit approved by the North Sumatra government, saying it failed to address the dam's impact on wildlife, communities living downstream, or the risk of damage from earthquakes in the seismically active region.

PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy and Indonesia's environment ministry declined to respond to AFP's requests for comment.

Bank of China said in a statement it did not comment on specific projects, but added it takes 'all relevant factors into consideration when formulating policies and making decisions.'

The $1.6 billion dam project will cut through the heart of the critically endangered orangutan's habitat

The World Bank, through its sister organisation the International Finance Corporation, declined to comment on any aspect of its initial ties to the project -- outlined in World Bank documents dated March 2017 -- or environmentalists' claims it pulled out due to habitat concerns.

The Batang Toru project is not the only development in Indonesia linked to the Belt and Road initiative, which aims to bolster Chinese influence abroad.

But it might be the most contentious.

'We really hope the financial backers of this project will see there are environmental and social problems with the project and decide not to support the project,' said Yuyun Eknas of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).

'The World Bank has pulled out. We hope the Bank of China will do the same.'Chocolate Labradors have a shorter life expectancy than their yellow-furred peers and it is as a result of their prized colour, scientists claim.

Dogs are often bred for their coat colour and reduces the variation of genes in the dog population and increases the risk of hereditary diseases.

Scientists have now found that chocolate dogs were particularly prone to ear infections and skin disease.

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Chocolate Labradors have a shorter life expectancy than their yellow-furred peers and it is as a result of their prized colour narrowing their gene pool and leading to a higher risk of genetic diseases (stock)

The analysis of more than 33,000 Labrador retrievers was taken at UK vet practices.

Analysis of the collected data on disorder and mortality from a random sample of 2,074 (6.2 per cent) of the dogs revealed the disturbing trend.

Professor Paul McGreevy, of the University of Sydney, explained: 'The relationships between coat colour and disease may reflect an inadvertent consequence of breeding certain pigmentations.

'Because chocolate colour is recessive in dogs, the gene for this colour must be present in both parents for their puppies to be chocolate.

'Breeders targeting this colour may therefore be more likely to breed only Labradors carrying the chocolate coat gene.

'It may be that the resulting reduced gene pool includes a higher proportion of genes conducive to ear and skin conditions.'

The three different colours are often associated with different roles.

The yellow has become associated with Guide Dogs for the Blind, the black with gundog work and the chocolate with pet homes and the show ring.

But in Britain, and possibly elsewhere, non-chocolate Labradors live for an average of 12.1 years.

This is over ten percent more than those with chocolate coats, reports Canine Genetics and Epidemiology.

The prevalence of ear inflammation, or otitis externa, was twice as high in chocolate Labradors.

They were four times more likely to have suffered from a skin disease known as 'hot-spot' or pyo-traumatic dermatitis.

In Britain, and possibly elsewhere, non-chocolate Labradors live for an average of 12.1 years. This is over ten percent more than those with chocolate coats (stock)

DOGS FIRST BECAME DOMESTICATED ABOUT 20,000 TO 40,000 YEARS AGO A genetic analysis of the world's oldest known dog remains revealed that dogs were domesticated in a single event by humans living in Eurasia, around 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. Dr Krishna Veeramah, an assistant professor in evolution at Stony Brook University, told MailOnline: 'The process of dog domestication would have been a very complex process, involving a number of generations where signature dog traits evolved gradually. 'The current hypothesis is that the domestication of dogs likely arose passively, with a population of wolves somewhere in the world living on the outskirts of hunter-gatherer camps feeding off refuse created by the humans. 'Those wolves that were tamer and less aggressive would have been more successful at this, and while the humans did not initially gain any kind of benefit from this process, over time they would have developed some kind of symbiotic [mutually beneficial] relationship with these animals, eventually evolving into the dogs we see today.' Advertisement

Co-author Professor McGreevy said the relationship between coat colour and disease came as a surprise.

He said: 'Labrador retrievers are reportedly prone to many disorders but accurate information about how common certain health problems are in the general pet population is lacking.

'This is the first study to include a large number of Labrador retrievers based on records gathered from hundreds of UK vet clinics.

'It provides owners with information on the issues that they should look out for in Labrador retrievers.'

The research is part of a veterinary programme at the university which analyses electronic patient data on dogs and is being replicated in Australia where Labradors are the most popular breed.

Across the entire Labrador population, the most common health conditions found were obesity, ear infections and joint conditions.

This backs research two years ago that identified a gene mutation that hardwires the Labrador, renowned for its greed, to overeat.

HOW DOES YOUR DOG CHANGE YOUR MIND AND BODY? - Dogs have been shown to trigger the release of the 'cuddle hormone' oxytocin in their owners - The chemical lowers your heart rate and blood pressure and relieves stress - Our canines also cause our brains to disperse the 'pleasure hormone' dopamine - This boosts your mood and long-term memory - Eye contact and touch are potent triggers of oxytocin and dopamine - This means social dog breeds like labrador and golden retrievers are more likely to illicit oxytocin release - Breeds that are more independent of humans like Great Pyrennes may bring out a lower oxytocin response - Dogs we perceieve as aggressive, such as bull dogs or German shepherds, initiate the fight-or-flight response - This triggers the release of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline - These chemicals raise blood pressure and heart rate and can suppress the immune system long-term Advertisement

The team of researchers said it may hold the key to combating human obesity.

Professor McGeevy said: 'We found 8.8 per cent of UK Labradors are overweight or obese - one of the highest percentages among dog breeds in the VetCompass database.'

His researchers, who included colleagues at London's Royal Veterinary College where the programme began in 2007, said prevalence was higher among male dogs who had been neutered.

They added the study may under-estimate the true number of dogs with health problems.

The data are likely to include more severely affected animals that require veterinary management. There may be lower reporting of health issues in dogs that are less unwell.

Yellow Labradors are best known for being Service Dogs. They are nice tempered, easy to train, full of love - and, of course very photogenic for charity literature.

Chocolate Labradors make great family pets - as well as playing a role in the Show Ring.

Black Labradors are the most common and are most likely to be seen in hunting environments.

In January a nationwide poll of more than 10,000 people crowned the Labrador as Britain's favourite dog, ahead of the Jack Russell and the Border Collie.

But as far as numbers go the Kennel Club revealed in June that it has been overtaken for the first time by the French Bulldog favoured by celebrities such as the Beckhams, Lady Gaga and Hugh Jackman.

In the first quarter of 2018 there were 8,403 French Bulldog puppy registrations, compared to 7,409 for the Labrador.You might think how much you tip in a restaurant depends on the quality of the service and standard of the food.

Think again. Researchers have found that background music is also a factor.

Diners are, apparently, prone to tipping waiting staff about 3.50 more if feel-good tracks are playing while they eat.

Diners are prone to tipping waiting staff about 3.50 more if feel-good tracks are playing while they eat (file photo)

The effect is particularly strong in older customers, who tended to be more generous than younger people when happy music was playing. Sad music also led people to tip more, they found, but tended to have less of an effect than happy music.

'Uplifting music makes people happy and the better mood someone is in, the more they tend to tip,' said Annika Beer, a psychologist at Austria's University of Innsbruck.

'Melancholic music, however, nurtures the people's helping behaviour.

'The manipulated customers want to help the waiter or waitress with higher tips than usual.'

The effect is particularly strong in older customers, who tended to be more generous than younger people when happy music was playing (file photo)

The researchers said Abba's Dancing Queen, Billy Joel's Uptown Girl and Queen's Don't Stop Me Now were examples of songs that bumped up the tips.

Miss Beer said the reason older people were more susceptible to the songs was perhaps because younger people tended to listen to more music on a daily basis, and were more immune to its effect.

She added: 'It is also possible that they just don't have the financial freedom to tip as much as older people.'An incredible cave hall which could fit two Great Pyramids inside has been found at the bottom of a vast sinkhole in Guangxi in China.

The cave hall, discovered earlier this month, is estimated to be 236 million cubic feet (6.7 million cubic metres) in volume and has been described as a 'world-class' find by experts.

A team of Chinese and British explorers lowered themselves into the 650ft (200m) long Nongle sinkhole using just one rope.

HOW DO SINKHOLES FORM? Sinkholes are a global problem. Sometimes sinkholes are a purely natural phenomenon, but they may also be associated with previous industrial activities, most commonly mining. Limestone is prone to dissolution by groundwater which can, over time, create enormous networks of underground caves known as karst. These can collapse downwards due to gravity, leading to great surface depressions and subsidence damage and even the complete loss of houses. Poorly mapped and recorded historic mine workings in coal, salt, potash, tin and copper often leave voids in the ground. These voids may eventually come to the surface over time as the roof progressively collapses. These collapses can be gradual, or can happen suddenly, with surface depressions appearing overnight without warning. Peter Styles And Jamie Pringle For The Conversation Advertisement

Sinkholes occur because of the interaction between water beneath the ground and soil erosion  a process that causes soil and rock to collapse in.

Inside the sinkhole there were two connected cave halls, according to the footage from Euronews which was recorded at the site in Fengshan county in Guangxi.

The expedition on October 4 was led by Zhang Yuanhai geology expert from the Institute of Karst Research which is part of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and Andy Eavis from the International Cave Association.

The entrance of the cave measures about 100 metres (328 feet) wide and the cave itself is about 200 metres (656 feet) long, according to the explorers.

The deepest point of the cave is about 118 metres (387 feet).

Lead explorer Zhang Yuanhai told China's Technology Daily that the cave hall was first discovered by a team of explorers from Hong Kong. Therefore, they have decided to call it 'Hong Kong Haiting Hall'.

Mr Zhang told the newspaper that the cave had a 'very steep' slope and a 'rough' surface, and it contained a 'corridor', a 'hall' and a 'basement'.

After carrying out a number of 3D scans in the cave hall, the team also discovered a sub-hall inside the cave hall, which they called the 'courtyard'.

The 'courtyard' measures 50 metres (164 feet) wide and 150 metres (492 feet) tall.

Mr Zhang told the newspaper that the cave had a 'very steep' slope and a 'rough' surface, and it contained a 'corridor', a 'hall' and a 'basement'.

After carrying out a number of 3D scans in the cave hall, the team also discovered a sub-hall inside the cave hall, which they called the 'courtyard'.

The 'courtyard' measures 50 metres (164 feet) wide and 150 metres (492 feet) tall. Commenting on the significance of the find, Mr Zhang said the hall preserved a large amount of evidence which shows that the cave had been in the process of collapsing.

They hope the find will help them better understand the geology of the region.

Researchers used 3D technology to scan the sinkhole and caves which are home to well-preserved stone pillars.

They hope the find will help them better understand the geology of the region.

Most natural sinkholes happen in areas where there are large deposits of carbonate rocks such as limestone.

Over long periods of time, groundwater flowing can dissolve the rock, creating open tunnels  which is also how caves form.

These tunnels allow water to flow faster, like it would through a pipe.

The tunnels also create a space for soil to wash away into, and with these two conditions, any soil overlying the void runs the risk of eroding away from the inside, eventually caving in and leading to a sinkhole.

Inside the sinkhole there were two connected cave halls, according to the footage from BBC which was recorded in Fengshan county in Guangxi

However, not all sinkholes form naturally in this way - many are human-created.

'Sometimes sinkholes are a purely natural phenomenon, but they may also be associated with previous industrial activities, most commonly mining', according to Professor Peter Styles and Dr Jamie Pringle from Keele University in an article for The Conversation

'Limestone is prone to dissolution by groundwater which can, over time, create enormous networks of underground caves known as karst.

'These can collapse downwards due to gravity, leading to great surface depressions and subsidence damage and even the complete loss of houses', the wrote.

Last year a bus carrying 21 people was nearly swallowed by a giant sinkole in Guangxi.

Footage shows the vehicle, carrying 21 people, driving over the spot where a sinkhole appeared seconds after.

The sinkhole measures three meters wide (9.8 ft) and three meters (9.8 ft) deep, according to Chinese media.

Many urban areas have miles of pipes under ground, and all it takes is settlement of the pipe or some shifting and the pipe can open, allowing water to pour our and internal erosion to begin.

Because this usually happens underneath roads, there's no signal on the surface - the road acts as a bridge above the sinkhole, masking the void underneath.Europe is launching a spacecraft that could finally shed light on the elusive material dark matter.

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (Lisa) will track ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves as they collide with black holes.

Scientists now believe these interactions, which occur at the centre of dwarf galaxies, may have a strong link with the creation of dark matter.

The material is thought to make up 85 per cent of the universe, and is the gravitational 'glue' that holds galaxies together.

It has never been directly observed by scientists, and proving it exists could help experts unravel many mysteries about the nature of the cosmos.

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Researchers calculated how stars, black holes and dark matter interact in colliding galaxies. Pictured are snapshots of the 120 million particle simulation of two merging dwarf galaxies, which each contain a blackhole, between 6 (top) and 7.5 billion (bottom) years

WHAT IS THE ESA'S LISA SATELLITE? ESA gave its Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission (Lisa) the green light in June 2017 after decades of development and delays. Lisa will be made up of three identical satellites orbiting the sun in a wide triangular formation. The satellites will beam lasers between one another. The presence of gravitational waves will cause tiny changes to the distances these lasers travel. An extra dimension would change the way gravitational waves stretch space. If these changes can be detected, it could help discover an extra dimension. Advertisement

Lisa, which will consist of three spacecraft orbiting the sun in a triangle formation, is scheduled to launch in 2034 by the European Space Agency (ESA).

It will track the tiny distortions caused by gravitational waves as they pass through a series of lasers that connects each probe.

Scientists have previously suggested measuring gravitational waves could help scientists find an extra, hidden dimension in space.

Lisa was originally designed to study gravitational waves alone, but scientists now claim it could also help unveil secrets about dark matter.

Researchers at the University of Zurich suggest the trio of spacecraft focus on gravitational waves fired off by galaxies when they collide and merge.

They ran 120 million state-of-the-art computer simulations to calculate how stars, black holes and dark matter interact when dwarf galaxies are born.

The study revealed a strong link between the merger rates of these black holes and the amount of dark matter at the centre of dwarf galaxies.

The LISA mission (artist's impression), scheduled for launch in 2034, will be made up of three identical satellites separated by 1.5 million miles (2.5 million km) in a triangular formation. The craft will follow Earth in its orbit around the sun while firing lasers between one another

Tracking gravitational waves emitted by merging black holes can therefore provide hints about the properties of dark matter particles.

Scientists have long thought that such a link exists, but the new study provides a mathematical way to describe it for the first time.

Study lead author Lucio Mayer said: 'Dark matter is the distinguishing quality of dwarf galaxies.

Dark matter: The mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the universe that scientists cannot confirm Dark matter is a hypothetical substance said to make up roughly 85 per cent of the universe. The enigmatic material is invisible because it does not reflect light, and has never been directly observed by scientists. Astronomers know it to be out there because of its gravitational effects on known matter. The European Space Agency says: 'Shine a torch in a completely dark room, and you will see only what the torch illuminates. Dark matter is a hypothetical substance said to make up roughly 27 per cent of the universe. It is thought to be the gravitational 'glue' that holds the galaxies together (artist's impression) 'That does not mean that the room around you does not exist. 'Similarly we know dark matter exists but have never observed it directly.' The material is thought to be the gravitational 'glue' that holds the galaxies together. Calculations show that many galaxies would be torn apart instead of rotating if they weren't held together by a large amount of dark matter. Just five per cent the observable universe consists of known matter such as atoms and subatomic particles. Advertisement

'We had therefore long suspected that this should also have a clear effect on cosmological properties.'

Researchers said the discovery comes at the perfect time as preparations for the final design of Lisa are under way.

Preliminary results of the researchers' simulations were met with excitement at meetings of the Lisa consortium, they said.

WHAT ARE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES? Scientists view the the universe as being made up of a 'fabric of space-time'. This corresponds to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published in 1916. Objects in the universe bend this fabric, and more massive objects bend it more. Gravitational waves are considered ripples in this fabric. Gravitational waves are considered ripples in the fabric of spacetime. They can be produced, for instance, when black holes orbit each other or by the merging of galaxies They can be produced, for instance, when black holes orbit each other or by the merging of galaxies. Gravitational waves are also thought to have been produced during the Big Bang. Scientists first detected the shudders in space-time in 2016 and the discovery was hailed the 'biggest scientific breakthrough of the century'. Experts say gravitational waves open a 'new door' for observing the universe and gaining knowledge about enigmatic objects like black holes and neutron stars. Advertisement

Lisa will be made up of three identical satellites, separated by 2.5 million km (1.5 million miles), that will follow Earth in its orbit around the sun.

The spacecraft will beam powerful lasers between one another as they search for ripples in space-time caused by gravitational waves.

The Lisa satellites will read how these waves warp space by detecting tiny changes in the distances the laser beams travel.

Gravitational waves are often created by by celestial objects with very strong gravity, such as pairs of merging black holes.BepiColombo, the British-built spacecraft destined for Mercury, has taken a selfie from space after launching successfully at the weekend.

The image was snapped by an on-board camera and captured the eternal abyss of space alongside the body of BepiColombo.

Extending along the right-hand side of the image is the spacecraft's extended solar arrays and visible in the bottom left of the picture is a sun sensor.

BepiColombo is hurtling towards the closest planet to the sun via four Star Trek-style 'impulse engines' that create electrically charged - or ionised - xenon atoms.

It successfully launched from the space port at Kourou in French Guiana at 2:45am UK-time on Saturday.

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The view looks along one of the extended solar arrays (right) as the spacecraft begins its journey to Mercury. The structure in the bottom left corner is one of the sun sensors on the MTM, with the multi-layered insulation clearly visible

The image was shared by the European Space Agency (ESA) and titled 'BepiColombo's first image from space'.

The ESA said: 'The transfer module is equipped with three monitoring cameras, which provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution.

'The other two cameras will be activated tomorrow.'

Future images from the spacecraft will show the deployed medium- and high-gain antennas on-board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), the space agency revealed.

These cameras will be used during the flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury during BepiColombo's seven year trip across five billion miles (8.5 kilometres) of space.

BepiColombo's journey will include a fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself before arriving at its destination at the optimum velocity, the Associated Press reports.

The three on-board monitoring cameras are surpassed technically by the high-resolution scientific camera on-board the MPO.

However, this camera is attached to the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) and only becomes available after the two segments of BepiColombo have detached.

This will happen as the mission arrive at Mercury in 2025.

BepiColombo was blasted into space from the European space port at Kourou, French Guiana, at about 2.45am UK time on Saturday. In 2025 it will place two probes, one European the other Japanese, in orbit around Mercury, the least explored world in the solar system

Protective measures on BepiColombo (pictured) include a heat shield, novel ceramic and titanium insulation, ammonia-filled 'heat pipes', and in the case of the Japanese orbiter, 'roast-on-a-spit' spinning

BepiColombo's seven-year journey is a joint mission between the ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

It is formed of two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).

The former will study the planet's magnetic field as well as its interactions with the sun and latter will map Mercury in great detail.

'It has a fantastic sequence of instruments on it,' Timothy Yeoman, professor of physics at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, told Gizmodo.

'There's no compromise in the design of the mission.'

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT MERCURY? For all its bland 'dead' appearance, Mercury is a very interesting place It is the smallest planet in our solar system - only slightly larger than the Earth's moon. On its sunward half, the planet sizzles at a temperature of 510C (950CF while its night side maintains 210C (346F). It is the closest planet to the sun at a distance of about 36 million miles (58 million km) or 0.39 AU. Mercury has a solid iron core that measures more than half the planet's diameter. Earth, by contrast, has a solid core that's just 9.5 per cent of its overall girth. One day on Mercury takes 59 Earth days. Mercury makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Mercury time) in just 88 Earth days. The European Space Agency spacecraft will take seven years to reach Mercury, which reaches temperatures of 450C on its sunlit side Advertisement

During BepiColombo's seven-year trip to Mercury its ion thrusters will be operating for 4.5 years. The resulting 'plasma' is fired out of the thruster at 90,000mph

A key feature of BepiColombo is that it is the first interplanetary mission to employ advanced electric ion propulsion technology.

Four Star Trek-style 'impulse engines', two firing at a time, will emit beams of electrically charged, or 'ionised', xenon gas to propel the spacecraft throughout its mission.

The ion thrusters will be operating for 4.5 years during the seven-year trip to Earth's closest planet.

The four unique engines will work in pairs and two engines will emit electrically-charged, or ionised, xenon gas.

They will be used not to accelerate the craft but to act as a brake against the sun's enormous gravity.Elon Musk has announced that the Boring Company will open a stretch of tunnel under Los Angeles in just 11 weeks.

The Boring Company founder made the announcement via Twitter and earmarked December 10 for the grand unveiling.

Boring has been working on developing a series of rapid-transit tunnels that can transport people on 'skates' at up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h).

The stretch of tunnel that will be opened to the public was previously dubbed a 'test tunnel' and sits beneath the suburb of Hawthorne, south of downtown LA.

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The stretch of tunnel that will be opened was previously dubbed a 'test tunnel' and sits beneath the suburb of Hawthorne, south of downtown LA

Elon Musk made the announcement via his Twitter and earmarked December 10 as the day of the grand unveiling

'The first tunnel is almost done,' he tweeted Sunday night.

This was then followed up by a second tweet a few moments later that read: 'Opens Dec 10.'

The Hawthorne tunnel runs for 'for up to' two miles along 120th Street and then west under 120th street, the firm claims.

Musk has been developing his plan to move commuters around various locations in the US at great speed by utilising a series of purpose-built underground tunnels.

A 'skate' will carry between eight and 16 passengers or a car that has been driven onto it.

The skate will then move at speeds of up to 150 mph (240 km/h) and people will access Musk's labyrinth via lifts from street-level or direct into car parks or office buildings.

This 'loop' technology differs form the proposed hyperloop technology which would transport people at much greater speeds by sucking the air out of a tunnel to reduce air resistance.

The Boring Company envisions this could allow people to travel at speeds in excess of 600mph (967 km/h).

Elon Musk is no stranger to making bold proclamations on Twitter - with the billionaire often tweeting about projects and current affairs.

Elon Musk has announced that the Boring Company will open a stretch of tunnel under Los Angeles in just 11 weeks. He made the announcement via Twitter

One of his more troublesome tweets was an announcement that he would soon be taking Tesla private at a price of $420 a share.

After an extensive investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Musk was forced to step down as chairman for three years and pay a $20 million (15.3 million) fine.

The furore around the tweet has not stopped Musk - a founder of Tesla, Boring Company and SpaceX - from frequenting his favourite social media platform.

Last week he posted a tweet mocking the popular game Fortnite by calling its fans 'virgins'.General Electric (GE) has announced it is working on a new engine that will make travelling faster than the speed of sound a commercial reality for the first time since the demise of Concorde.

The Affinity engine will be used in the upcoming Aerion AS2 supersonic business jet and GE says it will operate at altitudes of up to 60,000ft (18,000m) and speeds of up to Mach 1.4 - 1,000mph (1,600kmh).

It is also designed to comply with stringent noise limitations, which means it can travel subsonic over land as well as supersonic over water.

The AS2 will take to the skies for the first time in 2023 and GE is hoping to go into full production by 2025.

Developers of the engine hope the success of the AS2 will act as a springboard - launching a 'renaissance' of commercial supersonic flight.

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The Affinity engine will be used in the upcoming Aerion AS2 supersonic business jet and GE says it will operate at altitudes of up to 60,000ft (18,000m) and speeds of Mach 1.4 - 1,000mph (1,600kmh)

The AS2 (artist's impression pictured) will take to the skies for the first time in 2023 and GE is hoping for certification by 2025

This sleek AS2 jet that will feature the Affinity engine is being built in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, GE Aviation and Honeywell.

The firm claims the project will slash the duration of transatlantic journeys by three hours.

Further details of the proposed engine are sparse but GE says the Affinity will be superior to the Rolls-Royce engine that powered Concorde.

Affinity is being made with the combined expertise of GE's fighter jet division and the specialists who worked on engines for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

GE said in a statement: 'The Affinity is a new class of medium bypass ratio engines that provide exceptional and balanced performance across supersonic and subsonic flights.

'The Affinity integrates a unique blend of proven military supersonic experience, commercial reliability and the most advanced business jet engine technologies.'

The new engines will implement simple changes that are highly effective in reducing operating costs and increasing the plane's range.

A sweeping leading edge on the wing and a new fuselage design will help reduce air drag over the wing by up to 60 per cent, and overall drag by 20 per cent.

The engine for the AS2 is is designed to comply with stringent noise limitations and will therefore be able to travel subsonic over land as well as supersonic over water

Further details of the proposed engine are sparse but GE says the Affinity will be better than the Rolls-Royce engine that powered Concorde and is a culmination of the firm's fighter jet experience and building engines for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner

The new engines will have a sweeping leading edge on the wing and a new fuselage design will help reduce air drag over the wing by up to 60 per cent, and overall drag by 20 per cent

This addresses two of the key issues that Concorde faced towards the end of the plane's dominance in the field.

A string of high-profile accidents and an ageing fleet also compounded the issues of the Concorde project, which was affectionately known as 'The Queen of the Skies'.

'Our mission is to enhance global mobility with supersonic speed, starting with business aviation, and following with successively faster and larger designs for business and commercial aviation,' said Aerion CEO Tom Vice.

'GE Aviation is making this new efficient, sustainable supersonic era possible through its pioneering work on the Affinity engine.'

Concorde was retired in 2003 and commercial supersonic flight has remained unobtainable since. Developers of the engine hope the success of the AS2 business jet will act as a springboard - launching a commercial supersonic 'renaissance'

Concorde was retired in 2003 and commercial supersonic flight has remained unobtainable since.

Projects from various companies, including Nasa, have teased the possibility of a renaissance but it has yet to materialise.

AS2 will be almost three times faster than most modern-day airliners  with the target top speed of Mach 1.8 equating to 1,381mph (2,224km/h).

This proposed top speed will allow AS2 to surpass the maximum speed of Concorde by only 30mph (50kph).

'In the last 50 years, business aircraft speeds have increased by less than 10 per cent,' said Brad Mottier, GE Vice President and General Manager for Business and General Aviation and Integrated Services.

'Instead of going faster, cabins have increased in size and become more comfortable - and range has become longer.

'With large, comfortable cabin, long range aircraft in the marketplace, the next step is speed... made possible with GE's Affinity.'Advertisement

An amazing new Nasa image captures the youngest pulsar ever found by scientists.

The pulsar - an ultra-dense chunk of a star leftover from its explosive death into a supernova - sits just 19,000 light years from Earth.

It provides our best look yet at the early stages of star death, a mysterious and violent process that scientists still don't fully understand.

The image was taken using Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory, an orbiting telescope that has been out of action for nearly two weeks following a catastrophic gyroscope failure.

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This amazing image was taken by Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory. It shows Kes 75, an object 19,000 light years from Earth which scientist now believe contains the youngest pulsar ever found. Blue regions show high-energy X-rays created by winds of energetic matter and particles, while purple areas show the debris created by the supernova explosion

Researchers found the pulsar within Kes 75, a supernova remnant that has been known to scientists for several years.

'The rapid rotation and strong magnetic field of the pulsar have generated a wind of energetic matter and particles that flow away from the pulsar at near the speed of light,' Nasa said in a statement.

'This pulsar wind has created a large, magnetised bubble of high-energy particles called a pulsar wind nebula, seen as the blue region surrounding the pulsar.'

The composite image, pieced together using images of Kes 75 taken between 200 and 2016, shows X-rays observed by Chandra, which are coloured blue.

They highlight the pulsar wind nebula surrounding the pulsar, while lower-energy X-rays appear purple and show the debris from the explosion.

A separate photo of stars in the object's field was merged with Chandra's X-ray scans to complete the image.

The new image was taken using Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory (artist's impression), an orbiting telescope that has been out of action for nearly two weeks following a catastrophic gyroscope failure

Scientists compared images of Kes 75 taken between 2000 and 2016.

They found that the outer edge of the pulsar wind nebula is expanding at a remarkable 3.3 million feet second (1 million m/s), or more than 2 million miles per hour (3.2 million kph).

The expansion rate also tells astronomers that Kes 75 exploded about five centuries ago as seen from Earth, making it one of the youngest known pulsars in the Milky Way.

Records show that the explosion that birthed it was not spotted from Earth, likely because a dense layer of interstellar gas and dust in the region meant it was too dim to be seen from Earth several centuries ago.

Pure infrared radiation from the spinning core of a collapsed star was observed by scientists for the first time by scientists last month. One explanation is is that there is a disk of material, possibly mostly dust, surrounding the pulsar, slowing its rotation and heating it (Artist's Impression Provided By Penn State)

A pulsar is a rotating and highly-magnetised neutron star that appears to pulse when it is observed.

The stars are so tightly packed with material that our sun would have to shrink to just 18 miles across to match their density.

A paper describing the results has been published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

The study follows the news that Chandra will boot back up to full operational capacity following a two week down period.

WHAT ARE PULSARS? Pulsars are essentially rotating, highly magnetised neutron stars. These stars are made of matter much more densely packed than normal and which give the entire star a density comparable to an atomic nucleus. The diameter of our sun would shrink to less than 18 miles if it was that dense. These neutron stars also have extremely strong magnetic fields which accelerate charged particles. These give off radiation in a cone shaped beam which sweep across the sky like the light from a lighthouse as the star rotates. When the beam sweeps over earth, it becomes visible as a pulsar, producing light that cycles every few seconds to just a few milliseconds. Their rotational period is so stable that some astronomers use it to calibrate instruments and have proposed using it to synchronise clocks. British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar. Since then other types of pulsars that emit x-rays and gamma rays have also been spotted. Advertisement

A faulty gyroscope sent the observatory into a protective 'safe mode' on October 10, researchers revealed last week.

'The Flight Operations Team has completed testing and simulation of the procedures and onboard software updates that will place Chandra into a new gyroscope configuration, with the gyroscope that caused the October 10 safe mode in reserve,' Chandra team members said via the mission's Twitter account.

'The switch is scheduled for Friday night [October 19] and will be followed by a period of collecting maneuver data to validate and calibrate the new configuration prior to resuming science observing, planned for early next week,' the team added.The California-based motherboard manufacturer at the center of a controversial hacking report said it's conducting a review of its hardware for any proof of malicious chips.

The firm, Super Micro Computer, announced the review in a letter to its customers, dated October 18th and made public on Monday.

It comes after Apple CEO Tim Cook hit back at the report, published by Bloomberg, which claimed Chinese spies had placed computer chips inside equipment used by Apple, Amazon and other entities.

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Chinese motherboard manufacturer Super Micro Computer said in a letter to customers that it's conducting a review of its hardware in light of a controversial hacking report

'We are confident that a recent article, alleging a malicious hardware chip was implanted during the manufacturing process of our motherboards, is wrong,' Super Micro said in the letter.

'From everything we know and have seen, no malicious hardware chip has been implanted during the manufacturing of our motherboards.

'Despite the lack of any proof that a malicious hardware chip exists, we are undertaking a complicated and time-consuming review to further address the article,' the chipmaker added.

Super Micro also called Bloomberg's claims of it retrofitting spy chips 'not much bigger than a grain of rice' onto its motherboards 'practically impossible.'

Earlier this month, a Bloomberg report cited 17 unidentified sources from intelligence agencies and businesses that claimed Chinese spies had placed computer chips inside equipment used by about 30 companies, including Apple and Amazon and multiple US government agencies.

In doing so, they alleged it would give Beijing secret access to internal networks.

Super Micro denied the allegations made in the report.

Tim Cook, center, talks with Qu Zhangcai, left, and Liu Zhipeng, right, founders of the Xichuangzhu software app, during a visit in Beijing earlier this month. The Apple CEO has hit back at Bloomberg for a story claiming Apple equipment contained spy chips

'As we have said firmly, no one has shown us a motherboard containing any unauthorized hardware chip, we are not aware of any such unauthorized chip, and no government agency has alerted us to the existence of any unauthorized chip,' Super Micro explained in the letter.

The report said Apple in 2015 had found malicious chips on Super Micro motherboards and added that Amazon uncovered such chips the same year while examining servers made by Elemental Technologies, which Amazon eventually acquired.

Both Apple and Amazon have denied the allegations.

Cook doubled down on his denial of the report in an interview with BuzzFeed on Friday, in which he urged Bloomberg to retract the story.

'There is no truth in their story about Apple,' Cook told BuzzFeed in a phone interview.

'They need to do the right thing and retract it.'

Cook went on to argue that the reporters provided Apple with little evidence to support their claims.

HOW IT WORKED This is how the unnamed officials say the chips operated. All of their claims were refuted by Amazon, Apple and Supermicro. The chip was designed by spies from China's People Liberation Army, according to US government officials cited by the Bloomberg report. Once complete, the spies approached factory managers at the four subcontractors hired by Supermicro to manufacture servers. They bullied them into incorporating the chips onto the motherboards by bribing them and threatening to shut down the factories, it is claimed, all the while posing as Supermicro designers or Chinese government officials. Once the chips were loaded onto the motherboards, they were included in the servers and sent to Supermicro's customers. When the server was switched on, the chips were activated. Above is an example of a Supermicro motherboard. Apple, Amazon and Super Micro, the Chinese motherboard firm believed to have introduced the chips, have all denied the report They were inconspicuous and signal conditioning couplers which are common on motherboards so would not be detected. Once they were activated, they could essentially allow the hackers to do whatever they liked, the report said. Amazon has never used their products in the US but it did use them in Beijing in its AWS data center, the report claims. Apple, on the other hand, was using them 'sporadically' but ramped up its reliance on them when it acquired a startup designed to speed-up Siri, the voice assistant function. No consumer data was stolen, the officials say, but the threat the chips posed was extraordinary. Advertisement

'We turned the company upside down,' Cook said. 'Email searches, data center records, financial records, shipment records.

'We really forensically whipped through the company to dig very deep and each time we came back to the same conclusion: This did not happen. There's no truth to this,' he said.

When he was asked whether a scenario like the one Bloomberg described could go on without his knowledge, Cook said: 'The likelihood of that is virtually zero.'

Amazon previously denied the contents of the Bloomberg report.

'As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, this is untrue. At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems. Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government,' Steve Schmidt, Amazon Web Services' chief information security officer, said in a statement posted to its website.

The firm also denied that it had knowledge of any hardware modifications.

'There are so many inaccuracies in this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count.

Data center hardware used by Apple, Amazon and dozens of other US companies may have been fitted with tiny microchips placed there by Chinese spies, an explosive report claims

'...Security will always be our top priority. AWS is trusted by many of the world's most risk-sensitive organizations precisely because we have demonstrated this unwavering commitment to putting their security above all else.

'We are constantly vigilant about potential threats to our customers, and we take swift and decisive action to address them whenever they are identified,' Schmidt added.

Bloomberg, however, said it stood by its report and was confident of its reporting, which was conducted over more than a year.

Security experts as well as the U.S. and U.K. authorities have said they had no knowledge of the attacks.

Chinese officials also denied the attack.

'We hope parties make less gratuitous accusations and suspicions but conduct more constructive talk and collaboration so that we can work together in building a peaceful, safe, open, cooperative, and orderly cyberspace,' said a spokesman from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Sponges and microbes could be living beneath the surface of Mars, according to the latest research.

Salty subterranean lakes on the red planet are capable of producing enough oxygen to support cellular lifeforms and even simple animals, scientists say.

Experts believe these bodies of brine could be buried all over the red planet, further bolstering the possibility of it being home to extra-terrestrial life.

The study follows the landmark discovery of an underground lake of liquid water on Mars' icy south pole.

Researchers now believe that the polar regions are host to the most oxygenated areas of salt water on the planet.

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Sponges and microbes could be living beneath the surface of Mars in oxygen-rich salt water, according to new research. The study follows the landmark discovery of an underground lake of liquid water on Mars (pictured)

Life on Earth began when algae evolved photosynthesis - the process of turning sunlight into energy - and started exhaling oxygen as waste.

On Mars, however, oxygen is scarce and only trace amounts are produced by the light-induced breakdown of carbon dioxide.

It was previously thought that molecular oxygen would not be capable of supporting life on the red planet.

Now a computer model has shown this does not apply to the briny underground lakes on the red planet which are composed of salt and water, according to scientists from California Institute of Technology.

Lead author Dr Vlada Stamenkovic said such environments are particularly common near the poles of Mars.

Cold water contains more oxygen because the molecules are more tightly packed. This makes it harder for them to escape.

Dr Stamenkovic said places 'with sufficient oxygen available for aerobic microbes to breathe' may be all over the red planet.

He added: 'Moreover, about 6.5 per cent of the total Martian surface area could support far higher dissolved oxygen concentrations, enabling aerobic oases sufficient to sustain the respiration demands of more complex multicellular organisms such as sponges.'

Researchers calculated how much oxygen could be dissolved in the martian lakes under various pressure and temperature conditions. This image shows the surface of Mars (stock)

Salty subterranean lakes on the red planet are capable of producing enough oxygen to support microbes - and even simple animals, say scientists. Pictured is a lake uncovered by radar readings earlier this year

The sea sponge is one of the most primitive of all multi cellular animals and there are 10,000 different species, most of which live in sea-water.

Its arrival on Earth around 640 million years ago is believed to have kick-started life.

They feed by filtering water and can even reproduce sexually through males releasing sperm that is carried by the current and picked up by females.

Researchers calculated how much oxygen could be dissolved in the martian lakes under various pressure and temperature conditions.

Dr Stamenkovic said: 'Due to the scarcity of oxygen in the modern martian atmosphere, Mars has been assumed to be incapable of producing environments with sufficiently large concentrations to support aerobic respiration.

'Here, we present a thermodynamic framework for the solubility of oxygen in brines under martian near-surface conditions.'

HOW DOES A LAKE ON MARS CHANGE WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT LIFE ON THE RED PLANET? Liquid water is known to be one of the key components to life as we know it, and scientists have spent decades searching for it on Mars. If a large, permanent of body of water exists on the red planet then it has a good chance of hosting microbial life. Researchers had long speculated liquid water is present under the planet's surface, but lacked solid evidence to confirm this. A new finding from a team of Italian scientists suggests a subsurface lake that stretches 12 miles (20km) long is hidden beneath the Martian south pole. The discovery is the first evidence of a lake of liquid water on Mars that still exists today  an environment scientists believe is ideal for the growth of life. While the lake exists at a hostile temperature of -68C (-90F), microbes could grow there, as they do in similar environments on Earth, scientists said. Dr Brendan Burns, a microbiologist and astrobiologist from The University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the research, said: 'While the surface of Mars is inhospitable, there is the fascinating possibility that microbial life could survive and flourish in sub-glacial Martian waters.' Advertisement

Dissolved salts of magnesium, calcium and sodium keep liquid fluid - even below freezing point.

They are known to be present in martian rocks and are believed to maintain the briny miniature sea at the South Pole.

Dr Stamenkovic said little attention has been given to the role of oxygen on Mars due to its scarcity.

However, geochemical evidence from martian meteorites suggest it once had large amounts thanks to its warm atmosphere and liquid oceans which played a role in the weathering of its crust.

Dr Stamenkovic said: 'Thus, in principle, Mars could offer a wide range of near-surface environments with enough dissolved oxygen for aerobic respiration like that seen in diverse groups of terrestrial microorganisms.'

The latest study, published in Nature Geoscience, follows the recent discovery of a wide lake at the southern ice cap.

The reservoir, which spans 12 miles (20km) and is buried a mile (1.6km) underground, was uncovered by scientists using radar to probe the planet's icy south pole

The reservoir, which spans 12 miles (20km) and is buried a mile (1.6km) underground, was uncovered by scientists using radar to probe the planet's icy south pole.

Despite the triangle-shaped lake sitting at a hyper-cooled -68C (-90F), scientists believe the water is kept in liquid form as a 'sludge-like' salty brine.

The discovery is the first proof of a liquid water on Mars that still exists today  an environment scientists say is ideal for the growth of microbial life.

Experts said the 'stunning' find, which is around the size of lake Windermere, could provide the first evidence of life outside of Earth, and will serve as a key target for future missions to the red planet, as well as potentially providing a key resource for future human settlements.

The presence of the underground lake was discovered by scientists at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), in Rome.

Following the discovery, Warwick Holmes, an aerospace engineer at the University of Sydney, said future spacecraft missions to Mars will be working 'very hard' to design methods to sample liquid from the newly discovered lake.

As it stands, current generation technologies do not allow for drills to penetrate deep enough to reach the liquid water in the lake.

Despite this, Mr Holmes remained cautiously optimistic.

'This is currently our best, albeit slim chance of discovering life elsewhere in our solar system,' he said.Human bodies are becoming polluted with plastic, scientists have confirmed for the first time.

Tiny pieces were found in samples from every participant in an experiment which tried to estimate how much plastic we eat and drink every day.

Until now most research has focused on the natural world, but the new study shows that humans are also consuming plastic, with some pieces potentially lodging in our bodies.

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Sources could include the eating of fish or drinking of water from plastic bottles

Researchers spoke last night of their surprise at finding so many particles in the human samples. They suggested sources could include the eating of fish or drinking from plastic bottles.

Plastic is in everything, from beer to table salt It has become virtually impossible to escape eating plastic, but its health implications are largely unknown. Microplastics have been found in all forms of marine life, in table salt, honey, sugar, beer, organic fertilizers, in the dust in our homes, and in samples of bottled and tap water. Chemicals used in plastic production have been found to interfere with the development of sexual organs in animals and fish. It is feared that plastics could also deliver toxic chemicals  such as poisonous metals or hormones that interfere with normal sexual development  directly into our bodies. Dr Stephanie Wright, a research fellow at Kings College London, said: There is no published evidence to indicate what the health effects might be. It is likely that the larger particles are just passing through. Smaller particles could potentially cross the gut wall and redistribute to target tissues. Advertisement

Campaigners said the scale of the plastic crisis meant it was impossible for people to avoid eating, drinking and breathing in plastic  with potentially harmful effects. These include the risk of bacterial infections, introducing harmful chemicals to the body, irritating the gut lining, and affecting immune responses.

Lead researcher Dr Philipp Schwabl said: This is the first study of its kind and confirms what we have long suspected  that plastics ultimately reach the human gut. Of particular concern is what this means to us, and especially patients with gastrointestinal diseases.

The smallest microplastic particles are capable of entering the bloodstream and lymphatic system and may even reach the liver.

Now that we have first evidence for microplastics inside humans, we need further research to understand what this means for human health.

Hundreds of pieces of microplastics were found in every stool sample taken from people who took part in the study by the Medical University of Vienna.

Researchers from the university and the Environment Agency Austria monitored participants from the UK, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and Austria. The results showed every sample tested positive for the presence of microplastics  with up to nine different types identified. The most common plastics were polypropylene and polyethylene-terephthalate (PET). Both are commonly found in food and drink packaging.

The research was a pilot study involving eight participants. Each one kept a food diary for a week before their samples were analysed in the laboratory.

It is estimated that about 2 to 5 per cent of all plastic produced ends up in the sea

Research was a pilot study involving eight participants. Each one kept a food diary for a week

The diaries showed all the participants had eaten food wrapped in plastic or drunk from plastic bottles. None of the participants was a vegetarian and six of them ate sea fish.

The microplastics found were between 50 and 500 micrometres in size. A human hair has a thickness of between 17 and 181 micrometres.

The Daily Mail is leading the calls to tackle the plastic pollution crisis, with campaigns that have stopped the use of tiny microplastic beads in cosmetics and resulted in the introduction of a plastic bag levy.

It is estimated that about 2 to 5 per cent of all plastic produced ends up in the sea, where it is consumed by fish and other marine creatures. Significant amounts of microplastics have been detected in tuna, lobster, shrimp and mussels.

A Mail investigation this year found that tiny plastic particles have become part of the air we breathe.

A laboratory study found airborne particles on every sample of fish from eight major supermarkets after they had been left on open-air counters.

It had been thought the risk to health was largely limited to eating fish from oceans polluted with plastic, but the study proved that microplastics are also in the air.

Dr Schwabl said: Plastics are pervasive in everyday life and humans are exposed to plastics in numerous ways'

The researchers behind the new study, presented at UEG Week in Vienna, a gastroenterology conference, note: It is highly likely that during various steps of food processing or as a result of packaging, food is being contaminated with plastics.

Synthetic fabrics are also a significant source of microplastics in the environment as fibres from our clothes end up in the sea from treated and untreated sewage being released into rivers.

Dr Schwabl said: Plastics are pervasive in everyday life and humans are exposed to plastics in numerous ways. I did not expect that each sample would test positive. We do, however, need to be aware of the small sample size of our study.

He added: On a global level plastic production and plastic pollution correlate very strongly. Therefore, it is likely that the amount of plastic contamination may rise further if mankind does not change the current situation.

Friends of the Earths head of policy Mike Childs said: This is further disturbing evidence of how pervasive plastics are in our environment.

It now appears to be impossible for people to avoid ingesting or breathing in plastic pollution. While programmes like Blue Planet have vividly shown the devastating impact of plastic on wildlife, we dont yet know what effect it has on human health.

Louise Edge, Greenpeace UKs senior oceans campaigner, added: This is yet another shocking development that shows just how dramatically plastic is contaminating every aspect of our lives.

The global plastic problem is totally out of control. We need urgent action from governments to massively reduce plastic use and ensure any we do use, which must be essential, is captured and properly recycled.

Alistair Boxall, professor in environmental science at the University of York, said: It is a very interesting study and highlights that humans are being exposed to microplastics in our day-to-day lives.The classic whitewashed marble statues that populate art galleries and museums across the world were once vibrantly coloured.

Ignorance of this fact is being labelled as 'the most common misconception about Western aesthetics in the history of Western art' by experts.

Ancient Roman and Greek pieces of art are instinctively assumed to be white by the general public based on their current appearance after centuries in ruin.

Academics delved into the possibility that the statues were colourful - known as polychromatism - and found microscopic evidence of a variety of colours.

A variety of ultra-high resolution imagery was used to detect the presence of past pigmentation.

Alt-right groups have used white sculptures in ancient civilisations as 'proof' of white supremacy, which researchers argue has created a 'blindness' to the possibility that these sculptures were originally colourful.

This is reinforced by the historical popularity in the art world of neoclassic pieces, rising to prominence in the 18th and 19th Century, which also assumed ancient to works to be devoid of colour.

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The exhibition known as 'Gods in Colour' (pictured) was set-up in 2003 and has since visited 28 cities. It portrayed statues and art with the colouration it would have had when it was first created and before the annals of time erased it from view

Mark Abbe, now a professor of ancient art at the University of Georgia has been investigating the whitewashing of ancient statues.

He told Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker: '[It] is the most common misconception about Western aesthetics in the history of Western art.'

He went on to call it 'a lie we all hold dear'.

Dr Abbe has been studying pigmentation on ancient pieces of art for decades and re-investigated the findings from the ruins at Aphrodisias which was decimated by an earthquake in the seventh century AD.

Remains were studied for the first time in 1961 when archaeologists systematically excavated the city and put thousands of sculptural fragments in storage.

When Dr Abbe went to study the remains several decades later, he found many pieces were splattered with flecks of colour.

The classic whitewashed marble statues (left) that populate art galleries and museums across the world were once vibrantly coloured (right)

In August 2014 colour was projected onto a set of friezes at the Ara Pacis museum, in Rome (pictured). The removal of colour from ancient artwork has become romanticised and accepted over time

These included red pigment on the lips of a statue, black pigment on coils of hair and mirror like gilding on some limbs.

Vinzenz Brinkmann, a master's student in classics and archaeology from Ludwig Maximilian University, in Munich in the 80s reached a similar conclusion.

Dr Brinkmann invented a unique way of looking at the surface of these works of art and found a trove of polychromy.

With his discovery of the unmissable colouration came the simultaneous realisation that this portion of ancient history had all but been erased by time.

He told the New Yorker: 'It started as an obsession for me that has never ended.'

Pictured is a reconstruction of a lion statue that was part of a 2010 museum exhibit in Berlin, Germany. Researchers argue that back in the time of their creation, Roman and Greek monuments were vibrant and multi-coloured

The exhibition featured more than 20 full-size colour reconstructions of Greek and Roman works, alongside 35 original statues and pieces of art

Outrage at the exclusion of this slice of history is not limited to the two individuals who stumbled across the pigmentation over the course of their research.

Jan Stubbe stergaard, a former curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen has founded the international research network on polychromy.

'Saying you've seen these sculptures when you've seen only the white marble is comparable to somebody coming from the beach and saying they've seen a whale because there was a skeleton on the beach,' he said.

In response to the lack of education around the topic and the widespread omission of fact from textbooks around the world, Dr Brinkmann and his wife Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann started the exhibition known as 'Gods in Colour'.

This exhibition was set-up in 2003 and has since visited 28 cities.

Ancient Roman and Greek pieces of art are instinctively assumed to be white by the general public based on their current appearance after centuries in ruin

It portrayed statues and art with the colouration it would have possessed when it was first completed and before the annals of time erased it from sight.

Approximations of the original work were done by identifying and applying the pigment that remained on the object and also by studying 'shadows' - a tiny change in the surface that can tell experts what type of paint it once housed.

These included a Trojan archer from 500 BC with garishly patterned tights, a lion with ochre fur and the darkly coloured pubic hairs and bronzed skin and nipples of statues depicting a human likeness.

This portrait of the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanius, known as Caligula, hails from 37-41 A.D. The image on the right shows what it would have looked like originally

Previous essays and work from academics in the field has tried to reveal the colourful past of both the artwork and the people of ancient civilisations.

One researcher, Sarah Bond, a University of Iowa classics professor, received hate-mail from the 'alt-right' white nationalists who condemned her claims.

Professor Bond stressed that these much-touted ancient civilisations often separated people based on their race, but not on their skin colour and that this was subsequently reflected in the art of the era.

Identity Evropa, an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist organisation, claimed the classical white marble statues were a historical emblem of white nationalism.

The initial acceptance and romanticisation of white marble statues as the ancient norm stemmed from the belief artists deliberately avoided the use of colour in a bid to distinguish their work from the non-Western art and also reaffirm their sense of a superior rationality.

This misheard notion from modern scholars manufactured an elaborate solution to a simplistic issue; the pigment simply eroded away after many years exposed to the elements.

Improvemnts must be made ot the process which is applied when archaeological sites produce a rare sulpture.

Instead of mercilessly cleaning the specimen to determine what they have found, archaeologists should take greater care to not remove the fragile remains of a long-ago paint.Artificial intelligence is adapting to protect children from the perils of cyber-bullying and social media.

Researchers trained a machine-learning algorithm to detect bullying posts on social media and hide them from view.

The AI detected words and phrases in this dataset that were typically associated with bullying and filtered out more than two-thirds of threats, insults and instances of sexual harassment.

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Researchers trained a machine-learning algorithm with almost 200,000 real-life posts from anonymous site AskFM and the AI successfully picked up more than two-thirds of all malicious posts when set loose on data from the site (stock image)

Gilles Jacobs at Ghent University in Belgium built the programme and tasked it with filtering real-life posts from AskFM.

A team of professional linguists went through the same set of data and picked out the offensive posts from almost 200,000 posts.

Instances of bullying that slipped through the net tended to be more subtle and contain fewer obvious curse words or slurs, says Dr Jacobs.

'It's really difficult to get 100 per cent detection accuracy because there are so many different ways you can bully someone,' he says.

The algorithm also felldown when it came to detecting nuances of the English language, such as sarcasm or irony.

For example, it is sometimes unable to tell the difference between an innocent remark and a malicious one.

The researchers say that even this complex issue can be avoided if the algorithm can be trained on larger datasets.

Moderation of comments and content on websites has been in the spotlight recently with outrage at some of the videos, pictures, articles and remarks allowed on some sites.

The AI detected words and phrases in this dataset that were typically associated with bullying and filtered out instances of threats, insults and instances of sexual harassment (stock image)

Major platforms Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been under a barrage of pressure to improve its screening process and protect users, especially the younger generation.

'It is simply infeasible to rely on human moderators to manually scan through millions of comments every day,' Thomas Davidson at Cornell University told New Scientist.

'Assuming the system works well, it will allow moderators to direct their attention to the most problematic content.'

The research was published in the journal Plos One.Advertisement

A strange gigantic 'monolith' iceberg has been spotted by NASA scientists flying over Antarctica.

The rectangular berg was spotted off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, near the Larsen C ice shelf.

NASA experts believe it may have recently broken off the shelf, and say the sharp angles and flat surfaces are evidence the break occured very recently.

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The rectangular berg was spotted near the Larsen C ice shelf, and NASA experts believe it the sharp edges are evidence it may have recently broken off the shelf

WHAT IS A TABULAR ICEBERG? Tabular icebergs split off the edges of ice shelves in the same way a fingernail that grows too long ends up cracking off. This is why they have sharp edges. Advertisement

The strange, angular berg is known as a tabular iceberg.

'A tabular iceberg can be seen on the right, floating among sea ice just off of the Larsen C ice shelf,' the space agency said.

'The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf.'

The image was taken during an IceBridge flightan airborne survey of the planet's polar ice that gives a 3D view of the ice that makes up the Arctic and Antarctic, providing vital information on how it changes over time.

In an interview with LiveScience, NASA scientist Kelly Brunt said 'tabular icebergs are rather like fingernails that crack of, giving them sharp edges.

'What makes this one a bit unusual is that it looks almost like a square,' she said.

She estimated its size to be about a mile wide.

Scientists have been closely tracking Larsen C since a massive iceberg broke free, and began to spin.

The 'pizzaberg': This berg resembles a slice of pizza. The Triangular iceberg surrounded by many different types of sea ice, off the Larsen ice shelf in the Weddell Sea. In the open water, grease ice is forming.

From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: Mountains in the Shackleton Range, bordering Recovery Glacier, East Antarctica.

From Fridays #IceBridge flight: A lead (fracture within the sea ice) that is partially refrozen and also continuing to freeze over. New, very thin grease ice is forming.

Experts had previously said the giant area, estimated to be about the size of Delaware, was locked into place, saying it 'likely got stuck on the sea bed'

'But now A68 has started to swing northwards,' said Polar oceanographer Mark Brandon recently, who spotted the movement using temperature data collected by the Suomi NPP satellite.

'You can see at between 7-12 July 2018 the weather conditions and ocean currents conspire to swing the trillion tonnes of the giant iceberg A68 in an anticlockwise direction,' he said.

'My guess is that A68a will continue rotating as it is now around that western point, until what is currently the northern edge collides with the Larsen C ice front.

'It has a spectacular amount of momentum and it's not going to stopped easily. I should think we will see some interesting collisions with the ice shelf in the next few months.'

It is believed a 'temperature anomaly' on 20 July 2018, when it was almost 20 C warmer than the mean over the Weddell Sea and Larsen Ice shelf, may have triggered the rotation beginning.

Glaciologist and former Project MIDAS collaborator Martin O'Leary told Earther a collision is 'certainly possible' he doubts it would have much of an effect on either the iceberg or shelf given the slow-motion speed at which it would occur.

Eventually, O'Leary says the prevailing ocean currents will push the iceberg northwards and eastwards into the Southern Ocean 'where it will probably break up and melt.'

Left, a 'temperature anomaly' on 20 July 2018, when it was almost 20 C warmer than the mean over the Weddell Sea and Larsen Ice shelf Right: Sentinel-1 SAR satellite imagery from 29 August 2018 shows that to the north of the iceberg the wind is pushing the sea ice northwards faster than the iceberg is rotating. Iceberg A68 captured from with the Sentinel-1 SAR sensor 29 August 2018 23:58 UTC, showing an area of open water where there is intense sea ice generation happening right now.

last year it was revealed dense ice cover had so far prevented it from drifting far out to sea.

An animation showing its movement over the last few months reveals how the trillion-plus ton Iceberg A-68 has shifted as it's battered by ocean currents, tides, and winds in the Weddell Sea.

While the huge chunk of ice, estimated to be about the size of Delaware, has moved around some, the experts say its surroundings have kept it somewhat locked into place.

An animation showing its movement over the last few months reveals how the trillion-plus ton Iceberg A-68 has shifted as it's battered by ocean currents, tides, and winds in the Weddell Sea

Iceberg A-68 is the sixth largest iceberg on record since scientists began keeping track, and its separation from the ice shelf sparked fears about its future impacts on global sea levels.

Despite all the activity in the Weddell Sea, 'its northern end has repeatedly been grounded in shallower water near Bawden Ice Rise,' according to Project Midas researchers, who have been monitoring the iceberg over the last year.

'These groundings led eventually to further pieces of the iceberg being shattered off in May 2018.

'Whilst not quite large enough to be given labels themselves, the total area of icebergs lost from A-68 in May was the size of a small city.'

Scientists tracking a massive iceberg that broke free from Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf last year say dense sea-ice cover has so far prevented it from drifting far out to sea. It is shown above in July, 2018

While the huge chunk of ice, estimated to be about the size of Delaware, has moved around some, the experts say its surroundings have kept it somewhat locked into place. Its position back in November, 2017 is shown

Earlier this year, scientists released the first-ever footage of 'A-68', a trillion-ton iceberg the size of Delaware that has broken off from Antarctica.

Stunning aerial clips capture the huge crack in Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf that led to the third largest iceberg ever recorded breaking off from the continent last July.

When A-68 separated from Larsen C, it revealed an ocean hidden under the ice shelf for 120,000 years, and a team of scientists are now studying the region to uncover some of the hidden ecosystem's mysteries.

Led by the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the group will study tiny animals, microbes and plankton on the seafloor to see how they cope with severe changes to their environment.

As part of preliminary research for the trip, the team have taken aerial footage of the iceberg to monitor how far it has drifted to sea - the very first video captured of the berg since it calved from Larsen C last year.

Marine biologist Dr Katrin Linse, the BAS researcher leading the mission, said: 'The calving of A-68 provides us with a unique opportunity study marine life as it responds to a dramatic environmental change.

'It's important we get there quickly before the undersea environment changes as sunlight enters the water and new species begin to colonise.

'We've put together a team with a wide range of scientific skills so that we can collect as much information as possible in a short time. It's very exciting.'

The scientists are travelling by ship to collect samples from the newly exposed seabed, which covers an area of around 2,250 square miles (5,800 square kilometres).

The team says their mission is urgent because the ecosystem that's likely hidden beneath the ice for thousands of years may change as sunlight starts to alter the surface layers of the sea.

The team will investigate the area previously under the ice shelf by collecting seafloor animals, microbes, plankton, sediments and water samples using a range of equipment including video cameras and a special sledge pulled along the seafloor to collect tiny animals.

They will also record any marine mammals and birds that might have moved into the area. Their findings will provide a picture of what life under the ice shelf was like so changes to the ecosystem can be tracked.

A-68 is 620 feet (190 meters) thick from top to bottom, with just 100 feet (30 meters) of it is visible above the ocean.

The iceberg was formed by a single crack along Larsen C, its parent ice shelf, and makes up a little over 10 per cent of the shelf.

BAS researchers flew around the iceberg to get a better view of it as it drifts into the Weddell sea.

This newly exposed marine area is the first to benefit from an international agreement made in 2016 by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

The edge of A-68, the iceberg the calved from the Larsen C ice shelf. Nasa took this image in November during a flight that was part of its IceBridge program, which will help researchers understand the bedrock under the ice

This agreement designates Special Areas for Scientific Study in newly exposed marine areas following the collapse or retreat of ice shelves across the Antarctic Peninsula region.

The agreement came following a European Union proposal to CCAMLR, led by BAS scientists.

Professor David Vaughan, Science Director at BAS, said: 'The calving of A-68 offers a new and unprecedented opportunity to establish an interdisciplinary scientific research programme in this climate sensitive region.

'Now is the time to address fundamental questions about the sustainability of polar continental shelves under climate change.

'We need to be bold on this one. Larsen C is a long way south and there's lots of sea ice in the area, but this is important science, so we will try our best to get the team where they need to be.'The boss of Amazon's server business has joined Apple's Tim Cook in demanding Bloomberg retract a story claims Chinese spy chips were inside some of its servers.

'@tim_cook is right,' Andy Jassy tweeted.

'Bloomberg story is wrong about Amazon, too.

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Andy Jassy said the 'Reporters got played or took liberties'. Bloomberg has so far stood by its story, despite every firm involved denying it.

'They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories. Reporters got played or took liberties. Bloomberg should retract.'

Tim Cook hit back last weeks at Bloomberg for a story claiming the servers of tech giants including Apple contained spy chips.

Apple, Amazon and Super Micro, the Chinese motherboard manufacturer Bloomberg claimed introduced the chips, all deny claims the chips, which were 'not much bigger than a grain of rice,' would have given China unprecedented backdoor access to computers and data.

There is no truth in their story about Apple,' Cook told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. 'They need to do that right thing and retract it.'

'We turned the company upside down,' Cook said.

'Email searches, data center records, financial records, shipment records.

'We really forensically whipped through the company to dig very deep and each time we came back to the same conclusion: This did not happen. There's no truth to this.'

Asked if a scenario like the one Bloomberg described could occur without him knowing about it, Cook replied, 'The likelihood of that is virtually zero.'

However, Bloomberg says it stood by the story, telling Buzzfeed 'Bloomberg Businessweek's investigation is the result of more than a year of reporting, during which we conducted more than 100 interviews,'

Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, talks with Qu Zhangcai, left, and Liu Zhipeng, right, founders of the Xichuangzhu software app, during a visit to the Confucius Tempe in Beijing earlier this month. Tim Cook has hit back at Bloomberg for a story claiming the servers of tech giants including Apple contained spy chips.

'Seventeen individual sources, including government officials and insiders at the companies, confirmed the manipulation of hardware and other elements of the attacks.

'We also published three companies' full statements, as well as a statement from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting and sources.'

Apple previously strongly denied the report in a statement, saying in a statement published to its website: 'Over the course of the past year, Bloomberg has contacted us multiple times with claims, sometimes vague and sometimes elaborate, of an alleged security incident at Apple.

HOW IT WORKED This is how the unnamed officials say the chips operated. All of their claims were refuted by Amazon, Apple and Supermicro. The chip was designed by spies from China's People Liberation Army, according to US government officials cited by the Bloomberg report. Once complete, the spies approached factory managers at the four subcontractors hired by Supermicro to manufacture servers. They bullied them into incorporating the chips onto the motherboards by bribing them and threatening to shut down the factories, it is claimed, all the while posing as Supermicro designers or Chinese government officials. Once the chips were loaded onto the motherboards, they were included in the servers and sent to Supermicro's customers. When the server was switched on, the chips were activated. Above is an example of a Supermicro motherboard. Apple, Amazon and Super Micro, the Chinese motherboard firm believed to have introduced the chips, have all denied the report They were inconspicuous and signal conditioning couplers which are common on motherboards so would not be detected. Once they were activated, they could essentially allow the hackers to do whatever they liked, the report said. Amazon has never used their products in the US but it did use them in Beijing in its AWS data center, the report claims. Apple, on the other hand, was using them 'sporadically' but ramped up its reliance on them when it acquired a startup designed to speed-up Siri, the voice assistant function. No consumer data was stolen, the officials say, but the threat the chips posed was extraordinary. Advertisement

'Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them.

'We have repeatedly and consistently offered factual responses, on the record, refuting virtually every aspect of Bloomberg's story relating to Apple.

'On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, 'hardware manipulations' or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident,' the firm added.

Data center hardware used by Apple, Amazon and dozens of other US companies may have been fitted with tiny microchips placed there by Chinese spies, an explosive report claims

Similarly, Amazon Web Services, which oversees the data center equipment believed to have been targeted by the attack, denied the report's findings.

'As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, this is untrue. At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems. Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government,' Steve Schmidt, Amazon Web Services' chief information security officer, said in a statement posted to its website.

The firm also denied that it had knowledge of any hardware modifications.

'There are so many inaccuracies in this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count.

'...Security will always be our top priority. AWS is trusted by many of the world's most risk-sensitive organizations precisely because we have demonstrated this unwavering commitment to putting their security above all else.

'We are constantly vigilant about potential threats to our customers, and we take swift and decisive action to address them whenever they are identified,' Schmidt added.

READ THE FULL STATEMENT FROM APPLE ON THE SPY CHIP REPORT What Businessweek got wrong about Apple The October 8, 2018 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek incorrectly reports that Apple found 'malicious chips' in servers on its network in 2015. As Apple has repeatedly explained to Bloomberg reporters and editors over the past 12 months, there is no truth to these claims. Apple provided Bloomberg Businessweek with the following statement before their story was published: Over the course of the past year, Bloomberg has contacted us multiple times with claims, sometimes vague and sometimes elaborate, of an alleged security incident at Apple. Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them. We have repeatedly and consistently offered factual responses, on the record, refuting virtually every aspect of Bloomberg's story relating to Apple. On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, 'hardware manipulations' or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement. In response to Bloomberg's latest version of the narrative, we present the following facts: Siri and Topsy never shared servers; Siri has never been deployed on servers sold to us by Super Micro; and Topsy data was limited to approximately 2,000 Super Micro servers, not 7,000. None of those servers have ever been found to hold malicious chips. As a matter of practice, before servers are put into production at Apple they are inspected for security vulnerabilities and we update all firmware and software with the latest protections. We did not uncover any unusual vulnerabilities in the servers we purchased from Super Micro when we updated the firmware and software according to our standard procedures. We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg's reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed. Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously-reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple. While there has been no claim that customer data was involved, we take these allegations seriously and we want users to know that we do everything possible to safeguard the personal information they entrust to us. We also want them to know that what Bloomberg is reporting about Apple is inaccurate. Apple has always believed in being transparent about the ways we handle and protect data. If there were ever such an event as Bloomberg News has claimed, we would be forthcoming about it and we would work closely with law enforcement. Apple engineers conduct regular and rigorous security screenings to ensure that our systems are safe. We know that security is an endless race and that's why we constantly fortify our systems against increasingly sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals who want to steal our data. The published Businessweek story also claims that Apple 'reported the incident to the FBI but kept details about what it had detected tightly held, even internally.' In November 2017, after we had first been presented with this allegation, we provided the following information to Bloomberg as part of a lengthy and detailed, on-the-record response. It first addresses their reporters' unsubstantiated claims about a supposed internal investigation: Despite numerous discussions across multiple teams and organizations, no one at Apple has ever heard of this investigation. Businessweek has refused to provide us with any information to track down the supposed proceedings or findings. Nor have they demonstrated any understanding of the standard procedures which were supposedly circumvented. No one from Apple ever reached out to the FBI about anything like this, and we have never heard from the FBI about an investigation of this kind  much less tried to restrict it. In an appearance this morning on Bloomberg Television, reporter Jordan Robertson made further claims about the supposed discovery of malicious chips, saying, 'In Apple's case, our understanding is it was a random spot check of some problematic servers that led to this detection.' As we have previously informed Bloomberg, this is completely untrue. Apple has never found malicious chips in our servers. Finally, in response to questions we have received from other news organizations since Businessweek published its story, we are not under any kind of gag order or other confidentiality obligations. Advertisement

Chinese officials also denied the attack.

'We hope parties make less gratuitous accusations and suspicions but conduct more constructive talk and collaboration so that we can work together in building a peaceful, safe, open, cooperative, and orderly cyberspace,' said a spokesman from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

According to Bloomberg, the spy chips were designed for motherboards -- the nerve centers for computer equipment -- used in data centers operated by Apple, Amazon Web Services and others.

The chips were designed to be undetectable by standard machines and covertly attached during the manufacturing process to motherboards which wound up in servers deployed in the US.

Bloomberg said a three-year secret investigation, which remains open, enabled spies to create a 'stealth doorway' into computer equipment, a hardware-based entry that would be more effective and harder to detect than a software hack.

SuperMicro denied the existence of an ongoing investigation, saying: 'We remain unaware of any such investigation,' Supermicro spokesman Perry Hayes told Bloomberg.

Hayes added that it has never been notified about malicious chips on its motherboards by customers, such as Apple and Amazon, or US law enforcement.

The chips were designed to be undetectable by machines and covertly attached during the manufacturing process to motherboards which wound up in servers deployed in the US

READ THE FULL STATEMENT FROM AMAZON DENYING THE SPY CHIP REPORT Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Erroneous Article Today, Bloomberg BusinessWeek published a story claiming that AWS was aware of modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in Elemental Media's hardware at the time Amazon acquired Elemental in 2015, and that Amazon was aware of modified hardware or chips in AWS's China Region. As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, this is untrue. At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems. Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government. There are so many inaccuracies in this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count. We will name only a few of them here. First, when Amazon was considering acquiring Elemental, we did a lot of due diligence with our own security team, and also commissioned a single external security company to do a security assessment for us as well. That report did not identify any issues with modified chips or hardware. As is typical with most of these audits, it offered some recommended areas to remediate, and we fixed all critical issues before the acquisition closed. This was the sole external security report commissioned. Bloomberg has admittedly never seen our commissioned security report nor any other (and refused to share any details of any purported other report with us). The article also claims that after learning of hardware modifications and malicious chips in Elemental servers, we conducted a network-wide audit of SuperMicro motherboards and discovered the malicious chips in a Beijing data center. This claim is similarly untrue. The first and most obvious reason is that we never found modified hardware or malicious chips in Elemental servers. Aside from that, we never found modified hardware or malicious chips in servers in any of our data centers. And, this notion that we sold off the hardware and datacenter in China to our partner Sinnet because we wanted to rid ourselves of SuperMicro servers is absurd. Sinnet had been running these data centers since we launched in China, they owned these data centers from the start, and the hardware we 'sold' to them was a transfer-of-assets agreement mandated by new China regulations for non-Chinese cloud providers to continue to operate in China. Amazon employs stringent security standards across our supply chain  investigating all hardware and software prior to going into production and performing regular security audits internally and with our supply chain partners. We further strengthen our security posture by implementing our own hardware designs for critical components such as processors, servers, storage systems, and networking equipment. Security will always be our top priority. AWS is trusted by many of the world's most risk-sensitive organizations precisely because we have demonstrated this unwavering commitment to putting their security above all else. We are constantly vigilant about potential threats to our customers, and we take swift and decisive action to address them whenever they are identified. - Steve Schmidt, Chief Information Security Officer Advertisement

Citing unnamed US officials, Bloomberg said a unit of the People's Liberation Army were involved the operation that placed the chips on equipment manufactured in China for US-based Super Micro Computer Inc.

Super Micro, according to Bloomberg, also manufactured equipment for Department of Defense data centers, the CIA's drone operations, and onboard networks of Navy warships.

The report said Amazon discovered the problem when it acquired software firm Elemental and began a security review of equipment made for Elemental by California-based Supermicro.

Super Micro builds its equipment in San Jose, California, but outsources its manufacturing to contractors in China.

Many US tech companies outsource parts of their supply chain operations to facilities in China.

This has stoked fears about foreign intelligence agencies infiltrating US companies via 'supply chain attacks.'A co-founder of Facebook's virtual-reality division is joining the exodus of executives to leave the company after striking it rich in lucrative sales of their startups.

Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe disclosed his decision to leave Facebook in a tweet posted Monday, 2 1/2 years after Facebook parted ways with Oculus' other co-founder, Palmer Luckey.

The move follows internal shake-ups in the company's virtual reality arm last week that saw the cancellation of the company's next generation 'Rift 2' PC-powered virtual reality headset, which he had been leading development of, a source close to the matter told TechCrunch.

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Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe disclosed his decision to leave Facebook in a tweet, the latest in a string of founders to quit

THE FACEBOOK FOUNDER EXODUS His departure comes 2.5 years after Facebook parted ways with Oculus' other co-founder, Palmer Luckey. In April, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum left Facebook four years after selling the messaging app Last month Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger also quit Advertisement

Iribe and the Facebook executive team had 'fundamentally different views on the future of Oculus that grew deeper over time,' and Iribe wasn't interested in a 'race to the bottom' in terms of performance, the site said.

Both Iribe and Luckey joined Facebook in 2014 after selling Oculus to the company for $2 billion.

Palmer left following a string of problems and legal issues, and was also criticized for a donation of $10,000 to a pro-Donald Trump group called Nimble America, which created offensive memes online during the 2016 election season.

Iribe had been Oculus' CEO until 2016 when he shifted to a lower-ranking job in the virtual reality division.

Facebook says it's thankful for Iribe's leadership and dedication.

In April, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum left Facebook four years after selling the messaging app and last month Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger bolted .

Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, has talked about his departure for the firm for the first time since he quit.

Three weeks after he and his Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger abruptly left the Facebook-owned company, amid rumours it was due to a falling out with Mark Zuckerberg, he said 'You don't leave a job because everything's awesome.'

Speaking at the Wired25 summit in San Francisco, Systrom dodged questions about his relationship with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he wished the firm well.

'There are no hard feelings at all. I want this thing to succeed,' he said.

Brendan Iribe, the CEO of Oculus, unveiling the Oculus Rift headset at an event in San Francisco

Systrom had been at the company for eight years when he quit - and admits he wanted to do more.

'It [Instagram] didn't feel done by any stretch of the imagination,' he said. 'But it felt like it was in orbit.'

Anna Wintour, Serena Williams and Kevin Systrom attend VIP Dinner For WIRED's 25th Anniversary, Hosted By Nicholas Thompson And Anna Wintour at Tartine: Speaking at the Wired25 summit in San Francisco, Systrom dodged questions about his relationship with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he wished the firm well.

WHY DID KEVIN SYSTROM QUIT INSTAGRAM? Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger frequently clashed with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg over a range of issues, including the extent to which they could chart their own course, according to the Wall Street Journal. The co-founders also believed to be upset about tweaks to the photo-sharing app that seemed designed to promote Facebook growth at Instagram's expense, some of the people said. Many have also blamed Mark Zuckerberg's 'god complex', saying that while the app was supposedly independents, 'there was only one CEO'. Advertisement

Systrom said 'I don't have any plans yet, except for hanging out for a little while,' and said he'd been taking flying lessons, and has just made his first solo flight.

He also said he'd been spending time with his nine month old daughter.

Systrom also spoke about the vast power tech giants now wield, with apps able to reach billions in an instant.

We're learning what it means to have that responsibility as an industry,' he said.

However, he believes there is a solution.

'It's far more simple than we all understand, if we just focus on humans and the that problems they have.'

A week after System left, Facebook named Adam Mosseri, a 10-year veteran at the company and a member of Mark Zuckerberg's 'inner circle', as the CEO of Instagram.

The appointment comes after the photo-sharing app's co-founders resigned without giving a clear reason.

Kevin Systrom, Instagram's CEO, and Mike Krieger, its other co-founder, announced Mosseri's appointment Monday on the company blog in an awkward post.

'We are thrilled to hand over the reins to a product leader with a strong design background and a focus on craft and simplicity  as well as a deep understanding of the importance of community,' the pair wrote.

Many have also blamed Mark Zuckerberg's 'god complex' for the Instagram co-founders quitting, saying that while the app was supposedly independents, 'there was only one CEO'.

Mosseri was named as Instagram's head of product in May and said on Twitter he was 'humbled and excited by the new role'.

He began as a designer at Facebook and most recently led its news feed.

The founders sought to reassure users that Mosseri will 'hold true' to Instagram's values and community.

Some users have worried since last week's surprise departure that Instagram will become more like its parent company, becoming getting cluttered with features and sucking up personal data.

'Since we announced our departure, many people have asked us what we hope for the future of Instagram,' the pair said.

'To us, the most important thing is keeping our community  all of you  front and center in all that Instagram does.

'We believe that Adam will hold true to these values and that Instagram will continue to thrive.

Kevin Systrom, CEO and co-founder of Instagram, prepares for an announcement about IGTV in San Francisco. In a statement late Monday, Sept. 24, 2018, Systrom said in a statement that he and Mike Krieger, Instagram's chief technical officer, plan to leave the company in the next few weeks and take time off 'to explore our curiosity and creativity again.'

'We remain excited for the future of Instagram in the coming years as we transition from being leaders at Instagram to being just two users in a billion.

'We're confident that under Adam's leadership, Instagram will evolve and improve and we look forward to the future of the product and community.'

When Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger sold Instagram to Facebook in 2012, the photo-sharing startup's fiercely loyal fans worried about what would happen to their beloved app under the social media giant's wings.

None of their worst fears materialized. But now that its founders have announced they are leaving in a swirl of well wishes and vague explanations, some of the same worries are bubbling up again - and then some.

Will Instagram disappear? Get cluttered with ads and status updates? Suck up personal data for advertising the way its parent does? Lose its cool?

Worst of all: Will it just become another Facebook?

'It's probably a bigger challenge (for Facebook) than most people realize,' said Omar Akhtar, an analyst at the technology research firm Altimeter.

The appointment comes after the photo-sharing app's co-founders resigned last week without giving a clear reason. Photo, from left to right: Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, new Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom.

'Instagram is the only platform that is growing. And a lot of people didn't necessarily make the connection between Instagram and Facebook.'

Instagram had just 31 million users when Facebook snapped it up for $1 billion; now it has a billion.

It had no ads back then; it now features both display and video ads, although they're still restrained compared to Facebook.

But that could quickly change. Facebook's growth has started to slow, and Wall Street has been pushing the company to find new ways to increase revenue.

Instagram has been a primary focus of those efforts.

Facebook has been elevating Instagram's profile in its financial discussions. In July, it unveiled a new metric for analysts, touting that 2.5 billion people use at least one of its apps - Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger - each month.

While not particularly revealing, the measurement underscores the growing importance Facebook places on those secondary apps.

In this April 7, 2011, file photo, CEO Kevin Systrom, at left, chats with engineers Shayne Sweeney, center, and Mike Krieger at Instagram in San Francisco

Facebook doesn't disclose how much money Instagram pulls in, though Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates it'll be around $6 billion this year, or just over 10 percent of Facebook's expected overall revenue of about $55.7 billion.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long seen Instagram's promise. At the time, it was by far Facebook's largest acquisition (although it was dwarfed by the $19 billion Zuckerberg paid for WhatsApp two years later). And it was the first startup allowed to operate mostly independently.

That has paid off big time. Not only did Instagram reach 1 billion users faster than its parent company, it also succeeded in cloning a popular Snapchat feature, dealing a serious blow to that social network upstart and succeeding where Facebook's own attempts had repeatedly failed.

Instagram also pioneered a long-form video feature to challenge YouTube, another big Facebook rival.

Recently, Instagram has been on a roll.

In June, Systrom traveled to New York to mark the opening of its new office there, complete with a gelato bar and plans to hire hundreds of engineers.

Only a month earlier, Instagram had moved into sparkly new offices in San Francisco. In a July earnings call, Zuckerberg touted Instagram's success as a function of its integration with Facebook, claiming that it used parent-company infrastructure to grow 'more than twice as quickly as it would have on its own.'

But Instagram has also been a case study in how to run a subsidiary independently - especially when its parent is mired in user-privacy problems and concerns about election interference, fake news and misinformation. And especially when its parent has long stopped being cool, what with everyone and their grandma now on it.

Instagram's simple design - just a collection of photos and videos of sunsets, faraway vacations, intimate breakfasts and baby close-ups - has allowed it to remain a favorite long after it became part of Facebook.

If people go to Twitter to bicker over current events and to Facebook to see what old classmates are up to, Instagram is where they go to relax, scroll and feast their eyes.

Kevin Systrom (right) and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger (left) made a shock departure from their leading roles at the social network on Monday

So, will that change?

'I don't think Zuckerberg is dumb,' Akhtar said.

'He knows that a large part of Instagram's popularity is that it's separate from Facebook.'

As such, he thinks Facebook would be wise to reassure users that what they love about Instagram isn't going to change - that they are not going to be forced to integrate with Facebook. 'That'll go a long way,' he said.

Internally, the challenge is a bit more complicated. While Systrom and Krieger didn't say why they're leaving, their decision echoes the recent departure of WhatsApp's co-founder and CEO Jan Koum, who resigned in April.

Koum had signaled years earlier that he would take a stand if Facebook's push to increase profits risked compromising core elements of the WhatsApp messaging service, such as its dedication to user privacy. When Facebook started pushing harder for more revenue and more integration with WhatsApp, Koum pulled the ripcord.

One sign that additional integration may be in Instagram's future: Zuckerberg in May sent longtime Facebook executive Adam Mosseri to run Instagram's product operation.

Mosseri replaced longtime Instagrammer Kevin Weil, who was shuffled back to the Facebook mothership.

Systrom did mention Sandberg and Zuckerberg in an outgoing 'thank you' statement shared to Instagram (pictured)

That likely didn't sit well with Instagram's founders, Akhtar and other analysts said. Now that they're gone as well, Mosseri is the most obvious candidate to head Instagram.

'Kevin Systrom loyalists are probably going to leave,' Akhtar said.

Which means Facebook may soon have a new challenge on its hands: Figuring out how to keep Instagram growing if it loses the coolness factor that has bolstered it for so long.NASA says its has taken 'great strides' towards resurrecting the Hubble Space Telescope after a malfunction caused it to shut down.

The telescope switched on a backup gyro after it entered safe mode due to a failed gyro on Friday, Oct. 5.

However, the gyro began to rotate at an alarming rate, so NASA was unable to switch the scope back on.

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The Hubble telescope (pictured) was launched in 1990 and Nasa hope it will remain operational into the 2020s. It studies visible and near UV light and there is no clear successor lined up to replace it. It malfunctioned and went into 'sleep mode earlier this week

HOW DO HUBBLE'S GRYOSCOPES WORK? A wheel inside the gyro spins at a constant rate of 19,200 revolutions per minute. This wheel is mounted in a sealed cylinder, called a float, which is suspended in a thick fluid. Electricity is carried to the motor by thin wires, approximately the size of a human hair, that are immersed in the fluid. Electronics within the gyro detect very small movements of the axis of the wheel and communicate this information to Hubbles central computer. These gyros have two modes  high and low. High mode is a coarse mode used to measure large rotation rates when the spacecraft turns across the sky from one target to the next. Low mode is a precision mode used to measure finer rotations when the spacecraft locks onto a target and needs to stay very still. Advertisement

To fix it, NASA went with a tried and tested IT support technique - switching it off and on again.

The Hubble operations team turned the gyro off for one second, and then restarted it before the wheel spun down.

They then commanded a series of spacecraft maneuvers, or turns, in opposite directions to attempt to clear any blockage that may have caused the float to be off-center and produce the exceedingly high rates.

During each maneuver, the gyro was switched from high mode to low mode to dislodge any blockage that may have accumulated around the float.

Following the Oct. 18 maneuvers, the team noticed a significant reduction in the high rates, allowing rates to be measured in low mode for brief periods of time

'The rotation rates produced by the backup gyro have since reduced and are now within an expected range,' NASA said.

Additional tests will be performed to ensure Hubble can return to science operations with this gyro.

It comes as Earth's most powerful telescopes are beginning to show the strain of decades of use and may soon stop working completely.

Astronomical observatories such as Hubble and Chandra were launched into orbit several years ago and have provided us with stunning images and precious data ever since.

These wondrous machines, that have been invaluable in the advancement of modern science, are deteriorating with age and Nasa has no plan in place to replace the ailing technology.

They were developed to help map distant galaxies, peer into black holes and locate new planets but astronomers fear their eyes in the sky may soon go dark.

'The unwillingness to invest in substantial science has begun to worry us,' astrophysicist Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, which operates the Hubble telescope on behalf of NASA, told The Washington Post.

'We're facing a very daunting prospect as a community. Some fields just won't have a telescope. And the science will not be possible to do in any other way.'

NASAs Hubble Space Telescope is still working and has made more than 1.3 million observations since its mission began in 1990 The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, via the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. It is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889. He is arguably most famous for discovering that the universe is expanding and the rate at which is does so - now coined the Hubble constant. The Hubble telescope is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889 (pictured) Hubble has made more than 1.3 million observations since its mission began in 1990 and helped publish more than 15,000 scientific papers. It orbits Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude. Hubble has the pointing accuracy of .007 arc seconds, which is like being able to shine a laser beam focused on Franklin D. Roosevelt's head on a dime roughly 200 miles (320km) away. The Hubble telescope is named after Edwin Hubble who was responsible for coming up with the Hubble constant and is one of the greatest astronomers of all-time Hubble's primary mirror is 2.4 meters (7 feet, 10.5 inches) across and in total is 13.3 meters (43.5 feet) long - the length of a large school bus. Hubble's launch and deployment in April 1990 marked the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo's telescope. Thanks to five servicing missions and more than 25 years of operation, our view of the universe and our place within it has never been the same. Advertisement

Funding for successors to these marquee telescopes has yet to be secured and Paul Hertz, the astrophysics division director at Nasa said it is a 'choice for the nation'.

'What missions we do will be influenced by priorities of the community as well as the funding choices made by the political system,' he added.

Hubble was launched in 1990 and earlier this month it malfunctioned, halting its work and reinforced to the scientists that are totally dependent on the 28-year-old machine just how reliant they are on technology first designed in the 1970s.

The Chandra X-ray telescope is now in its 20th year of operation and has surpassed its projected operational lifespan by nearly 15 years.

Chandra automatically went into so-called safe mode earlier this month, because of a gyroscope problem.

'The cause of Chandra's safe mode on October 10 has now been understood and the Operations team has successfully returned the spacecraft to its normal pointing mode,' Nasa said.

It claimed the safe mode was caused by a glitch in one of Chandra's gyroscopes resulting in a three-second period of bad data that in turn led the on-board computer to calculate an incorrect value for the spacecraft momentum.

The erroneous momentum indication then triggered the safe mode.

'The team has completed plans to switch gyroscopes and place the gyroscope that experienced the glitch in reserve,' Nasa said.

Hubble went into hibernation due to a similar gyroscope failure.

Nasa claims the issues with Chandra have now been resolved but it remains low on fuel and it it is unclear how long it will remain functional.

The Space agency says it's coincidental both Chandra and Hubble went 'asleep' within a week of one another.

It 'continues to work toward resuming science operations of the Hubble Space Telescope after the spacecraft entered safe mode due to a failed gyroscope (gyro).'

An astronomer who works on Chandra, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted Friday that 'Chandra decided that if Hubble could have a little vacation, it wanted one, too.'

The political behemoth in the US provided Nasa with ample resources and financial support to launch and sustain the Great Observatory programme in the 1970s.

The Chandra X-ray telescope (pictured) is now in its 20th year of operation and has surpassed its projected operational lifespan by nearly 15 years

Four telescopes were designed and built that would measure the entire spectrum of light from Gamma rays (Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) to infrared radiation (the Spitzer Space Telescope).

The other two telescopes in this programme - Hubble and Chandra - analyse visible/near ultra-violet light and X-rays, respectively.

Between them they would find and help unpick the mysteries behind the most energetic explosions in the universe, black holes, exoplanets, newborn stars and discovering the age of the universe.

Compton perished in 2001 after a gyroscope issue rendered it useless and Spitzer is expected to die next year.

Nasa expects both remaining telescopes to continue working into the 2020s.

'People suddenly realised that Hubble is not going to live forever,' said Tom Brown, the Hubble mission head at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

When Hubble does fail, there will be no visible or ultraviolet telescopes at that scale.

This, Dr Brown says, is leading scientists to wonder what happens next.

The James Webb telescope will study infrared radiation in space but has been beleaguered with delays and errors that has seen the launch date pushed back to 2021.

As with the visible light spectrum, there are no plans from Nasa to replace Chandra and further study the X-ray wavelength of light.

Gamma ray astrophysicist Julie McInery, the project scientist for Fermi, the smaller successor to Compton, said: 'You have to have a minimal level of activity in any given telescope area to maintain expertise in the community so you can continue to build instruments.'Advertisement

England is home to some of the world's most beautiful and historic churches - and now you can discover exactly where to find them.

Explorechurches.org has signposted the counties in England that are best for church tourism and listed them according to the standout features of the churches within their borders, after studying 2,000 of them. For instance, some counties are best for churches with stained glass windows, others for charming graveyards.

There are nine categories altogether and here we present the full heavenly guide.

Revealing: The study by Explorechurches.org analysed 2,000 churches across 77 counties in England

GREATER LONDON: Most visitor friendly

Visitor-centred facilities such as parking, refreshment and toilets have been deemed as key features of a 'five star' church. Bringing churches closer in line with other major tourist and leisure attractions, this rating helps visitors know what to expect if planning a visit, from a practical point of view.

Greater London scores the highest when it comes to visitor experience, with more than half (56 per cent) of churches included in the study being accessible by public transport and providing parking, refreshments and toilets. Yorkshire was the second most visitor friendly (49 per cent), followed by Surrey (38 per cent).

Churches in this category are commended for smoothly combining historically rich surroundings with modern day facilities.

VISITOR FRIENDLY PICK: St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square

Take a pew: St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square (above) has daily church services and free music every weekday

Standing tall amidst Londons busiest sight-seeing hub, explorechurches.org applauds St Martin-in-the-Fields as one of the most visitor friendly churches.

Throughout its history, dating back to 1222, St Martins has been an innovator. In 1542, Henry VIII rebuilt the church that was already on this site to keep plague victims from being carried through his palace grounds  yet nowadays visitors can hope for a more welcoming experience. It was replaced by a Classical temple style church, designed by architect James Gibbs, In 1726.

Ingenious modern renovations over the years have introduced more light, restored the pews and stone flooring, and exposed the crypt's brickwork. There are daily church services, free music every weekday, as well as ticketed evening concerts, a shop, and an award-winning cafe.

NORFOLK: Top for interiors

Norfolk is joint first with Shropshire for the county with the highest percentage of churches with stunning interiors, including furniture, embroidered altar cloths, art, sculptures, carvings in wood and stone and ancient and modern wall and ceiling paintings.

Nearly all (96 per cent) of its churches are recognised for their interior features, followed by Somerset (94 per cent), and Oxfordshire (93 per cent).

INTERIOR PICK: St Agnes' Church, Cawston, Norfolk

Lord above: The angels perched on the hammerbeams in St Agnes' Church in Cawston, Norfolk, seem almost ready to fly

At St Agnes' Church in Cawston, Norfolk, the breathtaking ceiling is filled with carved wooden angels, a trend that was especially popular in East Anglian churches in the later medieval and Tudor periods.

This beautifully preserved early 15th century building is a glorious example of an uplifting church interior and the angels perched on the hammerbeams seem almost ready to fly.

Explorechurches.org recognises this as a truly outstanding and remarkable interior  both due to the quality of craftsmanship and the exceptional condition of the carving.

SUFFOLK: Stunning for stained glass

Suffolk joins Cornwall and Cumbria in the top three counties in England for stained glass windows, with 72 per cent of its churches, the highest in the country, being recognised for the people they depict, the stories they tell and their famous designers from pre-Raphaelites to modern day artists.

STAINED GLASS PICK: St Margarets Church, Herringfleet

Divine: Light streams in through a stained glass window at St Margarets Church, in Herringfleet, Suffolk (pictured above)

In St Margarets Church, in Herringfleet, Suffolk, magical stained glass glows with different colours. Set in lead brackets, pieces of glass are designed to catch the sunlight and lift the mood of anyone looking.

The perpendicular style windows allow light to flood into the building and the east window contains imported fragments of painted glass obtained from Cologne, which date from the late 14th century to early 15th century.

Explorechurches.org highlights this as an example of stained glass used to create an amazing collage effect.

CORNWALL: Wonderful for wildlife

Cornwall is the top place for discovering wildlife in church grounds, with almost half (49 per cent) of its churches either having wildflower meadows, unmown areas of the churchyard to encourage native species or being recognized as sites of special scientific interest.

Lincolnshire is the second-best county (48 per cent) for its wildlife friendly churches followed by Cumbria (42 per cent).

WILDLIFE PICK: St Michael and All Angels Church, Bude, Cornwall

All things bright and beautiful: The graveyard at St Michael and All Angels Church, Bude, Cornwall, is a haven for wildlife

St Michael & All Angels was built in 1835 and donated as a gift to the people of the place by the Lord of the Manor, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland.

It was designed by the Welsh architect George Wightwick, who built many other buildings in Bude, and its building also marks the rise of Cornwall as a fashionable location for holiday-makers, due to the 19th century expansion of England's railway network.

The lovely, scenic graveyard is home to a wide variety of wildlife and is alive with meadow flowers in springtime. ?Explorechurches.org has highlighted the importance of churchyards as wildlife sanctuaries supporting creatures such as bees, dormice and even deer.

SHROPSHIRE: Most charming churchyards

Shropshire is the top county for exploring churchyards with 96 per cent listing them as significant features, followed by Warwickshire (84 per cent) and Somerset (82 per cent).

Its churchyards are considered keepers of community heritage, a rich resource for seeking out family history and other historic information from gravestones.

CHARMING PICK: St Laurence's Church, Church Stretton, Shropshire

Praise be: St Laurences Church (above) was recognised for its outdoor monuments and manicured graveyard

A fine cruciform church, St Laurences Church is largely Early English but with a Norman nave, a perpendicular central tower and Victorian aisles.

Its charming churchyard is recognised by explorechurches.org for its outdoor monuments and beautifully-kept graveyard, which is also a haven for wildlife.

Visitors can stroll through a little gate to explore this pretty and historically-rich outdoor space and take time to discover monuments including a sundial, which originated as a medieval churchyard cross, whose shaft is sunk into a former mill wheel.

FROM THE SMALLEST TO THE TALLEST, ENGLAND'S MOST EXTREME CHURCHES OLDEST CHURCH: St Martin, Canterbury, Kent St Martin in Canterbury is 'an amazing time capsule' says Explorechurches.org. It's the oldest church in continuous use in the English-speaking world and a 'must see' St Martin's Church, Canterbury, Kent, dates from around 597 AD and is the oldest church in continuous use in the English-speaking world. The oldest parts of the structure were built during the Roman occupation of Britain, while other alterations were made in the Saxon period. Standing for nearly one and a half thousand years, this amazing time capsule is a must-see for any history-lover. SMALLEST CHURCH: Bremilham, Cowage, Wiltshire Compact: Bremilham in Cowage, Wiltshire, is the smallest church in the country, measuring just 12ft x 12ft Perched on a small grassy mound, in the middle of a farm yard, on the outskirts of Malmesbury, sits the tiniest church in service in Britain. Bremilham Church is barely four metres long by 3.6 metres wide and there's scarcely room for a congregation larger than ten, seating for just four on one tiny pew and no room for an altar. Previously used for housing turkeys of the nearby farm, the church only recently found its way into the Guinness Book of Records as Britains officially smallest church. TALLEST SPIRE: Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire Sky high: Salisbury Cathedral's beautiful church spire measures 123.1m or 404ft. It is the tallest spire in the United Kingdom Since 1549, the cathedral has had the tallest church spire in the United Kingdom, at 404 feet (123 m). Visitors with a head for heights are able to undertake a Tower Tour and climb 332 steps to explore this fascinating structure from the inside. Reaching the foot of the iconic spire, 68 metres (223ft) above ground level soon provides a breathtaking aerial view of the inside of the Cathedral and panoramic views of Salisbury and the surrounding countryside. LARGEST PARISH CHURCH: Beverley Minster, Beverley, Yorkshire In-spiring: Beverley Minster, in Beverley, Yorkshire (above) is an architectural marvel, with its spacious and soaring structure At 3,489 square metres, the interior of Beverley Minster is the biggest parish church in the UK. For over 1,300 years there has been a Christian community on the site of Beverley Minster and the current structure evolved through the three main Gothic styles of architecture to become the spacious and soaring structure it is today. The evolution of Gothic style allowed larger scale buildings to be created by repositioning structural weight and allowing bigger churches and cathedrals to be built. Advertisement

CUMBRIA: Amazing atmosphere

Cumbria has the highest percentage of churches offering atmospheric or other-wordly surroundings (78 per cent), followed by Cornwall, which is the second best county (69 per cent).

Often small and rural, these churches are sometimes referred to as the thin places, a term used by Celts and Christians.

ATMOSPHERE PICK: St Andrew, Kirkandrews-on-Esk, Cumbria

Gothic glory: St Andrew's church in Cumbria stands under the protection of a Pele Tower in the Netherby Hall Parkland

The tranquil St Andrew's church built in 1776 is set on the beautiful banks of the river Esk. The Grade II-listed church is a plain Georgian rectangular red sandstone structure, which sits on an unusual north-south axis.

Recognised by explorechurches.org for its other worldly atmosphere, it stands under the protection of a Pele Tower in the landscaped setting of the Netherby Hall Parkland.

Internally, the church has been radically and sumptuously altered by Temple Moore, the great Gothic Revivalist.

CUMBRIA: Best for national history

Cumbria is the top county for churches with links to our national heritage with over half (54 per cent) stating a famous connection or association with a national event, followed closely by Greater London, which reported 53 per cent of its churches had national links.

HISTORY PICK: St Marys Church, Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria

Pictured above is a famous painting by JMW Turner in St Marys Church that depicts the River Lune at a spot now called Ruskins View'

St. Mary The Virgin in Kirkby Lonsdale dates from the 12th century Norman period and represents a mixture of historical architecture during an era of extensive church building and re-building.

Explorechurches.org recognises it as a national treasure, highlighting the famous painting by JMW Turner (1775-1851), which depicts the River Lune at a spot now called Ruskins View, accessed through the churchyard and critically acclaimed by influential English critic, social theorist, painter and poet John Ruskin (1819-1900).

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE: Marvelous monuments

Northamptonshire has the highest percentage of church monuments (77 per cent), followed by Warwickshire (66 per cent), Shropshire (61 per cent), and Suffolk (59 per cent).

It is recognised for being home to both large, detailed and glorious monuments, as well as those that are quirky and unique.

Monuments include architectural or sculptural memorials made to remember individuals and historic events and often display fine stone carving and other artistic characteristics.

MONUMENTS PICK: St Edmund, Warkton, Northamptonshire

Angelic: Pictured is a 19th-century sculpture of the Montagu family, one of four incredible sculptures housed in St Edmund's Church

St Edmund's Church is situated within the small estate village of Warkton, Northamptonshire. It has been recognised by explorechurches.org for housing one of the most exquisite and important sets of funerary monuments in Britain.

They were sculpted by Peter Mathias van Gelder, a Dutch sculptor born in Amsterdam.

They commemorate Lady Mary Montagu, daughter of Duke John and his wife, who inherited Boughton House upon their deaths.

NORFOLK: Social history hotspot

Norfolk has the highest percentage of churches (63), both old or new, that safeguard community history with links to stories about people, activities and events throughout the years.

Cumbria and Greater London follow closely with 61 percent of its churches revealing more about our social history.

SOCIAL HISTORY PICK: St John the Baptist, Garboldisham, Norfolk

Majestic: Norfolk was found to have the highest percentage of churches revealing lots about England's social history. Pictured is St John the Baptist in Garboldisham

St John the Baptist in Garboldisham, Norfolk, is a beautiful church with medieval origins and a long history of serving the people of its parish. Modified over the centuries, its structure includes Victorian restoration, a 15th century flint tower and chancel screen with 16th century painted panels.

Explorechurches.org recognises this churchs significance for the social history of Norfolk, with different features revealing how the building was used in the past.

The Victorian and early 20th century stained glass is exquisite, designed by J Powell & Sons workshop by J W Brown. One window next to the cross specifically remembers George Montgomerie.

For more visit the National Churches Trust tourism website explorechurches.orgAdvertisement

Acclaimed artists have joined forces on a poignant charity track which chronicles the sacrifice of World War One soldiers and aims to raise awareness of the war on cancer.

The Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood, Sinead O'Connor, Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, iconic producer Brian Eno, vocalist Imelda May and Peaky Blinders actor Cillian Murphy have collaborated on EP 'One More Yard' released by Evamore records, to mark the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, an updated teaser was released on Friday.

'One More Yard' is inspired by around 90 letters home from young Irish soldier Lieutenant Michael Thomas Wall, who was killed at Flanders during the conflict, which ran from 1914-1918. It also takes words from other soldiers letters which used the phrase.

Iconic: Acclaimed artists including Rolling Stones rocker Ronnie Wood and Sinead O'Connor have joined forces on a poignant charity track which chronicles the sacrifice of World War One soldiers and aims to raise awareness of the war on cancer

Talented: Actor Cillian Murphy has joined the all-star line-up for EP 'One More Yard' released by Evamore records, to mark the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day

The beautiful track's lead vocals are provided by Sinead, with Gimme Shelter hitmaker Ronnie playing guitar, Nick on drums and Imelda singing backing vocals. John Reynolds has produced the EP.

The EP also features a prologue section, set to haunting instrumentation by Brian, with Cillian reading extracts from the letters Lt Thomas, from the Royal Irish Regiment, sent to his mother at home in Dublin.

In his harrowing letters to loved ones, Michael wrote: 'Nothing was spared, nothing  and when done there was not one more yard left.'

Going into battle one more yard in no man's land was a common phrase used by many young soldiers in letters and diaries.

Legend: Pink Floyd icon Nick Mason provides the drums on the poignant track

All proceeds from the EP and the forthcoming album of songs will go towards the Cancer Awareness Trust, which will provide expert clinical advice and guidance to cancer patients around the world, created by leading scientific entrepreneur Professor Sir Chris Evans.

The project started four years ago when Sir Chris, a millionaire pioneer in the life sciences field, was conducting research on creating a new cancer awareness charity.

After receiving thousands of letters from cancer patients, he was struck by the similarity between the emotional struggles endured by young people battling the disease and the writing and fighting spirit of young men going to war.

Reading over 30,000 letters written by young WW1 soldiers in the trenches, inspired Sir Chris and co-artists, to write a collection of original songs using the soldiers themes, words and phrases to tell their stories in the present day.

Rock god Ronnie urged the public to get behind the EP, which is released on November 2. He said: 'I love the track One More Yard  a sad true story set to a haunting melody. It was a pleasure playing on it. I hope everyone gets behind this great initiative  and there will be more news soon.'

He also said: 'As someone who has had to deal with cancer, I am delighted to be part of this new awareness initiative - its a great idea backed by some brilliant scientific people. I love the track One More Yard - a sad true story set to a haunting melody. It was a pleasure playing on it. I hope everyone gets behind this great charity ~ and there will be more to come.'

In perfect harmony: Completing the star-studded line-up Imelda May sings backing vocals while super producer Brian Eno composed the haunting instrumentation over Cillian's prologue

Wish You Were Here star Nick, added: 'This is an outstanding project that allows people such as myself to pay our tribute to the young men of 100 years ago who fought for our freedom but also to do something to help many young people facing cancer today. I am delighted to part of bringing these songs to fruition.'

John Reynolds said: 'The outstanding lead vocal of Sinead O'Connor and the craftsmanship of fellow artists combine to make 'One More Yard' a very fitting tribute to these young men as we approach the centenary of Armistice Day. The artists have taken great pride in getting involved and shown real humility and sensitivity.'

This is just the beginning for the project with an album, inspired by thousands of letters sent to loved ones by young soldiers in WWI, to be released within the next six months.

Remembrance: 'One More Yard' is inspired by around 90 letters home from young Irish soldier Lieutenant Michael Thomas Wall, who was killed at Flanders during the conflict which ran from 1914-1918

Message home: In his harrowing letters to loved ones, Michael wrote: 'Nothing was spared, nothing  and when done there was not one more yard left'

Sir Chris spoke to MailOnline about his motivations behind the incredible project and his new charity saying: 'My own granddad George Albert was in World War One and he survived.

'He had just got married to my grandmother Margaret Cottey and went to war straight after. He was the lucky one. His story lived on.'

George sneaked off to war, joining the Welsh Regiment at the tender age of 16 years old. He fought in the major battles of Ypres, Loos, Passchendaele and the Hundred Days Offensive 1918.

He was wounded several times but bravely returned to the trenches to continue the fight and was awarded medals for his bravery in the war.

Sir Chris said: 'Growing up we heard all the stories from our mum but all the letters he'd written home during the war were accidentally lost in a major flood many years after the war when the river Afan running through Port Talbot burst its banks and flooded their home out. So I never got to read their actual letters.

Rock on: All proceeds from the EP and the forthcoming album of songs will go towards the Cancer Awareness Trust, which will provide expert clinical advice and guidance to cancer patients around the world, created by leading scientific entrepreneur Professor Sir Chris Evans (above with Ronnie Wood)

'You tend to dial into things like World War One, There are hundreds of millions of people around the world who have connections to World War One.'

Discussing the new charity and its pioneering work, he said: 'I've spent 35 years in the discoveries of new medicines. Cancer is one of the worst diseases to afflict mankind.

'I've received thousands of letters from people who write to me personally, asking me for help. I realised that I was able to impart more knowledge than they could ever conceivably get in a matter of minutes. I have a wide network of scientists, oncologists, experts all around the world who are working on this project, this website, with me.

'The website aims to impart razor-sharp clinical knowledge and awareness.

'I began googling more cancer patients' letters, books and memoirs, as I was looking you get that moment of magic, phrases kept jumping out at me, "I'm going to fight this war, fight this battle. "I can't go much further, everything is painful, I want to get out of this"

Passion project: After receiving thousands of letters from cancer patients, Sir Chris was struck by the similarity between the emotional struggles endured by young people battling the disease and the writing and fighting spirit of young men going to war

Four year project: Sir Chris has spent four years working on the poignant EP and forthcoming album, reading more than 30,000 letters sent by WWI soldiers to their loved ones

'I realised I'd seen them in World War One letters. 100 years apart and I'm looking at things written by 17-18 year-olds, fighting on, battling, getting through hardships, here I am 100 years on and I'm seeing young people writing the same things.

'There is a link between The Great War and what had to be done and the war on cancer, they both have to fight and this linkage has to be told.'

Reading thousands of letters as part of his preparation for the album, he composed the first version of One More Yard on his guitar.

He said: 'I realised this was an interesting opportunity to bring these 100 year old memories of these boys back to life in song and tell them for the first time

Hero: Sir Chris' grandfather George Albert fought in WWI, leaving for the conflict at aged 16 after marrying wife Margaret Cottey

'I picked up my guitar, the story was in my head and the music was just there.

Praising the celebrity contributors he said: 'These artists, what I love is that they don't have to do this, they feel the stories are engaging, the songs, the reality of them, the truth, the honesty, they want to do this, they like the music and they all bring a touch of genius

'I've been privileged that these people have come together, they love it and what they've created.

'It's about doing this thing as well as it can be done, leaving a memory print from the 100 year old stories but for the benefit of the war on cancer today and saving millions of lives

'It is quite emotional listening to it, the artists brought it to life in an incredible way, beyond what I could do myself. That to me is what music is all about, people with different genius and skill prepared to contribute to something good

Sir Chris made contact through Ronnie Wood through a chance meeting with his son Tyrone.

He said: 'Ronnie is an unbelievably brilliant individual, highly skilled, I mentioned to him about the charity and the story behind and he wanted to help straight away.

'I knew Nick and was able to contact him again, came straight back and through him Sinead came on board. She loved the story, thought it was immensely sad and she is Irish, so there is a connectivity there.'

Sir Chris, who plans to fundraise for the charity, would also love for more accomplished and talented musicians to come on board and add their personal touch to the tracks.

The project founder, who was knighted in 2001,added:'I'm almost mentally immersed in these trenches, you end up emotionally with these guys, and it's unbelievable to have existed in that time for four years. I'm amazed that anybody survived.

'I've never lost sight of what we need to do. It needed to be brought to life by real world class musicians and actors, and now we need to get it out there.'

The EP 'One More Yard', mastered by Real World, will be available on all music platforms on November 2, with the website for the Cancer Awareness Trust launching on the same day at www.cancerawarenesstrust.orgThe Invictus Games have brought Meghan Markle and her best friend and stylist Jessica Mulroney together Down Under.

Jessica, 38, has been snapping photos from her travels through Sydney, Australia, where Meghan has been for several days with Prince Harry for their first official tour. While some thought the Duchess may have flown her gal pal out for fashion advice and friendship, it appears Jessicas there with her husband Ben Mulroney.

According to Harpers Bazaar, the CTV host is there to cover the Invictus Games for the network.

Meghan Markle's best friend Jessica Mulroney is spending time in Australia at the same time as the Duchess of Sussex

Jessica and Meghan will likely spend time together, but she and Ben are in no way travelling with the Royals in an official capacity.

The BFFs havent been seen together since the former Suits stars secret August 21 trip to Canada. According to Good Morning America, Meghan stayed at Jessicas home, spent time with Jessicas children and even enjoyed a night out.

So, what do you need to know about Meghan Markles BFF? Heres the scoop on Jessica Mulroney.

Nothing like birthday wishes from your BFF - even if a couple of days late. @jessicamulroney wished #MeghanMarkle a happy birthday today in her @instagram stories  pic.twitter.com/b7vpVMkFt1  Meghans Mirror (@MeghansMirror) August 7, 2018

Who is Jessica Mulroney?

Jessica Mulroney (nee Brownstein), born March 14, 1980, is a fashion stylist. She is originally from Canada and still lives there to this day.

She has worked for Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau and other high-profile clients.

Jessica and sisters-in-law Caroline, Katy and Vanessa Mulroney teamed up to start a charity called The Shoebox Project. The goal of the charity is to provide women in shelters with makeup.

Donors are asked to fill shoeboxes with $50 of cosmetics and toiletries.

Jessica is a long-time friend of Meghan Markle, whom she met when the then-actress moved to Canada to film Suits.

She is married to Ben Mulroney, the oldest child of Mila Mulroney and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Theyve been married since October 2008.

Jessica and Ben have three children: Twins Brian and John Mulroney and Isabel Mulroney.

Meghan Markle and Jessica Mulroney friendship

According to Harpers Bazaar UK, Meghan Markle and Jessica Mulroney have been friends for more than a decade. They met when the former Suits star moved to Canada to film the show.

Meghan and Jessica bonded over their mutual love of yoga. Before long the two were traveling together and spending time together at home.

Jessica and her husband reportedly hosted low-key dinner parties for Meghan and Prince Harry during their courtship.

A source told E! News: Harry has become close with all of Meghans closest friends.

When Harry first started going to Toronto to visit Meghan, it was Ben and Jessica who had them over at their house for dinners because it wasnt easy for them to go out in public without the risk of getting spotted.

The insider continued: Harrys become close with their children, Brian, John and Ivy. Ivy especially is a big fan. She, of course, had no idea that hes a prince though  hes just auntie Meghans special friend Harry, who sometimes comes over with fun presents!

Author Katie Nicholl delved deeper into this sentiment in the biography Harry: Life, Loss, and Love, writing: When Harry came to visit the [Mulroney] family he brought a bag filled with gifts. He won the kids over in an instant.

He was brilliant with them and I think what swung it for Meghan was how good Harry was with them.

I actually think that might have been the moment Meghan really fell for Harry. He got to know the Mulroneys quite well, and they liked Harry from the beginning.

Jessica attended the 2017 Invictus Games with Meghan and Prince Harry, proving that theyd grown close as a unit. The pair were seen in a private box with Meghans mother, Doria Ragland, during the closing ceremony.

She and Ben also attended the Royal wedding. While they werent in the ceremony, their children did act as page boys and a flower girl for their pseudo aunts special day.

After the wedding, Meghan snuck away to visit the Mulroneys in August. She spent time at Jessicas home with her, Ben and the kids and even enjoyed a quiet night out.

Jessica Mulroney Instagram

Jessica Mulroney shares fashion and fitness inspiration on Instagram as well as glimpses into other aspects of her life. Before Meghan Markle married into the Royal family, Jessica would share photos of them together.

She recently posted a happy birthday message to her gal pal, but quickly deleted it. The message, which included a photo of them together, said My favorite birthday girl.

Jessica Mulroney, Meghan Markle's best friend, used to regularly share photos of them together on Instagram

Jessica Mulroney net worth

Information about Jessica Mulroneys net worth was not available, but husband Ben Mulroney is worth $10 million according to Celebrity Net Worth. Hes made the majority of his fortune as a television host in Canada.

His broadcasting career started in 2002 on Etalk. He is still a co-host on the show years later. Ben also hosts Canadian Idol and became weekend host of Good Morning America in 2012.Theres been increasing confusing over the legality of delta-8, a cannabis derivative that can be found in vape cartridges, tinctures and candy at smoke shops and CBD stores in Texas. While the Texas health department maintains that delta-8 is a controlled substance and is on the states list of unlawful drugs, the 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized the production of hemp, which naturally contains delta-8 and has less than 0.3% THC. In 2019, Texas also legalized hemp growing. Delta-8 retailers believed the substance was as legal to sell as hemp. Delta-8 is legal in Texas for now after a Travis County judge blocked the state from criminalizing it. Should delta-8 continue to be legal in Texas?

You voted:Helen Flanagan has candidly revealed that she had cognitive behavioural therapy after struggling with anxiety following the birth of her eldest daughter Matilda.

The actress said during an interview with Ok! Magazine that although she has always suffered with anxiety, it hit its peak after she welcomed her first child.

The 28-year-old mother, who shares her two girls with fiance Scott Sinclair, added that struggling with anxiety also made her want to go back to work.

Doting mum: Helen Flanagan has candidly revealed that she had cognitive behavioural therapy after struggling with anxiety following the birth of her eldest daughter Matilda

She said: 'I didnt get post-natal depression, but my anxiety got unbearable. I had cognitive behavioural therapy. Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of.

Helen, who gave birth to Delilah last June, is an advocate for breast feeding and has spoken widely on the topic since becoming a mother.

The star said: Women shouldnt feel they have to cover up, its the most natural thing.

Struggles: The actress said during an interview with Ok! Magazine that although she has always suffered with anxiety, it hit its peak after she welcomed her first child

Family: The 28-year-old mother, who shares her two girls with fiance Scott Sinclair, added that struggling with anxiety also made her want to go back to work

Despite her joy at becoming a mum again, the star recently admitted that she's found the first few weeks with Delilah a struggle.

Writing an emotional blog post, the mum revealed that 'her boobs had changed a lot' from breastfeeding the little one, before admitting that the bonding experience she has had through feeding is worth the changes.

Read the full interview in this week's OK! Magazine out today

She wrote: 'My boobs have dropped and changed a lot from breastfeeding but I wouldn't have it any other way, I'm proud to have fed my child myself and my bonding experience with my baby is far more important than what my body looks like.'

In the blog she told of her fears that her first born Matilda wasn't getting enough milk because she had problems with the latch during feeding.

Helen explained: 'My experience with breastfeeding Matilda was really stressful the first two weeks. I was told by the midwives at the hospital and the midwives with my aftercare at home that Matilda wasn't latching on properly.

'It was just really stressful. I remember the first week of having Matilda was amazing as I was just so in love with my little miracle and being a first-time mum but I also felt incredibly overwhelmed with everything.'

Read the full interview in this week's OK! Magazine out today.It turns out The Bachelorette's Paddy Colliar is man of many talents.

The 27-year-old Englishman, who is billed as a gym manager on the Network Ten dating show, also apparently operates a 'brothel'.

Paddy told NW magazine on Monday that he runs a 'male escort business'.

'I gave up the brothel for this': The Bachelorette's Paddy Colliar has claimed he shut down his 'male escort business' for a chance at dating Ali Oetjen. Pictured in his topless waiter profile

Paddy claimed he 'put [his] male escort business on the line' to appear on Ali Oetjen's season of The Bachelorette.

'I had to stop stripping, the brothel that I run had to stop. I had so much to give up,' he said, emphasising his personal sacrifices.

'That's what I said to Ali - I gave up the brothel [for this],' he added.

Hmm! The 27-year-old Englishman (left), who is billed as a gym manager on the Network Ten dating show, also apparently operates a 'brothel'. Pictured right: The Bachelorette's Ali Oetjen

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Network Ten for comment.

It comes after Paddy's 'Magic Men' topless waiter profile resurfaced recently, in which he is described as 'handsome, charming and very cheeky'.

'He's fun, friendly and loves to get involved in party games and might even sneak your hen a naughty body shot or two!' the website stated.

Naught boy! It comes after Paddy's 'Magic Men' topless waiter profile (pictured) resurfaced recently, in which he is described as 'handsome, charming and very cheeky'

Paddy has emerged as one of the most controversial and outspoken contestants on this year's season of The Bachelorette.

He caused a stir during the first cocktail party by using 'disrespectful' language to describe Ali, repeatedly calling her 'fit as f**k'.

The Bachelorette continues Wednesday at 7:30pm on Network TenShe's the brides friend and co-star, but Lisa Vanderpump didn't go to Camille Grammers Hawaiian wedding on Saturday.

'Shes going through a lot right now,' a source close to The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star told People on Sunday. 'Its not been the best time for her.'

The source said that the death of the 58-year-old's beloved brother Todd, 59, in April 'took a toll,' and tensions with the other ladies on the show have been at an all-time high.

Staying low: Lisa Vanderpump, right, didn't go to RHOBH co-star Camille Grammer's wedding in Hawaii this weekend; the ladies are seen in West Hollywood in August 2015

'Lisas choosing not to film during any of the group activities,' said the source, who added that the drama arose partly after Lisa Rinna allegedly called out Vanderpump for missing a cast photo shoot.

Now, 'Lisa doesnt want to be around the women as a group, so shes getting less filming time. But nobody has quit. Shes definitely still on the show,' the source continued.

There have also been reports that the relationship between Lisa and her castmates took a turn for the worse after Dori Kemsley adopted a chihuahua mix from Lisa's dog rescue, and then returned it to another shelter after it tried to bite her kids.

Here comes the bride: Camille in white, center, with from left, her RHOBH pals Dorit Kemsley, Teddi Mellencamp, Lisa Rinna and Teddi Mellencamp at her wedding on Hawaii's Big Island

'When a rainbow shows up at your wedding': Lisa, Teddi, Kyle and Dorit in their wedding best

Meanwhile Camille, 50, said she understood why Lisa wasnt present to see her wed lawyer David C. Meyer.

'I respect her decision,' she told People. 'Lisa was very apologetic about it.'

Most importantly, Camille said she was eternally grateful for the support of her friend in helping her pursue lasting love with David.

'She encouraged me to take a leap of faith on this journey,' Camille said of her second marriage. 'She really did. She told me, "Youve got to take a leap!"'

Dorit, Kyle Richards, Teddi Mellencamp and Lisa Rinna were all on hand for the wedding ceremony on The Big Island.

The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills is expected to return to Bravo in 2019.

Several cast members of the next season of Bachelor of Paradise have been revealed in the latest issue of NW magazine.

And the biggest shock is the return of Sam Cochrane.

The surprise casting of the long-haired lothario comes as he continues to try and put the bombshell 'abuse' allegations he made about his ex girlfriend Tara Pavlovic behind him.

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Guess who's back? Several cast members of the next season of Bachelor of Paradise have been revealed in the latest issue of NW magazine . And the biggest shock is the return of Sam Cochrane

'Sam's definitely signed up,' a 'source' confirmed to the publication, before adding, 'Tara's moved on, so why shouldn't he?'

Joining Sam in sun-soaked Fiji will also be heartthrob James Trethewie from Sophie Monk's season of The Bachelorette.

New recruit James, who didn't appear on season one of Bachelor in Paradise, is sure to bring plenty of drama after ending things with his British girlfriend in June.

'Tara's moved on, so why shouldn't he?': A "source" told the publication that Sam was interested in finding love again after his bombshell abuse allegations against Tara

Meanwhile, rounding out the names is brunette bombshell Rachael Gouvignon, who first appeared on The Bachelor in 2016.

After failing to find love with Richie Strahan, Rachael appeared on the last season of Bachelor in Paradise, but went home single.

With a number of high profile break-ups, it's unknown if a number of other former cast members will re-appear on the show.

Brunette bombshell! Meanwhile, rounding out the names is brunette bombshell Rachael Gouvignon, who first appeared on The Bachelor in 2016

Blonde bombshell Keira Maguire and Jarrod Woodgate split, along with reality TV favourites Megan Marx and Jake Ellis, who got together during the last season of the show.

Meanwhile, latest Bachelor star Nick Cummins brutally double dumped finalists Brittany Hockley, 30, and Sophie Tieman, 25.

Last month, Cosmopolitan magazine reported that a number of contestants from the franchise were likely approached to be on the show.

Among them were 'mean girl' Cat Henesey-Smith along with 'stage five' clinger Cass Wood and Dutch bombshell, Florence Moerenhout.She was left heartbroken by Nick Cummins on The Bachelor earlier this year.

But Cassandra Wood has now reportedly set her sights on the Honey Badger's younger brother Jacob, 25.

According to Woman's Day, the accounting student, 24, turned to Jacob for support after being brutally rejected by the former Wallaby, 31.

Is Cassandra Wood dating the Honey Badger's BROTHER? The Bachelor star (right) has 'fallen for Jacob Cummins' (left) after her TV heartbreak... and Nick 'couldn't be happier for them'

'It started off as a friendship and things could well have blossomed,' a source said.

'They're waiting for all the show's hype to die down before they make any announcement on the status of their relationship, but Nick couldn't be happier for them.'

During an episode of The Bachelor that aired in late August, Jacob appeared to bond with Cassandra while offering relationship advice.

Close: During an episode of The Bachelor that aired in late August, Jacob (pictured) appeared to bond with Cassandra while offering relationship advice

In a piece to camera, Jacob explained that he and Nick had previously spent time holidaying with Cassandra on the Gold Coast.

He said at the time: 'I met Cass about a year ago. She was up for the summer, up at the Gold Coast and we went surfing with Nick and we had a few yarns, few beers.

'They have a history outside, so it'll be interesting to see how it works for her.'

What a gentleman! Nick Cummins (left), who broke Cassandra's heart by dumping her before the Bachelor finale, is apparently supportive of her 'relationship' with Jacob

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Cassandra and Jacob for comment.

Meanwhile, Jacob could have competition from another suitor in the form of newly-evicted Bachelorette star Nathan Favro.

On Friday, Cassandra took to Instagram to share several videos of herself enjoying a beach date with Nathan, 23, in Sydney.

Family ties: Nick, 31 enjoys a close bond with his younger brother Jacob, 25. Pictured together

It comes after Cassandra told The Sunday Project that she struggled to move on after being dumped by Nick on The Bachelor.

'I feel like a bit of a joke,' she told journalist Lisa Wilkinson. 'It hasn't been [easy].'

The Bachelorette continues Wednesday at 7:30pm on Network TenThe Block's Shaynna Blaze has reportedly surrounded herself with 'supportive women' following her split with Steve Vaughan earlier this year.

The Channel Nine star, 55, is said to be spending time with her female friends in Melbourne as she enters a new chapter in her life.

A source told Woman's Day on Monday: 'Shaynna has surrounded herself with a group of extremely supportive women.'

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'Her friends make sure she always has a shoulder to cry on': The Block's Shaynna Blaze 'has surrounded herself with supportive women' following her split from husband Steve Vaughan. Pictured: Shaynna and Steve in happier times

They added: 'Her friends make sure she's never alone and always has a shoulder to cry on - though, she's needing the shoulders less and less.'

It comes after Shaynna spoke about the importance of maintaining friendships during the 'highs and lows' of life.

'No matter what you go through, your girls will be there through the highs and the lows,' said the interior designer.

'No matter what you go through, your girls will be there through the highs and the lows': Shaynna (left) recently spoke about the importance of friendship during the 'highs and lows' of life. Pictured alongside female friends and colleagues at a Channel Nine ladies' luncheon

It was reported last week that Shaynna and her estranged husband Steve are continuing to live together in the 1880s terrace they renovated.

Personal trainer Steve apparently lives in the lower level of the home where he runs his business, My Fitness Journey.

Back in August, Shaynna announced the couple had separated.

She wrote on Instagram: 'Sometimes in life, our paths change directions and now this is one of those times for me, with Steve and I separating.

'I will not be making any further statements about this and whilst I appreciate your support I ask that you respect our right to privacy. Thank you Shaynna.'

She received an outpouring of support from her friends and fans, including fellow Block judge Neil Whitaker.

Famous face: In addition to being a judge on The Block alongside Neil Whitaker and Darren Palmer, Shaynna stars on Foxtel's Selling Houses Australia. Pictured on The Block

Shaynna and Steve married 18 years ago. They had previously been dating for 11 months after meeting at a bar in Melbourne.

She is the mother of two children - a son, Jesse Thomas, and a daughter, Carly Anne - who she shares with her first husband.

In addition to being a judge on The Block alongside Neil Whitaker and Darren Palmer, she stars on Foxtel's Selling Houses Australia.French Montana can't trust Scott.

The Moroccan rapper, 33, fell victim to a practical joke Saturday perpetrated by Scott Disick, 35, on You Kiddin' Me, the new Facebook Watch show from Kim Kardashian.

Disick enlisted the aid of French's brother Ayoub, who misled French into believing he was going to be the prankster in front of a studio audience packed with his fans for a (faux) talk show.

Gotcha! French Montana, 33, fell victim to a practical joke perpetrated by Scott Disick, 35, on You Kiddin' Me, the new Facebook Watch show from Kim Kardashian

The All the Way Up artist, whose real name is Karim Kharbouch, was shocked when Ayoub informed him that it was his talk show - titled Pardon My French with French Montana.

He told him, 'Surprise you're the host,' as a disbelieving French said, 'Yeah, right.'

Scott said, 'That's got to be so brutal.'

Ever the trooper, French did his best to entertain the audience with dancing and a purposely-awful monologue Ayoub gave him.

He then had to interview a mime given the moniker French Mime-Tana, followed by Disick.

Improv: The entertainer did his best to go with the flow, but things fell apart eventually

Instrumental: French's brother Ayoub misled him into believing he was going to be the prankster

Tricked: French was rushed in front of a studio audience packed with his fans, told he had to host

Disick, keeping the gag alive, began talking up the rapper's skills with the hula hoop - calling him 'the best hula hooper [he's] ever seen,' he said.

'I feel like not everyone knows your hidden talents,' said Disick, who has three children with ex Kourtney Kardashian - Mason, eight, Penelope, six, and Reign, three.

French, who was past romantically-linked to Khloe Karsashian - played along, quoting Shakira en route to an embarrassing moment.

'My hips don't lie,' said French, prior to showing he couldn't keep the hoop going.

On his feet: The performer had a good attitude amid the confusing situation, in which he was the target

Way back when: French was past romantically-linked to Khloe Karsashian, whose sister Kim is behind the series

Things progressed downward for French when he took part in another bit involving the mime, until Ayoub pulled the plug on the gag, letting everyone know of the practical joke.

French told the audience, 'This show's not real - I would never do a talk show!'

New episodes of You Kiddin' Me can be seen on Facebook Watch Saturdays at 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT.

Not his gig: French eventually told the audience, 'This show's not real - I would never do a talk show!'

On Friday evening LG hosted Grammy-nominated hip-hop superstar French Montana and surprise special guest Becky G at Stage 48 in Manhattan for an incredible concert and night-long party. French Montana played an hour-long set accompanied by Becky G, and sang his newest hit single "No Stylist" featuring Drake.Teresa Giudice asked fans at an event this weekend 'to pray' for her husband Joe who's set to be deported to his native Italy after completing his prison sentence for fraud.

The Real Housewives Of New Jersey star was taking part in a Bravo panel at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut when she made the comment.

'Everybody, please pray for my family that my husband Joe gets to come home to see our daughter Gia graduate,' she said, according to People Sunday. 'And thats all Im going to say.'

Spoke out: Teresa Giudice, pictured with fellow Bravo reality stars Kelly Dodd and Tamra Judge at an event in Connecticut this weekend, asked fans 'to pray' for husband Joe who's facing deportation to Italy after completing his prison sentence for fraud

Teresa had joined Real Housewives of Orange County stars Tamra Judge and Kelly Dodd and Real Housewives of New York star Dorinda Medley for the panel.

She and Joe were both sentenced to serve time in federal prison after they pleaded guilty in 2014 to 41 counts of fraud.

They were permitted to serve their sentences separately so as to keep one parent with their four daughters. Teresa completed 11 months of a 15-month sentence, getting out in time for Christmas in December 2015.

Joe, 48, is currently serving a 41-month sentence at Pennsylvania's FCI Allenwood and last week it was announced that upon release he will be sent back to Italy.

He came to America as a child but never obtained US citizenship.

Concern: The Real Housewives Of New Jersey star said she wanted people to pray that Joe is able 'to come home to see our daughter Gia graduate'

Staying put: Teresa toured colleges with Gia, 17, last week, posting this pic to Instagram. It seems she and the couple's four daughters are planning to remain in US even if Joe is deported

Gia, 17, the couple's eldest child, has recently been touring colleges with her mom and has been outspoken on social media about her dad's situation.

The teen shared a snap of herself as a young girl with her father to her Instagram a week ago.

'This is one of my favorite pictures of me and my dad,' Gia wrote. My father is no threat to society he is one of the most warm hearted people I know. He would never harm a soul. He puts everyone else before himself.'

She went on: 'My father did his time and learned from his mistakes. Isnt being in there supposed to make you realize your mistakes so you can become a better person? And thats exactly what my father did.'

Gia went on to say that America is the only country her dad knows and he belongs with his family.

Teresa and Joe also share daughters Gabriella, 14, Milania, 13, and Audriana, nine.

He has up to 30 days to appeal the deportation decision and is slated to be released from prison some time next year.

Sad: Gia shared a snap of herself as a young girl with her father to her Instagram a week ago along with message about how he needs to stay in America to be with his familyCraig Revel Horwood has reportedly been told off by Strictly Come Dancing bosses after he allegedly ripped into his co-stars, labelling them 'dull' and 'attention-seeking'.

The Australian star, 53, apparently lashed out at presenter Tess Daly as well as fellow judges Shirley Ballas and Bruno Tonioli.

Craig reportedly addressed a room of around 50 people with his allegedly scathing comments as part of a book tour in Oxford.

Oh dear: Craig Revel Horwood has reportedly been told off by Strictly Come Dancing bosses after he allegedly ripped into his co-stars, labelling them 'dull' and 'attention-seeking'

And now the outspoken judge has reportedly been told off by Strictly bosses and told that 'no one is irreplaceable'.

A source told The Sun: 'Craig has rubbed everybody up the wrong way with his comments including senior people on the production team and his fellow judges.

'She [Shirley] felt him making comments like that so publicly was just malicious and very unfair, and she isnt really talking to him.

'The comments were totally out of order and that has been made clear to Craig.'

Not impressed: The Australian star, 53, apparently lashed out at presenter Tess Daly as well as fellow judges Shirley Ballas and Bruno Tonioli

MailOnline has contacted Strictly and Craig for comment.

It comes after The Sun reported that Craig branded Tess' questions on the show 'dull' when speaking to his fans.

And his harsh criticisms didn't stop there as he reportedly commented on the appearance of head judge Shirley, and called Bruno an 'attention-seeker'.

He is alleged to have talked about Shirley's breasts, which he claims are 'fake', and added that Bruno was a 'proper attention-seeker', although he believes him to be a nice guy - yet still hit out at his willingness to spend money.

Craig reportedly told the audience that the judging panel was 'scared' when Seann Walsh and Katya Jones danced after revelations about their private life, and said that he would have got a room if he was them.

Criticism: The Australian star, 53, apparently lashed out at presenter Tess Daly as well as fellow judges Shirley Ballas and Bruno Tonioli

All smiles: He reportedly addressed a room of around 50 people with his allegedly scathing comments as part of a book tour in Oxford

The judge added that he thought the so-called 'Strictly curse' could be the 'Strictly blessing' for couples who work out.

MailOnline has contacted the representatives of Craig for comment.

Craig has recently claimed that the famous 'Strictly Curse' only affected those who weren't solid in their romances.

'I think of it as a blessing, actually, to be honest. When you think of the success stories.

Unimpressed: He is alleged to have said Bruno was a 'proper attention-seeker', although he believes him to be a nice guy

Not nice: Craig is also alleged to have talked about Shirley's breasts, which he claims are 'fake'

'If you come on Strictly, sometimes you are in a relationship that is not working anyway. I have noticed that if they are in love or are married, [they] end up being absolutely faithful to one another because of that love.'

He continued: 'It doesnt mean youre going to fall in love with your partner at any given point. They are actors arent they.'

Speaking on whether it was the correct decision to allow Seann and Katya to stay in the competition despite fierce backlash after their passionate kiss, Craig said: 'My take was keep them in the show, make them do the Dance of Shame, if you like.'

Hitting back: Speaking on whether it was the correct decision to allow Seann and Katya to stay in the competition despite fierce backlash after their passionate kiss, Craig said: 'My take was keep them in the show, make them do the Dance of Shame, if you like'They've been filming their movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood since June.

And on Saturday, it seemed to be just another day on set for Brad Pitt and Margaret Qualley, 23, as they braved the sunny temperatures to commence work on the Quentin Tarantino motion picture.

The Novitiate actress looked sensationally fit in her denim hot pants and multi-colored crop top as she left her trailer to join her co-star in an interior car scene.

Braving the hot weather: Brad Pitt and Margaret Qualley were seen filming scenes for Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time in Hollywood on Satuday

Sizzling: While the sun was clearly getting to them, the actors remained professional and continued with their proposed plans as an interior car scene was being shot

Baring hot temperatures inside a vehicle, though, was enough for the American beauty to find some much-needed shade during short breaks.

She ended up settling under a tent where she was joined by Tarantino.

Her brunette tresses were slightly curled while her bangs tucked behind her ears as she embarked on a conversation with the Kill Bill filmmaker.

Qualley was clearly amused by Tarantino's company on set as she broke into a burst of laughter in a presumed response to something the filmmaker had said to her.

Individual attire: Pitt looked tropical in his yellow printed shirt while Qualley donned a pair of denim hot pants and a colored crop top with brown sandals

And... action! The rising temperatures were ignored by the duo who seemed more focused on getting Tarantino's shot

Nothing to worry about: The legendary director looked more than pleased as he showcased his happiness in front of his cast and crew

But as the day continued to progress, the Montana native was back to channeling her role as Kitty Kat and it seemed as if she and Pitt were doing everything but let the sunny weather ruin their on-set chemistry.

The Hollywood actor seemed to be in good spirits while sipping on a beverage in a clear attempt to stay hydrated throughout the duration of the shoot.

Pitt wore a yellow printed shirt on top of his Champion labeled white tee while sporting a pair of Aviator sunglasses.

Handling the heat: Pitt wore a yellow printed shirt on top of his Champion labeled white tee while sporting a pair of Aviator sunglasses

Ready for her close-up: Qualley got into position as Tarantino checked the angle and framing for a particular shot inside the car

Pep talk: The Palo Alto star shared another conversation with her director before the cast and crew headed inside a building to film interior scenes

Qualley and Pitt took careful direction by Tarantino who watched the action unfold on his monitor.

At one point, the actress appeared to have taken a moment to herself as she puffed on a cigarette before returning to the set to commence the filming process.

And while scorching weather temperatures appeared to leave the cast looking somewhat exhausted while working up a sweat, Angelina Jolie's estranged husband and his co-star were still able to push through the day.

Later on, filming continued in the same vehicle, but this time it was stationed inside a building where fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio had joined.

The 43-year-old had notably sported a similar slick hairstyle to Pitt.

Later on: Kurt Russell joined Pitt for an interior car scene at a different location

Working hands: Things were moving rapidly as the Gladiator actor spoke with Tarantino

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood focuses its attention on a less than relevant television actor who is joined by his stunt double as they attempt to conquer the film industry in the midst of the Manson Family murders.

The film has a long list of A-list celebrities attached to the project including Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, and Kurt Russell.

It's release date is currently scheduled for July 26.Channel Nine's Ben Fordham celebrated the 10-year anniversary of his first date with journalist wife Jodie Speers on Monday.

The 41-year-old shared a romantic tribute to his partner on Instagram as they enjoyed a day out with their two children, Freddy, three, and Pearl, two.

In a sweet video, Ben and his children sang Happy Birthday to Jodie, as their first-date anniversary also happens to coincide with her birthday.

'We won the lottery': Ben Fordham (left) shared a tribute to his wife Jodie Speers (right) on the 10-year anniversary of their first date on Monday. Pictured with their children Freddy and Pearl

'10 years ago today, Jodie and I went on our first date,' Ben wrote in the caption.

'Over dinner I discovered it was also her birthday. She's the best thing to ever happen to me and our kids won the lottery scoring her as a mum.

'Happy birthday Speersy and happy 1st date anniversary.'

How sweet! '10 years ago today, Jodie and I went on our first date,' Ben wrote in the caption. 'Over dinner I discovered it was also her birthday. She's the best thing to ever happen to me and our kids won the lottery scoring her as a mum'

It's not the first time Ben has spoken about his fairytale romance with Jodie.

In a previous interview with 9Honey, the 2GB reporter said he was at first impressed with Jodie's journalistic skill.

After hearing Jodie delivering a report on the radio, he called up his friend Greg Burns, who happened to be the boss of the radio station.

Marital bliss! Ben and Jodie married in 2011. Pictured on their wedding day

'I remember thinking to myself, "She's really good, this Jodie Speers." So much so that I called my mate, Greg Burns, who was the boss of the radio station, and I went, "Mate, that Jodie Speers is bloody amazing,"' he said.

The couple eventually met for the first time at Greg's 40th birthday party and he later managed to get hold of her phone number.

Ben said he realised Jodie was 'The One' after just a few months of dating.

'It was was a nice thing to be able to share': Ben proposed to Jodie on the same day his younger brother Nick Fordham (left) proposed to Jodie's friend Liz

'I'd had girlfriends before, I'd had relationships before, but with Jodie I was like, "Okay"  and I know it's cliche  "this is the one. Don't stuff it up",' he said.

He proposed over a year later, on the same day that his younger brother Nick Fordham proposed to Jodie's friend Liz.

The brothers' engagement rings were designed together.

'Of course, when the girls compared rings they were like, "This might have been pre-meditated." But it was was a nice thing to be able to share,' Ben said.

It comes amid rumours that Ben is being lined up to replace Karl Stefanovic as host of the Today show, despite Channel Nine claiming his job is safe for another year.Anton Du Beke has suggested that he thinks Seann Walsh and Katya Jones may win Strictly Come Dancing after their kiss scandal.

Although the pair received backlash for their actions, which led to Seann's ex girlfriend Rebecca Humphries publicly dumping him on Twitter, Anton said they could still be potential winners.

The professional dancer, 52, was asked by the Mirror if the dancing duo could go all the way and make it to the final.

Anton Du Beke has suggested that he thinks Seann Walsh and Katya Jones may win Strictly Come Dancing after their kiss scandal

Anton replied: 'Yes, I think so. Absolutely. I don't see why not now.'

And Anton could be onto something as Seann and Katya survived a dramatic dance-off on Sunday night, leaving fans furious that Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima were sent home instead.

The judges were unable to make a unanimous decision, leading to head judge Shirley Ballas to make the final call to send the Capital FM presenter, 29, and professional dancer newcomer, 24.

Comedian Seann, 32, and his 29-year-old Russian dance partner's shock reprieve comes just two weeks after pictures emerged of the pair passionately kissing on a London street - despite them both being in serious relationships at the time.

Shock reprieve: Seann and Katya survived a dramatic dance-off on Strictly Come Dancing on Sunday night

On Saturday night, Seann and Katya found themselves in the bottom three on the leaderboard after failing to impress with their Quickstep to Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg.

Gaining just 24 points out of 40, the pair faced elimination as they prepared to take part in the dance-off against Capital DJ host Vick, 28, who scored 20 with her Cha Cha to More Than Friends.

After both couples danced, the judges delivered their all important verdicts, with Craig kick-starting the vote by picking Vick and Graziano to save.

Out: The judges were unable to make a unanimous decision, leading to head judge Shirley Ballas to make the final call to send Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima home

Scandal: Comedian Seann, 32, and his 29-year-old dance partner's shock reprieve comes just two weeks after pictures emerged of the pair passionately kissing on a London street

'Both dances were very different but both couples I thought need technique as well, but the couple I thought, for me on the night, Vick and Graziano,' he said.

Meanwhile, Darcey Bussell chose to save Seann and Katya, saying the pair did a 'cleaner performance' and had improved since their dance on Saturday night.

Guest judge, Alfonso Ribeiro, who was standing in for Bruno for one week, also chose to save the Mock The Week star.

As their status in the show hung in the balance, Head Judge Shirley Ballas had the casting vote and sent them sailing through to next week.

Suspense: Gaining just 24 points out of 40, the pair faced elimination as they prepared to take part in the dance-off against Capital DJ host Vick, 28, who scored 20 with her Cha Cha

Bad timing: On Saturday night, Seann and Katya found themselves in the bottom three on the leaderboard after failing to impress with their Quickstep to Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg

Shirley said: 'Well I thought both couples put their best foot forward this evening, but due to the performance I enjoyed the most I am going to save Seann and Katya.'

Show watchers were left furious over the result and argued that regardless of the kiss scandal, Katya and Seann had the weaker dance.

One person said: 'As if the judges saved Sean and Katya over vick and graziano wtf #Strictly.'

A different user put: 'Poor Vick and Graziano! They had more potential than Seann and Katya #Strictly.

Improvement: Darcey Bussell chose to save Seann and Katya, saying the pair did a 'cleaner performance' and had improved since their dance on Saturday night

She has the power: As their status in the show hung in the balance, Head Judge Shirley Ballas had the casting vote and sent them sailing through to next week

Exit: Vick Hope cut a casual figure after being voted off the show as she wore grey tracksuit bottoms with a purple jumper

Still smiling: The presenter was still smiling despite the disappointing result as she left her hotel

Another show watcher commented: 'Woooooooow. Controversial decision.... I personally thought Seann & Katya were worse and Vick had much left to give. #Strictly.'

While a different fan added: 'Seann and Katya. Sorry but ridiculous. Vick wasn't great but Seann's dance was awful. #Strictly.'

On Saturday night, some viewers accused the show and the duo of using a guitar as a prop to keep them apart during the performance.

The pair have brushed aside their cheating scandal since returning to the dance floor after they were caughtlocking lips in a drunken clinch earlier this month.

Sad: Vick was pictured getting into a taxi by herself as the other celebrities reportedly went off to film some scenes for Strictly's Halloween special

Cheat: Katya and Seann have been the talk of Strictly after they were caught in an boozy clinch earlier this month with Katya's husband Neil (circled) maintaining a dignified silence

The images, which emerged two weeks ago, led to the demise of Seann's long-term relationship with Rebecca Humphries and added strain onto Katya's marriage to Neil.

Both parties have publicly apologised for the hurt they caused when they shared that secret kiss.

Rebecca publicly dumped Seann in a lengthy social media statement, heaping further condemnation on the comic by revealing his passionate kiss with Katya happened on her birthday, while she sat alone in their London flat.

Awkward: On Saturday night, some viewers accused the show and the duo of using the guitar prop to keep them apart during the performance

Reflecting on his separation from his five-year girlfriend, he said on It Takes Two: 'I made a mistake, which I'm very sorry for - sorry for the hurt that I've caused. You never think about the extent of the damage that you're going to do, in a moment of, you know the mistake that you've made.

'I'm not perfect, far from it. Our relationship wasn't perfect. That doesn't mean I wanted it to end the way it finally did, and I'm very sorry for that.

'I feel it's also important for me to say that the people that know me the most, that love me, they know that I am not the person I'm being portrayed as. I'm still sorry for what I did, but it's very important for me to get that out there.'



Carefully chosen prop: The funnyman,and Russian dancer decided to do a Quickstep to Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg as their chosen routine

Time to say goodbye: When asked by Tess about her time on the show, Vick said: 'I've loved it. I've had the time of my life'

After finding out they had survived another week, the pair looked thrilled as they hugged.

Meanwhile, Vick looked devastated as she told Tess Daly said: 'I've loved it. I've had the time of my life so I want to thank everyone for being the best possible people I could spend all this time with.

'What an incredible team; the hair, the make-up, the clothes. Thank you for all of your guidance and the judging I appreciate it and of course, thank you Graz, you've been so patient with me and helped me so much, I've loved every last second of it so thank you.'

Graziano added: 'You did brilliantly and you are brilliant, thank you. You really make me proud day by day.'It's been widely rumoured she can't stand Karl Stefanovic.

But it seems Georgie Gardner has had a change of heart.

On Monday, she gushed that her Today show co-host was 'great company'.

That's a change of tune! The Today Show's Georgie Gardner gushes over 'great company' Karl Stefanovic...after previously branding him 'pathetic' following Ubergate

Georgie posted a picture of the pair chuckling together while on location on Queensland's Fraser Island covering the royal tour, writing in the caption: 'Great view with even better company!'

In a flowing ivory number, an expertly coiffed Georgie, 48 appeared to giggle with Karl, 44 who cut a dapper figure in a midnight blue jacket and skinny jeans.

Currently stationed on the tropical holiday isle, the pair are trailing Prince William and Megan Markle who are scheduled to enjoy a night there during their Australian tour.

Tension: Back in March, Karl was overheard by an Uber driver badmouthing Georgie during a private phone call with his brother Peter

The amiable display follows months of rumoured fraught tension between the co-hosts, sparked by Karl's now infamous Ubergate gaffe.

Back in March, he was overheard by an Uber driver badmouthing Georgie during a private phone call with his brother Peter.

In the 'b**chy' 45-minute phone conversation, Karl 'angrily' complained about Georgie saying she need to 'step up... if she wanted to stay on the show'.

Read my body language: Stepping out at the Logies in July, the mum of two did little to dampen speculation by rolling her eyes at Karl during an awkward interview on the red carpet

And stepping out at the Logies in July, the mum of two did little to dampen speculation by rolling her eyes at Karl during an awkward interview on the red carpet.

Back in November, Georgie joined the Today Show following Lisa Wilkinson's abrupt departure over a much reported pay dispute.

Meanwhile, Channel Nine confirmed last week that Karl will return to the Today show in 2019 despite rampant rumours suggesting he was facing the axe.Jamie Durie is making a welcome return to TV.

The 48-year-old designer and media personality has just signed on to appear as an expert judge on Channel Seven's long-running home renovation series, House Rules.

Jamie said he was 'excited' by his new role.

Back in the spotlight... Jamie Durie is making a welcome return to TV, having just signed on to appear as an expert judge on House Rules

'I couldnt be more excited to be back at Channel 7,' he said in a statement to Daily Mail Australia.

'We built some great memories together. Im looking forward to getting my teeth into all things design on one of Australias favourite design shows, House Rules.'

Jamie is set to appear in the series when it airs next year, after having previously worked on other lifestyle programs including The Block, The Outdoor Room and Backyard Blitz.

He'll be starring on House Rules alongside the show's longtime host, Johanna Griggs, 45.

Looking forward to it: Jamie said he was 'excited' by his new role

Others on the judging panel include British home consultant, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, 53, and Pacific Magazines general manager of homes and food, Wendy Moore.

Jamie will be replacing architect Drew Heath on the series.

'Were thrilled to welcome Jamie back to Seven,' Channel Sevens head of unscripted production Rikkie Proost said.

'Duries expertise and keen-eye for design will be invaluable on House Rules.'

Cast: Jamie will be replacing architect Drew Heath (far right) on the series, seen here alongside (L-R) judge Wendy Moore, host Johanna Griggs and judge Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

Jamie took to Instagram on Monday to further express his excitement at joining the show.

The star, who also runs a highly successful furniture design business, Durie Design, said he was looking forward to returning home to Australia after living abroad.

'Celebrating 20 years this year in our design business #DurieDesign and putting all that experience to use on #houserules. Great to be home in my beloved #australia,' he wrote.Chloe Grace Moretz seemed a little down in the dumps Sunday as she ran some errands in LA.

The actress, 21, failed to crack a smile as she stepped out in a very short patterned mini dress with a plunging neckline.

The Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising star showed off her legs in her chosen ensemble which she paired with white trainers.

Dared to bare: Chloe Grace Moretz ran errands Sunday in Los Angeles wearing a very short patterned mini dress with a plunging neckline

Moretz accessorized with several gold gold necklaces and small dangly earrings.

She carried her smartphone in one hand and had a shoulder purse on a long silver chain slung diagonally across her body.

She sported sunglasses and left her blonde hair loose.

Leggy look: The actress, 21, failed to crack a smile as she strode out in white sneakers. She sported sunglasses and left her blonde hair loose

Out and about: She carried her smartphone in one hand and had a shoulder purse on a long silver chain slung diagonally across her body

During her trip, Moretz was joined by a male friend who walked alongside her.

She will next be seen on the big screen in the horror film Suspiria with Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton.

The movie - about a nightmarish secret hidden within the walls of a famous German dance academy - opens in theatres on November 2.

Had company: During her trip, Moretz was joined by a male friend who walked alongside her

New movie: She will next be seen on the big screen in the horror film Suspiria with Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton, opening November 2

The actress, who is one of five children and has two gay brothers, recently opened up about her close bond with her siblings Colin and Trevor.

Talking to Gay Times, the actress, revealed: 'The healthiest relationship that I've ever seen and grew up with was not that of my parents, it was that of my brother and his boyfriend who have been together  still to this day  for 11 years.'

She also spoke with BBC about her upbringing.

'I have two gay brothers. We were raised in small town in northwest Georgia [in a] very Christian baptist town,' Moretz said.

'So when my brothers came out, it was fairly jarring to the community.'

She continued, reflecting on her family's spirit of acceptance: 'We were very blessed to have my mother who was very progressive, but nonetheless, they dealt with a lot of self-hate when they came out.'The Block 2018 auction day takes place on Saturday.

And the teams' real estate agents are already working hard to sell the apartments to the highest bidders, and that includes finding celebrity buyers.

Courtney Brown and Hans Baumgartner's agent Jesse Raeburn told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday that a high-profile figure has already expressed interested in the Perth couple's renovation.

Could The Block have another famous buyer? Courtney and Hans' real estate agent has hinted that a celebrity could place a winning bid... after Dave Hughes bought Josh and Elyse's home in 2017. Pictured: Courtney and Hans outside The Gatwick Hotel in St Kilda, Melbourne

'There has been one particular buyer who has asked to be kept anonymous,' he said.

'They have done a number of private viewings and I know a buyer's advocate has been engaged to help them with a potential purchase.'

Jesse said that while he would like to reveal the identity of the celebrity buyer, fans will need to wait until The Block finale airs on Sunday.

Celebrity buyer? Courtney and Hans' agent Jesse Raeburn told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday that a high-profile figure has already expressed interested in the Perth couple's renovation. Pictured: The master bedroom of their apartment

Last year, comedian and radio host Dave Hughes purchased Josh and Elyse's home on The Block for around $3.067million.

The purchase meant the young couple won the 2017 season.

But a potential celebrity buyer isn't the only advantage Courtney and Hans' apartment has.

Mod cons: A potential celebrity buyer isn't the only advantage Courtney and Hans' apartment has, as the winter terrace (pictured) is also perfect for Melbourne weather thanks to its overhead heating panels and pull-down projector

Jesse added that the sheer size of the apartment is also a major selling point.

'There's not much if anything you can buy new in St Kilda for $8,000 per square metre and Hans and Courtney's apartment looks very affordable and a sound investment when purely looking at the numbers,' he said.

He explained that the apartment's winter terrace is also perfect for Melbourne weather, thanks to overhead heating panels and a pull-down projector.

Spacious: Jesse said that the sheer size of the apartment is another major selling point

'I think a lot of people will look back in five years and kick themselves for not investing [in St Kilda] sooner,' Jesse continued.

'Our apartment has one of the largest depreciation schedule of the five, so naturally we have been attracting the savvy investor buyers.'

Jesse has also initiated a unique way of auctioning the property.

Sound investment: 'I think a lot of people will look back in five years and kick themselves for not investing [in St Kilda] sooner,' Jesse said. Pictured: The apartment's bathroom

He said: 'We've engaged Gavl to exclusively livestream our auction and registered buyers can bid and actually buy on the day from the comfort of their lounge room.

'We've had early interest in this initiative, with a couple of interstate investors not being able to attend the auction day. No other apartment will have this advantage.'

The Block's auction day takes place on Saturday October 27. The finale will air on Channel Nine at 7:30pm on Sunday October 28.Channel Nine recently confirmed a second season of Love Island Australia.

And the racy reality show is rumoured to be 'relocating' from its tropical villa in Majorca, Spain and move to a later time slot when it returns in 2019.

According to a report released by TV Tonight on Sunday, it has not been confirmed whether the show will 'remain in Europe or relocate to a Pacific setting'.

Adios, Spain! Love Island Australia will 'relocate' from Majorca and air at a later time slot on Channel Nine as dating show is revamped for its second season

The publication also claims the program could air past a 9pm timeslot.

It was recently announced the hit reality dating show would be moving 9Go! to the network's main channel Channel Nine for the second season.

The announcement was made on the show's official Instagram on Thursday.

Location: According to a report released by TV Tonight on Sunday, it has not been confirmed whether the show will 'remain in Europe or relocate to a Pacific setting'

'It's always better the second time,' read the caption of the post.

'#LoveIslandAU will make its move on @Channel9 in 2019!'

Last season, The Daily Telegraph reported that the dating show managed to rack up an audience of 142 million - taking into account TV viewers, streaming, catch-up and YouTube views.

Ratings hit: It was recently announced the hit reality dating show would be moving 9Go! to the network's main channel Channel Nine for the second season

Expressions of interest are now open for young singles keen to strip down to skimpy swimwear on the new series.

Love Island Australia host Sophie Monk, 38, will also be returning to host the show in the second season.

Nine's application form states that producers are seeking 'sexy young singles aged 18-35', who are 'honest, open and genuinely looking for love'.Emily Ratajkowski surprised friends and fans when she announced she married Sebastian Bear-McClard in a New York City courthouse wedding in February after dating just a few weeks

And on Sunday the model/actress shared a passionate kiss with her man and posted on her Instagram for her 20million followers to see.

'We gross & tbh idc', she captioned in the photo, which translates to 'We gross and to be honest, I don't care.'

Hot & heavy: Emily Ratajkowski shared a passionate kiss with husband Sebastian Bear-McClard and posted it on her Instagram with the caption: 'We gross & tbh idc', which translates to 'We gross and to be honest, I don't care'

The happy couple appear to be hot and heavy in the picture as they lock lips.

Emily looks to be wearing a revealing top with a plunging neckline that showcases her tanned and toned figure.

She wore her dark tresses long and loose with a part in the middle.

Sebastian wore a burgundy and brown jacket with a white button-down shirt for their day date.

Lovebirds: The model/actress also shared a picture showing Sebastian with his left arm lovingly wrapped around her

Emily and Sebastian Bear-McClard also packed on the PDAs when they attended the 2018 US Open in Queens, New York in September 2018

Love at first sight? Emily announced she and Sebastian were married in a surprise NY courtroom wedding in February after dating just a few weeks

Emily also posted another sweet picture on Sunday that shows her hubby with his left arm lovingly wrapped around her, while seated at a wooden table.

It appears they were enjoying some wine with a meal amongst a lush green field and tress in the backdrop.

The happy couple have never been shy when it comes to packing on the PDAs, as they have been pictured a number of times sharing kisses for all to see.

Unique romance: The actor/producer proposed to Emily with a ring made out of a paper clip from a restaurant bill

Sebastian, who is an actor and producer, wooed his lady to the alter in unique fashion that included some fast-thinking ingenuity. Turns out, he proposed to her with a ring made out of the paper clip from her restaurant bill.

'He proposed to me at Minetta Tavern [an upscale restaurant in New York City], and he didn't have a ring so I was like, mmm, nah,' the model and actress revealed during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

'And then he took the paper clip that the bill was paid with and made me a ring which I actually thought was really romantic.'

Suffice to say, Emily has replaced her paper clip with a beautiful diamond ring.He's the Hollywood superstar who hasn't lost his down-to-earth Aussie touch.

And on Monday, Chris Hemsworth and friend Luke gave an American backpacker a warm welcome to Australia by offering the tourist a ride.

Chris and his friend had just touched down in Brisbane, Queensland when they spotted Scott Hildebrand attempting to hitch a ride over the border to Byron Bay, NSW.

'Picked up a hitchhiker, wasnt a serial killer which we were stoked about!' Chris Hemsworth (left) gave American backpacker Scott Hildebrand (right) a free ride to Byron Bay via helicopter

Filming the incident for a video later posted to the Thor star's Instagram account, Luke said: 'So we've just landed in Brissie, we've just seen a guy is hitchhiking to Byron Bay. That's where we're going!'

Luke then panned the camera lens over to Chris, who was sitting in their van's backseat, with the former Home and Away actor adding: 'We're going to Byron, we'll give him a lift!'

But the ride wasn't going to be as straightforward as it first appeared.

Luke cheekily continued: 'Little does he know that we're getting a chopper.'

'We're going to Byron, we'll give him a lift!' Chris and his friend Luke (right) filmed themselves as they picked up Scott from the side of the road and laughed: 'Little does he know that we're getting a chopper'

Friendly: Scott described the men as 'super nice' and said the experience was incredible

Scott, who had just arrived in Australia after a trip to Mexico, looked ecstatic about the surprising yet fortunate turn of events.

'Picked up a hitchhiker, wasnt a serial killer which we were stoked about and just happened to be a kick** musician Scott Hildebrand,' Chris captioned the clip, which he uploaded to Instagram.

Speaking to Nova 106.9s Ash, Kip & Luttsy with Susie ONeill on Monday, Scott revealed he didn't realise he had been picked up by a star until he reached the helipad.

What a ride! The American musician was happy to be given a lift but admitted that he initially was unaware that he'd been picked up by someone famous

'I was at the airport terminal in Brisbane trying to get back to Byron and yeah, just thought I'd try and hitch hike. I'd actually never hitch hiked before,' Scott told the radio show.

He explained he was just trying to 'save 50 bucks' on the fare for the two-hour bus ride from the airport to Byron and the men were 'super nice' and even asked him to go surfing with them.

'Then they were like 'Oh we're gonna do a quick stop' [and we] switched vehicles and at that point I was like 'Oh I can help pitch in for gas, it's a 2 hour drive...'

'Oh I can help pitch in for gas' Scott offered to help pay for petrol... before realising he'd be taking a helicopter and was told his share would be around $4000

'And they're like "You're not gonna want to do that, it's going to be like $4000 for that." And I was like "What is going on here, I have no idea."'

It was that point, Scott said, that the penny dropped that he had just been given a lift from Hollywood royalty - describing the experience as 'incredible'.

Scott added that he hoped to keep in touch with Chris and that they're now following each other on Instagram.She's the plastic fantastic bride making waves on the latest season of Married At First Sight New Zealand.

But now Ottie Schwartz has opened up about the harsh realities of plastic surgery, warning other women that it's just a superficial enhancement that 'won't change how you feel on the inside.'

The 32-year-old previously supersized her B-cup breasts to DDs with a 'discount boob job' while holidaying in Thailand in her mid-twenties.

Harsh truth: Married At First Sight NZ's Ottie Schwartz has opened up about the harsh realities of plastic surgery, warning other women that it 'won't change how you feel on the inside.'

'I was so sad for my body, I apologised to it like 20 times,' she admitted to Woman's Day NZ.

'I really struggled,' she continued. 'It was ridiculous to go under the knife and it's sad to walk around with these things, but I talk openly about it to warn other women that you have to treat a boob job like a new handbag.

'It's just an accessory and won't change how you feel inside.'

'It was ridiculous to go under the knife': The 32-year-old previously supersized her B-cup breasts to DDs with a 'discount boob job' while holidaying in Thailand in her mid-twenties

The outspoken blonde has previously joked that she's 'had everything enhanced,' and that the only thing real about her is her personality.

Ottie 'married' apprentice barber Gareth Noble, 26, on the second season of Married At First Sight NZ.

The controversial cougar has made headlines since appearing on the series, most recently after admitting to 'assaulting a really close friend' after a 'big falling out.'

True love? Ottie 'married' apprentice barber Gareth Noble, 26, on the second season of Married At First Sight NZ

Appearing on The Project NZ, the blonde bride confessed: 'We ended up crossing paths at a gas station. It got very heated, there was some slinging, and I ended up pulling her hair.'

She added: 'Not a fine moment of mine. I'm still really sorry about it, and really embarrassed.

'It ruined our friendship. I haven't spoken to her since that.'

'It got very heated!' The controversial cougar has made headlines since appearing on the series, most recently after admitting to 'assaulting a really close friend' after a 'big falling out'

Ottie also told The Cafe that she lies about her age to be 'less culpable for my actions.'

'You can get away with a lot more in your twenties!' said the 32-year-old.

Married At First Sight New Zealand airs on channel Three at 7pm on Sunday and 7:30pm every Monday and Tuesday.Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis have been an item for nearly seven years now.

And on Saturday they showed they are still very much in love when they lit up the red carpet at The Sexy Beast Gala: A Benefit for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles on Saturday.

Some of the other high profile names on hand included: actresses Jaime King, Kat Graham and Ali Larter.

Two of a kind: Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis lit up the red carpet at The Sexy Beast Gala: A Benefit for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles on Saturday

Two peas in a pod: The happy couple looked comfortably elegant together on the red carpet

The 34-year old actress showed of her toned but curvy figure in black gown that was adorned with a white pattern.

The elegance number had a slit down the left side so that the New York native could reveal a little leg at a moments notice.

She parted her mixed tresses in the middle and allowed the shoulder-length locks to fall straight down with some soft waves, while keeping her accessories to a minimum.

Jason, 43, looked every bit the handsome leading man in a dark blue two-piece suit with a light-colored button down dress shirt.

He is sporting longer locks these days and had it stylishly pushed back off of his face.

Going strong: The Hollywood power couple have been an item for nearly seven years

Stylish: The 34-year old actress showed off her toned but curvy figure in the black number

Shining star: The Meadowland star couldn't hold back her big beaming smile on the red carpet

Sexy: The elegant gown had a slit on the left so she could reveal a little leg at a moments notice

East coast gal: Olivia was born in New York City but grew up in Washington, DC

Olivia and Jason started dating November 2011, several months after meeting at a Saturday Night Live finale party.

They share two children together: four-year-old son Otis and one-year old daughter Daisy.

The Tron: Legacy star has been forthright about her struggles with parenting on her social media.

'I think that I find great comfort in sharing stories with other parents," she said in an interview with E News.

'When you realize that Serena Williams is having just as hard of a time traveling with her toddler as I am, that makes me feel better. When I read that, I think well, maybe it's helpful if I share a story of having a really hard day with my kids.'

The Sexy Beast gala is Planned Parenthood's biennial benefit. The night included fine art, live music and performances and plenty of food and drinks.

Show of support: Actress/model Jaime King was among the other stars on hand for the Planned Parenthood gala in Los Angeles

The 39-year old wore a two-piece black silky number that had a belt that tied around her svelte waist

Comfy: The silky ensemble hung off her lean physique in all the right ways

Sassy: Swiss-born model/actress Kat Graham, 29, also commanded attention on the red carpetShe has the body of an Angel.

And Sara Sampaio wasn't shy about showing it off at a charity shindig in LA on Sunday night.

The 27-year-old showcased her stunning figure in a daring red gown with a neckline that plunged right to her navel.

Stunner: Sara Sampaio wasn't shy about showing her figure off at a charity shindig in LA on Sunday night

With her brunette tresses ties back, the Portuguese stunner completed the outfit in white ankle-strap heels.

The Taste of sbe Grand Dinner was held at Skybar at Mondrian in West Hollywood with Rolling Stone, to benefit the Make A Wish Foundation.

Also flashing some skin on the red carpet was actress Blanca Blanco, who lived up to her name in a gorgeous white dress.

Other stars spotted at the soiree included Emile Hirsch, who opted for a more casual look in grey jeans and a light blue shirt beneath a leather bomber jacket.

Lady in red: The 27-year-old showcased her stunning figure in a daring red gown with a neckline that plunged right to her navel

Angelic: With her brunette tresses ties back, the Portuguese stunner completed the outfit in white ankle-strap heels

Charity: The Taste of sbe Grand Dinner was held at Skybar at Mondrian in West Hollywood with Rolling Stone, to benefit the Make A Wish Foundation

Although she may look it on social media, the Victoria's Secret star recently admitted her life isn't perfect.

'Remember that what everyones posting isnt real,' she told StyleCaster this week. 'My life isnt perfect or whatever you see on Instagram.

'Youre only seeing one part that I feel comfortable showing. Ive also just distanced myself from it all in general.'

All white: Also flashing some skin on the red carpet was actress Blanca Blanco, who lived up to her name in a gorgeous white dress

The model admitted if it wasn't for her job, she probably wouldn't be on social media at all.

'But you really have to find a balance. Like when Im on vacation, I really try not to be on my phone for half of it. Just trying to disconnect and not worry if I have a picture posted to Instagram.

'I have amazing days and when it comes to the end of it, Im like "sh*t, I had the best day of my life and I didnt take any pictures because I wasnt worried about that." And thatsnice. Its more special if its just yours.'Olivia Attwood and Chris Hughes' acrimonious split stunned Love Island fans.

And their followers were no doubt left more shocked on Sunday evening as their bitter feud rumbled on, when he accused her of being bitter and making digs in the midst of her stint on E4 show Celebs Go Dating.

Hitting back, she shared a message with her 371,000 Twitter followers in which she claimed he had attempted to get a job on the same show and failed, while also admitting she was 'being petty' - yet did not care.

Uh oh.. Olivia Attwood and Chris Hughes' acrimonious split stunned Love Island fans

Olivia is currently appearing on Celebs Go Dating, joining stars including Gogglebox's Amy Tapper, TOWIE's Vas Morgan and Chloe Sims.

While she is on the reality-star studded roster, she claims her ex-beau desperately wanted to appear on the programme yet missed the chance.

Chris kicked off the woes, as he penned: 'Hard to work out... So my ex has made digs at me every month since we split; I say ONE thing supporting a friend about deja vu and Im bitter apparently.'

Seemingly hinting her recent actions were an act of self-promotion for her current show, he went on: 'I think the comments on her tweet justifies it all. some people eyy. Anyway! Celebs go Dating on at 9pm. Tune in.'

Shocking: And their followers were no doubt left more shocked on Sunday evening as their bitter feud rumbled on, when he accused her of being bitter and making digs in the midst of her stint on E4 show Celebs Go Dating (pictured on Sunday's show)

Oh my: Seemingly hinting her recent actions were an act of self-promotion for her current show, he went on: 'I think the comments on her tweet justifies it all. some people eyy. Anyway! Celebs go Dating on at 9pm. Tune in'

Hitting back, Olivia wrote: 'Christina Hughes, you use my name to promote/bring press to every mind numbing thing you do. You should know by now, that I will always clap back. Now stop being bitterrrrr x...

'Also Thanks for the @CelebsGoDating shout out too, very big of you, when everyone knows you were in that office the day before me, asking for the job'.

When a fan lauded the star for her 'pettiness' she responded: 'Im committed to my art . What can I say'. Hours before the most recent beef, Olivia responded to her ex's apparent dig at her this week, by again branding him 'bitter'.

Break up: In February, Chris and Olivia split up, after meeting on Love Island and months of relationship setbacks, with the blonde beauty getting back together with her ex Bradley Dack (they have also split since)

After Chris tweeted Love Island 2018 star Sam Bird, following the demise of his relationship with co-star Georgia Steel, offering him a word of support, Olivia retorted with: 'What in the bitter ex is going on here then?'

This was after Chris posted a tweet, intended for Sam: ''Deja vu... Smile on mate, see you tomorrow' - following Sam's claims he found a secret selfie of 'loyal' Georgia in bed with her ex-boyfriend.

In February, Chris and Olivia split up, after meeting on Love Island and months of relationship setbacks, with the blonde beauty getting back together with her ex Bradley Dack (they have also split since).

At the time, a friend told MailOnline: 'Chris broke up with Olivia over the weekend due to a breakdown in trust in the relationship. Everybody knew that Olivia was still up to no good with her ex and the tweets proved it.

All too much: 'It all got too much for Chris so he called her and ended it, its sad because he adored her.' Olivia dismissed his claims, with friends insisting his 'inappropriate' behaviour led to a breakdown in the relationship'

'It all got too much for Chris so he called her and ended it, its sad because he adored her.' Olivia dismissed his claims, with friends insisting his 'inappropriate' behaviour led to a breakdown in the relationship.

A source told MailOnline: 'Chris has publicly humiliated Olivia on many occasions - messaging Katie Price and lying about it, kissing a girl in the Sugar Hut and being verbally abusive at her work event, saying f**k Rita Ora and Liam Payne, Im Chris Hughes. Yet she has stood by him despite people telling her to leave him.

'There are countless incidents where he has behaved in appropriately. Olivia feels used by Chris; shes stuck by him believing he loved her but the realisation is it was all about monetising their situation.'She is returning to screens in the eighth season of American Horror Story.

And Emma Roberts enjoyed a relaxing weekend off as she stepped out to grab an iced tea at Sycamore Kitchen in the Universal City area of Los Angeles on Sunday.

The actress, 27, kept casual for her day out, going make-up free as she slipped into a fun pair of space-print leggings.

Caffeine fix: Emma Roberts enjoyed a relaxing weekend off as she stepped out to grab an iced tea at Sycamore Kitchen in the Universal City area of Los Angeles on Sunday

The Scream Queens star kept comfortable in black New Balance trainers and a skinny t-shirt.

Emma wore her blonde locks pulled back from her face, while sheltering her eyes from the Californian sunshine with dark shades.

The actress - who is the niece of Hollywood megastar Julia Roberts - carried a Catherine Lacey book and her phone, while toting a bag of takeout.

The Billionaire Boys Club star a is returning to TV screens in American Horror Story: Apocalypse, reprising her role as Madison Montgomery, who was first seen in Coven.

Out of this world: The actress, 27, kept casual for her day out, going make-up free as she slipped into a fun pair of space-print leggings

As well as bringing her villainous character back to the small screen, her role on the latest season also re-teams her with her boyfriend Evan Peters, 31.

The couple were previously engaged, but Emma has been spotted on occasion without her ring on.

Back in 2013, the actress was arrested for domestic abuse in Canada after officers responded to a report of a fight in a hotel room.

Emma was taken into custody after they allegedly found One Tree Hill star Evan with a bloody nose and a bite mark.

He declined to press charges and she was released several hours later, with the couple saying in a joint statement that it was 'an unfortunate incident and misunderstanding.'

The pair have remained famously tight-lipped about their relationship since.She is a proud mother to her one-year-old son Caben-Albi whom she shares with ex-boyfriend Jeremy McConnell.

And looking every inch the doting mother, Stephanie Davis put on a sweet display as she cuddled her baby boy in her arms on her arrival to The Doona Launch held at Menagerie restaurant in Manchester on Sunday.

The soap star, 25, cut a glamorous figure in an off-the-shoulder dress, with her appearance at the bash coming after she candidly revealed son Caben 'saved' her from her destructive past.

Proud mumma: Stephanie Davis put on a sweet display as she cuddled son Caben-Albi, one, on her arrival to The Doona Launch held at Menagerie restaurant in Manchester on Sunday

Stephanie couldn't hide her delight as she stepped out with her little man and was seen beaming from ear-to-ear as she posed with Caben.

The mother-of-one looked sensational as she slipped into a chic dress that sat just off the shoulder and cinched in at the waist with a complementing belt.

Former Celebrity Big Brother star Stephanie added a boost to her ensemble with a stylish pair of lace-up boot heels and wore her caramel-hued locks pinned up in a topknot.

She left the front sections of her mane down to frame her face and finished off her look with flawless make-up that favoured contoured cheeks and a nude lip.

Stunning: The soap star, 25, cut a glamorous figure in an off-the-shoulder dress, while little Caben looked sweet in a personalised gilet that had his initials 'CA' etched onto one side

Little Caben, meanwhile, looked adorable in a personalised gilet that had his initials 'CA' etched onto one side.

Stephanie and her son were joined by her Hollyoaks co-star Kieron Richardson and his husband Carl Hyland. The duo attended the event with their children; twins Chase and Phoebe.

Carl and Kieron welcomed their brood via surrogate in May 2017.

Meanwhile, Stephanie's appearance in Manchester comes after she candidly spoke about her battle with alcohol addiction - confessing it had left her suicidal.

She made the admission on Good Morning Britain this month and claimed she was a 'lost soul' before she made the decision to enter rehab. Speaking to Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, Stephanie described son Caben as the 'light of her life' who saved her from the destructive path she was following.

Close pals: Stephanie was joined by her Hollyoaks co-star Kieron Richardson and his husband Carl Hyland. The duo attended the event with their children; twins Chase and Phoebe

Stephanie sought treatment in rehab three months ago after drinking every day following the end of her turbulent relationship with ex Jeremy.

'I obviously went through a really bad time and alcohol was my coping mechanism to help with things,' she said. 'In the beginning it was a solution and it helped me, but then it starts to take and take, and in the end I thought I was going to die.'

Stephanie revealed her turbulent on/off relationship with Jeremy, 28, over the past two years led to her taking an overdose. She said: 'It was really sad. I did try to kill myself, and then the way I was drinking, because it got quite bad, I was either going to hit my head or my body.

'I couldnt take it anymore, so it just got to the point where I gave up the fight. I wanted to be me again, because I wasnt me. I was just a lost soul. Its sad.'

'Light of my life': Stephanie's appearance at the bash coming after she candidly revealed son Caben 'saved' her from her destructive past in an interview on Good Morning Britain

Candid: Stephanie claimed she was a 'lost soul' before she made the decision to enter rehab and admitted she had tried to take her own life

Stephanie said the turning point was when she 'just gave up' and realised she needed to go to rehab to get help. She revealed how her mother and auntie cried when she told them she wanted to seek treatment for her battles.

Addressing her rehab stint, the actress admitted it had been 'really hard', but she is 'so thankful' for the journey she has been on.

She also credited little Caben for 'saving her', as she gushed: 'Hes the light of my life. Hes just the most beautiful little soul, I cant even tell you. Hes really advanced for his age, I cant really believe hes mine.'

Discussing the height of her troubles, Stephanie said: 'I didn't love myself. I was so lonely and so suicidal. [My mum] wanted to shake me but I didn't see it because I was so depressed.

'It was the hardest thing I've ever done don't get me wrong, but now how my life's changed and I'm helping other people - that's the most important thing.'

Seeking help: Stephanie sought treatment in rehab three months ago after drinking every day following the end of her turbulent relationship with ex Jeremy McConnell - father to her son Caben

Stephanie and Jeremy met and fell in love on Celebrity Big Brother two years ago, when the actress was already in a relationship.

Over the next year the couple's turbulent relationship played out in the press before Stephanie fell pregnant.

Jeremy, who hasn't seen his son in months, subsequently attacked Stephanie at a Merseyside property last March, leading to a jail term. The former Irish model was originally sentenced to 200 hours community service and a 20 week suspended sentence last August over the attack.

But he was dragged back before Cardiff magistrates and sentenced to 18 weeks in prison for missing eight community service sessions while jetting off to Turkey for a hair and beard transplant.

Meanwhile Stephanie has turned her life around and is set to make an epic return to Hollyoaks, crashing ex Ste Hay and Harry Thompson's wedding after a three year hiatus.Along with her show partner Seann Walsh, she was seen being saved on Sunday's edition of Strictly Come Dancing, following a dramatic dance-off.

And Katya Jones, 29, was back to business on Monday morning, as she stepped out with her husband Neil Jones, 35, in London  amid furore from fans over her and Seann being saved, as Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima were sent home.

The Russian beauty cut a glum figure, barely cracking a smile as she walked alongside her dancer husband ahead of embarking on a fresh week of rehearsals with Seann  who she was caught publicly kissing earlier this month.

Stepping out: Katya Jones and her husband Neil Jones were spotted stepping out in London on Monday morning, ahead of a fresh week of Strictly Come Dancing rehearsals

Kayta wrapped up for the chilly morning, stepping out in a black bubble coat over a baggy cream sweater, which she teamed with red leggings and blue running shoes.

With an oatmeal woollen hat  emblazoned with the word 'Love'  resting on her ombre tresses, she carried a pink floral bag as she strolled with her husband, who opted to wear an all-black casual ensemble.

Their outing came after viewers watched Katya and Seann survive a dramatic dance-off on Sunday, leaving fans furious that Vick and Graziano were sent home instead.

Shock reprieve: The couple's outing came a day after viewers watched Katya and her show partner Seann Walsh survive a dramatic dance-off on Sunday night's Strictly Come Dancing

Glum: The 29-year-old Russian beauty cut a glum figure, barely cracking a smile as she walked alongside her dancer husband

Love it: The professional dancer wore an oatmeal woollen hat emblazoned with the word 'Love'

The judges were unable to make a unanimous decision, leading to head judge Shirley Ballas to make the final call to send the Capital FM presenter, 29, and professional dancer newcomer, 24.

Comedian Seann, 32, and his Russian dance partner's shock reprieve comes just two weeks after pictures emerged of the pair passionately kissing on a London street  despite them both being in serious relationships at the time.

On Saturday night, Seann and Katya found themselves in the bottom three on the leaderboard after failing to impress with their Quickstep to Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg.

Under wraps: Kayta wrapped up for the chilly morning, stepping out in a black bubble coat over a baggy cream sweater, which she teamed with red leggings and blue running shoes

Just the two of us: The TV personality carried a pink floral bag as she strolled with her husband, who opted to wear an all-black casual ensemble

Weathering the storm: Their outing came two weeks after Katya was caught on camera kissing her dance partner Seann, sparking a huge wave of controversy

Gaining just 24 points out of 40, the pair faced elimination as they prepared to take part in the dance-off against Capital DJ host Vick, 28, who scored 20 with her Cha Cha to More Than Friends.

After both couples danced, the judges delivered their all important verdicts, with Craig kick-starting the vote by picking Vick and Graziano to save.

'Both dances were very different but both couples I thought need technique as well, but the couple I thought, for me on the night, Vick and Graziano,' he said.

Meanwhile, Darcey Bussell chose to save Seann and Katya, saying the pair did a 'cleaner performance' and had improved since their dance on Saturday night.

Last dance: Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima were seen being sent home on Sunday's Strictly

Scandal: Comedian Seann Walsh, 32, and his Russian dance partner's shock reprieve comes just two weeks after pictures emerged of the pair passionately kissing on a London street

Guest judge, Alfonso Ribeiro, who was standing in for Bruno for one week, also chose to save the Mock The Week star.

As their status in the show hung in the balance, Head Judge Shirley Ballas had the casting vote and sent them sailing through to next week.

Shirley said: 'Well I thought both couples put their best foot forward this evening, but due to the performance I enjoyed the most I am going to save Seann and Katya.'

Show watchers were left furious over the result and argued that regardless of the kiss scandal, Katya and Seann had the weaker dance.

Suspense: Gaining just 24 points out of 40, the pair faced elimination as they prepared to take part in the dance-off against Capital DJ host Vick, 28, who scored 20 with her Cha Cha

One person said: 'As if the judges saved Sean and Katya over vick and graziano wtf #Strictly.'

A different user put: 'Poor Vick and Graziano! They had more potential than Seann and Katya #Strictly.

Another show watcher commented: 'Woooooooow. Controversial decision.... I personally thought Seann & Katya were worse and Vick had much left to give. #Strictly.'

While a different fan added: 'Seann and Katya. Sorry but ridiculous. Vick wasn't great but Seann's dance was awful. #Strictly.'

Bad timing: On Saturday night, Seann and Katya found themselves in the bottom three on the leaderboard after failing to impress with their Quickstep to Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg

Improvement: Darcey Bussell chose to save Seann and Katya, saying the pair did a 'cleaner performance' and had improved since their dance on Saturday night

She has the power: As their status in the show hung in the balance, Head Judge Shirley Ballas had the casting vote and sent them sailing through to next week

On Saturday night, some viewers accused the show and the duo of using a guitar as a prop to keep them apart during the performance.

The pair have brushed aside their cheating scandal since returning to the dance floor after they were caught locking lips in a drunken clinch earlier this month.

The images, which emerged two weeks ago, led to the demise of Seann's long-term relationship with Rebecca Humphries and added strain onto Katya's marriage to Neil.

Both parties have publicly apologised for the hurt they caused when they shared that secret kiss.

Exit: Vick Hope cut a casual figure after being voted off the show as she wore grey tracksuit bottoms with a purple jumper

Still smiling: The presenter was still smiling despite the disappointing result as she left her hotel

Sad: Vick was pictured getting into a taxi by herself as the other celebrities reportedly went off to film some scenes for Strictly's Halloween special

Cheat: Katya and Seann have been the talk of Strictly after they were caught in an boozy clinch earlier this month with Katya's husband Neil (circled) maintaining a dignified silence

Rebecca publicly dumped Seann in a lengthy social media statement, heaping further condemnation on the comic by revealing his passionate kiss with Katya happened on her birthday, while she sat alone in their London flat.

Reflecting on his separation from his five-year girlfriend, he said on It Takes Two: 'I made a mistake, which Im very sorry for - sorry for the hurt that Ive caused. You never think about the extent of the damage that youre going to do, in a moment of, you know the mistake that youve made.

'Im not perfect, far from it. Our relationship wasnt perfect. That doesnt mean I wanted it to end the way it finally did, and Im very sorry for that.

'I feel its also important for me to say that the people that know me the most, that love me, they know that I am not the person Im being portrayed as. Im still sorry for what I did, but its very important for me to get that out there.'



Awkward: On Saturday night, some viewers accused the show and the duo of using the guitar prop to keep them apart during the performance

Carefully chosen prop: The funnyman,and Russian dancer decided to do a Quickstep to Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg as their chosen routine

After finding out they had survived another week, the pair looked thrilled as they hugged.

Meanwhile, Vick looked devastated as she told Tess Daly said: 'I've loved it. I've had the time of my life so I want to thank everyone for being the best possible people I could spend all this time with.

'What an incredible team; the hair, the make-up, the clothes. Thank you for all of your guidance and the judging I appreciate it and of course, thank you Graz, you've been so patient with me and helped me so much, I've loved every last second of it so thank you.'

Graziano added: 'You did brilliantly and you are brilliant, thank you. You really make me proud day by day.'

Time to say goodbye: When asked by Tess about her time on the show, Vick said, 'I've loved it. I've had the time of my life'It seems her relationship with her daughter Blac Chyna is still incredibly rocky.

And in a last ditch attempt to see her granddaughter, Dream, Tokyo Toni has made a very public plea to the 20-month-old's father Rob Kardashian.

Blac Chyna's mum posted an Instagram video for all to see, asking Rob to let her see her grandchild as she is unable to contact him or her daughter privately.

Public plea: Blac Chyna's mum Tokyo Toni BEGGED Rob Kardashian to let her see granddaughter Dream as 'things haven't got better' with her daughter

The 46-year-old said in the video message: 'Hey Rob, this is me Tokyo. Unfortunately things still haven't changed since we last spoke, obviously.

'As far as Chyna is concerned things still haven't gotten better since the last time you told social media about it.

'Is it any way possible that you could let me see Dream through FaceTime or send a video to my DM or anything?

'I don't even know how the baby sound[s]. It's absolutely ludicrous. But this is the only way I can get through to you I don't have any numbers for anybody any more.'

Girls' day out: Blac Chyna had 20-month-old daughter Dream with reality TV star Rob Kardashian in November 2016. They split a month after she was born

We are family: Exotic dancer Blac Chyna is also mum to five-year-old son King who she shares with her ex, rapper Tyga

Toni, whose real name is Shalana Jones-Hunter, has previously reached out to Chyna's close friend Amber Rose begging her to speak to the 30-year-old and let her see Dream and her five-year-old grandson King, Chyna's son with rapper Tyga.

Toni said she was sorry to approach Rose 'in this way on social media but there's no other way,' referencing her astrological sign.

'You are a Libra Amber and you know where I'm going with this,' Toni wrote. 'I have not seen these kids and she's punishing me for nothing!'

Old times: Reality TV stars Rob and Blac, pictured together at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas in 2016, have had a turbulent relationship over the years

She added that she didn't care if Blac Chyna, whose real name is Angela Renee White, never spoke to her again but is desperate to see her grandchildren.

Toni fiercely defended her daughter after she split from Rob in 2016, one month after Dream was born.

When people on social media criticized Blac Chyna as a 'gold digger', Toni shot back; 'Chyna had hers long before Rob K.

'He is just emotionally disturbed... Chyna don't need to dig for gold with gold is given to her after every argument.'

However back in July, Tokyo went on a furious rant about her daughter on Instagram, with a series of alarming claims.She's usually known for her calm and controlled demeanor.

But on Thursday, Princess Diana's niece Lady Kitty Spencer revealed a crack in her regal facade by dissolving into a fit of giggles at the Channel 7 Telethon 2018 in Perth over the weekend.

The 27-year-old let out some laughs after Home and Away star Patrick OConnor stripped off shirt in front of her.

Enjoying the show? Princess Diana's niece Lady Kitty Spencer burst into laughter as Home and Away star Patrick OConnor stripped off shirt in front of her at the Channel 7 Telethon 2018 in Perth over the weekend

Kitty isn't the only royal in Australia, with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle also spending time Down Under over the last week.

As the power couple continue their whirlwind tour across the country, Harry's cousin Kitty has been raising funds at the Perth Telethon 2018.

The blonde beauty arrived in Western Australia on Thursday for the event, which supports children with life threatening diseases.

Get a look? The 27-year-old smiled as she stared at the chiseled actor

Having fun? The blonde beauty couldn't wipe the smile from her face

The English fashion model was photographed on a panel for the Telethon at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Perth on Saturday.

She looked every inch a royal as she donned a sparkling sequined gold dress for the public appearance Down Under.

Prior to appearing at the Telethon over the weekend, Lady Kitty visited several of the children which the Telethon aims to raise funds for on Friday.

Golden girl! She looked every inch a royal as she donned a sparkling sequined gold dress for the public appearance Down Under

After meeting patients at Perth Children's Hospital, the royal said on Instagram: 'What an emotional morning meeting the courageous and inspirational children.'

Speaking to The West, she added: 'It was lovely to meet people face-to-face and to hear from them what things like Telethon mean to them and the difference it actually makes.

'I think it was a really important visit and I met some very, very strong children and strong parents.

'I really have respect for the grace they have in what they're going through.'Fans have been eagerly-awaiting the return of The Mummy Diaries.

And the wait is nearly over, as ITVBe released a new trailer for the upcoming third series of the show centered around Billie and Sam Faiers, their partners Greg Shepherd and Paul Knightley respectively and their four kids.

A series of clips gave a flavour of what's to come later this month, as Billie was seen trying on dresses as she prepares to walk the aisle following a four-year engagement, shortly before her daughter Nelly took centre stage once again.

A vision: ITVBe released a new trailer for the upcoming third series of The Mummy Diaries centered around Billie and Sam Faiers, their partners Greg Shepherd and Paul Knightley respectively and their four kids

Sam and Billie first found fame on TOWIE, with Sam starring since the very first episode in 2010, however they both departed and hit screens with their spin off.

As they plan to return to screens, the sisters have been stars of the new trailer in which fans catch a glimpse of Billie going wedding dress shopping.

Sam and their mum Sue Wells were left breathtaken by one of the gowns, as Billie dazzled in a sensational, plunging white dress.

The camera than showed little Nelly larking around while blowing out her birthday candles and later Sam's daughter Rosie crawling.

Happy days: A series of clips gave a flavour of what's to come later this month, as Billie was seen trying on dresses as she prepares to walk the aisle following a four-year engagement, shortly before her daughter Nelly took centre stage once again

Snap happy: Sam and Billie first found fame on TOWIE, with Sam starring since the very first episode in 2010, however they both departed and hit screens with their spin off

The Billie and Greg love story goes back to 2011 when they met for the first time and Greg popped the question during a sunny holiday to the Maldives in 2014.

Last week, Billie revealed that she and Greg have finally set a wedding day, four years after announcing their engagement.

She disclosed that she plans to exchange nuptials with Greg in the idyllic Maldives next spring now that her children  Nelly, four, and son Arthur, 19 months  are old enough to watch her get married.

In an interview with Now magazine, the reality said when asked if she'd finally set a wedding date: 'We actually have! We're just keeping the exact date to ourselves for now, but it is going to be spring next year.'

Queen of the show: A series of clips gave a flavour of what's to come later this month, as Billie was seen trying on dresses as she prepares to walk the aisle following a four-year engagement, shortly before her daughter Nelly took centre stage once again

Yay! Rosie was crawling along in front of the cameras

Explaining the reasons for the delay, Billie  who has already had two hen celebrations  said: 'When we got engaged I was pregnant with Nelly. I always said I wanted two kids before I got married and now that's happened. They were a priority.'

She added: 'When I had Nelly, people were like, "You should get married now!" But I did want another baby quite soon after, so I felt like I'd rather wait...

'And even tough we have had a long engagement, there's been so much going on in between that it was always pushed to the back. But now it's actually happening.'

Billie admitted to the publication that she and Greg have 'got so much to do' ahead of their sun-kissed nuptials, for which she has declined to share a specific date.She has less than two months to go before she becomes a first-time mother, and chose to mark the occasion by jetting off for a babymoon in sun-soaked Dubai.

And Tyla Carr, 25, gave a glimpse of her growing baby bump during her trip to the ritzy United Arab Emirates city, when she stepped out in a yellow halterneck bikini for a leisurely day out on the golden shores.

The former TOWIE star, who returned from her luxury trip with boyfriend Ross just a few days ago, appeared to be in her element as she enjoyed her final getaway ahead of giving birth.

Before the baby: Tyla Carr was spotted enjoying a babymoon on the beaches of Dubai recently

Despite it being a relaxed day out, the reality star remained glamorous, teaming her skimpy swimwear with a pristine white kaftan and a wide-brimmed hat.

After basking in the sunshine as she meandered through the powdery sands, the seven-months pregnant star stopped for a quick outdoor shower.

As she prepares for her baby's arrival, Tyla attended the annual Baby Show, held at west London's Kensington Olympia.

Halterneck: The former TOWIE star enjoyed her leisurely day out in a yellow halterneck bikini

Shore: She enjoyed a brief outdoor shower after basking in the sunshine on the golden shores

Just the two of us: The expectant mother enjoyed the recent trip to Dubai with her beau Ross

Last week, Tyla told fans she was grateful to have a holiday with Ross before they welcome their little one, admitting it had given her partner a better opportunity to bond with her unborn child.

She wrote: 'I am already so in love with this child. Can I just say, holidays are a completely different experience to what I'm used to, sun bathing is a whole new ball game.

'The heat gets unbearable and there is no comfy way to sunbathe, nor can you wear heels out for a long period of time...

'However, I would recommend anyone healthy enough to travel at this stage of pregnancy to use it to spend some good quality time with their partner before the baby arrives.

Glamorous: Despite it being a relaxed day out, the reality star remained glamorous, teaming her skimpy swimwear with a pristine white kaftan and a wide-brimmed hat

Sliders: Tyla rounded out her beach ensemble with a pair of eye-catching embellished sliders

Relationship: Tyla and her partner Ross have been together for almost a year, but first met nine years ago in Mallorca. They reunited after Tyla shot a calendar there

She continued: 'Even if you can just make it a weekend away, anything that gives you time on your own as a couple. It's so lovely to not have any stresses or work worries or frantic moments of worrying about the things you need to buy for the baby.

'I've loved it and I really feel like my partner has had a chance to bond more with the bump which has been so nice.

'No doubt we are going to look back and miss our time alone together for a while, but we are also so excited to have ourselves a little family of three.'

Tyla and Ross have been together for almost a year, but first met nine years ago in Mallorca. They reunited after Tyla shot a calendar there.

Grateful: Last week, Tyla told fans she was grateful to have a holiday with Ross before they welcome their little one, giving her partner a better opportunity to bond with her unborn child

Sunshine: During her time in Dubai, Tyla shared a number of shots of herself basking in the sun

Growing bump: While Tyla seemed to be fully embracing her pregnancy, she did admit that she 'waddles' due to her growing bump and is 'scared' for it to get any bigger

While Tyla seemed to be fully embracing her pregnancy, she did admit that she 'waddles' due to her growing bump and is 'scared' for it to get any bigger.

'That face you make when you wish for a bump so big that you waddled and god really did answer your wishes,' she wrote on Instagram alongside a selfie.

'It just scares me that I still have at least a 2 and a half months left! I'm going to be huge and I'm so proud of it.'

She added: 'The extra weight, the extra cellulite and the potential stretch marks will all be worth it when I have a healthy happy baby in my arms.'

No fowl play: The reality star previously confessed she was left dumbstruck for awhile when she found out she was with child during a lunch date at Nando's

Romances: Tyla was propelled into the limelight in the Love Island villa where she enjoyed brief romances with 'Muggy' Mike Thalassitis and bad boy Jonny Mitchell in 2017

Mixed emotions: Tyla admitted she was 'over the moon', but also 'worried' on initially learning she was pregnant, as she'd not long moved in with her boyfriend Ross

The reality star previously confessed she was left dumbstruck for awhile when she found out she was with child during a lunch date at Nando's.

She reminisced to OK! magazine: We stopped for lunch after I bought the test and I couldnt wait until I got home. When I saw it was positive, I ran back to tell Ross  it felt like the longest journey of my life!

I was over the moon but part of me was worried too. We havent been together very long and wed only just moved in together. I started to panic that we had rushed.

Tyla was propelled into the limelight in the Love Island villa where she enjoyed brief romances with 'Muggy' Mike Thalassitis and bad boy Jonny Mitchell in 2017.

The brunette bombshell got her first taste for reality television when appearing on First Dates.

Oh baby! The 25-year-old reality star shared a snap of herself posing by the sea during her trip

Baby on board! Fresh off her trip to Dubai, the pregnant reality star was spotted attending the annual Baby Show, held at west London's Kensington Olympia, on FridayBy Trend





The opening of the Star oil refinery is a significant event that will contribute to the development of the economies of both Turkey and Azerbaijan, the expert-economist, doctor of economics Elshad Mammadov told Trend Oct. 20.

"I believe that the opening of the Star refinery and, in general, the investments that Azerbaijan has been making in the Turkish economy for a long period of time, are very important. Turkish economy is going through difficult times and needs direct investments. In this regard, the projects of SOCAR are very helpful. In general, the Star refinery will reduce the current account deficit of the balance of payments in Turkey and will make a significant contribution to the solution of the import substitution issue in the field of petrochemical products that is urgent for the country. The project has created many new jobs. In addition, Star means for Turkey the entry to regional markets, the market of European Union, particularly Southern Europe. The project strengthens the competitiveness of the Turkish economy, because SOCARs investments are made not only in the primary sector, but also in the deep processing sector," Mammadov said.

The expert noted that the refinerys activities will be mutually beneficial and will bring great benefits to the investing country, that is, Azerbaijan.

SOCAR, investing in such large projects of international importance, strengthens its image as a transnational company and a serious investor. SOCAR, thus, gets access to European markets with high-tech products. The project will allow Azerbaijan to receive dividends in tens of millions of US dollars in the short term, and the numbers can reach hundreds of millions of US dollars in the medium term," Mammadov said.

The opening of the STAR oil refinery owned by the Azerbaijani state company SOCAR was held earlier in Turkey.

The STAR refinery will produce naphtha, ultra low sulfur diesel fuel, jet fuel, petroleum coke, liquefied gas and other products. The refinery will not produce gasoline and fuel oil. The plant plans to process such grades of oil as Azeri Light, Kerkuk and Urals. Refining capacity of the refinery will be 10 million tons of products per year.

Today, the share distribution in the project is as follows: 60 percent is owned by Rafineri Holding (the company is 100 percent owned by SOCAR Turkey Energy), which previously bought out all 18.5 percent of Turcas Petrol's share in the project, and 40 percent - by SOCAR.







Michelle Bridges celebrated her 48th birthday over the weekend.

But on Monday, the fitness entrepreneur left fans flabbergasted by her age-defying appearance.

The Biggest Loser trainer took to Instagram to share a sultry selfie, with one fan remarking: 'You look so gorgeous'.

'This actually looks nothing like you!' On Monday, Michelle Bridges shocked fans with her age-defying appearance in a sultry selfie (pictured right). A number of followers remarked on how her looks had changed (she is pictured left in 2008)

In the snap, Michelle sported a smooth visage and arched eyebrows as she gave a coy smile to the camera.

Despite being just two years shy of 50, she appeared completely wrinkle-free in the snap,

While some followers claimed she looked 'pretty' and 'fresh', others claimed her taut visage left her looking unrecognisable.

Smooth operator! Michelle has shared a number of selfies of her taut visage in recent months

'This actually looks nothing like you?! Still gorgeous, but you look really different?!' one wrote.

'Is that Michelle??' another asked.

Meanwhile, another claimed that Michelle's youthful looks were not au naturel.

Age defying! Fans have remarked that Michelle appears not to have aged a day in a decade. She is pictured left in 2007 and right earlier this year

'Gotta stop with the Botox Michelle. You've gone to far. Sorry to say. Well done with your achievements though,' they wrote.

Back in 2014, Michelle told News Corp that she was not opposed to Botox, but did not confirm or deny whether she had ever used it.

'I am a fan of anything that makes a person feel good about themselves and more confident,' she said at the time.

The personal trainer added that sleep is her most powerful beauty tool.

'I am a big believer in [sleep] being majorly anti-ageing. Nothing enhances your features like a gratitude attitude and manners,' she said.

Age-defying! Super-fit Michelle says 'gratitude attitude and manners' help her stay young

Meanwhile, Michelle recently told Daily Mail Australia she maintains her incredible physique by taking an active approached to daily life.

'I try not to think of exercise as an isolated activity in my day, but a way of approaching simple, everyday tasks,' she said.

'Rather than doing everything I can to make it to the gym, I try to think more efficiently about what needs doing, and how I can get my heart rate up while doing it.

'For instance, if I am playing on the carpet with my son Axel, I might throw in some lunges and push-ups at the same time.'She's spent a week in Dubai on a 'make or break' getaway with fiance John Noble.

And it would seem Vicky Pattison had plenty to smile about as she prepared to jet off to Portugal from London's Gatwick Airport on Monday morning, just hours after flying home from her romantic trip.

The former Geordie Shore star, 30, was grinning from ear-to-ear as she made her way through the terminal, before heading to another boot camp after multiple stints at health and fitness retreats this year.

Success! Vicky Pattison prepared to jet off to Portugal from Gatwick Airport on Monday morning, hours after returning from a 'make or break' trip to Dubai with her fiance John Noble

The I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star was ready to travel in grey tracksuit bottoms, a cotton white T-shirt and box-fresh trainers.

Dressing for the autumnal chill, the star kept cosy in a woolly brown coat that flowed all the way down to her ankles.

The television personality opted to show off her natural beauty, sporting a make-up free look as she slicked her raven tresses into a low bun.

Keeping it low-key, the reality veteran shaded her eyes from the bright airport lighting with a pair of oval black shades.

Smiling: The former Geordie Shore star, 30, was grinning from ear-to-ear as she made her way through the terminal, before heading to another boot camp

Loved up: The I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star paid tribute to her fiance in a sweet Instagram post on Monday morning after their trip

The jet-setter spent Sunday night in an airport hotel before flying off again.

Vicky made the most of indulging before heading to boot camp, posting snaps of her three-course meal and champagne on the flight home from Dubai, before tucking into a plate of room service tuna sandwiches at her hotel.

The Geordie beauty treated herself to a tasty breakfast of a bacon sandwich, hash browns and baked beans from the airport before jetting to Portugal.

Vicky posted dozens of pics of her getaway to Dubai, which was said to have been a 'make or break' trip for her and fiance John.

Fun in the sun: Vicky posted dozens of pics of her getaway to Dubai with John

Gorgeous: Vicky showed off her gravity-defying assets in her skimpy bikini top

Treat yourself! Vicky made the most of indulging before heading to boot camp, posting snaps of her three-course meal and champagne on the flight home from Dubai

Come fly with me: The Geordie beauty treated herself to a tasty breakfast of a bacon sandwich, hash browns and baked beans from the airport before jetting to Portugal

The pair reportedly clashed over Vicky's showbiz lifestyle in London - while John is based in Newcastle - and reluctance to settle down and have kids.

The duo - who got engaged in July 2017 - were apparently not on speaking terms until recently and had severed ties on social media, with sources claiming their relationship is 'hanging by a thread'.

'Vicky and John's relationship is hanging by the thinnest of threads, but they both think what they've got is worth fighting for,' an insider told The Sun.

It would seem the trip was a success, with Vicky posting a sweet tribute to her 'weirdo' love on social media on Monday.

Relaxed: The star has since taken to Instagram to say she's 'looking forward to an early night' after 'a week, partying, drinking and generally just living my best life in Dubai'

Jet-setter: She later shared pictures from her cosy night in and flights joking 'yes, I live on planes now' and giving her followers advice on skincare

She posted a loved up picture of the duo saying: 'I never wanted a prince on a white horse, trust me when I say Im the hero of my own story, theres no damsel in distress here, what I wanted was a weirdo who made me laugh...

'Im pretty sure I found him... Love you weirdo'.

The star has since taken to Instagram to say she's 'looking forward to an early night' after 'a week, partying, drinking and generally just living my best life in Dubai'.

She later shared pictures from her cosy night in and flights joking 'yes, I live on planes now' and giving her followers advice on skincare.Ed Balls joked over falling victim to the Strictly Come Dancing curse 'in his dreams' as he addressed his former dance partner Katya Jones kissing Seann Walsh.

Appearing on ITV's Lorraine on Monday morning, the retired politician, 51, insisted he was 'too old' to be struck by the show's curse, with his wife always responding to questions on the subject: 'In his dreams!'

He also made sure to throw his support behind Katya - who has found herself at the centre of controversy following her drunken smooch - and claimed the married star made a 'mistake'.

Funny man! Ed Balls joked over falling victim to the Strictly Come Dancing curse 'in his dreams' as he addressed his former dance partner Katya Jones kissing Seann Walsh

Ed is no stranger to Strictly Come Dancing, having starred on the show in 2016 where he was partnered with Katya. He made it to week 10 of the competition, while Ore Oduba went on to win the series with Joanne Clifton.

When quizzed about Katya's kiss with Seann, Ed agreed that there is 'definitely a Strictly curse', but he was lucky enough to avoid any scandal thanks to his age.

Ed joked: 'Luckily there's an age cut off and I was well above the age. [My wife] Yvette's views - when she was asked about it she would say, "In his dreams!"'

Addressing the fallout of Katya and Seann's smooch, Ed said: 'Katya and Seann had a very tough time the last few weeks.'

Amusing: Appearing on ITV's Lorraine, the retired politician, 51, insisted he was 'too old' to be struck by the show's curse, with his wife always responding to questions on the subject: 'In his dreams!'

Familiar face: Ed had starred on the 2016 series of Strictly Come Dancing with Katya Jones (above) as his dance partner

'Katya made a big mistake,' he insisted. 'Neil and Katya are good friends of ours, all they can do is come back and keep dancing.'

Katya and Seann caused outrage when pictures surfaced of the duo kissing, as she is married to fellow Strictly professional Neil Jones and Seann had been in a five-year relationship with ex-girlfriend Rebecca Humphries.

The kiss occurred when the pair spent an evening together at the pub on the birthday of Seann's ex Rebecca. She immediately dumped the British comedian publicly on Twitter, slamming the star for his actions, leaving her alone on her birthday and his 'controlling' behaviour throughout their relationship.

In the wake of the scandal, Seann insisted his kiss with Katya had been a 'one-off' and a 'mistake'. Katya, meanwhile, apologised for the 'hurt' they had caused, but insisted her marriage to Neil is 'absolutely fine'.

Huge hit! He was highly loved on the show and made it to week 10 of the competition, while Ore Oduba went on to win the series with Joanne Clifton

Support: Ed made sure to address married Katya's kiss with her current Strictly dance partner Seann and insisted his friend made a 'mistake'

Neil hasn't publicly commented on the kiss.

Strictly fans were left in uproar as Seann and Katya survived the dance-off in Sunday night's results show, with Vick Hope being the latest celebrity to be sent home from the BBC dance competition.

Reports have claimed that Seann has found himself 'ostracised' from the rest of his Strictly co-stars and their WhatsApp group as a result of his kiss with Katya.

One source told The Sun on Sunday: This series is definitely the most bitchiest and frostiest series ever and there is Seann standing right at the heart of it.

Having his say: Ed said of the controversial kiss: 'Katya made a big mistake. Neil and Katya are good friends of ours, all they can do is come back and keep dancing'

Seann has reportedly been overheard voicing his concerns about how the Strictly group are ignoring him as he often receives a muted reaction to messages compared to his co-stars.

The source continued: Its everyones not-so-subtle way of making sure hes aware how everyone feels, especially when Neil and Katya are also present on the group.

They added that the majority of the stars wish he could be removed from the chat, with the Mock the Week regular allegedly not being liked from the start.

Meanwhile, 29-year-old Katyas husband Neil, 35, is a much loved member of the group and has become known as the shows practical joker.

Sources added: Neil is definitely the resident comedian of the group, which will no doubt hurt Seann. Hes the ringleader and tells jokes and starts competitions for them to all come up with the best pun.'She is set to reprise her role as Sinead O'Connor in Hollyoaks after three years away from the soap.

And now Stephanie Davis, 25, is set to send temperatures soaring when she strips off for her comeback on the Channel 4 stalwart this week.

The actress will enjoy a backseat romp with Sami Maalik, who is played by Rishi Nair, after they are drenched in a heavy storm that is headed for the Chester town.

Steamy: Stephanie Davis, 25, is set to send temperatures soaring when she strips off for her comeback on the Channel 4 stalwart this week

In an upcoming episode of the soap, Stephanie gets caught out in the ferocious storm and decides to take shelter in Sami's car, which she initially flags down in order to crash Ste Hay and Harry Thompson's wedding.

And soon things take a steamy turn between the pair when Stephanie's character strips off her red and white striped shirt to showcase her black sheer mesh bra, while Sami takes off his jumper beside her.

In a preview image of the scene, Sinead and Sami can be seen holding hands as they look into one another's eyes.

However unbeknown to Sam, Sinead is keeping a massive secret from him - that she's married.

Comeback: The actress will enjoy a backseat romp with Sami Maalik, who is played by Rishi Nair, after they are drenched in a heavy storm that is headed for the Chester town following Ste and Harry's wedding

Stephanie previously left the soap in 2015 after five years, but confirmed in May that she was returning to Hollyoaks.

Meanwhile, she candidly spoke about her battle with alcohol addiction - confessing it had left her suicidal.

She made the admission on Good Morning Britain this month and claimed she was a 'lost soul' before she made the decision to enter rehab.

Speaking to Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, Stephanie described son Caben as the 'light of her life' who saved her from the destructive path she was following.

Taking cover: In an upcoming episode of the soap, Stephanie gets caught out in the ferocious storm and decides to take shelter in Sami's car, which she initially flags down in order to crash the wedding

Secret: However unbeknown to Sam, Sinead is keeping a massive secret from him - that she's married

Stephanie sought treatment in rehab three months ago after drinking every day following the end of her turbulent relationship with ex Jeremy.

'I obviously went through a really bad time and alcohol was my coping mechanism to help with things,' she said. 'In the beginning it was a solution and it helped me, but then it starts to take and take, and in the end I thought I was going to die.'

Stephanie revealed her turbulent on/off relationship with Jeremy, 28, over the past two years led to her taking an overdose. She said: 'It was really sad. I did try to kill myself, and then the way I was drinking, because it got quite bad, I was either going to hit my head or my body.

Then: Stephanie previously left the soap in 2015 after five years, but confirmed in May that she was returning to Hollyoaks

Candid: She candidly spoke about her battle with alcohol addiction - confessing it had left her suicidal

'I couldnt take it anymore, so it just got to the point where I gave up the fight. I wanted to be me again, because I wasnt me. I was just a lost soul. Its sad.'

Stephanie said the turning point was when she 'just gave up' and realised she needed to go to rehab to get help. She revealed how her mother and auntie cried when she told them she wanted to seek treatment for her battles.

Addressing her rehab stint, the actress admitted it had been 'really hard', but she is 'so thankful' for the journey she has been on.

Guiding light: Speaking to Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, Stephanie described son Caben as the 'light of her life' who saved her from the destructive path she was following

She also credited little Caben for 'saving her', as she gushed: 'Hes the light of my life. Hes just the most beautiful little soul, I cant even tell you. Hes really advanced for his age, I cant really believe hes mine.'

Discussing the height of her troubles, Stephanie said: 'I didn't love myself. I was so lonely and so suicidal. [My mum] wanted to shake me but I didn't see it because I was so depressed.

'It was the hardest thing I've ever done don't get me wrong, but now how my life's changed and I'm helping other people - that's the most important thing.'She's a world-renowned actress and an outspoken advocate against discrimination.

And Amber Heard, 32, discussed her Human Rights experiences on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations (UDHR) in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday.

Moreover, she discussed her perspective on gender equality and LGBTI rights, saying: 'Changes in attitude will affect changes in policy.

Something to say: Amber Heard discussed her Human Rights experiences on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations (UDHR) in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday

Amber's full speech has not yet been released, however, in an excerpt, she said: '

'We have men on the ground who have turned incredibly heartbreaking and difficult experiences and they have used that energy and fuel as a passion and turned that into action.

'And that energy has made the world slightly better from even just one person and we all know that never stops there.

Opinions: Moreover, she discussed her perspective on gender equality and LGBTI rights, saying: 'Changes in attitude will affect changes in policy'

She said: 'We have men on the ground who have turned incredibly heartbreaking and difficult experiences and they have used that energy and fuel as a passion and turned that into action'

'I want to share the energy I see on the streets and I see change happening incredibly quickly because of that.'

A Human Rights Champion for the UN Human Rights Office, Amber promotes the principles of the (UDHR), which was adopted in 1948.

Amber is committed to humanitarian work and back in April, she said that her encounters with Syrian refugees and foreign medical volunteers helping the displaced have left an 'an indelible mark on my soul.'

She spent a week in Jordan as part of a delegation of the Syrian American Medical Society, visiting the kingdom's largest camp for Syrian refugees and rehabilitation centres for those wounded in Syria's seven-year-old civil war.

Heard told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday she was moved by the 'resilience and spirit of everyone involved' and that she was 'reminded of the beautiful side of human nature.'

Some 5.5 million Syrians have fled their homeland since 2011, most of them settling in neighboring countries, including Jordan.Jonathan Cheban has been enjoying a long work trip in Los Angeles to film Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

Again over the weekend the New Jersey native - who divides his time between NYC and Miami - was seen again in the 90210.

The FoodGod also shared a sweet tribute to his best friend Kim Kardashian as she turned 38-years-old on Sunday.

He loves LA: Jonathan Cheban has been enjoying a long work trip in Los Angeles to film Keeping Up With The Kardashians

The good life: Again over the weekend the New Jersey native - who divides his time between NYC and Miami - was seen again in the 90210

His tribute read: 'Happy Birthday legend @kimkardashian .. too much to write about how f***ing perfect you are as a friend a mother and a wife so I wont! As long as we all know its good enough for me!! Love you to death!! Best friends forever. Literally oh and that.'

The two have been close for over a decade as he gave her publicity advice when KUWTK first starting airing.

He has been at her wedding to Kanye West, her birthdays and he has serves as uncle to her three kids North, Saint and Chicago.

Pals 4ever: The FoodGod also shared a sweet tribute to his best friend Kim Kardashian as she turned 38-years-old on Sunday

On Sunday Jonathan wore a print sort, ripped jeans and Nike shoes with a tag on the ankle.

For some reason, Cheban doesn't appear to be wearing Kanye's Yeezys any longer.

This comes after he hit the Drake concert in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening.

This could be seen as a betrayal as Kardashian and her husband Kanye West are not happy with the rapper after he insinuated he had slept with the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star with his song In My Feelings.

The hit tune included the line, 'Kiki do you love me?' Kiki is Kim's nickname.

So posh: On Saturday night Jonathan wore a Louis Vuitton sweater as he left Catch

Bad boy of rap? Drake is currently feuding with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian

The way they were: In 2015 Kanye and Drake were seen with Kenny Burns in Atlanta

Kim has denied she ever dated Drake. In September she said, 'Never happened.'

Later Kanye said on a radio show that he didn't think it was right that Drake dropped a song hinting he had been in bed with Kim.

Drake and Kanye have been feuding for years.

On Tuesday, Jonathan looked stylish as he had dinner at Craig's in West Hollywood then headed to the Drake concert in Inglewood.

Longtime union: Kim and Jonathan have been close friends for over a decade and he often appears on KUWTK

The Towie star had on a camo jacket and dark slacks.

Kim and Jonathan have been close friends for over a decade and he often appears on KUWTK.

He was last seen in Beverly Hills buying Kim a gift at Louis Vuitton for her 38th birthday on Sunday.

In addition to KUWTK, Jonathan has showed up on Celebrity Big Brother and Rob & Chyna.

Jessica Alba was seen at the Drake concert the night before with her female friends.

Meanwhile, Kim has been in Africa with Kanye and their daughter North. New images of Kim and North were shared on Wednesday morning.Advertisement

On Sunday night's Strictly Come Dancing, he was seen getting the opportunity to hit the ballroom another day, after he and show partner Katya Jones were spared elimination after a nail-biting dance-off.

And in the hours leading up to the pre-taped elimination being aired, Seann Walsh was spotted enjoying a celebratory boozing session with pals on the streets of Notting Hill, west London.

In photographs exclusively obtained by MailOnline, the 32-year-old comedian is seen chugging down a pint of Guinness  despite bosses of the BBC show reportedly banning boozing among the contestants after his recent scandalous kiss with married dancer Katya, which both parties blamed on drunkenness.

Chug: Seann Walsh was seen chugging Guinness on the street as he enjoyed a day out in Notting Hill, west London, on Sunday

Wearing a red striped T-shirt with a pair of black tracksuit bottoms, he appeared to be decidedly high spirits as he laughed raucously white chatting with his pals, during a drinking session went on after sundown.

He was seen carrying out pint glasses of the popular Irish stout to drink with his friends as they stood on the pavement as basked in the unseasonably warm temperatures in the English capital.

With a pair of stylish sunglasses perched atop his curly golden mane, the star - who had taped Sunday's episode of Strictly on Saturday evening - looked to be celebrating the result, which sees him survive at least another week.

Having a laugh: The comedian appeared to be in decidedly jovial spirits as he laughed and chatted with his group of friends

Getting a round in: He carefully carried three pints filled to the brim with the popular Irish stout as he got a round for his pals

Walsh so funny? The 32-year-old star laughed raucously as he soaked up the unseasonably warm weather during his day out

Saved: His day out with his pals came just hours before the nation would see him and Katya saved for another week on Strictly

That kiss: Seann has been caught up in a wave of controversy after he was caught kissing dance partner Katya Jones in public

His evening out came days after it was reported that bosses of the show had banned contestants from boozy nights out, and instilled a strict curfew, in the wake of Seann and Katya's kissing scandal.

A source told The Sun that stars were told not to attend a late night bash last Friday, as producers feared it would set a bad example the night before a live show.

The source said: 'The dancers wanted to attend a late-night party on a Friday. It was suggested that it would not look good for them all to be seen out and about at a bash the night before the live BBC show.'

Reports of a ban came hot on the heels of Strictly star Graeme Swann admitting that this year's stars didn't take kindly to the strict rules brought in by producers, in the wake of the kiss scandal.

Light it up: Seann puffed on a cigarette as he made the most of his day off, ahead of another intense week of dance rehearsals

New rules? His evening out came days after it was reported that bosses of the show had banned contestants from boozy nights out, and instilled a strict curfew, in the wake of Seann and Katya's kissing scandal

Not a good look: A source said of the reported boozing ban, 'The dancers wanted to attend a late-night party on a Friday. It was suggested that it would not look good for them all to be seen out and about at a bash the night before the live BBC show'

Casual: The comedian looked casually cool for his outing, wearing a red striped T-shirt with a pair of black tracksuit bottoms

Regulations: Reports of a ban came hot on the heels of Strictly star Graeme Swann admitting that this year's stars didn't take kindly to the strict rules brought in by producers, in the wake of the kiss scandal

Speaking to a BBC Sounds podcast he said: 'The pros were told to wind their neck in and they were all very angry because they couldn't go to a couple of functions that they wanted to do.

'They were on lockdown - the curfew was placed upon them. It's very much like being on a team - if one person lets the side down...'

Seann and Katya were seen being saved after dramatic dance-off on Sunday's instalment of Strictly, leaving fans furious that Vick Hope and her professional partner Graziano Di Prima were sent home instead.

The judges were unable to make a unanimous decision, leading to head judge Shirley Ballas to make the final call to send the Capital FM presenter, 29, and professional dancer newcomer, 24.

Joy in a glass: As he walked around the upscale neighbourhood, Seann made playful gestures while holding his Guinness pint

Controversial: Seann's kiss with Katya earlier this month drew headlines because they were both in relationships at the time

The consequences: Their lip-lock subsequently lead to end of Seann's five-year relationship with actress Rebecca Humphries

Blame it on the alcohol...: After pictures of Seann and Katya's kiss emerged, the dancing duo blamed it on boozing too much

Scandalous: Their scandal is the latest in a long line that has hit the show, adding to what has been dubbed the 'Strictly curse'

Comedian Seann and his Russian dance partner's shock reprieve comes just two weeks after pictures emerged of the pair passionately kissing on a London street  despite them both being in serious relationships at the time.

On Saturday night, Seann and Katya found themselves in the bottom three on the leaderboard after failing to impress with their Quickstep to Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg.

Gaining just 24 points out of 40, the pair faced elimination as they prepared to take part in the dance-off against Capital DJ host Vick, 28, who scored 20 with her Cha Cha to More Than Friends.

After both couples danced, the judges delivered their all important verdicts, with Craig kick-starting the vote by picking Vick and Graziano to save.

Keeping up with the Jonses: The day after Seann's boozy outing, Katya Jones was seen in London with her husband Neil Jones

Just chilling: The comedian appeared relaxed and happy, having taped the elimination episode of Strictly on Saturday night

Chat: At one point, Seann and his friends appeared to be locked in an intense conversation as they relaxed in outdoor seating

Birthday: Seann's scandalous kiss took place on the 32nd birthday of his now ex-girlfriend of five years, Rebecca Humphries

Apologies: In announcing their split, Rebecca alleged that Seann had yet to apologise to her  a claim he subsequently denied

Outcry: In the immediate aftermath of Seann and Katya's kiss, some fans had called for them to be booted from the hit show

'Both dances were very different but both couples I thought need technique as well, but the couple I thought, for me on the night, Vick and Graziano,' he said.

Meanwhile, Darcey Bussell chose to save Seann and Katya, saying the pair did a 'cleaner performance' and had improved since their dance on Saturday night.

Guest judge, Alfonso Ribeiro, who was standing in for Bruno for one week, also chose to save the Mock The Week star.

As their status in the show hung in the balance, Head Judge Shirley Ballas had the casting vote and sent them sailing through to next week.

Vote: Seann and Katya survived another week on Strictly after Head Judge cast the deciding vote to keep them in the contest

All day, all night: The comedian and his group of friends continued to hang out as the sun went down over the English capital

Getting more drinks in: Into the evening, the Strictly contestant was spotted getting another round of drinks in for the gang

Cool: As temperatures dropped at night, Seann kept himself warm with a black jacket, which he wore as he relaxed in his seat

Blending: As he enjoyed his evening out with his pals, Seann seamlessly blended in with fellow customers at the upscale bar

Shirley said: 'Well I thought both couples put their best foot forward this evening, but due to the performance I enjoyed the most I am going to save Seann and Katya.'

Show watchers were left furious over the result and argued that regardless of the kiss scandal, Katya and Seann had the weaker dance.

Seann's scandalous kiss took place on the 32nd birthday of his now ex-girlfriend of five years, actress Rebecca Humphries. They have since broken up and she alleges that Seann is yet to apologise to her  a claim he denies.

On an episode of Strictly sister show It Takes Two earlier this month, Katya apologised to 'everyone it hurt and involved', but said she and husband Neil were 'absolutely fine'.

'Obviously I apologise, and I can't apologise enough to everyone who it hurt and involved,' she said.

Romance rumours: He is also rumoured to have had a fling with Inbetweeners' star Emily Atack back in 2016, while he was with Rebecca after clicking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Scathing post: Seann's ex Rebecca shared a scathing post about him, saying he had called her a 'psycho' when she questioned if he had been cheating on her

Back to work he goes: As the night came to an end, he was seen hauling a small black suitcase ahead of Monday's rehearsals

Shock reprieve: Katya and show partner Seann Walsh survive a dramatic dance-off on Sunday night's Strictly Come Dancing, which saw Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima being sent home

Scandal: Comedian Seann and his Russian dance partner's shock reprieve comes just two weeks after pictures emerged of the pair passionately kissing on a London street

Claims: Neil Jones has reportedly claimed his prospects on Strictly have been hampered by his wife Katya's cheating scandal

'But, the main thing, me and Neil are absolutely fine and thats what matters to me the most right now and focusing on my job and doing it as professionally I can.'

In fact, things were so fine between Neil and Katya that he was posting his support for the pair on social media, just hours after the kissing pictures emerged.

Seann's ex, Rebecca, meanwhile, shared a scathing post about him, saying he had called her a 'psycho' when she questioned if he had been cheating on her.

He is also rumoured to have had a fling with Inbetweeners' star Emily Atack back in 2016, while he was with Rebecca after clicking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

All over: Actress Rebecca Humphries confirmed that she had ended her relationship with comedian Walsh after details of the kiss emerged - they had been together for five years

Candid: The actress heaped further condemnation on Walsh by revealing his passionate kiss with Katya happened on her birthday, while she sat alone in their London flatCharlie Sheen is heading to Australia next month for a highly-anticipated speaking tour.

But activist group Collective Shout is now trying to derail the series of shows, calling on Immigration Minister David Coleman to 'revoke' the troubled actor's tourist visa.

In a petition published on their website, Collective Shout claim the 53-year-old's 'sickening history of assault' makes him a 'controversial visa applicant' and 'sends the wrong message' about violence.

'It sends the wrong message!' Activists group Collective Shout have called on Immigration Minister David Coleman to BAN Charlie Sheen from visiting Australia on his upcoming speaking tour

Collective Shout 'is a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls'.

Speaking with The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, the group's campaigns manager Caitlin Roper stated: 'Allowing Charlie Sheen to come into the country to profit from a speaking tour sends the wrong message'.

'It tells men if you're high-profile enough, wealthy or famous enough, you can get away with it. I don't really believe he's a changed man. He's got a really long rap sheet'.

In the public eye: Charlie has been a Hollywood star for more than three decades. He is pictured in 1990

According to USA Today, the former Two and Half Men star was taken into custody in 1996 charged with assaulting his former girlfriend, Brittany Ashland.

The following year, the actor 'plead no contest to the charges and received a suspended sentence and two years of probation'.

'It tells men if you're high-profile enough, wealthy or famous enough, you can get away with it': Collective Shout is hoping to derail Charlie's upcoming speaking tour

In 2009, Charlie was arrested on domestic violence allegations relating to then-wife, Brooke Mueller.

He later plead guilty to a misdemeanour assault charge and spent 30 days in rehab as part of a plea deal.

Caitlin Roper told The Sydney Morning Herald that should Charlie be allowed into the country, there may be protests outside the venues.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Charlie Sheen for comment.His wife is heavily pregnant with their first child but that didn't stop Josh Brolin from taking her on a mini motorcycle ride in Malibu on Sunday.

The actor, 50, and Kathryn Boyd, 30, were both helmet free as they laughed during the ride where she held onto his waist.

In the state of California all drivers and riders on a motorcycle are required to wear a helmet.

On two wheels:Josh Brolin took his heavily pregnant wife Kathryn Boyd on a mini motorcycle in Malibu on Sunday

California Vehicle Code Section 27803 requires all motorcycle drivers and passengers to wear a helmet when on a motorcycle, or motor-driven cycle.

The law goes further toward requiring helmets by making it illegal for a helmeted passenger to ride with a driver who is not wearing a helmet.

The star and his wife looked like they were having a great time, smiling as they pulled out of a parking lot.

Safety? Who cares!: On a hot day in the ocean-side town, the couple threw caution to the wind opting not to wear crash helmets. It is illegal in the state of California to ride a motorcycle without a helmet

On a hot day in the ocean-side town, the couple threw caution - and safety - to the wind.

The Avengers: Infinity War star dressed in blue and orange shorts, a white long-sleeved sweatshirt and flip-flops.

His wife wore a black and blue plaid long-sleeved shirt and black shorts with slides.

She put her blonde hair up in a high ponytail as she held on to her dad's waist.

Father and daughter bonding: The couple looked like they were having a great time

He married the former assistant in Cashiers, North Carolina, in September 2016, and they are expecting their first child, a baby girl, any day now.

Josh shares a daughter Eden and son Trevor, 29, with his first wife, Alice Adair, 52, to whom he was married from 1988 to 1994.

The Deadpool 2 actor was later wed to actress Diane Lane, 53, from 2004 to 2013.

Josh's career has gone from strength to strength this year. He starred in blockbusters - Avengers: Infinity War as Thanos in April and Cable in Deadpool 2 in May.

He also co-starred in Sicario: Day Of The Soldado in June and Legacy Of The White Tailed Deer in July.

Josh has four projects set up: The Untitled Avengers Movie, due out May 3; Deadpool spin-off X-Force; George And Tammy about country music icons George Jones and Tammy Wynette; and an untitled TV series.Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt are reportedly on the rocks after he secretly partied with his Playboy model ex-girlfriend in New York.

The Love Island hunk, 28, was allegedly spotted looking flirty with Australian bombshell Sarah Stephens at a silent disco during his trip to the Big Apple.

Jamie and Camilla, who are one of the few couples still together from the 2017 series, have apparently been rowing furiously over his antics and will have 'crisis talks' when he returns to Essex on Tuesday.

Rumour has it: Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt are reportedly on the rocks after he secretly partied with his Playboy model ex-girlfriend in New York

'They've hardly spent any quality time together in recent weeks due to Camilla being away filming the new series of SAS: Who Dares Wins in Chile while Jamie went to the States to catch up with old friends,' a source told The Sun.

The insider explained that Jamie was partying with pals from his reality show Taking New York, which he was on before Love Island, including his ex Sarah.

'The pair tried to disguise that they were out together but Camilla wasn't happy after she found out he'd gone all that way and suddenly ended up spending time with her,' the source claimed.

'They are a fiercely private couple and have prided themselves in not falling into the trappings of fame  but no doubt will try and save face on social media in the next few days.'

Former flame: Jamie dated Victoria's Secret model Sarah Stephen (pictured) for 18 months, with the pair splitting just six months before he made a late arrival on Love Island

Hmm: The Love Island hunk, 28, was allegedly spotted looking flirty with Australian bombshell Sarah at a silent disco during his trip to the Big Apple

Oh dear: Sarah was seen partying with Jamie and their other pals on Instagram story

Jamie's representative declined to comment on the claims. MailOnline has also reached out to Camilla's spokesperson.

Jamie dated Victoria's Secret model Sarah for 18 months, with the pair splitting just six months before he made a late arrival on Love Island.

Calvin Klein model Jamie met Sarah in New York on the fashion circuit and they embarked on a romance soon after.

She has appeared on Italian Vogue and has previously starred alongside Hollywood stars Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito in 2009 release Solitary Man.

Not great: 'The pair tried to disguise that they were out together but Camilla wasn't happy after she found out he'd gone all that way and suddenly ended up spending time with her,' a source claimed. Pictured, Sarah and Jamie while they were dating

They go way back: The insider explained that Jamie was partying with pals from his reality show Taking New York, which he was on before Love Island, including his ex Sarah

Meanwhile, bomb disposal expert Camilla, 28, and Jamie are one of just two couples still together following last year's season.

The well-suited couple who have gone the distance alongside engaged Jess Shears and Dom Lever have managed to outlast the other finalists Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies, Chris Hughes and Olivia Attwood, and Marcel Somerville and Gabby Allen.

The pair previously insisted that they are happily gliding along at their 'own pace' despite many of the other Love Island couples moving in together or, in one case, getting engaged.

Going strong: Meanwhile, bomb disposal expert Camilla, 28, and Jamie are one of just two couples still together following last year's season

Camilla told MailOnline last year: 'We don't feel any pressure, as long as were happy. We are just taking things at our own pace. I think the trick is to enjoy things as they are now, and that builds a strong foundation for the future.'

Camilla also said that her family and friends 'really like' Jamie - and that she gives him her 'full support' when it comes to talking about his previous battles with depression - something he spoke about after leaving the series.

She said: 'He is great at bringing that up and asking those questions about mental health. He is going to make a huge difference. He has my absolute full support.

'Any woman might feel great for 12 hours in the day, but then in the evening you dont feel great about yourself. Its a very normal thing. To give Jamie his due  he is very good at making me feel good'.The global value of illicit trade and transnational activities is estimated at between 8 per cent and 15 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), said experts ahead of the Economist Events Global Illicit Trade Summit in Abu Dhabi.



The global value of illicit trade and transnational activities is estimated at between 8 per cent and 15 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), said experts ahead of the upcoming Economist Events Global Illicit Trade Summit in Abu Dhabi, citing a World Economic Forum report.



The third edition of the event is being held on October 30 at the Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi, and will discuss the impact of illegal trade.



Governments and businesses are losing billions of dollars in tax revenues and income to underground economic activity such as the illicit trade of counterfeit products.



The summit offers a platform to facilitate dialogue between the private and public sectors, international organisations, law enforcement agencies and policy makers, in order to forge an international response to a global and multi-faceted problem.



Brendan LeMoult, AIT and fiscal affairs vice president, JTI, speaker on the Tax Regimes  Double Edged Swords panel, said: One of the key threats to tax policies is the upsurge in global illicit trade. This can influence market dynamics and divert consumers towards cheaper, illegal products. Ongoing dialogue between businesses and governments along with planned, long-term and balanced tax policies best meets government objectives and influences consumer choice. Platforms such as this Summit offer an opportunity to encourage such dialogue.



The Summit will feature panel discussions and interviews with prominent business leaders and experts on the various forms and facets of illicit trade.



Bassel El Turk, board member, Brand Owners' Protection Group, said: Illicit trade represents a significant problem for global brands and so far the international response to combat it has been fragmented and insufficient. It encompasses a broad variety of issues, ranging from the cross-border sale of Intellectual Property infringing goods (such as handbags, apparel and the like) to the sale of licit goods for illicit purposes (such as money-laundering).



Moreover illicit trade does not contribute to the economy the way licit trade, as it does not go through the legal channel. There is an urgent need for dialogue to tackle the issue.



The event is supported by JTI, SCLG, AmCham Abu Dhabi, Brand Owners Protection Group (BPG), Kuwait Business Council, British Business Group, German Emirati Joint Council for Industry and Commerce, Canadian Business Council, INTA and The Business Year.  TradeArabia News ServiceMena Suvari has gotten married for the third time.

On Sunday evening while at the Last Chance for Animals' Annual Celebrity Benefit in Beverly Hills, the 39-year-old star confirmed she had secretly wed boyfriend of two years Michael Hope.

'It's great. I'm really happy. We're happy,' the American Woman actress told Us Weekly. 'Third time's a charm!'

Mrs Hope: Mena Suvari has gotten married for the third time. On Sunday evening while at the Last Chance for Animals' Annual Celebrity Benefit in Beverly Hills she confirmed she had secretly wed boyfriend of two years Michael Hope

She did not say when they walked down the aisle.

She flashed her rings on Sunday as well

Suvari was previously married to Robert Brinkmann from 2000 to 2005, and Simone Sestito from 2010 to 2012.

'It was very intimate. It was very beautiful,' she told Us.

'I had my closest friends with me. It was very meaningful.

'After all these years, sort of having ups and downs, it's very nice just being settled, especially at this point in my life.'

And she said she loves that he is a gentleman.

'He's a really great guy,' she gushed to Us. 'I got me a Canadian. Old school, really considerate, old-fashioned. I'm like, "Who are you?"'

And the blonde may be ready to have a baby.

'Maybe [we'll] start a family,' she revealed. 'I have a few years left! We'll see.'

Animal lover: Suvari received the Celebrity Activist of the Year Award at the Last chance for Animals gala

They met on the set of their 2016 Hallmark movie, I'll Be Home for Christmas. She starred and he worked in the art department.

The American Beauty star flashed her rings at the Sunday event. She looked to have on an engagement ring and wedding band.

The actress was an absolute showstopper when she hit the red carpet for the benefit.

The former child star looked amazing in an elegant strapless gown that hugged her toned upper body, and flowed from the waist down with its pleated crimping fabric.

The American Pie star wore her blonde tresses long, with some soft waves and a part in the middle.While Chris Hemsworth wrapped production on Sony's Men in Black spin-off, Tessa Thompson was spotted on the New York City set on Sunday.

The Thor: Ragnarok star could hardly contain her excitement on the set, as she filmed scenes where she was seen running out of an NYC brownstone, trying to hail a cab.

She was also seen having some fun with photographers, as she turned her own camera on them during some downtime on the set.

Say cheese: Tessa Thompson has some fun with photographers, turning the cameras on them during some downtime on the set of Sony's Men in Black spin-off, filming in New York

I see you: The actress could barely contain her excitement while filming scenes in New York

Thompson, who plays Agent M in the currently-untitled MIB spin-off, was seen wearing a bright red hoodie that she had under a long, thick grey overcoat.

The long coat came below her knees, covering what appear to be a pair of black shorts seen peeking out from the coat in one photo.

The Creed II star was also holding a cell phone and wearing black combat boots during these scenes.

Wait for me: The Thor: Ragnarok star could hardly contain her excitement on the set, as she filmed scenes where she was seen running out of an NYC brownstone, trying to hail a cab

Buds in Black: The actress has also been sharing snaps from the set over the past few weeks, sharing one shot on Instagram with her 'bud in black' Hemsworth, as they walked up a desert sand dune while wearing black suits and carrying black umbrellas

The actress has also been sharing snaps from the set over the past few weeks, sharing one shot on Instagram with her 'bud in black' Hemsworth, as they walked up a desert sand dune while wearing black suits and carrying black umbrellas.

She also shared photos of her and her co-star between takes, with one shot featuring Hemsworth making a silly face.

Details are still unclear about what characters both Hemsworth, 35, and Thompson, 35, are playing, but The Hollywood Reporter revealed in March that this movie is 'more global in scope.'

Taxi time: The long coat came below her knees, covering what appear to be a pair of black shorts seen peeking out from the coat in one photo

Smiling star: 'The Creed II star was also holding a cell phone and wearing black combat boots during these scenes.

Global scope: Details are still unclear about what characters both Hemsworth, 35, and Thompson, 35, are playing, but The Hollywood Reporter revealed in March that this movie is 'more global in scope

Will Smith's Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K from the original MIB trilogy will not return, with this movie to focus on new, original characters like Thompsons' Agent M and Hemsworth's Agent H.

The only connection to the previous movies will be Emma Thompson, who reprises her role from 2012's Men in Black 3 as Agent O, the head of the Men in Black organization.

The movie also stars Rebecca Ferguson, Liam Neeson, Rafe Spall and Kumail Nanjiani.

New stars: This movie will focus on new, original characters like Thompsons' Agent M and Hemsworth's Agent H

Spin-off star: The only connection to the previous movies will be Emma Thompson, who reprises her role from 2012's Men in Black 3 as Agent O, the head of the Men in Black organization

Sony Pictures has set a June 14, 2019 release date for the Men in Black spin-off, directed by Straight Outta Compton filmmaker F. Gary Gray, which will go against Warner Bros.' Shaft remake.

Thompson will return as Bianca in this year's highly-anticipated sequel Creed II, and she's also voicing Lady in Disney's Lady and the Tramp remake, with Justin Theroux voicing Tramp.

The actress is also slated to star in Passing with Ruth Negga.

Busy star: Thompson will return as Bianca in this year's highly-anticipated sequel Creed II, and she's also voicing Lady in Disney's Lady and the Tramp remake

Smiling on the set: The actress is also slated to star in Passing with Ruth NeggaAshley Graham was in New York City on Monday hitting Sirius XM just days before her 31st birthday.

The curvy model, who appears to have lost 20lbs in recent months, flashed her tummy in a crop top and also showed off her backside while in tight leggings.

This comes after she said she was happy for Kendall Jenner who landed so many jobs she can be picky. While on Watch What Happens Live this weekend Ashley said: 'Well, lucky for her. I've never been so lucky. This t*ts and a** have had to fight through and break down barriers every day.'

Welcome to Sirius! Ashley Graham was in New York City on Monday hitting Sirius XM just days before her 31st birthday

Le look: The curvy model, who appears to have lost 20lbs in recent months, flashed her tummy in a crop top and also showed off her backside while in tight leggings

The lingerie model looked lovely in a cream colored cropped sweater that highlighted her shrinking tummy.

The Vogue cover girl added black track pants and cream colored heels.

And the siren, who has nearly 8m Instagram followers, looked glammed just right with her brunette locks cascading down her shoulder.

After posing alone, Graham put her arm around stand-up comedienne Sarah Silverman, who was also on Sirius XM.

No waist issues: The lingerie model looked lovely in a cream colored cropped sweater that highlighted her shrinking tummy

New pal: After posing alone, Graham put her arm around stand-up comedienne Sarah Silverman, who was also on Sirius XM

Before heading into Sirius, Ashley was on the street exiting her car with several handlers.

The looker - who says she hates being asked about the term 'plus-sized model' - gave a generous look at her figure, which has been a subject since the day she became famous.

Lately the star, who is 5ft9in tall and reportedly used to weight around 200lbs, has looked more slender.

The bombshell will likely not be commenting on her weight loss, however.

Popular model: And just when she was talking up Sarah, in popped Sway Calloway

Spicy: This comes after she said she was happy for Kendall Jenner who landed so many jobs she can be picky. While on Watch What Happens Live this weekend Ashley said: 'Well, lucky for her. I've never been so lucky. This t*ts and a** have had to fight through and break down barriers every day'

According to Hollywood Life, the Vogue cover girl is 'sick of people constantly commenting on her weight, and her bodyshe gets it, shes a model, but its the incessant, never ending speculation over how much she weighs, or if shes lost any weight, if shes gained anything, that really, really bugs her.'

The source added, 'Ashley, is just like any other regular woman in that throughout times in her life, even from month to month, her body can fluctuate.

'Shes not some stick thin model who has to constantly watch every calorie that she consumes and obsess about keeping her weight the exact same from hour to hour.'

Before the interview: Before heading into Sirius, Ashley was on the street exiting her car with several handlers and fans

Don't ask! The looker - who says she hates being asked about the term 'plus-sized model' - gave a generous look at her figure

This comes after Graham was accused by fans of losing too much weight after she attended Vogue Magazine's Force of Fashion summit on Thursday.

After Ashley shared pictures of her look from the event, she received backlash from some fans who thought she was losing 'too much weight' and no longer represented them as a plus-size model.

One fan wrote: 'You look stunning but I'm afraid that being plus sized is never going to be socially accepted when the woman who practically founded it in the first place continues to lose weight or photoshop.'

There were others in agreement who thought Ashley definitely looked 'skinnier' in the outfit she chose for the summit.

'Too skinny,' one disappointed fan wrote. 'Don't represent me anymore.'

They have met: Ashley was joined with Kendall (left), Paloma Elsesser, 26, (second to the right) and Gigi Hadid, 23 (right) at a panel in NYC last week

Suddenly slim? Lately the star, who is 5ft9in tall and reportedly used to weight around 200lbs, has looked more slender. Graham at the 2018 Hearst MagFront on Wednesday, left and in 2015, right

While another commented: 'You don't look like a curvy model anymore.'

During the Force of Fashion summit, Ashley was on a panel with Gigi Hadid, 23; Kendall, 22; and Paloma Elsesser, 26, where the four women divulged on the #MeToo movement and becoming a boss for their personal brands.

Ashley mentioned body image on the Vogue panel and how she still felt push back for her curvy figure.

'Thats a lot of resistance, right?' She said. 'Every day still theres still resistance for curvy women in the industry, and there is tokenism for curvy women in the industry.

Still in love: This weekend the star posed with her husband and said it will always be like prom

'It has become so much more normal, but Ive had people tell me, "You need to lose weight," or that the "clothes dont fit you, so were not shooting you."

'And this still happens, even on set...Resistance is just a part of my career and that's why I fight so hard and call myself a body activist.'

Representing an industry for curvy women sometimes has its drawbacks for Ashley because she often receives backlash if she posts working out videos or images where she might look thinner.

Just last year, Ashley addressed the issues with people thinking they can comment anything about her body. 'Just for the record - I workout to stay healthy, feel good, get rid of jet lag, clear my head...I don't workout to lose weight or my curves because I love the skin I'm in,' she said.

Get fit! Graham stepped out in skintight leggings and a windbreakerShe recently bucked convention in a top hat and tails at Princess Eugenie's wedding.

But Cara Delevingne opted for a more feminine style on Monday evening as she stepped out wearing a flowing floral frock.

The model, 26, tied her dress with a leather biker jacket and a pair of heeled boots so give her pretty ensemble an edgier feel, while attending the TAG Heuer auction auction at the Maddox Gallery.

The Suicide Squad star flashed a glimpse of her black bra in the dress, which boasted a sheer top half, showcasing her washboard abs.

Cara simply accessorised her look with a silver chain necklace and watch, while adding glamour with a perfectly applied palette of make-up.

As she arrived at the event, Cara warmly greeted a male companion by giving him a hug on the red carpet outside.

Model material: Cara Delevingne opted for a more feminine style on Monday evening as she stepped out wearing a flowing floral frock

Biker chic: The model, 26, tied her dress with a leather biker jacket and a pair of heeled boots so give her pretty ensemble an edgier feel, while attending the It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere auction

Stylish: The Suicide Squad star flashed a glimpse of her black bra in the dress, which boasted a sheer top half, showcasing her washboard abs

Rumour mill: It recently appeared that Ashley had confirmed her relationship with Cara after commenting 'mine'  and sharing suggestive emojis  under a sultry shot of the catwalk queen at the Toronto Film Festival

Cara appeared to be without her rumoured girlfriend, Pretty Little Liars star Ashley Benson, during the evening out.

It recently appeared that Ashley had confirmed her relationship with Cara after commenting 'mine'  and sharing suggestive emojis  under a sultry shot of the catwalk queen at the Toronto Film Festival.

However, the screen beauty claimed that her account was hacked, as she shared a snap of herself on Instagram posing at an airport on Tuesday with the caption: 'When you just get off a flight with no WiFi and find out your Instagram got hacked.'

Flying solo: Cara appeared to be without her rumoured girlfriend, Pretty Little Liars star Ashley Benson, during the evening out

Looking good: Cara was dressed to impress for her fun-filled outing on Monday evening

Pals: As she arrived at the event, Cara warmly greeted a male companion by giving him a hug on the red carpet outside

Sheer delight: The model turned actress commanded attention in a sheer top

Revealing that she already had somebody on the case to deal with the problem, she added: 'Thank god for @remi.franklin fixing it.'

Rumours of their romance first began in April after they were spotted holding hands together during a late night in New York.

They were also seen sharing a steamy kiss at London's Heathrow airport back in August.

All smiles! At the event Cara caught up with British photographer David Yarrow

Hand-in-hand: She chatted affectionately to a man dressed in navy outside the event

Hosts: Jean-Claude Biver took to the stage alongside Cara and David

Hot couple: Denise van Outen looked sleek in a black jumpsuit and trainers combination alongside fiance Eddie Boxshall

Loved-up: Montana Brown rocked a bejewelled jacket as she turned up with hunky beau Elliot Reeder

The boys! Smartly-dressed Jay Rutland and Jamie Redknapp were also spotted

Smouldering: Devilishly handsome David Gandy donned a navy coat and chinos

Stepping out: Jay was later pictured with his wife Tamara Ecclestone who wowed in a plunging velvet dress

Hello! Jamie gave a female pal a warm welcome at the event

Gal pals: Denise posed with Natalie Pinkham on the red carpet who wore a plunging maxi dress

Bottoms up! Denise held a glass of fizz as she hung out with glamorous MontanaAustralian audiences have been watching the comedy game show Have You Been Paying Attention? for five years, and the US will soon be sitting up to take notice.

As reported by TV Tonight on Tuesday, CBS Studios International has picked up the exclusive worldwide format rights to the Network Ten program.

The move is a rare international pick-up for the American media giant, which owns Network Ten following last year's buyout.

Scroll down for video

Have You Been Paying Attention? is set to go global after CBS announced this week it had bought the Network Ten format for American audiences. Pictured: HYBPA? host Tom Gleisner

Paul Gilbert, CBS Studios International's Senior Vice President, International Formats, said in a statement on Monday: 'HYBPA? joins CBS' portfolio of the biggest formats on television; from Wheel Of Fortune to America's Top Model.

'This agreement is a terrific example of the new synergies we have in Australia since acquiring Network Ten, and we look forward to partnering with the team at Working Dog Productions to make HYBPA? a global success.'

Michael Hirsh, Executive Producer, Working Dog Productions, added: 'We are proud and delighted to bring the show we love to the rest of the world.'

Big time: The move is a rare international pick-up for CBS, which owns Network Ten following last year's buyout. Pictured, from left: HYBPA?'s Sam Pang, Tom Gleisner and Ed Kavalee

The quiz show, hosted by Tom Gleisner, is currently in its sixth season and is Ten's third highest-rating program behind MasterChef and The Bachelor.

Each week, HYBPA? takes a comedic look at the news and current affairs events of the past seven days.

The five-person panel features comedian Ed Kavalee and includes guests such as The Living Room's Amanda Keller and Gruen star Wil Anderson.

Small screen hit: The quiz show, hosted by Tom Gleisner, is currently in its sixth season and is Ten's third highest-rating program behind MasterChef and The Bachelor

The rights buy-up is certainly welcome news for Ten, which has seen sweeping changes since CBS' takeover of the ailing TV station.

CBS has owned Channel Ten since November 2017.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the network for comment.Yesterday, following five months of in-fighting, Simon Mayo (pictured with Jo Whiley) announced his resignation from Radio 2

Ask anybody in broadcasting and theyll tell you that a hugely popular show, with impressive audience figures, fronted by a much-loved big name who isnt a diva sounds like the impossible dream.

And yet, for eight years, thats exactly what BBC Radio 2 had with their Drivetime show hosted by Simon Mayo  as popular with the A-list celebrity guests as he was with his six million listeners.

But yesterday, following five months of in-fighting, Mayo announced his resignation from Radio 2.

Those in the know say it had only been a matter of time after the BBC, a corporation obsessed with political correctness, foisted a female co-presenter on him in a clumsy bid to redress gender inequality.

And it doesnt help that James Purnell  the former Labour politician who is now Director of Radio  doesnt seem to care about the listeners and is more interested in driving digital traffic.

Mayo was typically polite and gracious when he took to Twitter to tell his 255,000 followers that he wished to focus more on writing.

But the truth is that, committed Christian though he is, it would have taken the patience of a saint for him to continue working at Radio 2.

He had admitted he found it difficult and upsetting when producers decided to scrap the afternoon show he anchored alone and parachute in Jo Whiley to present alongside him, scrapping her evening show in the process.

Certainly, a sense of wounded feelings was in evidence in Mayos precisely phrased Twitter statements which he used to announce his exit yesterday.

In the nicest possible way he made it clear that he was leaving because his dream job had unexpectedly turned into an nightmare which he simply could no longer see through.

So. A few things to say. Very sadly, I have decided to move on from Radio 2, he said. Sad to leave the show, sad to leave Jo, sad to leave Wogan House (I thought Id be dragged out aged 120). But circumstances change . . .

Juggling my writing and radio has become increasingly tricky (a nice problem to have). Ive just signed a new two-book deal with the nice folk at Transworld and theyll be expecting something half decent before too long . . .

His statement continued: I know, I know, Im as surprised at this turn of events as you. But at my grand old age to be setting off on these brand new trails is enormous fun.

And all the more so for being so unexpected. There are, however, only so many hours in a day. Ill continue with the (flagship) film show on 5Live with Mark Kermode and, beyond that, other radio adventures beckon!

Early days: Jo Whileys post on Instagram yesterday which was captioned: This pic was taken when I first started out in radio & was working for Radio 4. How times have changed

But for now its just the sadness of leaving. Radio 2 has been a wonderful place for me  my happiest radio I think. Our listeners are really quite extraordinary.

He went on: One other thing. Maybe it needs to be said, maybe not but so there is no room for argument Ill be clear. Ive loved working with the exceptional Jo Whiley and when the show was reconfigured she was my first and only choice.

Some of the abuse she has had here has been appalling. Support for a show is one thing, assaulting the dignity of a warm-hearted and loyal friend is another.

So by all means discuss whats happening here, but lets keep some civility. Thank you. Here endeth the lesson.

Despite the tactful words, many feel that Mayos departure is indicative of a toxic atmosphere at Radio 2, one which can be traced back to the BBCs publication last summer of a list of the salaries of the highest paid at the corporation.

Mayos salary, revealed to be in the 350,000-400,000 bracket, was a matter for national debate  as was the fact that Radio 2 was overwhelmingly presented by white men of a certain age. Jane Garvey of Radio 4s Womans Hour said that the station was extraordinarily male and entirely pale.

BBC director-general Tony Hall agreed that the corporation needed to go further and faster on diversity.

The top brass felt that Radio 2 in particular was an embarrassment. The last time a woman had presented a show between the hours of 7am and 7pm was Debbie Thrower back in 1998. It seems the knee-jerk response was to mess with two highly successful formats  the Drivetime show and Jo Whileys evening programme, all in the name, many felt, of tokenism and box ticking.

Head of Radio 2, Lewis Carnie, apparently tried to fight the rapid imposition of more female voices, and the downgrading of the pay of some of the male stars including Chris Evans and Simon Mayo who were both asked to take a pay cut.

He would have known that it would lead to a crisis for the station, with its biggest names heading for the commercial sector.

Breakfast host Evans announced last month that he is off to Virgin Radio for 2 million a year, Mayo reportedly is heading for Smooth  and a hefty pay rise.

He and Jo Whiley are friends  as he was at pains to make clear yesterday  having known each other for more than two decades since they worked together on Radio 1.

Yet, despite their friendship, their on-air chemistry was awful. They were tense, brittle and simply toe-curling as a duo. One would crash in on the others story, and then both would stop so that the other could continue.

Mayo, so able, so inoffensive, and so good at chatting gently with callers, was oil and water with edgy Jo Whiley.

Whiley, famously pals with celebs such as Bono, is great at interviewing musicians, but the demands of making nice with the little people proved a stretch.

One radio reviewer said that when talking to callers she was: squeezing out the words with all the ease and enjoyment with which one might squeeze out a kidney stone.

She and Mayo couldnt be more different. Mayo, who lives in a 2 million house in Islington, North London, but has managed to retain a common touch, was equally dismayed by the revelations about salaries. He said that he felt exposed and was worried that the list would come to be an annual turkey shoot for the enemies of the BBC.

And so he has quit rather than be exposed for a second year, and rather than continue working with Jo Whiley.

Mayo was typically polite and gracious when he took to Twitter to tell his 255,000 followers that he wished to focus more on writing

It was also said that his pay had gone down, and hers had gone up, to make sure that when they co-hosted on Drivetime they were being paid the same amount.

The son of two teachers, Mayo came into radio because he wanted to be a radio engineer. He then ended up doing hospital radio while he was working as a car park attendant for Worthing council  hardly the bright lights of showbiz. His happiest memory is of seeing Bruce Springsteen play a small concert.

Married for more than 30 years, he has three children.

Jo Whiley is famous for her nasal delivery and too-cool-for-school demeanour. She lives in a converted barn with a mass of David Bowie memorabilia and her four children, and has been going to Glastonbury for decades.

His side project is writing novels. Hers is managing an indie band.

Gillian Reynolds, the doyenne of radio critics, remarked that the strain that co-presenting was putting on their 25-year friendship was obvious.

She wrote: If voices can suggest antipathy, theirs are doing it well. Is she trying to dominate every exchange, or is he, craftily, just letting her waffle? Is he deliberately placed off-microphone to make her sound louder? Drivetime with them really is a bumpy ride.

Some 9,000 listeners were moved to sign a petition directly after the new show started in May this year, asking for Mayo to be given his slot back.

The son of two teachers, Simon Mayo came into radio because he wanted to be a radio engineer

In June, Head of Radio 2 Lewis Carnie hinted at a revamp but said that listeners needed to give the presenters time to bed in to their roles.

By August, this view had hardened  Mayo was to put up, and shut up. In an interview with Music Week magazine, Carnie said: I think its going very well.

Obviously a lot of listeners were unhappy when it started but it just takes a while. When Chris Evans took over from Terry Wogan, it was the same; when Chris Evans replaced Johnnie Walker on Drivetime years ago, it was the same. People tend to be very loyal to us and like what weve got.

So who is responsible for the sorry state Radio 2 currently finds itself in?

One knowledgable BBC source suggests that the blame lies with James Purnell. A former Labour politician who was Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, he is now the Beebs Director of Radio and Director of Strategy and Digital.

It is said he has made chasing podcast listeners and fighting the challenge from subscription services like Netflix his priority.

Only this summer he remarked that he doesnt care about the listening figures released by RAJAR every quarter.

The source said: The problem is that Radio 2, while the BBCs most popular network, is under the control of Purnell, who knows nothing about radio and cares even less.

The source added: Bob Shennan (a popular executive who is the BBCs Director of Music and was previously in charge at Radio 2) knows and cares about radio and has to go round breaking bad news to people. The stars, of whom Mayo is one, feel nobody actually cares about them or the listener. Regarding the issue of unequal pay and female representation, Lewis Carnie originally tried to deny that there was a pay gap at his station.

Mayo then ended up doing hospital radio while he was working as a car park attendant for Worthing council

Theres no gender pay issue here at all, he said. With the exception of Chris Evans, who has an extraordinary market value because other people are after him, everyone else is kind of really in line.

Clearly this wasnt true  Jo Whiley who presented five nights a week from 8pm to 10pm was on 150,0000 to 200,000 a year  precisely half Mayos pay packet.

He started broadcasting on Radio 1 in 1986 and had presented on Radio 2 since 2001 on and off.

He is second only to Evans in profile at BBC Radio 2, and has managed to remain popular with his audience for more than 30 years.

With Mayos tantalising mention that other radio adventures beckon! you would be foolish, then, to rule out a move to commercial radio, with Smooth apparently very interested in a deal with him. They made their offer around a month ago.

Jo Whiley, meanwhile, is being sent back to an evening slot on Radio 2 and it seems that Sara Cox will be offered Drivetime.

She missed out on replacing Chris Evans at breakfast, which has gone to Zoe Ball.

What a state of flux Radio 2 is in, with its two highest profile presenters gone within a few weeks and with Zoe Balls appointment making her the first female breakfast show presenter on the station.

Mayos statement ended: And (one very final thing), as anyone who has worked here will attest, the producers and APs [assistant producers] are a class apart. Brilliant production teams make our jobs a joy. Thanks to each and every one. Onwards.

What a great shame for Mayo who found Radio 2 the best place he had ever worked.

As he said in an interview two years ago: When I moved to Radio 2, that was wonderful. Like a big Jacuzzi. Everyone at Radio 1 is jostling, everyone wants someone elses show and its all a bit nasty and backstabbing.

The presenters in Radio 2, we know who we are and where we fit. Chris, Ken, Bob Harris, Mark Radcliffe  we know what were good at. No one wants anyone elses show. I think this is where Ive been happiest. I feel as if I belong here.

How quickly that changed.Chris Hemsworth and his personal trainer Luke Zocchi unexpectedly gave an American hitchhiker a ride from Brisbane to Byron Bay on Monday.

And on Tuesday's Sunrise, travelling musician Scott Hildebrand admitted that he did not recognise the Hollywood actor at first.

The backpacker said he assumed the 35-year-old Thor star was 'just a normal dude'.

'I didn't realise who he was!' American hitchhiker Scott Hildebrand told Sunrise on Tuesday he thought Chris Hemsworth was just 'a normal dude' after the Hollywood star offered him a free helicopter ride to Byron Bay earlier this week

When asked whether he knew who Chris Hemsworth was, Scott replied: 'Not by name, no. I'm not from Australia. I know he is famous.'

Scott added that he assumed Chris and Luke were just 'normal' guys and not involved in the movie business.

'He seemed like a normal dude,' Scott said. 'He was so sweet and nice... I just felt like I was hanging out with some friends.'

Overseas visitor: When asked whether he knew who Chris Hemsworth was, Scott (pictured) replied: 'Not by name, no. I'm not from Australia. I know he is famous'

On Monday, Chris and Luke showed Scott some famous Australian hospitality by offering the international visitor a free ride.

The two men had just touched down in Brisbane when they saw Scott attempting to hitch a ride over the state border to Byron Bay, New South Wales.

In footage later shared to Instagram, Luke said: 'So we've just landed in Brissie, we've just seen a guy is hitchhiking to Byron Bay. That's where we're going!'

Viral video: On Monday, Chris (left) and his personal trainer Luke Zocchi showed Scott (right) some famous Australian hospitality by offering him a free ride. Pictured in an Instagram video

Luke then panned the camera over to Chris sitting in the van's backseat, who said: 'We're going to Byron, we'll give him a lift!'

But the ride wasn't going to be as straightforward as it first appeared.

Luke added: 'Little does he know that we're getting a chopper!'

What a ride! Scott, who had just arrived Down Under after a trip to Mexico, looked ecstatic about the surprising turn of events

That's lucky! It was not until Chris and Luke revealed they were going to switch vehicles and fly to Byron Bay via helicopter that Scott realised he'd been given a lift from Hollywood royalty

Scott, who had just arrived Down Under after a trip to Mexico, looked ecstatic about the surprising turn of events.

'Picked up a hitchhiker, wasn't a serial killer which we were stoked about and just happened to be a kick*** musician Scott Hildebrand,' Chris captioned the clip.

It was not until Chris and Luke revealed they were going to switch vehicles and fly to Byron via helicopter that Scott realised he'd been given a lift from Hollywood royalty.

Scott later told Nova 106.9 that he hoped to keep in touch with Chris and that they're now following each other on Instagram.Gogglebox star Sandra Martin is getting married for the fourth time after proposing to her boyfriend.

The 56-year-old - who starred in the Channel 4 show alongside best pal Sandi Bogle from 2013 until 2017 - revealed on Monday that the wedding is set for Valentine's Day next year.

Sandra, who is also known as Queen Bee, excitedly tweeted: 'NOT ONLY I GOT A NEW PERMANENT HOME WHOOP WHOOP. I GOT A NEW PERMANENT RELATIONSHIP WITH MY BOYFRIEND AND TING XXX.

Congratulations! Gogglebox star Sandra Martin is getting married for the fourth time after proposing to her boyfriend

She added: 'PLEASE TO ANNOUNCE THAT WE HAVE SET A DATE FOR WEDDING AND TING XXX

'Yes yes yes..he said YES YES. AM GETTING MARRIED AGAIN. MY 4TH MARRIAGE. BOOYACKA XXX (sic)'

Sandra then posted a video in which she explained that she was selecting an engagement ring for her unnamed beau.

She said in the clip: 'I'm just getting my fiance his engagement ring. I hope he gets me one! Yes, Queen Bee life.

Exciting! The 56-year-old - who starred in the Channel 4 show alongside best pal Sandi Bogle from 2013 until 2017 - revealed on Monday that the wedding is set for Valentine's Day next year

Cute couple: The ecstatic reality star shared a string of photos with her unnamed fiance as she announced the happy news

'I've been married three times and divorced, but I'm getting married again! Valentine's Day. I proposed to him and he said yes.'

Sandra went on: 'Uh oh! Anyway, I know that was a big surprise, but we're in love.'

And in the caption, she wrote: 'LOOKING FORWARD TO TO MY ENGAGEMENT RING FROM METO U..AND YOU TO ME (sic)'

Since announcing the news, Sandra has pinned a new tweet to her profile, in which she displayed a picture of herself with her boyfriend and claimed he was the reason for her recent move to Birmingham from her home in Brixton, South London.

She wrote: 'CAN I INTRODUCED YOU GUYS TO MY PERMANENT BOYFRIEND. HIS THE REAL.REASON I.MOVED TO BIRMINGHAM AND TING XXX. (sic)'

Ecstatic: Sandra then posted a video in which she explained that she was selecting an engagement ring for her beau

Sandra shot to fame as the takeaway-munching telly addict on Gogglebox, which follows ordinary people watching the nation's favourite TV programmes.

Explaining how she landed a role in the series, Sandra told Loose Women in February that it was pure chance.

'I had a day off from babysitting my granddaughter, I went to pick up my benefits and go to the pub. This guy asked me do you want to go on TV and I said "no I don't want a job, I'm on benefits I dont want the tax man to find out!"' she said.

Sandra divulged that once she was persuaded to sign up she was too late to inform the benefits office, laughing: 'I was still on benefits so I had to run down there and tell them I had a job and they went "I know, I've seen you."'

Loved-up: She said in the clip: 'I've been married three times and divorced, but I'm getting married again! Valentine's Day. I proposed to him and he said yes'

'Not only that, I had to get a TV license as well, cause I never had one and I'm thinking about that TV licence man watching me.'

Sandra went onto admit that she quickly burned through her pay from the Channel 4 hit, confessing: 'The money was coming in. The bank account was big, being in the community, all my friends on the social.'

'I never got help, but the money was squandering. The money went, taxis, hair, take away, friends that wanted money. The money just went. It was natural to help, I dont regret it.'

After she quit Gogglebox, she lived in hotels for eight months, saying: 'I wasn't homeless, but I didn't live anywhere.'

Sandra added that at some points she wished she had never found fame, explaining: 'I wanted to burn it all and go back to it. I'm not the celebrity person. I do lots of charity work, they dont pay me, Sandi likes doing the red carpet.'She has three children with husband Matthew McConaughey.

And on Tuesday, Camila Alves stepped out solo to Build Studios in New York City to talk about her website Women Of Today.

The 36-year-old star arrived in a pleated white dress with sparkling heels and wavy tresses.

Beautiful: Camila Alves stepped out solo to Build Studios to talk about her website Women Of Today at the New York City studios on Tuesday

The brunette beauty donned a long-sleeved frock featuring a fabric belt and a collared detail.

Camila flashed her toned legs in the chic dress, adding black, silver and gold embellished heels.

The mother of three styled her hair in waves, opting for a center part.

Just days earlier, she stepped out solo to attend Suzy Amis' OMD book launch party in Los Angeles; the TV personality cut a chic figure in a white frock with a flared skirt and asymmetrical buttons for the event.

What a goddess: The 36-year-old star arrived in a pleated white dress with sparkling heels and wavy tresses

So pretty: The brunette beauty donned a long-sleeved frock featuring a fabric belt and a collared detail

Wow factor: The mother of three styled her hair in waves, opting for a center part

Lovely: Camila flashed her toned legs in the chic dress, adding black, silver and gold embellished heels

Camila chose a calf-grazing neutral gown with long sleeves and a collar detail; the elegant number featuring buttons that went diagonally down her dress.

The star donned elaborate heels, adding several eye-catching diamond rings and statement earrings.

Camila styled her long brunette tresses half-up, half-down in waves with just a touch of makeup to accentuate her natural beauty.

She posed alongside Suzy and James Cameron, who hosted the book launch at Crossroads Kitchen.

Focused: Camila sported teal painted nails for a pop of color

Lovely: Just days earlier, she stepped out solo to attend Suzy Amis' OMD book launch party in Los Angeles

Stunner: The TV personality cut a chic figure in a white frock with a flared skirt and asymmetrical buttons for the event; pictured with Suzy Amis and James Cameron

Last month, Camila dazzled at the 17th Annual Samsung Charity Gala in New York City.

She wowed in a plunging white gown, adding an array of sparkling accessories including a gold clutch.

Camila, who rocked matching gold pumps, wore her locks slicked back with matching eye shadow for a pop of shine.

Flawless: Last month, Camila dazzled at the 17th Annual Samsung Charity Gala in New York City; pictured September 27

Fancy: She wowed in a plunging white gown with a gold clutch, adding an array of sparkling accessories including a bronze clutch

The Brazilian-born beauty attended the event with her husband Matthew, 48.

Camila and Matthew are parents to three children: Levi, 10; Vida, eight, and Livingston, five.

The stunner and her actor beau began dating in 2006; they tied the knot on June 9, 2012.The impact of Ryan Edwards' troubles on his family is illustrated in Monday's edition of Teen Mom OG.

In a trailer for the MTV series, Edwards' parents Jen and Larry Edwards learn of his latest brush with the law, in the form of a July 23 arrest in connection with a parole violation.

Speaking with the show's co-executive producer Kiki Malone, the 30-year-old Chattanooga, Tennessee native's parents spoke about how they're on edge everyday over his struggles with drugs including heroin, and resultant legal problems.

Scroll below for video

Tough times: The impact of Ryan Edwards' troubles on his family is illustrated in Monday's edition of Teen Mom OG, as his parents Jen and Larry Edwards learn about his July 23 arrest in connection with a parole violation

'You don't know if there's gonna be a trigger,' Jen said, while Larry added, 'In addiction, you just never know - you never know if today's the day.'

The father-of-two sons - infant Jagger with wife Mackenzie Standifer, and Bentley, nine, with ex Maci Bookout - is currently in a rehab facility following a stint in rehab last year, and not expected to leave the facility until next year, a source toldUS Weekly earlier this month.

Bentley took news of his dad's absence particularly hard, Larry said.

'He asked me out there in the garage [where Ryan was] ... I knew he knew, but I knew he needed to hear it from us and I told him the truth,' Larry said. 'I told him, "The most important thing is that your daddy's clean." And he started crying.

Trying year: The Chattanooga, Tennessee native was arrested this past March over a probation violation

Uncertain: Jen Edwards said 'you don't know if there's gonna be a trigger' leading to her son abusing drugs again

Difficult: Ryan's parents spoke with Teen Mom OG co-executive producer Kiki Malone about how they're on edge everyday over his struggles with drugs and legal problems

Sad: Larry explained how he broke the bad news to grandson Bentley over his dad Ryan's rehab

The concerned grandpa said that Bentley gave him a 'big hug' and he did his best to reassure him that things would work out.

'I said, "Buddy, he's going to be OK - he's got us, and he's going to be fine,"' said Larry, who noted they were concerned for Standifer as well.

Bentley's mom Bookout told her Teen Mom peer Kailyn Lowry that she was less stressed about Edwards when he was in custody as opposed to on the streets, for his own sake.

'I feel better that he is in jail because I know he's safe there, if that makes sense,' she said in an August appearance on Lowry's Coffee Convos podcast. He's not doing something that could potentially hurt him or an innocent person. So it sucks, crappy situation for everyone.'

Teen Mom OG can be seen Mondays at 9/8c on MTV.

Adversity: Ryan's mom Jen wiped away a tear amid the emotional timeGermany-based Siemens, a global technology powerhouse, and Iraqs Ministry of Electricity have signed an agreement in which Siemens would add 11 gigawatts (GW) of power generation capacity over four years to ensure 23 million Iraqis sustainable electricity.



This would boost current generation capacity by almost 50 per cent. The economic viability of the plan is secured by billions of US dollars in potential fuel savings and revenue generation for the electricity sector, supporting the development of the future Iraq.



The company also envisions the creation of tens of thousands of jobs over the course of the projects. The roadmap emphasises people at its core  and is the result of a 12-month study to develop a comprehensive and tailored redevelopment plan. It focuses on energy, education, compliance and financing, aiming to advance sustainable economic development, national security and quality of life for the people of Iraq.



Signed by Qasim Al-Fahdawi, Minister of Electricity, and Joe Kaeser, president and CEO of Siemens AG, the memorandum of understanding (MoU) will examine a series of short, medium and long-term plans to meet the reconstruction goals of Iraq and support the countrys economic development.



Our commitment to the Iraqi people stands strong. We promised them to achieve affordable and reliable power supply, help with anti-corruption, build schools and hospitals and create thousands of jobs. Education, training and developing local skills and talent are key elements for us to contribute to building the New Iraq. Todays agreement on the Siemens roadmap is a significant step towards fulfilling that promise, said Joe Kaeser.



We are ready to start and look forward to working closely with the Iraqi government to immediately produce noticeable improvements for the Iraqi people.



In September, Siemens announced the donation of a smart health clinic that would be powered by solar energy and equipped with Siemens medical devices. The clinic would have the capacity to treat up to 10,000 patients per year. This was in addition to pledging to fund the first modular School of the Future in Iraq, provide a USD 60 million software grant for universities in the country, and train more than 1,000 Iraqis in vocational education.



Siemens Roadmap for the Electrification of the New Iraq outlines eight objectives to benefit the people of Iraq, the countrys national security and its economic development. These include reducing energy losses, introducing smart grids, strengthening the transmission grid, modernizing existing power plants, adding new generation capacities in deprived areas, connecting Iraq to the Arab Gulf region, putting Iraqs national resources to work, and investing in its people.



Modernizing the countrys energy infrastructure is intended to be completed in stages, from immediate improvement for up to 300,000 people, which can be operational within three months, to medium and long-term projects that require between 10 and 24 months completion time and beyond.



The company will also assist Iraqs government in securing appropriate finance packages provided by international commercial banks, Export Credit Agencies and supported by the German Government.



The roadmap lays out plans to use Iraqs valuable natural resources more efficiently by utilizing flare gas capture and treatment technologies to deliver a domestic source of fuel to Iraqs power generation sector, as well as create a long-term source of revenue for the government to finance power generation, transmission, and distribution projects.



As part of its commitment to driving sustainable growth, Siemens intends to support social development in Iraq with a series of training and education programs. This includes technical and vocational training as well as transparency and anti-corruption education, in order to build a pool of highly skilled, local talent with a culture of compliance. Under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Siemens aims to provide vocational training, starting with 1,000 young Iraqis.



Siemens initially presented the Roadmap to the Government of Iraq during the Iraq Reconstruction Conference in Kuwait, in February 2018. At the same time, the company signed a declaration of intent with BMZ with both parties agreeing to jointly contribute to the reconstruction and development of Iraq in areas including technical and vocational training, as well as transparency and anti-corruption.  TradeArabia News ServiceHe posted a delightful throwback snap of one of his childhood birthdays showing him sitting with his dad behind a delicious cake on Monday.

Ryan Reynolds' snap paints the perfect father-son picture...but all is not as it seems.

The star, who turns 42 on Tuesday, captioned it: 'Happy Birthday to me. Or as Dad used to affectionately say, "the condom broke."'

Dry humor: Ryan Reynolds, who turns 42 on Tuesday, posted this throwback snap on Monday captioned, 'Happy Birthday to me. Or as Dad used to affectionately say, the condom broke '

The Deadpool star has made no secret of his difficult relationship with his father, Jim Reynolds, who died on October 28, 2015, aged 74 after battling Parkinsons disease.

Ryan, who grew up in Vancouver, Canada, with three older brothers, talked about his dad, Deadpool and his new passion project, Aviation Gin on NBC's Sunday Today.

'My dad was an ex-cop. He was a very smart man but he was a very tough man,' he told host Willie Geist.

'When he walked into a room the oxygen could leave just like that,' he said snapping his fingers.

Opening up: Ryan, seen at Comic-Con in San Dieigo talked about his ricky relationship with his dad, Jim, Deadpool and his new passion project, Aviation Gin, on NBC's Sunday Today

Childhood lesson: He revealed that he used humor as a kid to diffuse the tension between his father and brothers, a skill that came in useful for Ryan's wise-cracking superhero Deadpool

'So I learned to kind of diffuse that with jokes, to make them laugh,' a skill that came in useful for Ryan's wise-cracking superhero Deadpool.

The star also talked about Aviation Gin. He bought a big stake in the Portland-based brand this year after trying the alcohol at a bar and asking the bartender about it. Now he's heavily involved in sales and marketing.

Meanwhile, Willie revealed he got a dose of Ryan's humor first hand when he emailed the star at his Aviation office and got a reply that read: 'Hello, I'm out of the office on an important investigative assignment with the Today Show.

New friend: NBC's Sunday Today host Willie Geist shared a snap of the actor hugging him, captioned: 'Ryan Reynolds gives me a killer back rub...'

He just can't be serious: Willie also got a taste of Ryan's sense of humor when he received this out-of-office reply to an email he sent to the star's Aviation Gin office

'Be sure to watch as I go undercover to find out why Willie Geist hasn't aged in 15 years. Extravagant nighttime skin-care routine? Or...is Willie Geist a hologram?'

Ryan's reply continued: 'Also on the program: Why saying "underwear" can get you into hot water at work. Millennials now refer to the sartorial staple as "a shirt for your genitals." Have they finally gone too far?'

Willie also shared a snap of the actor hugging him, captioned: 'Ryan Reynolds gives me a killer back rub...'

Meanwhile, the actor and gin entrepreneur is happily married to his Green Lantern co-star, actress Blake Lively, 31, and they share daughters James, three, and 18-month-old Ines.It was revealed last month that a 'significant character' will die during season 10 of Modern Family.

And while it's a closely guarded secret, many fans started pondering whether it will be Stella, the dog belonging to Jay and Gloria (played by Ed O'Neill and Sofia Vergara) that would be killed off.

However, cast member Jesse Tyler Ferguson, has stepped up to clarify that it will definitely be a human character that gets killed off.

'Not the dog': Jesse Tyler Ferguson has revealed it's definitely a human that's going to be killed off from Modern Family

'It's definitely a person, not the dog. I've been hearing rumors about the dog, it's not the dog. It's no animal, it's a human being,' Ferguson told E! News.

The 43-year-old actor was attending the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles Gala on Saturday.

Jesse then teased, 'I'll just say I haven't been at work in a few weeks. I'm just kidding. Or am I?'

Show co-creator Christopher Lloyd admitted last month that season 10 will deal with the death of one of the main characters of the long-running series.

Stella's safe: Many fans started pondering whether it will be Stella, the dog belonging to Jay and Gloria (played by Ed O'Neill and Sofia Vergara) that would be killed off

Talking to E! on Saturday night Jesse also teased, 'I'll just say I haven't been at work in a few weeks. I'm just kidding. Or am I?' He is pictured in an Instagram with costars Julie Bowen, Sarah Hyland and Sofia Vergara

'We're handling some bigger life events in this season,' he said. 'We do deal with a death, which is certainly a topic that families have to deal with, and on television, it's not easy to do because that's a heavy subject.

'But at the same time, it would seem unusual for a family not to go through it.'

Lloyd remained secretive on which character fans would be saying goodbye to and wouldn't confirm if the death would be of a main family member.

He did admit the death of a 'significant character on the series' would be 'a moving event  and an event that has repercussions across several episodes.'

As E! notes, there are several supporting players who it could be, including including Shelley Long who plays DeDe Pritchett and Fred Willard's Frank.

Modern Family airs Wednesdays, 9pm on ABC.Fans who have been waiting for the superhero sequel Wonder Woman 1984 will have to wait seven months longer, since the release date has just been pushed.

Star Gal Gadot took to Twitter on Monday morning to announce the sequel's release date was just changed from November 1, 2019 to June 5, 2020

'Super excited to announce that, thanks to the changing landscape, we are able to put Wonder Woman back to its rightful home,' Gadot said in her Twitter post. 'June 5, 2020. Be there or be square!!!'

New release date: Wonder Woman 1984 has just been given a new release date on June 5, 2020, star Gal Gadot revealed on Twitter Monday morning

The new date falls means it will arrive almost exactly three years after Wonder Woman, which debuted in theaters June 2, 2017

Gadot's comments about the sequel's 'rightful home' are not unfounded, since the original raked in big bucks in the first weekend of June last year.

Wonder Woman opened big with $103.2 million, en route to $412.5 million domestic (third highest total of 2017) and $821.8 million worldwide (10th highest total of 2017).

New cast: Kristen Wiig, seen filming a scene in London's Hyde Park in October, is playing Barbara Minerva, a.k.a. Cheetah.

Gal Gadot returns as Diana of Themyscira, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, along with Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Connie Nielsen as Diana's mother, Hippolyta and Robin Wright as Diana's aunt, Antiope.

Among the new cast members coming aboard for the sequel are Kristen Wiig, who plays DC Comics character Barbara Minerva, a.k.a. Cheetah, along with Narcos star Pedro Pascal in an unspecified role.

Patty Jenkins returns to direct Wonder Woman 1984, which is currently in production, working from a script she co-wrote with Geoff Johns (Batman v. Superman) and Dave Callaham (The Expendables).

Coming back: Gal Gadot (seen here in 2016) returns as Diana of Themyscira, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, along with Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Connie Nielsen as Diana's mother, Hippolyta and Robin Wright as Diana's aunt, Antiope

The Hollywood Reporter reveals that this new release date means the sequel will move out of the way of another Warner Bros. superhero project, Joaquin Phoenix's Joker movie that arrives October 4, 2019.

As of now, the movie has the release date to itself, with Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution, revealing the superhero sequel now has found the perfect home.

'We had tremendous success releasing the first Wonder Woman film during the summer, so when we saw an opportunity to take advantage of the changing competitive landscape, we did,' Goldstein said in a statement right after Gadot's tweet. 'This move lands the film exactly where it belongs.'

Changing date: The Hollywood Reporter reveals that this new release date means the sequel will move out of the way of another Warner Bros. superhero project, Joaquin Phoenix's Joker movie that arrives October 4, 2019

The release date shift also puts Wonder Woman 1984 between an unspecified Marvel Studios movie slated for May 1, 2020, and an unspecified 20th Century Fox/Marvel movie slated for June 26, 2020.

Warner Bros. also has another DC superhero project set for July 24, 2020, with another Fox/Marvel project set for October 2, 2020 and another Marvel Studios movie set for November 6, 2020.

Filming has taken place in Washington D.C., London and the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain.She joined the cast of VH1's Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta for this year's season seven.

And on Monday, Spice - real name Grace Hamilton - made a provocative statement on social media to promote her new mixtape.

The Jamaican rapper posted to Instagram a photo of herself with white skin and blonde hair and the caption: 'Nothing wrong with a fresh start.'

Gone white: Spice from VH1's Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta made a provocative statement on social media to promote her new mixtape on Monday

In the snap she wears a sleeveless leopard-print cropped top with black pants.

A mass of long blonde hair tumbles down over one shoulder as she stares into the camera through heavily mascara'd and lined eyes.

She has dark rouge on her cheeks and matte red color on her lips.

Fans commenting on social media seemed divided as to whether Spice has bleached her skin, is just wearing very heavy makeup or simply used Photoshop to alter her appearance.

Before and after: The Jamaican rapper - real name Grace Hamilton - posed in a sleeveless leopard-print top with blonde hair tumbling over one shoulder. Right, how she used to look

Publicity: She joined the cast of VH1's Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta for this year's season seven and is trying to replicate her huge dancehall success in her native Jamaica in the US

The new 'white' Spice has lost the tattoos that are prominent on her arms in the Instagram photo.

She posted the pic after a short absence from social media and deleted all her previous posts before sharing the new photo.

A rep for Spice told TMZ that there's a track on the mixtape she's touting called Black Hypocrisy, suggesting that's the reason behind the stunt.

In the caption to the photo, she gives details on how fans can purchase the mixtape.

Nusic to sell: A rep for Spice told TMZ that there's a track on the mixtape she's touting called Black Hypocrisy, suggesting that's the reason behind the 'white face' stunt

Confused: Fans commenting on social media seemed divided as to whether Spice has bleached her skin, is wearing very heavy makeup or used Photoshop to alter her appearance

Joke: Some found what she had done funny13-time Grammy nominee Katy Perry and her on-again British beau Orlando Bloom spent their Monday morning together inside contemporary art museum The Broad in downtown Los Angeles.

The 41-year-old SAG Award winner even brought along his seven-year-old son Flynn Christopher with ex-wife Miranda Kerr, whom he divorced in 2013 after three years of marriage.

The Killer Joe thespian and the 33-year-old pop diva - who were first linked in January 2016 - were especially amused by Jordan Wolfson's 2014 hypersexualized robotic sculpture in his Female Figure exhibit.

Still going strong! Katy Perry and her on-again British beau Orlando Bloom spent their Monday morning together inside contemporary art museum The Broad in downtown Los Angeles

Twinning: The 41-year-old SAG Award winner even brought along his seven-year-old son Flynn Christopher with ex-wife Miranda Kerr, whom he divorced in 2013

The scary scantily-clad fem-bot danced and lip-synched to songs by Katy's pop rival Lady Gaga and Paul Simon for seven uncomfortable minutes - challenging 'the ways women are represented.'

Both Katy and Orlando made immature jokes (involving farts and toilets) regarding Ron Mueck's somber realistic sculpture, Seated Woman, from 1999-2000.

Perry and Bloom's day of art and culture came after reports he's 'ready to settle down' and they've 'been talking about the future.'

'Orlando is in a different place than he was last year. He has matured a lot,' a source told People on Monday.

Riveted: The Killer Joe thespian and the 33-year-old pop diva - who were first linked in January 2016 - were especially amused by Jordan Wolfson's 2014 hypersexualized robotic sculpture in his Female Figure exhibit

'Challenging the ways women are represented': The scary scantily-clad fem-bot danced to songs by Katy's pop rival Lady Gaga and Paul Simon for seven uncomfortable minutes

'Thanks': Both Katy and Orlando made immature jokes (involving farts and toilets) regarding Ron Mueck's somber realistic sculpture, Seated Woman, from 1999-2000

'He has matured a lot': Perry and Bloom's day of art and culture came after reports he's 'ready to settle down' and they've 'been talking about the future'

'He realized that being single isn't that great after all. His relationship with Katy wasn't right the first time around, but it very much is now.'

The insider added: 'She hasn't put any pressure on their relationship lately, and everything is just easy...In the past, he seemed so scattered and unwilling to settle down. He is like a new person now and everyone is excited for him.'

The Burning Man enthusiasts rekindled their romance earlier this year after 'taking a respectful, loving space' apart from each other in February 2017.

A source told People on Monday: 'He realized that being single isn't that great after all. His relationship with Katy wasn't right the first time around, but it very much is now...She hasn't put any pressure on their relationship' (pictured last Thursday)

Jack-o'-lantern top: The American Idol judge was eager to start celebrating her 34th birthday this Thursday as well as Halloween

Will she win? For her 115-date, $76.9M-grossing Witness: The Tour, Katy will next compete for a trophy at the fan-voted People's Choice Awards, which air November 11 on E!

The American Idol judge was eager to start celebrating her 34th birthday this Thursday as well as Halloween.

For her 115-date, $76.9M-grossing Witness: The Tour, Katy will next compete for a trophy at the fan-voted People's Choice Awards, which air November 11 on E!

Perry faces heavy competition against concert tours by Beyonce & Jay-Z, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, and Super Junior.The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have arrived for the opening of the enhanced Anzac Memorial in Sydney's Hyde Park.

Prince Harry, who served for a decade in the British army, is wearing in military uniform while Meghan is in a black, high necked dress with buttons down the front and hat.

The extension has been designed to enhance the memorial's role to support and provide services for veterans and their families, ensuring a public and a private place of contemplation, remembrance, education and reflection.The Queensland premier will present the Duke and Duchess of Sussex a hand-made teddy bear from the state's sheep country for their impending first child when the couple visit Fraser Island on Monday.

Tambo, a tiny town boasting a population of just 345, rejuvenated their economy in the midst of crippling drought by producing unique teddy bears, stuffed with wool, out of woollen pelts.

Twenty five years on and Tambo Teddies have made their way into bedrooms around the world.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says the gift is a reminder of the importance of Queensland's fine wool industry and the extent to which western parts of the state have suffered from drought.

"Tambo Teddies are also proof of the resilience of Queenslanders and how they overcome tough times backing themselves and an Australian-made product," she said.

Queensland's official gift, reportedly set to be a cream-coloured bear with a green, black-spotted bow tie, continues a royal teddy tradition after Prince William and Kate's children were given one.

The royal couple's first child is expected around April next year.He may be technically a prince, but the Duke of Sussex has proved he's king of the kids on Sydney's Cockatoo Island.

As wife Meghan stood by Prince Harry enthusiastically tried his hand at driving remote control cars on grassy terrain with three young boys on Saturday.

A chuckling prince enthusiastically pursued the boys cars with his own calling out "alright I'm coming, I'll catch you," while sporting a giant grin.

The pursuit ended in a collision that flipped both cars, prompting one of the boys, Aiden from the Netherlands, to run out to right the crash.

However, he left Prince Harry's car unturned leaving the royal to run out and do his own flipping.

"Oh, thanks mate," a laughing Harry cried out before awarding the three boys medals for their performances on the track.

The newly-married Royals were on Cockatoo Island to cheer on competitors in the Invictus Jaguar Land Rover Driving Challenge.Australian champion Jackson Symonds has warmed up for next month's world titles by taking out the world's richest beach sprint in a thrilling return of the Curl Curl 1000.

Symonds overcame a tough lane draw and had to negotiate a couple of inclines on Sydney's South Curl Curl beach on Saturday to haul in NSW champion Michael Hanna on the line at the end of 120 gruelling yards.

Renowned for his finishing speed, the four-time Australian champion needed it all to take out the $1000 prize in the first running of the Curl Curl 1000 since 2002 and pay for his trip over from Perth club Sorrento.

Judges needed five minutes to examine the photo finish before awarding the race to Symonds.

"Michael had a great race. I thought he had it or it might have been a dead heat," Symonds, 24, said.

"I had a pretty horrible start; my legs had nothing coming out of the blocks. I could see him miles ahead at the start. I kept nipping away at him.

"The two hills were so tough. That one at 90 metres - that was the burner.

"I wasn't worried about winning it. I felt like throwing up - I'm trying to keep that in at the moment.

"It was a tough race, three races on pretty soft sand."

After a heat and semi, the extra distance compared to the usual 90-metre beach sprint took its toll on all athletes.

Queensland's world champion Bree Masters agreed after taking out the inaugural women's 1000 at South Curl Curl's centenary surf carnival.

"That was the toughest race I have ever run, hands down," Masters said.

"Twenty metres from the end, my legs just shut down but I gave it everything and luckily I made it to the end without falling over."

Triple world champion Jake Lynch from Newport pulled out after his heat as he nurses a knee injury into his world title defence from November 16 in Adelaide.

Symonds was content with his form as he bids to reclaim the world title he won in 2014 while Masters, from Gold Coast club Kurrawa, is out to defend her title in Adelaide.

"It was good to come out and have a quality race against a quality field toward the worlds," Symonds said.

Symonds won in 14.1 seconds, with the hilly track keeping the 1977 race record of 13.7 set by South Curl Curl's own Ken Picard out of reach.Former Turnbull government minister Craig Laundy says it would be wrong to blame Malcolm Turnbull if the party loses Wentworth.

The polls closed in the Sydney seat at 6pm on Saturday, with independent Kerryn Phelps tipped to defeat Liberal candidate Dave Sharma.

Mr Laundy, who was a staunch backer of Mr Turnbull's leadership, said he feared the former prime minister would be wrongly blamed for any loss.

"If we do lose this seat tonight one of the interesting things we are going to see is how quickly those that were responsible (for the leadership challenge) try to turn it to: 'It's Malcolm's fault, not what we did'," Mr Laundy told Sky News.

"I argued all the way through for stability and loyalty and came up short but it's our job now and I think there is an internal struggle within the party sadly about where we go going forward."

Mr Laundy said party members needed to resist calls to take the Liberals more to the right.

"I don't think that has played well in Wentworth," he said, adding that issues such as climate change were commonly mentioned by voters at poll booths.

Mr Laundy said he had spoken to Mr Turnbull several times during the week as the former leader was criticised for not campaigning for Mr Sharma.

"His strong thought was the people of Wentworth would have seen that as an absolute joke," Mr Laundy said.

"He knew if he stayed in town it would have been a circus and for his own well-being he had to get out and get away."US-based Jacobs Engineering Group, a global provider of technical and construction services said it has entered into an agreement to sell its energy, chemicals and resources (ECR) segment to Australias professional services firm WorleyParsons for $3.3 billion.



The transaction consists of $2.6 billion in cash and $700 million in WorleyParsons ordinary shares, Jacobs said in a statement on its website.



The deal value represents a multiple of more than 11.5 times trailing twelve-month (TTM) adjusted EBITDA for the ECR business, it added.



Following the completion of the transaction, Jacobs will be focused solely on its two higher growth, higher margin lines of business  Aerospace, Technology, Environmental & Nuclear (ATEN) and Buildings, Infrastructure & Advanced Facilities (BIAF).



"For Jacobs, this transaction marks an inflection point in our portfolio transformation focused on more consistent, higher-margin growth as a leader solving the world's critical challenges," said Jacobs chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou.



"The increased financial flexibility we gain from this sale better positions us to invest in our ATEN and BIAF businesses, focusing our premier talent and expertise on technology, innovation and sustainable solutions that are priorities for our infrastructure and government services clients. These capabilities, along with our strong backlog and efficient global platform, will further strengthen our global leadership in these segments to drive meaningful value creation."



"While we are in the process of finalizing our fiscal 2018 results, our current view is materially consistent with previously announced guidance for the year," said Jacobs CFO Kevin Berryman. "In addition, we continue to believe that the adjusted EPS guidance provided for fiscal 2019 remains appropriate, keeping in mind that such guidance did not reflect any impact from the pending transaction announced today."



"Upon closing of this transaction, we plan to initially apply proceeds to pay down floating-rate debt," Berryman added. "Beyond that, our strong financial flexibility and free cash flow will support incremental profitable growth investments and capital returns to shareholders, consistent with our record of disciplined allocation yielding attractive growth and value creation. And of course, Jacobs will continue to benefit from our ECR business' earnings and cash flow through the closing of the transaction."



Upon closing, Jacobs expects to receive approximately $2.6 billion in net proceeds from the transaction, which initially will be used to pay down floating-rate debt, while also maintaining a disciplined approach to deploy capital for increased shareholder value, including mergers and acquisitions. The company will provide further details about its capital allocation strategy, as well as its updated pro forma financial outlook, at the company's investor day on February 19, 2019, the statement said.



Together, ECR and WorleyParsons will be a global leader with the talent, industry sector, customer and geographic diversity needed to compete and win. The structure of the transaction enables Jacobs to benefit from the near-term upside created by the combination and the oil and gas market recovery.



At the close of the transaction, Jacobs will receive approximately 58.2 million shares of WorleyParsons stock, which will equate to approximately 11 per cent of WorleyParsons ordinary shares based on WorleyParsons' outstanding shares post-close. The shares will be subject to a six-month holding requirement (but not earlier than Aug. 31) following the transaction's closing.



The transaction is expected to close in the first half of calendar 2019, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.  TradeArabia News ServiceIt seems the motorsport gods are smiling on Supercars veteran Craig Lowndes.

A mistake in qualifying on the streets of Surfers Paradise on Saturday ensured the Bathurst 1000 champion began the opening race of the Gold Coast 600 a lowly 21st.

But the 44-year-old wasn't giving up hope of securing a result.

Lowndes was the only full-time driver to start the 102-lap race, carving his way into the top 10 after the opening 20 laps.

Then, just as Lowndes was getting ready to hand over to co-driver Steven Richards, a crash sparked a safety car meaning the early pit-stop didn't cost them any of the places they'd made up as the rest of the field also headed into pitlane.

In the end, Lowndes jumped back in the car at the 61-lap mark and worked his way to a podium finish, passing Holden's James Courtney late in the race to snatch second.

With Scott McLaughlin (5th) and Shane Van Gisbergen (10th) finishing behind Lowndes, it means he and Richards head into the Sunday's final race of the weekend holding an 87-point lead in the standings for the Endurance Cup.

"We opted to mix up the strategy, for me to start and then for Steve to do his minimum run in the middle part of the race, and it was just perfect timing for a safety car," Lowndes said.

"We actually put the call in for me to pit that lap and then, halfway round that lap, the safety car came out."

The fortuitous timing came two weeks after Lowndes claimed his seventh Bathurst crown in his final full-time season as a co-driver when David Reynolds succumbed to cramps in the race's final laps.

"If Shane or Scotty had won the race, we would have had to finish eighth to go in equal going into tomorrow's race," Lowndes said of the Endurance Cup battle, which is awarded to the best performing pairing across the Sandown, Bathurst and Gold Coast events.

"To be able to beat both of them today was completely unexpected. We thought we might have a fight on our hands but, at the moment, we've got a good gap - actually expanded that gap."Prince Harry has paid tribute to the thousands of Australians who lost their lives in battle during a visit to the Anzac Memorial in Sydney.

Harry and wife Meghan were greeted by a small crowd of well wishers as they arrived at the memorial's new entrance on the edge of the city's Hyde Park on Saturday morning.

The royal couple toured the memorial's new underground hall of service pausing to look at the huge display of soil samples taken from the 1701 towns across NSW where thousands of young men and women enlisted for World War One.

Another display of 100 soil samples, taken from battlefields where thousands of NSW troops have fought around the world since the 1856 Colonial Wars through to Iraq and Afghanistan, ringed the floor.

The displays feature as a highlight of the recently renovated memorial, which was never fully completed in line with its original architectural plans when opened in 1934 because of the financial hardships of the Great Depression

For Harry, being able to visit and officially open the newly-renovated sections represented a royal step back in time as his great, great uncle and namesake Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester - who later went on to become Australia's 11th Governor General - opened the building in 1934.

The memorial contains the original wreath of red flowers laid by the Duke, fixed in its faded glory in a glass case outside the memorial's hall of memory.

NSW Governor David Hurley and his wife Linda escorted former British army officer Harry and Meghan around the building, where they paused by the statue of sacrifice and visited the hall of memory, with its towering ceiling dotted with gold stars paying tribute to the thousands of NSW men and women killers in WWI.

Meghan chose a sombre black dress with gold buttons by British designer Emilia Wickstead and hat by Philip Treacy to wear to the memorial.

Harry donned his Blues and Royals tropical dress uniform featuring military medals from his decade long service with the British Army.

Watched by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Harry and Meghan laid a colourful wreath of Australian native flowers at the memorial's front step.

Harry saluted as the Last Post rang out across Hyde Park before the crowd of about 200 dignitaries and invited guests paused for a minute's silence.

He then joined Ms Berejiklian on the steps to unveil a plaque for the memorial's extension before three RAAF jets flew over.

The premier said it was poignant the $40 million extension had been completed just weeks before the centenary of the end of WWI next month.

She said the "magestic memorial" commemorated "all those who fought for our nation and made the ultimate sacrifice" and was a unique "place of reflection far from the horrors of war".

With the official proceedings over, Harry and Meghan prepared to make their exit but stopped for a quick chat with two young indigenous schoolgirls in the front row.

Twins Sienna and Krystal Dawson, 9, presented the royal couple with a colourful floral painting and silver medallion from their school, Beverly Hills Public School.

The girls had been part of the indigenous welcome ceremony by members of Koomurri that greeted the royals on their arrival

"They came over and said 'hi, what's your name," Sienna said.

"I said Sienna and she said Krystal and I gave them the things I had and Kyrstal did too."

Mum Connie Dawson said the girls had been nervous.

"And I was overwhelmed for them as a parent," she laughed.

The royal couple were scheduled to end day five of their Australia tour at the opening ceremony of the Invictus Games at the Opera House.Partying broke out in the Kerryn Phelps camp as the independent claimed victory in the Wentworth by-election.

Even though hopes were high among supporters, they could scarcely believe the speed with which she claimed the historic victory over the Liberals.

Former long-time Liberal voters danced alongside a mix of supporters at North Bondi on Saturday night with the high-profile GP expected to defeat Liberal candidate Dave Sharma.

An overjoyed Dr Phelps told a cheering and emotional crowd she thought it would be a miracle to win the seat when she first began her "pop-up campaign" after Malcolm Turnbull was ousted and resigned.

"My friends, we have made history today," she said.

"This win tonight should signal a return of decency, integrity and humanity to the Australian government."

Projections have Dr Phelps holding 54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote on the back of a 21 per cent swing against the Liberals.

"This has been a David and Goliath struggle," she said.

"We have been up against the major parties with all of their infrastructure and all of their resources and here we were, a little pop-up campaign."

The crowd booed when Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered his speech.

Held by the Liberals since the party's inception, Liberal voters had signalled they would shake things up in the once safe blue-ribbon seat.

Long-time Liberal voter turned campaigner for Dr Phelps, Peter Chadwick, said it was the first time he did not vote for the party.

"I just couldn't do it, I thought they've gone too far to the right," he told AAP while rejoicing over news of the win.

"I'm feeling elated. I was hoping and I thought it would be very close. I didn't think it would be as quick as this."

Small-business owners and former Liberal voters Deborah and Peter Franki said they were excited and relieved when Dr Phelps stepped up.

"I've voted Liberal every election but I'm just fed up with the shenanigans," Ms Franki told AAP.

Mr Franki said he would have voted for Mr Sharma if Dr Phelps wasn't in the running: "It's not only a protest vote about Malcolm Turnbull's removal, it's also about the incorrect way everything is being run, it's just wrong."

The Edgecliff local said he would vote for Dr Phelps again at the general election.The biggest swing in Australia's political history has landed the nation with its second minority government in just over eight years.

Independent Kerryn Phelps achieved an unprecedented swing of more than 20 per cent against Liberal candidate Dave Sharma in Malcolm Turnbull's former seat of Wentworth on Saturday.

As counting continued, Dr Phelps was on 52 per cent of the two-party preferred vote thanks to preferences from Labor and minor parties.

When Dr Phelps takes up her seat, there will be a crossbench of six members in the House of Representatives with Labor holding 69 seats and the coalition one short of a majority with 75.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison described it as a "tough day" and pledged to "listen, learn and accept the blows".

However he appeared unfazed about having to negotiate a minority parliament, as Julia Gillard was forced to after the 2010 election.

"We will work constructively with all of those who sit on the cross bench as we always have," he said.

Dr Phelps said she would be setting two priorities - action on climate change and getting asylum seeker children off Nauru.

She may also lend support for a national integrity commission which has been promoted by Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers for some time.

Independent Bob Katter said he did not want to see the government destabilised or an early election called.

But he said the coalition needed to address the drought, regional development and indigenous health.

Fellow independent Andrew Wilkie said he would not guarantee confidence or supply.

"That will continue to be the case," Mr Wilkie said.

Another crossbencher Cathy McGowan declined to comment.

Disgruntled Liberal MPs pointed the finger at failed leadership contender Peter Dutton's boosters for the by-election loss.

"The blame for this lies squarely at the feet of anybody who felt it was a good idea to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull," an angry Liberal backbencher Craig Laundy said.Mal Meninga has set his sights on re-igniting the famed Kangaroos tour of Great Britain as he waits on the some finality on the international calendar.

Australia avoided being the first Kangaroos team to lose back-to-back Tests in the same year in 40 years by holding off a determined Tonga side 34-16 on Saturday.

It ensured Meninga's side left New Zealand with at least one win from their two-Test tour after being upset by the Kiwis last week.

"We got to experience what Test match footy is all about," Meninga said.

It was the first trip the Kangaroos had without veteran trio Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk following their representative retirements this year.

"I think we learnt plenty out of this. From my perspective, I believe we picked the right players for these last couple of games," Meninga said.

"And we can only get better. There's some improvement in the footy team, which is pretty exciting I reckon."

The reigning world champions now turn their attention to a possible tri-series next year, where re-matches against New Zealand and Tonga await.

However Meninga is hoping to take his squad on a tour of Great Britain, despite talk that a British Lions team would travel to the Southern Hemisphere instead.

"We need to go to the Northern Hemisphere, but I'm not quite sure where that is all at. I believe that we need to get back to that old Kangaroos tours," he said.

"I think it's the right time to do that, but I'm not sure what will happen. I know all teams will play more representative games, but in what form I'm not quite sure."

Meninga is likely to have a stronger squad at his disposal, with the likes of injured stars Greg Inglis, Cameron Munster, Matt Gillett and Michael Morgan available.The arrests came just two months away from elections to replace President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Joseph Kabila

Five journalists in the Democratic Republic of Congo were freed on Friday after 12 hours of interrogation by police following the publication of articles on the misappropriation of rations for police cadets, their newspaper said.

The five journalists had been allowed to leave and told to return on Monday with AfricaNews managing editor Achille Kadima, it said in a statement.

The detentions followed a series of prosecutions of journalists in the troubled nation, which is just two months away from tense elections to replace President Joseph Kabila.

"It is unbelievable and very disturbing that the police have arrested journalists who revealed that a police investigation was being conducted into alleged misappropriation," said Arnaud Froger, the head of Reporters Without Border's Africa desk.

The journalists -- Octave Mukendi, Bruce Landu, Roddy Bosakwa, Dan Luyila and Laurent Omba -- "just did their job by informing the public that an investigation was under way."

DR Congo ranks 154th out of 180 countries on the press freedoms index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

- Journalists harassed, arrested -

The journalists had been working at the offices of the tri-weekly newspaper overnight to finish the latest edition when they were arrested on the premises.

DR Congo opposition supporters hope they can replace President Kabila in elections at the end of this year

The officers who took them did not show any documents, Kadima told AFP, adding that he had gone into hiding.

Earlier, he had written a letter to the national police chief complaining that police had conducted a "roundup" of copies of AfricaNews from newsstands.

On the front page of the current issue, the paper carried a story on an inquiry into misappropriation of police cadet rations, adding the head of the country's police academies had been summoned.

General Celestin Kanyama is under sanctions by the United States, which accused him of responsibility for a 2013-2014 police operation in which at least 50 young men and boys were reportedly killed and more than 30 others were forcibly "disappeared".

When approached by AFP over the case of the reporters, Kanyama said: "Stop your bullshit. Do not quote me over things I know nothing about."

This year around 20 journalists have been harassed or arrested in DR Congo, said Joseph-Boucard Kasonga, president of the UNPC national press union.

RSF on Wednesday also sounded the alarm over the case of reporter Sylvanie Kiaku, of the weekly La Percee, who has been detained for more than a week on charges of defamation, over two articles she wrote about redundancies at a local bank.Iran, currently led by President Hasan Rohani, is one of two countries on the FATF anti-money laundering agency blacklist. North Korea is the other

A global financial watchdog on Friday warned Iran to clamp down on terrorism financing by February or face a deeper squeeze on its sanctions-hit economy.

The Islamic republic, already hurt by a resumption of US sanctions over its past nuclear programme, this month approved one bill to help meet demands imposed by the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

FATF, following a meeting at its Paris headquarters this week, welcomed the legislation and extended a suspension of counter-measures that has allowed Iran to escape further isolation from international finance.

But nine of the 10 "action plan" items needed to remove Iran from an FATF blacklist have yet to be adopted by Tehran, according to Marshall Billingslea, the US assistant treasury secretary for terrorist financing.

"In our plenary, here in Paris, we expressed our disappointment that the majority of the action plan remains outstanding," said Billingslea, who currently chairs the FATF, told a news conference.

"We expect that they will have adopted all these measures by February," he said.

Billingslea said if measures were not adopted by February next year, the FATF will take further steps to protect against the risks from Iran's lack of action.

- Pressing finance needs -

For Iran, access to finance has become particularly pressing since the United States walked out of a 2015 nuclear deal earlier this year and began reimposing sanctions.

Iran's foreign ministry in a statement reacted favourably to the FATF decision, saying it considered the extension of the suspension of countermeasures "another victory" for Tehran's diplomacy.

However the ministry urged the financial watchdog to "resist political pressures" in its dealings with Iran.

The other parties to the deal -- Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia -- have sought to salvage the agreement and maintain trade with Iran, but have demanded that it accede to the FATF.

Among the further steps demanded by the FATF, originally an initiative of the G7 nations, was for Iran to identify and freeze extremist assets in line with UN Security Council resolutions.

Another was for Tehran to remove an exemption from its legislation that allows financing towards groups deemed to be attempting to end "foreign occupation, colonialism and racism".

Iran has long been accused by the United States, Israel and regional rivals such as Saudi Arabia of financing a web of extremist groups, including the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

In a statement, the FATF said it will review Iran's remaining legislation once it is in place to determine whether Tehran had met its demands.

It urged FATF members to exercise heightened checks on transactions involving Iranian businesses and nationals.

Iran is one of only two countries on the FATF blacklist.

The other is North Korea, and Friday's statement reiterated "serious concerns" about the Asian country's illicit activities to finance its missile and nuclear programmes.Honduran migrants taking part in a caravan heading to the US arrive at a border crossing point with Mexico in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala on October 19, 2018

Thousands of migrants who forced their way through Guatemala's northwestern border and flooded onto a bridge leading to Mexico, where riot police battled them back, on Saturday waited at the border in the hope of continuing their journey to the United States.

The caravan of mainly Honduran migrants, whose journey has triggered escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric from US President Donald Trump, on Friday surged through a series of police lines and barricades up to the final fence on Mexico's southern border.

There -- at the far end of the bridge over the Suchiate River, which forms the western part of the Mexico-Guatemala border -- they hurled rocks and other objects at hundreds of riot police, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Multiple migrants, federal police and journalists were wounded.

"We're running away from violence, and we arrive here and they just hit us more," sobbed 28-year-old Marta Ornelas Cazares, who was nursing her baby -- but had lost her other two children, aged 10 and 15, in the turmoil.

"I don't know what happened, I thought we were going to cross peacefully and then suddenly there were rocks flying and tear gas," she told AFP.

Honduran migrants tear down the gate of the Guatemala-Mexico international border bridge in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico

"We haven't eaten, the soldiers just sent us some water," Marina Alvarado, 48, said.

"We are imprisoned here, like animals. Please, open the door," she pleaded.

Mexican authorities insisted the undocumented migrants would have to file asylum claims one at a time in order to enter the country.

They began letting them through in a trickle -- first women and children, who were ushered onto trucks and taken to shelters.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto described the situation as "unprecedented."

"Violent entry into the country not only threatens our sovereignty, but also puts the migrants themselves at risk," Pena Nieto said in a video published on his social media profiles. He added Mexico remains willing to support migrants who enter the country and respect its laws.

The migrants are generally fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence.

With a homicide rate of 43 per 100,000 citizens, Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world.

- Chaotic scenes -

"We're staying here until they open this fence," said Adonai Sanchez, 36, who was traveling with his three nephews, aged two, three and 14.

A Honduran migrant jumps to the Suchiate River from the Guatemala-Mexico international border bridge to swim and reach Mexico

Others returned to the Guatemalan side late Friday, where shelters have been providing them food and water.

The scene remained tense at the final border barrier, a tall fence of white metal bars.

Chanting "Yes we can!" and "Mexico! Mexico!" migrants earlier climbed or tore down a series of barriers, flooding across the bridge.

The migrants could be seen passing babies overhead through the crowd, as women holding crying children by the hand or pressing their infants to their chests streamed past the broken metal barriers and onto the bridge.

At the front of the caravan, one group briefly broke through the final fence before police forced them back and closed it again.

Some migrants used a rope to jump off the bridge and swim across the river or hitch a ride on the many rafts that cross it regularly.

- Defying Trump's threats -

Various caravans had been traveling by bus or on foot from Honduras, converging in recent days on the town of Tecun Uman, Guatemala, near the border bridge.

Aerial view of the migrant caravan

Authorities in Ciudad Hidalgo, on the Mexican side, were expecting around 3,000 migrants to arrive in total.

Back in Honduras, hundreds marched in the capital Tegucigalpa in solidarity with their compatriots.

On Thursday, Trump branded the migrant caravan an "onslaught" and an "assault on our country" in a series of typically fiery tweets.

He threatened to cut aid to the region, deploy the military and close the US-Mexican border if authorities did not stop them.

- 'American sovereignty' -

Women holding crying children by the hand or pressing their infants to their chests streamed past the broken metal barriers and onto the bridge into Mexico

In Mexico City, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said after meeting his Mexican counterpart that migration across the two countries' border is reaching "a moment of crisis" and posing "a challenge for American sovereignty."

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray insisted Mexico would not cave to pressure to detain the migrants, urging the Trump administration to address the root causes of their northward flight: violent crime and poverty.

"Mexico's migration policy is for Mexico to decide," he said.

But Mexico has also been keen to show Trump it is working to slow the stream of migrants.

The Republican billionaire has made curbing undocumented immigration a keystone of his presidency.

Barely a week goes by without him warning about the danger posed by ultra-violent Central American gangs like MS-13, while chants of "build the wall" are a staple of his campaign rallies ahead of next month's US midterm elections.The US Justice Department has indicted the accountant for Russia's leading troll farm, alleging she took part in efforts to use social media to influence the 2018 election

The finance chief of Russia's leading troll farm was indicted by the US Justice Department on Friday for interfering with US elections, the first person to face charges involving the 2018 congressional midterms.

The indictment was released as the head of the US intelligence community issued an official warning of interference by China, Iran and Russia in the upcoming election in a possible reprise of the Moscow-tainted presidential campaign of 2016.

It came less than three weeks before the hotly contested November 6 vote that will determine whether Democrats can win control of the House of Representatives and the Senate from President Donald Trump's Republicans.

The indictment said Yelena Khusyainova was involved in a criminal conspiracy as the chief accountant for Project Lakhta.

This broad political interference operation is part of the Saint Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, the troll farm that conducted a massive disinformation campaign during the 2016 election.

Prosecutors said that since 2014, Khusyainova has been handling the finances for Project Lakhta operations to sow divisiveness and confusion in US elections.

She also budgeted millions of dollars this year for online social media efforts directed at the United States and Europe.

"Today's charges allege that Russian national Yelena Alexeyevna Khusyainova conspired with others who were part of a Russian influence campaign to interfere with US democracy," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.

The Internet Research Agency is controlled by a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, through his Concord Management and Consulting group, prosecutors said.

Prigozhin, sometimes dubbed "Putin's chef" because he has managed catering for the Russian leader, was already indicted in February along with 12 other IRA employees over their alleged interference during 2016.

In that effort, they pumped out millions of postings via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms designed to stir up animosity between political camps and groups in society.

The campaign aimed to boost Donald Trump's chances of winning the presidency while undermining his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to US intelligence.

- $10 million budgeted for troll farm -

US intelligence alleges that Russian President Vladimir Putin is behind the ongoing efforts to meddle in US elections

The indictment against Khusyainova suggested US investigators have gained detailed inside knowledge of the IRA's operations.

It lays out her budgeting for Project Lakhta month by month for the first half of 2018, with a total of more than 650 million rubles, or $10 million, requested for the program.

It also says that between January 2016 and June 2018, Project Lakhta had a proposed budget of more than $35 million for all of its operations.

The money served to pay for IRA activists, social media advertising, registering domain names and buying proxy servers, all needed for the group's influence operations.

The indictment laid out examples of multiple Facebook and Twitter postings on American-looking accounts, some of which attacked conservatives and others progressives.

"Just a friendly reminder to vote in the 2018 Midterms," said a tweet from the IRA-controlled pro-Trump account @johncopper16 on March 22.

"They are motivated They hate you They hate your morals They hate your 1A and 2A rights," the author wrote, pointing to Democrats and referring to First Amendment and Second Amendment rights to free speech and to bear arms.

"hey hate the Police They hate the Military They hate YOUR President."

While all of the social media identities cited in the indictment have since been removed or blocked, postings by others show their messages were frequently liked, forwarded and retweeted.

"The conspirators allegedly took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists," by setting up thousands of accounts made to appear to be owned by Americans, the Justice Department said.

The accounts were used "to create and amplify divisive social and political content targeting US audiences."

Just ahead of the indictment, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement expressing concern over possible election meddling.

"We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies," said the statement, issued in conjunction with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department.

"These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 US elections."

The statement noted that, despite attempts to penetrate election infrastructure, there was no sign that foreign hackers had compromised any systems such as voter registration databases or voting machines.US National Security Advisor John Bolton is heading to Moscow amid reports that Washington is pulling out of a landmark nuclear weapons treaty

US National Security Advisor John Bolton will meet Saturday in Moscow with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, amid reports that Washington will tell Russia it plans to quit a landmark nuclear weapons treaty.

The visit comes ahead of what is expected to be a second summit between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump this year.

Bolton, who will also meet Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, announced the visit to Moscow in a tweet, saying he would "continue discussions that began in Helsinki," referring to a summit held in July.

The New York Times said the Trump administration plans to inform Russian leaders in the coming days that it is preparing to leave the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the INF.

The newspaper said the US accuses Russia of violating the deal, signed in 1987 by president Ronald Reagan, by deploying tactical nuclear weapons to intimidate former Soviet satellite states that are now close to the West.

US-Russia ties are under deep strain over accusations that Moscow meddled in the 2016 presidential election, as well as tension over Russian support for the Syrian government in the country's civil war, and the conflict in Ukraine.

However, Washington is looking for support from Moscow in finding resolutions to the Syria war and putting pressure on both Iran and North Korea.

No new summit between Trump and Putin has been announced, but one is expected in the near future.

The two leaders will be in Paris on November 11 to attend commemorations marking the end of World War I.

A senior Trump administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said another potential date would be when the presidents both attend the Group of 20 meeting on November 30 to December 1.

"There are a couple possibilities, including the G20 in Buenos Aires or the Armistice Day parade in Paris. At the G20 is probably more likely," the official said.

"President Trump's invitation to Putin to visit Washington, DC still stands."Creative Solar USA has completed its installation of a solar generation facility on the roof of Dade County High School.

A grant from the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority helped pay the upfront cost of solar equipment that will extend the schools energy conservation efforts. The 60-kilowatt installation is part of ongoing improvements that reduce energy, utility costs and greenhouse gas emissions in school operations. Earlier efforts included a new energy-efficient HVAC system for the school and LED lights, said Dr. Jan Harris, superintendent of Dade County Schools.

Already, she said, savings from those efforts have helped to allow funds previously consumed by utility bills to be directed into other school needs.



Were hoping the solar panels will help reduce our [utility] cost even more, she said.

Dr. Harris said Dade County is proud to have the solar panels in place, and the team found the installation process to be a positive experience.

Schools across the nation are on the forefront of solar energy adoption. Not only do the utility bill savings allow more resources to be devoted to classroom needs like supplies and teacher salaries, the solar technology provides inspiration to students for STEM subjects, said officials.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, about five percent of the nations schools now use solar energy. Across the U.S., more than 5,500 U.S. elementary, middle and high schools have deployed 910 megawatts of solar, enough to power 190,000 homes.

Russell Seifert, CEO of Creative Solar USA, said he is proud to contribute to this dual-purpose infrastructure for schools in Georgia.

Schools are adopting solar because their mission is focused on creating a better future in every community, said Mr. Seifert. Todays solar technology is better and more cost-effective than ever. As a company, Creative Solar USA supports STEM education and creating systems that provide meaningful savings and clean energy for decades.

For more information, visit www.creativesolarusa.com.International real estate advisor Savills has announced planned expansion of its Indian business into a full-service platform.



The expansion of Savills into India is the next strategic move for the business, after the successful acquisition of Cluttons Middle East, said a statement from the company.



The expanded Savills India business will be led by new CEO Anurag Mathur, and will initially operate from offices in New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai with a focus on delivering the very best real estate advice and services for its clients, it stated.



Mathur is an industry veteran, with over 24 years experience in the Indian real estate sector, most recently as the head of project and development services and emerging businesses for JLL in India, said the statement.



Before that Mathur spent 14 years at Cushman and Wakefield India where he was one of the founding members, holding various senior positions, the last being the managing director and country head.



Lauding the appointment, Savills Group CEO Jeremy Helsby, said: "I am delighted to welcome Mathur and his management team in their new role as leaders of a new and exciting Savills business in India. I wish them every success for the future."



Joining along with Mathur is Pankaj Sharma who has been appointed as the finance chief as well as the chief operations officer of Savills India. Sharma brings more than 20 years of experience in Finance and Operations in the Indian real estate industry.



He served previously with Cushman and Wakefield for 18 years in various roles in India and APAC, ultimately as CFO for India.



Steven Morgan, the chief executive of Savills Middle East (formerly CEO Cluttons Middle East) said: "India is a critical addition in the strategic expansion of Savills across the world. Following the acquisition of the Cluttons Middle East business earlier this year, the addition of India, is a logical next step."



"The Middle East and India are intrinsically linked, with over 2.5 million Indian nationals residing in the UAE alone. There is a great opportunity for the combined Savills business to extend our services to these expatriate populations, providing expert advice in the GCC and their home nation," he added.



The most recent Dubai Land Department statistics for the first nine months of 2018 show that Indians actually made more transactions in Dubai real estate than Emiratis, with 4,676 investments compared to 4,112 for UAE citizens.

Indians are the largest foreign investors into Dubai real estate with Dh8.6 billion of investment. In addition, over the past year, the GCC has committed more than $52billion in commercial investments into India.



Morgan said it will continue to invest in Savills India to broaden the business over the coming years.



Talking about the expansion, Christian Mancini, CEO, Savills Asia Pacific (ex-Greater China), said: India is a strategic opportunity for Savills continued expansion in Asia. The country is a key growth engine of the global economy and has accelerated its significance with continued economic development and a highly talented workforce resulting in it being a preferred destination of global capital. Our aim is to offer a full suite of integrated services to Occupier, Investor and Developer clients in the key locations in India.



On his new role, Mathur said: "This is a very exciting opportunity for me and I am proud to have the chance to build and lead an iconic brand as we develop the Savills business in India."-TradeArabia News ServiceSome 54,000 security forces have been deployed to protect polling centres

Afghans are bracing for more deadly violence on Saturday as voters turn out for the long-delayed legislative election across the war-torn country that the Taliban has vowed to attack.

Some 54,000 security forces have been deployed to protect polling centres, which open at 7:00 am, but there are concerns the killing of a powerful police chief on Thursday will scare off many voters.

Voting has been delayed in the southern province of Kandahar after a Taliban-claimed attack on a US-Afghan security meeting that killed three people, including General Abdul Raziq.

General Scott Miller, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, escaped injury in the shooting, but 13 others were wounded.

Almost nine million people have registered to vote in the parliamentary election, which is more than three years late and only the third since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

But the threat of militant attacks and expectations for massive fraud are expected to deter many voters from showing up at the more than 5,000 polling centres.

In the days leading up to the poll, the Taliban has issued several statements urging candidates to withdraw and voters to boycott what the group calls a "malicious American conspiracy".

Shambolic preparations for the ballot have been made worse by a wave of poll-related violence that has left hundreds dead or wounded.

At least 10 candidates out of more than 2,500 contesting the lower-house election have been killed so far.

The most recent victim was Abdul Jabar Qahraman, who was blown up Wednesday by a bomb placed under his sofa in the southern province of Helmand.

Most of the candidates are political novices and include doctors, mullahs and journalists. Those with the deepest pockets are expected to win.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which has spearheaded international efforts to keep Afghan election organisers on track, on Friday urged voters to "exercise their constitutional right to vote".

The poll is seen as a crucial test for next year's presidential election and an important milestone ahead of a UN meeting in Geneva in November where Afghanistan is under pressure to show progress on "democratic processes".

But the eleventh hour introduction of biometric voter verification machines, which have never been used in an Afghan election, threatens to derail the process.

Observers are concerned the results could be thrown into turmoil if the devices are broken, lost or destroyed.

There are also fears the data could be manipulated before preliminary results are released on November 10.

Votes cast without the controversial machines will not be counted, the Independent Election Commission has said, even though polling centre workers have received little or no training in how to use them.The leadership merry-go-round that has seen six changes of prime minister in a decade has irritated voters, who could punish the ruling party

Australia's embattled conservative coalition was heading for a spectacular defeat in a crucial by-election Saturday, as analysts declared victory for a high-profile independent candidate.

The loss, if confirmed after counting finishes, would snuff out the Liberal-National coalition's one-seat parliamentary majority.

It would also be the biggest-ever swing in a by-election against a sitting government.

The poll in the wealthy Sydney seat of Wentworth was triggered after former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was ousted in a party coup in August -- the sixth change of national leaders in the last decade.

Turnbull's successor, Scott Morrison, is facing public anger about the leadership merry-go-round and constant infighting in Canberra, and could be made to pay in Wentworth, traditionally a seat held by his Liberal Party.

Just over an hour after polls closed, respected veteran analyst Antony Green of national broadcaster ABC said with some nine percent of the vote counted, the Liberals were facing a more than 25 percent swing against the party.

The benefactor was doctor and independent candidate Kerryn Phelps, who capitalised on the voter discontent.

"I think we can say that Kerryn Phelps will win the Wentworth by-election and this has been a pretty bad result for the Liberal Party," Green said.

The Wentworth loss would transform the coalition into a minority government, effectively turning Morrison into a lame duck prime minister.

Polls were pointing to defeat for the Liberal Party's Dave Sharma at the expense of independent candidate Kerryn Phelps

Voting is compulsory in Australia but the buzz around the polling stations was unusual for Wentworth, with dozens of volunteers from different parties inundating voters with leaflets for their candidates.

"I've done over 20 elections and this is the first time at eight o'clock (in the morning) we've had a queue," Liberal Party volunteer Kevin Berry told national broadcaster ABC.

"It's quite extraordinary the level of interest in the election this time around."

- Frustrated voters -

Wentworth resident Roslyn Taylor said she was frustrated with politicians and the chaos that has plagued the main parties in recent years.

The Wentworth constituency includes Bondi Beach, as well as a raft of luxury homes owned by the likes of Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe

"None of them have really got their mind on the job. None of them have got their mind on the people -- the true needs of the people in terms of education, in terms of health," she told AFP outside a polling booth at Bondi Beach.

The sprawling Sydney constituency takes in the famous beach well as the haunts of stars like Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman.

While the seat was easily held by Turnbull in the traditionally Liberal seat, polls before the by-election were already pointing to defeat for the Liberal Party's Dave Sharma.

"I'm hearing from the people in Wentworth that they are ready for change," Phelps told the ABC Saturday.

Scott Morrison ousted Malcolm Turbnbull in a party coup earlier this year, sparking the by-election that could now deprive him of his majority

A defeat would prove hugely embarrassing to Morrison, who even floated the idea of moving the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- upending decades of Australian foreign policy -- in a bid to woo Wentworth's Jewish voters.

Despite the efforts of party heavyweights to ramp-up support for Sharma before polls closed, Morrison appeared resigned to a defeat.

"The events of a couple of months ago would have caused a great deal of anger and outrage here in Wentworth," Morrison told reporters on Friday of Turnbull's removal.

"I know, I was in the parliament."A guard tower at Camp 5 at the US military's prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has instructed military judge Douglas Watkins to oversee court proceedings for 9/11 suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon said Friday.

Watkins, a US army colonel, replaces now-retired colonel James Pohl.

As chief judge, Watkins will be responsible for assigning military judges to each case referred to a special military tribunal.

The so-called "9/11 Five" -- including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- have been locked up at the Guantanamo Bay military prison for years and were first charged in 2008.

But an unending slew of legal missteps, issues with military court proceedings and problems stemming from evidence extracted under duress have seen the men's prosecution morph into a quixotic attempt at justice.

The judicial process is complicated by the fact that the prisoners passed through secret CIA prisons, where some were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- a euphemism for torture -- information from which was used to construct the prosecution's case.

This is especially true in the case of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and subjected to numerous waterboarding sessions -- which simulate drowning -- prior to being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.Demonstrators dressed as Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US President Donald Trump (C) protest outside the White House in Washington

The White House said Friday it was "saddened" after Saudi Arabia said missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a fistfight in its consulate, but made no mention of action against the US ally.

In Washington's first response to Saudi Arabia's confirmation that the US-based writer was dead, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said merely that the US "acknowledges the announcement."

"We will continue to closely follow the international investigations into this tragic incident and advocate for justice that is timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process," she said.

"We are saddened to hear confirmation of Mr Khashoggi's death, and we offer our deepest condolences to his family, fiancee and friends."

President Donald Trump has sent mixed messages about Khashoggi for days, vowing a severe response but also saying that the United States wants to preserve its close relationship with the conservative kingdom.

Members of the US Congress were far harsher about the announcement on Saudi state media, which said that Khashoggi died after his discussions at the consulate in Istanbul devolved into a fistfight.

What happened to Jamal Khashoggi?

Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally who has nonetheless been outspoken about Khashoggi's death, doubted the credibility of the Saudi authorities, which insisted for weeks that he left the consulate.

"To say that I am skeptical of the new Saudi narrative about Mr Khashoggi is an understatement," the Republican senator tweeted.

- Targeting Saudi officials -

Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States should pursue sanctions against Saudis involved in Khashoggi's death under a US law named after Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption Russian accountant who died in custody.

"The Global Magnitsky Act doesn't have exceptions for accidents. Even if Khashoggi died because of an altercation, that's no excuse for his murder," Menendez tweeted.

"This is far from the end and we need to keep up the international pressure."

Trump sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh, where he praised the Saudis for conducting a probe and called for the two nations to maintain a close alliance

Khashoggi, who lived in suburban Washington, was a former insider who turned into a critic of the kingdom's direction under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Khashoggi, who contributed opinion pieces to The Washington Post, visited the consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to sort out marriage paperwork, but his fiancee saw nothing more of him after he entered.

Representative Mike Coffman, one of a number of lawmakers from Trump's Republican Party who is facing a tough race in November 6 elections, said the United States "must stand up for our values and demand our 'allies' respect human rights."

The Colorado lawmaker, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, urged Trump to immediately recall the acting US ambassador from Saudi Arabia. Trump has yet to nominate an envoy to the kingdom.

Trump sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier in the week to Riyadh, where the top US diplomat praised the Saudis for conducting a probe and called for the two nations to maintain a close alliance for the sake of business deals and their shared opposition to Iran.President Donald Trump said that if the US does take action over journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death, he does not want it to impact arms sales to Saudi Arabia

US President Donald Trump said Friday he found Saudi Arabia's explanation about the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi credible and termed it an "important first step."

Trump added if the US takes action, he does not want it to impact arms sales to the kingdom, which said Khashoggi was killed in a fight at its Istanbul consulate. Turkish officials pointed to a state-sanctioned hit.

"I do, I do," Trump said when asked if he found the Saudis' explanation credible, adding: "It's early, we haven't finished our review or investigation, but... I think it's a very important first step."

"I would prefer, if there is going to be some form of sanction or what we may determine to do, if anything... that we don't use as retribution canceling $110 billion worth of work, which means 600,000 jobs," he said during a visit to Arizona, referring to a major arms deal with the kingdom.

Trump has sent mixed messages about Khashoggi for days, vowing a severe response but also saying that the United States wants to preserve its close relationship with the conservative kingdom.

Members of the US Congress were far harsher in the wake of the kingdom's admission that Khashoggi was dead.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said he doubted the credibility of the Saudi authorities, who insisted for weeks that he left the consulate.

"The story the Saudis have told about Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance continues to change with each passing day, so we should not assume their latest story holds water," he tweeted.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally who has nonetheless been outspoken about Khashoggi, shared Corker's suspicion.

"To say that I am skeptical of the new Saudi narrative about Mr Khashoggi is an understatement," the Republican senator tweeted.

- Targeting Saudi officials -

Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States should pursue sanctions against Saudis involved in Khashoggi's death under a US law named after Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption Russian accountant who died in custody.

"The Global Magnitsky Act doesn't have exceptions for accidents. Even if Khashoggi died because of an altercation, that's no excuse for his murder," Menendez tweeted.

"This is far from the end and we need to keep up the international pressure."

Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor who lived in suburban Washington, was a former insider who turned into a critic of the kingdom's direction under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

He visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to sort out marriage paperwork, but his fiancee saw nothing more of him after he entered.

Representative Mike Coffman, one of a number of lawmakers from Trump's Republican Party facing a tough race in November 6 elections, said the United States "must stand up for our values and demand our 'allies' respect human rights."

The Colorado lawmaker, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, urged Trump to immediately recall the acting US ambassador from Saudi Arabia. Trump has yet to nominate a permanent envoy to the kingdom.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres meanwhile demanded that those responsible for Khashoggi's death be held to account.

"The Secretary-General is deeply troubled by the confirmation of the death of Jamal Khashoggi. He extends his condolences to Mr Khashoggi's family and friends," Guterres's office said in a statement.

"The Secretary-General stresses the need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mr Khashoggi's death and full accountability for those responsible."Indra Nooyi, seen here at a dinner for business leaders hosted by President Donald Trump and his wife Melania, left her job as head of PepsiCo

This year was touted as the year of women in politics in the United States, but in the business world, female bosses remain few and far between.

And some warn the situation is unlikely to improve with men unwilling to play the role of mentor to younger female colleagues in the era of the #MeToo movement, which has heightened awareness of sexual abuse and inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

The departure in September of India's Indra Nooyi as head of PepsiCo after more than a decade in the job has only reinforced a trend that has been growing for the past two years: the decline in the number of women CEOs even as debate about the need for equality in the workplace rages, and amid increasing calls for women to break through the "glass ceiling."

Recently, a number of prominent women have left their posts as company heads, including Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup, Margo Georgiadis of Mattel, Sherilyn McCoy of Avon, Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, Ursula Burns of Xerox, and Ellen Kullman of Dupont.

All of them have been replaced by men, a blow for diversity since fewer than five percent of leaders of the S&P 500 largest enterprises are now women, down from 5.4 percent in 2017.

"We are going in the wrong direction," said Lorraine Hariton, whose NGO Catalysts advocates for women in senior positions.

"Women have gotten into entry-level positions very successfully, and then they get to middle management, and things stall out," she said. "Women still today are not reaching the top, particularly women of color."

Ursula Burns, one of the rare women of color to head a large US corporation

Dismissing the idea that the glass ceiling is down to women's decision to focus on family rather than career, experts lay the blame more on deep-rooted cliches.

Hariton said her group's research "shows that the stereotype that men 'take charge' and women 'take care' puts women leaders in a double bind and can potentially undermine their leadership and career and advancement options."

"Women suffer 'Goldilocks' syndrome: they are judged as being too hard, too soft, and never just right for the job," she said.

"Women are held to higher ethical standards and punished more harshly after ethical violations than are men," said Vanderbilt University professor Jessica Kennedy.

"In short, women face higher standards and have more to prove than men do," she said

- Millennial men not so open minded -

Mary Barra was the first woman to head General Motors, appointed just in time to break the bad news that the company's faulty ignition switch was linked to the deaths of 124 people

Women who aim high in business often find they are not invited to important meetings or to after-work gatherings, both places where important connections are made, experts say.

This "culture of exclusion" may get even worse because of the #MeToo movement, because some men worry "that a compliment to their young mentee is likely to actually trigger accusations of sexual harassment," said Kennedy.

"Nothing much happens without sponsorship," said Hariton, noting that a mentor or sponsor shares vital contacts, gives advice and pushes for their protege's advancement.

Even though the number of women in managerial positions has risen in the past decade, many are stuck in mid-level positions like head of human resources, or the legal or financial director of their company, according to Pew Research. Very few rise as high as chief operating officer, the launchpad to the CEO post.

On the other hand, researchers have found that it is not uncommon for a woman to be offered the helm of a company that is already in trouble, a "glass cliff" post she is more likely to accept in a bid to prove herself even if the chances of success are low.

Christy Glass, a professor at the University of Utah, said women are also seen as being better at breaking bad news than men.

She cited the case of Mary Barra, who was named head of General Motors in February 2014, several days before the car maker revealed that its faulty ignition switch was linked to 124 deaths.

Hariton said that to change the dynamic, more women are needed on companies' boards of directors, which are responsible for appointing the head of a firm.

"Eighty percent of board seats at S&P 500 companies are primarily men," said Hariton. "So the lens by which women are being evaluated is a white, male lens."

A recent California law forces publicly listed companies based in the state to appoint at least one woman to their board by the end of 2019, and two or three by the end of 2021.

Kennedy said quotas had been made necessary because even though young men of the "millennial" generation -- aged between 17 and 35 -- were more supportive of sexual equality than their forebears, they also worry that it could impinge on their own career opportunities.

Some large US corporations, such as American Express, Best Buy and Ralph Lauren, have recently signed up to ParityPlegde, in which members pledge to look at least one female candidate when a job position opens up.Democratic congressional candidate Harley Rouda is trying to win in Huntington Beach, which for 30 years has been held by Republicans

As the door slammed in his face, Josef Siroky understood that campaigning for a Democrat in the conservative California city of Huntington Beach was not going to be easy.

But he kept knocking on doors, handing out pamphlets -- and selling the idea of political change.

Siroky is one of hundreds of volunteers canvassing the Golden State's conservative bastions like Huntington Beach, which Democrats are hoping to conquer in the November 6 midterm elections en route to winning control of the House of Representatives -- and possibly, Congress.

On a sunny Sunday in October, Siroky and the other volunteers are going door-to-door for Harley Rouda, a former Republican who is now running for office as a moderate Democrat in a tight race with a veteran Republican.

"It's great to see the blue wave right now," Rouda shouted, earning applause from the squadron of volunteers.

California is often at the forefront of the leftist resistance to President Donald Trump. But Orange County, south of Los Angeles and home to three million people, has for decades been solid red Republican.

Hillary Clinton's 2016 victory over Trump in the mainly white, rich county by 100,000 votes motivated Democrats, offering them hope that they can turn the tables this year in the 14 House seats (out of 53) held by Republicans statewide.

Democrats are running viable races in seven of those districts, including the 48th, home to Huntington Beach and represented for 30 years by Dana Rohrabacher, whose ties with Russia have become an issue in the campaign.

Rohrabacher also has come under fire for seemingly defending the idea of arming schoolchildren when he was duped by actor Sasha Baron Cohen for his Showtime comedy "Who Is America?"

"We've seen so many Republicans, moderate Republicans here in the district... who are disappointed with the extremist views of their current representative," Rouda told AFP. "They want somebody who is more moderate."

Rouda is looking to unseat veteran Republican lawmaker Dana Rohrabacher, who has been in Congress for three decades

The 56-year-old Rouda, a real estate executive, says he thinks voters have grown weary of party politics as usual.

"I think people across America as well as here are getting tired about the question of whether it's a 'D' or an 'R' next to your name. It's about your character and about your values," he told AFP.

This is the main thrust of Rouda's campaign -- de-emphasizing the party label.

His volunteers are highlighting the fact that he was a Republican until 1997, that he is a businessman, and that he does not lean too far left.

Basically, they tell voters he's not blue or red -- but purple.

"We don't want to lie, but we need to know our audience," said one campaign staffer who asked not to be named.

- At full capacity -

Young Democrats line up in a Rouda field office to get instructions before going out to canvass for him in Huntington Beach, California

Siroky, a 22-year-old college graduate with a degree in political science, worked on one street in Huntington Beach with five other volunteers -- all men, all his age.

Here, the houses are huge and well maintained, and the lawns are pristine.

The young Democrats have hard work on their hands.

"It's like playing the lottery," says Siroky, whose father is of Czech descent and whose mother hails from Mexico.

After walking for five blocks, the team is not having much luck, with only two residents reached.

At one home, a 74-year-old woman who is a registered Republican is the one who slammed the door on Siroky.

At another, a much younger Asian woman who was not listed as having a party affiliation opened the door in her pajamas and listened to Siroky's spiel.

"Definitely you're trying to convince people, but I think that I can show Republicans that Democrats have good ideas too," he said.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs in the election, along with a third of Senate seats and governorships in 36 states.

In Orange County, Democrats are "energized, organized, and firing on all cylinders," Rachel Potucek, the party's local spokeswoman, told AFP.

"Campaign events feel electric and unified. We feel like we're making history."

Rouda got a big campaign boost from a high-profile Democrat -- former president Barack Obama (L), who came to Orange County to stump for Rouda and other Democrats

Former president Barack Obama even stopped by last month for a campaign rally in Anaheim for Rouda and other candidates.

"If these candidates win, I'm absolutely confident Washington will start working better," said Obama, who has ramped up his political activity in the run-up to the midterms.

The Republican Party's office in Orange County did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

- Giving up on Trump? -

Katherine Amoukhteh, a registered Republican, says she is voting Democrat in November, in part because of her dislike of Donald Trump

An annual survey carried out in Orange County by Chapman University, published in April, showed that 63 percent of respondents expressed disapproval for the way Trump is doing his job.

Katherine Amoukhteh, 53, is one of those people.

A Republican since her mid-20s, Amoukhteh says that the GOP has changed drastically so she decided to shift over to Team Blue.

In her yard in a wealthy neighborhood of Laguna Niguel, which is near Huntington Beach, she even posted a sign in support of Rouda.

Like her preferred candidate, Amoukhteh says she sees herself as politically "purple" -- she supports lower taxes and a smaller government footprint.

She never liked Trump -- "how he ran his business... the fact that he thought women were just an object."

"That's what woke me up politically and I started to think maybe... I should do something about this," Amoukhteh told AFP.

"I think California can be bluer."A physical therapy room has been set up for older detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison

The controversial Guantanamo Bay prison still houses 40 aging inmates -- and with no plans to close it, many of them will probably remain there until they die.

The population still imprisoned at the military base in Cuba range from middle-aged to elderly -- the oldest inmate is 71 -- so the prison with a history of torture has taken on some airs of a geriatric facility.

The US Army -- directed to ensure Guantanamo can stay open at least another 25 years -- has revamped parts of the institution home to terror suspects to include a dedicated medical center and operating rooms.

"There has been a lot of thought put into what preparing for an aging detainee population looks like and what infrastructure we need to have in place to do that safely and humanely," said Anne Leanos, the public affairs director for Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

With a budget of $12 million, a prison annex has been transformed into a public hospital, complete with a radiology room equipped with an MRI scanner, as well as an emergency room and three-bed intensive care unit.

During a journalist visit to the new clinic, a walker sits in the corner of a room, which has a hospital bed, wheelchair and medical equipment akin to any other infirmary.

But there is no window, and wire mesh serves as a partition, recalling that this is still very much a detention center.

Congress will not allow sick prisoners to travel to the United States for treatment: Guantanamo inmates are considered highly dangerous by the government, which accuses them of participating in various attacks including those of September 11.

- 'Still fighting' -

The US Army -- directed to ensure Guantanamo can stay open at least another 25 years -- has revamped parts of the institution home to terror suspects to include a dedicated medical center and operating rooms

No prisoner needs a wheelchair yet -- but if the need arises, the clinic is prepared with ramps.

Patients suffer from ailments common for their age: diabetes, hypertension, gastrointestinal diseases and motor disorders.

The second-floor psychiatric ward is equipped with two cells converted into consultation rooms.

A third, completely empty cell is padded and serves as the isolation room for prisoners experiencing psychotic episodes.

Like any staff deployed to Guantanamo, prison psychiatrists usually stay just nine to 12 months on site, limiting the scope of their interaction with prisoners.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visits Guantanamo about four times a year to make sure the prison is complying with detention standards and to assess detainees' treatment.

Since the infamous detention center opened in 2002, nine inmates have died: seven committed suicide, according to the military, while one died of cancer and another had a heart attack.

The largest contingent -- 26 inmates -- at the military complex have never been charged with anything, but are considered too dangerous to be released.

One "highly compliant" inmate was on a "non-religious fast," at the moment of the visit -- a euphemism used at the prison to describe hunger strikes prisoners regularly observe in protest.

Acts of rebellion are fairly common -- and base commander Admiral John Ring said one inmate was currently under disciplinary action.

"These are the ones that could not be released," said Ring. "Many of these gentlemen are still at war with the United States.

"Any act of resistance, no matter how small -- they are still fighting the war through these minor acts of resistance."A mother and her four children, among six Druze hostages released by the Islamic State group after a three-month ordeal, appear for the cameras in a Syrian government office in the southern city of Sweida on October 20, 2018

The Islamic State group has released two women and four children among 27 surviving Druze hostages it seized during a deadly July attack on the minority community's heartland in southern Syria.

State television broadcast footage of the six arriving in the city of Sweida on Saturday, joyful at being reunited with their families but haggard after their three-month ordeal.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said their release was the first part of a deal that would see at least 60 IS prisoners released in exchange and a $27 million ransom paid.

The jihadists abducted around 30 people -- mostly women and children -- from Sweida province in late July during the deadliest attack on Syria's Druze community of the seven-year civil war.

As negotiations for their release dragged on, families led a series of protests outside government offices in Sweida to demand more be done.

"I cannot describe my joy," Rasmia Abu Amar told state television after being reunited with her husband.

"But it is incomplete -- my son has not yet been released," she said, her hair covered by a white headscarf.

A second woman appeared with her four children, their clothes still dirty from their long captivity and her sons with their heads shaved.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the six were freed on Friday night and that further hostage releases were expected "in the next few days or hours".

- Stiff price -

The July 25 suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings were the deadliest attack on Syria's Druze community of the seven-year civil war

He said that in return for the release of all of the hostages, the Syrian government had agreed to free 60 Islamic State group prisoners and pay a ransom of $27 million.

"Nine IS women prisoners held by the regime have already been handed over to the group along with seven children," Abdel Rahman said.

During the coordinated assaults on July 25, IS carried out suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings that left more than 250 people dead, most of them civilians.

Sweida province is the heartland of the country's Druze minority, which made up around three percent of Syria's pre-war population -- or around 700,000 people.

Followers of a secretive offshoot of Islam, the Druze are considered heretics by the Sunni extremists of IS.

The jihadists executed a 19-year-old male student among the hostages in August and then a 25-year-old woman in early October. IS said a 65-year-old woman being held by the group also died from illness.

Negotiations between regime ally Russia and the jihadists for the release of the hostages had stalled. But the latest round of talks appeared to have paid off -- albeit it with a stiff price.

The Observatory said IS had also demanded the halting of an offensive against them in Sweida.

- Jihadists killed -

The Syrian army has been battling Islamic State group fighters in Sweida province since a July attack in which they killed some 250 people and kidnapped around 30 more

Government forces have battled its fighters in the volcanic plateau of Tulul al-Safa in the east of the province since the July attack.

Abdel Rahman said the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led alliance that controls swathes of the north and northeast with the support of a US-led coalition, "should also release some IS detainees" but he did not specify the number.

There was no immediate comment from the SDF, which has been taking heavy casualties fighting IS in its last pocket of control in eastern Syria, around the Euphrates valley town of Hajin.

On September 10, the group launched a major assault on the pocket where they estimate some 3,000 jihadists are holed up.

The battle has killed 414 jihadists and 227 SDF fighters in total since then, the Observatory says.

On Saturday, coalition air strikes killed 28 IS fighters in and around Hajin, while another seven jihadists were killed in clashes with the SDF, the monitor said.

Coalition air strikes on IS targets in another part of the eastern pocket killed at least 41 civilians, 10 of them children, on Thursday and Friday, it added.

A coalition spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Syria's grinding civil war has claimed more than 360,000 lives since it erupted with the the bloody repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

A caliphate which the jihadists proclaimed across large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014 has crumbled in the face of multiple offensives against them but they remain a potent force.Mai Khoi is afraid of becoming an online target

Mai Khoi, a dissident musician dubbed Vietnam's Lady Gaga, has appealed to Facebook's directors to safeguard freedom of expression as the government looks to bolster its control of the web.

With 53 million users, Facebook is extremely popular in Vietnam -- where the internet has become a battleground for activists like Khoi.

A controversial cybersecurity bill, due to come into effect in January, will require internet companies to remove "toxic" content and hand over user data if asked by the communist government to do so.

It also requires firms to host servers in-country, which has sparked fears of further government meddling.

"Protecting freedom of expression should be an official policy of Facebook, but sadly, it's not," Khoi told AFP during an interview at the city's airport.

"Facebook is the only space in Vietnam where we can talk freely, express our mind freely and we can access uncensored information, and sometimes organize the peaceful protests. That's why the government is scared. So now they try to control Facebook," she said.

"The crackdown is very heavy."

Banned from selling her CDs and organising concerts, Khoi performs secret gigs away from the watchful eyes of police -- and is now afraid of becoming an online target.

Facebook and Google have so far declined to comment on Vietnam's impending cybersecurity law, though rights groups have slammed the bill.

Khoi said during Friday's meeting with Facebook, she urged the company to prevent government supporters abusing the network's community standards to silence dissidents.

"Facebook said they already worked on this. But in reality, in Vietnam, many independent journalists and activists have their accounts locked and the post deleted every day," she added.

Placed under informal house arrest in late 2017 after she brandished an anti-Donald Trump sign when the US president visited last year, Khoi was also banned from running in parliamentary elections a year earlier.

"I think Facebook should do the right thing to show what they do is protecting freedom of expression," Khoi said.The global steel demand will reach 1,657.9 million tonnes in 2018, an increase of 2.1 per cent over 2017, a World Steel Association (worldsteel) report said.



In 2019, it is forecasted that global steel demand will grow by 1.4 per cent to reach 1,681.2 million tonnes.



Worldsteel is a non-profit organisation based in Belgium with more than 170 members representing 85 per cent of the world's steel production.



Worldsteel, headed by Saeed Ghumran Al Remeithi, Emirates Steel chief executive officer and the chairman of the worldsteel economic committee, released its Short Range Outlook (SRO), during its bi-annual meeting Tokyo, Japan.



Commenting on the outlook, Al Remeithi said: In 2018, global steel demand continued to show resilience supported by the recovery in investment activities in developed economies and the improved performance of emerging economies. Demand for steel is expected to remain positive into 2019.



While the strength of steel demand recovery seen in 2017 was carried over to 2018, risks have increased. Rising trade tensions and volatile currency movements are increasing uncertainty. Normalisation of monetary policies in the US and EU could also influence the currencies of emerging economies, he added.



"In the Middle East region, steel demand increased by 2.1 per cent, reaching 54.5 million tonnes this year. In 2019, steel demand is anticipated to grow by 1.2 per cent to reach 55.1 million tonnes. Structural reforms and rising oil prices have helped boost the slow upward growth of steel in the GCC region, Al Remeithi concluded.



Global steel demand trends and highlights for 2018 and 2019:

China: In the first half of 2018, Chinese steel demand got a boost from the mini stimulus in real estate and the strong global economy. However, continued economic rebalancing efforts and toughening environmental regulations will lead to deceleration of steel demand toward the end of 2018 and 2019.



Both downside and upside risks exist for China. Downside risks come from the ongoing trade friction with the US and a decelerating global economy. However, if the Chinese government decides to use stimulus measures to contain the potential slowdown of the Chinese economy in the face of a deteriorating economic environment, steel demand in 2019 will be boosted.



US: Steel demand in developed economies is expected to increase by 1.0 per cent in 2018 and 1.2 per cent in 2019. US steel demand grew strongly in 2017, benefiting from strong consumer spending and business investment supported by tax and regulatory changes and fiscal stimulus, although growth in the construction sector moderated. Steel demand growth in 2019 is expected to slow as auto manufacturing and construction activity is expected to see modest growth. The manufacturing sector is expected to perform well thanks to the strength of the machinery and equipment sector.



European Union: The broadening recovery of EU steel demand is expected to continue, though at a reduced pace, mainly driven by domestic demand. With business confidence high, investment and construction continued to recover while the automotive market may see slower demand growth. Though the economic fundamentals of the EU economy remain relatively healthy, steel demand in 2019 will show some deceleration over the growth seen in 2017-18, partly due to uncertainties resulting from global trade tensions.



Japan and Korea: Steel demand in Japan is expected to remain stable due to supportive factors on investment (record-high corporate earnings, the continuation of monetary easing, demand associated with the Tokyo Olympics and the increasing need for labour-saving investments). Steel demand in Korea will contract further in 2018 with all its major steel using sectors struggling. Only a minor recovery is expected in 2019.



India: As India recovers from the twin shocks of demonetization and the goods and services tax (GST) implementation, Indias steel demand is expected to move back to a higher growth track. Steel demand will be supported by improving investment and infrastructure programmes.



Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) region: Sluggish construction activities and stock adjustments led to slow growth of steel demand in the Asean region in 2017 and 2018, but demand in the Asean region is expected to resume its growth momentum backed by infrastructure programmes in 2019 and onwards. Steel demand in developing Asia excluding China is expected to increase by 5.9 per cent and 6.8 per cent in 2018 and 2019 respectively.



Turkey and Russia: Even with the rise in oil prices, growth in steel demand in Russia is expected to show weak momentum. Turkish steel demand is expected to contract in 2018 with the currency crisis it has faced, but the governments stabilization measures and a consequent return to the competitiveness of the manufacturing sector is expected to help recovery in 2019.



Latin American: Steel demand in the Latin American economies is continuing its second year of recovery backed by positive developments in the domestic and the global economy. Steel demand in Brazil continued its stable recovery in 2018. This will continue into 2019 as election fever subsides. Steel demand in Mexico has suffered from uncertainties related to the NAFTA negotiation and the election, but the recent signing of USMCA and the new President calming jittery markets are expected to help the economy to recover slowly in 2019.



Steel demand in the emerging economies excluding China is expected to grow 3.2 per cent and 3.9 per cent in 2018 and 2019 respectively, it stated.  TradeArabia News ServiceThe website of 23andMe, which offer users DNA tests to trace their genetic ancestry: some critics worry the tests may encourage people to see society through a race-based lens

Millions of Americans are using DNA test kits sold online to research their ancestry, either out of simple curiosity or to find answers about their identity.

But some academics warn the craze could reinforce racial stereotypes and divisions.

For around $100 and a few drops of saliva, a number of companies offer to decipher the genome of their clients and, by comparing their DNA to other profiles, tell them whether their ancestors came mostly from West Africa, southern Europe or from the indigenous peoples of the Americas, for example.

In a country whose population, for the most part, arrived in various waves of migration -- and where genealogy has caught the public imagination -- the DNA tests have proven wildly successful.

The main companies offering the service, Ancestry and 23andMe, say they have tested between 15 million people between them.

"I know my family tree, but there could have been something from another country that I did not know," said Beverley Shea, a 67-year-old pensioner who did the test because she was "just curious."

"My test was boring," she joked. "I am exactly what I thought I was: Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh..."

- 'A form of racism' -

Promoters say the new technology shows people their diverse backgrounds and will only increase racial tolerance.

"There is spectacular human diversity in the world and we celebrate and embrace it," says the 23andMe website.

By way of proof, the site showcases an African-American descended from a slave and a white person descended from a slave-owning family who found out through the company's tests that they have a common ancestor. They now meet at that ancestor's grave in the spirit of "reconciliation."

However, researchers from the University of California have shown that when white supremacists are confronted with evidence of a black ancestor, they scramble to explain away the results.

Two sociologists, Joan Donovan and Aaron Panofsky, became interested in discussions on a far-right website called Stormfront, where users said they had received "bad news" from their DNA tests.

Their research "points out that based on white nationalists' responses to genetic information upon learning their test results, there is no reason to believe that they would give up their racial ideology, and, more importantly, that genetic information cannot be relied on to change the views of white nationalists."

Bavarian lederhosen -- traditional leather shorts -- on display at a beer festival in Munich

Timothy Caulfield, a specialist in health care law at the University of Alberta in Canada, warns that the DNA tests might even be reinforcing racial interpretations of society.

"These services are marketing the idea that biological differences matter, that at some fundamental level, your biology defines who you are," he told AFP.

In one advert for Ancestry's DNA testing service, a man tells how he used to wear Bavarian lederhosen because he thought he was descended from German immigrants, but switched to a kilt because he found he had Scottish ancestors.

"They are basically marketing a form of racism, a form that your genes are meaningful, you should think of what group you belong to based on your genes," said Caulfield.

He acknowledged that most people just did it "for fun," and that "it does not really alter the way the see the world."

But he said "it's emerging at a terrible time... where there is more tribalism, a time when people are looking for reasons to find others groups to be different."

Anthropologist John Edward Terrell also warned in the magazine Sapiens that these services are reviving the concept of "race" in a modern guise.

"Human races are inventions of the human mind. Substituting words like 'ancestry' or 'heritage' for the disreputable old term 'race' may sound like progress, but it isn't," he said.

- More than biology -

Native Americans showed this week they are already aware of the problem, when they rejected claims by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren that DNA tests showed her Native heritage.

The Cherokee Nation's Secretary of State, Chuck Hoskin Jr., said Warren's use of a DNA test to claim a connection to any tribal nation was "inappropriate and wrong."

"It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens," he said.

Democratic Senator ELizabeth Warren had a DNA test after President Donald Trump mocked her as "Pocahontas" for claiming Native American heritage, but her actions were met with fury from Cherokee representatives

That sentiment was echoed by Brandon Scott, editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the nation's oldest native newspaper founded in 1828.

He said Warren's actions -- carried out in response to taunts by President Donald Trump, who dubbed her "Pocahontas" for claiming Native American ancestry -- "add some legitimacy to the myth that Native American heritage is tied to DNA."

"Heritage is not just who you are biologically," he said. "Our identity isn't present in a faux-buckskin outfit or a made-in-China headdress. It is in our communities, it is in the words of our elders and the faces of our children."Saudi Arabia admitted that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate

Saudi Arabia admitted Saturday that critic Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its Istanbul consulate, as world powers demanded answers and mystery surrounded the whereabouts of his body.

Ankara vowed to reveal all the details of a two-week inquiry as US President DOnald Trump said he was unsatisfied with Saudi Arabia's response to the Washington Post columnist's death and the EU, Germany, France, Britain and the UN also demanded clarity.

Before dawn on Saturday, Riyadh backtracked on a fortnight of denials by announcing that Khashoggi died during a "brawl" inside the consulate on October 2.

It said 18 Saudis have been arrested in connection with his death and two top aides of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as three other intelligence agents, have been sacked.

Saudi Arabia has plunged into an international crisis over the fate of Khashoggi, who was critical of the crown prince.

Turkish officials have accused Riyadh of carrying out a state-sponsored killing and dismembering the body, which police have begun hunting for in an Istanbul forest.

In the latest version of events from Riyadh, Saudi Attorney General Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb said Khashoggi died after talks at the consulate degenerated into a physical altercation.

Saudi Arabia has sacked deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri, a close aide of Crown Prine Mohammed bin Salman

"Discussions that took place between him and the persons who met him... at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul led to a brawl and a fistfight with the citizen, Jamal Khashoggi, which led to his death, may his soul rest in peace," the attorney general said in a statement.

Trump said he found the explanation credible. The US president later said he was unsatisfied with the response, although he warned against scrapping a multibillion-dollar arms deal with the conservative kingdom.

"It was a big first step. It was a good first step," Trump said of the sackings.

"But I want to get to the answer."

The Saudi king also ordered the establishment of a ministerial body under the chairmanship of the crown prince to restructure the kingdom's intelligence agency and "define its powers precisely," Saudi state media said.

Key members of the crown prince's inner circle were sacked, including deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and royal court media adviser Saud al-Qahtani.

Saudi Arabia's Gulf ally, the United Arab Emirates, welcomed the moves by the king, as did Egypt.

But Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz tweeted that her heart was "full of sorrow" over the confirmation of his death.

- Turkish 'debt of honour' -

Saudi moves to overhaul the intelligence apparatus and sack top aides of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appear designed to distance him from the killing, analysts said

The controversy has put the kingdom -- for decades a key ally in Western efforts to contain Iran -- under unprecedented pressure.

It has evolved into a major crisis for Prince Mohammed, a Trump administration favourite widely known as MBS, whose image as a modernising Arab reformer has been gravely undermined.

Ankara said it had a "debt of honour" to reveal what happened.

"We are not accusing anyone in advance but we don't accept anything to remain covered (up)," said ruling Justice and Development Party spokesman Omer Celik.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged "transparency from Saudi Arabia" and said that "available reports on what happened in the Istanbul consulate are insufficient."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said many questions remained "unanswered" and insisted "they require exhaustive and diligent investigation."

The EU's top diplomat Federica Mogherini called for a "continued thorough, credible and transparent investigation, shedding proper clarity on the circumstances of the killing and ensuring full accountability of all those responsible for it."

UN chief Antonio Guterres stressed "the need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation," and "full accountability for those responsible."

Britain's Foreign Office, which also has close ties to Riyadh, said it "was a terrible act and those responsible must be held to account."

- Shielding crown prince -

What happened to Jamal Khashoggi?

Saudi officials have roundly denied that King Salman's son, Prince Mohammed, had any involvement.

But one suspect identified by Turkey was said to be a frequent companion of the young heir to the throne, three others were linked to his security detail and a fifth is a high-level forensic specialist, according to The New York Times.

The decision to overhaul the intelligence apparatus and sack members of the crown prince's inner circle is designed to "distance the crown prince from the murder," said analysis firm Eurasia Group.

In a recent off-the-record interview published posthumously by US magazine Newsweek, Khashoggi described the 33-year-old crown prince as "an old-fashioned tribal leader," but said he would have accepted an offer to work as his adviser.

"I'm not calling for the overthrow of the regime," the one-time royal insider said. "I'm just calling for reform of the regime."

Pro-government Turkish media have claimed that Khashoggi was tortured and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad, although Turkey has yet to release any official findings.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, on October 16

Saudi Arabia has long been a major US ally in the Middle East, thanks primarily to security considerations and oil.

But their diplomatic friendship has not always been a smooth one.

- Partners since 1945 -

The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1940, in the early stages of World War II.

On February 14, 1945 their partnership was sealed during a historic meeting between king Abdel Aziz bin Saud and president Franklin D. Roosevelt on board the cruiser USS Quincy in the Suez Canal.

The agreement saw the US guarantee military protection for the kingdom in return for privileged access to oil reserves, which were discovered in enormous quantities in the 1930s.

- Cooperation over Saddam -

After Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Riyadh allowed hundreds of thousands of US troops to deploy in the kingdom.

The country served as a base for the US-led coalition during the 1991 Gulf War against Saddam.

Over the following years, the coalition continued to station planes in the kingdom to enforce a "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq, provoking the anger of Saudi fundamentalists who carried out two anti-US attacks on Saudi soil in the mid-1990s.

- Post 9/11 tensions -

The September 11, 2001 attacks against the US represented a serious setback for bilateral relations -- 15 of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Saudi Arabia denounced the attacks, but was accused of quietly financing Islamic extremism.

Riyadh refused to take part in strikes against Afghanistan in late 2001, or participate in the Iraq war in 2003, although the US again used Saudi territory for air operations against Saddam.

Washington evacuated most of its remaining soldiers from Saudi Arabia and transferred them to Qatar, the headquarters for its aerial operations in the Gulf, but maintained military cooperation with Riyadh.

- Confidence crisis under Obama -

Riyadh supported the Syrian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and did not hide its anger after US president Barack Obama in September 2013 backed away from carrying out air strikes against the regime.

In October that year, Saudi Arabia refused to take a seat at the UN Security Council, to protest against what it regarded as multilateral and US inaction over the Syrian crisis.

The 2015 nuclear agreement with rival regional power Iran -- signed by the US and other world powers -- further undermined Saudi Arabia's confidence in the Obama administration.

- Trump boosts ties -

Delighted to turn the page on the Obama era, Saudi leaders warmly welcomed President Donald Trump's arrival.

In May 2017, Trump was received with pomp in the Sunni kingdom for his first overseas presidential visit.

The US president called for the isolation of Iran, to counter the Shiite power's growing influence in the Middle East.

The US and Saudi Arabia announced huge contracts exceeding $380 billion, including $110 billion for the sale of US arms to Riyadh to conter Tehran and Islamist radicals.

The two allies accuse Iran of arming Huthi rebels in Yemen, where since March 2015 Riyadh has intervened to support the government.

On March 20, Trump gave Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman an effusive welcome at the White House, hailing a "great friendship".

"Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation and they are going to give the United States some of that wealth hopefully, in the form of jobs, in the form of the purchase of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world," said Trump.

On May 8, Riyadh "supports and welcomes" Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement.

- Khashoggi affair -

On October 2, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The Washington Post contributor had been critical of the crown prince and lived in self-imposed exile in the US from 2017.

Turkish officials accused Saudi Arabia of a state-sponsored killing.

On October 20, Riyadh admitted that Khashoggi was killed inside the embassy and said he died during a "brawl".

Trump endorsed the explanation as credible and "an important first step", saying the US had not yet completed its own review of the case.

But Saudi Arabia's version of events drew scepticism from some top US lawmakers.The Wentworth constituency includes Bondi Beach, as well as a raft of luxury homes owned by the likes of Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe

Australia's embattled conservative coalition was Saturday dealt a spectacular defeat in a crucial by-election two months after it turfed out its latest prime minister, sending it in into minority government.

The poll in the wealthy Sydney seat of Wentworth was triggered after former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull of the Liberal Party was ousted in the party coup in August -- the sixth change of national leaders in the last decade.

The result snuffs out the Liberal-National coalition's one-seat majority and sends the country into yet another period of political instability ahead of national elections that have to be called by mid-May next year.

Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps won the wealthy seat of Wentworth in eastern Sydney, snuffing out the government's one-seat parliamentary majority

The Australian Electoral Commission said with almost 40 percent of the vote in Wentworth counted, high-profile independent candidate Kerryn Phelps was leading 54.34 percent compared to 45.66 percent for the Liberals' Dave Sharma under Australia's system of preferential voting.

"I think we can say that Kerryn Phelps will win the Wentworth by-election and this has been a pretty bad result for the Liberal Party," respected veteran analyst Antony Green of national broadcaster ABC said.

It is the biggest-ever swing in a by-election against a sitting government.

At the heart of voter discontent in the traditional Liberal seat, which was held by Turnbull by an 18 percent margin, was widespread frustration about the leadership merry-go-round and constant infighting in Canberra.

The leadership merry-go-round that has seen six changes of prime minister in a decade has irritated voters, who have punished the ruling party

"What we have done is tapped into a sentiment in the Australian people, to talk about the issues that are important to them, not the issues about survival for a particular political party," Phelps told supporters during her victory speech.

"It was said if we won the seat of Wentworth, it would make history, and, my friends, we have made history today."

Turnbull's successor Scott Morrison told supporters at an evening campaign event for Liberal candidate Dave Sharma as he conceded defeat that his party would keep fighting on.

"Liberals are angry and they've expressed that," Morrison said.

"The Liberal Party has paid a big price tonight for the events of several months ago. But as a party, we will continue to rise again."

While the result is ominous for the ruling coalition, who is battling poor polls and strong competition from the main Labor opposition party, the wealth of Wentworth also makes the electorate unique.

Analysts have told AFP next year's elections would be more likely to fought in less moneyed marginal seats in outer city suburbs and regional areas, where the focus is on bread and butter issues such as tackling the high cost-of-living.

- Angry voters -

Voting is compulsory in Australia but the buzz around the polling stations was unusual for Wentworth, with dozens of volunteers from different parties inundating voters with leaflets for their candidates earlier Saturday after polls opened.

Scott Morrison ousted Malcolm Turbnbull in a party coup earlier this year, sparking the by-election that has now deprived him of his majority

"I've done over 20 elections and this is the first time at eight o'clock (in the morning) we've had a queue," Liberal Party volunteer Kevin Berry told national broadcaster ABC.

"It's quite extraordinary the level of interest in the election this time around."

Wentworth resident Roslyn Taylor said she was frustrated with politicians and the chaos that has plagued the main parties in recent years.

"None of them have really got their mind on the job. None of them have got their mind on the people -- the true needs of the people in terms of education, in terms of health," she told AFP outside a polling booth at Bondi Beach.

The sprawling Sydney constituency takes in the famous beach well as the haunts of stars like Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman.

The defeat is hugely embarrassing to Morrison, who even floated the idea of moving the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- upending decades of Australian foreign policy -- in a bid to woo Wentworth's Jewish voters.Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman chats with Jordan's King Abdullah II at the Future Investment Initiative FII conference in Riyadh on October 23, 2018

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose image has been tarnished by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, gained popularity after shaking up the ultraconservative kingdom with reforms. But many now see his crackdown on dissent as verging on authoritarianism.

Known by his initials MBS, the young, charismatic heir apparent to the Gulf region's most powerful throne has overseen the most fundamental transformation in the modern history of the oil-rich nation and sidelined all rivals after emerging as first-in-line in June 2017.

US President Donald Trump quickly saw the prince as a vital pillar of the American strategy of containing Iran -- long a Saudi foe -- while trying to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia closer together in the search for a Middle East peace plan.

Still only 33, Prince Mohammed has pledged to usher in a "moderate" Saudi Arabia as he seeks to win over international investors for his grandiose vision to overhaul the kingdom's oil-reliant economy.

He has also taken on the powerful clerics who long dominated Saudi life and struck out at the nation's coddled elite with a dramatic purge in September last year of royals, ministers and business figures that saw hundreds detained in a probe over graft worth $100 billion.

But Riyadh's admission on October 20 -- after two weeks of mounting global outrage -- that prominent critic Khashoggi was murdered during "a brawl" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 has jeopardised the prince's carefully cultivated reformist image.

- Selfies with supporters -

Two of the prince's inner circle, deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and royal court media advisor Saud al-Qahtani, have been sacked for their roles in Khashoggi's killing.

Yet Saudi officials have sought to shield the young prince from the gruesome affair, insisting he had "not been informed" of what was afoot.

And he still appears to have the unwavering support of his 82-year-old father, King Salman, who on Saturday named him as the head of a new committee charged with revamping the intelligence services.

A handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace on October 23, 2018 shows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman posing for a selfie with an unidentified man near Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Walid bin Talal during an investment forum in Riyadh

To show he remains firmly in place, MBS made a high-profile, if brief, appearance on Tuesday at a glitzy investment forum, aimed at diversifying the country's economy.

Winning a standing ovation from the gathered delegates, he later posed for selfies with participants, smiling broadly and appearing to brush aside a wave of boycotts by global business leaders and top officials.

The prince was also due on Wednesday to speak at the forum, being held in the same luxury hotel where he detained scores of people last year, in what will be his first public comments since Khashoggi's murder.

Born on August 31, 1985, the favourite son of King Salman has said he was raised strictly by his mother. He has a law degree from King Saud University, and is now the father of two sons and two daughters.

Since becoming the heir apparent, Prince Mohammed has developed close ties with the White House under Trump, especially with his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.

Presenting himself as reformer to Western governments keen to carry on doing business and earning Saudi petrodollars, he has taken a series of measures including lifting the decades-long ban on women driving, reducing the powers of the religious police and agreeing to the reopening of cinemas.

It is all part of Prince Mohammed's Vision 2030 plan for economic and social reforms as Riyadh prepares for a post-oil era, which include a series of ambitious projects such as futuristic mega-cities.

One of the centrepieces of the plan was to sell off 5.0 percent of shares in the oil giant Aramco, in an IPO which could raise some $100 billion for the Gulf kingdom. But the plans have been repeatedly delayed.

- 'Old-style tribal leader' -

And since he took over as crown prince, he has unleashed a harsh crackdown on political dissent, earning sharp criticism from non-governmental organisations.

In September 2017, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported the arrest of dozens of writers, journalists, activists and religious leaders, including prominent Islamist cleric Sheikh Salman al-Awda.

It was around this time that Khashoggi left the kingdom for self-imposed exile in the US.

A handout picture provided by the Saudi Press Agency on October 23, 2018 shows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meeting with the son of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Riyadh

The crown prince was also heavily criticised for placing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri under house arrest in Riyadh in November.

"Deep inside him, he is an old-fashioned tribal leader," Khashoggi told Newsweek earlier this year in an off-the-record conversation, only released after the reports of his killing had been confirmed.

- 'Impulsive intellectual' -

The prince has pushed to curb the power of hardline clerics and prominent sheikhs who promote the kingdom's uncompromising version of Islam, recognising that his country's association with Wahhabism is a problem.

And he has also beefed up the kingdom's foreign policy, raising alarm with a ruinous conflict in neighbouring Yemen backing the government against Iran-backed Huthi rebels as well as a dragging blockade against Qatar.

One western diplomat, who asked not to be named, described the prince last year as "an intellectual machine" but with a tendency to be "impulsive".

Prince Mohammed "is very much a believer in himself. He doesn't believe in anybody else", Khashoggi told Newsweek.

"He doesn't check. He doesn't have proper advisers, and he is moving toward a Saudi Arabia according to him, a Saudi Arabia according to Mohammed bin Salman only."Portraits of Saudi King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are seen on October 18, 2018 in Riyadh

Saudi Arabia's admission -- after emphatic denials -- over the killing of critic Jamal Khashoggi is aimed at shifting the responsibility away from the powerful crown prince, whose position so far appears unshaken, analysts say.

The kingdom sacked two top aides to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well three intelligence officials and arrested 18 Saudi suspects, in what some analysts called a scapegoating to quell the global outrage over Khashoggi's killing.

After 17 days of vehement denials, the kingdom's assertion on Saturday that the journalist was killed in a "brawl and fist fight" inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul -- without revealing the whereabouts of his body -- fell on sceptical ears around the world.

Saudi Arabia had previously roundly rejected allegations by Turkish officials that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents who dismembered his body, insisting he had walked out of the consulate alive.

"Here is Saudi Arabia's biggest problem," said Michael Stephens, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute.

The inconsistences in the Saudi statements "now totally undermines their position," he said.

Aside from the crisis of credibility, the international furore over Khashoggi's disappearance prompted fevered speculation that the 33-year-old prince, widely known as MBS, was at risk of being unseated from power by other royal family members.

But that danger appears to have subsided, analysts say.

Key dates in the reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia

The prince has amassed power to a level unseen by previous rulers after sidelining potential rivals, with only 82-year-old King Salman -- the prince's father -- in a position to oust him.

But the monarch issued a royal decree on Saturday to form a ministerial committee -- headed by the prince -- to revamp the kingdom's intelligence services, indicating that he was keen for him to stay.

"Despite speculation that the crisis spells the end of Mohammad bin Salman, the recent announcements prove that the king still believes that the current line of succession is suitable," said Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy.

The unprecedented crisis apparently prompted the king -- who appears to have handed over day-to-day affairs to MBS -- to intervene, including handling a diplomatic outreach with Turkey and the United States.

- 'Aiming for accountability' -

The king also ordered the sacking of deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and royal court media adviser Saud al-Qahtani, both part of Prince Mohammed's inner circle.

"The decision to remove members of Mohammad bin Salman's inner circle is designed to demonstrate real accountability in the process and distance the crown prince from the murder," Eurasia Group said.

This file photo taken on March 16, 2016, shows then-Brigadier General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition forces fighting rebels in Yemen, during an interview to AFP at King Salman airbase in Riyadh

But the dramatic moves early Saturday have yet to stem the tide of global condemnation of Prince Mohammed, whose image as a modernising Arab reformer has been tarnished with his crackdown on dissent.

It has also tainted his reform program known as Vision 2030 -- to prepare the kingdom for a post-oil era.

"Dismissing Saud al-Qahtani and Ahmad al-Assiri is as close to MBS as it is possible to go," said Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute in the United States.

"Interesting to see if these moves prove sufficient to end the crisis. If the drip-drip of additional details continue, there's no buffer to shield MBS any longer."

US President Donald Trump also appears to have thrown his weight behind the prince, swiftly endorsing Saudi Arabia's explanation about the death of Khashoggi and calling it an "important first step".

But casting doubt on the claim that Khashoggi was killed during a fist fight, the Washington Post reported on Saturday that the CIA had listened to audio recordings from Turkish officials that show he was brutally killed and dismembered by a team of Saudi agents.

US authorities have so far officially denied listening to any recordings.

- 'No cover-up' -

Pro-government Turkish media have also repeatedly claimed that Khashoggi was tortured and decapitated by a Saudi hit squad.

One Saudi agent identified by Turkey was said to be a frequent companion of Prince Mohammed, three others were linked to his security detail and a fifth is a high-level forensic specialist, according to The New York Times.

The kingdom's sudden admission on Saturday appears aimed at taking the heat off its rulers.

This handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace on July 10, 2017, shows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaking with Interior Minister Prince Abdelaziz bin Saud bin Nayef during a cabinet meeting in Mecca

But people close to the Saudi leadership insist there was no cover up.

"The removal of two top officials, a cabinet ranking, very powerful and close advisor of MBS and the deputy head of intelligence ... cannot be written off as a cover up," tweeted Ali Shihabi, head of pro-Saudi think tank Arabia Foundation which is said to be close to the government.

But Shihabi himself contradicted the Saudi narrative, saying "Khashoggi died from a chokehold during a physical altercation, not a fist fight", citing a senior Saudi source.

Meanwhile, global calls are growing for Turkey to call on the UN secretary general to authorise an independent, international investigation in the case.

Turkey, on its part, vowed Saturday to reveal all it knows about the death of Khashoggi, but has yet to divulge details about the investigation.

"The Saudi regime must not be allowed to hide behind lies in order to literally get away with murder," said Summer Lopez, senior director of free expression at PEN America.Kanu has not been seen in public since September last year

The lawyer for a missing pro-Biafran separatist leader on Saturday said he had spoken to his client, after a video and pictures emerged purporting to show him in Jerusalem.

Ifeanyi Ejiofor said he had "received a direct confirmation" about the whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu, who has not been seen in public since September last year.

"My client is the very person seen in the pictures/video. That I can confirm authoritatively," he added in a statement.

Kanu, a former London estate agent, heads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement and the outlawed pirate radio station Radio Biafra.

He is facing treason charges and had been on bail at the time troops were deployed to his home city of Umuahia in Abia state, southeast Nigeria, in September 2017.

He then failed to show at his trial in the capital, Abuja, sparking speculation as to his whereabouts.

Ejiofor has previously accused the Nigerian Army of either holding his client incognito or having killed him. The military has denied the charges.

On Friday, a video live-streamed on the Facebook accounts of known associates of Kanu appeared to show him praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

He was dressed in sandals, white trousers, a white Jewish prayer shawl and skull cap.

"This is the supreme leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, the prophet of our time, Nnamdi Kanu, in the Holy City of David," a voice off camera is heard to say.

Kanu maintains the Igbo people, who are in the majority in southeast Nigeria, are a lost tribe of Israel and it is his mission to lead them to the promised land of Biafra.

A previous unilateral declaration of independence by the Igbo people in 1967 sparked a brutal 30-month civil war that left more than one million dead.

Questions have been raised about how Kanu was able to get to Israel, as he had to surrender his Nigerian and British passports after his arrest.

Others suggested a link to next year's election, as Kanu has previously called for a boycott of the polls in the southeast.

Peter Obi, the vice-presidential pick for the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), comes from the region. The southeast is traditionally a PDP stronghold.

There was no immediate comment from Nigeria's government, military or security services.

But Kanu's younger brother, Prince Emmanuel Kanu, told AFP the footage was of his brother and was shot on Friday. He also spoke to him directly and said he was "fine".

The BBC Igbo language service also quoted one person as saying the man in the video was Kanu and another that he was headed from Jerusalem to Kiev, without elaborating.

Separate photographs of Kanu in Jerusalem do not appear to have been used previously, although it was not possible to extract a date from the images.

There was no immediate response from Facebook when contacted by AFP about the authenticity of the video.A Comoros police vehicle patrols the tense, deserted streets of Mutsamudu, where rebels oppose President Azali Assoumani's bids to extend term limits through constitutional changes

The Comoros military on Saturday started an operation to disperse armed rebels who took control of Mutsamudu's old city centre on the island of Anjouan earlier this week, a government minister said.

Security forces and rebels opposed to President Azali Assoumani have fought in the narrow streets of the medina quarter in Mutsamudu since Monday, with at least three people killed.

Tensions in the coup-prone Indian Ocean archipelago have mounted in recent months as Assoumani bids to extend term limits through constitutional changes that could see him rule for 11 more years.

"The army has started to take up positions inside the medina, no shots have been fired. The forces are content to secure the medina so that the population can move freely," Education Minister Mahamoud Salim Hafi, who has led the government response to the uprising, told AFP.

Hafi said some rebels remained holed up in houses, but said no military assault would be needed to clear them out.

"I guarantee that from Monday, life will resume normally in Mutsamudu," he added.

An amnesty deal signed between the main opposition Juwa party and government on Friday appeared to have been rejected by the rebels, who were estimated to be about 40 strong.

Assoumani won a widely-criticised referendum in July allowing him to scrap the rotation of the presidency between Comoros' three main islands, disadvantaging opposition-leaning Anjouan, which was next in line.

- Civilians flee -

Map of the Comoros archipelago, showing the position of Mutsamudu, scene of days of clashes between rebels and security forces

The government had sent in reinforcements to quell the unrest in the old quarter of Mutsamudu after rebels erected barricades and repelled attempts by the security forces to regain control.

Over the last five days, many civilians fled as a curfew was imposed and water and power supplies were cut.

The president, who came to power in a military coup and was elected in 2016, has indicated that he plans to stage polls next year which would allow him to reset his term limits and theoretically rule until 2029.

"(Assoumani) has done nothing in his three years in power, no jobs for young people, nothing. If they don't want to understand our challenges, then we will turn against them," one man in Mutsamudu told AFP.

The Comoros islands -- Anjouan, Grande Comore and Moheli -- are located between Mozambique and Madagascar.

President Assoumani won a July referendum allowing him to scrap the rotation of the presidency between Comoros' three main islands after one term, disadvantaging opposition-leaning Anjouan, which was next in line

They have endured years of grinding poverty and political turmoil, including about 20 coups or attempted coups, since independence from France in 1975.

The last coups was in 1999 when Assoumani, then the head of the army, seized power for the first time.

He gave up power in 2006 before being elected two years ago.

The fourth Comoros island, Mayotte, remains French.

Assoumani's government accuses the opposition Juwa party of being behind the unrest on Anjouan.

Former president Ahmed Abdallah Sambi who leads Juwa, one of the main opposition parties, is from Anjouan. He has been under house arrest since May.

Earlier this week, Interior Minister Mohamed Daoudou blamed "terrorists, as well as drug addicts and alcoholics" for the rebellion.

The United Nations and African Union have called for restraint from all sides and for stalled talks between rival parties to resume.A passenger, Harrison Hove, reported that passengers appeared to be safe after the emergency landing

An Icelandair flight made an emergency landing in Canada after a cockpit window shattered during flight, a passenger said on Twitter.

On its website, the airline said only that Flight 688 was diverted to Bagotville, Quebec "due to a technical issue."

A passenger, Harrison Hove, tweeted that the "captain says his left window shattered and had to bring us down rapidly."

Hove, a news manager at the University of Florida, said all passengers appeared to be safe.

He reported that an airline employee estimated the crack at 20 centimeters (eight inches).

The Boeing 757 aircraft was flying from Orlando, Florida to Keflavik, Iceland with 155 passengers and seven crew, the local Le Quotidien newspaper reported.

Bagotville, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Quebec, does not normally handle international flights, but Hove said Canadian immigration officers were sent onto the plane to clear the passengers.

Icelandair said another aircraft would arrive on Saturday so passengers could continue to Keflavik and then on to destinations in Europe.Hondurans taking part in US-bound migrant caravan, on the border bridge between Guatemala and Mexico at Tecun Uman, on October 19, 2018.

Thousands of US-bound Honduran migrants remained stranded Saturday after spending the night on a border bridge between Guatemala and Mexico where riot police barred their progress.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said he would meet Saturday with his Guatemalan counterpart Jimmy Morales to discuss the next steps in the crisis, which has triggered escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric from US President Donald Trump.

Hundreds slept in the open on the bridge over the Suchiate River and in the main square of the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman.

Hernandez said on Twitter he had asked Guatemalan authorities "to contract land transportation for those who wish to return -- and airlift in the special cases of women, children, the elderly and the sick -- and we will continue with this operation as long as necessary."

More than 300 people have taken up a government offer of a bus ride home to their country, police said.

Honduran migrants, heading in a caravan to the US, help others get down to the Suchiate River from the Guatemala-Mexico international border bridge, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas state, Mexico

However, the vast majority have opted to wait on the bridge over the Suchiate River where Mexican authorities insisted they would have to file asylum claims one at a time in order to enter the country.

On Friday, they began letting them through in a trickle -- first women and children, who were ushered onto trucks and taken to shelters.

- A surge, then clashes -

The caravan of mainly Honduran migrants had surged through a series of police lines and barricades up to the final fence on Mexico's southern border on Friday.

Sections of the crowd hurled rocks and other objects at hundreds of riot police, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas -- stalling the caravan which left Honduras last Saturday determined to reach the United States.

Several people were injured. Police used tear gas to drive the migrants back and calm was restored.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto described the situation as "unprecedented."

Organizers of the caravan said a section of the crowd had confronted the police and spoiled what had been an orderly attempt to cross into Mexico.

Honduran migrants heading in a caravan to the US use makeshift rafts to cross the Suchiate River which marks the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas state, Mexico, on October 20, 2018.

Some camped on the bridge "are very aggressive and no longer have patience, they are already desperate because the Mexicans did not open the door to us," said Gina Paola Montes, 21, a humanities student from Honduras university.

Some, like 22-year-old Alex Benitez, paid locals to take him across the river border by raft.

"They promised they will give us a visa but the people are there (on the bridge) since yesterday and they have not given us anything," Benitez said as he waited for friends who were crossing on another raft, made from huge truck tires.

Police officers patrolling the area told AFP that for now there are no plans to move against the migrants crossing by river.

- Going home -

A Guatemalan firefighter carries an ailing baby, as an Honduran migrant caravan heading to the US, reaches the Guatemala-Mexico international bridge in Tecun Uman, Guatemala on October 19, 2018.

Some, like 25-year-old Honduran Bryon Rivera, had decided to give up on a long- held dream of a better life in America.

"It is better to go back. It is very hard. There is a lot of disorder," said Rivera, who was hoping to get on a bus back to Honduras laid on by the Guatemalan government.

The soft-spoken 25-year-old said he was travelling with three friends who decided to remain in the caravan, but that for him, the fear of being deported once he reached Mexico was too much.

Overnight, a policeman said 220 Hondurans had begun to return to their country and another 130 were awaiting transport in a local migrant shelter.

The caravan, in some cases comprising entire families -- many with babies -- has braved intense sun and torrential rains by turn since setting out last Saturday from a Honduran border town.

Many have been given food and shelter by Guatemalans along their way.

On Thursday, Trump branded the migrant caravan an "onslaught" and an "assault on our country" in a series of typically fiery tweets.

He threatened to cut aid to the region, deploy the military and close the US-Mexican border if authorities did not stop them.

The migrants are generally fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence.

With a homicide rate of 43 per 100,000 citizens, Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world.Bahrain Medical Society is set to host the annual Bahrain Rheumatology Conference on November 23 and 24 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.



Being held under the patronage of Dr Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, President of the Supreme Council of Health, the event will include 14 discussion panels and 14 workshops led by 18 doctor speakers from Bahrain and across the world to share their views and expertise.



Dr Manaf Al Qahtani, vice chairman of the BMS commented, We are honoured to host the next Rheumatology Conference and we look forward to sharing our vision and expertise in the latest developments of diagnosis and treatment of rheumatism.



The conference aims to establish links between the health centres in the countries participating in the conference with the universities and the European and American medical centres, which will encourage the participation of the Arab centres in research conducted in the West, he added.



Therefore, He stressed the importance of attending doctors from all specialties for this conference, especially the doctors of internal diseases, family doctors, and general practitioners.



Panel discussion will include topics in rheumatism, immunology and rheumatoid arthritis, in addition to diagnosis of immunodeficiency diseases, antibody indication and its importance in early diagnosis, the importance of biological treatment in preventing malformations in cases of rheumatism and magnetic resonance in the diagnosis of rheumatic diseases, etc.  TradeArabia News ServiceComoros armed forces members search and patrol the medina quarter for weapons and armed men at Mutsamudu on the island of Anjouan

The Comoros military on Saturday regained control of Mutsamudu's old city centre on the island of Anjouan, a minister told AFP, after armed rebels staged an uprising earlier this week.

"The army has retaken the medina," Education Minister Mahamoud Salim Hafi, who has led the government response to the rebels, told an AFP team on the scene as soldiers patrolled the streets.

Comoros soldiers and rebels opposed to President Azali Assoumani had fought in the narrow lanes of the medina quarter in Mutsamudu since Monday, with at least three people killed.

Tensions in the coup-prone Indian Ocean archipelago have mounted in recent months as Assoumani bids to extend term limits through constitutional changes that could see him rule for 11 more years.

AFP reporters saw civilians emerged from their houses, some for the first time in five days.

"It was difficult to eat, except with the help of neighbours... but most difficult was that we were deprived of water and electricity," Djamou Houkoum said.

Assoumani won a widely-criticised referendum in July allowing him to scrap the rotation of the presidency between Comoros' three main islands, disadvantaging opposition-leaning Anjouan, which was next in line.A newly-built tin roof shines on top of Migingo island where its residents fish mainly for Nile perch in Lake Victoria on the border of Uganda and Kenya

A rounded rocky outcrop covered with metallic shacks, Migingo Island rises out of the waters of Lake Victoria like an iron-plated turtle.

The densely populated island is barely a quarter of a hectare large, its residents crammed into a hodge-podge of corrugated-iron homes. There's little else but a few bars, brothels and a tiny port.

Nevertheless for over a decade Migingo has been a source of tension between Uganda and Kenya, who have been unable to decide to whom it really belongs. They were once pushed to the brink of what some said would have been Africa's "smallest war" over the island.

While fishing communities around Lake Victoria have seen their catches slowly diminish over the years, the deep waters surrounding Migingo abound with catch such as Nile Perch.

Isaac Buhinza, 22, of Uganda learned fishing from his father and never went to school, and said he was drawn to Migingo because "my friends who were here before used to come back home with lots of goodies" from their fishing bounty.

"I do not know which country this (island) belongs to, I just stay here."

For fisherman like Buhinza, living directly on the tiny island saves them fuel and also gives them direct access to wholesale buyers.

Fishermen preparing their nets on Migingo island whose surrounding waters abound with Nile Perch

It was in the early 2000s when the island was barely inhabited -- then situated within Kenya on all maps -- that it began drawing the attention of Ugandan authorities who sent officials to Migingo to tax fishermen and offer protection against pirates.

Kenyan fishermen in return began complaining they were being shaken down by the Ugandans in their own waters and chased from the island. They called on Kenya's government which deployed security forces to Migingo in a move that nearly brought the two nations to blows in 2009.

Kenya and Uganda then decided to create a joint commission to determine where the watery border is, relying on maps dating from the 1920s whose interpretation is a key point of contention.

But nothing has come of the commission, and in the absence of any decisions on the boundary, the island is co-managed by both countries, a marriage of convenience that has seen highs and lows.

- A flap over flags -

A woman cuts and cleans Nile Perch. Despite on and off tensions between Uganda and Kenya over the island, Migingo's residents generally just go about their business

Whether gutting fish on the rocks of the island, frying them up in greasy cafes, or stringing them up to dry on wires between rusty metal shacks, Migingo's residents generally just go about their own business.

But "sometimes there are tensions", admitted Collins Ochieng, a young fisherman who moved to Migingo to "make money".

A Kenyan policeman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest flare up of acrimony came in mid-September, when Kenya tried to raise its flag on the island -- which had long had only the Ugandan flag fluttering above it.

He said the Ugandans "wanted to flex their muscles" and began patrolling the island in uniform and carrying weapons, "terrorising" residents.

On the Ugandan side, a policeman concedes there were tensions but said the issue was quickly resolved.

"We decided no flag would be hoisted," he said.

For Boaz Owuor, a 28-year-old fisherman based in Sori on the Kenyan side of the lake, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Migingo, the incident proved that "Ugandan authorities take Migingo a lot more seriously than Kenyan authorities."

The co-management agreement stipulates there should be equal numbers of police from both nations but "there are more Ugandans", said a Kenyan officer based on the larger nearby island of Ugingo. The Ugandan side denies this.

- 'We just want to sell fish' -

The densely populated island of Migingo in Lake Victoria is covered with corrugated-iron shacks

Lake Victoria is the largest in Africa, and the loss of its once abundant fish life has raised the stakes for millions living along its shores in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

In the past four decades up to 80 percent of indigenous fish species have been lost, and 70 percent of forest cover in the area, according to the conservation group WWF.

Meanwhile thick green fields of water hyacinth have bloomed, bedevilling fishermen.

Around Migingo, Kenyan fisherman complain about Ugandan officers harassing them, seizing fish and equipment in what they say are their waters.

Rejecting the accusation, the Ugandan policeman told AFP that it is a "complex issue".

"The deep waters where fishermen fish are more on the Uganda side, and the shallow waters where fish breed are more on the Kenyan side. We all need to work together," he said.

Adams Mulabbi, the officer in charge of the Ugandan police station on Migingo, said : "We just want fisherman to be able to do their business in peace."

Faced with mounting complaints from their constituents, local Kenyan politicians have called on Nairobi to ask the International Court of Justice to intervene and make a decision on the border -- to no avail.

"What matters now is not about the claims by either side, but the need to demarcate the place properly so that the border lines are clear," said Patrick Mugoya, permanent secretary in Uganda's foreign ministry.

For the fishermen the issue of who the island of Migingo belongs to is a political one -- they just want "to sell our fish"

On the island, some taunt each other good-naturedly. "This is Kenya," said Colins Ochyeng. "It's Uganda," fired back a Ugandan fisherman passing by, with a smile.

"I don't know who this island belongs to," said Kenyan fisherman Emmanuel Aringo.

"These are all political issues and we just want to sell our fish."Massud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), speaks during an electoral rally on September 20, 2018

A year after a disastrous independence vote he had championed in Iraqi Kurdistan, veteran leader Massud Barzani has made a strong comeback both on the home front and in Baghdad.

While Iraq's presidency, a ceremonial post, has gone to Barham Saleh of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) was on Sunday declared the clear winner of the September 30 parliamentary elections in the autonomous region of northern Iraq.

In the political manoeuvring for ministerial posts in Baghdad, meanwhile, the KDP can also even boast it is the largest single party in Iraq. The party garnered 25 seats in Iraq's legislative elections in May, contested mainly against party lists.

With 45 seats won in the 111-member Iraqi Kurdish parliament, Barzani's party can form a majority without the PUK.

It can, in theory, rely solely on the 11-seat allocation reserved for the region's minority Turkmen, Christian and Armenian communities.

"Now that he is the great heavyweight of Kurdish politics, no-one can do without him in Baghdad," said Adel Bakawan, a research associate at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris (EHESS).

He predicted Barzani would seek the deputy premier, foreign and finance minister posts for the KDP in the federal government that is to be formed by November.

"He lost the gamble of the referendum, but the legislative (polls) in May were a tremendous moment of grace; he was courted by the Americans and the Iranians," the two key powerbrokers in Iraq, he said.

- New opposition movement -

Barzani looked down and out after the Kurdistan independence vote, which was ruled illegal by Iraq's central government and resulted in Baghdad imposing economic penalties and retaking disputed territory.

The Iraqi Kurdish presidency has been left vacant since Barzani stepped down following the fiasco.

The appointment of a new president has been on hold, pending the drafting of a new Kurdish constitution for which no timetable has been set.

The leaders of the region's top two political parties also took their rivalry to Baghdad, contesting the role of Iraqi president.

The PUK's candidate Saleh won that race, maintaining a tacit accord between the two parties which sees the PUK take the federal presidency while the KDP holds the Kurdistan presidency.

Kurdistan is split politically and geographically between the KDP and the PUK, which won 21 seats in the region's election, but unlike in the past they no longer have to work together to form a government.

According to political scientist Wathiq al-Hashemi, the region could "see the return of two leaderships" but "regional pressures" from neighbouring states are likely to rule out a return to the deadly clashes of 1994-2006 when the Kurds had rival governments.

Kurdistan's parliamentary vote also saw the emergence of the New Generation movement, which was founded this year to channel public anger at the region's elite.

The movement picked up eight seats in the vote, while the main opposition Goran (Change) party lost half of its seats and was left with 12 lawmakers.

Analysts put Goran's losses down to the arrival of New Generation, whose candidates stood in opposition to the KDP and PUK.Jakarta's chief security minister Wiranto said Indonesia was looking to rewrite the terms on a multi-billion-dollar jet fighter development project with South Korea

Indonesia has demanded new terms from South Korea on a joint multi-billion-dollar jet fighter development project, as Seoul said Monday that Jakarta has not paid its share and is $200 million in arrears.

The Korean Fighter Experimental (KF-X) project is an 8-trillion-won ($7-billion) project to develop and build a fleet of 120 "indigenous" next-generation multi-role warplanes to replace Seoul's ageing US F-4 and F-5 fighters.

Korea Aerospace Industries and US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin are the main contractors on the project, with US conglomerate General Electric to supply the engines.

Jakarta signed a deal in 2016 to become the project's junior partner, covering 20 percent of the costs and receiving one prototype plane, with up to 100 Indonesian workers taking part in the development and production process.

But it stopped paying its share of the costs last year, the South's Defense Acquisition Program Administration, which handles the procurement of military equipment, said Monday.

"We plan to hold additional negotiations for the payment of Indonesia's contribution," DAPA's spokesman said.

Jakarta's chief security minister Wiranto, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said however Friday it was looking to rewrite the whole deal.

"With the state of the national economy," he said in a statement, President Joko Widodo had "decided to renegotiate the terms".

The Indonesian rupiah has sunk to 20-year lows, making payments more expensive.

Jakarta was seeking changes to cost-sharing, production costs, technology transfer and intellectual rights, Wiranto said in a statement.

"It is definitely not final because we need time," he said. "Hopefully this will be solved in less than a year."

However the DAPA spokesman insisted the joint programme would continue and the aircraft would go into service as scheduled in 2026 to defend the South.

Neighbouring North Korea is subject to multiple sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes, a fierce critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, smiles as he speaks to the media after a judge rejected an attempt to arrest him

A Philippine judge rejected on Monday an effort by President Rodrigo Duterte to arrest one of his fiercest critics, a decision hailed by opponents as a check on the leader and a victory for the rule of law.

The decision from a Manila court denied a government petition to take Senator Antonio Trillanes into custody on charges for which the lawmaker had already been granted amnesty.

Trillanes has attacked the president's deadly narcotics crackdown, but also accused Duterte of corruption and his son of involvement in drug dealing.

"We wish to thank Judge Andres Soriano who has singlehandedly upheld justice and the rule of law in the country despite extreme pressure coming from the Duterte regime," a beaming Trillanes told reporters.

The order for Trillanes' arrest stems from the president voiding in September an amnesty granted eight years ago to the senator, an ex-navy officer, for his role in two coup attempts in the mid-2000s.

Duterte alleged the lawmaker did not complete the requirements of filing an official application and admitting guilt, but Monday's ruling threw out those arguments.

However, this decision is unlikely to be the final word on this case. The Philippines' top court is weighing the constitutional questions posed by Duterte's amnesty revocation and the government all but pledged to appeal.

"This is not the end. Nobody has to claim total victory here," Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told reporters. "This may be subject to review by the higher courts."

Monday's news came as Trillanes was on bail over another military uprising case that was revived by Duterte revoking the lawmaker's amnesty.

His arrest last month in that case made Trillanes the second senator critical of Duterte's drug war to be detained. Leila de Lima has been behind bars since February 2017 on charges she says were concocted to silence her.

Human Rights Watch called Monday's decision a temporary victory for rule of law in the Philippines.

"The Duterte administration's campaign is designed to silence Trillanes," HRW researcher Carlos Conde told AFP.

"We expect it (the government) to continue, even ramp up, this political harassment and intimidation," he added.

Trillanes had faced rebellion and coup d'etat charges for being among military officers who rose up against then president Gloria Arroyo over alleged corruption and mismanagement.

He led scores of junior officers in taking over part of a main district of Manila in 2003 and seized a posh Manila hotel in 2007 along with several armed followers as they demanded Arroyo's resignation.A Thai navy ship in the port of Zhanjiang, in China's southern Guangdong province, from where eight vessels set sail on joint maritime exercises between China and ASEAN nations

China and Southeast Asian states kicked off their first joint maritime exercises on Monday in an effort to ease regional tensions linked to rival claims in the South China Sea.

Eight warships set sail from the port of Zhanjiang, in China's southern Guangdong province, with 1,200 military personnel taking part in the event, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

Beijing's expansive claims to the South China Sea have long been a source of friction with rival claimants in Southeast Asia, as well as Washington which has traditionally been the dominant naval power in the area.

The navies of China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to hold the week-long manoeuvres as part of efforts to promote stability and ease tensions across the disputed sea.

Singapore, which is co-organising the event, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines deployed ships to participate in the exercise, according to China's defence ministry.

Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar sent observers, according to CCTV.

Exercises are expected to include a joint search and rescue operation and communication exercises while in formation, the Chinese defence ministry said in a statement late Sunday.

The joint naval exercises are taking place after preparatory tabletop exercises were held in Singapore in August between ASEAN and China.

In a speech during Monday's opening ceremony, Singapore chief of navy, Rear-Admiral Lew Chuen Hong emphasised the security benefits, as well as economic growth, to be reaped from regional collaboration, reported The Strait Times.

"To allow the stable and collective use of a shared space, a set of common rules and understanding is very important," he said.

The Chinese defence ministry said Sunday the exercises would "enhance mutual trust" and "help promote military relations between China and ASEAN countries, strengthen maritime security cooperation, and enhance the ability to jointly respond to security threats."

Attending an ASEAN ministerial meeting where the drill was announced on Friday, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he did not believe the exercises were "contrary" to US interests.

The United States has raised concerns about China's installation of military facilities in artificially-built islands in the South China Sea, and routinely conducted "freedom of navigation" operations to challenge Beijing's territorial claims.The US leader arrived in the Lone Star State in the evening to give a shot in the arm to the Senate campaign of Cruz, his fiercest rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016

Donald Trump on Monday stumped for his former rival Ted Cruz, a pair that had long exchanged barbs but now share a Texas rally stage just two weeks before the congressional midterms.

The political equation is simple: Trump needs Cruz to maintain Republican control of the US Senate, while Cruz is all too aware that a presidential seal of approval could help him in his face-off with rising Democrat star Beto O'Rourke.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump infamously insulted the looks of Cruz's wife Heidi, vaguely suggested Cruz's father had played a role in John F. Kennedy's assassination and tagged him with the nickname "Lyin' Ted."

The 47-year-old junior senator from Texas fired off insults of his own, calling Trump a "pathological liar" and "utterly amoral."

But sporting black cowboy boots, Cruz welcomed the president to the Lone Star State on the tarmac as he descended from Air Force One.

"He's not Lyin' Ted anymore,'" Trump told reporters before leaving for Texas, bestowing Cruz with two new nicknames: "Beautiful Ted" and "Texas Ted."

"He defended your jobs. He defended your borders," Trump said later at the rally. "He defends your families and your faith."

"We are defending together with other great Republicans your freedom," he said, encouraging Texans to "get out there and vote."

Thousands of Trump supporters arrived hours in advance of the rally -- swarming streets around Houston's Toyota Center stadium in a festival-like atmosphere that was to include live music and food trucks.

Some had camped overnight, bundled up against the frigid temperatures, according to local media.

Trump focused particularly on immigration, a tender point in the border state of Texas.

The rally is timed with the beginning of early voting in the state. Local media reported unexpectedly heavy traffic at polling stations, where some also camped overnight in order to cast their ballots.

During the campaign, Trump infamously insulted the looks of Cruz's wife Heidi, vaguely suggested Cruz's father had played a role in John F. Kennedy's assassination and tagged him with the nickname "Lyin' Ted"

With national attention on Houston, O'Rourke campaigned in various spots around the city to boost supporters and encourage them to vote early.

"We are here for everyone," O'Rourke told a crowd in Pasadena, a Houston suburb, "Republicans, Democrats, independents alike."

- Far from a cake-walk -

Opinion polls still have the ultra-conservative Cruz in the driver's seat, but he is far from the cake-walk win he and the party initially predicted.

Beto O'Rourke, the Democrat trying to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz in Texas, is seen here campaigning in Dallas on October 20, 2018 -- some see him as the Democratic Party's brightest new star and a possible presidential contender in 2020

"Beto," as supporters of the 46-year-old O'Rourke call him, is making life difficult for Cruz.

While positioning himself firmly on the left, O'Rourke has eschewed the anti-Trump rhetoric systematically rolled out by most of his party -- a move that has won over voters.

Some even say O'Rourke could be the party's savior in the next presidential election in 2020.

Trump has called O'Rourke a "total lightweight" but the Democrat has opted not to trade insults with the president on Twitter.

"I don't know that it makes any sense to respond," O'Rourke told ABC News.

"The kind of bitterness and the name-calling and partisanship that has unfortunately defined so much of the national conversation, you can add more to it or you can stay focused on the future."

- Trump and Cruz: a study in insults -

Donald Trump -- seen here at Elko airport in Nevada after a campaign rally on October 20, 2018 -- needs Ted Cruz to maintain Republican control of the US Senate

Though Trump sang the praises of Cruz Monday night, two years ago the pair were hardly friends.

Cruz was the last man standing against Trump in the primary -- and the campaign got ugly.

Trump gave vague credence to a report from The National Enquirer tabloid that Cruz's Cuban-born father Rafael had been friends with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Cruz in turn accused the Manhattan real estate mogul of being the source of another Enquirer article that alleged the senator had been unfaithful to his wife.

Ted Cruz -- seen here with a supporter on October 3, 2018 in Conroe, Texas -- is seeking a second term in the US Senate

After the primaries, Cruz took a long time to formally endorse Trump, even going so far as to accept a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 -- and withhold his support.

Instead, Cruz urged Republicans to "vote your conscience." Only in September 2016 did Cruz eventually say in a Facebook post that he was voting for Trump.

As is often the case, Trump's tweets on Cruz tell the story about the evolution of their relationship.

In February 2016, Trump said: "Why would the people of Texas support Ted Cruz when he has accomplished absolutely nothing for them. He is another all talk, no action pol!"

In August this year, Trump tweeted: "As you know, Ted has my complete and total Endorsement. His opponent is a disaster for Texas."LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Republicans running in Nevada's hotly contested races for governor and U.S. Senate are taking aim at a common target as they try to maintain GOP control of the seats: California.

As more Californians have poured across the state line over the past few years, many of them escaping sky-high housing costs, some Nevada Republicans fear a state that already has become a political battleground will begin to resemble its deep blue neighbor.

GOP candidates are appealing to conservative voters with warnings about life in California: sanctuary cities, crippling business regulations, out-of-control housing prices and a worsening homeless crisis.

Republican Sen. Dean Heller, who is in a tight re-election battle against Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, has highlighted his opponent's support from California billionaire Tom Steyer and Hollywood celebrities, while warning on Twitter that the state could become "CaliforNevada" if Rosen is elected.

Politicians on the right have for years demonized California as a conservative's worst nightmare. In 2003, as a joke, a Republican state lawmaker in Nevada requested a bill be drafted to rename the state "East California," along with making The Beatles' song "Taxman" the official state song.

The California-bashing takes on added weight in Nevada, which has seen a greater-than-normal wave of Californians recently as housing prices and rents have soared in the Golden State. At the same time, transplants from Silicon Valley have followed Tesla, Apple and other California-grown companies as they have expanded in the Reno area.

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OR THEREAFTER - In this Oct. 12, 2018, photo, homes fill a small valley in Reno, Nev. A population inrush to Nevada has been driven by people seeking more affordable housing and a growing tech industry around Reno. (AP Photo/John Locher)

This year, with California emerging as a political bulwark against the Trump administration, the state has become a political bugaboo for conservatives around the country. They paint it as a cautionary tale of taxes, regulation, environmentalism and illegal immigration run amok.

In Georgia, Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp has cast his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, as a tool of "billionaires and socialists who want to turn Georgia into California." Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this summer declared that "California appears to have raised the leadership in the United States of America for socialism."

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which works on electing Republicans to state offices around the country, declared in a campaign email that California has turned into a "liberal wasteland" of "garbage-strewn streets, never-ending tax increases, and lax immigration laws" that Democrats would replicate if they took control of state legislatures.

In Nevada, California has become a special source of angst.

Californians have long made up at least one-third of new residents to Nevada, but this year are on track to comprise 40 percent of new residents, according to drivers' license data from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

That influx comes as Nevada has been trending more Democratic in its politics over the last decade, swinging for the Democrat in the past three presidential elections and giving Democrats full control of the Legislature in 2016 - the first time since 1992.

It's unclear whether the latest California influx will move the state firmly into the Democratic column this November.

Nevada's races are at the center of the political universe again this year: The U.S. Senate race is a pivotal one for determining whether Republicans maintain control of that chamber, and whichever party wins the governor's seat will have veto power over legislative and congressional redistricting following the 2020 Census.

"A lot of people left California because of what they didn't like, but then they got to Nevada and said, 'Oh, in California, we had this. Oh, in California we had that.' The things that they left, they want to bring here," said Chuck Muth, a conservative activist and blogger in Las Vegas.

"I think everybody has known about it, but now the candidates at the top of the Republican ticket are actually making a campaign issue out of it."

In the governor's race, Nevada's Republican attorney general, Adam Laxalt, has frequently included anti-California messages in campaign appearances and statements, even when endorsing other candidates.

Laxalt cites sanctuary cities and burdensome regulations as ill-considered California policies that Nevada should avoid.

"Do you think it should be a crime in a restaurant to give you a straw when you're trying to have a drink? How about cancer warnings on your coffee?" Laxalt said at a campaign appearance in May. "These are things we're seeing in our neighbor, California. These are the things I'm willing to fight against so Nevada does not become like California."

He told The Associated Press that while there's a concern that Californians moving to the state could import liberal politics, he meets new Nevada residents "all the time that have decided that they're utterly fed up with California" and "a lot of the just really extreme liberal policies that continue to flourish in that state."

He said his main worry is that Nevada progressives will see California as a model.

He cited the 2017 session of the Democratic-led Legislature as an example of the state "going the way of California." Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, a moderate, nearly set a state record by vetoing 41 bills.

___

Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Michelle Price at https://twitter.com/michellelprice

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This report is part of a series on how California's struggles with soaring housing costs, job displacement and a divide over liberal policies are affecting the November election. See full coverage at: https://apnews.com/CaliforniaataCrossroads

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OR THEREAFTER - In this Sept. 20, 2018, photo, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., walks on stage during a rally with President Donald Trump in Las Vegas. Heller, who is in a tight re-election battle against Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, has highlighted his opponent's support from California billionaire Tom Steyer and Hollywood celebrities, while warning on Twitter that the state could become "CaliforNevada" if Rosen is elected. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OR THEREAFTER - In this Sept. 20, 2018, photo, Nevada state Attorney General Adam Laxalt waits to take the stage before a campaign rally with President Donald Trump in Las Vegas. In the Nevada Governor's race, Laxalt has frequently included anti-California messages in campaign appearances and statements.(AP Photo/John Locher)

In this Oct. 13, 2018, photo, a sign marks the entrance to the Tesla Gigafactory in Sparks, Nev. A population inrush to Nevada has been driven by people seeking more affordable housing and a growing tech industry around Reno. (AP Photo/John Locher)

In this Oct. 13, 2018, photo, a Switch facility sits in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center in Sparks, Nev. A population inrush to Nevada has been driven by people seeking more affordable housing and a growing tech industry around Reno. (AP Photo/John Locher)RENO, Nev. (AP) - They were the toast of Reno in the 1950s, when the growing casino industry sparked a boom that for a time turned northern Nevada into the West's top gambling destination.

Dozens of downtown motor lodges provided spare but comfortable retreats for motorists who took to the nation's new highways to see the bright lights of the self-proclaimed "Biggest Little City in the World" and try their luck at the slot machines and blackjack tables.

Today, the lodges still standing are in disrepair and rent rooms by the week. But there is one similarity to their heyday: Reno is booming again and so are the lodges - just not with vacationers or fortune-seekers.

They have become the housing of last resort for Reno's down-and-out, a population that has soared in recent years as a red hot housing and rental market have priced out more and more people.

California is partly to blame.

Silicon Valley firms from Apple to Tesla have set up operations in the Reno area, bringing waves of well-paid tech and manufacturing workers. At the same time, California's soaring home prices and rents have sent thousands of people across the state line looking for more affordable housing.

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 12, 2018, photo, a man walks out of a weekly rental motel in Reno, Nev. The economic recovery has allowed Reno to reclaim its status as a boomtown, but that has been bad news for people on the margins who are having a harder time finding an affordable place to live, forcing many into the dozens of weekly rental motor lodges around the city. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Four of every 10 people who will move to Nevada this year will be from California, and most of those arriving in Reno and its suburbs are from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Along with that human stampede have come rising home prices and rents - as well as rising anxiety for those living on the margins.

"We're not worried with keeping up with the Joneses," said Dave Frazier, who lives in one of the old motor lodges. "We just want to keep a roof over our head."

He and his partner pay $850 a month for a small studio in the Fireside Inn, cooking food they get at a pantry on a small portable skillet they place next to the bathroom sink. Both are thankful they are no longer on the streets but say many of their neighbors are senior citizens or the disabled who are on fixed incomes and just one rent increase away from homelessness.

"It takes every cent they have to keep a roof over their head," said Frazier, 74. "When they get to that and the rent goes up high enough, they buy a tent and go live on the river."

An estimated 4,000 people - mostly working-class families, seniors and the disabled - live in the pay-by-the-week motels. For many, the lodges are the last stop before being forced onto the streets or to live in their cars.

The growing number of homeless in and around Reno is among the most visible effects of the area's recent population surge, bringing to Nevada a crisis that has been plaguing California and other West Coast states for years.

Reno's homeless shelters are over-flowing and local police periodically clear makeshift homeless camps from the banks of the Truckee River, which flows through downtown. They're places Wendy Wiglesworth doesn't want to return to.

Last year, she finally was able to save enough money for an apartment after years of being homeless. A few months later, she got bad news: The building was being sold to developers who wanted to tear it down to make way for student housing near the University of Nevada.

She ended up at one of the old motor lodges, which typically rent for about $800 a month - $500 less than rent for the average two-bedroom apartment.

Its owners have so far refused similar purchase offers, but Wiglesworth said she lives in constant fear that could change.

"It's horrible," she said. "There's no place to go."

Last year, 27 indigent people, identified by service groups as homeless, died in Washoe County. That's a statistic that is personal for Aria Overli, an organizer with the community group ACTIONN.

A few years ago, her sister moved into her apartment after being evicted from her own place. Rising medical bills left her unable to afford rent.

Last March, she took her own life.

"For me, that's a housing issue," Overli said, her voice cracking as she stood in front of one of the dilapidated weekly motels. "People are literally dying because there's not adequate housing."

Civic groups such as ACTIONN, local elected representatives and interfaith clergy toured several of the motor lodges over the summer, hoping to create a strategy to address Reno's housing problem.

City Councilwoman Jenny Brekhus said the economic boom, fueled in large part by government tax credits, has "put the city in a difficult position."

"We were not ready for such robust growth rates and are in many ways still not recovered from the downturn," she said, identifying housing and homelessness as the most pressing issues facing the city.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition ranks Nevada last among all states for providing affordable housing for its poorest families.

Over the past year, the Reno City Council expanded homeless shelter capacity, beefed up inspections of the weekly motels and budgeted $1 million to identify the most promising housing ideas.

The city and county have used federal block grants to build 342 affordable housing units over the past year and have another 1,200 under review or being built.

Creating a special fund dedicated to making affordable housing more widespread is another potential strategy, but one that will require approval by the state Legislature. A main supporter of that approach is Eric Novak, president of Reno-based Praxis Consulting Group, which helps various groups finance affordable housing projects.

"Unfortunately," he said, "the problem is the money, as it always is."

___

Associated Press journalists John Locher in Reno and Michelle Price in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

___

This report is part of a series on how California's struggles with soaring housing costs, job displacement and a divide over liberal policies are affecting the November election. See full coverage at: https://apnews.com/CaliforniaataCrossroads

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, Dave Frazier eats lunch by a bed in his room at the Fireside Inn motel in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, Dawn Robinson cooks food on a portable skillet in a room at the Fireside Inn motel in Reno, Nev. Robinson and her partner Dave Frazier get much of their food from local food pantries. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, Dave Frazier, left, kisses Dawn Robinson at the door of the room where they live at the Fireside Inn motel in Reno, Nev. "We're not worried with keeping up with the Joneses," said Frazier, "We just want to keep a roof over our head." (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 12, 2018, photo, Celeste Mills loads food into a refrigerator as Gordon Lamb at their room in a weekly rental motel in Reno, Nev. "There's not much choice," said Mills about being unable to afford a regular apartment, "First month, last month, and security deposit are just too much." (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 12, 2018, photo, Celeste Mills, left, holds hands with Gordon Lamb at their room in a weekly rental motel in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, Melissa Smith holds her dog Bella in her room at a weekly rental motel in Reno, Nev. Smith has lived in weekly and monthly rental motels for about two years. (AP Photo/John Locher)

In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, a man stands outside of his room at the Fireside Inn motel in Reno, Nev. The top two floors of the motel are for weekly and monthly rentals. An estimated 4,000 people - mostly working-class families, seniors and the disabled - live in the pay-by-the-week motels. For many, the lodges are the last stop before being forced onto the streets or to live in their cars. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, Dave Frazier stands outside of his room at the Fireside Inn motel in Reno, Nev. Frazier and his partner Dawn Robinson live at the motor lodge because they are unable to afford a regular apartment. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 12, 2018, photo, a bird is perched on a railing at a weekly rental motel in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER -- In this Oct. 12, 2018, photo, Celeste Mills kisses Gordon Lamb as they wait in line at a food pantry in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER - In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, Bella sits next to David Young at a weekly rental motel in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher)

MOVING IN ADVANCE FOR USE ON SATURDAY OCT. 20 OR THEREAFTER - In this Oct. 12, 2018, photo, homes fill a small a valley on the outskirts of Reno, Nev. Silicon Valley firms from Apple to Tesla have set up operations in the Reno area, bringing waves of well-paid tech and manufacturing workers which in turn helps to raise home prices and rents. (AP Photo/John Locher)

This photograph taken Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2018 in downtown Reno, Nevada shows one of the old motor lodges that have been shuttered and slated for demolition. Weekly motels increasingly are becoming the last stop before homelessness for hundreds of working families who can't afford to live anyplace else. An economic boom spurred by the arrival of thousands of new employees at Tesla, Google, Apple and other corporate giants has created an unprecedented housing crisis in the area. (AP Photo/Scott Sonner).

This photograph taken Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2018 in downtown Reno, Nevada shows one of the weekly motels that increasingly are becoming the last stop before homelessness for hundreds of working families who can't afford to live anyplace else. An economic boom spurred by the arrival of thousands of new employees at Tesla, Google, Apple and other corporate giants has created an unprecedented housing crisis in the area. (AP Photo/Scott Sonner).

This photograph taken Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2018 in downtown Reno, Nevada shows one of the old motor lodges that have been shuttered and slated for demolition. Weekly motels increasingly are becoming the last stop before homelessness for hundreds of working families who can't afford to live anyplace else. An economic boom spurred by the arrival of thousands of new employees at Tesla, Google, Apple and other corporate giants has created an unprecedented housing crisis in the area. (AP Photo/Scott Sonner).

Aria Overli, an organizer for the interfaith social justice group ACTIONN, addresses clergy and community leaders in front of the St. Thomas Aquinas Cathedral in downtown Reno, Nevada, in this photo taken Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2018. She helped lead a tour that day of rundown weekly motels that increasingly are becoming the last stop before homelessness for hundreds of working families who can't afford to live anyplace else. An economic boom spurred by the arrival of thousands of new employees at Tesla, Google, Apple and other corporate giants has created an unprecedented housing crisis in the area. (AP Photo/ Scott Sonner).TECUN UMAN, Guatemala (AP) - Migrants traveling in a mass caravan burst through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory on Friday, defying Mexican authorities' entreaties for an orderly crossing and U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of retaliation.

On the Mexican side of a border bridge, they were met by a phalanx of police with riot shields. About 50 managed to push their way through before officers unleashed pepper spray and the rest retreated.

The gates were closed again, and police used a loudspeaker to address the masses, saying, "We need you to stop the aggression."

Mexican federal police chief Manelich Castilla, speaking from the border town of Ciudad Hidalgo, told Foro TV that his forces achieved their main objective of preventing a violent breach by the 3,000-plus migrants. In a separate interview with Milenio television, he accused people not part of the caravan of attacking police with firecrackers and rocks.

"It will be under the conditions that have been said since the start," Castilla said. "Orderly, with established procedures, never through violence or force as a group of people attempted."

The chaos calmed somewhat as migrants formed lines in a mass of humanity stretching across the bridge. Some returned to the Guatemalan side to buy water and food.

A boy cries as he is brought back down after an unsuccessful attempt to lift him over a border fence, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Earlier in the day, waving Honduran flags and carrying umbrellas to protect against the sun, thousands of migrants arrived at the Guatemalan side of the border with Mexico, demanding they be allowed passage. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

But others, tired of waiting, jumped off the bridge into the Suchiate River. Migrants organized a rope brigade to ford its muddy waters, and some floated across on rafts operated by local residents who usually charge a dollar or two to make the crossing.

Cristian, a 34-year-old cell phone repairman from San Pedro Sula, said he left Honduras because gang members had demanded protection payments of $83 a month, a fifth of his income. It was already hard enough to support his four daughters on the $450 he makes, so he closed his small business instead.

Cristian, who declined to give his last name because the gangsters had threatened him, estimated that about 30 percent of the migrants want to apply for refugee status in Mexico, while the rest want to reach the United States.

"I want to get to the States to contribute to that country," Cristian said, "to do any kind of work, picking up garbage."

Police and immigration agents let small groups of 10, 20, 30 people through the gates if they wanted to apply for refugee status. Once they file a claim, they can go to a shelter to spend the night.

Eric Lagos Rodriguez from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, and his family turned themselves over to authorities to apply.

"We couldn't go on like this," Lagos said, "we're traveling with six children."

As dusk neared, police were relieved by fresh officers and reformed ranks. Migrants continued to hang on the gates, yelling "there are children here" and "we are hungry." Back on the Guatemalan side, some people set up tarp shelters.

Earlier in the day, thousands of migrants, some waving Honduran flags and carrying umbrellas to protect against the sun, arrived at the Guatemalan side of the river, noisily demanding they be allowed to cross.

"One way or another, we will pass," they chanted, climbing atop U.S.-donated military jeeps parked at the scene. Young men tugged on the fence, finally tearing it down, prompting the huge crowd of men, women and children to rush past and over the bridge.

Edwin Santos of San Pedro Sula was one of the first to race by, clutching the hands of his father and wife.

"We are going to the United States!" he shouted. "Nobody is going to stop us!"

Acner Adolfo Rodriguez, 30, one of the last through, said he hoped to find work and a better life far from the widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the world's deadliest countries.

"May Trump's heart be touched so he lets us through," Rodriguez said.

The U.S. president has made it clear to Mexico that he is monitoring its response. On Thursday he threatened to close the U.S. border if Mexico didn't stop the caravan. Later that day he tweeted a video of Mexican federal police deploying at the Guatemalan border and wrote: "Thank you Mexico, we look forward to working with you!"

Mexican officials said those with passports and valid visas - only a tiny minority of those trying to cross - would be let in immediately.

Migrants who want to apply for refuge in Mexico were welcome to do so, they said, but any who decide to cross illegally and are caught will be detained and deported.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Friday with President Enrique Pena Nieto and Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray in Mexico City, with the caravan high on the agenda.

At a news conference with Videgaray, Pompeo called illegal migration a "crisis" and emphasized "the importance of stopping this flow before it reaches the U.S. border," while also acknowledging Mexico's right to handle the crisis in a sovereign fashion.

"Mexico will make its decision," Pompeo said. "Its leaders and its people will decide the best way to achieve what I believe are our shared objectives."

At Mexico City's airport before leaving, Pompeo said four Mexican federal police officers had been injured in the border standoff and expressed his sympathy.

On Thursday, Videgaray asked the U.N. for help processing what Mexico expects to be a large number of asylum requests.

But Jose Porfirio Orellana, a 47-year-old farmer from Yoro province in Honduras, said he has his sights set on the United States due to woeful economic conditions in his country.

"There is nothing there," Orellana said.

Migrants have banded together to travel en masse regularly in recent years, but this caravan was unusual for its huge size, said Victor Clark Alfaro, a Latin American studies professor at San Diego State University. By comparison, a caravan in April that also attracted Trump's ire numbered about 1,000.

"It grabs one's attention that the number of people in these kinds of caravans is on the rise," Clark Alfaro said. "It is migration of a different dimension."

Elizabeth Oglesby, a professor at the University of Arizona's Center for Latin American Studies, said people join caravans like this because it's a way to make the journey in a relatively safe manner and avoid having to pay thousands of dollars to smugglers. She disputed Pompeo's assertion that that there is a "crisis" of migration.

"The border is not in crisis. This is not a migration crisis. ... Yes, we are seeing some spikes in Central Americans crossing the border, but overall migration is at a 40-year low," Oglesby said.

Speaking on the Televisa network, Videgaray did not seem concerned about Trump's threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border, saying it had to be viewed in light of the hotly contested U.S. midterm elections, in which Trump has made border security a major campaign issue.

Videgaray noted that 1 million people transit the border legally every day, and about $1 million in commerce crosses every minute.

"Before taking decisions of that kind," Videgaray said, "there would be many people in the United States ... who would consider the consequences."

___

Associated Press writers Peter Orsi, Christopher Sherman and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.

A youth calls for calm as he stands in from of a phalanx of Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, after Central American migrants rushed the gate at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities' entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of retaliation. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Hundreds of Honduran migrants stand at the shore of the Suchiate river on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Mexico's foreign ministry says government officials at its southern border with Guatemala have started assisting the early arrivals from a caravan of some 3,000 Honduran migrants that has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. (AP Photo)

Honduran migrants sing their national anthem standing standing at the shore of the Suchiate river on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Mexico's foreign ministry says government officials at its southern border with Guatemala have started assisting the early arrivals from a caravan of some 3,000 Honduran migrants that has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. (AP Photo)

Paramedics attend Honduran migrant Jose Alainez, 49, who suffered an epileptic seizure while walking north with other migrants, before taking him to the hospital in Guatemala City, early Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Alainez, traveling alone, had to leave the caravan of more than 2,000 Hondurans trying to wend its way to the United States. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A Honduran migrant family is allowed to pass through to safety by Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities' entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of retaliation. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Hundreds of Honduran migrants stand at the shore of the Suchiate river on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Mexico's foreign ministry says government officials at its southern border with Guatemala have started assisting the early arrivals from a caravan of some 3,000 Honduran migrants that has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. (AP Photo)The arrival of a new private financing platform in the UAE to support start-ups, private enterprises and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will give a huge boost to key engines of the countrys economic growth, said a legal expert.



Zisha Rizvi, partner at STA Law Firm, said the lead taken by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) is a vital move to ensure the continued growth of crowdfunding, which can mean the difference between business success and failure for SMEs.



The ADGM, an international financial centre in Abu Dhabi, last month launched its framework for the regulation of online private financing platforms (PFPs) for non-public companies, with the aim to reduce the risk of obtaining financial support from crowdfunding.



Rizvi said: SMEs, which comprise about 95 per cent of the total establishments in the UAE, employ more than 42 per cent of the workforce and are key engines of our economic growth.



STA says the UAE is witnessing a continuous rapid growth of crowdfunding through a plethora of online platforms, and it was essential that government authorities should take steps to regulate the risk and protect the rights of the parties involved in such transactions.



Rizvi continued: The proposed regulations by the ADGM portray the UAEs dedication to protect the interests of the enterprises that use financing platforms as alternate sources of funding by raising money from a qualified network of investors.



This limits the risk and provides a regulated platform for start-ups and established businesses in ADGM to obtain the appropriate capital and liquidity for their expansion and growth. These regulations place appropriate regulatory safeguards to ensure a risk-free operation of the financing platforms for the clients, she added.



Loans to SMEs account for just 4 per cent of the outstanding bank credit in the UAE, below the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region average of 9.3 per cent.



Rizvi is recognised as a leading UAE-based expert adviser on corporate law, banking and finance, litigation and real property in the global market, it stated.  TradeArabia News ServiceCHICAGO (AP) - Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned Friday that reforms planned for the Chicago police force could cause a surge in violent crime and pointed to the recent murder conviction of a police officer as evidence that such reforms aren't necessary because officers who break the law are already "prosecuted and jailed."

In a speech sponsored by the Chicago Crime Commission, Sessions reiterated statements he made a week ago when the Trump administration informed a federal judge that it was seeking to scuttle a proposed consent decree between the city and the state to of Illinois that calls for the department to be under close federal court supervision.

"Micromanaging the CPD through a federal court order isn't just unjustified, it's an insult," he said. "We do not need to treat Chicago's officers like some sort of rogue police department because of the actions of a few."

Sessions did not mention by name either Jason Van Dyke, the officer convicted of second-degree murder, or Laquan McDonald, the black teen he shot 16 times. But he spoke of a New York Times editorial supporting the consent decree that ran after the verdict.

In arguing against the consent decree, which includes strict rules on the use of deadly force by officer - Sessions pointed to the dramatic rise in violent crime in the city in 2016 and said it was caused by the city's agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois to require officers to document thoroughly their traffic stops.

"The results of this agreement were catastrophic," he said. "There's just no other way to say it."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to the Chicago Crime Commission at Union League Club of Chicago, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Sessions did not talk about the video of the McDonald shooting that led to the push for reforms of the police department or the U.S. Justice Department investigation under then-President Barack Obama that found a "pervasive cover-up culture" in the police department. He also did not mention that Van Dyke was the first city police officer to be convicted in an on-duty shooting in nearly a half century. Instead, he said that in 2014 "anti-police protests and movements arose, even getting support in the White House."

But, he said: "Chicago's police are not the problem. Chicago's police are the solution to the problem." The police department is already making changes, particularly in the way officers are trained, and more changes are planned.

Sessions did not discuss the chances of stopping the consent decree from being implemented or the Justice Department's statement of interest filed last week. But the decree, which has the support of both Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is widely expected to be approved by a federal judge.

Sessions had nothing but praise for law enforcement in the city, with kind words for Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, and others.

Ogechi Ike holds a sign as she protests with a small group outside the Union League Club of Chicago where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was speaking at an event sponsored by the Chicago Crime Commission, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Tricey Morelli holds a sign as she protests with a small group outside the Union League Club of Chicago where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was speaking at an event sponsored by the Chicago Crime Commission, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Protesters demonstrate with a small group outside the Union League Club of Chicago where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was speaking at an event sponsored by the Chicago Crime Commission, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to the Chicago Crime Commission at Union League Club of Chicago, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to the Chicago Crime Commission at Union League Club of Chicago, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)ISTANBUL (AP) - Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the kingdom claimed early Saturday, finally admitting that the writer had been slain at its diplomatic post. Authorities said 18 Saudi suspects were in custody and intelligence officials had been fired.

The overnight announcements in Saudi state media came more than two weeks after Khashoggi, 59, entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul for paperwork required to marry his Turkish fiancee, and never came out. They also contradicted assertions in Turkish media leaks that Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate, claims the kingdom had rejected as "baseless."

But growing international pressure and comments by U.S. officials up to President Donald Trump forced the kingdom to acknowledge Khashoggi's death.

While it fired officials close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia stopped short of implicating the heir-apparent of the world's largest oil exporter. King Salman, his father, appointed him to lead a committee that will restructure the kingdom's intelligence services after Khashoggi's slaying. No major decisions in Saudi Arabia are made outside of the ultraconservative kingdom's ruling Al Saud family.

The kingdom also offered a far different version of events than those given by Turkish officials, who have said an "assassination squad" from the kingdom including an official from Prince Mohammed's entourage and an "autopsy expert" flew in ahead of time and laid in wait for Khashoggi at the consulate. Beyond its statements attributed to anonymous officials, Saudi Arabia offered no evidence to support its claims.

Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and royal court insider for decades in Saudi Arabia, had written columns for The Washington Post critical of Prince Mohammed and the kingdom's direction while living in self-imposed exile in the U.S.

A man enters Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

"God have mercy on you my love Jamal, and may you rest in Paradise," Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, tweeted following the Saudi announcements.

In a statement Friday night, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. will closely follow international investigations into Khashoggi's death and will advocate for justice that is "timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process."

Trump meanwhile called the Saudi announcement a "good first step," but said what happened to Khashoggi was "unacceptable."

The announcements came in a flurry of statements carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency early Saturday morning.

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Public Prosecution showed that the suspects had traveled to Istanbul to meet with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi as there were indications of the possibility of his returning back to the country," the statement read. "Discussions took place with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi during his presence in the consulate of the kingdom in Istanbul by the suspects (that) did not go as required and developed in a negative way, leading to a fistfight. . The brawl led to his death and their attempt to conceal and hide what happened."

There's been no indication Khashoggi had any immediate plans to return to the kingdom.

The Saudi statements did not identify the 18 Saudis being held by authorities and did not explain how so many people could have been involved in a fistfight. The statement also did not shed any light on what happened to Khashoggi's body after his death.

"The kingdom expresses its deep regret at the painful developments that have taken place and stresses the commitment of the authorities in the kingdom to bring the facts to the public opinion, to hold all those involved accountable and bring them to justice," the statement said.

The kingdom at the same time announced the firing of four top intelligence officials, including Maj. Gen. Ahmed bin Hassan Assiri, a one-time spokesman for the Saudi military's campaign in Yemen who later became a confidant of Prince Mohammed.

Saud Qahtani, a powerful adviser to Prince Mohammed, also was fired. Qahtani had led Saudi efforts to isolate Qatar amid a boycott of the country by the kingdom and three other Arab nations as part of a political dispute.

On Twitter, where Qahtani had launched vitriolic attacks against those he saw as the kingdom's enemies, he thanked the Saudi government for the "great opportunity they gave me to serve my country all those years"

"I will remain a loyal servant to my country for all times," he wrote.

Assiri had no immediate comment.

Earlier this week, the Turkish pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak, citing what it described as an audio recording of Khashoggi's slaying, said a Saudi assassination squad seized the journalist after he entered the consulate, cutting off his fingers and later decapitating him. On Thursday, a leaked surveillance photo put Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the U.S., France and Spain this year, at the consulate just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival.

Turkish crime scene investigators this week searched the Saudi Consulate building in Istanbul and the nearby residence of the Saudi consul general, and came out carrying bags and boxes. On Friday, investigators questioned staff and explored whether his remains could have been dumped outside Istanbul after his suspected killing, Turkish media and a security official said.

Trump has said that the consequences for the Saudis "will have to be very severe" if they are found to have killed Khashoggi, but has insisted that more facts must be known before making any judgements. He dispatched U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier this week to both Saudi Arabia and Turkey to speak to officials on the case.

The president has made close ties to the kingdom a priority since taking office. Trump made his first overseas trip as president to Saudi Arabia and has touted his arms sales to the kingdom. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, responsible for a coming peace proposal for Israel and the Palestinians, also has forged a close relationship with Prince Mohammed.

Trump's previous warnings over the case drew an angry response Sunday from Saudi Arabia and its state-linked media, including a suggestion that Riyadh could wield its oil production as a weapon. The U.S. president wants King Salman and OPEC to boost production to drive down high oil prices, caused in part by the coming re-imposition of oil sanctions on Iran in November.

It's unclear whether the Saudi announcement will be enough to staunch the criticism the kingdom faces from lawmakers in the U.S., its most-crucial ally. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called Saudi Arabia's claim that Khashoggi was "killed while brawling with a team of more than a dozen dispatched from Saudi Arabia is not credible."

He was "fighting for his life with people sent to capture or kill him," Schiff said.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who earlier this week said in a televised interview that Prince Mohammed "has got to go," added: "To say that I am skeptical of the new Saudi narrative about Mr. Khashoggi is an understatement."

Human rights groups like Amnesty International separately have been calling for a United Nations investigation into Khashoggi's killing.

"All along we were concerned about a whitewash, or an investigation by the entity suspected of involvement itself," Amnesty's Rawya Rageh said Saturday. "The impartiality of a Saudi investigation would remain in question."

___

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey, and Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press journalists Mehmet Guzel and Ayse Wieting in Istanbul, Zeke Miller in Washington and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

A man leaves Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's remains may have been taken to a forest outside Istanbul or to another city after his suspected killing at the consulate earlier this month. Ankara's top diplomat, meanwhile, denied sharing any audio from the Saudi Consulate with U.S. officials. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

An aerial view of the Belgrade Forest in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official says investigators are assessing the possibility whether the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to the forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city, if and after he was killed inside the diplomatic mission earlier this month. (DHA via AP)

A man enters Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Security guards stand outside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A dozen of Indonesian journalists hold posters with photos of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi during a protest outside Saudi Arabian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city, if and after he was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)

A Turkish police officer walks outside the Saudi Arabia consul general residence in Istanbul, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Turkish crime-scene investigators finished an overnight search of both residence and a second search of the consulate itself amid Ankara's fears that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the diplomatic mission in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A security guard stands at the entrance of Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Turkish crime-scene investigators finished an overnight search of both the consul general's residence and a second search of the consulate itself amid Ankara's fears that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the diplomatic mission in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks to the media after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. Pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak on Wednesday said it had obtained audio recordings of the alleged killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.(Cem Ozdel/Turkish Foreign Ministry via AP, Pool)

A man enters Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A view of Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A dozen of Indonesian journalists hold posters with photos of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi during a protest outside Saudi Arabian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city, if and after he was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - The Latest on the disappearance of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month (all times local):

4:15 a.m.

Asked whether he thought Saudi Arabia's explanation for the death of Jamal Khashoggi was credible, President Trump said "I do. I do."

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump supporter, and other lawmakers are expressing skepticism about Saudi Arabia saying that the Saudi writer and critic of the royal family died during a "fistfight" in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The Republican Graham tweeted: "To say that I am skeptical of the new Saudi narrative about Mr. Khashoggi is an understatement."

Trump says that he'll work with Congress on the U.S. response to Khashoggi's death but that he'd rather not see billions of dollars in arms sales with the kingdom cancelled because that would cost American hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks to the media after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. Pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak on Wednesday said it had obtained audio recordings of the alleged killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.(Cem Ozdel/Turkish Foreign Ministry via AP, Pool)

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3:50 a.m.

President Donald Trump says Saudi Arabia's announcement of arrests in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a "good first step," but that what happened there is "unacceptable."

Trump said Friday that he wants to talk to the Saudi crown prince before next steps are taken. He says it's important that Saudi Arabia made arrests.

Trump says that he'll work with Congress on what the U.S. response should be, but that he'd prefer not to hurt American companies and jobs by cutting billions of dollars in arms sales to the kingdom.

He says the death of Khashoggi was a "horrible event" that has not gone "unnoticed."

Trump spoke during a defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where he holding a political rally.

___

2:50 a.m.

A high-ranking Democratic lawmaker in the United States is expressing doubts about the credibility of Saudi Arabia's explanation that Jamal Khashoggi was killed in a fight inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Friday that Saudi Arabia's claim that he was "killed while brawling with a team of more than a dozen dispatched from Saudi Arabia is not credible."

Schiff says that if Khashoggi was fighting inside the consulate, he was "fighting for his life with people sent to capture or kill him."

He says if Trump's Republican administration won't hold Saudi Arabia accountable for Khashoggi's death, Congress will.

Trump has previously warned against jumping to conclusions that Saudi Arabia was responsible for Khashoggi's disappearance.

___

2:40 a.m.

The White House is acknowledging the announcement from Saudi Arabia that journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead and that 18 Saudi nationals are in custody on suspicion of involvement in his death.

In a statement Friday night, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the U.S. will closely follow international investigations into Khashoggi's death and will advocate for justice that is "timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process."

Saudi state-run media reported that prosecutors believe The Washington Post columnist was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in a quarrel. He was last seen Oct. 2.

Turkish officials previously said they believe Khashoggi was dismembered. He was a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The White House offered condolences to his family, fiancee and friends.

___

1:40 a.m.

Saudi Arabia's state-run news agency says King Salman now has a proposal on the "urgent need" to restructure the kingdom's intelligence services after the slaying of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency made the announcement early Saturday.

It came immediately after the official announcement by the kingdom that Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was killed at the consulate and that 18 Saudis were detained as suspects in the killing.

___

1:30 a.m.

Saudi state-run media is reporting that prosecutors in the kingdom believe Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in a quarrel.

State media also quotes prosecutors as saying 18 Saudi nationals are being held on suspicion of being involved in the Washington Post columnist's death.

Saudi state TV and the state-run Saudi Press Agency carried the statement early Saturday morning.

___

11:55 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he could consider sanctions against Saudi Arabia over missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump told reporters after signing a presidential memo in Arizona on Friday that he'll involve Congress in any decision. But he says he'll be making "certain recommendations."

He says that it's still "too early" to determine potential consequences but that he expects to know more by Monday.

He says: "We're going to find out who knew what when and where and we'll figure it out."

Trump acknowledged Thursday that it "certainly looks" like Khashoggi is dead and threatened "very severe" consequences if the Saudis are found to have killed him.

The journalist's disappearance has sparked global outrage and threatened the U.S.-Saudi relationship. He was last seen going into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

___

11:05 p.m.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Trump administration will consider a "wide range" of responses if it is determined that Saudi leaders or officials played a role in the alleged murder of U.S.- based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Pompeo declined to comment on what the options might be and stressed that it is not yet certain exactly happened to Khashoggi after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey more than two weeks ago. Amid Turkish reports that Khashoggi was brutally killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad with links to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Donald Trump has said he believes it is likely the Washington Post contributor is dead.

Pompeo would not speculate on Khashoggi's fate but said he told Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials in Riyadh this week that the U.S. does not "approve of extrajudicial killings." He said he told the Saudis that that kind of activity is not "consistent with American values" and that it was their responsibility to get to the bottom of what happened in their consulate.

Pompeo made his comments in an interview Friday with the Voice of America while on a trip to Mexico.

___

4:50 p.m.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency says prosecutors are questioning a number of employees of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul over the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Private A Haber TV said as many as 15 employees were being questioned on Friday. The station said they included the consul's driver, technicians, accountants and telephone operators.

Khashoggi was last seen entering the consulate on Oct. 2. Turkish reports say Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the consulate by members of an assassination squad with ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudis have dismissed those reports as baseless.

Earlier, an Associated Press journalist witnessed a group of people leaving the building, getting into a van belonging to the Saudi mission and being driven away.

___

4:40 p.m.

A former head of Britain's MI6 overseas intelligence agency says missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was probably killed on the orders of people close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

John Sawers, who headed MI6 between 2009 and 2014, said "all the evidence points to it being ordered and carried out" by people close to Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler.

Sawers told the BBC that "I don't think he would have done this if he hadn't thought he had license from the U.S. administration to frankly behave as he wished to do so."

Sawyers said the fate of Khashoggi - whom Turkish authorities say was killed inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul - was a wake-up call to the Trump administration about "just how dangerous it is to have people acting with a sense that they have impunity in their relationship with United States."

___

12:40 p.m.

Turkey's foreign minister says his country has not shared any audio recordings from Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance with U.S. officials.

The state-run Anadolu Agency also quoted the minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, as saying that Turkey would share "with the world" the results of its investigation into Khashoggi's disappearance. Khashoggi vanished on Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Cavusoglu made the comments during a visit to Albania on Friday.

A report on Wednesday by the pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak, citing what it described as an audio recording of Khashoggi's slaying, said a Saudi team accosted the 60-year-old journalist after he entered the consulate, cutting off his fingers and later decapitating him.

___

11:20 a.m.

A Turkish official says investigators are assessing the possibility whether the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city, if and after he was killed inside the diplomatic mission earlier this month.

The official told The Associated Press on Friday that police have established that two vehicles belonging to the Saudi consulate left the building on Oct. 2 - the day Khashoggi had walked into the consulate and vanished.

The official says one vehicle went to the Belgrade Forest outside Istanbul while the other traveled to the city of Yalova. It's unclear if police had already searched these areas.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the secrecy of the ongoing investigation. -Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey;

A security guard stands at the entrance of Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Turkish crime-scene investigators finished an overnight search of both the consul general's residence and a second search of the consulate itself amid Ankara's fears that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the diplomatic mission in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony to sign a "Presidential Memorandum Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the West," Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A Turkish police officer walks outside the Saudi Arabia consul general residence in Istanbul, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Turkish crime-scene investigators finished an overnight search of both residence and a second search of the consulate itself amid Ankara's fears that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the diplomatic mission in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)TECUN UMAN, Guatemala (AP) - The Latest on a caravan of Central American migrants hoping to reach the United States (all times local):

4:30 p.m.

The U.N. special investigator on the human rights of migrants has a message for the Mexican and U.S. governments: Respect the human rights of every person on the caravan heading from Central America and consider each case individually.

Felipe Gonzalez Morales told a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York on Friday that "there cannot be massive collective expulsions, for instance, in violation of international law."

Some 3,000 migrants are currently trying to enter Mexico from Guatemala and hope to get to the U.S.

Gonzalez said that in destination countries there has been a trend toward "xenophobia" which has left many migrants fearing to go into public spaces or tribunals "for fear of being attacked or not taken seriously."

A Honduran migrant family is allowed to pass through to safety by Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities' entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of retaliation. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

He said Mexico and the United States should establish channels for "regular migration."

Gonzalez said he requested an official visit to the United States in March but has not received a response from the Trump administration.

___

3:45 p.m.

The head of Mexico's federal police says the first two buses have arrived at the Mexico-Guatemala border crossing so that immigration officials can take women, children and seniors away to be processed safely.

Manelich Castilla tells Milenio TV it is part of their plan to process the 3,000 some migrants who are trying to enter Mexico from Guatemala.

But at the bridge migrants, who have formed orderly lines, are refusing to board the buses fearing that they will simply be deported.

Some are chanting "Walk! Walk!" insisting that they prefer to continue on foot.

Manelich also blamed people who were not part of the caravan for attacking police with powerful firecrackers and rocks.

___

1:55 p.m.

Cristian, a 34-year-old cell phone repairman from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, says he wants to reach the U.S. to work.

He declined to give his last name, because he was threatened by gang members who demanded he pay 2,000 lempiras, about $83, per month for protection. That would be about one fifth of his income. He closed his small business instead. He can't support his four daughters on the $450 that he makes each month.

Cristian, who is among the informal leaders of the caravan, estimated about 30 percent of the migrants want to apply for refugee status in Mexico. The rest want to reach the U.S. like him.

"Honestly, I want to get to the states to contribute to that country, to do any kind of work, picking up garbage," he said.

___

1:34 p.m.

The head of Mexico's federal police says that they have achieved their first objective of preventing a violent breach of the border by some 3,000 migrants trying to enter from Guatemala.

Manelich Castilla told Foro TV the migrants will enter in an orderly fashion.

"It will be under the conditions that have been said since the start: orderly, with established procedures, never through violence nor by force," Castilla said from the Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo.

Police deployed pepper spray after some migrants tried to push their way through the Mexican side.

Some migrants are now forming lines on the bridge while others are sitting down and preparing for a long wait.

___

12:55 p.m.

Central American migrants in a mass caravan have clashed with Mexican riot police guarding a border post on the country's southern frontier.

About 50 migrants managed to push their way through. The rest retreated after officers unleashed pepper spray. Some in the caravan threw rocks.

After police held off the migrants, they closed the border gates again.

A federal police officer used a loudspeaker to address the masses, saying: "We need you to stop the aggression."

___

12:10 p.m.

Migrants in a caravan traveling through Central America have broken down gates at a border crossing and are streaming toward a bridge to Mexico.

After arriving at the tall, yellow metal fence Friday, some clambered atop it and on U.S.-donated military jeeps.

Young men began violently tugging on the barrier and finally succeeded in tearing it down.

Men, women and children then rushed through toward the bridge, about 150 yards (137 meters) away.

___

11:30 a.m.

Migrants in a mass caravan are chanting that "one way or another, we will pass" as they move toward a bridge on the Guatemala-Mexico border.

The caravan of disorganized women, men and children headed toward the border post Friday morning.

They got as far as a closed metal gate where two military jeeps were parked and Guatemalan police in riot gear looked on silently.

The migrants also chanted: "We are not smugglers, we are immigrants."

Dozens of Mexican federal police officers were on the bridge, with hundreds of others behind.

Mexico's ambassador to Guatemala said his country had decided to enforce a policy of "metered entry" in the face of the thousands clamoring to cross.

___

10:50 a.m.

Thousands of migrants traveling in a caravan briefly moved toward a border crossing on the Mexico-Guatemala frontier before turning around.

They stopped about two blocks from the crossing before heading back, saying they would wait another hour or so. Some of them talked among themselves.

The border post is guarded by a heavy security force and tall metal gates. Dozens of Mexican federal police officers are on the border bridge, with hundreds more behind them.

Guatemala has closed its border gate and is standing guard with dozens of troops and two armored jeeps.

Mexico's ambassador to Guatemala says his country has decided to enforce a policy of "metered entry" since thousands of migrants are clamoring to cross.

The migrants hope to enter Mexico and cross the country to reach the United States.

Jose Porfirio Orellana is a 47-year-old acorn and bean farmer from Yoro province in Honduras.

Orellana says "the economy in Honduras is terrible, there is nothing there."

___

7 a.m.

Participants in a 3,000-strong migrant caravan heading toward the United States have gathered in a park to wait a few more hours for members of the group who are still arriving.

The migrants have agreed that they will begin their journey to the border crossing between Guatemala and Mexico around 11 a.m. local time.

Some plan to make a valley-like formation, with men walking to the sides and women and children walking in the middle. Others intend to cross the Suchiate River on a raft.

The exhausted travelers are mostly from Honduras, but migrants from other Central American countries have joined the caravan.

Jonathan Guzman, a 22-year-old from El Salvador, said he had dreams of working in construction in Los Angeles.

"It's the third time that I'm trying to cross," he said.

As the sun rose, a military helicopter could be seen overhead, foreshadowing the difficulties that migrants will have as they try to reach the U.S.

Honduran migrants rush across the border towards Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Migrants broke down the gates at the border crossing and began streaming toward a bridge into Mexico. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A Honduran migrant hold his national flag, climbs the border fence in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Migrants broke down the gates at the border crossing between Guatemala and Mexico and began streaming toward a bridge into Mexico. The road sign reads in Spanish "Welcome to Mexico." (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Hundreds of Honduran migrants stand at the shore of the Suchiate river on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Mexico's foreign ministry says government officials at its southern border with Guatemala have started assisting the early arrivals from a caravan of some 3,000 Honduran migrants that has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. (AP Photo)

Paramedics attend Honduran migrant Jose Alainez, 49, who suffered an epileptic seizure while walking north with other migrants, before taking him to the hospital in Guatemala City, early Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Alainez, traveling alone, had to leave the caravan of more than 2,000 Hondurans trying to wend its way to the United States. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Honduran migrants sing their national anthem standing standing at the shore of the Suchiate river on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Mexico's foreign ministry says government officials at its southern border with Guatemala have started assisting the early arrivals from a caravan of some 3,000 Honduran migrants that has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. (AP Photo)

Hundreds of Honduran migrants stand at the shore of the Suchiate river on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Mexico's foreign ministry says government officials at its southern border with Guatemala have started assisting the early arrivals from a caravan of some 3,000 Honduran migrants that has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. (AP Photo)

Honduran migrants ride on the bed of a pick-up truck towards the Mexican border, in Mazatenango, about 200 miles north-west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)'

Honduran migrants ride on the bed of a pick-up truck towards the Mexican border, in Mazatenango, about 200 miles north-west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)'

Honduran migrant children bound for the U.S. border walk along a highway in Mazatenango, about 200 miles north west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)'

Honduran migrants are seen walking along a highway in Cocales, Gautemala, on their way to the U.S. border, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)'

Migrants from Honduras ride on the bed of a pick-up truck towards the Mexican border, in Cocales, about 80 miles north-west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/ Oliver de Ros)

Migrants from Honduras ride on a pick-up truck towards the Mexican border, in Cocales, about 80 miles north-west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/ Oliver de Ros)

A Honduran migrant holds a Honduras national flag, as he sits in the bed of a a pick-up truck, on his way to the Mexican border, in Cocales, about 80 miles north-west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/ Oliver de Ros)LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A political action committee said Friday that it won't pull radio ads in hotly contested races in Arkansas and Missouri that suggest African American men will face rape accusations if Democrats win midterm elections.

An ad from Black Americans for the President's Agenda in an Arkansas congressional race features a woman saying "white Democrats will be lynching black folk again." Both the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger have condemned it, and the Arkansas GOP filed a state ethics complaint over it.

In Missouri, the radio ad favoring Republican challenger Josh Hawley and attacking Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, does not mention lynching. Instead, the woman says that if Democrats prevail in mid-term elections, "black folk will be catching hell again" and that black men could face allegations of rape.

Hawley spokeswoman Kelli Ford said in an email, "Of course we don't support this."

The ads in both states were scheduled to run through Friday.

"We have a plan, we're executing the plan," Vernon Robinson, the PAC's co-founder and treasurer, told The Associated Press. Robinson has said the ad is part of a $50,000 buy.

FILE - This combination of 2018 file photos shows Arkansas Congressional candidates, Democrat Clarke Tucker, left, and Republican U.S. Rep. French Hill. Tucker and Hill condemned a political action committee's radio ad that suggests white Democrats will lynch black Americans if they win the midterm election next month. (AP Photos/File)

Robinson said the reference to lynching was removed from the Missouri ad because the attorney for a St. Louis radio station demanded it be left out before the station would run it.

Instead of mentioning "race verdicts, life sentences and lynchings when a white girl screams rape," the Missouri ad talks about "race verdicts, life sentences or worse."

But Robinson said, "The reality is, every black person in St. Louis knows what 'or worse' means."

Both ads invoke the accusation that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a woman when he was a teenager. The ad implies that Democrats' support for Kavanaugh's accuser means black men wouldn't be protected from unfounded rape claims.

In both ads, a woman says that she is voting for the Republican candidate to protect "our men and boys."

In the Arkansas ad, for Republican U.S. Rep. French Hill against Democratic challenger Clarke Tucker, the woman says, "We can't afford to let white Democrats take us back to bad old days."

Arkansas Republicans on Friday filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission against the PAC, saying it had not registered to campaign in Arkansas and that the ads were running illegally. Robinson on Friday said the complaint was "utterly without merit" and that the state Ethics Commission didn't have jurisdiction over federal PACs.

Tucker and Democrats are relying in part on heavy turnout from African-Americans to flip the 2nd District seat, which covers Little Rock and seven central Arkansas counties.

The North Carolina-based PAC was formed earlier this year and this week reported having about $52,507 cash on hand and $62,769 in debt. Robinson is a former city councilman from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who has run unsuccessfully for Congress in the state and led a super PAC aimed at drafting Ben Carson into the 2016 presidential race.

The ad isn't the first time racially-charged issues have come into play in the race. Tucker last month denounced immigration attack mailers sent out by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton's PAC as "racist." Tucker earlier this month said a statue of his great-great-grandfather should be removed from the U.S. Capitol, condemning his ancestor's statement that the South looked to the Democratic Party to preserve "white standards."

Hill and Tucker are both white. The 2nd District is about 23 percent black, according to U.S. Census estimates.

About 12 percent of Missouri's residents are black. While African-Americans are a core constituency for Democrats, McCaskill has struggled to overcome perceptions that she's ignored black constituents.

Her campaign did not respond immediately to email messages seeking comment about the radio ad.

___

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.

___

Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo . Follow John Hanna at https://twitter.com/apjdhanna .OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A man has been arrested on suspicion of making threats against the largest daily newspaper in Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoman reports that 41-year-old Robert Cameron Brewer was arrested Wednesday on a complaint of threatening to kill by use of explosive.

The threats came Monday in a profanity-laced voicemail to The Oklahoman.

Brewer is also accused of threatening the office of Oklahoma County District Judge Cindy Truong in September.

Court records indicate Brewer has a history of mental illness. He was put on probation for stalking in 2013 after prosecutors say he sent packages to an Oklahoma City man's home containing harassing notes and pictures.

Brewer is being held Friday in the Oklahoma County jail on $200,000 bail. Court records don't list a lawyer who can speak on his behalf.HOUSTON (AP) - The Texas Supreme Court reversed itself Friday by granting the state's request to review a case dealing with the disclosure of an execution drug supplier that officials have fought for years to keep secret.

The court set oral arguments for Jan. 23 in a case that stems from a 2014 lawsuit filed by several death penalty attorneys who want to know where Texas prison officials got execution drugs used in two executions that year. A lower court ordered the state to turn over the supplier's name, but the state appealed.

The attorneys who filed the lawsuit have said the case is ultimately about government transparency. They say the name of the supplier was needed to verify the quality of the drug and to spare condemned inmates from unconstitutional pain and suffering. Texas later implemented a law that allows the state to keep future supplier records secret. But a ruling against the state could still have implications.

Arizona's attorney general filed a court brief in support of Texas in July, arguing that the lower court's decision, if allowed to stand, would "bring dire consequences that ripple beyond Texas and threaten the death penalty's operation nationwide."

The availability of execution drugs has become an issue in many death penalty states after traditional pharmaceutical makers refused to sell their products to prison agencies for execution use. Similar lawsuits about drug provider identities have been argued in other capital punishment states.

In the Texas case, the 3rd Court of Appeals ruled that the state's prison agency, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, must identify its drug supplier for the 2014 executions. The Texas Supreme Court had denied the state's appeal in June.

Jeremy Desel, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the agency was pleased the court reconsidered.

"Releasing publicly the identity of any supplier of execution drugs raises serious safety concerns that real harm could come to the business operators and its employees," he said.

In a court filing earlier this month, lawyers with the Texas Attorney General's Office said the state's supplier of the pentobarbital used in executions was a retail compounding pharmacy that was open to the public. The lawyers argued the company was a "soft target" in an urban area "whose only defense is its anonymity; it is vulnerable to violence once publicly identified."

Attorneys who filed the original lawsuit argued in September that such claims were exaggerated.

"The core fact in this case ... is that there has never been any violence (or threat of violence) against a (lethal injection drug) supplier in Texas, even when their identities were known for many years," the attorneys wrote.

Maurie Levin, one of those attorneys, said Friday that the Texas Supreme Court is giving the case "the consideration demanded by the seriousness of the issue."

"We are confident the court will continue to uphold the principles of transparency and open government this suit is based upon," Levin said.

___

Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter at www.twitter.com/juanlozano70PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) - A family can begin to grieve after officials confirmed Friday the death of a 79-year-old Florida woman who had been missing since Hurricane Michael left her Mexico Beach home in rubble.

Joanne Garone Behnke said it's been an agonizing wait to find out what happen to her aunt, Aggie Vicari.

The Bay County medical examiner's office on Friday confirmed that it was Vicari's body that was recovered Monday. Her body had been under rubble for five days before rescuers found her, Garone Behnke said.

The South Florida woman says she spoke to her Aunt Aggie - affectionately described as a "stubborn Italian woman" - just hours before Michael's devastating winds came ashore. Her fence had already blown over.

"I know she was scared, and I know it was late, and I know she's the kind of person who kept money in her house, and I know she didn't want to leave it," said her niece.

A memorial service will be held next month on Vicari's lot, where her home once stood.

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2018 file photo, a member of a Tennessee urban search and rescue team works a debris pile with a dog in the aftermath of hurricane Matthew in Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction.(AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

As officials continue to identify bodies recovered since the devastating Oct. 10 storm, a firefighter became the latest death attributed to the storm when he was killed by a falling tree while helping clear debris with family members more than a week after Michael blew ashore with 155 mph (250 kph) winds.

Fire coordinator Brad Price, 49, of Wewahitchka was on his tractor when he was killed Thursday, the Gulf County Sheriff's Office said on its official Facebook page.

"We love you, grieve with you, and are praying for all of you," Gulf County firefighters said on their Facebook page.

That brought the storm's death toll in Florida to 25, and 35 overall across the South - where, in addition to tree falls, deaths came when the storm decimated homes with winds and storm surge, cut power to those reliant on electricity for medical conditions and swept away cars in flash floods.

While trees brought down by Michael's ferocious winds took a heavy toll on life and property, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam said Friday that the fallen trees themselves are contributing to a $1.3 billion hit to the heavily forested Florida Panhandle's timber industry. Pulp mills, sawmills and other production facilities were damaged in 11 of the top timber-producing counties in state, Putnam said.

"This is a catastrophic loss to the forest industry in the Florida Panhandle," Putnam said in a news release.

Officials also were concerned that downed trees could pose a fire hazard.

Forest Service Director Jim Karels said the danger grows as the debris dries. The agency is working to clear the debris and establish fire lines that could help contain forest fire, he said.

___

Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida, Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.

___

For the latest on Hurricane Michael, visit https://www.apnews.com/tag/Hurricanes.

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2018, file photo, Joy Hutchinson, left, is comforted by her daughter Jessica Hutchinson, as she returns to find her home swept away from hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction.(AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

Joyce Walker sits on her porch in front fallen trees outside her home in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Sandra Sheffield, 72, uses a washcloth to wipe sweat from her face, in her home, which now has no electricity, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. She and her husband refuse to leave their home, and neighbors are trying to assist them with fans and a generator. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Mickey Calhoun stands in line hoping a gas station will open, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Kahlan Ladik, 14, sits next to the camper her family just bought as temporary housing, since their home was heavily damaged by Hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. With her are her siblings Madison, 3, and Lilly, 6, top. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Survival supplies sit on the coffee table of Ed Kirkpatrick and his wife Sandra Sheffield, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. The elderly couple, both of whom have health issues, refuse to leave their home, which has no electricity. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Aleeah Racette receives medical treatment inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. At left is her mother, Amy Cross, and Amy's fiance, Corey Shuman. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Ed Kirkpatrick sits shirtless on his sofa because of the heat in his home, which now has no electricity, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. The elderly couple, both of whom have health issues, refuse to leave their home. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)GENEVA (AP) - No international letters, no international packages: A top official with a 192-country postal union says that's what Americans can expect if the Trump administration goes through with plans to pull out of an international postal treaty over concerns about China.

Pascal Clivaz, deputy director-general of the Switzerland-based Universal Postal Union, says the agency reached out quickly to U.S. officials after receiving a letter from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week announcing Washington's plan to pull out of the union in a year if the treaty isn't renegotiated.

The U.S. says it's willing to renegotiate. But the threat is the latest sign of U.S. President Donald Trump's go-it-alone approach to many issues, from the environment to trade to the Iran nuclear deal.

"It will have dramatic consequences for American consumers. It will cost them enormously. They will be all alone against all the countries of the world," Clivaz told The Associated Press on Friday. "They won't even be able to send (a package) to a neighboring country. It's an accord that links everybody."

Word of the planned pullout is the latest facet of Washington's multi-level trade dispute with Beijing. The U.S. administration says the treaty allows China to ship packages to the U.S. at discounted rates at the expense of American businesses.

Clivaz acknowledged the U.S. concerns about China were at the root of the problem, but said agreements within the UPU since 2016 have moved toward "improving the issue with China."

FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018 file photo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo briefs reporters at the State Department in Washington. No international letters, no international packages: A top official with a 192-country postal union says that's what Americans can expect if the Trump administration goes through with plans to pull of an international postal treaty over concerns about China. Pascal Clivaz, deputy director-general of the Switzerland-based Universal Postal Union, said on Friday, Oct. 19 the agency reached out quickly to U.S. officials after receiving a letter from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week announcing Washington's plan to pull out of the union in a year if the treaty isn't renegotiated. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, file)

"It's not at the level that Mr. Trump and others want it, but we're close. So we want to continue negotiating," he said.

The Trump administration says current rules allow for foreign postal services to send packages to the United States at highly subsidized rates, and amount to an unfair system that hurts the U.S. postal service and U.S. consumers.

The U.S. National Association of Manufacturers has applauded the planned U.S. move, calling the postal pact "outdated" in the age of e-commerce and at a time of Chinese manufacturing dominance.

UPS expressed support for the administration's move.

"Foreign postal operators should not be given government approved advantages in what is a competitive market," spokeswoman Kara Ross said in an e-mail. "All parties should pay the same parcel delivery rates for the same services from the U.S. Postal Service, regardless of whether the country of origin is foreign or domestic."

A U.S. pullout from the 144-year-old organization, a specialized U.N. agency, would strip the U.S. from access to special codes needed to send and receive mail internationally, Clivaz said. Any U.S. companies that need them - like FedEx or UPS - would lose access too, he said.

"This agreement regulates all the issues: technical problems, customs issues, security issues. Without the codes, without this green light, you can't move a single letter or package," he said.

"The next step is in their court: to give us a meeting," Clivaz said of the U.S. government.

Renegotiation of the treaty would require a majority vote among UPU members.

___

Paul Wiseman contributed from Washington.Emirates Post has launched a new dedicated desk for Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) member companies.



The post boxes will cater to all DMCC companies based in the free zone, located in Jumeirah Lake Towers (JLT), and serve over 100,000 people across 15,000 companies, said a statement.



In addition to Corporate PO Boxes, Emirates Post will also offer DMCC member companies added benefits at its branch in Almas Tower, it said.



Benefits will include domestic and international postal services for all documents as well as convenient payment options for utility bills (including Dewa, Sewa, Fewa, Du and Etisalat). In addition, customers can also make payments to the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and the Dubai Police, all over-the-counter, it added.



Emirates Post is also offering DMCC member companies access to flight booking and payment options at the service counter at Jumeirah Lake Towers, which enables customers to alter bookings, make payments and issue tickets for Air Arabia and FlyDubai.



Obaid Al Qatami, acting chief commercial at Emirates Post, said: The launch of the Emirates Post Corporate PO Boxes further highlights our commitment to meeting the demands of customers through best-in-class products and services.



We are pleased to be launching this brand-new service in partnership with DMCC and we are certain this initiative will support the business community in the heart of Dubai, he added.



Krysta Fox, executive director, free zone, DMCC, said: We are delighted to open an exclusive DMCC member desk with Emirates Post that will provide companies in our free zone with effective and easier solutions to conduct business on a day-to-day basis.



Launching the dedicated desk in Almas Tower itself will further integrate government services within DMCC, he added.



The official agreement between the companies was signed by Ahmed Bin Sulayem, executive chairman, DMCC, and Abdulla Mohammad Alashram, acting group chief executive officer of Emirates Post Group during a meeting at the DMCC headquarters in Almas Tower in May this year.



The partnership with DMCC aims to create a unique service for all companies operating in the free zone. The service counter is based on the first floor at Almas Tower, in addition to the development of a bespoke digital portal that enables DMCC members to process applications for a PO Box online.



Companies in the DMCC can apply for a dedicated PO Box which will help both privacy and security of their postal goods. Emirates Post is also providing a 10 per cent discount to DMCC employees and members towards their services such as domestic express, international premium and international express deliveries, it stated.  TradeArabia News ServiceSCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) - Donald Trump fueled his 2016 campaign with fiery immigration rhetoric, visions of hordes flowing across the border to assault Americans and steal their jobs. Now, in the final weeks before midterm elections, he's back at it as he looks to stave off Democratic gains in Congress.

It's an approach that offers both risks and rewards. He could energize Democratic foes as well as the Republicans he wants to rouse to the polls.

But for the president, the potential gains clearly win out. In campaign stops and on Twitter in recent days, he has seized on a huge caravan of Central American migrants trying to reach the United States through Mexico as fresh evidence that his tough immigration prescriptions are needed.

He tweeted that the caravan was an "assault on our country at our Southern Border." Then, Thursday night in Montana, he told cheering supporters, "This will be an election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order and common sense. ... Remember it's gonna be an election of the caravan."

His assertions got a visual boost Friday when some members of the caravan broke through a Guatemalan border barrier with Mexico. A few then got through to Mexican territory, but most were repelled by police with riot shields and pepper spray.

Trump signaled Friday he thought the strategy was working, telling reporters in Scottsdale, Arizona, that immigration was "a great issue for the Republicans."

President Donald Trump looks the the cheering audience as he leaves a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. Trump's 2016 campaign was defined by his fiery immigration rhetoric, visions of the undocumented flowing across the border to assault Americans and steal their jobs. Now, in the final weeks before midterm elections, he's back at it as he looks to stave off Democratic gains in Congress. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

On an aggressive campaign blitz, Trump has sought to cast the midterms as a referendum on his presidency, believing that he must insert himself into the national conversation in order to bring Republicans out to vote. Perhaps no issue was more identified with his last campaign than immigration, particularly his much-vaunted - and still-unfulfilled - promise to quickly build a U.S.-Mexico border wall. To Trump, his pledges are still rallying cries.

"I think it's a big contrast point. All the Democrats are refusing to build the wall. It's a good contrast," said former Trump campaign aide Barry Bennett, who said the caravan was "perfectly timed" for Trump's midterm pitch.

But some warn that as Trump seeks to pump up his base, he could energize opposition. Matt Barreto, co-founder of the research firm Latino Decisions, said an elevated immigration message could hurt Trump, too.

"I think you run the risk of angering minority voters across the board, Latino, black and Asian-Americans and also alienating and distancing from whites, including conservatives and moderates, now that they see what's happening with the family separations," said Barreto, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Thursday night, the migrant caravan of at least 3,000, many waving Honduran flags and chanting slogans, arrived at the Guatemalan border with Mexico. On Friday, they broke down Guatemalan gates and streamed toward a bridge to Mexico. Most were repelled by Mexican police, but about 50 got through.

Mexico's dispatching of additional police to its southern border seemed to please Trump. On Thursday night, he retweeted a BuzzFeed journalist's tweet of a video clip showing the police deployment, adding his own comment: "Thank you Mexico, we look forward to working with you!"

Earlier in the day, Trump railed against the caravan on Twitter and declared it was "Democrats fault for weak laws!" He also threatened to deploy the military to the border if Mexico did not stop the migrants and appeared to threaten a revamped trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

Until days ago, immigration appeared to be unlikely to repeat its central role of 2016, as Trump heeded congressional Republican requests to avoid a government shutdown over funding for the border wall ahead of the midterms. And an internal GOP poll presented to the White House last month found that other issues - particularly opposing the "Medicare for All" policy of some Democrats - would better resonate with voters.

While Trump did focus for a time on some Democrats calling for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, he largely discussed it as a warning against Democratic control of Washington. But the renewed embrace of the polarizing issue reflects a consensus view in both parties that control of Congress will be determined more by turning-out party loyalists than winning over centrist voters.

A vigorous immigration push will likely be well-received in many of the deep-red areas where Trump is campaigning, like his stop in Montana Thursday night. Republicans acknowledge it could play differently in other parts of the country - and might even harm GOP candidates in some selected districts - but they are wagering that as in 2016 it is still a net-win issue for the president's party.

Trump campaigns Friday night in Arizona, an increasingly competitive state where the message could have a mixed result. He won Arizona by 3.5 percentage points two years ago, compared with Republican Mitt Romney's 9-point margin in 2012.

Ahead of the midterms, polls continue to show that voters consider immigration among the most important issues, though generally falling behind the economy and health care.

However, Republican and Democratic voters have distinctly different views of immigration as a problem facing the country. A recent Pew Research Center survey found a majority of Democratic voters - 57 percent - think the treatment of immigrants in the country illegally is a very big problem in the U.S., compared with just 15 percent of Republican voters who say the same. By contrast, three-quarters of Republican voters call illegal immigration a very big problem, ranking the highest for Republicans among the long list on Pew's survey, while just 19 percent of Democratic voters say the same.

Recently, surveys from CNN and The Washington Post/ABC News found voters were slightly more likely to think the Democratic Party would do a better job handling immigration than the Republican Party.

___

Lucey reported from Washington.

___

This story has been corrected to show that the name of the research firm is Latino Decisions, not Latino Decision.

A youth calls for calm as he stands in from of a phalanx of Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, after Central American migrants rushed the gate at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities' entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of retaliation. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar in Missoula, Mont., Thursday Oct. 18, 2018. Trump is in Missoula to rally support for Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. (AP Photo/Lido Vizzutti)

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar in Missoula, Mont., Thursday Oct. 18, 2018. Trump is in Missoula to rally support for Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. (AP Photo/Lido VizzuttI)

Honduran migrants ride on the bed of a pick-up truck towards the Mexican border, in Mazatenango, about 200 miles north-west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)'PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) - Already sick with strep throat and asthma, Aleeah Racette got sicker when she cleaned out a soggy, moldy home after Hurricane Michael, so she sought help at the hospital where she began life. She was stunned by what she saw there.

The exterior wall of Bay Medical Sacred Heart in Panama City is missing from part of the building, and huge vent tubes attached to fans blow air into upper floors through holes where windows used to be. Plywood signs with green spray-painted letters point to the entrance of the emergency room, the only part of the 323-bed hospital still operating.

"I've never seen anything like this before," Racette, 20, said Thursday in a croaky voice. "I was born in this hospital."

Medical services in the Florida Panhandle are still on life support more than a week after Hurricane Michael.

Panama City's two major hospitals, Bay Medical and the 216-bed Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center, still aren't admitting patients. Only emergency room services are available at either facility. Patients with the most serious needs are being sent to other hospitals by ambulance or helicopter.

Both hospitals are receiving help from Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, which set up air-conditioned tents in parking lots and operate something like the military field hospitals depicted in the old television series M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H. Besides the care they'd provide on a typical basis, like treating Racette's strep throat, doctors and nurses also are treating many people with storm-related injuries and health conditions.

FILE- This Oct. 11, 2018 file photo shows a building at the Bay Medical Center Sacred Heart hospital damaged from hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla. Medical services in the Florida Panhandle are still on life support more than a week after Hurricane Michael. The two major hospitals in Panama City, Bay Medical and Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center, still aren't admitting patients. They are only open for emergency room services. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

"We're seeing cuts, we're seeing bruises and fractures," said Martha Crombie, a spokeswoman for Bay Medical Sacred Heart who was flown in from Nashville, Tennessee, to help with hospital communications.

Back injuries are common, she said, as are people who have chronic illnesses and are out of medication. The hospital is filling prescriptions and providing a list of open pharmacies.

Crombie said Bay Medical Sacred Heart and its other facility in Panama City Beach have treated an average of 200 people a day - a number she expects to rise when a county curfew is lifted. She said fewer patients arrive after the nightly curfew takes effect, which does have an exemption for people with medical emergencies.

Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center spokesman Brad Palmer said the facility had treated 560 emergency room patients in the week since the storm.

While they aren't admitting patients, the hospitals are stabilizing people with serious injuries or illness and transporting them to hospitals outside the heavily damaged areas.

Some people go to the outdoor medical tents, which is where Racette was treated at Bay Medical Sacred Heart. Tony Averbuch, who leads the team of government workers providing care outside the hospital, said business is steady.

"Right now we're seeing between 80 and 100 people a day at this site, but we're one of many sites that are across Florida," he said.

The team's work fills a critical need for patients and the medical community, as Crombie said Bay Medical Sacred Heart is still trying to check on the well-being of its own workers. Of 1,700 employees, she said, the hospital has heard from only about half, many of whom likely lost phone service and internet connection or evacuated because of the storm.

Hospital executives did a helicopter tour with employees' homes mapped out. "It was eye-opening and eye-popping," Crombie said.

Conditions are improving, but it's unclear when area hospitals might resume normal operations. Cleanup crews swarmed Bay Medical Sacred Heart on Thursday, the same day it regained power. The water also is back on, even though it's not yet safe to drink.

"We're bagging water fountains right now. It's not ready yet, but it's coming." Crombie said.

____

Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Florida.

Aleeah Racette receives medical treatment inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. At left is her mother, Amy Cross, and Amy's fiance, Corey Shuman. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A man who did not want his name used receives medical treatment inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A Panama City resident, who did not want his name used, receives medical treatment, inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A man who did not want his name used receives medical treatment inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Aleeah Racette receives medical treatment inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)DALLAS (AP) - A federal appeals court says Texas must make improvements to abuse investigations within its foster care system and make sure workers have manageable caseloads, but the court also struck down dozens of other measures ordered by a judge.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling Thursday in a years-long case focused on children in the state's long-term care. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack had ordered sweeping changes earlier this year. Jack's order followed a December 2015 opinion in which she ruled the system unconstitutionally broken and said children labeled permanent wards of the state "almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged than when they entered."

The appeals court judges said they understood Jack's frustration with the state failing to fix problems and agreed that "remedial action is appropriate." But the judges said her order went "well beyond" what's necessary for constitutional compliance.

So while the appeals court said Texas was "deliberately indifferent" to the risk of harm posed by high caseloads and ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to come up with guidelines for manageable caseloads, the judges nixed Jack's instruction for all sexualized children - either aggressor or victim - to be placed in a single-child home. They also disagreed with her elimination of foster group homes, which allowed a total of 12 children, including the caregivers' own, in a home.

The appeals court noted the state has "repeatedly refused" to work on corrective policies with experts appointed by Jack to craft reforms. The appeals court also writes that Texas "has had a wealth of information at its disposal detailing the structural deficiencies in its foster care system" since long before the lawsuit was filed and "it has failed to take meaningful remedial action."

The case was filed in 2011 by a New York advocacy group, Children's Rights, along with Texas lawyers on behalf of about a dozen current and former foster youth. Unlike most states faced with such lawsuits, Texas fought it instead of settling. During a trial in the class-action lawsuit in 2014, former foster children testified of abuse they suffered as they were shuffled from placement to placement.

The lead lawyer for the youth, Paul Yetter, called the appeals court ruling a "huge win for Texas children," saying the changes to caseloads and improvements in abuse investigations will make a difference.

"The trial court was trying to fix a very broken system and methodically went through every aspect of the system, suggesting common sense, important changes," Yetter said. "The court of appeals took a much higher level view and upheld the trial court on her basic findings but said that the more specific remedies, even if they are commonsensical, would be something that the state needs to handle."

Kayleigh Lovvorn, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, says, "While the program still faces challenges, the Fifth Circuit upheld significant parts of the program as constitutional while finding that the district court engaged in judicial overreach in entering an overbroad and impractical injunction."WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on U.S. election security (all times local):

2:30 p.m.

A Russian woman has been charged with interfering in American elections, including next month's midterms, through a vast social media effort aimed at trying to sway American public opinion.

It's believed to be the first federal case alleging Russian interference in this year's election.

The Justice Department disclosed the criminal complaint soon after U.S. intelligence agencies said in a joint statement that they were concerned about efforts by Russia, China and Iran to influence U.S. voters and policy.

The complaint says the woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, worked for the same Russian social media troll farm that was indicted in February by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats speaks at the DC CyberTalks conference, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The complaint accuses Khusyaynova of helping to control the finances of a Russian effort to use fake social media postings to sow anger and division among American voters.

___

2:05 p.m.

U.S. intelligence officials say they're concerned about "ongoing campaigns" by Russia, China, Iran and other countries to undermine confidence in American democracy.

In a joint statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Homeland Security Department, the Justice Department and the FBI say they're worried about activities that "seek to influence voter perceptions and decision-making" in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

The agencies say the "ongoing campaigns" could take many forms. Examples include attempts to influence voters through social media, sponsoring content in English language media such as the Russian outlet RT, or "seeding disinformation through sympathetic spokespersons regarding political candidates and disseminating foreign propaganda."

Intelligence officials said last year that Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election through similar means.WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. accused a Russian woman on Friday of helping oversee the finances of a sweeping, secretive effort to sway American public opinion through social media in the first federal case alleging foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

The criminal complaint against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova alleges that Russians are using some of the same techniques to influence U.S. politics as they relied on ahead of the 2016 presidential election, methods laid bare by an investigation from special counsel Robert Mueller into possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump's campaign.

Justice Department prosecutors claim that Khusyaynova, of St. Petersburg, helped manage the finances of a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on hot-button social issues like immigration and gun control.

The Justice Department unsealed the criminal complaint on the same day that U.S. intelligence agencies, in a rare public statement , asserted that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in continuous efforts to influence American policy and voters in the upcoming elections and beyond. National security adviser John Bolton heads to Russia on Saturday.

The U.S. is concerned about the foreign campaigns "to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies," said the statement from national security officials. The statement, which provided no details about any such efforts, said, "These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision-making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections."

The national security agencies said they currently do not have any evidence that voting systems have been disrupted or compromised in ways that could result in changing vote counts or hampering the ability to tally votes in the midterms, which are 2 weeks away.

Christopher Krebs, undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate, speaks during a news conference on election cyber security, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"Some state and local governments have reported attempts to access their networks, which often include online voter registration databases, using tactics that are available to state and nonstate cyber actors," they said.

But so far, they said, state and local officials have been able to prevent access or quickly mitigate these attempts.

Prosecutors allege that Khusyaynova worked for the same social media troll farm that was indicted earlier this year by Mueller, and the social media effort they outlined Friday largely mirrors the special counsel's criminal case against three Russian companies, including the Internet Research Agency, and 13 Russians - including a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The conduct singled out Friday runs afoul of criminal laws that bar foreign nationals from attempting to influence American elections or from engaging in political activities without first registering with the attorney general, prosecutors said. The new prosecution was brought not by Mueller but by the Justice Department's national security division and prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia. There is no allegation in the complaint of coordination with the Trump campaign.

Asked about the new accusation against the Russians, Trump responded that it had "nothing to do with me."

The court papers pull back the court papers on a Russian effort to use thousands of fake social media profiles, and email accounts that appeared to be from people inside the U.S., to influence American politics. The goal was not necessarily to espouse one political ideology over another, prosecutors say, but rather "create and amplify divisive social and political content" including on significant current events such as deadly shootings in South Carolina and Las Vegas, prosecutors said.

One fake persona, registered to "Bertha Malone," made over 400 Facebook posts containing inflammatory content. One post falsely alleged ties between President Barack Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood. Another fake Facebook account, in the name of "Rachell Edison," made more than 700 posts focused on gun control and the Second Amendment.

The Russian organizers of the conspiracy advised that the posts should reflect various viewpoints, and they gave specific instructions to only share articles from certain news websites to correspond to specific political views, prosecutors said.

"If you write posts in a liberal group...you must not use Breitbart titles," one of the group's members warned, court papers say. "On the contrary, if you write posts in a conservative group, do not use Washington Post or BuzzFeed's titles."

After one news article targeting Republican Sen. John McCain appeared online with the headline "McCain Says Thinking a Wall Will Stop Illegal Immigration is 'Crazy,'" members of the group were told to brand him as "an old geezer who has lost it and who long ago belonged in a home for the elderly." They were also told to say that McCain had a "pathological hatred toward Donald Trump and toward all his initiatives."

McCain, a longtime foe of Putin's, died in August of brain cancer.

After another article appeared about Mueller, members of the troll farm were told to share the article and say Mueller was a "puppet of the establishment" who had connections to the Democratic Party and "who says things that should either remove him from his position or disband the entire investigation commission."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said recently that Russia has no intention of interfering in the midterm elections.

Friday's separate statement about foreign influence in U.S. elections was issued just weeks before the Nov. 6 elections by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Given the breadth of alleged interference by Russia, which includes the hacking of Democratic email accounts ahead of the 2016 presidential election, it was notable that the intelligence community identified two other nations, China and Iran, in the same statement.

Vice President Mike Pence recently blasted China in a speech, saying Russia's influence efforts in America pale in comparison with the covert and overt activities of the Chinese to interfere in the midterms and counter Trump's tough trade policies against Beijing. But top administration officials have provided little evidence that China's activities are comparable to Russia's massive covert measures spelled out in previous indictments obtained by Mueller.

The officials have cited largely public steps taken by China, such as aiming tariffs at politically important states and pressuring U.S. businesses to speak out against the Trump administration.

Other countries are using social media to amplify divisive issues in American society and sponsor content in English-language media, such as Russia's RT and Sputnik news outlets, the security agencies' statement said. They also distribute propaganda and plant disinformation against political candidates, the departments said.

Intelligence agencies have not publicly released evidence of Iran working to meddle in U.S. elections. In March, however, the Trump administration announced criminal charges and sanctions against Iranians accused in a hacking scheme to pilfer sensitive information from hundreds of universities, private companies and American government agencies.

Lawmakers said the newest criminal complaint is proof that Russian meddling did not stop in 2016.

"Russian disinformation efforts are ongoing and sophisticated, and they are intent on dividing us and weakening our society and political system," said California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Colleen Long contributed to this report.SAO PAULO (AP) - The WhatsApp messaging service said Friday that it has sent "cease and desist" letters to stop companies from sending bulk messages related to Brazil's election, after a report that businessmen were bankrolling a campaign to spread fake news in support of leading far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

The company framed the move as part of its larger efforts to combat the spread of false information on its service, revealing that it had banned hundreds of thousands of accounts since August, when the election campaign officially got under way in Brazil.

It said it uses "spam detection technology that spots accounts that engage in abnormal behavior so they can't be used to spread spam or misinformation."

Among the accounts it has blocked are those belonging to the companies that received the "cease and desist" letters. The action came after a report in the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper on Thursday that said a blast messaging campaign was planned for the week before the Oct. 28 runoff.

Bolsonaro's rival, Fernando Haddad, said that, if true, the scheme would amount to illegal campaign practices and asked Brazil's electoral court to investigate. Haddad, who became the candidate for the left-leaning Workers' Party after former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was banned because of a corruption conviction, alleged that hundreds of thousands of fake messages were already sent out in support of the far-right hopeful.

Bolsonaro has said any support he received from businessmen was voluntary and his Social and Liberal Party said all donations they have received were legal.

President of the Superior Electoral Court Rosa Weber, talks with the President of the Workers' Party Gleisi Hoffmann, during a meeting with the leadership of the Workers' Party, at the Supreme Electoral Court headquarters, in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. The Haddad campagin accused far-right adversary of illegal campaign practices for allegedly allowing friendly businessmen to secretly pay to spread slanderous messages. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

WhatsApp said in a statement that it was taking the allegation seriously. It declined to name the companies that it sent the letters to, but the Folha report identified marketing companies it said allegedly received money to do the blast messaging. None of the companies mentioned immediately responded to requests to confirm they had received the "cease and desist" letters.

WhatsApp is immensely popular in Brazil, which is home to nearly one in 10 users worldwide, but it has come under scrutiny during this election as concerns grow about whether false or manipulated messages are influencing voters. While fake news is a concern on many social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, WhatsApp is more difficult to police because users exchange information directly and rumors there can gain added credibility since they're shared privately by friends.

Later, members of Haddad's Workers' Party met in Brasilia with the head of Brazil's electoral court. Chairwoman Gleisi Hoffmann said she feared there would not be a timely response to avert the false news wave before the runoff.

"I leave this meeting with a lot of concerns about the court's ability to face this new situation in the electoral process," Hoffmann told journalists. "Yesterday we filed a suit to request searches to gather evidence and so far the court had no decision. The court will treat this suit as if we were in normal times, so I am very worried."

Haddad also criticized Brazil's electoral court on Friday. "We have an analogue judiciary dealing with digital problems," he told journalists in Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil's top electoral court had been expected to hold a press conference on false news and electoral crimes, but it was postponed until Sunday. No details were given about the change.

Also on Friday Brazil's Labor Democratic Party filed a request to the country's top electoral court to cancel the results of the first round of voting on Oct.7. The left-leaning party of third-place Ciro Gomes argues Bolsonaro's campaign received illegal funds and used false news to thrive.

Meanwhile, amid the back-and-forth about whether WhatsApp was being weaponized in the campaign, Flavio Bolsonaro, who is a senator-elect for Rio de Janeiro and the presidential candidate's son, tweeted that his own account had been banned but hours later said it had been unblocked. WhatsApp confirmed that the account was blocked about a week ago for spamming users and reinstated a few days later.

"The persecution knows no limits!" Flavio Bolsonaro tweeted Friday when he initially revealed his account had been blocked. Jair Bolsonaro's campaign has frequently alleged that the mainstream media and others are working against the front-runner's candidacy.

WhatsApp noted that an account for former President Dilma Rousseff, who is from the rival Workers' Party and ran for senator in this election and lost, was also blocked during her campaign.

___

Associated Press writers Stan Lehman and Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo and video journalist Mario Lobao in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.

President of the Superior Electoral Court Rosa Weber, right, listens to questioning from lawyers representing Fernando Haddad's campaign, during a meeting with the leadership of the Workers' Party, at the Supreme Electoral Court headquarters, in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. The Haddad campagin accused far-right adversary of illegal campaign practices for allegedly allowing friendly businessmen to secretly pay to spread slanderous messages. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

President of the Superior Electoral Court Rosa Weber, listens to questioning from lawyers representing Fernando Haddad's campaign, during a meeting with the leadership of the Workers' Party, at the Supreme Electoral Court headquarters, in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. The Haddad campagin accused far-right adversary of illegal campaign practices for allegedly allowing friendly businessmen to secretly pay to spread slanderous messages. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) - Virginia Del. Lee Carter wants you to know that he is in the midst of his third divorce, can't hold a job, lobbed homophobic insults when he was young, and may even have explicit photos of himself floating around on the internet.

It's not that the incumbent Democrat wants to lose the election next year; he just wants to get all of the potentially damning information out there before any of his opponents can.

"I think we've moved past the age where folks in politics can pretend that their past doesn't exist," Carter, a 31-year-old first-term delegate from Manassas, told The Associated Press in explaining his decision to release the less-appealing aspects of his life in a series of 15 tweets.

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, acknowledged that Carter's strategy is unusual but said the approach "might be crazy like a fox."

"In the age of (Brett) Kavanaugh, trying to peddle false or incomplete narratives about one's past appears to be a high-risk strategy," said Farnsworth, referring to the Supreme Court justice whose nomination was in the balance after he was publicly accused of sexual assault when he was a high school student more than three decades ago. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the charges and was confirmed.

Carter's approach has the benefit of disclosing everything now, a year away from his re-election, making it "old news by the time you're in front of the voters again," Farnsworth added.

FILE - This Monday Feb. 12, 2018 file photo shows Del. Lee Carter, D-Manassas, as he looks over legislation during the House session at the Capitol in Richmond, Va. Carter of Virginia is expecting a rough campaign when he's up for re-election. So he's getting a jump on the opposition by self-disclosing a series of private, sometimes embarrassing details about his personal life. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

The incumbent, for his part, rejects any comparison between his behavior and the accusations against Kavanaugh; he said nothing in his background is equivalent to the accusations of attempted rape levied against the justice.

Carter, whose admissions range from the trivial to the potentially serious, said he's made no effort to scrub his internet history to hide anything embarrassing.

Among his voluntary confessions: He said that growing up in the South he didn't always have the same revulsion for the Confederate flag that he does now.

And, "Just like everyone else under 35, I'm sure explicit images or video of me exists out there somewhere," he said. "I never sent them unsolicited, and never while I was in a relationship. That's just a reality of dating in the smartphone era."

Carter also said he's a rape survivor. He declined to discuss it any further, however, saying he did not want to name or indirectly identify the woman who he says attacked him when they were in a relationship.

The incumbent also released some details about one of his failed marriages, saying in his tweets that a custody fight for his daughter got ugly, "to the point where a baseless claim for termination of parental rights was filed against me."

"I agreed to pay arrearage I didn't actually owe in the settlement because it was cheaper than paying a lawyer," he wrote.

Carter, a self-described democratic socialist with an unconventional outlook on politics, was not considered a serious candidate by the political establishment when he ran last year against Republican incumbent Jackson Miller. He received little support from the state Democratic Party, and his campaign largely flew under the radar until Election Day, when a Democratic tidal wave helped carry him to victory.

As a result, he acknowledges his background didn't receive the same scrutiny as most candidates. He expects that to be different in 2019, when he figures he will be a top target of Republicans.

"To all the Republicans who are tasked with following my social media, enjoy that oppo dump," Carter wrote in the last of his 15 tweets. "Have fun in 2019."

As for the reaction he's received, he said there's a generational divide. Older people are shocked he'd willingly disclose embarrassing facts in public, while younger people react with a shrug.

"I put the bad out there with the good," he said. "When it comes time to vote, they have a complete picture. They can look at my personal life, my professional life, and make their decision. ... I did this so we can focus on the issues, and the fact that people have messy lives won't be a distraction."

His expectation is that voters will be more interested in the issues than in his personal life. He says the socialist principles he advocates are popular once people get past the label. The core principle, he said, is that workers, not corporations, should enjoy the benefits of their own labor.

Bill Card, chairman of the Republican Party in Prince William County, said he was surprised by Carter's online admissions.

"In my generation, people don't live out their lives in public to that degree," said Card, 65.

But he said he expects that whoever the GOP fields to run against Carter next year will be as eager as Carter is to run on the issues. He does not believe either the socialist tag Carter applies to himself - or the policies associated with it - will appeal to the electorate.

"A socialist is just a patient communist in my book," Card said. "The end goal is the same."BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Federal investigators looking into clergy sexual misconduct collected documents from the Diocese of Buffalo in June but have not been in contact since then, the diocese said.

The diocese acknowledged the federal inquiry late Thursday amid reports the Justice Department has opened investigations across neighboring Pennsylvania into the Roman Catholic Church's handling of child sex-abuse allegations against priests.

There is no evidence the two investigations are related.

Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone has been under increasing pressure to resign over his handling of complaints against priests accused of misconduct with children and adults. Malone publicly apologized in September for "any of my own failures in adequately addressing that abuse," but said he would not step down.

The interest by federal investigators pre-dates the launch of a separate statewide civil investigation by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood. New York was among several states that started such inquiries following a shocking Pennsylvania grand jury report in August that found about 300 Catholic priests had abused more than 1,000 children statewide since the 1940s.

"Several months ago, we received a call from the local U.S. Attorney's office with a request to review documents. A subpoena was provided and after some discussion, an agreement was reached to produce documents," the Diocese of Buffalo said in a statement late Thursday. "We have heard nothing since early June."

FILE- In this Feb. 13, 2013 file photo, Bishop Richard Malone, bishop of Buffalo, speaks to Catholics before distributing ashes on Ash Wednesday at St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo, N.Y. Malone has been facing complaints over his handling of clergy sexual abuse claims and is under increasing pressure to resign. (AP Photo/David Duprey, File)

U.S. Attorney James Kennedy Jr., through a spokeswoman, said the office neither confirms nor denies investigations and declined further comment.

A Buffalo television station reported internal church emails reference the subpoena and discussions with federal prosecutors that resulted in an agreement to limit the production of materials to living priests.

In a June 13 exchange obtained by WKBW, diocesan Chancellor Regina Murphy told Malone and Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz a diocesan lawyer had helped gather information and left "with a relatively small amount of documentation from 16 files."

"If any prosecutions result, it would probably be only a few," Murphy wrote.

Later that evening, an email from an attorney for the diocese, Terrence Connors, said: "Our judgment is that there may be two or three cases that will interest (a federal prosecutor) and he will review to see if they are prosecutable."

The bishop responded, "I hope the ones that may be prosecutable are all men removed from ministry," according to WKBW.

A spokeswoman for the diocese did not immediately return calls seeking comment Friday.

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents clergy abuse victims, said in a statement "the time for transparency has arrived."

"Pope Francis has to be deeply concerned about what the federal investigation will reveal within the Diocese of Buffalo. The federal investigation represents hope for clergy sexual abuse victims in all of Buffalo and also worldwide," Garabedian said.

The attorney general's office said a statewide clergy abuse hotline received about 400 calls or online submissions since it was established in early September. Underwood said her office would work with district attorneys to prosecute individuals whose alleged misconduct occurred within the allowable time limits.PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Prosecutors in Bill Cosby's sex assault case called his bid for a new trial or sentencing hearing "meritless," and asked the judge to deny him a post-trial hearing.

Cosby, 81, has asked for a do-over in the Pennsylvania sex assault case that ended with him being sent to prison last month to serve a three- to 10-year sentence. A jury found he had drugged and molested a woman at his suburban Philadelphia estate more than a decade ago. The judge declared him a "sexually violent predator" who remains a danger to the community.

Defense lawyers later argued Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill made mistakes during the trial and sentencing that invalidate the conviction and punishment. In a memo filed Friday, District Attorney Kevin Steele said Cosby's objections are "time-worn" and have been rejected by the judge before.

Cosby called the sentence more than twice the minimum suggested in state guidelines, and complained he must admit the crime and undergo sex-offender therapy to have any real chance at parole in three years. Steele, in response, called parole "only a possibility," and said the state parole board board was free to set the rules.

The defense also attacked the validity of a taped phone confrontation between the accuser's mother and Cosby in early 2005. Cosby, in his post-trial motion, said the tape had been doctored. Prosecutors said it has long been clear the mother was struggling with the tape recorder and did not record the entire call.

And the defense said the entertainer's 2015 arrest may have come too late because it's unclear when the encounter took place. But Steele noted that Cosby himself said in a deposition it occurred in 2004 - within the 12-year window to file charges.

Cosby, best known for playing the wise-cracking Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the top-ranked "Cosby Show" from 1984 to 1992, is imprisoned at a state prison in Collegeville, about 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia.SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Years before the #MeToo movement, Yee Xiong embarked on a quest for justice after she says she was sexually assaulted at a college party.

What followed was a tumultuous legal battle that included two trials ending in hung juries, followed by her attacker taking a plea deal for felony assault, then turning around and accusing her of defamation. That lawsuit, in which he objected to Facebook posts calling him a rapist, was quickly dismissed.

But Xiong was determined to hold him accountable. She filed a civil suit against him that resulted last week with a jury finding her attacker Lang Her liable for sexual battery and awarding her $152,400.

That was the full amount of damages she sought for medical expenses and pain and suffering, her lawyer said Friday.

"This case was not about money. It was about vindication for Yee. And, she was absolutely vindicated by the jury's verdict," said Justin Giovannettone, a lawyer with Sacramento-based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which took on her case for free.

Xiong said she is relieved the case is over and now has a sense of hopefulness.

FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2016, file photo, Yee Xiong sits for a photo in Sacramento, Calif. A jury has awarded more than $150,000 in damages to the California woman whose 2012 campus assault case drew wide attention. Now 26 years old, Xiong calls the verdict a 'huge win' for survivors around the world and shows that people can be held accountable, not matter how long it takes. (AP Photo/Darcy Costello, File)

"I think this is a case that is a huge win for survivors around the world," Xiong, who is now 26 and lives in Davis, California, said in a telephone interview. She hopes it sends "a very powerful and positive message to the world that people will be held accountable for their actions, no matter how long it takes."

An attorney for Her did not immediately respond to a phone message Friday seeking comment.

Xiong was a 20-year-old student at the University of California, Davis, when she went to an off-campus party on July 9, 2012, and drank too much, according to court documents. She woke up in a bed early the next morning with her arms pinned at her sides to find him having intercourse with her.

They knew each other before the party. Both were students at UC Davis and part of the tightknit Hmong community at the school. Their families also knew each other. California has the highest population of Hmong, a Southeast Asian ethnic minority, in the United States.

She reported the assault to police the next day. A rape-kit evaluation found his semen. Her, now 26, was charged with one count of rape of an intoxicated person. He testified that he believed Xiong wanted to have sex with him, and his attorneys questioned why Xiong stayed the rest of the night in the apartment if she had been raped.

The case was tried twice in 2015 and 2016, and both times a jury deadlocked.

Prosecutors were ready to try the case a third time when Her took a plea deal that included a year of jail time and five years of probation. He also had to register as a sex offender.

He is still on probation and served six months of the 1-year sentence, said Giovannettone.

Xiong thought the plea deal was the end. But on the day of Her's sentencing in July 2016, he served Xiong with a $4 million defamation suit, saying that she and her three siblings colluded to alienate him from their Hmong community by calling him a rapist on Facebook.

A court dismissed the defamation suit in October 2016, but Xiong decided to fight back with a civil suit.

"Even though he took the plea deal he was not going to accept responsibility," she said. "He was trying to use the legal system to harass me, so I wanted to fight back in the same way."

A 4-day trial in Yolo County Superior Court ended Oct. 12 with a unanimous verdict in her favor.

Xiong credits the #MeToo movement with having shined a light on how victims of sexual assault react to attacks, which she thinks may have informed the latest jury.

"In the other two trials, some of the jurors did not understand why I allowed him to drop me in my apartment (after the attack) and let him take me to campus," she said. "I think people understand now, you do what you need to, to survive."Masdar City, Abu Dhabis flagship sustainable urban development, has embarked on the next phase of its sustainable mobility network with the formal unveiling of its first Navya autonomous vehicle.



Capable of transporting up to 12 people, the Autonom Shuttle was inaugurated in the presence of dignitaries representing the Department of Transport, Abu Dhabi Police, and the French Embassy, said a statement.



Also attending were Khaled Al Qubaisi, chief executive officer for Aerospace, Renewables & ICT at Mubadala Investment Company; Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, chief executive officer of Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company); Mohammed Darwish Al Qamzi, general manager of Integrated Transport Center, Department of Transport in Abu Dhabi; and Jerome Rigaud, deputy chief executive officer of Navya Group, it said.



Designed by the French autonomous vehicle pioneer Navya, the Autonom Shuttle is a self-driving electric vehicle dedicated to first and last-mile transportation. It carries up to 12 people with eight seated, is fully autonomous and has a top operational speed of 25 km per hour.



Having successfully completed a rigorous pilot phase, the Navya shuttle will shortly begin a regular all-day service linking Masdar Citys parking areas with its main podium. The service will be the first operational use of the technology in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena).



Yousef Baselaib, executive director for sustainable real estate at Masdar, said: Masdar City is built on the three pillars of economic, societal and environmental sustainability and the introduction of our first NAVYA vehicle perfectly illustrates this philosophy in action.



With urban mobility at the forefront of the sustainability conversation in the UAE and worldwide, and with the business, residential and research community here at Masdar City continuing to flourish, Masdar is building on its legacy as a catalyst for clean-tech innovation to bring cutting-edge and commercially viable autonomous mobility to the streets of Masdar City, he added.



Masdar Citys iconic Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system, which has carried more than 2 million passengers in eight years of operations, established a benchmark for driverless and sustainable mobility in the UAE, added Baselaib. The introduction of our first Navya shuttle represents the next exciting phase of the citys mobility journey.



Working closely with Abu Dhabi Department of Transport and Navya Group, the Navya shuttle was customised to mitigate the effects of the Gulfs extreme heat and humidity on battery performance. Rigorous health and safety testing was also carried out to safeguard passengers and pedestrians.



The vehicle uses on-board cameras and sensitive LIDAR sensors creating 3D and 2D perception maps to detect obstacles and their position relative to the vehicle. GPS technology further allows the vehicle to define its precise location, as well as V2X to communicate with traffic lights.



Mohammed Darwish Al Qamzi, general manager of integrated transport center, Department of Transport in Abu Dhabi (DoT), said: The arrival of autonomous mobility at Masdar has been the result of a highly successful collaboration between the DoT, Masdar and NAVYA, which has further raised the profile of Abu Dhabi as leader in environmental best practice and sustainable urban development.



Todays launch supports Abu Dhabis strategic aim to realize a world-class transportation system for the benefit of both residents and visitors, unlocking in the process further social and economic gains for the emirate of Abu Dhabi and the UAE, he added.



At Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2018 in January, Navya was selected as the winner of a global industry competition to supply Masdar City with the latest models of autonomous electric vehicles.



Jerome Rigaud, Navya group deputy CEO, said: We are proud to be working with Masdar, a global leader in renewable energy and sustainable real estate.



We are delighted to provide Masdar City with its fully autonomous and smart solutions, providing users with a new way of getting around. Masdar City is the perfect place to commemorate the first deployment of the Navya Autonom Shuttle in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, where we expect expansion within Masdar City to be broad and decisive in the coming months, he added.



Implementation of Masdar Citys wider transportation strategy will see the arrival of a fleet of seven Autonom Shuttles from next year. Over time the shuttle route map will be expanded to connect the Etihad Eco Residence complex above the citys North Car Park with the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and Majid Al Futtaims My City Centre Masdar shopping mall due for completion in the first half of 2019, it stated.  TradeArabia News ServiceWASHINGTON (AP) - A brazen attack that the Taliban says targeted the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is a stark reminder of the formidable task the Trump administration faces as it tries to extricate America from its longest war.

The commander, Army Gen. Scott Miller, escaped unharmed from Thursday's attack. Elections for the lower house of parliament are still expected to be held as scheduled Saturday in much of the country. And administration officials said U.S. resolve is unshaken.

"We remain absolutely committed to an Afghan-led Afghan reconciliation," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Friday on the sidelines of an Asian security conference in Singapore. "Right now, we're going toward the election and we will continue to defend the Afghan people."

But the timing of the attack makes U.S. goals seem ever more distant. It comes just a week after reported U.S. back-channel talks with the Taliban and as the administration steps up efforts to kick-start peace negotiations between the militant group and the Afghan government to end the war, now entering its 18th year.

"The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, wants out. The Taliban knows this and is more than happy to dictate the terms of America's withdrawal," Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine.

There are about 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan on a mission to train and assist Afghan government forces in taking the fight to the Taliban, which controls or contests close to half the districts in the country. Violence is rising, claiming the lives of hundreds of civilians every month. There have been seven U.S. combat deaths so far this year.

Guards of honor carry a photo of Gen. Abdul Raziq, Kandahar police chief, who was killed by a guard, during his burial ceremony in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Afghanistan's election commission on Friday postponed elections in Kandahar for a week, following a brazen attack on a high-profile security meeting there with a U.S. delegation that killed at least two senior provincial officials, including the province's police chief. (AP Photo)

U.S. Army Col. David Butler, who was near where the shooting occurred after Miller met Afghan officials, disputed the Taliban and said the target was Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq, one of the three officials killed. But even their claim that they were going after Miller cast doubt on whether the militants are indeed willing to negotiate.

"The U.S. government has never been more invested in pursuing peace talks, and even an attack on the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is unlikely to deter Washington in that goal," said Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center. "But the attack amplifies how the Taliban will test the extent of America's willingness to pursue talks, and how the Taliban may up its violence in order to strengthen its bargaining position."

The recent appointment of former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad as envoy for Afghan reconciliation was intended to energize the U.S. peace effort and coax the Taliban into direct talks with the government of Ashraf Ghani.

The Taliban said its political representatives in Qatar met with Khalilzad a week ago, during his first multination trip since he took up his new post. The State Department did not confirm the Oct. 12 meeting, but did not deny it either, which was widely viewed in Washington as tacit acknowledgement it happened. A similar scenario played out in July, when the Taliban reported a meeting with the senior U.S. diplomat for South and Central Asia, Alice Wells.

The risk of such back-channel talks is that could alienate Kabul. The Taliban claimed the two sides discussed finding a way to withdraw foreign forces from Afghanistan - an issue that the Afghan government would demand a say in as it would be key to any peace settlement. Since U.S. officials haven't confirmed that the meeting happened, they have not been able to publicly deny the Taliban's account of the meeting.

Aside from the rising violence, the quiet diplomacy is playing out against an unpredictable political backdrop in Afghanistan that could grow more turbulent in the weeks ahead.

The Taliban have condemned the elections, calling them a U.S.-manipulated event to further their hold on the country, and vowed to disrupt them. Militant attacks have killed seven candidates, and two other candidates have been abducted. Dozens of other people have died in attacks on election rallies.

The election for the 249-seat lower house is already three years overdue, and electoral authorities are battling both against deteriorating security and time to get polling centers ready for Saturday, using new biometric equipment intended to stop fraud that has plagued past elections. The U.S. has committed nearly $80 million in aid for U.N.-led support of Afghan election authorities.

Voting in southern Kandahar province has been postponed for a week because of Thursday's attack and will not take place at all in Ghazni, in the east, because of insecurity there.

Laurel Miller, a former U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and now at Rand Corp., said disputes will inevitably arise among candidates over the results and that could hamper preparations for a presidential election scheduled for next April, which is far more consequential in Afghanistan's highly centralized political system.

That could undermine the standing of the electoral authorities and cause political instability that will be exploited by the Taliban. "That's not a great environment for negotiating a peace agreement," she said.

____

Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann in Washington and Robert Burns in Singapore contributed to this report.

Guards of honor carry the coffin of Gen. Abdul Raziq, Kandahar police chief, who was killed by a guard, during his burial ceremony in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Afghanistan's election commission on Friday postponed elections in Kandahar for a week, following a brazen attack on a high-profile security meeting there with a U.S. delegation that killed at least two senior provincial officials, including the province's police chief. (AP Photo)

Guards of honor carry the coffin of Gen. Abdul Raziq, Kandahar police chief, who was killed by a guard, during his burial ceremony in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Afghanistan's election commission on Friday postponed elections in Kandahar for a week, following a brazen attack on a high-profile security meeting there with a U.S. delegation that killed at least two senior provincial officials, including the province's police chief. (AP Photo)

Civilians and military personnel stand beside the grave of Gen. Abdul Raziq, Kandahar police chief, who was killed by a guard, as the pay respect during his burial ceremony in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Afghanistan's election commission on Friday postponed elections in Kandahar for a week, following a brazen attack on a high-profile security meeting there with a U.S. delegation that killed at least two senior provincial officials, including the province's police chief. (AP Photo)SEATTLE (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a high-profile climate change lawsuit brought by young activists who accuse the federal government of violating their constitutional rights with policies that have caused a dangerous climate.

Chief Justice John Roberts signed an order freezing the trial that was set to start in 10 days in federal court in Oregon until lawyers for the young people provide a response and the high court issues another order.

It marked a victory for the government, which under the Obama and Trump administrations has tried unsuccessfully for years to get the case dismissed. An expert says the Trump administration tried again before the Oct. 29 trial as the court shifted to the right with the confirmation this month of Brett Kavanaugh.

The Supreme Court refused to toss the lawsuit in July, calling it "premature."

Justice Department lawyers asked again Thursday, arguing that the claim aims to redirect federal environmental policies through the courts rather than through the political process.

Julia Olson, a lawyer representing the young plaintiffs and chief legal counsel for Our Children's Trust, said they are confident the trial will move forward once the justices receive their response, which is due by Wednesday.

FILE - In this July 18, 2018, file photo, lawyers and youth plaintiffs lineup behind a banner after a hearing before Federal District Court Judge Ann Aiken between lawyers for the Trump Administration and the so called Climate Kids in Federal Court in Eugene, Ore. The U.S. government is trying once again to block a major climate change lawsuit days before young activists are set to argue at trial that the government has violated their constitutional rights by failing to take action climate change. On Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, the Justice Department for a second time this year asked the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss the case. The high court in July denied the request as premature. (Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard via AP, File)

The Supreme Court has recognized in other cases that review of constitutional questions "is better done on a full record where the evidence is presented and weighed," she said in an email. "This case is about already recognized fundamental rights and children's rights of equal protection under the law."

The young people say government officials have known for more than 50 years that carbon pollution from fossil fuels was causing climate change and that policies on oil and gas deprive them of life, liberty and property. They also say the government has failed to protect natural resources as a "public trust" for future generations.

The lawsuit wants a court to order the government to stop permitting and authorizing fossil fuels, quickly phase out carbon dioxide emissions to a certain level by 2100 and develop a national climate recovery plan.

The Trump administration got a temporary reprieve on the case after also asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the request in July.

"The latest attempt to get the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the trial does not appear to be based on any new evidence or arguments. The only new element is an additional Supreme Court justice," said Melissa Scanlan, a professor at Vermont Law School, who is not involved in the case.

Kavanaugh replaced the more moderate Anthony Kennedy.

Scanlan said the Trump administration is trying to avoid "what they're expecting to be a 50-day trial focused on climate disruption." The trial in Eugene, Oregon, was expected to wrap up in January.

The federal government has argued in court filings that the young people don't have standing to bring the case and the issues should be left to the political branches of government, not the court.

Jeffrey Wood, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's environment and natural resources division, said officials "firmly believe there is no legal basis for this case to be heard in federal court."

The lawsuit "is an unconstitutional attempt to use a single court to control the entire nation's energy and climate policy," he said, according to prepared remarks for a speech he gave Friday at a conference in San Diego. "It is a matter of separation of powers and preserving the opportunity in our system of government for those policies to be decided by the elected branches, not the courts."

The lawsuit is part of a nationwide effort led by the Oregon-based nonprofit Our Children's Trust to force states and the federal government to take action on climate change.

James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist who told the world 30 years ago that global warming had arrived, is also part of the federal case.

District Court Judge Ann Aiken earlier this week dismissed President Donald Trump as a defendant in the case and rejected arguments that the young people can't bring the case. She said they made specific allegations of "personal injuries caused by human induced climate change," including extreme weather events in 2016 and 2017 that led to flooding in Louisiana.

Scanlan, the law professor, said the plaintiffs will need to show that the government created a danger, that they knew they created that danger and they "with deliberative indifference" failed to prevent harm.

____

Follow Phuong Le on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AP_PhuongHOPKINS, S.C. (AP) - Declaring this midterm election year an "inflection point" in American history, Kamala Harris came Friday to South Carolina to tell Democrats that the way out of Donald Trump's America is through the ballot box.

The California senator may have been referring to Nov. 6 elections, but her surroundings - the state that hosts the first Southern presidential primary - also carried the air of another election year: 2020.

Harris demurred when asked about her looming decision on a White House bid. Still, she brought a message that could transition easily should she join what is expected to be a crowded Democratic presidential field.

"This is a moment that is really requiring us as a country, as individuals to look in the mirror and to collectively answer a question: Who are we?" she said, later adding, "This is a moment in time that is requiring us to fight for the best of who we are."

She bemoaned GOP efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, blasted the Republican tax law as a giveaway to the rich and skewered unnamed interests trying to sow "hatred and division" in America. But the former prosecutor invoked the language of the legal profession to "reject the premise" that the U.S. is as divided as it often appears.

"The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us. ... Let's speak that truth," she told party activists who later serenaded her with "Happy Birthday." Harris turns 54 on Saturday.

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2018 file photo, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during the confirmation hearing of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Harris is making her debut in South Carolina as a potential presidential candidate and women are thanking the California senator for her role in the Supreme Court confirmation fight over Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It delighted the Democratic partisans Harris greeted at get-out-the-vote rallies and a campaign phone bank, particularly women who said they were looking for a younger nominee to do what Hillary Clinton could not in 2016.

"She's fresh, she's new - and she has the optimism, the youth, the vigor," said Denise Scotti-Smith, a Democratic precinct captain in the upstate town of Simpsonville.

Harris is among several potential Democratic presidential contenders in the state this week. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker on Friday finished a two-day swing that included stops around Columbia and in Charleston. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who sought the Democratic nomination in 2016, is scheduled to be in the state Saturday. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was here Thursday. Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned for South Carolina Democrats last weekend.

South Carolina has proven critical in Democratic politics, offering the first opportunity for would-be president to face a significant number of black voters. Harris and Booker are the only two black Democratic senators. (South Carolina's Tim Scott is the Senate's lone black Republican.) .

The state helped propel both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to the 2008 and 2016 nominations, respectively.

Harris acknowledged the importance of black voters in South Carolina and Democratic politics generally. The senator compared current national tensions to the civil rights era, describing her parents as active in that movement. She quipped that voters "can honor the ancestors with absentee ballots," rather than waiting until Election Day.

Yet she seemed to carefully calibrate her message to a wide audience.

"Leaders should be able to see all of the people who we represent and see them equally," she told reporters, later adding regardless of race or geography, "some of the issues are the same issues, because frankly the values are the same, and the challenges are the same for families, especially working families."

That offered some contrast to Booker, who at multiple stops Thursday emphasized his personal and political ties within the black community.

Harris did not bring up her recent appearances - and Booker's - on the national stage during the Senate Judiciary Committee's consideration of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.

But several women thanked her for how she handled Christine Blasey Ford's allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh. Harris said from the outset she believed Ford's account that Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were in high school. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusation.

Bridgette Watson, 33, shed tears as she met with Harris. "I just appreciate so much that she treated Dr. Ford with respect," Watson told The Associated Press afterward, describing herself as a sexual assault survivor. "The way she addressed her was empowering for women who have never told their stories. ... I didn't tell mine until this year."

Harris said she has experienced many such encounters since the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings, despite Kavanaugh's eventual confirmation. "People who might have said hello (to me) are now telling (me) their story," she said. Other don't share details, Harris added, "but they are communicating 1,000 words without explicitly saying it."

At a black church in Columbia, two white Harris backers, Susan Riordan, 54, and Katy Beverly, 46, noted the racial mix of the crowd, arguing that it shows Harris can build a wide coalition.

Riordan noted an obvious comparison to the last time Democrats nominated a first-term senator that drew similar crowds. "There's a reason that Barack Obama ran only two years into office," she said. "Once you get into Washington, you get twisted by Washington."

So, Riordan said: "It's time. This is her time."

___

Follow Barrow and Kinnard on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP and https://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP .NEW YORK (AP) - The founder of a far-right group said Friday he was arranging the surrender of members wanted by police in connection with a New York City street brawl after a speech he gave last week.

Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes told The New York Times said he expects the rest of the group's wanted members to be in police custody by Friday night following two arrests in the case in recent days.

Geoffrey Young, 38, of New City, New York, and John Kinsman were arraigned Friday on charges of riot and attempted assault. Kinsman, 39, of Morristown, New Jersey, is also charged with attempted gang assault and possession of a weapon.

Court records didn't list lawyers who could speak on their behalf.

Police made the arrests after combing through photos and videos posted on YouTube that showed the violent clash a week ago after McInnes' speech at a Republican club in Manhattan. The fight started when a masked protester threw a bottle, leading to the Proud Boys and groups that were protesting McInnes' speech kicking and punching each other on the sidewalk.

No serious injuries were reported.

After arresting three protesters the night of the brawl, the NYPD said it was looking for a dozen more suspects - nine Proud Boys members and three protesters.

The department said it is also looking into the Proud Boys group itself. Deputy Commissioner John Miller told the Times the NYPD has opened a criminal investigation into the organization.

The male-only Proud Boys describe themselves as "western chauvinists." The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated them as a hate group.

McInnes, who is also a co-founder of Vice Media, didn't immediately respond to messages from the Associated Press.

The Republican club was vandalized ahead of McInnes' appearance. Damage included smashed windows, a spray-painted door and a keypad lock covered in glue.

A note left at the scene claimed that the damage was "just the beginning."MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) - Two alleged MS-13 gang members have been charged with murder in separate killings of two teenagers who were hacked to death in New York.

Josue Figueroa-Velazquez and Kevin Lopez-Morales were arraigned on a grand jury indictment Friday in the deaths of 15-year-old Angel Soler and 19-year-old Josue Amaya Leonor on Long Island. Both pleaded not guilty.

Soler's body was found last October and Leonor's was found May 30. Prosecutors say both victims were killed because they were perceived to be enemies of MS-13.

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas says the victims were lured to the woods by the defendants and other gang members and "ruthlessly" hacked to death.

An attorney for Lopez-Morales said he had no comment. An attorney for Figueroa-Velazquez did not immediately return a call seeking comment.BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) - The Latest on the sentencing of a man who shot and killed three people in a suburban Denver Walmart (all times local):

3:50 p.m.

A man who shot and killed three people at a Walmart in suburban Denver has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Scott Ostrem was sentenced Friday to three consecutive life terms plus 48 years after reaching a deal with prosecutors, who agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Prosecutors say the 48-year-old walked into the store in Thornton on Nov. 1, 2017, fired seven shots in about 20 seconds and left without saying a word. Investigators say they still don't know his motive.

Killed were 26-year-old Victor Vasquez, 52-year-old Pamela Marques and 66-year-old Carlos Moreno. Some of their family members spoke at Friday's hearing.

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2017, file photo, Scott Ostrem, 47, center, is escorted out of the courtroom after a hearing in Brighton, Colo. Ostrem, who pleaded guilty to gunning down three people in a suburban Denver Walmart last year, will be sentenced Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, but more than 11 months after the crime, his motive remains a mystery. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, Pool, File)

Ostrem pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder for endangering 45 other people inside the store.

___

9 a.m.

A man who pleaded guilty to shooting and killing three people in a suburban Denver Walmart is returning to court for sentencing.

Forty-eight-year-old Scott Ostrem will appear in court Friday after reaching a deal with prosecutors, who agreed to seek a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Ostrem could have faced the death penalty.

Prosecutors say Ostrem walked into the store on Nov. 1, fired seven shots in about 20 seconds and left without saying a word. Investigators say they still don't know his motive.

Killed were 26-year-old Victor Vasquez, 52-year-old Pamela Marques and 66-year-old Carlos Moreno. Some of their family members are expected to speak at Friday's hearing.

Ostrem will also have the opportunity to speak, but it's not clear whether he will.HOUSTON (AP) - A Houston hospital is replacing the surgical director of its renowned heart transplant programs with two veteran transplant surgeons and a veteran transplant program executive after a series of media reports on an unusual number of patient deaths.

The move comes after Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center temporarily shut down the program in the wake of reports by the Houston Chronicle and ProPublica of problems with the program.

The hospital announced Friday that Dr. Kenneth Liao and Dr. Alexis Shafii will jointly lead the program previously led by Dr. Jeffrey Morgan. Deborah Maurer, who has long administered transplant programs in Chicago and Arizona, will fill a new position overseeing the operations of all St. Luke's organ transplant programs.

Liao will come to St. Luke's in January from the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis, where he has been the top heart transplant surgeon. He will be St. Luke's new chief of cardiothoracic transplants and mechanical circulatory support.

Shafii, who has already taken over as St. Luke's surgical director of heart transplants, was previously surgical director of the lung transplant program at the University of Kentucky Transplant Center.

The Chronicle-ProPublica investigation found that the transplant center has performed an unusual number of transplants that resulted in deaths or unusual complications, has lost several top physicians and had pulled back from treating high-risk patients - all the while promoting its lustrous past. St. Luke's heart transplant program was made famous by Dr. Denton Cooley.

The hospital says Morgan will remain on its medical staff, but it's not saying if he will continue performing transplants.

"The addition of two expert surgeons and an experienced executive who specializes in transplant program administration demonstrates Baylor St. Luke's continued and growing commitment to heart and lung transplants," said St. Luke's President Gay Nord in a statement Friday.

In early June, St. Luke's suspended its heart transplant program for two weeks amid scrutiny over patient deaths. The hospital's administrators looked into what led to two patient deaths in May. The hospital reopened after making changes to policy and staffing.

However, the concerns over transplant outcomes prompted the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to stop funding for the program in August, so the hospital can no longer bill Medicare and Medicaid for heart transplants.

___

Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.comVIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - The American pastor recently released after two years of confinement in Turkey said Friday that he suffered a breakdown during his time in prison and was put on anti-anxiety medication.

Andrew Brunson said he was deprived of books - even a Bible - for long stretches of time. For eight months, he spent 24 hours a day with more than 20 men in a cell designed for eight.

But the worst of it, he said, was the uncertainty. The pastor who had led a small congregation faced the possibility of life in a Turkish prison if convicted on charges of terrorism and related counts, accusations he still calls "ridiculous."

"I didn't do very well," Brunson said of living in the crowded prison cell. "It was very high stress, and I was sleeping three to four hours maximum a day. And I was really struggling a great deal. I didn't know how long this would continue. I didn't know why I was in prison."

He added: "I really had a breakdown emotionally. And I received medication for anxiety because I was just a basket case."

Sitting next to his wife, Norine, Brunson spoke inside the Virginia Beach headquarters of the Christian Broadcasting Network after an interview on "The 700 Club," among other CBN shows. The network closely followed his ordeal, which became a cause celebre for evangelical Christians as well as President Donald Trump.

Pastor Andrew Brunson speaks during an interview at the headquarters of Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, Va., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Brunson was recently released from prison in Turkey. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Earlier this month, Brunson was convicted in Turkey and sentenced to more than three years in prison. But he was freed and allowed to leave for the two years he had already spent in custody. For the past few months, he had been on house arrest.

Brunson was accused of links to Kurdish militants and a U.S.-based Muslim cleric whom Turkey blames for a failed coup in 2016.

Upon his return, Brunson, 50, visited the White House and placed his hand on Trump's shoulder in prayer before asking God to provide the president "supernatural wisdom to accomplish all the plans you have for this country and for him."

Trump was insistent on Brunson's release without conditions. And the president maintained there was no deal for Brunson's freedom.

Brunson said Friday that he was unaware of any deals. And he pointed out that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had previously suggested trading Brunson for Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Turkey of engineering a failed coup in 2016. The swap was never made.

The Brunsons, who spent 25 years in Turkey, said they still love the country but can't return any time soon. They said they don't know what's next, but they view their ordeal as part of God's plan.

"We haven't done anything great," Brunson said. "But for so many people in so many countries to be praying for us, this is something that God did. It wasn't just to bless me. He's using that to bless Turkey."

In the meantime, the couple is still recovering from the past two years, which included Norine Brunson's arrest with her husband and the two weeks she spent with him in prison.

She was released and allowed to stay in the country while he was shipped around to various prisons. Their children, then ages 15, 18 and 21, were in the U.S. and have remained there.

The Brunsons said they still don't know why the Turkish government made its accusations. Their missionary work was legal and out in the open for more than two decades.

But they said they were American Christians, who are viewed with suspicion in Turkey. And they were there after the failed coup.

Brunson said Turkish authorities never offered any proof to support the charges; no emails, no social media postings or recordings.

But people the Brunsons had known testified against him. It's something the pastor is still processing.

"It's not an option not to forgive; we are required to as Christians," Brunson said. "Is it easy? No. But God forgave me. As I get emotions that come back, I say, 'I forgive.'"

Pastor Andrew Brunson, left, gestures as he demonstrates how he and his wife Norine communicated in a Turkish courtroom during an interview at the headquarters of Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, Va., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Brunson was recently released from prison in Turkey. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Pastor Andrew Brunson, left, gestures as his wife, Norine, listens during an interview at the headquarters of Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, Va., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Brunson was recently released from prison in Turkey. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)A former U.S. Navy commander has been sentenced to more than two years in prison after pleading guilty to accepting lavish dinners, drinks and the services of prostitutes in exchange for providing ship schedules to a Malaysian defense contractor at the center of one of the military's worst corruption scandals.

A federal judge in San Diego on Friday also ordered Troy Amundson, 51, of Ramsey, Minnesota, to pay a $10,000 fine.

His lawyers argued that Amundson was not aware the ship schedules were classified, though their client acknowledged that from 2012 to 2013, he took the bribes from Leonard Glenn Francis, nicknamed 'Fat Leonard.'

Authorities say Francis' company used the information to beat competitors and overbill the Navy by tens of millions of dollars for services in Asian ports.

Former Navy commander Troy Amundson, 51 (right), pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery in San Diego federal court

Twenty-one people have pleaded guilty so far.

The Fat Leonard scandal is considered one of the worst in the Navys history.

Federal prosecutors charged a total of 33 people, including 16 officials from the Navy.

Others involved in the scandal passed information to Francis in exchange for cash, Cuban cigars, Kobe beef, Spanish suckling pigs, and luxury travel.

Francis struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.

As part of his punishment, he agreed to forfeit $35million - the amount he says he overbilled the Navy.

In one email, Amundson arranged to hand-off confidential information to Francis.

Amundson admitted to giving secret military information to contractor 'Fat Leonard' Francis (pictured) in exchange for meals, entertainment and prostitutes

He wrote: 'Your program is awesome. I am a small dog just trying to get a bone however I am very happy with my small program. I still need five minutes to pass some data when we can meet up. Cannot print.'

Prosecutors say later that night, Francis arranged for Amundson to meet with several prostitutes from Mongolia.

Amundson also admitted to deleting his personal emails with Francis on the same day in 2013 that he was interviewed by federal investigators.

'Amundson deliberately, methodically, and repeatedly traded his public office for entertainment expenses and the services of prostitutes, and in so doing, aligned himself with a foreign defense contractor over his Navy, his colleagues and his country,' U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman said in a statement earlier this year.

'We are pressing forward in this investigation until we are certain that all involved have been held accountable.'WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump will likely have his second meeting with Kim Jong Un early next year to continue charting a way for the North Korean leader to give up his nuclear weapons in a verifiable way.

A senior administration official told White House reporters Friday that a meeting is "likely sometime after the first of the year."

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the meeting have not been finalized.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made his fourth visit to North Korea, and he is coordinating with allies Japan and South Korea to arrange a second summit between Trump and Kim.

The two leaders' meeting in June in Singapore produced a vague agreement on denuclearization with few, if any, specifics.The UAE has been unanimously selected by the International Association for Volunteering Effort (IAVE) as the host country for the 26th World Volunteer Conference in October 2020, a media report said.



After a rigorous selection process, the Emirates Foundation in Abu Dhabi has been chosen as the host organisation for this premier global event, to take place in 2020, reported Emirates news agency Wam.



The 2020 conference holds extra significance as it is also marks IAVEs 50th anniversary, a key milestone for the organisation.



The biannual event is the largest global gathering of volunteering experts and practitioners, and the announcement confirming Abu Dhabi as hosts in 2020 was made during the closing ceremony of 2018s conference in Augsburg, Germany.



This will be the first time the conference will be hosted in the UAE since its launch in 1970. And while the exact date of the event has not been announced, it will take place during the same month as the launch of Expo 2020 Dubai, which opens on 20th October of that year.



Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Foundation will coordinate the conference, building on its mandate by the Abu Dhabi government to facilitate public-private funded initiatives for the empowerment of youth across the UAE. Volunteering is one of the organisations key pillars  along with innovation, entrepreneurship, empowerment and engagement.



More than 1,000 participants representing volunteer communities of over 90 countries are expected to attend, including government entities, the private sector, non-profit groups, and individual philanthropists.



Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Chairman of the Emirates Foundation, said, "We are honoured to be hosting the next IAVE World Volunteer Conference in 2020 in Abu Dhabi, which attests to the leading role our nation is playing on the global stage in the area of volunteering.



"Corporate citizenship and social responsibility are fundamental pillars for building the strong communities that will unite our nation in responsibility. It starts with volunteering, which nurtures a common spirit of giving, one that honours the legacy of our Founding Father Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan."



"IAVE is delighted that Abu Dhabi in the UAE has been selected as the location of the 26th IAVE World Volunteer Conference in 2020 and that the Emirates Foundation will be our host organisation partner. This will be the first time that an IAVE World Volunteer Conference has been held in the Arab Nations region," said Kylee Bates, IAVE World President.



"The city of Abu Dhabi has demonstrated leadership and ambition for volunteering in the region and beyond. IAVE is excited to be partnering with the Emirates Foundation as the host organization to deliver an ambitious conference that we know will both celebrate IAVEs first 50 years and provide significant momentum for the next 50 years," she added.



Maytha Al Habsi, CEO of Emirates Foundation, added, "We thank the IAVE board members for their confidence in Abu Dhabi and our ability to further the mission and objectives of the global volunteering community. We look forward to contributing our voice, as together we share our experiences, challenges, innovations, and means for collaboration around volunteering efforts."PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The ex-president of a suspended Temple University fraternity has been ordered to stand trial for a second alleged sexual assault.

A judge ordered 21-year-old Ari Goldstein to stand trial Thursday on charges of rape, sexual assault, unlawful restraint and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. A charge of false imprisonment was dismissed.

Goldstein's attorney Perry de Marco Sr. says the two had sex on several occasions before the alleged November incident.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports de Marco described the allegations as part of "the 'MeToo' bandwagon."

Goldstein is facing separate charges including attempted sexual assault for a February encounter in which a woman says he tried to force her to have oral sex.

Temple University officials suspended Alpha Epsilon Pi in April after at least three women said they were sexually assaulted at the frat house.

___

Information from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.inquirer.comWASHINGTON (AP) - Outdoor clothing giant Patagonia jumped into two competitive Senate races Friday, endorsing Democrats Jon Tester of Montana and Jacky Rosen of Nevada in what the company called its first foray into elective politics.

The company described Tester and Rosen as champions of public lands and the outdoor industry. Tester is seeking a third term in the Senate while Rosen is a freshman House member who is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Dean Heller.

The move follows a lawsuit the California-based company filed last year challenging President Donald Trump's decision to drastically shrink Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

The company also sparred with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who accused Patagonia of lying after it claimed on its website that Trump "stole" public lands by shrinking Bears Ears and another monument in Utah.

Patagonia said in a statement that it has fought for the protection of wild places since its founding and has been encouraging its customers and employees to vote "with the planet in mind" since 2004.

The company is endorsing Senate candidates for the first time "because of the urgent and unprecedented threats to our public lands and waters," said spokeswoman Corley Kenna. Nevada and Montana are two states where Patagonia has significant history and a long record of conservation accomplishments, Kenna said.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018 file photo, Ranking Member Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., speaks during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. Tester and Republican challenger Matt Rosendale wll meet in their second debate on Saturday, Oct. 6. AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Patagonia's action is highly unusual. Many corporations, including Patagonia, have established political action committees that take donations and contribute to political campaigns, but the companies themselves usually stay out of politics.

Tester's campaign spokesman Chris Meagher said there's a stark contrast between Tester and Rosendale on public lands. "Jon Tester has worked tirelessly to defend our state's way of life and make sure our public lands stay in public hands. Matt Rosendale talks a big game, but he wanted to transfer public lands, and has voted against protecting and expanding access to land for Montana's hunters and anglers," Meagher said.

Rosen spokeswoman Molly Foley said the campaign was thrilled to have Patagonia's support, and said Rosen would fight to keep public lands in public hands.

A spokesman for Heller said simply, "Dean Heller is a Carhartt guy," referring to another company known for its work clothes and jackets.

Patagonia operates a global distribution center in Reno, Nevada, with more than 650 employees. Its retail operations in in Montana go back three decades.

Patagonia CEO and President Rose Marcario said Rosen has a strong record of defending public lands in Congress and protecting access to clean air and clean water.

"We need her leadership to protect Nevada's economy and the basic health of its people, so the business community can thrive and so Nevadans can prosper," she said.

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard said Patagonia was backing Tester "because he gives a damn about protecting public lands - and like us he's committed to fight back against anyone who doesn't."

Tester is running against Republican Matt Rosendale, the state auditor. Trump campaigned for Rosendale at a raucous rally Thursday night in Missoula, Montana. Trump said Tester has been a "disaster for Montana."QUITO, Ecuador (AP) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seeking a court injunction pressing Ecuador to provide basic rights he says the country agreed to when it first granted him asylum at its London embassy.

Assange's attorneys filed papers Friday in a Quito court. The Australian ex-hacker sought asylum from Ecuador in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange says his host must pay for his doctor visits, WiFi connection and relax strict rules that make visits difficult.

Assange's Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzon says Ecuador granted his client asylum, which carries these rights.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia says Ecuador intends to follow international standards and Ecuador's law.

Tension has been long building between Assange and his hosts, which had threatened to take away his cat if he didn't clean up after it.BARTOW, Fla. (AP) - A Florida city commissioner has been charged with fatally shooting a man he accused of shoplifting a hatchet from an Army-Navy surplus store.

The Ledger reports that a Polk County grand jury indicted 47-year-old Michael Dunn on a second-degree murder charged Friday. A conviction could mean a possible life sentence.

Surveillance video released to the public shows the Lakeland commissioner shooting 50-year-old Cristobal Lopez on Oct. 3. The video shows Dunn holding a gun in his right hand while trying to keep Lopez from carrying the hatchet out of the store. Dunn grabs a fistful of Lopez's shirt, and Lopez is partly out the door, raising the hatchet, when Dunn fires and Lopez falls, mortally wounded.

Dunn's attorney, Rusty Franklin, has previously said the shooting was justified because Lopez was holding the hatchet.JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Alaska Gov. Bill Walker dropped his re-election bid Friday, three days after the sudden resignation of his lieutenant governor over what Walker described as an inappropriate overture toward a woman.

Walker's announcement, made at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage shortly before he was to participate in a debate, was met with gasps and cries of "No!" from the audience.

"'Alaska First' is and cannot be just a campaign slogan," he said. With less than three weeks until the election, Walker, an independent, said it became clear he could not win a three-way race against Republican former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy and Democratic former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich.

Alaskans deserve a competitive race, "and Alaskans deserve a choice other than Mike Dunleavy," he said.

Walker, a former Republican and the only independent governor in the country, told reporters he doesn't agree with Begich on a lot of things. But he said Begich would be better for Alaska than Dunleavy.

On Friday night, Brett Huber, Dunleavy's campaign manager, issued a statement blasting Walker. "Governor Walker could have chosen a dignified, graceful exit to his campaign. Instead, he opted to bow out with a bitter, partisan attack on Mike Dunleavy. It's too bad - Alaskans deserve better," Huber said.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker announces he will drop his re-election bid while addressing the Alaska Federation of Natives conference Friday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. Walker's re-election plans were dealt a blow earlier in the week after his running mate, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, resigned after making an inappropriate overture toward a woman. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Walker was showered with praise and hugs by conference attendees after his announcement. The debate went on without him. Begich called Walker's action courageous. Dunleavy did not acknowledge it in his opening statements.

Walker's campaign was rocked Tuesday by the resignation of Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, a Democrat who was replaced by former state health commissioner Valerie Davidson.

Throughout the campaign, some Democrats and independents worried that Walker and Begich would split the vote, giving the election to Dunleavy. Walker was elected in 2014 with Democratic support.

Walker's campaign manager earlier this week said Walker and Begich had been in talks about a "path forward for Alaska" but would not elaborate. On Thursday, they both sought to downplay any suggestions of a potential deal ahead of the Nov. 6 election.

A Division of Elections spokeswoman said ballots have already been printed. Early voting in the state starts Monday.

Casey Steinau, chairwoman of the state Democratic party, lauded Walker for "stepping aside for the greater good."

Mallott, in a resignation letter, apologized for "inappropriate comments I made that placed a person whom I respect and revere in a position of vulnerability."

Few details have been released because Walker said he is honoring the wishes of the woman involved.

The partnership of Walker and Mallott - and blurring of partisan lines - was a central theme of their administration and campaign. Walker said he considers Mallott his closest friend and "soul mate."

In 2014, Walker and Mallott were each running for governor, trying to unseat Republican Gov. Sean Parnell. Walker was a Republican mounting an outsider bid. Mallott was the Democratic candidate and an Alaska Native leader.

With the support of the Democratic party, the two men, who had developed a friendship, combined their campaigns and defeated Parnell. Walker changed his affiliation from Republican to undeclared, and Mallott became Walker's running mate.

This year, their desire to run together helped seal what some had already seen as an uphill battle for Walker because of the three-way race. Though Democrats now allow independents to run in their primaries, Walker opted against that when it appeared Begich would run. He instead gathered signatures to appear on the general election ballot, which ensured that he and Mallott could run together. Libertarian Billy Toien also is running for governor.

Walker, 67, is no stranger to the underdog role and embraced it through much of the campaign. He often speaks of the emotional and financial toll of rebuilding his hometown of Valdez after a devastating 1964 earthquake. As a kid, he worked odd jobs to help make ends meet and helped his father with his construction business. He said the quake changed him - teaching him lessons about faith, perseverance and working together.

In 2014, oil prices, which had reached around $110 a barrel, began a freefall, bottoming out at $26 a barrel in early 2016. For a state heavily reliant on oil, the impact was severe, creating a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Alaska fell into a recession.

As governor, Walker faced criticism for halving the size of the check Alaskans received from the state's oil-wealth fund in 2016. He defends his decision as proper; it came amid legislative gridlock over how to address the deficit. But critics labeled him a thief.

"I ran for the job to do the job, not to keep the job," he said in a recent interview, describing that and other difficult decisions.

Alaska gubernatorial candidate Mark Begich, a Democrat, speaks during a debate Friday, October 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. Begich debated Republican Mike Dunleavy shortly after incumbent Gov. Bill Walker dropped his re-election bid. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Alaska first lady Donna Walker, left, blows kisses to the crowd and Gov. Bill Walker reacts at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska, after announcing he was suspending his re-election bid. Walker's re-election plans were dealt a blow earlier in the week after his running mate, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, resigned after making an inappropriate overture toward a woman. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker announces he will drop his re-election bid while addressing the Alaska Federation of Natives conference Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. Walker's re-election plans were dealt a blow earlier in the week after his running mate, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, resigned after making an inappropriate overture toward a woman. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Alaska gubernatorial candidates Democrat Mark Begich, left, and Republican Mike Dunleavy, right, take the stage amid an empty seat for Gov. Bill Walker at a debate Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. The two debated shortly after Walker, an independent, dropped out of the race just weeks ahead of the election. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)PHOENIX (AP) - Large groups of Central American migrants continue to surrender to Border Patrol agents in Arizona with the arrival of one recent group numbering 108 captured in dramatic video images, authorities said Friday.

The agency said camera operators monitoring movement Thursday afternoon along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Yuma area captured images of a large number of people being dropped over the border wall east of the San Luis Port of Entry.

It said the smugglers never crossed the border while they helped migrants over the wall in four places. The group was comprised of 100 Guatemalans and eight Hondurans. They included 52 children, nine of them 5 years and younger.

The mass crossing occurred while another drama was being played out much farther south as a caravan of several thousand Central American migrants traveled northbound, prompting President Donald Trump to warn Mexico to stop them from reaching the U.S. border.

Arizona Border Patrol agents for weeks have been overwhelmed by the arrival of large numbers of Central American migrants traveling in families.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona earlier this month began releasing hundreds of people to await court dates, saying it didn't have the capacity to hold an "incredibly high volume" of migrant families showing up at the border.

This image from video provided by the Yuma Sector Border Patrol shows a large group of Central American migrants being dropped over the U.S.-Mexico border wall east of the San Luis Port of Entry in Yuma, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Yuma Sector Border Patrol via AP)

"Coordinated smuggling of large numbers of Central Americans is taking place daily here," Yuma Sector Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Porvaznik said in a written statement.

Before the arrival of the latest group, authorities said that collectively more than 1,400 migrants had been left by smugglers in the broiling desert - or in one case in a drenching thunderstorm - in remote areas by Arizona's border with Mexico since Aug. 20. One group was as large as 275 people.

Unlike Texas, where people turn themselves in on the banks of the Rio Grande, the smugglers near Arizona have been dumping groups of migrant families near Yuma, or farther to the east on a remote dirt road running along the southern limit of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near the Lukeville Port of Entry.

While Mexican men traveling without relatives once made up the bulk of the migrants, Guatemalans and other Central Americans traveling in families or as unaccompanied minors are now the norm.SEATTLE (AP) - A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the National Rifle Association against Seattle's new gun-storage law.

King County Superior Court Judge Barbara Linde ruled Friday, tossing the lawsuit on technical grounds after the city contended the plaintiffs lacked standing and noted the law had yet to take effect, The Seattle Times reported .

"It seems the NRA jumped the gun in filing their lawsuit against this eminently reasonable legislation meant to protect children and the vulnerable," Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said in a statement.

The law, passed in July and set to take effect in January, says a gun owner can be fined up to $500 if a firearm isn't locked up, up to $1,000 if a minor, "at-risk person" or unauthorized user accesses the weapon and up to $10,000 if someone uses it to commit harm or a crime.

The NRA with the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation and two Seattle residents said in the lawsuit that the storage requirements violated Washington state law, which prohibits cities from regulating guns.

Linde didn't rule Friday on whether Seattle's requirements violate Washington state law.

Second Amendment Foundation officials said Friday they may appeal.

"It is frustrating when judges refuse to address the merits of a case and duck by saying the law is not yet in effect and plaintiffs have not proven that they will be arrested if they violate the law," Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb said in a statement. "We will continue this litigation and force a judge to rule that the law is illegal."

The lawsuit was expected by the city and pro gun-control groups including the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety and the law firm Orrick LLP, which represented Seattle at no charge.

In 2010, Seattle introduced a ban on firearms in city parks. The law was ultimately ruled unconstitutional after NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation sued the city.

Last year, however, the Washington state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Seattle's tax on guns. The ordinance imposed a tax of $25 per firearm and 2 or 5 cents per round of ammunition. It raised $93,000 in 2017.ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A southwest Alaska Yupik village on the Bering Sea will be the first counted for the 2020 U.S. Census.

Acting U.S. Census Bureau director Ron Jarmin said Friday that census takers on Jan. 21, 2020, will descend on Toksook (TOOK-sook) Bay, a village of 673 in southwest Alaska.

Toksook Bay is 512 miles (825 kilometers) west of Anchorage. It's accessible only by airplane or boat.

Counting people in Alaska is challenging because of the state's vast size - more than twice as big as the next largest state, Texas - and the difficulty in reaching rural villages off the road system.

The Census Bureau will give itself a head start and travel to rural Alaska villages while rivers remain frozen and snow covers the landscape, allowing for travel to homes by snowmobile and all-terrain vehicles.

"Logistically, I think we need to get to the remote villages before the spring thaw," Jarmin said. "That's when people are there. That's when you can actually access the community."

Ron Jarmin, acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau, addresses the convention of the Alaska Federation of Natives, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. Jarmin announced that the first community to be counted in the 2020 Census will be Toksook Bay, Alaska. (AP Photo/Dan Joling)

The early start also allows census takers to reach people in villages before they scatter to remote camps for hunting or fishing. Many Toksook Bay residents support themselves by commercial fishing as well as traditional subsistence activities such as harvesting fish, game, waterfowl and berries.

Most Americans will receive notices by mail to self-respond to census questions in mid-March, Jarmin said. The bureau is expected to hire 300,000 census takers throughout the country and will hire local people.

"It's important to have somebody that people will feel comfortable opening their door to, talking to," Jarmin said. "It also really helps to have someone who knows the people and knows the terrain."

Jarmin acknowledged that starting the census with a high-profile ceremony in an unusual location will help publicize the importance of the census. The count figures into each state's representation in Congress, voting districts and federal aid. In Alaska, he said, not counting one person means a loss of $3,000 annually.

"This is absolutely critical for determining how federal funds that are tied to the population are doled out," he said.

Jarmin announced the choice of Toksook Bay at the annual convention of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the state's largest Alaska Native organization.

In 2010, the bureau began the census in Noorvik, an Inupiat village of 670 on the Kobuk River in northwest Alaska. The head of the Census Bureau conducted the first enumeration that year and is expected to be on hand in Toksook Bay.

President Donald Trump has nominated Steven Dillingham to be permanent Census Bureau director. Dillingham answered questions this month at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has not voted on the nomination.DALLAS (AP) - An officer who shot and killed a black motorist in Texas last month during a traffic stop has not given a statement to detectives in the criminal investigation, police said in a statement Friday.

More than a month and a half following the Sept. 1 shooting, Arlington police identified Bau Tran as the officer who shot 24-year-old O'Shae Terry. The department had previously withheld his identity over safety concerns.

The agency has completed its criminal investigation into the shooting and given the case to prosecutors, according to the department statement.

Arlington police spokesman Lt. Christopher Cook said Tran has not provided a statement in the criminal probe, but did give a statement about the shooting for the administrative investigation.

The release says Tran is on "restricted duty status" until the end of the administrative investigation.

In the lead up to the Sept. 1 shooting, Tran responded to the traffic stop as backup to officer Julie Herlihy, who had stopped the SUV over a vehicle registration violation. Police video footage shows Tran grabbing onto the passenger-side window and the SUV moving away. Then gunshots can be heard.

Terrance Harmon was a passenger in the SUV when the gunfire broke out. His attorney Lee Merritt has said police have talked to his client about the traffic stop but not about what he saw when the officer opened fire, killing Harmon's childhood friend.

Yet, Cook said Harmon was asked about the shooting during an on-scene interview, which lasted about 14 minutes.MACON, Ga. (AP) - Georgia prosecutors have issued seven arrest warrants in a prostitution case linked to Fort Valley State University.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports prosecutors said Friday that warrants were issued earlier this week for former FVSU executive assistant to the president Alecia Johnson and six men.

Johnson, who was also the graduate adviser to a sorority on campus, faces six counts of pimping. She also faces six counts of prostitution as well as conspiracy to commit fiduciary theft stemming from allegations she conspired to take scholarship money.

The men each face charges of pandering and solicitation of sodomy stemming from conduct alleged to have occurred in 2017 and 2018. It's unclear if students were involved.

Officials announced in April they were investigating sexual misconduct and hazing at Fort Valley, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Macon.

___

Information from: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.comRussian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has welcomed the actions taken by Saudi Arabia as a result of the official investigation of Jamal Khashoggis case to punish and prosecute those who are responsible for this tragedy, a statement said.

RDIF strongly supports the process of transformative and historical reforms in Saudi Arabia undertaken by its leadership, including Vision 2030, which is of true significance for the Middle East and for the whole world, it said.

RDIF and many of its partners will continue close investment cooperation with Saudi Arabia to promote partnership and friendship among our great nations, it added. - TradeArabia News ServiceKANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) - Kyle Larson's appeal of a rules violation from last week's race at Talladega was denied Friday, a big blow to the Chip Ganassi Racing driver's chances of advancing in NASCAR's playoffs.

Larson was docked 10 points, crew chief Chad Johnston fined $25,000 and car chief David Bryant was suspended for Sunday's race at Kansas Speedway after officials determined the team used unapproved metal tabs in violation of NASCAR's policy for repairing damaged vehicles.

The penalty dropped Larson from 26 points behind the playoff cutoff to 36 points, meaning the elimination race at Kansas to trim the field to eight is practically a must-win for him.

"I don't know much about the appeals stuff. I kind of just drive," Larson said. "Obviously, a 10-point penalty doesn't help, but I felt like with even being 26 points back we were going to have to go into this week and get a win to make the next round. So it doesn't mean much to me."

Now he's going to have to win from the rear, too. Larson clipped the wall during practice on Friday and had to go to a backup car, which means he will be sent to the back after qualifying 27th.

His team's expedited appeal on Friday morning was denied by the three-person panel of Chuck Deery, Dixon Johnston and Cathy Rice. Chip Ganassi Racing made a final appeal that also was denied, though Larson didn't seem to care much whether the team was successful.

NASCAR Cup Series driver Kyle Larson shakes hands with a fan before qualifying for this weekend's auto race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Larson lost his appeal of a rules violation from last week's race. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

"I viewed this weekend before as we had to come in here and win," he said.

Larson was already having a tough day at Talladega when a blown tire led to a spin on Lap 104, which caused some damage to his car. The team wound up using metal tabs to make the repairs, but the damaged vehicle policy states only fasteners or tape can reattach parts.

The repairs were made without NASCAR officials noticing the violations.

Martin Truex Jr. is in the eighth and final playoff spot heading to Kansas Speedway, but Larson has more to make up than just the points. He'd need to leapfrog Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney, who along with Alex Bowman are among the four drivers below the cut line.

"I think if it was a 26-point gap, you could win both stages or something and that would kind of get you back in it, depending on what kind of race Truex and (Clint) Bowyer and all those guys have," Larson said, "but I don't know. We'll just go out there Sunday and run hard."

One thing Larson has going for him is his success at Kansas. He's finished in the top six in two of his last three races, including last spring, when he led 101 laps and won the middle stage before a late crash forced him to work back through the field and finish fourth.

Of course, there's been heartbreak at Kansas. Larson was 29 points to the good side of the cutline last fall when engine failure eliminated him from NASCAR's playoffs.

"I was a little bummed about Talladega, and flying home I got really excited about where we were headed this week," Larson said. "There's always more pressure to not make mistakes and you cost yourself the spot where you're already in the playoffs or in the next round. You're so worried about not making a mistake.

"We know what to do: We can run aggressive, we can race with little care, I guess. Our team can make aggressive calls if the opportunity is there. It's a cool position to be in."

___

More AP Auto Racing: https://apnews.com/tag/apf-AutoRacing and https://twitter.com/AP_SportsPHOENIX (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump's three-day campaign trip out West (all times local):

7:55 p.m.

President Donald Trump has pounded Democrats at a rally in Mesa Arizona, saying they are to blame for America's immigration problems.

He says the new platform of the Democratic Party is "Radical socialism and open borders." Trump says the Democrats are opening "inviting millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders and overwhelm our nation."

Trump also pledged to end what is called "chain migration" where one person immigrates and then brings their extended family into the country.

Trump's comments about "radical socialism" and "open borders" are not accurate reflections of Democratic positions. And his comments about migrants breaking the law and being "hardened criminals" do not provide a correct picture of the immigrant population.

President Donald Trump talks to a pilot in the cockpit of an F-35 aircraft during a Defense Capability Tour at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Several studies from social scientists and the libertarian think tank Cato Institute have shown people here illegally are less likely to commit crime than U.S. citizens, and legal immigrants are even less likely to do so.

___

7:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump says Central Americans trying to traverse Mexico and reach the U.S. border aren't "little angels" but "some hardened criminals."

On Friday while Trump was campaigning in Arizona, migrants burst through a Guatemalan border fence and started to stream into Mexican territory, rushing a phalanx of police with riot shields. About 50 pushed through before officers unleashed pepper spray and the rest retreated.

Asked what evidence he had that they were "hardened criminals," Trump told a reporter at a defense roundtable in Scottsdale: "Oh please. Please. Don't be a baby."

He told the reporter to look at Mexican soldiers lying on the ground as he discussed the migrants rushing across the border.

Trump then said he didn't want these "tough people" in the United States.

The president said: "I don't want them in our country. and neither does our country want them in our country."

___

5:35 p.m.

President Donald Trump says Arizona Senate hopeful Martha McSally, who is a former Air Force colonel and combat fighter pilot, is "brilliant and brave" and has a "very, very strange opponent."

McSally, a Republican, is running against Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (SIN'-uh-muh). Trump didn't say why he thought Sinema was "strange."

Trump spoke during a roundtable Friday at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona with defense industry executives and local business leaders. He's in Arizona to help stump for McSally.

The two congresswomen are vying for the seat of Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who is retiring. McSally was a Trump critic in 2016 and represents a Tucson district that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

She's now embraced the president and hopes his visit to Arizona helps unites Republicans against Sinema.

___

4:55 p.m.

Hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump have lined up outside an airplane hangar in a Phoenix suburb awaiting his arrival.

The typically chaotic protests that follow Trump when he visits Arizona haven't materialized Friday, as many of the activists who usually stage them said they are working on get-out-the-vote efforts instead. The midterm elections are 2 weeks away.

Trump is due to tour the Luke Air Force Base northwest of Phoenix on Friday.

About a half dozen anti-Trump protesters are present.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit against the city of Phoenix over the police department's response to protesters outside a Trump rally last year. The lawsuit claims police used excessive force in trying to disburse the crowds, using smoke, pepper balls and tear gas.

___

1:40 a.m.

President Donald Trump is suggesting without evidence that Democrats or their allies are supporting a "caravan" of Central American migrants who are traveling north aiming to enter the United States.

Addressing thousands of supporters at a campaign rally Thursday night in Montana, Trump said immigration is now one of the leading issues in the 2018 midterms, and he accused Democrats of supporting the migrants because they "figure everybody coming in is going to vote Democrat."

The comments mark the injection of one of Trump's signature 2016 campaign themes back into national conversation as he looks to boost Republican turnout to maintain their congressional majorities in 2018.

Trump was in Montana to boost GOP Senate candidate Matt Rosendale, who is running against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

President Donald Trump participates in a Defense Capability Tour with Brigadier General Todd Canterbury, Commander, 56th Fighter Wing, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump talks to a pilot in the cockpit of an F-35 aircraft during a Defense Capability Tour at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)EL CAJON, Calif. (AP) - A small plane with a student pilot on board made an emergency landing in the middle of traffic on a Southern California freeway.

The California Highway Patrol says the plane landed safely in the westbound lanes of Interstate 8 in El Cajon on Friday morning after reporting engine trouble.

Authorities say the single-engine Piper was carrying a 25-year-old pilot and a 36-year-old student.

The CHP says the instructor landed the plane. Video taken by a motorist on the freeway shows the plane gliding down between cars and rolling along two lanes.

The pilot and student pushed the plane to the freeway shoulder to avoid blocking traffic.WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's national security adviser will raise thorny subjects with his counterparts when he visits Moscow to help craft a script for another high-level meeting between Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin.

John Bolton leaves Saturday on a trip to Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. His first stop is Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials at a time when Moscow-Washington relations remain frosty over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race and upcoming U.S. midterm elections.

The New York Times citing unnamed sources reported Friday that Bolton is expected to tell Russia that the U.S. is getting ready to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The U.S. has accused Russia of violating the treaty for years; Russia says the United States is in violation.

The 1987 pact, which helps protect the security of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Far East, prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles.

The Trump administration would not confirm reports that Trump will exit the treaty.

"Across two administrations, the United States and our allies have attempted to bring Russia back into full and verifiable compliance with INF," a senior administration official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue. "Despite our objections, Russia continues to produce and field prohibited cruise misses and has ignored calls for transparency."

FILE - In this Wednesday, June 27, 2018 file photo, U.S. National security adviser John Bolton waits for the talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. President Donald Trump's national security adviser is going to be raising thorny subjects with his counterparts in Moscow on a visit to help craft a script for another high-level meeting between Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin. John Bolton leaves Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018 on a trip to Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool)

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said pulling out of the treaty would play into Russia's hands, undermine U.S. security and betray NATO allies. He said any attempt by the Trump administration to leave the treaty will spark a fight with Congress.

"Without question, Russia is violating the INF treaty. Threatening American withdrawal will not increase our negotiating leverage, it only falls hook, line, and sinker for Putin's predictable attempts to goad the United States into justifying Russian noncompliance," Markey said.

Bolton also is expected to emphasize U.S. desire to maintain sanctions against North Korea to pressure Pyongyang to eliminate its nuclear weapons program.

The Russians and Chinese have suggested it might be time to ease up on sanctions, but that is not the U.S. view and "we will not relent," said a senior administration official. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of Bolton's trip.

Putin and Trump met last in Helsinki, Finland, where Trump was criticized for appearing to doubt U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

Trump could see Putin at an Armistice Day parade in Paris next month, or at the G20 summit in late November and early December in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but Trump still wants Putin to visit Washington, the official said,

After Russia, Bolton will travel to Azerbaijan for discussions on a range of regional issues, including Iran, before continuing to Armenia and Georgia.NEW DELHI (AP) - A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing at least 60 people and injuring dozens more, police said.

The train failed to stop after the accident on the outskirts of Amritsar, a city in Punjab state, said the state governing Congress party politician, Pratap Singh Bajwa.

Railway police officer Sukhwinder Singh said Saturday morning that the death toll had risen to 60. Another 50 people have been injured and hospitalized.

The Press Trust of India news agency said two trains arrived from the opposite direction on separate tracks at the same time, giving little opportunity for people to escape. The casualties were caused by one of the trains, it quoted officials as saying.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was extremely saddened by the accident. "Have asked officials to provide immediate assistance that is required," Modi said on Twitter.

A witness said the train didn't even sound its whistle as it sped past the site, where hundreds were watching the burning of an effigy of demon Ravana during the Hindu festival of Dussehra. As the effigy was lit and the fireworks started, a section of the crowd started retreating toward railroad tracks while observing the event.

The body of a victim of a train accident lies covered in cloth on a railway track in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

"Why did authorities allow the fireworks display so close to the railroad track?'" he asked. He told the Republic television channel that he lost two brothers.

Another witness said the victims didn't realize that a train was coming because the fireworks were too loud.

Navjot Kaur Siddhu, a local Congress party politician who was the chief guest at the religious function, said the celebrations take place in the area every year and railroad authorities are alerted to run the trains at slow speeds.

A large number of people live in the area with homes on both sides of the railroad track, she said.

However, Junior Railways Minisfter Manoj Sinha said after visiting the accident site that organizers did not alert railroad authorities about their plan to hold the event there.

Shatrughan Das, an injured 35-year-old factory worker, said he was sitting close to the tracks watching the fireworks. "I didn't see the train coming. I fell unconscious. I saw the police taking me to a hospital as I regained consciousness."

"I am feeling a strong headache and pain in my back and legs," Das said from his hospital bed, adding his injuries were not serious.

Following the accident, people rushed to the site, nearly 465 kilometers (290 miles) north of New Delhi, and shouted at railway officials for not taking precautions.

At least 50 injured were admitted to a government-run hospital, PTI quoted Rajesh Sharma, a magistrate, as saying.

While accidents are relatively common on India's sprawling rail network, Friday's was among the deadliest in recent years. In 2016, 146 people were killed when a train slid off railroad tracks in eastern India.

An angry crowd shouts slogans beside the body of a victim of a train accident in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

Relatives mourn by the body of a victim of a train accident in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

A crowd gathers at the site of a train accident in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

A crowd gathers at the site of a train accident in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

An angry crowd shouts slogans at the site of a train accident in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

An angry crowd shout slogans as they sit by bodies of victims of a train accident in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

Relatives of victims of a train accident sit outside a hospital in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

A girl who got injured in a train accident cries after receiving treatment at a hospital in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

A man who got injured in a train accident receives treatment at a hospital in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

A man who got injured in a train accident is brought for treatment to a hospital in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)BEIRUT (AP) - Two days after Jamal Khashoggi vanished into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, The Washington Post published a column featuring his byline and the headline "A missing voice." The space below it was blank.

That influential voice on Saudi affairs has been silenced forever after three decades as a writer, editor, commentator and media adviser.

Eighteen days after Khashoggi disappeared, Saudi Arabia acknowledged early Saturday that the 59-year-old writer has died in what it said was a "fistfight" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The Saudi announcement shed little light on the mystery of Khashoggi's disappearance and contradicted leaks from Turkish media that he was tortured, killed and dismembered.

Once close to the royal family and an adviser to the country's former intelligence chief, Khashoggi became a sharp critic of its young and ambitious crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, for cracking down on any opposition and miring the country in a conflict in neighboring Yemen that killed thousands of people.

His disappearance and death ignited a diplomatic firestorm and shook Saudi Arabia's alliances with its partners, brought calls for sanctions against the oil-rich kingdom and horrified free speech advocates and people around the world who never read his work.

In this image made from a March 2018 video provided by Metafora Production, Jamal Khashoggi speaks during an interview at an undisclosed location. Eighteen days after Khashoggi disappeared, Saudi Arabia acknowledged early Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, that the 59-year-old writer has died in what it said was a "fistfight" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. (Metafora Production via AP)

In a final column for the Post, which the newspaper said it received from his assistant on Oct. 3 and was published Oct. 17, Khashoggi warned that governments in the Middle East "have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate."

He noted that some Middle East leaders were blocking internet access so they could tightly control what their citizens can see.

"The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power," Khashoggi wrote.

Born into a family of wealth and connections - he was the nephew of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and a cousin of Princess Diana's boyfriend Dodi Fayed - Khashoggi was a voice of moderation in a kingdom at war with terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

He spent years explaining its policies to outsiders, but made himself unpopular at home, saying the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen "would validate" those who compared the kingdom's actions to what Russia and Iran were doing in Syria. He also was critical of Riyadh's diplomatic break with Qatar.

After Khashoggi criticized the kingdom's celebration of Donald Trump's election as president in 2016, a royal court official who was close to him advised him to stop tweeting and publishing stories, a sign that his opinion was no longer welcome.

Khashoggi went into a self-imposed exile, moving to Washington in 2017, writing regular columns for the Post and pursuing pro-democracy projects.

The crown prince's crackdown intensified after Khashoggi left, reaching some of his friends and associates. A former boss, Saudi billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal, was among dozens of businessmen and royals put under house arrest in an upscale hotel in November 2017 in a crackdown on corruption that soon resembled a shakedown of the kingdom's most powerful people.

"Saudi royals view themselves as The Party, sharing power and ruling by consent, in an arrangement that is largely opaque," Khashoggi wrote after the crackdown, adding that the crown prince "is upending this arrangement and centralizing all power within his position."

But he told the Economist in May that he did not agree with Saudis who were "calling for regime change and stuff like that. ... I believe in the system. I just want a reform system. Actually, I want the system to give me a voice to allow me to speak."

While he supported fighting corruption, he described what was happening in Saudi Arabia as "selective justice." He argued that corruption was so entrenched that royals monopolize land ownership and fewer than 40 percent of Saudis can own their homes.

"The crown prince is engaging in a major economic transformation. And since there is no one to debate it, he will not see the (mistakes) of these transformations," he told the Economist.

A British-Palestinian friend, Azzam Tamimi, said Khashoggi spoke to Westerners in a language they understand.

Prince Mohammed "spent millions on PR and wanted to present himself as a modernist savior who brings rights to women," Tamimi said. "Jamal used to show the other face that Mohammed bin Salam didn't want to show."

Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi was born in Medina in 1958 and graduated from Indiana State University. He began his career as a journalist in the 1980s, covering the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the decade-long war that followed for the English-language daily, the Saudi Gazette. He covered Algeria's 1990s war against Islamic militants, the Balkan wars and the rise of Islamists in Sudan.

In his youth, according to one friend, Khashoggi briefly joined the Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest organization of political Islam in the region. He soon left it, wanting to remain outside organized groups, but throughout his life kept good relations with all sides.

He was editor of Medina's Islamist-leaning paper for nine years.

While in Afghanistan, he interviewed Osama bin Laden before he became the leader of al-Qaida. They later met again in Sudan in 1995.

"He could have done much better for himself, his family and his religion if he remained moderate," Khashoggi said after bin Laden was killed by a U.S. raid in Pakistan in 2011.

In a column for The Daily Star in Lebanon on Sept. 10, 2002, Khashoggi wrote: "Osama bin Laden's hijacked planes not only attacked the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They also attacked Islam as a faith. They attacked the values of tolerance and coexistence that Islam preaches."

He had a brief stint in 2003 as editor of a liberal Saudi paper, Al-Watan, founded after 9/11, and he was often quoted in the West as a reformist voice and expert on Islamic radicals. But after two months, he was fired when the kingdom's ultra-conservative clerics pushed back against his criticism of the powerful religious police.

Khashoggi served as media adviser to Turki Al-Faisal, the country's former spy chief, who was at the time the ambassador to Britain and then the United States.

He returned to Al-Watan in 2007, where he continued his criticism of the clerics as the late King Abdullah began cautious reforms to try to shake their hold. Three years later, he was forced to resign after a series of articles critical of Salafism, the ultra-conservative Sunni movement.

In 2010, he was tapped to lead the new Bahrain-based broadcaster Al-Arab, touted as a rival to the Qatari-funded Al-Jazeera, a harsh critic of the kingdom. But it was shut down hours after its launch for hosting a Bahraini opposition figure.

After the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, he was critical of the crackdowns by various Arab governments on the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that Saudi Arabia considers an existential threat.

Friends recalled him as a devout Muslim who loved his homeland, an avid history buff and a humble man with a sense of humor, fond of video games, which he sometimes played while waiting to conduct an interview.

A first marriage that produced two sons and two daughters fell apart, and Khashoggi told friends that it failed because of pressure from the Saudi government over his criticism.

His visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 was to get documents needed for his wedding scheduled for the next day to Hatice Cengiz, who waited for him in vain to emerge from the compound.

Khashoggi said he had no plans to return to Saudi Arabia because he didn't "want to risk losing my freedom. I really don't like being in jail. ... I just want to be a free writer. I think I am serving my people, my country."

Sherif Mansour of the Committee to Protect Journalists said Khashoggi was one of the few Saudis who helped track news of missing or detained journalists and activists.

"Saudi was always a black hole in terms of information, and now after Jamal's case, it is even harder to get any," Mansour said. "Those journalists depended on Khashoggi to tell their stories. It is up to us now to tell his story and make sure the risks he took on those journalists' behalf were not in vain."

FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2011 file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks on his cellphone at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Eighteen days after Khashoggi disappeared, Saudi Arabia acknowledged early Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, that the 59-year-old writer has died in what it said was a "fistfight" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tony Evers both delivered well-rehearsed, sharp attack lines on hot topics in the governor's race in their first debate Friday. Walker and Evers, the state superintendent, are locked in a tight battle for governor with the election just over two weeks away.

Takeaways from the debate hosted by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association:

CREDIBILITY

Both Walker and Evers addressed the issue of their credibility with some of the sharpest criticisms in the debate.

On Thursday, a fourth former Walker Cabinet secretary came forward to harshly criticize him and signed a letter with two other former secretaries calling for the election of Evers. And just hours before the debate, Evers admitted that four sections in the budget proposal he submitted for the state education department was taken from other sources without credit.

Walker discounted the criticism from his former top administration officials, saying he welcomed having people with diverse opinions.

Democratic Challenger Tony Evers, left, and Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, participate in a 10-minute media event before the start of their gubernatorial debate hosted by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation in Madison, Wis., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Steve Apps/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)

Evers said the real issue was "about how you govern and how the people of Wisconsin trust you." He said their allegations that Walker put his political aspirations ahead of the people of Wisconsin "is something, frankly, that is very frightening to me."

Evers also shrugged off the charges of plagiarism.

"If this is the best Scott Walker has, he doesn't have very much," Evers said. "We dropped a few citations from the back pages of a budget. ... The last thing I need in my life is to have Scott Walker lecturing me about the issue of plagiarism, frankly."

He accused Walker of signing conservative national model legislation into law with few changes.

Walker said he didn't know of any student who could turn in a term paper with plagiarism like what was in the budget Evers submitted.

TAXES

Walker repeated his argument that Evers will raise property and income taxes and the gas tax as much as $1 per gallon.

"You better hang on to your wallets and purses because he's going to raise your taxes," Walker said.

Evers has not proposed a dollar per gallon gas tax hike and said Friday he wouldn't do that and was hoping not to raise any taxes, but was open to it.

"Holy mackerel is what I say," Ever said. "Of course, the people of Wisconsin understand, except Scott Walker keeps repeating it, a dollar a gallon is ridiculous and isn't going to happen."

Evers said Walker's decisions to cut taxes at the state level forced local communities to raise taxes and fees, like wheel taxes on vehicles.

"That's a Scott Walker tax," Evers said.

HEALTH CARE

Evers supports the Affordable Care Act, which has a pre-existing condition coverage guarantee, while Walker is a longtime opponent of the law. Walker this year authorized the state to join a federal lawsuit seeking repeal of the law. Walker has called for the Legislature to pass a bill providing state protections for people with pre-existing conditions, but it didn't pass in the Senate.

"We can protect people with pre-existing conditions without protecting the failure that is 'Obamacare,'" Walker said.

Evers called Walker's explanation of his position a "breathtaking soliloquy." Evers said Walker was "talking out of both sides of his mouth" when he calls for repealing the national health care law while claiming to support guarantees for pre-existing condition coverage.

EDUCATION

Evers defended his proposed budget that includes a 10 percent funding increase for schools, with the state paying for two-thirds of costs. His proposal did not say how the $1.4 billion increase would be paid for.

Walker this week also said he is committed to two-thirds state funding for schools, something that hasn't happened in 15 years. Walker has similarly not said where the roughly $130 million a year to pay for it would come from.

But Walker said he proved that property taxes can be cut while education funding is increased, like it was in his last budget that Evers praised. Evers said he supported Walker's education budget last year because it was largely what Evers had proposed.

"My definition of plagiarism is when Scott Walker takes my budget and calls it his own," Evers said, a sly reference to the uncredited passages from his state budget.

WHAT'S NEXT

Walker and Evers will debate for a second and final time on Oct. 26, just 11 days from the Nov. 6 election.

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Democratic Challenger Tony Evers, left, and Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, participate in a 10-minute media event before the start of their gubernatorial debate hosted by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation in Madison, Wis., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Steve Apps/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)

Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, speaks during a 10-minute media event before the start of their gubernatorial debate with Democratic Challenger Tony Evers, hosted by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation in Madison, Wis., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Steve Apps/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)

Democratic Challenger Tony Evers speaks during a 10-minute media event before the start of their gubernatorial debate with Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, hosted by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation in Madison, Wis., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Steve Apps/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) - A family can begin to grieve after officials confirmed Friday the death of a 79-year-old Florida woman who had been missing since Hurricane Michael left her Mexico Beach home in rubble.

Joanne Garone Behnke said it's been an agonizing wait to find out what happen to her aunt, Aggie Vicari.

The Bay County medical examiner's office on Friday confirmed that it was Vicari's body that was recovered Monday. Her body had been under rubble for five days before rescuers found her, Garone Behnke said.

The South Florida woman says she spoke to her Aunt Aggie - affectionately described as a "stubborn Italian woman" - just hours before Michael's devastating winds came ashore. Her fence had already blown over.

"I know she was scared, and I know it was late, and I know she's the kind of person who kept money in her house, and I know she didn't want to leave it," said her niece.

A memorial service will be held next month on Vicari's lot, where her home once stood.

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2018, file photo, Joy Hutchinson, left, is comforted by her daughter Jessica Hutchinson, as she returns to find her home swept away from hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction.(AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

As officials continue to identify bodies recovered since the devastating Oct. 10 storm, a firefighter became the latest death attributed to the storm when he was killed by a falling tree while helping clear debris with family members more than a week after Michael blew ashore with 155 mph (250 kph) winds.

Fire coordinator Brad Price, 49, of Wewahitchka was on his tractor when he was killed Thursday, the Gulf County Sheriff's Office said on its official Facebook page.

"We love you, grieve with you, and are praying for all of you," Gulf County firefighters said on their Facebook page.

That brought the storm's death toll in Florida to 25, and 35 overall across the South - where, in addition to tree falls, deaths came when the storm decimated homes with winds and storm surge, cut power to those reliant on electricity for medical conditions and swept away cars in flash floods.

While trees brought down by Michael's ferocious winds took a heavy toll on life and property, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam said Friday that the fallen trees themselves are contributing to a $1.3 billion hit to the heavily forested Florida Panhandle's timber industry. Pulp mills, sawmills and other production facilities were damaged in 11 of the top timber-producing counties in state, Putnam said.

"This is a catastrophic loss to the forest industry in the Florida Panhandle," Putnam said in a news release.

Officials also were concerned that downed trees could pose a fire hazard.

Forest Service Director Jim Karels said the danger grows as the debris dries. The agency is working to clear the debris and establish fire lines that could help contain forest fire, he said.

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Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida, Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.

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For the latest on Hurricane Michael, visit https://www.apnews.com/tag/Hurricanes.

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2018 file photo, a member of a Tennessee urban search and rescue team works a debris pile with a dog in the aftermath of hurricane Matthew in Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction.(AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

Aleeah Racette receives medical treatment inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. At left is her mother, Amy Cross, and Amy's fiance, Corey Shuman. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A man who did not want his name used receives medical treatment inside the Florida 5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team tent, outside the Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2018 file photo, devastation from Hurricane Michael is seen in this areal photo over Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2018 file photo Nancy Register weeps as she is comforted by Roxie Cline, right, after she lost her home and all the contents inside to Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2018 file photo, Lanie Eden and her husband Ron stand in the destroyed vacation home they rented every year as they look for their possessions in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2018 file photo, a man walks through a damaged store in the aftermath of hurricane Michael in Springfield, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections in eight years suffered from violence and chaos Saturday, with a multitude of attacks killing at least 36 people, key election workers failing to show up and many polling stations staying open hours later than scheduled to handle long lines of voters.

Problems surrounding the elections - already three years overdue - threaten to compromise the credibility of polls which an independent monitoring group said were also marred by incidences of ballot stuffing and intimidation by armed men affiliated with candidates in 19 of the country's 32 provinces. Some areas have yet to vote, including Kandahar, where the provincial police chief was gunned down Thursday.

Stakes were high in these elections for Afghans who hoped to reform Parliament, challenging the dominance of warlords and the politically corrupt and replacing them with a younger, more educated generation of politicians. They were also high for the U.S., which is still seeking an exit strategy after 17 years of a war there that has cost more than $900 billion and claimed more than 2,400 U.S. service personnel.

Deputy Interior Minister Akhtar Mohammed Ibrahimi said 36 people were killed in 193 insurgent attacks across the country: 27 civilians, eight police officers and one Afghan soldier. He said attackers used everything from grenades to small arms fire to mortars and rocket launchers, and that security forces killed 31 insurgents.

The most serious attack on the polls was in a northern Kabul neighborhood where a suicide bomber blew himself up just as voting was about to end, killing three people and wounding another 20, many of them seriously, said Dr. Esa Hashemi, a physician at the nearby Afghan Hospital. Interior and defense ministry officials said 15 people were killed or wounded, including several police.

Polling stations also struggled with voter registration and a new biometric system that was aimed at stemming fraud, but instead created enormous confusion because many of those trained on the system did not show up for work. Also, the biometric machines were received just a month before polls and there was no time to do field testing.

Security forces block the main road at the site of a suicide attack during the first day of parliamentary election in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Police say a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a polling station in a school in the northern Kabul neighborhood of Khair Khana, the first major attack in Saturday's parliamentary elections. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

Many polling stations opened as much as five hours behind schedule. The Independent Election Commission was uncertain how many of the estimated 21,000 polling stations closed by 4 p.m. local time, the original closing time. Polling was extended until 8 p.m. local time for all those polling stations that opened late, and those that could not open before 1 p.m. local time will open Sunday.

Afghanistan's deputy chief executive Mohammad Mohaqiq expressed outrage at the chaotic start to polling and assailed election preparation by the country's election commission.

"The people rushed like a flood to the polling stations, but the election commission employees were not present, and in some cases they were there but there were no electoral materials and in most cases the biometric systems was not working," he said.

"The widespread reports today of confusion and incompetence in the administration of the elections ... suggest that bureaucratic failures and lack of political will to prioritize organizing credible parliamentary elections may do more to delegitimize the election results than threats and violent attacks by the Taliban and Daesh," said Andrew Wilder, vice-president of Asia Programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, using the Arabic acronym name for the Islamic State group.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani marked his ballot at the start of voting. In a televised speech afterward, he congratulated Afghans on another election and praised the security forces, particularly the air force, for getting ballots to Afghanistan's remotest corners.

"I thank you from the bottom of my heart," he said, also reminding those elected that they are there to serve the people and ensure the rule of law.

North of Kabul, thousands of outraged voters blocked a road after waiting more than five hours for a polling station to open, said Mohammad Azim, the governor of Qarabagh district where the demonstration took place.

Election Commission Commissioner Abdul Badi Sayat said dozens of teachers who had been trained in the new biometric system had not shown up for work at the polling stations. It wasn't clear whether that was related to a Taliban warning directed specifically at teachers and students telling them to stay away from the polls.

"The long lines at many polling stations today, despite the threats and violent attacks by the Taliban and Daesh, clearly demonstrate that the problem with Afghan elections is not the enthusiasm of Afghan voters for a democratic future," said Wilder.

The Defense Ministry said it had increased its deployment of National Security Forces to 70,000 from the original 50,000 to protect polling stations.

Elections in the provinces of Kandahar and Ghazni have been delayed as well as in 11 of the country's nearly 400 districts.

The Independent Election Commission registered 8.8 million people. Wasima Badghisy, a commission member, called voters "very, very brave" and said a turnout of 5 million would be a success.

At a polling station in crowded west Kabul, Khoda Baksh said he arrived nearly two hours early to cast his vote, dismissing Taliban threats of violence.

"We don't care about their threats. The Taliban are threatening us all the time," said 55-year-old Baksh, who said he wanted to see a new generation of politicians take power in Afghanistan's 249-seat Parliament. He bemoaned the current Parliament dominated by warlords and corrupt elite. "They have done zero for us."

In the run-up to the elections, two candidates were killed while polling in Kandahar was delayed for a week after a rogue guard gunned down the powerful provincial police chief, Gen. Abdul Raziq. In the capital of Kabul, security was tight, with police and military personnel stopping vehicles at dozens of checkpoints throughout the congested city.

Commission deputy spokesman Aziz Ibrahimi said results of Saturday's voting will not be released before mid-November and final results will not be out until later in December.

Security forces block the main road at the site of a suicide attack during the first day of parliamentary election in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Police say a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a polling station in a school in the northern Kabul neighborhood of Khair Khana, the first major attack in Saturday's parliamentary elections. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

Security forces block the main road at the site of a suicide attack during the first day of parliamentary election in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Police say a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a polling station in a school in the northern Kabul neighborhood of Khair Khana, the first major attack in Saturday's parliamentary elections. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

Afghan men line up to cast their votes, outside a polling station during the Parliamentary election at a polling station in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Women line up outside a pooling station during Parliamentary election in western Herat city, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in parliamentary elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Hamed Sarfarazi)

A woman casts his vote in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

A policeman casts his vote in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

An Afghan woman shows her inked finger after casting her vote at a polling station during the Parliamentary elections in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Women line up to enter a polling station in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

A man casts his vote in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

A man lets his child to cast his vote in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

People from the minority Sikh register to cast their votes in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

Men from the minority Sikh register to cast their votes in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

An election commission employee, right, and observers from the minority Sikh check the locks of ballot boxes in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

Voters from the minority Sikh register to cast in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

A man and women from the minority Sikh register to vote in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

A man from the minority Sikh casts his vote in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan is holding parliamentary elections on Saturday despite deep security concerns and ongoing fighting in as many as 20 out of the country's 34 provinces.

An official from the Interior Ministry said the number of security forces was increased to 70,000 from 50,000 across the country to protect 21,000 polling stations.

A look at the elections, the figures and key issues:

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SEATS, CANDIDATES AND POLLING STATIONS

There are 2,565 candidates vying for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament, including 417 women candidates. Voters will be able to cast ballots at more than 19,000 polling stations in 32 provinces. Of those, the elections commission says as many as 11,667 polling stations are reserved for men and 7,429 for women, while 46 will serve Afghan nomads, known as Kochis, and 22 will serve minority Sikhs and Hindus. The Kochis have 10 parliament seats reserved for them while the Sikhs and Hindus jointly have one seat.

An Afghan man searches for his candidate name at a polling station during the Parliamentary elections in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

However, security fears have forced the election commission to close about 2,000 polling stations.

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MAJOR PLAYERS AND POLITICAL PARTIES

A few parties have emerged in opposition to the current national unity government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, but none can be considered major players as most candidates in the vote are running as independents. Afghanistan's parliament includes both a lower and an upper house, but only members of the lower house are directly elected. The upper house consists of a mixture of parliamentarians chosen from local councils and those appointed by the president, as well as members elected in district elections. Legislature passed in the lower house has to be approved by the upper chamber.

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DISPUTE IN GHAZNI PROVINCE

Elections will not take place in eastern Ghazni province amid an ongoing dispute over how to divide its electoral constituencies to ensure a more balanced ethnic representation. Lawmakers elected from Ghazni in 2010 will retain their seats until the province is able to hold a vote. In the last elections, eight years ago, minority Hazaras won all the seats from Ghazni, leaving majority Pashtuns and also Tajiks without representation as voting wasn't held in their areas, which are mostly controlled by the Taliban.

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NO DISTRICT COUNCIL ELECTIONS THIS TIME?

Initially, elections for district councils were supposed to take place at the same time as parliamentary elections but the Independent Election Commission delayed that vote because only a tenth of the country's 400 districts had enough male and female candidates step forward to run in district races. Security fears and violence are top reasons why so few wanted to run for district seats. Other reasons include high illiteracy rates among Afghans living in districts.

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ELIGIBLE VOTERS

Around 8.8 million people have registered to vote. Though there hasn't been a census for more than 30 years, Afghanistan's population is estimated to be more than 30 million.

In Afghanistan, where minorities are registered separately, they make up roughly 2 percent of the 8.8 million Afghans who are registered to vote. The remaining 98 per cent of registered voters were divided according to gender with 64 percent men and 34 percent women. Many women do not register in conservative regions of the country.

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SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS

Around 70,000 members of the Afghan security forces will be deployed to secure polling stations. Afghan officials have announced three levels of security belts at each polling center. Police and members of the intelligence force will make up the first two belts, covering a distance of 3 to 5 kilometers (1.8 to 3 miles) from polling centers. The third security belt will be patrolled jointly by police and Afghan army. Officials say elections won't be held in 10 districts that are completely under Taliban control, including five in southern Helmand province, a Taliban heartland. The other five districts include two in northeastern Badakhshan province and one each in northern Baghlan, Sari Pul and southern Zabul province.

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VIOLENCE

There have been deadly attacks against candidates and campaign rallies, both by the Taliban and Islamic States militants. Since the 20-day campaign period began, at least two candidates and over 34 civilians have been killed in such attacks, including suicide bombings, motorcycle bombs and drive-by shootings. In the run-up to campaigning, five candidates were killed and two were abducted, their fates unknown. Also, Afghan security forces accidentally killed three bodyguards of an independent candidate during a raid on a house near his residence.

On Thursday, Kandahar's powerful police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq and at least one other senior provincial official and two policemen were killed when an Afghan guard opened fire at a meeting with U.S. officials to discuss security ahead of the vote. There were conflicting reports on the fate of Kandahar governor, Zalmay Wesa, who was initially reported wounded.

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POSTPONEMENT IN KANDAHAR

After Thursday's attack, the Independent Election Commission postponed the elections in Kandahar for a week to give voters who might have stayed at home on Saturday over security fears the chance to vote.

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TALIBAN WARNINGS

The Taliban, who have been fighting Afghan and NATO forces for more than 17 years, have condemned the elections and warned candidates and Afghan security forces they would be targeted. They have also warned teachers and students not to participate in the elections and not to allow schools to be used as polling centers.

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CIVIL SOCIETY AND ELECTON OBSERVERS

More than 400,000 civil society activists, independents and members of political parties, as well as national and international observers and representatives from media outlets will follow the polling day.

___

WHAT'S AT STAKE?

The Afghan government is keen to prove it's capable of holding these elections despite prevailing security challenges. The vote was originally scheduled for 2015 but the situation was too unstable at the time. Politically, there was a crisis following the 2014 presidential elections, and NATO forces had only just handed over security to Afghan forces at the end of 2014.

Now, the government wants to send a message to the Taliban - who are engaging in separate negotiations with the United States on a possible political settlement - that its institutions are functioning, and that if the Taliban decide to come to the negotiating table, they will have to deal with a government and a political process that's acceptable to the majority of Afghans.

A woman poses for a picture before casting her vote during the Parliamentary election in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

An Afghan woman left, registers to cast their votes during the Parliamentary elections in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)Aurecon, a global engineering and infrastructure advisory company, said it has become an Implementation Partner of the Competitive Business Programme of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in South Africa which aims to bring sustainable reporting tools to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).



The GRI promotes the use of sustainability reporting as a way for companies to gain a comprehensive understanding of the environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities facing their businesses.



Through becoming an implementation partner, Aurecon will be participating in a GRI programme that is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) to feed sustainability and sustainability reporting into Aurecons supply chain by offering training on the new reporting tool which the GRI developed.



Aurecon is the first major, multidisciplinary engineering consultancy to tieup with GRI programme, said a top official.



"Sustainability reporting is a critical competitive differentiator for SMEs in emerging markets," noted Sonja de Klerk, the head of quality, environment and sustainability at Aurecon.



"Thousands of large companies around the world already reap the benefits of sustainability reporting, like lower energy costs, and more productive employees. With the new tool, companies of all sizes can access these benefits," she added.



According to her, the user-friendly competitive business reporting tool gives companies an introduction to sustainability reporting along with templates for people to use.



"It has been designed for SMEs to enter global value chains and it has a strong emphasis on working in the different country-specific contexts," stated de Klerk.



Aurecon is focusing on providing training on the GRIs Competitive Business Reporting Tool to active sub-consultants who are also members of Consulting Engineers of South Africa (Cesa).



"Cesa members are obligated to do sustainability reporting, but often struggle with this reporting. Not only are sustainability courses often expensive to attend, but from experience I know help is generally needed to get started with this process," said de Klerk.



Aurecons annual sustainability report is guided by the GRI Standards and measures the companys performance against GRI indicators and demonstrates the link between the companys sustainability strategy and its commitment to sustainable global development, she added.



The new tool is currently in pilot phase and open to companies in Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Peru, South Africa and Vietnam.-TradeArabia News ServiceTOKYO (AP) - European and Japanese space agencies said an Ariane 5 rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft carrying two probes into orbit Saturday for a joint mission to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

The European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the unmanned BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and was sent into orbit from French Guiana as planned to begin a seven-year journey to Mercury.

They said the spacecraft, named after Italian scientist Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, was in the right orbit and has sent the first signal after the liftoff.

ESA says the 1.3 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) mission is one of the most challenging in its history. Mercury's extreme temperatures, the intense gravity pull of the sun and blistering solar radiation make for hellish conditions.

The BepiColombo spacecraft will have to follow an elliptical path that involves a fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself so it can slow down before arriving at its destination in December 2025.

When it arrives, BepiColombo will release two probes - Bepi and Mio - that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury. The probes are designed to cope with temperatures varying from 430 degrees Celsius (806 F) on the side facing the sun, and -180 degrees Celsius (-292 F) in Mercury's shadow.

In this photo provided by European Space Agency (ESA), The Ariane 5 rocket carrying BepiColombo lifts off from its launch pad at Kourou in French Guiana, for the mission to Mercury, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. (ESA via AP)

The ESA-developed Bepi will operate in Mercury's inner orbit, and JAXA's Mio will be in the outer orbit to gather data that would reveal the internal structure of the planet, its surface and geological evolution.

Scientists hope to build on the insights gained by NASA's Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year orbit of Mercury. The only other spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's Mariner 10 that flew past the planet in the mid-1970s.

Mercury, which is only slightly larger than Earth's moon, has a massive iron core about which little is known. Researchers are also hoping to learn more about the formation of the solar system from the data gathered by the BepiColombo mission.

"Beyond completing the challenging journey, this mission will return a huge bounty of science," said Jan Worner, ESA Director General, in a statement.

JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa, who earlier managed the project, said, "We have high expectations that the ensuing detailed observations of Mercury will help us better understand the environment of the planet, and ultimately, the origin of the Solar System including that of Earth."

It is the second recent cooperation between the Europeans and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. JAXA's Hayabusa2 probe dropped a German-French rover on the asteroid Ryugu earlier this month.

___

Jordans reported from Berlin.SINGAPORE (AP) - Japan's defense minister says he plans to start a program for professional airmen to strengthen ties between his country and Southeast Asia.

Takeshi Iwaya says the program fits in with the government's vision to raise defense cooperation with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has "gained momentum" since it was announced in 2016.

The program hopes to promote shared values and interoperability among Japan's Air Self-Defense Force and airmen of ASEAN countries.

Iwaya did not give details on when it will be launched or its frequency. He was speaking on the sidelines of an Asian security conference in Singapore, which was also attended by regional defense ministers, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Wei Feng.MESA, Ariz. (AP) - President Donald Trump, seeking to frame the choices for voters in the midterm elections, said Friday that Democrats are "too extreme and too dangerous" to take control of Congress.

On a three-day swing out West to make his closing arguments for Republican candidates, Trump sought to hone in on immigration as one of the defining election issues this fall by falsely accusing Democrats of wanting "open borders" and encouraging illegal immigration.

"Anybody who votes for a Democrat now is crazy," Trump said.

Rallying thousands of supporters in an Arizona aircraft hangar for GOP Senate candidate Rep. Martha McSally, Trump warned of dire consequences if her opponent, Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, is victorious.

Trump, trying to hold onto Republicans' narrow 51-49 advantage in the Senate, said a vote for Sinema "is dangerous" because it would empower Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

"The Democrat Party has become too extreme and too dangerous to be trusted with power," he claimed.

President Donald Trump arrives as the sun sets to speak at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Trump also had harsh words for Central American migrants trying to travel through Mexico and reach the U.S. border, declaring they aren't "little angels" but "hardened criminals."

Asked what evidence he had that they were "hardened criminals," Trump told a reporter: "Oh, please. Please. Don't be a baby."

Thousands of the migrants have fled poverty and violence in their home countries. Others are in search of work and help for their families.

Trump also claimed without evidence that Democrats want them to enter the U.S. because "they're gonna vote Democrat."

Earlier Friday, during a roundtable at Luke Air Force Base, Trump said McSally, a former Air Force colonel and combat fighter pilot, is "brilliant and brave" and has a "very, very strange opponent."

The two congresswomen are vying for the seat of Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who is retiring. McSally was a Trump critic in 2016 and represents a Tucson district that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

McSally has now embraced the president and hopes his visit to Arizona will unite Republicans against Sinema.

Trump campaigned Thursday in Montana on behalf of GOP Senate candidate Matt Rosendale and on Saturday will visit Elko, Nevada, to support Sen. Dean Heller, considered the most vulnerable Republican incumbent this fall.

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump arrives as the sun sets to speak at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Montana State Auditor Matt Rosendale, who is running against Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., during a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump calls out as he arrives at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

People in the audience cheer as President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) - About 2,000 Central American migrants who circumvented Mexican police at a border bridge and swam, forded and floated across the river from Guatemala decided on Saturday to re-form their mass caravan and continue their trek northward toward the United States.

Gathered at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo, the migrants voted by a show of hands and then marched to the bridge to urge those still there to cross the river and join them.

"Let's all walk together!" and "Yes we can!" they cried, defying warnings to turn back this week from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought to make the caravan and border security in general into a campaign issue a little over two weeks before midterm elections.

The group's decision capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some of them.

Mexico had sought to maintain order after a chaotic Friday in which thousands rushed across the bridge only to be halted by a phalanx of officers in riot gear. Authorities began handing out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.

But despite a continued heavy police deployment on the bridge, a steady stream of migrants made it to Mexican soil with relative ease by crossing the Suchiate River that demarcates the notoriously porous border.

A group of Central American migrants cross the Suchiate River aboard a raft made out of tractor inner tubes and wooden planks, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants are boarding the rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

They swam, waded with the aid of ropes or paid locals who charge the equivalent of $1.25 to ferry people and goods across the muddy waters, and were not detained on reaching the Mexican bank.

"We don't yet know if we will make it to the (U.S.) border, but we are going to keep going as far as we can," said Rodrigo Abeja, one of the migrants' leaders, adding that they would strike out Sunday morning for the city of Tapachula.

Where easily 3,000 people were on the bridge the previous day, the crowd had thinned out considerably by Saturday. In addition to those who crossed the river, immigration agents processed migrants in small groups and then bused them to an open-air, metal-roof fairground in Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.

But the pace was slow, frustrating those who remained on the bridge in hot and cramped conditions.

"Please let us in, we want to work!" they entreated agents at the main gate. Behind it, workers erected tall steel riot barriers to channel people in an orderly fashion.

Each time a small side gate opened to allow people to pass, there was a crush of bodies as migrants desperately pushed forward.

Scarleth Cruz hoisted a crying, sweat-soaked baby girl above the crowd, crying out: "This girl is suffocating."

Cruz, 20, said she was going to ask for political asylum because of threats and repression she faced back in Honduras from President Juan Orlando Hernandez's governing party.

"Why would I want to go to the United States if I'm going to be persecuted" there as well, she said.

Mexico's Interior Department said in a statement that it had received 640 refugee requests by Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.

At least half a dozen migrants fainted.

Some tore open a fence on the Guatemala side of the bridge and threw two young children, perhaps age 6 or 7, and their mother into the muddy waters about 40 feet below. They were rafted to safety in on the Mexican bank.

Mexican workers handed food bottled water to the migrants on the bridge. Through the bars, a doctor gave medical attention to a woman who feared her young son was running a fever.

Sustenance also came from Guatemalan locals - for Carlos Martinez, a 24-year-old from Santa Barbara, Honduras, the plate of chicken with rice was the first bite to eat he'd had all day.

"It is a blessing that they have given us food," Martinez said. "It gives me courage to keep waiting, as long as I can."

Migrants cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the world's deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reasons for joining the caravan.

"One cannot live back there," said Fidelina Vasquez, a grandmother traveling with her daughter and 2-year-old grandson, standing next to the main border gate.

Hector Aguilar, a 49-year-old sales manager who worked as a taxi driver in Honduras' Yoro province to feed his four children, said he had to pay the two main gangs there protection money in order to work.

"On Thursdays I paid the 18th Street gang, and on Saturdays the MS-13," Aguilar said. "Three hundred lempiras per day" - about $12.50, a significant amount in low-wage Honduras.

The caravan elicited a series of angry tweets and warnings from Trump early in the week, but Mexico's no-nonsense handling of the migrants at it southern border seems to have satisfied him more recently.

"So as of this moment, I thank Mexico," Trump said Friday at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona. "I hope they continue. But as of this moment, I thank Mexico. If that doesn't work out, we're calling up the military - not the Guard."

"They're not coming into this country," Trump added.

"The Mexican Government is fully engaged in finding a solution that encourages safe, secure, and orderly migration," State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday, "and both the United States and Mexico continue to work with Central American governments to address the economic, security, and governance drivers of illegal immigration."

Presidents Hernandez of Honduras and Jimmy Morales of Guatemala held an emergency meeting at a Guatemalan air base.

The leaders said an estimated 5,400 migrants had entered Guatemala since the caravan was announced a week ago, and about 2,000 Hondurans have returned voluntarily.

Morales said a Honduran migrant died in the town of Villa Nueva, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Guatemala City, when he fell from a truck that was transporting migrants.

Thousands of migrants slept - or tried to sleep - outdoors overnight underneath tarps and what blankets were available.

Jose Yanez, a 25-year-old farmer, woke up at 5 a.m. with a backache after having nothing to cover himself from the nighttime chill. But he was determined to press onward, saying the $6 a day he made back home was not enough to live on.

"From here," Yanez said, "there's no going back."

___

Mark Stevenson reported from Ciudad Hidalgo, and Sonia Perez D. reported from Tecun Uman, Guatemala. Associated Press writers Sonny Figueroa in Guatemala City and Peter Orsi in Mexico City contributed to this report.

A group of migrants rests at the central park in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. About 2,000 Central American migrants who circumvented Mexican police at a border bridge and swam, forded and floated across the river from Guatemala decided on Saturday to re-form their mass caravan and continue their trek northward toward the United States. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

Mexican navy personnel hand out food to Central American migrants stuck in no man's land on the bridge over the Suchiate River that is the border between Guatemala and Mexico, near Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. The entry into Mexico via the bridge has been closed. The migrants have moved about 30 feet back from the gate that separates them from Mexican police to establish a buffer zone. About 1,000 migrants now remain on the bridge between Guatemala and Mexico. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

A group of Central American migrants gather in the central park of Ciudad Hidlago, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Mexican authorities for a second straight day refused mass entry to a caravan of Central American migrants held up at the border with Guatemala, but began accepting small groups for asylum processing and gave out some 45-day visitor permits that would theoretically allow recipients time to reach the United States. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

A Central American migrant wades across the Suchiate River, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants began boarding rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally.(AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A Honduras migrant is comforted by a Mexican paramedic after her mother fainted while crossing the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Mexican officials are refusing to yield to demands from the caravan of Central American migrants that they be allowed to enter the country en masse but announced they would hand out numbers to those waiting to cross and allow them to enter in small groups. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

Migrants bound for the U.S.-Mexico border wait on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, early Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. The entry into Mexico via the bridge has been closed. The migrants have moved about 30 feet back from the gate that separates them from Mexican police to establish a buffer zone. About 1,000 migrants now remain on the bridge between Guatemala and Mexico. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A Guatemalan police officer gives a migrant child some food as the migrants bound for the U.S.-Mexico border wait on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, early Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. The migrants have moved about 30 feet back from the gate that separates them from Mexican police to establish a buffer zone. About 1,000 migrants now remain on the bridge between Guatemala and Mexico. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Central American migrants reach the shore on the Mexican side of the Suchiate River after wading across, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants are boarding the rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A group of Central American migrants cheers as they cross the Suchiate River aboard a raft made out of tractor inner tubes and wooden planks, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants began boarding rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A Central American migrant walks off the shore on the Mexican side of the Suchiate River after wading across, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants are boarding the rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A group of Central American migrants cross the Suchiate River aboard a raft made out of tractor inner tubes and wooden planks, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants are boarding the rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A Mexican Federal Police officer hands out food to Honduran migrants stuck in no man's land on the bridge over the Suchiate River that is the border between Guatemala and Mexico, near Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. The entry into Mexico via the bridge has been closed. The migrants have moved about 30 feet back from the gate that separates them from Mexican police to establish a buffer zone. About 1,000 migrants now remain on the bridge between Guatemala and Mexico. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

A group of Central American migrants wade across the Suchiate River, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants began boarding rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A group of Central American migrants wade across the Suchiate River, on the the border between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. After Mexican authorities slowed access through the border bridge to a crawl, hundreds of migrants began boarding rafts or wading across the river and crossing into Mexico illegally. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Migrant children play at the central park in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. About 2,000 Central American migrants who circumvented Mexican police at a border bridge and swam, forded and floated across the river from Guatemala decided on Saturday to re-form their mass caravan and continue their trek northward toward the United States. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

A group of migrants rests at the central park in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. About 2,000 Central American migrants who circumvented Mexican police at a border bridge and swam, forded and floated across the river from Guatemala decided on Saturday to re-form their mass caravan and continue their trek northward toward the United States. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

A group of migrants rests at the central park in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. About 2,000 Central American migrants who circumvented Mexican police at a border bridge and swam, forded and floated across the river from Guatemala decided on Saturday to re-form their mass caravan and continue their trek northward toward the United States. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. (AP) - President Donald Trump on Friday called Saudi Arabia's announcement that suspects are in custody in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi a "good first step" and said he would work with Congress on a U.S. response.

The president spoke to the media at a defense roundtable in Arizona hours after Saudi Arabia claimed that Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor last seen on Oct. 2, was killed in a "fistfight" at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The kingdom also said that 18 suspects were in custody and that intelligence officials had been fired.

Asked by a reporter whether he thought Saudi Arabia's explanation for Khashoggi's death was credible, Trump said, "I do. I do." But he said before he decided what to do next, he wanted to talk to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

"Saudi Arabia has been a great ally, but what happened is unacceptable," Trump said. Regarding the Saudi arrests, he said, "It's a big first step. It's only a first step, but it's a big first step."

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers including Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed skepticism of the Saudi account, which was vastly different than that given by Turkish officials, who had said an "assassination squad" sent by the kingdom had killed and dismembered Khashoggi.

"First we were told Mr. Khashoggi supposedly left the consulate and there was blanket denial of any Saudi involvement," Graham, R-S.C., tweeted Friday. "Now, a fight breaks out and he's killed in the consulate, all without knowledge of Crown Prince."

President Donald Trump waves after speaking at a campaign rally Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Mesa, Ariz. Trump is in Arizona stumping for Senate candidate Martha McSally. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and royal court insider for decades in Saudi Arabia, had written columns critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the kingdom's direction while living in self-imposed exile in the U.S. He went to the Saudi consulate to obtain paperwork for his upcoming marriage.

"The Saudi 'explanation' for murdering journalist and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi in a consulate_a fistfight gone wrong_is insulting," tweeted Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee. "Since the Trump Administration won't stand up against atrocity, Congress must."

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California said Saudi Arabia's claim that Khashoggi died in a brawl wasn't credible.

"If Khashoggi was fighting inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, he was fighting for his life with people sent to capture or kill him," said Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee.

"The Kingdom and all involved in this brutal murder must be held accountable, and if the Trump Administration will not take the lead, Congress must," Schiff said.

In a statement Friday night, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. will closely follow international investigations into Khashoggi's death and will advocate for justice that is "timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process."

Earlier Friday, Sanders said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had spoken to the crown prince and briefed the president and John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser. Trump dispatched Pompeo earlier in the week to Saudi Arabia and Turkey to speak to officials about the case.

___

Thomas contributed from Washington.

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Mesa, Ariz. Trump is in Arizona stumping for Senate candidate Martha McSally. (AP Photo/Matt York)SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) - Donald Trump fueled his 2016 campaign with fiery immigration rhetoric, visions of hordes flowing across the border to assault Americans and steal their jobs. Now, in the final weeks before midterm elections, he's back at it as he looks to stave off Democratic gains in Congress.

It's an approach that offers both risks and rewards. He could energize Democratic foes as well as the Republicans he wants to rouse to the polls.

But for the president, the potential gains clearly win out. In campaign stops and on Twitter in recent days, he has seized on a huge caravan of Central American migrants trying to reach the United States through Mexico as fresh evidence that his tough immigration prescriptions are needed.

He tweeted that the caravan was an "assault on our country at our Southern Border." Then, Thursday night in Montana, he told cheering supporters, "This will be an election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order and common sense. ... Remember it's gonna be an election of the caravan."

His assertions got a visual boost Friday when some members of the caravan broke through a Guatemalan border barrier with Mexico. A few then got through to Mexican territory, but most were repelled by police with riot shields and pepper spray.

Trump signaled Friday he thought the strategy was working, telling reporters in Scottsdale, Arizona, that immigration was "a great issue for the Republicans."

President Donald Trump looks the the cheering audience as he leaves a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. Trump's 2016 campaign was defined by his fiery immigration rhetoric, visions of the undocumented flowing across the border to assault Americans and steal their jobs. Now, in the final weeks before midterm elections, he's back at it as he looks to stave off Democratic gains in Congress. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

On an aggressive campaign blitz, Trump has sought to cast the midterms as a referendum on his presidency, believing that he must insert himself into the national conversation in order to bring Republicans out to vote. Perhaps no issue was more identified with his last campaign than immigration, particularly his much-vaunted - and still-unfulfilled - promise to quickly build a U.S.-Mexico border wall. To Trump, his pledges are still rallying cries.

"I think it's a big contrast point. All the Democrats are refusing to build the wall. It's a good contrast," said former Trump campaign aide Barry Bennett, who said the caravan was "perfectly timed" for Trump's midterm pitch.

But some warn that as Trump seeks to pump up his base, he could energize opposition. Matt Barreto, co-founder of the research firm Latino Decision, said an elevated immigration message could hurt Trump, too.

"I think you run the risk of angering minority voters across the board, Latino, black and Asian-Americans and also alienating and distancing from whites, including conservatives and moderates, now that they see what's happening with the family separations," said Barreto, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Thursday night, the migrant caravan of at least 3,000, many waving Honduran flags and chanting slogans, arrived at the Guatemalan border with Mexico. On Friday, they broke down Guatemalan gates and streamed toward a bridge to Mexico. Most were repelled by Mexican police, but about 50 got through.

Mexico's dispatching of additional police to its southern border seemed to please Trump. On Thursday night, he retweeted a BuzzFeed journalist's tweet of a video clip showing the police deployment, adding his own comment: "Thank you Mexico, we look forward to working with you!"

Earlier in the day, Trump railed against the caravan on Twitter and declared it was "Democrats fault for weak laws!" He also threatened to deploy the military to the border if Mexico did not stop the migrants and appeared to threaten a revamped trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

Until days ago, immigration appeared to be unlikely to repeat its central role of 2016, as Trump heeded congressional Republican requests to avoid a government shutdown over funding for the border wall ahead of the midterms. And an internal GOP poll presented to the White House last month found that other issues - particularly opposing the "Medicare for All" policy of some Democrats - would better resonate with voters.

While Trump did focus for a time on some Democrats calling for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, he largely discussed it as a warning against Democratic control of Washington. But the renewed embrace of the polarizing issue reflects a consensus view in both parties that control of Congress will be determined more by turning-out party loyalists than winning over centrist voters.

A vigorous immigration push will likely be well-received in many of the deep-red areas where Trump is campaigning, like his stop in Montana Thursday night. Republicans acknowledge it could play differently in other parts of the country - and might even harm GOP candidates in some selected districts - but they are wagering that as in 2016 it is still a net-win issue for the president's party.

Trump campaigns Friday night in Arizona, an increasingly competitive state where the message could have a mixed result. He won Arizona by 3.5 percentage points two years ago, compared with Republican Mitt Romney's 9-point margin in 2012.

Ahead of the midterms, polls continue to show that voters consider immigration among the most important issues, though generally falling behind the economy and health care.

However, Republican and Democratic voters have distinctly different views of immigration as a problem facing the country. A recent Pew Research Center survey found a majority of Democratic voters - 57 percent - think the treatment of immigrants in the country illegally is a very big problem in the U.S., compared with just 15 percent of Republican voters who say the same. By contrast, three-quarters of Republican voters call illegal immigration a very big problem, ranking the highest for Republicans among the long list on Pew's survey, while just 19 percent of Democratic voters say the same.

Recently, surveys from CNN and The Washington Post/ABC News found voters were slightly more likely to think the Democratic Party would do a better job handling immigration than the Republican Party.

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AP writer Catherine Lucey reported from Washington.

A youth calls for calm as he stands in from of a phalanx of Mexican Federal Police in riot gear, after Central American migrants rushed the gate at the border crossing in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Central Americans traveling in a mass caravan broke through a Guatemalan border fence and streamed by the thousands toward Mexican territory, defying Mexican authorities' entreaties for an orderly migration and U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of retaliation. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar in Missoula, Mont., Thursday Oct. 18, 2018. Trump is in Missoula to rally support for Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. (AP Photo/Lido Vizzutti)

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar in Missoula, Mont., Thursday Oct. 18, 2018. Trump is in Missoula to rally support for Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. (AP Photo/Lido VizzuttI)

Honduran migrants ride on the bed of a pick-up truck towards the Mexican border, in Mazatenango, about 200 miles north-west from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Many of the more than 2,000 Hondurans in a migrant caravan trying to wend its way to the United States left spontaneously with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they could quickly throw into backpacks. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)'KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Latest on parliamentary elections in Afghanistan (all times local):

6:05 p.m.

Police say a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a polling station in a school in the northern Kabul neighborhood of Khair Khana, the first major attack in Saturday's parliamentary elections. A doctor treating the wounded said three people were killed and six wounded.

Waheed Ullah, a police officer, said ambulances were roaring toward the hospital with victims. Dr. Mashook Hakimi was working with the ambulances to get the injured to hospital.

Both the upstart local Islamic State affiliate and the Taliban threatened violence during elections, warning people to stay away from the polls. Instead, outside most polling stations there were lines of people waiting to mark their ballot.

The Taliban further warned teachers and students to not allow schools to be used as polling stations. The suicide attack targeted a school where a polling station was set up.

Voters from the minority Sikh register to cast in Parliamentary elections in old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

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5:10 p.m.

The closing of polls in Saturday's Parliamentary elections were as chaotic as the opening with even the Independent Election Commission uncertain of how many of the estimated 21,000 polling stations closed by 4 p.m. local time, the original closing time.

As the day began it quickly became clear that polling stations were struggling with voters list and a new biometric system aimed at stemming fraud but instead created enormous confusion because many of those trained on the system did not show up for work. Also the biometric machines were received just a month before polls and there was no time to do field testing.

Even before elections, the election commission chairman Abdul Badi Sayat warned of possible glitches and bemoaned the lack of adequate testing.

Earlier Saturday Sayat extended voting until 8 p.m. local time for all those polling stations that opened late, with many opening as much as five hours behind schedule.

For those polling stations that could not open before 1 p.m. local time, they would open Sunday for voting, said Sayat.

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3:20 p.m.

An Afghan provincial government official says two people died and 22 were injured when insurgents fired several rockets and mortars at a variety of targets in the Baghlani Markazi district in an attempt to terrorize voters casting their ballots in parliamentary elections.

Zabihullah Shuja, of Baghlan province, said the attack Saturday did not deter voters who continued to make their way to polling stations to cast their ballot.

In a separate attack, also in Baghlan, a bomb detonated in the capital of Pul-e-Kumri injuring one person, said Shuja. He added that Taliban insurgents also engaged in a firefight with security personnel at check posts on the main roadways.

In other election-related incidents, insurgents fired rockets at the education department building in Wardak provincial capital of Maidan Shahr, south of the Afghan capital Kabul, said Hekmat Durrani, spokesman for the provincial police chief. Hekmat said insurgents targeted several other locations in Maidan Shahr.

There were no reports of injuries. Taliban earlier warned teachers and students from allowing schools to be used as election polling stations threatening attacks.

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12:55 p.m.

Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission says that after the chaotic start to the country's first parliamentary elections since 2010 it will allow some of the worst affected polls to remain open until 8 p.m. local time __ four hours beyond the original closing time.

Thousands of outraged voters blocked a road north of the capital Kabul on Saturday after waiting more than five hours for a polling station to open, says Mohammad Azim, governor of Qarabagh district where the demonstration took place.

Election Commission Chairman Abdul Badih Sayat went on national television to plead for patience with a new biometric system and explain that dozens of teachers who had been trained in the system did not show up for work at the polling stations. It wasn't clear why or whether it was related to a Taliban warning directed specifically at teachers and students telling them to stay away from the polls.

Sayat said for those polling stations which had not opened by 1 p.m., voting would be held on Sunday.

It wasn't immediately clear how many of the 21,000 polling stations across the country were affected.

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12:05 p.m.

A district police chief says two police were wounded when they tried to defuse an improvised explosive devise found near a polling station in a northwestern neighborhood of the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Khaled Haq Parast says two civilians were also wounded when the explosive devise detonated as voters were going to the polling station Saturday in Afghanistan's Parliamentary polls.

Elsewhere in election day violence, Taliban fighters ambushed and killed four local police in central Ghor province as they were making their way to a polling center in the capital of Firozkoh, several hours after voting had begun nationwide in parliamentary elections, says Abdul Hai Khateby, spokesman for the provincial governor.

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11 a.m.

Afghanistan's Interior Ministry says it has increased its deployment of Afghan National Security Forces to 70,000 from a previous 50,000 military personnel across the country to protect the country's 21,000 polling stations.

Elections in the two provinces of Kandahar and Ghazni have been delayed as well as in 11 of the country's nearly 400 districts.

Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish announced the increased deployment without giving more details.

Within hours of polling several minor incidences of violence had occurred as both the upstart Islamic State group affiliate and the Taliban have vowed to disrupt elections

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10:45 a.m.

Provincial officials say two attacks in northern Afghanistan have wounded two women and frightened voters going to mark their ballots in the country's first parliamentary elections since 2010.

The spokesman for the Farah province police chief, Mohibullah Mohib, says a mortar struck in a residential area of the capital of Afghanistan's western Farah province. He said no injuries were reported and security was under control. He said polling stations, including in the area of the mortar attack, were busy with Afghans casting their ballots.

In northeastern Kunar province's Nari district, Taliban fighters fired artillery onto roads leading to polling stations, injuring two women, said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman Ayar. The women's condition was not immediately known.

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10:30 a.m.

Afghanistan's deputy chief executive says he's outraged by the chaotic start to polling in Afghanistan's Parliamentary elections.

Mohammad Mohaqiq, in an interview with a local TV station, assailed election preparation by the country's Independent Election Commission.

He says: "The people rushed like a flood to the polling stations, but the election commission employees were not present, and in some cases they were there but there were no electoral materials and in most cases the biometric systems was not working."

Mohaqiq feared frustrated voters would abandon the polling stations without marking their ballots.

The Independent Election Commission chairman Abdul Badih Sayat also went on local television to say technical glitches had occurred. He did not say polling would be extended but said the commission was considering whether that might be necessary

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10:10 a.m.

A Kabul police official says a second small explosion has been reported just hours after parliamentary election polls opened in Afghanistan.

Jan Agha says a "sticky bomb" placed beneath the vehicle of an intelligence official exploded Saturday in the Karte Se neighborhood in the west of the capital.

There were no immediate report of injuries but security officials are on high alert as both the upstart Islamic State affiliate and Taliban have vowed to disrupt polling

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9:30 a.m.

A small explosion has frightened voters who had lined up at a polling station in the Qarabagh neighborhood, north of Kabul, to cast their ballot in the first parliamentary elections since 2010.

There were no injuries in the first act of violence to be reported since polls opened at 7 a.m. Saturday.

More than 50,000 Afghan security forces are deployed throughout the country to protect 21,000 polling stations.

The Taliban have warned of violence and told students and teachers to refuse to allow their schools to be used in voting. Education Minister Mohammad Mirwais Balkhy says 5,500 schools throughout the country are being used for elections.

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7:20 a.m.

Tens of thousands of Afghan forces have fanned out across the country as voting began in parliamentary elections following a campaign marred by relentless violence.

The Independent Election Commission says 8.8. million Afghans are registered to vote in Saturday's election. Wasima Badghisy, a commission member, called voters "very, very brave" and says a turnout of 5 million will be a success.

In the run-up to the elections, two candidates were killed while polling in Kandahar was delayed for a week after a rogue guard gunned down the powerful provincial police chief.

Commission deputy spokesman Aziz Ismaili says no results will be released before mid-November and final results will not be out until later in December.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani marked his ballot as polls opened at 7 a.m.ELKO, Nev. (AP) - Campaigning on opposite sides of a pivotal Senate race, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden appealed to party loyalists in Nevada as early voting began Saturday in the state.

Wrapping up a three-day visit to Western states with midday rally in rural Elko, Trump lent support for Dean Heller, considered the most vulnerable GOP senator on the Nov. 6 ballot as Republicans hope to retain their Senate majority. The GOP-leaning region of the battleground state is crucial to Trump's hopes of protecting or expanding Republicans' 51-49 edge in the Senate.

"If you want to protect America's laws borders, sovereignty and even your dignity, you need to go out today and vote," Trump said as he asked supporters to raise their right hands in a pledge to go to the polls.

A short time earlier and 400-plus miles south, Biden headlined a Las Vegas rally at a union local to promote Heller's challenger, Rep. Jacky Rosen, and other Democratic candidates, as he encouraged Nevada residents to get out and vote.

"This election is literally bigger than politics. It's bigger than politics," Biden said. "No matter how old or young you are, you have never participated in an election that is as consequential as this election national and locally."

Trump struck much the same theme throughout the week, as he has tried to frame the choices for voters in the upcoming election. He has sought to focus on immigration as one of the defining election issues and has falsely accused Democrats of wanting "open borders" and encouraging illegal immigration.

President Donald Trump speaks at Elko Regional Airport, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, in Elko, Nv., during a campaign rally. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

"They've gone loco," Trump said.

Trump referenced Biden's appearance in Las Vegas, mocking the smaller crowd drawn by his potential 2020 rival, compared with the thousands he gathered on an airport tarmac in the more sparsely populated part of the state.

Trump deployed a refrain he had fine-tuned during his Western swing, declaring that "Democrats produce mobs, Republicans produce jobs."

"That's called hashtag," he said to the crowd. "That's a new hashtag. That's a hot one."

Trump branded Heller's opponent "Wacky Jacky," as he sought to cast Rosen as beholden to Democratic coastal elites, including Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

In Las Vegas, Biden criticized Trump for his approach to Russia and President Vladimir Putin, his equivocating on white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his immigration policies, including the separation of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border

American values, "are being shredded," Biden said. "They're being shredded by a president who is all about himself. It's all about Donald."

In a tweet before leaving Arizona, Trump called Heller "a man who has become a good friend" and said he needed the senator's "Help and Talent in Washington."

Trump praised Heller for his votes for conservative Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The later faced allegations of decades-old sexual assault during his confirmation hearings, prompting impassioned Senate hearings and fraught votes.

"We stuck with Justice Kavanaugh, because he was the right man," Trump said.

But Heller himself once had rocky relations with Trump and had returned a campaign donation from then-candidate Trump over Trump's immigration rhetoric. Last year, Trump threatened Heller's re-election chances when the senator held up GOP efforts to repeal the Obama-era health law. But Heller has since become an ally of the president, who has made two fundraising stops for him in Nevada this year already.

Heller and Rosen held their first and only debate of the campaign on Friday. Heller accused her of making a visit to see separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border in order to stage a "photo-op," while she described Heller a "rubber-stamp" for Trump, whose tax plan she said benefits the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

In a further sign of the state's importance in the midterms, former President Barack Obama scheduled a stop Monday in Las Vegas.

He won Nevada in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and Democrat Hillary Clinton carried the state by 2 percentage points over Trump in 2016. But during the last midterm elections in 2014, many Democrats stayed home and Republicans won key races across the state, which has a 29 percent Latino population.

The country's immigration system has long vexed politicians from both parties, and Republicans themselves have torpedoed near-compromises in recent years. Yet Trump tweeted Saturday that "we could write up and agree to new immigration laws in less than one hour" if Democrats "would stop being obstructionists and come together."

"Call me," he told the Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California. It seemed reminiscent of the time last year when Trump cracked open the door of bipartisanship with those leaders, who emerged from a White House meeting to say Trump had agreed to work toward a deal on protection young immigrants. But no agreement came to pass.

The Biden-Trump circling of one another in the same state happened recently in Kentucky, where Biden campaigned for a Democratic congressional candidate on a Friday night and Trump held a rally the next evening.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that the GOP's Senate edge is 51-49.

Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., prepares before a U.S. Senate debate with Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, Pool)

The audience cheers as President Donald Trump arrives at Elko Regional Airport, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, in Elko, Nv., for a campaign rally. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)WASHINGTON (AP) - The assassination of Afghan leaders in Kandahar province won't lessen U.S. support for the war in Afghanistan or deter local security forces in the fight against the Taliban, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East said Saturday.

Gen. Joseph Votel said the U.S. was "pretty confident that the Afghans will be able to maintain the situation down" in Kandahar.

The Taliban said Thursday's attack, which killed an influential police chief, targeted the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. But U.S. military officials have said Army Gen. Scott Miller was not in the line of fire, and he escaped unharmed.

The attack just before Saturday's parliamentary elections, where violence marred some balloting, was as a stark reminder of the formidable task the Trump administration faces as it tries to extricate America from its longest war.

Votel expressed confidence in the ability of the Afghan forces to provide security for the election and into the future.

"My assessment is the Afghans are resilient to this," he said. "I don't consider it to be something that will change the security situation."

Men line up to cast their votes outside a pooling station in eastern city of Khost, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country to provide security, as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Nishan Khan)

The Kandahar shooting, he said, won't diminish "our will or on us going forward."

Votel's comment to reporters traveling with him at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar echoed the sentiment expressed by U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday.

"We remain absolutely committed to an Afghan-led Afghan reconciliation," Mattis told reporters Friday at an Asian security conference in Singapore. "Right now, we're going toward the election and we will continue to defend the Afghan people."

But the timing of the attack makes U.S. goals seem ever more distant.

It came just a week after reported U.S. back-channel talks with the Taliban and as the administration steps up efforts to kick-start peace negotiations between the militant group and the Afghan government to end the war, now entering its 18th year.

There are about 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan on a mission to train and assist Afghan government forces in taking the fight to the Taliban, which controls or contests close to half the districts in the country. Violence is rising, claiming the lives of hundreds of civilians every month. There have been seven U.S. combat deaths so far this year.

U.S. Army Col. David Butler, who was near where the shooting occurred after Miller met Afghan officials, disputed the Taliban and said the target was Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq, one of the three officials killed. But even their claim that they were going after Miller cast doubt on whether the militants are indeed willing to negotiate.

The recent appointment of former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad as envoy for Afghan reconciliation was intended to energize the U.S. peace effort and coax the Taliban into direct talks with the government of Ashraf Ghani.

The Taliban said its political representatives in Qatar met with Khalilzad a week ago, during his first multination trip since he took up his new post. The State Department did not confirm the Oct. 12 meeting, but did not deny it either, which was widely viewed in Washington as tacit acknowledgement it happened. A similar scenario played out in July, when the Taliban reported a meeting with the senior U.S. diplomat for South and Central Asia, Alice Wells.

The risk of such back-channel talks is that could alienate the Afghan government. The Taliban claimed the two sides discussed finding a way to withdraw foreign forces from Afghanistan - an issue that the Afghan government would demand a say in as it would be key to any peace settlement. Because U.S. officials haven't confirmed that the meeting happened, they have not been able to publicly deny the Taliban's account of the meeting.

The Taliban have condemned the elections, calling them a U.S.-manipulated event to further their hold on the country, and pledged to disrupt them.

The election for the 249-seat lower house is already three years overdue. The U.S. committed nearly $80 million in aid for U.N.-led support of Afghan election authorities.

Voting in southern Kandahar province was been postponed for a week because of Thursday's attack and wasn't taking place at all in Ghazni because of insecurity there.

____

Baldor reported from Doha, Qatar. Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann in Washington and Robert Burns in Singapore contributed to this report.

Women cast their votes in a pooling station in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country to provide security, as voting began Saturday in the elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)More than seven years after President Donald Trump launched his political career by questioning then-President Barack Obama's citizenship, Democrats are still struggling to find the right strategy to fight back against his racially-charged rhetoric.

After years of taunting from Trump, Sen. Elizabeth Warren revealed her DNA results this week proving her Native American roots. If it was an effort to take on Trump directly, it didn't seem to work. The president continued his mocking references to her as "Pocahontas" and she managed to offend Native Americans who felt their heritage was being used as a political prop.

Obama tried another tactic in 2011, holding a midday press conference to show reporters his long-form birth certificate after Trump spent weeks reviving the "birther" controversy claiming the first black president was not born in Hawaii, implying that his presidency was illegitimate.

"We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers," a bemused Obama told reporters.

That approach did little to silence Trump, either. Five years later, he was elected to the presidency after a campaign in which he referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists, called for a ban on Muslim travel to America and referred to inner-city black communities as "hell" and pledging to restore "law and order" to cities like Chicago.

As Democrats gear up for a presidential primary season that's likely to feature multiple women and people of color, some are saying it's time for a new approach.

President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony to sign a "Presidential Memorandum Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the West," Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

"There's a lot of data that shows that most Americans believe that Trump is either racist or bad for race relations in this country," said Harvard University historian Leah Wright Rigueur. "If you already know that, you have to give people something else. It doesn't mean you stand there and let yourself be bullied, but the way to do this is not to bring yourself to Trump's level."

The answer for prospective 2020 candidates, according to some activists, is to present an authentic counterpoint to Trump's provocations. That's one reason Warren's move was problematic to some. It seemed a departure from Massachusetts Democrat's usual playbook of hammering the president on the issues and largely ignoring his personal attacks. Some understood the impulse, but saw Warren's response as an unforced error that distracted from her message and her brand.

"The way she chose to fight back seemed out of character for how she's fought back before," said DeJuana Thompson, founder of Woke Vote, aimed at turning out young black voters and faith voters. "She usually sticks to the issues; she rarely brings it back to herself."

Instead of a DNA reveal, Warren could have stood with Native Americans on the issues that matter to them, like the environment or voter suppression, said Aimee Allison, president of Democracy in Color.

"A conversation centering on Native people, about their identity and their issues, that would've been inspiring," Allison said. "That is the way to cut through and dissipate the hatred that is poisoning our society, building connection with people."

Allison pointed to Texas U.S. Senate Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke as someone effectively appealing to a broader electorate.

"He speaks in solidarity with black people and Latinos, and shows a very different way of being a white Democrat," she said. "Whether he wins or loses, he's an example of people who want to lead and not fall victim of this racial playbook. There's no winning with that, but there is a way to embrace racial identity that helps build the democracy we want."

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Whack is The Associated Press' national writer on race and ethnicity. Follow her work on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/emarvelous.Mena spending on enterprise information security technology and services is on pace to reach $1.9 billion in 2019, an increase of 9.8 per cent over 2018, according to the latest forecast from research and advisory company Gartner.



Security and risk leaders will see new spending in areas related to cloud security and data security, driven by regulations and an increased awareness among organizations as their needs evolve to address more complex threats, said Sam Olyaei, principal research analyst at Gartner. Those two segments are set to achieve the highest growth rates in 2019, at 108 and 18 per cent respectively.



The enterprise information security spending market is comprised of five enterprise security product segments that will bolster growth in 2019:



 Cloud security spending will total $9 million  a 108 per cent increase in 2019.



 Data security spending will total $125 million  a 17.6 per cent increase in 2019.



 Infrastructure protection will total $225 million  a 10.5 per cent increase in 2019.



 Integrated risk management will total $33 million  a 9.2 per cent increase in 2019.



 Security services will total $798 million  a 9.9 per cent increase in 2019.



Gartner analysts provided the latest outlook for the information security industry today (October 22) at the 2018 Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit , which is taking place in Dubai through Tuesday.



These established security product segments benefit from strong growth rates due to net new adopters who are looking to rapidly increase their investments in security technology. Additionally, existing buyers of these technologies are looking to acquire more advanced capabilities in these areas, especially as organizations in the region race to catch up with government and national attitude toward digital transformation.



While the spending on cloud security products is set to increase 108 per cent in 2019, the market remains much smaller than the other four segments, and this is primarily due to its relative immaturity. As large cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Alibaba establish data centers and service clients in the region, the market will continue to see double-digit growth in the future.



In the last few years, Gartner analysts witnessed organizations and governments in the Mena region adopting digital initiatives.



Digital business initiatives are changing how organizations identify, evaluate and confront risk, said Olyaei. Having an integrated view of risk management is also becoming more pervasive as organizations are increasingly participating in digital ecosystems, making them more vulnerable than ever before.



CIOs have had to evolve their traditional cybersecurity systems to address the new cybersecurity risks that digital business initiatives introduce, he added.



Cybersecurity represents one of the major risks affecting Mena businesses and individuals today. Most attacks can be grouped into five categories that commonly exploit weaknesses through mechanisms such as socially engineered malware, phishing attacks, unpatched/insecure software, social media attacks, and the regular advanced persistent threats.



Lack of skills raising demand for security services



Organizations continue to feel the pressure to find the right people with the right skills to grow their security teams, particularly given the 24/7 nature of security operations functions. These ongoing skills shortages are driving demand for security services, particularly security outsourcing, managed security services and security consulting.



As the realities of digital sink in, the skills shortage may expose organizations to undue risk that increases the likelihood of a breach, causing ramifications for the organization in terms of data, monetary and brand reputation loss. Gartner estimates that 68 per cent of digital organizations globally have a cybersecurity expert on staff, but remain incapable of managing digital risk.



Security and risk management leaders should validate if their existing security programs can adequately address the emerging challenges resulting from participation in digital ecosystems, and build and develop new competencies and skills required to effectively support digital business initiatives, said Olyaei.



The Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit offers the latest research to help organizations transform their security strategy and build resilience across the enterprise. This years event delivers leading-edge thinking on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, the Internet of Things, blockchain, evolving security technologies and the ever-changing threat landscape.  TradeArabia News ServiceBEIRUT (AP) - The Islamic State group early Saturday released two women and four children they had been holding since July in the first part of an exchange with the Syrian government that will set free dozens of women related to members of the extremist group, opposition activists said.

The women and children were among 30 people kidnapped by IS in the southern province of Sweida on July 25 when they carried out a raid that left at least 216 people dead. One woman died in IS custody while another was shot dead. In August, a 19-year-old man was also killed while in detention.

The rare attacks in Sweida province, populated mainly by Syria's minority Druze, came amid a government offensive elsewhere in the country's south. The coordinated attacks across the province, which included several suicide bombings, shattered the calm of a region that has been largely spared from the worst of the violence of Syria's seven-year long civil war.

Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the women and children were the first batch of the exchange, adding that more will follow. The Observatory said the government in return will release 60 women held by authorities and a $27 million ransom.

The Suwayda 24 activist collective posted a picture of a woman and four children who were released adding that authorities freed 17 wives of IS fighters and eight of their children. It added that 21 women and children still being held by IS will be set free in the coming days.

Suwayda 24 identified the released women as Rasmiya Abu Ammar and Abeer Shalgheen and her four children.

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA shows Abeer Shalgheen and her four children after being freed by the Islamic State group that kidnapped them on July 25 during a raid by the extremists on the southern province of Sweida, Syria, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. The Islamic State group early Saturday released two women and four children they had been holding since July in the first part of an exchange with the Syrian government that will set free dozens of women related to members of the extremist group, opposition activists said. (SANA via AP)

"I am very happy. My happiness is great but it would have had been better had they released my son with me," Abu Ammar told reporters shortly after her release.

Shalgheen, standing next to her two sons and two daughters, told Syrian TV "we were confident that we will be set free but at some times (during detention) we were so desperate that we wished the ceiling fell on us."

The July 25 attack on the southern city of Sweida and nearby villages was one of the deadliest by the extremists since they lost most of the land they once held in Syria and Iraq.

State news agency SANA quoted the governor of Sweida Amer Ashi as saying that the six hostages were freed as a result of the tight siege imposed by Syrian troops on the extremists in the desert area outside the city of Sweida. He said that more hostages will be freed soon.

SANA quoted the women as saying that they lived through harsh conditions during their 88 days of detention adding that they suffered from sickness, hunger, cold and hot whether amid fighting.

Syrian troops have been on the offensive in Sweida against IS for weeks in clashes that left dozens of gunmen dead on both sides.

The Observatory said that as the exchange was ongoing, calm prevailed the Tulul al-Safa region where the fighting had been ongoing for weeks.

In eastern Syria, SANA raised the death toll of Thursday's airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition on the last pocket held by IS in the Deir el-Zour province to at least 62.

The Observatory gave an earlier death toll of 46 including civilians and IS members.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been advancing under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition since last month.

The Observatory reported more airstrikes on the area near the Iraqi border on Saturday killing 35 IS fighters on Saturday alone. It said the U.S.-led coalition targeted six vehicles belonging to IS on Saturday.

_____

Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report.

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a man kisses the head of Rasmiya Abu Ammar after being freed by the Islamic State group that kidnapped them on July 25 during a raid by the extremists on the southern province of Sweida, Syria, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. The Islamic State group early Saturday released two women and four children they had been holding since July in the first part of an exchange with the Syrian government that will set free dozens of women related to members of the extremist group, opposition activists said. (SANA via AP)ISTANBUL (AP) - The Latest on the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month (all times local):

10:55 p.m.

Germany's foreign minister is calling into question the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, after the kingdom acknowledged that writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate.

Heiko Maas told German public broadcaster ARD on Saturday that "as long as these investigations continue, as long as we don't know what happened there, there's no basis for reaching positive decisions on arms exports to Saudi Arabia."

Maas spoke after he and Chancellor Angela Merkel released a joint statement calling on Saudi Arabia to hold to account those responsible for the Washington Post columnist's death.

Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest buyers of German arms.

A man enters Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Asked whether German companies should decline attending a business conference in Saudi Arabia next week, Maas said he "certainly wouldn't" be attending any events in Riyadh at the moment.

___

7:45 p.m.

The German government is condemning the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi and calling on Saudi Arabia to hold those responsible to account.

In a joint statement Saturday, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said they were "greatly saddened" by the confirmation that the Washington Post columnist was killed at Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul.

Both said they "condemned the crime in the sharpest possible manner," adding that they expected "transparency from Saudi Arabia about the circumstances of (Khashoggi's) death and the background."

Merkel and Maas said that "those responsible must be held to account." They said "the information provided about the sequence of events in the consulate in Istanbul isn't sufficient."

They also expressed their condolences to Khashoggi's family and friends, "whose fears have now been sadly proven true."

___

6:05 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is demanding further clarity over the death of writer Jamal Khashoggi, after Saudi officials acknowledged Saturday that the Washington Post columnist was killed in a "fistfight" in its Istanbul consulate.

During a party conference in the eastern state of Thuringia on Saturday, Merkel referred briefly to Saudi Arabia and "the terrible events" surrounding Khashoggi's slaying on Oct. 2 saying "still nothing has been cleared up."

She added that "of course we are demanding that they be cleared up."

Germany has joined other nations in calling for a credible investigation into Khashoggi's death.

Berlin has long-standing economic ties with Riyadh that include significant arms shipments. According to official figures, the German government has authorized arms exports worth 254 million ($291 million) euros to Saudi Arabia since March.

___

3:35 p.m.

Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia should "immediately produce" the body of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi so that independence forensic experts can conduct an autopsy in line with international standards.

The human rights group issued the appeal on Saturday after Saudi Arabia said the columnist for The Washington Post was killed in a "fistfight" in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate, in a reversal from previous Saudi assertions that it knew nothing about Khashoggi's fate. The writer vanished after entering the consulate on Oct. 2.

Samah Hadid, Middle East director of campaigns for Amnesty International, says in a statement that the Saudi version of events can't be trusted and that whoever is responsible, regardless of their rank or status, should be brought to justice.

Hadid says an independent investigation ordered by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres would be necessary to avoid a "Saudi whitewash" of circumstances surrounding the killing or any attempts by other governments to "sweep the issue under the carpet to preserve lucrative arms deals and other business ties with Riyadh."

Turkey is conducting its own investigation of the killing and has promised to publicize its results once the probe is complete.

___

2:25 p.m.

The head of a media group says the "authority that gave the orders" to kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi should be punished.

Turan Kislakci, president of the Turkish Arab Media Association, spoke Saturday outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi vanished after entering the building on Oct. 2.

After initially denying any involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance, the kingdom said early Saturday that the Saudi writer and critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was killed in a "fistfight" in the consulate and that 18 Saudis have been arrested.

Kislakci says Khashoggi was "slaughtered by bloody murderers" and that his group wants "true justice" for its slain colleague.

___

1:50 p.m.

The deputy head of Turkey's ruling party says Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul.

Numan Kurtulmus of the ruling Justice and Development Party also said Saturday that Turkey would share its evidence of Khashoggi's killing with the world and that a "conclusive result" of the investigation is close.

His comments came hours after Saudi Arabia said Khashoggi died after a "fistfight" in its consulate, and that 18 Saudi suspects are in custody. Turkish pro-government media have given a different account, saying a hit squad was sent from Saudi Arabia to kill the columnist for The Washington Post.

Kurtulmus says he thinks "it's not possible for the Saudi administration to wiggle itself out of this crime if it's confirmed."

___

1:25 p.m.

Britain's Foreign Office says it is considering the Saudi report confirming writer Jamal Khashoggi's death, and reiterated that those responsible must be held to account.

In a statement Saturday, the ministry said "We are considering the Saudi report and our next steps."

It added: "As the foreign secretary has said, this was a terrible act and those responsible must be held to account."

Meanwhile, opposition parties Labour and the Liberal Democrats urged Britain to take steps to suspend arms sales to the kingdom.

Lib Dem leader Vince Cable said that Britain's heavy reliance on the Saudis for arms sales "is embarrassingly compromising in these circumstances."

___

1:20 p.m.

A United Nations spokesman says U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is "deeply troubled" by the confirmation of the violent death of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, following Saudi Arabia's acknowledgement that he was killed in its Istanbul consulate.

Spokesman Stephane Dujarric says Guterres "stresses the need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Khashoggi's death and full accountability for those responsible."

Saudi Arabia said early Saturday that the columnist for The Washington Post had been killed in a "fistfight" in the consulate after he went there on Oct. 2. It says 18 Saudi suspects are in custody and intelligence officials have been fired.

__

1:10 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to speak at the opening of a stadium early Saturday afternoon, though it is unclear whether he will comment on Saudi Arabia's acknowledgement that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate.

Erdogan, who has promised a thorough investigation of Khashoggi's killing, is to make public remarks in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

Turkish pro-government media had said for days that an official hit squad traveled from Saudi Arabia to kill Khashoggi, who vanished after entering the Saudi consulate on Oct. 2. That version differs from the account of Saudi Arabia, which said early Saturday that the Saudi journalist died in a "fistfight."

Saudi Arabia says 18 Saudi suspects are in custody and that intelligence officials were fired.

U.S. President Donald Trump says Saudi Arabia's announcement that suspects are in custody for Khashoggi's killing is a "good first step," though some U.S. lawmakers say Saudi Arabia's account isn't credible and seems designed to exonerate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of any involvement.

___

11:40 a.m.

A senior member of Turkey's ruling party has criticized Saudi Arabia over its acknowledgement that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Leyla Sahin Usta says the kingdom should have given its explanation "before the situation reached this point."

Usta, a human rights official in the ruling Justice and Development Party, said Saturday that Turkish authorities, including prosecutors, forensic and security officials, have already reached some conclusions as part of their investigation into Khashoggi's death.

She says it would have been "more valuable" if Saudi officials had admitted that Khashoggi was killed in its diplomatic post.

Saudi Arabia initially denied allegations that the columnist for The Washington Post had been killed in its consulate. It acknowledged early Saturday that he had and said 18 Saudi suspects were in custody and intelligence officials had been fired.

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8:45 a.m.

Amnesty International says the "impartiality" of a Saudi investigation into the killing of Jamal Khashoggi would remain in question after authorities in the kingdom said the journalist died after a fight in the consulate in Istanbul.

Amnesty's Rawya Rageh says early Saturday the rights group and other organizations have been very clear that what is needed is "an impartial and independent investigation by the U.N. to find out what happened and ensure justice" for Khashoggi.

She said rights groups have been concerned of a "whitewash" in the investigation.

Khashoggi disappeared after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Saudi authorities say a fight broke out in the consulate after which Khashoggi died.

___

8:10 a.m.

Saudi Arabia claims Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, finally admitting that the writer had been slain at its diplomatic post.

Authorities say 18 Saudi suspects were in custody and intelligence officials had been fired.

The overnight announcements in Saudi state media came more than two weeks after Khashoggi, 59, entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul for paperwork required to marry his Turkish fiancee, and never came out.

They also contradicted assertions in Turkish media leaks that Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate, claims the kingdom had rejected as "baseless."

But growing international pressure and comments by U.S. officials up to President Donald Trump forced the kingdom to acknowledge Khashoggi's death.

A man leaves Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's remains may have been taken to a forest outside Istanbul or to another city after his suspected killing at the consulate earlier this month. Ankara's top diplomat, meanwhile, denied sharing any audio from the Saudi Consulate with U.S. officials. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

An aerial view of the Belgrade Forest in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official says investigators are assessing the possibility whether the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to the forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city, if and after he was killed inside the diplomatic mission earlier this month. (DHA via AP)

A man enters Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Security guards stand outside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A dozen of Indonesian journalists hold posters with photos of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi during a protest outside Saudi Arabian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city, if and after he was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)

A Turkish police officer walks outside the Saudi Arabia consul general residence in Istanbul, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Turkish crime-scene investigators finished an overnight search of both residence and a second search of the consulate itself amid Ankara's fears that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the diplomatic mission in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A security guard stands at the entrance of Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Turkish crime-scene investigators finished an overnight search of both the consul general's residence and a second search of the consulate itself amid Ankara's fears that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the diplomatic mission in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks to the media after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. Pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak on Wednesday said it had obtained audio recordings of the alleged killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.(Cem Ozdel/Turkish Foreign Ministry via AP, Pool)

A man enters Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A view of Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city - if and after he was killed inside the consulate earlier this month. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A dozen of Indonesian journalists hold posters with photos of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi during a protest outside Saudi Arabian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A Turkish official said Friday that investigators are looking into the possibility that the remains of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have been taken to a forest in the outskirts of Istanbul or to another city, if and after he was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) - The man described as Africa's youngest billionaire said Saturday he is free more than a week after his abduction from a luxury hotel in Tanzania's commercial capital, while police suggested his captors came from South Africa.

"I thank Allah that I have returned home safely," said a statement released by the 43-year-old Mohammed Dewji's foundation. It did not give details about the Oct. 11 abduction or what led to his release but thanked police for working for his safe return.

Dewji, while arriving at the hotel for a workout, had been seized by two masked gunmen who fired into the air before driving away. Regional authorities have said two white men were seen on surveillance video, and they tightened controls at border posts and airports.

"We got information that the abductors used the same car that was used to seize him at the Colosseum Hotel and dumped him at gymkhana (sports facility) grounds," Dar es Salaam Regional Police Chief Lazaro Mambosasa said on Saturday.

"We found him there physically fit, and we suspect that the abductors are South Africans because he said they were communicating in one of the vernacular from that country."

The inspector general of police, Simon Sirro, later told reporters that the captors had demanded a ransom but he didn't divulge the amount or say whether it was paid.

Police seized the vehicle along with an AK-47 assault rifle, two pistols and several rounds of ammunition, Sirro said.

The captors had tried to burn the vehicle after dumping the billionaire, he added.

Tanzania's Environment Minister January Makamba, in a statement posted on Twitter, said he had spoken with Dewji and "he's the usual Mo. So he is okay."

Forbes magazine in 2016 put Dewji's wealth at $1.5 billion.

___

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_AfricaROME (AP) - Italy's government vowed Saturday to engage in constructive talks with the European Union as it still gave final approval to a rule-busting budget and brushed off a ratings downgrade triggered by its higher-than-expected deficit targets.

Premier Giuseppe Conte said the budget plan was definitively approved by all forces at an emergency cabinet meeting Saturday that was called to respond to the EU concerns and resolve an internal government squabble.

Conte said Italy was "available for constructive dialogue" with the EU in the coming weeks.

But 5-Star Leader Luigi Di Maio and League leader Matteo Salvini indicated little room for substantive changes to the budget, with Di Maio saying: "We repeated our positions."

The European Commission has warned Italy that its higher-than-expected budget deficit targets represent an unprecedented deviation from EU budget rules. The government has until midday Monday to respond to EU concerns.

Late Friday, international credit rating agency Moody's downgraded Italy's ratings to Baa3, with a stable outlook, citing the "material weakening in Italy's fiscal strength." Moody's cited the revised plans that will push Italy's deficit up to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product - three times higher than promised by the previous Italian government.

Italian Deputy Premier and League leader Matteo Salvini greets supporters during a rally in Mezzocorona, northern Italy, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Daniel Mosna/ANSA via AP)

Salvini said Saturday he wasn't worried about the downgrade or the criticism and that the Italian government was merely doing what was best for Italians.

"The government will go ahead despite ratings agencies, European commissioners and some internal misunderstanding," Salvini said.

Salvini said ratings agencies had been wrong before about Italy "and they'll fail again this time. It's a good budget and we'll see it through to the end."

The cabinet meeting was called in part because Di Maio had claimed that unauthorized changes were made to the draft budget, involving a proposal to extend a tax amnesty on money held abroad and brought back to Italy. The 5-Star Movement opposes such a move, fearing possible money laundering.

The accusations had sparked tensions in the 4-month-old coalition government but by Saturday the dispute appeared resolved.

Conte said the discrepancy amounted to a technical misunderstanding of a complicated section of the budget plan, and had been simplified in a way that satisfied both his deputies.

Italy insists the increased spending in its plan is necessary to boost growth, which will bring down debt, and that the higher deficit will in turn come down. But Italy is one of the 19 European nations that use the joint euro currency, and its eurozone partners have demanded that it give up the increased spending.

Markets reacted to Italy's plans by pushing up borrowing costs Friday to the highest levels in five years.NEW DELHI (AP) - Most of the casualties in a train disaster that killed dozens of people in northern India were migrant workers, a former state government official said Saturday.

R.C. Yadav, former chairman of Punjab state's Workers Welfare Board, said that many of the 60 killed and dozens injured when a speeding train ran over a crowd celebrating the Hindu festival of Dussehra on Friday night had left their families in neighboring states to work in factories and shops in Punjab.

Most "of those killed are these poor workers," Yadav said, adding that some earned as little as 7,000 rupees ($95) per month.

A local branch of the Indian National Congress party had organized the event at a clearing near the railway tracks on the outskirts of Amritsar.

Organizers erected a huge LED screen for the hundreds of people who gathered to watch the burning of the effigies of Ravana and other demons, said Yadav, who lives just a kilometer (half a mile) from the disaster site. As the fireworks started, the crowd moved backward onto the tracks for a better view when two trains crossed in opposite directions, giving people little opportunity to escape.

Police are investigating whether the organizers had a permit for the event and at what speed the train that ran over the crowd was traveling, said Amritsar's police commissioner, S.S. Srivastava.

The body of a victim of Friday's train accident is carried in for cremation in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

Navjot Kaur Siddhu, a local Congress party politician who was the chief guest at the religious function, said Friday that the celebrations take place in the area every year and railroad authorities are alerted to run the trains at slow speeds.

A large number of people live in the area with homes on both sides of the railroad track, she said.

A crowd gathers at the site of Friday's train accident in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

A woman cries holding on to her husband during the cremation of her son, who was killed in Friday's train accident, in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

Pyare Das, second right wearing white scarf, takes the help of his nephew to light the funeral pyre of his son, a victim of Friday's train accident in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

A woman cries holding on to her husband during the cremation of her son, who was killed in Friday's train accident, in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

Gurjeet Kumar lights the funeral pyre of his maternal grandfather, who was killed in Friday's train accident, as his mother holds on to him in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

Uday Raj Pandey walks forward to light the funeral pyre of his son, who was killed in Friday's train accident, in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)

The funeral pyre of a victim of Friday's train accident goes up in flames in Amritsar, India, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing more than 50 people and injuring dozens more, police said. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill)SYDNEY (AP) - Australia's ruling coalition was forced into minority government on Saturday after a massive swing against its senior partner, the Liberal Party, in a by-election for the seat of the prime minister the party itself had dismissed.

In a stinging backlash from the electorate after the fourth toppling of an Australian leader by internal party vote in just eight years, a swing of more than 20 percent against the sitting Liberals propelled independent candidate Kerryn Phelps to a decisive victory.

The result cost the conservative Liberal-National party coalition its one-seat majority in the House of Representatives, forcing Prime Minister Scott Morrison to rely on deals with independent lawmakers to guarantee confidence in his government, enact legislation and ensure money supply.

The next general election is due in seven months, and there was no immediate talk Saturday that it would be held any sooner.

With Phelps saying she has "no intention of bringing down the government," and other independent lawmakers also vowing to support Morrison's administration, it would seem unlikely that any no-confidence motion brought against the government between now and the election would succeed.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. projections hailed Phelps as the winner after just 9 percent of votes had been counted, forecasting she would gain a 57 percent share of votes on a two-party preferred basis.

Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps delivers her victory speech at a Wentworth by-election evening function at North Bondi Life Saving Club in Sydney, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Australia's ruling coalition will be forced into minority government after a heavy defeat in a by-election for former Liberal Party Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's old seat. With 15 percent of votes counted Saturday, Liberal candidate Dave Sharma conceded defeat to Phelps. (Chris Pavlich/AAP Image via AP)

Liberal candidate Dave Sharma conceded defeat soon afterward, saying: "Tonight's result has been over a little sooner than I expected. I'm certainly glad I kept my day job."

Of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, the Liberals now hold 75, including that of the speaker. The opposition Labor Party holds 69 seats, while independents have six.

The by-election was triggered when Malcolm Turnbull quit politics after being deposed as prime minister in August.

There was no comment from Turnbull on the election result as of late Saturday night.

It's the first time in their 117-year history the Liberals have lost the Wentworth seat, showing the depth of voter reaction to Australia's latest change of leadership without the people having their say.

Morrison said that while the loss was not unexpected given opinion polls, his party had received a loud message from voters.

"They have looked at Canberra and the Liberal Party has paid a big price tonight for the events of several months ago," he said, before adding defiantly, "But as a party, we will continue to rise again."

Morrison pledged that his government would continue as usual - even without a majority - when Parliament returns on Monday, promising to work closely with independent lawmakers.

"We will work constructively with all of those who sit on the cross bench as we always have," he said.

Speaking to reporters, Phelps declined to say how she might vote should a no-confidence motion be moved in Parliament against the government, but indicated she wants the government to run its full term, which expires next May.

Phelps, a doctor and former head of the Australian Medical Association, said the result should count as a warning to lawmakers.

"People have been concerned about the direction of government for a very long time and we've seen a lack of decency, a lack of integrity, and we have to look at what the House of Representatives is about," Phelps said. "It is about representing the people and the people have spoken loud and clear."

The by-election campaign, in a seat with a large Jewish population, drew international attention this past week when Morrison raised the prospect of following the United States by relocating Australia's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Morrison said the idea was suggested to him by Liberal candidate Sharma, a former Australian ambassador to Israel.

Slammed by critics as a cynical bid to garner Jewish votes in the by-election, Morrison's statement was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but sparked concern among Palestinian officials and leaders in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.

Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps, right, is congratulated by supporters as she arrives for a Wentworth by-election evening function at North Bondi Life Saving Club in Sydney, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Australia's ruling coalition will be forced into minority government after a heavy defeat in a by-election for former Liberal Party Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's old seat. With 15 percent of votes counted Saturday, Liberal candidate Dave Sharma conceded defeat to Phelps. (Chris Pavlich/AAP Image via AP)MOSCOW (AP) - A top Russian diplomat says the U.S. allegation that a Russian woman helped oversee a social media effort to influence the 2018 U.S. midterm elections is shameful.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made the comments in a statement Saturday, a day after U.S. prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Elena Khusyaynova. The complaint says she helped oversee the finances at a so-called troll farm aiming to influence U.S. politics through social media postings.

The operation is one of those also named in an indictment this year for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

"Washington, having spread shameless lies about the mythical 'hand of Moscow' for more than two years, is now trying to play the same card ahead of the approaching U.S. Election Day," Ryabkov said in the statement.

The troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, is one of a web of companies allegedly controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has reported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The internet news site Federal News Agency, reportedly also linked to Prigozhin, said in a story Friday that Khusyaynova was its head bookkeeper and had worked with the company since its inception in 2014. But it dismissed the allegation of her involvement in election meddling, saying "probably a closer look should be taken at the cleaners and the pizza deliverer."

Other than her employment, little was publicly known about the 44-year-old Khusyaynova.

According to the Russian bailiffs' database, Khusaynova owes about 10 million rubles ($167,000) for bailiff fees in debt-recovery cases from recent years. How she incurred the debts or their total amount was not stated.

The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that a bank in 2015 filed to recover 7.8 million rubles in debt and a court ordered foreclosure on a residence she owned in the Russian city of St. Petersburg.

The newspaper also reported that her son, Timur, had a channel on YouTube that he used to post videos critical of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The videos suspiciously received thousands of "likes" within minutes of being posted, according to the newspaper.

After YouTube shut down the channel, he established a presence on Vkontakte, a social media site similar to Facebook, the newspaper said.TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Thousands of pro-independence demonstrators gathered in Taiwan's capital on Saturday to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island.

China cut off contact with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's government shortly after her inauguration in 2016 and has been ratcheting up diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taiwan in a bid to compel her to agree to Beijing's insistence that the self-governing island democracy is a part of China.

"I want to loudly say no to China," said 43-year-old demonstrator Ping Cheng-wen, who is self-employed. "I just don't agree with China's rhetoric. We have our own sovereignty, and Taiwan is a country."

Another demonstrator at the rally in Taipei, Kuo Jung-min, an 85-year-old Presbyterian church pastor and Hebrew language professor at Taiwan Theological College and Seminary, said pro-unification advocates should move to China if they think it is a better place to live.

"We have to be real Taiwanese, not fake Chinese," Kuo said. "There is no use being Chinese. Those who advocate pro-unification still live in Taiwan. If China is that good, why don't they just move to China?"

In an Oct. 10 National Day address, Tsai called on China not to be a "source of conflict" and pledged to boost Taiwan's defenses against Beijing's military threats. Tsai said the best way to defend Taiwan was to "make it indispensable and irreplaceable to the world," while remaining nonconfrontational in its attitude toward China.

Pro-independence demonstrators shout slogans during a rally in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Thousands of the demonstrators gathered in Taiwan's capital on Saturday to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

China and Taiwan separated amid civil war in 1949 and China considers the island part of its territory to be taken control of by force if necessary.

Protesters with "Taiwan independence flags" attend a rally in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Thousands of pro-independence demonstrators gathered in Taiwan's capital on Saturday to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

A protester stands beside a slogan reading: "Taiwan China separate countries" during a rally in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Thousands of pro-independence demonstrators gathered in Taiwan's capital on Saturday to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

Pro-independence demonstrators shout slogans during a rally in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Thousands of the demonstrators gathered in Taiwan's capital on Saturday to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

Pro-independence demonstrators stage a rally in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Thousands of the demonstrators gathered in Taiwan's capital on Saturday to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) - The Latest on migration issues in Europe (all times local):

3:55 p.m.

A humanitarian group says its migrant rescue ship has been cleared to leave Malta for repairs, after being prevented from doing so for months by the island's authorities.

The German group Sea-Watch said Saturday that the vessel, Sea-Watch 3, has been "blocked" from leaving Malta since July 2 amid an investigation into Dutch-registered rescue ships.

The probe was triggered by questions surrounding the MS Lifeline as it was trying to land in Malta with 234 rescued migrants on board. Lifeline's German captain denies entering the island's waters illegally and without proper registration.

Sea-Watch said Malta held its ship for almost two months "without justification" after Dutch authorities cleared it of wrongdoing.

The group says over 500 people likely drowned in the Mediterranean during the time that the rescue ships were prevented from sailing.

___

1:45 p.m.

Spanish police say that 10 officers and one migrant have been injured when a large group of migrants tried to escape from a holding center where they await deportation.

Police say that a group of around 80 migrants of Algerian origin tried to break out of the internment center in Madrid early Saturday.

In August, 13 migrants successfully escaped from the same center. Five were arrested shortly after the breakout.

Spain has seen a spike in arrivals of migrants from Africa this year, many attempting the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea in dinghies.

Migrants who have been ordered by a Spanish judge to be deported to their countries of origin can be sent to internment centers for up to 60 days while authorities arrange their return.

___

1:40 p.m.

Cypriot police say most of the 29 Syrian migrants who have arrived to the Mediterranean island after setting sail from Lebanon told authorities they have relatives living on Cyprus.

Police said Saturday that the migrants, including five women, nine children and one unescorted minor, have so far made no requests for asylum after being taken to a reception center on the outskirts of the capital, Nicosia.

The 29 arrived Friday by boat at Cape Greco on Cyprus' southeastern tip.

Cyprus officials say the tiny country of 1.1 million people can hardly cope with a burgeoning number of asylum-seekers.

Earlier this week, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told other European Union leaders that the ethnically split country is coming under "disproportionately great strain" from arriving migrants, especially through the breakaway north.Tennessee American Water is partnering with law enforcement agencies, community organizations and other government agencies to promote a community Drug Take Back on Saturday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The purpose of this event is to keep drugs out of the environment and off of streets. Two of the locations will also include document shredders provided by the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, Division of Consumer Affairs.

Local residents are encouraged to drive up and drop off their old medications  prescriptions or over-the-counter -- for proper disposal at one of the 15 area locations in Hamilton, Bradley or Sequatchie Counties. Walgreens in East Brainerd and Mt. Canaan Baptist Church will have document shredders available for personal documents such as tax information or medical records:

Locations in Hamilton, Bradley and Sequatchie Counties:



Walgreens Locations



Walgreens in East Brainerd - 2289 Gunbarrel Road



Mt. Canaan Baptist Church  4801 Hwy. 58



Walgreens in Hixson - 5478 TN Highway 153



Walgreens in East Ridge - 5301 Ringgold Road



Walgreens in Brainerd - 3605 Brainerd Road



Walgreens in Ooltewah - 9307 County Highway



Walgreens in Soddy Daisy  121 Harrison Lane



Walgreens in St. Elmo  3550 Broad Street



Walgreens in Northshore  110 North Market Street



Walgreens in Dunlap  14857 Rankin Avenue



Walgreens in Cleveland  35 25th Street NW



Other Community Sites



Elks Lodge #91  1069 Graysville Road



First Baptist Church  506 East 8th Street



Food City in Red Bank - 3901 Dayton Boulevard



Orchard Knob Baptist Church  1734 E. 3rd Street



Signal Mountain Police Department -1111 Ridgeway Avenue



The program has positive community and environmental benefits. Having unused or expired medications in the home can lead to medication errors, accidental overdoses, or inappropriate use/abuse. In a well-intentioned effort to avoid these problems, many people flush unwanted medications down the toilet as a means of disposal. However, flushing medications means that traces of these drugs eventually end up back in the environment, said officials.

Experience shows that the most effective and cost-efficient way to ensure high-quality water at the tap is to keep our source waters clean," said Kitty Vaughn, Tennessee American Water supervisor of Water Quality and Environmental Compliance. "We support this partnership because it helps spread an important message to the public: Don't flush medications down the toilet, where they would eventually end up in our waterways.

The local Drug Take Back program offers citizens a chance to safely and conveniently dispose of unwanted, unused prescription or over-the-counter drugs (for both pets and people) and avoid misuse or unintentional harm to families, pets and the environment.

Properly disposing of medication reduces the chance of teenage experimentation and overdose. We encourage residents to take advantage of the drug take back day by simply driving to one of the locations and dropping off medication with no questions asked, said Camilla Bibbs, executive director of the Hamilton County Coalition.

Along with Tennessee American Water and the Hamilton County Coalition, other partners with the Drug Take Back are:

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee



Count It! Lock It! Drop It!



CHI Memorial



City of Chattanooga Police Department



City of Chattanooga Youth & Family Development



CHI Memorial



Drug Enforcement Administration



East Ridge Police Department



Hamilton County Sheriffs Organization



Red Bank Police Department



Signal Mountain Police Department



Soddy Daisy Police Department



Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurances Division of Consumer Affairs



Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services



Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation



Tennessee Department of Transportation



Tennessee Bureau of Investigation



UnitedHealthcare



WalgreensUAE's Etihad Airways and Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) have announced a new codeshare partnership, providing customers with access to more than 40 leisure and business destinations in the home markets and across the world.



In addition to the codeshare agreement, the two carriers also announced plans for greater commercial cooperation in other fields, including frequent flyer programme benefits, cargo, and engineering and maintenance.



The codeshare agreement was signed at Saudia headquarters in Jeddah by Engineer Saleh bin Naser Al Jasser, director general Saudia, and Tony Douglas, group chief executive officer of Etihad Aviation Group.



They were joined by Jaan Albercht, chief executive officer of Saudia; Ahmed Al Qubaisi, senior vice president government and international affairs, Etihad Aviation Group; and Ali Saleh, vice president alliances and partnerships, Etihad Aviation Group.



Al Jasser said: The new partnership broadens aviation and transport links with the UAE, building on the extensive aviation investment and strong foundation in the sector."



With the agreement, the added network coverage enables our guests to benefit from added flexibility and convenience, as well as increase the benefits for members of both airlines frequent flyer plans.



Douglas said: The ties shared between Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the deepest that the two nations have, and therefore we are extremely proud to play our role and bring the two flag carriers together in this unique partnership.



The partnership will allow for enhanced seamless travel across the Etihad Airways and Saudia networks which we anticipate will be highly popular with business and leisure travellers, especially those looking to fly to secondary city destinations.



The codeshare agreement will see Etihad Airways place its EY code on Saudias flights to Abha, Al-Baha, Alula, Arar, Bisha, Dammam, Dawadmi, Gassim, Gizan, Gurayat, Hail, Hofuf, Jeddah, Jouf, Madinah, Qaisumah, Rafha, Riyadh, Sharurah, Tabuk, Taif, Turaif, Wadi-Ad-Dawasir, Wedjh, Yanbo, and Abu Dhabi. Port Sudan, Tunis, Alexandria, Sharm el-Sheikh, Multan and Peshawar are subject to government approval.



At the same time, Saudia will place its SV code on Etihad flights to Baku, Chengdu, Ahmedabad, Nagoya, Tokyo-Narita, Dammam, Jeddah, Madinah, Riyadh, Belgrade, Seychelles, Chicago-O'Hare, and Abu Dhabi.



In addition to the codeshare, the teams at the Etihad Guest and Alfursan frequent flyer programmes are finalising discussions which would see members of each programme being offered reciprocal earn and burn opportunities.



In the cargo world, the teams in both airlines divisions are in talks about greater cooperation, recognising the increased volumes of freighter traffic flowing into and out of the UAE and the Saudi Arabia.



Etihad Airways Engineering will also provide select maintenance services for Saudia aircraft at its MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) facility in Abu Dhabi.



In the winter schedule (effective from October 28), Etihad will operate the following frequencies and aircraft types to Saudi Arabia:



 Medina: One daily A320 operation. Etihad has additional frequencies published for the Umrah peak in November/December.

 Dammam: Four daily A320 operations.

 Jeddah: Three daily operations consisting of one two-class 777-300ER; one two-class 787-10; one A320 operation.

 Riyadh: Three daily operations consisting of one two-class 787-9; one A321, one A320. - TradeArabia News Service

PARIS (AP) - Three people have been charged in France over an Islamic extremist's shooting rampage and supermarket hostage-taking earlier this year.

French regional media reported that the three are suspected of providing help to assailant Redouane Lakdim before his March attack in Carcassonne and the nearby town of Trebes. Four people were killed, including a police officer who traded himself for a hostage.

A judicial official said Saturday that the three were charged with criminal association with terrorists, and one was also accused of possessing arms in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

They were among six people arrested in raids this week. The other three were released. It was unclear why the arrests occurred so long after the attack.

Lakdim was fatally shot by police. His girlfriend was charged earlier this year.ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday, reflecting international skepticism over the Saudi account that the writer died during a "fistfight."

The comment was one of many critical reactions to Saudi Arabia's announcement early Saturday of the writer's violent death, indicating the kingdom's efforts to defuse a scandal that has gripped the world were falling short. U.S. President Donald Trump, however, was an exception. Asked whether he thought the Saudi explanation was credible, he replied: "I do. I do."

Despite widespread outrage over the killing of the columnist for The Washington Post, it is unclear to what extent the top leadership of Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally and a powerful player in a volatile region, would be held accountable for what human rights activists describe as an extrajudicial killing by Saudi agents.

The only way to find out what happened would be through an international investigation led by a U.N.-appointed panel, the editorial board of The Washington Post said.

Saudi Arabia's "latest version asks us to believe that Mr. Khashoggi died after becoming engaged in a 'brawl' with officials who had been sent to meet him. His body, Saudi officials told several journalists, was handed over to a 'local collaborator' for disposal," it said, while also criticizing Trump for allegedly trying to help top Saudi leaders escape "meaningful accountability."

Saudi Arabia said 18 Saudi suspects were in custody and intelligence officials had been fired. But critics believe the complex scheme that led to Khashoggi's death could not have occurred without the knowledge of Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old crown prince whose early promises of sweeping reform are being eclipsed by concerns that he may be an impulsive, even sinister figure.

A view of Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

The Saudi narrative of Khashoggi's death - that he was killed in a brawl following discussions with visiting officials in the consulate - contrasts with Turkish pro-government media reports that a Saudi hit squad, including an autopsy expert, traveled to Istanbul to kill Khashoggi and dispose of his body, which has not yet been found.

The overnight statement, released by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, that the writer died in the consulate also came more than two weeks after Khashoggi, 59, entered the building for paperwork required to marry his Turkish fiancee and never came out. Saudi Arabia initially denied any knowledge of his disappearance.

The kingdom has described assertions in Turkish media leaks, based on purported audio recordings that Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate, as "baseless." Turkish politicians pushed back Saturday.

"It's not possible for the Saudi administration to wiggle itself out of this crime if it's confirmed," said Numan Kurtulmus, deputy head of Turkey's Justice and Development Party. He also said Turkey would share its evidence of Khashoggi's killing with the world and that a "conclusive result" of the investigation is close.

Another Turkish ruling party official, Leyla Sahin Usta, also criticized Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom should have given its explanation "before the situation reached this point." She said it would have been "more valuable" if Saudi officials had earlier admitted that Khashoggi was killed in its diplomatic post.

In firing officials close to Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia stopped short of implicating the heir-apparent of the world's largest oil exporter. King Salman, his father, appointed him to lead a committee that will restructure the kingdom's intelligence services after Khashoggi's slaying. No major decisions in Saudi Arabia are made outside of the ultraconservative kingdom's ruling Al Saud family.

Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and royal court insider for decades in Saudi Arabia, had written columns critical of Prince Mohammed and the kingdom's direction while living in self-imposed exile in the U.S.

"God have mercy on you my love Jamal, and may you rest in Paradise," Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, tweeted following the Saudi announcements.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged "a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Khashoggi's death and full accountability for those responsible," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Standing outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the head of a media group said the "authority that gave the orders" in the killing of Khashoggi should be punished.

Turan Kislakci, president of the Turkish Arab Media Association, said Khashoggi was "slaughtered by bloody murderers" and that his group wants "true justice" for its slain colleague.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. will advocate for justice in the Khashoggi case that is "timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process."

Trump has called the Saudi announcement a "good first step," but said what happened to Khashoggi was "unacceptable."

The Saudi announcements about Khashoggi came in statements carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Public Prosecution showed that the suspects had traveled to Istanbul to meet with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi as there were indications of the possibility of his returning back to the country," the statement read. "Discussions took place with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi during his presence in the consulate of the kingdom in Istanbul by the suspects (that) did not go as required and developed in a negative way, leading to a fistfight. The brawl led to his death and their attempt to conceal and hide what happened."

There's been no indication Khashoggi had any immediate plans to return to the kingdom.

The Saudi statements, which expressed regret and promised accountability, did not identify the 18 Saudis being held by authorities and did not explain how so many people could have been involved in a fistfight.

The kingdom at the same time announced the firing of four top intelligence officials, including Maj. Gen. Ahmed bin Hassan Assiri, a one-time spokesman for the Saudi military's campaign in Yemen who later became a confidant of Prince Mohammed.

Saud Qahtani, a powerful adviser to the prince, also was fired. Qahtani had led Saudi efforts to isolate Qatar amid a boycott of the country by the kingdom and three other Arab nations as part of a political dispute.

On Twitter, where Qahtani had launched vitriolic attacks against those he saw as the kingdom's enemies, he thanked the Saudi government for the opportunity to serve.

"I will remain a loyal servant to my country for all times," he wrote.

Barriers block the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate, background, in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Ayman Nour, an Egyptian dissident, second left, and Turan Kislakci, right, head of the Turkish-Arab media association talk to the media regarding Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, near Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Turan Kislakci, head of the Turkish-Arab media association and friend of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi talks to the media, near Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Turan Kislakci, head of the Turkish-Arab media association and friend of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi talks to the media, near Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Turan Kislakci, head of the Turkish-Arab media association and friend of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi talks to the media, near Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

A security guard stands behind barriers blocking the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

A security guard stands behind barriers blocking the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said Saturday after Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the writer died during a "fistfight" in its consulate. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

A security guard stands outside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Saudi Arabia claims Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" in consulate, finally admitting that the writer had been slain at its diplomatic post. The overnight announcements in Saudi state media came more than two weeks after Khashoggi, 59, entered the building for paperwork required to marry his Turkish fiancee, and never came out.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

The Saudi Arabia's flag flies atop the country's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018.Saudi Arabia claims Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" in consulate, finally admitting that the writer had been slain at its diplomatic post. The overnight announcements in Saudi state media came more than two weeks after Khashoggi, 59, entered the building for paperwork required to marry his Turkish fiancee, and never came out.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Barriers block the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Saudi Arabia claims Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" in consulate, finally admitting that the writer had been slain at its diplomatic post. The overnight announcements in Saudi state media came more than two weeks after Khashoggi, 59, entered the building for paperwork required to marry his Turkish fiancee, and never came out.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

In this image made from a March 2018 video provided by Metafora Production, Jamal Khashoggi speaks during an interview at an undisclosed location. Eighteen days after Khashoggi disappeared, Saudi Arabia acknowledged early Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, that the 59-year-old writer has died in what it said was a "fistfight" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. (Metafora Production via AP) (Metafora Production via AP)

In this image made from a March 2018 video provided by Metafora Production, Eiad Alhaji, a Syrian documentary film maker, grabs a cat that jumped onto Jamal Khashoggi's lap as he speaks in an interview at an undisclosed location. Eighteen days after Khashoggi disappeared, Saudi Arabia acknowledged early Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, that the 59-year-old writer has died in what it said was a "fistfight" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. (Metafora Production via AP)

FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2011 file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks on his cellphone at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Eighteen days after Khashoggi disappeared, Saudi Arabia acknowledged early Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, that the 59-year-old writer has died in what it said was a "fistfight" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)ELKO, Nev. (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times local):

12:35 p.m.

President Donald Trump is poking fun at former Joe Biden on a day when both politicians were campaigning in Nevada for candidates on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Trump was in rural Elko, Nevada, for a rally a short time after Biden appeared hundreds of mile south in Las Vegas.

The president mocked the potential 2020 White House contender as '1 percent Joe' - a reference to Biden's low showing in earlier presidential runs.

Trump said Barack Obama came along in 2008 and took Biden "off of the trash heap and made him vice president."

The audience cheers as President Donald Trump arrives at Elko Regional Airport, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, in Elko, Nv., for a campaign rally. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Trump boasted of the size of his audience in Elko and said Biden drew only a few hundred in Las Vegas "and he was thrilled - that's one of the biggest crowds he's ever had."

___

11:55 a.m.

President Donald Trump is scoffing at the idea of a "blue wave" sweeping Democrats to big victories on Election Day, saying he thinks it's "being rapidly shattered."

He tells a Republican rally in Elko, Nevada, that he "likes where we stand in the election" on Nov. 6 that will determine control of Congress.

The president says "all the Democrats want is power and they've got this blue wave deal going. Not looking like a blue wave."

Trump is listing a number of GOP candidates he says will prevail, including Dean Heller, who's seeking another term as a Nevada senator.

Trump also accuses Democrats of backing an "extremist immigration agenda" and claims that he's "already figured out" how to solve the complex issue of immigration, though he's giving no details.

"We're going to make a lot of people happy," he says. "I think I'll keep it a little bit low-key until the election."

___

11:05 a.m.

Former Vice President Joe Biden says American values are "being shredded by a president who is all about himself."

Biden's swipe at Republican President Donald Trump came as he spoke at a Democratic Party rally in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Biden says America was built on basic fundamental decency and "it is being shredded right now."

He says America built some of the "greatest alliances in literally the history of the world" over the past 70 years. But Biden says Trump is "all about himself."

Biden also called out congressional Republicans, saying they are "choosing party over their country" because of gerrymandering and unlimited spending.

___

10:45 a.m.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is urging union members in Las Vegas to get out the vote for Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada's U.S. Senate race.

Biden has held a rally with Rosen and members of the powerful Culinary Union 226, which represents about 57,000 housekeepers, bartenders and other workers in the city's casino-hotels.

The heavily immigrant union's voter turnout was credited with giving Democrats key victories in Nevada in 2016.

Rosen is seen as one of Democrats' best chances to wrest a Senate seat from Republicans on Election Day. She's running against GOP incumbent Dean Heller in a state that Democrat Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential race over Donald Trump.

The rally took place as early voting began Saturday and shortly before Trump's rally several hundred miles away in rural Elko, Nevada.

___

5:20 a.m.

It's going to be a busy day of politicking in Nevada, where early voting for the Nov. 6 election is beginning Saturday.

President Donald Trump is wrapping up a visit to Western states with a campaign rally later Saturday in rural Elko, Nevada. He's lending support for Dean Heller, who's considered the most vulnerable GOP senator on the ballot this fall.

A few hours earlier, former Vice President Joe Biden is set to be in Las Vegas. And on Monday, former President Barack Obama is returning to Nevada, a state that he won in both his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

Democrat Hillary Clinton carried Nevada by 2 percentage points in the 2016 White House race. But during the last midterm elections in 2014, many Democrats stayed home and Republicans won key races across the state.

Heller faces Jacky Rosen, a Democratic congresswoman who's trying to help her party regain control of the Senate. Republicans now hold a 51-49 advantage.

___

10 p.m. Friday

President Donald Trump says Democrats are "too extreme and too dangerous" to take control of Congress.

That's one of the themes he's hitting on during a visit to Western states as he makes his closing arguments for Republican candidates before the Nov. 6 election.

The president wants to focus on immigration as one of the defining election issues.

On Friday night, Trump rallied thousands of supporters for GOP Senate candidate Rep. Martha McSally of Arizona. He warned of dire consequences if Kyrsten Sinema (SIN'-uh-muh), the Democratic congresswoman challenging McSally, is victorious.

Republicans hold a 51-49 advantage in the Senate now.

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., left, and Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., shake hands before a U.S. Senate debate, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, Pool)NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A Louisiana professor is in heady company, honored by having one of three newly identified species of snakes from the Galapagos Islands named after him.

"They named one after Charles Darwin - that's a no-brainer - and one after the Greek god of fire, and one after me, of all people," said Robert A. Thomas , an environmental biologist and head of head of the Center for Environmental Communication at Loyola University New Orleans.

The snake in question, a handsome critter with lengthwise brown and creamy yellow stripes, is called Pseudalsophis thomasi (sood-al-SO-fis TOM-uhs-eye).

"I've got a picture of it taped up here in the office, and it makes me smile every time I look at it," Thomas said.

He's been studying snakes since the 1970s and began studying those in the Galapagos Islands in 1984. In 1997, he published an overview of Galapagos snakes based on features such as scale counts, patterns and other shapes and forms.

A team of Brazilian and Ecuadorian biologists led by Dr. Hussam Zaher of the Universidad de Sao Paolo used genetic analysis to restudy the snakes and work out their evolutionary route through the chain of islands. That study identified the three new species. In addition to Pseudalsophis thomasi, they are Pseudalsophis hephaestus, for the island chain's volcanic origins; and Pseudalsophis darwini, for the scientist whose theory of evolution grew out of a voyage through the Galapagos.

This undated photo provided by Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues shows a snake named in honor of environmental biologist Bob Thomas. Thomas us the environmental biologist and head of the Center for Environmental Communication at Loyola University New Orleans. He says he has a picture of the snake on his wall, and it makes him smile every time he looks at it. (Courtesy of Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues via AP)

Their findings were published online Aug. 22 by the journal Systematics and Biodiversity, and on Sept. 3 in the Brazilian journal Pesquisa.

The scientists invited Thomas to join the team five years ago. He shared the information he had collected and got more from U.S. museums. Then the others told him they wanted to name one of the new species after him, to honor his work studying the islands' snakes.

"I had to drop off the paper. The rules are that you cannot be an author on a paper where something is named after you," Thomas said. "I thought about it deeply and decided there are just some fun honors you shouldn't pass up in life. This is one of them."

Thomas said the species is mildly venomous but not dangerous to people - only to lizards and other small animals. The one used for the species' formal description was 726 millimeters (about 28.6 inches) long and weighed 105 grams (3.7 ounces).

Thomas said he has photos of the snake that he took in 1984, not knowing it was a different species. They weren't very good, he said, because the snake was wriggling, but they did let him describe the belly scales and back pattern.

"A friend could have named a bacterium after me from Outer Slobovia and that would have been a real honor. ... But this is a snake that I've worked on, so it's very meaningful to me," he said. "I'm very honored."WASHINGTON (AP) - With his demand that the Pentagon create a new military service - a Space Force to assure "American dominance in space" - President Donald Trump has injected urgency into a long-meandering debate over the best way to protect U.S. interests in space, both military and commercial.

At the same time, his approach has left many struggling to understand the basics, such as what a Space Force would do and how much it might cost.

The Pentagon is expected to have enough details filled out by early next year to include a Space Force plan in its 2020 budget request to Congress. Until then, the idea has taken on a life of its own at Trump's political rallies, powered at least in part by his conflating of the nation's civilian space program with the military's separate role of providing space-based navigation and communications satellites.

At a June rally in Minnesota, for example, Trump alluded to his decision in December 2017 to refocus the civilian space program to human exploration as a first step toward returning an astronaut to the Moon. This prompted some in the crowd to chant, "Space Force, Space Force!" Trump responded by ticking off the names of the current military services and adding, "Now we're going to have the Space Force. We need it."

Earlier this month Trump told a rally in Kentucky, "One of the biggest applause I get wherever I go is when I talk about the Space Force."

But just what is this thing?

FILE - In this Aug. 9, 2018 file photo, Vice President Mike Pence, center, is greeted by Deputy Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan, left, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis before speaking at an event on the creation of a United States Space Force at the Pentagon. With his demand that the Pentagon create a new military service -- a Space Force to assure "American dominance in space" -- President Donald Trump has injected urgency into a long-meandering debate over the best way to protect U.S. interests in space, both military and commercial. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Some may think it would assemble a razzle-dazzle new army for the heavens that would deploy soldiers in space or arm astronauts with galactic superweapons. Analysts say the reality is that building space muscle is more about reordering the way the Pentagon already uses space than about combat.

In fits and starts, the military has been trying for decades to reorganize and accelerate technological advances in space. Some blame the Air Force, which has had the lead, for underinvesting in space because it prefers spending on warplanes.

Details are still in play, but the main idea is this: find more effective ways to defend U.S. interests in space, especially the constellations of satellites that U.S. ground, sea and air forces rely on for navigation, communications and surveillance. These roles make them increasingly tempting military targets even as China and Russia work on ways to disrupt, disable and even destroy American satellites.

"This isn't science fiction. This isn't about creating space marines or some expeditionary space force that is going to go out and conquer the universe," says Todd Harrison, director of the aerospace security project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is simply a reorganization" of existing space assets so that they can be use more effectively in a unified chain of command with one person in charge.

Still, questions abound as some in the Pentagon talk about someday basing anti-missile weapons in space.

Would a Space Force, which has yet to be authorized by Congress, consume an intelligence agency such as the National Reconnaissance Office, responsible for building and operating reconnaissance satellites? What about the Missile Defense Agency, which runs ground-based anti-missile systems that rely on space to defend U.S. territory?

Also to be determined is how it would connect, if at all, to the security policy goals of U.S. military allies and to U.S. civilian space entities to realize Trump's declared vision of "gleaming new spaceships" built to "conquer the unknown?"

Trump publicly raised the prospect of a Space Force in March. In seemingly offhanded comments to Marines in California he said, "You know, I was saying it the other day, because we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space. I said maybe we need a new force. We'll call it the Space Force. And I was not really serious. Then I said, 'What a great idea.'"

Three months later, on June 18, the "great idea" became an order. Trump told the Pentagon to immediately get started on building a Space Force. Since then, "Space Force" has become a staple at Trump political rallies.

William D. Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy and a longtime Pentagon critic, has written that "Space Force" could become the rhetorical equivalent of "the Wall" - "a big idea that appeals to Trump's base but would be wildly impractical and hugely expensive to implement."

Just how expensive it might be is a matter of debate.

The Air Force has estimated that it might cost $13 billion in the first five years. Others, including Harrison, say that's an exaggeration. In late August, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he was awaiting staff work on an estimate to be included in next year's defense budget request.

Tom Nichols, an author and professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, said no one should think a Space Force will produce an economic windfall of space contracts.

"People who think a 'space force' will create a new economic boom don't realize that our space infrastructure already exists," he wrote an email, stressing that he was speaking in a private capacity. "Any additional spending will likely be concentrated in research and knowledge-centric areas, not depressed manufacturing states." More to the point, he wrote, new weaponry is not in the offing.

"Put simply: We are not going to start building Klingon battle cruisers or the Moonraker fleet in West Virginia or Ohio."

Misconceptions aside, Harrison and many other defense analysts argue that a Space Force is needed.

In Harrison's view, it's about consolidating authority and responsibility for national security space in a single chain of command: reorganization, in other words, and building a bigger cadre of space strategy professionals. He argues that the space workforce now is so scattered across the military services and the intelligence agencies that it has not been possible to create a viable career path that will attract the right people.

He likens the Space Force proposal to the creation of the Air Force in 1947. It was not built from scratch. It was made a separate military department after having resided in the Army as the Army Air Corps.

Although a Space Force would require its own civilian and military leadership and presumably its own uniforms and additional personnel, other steps to consolidate the space chain of command would be bureaucratic.

In fact, one of the main moves already in motion is to recreate U.S. Space Command, which existed from 1985 to 2002, when it was disbanded to establish U.S. Northern Command in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Although Space Command went away, its functions did not. They were absorbed by U.S. Strategic Command, and the Air Force retained its lead role in space through Air Force Space Command.

___LONDON (AP) - The Latest on anti-Brexit protest Saturday in London (all times local):

3:20 p.m.

Organizers of a major protest in London calling for a new Brexit referendum are estimating that 670,000 people have turned up for the event.

Activists want a fresh referendum in which Britons can have a say on the final Brexit deal.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan joined students, families, health workers and scores more for Saturday's march, which ended with a rally at Parliament Square.

Among the protesters was "Lord of the Rings" actor Andy Serkis, who said he believes there should be a second referendum "now that people are more informed" compared to 2016, when Britons voted to pull out of the EU.

A British Union flag is held aloft bearing slogans including "Democracy", "Rule of Law", "Liberty", "Tolerance" and "Fish 'n' Chips", during the People's Vote March, in London, Saturday Oct. 20, 2018. Some thousands of protesters are marching through central London, Saturday, to demand a new referendum on Britain's Brexit departure from the European Union. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)

He says "the will of the people doesn't have to stand still, it's not an immovable thing that is fixed."

___

2 p.m.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has joined thousands of voters calling for a second Brexit referendum at a major demonstration.

Khan said Saturday's event was a "march for the future" for young Britons, including those who were too young to vote in Britain's 2016 EU membership referendum, when those who favor leaving the bloc won by 52 percent to 48 percent.

The mayor, from the opposition Labour Party, has previously backed mounting calls for a fresh referendum so that the public can have a say on whether they accept Conservative Party Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal or choose to stay in the EU.

He told the BBC that "what's clear is that the only options on the table now from the prime minister are a bad Brexit deal, or no deal whatsoever. That's a million miles away from what was promised two-and-a-half years ago."

___

11:30 a.m.

Thousands of protesters are gathering in central London to call for a new referendum on Britain's departure from the European Union.

Organizers want the public to have a final say on the government's Brexit deal with the EU, arguing that new facts have come to light about the costs and complexity of Britain's exit from the bloc since Britons voted to leave in 2016.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan from the opposition Labour Party was among those set to address the People's Vote March on Saturday, which will culminate at a rally in Parliament Square.

Prime Minister Theresa May of the Conservative Party has ruled out another public vote on the subject.

Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, but negotiations have been plagued by disagreements, particularly over the issue of the land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland border.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, speaks with European Council President Donald Tusk after a group photo during an EU-ASEM summit in Brussels, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. EU leaders met with their Asian counterparts Friday to discuss trade, among other issues. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

British Prime Minister Theresa May walks off the podium after a media conference during an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. EU leaders met for a second day on Thursday to discuss migration, cybersecurity and to try and move ahead on stalled Brexit talks. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, speaks with European Council President Donald Tusk after a group photo during an EU-ASEM summit in Brussels, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. EU leaders met with their Asian counterparts Friday to discuss trade, among other issues. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, front centre, holds a klaxon horn, as he joins protesters in the People's Vote March for the Future, in London, Saturday Oct. 20, 2018. Some thousands of protesters are marching through central London, Saturday, to demand a new referendum on Britain's Brexit departure from the European Union. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)

An anti-Brexit campaigner dressed as Theresa May waves European Union flags during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum, in London, Saturday Oct. 20, 2018. Thousands of protesters gathered in central London on Saturday to call for a second referendum on Britain's exit from the European Union. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)MOSCOW (AP) - Moscow authorities have refused permission for an annual commemoration of Stalin-era political repression victims to be held in Lubyanka Square outside the former KGB headquarters and the event's organizers have objected to a proposed alternative site.

For the past decade, the historical and civil rights group Memorial on Oct. 29 has conducted a 12-hour reading of the names of people shot for political reasons during Stalin's time. The event has been held at the Solovetsky Stone, a boulder from the islands that held the prison camp that gave rise to the Gulag system.

The neighborhood administration said Saturday that construction work prevented the event at the location this year and proposed moving it to the "Wall of Grief" monument to persecution victims.

A Memorial statement called changing the ritual's location "outrageous."OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - China's propaganda machine has taken aim at American soybean farmers as part of its high-stakes trade war with the Trump administration.

The publication last month of a four-page advertising section in the Des Moines Register opened a new battle line in China's effort to break the administration's resolve. U.S. farmers are a key political constituency for Trump, and Beijing has imposed tariffs on American soybeans as retaliation for Trump's tariffs on hundreds of billions in Chinese imports.

China regularly disseminates propaganda in the West through its China Daily newspaper to try to influence public opinion in the United States and elsewhere. But the advertorial in the Register was unusual for deploying not a national publication in New York or Washington but a newspaper in the farm state of Iowa.JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Mike Espy is doing a balancing act as he runs for U.S. Senate in Mississippi.

As an African-American Democrat, Espy needs a strong voter turnout among black people, who make up 38 percent of the state's population. But he can't win without some white support in a conservative Southern state where voting patterns tend to break along racial lines. While most black votes go to Democrats, the white majority leans Republican.

Even as prominent African-American politicians, including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, have traveled to Mississippi to endorse him, the 64-year-old Espy says he is reaching out to all audiences with a unifying message.

"I don't care about race or religion or gender or party or sexual orientation or disability," Espy told a diverse group of supporters at a recent reception in his Jackson campaign office, carefully pausing between each category.

"I'm going to be the senator for everybody," he said.

Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary, is one of three candidates trying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith next month. The race could have national repercussions as the GOP tries to maintain its slim Senate majority.

In this Oct. 5, 2018 photograph, Mike Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary, speaks to college and high school students in a small forum on education in Jackson, Miss. Espy hopes to unseat appointed U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and serve the last two years of the six-year term vacated when Republican Thad Cochran retired for health reasons. There are two other opponents in the non-partisan race. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Hyde-Smith to serve temporarily when longtime GOP Sen. Thad Cochran retired amid health concerns in April. The winner of a special election will serve the last two years of the six-year term.

President Donald Trump campaigned for Hyde-Smith at an Oct. 2 rally in northern Mississippi, telling a cheering crowd: "A vote for Cindy is a vote for me."

Espy grew up in Yazoo City in a prominent family that has operated funeral homes in the rural Mississippi Delta for 100 years. An attorney, he's been a familiar face in Mississippi politics for a generation. In 1986, he became the first African-American to win a U.S. House seat in the state since Reconstruction. In 1993, he became President Bill Clinton's first agriculture secretary.

Espy resigned the Cabinet post in 1994 amid a special counsel investigation that accused him of improperly accepting gifts. He was tried and acquitted on 30 corruption charges, but now the Mississippi Republican Party is running an ad that calls Espy "too corrupt for the Clintons" and "too liberal for Mississippi."

Espy said he refused to accept offers of plea deals.

"I put my reputation on the line, went through a trial, went through 70 witnesses against me, went through the special prosecutor who spent $26 million against me and I was found not guilty. Because I was not guilty," Espy told The Associated Press. "In fact, I was so not guilty, I was innocent."

Espy said he was also trying to maintain his own political viability when he refused any plea deal.

"I wanted to run for office one day," he said. "I didn't want any misdemeanor charge over me at all."

Mississippi hasn't sent a black man to the Senate since Reconstruction or a Democrat since Ronald Reagan was president.

The South has been a Republican stronghold for two decades, and Republicans hold all but one statewide office in Mississippi. But Espy supporters point to signs of hope for Democrats this year in a U.S. Senate race in Texas and governors' races in Georgia and Florida. They also point to Democrat Doug Jones' victory in a 2017 special U.S. Senate election in Alabama.

Hyde-Smith served 11 years as a Democrat in the state Senate before switching parties in late 2010. Running as a Republican, she won statewide races for agriculture commissioner in 2011 and 2015. Bryant said he chose her as Cochran's temporary successor because he considers her a solid conservative.

Another Republican is also trying to topple Hyde-Smith: tea party-backed state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who nearly defeated Cochran in a bruising 2014 Republican primary. Besides Espy, the other Democrat in the special election is Tobey Bernard Bartee, a former military intelligence officer who's running a low-budget campaign.

Party labels won't appear on the ballot, and if nobody wins a majority Nov. 6, the top two will advance to a Nov. 27 runoff. Espy is aiming for the runoff, hoping that Republicans will be splintered enough to prevent Hyde-Smith from winning outright.

Vicki Slater, a white attorney who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2015, is backing Espy, who says he supports broad access to health care and a $15 minimum wage that he says could primarily help single mothers.

"He's running against a woman," Slater said. "But you know what the sad fact of life is? It's that some men are better for women on women's issues than some women are."

Slater said troubling questions were raised about Supreme Court nominee, and now justice, Brett Kavanaugh, during his Senate confirmation. Hyde-Smith, the first woman to represent Mississippi in either chamber of Congress, tells voters she has a 100 percent record of supporting Trump. She supported Kavanaugh on the Senate floor and voted to confirm him.

Espy said Christine Blasey Ford was "believable" when she said Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in their teen years; Kavanaugh vehemently denies it. Espy also says Hyde-Smith voted for Kavanaugh's confirmation out of party loyalty.

"As your senator, I'm not going to let anything or anyone rush me to judgment," Espy said in a campaign email. "Not Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi. Not anyone from either party. Because when we put party first, all it does is divide us."

____

Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus .

In this Oct. 5, 2018 photograph, Mike Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary, speaks to college and high school students, unseen, in a small forum on education in Jackson, Miss. Espy hopes to unseat appointed U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and serve the last two years of the six-year term vacated when Republican Thad Cochran retired for health reasons. There are two other opponents in the non-partisan race. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Oct. 2, 2018 photograph, President Donald Trump kisses U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., after introducing her at a rally in Southaven, Miss. Hyde-Smith is running for the final two years of the term of former Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, who retired last year and faces three opponents in this non-partisan race, including Mike Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Aug. 2, 2018 photograph, shot in Philadelphia, Miss., Mike Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary, speaks at the Neshoba County Fair, one of the state's largest political events. Espy seeks to unseat appointed U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., in a nonpartisan race. The winner of a special election will serve the last two years of the six-year term. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)CENTRAL ISLIP, New York (AP) - A man charged with threatening to kill U.S. senators over Brett Kavanaugh's U.S. Supreme Court confirmation has dementia and isn't dangerous, his lawyer said as the 74-year-old was ordered held without bail.

Ronald DeRisi was arraigned Friday after prosecutors said he left a series of voicemails threatening two senators for supporting Kavanaugh's recent confirmation. The lawmakers haven't been publicly identified.

One message warned, "I'm gonna get you," according to a criminal complaint. It said another voicemail talked about a "present" for a senator and added, "It's a 9 mm."

"Representative democracy cannot work if elected officials are threatened with death for simply doing their job," the U.S. attorney for Long Island, Richard Donoghue, said in a statement.

DeRisi's lawyer, Peter Brill, told news outlets his client's brain-atrophying condition has caused behavior problems. The attorney said DeRisi is "belligerent," but not violent, and poses no physical threat to anyone.

"He's gotten to the point where he is not able to comprehend right and wrong," Brill said. "He's not in entire control of his faculties."

In this undated photo provided by the Suffolk County Police Department in Yaphank, N.Y., Ronald DeRisi is shown. On Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, DeRisi, 74, was charged with leaving a series of voicemails threatening to kill two U.S. senators over Brett Kavanaugh's U.S. Supreme Court confirmation. (Suffolk County Police Department via AP)

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Justina Geraci said DeRisi used a pre-paid cellphone, fake name and other strategies to mask his identity. Geraci said that showed "a level of criminal intent."

Authorities said ammunition for a 9-mm gun, but no firearms, were found in DeRisi's Smithtown home. Brill said DeRisi used to own guns but gave them to a relative.

DiRisi was arrested in 2011 after being accused of using a decorative samurai sword to cut cables on a cellphone tower he believed was linked to his wife's cancer, and he was arrested again in 2015 on charges of threatening a lawyer for his homeowner's association amid a dispute over resident fees, his lawyer said. He said neither case resulted in a felony conviction or jail time.

A judge Friday ordered a psychological evaluation for DeRisi.By Nikhat Fatima, TwoCircles.net

Today marks the 117th birth anniversary of Ashfaqullah Khan, one among the many forgotten heroes of Indias freedom fighters. Born to Shafiqur Rahman and Mazharunissa in the year 1900, in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, Ashfaqullah showed a keenness to join the freedom movement of India right from his school days. He was in school when Gandhi made a public call for people to join the Non-Co-operation Movement and many youths with a fire for independence in their bellies wanted to join this movement to free India.

During this time, the unexpected firings and death of civilians at the Chauri Chaura incident, resulted in Gandhi calling off the Non-Cooperation action disappointing many among whom was Ashfaqullah. His dismay at events transpiring around him, and his dwindling faith in non-violent strategies, led to his affiliation with the revolutionary group, Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), led by Ram Prasad Bismil.

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Such revolutionaries all over India who were banded together in small groups united after the Non-Cooperation movement was called off. They believed that Independence from British Imperialism especially from a large and powerful worldwide empire, could not just be won through non-violence and that it had to incorporate more radical methods, that included armed struggles. For these efforts, they needed money and decided to mobilize money by looting the train bound to Kakori carrying state treasury currency.

The robbery was carried out on 9th August 1925 by Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan and 9 other members of HRA. This Kakori train robbery was a real blow to the British Empire who immediately labelled Ashfaqullah and others as Terrorists and began a hunt to capture them.

Soon, all except Ashfaqullah Khan were caught. Ashfaqullah went into hiding and was finding ways to move out of the country to further the cause of Independence struggle. But he was betrayed by one of his friends who wanted the bounty money announced by the British on Ashfaqullahs head.

Ashfaqullah was imprisoned. The prison superintendent, a Muslim, tried to intervene by asking Ashfaqullah to testify against Bismil warning that Bismil, a staunch Hindu, wanted nothing but to establish Hindu rule in the country. The superintendent assured Ashfaqullah Khan, that he would help secure his release if he testified against Bismil. But at the time, Ashfaqullah Khan considered Ram Prasad Bismil to be more than a brother and he explicitly refused to testify against Bismil.

The British sentenced 4 of those involved in the Kakori Train robbery to death by hanging and others to life imprisonment. Thus on 19th December 1927, Ashfaqullah Khan, at only 27 years, was hanged to death at a jail in Faizabad.

Ashfaqullahs participation in the freedom struggle has been depicted in a Hindi movie titled Rang de Basanti (Paint me with the colours of the spring).

Today, Ashfaqullah is remembered as an Indian Muslim patriot and freedom fighter whose contributions and radicalism was part of the larger efforts to oust white colonials.

In his time, Ashfaqullah Khan was also an Urdu poet  a shayar who wrote under the pen name Hasrat.

Some of his writings and poetry are recalled even today. Phoot daalkar shaasan karne ki chaal ka ham par koi asar nahi hoga aur Hindustan azad hokar rahega. (Your conspiracy to divide and rule India will not work; We will make Hindustan ours)SAN DIEGO (AP) - Immigration has again become a hot political issue as President Donald Trump portrays the Mexico border in a state of crisis, underscored by dramatic images of a caravan of Central American migrants moving toward the U.S. and dozens of people climbing the border fence in Arizona.

The Border Patrol released video Friday of the fence incident near Yuma, Arizona, on the same day that the president traveled to the state for a rally where he stressed the need for a tougher border. The government said smugglers helped the migrants over the wall in four places and that the group was comprised of 108 people, including 52 children.

Trump's critics say the characterization of an out-of-control border is overblown and that Republicans are twisting the issue for political gain more than two weeks before the elections.

Here are some questions, answers and facts about what is happening at the border and with immigration:

WHAT IS HAPPENING AT THE BORDER?

Large groups of Central American families, particularly from Guatemala, have increasingly been making dangerous journeys through Mexico to the U.S. border. Many turn themselves in to U.S. border agents near the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas or in the deserts of Arizona to seek asylum.

This image from video provided by the Yuma Sector Border Patrol shows a large group of Central American migrants being dropped over the U.S.-Mexico border wall east of the San Luis Port of Entry in Yuma, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Yuma Sector Border Patrol via AP)

Border Patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, up 30 percent from August and up 80 percent from July, according to preliminary figures from Trump administration officials who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give out the numbers.

"If October is any indication, Fiscal Year 2019 is going to be a very busy year," Manuel Padilla Jr., chief of the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector, tweeted this week.

Agents made 396,579 arrests on the Mexican border during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 31 percent from a 46-year-low in 2017, according to preliminary figures from the officials. Despite the year-over-year surge, the numbers are still low in historic terms, down 76 percent from more than 1.6 million in 2000.

WHERE ARE MIGRANTS GOING?

The U.S. government is having trouble keeping up with the recent influx, forcing officials to find creative ways to handle the situation.

They have been dropping off immigrants at churches in Arizona, equipping them with an ankle-monitoring bracelet and giving them instructions to make court appearances at a later date. Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona, coordinating closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recently placed 340 people in motels in Yuma and Tucson until they could leave for other parts of the country.

Family detention space is limited to about 3,300 beds nationally and, under a court settlement, children can generally be held no more than 20 days, causing many families to be released.

Many of the immigrants are seeking asylum from violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador but the Trump administration has imposed tougher rules for these immigrants. Still, asylum seekers can wait years for their cases to be decided in immigration courts, which have a backlog of nearly 800,000 cases.

In addition, the U.S. continues to see large numbers of children coming to the border without parents. The number of these unaccompanied children held in a network of federally funded locations has soared, including a tent city in Tornillo, Texas, that is being expanded to 3,800 beds.

WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH FAMILY SEPARATION?

The White House found itself in a full-blown global crisis this year over a policy of separating children from their parents at the border. More than 2,500 children were separated from their parents after the administration adopted a "zero-tolerance" policy to criminally prosecute every adult who enters the country illegally. Hundreds of parents were deported without their children.

The administration scrapped the policy, but is considering new options to create deterrents for immigrant families.

The government is unable to hold children generally past 20 days under court-mandated guidelines on the care of children in government custody. But administration officials are working to amend the guidelines to allow for longer detentions.

Another possibility officials were considering is to give parents a choice between being detained months or years with their children while pursuing asylum or releasing their children to a government shelter while a relative or guardian seeks custody, administration officials said.

Immigrant advocates say that would leave parents with a horrible choice: face detention together or agree to separation.

The government is moving to create more detention space, but it's a lengthy process.

WHAT'S TRUMP'S TAKE ON IT ALL?

Trump is now touting family separation, even though it is highly debatable that the practice works.

"The one thing I will also say is that when a person thinks they will not be separated our border becomes overrun with people coming in." he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Central American leaders since a caravan of more than 2,000 migrants that left Honduras, threatening to cut off aid. He tweeted Thursday that he may call up the military to "CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!"

The caravan has increased the presence of immigration as a campaign issue with the midterms drawing closer. But it's unclear how many of the immigrants will ever make it to the U.S. on a trek that could extend past the election.

An earlier caravan this year largely lost steam in Mexico and only a couple hundred of the migrants arrived in the U.S. to seek asylum.

___

Long contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

President Donald Trump looks the the cheering audience as he leaves a campaign rally at Minuteman Aviation Hangar, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Missoula, Mont. Trump's 2016 campaign was defined by his fiery immigration rhetoric, visions of the undocumented flowing across the border to assault Americans and steal their jobs. Now, in the final weeks before midterm elections, he's back at it as he looks to stave off Democratic gains in Congress. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A boy cries as he is brought back down after an unsuccessful attempt to lift him over a border fence, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Earlier in the day, waving Honduran flags and carrying umbrellas to protect against the sun, thousands of migrants arrived at the Guatemalan side of the border with Mexico, demanding they be allowed passage. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Two years after a tough loss in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders returned Saturday to the state where he said his progressive message is resonating more strongly than before.

In an interview with The Associated Press following a rally attended by roughly 1,000 supporters, Sanders said, "The day is going to come, sooner than people believe, that South Carolina is going to become a progressive state."

"We have helped transform political consciousness in this country," the Vermont independent said.

Sanders' trip to the home of this first-in-the-South presidential primary came as part of a swing through several other states with early positions on the primary calendar. Next up was Iowa. A visit to Nevada was planned for next week.

The South Carolina trip differed from many of Sanders' other stops, where he's stumping with congressional candidates. None of them campaigned with him in South Carolina, with some young Democratic leaders in the state eschewing his trip as a self-serving exercise.

Still, Sanders received thunderous applause from his crowd of supporters.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders addresses supporters at a "Medicare for All" rally on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018, in Columbia, S.C. Sanders hasn't announced intentions for another bid in 2020. But in the run-up to the Nov. 6 election, he's visiting more than half a dozen states to stump with congressional candidates. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard).

"So there are progressives in South Carolina! I was told that nobody would come out to a meeting like this," Sanders said. "Thank you all very much for being here."

The trip was billed as a "Medicare for All" rally at the behest of Our Revolution, an offshoot of Sanders' 2016 presidential effort. The event came on the heels of visits by potential 2020 hopefuls Cory Booker and Kamala Harris , both of whom stumped with multiple Democratic candidates during several days in the state accustomed to hosting candidates testing out their messaging and building activist and donor relationships ahead of a national run.

News of Sanders' trip was met with a cool welcome from some Democrats, who characterized it as a distraction and portrayed Sanders' left-leaning message as too liberal for the conservative state. Sanders finished a distant second to Hillary Clinton in South Carolina's 2016 Democratic presidential primary, with only 26 percent of votes cast.

In a digital ad , Republican Gov. Henry McMaster pointed out that his opponent, state Rep. James Smith, boasted being endorsed by Our Revolution South Carolina. Smith's campaign distanced itself from Sanders, saying they "welcome the support" of voters of all persuasions but wouldn't campaign with the senator and didn't support his health care ideas. Smith's lieutenant governor running mate, state Rep. Mandy Powers Norrell, attended Our Revolution meetings on Friday.

Sanders told AP he wasn't concerned about Smith's stance, saying he understood the intricacies of a Democratic statewide campaign here.

"Our Revolution doesn't have a litmus test," Sanders told AP. "South Carolina is not California."

State Rep. Justin Bamberg, one of Sanders' biggest South Carolina backers and a 2016 national surrogate, said the trip was more about continuing to push some of the senator's top issues, such as increasing the minimum wage, than framing a presidential bid.

Ahead of Saturday's rally, Bamberg told AP it is imperative for Democrats to broaden the party's reach.

"If Democrats are going to start winning more, particularly in places where Democrats make up the minority, we've got to start being more welcoming," Bamberg said. "We cannot be a part of that Democrat 'elitists.' That, 'Oh, you're not Democrat enough,' or 'We don't agree with what you say.' Young people ain't trying to hear that nonsense."

Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, who introduced Sanders on stage, took on the critics directly, saying that Sanders' didn't need a candidate invitation to bring his message to South Carolina.

"We are not here for any particular candidate, baby, we're here for you," Turner said. "It's not just about standing on stages with folks who want to get elected to office. ... So South Carolina, I am here to declare that we are here because you are here. All the folks talking trash ain't going do nothing for the people."

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Kinnard can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP . Read her work at https://apnews.com/search/meg%20kinnard .The Marvel universe just got a slice smaller on Netflix with the cancellation of "Marvel's Luke Cage" after two seasons.

The news Friday surprised fans and came soon after Netflix axed another live-action Marvel series, "Iron Fist." Both are part of The Defenders world and ordered up by Netflix among five back in 2013.

"Unfortunately, Marvel's Luke Cage will not return for a third season," said a statement released by Netflix. "Everyone at Marvel Television and Netflix is grateful to the dedicated showrunner, writers, cast and crew who brought Harlem's Hero to life for the past two seasons, and to all the fans who have supported the series."

Netflix didn't provide a reason for the cancellation. An email request for additional comment was not immediately returned Saturday.

The Cage series made a splash when it was released because it featured a rare black superhero in a stand-alone vehicle. Mike Colter starred as the bullet-proof hero for hire. The second season premiered in June. Cage creator and showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker responded on Twitter but also offered no insight into why the series was dumped.

"A lot memories. A lot of individual thank you calls to make," he said. "Just want to say thank you to Marvel, Netflix, the best Writer's room, cast, crew, the Midnight Hour, all those who graced the stage at Harlem's Paradise and the most incredible fan base in the world. Forward always..."

FILe - In this June 21, 2018 file photo, Mike Colter attends the premiere of the Netflix original series Marvel's "Luke Cage" season two at The Edison Ballroom in New York. The Marvel universe just got a slice smaller on Netflix with the cancellation of "Marvel's Luke Cage" after two seasons. The news Friday, Oct. 20, surprised fans and came a few weeks after Netflix axed another live-action Marvel series, "Iron Fist." Both are part of The Defenders world. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File )

Disney, Marvel's parent company, is working on its own streaming service.FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - Jon Rios traces his ancestry to the Pima people of Arizona, but he has no tribal enrollment card and lives hundreds of miles away in Colorado.

He has no interest in meeting any federally imposed requirements to prove his connection to a tribe. If anyone asks, he says he's Native American.

"I'm a little bit like Elizabeth Warren. I have my ancestral lineage," Rios said, referring to his affiliation with the Pima, also known as Akimel O'odham.

The clash between the Massachusetts Democratic senator and President Donald Trump over her Native American heritage highlights the varying methods tribes use to determine who belongs - a decision that has wide-ranging consequences.

Some tribes rely on blood relationships, or "blood quantum," to confer membership. Historically, they had a broader view that included non-biological connections and whether a person had a stake in the community.

The 573 federally recognized tribes have a unique political relationship with the United States as sovereign governments that must be consulted on issues that affect them, such as sacred sites, environmental rules and commercial development. Treaties guarantee access to health care and certain social services but they can be treated differently when involved in a federal crime on a reservation.

In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, Nicole Willis, left, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation who lives in Seattle, listens to speakers at a rally in Lacey, Wash. Willis grew up hours away from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation in the Pacific Northwest, which she calls home. She traveled often from Seattle for cultural events and to spend summers with her grandmother. To her, being Native American means her family is part of a distinct, interconnected community that has existed since ancient times. Her tribe requires citizens to be one-quarter Native American, with 1/16 specific to the tribe, but she said "theoretically, it shouldn't matter." (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Within tribes, enrollment also means being able to seek office, vote in tribal elections and secure property rights.

For centuries, a person's percentage of Native American blood had nothing to do with determining who was a tribal member. And for some tribes, it still doesn't.

Membership was based on kinship and encompassed biological relatives, those who married into the tribe and even people captured by Native Americans during wars. Black slaves held by tribes during the 1800s and their descendants became members of tribes now in Oklahoma after slavery was abolished. The Navajo Nation contemplated ways Mexican slaves could become enrolled, according to Paul Spuhan, an attorney for the tribe.

Degree of blood became a widely used standard for tribal enrollment in the 1930s when the federal government encouraged tribes to have written constitutions. The blood quantum often was determined in crude ways such as sending anthropologists and federal agents to inspect Native Americans' physical features, like hair, skin color and nose shape.

"It became this very biased, pseudo-science racial measurement," said Danielle Lucero, a member of Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico and a doctoral student at Arizona State University.

Many tribes that adopted constitutions under the Indian Reorganization Act, and even those that did not, changed enrollment requirements. Blood quantum and lineal descent, or a person's direct ancestors, remain dominant determinants.

A 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case, Santa Clara v. Martinez, upheld the authority of tribes to define their membership based on cultural values and norms. Some tribes also have used that authority to remove members.

"Historically, we have very fluid understandings of relatedness," said David Wilkins, a University of Minnesota law professor who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. "It was more about your value, orientation and whether or not you acted like a good citizen and a good person, and if you fulfilled your responsibilities. It didn't matter if you had one-half, one-quarter or 1/1,000th, whatever Elizabeth Warren had."

The Navajo Nation, one of the largest tribes in the Southwest, has a one-fourth blood quantum requirement.

The Lumbee Tribe requires members to trace ancestry to a tribal roll, re-enroll every seven years and take a civics test about prominent tribal leaders and historical events, Wilkins said.

DNA alone is not used to prove a person's Native American background. The tests assess broad genetic markers, not specific tribal affiliations or connectedness to a tribal community.

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma uses a roster of names developed near the start of the 20th century to determine membership, regardless of the degree of Indian blood. In that era, federal agents also ascribed blood quantum to Native Americans for purposes of land ownership, Spruhan wrote.

Warren, who grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, and is seen as a presidential contender in 2020, recently released results of a DNA test that she said indicated she had a distant Native American ancestor. The test was intended to answer Trump, who has repeatedly mocked her and called her "Pocahontas."

She has said her roots were part of "family lore," and has never sought membership in any tribe.

Patty Ferguson-Bohnee works to protect sacred sites, culture camps and language immersion for her small Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe in southern Louisiana. The tribe also is seeking federal recognition.

"It's not just about money, it's about how do we protect our cultural heritage?" said Ferguson-Bohnee, who oversees the Indian Legal Program at Arizona State University.

Nicole Willis grew up hours away from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation in the Pacific Northwest, which she calls home. She traveled often from Seattle for cultural events and to spend summers with her grandmother.

To her, being Native American means her family is part of a distinct, interconnected community that has existed since ancient times. Her tribe requires citizens to be one-quarter Native American, with a grandparent or parent enrolled in the tribe, but she said "theoretically, it shouldn't matter."

"We should identify with the nation that we feel a part of," she said. "Because of the way the government dealt with us, we don't have the benefit of ignoring the numbers aspect."

Back in Greeley, Colorado, Rios tries to maintain traditions passed down through his father's side and his identity by gathering medicinal plants, giving thanks for food and to his creator, sitting with family around an open fire and passing knowledge on to his daughters.

"It's important for me and especially our people, always being respectful and trying to maintain that balance," he said.

In this 2016 photo provided by Jason Packineau, Danielle Lucero, center, of Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico, speaks during Indigenous Peoples' Day at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. The clash between Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and President Donald Trump over her Native American heritage highlights the varying methods tribes use to decide who belongs. The decision has wide-ranging consequences for Native American communities and their relationship with the federal government. (Jason Packineau/via AP)JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - The Latest on the Alaska governor's race (all times local):

9:40 a.m.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker dropped his re-election bid in hopes of boosting Democratic rival Mark Begich's chances of beating Republican Mike Dunleavy.

Walker, an independent, said Friday he could not win a three-way race and that Alaskans deserve a choice other than Dunleavy.

Whether Begich can overtake the presumed front-runner remains to be seen with just two-and-a-half weeks before the election. Begich thinks he can win.

Some Democrats and independents had worried that Walker and Begich would split the vote, handing the race to Dunleavy.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker announces he will drop his re-election bid while addressing the Alaska Federation of Natives conference Friday, Oct. 18, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. Walker's re-election plans were dealt a blow earlier in the week after his running mate, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, resigned after making an inappropriate overture toward a woman. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Walker's announcement came three days after his lieutenant governor resigned over what Walker described as an inappropriate overture to a woman.

Dunleavy says his message of reduced government and a full payout of checks to residents from the state's oil-wealth fund has resonated with Alaskans.

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12 a.m.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker has dropped his re-election bid, shortly after the sudden resignation of his lieutenant governor over what Walker described as an inappropriate overture toward a woman.

Walker's announcement, made Friday at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage right before he was to participate in a debate, was met with gasps and cries of "No!" from the audience.

With less than three weeks until the election, Walker, an independent, said it became clear he could not win a three-way race against Republican former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy and Democratic former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich.

Alaskans deserve a competitive race, "and Alaskans deserve a choice other than Mike Dunleavy," he said.

On Friday night, Brett Huber, Dunleavy's campaign manager, issued a statement blasting Walker. "Governor Walker could have chosen a dignified, graceful exit to his campaign. Instead, he opted to bow out with a bitter, partisan attack on Mike Dunleavy. It's too bad - Alaskans deserve better," Huber said.

Alaska gubernatorial candidate Mark Begich, a Democrat, speaks during a debate Friday, October 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. Begich debated Republican Mike Dunleavy shortly after incumbent Gov. Bill Walker dropped his re-election bid. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Alaska first lady Donna Walker, left, blows kisses to the crowd and Gov. Bill Walker reacts at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska, after announcing he was suspending his re-election bid. Walker's re-election plans were dealt a blow earlier in the week after his running mate, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, resigned after making an inappropriate overture toward a woman. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker announces he will drop his re-election bid while addressing the Alaska Federation of Natives conference Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. Walker's re-election plans were dealt a blow earlier in the week after his running mate, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, resigned after making an inappropriate overture toward a woman. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Alaska gubernatorial candidates Democrat Mark Begich, left, and Republican Mike Dunleavy, right, take the stage amid an empty seat for Gov. Bill Walker at a debate Friday, Oct. 19, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska. The two debated shortly after Walker, an independent, dropped out of the race just weeks ahead of the election. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)DETROIT (AP) - Police removed the remains of 63 fetuses from a Detroit funeral home and regulators shuttered the business amid a widening investigation of alleged improprieties at local funeral homes.

Detroit police Chief James Craig said officers found 36 fetuses in boxes and 27 others in freezers during Friday's raid at the Perry Funeral Home. He said he was "stunned" by the discovery, which came a week after the remains of 10 fetuses and one infant were discovered in a ceiling at Detroit's defunct Cantrell Funeral Home. Those remains were found after state regulators in Lansing received an anonymous letter.

Michigan Licensing and Regulatory Affairs said the remains found at the Perry Funeral Home were turned over to state investigators, who immediately declared the funeral home closed and its license suspended.

Inspectors for the State of Michigan's Corporations, Securities & Commercial Licensing Bureau said in a statement that they had found "heinous conditions and negligent conduct" at the Perry Funeral Home, including numerous failures to certify death certificates and obtain proper permits for burial.

The agency's statement said Friday's findings point clearly toward criminal offenses of state laws regulating funeral homes that could be felonies "punishable by imprisonment for not more than 10 years or a fine of not more than $50,000 or both."

Craig said the investigation into the Perry Funeral Home began after a man who has sued that business over its handling of remains of infants and fetuses saw coverage of the discoveries at the Cantrell Funeral Home and told his attorney to contact police.

This Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018 photo shows the Perry Funeral home in Detroit. Using a search warrant, the Detroit Police removed 63 remains of fetuses from the funeral home near Wayne State University on Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A widening investigation of alleged improprieties at local funeral homes is underway. (Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press via AP)

That lawsuit, filed in July, alleges that the Perry Funeral Home stored the remains of stillborn and live birth babies in the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science morgue for up to three years without trying to notify parents, some of whom wanted to donate the bodies for medical research. It also alleges the funeral home may have fraudulently billed Medicaid, as well as the Detroit Medical Center, for burials it never performed.

The attorneys in that suit, Peter J. Parks and Daniel W. Cieslak, said they believe many more infants' remains may be found in the improper possession of the Perry Funeral Home, perhaps as many as 200, based on research of log books kept by the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science.

"I'm really wondering where all the rest of them are," Cieslak said Friday.

Craig said that law enforcement agencies were considering forming a task force to target improper storage of remains and fraud in the area.

As part of investigators' widening probe, Detroit police also raided another funeral home, the Q A Cantrell Funeral Home in suburban Detroit's Eastpointe, along with a home in Grosse Pointe Woods.

The recent discovery of the 10 fetuses and one infant at the Cantrell Funeral Home came after state inspectors in April shuttered that business after finding 21 improperly stored bodies, some of them covered in mold, in the facility.

Since April, 38 unattended bodies and 269 containers of cremated remains have been discovered in the facility.

Detroit Police officers use crime scene tape to cordon off the area while they execute a search warrant at the Perry Funeral Home in Detroit on Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. Police removed the remains of 63 fetuses from the funeral home and regulators shuttered the business amid a widening investigation of alleged improprieties at local funeral homes. (John T. Greilick/Detroit News via AP)LAS VEGAS (AP) - Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke of working class struggles and said President Donald Trump is shredding American values as the Democrat rallied union members in Las Vegas to support Jacky Rosen and other Nevada Democrats.

Rosen, a freshman congresswoman from the Las Vegas-area, is challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dean Heller and the race is seen as one of Democrats' best chances to flip a seat this November.

Heller is the only Republican senator seeking re-election in a state Democrat Hillary Clinton won in 2016. He's a former Trump critic who has become an ally of the president and rallied with him in the northern, rural Nevada city of Elko Saturday.

In Las Vegas, Biden criticized Trump for his approach to Russia and President Vladimir Putin, his equivocating on white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his immigration policies, including the separation of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border

American values, "are being shredded," Biden said. "They're being shredded by a president who is all about himself. It's all about Donald."

The crowd was dominated by members of the powerful, heavily immigrant Culinary Workers Union Local 226. The union represents about 57,000 housekeepers, bartenders, bellmen and other workers in the city's casino-hotels and has been credited with giving Democrats key wins in the state in 2016.

CORRECTS TO LOCAL 226, NOT 266 Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a Nevada Democratic Party rally at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, in downtown Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Biden is urging union members in Las Vegas to get out the vote for Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada's U.S. Senate race. (Christopher DeVargas/Las Vegas Sun via AP)

Democrats are counting on Latino mobilization driven by the union this year to avoid a repeat of the 2014 elections, when Democratic turnout in Nevada faltered.

Trump in Elko later scoffed at the idea of a "blue wave" of heavy Democratic turnout this November and mocked the smaller crowd at Biden's event.

Culinary Union spokeswoman Bethany Khan said later Saturday organizers checked in more than 500 people for the Las Vegas rally, including some who filled in overflow areas away from the stage.

The rally outside the union hall north of the Las Vegas Strip included appearances from comedian Billy Eichner and a mariachi band and came as two weeks of early voting kicked off in the state.

Former President Barack Obama, who won Nevada during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, will be visiting the battleground state Monday with a get-out-the-vote rally in Las Vegas.

Biden also touted the candidacy of other Democrats, including Steve Sisolak, the powerful chairman of the county commission overseeing the Las Vegas Strip who is running for governor, and Susie Lee and Steven Horsford, who are seeking seats to Nevada's 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts, both of which are considered swing seats.

"This election is literally bigger than politics. It's bigger than politics," Biden said. "No matter how old or young you are, you have never participated in an election that is as consequential as this election national and locally."

Biden, who has said he won't decide until at least next year whether he'll seek the presidency in 2020, has been keeping a presence in early voting states like Nevada.

He's scheduled to return Dec. 1 to speak to a fundraiser for the law school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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This story has been updated to correct the proper name of the union.

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a Nevada Democratic Party rally at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, in downtown Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Biden is urging union members in Las Vegas to get out the vote for Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada's U.S. Senate race. (Christopher DeVargas/Las Vegas Sun via AP)

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a Nevada Democratic Party rally at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, in downtown Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Biden is urging union members in Las Vegas to get out the vote for Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada's U.S. Senate race. (Christopher DeVargas/Las Vegas Sun via AP)

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a Nevada Democratic Party rally at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, in downtown Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Biden is urging union members in Las Vegas to get out the vote for Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada's U.S. Senate race. (Christopher DeVargas/Las Vegas Sun via AP)

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to a crowd during a Nevada State Democratic Party rally to promote voting at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 headquarters in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to a crowd during a Nevada State Democratic Party rally to promote voting at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 headquarters in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

People listen to former Vice President Joe Biden as he speaks during a Nevada State Democratic Party rally to promote voting at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 headquarters in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, left, and Rep. Jacky Rosen, raise their hands together during a Nevada State Democratic Party rally to promote voting at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 headquarters in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

Democratic candidates for Congress Steven Horsford, left, and Susie Lee, speak to a crowd during a Nevada State Democratic Party rally to promote voting at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 headquarters in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

Former Vice President Joe Biden, center, with Nevada democratic candidates, speaks to the crowd during a Nevada State Democratic Party rally to promote voting at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 headquarters in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to a crowd during a Nevada State Democratic Party rally to promote voting at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 headquarters in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. Biden is urging union members in Las Vegas to get out the vote for Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada's U.S. Senate race. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (AP) - An employee at Michigan pizza shop that usually doesn't deliver made a big exception for a cancer patient and his wife hundreds of miles away in Indiana.

Julie and Rich Morgan grew fond of Steve's Pizza when they lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, more than two decades ago. They'd planned a trip to the restaurant for Julie Morgan's birthday in September, but Rich Morgan ended up in the hospital in Indianapolis and later in hospice care.

Julie Morgan's father called Steve's Pizza this month and spoke with 18-year-old Dalton Shaffer, who offered to make the 225 mile (362 kilometer) trip to make the delivery.

Shaffer tells the Battle Creek Enquirer he "just wanted to make them happy." MLive.com reports the delivery drew attention after Julie Morgan posted on Facebook about it .KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The rough-looking young men brought clubs and brass knuckles to the Pechersk Monastery in Kiev , one of Orthodox Christianity's most important pilgrimage sites, apparently seeking to disrupt worship. Police spread-eagled them against a wall decorated in faded centuries-old frescos of solemn saints, then hauled them away.

On the other side of the dispute, at a small church in the center of Kiev, a dozen men organized round-the-clock guard duty, worried that nationalist radicals might make their third attempt in a year to seize the place of worship.

The incidents a week ago underline the tensions in Ukraine as it prepares to establish a full-fledged Orthodox church of its own. The planned religious rupture from the Russian Orthodox Church is a potent - possibly explosive - mix of politics, religious faith and national identity.

The imminent creation of the new Ukrainian church raises deep concerns about what will happen to the approximately 12,000 churches in Ukraine that are now under the Moscow Patriarchate.

"The question of what will happen to the property of the Orthodox churches existing in Ukraine after the emergence of a single local church is key and could be one of the most painful" issues of the Orthodox split, said Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian think-tank Penta.

Since the late 1600s, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine had been a wing of the Russian Orthodox Church rather than ecclesiastically independent - or "autocephalous." Many Ukrainians chafed at that arrangement, resenting its implication that Ukraine was a vassal state of Russia.

FILE - In this Sunday, July 27, 2008 file photo, The thousand-year-old Monastery of Caves, the holiest site of Eastern Orthodox Christians, against the background of the Dnipro River, in Kiev, Ukraine. Tensions over the imminent formation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church independent of Moscow are raising fears that nationalists may try to seize Russian church properties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, FILE)

Schismatic churches formed under their own Ukrainian leaders, but they were not recognized as canonical by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the so-called "first among equals" of leaders of the world's Orthodox Churches.

That is about to change.

The Istanbul-based patriarchate last week removed an anathema against Ukrainian church leaders, a major step toward granting full recognition to a Ukrainian church that does not answer to the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Russian Orthodox Church, furious at the move, announced it would no longer recognize the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch. It also fears it will lose deeply cherished sites including the Pechersk Monastery, the seat of the church's Ukrainian branch and a major tourist destination renowned for its richly decorated churches and labyrinthine caves holding the relics of holy men.

It's not exactly clear when the autocephaly will be formally granted. The two schismatic Ukrainian churches must meet to decide who will be the patriarch of the unified church. Once that decision is made, Constantinople is expected to grant the independence order.

In recent years, about 50 churches in Ukraine that were under the Moscow Patriarchate have been forcibly seized and transferred to the Kiev Patriarchate, according to Metropolitan Antony Pakanich of the Moscow-loyal Ukrainian Church.

"People have been forcibly dragged out of our temples, the locks have been sawed off," he told The Associated Press. "People in camouflage and balaclavas, with insignia of radical organizations, have come and beat our believers and priests."

Some believers say they will forcefully defend their right to stay.

"The creation of a local church will push for a new round of confrontation ... we, who are supporters of canonical Orthodoxy, will defend our interests here," said Ilya Bogoslovsky, a 28-year-old who came with his wife and daughter for a service at the chapel of the Tithes Monastery, where the guards had been deployed.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has hailed the creation of the full Ukrainian church as "a guarantee of our spiritual freedom," has pledged that there will be no action taken against parishes that choose to remain under the Moscow Patriarchate.

Similar promises have come from Patriarch Filaret, head of the largest of the schismatic Ukrainian Orthodox churches, who said "creating a single Orthodox Church in Ukraine does not mean that the Russian Orthodox Church does not have the right to exist on our territory."

But some Ukrainian nationalists appear ready to use force. In September, radical right-wingers broke into a church in western Ukraine, beat up a priest, drove parishioners away and locked the building.

A leader of the ultranationalist C14 group, whose adherents have twice attacked the Tithes church in Kiev, sees the presence of Moscow Patriarchate churches in Ukraine as a form of propaganda by an "aggressor country" since the Russian Orthodox Church has close ties with the Kremlin.

The Tithes church is "the Kremlin's political tool," Serhiy Mazur said.

The war between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, which began in 2014 and has killed at least 10,000 people, has also sharply increased the hostility toward the Moscow Patriarchate churches.

Father Sergii Dmitriev, a chaplain in the Ukrainian army, was once part of the Moscow church but switched to the Kiev Patriarchate after the Russia-linked church began to refuse holding funerals for Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war.

"To be in the Moscow Patriarchate is to take part in the murder of Ukrainians," he told the AP. "Not only those who pull the trigger are responsible, but those who bless the pulling of the trigger."

With such passions on both sides, the cleric feared that more violence between the two uneasy neighbors lay ahead.

"The birth of a new Ukrainian church is taking place amid throes for which everyone should be prepared," he warned.

FILE - In this Thursday Oct. 11, 2018 file photo, Patriarch Filaret, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, conducts a service at the Volodymysky Cathedral in Kiev, Ukraine. Tensions over the imminent formation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church independent of Moscow are raising fears that nationalists may try to seize Russian church properties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, FILE)

FILE - In this photo taken Saturday, April 7, 2018 head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Onuphrius, lights believers' candles with fire which was delivered to the Ukrainian capital from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City, traditionally believed to be the burial place of Jesus Christ, after the ceremony of the Holy Fire, during the Easter service in the Monastery of Caves in Kiev, Ukraine. Tensions over the imminent formation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church independent of Moscow are raising fears that nationalists will try to seize Russian church properties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, FILE)

FILE - In this May 4, 2004 file photo, a full moon rises above the golden domes of the Orthodox Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, Ukraine. Tensions over the imminent formation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church independent of Moscow are raising fears that nationalists will try to seize Russian church properties.(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

FILE - In this April 9, 2018 file photo, Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I, right, speaks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Istanbul, Turkey. Ukraine's president says establishing a local Orthodox church won't prevent Russia-affiliated parishes from being able to operate, but tensions over the imminent formation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church independent of Moscow are raising fears that nationalists will try to seize Russian church properties. (Mikhail Palinchak/Presidential Press Service Pool Photo via AP, File)SRINAGAR, India (AP) - Armed soldiers and police fanned out across much of Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday as separatists challenging Indian rule called for a general strike to mourn the deaths of civilians and armed rebels during confrontation with government forces.

The death toll of civilians in an explosion after a gunbattle between government forces and militants the previous day climbed to seven as another injured young man died at a hospital on early Monday.

Government forces Monday patrolled streets in Kashmir's main city of Srinagar and enforced a security lockdown in the downtown neighborhoods in anticipation of anti-India protests. Businesses, schools and shops remained shut and public transport stayed off the roads.

Eight combatants, including five militants and three Indian soldiers, were killed in a pair of gunbattles on Sunday, officials said, triggering massive anti-India protests and clashes during one of the fighting in which nearly three dozen people were injured. The seven civilians were killed in an explosion at the site in southern Kulgam after the fighting ended, police and residents said.

Protesting villagers in Kulgam made several attempts to reach the site where the rebels were trapped, barraging troops with stones and abuse. They were trying to distract the soldiers who apart from guns and grenades also used explosives to blast the house where the rebels were cornered, residents and police said.

Authorities offered condolences to the families of slain and reiterated that gunbattle sites should not be visited by civilians until they're cleaned from any leftover explosives.

Indian paramilitary soldier patrol during a strike in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. Armed soldiers and police have fanned out across much of Indian-controlled Kashmir as separatists challenging Indian rule called for a general strike to mourn the deaths of civilians and armed rebels during confrontation with government forces. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

Some residents blamed Indian troops for excessive use of explosives in populated areas and deliberately leaving explosives at the site.

"It's routine with them (Indian army) to blast homes with explosives for killing holed up militants. High over their victory of killing Kashmiris, they leave the area without clearing it from unexploded explosives," said Farooq Ahmed, a resident in southern Kulgam area where Sunday's incident occurred. "It's so sinisterly planned, and it has happened so many times."

Anger spiraled in the region after the deaths, sparking protests and clashes at many places. Separatist leaders called for Monday's strike to protest what it described "Indian occupation forces crossing all limits of repression to break Kashmir's freedom struggle."

India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim it in its entirety.

Most Kashmiris support rebel demands that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country, while also participating in civilian street protests against Indian control. In recent years, mainly young Kashmiris have displayed open solidarity with the rebels and sought to protect them by engaging troops in street clashes during military operations.

Rebels have been fighting Indian control since 1989. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training the rebels, a charge Pakistan denies.

Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown.

An elderly Kashmiri man walks as Indian paramilitary soldiers guard during a strike in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir,Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. Armed soldiers and police have fanned out across much of Indian-controlled Kashmir as separatists challenging Indian rule called for a general strike to mourn the deaths of civilians and armed rebels during confrontation with government forces. The death toll of civilians in an explosion after a gunbattle between government forces and militants the previous day climbed to seven as another injured young man died at a hospital on early Monday. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold a glitzy investment forum, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Future Investment Initiative, which kicks off Tuesday, was intended to draw leading investors who could help underwrite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's ambitious plans to revamp the economy. But after the wave of cancellations, it could instead highlight the kingdom's growing isolation and the damage inflicted on the prince's reputation - as well as potentially his political future.

The forum is the brainchild of the crown prince, whose lofty vision for the Saudi economy hinges on his ability to attract foreign investments and create enough jobs for the millions of young Saudis who will be entering the workforce in the coming years.

The prince, who is set to inherit the throne from his father, faces steep challenges. More than 4.5 million new working-age Saudis will be searching for jobs by 2030.

One estimate from consultancy McKinsey and Co. says the kingdom needs some $4 trillion in investment to create as many as 6 million new Saudi jobs by then. That's almost three times as many jobs as Saudi Arabia created in the decade leading up to 2013, when oil prices soared.

Without a comprehensive economic overhaul underpinned by trillions of dollars in investments, the unemployment rate for Saudi nationals could exceed 20 percent, McKinsey has warned.

FILE - In this March 7, 2018 file photo, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives to meet Prime Minister Theresa May outside 10 Downing Street in London. Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold a glitzy investment forum that kicks off Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

As unemployment rises, household income would fall- two key triggers that contributed to public fury and revolts in other Arab countries nearly eight years ago.

Unemployment in Saudi Arabia has edged up this year to 12.8 percent. Currently, a third of Saudis seeking employment are between 25 and 29 years old. That number is expected to grow in coming years with half the population under 25.

The crown prince's ability to shepherd the Saudi economy is now in peril after the killing of Khashoggi - a Washington Post columnist who had been critical of the crown prince - in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

After insisting for weeks that Khashoggi had safely left the consulate on his own despite mounting evidence from Turkish authorities that he was killed by Saudi agents, Saudi authorities acknowledged his death last weekend, saying he had died in a "fistfight" with officials sent to convince him to return to the kingdom.

Even that explanation has failed to silence critics, who suspect the powerful crown prince ordered the killing or at the least had knowledge of it.

The Riyadh investment forum, which is meant to raise the kingdom's profile and attract global investors, has seen numerous executives cancel their participation, including the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Uber and Blackrock, as well as Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and the chiefs of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

All Western news outlets that had agreed to sponsor the Riyadh forum - The New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, the Financial Times and the Fox Business Network- have withdrawn their sponsorship in response to Khashoggi's death.

On Monday, hackers appeared to have taken down the main website of the conference.

Prince Mohammed has sought to distance himself from the killing, but international skepticism over the Saudi account of how the journalist died continues to mar his standing and has thrown into question whether Western executives will continue business as usual with the crown prince, who as King Salman's favored son is the second most powerful man in the kingdom.

That could lead the prince to turn to Russia, China and other Asian nations still eager to do business with the oil-rich kingdom.

"This is not going to be end of the Saudi economy. It is an important economy. It is a major oil exporter. It has other relationships across the globe," Ayham Kamel of the Eurasia Group said. "I think we somehow underestimate the importance of Asian businesses."

Last year, the investment forum debuted with Prince Mohammed announcing plans to build a $500 billion futuristic city in the desert called "Neom" and wowing the crowd of global business titans with pledges to lead the ultraconservative kingdom toward "moderate Islam."

But just days after the forum, the emboldened prince launched a sweeping shakedown of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest businessmen and top princes for alleged corruption, transforming the same Ritz-Carlton hotel that had earlier hosted the investment forum into a prison for the country's elite.

More than 200 people were rounded up, with many forced to hand over significant sums of their wealth in exchange for their freedom. An estimated 1,700 individual bank accounts were frozen.

The crackdown rattled investors.

In columns Khashoggi wrote for the Washington Post from his self-imposed exile abroad, he lauded the crown prince's efforts to reform the kingdom, but sharply criticized his parallel crackdown on activists, critics and even some clerics whose only apparent crime was not publicly cheering the prince's risky moves to consolidate power.

"We Saudis deserve more than the spectacle of royals and officials interred at the Ritz Carlton," wrote Khashoggi in a column shortly after last year's investment forum.

"We also should have the right to speak about these important and impactful changes - and the many more needed to achieve the crown prince's vision for our country," he added, before concluding: "We are a kingdom of silence no longer."

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2015 file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a news conference in Manama, Bahrain. Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold a glitzy investment forum that kicks off Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Khashoggi. The meeting was intended to draw leading investors who could help underwrite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's ambitious plans to revamp the economy. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)

Saudi employees print badges of participants of the Future Investment Initiative conference, which kicks off Tuesday, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold the glitzy investment forum, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Saudi employees print badges of participants of the Future Investment Initiative conference, which kicks off Tuesday, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold the glitzy investment forum, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Saudi employees print badges of participants of the Future Investment Initiative conference, which kicks off Tuesday, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold the glitzy investment forum, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

A Saudi employee prints badges of participants of the Future Investment Initiative conference, which kicks off Tuesday, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold the glitzy investment forum, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Saudi employees print badges of participants of the Future Investment Initiative conference, which kicks off Tuesday, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with plans to hold the glitzy investment forum, despite some of its most important speakers pulling out in the global outcry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Five of the six men killed last week when a dump truck collided with a pickup truck on a Utah highway were from Honduras, authorities said Monday.

Utah authorities are coordinating with Honduran consular officials to inform the victim's families before making their identities public, said Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Nick Street.

They were killed Friday when a dump truck driven by 41-year-old Jamie Don McKenzie crossed a median and hit the oncoming pickup south of Park City.

The Hondurans were passengers in the pickup driven by Efrain O. Cardenas, 62, of Salt Lake City, who also died. Three of the men were ejected and all six died at the scene.

The men were traveling to a work site, authorities said.

Maria Matamoros Castillo, the Honduran minister of communications, said four of the men were from one family, according to a recording provided by the Honduran government. Matamoros said one of the men has a disabled child. She said the Honduran government is helping the families of the victims to get the bodies returned to the Central American country.

This Friday, Oct. 19, 2018 photo provided by the Utah Highway Patrol shows the scene of a head-on collision of a dump truck and a pickup on a state highway near Heber, Utah. State troopers say the dump truck crossed a highway median and collided with the pickup truck traveling in the opposite direction, killing all six men in the pickup in an accident authorities suspect may was caused by alcohol and prescription drugs. The Utah Highway Patrol said Saturday its officers found prescription pills and open containers of alcohol inside the dump truck. (Utah Highway Patrol via AP)

Matamoros did not provide the victim's full names, ages or home cities.

"It's so sad for our country," Matamoros said in Spanish.

McKenzie was charged Monday with six counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of driving under the influence causing serious injury as well as allegations involving open containers, reckless driving and speeding, authorities said.

It's unknown if McKenzie has an attorney. He is set to make his initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon in the city of Heber, Utah.

McKenzie has a history of alcohol, domestic violence and driving-related offenses, online Utah court records show.

Four days before the fatal crash, McKenzie was cited with following too close in a vehicle.

In August, McKenzie was charged with assault and intoxication in a domestic violence incident. He pleaded guilty to the charges, and took a plea in abeyance in which he agreed to complete alcohol abuse evaluation and take an anger management class.

In July he was charged with having an open alcohol container in a car.

In 2013, McKenzie pleaded no contest to impaired driving and having an open container.

In 2002, McKenzie pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and was sentenced to nine months in jail. That same year, a judge ordered him to get "alcohol counseling" after he took a plea in abeyance on domestic violence-related charges.

When questioned by authorities after Friday's fatal crash a state highway near Heber, about 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of Park City, McKenzie denied drinking alcohol and refused a blood alcohol test, according to a probable cause statement.

But troopers reported that he smelled of liquor and that they found open containers in the dump truck. McKenzie said he drank whiskey the night before, the document said.

The dump truck was taking dirt to a Park City company on Oct. 19 around midday when authorities say it crossed the median and vaulted a cable barrier, hitting a pickup truck with six people inside traveling the opposite direction, the Utah Department of Public Safety said in a news release.

Before the crash, troopers received multiple calls about the dump truck swerving and cutting off other vehicles.

This Oct.2018, mug shot released by the Wasatch County Sheriff shows Jamie Don McKenzie, 41 in Heber City, Utah. McKenzie is being held at Wasatch County Jail for investigation of six counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of driving under the influence causing serious injury as well as allegations involving open containers, reckless driving and speeding, authorities said. Only one of six victims in the pickup truck has been identified, according to authorities who said the medical examiner's office was working to identify the other five bodies, possibly through DNA, and then notify relatives. (Wasatch County Sheriff via AP)

This Friday, Oct. 19, 2018 photo provided by the Utah Highway Patrol shows the scene of a head-on collision of a dump truck and a pickup on a state highway near Heber, Utah. State troopers say the dump truck crossed a highway median and collided with the pickup truck traveling in the opposite direction, killing all six men in the pickup in an accident authorities suspect may was caused by alcohol and prescription drugs. The Utah Highway Patrol said Saturday its officers found prescription pills and open containers of alcohol inside the dump truck. (Utah Highway Patrol via AP)HMS Queen Elizabeth is the biggest aircraft carrier to sail into New York for half a century, the commanding officer of the ship has said.

The 3.1 billion behemoth warship, which has more than 1,000 personnel on board, anchored about two miles from Manhattan in the Hudson River on Friday.

Speaking to the Press Association, Captain Jerry Kyd also revealed that where the aircraft carrier stopped is just yards from where Admiral Lord Nelson also used to anchor his ships.

We are the biggest carrier to go in there (New York) for about 50 years, he said  highlighting how the larger nuclear-powered Nimitz Class American carriers are forbidden.

There was much excitement on board the vast vessel ahead of the visit, with those in the officers mess the night before heartily singing along to Frank Sinatras New York New York.

As HMS Queen Elizabeth began the sail into the city, with the Royal Marines band and a bagpiper playing the ship in, the crew lined the edges of the carrier and walkways, standing to attention and wearing their smartest uniforms.

(PA Graphics)

Once dismissed by the captain, most of those on the four-acre flight deck gathered at the front of the ship and on the ski ramp to take in the views.

Due to hand over command of the ship on Wednesday to Captain Nick Cooke-Priest, Captain Kyd also revealed that the sail into New York holds extra poignancy for him.

It was in 1986 when he was serving on board HMS Ark Royal as a midshipman that he experienced his first foreign run ashore when that carrier also visited the city.

Captain Kyd, as he prepares to leave the ship for what will be his last run ashore, said the sight of the Statue of Liberty welcoming the aircraft carrier into the city would make him feel like an 18-year-old again.

With both of the test F-35B Lightning jets having disembarked the ship for maintenance, he said his visit 32 years ago involved a touch of aviation flair in the form of two Sea Harriers flying off HMS Ark Royal, hovering in front of the Statue of Liberty and bowing to it.

Asked what message HMS Queen Elizabeth sailing into the metropolis sent, Captain Kyd said it was symbolic of the link between the Royal Navy, US Navy and America and Britain in a post-Brexit world.

This sentiment was echoed by Commodore Mike Utley, commander of the UK Carrier Strike Group, who said the visit to New York shows our global intent as a country.

We are a global nation that seeks to further our western democratic values, he said.

We care about what goes on in the world and that is certainly not going to change any time soon. This is a statement for the next 50 years  it is a statement of intent.

(PA Graphics)

He said the visit was also a massive statement of our close relationship with the United States and between the Royal Navy and US Navy.

That is an enduring partnership, and this is a statement of that enduring partnership, which will continue into the future as the Carrier Strike Group becomes operational, he added.

A floating military base from which the F-35B Lightning jets will launch, from 2021 US Marine Corps will also operate their warplanes from HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Cdre Utley said the partnership between the two countries is apparent and runs deep within the F-35 programme.

This includes a pooling of the jets at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina, and a replenishment at sea from a US Navy ship to HMS Queen Elizabeth during her Westlant 18 deployment off the east coast of America.

With no set figure on how many US F-35s may be embarked upon the UK carrier, he said the air wing will be a combined one featuring British jets and the US Marine Corps.

Asked whether this was unprecedented, he said: Historically you might not have seen combined air wings in aircraft carriers  but I think the future of defence is that we are going to have to co-operate more and more.

Cdre Utley said there was an economic, military, strategic, diplomatic and political benefit to the arrangement, adding: You may well see, in the future, British F-35s operating off US carriers.

On Saturday Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is expected to visit HMS Queen Elizabeth, where he will make a speech during a special Trafalgar Day dinner held on board.

A number of other dignitaries and special guests, including the head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, are also expected to attend the formal event.Members of the suspected hit squad behind the alleged killing of a Jamal Khashoggi came to Britain during the Saudi crown princes state visit, it has been claimed.

Mohammed bin Salman was given the red carpet treatment during a three-day visit in March during which he met the Queen and Theresa May despite widespread protests over the Gulf states human rights record.

At least three of the suspects, First Lieutenant Dhaar Ghalib Dhaar Al-Harbi, Sergeant Major Walid Abdullah Al-Shihri and Abdul Aziz Muhammad Musa Al-Hawsawi, were part of the crown princes entourage, the news site Middle East Eye reported.

Another suspect, Major General Mahir Abdul Aziz Muhammad Mutrib, was seen emerging from a car in Downing Street during the visit, according to the Daily Mail.

Sir John Sawers says evidence suggests Mr Khashoggi has been murdered (Toby Melville/PA)

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the Government remained extremely concerned about the fate of Mr Khashoggi, who has not been seen since visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul more than two weeks ago.

He warned there will be consequences for Britains relationship with the kingdom if it is found the missing journalist was murdered by the Saudis.

Former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers said all the evidence suggested the journalist had been murdered on the orders of someone close to the crown prince, the kingdoms de facto ruler.

He said he did not believe the prince would have acted in the way he did unless he believed he had been given licence to do so by the US administration of Donald Trump.

Turkish government sources have alleged Mr Khashoggi  a persistent critic of the prince and the Saudi government  was tortured, murdered and his body dismembered by a hit squad flown in from Riyadh.

The Saudis have dismissed the claims as baseless, but have yet to provide an explanation as to what happened to him after he entered the consulate on October 2.

However, Sir John said it now appeared very likely that he had been killed.

Britain says it is extremely concerned about the fate of Jamal Khashoggi (Johnny Green/PA)

All the evidence points to it being ordered and carried out by people close to Mohammed bin Salman, Sir John told BBC Radio 4s The World At One.

I dont think he would have done this if he hadnt thought he had licence from the US administration to frankly behave as he wished to do so.

I think President Trump and his ministerial team are waking up to just how dangerous it is to have people acting with a sense that they have impunity in their relationship with the United States.

The former spymaster said the level of detail which had appeared in the Turkish media about a reported recording of Mr Khashoggis final torture and killing meant the tape must exist.

There has been such tension between Turkey and Saudi Arabia over the last 10 years or so they [the Turks] would have been monitoring very carefully what goes on inside Saudi offices, he said.

They could well have had the consulate general bugged in some way or there may have been other devices carried by the squad which carried out the assassination which they were able to intercept.Tory Brexiteers have been told to concentrate their fire on Theresa May instead of her officials by former Whitehall mandarins as tensions over talks with the EU mount.

Three former cabinet secretaries joined forces to condemn attacks on Olly Robbins, the leading civil servant in the exit negotiations.

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster told the Times those who wish to undermine or frustrate Mrs Mays Brexit policy should concentrate their fire on the organ grinder rather than the monkey.

Lord Butler of Brockwell, who served under Sir John Major and Tony Blair, said attacks against advisers were not in the national interest, while Lord ODonnell said the way to strike a good deal with the European Union was not by attacking our own officials.

Sir Mark Sedwill, the acting Cabinet Secretary, took the unusual step of writing to the newspaper earlier this week to defend Mr Robbins, who is widely mistrusted by Brexiteers who believe he wants to keep the UK in a close orbit around the EU.

It comes after Mrs May attempted to reassure business leaders about the progress being made in the Brexit talks following a tricky week.

In a 35-minute conference call with around 130 company bosses, the PM is said to have told them she knows time is running out to reach a Brexit deal, but is confident it can be done.

Stephen Martin, IoD director general, said the PM did not say if the possibility of extending the transition period was being seriously considered.

(PA Graphics)

He told BBC Radio 4s PM programme: She accepts fully that time is running out and a deal needs to be done certainly in the autumn, as she put it.

We need time to get ready for that. She was very clear she accepts the uncertainty that its causing at the minute and the impact that could be having.

But she was making it clear to everybody that she does believe a deal can be done and she is confident.

The only sticking point is the Northern Ireland border and the backstop arrangements.

Downing Street said Mrs May told the business leaders that significant progress has been made in the talks.

She acknowledged that there were a few significant issues that were still outstanding, but said that the very real sense she had from leaders around the table at the council was that they wanted to reach a deal as soon as possible this autumn, a No 10 spokesman said.

She emphasised that both sides wanted to have our future relationship in place by the end of December 2020 so that the backstop never needed to be used, but that the negotiating teams would work intensively on this to find a way forward.

Theresa May also met with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar while in Brussels, to discuss the Irish border issue (Irish Government/PA)

Japanese car firms warned that failing to reach a Brexit deal must be avoided at all costs.

Akio Toyoda, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, said: If no withdrawal agreement is reached and the transition period through December 2020 is consequently not implemented, corporate activities and consumers will be adversely affected by the impacts of suspended production activities resulting from failed just-in-time logistics operations, declines in revenue, and revised vehicle sales prices caused by spiralling logistics and production costs.

We hope that both the UK and EU governments will continue to make maximum efforts to reach a satisfactory settlement and that a withdrawal without agreement is avoided at all costs.

Mrs May faced a Tory backlash after signalling she is ready to delay the UKs final departure from the EUs hold until 2021 in a last ditch bid to end the deadlock over the Irish border issue.

Britain has secured a 21-month transition period following the formal date of Brexit in March 2019, to give authorities and companies time to prepare for new arrangements.

But EU chiefs indicated it could be extended when they met at the European Council summit this week in Brussels.Britain will be under increasing pressure to act against Saudi Arabia after the Gulf kingdom admitted dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed at its Istanbul consulate.

Saudi state television reported on Friday night that a primary investigation into the Washington Post columnists disappearance found he died after a fight broke out in the consulate in Turkey.

So far, 18 Saudi nationals have been arrested and deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have been dismissed, state TV reported.

In the US, the White House said it acknowledged the latest announcement and reasserted its call for justice that is timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process.

The British Government is yet to publicly comment on the latest announcement, but the Press Association understands officials are considering the UKs response to the reports.

Saudi Arabias crown prince Mohammad bin Salman is greeted by Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing Street (Victoria Jones/PA)

Jeremy Hunt had earlier warned there will be consequences for the UKs relationship with Saudi Arabia if it was found the journalist was murdered.

The Foreign Secretary said the Government remained extremely concerned about his fate after he went missing when he visited the consulate more than two weeks ago to get paperwork so he could marry.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a tweeted statement: The United States acknowledges the announcement from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that its investigation into the fate of Jamal Khashoggi is progressing and that it has taken action against the suspects it has identified thus far.

We will continue to closely follow the international investigations into this tragic incident and advocate for justice that is timely, transparent, and in accordance with all due process.

We are saddened to hear confirmation of Mr Khashoggis death, and we offer our deepest condolences to his family, fiancee, and friends.

Statement on Saudi Arabia Investigation: pic.twitter.com/DjBdwZAGAi  Kayleigh McEnany 45 Archived (@PressSec45) October 19, 2018

Labours shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, has called for action to be taken, tweeting in response to the announcement late on Friday: The Saudi lies and impunity must stop here.

We have heard the same excuses time and again from Saudi Arabia on Yemen, and now on Khashoggi: when disgraceful atrocities are committed, they call them unintended mistakes, and the world does nothing, she said.

Earlier, former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers said all the evidence suggested that Mr Khashoggi had been murdered on the orders of someone close to the crown prince.

Turkish government sources have alleged Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the prince and the Saudi government, was tortured and murdered and by a hit squad flown in from Riyadh.

The Saudis first dismissed the claims as baseless, without providing an explanation as to how he disappeared after entering the consulate on October 2.

News of the arrests came as it was reported that members of the suspected hit squad came to Britain during the Saudi crown princes state visit in March, during which he met the Queen and Theresa May.

At least three of the suspects, First Lieutenant Dhaar Ghalib Dhaar Al-Harbi, Sergeant Major Walid Abdullah Al-Shihri and Abdul Aziz Muhammad Musa Al-Hawsawi, were part of the crown princes entourage, the news site Middle East Eye reported.

Another suspect, Major General Mahir Abdul Aziz Muhammad Mutrib, was seen emerging from a car in Downing Street during the visit, according to the Daily Mail.Saudi state-run media is reporting that prosecutors in the kingdom believe Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in a fight.

State media also quotes prosecutors as saying 18 Saudi nationals are being held on suspicion of being involved in the Washington Post columnists death.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump says he could consider sanctions against Saudi Arabia over Mr Khashoggi.

President Trump told reporters after signing a presidential memo in Arizona on Friday that he will involve Congress in any decision. But he says he will be making certain recommendations.

He says that it is still too early to determine potential consequences but that he expects to know more by Monday.

He says: Were going to find out who knew what when and where and well figure it out.Two men have been charged with murder after a 46-year-old father died following a mass brawl near his flat.

Michael Swan, 45, and Gary Beech, 48, will appear in court in connection with the death of Ian Tomlin.

Police said Mr Tomlin died of a head injury caused by blunt force trauma following an incident in a communal area of a block of flats in Battersea, south-west London, on Wednesday.

Police at the scene in Charlotte Despard Avenue, Battersea (Tom Horton/PA)

Officers were called to a group fighting at the building on Charlotte Despard Avenue at about 5.30pm.

Medics battled to save Mr Tomlins life, but he was pronounced dead 45 minutes later.

Swan, of Enterprise Way, Wandsworth, and Beech, of Charlotte Despard Avenue, Battersea, will appear at Wimbledon Magistrates Court on Saturday.Britain and the US will sign an accord to ensure the two nations dominate and out manoeuvre adversaries in the cyber battlefield, the Defence Secretary will announce.

Gavin Williamson is expected to reveal the agreement during a Trafalgar Night dinner onboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, which is currently anchored two miles from Manhattan in New York.

During his speech on Saturday, he will also reveal that the new Atlantic Future Forum will take place on Monday, bringing US and UK industry and military together amid the changing face of warfare, and fight against cyber threats.

Some believe it is not the place for our armed forces to operate outside deployed conflict zones many thousands of miles from the UK mainland, he will say.

They are wrong. Against a threat seeking to subvert and destabilise the very fabric of our society such capabilities are critical.

So I am convinced cyber, information warfare and intelligence must be fully integrated into our military power, that they are fundamental to a modernised defence and our war fighting successes, and that without them we put our nations security at perilous risk.

He will say that this is why the accord, which will be signed on Monday, will serve as a commitment from the US and UK to work with a committee of firms in cyber and artificial intelligence.

The aim is to ensure the special relationship remains the worlds leading partnership for cyber security, defence and artificial intelligence in the face of changing threats, Mr Williamson is expected to say.

The Defence Secretary is expected to reveal the agreement during a Trafalgar Night dinner onboard HMS Queen Elizabeth (LPhot Kyle Heller/Royal Navy/MoD)

Aggressor nations still respect our hard-won military expertise on sea, land and air. But they can now use technology to do us harm in ways once thought impossible, he will add.

Already the UK is acting  combining our technical excellence, our professionalism, our war fighter ethos to design and increasingly use our offensive cyber capabilities.

Capability that can counter and deter malign cyber attacks and that allows us to strike swiftly and strategically as Daesh have found to their cost with their evil propaganda machine wiped from the online battlespace.

It comes as HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britains biggest and most powerful warship, prepares to have her systems rigorously tested against the evolving cyber danger next year as part of Information Warrior 2019.

The Royal Navy-led exercise will simulate attempts to bring down networks and jam satellite communications to ensure the fleet remains able to combat these threats, and as hostile states become more technologically advanced.The Duke of Sussex opened the extension of the Anzac Memorial in Sydney, which remembers the sacrifices made by Australian and New Zealand service personnel.

The 22 million extension of the memorial, in Hyde Park, has been designed as the centre point of the commemorations for the 100th anniversary of hostilities ceasing in the First World War.

Harry unveiled a plaque at the site simply reading: This Memorial Extension was opened by a grandson of the Queen on the 20th October 2018.

The opening of the original Anzac Memorial in 1934 (City of Sydney Archives/PA)

Officially known as Prince Henry until his marriage, the Duke of Sussexs namesake opened the original Anzac memorial in Sydney when the then Duke of Gloucester unveiled a dedication reading This Memorial was opened by a son of the King on 24th November 1934.

Here are some other facts about the memorial:

Some 100,000 people came to watch the opening of the original memorial in 1934.

The soil collection at the Hall of Memory (Brett Boardman/PA)

The extension of the memorial is a realisation of the architect Bruce Dellits original plans for the site, and includes a four-tier cascading waterfall.

The Hall of Memory inside the memorial features soil from the 1,701 towns and districts in New South Wales which were given as addresses for First World War enlistees.

A further 100 soil samples from places of significance to New South Wales military history have also been included within the memorial.

Remembering the fallen at Anzac Memorial Hyde Park. #WeWillRememberThem #RoyalVisitAustralia pic.twitter.com/5Ho1nbXgN4  The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) October 20, 2018

The Dome of Stars  repaired as part of the work  features around 120,000 stars, a representation of men and women from the state who served in the First World War.

Only two Australian soldiers who died during the First World War were brought home  Major General Sir William Throsby Bridges who died at Anzac Cove and the Unknown Soldier. A fund was established in 1916 to raise money for a permanent memorial for the thousands of others who died in service.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex lay a wreath at the Anzac Memorial (Ian Vogler/PA)

The fund had raised 60,000 by the end of the war and Hyde Park was chosen as the location in 1923.

The foundation stones of the memorial were laid in July 1932 and the site  which suffered from funding cutbacks following the economic impact of the Great Depression  opened two years later.Saudi Arabias announcement that suspects are in custody over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a good first step, Donald Trump has said, adding that he would work with Congress on a US response.

The president was speaking at a defence roundtable event in Arizona hours after Saudi Arabia claimed that Mr Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor who was last seen on October 2, was killed in a fistfight at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

The kingdom also said 18 suspects were in custody and that intelligence officials had been fired.

Asked by a reporter whether he thought Saudi Arabias explanation for Mr Khashoggis death was credible, Mr Trump said I do. I do.

Barriers block the road leading to Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

But he said that, before he decided what to do next, he wanted to talk to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia has been a great ally, but what happened is unacceptable, the president said.

Of the Saudi arrests, he added: Its a big first step. Its only a first step, but its a big first step.

A security guard stands at the entrance to Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

On Capitol Hill, politicians including Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham expressed scepticism about the Saudi account, which was vastly different from that given by Turkish officials, who said an assassination squad sent by the kingdom had killed and dismembered Mr Khashoggi.

First we were told Mr Khashoggi supposedly left the consulate and there was blanket denial of any Saudi involvement, Mr Graham tweeted on Friday. Now, a fight breaks out and hes killed in the consulate, all without knowledge of Crown Prince.

Its hard to find this latest explanation as credible.  Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 19, 2018

Mr Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and royal court insider for decades in Saudi Arabia, had written columns critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the kingdoms direction while living in self-imposed exile in the US. He went to the Saudi consulate to obtain paperwork for his forthcoming marriage.

The Saudi explanation for murdering journalist and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi in a consulate  a fistfight gone wrong  is insulting, tweeted Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee. Since the Trump Administration wont stand up against atrocity, Congress must.

The Saudi explanation for murdering journalist and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi in a consulatea fistfight gone wrongis insulting.



Since the Trump Administration wont stand up against atrocity, Congress must.  Tim Kaine (@timkaine) October 20, 2018

Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California said Saudi Arabias claim that Mr Khashoggi died in a brawl was not credible.

If Khashoggi was fighting inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, he was fighting for his life with people sent to capture or kill him, said Mr Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

The kingdom and all involved in this brutal murder must be held accountable, and if the Trump Administration will not take the lead, Congress must, he said.

In a statement on Friday night, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the US will closely follow international investigations into Mr Khashoggis death and will advocate for justice that is timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process.

Earlier on Friday, Ms Sanders said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had spoken to the Crown Prince and briefed the president and John Bolton, Mr Trumps national security adviser.

Mr Trump dispatched Mr Pompeo to Saudi Arabia and Turkey earlier in the week to speak to officials about the case.

Meanwhile, the deputy head of Turkeys ruling party said his country would never allow a cover-up over the killing of Mr Khashoggi.

Numan Kurtulmus, of the ruling Justice and Development Party, also said on Saturday that Turkey would share its evidence with the world and that a conclusive result of the investigation is close.

He added that he thinks its not possible for the Saudi administration to wiggle itself out of this crime if its confirmed.Two explosions were reported in Kabul hours after parliamentary election polls opened in Afghanistan.

Police spokesman Jan Agha said a sticky bomb placed under the vehicle of an intelligence official exploded in the Karte Se neighbourhood in the west of the capital.

There were no immediate reports of injuries but security officials are on high alert as both Islamic State and the Taliban have vowed to disrupt polling.

Observers watch the voting process in parliamentary elections in Kabul (Massoud Hossaini/AP)

Earlier, a small explosion frightened voters queuing at a polling station in the Qarabagh neighbourhood, north of Kabul, to cast their ballot in the first parliamentary elections since 2010.

There were no injuries in the first act of violence to be reported since polls opened at 7am local time on Saturday.

More than 50,000 Afghan security forces have been deployed throughout the country to protect 21,000 polling stations.

The Taliban have warned of violence and told students and teachers to refuse to allow their schools to be used for voting.

Education Minister Mohammad Mirwais Balkhy said 5,500 schools throughout the country are being used for elections.

Afghan men line up to outside a polling station in Kabul (Rahmat Gul/AP)

The Independent Election Commission said 8.8 million Afghans are registered to vote in Saturdays election.

Wasima Badghisy, a commission member, called voters very, very brave and said a turnout of five million would be a success.

As voting began, polling workers struggled with a new biometric system and in several polling stations workers took an extraordinary amount of time to locate names on voter lists.

In some polling stations in the capital, voting started as much as an hour late, causing small disturbances by frustrated voters, some of whom had arrived to vote nearly two hours before polls opened.

The new biometric machines meant to curtail fraud were late additions to Afghanistans elections and had not been tested in the field nor had workers had more than a few weeks to learn the system.

An election commission employee, left, uses a biometric device in Parliamentary elections in Kabul (Massoud Hossaini/AP)

Independent Election Commission chairman Abdul Batih Sayad warned ahead of polling that the system might experience glitches and asked for voters patience.

In the run-up to the elections, two candidates were killed while polling in Kandahar was delayed for a week after a rogue guard gunned down the powerful provincial police chief.

Commission deputy spokesman Aziz Ismaili said no results will be released before mid-November and final results will not be out until later in December.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani cast his vote as polls opened at 7am.

In a televised speech afterwards, he congratulated Afghans on another election and praised the security forces, particularly the air force, for getting ballots to Afghanistans remotest corners.

He also reminded those elected to Parliament that they are there to serve the people and ensure the rule of law.Former president of Ireland Mary Robinson is standing firm on her call for people to go vegan to tackle climate change, despite a backlash which saw her local council ask her to withdraw the comments.

The long-standing campaigner, who runs a climate justice foundation in her name, said she spoke from the heart when she made the remarks two years ago and stands by her call for people to consume less.

The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told the audience at the One Young World summit in The Hague on Saturday that her comments, made at the same summit in Ottawa two years ago, prompted a formal letter from her local council in her native Co Mayo.

Mary Robinson is standing by her 2016 call for people to go vegan to tackle climate change. Former Ireland president told @OYWTheHague her local council sent a formal letter asking me to withdraw those words, which I have not done. And I still say. #OYW18 pic.twitter.com/oSwZ28LDJq  Aine Fox (@aine_fox) October 20, 2018

Mrs Robinson faced criticism from some in Irelands farming community following her comments in 2016.

She said on Saturday: I said (in 2016) we all have to do more. We have to be more energy-efficient, we have to recycle, we must think about what we eat, we need to eat less meat, maybe become vegetarian or even vegan. And I got a big cheer.

But, back in my country, Ireland, this didnt go down too well and it ended up with the local authority in my county in Ireland, Co Mayo, sending me a formal letter asking me to withdraw those words, which I have not done. And I still say, and I still say.

And the point is we do have to take a stand and we do have to make our voices heard and if people take action themselves they are much more likely to use their vote and their power to change what government policies are doing.

Individual action alone wont get us there even if we try our hardest; we need government policies.

Mary Robinson speaks at the One Young World summit in The Hague (One Young World/PA)

Expanding on her comments later in an interview with the Press Association, she described herself as pro-farmer and said Ireland could successfully diversify and market itself as an organic producer.

She said: I know Im criticised in Ireland for saying that we need to eat less meat, and we need to become more vegetarian, maybe even some of us vegan. I say this because there are studies that prove that we do need as a global community to eat less meat and the figures are actually quite startling of the reduction that we need to do.

She said diversification would be a positive thing for the country, adding that farmers should not be blindly thinking theres only one way forward.

We could market Ireland as an organic place for food that could be very important in the European Union, she said.

Im certain it could be a positive thing and should be, and Im all for farmers having good incomes and being supported.

She told this years summit, which is being attended by more than 1,900 young leaders from 196 countries: Achieving climate justice, I believe, is the space race for your generation.

Mrs Robinson accused US President Donald Trump, who recently suggested climate change could go back, of making stupid remarks.

She told PA: I dont think President Trump necessarily believes in anything but himself and his own advancement and the advancement of his family and the advancement of his friends who are more or less very much wedded to, and in the pocket if you like, of fossil fuel companies.Theresa May is under pressure to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia after the Gulf kingdom admitted that dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed at its Istanbul consulate.

Saudi state television reported on Friday night that a primary investigation into the Washington Post columnists disappearance found he died after a fight broke out in the consulate in Turkey.

But the explanation about Mr Khashoggis death has been met with widespread scepticism and the Prime Minister has been urged to now put arms trading with the kingdom on ice.

Saudi Arabia is the UKs key ally in the region and also a significant trading partner.

Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is greeted by Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing Street (Victoria Jones/PA)

Britain rolled out the red carpet for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in March.

During his state visit he was granted rare access to a briefing on foreign policy issues by national security officials alongside his meetings with the Queen and Mrs May.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is considering the next steps in Britains response to the case, officials said.

Mr Hunt has previously warned there will be consequences for the UKs relationship with Saudi Arabia if it was found the journalist was murdered.

Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: What we would do certainly at the moment, and I think the Government should do this, is to suspend all arms sales to the kingdom.

Mr Gardiner acknowledged there were a lot of jobs in the UK linked to the defence trade but said this is about who we are as a country.

We have a thriving defence industry and, of course, this would be a hit to that industry, he added.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said the case gets murkier and murkier.

He added: The Government should have already suspended arms export licences to Saudi Arabia given the outrages in Yemen. This reinforces the argument for loosening the bonds to the regime.

US President Donald Trump said he found the Saudi explanation credible and it was a very important first step.

A number of Saudi nationals have been arrested and deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to the Crown Prince, have been dismissed, state TV reported.

Turkish government sources have alleged that Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the prince and the Saudi government, was tortured and murdered by a hit squad flown in from Riyadh.

The Saudis first dismissed the claims as baseless, without providing an explanation as to how he disappeared after entering the consulate on October 2.

Members of the suspected hit squad reportedly came to Britain during the princes state visit.

At least three of the suspects  First Lieutenant Dhaar Ghalib Dhaar Al-Harbi, Sergeant Major Walid Abdullah Al-Shihri and Abdul Aziz Muhammad Musa Al-Hawsawi -were part of his entourage, the news site Middle East Eye reported.

Another suspect, Major General Mahir Abdul Aziz Muhammad Mutrib, was seen emerging from a car in Downing Street during the visit, according to the Daily Mail.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: We send our condolences to Jamal Khashoggis family after this confirmation of his death.

We are considering the Saudi report and our next steps.

As the Foreign Secretary has said, this was a terrible act and those responsible must be held to account.Both leaders of the Scottish Green Party have given their backing to a vote on the final Brexit deal.

Co-conveners Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman pledged their support for a so-called Peoples Vote in a bid to stop the UK leaving the EU.

Speaking at the party conference in Glasgow, Ms Chapman said she is very much in favour of the principle of a Peoples Vote.

Mr Harvie told delegates they would have the chance to join the campaign for a Peoples Vote in a motion to be debated at the conference.

Like Maggie, I cant stay neutral on that question,  he said.

Even if it is a narrow window of opportunity to bring that vote about, and even if bringing it about gives us no guarantee of the outcome, weve already said as a party that it looks like now being the only way, the only possibility of stopping Brexit.

Scottish Greens co-conveners Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman back a Peoples Vote (Scottish Greens/PA)

"The Greens are adamant that Brexit can be stopped" says @Ross_Greer as he proposes a motion reaffirming our belief that Scotland's future is independence in the EU #SGPconf #SGPconf18 pic.twitter.com/YhbLdCXqTD  Harry Huyton (@Harryhuyton) October 20, 2018

He said the motion gives party members the choice to join the chorus of voices saying loudly that the only thing to do is to stop this mess and, if Westminster wont come to its senses, let the public be the ones to cancel Brexit.

Mr Harvie said the Brexit process is incompetent chaos and a direct assault on the authority of our parliament.

He warned that leaving the EU would harm Scotland as well as the rest of the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and criticised the Conservative and Labour stance on immigration, saying freedom of movement is a human right.

The Green MSP said the Scottish Greens remain committed to Scotlands future as an independent country which is a full member of Europe.

He added: The extreme Brexiteers are already flirting with the sociopaths of the US libertarian right, the same outfits which have been a force for ill from climate denial to union-busting.

Thats the agenda these people want to impose on us  one in which the social, environmental and workplace rights and protections which were fought for by generations before us are torn to pieces in the pursuit of an already failed economic system.

Patrick Harvie on migration : human beings should not be considered only for their economic value. Well said!#SGPconf  Alex Staniforth (@Alex4Craig_Dudd) October 20, 2018

He ridiculed proposals for a Festival of Brexit, saying: Can any day out sound less appealing?

He added: The only reason to call a festival would be if we cancel Brexit and stop this mess.

The conference also heard from Green member of the Irish senate, Grace OSullivan, who warned of concern in Ireland that the UK is three seconds from midnight in the Brexit negotiations but appears to have no resolutions to key problems.

She said: Brexit is something that we discuss every day in Dublin, every day in Ireland, in fact its on everyones mind.

A guillotine blade hanging ominously over the political, economic and social progress that has defined the island of Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement came into effect.

She said there is cross-party agreement in Ireland to look to the EU and the UK to protect the peaceful and borderless island we have worked so hard to create.Stormont special advisers should be subject to Civil Service disciplinary processes if they breach their code of conduct, Robin Swann has said.

The Ulster Unionist leader supported an independent review of their number, role, remit and salaries, and said they should be compared with their counterparts across the rest of the UK.

The role of special advisers has been under the spotlight during the Renewable Heat Incentive inquiry.

Mr Swann told his partys annual conference in Armagh: And I think it goes without saying that special advisers need to be pulled into line.

It is clear that when it is left up to parties it doesnt work.

So we are proposing that special advisers must be subject to the Northern Ireland Civil Service disciplinary process for breaching their code of conduct.

Stormont special advisers should be subjected to civil service disciplinary processes if they breach their code of conduct, Robin Swann said (Michael McHugh/PA).

He also reiterated unionist concerns about legacy proposals from the Government.

In particular, it quickly became clear that we could not give our support to the Historical Investigations Unit  another mess that has the DUPs fingerprints all over it.

We agree that the current situation is intolerable for victims.

But we cannot stand over these proposals.

We cannot support the establishment of a parallel police force.

We cannot allow the rewriting of history.

He highlighted the plight of those who have already had a Historical Enquiries Team review, those whose loved ones were murdered outside Northern Ireland and the 47,000 who were injured.

When a former justice minister has said that this process may only lead to one or two prosecutions  why are we setting up an entirely new police force?

"We are proposing that the Assembly Commissioners remit be expanded to allow them to investigate alleged breaches of the Ministerial Pledge of Office & Code of conduct" @RobinSwannUUP #UUP18 pic.twitter.com/xshNQQir5m  Ulster Unionist (@uuponline) October 20, 2018

Why are we not adequately funding our existing police force, which has the support of all political parties and across the community?

Why are we just moving the workload from one desk to another at great expense?

He said his party knows the human cost of IRA terror.

And we will not allow history to be rewritten so that the murders of our party members, our elected representatives  our friends  are portrayed as anything other than the barbaric, bloodthirsty, sectarian murders that they were.

To allow narratives to be shaped by those who brought mayhem to our streets will not reconcile our society for future generations.Organisers claim more than 500,000 anti-Brexit campaigners have joined a central London protest calling for a fresh referendum.

The Peoples Vote march set off from Park Lane and is expected to end in a rally in Parliament Square.

Celebrity cook Delia Smith, Dragons Den businesswoman Deborah Meaden and London Mayor Sadiq Khan are among the speakers at the event, which is being compered by broadcasters Richard Bacon and Mariella Frostrup.

The Peoples Vote campaign said its stewards estimated the size of the crowd to be around 570,000.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, speaking ahead of his platform appearance, said: Today will go down as an historic moment in our democracy. A moment when in their thousands, people from every corner of our country and every section of our society will take to the streets  coming to make our voice heard.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was on the march (Yui Mok/PA)

Weve heard some complain that a public vote would be undemocratic and unpatriotic. But the opposite is true. Theres nothing more democratic  nothing more British  than trusting the people to have the final say on our future.

The lies, the mistruths and the deceptions of the referendum campaign have now been exposed, and its clear the will of the people is changing. No one voted to leave the EU to make themselves poorer. No one voted to make life harder for our children and grandchildren. No one voted to see our NHS damaged. And no one voted for the shambles that this Government has created.

In a video message of support, Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, said: Let me say this loudly and clearly, if the issue comes before the House of Commons, SNP MPs will support a Peoples Vote which includes the option to remain in the EU.

She added: The Tory governments handling of these negotiations has been chaotic, incompetent and shambolic.

Having spent two years telling us that no deal was better than a bad deal, the Prime Minister is now preparing to pile pressure on MPs to vote for a bad or blindfold deal on the grounds that no deal would be catastrophic.

She is trying to scare the UK into the frying pan out of fear of the fire. It is a scandal and it should not be accepted.

An anti-Brexit campaigner dressed as Theresa May (Yui Mok/PA)

Delia Smith said people were not fully informed when they voted but now understood the dire consequences.

The only way we can avoid this total madness and win back our future has to be a Peoples Vote.

The march was led by a group of young voters calling for a second referendum.

Emily Longman, 20, said she was four months too young to vote in the referendum.

Miss Longman, who was marching alongside Emma Stevens, also 20, said: Were both Spanish students due to study abroad next year, but no one knows what will happen with Erasmus funding.

Joe Trickey, from Croydon, was celebrating his 83rd birthday at the march.

He said: I believe very strongly in the EU as a place of peace and strength.

Going out puts us in isolation and leaving isnt about trade deals, its about our values.Police in Afghanistan say a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a polling station in Kabul.

The first major attack in Saturdays parliamentary elections is said to have taken place in a school in the northern Kabul neighbourhood of Khair Khana.

A doctor treating the wounded said three people were killed and six wounded.

Observers watch the voting process in parliamentary elections in Kabul (Massoud Hossaini/AP)

Waheed Ullah, a police officer, said ambulances were heading to hospital with victims. Dr Mashook Hakimi was working with the ambulances to get the injured to hospital.

Both the upstart local Islamic State affiliate and the Taliban threatened violence during elections, warning people to stay away from the polls.

Instead, outside most polling stations there were lines of people waiting to mark their ballot.

Afghan men line up to outside a polling station in Kabul (Rahmat Gul/AP)

The Taliban further warned teachers and students to not allow schools to be used as polling stations.

The suicide attack targeted a school where a polling station was set up.A senior Royal Navy officer has said he is extremely confident HMS Queen Elizabeth and the cutting-edge F-35 stealth fighter jets are well protected from Russian hacking.

In recent weeks, Russia and its military intelligence unit the GRU have been accused of a raft of cyber-attacks on targets around the world.

These included an alleged attempt on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons which was investigating the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

The World Anti-Doping Agency, transport systems in the Ukraine and democratic elections such as the 2016 US presidential race are also believed to have been targeted.

Asked how confident he is the ship and jets are properly protected in light of the allegations made against Russia, the commander of the UK Carrier Strike Group, Commodore Mike Utley, said extremely.

This is fifth-generation stuff, these things are built with that in mind. We know the threats that are there, and they were built to deal with them, he told the Press Association.

That does not mean we can be complacent, because we cant be complacent.

Cdre Utley, who took over as the commander of the UK Carrier Strike Group two-and-a-half weeks ago, said they are absolutely focused in the cyberspace.

He revealed that an information warfare commander now operates within the carrier strike group alongside the traditional sections of anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-surface.

(PA Graphics)

It is not just about viruses and attacks, it is also about hybrid information warfare and the sort of shenanigans some nations are prepared to play, Cdre Utley added.

And we need to be ahead of that narrative.

It comes as Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson will announce that Britain and the US will sign an accord to ensure the two nations dominate and out-manoeuvre adversaries in the cyber battlefield.

He will confirm the agreement on Saturday during a Trafalgar night dinner on board HMS Queen Elizabeth, which is currently anchored two miles from Manhattan in New York.

Next year, HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britains biggest and most powerful warship, will also have her systems rigorously tested against the evolving cyber danger as part of Information Warrior 2019.

The Royal Navy-led exercise will simulate attempts to bring down networks and jam satellite communications to ensure the fleet remains able to combat these threats, and as hostile states become more technologically advanced.

The arrival of the aircraft carrier into New York comes after two of the multimillion-pound stealth fighter F-35B Lightning jets landed on the flight deck and took off from the ski ramp of the vessel for the first time on September 25.

So far there have been more than 98 take-offs from the ski jump on the bow of the ship, as well as two Shipborne Rolling Vertical Landings  a technique developed in a simulator.

With flight trials set to resume at the end of the month, Cdre Utley said they have been progressing very well indeed.

One of the first ever F-35B Lightning II jet vertical landings on HMS Queen Elizabeth (PO Arron Hoare/Royal Navy/MoD/Cr)

We are ahead of anywhere that people thought we would be, the design of the ship has really proven outstanding in terms of operating the jets, he added.

That is the benefit of building two things together, rather than trying to smash one thing into another.

We have done some extraordinary testing, we have already done our first rolling landing with the jet  to be able to do this live it is a huge part of the capability of the jet.

It can come back heavy  we are not in the old days that we used to be with the Harrier where we would have to ditch fuel and bombs in order to get back on deck.

That was a world first.

During the trials, 500 lb GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs have also been dropped from the jets as the aircraft carrier sailed off the east coast of America.

Marking the first time the US bombs have been embarked on a British ship, it allowed the teams from the Integrated Test Force to see how the warplanes behave at various weights.Scotlands First Minister has pulled out of a conference after learning that former White House strategist Steve Bannon will speak at the event.

Nicola Sturgeon had been scheduled to attend News Xchange 2018 in Edinburgh next month, but said she would not be part of any process that risks legitimising or normalising far right, racist views.

Mr Bannon, who worked on Donald Trumps successful presidential election bid, has championed right-wing political causes since leaving the White House.

I believe passionately in free speech but as @ScotGovFM I have to make balanced judgments - and I will not be part of any process that risks legitimising or normalising far right, racist views. I regret that the BBC has put me and others in this position. https://t.co/5x1rHZkaR9  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) October 20, 2018

Ms Sturgeon tweeted: I believe passionately in free speech but as Scotlands First Minister I have to make balanced judgements  and I will not be part of any process that risks legitimising or normalising far right, racist views.

News Xchange is a gathering of journalists and media operators from around the world. Mr Bannon is scheduled to be interviewed by the BBCs Sarah Smith.

BBC News and BBC Scotland are listed as host partners of the event at Edinburgh International Conference Centre November 14 and 15, and Ms Sturgeon said I regret that the BBC has put me and others in this position.

Nicola Sturgeon has pulled out of a conference next month (Jane Barlow/PA)

It is understood the First Minister was due to speak at the opening reception at the National Museum of Scotland on November 13.

Who are you looking forward to hearing speak at the #NX18?



Here's a list of some of our speakers --->https://t.co/53Zdo8KyMI pic.twitter.com/bu1Iaqre2i  News Xchange (@NewsXchange) October 19, 2018

She tweeted: The email the BBC sent to my office justifying Bannons inclusion described him as a powerful and influential figure  promoting an anti-elite movement. This kind of language to describe views that many would describe as fascist does seem to me to run the risk of normalisation.

A spokesperson for the event organisers told journalists at The Ferret: News Xchange is a journalism conference which seeks to explore the main industry trends and challenges delegates to understand the wider political and social context.

Steve Bannon is a key influencer in the rise of populism  one of the dominant political trends of our times. He has been invited to speak at News Xchange this year because his views are relevant to todays society at large and therefore to the media industry.

We also consider it our journalistic responsibility to share and scrutinise a range of relevant viewpoints within the framework of a balanced debate.

A BBC spokeswoman said: Steve Bannon was invited on behalf of the EBUs News Xchange committee.

Good journalism in a world of fake news and disinformation is more vital than ever. Journalism is about asking tough questions and understanding what is happening in the world and why.

A conference designed to analyse the big issues impacting that world isnt an endorsement of anyone or anything  it is a function of what journalism is.

It's those who give media platforms to dangerous far right extremists like Bannon who *make* them powerful and influential. The BBC must withdraw the invitation. https://t.co/JJRcnG6NYJ  Patrick Harvie  (@patrickharvie) October 20, 2018

Green MSP Patrick Harvie commented: Steve Bannon has been centrally involved in the attempt to re-boot the far right, both in the US and in Europe.

To normalise such dangerous extremists and give them media platforms of this kind only serves to give them a veneer of legitimacy.

When the rise of fascism threatens so many people across the world, there must be a clear line drawn between democratic politics and extremism and the BBC must recognise that line.Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.Europe is a force for peace in Northern Ireland and around the world, a pro-Remain rally was told.

A sizeable crowd waving EU flags and carrying anti-DUP placards converged outside Belfast city hall on Saturday afternoon.

Even some of the dogs on the street bore the blocs blue and gold symbol.

Anti-Brexit campaigners at a pro-Remain rally at Belfast City Hall (Michael McHugh/PA).

Cross-community Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said: We have the EU to thank for the longest period of peace and stability on the continent of Europe in history.

The EU forced nations to compromise, forced people to come together on the big issues like climate change.

It underpinned the peace. The EU spent money underpinning the peace right across Europe, from the fall of the Berlin Wall, which could have been chaotic, right through to the former Yugoslavia.

Nowhere did it do that more so than right here.

She said the Brexit debate was not about protecting the UKs union or creating a united Ireland, as it has been characterised by some on opposite sides of the issue.

Just in case anyone was wondering what NI thinks of Brexit... #Rally4Remain pic.twitter.com/LDT5bMVG8G  James Gordon (@jamesgordon89) October 20, 2018

Mrs Long said: This is about the people of this place coming together and saying, just like the EU, we value cooperation, we value immigration, we value working together in the best interests of everyone in this society.

That is why we value the EU, it is not just a model of cooperation, it underpins the very cooperation that we need here.

Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by 56%.

One placard hoisted aloft in the crowd said: 56% say protect Good Friday.

Anti-Brexit campaigners at a pro-Remain rally at Belfast City Hall (Michael McHugh/PA)

People fanned out around a stage in front of the city hall down the main shopping street, Donegall Place, to hear speeches focused on environmental, human rights, business and student concerns.

Residents of border communities who oppose Brexit were also present.

The crowd held a range of placards, including one proclaiming: We wont be DUPed in reference to the pro-Brexit Northern Irish partys partnership with Theresa Mays Conservatives at Westminster.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putins apparent support for Brexit was referenced as a reason for Northern Ireland to reject it.

Other slogans demanded a Peoples Vote, a second referendum, which another podium speaker, SDLP South Belfast Assembly member Claire Hanna, said Brexiteers should have nothing to fear from if they are so wedded to democracy.

She added: Nobody voted to be poorer.

Fab turnout at Rally for REMAIN at Belfast City Hall pic.twitter.com/dz0YViV110  Damian McGenity (@damian_mcgenity) October 20, 2018

John Barry, a Queens University professor associated with the Green Party in Northern Ireland, also attacked the Brexiteers.

He said: They are drunk on magical thinking around making England great again and continuing the border with science fiction technology and an exaggerated sense of their importance in the world and they show no signs of sobering up.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein vice-president Michelle ONeill said Brexiteers had exhibited reckless disregard for the people of Northern Ireland.

They care nothing for jobs or for rights and are prepared to drive our economy over the cliff.Scottish Green Party members have backed the campaign for a Peoples Vote on any Brexit deal before the UK leaves the EU.

Members at the partys autumn conference in Glasgow voted in favour of a motion supported by co-conveners Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman.

The policy of a Peoples Vote is already held by the Green Party in England and Wales.

Conference overwhelmingly backed that the people should have a say in the final #Brexit deal before leaving the European Union by way of a referendum   Scottish Greens (@scottishgreens) October 20, 2018

Mr Harvie said: The events of the next few weeks and months will pose a critical threat not only to the immediate prospects for our country and for our neighbours, but also to the future of our democracy and Scotlands Parliament.

Scottish Green Party members have said unequivocally that voters in the UK must have the final say on any Brexit deal or no deal.

We can now look forward to campaigning with our Green colleagues throughout the rest of the UK for a Peoples Vote.

Scottish Greens co-conveners Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman back a Peoples Vote (Scottish Greens/PA)

The MSP described the Brexit process as incompetent chaos and a direct assault on the authority of our Parliament.

He said the Scottish Greens remain committed to Scotlands future as an independent country which is a full member of Europe.

He added: The extreme Brexiteers are already flirting with the sociopaths of the US libertarian right, the same outfits which have been a force for ill from climate denial to union-busting.

Thats the agenda these people want to impose on us  one in which the social, environmental and workplace rights and protections which were fought for by generations before us are torn to pieces in the pursuit of an already failed economic system.

Great to be with so many @scotgp members at #sgpconf in Glasgow - people who know the climate crisis demands the urgent transformation that other parties have never grasped. #Divest Now!  Patrick Harvie  (@patrickharvie) October 20, 2018

The conference also heard from Green member of the Irish senate, Grace OSullivan, who warned of concern in Ireland that the UK is three seconds from midnight in the Brexit negotiations but appears to have no resolutions to key problems.

She said: Brexit is something that we discuss every day in Dublin, every day in Ireland, in fact its on everyones mind.

A guillotine blade hanging ominously over the political, economic and social progress that has defined the island of Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement came into effect.

She said there is cross-party agreement in Ireland to look to the EU and the UK to protect the peaceful and borderless island we have worked so hard to create.Police in Northern Ireland have disputed the Irish Presidents claim that he had to travel to Belfast by private jet because they could not provide security for him to journey by road.

Michael D Higgins said his staff were advised that for security reasons I couldnt be picked up at the border during last Mays trip.

He is running for a second term as president and the election will be held on Friday.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) told the BBC: It is the long-established policy of the PSNI not to comment on the security arrangements made for individuals.

Great buzz about Bandon this morning on our #Aras18 canvass. Plenty of people across the town will be voting for #ANewIreland on October 26th! #LiadhForPresident https://t.co/Eq7ivt6sJS pic.twitter.com/dUDirRmhFe  Liadh Ni Riada (@LiadhNiRiada) October 20, 2018

Assistant chief constable Alan Todd added: The PSNI routinely work with visiting heads of state and other key figures visiting Northern Ireland and make full provisions for their safety in line with their requirements.

Mr Higgins made his claim about his travel arrangements during a televised presidential debate on Wednesday evening.

Police in Northern Ireland have disputed Irish President Michael D Higgins claim that he had to travel to Belfast by private jet because they could not provide security for him to journey by road (Niall Carson/PA).

In May, he spoke at Queens University Belfast on the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement around the concepts of remembering, forgiving, forgetting, and imagining.

Sinn Fein presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada said President Higgins claim about his transportation had been disputed by the PSNI.

She added: They reject this security claim [and] say it would be inconceivable that the President of Ireland would not have been afforded security if it had been requested.

It is clear now that Michael D Higgins claim has caused considerable anger within the PSNI.

Another wonderful afternoon meeting supporters in Bray! And stunning weather too! #michaeldforpresident #aras18 pic.twitter.com/4TxxGOnCGM  Michael D Higgins (@MichaelDHiggins) October 20, 2018

Michael D Higgins must make a public statement on this matter immediately. This is very serious. He must come clean.

Another candidate, the Londonderry-born businessman Peter Casey, has suspended his campaign for this weekend as he reflects on whether to continue in the race.

He caused controversy when he challenged the right of Irish Travellers to be classed as members of an ethnic minority.Kyle Edmund will face Gael Monfils in the European Open final after the British number one saw off Richard Gasquet in straight sets on Saturday.

Edmund, the top seed at the tournament in Antwerp, defeated fourth-seeded Frenchman Gasquet 6-3 6-4 in an hour and 16 minutes.

Gasquets compatriot Monfils, the sixth seed, had earlier beaten Argentinas second-seeded Diego Schwartzmann 6-3 6-4.

Edmund is looking to secure his first ATP title.

The 23-year-old, who had been handed a walkover into the last four when his scheduled quarter-final opponent Ilya Ivashka was forced to withdraw with a thigh injury, broke Gasquet in the second game of the first set en route to going 3-0 up.

The second set then saw him break in the third as he wrapped up the win.

Kyle Edmund is looking to secure his first ATP title (Nigel French/PA).

I served well today. When I needed my serve it got me out of trouble and also got me some free points, Edmund said on the ATP Tour website.Saracens made it two wins from two in this seasons Heineken Champions Cup, producing a clinical display to seal a 29-10 bonus-point win over Lyon.

Mark McCalls men were not at their best after the 12-3 victory over Glasgow on Europes opening weekend  but they still came out on top.

Tries from Maro Itoje and Sean Maitland plus a penalty and two conversions from Owen Farrell put the hosts in control with 40 minutes played.

Captain Brad Barritt got his teams third try in the 46th minute  but it took until three minutes from time for the crucial fourth score to arrive thanks to Alex Lewington.

Lyon crossed through Virgile Lacombe, but their European dream now looks over after back-to-back defeats.

Saracens were in almost complete control from the first whistle.

Saracens Sean Maitland scores their seventh try during the Gallagher Premiership match at Allianz Park, London.

Farrell kicked a penalty in just the third minute and it was no surprise when the tries soon arrived.

After relentless home pressure, Itoje came up with the first score when the England international stripped the ball from giant Lyon lock Etienne Oosthuizen in impressive fashion and ran to the line. Farrell converted.

The second home try was a shocker from a French perspective. Alex Goode kicked through and although the ball went almost straight to Jean-Marc Doussain, the Lyon scrum-half could not deal with it and Maitland ended up as the beneficiary.

The Saracens wingers surprise was obvious as he scored and Farrell converted to make it 17-0.

Lyon got on the board through a Lionel Beauxis penalty and although the visitors finally began to see a bit of the ball, they trailed by 14 points at the break.

Rudi Wulfs break and powerful run was denied by an excellent tackle from Goode.

Saracens got their third try at the start of the second period, Barritt driven over for what was his teams 100th Champions Cup effort. The score was confirmed via the TMO and Farrell kicked the goal.

At 24-3 Lyon faced a tough task to come back, but when Toby Arnold hacked on a loose ball, his pick-up was hindered by a cruel bounce of the ball and the chance was lost.

Even without injured England forward trio Mako and Billy Vunipola and Nick Isiekwe, the Saracens pack was in outstanding form and both teams shuffled their sides in search of fresh legs. It worked for Lyon who to their credit, did not give up.

Doussain took a quick tap from a penalty and replacement Lacombe picked up and crashed over between the posts. It meant Beauxis couldnt miss with his conversion.

Saracens were suddenly in a hurry. Itoje went on the rampage and fed Farrell, but a superb tackle by covering Lyon defender Pierre-Louis Barassi stopped a try.

But there was still time for Lewington to finish off a flowing team move for the bonus point try and Farrells missed conversion mattered little.Mobile phone operator O2 has put its 10billion stock market flotation on hold until after Brexit amid market uncertainty, it has been reported.

O2 was expected to list on the London stock market this year, after it spent more than 520million at 4G and 5G spectrum auctions in April to bolster its network.

However, worries over Brexit and other recent IPO failures have convinced bosses of its parent company Telefonica to wait, according to reports by the Press Association.

On hold: O2 was expected to list on the London stock market this year

It comes as financial technology firm Funding Circle and car maker Aston Martin saw their share prices dive after recently floating on the London stock market earlier this month.

Funding Circle saw shares tank as much as 24 per cent on the first day of trading, while Aston Martin saw shares fall as much as 8 per cent.

Telefonica chief executive Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete said earlier this year that financial markets were not yet ready for an O2 float.

Its delay will cause further consternation as volatility, uncertainty and a perceived lack of investor appetite weigh on the listings pipeline.

Accountancy giant EY has previously said that Brexit uncertainty is casting a 'shadow' over the London IPO market.

O2 has been eyeing a stock market float since 2016, when its attempt to merge with rival mobile operator Three was blocked amid competition concerns.

Telefonica has been eyeing a cash-raising on O2 as a means of driving down its circa 40billion (35billion) debt pile. O2 made an operating profit of 879million (776million) in the first half of the year.

Telefonica declined to comment.A shopfront was badly damaged in a blast after thieves attempted to steal a cash machine.

Derbyshire Police said they had been called to reports of an explosion at the Post Office in Chapel Street, in the Spondon area of Derby, at about 4.45am on Monday.

Debris, including the shops front door, had been thrown across the pavement and the ATM had been moved about a foot by the force of the blast.

Despite the explosion, nobody was hurt, police added.

In a statement, the force said: Officers were called to the Post Office on Chapel Street in Spondon this morning, to reports of an explosion.

The cash machine was blasted out the front of the shop (Aaron Chown/PA)

On arrival it was found that an attempt to steal the ATM machine had been made. Inquiries are still in the early stages.

Anyone with information relating to the incident is asked to contact us on 101 quoting incident number 86 of October 22.

The Post Office confirmed no members of staff were inside the shop at the time.

Postmaster Sandeep Sarda condemned the plot as disgraceful and said it could pose problems in the run-up to Christmas.

He said: Im extremely annoyed and quite devastated, it does mean we have to close for a number of days until the Post Office have been in.

As you can imagine, (the culprits) have been rather heavy handed and until we can assess the damage, I wont be able to comment any further.

He added: Absolutely disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful. There are livelihoods that depend on it, a number of staff members work here, unfortunately Ive had to simply ask them to go back home.

The branch is closed as investigations continue and the damage is repaired (Aaron Chown/PA)

We are the only Post Office in the community and of course pensioners, young mothers, all sorts of customers get affected.

Its a huge loss to me. There is a lot of Post Office money in there, there is my stock in there, coming up to Christmas is not the best of times.

Sarah Staff, head of SaferCash at the British Security Industry Association (BSIA), said: This type of offending has a serious effect on local communities, business and the economic infrastructure.

There is a worrying increase in the use of gas to execute these crimes and this attack is one of the worst of its kind. The greatest fear is that before long an innocent member of the public will be seriously injured during an attack like this.

Although the net is tightening and perpetrators being caught and punished, the BSIA is calling on the judiciary to hand down stiffer, deterrent sentences to put a halt to these violent attacks.

Detectives said a stolen BMW, thought to have been used in the latest offence, was found in nearby Oakwood.

Detective Inspector Chris Whiteley said: The investigation is still in its very early stages, however I would like anyone that saw a silver BMW in the Spondon area between 4am and 5.30am to contact us.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Derbyshire Constabulary on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111..The Central Information Commission has expressed major concern over the way the MPLADS scheme is implemented. It is now for the presiding officers of the two Houses of Parliament to take a call

The Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS), which was launched a quarter of a century ago, has been mired in controversy for long years because of allegations of corruption and nepotism and gross violation of the schemes guidelines by MPs. But a new issue  lack of transparency  is now at hand following a couple of orders of the Central Information Commission pertaining to non-availability of information on projects which have been supposedly implemented.

MPLADS provides MPs five crore rupees per annum to identify and fund development projects in their constituencies, as per the guidelines drawn up by Parliament. But the scheme has been controversial since its inception because of violation of the norms by many parliamentarians. However, having committed itself to the idea, the Government is obliged to earmark close to Rs 4,000 crore per annum for this scheme. These funds are sent to District Collectors, who, in turn, have to ensure implementation of projects identified by MPs in their constituencies.

Lack of transparency and accountability in the execution of this scheme has come in for adverse comment from a variety of institutions, including the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC), the Second Administrative Reforms Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor-General General of India. Now, the Central Information Commission has some harsh things to say about it. However, despite the severe indictment of this scheme from various quarters, there has been no visible effort by Parliament to stop the misuse of funds and to remove the anomalies. However, one is bound to hear shrill protests from MPs if ever it is suggested that the scheme be scrapped.

This issue has been dealt with extensively in recent orders passed by Prof Madabhushanam Sridhar Acharyulu, Central Information Commissioner in Vishnu Dev Bhandari vs PIO M/o Statistics & Program Implementation and in Ram Gopal Dixit vs PIO in the same Ministry.

Referring to the procedure prescribed in this scheme, the Information Commissioner has said it is the reverse of what usually transpires in the Government. In all other schemes, a work has to be proposed, its viability has to be assessed and eventually, funds have to be allocated and released. But, in MPLADS, it works the other way. Here, the funds are first allocated, after which the works are recommended and the district administration has to implement it, if it is viable. Hence, the need for securing these funds is even greater.

The Commission said Parliament is known for enforcing strict financial discipline. Not a single rupee can be spent without prior sanction, but MPLADS, which was launched in 1993, operates differently. Projects are recommended without studying their viability. It is a massive scheme that is totally discretionary based and prone to high corruption.

The Commission has expressed major concern over the way this scheme is implemented. It says that it is difficult to prevent corruption in a scheme which has such massive funding and yet is so non-transparent and is totally dependent upon individual discretion with questionable privileges coupled with immunity of MPs.

In the order in Vishnu Dev Bhandaris case, Prof Sridhar Acharyalu has recommended that the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha provide the necessary legal framework for implementation of MPLADS. He has suggested that MPs be subjected to specific duties and compulsory transparency obligations and that they be also subjected to liabilities for dereliction of duties and breach of rules. They must be prohibited from spending MPLADS funds for private work of MPs; recommending allocation of funds to ineligible agencies; diversion of funds to private trusts; recommending works that benefit MPs or their relatives; and breaching any of the norms laid down under the scheme. The legal framework should also deal with the problem of assets created with MPLADS funds later becoming untraceable. This has become necessary because there is no law governing MPLADS spending. There are guidelines and there is sufficient evidence to show that these guidelines are often observed in the breach. Also, MPs are not penalised for misusing MPLADS.

The Commission has further recommended that MPs must be obligated to provide the fullest information on the applications they received for allocation of these funds, the works recommended, details of beneficiaries etc. They must also be duty-bound to inform their voters about this spending. Further, the political parties to which MPs belong must have an obligation to post all these details on their websites so that the people are informed.

Another issue that the Commission has touched upon is the non-utilisation of funds by MPs. The 16th Lok Sabha was constituted in May, 2014. It was reported that the Government had released Rs 1,757 crore towards this scheme in the first year up to May 2015, of which just Rs 281 crore constituting just 16 per cent was spent. As much as Rs 1,487 crore had gone unspent and not a single rupee was spent in 278 (51 per cent) of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies in the country. As many as 223 MPs did not recommend any expenditure.

As stated earlier, MPLADS has come in for a lot of flak in the past. Although the Supreme Court has held that the scheme is constitutionally valid, the NCRWC was of the view that the scheme be discontinued because it went against the principle of demarcation of responsibilities between the Executive and the Legislature. It also felt that MPs should not tread into the area of local Government institutions. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission also strongly recommended that MPLADS be scrapped because it eroded the notion of separation of powers. It said MPs choosing projects for execution amounted to intrusion into the powers of the Executive.

The CAG too has come down heavily on the scheme and listed its various drawbacks when it made a detailed analysis of this scheme on two occasions. It spoke of wastage of public funds, execution of inadmissible works and a host of other problems. Therefore, the CAG said in view of the persistent poor administration of the scheme, wastage of funds, inadmissible expenditure and frauds, the government must re-evaluate the need, manner and modality of resource transfer under the scheme.

It is now for the presiding officers of the two Houses of Parliament to take a call. Now can a scheme involving MPs be non-transparent? The Central Information Commissions observations need to be taken note of.

(The writer is Chairman, Prasar Bharati. The views expressed here are personal)Leaders of the Grand Alliance in Bihar chose the State's first Chief Minister Sri Krishna Singh's birth anniversary function in Patna on Sunday to band together against the NDA, where RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav slammed the BJP-JD(U) Government by likening it to "Rakshas Raj" (reign of the devil).

The Grand Alliance leaders  from the Congress, the RJD and the HAM(S)  vowed to uproot the NDA Governments at the Centre and in the State. They came down heavily on the two Governments, alleging that both the dispensations failed on all fronts, especially in taming price rise, corruption and crime.

The Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee organised the function at SK Memorial hall.

RJD leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav slammed JD(U) chief and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, likening the State Government to "Rakshas Raj" (reign of the devil).

"These people (NDA leaders) used to talk about 'Jungle Raj' (during the 15 years of Lalu-Rabri rule in Bihar). But there is 'Rakshas Raj' in Bihar today. State-sponsored crime is on the rise. This is the double-engine government of crime and corruption," Yadav said.

Taking a swipe at Bihar Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, who had termed Lalu Prasad's younger son as "rumour-monger", Tejashwi asked what has Bihar got from the Modi Government in its four and a half years.

"When will the special category status be accorded to Bihar? BJP has cheated the people of the state as it has no concern for them," Tejashwi said, adding sarcastically that the BJP has more concern for Lalu Prasad's family.

People should be wary of "back-stabbers", he said without naming anyone.

Former Bihar CM and HAM(S) chief Jitan Ram Manjhi demanded the Bharat Ratna for Sri Krishna Singh, the first Chief Minister of Bihar and powerful leader from the Bhumihar caste who occupied the post till his death in 1961. Manjhi also sought 15 per cent reservation for upper castes by amending the Constitution.

The party's national general secretary and Bihar in-charge Shakti Sinh Gohil said, "We will fight together to uproot the NDA Government and install Congress Government at the Centre... We will come out with a blueprint for Bihar's overall development and will fulfil our commitment".

Former Union Minister and Bihar Congress Campaign Committee chairman Akhilesh Prasad Singh announced that the party would soon hold a mega rally at the historic Gandhi Maidan in Patna to "send out a message".The Punjab police faced a tough time on Sunday to steer clear the railway tracks from the protesters. A police commando and a photojournalist were injured when local protesters pelted stones and clashed with security personnel who removed them from the rail track where 59 Dussehra revellers were mowed down by a train on Friday, officials said, adding traffic was restored on the route.

About 500 protesters had blocked the rail tracks at the accident site and were raising slogans against the State Government, administration and the railways, and demanding resignation of Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu.

The agitated protesters had warned that they would not let any train pass on the route unless their demands were met. Among other things, they were demanding action against the authorities for allowing Dussehra celebrations near the rail tracks, tracing the missing persons and giving adequate compensation to the families of those killed in the tragic accident.

The situation had been more or less peaceful but turned tense after some of the protesters began throwing stones on police personnel.

Seeing the police coming under attack from the protesters, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP-City) Amrik Singh Pawar led the operations and managed to clear the tracks blocked for over 40 hours after the accident. The Rapid Action Force was also present in the area.

The rail services were resumed in the afternoon, informed a railway spokesperson, adding that the railways got the clearance from local authorities at 12:30 pm.

In a precautionary move, the police has cordoned off the Dhobi Ghat area and Jaura Fatak, besides making public announcements that no one should come out of homes near the railway tracks.

The blockade, since Saturday, had forced the railways to cancel 27 trains, divert many others to Tarn Taran and Beas while some were short-terminated at Jalandhar.

The first goods train started from Manawala for Amritsar at 2:16 pm, said the Northern Railways spokesperson Deepak Kumar, adding that this is being followed by Mail and Express trains.

On Friday, 59 people lost their lives and 60 others were injured when a train ran through a crowd that had gathered on a railway track to watch 'Ravana' effigies go up in flames on the occasion of Dussehra.

Even as several people are still searching for their missing kith and kin after the tragic incident, the political mudslinging continued unabated.

Cabinet Minister and local MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu and his wife Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who was the chief guest at the Dussehra function, were the centre of criticism of their political opponents.

SAD core committee, which met on Sunday, demanded Sidhu's expulsion from the Cabinet, besides seeking arrest of his wife Dr Navjot Kaur and the organisers of the Dussehra function for "abetting" the Amritsar tragedy.

Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy blamed the Congress-led Punjab Government for not doing enough to safeguard the area near the railway tracks.

"The particular boundary where the accident took place belongs to Punjab State. It is the job of the State of Punjab to see that railway tracks are secured from all the sides. The Congress Government should be held responsible for this," he said.

Swamy said that the Punjab Government should have provided a ground for the people to celebrate Dussehra without risking their lives by standing on railway tracks. He also said that action should be taken against those who gave the permission to install a Ravana effigy near the accident spot.

"Why not an open ground with proper fencing was built up to conduct such a big event? Why the organisers never informed the railways about the same? Action should be taken against those who permitted Dussehra celebration near the railway track," he asked.

Amidst all the Opposition, Sidhu refused to respond to the demand for his resignation. "Anything else, anything else, anything elseNo comments," said Sidhu when media persons insisted on his reaction to his rivals' demand of his expulsion from the Cabinet.

Earlier, Sidhu's wife tried to dispel the criticism claiming that several announcements were made during the event urging the spectators to occupy vacant space on the ground.

Dr Navjot Kaur, who was the chief guest at the fateful event, said: "There were vacant seats at Dhobi Ghat ground. Ravana was tied securely and there were no chances of it falling down and creating chaos. There was no stampede. Announcements were made four-five times asking people to come inside the ground."

Jalandhar: Punjab Director-General of Police (DGP) Suresh Arora on Sunday announced that for fixing criminal responsibility for the Amritsar railway mishap, Additional Director-General of Police (Railways) Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota would conduct an inquiry.

"There has been negligence on the part of someone and that liability has to be fixed for which this probe has been ordered," said Arora while interacting with media persons on the sidelines of the 59th Police Commemoration Day parade.

The State DGP said that this was a very tragic and unfortunate incident into which Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has already ordered a magisterial probe by Jalandhar Divisional Commissioner B Purusartha, who would submit the report within four weeks.

Sahota would also personally conduct inquiry to ensure that the persons responsible for this mishap could be nailed, he said.Amid the escalating row between CBI Director Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi summoned both to discuss the goings-on that have brought much disrepute to Indias premier investigating agency. But there was no thaw in the internecine war as the CBI went on to arrest an investigating officer of Deputy SP rank who allegedly fabricated a statement from an accused to implicate the agencys boss on bribery charges.

Sources said the PM met the CBI chief separately on Sunday evening and summoned him again along with Asthana on Monday. The PM is learnt to have expressed his displeasure over the allegations and counter-allegations between the two top officers.

Despite attempts to diffuse the crisis, the high drama within the CBI continued. The CBI arrested its Deputy SP and Investigating Officer Devinder Kumar for allegedly trying to fix the agency boss. Kumar was probing the case against the controversial meat exporter Moin Qureshi. The CBI arrested him on charges of falsifying the statement of an accused, Satish Sana, who had admitted that a TDP MP of the Rajya Sabha had met Verma to settle investigation in his favour.

Sana, accused in the Moin Qureshi case, has now become a complainant against Asthana. The arrested DSP was part of the Special Investigation Team headed by Asthana.

The matter relates to the creation of a statement under section 161 of Satish Sana, a witness in Moin Qureshi case, showing it to be recorded on September 26, 2018, in Delhi. During the investigation, it has been found that Sana was not present in Delhi on that day and was in Hyderabad. Sana actually joined investigation in Delhi only on October 1, 2018, a CBI spokesperson claimed in a statement.

It was found that Devinder Kumar had fabricated this statement as an afterthought plan to corroborate the baseless allegations made by Special Director Rakesh Asthana against CBI Director Alok Kumar Verma to CVC, the spokesperson claimed, an indication that the CBI Directors superintendence over the subordinate staff was not effective.

He further said, Looking into the seriousness of the matter, role of other officers of SIT, CBI, then supervising the Moin Qureshi case, are being probed.

On October 18 and 19, Asthana had alleged in his plaint to the CVC sent that on receipt of information that Satish Babu paid illegal gratification to the CBI Director, and the same was brought to the notice of the Cabinet Secretary by Asthana through his letter dated August 24 this year. After this, the CVC initiated an enquiry and sought the relevant files from the CBI.

Asthana also wrote to the CBI that Satish Babu Sana attempted to flee but could not owing to the LOC opened by SIT headed by him.

Meanwhile, Satish Babu Sana appeared before the IO on October 1, 2018. He stated that he approached CM Ramesh, MP, (Rajya Sabha), TDP, who in turn personally met Director CBI. Later, CM Ramesh assured that Satish Sana would not be called again by the CBI, Asthana alleged.

Through his fresh complaints to the CVC, Asthana also sought transfer of eight cases, including the Moin Qureshi case, to the SIT. The Moin Qureshi case now been transferred to Joint Director (Policy) AK Sharma after the registration of the case against Asthana.

In his complaints to the CVC, also marked to the Cabinet Secretary, Asthana alleged that Verma scuttled the move of the SIT to arrest Sana. In his complaint dated August 24 to the Cabinet Secretary, Asthana had alleged that Verma had taken a bribe of `2 crore from Sana to grant him relief in the Moin Qureshi case.

The CBI has booked Asthana, Kumar and two private persons for corruption and criminal conspiracy.

Sources also said requisite permission under the Prevention of Corruption Act from the Government before registration of the case against Asthana was not taken by the agency. CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal did not respond to the query if permission was taken in the case and if Verma met the PM last evening.The UP police on Monday arrested Mira Yadav, the wife of Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav, for murdering their 22-year-old son Abhijeet Yadav.

Abhijeets body was found under mysterious circumstances at the official residence of Ramesh on Sunday.

The police claimed that Mira had confessed to her crime, however, she insisted that her son had committed suicide. ASP Sarvesh Kumar said that the body had marks on the neck and the post-mortem report confirmed death by strangulation.How could the Congress President be sensitive towards the plight of farmers when he doesnt know what a plough is, commented Chhattisgarh Minister for Panchayat and Rural Development, Ajay Chandrakar on Monday.

He was reacting to the address of AICC Chief Rahul Gandhi at a farmers rally in Raipur capital .

Rahul should rather talk on 'CD issue', said the minister.

Chandrakar while citing a public meeting in Rajasthan said the AICC Chief doesnt know what a plough is.

Rahul Gandhi questioned the farmers about what was that equipment (plough) all about, said Chandrakar.

Such a person has come here in state to talk about the farmers plight, he said.

Charging that exploitation of farmers and tribals was happening in Congress rule the minister further claimed that the Chief Minister Raman Singh here had already turned the agriculture into a profitable business.

Chandrakar also mocked on political inheritance of Rahul and said gone are the days of dynastic rule when king was decided right from the womb of queen, he said.

Referring to loan waiver by the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Chandrakar further said that only big farmers of Congress were benefitted in it and the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had also objected then.BJPs mayoral candidate Anu Kakkar and the same of Congress Anita Sharma filed their nomination papers along with their supporters at the district collectorate on Monday. The nomination filing process started on the day, a day after the principal parties-BJP and Congress-had announced the lists of the candidates. After the nomination filing process was over, the leaders of both the parties said that they would emerge triumphant at the election.

The former Chief Minister and MP from Haridwar Ramesh Pokhriyal NIshank who was present during the nomination filing process said that Anu Kakkar would win the election hands down. The State cabinet Minister Madan Kaushik was also present during the nomination filing process.

Though the ruling BJP showed up a united face on the day despite the party reeling under severe bout of factionalism schism surfaced in the Congress over the party list announced by the State Congress brass.

Giving a jolt to the party preparing for the crucial urban local body election, the district women Congress president, Kiren Singh, had resigned from the party on Sunday and posted her letter on Facebook. I apologise but I am also resigning mainly because of the former legislator Ambrish Kumar, she had stated. She had, further, said that she had been forced to resign despite her active association with the party for 18 years. Despite the development casting its shadow, the district Congress leaders sought to put up a brave face and claimed that the party would win the election with the support of the common people who have got disenchanted with the misrule of the BJP-helmed Government both at the Centre and in the State.

Kiren Singh had alleged that a section of the party leadership has been indulging in a vulgar kind of factionalism and ignoring those who have served the party and the State over the years. She had, further, predicted defeat of the candidates the party leadership has zeroed on for Haridwar and Shivalik Nagar elections.In order to enhance the cooperation and friendly relation between New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Shenyang Municipal Committee (SMC), a delegation led by Han Dongtai, Chairperson of Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference met his counterpart Naresh Kumar at NDMC headquarter on Monday.

A senior NDMC official said during the deliberations, it was decided to explore the possibilities for Sister School Agreement between schools run by NDMC and SMC to begin the student exchange programme.

The chairperson of NDMC said there is a need to enhance cooperation between the two cities with the exchange programme to improve person-to-person contact.

Extending his gratitude to NDMC Chairman for hosting the delegation, Han Dongtai emphasised the need for frequent interaction between two cities.Still scope for improvement! The ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh is scouting for ideas for good governance after 15 years of rule.

Barely a month before polling, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sought ideas for the next round of governance.

Party insiders say it is rather intriguing as why Shivraj Singh Chouhan Government has not come out with the figures as how many ideas they have received and how many have been implemented so far.

The ruling BJP and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan have been seeking ideas from the citizens for a decade, but did not come out with the figures as how many ideas they have received and how many have been implemented so far.

The BJP on Sunday launched a campaign seeking ideas from the citizens for making Madhya Pradesh prosperous.

It was claimed that it is an innovative campaign launched by the BJP.

However, factually, this campaign was launched on January 20, 2009 with website- ideasforcm.in. The portal was registered on December 27, 2008, soon after the BJP came to power second term in the State.

This website is still active and taking the suggestions or ideas from the citizens. However, in this decade old website, another link that was provided for complaints- mpsamadhan.org is non-functional and out for sale.

Ironically, a similar advertisement by the State Government, seeking ideas from the citizens was published by the newspapers from September 30 to October 5. In that advertisement, the ideas were sought through Future MP Task Force. A separate mobile number- 8000305305 was mentioned for giving innovative ideas.

However, at present this number is no working.

The futureofmp.in portal in this regard was created on September 18, 2018 and on logging in to the website, the visitor encounters with the message of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan stating, We have formed the Future MP Task Force for giving shape to prosperous future of the State.

Leader of the Opposition in the State assembly Ajay Singh on Monday lodged a complaint with the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Madhya Pradesh alleging that the BJP is using campaign of the State government.A day after talks between Haryana Government and the striking roadways employees failed to yield any positive results, the employees unions have announced to extend the strike till October 25 even as it entered its seventh day on Monday.

Despite the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) being in force, the agitating employees have threatened to continue the strike on Monday till the withdrawal of State Governments decision to hire 700 private buses in Haryana.

The coordination committee meeting has decided to extend strike by three days till October 25. Government is not serious on our demand and they are bent upon privatising the roadways, alleged Balwan Sigh, a member of the coordination committee of the Haryana Roadways Employees Union.

The meeting of coordination committee of Haryana roadways employees was held at Ambala on Monday.

Singh said that the talks broke down on Sunday because of the government's rigid approach. We will not allow them to hire private buses even if we have to continue our stir for long, he added.

The unions accused the government of remaining adamant on an anti-employee stand and leaving the employees with no other option but to hold strike.

The Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, however, ruled out to roll back his government's decision to augment the state transporter's fleet by hiring 700 private buses.

The Chief Minister, while talking to the mediapersons here dismissed the allegations by the opposition and the roadways union leaders that the government's decision to hire 700 private buses is aimed at benefitting private transporters.

Manohar Lal said the roadways union leaders should raise issues pertaining to the employees and must not interfere into the government's policy matters.

We have already said these 700 buses will be under the control of the Haryana Roadways and will be part of its fleet, we are not giving permits to private players, he said.

The addition of private buses, which would be plied on kilometre-basis, would not affect the roadways employees in any manner, he added.

When asked about the peoples' inconvenience due to the ongoing stir by the roadways employees, Manohar Lal said the government has made alternate arrangements and would shortly hire new drivers and conductors to ensure no one faces any hardship.

Sources said that the State Government has sought help from neighboring states of Punjab, Himachal, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to ply their state buses in Haryana during the ongoing strike.

Defying ESMA, the employees have been on strike since October 16.

As per the data collected by the Transport Department on Monday, Chandigarh-New Delhi bus services has continued despite the strike. There are 3897 roadways buses at 24 depots and 884 plied till the evening. 41 probationer drivers have been dismissed. Apart from this, 1059 other buses were also plied for the convenience of commuters, stated governments data.

Meanwhile, Haryana Government has appealed to the under probation employees of state roadways to get back to their work at the earliest.

A spokesman of the Transport Department said that the Department had issued appointment letters to 1,628 bus drivers selected by the Haryana Staff Selection Commission, of which 1,547 bus drivers had assumed the charge in different depots.

He said that the State Government has given assurance that if they get back to their work then they would be dealt with mildly for their involvement in the strike. After getting back to work, their safety would be the responsibility of the District Administration and the State Government, the spokesman added.Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal on Monday directed the concerned departments to fast track the repair work of roads that got damaged especially during the rainy season to make the roads pothole free.

Manohar Lal while presiding over a meeting regarding the repair of roads here said that the state roads as has heavy movement of vehicles should be widened to ensure smooth flow of traffic.

He also directed to take up the matter with National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on priority basis for carrying out the repair or patchwork on those national highways falling in the state which were damaged especially during the rainy season.

The Departments of Public Works (Building and Roads), Haryana State Agricultural and Marketing Board (HSAMB), Haryana Shehari Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP), Urban Local Bodies and Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) are involved in the construction of roads in the state.

While reviewing the condition of roads, the Chief Minister directed that a proposal be mooted for the transfer of all six karam roads of 3000 kms of HSAMB to Public Works (Building and Roads) Department for repair. The transfer of these roads to PWD (B&R) would further enhance the durability of these roads, which constitutes about 23.8 per cent total roads of HSAMB, he said.

The HSAMB has total 13021 kilometers roads in the state.

Manohar Lal also directed to constitute a dedicated team comprising three officers at divisional level. The team would work under the direct supervision of respective Divisional Commissioner and carry out regular inspection of all the 13021 kilometer end to end roads of HSAMB and also submit report in this regard, he said.

The Chief Minister also asked all the executing agencies to develop atleast one or two roads as a model road in terms of beautification and cleanliness.

He suggested that the sidelining on seven meter wide roads should be done in yellow colour to add beauty to the existing roads. The bushes alongside the roads should be cut and tall trees be trimmed, he directed.

During the meeting, it was informed that out of the 24,000 kilometer roads of PWD(B&R), the 2690 kilometers long affected roads would be made pothole free by November 1, 2018. The Chief Engineers of the Department have been asked to visit the site to ensure the early completion of work.

It was also informed that HSAMB has total 13021 kms roads in the state out which the patchwork on 7642 kms long road is in progress at a cost of Rs 10 crore . The work is likely to be completed by the end of November this year.

Similarly, the work for the strengthening of 1480 kms long roads is also being carried out at a fast pace and it would be completed by March 31, 2019. Apart from this, tender has been allotted for the special repair of 451 kms roads. In addition, the repair of 3448 kms roads would be got conducted under the defect liability period.

It was also informed that on the direction of Chief Minister the thickness of roads of HSAMB has been increased to 100 mm to enhance the durability of roads.

Out of the 2400 kms road of HSVP, special repair of 200 kms road has been completed. A budget provision of Rs 71 crore has been earmarked for this purpose during the current financial year out of which Rs 22 crore has already been spent.

It was further informed that workforce has been increased to timely redress the complaints received on HARPATH App, the mobile application which enables the people to upload the pictures of damaged roads and seek action. The Chief Minister was apprized that out the total complaints received on the app, 90 per cent has been attended.Delhis Patiala House court on Monday sent Ashish Pandey, son of former Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Rakesh Pandey, who was arrested for brandishing pistol at Hyatt Regency in National Capital last week, to 14-day judicial custody.

On Monday, after the police said that Pandey was not required for further custodial interrogation Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmendra Singh sent the accused to prison till November 5.

The court had earlier rejected the bail plea and had issued a non-bailable warrant against Pandey.

A video of the incident that occurred early on October 14 at Hyatt Regency had gone viral on social media resulting in public outrage.

It prompted the police to step in and launch a hunt for the accused who had gone missing after the incident.

Delhi Police had filed a First Information Report (FIR) on October 16 at RK Puram Police Station under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Arms Act relating to criminal intimidation and misuse of fire arms.

Prior to surrendering in the court on last week on Thursday, Pandey had released a video on social sites in which he claimed that CCTV footage of the events that took place inside the hotel should be examined.

He claimed that he was threatened but does not mention any name.

He proceeds to say that statements from the security personnel as well as the staff of the hotel should be taken to find out what actually happened.Premier educational institution Utkal University has been granted a sum of Rs 40 crore under the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) for infrastructure development.

The university, which has secured the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)s A Plus grade and is placed in top RUSA II list, has met the criteria to receive Rs 100 crore during next three years. Accordingly, the university has been sanctioned Rs 40 crore in the first phase of RUSA II, informed Higher Education Council Vice-Chairman Prof Ashok Kumar Das.

Prof Das, who is a former Vice-Chancellor of the Utkal University, said the Centre has decided to make 10 universities as the top educational institutions with best infrastructure facilities to the students for which Rs 100 crore would be sanctioned to each university under the RUSA for next three years. The Utkal University is among top 10 institutions in the RUSA list. The funds were released in first phase after Utkal University VC Prof Soumendra Mohan Patnaik tabled a report at a meeting in New Delhi a few months ago, he said. The RUSA is a Centrally-sponsored, overarching holistic and comprehensive umbrella scheme for norm-based funding for the State Universities and colleges to achieve the goals of expansion, equity and excellence with the aim of imparting relevant and value-based education for improving employability.

While the Centre would provide Rs 25 crore out of Rs 40 crore under the scheme, the remaining Rs 15 crore would be borne by the State Government. After submitting the first-phase fund utilisation report to the Centre, the remaining Rs 60 crore would be sanctioned to the university in the second phase of the scheme, said Prof Das.Shiromani Akali Dal-Bhartiya Janata Party (SAD-BJP) coordination panel on Monday decided to take up the fight for justice in Amritsar Dussehra Khooni Saaka case as per the decision of the poor affected people who were being repressed and prosecuted by the heartless Congress government even as the guilty Sidhu couple and the organizers of the function roamed scot free.

Addressing a joint press conference after a meeting of the Coordination Committee, SAD president Sukhbir Badal and Punjab BJP president Shwet Malik condemned the registration of cases under section 307 which was liable for life imprisonment punishment against 50 poor persons demanding justice in the case.

They said that in direct contrast, a non-consequential case under section 304-A had been registered against four unidentified persons with regard to the Dusshera tragedy. This itself proves that the Congress Government has launched a cover-up exercise to save the Sidhu couple  Navjot Singh Sidhu and his wife Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu  who are responsible for abetting the murder of 61 persons in the Dussehra Khooni Saka, they added.

Taking serious note of the Congress leaders indulging in antics like candle light march, Sukhbir said that it was condemnable that the perpetrators of ghastly tragedy were indulging in a candle light march and that this action was akin to sprinkling salt on the wounds of the man made massacre victims.

He said that we demand a judicial inquiry by a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court to ensure justice to the poor victims. This has been done in earlier instances and Pradesh Congress president Sunil Jakhar should not try to mislead people by stating the contrary, he said.

SAD-BJP DELEGATION TO MEET GOVT

Sukhbir announced that a SAD-BJP delegation would meet Punjab Governor VP Singh Badnore on Tuesday to demand justice for the poor victims including compensation of Rs one crore for the victims, Rs 50 lakh for the injured and a government job for each of the victim families. The Coordination panel said that it seemed that the victim families were being coerced into accepting compensation by the Sidhu couple and that this should not come in the way of announcement of enhanced compensation to them.

SAD-BJP DEMANDS SIDHUS EXPULSION, CASE AGAINST HIS WIFES, ORGANISERS

SAD-BJP Coordination Committee has demanded immediate sack of Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu. The panel also demanded registration of a case against Sidhu for abetting murder along with his wife Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu and the function organizers. The panel pointed that Sidhu was the real chief guest of the function and that he had formed the Dussehra Committee (East) which had organized the function and that posters were also released in his name.Giving a Diwali gift to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes students, the Yogi Adityanath government increased their annual scholarships from Rs 2,250 to Rs 3,000 and decided to include more children by increasing the income limit of beneficiary families from Rs 2 lakh per annum to Rs 2.50 lakh.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced these decisions during a review meeting of Social Welfare department in Lucknow on Monday.

A spokesman said that the government not only increased the income limit of beneficiary families by Rs 50,000 per annum but also increased scholarship by Rs 750 per annum. Earlier, the annual scholarship was Rs 2,250 while now it will be Rs 3,000.

Similar facilities will be extended to poor students of general category.

In the previous years, the government had discontinued scholarships of general category students studying outside UP, but the BJP government has revived the scholarship scheme, he said.

The spokesman said that majority of the students, including those whose cases had been renewed, had been paid scholarships till October 2 while the rest would be paid scholarships by January 26.

Social Welfare department officials apprised the Chief Minister that in previous years, 20.88 lakh students were given scholarships while in the BJP rule, 23 lakh students had been awarded scholarships.

Regarding old age pension, the Chief Minister was informed that in 2016-17, 36.52 lakh people were given pension amounting to Rs 1748 crore, while in 2017-18 (during BJP regime), 37.47 lakh elders were given pensions amounting to Rs 1783 crore.

In the current fiscal, the government disbursed Rs 1,952 crore among 40 lakh pensioners.

Similarly, more beneficiaries have been included in National Family Welfare Scheme and CMs Community Marriage Scheme during Yogi regime as compared to the previous Akhilesh Yadav government.A stress management workshop under the chairmanship of Commissioner of Gurugram Police KK Rao was organised on Monday at the old Commissioner of police office. Around 52 Personal Security Officer (PSO), gunmen attended the workshop who was attached with Judicial officials.

A decision in this regard was taken by Haryana Government in the wake of the recent case in which a gunman allegedly shot the wife and son of the Additional Sessions Judge in a fit of rage on October 13. The objective of the workshop is to understand the mental and health issues that the police officers face on a daily basis and also to make the district force stress-free and motivated.

The police officers work under immense pressure, and then they are away from their homes most of the time. All this leads to stress and depression which leads to aggression and the tendency to hurt oneself or other people.

We had also discussed several lectures on stress and pressure, Dr Garima Yadav, a psychologist and assistant professor, who conducted workshop on Stress management and motivation at work and home said. She also spoke on various sources of stress and pressure and discussed a different technique to manage work-life balance.

She also emphasized the importance of maintaining discipline and calmness in life.

Such work will surely help police personnel to deal any issue calmly. It will also help personnel to performe well during any kind of situations, Commissioner of police KK Rao, said adding that the Haryana Government has also decided to appoint counsellors across the State districts who will conduct stress management sessions in future as well.

A senior police inspector attached with the district police said that Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) and head constable level officers are usually more frustrated due to grapple with a huge amount of work. This developed health and physical problem amongst them, and have less patience too, he said.India should move to resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Monday.

His remarks came a day after six civilians were killed after an explosive went off at an encounter site in Kulgam district of South Kashmir.

"Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris....By Indian security forces," Khan tweeted.

"It is time India realise it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people," he said.

In a separate statement, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmmod Qureshi said the international community should take cognizance of the alleged human rights violations in Kashmir.

Three militants were killed Sunday in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam district, while six civilians lost their lives in a blast following the gunfight there.

It is not the first time Khan has spoken about Kashmir.

In September, New Delhi called off a meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, citing killings of Indian security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the release of Pakistani postage stamps "glorifying a terrorist and terrorism".

In his victory speech after the July elections, Khan expressed his willingness to improve Pakistan's ties with India and said that his government would like the leaders of the two sides to resolve all disputes, including the core issue of Kashmir, through talks.

He said good India-Pakistan relations will be beneficial for the entire region.

India maintains that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country and Pakistan is in illegal occupation of a part of the state's territory. American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved.

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Communities VI LLC, LNC Communities VII LLC, LNC Communities VIII LLC, LNC Pennsylvania Realty Inc., LNC at Meadowbrook LLC, LNC at Ravenna LLC, LS College Park LLC, LS Terracina LLC, LV Opendoor Investor LLC, LV Opendoor JV LLC, LW D'Andrea LLC, Lagoon Valley Residential LLC, Lakelands at Easton L.L.C., Legends Club LLC, Legends Golf Club LLC, Len - Little Harbor LLC, Len FW Investor LLC, Len Paradise LLC, Len-Angeline LLC, Len-Hawks Point LLC, Len-Land LLC, Len-Land West LLC, Len-MN LLC, Len-Verandahs LLP, LenCom LLC, LenFive LLC, LenFive Opco GP LLC, LenFive Sub III LLC, LenFive Sub LLC, LenFive Sub Opco GP LLC, Lenalto CMBS LLC, Lencraft LLC, Lennar Aircraft I LLC, Lennar Arizona Construction Inc., Lennar Arizona Inc., Lennar Associates Management Holding Company, Lennar Associates Management LLC, Lennar Avenue One LLC, Lennar Berkeley LLC, Lennar Bevard LLC, Lennar Bridges LLC, Lennar Buffington Colorado Crossing L.P., Lennar Buffington Zachary Scott L.P., Lennar Carolinas LLC, Lennar Central Park LLC, Lennar Central Region Sweep Inc., Lennar Chicago Inc., Lennar Cobra LLC, Lennar Colgate Urban Renewal Development LLC, Lennar Colorado LLC, Lennar Colorado Minerals LLC, Lennar Commercial LLC, Lennar Communities Development Inc., Lennar Communities Inc., Lennar Communities Nevada LLC, Lennar Communities of Chicago L.L.C., Lennar Concord LLC, Lennar Construction Inc., Lennar Cory Road LLC, Lennar Courts LLC, Lennar Developers Inc., Lennar Ewing LLC, Lennar Financial Services LLC, Lennar Flamingo LLC, Lennar Fresno Inc., Lennar Gardens LLC, Lennar Georgia Inc., Lennar Greer Ranch Venture LLC, Lennar Heritage Fields LLC, Lennar Hingham Holdings LLC, Lennar Hingham JV LLC, Lennar Homes Holding LLC, Lennar Homes LLC, Lennar Homes NJ LLC, Lennar Homes of Arizona Inc., Lennar Homes of California Inc., Lennar Homes of Indiana Inc., Lennar Homes of Texas Land and Construction Ltd., Lennar Homes of Texas Sales and Marketing Ltd., Lennar Homes of Utah Inc., Lennar International Holding LLC, Lennar International LLC, Lennar Lakeside Investor LLC, Lennar Layton LLC, Lennar Living LLC, Lennar Lytle LLC, Lennar MF Holdings LLC, Lennar MPA LLC, Lennar MPA WIP LLC, Lennar Mare Island LLC, Lennar Marina A Funding LLC, Lennar Massachusetts Properties Inc., Lennar Middletown LLC, Lennar Monmouth Redevelopers LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture GP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture GP Subsidiary LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture GP Victory Block G Mezz LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II GP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II GP Subsidiary LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II LP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II Manager LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture LP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture Manager LLC, Lennar Multifamily Builders LLC, Lennar Multifamily Communities LLC, Lennar Multifamily Venture DC LP, Lennar New Jersey Holdings LLC, Lennar New Jersey Properties Inc., Lennar New York LLC, Lennar Northeast Properties LLC, Lennar Northwest Inc., Lennar OHB LLC, Lennar PI Acquisition LLC, Lennar PI Property Acquisition LLC, Lennar PIS Management Company LLC, Lennar Pacific Inc., Lennar Pacific Properties Inc., Lennar Pacific Properties Management Inc., Lennar Plumsted Urban Renewal LLC, Lennar Point LLC, Lennar QR Build to Core GP LLC, Lennar QR Build to Core LP LLC, Lennar Realty Inc., Lennar Reno LLC, Lennar Riverwalk LLC, Lennar Sacramento Inc., Lennar Sales Corp., Lennar Sierra Sunrise LLC, Lennar Spencer's Crossing LLC, Lennar Sun Ridge LLC, Lennar Texas Holding LLC, Lennar Ventures LLC, Lennar West Valley LLC, Lennar Winncrest LLC, Lennar at Franklin LLC, Lennar at Jackson LLC, Lennar at Marlboro 79 LLC, Lennar at Monroe LLC, Lennar.com Inc., Longleaf Acquisition LLC, Lori Gardens Associates II LLC, Lori Gardens Associates III LLC, Lori Gardens Associates L.L.C., Lorton Station LLC, Lyons Lennar Farms LLC, Madrona Ridge L.L.C., Madrona Village L.L.C., Madrona Village Mews L.L.C., Majestic Woods LLC, Maple and Broadway Holdings LLC, Menifee Development LLC, Mid-County Utilities Inc., Miralago West Lennar LLC, Mission Viejo 12S Venture LP, Mission Viejo Holdings Inc., Motomic Diagnostics LLC, Multibank 2009-1 CML-ADC Venture LLC, Multibank 2009-1 RES-ADC Venture LLC, NC Properties I LLC, NC Properties II LLC, North American Asset Development LLC, Northbridge L.L.C., OHC/Ascot Belle Meade LLC, One SR L.P., PD-Len Boca Raton LLC, PG Properties Holding LLC, POMAC LLC, PT Metro LLC, Pace Drive Holdings LLC, Palm Gardens At Doral Clubhouse LLC, Palm Gardens at Doral LLC, Palm Springs Classic LLC, Palm Vista Preserve LLC, Patuxent Infrastructure Inc., Pioneer Meadows Development LLC, Pioneer Meadows Investments LLC, Plaza Condominium Ventures LLC, Portside Marina Developers L.L.C., Portside SM Associates L.L.C., Portside SM Holdings L.L.C., Portside Shipyard Developers L.L.C., Prestonfield L.L.C., Quail Roost Lennar LLC, RCCF GP II LLC, RCCF GP III LLC, RCCF GP IV LLC, RCCF GP LLC, RES-FL EIGHT LLC, RES-FL SEVEN LLC, RES-FL VISION ONE LLC, RES-FL VISION TWO LLC, RES-GA CASCADE LLC, RES-GA DIAMOND MEADOWS LLC, RES-GA KAP LLC, RES-GA SOUTHERN PLANTATION LLC, RES-GA THIRTEEN LLC, RES-GA TWELVE LLC, RES-GA WEST LLC, RES-IL ONE LLC, RES-NC ONE LLC, RES-PA LSJ LLC, RES-PA POM LLC, RES-TX BOULEVARD LLC, RH Insurance Company Inc., RH MOA BBCMS 2017-C1 LLC, RH MOA CF 2017-C8 LLC, RH MOA LLC, RH MOA U 2017-C4 LLC, RH MOA U 2017-C6 LLC, RIAL 2014-LT5 CLASS B LLC, RIAL 2014-LT5 LLC, RL BB FINANCIAL LLC, RL BB INACTIVE LLC, RL BB-AL LLC, RL BB-FL ALHI LLC, RL BB-GA LLC, RL BB-GA RMH LLC, RL BB-IL LLC, RL BB-IN AA LLC, RL BB-IN KRE LLC, RL BB-IN KRE OP LLC, RL BB-IN KRE RE LLC, RL BB-MS LLC, RL BB-NC LLC, RL BB-OH LLC, RL BB-SC BROOKSA LLC, RL BB-SC CLR II LLC, RL BB-SC CLR III LLC, RL BB-SC CLR IV LLC, RL BB-SC CLR LLC, RL BB-SC CRRC LLC, RL BB-SC RACEDAY LLC, RL BB-TN BRISTOL LLC, RL BB-TN LLC, RL BB-TN RACEDAY TOWER LLC, RL BB-TX LLC, RL BB-WV LLC, RL CMBS Holdings LLC, RL CML 2009-1 Investments LLC, RL REGI ARKANSAS LLC, RL REGI Alabama LLC, RL REGI FINANCIAL LLC, RL REGI Florida LLC, RL REGI GEORGIA LLC, RL REGI INACTIVE LLC, RL REGI KANSAS LLC, RL REGI MISSISSIPPI LLC, RL REGI MISSOURI LLC, RL REGI NORTH CAROLINA LLC, RL REGI SOUTH CAROLINA LLC, RL REGI TENNESSEE LLC, RL REGI VIRGINIA LLC, RL REGI-AL HP LLC, RL REGI-AL VRC LLC, RL REGI-FL CRC LLC, RL REGI-FL ESH LLC, RL REGI-FL FT. PIERCE LLC, RL REGI-FL GDL LLC, RL REGI-FL ITALIA LLC, RL REGI-FL MRED LLC, RL REGI-FL RDI LLC, RL REGI-FL SARASOTA LLC, RL REGI-FL TPL LLC, RL REGI-FL VARC LLC, RL REGI-GA DRAD LLC, RL REGI-GA HAY DB LLC, RL REGI-GA MHU LLC, RL REGI-GA MPD LLC, RL REGI-GA RLR LLC, RL REGI-MO GMB LLC, RL REGI-MO MOSCOW MILLS LLC, RL REGI-MS Double H LLC, RL REGI-MS OCEAN SPRINGS LLC, RL REGI-NC CIL LLC, RL REGI-NC LITTLE WING LLC, RL REGI-NC MLD LLC, RL REGI-NC Mland LLC, RL REGI-NC RALEIGH LLC, RL REGI-NC SUGARM LLC, RL REGI-NM LLC, RL REGI-SC CTL LLC, RL REGI-SC LAKE E LLC, RL REGI-SC TDG LLC, RL REGI-SC TIG LLC, RL REGI-TN OAK LLC, RL REGI-TN SEVIERVILLE LLC, RL RES 2009-1 Investments LLC, RMF Alliance LLC, RMF Commercial LLC, RMF PR New York LLC, RMF Partner LLC, RMF SUB 1 LLC, RMF SUB 2 LLC, RMF SUB 3 LLC, RMF SUB 4 LLC, RMF SUB 5 LLC, RMV LLC, Raintree Village II L.L.C., Raintree Village L.L.C., Ral-Len BM LLC, Ral-Len LLC, Rannel Capital WeWork Series D LLC, Rannel Holdings LLC, Rannel Interests LLC, Rannel Investments LLC, Rannel Mortgage Investments LLC, Rannel Proprietary Investments LLC, Renaissance Joint Venture, Reserve @ Pleasant Grove II LLC, Reserve @ Pleasant Grove LLC, Reserve at River Park LLC, Reserve at South Harrison LLC, Rialto Commercial Mortgage Securities LLC, Rialto Credit Partnership GP LLC, Rialto Mezz Partners GP LLC, Rialto Mortgage Finance LLC, Rialto Partners GP II LLC, Rialto Partners GP III - Debt LLC, Rialto Partners GP III - Property LLC, Rialto Partners GP LLC, Rialto RSSF GP LLC, Riverwalk at Lago Mar LLC, Rocking Horse Minerals LLC, Rutenberg Homes Inc. (Florida), Rutenberg Homes of Texas Inc., Rye Hill Company LLC, Ryland Homes Nevada Holdings LLC, Ryland Homes Nevada LLC, Ryland Homes of California Inc., S. Florida Construction II LLC, S. Florida Construction III LLC, S. Florida Construction LLC, SC 521 Indian Land Reserve LLC, SC 521 Indian Land Reserve South LLC, SPIC CPCO Inc., SPIC CPDB Inc., SPIC CPRB Inc., SPIC Del Sur LLC, SPIC Dublin LLC, SPIC Mesa LLC, SPIC NC Fremont LLC, SPIC Otay LLC, SPIC Springs LLC, San Felipe Indemnity Co. Ltd., San Lucia LLC, San Simeon Lennar LLC, Schulz Ranch Developers LLC, Seminole/70th LLC, Siena at Old Orchard L.L.C., Sierra Vista Communities LLC, Silver Springs Lennar LLC, South Development LLC, Southbank Holding LLC, Spanish Springs Development LLC, St. Charles Active Adult Community LLC, St. Charles Community LLC, Standard Pacific 1 Inc., Standard Pacific Investment Corp., Standard Pacific of Colorado Inc., Standard Pacific of Florida, Standard Pacific of Florida GP Inc., Standard Pacific of Las Vegas Inc., Standard Pacific of Orange County Inc., Standard Pacific of Tampa GP, Standard Pacific of Tampa GP Inc., Standard Pacific of Tonner Hills LLC, Standard Pacific of Walnut Hills Inc., Standard Pacific of the Carolinas LLC, Stoney Holdings LLC, Storey Lake Club LLC, Storey Park Club LLC, Strategic Holdings Inc., Strategic Technologies LLC, Summerfield Venture L.L.C., SunStreet Energy Group LLC, SunStreet Manager LLC, TCO QVI LLC, TICD Hold Co. LLC, TIH Hold Co. LLC, Talega Associates LLC, Temecula Valley LLC, Terra Division LLC, Terra/Winding Creek LLC, The Baywinds Land Trust, The Bridges Club at Rancho Santa Fe Inc., The Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe Sales Company Inc., The LNC Northeast Group Inc., The Oasis Club at LEN-CG South LLC, The Preserve at Coconut Creek LLC, The Vistas Club at LEN-CG South LLC, Titlezoom Company, Treasure Island Holdings LLC, Treasure Island Member LLC, Treviso Holding LLC, Two Lakes Lennar LLC, U.S. Home Corporation, U.S. Home Realty Inc., U.S. Home of Arizona Construction Co., U.S. Insurors Inc., U.S.H. Realty Inc., UAMC Holding Company LLC, UB 2018C14 MOA LLC, USH - Flag LLC, USH Equity Corporation, USH LEE LLC, USH Leasing II LLC, USH Leasing LLC, UST Lennar HW Scala SF Joint Venture, VII Crown Farm Investor LLC, Venetian Lennar LLC, Vineyard Land LLC, Vineyard Point 2009 LLC, Vista Palms Clubhouse LLC, WCI Communities, WCI Communities Inc., WCI Communities LLC, WCI Towers Northeast USA Inc., WCI Westshore LLC, WCP LLC, WIP Lennar OHB LLC, Waterview at Hanover LLC, West Lake Village LLC, West Seattle Project X LLC, West Van Buren L.L.C., Westchase Inc., Westchase Ltd., Westfield Homes USA Inc., White Course Lennar LLC, Wild Plum JV LLC, Willowbrook Investors LLC, Winncrest Natomas LLC, Woodbridge Multifamily Developer I LLC, Wright Farm L.L.C., and YLRichards4Acres 2015 LLC.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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The following companies are subsidiares of WESCO International: 1502218 Alberta Ltd., ALLNET Technologies Pty. Ltd., AXE Distribution Solutions Trinidad Ltd., Accu-Tech Corporation, Anixter (Barbados) SRL, Anixter (CIS) LLC, Anixter (Switzerland) Sarl, Anixter (U.K.) Limited, Anixter Argentina S.A., Anixter Asia Holdings Limited, Anixter Australia Pty. Ltd., Anixter Austria GmbH, Anixter Bahamas Limited, Anixter Belgium B.V.B.A., Anixter Cables y Manufacturas S.A. de C.V., Anixter Canada Inc., Anixter Canadian Holdings ULC, Anixter Chile S.A., Anixter Colombia S.A.S., Anixter Communications (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Anixter Communications (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Anixter Costa Rica S.A., Anixter Czech a.s., Anixter Danmark A/S, Anixter Deutschland GmbH, Anixter Distribuidor de Soluciones Empresariales e Industriales S.A., Anixter Distribution Ireland Limited, Anixter Dominicana SRL, Anixter Egypt LLC, Anixter Espana S.L., Anixter Eurotwo Holdings B.V., Anixter Fasteners Deutschland GmbH, Anixter Financial Inc., Anixter France SARL, Anixter Guatemala y Compania Limitada, Anixter Holdings Inc., Anixter Holdings Mexico LLC, Anixter Hong Kong Limited, Anixter Iletisim Sistemleri Pazarlama ve Ticaret A.S., Anixter Inc., Anixter India Private Limited, Anixter Information Systems LLC, Anixter International, Anixter Italia S.r.l., Anixter Jamaica Limited, Anixter Japan KK, Anixter Jorvex S.A.C., Anixter Limited, Anixter Logistica do Brasil LTDA, Anixter Logistica y Servicios S.A. de C.V., Anixter Magyarorszag Elektronikus Halozati Rendszer Kereskedelmi es Szolgaltato Kft, Anixter Mid Holdings B.V., Anixter Middle East FZE, Anixter Morocco SARL AU, Anixter Nederland B.V., Anixter New Zealand Limited, Anixter Norge A.N.S., Anixter Operaciones y Logistica s De RL De CV, Anixter Panama S.A., Anixter Pension Scheme Trustees Limited, Anixter Pension Trustees Limited, Anixter Peru S.A.C., Anixter Philippines Inc., Anixter Poland Sp.z.o.o., Anixter Portugal S.A., Anixter Power Solutions Canada Inc., Anixter Power Solutions Inc., Anixter Procurement Corporation, Anixter Puerto Rico Inc., Anixter Real-Estate LLC, Anixter Receivables Corporation, Anixter Saudi Arabia Limited, Anixter Singapore Pte. Ltd., Anixter Slovakia s.r.o., Anixter Sub Holdings B.V, Anixter Sverige AB, Anixter Thailand Inc., Anixter U.S. LLC, Anixter Venezuela Inc., Anixter de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Anixter do Brasil Ltda, Atlanta Electrical Distributors, Atlanta Electrical Distributors LLC, Atlas Gentech (NZ) Limited, Avon Electrical Supplies, B.E.L. Corporation, Brews Supply, Brown Wholesale Electric, Bruckner Supply, CBC LP Holdings LLC, CDW Holdco LLC, Calvert Wire & Cable Corporation, Carlton-Bates Company, Carlton-Bates Company (CBC), Carlton-Bates Company de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Carlton-Bates Company of Texas GP Inc, Central Security Distribution Pty. Ltd, Communication Cables LLC, Communications Supply Corporation, Conney Investment Holdings LLC, Conney Safety Products, Conney Safety Products LLC, Distribuidora Materiales Electricos E-Supply Limitada, EECOL Electric, EECOL Electric Bolivia Ltda, EECOL Electric Corp., EECOL Electric Peru S.A.C, EECOL Industrial Electric (SudAmerica) Limitada, EECOL Industrial Electric Ecuador Limitada, EECOL Industrial Electric Limitada, EECOL Power S.A., EECOL Properties Corp, Eurinvest B.V., Eurinvest Cooperatief U.A., Fastec Industrial, HMH Pension Trustees Limited, Hazmasters, Hazmasters Inc., Herning Underground Supply, Hi-Line Utility Supply, Hi-Line Utility Supply Company LLC, Hill Country Electric Supply, Hill Country Electric Supply L.P., ICV GP Inc., Infast Group Limited, Inner Range Pty. Ltd, Itel Container Ventures Inc., Itel Corporation, Itel Rail Holdings Corporation, J-Mark Inc., LaPrairie, Liberty Wire & Cable Inc., Monti Electric Supply, Needham Electric Supply, Needham Electric Supply LLC, Obras Y Servicios Sunpark S.A.C., PT Anixter Indonesia, Potelcom Supply, Pro Canadian Holdings I ULC, RECO LLC, RS Electronics, Reily Electrical Supply, SASK Alta Holdings S.A., Services Voice Video and Data Distribution de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Servicios Anixter S.A. de C.V., Signal Capital Corporation, Signal Capital Projects Inc., Stone Eagle Electrical Supply GP Inc., Stone Eagle Electrical Supply Limited Partnership, TVC Communications, TVC Communications L.L.C., TVC Espana Distribucion y Venta De Equipos S.L., TVC International Holding L.L.C., TVC UK Holdings Limited, Tri-Ed Puerto Rico Ltd. Inc., Trydor Industries, Voice Video and Data Distribution de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., WDC Holding Inc., WDCH LP, WDCH US LP, WDI USVI LLC, WDI-Angola LDA, WDINESCO B.V., WDINESCO II B.V., WDINESCO III B.V., WEAS Company S. de R.L., WESCO (Suzhou) Trading Co. Ltd., WESCO Australia Pty Ltd, WESCO Canada GP Inc., WESCO Canada I LP, WESCO DC Holding I LP, WESCO DC Holding II LP, WESCO DC Holding III LP, WESCO DC Holding IV LP, WESCO Distribution Canada Co., WESCO Distribution Canada LP, WESCO Distribution HK Limited, WESCO Distribution II ULC, WESCO Distribution III ULC, WESCO Distribution IV Inc., WESCO Distribution Inc., WESCO Distribution Ireland Limited, WESCO Distribution NL B.V., WESCO Distribution Pte. Ltd., WESCO Distribution de Mexico S. de R.L., WESCO Distribution-International Limited, WESCO Enterprises Inc., WESCO Equity Corporation, WESCO Holdings LLC, WESCO Integrated Supply Inc., WESCO Integrated Supply Polska Spolka z o.o., WESCO Netherlands B.V., WESCO Nevada Ltd., WESCO Nigeria Inc., WESCO Procurement Canada ULC, WESCO Real Estate I LLC, WESCO Real Estate II LLC, WESCO Real Estate III LLC, WESCO Real Estate IV LLC, WESCO Receivables Corp., WESCO Services LLC, WESCO TLD Holdings Co. Ltd., WND Nigeria Limited, WireXpress Ltd., Xpress Connect Supply Hong Kong Limited, XpressConnect Holdings B.V., XpressConnect International B.V., XpressConnect Supply B.V.B.A., XpressConnect Supply Colombia S.A.S., XpressConnect Supply Inc., XpressConnect Supply Mexico S.A. de C.V., and XpressConnect Supply do Brasil Ltda.ConocoPhillips engages in the exploration, production, transportation and marketing of crude oil, bitumen, natural gas, natural gas liquids, and liquefied natural gas on a worldwide basis. It operates through the following geographical segments: Alaska; Lower 48; Canada; Europe, Middle East and North Africa; Asia Pacific; and Other International. The Alaska segment primarily explores for produces, transports and markets crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids. The Lower 48 segment consists of operations in the U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico. The Canada segment is comprised of oil sands development in the Athabasca Region of northeastern Alberta and a liquids-rich unconventional play in western Canada. The Europe, Middle East and North Africa segment consists of operations and exploration activities in Norway, the United Kingdom and Libya. The Asia Pacific segment has explorations and product operations in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia. The Other International segment handles exploration activities in Columbia and Argentina. The company was founded in 1875 and is headquartered in Houston, TX.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Reliance Steel & Aluminum: AMI Metals Aero Services Ankara Havaclk Anonim Sirketi, AMI Metals Europe SPRL, AMI Metals Inc., AMI Metals UK Limited, Acero Prime S. de R.L. de C.V., Airport Metals, Alaska Steel Company, Alaska Steel Company, Aleaciones Especiales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., All Metal Services (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., All Metal Services India Private Limited, All Metal Services Limited, All Metal Services Ltd. (Xian), All Metals Holding, All Metals Processing & Logistics Inc., All Metals Transportation and Logistics Inc., Allegheny Steel Distributors Inc., American Metals Corporation, Best Manufacturing Inc., Bralco Metals (Australia) Pty Ltd, CCC Steel Inc., Chapel Steel Canada Ltd., Chapel Steel Corp., Chatham Steel Corporation, Clayton Metals Inc., Continental Alloys & Services (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Continental Alloys & Services Limited, Continental Alloys & Services Pte. Ltd., Continental Alloys Middle East FZE, Crest Steel Corporation, Delta Steel Inc., Diamond Manufacturing Company, DuBose National Energy Fasteners & Machined Parts, DuBose National Energy Fasteners & Machined Parts Inc., DuBose National Energy Services, DuBose National Energy Services Inc., Durrett Sheppard Steel Co. Inc., Earle M. Jorgensen Company, FastMetals Inc., Feralloy Corporation, Ferguson Perforating Company, Ferguson Perforating Company, Fox Metals And Alloys, Fox Metals and Alloys Inc., Fry Steel, Fry Steel Company, GH Metal Solutions, GH Metal Solutions Inc., Haskins Steel, Infra-Metals Co., KMS FAB LLC, KMS Fab, KMS South, KMS South Inc., Liebovich Bros. Inc., McKey Perforating, Merfish United, Metals USA, Metals USA Inc., Metalweb Limited, National Specialty Alloys, National Specialty Alloys Inc., Northern Illinois Steel Supply, Northern Illinois Steel Supply Co., PDM Steel Service Centers Inc., Pacific Metal Company, Phoenix Corporation, Precision Flamecutting and Steel Inc., Precision Strip Inc., Reliance Metalcenter Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Reliance Metals Canada Limited, Service Steel Aerospace Corp., Siskin Steel & Supply Company Inc., Sugar Steel Corporation, Sunbelt Steel Texas, Tubular Steel, Tubular Steel Inc., Valex Corp., Valex Korea Co. Ltd., Valex Semiconductor Materials (Zhejiang) Co. Ltd., Viking Materials Inc., and Yarde Metals Inc..Travelport Worldwide Limited, together with its subsidiaries, operates a travel commerce platform that offers distribution, technology, payment, mobile, and other solutions for the travel and tourism industry in the United States, the United Kingdom, and internationally. It facilitates travel commerce by connecting travel providers, such as airlines, hotel chains, and car rental companies with online and offline travel buyers in a business-to-business travel platform. The company provides distribution and merchandising solutions for hotel, car rental, rail, cruise-line, and tour operators; Virtual Account Number payment solutions that automatically generate unique MasterCard numbers that are used to process payments; advertising solutions; and other platform services, such as subscription, processing, and business intelligence data services, as well as marketing-oriented analytical tools to travel agencies, travel providers, and other travel data users. It also offers critical IT solutions and other services to airlines, such as shopping, ticketing, departure control, business intelligence, and other solutions. Travelport Worldwide Limited was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in Langley, the United Kingdom.

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.SPDR Portfolio Aggregate Bond ETF's stock was trading at $29.97 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, SPAB shares have decreased by 1.0% and is now trading at $29.67.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.The following companies are subsidiares of EnerSys: ABSL Power Solutions Inc., ABSL Power Solutions Ltd., Acumuladores Industriales EnerSys SA, Alpha Alternative Energy Inc., Alpha Broadband Services Inc., Alpha Innovations Industria e Comercio de Produtos Eletronicos Ltda., Alpha Innovations Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Alpha Mexico Network Power S.A. de C.V., Alpha Tech Energy Solutions India Private Limited, Alpha Technical Services Ltd., Alpha Technologies Ltd., Alpha Technologies Pty. Ltd., Alpha Technologies Services Inc., Alphatec Technologies (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Argus Research Ltd., Batterias Hawker de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Battery Power International Pte Ltd., Coppervale Enterprises Inc., DCPM Engineering Sdn Bhd, EH Batterien AG, EH Europe GmbH, EH Global Holdings GmbH, EH Swiss Holdings GmbH, ENAS Industrial Batteries Morocco Sarl, EnerSys (Chaozhou) Huada Batteries Company Limited, EnerSys (China) Huada Batteries Company Limited, EnerSys (Chongqing) Huada Batteries Company Limited, EnerSys (Jiangsu) Huada Batteries Company Limited (94.7%) *, EnerSys (Luxembourg) Finance Sarl, EnerSys (Yangzhou) Huada Batteries Co. Ltd., EnerSys A/S, EnerSys AB, EnerSys AD, EnerSys AE, EnerSys AS, EnerSys Advanced Systems Inc., EnerSys Argentina S.A., EnerSys Asia Limited, EnerSys Australia Pty Ltd., EnerSys BV, EnerSys BVBA, EnerSys Battery Private Limited, EnerSys Brasil Ltda., EnerSys Bulgaria EOOD, EnerSys Canada Inc., EnerSys Capital Inc., EnerSys Cayman Euro L.P., EnerSys Cayman Holdings L.P., EnerSys Cayman Inc., EnerSys Delaware Inc., EnerSys Delaware LLC I, EnerSys Delaware LLC II, EnerSys Delaware LLC III, EnerSys Delaware LLC IV, EnerSys Delaware LLC V, EnerSys Energy Products Inc., EnerSys Europe Oy, EnerSys European Holding Co., EnerSys GmbH, EnerSys Holdings (Luxembourg) Sarl, EnerSys Holdings UK Ltd., EnerSys Hungaria Kft., EnerSys India Batteries Private Ltd., EnerSys JSC, EnerSys LLC, EnerSys Ltd., EnerSys Malaysia Sdn Bhd, EnerSys Mexico Holdings LLC, EnerSys Mexico Management LLC, EnerSys Participacoes Ltda., EnerSys Reserve Power Pte. Ltd., EnerSys S.r.l., EnerSys SARL, EnerSys SNC, EnerSys South East Asia Pte. Ltd., EnerSys de Mexico II S de R.L. de CV, EnerSys de Mexico S de R.L. de CV, EnerSys s.r.o., EnerSys sp. z o.o., EnerSystem Chile Ltda., Enersys Aku Sanaya Dis Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Esfinco LLC, Hawker GmbH, Hawker Power Systems Inc., Hawker Powersource Inc., Hawker Systems GmbH & Co. KG., ICS Industries Pty Ltd, ICS Industries Pty Ltd., ICS Sheet Metal Pty Ltd., Industrial Battery Holding Ltda., International Communication Shelters Australasia Pty Ltd., Lancord Pty Ltd., Lenmic Pty Ltd., MIB Energy Sdn Bhd, N Holding AB, National Infrastructure Pty Ltd., National Infrastructure Services Pty Ltd., NaviSemi Energy Pte Ltd., NaviSemi Inc., New Pacifico Realty Inc., NorthStar Battery Company LLC, NorthStar Battery Company LLC, NorthStar Battery DMCC, Outback Power Technologies Inc., Powercom (NSW) Pty Ltd., Powersonic S de R.L. de CV, Purcell Systems, Purcell Systems Inc., Purcell Systems International AB, Quallion LLC, Riverfront Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., Shenzhen Huada Power Supply Mechanical & Electrical Co. Ltd. , SiteTel Shanghai Co Ltd., SiteTel Sweden AB, Telecomponents & Supply (Hong Kong) Ltd., The Enser Corporation, UTS Holdings Sdn Bhd, UTS Technology (JB) Sdn Bhd, UTS Technology (PG) Sdn Bhd, YCI Inc., and Yecoltd S. de R.L. de CV.Telecom Italia S.p.A., together with its subsidiaries, provides fixed and mobile telecommunications services in Europe, South America, and the Mediterranean Basin. The company operates through Domestic, Brazil, and Other Operations segments. It offers fixed and mobile voice and Internet, and public telephony services, as well as products managed and developed for individuals and families; and voice, data, and Internet services and products, and information and communications technology solutions for small and medium-size enterprises, small offices/home offices, the public sector, large accounts, and enterprises in the fixed and mobile telecommunications markets. The company also manages and develops a portfolio of regulated and unregulated wholesale services for fixed and mobile telecommunications operators; provision of infrastructure for housing radio transmission equipment of mobile telephone networks; and development, engineering, building, and operation of network infrastructures, information technology (IT), real estate properties, and plant engineering. In addition, it engages in customer care, operating credit support, loyalty, and retention activities; and staff functions and other support activities. Further, the company offers office products and services for IT sector. The company was founded in 1908 and is headquartered in Rome, Italy.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Laboratory Co. of America: 1957285 Ontario Inc. dba Quality Underwriting Services, 2089729 Ontario Inc., 2248848 Ontario Inc., 3065619 Nova Scotia Company, 3257959 Nova Scotia Company, 896988 Ontario Limited, 9279-3280 Quebec Inc., Accupath Diagnostic Laboratories Inc., Alpha Medical Laboratory LLC, Assets of Pathology Inc, Beacon LBS IPA Inc., Beacon Laboratory Benefit Solutions Inc., CannAmm GP Inc., CannAmm Limited Partnership, Center for Disease Detection International, Center for Disease Detection LLC, Centrex Clinical Laboratories Inc., Chiltern, Clearstone Central Laboratories (U.S.) Inc., Clearstone Holdings (International) Ltd., Clipper Holdings Inc., Colorado Coagulation Consultants Inc., Colorado Laboratory Services LLC, Correlagen Diagnostics Inc., Covance Inc., Curalab Inc., Cytometry Associates Inc., Czura Thornton (Hong Kong) Limited, DCL Acquisition Inc., DCL Medical Laboratories LLC (DE), DCL Medical Laboratories LLC (FL), DCL Sub LLC, DIANON Systems Inc., DL Holdings Limited Partnership, Decision Diagnostics L.L.C. (aka DaVinici/Medicorp LLC), Diagnostic Services Inc., DynaLifeDX, Dynacare - Gamma Laboratory Partnership, Dynacare Company, Dynacare G.P. Inc., Dynacare Holdco LLC, Dynacare Laboratories Inc., Dynacare Laboratories Limited Partnership, Dynacare Northwest Inc., Dynacare Realty Inc., DynalifeDX Infrastructure Inc., Endocrine Sciences Inc., Esoterix Genetic Counseling LLC, Esoterix Genetic Laboratories LLC, Esoterix Inc., Execmed Health Services Inc., FirstSource Laboratory Solutions Inc., GDML Medical Laboratories Inc, Gamma Dynacare Central Medical Laboratories GP Inc., Gamma Dynacare Central Medical Laboratory Limited Partnership, HHLA Lab-In-An-Envelope LLC, Health Trans Services Inc., Home Healthcare Laboratory of America LLC, IDX Pathology Inc., Impact Genetics Corp, Impact Genetics Inc., Kaleida LabCorp LLC, Lab Delivery Service of New York City Inc., LabCorp BVBA, LabCorp Belgium Holdings Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (Canada) Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (China) Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (Singapore) Pte., LabCorp Development Company, LabCorp Employer Services Inc., LabCorp Health System Diagnostics LLC, LabCorp Indiana Inc., LabCorp Japan G.K., LabCorp Limited, LabCorp Michigan Inc., LabCorp Nebraska Inc., LabCorp Neon Ltd., LabCorp Neon Switzerland S.a.r.l., LabCorp Specialty Testing Billing Service Inc., LabCorp Specialty Testing Group Inc., LabCorp Staffing Solutions Inc., LabCorp Tennessee LLC, LabCorp UK Holdings Ltd., LabWest Inc., Laboratoire Bio-Medic Inc., Laboratory Corporation of America, Lifecodes Corporation, LipoScience Inc., Litholink Corporation, MEDTOX Scientific Inc., MNG Laboratories, Medical Neurogenitics LLC, Medtox Diagnostics Inc., Medtox Laboratories Inc., Monogram Biosciences Inc., Monogram Biosciences UK Limited, Myriad Autoimmunes Vectra Testing Business, NWT Inc., National Genetics Institute, New Brighton Business Center LLC, New Imaging Diagnostics LLC, New Molecular Diagnostics Ventures LLC, Orchid Cellmark Ltd., Orchid Cellmark ULC, PA Labs Inc., Path Lab Incorporated, Pathology Associates Medical Lab LLC, Pee Dee Pathology Associates Inc., Persys Technology Inc., Pixel by LabCorp, Princeton Diagnostic Laboratories of America Inc., Protedyne Corporation, ReliaGene Technologies Inc., SW/DL LLC, Saint Josephs-PAML LLC, Sequenom Biosciences (India) Pvt. Ltd., Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine LLC, Sequenom Inc, Sequenom Inc., Southern Idaho Regional Laboratory, Tandem Labs Inc., The LabCorp Charitable Foundation, Tri-Cities Laboratory LLC, Viro-Med Laboratories Inc., Visiun, and Yakima Medical Arts Inc..The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, 2nd Road Pty Ltd., ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Ltd, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Innovation Singapore Holdings Pte, ?What If! Limited, ?What If! Shanghai Co. Ltd, ?What If! USA LLC, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD Dialeto Agencia de Publicidade SA, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Beijing) Mobile Technology Co Ltd, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co Ltd, Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (South Africa) Pty Limited, Accenture (UK) Ltd, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Azerbaijan Ltd, Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BV, Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A, Accenture CAS GmbH, Accenture Canada Holdings Inc., Accenture Capital DAC, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd., Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SAS, Accenture Customer Services Limited, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Delivery Poland sp. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital France Holdings SA, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance (Gibraltar) III Ltd, Accenture Finance GmbH, Accenture Finance GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II GmbH, Accenture Finance II GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II Ltd, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services Srl, Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Ghana Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Ltd., Accenture Global Services Ltd, Accenture Global Solutions Ltd, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services Ltd, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc., Accenture Holding GmbH, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holding GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SAS, Accenture Holdings plc, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazylym Cozumleri Limited irketi), Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazlm Cozumleri Limited Sirketi), Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture Insurance Services SAS, Accenture Insurance Services SpA, Accenture International BV, Accenture International Capital SCA, Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture International Sarl, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea BV, Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Managed Services SpA, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Middle East B.V, Accenture Middle East BV, Accenture Minority I BV, Accenture Minority III Ltd, Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi (Pty) Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Newco LLC, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations Sp. z o.o., Accenture Outsourcing SRL, Accenture Outsourcing Services, Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations BV, Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru S.R.L, Accenture Peru S.R.L., Accenture Post Trade Processing SAS, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process Ltd, Accenture Product Lifecycle Services, Accenture Properties, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture S.A., Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture SAS, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sendirian Berhad, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Ltd, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.r.l., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services Sp. z o.o., Accenture Services Sp. z.o.o., Accenture Services and Technology Srl, Accenture Services fur Kreditinstitute GmbH, Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Servicos Administrativos Ltda, Accenture Servicos de Suporte de Negocios Ltda, Accenture Solutions Co Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Sp. z o.o., Accenture Sp. z.o.o., Accenture SpA, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc., Accenture Sub Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag KFT, Accenture Technologia, Accenture Technologia Consultoria e Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions SAS, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn. Bhd., Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures BV, Accenture Technology Ventures S.P.R.L., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co., Accenture Vietnam Co. LTD, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Limitada, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Customer Insight Limited, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Agave Consultants Limited, Agilex Technologies Inc., Allen International, Allen International Consulting Group Ltd, Alnova Technologies Corporation S.L., AlphaBeta Advisors, Altima, Altima Asia Ltd., Altima SAS, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Appaloosa Technology SAS, Arca, Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Avanade, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade (Thailand) Co Ltd, Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Denmark ApS, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Ltd, Avanade Europe Services Ltd, Avanade Federal Services LLC, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SAS, Avanade GZ Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd. (SH), Avanade Guangzhou, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy SRL, Avanade KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Netherlands BV, Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland Sp. z o.o., Avanade Poland Sp. z.o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain SL, Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Ltd, Avanade do Brasil Limitada, Avanade Osterreich GmbH, AvantBiz Consulting Limited, Avenai, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Benext, Bionic, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Boomerang Pharmaceuticals Communications Ireland Limited, Bow & Arrow, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brand Learning LLC, Brand Learning Ltd, Brand Learning Partners Limited, Brand Learning Pte Limited, Bridge Energy Group LLC, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CadenceQuest Inc., Capable Marketer Limited, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc., Certus Solutions Consulting Services Ltd, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cimation UK Limited, Cirruseo, Cirruseo SAS, Clarity Insights, Clearhead, Clearhead Group, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas (SN) (PTE.) Limited, Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Ltd., Cloud Talent Limited, Cloudsherpas, Cloudsherpas Inc., Cloudworks, Codagenic Pty. Ltd., Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda., Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda., Context Information Security, Coritel S.A., Corliant Inc., CreativeDrive, CustomerWorks Europe SL, Cutting Edge Solutions Ltd, D5 Global Holdings LLC, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd., DMA Solutions Limited, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (Australia) PTY LTD, DayNine Consulting (Deutschland) GmbH, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting France SAS, DayNine Consulting Japan K.K., DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings, Declarative Holdings LLC, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digiplug SAS, Digital Consulting & Software Services LLC, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Ltd., Duck Creek Technologies, Duck Creek Technologies LLC, Deja Vu Security LLC, ESR Labs, Elcurator SAS, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting L.P., End-to-End Analytics, Energuia Web, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Ltd., Energy Quote Private Ltd., EnergyQuote JHA, EnergyQuote JHA Ltd., EnergyQuote Trading Ltd., Enimbos, Enkitec, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V. , Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enterprise System Partners PR LLC, Enterprise System Partners S.A.S., Entropia, Epylon, Ethica Consulting Group, Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Exton Consulting, Fairway Technologies Inc, Fairway Technologies LLC, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, First Annapolis International, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Focus Group Europe Limited, Formicary, Formicary Holdings Limited, Formicary Limited, FusionX, FutureMove Automotive, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, Genfour Limited, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gestion Altima Canada Inc., Gevity, Global Public Firm S.L., GlobalView SAS, GoodFilm GmbH Filmproduktion Stuttgart, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Hytracc Consulting UK Limited, Hytracc Holding AS, I-Faber S.p.A., IBB Consulting, IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INCAD, INSITUM, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Imagine Broadband (USA) Ltd, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Industrie&Co, Infoman AG, Infoman Schweiz AG, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Infusion Development Inc., Infusion Development UK Limited, InfusionDev LLC, Innoveer Solutions India Pvt Ltd, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria Brasil LTDA, Insitum Consultoria Colombia SAS, Insitum Consultoria Europa SL, Insitum Consultoria Peru SAC, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., Intrepid, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Advertisement (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inventor Technology Limited, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, Javelin Group (Bulgaria) EOOD, Javelin Group Limited (UK), Javelin Group SASU, K Comms Group Limited, KCS.net AG, KCS.net AG West, KCS.net Deutschland GmbH, KCS.net Holding AG, KCS.net Osterreich GmbH, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Ltd, Kogentix Singapore Pte. Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kunstmaan NV, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon UKI, Kurt Salmon UKI Ltd., Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LabAnswer, LabAnswer Government, LemonXL Limited, Logistics Market Place Limited (UK), Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Corporation, Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte. Ltd., Mackevision UK Ltd, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd., Maihiro, Matter, Matter Llc, Maud Corp Pty Limited, Maxamine International, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing Corporation, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mindtribe Product Engineering LLC, MobGen, MobGen Technology S.L, Moonrise NV, Mortgage Cadence, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, N3 LLC, NBS Marketing Inc., NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile, Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Chile SpA, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda., New Energy Aborda, New Energy Associates Ltd, New Energy Group, New Energy S.r.l., NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage China Ltd., NewsPage Pte Ltd, Nice Agency Limited, Northstream, Northstream AB, Northstream Holding AB, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology LTDA, Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Octo Technology SPRL, Octoman SAS, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Openmind, Openminded, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium Consulting Ltd, Orbium GmbH, Orbium Holding AG, Orbium Inc., Orbium International AG, Orbium International sp. z o.o., Orbium Licences AG, Orbium Limited, Orbium Pte. Ltd., Orbium Pty Ltd, Orbium Services sp. z o.o., Orbium Sarl, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PCO Innovation Canada Inc., PCO Innovation EURL, PIXO PUNCH Limited, PLM Systems S.r.l, POC Holdings, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, Pach Invest SARL, Pach Invest SAS, PacificLink Group, PacificLink iMedia Ltd., Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald Inc., Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Partners Technology Mexico Holdings BV, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production K/S, Perseroan Terbatas. Accenture, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Ltd, Pragsis Technologies S.L, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Ltd, Procurian Germany GmbH, Procurian Inc., Procurian International I LLC, Procurian International II LLC, Procurian LLC, Procurian Singapore Pte. Ltd., Procurian Switzerland GmbH, Procurian USA LLC, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co Ltd, Radiant Services, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Limited, Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (Asia) Pte Ltd, Redcore (India) Private Limited (India), Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Renacentis IT Services, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Rothco, Rothco Holdings Designated Activity Company, Rothco Unlimited Company, S.C. EnergyQuote S.r.l., S3 TV Technology Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SEC Servizi, SEC Servizi S.p.A., SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Sagacious Consultants LLC, Salt Solutions, Sanchez Capital Services Pvt Ltd, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Airline Planning Group, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace Asia (Hong Kong) Limited, Seabury Aviation Consulting LLC, Seabury Cargo Advisory B.V., Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Human Capital LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Seabury Structured Finance LLC, Search Technologies BPO, Search Technologies BPO Inc., Search Technologies GmbH, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LATAM, Search Technologies LATAM S.A., Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Sente Partners LLC, Sentelis, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Shackleton, Shackleton Barcelona S.L., Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton Madrid S.L., Shackleton S.A., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., Silveo, Simian Pty Limited, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Commerce GmbH, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., SinnerSchrader Swipe GmbH, Sistemes Consulting S.L., Solutions IQ, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Storm Digital, Storm Digital B.V., Structure Consulting Group, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Systor AG, TQuila Limited (UK), Tadata Creative Unlimited Company, Tara Insurance DAC, Tara Risk DAC, TargetST8, TargetST8 Consulting LLC, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica Ltd., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Limited, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Total Logistics Supply Chain Consultants Limited, Tquila, Trivadis AG, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Verax Solutions, Verax Solutions Corporation, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong, Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd., Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, Weblinc Pty Ltd, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wire Stone Sarl, Wolox, Workforce Insight, Yesler, Zag, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines, Zenta Global Philippines Inc., Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc., Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, and solid-serVision.com GmbH.The East Tennessee Symphony Orchestra welcomes a change in seasons with its fall concert Dvorak and Tchaikovsky on Sunday at 7 p.m. The free family-friendly event will take place in the new Founders Hall at the Collegedale Commons on Swinyar Drive in Collegedale.

ETSO conductor Jeremy Francisco leads the orchestra with Nathan Francisco on cello in a concert lineup featuring Tchaikovskys Rococo Variations, and Dvoraks Carnival Overture and Symphony No. 9 From the New World.

Mathew Miller, executive director of the ETSO, says he looks forward to the symphonys debut performance at Founders Hall as well as future performances at the new community venue.

Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Collegedale community, the ETSO can expand upon its mission to bring world-class symphonic performances to the East Tennessee Valley, said Mr. Miller. "We're excited, humbled and honored to help christen this new and unique venue. The Founders Hall is a beautiful multipurpose structure that will serve the greater Chattanooga community well into the distant future.

Mr. Miller says the ETSO remains hopeful that the completion of the Founders Hall will serve as a catalyst to spur the next phase of on-site development at the Collegedale Commons  a world-class outdoor amphitheater.

An updated schedule of future concerts will be available on the ETSOs website. For more information, contact Mr. Miller at 580-4999, or visit etsomusic.org.











China Telecom Corporation Limited, together with its subsidiaries, provides wireline and mobile telecommunications services primarily in the People's Republic of China. It offers wireline voice services, including local wireline telephone services and long distance wireline services; CDMA mobile voice services, such as local calls, domestic and international long distance calls, intra-provincial roaming, and inter-provincial roaming and international roaming; wireline Internet access services comprising dial-up and broadband services; wireless Internet access services; and wireline, Internet, and mobile value-added services. The company also provides Best Tone information services; and information technology-based integrated solutions, such as system integration and consulting, outsourcing, special advisory, information application, knowledge, and software development services. In addition, it offers managed data services that include digital data network, frame relay, and asynchronous transfer mode services for government agencies, large corporations, and institutions; and leased line services, as well as sells, repairs, and maintains customer-end equipment. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, including network, Internet access and transit, Internet data center, and mobile virtual network services in various countries, including the Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, South America, and North America; and music production and related information, instant messenger, finance leasing, capital and financial management, and e-commerce services, as well as sells telecommunications terminals. As of December 31, 2019, it had approximately 336 million mobile subscribers; 153 million wireline broadband subscribers; and 111 million access lines in service. The company was incorporated in 2002 and is based in Wanchai, Hong Kong. China Telecom Corporation Limited is a subsidiary of China Telecommunications Corporation.

Read MoreiShares Russell Mid-Cap Growth ETF shares split before market open on Monday, December 7th 2020. The 2-1 split was announced on Friday, November 6th 2020. The newly minted shares were issued to shareholders after the closing bell on Friday, December 4th 2020. An investor that had 100 shares of iShares Russell Mid-Cap Growth ETF stock prior to the split would have 200 shares after the split.The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, produces, distributes, and markets gas in Hong Kong and Mainland China. It is involved in the provision of liquefied natural gas, methanol, and coal and other chemicals; conversion and utilization of biomass, and industrial and agricultural waste; and operation of natural gas refilling stations, piped city-gas projects, upstream and midstream developments, water and wastewater treatment projects, energy exploration and utilization ventures, and aviation fuel facilities. The company supplies town gas to approximately 1.9 million customers. It also provides network connectivity, and data center and cloud computing services; and engages in the software development, solution implementation, and systems integration activities. In addition, the company offers consultancy and engineering contractor services, including utilities installation, infrastructure construction, and civil and building services engineering for public and private projects; and designs and manufactures gas meters and metering systems. Further, it is involved in water supply and wastewater treatment serving 2.4 million customers. Additionally, the company manufactures polyethylene piping and fittings; and engages in the customers center, cafA, restaurant, retail sale, automatic meter reading system development, laboratory testing, payment gateway and related, project management, landfill gas project, financing, logistics, oil, research and development, property development, and securities investment activities. The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited was founded in 1862 and is headquartered in North Point, Hong Kong.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Crown: Adularia Inversiones 2010 S.L., Angleboard Sweden AB, Bates Cargo-Pak ApS, Butimove, CMB Machinery and Technology (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CROWN AP (Thailand) Company Limited, CROWN Aerosols & Promotional Nederland, CROWN Aerosols Italia Srl, CROWN Aerosols Nederland BV, CROWN Aerosols UK Limited, CROWN Americas LLC, CROWN Arabia Can Company Ltd, CROWN Asia Pacific Holdings Pte. Ltd., CROWN Asia Pacific Investments (T) Limited, CROWN Bevcan Espana S.L., CROWN Bevcan France SAS, CROWN Bevcan Slovakia s.r.o., CROWN Bevcan Turkiye Ambalaj Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, CROWN Bevcan and Closures (Thailand) Company Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans (Cambodia) Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans (Dong Nai) Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Beijing Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Changchun Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Danang Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Hangzhou Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Hanoi Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Heshan Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Hong Kong Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Huizhou Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Malaysia Sdn Bhd, CROWN Beverage Cans Nanning Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Putian Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Saigon Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Shanghai Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Sihanoukville Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Singapore Pte. Ltd., CROWN Beverage Cans Ziyang Limited, CROWN Beverage Packaging LLC, CROWN Beverage Packaging Puerto Rico Inc., CROWN Cans Ghana Limited, CROWN China Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited, CROWN Commercial Belgium BVBA, CROWN Commercial France SAS, CROWN Commercial Germany GmbH & Co. KG, CROWN Commercial Hungary Kft, CROWN Commercial Netherlands B.V., CROWN Commercial Vermogensverwaltung GmbH, CROWN Cork & Seal USA Inc., CROWN Embalagens Metalicas da Amazonia S.A., CROWN Emballage France SAS, CROWN Emirates Company Limited, CROWN Envases Mexico S.A. de C.V., CROWN Famosa S.A. de C.V., CROWN Food Packaging (Thailand) Public Company Limited, CROWN Foodcan (Hat Yai) Company Limited, CROWN Foodcan (Nakhon Pathom) Company Limited, CROWN Foodcan Germany GmbH, CROWN Foodcan GmbH, CROWN Imballaggi Italia Srl, CROWN Imgallaggi Italia Srl, CROWN Italy Finance srl, CROWN Khmer Beverage Cans Limited, CROWN Maghreb Can, CROWN Magyarorszag Csomagoloipari KFT, CROWN Metal Packaging Canada Inc., CROWN Metal Packaging Canada LP, CROWN Middle East Can Co. Ltd., CROWN Packaging (Barbados) Limited, CROWN Packaging Holdings LLC, CROWN Packaging Investment (H.K.) Limited, CROWN Packaging Ireland Ltd, CROWN Packaging Jamaica Limited, CROWN Packaging Polska Sp.z.o.o., CROWN Packaging Technology Inc., CROWN Packaging Trinidad Limited, CROWN Packaging UK Limited, CROWN Promotional Packaging UK Ltd, CROWN SIEM, CROWN Senegal, CROWN Societe Malgache d'Emballages Metalliques, CROWN Speciality Packaging BV, CROWN Speciality Packaging Investment Pte. Ltd., CROWN Specialty Packaging UK Ltd, CROWN TCP Beverage Cans Company Limited, CROWN Verpakking Belgie NV, CROWN Verpakking Nederland B.V., Caretex Asia Ltd., CarnaudMetalbox Engineering Ltd, CarnaudMetalbox Food South Africa (Pty) Limited, CarnaudMetalbox Group UK Limited, CarnaudMetalbox Overeseas Limited, CarnaudMetalbox Overseas Limited, Cierres Hermeticos S.A. DE C.V., Constar International, Crown Americas Capital Corp., Crown Americas Capital Corp. II, Crown Americas Capital Corp. III, Crown Americas Capital Corp. IV, Crown Americas Capital Corp. V, Crown Americas Capital Corp. VI, Crown Brasil Holdings Ltda., Crown Canadian Holdings ULC, Crown Closures Spain S.L., Crown Colombiana S.A., Crown Comercial de Envases S.L., Crown Commercial Italy Srl, Crown Commercial Polska Sp. z.o.o., Crown Consultants Inc., Crown Cork & Seal Company (DE) LLC, Crown Cork & Seal Company Inc., Crown Cork & Seal Deutschland Holdings GmbH, Crown Cork & Seal Receivables (DE) Corporation, Crown Cork & Seal de Portugal Embalagens S.A., Crown Cork Kuban, Crown Cork and Seal Receivables II LLC, Crown Developpement SAS, Crown European Holdings, Crown Food Espana S.A.U., Crown Foodcan Turkey Ambalaj Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Crown Hellas Can Packaging SA, Crown Heshan Trading Company Limited, Crown Holdings Italia Srl, Crown Holdings Spain S.L., Crown International Holdings B.V., Crown International Holdings Inc., Crown Luxembourg Holdings, Crown Mexican Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., Crown Overseas Investments B.V., Crown Packaging Commercial UK Limited, Crown Packaging Distribution UK Limited, Crown Packaging European Division GmbH, Crown Packaging European Division Services SAS, Crown Packaging European Holdings GmbH, Crown Packaging Lux I S.a.r.l., Crown Packaging Lux II S.a.r.l., Crown Packaging Lux III S.a.r.l., Crown Packaging Manufacturing UK Limited, Crown Packaging Maroc, Crown Receivables III, Crown Services Iberia, Crown UK Holdings Limited, Crownway Insurance Company, Dacro B.V., EMPAQUE, Fabricas Monterrey S.A. de C.V., Form Koruyucu Ambalaj Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Foshan Continental Can Co. Limited, Foshan Crown Easy-Opening End Co. Limited, Glass & Silice S.A. DE C.V., Globoplastt s.r.o., Gunther S.A.S., Haloila Bulgaria EOOD, Interstrap B.V., Josef Kihlberg AB, Kiwiplan GmbH, Kiwiplan Inc, Lachenmeier ApS, Liljendals Bruk AB, Litec France S.A.S., Mezger Heftsysteme GmbH, Mima Films S.a.r.l., Mima Films Sprl, Mima Packaging Systems S.A.S., Mivisa, Nordic S.A.S., Norsk Signode AS, Oy M. Haloila AB, PT CROWN Beverage Cans Indonesia, Package Design and Manufacturing, Prolatamex S.A. DE C.V., Quandel Verpackungs- und Foerdertechnik GmbH, SMB Schwede Maschinenbau GmbH, SMP Schwede Maschinenbau Weischlitz GmbH, SPG Denmark, SPG France Holdings SAS, SPG Germany Service Management GmbH, SPG Industrial Packaging S.a.r.l, SPG Netherlands B.V., SPG Packaging Ireland Limited, SPG Packaging Systems GmbH, SPG Packaging UK Ltd, Scybele S.A.S., Shippers Europe S.p.r.l., Signode BVBA, Signode Brasileira Ltda, Signode Hong Kong Limited, Signode Industrial Group, Signode Industrial Group AB, Signode Industrial Group Colombia S.A.S., Signode Industrial Group GmbH, Signode Industrial Group Holdings Lux S.a.r.l., Signode Industrial Group Holdings US Inc, Signode Industrial Group Lux S.A., Signode Industrial Group Mexico, Signode Industrial Group Sweden AB, Signode International Holdings LLC, Signode International IP Holdings LLC, Signode International Investment LLC, Signode Kabushiki Kaisha, Signode Korea Inc, Signode NZ Limited, Signode Netherlands B.V., Signode Packaging (Qingdao) Co., Signode Packaging (Shanghai) Co., Signode Packaging Espana S.L., Signode Packaging Group (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Signode Packaging Group Australia Pty Ltd, Signode Packaging Group Canada ULC, Signode Packaging Group NZ, Signode Packaging Systems Limited, Signode Pickling Holding LLC, Signode Polska sp. Z.o.o., Signode Singapore Pte. Ltd., Signode Sweden Holdings AB, Signode System GmbH, Signode System Packaging GmbH & Co. KG, Signode Systems (Thailand) Ltd., Signode US IP Holdings LLC, Silice De Veracruz S.A. DE C. V., Silice Del Istmo S.A. DE C.V., Silices De Veracruz, Societe Civile Immobiliere Rousseau-Ivry, Societe Civile Immobiliere des Baquets, Societe de Participations CarnaudMetalbox, Stopak India Pvt. Ltd, Strapex Austria GmbH, Strapex Embalagem L.d.a., Strapex Holdings Limited, Strapex S.A.S., Strapex Srl, Superior Investments Holdings Pte. Ltd., Superior Multi-Packaging Limited, TopFrame LLC, V.A.C. B.V., Vichisa S.A. de C.V., and Warehouse Automation Iberia S.L..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.DTE Energy Co. operates as a diversified energy company, which engages in the provision of electricity and natural gas sales, distribution and storage services. It operates through the following segments: Electric, Gas, Non-Utility Operations, and Corporate & Other. The Electric segment engages in the generation, purchase, distribution and sale of electricity to residential, commercial and industrial customers in south-eastern Michigan. The Gas segment engages in the purchase, storage, transportation, distribution and sale of natural gas to residential, commercial and industrial customers throughout Michigan and the sale of storage and transportation capacity. The Non-Utility Operations segment engages in gas storage and pipelines, power and industrial projects, and energy trading. The Corporate & Other includes various holding company activities, holds certain non-utility debt, and holds energy-related investments. The company was founded in January 1995 and is headquartered in Detroit, MI.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Exxon Mobil: AKG Marketing Company Limited, Aera Energy LLC, Al-Jubail Petrochemical Company, Ampolex (Cepu) Pte Ltd, Ancon Insurance Company Inc., Barnett Gathering LLC, Barzan Gas Company Limited, Caspian Pipeline Consortium, Celtic Exploration Ltd., Coral FLNG S.A., Cross Timbers Energy LLC, Ellora Energy Inc., Esmeroon Oil Transporta Imperial Oil Limited, Esso (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Esso Australia Resources Pty Ltd, Esso Deutschland GmbH, Esso Erdgas Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 15) Limited, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 17) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Angola (Overseas) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Chad Inc., Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Deepwater) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Offshore East) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited, Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited, Esso Global Investments Ltd., Esso Italiana S.r.l., Esso Nederland B.V., Esso Norge AS, Esso Petroleum Company Limited, Esso Raffinage, Esso Societe Anonyme Francaise, Exxo Holdings Inc., Exxon Azerbaijan Limited, Exxon Chemical Arabia Inc., Exxon International Finance Company, Exxon Luxembourg Holdings LLC, Exxon Mobile Bay Limited Partnership, Exxon Neftegas Limited, Exxon Overseas Corporation, Exxon Overseas Investment Corporation, ExxonMobil (China) Investment Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil (Taicang) Petroleum Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil Abu Dhabi Offshore Petroleum Company Limited, ExxonMobil Alaska Production Inc., ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., ExxonMobil Australia Pty Ltd, ExxonMobil B Resources Company, ExxonMobil Capital Finance Company, ExxonMobil Capital Netherlands B.V., ExxonMobil Central Europe Holding GmbH, ExxonMobil Cepu Limited, ExxonMobil Chemical France, ExxonMobil Chemical Gulf Coast Investments LLC, ExxonMobil Chemical Holland B.V., ExxonMobil Chemical Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil China Petroleum & Petrochemical Company Limited, ExxonMobil Development Africa B.V., ExxonMobil Development Company, ExxonMobil Egypt (S.A.E.), ExxonMobil Exploracao Brasil Ltda., ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Malaysia Inc., ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Romania Limited, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Tanzania Limited, ExxonMobil Finance Company Limited, ExxonMobil Financial Investment Company Limited, ExxonMobil France Holding SAS, ExxonMobil Gas Marketing Europe Limited, ExxonMobil General Finance Company, ExxonMobil Global Services Company, ExxonMobil Golden Pass Surety LLC, ExxonMobil Holding Company Holland LLC, ExxonMobil Holding Norway AS, ExxonMobil Hong Kong Limited, ExxonMobil International Services SARL, ExxonMobil Iraq Limited, ExxonMobil Italiana Gas S.r.l., ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Inc., ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Ventures Inc., ExxonMobil LNG Services B.V., ExxonMobil Lubricants Trading Company, ExxonMobil Oil Corporation, ExxonMobil PNG Limited, ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical BVBA, ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical Holdings Inc., ExxonMobil Pipeline Company, ExxonMobil Production Deutschland GmbH, ExxonMobil Production Norway Inc., ExxonMobil Qatargas (II) Limited, ExxonMobil Qatargas Inc., ExxonMobil Ras Laffan (III) Limited, ExxonMobil Rasgas Inc., ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, ExxonMobil Russia Kara Sea Holdings B.V., ExxonMobil Sales and Supply LLC, ExxonMobil Technology Finance Company, ExxonMobil Ventures Finance Company, ExxonMobil Ventures Funding Ltd., Fujian Refining & Petrochemical Co. Ltd., Golden Pass LNG Terminal Investments LLC, Golden Pass LNG Terminal LLC, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures LLC, Imperial Oil Limited, Imperial Oil Resources Limited, Imperial Oil Resources N.W.T. Limited, Imperial Oil/Petroliere Imperiale, Infineum Italia s.r.I., Infineum Singapore Pte. Ltd., InterOil Corporation, Jurong Aromatics Corporation Pte Ltd, MPM Lubricants, Marine Well Containment Company LLC, Mobil Australia Resources Company Pty Limited, Mobil California Exploration & Producing Asset Company, Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company, Mobil Chemical Products International Inc., Mobil Corporation, Mobil Equatorial Guinea Inc., Mobil Erdgas Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Mobil Exploration & Producing Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil International Petroleum Corporation, Mobil Oil Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast Inc., Mobil Oil New Zealand Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Mobil Producing Texas & New Mexico Inc., Mobil SerLimited, Mobil Venezolana De Petroleos Inc., Mobil Yanbu Petrochemical Company Inc., Mobil Yanbu Refining Company Inc., Mountain Gathering LLC, Mozambique Rovuma Venture S.p.A., Palmetto Transoceanic LLC, Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas Global Company LDC, Permian Express Partners LLC, Phillips Exploration LLC, Qatar Liquefied Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited (II), SPI Limited, Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery Company Ltd., Saudi Yanbu Petrochemical Co., SeaRiver Maritime Inc., South Hook LNG Terminal Company Limited, Tengizchevroil LLP, Terminale GNL Adriatico S.r.l, Trend Gathering & Treating LLC, Wolverine Pipe Line Company, XH LLC, XTO Delaware Basin LLC, XTO ENERGY, XTO Energy Canada, and XTO Holdings LLC.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..The following companies are subsidiares of IQVIA: 159 SOLUTIONS, 159 Technology Solutions Private Ltd, AHM Global Operations Inc., AHM Global Services LLC, AHM Logistics Inc. (Canada), AIECO IT Solutions India Private Ltd., ALIMED Egeszsegugyi Szolgaltato Kft., Advanced Health Media LLC, Advanced Health Media Services, Aileron Solutions, Albatross Financial Solutions Limited, Appature, Ardentia International Limited, Ascott Sales Integration, Asesorias IQVIA Solutions Chile Limitada, Asserta Centroamerica Medicion de Mercados, BUZZEOPDMA LLC, Battaerd Mansley Pty. Ltd., Benefit Canada, Benefit Holding, BioFortis, CDS - Center de Service SAS, COORDINATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, CRM Health Korea Ltd., CSD Health Korea Ltd., Cambridge Pharma Consultancy, Cambridge Pharma Consultancy Limited, Cegedim Venezuela C.A., Cenduit (India) Services Private Company Limited, Cenduit Limited, Cenduit Mauritius Holdings Company, Clinical Financial Services, Clinical Lab Minority Shareholder Limited, Coordinated Management Holdings L.L.C., Cote Orphan, Cote Orphan Consulting UK Limited, DATA NICHE ASSOCIATES, Datadina Ecuador S.A., Dataline Software Limited, Datec Industria e Comercio, Dimensiions Healthcare LLC, Drug Dev Inc., DrugDev, DrugDev Limited, EA Institute L.L.C., ENTERPRISE ASSOCIATES, EPS Research Limited, EPS Software Limited, Epernicus, Forcea NV, Foresight Group International UK LTD, Foresight Group Japan G.K., Foresight IT Solutions Consulting India Private Limited, GRACE DATA CORPORATION, Global Crown Investment Limited, HIGHPOINT SOLUTIONS, Hospital Marketing Services Ltd., Hotel Lot C-8B, IMS (GIBRALTAR) HOLDING LIMITED, IMS (UK) Pension Plan Trustee Company Limited, IMS AB, IMS CHINAMETRIK INC., IMS HEALTH GROUP LIMITED, IMS HEALTH KOREA LTD, IMS HEALTH KOREA LTD., IMS HEALTH PUERTO RICO INC., IMS HEALTH TAIWAN LTD., IMS Health (Australia) Partnership, IMS Health Analytics Services Private Limited, IMS Health Bangladesh Limited, IMS Health Bolivia S.R.L., IMS Health Cyprus LTD, IMS Health Egypt Limited, IMS Health Information Solutions Argentina S.A., IMS Health Information Solutions Australia Pty. Ltd, IMS Health Information Solutions India Private Ltd., IMS Health Information Solutions Japan K.K., IMS Health Lanka (Private) Limited, IMS Health Networks Limited, IMS Health Pakistan (Private) Limited, IMS Health Paraguay SRL, IMS Health Surveys Limited, IMS Health Technology Solutions (China) Co. Ltd., IMS Health Technology Solutions Australia Pty. Ltd, IMS Health Technology Solutions Colombia Ltda., IMS Health Technology Solutions Holdings AB, IMS Health Technology Solutions Hungary Ltd., IMS Health Technology Solutions India Private Ltd., IMS Health Technology Solutions Japan K.K., IMS Health Technology Solutions Kazakhstan, IMS Health Technology Solutions LLC, IMS Health Technology Solutions Sweden AB, IMS Health Technology TUNISIA, IMS Health Tunisia sarl, IMS Health Uruguay S.A., IMS Health de Venezuela C.A., IMS Holdings (U.K.) Limited, IMS Hospital Group Limited, IMS Information Solutions Medical Research Limited, IMS Information Solutions UK Ltd., IMS International (Proprietary) Limited, IMS Market Research Consult (Beijing), IMS Meridian Limited, IMS Meridian Research Limited, IMS Republica Dominicana, IMS SOFTWARE SERVICES LTD., IMS Technology Solutions UK Limited, INTERCONTINENTAL MEDICAL STATISTICS INTERNATIONAL, IPP Informacion Promocional y Publicitaria S.A. de C.V., IPP Technology Solutions Mexico SA de CV (FKA Cegedim Mexico SA de CV), IQVA Romania S.R.L., IQVIA (Thialand) Co. Ltd., IQVIA AB, IQVIA AG, IQVIA AG (Mexico Branch), IQVIA AG (UK Branch), IQVIA Adriatic d.o.o. za Konzalting, IQVIA Asia Pacific Commercial Holdings LLC, IQVIA Beteiligungs-gesellschaft mbH, IQVIA BioSciences Holdings LLC, IQVIA CHINAMETRIK INC., IQVIA COMMERCIAL FINANCE INC., IQVIA COMMERCIAL INDIA HOLDINGS CORP., IQVIA COMMERCIAL LICENSING ASSOCIATES LLC, IQVIA COMMERCIAL SERVICES LLC, IQVIA COMMERCIAL TRADING CORP., IQVIA Clinical AB, IQVIA Commercial Deutschland GmbH, IQVIA Commercial GmbH & Co. OHG, IQVIA Commercial I LLC, IQVIA Commercial Software GmbH, IQVIA Commercial Sp. z.o.o., IQVIA Commerical Consulting Sp. z.o.o., IQVIA Consulting Solutions bvba, IQVIA Consulting and Information Services India Private Limited, IQVIA Finance Ireland Designated Activity Company, IQVIA GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS INC., IQVIA Healthcare QFC branch, IQVIA Hellas Technology Solutions S.A., IQVIA Holdings France SAS, IQVIA IES (UK) Limited, IQVIA IES Brasil Ltda., IQVIA IES Europe Limited, IQVIA IES European Holdings, IQVIA IES Italia S.r.l., IQVIA IES OY, IQVIA IES Overseas Holdings Limited, IQVIA IES Portugal, IQVIA IES Portugal Unipressoal Ltda., IQVIA IES Puerto Rico Inc., IQVIA II Technology Solutions Portugal, IQVIA INC., IQVIA INFORMATION MEDICAL STATISTICS (ISRAEL) LTD., IQVIA Information, IQVIA Information Solutions (China) Co., IQVIA Information Solutions GmbH, IQVIA Informations Solutions France SAS, IQVIA Istanbul Saglik Hizmetler Arastirma ve Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, IQVIA Korea Co. Ltd., IQVIA LTD, IQVIA Market Intelligence LLC, IQVIA Marktforschung GmbH, IQVIA Maroc SARL, IQVIA Mauritius Holdings, IQVIA Medical Communications & Consulting, IQVIA Medical Development (Dalian) Co., IQVIA Medical Education Inc., IQVIA Medical Radar AB, IQVIA Operations France SAS, IQVIA PHARMA Inc., IQVIA Partners AS, IQVIA Pharma Services Corp., IQVIA Pharmaceutical Marketing Services Ltd., IQVIA Phase One Services LLC, IQVIA RDS (India) Private Limited, IQVIA RDS (Pty.) Limited, IQVIA RDS AG, IQVIA RDS Argentina S.A., IQVIA RDS Asia Inc., IQVIA RDS Austria GmbH, IQVIA RDS BT Inc., IQVIA RDS Brasil Ltda., IQVIA RDS Bulgaria EOOD, IQVIA RDS Canada ULC, IQVIA RDS Chile, IQVIA RDS Colombia S.A.S., IQVIA RDS Consulting Inc., IQVIA RDS ESTONIA OU, IQVIA RDS East Asia Pte. Ltd., IQVIA RDS Eastern Holdings GmbH, IQVIA RDS Finland OY, IQVIA RDS France SAS (formerly, IQVIA RDS Funding LLC, IQVIA RDS GesmbH, IQVIA RDS GesmbH Greek Branch, IQVIA RDS Guatemala S.A., IQVIA RDS Holdings, IQVIA RDS Hong Kong Limited, IQVIA RDS ISRAEL LTD., IQVIA RDS Inc., IQVIA RDS Ireland (Finance) Ltd., IQVIA RDS Ireland Ltd., IQVIA RDS Italy Srl, IQVIA RDS Latin America LLC, IQVIA RDS Latvia SIA, IQVIA RDS Magyarorszag Gyogyszerfejlesztesi es Tanacsado Kft., IQVIA RDS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., IQVIA RDS Moscow, IQVIA RDS Novosibirsk, IQVIA RDS Panama Inc., IQVIA RDS Peru S.r.l., IQVIA RDS Philippines Inc., IQVIA RDS Poland Sp. Zoo, IQVIA RDS Pty. Limited, IQVIA RDS Slovakia s.r.o., IQVIA RDS Spain, IQVIA RDS Spain S.L., IQVIA RDS St. Petersburg, IQVIA RDS Support Sarl, IQVIA RDS Switzerland sarl, IQVIA RDS Taiwan Ltd., IQVIA RDS Transfer LLC, IQVIA RDS UAB, IQVIA RDS UK Holdings Ltd., IQVIA RDS and Integrated Services Belgium NV, IQVIA RDS d.o.o. Beograd, IQVIA SOLUTIONS ASIA PTE. LTD., IQVIA SOLUTIONS CANADA INC., IQVIA SOLUTIONS JAPAN K.K., IQVIA SOLUTIONS OPERATIONS CENTER PHLIPPINES INC., IQVIA SOLUTIONS PHILIPINES, IQVIA SOLUTIONS PHILIPPINES, IQVIA Services Japan K.K., IQVIA Solutions (NZ) Limited, IQVIA Solutions (Pty.) Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Argentina S.A., IQVIA Solutions Australia Holdings Pty. Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Australia Pty. Ltd., IQVIA Solutions B.V., IQVIA Solutions Belgium S.P.R.L., IQVIA Solutions Bulgaria EOOD, IQVIA Solutions Colombia S.A., IQVIA Solutions Consulting Myanmar Company Limited, IQVIA Solutions Denmark AS, IQVIA Solutions Enterprise Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co., IQVIA Solutions Finance B.V., IQVIA Solutions Finance UK I Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Finance UK II Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Finance UK III Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Finance UK V Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Finland OY, IQVIA Solutions Global Holdings UK Ltd., IQVIA Solutions GmbH, IQVIA Solutions HQ Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Holdings (Pty.) Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Hong Kong Limited, IQVIA Solutions Ireland Limited, IQVIA Solutions Italy W.r.l., IQVIA Solutions Kazakhstan LLC, IQVIA Solutions LLC, IQVIA Solutions Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., IQVIA Solutions Norway AS, IQVIA Solutions Pharmaceutical SRL, IQVIA Solutions Portugal, IQVIA Solutions Regional Pte. Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Services Ltd., IQVIA Solutions Sweden AB, IQVIA Solutions UK Investments Ltd., IQVIA Solutions UK Limited, IQVIA Solutions a.s., IQVIA Solutions del Peru S.A., IQVIA Solutions do Brasil Ltda., IQVIA Solutions s.r.o., IQVIA Solucoes de Tecnologia DO Brazil Ltda., IQVIA Staff Services Sp.A., IQVIA TRANSPORTATION SERVICES CORP., IQVIA Technology Services Ltd., IQVIA Technology Solutions Egypt LLC, IQVIA Technology Solutions Finland OY, IQVIA Technology Solutions Poland SP. z.o.o., IQVIA Technology Solutions Romania Srl, IQVIA Technology Solutions S.R.O. Branch Bulgaria, IQVIA Technology Solutions Ukraine LLC, IQVIA Technology Solutions s.r.o., IQVIA Technology and Services AG, IQVIA Tibbi Istatistik Ticaret ve Musavirlik Ltd. Sirketi, IQVIA Trading Management Inc., IQVIA World Publications Ltd., IQVIA Zagreb d.o.o., Iasist Holdco Limited, Iasist Potugal, Iasist SAU Agencia en Chile, Iasist Sociedad Anonima Unipersonal, Impact RX, Infocus Health Limited, Infopharm Ltd., Innovex Holdings I LLC, Innovex Merger Corp., Innovex Saglik Hizmetleri Arastirma ve Danismanlik Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Innovex Saglik Urunleri Pazarlame ve Hizmet Danismanlik Anonim Sirketi, Institute of Medical Communications NCO, Interstatistik AG, Kun Tai Medical Development Hong Kong Limited, Kun Tuo Medical Research & Development (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Laboratorie Novex Pharma Sarl, Laboratorio Commuq Pharma SL, Linguamatics, M&H Informatics (BD) LTD., M-TAG Australia Pty. Ltd., MED-VANTAGE, MG Recherche, Mecurial Insights Holding Pty. Ltd., Mecurial Insights Pty. Ltd., Mercados Y Analisis, Meridian Research Vietnam Ltd., Nordisk Medicin Information AB, Novella Clinical LLC, Novella Clinical Ltd., Novex Pharma Gmbh, Novex Pharma Laboratorio S.L., Novex Pharma Limited, Nuevo Health Pty Ltd, Onkodatamed GmbH, Operaciones Centralizadas Latinoamericana Limitada, Optimum Contact Limited, Outcome Sciences LLC, PILGRIM SOFTWARE HOLDING B.V., POLARIS MANAGEMENT PARTNERS LLC, POLARIS SOLUTIONS LLC, PR Editions S.A.S., PT IMS Health Indonesia, PT Quintiles Indonesia, Penderwood Limited, PharmARC Consulting Services GmbH, PharmARC Inc., Pharma Deals Limited, Pharma Strategy Group Ltd., Pharmadata s.r.o., Pharmaforce, Pilgrim Quality Solutions EMEA BV, Pilgrim Software Asia PVT, Polaris Solutions BV, Polaris Solutions Ltd., Primeum IQVIA SAS, Privacy Analytics Inc., Professional Pharmaceutical Marketing Services (Pty.) Ltd., Pygargus AB, Q Squared Solutions (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Q Squared Solutions (India) Private Limited, Q Squared Solutions (Quest) LLC, Q Squared Solutions (Quest) Limited, Q Squared Solutions (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Q Squared Solutions B.V., Q Squared Solutions BioSciences LLC, Q Squared Solutions China (Quest) Limited, Q Squared Solutions China Limited, Q Squared Solutions Expression Analysis LLC, Q Squared Solutions Holdings B.V., Q Squared Solutions Holdings LLC, Q Squared Solutions Holdings Limited, Q Squared Solutions K.K., Q Squared Solutions LLC, Q Squared Solutions Limited, Q Squared Solutions Proprietary Limited, Q Squared Solutions Pte. Ltd., Q Squared Solutions S.A., Q2 Metrics, Q2 Solutions, QIMS Pharma Services SA DE CV, QUINTILES MEXICO, QUINTILESIMS EUROPEAN HOLDINGS II C.V., Qcare Site Services, Quintiles B.V., Quintiles Benin Ltd., Quintiles Clindata (Pty.) Limited, Quintiles Clindepharm (Pty.) Limited, Quintiles Clinical and Commercial Nigeria Limited, Quintiles Commercial ApS, Quintiles Commercial Germany GmbH, Quintiles Commercial Rus LLC, Quintiles Commercial South Africa (Pty) Limited, Quintiles Commercial US. Inc., Quintiles Costa Rica S.A., Quintiles Czech Republic, Quintiles Denmark, Quintiles East Africa Limited, Quintiles Egypt LLC, Quintiles Enterprise Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Quintiles Finance Sarl, Quintiles Finance Uruguay, Quintiles GmbH, Quintiles Holdings S.a.r.l., Quintiles IMS European Holdings C.V., Quintiles Lanka Private Limited, Quintiles Latin America Inc., Quintiles Luxembourg European Holding, Quintiles Luxembourg European Holding S.a.r.l., Quintiles Luxembourg France Holdings SARL, Quintiles Medical Development (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Quintiles Netherlands, Quintiles New Zealand, Quintiles Norway, Quintiles Phase One Clinical Trials India Private Limited, Quintiles Russia LLC, Quintiles S.a.r.l., Quintiles Site Services, Quintiles South Africa (PTY.) Limited, Quintiles UK (Japan Holdings) Limited, Quintiles Ukraine, Quintiles Vietnam, Quintiles West Africa Limited, RX India LLC, Radar Acquisition Blocker, Redsite Limited, Reportive SA, STI Technologies Limited, Schwarzeck Verlag GmbH, Secureconsent, Shanghai IMS Market Research Co. Ltd., Source Informatics Limited, Spartan Leasing Corporation, Statfinn Oy, Strategique Sante, THE AMUNDSEN GROUP, Targeted Molecular Diagnostics, Tarius A/S, Temas Srl - Societa Unipersonale, TforG Connect BVBA, Themis Limited, UAB IQVIA Commercial, VALUEMEDICS RESEARCH, VCG&A Inc., and iGuard.iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF's stock was trading at $158.09 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, IWF shares have increased by 93.3% and is now trading at $305.59.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.At Landsec, we strive to connect communities, realise potential and deliver sustainable places. As one of the largest real estate companies in Europe, our A11.8 billion portfolio spans 24 million sq ft (as at 30 September 2020) of well-connected retail, leisure, workspace and residential hubs. From the iconic Piccadilly Lights in the West End and the regeneration of London's Victoria, to the creation of retail destinations at Westgate Oxford and Trinity Leeds, we own and manage some of the most successful and memorable real estate in the UK. We aim to lead our industry in critical long-term issues A- from diversity and community employment, to carbon reduction and climate resilience. We deliver value for our shareholders, great experiences for our customers and positive change for our communities.

Read MoreMaxar Technologies Inc. provides earth intelligence and space infrastructure solutions in the United States, Asia, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Canada, and internationally. It operates through Earth Intelligence and Space Infrastructure segments. The Earth Intelligence segment offers earth imagery products, including orthorectified imagery, imagery basemap, 3D and elevation, and information products; and SecureWatch, a subscription offering that provides online access to imagery and geospatial intelligence platform. This segment also offers geospatial information, application, and analytic services. It serves U.S. and other international government agencies, such as defense and intelligence agencies, as well as commercial customers in various markets. The Space Infrastructure segment provides space based infrastructure, robotics, sub-systems, and information solutions, including communication and imaging satellites and payloads; platforms for space exploration and hosting instruments for earth science; space subsystems for power, propulsion, and communication; satellite ground systems and support services; space-based remote sensory solutions; space robotics; and defense systems. This segment serves government agencies and satellite operators. Maxar Technologies Inc. was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Westminster, Colorado.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Brinker International: BI INTERNATIONAL SERVICES LLC, BI MEXICO HOLDING CORPORATION, BIPC GLOBAL PAYROLL COMPANY LLC, BIPC INVESTMENTS LLC, BIPC MANAGEMENT LLC, BRINKER AIRPORTS LLC, BRINKER ALABAMA INC., BRINKER ARKANSAS INC., BRINKER ASIA INC., BRINKER BRAZIL LLC, BRINKER CANADIAN HOLDING CO. ULC, BRINKER CANADIAN RESTAURANT CO. ULC, BRINKER CB LP, BRINKER CB MANAGEMENT LLC, BRINKER FHC B.V., BRINKER FLORIDA INC., BRINKER FREEHOLD INC., BRINKER GEORGIA INC., BRINKER INTERNATIONAL PAYROLL COMPANY L.P., BRINKER LOUISIANA INC., BRINKER MICHIGAN INC., BRINKER MISSISSIPPI INC., BRINKER MISSOURI INC., BRINKER NEVADA INC., BRINKER NEW JERSEY INC., BRINKER NORTH CAROLINA INC., BRINKER OF BALTIMORE COUNTY INC., BRINKER OF CARROLL COUNTY INC., BRINKER OF CECIL COUNTY INC., BRINKER OKLAHOMA INC., BRINKER OPCO LLC, BRINKER PENN TRUST, BRINKER PROPCO FLORIDA INC., BRINKER PROPERTY CORPORATION, BRINKER PURCHASING INC., BRINKER RESTAURANT CORPORATION, BRINKER RHODE ISLAND INC., BRINKER SERVICES CORPORATION, BRINKER SOUTH CAROLINA INC., BRINKER TEXAS INC., BRINKER VIRGINIA INC., CHILIS BEVERAGE COMPANY INC., CHILIS INC. a Delaware corporation, CHILIS INC. a Tennessee corporation, CHILIS INTERNATIONAL BASES B.V., CHILIS OF BEL AIR INC., CHILIS OF KANSAS INC., CHILIS OF MARYLAND INC., CHILIS OF WEST VIRGINIA INC., Grady's Inc., MAGGIANO'S OF ANNAPOLIS INC., MAGGIANO'S OF HOWARD COUNTY INC., MAGGIANO'S OF KANSAS INC., MAGGIANOS BEVERAGE COMPANY, MAGGIANOS HOLDING CORPORATION, MAGGIANOS INC., MAGGIANOS OF TYSONS INC., MAGGIANOS PROPERTY CORPORATION, MAGGIANOS TEXAS INC., PEPPER DINING HOLDING CORP., PEPPER DINING Inc., and PEPPER DINING VERMONT INC..iShares Floating Rate Bond ETF's stock was trading at $49.50 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, FLOT shares have increased by 2.6% and is now trading at $50.78.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.Xcel Energy, Inc. operates as a holding company, which engages in the generation, purchase, transmission, distribution and sale of electricity. It operates through the following three segments: Regulated Electric Utility, Regulated Natural Gas Utility and All Others. The Regulated Electric Utility segment generates, transmits and distributes electricity primarily in portions of generates, transmits and distributes electricity in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. In addition, this segment includes sales for resale and provides wholesale transmission service to various entities in the United States. It also includes commodity trading operations. The Regulated Natural Gas Utility segment transports, stores, and distributes natural gas primarily in portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Michigan and Colorado. The All Others segment engages in steam, appliance repair services, nonutility real estate activities, processing solid waste into refuse-derived fuel and investments in rental housing projects that qualify for low-income housing tax credits. The company was founded in 1909 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Owens Corning: 0979301 B.C. ULC, AS Paroc, Asahi Glass - Composites Business, Crown Mfg. Inc., Deutsche Foamglas GmbH, Dutch OC Cooperatief Invest U.A., European Owens Corning Fiberglas SRL, FOAMGLAS (Italia) SRL, FOAMGLAS (Nordic) AB, FiberTEK Insulation, Fibreboard Corp., Finefiber (Shanghai) Building Material Co. Ltd., Finefiber Insulation Co. Pte. Ltd., IBCO SRL, IPM Inc., InterWrap, InterWrap (Hong Kong) Ltd., InterWrap (Qingdao) Trading Co. Ltd., InterWrap Corp., InterWrap Corp. Private Ltd., International Packaging Products Pvt. Ltd., Inversiones Owens Corning Chile Holdings Limitada, Northern Elastomeric, OC Canada Finance Inc., OC Canada Holdings General Partnership, OC Celfortec Company, OC Latin American Holdings GmbH, OC NL Invest Cooperatief U.A., OC PRO CV, OC Steklovolokno AO, OCCV1 Inc., OCCV2 LLC, OCV (Thailand) Co. Limited, OCV Chambery France, OCV Chambery International, OCV Finance LLC, OCV Intellectual Capital LLC, OCV Italia Srl, OCV Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., OCV Servicios Mexico S.A. de C.V., OOO Paroc, Owens Corning (Australia) Pty Limited, Owens Corning (China) Investment Company Limited, Owens Corning (Guangde) Rock Wood Manufacturing Co. Ltd, Owens Corning (Guangzhou) Fiberglas Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (Hangzhou) Fiberglass Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (India) Private Limited, Owens Corning (Nanjing) Building Materials Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (Shanghai) Fiberglas Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Owens Corning (Tianjin) Building Materials Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (Xian) Building Materials Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Alloy Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Alloy Canada LP, Owens Corning Argentina Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Owens Corning Automotive LLC, Owens Corning BM (Korea) Ltd, Owens Corning By LLC, Owens Corning CV GP LLC, Owens Corning Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Canada Holdings B.V., Owens Corning Canada Holdings ULC, Owens Corning Canada LP, Owens Corning Cayman (China) Holdings, Owens Corning Celfortec Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Celfortec LP, Owens Corning Composite Materials Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Composite Materials Canada LP, Owens Corning Composite Materials LLC, Owens Corning Composites (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Composites (China) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Construction Services LLC, Owens Corning Corporate Services LLC, Owens Corning Elaminator Insulation Systems LLC, Owens Corning Enterprise (India) Pvt. Ltd., Owens Corning Fabrics (Changzhou) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Fiberglas (U.K.) Pension Plan Ltd., Owens Corning Fiberglas A.S. Limitada, Owens Corning Fiberglas Espana SL, Owens Corning Fiberglas France, Owens Corning Financial Services ULC, Owens Corning Finland Oy, Owens Corning Foam Insulation LLC, Owens Corning GlassMetal Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Global Holdings II Limited Partnership, Owens Corning Global Holdings Limited Partnership, Owens Corning HOMExperts Inc., Owens Corning HT Inc., Owens Corning Holdings 1 CV, Owens Corning Holdings 3 CV, Owens Corning Holdings 4 CV, Owens Corning Holdings 5 CV, Owens Corning Holdings Holland B.V., Owens Corning Hong Kong Limited, Owens Corning Industries (India) Private Limited, Owens Corning Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Owens Corning Insulating Systems Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Insulating Systems Canada LP, Owens Corning Insulating Systems LLC, Owens Corning Intellectual Capital LLC, Owens Corning InterWrap Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning InterWrap Canada LP, Owens Corning International Holdings C.V., Owens Corning Japan LLC, Owens Corning Kohold B.V., Owens Corning Korea, Owens Corning Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Owens Corning Mineral Wool LLC, Owens Corning Non-Woven - Blythewood LLC, Owens Corning Non-Woven Technology LLC, Owens Corning Receivables LLC, Owens Corning Reinforcements (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Remodeling Systems LLC, Owens Corning Roofing S. de R.L. de C.V., Owens Corning Roofing and Asphalt LLC, Owens Corning Sales LLC, Owens Corning Science and Technology LLC, Owens Corning Supplementary Pension Plan Limited, Owens Corning Technical Fabrics LLC, Owens Corning Treasury Services LLC, Owens Corning U.S. Holdings LLC, Owens-Corning Britinvest Limited, Owens-Corning Cayman Limited, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Deutschland GmbH, Owens-Corning Funding Corporation, Owens-Corning Veil Netherlands B.V., Owens-Corning Veil U.K. Ltd., Paroc AB, Paroc GmbH, Paroc Group, Paroc Group Oy, Paroc Limited, Paroc Oy Ab, Paroc Polska Sp. Z o.o., Pittsburgh Corning, Pittsburgh Corning (Suisse) SA, Pittsburgh Corning (United Kingdom) Limited, Pittsburgh Corning (Yantai) Insulation Materials Co. Ltd, Pittsburgh Corning Asia Limited, Pittsburgh Corning CR S.R.O., Pittsburgh Corning Europe N.V., Pittsburgh Corning France, Pittsburgh Corning Gesellschaft m.b.h., Pittsburgh Corning LLC, Pittsburgh Corning Nederland B.V., Pittsburgh Corning Singapore Pte. Ltd, Qingdao Novia Polymer Co. Ltd., SIA Paroc, Soltech Inc., The Modulo /ParMur Group, Thermafiber, Thermafiber Inc., Transandina de Comercio S.A., UAB Paroc, UC Industries, and Vitro Fibras.Hertz Global's quiet period expires on Monday, December 20th. Hertz Global had issued 44,520,000 shares in its public offering on November 9th. The total size of the offering was $1,291,080,000 based on an initial share price of $29.00. During the company's quiet period, insiders and any underwriters involved in the IPO are restricted from issuing any earnings forecasts or research reports for the company because of SEC regulations. Following the end of the company's quiet period, the brokerages that served as underwriters will likely initiate research coverage on the company.The following companies are subsidiares of Quest Diagnostics: AmeriPath, AmeriPath Cincinnati Inc. (OH), AmeriPath Cleveland Inc. (OH), AmeriPath Consolidated Labs Inc. (FL), AmeriPath Florida LLC (DE), AmeriPath Hospital Services Florida LLC (DE), AmeriPath Inc. (DE), AmeriPath Indianapolis PC (IN), AmeriPath Kentucky Inc. (KY), AmeriPath Lubbock 5.01(A) Corporation (TX), AmeriPath New York LLC (DE), AmeriPath Texas Inc. (DE), AmeriPath Tucson Inc. (AZ), American Medical Laboratories, American Medical Laboratories Incorporated (DE), Associated Clinical Laboratories L.P. (PA), Associated Clinical Laboratories of Pennsylvania L.L.C. (PA), Athena Diagnostics, Athena Diagnostics Inc. (DE), Blueprint Genetics, Blueprint Genetics FZ-LLC (UAE), Blueprint Genetics Inc. (DE), Blueprint Genetics Oy (Finland), California Laboratory Associates, Cape Cod Healthcare - Business, Celera, ClearPoint Diagnostic, Clearpoint Diagnostic Laboratories LLC (TX), Cleveland HeartLab, Cleveland HeartLab Inc. (DE), Clinical Laboratory Partners, Colorado Pathology Consultants P.C. (CO), ConVerge Diagnostic Services, Consolidated DermPath Inc. (DE), DFW 5.01(a) Corporation (TX), DGXWMT JV LLC (DE), Dermatopathology of Wisconsin S.C. (WI), Diagnostic Laboratory of Oklahoma LLC (OK), Diagnostic Pathology Services Inc. (OK), Diagnostic Reference Services Inc. (MD), ExamOne Canada Inc. (New Brunswick), ExamOne LLC (DE), ExamOne World Wide Inc. (PA), ExamOne World Wide of NJ Inc. (NJ), Focus Diagnostics, HemoCue, Hoffman M.D. Associated Pathologists Chartered (NV), Institute for Dermatopathology Inc. (PA), Isabella Street Urban Renewal LLC (NJ), Kailash B. Sharma M.D. Inc. (GA), Kilpatrick Pathology P.A. (NC), LabOne, LabOne LLC (MO), LabOne of Ohio Inc. (DE), Laboratorio de Analisis Biomedicos S.A. (Mexico), Lancet Labs, MACL, Med Fusion LLC (TX), Med fusion, MedPlus, Mid America Clinical Laboratories LLC (IN), Nomad Massachusetts Inc. (MA), Nuclear Medicine and Pathology Associates (GA), Ocmulgee Medical Pathology Association Inc. (GA), Pathology Building Partnership (MD) (gen. ptnrshp.), PeaceHealth Laboratories, PhenoPath Laboratories, PhenoPath Laboratories PLLC (WA), Q Squared Solutions Holdings LLC (DE), Q Squared Solutions Holdings Limited (UK), Quest Diagnostics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. (China), Quest Diagnostics Brasil Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics Clinical Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics Clinical Laboratories Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics Domestic Holder LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics HTAS India Private Limited (India), Quest Diagnostics Health & Wellness LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Holdings Incorporated (DE), Quest Diagnostics Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (MD), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NV), Quest Diagnostics India Private Limited (India), Quest Diagnostics Infectious Disease Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics International Holdings Limited (UK), Quest Diagnostics International LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Investments LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Ireland Limited (Ireland), Quest Diagnostics LLC (CT), Quest Diagnostics LLC (IL), Quest Diagnostics LLC (MA), Quest Diagnostics Massachusetts LLC (MA), Quest Diagnostics Mexico Holding Company Trust (Mexico), Quest Diagnostics Mexico S de RL de CV (Mexico), Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute (CA), Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute Inc. (VA), Quest Diagnostics Receivables Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics Subsidiary Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics TB LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Terracotta LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Venture LLC (PA), Quest Diagnostics Ventures LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics do Brasil Ltda. (Brazil), Quest Diagnostics of Pennsylvania Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics of Puerto Rico Inc. (PR), Quest HealthConnect LLC (CA), ReproSource, Reprosource Fertility Diagnostics Inc. (MA), Solstas Lab Partners, Sonora Quest Laboratories LLC (AZ), Specialty Laboratories Inc. (CA), Summit Health, UMass Memorial Medical Center - Anatomic Pathology Outreach Laboratory Business, Unilab Corporation, and Unilab Corporation (DE).Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary ETF's stock was trading at $83.04 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, RCD stock has increased by 92.6% and is now trading at $159.95.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.NTT DOCOMO, INC., a telecommunications company, provides various mobile services in Japan and internationally. It operates through three segments: Telecommunications Business, Smart Life Business, and Other Businesses. The company offers iPhone, iPad, smartphone, tablet, and feature phone products and services under the docomo name, as well as d POINT CLUB, a point program. It also provides technical and operational services to mobile operators and other companies. In addition, the company offers LTE, FOMA, and FOMA high-speed services; docomo Wi-Fi services; VoLTE voice call services; docomo Hikari, an optical Internet service; and docomo Shop services. Further, it provides optical-fiber broadband, satellite mobile communications, and international services; distributes video, music, and electronic books, etc.; and offers finance/payment services, online shopping service, other life-related services, etc. Additionally, the company engages in the mobile device protection service, commissioned development/sale, system maintenance businesses, etc. As of March 31, 2019, it had 78.45 million cellular subscriptions; and 70.15 million d POINT CLUB memberships. NTT DOCOMO, INC. has collaboration with Tohoku University to research on an artificial-intelligence technology to detect periodontal disease by photographing a person's gums with a smartphone. It also has a mobile payment alliance agreement with Merpay, Inc., LINE Pay Corporation, and KDDI Corporation for merchant stores. The company was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. NTT DOCOMO, INC. is a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation.

Read MoreStantec Inc. provides professional consulting services in the area of infrastructure and facilities in Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company provides consulting services in engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental sciences, project management, and project economics. It also offers water, transportation, and public works; transportation planning and traffic engineering; and resource assessment, mine development, reclamation, hydrology, and geotechnical and infrastructure engineering services, as well as urban planning, traffic assessments and optimization, environmental impact assessments, and public consultation services. In addition, the company provides structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and hydraulics engineering services. It serves urban regeneration, infrastructure, education, public and private sector, tourism and leisure, and waste and water sectors, as well as office and commercial, residential, and retail and town centers. The company was formerly known as Stanley Technology Group Inc. and changed its name to Stantec Inc. in October 1998. Stantec Inc. was founded in 1954 and is headquartered in Edmonton, Canada.

Read MoreDespite expected relaxation in ties between Turkey and the United States with the release of a U.S. pastor, analysts remain skeptical about Ankara's chance of obtaining exemption from U.S. sanctions on Iran ahead of a November deadline. The Chinese agency Xinhua reports in its article Spotlight: Turkey's chance for waiver on Iran sanctions dim: analysts that after dropping out of a nuclear deal concluded with Iran in 2015, Washington reintroduced the first batch of sanctions on Tehran at the beginning of August. The second tranche of the sanctions, which will be in effect on Nov. 4, is considered more critical as it targets Tehran's oil exports and financial transactions.

"I don't think the U.S. would stop pressuring Turkey to comply with the sanctions," Murat Bilhan, deputy chairman of the Istanbul-based Turkish Asian Center for Strategic Studies, told Xinhua. Bilhan's argument is mainly based on a trump card Washington has against Ankara, a U.S. court decision accusing Turkey's state-owned Halkbank of violating previous U.S. sanctions against Iran. The court may impose a heavy fine on Halkbank as well as smaller fines on several other banks in Turkey for the same reason, according to Turkish media.

Celalettin Yavuz, a security and foreign policy analyst, does not totally rule out the possibility that Washington may grant its allies, including Ankara, some limited exemption regarding the impending sanctions.

The U.S. may consider giving Turkey time until it holds local elections in March next year, he said, describing the release of the American pastor as a favor to the Trump administration ahead of the upcoming mid-term congressional elections in the U.S.

Brian Hook, the Trump administration's special envoy for Iran, signaled early this week that Washington could be willing to consider its allies' specific needs while asking them to observe the sanctions. He also noted that representatives of some countries had paid visits to Washington to present their side of the issue.

Ankara has repeatedly said it would not comply with the U.S. sanctions on its eastern neighbor, as the Turkish economy is expected to be hit hard by the sanctions in any case. Should Ankara comply with the sanctions, its ties with Tehran would be damaged and it may have to pay a little more for oil to be imported from other countries. In case Ankara does not observe the sanctions, it will face U.S. punitive measures unless it obtains a waver from Washington.

"The U.S. sanctions also aim to deal a blow to Turkish-Iranian ties," said Yavuz, who teaches at Istanbul Ayvansaray University. Turkey would not be negatively affected by the sanctions, argued Mehmet Acet, a columnist with the pro-government Yeni Safak daily with a source in the know about the sanctions issue. According to the anonymous source, Turkey's top oil refinery Tupras has been granted a waiver by Washington regarding the sanctions.

In 2017, Iran was Turkey's biggest supplier of crude oil and the second biggest supplier of natural gas after Russia. Ties between Ankara and Washington, two NATO allies, have been rather strained in recent years for a number of reasons. The release last week of evangelical Pastor Andrew Brunson, who was charged with espionage as well as being linked to terror groups, appears to have set the stage for a possible ease in ties.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on his Twitter account that Brunson's release was greatly appreciated by Washington and Ankara's move would "lead to good, perhaps great, relations between the United States and Turkey." U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Ankara on Wednesday to talk with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. Following the talks, Pompeo signaled that Washington could soon remove the sanctions levied on Ankara in August for keeping the pastor under arrest. Both analysts feel, however, that the apparent ease in ties with Washington is no more than skin-deep and temporary as there still remain some major disagreements between the allies. "I don't think the problems between Ankara and Washington are easy to resolve," stated Bilhan, a former diplomat. "Turkish-U.S. interests clash in a good deal of areas," said Yavuz.

For one, continued U.S. military support for Kurdish militia in Syria is a thorn in the side of Turkey, as Ankara sees the Kurdish fighters as terrorists. For its part, Washington is highly disturbed by Ankara's close cooperation with Moscow in war-torn Syria and its bid to buy Russian-made S-400 air defense system. "Unless the U.S. changes its domineering attitude toward Turkey, it would not be realistic to expect a complete normalization in ties," argued Bilhan. American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved.

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Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research.The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. Ltd., Alfa Aesar (Hong Kong) Limited, Allergon AB, Alphine Mountain Limited, Ambion Inc., Apogent Denmark ApS, Apogent Finance Company, Apogent Holding Company, Apogent Technologies Inc., Apogent Transition Corp., Apogent U.K. Limited, App-Tek International Pty Ltd, Applied Biosystems B.V., Applied Biosystems Finance B.V., Applied Biosystems International Inc., Applied Biosystems LLC, Applied Biosystems Taiwan LLC, Applied Biosystems Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Applied Biosystems de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Applied Scientific Corporation, Avances Cientificos de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Avocado Research Chemicals Limited, B.R.A.H.M.S. Biotech GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. UK Ltd, BAC BV, BAC IP BV, Barnstead Thermolyne LLC, Beijing Phadia Diagnostics Co Ltd, Bender MedSystems GmbH, BioTrove Corporation, BioTrove International Inc., Bioanalysis Labsystems S.A., Biochemical Sciences LLC, Biolab, BmT GmbH Laborprodukte, Bonsai Tecnologies - Sistemas para Biotecnologia e Industria Unipessoal Lda, Brammer Bio, Bumi-Sans Sendirian Berhad, CAC Limited, CB Diagnostics AB, CB Diagnostics Holding AB, CEPH International Corporation, CHK Holdings Inc., CRS Robotics, CTPS LLC, Capitol Scientific Products Inc., Capitol Vial Inc., Cellomics Inc., CellzDirect Inc., Cenduit GmbH, Cenduit LLC, Cezanne S.A.S., Chase Scientific Glass Inc., Chromacol Limited, Clintrak, Clintrak Clinical Labeling Services LLC, Clintrak Pharmaceutical Services LLC, Cohesive Technologies (UK) Limited, Cohesive Technologies Inc., Columbia Diagnostics Inc., Compendia Bioscience Inc., Comtest Limited, Consolidated Technologies Inc., Consultores Fisher Scientific Chile Ltd, Core Informatics, Core Informatics LLC, Core Informatics UK Ltd., D-finitive Technologies Inc., DCG Systems B.V., DCG Systems C.V., DCG Systems G.K., DCG Systems GmbH, DCG Systems Korea Ltd., DCG Systems LLC, DPI Newco LLC, DSM Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Dharmacon, Diagnostix Ltd., Dionex (China) Analytical Ltd, Dionex (Switzerland) AG, Dionex (UK) Limited, Dionex Austria GmbH, Dionex Benelux B.V., Dionex Brasil Instrumentos Cientificos Ltda, Dionex Canada Ltd., Dionex China Limited, Dionex Corporation, Dionex Denmark A/S, Dionex Holding GmbH, Dionex I LLC, Dionex Pty Ltd., Dionex S.A., Dionex S.p.A., Dionex Singapore Pte Ltd., Dionex Softron GmbH, Dionex Sweden AB, Distribution Solutions International Inc., Doe & Ingalls Investors Inc., Doe & Ingalls Limited, Doe & Ingalls Management LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties II LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties LLC, Doe & Ingalls of California Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Florida Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Maryland Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Massachusetts Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Operating LLC, Doublecape Holding Limited, Doublecape Limited, Drakeside Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Duke Scientific Corporation, Dynal Biotech Beijing Limited, EGS Gauging Ltd., EGS Gauging Technical Services Company, EP Scientific Products LLC, Ecochem N.V., EnviroEquip Pty Ltd, Epsom Glass Industries Limited, Equibio Limited, Erie Electroverre S.A., Erie Finance Limited, Erie LP Holding LLC, Erie Scientific Company of Puerto Rico, Erie Scientific Hungary Kft, Erie Scientific LLC, Erie U.K. Limited, Erie UK 1 Limited, Erie UK 2 Limited, Erie UK Holding Company, Erie UK Senior Holding Limited, European Laboratory Holdings Limited, Eutech Instruments Europe B.V., Eutech Instruments Pte Ltd., Eutech Instruments Sdn Bhd, Ever Ready Thermometer Co. Inc., FEI Asia Pacific Co. Ltd., FEI Australia Pty Ltd, FEI CPD B.V., FEI Company, FEI Company Japan Ltd., FEI Company of USA (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd., FEI Czech Republic s.r.o., FEI Deutschland GmbH, FEI EFA Inc., FEI EFA International Pte. Ltd., FEI Electron Optics B.V., FEI Electron Optics International B.V., FEI Europe B.V., FEI France SAS, FEI Global Holdings C.V., FEI Hong Kong Company Limited, FEI Houston Inc., FEI Italia Srl, FEI Korea Ltd., FEI Melbourne Pty Ltd., FEI Microscopy Solutions Ltd, FEI Munich GmbH, FEI Norway Holding AS, FEI SAS, FEI Saudi Arabia LLC, FEI Servicos de Nanotecnologia Ltda., FEI Technologies Inc., FEI Technology de Mexico S.A. de C.V., FEI Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., FEI Trondheim AS, FEI UK Ltd., FHP LLC, FRC Holding Inc. V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Finesse Solutions AG, Finesse Solutions Inc., Finnzymes Oy, Fisher Alder S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Asia Manufacturing Ventures Inc., Fisher Bermuda Holdings Limited, Fisher BioImage ApS, Fisher BioPharma Services (India) Private Limited, Fisher BioSciences Japan G.K., Fisher BioServices Inc., Fisher Bioblock Holding II SNC, Fisher CLP Holding Limited Partnership, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 1, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 2, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 3, Fisher Canada Limited Partnership, Fisher Chimica BVBA, Fisher Clinical Logistics LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services (Bristol) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Colombia) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Korea) Co. Ltd, Fisher Clinical Services (Mexico) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Peru) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services Colombia S.A.S., Fisher Clinical Services GmbH, Fisher Clinical Services Inc., Fisher Clinical Services Japan K.K., Fisher Clinical Services Latin America S.R.L., Fisher Clinical Services Limited Liability Company, Fisher Clinical Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Clinical Services Peru S.R.L, Fisher Clinical Services Pte Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services U.K. Limited, Fisher Emergo B.V., Fisher Germany Holdings GmbH, Fisher Hamilton China Inc., Fisher Hamilton Mexico LLC, Fisher Holdings ApS, Fisher Internet Minority Holdings L.L.C., Fisher Laboratory Products Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Fisher Luxembourg Danish Holdings SARL, Fisher Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Maybridge Holdings Limited, Fisher Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific (Austria) GmbH, Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Fisher Scientific (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific A/S, Fisher Scientific AG, Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Limited, Fisher Scientific Biotech Line ApS, Fisher Scientific Brazil Inc., Fisher Scientific Central America Inc., Fisher Scientific Chile Inc., Fisher Scientific Colombia Inc., Fisher Scientific Company, Fisher Scientific Company L.L.C., Fisher Scientific Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Fisher Scientific Europe Holdings B.V., Fisher Scientific GTF AB, Fisher Scientific Germany Beteiligungs GmbH, Fisher Scientific GmbH, Fisher Scientific Holding Company LLC, Fisher Scientific Holding HK Limited, Fisher Scientific Holding U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific Holdings (S) Pte Ltd, Fisher Scientific International LLC, Fisher Scientific Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Fisher Scientific Ireland Investments Unlimited, Fisher Scientific Ireland Limited, Fisher Scientific Japan Ltd., Fisher Scientific Jersey Island Limited, Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd, Fisher Scientific Latin America Inc., Fisher Scientific Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Fisher Scientific Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific Mexico Inc., Fisher Scientific Middle East and Africa Inc., Fisher Scientific Norway AS, Fisher Scientific Operating Company, Fisher Scientific Oxoid Holdings Ltd., Fisher Scientific Oy, Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific S.A.S., Fisher Scientific S.L., Fisher Scientific SPRL, Fisher Scientific The Hague I B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague II B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague III B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague IV B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague V B.V., Fisher Scientific U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company 2, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company Limited, Fisher Scientific Unipessoal Lda., Fisher Scientific Venezuela Inc., Fisher Scientific Worldwide (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Holdings I C.V., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Inc., Fisher Scientific de Mexico S.A., Fisher Scientific of the Netherlands B.V., Fisher Scientific spol. S.r.o, Fisher Servicios Clinicos (Chile) LLC, Fisher Servicios Clinicos Chile Ltda, Fisher WWD Holding L.L.C., Fisher Worldwide Distribution SPV, Fisher Worldwide Gene Distribution SPV, Flux Instruments, Fuji Partnership, G & M Procter Limited, G V Instruments Limited, GV Instruments Canada Ltd., GV Instruments Inc, Gatan Inc, General Scientific Company Sdn Bhd (M), Genomed molekularbiologische und diagnostische Produkte GmbH, Gerhard Menzel B.V. & Co. KG, Gold Cattle Standard Testing Labs Inc., Golden West Indemnity Company Limited, Goring Kerr Detection Limited, Greenville Service Company Inc., HENO GmbH i.L., Hangar 215 Inc., Helmet Securities Limited, Henogen, HighChem, HyClone International Trade (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Hybaid Limited, I.Q. (BIO) Limited, IDnostics AG, ILS Laboratories Scandinavia AB, Inel Inc., Inel SAS, InnaPhase Inc., InnaPhase Limited, IntegenX, Intrinsic BioProbes Inc., Intrinsic Bioprobes Inc., Invitrogen (Shanghai) Investment Co. Ltd., Invitrogen Argentina SA, Invitrogen BioServices India Private Limited, Invitrogen Europe Limited, Invitrogen Finance Corp., Invitrogen Holdings LLC, Invitrogen Holdings Ltd., Invitrogen Hong Kong Limited, Invitrogen IP Holdings Inc., Invitrogen Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ion Torrent Systems Inc., Ionalytics Corporation, JSC Thermo Fisher Scientific, Jouan LLC, Jouan Limited, Jouan SA, Kendro Containment & Services Limited, Kendro Laboratory Products Ltd, Kettlebrook Insurance Co. ltd., Keystone Scientific, KonTEM GmbH, Kyle Jordan Investments LLC, LIFE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, LTC Tech South Africa PTY Ltd., La-Pha-Pack GmbH, Lab Vision (UK) Limited, Lab Vision Corporation, Lab-Chrom-Pack LLC, Lab-Line Instruments Inc., Labomex MBP S. de R. L. De C.V., Laboratoire Service International - L.S.I, Laboratory Management Systems Inc., Laboratory Specialties Proprietary Ltd., LambTrack Limited, Laser Analytical Systems Inc., Liberty Lane Investment LLC, Liberty Lane Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Life Sciences International (Poland) SP z O.O, Life Sciences International Holdings BV, Life Sciences International LLC, Life Sciences International Limited, Life Technologies AS, Life Technologies Australia PTY Ltd., Life Technologies BPD AB, Life Technologies BPD UK Limited, Life Technologies Brasil Comercio e Industria de Produtos para Biotecnologia Ltda, Life Technologies Chile SpA, Life Technologies Clinical Services Lab Inc., Life Technologies Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Czech Republic s.r.o., Life Technologies DaAn Diagnostic (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Europe B.V., Life Technologies Finance Ltd., Life Technologies Finland Oy, Life Technologies GmbH, Life Technologies Holdings PTE Ltd., Life Technologies Inc., Life Technologies International B.V., Life Technologies Japan Ltd., Life Technologies Korea LLC, Life Technologies Limited, Life Technologies Magyarorszag Kft, Life Technologies New Zealand Ltd., Life Technologies Norway Investments US LLC, Life Technologies Polska Sp z.o.o., Life Technologies SA, Life Technologies SAS, Life Technologies s.r.o, Linkage Biosciences Inc., Linkage Biosciences S.a.r.l., Loftus Furnace Company, Lomb Scientific, Lomb Scientific (Aust) Pty Limited, MTI-GlobalStem, Marketbase International Limited, Matrix MicroScience Inc., Matrix MicroScience Ltd., Matrix Technologies Corporation Limited, Matrix Technologies LLC, Maybridge Chemical Company Limited, Maybridge Chemical Holdings Limited, Maybridge Limited, Medical Analysis Systems Inc., Medical Analysis Systems International Inc., Medical Diagnostics Systems Inc., Metavac LLC, Microgenics Corporation, Microgenics Diagnostics Pty Limited, Microgenics GmbH, Microm International GmbH, Microm Laborgerate S.L.U, Molecular BioProducts Inc., Molecular Probes Inc., Molecular Transfer Inc., NAPCO Inc., NERL Diagnostics LLC, NOVODIRECT GmbH Labor- und Industrie- Megerate, Nalge (Europe) Limited, Nalge Nunc International (Monterrey) LLC, Nalge Nunc International Corporation, Nanjing WeiKangLe Trading Industrial Co Ltd, NanoDrop Technologies LLC, National Scientific Company, Navaho Acquisition Corp., Neomarkers Inc., New FS Holdings Inc., NewcoGen PE LLC, Nihon Dynal K.K., Niton Asia Limited, NovaWave Technologies Inc., Nunc A/S, ONIX Systems Inc., OXOID CZ s.r.o., Odyssey Holdings Corporation, Odyssey Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 1 S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 2 S.a r.l., Odyssey Venture Corporation, Omega Data Systems, One Lambda Inc, Onix Holdings Limited, Orme Scientific Limited, Owl Separation Systems LLC, Oxoid (ELY) Limited, Oxoid 2000 Limited, Oxoid AS, Oxoid Australia Pty. Limited, Oxoid Company, Oxoid Deutschland GmbH, Oxoid Holding SAS, Oxoid Holdings Limited, Oxoid Inc., Oxoid International Limited, Oxoid Investments GmbH, Oxoid Limited, Oxoid N.V., Oxoid New Zealand Limited, Oxoid Pension Trustees Limited, Oxoid Senior Holdings Limited, Oxoid UKH LLC, PAX - DSI Acquisition LLC, PE AG, Pacific Rim Far East Industries LLC, Pacific Rim Investment LLC, Panomics L.L.C., Panomics S.R.L., Patheon, Patheon API Inc., Patheon API Manufacturing Inc., Patheon API Services Inc., Patheon Austria GmbH & Co KG, Patheon B.V., Patheon Banner U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon Biologics (NJ) LLC, Patheon Biologics Australia Pty Ltd, Patheon Biologics B.V., Patheon Biologics LLC, Patheon Calculus Merger LLC, Patheon Cooperatief U.A., Patheon Development Services Inc., Patheon Finance LLC, Patheon France SAS, Patheon Holdings B.V., Patheon Holdings I B.V., Patheon Holdings II B.V., Patheon Holdings SAS, Patheon I B.V., Patheon I Holding GmbH, Patheon Inc., Patheon International AG, Patheon Italia S.p.A., Patheon KK, Patheon Life Science Products International GmbH, Patheon Manufacturing Services LLC, Patheon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Patheon Pharmaceuticals Services Inc., Patheon Puerto Rico Acquisitions Corporation, Patheon Puerto Rico Inc., Patheon Regensburg GmbH, Patheon Softgels B.V., Patheon Softgels Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings LLC, Patheon UK Limited, Patheon UK Pension Trustees Limited, Pelican Acquisition Corporation, Perbio Science (Canada) Company, Perbio Science AB, Perbio Science BVBA, Perbio Science France SAS, Perbio Science Inc., Perbio Science International Netherlands B.V., Perbio Science Invest AB, Perbio Science Nederland B.V., Perbio Science Projekt AB, Perbio Science Sweden Holdings AB, Perbio Science Switzerland SA, Perbio Science UK Limited, Phadia AB, Phadia Diagnosticos Ltda, Phadia GmbH, Phadia Holding AB, Phadia International Holdings C.V., Phadia Korea Co. Ltd, Phadia Luxembourg Holdings S.a.r.l., Phadia Malta Holdings Limited, Phadia Oy, Phadia Real Property AB, Phadia Sweden AB, Phadia Taiwan Inc., Phadia US Inc., Phadia s.r.o., Pharmacaps Mexicana SA de CV, Phenom-World B.V., Phenom-World Holding B.V, Phenom-World Innovations B.V., Phinotex, Pierce Biotechnology Inc., Pierce Milwaukee Holding Corp., Pierce Milwaukee Inc., Polychromix, Power Sweden Holdings I AB, Power Sweden Holdings II AB, Power Sweden Holdings III Aktiebolag, Princeton Gamma-Tech Instruments LLC, Princeton Security Technologies, Prionics AG, Prionics Asia Ltd., Prionics Deutschland GmbH, Prionics France SAS, Prionics Italia S.r.l., Prionics Lelystad B.V., Prionics USA Inc., Priority Air Express LLC, Priority Air Express Pte. Ltd., Priority Air Express UK Limited, Priority Air Holdings Corp, Priority Solutions International, Promedica Pty Limited, Proxeon, Proxeon Biosystems ApS, Qiagen, REP GBP I-B Blocker Inc., Raymond A Lamb Limited, Remel Europe Limited, Remel Inc., Richard-Allan Scientific Company, Robbins Scientific LLC, Robocon Labor- und Industrieroboter Gesellschaft m.b.H, Rupprecht and Patashnick, Rupprecht and Patashnick (R&P), Russell pH Limited, S.C.I. du 10 rue Dugay Trouin, SCI Inno 92, STC Bio Manufacturing Inc., Samco Scientific (Monterrey) LLC, Samco Scientific LLC, Saroph Sweden AB, Schantz Road LLC, Seradyn Inc., Shanghai Life Technologies Biotechnology Co. Limited, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (C-I) Trading Co. Ltd, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (S) Trading Co. Ltd, Southern Trials (Pty) Ltd., Specialty (SMI) Inc., Spectra-Physics AB, Spectra-Physics Holdings Limited, Spectra-Physics Holdings USA LLC, Spectronex, Staten Island Cogeneration Corporation, Sterilin Limited, Stokes Bio Ltd., Sweden DIA (Sweden) AB, SwissAnalytic Group GmbH, Systems Manufacturing Corporation, TFLP LLC, TFS Breda B.V., TFS LLC, TFS Singapore HK Limited, TFSL Financing GP LLC, TFSL Senior GP Holdings 2 LLC, TK Partnership, TKA Wasseraufbereitungssysteme, TMOI Inc., TPI Real Estate Holdings LLC, TSP Holdings I LLC, TWX LLC, Technology Design Solutions Pty Ltd, Thermedics Detection de Argentina S.R.L, Thermo Allen Coding Limited, Thermo Asset Management Services Inc., Thermo BioAnalysis LLC, Thermo BioAnalysis Limited, Thermo BioSciences Holdings LLC, Thermo CIDTEC, Thermo CRS Holdings Ltd., Thermo CRS Ltd., Thermo Cambridge Limited, Thermo Cayman Holdings Ltd., Thermo Corporation, Thermo DMA Inc., Thermo Detection de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Dutch Holdings Limited Partnership, Thermo EGS Gauging LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings I LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings II LLC, Thermo Eberline LLC, Thermo Electron (Calgary) Limited, Thermo Electron (Chile) S.p.A., Thermo Electron (Karlsruhe) GmbH, Thermo Electron (Management Services) Limited, Thermo Electron (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Electron A/S, Thermo Electron Australia Pty Limited, Thermo Electron Export Inc., Thermo Electron Holdings SAS, Thermo Electron Industries, Thermo Electron LED GmbH, Thermo Electron LED S.A.S., Thermo Electron Limited, Thermo Electron Manufacturing Limited, Thermo Electron Metallurgical Services Inc., Thermo Electron North America LLC, Thermo Electron Pension Trust GmbH, Thermo Electron Puerto Rico Inc., Thermo Electron SAS, Thermo Electron Scientific Instruments LLC, Thermo Electron Sweden AB, Thermo Electron Sweden Forvaltning AB, Thermo Electron Weighing & Inspection Limited, Thermo Elemental Limited, Thermo Environmental Instruments LLC, Thermo Fast U.K. Limited, Thermo Finland Holdings LLC, Thermo Finland Holdings MT1 B.V., Thermo Finland Holdings MT2 B.V., Thermo Finnigan LLC, Thermo Finnigan Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Malta Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN-I) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (CN-II) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings I Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings II Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings 2) LLC, Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) II Limited, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Heysham) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Kandel) GmbH, Thermo Fisher CHK Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust II, Thermo Fisher Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Thermo Fisher Cyprus Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Detection Mexico LLC, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics (Ireland) Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AB, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AG, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Aps, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Austria GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics B.V., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics K.K., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics NV, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.L.U., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.p.A. , Thermo Fisher Diagnostics SAS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Thermo Fisher Eurobonds Ltd., Thermo Fisher Financial Services Inc., Thermo Fisher GP LLC, Thermo Fisher German Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Germany B.V., Thermo Fisher India Divestco Private Limited, Thermo Fisher India Holding B.V., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Thermo Fisher Israel Ltd., Thermo Fisher Production et Services SAS, Thermo Fisher Project Cyprus LLC, Thermo Fisher Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Asheville) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Australia) C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Barbados) Holdings Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Breda) Holding BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen) GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (CN) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China-HK) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (DE) Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Ecublens) SARL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance II) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Fuji) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Holding II) B.V. & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Johannesburg) (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mexico City) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Milwaukee) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mississauga) Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Monterrey) S. De R.L. De C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (NK) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) Austria Holding GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-I) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-II) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN1) UK Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) Dutch LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Praha) s.r.o., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) GmbH & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Schweiz) AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Instruments Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Suzhou) Instruments Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific AL-1 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific AU II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Aquasensors LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V.B.A., Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (I) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (II) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics UAB, Thermo Fisher Scientific Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Biosciences Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brahms LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Instrumentos de Processo Ltda., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Servicos de Logistica Ltda, Thermo Fisher Scientific C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cayman Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chemicals Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific China (C-I) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China (S) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings IV B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings Aps, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus IV C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus V C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Denmark Senior Holdings ApS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie 1 Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Europe GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC Finance C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSUKHCO Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Falcon Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Finance Company BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific GENEART GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Germany BV & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific HR Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) I, Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) II , Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings Europe Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific IT Services GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Pvt Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Malta) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments Malta (Sweden Financing) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Invitrogen Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific K.K., Thermo Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific LSI Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments III S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments IV S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life NL Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Netherlands Holding C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Switzerland Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Tech Korea Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Enterprise Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investments Holding LP, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Luxembourg Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Enterprise Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg German Holdings S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Life Technologies UK Holding S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings I S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings II S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malta Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Messtechnik GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Mexico City S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Middle East Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Milano Srl, Thermo Fisher Scientific NHK Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Holdings, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway Holdings AS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway US Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Operating Company LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Oy, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 C.V, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Panama I Cayman Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Peru S.R.L., Thermo Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific SL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Financing LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Holdings Australia LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific South Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific SpA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg I S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Investments Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Switzerland Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific TR Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Taiwan Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific West Palm Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Wissenschaftliche Gerate GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Worldwide Investments (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific eCommerce Solutions LLC , Thermo Fisher Senior Canada Holdings LLC, Thermo Foundation Inc., Thermo Gamma-Metrics Holdings Pty Ltd., Thermo Gamma-Metrics LLC, Thermo Gamma-Metrics Pty Ltd, Thermo Holding European Operations LLC, Thermo Hypersil Ltd, Thermo Hypersil-Keystone LLC, Thermo Informatics Asia Pacific Pty Ltd., Thermo Instrument Controls de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Thermo Kevex X-Ray LLC, Thermo Keytek LLC, Thermo LabSystems Inc., Thermo LabSystems S.A., Thermo Life Science International Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Thermo Life Sciences AB, Thermo Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo MF Physics LLC, Thermo Measurement Ltd, Thermo Measuretech Canada Inc., Thermo Neslab LLC, Thermo Nicolet Limited, Thermo Onix Limited, Thermo Optek (Australia) Pty Ltd., Thermo Optek Limited, Thermo Optek S.A., Thermo Orion Inc., Thermo Portable Holdings LLC, Thermo Power Corporation, Thermo Process Instruments GP LLC, Thermo Process Instruments L.P., Thermo Projects Limited, Thermo Quest S.A., Thermo Radiometrie Limited, Thermo Ramsey Italia S.r.l., Thermo Ramsey LLC, Thermo Ramsey S.A., Thermo Re Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Pte Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Sdn Bhd, Thermo Scientific Portable Analytical Instruments Inc., Thermo Scientific Services Inc., Thermo Securities Corporation, Thermo Sentron Canada Inc., Thermo Sentron Limited, Thermo Shandon Inc., Thermo Shandon Limited, Thermo Suomi Holding B.V., Thermo TLH (UK) Limited, Thermo TLH L.P., Thermo Trace Pty Ltd., Thermo-Fisher Biochemical Product (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ThermoLase LLC, ThermoSpectra Limited, Trek Diagnostic Systems LLC, Trek Diagnostic Systems Ltd., Trek Holding Company II Ltd., Trek Holding Company Ltd., Trex Medical Corporation, USB Corporation, Union Lab Supplies Limited, United Diagnostics Inc., VG Systems Limited, Westover Scientific Inc., ZAO PE Biosystems, eBioscience GmbH, eBioscience Ltd, eBioscience SAS, and picoSpin LLC.The following companies are subsidiares of Aramark: 1ST & Fresh LLC, AIL Servicos Alimenticios e Participacoes Ltda., AIM Services Co. Ltd., AMP Limited Partnership, ARA Catering and Vending Services Limited, ARA Coffee Club Limited, ARA Coffee System Limited, ARA Food Services Limited, ARA Marketing Services Limited, ARA Offshore Services Limited, ARAMONT Company Ltd., Active Industrial Unif, Alcatraz Hospitality, AmeriPride Services, American Snack & Beverage LLC, Aramark (BVI) Limited, Aramark Airport Services Limited, Aramark American Food Services LLC, Aramark Asia Management LLC, Aramark Aviation Services Limited Partnership, Aramark B.V., Aramark Beverages Limited, Aramark Business & Industry LLC, Aramark Business Center LLC, Aramark Business Dining Services of Texas LLC, Aramark Business Facilities LLC, Aramark CCT Trustees Limited, Aramark Campus LLC, Aramark Canada Ltd., Aramark Canadian Investments Inc., Aramark Capital Asset Services LLC, Aramark Catering Limited, Aramark China Dining Services (Shanghai) Limited, Aramark China Holdings Limited, Aramark Chugach Alaska Services LLC, Aramark Cleaning S.A., Aramark Cleanroom Services (Puerto Rico) Inc., Aramark Cleanroom Services LLC, Aramark Co. Ltd., Aramark Colombia SAS, Aramark Concessions Services Joint Venture, Aramark Confection LLC, Aramark Construction Services Inc., Aramark Construction and Energy Services LLC, Aramark Consumer Discount Company, Aramark Correctional Services LLC, Aramark Defence Services Limited, Aramark Denmark ApS, Aramark Distribution Services Inc., Aramark Educational Group LLC, Aramark Educational Services LLC, Aramark Educational Services of Texas LLC, Aramark Educational Services of Vermont Inc., Aramark Entertainment LLC, Aramark Entertainment Services (Canada) Inc., Aramark Executive Management Services USA Inc., Aramark FHC Business Services LLC, Aramark FHC Campus Services LLC, Aramark FHC Correctional Services LLC, Aramark FHC Healthcare Support Services LLC, Aramark FHC Kansas Inc., Aramark FHC LLC, Aramark FHC Refreshment Services LLC, Aramark FHC School Support Services LLC, Aramark FHC Services LLC, Aramark FHC Sports and Entertainment Services LLC, Aramark FSM LLC, Aramark Facility Services LLC, Aramark Food Service LLC, Aramark Food Service of Texas LLC, Aramark Food and Support Services Group Inc., Aramark Global Group S.a.r.l., Aramark Global Inc., Aramark GmbH, Aramark Gulf Limited, Aramark Gulf Limited Catering Services LLC, Aramark Healthcare Support Services LLC, Aramark Healthcare Support Services of the Virgin Islands Inc., Aramark Healthcare Technologies LLC, Aramark Holding Deutschland GmbH, Aramark Holdings GmbH & Co. KG, Aramark Holdings Ltd., Aramark Industrial Services LLC, Aramark Intermediate HoldCo Corporation, Aramark International Finance S.a.r.l., Aramark International Holdings S.a.r.l., Aramark Inversiones Latinoamericanas Limitada, Aramark Investments Limited, Aramark Ireland Holdings Limited, Aramark Japan Holdings Limited, Aramark Japan LLC, Aramark KSA LLC, Aramark Kazakhstan Ltd., Aramark Lakewood Associates, Aramark Limited, Aramark Management GmbH, Aramark Management LLC, Aramark Management Services Limited Partnership, Aramark Manning Services UK Limited, Aramark Mexico Group, Aramark Mexico S.A. de C.V., Aramark Monclova Manufacturing de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Aramark Monclova Support S.A.de C.V., Aramark Norway SA, Aramark Organizational Services LLC, Aramark Partnership Limited, Aramark Personnel Services, Aramark Peru S.A.C., Aramark Peru Servicios de Intermediacion SRL, Aramark Processing LLC, Aramark Property Services Limited, Aramark Qualified Opportunity Fund, Aramark Quebec Inc., Aramark RBI Inc., Aramark Rail Services LLC, Aramark Receivables LLC, Aramark Refreshment Group, Aramark Refreshment Services LLC, Aramark Refreshment Services of Tampa LLC, Aramark Regional Treasury Europe DAC, Aramark Remote Workplace Services Ltd., Aramark Restaurations GmbH, Aramark S&E/QCF Joint Venture, Aramark S.A., Aramark S.A. de C.V., Aramark S.R.O., Aramark SARL, Aramark SCM Inc., Aramark SM Management Services Inc., Aramark SMMS LLC, Aramark SMMS Real Estate LLC, Aramark School Catering Facility Ltd., Aramark Schools Facilities LLC, Aramark Schools LLC, Aramark Senior Living Services LLC, Aramark Senior Notes Company LLC, Aramark Service Industries (China) Co. Ltd., Aramark Services Inc., Aramark Services SA, Aramark Services of Kansas Inc., Aramark Services of Puerto Rico Inc., Aramark Servicios Industriales S. de R.L. de C.V., Aramark Servicios Integrales S.A., Aramark Servicios Mineros y Remotos Limitada, Aramark Servicios SRL, Aramark Servicios de Catering S.L., Aramark Servicos Alimenticos e Participacoes Ltda., Aramark Sports Facilities LLC, Aramark Sports LLC, Aramark Sports and Entertainment Group LLC, Aramark Sports and Entertainment Services LLC, Aramark Sports and Entertainment Services of Texas LLC, Aramark Sub Investments Limited, Aramark Technical Services North Carolina Inc., Aramark Togwotee LLC, Aramark Trademark Services, Aramark Trustees Limited, Aramark U.S. Offshore Services LLC, Aramark Uniform & Career Apparel Group Inc., Aramark Uniform & Career Apparel LLC, Aramark Uniform Holding de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Aramark Uniform Manufacturing Company, Aramark Uniform Services (Canada) Ltd., Aramark Uniform Services (Matchpoint) LLC, Aramark Uniform Services (Rochester) LLC, Aramark Uniform Services (Supply Chain), Aramark Uniform Services (Syracuse) LLC, Aramark Uniform Services (Texas) LLC, Aramark Uniform Services (West Adams) LLC, Aramark Uniform Services Japan Corporation, Aramark Venue Services Inc., Aramark WTC LLC, Aramark Workplace Solutions (UK) Ltd., Aramark Workplace Solutions Yonetim Hizmetleri Limited Sirketi, Aramark Worldwide Investments Limited, Aramark-Clarksville Club, Aramark-FINCO of Texas LLC, Aramark-Gourmet DPS LLC, Aramark-KWAME of St. Louis LLC, Aramark-SFS Healthcare J.V. L.L.C., Aramark/Dasko Restaurant and Catering Services S.A., Aramark/GM Concessions Joint Venture, Aramark/Giacometti Joint Venture, Aramark/Globetrotters LLC, Aramark/Gourmet HE-1 LLC, Aramark/Gourmet HE-2 LLC, Aramark/HF Company, Aramark/HMS LLC, Aramark/Hart Lyman Entertainment LLC, Aramark/Martin's Stadium Concession Services OPACY Joint Venture, Aramark/QHC LLC, Aramark/SFS Joint Venture, Avendra, Avendra Canada Inc., Avendra Gaming, Avendra Replenishment, Avoca, Avoca Handweavers Designs Limited, Avoca Handweavers Limited, Avoca Handweavers NI Limited, Avoca Handweavers Shops Limited, Avoca Handweavers UK Limited, Beijing Golden Collar Dining Ltd., Boompjes Hotel BV, Brand Coffee Service Inc., BuyEfficient, CDR Mantenimiento Integral S.A., Campbell Catering (Belfast) Ltd., Campbell Catering (N.I.) Ltd., Campbell Catering Holdings Limited, Campbell Catering Limited, Campbell Catering Ltd., Campbell Catering Services, Canadian Linen and Uniform Service Co., Canyonlands Rafting Hospitality LLC, Catering Alliance Limited, Caterwise Food Services Limited, Central Multiservicios S.R.L., Central de Abastecimiento Limitada, Central de Restaurantes Aramark Limitada, Central de Restaurantes Aramark Multiservicios Limitada, Central de Restaurantes S.R.L., Centrapal S.R.L., Centro de Innovacion y Servicio S.A., Cliff House Hospitality, Comertel Educa SLU, Comertel Residencia SLU, Comertel SA, Complete Purchasing Services Inc., Corporate Coffee Systems LLC, Crater Lake Hospitality, D.G. Maren II Inc., Delicious on West Street LLC, Delsac VIII Inc., Distributor JV Limited, Dongguan Best Property Management Co., Doyon/Aramark Denali National Park Concessions Joint Venture, Effective Partnerships Limited, Filterfresh Coffee Service, Filterfresh Coffee Service LLC, Filterfresh Franchise Group LLC, Fine Host Holdings LLC, Food JV Limited, Freedom Ferry Services, GTB Gastro Team Bremen GmbH, Gestion de Alimentacion y Limpieza Colectivadades SLU, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve Concessions LLC, Glen Canyon Rafting Hospitality, Glenrye Properties Services Limited, Golden Collar, Good Uncle Services, Gourmet Aramark Services LLC, Guaranty Energy Group 1981, HPSI Purchasing Services LLC, Harrison Conference Associates LLC, Harrison Conference Services of North Carolina LLC, Harry M. Stevens Inc. of New Jersey, Harry M. Stevens Inc. of Penn., Harry M. Stevens LLC, Hunters Catering Partnership Limited, Institutional Processing Services, Instituto ICS S.A., Inversiones Aramark Chile Limitada, Inversiones Centralcorp Limitada, Inversiones Palm Limitada, Inversiones en Aseo y Mantenimiento S.A, Irish Estates (Facilities Management) Limited, L&N Uniform Supply LLC, Lake Tahoe Cruises LLC, Landy Textile Rental Services LLC, Lifeworks Restaurant Group LLC, Lotus Facilities Management, MESA, Masterplan, Medical Equipment Solutions & Applications Sagl (MESA), Mill Mount Weavers Limited, Muir Woods Hospitality, MyAssistant Inc., New Aramark LLC, Nissho Linen, North Rim Hospitality, Old Time Coffee Co., Olympic Peninsula Hospitality LLC, Orange Support Services Limited, Overall Laundry Services Inc., Paradise Hornblower LLC, Pelican Procurement Services Limited, Philadelphia Ballpark Concessions Joint Venture, Prem Hospitality Limited, Premgroup Franchise Services Limited, Premier Management Company (Dublin) Limited, Premier Partnership (Catering) Limited, Quebec Linge Co., ReMedPar, Restaura Inc., Rocky Mountain Hospitality LLC, Rushmore Hospitality LLC, SeamlessWeb, Seguricorp Servicios S.A., South Rim Hospitality LLC, Spokesoft Technologies Limited, Stuart Cabeldu Catering Limited, Sun Office Service Inc., Tarrant County Concessions LLC, The Aramark Foundation, The Original Food Company Limited, Travel Systems LLC, Trinity Hospitality Services GmbH, Trinity Hospitality Services SARL, Trinity Purchasing N.V., Vector Environmental Services Limited, Vector Workplace and Facility Management Limited, Veris Plc, Veris Property Management Limited, Veris UK Limited, WearGuard, Wilderness River Adventures, and Yosemite Hospitality LLC.Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in London - by approximate estimations, more than half a million people - demanded a new referendum on Britain's exit from the European Union. According to some observers, the future of Brexit is less clear now.

One of the leading British newspapers The Guardian wrote that the demonstration against Britain's exit from the EU has become one of the largest protests in the UK over the past decade, i.e. since the military campaign in Iraq. In May 2016 a referendum on whether to remain in the EU was held, following the results of which Brexit supporters achieved a minimum advantage. Subsequent sociological studies revealed the following picture: Brexit was mostly supported by older people, i.e. a more conservative part of British society, while the young and engaged in entrepreneurial activities part of the population connects the country's future with integration trends.

However, sociological studies, which have no legal force, is one thing, while Brexit, which is a legal result of the people's will, even without a clearly defined advantage, is another thing. Having received the mandate of national trust to exit from the EU, London has opened negotiations with Brussels, which turned out to be more difficult than expected, so separation conditions are still not defined. Moreover, according to some experts, the negotiations become even more complicated or even deadlocked.

A point of significant contention in Brexit negotiations was the rights of citizens of EU countries living in the UK, and vice versa - the rights of the British, who prefer to live on the mainland. The second problem is the border between Northern Ireland, which is a part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which is the EU member and does not even think about leaving the interstate alliance.

However, the demonstration on October 20 pushed the problem of UK-EU negotiations to the second plan, because the split of British society was brought to the forefront, which worries the establishment more than other things.

The Guardian pushed the boat out in citing politicians and ordinary participants in the event, their statements are curious and cast more light on the situation in the UK than other arguments of venerable political scientists and experts.

The Liberal Democrats leader, Vince Cable, said it was "a tragedy this country is being divided by generation."

Green party MP Caroline Lucas: "Brexit would make our poorest communities even poorer and more powerless. We must re-programme an economy that fails so many, that is based on such inequality."

Conservative MP Anna Soubry: "It is clear we are the many. We will take responsibly and sort out this mess."

Matthew Cooke, 28, who had come down from Scunthorpe with the Modern Union for a Changing World, explained the reporters that "Brexit in its guise is no good for jobs, no good for workers rights and no good for peoples finance."

Peter, 60, from Crawley, had created a large banner that read: "Would an honourable country renege on a peace treaty? No hard border in Ireland." Peter said: "I remember the Troubles from the 70s. People forget too soon the benefits of the Good Friday agreement."

Jason Gillot, 43, said he originally voted to leave the EU, but "changed his mind five days after the referendum," so he has been marching with a sign that says "When the facts change, I change my mind!"

The comedian Dom Joly posted a photograph of London on Twitter, which depicts hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, and sarcastically contrasted the rally with the march by the far-right Football Lads Democratic Alliance: "Massive gang of non-racists maraud the streets of London chanting non-racist slogans and not harassing foreigners."

However, it seems that the half a million rally did not impress the British authorities. In any case, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared that no second referendum will be held, while she is in office. The people, who know May as a complex politician who is not inclined to change opinions and decisions, believe that it wasn't just words and this time she will follow her way, i.e. work towards leaving the EU. And this means an increase in the domestic political degree in Britain, a polarization of society, a toughening of political opposition. This may be sufficient for her opponents (not just the general opposition, but also opponents within the ruling Conservative Party) to start seeking new parliamentary elections and, as a consequence, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.The Georgian Interior Ministry released the presidential candidate, founder and leader of the libertarian Girchi party, Zurab Japaridze, who was detained as part of the investigation of drug distribution and drug propaganda criminal cases. Together with the presidential candidate, several other party activists were arrested and later released, as well as marijuana lovers who attended the widely-announced cannabis legalization festival.

Zurab Japaridze and his associates, some of whom are real fanatics who consider drug use "a sacred human right to choose", have been urging citizens to visit the festival at the children's Dedaena Park for the whole past week. Holding the festival in this park was a deliberate challenge to society, since Japaridze believes that the cannabis legalization in Georgia is hampered not only by the authorities, but also by the "medieval, fascist conservatism of society".

Yesterday, the number of police officers was no less in the park than the number of participants, and slightly more than the number of journalists. Dozens of cameras were recording what is happening in the center of the capital, which is full of tourists, including from Russia. Japaridze was going to "publicly give out cannabis cigarettes in protest against repressive drug policies." The police detained him several minutes later after he did it. But it is unprofitable to launch the criminal case and make specific accusations against the detainees - the arrest of the presidential candidate could be interpreted as an attempt by the Interior Ministry to influence the election campaign on the eve of the October 28 vote.

But it does not solve the main problem,pointed out by Japaridze during his patage demonstration: recently the Georgian Constitutional Court lifted any sanctions for the use of "soft drugs", legalizing their use. If recently people were not able to smoke weed, now they cannot even be fined. However, the ruling party and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which are categorically opposed to the legalization and decriminalization of drugs, found a "creative way out" to bypass the Constitutional Court's verdict without directly violating it: the distribution of cannabis (even for free) is still a criminal offense. In addition, it is forbidden to smoke in all public places; transportation in any volume is also punished. In fact, cannabis lovers can "relax" (this formulation was a key one in the decision of the Constitutional Court) only being at home. It turns out that the state no longer considers cannabis a crime, but it does not recognize any legal ways of acquiring soft drugs and does not offer alternative methods, like in the Netherlands, where you can legally buy soft drugs in some cafes.

According to Japaridze, he wanted to show with his public demonstration how absurd the situation is: what's the point of allowing cannabis smoking at home, if there are no legal ways to purchase, store and transport it? But the position of the Georgian Dream ruling party is unshakable and enjoys the support of the absolute majority of society, because drug addiction has become a real national disaster in the country since the 1970s.Diana Gasparyan, who was nominated by the Civil Contract Party, has won the mayoral election in Armenias Etchmiadzin city.

The Central Electoral Commission informed that, according to preliminary data, Armenias first female mayor-elect received 8,076 votes. The mayoral contender who came second - Suren Muradyan - garnered 3,699 votes, News.am reported.

Twelve candidates ran in the snap mayoral election in Vagharshapat.Armenian President Armen Sarkisyan will be visiting Switzerland October 22-25 to participate in the 6th World Investment Forum 2018, organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva and in another international forum Crans Montana.

Armenias president will speak at the summit of world leaders organized in the framework of the forum. The participants will discuss ways to direct foreign direct investments in sustainable development, ARKA reported.

Sarkisyan will also attend the opening of the 20th annual session of the Crans Montana international forum and will be the main speaker during discussions on local and global security issues.Chattanooga State Community College will host its Fall Open House on Saturday, Nov. 3, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Upon arrival, visitors may park in lot P1 located in front of the Albright Omniplex Building and check in at the Amphitheater where they will be welcomed and given information about the days activities.

ChattStates Open House presents opportunities for prospective students and their families to meet and chat with administrators, faculty, staff, and students. Tour the campus, visit labs, learn about admissions, financial aid and scholarships, career planning, student activities and campus organizations. Adults age 24+, may learn about returning to college tuition-free with the TN Reconnect scholarship. Reconnect information sessions are scheduled at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and noon in IMC-124. These free sessions are highly recommended for any adult who desires to begin or return to college.

Although all areas will be open for tours, ChattStates Engineering and Information Technologies division also will include hands-on demonstrations in the fields of welding, robotics, radiation protection, and more. Visitors may park on the west end of the campus in lot P17 to access the CETAS-WACKER building.

Open House is a perfect time to explore ChattStates 100+ degree and certificate programs that prepare students for associate and associate of applied science degrees, technical and institutional certificates, transfer to four-year institutions, or immediate entrance into the job market.

Home to the only fully embedded technical college on a Tennessee community college campus, the college consistently offers a high quality education with an 18:1 student-to-teacher ratio, 97 percent job placement rate, and 98 percent licensure pass rate.

Recruiting Services at Chattanooga State sponsors this Open House. RSVP at https://www.chattanoogastate.edu/events/chattstate-open-house. For more information, call 423 697-2689 or visit www.chattanoogastate.edu.Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev and U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton have started talks in Moscow.

"A meeting between Nikolay Patrushev and John Bolton began in Moscow," Patrushevs Spokesman Yevgeny Anoshin said.

Bolton began his two-day working program in the Russian capital today. Trumps adviser earlier tweeted that on October 20 he would be travelling to Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia to meet with his counterparts in order "to advance American interests on a range of security issues."

At the upcoming meeting, the US diplomat is expected to focus on the US plans to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), a milestone arms control agreement signed between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987, TASS reported.

Bolton is also scheduled to meet with representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry and Putins foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov. According to Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putins meeting with Bolton is still being prepared. Ushakov said that Bolton had requested a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The first meeting in the Bolton-Patrushev format was held in Geneva on August 23. The sides agreed to resume Russian-US contacts at the level of defense and foreign policy officials and the General Staff.

The deputy head of the Council of the Russian Diplomats Association, Andrey Baklanov, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, noted in the first place that U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton's visit to Moscow is of observation nature.

"U.S. President Donald Trump is in a rather difficult situation now. First, he cares about the interests of domestic American business and subordinates everything, including foreign policy, to this goal. And second, he leads an international negotiating process from a position of strength, from the position of the American establishment which seeks to ensure the dominance of its interests in the world," the expert said.

At the same time, he pointed out that such a line is unacceptable in relations with Russia. "Therefore, until now, we have failed to establish a normal political dialogue. Perhaps some attempt will be made during this visit to return to such interaction between Russia and the United States," the deputy head of the Council of the Russian Diplomats Association said.

According to him, currently there are a number of issues that require immediate attention from both countries. "In particular, there is a dangerous military situation in the territory of Syria. In addition, there is also a growing need to discuss armaments in general," Andrei Baklanov concluded.

The senior research fellow at the European Research Centre of the International Relations Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Olenchenko, suggested that Bolton arrived in Moscow with a proposal to intensify talks. I think that the main message of this visit is that the U.S. is ready to continue negotiations. The question is on what conditions. In my opinion, Trumps recent statements about the U.S. readiness to withdraw from the INF treaty were at least partially tied to his visit. Frankly speaking, it should be viewed as putting pressure on Russia on the eve of Bolton's visit in order to negotiate a better deal for themselves. Therefore, we can assume that Bolton will talk about it, as well as other aspects of bilateral relations," he said.

As for the position of Moscow, it expresses readiness to engage in a constructive dialogue. "We have repeatedly spoken out for the need to restore a normal dialogue - at least to return to that level of 12 different commissions on various issues. We have previously brought this position to the U.S., therefore, the U.S. should have a clear idea of what Russia wants and how it sees the development of bilateral relations," Vladimir Olenchenko concluded.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he will make a statement on the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 23 during his party's group meeting at the parliament.

Khashoggi was last seen on Oct. 2 when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. After days of denying to know his whereabouts, Saudi Arabia on Oct. 20 claimed Khashoggi died during a fight inside the consulate, Hurriyet daily recalls.

On the day of Khashoggis disappearance, 15 other Saudis, including several officials, arrived in Istanbul on two planes and visited the consulate while he was still inside, according to Turkish police sources. All of the identified individuals have since left Turkey.

A joint Turkish-Saudi team completed an investigation into the case on Oct. 18 after searching the residence of the consul general as well as the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.Dayton Philharmonic Special Event

HANDEL Messiah - Although Handels Messiah speaks directly to the gospel message of the passion and resurrection celebrated at Easter, this angelic piece has become a holiday tradition at Christmastime as well. With no distinguishable characters, the drama relies entirely on the communication of the story of Christ in words, as well as in the powerful, emotionally stirring, and at times heartbreakingly beautiful music of a composer for whom the oratorio proved a personal salvation. Join the Dayton Philharmonic, Dayton Philharmonic Chamber Chorus, and exquisite soloists in December for this glorious choral masterpiece.Free Event

The Annual Christmas in Historic Springboro Festival

Holiday Foods, Unique Gifts & Shopping, Saturday Parade, Christmas Music, Children's Activities, Carriage Rides and more!

Join us for the 34th annual Christmas Festival here in our Historic Springboro. We are excited to offer this time-honored tradition with you and your family!

Festival Mission: Each year we strive to give back to the community through funds that are generated through this festival. This year we will be donating to the Springboro Police Department's Operation Santa, adopting multiple families through Springboro Community Assistance Center and The Pantry, serving Springboro, Franklin and Carlisle.

The Christmas in Historic Springboro Festival features heated tents filled with shopping from local craft and retail vendors, music and entertainment from local organizations and various childrens crafts and activities. Join us Saturday at noon as our parade will be led by our local Grand Marshall and end with the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Claus (kids you wont want to miss this!). The streets will be lined with exceptional vendors fulfilling all your foodie needs, they will have you wanting to come back for more (good thing we are a 3-day festival). Be on the lookout for your opportunity to hop on the horse-drawn wagon with pickup/drop-off locations at either end of the festival.

Children's activities: Our featured children's tent is complimentary to all attendees and provides opportunity for crafts, entertainment and warmth for your little ones.

Additional activities will be available along the street provided by A&S Party Rental such as...zip lining, ice skating, rock climbing and more. Tickets sold at various locations for A&S entertainment.

Find more information on our website!Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he will discuss an ongoing investigation into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi with members of the cabinet at a meeting today.

Khashoggi went missing on October 2 when he entered the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul. After weeks of denying knowledge of his fate, Saudi officials said the prominent journalist was killed in a "rogue operation," Reuters recalled.New Delhi: Moody's Investors Service on Monday said the profitability of Indian banks is "distinctively weak" compared to those in BRICS nations, but it will improve from next fiscal as asset quality stabilises.

On capitalisation, Moody's said it is the "weakest" for Indian banks with a tangible common equity ratio of 8.7 per cent at the end of 2017. "System wide asset quality in India is weak due to stressed public sector banks, which dominate the sector. Government capital infusions will boost weak public sector banks' capital ratios," it said.

"The system as a whole is unprofitable due to high credit costs at dominant state-owned (Indian) banks," Moody's said, adding the profitability is "distinctively weak" for Indian banks than others in the five-nation BRICS bloc. By contrast, Brazilian and South African banks have the highest return on assets (ROA).

"Indian banks, despite having a similar level of pre-provisioning profitability to Chinese banks, have a negative ROA because of high credit costs at public sector banks, which dominate the system. Their profitability will remain under pressure for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2019, as provisions for credit losses will remain large. Indian bank's profitability will improve from the next fiscal year as asset quality stabilizes," it said.

The Moody's report on banks in BRICS countries said Indian lenders had the second highest non-performing loan (NPL) at 2017-end, followed by banks in Brazil, South Africa and China. Russian banks had the highest ratio of 11.8 per cent.

Brazilian banks had an NPL ratio of 3.5 per cent at the end of 2017, compared with 2.9 per cent for South African banks and the lowest of 1.5 per cent for Chinese banks.

"Indian banks also had a double-digit (NPL) ratio at the end of 2017. However, the recognition of stressed assets is largely complete and new non-performing loan (NPL) formation will moderate in the next 12-18 months, helped by on-going deleveraging by corporates and stable macro-economic conditions. Furthermore, reported NPL ratios will gradually decline as a result of stressed asset resolution," Moody's said.A wet lease is an arrangement under which an aircraft is leased out along with crew, maintenance and insurance.

Mumbai: Private carrier Jet Airways on Monday said it has cancelled a proposed deal with TruJet for wet leasing of some of its regional jets over the latter's apparent failure to meet with the deadline on terms of agreement.

Earlier in the day, a source said that the deal for wet leasing of up to seven ATR planes to TruJet by the Jet Airways had hit air pocket due to regulatory issues and pilots problems.

A wet lease is an arrangement under which an aircraft is leased out along with crew, maintenance and insurance.

"Jet Airways has called off the proposed agreement with a regional carrier as the terms were not met within stipulated timelines," a Jet Airways spokesperson told PTI in response to a query on the deal.

The spokesperson did not name the carrier.

The two carriers had attempted to strike a deal on ATR planes earlier last year as well but even after months of back and forth, Jet Airways failed to phase out these planes.

Jet Airways, partially owned by Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi, has been battling cash crunch following back-to-back quarterly losses.

"The plan to wet lease up to seven ATRs from Jet Airways is on hold as of now. If it comes back to the negotiation tables at all, it will be only next year," the source said.

Currently, Jet Airways has 15 ATRs in its fleet.

TruJet, which operates its services on regional and UDAN routes from Hyderabad to various destinations, has an all-ATR fleet.

"Jet Airways is not in a position to provide adequate number of ATR pilots along with the aircraft as a number of pilots have quit the carrier in the recent past. Instead, it wants TruJet to dry lease these planes, which is an economically unviable proposition for the regional carrier," the source said.

Under a dry lease arrangement, the lessor gives out only aircraft to a lessee airline or operator.

TruJet spokesperson was not available for comments.

"Leasing in an ATR from the market is not an issue but getting trained pilots for this type of aircraft is certainly a problem. So, a dry lease does not make economic sense at all," the source said.

In August, TruJet said the carrier was working on options to induct up to seven aircraft from Jet Airways.

Amid financial distress, Jet Airways has been delaying payments to its various vendors and has still not paid the September salary to its senior management, pilots and engineers.

The airline has also reportedly asked 15 managerial level employees from various departments including engineering, security and sales, to leave the carrier this month, besides grounding eight of its narrow and wide body planes.The Uday Kotak-led IL&FS management, readying a turnaround plan for the debt-ridden shadow bank, is preparing a list of subsidiaries that could be wound up. The list, which will be submitted to the NCLT on October 31, will also feature the arms that could be revived.

New Delhi: The Uday Kotak-led IL&FS management, readying a turnaround plan for the debt-ridden shadow bank, is preparing a list of subsidiaries that could be wound up. The list, which will be submitted to the NCLT on October 31, will also feature the arms that could be revived. The turnaround plan could include selling financial services and energy arms at the earliest.

For the transport arm, there could be a stake sale or of some of the road projects could be sold to private parties for immediate funds. Kotak has roped in his former investment banking head TV Raghunath (in pic) or TVR to chart out the IL&FS revival strategy.

Many see it as a test case for Kotak to turn the sick and fragmentised IL&FS around into a viable unit. A trusted lieutenant of Kotak for a long time, Raghunath's dexterity is expected to help the new IL&FS board to sort out the tricky situation. Insiders said TVR is busy drawing a list of IL&FS businesses which could be sold or retained for revival.

According to sources at IL&FS, loss-making units are to be sold at discounts if necessary. Raghunath's inclusion is expected to help bring in investors and buyers of assets, say industry sources. He has been serving as head of group strategy in the Kotak Mahindra Bank. He is a specialist in restructuring, valuations, deal structuring, joint ventures and India entry services and is going to play a key role in asset valuations and stake sale in IL&FS group.

Raghunath, who has an astounding record at Kotak, is part of the core operating committee. He is the architect of the action plan being prepared. He will work in coordination with Alvarez and Marsal, which has been hired as the specialist agency to develop debt-restructuring plan.

The Raghunath action plan could see IL&FS selling its financial services units (IL&FS Financial Services IFIN) and IL&FS Energy Development (IEDCL) or majority stakes to begin with, said sources, adding the ailing firm would start the process for IL&FS Transportation Networks (ITNL) road projects valuation next month after submitting its revival strategy to the NCLT on October 31.

To address its Rs 91,000 crore of debt, IL&FS will first start the process of asset valuation of its road projects after October 31 and it would inform the NCLT about the an updated roadmap and a first-hand assessment of the liabilities, assets, actual obligations and immediate payments dues, sources added.

The listed IL&FS Transportation Networks, which has 28 BOT projects some of which are incomplete, has already got few suitors after the government nominated board took over.

Though neither the companies nor IL&FS executives confirm names of the interested parties, banking and industry sources said the company has reached out to strategic investors like Italys Atlantia, Europes largest toll road operator and Cube Highways apart from The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), Canada's largest pension fund thro ugh its Infrastructure Management arm.

Private equity firm KKR, which completed raising a $7.4 billion infrastructure fund last month, is also said to be weighing options on ITNL projects. Some of the board members of IL&FS have also approached NHAI to acquire the assets of ITNL after due process which will add synergy to the government agency. A senior government official said it makes sense for NHAI to acquire incomplete projects of ITNL.New Delhi: Human ingenuity knows no bounds, if you add Indian jugaad to the mix, it gets remarkably twisted. Criminality has been turned into an art form using this eclectic and deadly dangerous mix in India. Fraudsters and scamsters are commonplace across the financial vector.

The CVC analysis of Top 100 Bank Frauds submitted to the Department of Financial Services (DFS) and RBI is instructional, educative and informative for not only does it examine these frauds across sectors  gems & jewellery, manufacturing/industry, agro, media, aviation, service/project, discounting of cheques, trading, IT, export, fixed deposits. demand loan and letter of comfort  but it provides a detailed exposition of cause and effect by giving specific examples.

The RBI and DFS have in turn sent this primer to all public sector banks. A copy of the 47-page report, now in possession of FC, breaks down each fraud by highlighting modus operandi, loopholes/lapses and systemic improvements.

The inventiveness and creativity used by the perpetrators of fraud are significant for they show originality and resourcefulness. The CVC has obviously got stuck into several of these frauds for the analysis is equally pithy. We have heard of evergreening of loans, fresh lines of credit being given despite red flags and of course in the Nirav Modi case, the same low-level bank officials openly indulging in jiggery pokery. Take, for instance, this company which obtained drawing powers in the account from a consortium against the book debts outstanding in their books; majority of which were found to be non-existent and were based on fake invoices/debtors. In this way, the company diverted working capital funds.

The company did not route proportionate sales with the member banks. The matter was taken up with the company repeatedly, but the turnover in the accounts maintained with member banks did not improve.

The company had shown debtors which were non-existent. The company got the enhanced facilities sanctioned on the basis of fake inventories of debtors and funds were siphoned through personal accounts of directors.

Packing credit advance had been taken from member banks, but the company failed to execute export business.

Funds were diverted through suppliers accounts which were the associates/connected accounts of the borrowing companies. Further, there was a huge difference in cost of equipment as per investigation report and the invoices submitted by the party.

The companies had submitted inflated and fabricated invoices which amounted to misrepresentation of facts to the banks for securing higher limits and misutilisation of the same.

One of the companies had submitted a certificate from a CA regarding infusion of capital. The chartered accountant had in writing denied having issued the said certificate. Hence, the company had submitted a fabricated certificate to avail of loans.

Fraud element had been apprehended due to the fact that one of the suppliers was non-existent and in case of three major suppliers, the promoters had managerial interest by virtue of being on board of the supplier companies at different times.

This open and naked defiance of the regulatory framework and no fear of punitive action is writ large across the fraud narratives compiled by CVC, now handed over as textbook crimes to RBI and DFS. It takes CBI to task saying:

Immediately after filing the case with CBI, all the accounts of the promoters should be confiscated and bank should take adequate action like appointment of administrator/receiver to take stock of all the accounts.

The bank should adopt coordinated approach in expeditiously taking the issues in hand instead of adopting compartmentalised approach.

CBI files the charge sheet in the trial court for criminal action without investigating the trail of money on account of fraud. Therefore, CBI should also investigate the trail of money so that action could be taken for recovery of money loss.

The CVC report slams many others in this food chain. It says categorically that the government should consider examining the role of third parties such as CAs, advocates, auditors, rating agencies that figure in accounts related to bank frauds and put in place strict punitive measures for future deterrence. This is very important given what has once again happened in the IL&FS case where all these people were asleep on the wheel.

Another instance provided by CVC is of an entity in the aviation sector:

The company cheated the bank by suppressing facts in the financial statements and diverting the funds to related entities for the purpose other than those for which finance was made.

The company ran its operations mostly on leased aircraft for which an overseas entity (vendor) was created which in turn had created fictitious invoices with inflated bills. The money was transferred to it through legal means. Whatever the money the company owed to the leasing company would be disbursed and rest parked with the entity.

The entire transaction carried out was legal as it was done through proper banking channels. The vendor had submitted invoices and created intermediaries, which had nothing to do with the leasing of aircraft. Therefore, funds received by the vendor were illegal.

The company wilfully cheated the banks with an intention to siphon off funds. The money apparently was diverted to several shell companies in seven countries.

The companys promoter wilfully and with mala fide intention did not pay the dues covered by his personal and corporate guarantees. Despite restraining orders from the high court, the promoter entered into an arrangement with overseas company to receive a big amount for stepping down from his office and position as director and chairman of a group. Any guesses on who this is?

Another specific example given is: Multiple banking arrangements in large value financing have done more harm than good to banks. This type of arrangement enabled a corporate to secure multiple finances from various banks far in excess of their requirements.

Funds raised were easily diverted through companys accounts with various banks in the absence of effective exchange of information between the banks. Banks do not have a foolproof system of checking and confirming whether the company has actually working on the contracts and whether the contracts were genuinely business based.There is no guarantee that the oil price will not exceed $100 per barrel next year, the Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih said.

"I cannot give you a guarantee, because I cannot predict what will happen to other suppliers,the minister said, when asked if the world can avoid oil prices hitting $100 per barrel again.

"We have sanctions on Iran, and nobody has a clue what Iranians export will be. Secondly, there are potential declines in different countries like Libya, Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela," Reuters cited Falih as saying.

"If 3 million barrels per day disappears, we cannot cover this volume. So we have to use oil reserves," the Saudi minister added.

He said Saudi Arabia would soon raise output to 11 million barrels per day (bpd) from the current 10.7 million. He added that Riyadh had capacity to increase output to 12 million bpd and Gulf OPEC ally, the United Arab Emirates, could add another 0.2 million bpd.

"We have relatively limited spare capacities and we are using a significant part of them," Falih stressed.Faith has prevailed over reasonableness. Women of all ages were allowed entry to the Sabarimala shrine of Lord Ayyappa by the Supreme Court. But devotees, tribals protecting the temple and religious activists have ensured that the centuries-old ban on menstruating women to the abode of the celibate god remains.

The issue has got extremely political. A Marxist government has been seen as too keen to carry out an order against a Hindu temple while fighting shy of action on other religious shrines which also reserve the right to allow entry. The BJP-RSS and the Congress have been driving home their advantage in the prevailing situation.

The south of India has been seen to rise against what it sees as an onslaught on Hindu identity and a faith that is a few millenniums old. A consolidation of the Hindu vote is being forecast on the political front. The government may have shot itself in the foot. But did it have a choice because it has to act in keeping with the constitution of India?

On the practical side, the police were unable to break the resistance and the few brave women who wore helmets and flak jackets had to beat a retreat in the face of the keeper of the temple threatening to stop the rituals and shut the shrine. The impasse will continue until the top court takes up the review petitions, including that of the Devaswom board.

The media were browbeaten for their coverage of the stirring events around the hill shrine. The liberals have their view, so too do the hardliners and the devotees. The losers are the women who do not have the unfettered right to pray.

Rajdeep Sardesai @sardesairajdeep

Shameless competitive religious politics being played by BJP and Cong over Sabarimala issue in attempt to tap so called Hindu vote. Learn to respect SC order and start working to unite Keralaites as you did during the floods. Kerala needs a battle over jobs, not temple entry!

Subramanian Swamy@Swamy39

The problem with the Sabarimala agitation is that its leaders think that adult women cannot decide on their own intelligence & knowledge whether they can go for Darshan on those 5 days. About time we begin to accept that women are as capable as men in intellect. If the State Govt is incapable of ensuring women devotees free access to the Temple then Centre must intervene with para military and military forces. Law & Order must be enforced

Thomas Isaac@drthomasisaac

BJP threatens bloodshed in Kerala if Supreme Courts verdict on women entry in Sabarimala temple is implemented. If they are so keen why do they simply get Central Gov to enact a new legislation? No, they wont. They have a hidden agenda. They shall not pass

Nikhil K V @nikhilkv

If faith is against humanity it should be changed just like changing the planet status of Pluto. Scientists are doing it based on the facts they have. Menstruation is human. It is a proven fact. No one should be banned anywhere based on something purely human

Anju Joseph@codeDressed

Because you are fighting to go back to a regressive society where women had no rights and in the process undermining the efforts of previous generations who fought for us to give us the rights we have today, right to vote , abolishing sati, child marriages and the list goes on

Maya Menon @TTFMaya

As a Malayali & a Hindu Im truly disappointed by the way some men & women of Indias most literate state are going the loutish way & flouting the Supreme Courts judgement. I have so far never wished to visit Sabarimala  but I will not object to another womans right to do so !

Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72

Distressing. Hope sense prevails and it doesnt come to this but I echo the underlying sentiment. The SC judgment is sacrosanct; it MUST be followed till such time it is overturned. This land CANNOT be run on anything other than the law of the land

Anshul Saxena@AskAnshul

Kerala HC dismisses Plea for Muslim womens entry to Mosques & called it cheap publicity. Kerala HC also said Petitioner is not such a person who should be concerned with rituals & practices of Islam. Well, In Sabarimala case How many Petitioners were from Kerala? No one

sundaram ramaswamy @SundaramRama

How can you decide my right to fight for my belief? Armed with laws to protect dissent against it SC is superceding its boundaries and judging beliefs and practices and ends up supporting mischief mongers in the media and politics. Who will show the mirror?

hindihainhum@kabirazad2017

Look at the language of the patriarchal bigot... Invasion . He thinks Supreme Court is invading Temple!!! He will protect something that is not his, its open to everyone. For him women devotees are atheists and he is a devout follower. The Lord is not you personal property

Ravee@ravee02

Kerala battled for right to eat beef too remember...then you were all for it and going ga ga...now #Kerala wants to fight for their right to pray as per prescribed rituals to Lord in #Sabarimala..learn to accept this tooBengaluru: The Banaswadi police arrested a man for trying to smuggle a leopard skin in the city and seized the skin from him on Sunday. The accused, Kumar, is a resident of H.D. Kote. Based on a tipoff, a police special team, headed by ACP Mahadevappa, was formed. They laid a trap in Banaswadi police limits on Saturday and arrested Kumar when he came to the spot to sell the leopard skin.

The probe revealed that Kumar along with his two accomplices had smuggled the leopard skin to the city from Heggadadevana Kote and was trying to sell it in the black market.

A senior officer said that they are investigating the case and trying to trace the weapon used to kill the leopard. The Banaswadi police have registered a case and are hunting for the other two accused who are absconding.He arrived on a flight from Sharjah, which had stopped over at Trivandrum before landing in Chennai. (Representional Image)

Chennai: One man from Kerala was arrested after customs officials seized 600 grams of gold from him at the Chennai airport on Sunday night.

He arrived on a flight from Sharjah, which had stopped over at Trivandrum before landing in Chennai.

Customs officials, acting on suspicion decided to check his luggage. They did not find anything in his baggage after which they took him to be searched.

On searching, 600grams of gold worth Rs 19.7 lakh was recovered from his person. They were hidden in a sponge and placed in his innerwear.

The man has been taken in for further questioning.Kashmiri villagers shout pro-freedom slogans as they carry the body of Uzair Mushtaq, who was killed when unused explosives of three militants, gunned down in an encounter, went off in Kulgam. (Photo: AP)

Srinagar: Separatists in the Kashmir valley called for a strike today over the death of civilians in a blast at an encounter site in Kulgam district.

The strike has been called by separatists Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik under the banner of Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL).

Normal life was disrupted in the valley due to the strike. Shops, private offices, fuel stations and other business establishments were shut, officials said. They said public transport was off the roads while private cars were seen plying in few areas of the city.

According to reports, all schools and colleges in Kashmir will remain shut today and exams have been postponed. Train services have also been suspended in the Valley.

The strike also affected attendance in government offices and banks, the officials said. They said while there were no restrictions anywhere in the city, there was heavy deployment of security forces at several places here as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order.

Three militants were killed Sunday in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam district, while seven civilians lost their lives in a blast following the gunfight there.

In a Twitter post before the toll was updated, Farooq said:

To strongly condemn &protest the mayhem unleashed in Kulgam by the ruthless Indian state in which so far 5 civilians & 3 armed youth killed besides injuries to tens of scores of injured,JRL calls for complete #Shutdown tomorrow,JRL will hold a #ProtestSitin on Tuesday at LaLchowk  Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (@MirwaizKashmir) October 21, 2018

In another tweet, he said:

Amidst internet &news blackout reports of #BloodbathInKulgam as Indian forces go berserk! Many civilian casualties reported,3 armed youth martyred more than sixty civilians injured many critical !Homes destroyed,women ruthlessly beaten!All roads to the area sealed,media barred!  Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (@MirwaizKashmir) October 21, 2018

The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and a Kashmiri Pandit organisation have extended their support to the strike called by the separatists. "In an emergency meeting held on Sunday, the executive committee of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry expressed its shock and concern at the sharp increase in the use of brutal force against the unarmed civilians of Kashmir," a statement by the KCCI said.

Condemning the killings, the KCCI said the business community of Kashmir once again urges the government to "restrain from launching operations in civilian areas which invariably trigger more killings and worsening of the law and order situation".

"The seemingly endless loss of innocent Kashmiri lives is a matter of pain and anguish for all of us. The KCCI offers its deepest condolences to the families of innocent unarmed civilians and requests the business community to observe a complete shutdown on Monday as a mark of protest against the brutalisation of our population," it said in a statement.

The Kashmiri Pandit Sangarash Samiti (KPSS) also extended its support to the strike called by the separatists, saying it is mandatory for security forces to sanitise the area where encounter takes place to safeguard the lives of the civilians.

"We feel the pain of killing of civilians and injuries during cordon and search operation in Kulgam," KPSS president Sanjay Tickoo said in a statement.

"It seems that the security forces take these basic things casually, which resulted in Sunday's incident. While Kashmir is being pushed back to the 1990 era by people's alienating policies by the political parties, the Central establishment is enjoying the so called victory in the Kashmir valley and is not bothered to diffuse current political turmoil in the valley," he said.Bengaluru: Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy has urged the police to act tough against those who try to create tension in the society in the name of religion.

During his address on the occasion of Police Commemoration Day at KSRP Grounds in Koramangala on Sunday, the Chief Minister also assured the police that his government will look into their long standing demands.

Mr Kumaraswamy said that ADGP Raghavendra Auradkar Committee report about salaries, schemes and policies for the benefit of policemen are under review. I assure you that our government will implement most of its recommendations soon.

Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister G Parameshwar, DG & IGP Neelmani N Raju, and other senior police officers were present in the event.

The Chief Minister pointed out that some anti-social elements were trying to create communal rift in the society on religious grounds. Police should not spare such elements at any cost. Our government will fully support for the police. You (police) should not compromise or nor succumb to influence or pressure while discharging your duty, he said.

People have good opinion about the police force. The reputation has to become much better and an atmosphere should be created where people do not fear or hesitate or approach policemen, the CM said.

From September 1, 2017 till August 31 this year, as many as 414 policemen across the country have laid down their lives while performing duty. In Karnataka, 15 police personnel, including two women, died while on duty.New Delhi/Amritsar: Locals on Sunday came out hard against the statement of the driver who has said that the Dusshera revellers at the spot of the accident had pelted stones at the train.

In a statement given to police as well as the railway authorities, the driver of the train, which mowed down 62 people watching a Ravan effigy being burnt on October 19, said he had not stopped his train because of stone pelting from the crowd at the accident spot.

"I was at the spot. Leave alone stopping, the train did not even slow down. It seemed as if the driver wanted to mow us down. The train passed us in a matter of seconds. Is it logically possible for us to pelt stones at the train when so many people were dead and injured around us? Is it possible for us to get our bearings after such an incident and pelt stones at a speeding train? The driver is lying," Shailender Singh Shally, Councillor, Ward Number 46, Amritsar, said.

The driver in his statement has said that he applied "emergency brakes" as he saw the crowd on the tracks but "still some people were caught in the path of the train". He also said that he continuously honked to get people off the tracks.

The driver said people started throwing stones at the train when it was "almost on the verge of stopping" and so, keeping in mind the safety of his passengers, he continued towards Amritsar and informed officials there about the accident.

Onlookers rubbished the driver's claims and said the train did not slow down anywhere near the spot.

"He did not even slow down, let alone almost stopping. The train was in such speed that the accident happened in split seconds. There are hundreds of videos that show how fast the train went. There was no chance of us reacting, leave alone pelt stones. All we could hear around us was people screaming and crying," Paramjeet Singh, another onlooker, said.

The maximum speed of the train, which was a Diesel Electrical Multiple Unit (DEMU) is 96 kmph, once brakes are applied, this kind of train stops completely in about 300 metres if empty, and in 600 metres if full, officials said.

The last recorded speed of the train, according to Divisional Railway Manager (Ferozpur) Vivek Kumar, was 68 kmph.

"As the train passed, I heard people screaming and shouting. There was no stone pelting. I don't understand why the driver would make up such a thing. Will people who are seeing their loved ones lying in pools of blood leave them and pick up stones to hit the train? Ajay Goenka, who was present at the spot, said.

"Anyway, the speed of the train was such that even if people wanted to pelt stones, by the time they collected them, the train would have disappeared from sight. He is lying," he added.

Local police too corroborated the claims of the eyewitnesses and said that not just the train was travelling at a high speed, there were no reports of stone pelting at the site of the incident on October 19.

"As far as I know, there has been no stone pelting at the spot of the accident when the train passed," Sukhminder Singh, SHO of Mohkampura police station under whose jurisdiction the area falls, told news agency PTI.

Senior Railway officials were not available for comment on the matter officially.Bidar: Its not only Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy , who is undertaking a whirlwind tour of various temples within and outside the state to pay obeisance to various deities, other ministers in this state government are doing it as well.

On Sunday, Minister for Cooperation Bandeppa Kashempur left his native place Bidar for Tulajapur in neighbouring Maharashtra on a bicycle to fulfil his vow. Tulajapur, which is about 200 km from Bidar by road, is famous for the Ambabhavani Temple, which is the 51st Shaktipeetha in the country.

It will take Mr Kashempur three days to reach Tulajapur on Hunname Divas on October 24. On the way, he will rest at Basavakalyana and Naladurga in Maharashtra in the night.Thousands of devotees undertake padayatra to visit the place on Hunname Divas.

Speaking to this newspaper before commencing his journey from the Ram Temple near his residence in Bidar City at 8am, Mr Kashempur said that this would be his third visit to Tulajapur on bicycle. I began this in 2004 when I won the polls for the first time. I did this again in 2008. This is my third visit, he said adding he undertakes this journey only when he gets elected.

What is notable is that Mr Kashempur has been undertaking the journey on the same bicycle, which his wife bought for him for Rs 22,500 in 2004. Its my wife who inspired to visit the temple, Mr Kashempur said.

More than one hundred people are accompanying him on the journey. Asked whether the journey would be strainful, Mr Kashempur said, thousands of people undertake padayatras. Compared to them, mine is not a very big yatra. Ambabhavani Maate gives me the strength to endure and undertake it.BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said Chandy and former Union minister K C Venugopal, also an accused in the case, were Gandhi's 'friends' and the Congress should answer questions on such a serious charge against its leaders, instead of targeting the ruling party's functionaries. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The BJP Monday seized on the registration of a rape case against Congress leader and former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy to attack the opposition party, saying its president Rahul Gandhi should now stop mocking the Narendra Modi government's "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" scheme.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said Chandy and former Union minister K C Venugopal, also an accused in the case, were Gandhi's "friends" and the Congress should answer questions on such a serious charge against its leaders, instead of targeting the ruling party's functionaries.

She also referred to a "Sukanya case", alleging that it was against Gandhi, and other cases involving Congress leaders.

Targeting Gandhi for his attack on the Centre's "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" scheme, Lekhi said it had led to an improvement in the sex ratio in many states.

The Crime Branch of the Kerala Police has registered cases against Chandy and Venugopal, who is an MP, on a complaint of sexual misconduct filed by Solar scam accused Saritha S Nair. Lekhi also parried the Congress's allegations against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying the opposition party should instead answer questions on the charges against Chandy and Venugopal.

The Congress Monday accused the Modi government of conniving with fraudsters who had escaped the country and claimed "conflict of interest" to demand Jaitley's sacking, saying his daughter and son-in-law, both lawyers, allegedly received a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from fugitive jeweller Mehul Choksi's firm Gitanjali Gems.

On the issue of oil pumps' strike in Delhi, Lekhi blamed the Aam Aadmi Party government, saying it did not reduce the petrol and diesel prices like the neighbouring states, leading to people buying fuel from outside Delhi.Devender Kumar, who was earlier investigation officer in case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, has been arrested on charges of forgery in recording statement of Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in case. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The CBI has arrested its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving its Special Director and second-in-command Rakesh Asthana, officials said on Monday.

Kumar, who was earlier the investigation officer in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, has been arrested on the allegations of forgery in recording the statement of Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in the case, they said.

It is alleged that a statement of Sana was purportedly recorded on September 26, 2018, by the investigating team headed by Asthana, but it emerged in the CBI probe that on that given day the businessman was in Hyderabad, they claimed.

In his statement, Sana had purportedly said that he had in June this year discussed his case with Telugu Desam Party's Rajya Sabha member C M Ramesh who, after speaking to the CBI Director, had assured him that he would not be summoned again. "From June onwards, I was not called by the CBI. I was under the impression that investigation against me is complete," he is believed to have said.

The CBI has now alleged that Kumar had fabricated this statement as an "afterthought...to corroborate the baseless allegations made by Asthana against CBI Director Alok Verma to the CVC (Central Vigilance Commissioner)", they claimed. They said the agency was also looking into the alleged role of other members of the special investigation team headed by Asthana.

Also Read: CBI case against special director hinges on 9 calls, WhatsApp messages

Asthana, who was booked by the agency on bribery charges in an unprecedented action, had complained against CBI Director Verma on August 24, 2018 that he had taken bribe of Rs 2 crore from Sana to give him relief in the matter.All petrol pumps in Delhi will remain closed for nearly 24 hours in protest from 6 am onwards on October 22 to till 5 am on October 23. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)

New Delhi: All 400-odd petrol pumps along with linked CNG dispensing units in the Delhi will remain shut today in protest against Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party's refusal to reduce Value Added Tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel.

There are about 400 petrol pumps in Delhi which also have linked compressed natural gas (CNG) stations and all of them will remain closed for nearly 24 hours in protest from 6 am onwards on October 22 to till 5 am on October 23, fuels, the Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA) said in a statement.

The strike could cause inconvenience to commuters today.

DPDA president Nischal Singhania said, "The central government had slashed the rate of petrol and diesel by Rs 2.50 per litre each on September 4. This was followed by reduction of VAT by various states including neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, bringing relief to their residents. But, the Delhi government refused to reduce VAT on fuel both petrol and diesel resulting in fuel becoming more expensive than bordering Haryana and Uttar Pradesh."

In comparison to Delhi, fuel rates in bordering states like Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are cheaper, he said. Because of high price in Delhi and low prices in states like UP and Haryana, customers are deserting the petrol pumps in Delhi leading to huge drop in sales, Singhania said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal however, alleged the strike was politically motivated. "Petrol pump owners have told us privately that this is a BJP-sponsored strike, actively supported by oil companies," he tweeted.

Petrol and diesel prices in the national capital today stood at Rs 81.44 per litre (a decrease by 30 paisa) and Rs 74.92 per litre (a decrease by 27 paisa), respectively, according to news agency ANI.

On Sunday, petrol prices stood at Rs 81.74, whereas diesel costed Rs 75.19 per litre.

Here are LIVE updates on Delhi petrol pump strike today:

08:51 am: BJP said, "Kejriwal government is not concerned about the people of Delhi and is disregarding the interest of common man."

@narendramodi Government has already decreased the price of Petrol-Diesel by Rs. 2.5 per litre for giving relief to the common man but the Kejriwal Government is not concerned about the people of Delhi and is disregarding the interest of common man. https://t.co/ENTnZJQDKc

08:00 am: Petrol and diesel prices at the national capital today, stood at Rs. 81.44 per litre (a decrease by 30 paise) and Rs. 74.92 per litre (a decrease by 27 paise), according to news agency ANI.

07:55 am: Delhi petrol pump strike: "This is a BJP-sponsored strike," alleges Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Petrol pump owners hv told us privately that this is a BJP sponsored strike, actively supported by oil cos. In fact, BJP has thrust it upon petrol pump owners. People will give BJP a befitting reply in elections for continuously inconveniencing people thro their dirty politics. https://t.co/S8pLZNbIOw  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) October 21, 2018

07:45 am: "Due to difference in prices, there has been a sharp drop of 50-60 per cent in sale of diesel in Delhi and 25 per cent in petrol in this quarter, DPDA president Nischal Singhania said, adding that on Monday, all the 400 pumps of Delhi will neither purchase nor sell petrol, diesel and CNG.U.S. President Donald Trump may have signaled that he's grown lukewarm about his Pentagon chief James Mattis, but lawmakers are urging the president not to get rid of him, the Hill writes.

The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed believes that any effort to push Mattis out would be "very inappropriate and would not be helpful to national security." He added that other members of Congress would also push back on an effort to oust Mattis.

House Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Adam Smith echoed that sentiment, saying it's "critical" that Mattis be kept in his position. "Wed be better off in national security. He seems to have an ability to work with the president while reining in his worst tendencies," he stressed.

Trump in an interview aired last week on CBS said he believes Mattis is "sort of a Democrat," a comment the Defense chief was forced to push back on. And when it came to the NATO alliance, where Mattis previously served as supreme commander, Trump boasted, "I think I know more about it than [Mattis] does."

Trump added that Mattis "is a good guy" and the two get along very well, but added that "he may leave."

The Pentagon chief this past week dismissed rumors of his impending departure, telling reporters that the two have never talked about me leaving" and that Trump told him, "Im 100% with you."

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are worried that in replacing Mattis, who is widely viewed as having been a moderating influence in the administration, the president may introduce new instability at the highest ranks of his administration.Reacting to the development, Oommen Chandy said they were prepared to face the cases legally. He claimed the cases were 'politically motivated'. (Photo: PTI)

Thiruvananthapuram: The Crime Branch of the Kerala Police has registered cases against former chief minister Oommen Chandy and MP K C Venugopal, on a complaint of sexual misconduct filed by Solar scam accused Saritha S Nair.

Confirming the development, Director General of Police (DGP) Loknath Behara said the cases against the two leaders were lodged on the basis of a complaint from Nair.

"Let the law take its own course," he told reporters at Thiruvananthapuram.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Superintendent of Police (SP) Abdul Karim, was constituted to probe the cases, the DGP added.

Reacting to the development, Chandy said they were prepared to face the cases legally. He claimed the cases were "politically motivated". By lodging the cases now, the attempt of the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in the state was to deflect the attention of the people from the Sabarimala issue, Chandy told reporters.

Nair has alleged in her complaint that Chandy had sexually exploited her at Cliff House, the official residence of the chief minister, in 2012, while Venugopal had raped her at Rose House, the residence of then state minister A P Anil Kumar.

The previous United Democratic Front (UDF) government had formed the G Sivarajan Commission when the allegations against Nair and Biju Radhakrishanan that they had duped several people of crores of rupees by offering them solar panel solutions had surfaced.

The 1,073-page, four-volume report of the commission, tabled in the state Assembly on November 9 last year, had found that Chandy and four of his personal staff -- Tenny Joppan, Jikkumon Jacon, gunman Salimraj and Kuruvilla, his aid in Delhi, -- had "assisted" Nair and her company, Team Solar, in enabling them to cheat their customers.

The report also contained details of the controversial letter written by Nair on July 19, 2013 to the police commissioner, in which she had levelled charges of sexual misconduct and corruption against various Congress and UDF leaders, including Chandy, some of his ministers and two former Union ministers.

The Kerala High Court had in May expunged the Solar Commission's findings against Chandy based on Nair's letter, while partly allowing a petition filed by the Congress leader, seeking to quash the panel's findings against him.According to neighbours, the groom, his father and brother were rounded up and taken to a park nearby and tonsured. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

Lucknow: Fed up of being harassed over dowry demand, the brides family tonsured the groom, his father and brother on Sunday in Lucknow.

The police had to step in to control the protests in Kurramnagar.

The grooms family had been increasing their demands every day for the last one week, said the brides father. Brides father is a vegetable vendor.

According to ANI news agency, brides grandmother said, "They made these demands five days before the wedding. He refused to marry the girl after we said we can't meet his demands. Don't know who tonsured his head."

Lucknow: Groom's head tonsured allegedly because he refused to marry the bride, demanding motorcycle&gold chain y'day;bride's grandmother says, "they made these demands 5 days before wedding. He refused to marry after we said we can't fulfil them.Don't know who tonsured his head" pic.twitter.com/VVAkUtnTi7  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 22, 2018

According to a report, the groom demanded a motorcycle as dowry but he didnt like the particular brand he was given and wanted something else. Later, brides father apparently agreed to give him the motorcycle of his choice but brides family lost control when he demanded a gold necklace on the wedding day.

According to neighbours, the groom, his father and brother were rounded up and taken to a park nearby and tonsured.

The members of the bride's family told news agency ANI that the groom and his relatives were drunk and had misbehaved with them.PM Modi on Monday summoned CBI director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana amid their public fight on bribery and corruption. (Photo: File)

Mumbai: Amid an ongoing internal fight in the country's top investigative agency, PM Modi on Monday summoned CBI director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana amid their public fight on bribery and corruption.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a bribery case against Asthana, who had written to the government listing several charges against his boss Alok Verma.

According to reports, on Sunday, the CBI tried to defend Alok Verma following allegations of corruption levelled against him by Rakesh Asthana saying they are "false and malicious".

The CBI has also claimed to analyse nine phone calls immediately after Manoj Prasad, who was the middleman, was arrested in the alleged bribery case against Asthana.

Read: CBI case against special director hinges on 9 calls, WhatsApp messages

Reports say that Asthana had also alleged that Verma delayed his teams request to arrest Sathish Sana, a businessman facing probe on corruption case involving meat exporter, Moin Qureshi.

According to reports, the CBI has named Asthana as an accused of accepting Rs 2 crore bribe to settle Qureshis case. Apart from Asthana, CBI also named RAW number 2 Samat Kumar Goel in the FIR. The FIR was filed on October 15.

Moin Qureshis case brings to the fore the divide in the CBI.

Qureshi was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in August last year. According to the agency, he was arrested under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and he was not cooperating in the probe.

Read: In bribery case against its special director, CBI arrests its senior official

On Monday, the CBI arrested its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar in connection with a bribery case involving Rakesh Asthana.Earlier, four media organisations were targeted -- in some cases in presence of the police. (Photo: PTI)

Sabarimala (Kerala): The Sabarimala temples first pilgrim season will end on Monday at 10 pm after the five-day puja.

The hill-top shrine in Kerala had opened on October 17, first time after the Supreme Court's historic verdict, allowing women in menstruating age groups to enter the temple.

In the last five days, ten women between 10-50 years have been stopped by angry devotees and protesters from entering the 800-year-old shrine in Keralas Patthanamthitta district.

On Sunday, a 47-year-old woman suffered panic attack at the entrance of the Lord Ayyappa temple after protesters surrounded and heckled her.

Journalists who have been reporting from Pamba have been told by the police to leave the area as they had information about targeted attacks on the media, news agency ANI reported.

Earlier, four media organisations were targeted -- in some cases in presence of the police.

The temple administration has written to the Kerala government that it would lock the temple and halt rituals if centuries-old tradition is broken by allowing women between 10-50 years in the temple. Now there are concerns over more than a thousand men camping inside the Lord Ayyappa temple, who can take law into their own hands, to stop women below 50, from entering the shrine claimed the authorities.

Following accusation by the opposition, the BJP has denied that it has deployed its party workers at the temple, to intensify the protests.

The party has demanded a special assembly session to seek the Centre's intervention, while the Congress sought an ordinance by the Centre to override the Supreme Court's order.

Both Congress and the BJP have alleged that the ruling CPI(M) in Kerala was trying to destroy the sanctity of the shrine.

The state BJP on Sunday decided to stage protests across Kerala against the Supreme Court's Sabrimala temple verdict. "There will be a month-long Sabarimala Ayyappa Samrakshanaye Abhiyan," K Surendran, Kerala BJP General Secretary told ANI.

BJP workers will go from door to door and tell people about the importance of maintaining the sanctity of the temple, Surendran added.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for the violence last Wednesday at Sabarimala. In a blog on Facebook, he said, "Sabarimala has a uniqueness that other temples lack. It allows entry for people of all faith. Sangh Parivar and RSS have always been intolerant of this fact. They have made many attempts to erase this distinction of Sabarimala."The CBI's top officers are accusing each other of massive corruption, he said, questioning the sanctity and the credibility of the government and the CBI to function in an 'honest, unbiased transparent way'. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Congress on Monday said there is a serious credibility crisis in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) with its top officers accusing each of massive corruption and blamed "vested interests" within the government for bringing the agency to "such a pass".

Terming the issue "very serious", Congress leader Sachin Pilot accused the government of interference in the CBI and asked why it was silent on the issue.

"How do we trust the CBI to look at corruption issues when their top people are themselves involved and allegations are flying thick and fast? The fact that it has reached this point tells you how long and how deep the rot may be within this government," Pilot told reporters at the Congress headquarters.

The CBI's top officers are accusing each other of massive corruption, he said, questioning the sanctity and the credibility of the government and the CBI to function in an "honest, unbiased transparent way".

"So there are serious credibility issues and I think there are vested interests within the government and within CBI that have brought this agency to such a pass," Pilot said.

As far as the internal functioning of the CBI is concerned, it is apparent that there is "power play and a blame game going on", he said.

Earlier in the day, Congress president Rahul Gandhi alleged that the CBI is being used as a "weapon of political vendetta" under the Modi government and said the premier investigation agency is "at war with itself".

Taking to Twitter, he cited a media report naming the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) second in command Rakesh Asthana as an accused in a bribery case.

"The PM's blue-eyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer, of Godra SIT fame, infiltrated as No 2 into the CBI, has now been caught taking bribes," Gandhi tweeted.

"Under this PM, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta. An institution in terminal decline that's at war with itself," he said.

The Congress has been attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the appointment of Asthana as CBI special director.

In an unprecedented move, the agency has booked its special director for allegedly receiving bribes from middlemen to give relief to a businessman being probed by him in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, officials had said on Sunday.

On Monday, officials said the CBI arrested its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving Asthana.

Also read: In bribery case against its special director, CBI arrests its senior official

Kumar, who was earlier the investigation officer in a case involving Qureshi, has been arrested on the allegations of forgery in recording the statement of Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in the case, they said.

The CBI has alleged that Kumar fabricated a statement as an "afterthought... to corroborate the baseless allegations made by Asthana against CBI Director Alok Verma to the CVC (Central Vigilance Commissioner)".

Pilot said the kind of allegations being made at the top level of the CBI are very alarming and something is certainly wrong somewhere. He said the government is not willing to come out clean on what is going on within the premier investigative agency.A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said that the offence of disclosing the identity of victims of sexual assaults has criminal liability, and if the law has been violated, action must be taken. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked media bodies, including the Press Council of India (PCI), as to why no prosecution proceedings were launched against media houses and journalists who disclosed the identity of victims of sexual assaults.

A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said that the offence of disclosing the identity of victims of sexual assaults has criminal liability, and if the law has been violated, action must be taken. "How many people have you punished?" the bench asked the counsel appearing for PCI.

The PCI counsel said in cases related to disclosure of identity of such victims, the power of the Council was limited to censure such publication and they also send their orders to the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP).

"If a publication has committed this criminal offence, it has to be prosecuted. Somebody has to prosecute them. Forget about DAVP. What about prosecution? You tell the police that there is violation of law and you prosecute them," the bench said.

"There is no point in saying that we have told the DAVP. Nobody knows it. You have to function under the law and the law says such persons (who discloses identity of victims of sexual assaults) have to be prosecuted," the bench said.

The court also said that documents filed by the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) have "nothing" and it was quite clear from the affidavit filed by the authority that no prosecution has been launched against any of the alleged offenders.

It asked PCI, NBSA, the Editors Guild and the Indian Broadcasting Federation to file their affidavit on the issue within three weeks.

"We would like to know specifically whether these bodies can inform the police about such offence and if so, why they have not informed the police about prosecution of alleged offenders," the bench said.

During the hearing, the counsel appearing for PCI said that they have to function as per the norms of journalistic ethics and standards and they have to identify which standard have been violated.

The counsel representing NBSA said that they have also imposed penalty in such cases. "But you do not want to prosecute. Some lady has been raped and her identity is disclosed and you are saying that complaints are closed," the bench said, adding, "the law says that you prosecute the persons if law is violated".

The bench also referred to the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault levelled by women across various fields under India's #MeToo movement.

The counsel appearing for Editors Guild and Indian Broadcasting Federation said they would file their affidavits. At the fag end, the PCIs counsel said that prosecution should be launched in such cases but the Council needed "some more teeth".

The top court had earlier issued notices to these four media bodies to assist it in the matter which deals with alleged non-compliance of statutory provisions about disclosure of identity of victims of rape and sexual abuses by the media.

The issue had cropped up when the court was hearing a plea related to the Muzaffarpur shelter home where over 30 girls were allegedly raped and sexually exploited.New Delhi: The CBI has arrested its deputy superintendent of police Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving its special director and second-in-command Rakesh Asthana, officials said on Monday.

It is alleged that a statement of Sana was purportedly recorded on September 26, 2018 by the investigating team headed by Asthana, but it emerged in the CBI probe that on that given day the businessman was in Hyderabad, they claimed.

The agency said it has evidence in the form of hotel bills, etc. which show his presence in Hyderabad on that day. In his statement, Sana had purportedly said that he had in June this year discussed his case with Telugu Desam Party's Rajya Sabha member C M Ramesh who, after speaking to the CBI Director, had assured him that he would not be summoned again, according to the officials. From June onwards, I was not called by the CBI. I was under the impression that investigation against me is complete, he is believed to have said.

The CBI has now alleged that Kumar had fabricated this statement as an afterthought...to corroborate the baseless allegations made by Asthana against CBI Director Alok Verma to the CVC (Central Vigilance Commissi-oner), they claimed.

They said the agency was also looking into the alleged role of other members of the special investigation team headed by Asthana. Asthana, who has been booked by the agency on bribery charges, had complained against CBI Director Verma on August 24, 2018 that he had taken bribe of Rs 2 crore from Sana to give him relief in the matter.

The CBI also refused to comment on Asthana's allegations that Additio-nal Director A K Shar-mas family members were running shell companies, saying the Central Vigilance Comm-ission is looking into the case. The CBI carried out searches at Kumar's residence and his office at the agency headquarters on Saturday and Sunday, and claimed to have seized his mobile phones and iPads.

The CBI went a step ahead and arrested Kumar Monday, alleging he had fabricated the statement of Sathish Sana. The statement was shown to be recorded on September 26, 2018. The matter relates to alleged creation of a fabricated statement U/S 161 (CrPC) of a witness in another case at Delhi by the accused (Kumar), the CBI spokesperson said Monday.

The feud between the two started when Asthana questioned the attempts of Verma to induct certain officers in the CBI last year. Verma gave back by objecting to the promotion of Asthana as Special Director, which was not given heed to by the transparency watchdog.

An application against his appointment was also rejected by the Supreme Court paving the way for Asthana's appointment as Special Director and number two in the agency.

Asthana filed an exhaustive complaint to the CVC against the CBI Director on August 24, 2018 giving over 11 instances of alleged corruption and irregularities against him, which included receiving Rs 2 crore bribe from Sana.

Verma also wrote to the CVC that Asthana cannot represent him in selection committee meetings in the transparency watchdog when he is away.

On October 15, the CBI registered the FIR against Asthana.Bhopal: In a significant development, Congress on Monday decided to field former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayees niece against Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh in the Rajnandgaon assembly constituency.

Mr Singh currently represented Rajnandgaon assembly seat. Karuna Shukla, Mr Vajpayees niece, figured in the second list of six candidates of Congress declared on late on Monday evening.

Eighteen assembly seats are going to polls in the first phase of elections in Chhattisgarh on November 12. The rest 72 assembly constituencies in the state are scheduled to go to polls in the second and final phase of elections on November 20.

Filing of nomination for the 18 assembly constituencies of Bastar and Rajnandgaon regions, which are going to polls in the first phase, will end on Monday.

Congress had earlier declared the first list of 12 candidates. However, BJP last week released its first list of 78 candidates.

Ms Shukla, who began her political career in BJP, switched over to Congress when she was denied party ticket in 2013 assembly polls in Chhattisgarh.The Karnataka Private Medical Establishments (Amendment) Bill, proposed in 2017, met with much criticism from the industry. Without it, however, healthcare facilities function minus accountability, private hospitals charge the earth for treatment and bewildered patients go through a litany of tests without explanation. Meanwhile, government hospitals, many of which languish without adequate facilities, cannot offer a viable alternative to those who cannot afford private healthcare. Abilash Mariswamy reports.

Medical negligence is neither new or uncommon, but the stories continue to horrify. Recounts one disgusted and unhappy Bengalurean, Christanand Malagi, My brother was admitted to a private hospital in the city and following a procedure lost the use of his limbs. The hospital refused further treatment unless the spiraling bill was paid and also refused to discharge him. He was held hostage without treatment until his death.

Such cases are not the norm, people are fleeced with many hospitals charging a heavy fee for treatments,, leaving patients bewildered and burdened with countless tests. The Siddaramaiah government did try to step in and rein in the private hospitals by introducing the Karnataka Private Medical Establishments (Amendment) Bill, 2017, which gave the government the authority to fix the rates they charged and also to penalize them for wrongdoing. But this set off a storm with doctors taking to the streets , forcing the government to introduce a much watered down legislation which did away with imprisonment for health professionals guilty of various offences and also lowering the fines they could be slapped with.

Read | Guest column: Too much focus on tertiary healthcare, what about basics?

But even this new milder legislation has still not been implemented in toto 11 months later. In the meanwhile the people continue to suffer. Says Akhila Vasan of Karnataka Janaarogya Chaluvali (KJC) Every day the struggle continues to grow. The main reason is that the private institutions are hogging the policymaker space.

Dr. Sylvia Karpagam, public health doctor and researcher rues that the health insurance in India today is such that the treating doctor has to make a choice every day on whether or not to prescribe a test or procedure. Often it is a choice between making money and not doing unnecessary tests or procedures. If doctors have a fixed salary based on their seniority or experience, then this perverse incentive will be removed. Now it is not uncommon for doctors to put brain dead patients on the ventilator, or prescribe unnecessary tests and procedures without so much as physically examining them, she laments.

Often patients arent in the loop and are asked to get several tests done without details of what ails them, she says. The health system has no time to spend listening to a patient and his or her concerns and every action of the doctor is measured in monetary terms. This is very dangerous for the health of the country, she warns.

Dr R. N. Tandon, secretary general of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) asserts that usually everything is above board in private hospitals. It is certainly wrong and not acceptable if the hospitals are charging five times more than the MRP. Some hospitals charge more because they give certain facilities and services, and people are accepting it, he reasons, protesting that the entire private healthcare system cannot be measured based on the doings of one or two hospitals.

Mr Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Karnataka Health Commissioner too claims that necessary action is being taken against hospitals that are guilty of violations and licenses have been cancelled. A task force has also been formed to take action in such cases, he adds.

Govt facilities no alternative to pvt hospitals

While private healthcare is becoming increasingly unaffordable, there are no dependable alternatives either with the quality of government health facilities leaving much to be desired. Many government hospitals function in deplorable conditions, lacking in basic cleanliness, and beset with shortage of doctors, instruments, and beds, making them unattractive to most people, except the poor, who have no option but to use their services.

The lack of knowledge about the various government health schemes also leaves people at the mercy of private hospitals, rue health activists. While there is no shortage of schemes under Arogya Karnataka the awareness about them and their reach is poor, they lament. Some of the health schemes available in the state are the Rajiv Bhagya, Vajpayee Arogyashree, Santhwana Harish, Jyothi Sanjeevini, Mukhyamantri Santwana Harish and Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram,but its anybody's guess how many are actually aware of them and how they can be accessed.

Ms Akhila Vasan of Karnataka Janaarogya Chaluvali (KJC) points out that there are different schemes for different people in the country. With more than 10,000 different health schemes in the state, its not easy to keep track of them, she notes, adding that that although Rs 1,000 crore is spent on Arogya Karnataka, its impact is not far reaching. Nearly 98 per cent of the money allocated for the scheme goes towards subsidising surgeries performed by private hospitals to lessen the financial burden on the patients to a degree, she says.

B04New Delhi: New Delhi has stepped-up constructive engagement with friendly neighbours in the backdrop of expanding Chinese economic influence in the region.

Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale on Monday visited eastern neighbour Myanmar to ink a pact for appointment of a private port operator for Sittwe port in that country which is part of the crucial Indo-Myanmar Kaladan Multi Model Transit Transport Project.

New Delhi on Monday said the project would also contribute to job creation and development in the whole region, particularly in the Rakhine and Chin States of Myanmar.

The Rakhine state in Myanmar has been affected by sectarian violence in Myanmar which has seen many Rohingya Muslims flee from there to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The Foreign Secretary called on the State Counsellor, H.E. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. All matters relating to bilateral cooperation as well as international and regional matters of common interest, including developments in Rakhi-ne State (were discussed), New Delhi said.Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on special economic measures in response to the anti-Russian sanctions of Ukraine.

The decision was made "in response to Ukraines unfriendly actions, which are contrary to the international law and imply introduction of restrictive measures against citizens and legal entities of the Russian Federation", as well as "in order to protect national interests," according to the decree published on the official website of the Kremlin.

The Russian government has been instructed to make up the lists of individuals and legal entities special economic measures are targeted at, as well as to determine "special economic measures applicable to individuals and legal entities."

Under the decree, the federal agencies, regional and local authorities should proceed from the fact that from the day the decree comes into force special economic measures are applied to the sanctioned individuals and entities.

It is noted that the document enters into force on the date of its signing. The decree can be cancelled by the decision of the Russian Federation in case Ukraine abolishes its restrictive measures imposed on citizens and legal entities of Russia.The two men were identified as Mohammed Sameer Khan alias Sameer Pathan alias Shoaib, 30, a resident of Errakunta, and his associate Mohammed Shoaib, 29, a driver from Old Malakpet, police said. (Representional Image)

Hyderabad: The Commissioners Task Force, South Zone, and the Dabeerpura Police arrested a notorious interstate house burglar and his associate on Monday.

The two men were identified as Mohammed Sameer Khan alias Sameer Pathan alias Shoaib, 30, a resident of Errakunta, and his associate Mohammed Shoaib, 29, a driver from Old Malakpet, police said.

Sameer is from Bengaluru and shifted to Hyderabad at the age of 18. He was jailed for the first time in 2008 by the SR Nagar Police in a cell phone theft case. He has been involved in over 12 house burglaries in Telangana state. He was last arrested on November 2017 by Kodigehalli Police of Bengaluru, said Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar.

Mohammed Shoaib was arrested by the LB Nagar Police in 2013 and was lodged in Cherlapally, where he met Sameer Khan. Due to his poor vision Sameer committed offences only in the day.

Sameer is tech-savvy and switches off his mobile phone to prevent leaving technical clues. He minimises contact as far as possible and restricts contact with his wife, associate, and receiver and frequently changes his residence, vehicle, mobile phone and SIM card, Mr Kumar said. Shoaib waits outside on the bike while Sameer enters the house and finishes the theft in 5-10 minutes, he added. The two have committed two offences in Hyderabad, five in Kalaburagi, four in Bidar and one in AP.The medical team that attended to her at Oman airport made all efforts to save her and then rushed her to the Royal Hospital where she was declared dead on arrival. (Representional Image)

Hyderabad: The body of five-year-old Yedapalli Yashiwini from Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh, who died on Thursday last while travelling on a flight from Hyderabad to Kuwait, was brought to her parents home town of Rajampet on Monday.

The child had been feeling unwell for several days before she travelled. The Jazeera Airways flight had made an emergency landing in Oman after the child complained of discomfort. The medical team that attended to her at Oman airport made all efforts to save her and then rushed her to the Royal Hospital where she was declared dead on arrival.

All procedures to bring the body back from Oman were completed with the help of Nalli Haribabu, a social worker in Muscat.

Mr Haribabu told this newspaper, The girl was not keeping well for over two weeks and they were coming to Hyderabad for treatment on Thursday evening.In her complaint, she stated that Rajaiah married her in 2009, telling that his first and second wife had died. The couple had three children. Rajaiah then entered into a relationship with another woman and harassed her. (Representional Image)

Hyderabad: A police inspector in the state has been booked on charges of domestic violence and bigamy at Saroornagar women police station on Monday.

The victim, K. Renuka of LB Nagar lodged a complaint at the women police station alleging that her husband inspector Rajaiah who earlier worked at Asif Nagar police station in the city, has cheated her, and subjected her to domestic violence.

In her complaint, she stated that Rajaiah married her in 2009, telling that his first and second wife had died. The couple had three children. Rajaiah then entered into a relationship with another woman and harassed her.

Saroornagar women police station inspector B. Vittal Reddy said The woman has mentioned that her husband Rajaiah worked as an inspector in Asif Nagar and as she is not in touch with him for over a month. She added that she did not know where he is currently posted. A case has been registered against Rajaiah under Sections 498A, 494, 420 and 506 of IPC.New Delhi: Fishing in troubled waters, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday meekly toed the Pakistan Army line and claimed that atrocities are being perpetrated in J&K even as he remained silent on Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism.

The Pakistan PM demanded that New Delhi resolve the Kashmir issue through a plebiscite conducted in Kashmir. Predictably, the tweet drew a sharp reaction from New Delhi late on Monday evening which termed the remarks deeply regrettable.

India demanded instead that Pakistan take credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours.

Hitting back hard, New Delhi added that Pakistans deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world.

This comes even as the Indian Army asked the Pakistan military through established communication channels to take back bodies of two armed intruders from that country who were killed in a gunfight along the Line of Control (LoC) in Sunderbani sector of Jammu on Sunday.

Three Indian Army soldiers had also been killed in the encounter. Indian Army sources said a stern warning had been conveyed to the Pakistan Army to restrain the operation of terrorists from the soil of Pakistan or territory controlled by it.

Indian Army sources said that as per information received by them, there has been a concentration of large number of terrorists in the launch pads desperate to infiltrate before the onset of snow.

Sources also said the Pakistan Army has been vigorously attempting to send terrorists across the LoC.

According to news agency reports, the intruders at Sunderbani were believed to be members of a Border Action Team comprising Pakistan Army soldiers and terrorists.

On Monday, the Pakistan PM tweeted, Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris ... by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the (decades-old) UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people. Later on Monday, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also spewed venom against India.

In New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs responded, saying, The remarks made by Pakistans Prime Minister in his tweet are deeply regrettable. Instead of making comments on India s internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues.Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has expressed the hope that the state would get an assistance which would be much bigger than the amount offered by the Emirates government earlier.

It was no secret that the UAE government had offered Rs 700 crore which could not materialise because of various reasons. We will receive a much bigger amount. This was evident from the overwhelming response of the diaspora and the UAE administration, he told reporters here after his five-day visit to the UAE.

He said the visit to the UAE was an opportunity to understand directly the love, affection and concern that the NRKs have for their brethren. We met the representatives of UAEs three prominent charitable and humanitarian foundations and held detailed discussions with them, he said.

UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyans brother and chairman of Emirates Red Crescent, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, praised the contributions of the Indian community to the development process witnessed by the country. He expressed the readiness of the UAE Red Crescent Authority to provide all kinds of support to Kerala and its people. It is one of the biggest charitable societies in the world. The Red Crescent had extended help during the floods, he said.

The Kerala delegation held a meeting with the representatives of Zayed Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation which was formed in memory of the Father of UAE, Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The chairman of the foundation, Sheikh Nahyan bin Sayed Al Nahyan, led the discussions. They sought detailed information on our rebuilding plan. A high-level delegation of officials will visit Kerala to hold further discussion. They have promised all assistance, he said.

The meeting with Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation vice-chairman Ibrahim Mohammed Ahmed BuMelha was fruitful. This foundation had sent relief materials soon after the floods.

He said the visit to the UAE was an opportunity to understand directly the love, affection and concern that the NRKs have for their brethren. We met the representatives of UAEs three prominent charitable and humanitarian foundations and held detailed discussions with them, he said.

UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyans brother and chairman of Emirates Red Crescent, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, praised the contributions of the Indian community to the development process witnessed by the country. He expressed the readiness of the UAE Red Crescent Authority to provide all kinds of support to Kerala and its people. It is one of the biggest charitable societies in the world. The Red Crescent had extended help during the floods, he said.

The Kerala delegation held a meeting with the representatives of Zayed Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation which was formed in memory of the Father of UAE, Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The chairman of the foundation, Sheikh Nahyan bin Sayed Al Nahyan, led the discussions. They sought detailed information on our rebuilding plan. A high-level delegation of officials will visit Kerala to hold further discussion. They have promised all assistance, he said.

The meeting with Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation vice-chairman Ibrahim Mohammed Ahmed BuMelha was fruitful. This foundation had sent relief materials soon after the floods.

They have assured of all help, especially in the housing sector, he said.

Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, who heads the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Culture, Youth and Social Development, assured assistance for rebuilding Kerala. It was the affection shown by him that prompted me to say at a public meeting that his words were worth over 100 million dollars for the people of Kerala, the chief minister said.

Mohammad Abdulla Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, came to his office on Friday which was a holiday, to meet the states delegation. This indicated their governments affection towards Kerala, he said.

The Kerala delegation met Crown Prince and Chairman of Mubadala Investment Company, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, and other senior functionaries. They evinced interest in investing in petrochemicals, defence park, life science park, food processing centre, aviation industry and agriculture sector. Mubadala has a clear perception about the investment-friendly policy of the state government. A high-level delegation of the company will visit the state soon to discuss the common areas of interest.

DP World evinced interest in joint venture with the state government in logistics park, industrial park and related sectors. They are particularly interested in the inland water transport project.

DP World also was keen on Thiruvananthapuram  Kasargod water way. They are ready to construct small ports for carrying freight. A high-level delegation of DP World will visit the state soon to carry forward the discussions. Dubai Holdings, the promoters of Kerala SmartCity project, have also assured all assistance for rebuilding the state, he said.

No going back on Sabarimala

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said there is no going back on SC verdict on Sabarimala. He said the government intends to implement the verdict in letter and spirit. At a time when women are getting ready to go to Mars, they are being denied entry into a temple.Bengaluru: Within hours of actress, Sruthi Hariharan making a #MeToo allegation against multilingual filmstar, Arjun Sarja, Sandalwood was divided with most coming out in support of the actor, and questioning Sruthis motives.

One theory doing the rounds is that Sruthi is being revengeful as she had on several occasions requested Arjun to cast her opposite his nephew and popular actor, Dhruva Sarja, but was turned down.

Arjuns father-in-law, Rajesh, a veteran actor himself, has, meanwhile, appealed to the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) to intervene in the matter and the chamber, which held an emergency meeting, has reportedly decided to resolve things amicably through dialogue possibly with the involvement of the head of the artistes association, Ambareesh.

Arjuns mother Lakshmi, too has furiously denied Sruthis charges, calling them baseless and vowing to make her pay for causing irreparable damage to her familys reputation. She claimed the actress once visited her house asking for Arjun, and was now acting out of revenge because things didnt work out as she had hoped.

Arjuns daughter Aishwarya, recalled that Sruthi had once praised her father and his work and wondered why she was now making serious charges against him.

But among the actors and actresses, who have come out in support of Sruthi, is actor Prakash Raj, who tweeted that even if Arjun dismissed her charges it would be best for him to apologise to her.

Shraddha Srinath, Neethu, Avantika Shetty, Samyuktha Hegde and a few others from the industry too have expressed their solidarity with Sruthi with the hashtag #wearewithshru on social media platforms.

Actor and social activist Chetan, the man behind the establishment of the Film Industry for Rights and Equality (FIRE) has also been drawn into the controversy, with Mr Rajesh and Arjun Sarja's close friend, Prashanth Sambargi alleging that he had orchestrated the actors embarrassment as an act of revenge for being dropped from one of his projects.

Mr Sambargi recalled that Mr Chetan, who was initially supposed to be the lead in Arjun Sarja's production venture to launch his daughter, was later dropped. He was given Rs 10 lakh as advance by Arjun Sarja, which he has still not returned. We will soon disclose the details of the cheque. It is a well choreographed act to malign the reputation of an actor , misusing the movement, he charged. When contacted, Mr Chetan, however, rubbished the allegations , calling them fabricated to divert peoples attention from the main issue of womens rights.

The head of FIRE, Kavitha Lankesh clarified once again on Monday that it was set up much before the #MeToo movement and its Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) was working for equality and rights of the women and others workers in the industry. It is a platform to instill hope and strength in any victim who approaches the body within three to six months of the incident. Sruthi's case is much older and although we have not taken it up, we are of course with her and hope that the truth will surface, she added.

B03Vijayawada: In a major embarrassment to the Telugu Desam, CBI special director Rakesh Asthana has stated that Hyderabad-based businessman Satish Sana had admitted during interrogation that a Telugu Desam member of Parliament had helped him settle a matter with CBI director Alok Verma.

In his complaint to the Cabinet Secretary, Mr Asthana said that during an interrogation on August 24 Hyderabad-based Sana had admitted to a settlement with Mr Verma through the TD MP, who was raided by the Income Tax sleuths recently, to give him relief in a money-laundering case booked against meat exporter Moin Qureshi.

Mr Asthana has been booked for allegedly accepting a bribe through a middleman. Interestingly, the FIR filed by the CBI on October 15 states that he had received Rs 2 crore as an advance through a Dubai-based middleman to give relief to Sana in the same case.

The FIR against Mr Asthana was registered based on the confession statement and complaint filed by Sana. In his complaint to the Cabinet Secretary, Mr Asthana had listed out 10 instances of alleged irregularities by Mr Verma and the alleged settlement of Satish Sana through a TD MP was one among them.

Sources close to Mr Asthana said that that official had on September 20 moved an arrest proposal for custodial interrogation of Satish Sana for approval of Mr Verma.

It was alleged that the CBI director had kept the file pending and tipped off Satish Sana. On September 25, Satish Sana allegedly tried to flee to Dubai from the Hyderabad airport. However, he was prevented by immigration officials due to a look-out circular issued by the local superintendent of police on Mr Asthanas instructions.

Two days later, on September 27, Satish Sana allegedly contacted the inquiry officer over telephone saying that he had been told that the investigation against him was over and asking why there was a look-out circular for him.

He was told to join the investigation, which he was avoiding since February 21. On October 3, Satish Sana appeared before the investigation officer and allegedly told him that the CBI director had been managed through a Telugu Desam MP some time in April-May.

The next day, October 4, the Enforcement Directorate called Satish Sana to their office on the pretext of examining him.

From October 4 to 15, Satish Sana remained in the control of the Enforcement Directorate and select officials of the CBI director during which the conspiracy was hatched to register the FIR on the basis a false complaint made by Satish Sana against Mr Asthana, a source close to the special director claimed.

The provision to seek mandatory permission of the competent authority as provided under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 was deliberately and maliciously ignored, the source said.Several women devotees also joined the procession holding placards appealing Supreme Court to reconsider its decision on entry of the women in Sabarimala.

Nellore: Hundreds of Ayyappa devotees participated in a rally appealing Supreme Court to reconsider its verdict on entry of women into Sabarimala at Nellore on Monday evening.

Cutting across party lines, former legislator and TD Nellore City wing in-charge Mungamuru Sridharkrishna Reddy, YSRC Nellore City legislator P. Anilkumar Yadav, BJP district unit president P. Surendra Reddy took part in the rally from VR College to Gandhi Statue.

Several women devotees also joined the procession holding placards appealing Supreme Court to reconsider its decision on entry of the women in Sabarimala.

Speaking on the occasion, president of Ayyappa temple in Nellore, P.T. Rangarajan reiterated that Lord Ayyappa or his devotees dont have any discrimination against women while expressing concern over some vested plans to project the shrine in a poor light.

He said the restriction is linked to the incarnation of the Lord as Ayyappa at Sabarimala and there is no bar on women to visit any other Ayyappa temples across the country.

Nellore City legislator Dr Anilkumar Yadav has questioned the rational behind finding fault with Sabarimala customs and traditions while pointing to such restrictions even in the temples at advanced countries such as Japan.

He said Ominesanji shrine at the top of 6000 feet Mount Omine in Nara at Southern Japan run by Buddhist Monastery is considered most sacred and women of menstrual cycle are not permitted to the area. Though the ban was struck down in 1872, the monastery still preaches the segregation and most visitors respect it.

Former legislator M.Sridharkrishna Reddy said the customs prevailing in Sabarimala are in vogue since centuries and it is inappropriate to question them or violate them in the name of equal rights. He said 99 percent of the women in South India honour the traditions of Sabarimala and they are against going to the shrine even if they are permitted.

Speaking on the occasion, a devotee and TD leader Anam Jayakumar Reddy said basis for religious practices in Sabarimala is available in an ancient book known as Bhootanadopakyanam while lamenting over Supreme Court order against prevailing practices in Sabarimala.

Stressing that there is no discrimination in Sabarimala except for women of certain age, he reminded that every devotee in deekhsha is addressed as Swami and wear black there they are poor or affluent. Ayyappa temple committee Secretary G. Seshagiri Rao, noted priests Machavolu Koteswar Rao and Machavolu Ramesh, Ms Vijayalakshmi of VHP and VHP President Menta Rammoha Rao also spoke.VIJAYAWADA: Stating that there will be a change in the regime after the 2019 polls and the BJP will play a crucial role in it, party national general secretary, Ram Madhav said that the new government will help the victims of the AgriGold financial scam.

Addressing a relay hunger strike launched by the BJP demanding relief for the victims of the AgriGold Scam, in the city on Monday, Mr Ram Madhav said a Hitler kind of rule was taking place in Andhra Pradesh and the state government was totally riddled with corruption. He said the TD had become the Telugu Dopidi Party.

Mr Ram Madhav said that he could see a conspiracy behind the AgriGold episode involving large-scale corruption by the heads of the TD government. He pointed out that though the Essel Group had come forward to buy the properties of AgriGold that would help the victims overcome the crisis; the Andhra Pradesh government had threatened them due to which they had backed off.

He said such protest programmes against the TD governments alleged corruption was only the beginning and in the future the BJP would organise many such protests across the state against the large-scale corruption.

Rajya Sabha member, G.V.L. Narasimha Rao said that Bihars Lalu Yadav kind of corrupt governance was going on in Andhra Pradesh and the TD would also face the same fate of RJD in Bihar.

BJP state president, Kanna Lakshminarayana said that the state government heads had been trying to undervalue the properties and most valuable assets of AgriGold and grab them at dirt cheap prices.

He also said that Rs 3,000 crore worth Haailand resort in Guntur district was undervalued at `200 crore. The relay hunger strike launched on Monday will continue for the next four days across the state.Hyderabad: Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat has directed all political parties to strictly follow the model code of conduct in the elections. The CEC has warned of serious action if liquor and money are used to bribe voters.

The 11-member CEC team headed by Mr Rawat began its three-day visit by holding discussions with recognised parties.

BJP leaders N. Indrasena Reddy and Bala Subramanyam said they were apprehensive that the TRS and other parties may resort to large-scale distribution of illegal money. They said money was being transported in ambulances, media vans, RTC buses and those carrying cash for ATMs.

They alleged that due to the negligence, or ineffectiveness of officials, serious lapses had occurred in the voters list, identifying polling centres, and creating geotagging zones. They alleged that a large number of bogus votes were registered in Hyderabad. They alleged that about 500 intelligence officers from AP had been deployed in TS.

The Congresss Marri Sashidhar Reddy complained that government officials had misled the court with regard to the voters list on his petition regarding irregularities. He alleged that caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao was interfering in election-related issues, and that political parties have not been provided the final voters' list.

MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said their proposals on changing the location of some polling stations of the the Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency limits to correct the anomalies were not considered by elections officials.

CPIs Chada Venkata Reddy and CPM leader N Narasimha Reddy also complained about polling stations, voters list and distribution of money and liquor. TRS MP B Vinod Kumar also met the CEC.

Later, Mr Rawat held a review meeting with the Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar.The Trump administration fears Russia could help Tehran evade US sanctions by buying up Iranian oil and reselling it as its own, Financial Times writes.

"Iran might be pushing the idea of Russia selling their oil on the world market to evade sanctions," the newspaper cited the Trump administration official as saying.

In addition, the official said that he would "discourage Russia from even considering this". "It would be in Russias best interests not to facilitate Iranian evasion of US sanctions," the official added.

The department spokesperson stated that their goal remains to get to zero oil imports from Iran as quickly as possible, ideally by 4 November.

The recent weeks have seen US officials preparing to provide special reduction exemptions to some oil consumers of Iran. This has increased the prospect of Iran continuing its oil exports to countries that indicate that they have reduced the total oil consumption from Tehran.

"The United States is in the midst of an internal process to consider SRE waivers for individual countries," the FT cited state department spokesperson as saying.

The spokesperson further added: "We are prepared to work with countries that are reducing their imports on a case-by-case basis."Hyderabad: Prajakutami leaders on Monday alleged that caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao was behaving like a dictator, and criticised his four-and-a-half year rule.

TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, CPI general secretary Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy, TJS chairman Prof. M. Kodandaram and Telangana State TD president L. Ramana who met to discuss alliance matters on Monday utilised the opportunity to launch a joint attack on Mr Rao.

Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy said this was a crucial period to end the dictators rule in the state. The contracts of Kaleshwaram and other projects were given to contractors to benefit the family of K. Chandrasekhar Rao with six per cent commission in each, he said.

He said caretaker minister K.T. Rama Rao did not have the stature to criticise Congress president Rahul Gandhi. If the TRS wins this election accidentally, democracy will not survive. K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are suppressing all democratic institutions in the country, the TPCC president said.

Prof. Kodandaram said, Society wants to end the dictatorship and all political parties should work against the TRS. The youth are angry as they did not get jobs. People are not allowing TRS candidates to enter villages.

Mr Ramana told this newspaper that, The TRS graph has gone down, from 60 seats to 30 seats in just 45 days. The people are unable to tolerate the fact that the state was in the hands of a single family.Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam national president N. Chandrababu Naidu said in the upcoming Telangana Assembly elections Prajakutami will come to power and this will have an impact on the grand alliance to be formed at the national level. Mr Naidu, on Monday, held a meeting with the Telangana TD leaders at its party headquarters at NTR Bhavan and discussed the proposals to be adopted by the party for the elections.

Mr Naidu said in the present political circumstances alliance with the Congress is necessary. He told to the party leaders not to insist for seats during the seats adjustment discussions. He said everybody is aware of how many seats TRS has contested and won in the 2009 Assembly elections.

Mr Naidu said if any party of the alliance wants Prajakutami to come to power not only TD but also others have to prepare for sacrifices. He said that the Congress is ready to give 12 seats and the party will ask for six more.

Mr Naidu said that for the party alliance is more important than number of seats. He asked all the leaders and cadre of to work hard to ensure the victory of Prajakutami in the Telangana Assembly elections.Hyderabad: With the Communist Party of India also demanding more seats along the lines of the Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS), the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy rushed to Delhi on Monday to get instructions from the All India Congress Committee on seat adjustments.

Mr Reddy will meet the party high command on Tuesday and discuss the situation among the allied parties.

The Congress was to provide two seats to the CPI in the forthcoming Assembly elections and two seats in the Council elections. It may be recalled that the CPI leaders had threatened to walk out of the Prajakutami if they didnt get at least five seats in the Assembly elections. The TJS has been demanding about 15 seats.

Since the alliance with opposition parties will definitely help the Congress chances of forming the next government, it is in its interest to appease its allies to whatever extent possible.

Allied parties also want to adjust with the Congress if they get a respectable number of seats so that the anti-incumbency vote is not split.

According to Congress leaders, the party does not want to give more seats to the TJS and CPI as these parties do not have strong cadres at the ground level.ANANTAPUR: The YSRC high command which was targeting minister Paritala Sunitha plan to field a strong candidate from the Rapthadu assembly segment in the district. Sources revealed the party plans to give a tough fight or even win the sensitive assembly segment in Rayalaseema region.

The Rapthadu assembly segment was formed during delimitation process five years ago after a few mandals of Penukonda-Kanaganipalli, CK Palli and Ramagiri were spilt and merged into Rapthadu.

Similarly, Parigi and Gorantla mandals were added to the Penukonda segment along with existing Penukonda and Somandepalli mandals. Kanaganipalli and Ramagiri are sensitive mandals, severely faction hit and extremist-affected areas in the region. Soon after the murder of Paritala Ravindra, his wife entered politics and won from Penukonda assembly segment and, later, from the newly formed Rapthadu segment. The YSRC candidate, Topudurthi Prakash Reddy, tasted defeat against his nearest rival, Paritala Sunitha, during last elections.

With information extracted through different survey teams, the YSRC party high command was reportedly feeling strong in a few segments in the district including Rapthadu and planning new strategies to give a close fight to the candidate from the rival party in the upcoming general polls. There are speculations over a plan to get back into the active politics the family members of Kanamukkala Sane Chenna Reddy by offering them either an MLA or an MLC ticket.

It may be noted that erstwhile Penukonda taluka politics was dominated by the factional rivalry of two families, Gangula Narayana Reddy and Paritala Sriramulu. More than a hundred persons, including family members from both groups, were killed in fighting. Warlord Maddelacheruvu Suri alias Gangula Suryanarayana Reddy who served most of his life in prison in connection with attempt to murder Paritala Ravindra, was unable to succeed as a politician. His wife G. Bhanumathi led the Congress party for a few years but she is now settled in Bengaluru, away from political activities. Topurdurthi Prakash Reddy leads the YSRC.

The YSRC was planning to strengthen the party by inviting the family members of Kannamukkala Sane Chenna Reddy, the slain legislator, who led the faction for years after Narayana Reddy died.

Chenna Reddy was gunned down by a splinter group naxals and his two sons, S.V. Ramana Reddy and S. Obula Reddy, were murdered as a result of faction rivalry.

Sources revealed, Sane Chenna Reddys daughter was planning to enter active politics to strengthen old people and group men in all villages.It is not clear what steps the present government has taken to revive interest in the life and work of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Dr B.R. Ambedkar so that a new evaluation of their contributions may emerge in order to correct distortions, if any. At any rate, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held forth on these issues at the Red Fort on Sunday although his grasp of history does appear to be uncertain, going by the serious gaffes he has made while making references to prominent Magadh rulers of ancient India in the course of electioneering. But then, politics and not historical accuracy is Mr Modis express purpose. Running through most of his speechs in the past five years is a discernible zealots commitment to running down the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and members of his family, whose role in the politics and development of this country  negative as much as positive  is not concealed from any Indian. Indeed, their story is a much-commented-on open book. The PM asserted at the Red Fort, at an occasion to mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the Azad Hind Sarkar by Bose, that the role of Patel, Bose and Ambedkar in the freedom movement had been sought to be obscured in order to highlight the part played by one family. This is a bee in the bonnet that derives from the RSS school. But what are the facts?

Bose became a hero in his own lifetime. None other than Nehru was his foremost defender and colleague when Gandhi expressed hesitations and doubts over courses of action proposed by him. Nehru and Bose were together leaders of the Congress Left then and had extremely close personal bonds until Bose sought to link up with the European fascists and their Axis allies, the Japanese, in order to defeat the British. Nevertheless, when the British later tried members of the Azad Hind Fauj, ironically at the very Red Fort from where Mr Modi ran down Nehru, Nehru and his father Motilal donned their lawyers gowns to defend the actions of Boses Army in the far-east during World War II. Patel was a stalwart of the freedom movement and of the countrys integration on the eve of Independence. But he died not long after Independence and had no time to leave his impress on the governance of India, unlike Nehru who was PM for 17 years. As for Bose, historians widely believe he perished in an air-crash during the war, well before Independence, and had no role after Indias freedom. As for Ambedkar, his role was a revolutionary one in raising dalit consciousness against the Hindu caste system and in drafting the Constitution, but he was not exactly known as a freedom fighter.

Giants like Patel and Bose need no new statues and commemoration volumes for the nation to remember them, as Mr Modi may think. And, the role of historical figures is best assessed by experts, not by practitioners of day-to-day politics.According to a recent study, unicellular diatoms are able to adapt their behaviour to different external stimuli based on an evaluation of their own needs.

This was discovered by scientists of the Friedrich Schiller University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, together with partners from Belgium. The algae depend on nutrients in order to reproduce. However, they also need sexual mates which they find when they follow pheromone traces.

In experiments, Seminavis robusta diatoms directed their orientation either towards nutrient sources or mating partners, depending on the degree of starvation and the need to mate. The tiny organisms demonstrated, in fact, a primitive form of behavioural biology.

Diatoms are unicellular microalgae. They dominated marine phytoplankton, which is ubiquitous in our oceans. On shores and beaches, these algae can be observed as biofilms on rocks and other surfaces. Diatoms are not only the food source for many marine animals but also responsible for an extremely important ecosystem service: They contribute significantly to global photosynthesis and thus to the production of oxygen on our planet. Moreover, they are discussed as possible produces of biofuels.

The diatom Seminavis robusta is an ideal model organism for behavioral studies in the lab. The cells respond to different environmental conditions and their sexuality can be controlled. The research group of Georg Pohnert, who is Professor of Instrumental Analytics/Bioorganic Analytics at Friedrich Schiller University and head of the Max Planck Fellow Group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, wanted to know whether the tiny organisms are able to make decisions about what they needed more urgently: food or sexual mates.

In order to find out, the scientists cultivated cells under different conditions. In particular, the cells were confronted with different amounts of nutrients and sex pheromones. Since diatoms primarily reproduce asexually by cell division, sexual reproduction may become necessary for their survival if the cells become smaller and smaller after continuous division. After all, the cells die if they become too small and fall below a minimum size.

Diatoms also search actively for nutrients they need for the formation of their cell walls. They can trace silicate minerals in their environment and move actively towards this food source. A recent study showed that they are attracted by the odor of the minerals.

"It is striking that even unicellular organisms that obviously lack a nervous system can process different stimuli and even evaluate their individual needs. Our study showed that diatoms can adapt their behavior flexibly to environmental changes.

They also responded differently depending on their need to sexually mate. We observed that the diatoms moved towards pheromones or food sources depending on how hungry they were for sex or nutrients. Until now, this kind of decision-making has only been attributed to higher organisms," study leader Georg Pohnert summarized the results.

The decision of one diatom does not only determine the fate of a single cell. Moreover, it is crucial for the dynamics of biofilms which is composed of communities of countless diatoms. Using mathematical models, the researchers calculated interactions between cell density and the availability of nutrients (silicate minerals) and mating partners (pheromones). Based on these results, the scientists are able to better explain how biofilms are organized and why they are often patchy and show certain patterns.

The scientist would now like to find out how the single-cell organisms perceive, process and evaluate chemical signals. "Our goal is to identify the corresponding receptors and signal processing pathways, but this will be a very complex endeavor given the fact that we know so little about this important microalgae." said George Pohnert.

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Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.WhatsApp has more than 120 million users in Brazil, a country of nearly 210 million.

Facebook Incs popular messaging service WhatsApp has become a political battleground in Brazils most polarized election in decades, raising concerns that it is distorting debate beyond the public eye.

Facebook has touted efforts to crack down on misinformation on its main platform ahead of the Oct. 28 presidential run-off between right-winger Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Fernando Haddad. But WhatsApp has been flooded with falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

Haddad now alleges that businessmen supporting Bolsonaro have been paying to bombard voters with misleading propaganda in violation of electoral law, which his rival denies.

WhatsApp has more than 120 million users in Brazil, a country of nearly 210 million, rivalling the reach of Facebooks main platform in one of the companys biggest global markets.

The messaging service has become one of the main ways Brazilians keep in touch with friends, colleagues and family.

The elections first-round vote on Oct. 7 underscored the major role that social media now plays in Brazilian politics.

Bolsonaro, a seven-term congressman from a tiny party, had little access to public campaign funding or TV advertising but his grassroots campaign and outsized presence on social media helped him win 46 per cent of votes, nearly foregoing a run-off.

Polling firm Datafolha found that two-thirds of Brazilian voters use WhatsApp. Bolsonaro supporters were more likely to follow political news on the platform with 61 per cent saying they did so, compared to 38 per cent of Haddad voters.

WhatsApps end-to-end encryption allows groups of hundreds of users to exchange texts, photos and video beyond the purview of electoral authorities, independent fact checkers or even the platform itself.

False rumours, manipulated photos, decontextualised videos and audio hoaxes have become campaign ammunition, going viral on the platform with no way to monitor their origin or full reach.

Many of the fakes portray Haddad as a communist whose Workers Party would turn Brazil into another Cuba, convert children to homosexuality and plans to rig voting machines.

Others have spread a conspiracy theory that Bolsonaro had staged his near-fatal stabbing at a rally last month, which took him off the campaign trail and out of presidential debates.

WhatsApp has tried to discourage the tsunami of falsehoods by limiting how many recipients a message can be forwarded to. The company also has run public advertising on how to spot fake news and blocked hundreds of thousands of accounts during the campaign, with technology spotting automated bot behaviour.

Haddad accuses Bolsonaro of not just benefiting from misinformation on WhatsApp but encouraging supporters to fund bulk messaging over the platform. That would amount to soliciting illegal campaign contributions in what they call an abuse of economic power undermining the election.

On Thursday, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported Bolsonaro supporters had paid digital marketing firms up to 12 million reais ($3.26 million) each to spread tens of thousands of attack ads. Haddad said his party had witnesses who heard Bolsonaro encouraging business leaders to fund the efforts.

Bolsonaro has denied any knowledge of such a scheme and called on any supporters doing so to stop.

WhatsApp said it takes the allegations seriously and is taking immediate legal action to stop companies from sending bulk messages, including cease-and-desist letters to the companies in question.

Brazils chief electoral court on Friday opened an investigation into the allegations, which pundits quickly labelled WhatsAppgate.

Haddads allies argue that the scandal should invalidate the election. However, the investigation is unlikely to derail Bolsonaros campaign with just a week to go before the vote and an 18 percentage point lead over Haddad in recent opinion polls.

Still, the allegations have tensed up an already angry and polarized electorate and are likely to hang over the next government.

The way marketing companies obtained cellphone numbers used for WhatsApp messaging may have violated Brazils data privacy laws, according to Fabio Malini, a professor of technology at Espirito Santo federal university.

Brazilian lawmakers and judges have tried repeatedly in recent years to encroach on the privacy offered by WhatsApp, creating headaches for Facebook executives who are often called to account. The latest electoral scandal could intensify those pressures.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.At the height of his influence, Lu, a colourful and often brash official by Chinese standards, was seen as emblematic of increasingly pervasive internet controls.

Chinas former internet chief, Lu Wei, pleaded guilty in court on Friday of taking millions of dollars in bribes, after prosecutors accused him of abusing his power in various government posts over 15 years.

The ruling Communist Partys anti-corruption watchdog said in November that Lu, who once headed the powerful Cyberspace Administration of China, was under investigation for serious discipline breaches.

He had since been expelled from the party, paving the way for his prosecution and making him one of a number of senior officials caught up in a sweeping anti-graft campaign under President Xi Jinping.

Prosecutors at an intermediate court in the Zhejiang province city of Ningbo said that between 2002 and 2017, Lu received illicit assets from government units or individuals worth more than 32 million yuan ($4.6 million), the official Xinhua news agency said.

Lu Wei also made a final statement to the court, and admitted guilt and expressed regret, Xinhua said.

The news agency said a verdict would be announced later, though Lu, 58, is almost certain to be found guilty, as courts are controlled by the party and will not challenge the accusations against him.

At the height of his influence, Lu, a colourful and often brash official by Chinese standards, was seen as emblematic of increasingly pervasive internet controls.

He had worked his way up through the Xinhua news agency before becoming head of propaganda in Beijing and then moving to internet work in 2013. He later became a deputy propaganda minister.

Xi has presided over a sweeping corruption crackdown since coming to power in 2012 and has vowed to target both tigers and flies, a reference to top officials and ordinary bureaucrats.

The campaign has seen the jailing or punishment of hundreds of thousands of officials and also brought down dozens of senior party and military officials.

The crackdown has not just been focused on issues like bribery and using public money to fund lavish lifestyles. It has also taken aim at those whose political loyalty is found lacking or who express doubt about party policies.

China has rejected criticism that the anti-graft campaign is as much about settling political scores as about stamping out genuine criminal acts.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.Riyadh said on Saturday that Khashoggi, a former regime insider turned dissident, died during a "brawl" inside the consulate after a visit on October 2 to get documents. (Photo: File)

Ankara: The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Riyadh's Istanbul consulate was "savagely planned", Turkey's ruling party spokesman said on Monday, the first official indication from Ankara it believes a plot was hatched in advance.

"This was extremely savagely planned, and we are faced with a situation where there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this," Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesman Omer Celik told reporters in Ankara.

"This is a very complicated murder," Celik said, warning that the Turkish government would not be drawn into speculation. "Everyone (else) can speculate but we cannot speculate," Celik added.

He also dismissed claims of "bargaining" between Saudi Arabia and Turkey as "immoral". Riyadh said on Saturday that Khashoggi, a former regime insider turned dissident, died during a "brawl" inside the consulate after a visit on October 2 to get documents.

It added 18 Saudis were arrested in connection with his death and two top aides of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as three other intelligence agents, were fired.

Before Riyadh's admission, Turkish sources said a team of 15 Saudis were sent to Istanbul and killed Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince who moved to the United States last year and wrote for the Washington Post. Turkish pro-government media has said the team interrogated, tortured and decapitated Khashoggi but a pro-government columnist Abdulkadir Selvi on Monday wrote in Hurriyet daily that Khashoggi was strangled to death before he was cut up into 15 pieces. Celik pointed to CCTV footage published by CNN on Monday, which the American broadcaster claimed showed one of the Saudi officials acting as a body double for Khashoggi and leaving the consulate.

A senior Turkish official quoted by CNN said that the Saudi was "brought to Istanbul to act as a body double" for Khashoggi, adding: "This was a premeditated murder and the body was moved out of the consulate."

In the video a man, named by CNN as Mustafa al-Madani, left the consulate by the back exit wearing what appeared to be Khashoggi's clothes -- although the shoes do not match those the journalist appeared to be wearing in CCTV footage of him entering the consulate.The Indian Army on Monday issued a stern warning to its Pakistani counterpart, asking the Pakistan military to restrain terrorists operating from its soil.

The latest warning came a day after three Indian Army soldiers were killed in a Pakistani BAT attack in the Sunderbani sector of Jammu and Kashmir. The intruders attacked an Indian patrol team, which in retaliatory strike gunned down two Pakistani intruders. Two AK-47s, ammunition and war-like stores were recovered.

The intruders were wearing combat uniform. But their identity could not be ascertained. Pakistan Army has been informed through established communication channels to take over the bodies of the hostile Pakistani nationals, Indian Army sources said.

Since talks between the two DGMOs on May 29 (held at the behest of Pakistan), Indian Army has been maintaining utmost restraint to uphold the ceasefire along the Line of Control despite regular provocative actions from across, said an officer.

However, the Pakistani Army has been vigorously attempting to send terrorists across the LoC. Since May 30, seven infiltration bids have been foiled by the Indian Army in which 23 terrorists have been killed. Intelligence reports suggest a large concentration of terrorists on launch pads across the border desperate to infiltrate before the onset of winter, sources said.

The disputed border between India and Pakistan is a military hot zone that witnessed heavy exchanges of fire from both sides notwithstanding the ceasefire agreement between the two countries.French President Emmanuel Macron has pointed to the importance of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty) for European security and stability in a telephone conversation with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in the wake of Washingtons plans to quit it, the Elysee Palace reported.

"The French president noted the importance of this agreement, especially for European security and our strategic stability," the statement reads.

On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty because Russia was violating the terms of the agreement. At the same time, he did not rule out signing a new agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces with Moscow and Beijing if Russia and China provided guarantees of halting the development of such weapons, TASS recalls.Resort politics seems to be returning to Tamil Nadu after a gap with AIADMK rebel T T V Dhinakaran planning to pack off MLAs supporting him, including 18 disqualified legislators, to the tourist town of Courtallam, 630 km from here.

Dhinakarans decision comes amidst intense speculation that the much-awaited verdict in the disqualification of 18 MLAs would be delivered this week by the Madras High Court. Sources said the MLAs would move to Courtallam, known for its famous waterfalls, either on Tuesday or Wednesday and stay put till the verdict in the case is delivered.

A senior leader close to Dhinakaran, nephew of jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala, told DH that MLAs only decided to camp at a luxury resort in Courtallam to ward off any attempts of poaching by the ruling AIADMK.

They thought it would be good if they are all in the same location. Since there are a lot of party events in Madurai and Pasumpon in Ramanathapuram district next week, the MLAs decided to camp at Courtallam, the leader said.

Thanga Tamilselvan, one of the disqualified MLAs, said the legislators will camp in Courtallam to take a dip at the Thamirabarani Maha Pushkaram, which is celebrated once in 144 years, in Tirunelveli district.

Resort politics has been synonymous with the Sasikala family to keep their flock together since J Jayalalithaas death in December 2016. Sasikala had shifted almost 120 MLAs to a resort in Koovathur near Mamallapuram on the scenic East Coast Road in February 2017 to avoid them being poached by O Panneerselvam, who had rebelled against her for staking claim to chief ministers post.

The Koovathur stay of the MLAs was the first episode in Tamil Nadu of legislators being shifted to a resort to keep the flock together. And Dhinakaran followed his aunt who also packed off the 18 MLAs, who were disqualified for expressing no confidence against Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami last year, were lodged in resorts in Puducherry and in Coorg in Karnataka last year.

The verdict is keenly awaited in political circles, not just in Tamil Nadu but at the national level since it has the potential to chart the future course of politics in the state.The Keystone Exams were implemented in 2012-13 as an end-of-course state test to asses a students proficiency in a certain testing subject. Algebra I, biology and literature were the first three tests that were administered, and are the only subjects being tested on date. The number of testing subjects was set to increase over the years to include algebra II, chemistry, world history and four other areas, marking 10 total Keystone Exams students were expected to take.

Students were expected to pass these exams in order to graduate high school.

However, pushback from school districts and educators has placed consecutive moratoriums to put the mandatory passing of these standardized tests on hold.

State Sen. Tom McGarrigle, R-26 of Springfield, said he heard about the problem with the exams when meeting with Tredyffrin/Easttown School District officials.

The board members came up to me and said, we have a real problem with these keystones. We have students who are accepted in to Ivy League schools and theyre having difficulty passing this (test) and its causing a lot of problems,' said McGarrigle during an Oct. 16 phone call.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education approximately 70 percent of students in 2017 passed all of the Keystone exams.

McGarrigle continued, That was the start of it and then I introduced a bill and met with all of the stakeholders involved and we worked through it.

The bill McGarrigle introduced was Senate Bill 1095 which lays out educational alternatives to the Keystones that would allow a child to graduate high school if they dont pass all of the state exams.

My legislation will not reinstate the Keystone Exam graduation requirement. However, in any school year in which proficiency on Keystone Exams is required for high school graduation, my bill will provide students with several alternative pathways to demonstrate postsecondary readiness, read a March memo circulated in the state Senate. My proposal takes into account an individual students strengths, interests and career goals, while requiring the student to meet or exceed locally-established grade-based requirements and to demonstrate competency through other valid and accountable measurements.

With unanimous support in both the Senate and the House, the bill, as of Friday, was still waiting on the anticipated signature of Gov. Tom Wolf to become law.

Starting with the 2021-22 school year students who do not receive the necessary proficient or advanced grade on a Keystone exam will still be able to graduate high school by demonstrating their college or career readiness in the following ways.

First, students can meet or exceed a composite score configured for all three exams. This will provide balance where students who are at proficient, at minimum, on one exam and basic on the other two.

Second, students successfully complete locally established, grade-based requirements in the content areas associated with each exam. This can be achieved through over a dozen ways including completion of a concurrent enrollment course, earning an established score on an Advanced Placement exam in that testing subject and completion of the testing subject material in a post-secondary education course.

Third, a student enrolled in a technical education program who has attained industry-based certification related to their program of study or demonstrates a high likelihood of success in their program.

Fourth, be granted a waiver for the requirements of proficiency by the chief school administrator.

The bill also includes the need for supplemental instruction to students.

One of the more frequently talked about graduation requirements that drew the ire of school districts was the completion of a project-based assessment if proficiency was not met. SB 1095 says a school entity may offer, but not require, participation or completion of such a project.

Because the bill strips down the over-reliance of standardized testing, reaction from prominent education organizations about the passing of the bill was positive.

No single standardized test should overshadow a students academic record of accomplishments, said Pennsylvania State Education Association President Dolores McCracken when the bill passed the House on Oct. 9. Students should be able to draw on multiple academic achievements to demonstrate their readiness to graduate high school.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association said years of uncertainty will be resolved when the bill is signed by Wolf.

Senate Bill 1095 recognizes that our students are better than a test. This bill listens and responds to the voices of concerned students, parents, teachers, school board members, administrators and others who believe that Keystone Exam scores should not be used for high-stakes motivations nor become a barrier as a sole measure for being eligible to graduate, said PSBA Chief Executive Officer Nathan G. Mains in an Oct. 15 press release. The legislation provides flexibility by allowing alternative valid and rigorous benchmarks for students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary to be college and career ready.

McGarrigle said one cant expect every child to pass a test the same way because one size fits all doesnt work.

Students are taking alternate pathways to their career and this just makes it fair for all students, he said. He added that we should not expect a vo-tech student to pass an exam in a subject area not pertinent to their field.

The bill may be beneficial to the 1,200 students who attend the Delaware County Intermediate Units technical schools.

According to DCIU spokeswoman Adrienne Irving, the goal of the Delaware County Technical Schools is to have students graduate with at least one industry certification, and students who complete their programs of study are eligible for articulated post-secondary credits.

Karen Pflugh, administrative director for the DCTS, said the DCIU provides a wide range of high quality, industry-led pathways that align with McGarrigles bill.

SB1095 provides technical education students a graduation pathway that aligns to their future career goal, whether their goal is to transition into post-secondary education or directly into the workforce, she said.

The Keystones go beyond gauging student proficiency in a subject area. The number of students who are proficient is a factor when evaluating teachers. No more than 5 percent of a teachers final rating in the educator evaluation system can be comprised of student achievement on standardized tests like the Keystones and PSSA.

With the new graduation requirements soon to be the new law, there was no mention of how a student who may graduate with one of the alternate proficiency pathways may affect teacher evaluation.

In terms of the educator evaluation system, PSEA opposes including student test scores as part of the evaluation system. It is not a reliable or relevant measure to establish teacher effectiveness, said PSEA spokesman Chris Lilienthal. Weve advocating for a fair and reliable evaluation system that provides meaningful feedback to educators.

Lilienthal added the Senate bill is making progress in reducing the high stakes of the exams.

Teachers are spending too much time teaching students to take a test rather than teaching them the courses that theyre involved in, said McGarrigle about teachers and standardized testing.

Beyond students and teachers, standardized test performance is yet another factor used to rate schools through the previously used School Performance Profiles. The Future Ready PA Index, which replaces the SPP this year as the evidence-based indicator of school performance, will continue to use performance on state-issued tests.

At the head of the test administration and teacher evaluations is the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Questions submitted to department Press Secretary Eric Levis on Wednesday went unanswered as of Friday.

By the time the new graduation requirements take effect it will have been 10 years since the Keystones were first used in the state. The unanimity of both chambers to fix the lingering problems of how to impose test performance for graduation requirements felt good for McGarrigle.

It just goes to show how important it was to everybody, he said.The Pennsylvania Senates inability to pass legislation related to a scathing Grand Jury report detailing decades of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church before the end of scheduled voting days last week was met with disappointment and anger from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Theres absolutely no excuse for this, said state Sen. Tom Killion, R-9 of Middletown. By not passing this bill, we are denying justice for victims who have suffered immensely. The Senates inaction has failed generations of victims. We need to get back to work and finally provide justice for these victims. Not to do so is unconscionable.

They stood with the powerful institutions over the people of Pennsylvania, said Attorney General Josh Shapiro after the Senate adjourned late Wednesday without a vote on the issue. They turned their backs on these victims and the thousands  yes the thousands  identified by the grand jury, all across the commonwealth.

Shaprio noted the 23 men and women of the Grand Jury spent more than two years investigating and hearing gut-wrenching testimony from victims before issuing a damning 900-page report Aug. 14 that said more than 300 Roman Catholic priests had abused at least 1,000 children over the past seven decades in six Pennsylvania dioceses and accused senior church officials of systematically covering up complaints.

The report made four recommendations for the state Legislature, including a provision that would give now-adult victims of child sexual abuse a two-year reprieve from current time limits in state law that bars lawsuits after a victim turns 30.

The recommendations passed in the state House overwhelmingly last month and had strong backing from Shapiro, Senate Democrats and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, but hit a wall among some Republican senators. The Catholic Church and for-profit insurers also opposed it.

Its unfortunate for the victims of these devastating abuses that a consensus was not reached to provide justice, said state Sen. Tom McGarrigle, R-26 of Springfield. I said I would vote for a two year window to seek civil damages against both perpetrators and the institutions that covered these abuses up, and I will. Im disappointed in this lack of results, but I continue to work towards providing justice to all victims of abuse.

Swarthmore Mayor Tim Kearney, McGarrigles Democratic opponent in the Nov. 6 General Election, echoed those sentiments and described the lack of action as horrible and outrageous.

They had every opportunity to stand up and do whats right, said Kearney. You have a Senate leadership that  boy, its hard to read it any other way than to say that theyre doing the bidding of special interests on this, whether its the Catholic Church or  the insurance companies.

Kearney added that the opposition did not seem to come from rank-and-file members of the church, but rather from the institution as a whole. He said a compromise put forth by Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-25 of Jefferson County, attempted to create a whole process that had no hope of actually succeeding in terms of doing anything for the victims.

Scarnati argued that allowing the two-year window would violate the remedies clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which prohibits retroactive changes to civil and criminal statutes of limitations. He had also supported a constitutional change, but said it is an extended process and has no absolute certainty.

Scarnati said during a late-night press conference Wednesday that he had been unfairly maligned for proposing a compromise bill that would allow victims to sue still-surviving perpetrators, but not institutions such as the Catholic Church.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-62 of Indiana County, made it clear Wednesday that the House would not accept such a proposal and Scarnati ultimately chose not to offer it.

Scarnatis plan included establishing a victims compensation fund that he said would speed payouts to survivors without involving lawyers and their fees, which can account for 40 percent of settlements or court awards.

Attorney Richard Serbin, who spent two decades pursuing a case for a sex abuse client in Altoona that finally ended with a jury award in 2008, called that proposal perverted and sinister.

The Grand Jury determined that the Catholic Church and its leadership, including bishops, were responsible for enabling and covering up the actions of hundreds of child predators, resulting in the sexual abuse of thousands of innocent Pennsylvania children, said Serbin in a release. Any law that permits those who are responsible for these evil and vile acts from escaping civil and criminal responsibility is unconscionable.

Serbin, who recently came out of retirement, also said multiple supreme courts from other states and the U.S. Supreme Court have determined that retroactive changes to civil laws are constitutional.

The Senate proposal also drew criticism from the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, which said the compensation program left much to be desired and allowed the very institutions that had harmed victims to determine the parameters of their own accountability.

Institutional accountability is one of the most important measures for real reform and justice for victims who have already been hurt, and it must be included in the window to justice language, said PCAR Chief Public Affairs Officer Kristen Houser in a release. We implore the Senate to come back to work before November 6th and pass statute of limitations reform with a true window to justice. Victims, voters, the nation, and the world are watching and waiting for justice.

Shapiro also lambasted Scanatis compromise bill Wednesday night, telling reporters at the Philadelphia Inquirer that a priest making $25,000 a year has no ability to pay for mental-health or drug and alcohol counseling that victims need. The compromise bill would additionally shield the church from court orders to divulge records of how they handled child sexual abuse complaints.

The only entity that can help support these victims, ironically, is the institution that enabled the abuse, and they are exempt, Shapiro told the Inquirer. The idea that you are going to let the Catholic Church define whether or not it participates and how much they are willing to put into a fund is a slap in the face to the victims  and it allows them to continue the cover-up, to continue to silence victims.

Archdiocese of Philadelphia spokesman Ken Gavin said in a statement Friday that the archdiocese supports other reforms proposed by the grand jury that eliminate a criminal statute of limitations and lengthen the civil statute of limitations to allow individuals to file civil suits up until the age of 50, as well as strengthening mandatory reporter requirements.

He said the archdiocese also continues to recognize its responsibility to provide an opportunity for sexual abuse survivors whose cases are time-barred from pursuing civil claims to share their experiences, identify their abusers, and receive compensation.

Archbishop (Charles Joseph) Chaput recently voiced his intention to create or participate in an independent, voluntary program that will include a panel of qualified experts to review individual cases and determine financial assistance for those who have been abused, said Gavin. We remain focused on our commitment and we will honor it through programs already in place, as well as new programs that will be administered independently of the church.

State Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, D-161 of Swarthmore, said she and other lawmakers were working at the Capital until 11 p.m. Wednesday before heading to the Senate steps to stand in solidarity with victims who had been advocating for Senate to take action, including state Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-126 of Berks County, a clergy-abuse victim and champion of the bill.

I dont understand why, after such a broad bipartisan vote in the house, the Senate Republican leadership failed to take any action at all, she said. This entire session week there were survivors reading portions of the grand jury report in the state Capital outside of the Senate wing and the chief Republican in the Senate decided to take no action. It was a complete failure of leadership.

Krueger-Braneky said that while no more voting days have been scheduled this session, House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-28, of Allegheny County, has put House members on 12-hour call in case the Senate does move to bring the matter back up for a vote.

I think there is will on the House side, bipartisan will, if the Senate Republicans decide to do the right thing, she said.

McGarrigle also vowed that if he is re-elected, he would introduce a bill with the full recommendations of the Grand Jury as the first piece of legislation in the new session.

We need to stand and be a voice for those whose voice was taken from them, he said.

The Associated Press contributed to his reportThis November, AARP Utah is urging voters to support Proposition 3, the initiative that will expand Medicaid coverage to approximately 150,000 people in Utah who currently do not have access to affordable health care coverage.

In Utah, most adults without children are completely ineligible for Medicaid benefits. The Utah Legislatures most recent expansion currently provides health care coverage for 4,500 parents who earn less than $15,000 a year (for a family of four) and 3,500 others who are either homeless or involved with the criminal justice system. The latter must also make 5 percent or less of the federal poverty limit_, or less than $594 a year._ While we wholeheartedly support expanding coverage to these Utahns, the income limit and narrow definitions of who is now eligible for expanded coverage is woefully inadequate.

Because of the programs limits, many hardworking Utahns will lose their health care if they take a promotion or work more hours to get ahead, and ironically may still earn too little to qualify for subsidies to buy affordable health care coverage on their own. Instead of punishing Utah workers by taking away their health care, Proposition 3 rewards them by bridging their health care as they pull themselves out of poverty.

There are thousands of people 50-64 years old who do not qualify for Medicaid yet or are too young for Medicare. Proposition 3 would offer a much-needed lifeline to these Utahns, in some cases providing the health care they need in order to seek employment. And according to a GAO study, people who have health insurance before they enroll in Medicare cost less to cover, as they havent let illnesses or conditions become severe before they seek medical intervention. According to the report, during the first year in Medicare, beneficiaries with prior continuous insurance had approximately $2,300, or 35 percent less in average predicted total spending than those without continuous coverage. As we look to make Medicare solvent for future generations, it is incumbent upon us to help people stay healthier longer to reduce long-term health care costs.

Beyond the economic savings, people with health care coverage have far better outcomes at lower cost than waiting to go to the emergency room for expensive care. Using the emergency room as a primary care center is not only inefficient, it also burdens hospitals with absorbing costs that may not be compensated. Further, emergency rooms only stabilize patients; they dont provide the ongoing care many with chronic conditions require. Covering patients who can receive preventive, coordinated care is not only more humanitarian, but helps hospitals recoup costs lost to charity care.

Right now, the uncompensated costs hospitals incur are often passed along to people who have health insurance in the form of higher premiums. Research shows that marketplace premiums are 7 percent lower in expansion states, which could represent a significant savings to many Utahns. This isnt unique to hospitals; business losses are often recaptured in the form of higher prices for consumers. In the health care world, this means patients who are already struggling with expenses not covered by insurance, such as co-insurance, deductibles and co-pays, pay even more for insurance that may cover fewer services. For older people with expenses not covered by Medicare, this can be debilitating.

And there are tangential benefits as well. Expanding Medicaid to help families have access to affordable health care helps those in the older population who may be helping their adult children pay for medical expenses or tending children for parents who must work several jobs to make ends meet. Medicaid, like Medicare, reduces the burden on family members to provide care or pay for expenses when their loved ones are in need of assistance.

AARP began as an organization to help retired teachers secure access to affordable, quality health care coverage, and has never looked back on this mission. AARP Utah supports Proposition 3 to keep our friends and neighbors healthy, on the job, and able to contribute to the states economy. We encourage you to support Proposition 3 on Election Day.SALT LAKE CITY  Chinese scientists are planning to put an artificial moon into the sky by 2020 as a way to illuminate city streets after dark.

Whats happening: Scientists hope they can hang the artificial moon above Chengdu, the capital city in the Sichuan province, China Daily reports.

The moon, which would actually just be a glowing satellite, will reflect sunlight back to Earth.

Scientists hope the light will replace streetlights.

In fact, scientists think it will be eight times more luminous than the real moon.

Wu Chunfeng, chief of the Tian Fu New Area Science Society, told China Daily it wont appear too much brighter than the normal moon.

Its expected brightness, in the eyes of humans, is around one-fifth of normal streetlights.

Flashback: China is not alone. Russia tried launching an orbital mirror back in the 1990s. However, they dropped the project after the mirror didnt unfold and it incinerated on its way into space, Time magazine reports.

Similarly, Rocket Lab out of the United States launched an artificial star. However, the star reportedly added to artificial light pollution and cluttering of Earth's orbit, The New York Times reports.SALT LAKE CITY  A group of Utah lawmakers want to use a federal law to create a new state park within the boundaries of the former Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Under the Recreation and Public Purposes Act, the state can petition the U.S. Department of Interior to convey up to 25,600 acres of federal land a year for recreation purposes.

Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, said the state could do that for three consecutive years and end up with a state park roughly the size of Arches National Park.

"I think we do as good a job if not better on our state parks," Noel said. "We would have the management in the state of Utah."

Noel added that most of the state's 43 parks were created using that law.

The discussion came up during a meeting last week of the Commission for the Stewardship of Public Lands during a presentation by Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, on his bill to create a sixth national park in Utah called Escalante Canyons.

Stewart said he does not believe his bill will pass this year, but he is going to continue to push it forward to gain certainty for the area.

"It is not only possible but likely that a future administration that was opposed to Mr. Trump's decision would come in and change it," Stewart said. A new national park in that area would avoid the "political pingpong," he added.

President Donald Trump reduced the monument's boundaries and that of Bears Ears National Monument last December to the applause of Utah's GOP leaders and the dismay of environmental groups, Native American tribes and others.

Those reductions are now part of a lawsuit pending in federal court.

Some question if it is wise to pursue a national park for the area while the litigation is pending, but Sen. Dave Hinkins, R-Orangeville, said waiting until the lawsuit is resolved is the wrong approach.

"Courts shouldn't be making these decisions," he said.

Ashley Soltysiak, head of the Utah Sierra Club, said Stewart's bill seeks to legitimize Trump's monument reductions.

"We respectfully but adamantly oppose this legislation," she said, noting that its provision to have it governed by local representatives would leave the land vulnerable.

"(They) lack the qualification and the expertise to manage the land."

Later in the meeting, Kane County Commission Chairman Dirk Clayson took exception to that assertion, noting he suspects the people in charge of managing the National Mall in Washington, D.C., are making better decisions on it than "I would here in Utah. I wish the trust went back the same way with us."

He also blasted arguments urging monument protection of the lands.

"The general premise that lands are being protected because they are given a monument designation is absolutely false. Lands are being destroyed. Lands are being ill maintained and lands are being withheld from public access," he said.

"The idea that tourism is negatively affected by the reduction in the monument is absolutely false."

Both Clayson and Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock said their counties have experienced record visitation this year.

But Soltysiak and critic Lucy Malan complained that Trump's actions leave the lands open to development that will degrade the pristine vistas.

"These are the crown jewels of the world in terms of parks," Malan said.SALT LAKE CITY  The technological leap from the fun and buzzy little drones now plying the airspace above most neighborhoods and parks to flying machines large enough to transport a package, or people, has already been made.

And now a new Utah group is hoping to clear a path for the state to become a leader in the wave of drone innovations that some believe will render other remarkable advancements like self-driving cars a moot point while turning the near-overhead airspace into a much busier place.

"The biggest untapped resource in the U.S. and the world is our airspace," said Tulinda Larsen, executive director of the newly formed Deseret Unmanned Aerial Systems. "And that's where Deseret UAS is stepping up."

Deseret UAS is the result of a joint effort by Tooele and Box Elder counties in partnership with Ogden city to advance the work of Utah businesses working in the arena of unmanned aerial systems and attract new endeavors to the state. Tooele County Commissioner Shawn Milne said the idea sprang from the pursuit of new ideas to help create high-paying, tech-centric jobs for residents that were closer to home.

"Deseret UAS is the culmination of three years of hard work on behalf of Tooele and Box Elder counties aimed at creating jobs," Milne said. "Right now, 75 percent of our residents are commuting to the Salt Lake Valley for work and we recognized years ago that we want to reverse that trend."

To that end, Deseret UAS pursued fiscal help from the Utah Legislature and secured $1.2 million in funding in the last session that is helping get the effort off the ground. Larsen said the group will be headquartered at a space called the Xperience Center in Tooele that has a nearby area for small-scale test flying, but is also working to secure larger test flight ranges. A dearth of testing facilities, which must secure a Federal Aviation Administration signoff to be used by drone developers, is one of the key hindrances that her group is addressing, Larsen said.

"In 2013, the FAA established seven test sites  the closest of which is in Nevada," Larsen said. "But they're mostly being used for regulatory work, and commercial operators can't use the sites for testing."

Larsen said her group has already established a conduit for drone companies to make use of a Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK) site in Box Elder County, has an FAA-approved urban testing area in Ogden and is working with the Tooele Army Depot to make use of a site there that could open up a 25-square-mile test range.

That news is music to the ears of John Manning, founder of Utah startup ElectraFly. Manning and his team are developing drone aircraft with the goal of expanding payload and range and have already had a prototype craft up and flying. Manning said the access to critical resources, like test flight ranges, that Deseret UAS is working to provide couldn't be more opportune for ElectraFly.

"The work that Deseret UAS is doing is really a miracle for us in terms of how the timing is working out," Manning said. "Having designated flight areas where FAA exemptions are in place is critical to us and the industry to making continued research progress."

ElectraFly is taking a unique approach to its drone design that is working to combine the best flight characteristics of both fixed-wing and multirotor craft. The company already has some 20 patent applications for technology it innovated and is hoping to be entering full-fledged test flight mode early next year. Manning said the industry is still very much in its infancy and praised the UAS effort for its forward-thinking stance.

"This technology is here to stay," Manning said. "Having Deseret UAS and Tooele County thinking far ahead is really the kind of thing that will start putting Utah on the map in this industry. We're watching the whole movie unfold in front of our eyes and are very fortunate to have UAS helping to make it all possible."

Larsen said putting Utah in front of the pack on advancing and commercializing drone technology is her group's raison d'etre. She also believes Deseret UAS will help accelerate the work of the state's two dozen or so companies already working in the drone space as well as attract new players to the Beehive State.

"Are we going to move the needle," Larsen said. "The answer is yes. We already have six companies knocking on our door...and I just spoke with a company that's talking about projects that will bring 350 jobs here to Utah."

Deseret UAS plans to cut the ribbon on its new Xperience Center on Wednesday.SALT LAKE CITY  Shireen Ghorbani has no inhibition about starting conversations with strangers at a restaurant or fitness class, often walking away with new-found friends.

She'll nudge a friend like Georgi Rausch to introduce themselves to someone who she thinks looks fun when they're out having drinks. Mortified, Rausch will go along to satisfy's Ghorbani's curiosity about people and their stories.

"She's always been like that," said Rausch, a University of Utah business management professor.

It's a trait that has served the first-time political candidate well as she has knocked on thousands of doors in the 2nd Congressional District where she is running against GOP Rep. Chris Stewart and Libertarian Jeffrey Whipple. And sometimes it goes beyond just trying to earn someone's vote.

Ghorbani, a Democrat, came across a couple in Tooele living on Social Security and disability who couldn't afford to fix the storm-damaged roof of their house. She made calls to various local governments and community programs trying get them help without much luck.

"I need to go back and see if her roof is fixed," she said. "I don't think we should let them sit in the cold because we can't figure out the appropriate way to get federal funding into communities when we have people living on the edge."

Ghorbani said she isn't saying that government or community groups should fix everyone's roof, but that those on the margin sometimes need extra help. Repairing the couple's roof, she said, would prevent a host of other compounding problems.

The idea that "we all do better when we all do better"  a phrase former Democratic Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone uttered in a speech  stuck with Ghorbani and is what she called the "North Star" of her campaign.

Human dignity is one of her priorities. She favors raising the federal minimum wage and equal pay for equal work. She vows to fight against discrimination against LGBT people from schools to policing to those seeking mortgages or student loans.

Ghorbani, 37, grew up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Bismarck, North Dakota. Her mother, Daphne Ghorbani, met her Iranian father when she taught English in Tehran. They married in the U.S. but he battled alcoholism and left the family by the time Ghorbani was 6. Ghorbani's mother raised her alone on $27,000 a year teaching high school English.

"She was the kind of person who knew where every dollar in her paycheck would go," Ghorbani said, adding financial responsibility and how money is spent were instilled in her at an early age.

After high school, including the "nightmare" of being in her mother's English class, Ghorbani moved on to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota where she earned a degree in theater and communications.

It was there that she came to admire Wellstone's advocacy for farmers, workers and everyday people and voting against the war in Iraq, solidifying her own political beliefs.

"He was a huge inspiration to me," she said.

In August 2003, Ghorbani married Nick Steffens and a month later they headed to Moldova with the Peace Corps for two years. She worked to stop human trafficking.

"I saw up close what happens when you have Russian influence in a fledgling democracy. I saw the apathy that takes hold. I saw the corruption that takes hold. I'm worried we have some of those strains happening here in our current society," she said.

Ghorbhani ran a nonprofit community theater in North Dakota after returning home and then earned a master's degree in organizational communication at the University of Nebraska. She moved to Utah about 10 years ago to study campus sexual assault policy at the University of Utah.

She and Steffens, an English teacher at Judge Memorial High School and big Beatles fan, have a 3 1/2-year-old son. Steffens wanted to name him Jude but Ghorbani wasn't keen on naming him after a song written to console a boy whose parents divorced. The couple settled on Desmond from "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."

Ghorbani now works as the associate director in organizational development and communication in the facilities management department at the U. Her job entails bringing people together to solve problems.

"That is her superpower," Rausch said.

Although her mother ran for the North Dakota House of Representatives in 2012, Ghorbani didn't consider running herself until her mother died of pancreatic cancer two years ago.

"I saw up close how families can lose absolutely everything over one health care incident," she said. "I couldn't stand to continue to watch my representatives vote to gut access to affordable health care without a solution."

Ghorbani supports working toward a form of universal health care and giving Medicare the ability to negotiate drugs prices at the federal level.

Health care and Donald Trump winning the White House were enough for Ghorbani to jump in the political arena.

Rausch recalled a Champagne toast at Ghorbani's house and how excited she and her friends and family were about running for Congress. Ghorbani, she said, is more about being positive and taking action than about being angry about what happened.

Ghorbani isn't one to sit around and gossip. She has a low tolerance for complaining and complacency, Rausch said. She likes to talk about ideas and the future and "what would be cool," she said.

Should Ghorbani win in November, she could be the only Democrat in Utah's congressional delegation, currently made up of six Republicans. She would make friends with all of them and their spouses, Rausch said.

"I've never seen Shireen intimidated by anyone," she said.

Where she stands ...

Public lands

Reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments poses a threat to public lands across the country and must be contested.

Jobs and economy

Invest in infrastructure, raise the minimum wage, federal incentives to end job outsourcing, reward companies that invest in American workers.

Immigration

Secure the border, provide a path to citizenship for undocumented children, keep families together, support humane state and local laws that integrate immigrants into society.

Health care

Favors a form of universal health care and single-payer system. Medicare and Medicaid should be able to negotiate drug prices to lower costs for patients.

National security

Sees President Donald Trump's lack of diplomacy as biggest threat to the nation's security.SALT LAKE CITY  A college creative writing course didn't go well for Chris Stewart.

The professor told him he wasn't a good writer and questioned whether someone else wrote the short story he turned in at the end of the term. He convinced the professor it was his work, resulting in a passing grade.

Several years later, while rocking his daughter to sleep, Stewart, who had become an Air Force pilot, came up with what he thought would make a good book that someone should write. Writing nights and weekends, Stewart published in 1997 his first novel, "Shattered Bone," about a stolen B-1 bomber, a military spy and tensions between Russia and the U.S.

The three-term Republican congressman has now written 18 fiction and nonfiction books, including "My Story" with Elizabeth Smart. And as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Stewart is privy to the kind of the spy stuff he wrote about more than 20 years ago.

Stewart, 58, considers his work on the committee his most important accomplishment as he faces Democrat Shireen Ghorbani in the 2nd Congressional District, and "it's the one that's impossible for me to talk about." Libertarian Jeffrey Whipple is also on the ballot.

He recalled a trip to the Syrian border to gather information for a decision on whether to continue a billion-dollar program. The intelligence committee reviews the decision but the rest of Congress is unaware because it's a "black box" program, Stewart said.

Stewart said he tells himself all the time, "Be careful, be careful. Make sure you're doing the right thing."

In addition to his work on the intelligence committee, Stewart lists accomplishments like a national suicide prevention hotline bill and legislation making it easier for states to exchange federal lands to bring in money for schools.

"In Congress, I dont think theres usually one thing that you think, 'OK, this is my magnum opus.' Its really a collection of smaller bills that you hope in aggregate have a positive impact," he said.

Stewart is noncommittal about how long he plans to serve should he win re-election. He does, however, want to be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He said he sees a pathway for doing that in the coming Congress or the next. Committee chairmen serve six years.

Politics wasn't part of Stewart's upbringing on a Cache Valley ranch and dairy farm where he was the eighth of 10 children. Five of the six boys in the family, including Stewart, joined the military, like their father, an Air Force pilot who retired to teach school and farm. Stewart wears his dad's wings on his lapel.

As a "rebellious" teenager, Stewart found his father's suggestion that he become a pilot a "dumb idea." That stuck with him into college until he saw F-16s taking off at Hill Air Force Base one day. He decided then he wanted to fly and serve the country.

Stewart drove home to tell his wife, Evie, who said "that's a terrible idea." But after Stewart earned his degree in economics from Utah State University, he signed up.

On his first day of flight school, the instructor informed the class that half of the 82 students would wash out.

"I was scared to death that I wasnt going to make it," Stewart said.

But with hard work, Stewart graduated at the top of his class. He went on to fly rescue helicopters and the B-1 bomber for 14 years in the Air Force and set some flying world records along the way.

Stewart's friend, Brent Bishop, of Farmington, said he knows him as someone always willing to do the right thing, regardless of how difficult and what others thinks. He points to Stewart's decision to fly rescue helicopter over the glory of becoming a top gun" flying fighter jets.

"He's willing to take on the hardest of it all," Bishop said.

Feeling he needed more time with his wife  who loved their time in the Air Force  and his six kids and figuring he could make a living writing books, Stewart returned to civilian life. He also owned a small environmental policy and energy development firm.

Stewart said running for office wasn't ever on his mind until he received a phone call one morning urging him to run against Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in the newly drawn 2nd District. Stewart and Evie quickly came to a decision.

Within a couple days, he went from never having thought about running, having no political experience or background and no friends in politics to becoming a candidate.

"It was a bit of a stretch, but we just felt compelled to do it," Stewart said.

Matheson ended up jumping to the 4th District, and Stewart cruised to victory in 2012 as well as the past two elections.

Ghorbani, his Democratic challenger this year, said the biggest issue in the campaign is that voters don't know who Stewart is.

"I think that's just silly," the congressman said, noting he won three elections with at least 60 percent of the vote.

Bishop said Stewart isn't pretentious, noting he drives an old pickup truck and that he's not embarrassed by it. He has a nice house but not a fancy one, he said. Bishop said he's never heard Stewart worry about not being elected because of a decision he makes.

Stewart doesn't search out attention, but events over the past year or so have frequently landed him on network news shows, usually talking about foreign affairs. He said he just tries to work hard and do a good job.

"I'm not the loudest member of the delegation, but thats OK because thats not why I ran," Stewart said.

Where he stands ...

Public lands

Sponsored legislation to put reduction of Grand-Staircase National Monument into law and create a new national park.

Jobs and economy

In addition to lowering taxes for businesses and individuals, the Republican tax plan bringing back business to the U.S. and creating jobs.

Immigration

Need to enforce strong border laws and illegal immigrants should not be allowed citizenship until they return to the home countries and follow U.S. immigration process.

Health care

Voted to repeal parts of Obamacare. Favors legislation that would drive down costs, offer families more choices and protect people with pre-existing conditions.

National defense

Supports President Donald Trumps military plan to build the Navy fleet and boost missile defenses to counter threats from North Korea and Iran.HEBER CITY  A man who police say caused a two-car crash that left two people in critical condition has a history of stealing cars and mental illness, according to court documents.

Tyson TJ Uresti, 22, was arrested Saturday for investigation of being in a stolen vehicle, failing to remain at the scene of an accident involving injuries, and several other traffic violations. In addition, he had at least one warrant out for his arrest at the time of the crash.

Saturday morning, Uresti crossed into oncoming traffic and hit a car head-on while on U.S. 40, about 13 miles southeast of Heber City. A couple in an Audi were taken to a local hospital in critical conditions, according to the Utah Highway Patrol. The woman was pregnant, according to a GoFundMe Pageset up for the couple.

The incident marked the third serious crash on U.S. 40 in less than 48 hours.

Uresti walked away from the crash but was found by troopers responding to the scene, according to a Wasatch County Jail booking report. He told investigators he was going 15 to 20 mph over the speed limit when he crashed, according to the report.

Troopers then learned the Ford Explorer Uresti was driving was stolen recently out of Duchesne County.

The crash comes two days after Uresti was charged in 4th District Court with sexual battery, a class A misdemeanor. And if charges are formally filed for Saturday's crash, it would mark the fifth time this year Uresti has been charged with a serious crime.

In May, Uresti was charged with theft by receiving stolen property, a second-degree felony. According to a Sanpete County Jail booking report, Uresti ran away from the Utah State Developmental Center in American Fork and stole a car. Police were cautioned that Uresti was "highly likely to flee if confronted," the report states.

The case was dismissed in August because Uresti was determined to be incompetent to stand trial, according to court records.

In February, he was charged with burglary, a second-degree felony; failing to stop for police, a third-degree felony; criminal mischief, a third-degree felony; and theft, a second-degree felony. In that case, Uresti again "escaped secure confinement from the Utah State Developmental Center earlier in the day," stole a car in American Fork and fled from police, charging documents state.

"In fleeing police defendant operated the vehicle in a manner that put the public at risk, including speeding over 90 mph and running red lights. Pursuit had to be terminated for public safety," the charges state.

He was later arrested. But he had an outstanding warrant in that case at the time of Saturday's crash for failing to show up for a scheduled court hearing.

Also in February, Uresti was charged with assault in Orem Justice Court.

In 2014, Uresti was charged with theft, a second-degree felony, and driving on a suspended license in 6th District Court in Sanpete County after allegedly stealing a car and wrecking it on U.S. 89, according to court documents. The case was later dismissed after Uresti was determined to be incompetent to stand trial.

Likewise, he was charged in 2014 in 4th District Court with three counts of assault, but the charges were dismissed when Uresti was determined to be incompetent to stand trial. In a 2015 case, he was charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped when it was determined "There is no likelihood of restoration" of his competency, according to court records.Few things at Sundays early morning sacrament services for Latter-day Saints here could aptly be called normal.

For starters, there was a gaping hole in the ceiling above one side of the Panama City Stake Center podium, the handiwork of Hurricane Michael. The chapels water-damaged carpet had been pulled from the floor days earlier. Resting on the grass outside was the meetinghouse steeple, toppled by the dreadful winds. And hundreds of congregants  including many who arrived hours and even days earlier from several states  were wearing yellow T-shirts and jeans instead of white shirts, dark suits and ties or dresses.

But dont be mistaken. The Latter-day Saints who gathered just as the sun was rising on devastated Panama City were observing the Sabbath in pure form.

Read the full Church News article here_._SALT LAKE CITY  The secret ingredient found in the lunch that was served to students in Nebraska is enough to make anyone feel jumpy.

On Thursday, a school district in Nebraska sent out a letter to parents informing them that their children had unknowingly been served a chili that contained kangaroo meat.

The Potter-Dix superintendent, Mike Williams, told the parents he was sorry for the incident.

On behalf of Potter-Dix Public Schools, I apologize for the anxiety and any harm that this has caused individual students and/or families, Williams said. We will make sure that something like this never occurs again.

According to CBS News, Williams was unaware of the special ingredient in the lunch until the schools cook told him the chili's beef had been augmented with kangaroo meat, which the cook cited as being lean and nutritious.

The Omaha World-Herald reported that meat came from a food distributor and was, therefore, FDA approved. But Williams said in the letter sent out by the school district that he did not agree with the decision to serve the meat.

If we were to have food or ingredients that are out of the ordinary, they should be listed on the menu so that the students and families are aware of what they would be being served, he wrote.

BuzzFeed noted that the cook has since been fired.RIVERTON  A man who investigators say held a knife to his mother's throat during a domestic violence incident was shot and killed by Unified police Monday.

But the father of the man who was killed disputes that it was a case of domestic violence and says his son would never have hurt his mother.

"They didnt have to shoot him. He had a frickin' butter knife. She was yelling at them, 'Dont do anything, hes not going to hurt me,' Robert Whittle said.

Jason Robert Whittle, 26, of Riverton became the fifth man in Utah to be shot and killed by police in less than two weeks. No one was injured in a sixth police shooting on Oct. 10.

Police were called to a home at 11779 S. Stone Ridge Court (1400 West) about 6:40 a.m. Monday. They arrived to find a man holding a female by the neck with a knife to her neck, said Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera.

At least one officer fired his gun, striking and killing Jason Whittle. The mother, 56, was not injured. The deadly confrontation happened outside the house near the end of the driveway. The woman lives at the home but Whittle did not, according to Rivera.

Robert Whittle said, however, that his son was holding a butter knife. He said his son has been battling substance abuse and has been "on the streets" for the past month or two. He said his son went to his mother's residence Monday morning seeking help and it was the mother who called police at her son's request, hoping he would be taken back to jail, mostly so he could receive treatment.

"He never was a danger to anybody. He came home wanting help, Whittle said.

Whittle said when Unified police officers arrived, the woman exited the house first and his son followed. But his son was still holding a butter knife at the time from buttering toast inside the house, he said, adding that officers immediately drew their weapons.

Whittle said his son became scared and grabbed his mother. Despite that, he doesn't believe his son would have hurt her.

"He had a butter knife, for heavens sake. He didnt have anything that would harm her. He wouldnt harm her, he said. "He was not a dangerous person. He was not. This is such a tragedy."

Whittle said the shooting happened very quickly after his son exited the house, but could have "easily been defused" if the officers had just taken a little more time.

"They didnt have to shoot him. A stupid stun gun would have worked fine," he continued. "She was trying to tell them, 'He's not a threat to me. He's afraid of you guys.' He never would have harmed his mom  never in a million years."

At least two officers initially responded to the scene, possibly three, the sheriff said. Unified police declined Monday to respond to the claims that Jason Whittle was holding a butter knife or that his mom allegedly told officers not to shoot.

A neighbor told the Deseret News that the mother rents a basement apartment at the house. The neighbor said she knew the son had had a problem with drug addiction, but thought he still lived there, too.

According to court records, the mother was granted a permanent protective order against her son in July. But Whittle said that was done more to keep his son off of the property.

Whittle said when his son used drugs, he would often show up at the house screaming and yelling and making a scene. While he was not violent, the father said it was usually an unsettling scene for the neighbors. He claimed that based on advice from police, the wife got a protective order to keep their son off the property, not because she was afraid of him.

Although Rivera said Jason Whittle did not live at the house, court records from charges filed a week ago list his home address as the place where the shooting occurred. He was charged a week ago with drug possession, a class A misdemeanor, in 3rd District Court. In that case, Whittle was a patient at University of Utah Hospital in August when doctors found baggies of crystal methamphetamine in his pockets, charging documents state. The documents do not say why he was admitted to the hospital.

Jason Whittle has a history of struggling with drug addiction, according to court records. But he had not committed any felony crimes.

In May, he was convicted of misdemeanor drug possession after being pulled over in the Daybreak area and drugs were found in his car including meth, charging documents state. He was convicted of theft of services, a class B misdemeanor, on Oct. 10. He was charged with trespassing, a class B misdemeanor, in August, and convicted of trespassing in 2015, court records state. He pleaded no contest to impaired driving in 2012 and guilty to disorderly conduct in 2011.

By early October, Whittle had several warrants out for his arrest after he stopped showing up for scheduled court hearings, according to court records. He was arrested on those outstanding warrants by Sandy police on Oct. 8. He was released from jail on Thursday.

The incident is the sixth officer-involved shooting in Utah in two weeks, and the third involving a Unified police officer in five days. Men were killed in five of the six shootings.

"It has been a tough couple of weeks. Anytime these type of situations happen we want to make sure were taking a good look at everything, Rivera said.

"We want to make sure we know what occurred. We wait for the investigation and then well take a look at our own department to make sure  theres anything we can do differently. But that has to wait until after the investigation. We cant guess on what happened."

 On Thursday, members of the Metro Gang Unit and the U.S. marshal's Violent Fugitive Apprehension Team confronted Andrey Tkachenko, 23, of Salt Lake City, in an ally near 455 E. 300 South. A Unified police officer and an officer from the Saratoga Springs Police Department fired their weapons, she said. Tkachenko died en route to the hospital.

 On Wednesday, a Unified police officer shot James Lyle Kuehn, 61, of Kearns, who allegedly had just robbed a Mexican restaurant at knifepoint. Kuehn was hospitalized in critical condition but died from his injuries three days later.

 On Oct. 12, Jacob E. Albrethsen, 17, was shot and killed by Orem police officers responding to a "family problem" involving Albrethsen and a woman. While the officers were inside the home, police say Albrethsen came at them "armed with a knife."

 On Oct. 11, Diamonte Riviore, 22, was shot and killed by a West Jordan police officer responding to a domestic violence call. Riviore, who had a history of threatening his ex-girlfriend, was holding a knife when officers arrived, police say.

 On Oct. 10, a Tooele police officer looking for a man wanted in a domestic violence-related assault shot at Christopher Michael Ono, 27, after Ono allegedly pointed a gun at the officer. No one was injured, and Ono was arrested and later charged.SALT LAKE CITY  Theres a cop-doughnut joke here somewhere.

What happened: Florida police officers recovered a stolen van last week that was filled to the brim with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the Associated Press reports.

Police in Clearwater, Florida, posted a photo on Facebook that showed the officers standing in front of the van and holding the doughnuts.

A Krispy Kreme Doughnuts delivery van was stolen this morning from Lake City, Fla. It was recovered this afternoon at... Posted by Clearwater Police Department on Tuesday, October 16, 2018

How it happened: The van was reportedly stolen in the morning on Oct. 16 in Lake City, Florida.

The van loaded with doughnuts was spotted 190 miles from where it was stolen.

What happened next: The store manager donated the doughnuts to the police, who later handed them out to the homeless population in Clearwater, The Tampa Bay Times reports.

Its still unclear what happened to the thief.SALT LAKE CITY  Sen. Mike Lee reiterated his call for an end to U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen in light of its admitting to killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Killing a United States resident is never acceptable behavior, and the repeated failure to be honest about the incident should call into question the extent of our relationship with Saudi Arabia, Lee, R-Utah, said in a statement Monday.

"But setting aside the extent of our alliance generally, why should we continue to support Saudi Arabias war in Yemen when the kingdom is killing our residents and lying about it?"

It's far past time the U.S. had a serious debate about its military involvement in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, he said.

Saudi Arabia has presented changing stories of what happened to Khashoggi. After weeks of denying involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance, Saudi Arabia said he was killed in the Istanbul consulate as the result of a "fistfight."

In February, Lee, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., introduced a resolution to remove U.S. forces from fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi movement in Yemen. The U.S. has supported Saudi Arabia in the war against the Houthis, an Islamic sect that seized the Yemeni the capital of Sanaa and other parts of the country more than three years ago.

Lee said then that Congress' power to declare war has been "woefully eroded" over the past 100 years. He said presidents have claimed that power and Congress has been "all but too happy" to give it away to avoid tough votes.

The resolution, he said, is a first step toward Congress re-asserting its power over foreign policy decisions.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee tabled the resolution in March. Lee noted that committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said it should go back to the committee with a commitment that it advance legislation to "actually deal appropriately with many of the issues relative to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran and ourselves."

Lee said the committee has had six months to study the resolution.

It is time for a vote," he said.SALT LAKE CITY  The Utah Division of Consumer Protection announced Monday that the agency is joining in the first International Charity Fraud Awareness Week.

In addition to the Utah division, the Federal Trade Commission, National Association of State Charities Officials and global charity regulators are participating in the campaign, which is a coordinated international effort to help charities and consumers avoid fraud and promote wise giving.

Utah and other U.S. partners are collaborating with the Charities Commission for England & Wales, which has hosted its own fraud awareness week and is now expanding to other countries. In addition to U.S. participants, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, the New Zealand Charities Service and the Office of the Scottish Regulator are also participating in the international outreach effort.

Some nongovernmental participants are also involved, including Chartered Accountants Worldwide, the U.K.'s Fraud Advisory Panel, along with international charities Oxfam, British Council and Amnesty International.

"Our agency is pleased to support this worldwide consumer education initiative," said Francine Giani, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce. "The hope is that with the collective efforts of our partners during this premier campaign, more charitable dollars will end up in the right hands and not in fraudsters pockets."

This week, the effort will feature a social media campaign promoting wise giving tips focused on particular topics of interest each day. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission has produced new public service announcement videos on "Make Your Donations Count."

"Charity fraud continues to trap consumers and businesses as scammers become more sophisticated in creating schemes that play on the public's emotions," explained Daniel O'Bannon, Director of the Utah Division of Consumer Protection. "(Our agency) is proud to be part of the effort to put more user-friendly information into the public's hands no matter where they live."

Follow @UtahCommerce on Twitter for daily fraud tips and tune into the weeklong discussion by using the hashtag #CharityFraudOut.Paul Shane Strickland, 46, of Athens, was arrested and charged with one count of criminal homicide on Monday.

A joint investigation by special agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Madisonville Police Department, the Tennessee Highway Patrol and several other local law enforcement agencies resulted in the arrest.



At the request of 10th District Attorney General Steve Crump, on Sunday TBI agents joined Madisonville police officers, THP troopers, officers with the Vonore Police Department, and deputies with the Monroe, Blount, and Loudon County Sheriffs Offices in investigating a homicide in Madisonville.

The initial investigation indicates that Christopher Garrett, 26, of Madisonville was in the passenger seat of a vehicle traveling near the 3700 block of Highway 411. A woman was driving, and another male, Paul Strickland, was in the back seat. The investigation revealed the two men engaged in a verbal altercation, and at one point, the woman heard a popping sound and saw Garrett slump over in the seat. Agents learned that as she attempted to transport Garrett to a hospital, the vehicle collided with another vehicle on Highway 411. Strickland ran from the vehicle and into a wooded area, and was ultimately apprehended by law enforcement officers. The investigation identified him as the individual responsible for the death of Christopher Garrett.



On Monday, Strickland was arrested and charged with one count of criminal homicide. He was booked into the Monroe County Jail on an open court bond.

Advertisement

By West Kentucky Star Staff

Oct. 21, 2018 | HICKORY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 21, 2018 | 10:17 AM | HICKORY

Area law enforcement agencies are participating in Drug Take Back events today to help citizens dispose of unwanted, unused or expired prescription drugs.



The national Drug Enforcement Administration's drug take-back program collects these potentially dangerous prescriptions free and anonymously, with no questions asked. This removes the potential for them to be misused or abused.



Paducah Police are collecting from 10 am until 2 pm at the main entrance to Kentucky Oaks Mall on Hinkleville Road.



Kentucky State Police will also be collecting from 10:00 am through 2:00 pm in the front lobby of KSP Post 1 in Hickory.



Both agencies said they cannot accept liquids, needles or sharps - only pills and patches can be collected.



Over the years, thousands of tons of these prescriptions have been collected and safely disposed of by using the drug take-back program. Last year KSP collected 1,648 pounds during two take back events. Citizens across the U.S. safely disposed of 456 tons of old medications during the previous Take Back Day.SALT LAKE CITY  Organizers may have to work at a frightening speed if they want to apply for $200,000 in grants to promote and support neighborhood and community events.

The Arts, Culture and Events Fund, administered by the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office, grants awards ranging from $100 to $10,000.

Events supported by the fund should support the city's goals and vision in supporting citywide economic development; bringing arts, education and technology opportunities to all communities; promoting diversity, inclusion and cultural identity; protecting the local environment and building a sustainable city; creating neighborhood and community unity; and supporting the health and wellness of city residents.

Grant recipients will be announced in February. For more information, or to apply, log on to www.slc.gov/mayor/ace-fund.KEARNS  A man shot by police in Kearns last week after he allegedly attempted to rob a Mexican restaurant while armed with a knife has died from his injuries, police confirmed Monday.

Unified Police Sgt. Melody Gray said James Lyle Kuehn, 61, of Kearns, died Saturday at a local hospital from injuries he sustained from being shot by police.

On Wednesday, Kuehn went into Fiesta Ole, 4098 W. 5415 South, with a small knife, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in 3rd District Court. Kuehn demanded cash, but was chased out of the restaurant by a worker who grabbed a bigger knife from the kitchen, the report states.

Witnesses followed Kuehn to a home at 4450 W. 5700 South and told arriving officers about the incident, police said. Officers who confronted Kuehn in the yard said he did not comply with their orders and did not drop the knife.

After first attempting to use a Taser, which did not work, Kuehn was shot, according to police.

The Salt Lake City Police Department is investigating the officer-involved shooting.At I/O 2018 earlier this year, Google announced an anti-smartphone addiction feature called Digital Wellbeing. Its aim is to reduce your dependence on your smartphone. Digital Wellbeing relies on APIs of Android 9 Pie to keep a track of your usage. The feature was earlier exclusive to the Pixel devices, however, Juho Sarvikas, HMD Global's Chief Product Officer for Nokia phones announced that the feature is now rolling out to the Nokia 7.1 Plus and the Nokia 6.1 Plus, which are both Android One devices.

Digital Wellbeing keeps a track of the apps youve used the most and for how long. It takes into account the number of times you unlocked the phone and the number of notifications youve received in a day. Over time, you can get an idea of just how addicted you are to your smartphone. Theres a nifty dashboard to see it all. Further, The feature also turns the screen into grey to help you sleep better at night. Although, the results would be hardly surprising considering the influence these handheld devices have over our lives these days.

The feature is part of Nokias promise of keeping its devices up to date with the latest Android features. All the Nokia phones that launched this year are Android One certified which means all of them receives regular security upgrades every month. Further, all the devices carrying the Nokia moniker will receive version upgrades for the next two years. As part of the deal, Digital Well-being is also being pushed out to Nokia devices and the Nokia 7.1 Plus and the Nokia 6.1 Plus will be the first to receive it.

The feature will be available as a standalone app from the Google Play Store. Search for Digital Wellbeing by Google LLC on the store to get the link. However, when we searched for the app on the Play Store from our Nokia 6.1 Plus review unit, it was nowhere to be found. Its likely to be a gradual rollout. Further, Sarvikas had also earlier promised that the update to Android 9 Pie will be rolled out to both devices by the end of this year.Savour that last pint because the end is nigh. A new scientific report claims that beer supplies around the world will soon run dry, forcing the popular bevy to become a rare and expensive pastime.

The academic study published in the journal Nature Plants suggests that large-scale droughts brought on by current levels of climate change are disturbing the steady production of barley in high output regions. Barley, of course, is the main ingredient of beer and without a steady supply of barley there is no steady supply of beer.

What also doesnt help is the fact that barley crops tend to decline sharply during bouts of extreme heat and drought.

The researchers came to this conclusion whilst studying worldwide crop and economic models in order to assess our current climate patterns. Based off this result they wanted to be able to predict future climate patterns and their conclusion wasnt great.

According to the statistics, they predicted an average yield loss of barley ranging from 3  17 percent depending on the climates intensity.

So how expensive and damaging are we talking?

Experts predict that countries with major industries in beer brewing are likely to feel the most pain. A standard six-pack of beer will jump by US$4  $20 and possibly more.

Professor Steven J. Davis from the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, who is also one of the authors of the paper, warned that farmers will eventually stop selling their barley to the alcohol industry and use it to feed their livestock.

When we have these shortages, our models suggest people are going to feed the barley to the livestock before they make beer, said Professor Davis.

That makes sense. This is a luxury commodity and its more important to have food on the table. In an affluent country like the United States, people might not be so concerned if their bread gets 10 to 25 cents more expensive.

It could be that luxury goods are actually more visible, in terms of the impact of climate change on affluent consumers.

There is definitely a cross-cultural appeal to beer, and not having a cool pint at the end of an increasingly common hot day just adds insult to injury.

Are the days of cracking open a cold one done? Perhaps, but at least itll be a good excuse to move onto gin or whisky.Russia cautions as Trump moves to take US out of N-arms pact

Russia has warned against US President Ronald Trumps move to withdraw from a nuclear weapons treaty, calling it a dangerous step, after Trump announced plans to pull out of the Cold War era treaty.

President Trump said Washington would withdraw from a landmark Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe because Russia was violating the pact, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, required elimination of short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.

Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement so were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out, Trump told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Nevada.

"This would be a very dangerous step that, I'm sure, not only will not be comprehended by the international community but will provoke serious condemnation," deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov told state news agency TASS.

The treaty is "significant for international security and security in the sphere of nuclear arms, for the maintenance of strategic stability," he stressed. Russia condemned what he called attempts by the US to gain concessions "through a method of blackmail", he added.

If the US continues to act "clumsily and crudely" and unilaterally back out of international agreements "then we will have no choice but to undertake retaliatory measures including involving military technology," Ryabkov told RIA Novosti news agency.

"But we would not want to get to this stage," he added. On Saturday, Trump announced US plans to leave the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the INF, signed in 1987 by the then US president Ronald Reagan.

"We're the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we've honoured the agreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement, so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out," said Trump. But Ryabkov on Sunday denied Trump's accusations, throwing the accusation back at Washington.

"We don't just not violate (the treaty), we observe it in the strictest way," he insisted. "And we have shown patience while pointing out over the course of many years the flagrant violations of this treaty by the US itself." US National Security Advisor John Bolton is set to arrive in Moscow on Sunday.

Gorbachev, now a frail 87-year-old, said it would be a mistake for Washington to quit the treaty, and it would undermine work he and US counterparts did to end the Cold War Arms race.

Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to? Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin would seek answers about the planned withdrawal when he meets John Bolton, Trumps national security adviser, for scheduled talks in Moscow this week.

US authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development. China is not a party to the treaty.India, China sign agreement on internal security cooperation

India and China today signed an agreement on internal security cooperation, the first such agreement to be signed between the two countries, marking a new beginning in bilateral relations.

The agreement was signed after Zhao Kezhi, China's minister of public security, discussed various aspects of security cooperation between the two countries with his Indian counterpart home minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi today.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest, including bilateral counter-terrorism cooperation, and welcomed increased cooperation between India and China in the area of security cooperation.

The agreement covers areas of intelligence sharing, exchange programme, sharing of best practices, cooperation in disaster mitigation besides others.

The agreement will further strengthen and consolidate discussions and cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, organised crimes, drug control and other such relevant areas.

Zhao Kezhi is on a bilateral visit to India from 21 to 25 October 2018, during which he will also travel to Mumbai.

India, as one of the key emerging economies along the route of the Belt and Road initiative (BRI), is a partner that China cannot ignore as it seeks to diversify its international trade. China and India are the world's two most populated countries, as well as two crucial Asian economies. The cooperation between them is expected to become a yardstick of South-South cooperation, the Global Times wrote.

China and India are ancient civilizations and neighbors with a long history of friendship and there is plenty of scope for teamwork in fields such as trade, investment, infrastructure, the internet, culture and tourism, according to the newspaper.

Since 2014, the China-India economic and trade relationship has experienced rapid expansion, and it now drives the overall bilateral relationship. Trade totaled $84.4 billion in 2017, up 20.3 per cent from 2016, and China is India's largest trade partner. As of the end of 2017, China had invested $8 billion in the Indian market.

China and India have the need and potential to cooperate. The two countries are compatible in terms of their economic and industrial advantages.

India is a huge market for Chinese companies as they explore the broader South Asia market.

The signing of the internal security cooperation pact comes days after China informed India about a landslide in the trans-border Yarlung Zangbo river or the Brahmaputra and activated the emergency information sharing of hydrological data on an hourly basis.

China today said the flood situation in Yarlung Tsangpo river has returned to normal, which had risen due to the formation of an artificial lake created by a landslide + and blocking its main steam in Tibet, posing a threat to India's northeastern states .

China also said it will continue to share the flood data with India.By The Associated Press Oct. 15, 2018 | 10:04 PM | FRANKFORT

A judge in Kentucky has ordered officials not to certify the results of an election next month on whether to add protections for crime victims to the state's constitution, saying the question posed to voters on the ballot is misleading.

Kentucky is one of six states scheduled to vote next month on "Marsy's Law," a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee victims similar rights to those accused of crimes in the judicial system. The effort is backed by a California billionaire whose sister, Marsalee Nicholas, was slain in 1983.

Kentucky's version of Marsy's law would guarantee crime victims have 10 constitutional rights, including the right to be timely notified of all court proceedings, the right to be present for those hearings and the right to be heard in any hearing involving a release, plea or sentencing. It would also give victims the right to ask a judge to enforce those rights.

But the question posed to voters on the ballot says: "Are you in favor of providing constitutional rights to victims of crime, including the right to be treated fairly, with dignity and respect, and the right to be informed and to have a voice in the judicial process?"

The Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers sued, saying the question was misleading. On Monday, Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate agreed.

"Many voters may want crime victims to be treated 'fairly' and with 'dignity and respect,' but those same voters may not want to extend standing to a crime victim or decree the 10 specific enumerated rights to victims," Wingate wrote. "The electorate cannot be expected or required to vote on a constitutional amendment of which they are not accurately informed of the substance."

It's too late to remove the question from the ballot. The Nov. 6 election is just three weeks away, and absentee voting has already started. Monday's ruling means voters will still vote on the proposed amendment, and election officials will still count those votes. But the results won't be certified until after state appellate courts have a chance to issue a final ruling.

In Kentucky, Marsy's Law was pushed by Republican state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee and a candidate for state attorney general in 2019. He said he's disappointed in the ruling and plans to appeal directly to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

"I remain confident that (Marsy's Law) will be incorporated into the Kentucky Constitution by the voters of the Commonwealth," he said.

David Ward, president of the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he agreed with the judge's ruling. He expects the ruling to hold up on appeal.

In Kentucky, most of the rights asserted in the proposed amendment are already covered by state law. But supporters say adding them to the state constitution would make them more secure. Critics, like the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, worry about the courts granting legal status to a victim when the judicial system  which is rooted in the presumption of innocence  has yet to determine if a crime took place.

The critics also voiced concerns that the amendment would let the state legislature, not the courts, set rules for criminal proceedings.

In Florida, a state judge ruled a Marsy's Law ballot question also was misleading. But the Florida Supreme Court overturned that decision and the question will appear on the ballot next month.

A version of Marsy's Law has been put into the constitutions of at least 15 states. This year, Kentucky and Florida are two of six states  including Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Oklahoma  voting on a version of Marsy's Law. Marsy's Law for Kentucky, a nonprofit group advocating for the change, has spent more than $4.5 million on a statewide advertising campaign.

In a news release, the group criticized the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense lawyers for waiting "until the eleventh hour, just before the election, to put forward this unnecessary lawsuit."World's longest sea bridge to open for traffic tomorrow

The world's longest sea bridge, the 55-km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge that links the cities of Hong Kong and Macau to the Chinese mainland, will open for traffic tomorrow, but only to drivers with a special permit.

The bridge links Hong Kongs Lantau Island to Zhuhai on the southern coast of Guangdong province and the gambling hub of Macau, a popular tourist spot for Chinese visitors, to the Chinese mainland.

The $20 billion Chinese project, which is part of a broader contentious plan to integrate the special administrative regions into China, is one of the most criticised initiatives in Hong Kong, where the bridge is seen as another way for Beijing to extend its control.

In Hong Kong, residents believe it is a poor use of taxpayer funds while conservationists blame the bridge construction for falling numbers of the threatened Chinese white dolphin. Others say the bridge is another way for Beijing to bind the autonomous administrative regions closer to China.

The bridge is not just a mega transport infrastructure jointly built by Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, Hong Kongs secretary for transport and housing, Frank Chan Fan, said on Friday.

The collaboration between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao in terms of trade, finance, logistics and tourism will be strengthened. Hong Kong will assume a more proactive role in the development of the Greater Bay Area.

Chinese president Xi Jinping is reportedly planning to attend the official opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge on Tuesday.

Officials are billing the 55km bridge as a key part of the Greater Bay Area plan, a campaign to connect Hong Kong and Macau to 11 Chinese cities to form a high-tech region to rival Silicon Valley.

Private cars will only be able to use it after applying for a special permit. The crossing will mostly be used by private shuttle buses and freight vehicles. The bridge is not served by public transport.

Under construction since 2009, the structure is supported by three cable-stayed bridges and designed to withstand winds of up to 340km an hour. A 6.7km undersea tunnel has been built to avoid disrupting shipping lanes, connected by two artificial islands.

Towers above the bridge are designed to look like dolphins, in honour of the white dolphin, Chinese knots and a boats mast, according to the bridges designer. The curves of the road are meant to resemble a snake.Diesel now costs more than petrol in Odisha

Diesel became costlier than petrol in India for the first time with the selling price of diesel stood 12 paise higher than that of petrol in Bhubaneswar, Odisha when diesel per litre was selling at Rs80.69 per litre while petrol was priced at Rs80.57 per litre.

The in Bhubaneswar per litre diesel prices have crossed that of petrol. Meanwhile, in the national capital Delhi, a city-wide strike of petrol pumps has been observed today.

This is the first time that the price of diesel surpassed that of petrol in Odisha, where the government levies a uniform 26 per cent VAT (Value Added Tax) on both petrol and diesel while other states have different VAT rates for petroleum products.

This imbalance is mostly due to faulty policy of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre ... There could be a tactical understanding between the central government and oil marketing companies, S B Behera, Finance Minister, Odisha was quoted in a PTI report.

Earlier on Sunday, union minister of petroleum and natural gas Dharmendra Pradhan asked the Odisha government to slash the VAT rates in order to provide relief to consumers.

Meanwhile, in the national capital Delhi, petrol pumps observed a city-wide strike today. About 400 petrol refueling stations remained shut to protest against Delhi governments refusal to lower VAT on petrol, diesel.

The central government had slashed the rate of petrol and diesel by Rs 2.50 per litre each on September 4. This was followed by a reduction of VAT by various states including neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh bringing relief to their residents. But Delhi government refused to reduce VAT on fuel both petrol and diesel resulting in fuel becoming more expensive than bordering Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA), was stated in an ANI report."Change in consumer behaviour has given impetus to design for differentiation"

Anuj Prasad is a leading designer and an alumnus of the National Institute of Design (NID), having completed his masters in product design in 1993. An engineer by profession, he is now better known as a design entrepreneur. And the engineer-designer is also an artist, whose paintings reflect the vibrancy of form and colour.

A founding member of the National Committee of Design of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he has been a jury member of the India Design Mark since inception.

Prasad, the founder and CEO of Desmania, one of the top industrial design studios in India, with its head office in Gurgaon, talks to Nithin Rao on the growing importance of the design industry in India, especially in sectors such as automobiles and urban planning.

What are the major developments in the Indian design industry and cutting across various sectors including industrial, architectural, interior, landscape, furniture, fashion, leather, retail and graphic and animation?

Indian industry has evolved rapidly in the post-liberalisation era. Consumer demand and increasing spending power has been instrumental in this major shift. With rising incomes and expanding middle class, the markets have over-flooded with products that entice the consumer for a better lifestyle or sheer consumption to feel good. This revolutionary change in consumer behaviour has given a great impetus to design for differentiation.

The industry has lapped the demand by increasing production and enhancing variety to cater to the tastes of the new generation. With the widespread penetration of TV with multiple channels, the consumer has gained unprecedented importance in the mind of producers. This has led to a consistent growth in GDP.

The landscape has suddenly become very fertile for the designers. Their talent is being utilised for one-upmanship of all kinds of manufacturers. Also, the accessibility of design, with a growing availability of talent, is seen as a major catalyst in the choice available for the consumer. The market is vibrant now and will continue to remain so.

E-com companies have further added fuel to the fire by creating an impulsive buying culture, to meet the aspirations of the middle-class.

The times ahead portend more production, more design and more consumption. Only thing that we need to be careful about is the sustainability. Our country cannot afford unabashed growth at the cost of the environment. Our resources are limited, and designers need to inculcate this challenge in their process.

Is there growing awareness in India - among manufacturers and service providers and consumers - on the importance of designs in the products and services that are marketed today?

Design is becoming the biggest differentiator and is at the helm of product development. Manufacturers and service providers have recognised that a great product without a great design is a doomed offering. They are very well aware that in a crowded market where functionality is taken for granted, it is design which swings the decision making. Many pre-and post-launch research for the new products have affirmed this fact.

Consumers have also shown a deep inclination towards products that reflect empathy for their desires and problems. Apart from imparting aesthetics to the products, design is also a great tool to solve consumer/user problems which have origin from their socio-cultural-economic background.

Last but not least, brands are gaining ground in consumers mind. Design plays a major role in creating perception about a brand. This is both at a visual and emotional level. In reality, design is the mother of all trusted brands. Now companies vouch for the deeply researched design that has user-centric features.

The same phenomenon has taken place in the digital space. The online apps circle around the ease of use, look and feel and user stereotypes.

Do you see a gradual decline in the churning out of shoddy products by manufacturers as a consequence of growing awareness about the importance of designs?

Though we still have a long way to go, the green shoots are visible. Shoddy designs are disastrous for business. Manufacturers, large and small, are getting a taste of design through business success. Now they use design as a tool to meet their business objectives. Yet, design is still at a fledgling state and there is enough scope to dig deeper to unearth its real value. It is value, perceived and experienced, that is the key to a good design.

Indian consumers face a lot of problems while handling products including sachets, food and drink packets (even on flights), and packages containing products couriered to them. However, many companies and brands are still not conscious of the need to design products that are consumer-friendly. What are the reasons for this gross negligence?

Packaging is one of the first early adopters of design. Unfortunately, the connotation of packaging design is either to attract the consumer or just to protect the content. Usability of packaging is not yet fully exploited. This is the main reason that many products have frustrating packing from the consumers perspective. It is true that sachets, bottle caps, etc are a struggle to open.

FMCG companies work on a basic premise to cut cost because of its magnifying effect on savings and increased profitability. Nevertheless, with the growing competition, they have no choice but to invest in user friendly packaging. Problem solving for opening and dispensing has only touched the tip of the iceberg. Also, environment friendly packaging is being thrust upon these manufacturers through policies and regulation.

I have seen that most of the big brands are now revisiting their packaging design to solve both of the above problems. It will be prudent for them to make investments that reduce material, solve user problems and explore the possibility of using green materials and substrates. Inclusive packaging should integrate all these three elements of design.

The automobiles sector in India has seen a lot of developments in the designing of vehicles. But besides cars, do you see commercial vehicles also becoming consumer-friendly in terms of designing over the coming years?

Sale of personal vehicles (PVs) is driven by the combination of design, brand, price and performance. Not necessarily in the same order, but definitely design as a precursor. OEMs are trying to create emotional connect with the customers through technology integration and feature based design.

Tata Motors, for instance, has seen a surge in sales because its new cars resonate with the new generations desires. It has been primarily driven by design. Overwhelming acceptance of design in the PV segment is largely because customer is also the user and he considers design as a reflection of his personality.

In the Commercial Vehicle (CV) segment, the customer is seldom the user. Price plays a big role in determining the buy. User comfort (read driver comfort) is never the priority for the buyer. Hence design is limited to the surface level of differentiation. In the developed markets, where the user (driver) is more evolved, manufacturers have been giving a similar design treatment to the CVs as in PVs. With the advent of brands like Volvo, Daimler, Scania, etc. in the CV segment, there is growing awareness among the Indian manufacturers to differentiate through design not only styling but also through experience (comfort in the interiors).

With the rapid growth in demand for low-cost housing, do you see designers stepping in and helping builders in developing affordable, yet attractive flats?

Urbanisation and smart cities concept is getting the traction that it deserved. Urban poor were a neglected lot until now, but with mass scale migration to urban centres, it is imperative that a large consumer base is getting ready for spending. However, pricing and affordability are the key challenges for the real estate industry. At the same time shrinking resources of water and land are forcing them to innovate on housing.

Still, housing and urban planning is the domain of architects. Mostly they are yet to accept the fact that designers can add value and help them in innovating better eco-systems. Value creation is a bigger subject to be addressed and this can only be done through design thinking.

We have advocated enough to penetrate this domain, but with limited success. One of the key digress from the usual was when we were invited to give inputs in a smart city project. The architect team was astounded to have us on board. With great skepticism they asked the role of design in building smart cities. Our answer was that our intervention will make the city soulful.

Is there a shortage of design specialists in the country? Is there need for more schools dedicated to designing?

At this point we have many new design schools emerging all over the country. There is also an oversupply of designers especially in the area of Fashion and Communication. Yet, for a country of 1.25 billion, the number of professional designers is still miniscule. Today it looks like an oversupply is basically because the government, which is the largest spender, has still not adopted design. The day they make it mandatory for government projects to have design as an essential ingredient, we will see a shortage of design specialists.

In more developed economies, design is on the national agenda. Countries like the UK, Italy, France and Netherlands are branded as design countries, whereas late adopters like China and Singapore are reaping enough benefits by treading the path of design.

Could you tell us about the future plans of Desmania and its approach towards the second quarter century of operations?

We have many big plans for the future. The first one is to establish Desmania Innovation Labs (DIL), the foundation for which is already laid. We have realised over the last quarter century of our existence that the corporate and government are both fearful of innovation. We would like to be the pathbreakers in this area. We want to solve problems of Indian people through innovation. Design is the subset of Innovation and DIL will help us in creating value for our people.

We are in a process of democratising design and remove the elitist tag from it. This is being done through a portal that will make design accessible to smaller companies who cannot afford design in their current avatar.

There is more in store. As design thinking becomes a business tool, we plan to create a knowledge company that will consult with the corporate and government to bring out latent benefits of design.

Design is infinite. As new technologies keep emerging, humanising them will be the task of designers and we are well equipped to take up that role.Dark blue walls, warm wood, parquet floors and metal light fixtures evoke the opulence of high-class travel. The idea of imitating a train station originated from the pre-existing arches in the space, which in turn take their form from the vaulted roof of the building. The customers are travelers who have at their disposal a bar area, restaurant and private dining rooms. In these renovated spaces an ideal voyage is reproduced, with all the elements: the ticket office, the big hall, the tracks, and finally the trains.

Thirteen years after first appearing on supermarket shelves, Australias first and only truly purse worthy fem-care products have had a make-over. Moxie tampons, complete in reusable and recyclable purse-worthy tins, first launched at Woolworths in early 2006. To mark Moxies 13th Birthday, the brand has had a glow-up (an urban term used to describe an incredible transformation) and is excited to re-launch its tampons in new-look packs at Woolworths stores nationally, where it all first began.

Moxie came to be because I was sick of having tampons roll around in (and out of!) my handbag, said Mia Klitsas, Moxie Co-founder.

Our aim was to combine function and convenience with style in order to provide women with a product that truly met our needs, whilst looking as slick and stylish as all the other products that we have in our artillery.

We have a great relationship with our Moxettes and theyre very vocal about what they want in the products they use. Our glow-up is very much a reflection of that.

In line with consumer needs and wants and as a result of Moxies extensive market research, Moxies new packs will now include one (previously two) unique and discreet chic tin, that has been designed with minimal branding so that it can easily be re-filled or up-cycled. Each pack will now also contain 20 tampons (previously 16). Every detail; from the slick outer pack embossing to the informative inner leaflet (featuring period hacks and other useful info), has been meticulously considered and designed to bring an extra touch of luxe to a product type and category that has previously often been deemed clinical.

The word Moxie means to have guts, determination and spunk and was a term often used to describe women in the 1930s and 40s. Moxies new-look tampons in Regular and Super variants are available for $5.00 each exclusively in Woolworths stores nationally from 19.10.18.

Dynamic Business sat down with Moxies Co-founder Mia Klitsas to discuss the companys new launch.

What made you relaunch?

Moxie has always been about modern femininity and style; over the last 13 years, femininity has evolved and we felt it was important to evolve with it! The new design is more minimalist and premium looking (with embossing and foil logos) and also focuses on less waste and better value (each pack now contains one re-fillable/reusable/recyclable tin and 20 tampons instead of 16).

What kind of preparation goes into a redesign/ relaunch?

Lots of market research, discussions with and feedback from our Moxettes (our most fiercely loyal customers), consultations and collaborations with retailers and design teams it was a lengthy process that we worked diligently on for over a year.

Did you outsource any help from experts?

We worked with Melbourne-based design agency The Company You Keep who really understood our vision and helped us bring it to life.

What is the biggest lesson you have learnt from these last 13 years?

Despite the temptations to employ day-to-day, short-term tactical programs to grow the business and compete with major players (i.e. deep price discounting), weve instead mostly focused on and invested in our overall brand strategy  which has resulted in strong brand loyalty and a truly unique proposition for the category that cant be easily replicated.

What is the biggest milestone in the last 13 years?

The biggest milestone was having Woolworths as our first major retail stockist and national platform in which to launch the Moxie range, all those years ago. And now, with the brand re-launch, we get to do it all over again!

Biggest hurdle that you overcame?

So many over the years, but one that comes to mind immediately is having survived the GFC!Advertisement

By West Kentucky Star Staff

Oct. 19, 2018 | RICHMOND

By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 19, 2018 | 11:05 PM | RICHMOND

Every third week of October, which is Bullying Prevention Month, schools across Kentucky have an opportunity to partner with their local lawmakers, first responders and community to observe Kentucky Safe Schools Week. The week provides an opportunity to raise awareness of school safety issues while discussing and enhancing initiatives at the local and state level.



This year's theme for October 21-27 is "BE INCREDIBLE, Reveal Your Superhero!" with an emphasis on students. Put simply, being incredible is being the best you can possibly be. Every student has incredible super skills and talents that make them unique and strong. The Kentucky Center for School Safety asks students to band together with school staff and the community to create a safe "family-like" culture at school. Incredible super powers can be used fighting against bullying, cyberbullying, harassment, conflict, hate and violence while spreading empathy, compassion and respect.



As quoted from the Disney "Incredibles 2" movie "It's time to make some wrong things right, help us bring Supers back into the sunlight."



Fighting to solve these issues may be as easy as leaving an online tip, where students can be a "Silent Hero" and help without fear of retaliation. The Kentucky Center for School Safety offers to partner with schools and provide a "free" online reporting tool, the S.T.O.P! TIPLINE. It encourages students, parents or community members who know of an unsafe situation in school to anonymously pass on that information to school personnel in a digital format. Check it out at www.kycss.org/stop/resources.php



During Safe Schools Week, the KCSS website supplies a variety of teaching aids, along with the online pledge against bullying and a Kentucky Safe Schools Week Tool Kit. It's loaded with resources such as daily announcements, activity pages, PowerPoint presentations, lessons, videos, scenarios, interactive websites and much more. Resources will also be available for school administrators, parents and community involvement at www.kysafeschools.org/ssw.php



This year's online pledge against bullying highlights the word SUPER and the qualities necessary to bring "Supers" into the sunlight!



S-Strong, U-Understanding, P-Powerful, E-Encouraging and R-Respectful!



www.kysafeschools.org/sswpledgeWhat is fracking?

Fracking is a process of blasting water, chemicals and frac sand deep into the earth to break up sedimentary rock and access natural gas and crude oil deposits. The fracking industry, which has sought to promote the practice as safe and controlled, has preferred the term "hydraulic fracturing."

Fracking emerged as an unconventional, "relatively new" and extremely popular technique only about 20 years ago in the U.S., after advances in technology gave it an unprecedented ability to identify and extract massive amounts of resources efficiently.

Fracking is one of the most important environmental issues today, and it's a prime example of how a new technology that offers immediate economic and political benefits can outpace (often less obvious) environmental and health concerns.

Why is fracking so controversial?

Modern fracking emerged so quickly, faster than its impacts were understood. Just as importantly, once scientists, health experts and the public started to object with evidence of harm it was causing, business and government succeeded in perpetuating a message of uncertainty, that more research was necessary, further enabling the "full speed ahead" fracking juggernaut.

How does fracking impact the environment?

Fracking's supporters have pushed an environmental angle, insisting that natural gas can be a "bridge fuel," a cheaper, cleaner option than coal before we have a large-scale transition to renewable energy. This claim has some merit, as natural gas does emit much less carbon dioxide than coal or oil. However, it is still a fossil fuel, adding harmful emissions while the climate crisis worsens. Moreover, fracking wells leak methane, a greenhouse gas more than 25 times more potent than CO2.

Water

In order to break up rock formations one to two miles deep, a fracking operation requires millions of gallons amount of water. After it's used, the resulting wastewater, which contains chemicals is pumped back into injection wells, sent to treatment plants, or can be dangerously dumped or spilled.

In 2016 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report skewed friendly to industry in its language: Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources in the United States. The EPA acknowledged that drinking water contamination was possible, but ultimately came to this conclusion: "Data gaps and uncertainties limited EPA's ability to fully assess the potential impacts on drinking water resources locally and nationally."

Earthquakes

According to the U.S. Geologic Survey, disposal of wastewater has caused an increase in earthquakes in the central U.S. Seismologists have reported that fracking's initial blasting process can trigger earthquakes.

Air Pollution



In addition to methane, fracking releases many toxic contaminants into the air. EPA has acknowledged the public health threat, but a lack of urgent political pressure has sidelined the agency into advising on ways to control and reduce, rather than eliminate, the danger.

Toxic Chemicals

Fracking fluids contain unknown chemicals and known carcinogens such as benzene. Fracking companies haven't been required to disclose their proprietary formulas, however. This is yet another example of how uncertainty serves as an enabling force. The EPA has identified more than 1,000 different chemicals used in fracking fluid.

Wildlife

Fracking can destroy wildlife habitats, pollute rivers and fisheries, poison birds, and use up water supplies that animals need to survive.

How does fracking affect the economy?

The fracking boom made the U.S. the world's largest producer of oil and gas, reducing its energy imports from 26% to less than 4%. It has lowered oil and gas prices and created thousands of industry jobs. While fracking companies profited greatly at first, as prices dropped their margins collapsed. Many are now going bankrupt.

How is fracking regulated?

Congress has enabled the oil and gas industry to be exempt from such regulations as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Fracking surged during the Obama administration, which moved to protect water from fracking on federal lands in 2015. Subsequently, the Trump administration sought to roll back protections and expand fracking on federal lands.

Key Examples of Fracking in the United States

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale is the source for about 40% of shale gas production in the U.S.

New York

While the Marcellus Shale also runs through New York, the state has banned fracking.

Texas

Texas produces more crude oil than any other state.

North Dakota

The Bakken Shale in North Dakota has been one of the main sites for the fracking boom and subsequent bust, leaving behind extensive environmental damage.

A recent report found that all 50 states could provide 100% (or even greater) in-state renewable energy.



Other Countries



Outside the U.S., only Canada, China and Argentina have commercial fracking operations. A UN report in 2018 said that other countries were "highly unlikely" to produce at such a large scale as the U.S., due to political and cultural factors, and existing infrastructure.

The Future of Fracking

While renewables were considered a solution for "peak oil" only a decade ago, fracking changed the terms of the debate, with a new focus from environmentalists to "keep it in the ground" starting in 2015.

The Biden administration now stands at a pivotal moment in the climate crisis. Biden's stance on fracking is not yet entirely clear, but he has rejoined the Paris agreement and appears to take climate seriously. At the same time, he is sympathetic to workers in fossil fuel industries, was vice president during the fracking boom years under Obama, and may be more inclined to seek a gradual transition than one fast enough to help solve the crisis.Getting back to normal after a devastating hurricane is long, arduous, and expensive for schools.

In Floridas Panhandle, education leaders have started the strenuous work of cleaning up and repairing schools ravaged by Hurricane Michael earlier this month, but they are also running into a longer-term problem: steep cost estimates that could lead to mounting piles of bills.

In North Carolina, where Hurricane Florence walloped communities across the state and some schools remain closed more than five weeks later, education officials are just now getting a clear picture of the storms heavy hit to districts finances and the deep emotional blow to students, teachers, and school communities. Some districts were running into roadblocks with their insurance providersincluding the state education agencyover what storm damage would be covered.

New Hanover County, N.C., was one of the hardest-hit regions. There, Superintendent Tim Markley dipped into the districts estimated $15 million surplus to allocate up to $9 million to pay for schools to be cleaned up and readied for students to return. While the district has had no disagreements with its private insurer over flood coverage for four of its schools located in flood zones, its state-provided insurance has been a different story. That policy, Markley said, has a mold exclusion. An insurance adjuster told district officials that cleanup of moldwhich was found in nearly all the damaged schoolsmay not be covered, Markley said.

Our contention is that the hurricane caused the water damage to the drywall, and its the water damage that should be covered, Markley said. The fact that we couldnt come in and deal with the water damage led to the mold.

Markley was also told that the insurance may not cover damages caused by a leaky roof if the leak existed before the storm.

We are going to make the claims and see what gets rejected, said Markley, who has discussed the hurdles with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson and elected officials.

Reserve Funds for Emergencies

North Carolina lawmakers approved a measure last week to send millions of dollars to schools as part of a recovery package. But some schools were already haggling with the North Carolina Department of Public Instructionan insurer of many districtsover what it would pay for. Whether the agencys policies would pay for mold damage, HVAC failures, and some roof damage was still being negotiated.

In the meantime, districts are tapping surplus funds to make speedy repairs. They hope to recoup the money later, either through reimbursements from insurance or from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which requires painstaking documentation and can take years to materialize.

The saving grace for many districts could be whether they have cash on hand to hire contractors and prevent small problems from morphing into bigger, more expensive ones, said David Stephens, the executive director of risk management for the Florida School Boards Insurance Trust, which provides insurance to several of the states districts.

While larger districts may have a big fund balance to draw on and the wherewithal to have contractors lined up ahead of a storm, smaller districts may not have had the opportunity to build up a reserve to cover this magnitude of expenses.

The initial problem a lot of the districts are going to have is actually finding people to do the work, Stephens said. If they dont have pre-positioned contracts, where youll have some of the large companies come in and start the process of drying out the facilities, rebuilding them ... then you are going to run into a lot of secondary problems: mold, mildew, those kinds of things.

But building up such a rainy day fund can be difficult as reserves are often looked upon as luxuriesdollars that should be used to reduce property taxes or increase teachers salaries, said Andrea Messina, the executive director of the Florida School Boards Association who was on Floridas Charlotte County school board when Hurricane Charley hit in 2004.

This is one of the reasons why it is crucial for districts to have more than a 2 or 3 percent fund balance thats unappropriated, Messina said. School districts never know when events like this are going to happen.

All of those extra dollars are eyed by any group or line item that needs additional funds, when in fact districts need to save a certain amount of money for things like this, she said.

In Florida, districts insured through the Florida School Boards Insurance Trust can tap into a reserve fund that the trust keeps for when districts face catastrophic events. That gives schools almost immediate access to cash to hire contractors, who are lined up ahead of time by the trust, Stephens said.

Worrisome Enrollment Losses

Back in North Carolina, districts are beginning to tally deep enrollment losses, as the numbers of students and families made homeless by Florence surge.

In New Bern, N.C., 117 of the 406 students at Oaks Road Academy were absent on the first day students returned to school after the storm, and the numbers have gotten worse, Superintendent Meghan Doyle said.

Rebuilding can be overwhelming in a place where both residents and local businesses suffer significant losses, Messina said.

What we typically see after these events is that the family will relocate to some other state, region, or city with family members with whom they can stay before they can get on their feet, she said. It may take a few years before they get back to this area.

After Hurricane Charley, many Charlotte County families didnt return, and the district ended up with about 2,000 fewer students than it anticipated over time, Messina said.

Enrollment drops can have financial consequences for districts because state funding is often based in part on the numbers of students who attend. (In North Carolina, the state department of public instruction has said that it will use the average daily membership over the first four months of the school year, rather than the first two months to divvy up the states $10 billion in K-12 funding.)

Multimillion Dollar Damages

Some Florida school officials, who are still in the earlier stages of inspecting storm damage, did not even want to begin to guess how much it will cost or how they will pay for whats predicted to be the most expensive storm in the states history.

Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart, who visited with school officials in three counties last week, said that expenses from Hurricane Michael were likely to be historic, like the storm itself.

Jim Norton, the superintendent of the Gulf County school district, a school system of about 1,900 students, estimated multimillion dollar in storm damages. The countys four schools were not piles of rubble, but were all affected, he said.

Norton is hoping to open schools this week. Schools in the northern part of the county still did not have power last week, while others in the southern end were being used as shelters and staging areas for utility companies, FEMA workers, and other disaster relief workers, he said.

Norton marveled that one of the schools, Port St. Joe Elementary, which was built in the 1950s as a high school, withstood the storms ferocious winds, which registered up to 150 miles an hour in some places.

It is built like the rock, and it really weathered the storm, he said. It was spared. I dont know how; I dont know why.

But the wider community was just devastated, said Norton, who lost some cottages and whose furniture from his home ended up in a neighbors yard.

Among the hardest-hit areas was Mexico Beach, whose students attend Gulf County schools in the town of Port St. Joe.

Many of those students are connected to the Tyndall Air Force Basewhich took a heavy hit in the stormand teachers who live in Mexico Beach have lost their homes, Norton said. And he predicts that will lead to the loss of students when schools finally reopen.

We will have school up and [going] because we have people who want to see their community rise again, Norton said.

The Bay County district, which includes Panama City, did not give a timeline for opening, but said that it was working on a plan that will likely include students from badly damaged schools sharing space at other campuses.Punita, youre Indian, can you tell the rest of the class a little about Diwali?

I wasnt sure how to respond to my teachers question. I was in 7th grade, and I didnt have a speech memorized on the significance of Diwali (a holiday celebrated throughout India but observed differently across regions and religions).

It wasnt a heartbreaking experience, but I remember still that I felt like I was somehow a bad Indian for not being able to teach everyone else about the holiday. At the time, I didnt think to be offended, but I was embarrassed. I remember feeling like I had let my teacher and classmates down.

I dont believe my teacher was trying to make me uncomfortable, but she should not have put me in that position. As a 12-year-old South Asian American kid, I shouldnt have had to feel guilty for not being a scholar on Indian history or holidays.

In asking me to speak as a representative for all Indian Americans, my teacher wasnt just showing a lapse in judgment, or even just a lack of cultural literacy . She was engaging in a kind of microaggression , and she was asking me to assume the role of teacher, rather than learnera role I shouldnt have had to take on.

Othering Students

My experience is far from unique. My own research on the K-12 experiences of South Asian Americans , conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation with the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, finds that many South Asian American students face discrimination and negative interactions in schools. Teachers expect them to serve as ambassadors for their race or culture, regardless of how little they might know or be reasonably expected to know.

This creates unreasonable pressure. There are doubtless some 10- or 12-year-old kids who know a great deal about the cultural significance of any number of holidays, but for the most part, they are not subject matter experts. As one of the participants in my study shared:

There were a few times I wondered what they [teachers] were thinking. My 5th grade teacher [name omitted] in particular stands out because we studied India in class and she was asking me if I thought the books were accurate; she seemed to think my ethnicity made me an expert on India, nevermind I was 10 years old.

Similarly, another participant in my research described how his teachers would ask him a million questions when we were studying ancient India (adding, like I knew anything).

These kinds of exchanges also single the student out, and are a kind of microaggression . Microaggressions are those little, day-to-day manifestations of racism that people of color continue to experience regularly, and which are often normalized and overlooked as innocuous or insignificant . Asking students to be spokespersons for their culture in school communicates that the teacher sees the student as not American, as a foreigner .

Though we need more research on the challenges South Asian American students face in schools, plenty of past research has documented the harmful impacts of microaggressions , including for Asian American groups .

In her 2009 work on microaggressions , researcher Janice McCabe found that it is common for students of color to be expected to speak for all people from their race or cultural background, and even to feel an ongoing daily pressure to be a spokesperson for their race. Likewise, a participant in my own work described how his teachers singled him out for his background:

[They] treated me like any of the other kids, except for when the topic India is brought up. Then theyd assume I was an expert on Indian culture and ask me very general or stereotypical questions about Indian attitudes on subjects such as marriage or grades or jobs  . [I]t was annoying to be singled out during class.

Academic Disadvantage

Expecting students to serve as cultural ambassadors or spokespeople doesnt just reflect a lack of basic cultural competence, it can even serve to inhibit a students own academic growth.

One participant in my study described how her teachers always assigned her topics related to India or pressured her to represent India in school, at the expense of her own learning:

I was always assigned to the India group and was expected to bring items from my house to enrich the class with diverse experiences, while learning nothing myself  . They [teachers] also assumed I needed no learning assistance and used me to help other students. Instead of challenging me, they would have me tutor other students, even talking them through test questions and helping them take school tests.

This participants teachers may have had good intentions in asking her to share about India. They might have been hoping to enrich other students knowledge or celebrate diverse backgrounds in their classroom. But in doing so, these teachers positioned this student to serve her peers at the cost of her own learning and growth.

This is not to say teachers should never ask about students backgrounds or invite them to share their heritages with their classes. But there is a fine line between inviting them to share, and pressuring or positioning them to speak as representatives of their culture.

How can teachers know what kind of questions are appropriate, and what might make a student uncomfortable?

First, treat every student as an individual. If you know your student well, you might already have a sense of how knowledgeable she is about her familys backgroundor whether shes even the kind of kid who would want to share.

Next, and perhaps more importantly, teachers should avoid putting a student on the spot. If you think students might want to share their personal experiences as part of a lesson, engage them ahead of time to check. This also gives you the opportunity to vet what theyre sharing and determine how to frame it in a broader context.

Finally, teachers should be self-reflective. Ask yourself: Are you inviting all students to share elements of their backgrounds and what matters to them (culture and heritage included), so that you are not singling out students of color?

When we invite our students to share their backgrounds and valuesall of our studentsthen we foster inclusion and respect for diversity. But when teachers position students of color to serve as spokespersons for their culture, we risk making them feel othered and we detract from their own opportunities for enrichment, learning, and growth.Major Regional Crime Gang Busted



Library Picture: Seized Drugs

An organised crime gang who smuggled heroin and cocaine in to the of Isle of Man have been jailed for more than 220 years.

The 26 members of the gang were convicted on Friday of conspiracy to supply class A and class B drugs.

Police say the group, based in Liverpool, sold and pushed drugs in Merseyside, the North of England and Isle of Man.

During the investigation on 8 separate occasions detectives seized Heroin (1.5 kilos in total), Cocaine (2.5kg in total) and 53 kilos of cannabis with an estimated total street value of 453k.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Reardon from Merseyside Police told Energy FM its a great result following the 18-month investigation.

Media

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Reardon - Merseyside PoliceTevir Group Buys Villiers Site

The company behind the purchase of the Castle Mona has announce the acquisition of another major site on the Island.

Tevir Group have now added the Villiers Site in Douglas to their portfolio.

A large part of the site has been empty since RBSI moved out of Villiers House and Tevir say they'll be refurbishing the building as well as tidying up the Town Square area.

A spokesperson for the Group said that work is also underway to refurbish the former Zurich building and to protective works at the Castle Mona.Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. 1. Intensive blood pressure lowering may not induce true kidney disease after all

Abstract: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M18-1037

URLs go live when the embargo lifts

Creatinine elevations, commonly seen during intensive blood pressure (BP) lowering, most likely do not represent true kidney disease, but may instead reflect benign reductions in kidney blood flow that occur naturally during treatment. The findings, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, represent a major advancement in the understanding of whether kidney tissue damage accompanies the diagnosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD) during hypertension therapy.

The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) clinical trial demonstrated that more intensive systolic blood pressure management (target <120mmHg) reduced rates of major cardiovascular events and mortality. However, intensive BP lowering is associated with a 3-fold incidence of CKD, as measured by serum creatinine levels. Given the lower blood pressure targets in the recently-updated national hypertension guidelines, there has been substantial concern that guideline implementation of BP targets could cause an epidemic of CKD.

Researchers from the University of California San Francisco and the University of California San Diego used a panel of validated urinary biomarkers of kidney damage to compare kidney function between SPRINT participants who developed CKD and matched controls. Where creatinine concentration is an indirect reflection of the kidney's filtering function, urinary biomarkers measure actual kidney damage. As such, the researchers found that the diagnosis of CKD during intensive hypertension treatment was not associated with true kidney tissue damage and thus may not represent real disease. These findings highlight the major limitations of current clinical standards to diagnose and monitor CKD.

Media contact: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Lauren Evans at laevans@acponline.org. To interview the lead author, Michael Shlipak, MD, MPH, please contact Scott Maier at scott.maier@ucsf.edu. 2. Algorithm safely rules out pulmonary embolism in pregnant women

Abstract: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M18-1670

Editorial: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M18-2818

URLs go live when the embargo lifts

A diagnostic strategy based on assessment of clinical probability, D-dimer measurement, bilateral lower limb compression ultrasonography (CUS), and computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA) can safely rule out pulmonary embolism (PE) in pregnant women. Findings from a multicenter prospective management outcome study are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

PE is among the most common causes of maternal death in developed countries and diagnosing PE is particularly challenging during pregnancy. Use of conventional diagnostic algorithms for PE is limited by several factors and guidelines provide inconsistent recommendations on the use of diagnostic tests in pregnant women.

Researchers from Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland studied 395 pregnant women with clinically suspected PE in 11 centers in France and Switzerland between August 2008 and July 2016 to prospectively validate a PE diagnostic strategy. PE was excluded in patients with a low or intermediate pretest clinical probability based on Geneva score and a negative D-dimer result. The remaining women underwent lower limb CUS and, if results were negative, CTPA. The researchers found that their diagnostic algorithm safely ruled out PE in pregnant women with a 3-month thromboembolic rate of 0.0 percent. The algorithm accuracy meets the recently proposed criteria of the International Society of the Thrombosis and Haemostasis for confirming the safety of VTE diagnostic strategies.

Media contact: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Lauren Evans at laevans@acponline.org. To interview the lead author, Marc Righini, MD, please contact him directly at Marc.Righini@hcuge.ch. 3. Presence of antiphospholipid antibodies found to be an important independent risk factor for MI

Abstract: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M18-2130

URLs go live when the embargo lifts

Researchers found a strong association between antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) and immunoglobin G (IgG) positivity and first-time myocardial infarction (MI). Findings from a brief research report are published in Annals of Internal Medicine and will be presented at the American College of Rheumatology (Chicago Oct 19-24).

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden assessed the frequency of antiphospholipid antibodies and antinuclear antibodies among 805 consecutive patients under the age of 75 who were hospitalized for a first MI at 17 Swedish hospitals between 2010 and 2014 compared to population controls individually matched for age, sex, and region. They found that the antibodies were 10 times more common in patients with MI than in control patients and occurred independently of traditional cardiovascular risk factors.

According to the researchers, these findings may lead to improved management, treatment, and out-comes for many patients with or at high risk for MI.

Media contact: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Lauren Evans at laevans@acponline.org. To interview the lead author, Elisabet Svenungsson, MD, PhD, please contact the Karolinska Institutet's Press Office at pressinfo@ki.se. 4. Evidence suggests that clinicians may need to rethink how they use buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder

Abstract: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M18-1652

Editorial: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M18-2722

URLs go live when the embargo lifts

Clinicians may need to rethink the way they treat opioid use disorder with buprenorphine.

A review of published evidence found that many current practices are too restrictive and conflict with the science. A special article on the next stage of buprenorphine care for opioid use disorder is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts reviewed published research to contrast recent evidence with common, widespread, and outdated practices involving the use of buprenorphine that have the paradoxical effect of potentially harming patients. The research focused on the following seven areas: location of buprenorphine induction; combining buprenorphine with a benzodiazepine; relapse during buprenorphine treatment; requirements for counseling; uses of drug testing; use of other substances during buprenorphine treatment; and duration of buprenorphine treatment.

Based on the evidence, the researchers suggest a more progressive approach to treating opioid use disorder that minimizes barriers in the Opioid Treatment Cascade of Care, including linkage, initiation, and maintenance of buprenorphine therapy. In addition to allowing home induction of buprenorphine, the researchers suggest that the old practice of requiring counseling with buprenorphine use may do more harm than good. The authors also challenge previous practices of discharging patients for relapse or use of other substances.

The researchers note that nearly all evidence guiding current practice was found before the lethality of heroin and illicitly produced fentanyl appeared at scale, making updated, evidence-based treatment all the more critical. Editorialists strongly agree that the magnitude of the opioid epidemic calls for a reexamination of the conservative approaches to buprenorphine use.

Media contact: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Lauren Evans at laevans@acponline.org. To interview the lead author, Stephen Martin, MD, EdM, please contact him directly at stmartin@gmail.com.

###NEW YORK (October 22, 2018) - A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool is being built to help doctors better identify and treat a deadly, but underrecognized, form of lung failure. Approximately 200,000 people in the United States suffer from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which occurs when the lungs fill with fluid, and organs are deprived of oxygen. The challenge is that up to 40 percent of the time it can be missed.

"ARDS is underrecognized because these patients are often extremely ill and have other life-threatening conditions, such as shock, pneumonia, or trauma. Since diagnosis depends on the patient meeting a number of criteria, it is easy for one of the criteria to be attributed to another acute condition, rather than to ARDS," said Dr. Michelle Ng Gong, chief of Research, Critical Care at Montefiore Health System and professor of medicine and of epidemiology & population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "By using new technology we hope to help clinicians identify ARDS as early as possible, when treatment may be most effective."

Funded by a $1.2 million Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant, the new tool will screen patients throughout Montefiore and flag people at risk of developing ARDS. Once identified, clinicians will receive guidance on the best practices for treating patients with the condition.

To create the screening tool, researchers and data and computer scientists are building off of Montefiore Einstein's existing AI platform, combing through years of de-identified patient data to determine dozens of critical, objective data points for ARDS. After developing a profile, the AI will run in the background of the electronic medical record system, flagging any patients who match the profile created for ARDS. This ARDS-specific tool is an extension of the work already conducted by the Critical Care and health data teams at Montefiore Einstein, which shows that AI can improve outcomes for people with another lung condition--severe acute respiratory failure.

"We have seen the power of AI and predictive analytics to accurately pinpoint patients at risk for other critical conditions and believe AI can be effective in helping clinicians identify patients with ARDS too," said Parsa Mirhaji, M.D., Ph.D., director of Clinical Research Informatics, director of the Center for Health Data Innovations at Montefiore Einstein and associate professor, Systems and Computational Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "The ultimate goal is for AI to become a standard tool for clinicians, helping them provide the best care for our patients."

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About Montefiore Health System

About Montefiore Health System Montefiore Health System is one of New York's premier academic health systems and is a recognized leader in providing exceptional quality and personalized, accountable care to approximately three million people in communities across the Bronx, Westchester and the Hudson Valley. It is comprised of 11 hospitals, including the Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and close to 200 outpatient care sites. The advanced clinical and translational research at its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, directly informs patient care and improves outcomes. From the Montefiore-Einstein Centers of Excellence in cancer, cardiology and vascular care, pediatrics, and transplantation, to its preeminent school-based health program, Montefiore is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system providing coordinated, comprehensive care to patients and their families. For more information please visit http://www.montefiore.org. Follow us on Twitter and view us on Facebook and YouTube.

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Montefiore, is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Einstein is home to697 M.D. students, 181 Ph.D. students, 108 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 265 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 1,900 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2017, Einstein received more than $174 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States through Montefiore and an affiliation network involving hospitals and medical centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn and on Long Island. For more information, please visit http://www.einstein.yu.edu, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and view us on YouTube.Larry B. Ilcewicz, FAA's Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor for Advanced Composite Materials to Receive the Prestigious AIAA Walter J. and Angeline H. Crichlow Trust Prize

October 22, 2018 - Reston, VA - The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is pleased to announce that Dr. Larry B. Ilcewicz, chief scientific and technical advisor for Advanced Composite Materials at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has been selected to receive the 2019 Walter J. and Angeline H. Crichlow Trust Prize.

The prize, presented by AIAA every four years for excellence in aerospace materials, structural design, structural analysis or structural dynamics, will be presented to Ilcewicz during the awards luncheon on 10 January 2019 at the AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition (AIAA SciTech Forum). The forum is being held 7-11 January 2019 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego in San Diego, California.

Ilcewicz's work has been instrumental as the aviation industry transitions from all-aluminum aircraft to composite materials, which are used to reduce weight, increase efficiencies and improve structural properties. He also has made significant research contributions to the Boeing 777, the world's largest twin-engine jet airliner.

He is being honored "For exemplary technical leadership in establishing a safety and regulatory framework enabling large-scale structural application of composites in commercial and general aviation aircraft, rotorcraft and engines." The award includes a medal, a certificate of citation and a $100,000 honorarium.

"The foresight and dedication of AIAA Senior Member Larry Ilcewicz has helped guide the aerospace industry in meeting the challenge of composite materials to make aircraft safer and more efficient," said Dan Dumbacher, AIAA executive director. "We are grateful for his keen understanding of the cooperation needed across the industry to advance aerospace."

Ilcewicz's nomination was supported by such companies as Airbus SE, The Boeing Company, Bombardier Aerospace, and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

Ilcewicz joined the FAA in 1998 as chief scientific and technical advisor for advanced composite materials following many years in prominent positions developing composite materials and structures technology at Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA). In his FAA position, he has worked to advance composite materials and structures technology and develop coordinated strategies to address certification issues and service issues for composites.

This work culminated in the FAA Aviation Safety Office (AVS) Strategic Composite Plan, an international plan for composite safety and certification initiatives. The Strategic Composite Plan was developed during the time that large aircraft companies, such as Boeing, Airbus and Bombardier, were intensively developing large composite structures for new aircraft applications.

While at Boeing, Ilcewicz was one of the founding participants in the Boeing Advanced Composite Development Program (ACDP), noted Steven A. Chisholm, director of Structures Engineering, BCA, in a nomination letter for Ilcewicz. ACDP set the stage for the "groundbreaking insertion of toughened advanced composites on the 777 Program, with Larry's research and guidance strongly contributing to the development of the composite empennage structure on the 777."

Ilcewicz also serves as co-chair of the Composite Material Handbook 17 (CMH-17) Working Group, which develops and publishes extensive documentation of standard methods, material databases and engineering guidelines to meet the needs of industry and the general public. As part of this effort, Ilcewicz created a forum with Boeing, Airbus, regulators and academia.

Chisholm wrote in the nomination letter, "I don't think that many believed that such a forum would be well supported and sustainable. However, Larry's passion for this was palatable, and this forum, which now has added Bombardier, is still going strong. He knew that the collective knowledge of the experts from each of the Airframers would benefit the industry as whole.

"Larry's vision and leadership have resulted in a cooperative relationship amongst the Airframers that did not exist previously. He was the kingpin in developing a culture where we regularly engage at the industry level to further composite safety, and establish standards to ensure that future aircraft benefit from our collective knowledge."

Ilcewicz was awarded a dual degree Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from Oregon State University in 1984. During his Ph.D., he performed contract work on advanced composite resin matrices with toughened interlayers for the Boeing Company ACDP. He also received an M.S. degree in Wood Science from Oregon State University in 1979, and a B.S. degree in Wood Science and Technology from Michigan Technological University in 1977. He is author or co-author of 79 technical publications.

The U.S. government recognized Ilcewicz's service and accomplishments with a 2013 Presidential Rank Award. The Presidential Rank Award program recognizes senior government officials for exceptional professional, technical, and/or scientific achievement recognized on a national or international level.

###

About AIAA

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world's largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 85 countries, and 95 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit http://www.aiaa.org, or follow us on Twitter @AIAA.Researchers developed a mathematical model describing motion of dark matter particles inside the smallest galaxy halos. They observed that over time, the dark matter may form spherical droplets of quantum condensate. Previously this was considered impossible, as fluctuations of the gravity field produced by dark matter particles were ignored. The study is published in Physical Review Letters.

Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that does not emit electromagnetic radiation. This property hinders dark matter searches and makes it hard even to prove its existence. The speed of dark matter particles is low, which is why they are retained by galaxies. They interact with each other and with the ordinary matter so weakly that only their gravity field can be sensed, otherwise the dark matter does not manifest itself in any way. Each galaxy is surrounded by a dark matter shell (halo) of much larger size and mass.

Most cosmologists believe that dark matter particles have large mass, hence their speed is high. Yet, back in the 1980s it was realized that under special conditions these particles may be produced in the early Universe with almost zero speed, regardless of their mass. They might also be very light. As a consequence, the distances at which the quantum nature of these particles becomes apparent can be huge. Instead of the nanometer scales that are usually required to observe quantum phenomena in laboratories, the "quantum" scale for such particles may be comparable to the size of the central part of our galaxy.

The researchers observed that the dark matter particles, if they are bosons with sufficiently small mass, may form a Bose-Einstein condensate in the small galaxy halos or in even smaller substructures due to their gravitational interactions. Such substructures include halos of dwarf galaxies - systems of several billion stars bound together by gravitational forces, and miniclusters - very small systems formed only by dark matter. The Bose-Einstein condensate is a state of quantum particles in which they all occupy the lowest energy level, having the smallest energy. The Bose-Einstein condensate can be produced in the lab at low temperatures from ordinary atoms. This state of matter exhibits unique properties, such as superfluidity: the ability to pass through tiny cracks or capillaries without friction. Light dark matter in the galaxy has low speed and huge concentration. Under these conditions, it should eventually form a Bose-Einstein condensate. But in order for this to happen, dark matter particles must interact with each other, while as far as we know, they interact only gravitationally.

"In our work, we simulated motion of a quantum gas of light gravitationally interacting dark matter particles. We started from a virialized state with maximal mixing, which is kind of opposite to the Bose-Einstein condensate. After a very long period, 100,000 times longer than the time needed for a particle to cross the simulation volume, the particles spontaneously formed a condensate, which immediately shaped itself into a spherical droplet, a Bose star, under the effect of gravity," said one of the authors, Dmitry Levkov, Ph.D. in Physics, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Levkov and his colleagues, Alexander Panin and Igor Tkachov from the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, concluded that Bose-Einstein condensate may form in the centres of halos of dwarf galaxies in a time smaller than the lifetime of the Universe. This means that Bose stars could populate them now.

The authors were the first who saw the formation of the Bose-Einstein condensate from light dark matter in computer simulations. In previous numerical studies, the condensate was already present in the initial state, and Bose stars arose from it. According to one hypothesis, the Bose condensate could have formed in the early Universe long before the formation of galaxies or miniclusters, but reliable evidence for that is currently lacking. The authors demonstrated that the condensate is formed in the centres of small halos, and they plan to investigate condensation in the early Universe in further studies.

The scientists pointed out that the Bose stars may produce Fast Radio Bursts that currently have no quantitative explanation. Light dark matter particles called "axions" interact with electromagnetic field very weakly and can decay into radiophotons. This effect is vanishingly small, but inside the Bose star it may be resonantly amplified like in a laser and could lead to giant radio bursts.

"The next obvious step is to predict the number of the Bose stars in the Universe and calculate their mass in models with light dark matter," concluded Dmitry Levkov.

###

This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF).

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.151301SAN ANTONIO, October 22, 2018 -- The first report of a large international clinical trial shows that, for men who show signs of prostate cancer after surgical removal of their prostates, extending radiation therapy to the pelvic lymph nodes combined with adding short-term hormone therapy to standard treatment can extend the amount of time before their cancer spreads. The findings, presented today at the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), were so encouraging --exceeding rigorous threshold criteria -- that the results were released by the research team ahead of schedule.

Men with prostate cancer who are initially treated with prostatectomy -- surgical removal of the prostate gland -- often face signs of recurrence, usually signaled by a rise in the level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in the blood. Radiation therapy to the region of the prior prostate surgery (surgical bed) is standard but only effective at keeping PSA low longer than five or more years in 60 to 70 percent of patients, said the study's lead author, Alan Pollack, MD, PhD, Chair of radiation oncology at the University of Miami and deputy director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

While a rise in PSA after prostatectomy signals that the cancer is still present, it does not indicate where the cancer is located. The NRG Oncology/RTOG 0534 SPORRT clinical trial is the first randomized trial to show that radiation therapy to treat the pelvic lymph nodes in addition to standard prostate bed results in significant incremental gains for these patients.

"We looked specifically at men with prostate cancer who began to show signs that the cancer was not completely eradicated after prostatectomy," said Dr. Pollack. "Adding hormone therapy and pelvic lymph node treatment substantively increased the proportion of patients who remained free from disease progression, to the point that we could report the data after an early interim analysis. The degree of the effectiveness of the combination is surprising, but makes sense when you consider other more contemporary evidence using newer PET scanning methods showing that pelvic lymph node recurrences are more common than previously appreciated."

The SPPORT trial enrolled 1,792 men at centers in the U.S., Canada and Israel from 2008 to 2015. Eligible patients had persistently detectable or rising PSA levels and evidence that some cancer cells were left behind after prostatectomy in the prostate bed, pelvic lymph nodes or elsewhere in the body after prostatectomy. The median patient age was 64 years (range 39-84), most patients (87 percent) were Caucasian, and the men had generally favorable performance status.

Patients in the SPPORT trial were randomly placed into three treatment groups: prostate bed radiation therapy (PBRT) alone, PBRT plus short-term androgen deprivation (hormone) therapy (STAD), and PBRT plus pelvic lymph node radiotherapy (PLNRT) plus STAD. Hormone therapy consisted of four-to-six months of androgen deprivation to reduce levels of testosterone, a driver of prostate cancer.

The trial was designed to assess freedom from disease progression at five years following treatment. Findings from a scheduled interim analysis when 1,191 patients had been followed for five years triggered the early release of the findings, explained Dr. Pollack. "The level of significance reached at this point was considerable, making it unlikely that the results will change substantively with longer follow-up, although outcomes such as the rates of distant metastasis and survival require much more patient follow-up, " he said. "Releasing the data at this juncture is important for physicians treating patients with a rising PSA following prostatectomy. The strategy of combining prostate bed and pelvic lymph node radiation therapy with short-term hormone therapy should be much more strongly considered in routine clinical practice than it is currently."

At five years following treatment, freedom-from-progression (FFP) rates in the interim analysis group were 71.7 percent for PBRT alone, 82.7 percent for PBRT+ADT and 89.1 percent for PLNRT+PBRT+ADT. The FFP rate was highest for the arm combining all three treatments (p<0.0001). Freedom from progression was defined as a PSA nadir of +2, clinical failure or death from any cause.

Rates of cancer spread were also significantly different between treatment arms. In all eligible patients followed for up to eight years, distant metastases were found in 45 patients in the PBRT-only arm, 38 patients in the PBRT+ADT arm and 25 patients in the PLNRT+PBRT+ADT arm. Distant metastasis rates were significantly lower following the three-treatment approach compared to PBRT alone (Hazard Ratio 0.52, 95% CI: 0.32-0.85) and compared to PBRT+ADT (HR 0.64, 95% CI: 0.39-1.06).

"While it is common practice to treat the lymph nodes in men with higher-risk prostate cancer treated without prostatectomy first), this study is the most convincing level-I evidence to demonstrate a benefit," noted Dr. Pollack. "To be seeing differences in distant metastasis with relatively short follow-up speaks to the robustness of the impact, suggesting that the results will be sustained with longer follow-up."

Another key finding of the SPPORT trial is that short term hormone therapy (also called androgen deprivation therapy or ADT) is a key component of the management of patients with signs of recurrence after prostatectomy. SPPORT is only the second trial to look specifically at adding short-term hormone therapy to radiation for men following prostatectomy, added Dr. Pollack. "There are a lot of data showing a benefit from adding short-term hormone therapy in men whose prostate hasn't been removed, though only one other randomized trial -- GETUG 16 -- has shown significant improvements after prostatectomy. Our study confirms that adding STAD to PBRT following surgery extends the time to progression."

Rates of severe side effects (grade three or higher using CTCAEv3.0) were low across treatment groups. During treatment, the main additional severe effects from PLNRT were in relation to blood/bone marrow events. For long-term effects, blood/bone marrow events were also slightly higher in the PLNRT arm, but only for grade 2+ events (4.1 percent), not grade 3+ (1.1 percent).

Additional analyses of the SPPORT trial will focus on the magnitude of difference between the experimental treatment arms to isolate the impact of pelvic lymph node treatment relative to androgen deprivation therapy. The research team also described preliminary data that for those with a very low PSA on study entry, there was no improvement from PLNRT+PBRT+STAD over PBRT+STAD; although, this was an unplanned analysis.

"It's now a question of management, of whether a PSA threshold or other factors can be used to identify a patient group in which pelvic lymph node treatment is not as beneficial," concluded Dr. Pollack. "Moreover, the role of newer PET tracers that identify pelvic lymph node involvement earlier in this decision process remains a key question. We still need more data, but we've taken a significant step forward with this study."

The abstract, "Short term androgen deprivation therapy without or with pelvic lymph node treatment added to prostate bed only salvage radiation therapy: The NRG Oncology/RTOG 0534 SPPORT trial," will be presented in detail during a news briefing and an oral abstract session at ASTRO's 60th Annual Meeting in San Antonio. To schedule an interview with Dr. Pollack and/or outside experts in prostate cancer, contact ASTRO's media relations team on-site at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center October 21 through 24, by phone at 703-286-1600 or by email at press@astro.org.

###

Attribution to the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting requested in all coverage.

This news release contains additional and/or updated information from the study author(s).

Study Presentation Details

News Briefing: Monday, October 22, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CT, Room 225-D, http://bit.ly/ASTRO18-2

Scientific Session: Monday, October 22, 2:15 - 3:45 p.m. CT, Stars at Night Ballroom

Abstract available on the final page of this release.

ABOUT ASTRO

The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) is the world's largest radiation oncology society, with more than 10,000 members who are physicians, nurses, biologists, physicists, radiation therapists, dosimetrists and other health care professionals who specialize in treating patients with radiation therapies. The Society is dedicated to improving patient care through professional education and training, support for clinical practice and health policy standards, advancement of science and research, and advocacy. ASTRO publishes three medical journals, International Journal of Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics, Practical Radiation Oncology and Advances in Radiation Oncology; developed and maintains an extensive patient website, RT Answers; and created the nonprofit foundation Radiation Oncology Institute. To learn more about ASTRO, visit astro.org or RTanswers.org, sign up to receive our news and follow us on our blog, Facebook and Twitter.Munich, Germany, 21 October 2018 - There is growing evidence that drugs approved for the treatment of breast cancer in women are also effective and well tolerated in men, according to the largest real-life study yet to investigate treatment and outcomes in men with breast cancer (1) and two further studies to be reported at ESMO 2018 (2,3).

Approximately one in every 100 cases of breast cancer (1%) occurs in men (4). However, there have been few prospective studies in men, and clinical trials of breast cancer treatments have often excluded men so treatment recommendations are largely extrapolated from the results of clinical trials in women (4).

To learn more about the treatment of breast cancer in men researchers analysed clinical data collected by the Epidemiological Strategy and Medical Economics Metastatic Breast Cancer (ESME MBC) platform (5) between January 2008 and December 2014. This national database collects real-life data from 18 French Comprehensive Cancer Centers for all patients newly diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer starting at least one treatment.

Researchers retrieved the data for men with metastatic breast cancer included in the database and compared their treatment and outcome with those in women. They found 149 men from the total of 16,701 patients (0.89%). The men were slightly older than the women (mean age 68.1 years vs 60.6 years, p<0.0001). Just over three-quarters of the men (105/149; 78.4%) had hormone receptor positive (HR+)/ human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) negative breast cancer, which was a slightly higher proportion than in women (65.6%, p=0.0019).

Results showed men received similar treatments to women with metastatic breast cancer. Just under half of those with HR+/HER2-negative breast cancer (45/105, 42.9%) received frontline hormonal therapy: tamoxifen (20/45), aromatase inhibitor + luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) analogues (18/45) or others (7/45).

Their median progression-free survival was 9.8 months, which was similar to that seen in a matched group of women (13.0 months, p=0.8) with the same age, breast cancer histology and grade, location of metastasis and adjuvant treatment.

One in four men with HR+/HER2- breast cancer (29/105, 27.6%) were treated with front-line chemotherapy. Their median progression-free survival was also similar to a matched group of women receiving chemotherapy (6.9 months vs 6.3 months, hazard ratio 1.24, 95% confidence interval 0.69-2.23). Overall survival for the whole population of men included in the database was also similar to that for women (41.8 months vs 34.9 months, p=0.745).

"We have reported on one of the biggest series of men with metastatic disease, with comprehensive data on their management and outcome with different types of treatment," said study author Jean-Sebastien Frenel, from the Institut de Cancerologie de l'Ouest, Nantes, France. "We found that most of the men with HR+/HER2- metastatic disease had received frontline chemotherapy and around 40% had received hormonal therapy. Most of the patients receiving hormonal therapy were treated with tamoxifen and the remainder received aromatase inhibitors. But few patients received aromatase inhibitors plus LHRH analogues despite some guidelines recommending that they should be given in combination."

Frenel reported: "The progression-free survival provided by chemotherapy or hormonal therapy was similar in men as in women." In terms of clinical implications, he suggested: "Hormonal therapy should be given to men with HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer in the absence of visceral crisis." He added that oncologists should be aware that aromatase inhibitors should not be given without LHRH analogues. The study is continuing and will next assess the prevalence of BRCA mutation in the patient population.

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Agnes Jager, medical oncologist and associate professor at Erasmus Medical University Cancer Institute, Rotterdam, The Netherlands said: "A recent study looked at tumour characteristics and outcome in a large cohort of men with primary breast cancer but such extensive data on advanced breast cancer in men was missing until now." She added: "This new study shows the prognosis of men and women is similar, which is of great value as this justifies our current clinical practice. We currently treat men with breast cancer in a similar way to women, which is now supported by these data."

Jager noted that although the largest study of its kind, the number of men with breast cancer was still small and data were lacking on the extent of advanced disease, BRAC mutation status and type of chemotherapy. However, she said: "More detailed information and longer-term follow-up will indicate whether there are characteristics or prognostic factors that are specific for men, which will allow us to change practice in the future."

Hormonal treatment

Results from the first prospective randomised trial to assess different hormonal treatments in men with breast cancer (2) showed that levels of estradiol, a form of the hormone estrogen, decreased steeply with a gonadotrophin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) plus tamoxifen or the aromatase inhibitor exemestane but increased with tamoxifen alone measured after a 6 months' treatment period.

More than 90% of male breast cancer patients have HR+ disease. Tamoxifen is currently the standard of care hormonal therapy but there is limited data on its efficacy and safety in men and little information on other hormone blocking treatments.

The Male-GBG54 trial randomised 55 men with breast cancer to hormonal therapy with one of three regimens as adjuvant or metastatic therapy for six months: tamoxifen (20mg per day); tamoxifen + gonadotrophin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) (subcutaneous every 3 months); exemestane (25mg/day) + GnRHa.

Tamoxifen blocks estrogen from attaching to hormone receptors on cancer cells while exemestane is an aromatase inhibitor that inhibits estrogen synthesis. The use of GnRH analogues in men with breast cancer is controversial but is based on reducing levels of testosterone when used in combination with aromatase inhibitors or antiandrogens (6).

Results reported at ESMO 2018 showed the median level of estradiol increased by 67% at three months and by 41% at six months in men treated with tamoxifen alone. In contrast, estradiol levels decreased by 85% after three months in men treated with a GnRH analogue plus tamoxifen and by 73% in those receiving a GnRH analogue plus exemestane. Estradiol levels continued to be decreased at six months with GnRH analogues plus tamoxifen or exemestane. These therapies were well tolerated with no safety signals.

The researchers also assessed the impact of treatment on quality of life and sexual function in men with breast cancer treated with hormonal therapy for the first time, using a validated questionnaire (Aging Males' Symptoms Scale Questionnaire) and assessment of erectile function (International Index of Erectile Function). Results showed that tamoxifen had little impact on health-related quality of life or erectile function in men with breast cancer while the combination of GnRH analogue plus exemestane had a major adverse effect on both measures.

Lead author Mattea Reinisch, from Klinikum Essen-Mitte, Essen, Germany, said: "We observed a deep and stable decrease of estradiol in patients receiving the combination of tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor plus GnRH for six months of therapy within the Male trial. The suppression of peripheral estradiol is a necessary condition for a therapeutic benefit of endocrine therapy in men with breast cancer when receiving an aromatase inhibitor plus GnRH analogue. Within the tamoxifen monotherapy arm, the estradiol values increased. These changes are known from female breast cancer patients and were expected."

Reinisch added: "Tamoxifen monotherapy should be kept as standard hormonal therapy for men with breast cancer. The side-effects are moderate, hardly impairing sexual behavior. The combination with GnRH influenced patients' well-being and erectile function profoundly."

Commenting on the study, associate professor Agnes Jager said: "The authors are to be congratulated with a randomised trial in such a rare study population, which must have been a real effort. However, it is regrettable that the estradiol suppression at 3 months was the primary endpoint. Although it is relevant to know whether and to what extent E2 levels change over time during different endocrine treatment strategies, as far as I know E2 suppression at 3 months is neither a validated nor a clinically useful surrogate endpoint for the efficacy of endocrine treatment."

Jager added: "The finding that tamoxifen without an LHRH agonist led to a pronounced increase of E2 levels after 3 and 6 months of treatment is not new, although the degree of the increase is somewhat unexpected." But she cautioned that the endpoint used in the study did not answer the question of whether an LHRH agonist should be added to tamoxifen in men and further research is needed on this. "Due to the severe side-effects of LHRH agonists in men and the negative impact on quality of life, clarity about this is of great clinical importance."

Prolonging sensitivity to hormonal therapies

The cyclin dependent kinase 4 and 6 inhibitor (CDK4/6 inhibitor) ribociclib plus the aromatase inhibitor letrozole has comparable safety and tolerability as first-line therapy in men with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer to that seen in women, according to preliminary results from an international phase 3 trial reported at ESMO 2018 (7).

Most patients with HR+ breast cancer become resistant to hormonal therapies over time so there is a lot of interest in finding treatments to prolong or restore sensitivity. Inhibiting the CDK4/6 has been identified as a potential target for overcoming or delaying resistance to hormonal therapy in advanced HR+/HER2-breast.

The CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib is approved for use in combination with an aromatase inhibitor for treating postmenopausal women with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer who have received no previous treatment for advanced breast cancer based on results from a trial showing significantly prolonged progression-free survival. However, men were not included in the study.

The international CompLEEment-1 trial included 20 men with HR+, HER2- advanced breast cancer in the first 1008 patients enrolled who completed 56 days of follow-up or discontinued before data cut-off. They were treated on an open-label basis with ribociclib (600mg per day, 3 weeks on/1 week off) plus letrozole (2.5mg/day). Male patients also received concomitant goserelin (3.6mg subcutaneous implant every 28 days). A pre-planned interim analysis was conducted approximately 15 months after the first patient's first visit for the primary outcome of safety and tolerability.

Results reported at ESMO 2018 showed the most frequent adverse events in men were hot flushes (30.0%), neutropenia (20.0%) and constipation (20.0%). Adverse events of grade 3 severity or higher included neutropenia (4 patients, 20.0%), increased alanine aminotransferase (2 patients, 10%) and increased aminotransferase (1 patient, 5.0%). QT prolongation was infrequent, occurring in 3 men (15.0%) and all events were grade 1 or 2.

Just over one-third (35.0%) of men required dose reduction or interruption due to adverse events, while two men discontinued treatment due to adverse events.

"We can conclude in this sub-population of men that the tolerability and the expected toxicity with ribociclib in men is no different to women. And this increases our confidence in data obtained in large trials with women in order to translate the results and the applicability to men," said lead author Claudio Zamagni, Head of Breast and Gynaecological Medical Oncology, Sant'Orsola Malpighi Hospital, Bologna, Italy. The combination of hormonal therapy plus ribociclib should be considered as an option also for male patients with metastatic HR+ HER2- breast cancer," he suggested. He noted that this was the first study to assess the safety of a CDK4/6 inhibitor in men, adding that efficacy data will be reported with longer-term follow-up in the future.

Commenting on the study, associate professor Agnes Jager considered that limitations were the small numbers and the lack of efficacy data at the time of reporting. She said: "As expected, there were no major differences in safety compared to previously published toxicity data for women, with the exception of the prevalence of neutropenia." This was less frequent compared with female breast cancer patients in the MONALEESA 2 study (grade 3/4: 20.0% in men vs 59.3% in women).

Jager suggested that if similar results were shown in other studies, this could be of interest from a mechanistic point of view. "One of the explanations might be that there is a gender-dependent toxic effect on bone marrow. Alternatively, it could be a reflection of different plasma concentrations of ribociclib in men and women," she suggested. If this were the case, efficacy could be lower in man. She continued: "The first step forwards is to compare the outcome between the men and women within the CompLEEment study, as well as cross-comparing with other studies in women."

Summing up the three studies, Dr. Stefan Zimmerman, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Switzerland, said: "Male breast cancer patients seem to benefit from endocrine therapy to a similar degree as women. Furthermore, these research results add to the current literature suggesting that the addition of GnRH analogues might improve on tamoxifen alone, but studies with clinical endpoints are needed. Lastly, it is urgent that strategies that have proven effective in defering resistance to endocrine therapy in women are explored in men with advanced breast cancer as well, including CDK4/6 inhibitors."

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

1 Abstract 294PD_PR 'Management and outcome of metastatic breast cancer in men in the national multicenter observational ESME program ' will be presented by Junien Sirieix during the Poster Discussion Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:15 (CEST) in Room 14b - ICM. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

2 Abstract 273PD_PR 'Final analysis of the Male-GBG54 study: a prospective multi-centre phase II study evaluating endocrine treatment with either tamoxifen +/- gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) or an aromatase inhibitor + GnRHa in male breast cancer patients' will be presented by Mattea Reinisch during the Poster Discussion Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:15 (CEST) in Room 14b - ICM. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

3 Abstract 293PD_PR 'Ribociclib (RIBO) + letrozole (LET) in male patients (pts) with hormone receptor positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer (ABC) and no prior endocrine therapy (ET) for ABC: preliminary subgroup results from the phase 2 CompLEEment-1 trial' will be presented by Claudio Zamagni during the Poster Discussion Session on Monday 22 October, 11:15 to 12:15 (CEST) in Room 14b - ICM. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

4 Giordano SH. Breast cancer in men. NEJM 2018; 378: 2311-20

5 Unicancer R&D. ESME Research Program. Epidemiological Strategy and Medical Economic. Academic Real-world Data Platform. http://cddf.org/files/2016/07/10-Coralie-Courtinard-ESME-Data-Platform_CDDF-Wokrshop-RWD-06-Jul-2016.pdf

6 Di Lauro L, Pizzuti L, Barba M et al. Role of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues in metastatic male breast cancer: results from a pooled analysis. Journal of Hematology & Oncology 2015: 8: 53

7 Hortobagyi GN, Stemmer SM, Burris HA et al. Ribociclib as first-line therapy for HR-positive, advanced breast cancer. NEJM 2016; 375: 1738-1748

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

273PD_PR - Final analysis of the Male-GBG54 study: A prospective, randomised multi-centre phase II study evaluating endocrine treatment with either tamoxifen +/- gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) or an aromatase inhibitor + GnRHa in male breast cancer patients

M. Reinisch1, S. Seiler2, T. Hauzenberger3, S. Schmatloch4, H-J. Strittmatter5, D-M. Zahm6, C. Thode7, C. Jackisch8, D. Strik9, V. Moebus10, T. Reimer11, B. Sinn12, E. Stickeler13, F. Marme14, W. Janni15, A. Kamischke16, C. Rudlowski17, V. Nekljudova18, G. von Minckwitz19, S. Loibl19

1Senologie/ Interdisziplinares Brustzentrum, Kliniken Essen-Mitte, Essen, Germany, 2Medicine and Research, German Breast Group (GBG) Forschungs GmbH, Neu-Isenburg, Germany, 3Frauenklinik, Klinikum St. Marien, Amberg, Germany, 4Brustzentrum, Elisabeth Krankenhaus, Kassel, Germany, 5Gynecology and Obstetrics, Rems-Murr-Hospital GmbH, Winnenden, Germany, 6Brustzentrum, SRH Wald-Klinikum, Gera, Germany, 7Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Immunologie, Amedes MVZ Wagnerstibbe fuer Laboratoriumsmedizin, Gottingen, Germany, 8Gynekologie und Geburtshilfe, Klinikum Offenbach GmbH, Offenbach, Germany, 9Frauenheilkunde und Geburtshilfe, Endokrinologikum, Berlin, Germany, 10Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Klinikum Frankfurt Hoechst, Academic Hospital of the Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, 11Klinikum Suedstadt, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany, 12Pathologie, Charite-Universitaetsmedizin, Berlin, Germany, 13Gynaekologie und Geburtsmedizin, Uniklinik RWTH, Aachen, Germany, 14Gynecologic Oncology, Nationales Zentrum fuer Tumorerkrankungen (NCT), Heidelberg, Germany, 15Frauenheilkunde und Geburtshilfe, Universitaetsklinikum, Ulm, Germany, 16Frauenheilkunde und Geburtshilfe, MVZ Kinderwunsch und Hormonzentrum, Muenster, Germany, 17Gynakologie, Evangelisches Krankenhaus, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, 18Statistics, German Breast Group (GBG) Forschungs GmbH, Neu-Isenburg, Germany, 19Department of Medicine and Research, German Breast Group (GBG) Forschungs GmbH, Neu-Isenburg, Germany

Background: Over 90% of mBC pts have hormone receptor positive disease. Until today tam is considered the standard of care. Due to the low incidence of mBC, there is a lack of data regarding its efficacy and safety. No prospectively randomized study in mBC pts has been completed so far. The Male-GBG54 study is the first prospective, randomized, multicenter trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of different endocrine treatment options in male pts with BC.

Methods: In the Male-GBG54 trial (NCT01638247), pts were randomized to receive tam 20mg/day per os (p.o.) in Arm A, tam + GnRHa subcutaneous (s.c.) q3m in Arm B and exemestane 25 mg/day p.o. + GnRHa s.c. in Arm C for 6 months (mo) as (neo)adjuvant or metastatic therapy. Further treatment was conducted as per local guidelines. Primary objective was the estradiol (E2) suppression after 3 mo. Secondary objectives were the E2 suppression after 6 mo and levels of different steroidal hormones after 3 and 6 mo. Quality of life was assessed using validated questionnaires. 14 pts/group were needed for the F-test to have 80% power to detect a difference in estradiol decrease between the groups at the 5% significance level.

Results: Between October 2012 and May 2017, 55 pts were randomized in Germany, of whom 46 pts were fully evaluable and comprised the 6-mo analysis set. The median age was 62 years. Baseline characteristics were well balanced between the 3 arms. The median E2 level with tam increased by 67% after 3 mo and by 41% after 6 mo. In pts receiving tam + GnRH and AI+ GnRH, there was an initial decrease of E2 after 3 mo of 85% and 73% respectively. After 6 mo of therapy the decrease was 59% and 63% respectively. Other hormone parameters will also be presented at the meeting.

Conclusions: This is worldwide the first fully recruited prospective randomized trial, evaluating the impact of 3 different endocrine treatments in male BC. The analysis revealed an increase of E2 levels along the course of therapy after an initial steep decrease when GnRHa was given. The therapy was well tolerated with no safety signals.

Clinical trial identification: Male-GBG54 trial (NCT01638247)

Legal entity responsible for the study: GBG Forschungs GmbH

Funding: Claudia von Schilling Foundation.

Disclosure: C. Jackisch: Travel grants: Celgene, outside the submitted work.

V. Moebus: Personal fees: Amgen, Celgene, Roche, Myelotherapeutics, outside the submitted work.

F. Marme: Personal fees: Roche, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Tesaro, Novartis, Amgen, PharmaMar, GenomicHealth, CureVac, Eisai, outside the submitted work.

G. von Minckwitz: Research funding for the Institution: Pfizer, Sanofi, Amgen, Roche, Novartis, Celgene, Teva, Astra Zeneca, Myriad Genetics, Abbvie, Vifor Pharma.

S. Loibl: Grants to Institution: AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Celgene, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Teva, Vifor during the conduct of the study as well as outside the submitted work.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

293PD_PR - Ribociclib (RIBO) + letrozole (LET) in male patients (pts) with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor-2-negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer (ABC) and no prior endocrine therapy (ET) for ABC: Preliminary subgroup results from the phase 3b CompLEEment-1 trial

C. Zamagni1, M. Campone2, I. Kudryavcev3, U. Brown-Glaberman4, P.H. Cottu5, A. Ring6, J. Lu7, M. Martin8, M. De Laurentiis9, K. Zhou10, J. Wu10, L. Menon10, H.A. Azim11

1Addarii Medical Oncology Unit, Policlinico S. Orsola-Malpighi-"F.Addarii", Bologna, Italy, 2Medical Oncology, ICO Institut de Cancerologie de l'Ouest Rene Gauducheau, Saint-Herblain, France, 3Department of Medicinal and Antitumor Chemotherapy, Kaluga Regional Clinical Cancer Center, Kaluga, Russian Federation, 4Division of Hematology / Oncology, University of New Mexico Cancer Center, Albuquerque, NM, USA, 5Department of Medical Oncology, Institut Curie, Paris, France, 6Medical Oncology, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Surrey, UK, 7Keck School of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 8Instituto de Investigacion Sanitaria Gregorio Maranon, CIBERONC, GEICAM, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain, 9Department of Breast and Thoracic Oncology, Istituto Nazionale Tumori "Fondazione G. Pascale", Naples, Italy, 10Novartis Pharmaceuticals, East Hanover, NJ, USA, 11Department of Clinical Oncology, Cairo Oncology Center Cairo University-CairoCure, Cairo, Egypt

Background: CDK4/6 inhibitor RIBO is approved for use in combination with an aromatase inhibitor for the treatment of HR+, HER2- ABC in postmenopausal women with no prior therapy for ABC, based on the significantly prolonged progression-free survival versus placebo + LET observed in the pivotal phase 3 MONALEESA-2 trial (Hortobagyi et al. NEJM 2016). However, relatively rare pt subsets such as men with HR+, HER2- ABC were not included in that trial. Here, we report early safety results for men enrolled in CompLEEment-1, an open-label, phase 3b trial evaluating RIBO+LET as first-line therapy in an expanded pt population.

Methods: Pts with HR+, HER2- ABC, less or equal 1 line of prior chemotherapy, and no prior ET for ABC received RIBO (600 mg/day, 3 wk on/1 wk off) + LET (2.5 mg/day); men and premenopausal women received concomitant goserelin (3.6-mg subcutaneous implant every 28 days). The primary outcome was safety and tolerability. A pre-planned interim analysis was conducted ~15 months after first pt first visit.

Results: Of the first 1,008 pts enrolled who completed 56 days of follow-up or discontinued before the data cut-off, 20 were men. Median age was 63.5 years and all had an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status ?1; 45.0% had stage IV disease at diagnosis. The most common sites of metastasis were lung (75.0%), lymph nodes (40.0%), and liver (20.0%). The most frequent adverse events (AEs) were hot flush (30.0%), neutropenia (20.0%), and constipation (20.0%). Grade ?3 AEs included neutropenia (4 pts, 20.0%), increased alanine aminotransferase (2 pts, 10.0%), and increased aspartate aminotransferase (1 pt, 5.0%). QT prolongation was infrequent, occurring in 3 (15.0%) men; all events were grade 1/2. Dose reduction or interruption due to AEs occurred in 35.0% of men; 2 discontinued treatment due to AEs.

Conclusions: Preliminary results from the CompLEEment-1 study demonstrate the safety and tolerability of first-line RIBO+LET+goserelin in male pts, consistent with previous reports in female pts. NCT02941926.

Clinical trial identification: NCT02941926

Editorial Acknowledgement: Financial support for medical editorial assistance was provided by Novartis Pharmaceuticals. We thank Holly C. Cappelli, PhD, ProEd Communications, Inc., for her medical editorial assistance with this abstract

Legal entity responsible for the study: Novartis Pharmaceuticals

Funding: Novartis Pharmaceuticals

Disclosure: C. Zamagni: Consulting or advisory role: AstraZeneca, Eisai, Novartis, Pfizer, PharmaMar, Pierre Fabre, Roche; Travel, accommodations, expenses: Celgene, Novartis, Pierre Fabre, and Roche; Research funding: AbbVie, Array BioPharma, AstraZeneca, Celgene, Medivation, Morphotek, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, and Roche/Genentech.

M. Campone: Grant and personal fees: Novartis, during the conduct of the study; Personal fees: Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Lilly, outside the submitted work.

P.H. Cottu: Consulting or advisory role: Novartis and Pfizer; Travel, accommodations, expenses: Novartis, Pfizer, and Roche; Honoraria: AstraZeneca, NanoString Technologies, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche; Research funding: AstraZeneca, Genentech/Roche, Novartis, Pierre Fabre, Pfizer.

A. Ring: Consulting or advisory role: Pfizer, Roche; Honoraria: AstraZeneca, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche; Research funding; AstraZeneca.

J. Lu: Travel, accommodations, expenses: Novartis.

M. Martin: Consulting or advisory role: Amgen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, PharmaMar, Roche/Genentech; Research funding: Novartis.

M. De Laurentiis: Consulting or advisory role: AstraZeneca, Celgene, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and Roche; Honoraria: AstraZeneca, Celgene, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche.

K. Zhou, L. Menon: Employee of Novartis.

J. Wu: Employee of Novartis; Employment: Janssen (immediate family member); Travel, accommodations, expenses: Janssen (immediate family member).

H.A. Azim: Employment: Innate, France (immediate family member); Consulting or advisory role: ASZ, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Janssen, MSD, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche; Honoraria: Amgen, ASZ, Bristol-Myers Squibb, MSD, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche; Research funding: Pfizer.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

294PD_PR - Management and outcome of metastatic breast cancer in men in the national multicenter observational ESME program

J. Sirieix1, J. Fraisse2, S. Mathoulin-Pelissier3, M. Leheurteur4, L. Vanlemmens5, C. Jouannaud6, V. Dieras7, C. Levy8, F. Dalenc9, M-A. Mouret-Reynier10, T. Petit11, B. Coudert12, E. Brain13, B. Pistilli14, J-M. Ferrero15, A. Goncalves16, L. Uwer17, S. Gourgou18, J-S. Frenel19

1Medical Oncology, Centre Hospitalier Regional Universitaire de Tours (Pole Kaplan), Tours, France, 2Biometrics Unit, ICM Regional Cancer Institute of Montpellier, Montpellier, France, 3Bordeaux University, Inserm CIC1401 and Clinical and Epidemiological Research Unit, Institut Bergonie, Bordeaux, France, 4Medical Oncology, Centre Henri Becquerel, Rouen, France, 5Medical Oncology, Centre Oscar Lambret, Lille, France, 6Medical Oncology, Institut Jean Godinot, Reims, France, 7Medical Oncology, Centre Eugene - Marquis, Rennes, France, 8Medical Oncology, Centre Francois Baclesse, Caen, France, 9Medical Oncology, Institut Claudius Regaud - IUCT Oncopole, Toulouse, France, 10Medical Oncology, Centre Jean Perrin, Clermont-Ferrand, France, 11Medical Oncology, GINECO & Paul Strauss Cancer Center and University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France, 12Medical Oncology, Centre Georges-Francois Leclerc, Dijon, France, 13Medical Oncology, Institut Curie, Paris & Saint-Cloud, France, 14Cancer Medecine, Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, 15Medical Oncology, Centre Antoine Lacassagne, Nice, France, 16Medical Oncology, Institute Paoli Calmettes, Marseille, France, 17Medical Oncology, Institut de Cancerologie de Lorraine - Alexis Vautrin, Vandoeuvre Les Nancy, France, 18Biometrics Unit, Institut du Cancer de Montpellier, Montpellier, France, 19Medical Oncology, ICO Institut de Cancerologie de l'Ouest - Rene Gauducheau, Saint-Herblain, France

Background: Breast Cancer (BC) in men accounts for 1% of all BC. Management is still based largely on BC management in women. Only small and selected retrospective series on metastatic cases have been reported so far. Based on a national database, we aimed at providing a large comprehensive analysis of metastatic BC (MBC) in men.

Methods: ESME MBC platform is a French multi-center retrospective real life database using a clinical trial-like methodology to collect data from 18 French Comprehensive Cancer Centers. It includes data from each newly diagnosed MBC patients having initiated at least one treatment between 01/2008 and 12/2014. Cases occurring in men were retrieved and compared to the overall female population (characteristics, Student T-test), and to a population of women matched (1/1) on age, histology, grade, adjuvant treatment and metastasis location, regarding treatment effects and survival.

Results: Of 16 701 evaluable patients, 149 (0.89%) men were identified. Main comparative characteristics are listed in the image for this release.

In HR+/HER2- men, 45/105 (42.9%) received frontline hormonal therapy : tamoxifen (20/45), aromatase inhibitor (AI)  LHRH analogs (18/45), others (7/45). Median PFS was 9.8 months (m) without evidence of statistically difference between HT types. Compared with a matched cohort of women , median PFS was similar : 9.8m versus 13.0m (p=0.8). For HR+/HER2- men receiving front line CT (29/105 (27.6%)), median PFS was 6.9m and was similar to the 6.3m PFS in matched women (HR=1.24, [0.69-2.23]). The overall survival in men was 41.8m versus 34.9m in matched women (p=0.745).

Conclusions: We report on one of the largest series of MBC in men. Compared with women, prognosis and treatment effects look the same. More biological information is needed to improve the customized management of MBC in men.

Legal entity responsible for the study: UNICANCER

Funding: Has not received any funding

Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interestMunich, Germany, 21 October 2018 - Neoadjuvant erlotinib benefits selected epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutated patients who undergo complete resection of stage IIIA-N2 stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), shows a randomised study comparing erlotinib with gemcitabine plus cisplatin as neoadjuvant treatment, presented at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich. (1)

"Our results suggest promise for the use of biomarker-guided neoadjuvant EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treat-ment strategies in stage IIIA-N2 non-small cell lung cancer,' said Dr Yi-Long Wu, Tenured Professor of Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute, Guangzhou, China who is the principal investigator of the CTONG 1103 study.

"This is the first study to demonstrate progression-free survival (PFS) superiority for erlotinib over gemcitabine plus cisplatin chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant/adjuvant setting of stage IIIA-N2 EGFR mutated NSCLC," added Wu.

Results showed that a total of 386 patients from 17 centres in China were screened, and 72 were randomised 1:1 to therapy and included in the intention-to-treat population. The objective response rate (ORR) for neoadjuvant erlotinib versus gemcitabine plus cisplatin chemotherapy was 54.1% (95% CI: 37.2% to 70.9%) versus 34.3% (95% CI: 17.7% to 50.8%) with an odds ratio of 2.26 (95% CI: 0.87-5.84; p=0.092). After neoadjuvant therapy, 83.8% of patients in the erlotinib group and 686% in the gemcitabine plus cisplatin group underwent surgery.

Median progression-free survival (PFS) was significantly longer with erlotinib at 215 months (95% CI: 19.3-23.6) versus gemcitabine plus cisplatin chemotherapy at 11.9 months (95% CI: 9.1-14.7) with a hazard ratio of 0.42 (95% CI: 0.23-0.76; p=00003). Overall survival is too immature to report, said Dr Wu.

Current treatment strategies for resected stage IIIA-N2 EGFR mutated NSCLC is controversial, explained Dr Wu, but he added that EGFR-TKIs have been shown to improve the prognosis of patients with advanced EGFR-mutant NSCLC.

"Cisplatin-based doublet chemotherapy as neoadjuvant treatment for stage IIIA-N2 NSCLC only gives patients 5% five-year overall survival benefit," said Dr Wu, explaining the unmet medical need in this patient population. "Recently, the CTONG 1104 trial (2) showed for the first time that adjuvant EGFR-TKI gefitinib could improve disease free surviv-al (DFS) by 10 months compared to adjuvant chemotherapy (28.7 months vs 18.0 months) in N1N2 resected NSCLC. This raises the possibility that EGFR-TKIs may play a beneficial role in the neoadjuvant setting for this subgroup."

Grade 3 and 4 toxicities were fewer in the erlotinib arm (0%) compared to the gemcitabine plus cisplatin arm (29.4%).

Commenting on the study for ESMO, Tony Mok, Professor of Clinical Oncology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that this was a long-awaited study on patients with EGFR mutation positive stage IIIA NSCLC. "It has always been tempting to offer neo-adjuvant EGFR TKI to downstage the patient for surgery, but the action stops short in absence of supporting evidence."

"This randomised study is the first to demonstrate improvement in multiple parameters including tumour response rate, resection rate, major pathologic response and PFS with the use of neoadjuvant EGFR TKI followed by adjuvant TKI," he pointed out. He added that, "While the difference between EGFR TKI and chemotherapy is significant, the impact of neoadjuvant EGFR TKI is relatively disappointing. Response rate of 54% is lower than what is expected of TKI in stage IV disease (about 70%), and only 13% of patients had attained major pathologic response. The reason for this is unclear, but one may have to query if duration of neoadjuvant EGFR TKI for 42 days is sufficient. Overall, this im-portant study offers us the rationale to consider neo-adjuvant EGFR TKI. "

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

References

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

1 Abstract LBA48_PR '"CTONG 1103: Erlotinib versus Gemcitabine plus Cisplatin as Neo-adjuvant Treatment for Stage IIIA -N2 EGFR-mutation Non-small-cell lung cancer (EMERGING): a Randomised Study" will be presented by Wen-Zhao Zhong during the Proffered Paper Session on Sunday, 21 October, 09:45 to 10:45 (CEST) in Hall A1 - Room 17. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

2 Zhong WZ, Wang Q, et al. Gefitinib versus vinorelbine plus cisplatin as adjuvant treatment for stage II-IIIA (N1-N2) EGFR-mutant NSCLC (ADJUVANT/CTONG1104): a randomised, open-label, phase 3 study. Lancet Oncol. 2018 Jan;19(1):139-148.

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA48_PR - CTONG 1103: ERLOTINIB VERSUS GEMCITABINE PLUS CISPLATIN AS NEO-ADJUVANT TREATMENT FOR STAGE IIIA -N2 EGFR-MUTATION NON-SMALL-CELL LUNG CANCER (EMERGING): A RANDOMISED STUDY

W.-Z. Zhong1, Y.-L. Wu2, K.-N. Chen3, C. Chen4, C.-D. Gu5, Q. Wang6, J. Wang7, W. Mao8, G.-B. Qiao9, Y. Cheng10, L. Xu11, C.-L. Wang12, M.-W. Chen13, X.-N. Yang1, H.-J. Chen1, H.-H. Yang1, J.-J. Yang2, Q. Zhou2

1Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute, Guangdong General Hospital, Guangzhou/China, 2Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute, Guangdong General Hospital and Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou/China, 3Thoracic Department, Beijing Cancer Hospital, Beijing/China, 4Thoracic Department, Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, Fuzhou/China, 5Thoracic Department, The 1st hospital affiliated Dalian Medical University, Dalian/China, 6Thoracic Department, Fudan University Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital, Shanghai/China, 7Thoracic Department, The People's Hospital of Peking University, Beijing/China, 8Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, Department of Thoracic Surgery, hangzhou/China, 9Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute, Thoracic Surgery department, Guangzhou/China, 10Department Of Thoracic Oncology, Jilin Provincial Cancer Hospital, Changchun/China, 11Thoracic Surgery Department, Jiangsu Cancer Hospital, Nanjing/China, 12Thoracic Surgery Department, Tianjin Cancer Hospital, Tianjin/China, 13Thoracic Surgery Department, The 1st hospital affiliated Xi'An Jiaotong University, Xi'an/China

Background: Cisplatin-based doublet chemotherapy as neoadjuvant treatment for IIIA-N2 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) give patients 5% survival benefit. EGFR-TKIs have been proved to prolong PFS of advanced EGFR-mutant NSCLC. CTONG1104 trial shown adjuvant gefitinib could improve 10 months (disease free survival) DFS than chemotherapy in N1/N2 resected NSCLC. It raises the possibility that EGFR-TKIs may play a beneficial role in the neoadjuvant setting. We conducted this randomized trial to compare the efficacy of erlotinib (E) and gemcitabine plus cisplatin (GC) as neoadjuvant/adjuvant treatment.

Methods: Eligible patients with N2 disease were randomly assigned in 1:1 ratio to E group for 42 days as neoadjuvant therapy and then for 12 months after surgery or GC group for 2 cycles neoadjuvant chemotherapy and 2 cycles after complete resection. The primary endpoint is objective response rate (ORR). secondary endpoints included downstaging rates of pathological lymph nodes, pathological complete response (pCR), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), safety, and tolerability.

Results: A total of 386 patients from 17 centers were screened, 72 were randomized and included in the intention-to-treat population. The ORR for neoadjuvant E versus GC was 54.1% (95% CI, 37.2% to 70.9%) vs 34.3% (95% CI, 17.7% to 50.8%) (OR 2.26; 95% CI, 087-5.84; p=0092). After neoadjuvant therapy, 31 patients (838%) in the E group and 24 (686%) in the GC group underwent surgery. Overall, lymph node downstaging occurred in 13% in the E and 42% in the GC group. The major pathological response (MPR) occurred in 3 of 28 patients (10.7%) in the E and no MPR (0/22) in the GC group. Median PFS was significantly longer with E (215 months; 95% CI, 193-236) versus GC (119 months; 95% CI, 91-147; HR 042; 95% CI, 023-076; p=0003), whereas OS data was immature. The incidence of grade 3/4 toxicities was lower in the E group (0%) than that in the GC group (294%). No unexpected AEs were found.

Conclusions: Neoadjuvant/adjuvant erlotinib improved ORR, and significantly prolonged PFS compared with GC chemotherapy in patients with stage IIIA-N2 EGFR mutation NSCLC.

Clinical trial identification: NCT01407822

Legal entity responsible for the study: Chinese Thoracic Oncology Group

Funding: Foundation or academic group WITH funding from a pharma, biotech, or other commercial company - Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Lung Cancer Translational Medicine (No.2012A061400006); National Health and Family Planning Commission of People's Republic of China (No.201402031); Guangzhou Science and Technology Bureau (2014Y200050); Roche China

Disclosure: W. Zhong: Speaker fees from AstraZeneca and Roche.

Y. Wu: Received Speaker fees from AstraZeneca, Roche, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Boehringer-Ingelheim and Sanofi;

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 20 October 2018 - Epigenetic therapy with histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors is worth pursuing in hormone receptor positive advanced breast cancer, suggests a phase III trial (1) reported today at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich.

Endocrine therapies are the foundation of treatment for patients with hormone receptor positive breast cancer. However, resistance to endocrine therapy is common, leading to disease progression or recurrence. HDAC inhibitors are a type of epigenetic therapy, meaning that they can switch genes on or off without changing the underlying DNA sequence. HDAC inhibitors have previously been shown to reverse resistance to hormone therapy. (2) But no randomised trial has so far demonstrated superiority with an HDAC inhibitor over existing treatments in advanced breast cancer.

This phase III trial used chidamide, an HDAC inhibitor developed in China. The study enrolled 365 postmenopausal women with hormone receptor positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer from 22 centres in China. Patients had progressed on previous endocrine therapy (tamoxifen and/or a nonsteroidal aromatase inhibitor). Patients were randomly allocated in a 2:1 ratio to receive chidamide 30 mg twice a week plus endocrine therapy with exemestane 25 mg daily (a steroidal aromatase inhibitor) or placebo plus exemestane.

The median progression free survival was 7.4 months with chidamide plus exemestane and 3.8 months with placebo plus exemestane (hazard ratio for disease progression or death 0.755, 95% confidence interval 0.582-0.978, p=0.0336). Prof. Zefei Jiang, Director of the Department of Breast Cancer, 307th Hospital of PLA (AMMS China) in Beijing, China, said: "This is the first phase III trial to demonstrate that an HDAC inhibitor plus endocrine blockade improves progression free survival compared to endocrine blockade alone in hormone receptor positive advanced breast cancer patients who have progressed after prior endocrine therapy."

Serious adverse events occurred in 51 (20.9%) patients in the chidamide group and seven (5.8%) in the placebo group. These included reduced blood levels of neutrophils (50.8% versus 2.5%), platelets (27.5% versus 2.5%), and leukocytes (18.8% versus 2.5%) in the chidamide and placebo groups, respectively. There were no deaths due to chidamide.

Quality of life with the drug was not measured in the study, but Jiang said: "The treatment regimen was generally well tolerated and toxicities were similar to those previously observed with chidamide monotherapy. The most common adverse events were blood disorders which were mostly asymptomatic and manageable."

Commenting on the study, Dr. Suzette Delaloge, Head, Breast Cancer Group, Institut Gustave Roussy, Paris, France, said: "This is the first randomised phase III trial to reach a positive result with an HDAC inhibitor in advanced breast cancer. It suggests that there may be some hope for this type of drug in these patients, since until now the only positive results have been in earlier stage breast cancer."

Delaloge said the findings should prompt more research on HDAC inhibitors in patients with advanced breast cancer. She said: "Studies are needed in Western populations comparing an HDAC inhibitor to the standard of care, which is the combination of endocrine therapy plus an m-TOR inhibitor (everolimus) or the combination of an endocrine therapy plus a CDK4/6 inhibitor."

On top of this trial, two ongoing phase III studies are comparing exemestane plus the HDAC inhibitor entinostat versus exemestane plus placebo. One trial is being conducted in the US (NCT02115282) and plans to complete in 2021, while the other trial is being run in China (NCT03538171) and is set to finish in 2020.

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

Abstract 283O_PR ' Phase III trial of chidamide, a subtype-selective histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, in combination with exemestane in patients with hormone receptor-positive advanced breast cancer ' will be presented by Zefei Jiang during the Presidential Symposium 1 on Saturday, 20 October 2018, 16:30 to 18:20 (CEST) in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Munster PN, Thurn KT, Thomas S, et al. A phase II study of the histone deacetylase inhibitor vorinostat combined with tamoxifen for the treatment of patients with hormone therapy-resistant breast cancer. Br J Cancer. 2011;104(12):1828-1835. doi: 10.1038/bjc.2011.156. Epub 2011 May 10.

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide.Visit http://www.esmo.org

283O_PR - Phase III trial of chidamide, a subtype-selective histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, in combination with exemestane in patients with hormone receptor-positive advanced breast cancer

Z. Jiang1, W. Li2, X. Hu3, Q. Zhang4, T. Sun5, S. Cui6, S. Wang7, Q. Ouyang8, Y. Yin9, C. Geng10, Z. Tong11, Y. Cheng12, Y. Pan13, Y. Sun14, H. Wang15, T. Ouyang16, K. Gu17, J. Feng18, X. Wang19

1Department of Breast Cancer, 307th Hospital of PLA (AMMS China), Beijing, China, 2Department of Cancer, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China, 3Department of Cancer, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Shanghai, China, 4Department of Cancer, Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital, Harbin, China, 5Department of Cancer, Liaoning Cancer Hospital, Shenyang, China, 6Department of Cancer, Henan Cancer Hospital, Zhengzhou, China, 7Department of Cancer, Sun yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China, 8Department of Cancer, Hunan Cancer Hospital, Changsha, China, 9Department of Cancer, Jiangsu Province Hospital, Nanjing, China, 10Department of Cancer, Tumor Hospital of Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang, China, 11Department of Cancer, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital, Tianjin, China, 12Department of Cancer, Jilin Cancer Hospital, Changchun, China, 13Department of Cancer, Anhui Province Hospital, Hefei, China, 14Department of Cancer, Jinan Cancer Hospital, Jinan, China, 15Department of Cancer, The Third Hospital of Nanchang, Nanchang, China, 16Department of Cancer, Beijing Cancer Hospital, Beijing, China, 17Department of Cancer, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China, 18Department of Cancer, Jiangsu Cancer Hospital, Nanjing, China, 19Department of Cancer, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, Hangzhou, China

Background: Chidamide (CS055/Tucidinostat/Epidaza) is an oral subtype-selective HDAC inhibitor. An exploratory clinical study has demonstrated the encouraging antitumor activity of chidamide in combination with exemestane in hormone receptor (HR)-positive advanced breast cancer (ABC) patients.

Methods: This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study involved postmenopausal patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative ABC that had failed with tamoxifen and/or nonsteroidal aromatase inhibitor. Eligible patients were randomly assigned (2:1) to two arms (chidamide 30 mg twice a week plus exemestane 25 mg daily or placebo plus exemestane). The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS), assessed by investigator. Secondary endpoints were overall survival (OS), objective response rate (ORR), clinical benefit rate (CBR), and safety.

Results: 365 patients were enrolled at 22 centers in China, with 244 in the chidamide group and 121 in the placebo group. The median PFS was 7.4 months [95% confidence interval (CI), 5.5 to 9.2] with chidamide-exemestane and 3.8 months (95% CI, 3.7 to 5.5) with placebo-exemestane (hazard ratio for disease progression or death, 0.755; 95% CI, 0.582 to 0.978; P=0.0336). ORR were 18.4% and 9.1 (P=0.026), and CBR were 46.7% and 35.5% (P=0.034) in the chidamide group and placebo group, respectively. Overall survival results were not mature at the time of the analysis. The most common grade 3 or 4 adverse events (AE) in the chidamide group were neutropenia (50.8% vs. 2.5% in the placebo group), thrombocytopenia (27.5% vs. 2.5%), and leucopenia (18.8% vs. 2.5%). Serious adverse events occurred in 51 (20.9%) patients in the chidamide group and 7 (5.8%) patients in the placebo group. No treatment-related death was reported.

Conclusions: This is the first oral HDAC inhibitor combined with exemestane in a pivotal clinical study to demonstrate PFS benefit and manageable adverse effect in HR-positive ABC patients progressed after prior endocrine therapy.

Clinical trial identification: NCT02482753.

Legal entity responsible for the study: Jiang Zefei.

Funding: Chipscreen Biosciences Co., Ltd.

Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 22 October 2018 - Immunotherapy with pembrolizumab improves survival in patients with head and neck cancer that has recurred or metastasised, according to late-breaking results from the KEYNOTE-048 study reported at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich. (1)

The current standard treatment for metastatic or recurrent head and neck cancer is platinum-based chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil (5-FU) with cisplatin or carboplatin) plus the EGFR inhibitor cetuximab. Around 35% of patients respond to treatment, which leads to a median survival of just over ten months.

The phase III KEYNOTE-048 study examined whether the anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody pembrolizumab could prolong survival and slow cancer growth compared to standard treatment. KEYNOTE-048 enrolled patients with head and neck cancer who had not received prior chemotherapy or biologic therapy for recurrent or metastatic disease. Patients were randomly allocated in a 1:1:1 ratio to: 1) standard treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy (5-FU with cisplatin or carboplatin) and cetuximab (the control group); 2) pembrolizumab alone; or 3) a novel combination of pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy.

At ESMO 2018 researchers presented results on pembrolizumab alone compared to standard treatment in patients expressing PD-L1, a marker of immune activity, and on the novel combination compared to standard treatment in all patients regardless of PD-L1 expression.

In the first comparison, 301 patients received pembrolizumab and 300 patients had standard treatment, with median follow up of 11.7 and 10.7 months, respectively. The patient demographics and disease characteristics were similar between the treatment arms.

In patients with tumour and/or surrounding cells expressing PD-L1 (combined positive score [CPS] >20), overall survival was significantly longer with pembrolizumab (14.9 months) than standard treatment (10.7 months, hazard ratio [HR] 0.61, p=0.0007). Some 23.3% responded to pembrolizumab and 36.1% responded to standard treatment. Median response duration was longer with pembrolizumab (20.9 months) than standard therapy (4.5 months). There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 0.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.75-1.29).

"Patients with PD-L1 expression live longer when they have initial treatment with pembrolizumab," said first author Prof Barbara Burtness, Yale School of Medicine and Co-Director, Development Therapeutics Research Program, Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, US.

The results were similar in patients with a lower cut point of PD-L1 expression (CPS >1). Overall survival was significantly longer with pembrolizumab (12.3 months) compared to standard care (10.3 months, HR 0.78, p=0.0086). Some 19.1% on pembrolizumab responded to treatment compared to 34.9% on standard chemotherapy. Median response duration was longer with pembrolizumab (20.9 months) than standard chemotherapy (4.5 months). There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 1.16, 95% CI 0.75-1.29).

In the second comparison, 281 patients received the novel combination of pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy and 278 received standard treatment, with median follow-up of 13.0 and 10.7 months, respectively. (2) Patient demographics and disease characteristics were similar between treatment arms. Overall survival was prolonged with the combination (13.0 months) versus standard care (10.7 months, HR 0.77, p=0.0034). Response rates were 35.6% for the pembrolizumab combination and 36.3% for standard treatment. There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.77-1.10).

Side effects in the three treatment groups were as expected. Pembrolizumab alone was less toxic than standard treatment. Pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy and standard treatment had similar toxicity.

Burtness noted that compared to standard care, pembrolizumab alone had a lower response rate and numerically shorter progression-free survival, but significantly longer overall survival. She said: "Pembrolizumab appears to prolong life even when the cancer continues to grow, suggesting that it should be a first line therapy in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer. Whether pembrolizumab is given alone or with chemotherapy may depend on PD-L1 expression and we are conducting analyses to answer this question."

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Dr Tanguy Seiwert, Head and Neck Cancer Programme Director, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, US, said: "This is the first study to show superior overall survival over the decade-old standard of care, platinum-based chemotherapy and cetuximab, and establishes PD-L1 CPS as a valid marker for head and neck cancer that should be routinely measured in these patients."

But he added: "The challenge is that treatment benefit is not equally distributed but depends on a biomarker. Hence, PD-L1 CPS expression will likely inform our choice between the two new options - pembrolizumab alone, with a favourable side effect profile, and pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy, which may be used in a larger group of patients. Higher PD-L1 expression is associated with more benefit but the exact cut points have to be determined, and individual patient characteristics will play an important role as well. Separate analyses are needed in patients who have tumours with low or absent PD-L1 expression, where there is potentially less benefit."

Regarding the need for further research, Seiwert said: "The usefulness of other biomarkers to select patients for treatment, such as tumour mutational burden, should also be examined."

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References and notes

Abstract LBA8_PR 'First-line pembrolizumab for recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC): interim results from the phase 3 KEYNOTE-048 study' will be presented by Barbara Burtness during the Presidential Symposium 3 on Monday, 22 October, 16:30 to 18:00 CEST in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 There are fewer patients in the novel combination part of the trial because there was a brief accrual hold due to safety.

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA8_PR - KEYNOTE-048: Phase III study of first-line pembrolizumab (P) for recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC)

B. Burtness1, K.J. Harrington2, R. Greil3, D. Soulieres4, M. Tahara5, G. De Castro Jr.6, A. Psyrri7, N. Baste Rotllan8, P.C. Neupane9, A. Bratland10, T. Fuereder11, B.G.M. Hughes12, R. Mesia13, N. Ngamphaiboon14, T. Rordorf15, W.Z. Wan Ishak16, A. Roy17, J. Cheng18, F. Jin18, D. Rischin19

1Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA, 2Targeted Therapy, The Institute of Cancer Research/The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, National Institute of Health Research Biomedical Research Centre, London, UK, 3III Medical Department, Salzburg Cancer Research Institute, Cancer Cluster Salzburg, Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria, 4Department of Medicine - Department of Hemato-Oncology, Centre Hospitalier de l'Universite Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada, 5Head and Neck Medical Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, Japan, 6Clinical Oncology, ICESP - Instituto do Cancer do Estado de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 7Internal Medicine/Medical Oncology, Attikon University Hospital, Athens, Greece, 8Department of Head and Neck Surgical & Medical Oncology, Gustave Roussy Institute, Villejuif, France, 9Medicine/Oncology, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA, 10Oncology, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway, 11Department of Medicine I, Clinical Division of Oncology & Comprehensive Cancer Center, Medizinische Universitaet Wien, Vienna, Austria, 12Cancer Care Services, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital and University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, 13Servicio de Oncologia Medica, Catalan Institut of Oncology, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain, 14Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand, 15Oncology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 16Clinical Oncology Unit, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 17BARDS, Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA, 18MRL, Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA, 19Medical Oncology, Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, Melbourne, Australia

Background: KEYNOTE-048 was an open-label, randomized phase 3 study of P or P + chemotherapy (C) vs EXTREME (E) as first-line systemic therapy for R/M HNSCC (NCT02358031).

Methods: Patients (pts) with R/M HNSCC not curable by local therapy and with no prior systemic therapy (R/M setting) who provided a tumor sample for PD-L1 testing were randomized to P 200 mg Q3W, P + C (cisplatin 100 mg/m2 or carboplatin AUC 5 Q3W + 5-FU 1000 mg/m2/d for 4 d Q3W), or E (cetuximab 400 mg/m2 loading/250 mg/m2 QW + C) given until PD, unacceptable toxicity, 6 cycles (C), or 24 mo (P). Primary end points for P vs E and P + C vs E were PFS and OS in the PD-L1 combined positive score (CPS) greater than or equal to 20 and greater than or equal to 1 and total populations (pop). Cutoff date for this final PFS/interim OS analysis was Jun 13, 2018 (minimum follow-up, ~17 mo).

Results: 882 pts were randomized: 301 to P, 281 to P + C, 300 to E. P was superior to E for OS in CPS greater than or equal to 20 (N = 255; median 14.9 vs 10.7 mo; HR 0.61 [95% CI 0.45-0.83]; P = 0.0007) and greater than or equal to 1 (N = 512; median 12.3 vs 10.3 mo; HR 0.78 [95% CI 0.64-0.96]; P = 0.0086); OS for P was non-inferior to E in the total pop (N = 601). P did not prolong PFS in CPS greater than or equal to 20 (P = 0.5); per the analysis plan, no further PFS testing was done for P vs E. Confirmed ORR (P vs E) was 23% vs 36% for CPS greater than or equal to 20, 19% vs 35% for CPS greater than or equal to 1, and 17% vs 36% for the total pop; median DOR was 20.9 vs 4.2 mo, 20.9 vs 4.5 mo, and 20.9 vs 4.5 mo. Gr 3-5 drug-related AE rates were 17% (P) vs 69% (E). P + C was non-inferior and superior to E for OS in the total pop (N = 559; median 13.0 vs 10.7 mo; HR 0.77 [95% CI 0.63-0.93]; P = 0.0034); OS for P + C was not significantly superior to E in CPS greater than or equal to 20 and greater than or equal to 1 at this interim analysis. PFS was not prolonged with P + C (P = 0.2). For P + C vs E, confirmed ORR was 36% vs 36%, median DOR was 6.7 vs 4.3 mo, and gr 3-5 drug-related AE rates were 71% vs 69%.

Conclusions: For first-line R/M HNSCC, P significantly improved OS over E in the PD-L1 CPS greater than or equal to 20 and greater than or equal to 1 populations and was noninferior in the total population with favorable safety. P + C significantly improved OS in the total population with safety comparable to E. P and P + C responses were durable. These data support pembrolizumab and pembrolizumab + platinum + 5-FU as new first-line standards of care for R/M HNSCC. The study continues to the final OS analysis.

Clinical trial identification: NCT0235803; Trial initiation, February 6, 2015

Editorial Acknowledgement: Medical writing and editorial assistance was provided by Melanie Leiby, an employee of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA

Legal entity responsible for the study: Merck & Co., Inc

Funding: Merck & Co., Inc.

Disclosure: B. Burtness: Advisory board member: Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Aduro, Amgen, Genentech; Research funding: Merck, Advaxis, Bristol-Myers Squibb; Honoraria: IDDI; Travel expenses, including accommodations: Boehringer Ingelheim.

K.J. Harrington: Advisory board member, honoraria, travel expenses: MSD, Merck-Serono, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Pfizer; Speakers' bureau: MSD, Merck-Serono, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca; Research funding: MSD, AstraZeneca.

R. Greil: Advisory board member: Celgene, Novartis, Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Takeda, Abbvie, AstraZeneca; Honoraria: Celgene, Roche, Merck, Takeda, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, MSD, Sandoz.

D. Souliere: Advisory board member: Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, AstraZeneca; Research funding: Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Novartis.

M. Tahara: Advisory board member: Ono Pharmaceutical, Bristol-Myers Squibb, MSD, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Aspyrian; Honoraria: Ono Pharmaceutical, Bristol-Myers Squibb, MSD, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Eisai.

G. De Castro Jr.: Advisory board member: MSD, Bristol-Myers Squibb; Speakers' bureau, honoraria, travel expenses: MSD, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck-Serono.

N. Baste Rotllan: Advisory board member: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck Serono, Nanobiotix

T. Fuereder: Advisory board member and research funding: MSD, Merck KGgA; Honoraria: MSD, Merck KGgA, Roche, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

B.G.M. Hughes: Advisory board member: MSD, Bristol-Myers Squbb, Roche, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eisai; Research funding: Amgen; Travel expenses: Boehringer Ingelheim.

R. Mesia: Advisory board member: MSD, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck KGaA, AstraZeneca, Roche; Speakers bureau: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck KGaA; Travel expenses: Merck KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

N. Ngamphaiboon: Advisory board: Roche, MSD, Amgen, Novartis, Taiho; Speakers' bureau: AstraZeneca, Roche, MSD, Eli Lilly; Research funding: Pfizer, MSD, Roche; Honoraria: Roche, MSD, Amgen, Novartis, Taiho; Travel expenses: Merck, Roche, Eisai, Taiho, Amgen.

T. Rordorf: Honoraria for advisory boards: MSD, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Amgen.

W.Z. Wan Ishak: Advisory board member: MSD, Roche, Eli Lilly; Speakers' bureau: Roche, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Eisai; Research funding: Roche, MSD, Amgen; Honoraria: Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Eisai, Pfizer; Travel: Eisai, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, MSD.

A. Roy, J. Cheng, F. Jin: Employee and stock owner: Merck & Co., Inc.

D. Rischin: Advisory board member (all uncompensated): Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Amgen; Research funding: Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Regeneron, Amgen, Genentech-Roche, GlaxoSmithKline; Travel expenses: Merck.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 22 October 2018 - Immunotherapy with nivolumab and low-dose ipilimumab could become a new first line treatment in patients with some metastatic colorectal cancers following late-breaking results from the CheckMate-142 trial reported at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich. (1) The drug combination shrank tumours and had beneficial effects on survival in patients with microsatellite instabiliy (MSI)-high metastatic colorectal cancer.

Around 4% of metastatic colorectal cancers are MSI-high, also called mismatch repair deficient. This means that tumour cells have mutations in the genes that usually repair DNA. Patients with MSI-high tumours have shorter survival (~14-19 months) than those with non-MSI-high tumours (~17-25 months), when treated with chemotherapy in a first-line setting. (2,3)

The phase II CheckMate-142 trial previously showed that in patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer that is resistant to chemotherapy, immunotherapy with nivolumab and low-dose ipilimumab provided durable clinical benefit and manageable side effects, leading to approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Today researchers report for the first time the CheckMate-142 results in patients who have received no prior treatment for MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. The study enrolled 45 patients. The median age was 66 years and 51% were male. Patients were followed-up for a median of 13.8 months for the primary endpoint of objective response rate.

The objective response rate was 60% and 7% of patients had a complete response. Some 84% of patients had tumour shrinkage. It took a median of 2.6 months to respond to treatment. The median duration of response, median progression-free survival, and median overall survival have not yet been reached. The 12-month progression-free survival and overall survival rates were 77% and 83%, respectively.

Other trials have tested high-dose ipilimumab combined with nivolumab, but CheckMate-142 used low-dose ipilimumab with nivolumab, which resulted in less toxicity. Treatment-related grade 3 and 4 toxicities were reported in 16% of patients and 7% discontinued therapy due to treatment-related adverse events.

Study author Prof. Heinz-Josef Lenz, Co-Leader, Gastrointestinal Cancers Program, University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, US, said: "The combination of low-dose ipilimumab and nivolumab has a durable clinical response and is well tolerated as first line treatment in patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. The data suggest that nivolumab and ipilimumab may be a first line treatment option for these patients."

Commenting on the results for ESMO, Prof. Thierry Andre, Head of Medical Oncology, Hopital Saint-Antoine, Assistance Publique - Hopitaux de Paris, France, said: "Nivolumab plus low-dose ipilimumab is effective in most patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. Patients improve dramatically and some return to work. It means healthcare systems can be confident that resources are being targeted effectively. This is in contrast to other metastatic cancers (melanoma, lung or kidney) where it is more difficult to select patients who benefit from immunotherapy."

Andre noted that these phase II results could lead the manufacturer to ask the FDA to approve this immunotherapy combination for the first line treatment of MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer, but the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will probably require a randomised phase III trial. The ongoing phase III KEYNOTE-177 study in MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer is comparing first line treatment with pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy with or without targeted therapy and the first results are expected in 2019. Andre; said: "Another question is whether the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab is superior to nivolumab alone for the first line treatment of patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. Previous results from CheckMate-142 suggest, with indirect comparisons, improved efficacy with nivolumab plus low-dose ipilimumab relative to nivolumab alone in previously treated patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer." (4)

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

Abstract LBA18_PR 'Durable clinical benefit with nivolumab (NIVO) plus low-dose ipilimumab (IPI) as first-line therapy in microsatellite instability-high/mismatch repair deficient (MSI-H/dMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC)' will be presented by Heinz-Josef Lenz during Proffered Paper Session on Monday 22 October, 09:15 to 10.50 (CEST) in Hall A2 - Room 18. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Heinemann V, et al. Somatic DNA mutations, tumor mutational burden (TMB), and MSI Status: Association with efficacy in patients (pts) with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) of FIRE-3 (AIO KRK-0306). J Clin Oncol. 2018;36:3591-3591. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2018.36.15_suppl.3591 Venderbosch S, et al. Mismatch repair status and BRAF mutation status in metastatic colorectal cancer patients: a pooled analysis of the CAIRO, CAIRO2, COIN, and FOCUS studies. Clin Cancer Res. 2014;20:5322-5330. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-14-0332. Overman MJ, et al. Durable Clinical Benefit With Nivolumab Plus Ipilimumab in DNA Mismatch Repair-Deficient/Microsatellite Instability-High Metastatic Colorectal Cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2018;36:773-779. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2017.76.9901.

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA18_PR - Durable clinical benefit with nivolumab (NIVO) plus low-dose ipilimumab (IPI) as first-line therapy in microsatellite instability-high/mismatch repair deficient (MSI-H/dMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC)

H-J.J. Lenz1, E. Van Cutsem2, M.L. Limon3, K.Y. Wong4, A. Hendlisz5, M. Aglietta6, P. Garcia-Alfonso7, B. Neyns8, G. Luppi9, D. Cardin10, T. Dragovich11, U. Shah12, A. Atasoy13, R. Postema14, Z. Boyd15, J-M. Ledeine16, M. Overman17, S. Lonardi18

1Medical Oncology, University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2Digestive Oncology, University Hospitals Gasthuisberg/Leuven and KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 3Medical Oncology, Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocio, Seville, Spain, 4Medical Oncology, Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia, 5Internal Medicine, Institut Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium, 6Medical Oncology, Candiolo Cancer Institute and University of Torino Medical School, Candiolo, Italy, 7Medical Oncology, Hospital Gral Universitario Gregorio Maranon, Madrid, Spain, 8Medical Oncology, University Hospital Brussels, Brussels, Belgium, 9Oncology and Hematology, University Hospital of Modena, Modena, Italy, 10Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt - Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, TN, USA, 11Medical Oncology and Hematology, Banner MD Anderson, Gilbert, AZ, USA, 12Hematology-Medical Onoclogy, Lehigh Valley Hospital, Allentown, PA, USA, 13R&D Oncology Clinical Development, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Princeton, NJ, USA, 14HEOR, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, London, UK, 15Oncology Translational Medicine, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Princeton, NJ, USA, 16Biostatistics, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Princeton, NJ, USA, 17Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA, 18Medical Oncology, Istituto Oncologico Vento IOV-IRCSS, Padua, Italy

Background: In previously chemotherapy-treated patients with MSI-H/dMMR mCRC from the phase II CheckMate-142 trial, NIVO + low-dose IPI (1 mg/kg) provided durable clinical benefit (investigator-assessed [INV] objective response rate [ORR] 55%, median duration of response [DOR] not reached, 12-month overall survival [OS] rate 85%) and manageable safety. Here we report the first results of the efficacy and safety of NIVO + low-dose IPI as a first-line (1L) therapy for patients with MSI-H/dMMR mCRC from CheckMate-142.

Methods: Patients with no prior treatment for MSI-H/dMMR mCRC were treated with NIVO 3 mg/kg every 2 weeks (Q2W) + low-dose IPI every 6 weeks (Q6W) until disease progression. The primary endpoint was ORR (INV; RECIST v1.1).

Results: Of 45 patients, 51% were male and median age was 66 years. Median follow-up (time from first dose to data cut-off) was 13.8 months (range 9-19). The ORR and disease control rate (DCR) were 60% and 84%, respectively, with a 7% complete response rate (Table). Median DOR was not reached. At 12 months, progression-free survival (PFS) and OS rates were 77% and 83%, respectively. Grade 3-4 treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) occurred in 16% of patients and 7% of patients had any grade TRAEs leading to discontinuation. Any grade select immune-mediated TRAEs affecting the hepatic (13%), gastrointestinal (11%), pulmonary (2%), and renal (2%) systems resolved in 100% of patients, while those affecting the skin (33%) and endocrine (24%) systems resolved in 45% and 60% of patients, respectively.

Conclusions: NIVO (Q2W) + low-dose IPI (Q6W) demonstrated robust and durable clinical benefit and was well-tolerated as a 1L treatment for MSI-H/dMMR mCRC. These results suggest that NIVO + low-dose IPI may represent a new treatment option for these patients.

Clinical trial identification: NCT02060188

Editorial Acknowledgement: Professional medical writing assistance and editorial assistance was provided by Tanmayi Mankame, PhD, and Christine Craig of Parexel International, funded by Bristol-Myers Squibb

Legal entity responsible for the study: Bristol-Myers Squibb

Funding: Bristol-Myers Squibb

Disclosure: H-J.J. Lenz: Honoraria: Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck Serono, Roche; Consulting or Advisory Role: Bayer, Merck Serono, Pfizer, Roche; Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Bayer, Merck Serono, Roche. E. Van Cutsem: Grants: Amgen, Bayer, BMS, Boehringer, Celgene, Ipsen, Lilly, Merck, MSD, Novartis, Roche, Servier; Honoraria: Bayer, BMS, Celgene, Lilly, Novartis, Servier. K.Y. Wong: Consultant/advisory role: Baxalta; Honoraria: Baxalta; Travel, accommodations, expenses: Roche. M. Aglietta: Honoraria: Bristol-Myers Squibb; Consulting or Advisory Role: Bristol-Myers Squibb; Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Bristol-Myers Squibb. B. Neyns: Honoraria: BMS, Merck, Novartis, Roche; Consultant/Advisory: BMS, Merck, Novartis, Roche; Speakers' Bureau: Novartis; Research (Inst): Merck KGaA, Novartis, Pfizer; Travel: Amgen, BMS, Merck, Novartis, Roche. D. Cardin: Consulting or Advisory Role: Merrimack, Raphael Pharmaceuticals; Research Funding (Inst.): Celgene, EMD Serono, Hoffman-LaRoche, Incyte, Oncolytics, Synta, BMS, Advaxis (Inst). A. Atasoy: Employment: BMS. R. Postema: BMS employee and shareholder. Z. Boyd: Employment: Bristol Meyers Squibb; Stock and other ownership interests: Roche/Genentech, Bristol Meyers Squibb. J-M. Ledeine: Employment: Bristol-Myers Squibb; Stock and other ownership interests: Bristol-Myers Squibb. M. Overman: Consulting or Advisory Role: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merrimack, Roche/Genentech; Research Funding: Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, MedImmune, Merck, Roche. S. Lonardi: Consulting or Advisory Role: Amgen, Bayer, Merck, Lilly; Speakers' Bureau: Lilly, Roche, BMS; Research Funding: Amgen. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 21 October 2018 - Radiotherapy to the prostate improves overall survival in men newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer who have a low metastatic disease burden but not in those with higher burden of disease, according to results from a pre-planned analysis of a large comparison study reported at ESMO 2018 (1).

"Standard treatment for men newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer is currently drug treatment alone," explained the lead author Dr Chris Parker, Clinical Oncologist, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton, UK. "Although outcomes have improved, men still typically die from metastatic prostate cancer within around five years, so there is a need for more effective treatment. We wanted to know if radiotherapy to the prostate might not only improve local control but also slow progression of metastatic disease."

The multi-arm, multi-stage STAMPEDE study included a randomised phase III comparison to test whether radiotherapy to the prostate improves overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer. This was based on the hypothesis that primary tumours, which are the original or first tumours occurring in a patient with cancer, could contribute to overall disease progression and shorter survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer.

The study included 2061 patients (median age 68 years) from the UK and Switzerland who were newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. They were randomly allocated to standard of care (SOC) treatment consisting of lifelong androgen deprivation therapy plus early docetaxel from 2016 or to SOC plus radiotherapy to the prostate. The radiotherapy schedule was 55Gy/20f daily over 4 weeks or 36Gy/6f weekly over 6 weeks.

Results showed that prostate radiotherapy improved failure-free survival (hazard ratio [HR] 0.68, 95% confidence interval 0.68, 0.84) but not overall survival (HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.80, 1.06) in the whole group of patients.

Prespecified subgroup analysis showed that radiotherapy to the prostate improved overall survival by just over one-third (32%) in the 819 men with a low burden of metastatic disease (HR=0.68, 95% CI 0.52, 0.90). In contrast, overall survival was not improved with radiotherapy in the 1120 men with higher metastatic burden. Higher burden of disease in prostate cancer is defined as four or more bone metastases with at least one outside the axial skeleton and/or visceral metastases (2).

Radiotherapy to the prostate was well tolerated with 5% of patients having grade 3-4 adverse events during treatment and 4% following treatment. "There was a small increase in risk of bladder and bowel side-effects but these were modest. The side-effects are certainly outweighed by the survival benefit," said Parker.

"Prostate radiotherapy improves the survival of men with metastatic prostate cancer who have a low disease burden," reported Parker. He recommended: "Prostate radiotherapy, in addition to drug treatment, should now be a standard treatment option for men with oligometastatic disease."

Parker noted that prostate radiotherapy is a simple technique that is widely available and relatively cheap, so he considered that it can be implemented easily. He added that the study results are also relevant to men with pelvic node positive but non-metastatic disease (N1M0) where addition of radiotherapy to drug treatment could be curative.

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Prof. Karim Fizazi, from the Gustave Roussy Institute, University of Paris Sud, France, said: "For the first time, this study provides evidence that treating the local primary tumor is associated with improvement in overall survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer and minimal disseminated disease." He added that the finding that there was no significant increase in overall survival in men with higher burden of disease was in line with the previously reported HORRAD trial (3).

Considering the implications for clinical practice, Fizazi suggested: "For men with newly diagnosed oligometastatic prostate cancer, it is quite likely that this data is practice changing." Looking to the future, he said: "For men with higher burden of disease more data are needed regarding whether upfront local treatment improves or prevents local symptoms, which, by itself, may justify its use in the absence of an overall survival benefit."

In terms of limitations, Fizazi noted that although the study was a large, randomised phase 3 trial only 18% of the patients had received early docetaxel and none had received early abiraterone, although these treatments are now part of standard treatment in fit men.

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

1 Abstract LBA5_PR 'Radiotherapy (RT) to the primary tumour for men with newly-diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer (PCA): survival results from STAMPEDE (NCT00268476)' will be presented by Chris Parker during the Presidential Symposium 2 on Sunday 21 October, 16:30 to 18:10 (CEST) in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

2 Sweeney CJ, Chen Y-H, Carducci M et al. Chemohormonal therapy in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. NEJM 2015; 373: 737-746.

3 Boeve L, Hulshof M, Vis A et al. PD10-10 a prospective, randomized controlled trial evaluating overall survival in patients with primary bone metastatic prostate cancer (MPCA) receiving either androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) or ADT combined with concurrent radiation therapy to the prostate, final data from the HORRAD trial. The Journal of Urology 2018; 199: e231-e232.

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA5_PR - Radiotherapy (RT) to the primary tumour for men with newly-diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer (PCa): Survival results from STAMPEDE (NCT00268476)

C.C. Parker1, N.D. James2, C. Brawley3, N.W. Clarke4, G. Attard5, S. Chowdhury6, W. Cross7, D.P. Dearnaley8, C.E. Gilson3, R. Jones9, M.D. Mason10, R. Millman11, S. Gillessen12, C. Eswar13, J. Gale14, J. Lester10, D. Sheehan15, A. Tran16, M.K. Parmar3, M.R. Sydes3

1Urology, The Institute of Cancer Research/Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton, UK, 2Clinical Trials Unit, Queen Elizabeth-University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK, 3MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, Institute of Clinical Trials and Methodology-UCL, London, UK, 4NGS Foundation Trust, The Christie and Salford Royal Hospitals, Manchester, UK, 5Medical Oncology, The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden, London, UK, 6-,Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital NHS Trust, London, UK, 7Department of Urology, LIMM - Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, Leeds, UK, 8-, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, UK, 9Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK, 10-, Velindre Cancer Centre Velindre Hospital, Cardiff, UK, 11Clinical Trials Unit, Medical Research Council - MRC Clinical Trials Unit, London, UK, 12 Division of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester and the Christie, Manchester, UK and Division of Medical Oncology and Haematology, Kantonsspital St Gallen, St Gallen, University of Bern, Switzerland, 13The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Liverpool, UK, 14-, St. Mary's Hospital Portsmouth Oncology Centre, Portsmouth, UK, 15Exeter Oncology Centre, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Devon, UK, 16-, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK

Background: Local treatment of the prostate might not only improve local control but also slow progression of metastatic disease. We hypothesised that RT to the prostate would improve overall survival in men presenting with metastatic PCa & that survival benefit would be greater in men with lower metastatic burden.

Methods: STAMPEDE, a multi-arm multi-stage platform protocol, included a randomised phase III comparison to test this hypothesis. Standard-of-care (SOC) was lifelong androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), with early docetaxel permitted from 2016. Stratified randomisation within 12 wk on ADT allocated pts 1:1 to SOC or SOC+RT. Men allocated to RT had daily (55Gy/20f/4wk) or weekly (36Gy/6f/6wk) schedules, started less than or equal to 8wk after randomisation or docetaxel. The primary outcome measure (OM) was death from any cause; secondary OMs included failure-free survival (FFS). 90% power & 2.5% 1 sided  for hazard ratio (HR) 0.75 required ~267 control arm deaths. Analyses used Cox proportional hazards & flexible parametric models. Directionally pre-specified subgroup analysis tested effects by metastatic burden at entry.

Results: 2061 men with newly-diagnosed M1 PCa were randomised Jan 2013 - Sep 2016. Randomised groups were well balanced: median age 68 yr; median PSA 97ng/ml; 18% early docetaxel; metastatic burden: 40% lower, 54% higher, 6% unknown. Prostate RT improved FFS (HR=0.76, 95%CI 0.68, 0.84) but not overall survival (HR=0.92, 95%CI 0.80, 1.06). Subgroup analysis showed improved overall survival for prostate RT in 819 men with lower metastatic burden (HR=0.68, 95%CI 0.52, 0.90) but not in 1120 men with higher metastatic burden (HR=1.07, 95%CI 0.90, 1.28). RT was well-tolerated during (5% Grd3-4 SOC+ RT) & after treatment (Grd3-4 <1% SOC, 4% SOC+RT).

Conclusions: Radiotherapy to the prostate did not improve survival for unselected patients with newly-diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer, but, in a pre-planned analysis, did improve survival in men with a lower metastatic burden. Therefore, prostate radiotherapy should be a standard treatment option for men with oligometastatic disease.

Clinical trial identification: NCT00268476

Legal entity responsible for the study: Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit at UCL (MRC CTU at UCL)

Funding: This comparison was funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK_A12459) with core funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC_MC_UU_12023/25). The protocol platform is also supported by Astellas, Clovis Oncology, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi Aventis, with a view towards other comparisons in the protocol.

Disclosure: C.C. Parker: Bayer grant and personal fees for research funding, speaker fees and advisory board honoraria; Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) advisory board honoraria; Janssen speaker fees.

N.D. James: Sanofi and Novartis advisory board; Janssen advisory board, speaker fees, assistance with travel.

C. Brawley, C.E. Gilson, M.K. Parmar: Educational grant plus drug from Astellas, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis for STAMPEDE; Educational grant from Clovis Oncology for STAMPEDE.

N.W. Clarke: Janssen consultation and advisory fees.

G. Attard: Veridex consulting fees; Roche/Ventana consulting fees, speakers' bureaus, travel and accommodation.

S. Chowdhury: Janssen personal fees for honoraria, speakers fee and travel grant.

D.P. Dearnaley: UK NIHR CRN financial support for trial recruitment.

R. Jones: Janssen personal fees & non-financial support; Astellas grant & personal fees.

S. Gillessen: Compensated consultancy and advisory roles (including IDMC): AAA International, Active Biotech, Astellas Pharma, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, CellSearch (Menarini Silicon Biosystems), Clovis, Curevac, Dendreon, Ferring, Innocrin, Janssen, MaxiVAX SA, Millennium, Novartis, Orion, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi Aventis; Speakers Bureaus (compensated): Janssen, Novartis; Patent application for a biomarker method (WO 2009138392 A1).

M.R. Sydes: Educational grant plus drug from Astellas, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis for STAMPEDE. Educational grant from Clovis Oncology for STAMPEDE. Speaker fee for educational meetings: Eli Lilly, Janssen.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 21 October 2018 - A high concentration of multi-strain probiotic helps to reduce mild to moderate episodes of chemotherapy-induced diarrhoea (CID) in cancer patients, according to results of a phase II/III study in India. (1)

Presenting the final results of the study at ESMO 2018 Congress lead investigator, Atul Sharma, Professor of Medical Oncology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India, remarked: "This is probably the first large, randomised, placebo-controlled study to look at the role of multi-strain, high dose probiotic in chemotherapy-induced diarrhoea,".

"Though it did not meet its primary endpoint in reducing incidence of grade 3 and 4 diarrhoea [statistical significance was not met], it helped to reduce the incidence of all grades of diarrhoea. The probiotic also helped in reducing levels of inflammatory markers, the significance of which needs to be ascertained," he added.

The incidence of grade 3 diarrhoea episodes was 8.0% for patients on probiotics, and 4.1% for those on placebo (p=0.088); and for grade 4 episodes the respective incidences were 2.0% and 0% (p=0.050). For all grades of diarrhoea, there were 199 and 220 episodes in probiotic and placebo groups respectively (p=0.019). Analysis of serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), clusterin, and faecal calprotectin showed levels were reduced in patients taking the multi-strain probiotic.

Chemotherapy changes the consistency of the gut microflora and as such it can lead to some serious side-effects. Sharma explained that, "chemotherapy-induced diarrhoea is an under-reported, unpleasant, and sometimes a serious side-effect of chemotherapy. It may be associated with weight-loss, malnutrition, fatigue and malaise, electrolyte imbalance and inability to deliver full dose of chemotherapy on time. It may also cause loss of body fluid resulting into acute renal injury and rarely death."

To determine whether it improved the balance of intestinal flora and as such reduce these side effects, the study investigated the efficacy of a high potency multi-strain probiotic on patients experiencing CID while receiving fluropyrimidines and/or irinotecan-based cancer therapy.

The multi-strain probiotic consisted of 900 billion colony forming units (CFU) sachet of four strains of lactobacillus, three strains of bifidobacteria and one strain of streptococcus thermophiles. Patients were randomised to receive either one sachet of probiotic twice daily (n=145) or one sachet of placebo twice daily (n=146), started 14 days prior to chemotherapy, and continued for two weeks following chemotherapy cycle three. The vast majority of patients were men, approximately 80%; and aged approximately 46 years. There were no increased incidence of infections.

Adding comment on the study for ESMO was Prof. Michal Mego, Head of 2nd Department of Oncology, Comenius University, National Cancer Institute, Bratislava, Slovak Republic, said: "These data suggest that probiotics have potential to be a simple and novel approach in the reduction of chemotherapy-induced diarrhoea, however confirmatory studies are awaited. As probiotics are living microorganisms there is potential risk of iatrogenic infection in immuno-compromised cancer patients, therefore safety data and adverse events associated with probiotic administration could influence their future role in prevention of chemotherapy induced diarrhoea."

Reflecting on the accumulation of evidence for the effect of the gut microbiome on cancer therapy, Prof. John B.A.G. Haanen, CSO Immunotherapy, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam and Professor of Translational Immunotherapy of Cancer, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, said: "Due to the effect of the gut microbiome on response and toxicity in cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors and the recently initiated trials with faecal transplantation to improve outcome of checkpoint inhibitors, this study is of interest."

"Currently unknown is whether probiotics used in this RCT positively or negatively influence the immune system, and with more patients being treated with immunotherapy, before embarking on large-scale usage of probiotics to reduce chemotherapy-induced diarrhoea, their effect on the immune system should be investigated," he remarked.

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

Abstract 1682O_PR 'Final results of a phase II/III, randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled study to investigate the efficacy of a high potency multistrain probiotic, on chemotherapy induced diarrhea in cancer patients receiving Fluropyrimidines and/or Irinotecan based therapy' will be presented by Dr Atul Sharma during Proffered paper Session on Sunday, 21 October 2018 14:45 to 16:15 (CEST), Date, Time 00:00 to 00:00 (CET) in Room 20 - Hall B3. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

1682O_PR - Final results of a phase II/III, randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled study to investigate the efficacy of a high potency multistrain probiotic, on chemotherapy induced diarrhea in cancer patients receiving fluropyrimidines and/or irinotecan based therapy

A. Sharma1, S.P. Chaudhary1, V. Raina1, N.K. Shukla2, V. Sreenivas3, S. Prakash4, P. Priyatma4, S. Bharti4

1Medical Oncology, B.R. Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital (AIMS), New Delhi, India, 2Surgical Oncology, B.R. Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital (AIMS), New Delhi, India, 3Biostatistics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India, 4Lab Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

Background: Chemotherapy-induced diarrhea (CID) is a common side-effect, associated with weight-loss, malnutrition, and treatment breaks. Chemotherapy changes the composition of the native gut microflora. We hypothesized that a high-concentration multi-strain probiotic product might improve the balance of intestinal flora and thus reduce the incidence of severe diarrheal grades.

Methods: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled single center study. Total sample size calculated was 242, however, protocol was amended to enrol 291 patients, accounting for loss to follow up or protocol deviations. Primary end-point was incidence of grade 3 and grade 4 diarrhea. Analysis of serum VEGF & clusterin and fecal calprotectin was also planned. Regulatory approvals and trial registration were done before study initiation. Enrolled patients were randomized to receive 1 sachet bid of study drug (900 billion CFU/sachet of 4 strains of Lactobacillus, 3 strains of Bifidobacteria and 1 strain of Streptococcus thermophilus) or placebo (corn starch), starting 14 days before chemotherapy and continued till two weeks after end of chemotherapy cycle 3.

Results: Between July 2010 to November 2014, 291 patients were enrolled at AIIMS, New Delhi. Type and site of cancer (p=0.882) and chemotherapy regimen (p=0.492) were similar in both groups. Body weight between the two arms was found to be comparable at all study visits. Results are shown in Table-1.

Conclusions: Results indicate a limited role of the probiotic in reducing incidence of severe CID. However, it was able to significantly reduce all grades of diarrheal episodes (taken together), levels of VEGF, fecal calprotectin and clusterin.

Clinical trial identification: Clinical Trial Registry India Identifier : CTRI/2009/091/001042

Legal entity responsible for the study: CD Pharma India Pvt Limited

Funding: CD Pharma India Pvt Limited

Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 20 October 2018 - Treatment with the cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor palbociclib achieves a clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival in patients with hormone receptor positive (HR+) human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer that has relapsed or progressed on hormonal therapy, according to the final analysis of overall survival results from the PALOMA-3 study reported at ESMO 2018. (1)

Most patients with HR+ breast cancer become resistant to hormonal therapies over time and inhibiting CDK4/6 has been identified as a target for overcoming or delaying resistance to hormonal therapy in advanced HR+/HER2-breast cancer. The prospective, randomised phase 3 PALOMA-3 trial showed that the first-in-class CDK 4/6 inhibitor palbociclib in combination with fulvestrant significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) in 521 women with HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer that had progressed on previous hormonal therapy (2).

The new analysis assessed overall survival (OS), a key secondary endpoint of PALOMA-3, after a median follow-up of 44.8 months in 521 patients with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer. The patients had relapsed or progressed on prior endocrine therapy before being randomised to palbociclib (125mg/day orally, schedule 3/1) plus fulvestrant (500mg per standard of care) or placebo plus fulvestrant. Researchers carried out the OS analysis when approximately 60% (n?310) of the 521 patients in the study had died.

Results showed that median overall survival improved by 6.9 months with palbociclib plus fulvestrant (median OS 34.9 months, 95% confidence interval [CI] 28.8-40.0) compared to placebo plus fulvestrant (median OS 28.0 months, 95% CI 23.6-34.6, p=0.043).

The improvement was even greater in patients with sensitivity to prior endocrine therapy, with an absolute improvement in median OS of 10.0 months. Median OS improved significantly by 11.5 months in patients without visceral disease. No new safety signals were observed with longer follow-up.

"Here, we present the first-ever overall survival results from a phase 3 study for a CDK4/6 inhibitor in a pre-planned analysis of the PALOMA-3 trial. Importantly, this is the first report demonstrating that the absolute gain in survival is similar to the absolute gain in progression-free survival in the whole population. Moreover, this prolongation of life is of a large magnitude in patients with prior sensitivity to endocrine therapy, "said lead author Massimo Cristofanilli, Professor of Medicine, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, USA.

"This is very important for patients, as it shows that the improvement in PFS observed in previous studies may have a positive impact on overall survival, an ultimate goal of treatment, therefore improving the chance for a long-term life in spite of advanced disease," said Cristofanilli. He added: "The demonstration of a positive impact on OS also provides additional confidence to clinicians and patients as to the benefits of this combination as an appropriate and effective treatment approach."

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Dr Carmen Criscitiello, European Institute of Oncology Milan, Italy, said: "These data were much awaited, as the clinical benefit obtained with CDK 4/6 inhibitors was incontestable, but there was the hot question whether the PFS benefit translates into OS benefit. This randomised Phase III trial shows for the first time an improvement in OS with a CDK4/6 inhibitor in the metastatic setting for ER+/HER2- breast cancer." However, she added: "The study was unpowered for OS so the data should be cautiously interpreted. Although the results strongly suggest that the PFS benefit may translate into OS benefit, the other trials conducted with CDK4/6 inhibitors will contribute to confirm the estimate of the OS benefit observed in this study."

Dr Matteo Lambertini, ESMO fellow at the Institut Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium, agreed: "Collecting mature OS data at longer follow-up from randomised trials that investigated the combination of endocrine therapy and CDK 4/6 inhibitors is crucial to have a clearer understanding on the benefit of these expensive agents. The limited OS data that we had so far from these trials are now supported by the PALOMA-3 updated results, which strongly suggest that this treatment should become widely available for women with advanced HR+/HER2- disease." He said: "Further research is needed to better understand how to optimise the sequencing of the available treatment options in this setting as well as to identify patients who may benefit from endocrine therapy alone."

Looking to the future, Cristofanilli said: "The significant impact of CDK 4/6 inhibitors on disease-free and overall survival in metastatic disease lead us to be excited about the potential of this class of agents in early-stage breast cancer, where our goal is to improve the cure rate. On that front, two large randomised adjuvant trials of palbociclib in early stage breast cancer, PENELOPE-B and PALLAS, are ongoing."

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

1. Abstract LBA2_PR 'Overall survival (OS) with palbociclib plus fulvestrant in women with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer (ABC): Analyses from PALOMA-3 ' will be presented by Massimo Cristofanilli during the Presidential Symposium 1 on Saturday, 20 October, 16:30 to 18:20 (CEST) in Hall A2 - Room 18. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

2. Cristofanilli M, Turner NC, Bondarenko I et al. Fulvestrant plus palbociclib versus fulvestrant plus placebo for treatment of hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer that progressed on previous endocrine therapy (PALOMA-3): final analysis of the multicentre, double-blind, phase 3 randomised controlled trial. Lancet Oncology 2016; 17: 425-439

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA2_PR - Overall survival (OS) with palbociclib plus fulvestrant in women with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer (ABC): Analyses from PALOMA-3

M. Cristofanilli1, D.J. Slamon2, J. Ro3, I. Bondarenko4, S.-A. Im5, N. Masuda6, M. Colleoni7, A. DeMichele8, S. Loi9, S. Verma10, H. Iwata11, N. Harbeck12, S. Loibl13, F. Andre14, K. Puyana Theall15, X. Huang16, C. Giorgetti17, C. Huang Bartlett18, N.C. Turner19

1Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA, 2Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA - School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 3Oncology, National Cancer Center, Goyang-si, Republic of Korea, 4Dnipropetrovsk Medical Academy, City Multiple-Discipline Clinical Hospital #4, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, 5Cancer Research Institute, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 6Dept. of Surgery, Breast Oncology, NHO Osaka National Hospital, Osaka, Japan, 7Divisione di Senologia Medica, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Milan, Italy, 8Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 9Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 10Tom Baker Cancer Centre, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, 11Department of Breast Oncology, Aichi Cancer Center Hospital, Nagoya, Japan, 12Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Brustzentrum der Universitat Munchen (LMU), Munich, Germany, 13German Breast Group, C/o GBG Forschungs GmbH, Neu-Isenburg, Germany, 14Department of Medical Oncology, Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, 15Pfizer Oncology, Pfizer Inc, Cambridge, MA, USA, 16Pfizer Oncology, Pfizer Inc, San Diego, CA, USA, 17Pfizer Oncology, Pfizer Inc, Milan, Italy, 18Pfizer Oncology, Pfizer Inc, Collegeville, PA, USA, 19Breast Cancer Now Research Centre, Royal Marsden Hospital and Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK

Background: Endocrine therapy (ET)-resistant ABC is dependent on cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6. In the prospective, randomized, double-blind, phase 3 PALOMA-3 study, the CDK4/6 inhibitor PAL in combination with FUL significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) vs placebo (PBO)+FUL (median PFS, 11.2 vs 4.6 mo; absolute difference, 6.6 mo; hazard ratio [HR] 0.50 [95% CI, 0.40-0.62]; P<0.000001). Here, we report OS analysis with a median follow up of 44.8 mo.

Methods: HR+/HER2- ABC (N=521) patients (pts) who had relapsed or progressed on prior ET were randomized 2:1 to PAL (125 mg/d orally, schedule 3/1) + FUL (500 mg per standard of care) or PBO+FUL. Primary endpoint was investigator-assessed PFS. A key secondary endpoint was OS. OS analysis occurred when approximately 60% (n?310) of the 521 pts died.

Results: Median OS improved with PAL+FUL vs PBO+FUL by an absolute difference of 6.9 mo (Table). In pts with sensitivity to prior ET, the absolute improvement in median OS was 10.0 mo with PAL+FUL vs PBO+FUL. In pts without visceral disease, median OS significantly improved with PAL+FUL vs PBO+FUL (11.5 mo). Time to end of the next-line treatment was 18.8 (PAL+FUL) and 14.1 (PBO+FUL) mo (HR 0.68 [95% CI, 0.56-0.84]; P<0.0001). Improvements in median OS, although not statistically significant at the prespecified level, were shown with PAL+FUL vs PBO+FUL regardless of ESR1 mutation status or prior lines of therapy. Median time on subsequent therapy was similar in both arms; median time to chemotherapy was 17.5 (PAL+FUL) and 8.8 (PBO+FUL) mo (HR 0.58; P<0.000001). No new safety signals were observed with longer follow-up.

Conclusions: In HR+/HER2- ABC pts, PAL+FUL showed a clinically meaningful improvement in OS (6.9 mo vs PBO+FUL), especially in pts with sensitivity to prior ET. The absolute difference of PFS gain was maintained in OS. Funding: Pfizer (NCT01942135).

Clinical trial identification: NCT01942135

Editorial Acknowledgement: Editorial support was provided by Jennifer Fetting, PhD, and Kevin O'Regan, PhD, of Complete Healthcare Communications, LLC (North Wales, PA), a CHC Group company, and funded by Pfizer Inc

Legal entity responsible for the study: Pfizer Inc

Funding: Pfizer Inc

Disclosure: M. Cristofanilli: Honoraria: Pfizer.

D.J. Slamon: Consulting or advisory role: Bayer, Eli Lilly, Novartis, BioMarin.

S-A. Im: Consulting or advisory role: AstraZeneca, Hanmi Corp., Novartis, Roche, Pfizer.

N. Masuda: Honoraria: Chugai, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Takeda; Research funds: Chugai, AstraZeneca, Kyowa-Kirin, MSD, Novartis, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Daiichi-Sankyo.

A. DeMichele: Consulting or advisory role: Pfizer, Novartis; Research funds: Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Calithera, Incyte, Genentech.

S. Loi: Research funds: Merck, Novartis, Roche-Genentech.

S. Verma: Consulting or advisory role: Pfizer, Novartis, Roche, Astra Zeneca, Amgen, Eli Lilly.

H. Iwata: Honoraria: AstraZeneca, Chugai, Eisai, Novartis; Consulting or advisory role: Chugai, Daiichi-Sankyo.

N. Harbeck: Honoraria: Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer.

S. Loibl: Research funds: Pfizer, Novartis.

F. Andre: Research funds: AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfizer, Eli Lilly.

K. Puyana Theall, X. Huang, C. Huang Bartlett: Pfizer employee and shareholder.

C. Giorgetti: Consulting role: Pfizer; Shareholder: Pfizer.

N.C. Turner: Honoraria: Pfizer; Consulting or advisory role: Pfizer; Research funds: Servier, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Roche, AstraZeneca.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Biological medicines are responsible for some of the most promising innovations in cancer treatment, including immunotherapy, targeted drugs and vaccines - but they are also expensive.

According to a report by IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science (1) EU-wide spending in cancer therapeutics exceeded 24 billion euros in 2016, with biological medicines accounting for almost 40% of the expense. The introduction of biosimilars for the top three oncology agents is estimated to enable up to 2 billion euros in savings across Europe in 2021 alone. As such, their use could increase the availability of innovative therapies for patients who would not otherwise be treated with biologicals due to economic constraints. All of this, however, hinges on a broader understanding of biosimilars throughout the oncology ecosystem.

ESMO has already taken a position on the use of biosimilars (2), supporting their use in oncology as they represent cheaper alternatives to reference biologics with the potential to make optimal cancer care more sustainable and widely accessible.

Drawing further attention to the issue, ESMO recently published a paper (3) about the integration of biosimilars into routine oncology practice, calling for multidisciplinary collaboration to build confidence wherever it is still lacking. According to preliminary results of an ESMO survey to be published later this year, questioned about their knowledge of and comfort with biosimilars, many oncologists exhibited only a moderate confidence in their understanding of key concepts that underpin biosimilar drug development and use. Close to 87% of respondents stated that they wished to be offered more educational activities on the subject.

On the same wavelength was the discussion at the fourth stakeholder conference on biosimilar medicines, (4) organised by the European Commission in Brussels in September, where ESMO moderated a discussion on the use of biosimilars in oncology.

"Collaboration and multi-stakeholder approaches to improve understanding and eradicate misconceptions are important for the successful uptake of biosimilars in oncology," said Josep Tabernero, ESMO President. "If more education is what oncologists need, being the Society of reference that looks after their professional development, we must urgently act on that."

At a session on biosimilars during the ESMO 2017 Congress in Madrid, physicians, but also nurses, pharmacists, patient organisations and competent authorities from the EU Member States were invited to join the discussion, in order to draw from everyone's knowledge and experience. "All of them play a crucial role in delivering these medicines to patients and making sure the latter accept and adhere to their therapies," Tabernero said. A similar approach will be proposed at this year's congress, later this month in Munich.

Extrapolating the use of a biosimilar in all indications approved for the reference drug appears the most common source of misunderstanding among physicians, nurses and patients alike, according to data in the ESMO survey. "It is a very difficult concept to explain outside of the regulatory setting," said Elena Wolff-Holz from the EMA (European Medicines Agency), first author of the paper and panel member at the event in Brussels. "This is what educational initiatives should focus on - not just for oncologists, but for all healthcare professionals and for patients," Tabernero highlighted.

Tabernero, who also co-authored the paper, cited one of its key examples in this area: "The Information Guide for Healthcare Professionals on Biosimilars in the EU has been publicly available since its release in 2017," he said. "It is the product of a concerted effort by the European Commission, the EMA, (5) as well as scientific experts, healthcare professionals and patients from the member states - and of course ESMO, which ensured that the information needs for the oncology community were also adequately addressed. This is exactly the kind of broad-spectrum collaboration we need to see more of going forward."

###

Notes to Editors

References

https://www.iqvia.com/institute/reports/global-oncology-trends-2017-advances-complexity-and-cost https://esmoopen.bmj.com/content/1/6/e000142 E. Wolff-Holz, J. Garcia Burgos, R. Giuliani et al. Preparing for the incoming wave of biosimilars in oncology. ESMO Open 2018. doi: 10.1136/esmoopen-2018-000420 https://ec.europa.eu/growth/content/fourth-stakeholder-conference-biosimilar-medicines http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/medicines/general/general_content_001832.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac0580bb8fda

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide.

http://www.esmo.org

Twitter: @myESMO

Facebook: esmo.org

Youtube: ESMOchannelMunich, Germany, 22 October 2018 - Patients with human papilloma virus (HPV)-positive throat cancer should receive chemoradiotherapy rather than cetuximab with radiotherapy, according to late-breaking research reported at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich. (1)

"Many patients have been receiving cetuximab with radiotherapy on the assumption that it was as effective as chemotherapy with radiotherapy and caused less side effects but there has been no head-to-head comparison of the two treatments," said study author Prof Hisham Mehanna, Chair, Head and Neck Surgery, Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK.

Throat cancer is rapidly becoming more common in Western countries. For example in the UK, incidence was unchanged in 1970 to 1995, then doubled in 1996 to 2006, and doubled again in 2006 to 2010.The rise has been attributed to HPV, a sexually transmitted infection. Most throat cancer was previously caused by smoking and alcohol and affected 65-70 year-old working class men. Today HPV is the main cause and patients are around 55, middle class, working, and have young children.

HPV-positive throat cancer responds well to a combination of cisplatin chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and patients can survive for 30-40 years, but the treatment causes lifelong side effects including dry mouth, difficulty swallowing, and loss of taste. Patients deemed unable to tolerate chemotherapy, for example because of poor kidney function or older age, receive cetuximab, an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor, and radiotherapy.

This study compared side effects and survival with the two treatments in 334 patients with HPV-positive throat cancer enrolled from 32 centres in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Patients were randomly allocated to radiotherapy and either cisplatin or cetuximab. Eight in ten patients were male and the average age was 57 years.

During the two-year study there were ten recurrences and six deaths with cisplatin compared to 29 recurrences and 20 deaths with cetuximab. Patients on cisplatin had a significantly higher two-year overall survival rate (97.5%) than those on cetuximab (89.4%; p=0.001, hazard ratio [HR] 4.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.70-14.67). Cancer was over three times more likely to recur in two years with cetuximab compared to cisplatin, with recurrence rates of 16.1% versus 6.0%, respectively (p=0.0007, HR 3.39, 95% CI 1.61-7.19).

There were no differences between groups in the overall number of side effects, or of acute or late severe (grade 3-5) toxic events including dry mouth and difficulty swallowing. There were significantly more serious adverse events such as renal and haematological problems with cisplatin than with cetuximab.

Mehanna said: "Cetuximab did not cause less toxicity and resulted in worse overall survival and more cancer recurrence than cisplatin. This was a surprise - we thought it would lead to the same survival rates but better toxicity. Patients with throat cancer who are HPV positive should be given cisplatin, and not cetuximab, where possible."

Commenting on the study for ESMO, Dr Branislav Bystricky, Head, Medical and Radiation Oncology Department, University Hospital Trencin, Slovakia, said: "It was believed that cetuximab causes less side effects and was therefore a good option for HPV-positive throat cancer patients who are young and expected to survive for several decades, as well as those less able to tolerate chemotherapy. This study shows that the best treatment choice for patients with HPV-positive throat cancer is cisplatin and radiotherapy. This combination gives 'double' the benefit since it is more effective in terms of survival and does not worsen all grade toxicity compared to cetuximab with radiotherapy."

Bystricky noted that the results were in agreement with interim findings of the US National Cancer Institute's RTOG 1016 trial, which is scheduled to report this month.(2) He said: "We now have two studies showing that these patients should not be given cetuximab. Future research should examine whether genotyping for the KRAS-variant can select a group of patients that will benefit from cetuximab treatment with radiotherapy."

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

Abstract LBA9_PR 'Cetuximab versus cisplatin in patients with HPV-positive, low risk oropharyngeal cancer, receiving radical radiotherapy' will be presented by Hisham Mehanna during the Presidential Symposium 3 on Monday, 22 October, 16:30 to 18:00 (CEST) in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Full results presented at the plenary session at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) annual meeting on 22 October: https://www.astro.org/Meetings-and-Education/Live-Meetings/2018/2018-Annual-Meeting

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide.Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA9_PR - Cetuximab versus cisplatin in patients with HPV-positive, low risk oropharyngeal cancer, receiving radical radiotherapy

H. Mehanna1, A. Kong1, A. Hartley2, P. Mistry3, M. Dalby3, T. Fulton-Lieuw1, M. Robinson4, A. Gray5, B. Foran6, M. Sen7, L. O'Toole8, K. Dyker9, H. Al Booz10, R. Moleron11, S. Brennan12, E. Aynsley13, A. Chan14, D. Srinivasan15, J. Buter16, J. Dunn3

1Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, 2Oncology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, 3Warwick Clinical Trials Unit, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, 4Centre for Oral Health Research, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 5Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 6Oncology, Weston Park Hospital, Sheffield, UK, 7Oncology, St James's Institute of Oncology, Leeds, UK, 8Oncology, Castle Hill Hospital, Cottingham, UK, 9Oncology, Bradford Institute for Health Research, Bradford, UK, 10Oncology, Bristol Haematology and Oncology Centre, Bristol, UK, 11Oncology, NHS Grampian, Aberdeen, UK, 12Radiation Oncology, Saint Luke's Radiation Oncology Network, Dublin, Ireland, 13Oncology, South Tees Hospitals, Middlesborough, UK, 14Oncology, University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire, Coventry, UK, 15Oncology, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, UK, 16Medical Oncology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Background: The incidence of Human papillomavirus-positive oropharyngeal cancer (HPV+OPSCC) is rapidly rising. It is a distinct disease entity, affecting younger patients, with much better outcomes. However, standard treatment (cisplatin+radiotherapy) causes significant toxicity, which these young patients have to endure for decades. Cetuximab, an epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitor, has been proposed for treatment de-escalation to reduce toxicity of standard (cisplatin) treatment, but no randomised trials exist.

Methods: In this international, multi-centre, randomised, controlled trial, patients with low-risk HPV+OPSCC were randomised to receive radiotherapy (70G in 35F) and either cisplatin (3 doses of 100 mg/m2) or cetuximab (400 mg/m2 loading dose followed by weekly 250 mg/m2). Outcomes were total number of severe (Grades 3-5) toxicity events, overall survival, and quality of life.

Results: We recruited 334 patients (166 in cisplatin arm and 168 in cetuximab arm) between November 2012 through October 2016 at 32 head and neck treatment centres in 3 countries: UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. Of patients randomised, 80% are male, mean age 57 years. The arms were well balanced. There were 10 recurrences and 6 deaths in cisplatin arm, compared to 29 recurrences and 20 deaths in cetuximab arm. There was a significant difference in the 2-year overall survival between cisplatin and cetuximab (97.5% vs 89.4% respectively, p=0.001, HR=4.99, 95% CI 1.70-14.67) and in 2-year recurrence rate (6.0% vs 16.1% respectively, p=0.0007, HR=3.39, 95% CI 1.61-7.19). There were no differences between the cisplatin and cetuximab arms in the reported mean number of overall (5.37 vs 5.45 events per patient respectively), acute or late severe (grade 3-5) toxicity events per patient or all grade toxicity (overall 29.15 vs 30.05 event per patients respectively). There were significantly more serious adverse events (162 vs 95) in the cisplatin arm compared to the cetuximab arm.

Conclusions: There was significant detriment from the use of cetuximab instead of cisplatin in terms of tumour control, and no benefit in terms of reduced toxicity. Cisplatin and radiotherapy remains the standard of care in this setting.

Clinical trial identification: ISRCTN33522080

Legal entity responsible for the study: University of Warwick

Funding: Cancer Research UK

Disclosure: H. Mehanna: Honoraria: AstraZeneca. Speakers' Bureau: MSD, Sanofi Pasteur, Merck. Research Funding: GSK Biologicals, MSD, Sanofi Pasteur, Silence Therapeutics, GSK Plc, AZ. Travel Accommodation Expenses: Sanofi Pasteur, MSD, Merck.

A. Kong: I have received research grants from PUMA and AstraZeneca. I have received payments as a speaker, consultant or in an advisory role for the following companies: PUMA, Merck, BMS, MSD and Avvinity Therapeutics Limited.

M. Robinson: Consultancy for Leica Biosystems.

B. Foran: I have received payments from MSD and Merck for speaker engagements.

L. O'Toole: Merck sponsored my trip to ICHNO 2015.

R. Moleron: I hereby declare the receipt of consultation fees from Bristol-Myers-Squibb and MSD.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 20 October 2018 - Immunotherapy improves survival in some patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer, according to late-breaking results from the IMpassion130 trial reported at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich. (1)

Prof. Peter Schmid, first author, said the results "will change the way triple-negative breast cancer is treated". "Atezolizumab in combination with nab-paclitaxel is the first targeted treatment to improve survival in metastatic triple negative breast cancer," said Schmid, Clinical Director of London's St. Bartholomew's Breast Cancer Centre, Barts Health NHS Trust, UK and lead of the Centre for Experimental Cancer Medicine, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, UK. "It is also the first immune therapy to improve outcome in this cancer. Most of the survival benefit was in patients with PD-L1 positive tumours."

Triple negative breast cancer is the most aggressive type of breast cancer. It is relatively rare and often affects younger women. Once the disease becomes metastatic, the median survival is around 12 to 15 months. Triple negative breast cancer does not have receptors for the hormones oestrogen or the protein HER2, meaning it cannot be treated with hormone therapy or drugs targeting HER2. The main drug treatment is chemotherapy and most patients develop resistance to chemotherapy within a few months.

The phase III IMpassion 130 trial enrolled 902 patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer who had not received prior treatment for metastatic disease. Patients were randomly allocated to standard chemotherapy (nab-paclitaxel) plus atezolizumab, an antibody targeting the protein PD-L1, or to standard chemotherapy plus placebo. The two main objectives were to see whether the drug combination could slow cancer growth (progression-free survival) and prolong life (overall survival) in all patients and in those expressing PD-L1. The median follow-up was 12.9 months.

The combination therapy reduced the risk of disease worsening or death by 20% in all patients and 38% in the subgroup expressing PD-L1. In the entire study population, the median progression free survival was 7.2 months with the combination and 5.5 months with chemotherapy alone, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.80 (p=0.0025). In the PD-L1 positive group, the median progression free survival was 7.5 months with the combination and 5.0 months with chemotherapy alone (HR 0.62, p<0.0001).

More than half of patients were alive at the time of analysis, so this was an interim assessment of overall survival. In patients with PD-L1 positive tumours, the median overall survival was 25.0 months with the combination compared to 15.5 months with standard chemotherapy alone (HR 0.62). In all patients, survival was 21.3 months with the combination versus 17.6 months with chemotherapy alone which was not statistically different, likely because of the short follow-up.

The proportion of patients responding to treatment (objective response rate) was higher with the combination compared to chemotherapy alone for all patients (56% versus 46%) and those with PD-L1 positive tumours (59% versus 43%).

Schmid said the combination therapy was well tolerated. Most side effects were due to chemotherapy and occurred at a similar rate in both treatment groups, although there was a minor increase in nausea and cough in the combination group. Side effects related to immune therapy were rare, the most common being hypothyroidism which occurred in 17.3% of patients receiving the drug combination and 4.3% receiving chemotherapy alone.

Schmid said: "Immune therapy on top of standard chemotherapy prolonged survival by ten months in patients with tumours expressing PD-L1. This combination should become a new treatment option for patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer."

Commenting on the results for ESMO, Dr Marleen Kok, Medical Oncologist, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, said: "This is the first randomised phase III trial providing evidence that adding immune therapy to standard chemotherapy increases progression-free survival in metastatic triple negative breast cancer, particularly in patients with PD-L1 positive tumours, and extends overall survival in the PD-L1 positive subgroup. While the benefit in terms of progression-free survival was relatively small, around three months, the gain in overall survival in the PD-L1 positive subgroup was impressive with a ten-month benefit. Around 40% of the tumours were PD-L1 positive. The IMpassion 130 data will probably change the treatment landscape for our metastatic triple negative breast cancer patients."

Kok noted that it is still not clear what the best chemotherapy backbone is for anti-PD-(L)1 treatment and that many trials are ongoing, evaluating the additional effect of anti-PD-(L)1 on top of chemotherapy in metastatic breast cancer but also for early breast cancer patients. "This should help answer the question of which chemotherapy backbone is most effective in combination with anti-PD-(L)1." she said. "We also need more studies to determine a biomarker for selecting patients most likely to benefit from this treatment."

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

1 Abstract LBA1_PR 'IMpassion130: Results from a global, randomised, double-blind, phase 3 study of atezolizumab (atezo) + nab-paclitaxel (nab-P) vs placebo + nab-P in treatment-naive, locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC)' will be presented by Peter Schmid during the Presidential Symposium 1 on Saturday, 20 October, 16:30 to 18:20 (CEST) in Hall A2 - Room 18. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA1_PR - IMpassion130: Results from a global, randomised, double-blind, phase 3 study of atezolizumab (atezo) + nab-paclitaxel (nab-P) vs placebo + nab-P in treatment-naive, locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC)

P. Schmid1, S. Adams2, H.S. Rugo3, A. Schneeweiss4, C.H. Barrios5, H. Iwata6, V. Dieras7, R. Hegg8, S-A. Im9, G.S. Wright10, V. Henschel11, L. Molinero12, S.Y. Chui13, R. Funke14, A. Husain15, E.P. Winer16, S. Loi17, L.A. Emens18

1Centre of Experimental Cancer Medicine, Barts Cancer Institute-Queen Mary University of London, London, UK, 2Perlmutter Cancer Center, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA, 3Breast Cancer Center, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA, USA, 4Division of Gynecologic Oncology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany, 5Department of Medicine, PUCRS School of Medicine, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 6Nagoya City University Medical School, Aichi Cancer Center Hospital, Nagoya, Japan, 7Department of Medical Oncology, Institut Curie, Paris, Paris, France, 8Gynecological Clinical Service School of Medicine, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 9Internal Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 10Medical Oncology & Internal Medicine, Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, New Port Richey, FL, USA, 11Roche, Roche, Basel, Switzerland, 12Biomarkers, Genentech, Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA, 13Genentech, Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA, 14Clinical Science, Genentech, Inc., South San Francisco, USA, 15Immuno-Oncology, Roche, Basel, Switzerland, 16Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA, 17Translational Breast Cancer Genomics Lab, Division of Research, Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 18Medicine, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Background: mTNBC is the breast cancer subtype with worst prognosis and is typically treated with chemo. Atezo (anti-PD-L1) combined with nab-P (A+nab-P) demonstrated safety and clinical activity in mTNBC (Pohlmann AACR 2018). Here we report final PFS and initial interim OS results from IMpassion130, a ph 3, double-blind, randomised study evaluating 1L A+nab-P in mTNBC.

Methods: Eligible patients (pts) with histologically documented mTNBC, ECOG PS 0-1 and tumour tissue for PD-L1 testing were randomised 1:1 to IV atezo 840 mg or placebo (P) on d1 and 15 (q2w) + nab-P 100 mg/m2 on d1, 8 and 15 of a 28-d cycle until progression. Stratification factors were prior taxanes, liver mets and tumour PD-L1 status on immune cells (positive: greater than or equal to 1%). Co-primary endpoints (EPs) were PFS (ITT and PD-L1+ pts) and OS (ITT and, if significant, PD-L1+ pts). Key secondary EPs were ORR and DOR.

Results: At data cutoff 17 Apr 2018, median follow-up was 12.9 mo. In the A+nab-P and P+nab-P arms, respectively (n = 451 each), median age was 55 and 56 y; 57% and 60% had ECOG PS 0 and 63% each had prior (neo)adjuvant treatment. Efficacy data are in the Table. All-cause AEs occurred in 99% (G3-4, 49%) and 98% (G3-4, 42%) of evaluable pts in the A+nab-P and P+nab-P arms (n = 452, 438), respectively. Nausea, cough, neutropenia, pyrexia and hypothyroidism were greater than or equal to 5% higher with A+nab-P. 3/6 G5 AEs in A+nab-P and 1/3 in P+nab-P pts were related to either atezo, P or nab-P. G3-4 AEs of special interest occurred in 8% of A+nab-P and 4% of P+nab-P pts.

Conclusions: IMpassion130 met its co-primary PFS EP in ITT and PD-L1+ pts, with clinically meaningful OS benefit seen at interim OS analysis in PD-L1+ pts. A+nab-P was well tolerated, with a safety profile consistent with each agent. This first positive ph 3 mTNBC immunotherapy study highlights A+nab-P as a new therapy for untreated PD-L1+ pts.

Clinical trial identification: NCT02425891

Editorial Acknowledgement: Medical writing support provided by Ashley J. Pratt, PhD, CMPP, of Health Interactions

Legal entity responsible for the study: F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG

Funding: F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG

Disclosure: P. Schmid: Honoraria from AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer, Celgene, Eisai, Novartis, Pfizer, Puma, Roche/Genentech; Received grants or been supported/had contracted research from Astellas, AstraZeneca, Medivation, Novartis, Oncogenex, Roche/Genentech (all paid to his institution). Dr. Schmid's wife is an employee of Roche.

S. Adams: Institution has received research funding for this trial.

H.S. Rugo: Grants: Pfizer, Novartis, Lilly, Genentech/Roche, Macrogenics; Other from Puma, Mylan, Genentech/Roche; Grants: Merck, OBI, Eisai, Plexxikon; Other from Novartis, Pfizer, outside the submitted work.

A. Schneeweiss: Honoraria: Roche, Celgene, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Novartis.

C.H. Barrios: Honoraria: Novartis, Roche/Genentech, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eisai. Consulting or advisory role: Boehringer Ingelheim, Roche/Genentech, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Eisai, Pfizer; Research funding from Pfizer, Novartis, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche/Genentech, Lilly, Sanofi, Taiho Pharmaceutical, Mylan, Merrimack, Merck, AbbVie, Astellas, Biomarin, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Daiichi Sankyo, Abraxis Bioscience, AB Science, Asana Biosciences, Medivation, Exelixis, ImClone Systems, LEO Pharma, Millennium.

H. Iwata: Grants and personal fees: Daiichi Sankyo, during the conduct of the study; Grants and personal fees from Chugai, AstraZeneca, Pfizer; Personal fees: Eisai, Grants: MSD, Kyowahakou Kirin, GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Bayer, outside the submitted work.

V. Dieras: Travel expenses: Roche, Novartis, Pfizer, GSK, Eisai, AstraZeneca. Honoraria for serving as a consultant from Roche/Genentech, Novartis, Lilly, Pfizer, Eisai, Nektar, Astellas, AbbVie, MSD, Tesaro, Daiichi Sankyo, Odonate; Honoraria for serving as a speaker from Roche, Novartis, Eisai, Pfizer, Lilly.

S-A. Im: Received research grant: AstraZeneca (not related with this clinical trial). Also worked as an advisory board member for AstraZeneca, Hanmi, Novartis, Roche, Pfizer for the last 5 years.

V. Henschel: Employee and stockholder of Roche.

L. Molinero, A. Husain: Employee and stock owner of Roche.

S.Y. Chui: Employee of Genentech and a stock owner of Roche.

R. Funke: Roche employee and stock owner.

E.P. Winer: Honoraria for consulting: Genentech/Roche. Other honoraria from Lilly, Tessaro and Leap.

S. Loi: Research funding to her institution from Novartis, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Merck, Roche-Genentech, Puma Biotechnology, Pfizer.

L.A. Emens: Employment at Johns Hopkins University and FDA-CTGTAC; Board of Directors for Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC); Honoraria for serving as a consultant/on an advisory board for: AbbVie, Amgen, Astrazeneca, Bayer, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Celgene, eTHeRNA, Gritstone, Medimmune, Molecuvax, Peregrine, Replimune, Syndax, Vaccinex; Research funding: Aduro Biotech, Atrazeneca, Corvus, EMD Serono, Genentech, HeritX, Inc., Roche; Royalties from Aduro IND Licensing/vaccine (<25K).

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 20 October 2018 - Targeting a common mutation in patients with hormone receptor positive (HR+) HER2 negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer with the alpha-specific phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor alpelisib significantly improves progression-free survival, according to late-breaking results reported at ESMO 2018. (1)

"Alpelisib is the first drug to show a benefit in a genomic subgroup of breast cancer patients," said lead author Fabrice Andre, oncologist and Professor of Medical Oncology at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France. He explained: "We have had HER2-targeted drugs - targeting the HER2 protein - but, until now, the use of tumour genomics has not really entered the practical care of breast cancer, unlike melanoma or lung cancer."

About 40% of patients with HR+ breast cancer have PIK3CA mutations, activating the PI3 kinase pathway leading to cancer progression and resistance to endocrine therapy. Alpelisib (BYL719) is an oral PI3K inhibitor that is alpha specific. "The alpha isoform of PI3-kinase is the one that is mutated in breast cancer. Previous PI3K inhibitors targeted all four isoforms so there were a lot of toxicities," noted Andre. A previous phase 1 trial with alpelisib showed promising preliminary efficacy and manageable safety profile (2).

The SOLAR-1 trial randomised 572 postmenopausal women or men with HR+, HER2- advanced breast cancer; 341 had PIK3CA mutations when tumour tissue was tested. The patients had good performance status (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) status of ?1) and had received one or more prior lines of hormonal therapy but no chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer. They had not previously received fulvestrant, or any PI3K, Akt or mTOR inhibitor, and were not on concurrent anticancer therapy.

Patients were randomised to oral alpelisib (300 mg/day) or placebo plus intramuscular fulvestrant (500 mg every 28 days and on days 1 and 15 of treatment cycle 1). The primary endpoint was locally assessed progression free survival (PFS) in patients with PIK3CA mutations, detected in tumor tissue.

Results showed the PFS was nearly twice as long in patients with PIK3CA mutations randomised to alpelisib compared to the placebo group. The median PFS was 11.0 months in the alpelisib arm compared to 5.7 months in the placebo group (hazard ratio 0.65, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.50 to 1.25, p=0.00065) at a median follow-up of 20.0 months.

Just over one-third (36%) of patients with measurable PI3KCA-mutated advanced breast cancer (n=262) responded to alpelisib plus fulvestrant, while the overall response rate in the placebo/fulvestrant group was 16% (p=0.0002). The secondary endpoint of locally assessed PFS in patients without PI3KCA mutations did not meet the predefined proof of concept endpoint (HR0.85, 95% CI 0.58-1.25, median 7.4-5.6mo).

Andre said: "Alpelisib offers the potential for increased life expectancy in patients with HR+ HER2- advanced breast cancer with PI3KCA mutations." But he cautioned: "For now, the follow-up is short so we cannot say whether there is a long-term survival benefit. But alpelisib increased progression-free survival and that will hopefully translate to improvement in outcome."

Commenting on the study for ESMO, Prof. Angelo Di Leo, Head of the Department of Medical Oncology, Hospital of Prato, Italy, said: "This is the first trial to show a clinically relevant benefit with a PI3K inhibitor combined with endocrine therapy in patients with HR+ HER2- advanced breast cancer with PIK3CA mutations."

Di Leo added: "The next critical step will be to understand when, and how, this compound should be incorporated into the current treatment algorithm - upfront, in combination with endocrine therapy and a CDK4/6 inhibitor, or sequentially, after disease progression on the combination of endocrine therapy and a CDK4/6 inhibitor." He cautioned that a limitation of the study was that only a modest number of patients were pre-treated with CDK4/6 inhibitors, which have become a new standard of care in this setting.

The most frequent side-effects with alpelisib were hyperglycaemia, which Andre said could be managed with metformin, nausea, decreased appetite and rash. He said: "There is no life-threatening toxicity or major toxicity that would be expected to affect quality of life. This is good because alpelisib is a drug that is supposed to be given before chemotherapy."

Considering the wider implications, Andre said: "This study opens the door for clinical genomics for breast cancer as the first study to show that treatment based on a patient's tumour genomic profile - specifically PI3KCA mutation - can improve the outcome." He predicted: "These results will have a major impact for practice because we have to implement genomic testing for breast cancer."

Di Leo agreed: "If PI3K inhibitors become a treatment option for patients with advanced breast cancer, assessing PIK3CA mutations using plasma samples (liquid biopsies) will become standard of care, with the considerable advantage of this being a non-invasive procedure."

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO or IASLC who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

Abstract LBA3_PR 'Alpelisib (ALP) + fulvestrant (FUL) for advanced breast cancer (ABC): results of the Phase 3 SOLAR-1 trial' will be presented by Fabrice Andre during the Presidential Symposium 1 on Saturday 20 October, 16:30 to 18:20 (CEST) in Room 18 - Hall A2. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Mayer IA, Abramson VG, Formisano L et al. A phase Ib study of alpelisib (BYL719), a PI3K inhibitor, with letrozole in ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer. Clinical Cancer Research 2017; 23;: 26-34.

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide.Visit: http://www.esmo.org

LBA3_PR - Alpelisib (ALP) + fulvestrant (FUL) for advanced breast cancer (ABC): results of the Phase 3 SOLAR-1 trial

F. Andre1, E.M. Ciruelos2, G. Rubovszky3, M. Campone4, S. Loibl5, H.S. Rugo6, H. Iwata7, P. Conte8, I.A. Mayer9, B. Kaufman10, T. Yamashita11, Y.-S. Lu12, K. Inoue13, M. Takahashi14, Z. Papai15, A.-S. Longin16, D. Mills17, C. Wilke17, S. Hirawat18, D. Juric19

1Breast Cancer Unit, Department of Medical Oncology, Gustave Roussy - Cancer Campus, Villejuif, France, 2Medical Oncology , Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain, 3Department of Medical Oncology and Clinical Pharmacology, National Institute of Oncology Hungary, Budapest, Hungary, 4Medical Oncology, ICO Institut de Cancerologie de l'Ouest Rene Gauducheau, Saint-Herblain, France, 5Department of Medicine and Research, German Breast Group (GBG) Forschungs GmbH, Neu-Isenburg, Germany, 6Breast Cancer Center, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA, USA, 7Nagoya City University Medical School, Aichi Cancer Center Hospital, Nagoya, Japan, 8Department of Surgery, Oncology and Gastroenterology, University of Padova, Istituto Oncologico Veneto IRCCS, Padova, Italy, 9Breast Cancer Research Program, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, TN, USA, 10Oncology, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel, 11Medical Oncology, Kanagawa Cancer Center, Yokohama, Japan, 12Hematology/Oncology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 13Medical Oncology, Saitama Cancer Center, Saitama, Japan, 14Department of Breast Surgery, Hokkaido Cancer Center, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, 15Medical Oncology, Duna Medical Center, Budapest, Hungary, 16Oncology, Novartis Pharma S.A.S, Paris, France, 17Oncology, Novartis Pharma AG, Basel, Switzerland, 18Oncology, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, East Hanover, NJ, USA, 19Medical Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Background: Hyperactivation of the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) pathway can occur due to PIK3CA mutations, present in ~40% of patients (pts) with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) ABC. The Phase 3 randomized, double-blind SOLAR 1 trial (NCT02437318) investigated the efficacy and safety of ALP (-specific PI3K inhibitor) + FUL in pts with HR+, HER2- ABC.

Methods: Men/postmenopausal women with HR+, HER2- ABC and 1 prior line of endocrine therapy were randomized (1:1) to ALP (300 mg/day) + FUL (500 mg every 28 days + Cycle 1 Day 15) or placebo (PBO) + FUL. Primary endpoint was locally assessed progression-free survival (PFS) in the PIK3CA-mutant (mut) cohort; PFS was analyzed in the non-mut cohort as a proof of concept (PoC). Safety was assessed in the total population. Other analyses were tumor response and PFS by important prognostic subgroups, including PIK3CA mutation exon/domain and subtype.

Results: 572 pts enrolled; 341 had PIK3CA-mut ABC by tissue. Primary endpoint was met; PFS in the mut cohort was significantly longer with ALP+FUL vs PBO+FUL (HR 0.65; 95% CI 0.50-0.85; P=0.00065; median 11.0 vs 5.7 months [mo]); median follow-up was 20.0 mo. Secondary endpoint of locally assessed PFS in the non-mut cohort did not meet predefined PoC criteria (HR 0.85; 95% CI 0.58-1.25; median 7.4 vs 5.6 mo). In pts with measurable, PIK3CA-mut ABC (n=262), overall response rate was 36% for ALP+FUL vs 16% for PBO+FUL (p=0.0002). Overall, most frequent all-grade (G) adverse events (AEs; single preferred term; ALP+FUL vs PBO+FUL) were hyperglycemia (64% vs 10%), diarrhea (58% vs 16%), nausea (45% vs 22%), decreased appetite (36% vs 10%) and rash (36% vs 6%). G 3/4 hyperglycemia (fasting plasma glucose >250 mg/dL) was observed in 37% of patients for ALP+FUL vs <1% for PBO+FUL; G 3/4 rash in 10% vs <1%. Discontinuations of ALP+FUL/PBO+FUL due to AEs were 5% vs 1%.

Conclusions: ALP+FUL met the primary endpoint by significantly extending PFS vs PBO+FUL and demonstrated a manageable tolerability profile. This is the first study to show statistically significant, clinically meaningful PFS treatment improvement with an -specific PI3K inhibitor in PIK3CA-mut HR+, HER2- ABC.

Clinical trial identification: NCT024373, 18 May 7, 2015

Editorial Acknowledgement: Editorial assistance was provided by John Munro of ArticulateScience Ltd

Legal entity responsible for the study: Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation

Funding: Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation.

Disclosure: F. Andre: Grants from Novartis during the conduct of the study; Grants from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Roche, outside of the submitted work.

G. Rubovszky: Fees paid to his institution by Novartis during the conduct of the study, and fees for advisory boards from Novartis outside of the submitted work.

M. Campone: Consulting fees and fees for non-CME services related directly from commercial interest or their agents: Novartis, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Eli Lilly.

S. Loibl: Grants to her institution for research funding: Abbvie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Celgene, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Teva, Vifor, outside of the submitted work.

H.S. Rugo: Grants to her institution: Pfizer, Novartis, Eli Lilly, Genentech, Macrogenics, Plexxikon, Merck, OBI, Eisai; Travel support: Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Mylan, Amgen, Merck Puma, all outside of the submitted work.

H. Iwata: Grants and personal fees: Daiichi Sankyo, during the study; Grants and personal fees: Chugai, AstraZeneca, Pfizer; Personal fees: Eisai; Grants: MSD, Kyowahakou Kirin, GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Bayer, outside the work.

P. Conte: Speaker's bureau: Roche/Genentech, Novartis, AstraZeneca; Research funding to his institution: Roche, Novartis; Merck Serono; Travel & accommodation: Novartis; Celgene; AstraZeneca.

I.A. Mayer: Consulting/advisory relationship with Novartis, Genentech; Research funding: Novartis, Pfizer.

B. Kaufman: Participation in advisory boards for Novartis, outside of the submitted work.

T. Yamashita:Grants and honoraria: Chugai; Honoraria: Eisai, Novartis, Taiho, Sanofi, AstraZeneca; Grants and honoraria: Kyowa Kirin; Honoraria from Pfizer Japan, outside the submitted work.

K. Inoue: Grants to institution: Novartis, Pfizer, Chugai, DaiichiSankyo, Parexel / Puma Biotechnology, MSD, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Esai, during the conduct of the study.

A-S. Longin: Employment: Novartis.

D. Mills, C. Wilke, S. Hirawat: Employment by Novartis and ownership of stocks.

D. Juric: Fees from advisory boards: Novartis, Genentech, Eisai, Ipsen, EMD Serono, during the conduct of the study.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.Munich, Germany, 20 October 2018 - Adjuvant treatment with the bone sparing drug zoledronic acid plus hormonal therapy with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole significantly increases disease-free survival compared to tamoxifen in premenopausal women with hormone receptor positive (HR+) early breast cancer, according to results reported at ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich. It is the first study to assess this specific combination in premenopausal breast cancer (1) and adds to previous observations with zoledronic acid and anastrozole in premenopausal women receiving ovarian suppression (2).

Studies have shown reduced recurrence and breast cancer mortality with zoledronic acid plus hormonal therapy in HR+ breast cancer in postmenopausal women (3), but the benefit in premenopausal women was previously less clear. Zoledronic acid is a bisphosphonate that reduces the rate of bone turnover; it is licensed to treat osteopororosis and to reduce bone damage in advanced cancers involving bone and hypercalcaemia in cancer (4). Unlike tamoxifen, which blocks estradiol binding to the estrogen receptor, letrozole is an aromatase inhibitor that profoundly suppresses estradiol levels but has not previously been evaluated in premenopausal breast cancer.

The HOBOE-2 (Hormonal BOne Effects-2) phase 3 trial included 1065 patients with estrogen/progesterone receptor positive early breast cancer who had their last period within one year of randomisation. They were treated with the gonadotrophin-releasing hormone agonist triptorelin (3.75mg every four weeks) for five years up to the age of 55 to suppress ovarian function and nearly two-thirds (63%) received chemotherapy before randomisation.

The patients were randomised to hormonal therapy with tamoxifen (20mg/day) or letrozole (2.5mg/day) or to combination therapy with zoledronic acid (4mg IV every six months) plus letrozole (2.5mg/day) (ZL) for a planned treatment duration of five years. The study was stopped early in May 2018 after a median follow-up of 65 months when the Independent Monitoring Committee recommended sharing the data with the Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Cooperative Group (EBCTCG) 2018 overview (5).

Results reported at ESMO 2018 showed there were 32 breast cancer recurrences or second breast or non-breast cancers or deaths in patients treated with ZL, giving a 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) probability of 0.93. There were 58 events in patients treated with tamoxifen and 44 events in the letrozole group, giving 5-year DFS event rates of 0.85 and 0.93, respectively (p=0.008).

Disease-free survival was significantly improved in patients randomised to zoledronic acid plus letrozole compared to those treated with tamoxifen, with an absolute advantage of 8% in 5-year DFS. The risk of breast cancer recurrence or non-cancer death was nearly halved in patients treated with ZL compared to those treated with T (hazard ratio [HR] 0.52, 95% confidence interval 0.34-0.80, p=0.003).

The improvement in DFS with ZL compared to tamoxifen was seen in all subgroups of patients apart from the small subgroup of women with tumours overexpressing HER2 who showed greater benefit with tamoxifen (interaction p=0.002).

There was no statistically significant difference in DFS comparing letrozole with tamoxifen (HR 0.72, 95% CI 0.48-1.07, p=0.06) or comparing ZL with letrozole alone (HR 0.70, 95% CI 0.44-1.12, p=0.22).

As expected, side-effects were more frequent in patients treated with ZL, with 9% of patients experiencing grade 3-4 toxicity compared to 4% of those treated with T and 7% of those treated with L. Nearly one in five (17%) patients treated with ZL stopped treatment before 5 years due to toxicity or refusal, compared to 7% of those on T and 7% of those on L. Among the most feared side-effects associated with the study drugs, there were four cases of jaw osteonecrosis in the ZL arm.

"HOBOE-2 strongly supports the hypothesis that combination treatment with an aromatase inhibitor and bisphosphonate plus triptorelin may improve prognosis in premenopausal patients with HR-positive breast cancer," said lead author Prof. Francesco Perrone, Director of the Clinical Trials Unit at the Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Naples, Italy.

Perrone continued: "We had previously shown that, in combination with triptorelin, letrozole suppresses estradiol levels much more than tamoxifen in premenopausal patients. And we know that suppressing estradiol levels means cutting the fuel to endocrine-dependent breast cancer."

Considering zoledronic acid, Perrone said: "Our hypothesis is that the drug modifies the bone microenvironment that is the niche where breast cancer micrometastases remain in a state of dormancy, potentially for many years. Microenvironment modifications may be lethal for isolated cancer cells, reducing the risk of distant metastases over time." He explained: "The two mechanisms are partially independent and, therefore, may sum up to give an additive benefit."

Reviewing the potential impact on clinical practice, Perrone suggested: "If the size of the benefit we saw is confirmed with longer follow-up, ZL treatment might turn out to be a highly cost-effective treatment for premenopausal HR+ breast cancer." He noted that zoledronic acid and letrozole are both very cheap drugs, so could be used widely.

Commenting on the study for ESMO, Robert Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Medical Oncology, University of Sheffield, UK, said: "The findings add to existing information to support the use of more intensive treatment with an aromatase inhibitor and bisphosphonate in women at high risk for recurrence, either by virtue of node involvement or high-grade or large tumours." He noted: "Both treatments add toxicity over and above tamoxifen and so are best limited to women at intermediate to high risk where the risk-benefits are likely to be acceptable."

Coleman cautioned that the study was underpowered, with insufficient events for statistical confidence in the results. He added: "This study is not definitive but adds to the information on these two treatment approaches and will contribute to the ongoing EBCTCG meta-analyses." He considered there were unlikely to be further trials with aromatase inhibitors and bisphosphonates as the focus is now on adding other targeted treatments.

###

Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO 2018 Congress

Official Congress hashtag: #ESMO18

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

References

Abstract LBA14_PR 'The HOBOE-2 multicenter randomised phase 3 trial in premenopausal patients with hormone-receptor positive early breast cancer comparing triptorelin plus either tamoxifen or letrozole or letrozole + zoledronic acid' will be presented by Francesco Perrone during the Poster Discussion session on Saturday 20 October, 15:00 to 16:15 (CEST) in Room 15 - Hall A1. Annals of Oncology, Volume 29 Supplement 8 October 2018 Gnant M, Mlineritsch B, Schippinger W et al. Endocrine therapy plus zoledronic acid in premenopausal breast cancer. NEJM 2009; 360: 679-691 Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Cooperative Group. Adjuvant bisphosphonate treatment in early breast cancer: meta-analyses of individual patient data from randomised trials. Lancet 2015; 386: 1353-1361 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. 2018. Zoledronic acid. https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/zoledronic-acid.html Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Cooperative Group. https://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/research/ebctcg

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 18,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. Visit http://www.esmo.org

LBA14_PR - The HOBOE-2 multicenter randomized phase 3 trial in premenopausal patients with hormone-receptor positive early breast cancer comparing triptorelin plus either tamoxifen or letrozole or letrozole + zoledronic acid

F. Perrone1, M. De Laurentiis2, S. de Placido3, M. Orditura4, S. Cinieri5, F. Riccardi6, A.S. Ribecco7, C. Putzu8, L. Del Mastro9, E. Rossi10, B. Daniele11, A.M. Mosconi12, F. Di Rella2, G. Landi2, F. Nuzzo2, C. Pacilio2, R. Lauria3, L. Arenare1, M.C. Piccirillo1, C. Gallo13

1Clinical Trials Unit, Istituto Nazionale Tumori - I.R.C.C.S - Fondazione Pascale, Napoli, Italy, 2Senology, Istituto Nazionale Tumori - I.R.C.C.S - Fondazione Pascale, Napoli, Italy, 3Medical Oncology, AOU Policlinico Federico II, Napoli, Italy, 4Dept of Internal and Experimental Medicine, Universita degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Napoli, Italy, 5Medical Oncology, Perrino Hospital, Brindisi, Italy, 6Oncologia Medica, Ospedale Cardarelli, Napoli, Italy, 7Medical Oncology, Ospedale S. Giovanni di Dio, Firenze, Italy, Italy, 8Oncologia Medica, Universita di Sassari, Sassari, Italy, 9Internal Medicine, IRCCS AOU San Martino - IST-Istituto Nazionale per la Ricerca sul Cancro, Genova, Italy, 10Oncologia Medica, Azienda Ospedaliera S. Giuseppe Moscati, Avellino, Italy, 11Oncology, Azienda Ospedaliera G. Rummo, Benevento, Italy, 12Oncology-Hematology Dpt, Azienda Ospedaliera di Perugia S. Maria della Misericordia, Perugia, Italy, 13Medical Statistics, Universita degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Napoli, Italy

Background: Role of aromatase inhibitors and zoledronic acid as adjuvant treatment of premenopausal endocrine-responsive breast cancer patients is debated. Letrozole has never been tested in this clinical setting.

Methods: Following surgery and eventual neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy, premenopausal patients (last menses within 1 yr) were randomly assigned 1:1:1 to Triptorelin 3.75 mg every 4 weeks plus either Tamoxifen 20 mg/die (T), or Letrozole 2.5 mg/die (L) or Zoledronic acid 4mg iv every 6 months + Letrozole 2.5 mg/die (ZL), for 5 years. The primary end-point was disease-free survival (DFS) including locoregional or distant recurrence, second breast or non-breast invasive cancer and death without cancer as event. Analysis was based on intention-to-treatment. Pairwise comparisons (with Bonferroni-Holm correction) were allowed if overall test was statistically significant. The IDMC suggested final analysis be done after 5yrs median follow-up, independently of number of events.

Results: From March 2004 to August 2015, 1065 patients were randomized (T: 354, L:356, ZL: 355) in 16 centres in Italy. Median age was 45; 68% had a pT1 tumor; 55% had negative nodes; 63% had received chemotherapy. After 65 months median follow-up, there were 58, 44, and 32 DFS events and 5 yrs DFS probability was 0.85, 0.93 and 0.93 in the T, L and ZL arms, respectively (P=0.008). Pairwise comparison was statistically significant for ZL vs T (HR 0.52, 95% CI 0.34-0.80, P=0.003) but not for L vs T (HR 0.72, 95% CI 0.48-1.07, P=0.06) and ZL vs L (HR 0.70, 95% CI 0.44-1.12, P=0.22). ZL was more effective than T in all subgroups, but for HER2-positive cases (interaction P=0.002). Twenty-six (7%) patients with T, 26 (7%) with L and 59 (17%) with ZL stopped assigned treatment before 5 yrs due to toxicity or refusal. Grade 3-4 side-effects were reported in 4%, 7% and 9% of patients with T, L and ZL, respectively; there were 4 cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw in the ZL arm.

Conclusions: HOBOE shows that, in premenopausal early breast cancer patients, the ZL+triptorelin combination is more effective than T+triptorelin in terms of DFS.

Clinical trial identification: NCT00412022

Legal entity responsible for the study: Istituto Nazionale per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori IRCCS Fondazione G. Pascale, Napoli, Italy

Funding: Novartis provided experimental drugs

Disclosure: F. Perrone: Honoraria: AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Celgene, Incyte, Ipsen.

M. De Laurentiis: Honoraria: Novartis, Roche, AstraZeneca, Amgen, Celgene, Pfizer, Eli Lilly.

S. de Placido: Honoraria: Pfizer, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Eisai, Roche.

A.S. Ribecco: Honoraria: Amgen, Eli Lilly.

L. Del Mastro: Honoraria: Ipsen, Roche, Pfizer, Novartis, Eli lilly, Eisai.

B. Daniele: Honoraria: Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck Sharp&Dohme, Merck.

M.C. Piccirillo: Honoraria: Merch Sharp & Dohme.

All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.By merging the ancient art of origami with 21st century technology, researchers have created a one-step approach to fabricating complex origami structures whose light weight, expandability, and strength could have applications in everything from biomedical devices to equipment used in space exploration. Until now, making such structures has involved multiple steps, more than one material, and assembly from smaller parts.

"What we have here is the proof of concept of an integrated system for manufacturing complex origami. It has tremendous potential applications," said Glaucio H. Paulino, a professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a leader in the growing field of origami engineering, or using the principles of origami, mathematics and geometry to make useful things. Last fall Georgia Tech became the first university in the country to offer a course on origami engineering, which Paulino taught.

The researchers used a relatively new kind of 3D printing called Digital Light Processing (DLP) to create groundbreaking origami structures that are not only capable of holding significant weight but can also be folded and refolded repeatedly in an action similar to the slow push and pull of an accordion. When Paulino first reported these structures, or "zippered tubes," in 2015, they were made of paper and required gluing. In the current work, the zippered tubes - and complex structures made out of them - are composed of one plastic (a polymer) and do not require assembly.

The work was reported in a recent issue of Soft Matter, a journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The primary authors are Paulino; H. Jerry Qi, a professor in Georgia Tech's George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; and Daining Fang of Peking University and the Beijing Institute of Technology. Other authors are Zeang Zhao, a visiting student at Georgia Tech now at Peking University; Qiang Zhang of Peking University; and Xiao Kuang and Jiangtao Wu of Georgia Tech.

An Emerging Technology

There are many different types of 3D printing technologies. The most familiar, inkjet, has been around for some 20 years. But until now, it has been difficult to create 3D-printed structures with the intricate hollow features associated with complex origami because removing the supporting materials necessary to print these structures is challenging. Further, unlike paper, the 3D-printed materials could not be folded numerous times without breaking.

Enter DLP and some creative engineering. According to Qi, a leader in the emerging field collaborating with Fang's group at Peking University, DLP has been in the lab for a while, but commercialization only began about five years ago. Unlike other 3D printing techniques, it creates structures by printing successive layers of a liquid resin that is then cured, or hardened, by ultraviolet light.

For the current work, the researchers first developed a new resin that, when cured, is very strong. "We wanted a material that is not only soft, but can also be folded hundreds of times without breaking," said Qi. The resin, in turn, is key to an equally important element of the work: tiny hinges. These hinges, which occur along the creases where the origami structure folds, allow folding because they are made of a thinner layer of resin than the larger panels of which they are part. (The panels make up the bulk of the structure.)

Together the new resin and hinges worked. The team used DLP to create several origami structures ranging from the individual origami cells that the zippered tubes are composed of to a complex bridge composed of many zippered tubes. All were subjected to tests that showed they were not only capable of carrying about 100 times the weight of the origami structure, but also could be repeatedly folded and unfolded without breaking. "I have a piece that I printed about six months ago that I demonstrate for people all the time, and it's still fine," said Qi.

What's Next?

What's next? Among other things, Qi is working to make the printing even easier while also exploring ways to print materials with different properties. Meanwhile, Paulino's team recently created a new origami pattern on the computer that he is excited about but that he has been unable to physically make because it is so complex. "I think the new system could bring it to life," he said.

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The principal funders of the work were the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-16-1-0169), the National Science Foundation (CMMI-1462894, CMMI-1462895, and CMMI-1538830), the Raymond Allen Jones Chair at Georgia Tech, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the National Materials Genome Project of China.

CITATION: Zeang Zhao, et al., "3D printing of complex origami assemblages for reconfigurable structures," (Soft Matter 39, 2018) http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c8sm01341aJillian Rose, LCSW, MPH, director of Community Engagement, Diversity and Research at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City, has received the Distinguished Educator Award from the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals (ARHP). Ms. Rose received the honor at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology/ARHP in Chicago on October 20.

The award recognizes an ARHP member "who has demonstrated sustained excellence in the teaching of patients and students/trainees, including health professional students, medical students, residents, graduate students, and/or fellows, with their primary focus being rheumatology-related content," according to the association.

Ms. Rose, who began her career at Hospital for Special Surgery in 2005, is recognized by her colleagues as an innovative thought leader, talented educator and compassionate individual. She dedicates much of her work to understanding inequalities in rheumatology care and addressing them through educational programs for health professionals, as well as patients, to promote the highest quality of care for all.

Ms. Rose says she was humbled and surprised to receive the Distinguished Educator Award. "To be recognized for doing work that is your life passion is an amazing honor," she said. "This award is especially meaningful to me as a social worker and a change-agent for people who are disproportionately affected by negative health care outcomes. I am committed to education as a platform to empower both patients and health care providers to achieve the best health care outcomes."

"It is hard to imagine a more passionate, innovative, and committed rheumatology educator than Jillian," said Roberta Horton, LCSW, ACSW, assistant vice president, Department of Social Work Programs at HSS. "Her vision and implementation of rheumatology educational initiatives seek to engage others to be curious and to be passionate about discovering, learning and integrating new knowledge. Jillian accomplishes this not only through her teaching, supervision, presentations, research, and program development, but also by creating safe learning environments from which enhanced self-awareness and understanding emerge."

Growing up in an impoverished village in Guyana, Ms. Rose began to experience firsthand the impact that a lack of health education and access can have on communities. She moved with her family to the U.S. when she was 11, and later began her undergraduate studies at Providence College in Rhode Island. While taking a course in public health, she began to truly understand the impact of poorly-designed and inaccessible health services on marginalized, minority communities. It was then that she found her calling and decided on a career in health policy and social work.

Ms. Rose fosters education in rheumatology care through a number of initiatives at Hospital for Special Surgery. She plays an integral role in the hospital's Community Health Needs Assessment and Community Service Plan.

Since 2005, she has overseen Charla de Lupus (Lupus Chat) and LupusLine at HSS, nationally recognized peer support and education programs for people with lupus and their families.

Ms. Rose has developed and implemented hospital-wide training for staff on working with multicultural populations and fostering an inclusive environment for the LGBTQ community. She chairs the LGBTQ Committee at HSS, providing ongoing leadership and support for the collection of data regarding gender identity, sexual orientation and race, ethnicity and preferred language.

As a member of the Disparities Research Committee at HSS, Ms. Rose participates in quality initiatives to develop appropriate tools and evaluation processes to ensure the highest quality care for all. She has served as principal and co-investigator on many studies impacting rheumatology care, including the development of a lupus app as a self-management tool for people with the condition.

More recently, she was co-investigator on a national study training research coordinators at nine hospital centers focused on engaging Latina and African American women to examine their treatment options for arthritis using a decision-making tool.

Ms. Rose has shared her knowledge as a rheumatology educator through numerous national and international conferences and public forums. Her contributions include presentations at American College of Rheumatology-Association for Rheumatology Health Professionals national conferences; the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR); the Office of Minority Health's Leadership Summit; the Movement is Life National Caucus on Arthritis & Musculoskeletal Health Disparities; the American Hospital Association and the Greater New York Hospital Association.

In 2017, she gave a well-received presentation at HSS titled, "Understanding Implicit Bias and Its Impact on Clinical Practice, Decision-Making and Achieving Optimal Health Outcomes" in honor of National Professional Social Work Month.

For the past decade, Ms. Rose has volunteered with the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals, serving as a member of the association's Practice Committee, Marketing Committee, Executive Committee, and most recently of COIN, a new collaborative initiative to advance health equity.

Ms. Rose's vision and dedication have resulted in previous awards. In 2012, she received the Wholeness of Life Award from HSS, which recognizes a member of the hospital staff who has made a significant contribution to the quality of patient care. In 2010, she received the Emerging Social Work Leader Award from the National Association of Social Workers, New York City Chapter.

Ms. Rose earned a Master of Science degree from Columbia University School of Social Work in 2005, a Master's degree in Public Health from George Washington University in 2015, and is currently a PhD candidate in Public Health at Columbia University.

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About Hospital for Special Surgery

HSS is the world's leading academic medical center focused on musculoskeletal health. At its core is Hospital for Special Surgery, nationally ranked No. 1 in orthopedics (for the ninth consecutive year) and No. 3 in rheumatology by U.S.News & World Report (2018-2019). Founded in 1863, the Hospital has one of the lowest infection rates in the country and was the first in New York State to receive Magnet Recognition for Excellence in Nursing Service from the American Nurses Credentialing Center four consecutive times. The global standard total knee replacement was developed at HSS in 1969. An affiliate of Weill Cornell Medical College, HSS has a main campus in New York City and facilities in New Jersey, Connecticut and in the Long Island and Westchester County regions of New York State. In 2017 HSS provided care to 135,000 patients and performed more than 32,000 surgical procedures. People from all 50 U.S. states and 80 countries travelled to receive care at HSS. In addition to patient care, HSS leads the field in research, innovation and education. The HSS Research Institute comprises 20 laboratories and 300 staff members focused on leading the advancement of musculoskeletal health through prevention of degeneration, tissue repair and tissue regeneration. The HSS Global Innovation Institute was formed in 2016 to realize the potential of new drugs, therapeutics and devices. The culture of innovation is accelerating at HSS as 130 new idea submissions were made to the Global Innovation Institute in 2017 (almost 3x the submissions in 2015). The HSS Education Institute is the world's leading provider of education on the topic on musculoskeletal health, with its online learning platform offering more than 600 courses to more than 21,000 medical professional members worldwide. Through HSS Global Ventures, the institution is collaborating with medical centers and other organizations to advance the quality and value of musculoskeletal care and to make world-class HSS care more widely accessible nationally and internationally.Scientists have created an artificial intelligence system that could help treat patients with sepsis

Scientists have created an artificial intelligence system that could help treat patients with sepsis.

The technology, developed by researchers from Imperial College London, was found to predict the best treatment strategy for patients.

The system 'learnt' the best treatment strategy for a patient by analysing the records of about 100,000 hospital patients in intensive care units and every single doctor's decisions affecting them.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Medicine, showed the AI system made more reliable treatment decisions than human doctors.

The team behind the technology say the tool could be used alongside medical professionals, to help doctors decide the best treatment strategy for patients.

Sepsis, also known as blood poisoning, is a potentially fatal complication of an infection, and kills around 44,000 every year in the UK.

In the study, researchers looked back at US patient records from 130 intensive care units over a 15 year period to explore whether the AI system's recommendations might have been able to improve patient outcomes, compared with standard care. The researchers now hope to trial the system, called AI Clinician, in intensive care units in the UK.

Dr Aldo Faisal, senior author from the Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Computing at Imperial, said: "Sepsis is one of the biggest killers in the UK - and claims six million lives worldwide - so we desperately need new tools at our disposal to help patients. At Imperial, we believe that AI for Healthcare is the solution. Our new AI system was able to analyse a patient's data - such as blood pressure and heart rate - and decide the best treatment strategy. We found that when the doctor's treatment decision matched what the AI system recommended, they had a better chance of survival."

The team used the AI system to assess which particular treatment approach to sepsis was most successful.

Sepsis can cause a drastic drop in blood pressure which can leave organs deprived of blood flow and oxygen, and can ultimately lead to multiple organ failure and death.

To raise blood pressure and keep the heart pumping, doctors give extra fluids, usually in the form of a salt solution, as well as medication that tightens blood vessels and raises blood pressure, called vasopressors.

Professor Anthony Gordon, senior author from the Department of Surgery & Cancer at Imperial explained: "We know that most patients with sepsis need fluid drips and in more severe cases also need vasopressors to maintain blood pressure and blood flow. There is still much debate amongst clinicians about how much fluid to give and when to start vasopressors. There are clinical guidelines but they provide general advice. The AI Clinician is able to learn what is the best option for each individual patient at that moment in time."

Health Minister Lord O'Shaughnessy added: "Sepsis is a devastating condition which claims far too many lives in the UK. We need to be better at spotting the signs early and artificial intelligence has the potential to do this quickly and more effectively than humans - supporting doctors so they can spend more time with patients.

"We're already making steps to improve diagnosis with our new sepsis tool, but we must also embrace any new technology solutions that can improve patient care and save lives."

To help doctors decide which approach would boost a patient's chance of survival, the research team created an AI system that would assess a patient's vital signs and recommend the best treatment approach.

The system analysed the medical records of 96,000 US patients with sepsis in intensive care units. Using a process called reinforcement learning - where robots learn how to make decisions and solve a problem - the AI Clinician went through each patient's case and worked out the best strategy of keeping a patient alive. The system calculated 48 variables including age, vital signs and pre-existing conditions.

The system then predicted the best treatment strategy for each patient with sepsis. The results revealed that 98 per cent of the time, the AI system matched or was better than the human doctors' decision.

The study also found that mortality was lowest in patients where the human doctor's doses of fluids and vasopressor matched the AI system's suggestion. However, when the doctor's decision differed from the AI system, a patient had a reduced chance of survival.

The team found when the doctor's decision varied from the AI Clinician's suggestion, it was on average to administer too much fluid and too little vasopressor but importantly it varied between individual patients.

The team say the findings show the AI Clinician could help doctors decide the best treatment strategy for patients.

Professor Gordon explained "The AI Clinician was able to 'learn' from far more patients than any doctor could see in a lifetime. It has learnt from 100,000 patients and 'remembered' them all equally whereas doctors are always susceptible to recall bias, where they particularly remember recent cases or unusual cases".

Dr Faisal explained: "An intensive care doctor will see roughly 15,000 patients by the time they retire. Yet this system has seen nearly 100,000 patients, it has the life time experience of 8 doctors, and has learned from each of those cases what the best decisions were for each situation."

Dr Faisal added: "The explosion in Artificial Intelligence applications in healthcare is currently focussed on mimicking the perceptual ability of human doctors, e.g. recognising a tumour from a brain scan as used in diagnostics. However, doctors do more than just diagnose, they treat people. Our AI Clinician system focus on capturing this cognitive capacity of doctors: Imagine having a doctor watching over you every second of every day, administering a course of treatment, observing how you respond to the treatment, and then adjusting the treatment as your condition evolves.

"The AI Clinician technology we developed can have many applications in medicine, whenever we need to choose, observe and adjust treatment. Whenever there are large amounts of patient data the AI Clinician can assess and learn from, the system can be used. We have applied this technology previously to treatment in diabetes and in anaesthesia during surgery, and can use this to optimise the delivery of expensive treatments e.g. in cancer therapy".

The team now plan to trial the AI Clinician in UK hospitals. Dr Faisal added: "The only way for any technology to help a patient is to turn it into a product that doctors and hospitals can prescribe, therefore we are seeking to commercialise."

This work was only possible through the collaboration of artificial intelligence and clinician scientists pioneered at Imperial.

Dr Faisal said: "We broke down boundaries and silos that held back traditional approaches to healthcare, by training a novel generation of PhD students to look at AI and Healthcare as one problem, not two."

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Dr Matthieu Komorowski, a clinician who obtained a PhD in Artificial Intelligence with the two senior authors and was the first author of this study and supported by an Imperial College President's PhD fellowship.

The research was supported by National Institute of Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and the UK Research and Innovation's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Professor Anthony Gordon is also an NIHR Research Professor.Researchers at IIASA and the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, have discovered that non-financial firms, such as vehicle manufacturers and energy companies, contribute to systemic risk in financial systems in the same way as financial institutions like banks, and as such, should be regulated in the same way.

Systemic risk is the chance that a crisis at one institution could lead to the collapse of an entire financial system. The financial crisis in 2008 was triggered by the failure of a single bank, and in response to this, a new international regulatory framework was introduced to improve regulation and risk management, known as Basel III. The framework calls for stronger regulation of systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) and recommends, for example, increased capital requirements, so-called SIFI surcharges, for them. However, such regulations are not applied to non-financial firms. Researcher Sebastian Poledna and his colleagues argue that such macro-prudential regulations should be applied to all systemically important companies, whether financial or non-financial.

The work is the first to study the systemic importance of non-financial firms.

"The mechanisms of how a financial crisis may lead to an economic recession, and vice versa, are not understood on a fundamental level. To clarify and map the financial ties between the financial and the real economy, which are at the core of such potential spreading mechanisms, are more important than ever," says Thurner.

The team collected data on nearly all financial and non-financial firms in the Austrian economy. The data analyzed includes 80.2% of the liabilities, or debts, of firms to banks. It was collected from the financial statements of firms and banks in Austria, and anonymized interbank liabilities from the Austrian banking system. The researchers then reconstructed the financial network between 796 banks and 49,363 firms, effectively the Austrian national economy in 2008. Poledna says that to their knowledge, this is the most comprehensive financial network ever analyzed.

The next step was to identify systemically important firms, for which the researchers used a previously developed method called DebtRank. This gives each firm a number based on the fraction of the economic value in a network that will be affected if that firm is in distress. The highest-ranking firms are generally large banks with substantial total assets. In the Austrian economy, those with the highest DebtRank are, unsurprisingly, large banks, but the eighth most systemically important firm is non-financial. The firm in question has a DebtRank of 0.39, meaning that if it defaulted, up to 39% of the Austrian economy would be affected.

Systemically important firms came from multiple industries, and were not all large. The researchers identified a number of mid-sized firms, with assets worth less than 1 billion, that are systemically important in the Austrian economy. This was previously unknown.

Poledna and his colleagues additionally looked at the fraction of systemic risk coming from non-financial firms in the liability network, by dividing the sum of their DebtRank values by the total number of firms. They found that non-financial firms introduce more systemic risk than the financial sector, with 55% of systemic risk comes from non-financial firms. This strengthens the argument for regulations for SIFIs to be applied more widely.

The method used is broadly applicable.

"The results of this work could be the basis for a new approach to bank stress testing exercises that takes feedback effects between the real [goods and services] and financial economy into account," says Poledna. "Bank stress testing exercises assess the impact of risk drivers on the solvency of banks and are typically conducted without considering feedback effects between banks or between banks and the real economy."

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Reference

Poledna S, Hinteregger A, Thurner S (2018) Identifying Systemically Important Companies by Using the Credit Network of an Entire Nation. Entropy DOI: 10.3390/e20100792 [pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/15540/]

Contacts:

Sebastian Poledna

Research Scholar

Risk and Resilience

Advanced Systems Analysis

Tel: +43 2236 807 261

poledna@iiasa.ac.at

Stefan Thurner

Senior Research Scholar

Advanced Systems Analysis

Tel: +43 2236 807

thurner@iiasa.ac.at

Helen Tunnicliffe

IIASA Press Office

Tel: +43 2236 807 316

Mob: +43 676 83 807 316

tunnicli@iiasa.ac.atLevels of antiphospholipid antibodies, which are associated with rheumatic diseases, are also elevated in myocardial infarction without any autoimmune co-morbidity, a study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in The Annals of Internal Medicine reports.

Antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) are a group of antibodies that target endogenous tissue, including the fat molecule cardiolipin and the plasma protein 2glycoprotein-I. Cardiolipin is found in the membranes of blood vessel and blood platelet cells, whereas 2glycoprotein-I is found in the blood and is thought to help the body rid itself of dead cells.

The antibodies are common in rheumatic diseases such as SLE and increase the risk of blood clots. Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is an autoimmune condition characterised by recurrent blood clots and/or pregnancy morbidities together with chronically elevated levels of antiphospholipid antibodies.

It is unknown how common the antibodies are in patients with myocardial infarction but without any autoimmune co-morbidity. Previous studies have been small and the antibody measurement flawed.

"I've long been convinced that the antibodies are more common than we think and have now been able to analyse their presence in a large patient material," says Elisabet Svenungsson, professor of rheumatology at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Medicine in Solna.

The study involved 800 patients from 17 Swedish hospitals who had suffered their first myocardial infarction and as many matched healthy controls. Their blood was then analysed 6 to 10 weeks after the infarction for three different antiphospholipid antibody types: immunoglobulin G (IgG), M (IgM) and A (IgA). It was found that eleven per cent of the patients had antiphospholipid antibodies against both cardiolipin and 2glycoprotein-I, which was ten times more than the controls.

"It was a surprisingly high proportion of the patients and the levels were also clearly high," says Professor Svenungsson.

However, the increase was only found in the IgG antibodies, the type that is considered most associated with blood clots.

The measurement was done on one single occasion, so it is not impossible that it reflects a temporary reaction to the infarction. However, if the levels of antiphospholipid antibodies remained elevated for a further three months, by definition these patients have APS.

"In which case they should, according to current recommendations, be prescribed lifelong treatment with the anticoagulant warfarin, which reduces the risk of new blood clots," says Elisabet Svenungsson. "This would change the prevailing guidelines for the investigation and treatment of heart attacks."

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The study was conducted as a subanalysis of the PAROKRANK study in association with Uppsala University, the Royal Institute of Technology and Capio St Goran's Hospital. It was financed by AFA Forsakring, the Swedish Heart and Lung Foundation, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Society of Medicine, Stockholm County Council through the ALF programme, the King Gustaf V 80-year Foundation and the Swedish Rheumatism Association. Bio-Rad contributed antibody reagents, but had no influence over the planning or execution of the study. None of the researchers have declared any commercial interests.

Publication: "Antiphospholipid Antibodies in Patients with Myocardial Infarction", Giorgia Grosso, Natalie Sippl, Barbro Kjellstrom, Khaled Amara, Ulf de Faire, Kerstin Elvin, Bertil Lindahl, Per Nasman, Lars Ryden, Anna Norhammar, Elisabet Svenungsson, Annals of Internal Medicine, online 23 October 2018, doi: 10.7326/M18-2130.A measurable criterion now exists for determining the age rating of films. A group of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz has found that the concentration of isoprene in cinema air correlates with the cinema industry's voluntary classification of films. Evidently, the more nervous and tense people are, the more variable is the isoprene they emit. This can be used to deduce how "stressful" a film might be for children and adolescents.

The age from which children are allowed to watch a movie has so far been based on subjective judgments. In Germany, the Voluntary Self Regulation of the Movie Industry (FSK) classifies films after carefully examining their content. Some movies such as The Lion King are released for all ages, whereas others such as Harry Potter, Star Wars and Dracula are only suitable for viewers aged 6, 12, 16 or 18 respectively. Ultimately, the classification is fairly subjective.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have now developed a method that can objectively evaluate the age at which children and adolescents can safely watch a movie. They measured the composition of air in cinemas as well as levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during 135 screenings of eleven different movies. Over 13,000 audience members were involved. For a variety of film genres and age groups, the researchers found that isoprene levels reliably correlate with the age rating of a film. "Isoprene appears to be a good indicator of emotional tension within a group," says Jonathan Williams, group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "Our approach could therefore provide an objective criterion for deciding how movies should be classified."

Isoprene is released whenever we move

Isoprene is formed by metabolic processes and is stored in muscle tissue. It is released via the circulatory system, expired air and the skin whenever we move. "Evidently, we involuntarily squirm back and forth on our cinema seat or tense our muscles when we become nervous or excited," Jonathan Williams explains. And how intently the audience follows a film is, in turn, a good indication of the movie's emotional impact on children and adolescents.

If the new method were applied to an audience with representative age groups, it could help to determine the age rating of a movie in disputed cases. In addition, the measurements could show how audience reactions and age classification standards change over time.

Do our emotions leave a chemical fingerprint in the air?

In order to detect the chemical clues, the scientists connected a mass spectrometer to the cinema's ventilation system. During the film screenings, the device, which can identify substances even at ppt levels, was used to track changes in the air composition by taking measurements once every 30 seconds. In this way the team analyzed the concentrations of 60 compounds. Based on the data, the scientists then created a model that compares the age classification with the data on how often and in what quantities the audience released those compounds.

Jonathan Williams has now come up with a new research idea for the unambiguous correlation they identified for isoprene. He plans to investigate whether the volatile organic compounds we emit leave a chemical fingerprint in the air, not only of tension but of other emotional states as well. His team was unable to determine this clearly during the film screenings, because scenes that elicit very different emotions follow each other in rapid succession, thereby blurring the potential air-borne chemical traces. However, by taking air measurements under controlled laboratory conditions, in collaboration with other Max Planck Institutes in Frankfurt and Nijmegen, Jonathan Williams now hopes to conduct a thorough investigation into the question of whether specific emotions leave traces in the air.

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Original publication

C. Stonner, A. Edtbauer, B. Derstroff, E. Bourtsoukidis, T. Klupfel, J. Wicker, J. Williams

Proof of concept study: Testing human volatile organic compounds as tools for age classification of films.

PLoS ONE 13(10): e0203044.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203044We make judgements quite rationally or "by the gut". Not only experience and relevant information play an important role, but also our preferences. A study by the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne shows how the reward system in the brain conveys judgements affected by one's own desires.

"In complex, confusing situations, we run the risk of making a biased judgement as soon as we prefer one conclusion over another," explains Bojana Kuzmanovic, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne. In her work, she investigated how people's judgment is influenced by their wishful thinking.

In the study, volunteers were asked to estimate the average and personal risk of different negative events. They then learned the actual average risk and were able to adjust their own risk estimates accordingly. If the actual average risks were desirable (i.e. lower than initially estimated by the respondents), they were considered more than undesirable statistics.

Using an example, Kuzmanovic explains the phenomenon as follows: "By ignoring unpleasant information, we avoid drawing threatening conclusions. For example, we could neglect federal statistics, which indicate a higher risk of heart attack, because we think we have a particularly healthy lifestyle.

Desires activate reward system

During the survey the scientists recorded their brain activity using magnetic resonance tomography. They found that preferred judgements activate brain regions that otherwise react particularly strongly to rewards such as food or money. In addition, the scientists were able to show for the first time that the reward system in turn influenced other brain regions that are involved in conclusion processes. The stronger this neuronal influence was, the stronger the judgements of the study participants were determined by their wishes.

So, our desires and preferences influence our judgment without us consciously realizing it. The same brain systems that reinforce our efforts to maximize rewards such as food and money would also reinforce specific strategies for constructing judgements. Marc Tittgemeyer, who led the study, adds: "The influence of preferences is independent of expertise. We can benefit from this pleasant self-strengthening effect as long as our judgements do not have serious consequences. However, when making important decisions, we should be aware of our tendency to distort judgement and apply strategies to increase objectivity."

Next, the researchers will investigate whether these and other reward-dependent behaviours are different in patients with metabolic diseases than in healthy individuals. Reward dependent brain circuits are closely linked to homeostatic circuits that regulate energy demand and metabolism based on saturation and hunger signals. Thus, if homeostatic networks are altered by disease, this could also affect reward-dependent brain areas and lead to more impulsive behaviour, for example.

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Original publication

Bojana Kuzmanovic, Lionel Rigoux, Marc Tittgemeyer

Influence of vmPFC on dmPFC Predicts Valence-Guided Belief Formation.

The Journal of Neuroscience, 2018; 0266-18CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Researchers commonly study brain function by monitoring two types of electromagnetism -- electric fields and light. However, most methods for measuring these phenomena in the brain are very invasive.

MIT engineers have now devised a new technique to detect either electrical activity or optical signals in the brain using a minimally invasive sensor for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

MRI is often used to measure changes in blood flow that indirectly represent brain activity, but the MIT team has devised a new type of MRI sensor that can detect tiny electrical currents, as well as light produced by luminescent proteins. (Electrical impulses arise from the brain's internal communications, and optical signals can be produced by a variety of molecules developed by chemists and bioengineers.)

"MRI offers a way to sense things from the outside of the body in a minimally invasive fashion," says Aviad Hai, an MIT postdoc and the lead author of the study. "It does not require a wired connection into the brain. We can implant the sensor and just leave it there."

This kind of sensor could give neuroscientists a spatially accurate way to pinpoint electrical activity in the brain. It can also be used to measure light, and could be adapted to measure chemicals such as glucose, the researchers say.

Alan Jasanoff, an MIT professor of biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, and nuclear science and engineering, and an associate member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of the paper, which appears in the Oct. 22 issue of Nature Biomedical Engineering. Postdocs Virginia Spanoudaki and Benjamin Bartelle are also authors of the paper.

Detecting electric fields

Jasanoff's lab has previously developed MRI sensors that can detect calcium and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. In this paper, they wanted to expand their approach to detecting biophysical phenomena such as electricity and light. Currently, the most accurate way to monitor electrical activity in the brain is by inserting an electrode, which is very invasive and can cause tissue damage. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a noninvasive way to measure electrical activity in the brain, but this method cannot pinpoint the origin of the activity.

To create a sensor that could detect electromagnetic fields with spatial precision, the researchers realized they could use an electronic device -- specifically, a tiny radio antenna.

MRI works by detecting radio waves emitted by the nuclei of hydrogen atoms in water. These signals are usually detected by a large radio antenna within an MRI scanner. For this study, the MIT team shrank the radio antenna down to just a few millimeters in size so that it could be implanted directly into the brain to receive the radio waves generated by water in the brain tissue.

The sensor is initially tuned to the same frequency as the radio waves emitted by the hydrogen atoms. When the sensor picks up an electromagnetic signal from the tissue, its tuning changes and the sensor no longer matches the frequency of the hydrogen atoms. When this happens, a weaker image arises when the sensor is scanned by an external MRI machine.

The researchers demonstrated that the sensors can pick up electrical signals similar to those produced by action potentials (the electrical impulses fired by single neurons), or local field potentials (the sum of electrical currents produced by a group of neurons).

"We showed that these devices are sensitive to biological-scale potentials, on the order of millivolts, which are comparable to what biological tissue generates, especially in the brain," Jasanoff says.

The researchers performed additional tests in rats to study whether the sensors could pick up signals in living brain tissue. For those experiments, they designed the sensors to detect light emitted by cells engineered to express the protein luciferase.

Normally, luciferase's exact location cannot be determined when it is deep within the brain or other tissues, so the new sensor offers a way to expand the usefulness of luciferase and more precisely pinpoint the cells that are emitting light, the researchers say. Luciferase is commonly engineered into cells along with another gene of interest, allowing researchers to determine whether the genes have been successfully incorporated by measuring the light produced.

Smaller sensors

One major advantage of this sensor is that it does not need to carry any kind of power supply, because the radio signals that the external MRI scanner emits are enough to power the sensor.

Hai, who will be joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in January, plans to further miniaturize the sensors so that more of them can be injected, enabling the imaging of light or electrical fields over a larger brain area. In this paper, the researchers performed modeling that showed that a 250-micron sensor (a few tenths of a millimeter) should be able to detect electrical activity on the order of 100 millivolts, similar to the amount of current in a neural action potential.

Jasanoff's lab is interested in using this type of sensor to detect neural signals in the brain, and they envision that it could also be used to monitor electromagnetic phenomena elsewhere in the body, including muscle contractions or cardiac activity.

"If the sensors were on the order of hundreds of microns, which is what the modeling suggests is in the future for this technology, then you could imagine taking a syringe and distributing a whole bunch of them and just leaving them there," Jasanoff says. "What this would do is provide many local readouts by having sensors distributed all over the tissue."

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The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.Critically ill patients in intensive care units (ICUs) did not benefit from two antipsychotic drugs used to treat delirium, according to a large clinical trial funded by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health. The multi-site team that conducted the trial found no evidence that treatment with antipsychotic medicines--haloperidol or ziprasidone--affected delirium, survival, length of ICU or hospital stay or safety. The findings from the Modifying the Incidence of Delirium USA (MIND USA) study were published online Oct. 22, 2018 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"This is strong evidence from what we consider a 'gold standard' clinical trial showing that these two antipsychotics don't work to treat delirium during a critical illness," said NIA Deputy Director Marie A. Bernard, M.D. "Antipsychotics have often been used to treat delirium. The evidence from this study suggests the need to reexamine that practice." Bernard is also NIA's senior geriatrician.

Delirium is an acute disturbance in attention and awareness with symptoms that can include disorganized thinking and agitation. More than 7 million hospitalized Americans per year experience delirium. It can affect patients of any age but is more common among older adults who experience major illness--especially involving an ICU stay--or have major surgery. Delirium is also associated with higher ICU costs and multiple adverse outcomes, such as longer hospital stays, long-term cognitive impairment and death.

Antipsychotic medications have been used to treat delirium in ICU patients for 40 years without definitive understanding of their effectiveness. To address the question of benefit versus risk of the use of antipsychotics for delirium, the MIND USA investigators, led by E. Wesley Ely, M.D., M.P.H., professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, associate director of Research for the VA Geriatric Research Education Clinical Center, and co-director of the CIBS (Critical Illness, Brain dysfunction, and Survivorship) Center, screened nearly 21,000 patients at 16 U.S. medical centers. Of the 1,183 patients on mechanical ventilation or in shock enrolled, 566 became delirious and were randomized into three groups: those who received intravenous haloperidol, ziprasidone or placebo (saline). The researchers then measured for endpoints including delirium and coma duration, time on mechanical ventilation, successful discharge from ICU and hospital, as well as 30- and 90-day mortality.

Researchers found no significant difference in duration of delirium or coma among those participants on haloperidol or ziprasidone compared to placebo. Similarly, there were no significant differences among participants on either antipsychotic medication compared to placebo in 30-day and 90-day mortality or time on the ventilator, or in the ICU and hospital.

The study population included participants with a wide range of ages, conditions and admission diagnoses. Overall, they had a 73-percent 30-day survival rate and 64-percent 90-day survival rate, which reflects the severe nature of their illnesses. The research team also found no evidence of major harm from the antipsychotics but did note other research suggesting safety concerns--including increased mortality--associated with antipsychotic use in non-ICU geriatric populations.

"This research joins other important studies on delirium showing that there clearly is need for improvement in treating and managing this complicated condition," said Molly Wagster, Ph.D. chief of the Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience Branch in the NIA's Division of Neuroscience. "Large randomized trials like this can inform clinicians and help guide care."

###

The MIND USA researchers noted there is some evidence that medications such as dexmedetomidine or melatonin--which are being studied in separate NIA-funded grants to other researchers (AG053582 and AG050850)--may reduce both the prevalence and duration of delirium. The authors emphasized that reducing oversedation and improving early mobility is another strategy.

The MIND USA study was funded in part by NIH grants AG035117 and TR000445. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01211522.

Reference: Gerard et al. Haloperidol and Ziprasidone for Treatment of Delirium in Critical Illness. NEJM. 2018 Oct. 22. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1808217

About the National Institute on Aging (NIA): The NIA leads the federal government effort conducting and supporting research on aging and the health and well-being of older people. The Institute's broad scientific program seeks to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life. For more information on research, aging, and health, go to http://www.nia.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.NII and CERN signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate in the development of research support tool and software. The new system encourages researchers to share their research output and consequently facilitate open science.

The National Institute of Informatics, Research Organization of Information and Systems, Inter-University Research Institute Corporation (NII/Director General: Masaru Kitsuregawa/Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan) and European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN/Head of the Information Technology Department: Frederic Hemmer/Geneva, Switzerland) signed a memorandum of understanding as of September 4, to collaborate in the development of research support tool and software. As for the first project, NII and CERN will start the joint development of a next generation repository system, which has a strong impact on scholarly communication network. The new system encourages researchers to share their research output and consequently facilitate open science. [Background]

Open science is a movement that aims to make research data, software, and other research components, in addition to the research paper, widely available via the Internet, and it is attracting attention as a new way of research approach. It has a strong advantage for improving the efficiency and productivity of research by reducing the duplication of experiments and by making research data available for other research groups. The repository itself plays an important role as a distributed, globally networked infrastructure for open science.

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is an international association for the repository community to build capacity, align policies and practices, and act as a global voice for the community. (*1) In order to establish the repository more research-centric, open to and supportive of innovation, while also collectively managed by the scholarly community, COAR proposed principles and technical recommendation for next generation repository (NGR) system. (*2) [Joint Development in Repository Software]

CERN (*3), the European Organization for Nuclear Research, sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe's first joint ventures and now has 22 member states. The physicists and engineers at CERN are probing the fundamental structure of the universe and use the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter - the fundamental particles. Thousands of physicists from more than a hundred of institutes and universities worldwide participate in the experiments hosted at CERN and create a massive research output. To preserve it for the future and facilitate results' sharing, since 2002, CERN has been developing the repository software named Invenio.

Since 2008, NII also has been developed the original repository software named WEKO. WEKO is now utilized by more than 500 Japanese institutions through a cloud service named JAIRO Cloud which is operated by NII. Because of Invenio's modular and flexible architecture, NII has decided to use Invenio for the new framework of the WEKO repository system. NII will develop several needed functionalities for WEKO3 and along the way will contribute to the development of the new Invenio 3 framework. This activity will generate many new Invenio modules that do not exist yet, and that are interesting for the world wide Invenio community. NII will contribute these modules back to the Invenio core framework, as much as possible. CERN will provide support and advice on how to achieve this goal and make those aforementioned modules reusable.

Due to the evolving nature of Invenio and the creation of WEKO3, many modules related to COAR NGR capabilities will be addressed during the upcoming years. Both NII and CERN will collaborate on developing a subset of the NGR features recommended by COAR NGR Working Group. The advantage of NII is to deploy these developments through JAIRO Cloud service and consequently Japanese institutions will instantly ready to work with COAR NGR vision. CERN will also implement them into Zenodo data repository and related digital library services. Through these activities, both institutions strongly contribute to create a new scholarly communication network.

###

About the National Institute of Informatics (NII)

NII is Japan's only academic research institute dedicated to the new discipline of informatics. Its mission is to ""create future value"" in informatics. NII conducts both long-term basic research and practical research aimed at solving social problems in a wide range of informatics research fields--from fundamental theories to the latest topics, such as artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and information security.

Also, as an inter-university research institute, NII builds and operates academic information infrastructure essential for the research and educational activities of the entire academic community, including the Science Information Network (SINET5), as well as developing services such as provision of academic content and service platforms.Cannabis oil has been shown to significantly improve the symptoms of Crohn's disease and the quality of life of sufferers but, contrary to previous medical thinking, has no effect on gut inflammation

(Vienna, October 22, 2018) In the first study of its kind, cannabis oil has been shown to significantly improve the symptoms of Crohn's disease and the quality of life of sufferers but, contrary to previous medical thinking, has no effect on gut inflammation.

In a randomised, placebo-controlled study, researchers from Israel have shown that cannabis can produce clinical remission in up to 65% of individuals after 8 weeks of treatment, but that this improvement does not appear to result from a dampening down of the underlying inflammatory process.

Speaking at UEG Week 2018 in Vienna, lead researcher, Dr Timna Naftali explained, "Cannabis has been used for centuries to treat a wide range of medical conditions, and studies have shown that many people with Crohn's disease use cannabis regularly to relieve their symptoms. It has always been thought that this improvement was related to a reduction in inflammation in the gut and the aim of this study was to investigate this."

The Israeli team recruited 46 people with moderately severe Crohn's disease, and randomized them to receive 8 weeks of treatment with either cannabis oil containing 15% cannabidiol and 4% tetrahydrocannabinol or placebo. Symptom severity and quality of life were measured before, during, and after treatment using validated research instruments. Inflammation in the gut was assessed endoscopically and by measuring inflammatory markers in blood and stool samples.

After 8 weeks of treatment, the group receiving the cannabis oil had a significant reduction in their Crohn's disease symptoms compared with the placebo group, and 65%met strict criteria for clinical remission (versus 35% of the placebo recipients). The cannabis group also had significant improvements in their quality of life compared with the placebo group.

"We have previously demonstrated that cannabis can produce measurable improvements in Crohn's disease symptoms but, to our surprise, we saw no statistically significant improvements in endoscopic scores or in the inflammatory markers we measured in the cannabis oil group compared with the placebo group," said Dr Naftali. "We know that cannabinoids can have profound anti-inflammatory effects but this study indicates that the improvement in symptoms may not be related to these anti-inflammatory properties."

Looking ahead, the research group plans to explore further the potential anti-inflammatory properties of cannabis in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. "There are very good grounds to believe that the endocannabinoid system is a potential therapeutic target in Crohn's disease and other gastrointestinal diseases," said Dr Naftali. "For now, however, we can only consider medicinal cannabis as an alternative or additional intervention that provides temporary symptom relief for some people with Crohn's disease.'

###

Notes to Editors

For further information, or to arrange an interview with Dr Tinma Naftali, please contact Luke Paskins on +44 (0)1444 811099 or media@ueg.eu

About Dr Timna Naftali

Dr Timna Naftali is an MD Specialist in Gastroenterology at Meir Hospital and Kupat Holim Clinic, Tel Aviv University, Israel.

About UEG Week

UEG Week is the largest and most prestigious gastroenterology meeting in Europe and has developed into a global congress. It attracts over 14,000 participants each year, from more than 120 countries, and numbers are steadily rising. UEG Week provides a forum for basic and clinical scientists from across the globe to present their latest research in digestive and liver diseases, and also features a two-day postgraduate course that brings together top lecturers in their fields for a weekend of interactive learning.

About UEG

UEG, or United European Gastroenterology, is a professional non-profit organisation combining all the leading European medical specialist and national societies focusing on digestive health. Together, its member societies represent over 30,000 specialists, working across medicine, surgery, paediatrics, gastrointestinal oncology and endoscopy. This makes UEG the most comprehensive organisation of its kind in the world, and a unique platform for collaboration and the exchange of knowledge. To advance the standards of gastroenterological care and knowledge across the world and to reduce the burden of digestive diseases, UEG offers numerous activities and initiatives, including:

UEG Education, the universal source of knowledge in gastroenterology, providing online and classroom courses, a huge online library and delivering the latest GI news, fostering debate and discussion

Activity Grants, promoting and funding educational projects in the field of digestive health to advance and harmonise the training and continuing education of professionals

UEG Journal, covering translational and clinical studies from all areas of gastroenterology

Public Affairs, promoting research, prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of digestive diseases, and helping develop an effective health policy for Europe

Quality of Care, European-based and English clinical practice guidelines, clinical standards, consensus, position papers and standard protocols in the field of digestive health, are available in the repository

Find out more about UEG's work by visiting http://www.ueg.eu or contact: Luke Paskins on +44 (0)1444 811099 or media@ueg.eu

References

1. Naftali T, Bar-Lev Schlieder L, Konikoff F, et al. Cannabis induces clinical response but no endoscopic response in Crohn's disease patients. Presented at UEG Week Vienna 2018, October 22, 2018.

2. Lal S, Prasad N, Ryan M, et al. Cannabis use amongst patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2011;23(10):891-6.

3. Weiss A, Friedenberg F. Patterns of cannabis use in patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A population based analysis. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2015;156:84-89.

4. Naftali T, Bar-Lev Schleider L, Dotan I, et al. Cannabis induces a clinical response in patients with Crohn's disease: a prospective placebo-controlled study. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2013;11(10):1276-1280.e1.(Vienna, October 23, 2018) Oesophageal microbiota may help to improve the diagnosis and management of oesophageal cancer, according to the results of a study presented today. Researchers from Italy directed by Professor Cammarota have found a unique pattern of microbes living in the oesophagus of people with oesophageal cancer or Barrett's oesophagus, which could potentially be used to identify at-risk individuals and pave the way for new types of treatment in the future.

Speaking at UEG Week 2018 in Vienna, Austria, lead researcher, Dr Loris Riccardo Lopetuso from the Catholic University of Rome, Italy, said: "Despite the introduction of novel therapies such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, the prognosis for people with oesophageal cancer remains poor. We need to develop a better understanding of what causes normal oesophageal cells to become malignant so we can find at-risk individuals as early as possible and develop alternative therapeutic strategies."

Oesophageal cancer is the 8th most common cancer worldwide and the 6th most common cause of cancer-related death. Most people present with established disease, so rates of mortality are high in most countries. Known risk factors include gastroesophageal reflux disease (GORD), obesity, smoking, low fruit/vegetable intake, and alcohol consumption, but other factors, including upper digestive tract microbiota are thought to be involved.

In the study presented today, researchers aimed to characterize the composition of the oesophageal microbiota in patients with oesophageal cancer compared with patients with Barrett's oesophagus and a control group of people with no evidence of the disease. Biopsy samples from six newly-diagnosed patients with oesophageal cancer, 10 with Barrett's oesophagus and 10 controls were analysed for microbiota composition.

A higher level of bacterial diversity was reported for patients with oesophageal cancer compared with the controls; there was a relative abundance of Bacteroidetes and a relative paucity of Firmicutes (different categories of microbiota) in the patients with oesophageal cancer compared with the controls. There were also lower levels of Streptococcus, and higher levels of Veillonella, Porphyromonas, and Prevotella (different types of bacteria) in those with oesophageal cancer compared with Barrett's oesophagus patients and the controls.

"These results indicate that there is a unique microbial signature for oesophageal cancer that might represent a risk factor for this condition," said Dr Lopetuso. "If these findings are confirmed in our further analyses, it may be possible to imagine innovative diagnostic and therapeutic tools to help us manage this condition more successfully."

###

Notes to Editors

For further information, or to arrange an interview with Dr Loris Riccardo Lopetuso, please contact Luke Paskins on +44 (0)1444 811099 or media@ueg.eu

About UEG Week

UEG Week is the largest and most prestigious gastroenterology meeting in Europe and has developed into a global congress. It attracts over 14,000 participants each year, from more than 120 countries, and numbers are steadily rising. UEG Week provides a forum for basic and clinical scientists from across the globe to present their latest research in digestive and liver diseases, and also features a two-day postgraduate course that brings together top lecturers in their fields for a weekend of interactive learning.

About UEG

UEG, or United European Gastroenterology, is a professional non-profit organisation combining all the leading European societies concerned with digestive diseases. Together, its member societies represent over 22,000 specialists, working across medicine, surgery, paediatrics, gastrointestinal oncology and endoscopy. This makes UEG the most comprehensive organisation of its kind in the world, and a unique platform for collaboration and the exchange of knowledge.

To advance standards of gastroenterological care and knowledge across Europe and the world, UEG offers numerous activities and initiatives, including:

UEG Education, the universal source of knowledge in gastroenterology, providing online and classroom courses, a huge online library and delivering the latest GI news, fostering debate and discussion

Activity Grants, promoting and funding educational projects in the field of digestive health to advance and harmonise the training and continuing education of professionals

UEG Journal, published bi-monthly, covering translational and clinical studies from all areas of gastroenterology

EU Affairs, promoting research, prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of digestive diseases, and helping develop an effective health policy for Europe

Quality of Care, European-based and English clinical practice guidelines, clinical standards, consensus, position papers and standard protocols in the field of digestive health, are available in the repository.

Find out more about UEG's work by visiting http://www.ueg.eu or contact:

Luke Paskins on +44 (0)1444 811099 or media@ueg.eu

References(PHILADELPHIA) - Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat and is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Now, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center - Jefferson Health and Lankenau Institute for Medical Research scientists find that a gene involved in the immune system called IDO2 plays a significant role in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common type of pancreatic cancer. The discovery may help physicians provide better treatment options for patients.

"The findings could point to a therapeutic target or an important prognostic biomarker," said George Prendergast, PhD, President and CEO of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) of Main Line Health who co-led the study with Jonathan Brody, PhD, Director of the Research Division and Professor of Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University, both of whom are members of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center -- Jefferson Health.

The team published the new work September 28 in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

The IDO2 gene, which was first discovered by LIMR researchers in 2006, produces an enzyme that helps manage the immune system. During pregnancy, IDO2 and a related gene, IDO1, tone down the mother's immune system so it will not attack the fetus, for example. Cancer, however, hijacks the IDO genes' function. It uses IDO1 and 2 to conceal itself from the immune system. The researchers thought that shutting down the IDO enzymes could make the cancer visible to the immune system, thereby allowing the body's defenses the opportunity to fight the cancer. In fact, in previous research, the team found that mice lacking the IDO genes did not develop pancreatic cancer in a rodent model of the disease. The results suggested IDO genes are essential to pancreatic cancer progression.

Now, Drs. Brody and Prendergast find IDO2 spurs the formation of PDAC tumors. When the researchers induced the development of pancreatic cancer in mice, they found nearly 30 percent of rodents developed the invasive cancer. In mice that lack the IDO2 gene, however, the cancer grew in only 15 percent of the animals. Strikingly, all the mice lacking IDO2 that developed cancer were male. The results suggest IDO2's involvement in pancreatic cancer may affect females differently from males.

The researchers knew that many people in the general population have inherited, or germline, alterations in the IDO2 gene that turn off the gene's ability to mediate the immune system. So the scientists examined the IDO2 gene in a subgroup of pancreatic cancer patients from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Genetic testing is easy and cost effective, since researchers need only a sample of blood or cheek swab to detect this DNA.

"Besides IDO2's involvement in development of pancreatic cancer, we wanted to know whether IDO2 affects how patients respond to treatment," said Dr. Brody.

When the team compared patients' IDO2 genes with their prognosis, they found that patients with defunct IDO2 genes had more favorable outcomes.

"The patients in our small cohort actually do better in specific treatment settings," said Dr. Brody. "They have improved disease-free survival when they receive radiotherapy."

Patients with nonfunctional IDO2 who also received adjuvant radiation treatment lived cancer-free for almost twice as long as patients with a working version of the gene, the researchers found. The results suggest that people with a specific IDO2 gene status may respond better to radiotherapy for their disease. In fact, patients who had deficient IDO2 gene status and received radiotherapy had a markedly improved survival. Patients with a functioning IDO2 gene who had received radiation treatment did not demonstrate such benefits and nor did patients with an inactive IDO2 gene who did not receive radiotherapy.

Together, these initial findings suggest that IDO2 gene status has the potential to influence pancreatic care decision-making (i.e., precision therapy). In the future, physicians may be able to use the gene's status as a biomarker to inform their treatment recommendations.

"Developing new strategies to refine therapeutic options has been a top priority of our nationally recognized pancreatic cancer team at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center," says cancer researcher Karen Knudsen, PhD, Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center - Jefferson Health. "This breakthrough in understanding lays the foundation for determining what patients might most benefit from radiotherapy, and represents a major step forward toward the goal of precision oncology."

Although the researchers are excited about these findings, Dr. Brody suggests a lot of work needs to be done to validate the study in additional, larger cohorts, and ultimately, in a prospective clinical trial. If confirmed, Brody states, "With a simple blood test, physicians could determine a patient's IDO2 gene status and determine whether they should go on radiotherapy."

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Article Reference: Avinoam Nevler, Alexander J. Muller, Erika Sutanto-Ward, James B. DuHadaway, Kei Nagatomo, Eric Londin, Kevin O'Hayer, Joseph A. Cozzitorto, Harish Lavu, Theresa P Yeo, Mark T Curtis, Tatiana Villatoro, Benjamin E Leiby, Laura Mandik-Nayak, Jordan M. Winter, Charles J. Yeo, George C Prendergast and Jonathan R. Brody, "Host IDO2 gene status influences tumor progression and radiotherapy response in KRAS-driven sporadic pancreatic cancers," Clinical Cancer Res., DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-0814, 2018.

Media Contact: Edyta Zielinska, edyta.zielinska@jefferson.edu, 215-955-7359, OR Donna Loyle, loyled@mlhs.org, 484-476-8425.Lower Fillmore Street is already a melting pot of cultures and flavors. Now mixing in is a bit of tropical flavorwith essences of Miami, Cuba, and Africathanks to the new fast-casual eatery Isla Vida.

From the team behind Farmerbrownchef Jay Foster, Matthew Washington, and Erin Traylorthis new Caribbean soul-food joint aims to showcase the best of the tropics.

(Sarah Chorey) Bright colors send the sign that good times are ahead.

It would be tough not to smile while inside this sunny little spaceits pink-and-green fern-patterned ceiling, hanging plants, and lively semi-open kitchen all signal a good time's coming. And there's nothing sad about the hearty plates of wood-fired jerk chicken, thick ham-and-pork Cubano sandwiches, and aromatic dishes of whole roasted red snapper either. Tostones (crispy plantains), maduras (sweet plantains), and congri (rice and black beans) are savory supporting sides.



The friendly trio at the helm also shares a passion for community, and it's their hope that Isla Vida will enliven the neighborhood by providing a space for locals to gather; the group also intends to hire, train, and mentor people from within the community, and hopes to attract more black-owned businesses back to the Fillmore district.

On nice days, expect their outdoor patio to fill up quickly.

// Isla Vida, 1325 Fillmore St. (Fillmore), islavidasf.com/ESMO 2018 abstract LBA21 - "InterAACT: A multicentre open label randomised phase II advanced anal cancer trial of cisplatin (CDDP) plus 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) vs carboplatin (C) plus weekly paclitaxel (P) in patients (pts) with inoperable locally recurrent (ILR) or metastatic treatment naive disease - An International Rare Cancers Initiative (IRCI) trial."

A new approach to treating advanced anal cancer is safer and more effective than the most widely used current treatment, according to the first ever randomised clinical trial in this group of patients.

Around 1,300 people are diagnosed with anal cancer each year in the UK and this number is rising by around three per cent per year. Due to small patient populations, there is very limited evidence to guide treatment decisions, and international consensus among clinicians is lacking. The findings from this study will set a new standard of care for this rare type of cancer.

The international randomised phase II trial, led by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and presented today (Monday 22 October) at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2018, analysed data from 91 patients in four countries, including the UK, Norway, the US and Australia.

The researchers found that a chemotherapy combination of Carboplatin and Paclitaxel - which is primarily used to treat other cancers, including ovarian, womb and lung cancer - performed better overall compared to chemotherapy treatment with Cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil.

In the trial, endorsed by the International Rare Cancer Initiative (IRCI), Carboplatin and Paclitaxel performed better both in terms of survival rates and safety. Until now, when anal cancer had spread or come back after treatment, doctors had considered Cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil to be the preferred first-line treatment option.

Study Chief-Investigator Dr Sheela Rao, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden, said: "The results of this study will immediately change patient care. While treatment with Cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil was generally considered a reasonable option for advanced anal cancer, we now know that carboplatin and paclitaxel is more effective and better tolerated. In our study, these patients lived seven months longer overall.

"Around 30 per cent of people with anal cancer will develop advanced disease which cannot be treated surgically, and all of these patients are eligible to receive this chemotherapy combination."

Professor David Sebag-Montefiore, a study co-author and Cancer Research UK anal cancer expert, said: "Making progress in rare cancers is incredibly difficult, so it's very exciting to see these results which, in my opinion, are practice changing. This important research informs both patients and their cancer teams that the combination of the chemotherapy drugs carboplatin and paclitaxel should be first line treatment for advanced anal cancer.

"This study also shows the benefit of international collaboration within the International Rare Cancer Initiative (IRCI) - it can deliver results in rare diseases that individual countries cannot achieve on their own."

Professor David Cunningham, Director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "These findings set a new standard of care and highlight the importance of international collaboration for advances in the treatment of rare cancers. We now have the backbone for future trials into novel treatments for advanced anal cancer, including immunotherapy."

###

This study was funded by Cancer Research UK, The Royal Marsden's GI and Lymphoma Unit, the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), and The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

ESMO 2018 abstract - LBA21 - "InterAACT: A multicentre open label randomised phase II advanced anal cancer trial of cisplatin (CDDP) plus 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) vs carboplatin (C) plus weekly paclitaxel (P) in patients (pts) with inoperable locally recurrent (ILR) or metastatic treatment naive disease - An International Rare Cancers Initiative (IRCI) trial" - will be presented by Dr Sheela Rao on Monday 22 October.

For further media information please contact Jack Stonebridge, Senior PR & Communications Officer at The Royal Marsden on jack.stonebridge@rmh.nhs.uk or 0207 808 2605/07584441432.

About The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust

The Royal Marsden opened its doors in 1851 as the world's first hospital dedicated to cancer diagnosis, treatment, research and education.

Today, together with its academic partner, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), it is the largest and most comprehensive cancer centre in Europe seeing and treating over 50,000 NHS and private patients every year. It is a centre of excellence with an international reputation for groundbreaking research and pioneering the very latest in cancer treatments and technologies.

The Royal Marsden, with the ICR, is the only National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Cancer. This supports pioneering research work carried out over a number of different cancer themes.

The Royal Marsden also provides community services in the London borough of Sutton.

Since 2003, The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity has funded the latest developments in cancer research, diagnosis, treatment and patient care. Over recent years, supporters of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity have funded facilities including the Oak Centre for Children and Young People, the da Vinci robots, the CyberKnife radiotherapy machine and the Reuben Foundation Imaging Centre.

HRH The Duke of Cambridge became President of The Royal Marsden in 2007, following a long royal connection with the hospital.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR): improving the health and wealth of the nation through research.

Established by the Department of Health and Social Care, the NIHR:

funds high quality research to improve health

trains and supports health researchers

provides world-class research facilities

works with the life sciences industry and charities to benefit all

involves patients and the public at every step

For further information, visit the NIHR website http://www.nihr.ac.uk

This work uses data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support, and would not have been possible without access to this data. The NIHR recognises and values the role of patient data, securely accessed and stored, both in underpinning and leading to improvements in research and care. Read more http://www.nihr.ac.uk/patientdataCollection edited by UC Riverside researchers focuses on the role of rising oxygen in the birth of complex life

Riverside Calif. --Hundreds of millions of years before there was a chicken or an egg to debate, the first complex animals were evolving in parallel with Earth's rising oxygen levels.

But what came first -- animals or oxygen?

That question is the central theme of a special issue of Emerging Topics in Life Sciences published Sept. 28 by Portland Press. Titled "Early Earth and the Rise of Complex Life," the issue was edited by UC Riverside's Timothy Lyons, a distinguished professor of biogeochemistry, along with UCR professor Mary Droser and postdoctoral researcher Kimberly Lau, and Susannah Porter, a professor at UC Santa Barbara. Several of the 18 articles included in the collection were authored or co-authored by UCR researchers.

While geological and fossil records suggest the formation of complex life and oxygenation of the planet progressed hand-in-hand, the details about the possible cause-and-effect relationship are still murky and debated. Did rising oxygen levels in the oceans and atmosphere drive the formation of complex life, were they unrelated, or did the eventual emergence and proliferation of complex life instead cause a rise in oxygen?

"While those questions remain largely unanswered at this time, this curated collection offers an up-to-date look at the relationship between early organisms and their environments through the lens of a diverse group of scientists using a variety of cutting-edge methods," Lyons said.

Oxygen began to accumulate in the oceans and atmosphere 2.3-2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxidation Event. By 1.8 billion years ago, oxygen levels had fallen to intermediate levels, where they remained stable for another billion years -- dubbed 'the boring billion' by scientists. Around 800 million years ago, the levels likely increased again, and the first animals evolved soon after.

A paper by Scott Evans, a graduate student in Droser's lab, presents evidence suggesting another rise of oxygen catalyzed innovation in animal life. By studying fossil animals from between 550-560 million years ago, during the so-called Ediacaran era, Evans showed that Earth's early animals, which were ocean-dwelling creatures that "breathed" by diffusion, evolved to be larger. This meant a lower fraction of their cells came in contact with the surrounding waters during a period of increased oxygen and became smaller again during a transient decrease.

"This relationship suggests that a rise in oxygen levels may have provided the environment necessary for the diversification of complex body plans and energetically demanding ecologies," Lyons said.

Not everyone in the series agrees that a rise in oxygen was key to our early ancestors' success. Daniel Mills at the University of Southern Denmark cautions the relationship between the evolution of complex life and increasing oxygenation remains open to question. Perhaps, he suggests, the emergence of animals might have been based on "internal developmental constraints," meaning the time it took for animals with sophisticated cellular machinery governed by complex genetics to evolve independently of environmental changes.

"Readers will not leave this collection with a clear single answer," Lyons said. "Instead, our goal was to give them an up-to-date view of the key debates about evolving early complex life and environmental change, the full context that lies behind the questions and uncertainties, and the work left to do."

###

Support for this series came from NASA and the National Science Foundation through a 2014 joint workshop, "Beyond Habitability: Coevolution of Life and the Early Earth," held at the Smithsonian Institution and organized by Lyons, Doug Erwin of the Smithsonian, and NASA's Lindsay Hays.For decades, metformin has been the first-line drug in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, lowering blood glucose levels by inhibiting glucose production in the liver. Metformin also improves glucose uptake and use by muscle tissue.

The effect of metformin on hepatic glucose production is most likely transmitted through the mitochondrial respiratory chain. However, up to now the mechanism through which the drug increases glucose uptake in muscle tissue has been unknown.

A research group led by Professor Sanna Lehtonen at the University of Helsinki has now demonstrated in cell cultures and in an animal model that metformin directly binds to the lipid phosphatase SHIP2, reducing its activity. The reduction in SHIP2 activity increased glucose uptake in muscle cells and decreased cell death in podocytes, or glomerular epithelial cells.

The lipid phosphatase SHIP2 suppresses the insulin signalling pathway. Prior studies have demonstrated through animal models that individuals suffering from diabetes have elevated levels of SHIP2 in their kidney, muscle and adipose tissue. This reduces the ability of tissue to react to insulin signalling and reduces its glucose uptake. Elevated SHIP2 concentration also increases programmed cell death in podocytes.

In addition to an animal model, Lehtonen's group utilised patient samples in the study. Their analysis revealed that in patients with type 2 diabetes who were not taking metformin, SHIP2 activity in the kidneys was elevated, in addition to which their podocyte loss was remarkable. In patients taking metformin, SHIP2 activity did not deviate from people without diabetes, while podocyte loss was also lower than in patients using another drug therapy.

"Our results indicate that the lipid phosphatase SHIP2 has a significant role in regulating glucose metabolism and cell death in podocytes. So, regulating SHIP2 activity with metformin or another suitable pharmaceutical agent is crucial in managing type 2 diabetes and particularly in preventing related diabetic kidney disease," Lehtonen says.

UNDERSTANDING THE MECHANISM OF ACTION HELPS TARGET DRUG THERAPY

Metformin's mechanism of action is being enthusiastically investigated due to its diverse effects on the body, making it potentially useful in treating diseases other than diabetes in the future. Better understanding of the mechanism also helps target the therapy precisely to those patient groups that will benefit from it.

"Combined with the research results published last spring by Professor Leif Groop and Docent Tiinamaija Tuomi, the findings of my group highlight the significance of metformin in treating a certain group of patients with diabetes," Lehtonen states.

Based on the study conducted by Groop and Tuomi (Ahlqvist et al., Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 6: 361-, 2018), a proposal has been made to classify diabetes into five different subgroups, one of which would be severe insulin-resistant diabetes. Patients with this type of diabetes are at an exceptionally high risk of also contracting diabetic kidney disease. The researchers estimate that it would be this group in particular that would benefit from metformin.

The results gained by Lehtonen's group support this view.

"Our findings prove that metformin could protect patients from renal damage by suppressing SHIP2 activity. This introduces a new, direct mechanism of action, through which metformin protects the kidneys from damage.

According to a recent finding, metformin impacts metabolism also by affecting the gut microbiota," Lehtonen points out.

NEW INDICATIONS - NEW DRUGS?

Identifying new mechanisms of action can expand metformin's indications for use outside diabetes in treating, among other disorders, cancer and cardiovascular diseases - research is already underway in these fields - as well as in regulating aging.

"Our new study highlights SHIP2's significance as a drug target. Prior studies support this notion, but knowing that the most common diabetes drug acts precisely through SHIP2 encourages us to find new SHIP2 inhibitors that are more effective than metformin," Lehtonen says.

Diabetes is one of the diseases that are gaining in prevalence the fastest, both in Finland and globally.

###When alcohol enters the brain, it causes neurons in a specialized region called the ventral tegmental area, or VTA -- also known as the "pleasure center" -- to release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that produces those feel-good sensations, and tells the brain that whatever it just experienced is worth getting more of.

Scientists have long sought the first step in the molecular pathway by which alcohol causes neurons in the VTA to release dopamine.

Now, researchers in the Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics at the University of Illinois at Chicago report in the journal Neuropharmacology, that alcohol blocks a potassium channel called KCNK13 that sits within the membrane of dopamine-releasing neurons in the VTA. When the potassium channel gets blocked, the neurons increase their activity and release more dopamine.

"The KCNK13 channel is absolutely required for alcohol to stimulate the release of dopamine by these neurons," said Mark Brodie, professor of physiology and biophysics in the UIC College of Medicine and lead author of the study. "Without the channel, alcohol can't stimulate the release of dopamine, and so drinking is likely less rewarding. We think that the KCNK13 channel presents an extremely exciting new target for drugs that could potentially help people with alcohol use disorder to stop drinking."

Other drugs on the market to treat alcohol use disorder cause feelings of nausea with drinking, or interfere with the action of alcohol in other parts of the brain.

"Currently available drugs reduce the impact of alcohol on the brain that is akin to turning down the volume on a stereo," he said. "A drug that would target KCNK13 would be different in that it would be like an on/off switch. If it's turned off, alcohol just wouldn't trigger increased dopamine release."

Brodie explained that without the channel, the VTA would still be able to release dopamine in response to other pleasurable indulgences, like chocolate cake.

"This channel seems to be specific to alcohol effects in the VTA, so targeting it with a drug would dampen the effects of alcohol only," he said.

Brodie and his colleagues used genetic techniques to reduce KCNK13 in the VTA of mice by about 15 percent compared with normal mice. When allowed to binge on alcohol, these mice drank 20 percent to 30 percent more than normal mice.

"We believe that mice with less KCNK13 in the VTA drank more alcohol in order to achieve the same 'reward' from alcohol as normal mice, presumably because alcohol was triggering the release of less dopamine in their brains," Brodie said.

In another experiment, the researchers examined the response of neurons in the VTA region taken from the mice that expressed less KCNK13. When these neurons were exposed to alcohol, they were 50 percent less responsive to alcohol than VTA neurons from normal mice.

Brodie speculates that variations in the amount of the KCNK13 channel could be involved in predisposing certain people to binge drinking.

"If someone has naturally lower levels of this channel, then in order to produce the pleasurable effects of alcohol, that person would have to drink much more, and may be at higher risk for binge drinking disorder," he said.

Brodie and his colleagues will continue to investigate the role of KCNK13 and examine how selective manipulation of the channel in other brain areas and cell types might alter alcohol-related behaviors.

"We are the first to show that KCNK13 is a primary, direct target of alcohol and that this channel is important for regulating alcohol consumption. KCNK13 represents a novel target for the development of alcohol use disorder drugs, of which we have relatively few today," Brodie said.

###

Chang You, Bertha Vandegrift, Donghong He, Subhash Pandey and Amy Lasek of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Antonia Savarese (currently at Oregon Health and Science University) are co-authors on the paper.

This research was funded by Grant R01AA05846 and P50AA022538 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health.UMass Amherst scientists have produced a new class of electronic materials that may lead to a "green," more sustainable future in biomedical and environmental sensing

AMHERST, Mass. - An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has produced a new class of electronic materials that may lead to a "green," more sustainable future in biomedical and environmental sensing, say research leaders microbiologist Derek Lovley and polymer scientist Todd Emrick.

They say their new work shows it is possible to combine protein nanowires with a polymer to produce a flexible electronic composite material that retains the electrical conductivity and unique sensing capabilities of protein nanowires. Results appear in the journal Small.

Protein nanowires have many advantages over the silicon nanowires and carbon nanotubes in terms of their biocompatibility, stability, and potential to be modified to sense a wide range of biomolecules and chemicals of medical or environmental interest, says Lovley. However, these sensor applications require that the protein nanowires be incorporated into a flexible matrix suitable for manufacturing wearable sensing devices or other types of electronic devices.

As Lovley explains, "We have been studying the biological function of protein nanowires for over a decade, but it is only now that we can see a path forward for their use in practical fabrication of electronic devices." Postdoctoral research Yun-Lu Sun, now at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered the proper conditions for mixing protein nanowires with a non-conductive polymer to yield the electrically conductive composite material. He demonstrated that although the wires are made of protein, they are very durable and easy to process into new materials.

"An additional advantage is that protein nanowires are a truly 'green,' sustainable material," Lovley adds. "We can mass-produce protein nanowires with microbes grown with renewable feedstocks. The manufacture of more traditional nanowire materials requires high energy inputs and some really nasty chemicals." By contrast, he says, "Protein nanowires are thinner than silicon wires, and unlike silicon are stable in water, which is very important for biomedical applications, such as detecting metabolites in sweat."

Emrick adds, "These electronic protein nanowires bear surprising resemblance to polymer fibers and we're trying to figure out how to combine the two most effectively."

In their proof-of-concept study, the protein nanowires formed an electrically conductive network when introduced into the polymer polyvinyl alcohol. The material can be treated with harsh conditions, such as heat, or extreme pH such as high acidity, that might be expected to ruin a protein-based composite, but it continued to work well.

The conductivity of the protein nanowires embedded in the polymer changed dramatically in response to pH. "This is an important biomedical parameter diagnostic of some serious medical conditions," Lovley explains. "We can also genetically modify the structure of the protein nanowires in ways that we expect will enable detection of a wide range of other molecules of biomedical significance."

The electrically conductive protein nanowires are a natural product of the microorganism Geobacter discovered in Potomac River mud by Lovley more than 30 years ago. Geobacter uses the protein nanowires to make electrical connections with other microbes or minerals. He notes, "Material science experts like Todd Emrick and Thomas Russell on our team deserve the credit for bringing protein nanowires into the materials field. It's not just about mud anymore."

In this work supported by UMass Amherst campus funds for exploratory research, next steps for the collaborative materials-microbiology team include scaling up production of nanowire-polymer matrices, Lovley says.

He points out, "Materials scientists need a lot more nanowires than we're used to making. We're were making thimblefuls for our biological studies. They need buckets full, so we are now concentrating on producing larger amounts and on tailoring the nanowires so they'll respond to other molecules." The researchers have also applied for a patent on the idea of a conductive polymer made with protein nanowires.

###PITTSBURGH, Oct 20, 2018 - Patients with an aggressive form of advanced breast cancer can benefit from immunotherapy when used in combination with chemotherapy as first-line treatment, according to the results of a large international Phase III clinical trial published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and led by a researcher at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The study is the first large clinical trial to support the use of immunotherapy in treating triple-negative breast cancer and establishes a new standard of care in PD-L1+ patients, senior trial investigator and study author Leisha Emens, M.D., Ph.D., co-leader of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program, explained. Results were presented today at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Munich, Germany.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with an estimated 2 million new cases diagnosed in 2018 alone. About 10 to 20 percent of patients have triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of breast cancer that has a higher chance of recurrence and metastasis, and lower survival.

"While chemotherapy is the current standard of treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, there is an urgent need for newer, more effective therapies," said Emens. "The results of this trial showed that adding the immunotherapy drug atezolizumab to chemotherapy was well-tolerated and resulted in a clear increase in clinical benefit for some patients with triple-negative breast cancer."

The IMpassion130 trial was designed to evaluate whether atezolizumab, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat both bladder cancer and non-small cell lung cancer, could be used along with chemotherapy to improve clinical outcomes in patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Atezolizumab belongs to a class of immunotherapy medications known as checkpoint inhibitors. The drug targets the PD-L1 protein, which in triple-negative breast cancer patients is found mostly on immune cells that infiltrate the tumor. Blocking PD-L1 reinvigorates these immune cells, allowing them to attack the tumor.

The trial enrolled 902 patients with either metastatic or locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer that could not be surgically removed. Patients were enrolled at 246 sites in 41 countries across the world and were randomly assigned to receive either atezolizumab or a placebo, along with the chemotherapy drug nab-paclitaxel.

Both progression-free survival--the length of time the patient lives after receiving the therapy without the tumor growing or spreading, and overall survival--the length of time the patient survives from the start of the trial, were recorded.

In the overall patient population, the researchers found a statistically significant increase in progression-free survival in patients treated with both nab-paclitaxel and atezolizumab - 7.2 months when compared to 5.5 months in patients who received chemotherapy alone. In the group of patients who expressed the PD-L1 protein on tumor-infiltrating immune cells, the combination treatment had a more significant impact on progression-free survival - 7.5 months versus 5 months.

Overall survival was 21.3 months in the combination treatment group as compared to 17.6 months with chemotherapy alone, though this did not reach statistical significance in this first analysis. In the group of patients who expressed PD-L1 on their tumors, the difference in survival was greater, with overall survival of 25 months, in contrast to 15.5 months in patients treated with nab-paclitaxel alone.

"This improvement in progression-free and overall survival is clinically meaningful in patients with advanced PD-L1+ triple-negative breast cancer," Emens said. The researchers continue to follow the patients to determine overall survival over a longer time period.

The adverse events observed were similar to the known adverse event profile of the two drugs. Patients who received both immunotherapy and nab-paclitaxel experienced a higher frequency of adverse events that were potentially immune-related, than those who received chemotherapy alone, at 7.5 percent versus 4.3 percent, respectively.

The trial was funded by F. Hoffmann-La Roche/Genentech, which provided atezolizumab and placebo and collaborated with an academic steering committee regarding the trial design and data collection, analysis and interpretation. Celgene provided nab-paclitaxel and had no role in the trial design, data collection or analysis, but did review the manuscript.

A complete listing of the authors and their affiliations, along with the financial disclosure forms provided by the authors can be found with the article online.

###

About UPMC Hillman Cancer Center

UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, the region's only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, is one of the largest integrated community cancer networks in the United States. Backed by the collective strength of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center has more than 60 locations throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and New York, with seven international cancer centers and partnerships. Consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report for excellence in cancer care, the more than 2,000 physicians, researchers and staff are leaders in molecular and cellular cancer biology, cancer immunology, cancer virology, biobehavioral oncology, and cancer epidemiology, prevention, and therapeutics. UPMC Hillman Cancer Center is transforming cancer research, care, and prevention -- one patient at a time.

About the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

As one of the nation's leading academic centers for biomedical research, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine integrates advanced technology with basic science across a broad range of disciplines in a continuous quest to harness the power of new knowledge and improve the human condition. Driven mainly by the School of Medicine and its affiliates, Pitt has ranked among the top 10 recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1998. In rankings recently released by the National Science Foundation, Pitt ranked fifth among all American universities in total federal science and engineering research and development support.

Likewise, the School of Medicine is equally committed to advancing the quality and strength of its medical and graduate education programs, for which it is recognized as an innovative leader, and to training highly skilled, compassionate clinicians and creative scientists well-equipped to engage in world-class research. The School of Medicine is the academic partner of UPMC, which has collaborated with the University to raise the standard of medical excellence in Pittsburgh and to position health care as a driving force behind the region's economy. For more information about the School of Medicine, see http://www.medschool.pitt.edu.

http://www.upmc.com/media

Contact: Arvind Suresh

Office: 412-647-9966

Mobile: 412-509-8207

E-mail: SureshA2@upmc.edu

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E-mail: PattonC4@upmc.eduStress related to social stigma may be the reason why autistic people experience more mental health problems than the general population, dispelling past theories that the condition itself is the origin of such distress.

In the first study of its kind, published in the Journal of Society and Mental Health, researchers from the University of Surrey and University College London examined how stress related to social stigma, such as discrimination and rejection, impacts on the mental health of autistic people.

Researchers testing the 'minority stress theory' conducted an online survey with 111 participants, who considered themselves autistic, to assess stressors that were thought to lead to a decline in their mental health. Minority stress describes chronically high levels of stress faced by members of stigmatized minority groups, which the researchers believed would also apply to autistic people.

The survey covered six key areas of minority stress, including 'victimisation and discrimination' and 'outness', which assessed the degree to which people on the autistic spectrum disclosed their condition to peers, colleagues and health care providers. Other areas investigated included 'everyday discrimination,' 'expectation of rejection,' 'physical concealment,' and 'internalised stigma'. Researchers tested the degree to which exposure to these minority stressors had a negative impact on participants' mental health in the form of psychological distress and a decline in well-being.

For the first time, researchers found that social stress related to the stigma experienced by those on the autism spectrum was predictive of higher levels of psychological distress and lower levels of emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Importantly, the research shows that these unique forms of minority stress could explain the mental health problems of autistic people above and beyond the effects of general and everyday forms of stress not related to stigma. Minority stress can be addressed through better education and understanding of the autistic community.

Previous research in this area has found that autistic individuals are more likely than non-autistic people to die by suicide, emphasising the urgent need for additional mental health support for this group. Insights gathered from this research could help transform the approach taken to prevent poor mental health in autistic people, focusing on social and education reform in societies.

Lead author Monique Botha, a Post Graduate Researcher at the University of Surrey, said: "Traditionally autism and poor mental health were believed to be intrinsically linked, but this is not the case. These findings show that poor mental health of people with autism is instead directly connected with exposure to social stress, which goes beyond the effects of everyday stress that are experienced by others.

"Such insight gives us a better understanding of why people with autism may be more likely to have poor mental health and will inform ways of reducing such stresses. It suggests that taking actions within society to tackle discrimination might significantly reduce rates of poor mental health, and thus suicide in autistic population."

###(San Antonio, Oct. 22, 2018) - It's called ArcCI (or Arctic CyberInfrastructure) and promises to combine the thousands of images that have been taken along the years of the Arctic Ocean into one global database that will help scientists and the world see the physical changes occurring in the region including ice loss. The hope is that this web-based repository will allow researchers to spend more time analyzing information rather than just collecting and processing data.

"This is to help scientists spend more time doing the science," says Professor Alberto Mestas-Nunez, one of two researchers at The University of Texas at San Antonio working on the on-demand data mining module. "At present time there isn't a place on the internet that provides all these datasets but also an algorithm that allows to extract the information," adds Mestas. "Most of the time scientists spend time getting data and preparing it. Typically, it's about 80 percent preparing the data and 20 percent doing the actual science. We want to break that paradigm."

The original idea to build ArcCI came from Professor Hongjie Xie, the principal investigator of the project at UTSA and a professor in the university's Department of Geological Sciences. Although big data analytics, and dashboards are prevalent in many industries, the technology has yet to be applied fully to monitoring the Arctic's sea ice.

"We have to harness the data revolution," says Xie. "It's about learning more in order to navigate the new Arctic."

Xie along with Xin Miao at Missouri State University started working on the project five years ago. Now the National Science Foundation has given the green light in the way of funding to develop the online system which uses high resolution imaging either obtained on-site, via satellites, or via airborne monitoring.

The system will allow the scientific community the ability to readily extract detailed information of various ice properties including submerged ice, ice concentration, melt ponds or ice edge--the boundary between an area of ice and the open sea. The on-demand database will be dynamic and allowed to include new algorithms as well as additional datasets as they become available. Currently, the cloud-based system holds about a terabyte of images but that number will surely grow. The earliest dataset is from 1998 from the Sheba expedition which conducted 13 flights over the Beaufort Sea. Now researchers will include close to 1760 declassified images.

"We will use the power of the image," says Xie about the large amount of declassified information that will be integrated into ArcCI.

The cloud framework and interface is being prototyped by Chaowei Yang at George Mason University, another investigator partnering with UTSA. A beta version of ArcCI will be presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union to be held in Washington D.C. in December 2018.

This on-demand service module for mining the geophysical characteristics of the Arctic sea ice allows for a wider circle of the scientific community to have a smart tool that will enable them to conduct research in a digital modality. The project will also include summer workshops for educators so they can take advantage and they in turn teach the new landscape of the Arctic to the next-generation of scientists and kids.

###A team of researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington is combining several principles of machine learning to enable machines to control power networks and other complex dynamic systems more effectively during unexpected events.

Frank Lewis, the Moncrief-O'Donnell Professor of Electrical Engineering, Yan Wan and Ali Davoudi, associate professors of electrical engineering, are using a $220,000 Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research, or EAGER, from the National Science Foundation to use real-time learning to create a unified theory on how to optimize microgrid capacity through DC distribution. Junfei Xie, an assistant professor of computer science at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi, is assisting the team with data analysis.

Microgrid capacity in the United States is strained and DC, or direct current, distribution networks are emerging as alternatives to the current standard AC, or alternating current, networks. The networks are critical to the scalable integration of renewable energy resources and fleets of electric vehicles.

All of the systems operating in a complex environment act on each other. Uncertain spatiotemporal dynamics of the environmental patterns create new data types and enable the spatiotemporal-scenario data-driven decision approach.

Optimal control is the model-based process of determining how a system will react to cues over a period of time and how to make the system work at its most efficient based on that data. Reinforcement learning is a data-driven type of machine learning where computers learn to behave in an environment by performing actions, seeing the result and reacting accordingly to achieve a specific goal. The team's goal is to combine both optimal control and reinforcement learning into a unified theory that will allow efficient, real-time feedback control of interacting complex systems.

"We think our methods of reinforcement learning show how to use deep learning for real-time feedback control," Lewis said. "We'll use the algorithms and tools we develop to create optimal power profiles for power electronic converters in DC distribution networks and help mitigate the adverse effects of intermittent source, uncertain load demand or faults." EAGER grants are awarded to researchers who propose potentially transformative research into high-risk, high-reward new subjects or methods that lead to innovation.

The team's research is an example of innovative thinking in the area of data-driven discovery, one of the themes of UTA's Strategic Plan 2020: Bold Solutions | Global Impact, said Jonathan Bredow, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering.

"EAGER grants are awarded to faculty who are engaged in high-risk, high reward research, and Dr. Lewis, Dr. Wan and Dr. Davoudi are all accustomed working on research that pushes the boundaries of accepted engineering tenets," Bredow said. "Their research is sure to set a solid foundation for future applications of machine learning that haven't been considered.

###The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will enable astrophysicists to observe gravitational waves emitted by black holes as they collide with or capture other black holes. LISA will consist of three spacecraft orbiting the sun in a constant triangle formation. Gravitational waves passing through will distort the sides of the triangle slightly, and these minimal distortions can be detected by laser beams connecting the spacecraft. LISA could therefore add a new sense to scientists' perception of the universe and enable them to study phenomena invisible in different light spectra.

Dwarf galaxies are natural laboratories

Scientists from the Center for Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology of the University of Zurich, together with colleagues from Greece and Canada, have now found that LISA will not only be able to measure these previously unstudied waves, but could also help to unveil secrets about another mysterious part of the universe: dark matter.

Dark matter particles are thought to account for approx. 85% of the matter in the universe. However, they are still only hypothetical - the name refers to their "hiding" from all previous attempts to see, let alone study them. But calculations show that many galaxies would be torn apart instead of rotating if they weren't held together by a large amount of dark matter.

That is especially true for dwarf galaxies. While such galaxies are small and faint, they are also the most abundant in the universe. What makes them particularly interesting for astrophysicists is that their structures are dominated by dark matter, making them "natural laboratories" for studying this elusive form of matter.

Black holes and dark matter are connected

As reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters, high-resolution computer simulations of the birth of dwarf galaxies, designed and carried out by UZH PhD student Tomas Ramfal, yielded surprising results. Calculating the interplay of dark matter, stars and the central black holes of these galaxies, the team of scientists from Zurich discovered a strong link between the merger rates of these black holes and the amount of dark matter at the center of dwarf galaxies. Measuring gravitational waves emitted by merging black holes can thus provide hints about the properties of the hypothetical dark matter particle.

The newly found connection between black holes and dark matter can now be described in a mathematical and exact way for the first time. But it is far from being a chance finding, stresses Lucio Mayer, the group leader: "Dark matter is the distinguishing quality of dwarf galaxies. We had therefore long suspected that this should also have a clear effect on cosmological properties."

The connection comes at an opportune moment, just as preparations for the final design of LISA are under way. Preliminary results of the researchers' simulations were met with excitement at meetings of the LISA consortium. The physics community sees the new use of gravitational wave observations as a very promising new prospect for one the biggest future European space missions, which will take place in about 15 years and could link cosmology and particle physics - the incredibly big and the unimaginably small.

###Pound (GBP) Exchange Rates Find Floor After Brexit and May Leadership Speculation

UPDATE: The Pound Sterling (GBP) remained "quiet" on Tuesday following Mondays Brexit-driven decline. The only data for the day, the CBI Business Optimism Index missed market estimates, further pressuring the British currency.

Analysts at Scotiabank reported that "The CBIs Business Optimism index slumped to -16 this month (from -3 in Sep, the lowest in three years, ) and manufacturing orders continued to slide (-6). Companies look for flat output over the next quarter, the worst forecast since 2015. The survey suggests caution (at best) descending over UK manufacturing amid uncertainty over the Brexit process. PM Mays statement on Brexit yesterday left many key issues unresolved but the back-bench revolt among Brexit hardliners  and some centrists  which threatens to topple her remains in check for the moment."

UPDATE: The Pound Sterling (GBP) tumbled against the euro, US dollar, Australian and Canadian dollars on Monday after markets reacted to the latest Brexit uncertainty.

Analysts at Lloyds said "Yesterday PM May announced to Parliament that "95%" of the terms of Brexit were agreed. The crucial issue remains the Irish border. Even as she is willing to "explore every possible option", the pressure both from her own backbenches (with growing speculation of a leadership challenge) and across the House (with no other party willing to support her deal) is rising.

"This was reflected in GBP, which suffered losses against all other G10 currencies through yesterdays session.

"Most GBP crosses remain within recent ranges. GBP/JPY has been the first to break notable support, at 145.90/60, while we are approaching important support regions in other pairs (GBP/USD: 1.2925/05, GBP/EUR: 1.1300-1.1250, GBP/CHF: 1.2880/65 and GBP/CAD: 1.6940/10)."

GBP/EUR Exchange Rate Pressured by Growing Pressure Against Theresa May

The Pound Sterling Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate opened this weeks session on the back foot, sliding almost half a cent through Mondays session as political machinations against Theresa May left anxious investors to shun Sterling.

The Pound (GBP) got off to a shaky start this week as reports of a possible vote of no confidence in Theresa May piled even more pressure on the beleaguered currency.

Following last weeks failure to reach a withdrawal deal with the EU and reports that the PM may seek and extension to the Brexit transition period, May has found herself quickly running out of political capital at home.

Unsurprising the possibility of May being dethroned in a possible leadership challenge and the potential for further political uncertainty in the UK did not go down well with GBP investors on Monday morning.

However more pressure would come in the afternoon as reports emerged that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)  the small Northern Irish party which props up Theresa Mays government- would support legislation that would block a backstop agreement regarding the Irish border.

According to the Telegraph the DUP will throw its support being an amendment proposed by pro-Brexit MPs that would make a backstop arrangement with the EU effectively illegal.

Steven Swinford, the Telegraphs deputy political editor, said: DUP will back amendment being tabled by Tory Eurosceptics on Wednesday that will effectively make the EUs NI backstop illegal. Yet another headache for No 10, with 40 Tory MP already poised to support it.

Not only will this potentially make it harder for the PM to reach an agreement with the EU over the Irish border, but it also ratchets up the pressure on Theresa May herself, as she faces a possible revolt from key allies.

Euro (EUR) Exchange Rates Trimmed by Italy Concerns

The Euro (EUR) meanwhile found its advance against the Pound (GBP) tempered somewhat at the start of this weeks session as Italy remains on a collision course with the EU as it refuses to back down with its controversial draft budget.

Responding to a letter from his EU peers expressing their displeasure with Romes budget proposals Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte explained that he stuck by the draft, despite it running afoul of EU deficit rules.

While Conte appeared willing to sit down with his peers to discuss the budget he offered no indication that Rome would be willing to bend, much to the concern of EUR investors.

Conte told reporters at the foreign press association in Rome on Monday: We wanted to explain our budget in the letter to the EU, in this letter we explained why we set it out in this way, we explained the direction of our economic policy, the objectives we intend to achieve. But we are willing to get around a table to continue dialogue with the European Commission. If it is rejected (by the Commission), we will sit at a table and assess things together.

GBP/EUR Exchange Rate Forecast: Sliding Eurozone Consumer Confidence to Drag on the Euro?

Looking ahead the Pound Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate may find some respite on Tuesday following the release of the latest Eurozone consumer confidence numbers.

Economists forecast the latest survey will see pessimism amongst respondents grow even in October, resulting in the confidence index slipping even further into negative territory and likely dragging on the Euro.

Meanwhile if the Pound is able to shake off some its Brexit related anxiety there may be a chance for Sterling to recoup some of its losses on Tuesday following a speech by Mark Carney, should the recent upswing in UK wage growth result in a how hawkish outlook from the Bank of England (BoE) Governor.Privacy Settings

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NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using."Advancing Innovation & Navigating Global Trends"

CLAREMONT, CA  October 22, 2018 APICS Inland Empire Chapter (APICS-IE), the leading association for supply chain and operations professionals, is proud to announce the Fall 2018 Symposium line up of Innovation and Global Trends Experts. The Symposium is focusing on: "Advancing Innovation & Navigating Global Trends". The event will be held on Saturday, November 3, 2018 from 8am  11:30am at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

The panel features five key executives who have facilitated, experienced and observed innovation in global environments.



"Innovation is so key to growth and remaining ahead of the competitive curve. We are excited to have these experts share their experiences with us" commented Lisa Anderson, APICS-IE Chapter Leader and President of LMA Consulting Group. The experts come from diverse industries such as: Aerospace and Defense, HealthCare and Manufacturing to Transportation and a national Association.

The panel includes:

Cindi Mullane  Senior Director, Supply Chain and Operations, Feit Electric

Todd Boppell  Chief Operating Officer, National Association of Manufacturers

David Libatique  Deputy Executive Director, Port of Los Angeles

Kelly Ford - Aerospace/Defense Senior Executive

Dr. Yuman Fong, Chairman, Department of Surgery, City of Hope National Media Center

"Each panelist brings a unique perspective to the innovation discussion and how they see a global economy affecting their supply chain and, ultimately, progress. To hear first-hand from experts in a range of industries is essentially, super-collaboration, which would otherwise be difficult to coalesce from a single industry perspective" Ms. Anderson concluded.

The symposium attracts industry professionals from throughout the Inland Empire and Southern California and welcomes students. The APICS-IE Fall Symposium, "Advancing Innovation & Navigating Global Trends" will be held Saturday, November 3, 2018 from 8:00-11:30 AM at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Fees to attend are $15 for members, $25 for non-members and students are free. A breakfast buffet is included. Register onlineWASHINGTON - The Texas Public Policy Foundation has spent the last decade building both its reputation and influence in Austin to the point that lawmakers considering legislation routinely ask, Where is TPPF on this?

Now the conservative think tank is expanding into Washington, looking to repeat the success its success in Austin shaping policy according to its libertarian vision of smaller government, lower taxes and fewer regulations. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has hired or nominated seven former TPPF staffers to high and mid-level positions in the departments of Interior, Energy and State, as well as the Council on Environmental Quality  numbers comparable to well-established Washington think tanks, such as the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute.

Among them is Brooke Rollins, the former president of Texas Public Policy Foundation, whom the White House hired in February as an assistant to the president working in the Office of American Innovation run by Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law.

REGULATION: EPA weighs allowing oil companies to pump wastewater into rivers, streams

Since coming into office, the Trump administration  largely rejected by Washingtons Republican establishment  has repeatedly turned to Texas Public Policy Foundation and its decades of experience pushing an anti-tax and deregulatory agenda in Austin. That new influence, meanwhile, is providing a platform for the Texas think tank to build a national brand.

Now is the time to launch, said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist in Austin. Theres a good number of Texans in serious roles in the administration and Texas has a great story to tell.

Charged with leading the expansion is TPPF Executive Director Kevin Roberts. On a recent visit to Washington to meet with donors and a new hire, he stopped in at the groups new office, housed in the basement of building owned by the Conservative Partnership Center, which leases space to other conservative groups.

A taste for politics

With the only sunlight coming from narrow windows near the ceiling, the sparsely decorated office is a long way from the foundations Austin headquarters, which spans more than 40,000 square feet and includes not only a theater, but also a view of the Capitol from the Governor Rick Perry Liberty Balcony. We were looking for cheap office space, Roberts said as he looked around.

Roberts has the polite, jovial demeanor of a teacher, which was what he was in an earlier time. After earning a PhD in history from the University of Texas in 2003, he taught in Texas and New Mexico before ending up leading a small, Catholic college in Wyoming. There, he got a taste for politics when the school drew national attention for refusing federal student loans to avoid complying with federal regulations that the college argued would intrude on its religious freedom.

Roberts joined TPPF in 2016 out of a desire, he said, to enter politics full-time as well as a weariness of organizations more interested in fighting the good fight than bringing change.

I wanted to be part of an institution that was having an impact, he said. TPPF was at the tip of the spear, not just writing white papers, but having a policy impact.

OPEC: As Trump taunts OPEC, Congress weighs anti-trust bill

With its own people housed within the Trump administration, TPPF is seeing the steady movement toward the principles they have long championed, from rolling back federal laws and regulations governing everything from air pollution to what schools are required to teach to the size of the federal government itself.

The foundation already has taken steps to extend its influence. It has staffers in eight state capitals working on a bipartisan campaign to reduce prison population while a newly formed legal unit is sending lawyers to courtrooms across the country to fight what they see as government overreach on issues such as Obamacare and eminent domain.

But cracking Washingtons universe of established think tanks and lobbying firms is likely to prove tricky. To establish a national brand, TPPF will have to compete with conservative groups that have well-established donor networks and track records of winning in Washington.

Peoples eyes are always bigger than their stomachs when it comes to public policy debates in Washington, said Frank Maisano, a partner at the Washington law firm Bracewell. People try to come into the space because theyve been successful regionally. They dont realize the broad swath of objective expertise here.

TPPF was founded in 1989 by James Leninger, a wealthy San Antonio doctor and Republican donor who made a fortune selling hospital beds. Weary of the Democratic majority in the Texas Legislature at the time, he launched TPPF to produce research representing his conservative point of view.

Whos who of corporate donors

With less than a half dozen staff working out of a San Antonio warehouse, the group operated in virtual anonymity for years. But the groups fortunes rose in the 2000s along with the state Republican Party. The hiring of Rollins, the-one time policy director for Perry, now the secretary of Energy, turned the organization into a fundraising juggernaut.

Brooke didnt change the direction [of TPPF], she enhanced their influence, said Thomas Graham, a public relations executive in Austin and friend of Perrys. She has a way about her in making people feel empowered and part of the process.

Rollins declined to be interviewed.

OIL PATCH: How long can the fracking spending spree last?

The organization keeps its donors private, but according to a document accidentally posted online in 2012, the contributors include a whos who of corporate America, including oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips, and anti-establishment Texas Republicans such as Tim Dunn, co-founder of the Midland oil and gas company CrownQuest Operating, and Jeff Sandefer, the scion of a Texas oil family who has long pushed for market-based education reforms. In 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, TPPFs donations added up to more than $18 million.

[Their principle donors] are all West Texas libertarian conservatives. Not so much pro-business, its much more individualistic, much more libertarian, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The standard pro-business conservative realizes you need a well-prepared work force, which means education and health care. TPPFs philosophy is youre welcome to educate your kids as much as you like.

To push that message, TPPF employs a staff of close to 100, drawing from diverse backgrounds. Roberts ended up at TPPF after responding to a help-wanted ad. His chief operating officer, Greg Sindelar, worked on internet marketing at the insurer GEICO. The head of the criminal justice reform campaign, John Koufos, is a former criminal attorney who experienced the difficulty inmates have re-entering society first hand after a 17-month prison sentence for crashing into a pedestrian while drunk and then fleeing the scene.

TPPF staffers describe themselves as pragmatists, eager to work on issues they believe have the best chance becoming law. That often means working across the aisle, as they have on their campaign to reduce the national prison population and recidivism rates - something they describe as both good fiscal policy and a humanitarian issue.

With legislation now before Congress, they are forces with everyone from the Koch brothers, among the biggest funders of conservative causes, to Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and darling of the left.

Lean to the right

We exist in order for our ideas to be implemented, Roberts said. Were very cheerful Texans. We like working with other people, and it's genuine. Theres a track record that shows that.

Luke Metzger, director of the advocacy group Environment Texas, said he disagrees with the group on just about everything, most recently its campaign against local tax breaks for wind farms. But Metzger also said he has worked with TPPF on issues such as blocking an effort by power companies to create a capacity-market, which pays them to keep idle generating plants available for periods of heavy demand.

CARBON TAX: Millions of Texas oil dollars flowing into carbon fee fight in Washington state

To their credit they do a good job of inviting opposing view points, Metzger said. Ive been there [at their headquarters] debating about individual liberty.

More animosity toward TPPF exists within the Texas Republican Party. Moderates argue the group has been instrumental in pushing the party to the right, allowing the rise of extreme view points on not only immigration and guns but government spending, as promoted by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

In 2013, TPPF even drew fire from Perry, one of their most strident allies, when using some unusual calculations to show that the state budget was increasing 26 percent, a claim picked up in a Wall Street Journal editorial page lambasting Texas legislators. Perry told reporters TPPF was in need of remedial work.

They are so radical in their thoughts, said Jim Keffer, a former Republican state representative who was a top lieutenant of House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio. If anything harms them in Washington, its going to be that. [The conservative Heritage Foundation] and those other guys arent going to let them elbow their way into their territory without a fight.

Its still early for TPPF Washington, but the foundation has already had setbacks. Trump withdrew his nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White, a senior fellow at TPPF and former chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to head the Council on Environmental Quality after controversy arose around her statements questioning climate change research.

Will it travel?

Similar questions are surrounding Bernard McNamee, a former TPPF staffer who Trump nominated to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Despite the foundations stated opposition to government subsidies, McNamee endorsed the administrations plan to increase power rates for struggling coal and nuclear power plants.

I think they figure, Were hot and well respected and lets see if we can export the brand elsewhere, said Bill Miller, an Austin lobbyist. It will be interesting to see how that all works out. We are a very big lobbying firm and everyone says, Do you guys lobby in Washington? I say absolutely not. We know our market..

james.osborne@chron.com

Twitter: @osborneja

Appointment of Company Secretary - Mr Madhukar Bhalla

Perth, Oct 22, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Classic Minerals Ltd ( ASX:CLZ ) wishes to advise the appointment of Mr. Madhukar Bhalla as Company Secretary for Classic Minerals Limited with effect from 19th October 2018.Madhukar is a qualified Company Secretary and a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. He brings to Classic Minerals Limited a wealth of experience in Corporate Governance and Administration.Mr Jeffrey Nurse has resigned as the Company Secretary but retains his role as the Chief Financial Officer of Classic Minerals Limited. The Board and Management thank Jeffrey for his contribution as Company Secretary.About Classic Minerals Limited

Classic Minerals Limited (ASX:CLZ) is an exploration and development company focused on gold deposits in Western Australia's famous Goldfields region. In March 2017, Classic acquired the Forrestania Gold Project, with seven tenements stretching across 450km2. Strategically located in a very prospective region, the FGP is an underexplored package surrounded by multimillion ounce deposits such as Bounty (2Moz) and Yilgarn Star (1.5Moz).Josh Groban plays a straight-laced detective with a quirky sense of duty in the new Netflix series The Good Cop. Hes currently touring behind new album Bridges, a mix of originals and covers. He earned a Tony nomination last year for his Broadway debut in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.

It all seems to come effortlessly for Groban, whose big break came when he subbed for an ailing Andrea Bocelli during the 1999 Grammys. Hes since released a series of albums that showcase his masterful vocal range and has flexed his acting chops with various film and TV roles, from Ally McBeal to Crazy, Stupid, Love.

But Groban insists that it wasnt all so obvious in the beginning.

When I was a teenager, I was just filled with so many inspirations. There were so many things I wanted to do, and I felt a little bit like an alien. I still do in this business, to be honest. I felt like a weird outsider, Groban said.

I loved improv comedy. I loved singing showtunes. I listened to Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. I felt like I had all of this eccentric stuff in me that I wanted to get out and was inspired by but didnt really fit in many lanes. So I just kind of did me and got picked on for it a little bit.

More Information See More Collapse

Groban is long past the picking these days. He talked about his early champions and what he learned from The Good Cop costar Tony Danza.

Q: Who helped put you on the path to applying your talents in so many ways?

A: With the music side of things, it was David Foster saying, I really love your voice, and I wanna produce it. And then after a ton of just being a weirdo in television and in film and interviews, Andy Breckman was my, like, TV David Foster and said, Hey, I really like the comedy stuff youre doing. I like your timing. I like your Broadway run. Id love to take you out for pancakes and talk to you about my new show The Good Cop. People can go a lifetime without any of those things, and to have two of them in my life  more than two  is more than any one person deserves.

Q: Carol Burnett recently told me there are still new things shed love to try at 85 years old. Whats on your list?

A: Id love to host SNL. Thats a dream for me, hopefully by the time Im 85. At that point, a Lorne Michaels cyborg will have to hire me for that. I have loved hosting very, very much. I loved doing it on a short-lived reality show (Rising Star) on NBC. I loved doing it with Kelly Ripa 15 times. I loved doing it on the Tonys. And Id love to do some film scoring. I love writing music that doesnt involve having to then sing it.

Q: Youre known for lush covers of pop standards. How did you choose the ones on Bridges?

A: A lot of times, the covers really have been road-tested for a long time before I record them. Sarah McLachlan and I did Run every night on tour two summers ago. It was my favorite moment of the night. Ive been doing Bridge Over Troubled Water for over a decade now on tour. Ive sung it with everyone from Foy Vance to Brian McKnight to Paul Simon, who was the first person I ever sang it with for a concert honoring him. I learned it for him. Its always terrifying to record a cover because so many people have generally done these incredible songs. Its generally an arrangement or a producer that finally gives you the confidence to put it on a record.

Q: The Good Cop was a big surprise just in visual alone  you and Tony Danza as father and son cops in New York.

A: Its jarring. Im always excited by unexpected opportunities. I was skeptical, and Tony was skeptical. We shared everybodys reaction when they see that picture pop up on Netflix. Once Andy (Breckman, the creator) got us at a table and put a glass of wine in both our hands, and we just shot the (expletive) over every topic imaginable, our chemistry just immediately clicked. I love challenges. When somebody at the top has said, I think youre right for this, it always piques my interest. I just thought (The Good Cop) was a hell of a lot of fun. I got to go to a ski lodge. I got to chase bad guys.

Q: What did you take from working with Tony Danza?

A: Both professionally and personally, there is just so much to learn from Tony Danza. He has so much charisma on and off the set. Im, like, a little internal Larry David. Anywhere I am, Im thinking about where the exit is. Tony waltzes into a room. Hes just endlessly charismatic and caring and filled the room with this positive light. Thats really fun to be around. So much of acting is reacting, and when you get to react off Tony Danza, half the work is done for you.

Q: What was your last Netflix binge?

A: The Staircase. I love true crime, and I love the documentary series they do on Netflix. You do your best not to Google, not to Wikipedia while youre watching. That was a real bleak week-and-a-half, but I loved every second of it.

joey.guerra@chron.comDetroit Police Chief James Craig announced a "wide probe" into Michigan funeral homes Friday, after hidden caches of baby corpses were allegedly discovered at two unrelated businesses inside a week.

"This is deeply disturbing," Craig said at a news conference, hours after police raided Perry Funeral Home and allegedly seized 63 fetus or infant bodies, more than half of which were packed together in unrefrigerated boxes. "We want to understand the reasons: Is it financial gain? If so, how? Who knew or who else is involved in this?"

The raid came a week after an anonymous letter led investigators to an abandoned funeral home on the other side of central Detroit, where they allegedly found nearly a dozen infant corpses hidden in a ceiling.

"I would like to look at you and tell you I hope . . . that this is isolated to these two. I can't say that with certainty," Craig told reporters, shortly after leaving a meeting with FBI and state investigators. "This is much larger than we might know."

The police chief gave few details about the investigation, and declined to speculate as to what would motivate someone to keep tiny, desiccated corpses long after they were supposed to have been interred. All the same, he described how the case escalated rapidly from a single, anonymous tip into a full-blown investigative task force that could now probe business throughout the state.

The case began last week at Cantrell Funeral Home in east Detroit, which had been shuttered since the spring over accusations that adult corpses had been improperly stored to the point of growing mold.

An unsigned letter received on Oct. 12 urged investigators to return to the business and search it. The note led them to what police described as a hidden compartment in a ceiling - containing a casket, cardboard boxes and several trash bags packed with 11 dead infants.

Speaking to reporters on the night of that discovery, a police sergeant attributed to bodies' condition to "just the callousness of the owner, the operators, the employees of the funeral home."

Nevertheless, police opened a criminal investigation into the matter this week. Investigators then got a second tip, leading them to a second funeral home.

"A parent saw the story" about Cantrell in the news, Craig told reporters. "He told his attorney he wanted to go to the police."

The Detroit News wrote that the tipsters were the parents of Alayah Davis, who died from respiratory failure minutes after she was born in late 2014.

The mother and father sued Perry Funeral Home in July, alleging that the company had claimed to bury Alayah and several other infants at a particular cemetery, but had actually stored their bodies for years in a mortuary school morgue.

Perry went so far as to issue fraudulent death certificates for the infants, the parents alleged, and billed Medicare and hospitals for funerals that were never performed.

The Washington Post could not independently review the lawsuit, but Craig said the allegations in the lawsuit led them to raid Perry Funeral Home.

Inside, on Friday afternoon, they found "three unrefrigerated boxes containing the remains of a total of approximately 36 deceased bodies of fetuses or infants," according to a statement from the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, "plus a deep freezer containing an unknown number of additional deceased bodies."

The agency alleged that Perry and its director, Gary Deak, failed to filed death certificates for at least some of those bodies; and stored them without being the families' permission; and improperly held them for months - long enough to constitute a state felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A lawyer for the business told The Washington Post that Deak was "unavailable for comment," but disputes accusations that his business secreted corpses.

Perry Funeral Home had its license revoked immediately after the raid, and is now shuttered like Cantrell before it. While a criminal investigation is underway, no one has been reported arrested in either case.

The police chief, Craig, said a task force of local and state police, FBI advisers and other investigators has been assembled to look for any possible connection between the two funeral homes, any possible reason for hoarding infant corpses, and the possibility that businesses in the region could have done the same.

"We have tremendous work today," the police chief said. "We know some of it may take us away or out of the city of Detroit."When Dr. Basil Pruitt became commander of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston in 1968, he began a tradition that fellow physicians, nurses and laboratory researchers came to dread  Saturday grand rounds.

Pruitt went patient to patient at Brooke Army Medical Center with a team that included laboratory section chiefs  pathology, bacteriology, hematology and others. Until Pruitt ran ISRs burn center, the visits were on weekdays. Lab chiefs were not involved.

When I retired, the next Saturday there were no grand rounds, he laughed.

Pruitt, 88, is considered the father of burn medicine because of the advances he helped pioneer.

One of his most important contributions at the ISR, where he spent 27 years, was to discover why burn wounds get infected. He teamed up with the late Arthur D. Mason Jr., chief of the laboratory division, who developed and tested a burn cream on animals.

Their work led to a reduction in patient mortality and other important clinical-laboratory collaborations.

Fellow physicians who worked for Pruitt say he was a pivotal figure in improving the chances of survival for the seriously burned, and for the confidence doctors now have in saving even the worst-injured patients. And it all began back with those grand rounds.

Hes a force of nature, said former Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake, a retired three-star general who worked under Pruitt as a surgery resident and later commanded BAMC.

Dr. Lee Cancio recalled being questioned by the scientists and clinicians in the hospitals multidisciplinary burn team, maybe 25 people listening to what I, as a second-year surgery resident, had to say.

I had never before seen so many people on morning rounds, said Cancio, now the burn centers civilian director and a retired Army colonel. And I distinctly remember feeling very concerned about making sure that I got all the facts."

Pruitt, long retired from the Army, hasnt quit. He was in Boston to address a conference this week, maintains a basement office at University Hospital, holds the Dr. Ferdinand P. Herff Chair in surgery at UT Health San Antonio and consults regularly for the ISR.

He produced a mountain of influential papers on burns, the first of which appeared in the well-regarded Annals of Surgery in 1964. Detailing mortality in 1,100 consecutive burns treated at ISR, it brought him recognition as a clinician and researcher and settled the question of what area he would study.

RELATED: San Antonio has served as a hub for military medicine throughout history

It told people that if you were a young adult in the United States at that time and got a 43 percent burn, not even half of the body surface, you had a 50-50 chance of living or dying, he said of the paper. And thats really what convinced me that working in the field of burn management had a future because the outlook was so bad that you could make a real improvement with appropriate studies to find out what to do.

He remains the most cited researcher in burn care over the past half-century, colleagues said.

No one else had more peer-reviewed papers on burns than he did, said Dr. Evan Renz, a former BAMC commander who also led the burn center from 2008-13.

In 2014, we did the comparison. We looked to find the 100 most cited burn-related articles over the last 50 years, and he led the pack, Renz said. He got people thinking about things his whole career. He was a dominant thought leader in the area of burn management and treatment for many years.

But Pruitt is proudest of his championing the multidisciplinary approach to clinical laboratory research here, something he believes was responsible for the significant advances in burn care that occurred on his watch.

Now Playing: Sometimes called the father of burn medicine, retired Army colonel and physician Basil Pruitt has helped revolutionize the field. He discusses those advances and looks into the future. Video: San Antonio Express-News

Burn research epicenter

The ISR burn center at Fort Sam  which reports to a different command from BAMC, though part of the same hospital  owes its creation to the atomic bomb, which drew the Pentagons attention to the potential for burn injuries in combat.

Years after Pruitt arrived for a two-year stint as a drafted Army doctor, Vietnam and, later, Iraq and Afghanistan, brought waves of wounded troops to the center, the Defense Departments sole burn treatment facility.

The post-9/11 era has seen the largest percentage of burn victims of any U.S. conflict  one in every 10 wounded. ISR also treats burned civilians, from South Texas oil field workers to Gov. Greg Abbott.

Their chances of survival are high. That wasnt the case when Pruitt started out.

In those days, in many places, it was said you could find your way to the burn center just by the smell of rotting flesh, said Pruitt, a 1952 Harvard graduate who grew bored with geology in graduate school there and entered Tufts Medical School. When I arrived at the burn center, one of the things I saw was an artificial kidney because of the historical association of acute renal failure to massive burns.

BAMC became the epicenter for burn research in 1947, when the Army Wound Study Unit was moved from Halloran General Hospital to Fort Sam and eventually became the ISR. Among the first of its many innovations, it came known for the Brooke Formula, which combined blood, plasma and a crystalloid solution of water, salt and trace elements.

A variation of other formulas dating to 1943, it helped prevent kidney failure, which killed one in every 10 burn victims during the 1950s. It was a big step, but massive swelling was a major drawback of fluid treatment in those days.

I saw patients that were blown up and were huge, huge, huge, and gained all kinds of weight and had problems with their lungs. Some people got so full of fluid that we had to open their abdomen, he recalled. And now thats a thing of the past, really. It seldom occurs.

Pruitts paper on a variation of the Brooke Formula, Hemodynamic Studies of Burn Patients During Resuscitation, spurred yet another development. The Modified Brooke Formula cut fatalities to 3.4 percent of 1,809 patients in 1970. Only 10 burn patients out of 3,266 died of renal failure from 1994 to 2004. Today, he said, ISR uses a computer-assisted system that reads urine output and adjust fluids every 10 minutes.

As renal failure was reduced as a cause of death, Pruitt and others realized that those suffering from smoke inhalation injury were at high risk as well. Around a third of all burn patients suffer inhalation injury, which increases mortality.

Pruitt said he also became interested in the pathophysiology of stress ulcers in burns that in some cases cause massive upper gastrointestinal bleeding, and co-authored a paper urging physicians to employ antacids or other forms of treatment. The problem is essentially unheard of today, he said.

At BAMC, lots of patients

How Pruitt settled on San Antonio is a tale rooted in what he calls the doctor draft. He was ordered into the Army in the late 1950s while working as a resident at Boston City Hospital. Doctors there suggested that he do his Army service at BAMC because of its fledgling burn center. He served two years, returned to Boston but was dismayed to find his old surgery department chairman had moved.

So I called the Army and said, I think Id like to come back if I could go back to the burn center.

San Antonio had around 588,000 people when he and his wife, Molly, settled here. The River Walk, a Depression-era creation of the Works Progress Administration, wasnt a glitzy tourism showcase  in fact, he was warned not to visit it after dark. A sprawling future city of 1.5 million wasnt imaginable.

You could go about four blocks from where we were living and be in a place where they shot doves at dusk, said Pruitt, who lived on Fort Sam a short drive from the old hospital, now headquarters for U.S. Army South. Our kids all went to public school here. Mrs. Pruitt was elected to the school board for 24 years as a trustee.

That was the North East Independent School District, where the Roosevelt High School library is named the Molly Pruitt Library.



Pruitt commanded a combat hospital in Vietnam and later led the burn center during the war, which saw the worst-injured troops brought in by critical care air transport flights staffed with surgeons. ISR teams moved 824 burn patients on 103 flights from Japan to San Antonio from April 1967 to December 1972. Only one died enroute.

It was no accident.

Under his leadership we partnered with the Air Force to fly around and pick up burn victims from all kinds of places, and if you think about it, it foretold the kind of care in the air  this last 16 years of war (that was) so effective, said Peake, the former VA secretary. We practiced that with burn patients.

Discovering that leaving a needle or catheter in a vein too long leads to life-threatening infections that can reach organs. Pruitt said he and other researchers at ISR reduced the problem by changing intravenous lines more frequently.

But the biggest things, he said, were the creams  effective topical anti-microbial therapy that included Sulfamylon, developed at the ISR.

If you started Sulfamylon therapy immediately upon admission of the burn patient you decreased that incidence of invasive burn wound infection by 50 percent, Pruitt said, adding that it also controlled the density of bacteria in the dead tissue so it could be more safely removed in surgery.

Topical therapy and early excision together reduced  the presence of invasive infection in those patients who died. That is, they died of something else, he said. It used to be that 60 percent of the patients who died had invasive wound infection. It was decreased to 6 (percent).

Its now less than that.

A connected thought leader

As the United States prepared to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1990, the Pentagon braced for a high number of burn injuries. Peake recalled that Pruitt had a built-in network of burn center directors around the country who could be tapped to help out.

Pruitt had trained many of them.

He attracted amazing talent across the U.S. and academia  folks who became institutions in their own right in terms of leaders and academic surgery, Peake explained. They came to study with Basil Pruitt. The burn unit had a reputation of cutting edge thinking.

Pruitts lifetime research output totaled 469 papers in peer-reviewed publications, 181 chapters in textbooks, and 15 books and monographs. Asked how many papers he has written that proved to be turning points in the field of burn care, Pruitt hesitated.

I dont know, he said. A dozen, two dozen major papers that indicated a significant improvement in care.

Those who cheered after Pruitt recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from BioMedSA, a nonprofit that promotes health care and bioscience in San Antonio, might have wondered if he was spending his time vacationing with his wife or fishing in a quiet spot.

When Pruitt retired from the ISR in 1995 at the end of a 35-year Army career, he could have dialed down his schedule. He hasnt. As second vice president of the American College of Surgeons, Pruitt was preparing for its conference when asked if he was ready to shut down his offices at BAMC and University Hospital and maybe write his memoir.

He replied, without much conviction, Yeah, yeah, I could do that, and when asked again, replied, Well, like I say, Im giving that some serious thought.

Sig Christenson covers the military and its impact in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | sigc@express-news.net | Twitter: @saddamscribeEarly voting for the November midterms begins Monday, and Bexar County elections officials are encouraging voters to take advantage of the shorter lines during the two-week period.

Texans will cast their ballots in a number of important races this fall, including statewide races for governor and U.S. senator, as well as a number of contests for congressional representatives and local judges.

There are 1,100,636 registered voters in Bexar County, as of Thursday morning, according to Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen. The county had a turnout rate of 31.69 percent in the most recent midterm elections in 2014.

The early voting period ends Nov. 2, and Election Day is Nov. 6. Heres what you need to know about casting your ballot early:

Whos on the ballot?

On ExpressNews.com: Heres a voters guide to the November midterms

How do I register to vote?

The registration deadline has already passed. Voters can check their registration status and polling place (for voting on Election Day) here.

Where do I vote?

When can I vote? Most voting sites will follow the hours below: Monday-Friday: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday: Noon to 6 p.m. Oct. 29-Nov. 2: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. See More Collapse

In Bexar County, voters can cast early ballots in person at 43 locations during the two-week period. And unlike Election Day, voters can go to any of those polling sites during early voting.

The locations include the Bexar Elections Department at 1103 S. Frio St., the University of Texas at San Antonio and Palo Alto College. A full list of locations is available here.

When can I vote?

Most voting sites will follow the hours below:

Mon-Fri: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 27: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 28: Noon to 6 p.m.

Oct. 29-Nov. 2: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Special voting conditions

Each polling location also has curbside voting for people who have difficulty walking or standing for long periods of time. Those voters can call the polling site where they plan to cast their early ballots, and a poll worker will bring the ballot to the car.

There will be accommodations for deaf or hearing impaired voters at the elections department and San Antonio Community College.

Can I vote by mail?

Some voters can also cast their ballots by mail. Those include people traveling on Election Day and during early voting, the sick or disabled, voters 65 or older and those confined in jail but eligible to vote.

Applications requesting mail ballots must be delivered to the elections department by Oct. 26.

Dylan McGuinness covers local politics and the Bexar County government for the Express-News. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | dylan.mcguinness@express-news.net | Twitter: @DylMcGuinnessAs a San Antonio audience anxiously awaited for author and Democratic political operative Jennifer Palmieri to speak at an Annies List luncheon, the talk around the room was about getting out the vote.

Early, they said.

Text your contacts, they said.

Follow-up, they said.

Nudge them again, they said.

Today is that day, starting at 8 a.m. I hope to see you there.

Over the next two weeks in Bexar County, well get 123 hours in all to have our say before Election Day Nov. 6. In addition to several federal, state and local races, some school districts are holding bond elections and the City of San Antonio has three charter amendments on the ballot. Theyre all begging for your attention.

Dont wait.

Drag a colleague with you.

Offer to drive.

Challenge friends and family members to cast their ballots and get together afterward.

Over coffee, or over beer.

Pledge to cook dinner for them after everyone has done their duty, or meet at a restaurant.

Early voting will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. until Friday; 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday; and then 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday of next week.

No matter how you vote in the midterm elections, youre invited.

Its the only way to express your frustration with whats happening  and not happening  at all levels of government. Its hard being a leader; its harder still to watch the leaders lead so badly so much of the time, or worse, to not work on our behalf at all.

Texas especially needs its young voters  those newly registered and those whove not made voting routine yet  to join the ranks of the committed.

Cross that line.

Become a voting nerd.

Share an image of your I Voted sticker.

Well like it, promise.

If you feel unrepresented and ignored, its because too few of you are showing up.

Tap each other.

Textealos.

Challenge that cubicle partner, your work spouse, your actual spouse.

Promise to mow the lawn, go to the movie of their choosing or leave them alone during the next game.

Get that roommate off the couch. Promise him/her tacos.

Encourage those committee members.

Promise to go to the next meeting.

Palmieri, author of the new book Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World, inspired a group of San Antonio women and a few men to tell you this. She also talked about why your vote matters, pointing not only to the candidates in the audience but to a group of students from the Young Womens Leadership Academy.

She asked them to stand. Theres at least a few mayors in the group and a president or two, she said.

Mark her words.

Palmieri headed Hillary Clintons communications team during her 2016 run, and she served as White House communications director for President Barack Obama and White House deputy press secretary for President Bill Clinton.

She quickly got to that harrowing day, a communal moment for the Democratic women sitting in the audience: the morning after the 2016 election.

For Palmieri, it was like a scene in a disaster movie in which the heroes dont save the world in time. Instead the world explodes, and everyone goes hurling around in black space.

She needed her own space and hung back to see what women would do next. Palmieri had hoped they would march, and they did, the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated.

It was hardly the first. In 1913, 5,000 women marched in the Womens Suffrage Parade on the eve of President Woodrow Wilsons inauguration. Though so much has changed, too much hasnt.

On Jan. 21, 2017, women all over the country and the world took to the streets. In Washington, D.C., the flagship march was the largest one-day demonstration in recorded U.S. history.

She recalled days during the campaign that were good and bad. They held fast to a mantra: Move forward, draw fire.

The reality was some days they didnt move forward. They just drew fire.

Its hard business, this work of changing the world, she said. But you can change how you react to it.

React by voting.

Do it today.

It really is our super power, and Ive got my cape on already.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that early voting would be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. until Friday. Early voting is open until 6 p.m.

Elaine Ayala covers religion and minority affairs in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eayala@express-news.net | Twitter: @ElaineAyalaA sea of mostly red-clad President Trump supporters flooded closed-off streets around the Toyota Center Monday morning, hours ahead of the president's rally here with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Many attendees drove from hours away, foregoing sleep to line up overnight as they sought to ensure a spot at the rally. The arena seats about 18,000 people, far less than the reported demand for the event.

Those attending the rally appeared to mostly set aside Trump's feud with Cruz during the presidential primary, considering the matter settled.

"Politics can be a little cutthroat," said John, a 38-year-old Woodlands resident who did not want to give his last name. "I think there were two people that had a lot of passion."

He pointed out that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama criticized each other during the 2008 Democratic primary before reconciling their differences.

Jason Solis, who lives in Mission and chairs the Rio Grande Valley chapter of "Latinos for Trump," arrived in Houston at 2 p.m. Sunday and was in line by 4 p.m. He said the trip took about seven hours.

Linda Van Bebber, a Tomball-based realtor, was looking forward to seeing Trump and Cruz on stage together.

"Everybody says, 'well, how could you support somebody like Trump? He tweets bad things.' And I don't like all of the tweets he makes," said Van Bebber, 64. "But if you look at the bottom line, it's a lot about him being tough on certain issues."

Some attendees worried about the candidacy of Rep. Beto O'Rourke, Cruz's Democratic opponent, with many expressing dismay over his positions on gun safety and the Second Amendment.

"I do think it's going to be a close race," John said. "I just hope people pay attention to Beto's (positions). He seems like he's more popular out of state."

"In his defense he's very passionate," Van Bebber said. "He comes from an area  El Paso  where things are very different. I think he's blind to the border."

Jen Salinas, a San Antonio resident and the Texas director of "Latinos for Trump," explained what motivated her to come to Houston to support Trump.

"When they punch, he punches back. We love that about him," she said. "He stands his ground, he stands up for himself, he stands up for us when we don't have a voice. You know, Trump's our voice."

The line to see President Trump speak Monday night in support of Cruz's re-election bid at Toyota Center began taking shape more than 24 hours before the rally was set to begin.

Lisa Brewer was the first to stake her place at the corner of Crawford and Polk Street across from the 18,000-seat arena around 10 a.m. Sunday. By nightfall, Houston police were preparing to re-arrange more than 175 people who joined Brewer with chairs and tents as their line to enter the rally snaked onto Dallas Street.

"I just got out of bed and ran down here," said Brewer, a freight logistics manager. "I didn't know people would be here right after me."

TRUMP'S MESSAGE TO HOUSTON: A vote for Ted Cruz is a vote for Trump agenda

Brewer and her daughter-in-law, Jami Brewer, will have spent more than 24 hours waiting in line with little to no shut-eye before Trump speaks. For Brewer, she said raising kids and taking care of grandchildren was good practice for staying awake.

"We're not planning on sleeping," Brewer said. "Just the adrenaline alone will fuel us all."

To prepare for Trump's first campaign visit to the region since snagging the presidency, police began barricading two blocks of streets surrounding the Toyota Center to vehicle traffic Sunday night. The streets are expected to remain closed until around 10:30 p.m. Monday.

Leeland, Caroline, Capitol and Chartres have been designated as detours, according to police.

Glen Collins and his fiancee, DeeJay Miller, are among the supporters flocking to the Houston area to see the president. The couple left their 5-month-old baby with a relative in Waco to see Trump stump for Cruz. After driving 180 miles, the couple planned to spend Sunday night at a Howard Johnson hotel along the Katy Freeway, but Collins took one look at the growing line on Crawford Street and called the reservation a wash.

"We thought we'd get down here at 6 a.m., but when I drove down here to scout it out, I seen the line and I said 'We can't take our chances. We just gotta sit out here,'" said Collins.

The unused booking made a $111.12 dent in the couple's finances, but it was no big deal to Collins. The 39-year-old tow truck wrecker attributed the extra cash in his paycheck to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump signed last year.

"He's the one who gave me the money, so I'm alright with that. It's totally worth it," Collins said.

IN CONROE: O'Rourke touts willingness to serve all Texans in area visit

Dozens of folding chairs that lined the sidewalk on Crawford Street remained empty as their owners took a break from the queue. Sitting outside all night was not an option for Air Force veteran Cheryl Henson, who recently underwent surgery undo the damage to her back for years of carrying service members on stretchers.

"It just wrecked havoc on my spine," Henson said of her military service.

A room at the Embassy Suites on Dallas Street was waiting for Henson for when she decides to step away. Her husband, Billy Henson, will watch their place in line.

For Henson's husband, Trump was the draw to drive to Houston from Lake Jackson  not Cruz, who is leading the polls against Democratic state Rep. Beto O'Rourke in the contested November election.

For the past month, Vice President Mike Pence, the president's children Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump have attended campaign events for Cruz, Trump's former political rival during the 2016 presidential election.

"If there was a better Republican, I'd vote for them," Henson said. "But Cruz will work.AUSTIN  Voters lined up at polling places across Texas at dawn on Monday, the first day of early voting as an energized Democratic Party tries to take control of Congress, and as Republican voters respond to months of hype about a blue wave.

Thousands of people queued up at one polling place in Houston hours before it opened.

This is one of the most important elections of our lifetimes," said Cody Pogue, who arrived at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday to make sure he'd be one of the first people to cast a ballot for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke.

A ten-minute drive away, hundreds of people gathered in chairs and beneath tents to await the arrival of President Donald Trump in Houston. He is rallying with Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, whos seeking a second six-year term.

"I just got out of bed and ran down here," said Lisa Brewer, one of the first to stake out a place Sunday night across from the 18,000-seat arena. "I didn't know people would be here right after me."

The competitive U.S. Senate race is driving much of the excitement in Texas, where just a third of registered voters turned out for the last midterm election, in 2014. Democrats havent won statewide office in Texas since 1994.

Ahead of the Nov. 6 election, voter registration in Texas spiked, reaching a record high of more than 15.7 million. From the primary until the final day of voter registration in October, roughly 400,000 people were added to the rolls, election records show.

Democrats and Republicans turned out in droves during the March primary. More than one million Democrats cast a ballot, the highest turnout in a midterm since 2002. Similarly, Republican voters cast 1.5 million ballots for governor, the most since at least 1970.

The Texas Secretary of States office wont release the first-day early voting numbers until Tuesday afternoon.

Some voters in Bexar County faced delays and long lines Monday morning. At one polling location on the West Side of San Antonio at least 100 voters waited for more than an hour to cast a ballot and found poll workers were using just one laptop to verify voters registration.

By 11 a.m. Monday in the Democrat stronghold of Travis County, more than 9,400 people had already voted in person, according to Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Bruce Elfant. The county, which includes the city of Austin, also received some 10,700 ballots by mail.

Officials in Travis County are still processing a late surge in voter registration applications and aim to finish the remaining 6,000 applications by the end of Monday, Elfant said. Texas is one of about a dozen states that dont offer online voter registration. Applications must be sent by mail before the deadline and it took several days for thousands to arrive to the Travis County office. Though not all voters appear on the rolls yet, those who have registered can still request a provisional ballot at the polls, Elfant said.

Early voting is going smoothly and there have been no issues regarding provisional ballots as a result of the backlog in processing, Elfant said in a written statement.

Elaine Ayala, Jeremy Wallace and Nicole Hensley contributed to this report.

This is a developing story; check back for updates.

amorris@express-news.netRetiring Tennessee state representative and former Majority Leader Gerald McCormick has joined The Ingram Group, founder Tom Ingram announced on Monday. Mr. McCormick will provide general consulting services with an emphasis on expanding state government relations practices for the Nashville and Washington based boutique strategic consulting firm which was founded over 35 years ago.

Rep. McCormick announced at a late date that he was not seeking re-election, saying his employer was requiring that he move to Nashville. State Democrats filed suit, while questioning the validity of the late withdrawal.

The lawsuit was dismissed and former state GOP Chairman Robin Smith is on the Republican ticket for House District 26.

Garrett Johnson, outgoing deputy director of legislation for Governor Bill Haslam, also joined the group and will work alongside his former boss, Mr. McCormick.

A U.S. Army veteran, Mr. McCormick was a member of the Tennessee General Assembly from 2004 until his retirement this year. In that capacity he served in a number of leadership positions, including his roles as House Majority Leader and as chairman of the Budget Subcommittee of House Finance, Ways and Means. During Governor Haslams two terms, Rep. McCormick carried much of Governor Haslams legislation in the House including Tennessee Promise, which made tuition and fees free for the first two years of college for any Tennessee resident.



Were very fortunate to add Gerald to our team. No one knowsTennessee politics or the ever changing legislature like he does, said Mr. Ingram.

Gerald grew up in Memphis, lived in and represented Chattanooga and served the state as Majority Leader. His statewide scope and expertise will help serve and build our business in incredible ways. Even more, Gerald is a great guy that our clients will benefit from working with, as well as enjoygetting to know.

Mr. Johnson brings expertise in both the executive and legislative branches of government. In addition to his role on Haslams legislative team, Mr. Johnson served three legislative sessions in then-House Majority Leader Gerald McCormicks office as his policy and research analyst. Mr. Johnson also served stints with the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, as well as the Tennessee Attorney Generals office.

Reuniting Gerald and Garrett as a team puts The Ingram Group in the position of having one of the strongest teams on the Hill, said Mr. Ingram of the duo. We will be well-situated to navigate the legislatures landscape and best serve our client base.

Garrett is highly respected by all who have worked with him for his determination, work ethic and integrity. Were pleased to welcome him to the team.

Mr. Ingram returned to The Ingram Group in 2009 after serving seven years as chief of staff to Senator Lamar Alexander and as staff director of the Senate Republican Conference. A former reporter for the Nashville Tennessean, Mr. Ingram has been at the epicenter of politics and government  in Tennessee and Washington  for more than three decades. In addition to being a part of all of Sen. Alexanders campaigns and serving as Governor Alexanders deputy and chief of staff, Ingram also oversaw winning political campaigns for Sen. Fred Thompson, Governor Don Sundquist, Sen. Bob Corker and Governor Bill Haslam.

The Ingram Group focuses on strategic practice areas in general corporate strategy, government relations, communications strategy, crisis management and political consulting. The team is made up of prominent consultants including former journalists; former Congressional Chiefs of Staff; several former local, state and federal officials; and experienced business executives.

In recent weeks, the group merged with Poe Consulting, bringing political strategist and communications expert Alexia Poe in house, as well as added Dean Rice, the former chief of staff to Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett, to the team in East Tennessee

Both Mr. McCormick and Mr. Johnson will be based out of the Groups Nashville offices which are housed in the First Tennessee building at 511 Union St. in Nashville. The Washington offices are located at 1310 G Street NW, Suite 230.

Acquires XCOM Media Pty Ltd

Brisbane, Oct 22, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - OtherLevels Holdings Limited ( ASX:OLV ) ("OtherLevels" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has entered into a binding agreement to acquire 100% of XCOM Media Pty Ltd ("XCOM").Highlights:- OtherLevels will acquire the business and assets of XCOM, a Brisbane based digital marketing automation agency- The acquisition provides OLV with immediate distribution and service capabilities into the mid-market- Aligns with OtherLevels strategy to consolidate comparable agencies- XCOM has significant experience and tier 1 clients in the travel & hospitality sector which is a key growth sector for OtherLevels- The acquisition will create material cross marketing opportunities for the OtherLevels platform, unlocking significant scaling potential- The acquisition is earnings and cash accretive- The transaction will be funded by a combination of cash and equityOtherLevels has acquired XCOM for an initial consideration of $889,000 cash and $157,000 in fully paid ordinary shares. Additional earnout payments may be paid based on extra services revenue and OtherLevels licence royalties, as discussed in the Acquisition and Capital Raising presentation.Mr Brendan O'Kane, CEO and Managing Director of OtherLevels said: "This exciting acquisition is an important step towards the Company's goal of becoming the premier Australian supplier, and a global leader in digital marketing technology solutions. OtherLevels believes that the future go-tomarket model for the sale and distribution of marketing technology ("mar-tech") will be direct sales to a small number of large sophisticated enterprises, and a service led solution combining mar-tech and related services to the broader mid-market. A strategic and selective acquisition program, provides the opportunity to consolidate a fragmented sector, while securing further distribution channels for the OtherLevels platform.""Acquiring XCOM is a first step that increases distribution capability into the mid-market and has the additional strategic benefit of strengthening OtherLevels presence in the travel and hospitality sector."XCOM currently provides digital marketing automation solutions to leading clients including Tourism Queensland, Destination Gold Coast and Fiji Airways. XCOM has deep expertise in email and mobile messaging which is complimentary to the OtherLevels platform.XCOM will enable OtherLevels to implement a number of cross marketing programs which along with cost savings in premises and back-office, will deliver revenue and cost synergies to OtherLevels.The completion date for the acquisition is November 1st, 2018.Sequoia Corporate Finance Pty Ltd, a corporate authorised representative of Sequoia Wealth Management Pty Ltd, acted as sole lead manager to the equity raising. The acquisition, which was oversubscribed, was funded by a placement to sophisticated investors and a number of small cap specialist funds. A presentation outlining the equity raise along with additional information follows this release.To view the presentation, please visit:About Otherlevels Holdings Ltd

OtherLevels Holdings Ltd (ASX:OLV) (FRA:7OL) is a leading second-generation digital marketing platform with offices in Europe, the US and Australia.

The OtherLevels platform enables clients to acquire sooner, engage smarter and retain longer across desktop, mobile web and apps audiences. The OtherLevels platform offers both Intelligent Messaging for Conversion, and Intelligent Messaging for Marketing Clouds and CRM, hence delivering both acquisition and engagement capabilities for digital marketers. OtherLevels leading clients include Camelot (UK), Tatts/Tabcorp, Coles, Flight Centre, IHG, LadbrokesCoral, Betfred and Doubledown.

For more information, please visit http://otherlevels.com.

For media enquiries please contact media@otherlevels.com.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Hecla Mining Co. operates as a silver and gold production company. The firm produces lead, zinc and bulk concentrates for custom smelters and brokers; and develops unrefined precipitate and bullion bars for precious metals traders. It operates through the following business segments: The Greens Creek, The Lucky Friday, The Casa Berardi, The Nevada Operations, and The San Sebastian. The Greens Creek segment is located on Admiralty Island near Juneau in southeast Alaska. The Lucky Friday segment is located in northern Idaho. The Casa Berardi segment is located in the Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec, Canada and is operated by Aurizon. The San Sebastian segment is located in the state of Durango, Mexico and contains underground mines. The Nevada Operations segment is located in northern Nevada. The company was founded by Amasa B. Campbell, Patsy Clark, and John Finch on October 14, 1891 and is headquartered in Coeur d'Alene, ID.

Read MoreiShares MSCI Switzerland ETF's stock was trading at $35.66 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 (Coronavirus) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EWL shares have increased by 42.9% and is now trading at $50.97.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.iShares MSCI Finland ETF's stock was trading at $31.15 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EFNL shares have increased by 54.9% and is now trading at $48.25.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.

Grants Lithium Resource Increased by 42% ahead of DFS

Adelaide, Oct 22, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Emerging Northern Territory lithium developer, Core Exploration Ltd ( ASX:CXO ) ("Core" or the "Company") is pleased to announce a substantial Resource upgrade for its Grants Lithium Deposit at the Finniss Lithium Project in the Northern Territory.HIGHLIGHTS- Core's high grade Grants Lithium Resource has been upgraded, adding 42% more tonnes to the inventory at the high-grade of 1.5% Li2O- Two-thirds of the Grants Lithium Resource is now classified as Measured or Indicated- Finniss Project Lithium Resource now stands at 4.3 Mt at 1.4% Li2O- Considerable scope remains to further increase the mining inventory given the many additional lithium-rich pegmatites identified within Core's large >400km2 of tenure at Finniss- Resources for the nearby BP33 deposit being updated currently, with a new estimate expected to be reported later this quarter- The additional mining inventory defined is expected to result in a longer mine life at the Finniss Project, and further enhance the robust economics- Recent Grants resource drilling results show consistent grade and geological character and include: 48m @ 1.59% Li2O from 224m (FRC179)- The Finniss project Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) remains on track for completion in late November 2018- DFS focussed on mining and production of high-grade lithium concentrate near Darwin, with development planned to commence in 2019- Finniss Project Lithium Resource is one of the highest-grade undeveloped lithium deposits in AustraliaThe resource tonnes have increased by 42% in size at a high grade of 1.5% Li2O, with over one-third classified in the Measured Mineral Resource category - the highest resource confidence classification (see Table 1 in link below).The increase in the size of the estimate and confidence of the Resource, following successful drilling in recent months, provides the Company with great conviction that Finniss Project has potential to deliver robust returns, which is expected to be confirmed by the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS).The Grants Lithium Resource estimate currently comprises 2.89Mt @ 1.5% Li2O (see Table 1 in link below) and is one of the highest-grade spodumene resources in Australia. Two-thirds of the Grants Lithium Resource is now classified in the Measured or Indicated category (see Figures 1-4 in link below).The global Mineral Resource for the Finniss Project is now 4.3Mt @ 1.4% (see Table 1 in link below) and is expected to grow further in coming weeks when a new resource estimate is announced for BP33.Core is in the final stages of completing a Definitive Feasibility Study ("DFS") for the development of a spodumene concentrate operation from the Finniss Lithium Project and expects to deliver the DFS in late November 2018.Core is targeting commencement of mining and construction mid-2019 and first production of high quality spodumene concentrate in late 2019.The DFS is expected to dramatically build on the strong financial outcomes highlighted in the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) ($140M NPV and 142% IRR; ASX 25/06/18). The DFS is likely to consider substantially expanded resources and longer mine life, optimised recoveries and increased grade of product as well as further confirmation of offtake and customer prepayment finance.The Finniss Lithium Project has arguably the best supporting infrastructure and logistics chain to Asia of any Australian lithium project. The Project is within 25km of port, power station, gas, rail and 1 hour by sealed road to workforce accommodated in Darwin and importantly to Darwin Port - Australia's nearest port to Asia.High grade, low processing costs and cheap haulage make Core's Finniss Project potentially one of the least capital intensive and most cost competitive spodumene operations in Australia.In the context of recently reported Year-on-Year (YoY) growth of Electric Vehicle (EV) sales in US of 65%, China 44% and Europe of 42. Core is well placed to be the next high-quality lithium concentrate producer in Australia in 2019.Grants Lithium ResourceThe results of the Mineral Resource Estimate are provided in Table 1 and Figures 1-4(see link below). The Mineral Resources are reported at a high cut-off of 0.75% Li2O.The Grants ore-body averages 25m wide, is over 300m long and characterised by consistent, high grade spodumene mineralisation from one wall to the other (see Figure 1 in link below). These characteristics and scale of orebody enable a simple open pit operation producing consistent high grade with low dilution utilising the efficiencies of bulk mining equipment.Dr Graeme McDonald (BSc PhD MAusIMM) was contracted by Core to undertake the Mineral Resource Estimate for the Grants Lithium Deposit. As part of the preparation of the Resource Estimate, Dr McDonald developed a geological interpretation based on cross sections, generated a 3D geological interpretation from interpreted cross sections, created domain interpretations for lithium, developed a block model of the deposit, undertook a geostatistical analysis of the data and estimated lithium grades.Dr McDonald's report notes that fresh pegmatite at Grants is composed of coarse spodumene, quartz, albite, microcline and muscovite. Spodumene, a lithium bearing pyroxene (LiAl(SiO3)2), is the predominant lithium bearing phase (see Figure 2 in link below) and displays a diagnostic red-pink UV fluorescence. The pegmatite is not strongly zoned, apart from a thin (1-2m) quartz-mica-albite wall facies. Overall the lithium content throughout the pegmatite is notably consistent.Grants has a flat Grade-Tonnage curve at the 1.5% Li2O "sweetspot" for spodumene production (see Figure 5 in link below). A high 0.75% Li2O cut-off grade results in no significant reduction in the contained tonnes, demonstrating the consistent high-grade nature of the Mineral Resource.Recent Resource drill results at GrantsDrill results emanating from the resource definition program at Grants leading to the resource upgrade include:- 40m @ 1.54% Li2O from 81m (FRC149) including:o 8m @ 2.00% Li2O from 99m- 40m @ 1.52% Li2O from 210m (FRC176) including:o 13m @ 2.17% Li2O from 233m- 48m @ 1.59% Li2O from 224m (FRC179) including:o 15m @ 2.18% Li2O from 253mSummary of Mineral Resource Estimate and Reporting CriteriaGeology and geological interpretationThe Grants Lithium Deposit is hosted within a rare element pegmatite that is a member of the Bynoe pegmatite field. The Bynoe Pegmatite Field is situated 15km south of Darwin and extends for up to 70km in length and 15 km in width. Over 100 pegmatites are known within clustered groups or as single bodies. Individual pegmatites vary in size from a few metres wide and tens of metres long up to larger bodies tens of metres wide and hundreds of metres long.The pegmatites are predominantly hosted within the early Proterozoic metasedimentary lithologies of the Burrell Creek Formation and are usually conformable to the regional schistosity. The Bynoe pegmatites are classified as LCT (Lithium-Caesium-Tantalum) type and are believed to have been derived from the ~ 1845 Ma S-Type Two Sisters Granite which outcrops to the west.Fresh pegmatite at Grants is composed of coarse spodumene, quartz, albite, microcline and muscovite (in decreasing order of abundance). Spodumene, a lithium bearing pyroxene (LiAl(SiO3)2), is the predominant lithium bearing phase and displays a diagnostic red-pink UV fluorescence. The pegmatite is not strongly zoned, apart from a thin (1-2m) quartz-mica-albite wall facies. Overall the lithium content throughout the pegmatite is consistent.Drilling techniques and hole spacingThe Grants drill hole database used for the MRE contains a total of 95 holes for 13,794m of drilling. Comprising 74 RC holes, 17 DD holes and 4 AC holes.The majority of holes have been drilled at angles of between 55deg - 70deg either due east or west, with a small proportion drilled vertically. The 4 vertical AC holes were only used to assist with the interpretation of the geology and depth of the weathering profile. The assays were not used as part of the MRE due to the higher risk of cross contamination issues associated with the AC drilling technique. Geological and assay data for RC and diamond drill holes was used in the geological interpretation and MRE. The only exception being the assay data for 3 recently completed diamond holes had not been received prior to the MRE being undertaken.Sampling and sub-samplingSamples were collected from RC drilling and when submitted for assay typically weighed 2-5kg over an average 1m interval. RC sampling of pegmatite for assays is done on a 1 metre basis. 1m-sampling continued into the barren wall-zone of the pegmatite and then a 3m composite was collected from the immediately surrounding barren phyllite host rock. RC samples were homogenised and subsampled by cone splitting at the drill rig.Drill core was collected directly into trays, marked up by metre marks and secured as the drilling progressed. Core was cut firstly into half longitudinally along a consistent line, ensuring no bias in the cutting plane. Again, without bias, half core was then cut into two further segments. A quarter was then collected on a metre basis where possible but not less than 0.3m in length, determined by geological and lithological contacts.All samples were sent to North Australian Laboratories (NAL) in Pine Creek for analysis.Sample analysis methodSample Preparation - The samples have been sorted and dried. Primary preparation has been by crushing the whole sample. The samples have been split with a riffle splitter to obtain a sub-fraction which has then been pulverised to 95% passing 100microns m.A 0.3 g sub-sample of the pulp is digested in a standard 4 acid mixture and analysed via ICP-MS and ICP-OES methods for the following elements: Li, Cs, Rb, Sr, Nb, Sn, Ta, U, As, K, P and Fe.In 2016-2017, all samples were also analysed via the fusion method - a 0.3g sub-sample is fused with a Sodium Peroxide Fusion flux and then digested in 10% hydrochloric acid. ICP-OES is used for the following elements: Li, P and Fe. Exhaustive checks of this data suggested an excellent correlation exists, so in 2018 a 3000 ppm Li trigger was set to process that sample via a fusion method.Selected drill core samples were also run for the following additional elements to provide a broader suite: Al, Ca, Mg, Mn, Si, LOI, SG (immersion), SG (pychnometer) and various trace elements.Standards, blanks and duplicates have all been applied in the QAQC methodology. Sufficient accuracy and precision have been established for the type of mineralisation encountered and is appropriate for QAQC in the Resource Estimation.Cut-off gradesThe current Mineral Resource Inventory for the Grants Deposit has been reported at a cut-off grade of 0.75% Li2O which based on current modelling approximates the current break even operating cost estimate for an open pit development. No top cuts were applied.Estimation methodologyGeology and mineralisation wireframes were generated in Micromine software using drill hole data supplied by Core. Resource data was flagged with unique lithology and mineralisation domain codes as defined by the wireframes and composited to 1m lengths. The composites were analysed and no top-cuts applied.Grade continuity analysis was undertaken in Micromine software for Li2O for the mineralised domain and models were generated in all three directions. Parameters were used in the block model estimation. A block model with a parent block size of 5 x 10 x 10m with sub-blocks of 1.25 x 2.5 x 2.5m has been used to adequately represent the mineralised volume, with sub block estimated at the parent block scale.Density data was supplied by Core and is consistent with expected values for the lithologies present and the degree of weathering. Within the block model, density has been assigned based on lithology and weathering state.Classification criteriaThe resource classification has been applied to the Mineral Resource Estimate based on the drilling data spacing, grade and geological continuity, and data integrity. Portions of the model that have drill spacing of better than 25m by 30m, and where the confidence in the geology, mineralisation and resource estimation is considered high and would allow the application of modifying factors in a technical and economic study have been classified as Measured Mineral Resources. Areas that have drill spacing of greater than 25m by 30m, and/or with lower levels of confidence in the geology, mineralisation and resource estimation or potential impact of modifying factors have been classified as Indicated Mineral Resources. Areas that have drill spacing of greater than 25m by 30m, and with low levels of confidence in the geology, mineralisation and resource estimation or potential impact of modifying factors have been classified as Inferred Mineral Resources.The classification reflects the view of the Competent Person.Mining, Metallurgy and EnvironmentThroughout the PFS (released to the ASX on 25/6/2018) a number of assumptions were made that are still considered valid; including:- Mining Recovery - 95%- Mining Dilution - 5%- Mining Cost/tonne of conc. - AUD$208.70- Processing Cost/tonne of conc. - AUD$71.19- Haulage Cost/tonne of conc. - AUD$11.47- G & A Cost/tonne of conc. - AUD$8.00- Port Costs/tonne of conc. AUD$7.50- Total unit operating Costs/tonne of conc. AUD$372 (incl. royalties)- Price - US$649/ tonne of 5.0 % Li2O conc.The PFS concluded that the traditional open cut mining method of drill, blast, load and haul will be used and that the operation would produce a concentrate with a target grade of 5.0% Li2O. Further metallurgical test work has demonstrated a concentrate grade of 5.5% Li2O is achievable with recoveries of 79% (as described in an ASX announcement on 02/08/2018). This occurs via a simple process of crushing, screening and dense media separation. As part of the PFS preliminary mine planning and scheduling was undertaken considering possible waste and process residue disposal options and environmental impacts.As part of the current DFS, geotechnical studies have been undertaken as well as waste characterisation, groundwater modelling and further metallurgical test work. A mining lease application has been submitted and is being processed and an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is being prepared ready for submission.Eventual Economic ExtractionIt is the view of the Competent Person that at the time of estimation there are no known issues that could materially impact on the eventual extraction of the Mineral Resource.To view tables and figures, please visit:About Core Lithium Ltd

Core Lithium Ltd (ASX:CXO) is an emerging lithium producer focused on development of its Finniss Project near Darwin in the Northern Territory. Core owns 100% of Finniss, a major developing project that lies close to existing infrastructure such as the Darwin Port, grid power, gas and rail infrastructure.

The Finniss Project covers a 500km2 tenement holding and 25 historic pegmatite mines. The project area is about 80km from Darwin Port. Exploration work has generated a near term development timeline, with feasibility studies to be completed over the course of 2018 ahead of receipt of approvals in early 2019 and planned first production during 2019.

An aggressive exploration program is under way, which has confirmed the high quality prospectivity across much of the Finniss Project area. Core's stated ambition is to upgrade Finniss' resource base to fast-track commercialisation options.Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.

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Limited, World Fuel Services Peru S.R.L., World Fuel Services Private Limited, World Fuel Services Regulatory Holdings LLC, World Fuel Services Trading DMCC, World Fuel Services Turkey Petrol Urunleri Dagitim Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, World Fuel Singapore Holding Company I Pte Ltd, World Fuel Singapore Holding Company II Pte Ltd, and Yacht Fuel Services Limited.The Belgium government has released 1m (880m) for the culling of more than 4,000 commercial and domestic pigs in the African swine fever infected zone.

According to the Belgian farming organisation Boerenbond, the funds will be used to reimburse the pig farmers for the culled animals and the operational costs involved.

The European Commission has already indicated that it will guarantee co-financing of 50% for the operation, which with a few weeks of the virus being discovered in wild in Belgium's Luxembourg region, near the French border.

However, the number of confirmed cases in wild boar continues to rise. The figure currently stands at 96, with all cases located within the original infected area.

With Belgium doing its best to keep the virus out of the commercial herd, it has received some good news.

India has lifted its embargo on Belgium pork imports, following a similar move by Malaysia last. They were just two of a number of non-EU countries to ban Belgium pork in response to the ASF outbreaks.

"Hopefully other export destinations will soon agree with the regionalisation principle," Boerenbond said.

The EU adopts a regionalised approach where areas of a country that are free of disease can continue exporting.

It follows news of China suffering its most serious case of African swine fever yet, further damaging the country's cherished $1 trillion pig industry.

The UK's National Pig Association (NPA) has urged pig farmers and keepers to not feed kitchen or catering waste to pigs to help prevent the spread of the disease.The British governments post-Brexit agriculture plans are "insufficient" when considering specific agricultural concerns in Northern Ireland, MPs have warned.

Westminster has been urged to explain how policy for farmers and growers in Northern Ireland will be devised in the absence of an Executive, and in advance of Brexit.

Farming and growing plays a bigger part in the Northern Ireland economy than in the rest of the UK, and has significant differences to the sector in the rest of the country.

Farmers will be particularly affected by Brexit because of this and due to its proximity to the Republic of Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has expressed disappointment about Defra's "insufficient" approach to considering specific agricultural concerns in Northern Ireland.

In a new report released on Monday (22 October), MPs warned that particular structural and Brexit related challenges must be addressed quickly, with or without an Executive.

Executive collapse

Northern Ireland is still without a government as talks to form a power-sharing government following the election in 2017 failed.

The Executive collapsed after deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness resigned in protest over the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal.

This triggered the Northern Ireland Assembly election on 2 March 2017. However, political parties could not reach an agreement to form a coalition agreement, with talks having been going on for nearly a year.

With the Executive remaining vacant, hard-pressing issues in agriculture are starting to worry farmers. One of the greatest challenges farmers are facing in Northern Ireland is the issue of Brexit.

Chair of the Committee, Dr Andrew Murrison MP, said: "My Committee is calling on the UK Government to provide clarity and confidence for the Northern Ireland agricultural sector by making plain how a post-Brexit agricultural policy for Northern Ireland will be devised if the political impasse continues into the New Year.

"Agri-food in Northern Ireland has much to inspire optimism. However, we are concerned that its uniqueness, challenges and vulnerabilities have not been fully hoisted in by ministers. We heard evidence about DEFRA's lack of engagement with Northern Irelands civil service and with the sector.

He added: "We were left with the impression of drift and delay at a critical time and an over-reliance on the much hoped for restoration of an Executive."

'Limited engagement'

The distinctive characteristics of farming and growing in Northern Ireland mean that its agricultural sector has different needs and priorities to the rest of the United Kingdom.

The predominance of smaller, more marginal businesses means that the sector is particularly reliant on direct financial support to maintain a steady income.

The Committee expressed concern at Defra's "limited engagement" with farmers in Northern Ireland during its agricultural policy consultation, and concluded that there has been "insufficient recognition of key differences between Northern Ireland's agriculture sector and that of other parts of the United Kingdom."

Furthermore, the Committee is concerned that without a Northern Ireland Government the challenges and opportunities of Brexit run the risk of being overlooked, leaving Northern Ireland's agriculture sector adrift without a "dedicated and devolved" policy framework.

The Committee recommends that, if the NI Government is not restored by the end of the year, the Government should set out how it will develop post-Brexit agricultural policy for Northern Ireland.

Financial support

For the typically small farms of Northern Ireland, subsidies and payments are "existentially significant", MPs said.

The Committee heard evidence that the UK Governments "public money for public goods" proposal, while broadly welcomed, was designed with England in mind.

It warned this proposal could have a "serious impact" on farms in Northern Ireland if the scheme is not modified to reflect the different character of farming.

The Committee urged the Government to revise its definition of public goods to include the survival of farms as "essential rural assets", and to commit area payments beyond 2022, with small farms and those reliant on pasture and husbandry on marginal land particularly in mind.

While the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Michael Gove MP recently announced that agricultural budgets will not be Barnettised post-Brexit, the Committee heard that greater clarity for the future is essential to ensure Northern Ireland has a basis for planning its own future agricultural policies and support mechanisms.

The Committee called on the Government to bring forward plans for the allocation of funding for agricultural support post-2022.

North-South cooperation

Northern Ireland's agri-food sector is closely integrated with that of the Republic of Ireland, and agricultural produce crosses the border frequently.

899.5 million worth of food and live animals were exported to the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland in 2017.

The Committee heard evidence that a no-deal scenario, whilst unlikely, could result in fresh milk, live animals, cereals and flour being unable to cross the border to the Republic of Ireland and perishable goods unable to access wider EU markets.

MPs warned that land-based businesses have not been given clarity on what no-deal, however unlikely, will mean for cross-border trade.

The Committee is also concerned that the Government's consultation on tightening controls on live animal exports with the EU does not specify whether animals travelling by road across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will be exempt.

The Government has been urged to introduce necessary exemptions to avoid harming Northern Irelands agricultural sector, which exports thousands of live animals to the Republic each week.Farming organisations are highlighting the risk fireworks and sky lanterns have on farms as a fire hazard and on livestock health.

Many farmers and rural organisations are calling on the public to have a happy  but lantern-free and considerate  bonfire night this November.

Sky lanterns, which are constructed from paper with a wire or wooden frame and contain a lighted candle, are a proven fire risk and can be a danger to livestock.

They also pose a fire hazard to stacks of hay and straw, woodland and farm buildings. If they land within crops grown to feed livestock, the frames risk being ingested causing great harm to livestock.

Farmers' Union of Wales (FUW) is one organisation calling for the public to stick to the firework safety code "at all times".

FUW Policy Officer, Charlotte Priddy said: This time of year poses many dangers to animals and children  so dont let negligence and ignorance be the cause for a real-life horror.

Animals in general are not fond of the noise of fireworks and can become quite anxious during this time of year. Therefore, the union has urged people to be considerate and not let them off near livestock.

It is also a good idea to make sure that your pets have been micro-chipped by a vet and that the details on the chip are up to date prior to bonfire night, just in case they go missing, said Mrs Priddy.

Farm groups recommend people visit an organised display, but if one is to be displayed at someone's home, the firework code should be followed at all times to minimise the stress for farm animals.

'Devastating damage'

NFU President Minette Batters has previously said that farmers tell of the "devastating damage" sky lanterns have caused to buildings and fields.

She said farmers have told of "gruesome injuries" they can cause to livestock and other animals.

Simply put, all of these lanterns must land somewhere and while they may look pretty in the sky, they also become unnecessary litter across our beautiful countryside, Ms Batters explained last year.

We have already seen numerous councils ban sky lanterns, who have rightly recognised the danger they pose, and I would encourage the remaining local authorities to follow the good examples set across the country.

The NFU has said it would like to see a total ban on sky lanterns across England and Wales.

Drilling Advances at Kachi with Consistent Assay Results Delivered

Brisbane, Oct 22, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Argentine-focused lithium exploration and project development company Lake Resources NL ( ASX:LKE ) has extended drilling activities at its 100%-owned Kachi Lithium Brine Project in Catamarca Province with assay results reinforcing the large scale and quality of the discovery.- Drilling continues to confirm the large scale and quality of the Kachi Lithium Brine Project - a major discovery of a similar size to globally significant lithium producers.- Results show brines returning averaging 326 mg/L lithium over 60 metres (237 - 301m) in drill hole K08R14.- More assays pending and drilling to be extended based on these favorable results.- Brines extend from near-surface to at least 400 metres depth consistently, with geophysics suggesting depths of 600-800 metres, with low impurities and low average Mg/Li ratio of 3.8 at K08R14, a ratio similar to large Argentine projects of Galaxy and Neo Lithium.Recent drill results returned 314-332 mg/L lithium over 60 metres in drillhole K08R14 averaging 326 mg/l lithium. Brine samples in this hole display encouraging densities with a favourable Mg/Li ratio of 3.8. This follows averaged results of 306 mg/L lithium over 24 metres (213 - 237m) from hole K03R03 indicating consistent brine chemistry throughout the stratigraphic profile in the western sector of this project area.To date, the lithium brines analysed show positive chemistry with low combined impurities (boron, sulphate, calcium, magnesium, iron). Visually, sediments suggest high porosities and permeabilities, with laboratory porosity and permeability results anticipated soon. Brines extend from near- surface to at least 400 metres depth consistently, and geophysics suggest 600-800 metres depth.The drilling advances the Kachi discovery towards an initial resource target estimate, with data from a further hole, K04R15 in the western area (refer Figure 1 in link below), due prior to the resource estimation. The western area of the basin is being targeted at present for completion of the resource estimation. A number of sample results are pending from recent drilling, and regular updates will be provided as drilling progresses. An exploration target will be provided in the next two weeks as a precursor to the resource estimate.Resource Drilling - Kachi Lithium Brine ProjectLake Resources' 100%-owned Kachi Lithium Brine Project in Catamarca province, Argentina covers over 50,000 hectares of mining leases owned 100% by Lake's Argentine subsidiary. These are held over the centre of the known Kachi salt lake in the deepest part of the basin. Surface sampling revealed positive lithium results in brines, supported by positive results in drilling from surface to depth and through geophysics programs.Recent drilling intersected different interlayered lithologies which are dominated by sandy sediments. Samples have been collected for porosity tests in a laboratory in the USA with extensive experience in analysing salt lake sediments for their porosity characteristics, in particular the specific yield (also known as drainable porosity).Drilling has been completed at platform K04. New locations are currently being planned based on these recent favourable results. The company intends to conduct a resource estimate for the project in accordance with the JORC reporting code as soon as practical. This will incorporate the porosity data and systematic brine analyses from the drilling samples including yet to be reported result from K04R15. Further drilling is planned but this will not impact timing of the resource estimate which is based on drilling completed to date.CommentManaging Director Steve Promnitz said: "Kachi continues to produce favourable assay results which are consistent with and similar to the large lithium brine projects of Galaxy and Neo Lithium, also in Catamarca. The grades we are achieving at Kachi demonstrate to us that, based on the scale of Kachi at 50,000 hectares, we have a project that is commercial with significant upside."We are well advanced in defining a resource estimate which will be based on some final assays we have pending. Beyond this, we have taken the decision to extend the drill program based on these new, very encouraging assays. We are also pleased to confirm that drilling is advancing well in Cauchari and first assays are on track for early next month."Table 1 (see link below) provides drill hole location details and lithium results which are averaged where multiple samples have been taken at a single interval.To view tables and figures, please visit:About Lake Resources NL

Lake Resources NL (ASX:LKE) (OTCMKTS:LLKKF) is a clean lithium developer utilising clean, direct extraction technology for the development of sustainable, high purity lithium from its flagship Kachi Project, as well as three other lithium brine projects in Argentina. The projects are in a prime location within the Lithium Triangle, where 40% of the world's lithium is produced at the lowest cost.



This method will enable Lake Resources to be an efficient, responsibly-sourced, environmentally friendly and cost competitive supplier of high-purity lithium, which is readily scalable, and in demand from Tier 1 electric vehicle makers and battery makers.Latest Government figures show that the free range layer flock is continuing to increase in Northern Ireland.

The statistics, which are produced by Northern Ireland's Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), have just been released by Defra in London.

The figures are for November 2017 and provide a comparison with the same month in 2016.

They show that the number of free range layers placed in Northern Ireland in November 2017 was 2.82 million - an increase of 5.5 per cent on the 2.67 million placed in November 2016.

Placings of cage birds was also up, even though major UK retailers have committed to moving away from cage eggs by 2025.

In November last year, the number of cage birds placed in Northern Ireland was 1.86 million - an increase of 3.8 per cent on the 1.79 million placed in the same month the previous year.

The number of eggs from all production systems arriving each week in Northern Ireland packing stations during November was 83,812 cases. The number in November 2016 was 72,337 cases.

The number from free range, perchery and organic units in 2017 was 51,372 cases per week compared with 42,873 the previous year.

'Encouraging'

Earlier this year representatives of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA) attended a meeting in County Tyrone to discuss the rapid growth of free range egg production in the province.

BFREPA chairman James Baxter and the association's chief executive, Robert Gooch, joined about 120 egg producers at the meeting.

During the meeting, Robert Gooch said that the number of free range birds in the UK as a whole had been increasing by 10 per cent each year since 2015.

He said that, whilst the growth of free range in Northern Ireland had been very positive, he sounded a note of caution at the speed of the growth.

"It's encouraging to see the growth we are experiencing in the UK and, indeed, the spurt of growth in Northern Ireland. However, as an economist, I would hint caution at the rate of this growth in Northern Ireland as demand is not increasing at the same rates," he said.

'Minimum disruption'

It was suggested during the meeting that the cost of production in Northern Ireland was 25 per cent less than in other parts of the UK. A supplier of poultry houses in the province said that farmers in Northern Ireland paid less to build a poultry unit.

The latest figures produced by DAERA are based on an egg packers survey, which is carried out twice each year.

With Brexit looming, one set of figures included in the report may be of interest to the egg industry. The figures show that just 37 per cent of eggs produced in Northern Ireland stay in the province.

Some 55 per cent go across the Irish Sea to the rest of the UK, with eight per cent of the eggs crossing the border into the Republic of Ireland.

The Ulster Farmers Union has called for minimum disruption to trade with both the Republic and the rest of the UK in any post-Brexit settlement between the UK and the European Union.

UK egg industry leaders have also called for a close relationship with the European Union when the UK eventually leaves the bloc.One of the UKs biggest chicken catching businesses will have to close down within weeks after having its Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) licence revoked.

Victor Foster Poultry Services Ltd (VFPS) was granted a GLAA licence back in 2006 to supply farm workers to catch chickens which were then sent for processing and vaccination.

The company, which is based in Northern Ireland but also operates throughout the UK, was found to have breached the GLAAs licensing standards in three critical areas as well as not being fit and proper.

The GLAA found that VFPS was unwilling to comply with the standards and had shown a wholesale disregard for the licensing scheme.

VFPS failed to show the GLAA that its workers were being paid accurately and taking adequate rests during their shifts. Workers also told inspectors that they did not receive copies of their contracts.

18 hour shift

Concerns were raised that the drivers transporting workers were working incredibly long shifts with insufficient rest periods.

On one occasion, GLAA inspectors found that a worker completed an 18-hour shift, had under six hours as a break before he was back out for a 19-hour shift.

Despite this damning evidence, VFPS appealed the GLAAs decision to revoke its licence, claiming that it was disproportionate as they had rectified all the issues highlighted during the inspection.

However, a hearing held in Nottingham from 8 to 10 October dismissed the appeal.

'Tremendous result'

Judge Peter Britton supported the GLAAs position that compliance with the licensing standards must be demonstrated at the time of inspection, not at a later date.

GLAA Head of Licensing Charlotte Woodliffe said: This is a tremendous result for our hard-working licensing and compliance teams. We are pleased that the judge upheld our original decision and agreed with our assessment that there were several key breaches of our licensing standards.

We hope this result sends a strong message to businesses who are acting unlawfully within the sectors regulated by the GLAA. We will find out if you are breaching the standards and we will not hesitate to put you out of business when you are caught.

VFPS has 28 days from the decision to wind up the business before the licence is revoked. Any trading after this date would be considered a criminal offence.Farmers have been urged to respond to the Welsh Governments Brexit consultation before the deadline in just over a week's time.

With the Tuesday 30 October deadline nearing, the Welsh Governments Brexit and Our Land consultation - described as the biggest consultation on Welsh farming in a generation - seeks to shape thoughts on the industry post-Brexit.

NFU Cymru is now urging Welsh farmers to respond to the Brexit and Our Land consultation before the deadline.

NFU Cymru President, John Davies said the consultation is the "most significant" policy proposal affecting the Welsh agricultural industry "in a generation".

"It is absolutely vital that Welsh farmers make their views known to Welsh Government and submit their responses before the deadline," Mr Davies said.

This consultation seeks views on how Welsh Government proposes to support farmers after Brexit. It proposes a phased withdrawal of the Basic Payment Scheme to be replaced by two new schemes; an economic resilience scheme and a public goods scheme.

He added: It is essential that Welsh farmers have their say on these proposals and ensure that the industrys voice is heard in helping to shape policies that will affect our businesses well into the future.

The Welsh government's Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths said the two funds marks a "significant change".

Once we leave the EU, our access to markets and how we compete will change so maintaining the status quo is not an option, she said.

The Welsh government says the new schemes could be fully in place by 2025.

Earlier this month, NFU Cymru said it is "vital" that the industry gets the message across that food production is at the heart of everything farmers do.

The union has also spoken out against environmental and green bodies who are putting forward "damaging claims" about the industry.

In particular, the union has criticised the WWF, the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts Wales for claims made on their websites and social media channels that infer that farming practices are harming the environment.The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike.

We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve.Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release

SubCategory Select Sub-CategoryView this post on Instagram A post shared by Deepika Padukone (@deepikapadukone) on Oct 21, 2018 at 3:29am PDT

View this post on Instagram AAAAA A post shared by Ranveer Singh (@ranveersingh) on Oct 21, 2018 at 3:30am PDT

Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh took the internet by storm yesterday as they announced their wedding date. While we still cant keep calm since after months of speculations about their November wedding, #DeepVeer finally shared the big news with all their fans and loved ones, we have another big news for you. All set to tie the knot on November 14th and 15th this year at Lake Como, Italy, the couple is already being showered with love and good wishes from the entire world. Take a look at their wedding invite here.Moving ahead, we have another BIG update on the #DeepVeer wedding. Fact that they will be walking the aisle in Italy has been told you enough times; we now have some insider information for you on their wedding reception. A source close to the couple just informed Filmfare that the celebrity couple will be hosting a grand wedding reception in Mumbai on December 1 at Grand Hyatt. The source said, Ranveer and Deepika are extremely happy and excited for their big day. As decided, their Italy wedding will be a private affair with a guest list including only their families and close set of friends. Soon after they return from Italy, Ranveer and Deepika will be hosting a lavish wedding reception for all their industry friends in Mumbai on December 1. Grand Hyatt has been picked as the reception venue and everyone from Bollywood is expected to be present.We can already just imagine how stunning these two will look at their reception. Once again congratulations Deepika and Ranveer, we wish you all the happiness and love.Tanushree Files A Rs. 10 Crore Defamation Case On Rakhi

Tanushree's advocate Nitin Satpute told Republic TV, "We have filed a criminal and civil defamation case against Rakhi Sawant for maligning my client's character and image. If she fails to revert, she will be punished for two years or fined or both."

Rakhi Had Victim-Shamed Tanushree

She had said, "These are fake allegations on Nana Patekar ji and Ganesh Acharya. Tanushree Dutta has gone mad. She was in a coma for 10 years. She has just woke up after a coma of 10 years. I don't like saying such things about a woman. I respect womens. but this Tanushree Dutta who has returned from America after 10 years is vomitted such things because she has exhausted all the money from her bank account and has no work, has nothing and is blaming Nana Patekar ji."

'I Have Done A Song, Nana Did Not Touch Me A Little'

Rakhi had further added, " She is talking about the past which has nothing to do with the incident. Nothing of this sort ever happened. If something like this would have happened..have you seen my song with Nana Patekar... have you seen it... where is that song...show that song. I have done a song, he did not even touch me a little."

Nana Patekar vs Tanushree Dutta

Meanwhile, Nana Patekar recently responded to the complaint filed by Tanushree with the Cine and Television Artistes' Association (CINTAA), and called her claims 'motivated' and 'malicious'.Kapil Sharma to get married on this date with Ginni Chatrath; Check Out | FilmiBeat

After getting involved in many controversies, Kapil Sharma is now finally hitting the headlines for the right reason! The actor-comedian recently announced about his new show that will be aired on Sony TV. The actor also revealed that it will be a brand new season of his popular show, The Kapil Sharma Show. Recently, he had also shared a picture and revealed that he is back in Mumbai. The actor has apparently started shooting for the show! There were also reports that the actor will soon tie the knot.

Kapil had said that he was busy with his maiden Punjabi venture and they are yet to fix the wedding date, post which he would announce it! As per the latest buzz, Kapil is all set to tie the knot with long-time girlfriend Ginni Chatrath on December 12, 2018.



A source close to Kapil Sharma was quoted by IE as saying, "Kapil is finally getting married in December. His close friends have been asked to keep themselves free during the time. He should be officially making the announcement of the date soon."

The source added, "While December 12 is the wedding date for now, Kapil and his family want to zero in on the most auspicious date. The family has already started prepping up for the big fat Punjabi wedding which will happen in his hometown."

The source further added, "Kapil is in Mumbai but has been keeping in touch and personally looking into the preparations. His show is also supposed to go on floors soon. So, he has quite a lot in his kitty for now."

Stay locked to this space for the latest updates!

Prince Narula & Yuvika Chaudhary Look Every Bit Like A Royal Couple At Their Chandigarh Reception!Guls Team Is Working On The Details Regarding The Dates & More!

Gorky M, film director and co-producer, 4 Lions Films, confirmed that Sanaya will be working with them! He revealed to Pinkvilla saying, "Yes. We will be reuniting with Sanaya for one of our upcoming projects. We are putting a lot of effort in the script but still working out the details regarding dates etc."

Details Of The Show Are Yet To Be Revealed!

"As far as other details are concerned- just wait and watch is all that I can say! This is just the tip of the ice berg. I am spearheading this initiative into the digital space and more details will be revealed soon but I am really excited about this."

Sanaya In Guls Next Which Will Be A Love Story!

He further added, "It will be a love story. As far as production is concerned I am finalising the details but yes, 4 Lions will be involved."

Will They Create IPKKND & Tanhaiyan Magic Again?

Well, Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon - Ek Jashan starring Barun and Sanaya was released on Hotstar on public demand, which was a web series of eight extended episodes! Also, Tanhaiyan starring Barun and Surbhi Jyoti was a love story, which too was a super hit. Now, it has to be seen whether the makers will create the magic of IPKKND and Tanhaiyan again!

Fans Troll Gul Khan!

It has to be recalled that the duo worked together and made a superhit show Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon, but the third installment was without Sanaya. Something didn't seem good between Sanaya and Gul. One of the fans trolled Gul for the same by commenting on the post saying, "You can make anybody crowl back to your feet"! - (sic)

Gul Gives It Back To The Troll!

Gul replied to the troll as, "You know you guys see things from a distance you actually don't know what is actually going on! It's not cool to saw stuff like crawling back! While working together people might fight and have differences but believe it or not mutual respect for each other's talent always exist! Let's not disrespect anybody here please! Try if you can soo that pls!" - (sic)Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - October 22, 2018) - White Metal Resources Corp. (TSXV: WHM) ("White Metal" or the "Company") announces that it has received the assay results from the recently completed channel sampling program at its Gunners Cove Gold Property (the "Property" or "Project"), located in northwestern Newfoundland. The Company is compiling all the work to date including mapping, prospecting samples, trench samples and airborne geophysical data to determine the best way to advance the project. The majority of the 689 channel samples returned below detection gold (<5 ppb Au) with only a few anomalous gold concentrations ranging from 5 to 209 ppb Au. Although disappointing as a first pass of detailed channel sampling, management's technical team remains encouraged about the Property and is committed to continued exploration and examining alternatives to furthering development at Gunners Cove.

The Gunners Cove Gold Property is an exceptional new discovery of an unexplored gold system that has been traced intermittingly for approximately 18 kilometres along strike (north-south) and from 1.3 to 3.0 kilometres in width (east-west). To date, 16 gold zones have been identified as target areas on the basis of prospecting and grab sampling, returning anomalous gold (>100 ppb Au) in more than 50% of the grab samples and up to 5.86 g/t Au, 8.0 g/t Ag, and 0.13% Cu. These early results were encouraging enough to initiate the detailed channel sampling program at the following zones (from north to south) East Gunners, Mossberg, Gunners Hidden Pit, Stevens, and Bazooka Island zones (see Press Release dated October 4, 2018).

Selected detailed gold zone coverage by this first channel sampling program examined a very small percentage of the Project area, having an initial look at 5 of the 16 gold zones discovered to date by prospecting. There is still much to learn about the geological environment of the Property, but there are undoubtedly theories that the gold-bearing trends occur in a unique and areal extensive geological environment and defining, interpreting, and targeting will take considerable time and effort.

Other examples of black shale hosted gold environments which share some broad similarities to the Project include Kalgoorlie Goldfields, Australia, where anomalous gold is associated with nodular pyrite in black shales, and Shukio Log, Russia, where gold-rich pyrite nodules in black shales host resources of 384 million tonnes, grading 2.5 to 2.7 g/t Au, lower grade resources of 165 million tonnes at 2.0-2.3 g/t Au, and a further 205 million tonnes at 0.8 g/t Au (www.smedg.org.au/apr03BryceWood.pdf). These two examples represent very complex systems which took many years of exploration, sampling and drilling to understand and vector in on the principal areas of mineralization.

The black shale-hosted gold environment on the Property, with an enrichment of +25 ppb Au, is highly anomalous, and technical experts indicate that much more work is warranted. The Company will continue to evaluate all of the results to date and the known gold showings and look to engage other experts with respect to this type of gold environment.

Since the initial gold discovery in September 2017, the Company has had excellent success at the Gunners Cove Gold Property and geological controls of known gold mineralization can be summarized as follows:

Anomalous and moderate grade gold assays are associated with 2% to 10% pyrite nodules, discontinuous stringers, fragments and cubic crystals.

The gold zones are hosted in a geological distinctive unit of chaotic, multi-lithic breccia with a predominately graphitic and mudstone matrix. This unit is associated with regional thrust faulting and referred to as a melange.

The higher pyrite content appears to be associated with well-foliated (sheared) graphitic melange.

This melange can be mapped over horizontal widths of up to 1.3km, however the full extent of the melange is not understood at this time. The unit appears to be located at the base of a sedimentary-ultramafic package and has been extended as a discontinuous unit over an area measuring approximately 18km by 3km.

Anomalous silver, copper and molybdenum are also associated with the gold mineralization.

In furtherance of the advancement of the Gunners cove Gold Poject, White Metal is very pleased to engage Robert Middleton, P.Eng as the senior consulting geologist on the Gunners Cove Gold Project. Robert Middleton, P.Eng is a seasoned geologist who has reviewed numerous gold producers in North America and many other deposits worldwide and has observed many different geological gold settings. He has also worked on gold deposits in South Africa, Kyrgestan and Europe and, as a result, he has wide knowledge of many geological settings for gold.

White Metal's technical consultants and geologists and its board believe that this widespread geological knowledge of Robert Middleton, P.Eng. is one of possibly several additions that is required at this stage to comprehend the Gunners Cove Gold Project in order to have a better undertstanding of potential opportunities and potential follow-up work. Of significance, Robert Middleton was chief geophysicist and Vice President of Rosario Resources and in this capacity he worked on many gold settings in North America and Central America and the Carribean and, in particular, worked very extensively on the Pueblo Viejo gold deposit in the Dominican Republic, which is situated on a major thrust fault on a plate boundary with deformed metasediments such as argillites and graphitic sediments containing sulphides with low grade .14 oz per tonne gold values. This setting is believed by some technical experts to be similar to the Gunner Cove Gold Project in that there is an extensive deformation zone consisting of deformed metasediments and graphitic rocks with sulphides.

At Pueblo Viejo, for example, these sediments occur beneath a tropical weathered zone that was mined as oxide ore and work has continued to this date by Barrick Gold Corporation (TSX: ABX) mining the graphitic sulphide zone. The Pueblo Viejo mine was originally developed by Rosario Resources Corp. and brought forward in 1975. It was nationalized in 1979 and continued to operate and being managed by Rosario Dominicana until it was taken on by Placer Dome which was subsequently bought by Barrick Gold Corporation which now operates the mine in a JV with Goldcorp Inc. (TSX:G). Pueblo Viejo are mining the footwall sediments with sulphides and low grade gold values of approximately .13 oz per tonne. Robert Middleton believes that the gold is locked up in the graphite and sulphides similar to pyrite and sphalerite at Pueblo Viejo and the Gunners Cove Gold Project is hypothesized by him to be similar to the Pueblo Viejo foot wall zone and the Russian deposit of Sukhoi Log mine, the Austraian Kargoorlie mines associated with black shale or the Paracatu mine in Brazil, operated by Kinross Gold Inc. (TSE:K).

Jean-Pierre Colin, President & CEO of White Metals, commented, "Previous assay results from our prospecting grab sampling programs do not compare well with results from our recently completed channel sampling program. Nonetheless, our board of directors is confident that given further exploration and interpretation, including possible additional sampling programs, White Metal can possiby demonstrate the prospectivity of the Project. Our short-term plan is to engage several geologists and to promote the creation of an advisory board to study in more detail what is now better known about the Gunners Cove Gold Property and discuss requirements for future exploration. We look toward early 2019 for the implementation of additional work on the Property, if warranted by our geologists and consultants. In the meantime, White Metal continues to examine and negotiate alternative properties of merit to add to its portfolio. On behalf of the entire board of directors of White Metal, we recognize and thank our employees, our consultants and all our loyal shareholders for their continued support."

Technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Scott Jobin-Bevans (P.Geo.), Vice President Exploration and a Director of White Metal, who is a Qualified Person under the definitions established by the National Instrument 43-101.

For more information in regards to the Gunners Cove Property you can visit the company's Web Page at www.whitemetalres.com.

About White Metal Resources Corp (TSXV: WHM):

White Metal Resources Corp is a junior exploration company exploring in Canada and currently has 35,691,073 common shares issued and outstanding.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of White Metal Resources Corp.

"Michael Stares"

Michael Stares, Director

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements."

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to gold price and other commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projection.

For further information contact:

Michael Stares

684 Squier Street

Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, P7B 4A8

Phone: (807) 628-7836 Fax (807) 475 7200Artprice and Artron have just created an "Art Media Mogul"

After seven years of collaboration, cultural exchange and regular trips between China and Europe, the two founders and presidents of Artron and Artprice, WAN Jie and thierry Ehrmann (who are exactly the same age and share the same commitments), share the same vision of the Global Art Market and the same passion for Art within the context of a loyal and mutually respectful friendship.

This long and infallible relationship has allowed both groups to work extremely quickly without cultural barriers to build an "Art Media Mogul". By analogy, it's exactly as if Baidu and Google were merging their respective knowledge.

Artron is the world's largest printer of art books with more than 60,000 books and auction catalogues and a total publication volume of 300 million a year. Artron.net is the most respected brand in the Chinese art world. Artron is celebrating his 25th anniversary. Established in 1993, Artron Art Group celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Artprice is the world leader in Art Market Information since 1987 with 4,500,000 members its databanks with information from 6,300 auctioneers and publishes a constant flow of art market trends for the world's principal news agencies and approximately 7,200 international press publications. Artprice gives access to the world's leading Standardised Marketplace for buying and selling art.

Last Friday, 12 October 2018, at Artprice's head office in Lyon, France, Artron CEO and founder, WAN Jie, along with his staff, and Artprice CEO and founder, thierry Ehrmann, along with his staff, signed a historic agreement between the two groups.

Official video of the Friday 12 October 2018 signing ceremony and talks about the 10 new development agreements at Artprice's head office in France:

https://vimeo.com/296010836

Facebook (450k views)

https://www.facebook.com/228501370495445/posts/2201077099904519

Twitter

https://twitter.com/artpricedotcom/status/1053538253192749056

Chinese:

https://vimeo.com/296008906

A series of development agreements in principle (10, soon to be delivered) was discussed and. They go far beyond the exclusive distribution contract allowing for Artprice subscriptions to be marketed through the Chinese Intranet to millions of Chinese art collectors - via Artron Group's customers - in China.

The scope of the 10 new development agreements discussed on 12 October 2018 will have a structural impact on the Global Art Market and on Art History, according to Art historians, in a way that no-one could have imagined. At the same time, Artprice and Artron are on the verge of an extraordinary evolution during which, from a shareholder perspective, Artprice will change in dimension - economically, financially and historically - as of 2019.

Artron produces all the catalogues of Chinese auction houses and handles the postal or digital mailing of these catalogues to their final customers. It will be possible for Artprice subscriptions, sold exclusively by Artron in China, to directly reach the target audience.

Similarly, Artprice will be featured on the homepage of Artron.Net which, according to many studies, is the most respected brand in the Chinese art world. Artron.net has more than 3 million members and receives more than 9 million online visitors per day (on average) or 270 million visitors per month to their website.

Via Artron, there exists a massive potential demand for Artprice subscriptions, including its unique decision support tools, because these tools allow China's collectors, art professionals and its museum industry to acquire Western artworks with total assurance that they have complete mastery of all the relevant pricing information, the artist's background and their "economic profile'.

Thanks to Artron's expert advice, Artprice fully complies with the specifications and conditions of China's Great Electronic Firewall (Law CL97 (1997) et seq.) and its Golden Shield protocol (1998).

To do so, Artprice has deployed the obligatory Alipay and WeChat Chinese payment platforms (1.8 billion users) for Chinese buyers after developing no less than 54 million pages in Mandarin on its Internet accessible data banks (which took seven years...).

In order to conform to Law CL97, Artprice spent two years rewriting all its data bank code in order to eliminate all US and European corporate source code containing cookies, tags, metadata or backdoor elements (amongst other elements).

In fact, thanks to Artron's assistance and advice, Artprice has managed to achieve what the GAFA's have tried on numerous occasions but failed. It has managed to penetrate the core of the Chinese Intranet.

What was discussed on Friday 12 October 2018 far exceeds what was originally planned. It follows on from a summit meeting held in March 2018 in Beijing between Artprice's and Artron/AMMA's executive teams, and should broaden the two companies' Marketplaces.

Artron is the world's largest printer of art books with more than 60,000 books and auction catalogues and a total publication volume of 300 million.



To understand the power of Artron and its unavoidable position in China, follow the link to this video in English...

http://english.artron.com.cn/about/video/index

Read Artron's official presentation: http://english.artron.com.cn/about/introduction/index

The exclusive contract for the distribution of Artprice subscriptions to Artron's customers and the ten new additional agreements in principle can be implemented rapidly on the basis of the two companies' mutual knowledge resulting from seven years of constant partnership, proving that long-term collaboration, patience and hard work are the keys to success.

In 2018, China accounted for 45% of global online art trade, conducting twelve times more online transactions than the United States. China has a huge advantage over the West because it is building its market economy directly on the Internet. Moreover, no-one doubts that China's Art Market will account for 70% of the global Art Market as of 2020. Artprice, as the world leader in Art Market information, had to be central to its market. It should not be forgotten that France accounted for 4% of H1 2018 results.

For further information regarding the historical background of relations between Artprice and Artron/AMMA and its economic consequences, please refer to Artprice's reference documents and, in particular, to its 2017 registration document filed with the AMF (France's Financial Markets Supervisory Authority) on 1 June 2018 (in accordance with the Article 212-13 of the AMF's General Regulations) and to Artprice's Press Releases.

More details, video clips and photos of the signing and accompanying speeches will be online shortly on Artprice's and Artron's social networks.

About Artprice:

Artprice is listed on the Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only and Euroclear: 7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF.

Dicover Artprice in video: https://www.artprice.com/video

Artprice is the global leader in art price and art index databanks. It has over 30 million indices and auction results covering more than 700,000 artists. Artprice Images(R) gives unlimited access to the largest Art Market resource in the world: a library of 126 million images or prints of artworks from the year 1700 to the present day, along with comments by Artprice's art historians.

12 Oct. 2018: Artprice and Artron have just created an "Art Media Mogul" :

Video: https://vimeo.com/296010836

Artprice permanently enriches its databanks with information from 6,300 auctioneers and it publishes a constant flow of art market trends for the world's principal news agencies and approximately 7,200 international press publications. For its 4,500,000 members, Artprice gives access to the world's leading Standardised Marketplace for buying and selling art. Artprice is preparing its blockchain for the Art Market. It is BPI-labelled (scientific national French label)Artprice's Global Art Market Annual Report for 2017 published last March 2018: https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2017

Artprice's Contemporary Art Market Annual Report for 2017 - free access at: https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2017

Artprice's press releases:

http://serveur.serveur.com/Press_Release/pressreleaseen.htm

https://twitter.com/artpricedotcom

Artmarket News:

https://twitter.com/artpricedotcom & https://twitter.com/artmarketdotcom

https://www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom & https://plus.google.com/+artpricedotcom/posts

http://artmarketinsight.wordpress.com/

Discover the Alchemy and the universe of Artprice http://web.artprice.com/video , which headquarters are the famous Museum of Contemporary Art, the Abode of Chaos:

http://goo.gl/zJssd

https://vimeo.com/124643720

The Contemporary Art Museum The Abode of Chaos on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999

Contact: ir@artprice.com

------------------------



 Copyright Actusnews Wire

Receive by email the next press releases of the company by registering on www.actusnews.com, it's free

Full and original release in PDF format:https://www.actusnews.com/documents_communiques/ACTUS-0-55614-artprice-artron-art-media-mogul-en.pdfRIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The five day conference with over 2,000 registered attendees saw a number of educational sessions with experienced speakers from across the globe, together with a series of workshops, award ceremonies and an interactive exhibition floor, featuring over 30 leading companies. The HIMSS Saudi Arabia Conference and Exhibition 2018 was organised by the Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Health Council, the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, and HIMSS Middle East.

This unique event addressed best practices, practical solutions and cutting edge developments in the digital health ecosystem. Manal Almalki, PhD, of Jazan University in Saudi Arabia, said: "This conference brings a lot of value to the Saudi society and community. HIMSS serves the community of IT and health by bringing them together, let them discuss and talk about the use and the best practices using information and technology for transforming health, improving the healthcare system and its delivery. I have heard people talking about virtual clinic, cloud computing, blockchain and many more topics equally important for the transformation of health into a digital environment."

Awards and recognitions for digital excellence

On Wednesday 11 October, John Daniels announced the hospitals and organizations from across the Middle East who have achieved Stage 6 or 7 from a number of the HIMSS Analytics Maturity and Adoption Models. Over the last year, eight different hospitals and health care organizations from across the Middle East have jointly achieved excellence in a number of maturity models, including: the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM), the Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (O-EMRAM), the Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity (AMAM), the Digital Imaging Maturity Model (DIAM), and the Continuity of Care Maturity Model (CCMM). Reaching these levels of maturity implies establishing clear goals for improving safety, minimizing errors, and recognizing the importance of information and technology in healthcare.

In addition, the HIMSS-Elsevier Digital Healthcare Awards, now in its fourth Middle Eastern edition, recognised the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention as the winner of this year's award for its project, "Universal Newborn Critical Congenital Heart Disorders (CCHD) Screening in MOHAP Maternity Hospitals", which standardizes CCHD screening to ensure all babies are tested positive after screening, and to receive critical interventions in a timely and safe manner.

Highlights: 2030 Vision and disruptive technologies

One of the most highly anticipated sessions during HIMSS Saudi Arabia 2018 was the "2030 Visionary Innovation in Healthcare Transformation". Amongst other speakers, Dr. Sadek Al Shouli MD MBA MPH, CEO, Dal Digital Health Solution & Information Technology highlighted the need to have healthcare organizations adopting up-to-date, innovative strategies and addressed some of the challenges they could all face, working towards a common goal for high-quality patient care.

Recent scientific and technological advances in the healthcare sector were also presented during the conference. So-called disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Precision Medicine that could affect patients, doctors and services were all brought to the table, encouraging thought-provoking discussions.

Roadmap for 2019

Charles Alessi, Chief Clinical Officer at HIMSS, announced the launch of a new initiative in the Middle East: the "Future50 Community", which aims to identify and bring together the top 50 digital health leaders in the region. Once identified, this community will work alongside HIMSS and many partners to overcome current and future systemic health challenges. These 50 individuals will influence the potential of digital health to improve healthcare for all of us. The Future50 community will be encouraged to share expertise, collaborate over borders and foster innovation both individually and as a group. Nomination process and eligibility criteria will be announced shortly.

Next year's annual conference will be in the fall and will be hosted in Jeddah, KSA on 2-5 November 2019. HIMSS Middle East looks forward to gathering digital health stakeholders again next year 2019.

About HIMSS

HIMSS is a global advisor and thought leader supporting the transformation of health through information and technology. As a mission driven non-profit, HIMSS offers a unique depth and breadth of expertise in health innovation, public policy, workforce development, research and analytics to advise global leaders, stakeholders and influencers on best practices in health information and technology. Through our innovation companies, HIMSS delivers key insights, education and engaging events to healthcare providers, governments and market suppliers, ensuring they have the right information at the point of decision. As an association, HIMSS encompasses more than 72,000 individual members and 630 corporate members. We partner with hundreds of providers, academic institutions and health services organizations on strategic initiatives that leverage innovative information and technology. Together, we work to improve health, access and the quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, HIMSS serves the global health information and technology communities with focused operations across North America, Europe, United Kingdom, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. www.himssme.orgThe Leading Conversational AI for Banking Provider Closes Second Funding Round, Announces Hire of Former IBM Watson Executive Linda Wittich

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / Finn AI today announced it has completed a $14 Million (USD $11 Million) Series A financing round.

The round was led by Yaletown Partners and Flying Fish Partners and joined by new investors BDC Capital's Women in Technology Fund (WIT), and New York-based 1843 Capital , an early stage technology venture firm advocating for gender equity to generate superior returns. Additional investment was provided by angel investors. Lending facilities were provided by Comerica Bank.

The new funding will be used to support the growth momentum underway at Finn AI across North America and Europe. The financing will allow Finn AI to enhance enterprise tooling and extend its core product to support additional banking and personal finance capabilities for existing customers including ATB Financial, Bank of Montreal, Banpro Grupo Promerica, Commonwealth Bank, and Fidor Bank.

"We've seen great progress in our business over the last twelve months, doubling our team to over 50 across North America and acquiring a number of major new customers and partners," said Jake Tyler, Co-Founder and CEO of Finn AI. "As the market moves beyond early experiments into scale production deployments we are seeing greater demand for our proven enterprise grade Conversational AI platform."

Along with contributing to the initial round of funding in 2017, Yaletown Partners continues to support Finn AI as it enters this period of strong growth. Yaletown Partners leveraged its Innovation Growth Fund (IGF) for this round of financing, which focuses on scaling companies that expand the innovation economy across industries and sectors through the adoption of software and IT technologies.

"Banks around the world are rapidly adopting Conversational AI to deepen relationships with customers, drive sales and migrate routine, high volume tasks and queries to digital self-serve channels" said Eric Bukovinsky, Partner, Yaletown Partners. "Finn AI has proven it can deliver with major banks across North America, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. We're excited to support them in this next stage of their growth."

Flying Fish Partners also expanded their support of Finn AI in this financing. Their partnership team includes Heather Redman as well as Geoff Harris, former Managing Director of the Voice and Natural Language business at Microsoft, and Frank Chang, who led Microsoft's core engineering team in the same unit.

"With its deep, domain-specific platform, Finn AI has a competitive advantage in the application and scaling of conversational AI within the financial services vertical" said Frank Chang, Managing Partner, Flying Fish Partners. "The team combines state of the art natural language technology, a wealth of training data, and a true understanding of banking and personal finance to create a best of breed product. We are excited to continue our partnership as they grow their business and maintain their leadership position."

Additionally, Mr. Bukovinsky of Yaletown Partners and Mr. Chang of Flying Fish Partners will join the Finn AI board of directors.

The participation of BDC Capital's $200 Million WIT fund in this round draws focus to the importance of female-led initiatives within technology. The WIT fund is one of the world's largest venture capital funds dedicated to investing in women-led technology companies. Interest in Finn AI by BDC Capital was driven in part by the leadership of Natalie Cartwright, COO and co-founder of the company.

"Finn AI aligns well with the goals of our Women in Technology Venture Fund," said Michelle Scarborough, Managing Director, Strategic Investments and Women in Technology Venture Fund, BDC Capital. "Along with a strong leadership team, we believe that Finn AI is building a globally competitive business that will deliver strong returns - exactly what our investors expect from any of our investments."

Finn AI also announced the addition of financial services veteran Linda Wittich as Managing Director, Global Sales & Strategic Account Management. As a key member of the senior leadership team, Wittich will lead sales and strategic accounts as Finn AI continues to expand in North America and globally.

Previous to joining Finn AI, Wittich was the Strategic Delivery Executive with IBM for their AI-based Watson for Wealth solutions. In addition, Wittich has held a variety of sales leadership and new product development roles at globally-recognized financial services technology firms including Broadridge, DTCC/NSCC and Citi. Wittich is located in the USA and will report directly to the CEO, Jake Tyler.

"I am thrilled to be joining such an impressive team of FinTech experts dedicated to democratizing banking and personal finance - a long-time passion of mine," stated Wittich. "With multiple banks already using the platform, Finn AI is quickly developing the strongest banking language model in the market. Based on my experience, this means banks can accelerate their time to market by as much as 50 to 80 percent. This is a strong value proposition and one that is definitely resonating within the market."

This raise and new hire news follows the recent announcement of Finn AI's partnership with Visa Canada , a first-if-its-kind collaboration centered on the use of the Visa Developer API platform to develop new capabilities for conversational banking chatbots and AI. Finn AI also recently co-presented with their customer, Bank of Montreal (BMO), at Finovate NYC where they showcased the BMO Bolt conversational assistant, powered by Finn AI.

For interviews and further information, please contact:

Murphie Mendez

Caliber Corporate Advisers

888.550.6385 ext. 6

murphie@calibercorporateadvisers.com

About Finn AI

Finn AI is an award-winning, AI-powered virtual assistant built for personal banking and finance. We put a personal banker in every bank customer's pocket, helping them to manage their money wherever they are, whatever they need - via a simple, natural conversation.

The Finn AI team of data scientists, engineers, and financial industry experts helps banks and credit unions transform customer engagement and increase financial literacy, while delivering the convenience and savings of a digital-first experience.

Today we have successful public deployments with a growing global customer base that includes ATB Financial, Bank of Montreal (BMO), Banpro Grupo Promerica, Commonwealth Bank, Fidor Bank, and TymeDigital, as well as partnerships with Visa Canada and Temenos.

SOURCE: Finn AI

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/525876/Finn-AI-Closes-14-Million-Series-A-FinancingAs announced at the presentation of the 2018 half-year results, Beter Bed Holding (Beter Bed) kicked off a strategic journey to recover profitable sales growth. At the Capital Markets Day to be held today, Beter Bed presents its short-term restructuring and mid-term sales growth plans. The full presentation is available on the corporate website.

Beter Bed's international brands have been leading providers of sleep solutions to their customers for the past 35 years. Consumers are increasingly aware of the relevance of sleep, reinforced by trends such as health & wellbeing, lifestyle, sustainability, accessibility and affordability. Beter Bed is convinced that these consumer trends combined with its strong heritage create great market potential for a strong value-for-money player, and that its brands are perfectly equipped to fulfil this potential.

The strategy presented today comprises two phases and a performance framework aimed at creating value for all stakeholders.

Phase 1: short-term restructuring

The first phase of the strategic journey is already in full progress. We have new leadership teams in place in Holding, Matratzen Concord and the Dutch organisation, and have announced the discontinuation of El Gigante del Colchon operation in Spain by November 1st 2018 and the reorganization of Matratzen Concord, closing 176 stores and reducing headcount by 64 FTE by the end of 2018.

We have started a capex and inventory reduction program towards year-end 2018 and are implementing a "Fight for sales" program, including aggressive promotions, in-store communication, improved and more creative online campaigns.

This phase will be completed by a major push to regain short-term sales momentum in all markets in Q4 2018.

Phase 2: mid-term strategy

The new mid-term strategy is supported by the new customer value proposition to "offer best quality rest @ affordable prices". There are five strategic pillars to deliver this proposition:

Value-for-money customer proposition : offer the best quality products at guaranteed best competitive prices in each key customer segment through a smaller and more focused assortment, including new value brands.

: offer the best quality products at guaranteed best competitive prices in each key customer segment through a smaller and more focused assortment, including new value brands. Best advice : provide the best sleep advice throughout the full customer journey.

: provide the best sleep advice throughout the full customer journey. Seamless omni-channel : lead in digital and online by leveraging Group capabilities and launching new, innovative online products and services.

: lead in digital and online by leveraging Group capabilities and launching new, innovative online products and services. Performance culture : create a strong performance culture that enables to win, lead and outcompete in the market and in sustainability.

: create a strong performance culture that enables to win, lead and outcompete in the market and in sustainability. Cost leadership : becoming a cost leader in the value-for-money segment by leveraging its market leading scale and increasing focus on spend reduction and operational excellence, all driven by the new One Group Leadership Team.

Performance framework

The mid-term strategy is supported by a performance framework in which clear measures with realistic ambitions have been formulated. The framework consists of strategic, customer, employee, operational and financial elements and metrics to track progress for each of the five strategic pillars. Key elements are:

Cost savings of 25 million by 2020;

Capex investments of 3 - 4% of sales per year;

Online channel share towards 20% of total Sales.



In its drive for value creation, Beter Bed targets annual sales growth of 4-5% per year with sustainable EBITDA margins of 7-9% over the medium term.

With this performance framework, Beter Bed will continue to operate within the existing credit facilities. Beter Bed agreed with its banks to amend the Net debt / EBITDA covenant as per year-end 2018 to an absolute EBITDA measure. The banks are in full support of the strategy.

Our long-term dividend pay-out remains unchanged with a minimum of 50% of net profits distributed, assuming the financial position of the company is sufficient. For 2018 and 2019 no dividend is expected.

The One Group Leadership Team will now fully focus on the implementation of the plans presented in the two phases. Progress on the delivery of the two phases and the performance framework will be shared on a regular basis. The team is convinced that, with this mid-term strategy, the company can build upon its market leading positions to drive value creation for all stakeholders.

Profile

Beter Bed Holding is a European retail organisation that strives to offer its customers a comfortable and healthy night's rest every night at an affordable price. The retail formats ensure products of good quality, offer customers the best advice and always the best possible deal. Beter Bed Holding is also active as a wholesaler of branded products in the bedroom furnishing sector via its subsidiary DBC International (M line). In 2017, the company achieved revenue of 416 million with a total of 1188 stores. 64% of this figure was realised outside the Netherlands.

For more information

John Kruijssen Hugo van den Ochtend

CEO CFO

+31 hugo.vandenochtend@beterbed.nl

Please click on the link below for the Pdf of this press release.



AttachmentModerators: Bryan Arkwright, William Baker, Fred Bazzoli, Tory Cenaj, Kevin A. Clauson, PharmD, Todd Eury, Heather Flannery, John D Halamka, Rajiv Leventhal, MD, Ron Ribitzky, MD, Tom Savel, MD, Ted Tanner

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / Convege2Xcelerate healthcare blockchain Conference (ConV2X) is proud to announce its 2ndannual conference agenda panel moderators. The event which is being help at Columbia University on October 24th, 2018 - will bring together some of the best minds in Healthcare to moderate over 90 C-level and academic honored market leaders across 45 sessions discussing blockchain and health technologies - cover use-case and application technologies such as AI, IoT, machine learning, and telehealth.

Founder and Publisher, Tory Cenaj, of Partners in Digital Health, commented: " we are honored to have such a distinguished roster of moderators who champion health innovations to drive better outcomes for institutions and patients not only in the US but around the globe."

Moderators: Bryan Arkwright, William Baker, Fred Bazzoli, Tory Cenaj. Kevin A. Clauson, PharmD, Todd Eury, Heather Flannery, John D Halamka, Rajiv Leventhal, MD, Ron Ribitzky, MD, Tom Savel, MD, Ted Tanner.

About the Honored Moderators:

Bryan T. Arkwright is a Managing Consultant with Schumacher Clinical Partners Consulting and Physician Advisory Services focusing on Telehealth / Telemedicine Strategy and Operations.

William Baker heads the NYU Global Debate Fund, housed in the Business & Society Dept. of the Stern Business School and is the CIO for Baker Consulting Associates (BCA) based in Dallas, Texas. As a leading authority on debate training, strategy & operations, Will is one of the top corporate debate consultants in NYC.

Fred Bazzoli is Editor in Chief at Health Data Management and coordinates editorial operations, with oversight of digital news, print publications and special projects. Fred was most recently senior director of communications at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

Tory Cenaj, is Partners in Digital Health, Founder and Publisher of the innovative online journal Telehealth and Medicine TodayTM. She has extensive experience in healthcare publishing and communications, managing medical journals, publication planning, continuing medical education, and digital health portfolios.

Kevin A. Clauson, PharmD is an associate professor at the Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences in Nashville, TN, USA. Dr. Clauson previously served as founding director of the first World Health Organization Collaborating Center to prioritize mobile health (mHealth) initiatives in its work plan.

Todd Eury, Founder of Pharmacy Podcast Network and Director of Strategy and Business Development at New Season and leads his team in B.D. and marketing efforts of the nations leading provider of Medication Assisted Treatment to support communities in the addiction recovery sector of healthcare. Building community networks with political leaders, health-systems, law enforcement, and behavioral health organizations to reach more patients suffering with the disease of opioid addiction.

Heather Flannery is the Health Circle Global Lead at ConsenSys and the Co-Founder and Board Chair of Blockchain in Healthcare Global ("BiHG"), a new trade association organized under the IEEE ISTO launching in Q4 2018. She chairs the IEEE SA P2418.6 Standards Development Working Group (blockchain in healthcare and life sciences) and serves as the FY19 Co-Chair of the global HIMSS Blockchain in Healthcare Task Force.

John D. Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dean of Technology for Harvard Medical Schoo , is responsible for all clinical, financial, administrative, and academic information technology, serving 3,000 doctors, 12,000 employees, and 1,000,000 patients. As chairman of NEHEN, Dr. Halamka oversees clinical and administrative data exchange among the payers, providers, and patients in Massachusetts. Dr. Halamkaspecializes in the adoption of electronic health records and the secure sharing of healthcare data for care coordination, population health, and quality improvement.

Rajiv Leventhal is Managing Editor of Healthcare Informatics, covering healthcare IT leadership and strategy for the renowned, award-winning publication. Since 2012, he has been covering the daily impact of regulatory measures on Healthcare Informatics' CIO and CMIO-based audience and has taken keen interest in areas such as patient engagement, health information exchange, mobile health, healthcare data security, and telemedicine.

Ron Ribitzky, MDis Founder & CEO of R&D Ribitzky. An entrepreneurial driver and enabler of pragmatic innovation, Dr. Ribitzky is a highly accomplished Physician executive with 30 years of cross-functional experience in Healthcare IT, Life-Sciences Informatics, and Precision Medicine. Dr. Ribitzky has broad and deep hands-on, managerial, and scientific technology expertise that includes AI, analytics, UX prototyping, blockchain, semantic services, and NLP, among other.

Tom Savel, MDis a Health IT physician executive at the CDC. 15+ years creating bridges and solutions at the intersection of technology, healthcare, and public health. Always striving to leverage the power of technology innovation to transform public health. Passionate presenter and educator of this rapidly ever-evolving, multidisciplinary field. An advocate of servant leadership. Profoundly honored to have worked at the CDC since 2003.

Ted Tanner is Co-Founder and CTO of PokitDok and a creator of DokChain, blockchain for healthcare. Focused primarily on Artificial Intelligence and Agent-Based Systems, Ted has held architect positions at both Apple and Microsoft and held instrumental roles in several start-ups, including Digidesign (IPO and acquired by Avid), Crystal River Engineering (acquired by Aureal Semiconductor), VP of R&D at MongoMusic (acquired by Microsoft) and Co-Founder and CTO of BeliefNetworks (acquired by Benefitfocus).

Event Sponsors: ConsenSys Health, BurstIQ, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cadent Medical Communications, Healthcare Informatics, Health Data Management, HealthVerity, Izzy, Nonnatech, Pharmacy Podcast, SimplyVital & 1800pr.

About ConVerge2Xcelerate Conference (ConV2X)

The ConVerge2Xcelerate Conference focuses on practical and next-generation discussions on healthcare and blockchain use-case and applications by academic, established and emerging growth industry leaders - taking a close look at what is driving innovation and changes in our healthcare delivery systems today.

Hosted by Columbia University, the 2nd annual event will be held in NYC on October 24, 2018. The event will bring together over 90 C-level and academic honored market leaders across 50 sessions discussing blockchain and health technologies. The one-day event will cover technologies such as AI, IoT, machine learning, and telehealth.

Meet and network with pioneers, innovators, government, industry specialists, and university leaders. Join us and become part of the dialogue!

To learn more: ConVerge2Xelerate

*Media and Communication support provided by 1-800-PublicRelations (1800pr)

CONTACTS:

Sponsorship Contact:

Randy Knotts

P: 312-933-4700

E: randyknotts@partnersindigitalhealth.com

Event Director Contact:

Tiffani DeLorenzo

P: 201.787.7461

E: info@partnersindigitalhealth.com

PR & Media Contacts:

Matthew Bird

CEO @1800pr

1-800-PublicRelations

O: 646.401.4499

E: matt.bird@1800pr.com

Stella Rankin

EVP @1800pr

1-800-PublicRelations

O: 917.608.1480

E: stella.rankin@1800pr.com

SOURCE: ConVerge2Xcelerate Conference

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526006/Convege2Xcelerate-2018-Announces-Moderators-for-Healthcare-Blockchain-Industry-Conference-at-University-of-Columbia--NYC-Oct-24-2018-ConV2XDIDCOT, UNITED KINGDOM / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / Steven Poulton announces that on October 19 2018, he purchased 795,431 Ordinary Shares ("Shares") of Altus Strategies Plc (the "Company") (TSX-V: ALTS) at an aggregate price of 0.0322 per Share (being C$0.055 per Share at the then prevailing /C$ foreign exchange rate).

Immediately prior to the purchase of the Shares, Mr. Poulton controlled a total of 24,354,569 Shares in the Company, representing approximately 13.70% of the Company's issued and outstanding Shares of 177,782,686 Shares. After the Share purchase Mr. Poulton controlled an aggregate of 25,150,000 Shares, representing approximately 14.15% of the Company's issued and outstanding Shares.

The purchase of the Shares by Mr. Poulton was primarily made for investment purposes. Mr. Poulton may increase or decrease his investment in the Company from time to time according to market conditions or other relevant factors.

Mr. Poulton is issuing this news release pursuant to the requirements of National Instrument 62-103 - The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues. A copy of the related early warning report (the "Report") will be issued and filed by Mr. Poulton on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com under the Company's profile.

The Company's head office is located at 14 Station Road, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 7LL, United Kingdom. For further information or to obtain a copy of the Report, contact Kim Casswell, the administrative secretary of the Company at: kcasswell@seabordservices.com.

SOURCE: Altus Strategies Plc

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526032/Acquisition-of-Ordinary-Shares-of-Altus-Strategies-PLCLONDON, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Top 20 accountancy firm Kingston Smith LLP has joined Expatland's London E-Team. The firm will provide tax and accountancy services to the London E-Team's clients.

Kingston Smith is a founding member of Morison KSi. This international association provides consultancy in cross-border accounting, auditing and tax from over 85 partner offices. With deep insight into the issues facing expats, Kingston Smith is a name that inspires confidence.

The Expatland Global Network is assembling E-Teams in major expat destinations. Each team brings together vetted professionals who offer essential services to expats. Through one point of contact, they can access expert advice and local insight on all aspects of moving to, and living in, a location.

John Marcarian, founder of the Expatland Global Network, says, "Kingston Smith has shown unfaltering confidence in the E-Team concept. As a renowned accountancy firm with global outreach, it will be a great asset to our fast-growing London E-Team."

Mike Scoltock, partner at Kingston Smith, comments, "This is an excellent opportunity for us and represents a natural fit for our highly experienced team of advisers. Expatland is building a reputation as a trusted community of expat service providers. We are looking forward to supporting E-Team's clients through our dedicated range of tax, accountancy and advisory services. We are also eager to begin working with partners, to provide holistic expat support."

Richard Feakins, Expatland London E-Team leader, says, "Bringing Kingston Smith onboard is a reflection of the quality of the Expatland offering. We are delighted to welcome Mike and his team and look forward to working together to assist expats moving to London."

'Expatland' origins

Expatland began as a best-selling book by John Marcarian, written in 2015. Expanding on this idea, John launched the Expatland Global Network in 2018. His aim was to support people all over the world who are looking to join the vast, dynamic expat community. E-Teams in major expat destinations will deliver vital expat services, alongside destination-specific insight.

E-Team members are non-competitive and share leads, fostering business growth. Each member contributes to city-specific editions of the Expatland book. These are free-to-download and packed with locally-focused advice, tips and case studies.

The Expatland Global Network is expanding rapidly. There are now E-Teams in Sydney, Melbourne, LA, Singapore, Auckland and London.

Businesses interested in joining an E-Team in their city can get in touch with Expatland: http://www.expatland.com/contact/

Contact:

Lloyd Gofton

lloyd@liberatemedia.com

+44-(0)7919-353-484At present, the Kolkata-based company's total torch and battery business accounts for 70 percent of its turnover

Mumbai: Dry cell battery major Eveready is focusing on the lighting and appliances business to drive its growth and expects the two segments to contribute almost half in its turnover in the next 4-5 years, a senior company executive has said.

At present, the Kolkata-based company's total torch and battery business accounts for 70 percent of its turnover. "Torch and battery business has been growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 2-3 percent over the last few years. We are focusing on other categories to grow our business or topline," Anil Bajaj, senior vice-president for sales and marketing, Eveready, told PTI.

"The projection in the next four to five years time is our turnover from the non-torch and battery category should start reflecting 45-50 percent on our business. For this the challenge is to grow to lighting business and appliances business," he added.

It had clocked a turnover of Rs 1,450 crore last fiscal, of which torch and batteries accounted for Rs 950 crore while lighting business contributed Rs 300 crore, the company said.

The appliances segment accounted for Rs 100 crore and its packet tea segment contributed Rs 70-75 crore. This financial year, the company aims to grow at around 15 percent.

Eveready is estimated to have a 55 percent market share in batteries in terms of volume and 65 percent share in value terms. In the torch category, it holds over 80 percent of the total market pie. The battery market is estimated to be Rs 1,300-1400 crore, of which the company's share is Rs 750 crore.

In terms of volume, Eveready sells 1.2 million batteries of the total around 2.2 to 2.3 billion batteries market per year.

The torch industry is pegged at Rs 240-250 crore, of which Eveready's estimated share is Rs 200 crore.

The company which spends 3-4 percent of its turnover on marketing activities, said metros and top 20 towns account for 30 percent of the business.

"Urban vs rural consumption for overall business would be 60:40. For batteries it would be more skewed towards rural,Bajaj said.

He added that online contributes close to 10 percent of sales for the appliances business.Since the ITC is availed on the basis of summary sales return or GSTR-3B filed. the deadline for ITC claims and GSTR-3B have been kept same

New Delhi: The Finance Ministry on Sunday extended the deadline for filing summary sales return GSTR-3B for the month of September by five days to 25 October.

With this extension, businesses which wish to claim Input Tax Credit (ITC) benefit for July 2017-March 2018 period can do so till 25 October.

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), under the Finance Ministry, said trade and industry had expressed apprehension relating to 20 October due date for claiming ITC under GST for July 2017-March 2018.

"With a view to give some more time for the same, the last date for furnishing GSTR-3B for the month of September, 2018 is being extended up to 25th October, 2018, the CBIC tweeted.

The GSTR-3B of a particular month has to be filed by the 20th day of the subsequent month. The deadline for the September return filing was 20 October.

"The extension of the said due date also implies that the last date for availing of ITC for the period July 2017 to March 2018 also gets extended up to 25 October 2018," the Finance Ministry later said in a statement.

Businesses had expressed concern about the 20 October deadline, saying there would be trouble in reconciling their sales returns with the purchase returns filed by their suppliers.

Since the ITC is availed on the basis of summary sales return or GSTR-3B filed. the deadline for ITC claims and GSTR-3B have been kept same.

Goods and Services Tax (GST) was rolled out on 1 July 2017.

"The ministry further said that for those taxpayers who have been recently migrated from erstwhile tax regime to GST regime, the last date for availing ITC for the period July 2017 to March 2018, is 31 December 2018 or the date of filing of annual return whichever is earlier," the statement added.

PwC India Partner and Leader (Indirect Tax) Pratik Jain said while the businesses which could not file the return by 20 October can avail of the extension, this does not really help most large companies which would have already filed their returns by working overtime.

"Since there is no facility for amendment of the return, these companies can not claim the credit which they might have missed," he said.

AMRG & Associates Partner Rajat Mohan said the date extension comes as a shock for compliant payers, whereas it would be a tax bonanza for late filers, non-filers and tax evaders.

"It seems that the government has given a date extension (after expiry) only for lifting public perception rather than creating a conducive environment for businesses to nurture," he said.

Jain said the government should at least extend the due date till 20 November so that credit can be claimed in October return. "This is extremely critical as the amount of credit at stake is huge in many cases," he added.

EY Tax Partner Abhishek Jain, however, said: "This extension of five days would provide some breather to the industry players, most of whom were struggling to avail the FY 17-18 GST credits by 20 October."

Caula Vanadium-Graphite Project Scoping Study Shows Exceptional Economics

Sydney, Oct 22, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - New Energy Minerals Limited ( ASX:NXE ) ( FRA:GGY ) is pleased to report the results of an independent Scoping Study completed by mining consultant group Bara International ("Bara") on the Company's 80% owned Caula Vanadium Graphite Project located in Mozambique.Highlights- The Study demonstrates the viability of an open pit vanadium and graphite mining operation with outstanding economics- Mine life of 26 years based entirely on the JORC Measured Resources for both vanadium and graphite- 1,877 metres of diamond drilling over 16 drillholes and 99 metres of RC drilling (1 drillhole) were completed by the Company for the Scoping Study- Approximately 4,000 metres of additional drilling, sampling, assaying and further testwork underway (drilling and sampling completed) to support Reserve definition and pre-feasibility studies- New Energy Minerals is now focused on delivering pre-feasibility level studies by Q1-2019 as well as the fast-tracked implementation of Phase 1 of the project targeting 1st cashflows in H2-2018To view the full release, please visit:About New Energy Minerals Ltd

New Energy Minerals Ltd (ASX:NXE) (FRA:GGY) is an ASX listed junior mining company, that recently announced the divestment of the Company's Caula vanadium - graphite project and the Montepuez Ruby project in Mozambique.CAIT seeks a further extension as it claims there are issues arising due to technical glitches on the GST portal.

New Delhi: Traders body CAIT on Sunday wrote to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley seeking a further extension of the deadline for filing summary sales return GSTR-3B for September till 31 December, claiming issues arising due to technical glitches on the GST portal.

The Finance Ministry Sunday extended the deadline for filing summary sales return GSTR-3B for the month of September by five days to 25 October.

With this extension, businesses which wish to claim Input Tax Credit (ITC) benefit for July 2017-March 2018 period can do so till 25 October.

In a letter to Jaitley, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said there are numerous technical glitches on the website because of which the dealers/consultants are unable to file their GSTR 3B return for the month of September.

In the wake of no proper functioning of GST portal causing a lot of harassment to tax return filers, we at the first instance urged your good self to extend the due date of filing GSTR 3B for the month of September 2018 till 31 December 2018, CAIT said.

The traders body said this will ensure ITC of FY 2017-18 does not lapse and further to make it in tune with the annual return filing due date.

It may also be inferred from the facts that the intention of the government is to increase the revenue out of late fees income, which is shameful, CAIT said in the letter.

It flagged technical issues in the portal since the last two to three days claiming it cannot take more than 1,50,000 users at a time and is down due to the server.

It further said the entered figures are automatically being converted into zero and miscellaneous errors are popping up at the time of uploading.

In such kind of critical situation, a concrete solution ought to be evolved and make GST a dream law and not a nightmare, CAIT said, urging Jaitley to take necessary action.Earlier this month, GoAir became the sixth domestic carrier to hit international skies with the launch of its inaugural flight to Phuket from New Delhi

Budget carrier GoAir on Monday launched a new sales scheme which offers tickets as low as Rs 999 (all-inclusive) for travel during 22 November 2018 to 22 December, 2018.

The airline is offering low fares under its "Fly smart. Save big" scheme. Bookings for the scheme starts 22 October 2018 and will end on 23 October 2018.

Fly Smart. Save Smart.

Get Go-ing with our low fares starting 999*.

Travel Period:Nov 22nd  Dec 22nd.

Book now: https://t.co/I904hXTcmd. pic.twitter.com/XtKnHaJm6R  GoAir (@goairlinesindia) October 22, 2018

Earlier this month, GoAir became the sixth domestic carrier to hit international skies with the launch of its inaugural flight to Phuket from New Delhi. The inaugural flight (G8 031) with 182 passengers on board was given a ceremonial flag off for Phuket in Thailand at 0100 hours Thursday from New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Besides the national carrier Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express, private carriers Jet Airways, IndiGo and SpiceJet also fly international.

GoAir's first international service was operated by Airbus A320 Neo aircraft, the airline said, adding that it will soon mark the commencement of a direct service on New Delhi-Phuket route twice a week and on Mumbai-Phuket sector thrice a week.

GoAir became eligible to fly overseas two years ago when it took delivery of its 20th aircraft, which was also the first Airbus A320 Neo for the airline.

GoAir currently operates over 1,544 weekly flights across 23 domestic destinations with a fleet of 38 Airbus A320 planes, including 19 A320 Neos.

GoAir, which launched its domestic operations in November 2005, was granted rights in August 2016 to operate to nine countries, including China, Vietnam, Maldives, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among others.

With inputs from PTIThe panel, headed by Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas, is likely to recommend adoption of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) model to deal with cross-border insolvency cases

New Delhi: A high-level panel is likely to recommend a United Nations model for cross-border insolvency cases under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, according to a senior official.

The Insolvency Law Committee (ILC) is looking into the discussion paper related to having the UN model for cross-border insolvency matters as well as the comments received on the paper.

Under the Code, there are provisions to deal with cross-border insolvency matters.

The panel, headed by Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas, is likely to recommend adoption of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) model to deal with such matter. The report is expected to be submitted soon, the official said.

The model would be on the basis of Centre of Main Interests (COMI), which would be defined. In accordance with COMI, the place of main proceedings for cross-border cases would be decided.

Further, the official said it would be essentially a co-operation agreement and the proceedings would be at one place.

Established in 1966, UNCITRAL is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly of the UN with the general mandate to further the progressive harmonisation and unification of the law of international trade, as per its website.

As per UNCITRAL, 'harmonisation' and 'unification' of the law of international trade refers to the process through which the law facilitating international commerce is created and adopted.

"Harmonisation may conceptually be thought of as the process through which domestic laws may be modified to enhance predictability in cross-border commercial transactions.

"Unification may be seen as the adoption by States of a common legal standard governing particular aspects of international business transactions," the website said.

In June, the Corporate Affairs Ministry, while coming out with the draft norms, said it was keen to introduce a globally accepted and well-recognised cross-border insolvency framework, fine-tuned to suit the needs of the aspirational Indian economy.Of the three ports that JNPT plans to buy, only Dighi is operationalwhile the other two are concessions held by corporations with little or no development on the ground.

Mumbai: The country's largest container port JNPT is mulling to acquire three ports in Maharashtra, as it targets to more than double its profits. The Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) is also going ahead with its efforts to develop an offshore port at Wadhawan, north of the financial capital.

Union Shipping and Ports Minister Nitin Gadkari said that the JNPT, which handles more than half of the overall container traffic, is looking to acquire Vijaydurg, Revas and Dighi ports. It can be noted that of the three, only Dighi is an operational port while the other two are concessions held by corporations with little or no development on the ground.

Gadkari said the Revas port, where the concession is held by Reliance Industries, is "in problem" and a solution will have to be found in co-ordination with the Maharashtra government. The minister also said that the port is in talks to acquire Vijay Kalantri-promoted Dighi Port in Raigad district, which is facing financial trouble and has been undergoing resolution in insolvency courts.

According to reports, the Dighi Port owes over Rs 1,600 crore to a consortium of banks led by the Bank of India. While Gadkari did not elaborate on the Vijaydurg port buy, it can be noted that the port for which concession is held by BJP MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar promoted Jupiter Capital will act as the home port for the proposed mega refinery at Nanar, to be built by state-run oil marketing companies.

Asked if JNPT will be given budgetary support for the acquisitions, Gadkari said money is not an issue and the port, located off the financial capital, has enough reserves as it makes Rs 1,400 crore profits a year.

Gadkari said there are "environmental and political" issues with regard to the greenfield Wadhawan port development but added that the ministry is still going ahead with it.

Meanwhile, JNPT's acting chairman Neeraj Bansal said the port is targeting to more than double its profits to Rs 3,000 crore in the next seven years and will take it up to Rs 2,000 crore in the next three years. Without elaborating, he said a detailed plan has been prepared to achieve the profit growthFull stack developers in the product space are paid two times more in comparison to ITES sector.

Mumbai: There is a 20 percent growth in demand for 'full stack developers' compared to last year as companies look for multi-skilled professionals, according to a report.

A full stack developer is someone who can work on both the front-end and back-end portions of an application. The full stack development process involves work with all three layers of development - presentation layer, business logic layer and the database layer.

While a front-end developer is a programmer who codes and creates the features that are directly accessible by the end user, back-end developers build the core functional logic and operations of the application.

The report by predictive hiring solution provider Belong has revealed full stack developers in India on the front end side are normally skilled in JQuery, HTML5, CSS and Javascript while on the backend stack are familiar with RubyOn Rails, Python, Java or PHP and multiple databases like SQL, MongoDB among others.

Belong co-founder Rishabh Kaul said, "Full stack developers find more relevance in end-to-end product development startups or companies with smaller teams. Full stack developers in the product space are paid two times more in comparison to ITES sector. Since they have knowledge and experience in front-end and back-end coding, their insights help large enterprise companies as well," he said.

With companies now moving to leaner teams, the demand for full stack developers has increased by 20 percent in the last year according to our research, he added.

The talent pool is concentrated in Bangalore, NCR region, Pune and Hyderabad and these four regions make up for 65 percent of overall talent pool.

While Bangalore constitutes roughly 30 percent of India's full stack developer pool. A majority of the talent pool is employed by the ITES sector and captives with 4-6 years of experience.

The minimum compensation of full stack developers ranges from Rs 10-15 lakh per annum in both the ITES and Captive sectors, which goes up to Rs 40 lakhs per annum by the time they gain 8-20 years of experience, it added.By David Henry NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co said on Friday that it was building a new 'fintech campus' in Silicon Valley for more than 1,000 employees, as it pushes to keep abreast of changes in digital payments.

By David Henry

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co said on Friday that it was building a new "fintech campus" in Silicon Valley for more than 1,000 employees, as it pushes to keep abreast of changes in digital payments.

The building is set to open in Palo Alto, California in 2020, the bank said in a statement and interviews. Most of the employees at the site will work for JPMorgan's Chase Merchant Services division, which is the second-biggest U.S. processor of card payments for merchants.

The division last year bought WePay, a young Silicon Valley-based firm that specializes in connecting payment software with bank networks. WePay now has about 275 employees, who will move to the new building. WePay's co-founder Bill Clerico said the bank will also hire hundreds of people for new jobs at the site.

This year, JPMorgan made its digital products strategy a major theme of its annual February conference for investors and stock analysts.

The bank, the largest in the U.S. by assets, has said it believes that handling more payments for consumers and companies will bring it more of their deposit and loan business.

Matt Kane, chief executive of JPMorgan's merchant services division, said the bank was prepared to pay the high costs of operating in Silicon Valley for the chance to hire local software engineers. They are intended to complement payments industry specialists that JPMorgan employs now, largely in Plano, Texas and Tampa, Florida.

Chase Merchant Services ranks second to Atlanta-based First Data Corp in processing card transactions for merchants.

(Reporting by David Henry in New York, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.According to the data compiled by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), MSI's premium hatchback Swift stood at the first position with sale of 22,228 units in September as against 13,193 units, a year ago.

New Delhi: Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) maintained its leadership position in the domestic passenger vehicles (PV) segment in September, with seven of its models appearing in the top 10 selling list, according to the SIAM data.

Rival Hyundai Motor India also made its presence felt with three of its models featuring in the list.

According to the data compiled by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), MSI's premium hatchback Swift stood at the first position with sale of 22,228 units in September as against 13,193 units, a year ago.

The company's compact hatchback Alto was at the second position with 21,719 units as against 23,830 units a year ago. MSI's compact sedan Dzire stood at third position with sale of 21,296 units last month.

Baleno was the fourth best-selling model in September with 18,631 units. MSI's compact SUV Vitara Brezza stood at the fifth position with sale of 14,425 units. The company had sold 13,268 units of the model in September 2017.

MSI's compact model Wagon R stood at the sixth position with sale of 13,252 units. 14,649 units of the model were sold in September 2017.

Hyundai Motor India's Elite i20 stood at the seventh position with sales of 12,380 units last month. Last year in September, the model had sold 11,574 units and was at the eighth position.

Grand i10 stood at the eighth position with sale of 11,224 units. The model had stood at the fifth position with sale of 14,099 units in September last year.

Hyundai's SUV Creta took ninth position with 11,000 units while MSI's compact hatchback Celerio moved up to take tenth position with sale of 9,208 units.Oyo Living has onboarded about 36 properties with 2,000 beds, and the plan is to scale it to about 50,000 beds in the next one year

Hospitality firm OYO has launched a new business - Oyo Living, focused on the long-term housing rental sector, a media report said.

According to The Times of India, Oyo Living already has on-boarded about 36 properties with 2,000 beds, and the plan is to scale it to about 50,000 beds in the next one year.

It will be rolled out initially in Noida, Gurgaon, Bengaluru, and Pune, the report said. The hospitality firm is working with independent owners and large builders to lease out properties for long-term, Oyos chief growth officer Kavikrut told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, on 18 October, OYO said it had forayed into Indonesia and also confirmed an investment of over $100 million in the country as part of its expansion in Southeast Asia.

Starting operations with over 30 exclusive hotels and more than 1,000 rooms in three cities - Jakarta, Surabaya and Palembang, the company is ready to offer benefits of its hospitality experience to asset owners, property investors and travellers to Indonesia, OYO said in a statement.

The company will be working towards transforming Indonesia's hospitality industry by leasing and franchising assets and renovating them into beautiful living spaces, it added.

Commenting on the development, OYO Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal said: "We intend to invest over $100 million in this high growth market and plan to expand to the top 35 cities in Indonesia, including Yogyakarta, Bandung, Bali, over the next 15 months".

Indonesia is one of the top choices for both global and Indian travellers and with OYO's market learning and expertise the company is ready to tap this opportunity, he added.

"This expansion is in line with our quest to support the country's hospitality ecosystem and creating infrastructure for asset owners to grow and run successful businesses, all of this while ensuring high standards of quality," Agarwal said.

The company looks forward to creating over 60,000 (direct and indirect) livelihood opportunities in Indonesia, he added.

In September, OYO had announced a capital raise of $1 billion (around Rs 7,280 crore) in a fresh round of funding led by SoftBank Investment Advisers (SBIA) through SoftBank Vision Fund for further expansion. The funding round also saw participation from other existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia and Greenoaks Capital.

--With inputs from agenciesPersistent Systems stock dived 14.61 percent to settle at Rs 564.95 on BSE. During the day, it tanked 18.37 percent to Rs 540 -- its 52-week low

New Delhi: Shares of Persistent Systems slumped nearly 15 percent Monday after the company's second-quarter earnings failed to cheer investors.

The stock dived 14.61 percent to settle at Rs 564.95 on BSE. During the day, it tanked 18.37 percent to Rs 540 -- its 52-week low.

At NSE, shares of the company tumbled 11.47 percent to close at Rs 585.

The company's market valuation declined by Rs 772.4 crore to Rs 4,519.60 crore on BSE.

In terms of equity volume, 1.68 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over 24 lakh shares changed hands at NSE during the day.

Persistent Systems Sunday reported a 7 percent rise in its consolidated net profit to Rs 88.14 crore for the second quarter ended September 2018.

The company had registered a net profit of Rs 82.62 crore in the July-September period of 2017-18.

Total income of the company increased to Rs 858.78 crore in the September quarter of 2018-19 as against Rs 794.89 crore in the year-ago period, it had said in a regulatory filing.

"As of September 30, 2018, Persistent Systems Limited had deposits of Rs 430 million with the financial institutions Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) and IL&FS Financial Services Ltd. These are due for maturity from January 2019 to June 2019. As of September 30, 2018, there have been no defaults in payment of interest on the aforesaid deposits," it said.

"While our digital numbers are lower than expected, we see good growth opportunities across all segments of our business and multiple new projects started this quarter that will deliver long-term revenue growth," said Anand Deshpande, Chairman and Managing Director, Persistent Systems.Punjab National Bank (PNB) holds 32.79 percent stake in PNB Housing Finance, another 32.36 percent holding is with Carlyle Group through its investment arm Quality Investment Holdings.

New Delhi: PNB Housing Finance on Monday said it has raised Rs 1,775 crore by issuing commercial papers (CPs) to mutual funds and banks during this month.

"In spite of the current tight market scenario, our company has successfully raised funds through CPs aggregating to Rs 1,775 crore at competitive rates," Managing Director Sanjaya Gupta said in a statement.

These borrowings in the present environment exhibit the trust and faith of the lender community in PNB Housing Finance, he added.

The company is comfortable with its liquidity and asset and liability management(ALM) and the money raised in this month is in addition to the fund raised through external commercial borrowings (ECBs), Chief Financial Officer Kapish Jain said.

"This fund raise shall not increase our overall exposure to CPs and we would continue to maintain our overall borrowing through CPs at around 12-13 percent compared to 19 percent as of 31 March, 2018," Jain said.

He also said the company did not raise any funds from capital markets in the previous month in view of surplus liquidity.

As on date, the company has cash and liquid investments of nearly Rs 6,000 crore, PNB Housing Finance said.

Punjab National Bank (PNB) holds 32.79 percent stake in PNB Housing Finance, another 32.36 percent holding is with Carlyle Group through its investment arm Quality Investment Holdings.

Stock of PNB Housing was trading flat at Rs 706.50 on BSE.The average insurance penetration rate (total insurance premiums as a percentage of GDP) in developed nations is twice as high as the average in emerging, or lower income countries, which account for almost all ($160bn) of the global insurance protection gap. Many of the countries with the lowest levels of insurance are among the most exposed to risks such as climate change and are the least able to fund recovery efforts. Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt and Nigeria each has an insurance penetration rate of less than 1%. The country with the highest expected annual loss from natural disasters, Bangladesh, also has the largest insurance gap relative to GDP (2.1%). Expressed in absolute dollar values this equates to an insurance gap of almost $6bn in Bangladesh. Second highest is Indonesia at 1.4% of GDP, equivalent to an insurance gap of $15bn. Countries with more wealth stand to lose more in pure financial terms. China is the country with the highest insurance gap expressed in dollar values ($76bn) due to the size of its economy and the fact that its insurance market is still developing. Global economic losses from natural disasters are substantial and growing with annual expected economic losses of $165bn, according to Lloyds City Risk Index. They will continue to increase, driven by greater wealth, hazard exposure and, for some events, climate change. The underinsurance gap, however, is hardly closing. In 2012 Lloyds and CEBR revealed that $168bn in assets globally were underinsured. This means the gap has closed by less than 3% over a period of six years. The impact of disasters can be reduced by investing in greater resilience. A range of studies suggest that, on average, the benefits of resilience (broadly defined) outweigh the costs fourfold (see UNISDR (2007), OECD (2015) and UK Government Office for Science (2012)). The Centre for Global Disaster Protection today published a new report, produced in conjunction with Lloyds, Risk Management Solutions (RMS) and Vivid Economics, detailing four potential new financial instruments that could be used to incentivise investment in resilience. The report also underlines the important role that risk financing can play by providing liquidity after a disaster, protecting government balance sheets and buffering taxpayers. The Indonesian government, for example, is reportedly looking at disaster risk financing, with support from global reinsurers, following the recent devastating Sulawesi quake and tsunami. More detail about the structure of these financial instruments is provided below. Bruce Carnegie-Brown, Chairman of Lloyds, said: Insurance is a major contributor to disaster recovery often providing the quickest financial crisis relief available. The terrible earthquake and tsunami disaster on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi underlines the important role that insurance can play by increasing financial liquidity in catastrophe affected areas. Innovative insurance solutions can provide governments with access to financial relief rapidly after a disaster strikes, easing the burden on them and tax payers. If insurance is not available catastrophes can have a much greater impact on economies and lives. The insurance sector wants to work with government to help people understand the insurance products that are available and to provide improved access to those products. Together we can help tackle the crippling underinsurance crisis and give people in the worlds most exposed economies the security they so desperately need. Daniel Stander, Global Managing Director, RMS, said: Those who cant afford the additional costs of building resiliently are even less likely to be able to afford to rebuild after a disaster. Being able to quantify accurately the benefits of investing in resilience is therefore fundamental. The four products have been designed with this in mind. The objective is twofold: to reduce the initial costs of building resiliently and to finance the residual risk. In this way the benefits of insurance can be enjoyed by those who need it most.SBI shares closed almost flat at Rs 259.95 on BSE.

Mumbai: The country's largest bank SBI said on Monday it seeks to raise up to Rs 25,000 crore during the current financial year, including up to Rs 5,000 crore through bonds to meet capital adequacy norms.

The central board of the bank gave its approval to two proposals of the bank, State Bank of India (SBI) said in a regulatory filing.

The board accorded approval to the bank to raise Basel III-compliant Tier 2 bonds up to Rs 5,000 crore in USD/domestic currency to overseas and/or Indian investors during 2018-19, through a public offer/private placement.

SBI also received approval for an enabling resolution for raising equity capital.

The resolution provides for raising "equity capital up to an amount of Rs 20,000 crore during FY2018-19 from the market by way of FPO/ QIP/ Preferential allotment/ Rights lssue/ any other mode or a combination of these, to be decided at the opportune time", the filing said.

SBI shares closed almost flat at Rs 259.95 on BSE.The BSE Sensex gave up all its early gains of over 435 points to end 181 points lower at 34,134.38 on Monday, due to late sell-off in oil&gas, consumer durables, PSU, IT and infrastructure stocks amid crude again rising past $80 a barrel.

Mumbai: The BSE Sensex gave up all its early gains of over 435 points to end 181 points lower at 34,134.38 on Monday, due to late sell-off in oil&gas, consumer durables, PSU, IT and infrastructure stocks amid crude again rising past $80 a barrel.

The 30-share Sensex after a gap up opening at 34,689.39 points advanced to a high of 34,748.69 points in the early session on the back of better-than-expected earnings from HDFC Bank, positive cues from Asian markets and recovery in the rupee.

However, the emergence of selling in the last one hour of trading, it slipped into the negative zone to hit a low of 34,082.76 before ending at 34,134.38, registering a fall of 181.25 points or 0.53 percent.

The index had lost 847 points in the previous two sessions on liquidity concerns as well as weak global cues.

Similarly, the NSE Nifty after shuttling between 10,408.65 and 10,224 points, ended 58.30 points, or 0.57 percent, lower at 10,245.25.

Brokers said sentiments remained weak on macro concerns such as prevailing liquidity crunch in the market despite the RBI's measures to improve the situation in the market and rising crude prices.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, again went past the $80-mark to quote $80.14 per barrel on Monday.

Besides, unabated capital outflows by foreign funds, dampened sentiments, they added.

Meanwhile, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) offloaded shares worth Rs 618.26 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) had net sold shares worth Rs 2.14 crore on Friday as per provisional data.The GST scheme seems to have unwittingly left the small-scale units on the wrong side---they have been for the first time made to feel the heat of taxation

That the small-scale industry (SSI) have been the mainstay of the Indian industrial economy is almost trite. It provided employment to some six crore people is significant in itself. Its contribution to exports and providing employment in rural areas is also well-documented.

In the event, the recent report that SSI units have been feeling like the proverbial deer before the full glare of headlights and hence attenuating if not self-destructing is disconcerting. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) while doing the commendable job of mainstreaming (formalising) the economy by pushing to the surface what was hitherto happening underneath or in the subterranean channels seems to have unwittingly left the SSI on the wrong side---they have been for the first time made to feel the heat of taxation. In the earlier cash-and-carry economy, they were operating in they were by and large untrammeled by any legal niceties including taxes.

At present, there are some 16 lakh small dealers registered under the GST compounding scheme. Only those with a turnover of not more than Rs 1.5 crore are eligible to avail themselves of the compounding scheme. The gravitas for opting for the compounding scheme is being let off with just a slap on the wrist, as it were---1 percent GST, period. But they cannot claim input tax credit (ITC) the main feature nay the hallmark of GST.

In fact, denial of ITC has kept a large number of small-scale units away from the temptations of the compounding scheme because they supply to larger firms which insist on them being registered under the GST and paying full tax so that ITC isnt denied to the large-scale firms.

Yet the truth remains that the compounding scheme is a godsend for small and tiny enterprises especially those doing the last mile delivery to the ultimate customers.

In a recent visit to Vijayawada, the author was pleasantly surprised to find several shopkeepers proclaiming proudly their GST status---We are registered under the GST compounding scheme. This is almost wearing tax compliance on sleeves.

What the government must do is to do everything in its power to hard-sell the scheme to more and more small dealers, if necessary by heightening the schemes threshold from Rs 1.5 crore to a generous limit of Rs 5 crore given the fact that a small trader operating in Delhis Chandni Chowk or Bara Bazaar in Kolkata is likely to sell a lot more than Rs 1.5 crore per annum.

At the same time, the presumptive taxation scheme for small traders under the Income Tax law also needs to be tweaked so that it is in harmony with the GST.

As it is, the Income Tax law lets small traders with a turnover not exceeding Rs 2 crore with a slap on the wrist---presumed profit just 8 percent (6 percent on revenue received through banking channels) of the turnover which is indeed a generous presumption in favor of the small traders given the eye-popping retail margin of 25 percent to 30 percent on the average.

The government must align the two schemes---GST compounding scheme and the income tax presumptive taxation scheme. The turnover limit ought to be the same under both, say Rs 5 crore. The tax rate, however, cannot be the same given the fact that while one is an indirect tax, the other is direct which cannot be passed onto the ultimate consumer.

While the government can and should bring about a thaw in these two schemes, it cannot be business as usual for the subterranean business in India which prior to GST has been thriving through cash payments and kachcha (unofficial) invoices.

Indeed, GST has smoked them out and exposed them not only to the GST authorities but also to the Income Tax authorities. If you cannot beat them join them is an old adage. The wise ones have joined the mainstream by either enlisting themselves under the compounding scheme of GST or registering themselves as full-fledged taxpayers with GSTN. But it is the ones who have started downsizing, unable to face the heat of the twin pincer of indirect and direct tax, that must worry the government. Heightening the entry barrier to compounding schemes as suggested herein should go some way in this regard.

India cannot rely only on large scale industries. Small ones must have their place under the sun but they cannot hark back regressively into the past and pine for shady business deals. The government must educate them suitably.

(The author is a senior columnist and tweets @smurlidharan)By Costas Pitas and David Milliken LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May told business leaders during a teleconference on Friday that EU politicians are committed to reaching a Brexit agreement this autumn, striking what one source told Reuters was an upbeat tone.

By Costas Pitas and David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May told business leaders during a teleconference on Friday that EU politicians are committed to reaching a Brexit agreement this autumn, striking what one source told Reuters was an upbeat tone.

London and Brussels are racing to strike a deal by the end of the year and firms are worried that without one, there could be widespread disruption of everything from supply chains to flights and the movement of food and livestock.

May briefed around 120 business leaders to update them on the progress of the talks after discussions in Brussels earlier this week.

"The Prime Minister spoke for about 10 minutes and the tone of her message was quite optimistic," a source familiar with the content of the call told Reuters.

May's office said the prime minister had acknowledged that there were "a few significant issues" still outstanding but that progress was being made.

"The very real sense she had from leaders around the table at the Council was that they wanted to reach a deal as soon as possible this autumn," May's office said.

"She said that her aim was to wrap this up in November," one of the business people listening to the call said.

May was told by some that time is pressing and heard concerns over contingency measures which may be irreversible, the source added.

She was also asked what business could do to help on Brexit, to which she suggested firms write to lawmakers in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, to make sure leaders were aware that business needed a resolution.

Separately, Bloomberg reported that May was ready to give ground on one of the key sticking areas of the talks concerning the land border between the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Sterling gained on the report that Britain would allow the Northern Ireland backstop, or fallback arrangement in case of failure to agree a broader deal, to have no fixed time limit.

May's office said in response that the government's position had not changed, and pointed to the remarks the prime minister had made to businesses, where she said she expected any backstop arrangement to be temporary.

Britain's Brexit minister, Dominic Raab, said a week ago that the so-called backstop designed to prevent a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, must be finite, short and time-limited.

Brexit supporters in May's government are concerned any temporary arrangements with the EU that lack a clear time limit may become permanent solutions over time.

(Additionl reporting by David Milliken; editing by Stephen Addison and Andrew Heavens)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.Singh, accompanied by a delegation of officials, reached Israel on Sunday evening. He will be visiting several facilities and institutions working in sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, dairy and waste water management to tap opportunities that can address Punjab's requirements, and boost the state's internal security apparatus.

Tel Aviv: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has arrived in Israel on a five-day visit to strengthen cooperation with the Jewish nation in sectors such as agriculture, horticulture and dairy.

Singh, accompanied by a delegation of officials, reached Israel on Sunday evening. He will be visiting several facilities and institutions working in sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, dairy and waste water management to tap opportunities that can address Punjab's requirements, and boost the state's internal security apparatus.

Ahead of his visit, the Punjab chief minister had said his government was keen to tap technological advancements on offer by the country. On Tuesday, a seminar, "Investment Opportunities in Punjab" has been organised to attract investments in the state from Israel.

The Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) will be signing MoUs with the Tel Aviv University and the Galilee Institute for cooperation in the field of agriculture. Another MoU will be signed in the field of water conservation by the visiting delegation.

Singh has emphasised that farmers in Punjab should diversify their crop pattern and get out of the paddy-wheat cycle, replicating the latest practices of drip irrigation and hydroponics in view of the depleting water table in the state. During a meeting with an Israeli delegation ahead of his visit, he had evinced interest in adopting Israeli know-how to boost the dairy sector.

He had also expressed interest in visiting Israeli orchards and nurseries to secure first-hand knowledge of the technological advancements in hybrid production of plants. Punjab is also seeking Israeli assistance in improving the quality of citrus fruits as the state is a leading producer of Kinnow and wants to go for mass plantation of sweet oranges, which finds a remunerative market.

The Singh-led delegation will be also given a presentation on Israeli expertise in the homeland security sector and will visit the academy of a leading Israeli security company during the trip. Security officials from the state are said to have also made trips earlier to Israel to tap state-of-the-art technology and gain expertise in intelligence and homeland security to boost Punjab's security apparatus.

Singh is scheduled to call upon Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel and Minister of Energy and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz during his trip. He will be also visiting the cemetery of Indian soldiers who laid their lives during the War of Liberation of Haifa in 1918.

Haifa celebrated the centenary year of its liberation by Indian cavalry units in September paying warm tributes to the courage shown by them in what is considered by most of the War Historians as the "last great cavalry campaign in history".For, living right next to the railway tracks, the locals of Joda Phatak in Amritsar have become accustomed to crossing them at will. They are also angry because they feel that no government agency - the railways, police or administration - has accepted any responsibility for the incident.

A fast-moving train ran over people, whose Dusshera celebrations had spilled onto the railway tracks in Amritsar's Joda Phatak area on Friday, killing sixty. Three days later, locals are unable comprehend how this could have happened. They are still stitching together events that led to this disaster and are angry with government agencies that have pointed fingers at them for being on the tracks. For, living right next to the railway tracks, the locals have become accustomed to crossing them at will. They are also angry because they feel that no government agency - the railways, police or administration - has accepted any responsibility for the incident. This has left them feeling alone, isolated and burdened with all of the blame.

As a result, when railway services were resumed on this stretch on Sunday at 2 pm there was stone pelting by angry young men and then a mild lathicharge by police in which three were injured. This caused further heartburn in Judges Colony, Krishna Nagar and adjacent areas of Joda Phatak. Forcibly restoring train movement only seemed to demonstrate to these people that their suffering hasn't moved the authorities. They complain that only six policemen were present on the day of the function but more than 1,500 came to prevent them from protesting after 60 people have died.

"Now, that the administration has decided to resume train services, we have been locked into our neighbourhood and we are being told not to step out, although we are the victims," says Vishal, a resident of Krishna Nagar who has lived near the tracks since 2010 and works as a marketting executive for an edible oil company in Chandigarh. "We never committed any crime but we are being treated as if we have." Further, a written statement from the train driver in which he says he did not halt his train because locals were throwing stones at it, has enraged people, who deny this ever happened.

Despite their anger, when the first train passed through the Phatak on Sunday afternoon Vishal and his neighbours rushed to watch it go by, as if it were a novelty. But the passing of a train is nothing new here. Railway officials in Amritsar say this crossing is one of the busiest routes in the region, through which 38 to 40 pairs of trains pass daily, to Delhi, Howrah and Attari on the border with Pakistan.

Trains are a commonplace and inexorable feature of the social and economic life of everyone who lives here. The very name Joda Phatak is a railroad term, literally translated to Punjabi. It means two gates, a reference to the fact that this is a double railway crossing. These twin gates determine everything from what time locals wake up to when they will return after work. Whether the level crossing is open or shut also determines their expenses on fuel, because to avoid the gates when they are closed means taking a different, always much longer, route into the heart of the city.

Joda Phatak cuts the city of Amritsar in two. The situation is simple, as Vishal puts it, "Idhar walon ko udhar jaana hai (those on this side of the tracks have to get to the other side)." Decades ago this part of town was all fruit orchard and virgin forest but now it has 100 overcrowded residential colonies. The railway station, bus stand, hospitals, prominent schools, markets, government and private offices and the Golden Temple are "udhar"- across the tracks - which people from Joda Phatak have to cross to get to.

Whether one should stroll across these tracks on foot or wait at the manned railway crossing is a critical part of everyday decision-making here. But this decision does not necessarily follow much consideration. Usually, it makes itself. For example, a ride in a taxi from the railway station to a dhobhi ghat (a two minute walk from Joda Phatak) costs Rs 10. But if a cabbie is asked to cross the barrier and enter their colonies the rate is Rs 50. "Just hearing of crossing the gates hikes prices, whether or not they are ultimately found open," says Kuldeep Singh Raju, an artificial jewellery supplier who crosses the tracks daily for work. Naturally, people disembark at dhobhi ghat, then traipse across the tracks on foot, sometimes carrying supplies.

Similarly Amritsar railway station is a 10 minute drive beyond the twin gates, or around 3 kilometres. But if the gate is closed, this trip can take 30-35 minutes. If there is a traffic jam at both gates, the wait can be an hour. The alternate route, around 6 km long, takes 45 minutes due to regular high traffic. Hence people scramble to get past these gates when they open, ironically causing more congestion.

Residents wince at the thought of being "caught" with both Joda Phatak gates closed. "Chances are, after one gate opens, the other will close. The waiting can seem endless," says Sachin Bhalla, a resident. For pushcart vendors waiting half an hour at the Phatak is a daily ritual to grin and bear. This is because the wholesale vegetable market can only be reached by crossing the track. For two-wheeler drivers there is a six feet wide underpass built by the railways built about a decade ago. Locals love it but it gets flooded when it rains.

Besides, there are pedestrians, some living less than ten feet from the tracks, who have devised their own impatient routines around the barriers. A few scoot under the closed level crossings and dash for the other side-a 15 metre sprint before the train gets them. Some claim they have mastered the craft of identifying fast trains from slower ones: They let fast trains to go by and leap across if it is slow. At times they dodge three trains, each at different speeds.

All pedestrians are united by one goal: to make it to the main road quick. Yet, they also recall a wedding party, a school bus and an auto-rickshaw ferrying children to school as instances of deadly accidents that have taken place here. "For fifty years they have been promising us an overbridge but no government has built it," says Bhalla.

When Lal Babu Yadav, originally from Bihar, got a call on Friday evening at 7:45, telling him his sister's husband has had an accident while watching the Dusshera at dhobhi ghat, he rushed to get there on his scooter. "The level crossing was closed so I parked right there and jumped over the tracks to get to him," Yadav says. To expect him to have waited that day would be most unkind but he only illustrates the many ways in which people navigate Joda Phatak while trying to make their lives a little easier.

Satnam Singh, a middle aged driver in Judges Colony, is furious with the Railways and organisers of the Dusshera event. He believes, like almost everyone else here, that the Railways would have slowed its trains that evening-if only they knew of the event. "People," he says, "would then have dodged the slower trains (while enjoying the Dusshera celebration)."

Satnam left the Dusshera festivities unhurt. Also, he is getting how trains work wrong. Vivek Kumar, Divisional Railway Manager, Firozepur, says the Railways does not lower train speeds so that festivals can be enjoyed on the tracks. In fact, it is the other way around. "Our drivers are asked to ply at the highest permissible speed."

The high-speed Joda Phatak line is fit for up to 110 kmph. A train of the type that hit passengers would take 700 metres to stop after braking, Kumar says. This is why the railways have been insisting that the driver had no time to avert the mishap.

The Dusshera celebration also cannot be compared with rail roko or other protests that take place on railway lines because in those cases the railways have no choice but to halt services. "People are assuming that the guard at the Joda Phatak knew there was a crowd gathered at the tracks but he did not," says Kumar, the DRM.

The fact that this was a religious gathering has also piqued the interest of social scientists familiar with Amritsar. Harish Puri, who used to teach political science at the GTB University in the city says that the crowd was so large, so preoccupied with itself, that it probably developed a sense of impunity as well as immunity. "When you are in large numbers you can sometimes feel that no law operates but yours," he says. "Not just on Dusshera, many kinds of large crowds are doing as they please across India. The culture of impunity is growing."

Amrit Singh, station director, Railways, Amritsar, explains further that the railways manned crossings always have a gateman, responsible to secure the track for traffic, but not watch for people on them. "His work is too hectic, with filling registers and logging times and opening and closing the gates. A closed gate is meant to signify to the public whether it's safe to cross or they should use underpasses and overbridges," he says.

The crossing at Joda Phatak, 350 metres from the Dusshera event, is manned-by just one person per gate. "If these gatemen don't open and close gates on time, thousands of vehicles will collect and there will be chaos. That is why the gateman did not see the crowd gathering," Singh says. "At unmanned level crossings, I am not very clear, but it's the responsibility of the public to be safe. We have all been taught how to cross roads safely from childhood," he says.

This puts the Joda Phatak residents in a strange in-between zone. At a manned crossing, they must submit to the gateman's signals. At an unmanned crossing they must use caution and discretion. Everywhere else, the track is uncharted territory - where presumably discretion counts.

The question is, are people who live next to train lines reading the signals and symbols of the Railway network correctly? For example, Joda Phatak residents vehemently insist that trains in the past would slow down during Dusshera celebrations, except the one on Friday. Kumar says that people possibly saw trains slow down, but misunderstood why this was happening. "It was probably bunching that slowed down trains as they approached Joda Phatak," he says. Bunching is a process wherein trains are slowly lined up outside a station until a track is available. This had nothing to do with whether people are on the tracks or not.

Some at Joda Phatak also say that the driver was rushing because he was late. "The train arrived at Amritsar at around 7:00 PM, five minutes late," Kumar says. "You have been traveling on Indian Railways. Do you think a five-minute delay is going to make any driver panic."

That said, the Railways has also been insisting that there will be no inquiry into Friday's incident. "Railway inquiries are held when there is a violation of procedure by Railway staff. This was an extraneous event," says Amrit Singh. This may be technically true but the Railways are being heavily criticised for it. "Because so many people have died, the matter should not remain a mystery. There should be an inquiry by Railways, if not to pin blame then to give Railway authorities a lesson, so that on future they can work out some kind of norm and mechanism for these situations," says Puri.

Officials accept that every Railwayman is taught to take cognisance of safety and taught to look out for any incident that may cause a hazard. "This is the generic, macro training all Railwaymen are given because Railways handle lakhs of passengers and we are responsible for their safety," says Amrit Singh. Therefore, an alert guard or gateman could have averted the crisis-as could have the police, whose duty is to ensure safety of people. Even an alert member of the public could have sounded an alarm. But nobody did. Hence the question is not just who was responsible but also to what extent. "To file cases of trespassing-as the General Railway Police has done-against unnamed members of a gathering simply looks cruel," says Puri.

People of Joda Phatak are looking for catharsis after their tragedy. They need an outlet to shout, accuse and let out their anger. As Puri says: The government should provide space for such an outpouring and not let things fester.In a statement given to police as well as the railway authorities, the driver of the train, which mowed down 59 people watching a Ravan effigy being burnt on 19 October, said he had not stopped his train because of stone pelting from the crowd at the accident spot. 'I was at the spot. Leave alone stopping, the train did not even slow down. It seemed as if the driver wanted to mow us down. The train passed us in a matter of seconds.

New Delhi/Amritsar: Locals on Sunday came out hard against the statement of the driver who has said that the Dussehra revellers at the spot of the accident had pelted stones at the train.

In a statement given to police as well as the railway authorities, the driver of the train, which mowed down 62 people watching a Ravan effigy being burnt on 19 October, said he had not stopped his train because of stone pelting from the crowd at the accident spot. "I was at the spot. Leave alone stopping, the train did not even slow down. It seemed as if the driver wanted to mow us down. The train passed us in a matter of seconds.

"Is it logically possible for us to pelt stones at the train when so many people were dead and injured around us? Is it possible for us to get our bearings after such an incident and pelt stones at a speeding train? The driver is lying," Shailender Singh Shally, Councillor, Ward Number 46, Amritsar, said.

The driver in his statement has said that he applied "emergency brakes" as he saw the crowd on the tracks but "still some people were caught in the path of the train". He also said that he continuously honked to get people off the tracks.

The driver said people started throwing stones at the train when it was "almost on the verge of stopping" and so, keeping in mind the safety of his passengers, he continued towards Amritsar and informed officials there about the accident. Onlookers rubbished the driver's claims and said the train did not slow down anywhere near the spot.

"He did not even slow down, let alone almost stopping. The train was in such speed that the accident happened in split seconds. There are hundreds of videos that show how fast the train went. There was no chance of us reacting, leave alone pelt stones. All we could hear around us was people screaming and crying," Paramjeet Singh, another onlooker, said.

The maximum speed of the train, which was a Diesel Electrical Multiple Unit (DEMU) is 96 kmph, once brakes are applied, this kind of train stops completely in about 300 metres if empty, and in 600 metres if full, officials said. The last recorded speed of the train, according to Divisional Railway Manager (Ferozpur)

Vivek Kumar, was 68kmph. "As the train passed, I heard people screaming and shouting. There was no stone pelting. I don't understand why the driver would make up such a thing. Will people who are seeing their loved ones lying in pools of blood leave them and pick up stones to hit the train?

"Anyway, the speed of the train was such that even if people wanted to pelt stones, by the time they collected them, the train would have disappeared from sight. He is lying," Ajay Goenka, who was present at the spot, said. Local police too corroborated the claims of the eyewitnesses and said that not just the train was travelling at a high speed, there were no reports of stone pelting at the site of the incident on 19 October.

"As far as I know, there has been no stone pelting at the spot of the accident when the train passed," Sukhminder Singh, SHO of Mohkampura police station under whose jurisdiction the area falls, told PTI. Senior Railway officials were not available for comment on the matter officially.One of the false claims doing the rounds on social media on the Amritsar train tragedy is to do with  no surprises here  the religion of the driver of the train.

Following the Amritsar train tragedy, in which at least 61 people lost their lives during Dussehra celebrations on Friday, a number of false and misleading claims have been made by Twitter users and a mainstream media outlet.

One of the false claims being circulated on social media is to do with  no surprises here  the religion of the driver. Many people posted tweets saying the driver of the train involved in the accident was a man named Imtiaz Ali, by implication, a Muslim.

We want CBI investigation immediately.

Arrest all the persons involved including driver Imtiaz Ali for investigation. https://t.co/5b62xu1J7Y  Debol Mukherjee (@Debol_Mukherjee) October 20, 2018

It may have some plot need to check as the moment in which train passed we can see CCTv recording so driver imtiazAli claiming he can't see people is lame @NIA_India  pravin.c (@PravinGyan) October 21, 2018

Others claimed that the driver's name was Imtiaz Khan, not Ali.

In response to this comment, when another Twitter user pointed that this was not the driver's actual name, Tripathi said, "U could have ignored it. (sic)"

The driver of the train involved in the Amritsar tragedy is Arvind Kumar.

In another instance, news agency ANI had, on Friday, tweeted a video of a person commenting on the train accident and described him as an eyewitness. Later, the agency clarified that the person was BJP spokesperson Rajesh Honey, saying he was present at the spot when the accident took place. However, Honey himself posted a tweet on the day after the Amritsar tragedy, saying he had reached the spot 20 minutes after the train ran over revellers at Amritsar's Joda Phatak.

#AmritsarTrainAccident .I was on spot in 20 min of incident. Scene there were unexplainable & have left Heart & Mind with indispensable thoughts for rest of my life. The culprit,the organizers should be held responsible for arranging the event irresponsibly #PunjabTrainMishap.  Rajesh Kumar Honey (@RajeshHon1) October 20, 2018

The Congress has not held back on its criticism of the Railways, accusing it of shirking responsibility. After visiting the site of the accident at Joda Phatak on Friday, Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha had absolved the railways of all responsibility and ruled out any action against the driver of the train and an investigation into the incident.Throughout August 2018, there has been a statewise crackdown over a thousand spurious milk product/paneer factories in Punjab (out of many thousand).

In the last two months there has been a major crisis in Punjab -- on the front page of every local paper. Paneer, the state dish, has disappeared from the market. For the uninitiated, paneer is an un-aged, fresh, non-melting cheese made by curdling milk with a vegetable-derived acid, such as lemon juice/lactic acid/citric acid/tartaric acid/alum or sour whey. It is eaten all over North India (and, alas ,has spread its tentacles into the south as well), but Punjab is its home and every house feels compelled to eat and serve it. Personally, I have find it disgusting and I would rather starve than eat it  and I frequently do that when travelling in planes where vegetarians are only given the paneer option.

For years I have been cautioning people not to eat milk, or any of its products. Here is another reason why.

Because it is not paneer. Unless you make it in your own house and with milk that you have taken from trusted sources  since most milk is not milk.

Lets start with the math and then the empirical evidence.

According to government data, India produces roughly 15 crore tonnes of milk annually. If all of it were only to be used to make paneer, India would produce 7 lakh tonnes. Obviously that is not possible, since only a small percentage of this is turned into paneer. But 5 lakh tonnes of paneer are sold annually. So where do they come from?

They come from an odious mixture of maida, palm oil, baking powder, old discarded skimmed milk, detergent, bicarbonate of soda and suphuric acid. The same sulfuric acid that is found in lead-acid batteries, metal cleaners, drain cleaners and anti-rust products. The same sulphuric acid that is thrown on women. This is boiled till it becomes a semi solid product. Then it is poured into vessels, flattened and left for a few hours. Finally it is cut into 5 kg bricks of paneer and sold. The residue is secretly drained into illegal bore wells within the premises, polluting underground water for miles around. On an average 5 kilos of paneer cost the maker Rs 30 or Rs 150. This is sold for Rs 150-200 a kilo wholesale and Rs 300+ retail.

This is the modus operandi: the factory owners make the paneer in dirty shanties in industrial areas and sell the products to ghost dairies owned by themselves, or to legitimate dairies which have a few standing cows/buffaloes, and perhaps even extract some milk from them. The dairies then sell them to prominent sweetshops and bakeries. Most of the paneer factories work at night, dispatch the product at dawn and then shut up for the rest of the day. In order to avoid being stopped at tolls, or be inspected, the paneer is often brought in the dicky of a car/SUV, instead of a tempo.

Just as the forest is cut with the active collusion of the forest department, the spurious food industry is run by food inspectors and the dairy department. Every now and then a minister orders raids. Some people go to jail, the food item disappears, and then everything comes back to normal. According to the factory owners, the local health officer charged Rs 5,000 a month on principle and Rs 10,000  Rs 15,000 to clear each food sample from the lab. It is extraordinary that a small state like Punjab should have so many spurious factories. None of them are near dairies  which itself should have sounded a warning bell a long time ago. Most of them are in industrial areas, or in small villages. While dozens of people have been sent to jail, not a single health official has had any action taken against him.

Throughout August 2018, there has been a statewise crackdown over a thousand spurious milk product/paneer factories in Punjab (out of many thousand). Chilling centres, creameries, milk establishments in remote areas, interception of tankers at toll barriers: all these have revealed acids and illegal colouring agents. Even the dairies that were legitimately making paneer were found to be so unhygienic  unwashed workers, rusted implements  that the paneer is unsafe to eat.

Paneer has vanished in the market -- which means most, or all, of it was spurious. Most sweetmeats made from it have vanished from the mithai shops. Shopkeepers and dairy owners have refused all bulk orders.

Here are some examples to show you how large this illegal industry is:

 The Mohali health department raided a paneer manufacturing unit in Ballomajra Village, Mohali. 20.6 quintals of spurious paneer, 33 quintals of skimmed milk powder, sulphuric acid and other chemicals were found. The owner has been supplying this paneer daily to restaurants and dhabas at Chandigarh, Pinjore, Kalka, Rajpura and Panchkula and some local colonies. While the factory owners claimed that they made cheese, ghee, butter and other dairy products from 5,000 litres of milk collected daily from Lehragaga in Sangrur village, no dairy was found. The owner had no licence for any food product. The premises were filthy.

 A raid by a joint team of the health department, food safety department, dairy development department and police, on two factories at Khokh Village, Nabha, Patiala, turned up 8 quintal spurious milk, 12 quintal fake paneer, skimmed milk and boxes of caustic soda.

 A raid at Gonsawal village, Amritsar has led to the seizure of 58 bags of 25 kg each of skimmed low quality milk powder, 20 kg paneer and 30 kg adulterated milk.

 A raid on a dairy on Ram Tirath Road, Amritsar, found 74 bags of skimmed milk powder, 35 kg of paneer, and 150 of kg adulterated milk.

 Paneer and khoya manufacturing units at Neem Wala Mor village in Barnala, Fatehgarh Sahib district's Chandila village, Pathankot, Gurdaspur, found huge quantities of fake paneer and khoya. Sweetshops in Mansa were found selling quintals of fake patisa made from this paneer.

 A food safety team raided paneer manufacturing units in Samrala and Baghapurana, Ludhiana and found 3 quintals of spurious paneer, 90 litres of palm oil, 39 empty Palm oil tins of 15 litres each, and 17 bags of 25 kg each of skimmed milk powder.

 In Rajpura, Patiala district, a vehicle carrying 160 kg of fake paneer, coming from Narwana, in Jind district of Haryana, was intercepted by the food safety team. The vehicle was bound for a Dairy in Rajpura. The Narwana owner confessed that he sold spurious paneer at Rs 160 /kg to the dairy who further sold it.

 A raid in village Sangatpur Bhonki yielded 90 kg paneer, 1,400 kg milk, 18 empty bags of 25 kg Skimmed Milk Powder(SMP), 2 full bags of SMP were found.

 At Boor Majra, Ropar, 12 quintal paneer were found. The hygiene conditions of the dairy were very poor and the dairy owners did not possess any licence.

 The Jalandhar Food Team intercepted a car delivering paneer to a sweetshop in Adampur. The car was carrying paneer in rear storage and on the back seat. While the paneer was being inspected the driver fled with the car.

 A vehicle carrying 300 kg of spurious khoya burfi, milk cake, ladoo, patisa was intercepted at Jandiala Road, Tarntaran.

 The shop of a khoya barfi supplier at Jaito, Faridkot was inspected and 1.5 quintals of spurious barfi and dhoda sweets were found. The khoya burfi was brought from Fazilka and dhoda burfi from village Daria in Chandigarh and then resold to small shops.

 Checking and sampling at a sweetshop at Garhshankar revealed approximately 100 kg of adulterated khoya.

 Is Punjab the only place where this is happening? Of course not. The entire country is awash with spurious paneer, and almost every week there is a report from some local TV channel or newspaper about an illegal factory.

Here are some samples in the last month:

News 24: A Mahindra pickup was found with 120 kilos of spurious paneer going to Dehradun from Panipat. The bill of lading said it was plywood.

 Bansal News: A raid in Morena, Madhya Pradesh delivered 1,500 kg of fake paneer. The factory is in an industrial area, and filthy, cockroach ridden with paneer was being made and thrown on the floor. It has been raided several times. The owner hides out for a few days and then restarts the business.

 NNI: A raid in a Mathura paneer factory shows dirty vats, dirty handlers, rusted implements. The place is full of milk powder and refined oil. The owner runs as soon as he sees the police. The paneer is supplied to Delhi.

 Times of India, Bangalore: Paneer made of urea and chemicals has flooded the market. 5 tonnes of adulterated paneer, brought from Dharmapur in Tamil Nadu, sent to the chemical lab for testing was reported to be full of chemicals and not fit for human consumption. Police said 100 tonnes of chemical paneer arrives in vans from Tamil Nadu every month. Salem milk/paneer is the common name for fake dairy products.

 Patna: Raids found that even posh hotels and big sweet shops were selling fake or adulterated paneer which contained corn starch mixed with chemicals, urea and maida. They buy at Rs 40-50 a kg and sell at Rs 300 a kg. A report by the food safety wing of the health department has revealed that 95% of the samples of paneer, collected from 60 shops and eateries in the city, have been found to be adulterated. Starch is added to cottage cheese to increase its quantity. When questioned, the team said that they only had the ability to look for starch adulteration as they were not competent to check for acids and chemicals in paneer, and their lab in Agamkuan was shut!!

How do you make out real from fake paneer? Pure paneer is soft in texture. Synthetic one is rubbery. Pure has a milky taste. Synthetic has a bland /no taste. Put a drop of iodine solution on raw paneer. If it changes colour to blue black it is spurious.The BJP rose to power in Assam under the leadership of Sarbananda Sonowal for the first time in 2016 on the promise to deport Bangladeshi immigrants.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal is faced with a threat to the states law and order situation, as 46 organisations representing various tribes and indigenous groups in the state have called a 12-hour long bandh on Tuesday in protest against the Centres move to clear the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016.

The Bill provides for the possibility of granting citizenship to religious minorities who have fled to India from a number of neighbouring countries on account of facing religious persecution.

The bandh coincides with the Joint Parliamentary Committee's meeting to be held in Delhi on Tuesday, during which organisations taking part in the protests fear that the Bill will be approved.

If the bill becomes a law, the problems faced by Assam due to illegal migrants from Bangladesh in all aspects of socio-economic and political life will aggravate, said Palash Changmai, general secretary of the Asom Jatiyotabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad, one of the organisations calling the bandh.

In May, the JPC conducted a hearing in Assam, which reopened the existing divides in the state over this issue.

Though the JPC received petitions from residents in the Assamese-dominated Brahmaputra valley opposing the Bill, a flurry of letters supporting it came from the Bengali-dominated Barak valley in the state.

Fear looms large in the Brahmaputra valley that the committee may give its nod to the Bill, after which it will be made a law by Parliament.

The JPC members had said after the hearing that they would visit Assam again and organise consultations with organisations. But the committee never returned. In fact, it is going to take a decision on the Bill on Tuesday, asserted Akhil Gogoi, another leader of the movement, in a Facebook live video.

Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, a member of the committee, said to Firstpost, As per my knowledge, the committee will discuss the Bill with top officials in the home ministry and external affairs ministry on Tuesday. However, I do not think that a report can be filed by tomorrow, as deliberations on the nitty-gritties are still on.

Tasa ruled out any possibility of the JPC visiting Assam again. We have already completed the hearing process. So, there is no need to visit Assam again. The JPC cannot go from village to village, he said.

Palash Changmai, said to Firstpost that all offices, schools and other institutions will remain shut as part of the bandh from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. We appeal to the people of Assam to support the bandh wholeheartedly and make it successful, he said.

The state government has appealed to people not to heed the bandh call.

Citing a Gauhati High Court order banning bandhs in the state, the state's finance and health minister said, "All shops and business establishments should remain open, while government employees must report for their duties, or else it will be considered as a contempt of court.

The state government has also reportedly issued directives to the offices of deputy commissioners of various districts to ensure that the orders are followed.

The issue of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016 is likely to pose challenges to the BJP led government in Assam on the fronts of law and order as well as politics.

The state has seen periodic flare-ups of the law and order situation since the late 1970s, when a six-year-long, historic Assam movement demanded the ouster of illegal migrants. Eight hundred and fifty-five youth died during the movement.

The year 2012 saw the worst riot in the contemporary history of the state in Kokrajhar. The violence was triggered by the fear that vast tracts of lands in the tribal-dominated Bodoland Territorial Council were being encroached upon by illegal migrants.

On the political front too, the issue may hit the ruling dispensation hard, as the BJP rose to power in the state for the first time in 2016 on the promise to deport Bangladeshi immigrants.

The Bill seeks to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to make illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship. It is seen in stark contrast of the demand in the state to identify and deport illegal migrants irrespective of their religious affiliation.

The Bill, after being discussed in the Lok Sabha, was referred to the JPC in August 2016. It is likely to be tabled in Parliament in 2019.David Austin  along with Susan Dalton, Alan Barratt and Julian Hanson  ran a scam that cost 245 people their pension savings, after the members were persuaded using cold-calling and other techniques to transfer their pensions into one of 11 scam schemes. The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has now prohibited Mr Austin from acting as a pension scheme trustee to protect pension holders. The Insolvency Service has disqualified him from being a company director for 12 years. Ms Dalton, Mr Barratt and Mr Hanson have also been banned from being trustees of pension schemes. After TPR brought proceedings against the quartet in the High Court, in January the individuals were ordered to repay the millions of pounds they took from the schemes. At the conclusion of the case, Judge Mark Pelling QC ruled that Mr Austin had been the 'mastermind' behind the scam. Victims of the scam were told that if they transferred their pension pots to the schemes they would receive a tax-free payment commonly described as a 'commission rebate' from investments made by the pension scheme  a form of pension scam. The High Court ruled that Mr Austin moved funds from the schemes to his bank account and the accounts of family members in the UK, Switzerland and Andorra through a number of businesses that he had set up in the UK, Cyprus and the Caribbean. Mr Austin and his family had derived at least 1.3 million of benefit from the scam. Mr Barratt had been paid more than 380,000, Ms Dalton more than 168,000 and Mr Hanson 7,000. Part of the scam involved 120,000 of scheme funds being moved to a company whose directors included Mr Austin and his daughter, Camilla Austin. Mr Austin had not been appointed as a trustee of any of the schemes, but TPRs Determinations Panel has ruled that TPR should take action as he had been "dishonestly involved in the misuse or misappropriation of scheme assets". Banning him from being a trustee, it said: "The panel concluded that the evidence in relation to Mr Austin's conduct was so serious, and his involvement in the Receiving Schemes was so close and influential, as to warrant his prohibition from acting as a trustee of trust schemes in general." The panel ruled that Ms Dalton, Mr Barratt and Mr Hanson should be banned from being trustees both for their dishonesty but also because of the amounts of money they took from the schemes. Separately, the Insolvency Service has banned Mr Austin from being a company director for 12 years and Camilla Austin for four years for their role in the misuse of pension scheme funds. TPR and the Financial Conduct Authority joined forces in August to launch a new national awareness campaign about pension scams. For tips on how to identify a pension scam and advice on what to do if you fear you have fallen victim to a scam, click herePublic prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar continued her argument before Sessions Judge KD Vadane opposing the bail applications of activists Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj.

Pune: Opposing the bail applications of five prominent activists arrested in June for their alleged links with Maoists, the prosecution on Monday submitted "intercepted email communications" exchanged between top CPI(Maoist) fugitive leader Ganapathy and Varavara Rao.

These were exchanged after the arrest of the five activists, the prosecution told court.

Public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar on Monday continued her argument before Sessions Judge KD Vadane opposing the bail applications of activists Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj.

She told the court that the email communication reveals that the top leaders in CPI (Maoist) central committee were concerned after the arrest of the five and Chandrashekhar alias Ganapathy, who she claimed was the general secretary of CPI (Maoist), had asked Rao how the letters were leaked.

While quoting the content of the email, which she claimed was written to Rao by Ganapathy, Pawar said, "The central committee has received a news-clip of some communication that was leaked immediately after the arrests. The point of great concern is how exactly the letters were leaked and how the letters got in the hands of police. We need to put efforts to understand the full scale of this breach and the methods of the intelligence agencies."

Pawar said the sender of the email also asked Rao to ensure the confidentiality of the communication channel.

"Please ensure the confidentiality of this communication channel and any report or message sent outside of the secured network through the micro chip must be encrypted with password," said Pawar, quoting the mail.

She added that Ganapathy in the mail told Rao that the committee is seeking a report from him.

Quoting the contents of the letter, Pawar said, "It is better to use multiple keys for the future correspondence. The central committee also expects your report on the assessment of the the damage caused by the police action."

Pawar said, in the email, that Ganapathy told Rao that after the recent arrests from Delhi and Maharashtra, central committee is concerned and said that the "urban movement" is facing a lot of difficulties for last several years.

"In the backdrop of all these events, the central committee wants your suggestions to formulate short and long term action plan," Pawar said while quoting the email.

Quoting the email conversation, Pawar said, "The five arrests have caused a lot of damage to the movement and some urgent steps are needed to boost the morale of the cadre."

Citing this email communication, Pawar told the court that the defence has been constantly claiming that these seized letters are fabricated. "This email communication of banned outfit showing concerns about the actions proves that the seized letters are genuine," she added.

In order to support her claim, Pawar also cited some more details of the same email communication, where the sender has asked Rao to delete this mail permanently after reading.

Pawar also cited another email communication which she claimed was Rao's reply to Ganapathy.

"This mail was written to Ganapathy by Rao in response to the earlier communication that he had received from Chandrashekhar on 4 July, 2018. This mail was sent on 14 July, where he is asking Ganapathy to maintain extra caution in the view of blanket raids," she said.

"In coming days, I will send a detailed reply along with my own assessment of a serious breach. I agree that any comrade must be secured. Unfortunately I do not know how to set up multiple PGP keys but I will take the help of one of the students," said Pawar, quoting the email content.

PGP is "pretty good privacy" which is an encryption programme to provide cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication.

Pawar said that Rao wrote in the mail that he will put rules in place for using personal mobiles and computers.

Pawar added that Rao had expressed concerns about how the intelligence agencies managed to access a confidential file by the name of "final dispatch.pgp" containing the details of the arms to be smuggled through Nepal, Manipur and Kolkata corridors.

District Judge KD Vadane is currently hearing bail applications of activists Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj, arrested in June and August this year.Togadia said he and his followers would perform a 'parikrama' of the make-shift Ram temple on Tuesday morning and hold a public meeting to announce who the Hindus should vote in the next election.

Ayodhya: Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad chief Pravin Togadia on Monday accused the BJP and the RSS of betraying Hindus, saying that instead of building a Lord Ram temple in Ayodhya, they were now preparing to build a mosque in Ayodhya.

The former international working president of the Vishva Hindu Parishad claimed the BJP and the RSS were now busy appeasing Muslims, whom, he said, the RSS brought to Ayodhya to perform 'wazu' (ablutions) with the Saryu water and offer namaaz on its bank.

Togadia made the allegations while addressing over 2,000 of his followers on the bank of Saryu after holding an oath-taking ceremony with them to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Accusing the BJP-led Modi government in the Centre of suppressing the Hindus' voice, Togadia urged his followers to launch a movement to elect a Hindus' government in the upcoming 2019 general elections.

"In fifteen Hindu 'dharam sansads' since 1984, unanimous resolutions have been passed that the BJP would get a law enacted to build a Lord Rama temple on getting a clear majority, but they have betrayed all 'dharam sansads' and decided to wait and obey the court verdict now," he said.

Togadia said he along with his followers would perform a 'parikrama' of the make-shift Ram temple on Tuesday morning and hold a public meeting to announce who the Hindus should vote in the next election.Following every gunfight security forces as per their standard operating procedure must sanitise the site of all unexploded explosives before allowing civilians to proceed to the area.

Laroo is in the volatile south Kashmirs Kulgam district, a hotbed of the separatist militancy. Late on Saturday night as villagers in Laroo returned to their homes from a marriage function, Sheraz Ahmad Bhat did not think that anything was amiss.

Around midnight, however, strange knocks on his door led to a series of events that would shake up Kashmir. Three Kashmiri recruits of the Pakistan based militant outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammad, had sought shelter in Bhats home and were gunned down in a gunfight that erupted in the next few hours.

Gunfights and subsequent mourning over the deaths of militants are not new to Kashmir but on Sunday, the Valley was taken aback as six civilians were killed in a blast at the site of the gunfight in Laroo, shortly after security forces had withdrawn from the area.

A large number of civilians had gathered at the site when an explosive left behind after the operation was triggered. Videos of the incident showed dozens of injured lying on the ground while some were being carried by their arms and legs. The injured were rushed to nearby district hospitals from where those critically injured were rushed to hospitals in Srinagar. Two civilians were declared dead on arrival while four more succumbed to their injuries at the hospital.

The incident was condemned by various quarters in the Valley -- including unionist and separatist politicians. The Indian Army conveyed its heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed in the blast. Kashmir, however, observed a shutdown against the deaths on Monday, at the call of the separatists. The separatists have also called for a march to Srinagars commercial hub Lal Chowk on Tuesday.

The gunfight

Bhat had gone to sleep soon after the village quieted down on Saturday night. The three gunmen knocked at his doors and had forcibly entered his house half an hour past midnight, Bhat claimed. An hour later security forces had completely surrounded the neighbourhood and evacuated civilians in the vicinity, except the Bhat family.

By around 4 am full-fledged gunfight had erupted as the first gunshots were heard and continued till hours after dawn. Local residents said that one of the three militants was killed before dawn as he attempted to escape from the neighbourhood that was under a tight cordon.

Bhat alleged that his family was not evacuated till about 7 in the morning. We could not even give water to our children while we were inside, Bhat said. We were all crouching under the sink in the kitchen.

By 8 am security forces use explosives to set Bhats house on fire  a method used by security forces to speed up operations by forcing militants out of buildings they take positions in and into the open where they can be easily gunned down. The two remaining militants were gunned down in a brief shootout shortly.

At the same time, two large mobs of stone pelters had amassed on both sides of Laroo village  one group was engaged by security forces at a site towards Kanipora village while the other was being engaged near the Shurat village.

By 9 am the gunfight had ended and security forces began to withdraw from the site of the gunfight by around 10.30 am during which stone pelters who had gathered near Shurat reached the site of the gunfight. Soon after, at around 11 am according to local residents, a loud blast occurred at the site.

According to one eyewitness, the blast occurred near the entrance of the house as young men and boys had gathered over the rubble. Two civilians from Shurat were killed in the blast and at least one more injured. According to a young man from Shurat, who was injured in the blast, civilians were thrown off their feet by the blast. Resting in a ward at a hospital in Srinagar, he said his ears were still ringing from the sound of the blast.

Bhat said that no warning was issued to him against proceeding towards his now destroyed house but according to one stone pelter who part of the Kanipora group of stone pelters, warnings were the reason youth poured into the site. The house owner told us that he had warned boys against moving further as the police had told him there were explosives, he said.

The stone pelter, who did not want to be identified, said that the youth suspected that there were more dead bodies or weapons left behind as they found the warning unusual. Civilians routinely throng the sites of gunfights and there have been several instances in the past where stray explosives have set off causing fatalities.

Bhats modest two storey house is located inside the Bon Mohalla in Laroo. Local residents said it was because of the congested layout that more people could not gather at the site. Otherwise there would have been several more dead bodies here, one resident said. The walls of what stands of Bhats house tilted and developed cracks due to the impact.

Failure to observe SOP?

Following every gunfight security forces as per their standard operating procedure must sanitise the site of all unexploded explosives before allowing civilians to proceed to the area. However, in recent years the security forces, under pressure from stone pelters, have had to speed up operations adversely affecting clearance operations.

Soon after the blast, the Jammu and Kashmir Police issued an advisory warning people against visiting the site of the gunfight. However, since Monday morning civilians still continued to throng the site of the gunfight and local residents said no subsequent clearance operation was undertaken.

The previous day, local residents said the security forces were present at the site of the gunfight for at least two hours after the gunfight had ended. Now, local residents believe that the explosives were left behind deliberately to prevent civilians from gathering at sites of gunfights.Rahul Gandhi reacted to the ongoing controversy over second-in-command in CBI special director Rakesh Asthana and called the investigating agency 'an institution in terminal decline thats at war with itself.' Asthana has been accused of accepting bribe.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday reacted to the ongoing controversy over second-in-command in Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special director Rakesh Asthana and called the investigating agency "an institution in terminal decline thats at war with itself." Asthana has been accused of accepting bribe.

In a tweet, Rahul said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "blue-eyed boy has been caught taking bribes", adding that "under this prime minister, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta".

The PMs blue-eyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer, of Godra SIT fame, infiltrated as No. 2 into the CBI, has now been caught taking bribes. Under this PM, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta. An institution in terminal decline thats at war with itself. https://t.co/Z8kx41kVxX  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 22, 2018

On Sunday, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that the Centre should disclose everything and not interfere in the probe against Asthana. Speaking at a press briefing, Singhvi said he was sure that the credibility of the story, which he claimed that he had only read about in news reports, would be ascertained. He added, "But let me say one thing, if even fractionally what you and I have read is true, then it is the most serious of serious things and remember, this is the same appointment which was heavily objected to at the time of its inception."

The CBI named Asthana in an FIR on 15 October. Asthana has been accused of receiving a bribe from an accused probed by him in a case linked to meat exporter Moin Qureshi. The CBI registered the case  FIR RC 13(A) of 2018  on the basis of a complaint from Satish Sana, who was facing a probe in the 2017 case allegedly involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi. Sana alleged the officer had helped him to get a clean chit.

The CBI has also arrested Manoj Prasad, believed to be a middleman, when he returned from Dubai on 16 October. However, the agency has maintained silence on the issue.

Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Asthana is heading the special investigating team (SIT) handling crucial cases such as AgustaWestland chopper scam and loan fraud by business tycoon Vijay Mallya. The team is also probing the Moin Qureshi case.

With inputs from agenciesAccording to the new affiliation bye-laws of the CBSE, the board can take various actions against erring schools, including issuing written warning, levying fine up to Rs 5 lakh, and suspending affiliation for a definite period

New Delhi: Downgrading from senior secondary level to secondary level, restricting number of sections and debarring school from sponsoring students in board examinations are among the penalties prescribed by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) if any school is found guilty of irregularities in financial, administrative, examination and academic matters.

According to the new affiliation bylaws of the CBSE, the board can take various actions against erring schools, including issuing written warning, levying fine up to Rs 5 lakh, suspending affiliation for a definite period, debarring school from applying for affiliation, and withdrawing affiliation.

"The board may impose all or any of the penalties in case of gross malpractices in examination, academic, administrative and financial matters and established violation or non-compliance of court or government orders," the bylaws read.

Other grounds for penalty pointed out by CBSE include shortcomings in affiliation requirements detected at any stage, withdrawal of no objection certificate or recognition by state government and poor academic performance of school for consecutive three years.

Not sending teachers or principal for training as per the requirement of bylaws and not nominating and relieving staff for evaluation of answer scripts of the board's examination will also be treated as a ground for penalty.

"In case of any complaint or taking suo motu cognisance, the board may seek report or clarification from the school, seek comments or reports from authorities and concerned quarters, conduct a surprise inspection of the school or take any other action that may be deemed fit to verify the facts.

"After verification of facts, the board shall serve a show-cause notice to school setting out reasons for the proposed action and the school will be required to reply within 30 days. The reply will be scrutinised by the board and action regarding closing of the complaint or imposing penalty will be taken accordingly," the bylaws read.AICC Odisha in-charge Jitendra Singh claimed had the Odisha government taken the IMD warning seriously and organised cautionary operation well in time, the lives of all the deceased could have been saved.

Bhubaneswar: The Congress Monday accused the Odisha government of "not taking adequate precautionary measures" to tackle the twin disaster of cyclone Titli and the subsequent flood.

All India Congress Committee (AICC) Odisha in-charge Jitendra Singh told reporters in Bhubaneswar that the casualty figure was "much higher" than the state government's official death toll of 61.

"Odisha government's craziness for zero casualty publicity has led to such a huge human casualty in the very severe cyclonic storm Titli. Naveen Patnaik administration

is solely responsible for this," he said.

Singh, who visited the calamity affected areas of Gajapati, Ganjam and Rayagada districts along with a party team during the day, claimed that more than 70 people died due to 'Titli' and flash flood, but Odisha government has put the death toll at 61.

Accusing the state government of having "failed" to tackle the disaster, the Congress leader claimed had it taken the IMD warning seriously and organised cautionary operation well in time, the lives of all the deceased could have been saved.

"The state government has also failed to carry out relief and restoration work in the affected areas in a proper manner as most of the villages hit by the calamity are still

devoid of road links and electricity and drinking water supply even 12 days after the disaster," said Singh.

The former union minister alleged that the focus of the entire administration after the cyclone and floods was on Ganjam district which happens to be chief minister's home district.

The Congress leader demanded that the BJP-led NDA government at Centre provide a special package for cyclone and flood hit Odisha.

"We appeal to the Centre to provide a special package of assistance for the people affected by the recent cyclone Titli and subsequent floods," he said asking Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to use his influence on the Centre to ensure a package at the earliest.The court had earlier rejected his bail plea and issued a non-bailable warrant against him. A video of the incident which occurred on 14 October went viral on social media resulting in public outrage. It prompted the police to step in and launch a hunt for the accused who had gone missing after the incident.

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Monday sent the son of former BSP MP Ashish Pandey, who was arrested for brandishing pistol at a five-star hotel here, to 14-day judicial custody.

Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmendra Singh sent the accused to jail till 5 November after the police said that he was not required for further custodial interrogation.

The court had earlier rejected his bail plea and issued a non-bailable warrant against him. A video of the incident which occurred on 14 October went viral on social media resulting in public outrage. It prompted the police to step in and launch a hunt for the accused who had gone missing after the incident.

An FIR was filed on 16 October at RK Puram police station under various provisions of the IPC and the Arms Act relating to criminal intimidation and misuse of firearms.The issue of entry of menstruating women into the Sabarimala temple should never have been the cause for a debate on the touchstone of one-size-fits-all feminism.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on 22 October, 2018. It is being republished in light of the CJI Ranjan Gogoi-led Supreme Court bench being slated to deliver the verdict on a batch of petitions seeking re-examination of its decision to allow entry of women of menstruating age in Kerala's Sabarimala Temple on Thursday at 10.30 am.

Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhis opinion that the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala has made Hinduism more inclusive is more than a little ironic. If anything, the verdict and its aftermath have shown that it is easy to constrict and exploit the openness, pluralism and diversity of Hinduism and force upon it an Abrahamic "quick fix" that threatens to alter its core. And this process, once set in motion, feeds on itself.

Sabarimala should never have been the cause for a debate on the touchstone of one-size-fits-all feminism. Much less should it have been a trigger for judicial overreach. It is pointless to search for misogyny or patriarchal oppression in a religious custom where a deity in his eternal celibate avatar wishes to be spared the presence of women of menstruating age. It was not a blanket ban on women. They are free to visit the shrine unless within that age bracket. There are 140 other Lord Ayyappa temples in Kerala alone that place no bar on age or gender.

To subject one particular custom in one particular temple to judicial decree goes beyond attempting to micromanage Hinduism. It disrespects the deitys wishes, distills Lord Ayyappa of his "naishtika brahmachari" characteristic and ultimately negates the essence of Hinduism as a lived experience that not just worships but celebrates the bond between the deity and the faithful in dynamic ways. The court says that the deity in a temple has no constitutional rights. The devotees believe he has. Faith is beyond the realm of reason or statutes.

To argue, as Justice DY Chandrachud has done, that the burden of the deitys celibacy should not be transferred on a woman and construct her as a cause for deviation from celibacy is specious.

On this, R Jagannathan writes in Swarajyamag, The world over, celibates do separate themselves from temptations of the flesh and the Catholic church is a prime example of this. So, does Justice Chandrachud believe that the burden of the Popes celibacy, and those of his cardinals, bishops and lesser priests, is being cast unfairly on nuns and Catholic women?

Religious traditions or customs that do not reflect any social evil (such as sati) or economic oppression (such as triple talaq) are not justiciable. In her dissenting opinion in the 4:1 verdict, Justice Indu Malhotra wrote: in a secular polity, issues which are matters of deep religious faith and sentiment, must not ordinarily be interfered with by courts.

Tampering with this simple rule results in unintended consequences. The apex court through its majority verdict may have wished to introduce reform through engineering, but such attempts are almost always doomed to fail in the absence of public support. On the other hand, as we have been witnessing in the protests against the judgment, such engineering is likely to have the opposite effect. It isnt just the futile attempt to rationalise faith and unintentionally create a persecution complex among practicing Hindus, but also the creation of a space for activism in religion that further hardens people's stances. And thats not all.

There are more ways in which the majority verdict is hastening the Abrahamisation of Hindu faith. The court has tested the custom solely on the basis of Article 14 (equality before law) and found it wrong. However, as Justice Malhotra had pointed out in her dissenting judgement, the equality doctrine enshrined under Article 14 of the Constitution does not override the fundamental right guaranteed by Article 25 to every individual to freely profess, practice and propagate their faith, in accordance with the tenets of their religion.

The majority judgement refuses also to recognise Lord Ayyappa devotees as a separate entity, in effect denying them the group rights under Article 26 that would have enabled them to manage their own religious affairs  a protection extended to minorities. Notwithstanding the dissenting opinion of Justice Malhotra, who wrote that Article 26 not only applies to religion but also sects, this ruling strips different Hindu sects of constitutional protection and makes them vulnerable to similar instances of judicial overreach.

What this judgment therefore does is inadvertently push Hindus towards seeking minority status in a bid to immunise their religion from judicial overreach or pressurise the government to bring an amendment to the Constitution.

In a separate article for Swarajyamag, R Jagannathan writes that this verdict opens the opportunity for the Narendra Modi government to amend the Constitution to the effect that the protections given in Articles 25-30 will be equally applicable to any community seeking it, including the majority, and the Ayyappa devotees would benefit.

The exclusionary tactic of the Supreme Court cuts deeper, however. In assuming the role of a papal authority while managing Hindu religious affairs  while at the same time denying Lord Ayyappas devotees the right to do so  the court has foisted among Hindus a sanctified version of the religion that looks and sounds like an Abrahamic faith, devoid of its customs and codified by judicial decree.

In his column for The Times of India, Arghya Sengupta of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy writes, if the tests for determining a religious denomination are to be applied dogmatically as they have been in this case, the court has unwittingly pushed a sterile and exclusionary version of Hinduism that has little basis in Hindu texts. Exclusion of other faiths, streamlined organisation and dogmatic pathways to achieving salvation are alien to Hindu scripture. Constitutional doctrine cannot emerge in a vacuum and be applied so pedantically.

The consequences have been severe. As the gates of Sabarimala Temple close for a month on Monday, a quick stock-taking suggests that not just devotees of Lord Ayyappa (among which women equal, if not outnumber men) have reacted with fury. The verdict has run into a groundswell of protests and there has been a considerable hardening of stance among Hindus everywhere.

Amid this judicial outreach, misplaced activism has further queered the pitch. From the likes of activist Rehana Fathima to journalists, Sabarimala has become a hunting ground for "crusaders". This sort of activism is good for proving a point but nothing else, serving to only harden stances further in a polarised atmosphere.

Say one truth a day ; Ayyappa to Media An Ayyappa devotees plea to @Vijayanpinarai, Feminists & to Media@TVJanam#CPMAttacksSabarimala#SaveSabarimala pic.twitter.com/kZxzIzHI3J  HKupdate (@HKupdate) October 21, 2018

We have decided to lock the temple and handover the keys & leave. I stand with the devotees. I do not have any other option: Kandararu Rajeevaru, #SabarimalaTemple head priest #Kerala (file pic) pic.twitter.com/6LilPOx9qr  ANI (@ANI) October 19, 2018

As ordinary devotees and the head priest of the Sabarimala temple feel as if their faith is under siege, it is worth reflecting on the path Hinduism might take if forced within the shackles of monotheistic interpretation from a judiciopapist authority. It wont remain the pluralist philosophy that is a way of life for billions.The Indian Army has informed the Pakistan Army to take back bodies of two 'hostile Pakistani nationals' who had been killed in an encounter in Sunderbani sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Indian Army has asked Pakistan to take back the bodies of two 'hostile Pakistani nationals' who had been killed in an encounter along the Line of Control in Sunderbani sector of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday.

"Pakistan Army has been informed through established communication channels to take over the bodies of the hostile Pakistani nationals," Colonel Aman Anand, Army spokesperson told the media on Monday. Army sources said a stern warning has been conveyed to the Pakistan Army to restrain terrorists operating from its soil.

Two heavily armed Pakistani intruders and three soldiers were killed on Sunday in a gunfight after the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the LoC. The slain intruders are believed to be members of a Border Action Team (BAT) comprising Pakistan Army jawans and trained militants, an army officer said on condition of anonymity.

"At about 1.45 pm, the Indian Army in Sunderbani sector had a fierce encounter with heavily armed Pakistani intruders very close to the LoC. The patrol (team) killed two intruders and recovered war-like stores including two AK-47 rifles," the spokesman told PTI.

He said three soldiers were killed while fighting the intruders and another soldier suffered grievous injuries and has been airlifted to the Army Command hospital in Udhampur. The injured soldier's condition is reported to be stable, the spokesman said. Sources said five to six Pakistani intruders crossed the LoC and fired on Indian Army patrol.

The dead soldiers have been identified as Havildar Kausal Kumar from Nowshera, Launce Naik Ranjeet Singh from Doda and rifleman Rajat Kumar Basan from Akhnoor, according to The Indian Express. Rifleman Rakesh Kumar of Samba has been hospitalised.

Sources also stated that since the talks between DGMOs (Director General of Military Operations) of the two countries on 29 May, the Indian Army has been maintaining "utmost restraint" to uphold the ceasefire pact along the LoC despite regular provocative actions from across the border.

However, Pakistan Army has been vigorously attempting to send terrorists across the LoC and seven infiltration bids have been foiled by the Indian Army since 30 May, in which 23 terrorists have been killed.

Reports suggest that there is a concentration of a large number of terrorists in launch pads across the border and they are desperate to infiltrate into India before the onset of winter.

With inputs from PTIThe family members of Father Kuraikose and the supporters of the rape victim are suspecting fouls play behind the death of the priest as a series of attempt were made by the supporters of the bishop to influence and intimidate the witnesses.

The nuns who led a protest for the arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the Jalandhar diocese in connection with the rape of their fellow nun had expressed fear of threat to the lives of those who supported the survivor when the Kerala High Court granted him bail on 15 October.

They suspect that Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who was found dead in his room attached to the St Marys Church at Dasua in Hoshiarpur this morning, may have been killed as he was a key witness in the case. The nuns consider this as a warning to those who are trying to pursue the case.

We see the death of Father Kuriakose as a clear message to us to keep quiet. He was our strength. He helped us to fight the case and supported us through media, said the sister of the rape survivor.

She said that the priest had antagonised the bishop by forming a priests collective and questioning his wrong deeds. The bishop transferred Father Kuriakose, who was serving as a vicar in a church under the diocese in Punjab, to Dasuya. Father Kuriakose was then posted under a junior priest without any powers.

We did not expect such a fate to the priest. We dont know whether it was a natural death or homicide. The circumstantial evidence suggests fouls play. It should be probed at the highest level and the truth brought out, the nun said.

The family members of the bishop, who belongs to a Syrian Christian family at Poochakkal near Cherthala in Alappuzha district have termed the premature death mysterious. Jose Kurian, younger brother of Father Kuriakose said that he had told us after the bishop came out on bail that he may not live long.

My brother had talked to me a week before the death. He had expressed fear that something may happen to him. We cant believe the Punjab Police version that my brother had died due to cardiac arrest. He had no history of heart ailments, Jose said.

He said that the family had filed a petition with the Alappuzha district superintendent of police seeking a high-level probe and postmortem of the body in Kerala. The SP has forwarded our petition to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

We hope the Kerala government will intervene in the case and do justice to us. We are going to Punjab tomorrow and decide our future course action after reaching there, he said.

The family members of Father Kuraikose and the supporters of the rape victim are suspecting fouls play behind the death of the priest as a series of attempt were made by the supporters of the bishop to influence and intimidate the witnesses.

The survivor herself had complained about an attempt to endanger her life. The brother of a priest who is a confidant of the bishop bribed a migrant worker posted at her convent at Kuravilangad to dislodge the brake system and damage the tyre tube valve of a two-wheeler she had been using. The nun had lodged a complaint with the Kuravilangad police in this connection.

Another sister of the survivor had also alleged threats to the lives of her family members from the relatives and supporters of the bishop. A complaint she filed with the Kalady police in Ernakulam district said that she and her family members had received several life threats after her sister filed the police complaint.

One Thomas Chittuparambil, brother of Father Lawrence Chittuparampil, had threatened to liquidate my son and brother if something happened to the bishop. The people who are close to the bishop are ready to go to any extent to save the bishop, she said adding that they had sought police protection in view of the constant threats.

The threats to the survivor and her supporters came after the nuns refused to budge under pressure and settle the case by receiving favours. The family members of the victim had claimed that the bishop had earlier through a mediator promised Rs 5 crore to the nun to withdraw the case.

When they rejected the offer, a priest close to the bishop approached the nuns supporting the victim offering them 10 acres of land and a new convent estimated to cost Rs 10 crore to continue their religious life. The police have registered a case against the priest Father James Aerthayil, who belongs to the Congregation of Mother of Carmel (CMC), in this connection.

The bishops powers are not limited to people who are ready to do anything for him but extends across the Church and political spectrum. While the Church authorities lent him indirect support by questioning the acts of the nuns, the politicians made a beeline to the jail where he was lodged during his judicial custody.

The delay in arresting Franco and the bail he got in spite of several complaints about the attempts made by his supporters to influence and intimidate the witnesses speaks volumes of the power he wields. The government has bowed its head before him by not opposing his application for bail, says George Joseph, president of the Joint Christian Council (JCC), which supported the nuns stir at Kochi in September.

He said that they were expressing doubt about the death of Father Kuriakose because the bishop is capable of doing anything to save himself and his position. He said that Father Kuriakose had several times talked about the threat to his life ever since he extended his support to the nun.

Advocate Indulekha Joseph of Church Action Council said that the death of the priest would adversely affect the case as he was the main prosecution witness in the case. The statement he had given to the police against the bishop will not hold in the court following the death.

An accused in such a case would have remained in jail till unless he is acquitted if it was an ordinary person. Nobody expected the bishop to get the bail as the police had arrested him after almost completing the investigation. They were ready to file the chargehseet any time, the lawyer said.

Actor Dileep, who was arrested for his alleged involvement in the actress abduction case, spent 85 days in jail. The bishop who was accused of raping a nun 13 times was out of jail 20 days after his arrest following a two-month long investigation.

The church activists view this as a clear indication of the fate of the case. The death of the key witness has strengthened their apprehension.The estimate includes property damage and business interruption across residential, commercial, industrial, and automobile lines of business. It also factors in post-loss amplification and accounts for non-modeled losses. RMS expects the majority of insured losses to impact residential lines. Included in the industry estimate are losses to the National Flood Insurance Program of between $0.25 to $0.75 billion USD. Unlike recent events such as Hurricanes Harvey and Florence where precipitation-induced inland flooding was the main driver of loss, RMS expects the majority of insured losses from Michael to be driven by wind and storm surge. Economic losses for the U.S. (all affected states) are estimated to be between $8.5 and $14 billion USD. Economic losses are losses to all potentially insurable properties, regardless of whether they have coverage or not. It does not include items such as roads and utilities, and government-owned property, often which is self-insured or uninsured. Michael made landfall on Wednesday, October 10, 2018 near Mexico Beach, Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Michael produced maximum 1-minute sustained wind speeds of 155 mph (250 km/hr) according to the National Hurricane Center, and 152 mph (245 km/hr) as estimated by RMS HWind. This level of intensity makes Michael the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. since Hurricane Andrew (1992), and the strongest October U.S. landfalling hurricane on record. To arrive at this estimate of loss, RMS simulated wind and storm surge impacts using the latest North Atlantic Hurricane Model (Version 18.0) as well as ensemble footprints, which are hazard reconstructions of Michaels wind and surge fields informed by observational datasets. The destructive power of Michael damaged many observing stations in the region, inhibiting them from capturing the peak wind speed or a complete time history of winds for the event. RMS sent scientists and engineers onsite to survey the damage and collect key observational data from the field to better understand the impacts of Michael on actual properties. Combined with RMS HWind technology, their detailed, four-day, field reconnaissance effort helped validate RMS modeled wind and storm surge profile for the hurricane, particularly where data gaps existed. Michael Young, Vice President of Model Management, RMS, said: This truly was one of the few hurricanes that have exceeded building-level design wind speeds for the region. Within the tragedy of this event, there are many opportunities to see effective wind and flood mitigation measures and learn how to re-build better and stronger. Dr. Mark Powell, Vice President of Modeling, RMS, said: This event reminds me of the damage level we saw in Hurricane Andrew back in 1992. The intensity of Michael caused significant damage, however Michael was relatively concentrated, unlike hurricanes such as Florence or Harvey which were spread out over a larger geographical area. Michaels speed and intensity is one of the main reasons that losses from Michael are far more wind and storm surge related rather than flood. In fact, I would not be surprised if Michael is re-classified as a Category 5 event after further analysis.

The prime witness in the Kerala nun rape case, Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who was found dead in Jalandhar on Monday, had testified against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal in the case and had also played a key role in nuns' protest.

Soon after the prime witness in the case of a Kerala nun's rape was reported dead on Monday, the convener of the the Save Our Nuns Action Council, which had organised the unprecedented protests by nuns in Ernakulam seeking the arrest of rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, said his bail must be revoked. Father Augustine Vattoli told Firstpost that this was the primary reason why they had opposed Mulakkal being granted bail.

Father Kuriakose Kattuthara was found dead in his room at his church at Bhogpur in Jalandhar at 10 am on Monday. He had testified against Mulakkal in the rape case and had also played an active role in the agitation by five nuns at Ernakulam's Vanji Circle demanding Mulakkal's arrest.

"We had expected retaliation. Father Kattuthara regularly told us that he was facing threat calls," Father Vattoli told Firstpost. "This is all the more reason to immediately revoke Mulakkals bail."

After news of Father Kattuthara's death broke, Father Vattoli led a delegation to the Kerala Chief Minister's Office to insist that the government take action in the matter at the earliest. If they dont, Mulakkal is going to continue his attempts to cover up the crime.

Mulakkal was arrested on 21 September on the Kerala nun's complaint that the priest from the Jalandhar diocese he had raped her at least 13 times between 2014 and 2016. He was released from a sub-jail near Kottayam on 17 October, a day after the Kerala High Court granted him bail. He had received a rousing welcome from his supporters on reaching Jalandhar after his release.

Father Kattuthara's sister-in-law told CNN-News18 that he had been receiving threats from Mulakkal and his associates since he publicly came out in support of the nun who accused him of rape. The nuns from Kerala had initially approached Father Kattuthara for his help in the matter, after which he facilitated the process to file the complaint in the case.

She said that Father Kattuthara had mentioned multiple times that he was under a lot of pressure from his congregation to either withdraw support to the nuns' agitation, or to stay silent, adding that the family suspects foul play in his death and have filed a police complaint. They are awaiting details of his autopsy to ascertain the cause of death.

When contacted, the office of the Behra Director General of Police said they are awaiting details at the moment and refused to comment further.Father Kuriakose Kattuthara (62), a witness in the Kerala nun rape case, was found dead inside his room in St Pauls Church, Dasuya in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab.

Dasuya: It has only been five days since Franco Mulakkal, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar and accused in the rape of a nun, returned to Jalandhar after being granted bail by the Kerala High Court, and already, a key witness in the case has been found dead. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara (62) was found dead inside his room in St Pauls Church, Dasuya in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. The church and his accommodations are situated inside St Pauls Convent School.

Father Kuriakose, who was generally an early riser, did not wake up until 9.30 am on Monday morning. This raised the suspicions of the church cook, Madan Lal, who informed the staff. Lal said that he had served food to the Father on Sunday evening and that was the last time he saw him. Father used to wake up very early in the morning. When he did not come out till late on Monday morning, I informed the staff of the church, he said.

Sister Vianney from St Pauls Convent was among those who were alerted by Lal. After 15 minutes of trying to get a response from inside, the door was broken down and he was found lying motionless on the bed and his clothes were stained with vomit. According to Sister Vianney, he was immediately taken to the Government Civil Hospital in Dasuya where the doctors declared him dead on arrival. A post-mortem is underway at the hospital and the report is still being awaited.

At around 3.15 pm on Monday, senior police officials reached the spot along with a dog squad and searched the room where the Father was found. Sources in the police said that they are checking documents and other items to ascertain if there is any case of foul play in his death, as alleged by his family. Police also held a thorough check of the kitchens where the food for the priest and his staff are usually prepared.

A colleague of Father Kuriakose and a priest from the St Pauls Church, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the former had not been well for the past few days and was on medication. Some prescriptions for high blood pressure were also found in his room, according to police sources.

Deputy Superintendent of Police AR Sharma has said that initial inquiries revealed no injury marks on the body. Only after the post-mortem report comes in, we can explain the cause of the death, he said. Senior Superintendent of Police of Hoshiarpur J Elanchezhian has said that prima facie, the death seems to be due to natural causes. We are examining all the facts and a board of doctors has been formed to hold the postmortem and verify other scientific details. After the postmortem report comes to us, we will be in a position to say something. But it seems to be a case of natural death in our initial investigation, he said.

With inputs from Sunil Lakha

The author is a Ludhiana-based freelance writer and a part of 101Reporters grassroots network.Father Kuriakose Kattutharas sudden death in the premises of a school run by the Jalandhar Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Punjab caught the police by surprise.

Father Kuriakose Kattutharas sudden death in the premises of a school run by the Jalandhar Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Punjab caught the police by surprise, as also the clergy and laity in village Kairwali.

The fact that a witness in an ongoing controversial investigation, involving the Bishop of the Jalandhar Diocese, was living hardly 3 kilometres from the Dasuya police station came to the attention of the local police at roughly 12 pm on Monday afternoon. This was when the principal of the school called the police to inform them of the death.

The Station House Officer at Dasuya station is on leave until Tuesday morning, and another officer is in charge until then. The people who work in the St Pauls school contacted us at 11.45 am or 12 pm This was after they had taken the priest to the hospital, where he was declared brought dead, says the officiating SHO Sukhinder Singh. None of us knew he was here  even the media didnt know.

The family members of the deceased priest are expected to arrive in Dasuya by the morning and will be taken by the police to the site where Father Kuriakose died  a small room in a three-room house built in a corner of the schools playground. They will also be taken to the hospital to identify the body and thereafter, a post-mortem would be conducted. Its results could take from 24 to 72 hours to be released.

The police and hospital authorities are awaiting the permission from the brother of Father Kuriakose before proceeding with formalities and until then, the body is being preserved, they said. The brother has specifically requested that no steps should be taken until he arrives in Dasuya. No complaint or FIR has been registered in the matter until now in Dasuyathe family of the Father has registered an FIR in Kerala this morning. It is learnt that they would prefer to take the proceedings to Kerala.

However, in this high profile case, it is not just the local police but the SSP JN Cherian and DSP AR Sharma of Hoshiarpur district who are taking the lead in investigations. According to Sharma, the death of the priest, who was around 62 years old, is being seen as non-natural. The police normally investigates all cases of unnatural death, but here since he was involved in a high profile case as a witness, we are investigating the matter from that angle also, Sharma says. When the family members of the deceased arrive, we will ask them questions regarding that matter as well.

The fact is, this sudden death has caught the Punjab Police unawares. The father has been living in different towns of Punjab and had never sought any kind of protection from us, says Singh.

The 62 year old priest had led the Sunday Service on 21 October, which was attended as usual by a large crowd in the church located within St Pauls school of Ferozepur district, roughly 40 kilometres from Jalandhar city.

The case in which Father Kuriakose was involved relates to accusations of rape against Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal. The Bishop has been accused by a nun of the Roman Catholic denomination of sexual exploitation and rape, a charge he refutes. Other women in the clergy and laity both in Kerala and Punjab had supported Father Kuriakose.

Father Kuriakose had supported the womens version and also promised to testify in the matter.

By around 4 pm on Sunday, the police had asked questions of several people at the school premises regarding the death of Father Kuriakose. This included the mother superior (who could not be contacted) and other sisters who live in the convent next to the school. Whatever I wanted to say, I have told the police, said Sister Elisabeth at the convent. We are now in prayer and wont issue any more statements.

Father Kuriakose has moved to Dasuya only a month ago. Previously, he lived and worked in the neighboring district Jalandhars Bhojpur village. He had been living and preaching in Punjab towns and cities for well over 20 years, and kept poor health, according to those who worked with the school.

Those familiar with the sermons of Father Kuriakose said his sermons were well-attended, usually getting 300-350 visitors. He rarely went outside the school premises.

Usually, the priest would go to sleep after 11 pm and would wake up at 8 or 9 am. When he didnt wake up on Monday, his cook said they knocked on the door and finally pushed it open to find him lying in bed, froth emerging from his mouth. After the police came to know how important the man who died is to an ongoing investigation involving both Punjab and Kerala police, they stationed several policemen at the site of the death. Four policemen have been put on duty and they will stay at the residence of the priest, says Sharma.

Father Kuriakoses sermon on Sundaywhich turned out to be his lastdwelled on his mother, attendees said. He said that whenever he used to go home, he would like to be with his mother. He spoke very softly from the pulpit, said Sohanpal Masih, who works with the Church at St Pauls.In this #MeToo Conversation, the panelists discuss what are the issues marginalised women face and how they must occupy a more equal place in the movement

As the #MeToo movement continues to dominate conversations on social media and in the workplace, one of the narratives that has emerged is that of marginalised women in India. Notably, last year, the list of sexual harassers in academia was created by a Dalit lawyer, Raya Sarkar  a fact that many say is being forgotten or ignored.

In this #MeTooConversation, Divya Kandukuri, Nidhi Goyal, Ngurang Reena and Christina Thomas Dhanaraj discuss the need for inclusivity in the movement. Kandukuri, freelance journalist and founder of the BlueDawn Mental Health Care Group, opened the discussion with a question: Why did Raya Sarkar's list not gain the same amount of prominence as the current wave of the movement?

Dhanaraj, consultant at @DalitWomenFight and advisor at Smashboard, spoke about how Dalit women should not be badgered to explain details of the harassment or abuse they have experienced. She also spoke about how the media is irresponsible in reporting crimes perpetrated against marginalised women, especially when it comes to documenting these crimes through photographs and video. "We have to have marginalised women at the centre of the movement," she said.

Reena, poet-activist and research scholar at JNU, spoke about how tribal women are discouraged from reporting because their communities ask them to be silent or compromise.

Goyal, founder-director of Rising Flame and a disability and gender rights activist, spoke about how very often care-givers themselves can be harassers. She said that many times, survivors don't report harassment because it could lead to further alienation in their personal or professional spaces. She said that networks of support are needed for women, which are accessible to all.Chetan Bhagat on 15 October put up a screenshot of a mail Ira Trivedi wrote to him in 2013 to counter her claim that he tried to forcibly kiss her in his room after inviting her to tea at the India International Centre.

Writer and yoga exponent Ira Trivedi, who recently narrated her own #MeToo experience in a column in the Outlook magazine, accusing Chetan Bhagat of sexual misconduct, on Monday slapped a legal notice on the Half Girlfriend writer for a range of misdemeanours, including defamation of character.

Bhagat on 15 October put up a screenshot of a mail Trivedi wrote to him in 2013 to counter her claim that he tried to forcibly kiss her in his room after inviting her to tea at the India International Centre. Trivedi signed the mail off with the word kiss which Bhagat used to pose the question who kissed whom to his 12.5 million Twitter users  an action that Trivedi said has caused her enormous mental trauma.

He maligned my reputation because he said to his to 12.5 million followers that I tried to kiss him, that is extremely awful. He selectively produced this email trail, in a manner which is completely out of context, Trivedi told Firstpost over the phone.

These statements have been made in the background of me calling him out in the #MeToo campaign. Hes trying to give the impression that I am trying to derail the movement because of personal vendetta, she said. Trivedi said the trolling that followed Bhagats tweet has caused her mental strain and anxiety.

By jibing who is trying to kiss whom, as a married man with children, Bhagat is casting aspersion on her character, she said. For the Indian masses, the society that we live in, its taken in an extremely negative way. I was trolled for one week, and got hate messages asking me why I would say this to a married man with children.

His reach on Twitter, she said, amplified that message, damaging her credibility as a writer and a journalist she said.

Hes a thousand times more famous than I am, she said. His attempts to kiss me and proposition me and his groping of my friend amount to offences under Sections 509 and 354A of the IPC, his tweets and online statements about my allegations fall under sections of Sections 354D and Section 503 of the IPC, the writer wrote to this Firstpost writer on WhatsApp on advice from her lawyer on why Bhagat is being sued.

According to Trivedi, she used the word kiss simply as a salutation at the end of an email she shot off in a hurry and that it was simply a figure of speech. Trivedi said Bhagat tried to bring it (the kiss) up again and again though he didnt share that on Twitter. I dodged the question, I just stopped responding completely, she said. She sent Firstpost screenshots of the subsequent exchanges with Bhagat. The author wrote back, Kiss...hmmm...figure of speech or is something changing around here?

My client therefore calls upon you notice to

1. issue an unconditional public apology through print and electronic media of national circulation and reach

2. withdraw/remove your defamatory statements dated 15-10-2018 against my client from your twitter account

3. issue correspondence to all media portals which have published your defamatory statement within 10 days of receipt of this legal notice, failing which my client will be constrained to take appropriate legal action against you including prosecuting you for civil and /or criminal defamation and recourse to other legal proceedings at appropriate platform at your own risk, cost and consequences, the legal notice sent out by her lawyer Avijit Singh, stated.

In his tweet, Bhagat had said: So who wanted to kiss whom? @iratrivedis self-explanatory email from 2013 to me, esp last line, easily shows her claims from 2010 are false, and she knows this too. This mental harassment of me and my family has to stop. Please dont harm a movement with #fakecharges #harassed.

In subsequent tweets, he added: Ultimately, is this movement about the truth or blindly supporting a particular gender? Please dont let your biases make you believe things that are not true. A persons reputation is their most prized asset and takes a lifetime of work to earn. To have these motivated, fake attacks on me is abhorrent and the sickest thing a person can do. Please dont support this kind of smear campaign.

Trivedi said she needed to collect her thoughts and reach a stable mental state to think of future course of action. On Monday, she made public the entire email chain between Bhagat and her that she accused him of selectively tweeting out.

There needs to be a collective call of action, women have got together, individuals have spoken up. Now corporations, publications, media channels all public platforms that have helped them make public figures should withdraw their platforms, she said. Trivedi suggested institutions bring back a practice of civil resistance that played a big role in Indias freedom movement  boycott.

We won back our country with a boycott. Women can win their self-respect through the same movement, she said. Firstpost reached out to Bhagats press agent listed on his website as his India press contact for a comment via phone calls, a mail and text messages. On phone, she promised to get back after consulting with Bhagat. As soon as Bhagat puts out a statement, the story will be updated with his comment.Giriraj Singh appreciated Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath's initiative in this direction.

Patna: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union minister Giriraj Singh on Monday called for change of all names that are associated with Mughals. He appreciated Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath's initiative in this direction.

He told ANI, "India is a free country today. We are not slaves of the Mughal or the British. Why should we keep names associated with them? Do people of Bihar not know that Khilji looted the state yet Bakhtiarpur is named after him. Names of around 100 places were changed, including Bihar's Akbarpur. Yogi ji took a good step. I will demand that names associated with Mughals should be changed in the entire country including in Bihar."

Attacking the Opposition, Singh said the problem in the country is that all issues are seen with the sole motive of vote bank politics. He further claimed that people with slave mindset will have problems in changing names.

Reacting on the Amritsar train tragedy, he defended the Railways while asserting that it was not at fault. He added, "The state government is at fault. The chief guest at the event is also answerable. Navjot Singh Sidhu's wife was the chief guest. If the government did not give the permission then why did she go there?"

The accident took place in Choura Bazar near Jhoda Phatak area of Amritsar after a train ran over the crowd, standing along train tracks, to watch an effigy of Ravana being burnt. At least 59 people died while 57 sustained injuries in the tragedy.India-Japan relationship is on the upswing as demonstrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming official visit to Japan 28-29 October for annual India-Japan summit with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe.

India-Japan relationship is on the upswing as demonstrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming official visit to Japan 28-29 October for annual India-Japan summit with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe.

India has the institutional mechanism of an annual bilateral summit with only two countries  Japan and Russia. And Modi has always accorded great importance on strengthening India's ties with Japan: the first country he visited after being elected as prime minister was Japan.

Modi and Abe are said to share special friendship. Abe has been re-elected as the president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for the third time, effectively extending his time in power by another three years. It also means that he could be Japans longest-serving post-war prime minister. This augurs well for Modi as Abe has always been a great champion of stronger ties between India and Japan. For Abe, a strong India is in Japans interest, just like a strong Japan is good for India.

Ties between India and Japan have been building up across all fields, particularly defence and security. This is clearly reflected in the landmark decision to hold the first ever joint military exercise Dharma Guardian-2018 between the Indian Army and Japan Ground Self Defence Force at Counter Insurgency Warfare School in Vairengte, Mizoram, during 1-14 November. During the two week exercise, emphasis will be given on increasing inter-operability between forces from both countries. Talks have already begun on a bilateral Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) which will allow them to share defense capabilities and supplies including fuel and ammunition.

While cooperation between the armies of both counties is still at a nascent stage, the Indian Navy and Japans Maritime Self Defense Force have been forging closer ties for a number of years. JIMEX-18  a bilateral maritime exercise between India and Japan  was held in Visakhapatnam between 7-15 October. It needs to be mentioned that the last edition of JIMEX was held in December 2013 off the Chennai coast. The conduct of JIMEX-18 after a gap of five years is clearly symptomatic of an upward graph in their bilateral defence ties as informed by an identical strategic vision shared by Modi and Abe. Moreover, the navies of the two have been working in close coordination in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden for the past few years. The navies of India, Japan and the US held the Malabar naval exercise in June this year. In 2015, Japan was admitted as a permanent member of the annually held Malabar naval exercise, which was originally a bilateral naval exercise between India and the US since 1992.

The defence industries of both the countries have also shown keen interest in deepening cooperation. Although Japans ShinMaywa group and Indias Mahindra group have entered into an agreement to manufacture and assemble US-2i amphibious search-and-rescue aircraft for the Indian Navy, however the issues of price and technology transfer have hindered progress on the project. The biggest challenge has been Japans reported unwillingness to allow India license produce the aircraft. Modis forthcoming visit is expected to remove all irritants in the project.

For Modi, it is imperative to strengthen the bonds of friendship with Japan since the success of his governments ambitious Act-East Policy largely depends on Japanese participation. Japan also happens to be one of the biggest investors in India and Tokyos financial and technological backing holds the key to building infrastructure in Indias northeast. Strategic connectivity is an important area of cooperation: road and port connectivity is on the agenda in countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Traditionally, Japan has been the major economic development partner for most South Asian countries, but Beijings expanding influence beyond the South China Sea and across the Indian Ocean region has left Tokyo feeling vulnerable.

The transactional approach of the Donald Trump administration may be seen an important factor contributing to growing rapport between India and Japan. Trumps unusual manners of conducting Americas foreign policy have led to several changes in regional geopolitics. With an aim to cut a deal with Pyongyang, Washington has been opening up to North Korean regime in recent months.

However, this is unlikely to please Japan, which has long-standing concerns about the reckless behaviour of the North Korean dictator. Given the traditionally sound ties between the two countries coupled with growing strategic convergence between them, Abe finds it useful to elevate Indias position in Japans Indo-Pacific strategy.

There is a growing realisation of the significance of the Indo-Pacific region in fast-changing geopolitical landscape of Asia, which has challenged the existing security architecture. The US, Japan and Australia are faced with Chinese assertiveness in the Western Pacific. And in the Indian Ocean, India and the US are faced with an increasing Chinese presence. Japan seeks to bolster cooperation with many Asian and African countries based on Abes Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy aimed at keeping in check the growing maritime assertiveness of China.

One should not forget that Abe, during his first short-lived tenure as prime minister, had unveiled the term Indo-Pacific in a speech he delivered at the Indian Parliament in August 2007. His speech, which was titled as Confluence of the Two Seas, introduced Tokyos vision for the Indo-Pacific as a region based upon common values, such as democracy and freedom. Abe argued that if India and Japan came together, the broader Asia will evolve into an immense network spanning the entirety of the Pacific Ocean, incorporating the United States of America and Australia. Open and transparent, this network will allow people, goods, capital, and knowledge to flow freely. It is therefore not surprising that upholding principles such as freedom of navigation and countering threats to Japanese shipping remains fundamental to Japanese foreign policy.

Without any doubt, China is the elephant in the room when it comes to defining close partnership between India and Japan. Chinas growing military strength and rising economic power have prompted other democracies, including India and Japan, to sit up and take notice. Amid growing concerns about Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), New Delhi and Tokyo have stepped up their cooperation for creating a viable alternative for infrastructure development and connectivity among countries.

Since bilateral cooperation between India and Japan is closely intertwined with trilateral cooperation with the US, it is but natural for Japan to expect India to play an increasingly active role in the Quadrilateral Security Initiative (referred to as the Quad) while affirming the importance of freedom of navigation and rule of law. In the light of bilateral and trilateral linkages involving India, Japan and the US, the next step is straightforward. But India remains hesitant on the Quad, which is likely to cause confusion among other three partners  the US, Japan and Australia. It was this confusion which prevented New Delhi from allowing Australia to become a part of the Malabar naval exercises.

Indias stance towards China has already softened following the informal summit at Wuhan between Modi and the Chinese president Xi Jinping. Modis keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June also reflected a lack of resolve to actively counter China. Keeping alive this strategic ambivalence, New Delhi has also decided to stay away from a joint initiative launched by the US, Japan and Australia to fund infrastructure projects to counterbalance the BRI in the Indo-Pacific region. Indias participation in this important infrastructure initiative would have reassured the other members of Indias commitment to the grouping.

The Indo part of the Indo-Pacific is not merely a geographical pointer to the Indian Ocean, but also indicates geopolitical linkages to India. The significant shift from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific security arrangements being created by the Trump administration are primarily focussed around India. At a time when India has been identified as a key player across the Indo-Pacific that Abes Japan seeks to actively work with, it is imperative for Modis India to develop a coherent approach on the Indo-Pacific and the Quad.Father Kuriakose Kattuthara had testified against Kerala nun rape-accused Biship Franco Mulakkal and also supported the nuns' protest against him.

The prime witness in the case of a Kerala nun's rape, allegedly by Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the Jalandhar diocese, has died. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who had testified against the rape-accused priest, was found dead in his room at 10 am on Monday in a church in Bhogpur in Jalandhar.

While several priests, as well as his family, have alleged a conspiracy into the death, Father Peter, Mulakkal's spokesperson from the Jalandhar diocese, asserted that Kattuthara's death was "natural".

"We got to know about this at 10 am today (Monday). Bishop (Franco Mulakkal) has no connection with the death of Father Kattuthara, as there was no personal enmity between them," Father Peter was quoted as saying by CNN-News18.

The prime witness in the Kerala nun's rape case, Father Kattuthara had also supported the protest several nuns had staged against rape-accused Mulakkal.

His body has been sent for an autopsy in Jalandhar, and the report is awaited. However, Father Kattuthara's family has demanded that his body be brought back to Kerala, and that the postmortem examination be conducted in the state and not in Punjab. Father Kuriakose's brother told ANI: (We) have no faith in the Punjab Police. We want to bring the body to Alappuzha and bury it. If they want to do postmortem without letting us know, is there any guarantee that it'll be done without foul play?"

First on CNN-News18 | Father Kuriakose, who testified against Franco Mulakkal, found dead. His body found in Jalandhar. He was facing threats and his car was vandalized. Sister Anupama suspects foul play. #FrancoRapeCase | @jyotik with more details pic.twitter.com/63PmXkZSbJ  News18 (@CNNnews18) October 22, 2018

Franco Mulakkal was arrested on 21 September on a nun's complaint that he had raped her at least 13 times between 2014 and 2016. He was released from a sub-jail near Kottayam on 17 October, a day after the Kerala High Court granted him bail. He had received a rousing welcome from his supporters on reaching Jalandhar after his release.

According to CNN News18, Kattuthara was facing threats and his car was recently attacked. His sister-in-law told CNN-News18: "Franco Mulakkal was threatening him from along time. We had filled a police complaint. We suspect foul play."

Sister Anupama, who had led the nuns' protests against Mulakkal, called Kattuthara's death "mysterious" and said "it needs to be investigated thoroughly".After two rounds of meetings, restricted talks between Rajnath Singh and Zhao Kezhi followed by delegation-level parleys, the home ministry said in a statement that the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest.

New Delhi: India on Monday asked China to support the pending application in the UN to designate Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror group leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, officials said.

It also asked Beijing to not give shelter to hardline United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) leader Paresh Baruah on its soil, they said.

The two key issues were raised at the first India-China high-level meeting on bilateral security cooperation which was co-chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Zhao Kezhi, State Councillor and Minister of Public Security, China, in New Delhi.

"The key concerns of both the countries were flagged and both the sides assured each other full cooperation," an official, who was part of the Indian delegation, said.

The key Indian concerns are China's objection to the application to designate Azhar as terrorist under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council, frequent visit of Baruah to China, and smuggling of arms and narcotics to the Northeast, the official said.

A veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked the bid at the United Nations to list Azhar as global terrorist.

The official said that Chinese concerns included insurgency in Xinjiang by Uyghur extremists.

After two rounds of meetings, restricted talks between Singh and Zhao followed by delegation-level parleys, the home ministry said in a statement that the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest, including bilateral counter-terrorism cooperation, and welcomed increased security cooperation between India and China.

An agreement on security cooperation between the home ministry and China's Ministry of Public Security was also signed by the two ministers. This was first ever India-China security cooperation pact.

"The agreement will further strengthen and consolidate discussions and cooperation in areas of counter-terrorism, organised crimes, drug control and other such relevant areas," the statement said.

Even though an MoU had been signed by the two sides in the spheres of security years ago, it had lapsed a few years ago.

The Monday's pact may lead to signing of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty in future, another official said.

Zhao Kezhi is on a bilateral visit to India from 21 to 25 October during which he will also travel to Mumbai.

The meeting comes just a year after a two-month-long border stand-off between the India Army and the China's People's Liberation Army at Doklam on the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese president Xi Jinping held an informal summit in Wuhan, China, in April which helped repair bilateral ties.

The Chinese delegation also visited the headquarters of the CRPF, country's largest paramilitary force, where they were given a presentation about the functions of the forceRahul Easwar was charged by the Pamba Police in Kerala for unlawful assembly and rioting during protests blocking women from entering Sabarimala temple.

Activist Rahul Easwar, who was arrested on 17 October for protesting against the Supreme Court verdict allowing the entry of women between 10 to 50 years into the Sabarimala temple, was granted bail by a local court on Monday.

He was charged by the Pamba Police in Kerala under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including Section 143 (unlawful assembly) and 147 (rioting). The non-bailable charge against him was under Section 353 for stopping police personnel from doing their duty.

Easwar's bail plea was rejected on Sunday, as the court asked the police to file a report on the ongoing protests by Monday for it to consider any new bail applications. He had been participating in protests to stop women from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kerala the day the shrine opened for Lord Ayyappa pilgrims.

After being taken into custody, Easwar had launched an indefinite hunger strike. CNN-News18 reported that he was subsequently admitted to the Government Medical College in Thiruvananthapuram. Once the bail order is out, he is likely to be shifted to another hospital.

Hundreds of devotees are camping at the Sabarimala Sannidhanam temple complex to prevent women of menstruating age from reaching the shrine, located in a dense forest.

Angry protesters have turned back nearly a dozen women attempting to visit the shrine of Lord Ayyappa, the presiding deity of Sabarimala temple considered "naishtika brahmachari" (eternally celibate), since its doors opened for five-day prayers on 17 October. The temple closed on Monday and will reopen on 17 November.

The Travancore Devaswom Board, which is the custodian of the temple, will submit a detailed report about the events that unfolded in Pampa and Nilakkal over the last five days to the Supreme Court and the Kerala High Court.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide on Tuesday about when the review petitions, challenging its 8 October verdict, pending before it will be listed for hearing.

With inputs from agenciesJacqui Woodward, Senior Consultant, XPS Pensions Group The agreement, which would see around 142,000 employees move to a CDC scheme, was subject to the not insignificant proviso that the government would need to legislate to allow the operation of CDC schemes. What is a CDC scheme?

Currently there are two types of employee pension schemes, DC and DB. Under a traditional pure DC scheme, the member bears the bulk of the risks whereas, under a typical DB scheme the employer takes on these risks. The last 10 to 15 years have seen a trend of employers moving away from DB provision towards DC with a corresponding transfer of risk from the employer to the member. The introduction of automatic enrolment has resulted in a growing use of DC schemes over the last six years. A CDC scheme is one in which risks are shared between members. Typically, the employer would pay a fixed rate of contributions and a level of DB pension would be targeted but no guarantees are made. The actual benefit amount paid would depend on the funding position of the scheme and, where this was poor, pensions in payment might not be increased or might even be reduced. As with all forms of pension provision, CDC schemes have some possible advantages and disadvantages. Advantages:

 The sponsoring employer would, in theory, have certainty over the level of contributions it pays into the scheme.

 Administration and investment management costs might be lower as a result of economies of scale.

 Typical DC schemes tend to move from equities into lower-risk, lower-return assets as an individual approaches retirement (known as lifestyling). CDC schemes might be able to remain fully invested in equities for longer, which might lead to higher returns.

 Depending on the schemes design, it might be possible to pool longevity risk without having to cover the cost of the insurers profit margin and capital buffer. Disadvantages:

 It may not be straightforward to communicate to members how a CDC scheme works. Members might view a benefit target as being guaranteed.

 There will be inter-generational cross-subsidies which might be perceived as unfair by members. Current legislation

At present, much of the UKs pension law treats anything that is not pure money purchase as being DB. In 2009, the then Labour government looked into CDC schemes, but decided not to take any further action, citing concerns about whether such schemes could manage intergenerational risks fairly, the extent to which their stability was dependent on a continuing stream of new contributions and low expected demand from employers. The Coalition government consulted in 2012 on some possible risk-sharing schemes, including so-called defined ambition (DA) schemes, as well as CDC schemes. DA schemes would allow risks to be shared between the employer and members whereas CDC schemes typically involve risks being shared between members but not the employer. Consequently, the framework for certain risk-sharing schemes, including both DA and CDC, was put on the statute book via the Pension Schemes Act 2015 (PSA2015) although none of the relevant provisions have, to date, come into force. So, as it stands, CDC schemes are not currently permitted in the UK. The key recommendation made by the Work & Pensions Select Committee (WPC) is that, rather than bringing the provisions of PSA2015 into force, which would be disruptive and according to the government could take up to two years, the government should instead amend the existing definition of money purchase schemes. The WPC also makes a number of other recommendations on matters the government should consult on including benefit adjustment and risk-sharing policies and transfers out from CDC schemes. The government have indicated that they will launch a consultation on a legislative framework for CDC schemes this Autumn. Conclusion

As we wait the consultation, it is currently not clear whether or when legislation might be changed. Whilst the Royal Mail agreement is a first and there have been some positive noises from the current pensions minister, it remains to be seen whether there is now significant demand for CDC schemes from employers and whether legislation will be changed. Employers interested in following Royal Mails lead will either have to wait and see whether the law is indeed changed to allow CDC schemes or explore using an alternative form of risk-sharing.

Valiant attempts by around a dozen women, including activists and journalists in the 10-50 years age group to script history came to nought as frenzied devotees of Lord Ayyappa, the eternally celibate deity, heckled and hassled them and forced them to retreat.

Sabarimala: The doors to Sabarimala temple closed on Monday night, six days after opening for the first time since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on entry of women of menstruating age, but climbing the 18 "sacred steps" leading to the sanctum sanctorum proved a tall order for them.

Valiant attempts by around a dozen women, including activists and journalists in the 10-50 years age group to script history came to nought as frenzied devotees of Lord Ayyappa, the eternally celibate deity, heckled and hassled them and forced them to retreat.

Yet another woman in the "barred" age group made a futile attempt on Monday to reach Sabarimala but was turned back by agitated protesters.

Bindu, a Dalit activist, who was proceeding to Pamba at the foothills of Sabarimala temple from where devotees undertake an arduous 5-kilometre trek to the shrine, was given police protection on her request, officials said.

However, when the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus she was travelling in was about to reach Pamba, a group of BJP workers and those opposing the entry of girls and women aged between 10 and 50 years into the temple, blocked the road and forced her to alight.

She was then escorted to safety in a police jeep, officials said.

'Melsanti' or the head priest and other priests stood on both sides of the idol of Lord Ayyappa and recited divine song "Harivarasanam" and began putting off the lamps in the sanctum sanctorum halfway down the rendition.

As the last line was sung, the doors were closed and locked, shutting out, at least for the time being, spirited women of menstruating age from offering prayers to the deity.

The iron gates to the shrine were opened on Wednesday and every day since then women of the "barred" age group made brave but futile attempts to enter the shrine. Six women were prevented from entering the temple Sunday alone.

Kerala women's rights activist Rehana Fathima and Hyderabad journalist Kavitha Jakkal, wearing helmets and khaki, and surrounded by a police contingent, could manage to go up to Valiya Nadappandhal, the queue complex located a few metres away from the holy 'pathinettam padi', the 18 sacred steps, but not beyond.

Several people, including journalists, were injured on Wednesday as police cracked down on protesters who were up in arms against Kerala's Left Front government for its decision to enforce the Supreme Court order.

Hindu fringe groups called a strike the next day and both the Congress, the main Opposition party in Kerala, and the BJP, which is desperately seeking to expand its footprint in the state, lent support to the agitation.

Meanwhile, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages Sabarimala temple, is meeting on Tuesday to discuss how to make an intervention in the Supreme Court while protecting the "interest of devotees".

"The TDB has the legal responsibility to protect the interest of devotees. We also have to look at the rituals and customs of the temple. The board will make its intervention in Supreme Court without harming this," its chief A Padmakumar told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

He said the meeting would decide the "nature" of the report to be submitted to the apex court.

The Supreme Court said it would decide on Tuesday as to when the petitions seeking a review of its Sabarimala verdict will be listed for hearing. In all, 19 review petitions are pending before it for hearing.

The state's Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran welcomed the TDB's decision to approach the Supreme Court with a comprehensive report about the recent developments in Sabarimala.

"It's a good decision...the TDB's move is to bring to the notice of the Supreme Court the difficulties faced by the real devotees," Surendran said.

He conceded that the LDF government was caught between the "devil and the deep sea" while executing the apex court order.

The Congress-led UDF has decided to hold a series of foot marches, vehicle rallies and meetings across the state to explain to people its stand on the issue and "expose" the ruling CPI(M) and BJP's "hidden agenda".

The temple will open briefly on 5 November evening for the next day's 'Chithira Attavisesham' to celebrate the birth anniversary of Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the last king of Travancore.

The doors of the shrine will open on 17 November for the three-month-long Mandalam Makaravilakku celebrations when lakhs of devotees from the country and abroad visit the place every year.

If the Supreme Court does not stay or overturn its own verdict by then, enforcing its historic order may prove to be a daunting task for the Kerala government.While Rehana Fathimas adventurism has been seized upon by the extreme right as another example of how Muslims are attacking Hindu traditions, it appears to be far from the truth.

On Saturday, the Kerala Jamaat took the rather unexpected decision to expel activist Rehana Fathima from the community. Not just her, but her family too. You may think this is an unpopular decision, but judging by reactions on social media, most people in Kerala, cutting across religious and party lines, welcomed it. Malayalees are deeply embarrassed by how Rehana, accompanied by a journalist from Andhra Pradesh, came within striking distance of climbing up the sacred 18 steps to the temple of Ayyappa.

On a day of high drama, public anger against the state government was mounting as an inspector general of police and a phalanx of policemen accompanied the riot gear-clad women up the steep path that leads to the shrine. If TV reports were to be believed, the women would soon climb the 18 steps. But then, two things happened. First, Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran appeared on TV and said that while the government would protect genuine devotees, it would not allow Sabarimala to be turned into a proving ground for activists. Shortly after, the temple priests, or thantris as they are called, announced they would stop poojas and close the temple doors if the women were allowed inside. Faced with this unprecedented defiance, the women were forced to return.

In hindsight, it is pertinent to ask if the threat to close down the temple by the thantris was a unilateral one. The thantris are employees of the Devaswom Board, and their minister was on the spot directing operations. Was encouraging a revolt among the thantris a clever plan by the state government to thwart the women activists? Clearly, the Sabarimala fracas is something Keralas CPM government can do without. Although Kerala is a Communist-ruled state, its voters are not atheists. Temples, mosques, and churches profusely dot the landscape and its easy to see why this is called Gods Own Country.

Sabarimala is a striking example of communal amity. And it goes back to the 12th century AD when Ayyappa was the prince of Panthalam. An Arab pirate named Vavar (Malayalam for Babar) terrorised the coastline of the area. Ayyappa confronted and defeated him after which Vavar became Ayyappas most loyal subject. When Ayyappa retreated to Sabarimala, Vavar wanted to accompany him. But Ayyappa instructed him to remain in Erumeli, at the entrance to the treacherous path to Sabarimala. Vavars job was to guard the path and protect devotees from being harmed by robbers and wild animals.

Every year, millions of devotees first visit the Vavar mosque in Erumeli before going up the mountain. And, at the top, just across the courtyard in front of the temple, sits a small Muslim shrine. The mullah there distributes holy ash as prasad, perhaps the only Muslim shrine anywhere to do so.

While Rehanas adventurism has been seized upon by the extreme right as another example of how Muslims are attacking Hindu traditions, it appears to be far from the truth. Her Facebook page is an eclectic (some would say weird) mix of rants against the right, claims that she is an Ayyappa devotee, and pictures of her in bathing suits. She seems to be operating on her own, and, contrary to what her accusers may say, does not seem to be part of some grand conspiracy to attack Hindus.

But, if she angered Hindus, she seems to have angered her own community even more. Excommunicating an adherent, along with her family, is a big step for the Jamaat to take, and some thought must have gone into it. This harsh decision is most probably due to Sabarimalas extraordinary backstory involving the confluence of Hinduism and Islam. Its a balance that the Hindus and Muslims of Kerala are equally proud of. Rehanas attempts to enter the temple threatened that balance.

Meanwhile, the state government is trying to distance itself from the controversy without actually seeming to be part of any decisions that will be seen as pandering to Hindu sentiment. If, as some believe, the threatened closure of the temple by the thantris had official approval, then it was indeed a masterstroke. So, while one arm of the government, meaning the police, appeared to be supporting the activists, another arm of the same government, meaning the priests, successfully thwarted their attempts.

With the police going soft on the protestors, the state government was severely criticised for its inability to implement the Supreme Court order. To deflect attention from the state governments perceived failure, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury compared the Sabarimala protests to the Babri demolition, blaming the RSS for it. This is rubbish. The protests were spontaneous to start with, but both the Congress and BJP quickly saw where the sentiment lay and took advantage of the situation. Its a rare sight to see the BJP and Congress agree on something!

Actually, it is the RSS that has flip-flopped on the issue. Back in 2016, it had come out strongly to support the entry of women in Sabarimala. But, barely two years later, its stand has changed. Clearly, if it comes to scoring brownie points against the CPM government, anything goes. But the Internet has the uncomfortable habit of raking up the past.Sabarimala temple would be closed on 22 October after a five-day monthly prayer during the Malayalam month of Thulam. The temple will reopen on 17 November for two months.

Amid continued protests by Ayyappa devotees and the royal family of Pandalam against the implementation of the Supreme Court's order to allow women of all ages to enter and pray in the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) (the custodian of the temple) has decided to submit a detailed report about the events that unfolded in Pampa and Nilakkal over the last five days to the Supreme Court and the Kerala High Court.

A Padmakumar, TDB president, told the media in Thiruvananthapuram that the board would soon approach their legal counsel for preparing the report on what has been happening in the temple after it opened for devotees on 17 October. "We have no intention to play political games with Sabarimala," he said. Sabarimala temple would be closed on 22 October after a five-day monthly prayer during the Malayalam month of Thulam. The temple will reopen on 17 November for two months.

Padmakumar added that the board will discuss the details of the situation report today. "Details on when we would submit it and the content of the report can be revealed only after talking to the board's counsel," Padmakumar told Firstpost.

Meanwhile, protesting women have said that no women belonging to the banned age group of 10-50 will be allowed to travel further from Nilackal and offer worship at the shrine. According to police sources, 12 women in the 10-50 age group have so far been prevented from entering the sanctum of the temple.

On the first day of worship itself, Madhavi, a woman from Andhra Pradesh tried to climb the Sabarimala Hills to reach the Lord Ayyappa temple but was returned to Pamba following protests by male devotees. She was provided security by the police to climb the hills but was forced to return after protests. Another woman named Liby, belonging to the Alappuzha district and said to be in the below 50 years age group, was on the way to the shrine armed with the Supreme Court order but was stopped from proceeding at the Pathanamthitta bus terminal by passengers. The passengers including women chanting Ayyappa mantra urged her not to violate the centuries-old custom of the shrine where women in the menstruating age group are not allowed.

A couple from Tamil Nadu, aged 45 and 40, was also their way to Pamba when they were forced to get down from the KSRTC bus allegedly by some activists of the Sabarimala Achara Samrakshana Samiti. Although the couple had said that they would go only up to Pamba and not climb Sabarimala, the activists prevented them.

Some women journalists also faced the ire of a section of protesters and their vehicles attacked on 17 October. The women reporters of two national TV channels were on their way to Pamba for news coverage but were blocked by a violent crowd which was seen banging their cars while shouting that they go back as a tense situation prevailed in the area. The journalists were forced to get out of the vehicles by the crowd of men as the police intervened and escorted them to safety. In another incident, a woman reporter of an English online media organisation was asked to get down from a state-owned KSRTC bus.

On 18 October, a Delhi-based woman journalist of The New York Times, Suhasini Raj was stopped midway by the devotees. The journalist who accompanied by her male colleague, a foreigner, descended the hills from Marakkoottam area in the face of mounting protest by Ayyappa devotees. A case was registered against the devotees who allegedly prevented her trekking and forced her to climb down the hills. The journalist later said she and her colleague decided to return after they were stopped by an "aggressive mob" which hurled stones at them. "While we were midway to the temple, the mob got very huge and very aggressive and started pelting stones and something hit me on my shoulder," she said. And thus they returned as they didn't want "anybody to get hurt", local media quoted her as saying.

Later, two women (one in her late 20s) including a reporter from Hyderabad and an activist from Kerala, also tried to trek to the shrine in a failed attempt to enter the temple. A large number of devotees blocked the young women and the police team escorting them at Valiya Nadappandhal, the queue complex located a few metres away from the holy 'pathinettam padi' (the 18 sacred steps), leading to the sanctum sanctorum. Meanwhile, the 'tantri' (head priest) took a stand that he would close the temple if the women were escorted into the sanctum sanctorum. Though the women had earlier insisted they should reach the shrine, police later convinced them about the gravity of the situation and conveyed the stand taken by the government and the head priest and they agreed to turn back. But as the two were returning, a 46-year-old woman also made an attempt to trek the forest path from downhill Pamba to the temple complex but retracted following protests.

On 20 October, however, a massive protest broke out near the Sabarimala Sannidhanam following rumours that a woman from Tamil Nadu below 50 years of age had climbed the hills to offer prayers to the presiding deity. The situation turned tense in the area, where section 144 was clamped, as devotees gathered in large numbers at 'Valiya Nadapandhal' to protest against the woman's entry into the temple. However, the tension was defused after the woman, who had come with her family members, convinced the protesters that she was above 50 years of age, and proceeded to the shrine. The woman carrying 'irumudikkettu' (holy bundle) climbed the 18 holy steps amid security cover to reach the temple and have 'darshan'.

On the other hand, activist Rehana Fathima's house was allegedly vandalised by unidentified persons while she was attempting to reach the Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala on Friday, police said. She, along with Hyderabad-based journalist Kavitha, had made a failed attempt to reach the temple with heavy police protection. The houses of a 46-year-old woman from Kazhakkoottam in Thiruvananthapuram district, who had also made an attempt to trek the forest path from downhill Pamba were also allegedly attacked by unidentified people. The woman's houses at Thumba and Murukkumpuzha were reportedly attacked soon after she made the attempt to climb the holy hills. She, however, gave up the attempt following protests from devotees.

A Dalit woman activist Manju, who is also the leader of Dalit Mahila Federation, was planning to visit the Sabarimala shrine on Saturday, but put her plans on hold following heavy rains on Sunday. Manju left Pamba in the evening, saying she was a devotee and would come here to climb the hill "on a convenient date." She said police had offered all sorts of assistance to her to visit the shrine. Police had earlier said it was verifying the background of the woman, said to be in her late 30s, and a decision regarding her trekking would be taken Sunday morning.

On the same day, devotees prevented two Telugu-speaking women from climbing the holy hills. The protesters chanting Ayyappa mantra stopped the women, said to be in their 40s, at the foothills itself. The women were accompanied by their relatives. The police, which took the women to safety, said that the duo informed the security forces that they came to Sabarimala without knowing the customs of the temple. A 47-year old woman also reached up to the 'Nadappandhal' close to the sanctum sanctorum but was prevented by the devotees chanting "Swamiye Saranam Ayyapa" after three others were stopped en route to the hills. The woman, who complained of uneasiness, was brought to a hospital here by the police. An elderly woman devotee who was present at the spot said as the identity card of the woman showed she was born in 1971 and had not attained the 'permissible age", the other devotees started chanting Sarana mantra.

Meanwhile, the BJP demanded a special assembly session to seek the Centre's intervention, while Congress sought an ordinance by the NDA government. The Pandalam royal family, the traditional custodian of the Sabarimala temple, alleged the CPIM-led LDF government was trying to destroy the sanctity of the shrine of the "Naishtik Brahmachari" by taking women in the menstrual age group there. Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Ramesh Chennithala of Congress urged the Centre to bring an ordinance to overcome the Supreme Court verdict.

Whereas, CPM politburo member S Ramachandran Pillai claimed the devotees opposing the apex court verdict were in a minority and they did not have the support of the entire Kerala society.

However, the Sabarimala Karma Samithi intensified its agitation against the CPM-led government's "hasty" move to implement the court order. Thousands of people participated in the "namajapa yatra" (protest march chanting Ayyappa mantra) to police stations across the southern state against alleged police action on the samithi activists near Sabarimala last week. Hundreds of women participated in a protest march held in Erumeli, a key pilgrim centre connected with Sabarimala.

On Sunday, hundreds of people, including Keralite women, also took out a march in Raipur and vowed that females in the banned age group from their families would not enter the famous Sabarimala shrine in Kerala. Besides Keralites, members from Andhra Association and Tamil Association also participated in the procession, which culminated into a public meeting in the Ayyappa temple premises in Tatibandh, he said.

On the whole controversy, actor Rajinikanth said that there should be no "interference" in temple traditions being followed for a long time.

Kerala has been witnessing massive protests by Lord Ayyappa devotees opposing the entry of girls and women of menstrual age into the Sabarimala temple since the government decided to implement the apex court order. The devotees had intensified the agitation at the shrine complex and nearby areas including the base camps, Nilackal and Pamba, since the shrine was opened for the five-day monthly puja on 17 October.

With inputs from agenciesThe petition has challenged the provisions of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, the Special Marriage Act and the Hindu Marriage Act which deal with the minimum marriageable age for men.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a PIL (Public interest litigation) seeking that the legal marriageable age for men be brought down from 21 to 18 years, as for women, and imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on a lawyer for filing such a plea.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice SK Kaul refused to entertain the plea filed by lawyer Asok Pande saying that there was no "public interest" involved in the petition.

The plea, which has referred to various provisions of statutes dealing with the issue of majority, said a male is eligible to vote in elections at the age of 18 years, but he cannot marry.

"Dismissed with a cost of Rs 25,000," the bench said and also rejected the plea that the fine be waived.

"If any 18-year-old person approaches us with such kind of a petition, then we will give him the cost deposited by you (Pande)," the bench said, adding that such a plea cannot be a matter of "public interest" and an affected person can come to the court.

The petition has challenged the provisions of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, the Special Marriage Act and the Hindu Marriage Act which deal with the minimum marriageable age for men and alleged that they are violative of various fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

"The above mentioned provisions of three different Acts, fixes different age of marriage of the girl and the boy, so the petitioner has come forward to challenge the validity of the Acts," the petition said.

It contended that the provisions were "unreasonable, unjust and improper" and also violative of Article 15 of the Constitution which prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

Pande in his plea contended that at the age of 18, every male and female get the right to vote and choose their legislators and it is upon attaining the age of 18 years that a person comes out of the definition of a 'juvenile'.In the long list of renamed Indian cities, Shimla could be the latest entrant as the ruling BJP government is considering a proposal to change its name to Shyamala.

New Delhi: In the long list of renamed Indian cities, Shimla could be the latest entrant as the ruling BJP government is considering a proposal to change its name to Shyamala.

A campaign has been launched by some right-wing Hindu groups demanding that the capital of Himachal Pradesh be renamed.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and state health minister Vipin Singh Parmar said many cities in different parts of the country used to have historic names but they were changed. So, there would not be any harm in reverting to those names.

If the people want Shimla to be rechristened as Shyamala, the proposal can be considered, Parmar told PTI.

Notably, the social media has been abuzz with discussions on the topic for the last few days. The debate has left people divided with some favouring the name change and others opposing it.

Senior Himachal Pradesh Congress leader Harbhajan Singh Bhajji questioned the intention of those who want Shimla to be renamed.

"What is the justification (for changing Shimla's name)," asked Bhajji as he vehemently opposed the proposal. This is a historical city and if you change its name, it will lose its character, Bhajji argued.

What's wrong with the name Shimla? Will the renaming ensure development? The state government should focus on ensuring that the state progresses instead of indulging in such frivolous antics, he added.

According to Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) functionary Aman Puri, the popular holiday retreat was originally called Shyamala but as the Britishers found it tough to pronounce, they renamed it Simla which later became Shimla.

Also known as the queen of hills, Shimla was declared the summer capital of British India in 1864. It remained that way till India got independence in 1947.

British officer Captain Charles Pratt Kennedy played a pivotal role in transforming Shimla as he built the first house here in 1822 aptly calling it  Kennedy House.Prior to the meeting with the governor, VHP's joint general secretary Surendra Jain told reporters in Ahmedabad that the decision to launch such a campaign was taken during a meeting in Delhi on 5 October.

Ahmedabad: As part of its initiative to pressure the Centre to enact a law to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leaders Monday met Gujarat governor OP Kohli.

A delegation comprising leaders from Gujarat, led by VHP's joint general secretary Surendra Jain, called on the governor in Gandhinagar and handed him a memorandum.

In the memorandum, they urged Kohli to convey to the Centre the VHP's demand that the NDA government bring a legislation in Parliament for constructing a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, said state VHP secretary Ashok Raval.

Prior to his meeting with the governor, Jain told reporters in Ahmedabad that the decision to launch such a campaign was taken during a meeting in Delhi on 5 October.

Jain said the ruling BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "committed" to building the Ram Mandir.

He said a law in Parliament for the construction of the temple was the only solution.

"There were three solutions for building the Ram Mandir. One was talks with various parties, another was (through) court and third was a law. Though talks were held several times in the past, it yielded no result," said Jain.

"We are in court since 1950 over this issue. But, we only received dates till now. We can't wait now. We don't know when the judgment would come. Thus, we strongly feel that bringing a law is the only solution left," said Jain.

He said, apart from meeting state governors and asking MPs to clear their stand on it, the VHP would hold rallies on the matter.

"This movement by the VHP should not be seen in view of the upcoming Lok Sabha election. On 31 January and 1 February, the outcome of this nationwide movement will be presented in the Dharm Sansad at Prayag. Saints will take a call after studying the outcome," Jain said.

"Even the BJP has said several times that they are committed to building a Ram temple through any legal means, which include legislation. We trust the BJP on this issue," he added.The order, signed by Secretary Home (A) Department, Deepak Majumdar, further stated that during the period of this order in force, Meena shall remain at the Assam Police headquarters and not leave it without obtaining permission from the competent authority.

Guwahati: The Assam government on Saturday suspended Guwahati West Deputy Commissioner of Police for not ensuring adequate security for Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi who was on a visit to the Kamakhya Temple recently.

Bhanwar Lal Meena has been suspended with immediate effect under Rule 3(1) of the All India Services (Disciple and Appeal) Rules, 1969, according to an order issued in the name of the Governor by the state Home Department.

The order, signed by Secretary Home (A) Department, Deepak Majumdar, further stated that during the period of this order in force, Meena shall remain at the Assam Police headquarters and not leave it without obtaining permission from the competent authority.

CJI Gogoi and his wife had visited Guwahati on 17 October and his programme was intimated by the General Administration Department to all concerned. There was, however, lapse of adequate security arrangements for the CJI at Kamakhya Temple causing him inconvenience, the order stated.Branding women as witches and torturing them, often to death, continues to prevail in parts of rural Bihar.

Patna: A 70-year-old woman's tongue was chopped off after she was branded a witch in a Bihar village in Rohtas district, police said on Monday.

Rajkali Devi was attacked in Redia village with traditional weapons and a part of her tongue was cut off leaving her seriously injured, Tilauthu police station in-charge Pramod Kumar said.

The Dalit widow was admitted to a hospital and an FIR was registered on Sunday on the complaint by her granddaughter.

The granddaughter, who was sleeping with Rajkali Devi, at the time of the attack said three villagers forcibly entered their house late on Saturday and chopped off her grandmother's tongue accusing her of practicing witchcraft.

A manhunt was underway to nab the culprits.

Branding women as witches and torturing them, often to death, continues to prevail in parts of rural Bihar. The Bihar Human Rights Commission had been asking the government to expedite probes and trials in cases related to offences under the Prevention of Witch Hunting Act, 1999.'It will also address problem of their leave and they will be able to perform their duties without any tension and will also be able to spend quality time with their families,' Yogi said addressing Police 'Smriti Diwas' in Lucknow.

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath Sunday announced constitution of a three-member commission to recommend steps for strengthening and modernising the state police force.

"A three-member commission will be constituted to give recommendations for strengthening and modernisation of police," he said adding by next year end, 1.25 lakh constables will join the force after training. "By the end of 2019, 1.25 lakh constables will join the force, ending their shortage. It will help people and will witness better policing.

"It will also address problem of their leave and they will be able to perform their duties without any tension and will also be able to spend quality time with their families," Yogi said addressing Police 'Smriti Diwas' in Lucknow.

The chief minister said the state government was taking necessary initiatives for the family of policemen who laid their lives while performing their duties. "To enhance morale of the force and ensure good work culture, the state government made special emphasis on their time bound promotion. In 2017, as many as 9,892 police men and in 2018, 37,575 policemen were promoted which is a record," he said.

The chief minister said at present there was infrastructure for training only 5,793 constables and the government was planning to double the capacity by providing various facilities. "Help of Central Paramilitary forces and other states will also be sought for training capacity enhancement. In Jalaun and Sultanpur where training centres are ready, they will be started soon," he said.

He said to meet housing demands, more barracks will be put up in police lines and police stations. Yogi said cycle and uniform allowances of policemen will be increased soon and medical reimbursement related issues will also be sorted out.

Elaborating on the initiatives of the state government for the police, the chief minister said the Uttar Pradesh government has already increased compensation to the family of a martyr from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 40 lakh, besides hiking the amount given to their parents to Rs 10 lakh. Giving details, DGP OP Singh said 67 policemen lost their lives while performing their duties between 1 September 2017 and 31 August 2018.An introduction: Maharashtras tradition of shahiri is several centuries old. In the last few decades of the 18th century, under the influence of Mahatma Phules Satyashodhak Samaj, it was transformed into a musical weapon of the masses, against the caste system. By the 1930s, the Satyashodhaki jalsa was in decline, but a powerful new force had emerged in its place: Ambedkari jalsa. Ambedkari jalsa represented the teachings and philosophy of Dr BR Ambedkar in oral form, accompanied by songs. Over a journey that is close to completing a century, many Ambedkarite shahirs have helped hone shahiri as an anti-caste tool. This series on Maharashtras shahirs explores the lives and work of 15 greats.

This is part eleven of the series.

 Art by Satwick Gade

***

Shahiri and the Ambedkarite movement are interconnected and inseparable. When it comes to using art to disseminate Dr Babasaheb Ambedkars ideas and philosophy, shahirs were at the forefront. Their music became the spirit of the anti-caste movement.

Dr Bhagwan Thakur writes in Ambedkari Jalsa:

Folk art or the traditional tamasha has entertained the people and given them insight too, but kept them away from the idea of resistance against oppression. Hence, their material life never improved. But jalsas, with their social conscience and ability to inspire, as well as the Ambedkarite jalsas which evolved later, have tremendously transformed the lives of common people.

(Translated from the original Marathi by Yogesh Maitreya)

One way to understand this inextricable relationship between shahiri and the Ambedkarite movement is to study the life and works of Vilas Ghogare. Born on 1 June 1947 in Pune, Vilas went on to witness life in all its intensity and cruelty. He was born into a house where his father Bhikaji Ghogare, influenced by Kabir, would play bhajans on the iktara (a one-stringed musical instrument). He died of excessive drinking when Vilas was all of three, leaving behind a legacy that Vilas would go on to inherit.

Like his father, Vilas used the iktara to sing of those parts of the society which were neglected by Brahminical eyes. After the demise of his parents, Vilas managed to educate himself till the matriculation level (pre-university education), but could not finish the course. Nonetheless, he had already been introduced to the art of writing by then, and had begun writing poems. At the age of 12, he had begun to gather boys and make them rehearse songs, using a tinpot as his instrument  the same tinpot that he would use to carry water when he would need to defecate, in the open.

During the early 1960s, Maharashtra was going through social  but more evidently  political upheavals. Shahiri jalsas played an important role in the formation of the state of Maharashtra. Vilas was witness to one such jalsa of the shahir Jangamswami. He realised then that shahiri would become his lifes work and purpose. However, this journey of music and activism wasnt going to be easy. In 1965, he was forced to move to Mumbai, in search of a job.Measuring 34 pension systems, the Index shows that the Netherlands and Denmark (with scores of 80.3 and 80.2 respectively) both offer A-Grade world class retirement income systems with good benefits - clearly demonstrating their preparedness for tomorrows ageing world. However, common across all results was the growing tension between adequacy and sustainability. This was particularly evident when examining Europes results. Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden score A or B grades for both adequacy and sustainability, whereas Austria, Italy and Spain score a B grade for adequacy but an E grade for sustainability thereby pointing to important areas needing reform. Author of the study and Senior Partner at Mercer Australia, Dr David Knox says that the natural starting place to having a world class pension system is ensuring the right balance between adequacy and sustainability. Its a challenge that policymakers are grappling with, says Dr Knox. For example, a system providing very generous benefits in the short-term is unlikely to be sustainable, whereas a system that is sustainable over many years could be providing very modest benefits. The question is  whats an appropriate trade-off? As highlighted in Chart 1, all systems should consider adjusting their strategy so they are moving towards the top right quadrant. Through the study, policymakers can understand the characteristics of leading systems and find ways to improve their own. Chart 1: Adequacy versus Sustainability ratings for global pension systems Dr Knox adds that its not enough for a system to be sustainable or adequate; an emerging dimension to the debate about what constitutes a world class system is coverage and the proportion of the adult population participating in the system. In some countries, broad coverage has been successfully accomplished through compulsory workplace pension systems or, in some cases, auto-enrolment arrangements, he says. However, with changes in the way people are working around the world, we need to ensure these schemes include everyone so that the whole workforce is saving for the future. This includes contractors, self-employed, and anyone on any income support, be that parental leave, disability income or unemployed benefits. Brian Henderson, Partner at Mercer said The UK scored well on the integrity of its pension system, with a sound approach to regulation and governance, but must take action now to increase provision for low earners and the self-employed. Measures are underway to improve the UKs global standing, but this alone will not be sufficient. For example, the UK will benefit from the impact auto-enrolment as the number of employees participating in private pension schemes grows and levels of pension savings improves, particularly with minimum contributions increasing from 5% to 8% in April 2019. Furthermore, the Pension Regulator's assurance framework for master trusts will drive improvements, and so will the continued consolidation of smaller savings vehicles into larger pools, although employers need to play an active role here. More widely, with a tight labour market, employers should attract and retain talent by improving workplace pension schemes. This can improve the financial wellbeing of employees and create a more productive workforce, he said. Ageing populations, high sovereign debt levels in some countries and the global competition to lower taxes constrain the ability of some jurisdictions to improve retirement income security. With a decade of unique data, the MMGPI and associated research can provide valuable global comparative insights to planners and policymakers on the way forward, said Professor Deep Kapur, Director of Australian Centre for Financial Studies. Supported by the Victorian Government and bringing together the best minds in Australias financial services and research expertise fields, the Index is testament to Victorias dominant position in the superannuation and financial services sectors. Minister for Industry and Employment, The Honourable Ben Carroll, said that the result demonstrates the success of Victorias thriving financial sector, which is home to approximately 60 per cent of the nation's institutional investors. Melbourne is the undisputed capital of Australia's pension industry and is home to six of the eight largest industry superannuation funds in the country. Our top four funds manage AU$300 billion, demonstrating the ongoing success of Victorias strong and sophisticated financial services sector. What does the future look like? Some pension systems face a steeper path to long term sustainability than others, and all start from a different origin with their own unique factors at play. Nevertheless, every country can take action and move towards a better system. In the long-term, there is no perfect pension system, but the principles of best practice are clear and nations should consider creating policy and economic conditions that make the required changes possible. With the desired outcome of creating better lives, this years Index provides a deeper and richer interpretation of the global pension systems. Having now expanded to include Hong Kong SAR, Peru, Saudi Arabia and Spain; the Index measures 34 systems against more than 40 indicators to gauge their adequacy, sustainability and integrity. This approach highlights an important purpose of the Index  to enable comparisons of different systems around the world with a range of design features operating within different contexts and cultures. Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index by the Numbers This years Index reveals that many North-Western European countries lead the world in developing world class pension systems. The Netherlands, with an overall score of 80.3, beat Denmark to first place, a spot held by Denmark for six years, by 0.1. Finland bumped Australia (72.6) out of third place with an overall score of 74.5 and Sweden (72.5) coming in fifth place. The Index is an important reference for policymakers around the world to learn from the most adequate and sustainable systems, Dr Knox said. We know there is no perfect system that can be applied universally, but there are many common features that can be shared for better outcomes. Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index  Overall index value results The Index uses three sub-indices  adequacy, sustainability and integrity  to measure each retirement income system against more than 40 indicators. The following table shows the overall index value for each country, together with the index value for each of the three sub-indices: adequacy, sustainability, and integrity. Each index value represents a score between zero and 100.The Congress listed out several lapses which it said led to the Amritsar train tragedy on Dussehra, including a non-functional train headlight and inattentive Government Railway Police officials.

Days after the Amritsar train tragedy claimed 61 lives, the Congress on Monday lashed out at the Union railway ministry for giving a "clean chit" to its officials, saying there were "lapses at all levels".

"Why is the Railways running away from an inquiry? Nobody has given them a clean chit," Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar said at a press conference. "The railway ministry cannot say that they weren't aware there could be trespassing in that area. You cannot ignore the reality."

After visiting the site of the accident at Joda Phatak, Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha had absolved the railways of all responsibility and ruled out any action against the driver of the train and an investigation into the incident.

Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani had also clearly said that the Amritsar mishap was a case of "trespassing", not a "railway accident", and thus, there would be no inquiry by the Commissioner of Railway Safety, who investigates rail-related accidents.

Listing out several lapses, the Congress said: "The headlight of the approaching train wasn't working. The GRP (Government Railway Police) patrolling begins at 8 pm every day. I want to ask the railway authorities, were these GRP officials unaware that it is festival season?"

Jakhar claimed that the organisers of the Amritsar event had taken permission from the police to hold the Dussehra celebrations. "The police should have informed railway officials about the event. There have been failures at multiple levels. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh didn't deflect blame and has only said we must wait for the inquiry report."

Accusing the BJP of making Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu a scapegoat in the incident, Jakhar said, "Either they (the Railways) want to save someone or frame someone... The facts have to come out. People will play politics no matter what."

He said the state government would try to provide employment and education to the kin of those affected by the accident, adding that there was still one unidentified body.

Sidhu, wife Navjot Kaur to adopt families of deceased

Sidhu's wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu was the chief guest at the Dussehra event in Amritsar at which tragedy struck on Friday. She was accused of leaving the site of the accident without attending to the victims or enquiring about them.

At Monday's press briefing, Sidhu announced that he and his wife will adopt the families of the deceased.

"It's my promise to the families and to everyone: I will try to provide jobs to the kin of the deceased and adopt the children if they have no one to support them. These are the people who have respected Sidhu's family. These children will never be orphans," he said.

Earlier on Monday, Sidhu had hit out at the Centre for giving a clean chit to the train driver.

Railway engine,police,guards,tracks belong to Centre&FIR also has been lodged by Centre.Driver was given clean sheet within 6 hrs,why his name hasn't been revealed? Is it possible when a train is approaching guards can't see it: Navjot Singh Sidhu, Congress #AmritsarTrainAccident pic.twitter.com/CajuXpDH4J  ANI (@ANI) October 22, 2018

With inputs from agenciesJP Nadda said the BJP will contest the Mizoram Assembly elections on 13 seats. The party also released the list of 38 candidate for the upcoming Telangana Assembly polls.

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released its first list of candidates for the Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram Assembly elections after long deliberations at a central election committee (CEC) meeting of the party.

The party announced names of 77 candidates for Chhattisgarh, 38 for Telangana and 13 for Mizoram.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, who is seeking his fourth consecutive term, will contest from the Rajnandgaon seat.

"Among the 77 candidates announced out of a total of 90 Assembly seats in Chhattisgarh, 14 are women candidates and 14 sitting MLAs have been replaced with new names," Union Minister JP Nadda told reporters after the CEC meet attended among others by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah.

Among those fielded by the BJP include former IAS officer OP Chaudhary and tribal leader Ramdayal Uike, who recently left the Congress to join the party.

Chaudhary, the former Collector of Raipur, has been fielded from Kharsia constituency, while Uike will contest from Pali Tanakhar (ST) seat.

Besides, Chaudhary and Uike, the BJP named Ama Agarwal from Bilaspur, Brij Mohan Agrawal from Raipur City (South) seats.

Nadda said the BJP will also contest the Mizoram Assembly elections on 13 seats.

The party also released the list of 38 candidate for the upcoming Telangana Assembly polls.

"The party has considered the aspirations of our dedicated workers in Telangana region. Adequate representation has been given to the representatives of all communities," Nadda said.

Elections in Chhattisgarh are scheduled in two phases - on 12 November and 20 November, while the polling in Mizoram and Telangana will take place on 28 November and 7 December, respectively.

The counting of votes will take place on 11 December.Chidambaram said the prime minister's post was not an issue for the Congress and the party has asked its leaders not to speak about it.

Chennai: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram has said the party has not declared its president Rahul Gandhi as the Prime Ministerial candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

"Congress has not officially said Rahul Gandhi is its Prime Ministerial candidate," he said in an interview to News18 Tamil TV channel.

The former Union finance minister said the party wants an Alliance to be formed and win the elections and the "alliance partners could then decide on who should be the prime minister," Chidambaram said.

He said the prime minister's post was not an issue for the Congress and the party has asked its leaders not to speak about it.

According to him, the prime agenda is to remove the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and provide a progressive government that does not indulge in tax terrorism, take away human rights, does not threaten the people but provide security to women and children and gives a remunerative price to farmers for the farm produce.Sudeep Shukla, who was earning a salary of Rs 1 lakh per month, quit his job and decided to jump into Madhya Pradesh politics.

Satna: For the first time in the country a hearing and speech impaired person may script a new chapter in Indian politics by contesting elections. An engineer from Satna who is deaf and mute is hopeful of contesting the ensuing Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh.

Sudeep Shukla, who was earning a salary of Rs 1 lakh per month, quit his job and decided to jump into politics to uplift poor and disabled people of the society.

The 36-year-old engineer has been disillusioned with the lawmakers of past 70 years because he believes that they did nothing substantial to improve the lives of the deprived section. He felt that they only addressed people's issues during election time and that too, in order to garner votes.

In frustration, he resigned from his job and decided to be the agent of change by contesting elections.

Speaking to ANI, Sandeep with the help of an interpreter said, "It is sad that even in cities like Delhi and Chennai, women are being raped. No leader is supporting them (victims). Not only that, they are not helping poor and disabled also. I have been witnessing all this from the past many years and hence, decided to contest the polls. These leaders only address the grievances of people during the election time in order to get the maximum number of votes."

"I urge you all, to please support me. I just need one chance to bring changes. I know many people are afraid that I will be standing against major political parties. I am fighting the battle of truth. I don't want people to waste their vote by giving it to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or Congress as both the parties have not done anything substantial for the country," he added.

Madhya Pradesh has always been a vanguard in an inclusive democracy. For instance, the state elected first transgender to public office in 1998. Shabnam Mausi was an elected member of the Madhya Pradesh State Legislative Assembly from 1998 to 2003.

In 1999, country's first eunuch Mayor Kamla Jaan was elected from Katni municipality in the state. Another eunuch was elected as a mayor from Sagar in the year 2009.Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje is reportedly following one of the oldest dictums of Indian politics by hunting for a constituency that she may be able to win with ease.

When in doubt, look for a second seat. Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje is reportedly following one of the oldest dictums of Indian politics by hunting for a constituency that she may be able to win with ease since her old bastion is under constant attack from the Congress.

Two new seats are said to be on her radarRajakhera on the Rajasthan-UP border and Sriganganagar on the Rajasthan-Punjab border. If the BJP high command agrees with her decision, Raje may take out an electoral insurance by contesting from two seats in December.

Her traditional seat, Jhalrapatan on the Rajasthan-Madhya Pradesh border, is the centre of a relentless and high-profile campaign by the Congress. A few days ago, while Raje was showing her strength in Ajmer, pocket borough of state Congress chief Sachin Pilot, the Congress invited Rahul Gandhi for a road show in the chief ministers constituency. On Wednesday, Gandhi will be in Jhalrapatan again for an election rally and a roadshow that would cover a large portion of the chief ministers territory.

The Congress is working on a simple strategyit wants to pin Raje down to her own constituency during the election, taking her away from the BJP campaign in the state. Since she is the only state BJP leader with a capacity to draw crowds, confining the chief minster to her constituency is one of the important set pieces of the Congress game plan.

In Rajasthans politics, Raje has been one of the few leaders to have not lost an election in three decades. During this period, some of her contemporaries and predecessors like Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and Congress leader Ashok Gehlot lost at the hustings, but Raje maintained a clean record, winning nine elections  five for the Lok Sabha and four for the state assembly. And since her son Dushyant Singh has been winning Jhalawar  the parliamentary seat she vacated after becoming the chief minister  her electoral clout has remained unchallenged.

However, the 2018 election might be different because of the rising tide of anti-incumbency in the state and her falling popularity. Several opinion polls suggest that the combined popularity of Pilot and Gehlot is almost double that of Raje. Also, the caste equations that helped Raje win Jhalrapatan have been rearranged by the anger among Rajputs and dissatisfaction among upper castes, both traditional voters of the BJP.

In many ways, the anger against Raje is similar to the fury that Prem Singh Dhumal faced in Himachal Pradesh. The resentment is more because of her own image and performance, not because of the party. This is reflected in the popular slogan on the campaign trail that warns Raje of dire political consequences in spite of the voters love for Narendra Modi.

Rajes quest for a second seat is symptomatic of the BJPs plight in the state. Wary of anti-incumbency and the voters penchant for booting out the government in every election, many BJP leaders are trying to shift to new constituencies. However, the BJP might take a policy decision disallowing a change of seat, primarily to hold incumbents accountable for their own destiny.tech2 News Staff

For better or worse, Apples iPhones tend to grab an inordinate amount of the limelight. Every issue is magnified a hundred-fold and the admittedly overpriced phones are examined with the deepest of scrutiny. Maybe its just more evidence of the polarising nature of the phones.

The only other phone that manages to draw even half as much attention as Apples iPhones is, of course, Googles Pixel lineup. The phones cant hold a candle to Samsungs incredible design, but the promise of stock Android and an unmatched camera is hard to ignore. At the same time, Google is so far behind in the hardware game that its not even funny.

The Pixel and Pixel 2 XL were plagued by issues from the start. Camera and speaker trouble, not to mention the ridiculously bad LG-made screen on the 2 XL, these were only the tip of the iceberg. With the Pixel 3 launch, it was hoped that Google would at least have sorted out its quality control issues.

The Pixel 2 XL display is driving my eyes crazy. I showed multiple people and they said the same thing and said they can't hardly look at it.  Aaron Zollo (@zollotech) November 21, 2017

As it turns out, that may not yet be the case.

According to reports from all over the internet, Googles latest phones, which retail at well over Rs 70,000 (thats more than a Samsung Galaxy Note 9), suffer from an embarrassment of issues, starting with:

RAM management

When it comes to RAM, more is better, but only up to a certain point. Experts generally agree that around 4 GB RAM is enough for any Android smartphone and the Pixel 3 phones do pack in that much RAM. The Pixel phones also run bloat-free, optimised Android and were sure that Googles engineers are satisfied that 4 GB is all they need for a smooth Android experience.

However, something clearly went wrong somewhere. The internet is filled with complaints about the Pixel 3s inability to hold anything in memory, with even our very own Sheldon Pinto complaining of the same in his review of the Pixel 3 XL. In his review, he notes that background apps simply dont survive very long on the phone. Switch between a few apps and most of them will reset.

Thankfully, initial examination of the Android code by independent developers indicates that this is some sort of bug which can, hopefully, be fixed in a later update. For now, it seems that disabling intelligent battery management features can resolve the issue.

2a. The memory issues that some people are complaining about may be due to the switch (https://t.co/LTsuCgw8Pm) to lmkd (a userspace low memory killer implementation): https://t.co/VhgRUYNJMR  Nathan Chancellor (@nathanchance) October 21, 2018

Audio and microphone issues

As with the Pixel 2, the Pixel 3 also seems to be suffering from speaker issues. Users have reported that the front speaker rattles and crackles when playing at higher volume levels. Speakers sounded like they were being run through a bitcrusher, says one affected user.

This was a problem with the original Pixel as well and we cant understand why Google still hasnt managed to fix the issue. There is some speculation that this is, unlike last time, a software issue and something to do with the algorithm that Google is using to enhance the audio. Only time will tell if this is indeed the case.

Other users are reporting issues with the microphones on the Pixel 3. Theyre complaining that the recorded audio is too tinny. It seemed meh is the tamest description that weve seen of the problem.

Yet another audio issue appears to be a WearOS-related one. A few users have reported that theyre unable to enable speakers during a phone call when a WearOS device (smartwatch) is paired with the phone.

Image capture

You can have the best camera in the world, but without a means of saving the images, you might as well have come empty-handed. The Pixel 3, it seems, is having trouble saving images. Users have been complaining for several days now and Google has, so far, refused to acknowledge the issue. Frustrated users have pinpointed the issue to Google's HDR mode, the secret sauce that makes the Pixel's images so compelling. Apparently, if you exit the camera app before it finishes processing an HDR image, the image will not be saved. It's yet another minor software issue, but one that's been present since the days of the venerable Nexus 5X.

Why can't a $700 bn company fix a 3-year old software bug?

You cant sue Google

This is by far the silliest issue of all, but one with long-term consequences. It seems that Google is now bundling an Arbitration Agreement with phones sold to US customers. The agreement covers the Pixel 3, 3 XL and related accessories. As per the agreement, you waive your rights to a class action lawsuit and will have to use arbitration to settle any dispute with the company.

This applies if you purchase a Pixel device and dont return it within 30 days. There is, thankfully, an opt-out clause, but you have to opt-out within 30 days of receiving your Pixel smartphone.

If you remember, the owners of the original Pixel had sued Google over microphone issues, a defect that Google only acknowledged in March 2017, several months after the phones launch. The lawsuit was filed by customers who were refused refunds or replacements for the defective phones they were sold.Press Trust of India

Heads of the country's top telecom firms will be seen sharing dais during the India Mobile Congress from 25 to 27 October, where these telcos are expected to discuss critical issues facing the industry.

According to the event schedule, Reliance Jio chairman Mukesh Ambani and Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal are going to be part of the inaugural session on 25 October. Vodafone Idea Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla is also expected to join the session.

"Promoters of all three telecom operators are going to participate in IMC," Industry body COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews told PTI.

Mathews said chief technology officers and chief marketing officers of leading telecom operators are expected to discuss various business proposals at the event.

The second edition of the three-day India Mobile Congress will focus on BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) region telecom sector.

Mathews said that delegates from the US, Canada, UK and European Union too have confirmed participation in the upcoming IMC.

"We have Mobile World Congress in Barcelona but not everyone can go there. There is no big event in South Asia and South East Asia to showcase potential of the telecom sector and encourage development of technology. This time, we have global speakers like FCC (US telecom regulator) chairman Ajit Pai, European Commision vice president Andrus Ansip, (and) leaders from BIMSTEC countries," Mathews said.

He said that the government will be more involved in the IMC to meet delegates and industry officers who want to reach out them.

"Telecom Minsiter (Manoj Sinha) and DoT secretary (Aruna Sundararajan) will be meeting people at IMC at pre-fixed schedule. Department of Science and Technology will engage with IMC to connect with innovators. We are trying if any fund from government can be made available for select start-ups at the event," he added.

Around 300 exhibitors, 2,500 delegates and 10,000 visitors are expected to participate in the event.

"We have shortlisted 250 startups. We will work out with Department of Science and Technology to find out if any of their fund can be made available to the best startups," Mathews said.

The COAI will start its own business-to-consumer exhibition from this edition of the IMC with participation from Samsung, Huawei and Nokia.

"We have reached out to university and colleges where they have specialised interest in telecom sector. At IMC they will get live exposure to industry people and look at advance technologies and accordingly shape their career," the director general said.

Live demonstration of 5G will take place at the event, machine-to-machine communications, IoT and other latest technology are scheduled for demonstration at the event, Mathews said.Press Trust of India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend on 22 October the fourth edition of the NITI Lecture Series focussed on 'leveraging artificial intelligence for inclusive growth', according to an official statement.

Modi will attend the lecture series in which the keynote address will be delivered by Jensen Huang, president and co-Founder of US-based technology firm NVIDIA Corporation, the Niti Aayog said 21 October.

The government think tank said the 2018 theme for the lecture series 'AI for All: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Inclusive Growth' is part of the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence aimed at evolving a robust ecosystem in India for AI research and adoption.

Union ministers, policy makers, experts from different walks of life along with Niti Aayog vice chairman, CEO, members and other senior officials will also be present on the occasion.

The Union Budget 2018 had mandated the Niti Aayog to come up with a national programme on employing artificial intelligence towards national development and since the Aayog has published a National Strategy for artificial intelligence (AI).

The Aayog said its has signed statements of intent (SoI) with industry leaders such as Google, Microsoft and IBM to leapfrog India into global arena of future technologies and enable use of AI in key, high gain sectors of social development -- healthcare, agriculture, smart mobility, education and infrastructure.

The Aayog said it has launched multiple projects in areas of precision agriculture, creating AI led healthcare solutions, and bridging India's diversity of languages by creating a digital 'Ek Bharat, Shrestha Bharat' platform using Natural Language Processing (NLP).

The NLP is a system of protocols which allow machines or computers to understand and interact with human speech and symbols.

The Niti Aayog said it has also identified barriers that need to be addressed to achieve success in use of artificial intelligence with the aim to use the technology across all sectors.

It has also proposed setting up of a Centre of Research Excellence (CORE) to focus on developing better understanding of existing core research, it said.

The 'NITI Lectures: Transforming India' was inaugurated by Modi in August 2016 featuring eminent speakers from across the world.

The first keynote address 'India and the Global Economy' was delivered by the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

Bill Gates, Co-Founder, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered the second lecture in November 2016, and in May 2017, Michael Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, had delivered the third lecture of the series.tech2 News Staff

Vodafone has brought back its old Rs 597 prepaid plan, which it has once discontinued. However, with the re-introduced plan, comes some revised offers too.

In Rs 597, Vodafone is offering unlimited voice calling, 100 SMS every day and 10 GB data. The calling is free to both local and STD numbers, but it is capped at 250 minutes per day which means that users get 4 hours and 10 minutes of daily talk time. Weekly, the calling is capped at 1000 minutes, which is about 16.6 hours.

Another condition that comes with the offer is that users can also only make calls to 100 unique numbers during the period of their validity.

As for the validity, the part is slightly tricky. For the same plan, feature phone users get a validity of 168 days, which is around 5 months and 18 days. Smartphone users get a validity of 112 days (3 months 22 days) for the same offer.

That makes it pretty clear that the offer is inclined towards feature phone users.

This plan by Vodafone aims to take on Airtels plan with the same price, that is Rs 597. The plan also offers 168 days of validity, however, with no limitation on voice calling, which is free for the validity period. Airtel plan also offers 10 GB of data and 100 daily SMS.The Associated Press

The loud crack rang out from the fog above the Baishui No 1 Glacier as a stone shard careened down the ice, flying past Chen Yanjun as he operated a GPS device.

More projectiles were tumbling down the hulk of ice that scientists say is one of the worlds fastest melting glaciers.

We should go, said the 30-year-old geologist. The first rule is safety.

Chen hiked away and onto a barren landscape once buried beneath the glacier. Now there is exposed rock littered with oxygen tanks discarded by tourists visiting the 15,000-foot-high blanket of ice in southern China.

Millions of people each year are drawn to Baishuis frosty beauty on the southeastern edge of the Third Pole  a region in Central Asia with the worlds third-largest store of ice after Antarctica and Greenland thats roughly the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.

Third Pole glaciers are vital to billions of people from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Asias ten largest rivers  including the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, and Ganges  are fed by seasonal melting.

Youre talking about one of the worlds largest freshwater sources, said Ashley Johnson, energy program manager at the National Bureau of Asian Research, an American think tank. Depending on how it melts, a lot of the freshwater will be leaving the region for the ocean, which will have severe impacts on water and food security.

Earth is today 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial levels because of climate change  enough to melt 28 to 44 percent of glaciers worldwide, according to a new report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Temperatures are expected to keep rising.

Baishui is about as close to the equator as Tampa, Florida. And the impacts of climate change already are dramatic.

The glacier has lost 60 percent of its mass and shrunk 250 meters (820 feet) since 1982, according to a 2018 report in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Scientists found in 2015 that 82 percent of glaciers surveyed in China had retreated. They warned that the effects of glacier melting on water resources are gradually becoming increasingly serious for China.

China has always had a freshwater supply problem with 20 percent of the worlds population but only 7 percent of its freshwater, said Jonna Nyman, an energy security lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Thats heightened by the impact of climate change.

One research team has tracked Baishuis retreat of about 30 yards (27 meters) per year over the past decade. Flowers, such as snow lotus, have rooted in exposed earth, says Wang Shijin, a glaciologist and director of the Yulong Snow Mountain Glacial and Environmental Observation Research Station, part of a network run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Nestled into a suburb of Lijiang, population 1.2 million, the station is home to Wang and his team: geologist and drone operator Chen, postgraduate glaciology student Zhou Lanyue and electrical engineer Zhang Xing, a private contractor.

After breakfast, the team heads off by van for the days mission. A cable car carries them up to a majestic view of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

The team shuffles past a line of tourists  many in red ponchos, most sucking oxygen canisters, a few vomiting from altitude sickness  before descending to replace a broken meteorological station.

The team operates remote sensors that collect data on temperature, wind speed, rainfall, and humidity. Other sensors measure water flow in streams fed by melted ice. Cold, downpours, rock slides, gales and glacier movement break the equipment.

It is not easy to encounter good weather here, Wang said.

This weather will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater while other glacier loss poses serious risk of drought across the Third Pole, he said.

The next day, the team wore crampons while repairing more sensors scattered across the glaciers crags.

Where were at right now was back in 2008 all covered with ice, Wang said. From here to there at the side, the glacier shrank about 20 to 30 meters. The shrinking is very remarkable.

The team forded streams and jumped crevasses in search of long iron bars they previously embedded in the ice. GPS tells them how much the bars, and thus the glacier, have moved. They also measure how much height the glacier has lost during the summer.

Back on the viewing platform, Che launched a buzzing camera drone over the white expanse. The photographs help tell a story of staggering loss. A quarter of its ice has vanished since 1957 along with four of its 19 glaciers, researchers have found.

Changes to the Baishui provide the opportunity to educate visitors about global warming, Wang said.

Last year, 2.6 million tourists visited the mountain, according to Yulong Snow Mountain park officials.

On blustery day recently, hundreds of tourists climbed wooden stairs through grey fog to snap selfies in front of the glacier.

Hou Yugang said he wasnt too bothered over climate change and Baishuis melting. I dont think about it now because it still has a long way to go, he said.

To protect the glacier, authorities have limited the number of visitors to 10,000 a day and have banned hiking on the ice. They plan to manufacture snow and to dam streams to increase humidity that slows melting.

Security guard Yang Shaofeng has witnessed a warming world melting this mountain, which his local Naxi minority community considers sacred.

Yang remembers being able to see the glaciers lowest edge from his home village. No longer.

Only when we climb up can we see it, he said sadly, as tourists lined up to have their names engraved on medallions bearing the glaciers image.

The etching is already outdated.By Anthony Boadle BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's leading presidential hopeful, Jair Bolsonaro, publicly upbraided his son on Monday for threatening to shut down the Supreme Court in comments that set off a storm of criticism and prompted his main opponent to call the far-right candidate a threat to democracy. Over the weekend, social media exploded over a video of comments made in July by Eduardo Bolsonaro saying the top court could be forcibly disbanded by the Army if it stripped his father of an electoral victory

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's leading presidential hopeful, Jair Bolsonaro, publicly upbraided his son on Monday for threatening to shut down the Supreme Court in comments that set off a storm of criticism and prompted his main opponent to call the far-right candidate a threat to democracy.

Over the weekend, social media exploded over a video of comments made in July by Eduardo Bolsonaro saying the top court could be forcibly disbanded by the Army if it stripped his father of an electoral victory.

Chief Justice Jose Antonio Dias Toffoli issued a statement saying that any attack on the judiciary amounted to an attack on democracy and urged all authorities to respect the constitution.

Bolsonaro's leftist rival, Fernando Haddad, who is trailing in opinion polls, said if the former Army captain wins Sunday's run-off vote, military hard-liners will threaten democratic institutions and undermine the country's young democracy. Brazil emerged in 1985 from a repressive 21-year military dictatorship.

Following the firestorm, Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker, expressed his respect for the separation of powers and disowned the comments by his son, a 34-year-old member of Congress.

"I've already warned my boy. It was his responsibility. He has already apologised. It happened four months ago. He was asked a senseless question and gave an absurd answer," said Bolsonaro, 63, in a interview with the SBT television network.

"The judiciary is obviously important. I was even hard on the boy. Anyone who says such a thing needs to see a psychiatrist," he said. "As far as we are concerned, this is a closed chapter."

Yet Haddad seized on the controversy to tell Brazilians that democracy was in peril. The Workers Party (PT) candidate has issued increasingly dire warnings as the latest opinion polls show the race seemingly out of reach, with nearly three in five voters backing Bolsonaro.

"If he has the courage to threaten democracy before the election, what do you think he will do if he wins?" Haddad said in Sao Paulo, a day after Bolsonaro renewed a vow to jail him for alleged graft and wipe the PT from Brazil's political map.

"Either we toss aside this authoritarian tradition that Brazil has always had ... or we are in danger, including physical, if we do not alert the country that the political opposition, judges and journalists are being threatened before the election has been decided," he said at a press conference.

Bolsonaro is a seven-term member of Congress who has found wide appeal with an electorate seeking order after five years of economic and political crises. Haddad has faced strong headwinds as his party, a dominant force in politics in recent years, is one of many ravaged by corruption scandals.

Until his presidential run, Bolsonaro was best known for his defence of the 1964-1985 military government and being charged with hate crimes for misogynist, racist and homophobic rants. The Supreme Court rejected the racism charge, but has not ruled on a case in which he told a fellow lawmaker she was not pretty enough to rape. He has called the cases political persecution.

CLASSROOM VIDEO

In a video taken in July of him speaking in a classroom, Eduardo Bolsonaro said the Supreme Court could be shut down if it countered his father. "One wouldn't even need a Jeep. Sending a soldier and corporal would be enough to close the STF," he said, using the acronym for the court.

The younger Bolsonaro posted another video Monday on his Twitter account criticizing the top court and backing his father's proposal to increase its size from 11 to 21 members - something that Haddad said was a clear attempt to neutralize the court's current justices.

Justice Celso de Mello, the court's oldest judge, called Eduardo Bolsonaro a "coup-monger" in a written statement. Mello said the junior congressman's "unacceptable authoritarian view" was a danger to Brazil's democratic system and disregarded the country's constitution.

Another justice, Alexandre de Moraes, asked public prosecutors to investigate the threat to close the Supreme Court as a possible violation of the country's national security law. "You don't joke with democracy, the state of law or republican stability," he said in a statement that did not name Bolsonaro.

An MDA opinion poll published on Monday by transportation lobby CNT showed that Bolsonaro had 57 percent of voter support, compared to Haddad's 43 percent. The numbers were in line with other polls that show Bolsonaro taking 59 percent (Datafolha) or 60 percent (BTG/FSB) of the votes.[E6N1T0007]

The race came down to Bolsonaro against Haddad after the first round of voting on Oct. 7. As Brazil's most polarized presidential campaign in decades entered its last week, tens of thousands of Bolsonaro's backers gathered in several cities across Brazil on Sunday, where the vibe was more of victory parties than pre-election rallies.

Anti-Bolsonaro protesters gathered in fewer cities on Saturday for events that were mostly organised by a Facebook group of women voters who oppose him.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle in Brasilia and Tais Haupt in Sao Paulo; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo; Editing by Brad Haynes and Frances Kerry)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.A growing caravan of Honduran migrants streamed through southern Mexico on Sunday heading toward the United States, after making an end-run around Mexican agents who briefly blocked them at the Guatemalan border.

Mexico: A growing caravan of Honduran migrants streamed through southern Mexico on Sunday heading toward the United States, after making an end-run around Mexican agents who briefly blocked them at the Guatemalan border.

They received help at every turn from sympathetic Mexicans who offered food, water and clothing. Hundreds of locals driving pickups, vans and cargo trucks stopped to let them clamber aboard.

Besi Jaqueline Lopez of the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula carried a stuffed polar bear in a winter cap that seemed out of place in the tropical heat. It's the favorite  and only  toy of her two daughters, 4-year-old Victoria and 3-year-old Elisabeth, who trudged beside her gleaming with sweat.

A business administration graduate, Lopez said she couldn't find work back home and hopes to reach the United States, but would stay in Mexico if she could find employment here. "My goal is to find work for a better future for my daughters," she said.

In dozens of interviews along the journey, they have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption in Honduras. The caravan is unlike previous mass migrations for its unprecedented large numbers, and because it largely began spontaneously through word of mouth. Guatemala's migration agency confirmed that another group of about 1,000 migrants crossed into the country from Honduras on Sunday.

After praising Mexico for its no-nonsense response when police at a southern border bridge pushed the migrants back with riot shields and pepper spray, US president Donald Trump again hammered Democratic Party opponents over what he apparently sees as a winning issue for Republicans a little over two weeks ahead of midterm elections.

After blaming the Democrats for "weak laws" on immigration a few days earlier, Trump said via Twitter: "The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat party. Change the immigration laws NOW!" "Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther (sic) Border," he said in another tweet. "People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the US will turn them away. The courts are asking the US to do things that are not doable!"

Hundreds of migrants from the caravan did just that  applied for refugee status in Mexico in the southern city of Ciudad Hidalgo. By Sunday evening, the Interior department reported that it had received more than 1,000 requests.

But a far bigger group forded the Suchiate River from Guatemala to the Mexican side individually and dozens at a time, and resumed the trek at first light, marching 10 abreast on the highway. "Si se pudo!" they chanted in Spanish  "Yes, we did!"

The throng grew even larger than when the migrants arrived at the border bridge, swelling overnight to 5,000. It was not immediately clear where the additional travelers came from since about 2,000 had been gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. But people have been joining and leaving the caravan daily, some moving at their own pace and strung out in a series of columns.

Their destination Sunday was the city of Tapachula in Chiapas state. Under a blazing sun, small groups of 20 to 30 paused to rest in the shade of trees on the side of the road, and by afternoon the caravan had evolved into long lines of walkers straggling for miles. Jesus Valdivia, of Tuxtla Chico, Mexico, was one of the many who pulled his pickup truck over to let 10 or even 20 migrants hop in at a time, sometimes causing vehicles' springs to groan under the weight.

"You have to help the next person. Today it's for them, tomorrow for us," Valdivia said, adding that he was getting a valuable gift from those he helped: "From them we learn to value what they do not have." Passing freight trucks were quickly boarded by dozens of migrants, and straining tuk-tuks carried as many as a half-dozen.

Brenda Sanchez of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who rode in Valdivia's truck with three nephews ages 10, 11 and 19, expressed gratitude to "God and the Mexicans who have helped us." She even had kind words for Mexican police: "We are very grateful to them because even though they closed the doors to us (at the border), they are coming behind us taking care of us."

Federal police monitored the caravan's progress from a helicopter and had a few units escorting it. Outside Tapachula, about 500 black-uniformed officers briefly gathered along the highway on buses and in patrol units, but they said their orders were to maintain traffic and not to stop the caravan. They moved on toward the city before the caravan reached them.

As the migrants passed through villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, locals applauded, shouted encouragement and donated supplies. Maria Teresa Orellana, a resident of Lorenzo, handed out sandals. "It's solidarity," she said. "They're our brothers."

Mexico's Interior Department said in a statement that federal and Chiapas state authorities were providing assistance to migrants, including legal counseling for those who applied for asylum. It released a video showing workers doling out food, medicine and medical treatment.

In comments to reporters after a rally in Elko, Nevada, on Saturday night, Trump said of Mexico's response: "I just want to say, on behalf of the American public, that we appreciate what Mexico is doing. They've really stepped up, and it will not be forgotten." Trump also repeated: "I will seal off the border before (the migrants) come into this country, and I'll bring out our military, not our reserves."

Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he was suggesting to Trump that the United States, Canada and Mexico seek an agreement to invest in development in Central America and southern Mexico, which is home to many of that country's poor. "In this way we confront the phenomenon of migration, because he who leaves his town does not leave for pleasure but out of necessity," said Lopez Obrador, who takes office 1 December.

Mexican authorities had refused to allow the caravan mass entry from Guatemala, instead accepting small groups to process asylum requests and handing out some 45-day visitor permits. An estimated 1,500 were still on the Guatemalan side of the Suchiate, hoping to enter legally.

But police could do little if anything in the face of the throngs who avoided the official entry point and crossed the notoriously porous border elsewhere. Migrants marching north Sunday said they gave up on Mexico because the application process was too slow, and most wanted to continue to the United States anyway.

"We're warriors, we got to get to the place we got to get to. We're gonna keep on going and we're not gonna stop," Luis Puerto, 39, of Colon, Honduras, said in English.

For Puerto, that place is North Carolina, where he has a wife and two daughters. He said he was recently deported from the United States after a brush with the law that he did not specify. "We are going to get to the border of the U.S.," he said. "I am not going to stop. I don't care if I die."By Valentina Za and Giuseppe Fonte MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and Five-Star leader Luigi Di Maio said on Sunday he was committed to preserving the country's membership of the euro zone. Rome's anti-establishment government is striving to reassure investors after a draft 2019 budget driving the deficit higher prompted a market sell-off and sent the risk premium that Italian bonds pay over safer German paper to a 5-1/2 year high of 3.4 percentage points.

By Valentina Za and Giuseppe Fonte

MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and Five-Star leader Luigi Di Maio said on Sunday he was committed to preserving the country's membership of the euro zone.

Rome's anti-establishment government is striving to reassure investors after a draft 2019 budget driving the deficit higher prompted a market sell-off and sent the risk premium that Italian bonds pay over safer German paper to a 5-1/2 year high of 3.4 percentage points.

"We understood from conversations with people from the ECB (European Central Bank) and the markets, meaning investors, that the (bond yield spread) jumped because there is a concern that this government wants to leave the euro or the European Union," Di Maio told RAI state television.

"I want to say it here, and there will be other solemn occasions to reiterate it as a government and a political party, ... there is no Plan B (to leave Europe) but only Plan A which is to change Europe," Di Maio said.

"As long as I'm head of this movement and a minister of this government I'll always guarantee that Italy remains within the euro and in Europe," he added.

The ECB declined to comment on Di Maio's remark about conversations with people from the central bank.

Euro break-up fears have resurfaced since a coalition comprising the anti-establishment 5-Star and the eurosceptic League party came to power in Italy in May. Foreign investors have shed 67 billion euros ($77 billion) in Italian government bonds since then.

Faced with a spike in debt costs which is undermining the country's banks and could risk choking off the economy, the Rome government has sought to strike a more conciliatory tone over the budget but it has so far stopped short of saying it may revise down next year's deficit goal.

A government source told Reuters Economy Minister Giovanni Tria, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi had unsuccessfully pushed for a reduction of the deficit target at a cabinet meeting on Saturday.

Di Maio said the government was preparing a letter in reply to the EU Commission's criticism of the budget which would be sent on Monday with the Commission expected to react shortly after that.

"I hope the explanations we will provide over a long discussion process ... could lead the Commission to share the goals we have set," he said.

The Commission has labelled Rome's plan to lift the budget deficit to 2.4 percent of domestic output next year from 1.8 percent in 2018 an unprecedented breach of EU fiscal rules.

Credit rating agency Moody's on Friday downgraded Italy's debt to one notch above junk status citing concerns over the government's budget plans.

Di Maio said he hoped the Commission would take into account in its assessment Italy's strengths such as the private sector's low debt and high household wealth, which Moody's cited among reasons supporting a 'stable' outlook on the rating.

He denied however the government was considering a wealth tax to help reduce Italy's 2.3 trillion euro public debt.

After riding popular anger at the austerity measures Italy adopted in response to the euro zone crisis of 2011-2012, the League and the 5 Star want to lower the retirement age and provide a basic income for the poor.

Di Maio said Italy had a chance to prove public debt could be reduced by "investing in social rights" and trigger important changes across Europe.

Di Maio said the 5-Star, founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, was working to present in January-February a programme that brought together similar grassroots movements from other European countries with the goal to "give back a heart and humanity to European institutions."

($1 = 0.8686 euros)

(Editing by Adrian Croft)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.A member of the Imran Khan's Cabinet said the prime minister was likely to take up the issue of financial aid with his hosts in the three friendly countries because Pakistan needs assistance to ease the current economic crisis.

Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit three 'friendly countries'  Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and China  where he is likely to seek monetary help of up to $13 billion for his cash-strapped government, a media report said on Monday.

Quoting sources, Dawn newspaper reported that Khan would leave for Saudi Arabia on Monday and embark on a two-day visit to Malaysia on 28 October and to China early on 3 November.

In the next two weeks Khan will visit three 'friendly countries' where he is likely to seek monetary assistance, the report said, days after Islamabad formally sought a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A member of the Khan's Cabinet said the prime minister was likely to take up the issue of financial aid with his hosts in the three friendly countries because Pakistan badly needed assistance to ease the current economic crisis.

He said the government immediately needed $12 billion to $13 billion to ease the financial crisis and retire foreign debt.

"We need $8 billion to retire foreign debt and $5 billion to run the affairs of government," the unnamed minister said.

"If we get good monetary support from our friendly countries then there is a possibility that we will not require support of the IMF," he added.

Pakistan formally approached the IMF on 12 October for a bailout to tide over the economic crisis.

But some tough talking by IMF managing director Christine Lagarde and the US on Pakistan's bailout plan, demanding absolute transparency on the country's debts, including those owned by China under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has upset Islamabad.

Pakistan finance minister Asad Umar last week said the government don't want to fully rely on the IMF. He said the loan programme with the IMF is almost final, but the government will have to see that the IMF does not place any "undoable conditions" for Pakistan in return.

According to Pakistan's Foreign Office, Khan is going to Riyadh on the special invitation of King Salman bin Abdel Aziz to participate in the Future Investment Initiative conference being held there from Tuesday to Thursday.

Interestingly, some countries are boycotting the conference in reaction to the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Cabinet minister said the prime minister would visit Malaysia for two days (28 and 29 October) and would meet his Malaysian counterpart Mahathir Mohamad and other government functionaries, the report said.

In his recent telephonic conversation with Mahathir, Khan had expressed his desire to learn from Malaysia's experiences.

Khan would embark on an official visit to China on 3 November during which there would be discussions in detail on Pakistan-China strategic ties, the report said.

During his meetings in the friendly country, Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of the CPEC, said the sources.

Under the previous government there was an emphasis on infrastructure schemes, but the current government wanted projects involving agriculture, job creation and foreign investment take centre stage, the report said.

The $60 billion CPEC is the flagship venture of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of Chinese president Xi Jinping aimed at enhancing Beijing's influence around the world through China-funded infrastructure projects.

Cash-strapped Pakistan has already announced plans to cut a $8.2 billion railway project between the Karachi and Peshawar, the biggest under the CPEC, by about $2 billion to reduce the debt burden.

The Trump administration has been critical of China's BRI, saying that it has saddled some developing countries with debts they cannot afford to repay.A man appearing to wear Jamal Khashoggi's clothes left the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul following his killing there, according to a surveillance video, while a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office around the same time, reports said Monday.

Ankara, Turkey: A man appearing to wear Jamal Khashoggi's clothes left the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul following his killing there, according to a surveillance video, while a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office around the same time, reports said Monday.

The reports by CNN and a pro-government Turkish newspaper came just a day before Prince Mohammed's high-profile investment summit is to begin in Riyadh and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised that details of Khashoggi's killing "will be revealed in all its nakedness."

That yet again adds to the pressure Saudi Arabia faces over the slaying of the Washington Post columnist. The kingdom's claim on Saturday that Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" met international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

CNN aired surveillance footage on Monday showing the man in Khashoggi's dress shirt, suit jacket and pants. It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a "body double" and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The man is seen in the footage walking out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then taking a taxi to Istanbul's famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public bathroom, changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Khashoggi's clothes.

In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said that he had left the consulate, implying premeditation on the part of the Saudi team.

"After Turkish authorities and the media were allowed to inspect the consulate building in its entirety, the accusations changed to the outrageous claim that he was murdered, in the consulate, during business hours, and with dozens of staff and visitors in the building," Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote on Oct. 8. "I don't know who is behind these claims, or their intentions, nor do I care frankly."

A separate report by newspaper Yeni Safak said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed's office. It said another call went to the United States.

Yeni Safak cited no source for the information. However, pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Khashoggi's killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces. Yeni Safak reported last week that Saudi officials cut off Khashoggi's fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate as his fiancee waited outside.

Officials in Saudi Arabia have not answered repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press in recent days, including on Monday. Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutreb's presence in Istanbul  nor that a forensics and autopsy expert was also on hand for Khashoggi's arrival at the consulate.

Last week, a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage showed Mutreb at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival. Mutreb's name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early on Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggi's death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told the AP that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his father's criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion. The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

Five Turkish employees of the consulate also gave testimonies to prosecutors on Monday, Turkish media reported. Istanbul's chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony. Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday told Fox News that Khashoggi's killing was "a rogue operation" and that "we don't know where the body is."

"The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority," he said. "There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government."

However, leading Republicans and Democrats in Congress are saying Saudi Arabia should face punishment over Khashoggi's killing. President Donald Trump also had talked about possible punishment but said he didn't want to halt proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia because, he maintained, it would harm U.S. manufacturers.

Britain, Germany and France issued a joint statement condemning the killing of Khashoggi, saying there is an "urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened."

In a statement Sunday, the governments said attacks on journalists are unacceptable and "of utmost concern to our three nations." They said the "hypotheses" proposed so far in the Saudi investigation need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that she supports a freeze on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined that point Monday, calling for a joint European position as Germany "won't at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened."The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed express their condolences for Jamal Khashoggi's death.

Istanbul: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the son of Jamal Khashoggi, the kingdom announced early Monday, to express condolences for the death of the journalist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by officials that allegedly included a member of the royal's entourage.

King Salman similarly made a condolence call as international pressure on the kingdom continues to rise, even after it acknowledged on Saturday that the Washington Post journalist was killed 2 October at the consulate under still-disputed circumstances.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that he will "go into detail" about the Khashoggi case in a speech in parliament Tuesday, the same day a glitzy investment forum in Riyadh spearheaded by Prince Mohammed is to take place.

Saudi Arabia's explanation that Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight" and 18 Saudis have been detained has been met with international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up designed to absolve Prince Mohammed of direct responsibility. Turkish media reports and officials say a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul, laid in wait for Khashoggi at the consulate and then cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

"Why did these 15 people come here? Why were 18 people arrested? All of this needs to be explained in all its details," Erdogan said.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed express their condolences for his father's death.

The call comes after a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage shows Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival. Mutreb's name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutreb's presence in Istanbul  nor that of a forensics and autopsy expert, also on hand for Khashoggi's arrival at the consulate.

Istanbul's chief prosecutor summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony on Monday, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported. Prosecutors have previously questioned consulate staff; some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Turkish news agency Anadolu Agency reported Sunday that Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has been given 24-hour police protection.

Also Sunday, images that were obtained by TRT World, a Turkish news channel that broadcasts in English, showed Khashoggi as he arrived at a police barrier before entering the consulate on 2 October. The images, taken from security camera video, show the writer being searched before continuing toward the building.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Fox News that Khashoggi's killing was "a rogue operation" and that "we don't know where the body is.'" "The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority," he said.

"There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government." However, a leading US Senate Republican said the Saudi explanation, which followed initial denials from the kingdom that it knew anything about Khashoggi's fate, wasn't credible.

Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday on CNN's "State of the Union" that he believed Prince Mohammed, the heir-apparent of the world's largest oil exporter, was behind the killing.

The crown prince has "now crossed a line and there has to be a punishment and a price paid for that," Corker said. He also urged Turkey to turn over purported audio recordings of Khashoggi's killing inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The existence of such evidence has been reported in Turkish media in a series of leaks, though Turkish officials have yet to confirm they have recordings.

"The Turks have been talking more to the media than they have (to) us," Corker said of the NATO ally.The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul is unlikely to halt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's rise to power, but could cause irreparable harm to relations with Western governments and businesses, potentially endangering his ambitious reform plans.

The killing of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Kingdom's consulate in Istanbul is unlikely to halt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's rise to power. However, it could irreparably harm relations with Western governments and businesses, potentially endangering his ambitious reform plans.

International outrage over Khashoggi's 2 October murder at the hands of Saudi officials, under still-disputed circumstances, has become the greatest crisis in the 33-year-old's rapid rise, already tarnished by a catastrophic war in Yemen and a sweeping roundup of Saudi businessmen and activists.

The crown prince had hoped to galvanise world support for his efforts to revamp Saudi Arabia's oil-dependent economy, but now, the monarchy faces possible sanctions over the journalist's killing. Saudi Arabia, however, has threatened to retaliate against any punitive action, but analysts say that wielding its main weapon  oil production  could backfire, putting the prince's economic goals even further out of reach.

Senior aides close to the crown prince have been fired over Khashoggi's killing, and 18 suspects have been arrested. But Crown Prince Salman himself, protected by his 82-year-old father, King Salman, has been tapped to lead a panel to reform the Kingdom's intelligence services, a sign that he will remain the next in line to the throne.

Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said on Saturday, reflecting international scepticism over the Saudi account that the writer died during a "fistfight". The comment was one of the many critical reactions to Saudi Arabia's announcement early on Saturday of the writer's violent death, indicating the Kingdom's efforts to defuse a scandal that has gripped the world were falling short.

Meanwhile, the Kingdom announced early on Monday that the Saudi crown prince had called Khashoggi's son to express his condolences for his father's death at the hands of officials at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, allegedly including a member of the royal's entourage.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early on Monday. Statements from the agency said both the king and crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggi's death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi, who was in frequent touch with him before his death, told The Associated Press that Salah has been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the Kingdom since last year, as a result of his father's criticism of the government of the West Asian country. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions. The Saudi statements, however, did not acknowledge this travel ban.

The call was made after a leaked photograph, apparently taken from surveillance footage, showed Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb  a member of Crown Prince Salman's entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year  at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival. Mutreb's name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

US President Donald Trump, however, is an exception to the criticism pouring in about the Saudi Arabian account of what led to Khashoggi's death. When asked whether he thought the country's explanation was credible, he replied, "I do. I do." He also called the Saudi announcement a "good first step", but said what happened to Khashoggi was "unacceptable".

Later, in his strongest comments to date on the subject, Trump accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who fell out of favour with the ultra conservative Kingdom, as pressure built on the US administration to strike a tougher line.

Despite widespread outrage over the killing of the columnist for The Washington Post, it is unclear to what extent the top leadership of Saudi Arabia  a key US ally and a powerful player in a volatile West Asian region  would be held accountable for what human rights activists describe as an extrajudicial killing by Saudi agents.

2 weeks later, and this is the best explanation they could give? Its almost insulting. But here goes: 1) Then what happened to the body?

2) Why did officials lie say and he left the consulate?

3) What evidence do they have to support that there was a fistfight? #Khashoggi https://t.co/SMZiV51sz1  Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) October 20, 2018

The only way to find out what happened would be through an international investigation led by a panel appointed by the United Nations, the editorial board of The Washington Post said.

Saudi Arabia said 18 Saudi suspects were in custody, and intelligence officials had been fired. But critics believe the complex scheme that led to Khashoggi's death could not have occurred without the crown prince having knowledge of it, adding to concerns that the 33-year-old may be an impulsive, even sinister, figure.

The Saudi narrative of Khashoggi's death  that he was killed in a brawl following discussions with visiting officials at the consulate  contradicts Turkish pro-government media reports that a Saudi hit squad, including an autopsy expert, had traveled to Istanbul to kill Khashoggi and dispose of his body, which has not yet been found.

Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and royal court insider for decades in Saudi Arabia, had written columns critical of Crown Prince Salman and the Kingdom's direction while living in self-imposed exile in the US.

"God have mercy on you my love Jamal, and may you rest in Paradise," Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, tweeted after the Saudi announcements.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for "a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances" surrounding Khashoggi's death and "full accountability for those responsible", spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the US will advocate for justice in the Khashoggi case that is "timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process".

Statement on Saudi Arabia Investigation: pic.twitter.com/DjBdwZAGAi  Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) October 19, 2018

The Saudi announcements on Khashoggi came in statements carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Public Prosecution showed that the suspects had traveled to Istanbul to meet with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi as there were indications of the possibility of his returning back to the country," the statement read. "Discussions took place with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi during his presence in the consulate of the Kingdom in Istanbul by the suspects (that) did not go as required and developed in a negative way, leading to a fistfight. The brawl led to his death and their attempt to conceal and hide what happened."

Amnesty International said Saudi Arabia should "immediately produce" the body of the Saudi journalist so that independent forensic experts can conduct an autopsy in line with international standards.

Turkey

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to reveal within days the "naked truth" about Khashoggi's death, even as Riyadh said it did not know the whereabouts of his body, and that the crown prince had been unaware of any operation to murder the journalist.

Erdogan's statement came a day after Saudi authorities conceded that Khashoggi had been killed at their diplomatic compound in Istanbul.

"We are looking for justice here, and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth," Erdogan said at a rally in Istanbul.

France

French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said his country condemned the killing of Khashoggi and called for a thorough investigation into the incident.

"France condemns this murder in the strongest terms," Le Drian said in a statement. "The confirmation of Jamal Khashoggi's death is a first step toward the establishment of the truth. However, many questions remain unanswered."

Le Drian added that those responsible for Khashoggi's death should be held accountable.

Spain

Spain's government said it was "dismayed" by information from Riyadh about Khashoggi's death, echoing a call from the UN for a thorough and transparent investigation to bring to justice those responsible for his murder.

"The Spanish government is dismayed by early reports from the Saudi prosecutor about the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and offers its most sincere condolences to his family," Spain said in a statement.

Denmark

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he was unconvinced by Saudi Arabia's account of Khashoggi's death.

"The fact that the Saudis last night confirmed that he died, after previously insisting he left the consulate alive, shows that we haven't been told the full truth, and we must insist on getting that," Rasmussen was quoted as saying in Copenhagen after talks with Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte.

Rutte called Khashoggi's killing "shocking".

Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, too, said she does not accept Saudi Arabia's explanation on the death of Khashoggi, Bloomberg reported.

"They still haven't been cleared (doubts about the murder) and, of course, we demand that they be cleared," she said at a regional convention of her Christian Democratic Union Party in East Germany.

The "horrific events" surrounding the journalist's killing are a warning that democratic freedoms are under assault across the globe, she added.

Furthermore, Egypt praised Saudi's King Salman for taking "decisive" action, saying it was confident the ongoing investigation into Khashoggi's death would reveal the truth.

"Egypt sees that the brave and decisive decisions made and actions taken by the Saudi king over this matter align with his majesty's approach that respects the principles of law and applications of effective justice," the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also voiced support for King Salman and commended his "directives and decisions... on the issue of Khashoggi", UAE's state-run WAM news agency reported.

Bahrain said in an official statement that Saudi Arabia "will remain a state of justice, value and principles", the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV network reported.

Yemen also "praised decisions" made by the Saudi king, according to the country's state news agency.

United Kingdom

Britain's Foreign Office said it was considering its "next steps", following Saudi Arabia's admission of Khashoggi's killing, reiterating that that those responsible must be held accountable.

"We send our condolences to Jamal Khashoggi's family after this confirmation of his death. We are considering the Saudi report and our next steps," the statement read. "As the foreign secretary has said, this was a terrible act and those responsible must be held to account."

The UK's main Opposition Labour Party has called on the governing Conservative Party to suspend arms sales to the Kingdom.

With inputs from The Associated PressAlthough aides close to the Saudi crown prince have been fired over Khashoggi's killing, the prince himself, protected by his 82-year-old father, King Salman, has been tapped to lead a panel to reform the kingdom's intelligence services, a sign he will remain next in line to the throne.

Dubai: The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul is unlikely to halt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's rise to power, but could cause irreparable harm to relations with Western governments and businesses, potentially endangering his ambitious reform plans.

International outrage over Khashoggi's 2 October slaying at the hands of Saudi officials, under still-disputed circumstances, has marked the greatest crisis in the 33-year-old's rapid rise, already tarnished by a catastrophic war in Yemen and a sweeping roundup of Saudi businessmen and activists.

The prince had hoped to galvanize world support for his efforts to revamp the country's oil-dependent economy, but now the monarchy faces possible sanctions over the killing. Saudi Arabia has threatened to retaliate against any punitive action, but analysts say that wielding its main weapon  oil production  could backfire, putting the prince's economic goals even further out of reach.

"The issue now is how Western governments coordinate a response and to what extent they wish to escalate this in a coordinated fashion," said Michael Stephens, a senior research fellow who focuses on the Mideast at London's Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies.

"Would financial sanctions be considered sufficient as to have sent a message to Saudi Arabia that this will never happen again?" Stephens added. "Some may feel this is inadequate, while others, like the Americans, may feel this is going too far."

Senior aides close to the prince have been fired over Khashoggi's killing, and 18 suspects have been arrested. But the prince himself, protected by his 82-year-old father, King Salman, has been tapped to lead a panel to reform the kingdom's intelligence services, a sign he will remain next in line to the throne.

The king has the authority to change the line of succession  as he did when he appointed his son crown prince in the first place, upending the previous royal consensus.

But any direct challenge to Prince Mohammed's succession "may be destabilizing for the kingdom as a whole," said Cinzia Bianco, a London-based analyst for Gulf State Analytics. "Being young and being so close to his father, there is a chance that his behavior can be constrained with the influence of his father and other actors around the world," Bianco said.

That only holds as long as King Salman remains in power. If Prince Mohammed ascends the throne, he could be in power for decades, longer than any other royal since the country's founding in 1932, including its first monarch, King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.

The firing and arrests announced by the kingdom appear to be at least an acknowledgement by the royal family of how serious the crisis has become.

"While it might be too early to evaluate the reaction of the international community, these moves might be read as a serious initial signal that the Saudi leadership is course correcting," wrote Ayham Kamel, the head of Mideast and North Africa research at the Eurasia Group. "Despite speculation that the crisis spells the end of Mohammad bin Salman, the recent announcements prove that the king still believes that the current line of succession is suitable."

The Saudis' greatest concern is the United States, a crucial military ally against archrival Iran and a key source of the kind of foreign investment they will need to reform the economy. A strong American response could encourage other Western countries to follow suit, further amplifying the crisis.

President Donald Trump has thus far sent mixed signals, vowing "severe punishment" over the death of the Washington Post columnist but saying he doesn't want to imperil American arms sales to the kingdom.

Trump chose Saudi Arabia as his first overseas trip as president, and his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has developed close ties with Prince Mohammed, apparently seeing him as an ally in advancing his yet-to-be-released peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians.

But even if the Saudis keep Trump on their side, they could face a reckoning from the US Congress, where Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed outrage over the killing. Some have suggested using the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act, which makes it possible to impose entry bans and targeted sanctions on individuals for committing human rights violations or acts of significant corruption.

Saudi Arabia last week threatened "greater action" if faced with sanctions. While no official has explained what that would entail, the general manager of a Saudi-owned satellite news channel suggested it could include weaponizing the kingdom's oil production.

Forty-five years ago, Saudi Arabia joined other OPEC nations in an oil embargo over the 1973 Mideast war in retaliation for American military support for Israel. Gas prices soared, straining the US economy.

But it's unclear whether such a move would work in today's economy. Saudi Arabia has been trying to claw back global market share, especially as Iran faces new US oil sanctions beginning in November. Slashing oil exports would drain revenues needed for Prince Mohammed's plans to diversify the economy, while a spike in oil prices could revive the US shale industry and lead other countries to boost production.

"The Saudis have been very helpful by accelerating oil production, especially as sanctions on Iran ramp up," said Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. "It would be very foolish of Saudi Arabia to forfeit the trust of the oil market earned over decades by injecting politics into their oil policy."US president Donald Trump has seized on a new hashtag - #JobsNotMobs - created entirely on the internet and then recommended by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams - to fire up his base and define the Republican versus Democrat distinction even as his own approval rating has soared to the highest its ever been - 47% - in a latest NBC News Wall Street Journal poll.

New York: US president Donald Trump has seized on a new hashtag - #JobsNotMobs - created entirely on the internet and then recommended by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams - to fire up his base and define the Republican versus Democrat distinction even as his own approval rating has soared to the highest its ever been - 47% - in a latest NBC News -Wall Street Journal poll.

Within minutes of Scott Adams suggesting that this would be a catchy coinage for the election cycle, Trump tested it on stage to a rousing reception: The choice could not be more clear: "Democrats produce mobs, Republicans produce jobs! Based entirely on Trump role as a master persuader, Adams had predicted Donald Trumps possible victory in the Republican nomination process and later the US elections 2016.

Theyve gone so far left, they dont know what theyre talking about, says Trump, tearing into the Opposition in a new series of videos.

This is what it is all about for the Republican Party! #JobsNotMobs pic.twitter.com/8OabccPec5  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2018

Donald Trump fueled his 2016 campaign with fiery immigration rhetoric, visions of hordes flowing across the border to assault Americans and steal their jobs. Now, in the final weeks before midterm elections, he's back at it as he looks to stave off Democratic gains in Congress. The #JobsNotMobs hashtag bundles both arguments in one neat package.

Currently on the campaign trail in the final bend of the midterms, Donald Trump has returned to his tried and tested battle cries on the campaign trail again: jobs and immigration.

Trump is getting plenty of help from the news media to add visual support to his claims. As news networks despatch crews to the US Mexico border to report on an advancing Central American caravan of migrants, Trump has simply pounced on the wall to wall coverage as fresh evidence that his tough immigration prescriptions are needed.

"Otherwise, youll be dealing with them on your front porch", he has warned multiple times, forever yanking illegal immigration from the deep recesses of bureaucratic work to front and center in American voters lives.

Trumps immigration warnings got a TV boost when some members of the caravan broke through a Guatemalan border barrier with Mexico. A few then got through to Mexican territory, but most were repelled by police with riot shields and pepper spray.

Absent any trigger event, forecasts for the House and Senate have stabilised as we enter the final bend: Republicans had a 7 in 9 chance of keeping control of the Senate; the House is moving in the opposite direction. Democrats have a 6 in 7 chance of retaking the House. Either party needs 218 seats for a House majority.

This comes at a time when the House and Senate elections are going in totally opposite directions. The Senate is looking ruby red, the House seems decidedly on the Democrats side. After the midterm elections, theres likely going to be a piece of the pie for everyone to crow about. Trump, meanwhile is hedging against a potential thumping in the House elections by saying two things simultaneously, one in full public view and one in private: "Get out in 2018 because youre voting for me" and "the real election is in 2020." Trump's ability to frame initial statements that have flex, like the two scenarios about 2018 and 2020, has long been a signature tactic.

Trump confidants are bracing for lots of unfiltered, early-morning tweets.

"He likes to have fun", they say, as they ready for their clean-up ops.By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan said on Sunday it would not extend the 25-year deal that allows Israel to use two tracts of territory along its border just as Israel said it was still planning to negotiate an extension. Much of the land in Baquora in the northwestern part of the kingdom and Ghumar in the south is used by Israeli farmers, some of whom were given private land ownership rights and special travel rights under a 1994 peace treaty between the two countries.

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan said on Sunday it would not extend the 25-year deal that allows Israel to use two tracts of territory along its border just as Israel said it was still planning to negotiate an extension.

Much of the land in Baquora in the northwestern part of the kingdom and Ghumar in the south is used by Israeli farmers, some of whom were given private land ownership rights and special travel rights under a 1994 peace treaty between the two countries.

The agreement will expire next year.

King Abdullah has been under increasing public pressure to end the arrangements with Israel. He told senior Jordanian politicians the kingdom wanted to exercise its "full sovereignty" over the two areas, Petra state news agency said.

"These are Jordanian lands and they will remain.." the monarch said. In an "era of regional turmoil" his kingdom -sandwiched between Syria to the north, Iraq to the east and Israel to its west - Jordan wanted to protect its "national interests," Abdullah said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking after Abdullah's comments on Sunday, acknowledged that Jordan wanted to exercise its option to end the arrangement.

But he said Israel "will enter negotiations with it on the possibility of extending the current arrangement".

Under the terms of peace treaty, the lease would be automatically renewed unless either of the parties notified the other a year before expiry that it wished to terminate the agreement, the Israeli Foreign Ministry also said in a statement on Sunday.

Jordan is one of only two Arab states that has a peace treaty with Israel and the two countries have a long history of close security ties. They have also been expanding economic ties in the last year.

But the peace treaty with Israel is unpopular and pro-Palestinian sentiment widespread in Jordan. Activists and politicians have been vocal against a renewal they say perpetuates Israeli "occupation" of Jordanian territory.

Political ties have also become strained over the Middle East peace process. An incident last year in which an Israeli security guard killed two Jordanian citizens within the Israeli embassy compound added to the tension.

Under an annex to the peace agreement, Israel uses about 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of agricultural land in the southern sector of its border with Jordan.

In the Baquora area, known in Hebrew as Naharayim, Israeli citizens ownership rights date back to 1920's, when Russian Jewish engineer, Pinhas Rutenberg, obtained a concession in British mandated Palestine to build a power plant.

In the 1994 peace treaty, Jordanian sovereignty over the area was confirmed but Israelis retained private land ownership and special provisions that allow free Israeli travel.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; editing by John Stonestreet, Adrian Croft, Anna Willard)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will not export arms to Saudi Arabia while the current uncertainty over the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi persists, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will not export arms to Saudi Arabia while the current uncertainty over the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi persists, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.

Campaigning for her party in a regional election, Merkel repeated to a news conference her earlier condemnation of Khashoggi's killing, which Saudi Arabia admitted had taken place inside its consulate in Istanbul.

"First, we condemn this act in the strongest terms," she said. "Second, there is an urgent need to clarify what happened - we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account ... As far as arms exports are concerned, those can't take place in the current circumstances."

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.By Doina Chiacu and Kylie MacLellan WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Sunday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate a 'huge and grave mistake', but sought to shield its powerful crown prince from the widening crisis, saying Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware.

By Doina Chiacu and Kylie MacLellan

WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Sunday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate a "huge and grave mistake", but sought to shield its powerful crown prince from the widening crisis, saying Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware.

The comments from Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir were some of the most direct yet from Riyadh which has given multiple and conflicting accounts about Khashoggi's killing on Oct.2, first denying his death before admitting it on Saturday amid an international outcry.

The kingdom's weeks of denial and lack of credible evidence in the face of allegations by Turkey from the start that Khashoggi had been killed have shaken global confidence in ties with the world's top oil exporter, Western governments say.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia's admission that the dissident journalist had been killed in a fistfight was a "good first step but not enough", though he added it was premature to discuss any sanctions against Riyadh.

Three major European powers - Germany, Britain and France - pressed Saudi Arabia to provide facts to back up its earlier explanation of a fight.

Speaking to U.S. broadcaster Fox, Foreign Minister Jubeir on Sunday extended condolences to members of the journalist's family.

"This is a terrible mistake. This is a terrible tragedy. Our condolences go out to them. We feel their pain," he said. "Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this."

He said the Saudis did not know how Khashoggi, a Saudi national and U.S. resident, had been killed or where his body was.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan - who has remained largely silent, even as Turkey's pro-government media has reported gruesome allegations that Khashoggi was tortured in the consulate and his body cut up - said he would reveal "necessary details" about the case on Tuesday.

Khashoggi went missing after entering the consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

After denying any involvement in the 59-year-old's disappearance for two weeks, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had died during a fight in the building. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold.

"Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Germany, Britain and France said in their joint statement on Sunday.

"There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened ... beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible."

Reflecting international scepticism over its account, a senior Saudi government official has laid out a new version that in key respects contradicts previous explanations.

The latest account includes details on how the team of 15 Saudi nationals sent to confront Khashoggi had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and killed him in a chokehold when he resisted. A member of the team dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.

ERDOGAN TO SPEAK

Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was killed inside the consulate by the team of Saudi agents and his body cut up. Turkish sources say the authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting Khashoggi's murder inside the consulate.

In a speech on Sunday, Erdogan appeared to suggest that he was getting ready to release some information about the Turkish investigation, and would do so at his weekly speech to members of his ruling AK Party in parliament.

He has remained largely silent on the case, although Turkey's pro-government newspapers have released information detailing a 15-member team that purportedly arrived in Istanbul to confront Khashoggi at the consulate.

"I will make my statements about this issue on Tuesday at the party group meeting," Erdogan said.

"Why 15 people came... why 18 people were detained... These things have to be told in detail," he said, referring to Riyadh's announcement on Saturday that 18 people had been arrested in connection with the incident.

Pro-government Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak, citing the purported audio recording of the killing, said his torturers cut off his fingers during an interrogation and later beheaded him.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin hailing the Saudi explanation as a good first step told reporters in Jerusalem:

"It would be premature to comment on sanctions and premature to comment on really any issues until we get further down the investigation and get to the bottom of what occurred."

While Mnuchin said he would not attend a Saudi investment conference on Tuesday, he would still visit Riyadh as planned for talks with his counterpart there on joint efforts to counter terrorist financing and plans by Washington to reimpose sanctions against Iran in November.

"I am not satisfied until we find the answer. But it was a big first step, it was a good first step. But I want to get to the answer," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters this weekend, when asked about the Saudi investigation and Riyadh's subsequent firing of Saudi officials over the incident.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said that "obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies".

For Saudi Arabia's allies - particularly in the West - the question will be whether they believe that the prince, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability. King Salman, 82, had handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to him.

A leading Republican U.S. senator said he believed the crown prince was behind the killing, adding that the Saudis had lost all credibility in their explanations of his death.

"Yes, I think he did it," Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview with CNN.

SHIFTING NARRATIVE

Saudi Arabia's account of the incident has changed multiple times. The authorities initially dismissed reports that Khashoggi had gone missing inside the consulate as false and said he had left the building soon after entering. When the media reported a few days later that he had been killed there, they called the accusations "baseless".

King Salman ordered the dismissal of five officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court adviser seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohammed, and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed Asiri, Saudi state media reported on Saturday.

The king also ordered a restructuring of the intelligence service, to be led by Prince Mohammed, suggesting the prince still retained wide-ranging authority.

Some governments and prominent executives have said they would pull out of a forthcoming investment conference in Saudi Arabia. Among the latest, the government of New Zealand said it would not attend, as did the head of the main banking unit of Japanese financial group MUFG.

According to the senior Saudi official, the Saudi team rolled up Khashoggi's body in a rug, took it out in a consular vehicle and handed it to a "local cooperator" for disposal.

Turkish investigators are likely to find out what happened to the corpse "before long", a senior Turkish official said on Saturday.

(Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan in London, Laurence Frost in Paris, Taiga Uranaka in Tokyo, Praveen Menon in Wellington, Doina Chiacu in Washington, Omer Berberoglu and Yesim Dikmen in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump warned on Monday that the United States intended to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons to pressure Russia and China. Speaking to reporters, Trump repeated his contention that Russia was not abiding by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which he has threatened to abandon. (Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump warned on Monday that the United States intended to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons to pressure Russia and China.

Speaking to reporters, Trump repeated his contention that Russia was not abiding by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which he has threatened to abandon.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday vowed to reveal within days the 'naked truth' over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as Riyadh said it did not know the whereabouts of his body and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been unaware of any operation to murder him.

Istanbul: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday vowed to reveal within days the "naked truth" over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as Riyadh said it did not know the whereabouts of his body and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been unaware of any operation to murder him.

The Turkish leader's statement came the day after Saudi authorities conceded Khashoggi had been killed inside their diplomatic compound in Istanbul.

"We are looking for justice here and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth," Erdogan told a rally in Istanbul.

In his strongest comments to date on the affair, President Donald Trump accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who fell out of favour with the ultraconservative kingdom, as pressure built on the US administration to strike a tougher line.

The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, on Sunday described the killing as a "tremendous mistake" and said it had been a "rogue operation" by individuals who "exceeded their responsibilities" and then "tried to cover up for it".

Jubeir insisted in an interview with Fox News that the operation was not ordered by the crown prince known by his initials MBS, also adding that "we don't know where the body is".

Erdogan, who has not yet directly blamed Saudi Arabia, held a telephone call with Trump on Sunday where the two leaders agreed the Khashoggi case needed to be clarified "in all its aspects," a Turkish presidential source said.

Erdogan is expected to make a full statement to his party's MPs in parliament on Tuesday.

Turkish officials have said they believe that 15 Saudi men who arrived in Istanbul on two flights on 2 October were connected to Khashoggi's death.

Riyadh reacted by claiming one of the 15 had died in a car accident years ago.

Saudi officials originally said Khashoggi, who stepped inside the doors of the diplomatic mission on 2 October, had left unharmed, before announcing he was killed inside the building in what they described as an altercation.

The kingdom has since admitted Khashoggi died in a "brawl" inside the consulate and said it has fired five top officials and arrested 18 others in an investigation into the killing.

'Lies'

Khashoggi, who would have been 60 this month, sought refuge in the United States after fleeing his native Saudi Arabia after the 2017 appointment of strongman Mohammed bin Salman as heir to the throne.

The journalist, who had espoused both Islamist and liberal views throughout his decades-long career in the press, was engaged to a Turkish woman.

His killing has further soured relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, already at loggerheads over Qatar, with which Riyadh cut ties in 2017 and to which Ankara has deployed aid and troops.

Turkish officials now believe Riyadh carried out a state-sponsored killing and dismembered the body, with pro-government media in Turkey reporting the existence of video and audio evidence to back those claims.

As the Turkish leader is expected to reveal all details into the journalist's killing, Trump has stepped back from his stance that Saudi Arabia's latest explanation over the death was credible amid mounting pressure at home.

"Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies," he said of the shifting accounts of Khashoggi's death offered by Riyadh. "Their stories are all over the place."

Several senior members of Trump's Republican Party said they believed Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, was linked to the killing, and one called for a "collective" Western response if a link is proved.

Trump has stopped far short of calling for the prince to be replaced, emphasising as he has before how important the US-Saudi relationship is to Washington's regional strategic goals.

He described the 33-year-old prince as a "strong person; he has very good control."

"He's seen as a person who can keep things under check," added Trump. "I mean that in a positive way."

UK, France, Germany intervene

The controversy has put the kingdom  for decades a key ally in Western efforts to contain Iran  under unprecedented pressure.

It has also blown up into a major crisis for Prince Mohammed whose image as a modernising Arab reformer has been gravely undermined.

Britain, France and Germany have shown a united front, demanding Saudi Arabia clarify how the journalist died inside its Istanbul consulate backed by "credible" facts.

Australia, Canada, the UN and the EU have also demanded greater clarity around Khashoggi's death.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel added that Berlin would not export arms to Saudi Arabia "in the current situation".

Germany last month approved 416 million euros ($480 million) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018. In the past, military exports by Berlin to Saudi have mostly consisted of patrol boats.INF treaty: US-Russia relations are likely to sour further with the Donald Trump administration announcing its decision to opt out of the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.

US-Russia relations are likely to sour further with the Donald Trump administration announcing its decision to opt out of the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty on Saturday. The US president made the announcement amid speculation that Russia is developing a ground-launched system; an accusation that Moscow has consistently denied.

Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement so were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out, Trump said, adding that, "Theyve been violating it for many years. I dont know why president Obama didnt negotiate or pull out. And were not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [while] were not allowed to."

Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development. Russia, in response to the US' decision to nullify the treaty, warned against a "very dangerous step". Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Washington's withdrawal from the treaty would be a dangerous step and "would draw criticism from the global community".

The treaty is "significant for international security and security in the sphere of nuclear arms, for the maintenance of strategic stability", he added. Ryabkov also warned against possible "military-technical" retaliation.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a co-signatory of the INF treaty also said that Trumps plan to quit the treaty was a mistake. "Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements. Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to? Gorbachev was quoted as saying. According to Interfax news agency, he added, "Quitting the INF is a mistake."

Newsweek reported that Germanys foreign minister Heiko Maas also urged Trump to consider the potential result of nullifying the treaty. "The treat has for 30 years been an important pillar of our European security architecture, Maas said in a statement issued on Sunday. We have often urged Russia to address serious allegations that it is violating the agreement. We now urge the U.S. to consider the possible consequences.

However, Britain "stood firmly" behind US' decision to pull out of the treaty.

What is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty?

The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty bans medium-range missiles capable of hitting Europe or Alaska and ended a Cold War-era crisis when the Soviet Union installed nearly 400 nuclear warheads pointed at western Europe.

The INF was co-signed by then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then-US president Ronald Reagan in 1987 and came into force by 1988. The treaty, signed at the near-end of the Cold War also prohibited the use, possession, production, or testing of a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of around 480 to 5,400 kilometres. According to a report by CGTN, the INF did not cover sea-launched missiles.

The signing of the treaty was considered to be a watershed moment between the superpowers towards the end of the Cold War.

The Newsweek article said, "The US had been concerned about the Soviet deployment of the SS-20 missile system on the borders of Europe, and there were widepsread protests when it decided to deploy its Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe in response. By 1991, the treaty had resulted in the destruction of 2,700 missiles."

Possible consequences of nullifying the INF treaty

The INF has been a topic of contention since around 2007 when Russian president Vladimir Putin had said that the US had violated the treaty after it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002. During former US president Barack Obama's term too, the US had in 2014, accused Russia of violations, but had stopped short of withdrawing from the treaty due to global concerns that doing so could result in an arms race.

CNN reported that according to some analysts, the withdrawal on behalf of the US could help Russia point to America as the reason for the treaty's death. The report quoted former US state department official Steven Pifer as saying, "Moscow will be free to deploy the 9M729 cruise missile, and an intermediate-range ballistic missile if it wants, without any restraint," Pifer added while noting that "the United States currently has no missile that it could quickly deploy to match the Russians."

The report added, "Russia's development of its cruise missile is also relatively much more advanced, meaning Moscow could begin deploying it much more widely should the treaty be terminated."

With inputs from agenciesThe glacier has lost 60 percent of its mass and shrunk 250 meters (820 feet) since 1982, according to a 2018 report in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Yulongxueshan, China: The loud crack rang out from the fog above the Baishui No. 1 Glacier as a stone shard careened down the ice, flying past Chen Yanjun as he operated a GPS device.

More projectiles were tumbling down the hulk of ice that scientists say is one of the world's fastest melting glaciers.

"We should go," said the 30-year-old geologist. "The first rule is safety."

Chen hiked away and onto a barren landscape once buried beneath the glacier. Now there is exposed rock littered with oxygen tanks discarded by tourists visiting the 15,000-foot (4,570-meter) -high blanket of ice in southern China.

Millions of people each year are drawn to Baishui's frosty beauty on the southeastern edge of the Third Pole  a region in Central Asia with the world's third-largest store of ice after Antarctica and Greenland that's roughly the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.

Third Pole glaciers are vital to billions of people from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Asia's 10 largest rivers  including the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, and Ganges  are fed by seasonal melting.

"You're talking about one of the world's largest freshwater sources," said Ashley Johnson, energy program manager at the National Bureau of Asian Research, an American think tank. "Depending on how it melts, a lot of the freshwater will be leaving the region for the ocean, which will have severe impacts on water and food security."

Earth is today 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial levels because of climate change  enough to melt 28 to 44 percent of glaciers worldwide, according to a new report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Temperatures are expected to keep rising.

Baishui is about as close to the equator as Tampa, Florida. And the impacts of climate change already are dramatic. The glacier has lost 60 percent of its mass and shrunk 250 meters (820 feet) since 1982, according to a 2018 report in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Scientists found in 2015 that 82 percent of glaciers surveyed in China had retreated. They warned that the effects of glacier melting on water resources are gradually becoming "increasingly serious" for China.

"China has always had a freshwater supply problem with 20 percent of the world's population but only 7 percent of its freshwater," said Jonna Nyman, an energy security lecturer at the University of Sheffield. "That's heightened by the impact of climate change."

For years, scientists have observed global warming change Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the Chinese province of Yunnan.

One research team has tracked Baishui's retreat of about 30 yards (27 meters) per year over the past decade. Flowers, such as snow lotus, have rooted in exposed earth, says Wang Shijin, a glaciologist and director of the Yulong Snow Mountain Glacial and Environmental Observation Research Station, part of a network run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Nestled into a suburb of Lijiang, population 1.2 million, the station is home to Wang and his team: geologist and drone operator Chen, postgraduate glaciology student Zhou Lanyue and electrical engineer Zhang Xing, a private contractor.

After breakfast, the team heads off by van for the day's mission. A cable car carries them up to a majestic view of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

The team shuffles past a line of tourists  many in red ponchos, most sucking oxygen canisters, a few vomiting from altitude sickness  before descending to replace a broken meteorological station.

The team operates remote sensors that collect data on temperature, wind speed, rainfall, and humidity. Other sensors measure water flow in streams fed by melted ice. Cold, downpours, rock slides, gales and glacier movement break the equipment.

"It is not easy to encounter good weather here," Wang said.

This weather will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater while other glacier loss poses serious risk of drought across the Third Pole, he said.

The next day, the team wore crampons while repairing more sensors scattered across the glacier's crags.

"Where we're at right now was back in 2008 all covered with ice," Wang said. "From here to there at the side, the glacier shrank about 20 to 30 meters. The shrinking is very remarkable."

The team forded streams and jumped crevasses in search of long iron bars they previously embedded in the ice. GPS tells them how much the bars, and thus the glacier, have moved. They also measure how much height the glacier has lost during the summer.

Back on the viewing platform, Che launched a buzzing camera drone over the white expanse. The photographs help tell a story of staggering loss. A quarter of its ice has vanished since 1957 along with four of its 19 glaciers, researchers have found.

Changes to the Baishui provide the opportunity to educate visitors about global warming, Wang said.

Last year, 2.6 million tourists visited the mountain, according to Yulong Snow Mountain park officials.

On blustery day recently, hundreds of tourists climbed wooden stairs through grey fog to snap selfies in front of the glacier.

Hou Yugang said he wasn't too bothered over climate change and Baishui's melting. "I don't think about it now because it still has a long way to go," he said.

To protect the glacier, authorities have limited the number of visitors to 10,000 a day and have banned hiking on the ice. They plan to manufacture snow and to dam streams to increase humidity that slows melting.

Security guard Yang Shaofeng has witnessed a warming world melting this mountain, which his local Naxi minority community considers sacred.

Yang remembers being able to see the glacier's lowest edge from his home village. No longer.

"Only when we climb up can we see it," he said sadly, as tourists lined up to have their names engraved on medallions bearing the glacier's image.

The etching is already outdated.Huawei at the launch of Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro confirmed that it is planning on launching 5G foldable phone in 2019. In an interview, Yu commented, We are working on foldable phones. Foldable 5G phones. Its a known fact that Huawei is working on a foldable phone to beat its rival Samsung by launching it as early as 2019.

Apart from being a foldable smartphone, the comments confirm that it will also support 5G. It is also known that the Chinese company is developing its own chip, the Balong 5G01, that can support the new 3GPP standard for 5G networks. Huawei also invested $600 million to make its devices 5G compatible.

On the other hand, Samsung is holding a developer conference next month, where Samsung Mobile CEO DJ Koh said to be giving a keynote previewing the companys foldable phone. Samsungs been working on a flexible OLED screen for years and recently, got its unbreakable OLED display certified for durability.

Its been reported that Samsungs foldable phone will be a tablet that can fit in your pocket and will fall under the Galaxy Next Line. It is also possible that Huaweis 7.2-inch Mate 20 X could be previewed of what the foldable phones full display would look like. With an official confirmation coming from Huawei, we now have a bright foldable future to look forward.

SourceFor years, railroads have been considered a slow-and-steady business. You hold onto their stocks forever because they grow gradually and create investor returns through dividends and buybacks.

Over the past few quarters, though, Canadian Pacific (NYSE:CP) has been shattering that perception. Volume growth on its network has been climbing faster than management initially anticipated, and the company has been investing in its network to ensure that it can handle those volumes without compromising operating margins. This third quarter was the realization of those investments as the company posted record revenue, earnings, and third-quarter margins.

Let's take a look at the railroad's fantastic quarter and see if Canadian Pacific can continue these kinds of results into the future.

By the numbers

Metric Q3 2018 Q2 2018 Q3 2017 Revenue $1.89 billion $1.75 billion $1.59 billion Operating income $790 million $627 million $622 million Net income $622 million $436 million $510 million EPS (diluted) $4.35 $3.04 $3.50

Record revenue and earnings are all great things to hear from an investor's perspective. What is truly astounding about this past quarter, however, was the fact that Canadian Pacific was able to deliver those results while also recording an operating ratio (the transportation industry's term for operating margin. The lower the number, the better) of 58.3%. Earlier this year, Canadian Pacific's operating ratio ticked up from a few bottlenecks, which suggested that perhaps its network was running at capacity and would require lots of investment to meet demand.

Yet that doesn't seem to be the case, as management noted that its fuel-efficiency metrics were the best the company has ever recorded and equipment rental expenses -- an expense that runs high when capacity is strained -- were down compared to this time last year. Keep in mind that Canadian Pacific's operating ratio for the first nine months of 2018 is still higher than the 2017 period as a result of those network constraints in the first two quarters.

The combination of good operating results and incredibly strong volume results in its three largest segments -- grain, energy, chemicals and plastics, and intermodal -- led to a 17% increase in foreign-currency adjusted revenue and a 24% increase in earnings per share. Those aren't typical growth numbers you would expect from a railroad company.

The company's results thus far have given management enough confidence to raise its full-year guidance during its investor day conference on Oct. 4 as well as announce a share repurchase program to buy back 4% of all shares outstanding on Oct. 17.

U.S.-China trade tensions? Not our problem

Railroad companies are very much a proxy for both economic growth and commercial trade. Today, any conversation with the word "trade" tends to have the word "tariff" in it as well. The prevailing thought is that the tit-for-tat tariff spat between the U.S. and China is going to impact railroads, with some analysts going so far as to say that Canadian Pacific will suffer a lot because of its heavy traffic going to its Vancouver port terminals and the amount of goods it delivers to the Asia-Pacific region.

So when asked what tariffs could do to Canadian Pacific's business, CEO Keith Creel was quick to step in to downplay the impact it could have on CP.

Asia is China, Asia is Indonesia, Asia is Japan, Asia is Korean, Asia is India, etcetera. It's not just China. In a world of trade relations, I think another critical point when you think about CP, a predominately Canadian based railroad, Canada's not at odds with China. It's not a Canada-China trade war. The majority of our revenue at CP originates and terminates in Canada. Not in the US. And then thirdly, if we want to get more specific, and I think it's important that we do, when we speak to China, China specific to CP, and that's for the entire network, both U.S. and Canada, is 12% of our revenue. And if I want to get even more specific, China direct to the USA is less than 5% of our revenue. So for anyone to suggest that this railway is heavily weighted to China, the most heavily weighted railway in the industry to China is just ill-advised and not fact-based.

You can read the entire transcript of Canadian Pacific's conference call on fool.com.

Can we expect results like this to continue?

A railroad company delivering earnings growth like this is almost too good to be true. Considering the capital intensity of the business, the cyclicality of some revenue sources, and the fact that railroads are a barometer for economic health means that investors shouldn't' get too used to these kinds of results. Canadian Pacific even said on the call that this was a bumper crop for grain this year, so this is about as good as it gets for that particular segment.

There are, however, some portions of the business where we can expect continued growth for some time. Management noted on its investor day presentation several hundred acres of land it acquired at or adjacent to its major terminals to grow capacity as well as new grain hoppers that will allow CP to move up to 40% more grain per train. These kinds of investments should allow the company to keep growing at a decent clip. Couple that with management's intention to buy back about 4% of shares annually and its dividend and Canadian Pacific could continue to put up growth numbers that are much higher than you would expect for your prototypical railroad investment.Some may have noticed that Togo's has been pretty quiet the last few years, but that's because we've been hard at work reimagining the company to focus on what fans love most about the brand. And now, we are thrilled to begin sharing our many exciting brand improvements with existing and new guests.

After more than 50 years of perfecting our big, fresh, and meaty sandwiches, we decided it was time for a brand refresh to ensure that everything we do, from marketing to store design, would be in line with the uniqueness and high quality of a Togo's sandwich.

Accordingly, Togo's has launched its system-wide brand refresh, anchored by the company's new anthem and tagline, "True to the Sandwich," along with the addition of our newest signature sandwich, the Pretzelrami. After taking the time to ask fans why they choose Togo's over other sandwich concepts, it always came back to the sandwich - and the fact that there is nothing else like it. So our new commitment is to be relentlessly "True to the Sandwich" in everything we do, which means staying focused on what matters most to our guests, and that's bold flavors, premium ingredients, and generous portions.

Our guests have already noticed big changes at Togo's, including an updated logo that features our new tagline. All employees are donning our new uniforms, the Pretzelrami is front and center on new menu boards, and the brand's redesigned, vibrant packaging is now being used in all locations. In addition, all stores will undergo a facelift that will be rolled out gradually at our more than 220 locations in the coming months, and our many restaurants in development will feature the new store design.

What our fans might be loving most about our recent changes is the permanent addition of our newest signature sandwich, the Pretzelrami. Featuring more than a quarter pound of our famous pastrami piled high on a soft pretzel roll, the sandwich is toasted with two slices of white cheddar cheese aged for seven months, and finished off with tangy yellow mustard and crisp dill pickles. Our Pretzelrami takes our fan-favorite traditional pastrami sandwich to a whole new level of taste and quality, and further reflects the brand's promise to provide guests with the highest quality, generous portions, and an engaging dining experience they won't find anywhere else.

To celebrate Togo's being back and better than ever, we've launched a new marketing campaign developed by Siltanen & Partners of Los Angeles titled, "How Far Would You Go for a Togo?" The campaign illustrates the extreme and humorous lengths people will go to get their favorite Togo's sandwich. To get our fans involved, we've been encouraging them to share their own stories on social media about how far they would go for a Togo.

While the response from our valued guests has been overwhelmingly positive, our franchise partners are even more excited about the brand's new direction and the customer feedback they've been receiving. Our franchisees bought into our storied culture, and we're proud that our refresh efforts help to tell that story better and enhance what makes Togo's stand out from other sandwich concepts.

The evolution of Togo's presents enormous opportunity for prospective franchisees to join the brand at a very exciting time of growth and innovation. With a focus on the western regions of the United States, Togo's is building a stronger national presence by entering new territories while infilling existing markets.

With more than 220 locations across five states, the company offers plenty of room for franchisees to grow in both existing and untapped markets, while introducing Togo's next-generation stores to new guests. There has never been a better time for potential franchisees looking to expand their portfolio and grow with a proven brand that has an extremely loyal following.

This brand refresh, years in the making, is designed to remind longtime guests of why they gravitate to Togo's when craving a sandwich, while making a strong introduction to new customers who have yet to experience their new favorite sandwich at Togo's. We're confident that guests will appreciate our fresh approach to the Togo's they've grown up with and have loved since that very first bite!

Glenn Lunde is president of Togo's Eateries.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.After tonnes of rumours and a bunch of speculation, it's finally been confirmed that Swedish House Mafia will be releasing brand new music very soon.

The boys have collectively all been cooking a lot of good tunes in the kitchen, but this'll be the first music they've released as a trio since 2012.

Last week a very vague countdown timer was set on their official website that had EVERYONE losing their shit. What would it be for? Well, now we know.

At the conclusion of the countdown, the official announcement of brand new music was made and they also revealed they would be performing a massive show in Stockholm early next year.

The press conference that dropped at the end of the countdown, which was mostly in Swedish, left a lot of people in the dark until translations were later surfaced online, but the wait was definitely worth it.

We're yet to know any details in regards to song titles or anything like that... But boy, we're so keen.Google Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL common issues/bugs that everyone should know Features oi-Vivek Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL comes with similar hardware specifications, except for the display and the battery capacity

The Google Pixel 3 and the Google Pixel 3 XL are the latest flagship smartphones from the search engine giant with the latest Android OS and an impressive camera. These smartphones come with top of the line specifications with a premium all-glass design. Just like most of the flagship smartphone, the price of the Google Pixel 3 series starts in India at Rs 71,000 for the base variant.

Just like most of the smartphones, the Google Pixel 3 and the Google Pixel 3 XL also comes with a bunch of issues, where some of these issues can be patched with a software update. Here are the some of the issues found on the Google Pixel 3 and the Google Pixel 3 XL (reported by users).

Scratches easily

The Pixel 3 XL comes with the Corning Gorilla Glass protection (same as the Pixel 2 XL). However, according to some users, the smartphone gets scratched easily compared to the Pixel 2 XL. So, make sure to use a high-quality screen protector to protect the premium smartphone.

Low ringtone volume

The Google Pixel 3 series of smartphones comes with a dual stereo speaker setup. However, according to reports, users are facing issues with respect to ringtone volume, which is lower than the multimedia volume. Again, this is a software issue, and Google is likely to fix this with a software update.

Poor audio recording

Though the Google Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL is touted as the best camera smartphone, the video recording on the Pixel 3 series of smartphones is not up to the mark. The smartphone does not support 4K video recording @ 60fps, and the audio recorded (with video) on the Pixel 3 or the Pixel 3 XL sounds distorted and unusable. Google can fix this issue with a software update.

RAM management

The Google Pixel 3 and the Google Pixel 3 XL comes with 4 GB of LPDDR4X RAM, which is identical to the Google Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Google Pixel, and the Google Pixel XL. 4 GB RAM on a smartphone will be good enough for the most of the tasks, however, when it comes to keeping the apps in memory, the Google Pixel 3 XL cannot keep more than 3-4 apps in memory.

In this scenario, apps and games will reload, which will consume both power and internet. As this is a hardware limitation, Google cannot fix this issue. The only way to fix this issue is to launch an iteration of the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL with 6 GB of RAM.

Camera failure

The Google Pixel 3 and the Google Pixel 3 XL has a single 12 MP camera. Google offers unlimited cloud storage (up to two years from the day of purchase) on Google Photos to store full-size images. However, according to reports, the Pixel 3 series of smartphones are not saving some all the photos that a user clicks. Again, this is a software bug, and Google can fix this with a software update.

Wi-Fi connectivity issues

When a smartphone connects to a wireless Wi-Fi network, then it will latch from mobile data to Wi-Fi network automatically. However, according to some users, Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL is not locking to a Wi-Fi network for the most part, where a user has to turn on-and-off aeroplane mode or restart the device. Google is likely to fix this software related issues with a software update.

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow NotificationsNokia 6.1 Android 9 Pie update imminent: Juho Sarvikas CPO HMD Global News oi-Vivek Nokia 6.1 was launched with Android 8 Oreo

When it comes to software updates, Nokia is one of the few brands, which offers a faster software update and security updates, as the Nokia smartphones come with stock Android OS. And now, HMD Global's CPO has officially confirmed that the Nokia 6.1 will get Android 9 Pie update in the next few weeks.

Do not confuse the Nokia 6.1 (Nokia 6 (2018)) with the Nokia 6.1 Plus (which was launched in September 2018 and Android 9 pie update is already available via Nokia Betalabs. The Nokia 6.1 was launched in early 2018 with a full metal unibody design and a 16:9 aspect ratio display, running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 SoC. Juho Sarvikas has also said that the update will skip the Betalabs and will directly be rolled out in the next few days. However, as of now, there is no exact time frame mentioned regarding the Android 9 Pie update for the Nokia 6.1.

Next. We will skip betalabs on Nokia 6.1 and roll out  soon  Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) October 20, 2018

Nokia 6.1 specifications

The Nokia 6.1 is now available in India with 3/4 GB RAM with 32/64 GB internal storage for Rs 13,499, and Rs 16,499, respectively. The smartphone comes with a 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen with 1920 x 1080p resolution, protected by 2.5D curved tempered glass on the front with a metal unibody design on the back.

The Nokia 6.1 Plus 16 MP primary camera with Carl Zeiss optimisation and an 8 MP selfie camera. Both cameras can record 1080p videos @ 30fps, whereas the main camera can also record 4K videos @ 30fps with other features like panorama, HDR, bokeh effect, and more.

The smartphone has a 3000 mAh Li-ion battery with support for fast charging via USB type C port with a dedicated 3.5 mm headphone jack. The mobile was launched with Android 8.0 Oreo, and subsequently, the phone received an update for Android 8.1 Oreo, and now being updated to Android 9 Pie.

Do you own a Nokia 6.1 smartphone? If yes, how is the actual performance of the device and how do you feel about the big bezels on the top and the bottom portion of the smartphone?

Best Mobiles in IndiaOnePlus 6T Ultimate Limited Edition retail box spotted ahead of launch News oi-Abhinaya Prabhu OnePlus 6T Ultimate Limited Editions existence tipped.

OnePlus 6T will the first in many aspects. It will be the first smartphone from the company to arrive with an in-display fingerprint sensor, to miss out on a headphone jack, to launch with the US carrier T-Mobile and to feature Android 9 Pie out of the box. In addition to these aspects, it looks like this device will be the first one to be launched in an Ultimate Limited Edition package.

The Swedish retailer site Webhallen has listed the OnePlus 6T Ultimate Edition. This listing is mysterious but the description makes it clear that it includes the device and a slew of secret features. It is claimed that this device will come in a limited edition of just 100 units.

What to expect?

OnePlus is not new to release limited edition models of its devices. The OnePlus 5T was launched in a Star Wars edition and the OnePlus 6 came in a Marvel Avengers edition. So, the Ultimate Limited Edition variant of the OnePlus 6T could be real. If it turns out to be true, it will arrive with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage space, some accessories such as cases, screen protectors and an updated version of the Bullets Wireless earphones. We cannot except any changes in terms of specifications.

OnePlus 6T Ultimate Limited Edition prebooking

Recently, the OnePlus 6T launch has been preponed to avoid clashing with the Apple event slated to happen on October 30. Going by the same, the 6T will be unveiled on October 29 at a global event in New York City. And, the India launch will happen on October 30. There are claims that the Ultimate Limited Edition model will be available for prebooking on October 25 and will start shipping in the country from November 5.

OnePlus 6T features

When it comes to the upcoming smartphone, it will arrive with an optical in-display fingerprint sensor as seen on its Oppo and Vivo counterparts. The device will feature the Screen Unlock feature and a more capacious 3700mAh battery. It is likely to feature a 6.4-inch Optic AMOLED display along with a waterdrop notch at its top. The device will miss out on the 3.5mm headphone jack and users will have to depend on the USB Type-C port.

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow NotificationsYemen targets Saudi military position in Jizan

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Oct 21, IRNA -- The missile unit of the Yemen Army and popular committees targeted positions of Saudi military forces in Jizan south of the country.

According to Almasirah news network, during the operations, several Katyusha missiles were fired at the Saudi military gathering in Al-Ein al-Harreh Camp where a large number of forces were injured.

Yemeni Army also fired a Al-Zelzal missile at the Saudi mercenaries gathering in west of Jizan, inflicting heavy casualties on them.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing back the government of Hadi back to power and crushing the country's Houthi Ansarullah movement.

Some 16,000 Yemenis have been killed and thousands more injured since the onset of the Saudi-led aggression.

The assaults of the Saudi-led coalition forces have failed to stop the Yemenis from resisting the aggression. Recently, the Yemeni army unveiled its home-made underground missile launching pads.

8072**1396

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Yemeni forces foil Saudis' attack in Najran

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Oct 21, IRNA -- Yemeni army and popular forces foiled Saudis' attack around Najran, southern Saudi Arabia and killed a number of Saudi forces on Saturday night.

According to Yemeni TV Channel Al-Masirah, the operation was foiled in al-Souh region.

A number of Saudi mercenaries are reported to be killed or injured.

Yemeni forces also targeted Saudis' positions in Jizan with 'Zelzal-1' missile.

Earlier, Yemeni drones targeted Emirati forces positions in western coast of Al-Hudaydah on Saturday.

On Saturday, President of the Revolutionary Committee of Yemen Mohammed-Ali al-Houthi urged forming independent fact-finding committees to look into Saudi crimes against Yemen like that of Jamal Khashoggi.

The 59-year-old Saudi investigative journalist, who had left the country since Bin Salman was named Crown Prince and moved to the US, vanished on October second after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to collect documents for his forthcoming marriage.

Some unofficial news sources say Saudi security agents have tortured and brutally murdered the prominent journalist inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, cutting his body into pieces.

The government of Saudi Arabia has given some explanantion about the murder of Khashoggi but almost nobody has been convinced and many has asked that a fact-finding committee be set up to probe into the case.

Saudi Arabia and its regional allies attacked Yemen in March 2015 to bring back to power the deposed president of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

The aggressors have committed horrible war crimes against Yemeni civilians during the past three years.

9376**1771

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Iran denies meddling in US mid-term elections

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 21 October 2018 / 11:09

Tehran (ISNA) - Iran's Foreign Ministry has denied interfering in the United States' mid-term elections saying that the Islamic Republic's principled policy is not to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, in a statement, dismissed the recent baseless claims by the US government's intelligence, judicial and security authorities about Iran's meddling in the US mid-term elections.

He noted that the attempts made by the US officials to say Iran has been involved in the US mid-term polls are an unfounded allegation, possibly caused by an unknown illusion.

The US national security advisor had earlier made a similar allegation without providing any evidence, the Iranian official added.

"The White House has for some time been trying to raise allegations against other countries for specific political reasons, and every day adds a country to its fictional list," said the Iranian spokesperson.

"The president of the United States had claimed that since he took office, Iran has been busy with its internal affairs, alleging that Tehran is so weak that it cannot even think of regional issues and is just thinking about its survival."

"Then how can such an 'introverted' country (as the US officials say) be interfering in the United States' parliamentary elections?" concluded Qassemi.

End Item

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Political uncertainty over Lebanese government formation persists: Top Hezbollah official

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 06:20PM

A senior member of Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement has expressed uncertainty about the quick formation of a unity government in the Arab country, saying that he is neither optimistic nor pessimistic on the matter.

"Given the available data, there is no longer a possibility of speaking either optimistically or pessimistically about the government formation process," Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem said during a memorial ceremony in the southern Lebanese city of Bint Jbeil on Sunday.

He added, "As long as there is a certain mechanism for government formation on one hand, and a veto on the other that stops the process ... then we don't know whether the government will be formed in near or distant future."

"Government formation is a public demand for people and a fundamental necessity Economic issues can only be addressed once there is a government. We hope to break the deadlock and get the desired result," the high-ranking Hezbollah official pointed out.

The remarks came in the wake of strong opposition from President Michel Aoun, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) led by Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil as well as Hezbollah that a candidate from the Lebanese Forces political party should be in charge of the justice ministry.

Lebanon's first parliamentary vote in nine years was held on May 6, with over 500 candidates vying for seats. Turnout was 49.2 percent, according to officials.

According to official results, Hezbollah and its political allies secured over half the seats.

Hezbollah as well as groups and individuals affiliated to it won at least 67 seats in Lebanon's parliament, according to the results cited by politicians and campaigns and reported in Lebanese media.

Hezbollah's allies include the Amal Movement led by Berri and the Christian Free Patriotic Movement founded by Aoun.

The parliamentary seats are split evenly -- 64 for Christians and 64 for Muslims, including Druze, with the two halves further divided among 11 religious groups.

Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has called on political parties to "show modesty" in their demands regarding the new government, emphasizing that he is not responsible for the serious delay.

"They are blaming me for the delay whereas each party is clinging to its stances and demands," he told reporters on August 7 ahead of a meeting for the Future Movement parliamentary bloc.

"Everyone must display modesty and sacrifice for the sake of the country," Hariri said.

Political rivalry led to years of governmental paralysis in Lebanon, and the country did not produce a state budget from 2005 until last year.

The International Monetary Fund has said that Lebanon must urgently address its fiscal policy in order to sustain its high levels of public debt.

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Gunfights, clashes claim 14 lives in Kashmir

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 03:04PM

At least fourteen people, including six civilians, have been killed in a series of gunfights and clashes in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

India's military said on Sunday that fighting erupted after troops cordoned off a village in the southern area of Kulgam on a tip-off that independence fighters were hiding there. The exchange of fire lasted for several hours, and three fighters were killed and two soldiers injured.

Swayam Prakash Pani, a top police officer, said demonstrators assembled at the site despite repeated requests to stay away.

"Protesters ignored warnings and soon overwhelmed the site, where five died after being hit when leftover explosives went off," Pani said. A sixth civilian injured in the explosion later died in a hospital in Srinagar, the main city in Kashmir.

Witnesses at the scene said at least 30 other civilians were wounded in clashes with police.

Mobile telephone services were suspended across the Muslim-majority region.

Elsewhere, fighting near the de facto border dividing the contested Himalayan valley between India and Pakistan also left three soldiers and two unknown fighters dead. Indian Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand said the troops died in "a fierce encounter with heavily armed Pakistani intruders."

The incidents could spark more unrest in a region that has witnessed renewed attacks and public resistance against the Indian rule in recent years.

New Delhi has deployed some 500,000 soldiers to the disputed region to further boost security of the borderline and enforce a crackdown on pro-independence demonstrations in its share of Kashmir, where anti-India sentiments are high.

Since last year, gunfights between government forces and pro-independence fighters seeking an end to the Indian rule in the disputed valley have become more frequent.

A civilian was among four people killed last week in a shootout in the heart of Srinagar.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan but is claimed in full by both countries since they partitioned and gained independence from Britain in 1947.

The two countries have fought three wars over the disputed territory. Despite a ceasefire agreement that was reached in November 2003, sporadic skirmishes continue in Kashmir.

New Delhi accuses Islamabad of supporting pro-independence fighters, an allegation rejected by the Pakistani government. Islamabad, in turn, is critical of India's heavy military deployment to Kashmir and its crackdown against the region's Muslim population.

Armed battles between Indian forces and militants over the years have killed nearly 70,000 people, mostly civilians.

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Fresh Saudi airstrikes leave five civilians dead in Yemen

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 02:08PM

At least five civilians have been killed when Saudi military aircraft carried out two separate airstrikes against residential areas in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah and the western coastal province of Hudaydah as the Riyadh regime presses ahead with its atrocious bombardment campaign against its southern neighbor.

Saudi fighter jets struck a car as it was travelling along a road in Bani Hassan area of the Abs district in Hajjah province on Sunday afternoon, leaving four people dead and another injured, an unnamed local source told Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah television network.

Earlier in the day, a Yemeni civilian lost his life and four others sustained injuries when Saudi military aircraft hit an area in Zayed road of the al-Hali district in Hudaydah province.

Additionally, several Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to Yemen's resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, were killed and injured when a roadside bomb explosion ripped through their military vehicle in al-Ajashar desert of Saudi Arabia's southwestern Najran region, located 844 kilometers south of the capital Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of Hadi back to power and crushing the country's popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Legal Center for Rights and Developments in Yemen, in a statement released on October 15, announced that the ongoing Saudi-led military campaign against the impoverished and conflict-plagued Arab country has resulted in the death of 15,185 civilians, including 3,527 children and 2,277 women.

A total of 23,822 civilians, among them 3,526 children and 2,587 women, have also sustained injuries, and are currently suffering from the lack of medicine, medical supplies and poor treatment due to the crippling Saudi siege.

The center further noted that the Saudi military aggression has also caused the death of nearly 2,200 Yemenis from cholera.

It highlighted that aerial assaults being conducted by the Saudi-led alliance have resulted in the destruction of 15 airports and 14 ports, and damaged 2,559 roads and bridges in addition to 781 water storage facilities, 191 power stations and 426 telecommunications towers.

Tropical storm kills dozen in eastern Yemen

Separately, at least twelve people have been killed since last week after a fierce tropical storm hit Yemen's eastern province of Mahra.

"A total of 126 people were also injured in the storm," Awad Mubarak told Anadolu, a local health official, said.

He expressed fears about possible outbreak of cholera and malaria in the province.

Mahra has been pounded by high winds and torrential rains since last Sunday, after Cyclone Luban developed in the Arabian Sea earlier this month and dumped heavy rains on Oman.

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'55 people killed in communal clashes in Nigeria'

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 09:22AM

Nigeria says dozens of people were killed earlier this week in sectarian violence sparked by a dispute in a market in the country's north.

A spokesman for Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Saturday that a total of 55 people had lost their lives in clashes between young Christians and Muslims in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna.

Local sources told AFP that the fighting erupted between Adara Christian and Hausa Muslim youths in the town of Kasuwan Magani's market following a dispute among wheelbarrow porters.

The state police commissioner said 22 people had been arrested after the unrest.

"President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the latest communal violence in Kasuwan Magani in Kaduna State, which claimed 55 lives," the presidential office said in a statement.

The Nigerian president expressed concern that Nigerians were too frequently resorting to violence over misunderstandings that could be resolved peacefully.

"No culture and religion supports the disregard for the sanctity of life," he said, adding that "peaceful coexistence is necessary for the progress of any society and its well-being."

Buhari also said that without harmony between communities, an environment conducive to "our everyday businesses would be impossible to achieve."

"Violence cannot be an alternative to peace. On the contrary, reliance on violence leads to ultimate self-destruction. Violence is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Embracing peace is a necessity," he said.

The Nigerian president called on community leaders to take part in regular dialog to prevent misunderstandings and foster a spirit of tolerance and patience.

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Voting Ends In Afghanistan's Parliamentary Elections Marred By Violence, Delays

RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan October 21, 2018

KABUL -- Voting in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, which were marred by deadly militant attacks and delays caused by technical and organizational problems, ended on October 21.

Abdul Badi Sayat, the head of the Independent Elections Commission (IEC), told reporters that around 4 million people out of the 8.8 million registered voters had cast their ballots over the past two days at over 4,500 polling centers across the country.

In a televised address to the nation, President Ashraf Ghani said the high turnout showed that voters "have the power and will to defeat their enemies," referring to threats by the Taliban and Islamic State (IS) extremist group to target the elections.

The elections were extended to a second day on October 21 after hundreds of polling stations were closed on the first day of voting due to technical and security issues.

But only 253 of the 401 polling stations that were scheduled to be open on October 21 were operational, with the remainder closed for security reasons, Abdul Bade Sayad, the head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said.

At some of the centers opened for voting, there were insufficient ballot papers and voter rolls were "either incomplete or nonexistent," Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) spokesman Ali Reza Rohani said, adding, "most of the problems we had yesterday still exist today."

The ECC said it had received around 5,000 complaints of electoral irregularities from voters and candidates, and the Interior Ministry said 44 people had been charged with "illegal interference in the election and fraud."

Election authorities said the biggest turnout was in Kabul, and the lowest in the southern province of Oruzgan.

The vote was marred by scores of militant attacks in which dozens of people were killed or injured, as well as chaotic scenes at polling stations hit by technical and organizational problems.

However, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it was "encouraged by the high numbers" of Afghans who braved security threats and waited long hours to cast their votes.

"Those eligible voters who were not able to cast their vote, due to technical issues, deserve the right to vote," it added.

The Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA), a civic action body that has been monitoring the ballot, gave a more downbeat assessment of the elections.

Naeem Ayubzada, director of TEFA said more than a million people voted in Kabul but turnout was very low in the provinces.

He said the decision to extend the vote opened the way for fraud, with half-filled ballot boxes left open all night in some polling centers.

Preliminary results of the elections, which are seen as a key test of the government's ability to provide security across the country, were expected to be released on November 10 at the earliest. Final results will likely be out sometime in December, an election commission spokesman said.

Originally scheduled for 2015, the parliamentary vote was delayed for three years amid disputes over electoral reforms and because of the instability following NATO's handover of security responsibilities to Afghan forces at the end of 2014.

The Interior Ministry said around 70,000 security personnel were providing security for the elections. Security was highly visible in Kabul, with vehicles being searched and some roads closed to traffic.

On the first day of voting, Afghans expressed frustration over polling stations not opening on time, absent election staff, missing election materials, and technical glitches with biometric voter verification devices.

Militant Attacks

On October 20, Akhtar Mohammad Ibrahimi, the deputy interior minister, said 36 people were killed in 193 militant-led attacks across the country -- 27 of them civilians, eight were police officers, and one was an Afghan soldier.

Assailants used grenades, small arms, mortars, and rocket launchers in various attacks, he said, adding that security forces killed at least 31 insurgents.

At one polling station in Kabul, a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people, including police officers and voters, officials said.

More violence was reported on the second day of elections, with a roadside bomb blast killing 11 civilians, including six children, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor.

New Biometric System

Election authorities had pleaded for patience with the new biometric system and said that dozens of teachers who had been trained in the system did not show up for work at the polling stations.

TEFA said its team of observers found almost a third of polling centers in Kabul were not in a position to use biometric equipment.

The new technology, aimed at preventing election fraud, was rushed in at the last minute.

Ghani, in a televised speech, congratulated his fellow citizens for voting and praised the security forces.

"Today we proved together that we uphold democracy. With casting our ballots without fear we honor the sacrifices of the fallen," he wrote in a tweet.

Photos posted on social media on October 20 showed scores of men and women holding their identification documents lining up outside polling stations across the country amid a heavy security presence.

RFE/RL correspondents in Kabul and other locations reported problems at some polling stations. Outside one station in the northern province of Parwan, there was a long line of eager voters who waited patiently despite technical problems.

In a fresh warning issued on October 20, the Taliban urged voters to boycott the "sham and theatrical process to protect their lives."

Candidates, campaign rallies, and senior security officials have been targeted in deadly attacks by Taliban and IS militants  including suicide attacks, motorcycle bombings, and drive-by shootings.

During the three-week campaign period, two candidates and 34 civilians were killed in militant attacks.

Eight other candidates were killed by militants during the run-up to campaigning, and the fate of two abducted candidates remains unknown.

Altogether, there are more than 2,500 candidates -- mostly running as independents -- contesting 249 seats in Afghanistan's lower house of parliament, known as the Wolesi Jirga. Of those candidates, 417 are women.

But no major opposition party is poised to win enough seats to contest the national unity government of President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and Tolo News

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghans-cast-ballots-for-second -day-in-chaotic-general-elections/29555274.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Bosnia's Postelection Blues

Gordana Knezevic October 21, 2018

Despite long-shot hopes of a breakthrough in this month's elections, it looks more like Bosnians have to settle for familiar tribal politics and a tense calm.

Nationalist parties who agreed to end hostilities in 1995, with the signing of the Dayton Accords, have in some ways continued the war by other means. Ahead of the October 7 elections, their common approach appeared to be to spread fear that "their" respective ethnic group would be overrun by one or both of the others.

It is tempting to conclude, as a result, that this strategy is regarded as the one sure path to staying in power for the self-appointed "protectors of the 'national' interest," whether the "nation" in question is Serbs, Muslims, or Croats.

Since the election, the fear level has remained high despite gains made by non-nationalist parties and politicians -- insufficient to upset the status quo, perhaps, but worrying for those who thrive on mutual distrust and sharp dividing lines between Bosnia's main ethnic groups.

Here are some of the problems as embodied in the newly elected members of the tripartite Bosnian Presidency.

Zeljko Komsic

A case in point is the election of Zeljko Komsic as the designated Croat within the Bosnian Presidency. During the conflict in the 1990s, Komsic had fought in the ranks of the Bosnian Army, which defended the unitary state against ethnic division. Although he has been a member of the presidency on two previous occasions, his election has outraged the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party; its leader, Dragan Covic, is threatening to block the formation of the new government in response to this "scandalous" election result.

The HDZ has rallied its supporters in the city of Mostar, who have come out to protest Komsic's election triumph over a more nationalist candidate. Komsic is a Croat, but many HDZ supporters appear to regard him as "not Croat enough" and overly fond of the idea of Bosnia as a country of citizens, not ethnic groups.

Nationalist Croats are suggesting that Komsic was elected thanks to votes from Bosniaks (Muslims). But if that were true, it is unlikely that Sefik Dzaferovic, the candidate of the largest Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), would have fared so well in the voting. A more likely explanation is that some Bosnians -- including ethnic Croats -- are choosing an alternative to more nationalist impulses.

But anxious Croat nationalists are demanding that a "real" Croat be installed in the presidency in Sarajevo, elected only by Croats.

Sarajevo-based analyst Emir Habul has suggested that the roots of the current political crisis lie in 2006, the last time there was any real prospect of constitutional change, when there was an unsuccessful movement afoot to make parliament responsible for selecting the central presidency's members.

Meanwhile, some Bosnian municipalities with ethnic Croat majorities have been busy announcing that the newly elected Komsic is persona non grata in their eyes.

Among those who have voiced postelection fears are Cardinal Vinko Puljic, who was long considered a moderate Catholic religious leader. After the election, Puljic implied that Komsic was a harbinger of trouble.

In a seemingly confused historical reference, Puljic appeared to compare Komsic's victory to the postwar imposition of communism and the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party.

"In 1945 there was a law to take our property away and destroy all that was Croatian and intelligent. Under that law we were expelled -- and Hitler came to power in a lawful way. But the question is: What kind of law is it if it takes away the rights of one ethnic group and that group is to be erased like it never existed, as is happening now to Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina?"

The apparent emphasis on ethnicity rather than citizenship risked sounding like a marked shift from his statements prior to the vote, when he argued that "a political party cannot be more important than people. It is unacceptable that after we are done with a one-party system and the single-mindedness of that system, we now have a triple-mindless system. We have to unite in our differences and think of those differences as our advantage in this God-given country of Bosnia-Herzegovina."

Komsic was asked in a recent TV interview to respond to Puljic's statement.

"Since he has expressed an interest in criminal figures like Hitler and the history of that period, I suggest that he lose no time in planning a visit to Jasenovac" -- a reference to the site of a notorious concentration camp run by the Croatian Ustase regime that was installed by the Nazis -- "and to pay his respects to the souls of the innocent, brutally murdered victims of Hitler's comrade [Ustase leader Ante] Pavelic and offer a prayer for them," Komsic told TV1.

"It would be a way for [Puljic] to take a truly historic step in distancing himself from the Ustase and their crimes, which is expected from him as a cardinal."

Milorad Dodik

The perceived panic among Bosnian Croat nationalists over Komsic's victory has overshadowed the election of Milorad Dodik as one of the other two members of the presidency.

Before the vote, Dodik's statements and successes were seen as one of the biggest sources of tension in the country.

He was running for membership of the central executive body while openly declaring that he wants independence for Bosnia's predominantly Serb entity, Republika Srpska.

His elevation to the Bosnian Presidency also means one of the country's chief representatives is the subject of sanctions by the U.S. Treasury.

His first postelection demand, prior to taking up his duties, was that the Republika Srpska flag be displayed at the Bosnian Presidency's building in Sarajevo. Until that happens, Dodik vowed, he will refuse to attend official meetings and functions there, although he will contact his counterparts via video-link.

Even before the election, Dodik pledged that he would not sit in the presidency's offices in downtown Sarajevo at all. Rather, he intended to make use of an office reserved for Serb politicians in East Sarajevo -- suburban sections of Sarajevo that lie in Republika Srpska -- pending the construction of a new security barrier to ensure Dodik's safety.

Radio Sarajevo also reported that Dodik planned to appoint as one of his advisers film director Emir Kusturica, another divisive figure.

It is hard to discern Dodik's motives, but he has already said he will block Bosnia's bid for NATO membership.

Bakir Izetbegovic

Finally, a term limit meant SDA party leader Bakir Izetbegovic could not stand for reelection to a third term as the Bosniak member of the presidency.

But the victory of Sefik Dzaferovic to represent Bosniaks appears to ensure that Izetbegovic will maintain considerable influence in Bosnian politics.

"Izetbegovic has done good things for Bosnia, and I will continue on the same path," Dzaferovic said. "I will be happy to be like him."

One of the implications is that, like Izetbegovic, Dzaferovic might welcome Turkish influence in the country and lobby for investment from wealthy Arab states.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/bosnia-s-postelection-blues/29555500.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Local Taliban Leader Killed in Eastern Afghanistan - Reports

Sputnik News

21:34 21.10.2018

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - A shadow district administrative chief of the Taliban* movement was killed in a US-led coalition strike in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, Khaama Press reported on Sunday.

Taliban shadow district chief for Hesarak district Abdul Jabar and six other militants were killed in a drone strike on Saturday, according to the Khaama Press news agency citing the provincial government press office.

Afghanistan has long been suffering from an unstable political, social and security situation due to the activity of various terrorist and radical groups.

The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, supported by a US-led coalition, are conducting joint offensive operations to combat terrorism across the country.

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as a reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with the mission lasting until December 28, 2014. In 2015, NATO initiated a new mission, Resolute Support, aimed at training Afghan security forces. Nevertheless, seemingly endless US operations have shown limited effectiveness at establishing an enduring peace in Afghanistan.

*Daesh and Taliban are terrorist groups banned in Russia

 Sputnik

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Jordan King to Abandon Part of 1994 Peace Treaty With Israel on Land Lease

Sputnik News

17:16 21.10.2018

In line with the 1994 peace agreement, which stipulated a one-year notice period, Jordan granted Israel private ownership rights in two border territories. However, the Jordan King noted that he wants to reclaim the land, citing national interests.

Jordan's King Abdullah II announced on Sunday that Jordan has chosen to nix two annexes of the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, ending the Israeli lease of Baqura/Naharayim and Al-Ghamr/Zofar territories.

"Baqura and Ghamr are Jordanian territory and will remain Jordanian, and we exercise full sovereignty over our land," the King said, as quoted by the state-owned Jordan News Agency (Petra).

"Our priorities in such difficult regional circumstances are protecting our interests and doing everything necessary for Jordan and the Jordanians," Abdullah II noted, adding that Israel had been made aware of the decision.

In response to the move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged, as cited by Haaretz, to try and talk Jordan into extending the lease. "There is no doubt the agreement is an important asset," he said, praising the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt as "anchors of regional stability."

Both areas in question are located on the Israel-Jordan border; Israeli farmers were granted private land ownership rights and property interests for a 25-year period under the 1994 peace accord, which settled long-standing land and water disputes between the two countries.

After the 1994 agreement, Jordan became the second Arab country (after Egypt) to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The deal helped Amman to pave the way for US economic and military assistance to the country. However, Israel-Jordan relations have been strained in recent years, particularly due to Amman's stance on the issue of Jerusalem. Earlier this year, Jordanian King Abdullah II confirmed that East Jerusalem should be the capital of a future Palestinian state, while Israel views Jerusalem as its official capital.

 Sputnik

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Watchdog Warns Iran Could Be Blacklisted Unless It Acts Against Terrorism Funding

October 20, 2018

A global financial watchdog has given Iran until February to crack down on terrorism funding or risk further sanctions on its struggling economy.

The Financial Action Task Force warned on October 19 that it would effectively blacklist Iran if it doesn't fulfill 10 promises Tehran made to pass and enforce laws against financing terrorist groups.

Iran has long provided support to the Lebanese Hizballah militant group and Palestinian armed groups, which Western countries view as terrorist organizations.

Iran's parliament approved some new measures against funding terrorism earlier this month under pressure to adopt international standards. But the task force said that it could only consider fully enacted legislation.

"We expect Iran to move swiftly to implement the commitments that it undertook at a high level so long ago," said Marshall Billingslea, U.S. assistant treasury secretary for terrorist financing and chair of the global task force.

"In line with that, we expect that it will have adopted all of these measures by February. If by February 2019 Iran has not yet done so, then we will take further steps," he said.

Billingslea said the task force for now has decided to continue suspending an earlier decision to blacklist Iran.

Blacklisting by the organization can result in limits or even bans on transactions with a country, greatly hindering global investment at a time when the United States has already moved to block foreign investment in Iran after pulling out of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Britain, France and Germany are trying to keep some financial channels open for Iran amid the U.S. push to reimpose sanctions, and have urged Tehran to comply with the task force's demands.

Analysts say that missing the task force's February deadline and being blacklisted could effectively nullify the European efforts on behalf of Iran.

Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/global-financial- watchdog-warns-iran-could-be-blacklisted-unless-acts- against-terrorism-funding/29554071.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Military official: No one agrees to negotiation on Iran missile program

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Oct 21, IRNA -- Nobody agrees to negotiate Iran missile power, Spokesman of the Iranian Armed Forces said.

Anybody who talks about negotiating missile program is ill-informed, enemy or traitor, Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said in an exclusive interview with Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Missile is one of the most fundamental tools for defense power, he said, adding that no Iranian official is for the US' demand to stop manufacturing missiles.

Elaborating on Iran advisory presence in regional countries, Shekarchi said Iran's advisory presence in Syria is by Syrian government's demand.

Enemy wants the conflict area to be farther from Israel, he said, adding that they are after maintaining insecurity in Iran.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he referred to kidnapping of Iranian border guards.

It seems that the terrorist act is an inside job; he said adding that investigations should become finalized.

Economic war is the last choice adopted by enemies against Iran, said the official.

Referring to the fact that enemies are taking advantage of media to reach their goals, he urged officials to take this war seriously.

If we want to compare our position with other countries as regards power, we are on top, Shekarchi said.

Enemy is using Iran missiles as a pretext for disarming the country, he said, adding that whenever they are afraid of direct fighting they create a scenario for disarmament.

Shekarchi went on to say that enemies are aimed at first disarming the country and second pretending to support people for bringing accidents more destructive than what happened in Libya, Afghanistan, etc.

Iran will not use its missiles unless an aggressor takes any measure against the country, he said.

This is while, the US is using weapons in line with aggression and expansionism, he added.

He went on to say that, Iran has never intervened in sovereignty of Yemen, Syria and Iraq and Iran presence is upon their request.

9376**1420

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Barzani's party wins most seats in Kurdish regional parliament election

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 06:10PM

Massud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has secured the most seats in the semi-autonomous region's parliament, the local electoral commission says.

According to final results announced by the commission on Sunday, KDP won 45 of 111 seats in the September 30 elections.

The KDP's main rivals, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), will see 21 of its lawmakers enter parliament.

The main opposition Goran (Change) was left with 12 lawmakers in Kurdistan's parliamentary vote.

The New Generation movement, founded this year to channel public anger at the region's elite, won eight seats in the poll.

The remainder of the seats were won by smaller, mainly Islamic parties. The ethnic and religious minorities of Kurdistan's three provinces in northern Iraq are reserved 11 seats in parliament. Five each go to Turkmen and Christian candidates, with one for the Armenian community.

Goran and numerous Islamic parties have said they will reject the results of the vote.

The results mean the KDP could theoretically have the parliamentary majority without having to form an alliance with its political rivals.

In early October, the leaders of the region's top two political parties also took their rivalry to Baghdad, contesting the honorary role of Iraqi president.

The presidency has been reserved for the Kurds since Iraq's first multi-party elections in 2005, held two years after the US-led invasion.

The PUK's candidate Barham Saleh won that race, maintaining a tacit accord between the two parties which sees the PUK take the federal presidency while the KDP holds the Kurdistan presidency.

The Iraqi Kurdish presidency has, however, been left vacant since Barzani stepped down following a failed independence referendum last year.

The appointment of a new president to replace Barzani has been on hold, pending the drafting of a new Kurdish constitution.

Barzani was the key backer of Kurdistan's independence vote in September 2017 that was declared illegal by Iraq's central government and saw Baghdad impose economic penalties and retake disputed territory.

The United Nations and the US as well as regional powers like Iran and Turkey also rejected the referendum by the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), arguing that it could create further instability in the already volatile region.

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Accountability a key pillar for reconciliation in Myanmar: UN Envoy

20 October 2018 - Accountability and inclusive dialogue are two important pillars for national reconciliation in Myanmar, said the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General (SESG), Christine Schraner Burgener in a statement released on Saturday, adding that "credible fact-finding is the first step towards accountability."

Ms. Schrager has been on a 10 day visit to Myanmar, where she has held consultations with State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, other government and military leaders, ethnic armed organizations, local and religious leaders, NGOs, UN agencies and the diplomatic community.

In Rakhine and Kachin provinces, Ms. Burgener engaged with local civilian and military authorities, and directly with those affected by conflict, in particular women, and went to several camps and relocation sites for internally-displaced people, to gauge progress made since her first visit to the country in June 2018.

UN agencies and the Myanmar Government reached an agreement in June to create conditions that would allow Rohingya refugees to voluntarily and safely return to their homes in the country's Rakhine province.

Almost a million Rohingya are sheltering in camps across the border in the Cox's Bazar region of Bangladesh, after being driven from their homes in northern Myanmar since last August.

To ensure that they, and people are able to return home, their full human rights must be respected, Ms. Burgener said, starting with equal access to education and health, and freedom of movement: "they have to be able to live in safety and security. This will be the most positive incentive for the refugees in Bangladesh to return. Knowing that the UN and its partners are present at their places of return, will give the returnees confidence and trust in the process."

Ms. Burgener also emphasized the need for greater domestic and foreign investment in the region, one of Myanmar's poorest, which urgently requires inclusive development.

In Kachine province, the Special Envoy met with inhabitants of a camp for internally displaced people around Myitkyina, some of whom have been displaced since 2011 without job prospects or hope of returning to their places of origin, due to land-mines and lack of security, and took note of the increasingly limited humanitarian access which affected the availability of medical assistance and aid.

Expressing concern about intensified fighting in the north of the country, Ms. Burgener reiterated her offer to serve as a "bridge" between the Myanmar Government and ethnic armed groups, in order to help advance the peace process.

Offering her views on Myanmar's democratic transition, the Special Envoy urged the Government to undertake a public "Zero Tolerance for Discrimination" campaign at the highest level, and committed to focusing her efforts on strengthening engagement between Myanmar and the international community towards a "more tolerant, democratic and inclusive society that recognizes diversity as an asset."

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Watchdogs Press Pakistan on Terror Financing

By Madeeha Anwar October 20, 2018 9:54 PM

A delegation from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog monitoring terror financing and money laundering, has reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with what it called inadequate measures Pakistan has taken to curb terror financing and fix anti-money-laundering laws.

The nine-member delegation of the Asia Pacific Group (APG), an FATF entity that overlooks Asian countries, concluded its 12-day visit to Pakistan on Friday after meeting officials from the country's ministries of finance and foreign affairs as well as the central bank to assess Pakistan's progress and compliance with the FATF's recommendations.

In its report presented to Pakistani authorities Friday, APG reportedly pointed to problems in the country's legal system and urged Pakistan to address inadequacies in the supervision of nonprofit and charitable organizations.

The APG's recent findings will also be submitted to the FATF's main headquarters, which will evaluate Pakistan's progress and decide whether the country should remain on the FATF's gray list or be removed next year following measures taken by Pakistan to address the global watchdog's concerns.

Pakistan was placed on the FATF's gray list in June over its alleged failure to comply with the global watchdog's guidelines to crack down on terror financing.

Islamabad was placed on the gray list before, in 2012, where it remained until 2015.

Effects on economy

Some economists in Pakistan fear that the country's continued failure to satisfy the FATF's demands could mean the country runs the risk of being moved from the gray list to the black list. They also fear such an action would undermine Pakistan's fragile economy, which is facing a debt crisis.

"Pakistan's economy right now is no doubt in a fragile state. Pakistan is seeking help from IMF and fighting to get out of the gray list. If Pakistan remains unsuccessful in satisfying the APG body, there could be consequences, and there are chances the country could be placed on the black list," Muhammad Zubair Habib, a Karachi-based economist, told VOA.

Earlier this month, Pakistan sought financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help address some of its economic challenges.

Banking system

Ayub Mehar, another Pakistani economist, told VOA he believes the real problem lies in Pakistan's banking sector and its existing infrastructure, which has known loopholes that allow militant groups to launder money.

"The team specifically mentioned the flaws in our organized banking system, financial markets, investment in the stock market and the corporate sector. They have pointed towards the lack of enforcement mechanism against the money-laundering and terror-financing channels," Mehar said.

"Pakistan's banking system has improved immensely, and one cannot open an account without biometrics and certain verifications," he said. "But it's the old bank accounts of individuals and organizations that need to get verified, too, as they were opened before this new system."

Existing laws

Some analysts, such as Waqar Masood, who once served as Pakistan's secretary of finance, believe the problem is not a lack of new laws but rather enforcement of existing laws.

"The main problem is not the laws, but the forceful implementation of these existing laws. If Pakistan is serious to get out of the gray list, the country will have to ensure to forcefully implement the laws," Masood told VOA.

New measures

Over the past year, Pakistan has passed new legislation to combat money laundering and terror financing in an effort to show that Islamabad is taking the FATF's concerns seriously.

In June, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), the country's national financial body, introduced the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Regulations.

SECP also banned individuals and groups placed on terror watch lists by Pakistan and the U.N. Security Council from collecting funds.

The legislation allowed Pakistan to halt the operations of the U.N.- and U.S.-designated terror groups Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), both linked to Hafiz Saeed, who is a U.S.-designated global terrorist accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed more than 160 people, including six Americans.

But many analysts accuse Pakistan of being selective in its attention to militants and their financial networks, alleging that Islamabad cracks down on militants that pose a threat to Pakistan while overlooking other groups that operate outside the country. Pakistan has denied such allegations.

Informal channels

Terror financing remains a big challenge in Pakistan. The terror groups allegedly continue to collect large sums of money in the name of religion and welfare for the poor.

The militant outfits also use foreign funding, drug trafficking, extortion from businesses and kidnapping for ransom as ways to generate wealth.

The terror groups also depend on the Hawala system, a parallel banking system, to launder their money, which according to some analysts is not adequately scrutinized by authorities.

"There is no doubt Pakistan has introduced substantial reforms in its banking sector over the past few years. The problem is not the banking system, but the other informal money channels the terror groups continue to use easily," Pakistani economist Mehar said.

VOA's Nafisa Hoodhboy and Sarah Hassan contributed to this report.

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Russia Says U.S. 'Fabricating Pretext' To Justify Sanctions

RFE/RL October 20, 2018

Russia has accused the United States of "fabricating a pretext" to impose fresh sanctions against Russia after Washington charged a Russian of conspiring to interfere in U.S. elections.

"We understand that Washington is fabricating a pretext in order to impose its notorious sanctions once more against our country," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in a statement quoted by Russian media on October 20.

His comments come a day after U.S. prosecutors charged a Russian woman with conspiring to interfere in U.S. elections, in what appeared to be the first such charges related to next month's key congressional elections.

The indictment came as U.S. intelligence agencies said in a joint statement that they were concerned about efforts by Russia, China, and Iran to influence U.S. voters and policy.

In a filing in U.S. federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on October 19, prosecutors accused Elena Khusyaynova of running an operation called Project Lakhta that was funded by a St. Petersburg businessman with close Kremlin ties who was indicted earlier this year.

The project, according to the criminal complaint, intended to wage "information warfare against the United States" and sow distrust in U.S. political candidates and the U.S. political system overall.

The complaint said Khusyaynova had served as chief accountant for Project Lakhta since about April 2014.

The St. Petersburg businessman who allegedly funded the effort was Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year on similar charges of trying to interfere with past U.S. elections.

He, two of his companies -- Concord Management and Concord Catering  and 12 other Russians were accused by Mueller of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential race in an effort aimed at bolstering Donald Trump and denigrating his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Khusyaynova and Prigozhin are believed to be in Russia and are unlikely to face justice in the United States.

A joint statement released by four intelligence and law enforcement agencies on October 19 said methods of influencing used by China, Iran, and Russia included the use of social media to amplify divisive issues, seeding disinformation about political candidates, and sponsoring content in English-language media.

The statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security was issued just weeks before the November 6 elections.

That election will, among other things, determine whether the Republicans continue dominating both the House of Representatives and the Senate, or if Democrats will take control.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-says-u-s-fabricating- pretext-to-justify-sanctions/29554592.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Russian Aerospace Forces Destroyed Over 122,000 Terrorist Targets in Syria

Sputnik News

07:46 20.10.2018(updated 07:56 20.10.2018)

The Russian Aerospace Forces have carried out over 40,000 missions, including over 21,000 sorties during the night time, in the course of their operation in Syria, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the fifth ASEAN and Dialogue Partners Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM-Plus) in Singapore.

"In the course of the military actions, over 122,000 terror targets have been eliminated. The main part of the militants has been killed," Shoigu said.

"In Syria, we have received the vast fighting experience which we are ready to share," he pointed out.

Peaceful life was being restored in Syria, the defense minister added, noting that over 2,500 settlements across the country have joined the reconciliation process due to the work of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria.

The key focus of the Middle Eastern country's authorities was on solving humanitarian issues and returning refugees to their homes, the minister noted.

Shoigu also said that the return of militants to the Asia Pacific region after fighting in Syria and Iraq boosts terror threat in Southeast Asia.

"The return of terrorists, who have received fighting experience in Syria and Iraq, to the Asia Pacific region remains an acute problem. They represent the ready force for joining local terror cells Terrorism becomes the more and more grave threat for Asia Pacific states. This is caused by the activities of the significant number of extremist organizations in Southeast Asia," Shoigu said.

The extremist groups operating in the region used force for its fight and sought to establish strong ties with international terror groups, Shoigu added.

Money flows to Asia Pacific states for supporting terrorist cells and holding terror attack had been more and more often detected recently, he said.

The defense minister called for causing irreparable damage to the terrorists' capabilities.

Russian Defense Minister also said that the cells of the Daesh* terror group have been fully dismantled in Syria with Russia's support in the course of three years of Moscow's participation in the operation.

"Over 87,500 militants have been killed, 1,411 settlements and over 95 percent of the Syrian territory have been liberated in the course of the operation," Shoigu said.

"Key settlements have been liberated The Syrian Armed Forces currently control the territory where over 90 percent of the country's population live," Shoigu added.

Russian Defense Minister also said that Russian demining specialists have cleared 6,500 hectares (over 16,000 acres) of Syrian territory from mines in the course of their operation in Syria.

"Russian demining specialists have cleared over 6,500 hectares of the Syrian territory, 1,500 kilometers [over 930 miles] of roads, over 19,000 buildings from mines," Shoigu said.

The defense minister suggested that all the conditions had been created for the revival of Syria as a united state, noting that other members of the global community, apart from Russia, should contribute to this.

Shoigu emphasized Russia's role in helping Syria refugees return home from abroad. The minister also recalled that an interdepartmental coordination center for the return of Syrian refugees was operating in Moscow, while a center for refugees reception and resettlement was working in Damascus.

Over 245,000 Syrians have returned to their country from abroad since the beginning of the Russian operation in the Middle Eastern country, while around 2 million people have expressed their will to return to their homeland, according to Shoigu.

*Daesh (also known as IS/ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State) is a terrorist group, banned in Russia and many other countries.

 Sputnik

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Kremlin: Russia Expects US Explanation on INF Treaty as Bolton Arrives in Moscow

Sputnik News

17:21 21.10.2018

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The issue of the US pullout from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia will most probably be raised at a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US National Security Adviser John Bolton next week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Washington would pull out of the treaty. Bolton arrived in Moscow earlier in the day, a source told Sputnik.

"Following the latest statement the US explanation will most probably be needed," Peskov said.

Meanwhile, US National Security Adviser John Bolton arrived in Moscow on Sunday, where he is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a diplomatic source told Sputnik.

The senior adviser to US President Donald Trump is expected to discuss Washington's decision to pull from the nuclear arms treaty with Russia, as well as US actions in Syria.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced the country's exit from the INF treaty over alleged Russian violations of the agreement.

The INF treaty was signed between the Soviet Union and the United States in December 1987 and required the parties to destroy their ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (from 311 to 3,317 miles). The United States and Russia have repeatedly accused each other of violating the treaty.

 Sputnik

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Moscow: US Exit From Nuclear Arms Treaty With Russia to Be 'Very Dangerous Step'

Sputnik News

09:50 21.10.2018(updated 11:44 21.10.2018)

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced the country's plans to exit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) treaty over alleged Russian violations of the agreement.

If the US continues to withdraw unilaterally from agreements, then Russia will adopt a range of retaliatory measures, including military ones, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Sputnik.

"The issue is too serious to be dealt with through public debate. If the United States continues to act so clumsily and harshly, as we can see it do on numerous occasions, if it continues to unilaterally withdraw from agreements, different kinds of accords and mechanisms, and the examples are piling up  from the JCPOA on Iran to the Universal Postal Union  then we will have nothing left to do but to take retaliatory measures, including ones of military and technological nature. But we would like to avoid that. The US clumsy and harsh politics sees more and more rejection in a lot of countries and wide circles of international community. Washington should not underestimate these shifts in sentiment," Ryabkov said.

"We are treating with concern and condemnation the United States' new attempts to force Russia to make concessions in the sphere of international security and strategic stability via blackmailing. The Russian side has repeatedly said that the US side has no reasons for accusing Russia of allegedly violating this treaty. After all these years, they have failed to substantiate their fanciful claims by clear explanations why they are doing this," Ryabkov added.

Ryabkov said that the US accusations toward Russia regarding the INF treaty seem to be aimed at concealing its own violations of the treaty.

He added that the US has no reason to say that Russia is violating the INF treaty, and that all of the accusations were unsubstantiated.

Russia will continue to insist on dialogue with the US on resolving issues with the INF treaty, Ryabkov stressed.

According to him, Moscow condemns Washington's recent attempts to persuade Russia to make concessions which would threaten its strategic stability.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced the country's unilateral withdrawal from the INF treaty over Russia's alleged violations of the agreement.

"We are counting on obtaining clear explanations from him regarding the nature of the United States' intentions and further steps [regarding the treaty]," Ryabkov said.

Earlier, Donald Trump announced the country's exit from the INF treaty due to alleged Russian violations.

In May, US President Donald Trump issued a memorandum ordering State Secretary Mike Pompeo to propose sanctions on Russia in response to alleged violations of the INF Treaty. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the matter, said that Russia had never violated the INF Treaty, and that it adheres to its obligations and intends to continue doing so.

Earlier, Russia's Foreign Ministry said that Russia's 9M729 missiles comply with the country's obligations under the INF Treaty and have not been upgraded or tested for the prohibited range.

The Ministry pointed out that the United States has provided no proof that Russia has in fact violated the treaty by deploying the missiles.

The 1987 INF Treaty prohibits the development, deployment and testing of ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles.

Russia and the US have repeatedly accused each other of violating the treaty. The administration of former US president Barack Obama, however, decided not to abandon the agreement.

 Sputnik

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'Major Blow' to Global Stability: Russian Lawmakers React to Trump's INF Pullout

Sputnik News

02:25 21.10.2018

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United States decision to leave INF under the pretext of alleged Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was condemned by Russian Lawmakers.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced the country's withdrawal from the INF treaty over the alleged Russian violations of the agreement.

"US President Donald Trump's decision to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is not surprising to us but we hoped that the common sense would prevail. It is obvious that the United States has no evidence proving Russia's violations of the treaty's provisions," a member of the Russian parliament's upper house's defense committee, Frants Klintsevich, told Sputnik.

The lawmaker pointed out that Trump's decision to leave the INF Treaty was not in line with the interests of its European allies.

"[The United States] wants to drag us, like the Soviet Union, into an arms race. It will not succeed. I have no doubts that our country will manage to ensure its security under any circumstances," Klintsevich added.

Russian member of the parliament's upper house Alexey Pushkov also called on Sunday the US decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) the second major blow to the global stability system along with the 2002 US exit from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty).

"Trump announced the US withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. If the United States withdraws [from the INF Treaty], that will be the second major blow to the whole global system of strategic stability. The first blow was the US [decision on] exit from the ABM Treaty in 2001. Once again the United States is an initiator of the treaty's denouncement," Pushkov wrote on his Twitter page.

The lawmaker pointed out that the recent statement of Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow would resort to nuclear weapons only in case of a foreign nuclear aggression meant that Russia would not allow the US nuclear superiority.

"Only that can prevent a possible nuclear aggression. The United States is pushing the world back to the Cold War," Pushkov added.

The 1987 INF Treaty prohibits the development, deployment and testing of ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles.

 Sputnik

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Russia Wants Explanation of Trump Withdrawal from Arms Treaty

By VOA News October 21, 2018

U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton faces tough questions this week in Moscow after President Trump said he will pull the U.S. out of a key Cold War arms deal with Russia.

Bolton will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Monday and President Vladimir Putin Tuesday.

Trump has accused Russia of building and testing missiles that violate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty  better known as the INF pact.

The landmark deal bans the U.S. and Russia from building, testing, and stockpiling ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range from 500 to 5,000 kilometers.

The Kremlin has yet to formally comment on Trump's announcement other than saying "explanations...will be required."

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev signed the deal with the late U.S. president Ronald Reagan at the White House in 1987.

"Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?" Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying. "Washington's desire to turn back politics cannot be supported. Not only Russia, but all those who cherish the world, especially a world without nuclear weapons, must declare this."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Tass news agency that the U.S. move would be "a very dangerous step."

Without specifying how Russia violated the treaty, Trump Saturday appeared to say Moscow will not get away with it.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years. And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we are not allowed to," he said.

U.S. officials going back to the Obama administration have accused Russia of deliberately deploying a land-based cruise missile to pose a threat to NATO.

Russia has denied violating the INF agreement and says U.S. missile defense systems are a violation.

Many so-called hawks in Washington say the INF treaty keeps the U.S. from developing a new generation of weapons in a world that faces new global security challenges.

"We'll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let's really get smart and let's none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia's doing it and if China's doing it, and we're adhering to the agreement, that's unacceptable," Trump said.

China is not part of the IMF agreement.

Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons  the coalition that won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize  said that "by declaring he will leave the INF Treaty, President Trump has shown himself to be a demolition man who has no ability to build real security. Instead, by blowing up nuclear treaties, he is taking the U.S. down a trillion dollar road to a new nuclear arms race."

Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent Russian political analyst told the Associated Press, "We are slowly slipping back to the situation of Cold War, as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, with quite similar consequences, but now it could be worse because Putin belongs to a generation that had no war under its belt. These people aren't as much fearful of a war as people of (former Soviet leader Leonid) Brezhnev's epoch. They think if they threaten the West properly, it gets scared."

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Saudi, US can weather crisis over murdered journalist: Jubeir

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 10:03PM

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir says the kingdom and the United States can sustain the crisis created by the murder of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"The strategic relationship is important for both countries," Jubeir told Fox News on Sunday. "The relationship will weather this."

Khashoggi, a US resident, The Washington Post columnist, and a leading critic of Riyadh, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain documents for his pending marriage, but he never left the mission.

Saudi officials originally said Khashoggi had left the diplomatic mission unharmed, before announcing on Friday that he had been killed inside the building in what they described as an altercation.

Jubeir said King Salman was "determined" to punish those behind the murder, which he claimed had been "a tremendous mistake" and part of a "rogue operation."

"I believe that when the investigation's over and the facts have been revealed and ... people know who is responsible, and see those individuals being punished, and see procedures put in place to prevent this from happening," the top diplomat said.

Jubeir brushed off accusations that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which Khashoggi would openly criticize, had ordered the foul play.

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, delivered his strongest comments yet about the affair in an interview with The Post, saying, "Obviously, there's been deception and there's been lies." "Their stories are all over the place," he added.

Trump, however, emphasized the importance of the US-Saudi relationship to Washington's regional strategic goals.

He described the 33-year-old crown prince as a "strong person; he has very good control."

Trump added that he has yet to be shown any evidence by intelligence officials that would make him believe the royal had any direct role in the murder.

"Nobody has told me he's responsible. Nobody has told me he's not responsible. We haven't reached that point," the president said, adding, "It could be something in the building went badly awry."

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Khashoggi controversy triggers Saudi capital flight

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 04:42PM

New indications have appeared that show Saudi Arabia is already paying a heavy price for the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its consulate in Istanbul in terms of capital flight.

Saudi exchange data on Sunday showed that Foreigners sold a net 4.01 billion riyal ($1.07 billion) in stocks over the week ending October 18.

This was seen as one of the biggest selloffs since the Saudi market opened to direct foreign buying in mid-2015.

It came during a week when investors were rattled by Saudi Arabia's deteriorating relations with a powerful portion of the international community following Khashoggi's disappearance.

Reports said foreigners had sold 5 billion riyals worth of stocks and bought 991.3 million worth.

The Saudi stock market is down about 4 percent since Khashoggi disappeared. The market had started to weaken before the incident as foreign funds slowed their buying after MSCI's announcement in June that the kingdom will be included in its global emerging market benchmark next year.

Last Sunday, Saudi stocks plunged 7.0 percent in what became the Saudi market's biggest drop since December 2014.

This followed a rise in international pressures against Saudi Arabia over its suspected role in Khashoggi's disappearance.

Khashoggi, 59, was an outspoken critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He went missing after entering the Saudi consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

Officials in Riyadh later said the dissident journalist had been killed during a fight at the consulate.

Many countries have announced that Riyadh's explanations over the case have not been adequate.

Trump emphasized on Saturday that he was not satisfied with the Saudis' handling of the case, further raising questions over whether he would act to impose sanctions on Saudi officials believed to be behind Khashoggi's death.

Pressures have nonetheless increased on Trump as policymakers on both sides of the isle have called on him to intensify pressures on Saudi Arabia over the slaying of the dissident journalist.

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US Treasury chief says Saudi account of Khashoggi killing 'not enough'

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 03:09PM

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said Saudi Arabia's explanation of the killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a "good first step but not enough", adding it was premature to discuss any sanctions against Riyadh over the incident.

The comments from Mnuchin on Sunday are the latest from the administration of US President Donald Trump that appear aimed at condemning a murder that has sparked global outrage.

"It would be premature to comment on sanctions and premature to comment on really any issues until we get further down the investigation and get to the bottom of what occurred," Mnuchin told reporters in Jerusalem al-Quds at the start of a Middle East visit.

On Tuesday, Mnuchin said he would not attend an upcoming high-profile investment conference in Saudi Arabia but still plans to visit Riyadh for talks with his Saudi counterpart about curbing Iran's political and military influence in the region.

International media and business executives have been pulling out of next week's investment conference in Riyadh, known as "Davos of the desert," indicating outrage over Khashoggi's killing.

European governments, as well as some lawmakers in Trump's own Republican Party, have been more forceful in dismissing Riyadh's explanation that Khashoggi died following a fistfight in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2.

Khashoggi, 59, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

Growing international pressure and comments by US officials forced the kingdom to acknowledge Khashoggi's death after initially denying any involvement in his disappearance for two weeks.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday said the prominent journalist and critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had died during a fight in the building. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold.

Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi had been tortured and beheaded and his body was cut up into pieces.

Khashoggi was a Washington Post columnist and lived in the US, having fled Saudi Arabia in September last year.

Trump has said that the consequences for the Saudis "will have to be very severe" if they are found to have killed Khashoggi, but has acknowledged he wants to protect Washington's massive arms sale to the kingdom.

Trump emphasized on Saturday that he was not satisfied with the Saudis' handling of the case, further raising questions over whether he would act to impose sanctions on Saudi officials believed to be behind Khashoggi's death.

The incident has grown into a public relations nightmare for the kingdom and the crown prince in particular.

So grave is the fallout from the murder of Khashoggi that Saudi King Salman has felt compelled to intervene, five sources with links to the Saudi royal family have told Reuters.

Initially the king, who has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to his son, commonly known as MbS, was unaware of the extent of the crisis, according to two of the sources with knowledge of the ruling family.

"The king started asking aides and MbS about it. MbS had to tell him and asked him to intervene when Khashoggi's case became a global crisis," one of the source said.

Since he acceded to the throne in January 2015, the king has given MbS, 33, increasing authority to run Saudi Arabia. But the king's latest intervention reflects growing concern among some officials in Riyadh about MbS's fitness to govern, the five sources said.

"He has been living in an artificially-created bubble," said one of the sources. Lately, though, the king's advisers have grown frustrated and begun warning him of the risks of leaving the crown prince's power unchecked. "The people around him are starting to tell him to wake up to what's happening," the source said.

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Britain says Saudi account of Khashoggi's death not credible

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:02AM

The United Kingdom says that Saudi Arabia's explanation of how dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul was not credible.

The remarks by Brexit minister Dominic Raab came on Sunday two days after Riyadh had confessed that Khashoggi was murdered.

In a Friday announcement, Saudi Arabia said that the preliminary results of its investigation indicated Khashoggi had been killed in a "fight with people who met him in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul."

However, Raab told the BBC that "I don't think it's credible," adding there was a "serious question mark over the account that has been given."

"We support the Turkish investigation into it and the British government wants to see people held to account for that death."

Saudi Arabia's narrative of Khashoggi's murder has been criticized by several other countries too. They demanded greater clarity regarding the case.

Since the very early hours of Khashoggi's disappearance on October 2, many pointed the finger to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, saying the crown prince had clear motives to kill the journalist.

Later revelations in the Turkish media showed that a 15-member hit squad, among them members of bin Salman's personal guard, had carried out the murder inside the Saudi consulate.

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Saudi Arabia's narrative of Khashoggi's murder sparks international skepticism

Iran Press TV

Sun Oct 21, 2018 09:09AM

Saudi Arabia's explanation of how dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the kingdom's Istanbul consulate has been greeted with international skepticism.

Several countries and officials have criticized Riyadh's account of Khashoggi's death and demanded greater clarity regarding the case.

The backlash came after Saudi Arabia admitted that the critic had died at the hands of its officials after "discussions" at Riyadh's mission in Istanbul turned into "a brawl and a fist fight." It followed Saudi Arabia's denial for two weeks of its role in Khashoggi's disappearance on October 2.

On Saturday, Canada denounced the inconsistent Saudi narrative of the murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, calling for a "thorough" probe into the case.

"Canada condemns the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has confirmed took place in its consulate in Istanbul," Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement. "The explanations offered to date lack consistency and credibility."

She also underlined the need for "a thorough investigation, in full collaboration with the Turkish authorities, and a full and rigorous accounting of the circumstances surrounding Mr Khashoggi's death."

The top Canadian diplomat further stressed that those responsible for Khashoggi's death "must be held to account and must face justice."

Similarly, the EU foreign policy chief called for a "credible" investigation into the journalist's murder, noting that the incident breaches international conventions.

"The emerging circumstances of Jamal Khashoggi's death are deeply troubling, including the shocking violation of the 1963 Vienna convention on consular relations," Federica Mogherini said.

"Therefore the European Union, like its partners, insists on the need for continued thorough, credible and transparent investigation, shedding proper clarity on the circumstances of the killing and ensuring full accountability of all those responsible for it."

Separately, Berlin demanded "transparency" from Riyadh concerning the killing of Khashoggi.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign minister, Heiko Maas, issued a joint statement, saying "the information provided about the sequence of events in the consulate in Istanbul isn't sufficient."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also complained that many "unanswered" questions about Khashoggi's death "require exhaustive and diligent investigation."

Furthermore, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison deplored the incident, saying, "We expect the Saudi government to cooperate fully with Turkish authorities regarding the investigation of this matter."

The spokesman for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party said Ankara would "uncover what has happened" to the Saudi journalist.

"Nobody should ever doubt about it. We are not accusing anyone in advance but we don't accept anything to remain covered up," Omer Celik said.

Saudi officials have denied Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in Khashoggi's murder, but reports says several of a 15-person Saudi team suspected of having killed the Washington Post columnist were from bin Salman's personal security staff.

Audio recordings from within the consulate have suggested that Khashoggi was tortured, murdered and dismembered with a bone saw.

Participants skip Riyadh conference

As furor mounts over Khashoggi's death, more participants pull out of the Future Investment Initiative conference slated for October 23-25 in Riyadh.

New Zealand is the latest to cancel its participation in the summit, dubbed "Davos in the Desert."

New Zealand's Trade Minister David Parker said in a statement that no officials from his country would attend the event.

Washington unlikely to halt deals with Riyadh

However, Lawrence Davidson, professor at the West Chester University, told Press TV that American lawmakers would not cancel contracts with Riyadh over Khashoggi's murder.

"They are so tied up with us that they can't be shaken loose. This whole morality is political posturing on the part of the Congress, because there is no one in there who would do away with this," he said.

He further predicted that US President Donald Trump "will cover for the Saudis and the crown prince, whose type of personality - the top guy's personality - that he favors."

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Saudi FM: Khashoggi Killing 'Terrible Mistake', Crown Prince Was Not Aware

Sputnik News

18:37 21.10.2018(updated 19:46 21.10.2018)

Earlier, President Trump and officials from the UK, France and Germany expressed doubts regarding the Saudi investigation's preliminary findings on the Saudi journalist's death, which suggested he was killed as a result of a fistfight at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has expressed his condolences to Jamal Khashoggi's family, saying his death was a "terrible mistake" and emphasizing that Crown Prince Salman was "not aware" of what happened.

"This is a terrible mistake. This is a terrible tragedy. Our condolences go out to them. We feel their pain," al-Jubeir said, speaking to Fox News host Bret Baier on Sunday.

Riyadh, the Saudi foreign minister said, still does not know exactly how Khashoggi was killed or where his body is, but promised to provide information about the case as soon as it becomes available.

According to al-Jubeir, the individuals involved in Khashoggi's killing did not have close ties to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and did what they did "out of the scope of their authority."

"There were not people closely tied to him. This was an operation that was a rogue operation," the official said.

The foreign minister stressed that the perpetrators of Khashoggi's killing had gone over the heads of the Kingdom's authorities, made "a tremendous mistake" and then attempted to hide it. Riyadh is determined to hold Khashoggi's killers accountable, al-Jubeir said. "The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority. There obviously was a tremendous mistake made, and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up," he noted.

"Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure [members of Khashoggi's family] that those responsible will be held accountable for this," he said.

Calling Riyadh's investigation, the arrest of 18 Saudi nationals thought to be connected to the case and the dismissal of two senior officials "the first step of a long journey," al-Jubeir said Riyadh was "determined to uncover every stone, we are determined to find out all the facts, we are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder, and we are determined to ensure that the institution that we have that deals with intelligence has checks and balances in it to ensure that something like this can never happen again."

Ultimately, the foreign minister stressed that Saudi-US relations would eventually overcome any possible downturn in relations caused by Khashoggi's death.

Saudi national and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi disappeared on October 2 in Istanbul and was last seen entering the Saudi consulate, where he went to receive papers required to remarry. On Friday, amid growing pressure from the international community, Saudi authorities announced that the journalist was killed in an altercation inside the embassy. Riyadh detained 18 individuals in connection with the case, and dismissed intelligence chief Ahmad Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aid to the crown prince over the incident. On Sunday, officials from the UK, France and Germany issued a joint statement condemning Khashoggi's death in the "strongest possible terms" and saying that the version of events provided by the Saudi investigation still "need to be backed by facts to be considered credible."

 Sputnik

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UK, France, Germany Condemn Khashoggi Killing in 'Strongest Possible Terms'

Sputnik News

17:50 21.10.2018(updated 20:35 21.10.2018)

Earlier this week, Saudi authorities said that a fight had broken out between Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his interlocutors at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, with the altercation leading to his death.

The UK, France and Germany have condemned the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and said that nothing could justify his death.

In a joint statement issued Sunday, the three countries stressed that urgent clarificiation was needed regarding Khashoggi's death, and said the version of events proposed by the Saudi investigation required more facts to back it up.

"There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened on October 2nd  beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible," the joint statement noted. The three countries expect "more effortstowards establishing the truth in a comprehensive, transparent and credible manner," it added.

The statement followed critical remarks by President Donald Trump on Saturday, who accused

Riyadh of "deception" and "lies" in its explanation of the journalist's disappearance.

Commenting on the issue later in the day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the arms export to Saudi Arabia could not take place under current circumstances.

"First, we condemn this act in the strongest terms," she said. "Second, there is an urgent need to clarify what happened  we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account As far as arms exports are concerned, those can't take place in the current circumstances."

Doubts About Saudi Version of Events

Earlier, British Brexit minister Dominic Raab cast doubt on the Saudi version of events, saying the explanation wasn't credible and adding that London "support[s] the Turkish investigation into [the case]The British government will want to see people held accountable for that death," he said.

Also Sunday, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that Berlin is coordinating with its European Union and G7 allies over Khashoggi's suspected killing. On Saturday, Maas said that Germany would not approve any further arms sales to Riyadh until the investigation into the journalist's death is concluded. Washington has remained more hesitant to threaten Riyadh with economic consequences, with President Trump saying repeatedly that he did not want the Khashoggi issue to jeopardize $110 billion US arms deal with the Kingdom.

Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi disappeared on October 2 in Istanbul and was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate, where he went to receive papers required to remarry. On Friday, amid pressure from the international community, Saudi authorities announced that a fistfight had broken out between Khashoggi and people who met him at the consulate, with the altercation leading to his death. Riyadh noted that 18 Saudi nationals had been detained in connection with the case and that intelligence chief Ahmad Assiri and senior aide to the crown prince Saud al-Qahtani were sacked over the incident.

 Sputnik

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Trump Reportedly Suspects 'Lies' in Saudi Version of Khashoggi's Death

Sputnik News

09:30 21.10.2018(updated 10:53 21.10.2018)

Speaking late Saturday after a campaign rally in Nevada, Trump said he was not satisfied with Saudi Arabia's response to the journalist's death, but warned against scrapping a multibillion-dollar deal with Riyadh.

US President Donald Trump believes that "obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies" concerning Saudi authorities' explanation of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to The Washington Post.

The newspaper also cited several sources as saying that his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner's close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman "has become a liability and left the White House with no good options."

One of the sources said that Trump is "annoyed by a sense that he was blindsided and by what he sees as Kushner's misjudgment" and that many in the US administration hailed the fact that Kushner had recently been sidelined due to the Khashoggi case.

Another source voiced concern that the close relationship between Kushner and the Saudi Crown Prince "was not enough to provide guardrails against the killing and now leaves the administration vulnerable to criticism that the United States is beholden to the Saudis."

According to the sources, although Trump is "particularly sensitive about the unpleasant optics of the situation," it is still unclear whether or not he will take any steps on the matter.

Touching upon Riyadh's statement on Khashoggi's death, Trump said earlier that "I'm not satisfied until we find the answer," and that anti-Saudi sanctions could be an option.

At the same time, he made it clear that halting an arms deal with Riyadh would "hurt us more than it would hurt them," also saying that it was "possible" that the Saudi Crown Prince hadn't been told about the killing of Khashoggi.

The US President's remarks came after Saudi authorities announced on Friday that a fistfight had broken out between Khashoggi and people who met him in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, an altercation which finally led to his death.

The authorities added that 18 Saudi nationals had been detained, and that intelligence chief Ahmad Assiri and senior aide to the Saudi crown prince Saud al-Qahtani had been sacked over the incident.

The White House responded by stating that it will "closely follow the international investigations into this tragic incident and advocate for justice that is timely, transparent, and in accordance with all due process."

 Sputnik

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Germany Rethinks Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia Over Jamal Khashoggi's Death

Sputnik News

03:54 21.10.2018(updated 04:00 21.10.2018)

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Saturday that Berlin should not approve further arms sales to Saudi Arabia until the end of the investigation into journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death.

"There was no reason to approve sales while it is still unclear about Khashoggi's death details," said Maas in an interview with German public television's Tagesthemen program, in an apparent reversal of last month's decision to authorize the sale of artillery systems to Saudi Arabia.

"So long as investigations are underway, so long as we don't know what happened there, there is no reason to take positive decisions on arms exports to Saudi Arabia," Heiko said.

Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, went missing on October 2. He was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where he went to receive papers he needed to remarry. Later, Saudi authorities announced that a preliminary investigation had shown that Khashoggi was dead.

The authorities said 18 Saudi nationals had been detained in relation with the matter, and intelligence chief Ahmad Assiri and senior aide to the Saudi crown prince Saud al-Qahtani had been sacked over the killing.

 Sputnik

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Saudi Arabia: 'Huge and Grave Mistake' in Killing of Journalist

By Ken Bredemeier October 21, 2018

Saudi Arabia says it made "a huge and grave mistake" in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi inside its Istanbul consulate and vowed those responsible for it would be held accountable.

Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News on Sunday that Saudi agents "did this out of the scope of their authority," calling it "a rogue operation."

The country's top diplomat offered his condolences to Khashoggi's family, but disclosed no new information about how the writer was killed, where his body is or if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler, was involved.

"There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up," al-Jubeir said. "That is unacceptable in any government."

Saudi Arabia said Saturday the 59-year-old Khashoggi was killed October 2 after an argument leading to a fist fight, an explanation that has drawn widespread international scorn and skepticism, including from U.S. President Donald Trump. The U.S. leader said Saturday, "Obviously there has been deception, and there has been lies."

Al-Jubeir said in the television interview, "This is an aberration. This is a mistake and those responsible will be punished for it. We want to make sure that we know what happened and we want to make sure that those responsible be held to account." Saudi Arabia says it has fired five key officials linked to the death and arrested 18 others.

Critics are questioning how a team of 15 Saudi agents could fly to Istanbul to meet Khashoggi and eventually kill him without the crown prince's knowledge and consent. But al-Jubeir said, "There were not people closely tied to him," although news accounts have said that several Saudi security officials close to Mohammed were involved.

Khashoggi was living in the U.S. in self-imposed exile, writing columns for The Washington Post that were critical of Mohammed and Saudi Arabia's intervention in the conflict in Yemen.

Trump told the newspaper that Saudi Arabia has been an "incredible ally" of the United States for decades and it is possible the crown prince did not order Saudi agents to kill Khashoggi.

"Nobody has told me he is responsible. Nobody has told me he is not responsible," the U.S. leader said. "We have not reached that point ... I would love if he was not responsible."

After the Saudis' explanation Saturday for Khashoggi's death, Trump at first said it was credible. But numerous U.S. lawmakers, including Trump's Republican colleagues, are calling for sanctions against Riyadh. Turkish investigators say Saudi agents tortured Khashoggi, decapitated him and then dismembered his body.

Trump told the Post that "something will take place" in response to Khashoggi's death, but said the United States should not let the incident disrupt a possible $110 billion weapons sale to Riyadh he announced last year.

"It's the largest order in history," Trump said. "To give that up would hurt us far more than it hurts them . Then all they'll do is go to Russia or go to China. All that's doing is hurting us."

But one Trump supporter, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, told Fox News on Sunday, "I don't think arms should ever be seen as a jobs program."

Other U.S. lawmakers voiced skepticism of the Saudi explanation for Khashoggi's death.

Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN he believes Mohammed bin Salman was responsible, saying, "Yes, I think he did it."

A Trump critic, California Congressman Adam Schiff, told ABC News, "This ought to be a relationship-altering event for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, that we ought to suspend military sales, we ought to suspend certain security assistance."

U.S. officials are faced with reconciling the Saudi explanation for Khashoggi's death and Turkey's claim an audio recording exists of Khashoggi's torture and death. Trump denies U.S. officials have heard the audio or read transcripts of it, but the Post quoted sources saying that Central Intelligence Agency officials have listened to the audio. Verification of it would make it difficult to accept the Saudi explanation for Khashoggi's death.

European leaders and the human rights group Amnesty International expressed skepticism about the Saudi explanation.

Britain, Germany and France issued a joint statement condemning the killing of Khashoggi and said there is an "urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened." They said the Saudi explanation for the journalist's death needs to be supported by facts in order to be credible.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he will announce details of his country's investigation on Tuesday.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the circumstances around Khashoggi's death are deeply troubling, and called for a thorough, credible and transparent investigation.

Amnesty International called on Saudi Arabia to "immediately produce" Khashoggi's body so an autopsy can be performed.

Amnesty's director of campaigns for the Middle East, Samah Hadid, said a United Nations investigation would be necessary to avoid a "Saudi whitewash" of the circumstances surrounding Khashoggi's death. Hadid said such a cover-up may have been done to preserve Saudi Arabia's international business ties.

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Saudi Khashoggi Admission Fails to Stem International Outrage

By Ken Bredemeier October 21, 2018

Saudi Arabia's belated admission that writer and onetime royal insider Jamal Khashoggi died in the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul more than two weeks ago is failing to stop the international outcry over his slaying.

The Saudi claim that the 59-year-old Khashoggi brawled during a quarrel with security officials came 18 days after repeated Saudi assertions the dissident left the consulate alive and

Reported ties between the killers and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and shifting explanations being offered by Riyadh have only increased suspicion about what really happened to Khashoggi.

Allies' concerns

Allies in the West and the Gulf are becoming more anxious about the consequences from the slaying in terms of dealing with the kingdom and the possible fallout in Saudi Arabia, say analysts and diplomats.

Four of the 15 Saudi security operatives and officials who flew into Istanbul hours before Khashoggi was due to visit the consulate were among the bodyguards protecting the Crown Prince on a visit last March to London. One of them, Maher Abdul Aziz Mutreb, was photographed in London during the visit.

Last week, The Washington Post reported five members of the Saudi team that flew to Turkey had traveled to the United States in recent years on trips overlapping with visits by the Crown Prince, suggesting they are members of his security entourage.

The links between what Turkish officials describe as a hit squad dispatched to murder Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States, and the Crown Prince are complicating Riyadh's efforts to distance Mohammed bin Salman from the gruesome incident.

Shifting account

The Saudis are apparently trying to contain the blame to two high-ranking officials, Saud al-Qahtani, a close confidant of Mohammed bin Salman, and Ahmed al-Asiri, the deputy intelligence chief. Both men have been fired, according to Riyadh.

The Saudi government says 18 suspects have been arrested and officials maintain all acted independently of the Crown Prince. But Mohammed bin Salman's critics at home and abroad point to a tweet by Qahtani last year in which he said he never acted without the approval of the monarch or the Crown Prince.

World reaction

Many countries have expressed astonishment over the Saudi story that "discussions" aimed at trying to persuade Khashoggi to return to the kingdom went awry and led to a "fight and a quarrel." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "We expect transparency from Saudi Arabia about the circumstances of his death... The information available about events in the Istanbul consulate is inadequate."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has called for a full investigation, joining a similar demand by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

Australia and New Zealand announced Sunday they are joining a boycott of a major investment conference this month in Saudi Arabia, joining Britain, the Netherlands, France and the United States in protest over the Khashoggi killing.

Australia's prime minister, Scott Morrison, said Sunday the latest Saudi explanation for what happened to Khashoggi "cannot stand." Canada's foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said the explanations offered by Riyadh "lack consistency and credibility."

British lawmakers and rights campaigners are demanding targeted sanctions on Saudi officials, a demand also made by U.S. lawmakers. British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt questioned the credibility of the Saudi claims of how Khashoggi met his end. A British official told VOA, "There is no justification for this killing and how we respond will partly be determined by the truthfulness of the Saudis."

The former head of Britain intelligence service, John Sawers, said Friday he had little doubt the order to kill Khashoggi came from highest levels of the Saudi government.

Seeking answers

U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday, "I'm not satisfied until we find the answer," although he added it was "possible" the Saudi Crown Prince did not know about the killing. Trump said sanctions are possible, but he hoped that wouldn't involve halting a multi-billion-dollar arms deal, which he said would hurt the United States more than Saudi Arabia.

Turkish officials say they have audio and video evidence Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered on an office desk in the consulate. Turkish officials, who have been leaking gruesome details of the killing to pro-government media in Turkey, have threatened more revelations.

Whether the pressure reaches a breaking point for Western allies may depend on how much information the Turkish government chooses to release. Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, says when Turkey completes its investigation it will share the results "with the world." On Friday it added pressure on Riyadh by starting to interview Turkish employees of the consulate.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has left it to underlings to brief loyal media in Turkey on the unfolding investigation. That has prompted some analysts to suspect Erdogan, who bears little affection for the Saudi Crown Prince, is using the killing in an effort to secure substantial monetary compensation Saudi Arabia.

Other analysts suspect Erdogan wants the United States to readjust its strategy in the region to rely less on Riyadh and to earn Washington's gratitude by withholding all Ankara could reveal.

But the fallout from the slaying may be uncontrollable, say diplomats. Western journalists and politicians are unlikely to be satisfied with anything short of a full accounting and they remain adamant the Crown Prince, who they say is impulsive and vindictive, was behind the killing.

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Syria demands int'l probe into US-led Coalition's attacks

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Oct 20, IRNA -- Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said the heinous crime committed by the illegitimate US-led Coalition in al-Sousa and al-Bubadran villages in Deir Ezzor countryside prove once again its disregard for international law.

The ministry demanded a transparent and independent international investigation into this crime and other crimes on its territories, SANA reported.

Syria's demand came in two letters the ministry addressed to the UN Secretary-General and President of the United Nations Security Council that SANA received a copy of on Saturday.

On Friday October 19 2018, the illegal US-led Coalition targeted with warplanes residential buildings in al-Sousa and al-Bubadran villages in Deir Ezzor southeastern countryside, killing 62 civilians, mostly women and children, and injuring an unidentified number, some are in a critical condition.

The ministry reminded of earlier letters in which it indicated to the Coalition escalating its bloody attacks against innocent civilians and its use of weapons of mass destruction and weapons with an indiscriminate impact such as white phosphorus in bombarding residential areas in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, Aleppo and Hasaka.

The letters demanded the UN Security Council to take a prompt action to end these crimes and prevent their recurrence.

According to the ministry, yesterday's crime is a war crime and a crime against humanity which proves once again the Coalition's disregard for international law and the international humanitarian law, and belies the Coalition's claims of fighting ISIS terrorism while in reality it is supporting its continuity in Syria.

The ministry demanded that the UN Security Council shoulder its responsibilities in preventing these crimes and conducting a transparent and independent international investigation into them, and terminating the illegal presence of US and other foreign troops on the Syrian territories.

1396**1396

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62 killed in US-led coalition airstrikes on Deir Ezzor

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Oct 20, IRNA -- At least 62 civilians were martyred in three new massacres committed by the US-led international coalition in the villages of al-Suseh and al-Bubadran in al-Bukmal region in Deir Ezzor southern countryside.

Civil sources told SANA that jet fighters of the US-led coalition, over the past 24 hours, launched airstrikes on al-Alyat area in Al-Suseh village, al-Boukamal countryside, claiming the lives of 15 civilians, mostly children and women.

The source added that 37 civilians were also martyred as dozens were injured in the airstrikes of the coalition raids on the mosque of Othman bin Affan.

The third airstrike by the US-led coalition, according to the sources, targeted Ammar bin Yasser mosque in the village of al-Boubadran, claiming the livers of 10 civilians and wounding others.

The sources said that the death toll is likely to rise as most of the wounded sustained serious injuries and the difficulty of being evacuated from the rubble of houses destroyed by the airstrikes.

Since it was illegally formed outside the jurisdiction of the U.N. Security Council in 2014, under the pretext of fighting ISIS, the alliance has been committing massacres against innocent civilians, killing hundreds of people and injuring others.

On Saturday, Oct. 13, the US-led coalition lunched airstrikes with the internationally-banned white phosphorus bombs on Hajin city in Deir-Ezzor southeastern countryside, claiming the lives of a number of civilians.

1396**1396

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Some 88,000 Takfiri terrorists killed in Russian airstrikes in Syria in 3 years: Defense minister

Iran Press TV

Sat Oct 20, 2018 01:35PM

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says almost 88,000 foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorists have been killed in Syria ever since Moscow launched its counter-terrorism airstrikes against militant redoubts in the Arab country more than three years ago.

"Over the course of the operation, a total of more than 87,500 militants have been eliminated, and 1,411 settlements in addition to more than 95 percent of Syria's territory have been liberated," Shoigu said at the fifth council of defense ministers of ASEAN member states and their dialogue partners in Singapore on Saturday.

"Key settlements have been liberated and main communications have been brought into operation. Syrian armed forces currently control territory, where 90 percent of the population resides," he added.

Russian jets have been carrying out air raids against targets belonging to the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and those of other terror outfits inside Syria at the Damascus government's formal request since September 2015.

The airstrikes have helped Syrian forces advance against anti-Damascus militants, who have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country since March 2011.

On August 22, Russia's Defense Ministry stated that Moscow had dispatched 63,012 troops to Syria over the course of its involvement in the conflict-plagued Arab country.

The ministry said 25,738 ranking officers and 434 generals as well as 4,349 artillery and rocket specialists were among the troops sent to Syria.

It added that the Russian personnel have "received combat experience" in the war-torn country.

The ministry further noted that its forces had tested 231 types of modern weaponry, including aircraft, surface-to-air systems and cruise missiles, in Syria.

Death toll from US-led airstrikes against Syria's Dayr al-Zawr rises to 62

Meanwhile, the death toll from separate aerial assaults conducted by the US-led coalition purportedly fighting Daesh in Syria's eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr has reached 62.

Local sources, requesting not to be named, told Syria's official news agency SANA on Saturday that an airstrike targeted the village of al-Susah on the outskirts of Abu Kamal city, leaving at least 15 civilians, including women and children, dead and many more wounded.

Thirty-seven civilians were also killed and tens of others injured when a US-led aerial attack pounded Osman ibn Affan Mosque.

Separately, at least 10 civilians were killed and many more wounded as US-led military aircraft struck Ammar bin Yasser Mosque in al-Bubadran village.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.

Addressing world leaders at the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 29, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said the US-led coalition had been doing everything it could since the onset of its airstrikes but combat terrorism and militant outfits wreaking havoc in the Arab country.

Muallem described the military alliance as "illegitimate" and censured the "hegemonic policies" pursued by certain countries against the Damascus government.

Exposure to white phosphorous can cause extensive and deep second- and third-degree burns, while inhalation of the fume released by it may result in illness or death.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

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Car-bomb blast rocks NW Syria

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Damascus, Oct 21, IRNA -- Explosion of a bomb-laden car rocked Idlib, a city in northwestern part of Syria.

The media, affiliated with terrorists, announced that the car has been detonated near al-Ghosour Street.

No reports have yet been released on the exact casualty count or damage to properties.

Massacre, terror, bombardment and attacking meetings are among usual accidents in northern Syria and near borders with Turkey.

After the evacuation of Al-Fu'ah and Kafriya, Idlib is completely occupied by terrorists.

According to some statistics, 146,000 terrorists affiliated with 103 groups have been transferred to Idlib and Jarabulus.

9376**1420

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Air Force takes delivery of first upgraded F-16 fighter jet

ROC Central News Agency

2018/10/20 21:09:53

Taipei, Oct. 20 (CNA) The first upgraded F-16 fighter jet, known as the F-16 Viper or F-16V, has been delivered to the Air Force by state-owned aviation firm Aerospace Industrial Development Corp. (AIDC), an Air Force official said Saturday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that three other F-16Vs are currently undergoing extensive flight testing and are expected to be delivered to the Air Force by year-end.

The fighters are part of a NT$110 billion (US$3.68 billion) program launched by the government in 2016 to upgrade Taiwan's 144 F-16 A/B jets into F-16Vs, the largest and most important upgrade ever undertaken by the Air Force.

In order to carry out the program locally, the manufacturer of the jets -- Lockheed Martin in the United States -- sent engineers to Taiwan last year to help train local personnel at the AIDC on how to carry out the upgrades.

According to the AIDC, the retrofit program includes installing advanced equipment on the fighters, including the AN/APG active electronically scanned array radar system currently used in the U.S. F-22 and F-35 fighters.

The comprehensive upgrade of the Air Force's entire F-16 fleet is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.

(By Matt Yu and Ko Lin)

Enditem/J

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U.S. mulling new warship passage through Taiwan Strait:WSJ

ROC Central News Agency

2018/10/21 18:03:56

New York, Oct. 20 (CNA) The United States is considering sending naval vessels through the Taiwan Strait after two U.S. Navy ships sailed through the strait in July, sending a message to China about the U.S. military's right to travel those and any other international waters, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Saturday, citing two U.S. officials.

The operation, which is currently in the planning stage, would include at least two ships on a multi-day mission, and should it happen, will come at a time of renewed tension between Washington and Beijing, according to the officials.

The passage would also come just after U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met with regional defense chiefs in Singapore and stressed that the U.S. can sail anywhere it wants in international waters, according to the report.

"The U.S. will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, and we encourage all nations to confidently exercise their right to do the same," Mattis said at the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus).

U.S. Navy vessels have frequently sailed through waters in the South China Sea that China claims as its own in recent years as part of its freedom of navigation operations to challenge China's territorial claims, but they have seldom sailed through the Taiwan Strait.

While in Singapore, Mattis met with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe () in what he called an effort at resetting an increasingly strained military relationship between the two countries.

Relations between the U.S. and China have dramatically soured this year over trade tensions and growing friction in the political and military arenas.

This is evidenced by Washington's announcement of a planned US$330 million arms sale to Taiwan, its sanctions on the Chinese military's Equipment Development Department and its director, Li Shangfu (), for purchases of Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 surface-to-air missiles from Russia, as well as photos showing the moment when a Chinese destroyer came perilously close to a U.S. destroyer during a tense standoff in the South China Sea in late September.

The WSJ report said a U.S. Navy passage through the strait will be seen by Taiwan as a demonstration of support for the nation.

In July, two U.S. Navy ships -- the USS Mustin and the USS Benfold -- sailed through the strait, the first such passage by U.S. Navy ships in about a year, following a series of Chinese military drills around the island.

Taiwan's Presidential Office said at that time that the country attaches great importance to peace and stability in the strait and the region and that as a responsible member of the international community, will continue striving to maintain the status quo across the strait and ensure peace, prosperity and development in the Asia-Pacific region.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that in the face of a constantly growing military threat from China, the government will speed up its investment in national defense and strengthen its self- defense capabilities.

A Reuters report Saturday also cited U.S. officials as saying that Washington is considering a new operation to send warships through the Taiwan Strait, a mission aimed at ensuring free passage through the strategic waterway but which risks heightening tension with China.

(By Ozzy Yin and Evelyn Kao)

Enditem/J

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Here's what happens at the UN General Assembly, when world leaders have gone home

19 October 2018 - After the world media spotlight fades on the General Assembly's annual high-level debate, the work of the Assembly, the UN's primary deliberative body, shifts to its so-called Main Committees, where the bulk of the Organization's work get done.

While the six-day "general debate" grabs headlines for its political and policy speeches from Queens, Kings, Presidents and Prime Ministers, the Assembly's committees seldom make the news.

Their prosaic names  the First through the Sixth Committee  tell you nothing about what actually goes on when they meet.

But, by taking on matters from disarmament to decolonization; from economic growth to humanitarian aid, these committees work away each week, far from the limelight, translating the policies unveiled by political leaders and senior UN officials into action to be implemented in the real world.

In this feature series over the next few weeks, UN News will be giving you an informative glimpse inside the day-to-day the world of the General Assembly's main committees.

What do these committees do?

Because of the sheer volume of work to get through, the bulk of the General Assembly's efforts get channelled into the Main Committees.

Here, the issues are discussed, a common response formulated  by vote, if necessary  and recommendations are then sent back to the Assembly Plenary of all 193 Member States, for its consideration.

Some agenda items such as the question of Palestine are only discussed in the General Assembly Plenary.

There are six Main Committees of the General Assembly:

- First Committee  Agenda items related to disarmament and international security



- Second Committee  Economic and financial matters



- Third Committee  Social, humanitarian, human rights and cultural agenda items



- Fourth Committee Also known as the "Special Political and Decolonization Committee", deals with political subjects not covered under the First Committee



- Fifth Committee  UN administration andthe budget



- Sixth Committee  Matters relating to international law

Each Committee is a Committee of the Whole, consisting of all 193 Members of the General Assembly. Each member of the Committee has one vote.

According to the Assembly's Rules of Procedure, decisions of committees are made by a majority of the members present and voting. Committee members may also come to decisions by consensus.

Alongside the Main Committees, the General Assembly also includes the nine-member Credentials Committee, which handles the official credentialing of Member States' representatives; the General Committee, which oversees the Assembly's progress overall; and a number of other subsidiary bodies. These subsidiary entities may not be made up of all UN Member States.

Who does what  committee officials

The bureau of each Main Committee consists of a Chair, three Vice-Chairs, and a Rapporteur  who produces the official Committee report. They may be elected on the day of the election of the President of the General Assembly, or at the first formal meeting of the Committee.

According to the Assembly's Rules of Procedure, no Member State can serve both as Vice-President and Chair of a Main Committee during the same session. Furthermore, the Chair of a Main Committee cannot cast a vote, but another member of their delegation may vote in their place.

The Main Committee Chairs are also members of the General Committee, which is chaired by the President of the General Assembly.

Many kinds of meeting (a UN speciality)

The Committees, as with its parent General Assembly, hold formal or informal meetings.

The formal meetings can consider only those items on a particular Committee's agenda. Furthermore, decisions  in the form of a draft resolution or decision  for the Plenary's consideration, can only be taken at a formal meeting.

An informal meeting can be held for a variety of reasons. Such meetings may include briefings by Secretariat officials or technical experts, interactions with civil society, consultations or negotiations. No Committee decisions can be taken in informal meetings. Informal meetings also generally do not have translation services, which are, obviously, a vital part of reaching agreement.

In addition to formal and informal, meetings can be open or closed.

Open meetings, as the name suggests, are open to all Member States and Observers, UN entities, civil society, media and the general public (security needs and seating availability, may limit the space open to curious bystanders). These meetings may be broadcast, covered by the media, and meeting records published.

On the other hand, different levels of restrictions apply to closed meetings. Generally, only Member States, Observers or invited participants may attend these meetings. On any given day, the Journal of the UN indicates which meetings are open and which are closed. However, a decision to close an open meeting can be taken during the meeting.

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Bolton Visiting Russia Amid Reports U.S. Might Withdraw From Nuclear Treaty

RFE/RL October 20, 2018



October 20, 2018 04:52 GMT

White House national security adviser John Bolton leaves on a trip to Russia and the Caucasus on October 20 amid reports that Washington is moving toward withdrawing from a bedrock Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty that it has accused Russia of violating.

The New York Times reported on October 19 that Bolton plans to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Trump administration is preparing to leave the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), negotiated by former President Ronald Reagan during the waning days of the Soviet Union.

Despite the threat, the newspaper said no final decision had been made on withdrawing from the treaty. White House officials did not deny The New York Times report.

The newspaper said the United States believes Russia is violating the deal by deploying tactical nuclear weapons in places like Russia's Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic Sea to intimidate former Soviet allies in Eastern Europe that have joined the Western bloc.

Meanwhile, The Guardian newspaper reported that Bolton recently recommended that Trump withdraw from the treaty.

In 2014, Washington publicly accused Moscow of developing a ground-launched cruise missile that U.S. officials said was in direct violation of the 1987 agreement because it could allow Moscow to launch a nuclear strike on Europe on short notice. The U.S. State Department later said Moscow had begun deploying the missile.

Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Russia's violation of the INF treaty was "untenable" and, unless it changed course, the United States would respond.

"Across two administrations, the United States and our allies have attempted to bring Russia back into full and verifiable compliance with INF," a senior administration official told reporters in Washington on October 19. "Despite our objections, Russia continues to produce and field prohibited cruise missiles and has ignored calls for transparency."

Russia, for its part, has repeatedly denied the U.S. accusations, and also has alleged that some elements of the U.S. missile-defense systems in Europe are in violation of the agreement.

The treaty, signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was the first arms control agreement to eliminate an entire class of missiles.

During his visit to Moscow, Bolton is also expected to broach other major topics with Russian officials, including North Korea, Ukraine, and Syria.

He said in a tweet on October 19 that he will start his visit meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. Russian news agencies reported that the Kremlin is also arranging a meeting with Putin during the trip.

While in Moscow, Bolton will emphasize the importance of maintaining UN sanctions against North Korea to keep pressure on Pyongyang to eliminate its nuclear weapons program. Russia and China have suggested easing sanctions.

Bolton will later travel to Azerbaijan for discussions on a range of regional issues, including Iran, before continuing to Armenia and Georgia.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/bolton-visiting -russia-caucasus-us-might-withdraw-cold-war-era-bedrock- nuclear-arms-treaty-inf-bolton/29554068.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Trump Vows to Quit Nuclear Arms Treaty With Russia

Sputnik News

23:24 20.10.2018(updated 11:57 21.10.2018)

US President Donald Trump said that he will pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, media reported.

Donald Trump claimed that Russia is violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States, and that he will pull out of it.

The treaty was signed in 1987 by the USSR and the US, and stipulates the elimination of nuclear and conventional missiles and their launchers with ranges of 5001,000 km (310620 mi) and 1,0005,500 km (6203,420 mi).

Commenting on his decision, Donald Trump said that the United States needs to develop this type of military equipment.

"We'll have to develop those weapons," the US president said, commenting on his announcement.

On Friday, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was preparing to exit the three-decade-old Cold War-era treaty next week.

A source within Russian Foreign Ministry commented on the situation, saying that Trump made the move because of Washington's dreams of a unipolar world.

"The main motive is the dream of the unipolar world. Will that come true? No," the source said.

Moscow and Washington have repeatedly accused each other of violating the treaty. The administration of former US president Barack Obama, however, decided not to abandon the deal.

Last year, a senior Russian legislator warned that Moscow would prepare an adequate response to ensure the country's protection if the United States decides to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Meanwhile, Europe is in favor of the extension of the Russia-US 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel stated last year that if the deal isn't renewed in 2021, the security of Europe would be threatened.

 Sputnik

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Trump Declares U.S. Will Withdraw From Cold War-Era Missile Treaty

Mike Eckel October 21, 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States will withdraw from a key Cold War-era arms control treaty with Russia.

Trump made the declaration on October 20 as his national security adviser, John Bolton, flew to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin about the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and other issues.

Trump also repeated longstanding U.S. accusations that Moscow had violated the agreement.

"We're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out," he told reporters during a campaign stop in Nevada.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years," Trump said.

"And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to."

"We'll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let's really get smart and let's none of us develop those weapons.

"But if Russia's doing it and if China's doing it, and we're adhering to the agreement, that's unacceptable," he added.

The Kremlin did not immediately comment, although Russian state media quoted a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry as claiming the U.S. motive in pulling out of the treat was its dream of creating a "unipolar world."

The 1987 treaty prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing, or deploying a medium-range, ground-launched cruise missile.

U.S. officials have said Russia had been developing the missile for years and, in 2014, Washington made its accusations public.

The U.S. State Department later said Moscow had begun deploying the weapon.

Asked about the U.S. decision, a senior U.S. administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told RFE/RL that: "Across two administrations, the United States and our allies have attempted to bring Russia back into full and verifiable compliance with INF."

He added: "Despite our objections, Russia continues to produce and field prohibited cruise misses and has ignored calls for transparency."

Russia, for its part, has repeatedly denied the U.S. accusations and also alleged that some elements of the U.S. missile-defense systems in Europe were in violation of the agreement.

The Guardian and The New York Times reported on October 19 that U.S. officials had begun notifying European allies of the U.S. decision to withdraw. The Times said also that no final decision had been made.

The treaty, signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was the first arms control agreement to eliminate an entire class of missiles.

Trump's declaration came just days after Putin said Russia would only use its nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack on the country, in what some arms control experts said appeared to be an important clarification of Russian doctrine.

Putin's comments appeared in part to be a response to the new U.S. "nuclear posture review," a Defense Department planning document that lays out the criteria for when Washington would use nuclear weapons.

The review, released in February, calls for revamping the U.S. arsenal and developing new low-yield atomic weapons.

The document also highlighted a Russian doctrine that experts say has been around since the Cold War but has gained new attention amid the tensions between Moscow and Washington.

Under that doctrine, known as "escalate to de-escalate," Moscow stipulates it would use or threaten to use smaller-yield nuclear weapons in a limited conventional conflict in Europe to compel the United States and NATO to back down.

That was seen by many Western officials as lowering the threshold for when such weapons would be used.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-pullout-inf-russia- reagan-gorobachev-nuclear-treaty/29554782.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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China and Portugal on Monday agreed to expand cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative and to strengthen connectivity between Asia and Europe.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi holds talks with his Portuguese counterpart Augusto Santos Silva on Monday, October 22, 2018. [Photo: fmprc.gov.cn]

The two sides reached the consensus when Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with his Portuguese counterpart Augusto Santos Silva.

"China attaches importance to the Portuguese side's hope to strengthen the China-Portugal comprehensive strategic partnership and to deepen pragmatic cooperation, and stands ready to work with Portugal to fully prepare for the high-level exchanges between the two countries in the next stage, Wang said.

"China appreciates Portugal's support for the Belt and Road Initiative and hopes to expand mutually-beneficial cooperation between the two sides by strengthening the interconnectivity between Asia and Europe."

Silva said that the Belt and Road Initiative was in line with the target for enhancing Europe-Asia interconnectivity, and Portugal hoped to take an active part in the joint construction and become a key hub connecting land and sea routes between the two continents.ISTANBUL - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump spoke by phone about the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident journalist who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, said Turkish presidential sources on Monday. The sources said the two leaders highlighted the need to "shed light on all aspects" of the case.

Erdogan said he will release the results of his country's investigation into the death on Tuesday.

The two leaders also spoke about the release of American evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson, which recently took place recently after Brunson spent nearly two years in a Turkish prison; as well as the situation in Syria, particularly American support for the Kurdish YPG, which Turkey considers terrorists.The state Department of Health has reported the first flu death in Connecticut this season. And though experts said this isnt necessarily a harbinger of a nastier than usual flu season, they say it should drive home the message that the flu is dangerous, and people should get vaccinatedess.

Sometimes people dont take the flu seriously, but its deadly, said Dr. Zane Saul, chief of infectious disease at Bridgeport Hospital.

According to the health department, the person who died was older than 65. No other details about the individual were released.

The Department of Public Health reported that between Aug. 26 and Oct. 13, 22 people in the state were hospitalized with the flu, and 41 tested positive for the contagious respiratory illness. Cases of the flu are still classified as sporadic in the state, meaning that small numbers of laboratory-confirmed influenza cases or a single laboratory-confirmed influenza outbreak has been reported.

Local hospitals said they have only see a handful of cases so far, but expect that rate to pick up soon. At Bridgeport Hospital, Saul said he wasnt aware of anyone being hospitalized there with flu, but that several people had come in with symptoms.

Though Saul said that October, is a little early for a death, it doesnt seem that flu activity is anywhere near its peak in the state. And he said that one early death doesnt mean the state is in for a particularly bad flu season.

Dr. Goran Miljkovic, infectious disease specialist at Bridgeport Hospital, said adults 65 and older are particularly vulnerable to the flu, along with young children, and those with compromised immune systems.

He also said that a single early death doesnt necessarily cast a pall over the rest of the season.

More News Americares, Walgreens partner for flu shots

Even one case of flu can lead to a death, Miljkovic said.

However, the state is coming off a particularly bad flu season. Last season, there were 154 deaths from the illness in Connecticut  including those of at least three children. It was the deadliest flu season in five years, according to the state Department of Public Health.

Nationwide, more than 80,000 people died from flu last year.

Influenza facts Here are some facts about flu activity in Connecticut, from the Connecticut Department of Public Health. A total of 41 people tested positive for the flu between Aug. 26 and Oct. 13 Of those, 15 patients were from New Haven County, 13 were from Hartford County, six were from Fairfield County, four were from Litchfield County and three were from Windham County A total of 22 people in state were hospitalized with lab-confirmed flu between Aug. 26 and Oct. 13 Of those hospitalized, 15 were associated with Type A (subtype unspecified) influenza; four were associated with influenza A (H3N2) and three with influenza B. There has been one flu-related death in Connecticut so far this season. See More Collapse

At least part of the reason the last flu season was so difficult was that the flu vaccine was not as effective as many had hoped. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last seasons flu vaccine was, on average, 36 percent effective at preventing flu infections.

In September, Congress approved $140 million in new federal funding toward a universal flu vaccine. That is on top of a $40 million increase in federal funding for development of a universal flu vaccine secured earlier this year. On Monday, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, was at Hartford Hospital to announce he is helping to push legislation that would provide $1 billion in new flu research investment over the next five years.

Meanwhile, doctors said that even when the flu shot isnt a perfect match for the strains of flu circulating in an area, it does offer some protection.

Influenza is a disease that can cause pneumonia and death, said Dr. Michael Parry, director of infectious disease at Stamford Hospital. Thats why we are so aggressive about getting people vaccinated.

Staff writer Jim Shay contributed to this report.GREENWICH  Western Middle School will retire its International Baccalaureate magnet program in favor of a new theme that administrators will announce sometime next year.

Western adopted the IB magnet theme in 2013 in hopes of attracting students from other parts of Greenwich and balancing out the schools racial make up.

Students of color comprise 55.9 percent of the overall population at Western, 17.4 percent higher than the district average and nearing the states definition of racial imbalance, according to enrollment data from this month.

In particular, school administrators hoped to attract rising sixth graders from the International School at Dundee, an eastern Greenwich elementary school with the IB theme.

But IB attracted very few students to Western, causing administrators to decide to try something else. The new theme has not been set, but the school is working with Deputy Superintendent Ann Carabillo to present next calendar year, Principal Gordon Beinstein said in an email.

The decision to drop IB caught school board members off guard last week when they discovered a proposed budget transfer with the explanation there has been a change in the magnet theme at WMS and IB funds (are) no longer required.

Board members claimed they did not know the school had started moving toward a new plan.

Administrators, you guys have to be more thoughtful with the board and not do drive-bys, board member Peter Sherr said. I was shocked to learn someone was talking about retiring IB.

Administrators countered that board members had been clued to a change in April. In that month, then-Superintendent Jill Gildea suggested changing the IB theme to Innovation Lab Junior, a spin on the school-within-a-school model at Greenwich High School in which students learn by doing projects, using advanced technology and blending their courses.

A project plan devised by administrators for developing a new theme would build confidence on the school board, said board member Jennifer Dayton.

Before moving forward, administrators should answer questions about resources and ideas for family and community outreach, she said.

Board Secretary Barbara ONeill requested research, a timeline for implementation, projected costs for materials and personnel, and goals for measuring success of a new program.

The board should have voted on that, just as we voted on the theme, ONeill said. It should be a real work plan, not Oh, by the way, were doing X, Y, Z, she said.

Carabillo admitted communication of the process was opaque.

I know it wasnt clear, you know it wasnt clear, Carabillo said. Moving forward, well make that clear.

Sherr insisted Interim Superintendent Ralph Mayo is not to blame for the miscommunication, but the new district leader assumed responsibility anyway.

Somebody signed the transfer, and that was me, Mayo said. Dont look at the cabinet, look right here.

jo.kroeker@hearstmediact.comWilliam Morgan believed he had a big story to tell. What happened to him ended up being even bigger.

An itinerant stone mason and failed brewer cursed by what one critical observer called "a wonderful faculty for getting into debt and none for getting out," Morgan, 52, turned his ambition to writing in 1826. He thought he had a seemingly surefire way to cash in on the conspiratorial zeitgeist that flourished in the early years of the 19th century and remains a hallmark of American politics.

Morgan was poised to expose what he said were the dark secrets of the Freemasons, a fraternal order that over the years counted 21 signatories of the Declaration of Independence and George Washington as members.

Almost 200 years before conspiracy theorists raised alarms about the "deep state" and claimed that mass school shootings were hoaxes, some Americans regarded the Freemasons as a sinister cabal that threatened the future of America.

The occasionally disturbing language of Masonic ritual as described by Morgan seemed to validate these fears. Applicants vowed to "(bind) myself under no less penalty, than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the roots, and my body buried in the rough sands of the sea at low water mark," according to Morgan's book. Candidates for the rank of third-degree Mason were required to acknowledge that failing to adhere to the order's secrecy requirement would justify having "my body severed in two" and "my bowels burned to ashes."

Morgan's publishing plans aroused the ire of local Freemasons, some of whom apparently took their vows of silence literally rather than figuratively.

What happened next sounds like something from a Dan Brown novel.

As word spread about the book, Morgan's prospective publisher was threatened. Morgan was jailed on trumped-up charges involving a debt of $2.69 and abducted upon his release, screaming "murder" as he was taken away, according to historian William Preston Vaughn. His kidnappers, Vaughn writes, were the head of the Masonic lodge at Canandaigua, New York, and two other Masons.

The aspiring author was never seen again and was widely believed to have been killed by his captors. Vaughn argues that they probably intended to smuggle him into Canada but killed him when that plan fell through.

Subsequent efforts over the next five years to prosecute those responsible produced a handful of convictions and sentences no longer than 28 months, which fanned the flames of anti-Masonic hysteria. "The question of one man's fate was translated into public concern as to whether there existed a secret society powerful enough and to prevent punishment of the Morgan collaborators," according to Vaughn.

The mysterious fate of Morgan animated an uneasy alliance of cranks and ambitious politicians and formed the basis of the first third party in the United States. The Anti-Masonic Party flourished in the late 1820s and early 1830s, before the partisan divisions of the antebellum era solidified into Democrats versus Whigs.

Members of Masonic lodges "are held in allegiance to an unauthorised government and code of laws," Pennsylvania Anti-Masons warned in 1831. "(W)ithout attacking Masonry by means of the Ballot Box, where it is entrenched behind the political patronage and power of the government, all efforts to destroy its usurpations on the rights and privileges of the people must fail."

Far from threatening republican government in the United States, Masons actually championed self-government, journalist Peter Feuerherd has written. "Many historians note that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights both seem to be heavily influenced by the Masonic 'civil religion,' which focuses on freedom, free enterprise, and a limited role for the state," according to Feuerherd.

"The fraternity embodied European Enlightenment ideals of liberty, autonomy, and God as envisioned by Deist philosophers as a Creator who largely left humanity alone," he wrote.

But where Masons saw benevolence, their foes saw danger. "At this very moment, its foot is on the neck of our liberties," the Expositor newspaper of Wilmington, Delaware, editorialized in 1832.

In the aftermath of Morgan's disappearance, legislative candidates who ran against the Freemasons showed surprising strength in New York, according to historian Charles McCarthy. As the National Republican Party led by President John Quincy Adams began to collapse, opposition to Freemasonry seemed to offer a viable basis for a new political organization.

Among those drawn to the movement was William Seward, then an aspiring young politician who rose to prominence in later decades as a Republican senator from New York and as secretary of state for President Abraham Lincoln. Seward was elected to the state Senate in 1830 as an anti-Masonic candidate and attended an anti-Masonic convention in Philadelphia later that year, according to Seward biographer Walter Stahr.

Adams was another prominent foe of Freemasonry. Although he stopped short of enlisting in the third party, he shared its suspicions. "That (Freemasonry) is a most pernicious institution I am profoundly convinced," Adams wrote in his diary in November 1831, "and how it has arisen and grown, and spread over the world, and drawn into its vortex so many wise and good and great men is scarcely credible."

Two months before Adams confided to his diary, a gathering of anti-Masonic politicians in Baltimore pondered the same question. The proceedings "were replete with reports and addresses on the self-assigned task of curbing if not extirpating Masonry as an element in the public life of the nation," William S. Odlin wrote in The Washington Post in 1930.

Almost as an afterthought, the anti-Masonic delegates in Baltimore chose a presidential candidate - and in doing so became the first presidential nominating convention. William Wirt of Baltimore, who had served as attorney general for President James Monroe and Adams and prosecuted Aaron Burr, accepted the party's nomination.

But he did so with profound ambivalence. Wirt admitted he had been a Mason as a young man. He was alarmed by what happened to Morgan yet refused to believe that it reflected on Freemasons as a whole. "But gentlemen," he protested in the letter he wrote accepting the party's nomination, "this was not, and could not be, masonry as understood by Washington. The thing is impossible. The suspicion would be parricide."

If delegates found his views on Masonry insufficiently resolute, he assured them "that I should retire from (the nomination) with far more pleasure than I should accept it."

They didn't let him off the hook. In the end, Wirt carried only one state - Vermont - and soon the Anti-Masonic Party was well on its way to the oblivion that has awaited every third party in American history. As for Wirt, he became ill in early 1834 - and after undergoing the standard medical treatments of the day, including the application of leeches, according to historian William C. Robert - the one-time presidential candidate died in Washington on Feb. 18. But Wirt, who is buried in Washington's Congressional Cemetery, returned to the headlines 170 years later in a ghoulish epilogue.

In 2004, D.C. Councilman Jim Graham contacted the cemetery to report that he had been given a skull in a tin box with the words "Hon. Wm. Wirt" painted on it, The Post's Peter Carlson reported. Cemetery officials eventually took possession of the skull from Graham and arranged for a forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian to examine it.

After entering the Wirt tomb and discovering that remains had been disturbed by grave robbers, investigators concluded that the skull was indeed Wirt's. It was one of 40 owned by a collector who died in 2003, according to Library of Congress guest blogger Rebecca Boggs Roberts. The collector was not a suspect in the theft of the skull, which was probably taken in the late 1970s or early 1980s when the cemetery was in disrepair and thefts were common, Roberts wrote.

Evidence of Masonic evil, perhaps? Her conclusion would no doubt disappoint conspiracy theorists or fans of best-selling authors. "The answer to who stole William Wirt's skull," according to Roberts, "will remain a mystery."WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump vowed Monday to cut off or "substantially" reduce aid to three Latin American nations, voicing fresh frustration as a growing caravan of migrants that originated in Honduras continued to make its way toward the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.," Trump said in one of a string of morning tweets on the subject. "We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them."

It was not immediately clear what payments Trump was alluding to or the extent to which he could act without congressional approval.

Later Monday, in an exchange with reporters before leaving Washington for a rally in Texas, Trump again mentioned the three countries and that the U.S. gives them "tremendous amounts of money" for nothing."

"Every year, we give them foreign aid," Trump said. "And they did nothing for us. Nothing."

Asked about his claim that the caravan includes "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners," Trump told reporters to go look for themselves.

"Go into the middle of the caravan, take your cameras and search, OK?" Trump said. "You're going to find MS-13, you're going to find Middle Eastern, you're going to find everything. And guess what? We're not allowing them in our country. We want safety."

In his morning tweets, Trump also expressed frustration with Mexico's military and police, saying they appear "unable to stop the Caravan" and that he has alerted the U.S. Border Patrol and military to what he termed a national emergency.

Ahead of the Nov. 6 midterms, Trump has sought to turn the caravan into a symbol of the larger issue of immigration, which the White House believes can be used to drive up turnout among the Republican base.

Trump made that point explicitly in another of his Monday morning tweets.

"Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!" Trump wrote. "Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally."

Although Trump blames the Democrats, a pair of immigration bills he had backed failed in the Republican-controlled House amid policy disputes between the GOP's conservative and more moderate wings.

In 2014, when tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors and families from Central America overwhelmed U.S. Border Patrol stations, Congress authorized a $750 million aid package to the Northern Triangle countries to boost economic growth and improve public safety to help create conditions that would prevent the exodus of migrants.

That hasn't worked, but experts said the strategy would take up to a decade and require continued investment and oversight under a coordinated strategy that was upended when Trump succeeded President Barack Obama.

In the fiscal year just ended, U.S. aid to Guatemala totaled $83.7 million, to Honduras $58.3 million and to El Salvador $50.7 million. All were sharply lower than in the previous years. In the fiscal year that just began, planned foreign spending for Guatemala is $69.4 million, for Honduras $65.7 million and for El Salvador $45.7 million.

As of Sunday, the caravan of migrants from Central America had grown to roughly 5,000 people, a massive group that stretched along the main highway in Tapachula, Mexico, for more than half a mile.

- - -

The Washington Post's Carol Morello contributed to this report.ROME - In 2030 there will be 129 million children with growth problems due to malnutrition, most of the time caused by the malnutrition of their adolescent mothers. The inter-generational cycle of malnutrition depends on a series of causes that, in order to be resolved must be dealt with in an integrated manner, noted Save the Children.

The humanitarian aid organization will be in Rome on Monday and Tuesday for the International Conference "Leaving no one behind - making the case for adolescent girls," organized by IFAD and Save the Children, with support of the Canadian Government.

The conference will be held at IFAD. ''Every year in the world, about 12 million girls get married prematurely and 16 million adolescents become mothers. While girls play an essential role in the economic and human development of their families and communities, they are strongly threatened by varying experiences of exclusion and discrimination, such as early marriages and/or early pregnancies, violence, all kind of abuses, and poor access to essential services,'' a Save the Children statement notes. "Adolescent girls, especially if they are undernourished, are more likely to die in childbirth or to give life to children with nutritional deficits, who are more vulnerable and exposed to premature death," emphasizes Daniela Fatarella, Deputy CEO of Save the Children Italy, the international organization that since 1919 fights to save the lives of children and guarantee them a future. "To stop the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition it is important to invest in young girls, improve their nutritional health and above all, empower them, providing them with necessary life-skills to strengthen them, improve their self-esteem and ability to emancipate themselves, both socially and economically. Ensuring appropriate nutrition for adolescent girls,'' she added.

US airstrikes kill dozens in eastern Syria mosque - sources During Friday prayers. Coalition partially admits

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, OCTOBER 22 - The US-led anti-ISIS coalition in eastern Syria conducted an airstrike on a mosque last Friday that killed "dozens of civilians" in an area near the border with Iraq, where an offensive by US-backed Kurdish-Syrian fighters is currently underway, said local sources, citing healthcare workers and activists in the region.



The international anti-ISIS coalition said in a statement that it hit a mosque in the area of Susa, but said those who died in the airstrike were Islamic State fighters.



The statement did not report any civilian deaths.



It said the mosque was targeted because various jihadist militants were gathered there.



Local sources said the airstrike on the Uthman mosque in Susa took place during Friday prayers and that there were "dozens of civilians" killed.



It said the bodies of those killed are still trapped in the rubble of the mosque and surrounding buildings.



The information cannot be independently verified.(ANSAmed).



Reliance Jio is expected to become the 10th largest phone brand in the world, according to Digitimes Research, which predicts that 25-30 million Jio Phones will ship this year, all of them powered by the new Kai OS platform.

The original Jio Phone was unveiled in July last year and the carrier managed to ship 18 million units until the end of 2017. Thats just half a year of shipping and of just one model. It helped that carrier Reliance was offering the original Jio Phone effectively for free. Recently, the company launched a QWERTY-packing sequel, the Jio Phone 2.

KaiOS powers other feature phones as well, including the likes of the Nokia 8110 4G. TCL is selling Kai OS phones too, under the alcatel brand (licensed from Nokia).

Digitimes believe that the platform will continue to rise in popularity in emerging markets and could conquer 3% of the global OS market in 2019. Last year, feature phones outpaced smartphone growth, Jio even beat Apple in overall phone market share.

Kai (a Firefox OS) was designed to provide smartphone-like functionality, including Google Maps and Assistant without requiring the advanced hardware to run something as complex as Android.

SourceOppo K1 arrived two weeks ago with a waterdrop notch. The phone kept appearing under a different model name on Geekbench and finally arrived today at the company website as Oppo R15x with more storage.

Both phones have otherwise similar specs, including the UD fingerprint scanner and the selfie camera. The company is yet to unveil the full specs, but the key features are already outed, along with pricing and availability.

Oppo R15x arrives with a 6.4 AMOLED display with what appears to be a Synaptics optical sensor underneath it. The company claims there is a 91% screen-to-body ratio. The front-facing camera is embedded in the notch, with the speaker making its way in the bezel.

The snapper is 25 MP with over 800 detection scenes and AI features. The main setup is not listed on the website, but if the K1 formula is preserved we are looking at a 16 MP f/1.7 primary camera with a secondary 2 MP for depth-sensing. The phone runs Color OS 5.2, based on Android Oreo. The battery capacity is yet to be revealed.



Oppo R15x from all sides

Biggest difference between the two phones is the upgraded storage. Oppo R15x arrives with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage as a sole memory option. The phone will come in two gradient colors - Nebula and Ice/Glacier. The price is CNY2,499, which is around $360 or 310, with the phone being up for pre-order. Official sales will begin on November 1.

Source (in Chinese) | ViaSamsung has filed a patent that describes a way to turn the entire display of a phone into a fingerprint reader. Current in-display fingerprint readers are not any bigger than the old readers and are fixed in place, so they are not as convenient as they can be.

The patent describes an optical reader and specifically notes that it can be applied to foldable phones. This type of sensor will give apps more freedom in positioning the authentication UI on the screen so it will be used in tablets and other devices as well. Heres how Samsung imagines the reader:



Patent drawings of Samsung's all-display fingerprint reader

Dont worry about the notch in the image, chances are that Samsung is looking to sell the all-display fingerprint reader to other manufacturers instead of adopting the notch. Anyway, the new reader requires a low-power processor to wait for the user to touch the screen while the main chipset sleeps.

The reader will scan a finger three times, each scan requiring about 20-30ms. The brightness of the screen is adjusted between each scan (which takes about 200ms) for improved resilience and accuracy. The display goes typically between 200 nits and 600 nits and even a local high brightness mode is used to go over 1,000nits.

In total, it would require around 700ms to complete a scan, which in line with Synaptics optical fingerprint reader.

Source (PDF) | Via (in Dutch)ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean

(ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 22 - These are the main events scheduled in the Euro-Mediterranean area for today: ROME - Geographic Society, Palazzetto Mattei, 16:30. Conference titled 'Italy and Albania: Walking Towards Europe'.



NAPLES - 2nd edition of Nazra, the short film festival on Palestine, continues (until 24/10).



GENEVA - World Investment Forum begins (until 26/10).



STRASBOURG - European Parliament, Plenary Session (until 25/10).



CARTHAGE (TUNISIA) - Acropolium hosts the 24th edition of Musical October (until 31/10).



ROME - Exhibition at Istituto Cervantes 'The Poetry Between Abstraction and Figuration' on contemporary art in Madrid in the post-WW II era (until 12/01). MADRID - Exhibition titled 'El jardin secreto', vintage female portraits on photographic plates (until 20/12). (ANSAmed).







Haiti - Culture : Haiti host country of the 2nd International Edition of the Encounters of Creole cultures





From Sunday until October 28, 2018, the Association Vagues Litteraires invites you to the second International Edition of the Encounters of Creole Cultures.



On the agenda: conferences, screenings, exhibitions, signature sales, meetings and performances in 8 spaces of the Haitian capital, the city center in particular, including the French Institute in Haiti, the Faculty of Applied Linguistics, the National Bureau of Ethnology , the Pyepoudre Cultural Center and the Knowledge and Freedom Foundation (FOKAL).



Do not miss Wednesday, October 24 at 5:00 pm at the Foundation Knowledge and Freedom (FOKAL) for the screening of documentary film Marie-Clemence Andriamonta-Paes and Cesar Paes : "Le Bouillon dAwara" (Admission is free).



For this 2nd edition of the Encounters of Creole cultures, Guadeloupe is the guest country of honor and has the largest number of representatives. Haiti will not be outdone with his delegation : Assaf, Jean Jean Roosevelt, Darlene Dubuisson, Guy Regis Junior, Mushi Widmaier, Paula Clermont Pean, Phanise Rosembert, Yamba Ye and Tamara Suffren. The other artists will come from Martinique, France and Canada.



In addition, a window will be opened on Canada's endangered native cultures. Several Canadian Aboriginal artists will be sharing the scenes during this festival to enrich this intercultural dialogue.



Guadeloupe guests :

Dominik Coco (Music), Dominique Hubert (Culture / Literature), Gerard Theobalt (Cinema), Laurence Maquiaba (Cultural Action), Nadege Lorela Descombes (Photography), Philippe Bon (Media), Jean Claude Nelson (Representative Region Guadeloupe) and Valerie Samuel Cesarus (Representative Region Guadeloupe).



HL/ HaitiLibre

















Published on 2018/10/21 | Source

Actor Yoo Jae-myung happily married his bride, his long-term girl friend 12 years younger than he, on the 21st.

Advertisement

The bride is a theater actress who he met in Busan during a performance.

The wedding was held privately, but many celebrities such as Cho Seung-woo, Shin Hye-sun, Lee Dong-wook, Won Jin-ah, and Lee Kyu-hyung attended in support.

A source from the wedding said, "Yoo Jae-myung is so active in various areas that people from movies, theater and even drama were invited to his wedding.

Yoo Jae-myung debuted in 2001 and started becoming popular when he played Lee Dong-hwi's father in the tvN drama "Answer 1988". He continued to star in "Secret Forest" and "Life".Monday, Oct. 29, between the hours of 6 and 8:30 p.m., the Havre High School Key Club will be going door to door in the Havre community collecting donations for Trick or Treat for UNICEF.

The money collected will go to provide vaccinations for prevention of neonatal tetanus.Conan Cuts the Rope, from left, Taeshon Schaeffer, Democratic U.S. House candidate Kathleen Williams, Montana Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., stand during a blessing Sunday during the Blaine County Democratic Party spaghetti fundraising dinner in Wallner Hall in Chinook.

Democrats U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, U.S. House candidate Kathleen Williams, Clerk of Montana Supreme Court candidate Rex Renk and Public Service Commission candidate Doug Kaercher spoke Sunday to a crowd of more than 120 people at the Blaine County Democrats Spaghetti Dinner.

Tester is facing Republican state Auditor Matt Rosendale and Libertarian Rick Breckenridge in his bid for re-election; Williams is challenging U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., in his bid for re-election; Renk faces Libertarian Roger Roots of Livingtson and Republican Bowen Greenwood of Helena, and Kaercher is facing Sun River Republican candidate Randy Pinocci in Novembers general election.

Williams and Tester during the dinner received gifts from Fort Belknap Indian Reservation Aaniiih Nakoda tribal elder Gerald Stiffarm during the dinner, with Conan Cuts the Rope and Taeshon Schaeffer in full regalia presenting the gifts.

After the gifts were presented Cuts the Rope and Schaeffer danced as John Stiffarm and Sid Goes Ahead played the drums and sang.

Williams

State Rep. Jacob Bachmeier, D-Havre, who is facing off against Libertarian Conor Burns and independent candidate Bob Sivertsen, both of Havre, in his bid for re-election, introduced Williams at the dinner.

Bachmeier said there are 16 days before the election and it is important that everybody gets out and works to get their candidates elected. He added that Williams, a three-term state legislator, has developed the reputation of a non-partisan, no-nonsense worker who has delivered by creating jobs, providing health care and protecting public lands for the state of Montana.

He said health care is one of many peoples top priorities and it is important that the state sends someone to Washington, D.C., who represents Montanas values.

Thank you for tonights celebration, what a wonderful gathering, what a wonderful celebration of culture, of family, of commitment to the future, Williams said in her opening remarks.

Williams said she is not tired of campaigning and it has been an honor to travel the state that she has worked to serve for 24 years.

Its incredible, Williams said.

She said she is absolutely committed to rural Montana and to Native country and she is excited for the chance to serve those communities in U.S. Congress.

Drawing from her own experience  her mother suffered from Alzheimers before dying  she knows what effects a health care crisis can have on a family, Williams said. She said she has worked for more accessible, more affordable, health care for years while in the Montana Legislature and she can take that experience with her to the U.S. Congress.

She added that, if elected, there are many other issues she wants to look at in Congress.

We are talking about fostering opportunity, Williams said. Whether its for public education or rewarding careers with good pay and good benefits, or secure and dignified retirements, protecting Social Security and Medicare.

All those things that help us live the American Dream, the Montana Dream, whether its removing barriers or just providing a little bit of a floor to help people get ahead, Williams said.

She added that she has also spent her career for 35 years looking for win, win, win solutions to protecting Montanas outdoor heritage.

The issue might be polarized, she said, but if people work together there can be a solution.

If elected, Williams added, she wants to help the St. Mary Diversion of the Milk River Project get more federal funding to repair and enhance the system. She said she has been a part of the discussions about this project since 2002, and she understands the business of water and would be an ally in Congress  a Congress, she added, that is in desperate need of a return to dignity, integrity and honesty.

Congress is so close to broken that its terrifying, Williams said. Its really terrifying that we have an institution that is so non-functional because of hyperpartisanship, divisiveness, inexperience, inability to get anything done and really only considering what seems like is prohibiting whichever party from being in power the next time around. That is not the way to run a business, its not the way to run a government, its not the way that Montanans operate.

She said she never thought she would be talking about export markets and tariffs damaging agricultural markets that Montanans have worked for generations to build overseas. She added someone in Congress should have stood up and talked about the importance of these markets and how once market shares are lost it is very difficult to get them back.

She said the way she won in the primary was that she was able to align support from progressives, independents and moderate Republicans.

This state went 20 points for Trump but elected (Gov.) Steve Bullock at the same time, she said, thats the coalition that all of you need to help us with.

Tester

Democratic candidate for Montana Senate District 14 Paul Tuss of Havre, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Russ Tempel, R-Chester, in his re-election bid, introduced Tester, the keynote speaker for the event.

He said he doesnt need to do a long introduction for a man that everyone knows so well.

But this is a man who has absolutely committed his life to public service, Tuss said, and not in any superficial way, but public service is in his marrow. Its in his DNA.

Tester has a long history of serving Montanans, Tuss said, adding that everyone has a lot of work to do in the next 16 days before the election to get Tester re-elected.

Our state would be significantly less if Jon Tester was not re-elected, Tuss said. The United States of America would be significantly less if Jon Tester was not in the United States Senate.

Tester said this is a big election. One of the biggest issues facing rural communities, such as the small communities on the Hi-Line, is health care, Tester said, adding that Washington, D.C., needs to do bipartisan work to assure these rural communities maintain their health care providers and figuring out ways to move forward that lowers the cost of health care, whether it be health insurance or the actual delivery of health care.

He said that last year, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee Chair Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and the committee worked with different groups and government officials to come up with ideas to drive down health care rates. Tester said it was a bipartisan effort with people coming from across the isle to address a serious issue and work to resolve the problem, but all of a sudden somebody pulled the plug.

It is my belief the plug was pulled because folks look at this in Washington, D.C., from a perspective of politics and how do we make it the biggest political gain out of this, Tester said, when in fact the folks that are suffering are the folks that are on the ground.

He said his family has been in rural Montana for generations, watching the communities being built, and he understands the importance of hospitals in rural communities. He added the possibility of losing these hospitals in these communities would be devastating.

Tester said everyone needs to work in a bipartisan way and the best way to start is to lead by example.

The truth is Montana was built by people working together, he said.   Its that same sort of work-together attitude that has to start impacting Washington, D.C.

It is important that someone is in Congress who represents rural American Tester said, adding that there are many differences between himself and his opponent, but he doesnt say he is something that he is not. He is in Congress for Montanans, he said.

If you want somebody that understands Montana, the choice should be obvious, Tester said.

Kaercher

Event Master of Ceremony and Montana Department of Transportation Commissioner Greg Jergeson introduced Kaercher.

Jergeson, a long-time state senator and former chair of the PSC, said the race is important to him. He added that although the PSC is held by one party  entirely by Republicans  it is highly dysfunctional and more partisan than it has ever been.

Nobody can agree on the issues, Jergeson said, but there is a chance with Kaercher for that to change.

Kaercher said he is running for the PSC because the PSC needs some balance. It is adversarial to the industries and, as a certified mediator, he can work to change that, he said.

He added that he wants to broaden Montanas energy portfolio. Coal is important to Montana, Kaercher said, but coals future is uncertain as a long-term energy source. The current PSC does not support utilizing renewable resources for energy, he said, and they have done a poor job of making sure renewables are in the states energy profile.

The state does not have a replacement for the base power resource that coal provides, Kaercher said, but the technology is coming along very quickly for renewable energy and it is important to invest and prepare for the future.

Building a secure portfolio helps create safe, affordable energy for the future, he said.

He said he has a unique expertise and background and he wants to make sure everyones voices are heard by the commission.

I want to make sure that we keep consumers first, Kaercher said, but we always make sure that Montana is there.

Renk

Former Blaine County Clerk of Court Kay Johnson introduced Renk at the dinner.

She said she could say a lot of great things about Renk but the most important thing to know is that he has always been a hard worker. Renk, who is the deputy clerk of the Supreme Court, and the entire staff in the Montana Supreme Court are always there to help, Johnson said.

They are so efficient, they are so effective, she added. He never ceased to amaze me. Hes the right person for the job.

Renk said he has been all over the state running for this office, an office that doesnt get a lot of press coverage but is still vitally important. This is the sort of job that is a direct service job and is a bipartisan position, he said.

He added that this coming election is extremely important and he has enjoyed traveling the state with the leadership of Jon Tester, the incredible passion of Kathleen Williams on the campaign trail.

Renk said he has spent his entire career trying to help people get their cases heard before the state Supreme Court. In his 24 years in the office, 23 of those years were as the deputy clerk, Renk said. He added that he has been in the forefront of everything that they have done to protect access to court records during that time.

He said he has received bipartisan support from more than 40 clerks of district courts across the state, he has also received a variety of endorsements from past and present justices of the Montana Supreme Court, and support from former U.S. Clerk of the Supreme Court William Suter.

One of the reasons that he has this support, he said, is that the experience people have with the clerks office is positive. He added that the clerks office is what people interact with when they have an issue that they want to bring to the state Supreme Court.

Havre Daily News/Colin Thompson Democratic U.S. House of Representatives candidate Kathleen Williams talks Sunday during a Blaine County Democratic Central Committee fundraiser in Chinook.

I think its really important that if people come to the Supreme Court they are treated fairly and with respect, Renk said. And they know that they are getting at least some assistance, not legal advice, but some assistance. The impression that they take away from that branch of government and their experience is going to be a positive one.  In this day and age I think that is important and not only for our state but our society, too, because it builds faith in our institutions.

Given the political climate, Renk said, he remembers a quote from Rep. Sam Rayburn, D-Texas.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one, Renk said, adding that Kaercher, Tester, Williams and himself are carpenters.

We have such wonderful candidates, all of us, our values are important because we know we need one another, Renk said.

He added that carpenters build form the ground up, and what they were all doing at the dinner that night was building a grassroots campaign to serve.

Its enough to serve, Renk said.We Montanans are facing a choice of who would best represent us in the United States Senate for the next six years. While this choice is critical for everyone, it is absolutely foundational for Montana Indians. The federal government has a legal trust responsibility to Indian people, and congressional acts are the primary way of fulfilling this responsibility. Sen. Jon Tester, a third generation farmer from Big Sandy, Montana, deeply understands this and has a strong record in this regard. This is why we support Jon Tester for United States Senate.

Sen. Tester is now the ranking member of the Senate Veterans Committee; but when he was first elected to the United States Senate, he requested a seat on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. He went on to chair the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and then served as the ranking member of that committee. In his time in the Senate, he guided two of the largest Indian water settlements in history through Congress to the presidents desk. These two water settlements brought certainty to Montana water users, and a major boom to the states economy, while improving critical infrastructure on those reservations.

Sen. Tester is dedicated to correcting injustices that tribal governments face. He stepped up for the Northern Cheyenne people and worked on legislation to restore tribal lands that were improperly taken from them. Sen. Tester also secured a resolution of the long-standing Cobell trust litigation which brought justice to thousands of Indian people whose assets were mismanaged by the United States. He has forged bipartisan relationships to combat domestic violence crimes in Indian Country. And because of this persistence and advocacy, tribal governments can now prosecute serial domestic violence offenders, regardless of their race.

Sen. Tester has worked to bring critically needed funds to address opioid addiction, housing, transportation and natural resource needs throughout Indian country and in Montana. When he became ranking member on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, he did not leave Indian people behind. Instead, he made sure that the committee heard from and knew about the needs of Native veterans. Because of his work, the VA Mission Act, includes provisions that ensure that Native veterans can receive health care at their tribal health clinics close to home and bring more doctors to Indian Country to serve Native veterans.

 Over the years, most of our caucus members have sat across a table and have had discussions with Sen. Tester on important issues impacting all Montanans. One thing always holds true: When he tells you he is going to do something, he works relentlessly to fulfill his promises. He is always up-front and realistic with you about the challenges of an issue. But when he believes its the right thing to do, he gets it done. Sen. Tester is a true statesman and we are fortunate to have him as our senator. For all these reasons, and many more, we support Jon Tester, a native Montanan, for the United States Senate.



Submitted by the following members of the Montana American Indian Caucus:

Rep. Shane Morigeau, D-Missoula; Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder; Sen. Frank Smith, D-Poplar; Rep. Bridget Smith, D-Wolf Point; Rep. George Kipp III, D-Heat Butte; Rep. Susan Webber, D-Browning; Sen. Lea Whitford, D-Cut Bank; Rep. Sharon Stewart-Peregoy, D-Crow Agency; Rep. Rae Peppers, D-Lame Deer.ANSAmed - Tomorrow's events in the Mediterranean

(ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 22 - These are the main events scheduled in the Euro-Mediterranean area for tomorrow: BIZERTE (TUNISIA) - 'Forum de la Mer - Bizerte 2018, Euromediterranean Meetings on the Sustainable Blue Economy'.



VAN (TURKEY) - Anniversary of the earthquake that killed over 600 people and wounded over 4,000.



ROME - IFAD headquarters - International Conference "Leaving no one behind - making the case for adolescent girls," organized by IFAD, Save the Children, comes to an end.



TRIPOLI - Anniversary of Libya's declaration of freedom.



NAPLES - 2nd edition of Nazra, the short film festival on Palestine, continues (until 24/10).



GENEVA - World Investment Forum (until 26/10).



STRASBOURG - European Parliament, Plenary Session (until 25/10).



CARTHAGE (TUNISIA) - Acropolium hosts the 24th edition of Musical October (until 31/10).



ROME - Exhibition at Istituto Cervantes 'The Poetry Between Abstraction and Figuration' on contemporary art in Madrid in the post-WW II era (until 12/01). MADRID - Exhibition titled 'El jardin secreto', vintage female portraits on photographic plates (until 20/12). (ANSAmed).



A Promising New Oxygen-Delivery Therapeutic Has a Wide Range of Potential Applications

Running low on oxygen is a major danger for any of your bodys tissues, but the heart is particularly sensitive to such hypoxic conditions, which can lead to long-term tissue damage or even heart attacks.

In new studies conducted at UC San Francisco, a novel oxygen-delivery therapeutic restored the function of oxygen-starved heart tissue in an animal model of global hypoxia. Unlike its experimental predecessors, the new drug does not appear to cause systemic side effects or overcorrect with excessive blood oxygenation, which can itself be toxic. Instead, the new drug delivers its precious oxygen cargo only to the tissues that need it most.

Any tissue with compromised blood flow, whether due to trauma, stroke, or heart disease, could potentially be targeted by a treatment like this, said Emin Maltepe, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics at UCSF and co-senior author of the paper.

The new drug, called OMX-CV, was developed by Omniox, Inc.  a biopharmaceutical company developing oxygen-delivery therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, trauma and other conditions in which low oxygen levels, or hypoxia, negatively impact disease outcomes.

Omniox, which was among the first startup biotech companies to launch in the QB3 Garage incubator space on UCSFs Mission Bay campus, in 2010, teamed up with Maltepe and other UCSF researchers to test the treatment, and published their findings October 18, 2018, in the journal PLOS Biology.

Hypoxia During Heart Disease  an Unmet Clinical Threat

Cardiovascular diseases such as coronary artery disease can starve the heart of oxygen, triggering cardiac dysfunction or heart attacks in adults, but hypoxia in the heart is also a problem in children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 10,000 children are born each year with a critical congenital heart defect. Many of these infants require heart surgery within their first year of life, during which blood may be temporarily removed from the heart, leaving the organ starved for oxygen.

Under normal conditions, the heart consumes more oxygen by weight than any other organ, and when oxygen levels are low, its demand soars even higher. The hypoxic heart pumps harder to deliver oxygen to the rest of the body, and paradoxically, requires more and more oxygen itself to maintain function. An oxygen-delivering drug like OMX-CV could ease the physical stress of hypoxia and improve recovery following heart attacks or after open heart surgery in adults and children.

Scientists have tried to design ways to fight hypoxia by delivering oxygen on the back of hemoglobin, the protein that lets red blood cells shuttle oxygen throughout the body and also produces their scarlet color. But these treatments also carry a lot of baggage.

Hemoglobin-based drugs have proven too good at their jobs: they tend to flood the blood with excess oxygen that can itself cause serious tissue damage. Moreover, when outside the bounds of a red blood cell, hemoglobin can grab hold of nitric oxide, a natural muscle relaxant found in blood vessels. Vessels robbed of nitric oxide constrict, causing blood pressure to jump, raising the risk of heart attack and decreasing blood flow to important organs like the kidneys.

OMX-CV sidesteps these problems by employing an engineered bacterial protein known as H-NOX as its base, rather than hemoglobin. H-NOX proteins contain a co-factor called a heme group  the same co-factor that gives hemoglobin its name  which alllows the protein to bind not only oxygen but also nitric oxide. By modifying the chemical structure of H-NOX proteins, Omniox scientists reengineered them to hold tight to oxygen, but leave nitric oxide alone.

The researchers also showed that the modified proteins bind oxygen so tightly that they only relinquish their grip when they come across a severely hypoxic tissue.

Unlike hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers, OMX-CV is fine-tuned to only release oxygen under pathologic conditions, said Ana Krtolica, PhD, vice president of research at Omniox and co-senior author of the paper. Relatively small doses of the drug transform the capacity of the heart to keep up in the face of severe hypoxia.

Targeted Delivery to Oxygen-Starved Tissues

The authors envision OMX-CV primarily being used to treat many conditions impacted by hypoxia in adults, but the new study was also designed with an eye toward pediatric applications. The research was conducted through the Initiative for Pediatric Drug and Device Development, or iPD3, a collaboration between UCSF and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The effort aims to design and test therapeutics specifically for pediatric care, rather than handing down therapies designed for adults.

Kids change so much as they grow  their drug metabolism changes dramatically year to year, said Maltepe. After drugs are established in adults, pediatricians essentially have to experiment with kids to understand the treatments toxicity profiles and proper dosing for different age groups. By initially designing and testing drugs with kids in mind, and taking measures such as using juvenile animal models of disease, the researchers hope to circumvent this unwieldy guesswork.

In their experiments, the scientists tested the effects of OMX-CV in acute hypoxia, and to ensure that their results would also apply to children, the researchers examined the drugs ability to supply oxygen to juvenile animal hearts, which share important anatomical and physiological characteristics with the hearts of human infants.

The researchers found that OMX-CV delivered oxygen to stressed hearts but not to tissues with an adequate oxygen supply. The OMX-CV infusion improved the hearts ability to contract almost two-fold better than their own baseline under hypoxic conditions, without the toxic effects of hemoglobin-based treatments. In contrast, the cardiac function of untreated animals deteriorated significantly over the hour-long study.

These impressive results were obtained with a relatively low dose of OMX-CV: each animal was treated with a dose equivalent to only 2 percent of the oxygen-carrying capacity of the bloods naturally circulating hemoglobin.

Ongoing studies at UCSF funded by the National Institutes of Health are designed to test whether OMX-CV can be developed to protect infant hearts undergoing cardiac bypass surgery using similar juvenile animal models.

A Myriad of Applications

More preclinical research is needed before OMX-CV reaches human clinical trials. Looking forward, the researchers expect separate clinical trials for the drugs various applications.

Given the general need for oxygen across tissue and organs, hypoxia is associated with a number of pathological conditions, said Krtolica. Omniox is developing preclinical programs focused on oxygen delivery in ischemic stroke, which compromises blood flow to the brain, as well as in cancer.

This treatment targets a fundamental problem in medicine  in the ICU, for instance, youre always battling against tissues becoming hypoxic, said Maltepe, adding that the technology could someday form the basis of a more general blood replacement product, long considered a holy grail of medicine.

Authors: Emin Maltepe, MD, PhD, is an associate professor of pediatrics at UCSF and the director of product development for the Initiative for Pediatric Drug and Device Development (iPD3). He is co-senior author of the new paper. Ana Krtolica, PhD, is vice president of research at Omniox, Inc., and co-senior author of the paper. Jason Boehme, MD, of UCSF and Natacha Le Moan, PhD, of Omniox, Inc., are co-first authors of the paper.

Additional co-authors are Rebecca J. Kameny, MD, Michael J. Johengen, Amy L. Lesneski, Wenhui Gong, MD, PhD, Youping He, PhD, Sanjeev A. Datar, MD, PhD, Jeffrey R. Fineman, MD, and Janel Long-Boyle, PharmD, PhD, of UCSF; Alexandra Loucks, PhD, Tina Davis, MPH, Kevin Tanaka, Andrew Davis, Jonathan A. Winger, PhD, and Stephen P. Cary, PhD, of Omniox, Inc.; and Vijay Ivaturi, PhD, and Joga Gobburu, PhD, MBA, of the University of Maryland. Long-Boyle, Ivaturi, Gobburu, Fineman and Maltepe are all directors of the UCSF Initiative for Pediatric Drug and Device Development (iPD3).

Funding: Supported by National Institutes of Health grants R44HD094414, R01HL133034 and R01HD072455.

Disclosures: Krtolica, Le Moan, and other authors are employees of Omniox, Inc. Maltepe and Fineman are consultants to Omniox, Inc. Other UCSF authors declare no conflicts of interest. The University of Maryland authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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 three top-ranked hospitals  UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland  as well as Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, UCSF Benioff Childrens Physicians and the UCSF Faculty Practice. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF faculty also provide all physician care at the public Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and the SF VA Medical Center. The UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program is a major branch of the University of California, San Franciscos School of Medicine.I believe we soon can offer the first approved drug for Alzheimers disease, says Lars Lannfelt, Senior Professor of Geriatrics, whose research sparks hope of curbing one of the major widespread diseases of our time.

In late July there were reports in the media from a conference in Chicago about Alzheimers disease. The focus of journalists attention was a new study of how the progression of the disease is affected by the BAN2401 antibody, a Swedish product developed by Lars Lannfelt, Senior Professor of Geriatrics at the Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences.

We have tested the antibody in various doses on 856 patients on three continents with better results than we even dared to hope for. After only six months we observed positive results, and after 18 months 81 per cent of the group receiving the highest dosage showed lower levels of amyloid beta than the level we measure in Alzheimers disease, says Lannfelt.

A change in genetic material identified

The idea for the antibody originated back in the 1990s, when the team identified a change in the genetic material of a Swedish family that had been severely afflicted by Alzheimers disease. The mutation indicated that the cause seemed to be a soluble, early form of amyloid beta molecules, known as protofibrils, which give rise to plaque in the brain.

With this new knowledge, we chose to focus on these protofibrils, which we believed were the form of amyloid beta that causes the most damage. In 2005 we developed our antibody, and today I am extremely pleased with what we have achieved, for the sake of the patients and my many colleagues over the years and for Swedish research, says Lannfelt.

Modifications of the antibody

In 2003 Lannfelt and former research colleague Par Gellerfors founded the BioArctic biotechnology company as a platform for pharmaceutical development. A significant part of the modifications of the antibody were carried out there, and when the results of the current study were made public, the shares soared in the stock market. Suddenly Lannfelt and Gellerfors saw their faces on Swedish business magazines accompanied by headlines such as Swedish Alzheimer researchers became billionaires in two days.

I do not see any problem with researchers benefiting from their innovations, but I find it annoying that the Swedish press has chosen to focus on the money rather than the medical innovation and its importance for patients. I have never been motivated by economic interests, and I will retain my shareholding to remain a guiding force in BioArctics continued development and to help maintain the right course.

New study being prepared

Today BioArctic is preparing for the Phase III study every pharmaceutical product must undergo before it reaches the market. At its side BioArctic has Eisai, Japans pharmaceutical giant, which is assisting with funding and implementation. The goal is to go ahead as early as 2019, but despite BioArctics successes, Lannfelt does not want to speculate on when an approved treatment can be available for health care.

I have learned that it is far too easy to be optimistic about timing, but with the results we demonstrate in combination with minimal side effects, I believe we will be able to offer the first approved pharmaceutical for Alzheimers disease. This would mean enormous socio-economic savings, and above all great hope for all the patients and relatives that we can help enjoy a better old age.



Facts:

Alzheimers disease is named after Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist, who in 1906 became the first in the world to describe the disease.

In patients with Alzheimers disease, fibrils  long threads of amyloid beta  have clumped together and formed deposits on brain tissue, causing insoluble plaque in the brain.

Lars Lannfelts research team has created an antibody that attacks protofibrils, soluble precursors to fibrils, which seems to both curb and reverse the progression of the disease at an early stage.

Protofibrils are toxic and the most harmful form of amyloid beta.

Uppsala UniversityThe Hopp Childrens Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ) is a joint initiative of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg University Hospital and Heidelberg University.

Brain tumors that look similar under the microscope can differ strongly on a molecular level  a distinction that should be considered when making treatment decisions. Children with embryonal brain tumors have to undergo intense and devastating therapies, with an overall limited curative outcome for some tumor subtypes. This holds true for supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumors (sPNETs): These tumors derive from immature cells of the central nervous system (CNS), growing particularly fast and aggressively.

The team surrounding Professor Stefan Pfister, KiTZ director, head of the Pediatric Neurooncology division of the DKFZ and senior physician at the Heidelberg University Hospital, conducted the study together with colleagues of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle, USA) and the Childrens National Medical Center (Washington DC, USA). Using a state-of-the-art data analysis method, the researchers analyzed chemical gene modifications, so-called DNA methylation, within the patients` tumor tissue in the context of a phase-III clinical trial on sPNETs.

Molecular diagnostic tumor classification prior to treatment could prevent devastating therapies for many children. An exact diagnosis and prognosis assessment for most children with CNS tumors is possible when histological examinations are combined with methylation analyses of the tumor DNA, says Professor Pfister, a main author of the study. We can thus better estimate who would benefit from the intense radiation and chemotherapy and which treatment option should be used. This way we are able to save children from the side-effects of non-beneficial therapies.

In the context of this study the methylation analysis showed that fewer patients than assumed truly suffered from sPNET, but the majority had other tumor types such as glioblastoma, ependymoma or others that had been misdiagnosed. Accounting for these false positives, the prognosis for sPNET is much better than previously assumed, with an increased chance of responding well to chemotherapy.

Since the molecular characterization of embryonal tumors of the central nervous system in children can therefore have a crucial impact on treatment types and therapy success, the researchers recommend to implement this method as a standard-of-care method for diagnosis.

Original publication:

Hwang et al. 2018: Extensive Molecular and Clinical Heterogeneity in Patients With Histologically Diagnosed CNS-PNET Treated as a Single Entity: A Report From the Childrens Oncology Group Randomized ACNS0332 Trial. DOI: 10.1200/JCO.2017.76.4720. Journal of Clinical Oncology  Online publication on October 17, 2018.

A picture is available for download:

https://www.dkfz.de/de/presse/pressemitteilungen/2018/bilder/PNET_FOXR2_HE.jpg

Note on use of images related to press releases

Use is free of charge. The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) permits one-time use in the context of reporting about the topic covered in the press release. Images have to be cited as follows: Source: Dominik Sturm / KiTZ.

Distribution of images to third parties is not permitted unless prior consent has been obtained from DKFZs Press Office (phone: ++49-(0)6221 42 2854, E-mail: presse@dkfz.de). Any commercial use is prohibited.Rob Matheson | MIT News Office

MIT researchers have developed a cryptographic system that could help neural networks identify promising drug candidates in massive pharmacological datasets, while keeping the data private. Secure computation done at such a massive scale could enable broad pooling of sensitive pharmacological data for predictive drug discovery.

Datasets of drug-target interactions (DTI), which show whether candidate compounds act on target proteins, are critical in helping researchers develop new medications. Models can be trained to crunch datasets of known DTIs and then, using that information, find novel drug candidates.

In recent years, pharmaceutical firms, universities, and other entities have become open to pooling pharmacological data into larger databases that can greatly improve training of these models. Due to intellectual property matters and other privacy concerns, however, these datasets remain limited in scope. Cryptography methods to secure the data are so computationally intensive they dont scale well to datasets beyond, say, tens of thousands of DTIs, which is relatively small.

In a paper published today in Science, researchers from MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) describe a neural network securely trained and tested on a dataset of more than a million DTIs. The network leverages modern cryptographic tools and optimization techniques to keep the input data private, while running quickly and efficiently at scale.

The teams experiments show the network performs faster and more accurately than existing approaches; it can process massive datasets in days, whereas other cryptographic frameworks would take months. Moreover, the network identified several novel interactions, including one between the leukemia drug imatinib and an enzyme ErbB4  mutations of which have been associated with cancer  which could have clinical significance.

People realize they need to pool their data to greatly accelerate the drug discovery process and enable us, together, to make scientific advances in solving important human diseases, such as cancer or diabetes. But they dont have good ways of doing it, says corresponding author Bonnie Berger, the Simons Professor of Mathematics and a principal investigator at CSAIL. With this work, we provide a way for these entities to efficiently pool and analyze their data at a very large scale.

Joining Berger on the paper are co-first authors Brian Hie and Hyunghoon Cho, both graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science and researchers in CSAILs Computation and Biology group.

Secret sharing data

The new paper builds on previous work by the researchers in protecting patient confidentiality in genomic studies, which find links between particular genetic variants and incidence of disease. That genomic data could potentially reveal personal information, so patients can be reluctant to enroll in the studies. In that work, Berger, Cho, and a former Stanford University PhD student developed a protocol based on a cryptography framework called secret sharing, which securely and efficiently analyzes datasets of a million genomes. In contrast, existing proposals could handle only a few thousand genomes.

Secret sharing is used in multiparty computation, where sensitive data is divided into separate shares among multiple servers. Throughout computation, each party will always have only its share of the data, which appears fully random. Collectively, however, the servers can still communicate and perform useful operations on the underlying private data. At the end of the computation, when a result is needed, the parties combine their shares to reveal the result.

We used our previous work as a basis to apply secret sharing to the problem of pharmacological collaboration, but it didnt work right off the shelf, Berger says.

A key innovation was reducing the computation needed in training and testing. Existing predictive drug-discovery models represent the chemical and protein structures of DTIs as graphs or matrices. These approaches, however, scale quadratically, or squared, with the number of DTIs in the dataset. Basically, processing these representations becomes extremely computationally intensive as the size of the dataset grows. While that may be fine for working with the raw data, if you try that in secure computation, its infeasible, Hie says.

The researchers instead trained a neural network that relies on linear calculations, which scale far more efficiently with the data. We absolutely needed scalability, because were trying to provide a way to pool data together [into] much larger datasets, Cho says.

The researchers trained a neural network on the STITCH dataset, which has 1.5 million DTIs, making it the largest publicly available dataset of its kind. In training, the network encodes each drug compound and protein structure as a simple vector representation. This essentially condenses the complicated structures as 1s and 0s that a computer can easily process. From those vectors, the network then learns the patterns of interactions and noninteractions. Fed new pairs of compounds and protein structures, the network then predicts if theyll interact.

The network also has an architecture optimized for efficiency and security. Each layer of a neural network requires some activation function that determines how to send the information to the next layer. In their network, the researchers used an efficient activation function called a rectified linear unit (ReLU). This function requires only a single, secure numerical comparison of an interaction to determine whether to send (1) or not send (0) the data to the next layer, while also never revealing anything about the actual data. This operation can be more efficient in secure computation compared to more complex functions, so it reduces computational burden while ensuring data privacy.

The reason thats important is we want to do this within the secret sharing framework  and we dont want to ramp up the computational overhead, Berger says. In the end, no parameters of the model are revealed and all input data  the drugs, targets, and interactions  are kept private.

Finding interactions

The researchers pitted their network against several state-of-the-art, plaintext (unencrypted) models on a portion of known DTIs from DrugBank, a popular dataset containing about 2,000 DTIs. In addition to keeping the data private, the researchers network outperformed all of the models in prediction accuracy. Only two baseline models could reasonably scale to the STITCH dataset, and the researchers model achieved nearly double the accuracy of those models.

The researchers also tested drug-target pairs with no listed interactions in STITCH, and found several clinically established drug interactions that werent listed in the database but should be. In the paper, the researchers list the top strongest predictions, including: droloxifene and an estrogen receptor, which reached phase III clinical trials as a treatment for breast cancer; and seocalcitol and a vitamin D receptor to treat other cancers. Cho and Hie independently validated the highest-scoring novel interactions via contract research organizations.

Next, the researchers are working with partners to establish their collaborative pipeline in a real-world setting. We are interested in putting together an environment for secure computation, so we can run our secure protocol with real data, Cho says.GALVESTON, Texas A recent study by The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston identified a protein that allows the West Nile virus to invade our bodies and replicate itself, causing infection and disease. The study is available in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The UTMB scientists learned that the protein, Peli1, that normally helps fight infections, actually is a key link in the West Nile virus ability to attack the immune system.

We identified a protein that increases the risk of West Nile virus infection and brain inflammation, gaining a better understanding of how this occurs, said UTMBs Tian Wang, a professor in the department of microbiology and immunology. Our findings will ultimately help to develop treatments for West Nile infection and subsequent inflammation.

The mosquito-borne West Nile virus has caused disease outbreaks in Asia, Europe and Australia and has been a leading cause of viral encephalitis  an inflammation of the brain  in the U.S. for more than a decade. Up to 50 percent of people who had the disease are reported to have long-term neurological damage. Currently, there is no specific treatment or available vaccine for West Nile viral infections.

Peli1 plays a key role in regulating the bodys immune response to viruses, especially within the brain cells. Peli1 produces inflammation in certain types of brain cells and promotes the release of immune cells into the central nervous system.

The research team found that the protein is essential for the West Nile virus to infect and ultimately multiply within host cells. Mice that were engineered to lack the Peli1 protein were more resistant to West Nile virus infection. Similarly, an analysis of the brain tissue of people who died from West Nile virus disease showed high levels of Peli1 compared with brain tissue of people who did not have the infection.

Next, we plan to determine the role of Peli1 in other viral infections that preferentially attack the nervous system, said Wang.

Other authors include Huanle Luo,Evandro Winkelmann,Shuang Zhu,Wenjuan Ru,Elizabeth Mays,Jesus Silvas,Junling Gao,Bi-Hung Peng,Nathen Bopp, Courtney Cromer, Chao Shan,Guorui Xie,Guangyu Li,Robert Tesh,Vsevolod Popov,Pei-Yong Shi, Ping Wu, Shao-Jun Tang, Wenbo Zhang andPatricia Aguilar; Lauren Vollmer and Robyn Klein,from Washington University School of Medicine as well as Shao-Cong Sun from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at GalvestonTWINS from Henley are starring in a Marks & Spencer campaign promoting a new range of clothes for children with disabilities.

Edward and Celia Newton, five, of Greys Road, modelled the clothes from the retailers easy dressing collection  the first of its kind on the high street.

The clothes have been specially adapted to make dressing less stressful for children and parents.

Celia is able-bodied but Edward suffers from hemiplegia, a type of cerebral palsy that affects his right side, and epilepsy.

He has limited control and movement in his arm and leg and regularly uses a wheelchair, particularly when he is tired.

His mother Emma said it could be difficult to dress her son and ensure he was comfortable but the new range would help.

The designs are identical to M&Ss standard range so children can wear the same clothes as their friends or siblings. However, they are made with softer materials and with the fewest possible seams and hidden care labels that wont irritate sensitive skin.

Mrs Newton said: This range is great. The Velcro fastening down the back of the sweater and body warmer means I can easily get Edward ready to go out when hes in his wheelchair.

He has stretchy trousers that have a high waistband so when he sits down they are nice and comfortable and they are easy to get on and off.

I havent seen anything else like this before and Edward loved how cool the clothes looked.

The dress Celia is wearing is in the standard and adapted range, meaning it can also be removed easily with the Velcro strip.

Im sure loads of girls out there will love to wear it  Celia did! Theres also a gilet we have got thats lovely  its super-cosy and has got really strong Velcro down the back.

All the dresses have also got spaces to put feeding tubes in. M&S have researched it and good for them. Im really pleased and Im really proud were part of it.

Mrs Newton said she became involved via her friend Claire Askew, kidswear editor for the M&S online magazine Inspire Me, who also has twins in Edward and Celias class at Trinity Primary School in Vicarage Road, Henley.

Mrs Askew invited the family to a photoshoot at a studio in Kentish Town and the company liked one particular photograph so much that it has been used far and wide to promote the range.

Mrs Newton said: We had a lovely time in London and it was a really nice day.

Celia loved it  she had her hair done and was a bit of a natural! I think Edward was a bit more reluctant and hes getting to an age where hes quite aware that hes a bit different. People have shared the photo on Facebook and Im part of cerebral palsy and hemiplegia support groups and they have both posted it online. There have been really positive comments.

She hopes that other retailers will follow suit.

Mrs Newton said: It has been a long time coming and theres still a lot more that they need to do.

It is really hard for us and other people have it a lot worse than we do. Youre trying to fit children into sweatshirts and put their arms straight, which is really difficult.

As Edward gets older its going to get harder. He has trouble dressing himself and its not really comfortable when youre living in jogging bottoms.

Edward was born with a serious heart defect called transposition of the great arteries where the aorta is connected to the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery is connected to the left ventricle  the opposite of a normal hearts anatomy. He also has a large hole in his heart.

Mrs Newton said: We were in the John Radcliffe Hospital and we had a lot of near-misses.

At seven months old Edward had open heart surgery which was very successful but at some point he had a stroke.

He wears a splint on his right arm to keep it straight and an orthotic on his right leg to do the same.

Mrs Newton said: Its very hard getting across what day-to-day living with a disabled child is like.

I know we dont have it as hard as some people but little things like this do help.The brother of a farmer who was brutally slain over a noisy "crow banger" has said the trial was a total "character assassination" of his dead sibling.

Seamus O'Mahony described his deceased brother Anthony O'Mahony (73) as a "decent, hard-working, caring, genuine man who was passionate about his work".

He described his brother's killing as "planned" - adding he was shocked and devastated when killer neighbour Michael Ferris (63) was found not guilty of murder.

PIERCING

Instead, a jury at Tralee Circuit Court convicted Ferris of manslaughter at Ratoo, Ballyduff, Co Kerry, last April.

Tragic Anthony was killed after Ferris drove the forks of his teleporter through his car, piercing his body and lacerating his heart.

Speaking to the Sunday World, Seamus said: "I will live in fear knowing the likelihood is he will only serve between five and seven years in jail, knowing the day will come when we will pass each other on that lane again.

"He said he snapped. If he can snap once, how can we know that he won't do it again?

"How could I feel safe going up and down to that farm?"

He revealed he was horrified by the manner in which his brother, a hard-working and passionate farmer, had been "criminalised" during the trial.

The court was told how the dead man had allegedly shot two members of the local gun club after they trespassed on his land in 1987.

"There was nobody there to defend his character; nobody there to defend his good name," said Seamus.

"The person they described during the trial was not the Anthony we knew or that anyone knew.

"He was a passionate farmer who spent his life educating himself about farming - he was 100pc dedicated to that.

"Anthony gave lots of employment on that farm, not just to workers but also to schoolchildren in the 70s, 80s and 90s when there was no work at all around here.

"Even at the funeral I had those young people come up to me and they couldn't speak highly enough of him.

"Anthony helped a huge number of families when times were bad in this country.

"But now because of this trial, and this hurts more than anything, people are embarrassed to even speak to us about him."

Seamus's son James - Anthony's nephew - said: "They made out the use of the crow banger justified what was done to him, but they [crow bangers] are used by farmers widely all over the country.

"Anthony farmed over 200 acres and including other farms to that one, and he used the bangers on all of them and no one ever complained about them.

"My father worked with Anthony in partnership on the farm so if they had come to us and said this is getting out of control we would have intervened."

In court, gruesome evidence was heard detailing the shocking nature of the injuries sustained by Anthony when Ferris ploughed the prongs of a teleporter through him after blocking his car on the rural laneway leading to the O'Mahony farm.

AMBUSHED

Dr Margot Bolster told how his heart had been torn from its roots; his liver found in the footwell of the car; his bowel left protruding from his blood-drenched shirt; his left eye penetrated; a kidney lacerated; multiple ribs broken, and his backbone fractured.

"My brother who was killed was the one who was put on trial, the one who was made out to be the guilty one," Seamus said.

"But my brother was the one who was totally and utterly ambushed. He had no chance.

"My brother was a decent, honest, hard-working, caring, genuine man who was passionate about his work.

"But that trial was a total character assassination... and we got no chance to defend him."

Following last Friday's verdict, Ferris was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on November 26 at the Central Criminal Court.Erdogan, Trump agree on seeking clarity on Khashoggi case Turkey says it will make results of its probe public on Tuesday

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, OCTOBER 22 - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump spoke by phone about the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident journalist who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, said Turkish presidential sources on Monday. The sources said the two leaders highlighted the need to "shed light on all aspects" of the case.



Erdogan said he will release the results of his country's investigation into the death on Tuesday.



The two leaders also spoke about the release of American evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson, which recently took place recently after Brunson spent nearly two years in a Turkish prison; as well as the situation in Syria, particularly American support for the Kurdish YPG, which Turkey considers terrorists.(ANSAmed).



As many as 30 patients a month are catching the potentially lethal MRSA superbug and related infections in our hospitals, figures reveal.

The bug is particularly dangerous for patients who have weakened defences due to illness or age.

The scale of the threat has emerged in an analysis by the HSE of new cases of staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection - mostly MRSA - contracted in hospitals between January 2017 and June 2018.

DEATHS

The news comes as hospitals are braced for another winter of overcrowding, which doctors warn will result in record numbers of patients languishing on trolleys.

MRSA is difficult to combat because it has developed a resistance to some commonly -used antibiotics.

The bacterium that causes MRSA is also responsible for another infection, MSSA, which produces the same symptoms but is easier to treat because it is not resistant to the antibiotic methicillin.

MRSA contributes to the deaths of several patients each year. Last year, a rise in cases was recorded for the first time in a decade.

The report warned that, over the past 12 months, St Vincent's and St James's hospitals in Dublin - among the worst hit by the trolley crisis - had rates of infection that were above the upper control limit. The hospitals did not respond to questions asking why they were failing to control the infection and what efforts were being made to reduce the risk to patients.

MRSA can exist harmlessly on the skin but can be fatal if it infects a patient who is already ill or weak.

Infections happen when MRSA enters the bloodstream, often via surgical wounds or where a catheter or needle is inserted.

Measures that can reduce the risk of infection include handwashing by staff, patients and visitors, the provision of proper isolation facilities for infected patients and better use of antibiotics.

The report also revealed that several hospitals were tackling worrying rates of the gut superbug C difficile. Between January 2017 and June this year an average of 66 inpatients a month contracted the bug.Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin is standing by a pledge to prop up Leo Varadkar's Government until a deal is concluded, despite concerns over how prepared Ireland is for Brexit.

Mr Martin hit out at the Government's preparedness for any Brexit outcome, but continued to insist that a general election was not in the best interests of the country, despite what he termed a "chronic lack of planning and preparation around Brexit".

RECKLESS

However, Mr Martin left the door open for an election in the immediate aftermath of a Brexit deal, stating that the review of the confidence and supply arrangement would govern that.

He reiterated that it would be "reckless" to have an election in the midst of such volatility in the UK.

He also appeared to dismiss a suggestion of extending the deal to 2020 with an agreed election date as "Leo's agenda".

Speaking after he delivered a speech at the party's annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration, Mr Martin indicated that his offer for an amnesty until after Brexit - which he described as "reasonable" - still stands. He did not see it as a risk not to have an election, despite his criticism of pre-Brexit planning.

Negotiating teams from both parties are to meet in the coming days to begin a review process of the confidence and supply deal that has facilitated the minority Fine Gael Government since 2016.

A senior Fianna Fail source said the Government's response to various Brexit scenarios would form a part of the negotiations with Fine Gael.

Mr Martin, meanwhile, said he would not be beholden to any deadlines put down by Fine Gael. Tanaiste Simon Coveney had put the latest time limit on talks, calling for them to be concluded in a month.

WARNING

However, Mr Martin warned that the process was not to rubber-stamp an extension.

"This is not about carrying on as before; it's not about signing on the dotted line and continuing for another two years. No one has a definite right to power. There has to be a focus on the issues," he said.

During his speech Mr Martin warned that Ireland is "nowhere near Brexit-ready".

"Of the 6,900 companies who export to the UK, only a quarter have a Brexit plan in place. A critical loan scheme was announced 12 months ago but has not yet been established, let alone awarded any funding. A 300m loan scheme for Brexit adaptations has distributed less than 1pc of its funding," he said.

"The Dutch government has hired and trained over 1,000 new staff to handle post-Brexit trade. Our Government has only just begun the process of hiring 400 and almost none will be trained and in place by mid-next year.

"We need fewer ministerial roadshows and a much greater urgency to reach out to businesses and communities impacted by Brexit to help them meet this challenge."

However, Business Minister Heather Humphreys defended the Government's record on Brexit planning, saying there was a "lot of work going on". Speaking on The Week In Politics, on RTE, Ms Humphreys referred to a number of Enterprise Ireland initiatives among other measures, including grant funding for businesses.Ryanair has sparked outrage by apparently failing to remove a passenger from a plane after he launched a racist tirade against the woman in the seat next to him.

The man was filmed by a fellow passenger calling the elderly woman an "ugly black b*****d", and shouting "don't talk to me in a foreign language you stupid, ugly cow".

The footage was recorded on Friday before take-off on Ryanair flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted by fellow passenger David Lawrence, who uploaded it on to social media.

It shows the man shouting at the 77-year-old woman to move seats while her daughter tries to stand up to him, telling him her mother is disabled.

He replies: "I don't care whether she's f**king disabled or not - if I tell her to get out she gets out."

The man then calls her "an ugly f**king c**t" and tells staff to move the woman to another seat, adding: "If you don't go to another seat I'll push you to another seat."

STINKS

Staff on the flight seem to do little to silence the man during the camera footage, leaving a passenger in the row behind to try to deal with the situation.

The cabin crew can be heard to say "don't be so rude, you have to calm down", while other passengers call for the man to be thrown off the flight.

The victim can be heard telling the man he stinks and needs a wash, before asking to be moved. Her daughter (53) told reporters the row started because her mother's arthritis meant it took her some time to move out of the way so the man could reach the window seat.

She said she had taken her mother, a Windrush generation migrant who went to the UK from Jamaica in the 1960s, on holiday to mark the anniversary her father's death.

News of the incident was shared 18,000 times on Twitter.

Ryanair said yesterday that it had seen the footage and reported the incident to the British police. It added: "As this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further."

A spokeswoman for the Essex Police force said: "We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation."French Foreign minister in Tunisia, focus on cooperation Discussions also on Libya with Tunisian counterpart

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, OCTOBER 22 - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian arrived in France on Sunday to begin a two-day visit aimed at "reaffirming French-Tunisian friendship and trust and France's support for reforms underway to consolidate the country's political and economic transition", according to a statement by the French Embassy in Tunisia.



It said the visit is part of bilateral commitments made in Tunisia last February by French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as preparations for the second Franco-Tunisian High Council for Cooperation, which will take place in Paris in the first half of 2019.



Le Drian will be received by Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi and Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, and he will also meet with Industry Minister Zied Laahari and Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui.



With Jhinaoui, he will discuss the main issues of bilateral and multilateral cooperation and the political and security challenges of the region, including the situation in Libya.



Various cooperation agreements are expected to be signed during the visit.(ANSAmed).



TEL AVIV - Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Israeli Parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on Monday that it is currently not possible to reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas over the violence in Gaza.

"We have exhausted all options; we have allowed the UN envoy to make attempts, as well as Egypt and Qatar; but the reaction (of Hamas) has been more than eloquent," Lieberman said, referring to violence at the border last Friday.

On Monday, another Egyptian intelligence delegation arrived in Gaza and was immediately received by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

"We've arrived at a situation in which there are no other choices except to deal Hamas the hardest hit we're able to produce," Lieberman said.

He said the people of the Gaza Strip are being "held hostage" by Hamas and that Palestinian demonstrations on the border between Gaza and Israel each week are "anything but spontaneous" and massively financed.

"From 30 March to today, Hamas has invested tens of millions in this new mechanism that it invented to generate violence.

They give 3,000 dollars to the family of every person who dies, 500 dollars to every seriously wounded, and 200 dollars to the average or lightly wounded," Lieberman said.

"It's not a 'popular protest' but rather a systematic and organised use of violence, on which Hamas turns up or lowers the flame as it wishes," he said.For Subscribers Top 25: The best Washington County high school boys athletes since 2001

We have had some great athletes since 2001, so it wasn't an easy job, but here's a break down the best 25 athletes in, Washington County.Jordan: king meets EU commissioner for Neighborhood policy Focus on further cooperation, Israeli-Palestinian peace process

(ANSAmed) - AMMAN, OCTOBER 22 - King Abdullah of Jordan on Monday met Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, and discussed the strategic partnership between Jordan and the European Union(EU), and current developments in the region, Petra news agency said.



During a meeting at the Al Husseiniya Palace, the King and the EU official discussed prospects of further bilateral cooperation, and opportunities to benefit from the simplified Rules of Origin agreement to increase Jordan's exports to European markets, said Petra.



The discussions also tackled developments in the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis, with the King highlighting the importance of stepping up efforts to reach a lasting peace according to the two-state solution, which leads to setting up an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.



The Jordanian monarch urged EU officials to provide support UNRWA to enable it to provide relief, education and health services, for Palestinian refugees.



Meanwhile, both sides stressed the need to reach political solutions to the crises in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and to ensure the safety of its land and the unity of its people. (ANSAmed).



Riyadh says will not use oil as leverage in Khashoggi case Energy minister says policy is to ensure stability

(ANSAmed) - MOSCOW, OCTOBER 22 - Saudi Arabia will not use its oil as political leverage in the dispute over the death of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who died in the Saudi consolate in Istanbul on October 2, said Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih in an interview with Russian news agency TASS.



He said the country's energy policy aims at ensuring the stability of global markets.



"We hope that the world will face the political crisis with wisdom, and we will exercise our wisdom both on a political and an economic level," he said.



"My role as energy minister is to enact the directives of the government, which has a constructive and responsible role, and as a result to stabilise worldwide energy markets, contributing to global economic development," he said.



When asked whether another oil embargo like the one in 1973 could happen again, he said there is "no intention" of that.



Meanwhile, examining magistrates in Istanbul are questioning another five Turkish employees of the Saudi consolate as witnesses in the investigation into Khashoggi's death. More than 20 other employees have been questioned in recent days, many of whom said they were told not to report to work on the day of the reporter's death.(ANSAmed).



Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump discussed the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by phone late Sunday night.

US President Donald J. Trump (L) and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) arrive for a family picture of Nato Summit in Brussels, Belgium, 11 July 2018. [File Photo:IC]

During the phone call, they agreed that all aspects of the case should be brought to light, Turkey's presidential press office said in a statement.

Erdogan said earlier Sunday he will make a statement and address the issues "in detail" on the Khashoggi case on Tuesday during his party's group meeting at the parliament.

Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, has been missing since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

The kingdom claimed early Saturday that Khashoggi had died in a "brawl" in its consulate, but did not explain the cause of his death.

The two leaders also discussed bilateral relations and release of pastor Andrew Brunson, stressing the importance of the Manbij road map and maintaining peace in Idlib, according to the statement.Senior political leader Yashwant Sinha had recently said, It is time to make a strong mahagatbandhan (grand alliance). If people do not even wake up now, it will be too late.

The dissident Bharatiya Janata Party leader (BJP) from Bihar was addressing a meeting organised by the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Lucknow to celebrate the birth anniversary of Socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan.

Sinha, who has seen the rise and fall of alliances in his own state, was bang on. Last-minute alliances fail to turn around the electoral prospects of political parties as overnight bonhomie between estranged leaders does not translate into votes, especially when they represent castes locked in traditional social and political animosity.

The oppositions dilemma and delay in firming up alliances is raising doubts over their avowed espousal of a credible alternative to the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre.

Congress, the second pivot around which the countrys politics is expected to revolve, is seen as lackadaisical in taking forward seat-sharing talks with equally recalcitrant partners.

A senior leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) said, The failure of the non-BJP parties to strike an alliance for the forthcoming elections in the neighbouring states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh has hugely impaired the oppositions credibility to form a grand alliance ahead of the 2019 polls. It has instead triggered the TINA (there Is no alternative) factor in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

An SP leader said, Even if BSP president Mayawati had put up unreasonable demands for states going to the polls, the Congress could have done a package deal for assembly and general elections, trading off seats, giving her more in her stronger territory of Uttar Pradesh in lieu of states heading for polls in the year-end.

Ironically, at a time when non-BJP parties should have cemented alliances, fragmentation is seen in their camps.

The SP, one of the two prime regional parties in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP hopes to reap a bountiful harvest of Lok Sabha seats next year, has suffered a virtual split with former chief minister Akhilesh Yadavs uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav rebelling and raising an entity called Samajwadi Secular Morcha.

Shivpals Morcha has the support of the BJP, as indicated by enhanced security to the leader, prompt allotment of the bungalow vacated by Mayawati to him for his new office and withdrawal of a police case against his brother Mulayam Singh Yadav by an obliging government.

According to another veteran socialist leader from Allahabad, the unpalatable developments are reminding many of the 1960s when governments, formed by fragile alliances, frequently collapsed because of unending ego battles between l socialist stalwarts like Raj Narain, Ram Manohar Lohia, George Fernandes and Charan Singh.

A political observer said the oppositions seriousness in forming a grand alliance against the NDA would have got a boost had the opposition parties displayed some flexibility in sharing seats for the upcoming assembly elections. Loss of states would harm their prospects in 2019 too, said a political observer.

When Sinha had sounded a political alert, he knew that an alliance at the top level takes time to filter down to the ground level, especially when rival castes have a history of animosity.

Yadavs and Kurmis have not been best of friends in Bihar. Both Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal (United) had to toil hard to transfer their votes to their partners after they had buried their old enmity to form a grand alliance that later fell apart.

This is how it happened. The two leaders displayed great bonhomie; the Yadavs, who are often described as sarkari jati (government caste) for their clout as a voting bloc, had been feeling marginalised in state politics during the over decade-long coalition rule of Nitish Kumars Janata Dal (United) and the BJP.

The community went with the alliance after Prasad told them it was a do or die time for them as well as the party; the Kurmis were satisfied with the chief ministers post for Nitish Kumar. Prasad had himself propped up his name.

The scene is no different in Uttar Pradesh, where the Yadavs and Dalits have traditionally voted against each other. Their enmity had turned intense after the violent fall of the SP-BSP coalition government in 1995.

The communities, feeling marginalised in the current dispensation, have decided to support the alliance, if it materialises. The canny BJP leadership has thrown a spanner in the works by propping up Shivpal Yadav while the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh , its ideological mentor, is busy wooing the Dalits .

Mere seat-sharing would not help till several rounds of meetings are held at the ground level. The question is: Will Mayawati and Akhilesh hold joint meetings before the polls?

Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Chaudhary Ajit Singh recently said the alliance will come through by December, which means the political parties and their candidates will barely get three months to canvass after burying the hatchet.

In the 2017 UP polls, the SPs alliance with the Congress had failed for two reasons  firstly, the seat-sharing agreement was closed at the eleventh hour due to which the candidates remained uncertain about their tickets to contest elections, and secondly, Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi, failed to put up a joint fight.

As a result, the alliance between them failed to reach the grassroots while disgruntled candidates, who lost their election tickets because of the seat-sharing pact, refused to throw their weight behind the poll partner. Each Lok Sabha constituency comprises of five assembly segments and confusion prevails about the seats that the partners would contest.

In the meantime, the BJP has launched its campaign, much ahead of the general elections.After all, slow and steady rarely wins the race in politics. Instead, those who have a head start eventually get the crown.After Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singhs wedding announcement on Sunday evening, here is everything you wanted to know about their wedding plans  from the speculated venue to what Deepika and Ranveer will be wearing and the expected guest list.

Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singhs wedding announcement had the whole of India enthralled on Sunday evening. Taking a detour from the usual way in which Bollywood celebs tie the knot  in secret while speculation rages around them  Deepika and Ranveer confirmed their wedding dates on social media while thanking their fans and well-wishers for all the love and support.

We thank you for all the love you have showered upon us over the years and seek your blessings as we embark on this incredible journey of love, loyalty, friendship and togetherness, their joint statement read as they announced November 14 and 15 as wedding dates.

Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh confirmed their wedding date on Twitter.

Given their star status, however, speculation is rife still. Now, it has just moved on to where DeeVeer, as their fans call to like them, will get married, who will make it to the super-exclusive guest list and who will they be wearing. Heres everything you wanted to know about Deepika and Ranveers November wedding but didnt know who to ask, speculated of course.

Deepika, Ranveer wedding venue

According to various reports, Deepika and Ranveers wedding will take place at Villa del Balbianello at Lake Como, Italy. A Delhi-based wedding planner has been roped for the shaadi which will be preceded by the sangeet on November 13, Mumbai Mirror quoted a source as saying. The wedding will be followed by receptions in Mumbai and Bangalore.

Deepika, Ranveer wedding guests

Just like Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli, the wedding of Deepika and Ranveer will be attended by only their family and close friends. However, some of their close industry colleagues may be in attendance including Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Arjun Kapoor and Karan Johar. Deepika and Ranveer started dating on the sets of Bhansalis Goliyon ki Rasleela: Ram-Leela and have done two more blockbusters with him including Padmaavat and Bajirao Mastani. Coincidentally, Ram Leela released on November 15, 2013.

Deepika, Ranveer wedding trousseau

Sabyasachi Mukherjee is expected to design Deepikas outfits for the wedding, say reports. It is not clear who the flamboyant Ranveer Singh will be wearing. The couple will head for a brief honeymoon before Ranveer dives into the promotions of Simmba which opens on December 28, the report said.If it is Priyanka Chopra, it has to be interesting. Nothing that our desi girl in Hollywood avoids notice. Whats more is that her upcoming nuptials will ensure that our interest in Nick Jonas and Priyanka stays intact. Speculations are rife that the duo will wed in December in Jodhpur this year. Now, a picture has emerged online, in the duo pose in a Las Vegas chapel with a friend.

A latest Instagram photo shared by Irish filmmaker Emmett Hughes show Nick and Priyanka posing with actor Ashley Benson. The picture has Priyanka standing between Nick and Ashley with red flowers in her hands and a tiara band. Scribbled behind are the words: The Little Vegas Chapel.

Priyanka Chopra is all smiles with Nick Jonas as she holds a bunch of red flowers.

As the photo fuelled speculation if the two got married, Las Vegas style, one may recall that in a 2013 interview to Filmfare, Priyanka had revealed that she would want to marry six times (to the same man, of course), of which one would be at a church in Las Vegas. The six locations and ceremonies would include big, fat Indian wedding at her dadajis (grandfathers) place in Ambala (north India), an underwater wedding at the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, a church wedding in Las Vegas, fourth would an intimate ceremony at a small, beautiful church in Locarno, Switzerland (on top of a hill overlooking Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The fifth would be a nikaah (Muslim wedding) while the sixth would be of the grooms choice.

But, as they say, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

On the work front, Nick and Priyanka have been rather busy  while Nick is promoting his new song Right Now (for which he has collaborated with German musician, DJ and record producer Robin Schulz), Priyanka is busy shooting for her Bollywood comeback project, The Sky Is Pink. Priyanka completed her Mumbai and London shooting schedules recently and is back in New York.

At the same time, reports suggest that the celebrity couple is also planning a grand December wedding in Jodhpur in Rajasthan. The venue is said to be Umaid Bhawan. They will also have a wedding shower in New York for their American friends.

For those who are late into the Priyanka-Nick saga, the couple met at the 2017s Met Gala and walked the ramp for designer Ralph Lauren. While the media was abuzz of their romance ever since, Nick confirmed on a chat show that they were just friends then but were in touch. Few months down the road, the couple met again and this time sparks flew. They both realised their feelings for each other. Ever since, their intercontinental romance has had their fandom transfixed. Earlier this year, there were reports that Nick proposed to Priyanka in London but the duo chose to make their engagement official with a simple roka ceremony in Mumbai in August.

Follow @htshowbiz for moreA 24-year-old man allegedly strangled his wife to death in front of their two-year-old daughter in Kamla Market on Friday night. Police said the man then proceeded to sit with the body and with the child on his lap for more than 24 hours, before going to a police station to confess to the crime on Sunday.

The man, who worked as a peon at a Delhi University college, suspected that his wife was having an affair, police said.

The man, identified by the police by his first name Kamil, was arrested after he led the police to his house at Shakir ki Dandi in Kamla Market. The body of his 22-year-old wife, Reshma, was found on a mattress on the floor. Reshmas family members accused Kamil of allegedly torturing and killing his wife for dowry. Kamil was booked for murder and dowry death.

Police officials said that Kamil was carrying his daughter when he came to the police station to surrender. The child was handed over to Kamils family after Reshmas parents refused to accept her, police said. Deputy commissioner of police (central) Mandeep Singh Randhawa said around 2am on Sunday, Kamil came to the police station and informed an officer on duty he had murdered his wife.

An officer associated with the case said initially some of the personnel on night duty at the police station were shocked and thought Kamil was drunk and was making false allegations. However, when he insisted the police visit his home to verify his claims, a team was dispatched.

Kamils claims were found true and his wife was found on the mattress with strangulation marks around her neck. Her faced had turned blue and we suspected poisoning as well. The body was sent to Lok Nayak Hospital where doctors confirmed that she died of strangulation, said the officer.

During interrogation, Kamil allegedly told investigators that he had been married to Reshma for three years ago.

Kamil suspected Reshma of having an affair. The couple often had arguments over it. On October 18, Reshma left for her parents home with her daughter but returned the next day. On that night, they had an altercation during which Kamil strangled her, said the officer.

After killing his wife, Kamil spent more than 24 hours sitting near her body with their daughter in his lap. The next morning, he fed milk to the child and then went to the police station to surrender, said police.A twin strike by fuel station owners and autorickshaw and taxi drivers that began in the national capital on Monday morning is set to cripple traffic movement and cause severe inconvenience to commuters in Delhi.

Around 400 fuel stations in the national capital began a 24-hour shutdown to press the Delhi government to slash value-added tax (VAT) on the key transport fuels to cut their losses.

The Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti, one of the major auto-taxi unions in Delhi also called for a one-day strike to protest against the Delhi governments policies on cab aggregators Uber and Ola, and the Centres rule on speed governors.

Ahead of the strike, Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA) president Nischal Singhania had blamed the Arvind Kejriwal governments refusal to reduce VAT on petrol and diesel prices which he claimed had caused losses of around 30% to the pumps in Delhi as people chose to get fuel at stations in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, which had cut VAT after the Centre slashed petrol and diesel prices by Rs 2.50 per litre each, IANS reported.

In comparison to Delhi, petrol in UP and Haryana is cheaper by Rs 2.59 and Rs 1.95 per litre, respectively, while diesel in these two states is cheaper by Rs 2.02 and Rs 1.72 per litre, respectively, Singhania had told reporters earlier in the week.

Because of high price in Delhi and low prices in states like Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, customers are deserting the petrol pumps in Delhi, leading to a huge drop in sales, he said.

He also said that consumers are forced to go for cheaper, dirtier fuels in UP and Haryana, causing more pollution in Delhi, as the environment-friendly Euro VI fuel, that produces 80% lesser emission, is available only in the national capital.

#Visuals from a petrol pump in Delhi as a protest has been called by Delhi Petrol Dealers Association against Delhi govts refusal to reduce VAT on diesel & petrol. All 400 petrol pumps along with linked CNG dispensing units will remain shut from 6 am today to 5 am tomorrow pic.twitter.com/rj0nKsLe3d  ANI (@ANI) October 22, 2018

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has blamed the BJP for the strike.

Petrol pump owners hv told us privately that this is a BJP sponsored strike, actively supported by oil cos. In fact, BJP has thrust it upon petrol pump owners. People will give BJP a befitting reply in elections for continuously inconveniencing people thro their dirty politics, he said in a tweet on Sunday night.

The taxi strike has been supported by the All India Tour and Transport Association (AITTA). Some have threatened to block major roads in the city and stage a protest against the Centre in front of Parliament.

AITTA chairman Inderjeet Singh claimed that the unions made multiple attempts to reach out to the governments at the Centre and Delhi. But we got no response. So we are now forced to block roads to make our voice heard.

A senior Delhi transport department official who did not wish to be named, The reason for the strike is completely unfounded as no such policy has been notified till now. A draft was prepared, but there has not been any development.

Delhi has about 95,000 registered auto-rickshaws and about 1.5 lakh cabs.

Meanwhile, state-run oil marketing companies cut the prices of petrol and diesel for a fourth consecutive day on Sunday amid lower global crude oil prices.

Petrol and diesel prices in Delhi on Monday are Rs 81.44 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.30) and Rs 74.92 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.27), respectively. Petrol and diesel prices in Mumbai are Rs 86.91 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.30) and Rs 78.54 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.28), respectively.The organiser of a Dussehra event at Amritsars Dhobi Ghat where 61 people were killed as a train ploughed through a crowd, claimed all permissions and safety measures were taken and he was being framed by some people who had personal enmity against him.

In an about one and a half minute-long video, shared by ANI, a distressed-looking Saurabh Madan alias Mithu, who went into hiding after kin of the victims in Fridays tragedy blamed him, said there were no lapses from his side.

I had organised the function to get everyone together. We took all permissions... we had 20 feet space around the Ravan effigy. There was no lapse from my side, we had 100 policemen at the site, a fire brigade vehicle and water tankers were there at the spot. The programme was held within the boundary of the Dhobi ghat ground, not on the (railway) lines... we hadnt put chairs on the railways lines, Madan said in Punjabi in the video shot in an undisclosed location.

The train suddenly came.. it was fate. We had already made 7-10 announcements asking people not to stand on the railway lines, he added.

Madan, the son of local Congress councillor Vijay Madan, alleged that there were three-four mischievous people with personal enmity against him who were spreading accusations against him, and he appealed to people not to believe them, adding he and his family were very disturbed.

Closed-circuit television footage of Madan leaving his house in an SUV surfaced on the social media on Sunday. His house has been locked ever since the accident. Angry people even threw stones at the house Saturday.

The Punjab police and the Government Railway Police (GRP) have not initiated any action against Madan yet.

The accident took place on the railway track which is under the jurisdiction of GRP. We cannot do anything. Secondly, chief minister Amarinder Singh has ordered a magisterial inquiry in the case, said Amritsar police commissioner S S Srivastava.

The GRP has registered an FIR against unknown persons for negligence and culpable homicide. The matter is under investigation, GRP Amritsar station house officer Balbir Singh said.

Hindustan Times repeatedly tried to call Madan over the phone but to no avail.Punjab minister and Amritsar East MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu on Monday said he will adopt child victims of Fridays train accident and take responsibility for the affected families, while the National Human Rights Commission issued notices to the Railways and the Punjab government for negligence and sought a report from the state chief secretary and rail board chairman in four weeks.

Sidhu is under fire after the accident that claimed the lives of more than 60 Dussehra revellers at a function organised by his aide Saurabh Mithu Madan and presided over by his wife Navjot Kaur, who reached the event late, delaying the burning of Ravans effigy. The delay is seen as one of the reasons behind the tragedy as people watching the burning effigy did not see the approaching train in the dark and got run over.

It seems that the local authorities and the organisers did not properly manage the crowd, gathered to watch the Dussehra celebrations. It was the responsibility of the State to provide proper safety and protection to the citizens during the event, the NHRC said while taking suo motu cognisance of media reports about the incident.

A petition was filed by an advocate in the Punjab and Haryana high court, seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation or a special investigation team. Dinesh Kumar Dakoria, the petitioner, blamed the event organisers for the tragedy. A similar petition filed in the chief judicial magistrates court in Bihars Muzaffarpur against Navjot Kaur, seeking registration of a case against her. The case will be heard on November 3.

Accompanied by Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar, Sidhu told reporters in Amritsar, I commit to take all kind of responsibility to educate them (the victims) and settle them from my own pocket. Besides, I also take responsibility of the persons who became disabled or the elderly who lost the breadwinner of the family, he said.

He visited the local civil hospital and Guru Nanak Dev Hospital to enquire after the health of the injured.

Jakhar criticised the manner in which the minister of state for railways and the rail board chairman had washed their hands of the accident by giving a clean chit to the driver.

The Punjab Government disbursed the compensation amount of 5 lakh each to 21 families of the deceased in the first phase.Normal life across most parts of Assam remained affected on Tuesday due to a 12-hour shutdown from 5 am called by 46 indigenous groups against the proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.

The bill proposes to grant citizenship to religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Assams indigenous groups, 46 of whom are supporting the bandh, oppose the bill as they feel it will marginalize them by encouraging more migrations of the Hindus from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Tuesdays shutdown coincided with a joint parliamentary committee (JPC)s meeting over the bill ahead of its expected tabling during Parliaments winter session in December. It had the support of opposition Congress as well as pro-talks faction of the ULFA.

Hundreds of protesters belonging to JPC took to the streets since early morning and burnt tyres on roads, prevented movement of vehicles and disrupted trains at some places. Essential services have been kept outside its purview. Opposing the shutdown, the BJP-led ruling coalition in the state had ordered all government employees to attend offices and threatened traders and business establishments of revoking their licenses if they downed shutters.

The spontaneous response to the shutdown despite government threats of crackdown shows mass opposition of the Bill in Assam... farmers rights activist Akhil Gogoi of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti said. But despite assurances of safety most business establishments and transport operators across the state chose to shut down their shops and keep vehicles off the roads.

The shutdown was by and large peaceful apart from incidents of stone pelting at vehicles reported from few areas... DGP Kuladhar Saikia said. While effect of the shutdown was felt in 30 districts, it didnt have any effect in Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi.

Unlike other parts of the state, most organizations in Barak Valley support the Bill as they feel it is needed to give citizenship to people who migrated to India due to the Partition and religious persecution in Bangladesh.

Clause 6 of Assam Accord provides that constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of Assam.

The shutdown received maximum support in minority-dominated areas. Those same people who failed to close shops during the Assam Agitation (against illegal immigrants) are today supporting the shutdown, BJP state unit chief Ranjit Dass said.A 70-year-old tribal woman is battling for life after her tongue was chopped off by villagers, who accused her of practising witchcraft, in Bihars Rohtas district, police said on Monday.

Police said Rajkalo Kunwar, a widow, was sleeping at her house with her grandchildren when three villagers barged into their house early on Sunday in Rediya village under Tilauthu police station area. The village is around 155km south west of state capital Patna.

They held the children at gunpoint and assaulted the woman before chopping off her tongue and fleeing. The victim suffered multiple injuries in the attack.

She was rushed by villagers alerted by the childrens cry for help to the primary health centre in Tilauthu, where doctors referred her to the Sadar Hospital in Sasaram.

Tilauthu Police have registered a case against Nanhak Rajwar, Uday Rajwar and Chatthu Rajwar of Bigaha Tola after her granddaughter lodged a complaint against them.

We are carrying out raids to arrest the accused, station house officer Pramod Kumar said.

The widows only son Krishna Rajwar is a hearing and speech impaired. He works as a daily wage labourer with his wife in a factory in Punjabs Chandigarh. The couple had left their two daughters and a son with their grandmother at the village.

Police said the couple had taken leave to travel home three days ago and learnt about the incident as soon as they landed at the Sasaram railway station.

The accused, villagers said, blamed the old widow of practising witchcraft and causing ailments and other disturbances in their families.

In the past too, they had abused and assaulted her with similar allegations and had threatened to teach her stern lessons, the womans daughter-in-law Kamla said.

Tribals constitute only 1.1% of Rohtas population and are deeply mired in superstitious practices. Hundreds of women have been killed in the past few years on suspicion of being witches in the state.

The Prevention of Witch Practices Act, 1999 is entering its 20th year of enactment, but the torture of women, especially from weaker sections in Bihar and Jharkhand, continues unabated due to lack of its knowledge among policemen, anti-witchcraft crusader Premji said.

His organisation Free Legal Aid Committee (FLAC) had played an instrumental role in getting a law formulated to check witch-hunting.

I sincerely hope that governments of Bihar and Jharkhand, where the practice of witch hunting is highest in the country, does something to check the heinous, inhuman practice, he added.The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is likely to seek action against its special director Rakesh Asthana, who has long been in a tussle with director Alok Verma, and his immediate repatriation to his cadre state Gujarat, an agency official said Monday.

A CBI officer told Hindustan Times that the director is to move to a formal proposal for action against Asthana Monday but was caught up with other official work. Asthanas continuation has become untenable... The CBI director will send the communication for his removal in a day or two at the most, the official said.

The paperwork for the recommendation is in the process of being completed, the official added.

CBI director Verma had met prime minister Narendra Modi Sunday to brief him on the allegations against Asthana, against whom the agency had last week filed a corruption case on a complaint from Hyderabad-based businessman Sana Satish Babu. The businessman alleged that Dubai-based brothers, Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad, demanded Rs 5 crore from him for Asthanas intervention in a case the agency registered against controversial meat exporter Moin Qureshi. He also claimed to have paid them money.

The CBI had Monday arrested its deputy superintendent of police Devender Kumar who was also named in the corruption case registered against Asthana and searched his office and residence.

On the other hand, Asthana has accused Verma of interfering in investigations carried out under his supervision and made a formal complaint to cabinet secretary Pradeep Sinha, who asked the Central Vigilance Commission to look into the matter.

Asthana was brought to the CBI by the government in 2016 and had been widely perceived to have been positioned to head the CBI. As a Gujarat cadre police officer, he had supervised the initial investigation into the Godhra train burning incident when he was inspector general of police of the states Vadodara range.

His appointment as an interim CBI director in December 2016 provoked sharp protests from the opposition and he had to eventually make way for Verma, who was brought in as a full-time CBI boss five weeks later.UP Legislative Council chairman Ramesh Yadavs wife Meera, who was arrested Monday after reportedly admitting to murdering her son Abhijit Yadav, alleged that her confession was made under police pressure.

Appearing before chief judicial magistrate Anand Prakash Singh, she denied any involvement in her sons murder. The court sent her to 14 days judicial custody.

After coming out of the court, Meera claimed that she had earlier given a confession statement under pressure from the police. There is a big conspiracy in Abhijits murder, she alleged.

Police arrested her early on Monday morning for allegedly murdering Abhijit (22) after a late night argument on Saturday. According to police, preliminary investigation has revealed that alleged physical and mental harassment by Abhijit led forced Meera to kill him.

A senior police officer privy to the investigation said Meera told the investigation team that Abhijit used to abuse and assault her almost on a daily basis.

She apparently got tired of constant abuse and eventually decided to kill Abhijit. During medical examination on Monday morning, Meera showed her injuries to the doctors, the officer said.

According to the statement given by Meera to the investigating team, Abhijit was addicted to drugs. On Saturday, he reached home - an official accommodation provided to his father in the legislators hostel at Darul Shafa in Hazratganj area around 11 pm in an inebriated condition and had a spat with Meera.

Senior superintendent of police, Lucknow, Kalanidhi Naithani said, Meera told the police that Abhijit tried to hit her but she pushed him back. Abhijits head hit a wall after which he fell down. Later, Meera strangulated him with a piece of cloth.

Once Abhijit became motionless, Meera tried to dispose of the cloth by burning it on an electric heater. On Sunday morning, she informed her elder son Abhishek Yadav, 27, about the incident, he added.

The incident took place in the official accommodation issued to Ramesh Yadav in the legislators hostel Darul Shafa under Hazratganj police station.

On the advice of forensic experts, the Hazratganj police sealed the house on Monday to prevent any tampering with evidence.

Abhishek and a male servant were the first to reach the spot at around 9 am on Sunday.

A police team reached the house by 11 am. Meera and Abhishek claimed that Abhijit had died of heart attack and were reluctant to hand over the body to the police for post-mortem examination.A 45-year-old former secretary of the Mumbai Youth Congress was allegedly murdered by two men who stabbed and slashed him with a sword and a knife in Ghatkopar on early Monday morning. Two suspects, identified as Umesh Thakur and RJ Sharma, have been detained for questioning, said deputy commissioner of police (Zone 10) Navinchandra Reddy. Police are also questioning BJP Yuva Morchas district president Sunil Dubey and another BJP worker Jitendra Mishra. There are two more suspects in the case, who are yet to be located.

Sakinaka police told HT that Manoj Dubey  an active Congress worker whose primary business was broadband services distribution  was found grievously injured at 1.30 am on Monday by his friends below Asalfa Metro station near Maheshwari Mahadev temple. They took him to Rajawadi hospital in Ghatkopar where he was declared dead on arrival.

Though HT could not independently verify it, an officer at Sakinaka police station said Dubey had got into a heated argument with a woman BJP supporter over a Facebook post. The woman had filed a complaint against Dubey.

In his Facebook post, Dubey had reportedly praised Congress MLA Naseem Khan on his birthday on October 21, to which the woman objected, saying Khan had done no work for his constituents. According to the police, this angered Dubey who allegedly abused her in a Facebook comment (the comment has since been deleted from Dubeys Facebook account). In response, the BJP supporter lodged a non-cognisable complaint against Dubey at Ghatkopar police station at around 11 pm on Sunday.

After this, according to Sakinaka police officials, Dubey went to a bar with his friends. The two accused followed him there. Dubey allegedly got into an argument with the two men who attacked him with a sword and a knife, the police said.

Reddy told HT that a murder case has been registered under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. Our team is on the lookout for the accused, he said.

Khan, a former minister, led a protest march of 20-odd Congress workers to Sakinaka police station on Monday evening. This is a political murder by BJPs youth wing members, he said. There are more than five eye-witnesses. They are saying that more than two people are involved. We have requested the police to ensure all culprits are arrested.

A Sakinaka police officer said, At the moment, it looks like a case of political rivalry gone wrong, but we dont know for certain. We will keep an eye on this.

HT reached out to Mumbai BJP chief Ashish Shelar for his comments, but he had not responded up until the time of going to press.

Law enforcement officials said that Dubey had few criminal cases filed against him, including attempt to murder and grievous assault. Dubey is survived by his parents, younger brother, wife and a minor daughter.

Mumbai Youth Congresss Twitter handle issued a statement on Monday saying, We strongly condemn barbaric murder of Mumbai Congress volunteer Manoj Dube who was killed last night for sharing a post on Facebook that Congress will form the government in 2019. We urge Mumbai Police to quickly investigate and put the accused in this horrendous crime behind barsThe DMK has started to gear up for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls - the first major electoral challenge under new party chief MK Stalin - as it seeks to stage a comeback from the total wipe out it suffered in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in 2014.

With brainstorming sessions with senior functionaries and office-bearers to take stock of the situation on the ground and to galvanize its organizational network, the party has switched into election mode.

After constituting a two-member committee for each of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state and Puducherry last week, the party said it hold a conclave of Lok Sabha constituency panels and district secretaries at the party headquarters in Chennai on October 25. Strategies for the 2019 polls would be discussed at the meeting, party general secretary K Anbazhagan said in a statement on Sunday.

Unlike in other parties, the DMK district secretaries, with their domain knowledge, wield power in the organization and play a key role in devising election strategies. Those on the Lok Sabha constituency panel are mostly in the third rung-of the party hierarchy and the party wants to utilise them in this task, a senior party leader told Hindustan Times.

Since these are the first major elections under Stalins leadership, the party has launched the election work well ahead of the4 election announcement.

After last weeks DMK High-Level Committee meeting, Stalin had said, We discussed all the aspects of facing the LS polls. We considered in detail about alliance and seat sharing issues as well. Once the election commission announces the dates, we will officially begin the seat-sharing talks with our partners. Preparing the partys election manifesto too has begun, he added.Posters accusing Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of being missing and terming her an emotional blackmailer were seen on Monday in some areas of Uttar Pradeshs Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituency of her mother and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, sparking a verbal spat between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The headline of the posters read Madam Priyanka Vadra is missing, with emotional blackmailer written below her picture.

Saying they were waiting for a glimpse of her, the posters cited her absence after the rail accident in Harchandpur and the tragedies at NTPC plant in Unchahar and Rowlpur in the constituency as well as in festivals.

The Congress blamed the BJP for indulging in the poster campaign with reports of 50 to 100 posters posted in the Sadar and Sareni assembly areas. Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has been making serious efforts to foray into Sonia Gandhis constituency, which along with Amethi, held by her son and party chief Rahul Gandhi, is considered to be a Congress bastion.

We condemn this act. Some people travelling in luxury vehicles threw or pasted the posters at some places in Rae Bareli Sunday night. We understand this has been done by some local leaders, who recently switched loyalties from the Congress to BJP. We will report this issue to the district administration as the posters do not carry the name of any printing press or any organisation, said district Congress committee president VK Shukla.

Though Priyanka has not visited Rae Bareli for more than a year, Congress leaders, however, say she has been meeting its people regularly in New Delhi.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has a personal connect with the people of Rae Bareli. She keeps on meeting them and has been campaigning in Rae Bareli and Amethi. However, in the 2017 assembly elections, she stayed away and appeared only at a public meeting in Rae Bareli. She is yet to join active politics. Yet, people in BJP are afraid of her.

They (BJP) are reacting in this fashion when there is only apprehension that she may join active politics and contest the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Rae Bareli. What will happen to them if she decides to join active politics and actually contests, said Congress MLC Deepak Singh.

Rae Bareli BJP president Ram Dev Pal said his party never resorts to such tactics and such posters targeting BJP leaders have also come up in the past.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra campaigned actively for her mother Sonia Gandhi in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. She is not an office bearer of the Congress. Yet, she comes to create a poll atmosphere in her mothers favour. This appears to be an attempt of the local Congress leaders to draw attention of the people, said Pal.

District magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri said he has not received any complaint about any posters so far but he will definitely look into the matter.Entangled in a suo motu contempt case for hurling derogatory remarks at the judiciary, BJP National Secretary H Raja escaped imminent arrest by tendering an unconditional apology to the Madras High Court on Monday.

Appearing before a bench of justices CT Selvam and Nirmal Kumar, Raja said, he had passed the remarks in a fit of rage, having turned emotional and offered his unconditional apology to the court.

Known as loose cannon for his acerbic comments, which have often landed him in controversies, Raja, was caught on camera making scandalous and vulgar remarks against the high court last month, during a Ganesh Chathurthi procession in Pudukottai district.

When police prevented him and the procession organizers from erecting a stage and holding a meeting near a mosque, he turned his ire at the cops. When told that there is a high court directive against erecting a stage and holding a meeting at the place, he abused both the police and the judiciary with expletives.

With the video of Rajas acerbic comments going viral on social media, political parties demanded stern action against Raja. Finding himself in a corner, he initially claimed that the video was fake and doctored and that the voice was not his. And even though an FIR was filed, he was not arrested. At this juncture, a Division Bench of Justice CT Selvam and Nirmal Kumar stepped in and initiated contempt proceedings.

Initially, Raja argued that only the chief justice could initiate contempt proceedings. But, the chief justice posted the matter before the same bench which issued the summons.

On Monday, the BJP leader came early and appeared before the bench and his counsel submitted an affidavit, tendering an unconditional apology. Those words were uttered in a highly agitated state. It was purely unintentional. Only after watching the video did I realize it was wrong, Raja said in his statement.

This is the first time Raja had owned up his action though he had been at the center of many controversies. Earlier, this year, in a Facebook post in the wake of the razing down of Lenins statue in Tripura he had advocating similarly removing statues of social reformer and rationalist leader Periyar EV Ramasamys which dot the landscape of Tamil Nadu. This had led to a furore. Then, Raja had maintained that the post was uploaded by his admin without his consent.The Indian army on Monday told its Pakistani counterpart to take the bodies of two of its men killed during an attack on an army patrol in Jammu and Kashmirs Sunderbani Sector on Sunday. The army also asked Pakistan to take over the bodies of its two hostile nationals, said an army officer who did not want to be named told PTI.

Pakistan Army has been informed through established communication channels to take over the bodies of the hostile Pakistani Nationals. A stern warning has been conveyed to Pakistan Army to restrain the terrorists operating from its soil, the officer said.

Two heavily armed Pakistani intruders and three Indian soldiers were killed in the gunfight after the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the LoC.

The intruders were believed to be members of a Border Action Team (BAT) comprising Pakistani soldiers and trained militants, an Army officer said on condition of anonymity on Sunday.Pro-Kannada outfit Kannada Rakshana Vedike Yuva Sene on Monday protested against Sunny Leones casting in a multi-lingual film Veeramadevi alleging that this was an insult to a historical figure and warned of a Padmaavat-like protest if she was not replaced.

A couple of youth also cut their hands with blades to make people recognise the seriousness of their intentions. The groups youth wing president R Harish said it was not right to have Sunny Leone play a historical character, who had supported the cause of Hindus.

Leone is popular as a porn star and it such a person should not play a historical character, who is not only an icon of Kannada but also someone who built many temples, he said. According to the activists, Veeramadevi had built many temples in what is now Karnataka and, hence, their religious sentiments would be hurt if she is played by Sunny Leone.

To press their demand, the protesters have vowed to disrupt a performance by Sunny Leone in Bengaluru on November 3. We have bought at least 230 tickets for the performance, and we will disrupt it if she doesnt stay away from the movie, Harish said.

The protesters said they did not have any problem with Sunny Leone acting any movie or taking part in any programme that wasnt about historical characters. We are not against anything else, we just want her to quit this movie. Else, we will also have to protest like people in Rajasthan did against the movie Padmaavat, Harish said.

Meanwhile, Harish M, founder and director of Time Creations, which is organising the November 3 event, said it was up to the police now to ensure the security of the performers at the event. We have taken all the requisite permission from the police and the authorities. It is now for those authorities to ensure that law and order is maintained, he said.

Similar protests had erupted in December, when the KRV Yuva Sene had protested against an event featuring Sunny Leone on New Years Eve. That programme was cancelled after the state government had backed away from ensuring security at the event.

On the November 3 event, Harish M said: This is a Kannada event and we have even accommodated Raghu Dixit in it, adding The event comes under my purview, I cannot do anything about objections to a movie that I have nothing to do with.Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnaviss wife Amruta Fadnavis clicked a selfie on the restricted area of Angriya, Indias first domestic luxury cruise ship, despite being cautioned by the police, news agency ANI reported on Monday.

ANI reported that Amruta was seen sitting across Angriyas safety range on Saturday, in a 30-second video of the incident, during the ships journey from Mumbai to Goa for the first time.

She is seen sitting in the place which looks like the extreme edge of the ship as a security personnel stands a few feet behind her, ANI said. A police officer is seen walking to the spot after jumping through some railings and speaking to the security personnel.

The security personnel is then seen conveying the officials message to Amruta. He gestured to her in what seemed like a caution against crossing the safety range of the cruise ship. She is seen taking out her phone and clicking a selfie while sitting at the same spot.

The incident occurred during the maiden trip of Indias first domestic cruise, which started operating on Mumbai-Goa sea route from Saturday. It boasts of six bars, two restaurants, a swimming pool, discotheque, a reading room and a spa.

The cruise ship has 104 rooms and the capacity to accommodate 400 passengers and 70 crew members. The travel time of the cruise from Mumbai to Goa is 14 hours.Former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi, who floated the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) after quitting the Congress, has formed an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) for the upcoming assembly elections in the state.

He has decided that he will not contest the elections as a candidate and will campaign to strengthen the coalition which, he says, will form the next government in the state. Jogi spoke to Ritesh Mishra about his commitment to back Mayawati as prime minister, a possible post-poll tie-up with the Congress, and some of the key the issues facing Chhattisgarh. Edited Excerpts:

With the elections just round the corner, how do you assess your preparations?

We are doing very well and are in top gear. My meeting with candidates and my election rallies are drawing huge crowds, which signifies our popularity. We have already declared candidates for 45 seats while other parties have done nothing considerable in this regard. They are still lagging behind. Im sure we will do very well.

People were talking about you as a probable kingmaker. Now that a coalition with the Bahujan Samaj Party is in place, how do you assess your role in the elections?

I dont think I will be a kingmaker. I am aiming to be king. Why be a kingmaker? I am certain that our coalition with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Communist Party of India will help us attain majority. We will form the government of our own and will not need anybody.

What if things do not turn out as per your expectations?

Well, this is a hypothetical question. I am sure about attaining the majority and forming the government.

Will you retire from politics if you lose the elections? Or, irrespective of the results, is it your last election?

This is certainly not my last election. I was sick for 52 days, but now I have recovered from my bad phase and Im touring extensively. I have almost completed one round of all 90 constituencies and will complete the second round before the elections.

Who is your main rival  the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party? Is there a possibility of your party and the Congress coming together?

I have never said that the Congress and I will come together. Nor have I said that the Congress is not our main rival. I have been explaining that the Congress has become extremely weak. Recently, one of their very important MLAs, their working president, joined the BJP. The infighting is so acute that the party high command had to form a presidium of seven persons. How can a party function in this manner?

In case the Congress approaches you, would you form a post-poll alliance with it?

There is no question of forming a coalition with either the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party in any situation.

The people of Chhattisgarh, Mayawatiji, and the CPI are with me. I am sure of winning this election with a thumping majority.

The Congress has been severely hit by an alleged CD scandal just before the elections which will perhaps affect its electoral prospects too. What is your opinion about this development?

I will say that the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are involved in this CD affair. We are involved in the CG, that is Chhattisgarh, affair.

It is not worth commenting about anyone of the stature of Bhupesh Baghel, who is the prime target of this scandal.

The alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party has given you a big boost. What really led to this breakthrough after the failure of talks between the Congress and the BSP?

Everyone knows that the Congress was desperately trying to win the support of Mayawatiji. We were also trying, but not at the top level. But one day I was called to Lucknow for negotiations. We were able to strike a deal and form a coalition within three hours of meeting each other owing to our dedication towards the poor, Dalits and Adivasi people. This clearly explains that why she prefers me over the Congress.

Why did the talks between the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party fail?

The Congress was bullying in its stance and was underplaying the national stature of the BSP and its leader.

What I could gather from plain newspaper reading is that it was sheer arrogance that caused the failure of talks. Moreover, it is noteworthy and has been reiterated time and again by Mayawatiji that in case of a tie-up with the Congress, the votes of the BSP will surely be passed over to the Congress; however, Congress votes will never be polled in favour of the BSP.

They will go mostly to the BJP and not to the elephant (BSPs election symbol). Hence, such a coalition was not electorally practical as well as possible.

Do you think the BSP should join hands with Congress in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 general elections to achieve the larger Opposition goal of defeating the BJP?

In UP, the Congress has absolutely no presence except the two constituencies of the Gandhi family members. Even there, the situation in Amethi is very unfavourable. Moreover, the easy win of the Congress in Rai Bareli and Amethi may be attributed to the fact that socialist parties and the BSP do not field their candidates. In this background, I feel that UP needs an alliance of SP (Samajwadi Party) and BSP in order to defeat BJP.

What if Congress joins this alliance in Uttar Pradesh? Would it change the fortune of the alliance and help it attain the larger goal?

No. If the Congress will join the alliance, its vote will go to the BJP and will never get transferred to the alliance.

That is why I feel that only the SP and the BSP should form an alliance.

Is Mayawati your prime ministerial candidate, and if so, why?

Since the time of the national freedom movement, all the great doyens have worked towards uplifting Dalits. A Dalit PM will be a fitting tribute to this process. Mayawatiji is a very able administrator with a proven track record. She is acceptable to all and would make an excellent prime minister. That is why I am backing her.

What are the main issues that are affecting Chhattisgarh and why should people vote for you?

I have filed an affidavit in the high court on a stamp paper of ~100 in which I have promised three-four things.

First is about unemployed youth. There are 25 lakh (2.5 million) unemployed youth in our state. In these 15 years, no one has cared for them.

They are utterly frustrated and are becoming deviants.

I have promised that all state government jobs will be notified and the recruitment process shall be carried out briskly. Moreover, we will facilitate the setting up of industries by providing them all the required assistance, but our condition will be that 90% of the workforce should be from among these 25 lakh unemployed youth. Even after this, a large number will be left, for whom we will provide an unemployment allowance till we are able to provide them employment.

I have also promised that we will impose total prohibition in the plain areas and not hilly areas of our state. This will be done keeping in mind the sensitivities of tribal people, who have their peculiar belief system. With the passage of time, we shall try to win them over by persuasion and impose complete prohibition.

What is your view about the infighting in both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress?

There is lot of infighting in the BJP but it never gets the type of publicity that it deserves.

You see it everywhere, like in Bilaspur, Amar Agarwal is pitted against Kaushikji [Dharamlal Kaushik]. In Durg, Saroj Pandey is against Prem Prakash Pandey.

They cant even look at each other. Somehow the BJP has succeeded in hiding the intensity of this infighting.As far as the Congress is concerned, it is a free-for-all party. Nobody listens to anybody. The state president of the party openly abuses his boss. It is a continuous slugfest. There are seven persons nominated in the presidium  they are leading seven different groups and cannot tolerate each other.

People say there are many leaders of Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress who are in contact with you and might approach you after the declaration of tickets? How many such leaders are in contact with you?

Not many, but yes, a large number of Congress leaders and fewer number of BJP leaders are in contact with me.

Its mostly MLAs who are in contact with me. I cannot give the figures, but a substantial number of them are in contact. However, I cannot assure them a ticket. One or two might be able to secure a ticket from my party if they are strong enough in my assessment to deserve one. My priority will be my own party workers who have toiled day and night for the last two-and-a-half years.Former finance minister P Chidambaram on Monday said the Congress has never officially stated its president Rahul Gandhi should be the prime minister if an opposition alliance formed the next government.

In an interview to News18 Tamil TV channel, he said the Congresss focus was on dislodging the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre and bringing in a progressive alternative.

Chidambaram said the Opposition constituents would take a decision on who will be the prime minister in case it wins the next years Lok Sabha poll.

The Congress party has not officially said Rahul Gandhi should be installed as prime minister. When one or two persons spoke about it, the AICC (All India Congress Committee) leadership asked them not to discuss the issue, he said.

We do not have an issue over prime ministership. We want a government that does not snatch human freedom, one that does not intimidate citizens, one that does not impose tax terrorism on traders and entrepreneurs, Chidambaram said.

He said the safety of women and children should be a key characteristic of such a government, which would strive to ensure that farmers do not lose their livelihood.

That is our intention. The Congress party never said the prime minister should be from the party. Rahul Gandhi never said so. An alliance should take shape, that alliance should win, and the alliance parties will decide who will be the prime minister.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)s politburo member Md Salim said they have maintained from day one that there is no scope of any national alliance with any name as a prime ministerial candidate. Congress must look at the 1996, 2004 model where a post-poll coalition came to power. He said the focus should be on maximising the opposition votes in different constituencies and defeat the BJP.

Samajwadi Party spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary called it Congresss internal matter. ...our national president Akhilesh Yadav had already been saying that PM face will emerge after the elections. If Congress intends for an alliance with anyone, then anyway a democratic system should be followed about alliance partners selecting a prime ministerial candidate.

Akhilesh Yadav has repeatedly said the next prime minister will be a new PM and from Uttar Pradesh.Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday condemned what he described as a new cycle of killings in Kashmir and said the solution to the Kashmir dispute lay in dialogue.

Khans ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is keen to make progress in relations with India and other neighbours, but, in Indias case, wants to do this without altering its rigid stance on Kashmir, say analysts. The lack of dialogue between the two countries comes at a time when Pakistan is facing diplomatic isolation from neighbours and a cold shoulder from allies such as Saudi Arabia, who have turned down requests to help Islamabad tide over its economic problems.

In a tweet, Khan criticised what he called the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris and repeated his stance that the solution to the issue lay in dialogue. It is time India realised [that] it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UNSC resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

The Indian ministry of external affairs said Khans comments were deeply regrettable.

Instead of making comments on Indias internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues. Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control... Pakistans deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world, said spokesperson Raveesh Kumar.

Foreign policy analysts said the Pakistan premier is trying again to reach out to India for some sort of dialogue. He is under pressure from a number of quarters and he wants to show some achievement, commented analyst Aga Hilali.

Hilali said there were high expectations from the Imran Khan government on the foreign policy front. Instead there has been disappointment.

In September, India called off a meeting scheduled between Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Indias external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj that was to take place in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session.

The Indian foreign ministry said the talks were called off after the latest brutal killings of our security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the recent release of a series of twenty postage stamps by Pakistan glorifying a terrorist and terrorism.

In a statement released on Monday, Qureshis office said the international community needs to take swift action against human rights violations in Kashmir.

Khan is set to travel to Saudi Arabia to take part in the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh. This forum is being widely boycotted by international leaders following the murder of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.

In a meeting with the foreign media on Monday, Khan said, What happened in Turkey is just shocking, what can I say? Its shocked all of us.

But that aside, the reason I have to take this opportunity is because we are country of 210 million people and we have the worst debt crisis in our history.

Khan told foreign journalists: We are desperate for money. Unless we get loans from friendly countries or IMF, we actually wont have foreign exchange to either service our debts or to pay for our imports. Unless we get loans, or investment from abroad, well have real, real problems.Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the National Police Memorial in New Delhi on Sunday. It has been in the making for more than a decade.

Interestingly, the National War Memorial  a memorial to honour the fallen soldiers, a key demand of veterans and the three services  is still in the making and is likely to be unveiled soon.

Speaking at the occasion on Sunday, Modi remembered policemen serving in the disturbed areas of Jammu and Kashmir and Maoist-affected areas. Peace, rule of law is a product of your dedication, he said.

The National Police Commemoration Day is observed every year this day to pay homage to the 10 policemen who were killed in an ambush by Chinese troops in 1959 in Ladakhs Hot Spring area.

The proposal to have a national memorial for police personnel was first mooted by the Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2002. Then home minister L K Advani laid its foundation stone. The project, however, ran aground.Senior priest Father Kuriakose Kattuthara who had testified against former Jalandhar bishop Franco Mulakkal accused of raping a nun, was found dead Monday morning.

Kattuthara was found dead in a room at the St. Marys Church complex in Dasuya town in Hoshiarpur, around 180 km from state capital Chandigarh. He was under the Jalandhar diocese which was headed by Mulakkal, according to news agency IANS.

The Punjab Police said a probe is underway into the 67-year-old priests death.

It was found that he vomited over the bed. Blood pressure tablets were found at the spot. Investigation is underway. In our notice, no security was provided to him, ANI quoted A R Sharma, deputy superintendent of police of Dasuya , as saying.

His family and supporters of the nun, however, said they suspect foul play.

His brother Jose Kattuthara told local news channels that church authorities from Jalandhar called him this morning and informed him that his brother was found dead in his room which was locked from inside. Church officials reportedly told the priests brother that he may have died of a heart attack.

But Jose Kattuthara remains suspicious. He said he will file a complaint and move the Kerala High Court to seek cancellation of Mulakkals bail. The former Jalandhar bishop had been ordered by the high court not to return to Kerala unless summoned by the police. He had recently returned to Jalandhar to a grand welcome.

Sister Anupama, one of the five nuns who staged a dharna in Kochi seeking arrest of the bishop, said she also suspected foul play. The priest was a pillar of strength to us. He is also one of the key witnesses in the case. Only a thorough probe can reveal what led to his death, she said. After hearing of the priests untimely death, they feel more nervous, she added.

The brother of the nun also alleged it was pre-planned murder. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara had said that his life was under threat. An investigation should be conducted into his death. All witnesses should be given police protection, he told ANI

Father Kuriakose Kattuthara had alleged there were attempts by the church to hush up the sexual assault complaint of the nun against bishop Mulakkal of Jalandhar diocese.

He had also said that many of the nuns who had left the church had approached him with complaints against the bishop. They refused to reveal the truth because they were afraid of Mulakkal, Father Kattuthara had claimed.

Mulakkal was arrested in September 21 on charges of raping a nun repeatedly between 2014 and 2016. He was sent to two-week judicial custody on September 24.Home Minister Rajnath Singh will visit Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday during which he will review the security situation in the state and interact with political leaders, officials said.

During the day-long visit, Singh will attend a high-level meeting with Governor Satya Pal Mailk and top civil, police and security forces officials and assess the prevailing situation.

The home minister will review the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in the valley and along the border with Pakistan, during his visit on October 23, a home ministry official said Sunday.

The visit of the home minister to Jammu and Kashmir comes following the urban local body and the panchayat elections, which were boycotted by the two major political parties -- the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party.

The Pakistan-based terror groups had also threatened to disrupt the poll process.

The home minister is expected to meet leaders of political parties in Jammu and Kashmir during his visit, the official said.

The state has been under the Governors rule after PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti had resigned as Chief Minister in June following the withdrawal of support by the BJP to her government.

Singh is also likely to meet representatives of some civil society groups, another official said.

Unrest in Jammu and Kashmir has been continuing with incidents of violence perpetrated by terror groups taking place regularly.Keralas Sabarimala temple closed its doors till next month on Monday after a five-day ritual, but strong protests by traditionalists made sure female devotees between 10 and 50 years could not enter the hilltop shrine despite last months Supreme Court order that allowed women of all ages to pray at the holy site.

At least 12 women, including journalists and activists, tried to trek to the temple nestled in the greenery of the Western Ghats during this period; two of them were just 50 metres away from the sanctum sanctorum. In the end all of them were turned away by a wall of resistance mounted by protesters who claim women of menstrual age cannot enter the shrine because the presiding deity, Lord Ayyappa, is considered celibate.

In New Delhi, the top court hinted that it will decide on Tuesday when or whether to take up a clutch of petitions against its September 28 judgment that said divinity and devotion cannot be subjected to the rigidity and stereotypes of gender. Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), responsible for the administration of the 800-year-old temple, said it will file a status report in the Supreme Court after the recent protests in which devotees clashed with police, damaged buses and even intimidated journalists.

The next challenge for the temple administration will be a three-month annual pilgrimage season beginning in the second week of November.

According to TDB, 35 million visited the temple last year in this period.

Keralas Left government has faced criticism by the opposition Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, as well as some fringe groups, over the handling of the emotive and religiously sensitive issue, but chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has stressed that his administration is committed to implementing the top court order.

Braving heavy rains on Monday, two women, including a Dalit activist, tried to enter the temple even as police promised them protection. In a story familiar by now, they too had to retreat in the face of angry protests. Tension continued to stalk the base camps of Nilakkal and Pamba, from where the 5-km trek to the shrine begins, despite authorities imposing restrictions under Section 144 of CrPC that prohibits the gathering of more than four people.

Bhanumati Amma, a 62-year-old woman who has been camping near the 18 holy steps that lead to the sanctum sanctorum, said, If a woman enters the temple, she will have to go over my body.

It is one of the most sacred pilgrimages in the country. Why are politicians and courts in a race to hurt devotees sentiments? asked Nagarjuna Reddy, a doctor from Vijayawada who came to visit the shrine.

Inspector general S Sreejith, who offered prayers at the shrine early on Monday, said, I am a devotee but also duty-bound.The Sabarimala temples first period of pilgrimage after the Supreme Court lifted the ban on the entry of women of menstrual age ends Monday with 10 women aged below 50 stopped by angry devotees from praying at the 800-year-old hilltop shrine in Keralas Patthanamthitta district since it opened on Wednesday.

Amid the face-off between the states Left Democratic Front government which assured implementation of the September 28 apex court verdict and the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress and various Hindu groups which opposed it and demanded a review petition be filed, the Travancore Dewaswom Board (TDB), which manages the temple, is expected to submit a report to the court on the ground situation. It is also likely seek more time to implement the verdict as the main pilgrimage season begins next month.

Meanwhile, 20-odd review petitions challenging the Supreme Courts verdict in which a five-judge constitutional bench decided 4-1 that exclusion on the basis of biological and physiological features was unconstitutional and discriminatory and denied women the right to be treated as equals, are also coming up before the apex court.

Admitting the Sabarimala pilgrim season beginning next month was going to be a challenging one for them, Kerala police chief Loknath Behera said a review of the alleged lapses and excesses while handling the issues related to the temple will be conducted after the shrine closes on Monday.

As protests continued across Kerala and elsewhere, four women, all from Andhra Pradesh, were Sunday stopped on the pathway to the temple by Ayyappa devotees and forced to return.

Two of the women, said to be in their 40s, were part of a pilgrim group visiting temples in Kerala and claimed they did not know the customs of the Lord Ayyappa temple, PTI quoted the police as saying. The women, who were stopped at the Pambha base camp, later gave written statement that they did not want to proceed and were escorted by police o the shrine areas entry point Nilakkal, where their vehicle was parked, police said.

Protesters found another woman on the path to the temple and made her return after checking her Aadhaar card, which stated she was 47, reported IANS. Police reached the spot and took the woman, who felt a bit uneasy amid the ruckus, to a clinic. She subsequently did not proceed.

Another woman, who reached the hilltop on a palanquin, was stopped and surrounded by protesters about a kilometre from the temple. Police took her downhill to the Pambha base camp.

However, the hilltop and base camps of Nillakal and Pambha - which had seen violent clashes on Thursday and Friday - were relatively peaceful on Sunday.

On Saturday, protestors stopped 52-year-old Latha Kumar, a teacher from Tamil Nadus Trichy who was on her second pilgrimage, outside the temple, alleging she was below 50 years of age but allowed her after she showed her Aadhaar card. Woman Dalit leader SP Manju (38), who was planning to visit the shrine Saturday, was asked by police to defer her plans following heavy rain and later decided to return.

Though Hyderabad-based woman journalist Kavitha Jakkal and activist Rehana Fathima, escorted by 100 policemen, reached right up to the temple Friday, they could not go in as devotees and priests blocked their way and the tantri (head priest) warned he would close the temple if they entered. Another woman, Mary Sweety, who works in the Middle East, did not go as police refused to provide protection.

Madhavi, a devotee from Andhra Pradesh, and New York Times reporter Suhasini Raj had to abandon their trips midway Thursday after protests.

Fathima, whose house was vandalised when she was on her to Sabarimala, has been expelled from the Muslim community for hurting the sentiments of lakhs of Hindu devotees, the Kerala Muslim Jamaath Council president A Poonkunju said in a press statement, according to PTI.

On Sunday, the BJP and organisations like the Sabarimala Karma Samithi took out nama japa (hymn chanting) rallies outside all police stations in the state to protest the crackdown on their activists.

BJP state president PS Sreedharan Pillai said if the state assembly passes a unanimous resolution, the Centre can explore the possibility of an ordinance to protect the shrines customs. He held the state government was fully responsible for the present situation, as it was in a tearing hurry to implement the verdict angering devotees.

He also alleged that even members of the ruling Left were opposing the bid to break the shrines long-standing customs. Communist Party of India (Marxist) politburo member S Ramachandran Pillai however said the protesters did not have the support of Keralas society.

In Chennai, Hindu Makkal Katchi activists held a protest alleging the women who tried to visit Sabarimala had spoiled the sanctity of celibacy of Lord Ayyappa and were not devotees but seeking publicity, ANI reported.

Pilgrimage to Sabarimala situated in Western Ghats mountain ranges is unique. A devotee has to observe 41 days fast and abstain from all worldly pleasures followed by a rigorous uphill trek through forests.The temple management had earlier told the apex court that the ban on entry of women of the particular age was because they cannot maintain purity on account of menstruation.

Prior to the apex court verdict, women aged between 10 and 50 were allowed only till Pambha, where women cops were deployed to screen women devotees and could seek proof of age from anyone they doubted.

The restriction on women was first challenged in Kerala High Court which ruled in 1991 that it was part of an age-old tradition and not discriminatory under the Constitution. In 2006, the Indian Young Lawyers Association had filed a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the practice, saying it was discriminatory in nature and against gender justice.A day after killing of seven civilians and three militants in South Kashmirs Kulgam district, Valley observed complete shutdown and protests against the killings.

The strike call was given by Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) led by separatist leaders Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Yasin Malik and Syed Ali Geelani.

On Sunday three militants were killed in an encounter at Larnoo village and after the encounter ended seven civilians were killed in an explosion at the encounter site while more than three dozen civilians were injured in an explosion and clashes near the encounter site.

According to police all three militants were locals and affiliated with Jaish e Mohammad militant outfit.

Shops and business establishments remained closed and there was very thin attendance in the government offices. Todays shut down was observed even in those areas where shopskeepers usually ignore shutdown calls.

The strike had an impact across Kashmir as people were appaled with the pictures of civilians splashed with blood which got circulated on the social media after the killing of civilians, said Rizwan Akthar a university student. The administration had already suspended internet mobile in South Kashmir soon after the start of encounter.

The government had also postponed all the exams scheduled for Monday, especially the Board examinations which were scheduled to begin from today.

The train service between Banihal and Baramulla which passes through South Kashmir was also suspended following apprehensions of protests on the tracks.

Meanwhile Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq while reacting on the tweet of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan over the fresh cycle of violence in Kashmir asked Pakistan to do more. People of #Kashmir appreciate Pakistans concern,but to put an end to the appalling grind of repression and human right abuse that Kashmiris are suffering at the hands of Indian state urgently requires #Pakistan as a party to the dispute to do much more, Mirwaiz Umar tweeted.

Independent legislator from Langate, Sheikh Rashid along with dozens of his workers led a protest demonstration against the civilian killing in north Kashmirs Handwara town.

In other protest, students of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology Wadoora Sopore also held demonstration against the killing of civilians in South Kashmir.

Chanting pro freedom slogans and carrying placards students asked human rights bodies to take note of the civilian killings.

J-Ks Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh said that incident that happened after the killing of three Jaish e Mohammad militants could have been avoided. It was an unfortunate incident which we feel could have been avoided. The operational sites have these type of dangerous, especially the places where encounter has ended recently. We appeal to people especially youths not to visit these sites after encounter and touch debris. We have all sympathies with six people who lost their lives there. We have given clear instructions to our troopers to avoid collateral damage at operational sites. At the same time people should also realise its dangerous to go near these spots, Singh said on the sidelined of a function.China on Monday said the flood situation in Yarlung Tsangpo river has returned to normal after it posed a threat to Indias northeastern states following the formation of an artificial lake created by a landslide in Tibet. China also said it will continue to share the flood data with India.

People living along the banks of Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh were moved to safer places after China informed India about the landslide, which occurred on October 17, blocking Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet leading to the formation of the artificial lake.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Saturday had also directed authorities in districts bordering Arunachal Pradesh to remain alert for possible flash flood and take all possible steps to prevent any major catastrophe.

The Yarlung Tsangpo river is known as the Siang after it enters India at Arunachal Pradesh from the Tibetan region and is called the Brahmaputra once it reaches Assam.

By October 20, the river section of the barrier lake has returned to normal. We will keep close monitoring of the landslide situation and maintain close communication and cooperation with the Indian side through the existing channels, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing in Beijing.

She said the Chinese hydrological department had informed India about the situation immediately after the landslide and also launched the emergency reporting mechanism. Up to October 22, we have provided seven bits of hydrological information and 110 bits of statistics. We also reported the Indian side of the flow of barrier lake, Hua said.

China has resumed sharing of hydrological data on the Brahmaputra from May 15 after a gap of one year. It had stopped sharing the data with India last year soon after the Doklam stand-off, stating that its hydrological stations in Tibet were being upgraded and that the data couldnt be shared.

The data is important for predicting floods in basins of the rivers. Brahmaputra gets severely flooded during monsoon months affecting Northeast India and Bangladesh. India and China have established Expert Level Mechanism (ELM) in 2006 to discuss various issues related to trans-border rivers.

Under the existing bilateral agreements, China provides hydrological information of Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) and Sutlej (Langqen Zangbo) to India during the flood seasons.

As per the arrangement, China provides data of the Brahmaputra river between May 15 and October 15 every year. This year the data sharing was extended due to the barrier lake in the river.

China has been building major dams on the Brahmaputra river to generate electricity. While the dams raised concerns of water shortages in India and Bangladesh, China maintains that its dams were aimed at generating power and not storing water.With a single tweet, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday waded right in the middle of the controversy over the CBI accusing a top-ranking officer Rakesh Asthana of corruption.

For the first time in the history of the CBI, the agency booked its special director Rakesh Asthana last week on the complaint from a Hyderabad-based businessman Sana Satish Babu who claimed that he was asked for a Rs 5 crore bribe on behalf of Asthana for his help in a case.

An institution in terminal decline thats at war with itself, Gandhi, 48, tweeted after the CBI filed the case.

Asthana was brought to the CBI by the government in 2016 and had been widely perceived to have been positioned to head the CBI. As a Gujarat cadre police officer, Asthana had supervised the initial investigation into the Godhra train burning incident when he was inspector general of police of the states Vadodara range.

Asthana was also appointed as an interim CBI director in December 2016 provoking sharp protests from the opposition and had to eventually make way for Alok Verma, who was brought in as a full-time CBI boss five weeks later.

Gandhi called him PM Modis blue-eyed boy.

The PMs blue-eyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer, of Godhra SIT fame, infiltrated as No. 2 into the CBI, has now been caught taking bribes. Under this PM, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta, Gandhi tweeted.

The case against Asthana is seen to be a fallout of his feud with CBI director Alok Verma since October last year when Verma tried to stall his promotion as special director on the grounds that his name figured in a diary of the Gujarat-based company Sterling Biotech where some entries totalling Rs 3.8 crore were allegedly found against his name.

Since then charges and counter-charges have been traded between the two officers over a series of probes and internal transfers.

Asthana formally made a complaint to cabinet secretary Pradeep Singh on August 24 saying Verma was interfering in probes carried out by him and gave the example of Sana Satish Babu.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also tweeted his attack on the CBI corruption case, accusing the government of having turned the CBI into a national disgrace. Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party chief, who has been a bitter critic of the Congress when it was in power at the centre, said the BJP had clearly outdone the Congress.

During the Congress rule the Supreme Court had termed the CBI a caged parrot, Modi govt has surpassed the Cong record and in its greed to victimise political opponents, Modi govt has turned the CBI into a national disgrace, he said.Most people would be left feeling frightened if they found a venomous snake in their house. However, a couple in Kentucky was in for an even bigger shock when they found a rare two-headed snake in their yard. The couple has donated the snake to the Salato Wildlife Education Center where it has been put on display for public viewing.

A post shared by the wildlife centre on Facebook shows pictures of the two-headed copperhead snake. While the staff at the centre is thrilled to host this unique animal, at first they were shocked to hear about the snake.

Weve all been kind of fawning over him, Heather Teachey, the director of Salato Wildlife Education Center told WDRB.com. Were really hoping that he thrives here.

The centre explained in the comments section of the post that both heads and both sets of eyes of the snake move. Its tongues are functional as well. They are, however, uncertain if both mouths can swallow food.

While the snake has been put up on display from October 19, the centre is focusing on its health. Anomalies like two-headed animals rarely survive long in the wild, due to a multitude of reasons. They have an increased chance of survival in captivity, says the centre in the comments section.

Since being shared on Facebook on October 18, the post has collected almost 1,900 shares and more than 1,100 reactions  and still counting. Several people have posted comments about the snake.

Which one decides where they go? Let me guess its a split decision? jokes one. Yuck! No thank you! I wouldnt sleep for weeks if I saw this thing! Id have nightmares, says another. Its beautiful! Glad it was donated, it has a far better chance at surviving! says a third.Police arrested the wife of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council chairman Ramesh Yadav early on Monday morning for allegedly murdering her younger son after a late night argument on Saturday. Meera Yadav is the second wife of Ramesh Yadav who is an MLC from Etah. The first wife reportedly lives at his ancestral home in Etah.

A local court sent her to 14 days of judicial custody.

We have arrested Meera Yadav for the murder of Ramesh Yadavs younger son Abhijit, 22. The arrest was made on the basis of circumstantial evidence and preliminary investigation, Superintendent of Police (east) Sarvesh Mishra said.

Meera told police that she strangled Abhijit with a piece of cloth following an argument on Saturday night. Abhijit was reportedly drunk at the time of the incident, so the mother managed to overpower him easily, Mishra said.

The incident occurred at Ramesh Yadavs official quarters at the legislators hostel in Darul Shafa where Meera lived with Abhijit, a graduate student, and his elder brother Abhishek, 27, a local businessman. Ramesh Yadav, who lives in a separate residence, was out town on Saturday.

Meera and Abhishek initially informed police that Abhijit died of ill health but the post mortem on Sunday evening confirmed strangulation as the cause of death. Based on the findings of the post mortem report, an FIR for murder was lodged at Hazratganj police station and a team headed by the SP began investigation.

Meera had earlier told the police that Abhijit returned home around 11 pm on Saturday and complained of chest pain. When she went to wake him in the morning Abhijit didnt move. She claimed that she then called his elder brother who found out that Abhjit was not breathing and had no pulse.

Though police reached the quarter shortly after the incident, the family members refused to lodge any complaint and decided to take Abhijits body for cremation. However, police suspected foul play and did not allow the body to be taken for cremation.

Abhijits dead body was seized and sent for post mortem, said the SP.

Police handed over the body to the family following the post mortem after which it was cremated. The council chairman who had returned to Lucknow ahead of the cremation, claimed he had no idea what led to the fight.

I am not aware of the situation that led to his death. We are all in shock because there was no dispute in the family, said a shocked Yadav. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath and former CM Akhilesh Yadav expressed their condolences to the family.At least five people, including the driver, were killed and 10 to 12 others injured after a private bus they were travelling in rammed into a stationary truck on Pune-Ahmednagar highway on Monday morning, police said.

Officials said the bus, belonging to Bhavana Travels, had started from Aurangabad was heading towards Pune when the accident took place at Wadegavhan village in Parner taluk of Ahmednagar district. The truck had a punctured tyre and was standing on the side of the road when the bus ran into it, they said.

 I spoke to a man (a survivor) called Akash Baban Pharte, 20, who was sitting in the drivers cabin. He got thrown out of the bus after it hit the truck so he survived. He said that the driver fell asleep at the wheel around 5:20am when the incident happened, Ahmednagar deputy superintendent of police Arun Jagtap said.

The driver of the bus was identified as Shaikh Amjad Mohammad and a passenger as Pramod More. Three bodies are yet to be unidentified, including that of a child and two men.

Sub-inspector of police Sanjay Sone of Supa police station said the injured were taken to a government hospital in Shirur.

A few of the injured peoples relatives showed up and shifted them to private hospitals. We are still tracking their whereabouts. The priority was to get them to hospitals and clear the traffic on the highway, Sone said.

We have been clearing traffic in the area since the incident occurred. Multiple teams have been dispatched with the deceased, who have been taken to Parner rural hospital, and the injured who have been taken to Shirur, senior police inspector Bhosale of Supa police station said.

Senior officials from Ahmednagar Police visited the spot and deployed various teams so that the dead and injured could be taken to hospitals and for traffic management.

A case will be registered at Supa police station under Parner division of Ahmednagar Police.The coordination committee of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday decided to launch a campaign for justice to the victims of the Amritsar train tragedy.

Addressing a joint press conference with BJP state president Shwait Malik, SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal alleged that the Congress government has launched a cover-up exercise to save local bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and his wife Navjot Kaur who were responsible for the death of 61 people during the Dussehra celebrations in Amritsar on Friday.

The coordination committee demanded immediate sacking of Sidhu and registration of a case against his wife and organisers of the function.

Sukhbir and Malik said both the parties were with the train tragedy victims and their kin in this hour of grief whereas chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh was off to Israel.

Condemning the registration of attempt to murder cases against 50 protesters who clashed with the police on Sunday, Sukhbir said it was in contrast to an inconsequential case registered under Section 304-A (causing death by negligence) against four unidentified persons who happen to be the organisers of the function.

It was condemnable that the perpetrators of the tragedy were indulging in a candle light march and that this action was akin to rubbing salt on the victims wounds, said Sukhbir.

This proves that justice can never be given under the Congress government. We demand a judicial inquiry by a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana high court, added Sukhbir.

The SAD president said that the Union minister of state for railways and the Punjab governor reached the accident site within hours, but it took Amarinder 18 hours to reach Amritsar.

SAD-BJP Condemns Khaira

Both Sukhbir and Malik condemned rebel AAP leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira for underplaying the train tragedy. Khaira has made an insensitive statement to save his friend Navjot Singh Sidhu, said Sukhbir, referring to a video clip.

Khaira later said his comments were misinterpreted and twisted by selecting a portion of his live video.

The SAD-BJP delegation would meet Punjab governor VP Singh Badnore on Tuesday and would demand a compensation of 1 crore each for the kin of those killed in the train accident, 50 lakh for the injured, besides a government job for the victims kin.Even as the railway authorities have passed the buck to the Amritsar administration and police for Fridays Dussehra tragedy, which left 61 dead and many injured, by terming it as a case of trespass, the magisterial inquiry ordered by the state government will look into the railway officials role, if any.

Chief minister Amarinder Singh on Saturday had ordered a magisterial inquiry into the mishap.

Jalandhar divisional commissioner Baldeo Purushartha, who has been appointed as a special executive magistrate by the state government to probe the rail tragedy, will start his investigation from Monday.

We will conduct the inquiry from all angles and see what role the stakeholders, including the railways, played? he said.

Minister of state (MoS) for railways Manoj Sinha, who visited Amritsar on Saturday, had denied any action against the train driver saying the railway officials were not at fault as they had no intimation about the event.

Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani had also ruled out any statutory inquiry into the incident, saying it was a case of trespass on rail tracks.

Purushartha is slated to visit the accident spot and the hospitals to record the statements of the victims and their families to figure out what exactly had happened.

The inquiry will be done within the deadline set by the state government, he said.

Congress leader Mandeep Singh Manna, who earlier used to organise Dussehra at the same spot where the accident took place, had said they used to inform the railways about the event.

Eyewitnesses have blamed that the railways for negligence claiming that the gateman at the railway crossing could have communicated about the event so that the loco driver could have slowed down the train.

The magisterial inquiry will look into the role of the civil administration, police and the organisers among others.

The executive magistrate is also likely to question the event organiser Saurabh Madan Mithu, son of local Congress councillor Vijay Madan, who has gone underground after the mishap.Though the state government has announced to provide free treatment to all the injured of Jaura Phatak train tragedy that claimed 61 lives, some of the injured along with their family members staged a protest at the accident site here on Sunday alleging that the private hospitals are charging fee for the treatment.

At around 12:00pm, as many as 50 protesters gathered on the railway lines and raised slogans against the district administration and private hospitals.

Pamma, an injured, along with his mother Sonia, laid down on the railway track to protest against private hospital for charging money. He said, I was admitted to the city-based Amandeep Hospital and they asked me to pay money for the treatment. This is really sad and terrible.

As the protesters tried to block the railway track, police officials intervened and shifted the protesting injured to the civil hospital for further treatment free of cost.

Prabhjot Singh, ACP, who helped Pamma said, When doctors checked his leg injuries, his was found faking the injury. He is completely fine now, but still as a precautionary measure he has been referred to government hospital so that further tests can be done.

Refuting the claims made by the protesters, an official from Amandeep Hospital, Deepak, said, Since Friday, we have been providing free of cost treatment to all the train mishap, who have come here for the treatment. We have not taken any money from any victim of the train accident.

We demand probe into these allegations, he added.

I rushed to Kumar Hospital after the accident. Despite the announcement for the free treatment, they charged me 1,500 for stitches on my head. I paid the money as I had no other option at that time, however, later I went to civil hospital for the treatment, another injured Krishna said.

However, Dr Satiesh Malik of Kumar Hospital said, We have not charged any money from the victims. Only three of them came to us for the consultancy here, but we referred them to government hospital.

Karmandeep Singh, whose arm and leg were injured in the mishap said, After the accident, my friends did not wait for an ambulance and rushed me to Prem Rai Hospital on a bike. They charged us around 20,000 for the treatment. Now, I am getting the treatment done from civil hospital.

Deputy commissioner Kamaljit Singh Sangha, We are looking into the allegations made by the injured. Meanwhile, in Karamdeep Singhs case, on investigation it was found that Prem Rai Hospital charged him for some medication and CT scan. We will make sure that his money is refunded soon.

We are also looking into other cases and will investigate as soon as possible. Moreover, we will refund the money if the allegations are found true, he added.

We have more than 40 doctors to treat the train mishap injured. Doctors from civil hospital, Jalandhar, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur, have also reached here for treating the injured. We have enough medicines and blood required for the treatment, said Dr Charanjit Singh, senior medical officer, civil hospital.Saudi Arabia sent to Istanbul a man who looked like dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and then dispatched the look-alike in Khashoggis clothes to walk around the city and create a misleading trail of surveillance camera images, a Saudi official confirmed Monday.

A Turkish newspaper, Haberturk, reported Saturday that someone who looked like Khashoggi left the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, the day the dissident was killed inside the building. On Monday, CNN showed images, leaked by Turkish authorities, that appear to show that man, one of 15 Saudis sent to Istanbul on the day Khashoggi disappeared, strolling around Istanbul wearing Khashoggis clothes.

The use of a body double suggests a premeditated plan to make Khashoggi disappear, through death or abduction, and to cover it up  possibly contradicting Saudi insistence that his death was the accidental result of an altercation. Turkish officials have said that the Saudi team, who left Turkey hours after they arrived, was sent to Istanbul to kill Khashoggi.

After weeks of insisting that Khashoggi, a Saudi who lived in the United States and who wrote columns for The Washington Post, had left the consulate alive and well, the Saudi government acknowledged Friday that he had been killed there. The case has caused an international uproar.

On Sunday, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, gave the first public, high-level acknowledgment that there had been a cover-up, but he and other officials continue to say that the death was an accident and that it was not ordered by the royal family. Western intelligence officials have said that the operation was most likely directed by Saudi Arabias powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and several members of the team that flew to Istanbul have ties to him.

Khashoggis fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has been placed under police protection, a Turkish official said Monday. The official said the measure had been taken not because of any specific threat but because Cengiz, who was to marry Khashoggi the day after he went to the Saudi Consulate, had been the target of online abuse.

On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said that he would soon reveal everything Turkey knows about the case.Deposed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday told a court here that he is not a traitor as his family migrated from India for its love for Pakistan.

The Lahore High Court on Monday held the hearing on a petition seeking action against 67-year-old Sharif under treason charges for claiming that those involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack belonged to Pakistan.

Another former premier Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Dawns journalist Cyril Almeida, who are the other respondents in the case, also filed their reply in the court.

Some 166 people were killed in the attack carried out by 10 Pakistan-based LeT terrorists. Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was caught and hanged after handed down death sentence.

In his reply filed in the court, Sharif said: How come a man who has made this countrys an atomic power can be a traitor. A persons party that is given more votes than any other party in this months by-polls can be a traitor. I represent millions of Pakistanis can they be traitors. He further said his family had migrated from India for its love for Pakistan.

Me and my family love every inch of this land (Pakistan), Sharif said and dismissed allegations that he had committed any treason.

Sharifs father Mian Muhammad Sharif had lived in Jati Umra in Punjabs Tarn Taran district before migrating to Lahore in 1947. In his reply, Abbasi denied that he had shared the minutes of the National Security Council meeting about the participants on his (Sharif) statement on the Mumbai terror attack.

Journalist Almeida said he committed no treason as he conducted interview of Sharif and wrote what he said.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority filed its reply saying the matter had been referred to the Press Council of Pakistan.

A full-bench of court headed by Justice Mazahir Ali Naqvi adjourned the hearing till November 12.

The court is conducting hearing on the petitioner of Amina Malik.

She said Sharif, who was disqualified by the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case in July 2017 and subsequently jailed for 10 years in last July in Avenfield corruption case, in an interview to Dawn May last made the remarks that those involved in the Mumbai attack case actually belonged to Pakistan thus committed treason.

The petitioner said the anti-state statement of Sharif  a three-time prime minister  could be used against Pakistan by its enemies.

She said a meeting of the National Security Council was held to discuss the misleading statement of the disqualified premier and later the then prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi met Sharif and conveyed to him the concerns of the military leadership on his statement. The act of Abbasi was also a clear violation of his oath as he was bound not to allow his personal interest to influence his official conduct, she said.

Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Mohammad Safdar were released last month following the suspension of their sentences by the Islamabad High Court in the Avenfield properties corruption case.A Russian Army contingent arrived in Islamabad on Monday to take part in the third edition of a joint bilateral military training exercise, the Pakistan Army said. The two armies will be holding joint military drills in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan which will continue till November 4.

This will be the third joint military drill between Pakistan and Russia under the bilateral training cooperation agreement, according to a statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan Army.

Russian Army Contingent arrived in Pakistan to participate in the Pak-Russia Joint Training Exercise Druzhba-III, the statement added. The Army did not provide any further details about the drills.

Earlier, the Russian army had said that the drill will be held at the training range in Nowshera district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and over 70 soldiers from Russias southern military district will participate.

The servicemen from the two countries armed forces will perform tasks at the altitude of 1,400 meters above the sea level. Meanwhile, the Pakistan Army said that the third exercise was part of the Pak-Russia bilateral training cooperation.

The two sides are trying to bolster defence ties and in August this year they inked an agreement allowing Pakistani troops to train in Russia.

The agreement was signed during the visit of deputy defense minister of Russia Colonel General Alexander Fomin to Islamabad to participate in the first Russia-Pakistan Joint Military Consultative Committee (JMCC) meeting on security and defence.

Russia and Pakistan have been holding the Friendship drills since 2016. In October 2016, they held their first-ever joint military exercise in Pakistan. In 2017, over 200 servicemen took part in the drills, hosted by Russia at Minralney Vody in the North Caucasus at an altitude of 2,300 meters above sea level.

Pakistans defence ties with Russia have moved past the bitter Cold War hostilities in recent years and the chill in the relations between Pakistan and the US has further pushed the country towards Russia and China.

Pakistan has shown eagerness to build defence level ties with Russia. Russia has over the past three years provided four Mi-35M combat and cargo helicopters to Pakistan.Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the son of Jamal Khashoggi, the kingdom announced early on Monday, to express condolences for the death of the journalist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by officials that allegedly included a member of the royals entourage.

King Salman similarly made a condolence call as international pressure on the kingdom continues to rise, even after it acknowledged on Saturday that the Washington Post journalist was killed October 2 at the consulate under still-disputed circumstances.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that he will go into detail about the Khashoggi case in a speech in parliament Tuesday, the same day a glitzy investment forum in Riyadh spearheaded by Prince Mohammed is to take place.

Saudi Arabias explanation that Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight and 18 Saudis have been detained has been met with international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up designed to absolve Prince Mohammed of direct responsibility. Turkish media reports and officials say a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul, laid in wait for Khashoggi at the consulate and then cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

Why did these 15 people come here? Why were 18 people arrested? All of this needs to be explained in all its details, Erdogan said.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the calls to Khashoggis son, Salah, early Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed express their condolences for his fathers death.

The call comes after a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage shows Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggis arrival. Mutrebs name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutrebs presence in Istanbul  nor that of a forensics and autopsy expert, also on hand for Khashoggis arrival at the consulate.

Istanbuls chief prosecutor summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony on Monday, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported. Prosecutors have previously questioned consulate staff; some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Turkish news agency Anadolu Agency reported Sunday that Khashoggis fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has been given 24-hour police protection.

Also Sunday, images that were obtained by TRT World, a Turkish news channel that broadcasts in English, showed Khashoggi as he arrived at a police barrier before entering the consulate on Oct. 2. The images, taken from security camera video, show the writer being searched before continuing toward the building.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Fox News that Khashoggis killing was a rogue operation and that we dont know where the body is. The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority, he said. There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government.

However, a leading US Senate Republican said the Saudi explanation, which followed initial denials from the kingdom that it knew anything about Khashoggis fate, wasnt credible.

Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday on CNNs State of the Union that he believed Prince Mohammed, the heir-apparent of the worlds largest oil exporter, was behind the killing.

The crown prince has now crossed a line and there has to be a punishment and a price paid for that, Corker said. He also urged Turkey to turn over purported audio recordings of Khashoggis killing inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The existence of such evidence has been reported in Turkish media in a series of leaks, though Turkish officials have yet to confirm they have recordings.

The Turks have been talking more to the media than they have (to) us, Corker said of the NATO ally.Appointment

22 October 2018

Centara Hotels & Resorts, Thailand's leading hotel operator, announced the appointment of Andrew Langston, a British national with over 34 years' experience in hospitality management and development, to help execute their ambitious 5-year expansion plan. Mr. Langston will assume the position of Senior Vice President Business Development in the company's development team, reporting to Deputy CEO Markland Blaiklock.

Langston arrives with exceptional experience and a vast cross-discipline, global network. He has held senior management positions with major hotel groups such as Banyan Tree and Intercontinental Hotels group [IHG] and most recently he held the position of Executive Vice President, Strategic Advisory & Asset Management, at Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels & Hospitality Group, for whom he was based in Thailand and working throughout the Asia region.

It can certainly be said that Langston's talents in the service industry were honed at the highest level, having earlier in his career served the British royal family as a footman at Buckingham Palace, a role which included looking after H.M the Queen of England, Diana the Princess of Wales and Prince William amongst others. This natural aptitude in hospitality saw him move into the hotel industry where his steady advancement included responsibilities in Singapore, Philippines, Korea, Macau, China, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Thailand and Australia.Appointment

22 October 2018

Four Seasons Hotel Beirut welcomes the appointment of Christopher Jordan as new Director of Food and Beverage at the Hotel. Since taking on the position, Jordan has been overseeing the Hotel's food and beverage operations, focusing on innovation, creativity and providing extraordinary culinary experiences for guests.

Jordan brings an extensive wealth of knowledge and global experience having worked for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts company for the past 10 years. He most recently served as Director of Restaurants at Four Seasons Hotel Doha in Qatar, and prior to that held several positions as Executive Pastry Chef at Four Seasons in San Francisco, St Louis and Denver. He has also helped in the opening of two new properties for the company in 2008 and 2010.Appointment

22 October 2018

Karisma Hotels & Resorts, a luxury hotel collection that owns and manages properties in Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, promoted Rinaldo Fernandez to president of the company's Global Travelers Club division. Fernandez brings to the position more than 25 years of experience and a commitment to building upon existing sales and marketing efforts, as well as restructuring and expanding the Exotic and Prestige Travelers clubs.

In his new position, Fernandez will continue overseeing the Karisma's Travelers Club division with its two brands: Exotic Travelers, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, and Prestige Travelers. He will also lead the aggressive expansion plans for the club, which include all new markets where Karisma Hotels & Resorts is entering, as well as new strategic territories where the club will open as a stand-alone operator.

Before working for Karisma Hotels & Resorts, Fernandez successfully oversaw international markets in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, South America, Mexico, Europe and the United States for 17 years in Procter & Gamble Company. In 2009, Fernandez joined Karisma as the VP of administration, where he was heading the company's corporate offices, as well as the management of the Exotic Travelers Club.

Fernandez's knowledge of international business management aided him in making changes at Karisma Hotels & Resorts, including the creation of a corporate human resources department; and the integration of travel clubs as a fundamental pillar of the company. Upon the creation and launch of Prestige Travelers in December 2012, Fernandez became SVP for the Travelers Club Division, where he remained for six years. He played a role in the expansion of the Prestige Travelers club on an international level, and doubled business for the Exotic Travelers club.Asset managed by Hospitality Management Corporation, Four Points Oklahoma City Airport, previously under the name Route 66 Inn, offers 96 guest rooms, over 750 sq. ft. of meeting space, a 24-hour fitness center and a business cente

Marriott International, Inc. today announced the opening of Four Points Oklahoma City Airport. The hotel caters to the needs of today's everyday traveler offering an approachable design, stylish comfort and all the brand's popular extras including a 24-hour fitness center, an outdoor swimming pool, fast and free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel, and the Best Brews & BBQ program, detailed below.

Asset managed by Hospitality Management Corporation, Four Points Oklahoma City Airport, previously under the name Route 66 Inn, offers 96 guest rooms, over 750 sq. ft. of meeting space, a 24-hour fitness center, business center and fast and free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel. Guests will enjoy full-service dining at the hotel pub and the brand's iconic Best Brews and BBQ program, which serves guests refreshing, curated local beers and seasonal BBQ-style appetizers. The pub's offerings will include Neon Sunshine Belgian Witbier and Astrodog IPA from local Stonecloud Brewing Company, the Best Brew at Four Point Oklahoma City Airport.

Four Points Oklahoma City Airport is just a short drive from White Water Bay water theme park. It is also within driving distance of downtown Oklahoma City and is roughly five miles from Will Rogers Airport (OKC) for a convenient travel.

"Designed with the everyday traveler in mind, Four Points Oklahoma City Airport will be a convenient stay for anyone looking to enjoy the world-class attractions of Oklahoma City," said Callette Nielsen, Vice President & Global Brand Manager of Courtyard, Fairfield, Four Points, and SpringHill Suites."Accessible to families and business travelers alike, the friendly design of the property will make anyone's stay comfortable."

General Manager of Four Points Oklahoma City Airport, Cyndi Lundy, stated, "We are excited to add the Four Points brand to the Oklahoma City market, it has proven to be extremely popular with business and leisure travelers. We expect the hotel to resonate with guests looking for a home away from home."

Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Hotel industry news and trends. Subscribe

 2021 Hotel News ResourceJordan Brand has done plenty of experimenting with the Air Jordan 12 in recent years, including the use of different of materials such as suede, wool and neoprene. This Holiday season, it looks like Jordan Brand is bringing back the suede variety on an all-red pair.

The all-new "Chicago Bulls" Air Jordan 12 has been making the rounds on the internet once again but this time it appears the kicks will actually be hitting retailers, with rumors suggesting a November 23rd (Black Friday) release.

Just like the blue sueded Air Jordan 12 that preceded it, this red rendition sticks with a monochromatic build accompanied by metallic red details on the top eyelets as well as the midfoot Jumpman logo. The only variation from the all red color scheme comes in the form of black branding on the tongue and heel.

Take an early look at the "Chicago Bulls" Air Jordan 12 in IG post below and stay tuned for official photos.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BowVMXsFtzE



https://www.instagram.com/p/Bot15k-jxb-

This past Sunday saw a number of Hollywood's biggest names celebrate their birthdays. Model, actress, and entrepreneur Amber Rose recently rang in her 35th birthday on the same day that her famous ex Kanye West's wife Kim Kardashian West celebrated her 38th. While Kim boasted a beautiful array of flowers gifted to her by her West, Rose was met by a surprise bash organized by her current boyfriend, Def Jam Records executive, Alexander Edwards.

In video footage shared by TMZ, Rose can be seen unsuspectingly walking into her home. She appears to have come from performing a few errands as she is clad in a casual cut-off shirt with a can of coca-cola and car keys in hand. When met with joyful cheers of her friends and loved ones, Rose looks overwhelmingly happy and in slight disbelief. She hugged her young son first and proceeded to make her way into the celebration.

Later in the video, Amber and the invitees can be seen enjoying the occasion and dancing. During dinner, a visibly emotional Amber gave an endearing speech gushing about Edwards. "I thank God every day for him because he is so amazing, and he's so good to my son. He treats Bash [as his] own." She went on to say, "I finally feel like I am happy... I feel like I am complete."

Watch the clip below.Former Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth was released just after 8 a.m. ET Monday from the Sampson Correctional Institution in Clinton, North Carolina.

In 2001, Carruth was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams, after he orchestrated a plot to kill her during a November 1999 shooting. Adams was shot four times by Van Brett Watkins, who was hired by Carruth. Watkins was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years and remains in jail, while Carruth received a sentence of 18 to 24 years. Michael Kennedy, who drove Watkins to commit the murder, was released from prison in 2011.

According to reports, Carruth stopped his vehicle in front of Adams' as the two returned from a movie, so Kennedy and Watkins could pull alongside in another vehicle to kill Adams. She died about a month after the shooting and the child, Chancellor Lee Adams, was born prematurely.

Due to a loss of blood and oxygen the night of his birth, Chancellor Lee was born with cerebral palsy and permanent brain damage. Saundra Adams, Cherica's mother, has raised her 18-year old grandson since his birth.

ESPN reports that Carruth will be on a nine-month post-release program, according to North Carolina Department of Public Safety spokesman Jerry Higgins. Carruth would need special permission from a case officer to leave the state or the country during that span, but is free to go wherever he pleases after nine months.Jenifer Lewis is empathetic towards Kanye West's controversial persona. The actress wants to impart some of her wisdom to the young entertainer as someone who has also struggled with the extreme highs and lows that come with having bipolar disorder.

Lewis broke down in tears when she spoke to CNN about West saying that she feels sorry for him.

"Part of the disorder is not wanting to tame the mania. The high is so high and it feels great, but it's dangerous. It's so dangerous."

She says members of Kanye's camp have reached out to her about having a discussion with him about their shared experiences.

"They are going to try to get me in a room with him when he gets back from Uganda. And all I can tell everyone is that I will do my best."

West's meeting with president Trump and the backlash that followed upset her.The prosecutors in Tekashi 6ix9ine's criminal case are urging the judge to make sure the rap sees the inside of a prison. According to The Blast, they want the rapper to serve a harsher prison sentence for continuously exhibiting signs of violence on social media and through his public persona.

Manhattan Assistant D.A. Sara Weiss wrote a letter to the judge, saying that rapper has "Failed to mature into the law-abiding adult anticipated by the plea agreement which he signed on October 20, 2015. Weiss argues that since 6ix9ine signed his plea agreement, he has gone on to claim himself as a member of the 9 Trey Bloods and has shown violent conduct related to that gang.

Although the D.A. admits that 6ix9ine became a successful artist since signing the plea deal, she argues that he is now a self-admitted member of a violent gang, the 9 Trey bloods and constantly flexes his gang ties on social media. Additionally, they're also using 6ix9ine's social media feuds against him by claiming that he encourages his fans to use violence against his enemies in his honor. Although they say his "trolling" has helped him boost album sales, they argue there have been real-life consequences to his actions online, specifically with Casanova and Chief Keef.

Officials are also calling out 6ix9ine for claiming that the concussion he allegedly sustained after he was violently attacked caused him to miss appearances in court. The rapper claimed that he was too ill from the effects of his head injury, but the D.A. claims that he also went to nightclubs with loud music and strobe lights almost every night that week. They also said that he "took a several hour flight to Miami, where he filmed himself holding a loaded assault rifle.

The prosecutors argue that giving 6ix9ine a lighter sentence under the Youthful Offender guidelines would leave a negative impression on "like-minded offenders who follow defendant on social media and other outlets.

6ix9ine is due in court this Friday for the sentencing for his child sex charge.One of the suspects related to the murder of XXXTentacion will be evaluated for his competency. Michael Boatwrights lawyer argued that this aspect of his character has yet to confirmed as viable in the context of the criminal trial. He claims the defendant may be ill-equipped to "communicate pertinent facts of the case." Circuit Court Judge Michael Usan has since ordered an evaluation.

Another defendant, Robert Allen appeared in court Friday, October 19, and waived his right to a speedy trial. This option is routinely used by suspects in efforts to build their defense.

On June 18, XXXTentacion whose real name is Jahseh Onfroy entered RIVA Motorsports in Deerfield Beach, Florida. The rapper was toting a Louis Vuitton duffle bag full of $50 000. An SUV carrying 4 people pulled into the shop's parking lot. Allen and another suspect Dedrick Williams exited the vehicle and entered the shop, walking past the rapper. After an unconfirmed amount of time, the pair left ahead of X.

Legal authorities claim the suspects remained in the parking lot for approximately 10 minutes waiting for the Onfroy who was then blocked once inside his car. Law enforcement says Boatwright and Trayvon Newsome robbed the rapper at gunpoint while Allen and Williams waited inside the Dodge Journey.

Boatwrights competency evaluation results will be read in court on October 25.Business research site Market Watch released an extensive roster of S&P 500 CEO's donations to the midterm elections. Any amount given between Jan. 1, 2017, and Aug. 31, 2018 was taken into account for this list.

The majority of these donations were markedly partisan, with some giving their entire donation to either the Democratic party or the Republican party.When hiring a new employee, do you look only at where they went to school?

Thats what millions of Texas voters will do over the next few weeks in choosing their elected officials. They will click on a single button, either all Republicans or all Democrats.

Please dont do that. Dont mindlessly follow your political tribe. Join me in what I like to call the radical middle. Hire the best person for the job, particularly to the lesser known statewide positions that have the most significant impact on Texas economy and businesses.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Editorial Board Endorsements

The states top criminal and civil lawyer, who decides what cases to pursue, is a great example of someone who impacts business.

Incumbent Ken Paxton is under indictment for three counts of felony fraud, and his political backers have used every method imaginable to keep his case from going to trial. To give you a sense of his ethics, Paxton even accepted a perfectly legal $100,000 donation to his defense fund from the owner of a company his office was investigating for Medicaid fraud.

Justin Nelson, a Houston lawyer, is a graduate of Columbia Law School and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor. That he has a D next to his name should not matter in the attorney generals race. Hes not an embarassment.

Moving on to the state comptroller, too few people recognize that this elected official collects taxes, keeps the states books, forecasts government revenue and manages government bank accounts. The comptrollers office interacts with businesses every day.

The Democratic challenger in this race, Joi Chevalier, has never held elected office and most of the priorities listed on her website are beyond the comptrollers purview. She fails to make the case she will do better than Glenn Hegar, the Republican incumbent. Hegar has done a good job keeping lawmakers apprised of cash flow and focusing on the job, not politics.

Then theres Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who's gone from rodeo champion to rodeo clown. He is perhaps the most reckless, irresponsible state official in Texas. Among other things, he posts racist memes on social media and reintroduced soft drinks and fried foods to Texas public schools.

Despite the R next to his name, Miller has repeatedly tried to raise agriculture fees by tens of millions of dollars while handing out unparalleled bonuses to state employees who double as his campaign aides. His attempts to impose new regulatory burdens on agriculture has attracted the anger of cattlemen, barbecue restaurant owners, yogurt shops, nursery operators and many more.

Kim Olson, the Democratic candidate, is a retired Air Force colonel from a farming family. She has commanded troops in Iraq and served on the Weatherford school district board of trustees. Her positions on rural economic development and farm policy are so well-informed and nuanced that they prove Miller is all hat and no cattle.

The next race on the ballot is for railroad commissioner, which despite the archaic name, is one of three people who oversee Texass oil and gas industry. The incumbent Christi Craddick is a consummate Republican insider whose father was once Speaker of the House. She had a career as an oil and gas lawyer in Midland before running for statewide office.

While Craddick is undoubtedly closely allied with the industry, no one can doubt her competence. The Democratic challenger, Roman McAllen, would be a disaster for the states economy and petroleum industry. If the misleading blurbs on his website are any indication, McAllen is not an honest politician.

Clicking on his websites Issues button reveals a candidate who has failed to do his homework. A career in historic preservation, with no experience in elected office, does not qualify McAllen for the highly technical job of overseeing the oil and gas industry.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Baby boomers are stealing big-time from millennials

I know that voting a straight ticket is easier than reviewing all of the job applications. But party hacks rely on this convenience to sneak in unqualified candidates whose loyalty is to the tribe, not the majority of people in Texas who consider themselves independents.

Besides, this is the last election where the straight-party option will be on the ballot. The Texas Legislature decided to take this crutch away in 2020, so now is a good time to start voting the whole ballot.

Early voting begins today. Think about how great Texas could be if the best candidates won. Be a patriot, review the candidates and see if you share their vision for the job they seek. Vote accordingly.

Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about business and economics.

chris.tomlinson@chron.com

twitter.com/cltomlinsonPoor Texans have fewer places to turn for help paying utility bills after the state eliminated a program that subsidized electricity bills during the hot summer months and a federal program has far too little money to meet the needs of residents struggling to keep on the lights, air conditioning and heat.

In Texas, only about 4 percent of people eligible for federal utility assistance under income guidelines are able to receive help, compared to about 16 percent nationally, according to the state Public Utilities Commission and the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan agency that does public policy research for Congress. The aid reaches so few people here in large part because, unlike many other states, Texas does not provide funding to supplement the federal program.

Texas offered low-income residents some help with their utility bills through another program, but two years ago, Texas eliminated Lite-Up Texas, a program that subsidized summertime electricity bills for about 700,000 low-income Texas who live in the deregulated parts of the state, including Houston and Dallas. The program was funded by utility customer who pay a fraction of a cent per kilowatt hour into a special fund.

The one-two punch has left hundreds of thousands of Texas residents in the position of having to choose between paying electricity bills or buying food and other necessities.

Related: Enegy insecurity affects one-third of U.S. households

Lois McConnell, 80, lives on $665 a month, including $465 in Social Security and $200 for providing home care to an elderly friend. She had relied on the federal program to help pay summer power bills that can spike to $150 a month  until this year when program ran out of money before her application was approved.

Early this summer, she received a disconnection notice from Reliant Energy. McConnell, who suffers from asthma and a heart condition, not only relies on air conditioning, but also a machine that delivers her asthma medicine three times a day. I do not buy things I cannot pay for, she said.

Last year, the federal government distributed $98 million in energy assistance in Texas, where about 2.5 million households had income low enough  $37,500 a year for a family of four  to qualify for up to $1,200 in assistance with utility bills. But only about 138,000 households in Texas were able to receive the aid before the money ran out.

Other states also face federal funding shortages, but low-income residents in some parts of the nation, especially the Northeast and Midwest, fare better than the South. Thats because many cold-weather states augment their allocation of federal funds with state money and ratepayer surcharges to help their residents with expensive heating bills.

Michael DeYoung is the community affairs director for the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs which administers the federal program in Texas. He estimates that the extra state funding provides help to as many as 40 percent of low-income residents in the Northeast and Midwest. The federal program was started when energy costs spiked during the 1970s Arab oil embargo to provide help paying for home heating oil. Electricity was added later.

The shortage of financial assistance comes when the U.S. Energy Department calculates that nearly one-third of U.S. households face energy insecurity  that is, they cant afford to pay utility bills at least once a year, leaving then unable to turn on the air conditioning or heat. It also comes after Congress approved some $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that created multibillion-dollar windfalls for some of the nations biggest and richest corporations and their investors.

In Texas, with the oil industry booming again, the state government is running a $2.7 billion surplus and sitting on a $11 billion reserve, or so-called rainy day fund. Texas, which has handed out $7 billion in property tax breaks to some of the worlds richest corporations, has never provided funds to supplement the federal LIHEAP program.

Texas is a cheapo state, said Carol Biedrzycki, who led the Texas Ratepayers Organization to Save Energy, an advocacy group for residential and low income electric customers, before retiring recently. If its enough, okay. If its not, too bad.

The office of Gov. Greg Abbott did not respond to requests for comment.

The federal government increased available assistance for low-income Texans this year by 30 percent to $127.6 million. About 2.6 million households statewide are expected to to be eligible for the program this year. But its still not enough to meet the need. BakerRipley, the Houston nonprofit that administers federal LIHEAP funds in Harris County, ran out of money during the summer.

Funding begins in January and households that apply early can get help with their monthly utility bills. But as the money dwindles over the year, BakerRipley tries to set aside at least $500,000 to cover emergencies, said Barb Schetter, who is responsible for the utility assistance program at BakerRipley. Low-income households with seniors, disabled or children under six get first priority

This year BakerRipley is distributing about $16.8 million for utility bills, about $4.4 million more than it received in 2017 when it helped about 14,000 households in Harris County. But BakerRipley said doesnt know how many eligible Harris County residents need help because they stop accepting applications after the money runs out, usually well before the end of the year.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs also said it cant be sure what the unmet need is. When people call, theyre referred to the agencys social service partner for their area, said agency spokeswoman Kristina Tirloni.

Some retail electricity providers offer help to struggling customers. NRG Energy, the biggest retail provider in Texas, has funds set aside donated by customers and the company. Households also rely upon social service agencies that dot the Houston area. The United Way Helpline, for example, received more than 1 million calls last year for help with basic necessities like food, utilities and health care.

McConnell called the United Way 211 helpline after she received her disconnection notice from Reliant. The helpline called Reliant, which stopped the disconnection and provided financial aid through its fund to help low-income customers. The 211 United Way representative also helped McConnell sign up for a plan with Reliant with a lower rate, which cuts her bills in about half.

If it had not been for the good Lord and those good ladies at the 211 number, said McConnell, then Id just be sitting in the dark.

lynn.sixel@chron.com

twitter.com/lmsixelMagellan Midstream Partners

A new oil pricing benchmark launched Monday that could make Houston the new hub for U.S. oil pricing.

The commodities trading firm Intercontinental Exchange Inc., called ICE, initiated the West Texas Intermediate pricing guide that will price oil based on volumes produced from the Permian Basin and delivered to Houston's refining and export hub.Crude settled below $70 a barrel for a fourth straight session as Saudi Arabia backed away from using its oil wealth as a diplomatic hammer and American inventories expanded at the fastest pace in more than a year and a half.

Futures added a nickel in New York on Monday. Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih eased concern that the world's biggest oil exporter would withhold supplies to counter any punishment over the killing of regime critic Jamal Khashoggi.

Any disruption to output from the Saudis or other major producers would be buffered by U.S. producers who have been pumping more than 10.5 million barrels a day since April. American crude stockpiles probably rose by 3 million barrels last week for the longest streak of weekly increases since March 2017, according to a Bloomberg survey.

"The market appears to be in somewhat of a cautionary holding pattern," said Thomas Finlon, director of Energy Analytics Group LLC.

Earlier this month, crude fell from a four-year high as a darkening demand outlook and equity market routs spurred a flight from risky assets. While U.S. President Donald Trump praised Saudi Arabia's official report on Khashoggi's demise, the oil market remains on edge as many leaders questioned the explanation that he was accidentally killed in an altercation. Turkish officials have leaked details saying the journalist was murdered.

"The Saudis admitting that Khashoggi died in the consulate may make some nervous about how the West reacts, but Al-Falih saying that they will continue to increase output and won't use oil as a weapon isn't as constructive" for oil prices, said Warren Patterson, commodities strategist at ING Bank NV.

West Texas Intermediate for November delivery, which expires Monday, settled at $69.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The more active December contract also was little changed, closing at $69.36.

Brent for December settlement gained 5 cents to close at $79.83 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe. The global benchmark traded at a premium of $10.47 to West Texas Intermediate for the same month.

Al-Falih told TASS that Saudi Arabia has no intention of repeating the 1970s oil embargo, in which it and several regional allies squeezed supplies to the U.S. and Europe in retaliation of their support for Israel. The kingdom will raise output to 11 million barrels a day in the near future and has the ability to reach 12 million if the market requires it, he said.

Meanwhile, American explorers expanded drilling activity for a second week despite a dramatic pullback in the frack work needed to put the finishing touches on new wells. More than 125 additional rigs have been deployed across U.S. fields this year.

--With assistance from Alex Longley and Heesu Lee.

2018 Bloomberg L.P.Last December, Jeff Glor took over one of the most sacrosanct spots in television news: anchoring the nightly CBS Evening News, a spot that had been held over the years by the likes of Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric as well as Texans Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer and Scott Pelley. Glor, who had been a weekend and morning anchor at CBS, inherited the job from Pelley, who remains at CBS as part of the 60 Minutes team.

Now, Glor is criss-crossing the country to take the pulse of mid-term America and that included a stop in Houston Monday to cover the Donald Trump-Ted Cruz rally at the Toyota Center the electoral battle between Republican John Culberson and Democrat Lizzie Pannill Fletcher in the 7th Congressional district and the early-voting frenzy. Glor anchored Monday nights broadcast from Houston, following on the heels of NBCs Lester Holt and MSNBCs Richard Engel whove anchored broadcasts from the city in recent weeks.

We caught up with Glor, 43, for a few minutes between his work talking to voters and heading to the studios of CBS local affiliate, KHOU/11.

Q: Besides covering the Trump-Cruz rally, what else are you doing while youre here?

CBS Evening News with Jeff Glor When: 5:30 p.m. weeknights Where: CBS, KHOU/11 See More Collapse

A: The focus of these trips  we started in Arizona then went to Missouri, were in Texas now, well be in Florida next week  is to go to battleground states to talk to voters and talk to people on the ground as much as possible to talk about whats happening in their cities, their towns and in their states.

Q: Has anything stood out to you in Texas? Has anything surprised you?

A: Its been remarkable to see the number of signs up. Its been remarkable to see how involved people are in the process this year and I think hopefully some of those discussions can be productive. I know theres certainly very strong feelings one way or the other, depending on which candidate you support.

Q: And there were long lines for early voting (Monday morning)?

A: Well, that seems to be the thing to watch because early voting will give you an early indication of where some of these races may go so I know a lot of people are watching that extremely closely. Thats another reason why were here today is because early voting started.

Q: Beyond the Cruz-ORourke race, whats the perspective of the election in Texas from someone who doesnt live here?

A: Texas is always an enormous focus for us and for everyone else around the country, given its size and importance. So, yes, were watching the Beto ORourke-Ted Cruz race but were also watching some of these House races very closely. Were spending a lot of time talking in this particular case about the Texas 7th congressional district which hasnt voted Democratically, Congressionally, in 50 years but that might change this year.

RELATED: What the heck was Lester Holt doing in Houston?

Q: I wanted to ask you a few questions about The CBS Evening News.  How big a transition was it for you moving from mornings to evenings?

A: Ive always done a number of different jobs in this business at different times. Ive worked weekends, worked mornings, worked nights, whether its in local news or now at the network for 11 years. In terms of the time of the day, I wouldnt say thats the biggest transition.

Q: How do you make something like this your own?

A: Thats a good question. You work really hard every single day and try to do the best stories possible and surround yourself with the best people. And you find your voice.

Q: Do you think youve found yours yet?

A: Ive always, since I started in this business 21 years ago, Ive tried to improve every day and Im still doing that today.

Q: Were you surprised when you were chosen?

A: I was happy. I was excited. I couldnt wait to get started. I had to keep it a secret for a little while and that was very difficult. But I think were doing some very exciting things. This is a long term process and a long-term plan. CBS News has an extraordinary tradition. I think theres a lot more good to come.

RELATED: NBC's Richard Engel comes to Houston for what may be his toughest assignment.

Q: CBS is still behind NBC and ABC in the (evening news) ratings. Does that affect how you go about your work?

A: Im conscious of them (the ratings). I dont obsess over them. It doesnt drive the broadcast. What drives the broadcast every night is doing the best possible stories and doing the best possible reporting and doing that accurately and fairly and compellingly and thats the focus.

Q: The CBS Evening News does more in-depth stories. Do you think youll be able to continue to do that if ratings stay the way they are?

A: We brought back Eye on America. We ran a five-and-a-half minute long piece last week which is extraordinarily rare for a network evening newscast. CBS has a tradition of doing high-quality, important, distinguished reporting and were going to continue to do that  I think people want to watch quality journalism.

cary.darling@chron.comThe original recipe calls for Hokkaido pumpkin, which is hard to find in the United States. Any winter squash with firm flesh and a sweet flavor can be substituted.

14 ounces beetroot (beet)

10 ounces winter squash, such as butternut, acorn or delicata squash

2 tablespoons hot Madras curry powder

4-5 tablespoons olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

2-3 tablespoons lime juice

Chopped fresh parsley, to serve

Instructions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Peel the beet. Halve the squash, scrape out the seeds and wash the skins well, then cut both the beet and squash into -inch chunks. Mix the curry powder, olive oil and salt and pepper with the vegetables and spread out in a roasting pan.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft but not overcooked. Pour the lime juice over, add the parsley and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Makes 4 servingsDespite the chilly mornings, thousands of Woodlands voters made their way to the polls at the South County Community Center and the George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Library for the first week of early voting.

As of Friday, Oct. 26, more than 18,000 voters made their way past the usual forest of campaign signs planted along the driveway to the community center this week, for what one called the most important election she can remember.

Adorned with a Barack Obama watch and a purse decorated with photos of Michelle Obama, resident Stephanie Cooper was one of the first people to cast her vote.

Im ready for a change, Stephanie Cooper said of the current state of politics. Im tired of waking up every morning to chaos.

Voters credited heavy campaigning from both Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his opponent, Rep. Beto ORourke (D-El Paso), with energizing them to get out and vote early.

Both Cruz and ORourke made stops in the south county over the Oct. 19-20 weekend  Cruz held a joint rally with U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-The Woodlands) in Montgomery on Saturday and is speaking with President Donald Trump at a rally in downtown Houston later on Monday. ORourke also spoke at the same venue early Monday, part of a half-dozen rallies the Democratic challenger to Cruz has planned in the Houston area to kick off early voting.

Early voting locations in Montgomery County North Montgomery County Community Center - 600 Gerald St., Willis Magnolia Community Building - 422 Melton St., Magnolia East County Courthouse Annex - 21130 Highway 59 S., New Caney Lone Star Community Center - 2500 Lone Star Parkway, Montgomery Lee G. Alworth Building - 207 W. Phillips St., Conroe South Montgomery County Library and Community Center - 2235 Lake Robbins Drive, The Woodlands George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Library - 8125 Ashlane Way, The Woodlands See More Collapse

Early polling places across the Houston area have seen unexpectedly large numbers of voters since opening at 8 a.m. A community center in Houston had people lining up Sunday night and had a line of reportedly more than 2,000 voters early Monday morning.

I wanted to make sure I got my vote in, Cooper said, explaining why she arrived so early.

For voter Mary Ellis Johnson, this years elections are do or die. She said she wants to see Cruz back in the Capitol, and her hopes are for Republicans to strengthen their majority in Congress  both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Were in danger of losing big, Johnson said, referring to what many across the nation have predicted as an impending blue wave of Democratic victories.

Officials running for re-election also took to the community centers crowded parking lot  Brady was joined by Conroe Independent School District board President Melanie Bush and The Woodlands Township Board of Directors Member Brian Boniface. All three candidates were on hand to speak with voters and encourage them to get to the polls.

Im getting face-to-face with voters, said Boniface, who is being challenged by former aerospace industry engineer turned stay-at-home mother Treva Taglieri. Its my commitment to the constituents.

In the first four days of early voting, more than 55,000 Montgomery County residents cast their votes, compared to 57,000 total in the 2014 midterm elections and 65,000 in 2010.

For many in the seemingly interminable line, voting was more than just about fulfilling their civic duty.

Roger Channing said he had never before voted in a mid-term or Senate race  but the candidacy of Beto ORourke changed that. Channing woke up early to see the state representative from El Paso speak at the community center.

I believe in the values of Beto and what he stands for, Channing said. I want to get out and support him and trying to make a change.

mrincon@chron.comA small Oleander Homes sign serves as a grave marker of sorts for the once-sprawling public housing complex north of Broadway that thousands of low-income residents called home before severe flooding during Hurricane Ike in 2008 forced its demolition, leaving vacant the vast, fenced-in land off 53rd Street.

More than 10 years after Ikes wrath forced the bulldozing of all of Galvestons public housing developments, fewer than half of the citys 569 public housing units have been rebuilt. The city is required by state and federal mandate to rebuild every unit, but construction has been delayed for so long that some advocates wonder whether Galveston is trying to run out the clock on the federal funding. Public outcry, political inaction and a lack of financial capital are blamed for the delays.

I cannot think of another instance nationally in disaster recovery where it has taken this long to take money that has been appropriated for 10 years, and to actually use it to build homes and stimulate the local economy and generate jobs, said John Henneberger, co-director of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service, a statewide housing advocacy group.

Currently, two mixed-income developments on the island provide 145 units for public housing residents, with another 40 one-bedroom units in a separate development. Another 97 scattered-site units  financed with project-based vouchers from the federal government and built by private developers  are under construction, expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The Texas General Land Office has earmarked $66 million  via federal disaster grant money  for the remaining 287 units, but the homes will be built under a different arrangement, with the Galveston Housing Authority owning and maintaining the properties indefinitely. That money must be spent by the end of 2019, or the island risks losing the ability to build back its public housing entirely.

A proposal that the Galveston Housing Authority sent in May to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development includes an option for 100 units north of Broadway, 100 units south of Broadway and another 87 in yet-to-be-determined locations in Galveston. As part of the proposal package, Galveston compiled a list of available land to build back the housing, however, most of that land is north of Broadway, an area with a concentration of low-income residents that is susceptible to flooding.

Another option is that 50 of the units would be built in Texas City, a proposal floated by the Texas City Housing Authority. But building any public housing off the island may violate the state and federal mandate of rebuilding the housing in Galveston on a one-for-one basis. Any off-island units must affirmatively further federal fair housing requirements and must be built in neighborhoods where there is an under-representation of project-based and tenant-based subsidized housing.

The Texas City Housing Authority, which did not respond to a request for comment, currently operates 74 public housing units.

Texas City is not a place with an under-representation of subsidized units, so that would not be an eligible place for them to put those units, said Maddie Sloan, a fair housing advocate with the nonprofit Texas Appleseed that has worked extensively in Galveston.

Mona Purgason, the executive director of the Galveston Housing Authority, disagrees. Purgason told the Chronicle that the Texas City proposal is shovel-ready, preapproved for development, and falls under fair housing criteria, but they are awaiting final say from the federal government.

We havent heard back from (HUD) on that and so we havent taken any action, she said. It hasnt been brought to the board for discussion, theres been no vote on it, and thats where we stand on that.

Purgason added the housing authority would prefer rebuilding the 287 units on the island, but guidance from HUD is necessary before putting out requests for proposals.

The housing authority has also considered other unorthodox options, such as acquiring the Sandpiper Cove Apartments  an apartment complex on the north side of the island that serves mostly low-income and Section 8 residents  as a replacement strategy. This option was included in the proposal to HUD and would require the housing authority to acquire the property, demolish the units, relocate residents and construct a mixed-income property on the site.

A spokesman for Millennia Housing Management, an Ohio-based company that owns Sandpiper Cove, was unaware of any proposal and noted that the complex is not for sale. Housing advocates found the Sandpiper Cove proposal perplexing, considering the apartment complexs deteriorating conditions, rampant crime problems, and the fact that it would be a net loss of affordable housing on the island to tear down the complex to build public housing.

Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the Galveston Housing Authority will have enough time to solicit requests for proposals to build the remaining 287 units before the $66 million earmarked for those units expires at the end of 2019. But Purgason indicated that a more pressing issue is whether Galveston has the financial capacity to operate the 287 units without federal subsidy.

There are some reserve funding needed to do this well, Purgason said. We need maintenance reserves in order to assure that we can maintain these (units).

The estimated cost of managing and operating 287 public housing units is about $51.7 million, according to the HUD proposal. The housing authority has said it would need reserves of up to $9.3 million  not including the estimated $78 million for construction  to ensure long-term sustainability.

A reserve that large would necessitate that the units be built as part of another mixed-income development, which Galveston officials say is not possible because of the lack of available land on the 27-mile long island.

Where are you gonna find a tract of land big enough to build? If youre going to do a mixed-income site with 280 public housing, you have to build 560 apartments to get 50 percent of them and maintain the 50/50 balance of market rate and public assistance rate, we just dont have the property to do that, Galveston Mayor Jim Yarbrough said.

Henneberger and other housing advocates say this list of obstacles borders on excuses and doesnt bode well for future natural disaster responses that disproportionately affect low-income residents.

Galveston has learned the lesson if they can just wait it out and drag their feet, and obstruct the process of rebuilding that, so far, there have not been any consequences to that, he said.

nick.powell@chron.comWith early voting now underway for the November election, Democrats are hoping to outnumber Republicans across Harris County for the first time in a midterm election since Republicans gained statewide control in the 1990s.

Progressive backlash to President Donald Trump has put seats once considered safely red in play, with an added push from a closer-than-anticipated U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Beto ORourke that is expected to reverberate down the ballot.

Republicans, running on Trumps tax cuts, a robust economy and a potentially revved up base over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaughs contentious confirmation, are looking to maintain their midterm streak in Harris County, putting particular emphasis on local judicial candidates.

VOTER GUIDE: Study the issues, hear from the candidates, and research what's on your ballot

But in most cases, the topline national trends will only get either party close to the finish line. More nuanced factors, observers say, will ultimately decide the fate of individual competitive races.

Although Trump is altering the environment and stimulating the Democrats, he is not the main thrust of many of these races, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist. It's an odd twist: Trump has created much of this, but isn't the subject of it.

Voting essentials When and where can I vote early? Oct. 22 - Oct. 26: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 27: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 28: 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 29 to Nov. 2: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. What do you need to bring with me? Texas Driver License issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS Texas Personal Identification Card issued by DPS Texas Handgun License issued by DPS United States Military Identification Card containing the person's photograph United States Citizenship Certificate containing the person's photograph United States Passport (book or card) Texas allows voters who do not possess any of the above options to present "supporting forms of ID" after filling out a "reasonable impediment declaration" form at the polling location. Alternative options: - copy or original of a government document that shows the voter's name and an address, including the voter's voter registration certificate;

- copy of or original current utility bill;

- copy of or original bank statement;

- copy of or original government check;

- copy of or original paycheck; or

- copy of or original of (a) a certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes the voter's identity (which may include a foreign birth document). See More Collapse

Historically, the incumbent presidents party suffers losses during midterm elections, and national polls have found women in particular are driving favorable polls for Democrats. That trend hit many Texas races during the primary, when female candidates by and large outperformed their male counterparts.

For their part, Republicans hope Democratic energy is peaking at the wrong time. Harris County is generally up for grabs during presidential years but has swung reliably red in most midterm elections. For instance, Republicans won straight-ticket voting here in 2014 by about 9 percentage points, while two years earlier Barack Obama won the county by less than one-tenth of a percent.

In 2016, however, Hillary Clinton carried Harris by about 12 points. Those predicting a blue wave in Texas point to results like this, while skeptics remind them of Republicans historical dominance in midterm years. The result: Texas Republicans simultaneously mock the prospect of a blue wave and prepare for its possible impact.

National forces come to bear

Since the primaries, candidates from both parties have navigated tricky external factors. While Harris Republicans grapple with how closely to align themselves with Trump, some Democrats running in traditionally conservative districts here have taken positions at odds with the partys hardline progressive turn.

For instance, Todd Litton and Lizzie Fletcher, the Democratic nominees in the 2nd and 7th Congressional Districts, have argued against a single-payer health care system. They have also resisted the push by some in the party to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

EARLY VOTING: When, where to cast ballots early in the Houston area

That hasnt stopped their Republican opponents, Dan Crenshaw, and Rep. John Culberson, from painting them as far-left liberals out of step with Texas voters. Culbersons ads have accused Fletcher of supporting single-payer or government-run health care, which she called a lie.

National Republicans and Democrats have done what they can to help without inflaming the other sides base. Trump has donated to Culbersons campaign without issuing an endorsement, and Vice President Mike Pence fundraised for him in August.

Meanwhile, Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden have endorsed Fletcher. On an August visit to Houston, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi  who has donated to Fletcher and Litton  mentioned the two races as winnable targets, but did not publicly appear with the candidates.

Though Trump received low support in pockets of Harris County  like Culbersons district, which he lost  Republicans are running primarily on his tax cuts and the strength of the national economy.

In most contests, Trump himself has not always been an overt topic of conversation. But the topics dominating congressional races tend to connect back to the president one way or another, from health care to tax reform to the family separation crisis.

People are more involved because politics has been put front and center in a way, with Donald Trump and the White House, that it hasn't been for a very long time, said Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lillie Schechter. People are talking about it everywhere.

Also hanging over the ballot is Kavanaughs divisive confirmation to the Supreme Court. In CBS Newss recent Battleground Tracker poll, 73 percent of Texas Republicans said the matter surrounding Brett Kavanaughs nomination to the Supreme Court made them more motivated to vote this year, compared to 60 percent of Democrats.

Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson interpreted Democrats handling of the Kavanaugh nomination as further evidence that the party has gone as far left as it has, increasingly out of step with  Harris County voters.

Republicans are now very energized, he said.

Reading the tea leaves

Further down the ballot, candidates are mostly at the mercy of their partys top-of-the-ticket performance. Straight-ticket voting  which allows voters to cast their ballot for every candidate from one party by checking a single box  is a big reason.

Unless the Democratic and Republican parties all but split the Harris County straight-ticket vote, countywide candidates generally have little power to sway their election, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.

A notable exception could be County Judge Ed Emmett, a moderate Republican poised to receive rare crossover votes. He faces a challenge from Democrat Lina Hidalgo.

The only (countywide) Republican who could survive a blue wave of, say, 4 to 5 points would be Ed Emmett, Jones said. If that happens, he added, the most likely scenario is every Republican is swept out with the possible exception of Emmett.

For statewide Democrats to have any hope of breaking their 24-year drought, the party will need to far outpace its historic midterm results in Harris County  the nations third largest county, and by far the biggest in Texas  while seeing massive overall turnout, Jones said.

Primary voting offers a hint at Harris Countys political leaning, though experts say its an imperfect predictor. There is no telling how many primary voters will return for the general election, and more than 55,000 people registered to vote in Harris County between March and September, more than any other Texas county.

Disclaimers aside, the Harris County primaries showed promise for Democrats: While Republicans turned out at about the same rate as they did in the 2014 primaries, Democratic turnout jumped from 2.7 percent that year to 7.5 percent. That meant about 11,000 more Democrats than Republicans voted in this years primaries, compared to Democrats 86,000-vote deficit in the 2014 primaries.

The fast-changing demographics of Harris and neighboring Fort Bend County also point to possible Democratic gains this year, with some looking closely at races like Sri Preston Kulkarnis challenge to U.S. Rep. Pete Olson in the 22nd Congressional District.

Kulkarni speaks six languages and is aggressively courting minority voters in a district thats grown more than any other Texas congressional district since it was drawn safely Republican. It also has the states second-highest rate of foreign-born residents, behind only the 7th District.

Yet even Democrats urge caution in reading too much into population shifts.

Our demographics are changing, but we also have to do the work to make sure that the voters and the people of different demographics know who the Democratic Party is, know what we stand for, and actually believe in Democrats, Schechter said.

If Republicans hold off the blue wave this year, Jones said, they can point in large part to Gov. Greg Abbotts role: The Republican governor has retained high approval ratings while running a well-funded race against Democratic challenger Lupe Valdez. At last count, she trailed in every poll by double figures and had raised about $1.4 million total, while Abbott had $27 million cash on hand.

Polls are open for early voting for 12 consecutive days ahead of Election Day on Nov. 6.

The Harris County Clerks office is operating 46 early voting locations throughout the county, with polls open every day until Nov. 2. The locations will open and close at different hours depending on the day, including from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for the first five days of early voting.

Voters may cast their ballots at any of the 46 locations, and must carry an acceptable form of photo identification.

jasper.scherer@chron.com | twitter.com/jaspschererDuring J.C. and Sharon Heberts honeymoon, J.C. ordered Champagne and room service to celebrate. The newlyweds romantic gesture quickly fell flat as Sharon took one sniff of the bubbly and declared it smelled like rotten beans.

I had to finish it myself, J.C. said with a laugh.

The Heberts were one of over 200 couples who gathered at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart Sunday afternoon to celebrate their golden jubilee  50 years of marriage.

And far from seeing the foul Champagne as a bad omen, the couple saved the bottle and hold up the story half a century later as an example of what they love about their relationship.

He was patient with me, Sharon said.

We had fun, J.C. said.

Many other couples cited humor as key to their 50-year-long marriages. And while one couple professed they couldnt remember the last time they got angry at each other, others acknowledged that marriage takes patience.

It begins with listening and understanding, said Tom Karpinksi, married to Nancy Karpinski. He said that marriage requires people to stop framing decisions as my way v. your way.

Theres a lot of give and take. A lot, said Beth Moseman of her relationship with Merlin Moseman.

Many who attended the mass also cited faith as the glue that held them together.

Richard and Judy Lambert of The Woodlands said they turned to prayer whenever emotions grew heated. Just getting to the point where you can pray together can be healing. Theres not much to fight about if you make it to that step, Richard said.

And while every couple who celebrates their golden jubilee has made a long emotional journey together, the couple who physically traveled the furthest was likely Rev. Jude Ezumas parents, who flew from Nigeria to attend the ceremony.

Ezumas first assignment within the Catholic Church was in Houston, and he still remembers how inspired he felt his first time seeing the cathedral fill with couples who had stayed together for 50 years. As his own parents approached their 50th anniversary, he began making plans for them to attend the celebration and applied for visas for them to travel to the United States for the first time.

His father, Michael Ezuma, said renewing his vows during the golden jubilee celebration gave him a chance relive one of his favorite memories  the day he married his wife, Philomena Ezuma.

We were very happy that day, Michael said. And that same happiness was repeated this day.

rebecca.schuetz@chron.com

twitter.com/raschuetzWhen Dr. Adriaan Bax got a call from the Welch Foundation last spring, he figured he was on the hook to speak at a conference or review a grant proposal.

So when he heard the voice mail message from Peter Dervan, chairman of the foundations scientific advisory board, I somewhat reluctantly called him back, he said with a laugh.

But Dervan wasnt calling to ask a favor. The Houston foundation, which uses an endowed fund to support basic chemical research, was awarding Bax its annual Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry  one of the highest honors in the field.

It was a total surprise, said Bax, who didnt even know hed been nominated by the director of the National Institutes of Health.

Bax, 62, is a molecular biophysicist who heads the NIHs section on biophysical nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This years Welch Award, a $500,000 prize, recognizes his decades at the forefront of NMR spectroscopy, developing and improving the technique as a way to study biological macromolecules.

Bax was in Houston Monday to receive his award at the Welch Foundations annual conference. In an interview, he said NMR spectroscopy is a technology that is being used worldwide  in the pharmaceutical industry and every chemistry lab in the world  to understand the structure of molecules.

From the earliest days of his career, Bax was developing multi-dimensional experiments using NMR that have become a cornerstone of chemical analysis, according to the Welch Foundation. He has continued to develop new approaches, methodologies and uses for NMR spectroscopy that have revolutionized the field, allowing scientists everywhere to see and understand proteins and molecules at a vastly more complex level.

Most recently Bax and his NIH team in Bethesda, Md., have developed the capability, through NMR spectroscopy, to observe protein chains as they fold  in real time, at an atomic level. This can potentially help researchers better understand diseases that are connected to protein misfolding, including Parkinsons and Type 2 diabetes.

Baxs work is exactly the type of contribution the Welch Foundation wants to reward with this annual prize, said Carin Marcy Barth, head of the foundations board of directors. The award was established to recognize research that is for the benefit of mankind.

Last years Welch Award recognized Dr. John B. Goodenough at the University of Texas at Austin for his contributions to developing the cathode material for the lithium-ion rechargeable battery. In 2016, the foundation honored two chemists  Stephen J. Lippard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvards Richard H. Holm  for their work leading to new insights about the biological function of metals.

The Welch Foundation has given away nearly $900 million since it started in 1954, two years after the death of Houstonian Robert Alonzo Welch. Born in South Carolina, Welch came to Houston as a young man and made his fortune in oil and minerals. When he died in 1952 at the age of 80, he left behind $25 million to start a charitable foundation  one that would support research in chemistry.

The Welch Foundation is different from many other funding sources because it supports basic research, the type of investigation that is at the very beginning of curiosity, Barth said.

Were not looking for applied research, she said. Were looking for research so early on that some of the ideas work and some of them dont  early stage investigation.

That sort of what if? intellectual curiosity doesnt get rewarded as often, she said, because its not designed to produce results that can immediately be used and monetized.

Its hard to find this kind of money for basic research, Barth said. When you talk to the universities and institutions that we fund, theyll tell you  this is not easy money to find.

Bax agreed. He earned a Ph.D. at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, his home country. He said that in the 1960s and 70s, when he was a young researcher, it was already difficult to secure funding from the Royal Dutch Chemical Society and other government and public funding groups. Since then, he said, it has only become harder.

Worldwide, funding has become much more geared toward What is it good for? Is it going to cure some disease? What problem is it going to solve? Bax said, adding that tangible results are expected almost immediately for most funding.

The Welch Foundations research grants, endowed chairs and departmental grants stay within the Texas borders, awarded to researchers at universities across the state. But the annual Welch Award  which can be given to any chemist, worldwide  is essentially a lifetime achievement award for significant work in the field, Barth said.

Were really looking for individuals who have made very large research contributions, she said. For the most part, theyre very far along in their careers. You can see what influence theyve had on humankind.

In Baxs case, she said, the impact is obvious: His work has revolutionized the way molecules are studied  advances that are used in chemistry and biology labs around the world every day.

Ive been very lucky, Bax said. He got into the field at its very beginning, in the late 1970s. As computer technology has advanced, the possibilities for NMR spectroscopy have increased dramatically, he said  and theres still room for much more growth and discovery.

The nice thing about this field  it has never matured, Bax said Monday. It keeps on evolving. There are always new things.The question lies whether YRF will take a stand against Dibakar Banerjee in the wake of #MeToo movement.

As the #MeToo movement progresses, here comes another case which is now in buzz. Actress Payal Rohatgi who has accused director Dibakar Banerjee of sexual harassment has received the support of Twitter users.

As Netizens rise in support of the actress, the buzzing question is - will Yash Raj Films take a stand against the director?

After creating a storm with reportings of talent and business head of Yash Raj Films, Ashish Patil, caught in accusations of sexual harassment case, the production house has embroiled in yet another controversy with regards to director Dibakar Banerjee.

YRF took a stand and sacked Ashish Patil post the allegations, but will the same continue with Dibakar?

After actress Payal Rohatgi has accused director Dibakar Banerjee for sexual harassment, Twitter urges YRF to take a stand against Dibakar Banerjee like they did for Ashish.

Dibakar Banerjee, who happens to be the director of YRF's next film Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, has been facing the wrath of Netizens, as Twitter rises in support of Payal Rohatgi.

Payal Rohatgi had accused Dibakar saying he had asked her to lift her shirt for a role in his film Shanghai. After Payal denied she claims to have stopped receiving a response from Dibakar Banerjee.

Payal herself has urged YRF to take a stand against Dibakar Banerjee, post which Twitterati came out in her support.

Here's what some netizens had to say:

Will Yash Raj Films be righteous enough, stay true to the legacy of the magnanimous Yash Chopra and ask Dibakar Banerjee to step down? @TimesNowhttps://t.co/0wFKeCGPXr  rakhi_jadon (@Rakhi_Jadon1) October 22, 2018

Disgusting behaviour by Dibakar Banerjee with Payal Rohatgi...

How many more skeletons are hidden behind the @yrf Yash Raj Films closets?https://t.co/k4i8PVx27M  Chethana (@Tall_Dreams) October 22, 2018

Dibakar Banerjee should be punished and thrown out from film industry.. will continue to harass women if production houses like Yash Raj Films will keep working with them. This will never stop. pic.twitter.com/4TTLzIlPTK  Jahanvi.....jai hind  (@Hindu_Tigeress) October 22, 2018

Yash Raj Films

Should listen the voice of her

Dibakar Banerjee pic.twitter.com/ZsVlcZW96C  BIG Dreams (@HighUp2Sky) October 22, 2018

Now the question lies whether YRF will take a stand against Dibakar Banerjee in the wake of #MeToo movement.As Harris County goes, so go its judicial races.

In three of the last five elections, a single party has swept every Harris judicial contest, with two going to Republicans and one to Democrats, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones analysis. In 2008, one of the two non-sweeps, Democrats won 85 percent of Harris Countys judicial contests.

During most wave years in Harris County, courthouse races go to the party whose candidate wins the top-of-the-ticket contest  the presidency or U.S. Senate  within the county.

The trend could end after 2018, the last year Texas will allow voters to cast their ballots for every candidate from one party by checking a single box. Lawmakers nixed straight-ticket voting through a bill signed last year by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The end of the straight-ticket option makes 2018 critical for judicial candidates, who, if they win, will have four or six years to raise money and gain name identification before facing re-election. By then, their fates will rest less on their partys top-of-the-ticket performance and more on their own ability to draw support.

With some predicting a wave year for Democrats  or at least a favorable electoral environment  the party has a rare chance to avoid an electoral massacre during a midterm cycle.

Courts on the Harris County ballot The Supreme Court of Texas The Supreme Court has the final say on civil and juvenile appellate cases, with most of its cases coming out of Texas' 14 courts of appeals. Its chief justice and eight justices are elected to six-year terms; three justice seats are on the 2018 ballot. Court of Criminal Appeals Comprised of a presiding judge and eight judges, this is the statewide court of last resort for criminal cases. If the state or a defendant appeals a trial court decision, that appeal goes to one of 14 courts of appeals; the Court of Criminal Appeals may then review those 14 courts' decisions. An exception: Death sentence appeals go directly to this court. The presiding judge and two judges are on the ballot this year. Courts of Appeals Two of Texas' 14 courts of appeals, the 1st and 14th, cover Harris County. These courts have jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases appealed from district and county courts. Both Harris appeals courts seat nine justices - one chief justice and eight justices - but others seat as few as three and as many as 13. Five justice seats from each court are on the ballot in 2018. State District Courts Harris County has 60 state district courts that handle civil, criminal, family and juvenile law matters. Thirty-six of those courts will be on the 2018 ballot. In general, district courts have original jurisdiction over cases including felony criminal charges, civil matters involving small amounts of money, divorce, disputes of title to land and election contests, among others. Judges serve four-year terms. County courts at law and justice courts Harris County has 16 justice of the peace courts, which cover a wide range of minor civil cases, as well as minor criminal cases punishable only by fine. Cases generally get appealed to the county's 16 criminal courts at law or four civil courts at law. County probate courts Probate courts handle estates, guardianships, trusts and mental health matters. All four of Harris County's probate courts are on the 2018 ballot. See More Collapse

Democrats want to use this as an opportunity to pick up seats and build a bench, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist. The opportunity here is massive.

Harris County Republican Party officials, recognizing whats at stake, have focused a big chunk of the partys energy on judicial races, hoping to boost their chances through a robust coordinated campaign.

The party also launched a website, republicanjudges.com, that claims, Special interest groups are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect unqualified Democrat candidates to ignore the will of the voters and impose failed liberal policies.

Though it did not matter much during last elections Democratic courthouse sweep, Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson noted that Republican down-ballot candidates outperformed the top of the ticket the last two cycles.

We've spent a lot of effort making sure folks know about our candidates, he said.

Where that could matter is if 2018 looks like 2012, when the two parties share of the straight-ticket vote was separated by one-third of a percentage point. Buried near the bottom of the ballot, judges generally have little ability to sway the results of their individual elections  but in 2012, half the countys judicial races came down to margins of less than 1 percent, Jones found, putting just about every one in play.

For its part, the Harris County Democratic Party this year is mobilizing in large numbers too, running seven-day-a-week phone banks while looking to increase turnout instead of targeting moderates. The party has listed its judicial candidates on a section of its website that pulls together Harris County Democratic candidates.

Party officials also hope U.S. Senate candidate and El Paso Democrat Beto ORourke breaks up the straight ticket on the other side, Democratic Party Chair Lillie Schechter said.

We have the wind behind our sails instead of pushing into a headwind, which is something we've never had in a midterm in my lifetime, she said.

Both parties appear to be pooling donations from judicial candidates for a coordinated campaign, according to their campaign finance reports, with the Republican Party reporting $800,000 cash on hand through Sept. 27. The Democratic Party reported $386,000 cash but outspent the Republicans, roughly $194,000 to $6,000, after June.

Notably, Harris County has more judicial races than any other county in Texas, perhaps explaining why straight-ticket voting is especially popular here. From 2008 to 2016, 67 percent of Harris voters cast straight-ticket ballots, according to Jones, marking the third highest rate among Texas 20 biggest counties and six percentage points higher than those counties median rate.

Those who want to keep straight-ticket voting typically argue that removing the option will affect minority voters disproportionately. A federal judge in 2016 blocked Michigans ban on straight-ticket voting, saying it would lead to unreasonably long lines at the polls. The judge pointed to a strong correlation between black voter turnout and the use of straight-ticket voting.

Most observers of judicial elections agree that party affiliation says little about a candidates temperament, legal acumen or ability to show fairness  key traits of any judge. Perhaps for this reason, only one other state, Alabama, elects and re-elects judges in partisan elections while allowing straight-ticket voting, according to Jones.

Members of Texas legal community have spoken up, including Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, who said during last years State of the Judiciary address that in 2016, many good judges lost solely because voters in their districts preferred a presidential candidate in the other party.

Former civil trial and appellate lawyer Stephen G. Tipps wrote in the Houston Chronicle last month: Unlike candidates for executive and legislative offices, whose party affiliation often signals fairly reliably the policies that the candidates would pursue if elected, judicial candidates party affiliations say relatively little about how they would perform their duties as judges.

jasper.scherer@chron.com

twitter.com/jaspschererTwilight was starting to fall Sunday when Mirza Masroor Ahmad, a worldwide spiritual leader of Islam, at last stepped from his car at a Houston mosque and into the Texas history books.

Ahmad, who lives in London, is the fifth khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, the fastest growing Muslim sect with tens of millions of followers across the globe. He chose Houston as part of his U.S. tour, marking the first time he has included Texas in his travels. Other cities were Silver Spring, Md., Baltimore, Philadelphia and Manassas, Va.

"He is the equivalent to the pope in Islam," said Adnan Ahmed, an iman from Rochester, N.Y. who had been in Baltimore on Saturday. "I try to go where his Holiness goes."

"I don't think words can express the excitement I feel. I am feeling extremely blessed," agreed Attiya Ahmad, who worships at the Baitus Samee Mosque in north Houston where the event was held.

The celebration in Houston comes at a time when the political climate for Muslims is challenging, some said on Sunday. "We do feel at times that Muslims are being targeted," said Ahmed, who wore on his lapel a square blue pin that said "Love for All. Hatred for None."

While Muhammed Chaudhry, the communication director for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, said Ahmad was a religious leader not a political one, he saw opportunity in the Houston visit as a chance to help those outside of Islam better understand what their faith is  and isn't.

One of the challenges for today's Muslims is to fight back against the radicalization of some of the faith's young people, Chaudhry said, adding that Ahmad has "explicitly said that extremists don't represent true Islam."

As the afternoon wore on, hundreds of people packed the grounds of the mosque amid tight security. Some had come from as far away as Canada and California, arriving early Sunday morning for the scheduled mid-afternoon arrival. A barricade kept them back from the driveway which had been cloaked in a red carpet. The men were in one section while the women and groups of children were in another. The children were well rehearsed for their moment to sing for the leader, each clutching small American flags.

"I'm really excited to sing," said Aashir Bhatti, an 11-year-old from Houston, who had been preparing for months. "I'm pretty nervous," he confessed. "If we mess up that will be be ..." he grimaced, the thought too much to put into words. Finally he settled on "disrespectful."

But in the end, the best laid plans fell victim of a plane delay out of Dulles International Airport. By the time the black Mercedes drove through the gates of the mosque with police escort, the time for afternoon prayers was slipping away.

Instead of walking the red carpet to greet the crowd, Ahmad's car drove straight to a guest house where he prepared for the service. Just before 6 p.m., he emerged again but headed briskly to the mosque, giving only a few quick waves to the crowd and accepting a bouquet of flowers from two children who had won the honor in a raffle.

Once inside the mosque, he led the prayers in Arabic before scores of men and boys. The women worship separately.

Then it was over.

In the end, though, the excitement was still high. No one seemed disappointed by the abbreviated welcoming ceremony. Ahmad was to meet with about 40 families later Sunday night.

He leaves Houston on Monday to go to Guatemala to bless a hospital and then will return later in the week.

jenny.deam@chron.comFox News host Sean Hannity and former Gov. Rick Perry unloaded on Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke and national Democrats Saturday at a rally here for Sen. Ted Cruz, with the senator also taking the stage to continue framing his race as one with clear ideological choices.

During his red meat-heavy stump speech, Hannity adopted a nickname for O'Rourke  Bozo  and accused Democrats of lacking a plan "to help the forgotten men and women in this country."

"They want to go backwards into the failed policies of [Barack] Obama," Hannity told a packed crowd in the ballroom of the Hilton DoubleTree hotel on East Greenway Plaza. "They are hiding what they really want to do: They want to impeach Donald Trump. Beto, Bozo, wants to do it himself."

Ahead of Cruz's Monday rally here with Trump, Hannity lauded the two Republicans for passing "the biggest tax cut in American history."

"Bozo wants the crumbs back," Hannity said, alluding to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's characterization of tax bill bonuses. "I say that money belongs in your pocket."

Perry, the U.S. Energy secretary who served as Texas governor for 14 years, predicted Cruz would beat O'Rourke by "a substantial margin" thanks in part to the state's booming oil and gas industry. He played up Cruz's relationship with Trump, calling Cruz "one of the powerful influences on this president."

Perry also cast Cruz's election against O'Rourke as a "pivotal" moment in Texas' history, and took a couple shots at the El Paso congressman.

"Robert Francis O'Rourke thinks that because he's got a Hispanic nickname, he's gonna get the Hispanic vote," Perry said. "Ain't gonna happen, Robert."

Cruz stumped for about half an hour to close out the hour-long rally, focusing mostly on widening the contrast between himself and O'Rourke. He hit many of the same notes from prior rallies  including on immigration, judicial appointments and regulations  and newly announced he was "proud" that the Houston Chronicle editorial board had endorsed O'Rourke.

"There is a caravan marching north right now," Cruz said at one point. "I'm just waiting to see Beto O'Rourke come down and start leading the caravan."

Upon taking the stage, Cruz  who once had a stormy relationship with Hannity  commended the radio and TV host for "stepping forward and battling political correctness," "the forces of socialism," "open borders" and "stupidity."

From Houston, Hannity and Cruz are traveling to Beaumont, where they will hold another rally at 3:30 p.m. O'Rourke this weekend is holding events near Corpus Christi and in Dallas-Fort Worth before heading to the Houston area.What exactly President Donald Trump will say at a podium is never easy to predict. But when he steps to the microphone at Houstons Toyota Center on Monday night, there is little doubt what his core message will be.

At rallies around the nation for other Republican U.S. Senate and House candidates in midterm elections, Trump has made clear that a vote for candidates such as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is, in fact, a vote for Trump himself and his agenda.

Im not on the ballot, but in a certain way, Im on the ballot so please go out and vote, Trump said at a rally earlier this month in Mississippi and since repeated in city after city.

Trump was definitely the draw for Lisa Brewer, of Splendora, who took her place in the front of the line on Crawford Street around 10 a.m. Sunday. By nightfall, more than 175 people equipped with chairs, tents and plenty of snacks joined her incamping out as the line to enter the rally snaked onto Dallas Street.

I just got out of bed and ran down here, said Brewer, a freight logisitics manager. I didnt know people would be here right after me.

Ken Ellis / Houston Chronicle

Brewer and her daughter-in-law, Jami Brewer, will have spent more than 24 hours waiting in line with little to no shut-eye before Trump speaks.

Were not planning on sleeping, Brewer said. Just the adrenaline alone will fuel us all.

For subscribers: 2018 Houston Chronicle Voter Guide

For subscribers: 2018 San Antonio Express-News Voter Guide

While Trumps policies continue to energize Democrats against him and other Republicans, the White House is in an all-out push to re-energize the presidents base and get those voters to the polls to match the Democratic energy. That applies even to candidates like Cruz who was a determined enemy of Trump just two years ago, but whom the White House absolutely needs to win re-election to protect the GOP majority in the U.S. Senate.

In Montana just days ago, Trump warned thousands of supporters that if Democrats sweep into power in Congress, all of the extraordinary progress hes made as president is in jeopardy.

All they want to do is obstruct, Trump said.

By coming to Texas, Trump will be trying to counter Cruzs opponent, Democrat Beto ORourke, who Thursday again acknowledged in an interview that if he is elected he would vote to impeach the president.

In debates and on the campaign trail, Cruz has made ORourkes stand on impeachment a major talking point. And Trump himself has begun to target ORourke. Days after calling ORourke a flake on Twitter, Trump on Friday launched another attack, calling ORourke a total lightweight compared to Cruz.

Trumps speech at the 18,000-seat Toyota Center begins at 6:30 p.m. Doors for the event open at 3:30 p.m. People wanting to attend are required to register beforehand with Trumps official campaign website: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/.

Trump in some ways is answering a plea from other Republicans in Texas who pushed the White House to focus more on Texas, and on Cruzs re-election. While Cruz acknowledged he talked to Trump about visiting Texas, it was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick who traveled to the White House during the summer and made a direct pitch to get Trump to Texas to motivate voters.

For subscribers: TED CRUZ AS PEACEMAKER? Senator walks a fine line in embracing Trump

The trip was about making sure they were focusing on Texas as well as every other state, said Patrick, Trumps 2016 Texas campaign chair.

Over the last four weeks, Vice President Mike Pence, the president's son Donald Trump Jr., and his daughter Ivanka Trump have all been in Texas for events with Cruz.

Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott have both said they will be in Houston for Trumps rally on Monday.

There are risks in bringing Trump to Houston. In 2016, Trump lost Harris County to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. While Trump could further energize some people on the left, Cruzs campaign thinks Trump can help in key Republican precincts in Houston.

Although ORourke has raised record-shattering amounts of money for his campaign, the Cruz campaign is expressing confidence, and recent polls show Cruz remains ahead in the race.

ORourke himself wont be far from the Toyota Center on Monday as Trump heads to Houston. He has a half dozen Vote with Beto events in and around Houston, including stops in Spring, northeast Houston, Pasadena, West Houston and Rosenberg.

Nicole Hensley contributed to this report.

jeremy.wallace@chron.comAndrea Zelinski

AUSTIN  Democrat Justin Nelson and his mobile billboard featuring the mugshot of Attorney General Ken Paxton were kicked out of a hotel drop-off area Monday moments before he was to begin a press conference slamming the incumbent for alleged illegal transgressions.

Nelsons campaign parked the truck with a billboard of the attorney general, dubbed the mugshot mobile, at the DoubleTree motel across the street from a state building where staff from the attorney generals office work. The Nelson campaign said valet staff gave him permission to park the truck there earlier in the day, although upper-level management asked his team to move the vehicle.Minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha had ruled out an inquiry into the incident on Saturday.

Security on high alert as the first train passes by before resumption of railway services since the train accident in Amritsar. (Photo: PTI)

Amritsar: A police commando and a photojournalist were injured on Sunday when protesters pelted stones and clashed with security personnel who removed them from a rail track where 59 Dussehra revellers were mowed down by a train, officials said, adding that traffic was restored on the route.

The agitated protesters blocking the track were removed and train services resumed this afternoon with the movement of a goods train, 40 hours after the horrific accident. The first passenger train Amritsar-Gorakhpur Express started at 7 pm, Northern Railway spokesperson Deepak Kumar said. On Friday evening, a gathering of more than 300 people were on the tracks to watch the burning of a Ravana effigy when the speeding train struck leaving 59 dead and scores injured. The railways got the clearance from local authorities at 12:30 pm to restore services, the railway spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the Congress questioned the railways over its decision not to initiate a probe into the Amritsar train accident. At a press conference, party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said while his partys first concern remained the rehabilitation and relief of those injured and those who had lost their loved ones, it was cruel of the railways to reject an inquiry into the incident.

Minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha had ruled out an inquiry into the incident on Saturday.

There was a curve. The driver couldnt have seen it. What should we order an inquiry about? Trains travel in speed only, said Mr Sinha.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani maintained the Indian Railways stand on the matter. Today we called a spade a spade. If IR is not at fault why beat about the bush. If our staff have done no wrong why hang them. We have to come out of our shells if the organisation has to flourish..., he said.

Earlier in the day, the Punjab Police cleared the track off the protesters who were staging a sit-in. They resorted to stone-pelting and clashed with security personnel after being removed, officials said. A Punjab police commando and a photojournalist were injured during the clash, they said. The protestors were raising slogans against the state government and demanding resignation of Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu. The Punjab police has deployed its personnel, including commandoes, to manage the crowd. The Rapid Action Force was also present in the Joda Patak area, officials said.

Meanwhile, chief minister Amarinder Singh directed the Amritsar administration to prepare detailed socio-economic profiles of victims. Singh, who met some of the survivors in hospitals Saturday, was particularly moved by tales of two young women who lost their entire family including children and husbands, and in one case her in-laws, an official release said.

Anguished at the plight of such survivors, Mr Singh told chief Principal secretary Suresh Kumar that the government needed to do more than just giving `5 lakh ex gratia, especially in cases where victims were poor.

The senior Congress leader announced that a proper system would be worked out to ensure that such survivors were rehabilitated by the state at the earliest. He also directed that ration, clothing, medicines etc be provided to the families of the victims as most were from the economically weaker sections of the society.

Mr Singh reviewed the relief and rehabilitation work with the Crisis Management Group of ministers headed by state Health Minister Brahm Mohindra, and directed them to take immediate steps for early disbursement of the compensation.

All steps should be taken for the effective rehabilitation of the survivors and families of the victims, he added. The Crisis Management Group was set up by the state government on Friday, immediately after the disaster struck.WASHINGTON  Up in the money chase, but down in the polls with two weeks to go, El Paso Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto ORourke has taken an assertive turn in his underdog challenge to Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Hit by a succession of Cruz attack ads  likely to be amplified by President Donald Trumps rally Monday night in Houston  ORourke is fighting back with direct challenges to the Republicans honesty.

Nowhere was it more evident than in their final debate Tuesday in San Antonio, when ORourke resurrected Trumps Lyin Ted moniker from the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.

ORourke acknowledged two days later that taking a page from Trumps playbook made him uncomfortable, even if he felt he was responding to misleading Cruz attacks suggesting that he wants to legalize heroin, take away peoples guns, or open the border.

Perhaps, in the heat of the moment, I took a step too far, ORourke said in a CNN town hall Thursday night in McAllen. I dont know that thats the way I want to be talking in this campaign.

But he also rolled out a series of television ads in the last week criticizing Cruz directly on education, health care and immigration, chastising his opponent for selling paranoia and fear instead of solutions.

ORourkes new edge in the closing weeks of the race is a departure from the generally positive tone of his 18-month campaign, in which he has spoken little about Cruz, eschewed partisanship and appealed to voters hopes.

Many Republicans chalk it up to desperation.

Hes taking it straight out of the Trump playbook, and the only problem is hes not Trump, said Texas fundraiser Mica Mosbacher, a Trump 2020 advisor and former Cruz co-chair for women.

Cruz accused ORourke of having unleashed the dogs, suggesting their pollsters have told them theyre in trouble, and so the decision theyve made is attack and go ugly and nasty.

ORourke maintains his campaign does not use pollsters. Regardless, some Democrats say a more forceful line was always to be expected.

I never expected anything different, said Texas Democratic strategist Matt Angle. If there was any kind of miscalculation within the campaign it was that somebody might have thought you wouldnt challenge your opponent straight up.

Political analysts say it is simply a sign that Election Day is drawing near, and that time is running out. In any campaign against a sitting senator, the conventional wisdom holds that it is up to the challenger to make the case that voters should fire the incumbent. Until now, that case has largely been made by outside groups such as the Fire Ted Cruz PAC, a group run by Dallas lawyer and Democratic donor Marc Stanley.

We need to shake things up, Stanley said in a recent fundraising pitch to supporters. We need someone out there telling the truth about Ted Cruz.

Tough-guy image

One web ad that went viral was produced by Texas native and Boyhood director Richard Linklater questioning Cruzs Texas toughness over Trumps insults to Cruzs family during the 2016 GOP primaries.

ORourkes ads, in contrast, have until recently featured soaring soundbites and extended montages of his travels around the state, emphasizing his willingness to show up in all 254 Texas counties  a fairly mild reminder of Cruzs 99-county tour of Iowa during his 2016 White House bid.

Democratic consultants also believe that Cruz, known better for his partisan fervor than congeniality, provides a ready target for a more hard-edged approach.

Nobody plays the role of the bad guy in a drama better than Ted Cruz, Angle said.

Republicans say Cruz can stand on his conservative credentials alone.

I used to say he may not be everyones favorite drinking partner, but he is Texans favorite designated driver, Mosbacher said.

For ORourke, who has sworn to elevate his campaign above the meanness of modern politics, a more confrontational style is not without risk, undermining an upbeat, sunny disposition he has cultivated on the campaign trail.

It clearly is a sign of desperation, said Texas Republican Party Chairman James Dickey, who believes ORourkes policy agenda is too liberal for the state.

Some Democrats say that with partisan divisions hardening in the race, and few undecided voters left to persuade, ORourke needs to super-charge his campaign by putting his differences with Cruz into sharper contrast.

Hes doing exactly what he needs to do, said Democratic strategist Harold Cook, former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. If there is room to get into the lead in this race, I think thats the way he does it.

ORourkes new ads, however critical of Cruz, still emphasize policy differences, not personal attacks. There is none of the eerie music or grainy black-and-white imagery that is the hallmark of negative political advertising.

Spare in their creative content, they consist simply of ORourke speaking directly into a camera, criticizing Cruzs positions in favor of school vouchers, building a border wall, and deporting Dreamers. One also recounts Cruzs efforts to repeal every word of the Affordable Care Act, which Democrats say would jettison current protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

He has to be who he is, Cook said of ORourke. He cant just be this other guy who attacks Cruz. I dont think thats whats happened. Youve got to walk and chew gum at the same time here.

Either way, with Trump scheduled to rally the Republican faithful Monday night at the Toyota Center in Houston, strategists on both sides expect the race  and the rhetoric  to heat up in the coming two weeks.

Trump talk

Trump rallies in other states, like one he held Thursday in Montana, have tended to inflame passions. In a preview of an attack line he might make on ORourke, Trump accused Democrats  without evidence  of backing a caravan of Central American migrants who are traveling north to the U.S. border because they figure everybody coming in is going to vote Democrat.

Trump also went after ORourke on Twitter Friday afternoon.

Beto ORourke is a total lightweight compared to Ted Cruz, and he comes nowhere near representing the values and desires of the people of the Great State of Texas. He will never be allowed to turn Texas into Venezuela!

But political experts say incendiary formulations like that can mobilize both sides, raising questions about why Cruz, as the front-runner, would want to shake up the race at this late juncture.

Its an insurance policy, Mosbacher said. The rally is a sign of due diligence, Republicans say, a way to mobilize their base.

Polls show that Trumps approval rating in Texas is basically a wash between those who approve and disapprove.

With scarcely two weeks left in the race, ORourke said their differences can only become more stark.

I want to make sure theres a contrast offered on everything that we want to do, from immigration to education to health care, ORourke said in McAllen. The choice could not be any more clear.

kevin.diaz@chron.comDespite the press attention to the case, the names of the applicant and respondent were stripped away. Anonymity blocks accountability.

He added that there was a particularly mean-spirited nature of the teachers mistreatment and a subsequent effect on her family and career.

Consequently, if the case had been heard by an American jury at trial, the award could easily have reached USD $1.5 million (or almost NZ $2.3million).

Dr Namie acts as an expert witness who works with a California attorney who accepts employment cases on a contingency basis and who regularly wins major cases in jury trials.

Dr Namie also provided conservative estimates of what the jury monetary verdicts might be if they had been pursued in court in the States as contrasted with the ERA in New Zealand.BREXIT: How End of Free Movement Will Affect All Musicians

As Brexit proceedings move ominously forward, independent self-employed musicians who tour internationally are starting to worry about what sort of an impact the separation could have on their way of life. Here we look at what the negative outcomes could be.

_________________________

Guest post by Joe Hoten of Bands for Hire

With the stormy cloud of Brexit looming ever more convincingly on the horizon, self-employed musicians who tour internationally are starting to ask what this will mean for them. Major label artists may well find themselves largely unaffected, but will it still be as easy as ABC for unsigned bands to DIY themselves over to Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen and parts beyond, or will they find themselves tied up with red tape and visa fees?

Will it even be possible, in a post-Brexit world, to carve a career as a musician in the same way the most fortunate among us can today, or will the rulebook require a complete rewrite?

Here are a few ways in which the end of Free Movement could spell the end of the musical world as we know it:

Less Diversity

Music is a constant cycle of revision and discovery, and the most effective way of keeping that wheel turning is to meet and learn from musicians from different cultures and backgrounds. Without expanding their musical boundaries beyond the western world, the Beatles would never have written Dear Prudence, Paul Simon would never have written Graceland and Kula Shaker probably wouldnt have written anything. Travelling to different countries and discovering hitherto untapped resources of inspiration prevents stagnation and encourages outside-the-box thinking. The converse is also true: limiting international travel insulates a musical scene from outside influence, and may cause ideas to run out more quickly.

While connectivity via the internet is entirely possible in the information age, watching YouTube clips and lagging your way through a live video lesson is a far less personal and far less fulfilling experience than sitting in the same room as a real life master of an unfamiliar style and feeling it firsthand. Theres no escaping the magic in the air when its right there in front of you, but in the comfort of your own home youll be far more prone to distraction. Or your wifi could just cut out.

Restrictions on Free Movement may also prove problematic when your local venue is trying to bring in bands from other countries, to bring that precious diversity to the audience as well as the local musicians. Without the occasional breath of fresh talent, your regular gig-goers will soon begin to find the recycled air stale, and their gig-going days will be numbered. Once the venues start suffering, so will the performers.

Fewer Opportunities

As anyone in the music game will tell you, you have to seize any opportunity that comes your way in the early days. It could be a spot on a radio show, a support slot for a more established touring band or session work for a big-time solo artist, a meeting with an advertising executive to have your song featured on a soda commercial  but its a well known fact that you cant expect Lady Luck to keep coming all the way to your house to knock on your bedroom door. You need to venture out and seek your fortune, which for many is found beyond our British borders.

The removal of Free Movement will mean the reduction, and possible even removal, of such non-UK opportunities for UK bands and musicians. And, regrettably, this is no longer mere speculation: according to a recent post from the Incorporated Society of Musicians, over 40% of musicians asked felt that Brexit had impacted upon their work (almost twice as many as the year before), with some citing instances of European employers claiming to be incapable of hiring non-EU workers. British musicians will be regarded as such, if Brexit goes ahead, and many European organisations wont be able to support the amount of paperwork necessary to hire them.

Less Spontaneity

Gone may be the days when a member of your friends band would fall ill, the panicked message of how soon can you get to Paris would appear in your voicemail inbox, and you would grab your guitar case, excuse yourself from work and hop on the ferry.

In their stead, we have costly and arduous visa applications to look forward to. Professional musicians are often given very short notice when recruited for overseas work, and, as their livelihood depends on such opportunities, they have little choice but to seize them. Timing is everything in music, and if youre stuck at the border declaring every single piece of equipment while border control fill out a meticulouscarnet, the people waiting for you on the other side might just have passed your chance over to someone closer by.

If a self-employed musician gets the call to collaborate or join a European festival as a last-minute addition to the bill, an awful lot more planning will be required. Perhaps itll become too much of a logistical nightmare to justify, and self employed musicians will be unable to widen their circles.

Fewer Fans

The key to any bands success is building a solid foundation of loyal fans. Fans stream your songs, come to your gigs and buy your t shirts  plus, theyll hopefully tell their friends to do the same. The general pattern is, make a splash in your home town, and ride the waves as they spread further afield. Fans who really enjoy your shows will follow you on your travels, and, with any luck, your following will pick up new members with each stop on your tour.

That is, of course, unless your waves are confined to a small pond. With so many hopefuls trying to make a scene, theres an awful lot of competition from other unsigned bands  and youre not only competing for support slots, but also for the concert-going publics attention. As much as people try, they cant dedicate themselves to every single up-and-comer who darkens their door, and the enthusiasm will start to wear a bit thin.

Many UK-based bands make their first steps onto foreign soil by taking advantage of Free Movement within the EU, as forking out for a visa for a Japanese or North American tour will be a bit out of their price range straight away. So, not only will bands miss out on the early the kudos of having toured internationally, but will also be forced to revisit  and risk overexposure  far sooner than they would have under Free Movement.

Higher Import Charges

This may not be a cause for concern for those patriots whove sworn to buy British, but the fact remains that the prices of European brands are likely to skyrocket if the UK distances itself from European trade. Fair enough if you consider Vanquish and Gordon Smith to be superior to Fender and Gibson, but brands such as Hofner and Lag who produce more affordable models for beginners could start to disappear from your local guitar shop.

Even popular online stores like the Germany-based Thomann will most likely be forced to charge extortionate rates shipping. While this may seem like an opportunity for UK based sellers, it also prevents less affluent musicians from taking advantage of more competitive rates they might find online.

Share on:China completes deep-sea research mission in Mariana Trench

October 17,2018 | Source: CGTN

A team comprising of 59 Chinese researchers returned Tuesday after completing a 54-day deep-sea research mission at Mariana Trench.



During the expedition, researchers tested deep-sea equipment and conducted scientific research in disciplines such as geophysics, marine geology, geochemistry, and marine biology.



We have achieved fruitful results during the mission, according to Bao Gengsheng, chief scientist of the expedition. The team after completing the 7,292-nautical-mile deep sea mission arrived at Sanya city in China's southern Hainan Province.



During the expedition, two 7,000-meter-class deep-sea gliders operated continuously for 46 days, making it the only abyss-class glider in the world that can work consistently for such a long period of time.



A magnesium seawater-fuel cell carried out two tests and became the first new metal seawater-fuel cell tested in the 10,000-meter abyss in the world.



In addition, researchers also used a remote-controlled robot to complete a high-definition live-streaming 10,000 meters under the sea.



"The expedition shows that China is capable of carrying out comprehensive equipment test and scientific research in deep sea and abyss," said Ding Kang, director of the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 2018 CGTN

Theme(s): Fisheries Development and Aquaculture.The ministry also confirmed the harassment of Mr Chaturvedi and recommended quashing of cases against him which were quashed by the President.

Not getting satisfactory response from the PMO, Mr Chaturvedi filed an appeal before the Central Information Commission, the highest appellate body on RTI matters.

New Delhi: The Central Information Commission has directed the Prime Ministers Office to disclose complaints of corruption received against Union ministers between 2014 and 2017 and action taken on them.

Chief Information Commissioner Radha Krishna Mathur, while deciding a plea of Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi, also directed the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) to share information about the quantum and value of black money brought back from abroad during the tenure of the Narendra Modi dispensation, along with records of efforts made in this direction.

The order asked the PMO to disclose information related to depo-sits made by the government in bank accounts of Indian citizens from the black money brought from abroad.

The Prime Ministers Office had termed the questions asked by Mr Chaturvedi, in his RTI application related to black money, as not covered in the definition of information which can be accessed under the Right to Information Act, but the commissioner rejected the contention.

The respondent (PMO) has wrongly stated in his reply against point nos 4 (black money brought from abroad) and 5 (deposits made in bank accounts of Indian citizens from the black money recovered from abroad) of the RTI application that request made by the appellant is not covered under the definition of information as per Section 2(f) of the RTI Act, Mr Mathur said while ordering their disclosure.

In his RTI application, Mr Chaturvedi had also sought information on various schemes of the BJP government such as Make in India, Skill India, Swachchh Bharat and Smart City Project which were transferred to the ministry concerned by the PMO.

Not getting satisfactory response from the PMO, Mr Chaturvedi filed an appeal before the Central Information Commission, the highest appellate body on RTI matters.

During the hearing, Mr Chaturvedi told the commission that he had sought specific information regarding certified copy of complaints submitted to the Prime Minister against corruption of serving Union ministers which should be provided to him.

The commission further observed that the respondent (PMO) has not given correct and specific reply/information to the appellant on point numbers 1(b) (corruption complaints against ministers), 4, 5, 12 & 13 (related to corruption in AIIMS) of the RTI application, Mr Mathur noted.

The commission also directed the PMO to disclose action taken on a letter of Mr Chaturvedi alleging corruption against officials of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and purported role of a union health minister in it.

Mr Chaturvedi had earlier raised the issue of alleged corruption in the erstwhile Congress government in Haryana and a forestry scam case in which fake plantations were allegedly carried out across the state.

Facing purported harassment from the state government, he appealed to the central government which formed a committee in Union environment ministry in 2010. Its report found merit in the contentions of Mr Chaturvedi.

The ministry also confirmed the harassment of Mr Chaturvedi and recommended quashing of cases against him which were quashed by the President.

He was brought to AIIMS as chief vigilance officer by the Congress-led UPA government and his work to contain corruption at the prestigious institute was termed outstanding by the then health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

In August 2014, Mr Chaturvedi was relieved from AIIMS and sent to Uttarakhand, where he is serving as a conservator of forests.CBI arrests its Dy SP Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving its Special Director Rakesh Asthana.

Devender Kumar, who was earlier investigation officer in case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, has been arrested on charges of forgery in recording statement of Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in case. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The CBI has arrested its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving its Special Director and second-in-command Rakesh Asthana, officials said on Monday.

Kumar, who was earlier the investigation officer in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, has been arrested on the allegations of forgery in recording the statement of Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in the case, they said.

It is alleged that a statement of Sana was purportedly recorded on September 26, 2018, by the investigating team headed by Asthana, but it emerged in the CBI probe that on that given day the businessman was in Hyderabad, they claimed.

In his statement, Sana had purportedly said that he had in June this year discussed his case with Telugu Desam Party's Rajya Sabha member C M Ramesh who, after speaking to the CBI Director, had assured him that he would not be summoned again. "From June onwards, I was not called by the CBI. I was under the impression that investigation against me is complete," he is believed to have said.

The CBI has now alleged that Kumar had fabricated this statement as an "afterthought...to corroborate the baseless allegations made by Asthana against CBI Director Alok Verma to the CVC (Central Vigilance Commissioner)", they claimed. They said the agency was also looking into the alleged role of other members of the special investigation team headed by Asthana.

Also Read:

Asthana, who was booked by the agency on bribery charges in an unprecedented action, had complained against CBI Director Verma on August 24, 2018 that he had taken bribe of Rs 2 crore from Sana to give him relief in the matter.Dr Fatih Birol, the IEAs Executive Director, was in Tokyo today to meet with high-level officials and provide the keynote address at Japans Inaugural Hydrogen Energy Ministerial Meeting.

Japans Hydrogen Energy Ministerial is a critical milestone to send a strong signal to governments and companies around the world, said Dr Birol in his keynote address. Dr Birol highlighted the role that hydrogen can play in global clean energy transitions while at the same time increasing energy security by diversifying the fuel mix.

Dr Fatih Birol provides the opening keynote at the Inaugural Hydrogen Energy Ministerial (Photo: IEA)

Following his address, Dr Birol met with Japan Foreign Minister TarA KAno along with IEA Governing Board Representative for Japan Mr Hiroki Takabayashi and other high level officials.

Dr Birol highlighted the three pillars of the IEAs modernisation strategy: opening the doors to emerging economies, broadening its approach to energy security and becoming the clean energy hub, and how these feed into the IEA Clean Energy Transitions Programme. Dr Birol and Minister TarA also discussed how the IEA will support Japans G20 Presidency in 2019 through work on energy efficiency and hydrogen.

Prior to his visit to Tokyo, the Executive Director was in Nagoya to give the keynote speech at the LNG Producer-Consumer Conference 2018 and meet with Mr Hiroshige Seko, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry.

In his meeting with Minister Seko, Dr Birol emphasized the IEAs support for Japans upcoming G20 presidency, in particular highlighting the IEAs commitment to energy efficiency policy guidance and upcoming work on the future of hydrogen and energy in support of the G20 Summit to be held in June 2019.

IEA Executive Director Dr Fatih Birol (right) with Mr Hiroshige Seko, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry (Photograph: IEA)

Following this meeting, Dr Birol provided a keynote address to the LNG Producer-Consumer Conference to an audience of over 1000 participants. Dr Birol highlighted the bright future for LNG, noting that the number of LNG importers is projected to rise from 10 in 2000 to nearly 50 in 2023.

On Monday afternoon, Dr Birol visited Toyota headquarters in Toyota City, meeting with Toyota Chairman Mr Takeshi Uchiyamada. Dr Birol and Mr Uchiyamada discussed the promise of electric and fuel cell transport, including hydrogen. Dr Birol emphasized how the IEA considers hydrogen and fuel cell technology to be an important option for clean mobility and mitigating the growth in oil demand. Dr Birol was then given a tour of the Toyota plant where he had the opportunity to view first-hand the manufacture of next-generation vehicles.

During his visit to Japan, Dr Birol also held bilateral meetings with US Deputy Secretary of Energy Mr Dan Brouillette, Thai Minister of Energy Dr Siri Jirapongpan, Australia Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Mr Matthew Canavan, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy of Mozambique Mr Ernesto Max Elias Tonela, New Zealand Minister for Energy, Science & Innovation Ms Megan Woods, and Qatar Minister of Energy and Industry Dr Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada.Modi lamented that post Independence, Indias policies were based on the British system as things were seen through British glasses.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with INA veteran Lalti Ram during a flag hoisting ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the Azad Hind government at Red Fort in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Launching a thinly-veiled attack on the Nehru-Gandhi clan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday alleged that the contribution of several great leaders such as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, B.R. Ambedkar and Subhash Chandra Bose to the freedom struggle was deliberately forgotten to glorify one family. He also said that it is high time more Indians knew about the historic role these stalwarts played.

A combative Mr Modi also said that India never eyes anyone elses territory but will hit back with double the force if its sovereignty is ever challenged. In his speech, he also said that his government was working towards providing the armed forces with better technology and latest weapons. He went on to add that efforts were underway to make the lives of soldiers easier by giving them better facilities. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi said this at an event to mark the 75th anniversary of proclamation of the Azad Hind government by Subhash Chandra Bose.

Donning the famous Azad Hind Fauj cap, the Prime Minister hoisted the national flag at the Red Fort and unveiled a plaque to mark the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of the Azad Hind government by Bose.

Traditionally, the Prime Minister unfurls the tricolour on the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day. The plaque will be placed at barrack number three at the Red Fort where members of the Azad Hind Fauj faced trial. A museum will be also set up in the barrack.

Mr Modi lamented that post Independence, Indias policies were based on the British system as things were seen through British glasses.

Policies, including those related to education, had to suffer because of this, he said, adding that, Subhash babu always took pride in Indias history and our rich values. He taught us that not everything must be seen from a non-Indian prism.

He said in the later decades of independent India if the country had got the guidance of personalities like Subhash babu and Sardar Patel, the conditions would vary greatly. Mr Modi said that his government was changing that now.

It is unfair that to glorify one family, the contribution of several other great leaders was deliberately forgotten. It is high time more Indians knew about the historic role of stalwarts like Sardar Patel, Babasaheb Ambedkar and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, he said.

The Congress on its part dismissed Mr Modis claim that they, while in power for several years, neglected the contribution of freedom fighters like Bose. Accusing the BJP-led Centre of using every auspicious occasion as a political tool, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi Sunday said the saffron party was desperate to rewrite history. Dr Singhvi further added that in August 1947, the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru raised the Indian national flag above Lahori Gate.

Further augmenting his claim the Congress leader added, Pandit Nehrus speech made a special mention of Netaji, regretting his absence on the occasion. It was Jawaharlal Nehru who was INAs defence lawyer in the Red Fort trials of the INA (Indian National Army or Azad Hind Fauj). Taking on the Sangh Parivar Dr. Singhvi said Sardar Patel had written to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, stating that the activities of the Hindu Mahasabha were a clear threat to the existence of the government and the activities had not died down, despite the ban.

The Prime Minister in his speech went on to add that while Mr Bose focused on the East and

Northeast India, the two regions did not get due recognition. Now, he said, his government was working to make the Northeast the engine of growth. We are heading towards building an army which was once envisioned by Netaji (Bose), he said.



Listing out the NDA governments contribution towards the armed forces, Mr Modi said his government took decisions such as carrying out surgical strikes across the Line of Control and providing benefits of one rank, one pension to ex-servicemen.

He said it has been the Indian tradition not to eye someone elses territory, but when our sovereignty is challenged, we will hit back with double the force. The prime minister said India would continue to use its military might only for self defence.

He also cautioned people against forces inside and outside India which are working against the country by targeting its independence, unity and constitution. It is the duty of every Indian to fight and defeat such forces, he said, adding that a feeling of nationalism and Indianness is a must to counter such designs.Imperial Valley News Center

Secretary Pompeo's Meetings With Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray

Washington, DC - Secretary Pompeo met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray Friday in Mexico City. They discussed the caravan of migrants from Central America. The Mexican Government is fully engaged in finding a solution that encourages safe, secure, and orderly migration, and both the United States and Mexico continue to work with Central American governments to address the economic, security, and governance drivers of illegal immigration.

They also discussed U.S.-Mexico cooperation on a range of regional and global issues, including Mexicos leadership on Venezuela with the Lima Group as well as combatting transnational criminal organizations. Secretary Pompeo expressed appreciation for Mexicos efforts to complete the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which benefits all three countries.Imperial Valley News Center

Migrant Caravan

Washington, DC - Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo: "The United States is closely following the migrant caravan, in which thousands of migrants from Honduras and other countries continue to make a dangerous journey through Guatemala and into Mexico. Many migrants are attempting to transit these countries and in the process are violating their sovereignty, their laws, and their procedures. As President Trump has stated, consistent with U.S. law, the United States will not allow illegal immigrants to enter or remain in the United States.

"We are concerned that these migrants may be victimized by human smugglers or others who would exploit them. We also are deeply concerned by the violence provoked by some members of the group, as well as the apparent political motivation of some organizers of the caravan.

"We understand Mexico will detain and repatriate migrants who enter Mexico in violation of Mexican law, and in instances where migrants apply for asylum, process the requests in accordance with Mexican law. We also understand that those who do not qualify will be returned in a safe and orderly process, consistent with Mexican law.

"We welcome the Government of Mexico's collaboration with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to address refugee and migration issues in the region, including the influx of people arriving in Mexico. The United States stands ready to assist the Government of Mexico in this effort."Imperial Valley News Center

Newly Identified Genes Linked with Higher Risk for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Atlanta, Georgia - Out of 100 people with breast cancer about 15 will have triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Its one of the most challenging types of breast cancer to treat. Thats due to several things:

TNBC tends to be more aggressive than other common types of breast cancer.

Women usually dont learn they have it until the cancer has already spread to other parts of the body (metastasized), so it may be more complicated to treat.

Treatment options remain limited. Hormone therapies and targeted therapies that help treat people with some types of breast cancer, dont work for a woman with TNBC. Doctors use chemotherapy to treat these patients, but it isnt very effective and may have a lot of side effects.

If doctors had a way to identify women at risk for TNBC, they might be able to find cancer earlier, before it spreads. And, if doctors had a way to personalize treatment for women with TNBC, they might be able to improve a womans outlook and survival. One approach researchers are using to identify women at risk for TNBC and possible treatment options for TNBC is by studying inherited mutations in cancer genes.

Understanding Breast Cancer Risk Genes

A team of researchers in Rochester, Minnesota recently discovered mutations in 5 genes that seem to increase the risk for TNBC. These genes are known by several names: breast-cancer-risk genes, cancer-predisposition genes, and cancer-susceptibility genes. The research team was led by Fergus J. Couch, PhD, the Zbigniew and Anna M. Scheller Professor of Medical Research and Chair of the Division of Experimental Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

About the Study

About 10 to 15% of triple-negative breast cancers in Caucasians test positive for mutations in the BRCA1 gene. In the African American population, about 35% do.

Until recently, BRCA1 was the only gene linked to TNBC. In the past, researchers werent able to identify other breast cancer risk genes, because the technology was too cumbersome to check the genes in large numbers of people, Couch says.

We used to check one gene at a time, which was very time consuming. But about 4 or 5 years ago, sequencing technology changed dramatically, so now were able to do these gene panels and check many genes at a time.

Couch and his research team used a technology called multigene panel testing on blood samples taken from people with triple-negative breast cancer. The technology looks at multiple genes simultaneously, looking for mutations that could be linked to breast cancer.

The team studied how often mutations occurred in people with TNBC compared with a control group of people who didnt have cancer. This was the first study to identify which mutated genes are linked to a highly increased risk for TNBC. They are: BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, and RAD51D.

Women who carried any of these gene mutations had a more than 20% lifetime risk for any type of breast cancer. By comparison, women in the general population have about a 12% or 1 in 8lifetime risk of getting breast cancer.

That means, Couch says, doctors should consider that women who have any of these mutations will have an increased risk for triple negative breast cancer. Also if a woman with breast cancer has one of these mutations, her doctor may need to consider using specific treatments.

The team was not able to learn why African American women have an increased risk for TNBC and suggest that larger studies with African American patients be done.

The team also found strong support that 3 other mutated genes (BRIP1, RAD51C, and RAD51D) moderately increase the risk for TNBC, when they were previously thought to only cause ovarian cancer.

What the Results Could Mean

With the identification of these TNBC genes, doctors who are concerned about risks of breast cancer in their patients can focus on using cancer genetic tests that include this set of genes. And their identification allows researchers to now focus on developing drugs that could target specific gene mutations in tumors.

New guidelines for gene testing for those at risk for triple-negative breast cancer. Current guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recommend that people be tested for BRCA1 and BRCA2, if they have an increased risk for breast cancer due to a personal or family history of cancer such as:

A family history of breast or ovarian cancer

A diagnosis of TNBC at age 60 or younger

A diagnosis of breast cancer under age 40

There are no guidelines to test people for predisposition genes other than BRCA1 or BRCA2. However, this may change as more information about which genes increase risk of breast cancer becomes available.

Plus, only mutations in certain genes qualify women for breast MRI in addition to mammograms for screening and early cancer detection. Some of the genes indentified by Couch are not currently on that list. The hope is that breast cancer screening guidelines might change based on our findings, Couch says. Those at high risk could then get additional screening with a breast MRI, which studies show can improve survival, he says.

Why It's Called Triple Negative

Most breast cancers are classified by 3 substances that can affect the cancers growth:

The female hormone estrogen The female hormone progesterone The human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)

Estrogen and progesterone bind with their specific receptors and move to the cell nucleus and alter the activity of many genes. That can result in some genes helping cancers grow.

The binding of HER2 and its receptor can also switch on many genes and influence how much a cancer cell grows.

If the cancer cell doesnt have a receptor for estrogen, then estrogen doesnt help the cancer grow. That cancer is classified as estrogen-receptor negative (ER negative).

The same is true if the cancer cell doesnt have a receptor for progesterone or for HER2. If a breast cancer cell doesnt have receptors any of these, the cancer is called triple negative.

It may seem like no receptors would be good because the hormones and HER2 can't help the cancer grow. But having a triple-negative breast cancer isnt good.

Here's why: current breast cancer treatments either reduce the amount of these hormones or block the receptors. That means hormone therapy wont work against TNBC and neither will drugs that target HER2.

Drugs for treatment of people who have gene mutations (called mutation carriers) and who have been diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. This enhanced understanding of the genetic risks for TNBC opens the door to test the effectiveness of current targeted treatments, Couch says.

For instance, theres some evidence that BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers with TNBC might respond well to platinum agents, such as cisplatin (Platinol AQ) or carboplatin (Paraplatin).

Mutation carriers may also be helped by a type of drug called PARP inhibitors. PARP is an enzyme that helps both healthy and cancer cells repair DNA damage so they can live. Blocking PARP in cancer cells prevents them from repairing DNA damage, ultimately leading to their demise.

Some of the new TNBC genes work the same way as BRCA1 and BRCA2, so studies are underway to learn if tumors with mutations in these other genes can also benefit from platinum drugs or PARP inhibitors.Imperial Valley News Center

USDA Partners to Help Rural Leaders Build Strategies to Achieve Prosperity

Sacramento, California - Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has finalized four cooperative agreements to help rural communities create and implement economic development plans.

Under the leadership of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, USDA is committed to being a strong partner in enhancing quality of life and building economic opportunity in rural America, Hazlett said. Asset-based planning is an important tool to complement and leverage existing regional resources and create a foundation for rural prosperity.

USDA is partnering with four organizations to help build rural prosperity through the Rural Development Innovation Centers Rural Economic Development Innovation (REDI) initiative. Hazlett announced these partnerships today during the Federal Priorities for Improving Water Forum, co-hosted by the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, the Rural Community Assistance Corp. and USDA.

Hazlett announced the following partnerships:

The Rural Community Assistance Partnership is receiving $477,208 to support the National WealthWorks Technical Assistance Program. WealthWorks will help rural communities, specifically those in economically distressed areas, implement economic development plans. WealthWorks is a network of organizations that includes the Central Appalachia Network, Communities Unlimited, Community Roots, Region Five Development Commission, Rural Community Assistance Corp., Rural Development Initiatives, and Midwest Assistance Program.

McClure Engineering Company is receiving $200,000 to implement regional development plans in four rural communities. It will help them leverage assets to spur economic development and build a network of entrepreneurs. McClures goal is to leverage at least $10 million in public and private investments in an entrepreneurial program to create 130 businesses.

Purdue Universitys Center for Regional Development is receiving $388,949 to collaborate with the University of Kentucky to help rural communities in the Midwest and South develop five-year economic plans. The universities will focus on improving workforce and economic development, infrastructure and technology.

The National Association of Counties Research Foundation is receiving $138,780. It will help rural communities develop a peer-learning program to teach people how to implement economic development plans and projects. The program will include workshops, team mentoring, educational webinars, community case studies and interactive learning.

In April 2017, President Donald J. Trump established the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to identify legislative, regulatory and policy changes that could promote agriculture and prosperity in rural communities. In January 2018, Secretary Perdue presented the Task Forces findings to President Trump. These findings included 31 recommendations to align the federal government with state, local and tribal governments to take advantage of opportunities that exist in rural America. Increasing investments in rural infrastructure is a key recommendation of the task force.Update on Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM) in the United States

Washington, DC - Transcript for CDC Telebriefing: Update on Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM) in the United States:

OPERATOR: Good afternoon and thank you for standing by and welcome to CDC update on acute flaccid myelitis. Todays conference is being recorded. If you have objections please disconnect at this time. Your line is placed on a listen only mode until the question and answer session of todays conference. At that time you may press star followed by the number one to ask a question. I would like to turn it over to Kathy Harben, Chief of CDCs New Media Branch.

KATHY HARBEN: Thank you all for joining us today on an update on acute flaccid myelitis also known as AFM in the United States. We are joined by Dr. Nancy Messonnier. She is director of CDCs National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. She has opening remarks and then she and her staff will be available for a Q&A period.

NANCY MESSONNIER: Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today to talk about acute flaccid myelitis or AFM. Today I want to update you on CDCs work on AFM including what we know and what we dont know about the condition and advice for clinicians and parents. AFM is a rare, but serious condition that affects the nervous system. It specifically affects the area of spinal cord called gray matter and causes muscles and reflexes to become week. We know this can be frightening for parents. I know many parents want to know what the signs and symptoms are that they should be looking for in their child. I encourage parents to seek medical care right away if you or your child develop sudden weakness or loss of muscle tone in the arms or legs. CDC has been actively investigating AFM, testing specimens and monitoring disease since 2014 when we first saw an increase in cases. The number of cases reported in this time period in 2018 is similar to what was reported in the fall of 2014 and 2016. Since 2014, most of the AFM cases have been among children. In 2018 so far, CDC has received reports of 127 patients under investigation or PUIs; 62 cases have been confirmed as AFM (in 22 states) edited for clarity. CDC and state and local health departments are still investigating some of these PUIs. Of the confirmed cases, the average age is about 4 years old. More than 90 percent of the cases are in children age 18 years and younger. We plan to post updated PUI and AFM counts on our website this afternoon. Going forward, we will report updated case counts on our website every Monday afternoon. We expect that the case count may vary from week to week as our experts work with local and state health departments to investigate their PUIs. Based on previous years, most AFM cases occur in the late summer and fall. The data we are reporting today is a substantially larger number than in previous months this year. CDC recently received increased reports for patients suspected to have AFM with an onset of symptoms in August and September. With enhanced efforts working with state and local health departments and hospitals we were able to confirm a number of these cases faster. Also, CDC is now providing a number of patients still under investigation or PUIs, so people can better investigate increases in confirmed cases over the coming months. We understand that people particularly parents are concerned about AFM. Right now, we know that poliovirus is not the cause of these AFM cases. CDC has tested every stool specimen from the AFM patients, none of the specimens have tested positive for the poliovirus. AFM can be caused by other viruses, such as enterovirus and west nile virus, environmental toxins and a condition where the bodys immune system attacks and destroys body tissue that it mistakes for foreign material. While we know that these can cause AFM, we have not been able to find a cause for the majority of these AFM cases. The reason why we dont know about AFM  and I am frustrated that despite all of our efforts we havent been able to identify the cause of this mystery illness  we continue to investigate to better understand the clinical picture of AFM cases, risk factors and possible causes of the increase in cases. Despite extensive laboratory testing, we have not determined what pathogen or immune response caused the arm or leg weakness and paralysis in most patients. We dont know who may be at higher risk for developing AFM or the reasons why they may be at higher risk. We dont fully understand the long-term consequences of AFM. We know that some patients diagnosed with AFM have recovered quickly and some continue to have paralysis and require ongoing care. And we know of one death in 2017 in a child that had AFM. For health care professionals, we have developed a provider tool kit that contains information on AFM and instructions for reporting PUIs to the health department. CDCs website has information for families with patients with AFM, links to important resources and a section for health care providers. We will continue to post updates on our website. As a parent myself, I understand what it is like to be scared for your child. Parents need to know that AFM is very rare, even with the increase in cases that we are seeing now. We recommend seeking medical care right away if you or your child develop sudden weakness of the arms or legs. As we work to better understand what is causing AFM, parents can help protect their children from serious diseases by following prevention steps like washing their hands, staying up to date on recommended immunizations and using insect repellent. While I am concerned about the increase in cases, I want folks to know this work is core to CDCs mission to protect America from health threats. Thank you and we are happy to take any questions.

OPERATOR: Thank you, at this time if you is questions or comments you may press star 1. Again that is star 1 for questions or comments. Maggie Fox, you may go ahead.

MAGGIE FOX: Thanks, very much. Can you talk about a little bit more about the possible agents? You mentioned environmental toxins for the first time. Can we also put this in context of how extraordinarily rare these numbers are given the overall population of children? Thank you.

NANCY MESSONNIER: Sure. Thank you for the questions. Let me start with the second. Overall, the rate of AFM over the years that it has been diagnosed which is since 2014 is less than one in a million. That is why we say that this disease is incredibly rare. In terms of the causes, we are looking at everything. Certainly, after three cycles of this, when we have looked through all the normal agents, we are looking beyond that to see if there are things beyond normal infectious diseases that could cause this. Of course, we are considering environmental agents broadly. We have seen no sign of that yet, but we are open and considering all possibilities. This is a mystery so far and we havent solved it yet, so we have to be thinking broadly.

MAGGIE FOX: Thank you.

OPERATOR: The next question comes from Mike Stobbe. You may go ahead sir.

MIKE STOBBE: Thank you for taking my call. So I just wanted to confirm a couple of things. First of all, did you say 90 percent of these cases are in children 15 and younger, 1 in 5. Also, I want to confirm there have been no deaths in the 127? Also, 127, each of these cases are people who had paralysis or weak arms and legs? Then the last question, you talked about the rate of AFM since 2014 is less than one in a million. What is the denominator? A million kids in the U.S. or a million kids who have enterovirus? You said you havent been able to establish a cause in most cases, but in some it sounds like you have. What have you established and how many cases have you determined a cause?

NANCY MESSONNIER: Thats a long list of questions. Let me see if I can start with  overall since we have started detecting the increases in 2014 there has been 386 cases. So its that case over the population denominator, not those with the enterovirus that gets us less than one in a million. Its 18 years old, so 90 percent of the cases are in those 18 years of age or younger. Lets see  what are the causes? So for individual cases, we have determined causes. For example, weve have detected enterovirus in several of these individual cases. Theres sort of a long list of other agents that we have found in one or two. But if you are having the peaks of disease every late summer and early fall you would think we are finding a single agent. That is what we are not finding. For individual cases we are finding agents, but nothing that provides the unifying diagnosis that we expect to explain this disease. I guess, if you want to be specific, I can tell you that in several of the cases we found enterovirus and several cases we found rotovirus. Sorry, rhinovirus, not rotovirus. Some of it is public literature. But again this is a wide variety of causes. It doesnt explain the whole peak of disease. Did that answer all of your questions? There are a lot of them.

MIKE STOBBE: Im sorry to load a big list on you. Can you quantify of the 62 confirmed cases, like 20 of them you found something? Did you find west nile in any of them? If there is a tally of specific numbers, that would be helpful.

NANCY MESSONNIER: The numbers that Im quoting are actually primarily from the last two clusters in 2014 and 2016 where we have had much more time to go through a long list of diagnostics. In 2018, most of these cases are just occurring, so we havent finished the whole diagnostic algorithm. The numbers we would quote would be from the previous two clusters though we had no reason to think they would be different now. The number that I gave you, the overall number of patients under investigation are those patients for which we are looking in more depth to see if they meet the confirmed case definition. That is the smaller number versus the larger number that I gave you. I will stop there and see if there are more questions.

OPERATOR: Once again, that is star 1 if you would like to ask a question. Our next question comes from Helen Branswell, please state your affiliation.

HELEN BRANSWELL: Hi, Im with stat. I was wondering if there are any geographic clues that you are seeing a pattern with these infections? Do they cluster in any part of the country? Are they being seen elsewhere? Im fairly certain Canada has seen them. Im not sure if Ive heard reports from Europe. Is this unique to North America?

NANCY MESSONNIER: Thank you for both of the questions and for giving me the chance to clarify. There has been reported cases of AFM in many countries, but nobody else has detected this very particular pattern of disease with these seasonal clustering every other year. As far as we know it has only been detected in the united states. In terms of clustering in the United States, many states in the U.S. has been impacted by this disease, so we are not seeing geographic clustering in 2018 nor have we seen it in 2016 or 2014. We are looking for clues, but we really havent seen it in the geography.

HELEN BRANSWELL: Thank you.

OPERATOR: our next question comes from Betsy McKay from Wall Street Journal. You may go ahead.

BETSY MCKAY: Thanks so much. I have a couple questions. One is, if you compare this year, 2018 so far with 2014, is it on track, do you think, to be worse? Or is this more intense so far than 2014 or not? I saw 127 cases, but some are under investigation whereas in 2014, the CDC reported I think 120 people. Anyway, if you can put this year in context with 2014 and whether this is worse or not or if you think it will be worse  and also, is AFM reportable by  reported voluntarily by health departments to the CDC? Is it a reportable disease by doctors to health departments? How might that be playing into the numbers?

NANCY MESSONNIER: As you point out, in previous years we reported confirmed cases and we didnt regularly update on the patients under investigation. We decided this year that it was really important to be able to report also the patients under investigation so folks to see what is coming. That may be why the numbers dont exactly lineup to what you are familiar with in the previous two, 2014 and 2016. So far, we are generally on track to have a number of cases similar to what we have seen in 2014 and 2016, but it would be premature to say that were confident that we know what is going to happen since it really is early in this. Your second 

BETSY MCKAY: What is reportable? Is AFM notifiable? What is the process right now?

NANCY MESSONNIER: So we work very closely with our state and local partners across a wide variety of diseases. They are very concerned about AFM as we are. And they are working hard to identify these cases, report them and track them. And thats something that all across the country we are working with state and local health departments on. We have a call with them later today. We have a close partnership with them and we know that they are concerned about AFM and they have been reporting patients under investigation to us.

BETSY MCKAY: I guess my real question was, of the number of cases that have been reported, do you think there may be more out there that arent being reported? And is growing awareness of the disease affecting the numbers, causing them to be higher or do you not think that is a factor here?

NANCY MESSONNIER: Thank you for clarifying the question. This is actually a pretty dramatic disease. These kids have a sudden on set of weakness. They are generally seeking medical care and being evaluated by neurologists, infectious disease doctors and pediatricians. So, it is certainly possible that there are patients out there who have the disease who havent been reported, especially mild disease. We think the majority of cases are coming to our attention. That being said, one of the reasons that we are going out with this information is we do want to let patients know about this illness so that they can be aware of it and know that if their child does have sudden on set of weakness in their arms and legs they need to seek medical care right away.

BETSY MCKAY: thanks so much.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Lena Sun from the Washington Post, you may go ahead.

LENA SUN: Hi. Thanks for taking the call Dr. Messonnier. Can you just sort of very simply go over what CDC does when these cases come to your attention? What are you doing to investigate? And how is anything different now this year than in previous years in terms of what you guys are doing?

NANCY MESSONNIER: Sure. So this is what CDC is here for, to investigate these kinds of clusters of illness. So we do all of the normal protocol that we would follow. When we detect the cases we gather a bunch of information through our health departments, partners and hospitals, as well as, collecting a whole bunch of samples. So with a case investigation we have expanded laboratory testing. We also have reviewed a number of external experts to help us think through this disease to make sure that we are doing absolutely everything we can both clinically, epidemiologically and also from a laboratory perspective to identify the cause. Although we have had activities all along and this is a normal pattern of how we would investigate, we are certainly escalating our response this year to make sure that we are basically considering everything possible and doing everything that we can.

LENA SUN: So just to follow up, so is that external panel of experts, was that something new this year or have you always had that external panel?

NANCY MESSONNIER: We have been consulting with experts since this began as we would normally do when something isnt so straightforward to us. We expanded the group last year  not last year, but in 2016 to make sure that we were considering every possibility. We are going to do the same thing this year, go back and make sure that any expert that might be able to give us information is included in our discussions.

LENA SUN: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Allison Aubrey from NPR, you may go ahead.

ALLISON AUBREY: Three quick questions. Wondering if you can circle back to the west nile question. Have any of them been linked to west nile this year? Im assuming the diagnosis is made by the onset of the symptoms if there isnt a common pathology, as you just explained you havent been able to link it back to any common pathology confirming the diagnosis is made on the symptoms. You mentioned that some kids recover fully, there was one death, some kids continue to have paralysis. Can you talk about the number of kids that you think make a full recovery?

NANCY MESSONNIER: Thank you for reminding me about the west nile virus. I think it was in Mike Stobbes list of questions and I missed it. None of these patients have had west nile virus, though we do not believe that west nile virus is causing these cases. In terms of the case definition, it is also a radiological finding. These patients have a specific finding in their MRI scans. It is a combination of symptoms, but also an MRI. Since we dont have a pathogen identified the case definition has to include those findings, not the identification of an actual pathogen. In terms of the numbers, I dont have that right in front of me, but we can get back to you with estimates from the previous two seasons.

ALLISON AUBREY: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our last question comes from Susan Scutti from CNN. You may go ahead.

SUSAN SCUTTI: Thank you for taking my question. Yesterday CNN reported 30 states reporting PUIs or confirmed cases. You are saying 22 states. Can you explain the eight-state discrepancy?

NANCY MESSONNIER: I think the way that I would explain this is that the 22 states that we are reporting are the states that have confirmed cases. As you know, many states across the country as well as parents are identifying issues and are talking about their own kids that may have illness. The 22 number is the states that have confirmed cases. Thats what we will be reporting on our website. There is going to be a delay, a lag in the timing of some of these reports. Its a case definition that requires review of the radiological images as well as the clinical syndrome. So there is a bit of a lag as we review those things. There may be cases reported in the media that arent yet confirmed to the CDC. We will report overall cases under investigation, but then the confirmed cases and the states that have confirmed cases.

KATHY HARBEN: Thanks. Dr. Messonnier now has a few final comments.

NANCY MESSONNIER: Thank you for listening today. I want to take this last moment to remind parents that AFM is a very rare condition. It is also a serious condition. We want to encourage parents to seek medical care right away if you or your child develops symptoms of AFM, such as sudden weakness and loss of muscle tone in your arms or legs. As we work to better understand what is causing AFM, parents can help protect their children from serious diseases by following prevention steps like washing our hands, staying up to date on recommended vaccines and using insect repellent to prevent mosquito bites. Thank you.

KATHY HARBEN: Thank you Dr. Messonnier and also thank you to the media who have joined us for this call. If you have follow up questions, you can call our media line at 404-649-3286 or e-mail us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . A transcript of this call will be posted later today. Thank you again for joining us. This concludes our call.

OPERATOR: Thank you. This does conclude todays conference call. You may go ahead and disconnect at this time.Move Towards Ukrainian Autocephaly

Washington, DC - Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo: "The United States reiterates its strong support for religious freedom and the freedom of members of religious groups, including Ukraines Orthodox community, to govern their religion according to their beliefs, free of outside interference.

"We support Ukrainians ability to worship as they choose and hope this will be respected by all. Tolerance, restraint, and understanding are key to ensuring that people with different religious affiliations can live and prosper together in peace. We urge Church and government officials to actively promote these values in connection with the move towards the establishment of an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church."Does the gender pay gap apply even when women set their own salaries?

Female founders are paying themselves significantly less than their male counterparts are paying themselves, The Wall Street Journal reports. The average female entrepreneur pays herself an annual salary of $179,444, compared with the $232,659 that the average male founder pays himself, according to a study from J. Thelander Consulting, a San Francisco-based company that studies compensation data. The study analyzed data from more than 160 private companies with less than $15 million in funding.

So why are women entrepreneurs paying themselves less than their male peers do? Venture capital firms are partly to blame, as women-led businesses received just 2.2 percent of all VC funding last year, according to PitchBook. With less capital available, founders look to invest their limited resources in what will make their company grow, like hiring top talent, and will sometimes forgo a paycheck or pay themselves just enough to make ends meet. Another reason has to do with women founders wanting to show investors they are budget-conscious and not spending capital extravagantly, WSJ reports.The UK government is trying to water down rules that block pesticides linked to a string of health defects from being sprayed on fields across Europe, according to environmentalists.

Exposure to these chemicals, which crops carry onto supermarket shelves, can increase the risk of cancer, nervous system disorders and developmental issues.

Despite these hazards, a handful of states with the UK at the helm has pushed the European Commission into a bid to weaken EU rules  a move that lawyers warn is illegal.

Mounting evidence has suggested some endocrine disrupting chemicals used in pesticides are linked with everything from breast and thyroid cancers to non-descended testes in young men.

Responding to this perceived threat, the EU has attempted to remove them from the food chain.

The first steps to eradicating these substances in Europe came nine years ago, when the EU agreed on an effective ban. The UK was the only member state to vote against the motion.

Since then, industry lobbying backed by the UK, the Netherlands and a handful of Eastern European nations has seen repeated attempts to weaken these rules as the EU attempted to clarify which substances are covered by the new restrictions.

After years of debate, a decision has finally been reached on which pesticides are classed as endocrine disruptors.

This means public authorities will be able to enforce rules to protect people against them within weeks.

But pesticide companies argue that given the range of harmful and harmless substances that interact with the human endocrine  or hormone  system, the criteria that have been established are too strict.

Now, a push to alter these strict regulations, up for discussion at a committee this week, has been slammed by environmental lawyers ClientEarth.

Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. 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They say this small group of actors has influenced the commission into illegally overstepping its powers, in clear violation of its duty to protect humans, animals and the environment.

Contrary to the claims of pesticide companies, they argue that endocrine disruptors are dangerous enough to merit a near-blanket ban.

The current rules mean these chemicals will only be allowed if industry can demonstrate there will be negligible exposure, meaning levels people are exposed to are virtually undetectable.

Under the commissions new proposal this would be changed to negligible risk, a far more vague definition that would likely lead to an uptick in these potentially toxic chemicals

Environmental group the Pesticide Action Network estimates this change would increase levels in food by hundreds of thousands of times.

If you do it by risk assessment, it always leads to approval, explained Hans Muilerman from the Pesticide Action Network.

You can use numerous ways to calculate and you can keep on calculating and calculating and in the end somehow there is safe use.

ClientEarth lawyer Dr Apolline Roger warned against abandoning the strong protections currently in place at the request of a small number of vocal member states.

The proposal assumes a safe level of exposure, but even very low doses of endocrine-disrupting chemicals may affect humans and wildlife, she said. For endocrine disrupting chemicals we need laws which strongly favour prevention.

Graeme Taylor from pesticide industry representatives the European Crop Protection Association said they disputed the criteria used to determine endocrine disruptors as not all of them are as dangerous as the EUs rules suggest.

Many ordinary everyday substances interact with the endocrine system in a temporary way without causing harm like paracetamol, vitamin C, soy or coffee; but that does not make them endocrine disruptors, he said. The same goes for pesticides.

Member states will gather at the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed this week. If the proposal is passed the European Parliament  which has previously criticised the committees efforts to change pesticides regulations  will have a chance to veto it.

Though critics hope this latest attempt will go the same way as previous efforts, they are concerned that more member states will be convinced by the move. ClientEarth said this could lead to a backtracking that would not just moving the goalposts, but removing the whole pitch.

The commissions changes are in clear violation of its duty to protect humans, animals and the environment and an illegal overstep in powers reserved to the democratically elected parliament and council, said Dr Roger

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Though the commission has the power to propose new laws, it is not supposed to amend existing laws in the fundamental way currently being proposed.

Its now up to member states and the Parliament to oppose the illegal amendment and ensure people and the environment continue to be protected, said Dr Roger.

A European Commission spokesperson said that as member states are only discussing the point and deciding whether they wish to proceed, they did not wish to comment.

Though the future of the UKs pesticide laws remains uncertain until a Brexit deal if agreed, critics suggested its focus on resisting environmental regulation does not bode well for a future away from the EU.

Undoubtedly the UK is opposing regulation as far as I can see, and leaving it to the companies  they have a lot of trust in the companies, said Mr Muilerman.

Responding to these concerns, a spokesperson from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: We have a strong record on taking action to prevent dangerous pesticides from being used, including banning certain neonicotinoids that can impact our bees and pollinators.

It remains our position that decisions on the use of pesticides should be based on a careful scientific assessment of the risks, with the aim of achieving a high level of protection for people and the environment.Hackers have hijacked the website of a major conference in Saudi Arabia and placed an image of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi on its homepage.

The conference, dubbed Davos in the Desert, is due to take place this week in Riyadh but has been overshadowed by the withdrawal of several high-profile attendees over the murder of the Saudi dissident.

The second annual Future Investment Initiative conference has billed itself as a blueprint for the 22nd century that is bringing together the worlds most visionary and influential leaders in business, government and civil society.

However, the site was taken over by hackers on Monday to show an image depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman beheading Khashoggi.

Screenshots of the hack were captured by journalists and analysts and shared on social media (Screenshot)

Screenshots of the hacked website show the message: Saudi regime is one of the sources for #Terrorism_Financing in the world.

Figures at the bottom of the hacked page claim that Saudi Arabias support of 17+ terrorist groups has led to the deaths of more than 42,000 people in Yemen and 89,000 civilians in Syria.

For the sake of security for children worldwide, we urge all countries to put sanctions on the Saudi regime, the message stated.

The regime, aligned with the United States, must be kept responsible for its barbaric and inhuman action, such as killing its own citizen Jamal Khashoggi and thousands of innocent people in Yemen. The medieval Saudi regime is one of the sources of #Terrorism_Financing in the world.

The Future Investment Initiative website was down at the time of publication and a spokesperson for the conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Saudi Arabias Ministry of Culture and Information also did not respond.

 Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

In recent weeks several high-profile attendees pulled out of the event, including UK trade secretary Liam Fox and US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The secretary of state for international trade has decided the time is not right for him to attend the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on 23 October, a spokesperson from Dr Foxs department said last week.

The UK remains very concerned about Jamal Khashoggis disappearance. We encourage Turkish-Saudi collaboration and look forward to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia conducting a thorough, credible, transparent and prompt investigation, as announced. Those bearing responsibility for his disappearance must be held to account.The life expectancy of chocolate Labradors is significantly lower than other colours, a new study finds.

Scientists are warning that the second most popular dog breed in the UK is more vulnerable to a number of serious health problems including obesity, ear infections and joint conditions.

This, they suggest, is because the gene responsible for the chocolate coat is recessive, meaning breeders require two chocolate Labradors to produce puppies of the right colour.

The authors claim that increasing demand is causing the gene pool to narrow and increase the risk of genetic disease.

Researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia, in collaboration with the Royal Veterinary College, London, analysed data from a sample of 33,320 Labradors registered with UK vets.

It found that the average life expectancy for a non-chocolate Labrador in the UK is 12.1 years, while those with brown coats typically do not make it to 11 years.

The data also showed that nearly one in ten Labradors are overweight, particularly male dogs which have been neutered.

Professor Paul McGreevy, from the University of Sydney, which collaborated with the RVC, said: The relationships between coat colour and disease may reflect an inadvertent consequence of breeding certain pigmentations.

Breeders targeting this colour [chocolate] may therefore be more likely to breed only Labradors carrying the chocolate coat gene.

World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Show all 11 1 /11 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Zsa Zsa, an English Bulldog owned by Megan Brainard, stands onstage after being announced the winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Megan Brainard reacts after her dog Zsa Zsa, bottom, is announced the winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Zsa Zsa stands onstage after being announced the winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Rascal Deux is held by owner Dane Andrew AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Wild Thang, a Pekingese, stands onstage AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Himisaboo, Chinese Crested and Dachshund mix, walks onstage AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Zsa Zsa, an English Bulldog, walks onstage AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Meatloaf, a bulldog mix, walks onstage AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Martha, a Neopolitan Mastiff who won the 2017 World's Ugliest Dog Contest, stands onstage before this year's winner was announced AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Zsa Zsa, an English Bulldog, stands onstage with Megan Brainard, before being announced the winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest AP World's Ugliest Dog 2018 World's Ugliest Dog 2018 Josie, a Chinese Crested mix, is checked by judges Debbie Abrams, right, and Jo Ling Kent AP

It may be that the resulting reduced gene pool includes a higher proportion of genes conducive to ear and skin conditions.

The study authors revealed that the most common health conditions that affect chocolate Labradors are obesity, ear infections and joint conditions.

They also warned that the results might not be a true representation of just how severe the problem may be, as the data was taken from Labradors requiring veterinary treatment, excluding those with less pressing health issues.

Labrador retrievers are reportedly prone to many disorders but accurate information about how common certain health problems are in the general pet population is lacking, McGreevey explained.

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This is the first study to include a large number of Labrador retrievers based on records gathered from hundreds of UK vet clinics.

It provides owners with information on the issues that they should look out for in Labrador retrievers.

The new research is published in the the journal Canine Genetics and Epidemiology.The home minister is also expected to meet representatives of some civil society groups, another official said.

New Delhi: Union home minister Rajnath Singh is scheduled to visit Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday to review the overall security situation in the Valley, particularly after completion of local body elections.

During the visit, the home minister is also scheduled to meet political leaders from different political outfits.

Incidentally, two major political parties in the state  National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party  had boycotted the local elections. Terror groups operating out of Pakistan had also threatened to disrupt the poll process.

Mr Singh is also scheduled to have a series of meeting with top security officials in addition to holding deliberations with J&K governor Satya Pal Malik. One of the key issues, sources added, will be to review the security situation along the Indo-Pak border before the onset of winter season with focus on ceasefire violations by Pakistani forces and infiltration.

J&K has been under the Governors Rule ever since PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti had resigned as chief minister in June this year after BJP pulled out of the coalition government in the state.

The home minister is also expected to meet representatives of some civil society groups, another official said. Even though there has been no major terror strike in the Valley in the last few months but sporadic incidents have been reported particularly from South Kashmir and even regular ceasefire violations by Pakistans border guarding forces.A weight loss expert is being criticised online after revealing he believes fat parents are to blame for the childhood obesity epidemic.

Steve Miller appeared on This Morning to discuss the idea that children undergo a yearly weigh-in at school - as recommended by The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which stated in a new report that children should be weighed annually between the ages of two and 18.

According to Miller, he agrees with the idea that children should be weighed at school because we have got a problem".

"We are now in a situation where weve got a big child obesity epidemic, he said.

Recommended Tackling childhood obesity is about more than just diet and exercise

Miller, who has no children of his own, then explained that he thinks parents should be responsible and held accountable for the health and weight of their child - because we are normalising fat.

And actually, if youre not willing to take that on, you shouldnt have kids, he said, before suggesting childhood obesity is often because the parents are too fat.

Steve Miller argued it was parents' fault that children are obese (ITV)

Millers comments have since sparked backlash online from people angered at his suggestions - especially because he does not have children.

This blokes a clown on This Morning, who has NO KIDS and NO IDEA! one viewer tweeted.

Another person said: Tackling obesity should NOT be done through periodic weighing and shaming of children. PE needs to be a larger part of the curriculum and home economics taught properly.

Who is this outspoken fool talking about obesity this morning? Cant he give the woman a break and let her finish what shes saying? another asked.

Others took offence with Millers suggestion that weighing children would not likely trigger eating disorders such as anorexia - as well as his claim that children are not dying of the disorder.

People ARE dying of anorexia. Me nearly being one of them. Do you want a list of names of the friends I have lost? Furious, one person tweeted, while another viewer asked: Who is this bloke on This Morning arguing about how many kids have died of anorexia?

Discovery of 'fat gene' raises hopes for fighting obesity Show all 2 1 /2 Discovery of 'fat gene' raises hopes for fighting obesity Discovery of 'fat gene' raises hopes for fighting obesity 495961.bin GETTY IMAGES Discovery of 'fat gene' raises hopes for fighting obesity 495829.bin GETTY

During the segment, journalist and mother Rachel Halliwell took the opposite approach, suggesting that teachers could teach children about weight in a positive way, such as teaching them how to cook healthy meals.

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I think we need far more intelligent solutions than sticking kids on scales, she said.

In the UK, obesity affects one in five children aged 10 to 11, according to the NHS, and over a third of children left primary school overweight last year.

According to Anorexia and Bulimia Care, anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder in adolescence in the UK.Four in 10 UK companies say they will be forced to trigger further contingency plans as soon as next month if Theresa Mays Brexit team does not provide more clarity on a potential divorce deal with the EU.

Those plans include cutting jobs, adjusting supply chains outside the UK, stockpiling goods and relocating production and services overseas.

Of those with contingency plans 44 per cent say they will stockpile goods in anticipation of delays at the border after Brexit.

A survey of small and large UK companies by the Confederation of British Industry found that 80 per cent of firms believe Brexit has already had a negative effect on investment decisions.

This reluctance to invest is likely to have a knock-on effect for jobs, wages and living standards and could further damage UK productivity which already lags behind many other developed economies, the CBI warned.

The latest research further highlights the critical need for progress in the Brexit negotiations and comes as the prospect of no deal being agreed in time looms larger than ever.

The EUs chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday that a deal could still be sunk at the last minute by the Irish border issue, despite 90 per cent of terms being agreed.

Speaking after a summit in Brussels where EU leaders discussed progress in talks, Michel Barnier said he was still not sure well get a withdrawal agreement.

Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director-general, warned that the situation was now urgent and that the speed of negotiations is being outpaced by the reality firms are facing on the ground.

Almost a fifth of firms have said they have already been forced to trigger contingency plans and many more are readying themselves for a no-deal scenario.

Unless a withdrawal agreement is locked down by December, firms will press the button on their contingency plans. Jobs will be lost and supply chains moved, Ms Fairburn said.

The knock-on effect for the UK economy would be significant. Living standards would be affected and less money would be available for vital public services including schools, hospitals and housing.

Uncertainty is draining investment from the UK, with Brexit having a negative impact on 8 in 10 businesses.

From a multinational plastics manufacturer which has cancelled a 7m investment, to a fashion house shelving 50m plans for a new UK factory, these are grave losses to our economy.

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At the latest EU summit, negotiators made little in the way of concrete progress, and leaders agreed to shelve a planned November meeting where a Brexit deal was supposed to be finalised  stating that decisive progress had not been made in time.

Ninety percent of the accord on the table has been agreed with Britain, Mr Barnier told French broadcaster Inter radio.

Im convinced a deal is necessary, Im still not sure well get one."The chief executive of Philips has warned that Brexit threatens the UKs future as a manufacturing hub.

Frans van Houten said he was concerned about the lack of progress on a deal between the UK and the EU and that a no-deal Brexit would jeopardise British manufacturing.

As time passes and there is no solution I get increasingly worried that hereafter frictionless trade between the United Kingdom and European mainland could be at risk, Mr van Houten told reporters after the company reported disappointing quarterly earnings on Monday.

Basically the UK as a manufacturing hub for the world would be at risk, he added

We are looking at a customs union as a minimum [requirement], for a negotiated Brexit, he said. If that were not to happen we would need to rethink our manufacturing footprint.

Philips expects production at its main plant in Glemsford, Suffolk to fall in the event of a hard Brexit. The Dutch multinational said in July that it would cut 500 jobs at the facility if the UK does not secure a favourable trading deal.

Philips has an 82-year history on the site but said any changes to current free trade arrangements and product certification regimes is a serious threat to the competitiveness of this factory, adding: We need to do worst-case scenario planning.

The company is the latest big manufacturer, to warn that crashing out of the EU will have major negative consequences for the UK. Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, Airbus and Nissan have all said they will have to reconsider their operations if the government doesnt reach an agreement in time.

UK car production dropped 13 per cent in August, the third consecutive month of decline.

Figures compiled by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders show that a cliff-edge Brexit could mean at least 5bn in tariffs.

However, the organisation said this would be just the tip of the iceberg for the sector, as these levies could push the cost of UK-built cars sold in the EU up by an average of 2,700, affecting demand, profitability and jobs.

Last month, Honda said a no-deal scenario would cost it tens of millions of pounds, while BMW said it would move a planned shutdown of its Mini plant in Oxford forward to coincide with the beginning of Brexit in order to minimise the risk of disruption.

Meanwhile, Jaguar Land Rover has moved workers at its Castle Bromwich plant to a three-day week because of continuing headwinds impacting the car industry. The companys chief executive, Ralf Speth, warned that tens of thousands of jobs in the UK motor industry are at risk if a no-deal Brexit goes ahead.Morrisons could face a massive payout after losing a legal challenge against a ruling that opened the gate to compensation claims from thousands of staff whose personal details were leaked online.

The case centred on a security breach in 2014 when Andrew Skelton, a senior internal auditor at the supermarkets Bradford headquarters, leaked the payroll data of around 100,000 employees, including their names, addresses, bank account details and salaries.

A group of 5,518 former and current staff who were affected by the breach are seeking compensation for the upset and distress caused by the incident, and said Morrisons was responsible for breaches of privacy, confidence and data protection laws.

The company said it could not be held directly or vicariously liable for the criminal misuse of the data, however, in December last year the High Court found that Morrisons was vicariously liable for the breach.

Mr Skelton was previously found guilty of fraud at Bradford Crown Court of fraud, securing unauthorised access to computer material and disclosing personal data, and was subsequently jailed for eight years.

During the appeal hearing, Anya Proops QC, for Morrisons, told the judges that, if the High Court decision was allowed to stand, the company was exposed to "compensation claims on a potentially vast scale".

On Monday, the Court of Appeal dismissed Morrisons appeal, in a ruling that has implications for other UK companies

Nick McAleenan, a partner and data privacy law specialist at JMW Solicitors, who represents the claimants, said: "The claimants are obviously delighted with the Court of Appeal's ruling. The judges unanimously and robustly dismissed Morrisons' legal arguments.

"These shop and factory workers have held one of the UK's biggest organisations to account and won - and convincingly so. This latest judgment provides reassurance to the many millions of people in this country whose own data is held by their employer.

He added: "The judgment is a wake-up call for business. People care about what happens to their personal information.

"They expect large corporations to take responsibility when things go wrong in their own business and cause harm to innocent victims. It's important to remember that data protection is not solely about protecting information - it's about protecting people."

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A spokesman for Morrisons said: "A former employee of Morrisons used his position to steal data about our colleagues and then place it on the internet and he's been found guilty for his crimes.

"Morrisons has not been blamed by the courts for the way it protected colleagues' data but they have found that we are responsible for the actions of that former employee, even though his criminal actions were targeted at the company and our colleagues.

"Morrisons worked to get the data taken down quickly, provide protection for those colleagues and reassure them that they would not be financially disadvantaged.

"In fact, we are not aware that anybody suffered any direct financial loss. We believe we should not be held responsible so that's why we will now appeal to the Supreme Court."World-leading scientists and mathematicians from across Europe have warned against a hard Brexit if the UK is to preserve its vital research.

In a letter addressed to Theresa May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, 29 Nobel Prize winning scientists and six winners of the prestigious Fields Medal urged them to pursue the closest possible cooperation.

French biologist Jules Hoffmann, Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen and German biologist Christiane Nusslein-Volhard were among those warning that leaving the EU could establish barriers to scientific partnerships that have provided a massive boost for European research.

Many of us in the science community therefore regret the UKs decision to leave the EU because it risks such barriers, they wrote.

The call was reinforced by a survey at the UKs biggest biomedical lab, the Francis Crick Institute, which found 97 per cent of its researchers believed a hard Brexit would be bad for British science. Half also expressed a desire to leave the UK due to Brexit.

Sir Paul Nurse, the institutes director and one of the letters signees, said a hard Brexit could cripple UK science and the government needs to sit up and listen.

A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA

The overwhelming negativity of scientists towards a hard Brexit should be a wake-up call to the country and the government, he said.

We need a deal that replaces the science funding lost because of Brexit, that preserves freedom of movement for talented scientists, and that makes them feel welcome in this country.

Scientists have been vocal in their criticism of the governments approach to leaving the EU, which they say will lose them millions in research funding and throw their projects into disarray.

Royal Society president Venki Ramakrishnan, another signee, has warned that leaving without a deal would be a disaster for the scientific community.

Many scientists have expressed their support for a second Brexit referendum, a cause which saw 700,000 people gather in London on Saturday.

Sir Paul was among the top scientists to back The Independents campaign for a Final Say on the Brexit deal, alongside Nobel prize winner Sir Fraser Stoddart and astronomer royal Lord Martin Rees.

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Another Final Say supporter, Royal Society of Edinburgh president Dame Anne Glover echoed the sentiments of the letter as she called on the prime minister to secure the closest possible research relationship with the EU.

This includes providing for the UKs full participation in the European framework programmes for research and innovation, and ensuring that universities and research institutions can continue to recruit talented researchers and the staff that are needed to underpin the UKs research base from a global pool, she said.

Ms May has previously indicated she wants the UK to remain fully associated with the EU and its Horizon 2020 funding programme.

However, scientists have pointed out that under current plans Britain stands to lose around half a billion pounds of funding in the case of a no-deal outcome, and the positions of UK researchers leading European projects look precarious.

Around one in six academic staff at UK universities are EU nationals, and the legal status of them and their families may not be protected after Brexit.

Researchers warn that besides the livelihoods of those working in the sector, the decline of British science should be a concern to everyone due to knock-on effects on everything from medicine to environmental protection.

The challenges we face must be tackled in a manner that benefits everyone and those challenges are better faced together, the Nobel laureates wrote in their letter.

Only a deal which allows the closest possible cooperation between the UK and the EU, now and in the future, will make that possible.Alien life could be hiding in briny water underneath the Martian surface, according to a new study.

Scientists had long feared that the lack of plants on Mars would also mean there wouldn't be enough oxygen to support life. But the salty water underneath the surface could store up that oxygen and provide a place for life, a new study suggests.

There might be simple animals like sponges hiding beneath that surface, the scientists report.

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

On Earth, life began when algae evolved photosynthesis, so that they could turn sunlight into energy. As they did, they pushed out oxygen, changing the atmosphere and filling it with the gas that allowed living things to survive.

But that doesn't happen on the surface of Mars. There is only small bits of oxygen around, and so scientists feared that there might not be life on the surface.

But a new study, published in Nature Geoscience, used computer models to explore the briny lakes underneath the Mars surface. And it found there might be oxygen lurking in those pools.

The new study found that the amount of oxygen in that briny surface could be enough to support aerobic life, according to the authors.

That oxygen is especially concentrated at the poles of the planet, the authors write. And they could help explain how the mysterious oxidized rocks found on Nasa's surface might have formed.

The study comes after scientists announced this summer that they had found a vast lake underneath the Martian surface, in a major breakthrough for the search for alien life. That discovery helped settle the long debate about whether the planet had any water at all  and the new research will add to hopes that those pools could contain life.Police have arrested a 57-year-old man on suspicion of sexual assault after officers said two young girls were attacked on Saturday on a street in Teesside.

Cleveland Police had earlier appealed to members of the public for information about the alleged assaults.

The suspect, from Redcar in North Yorkshire, is said to have parked a white van on Imperial Avenue in Thornaby at around 1.35 pm on Saturday afternoon.

Police allege the unidentified man then approached the children, who are both aged under 10, and sexually assaulted them.

He then returned to the van and drove away, the force said.

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Earlier, Detective Inspector Jon Tapper from Cleveland Police described the attack as a "very serious incident".

"Our officers are providing a reassuring presence in the area as part of our investigation," he added

The 57-year-old man remains in police custody.A major police operation is being put in place around the Old Bailey amid fears of disorder at a hearing where Tommy Robinson could be jailed.

More than 1,000 of the far-right figureheads supporters say they will attend a demonstration outside the London court during a re-hearing over alleged contempt of court.

City of London Police are to close two surrounding roads and officers have been visiting nearby pubs, restaurants and businesses to offer them advice, The Independent understands.

Many are expected to close or stop serving alcohol in glasses during the protest, while Robinsons supporters and counter-demonstrators will be kept apart by significant numbers of police officers.

Two large Free Tommy protests saw disorder break out in London over the summer  police were attacked, and demonstrators performed Nazi salutes and blockaded a bus driven by a Muslim woman.

Robinson, who founded the English Defence League (EDL), was jailed in May for allegedly violating reporting restrictions on a set of linked trials at Leeds Crown Court.

The 35-year-olds barrister admitted contempt of court on Robinsons behalf after he broadcast a Facebook Live video outside the court, talking about the case and jihad rape gangs.

The reporting ban was lifted on Friday after three trials saw 20 men convicted of committing offences including child rape, abduction and trafficking as members of a grooming gang operating in Huddersfield.

 Detective Chief Inspector Ian Mottershaw of West Yorkshire Police speaking outside Leeds Crown Court about Huddersfield grooming gang

Lawyers for the defendants, who have so far been jailed for more than 220 years, applied for the jury in the second trial to be discharged over Robinsons video.

The attempt would have caused the trial to be reheard at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but a judge refused the application.

Robinson was handed a 13-month prison sentence but was freed in August after the Court of Appeal found that the way his case was handled was fundamentally flawed.

Recommended Why Tommy Robinson could find himself in jail again

Senior judges ordered the matter to be reheard before Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, the Recorder of London, at the Old Bailey.

Their judgment suggested that Robinson may have committed contempt both by violating reporting restrictions and with generally prejudicial remarks, including on the ethnic and religious backgrounds of the defendants.

These comments were, at least potentially, capable of amounting to a freestanding contempt of court, it continued.

The alleged contempt was serious and the sentence might be longer than that already served if a finding is again made against [Robinson].

Contempt of court laws aim to ensure fair trials in Britain by preventing juries from being swayed by information from outside the hearing, and apply to all forms of online and offline publications.

The offences are covered by a strict liability rule, meaning that intent and knowledge of committing them are not necessary for a conviction, nor is proof that a jury was prejudiced.

Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Show all 16 1 /16 Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey A Tommy Robinson supporter in London after former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson left the Old Bailey where his contempt of court case was adjourned PA Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey A Tommy Robinson supporter outside the Old Bailey in London where the former English Defence League (EDL) leader is accused of contempt of court PA Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Tommy Robinson supporters outside the Old Bailey in London before former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson arrives accused of contempt of court PA Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson demonstrate outside the Old Bailey Getty Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson demonstrate outside the Old Bailey Getty Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson protest at the Old Bailey Courthouse EPA Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of former English Defence League leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, or 'Tommy Robinson', who was jailed for contempt of court in May and later released, wait for him to arrive at the Old Bailey to attend a court hearing Reuters Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson demonstrate outside the Old Bailey Getty Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Tommy Robinson arrives for his hearing at the Old Bailey Reuters Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson demonstrate outside the Old Bailey Getty Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of far-right spokeseman Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the right-wing EDL (English Defence League) wave flags as they demonstrate outsise The Old Bailey AFP/Getty Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Supporters of far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson demonstrate outside the Old Bailey EPA Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey EPA Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey Robinson gestures to supporters from inside the Old Bailey AFP/Getty Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey AFP/Getty Tommy Robinson supporters protest outside the Old Bailey EPA

The Court of Appeal refused to quash a separate finding of contempt from Canterbury Crown Court in May 2017, saying criticism by Robinsons legal team had no substance.

In that case he was handed a three-month suspended sentence for trying to film defendants inside the court during jury deliberations, after being told to stop and warned filming was against the law.

Judge Heather Norton said at the time: This contempt hearing is not about free speechit is about justice, and it is about ensuring that a trial can be carried out justly and fairly.

Judge Geoffrey Marson QC activated the suspended sentence in May and added another 10 months for the alleged new contempt in Leeds.

He initially imposed another reporting ban on proceedings against Robinson, but it was lifted days later following a challenge by The Independent and local media.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, attended a preliminary hearing last month that saw hundreds of his supporters descend on the Old Bailey, chanting his name in the street outside the court and clashing with counter-protesters amid a heavy police presence.

Many of Robinsons supporters were holding their own signs, reading no to Sharia law, attacking the fake news media and calling for freedom of speech.

But they shouted down counter-demonstrators, labelling them scum, and a woman who with a placard listing Robinsons previous criminal offences had it ripped out her hands.

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, leaving HMP Onley near Rugby on 1 August (PA)

City of London Police said one person was arrested for breach of the peace and they are also investigating whether an offence was committed by one of Robinsons key supporters.

Ezra Levant, the activists former employer at Canadian website Rebel Media, may have broken contempt of court laws himself by breaking the filming ban inside the Old Bailey.

We were made aware of a video on social media which appeared to show filming taking place inside the Central Criminal Court, a police spokesperson said. We continue to work with the court authorities to assess this video and whether any further action needs to be taken.

While on bail, Robinson has triggered a furore over far-right sympathies in the British Army by posting footage of recruits he ran into at a motorway service station online.

At least one soldier has so far been discharged, while troops have been disciplined for inviting Robinson to their barracks following the incident.

This weekend, he attended a rally held by the German anti-Islam group Pegida and gave a speech that ended with the slogan: Wir sind das Volk.

Now is the time for things to turn, a revolution is on the cards, Robinson told the crowd in Dresden. The Muslim invaders want your country for themselvespeace with Islam is a false peace.

He attempted to found a British offshoot of the group in 2015, having left the EDL two years before.

The Luton father-of-three styles himself as a reporter, raising cash for his work by crowdfunding via his website, which has seen a dramatic increase in donations since his imprisonment.

Robinsons activism has been interrupted by jail sentences for entering the US with a false passport, and mortgage fraud, while he has also been convicted of offences including actual bodily harm, threatening behaviour and drug possession.MPs will be gvien a chance to vote on legalising abortion in Northern Ireland, after a cross party coalition of politicians launched a 10-Minute Rule bill to decriminalise women who end their own pregnancies.

Although they rarely make it into law, those behind the move hope the vote will step up pressure on the government for repeal.

The bill would remove the criminal provisions from the Offences Against the Persons Act 1861 that make abortion illegal except when there is a risk to the life of the mother or a serious risk to her physical or mental health.

In theory, anyone breaching the law could face life in jail. In practice, many women travel from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK for legal abortions.

After the Irish Republic voted earlier this year to decriminalise abortion, pressure mounted for the same to happen in the North.

But until now, the government has rejected calls for repeal, arguing that abortion is a devolved issue that Stormont must decide. However, the Northern Ireland Assembly has not sat since January 2017.

Last year the UK government announced women from Northern Ireland may have free abortions in England and Wales.

In a Supreme Court case this summer, justices found that Northern Irelands law was incompatible with the right to respect for private and family life as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.

The mental health toll on women with fatal foetal abnormality is particularly harsh MP Diana Johnson

Diana Johnson, the Labour MP behind the new vote, told The Independent that current legislation was outdated, and that from talking to doctors and women, she believed the province needed an updated law that didnt criminalise women and accepted social attitudes had moved on.

Abortion is a healthcare and human-rights issue. Women who have abortions are not criminals, and the law should not treat them as such," she said. In Northern Ireland, prosecutions are a reality and this cannot continue.

She added that it was wrong that abortion was outlawed even in cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormalities.

The mental health toll on women with fatal foetal abnormality who have to continue the pregnancy knowing it will be a stillbirth is particularly harsh," she said.

It would leave us with no law whatsoever protecting mothers and their unborn children Bernadette Smyth

Under retained powers, if Northern Ireland is in breach of international conventions, Karen Bradley, the Northern Ireland secretary, has the power to intervene, Ms Johnson said.

MPs backing the bill include Conservatives Dr Sarah Wollaston, Nicky Morgan, Anna Soubry and Crispin Blunt, Green Caroline Lucas, Lib Dem Norman Lamb, and Labours Stella Creasy.

In February, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called on the government to legalise abortion in Northern Ireland.

In polls most Northern Irish people oppose criminalising women who end their own pregnancies, the MPs said.

The 10-Minute Rule bill would allow abortion to be regulated in the same way as other medical procedures. It would not change the time limits for abortion.

The bill applies to all the UK, although in Britain later legislation superseded the 1861 Act. It also introduces a new offence of using violence or the threat of violence to cause a woman to have a miscarriage.

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Ms Johnson said it would bring Northern Ireland into line with some states in Australia, the US and much of Europe.

Ms Soubry added: Abortion is a matter for women and their doctors, not the criminal justice system. I fully support the decriminalisation of abortion.

Amnesty International, which has dubbed Northern Irelands law dangerous and degrading says police in Northern Ireland are cracking down on the use of abortion pills, further limiting womens options and forcing them into despair.

However, anti-abortion campaigners in Northern Ireland condemned the inconsiderate and undemocratic attack on unborn babies.

Bernadette Smyth, of the Precious Life group, said: Its undemocratic for Westminster MPs to be debating what happens in Northern Ireland.

Petitions with more than 15,000 signatures showed there was no will to scrap the ban, she said. It would leave us with no law whatsoever protecting mothers and their unborn children.

Most women with unplanned pregnancies who received counselling and support did not have an abortion, she said.

She pointed out that in 2016, the Northern Ireland Assembly voted against any change in the law.A Bosnian student was granted a visa by the Home Office, within hours of a report by The Independent about its decision to block her from entering the UK for a conference.

Nadza Dzinalija was originally told she could not attend an event organised by Glasgow Universitys psychology department because immigration officials were not satisfied she would leave at the end of her stay.

Lawyers and academics described the refusal as unlawful and nonsensical and claimed it undermined Britains status as a driver of academic research.

Within hours of The Independent reporting on her case, the 21-year-old who is studying for a psychology masters at the University of Amsterdam, was informed that her visa had been approved.

Officials did not give any explanation for the U-turn. The Home Office have been contacted for comment.

I am just very relieved, Ms Dzinalija told The Independent. They called me on the phone for some additional information and a few hours later they called to say that I would get the visa. I have dropped my passport off and they said I will be able to pick it up later.

She had feared the original refusal could have made it difficult to get a UK visa in the future, she said.

She added that she was now really excited she can go to the conference with her fellow students.

 Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

I am sure it was because of the media attention, she said.

Immigration barrister Jan Doerfel, who took up the case on pro bono basis, said it was another example of the fight for decent Home Office decision making.

Mr Doerfel told The Independent: Were obviously delighted that the Home Office has reversed this erroneous decision in time so that Nadza can still attend the conference. The fact is, however, that it is the underlying refusal culture that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency and the systematic issuing of unlawful decisions that presents an extension of the hostile environment in decision-making and seeks to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands.

Nadza received a fast remedy because her case was highlighted in The Independent and because she could benefit from pro bono representation."

He added: Very many applicants are not so lucky and are unlawfully denied visitors visas for a whole range of important events such as attend a siblings wedding, their childs graduation in the UK or to visit sick or disabled relatives here  refusals which are not rectified in time and often mean chances missed forever as a result of decision-makers failure to properly apply the Immigration Rules.

He later tweeted: The role of the media is so essential in such cases and often the only way to cause change together with lawyers support."

After Ms Dzinalija's application was initially refused, a Home Office spokesperson said officials were reviewing the case.

They added: All visa applications are considered in line with the immigration rules and on the basis of the evidence provided."

The Home Office has since confirmed the visa has now been issued.Officials said after the gunfight ended, which killed 3 terrorists, civilians rushed to the encounter site where an explosive went off.

Three terrorists were killed in the ensuing encounter with security forces in Kulgam district of Jammu and Kashmir. (Representational Image)

Srinagar: Nine people including six civilians and three militants were killed and several others injured in an encounter with security forces, subsequent clashes and an explosion in Jammu and Kashmirs southern Kulgam district on Sunday.

The officials said that the security forces shot dead three Jaish-e-Muha-mmad (JeM) militants in an encounter in Kulgams Laroo village earlier on Sunday. Protests by locals broke out during the encounter and these only intensified after the word about the killing of militants spread. The security forces fired live ammunition to quell protesters and stone pelting mobs at and around the encounter site, leaving scores injured, the witnesses and hospital sources said.

While the protests were underway an improvised explosive device went off at the encounter site, killing, at least, one person on the spot. Two of the several persons injured in the impact of the blast were declared brought dead at a nearby hospital.

Later during the day, 3 more persons critically injured during the clashes also died in the hospital, raising the toll to nine including seven civilians and three militants. There were reports, unconfirmed by the police that there was another death in the hospital.

The police said that the civilian casualties occur-red in the explosion. A statement issued by it here said, In Kulgam encounter while three militants of JeM outfit were killed, in the aftermath of the encounter when a large congregation entered the encoun-ter site before it was cleared led to an explosion in which six people died.

It added, Moreover, after the conclusion of encounter as the forces moved out, the locals from the area started assembling at the site of encounter and had apparently fiddled with some stray explosive materials leading to an explosion. It said that five more civilian were injured in the blast.

The police reiterated, Citizens are requested not to visit any encounter site until the site is sanitised by the bomb disposal team. We seek cooperation of people in this regard for avoiding accidents of such nature.

But the locals said that, at least, three persons died in security forces actions against irate protesters.

The slain militants have been identified by the police as Zubair Ahmed Lone, Shahid Ahmed Tantray and Yazil Ahmed Makroo, residents of Kulgam, Shopian and Anantnag districts, respectively. The officials said that the trio belonged to JeM and was involved in a series of terror acts mainly in south Kashmir.

The police said that the security forces had launched a cordon-and-search operation in Laroo village outside Kulgam town after receiving information about the presence of militants in a private house. It added that as the cordon was tightened, the militants holed up in the house opened fire at the security forces, triggering a gunfight in which two soldiers were wounded.

While the encounter was on, irate crowds took to the streets chanting pro-freedom slogans. A group of youth also tried to go near the encounter site and allegedly made attempts to disrupt the operation, the police sources said. The Internet services and rail services through the area were immediately suspended as a precautionary measure, the officials said.

The civilians slain in explosion and security forces firing are Ubaid Laway, Uzair Ahmad, Mansoor Ahmad, Talib Maqbool, Tajamul Ahmad, Irshad Ahmad.

The witnesses said that the security forces fired live ammunition including pellets and also teargas canisters to quell the protests at and around the encounter site. The officials at Kulgams district hospital said that 32 people were injured in the blast and the due to the use of force by the security forces were brought there. Out of these four seriously injured were referred to Srinagar for specialised treatment.

Another eleven injured persons were admitted to the district hospital at neighbouring Anantnag, medical superintendent Dr. Abdul Majeed Mehrab said. He added that three of them who had sustained bullet injuries were shifted to a Srinagar hospital.

Dr. Saleem Tak, the medical superintendent of Srinagars government-run Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, said that two of the injured succumbed soon after they were brought there from Kulgam. Earlier Kulgams chief medical officer Dr Fazil Kochak said that three civilians injured in the Kulgam incidents were declared dead on arrival at the district hospital. A sixth person died in Srinagars Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), the officials said.

Advisor to Jammu and Kashmir governor K. Vijay Kumar and J&Ks DGP Dilbag Singh regretted the loss of civilian lives in Kulgam district. They have expressed profound condolences to the bereaved families. Such sites should be avoided by civilians till they are properly sanitised, said an official statement.

Meanwhile, militants targeted an Army convoy while passing through the highway town of Awantipore in neighbouring Pulwama district on Sunday afternoon. However, no casualties or damage was reported in the incident, the police said.Theresa May has sidestepped a Brexit rebellion from Eurosceptic Tories threatening to seize control of a key part of her negotiating strategy.

The prime minister said she would make the UKs proposals for the Irish border after Brexit legally binding, claiming this would negate the need for the EUs alternative, which is hated by Eurosceptic rebels.

She also argued there had been a substantial shift in the EUs willingness to engage with her ideas on the problem of the Irish border.

In a sign that her words had won at least a temporary reprieve, rebels withdrew a plan to forcefully cut off some of her negotiating options in a Commons vote later this week.

But rumours still circulated that senior figures in her party, including ex-cabinet minister David Davis, are manoeuvring ahead of a potential leadership challenge.

The prime minister was addressing MPs following the European Council last week, telling them a considerable sticking point remained over how to keep the Irish border open if, after the Brexit transition period ends in December 2020, no plan for future relations between the UK and EU are agreed.

She set out steps to break the impasse, the first of which would be to enshrine in law her UK backstop plan for that scenario which would keep the whole UK in a temporary customs union with the EU.

Ms May argued this would mean the EUs alternative backstop  keeping Northern Ireland alone under Brussels customs union, with a customs border put down the Irish Sea  would no longer be needed.

 Dominic Raab says a Brexit deal needs to be done by the end of November

The prime minister also repeated comments indicating the UK would consider temporarily extending the transition period to provide more time to negotiate.

The Independent understands that the government would seek to extend the transition if only a few months was needed to secure the final deal on future relations after December 2020, but would opt to move to the UK backstop plan if a longer period was needed  officials underlined that under the PMs proposals both paths would be time limited to ensure the UK did not remain tied to EU customs rules indefinitely.

Ms May said: Let us remember that all of these steps are about insurance policies that no one in the UK or the EU wants or expects to use.

So we cannot let this become the barrier to reaching the future partnership we all want to see.

We have to explore every possible option to break the impasse and that is what I am doing.

 Aerial footage of protesters marching in London to demand a Final Say on Brexit

Ms Mays move to enshrine the UK backstop plan in law appeared to placate ex-Brexit minister Steve Baker who had planned to force a vote on a rebel motion on Wednesday that would have effectively made the EUs backstop plan illegal.

If passed it could have restricted Ms Mays room for manoeuvre in Brussels, but Mr Baker backed down on Monday afternoon.

Other Brexiteers did raise questions about her suggestion of elongating the transition period, with former cabinet minister John Redwood warning it could cost the UK up to 20bn extra on top of the 39bn EU divorce bill.

Ms May will meet the cabinet amid the high tension and give them an update on negotiations on Tuesday, with at least three of her top ministers said to have been considering quitting over her approach.

The prime minister also looked set to avert a potentially bruising meeting with the powerful backbench 1922 Committee, with Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis going to represent the leadership instead.

One Brexiteer had suggested that if she went to the meeting she should bring her own noose while an ally of former cabinet minister Mr Davis had suggested ahead of the meeting that she was now in the killing zone.

The unsavoury language was condemned in the house by many MPs, including Ms Mays critics, giving her another small victory over her opponents.

Mr Davis was however still said to be in the process of laying the ground for a potential leadership challenge, if Ms Mays unstable administration begins to crumble.Theresa May is to say 95 per cent of the Brexit deal is settled as she seeks to quell mounting frustration at her handling of EU divorce negotiations.

In a Commons statement on Monday following talks with European leaders in Brussels, the prime minister will insist the shape of the deal across the vast majority of the withdrawal agreement is now clear.

But she will also reiterate her refusal to compromise over the Irish border, one of the key issues yet to be resolved with just over five months until Britain leaves the EU.

Ms Mays statement to parliament comes as she faces growing anger among Eurosceptic rebels in her own party as well as calls for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal.

In an attempt to highlight important progress since a fractious EU summit in Salzburg last month, the prime minister will tell MPs that agreements have been reached on security, transport and services.

She is expected to confirm that protocols have been developed on how Brexit will impact Gibraltar and the UKs military base in Cyprus.

Taking all of this together, 95 per cent of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled, Ms May will tell the Commons.

And all of this from the last three weeks alone, is in addition to the agreements we had already reached.

A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA

The commitment to avoiding a hard border is one that this House emphatically endorsed and enshrined in law in the Withdrawal Act earlier this year.

"As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.

I do not believe that any UK prime minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not.

Furious backbenchers warned the prime minister she is drinking in the last chance saloon at the weekend after tensions flared over her negotiating strategy after a Brussels summit.

Senior Brexiteer Theresa Villiers criticised disturbing anonymous briefings to Sunday newspapers, including claims the PM was entering the killing zone.

But Brexit minister Suella Braverman said her colleagues were free to express themselves in any way they wished and repeatedly refused to say she would back Ms May in a confidence vote.

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Brexit secretary Dominic Raab said the exit agreement must be finalised by the end of next month to allow new laws to be put in place in time for exit day.

He suggested a transition extension could run for three months, but said the move would have to solve the Irish backstop issue.

Labour has warned Ms May that it will not back her Brexit blueprint when it reaches the Commons.

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said there was a real lack of confidence Ms May could bring back anything by way of a good deal.

An estimated 670,000 people marched in London on Saturday to demand a second Brexit referendum.

Conservative MP Anna Soubry said many of her Tory colleagues were privately supportive of a fresh vote amid bitter divisions in the party.Northern Ireland remains the only country in the United Kingdom where abortion is still illegal.

But there have been growing calls for a change in the law, particularly after a referendum in the Republic of Ireland which overturned its ban on abortion in May.

However, abortion continues to be strongly opposed by the Democratic Unionist Party, which currently has a confidence and supply arrangement with Theresa May's Conservative Party.

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In exchange for a 1bn financial package, the DUP's 10 Westminster MPs will give her a working parliamentary majority and support on certain issues.

However, it puts the prime minister in a difficult position when it comes to supporting a change in Northern Irish law.

What is the law on abortion in Northern Ireland?

It is currently illegal to have an abortion in the country, under laws dating back to the Offences against the Person Act 1861. The maximum sentence is life.

Abortion is only permitted when there is a risk to the life of the mother, or a serious risk to her physical or mental health. In such an instance, women can have the termination in an NHS or private clinic in Northern Ireland.

However, the majority of women seeking an abortion travel to England, Scotland or Wales. Last year, the government introduced a travel grant for low income women making this journey.

In 2015, the High Court in Belfast ruled that Northern Irelands law on abortion was not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights - specifically as it lacks provision for cases of fatal foetal abnormality, or where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

Why is this different to the rest of the UK?

The Abortion Act of 1967 legalised abortion on certain grounds in Great Britain, but this did not extend to Northern Ireland.

Health was one of the devolved powers transferred to the Northern Ireland Assembly which was created in 1998. Therefore any change to abortion laws must be made there.

However, political support has long been lacking from both sides of the political divide.

The DUP are fundamentally opposed to abortion, while Sinn Fein have been moving slowly towards supporting reform, while remaining careful not to alienate their Catholic support base. The party successfully supported lifting the abortion ban in the referendum in the Republic of Ireland.

Regardless, the Northern Ireland Assembly is currently not sitting, after power-sharing collapsed in January 2017. Until another Executive is formed, abortion reform is one of many important issues which cannot be resolved.

Can the law be changed at Westminster in the absence of the Northern Ireland Assembly?

Since the Northern Ireland Assembly has not been sitting for almost two years, there now exists a grey area over what powers Westminster has to legislate on the regions issues.

While the UK government could impose direct rule on Northern Ireland, they have thus far refused to do so, as it would be seen to destabilise the peace process as set out in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Instead, Northern Ireland has been strung along on emergency budgeting and the decision making of civil servants.

Some politicians in Westminster have called for the House of Commons to take action on abortion, and on same sex marriage, in the absence of power-sharing in Northern Ireland. This is something which is opposed by the DUP.

Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Show all 8 1 /8 Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Campaigners intervene after police try to lead away one of the three women (centre with sunglasses) who publicly took an abortion pill during a demonstration outside Belfast's Crown and High Courts, where counter-demonstrations were held by both sides of the Northern Irish abortion argument. PA Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Police officers watch on from close by as abortion rights campaign group ROSA, Reproductive Rights Against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity hold a protest in Belfast Getty Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Eleanor Crossey Malone takes an abortion pill as abortion rights campaign group ROSA, Reproductive Rights Against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity distribute abortion pills Getty Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Ruth Coppinger TD addresses the crowds outside Belfast's Crown and High Courts where counter-demonstrations were held by both sides of the Northen Irish abortion argument. PA Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Eleanor Crossey Malone displays an abortion pill packet after taking a pill Getty Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills Protestors dressed as hand maidens stand as abortion rights campaign group ROSA, Reproductive Rights Against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity distribute abortion pills from a touring bus Getty Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills An unidentified woman takes an abortion pill as abortion rights campaign group ROSA, Reproductive Rights Against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity distribute abortion pills from a touring bus Getty Images Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills A robot drone delivers abortion pills as abortion rights campaign group ROSA, Reproductive Rights Against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity distribute abortion pills Getty

After the Republic of Ireland voted to lift the ban on abortion in May, Theresa May refused to give MPs in Westminster a free vote on legalising abortion in Northern Ireland, amid pressure from her partners in the DUP.

This week, Labour MPs intend to put more pressure on the government by introducing a series of Commons votes aimed at ending the abortion ban in Northern Ireland.

What is public opinion on abortion in Northern Ireland?

A YouGov poll carried out in October 2018 found that 75 per cent of people in Northern Ireland want the abortion law to change, with 65 per cent agreeing that abortion should not be a crime.

In the absence of the Northern Ireland Assembly, 66 per cent of people thought that Westminster should legislate to reform the law.

This was the first poll carried out on abortion in Northern Ireland after a referendum in the Republic of Ireland voted to lift the constitutional ban on abortion in May. It is believed that the public conversation around the referendum, and the momentum which built around the cause have contributed to a growing desire for change north of the border too.A ban on use of plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds could be in place by the end of next year, as part of government plans to curb the escalating problem of plastic clogging up Britain's waterways.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has vowed to "turn the tide on plastic pollution" by stamping out the use of 4.7 billion plastic straws, 316 million plastic stirrers and 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds in England each year, many of which end up in rivers and seas.

The ban was trailed earlier this year, but it drew criticism from some disability rights campaigners, as straws are vital to help people with conditions such as Parkinson's disease or muscular dystrophy to consume food and drink safely.

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The government will now consult on allowing straws to be sold in pharmacies and letting restaurants and pubs stock straws for customers who ask for them. The distribution and sale would become illegal at some point between October next year and October 2020.

It comes after a flurry of announcements of a ban on microbeads, petrol and diesel cars being outlawed by 2040 and a bottle deposit scheme, as Mr Gove seeks to burnish his party's green credentials.

He said: Our precious oceans and the wildlife within need urgent protection from the devastation throw-away plastic items can cause.

In England we are taking world-leading action with our ban on microbeads, and thanks to the publics support have taken over 15 billion plastic bags out of circulation with our 5p charge.

I commend retailers, bars and restaurants that have already committed to removing plastic straws and stirrers. But we recognise we need to do more.

"Today we step up our efforts to turn the tide on plastic pollution and ensure we leave our environment in a better state than we inherited it.

Fast food giants McDonalds and Starbucks have already announced their intention to ban plastic straws from their outlets, in an attempt to reduce the escalating amounts of plastic ending up in landfill and in the oceans.

Sam Chetan Welsh, political adviser for Greenpeace, said: Our societys addiction to throwaway plastic is fuelling a global environmental crisis that must be tackled.

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Ministers are doing the sensible thing by looking to ban single-use plastic items that can be easily replaced with better alternatives or that we can simply do without. But this should be just the start.

If we are to protect our oceans from the scourge of plastic, the flow of waste needs to be cut off at the tap. And that means the companies producing and selling all this packaging must take responsibility for it and cut down the amount of plastic ending up in our shopping baskets.

The Independent is calling on the government to bring in a "latte levy" by slapping a 25p tax on coffee cups, which are very difficult to recycle.

The Treasury has signalled that ministers are considering a possible tax amid widespread public support for the plan.Theresa May has told MPs they must "hold their nerve" as she attempted to quell a growing rebellion on her own backbenches.

The prime minister insisted a Brexit deal is 95 per cent complete as she delivered a Commons update on the state of negotiations.

She faced a number of probing questions from Tory Eurosceptics over suggestions the transition period could be extended, while MPs on both sides of the Commons demanded the public be given a final say on whatever Brexit deal Ms May brings back from Brussels.

The prime minister told MPs: "The Brexit talks are not about my interests. They are about the national interest  and the interests of the whole of our United Kingdom.

"Serving our national interest will demand that we hold our nerve through these last stages of the negotiations, the hardest part of all."

The statement came amid intense speculation over the prime minister's future, with reports suggesting a leadership challenge could be imminent.

Attempting to ward off the threat, Ms May told MPs that "important progress" had been made since last month's fractious EU summit in Salzburg, including on issues including security, transport and services.

But she admitted that disagreements over a customs backstop were proving to be a "significant" obstacle.

A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA

The prime minister repeated her insistence that the UK would not accept a backstop that would see Northern Ireland, but not the rest of the UK, stay in the customs union.

Earlier in the day, Downing Street saw off one potential rebellion when Steve Baker, a leading Brexiteer, agreed to withdraw amendments he had tabled to the Northern Ireland Bill, which is set to be voted on on Wednesday.

The amendments, which were backed by the DUP and dozens of Tory MPs, would have made it illegal for Northern Ireland to have different customs arrangements to the rest of the UK - thus binding Ms May's hands in negotiations with the EU.

Brussels is insisting that this option must be part of the Brexit deal, in case proposals for a UK-wide backstop cannot be agreed in time.

Follow updates as they happened...Five of the most valuable exhibits at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC have been found to be fake.

The artefacts, thought to be part of the historic Dead Sea Scrolls, will no longer be displayed.

Academics tested the fragments and found that the show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin and therefore will no longer be displayed at the museum, the institution said.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest copies of Bible text ever found, and include passages of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, that range from 1,800 to more than 2,000 years old.

Though we had hoped the testing would render different results, this is an opportunity to educate the public on the importance of verifying the authenticity of rare biblical artefacts, the elaborate testing process undertaken and our commitment to transparency, said Jeffrey Kloha, the chief curatorial officer for Museum of the Bible, said in a statement.

As an educational institution entrusted with cultural heritage, the museum upholds and adheres to all museum and ethical guidelines on collection care, research and display, Mr Kloha 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

While the cost of the scrolls has not been revealed, the museum is thought to have spent millions of dollars on them. The institution faced questions over the authenticity of the fragments even before the site opened in November 2017.

In April 2017, it sent five fragments to the Bundesanstalt fur Materialforschung und-prufung (BAM) a German institute for analysing materials, who tested the ink and the papyrus. The Museum of the Bible said that the recently-received report further raises suspicions about the authenticity of all five fragments.

The museum said that supported two other research projects on its DSS fragments. Two years ago, Brill, a leading international academic publisher, released the first in a series of planned volumes sponsored by Museum of the Bible. Edited by Emanuel Tov, Kipp Davis and Robert Duke. Mr Davis and some of the contributors raised questions about the authenticity of some of the fragments.

My research has focused primarily on two aspects of Museum of the Bibles fragments: scribal quality and technique in the penning of the texts as well as the physical composition and current state of the manuscript media, said Mr Davis. My studies to date have managed to confirm upon a preponderance of different streams of evidence the high probability that at least seven fragments in the museums Dead Sea Scrolls collection are modern forgeries, but conclusions on the status of the remaining fragments are still forthcoming.

 Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent eventsA lioness has killed the father of her three cubs in their enclosure at a zoo in Indianapolis.

Zoo personnel do not know what caused Zuri, a 12-year-old female, to attack Nyack, a 10-year-old male, Reuters reported. The animals had lived in the same enclosure together for eight years with no history of significant conflict, according to detailed zoo logs.

Staff heard loud roaring on Monday morning before the zoo opened. They went to investigate and found the lions fighting. Staff tried to separate the big cats, but were unable to do it before Nyack died. A necropsy - animal autopsy - showed that he had died of suffocation due to neck injuries.

The zoo announced on Facebook that Nyack had died, and that Zuri and the cubs were safe. There are currently no plans to change the living arrangements of lions at the zoo. Commenters wrote that Nyack had been a beloved staple of the Indianapolis zoo.

The most controversial animal killings Show all 6 1 /6 The most controversial animal killings The most controversial animal killings Cincinnati Zoo worker shots and kills Harambe, the 17-year-old gorilla Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla was shot and killed by a Cincinnati Zoo worker after a three-year-old boy climbed into a gorilla enclosure and was grabbed and dragged by Harambe. The incident was recorded on video and received broad international coverage and commentary, including controversy over the choice to kill Harambe. A number of primatologists and conservationists wrote later that the zoo had no other choice under the circumstances, and that it highlighted the danger of zoo animals in close proximity to humans and the need for better standards of care Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden The most controversial animal killings Walt Palmer (left), from Minnesota, who killed Cecil, the Zimbabwean lion (pictured here with another lion shot in Africa) Walter James Palmer has been named by Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force as the shooter of Cecil, a 13-year-old prized lion. He is now wanted by Zimbabwe officials on poaching charges. The lion was protected and the subject of a decade long study by the Wildlife Unit of Oxford University in the UK. He was outfitted with a GPS collar and was killed in Hwange National Park. The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority and the Safari Operators Association said that two men were charged with poaching in connection to Mr Palmer The most controversial animal killings Kendall Jones hunting images Kendall Jones, a 19-year-old Texas Tech university student, has provoked worldwide fury after posting pictures of herself smiling next to animals she hunted, including a lion, rhinoceros, antelope, leopard, elephant, zebra and hippopotamus The most controversial animal killings Rebecca Francis hunting images Rebecca Francis, a huntress who has killed dozens of wild animals has been sent death wishes by furious social media users after a picture showing her lying down next to a dead giraffe was circulated. Rebecca Francis has a website and Facebook page dedicated to the animals she has killed in hunts across Africa and America. Francis, a prolific hunter who has also co-hosted the television show Eye of the Hunter, regularly posts pictures of herself posing next to dead bears, giraffes, buffaloes and zebras, among other animals. She uses a bow and arrow to kill her prey The most controversial animal killings The slaughter of Marius, an 18-month-old healthy giraffe in Copenhagen Zoo Copenhagen Zoo made the controversial decision to euthanise a healthy giraffe named Marius, which was later dissected and fed to lions as visitors watched. The slaughter sparked a furious backlash from social media users and zoo staff have received death threats by phone and email. Soon after the incident, Copenhagen Zoo faced an international outcry once again after four healthy lions were put down The most controversial animal killings Swiss Dahlholzli zoo kills healthy brown bear cub A Switzerland zoo faced heavy criticism from animal rights groups, after keepers put down a healthy brown bear cub to spare it from being bullied by its dominant male father. The 360 kg male bear Misha had already killed one of his 11-week old cubs in public and was bullying the second, staff at the zoo said, because he was jealous of the attention the cubs were receiving from their mother, Masha. Both adult brown bears had been donated to Berns Dahlholzli zoo in 2009. Campaigners condemned staff there for not separating the cubs, who are being referred to as Baby Bear Two and Baby Bear Three, and their mother from Misha after their birth in January Facebook

Zuri and Nyak had a usually amiable, but somewhat uncommon relationship. Typically, males are larger, more aggressive and more dominant than females. Nyack was only 25 pounds heavier than Zuri, and Zuri had an imposing personality.

The zoo contacted lion biologist Craig Packer to help them understand what had happened and if this type of incident could have been prevented. However, even the lion expert was surprised by the attack, Washington Post reported. Female lions sometimes attack males, but it is rare for those attacks to be fatal. Usually, the intention is to drive away aggressive or unfamiliar males.

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Mr Packer suggested that the incident may have occurred because Zuri was so much more dominant than Nyack, or perhaps because she was having a bad day, the Post reported. The zoo plans to conduct a thorough review to understand what happened, according to their Twitter page.Two-thirds of Americans are lit for legalising marijuana, according to a new survey.

For three consecutive years, pollsters Gallup recorded public support for legal pot. The most recent figure marks an all-time high in the last 50 years of polling American attitudes towards the drug.

The poll found that 66 per cent of Americans surveyed supported legalising marijuana. This is up two per cent from last year. In contrast, only 12 per cent of Americans supported legal pot in 1969.

Both Democrats and Republicans express similar opinions on pot legalisation with 75 per cent and 53 per cent favouring it, respectively. Seventy-one per cent of independents support legalising the drug.

The largest increase seen is among Americans 55 and older with 59 per cent supporting legal weed. In 2017, 50 per cent supported the legalisation.

Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry Show all 8 1 /8 Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591453.jpg Sam Adams Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591446.jpg Sam Adams Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591448.jpg Sam Adams Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591452.jpg Sam Adams Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591449.jpg Sam Adams Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591450.jpg Sam Adams Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591451.jpg Sam Adams Mile high city: Inside Denver's billion-dollar marijuana industry 5591454.jpg Sam Adams

The poll results are close to Quinnipiac Universitys April 2018 poll that found 63 per cent of Americans support the legalisation of marijuana, The Hill reported.

The poll results come about one week after Canada became the second country to officially legalise the sale and use of recreational weed. In the United States, however, marijuana is still outlawed on the federal level.

Although Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged to crack down on marijuana use, more and more states have legalised weed for both recreational and medicinal purposes. As of October 2018, only nine states and the District of Columbia have legalised recreational marijuana usage. These states are Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts. On Wednesday, Oklahoma became the 30th state to legalise medical marijuana use.

Earlier this year, Mr Sessions effectively rescinded a policy from the Obama administration that allowed flexibility for states to legalise recreational marijuana. The policy, known as the Cole memo, ordered US attorneys to deprioritise weed-related cases from prosecution.

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The White House, however, holds a different stance from Mr Sessions and his Justice Department. President Donald Trump said that he would be in favour of congressional efforts to end the federal ban on marijuana.

I really do. I support Senator [Cory] Gardner, Mr Trump said in response to a question about whether he would support a bipartisan bill sponsored by the Republican senator that would leave marijuana legalisation up to the states.Donald Trump has vowed to cut financial aid to a number of Central American countries while also declaring a national emergency in light of the caravan of migrants making its way to the US border.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border, he wrote after Mexican riot police failed to contain thousands of people from crossing into the country.

The caravan, mostly Hondurans, crowded into the Mexican border city of Tapachula over the weekend after trekking on foot from the Guatemalan border. Organisers claim there are now more than 7,000 people in it, which will take about a week to reach the US border.

Recommended Migrant caravan traveling through Guatemala arrives at Mexico border

President Trump has repeatedly called for immigration law reform in light of the influx of undocumented immigrants fleeing rampant gang violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. He has made the issue  and his hardline stance  central to the upcoming midterm elections in Congress.

I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic]. Must change laws! Mr Trump said. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.

Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in, the president wrote. He has repeatedly called the thousands on the Mexico border criminals.

He has been speaking about the issue of immigration at dozens of political rallies across the country ahead of the 6 November midterm elections. He is due to hold another Make America Great Again rally in Texas on Monday night.

Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!, Mr Trump said, as a reminder his supporter base.

 Melania Trump: I really dont care jacket was message for media, not separated migrant children

The sentiments are echoed in his now infamous campaign rally line: Democrats create mobs, we create jobs.

The president also restated his threat to cut off foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, much of which is aimed at violence prevention and poverty reduction.

According to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2016, the US gave Honduras nearly $128m, Guatemala $297m, and El Salvador $75m in aid across all federal agencies mostly aimed towards counter-narcotics activities, military training, agricultural subsidies, and violence prevention.

By next year, those sums were projected to fall to $69.4m for Guatemala, $65.8m for Honduras, and $45.7m in the case of El Salvador.

Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Show all 14 1 /14 Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Immigrant children, many of whom are separated form their parents, are housed in Texas' tent city Reuters Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the US-Mexico border Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Undocumented migrants ride on the top of a freight train referred to as the beast, or La Bestia Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border A cage inside a US Customs and Border Protection detention facility in Texas Reuters Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US Border Patrol Academy All new agents must complete a months-long training course at the New Mexico facility before assuming their posts at Border Patrol stations, mostly along the US-Mexico border Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US-Mexico border fence A group of young men walk along the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border fence in a remote area of the Sonoran Desert Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US-Mexico border fence in the US Man looks through US-Mexico border fence into the US in Tijuana, Mexico Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US-Mexico border fence US Border Patrol agent Sal De Leon stands near a section of the US-Mexico border fence while stopping on patrol on in La Joya, Texas Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US Border Patrol Academy US Border Patrol instructor yells at trainees after their initial arrival to the academy Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Memorial service in Guatemala Families attend a memorial service for two boys who were kidnapped and killed in San Juan Sacatepequez, Guatemala. Crime drives emigration from Guatemala to the United States, as families seek refuge from the danger Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Arrests on the border Undocumented immigrants comfort each other after being caught by Border Patrol agents near the US-Mexico border Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Detention holding facility A boy from Honduras watches a movie at a detention facility run by the US Border Patrol Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Mexican farm workers Mexican migrant workers harvest organic parsley at Grant Family Farms in Wellington, Colorado Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Mexican family in Arizona A Mexican immigrant family sits in the living room of their rented home in Tuscon, Arizona. The family that Arizona's new tough immigrant law had created a climate of fear in the immigrant community. Getty

Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said that while National Guard troops are currently supporting the Department of Homeland Security on the border, the Pentagon had not been asked to provide additional support. There are currently 2,100 National Guard troops along the border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, according to the Pentagon.

Mexican officials also issued their own warning to the caravan, stating only those who met the countrys standards for refugee status would be allowed to enter at its southern border but to no avail.

Several people rushed a bridge gate at the border between Guatemala and Mexico or crossed the Suchiate River to enter. As crowds persisted, Mexican police did allow women and children to enter and seek refuge.

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A similar caravan of approximately 1,500 people made its approach in April, just weeks before the Trump administration began its family separation policy and putting National Guard troops along the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border.

The separation policy stemmed from a zero-tolerance approach to illegal immigration where all adults face prosecution, even if it means removing them from infants travelling with them.

Several of those who had crossed without documentation were seeking asylum, which requires physical entry into the US before an application for the protected status can be considered per American immigration laws.

The Trump administration continues carrying out its bid to build a large border wall, the funding for which is still up for debate in Congress.A diplomatic vehicle belonging to the Saudi consulate has been discovered abandoned on the outskirts of Istanbul, days after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Security sources told Turkey's state TV the vehicle was found in the Sultangazi district, some way outside the city centre.

Turkish crime scene investigators have arrived at the underground car park in which the vehicle was reportedly dumped days after Mr Khashoggi's murder at the hands of a 15-man Saudi squad of intelligence and security officials, according to local media. Officials also released to state television a photo of an unidentified man entering and leaving the vehicle, a black 2011 E-Series Mercedes-Benz sedan, "days" after the killing, state TV reported.

Still from Turkey's state-owned TRT shows mysterious man parking and leaving a Saudi consular vehicle in underground garage park on Istanbul's outskirts. (TRT)

Saudi officials have insisted the killing was the result of a botched attempt to convince Mr Khashoggi to return to Saudi that resulted in a panicked attempt to cover up the slaying from both Turkish authorities and Saudi leaders. But the vehicle hints at a far wider and complex coverup scheme encompassing a larger swath of Istanbul's geography, a longer time frame that stretched well past Mr Khashoggi's 2 October death, and more personnel than the 15-man Saudi team that has been exposed by Turkish media.

"Turkish officials are 100 per cent sure that this wasnt a botched operation or rogue operation," Ragip Soylu, Washington correspondent for the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper, told The Independent. "The fact that this team arrived in a sophisticated way on the day of murder tells us that it was premeditated. Obviously Saudis were tying to cover their tracks by using many cars. Even on the day of arrival to consulate, they used seven different cars. At an operational level, they were trying to do job by the book, but botched the details."

Turkey has accelerated leaks from the investigation into Khashoggi's killing ahead of much-anticipated speech tomorrow during which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to disclose fresh details. Police reportedly requested permission to search the car from the chief public prosecutor's office and the consulate general of Saudi Arabia. It is not clear if their request has been granted.

Investigators looking into the disappearance of Khashoggi last week searched other consulate vehicles, along with the consulate building and the consul general's residence.

Saudi Arabia said on Saturday Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight" inside the consulate. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked by a 15-man Saudi team that cut off his fingers and decapitated him.

Car with diplomatic plates allegedly belonging to Saudi Consulate seen in an Istanbul car park (REUTERS)

His remains have yet to be found.

The disclosure of the abandoned car comes on the same day as reports of a man appearing to wear Khashoggi's clothes can be seen on surveillance video leaving the Saudi consulate after the journalist's death.

CNN aired surveillance footage showing a man in Mr Khashoggi's dress shirt, suit jacket and trousers.

At 57 years old, the alleged decoy, Mustafa Muhammed al-Madany, was the oldest member by a dozen years of the team apparently dispatched to Turkey from Riyadh to confront the 59-year-old journalist.

 Trump says he is not satisfied with Saudi account of journalist Jamal Khasoggi's death

Mr al-Madany is seen in the footage walking out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then taking a taxi to Istanbul's famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public toilet, changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Mr Khashoggi's clothes.

In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said that he had left the consulate.

Citing unnamed government sources, the newspaper Yeni Safak reported on Monday that the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman had got on the phone with Mr Khashoggi during a consular visit to obtain personal papers and personally attempted to convince him to return to the kingdom.

The claim could not be verified but other sources have told The Independent that at least some parts of Mr Khashoggis encounter in the consulate may have been live streamed to Riyadh.

Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Show all 12 1 /12 Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul According to local media reports, Saudi consul Mohammad al-Otaibi left Turkey on 16 October. A Turkish prosecutor on 15 October has entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to investigate the disappearance of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an inspection that was being carried out jointly with a Saudi team AFP/Getty Images Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Turkish forensic police officers work on the roof of the residence of the Saudi consul in Istanbul EPA Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Khashoggi went missing on 2 October when he entered the Saudi consulate to pick up paperwork AP Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul AFP/Getty Images Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Turkish police arrive to investigate the Saudi Arabian consulate general residence Getty Images Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Turkish forensic police search for evidence at the garden of the Saudi Arabia's Consul General Mohammad al-Otaibi AFP/Getty Images Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Turkish police search the rooftop of the Saudi Arabian consulate general residence Getty Images Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Turkish police arrive at the residence of the Saudi consul General Mohammed al-Otaibi to conduct a search AP Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul AP Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Turkish forensic police search for evidence at the garden of the Saudi Arabia's Consul General Mohammad al-Otaibi AFP/Getty Images Khashoggi disappearance: Forensic police investigate Saudi consul Getty Images

White House adviser Jared Kushner said on Monday he had urged the crown prince to be transparent about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and told him the world is watching Riyadh's account of the journalist's disappearance.

At times, President Donald Trump appeared at times to play down Riyadh's role in the incident, but also warned of potential economic sanctions. He has repeatedly highlighted the kingdom's importance as an ally.

Mr Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, has cultivated a personal relationship with Prince Mohammed and urged Trump to act with caution to avoid upsetting a critical strategic and economic relationship, a senior administration official said.

Just to be transparent, to be fully transparent. The world is watching. This is a very, very serious accusation and a very serious situation, Mr Kusher said he had told the crown prince.

Asked how the prince responded, Mr Kushner, speaking on CNN, said: We'll see.

Mr Kushner said the United States was in a fact-finding phase on the case and had its eyes wide open. He did not say when or by what means he had communicated with Crown Prince Mohammed.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to detail Khashoggi's killing, raising international pressure on Saudi Arabia.

Pro-government newspapers have been drip-feeding information about the killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces.

"We seek justice and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth, Mr Erdogan said at the opening of an Istanbul mass transit line expansion on Sunday. This is not an ordinary case. The incident will be revealed entirely.

Saudi Arabia has sought to depict the killing of Khashoggi as an unintended death that took place during an attempt to convince him to come home as part of an authorised program to draw dissidents back to the kingdom.

Additional reporting by APThe blast had taken place inside a damaged house in which an encounter had taken place in Kulgams Laroo village earlier on Sunday.

Srinagar: Kashmir Valley and parts of Jammu regions Chenab Valley were shut on Monday to mourn and protest the killing of seven civilians in an explosion and injuries to scores of others in it and subsequent clashes with security forces in southern Kulgam and neighbouring Anantnag district on Sunday.

The escalation prompted Pakistans Prime Minister, Imran Khan, to ask New Delhi to come forward to address the issue of Kashmir to end the cycle of violence in the state.

Home minister Rajnath Singh is scheduled to arrive here on a daylong visit on Tuesday to review the situation with governor Satya Pal Malik and other functionaries of the government.

On Monday, Mr Khan said in a tweet, Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

J&Ks oldest political party, National Conference (NC), also urged the Centre to initiate dialogue on Kashmir and asserted that the current situation demands sincere conciliatory process.

The call for the one-day strike had been issued by an alliance of key separatist leaders, called Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), which has accused the security forces of inflicting terrible atrocities on the people of Kashmir. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti (KPSS) endorsed the strike call.

The blast had taken place inside a damaged house in which an encounter had taken place in Kulgams Laroo village earlier on Sunday. Three militants belonging to outlawed Jaish-e-Muhammad outfit were killed and two soldiers injured in the fighting.

The JRL has mailed a petition to the Secretary-General of United Nations, Antonio Guterres, asking it to stop being a mute spectator and play its role in putting an end to the extreme repression people are being subject to by the Indian state by taking urgent steps for the resolution of Kashmir dispute, which is the main cause of all suffering and human rights violations of people of Kashmir.Kim Jong-un has spent more than $4bn (3bn) on importing luxury goods from China since he took power in North Korea in 2011, a South Korean MP has said.

Last year, the reclusive state imported at least $640m (493m) in defiance of UN sanctions outlawing such trade over the countrys nuclear and missile testing programmes.

Kim has bought lavish items from China and other places like a seaplane for not only his own family, and also expensive musical instruments, high-quality TVs, sedans, liquor, watches and fur as gifts for the elites who prop up his regime, Yoon Sang-hyun, an opposition MP, said in a statement.

Purchases of electronic goods such as high-end TVs made up for more than half of the total transactions, worth $340m (262m), followed by cars at $204m (157m) and liqours at $35m (27m).

The volume of luxury trade last year was down from a peak of $800m (617m) in 2014, but was only a 3.8 per cent fall from $666m (514m) in 2016, Mr Yoon said.

The luxury items accounted for 17.8 per cent of North Koreas entire imports from China last year, which Mr Yoon said totalled $3.7bn (2.8bn).

He accused China of loosening its enforcement of sanctions and criticised South Koreas recent request for UN and US exemptions to restart inter-Korean economic cooperation.

 Donald Trump says he and Kim Jong-un fell in love after sending each other beautiful letters

The US has urged a strict implementation of sanctions on North Korea as part of a maximum pressure campaign which it has credited with bringing the impoverished country to the negotiating table.

However, there have been signs the campaign has been losing strength since North Korea suspended its nuclear and missile tests and its leader said it would take steps towards denuclearisation.

China and Russia have also called for relaxed sanctions.

With the growing loophole, Kim would be able to near his goal of neutralising sanctions soon without giving up the nuclear weapons, Mr Yoon said.

Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Show all 20 1 /20 Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump and Mr Kim leave following their historic meeting AFP/Getty Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump and Mr Kim sign a document committing to peace between their nations, amongst other things EPA Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump holds up a document that both he and Mr Kim have signed AFP/Getty Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un The two leaders reach out to shake hands for the first time AP Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump and Mr Kim shake hands as they meet for the first time Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump and Mr Kim walk off stage, following their historic meeting Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump and Mr Kim take a stroll after their meeting on June 12 Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump and Mr Kim interrupt their stroll to talk to the media AP Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Kim and Mr Trump look out over a balcony at the Capella hotel, where they held their meeting on June 12 Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump takes questions at the press conference following his meeting with with Mr Kim AP Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump appreciates the crowd in the press conference following his meeting with Mr Kim Getty Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump travels to the Istana ahead of the summit with Kim Jong Un on June 12 Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Kim Jong Un travels to the Istana ahead of the summit with President Trump on June 12 Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Kim poses for a photo with Singapore's Finance Minister Vivian Balkrishnan and Education Minister Ong Ye Kung ahead of the summit with Mr Trump Twitter/Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump shakes hands with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, meeting on Monday June 11 in the Istana, Singapore's presidential palace AP Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un At a working lunch on Monday, Singapore's Prime Minister surprised Mr Trump with a birthday cake, in early celebration of his 72nd birthday later in the week EPA Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo answers questions about the summit at a press briefing in Singapore on Monday, June 11 Getty Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un US President Donald Trump arrives at the Paya Lebar Air Base in Singapore on June 10, two days prior to his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Reuters Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump and Mr Kim met on Tuesday June 12 in the Capella hotel on the island resort of Sentosa, just off the south coast of Singapore AFP/Getty Singapore Summit: historic first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un Mr Trump boards Air Force One following the summit AFP/Getty

Last week, Singapore charged one of its citizens, a North Korean and three companies with supplying prohibited luxury items to North Korea.

The charges involve hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of perfumes, wines and watches, according to court documents seen by Reuters.A man in India has died after a group of monkeys reportedly pelted him with bricks from a tree.

Dharampal Singh was collecting pieces of dry wood in Tikri, Uttar Pradesh, when he was struck by the bricks, which hit his head and chest.

The animals had collected the bricks from a dilapidated building nearby, according to The Times of India.

Singh later died in hospital.

His family have now lodged a formal complaint about the incident with officers at Doghat police station in Uttar Pradesh.

Officers are refusing to proceed with a case against the animals.

Monkeys threw more than 20 bricks at Dharampal on Thursday, said Krishapal Singh, the 72-year-olds brother.

He was hit on the head, chest and legs. Thrown from quite a height, the bricks were enough to kill him.

These rogue monkeys are the real culprits and must pay for it.

Police officers have declared Singhs death an accident.

How can we register the case against monkeys? said Chitwan Singh, station officer at Doghat police headquarters.

This will make us a laughing stock.

Villagers have repeatedly complained about monkeys causing havoc in the area and told The Times of India there was no solution in sight.

Parts of India have a well-documented problem with aggressive monkeys.

In April, a newborn baby was reportedly snatched from his home in eastern India by a monkey.

The infant was later found dead in a well.

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In 2007 the deputy mayor of Indias capital, New Delhi, died following an attack by a horde of monkeys.

SS Bajwa fell during the attack from a first floor balcony and later died of head injuries, in an incident that made headlines worldwide. Close US Coast Guard video shows destruction caused by Hurricane Michael on Florida coastline

Hurricane Willa has developed into a life-threatening storm as it barrels towards west Mexico in the eastern Pacific ocean.

The hurricane intensified into a Category 5 storm on Monday afternoon as it was expected to make landfall Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta, prompting the governments of Sinaloa and Nayarit to prepare emergency shelters. Meanwhile, the US National Hurricane Centre has warned Hurricane Willa may "produce life-threatening storm surge, wind and rainfall over portions of southwestern and west-central Mexico beginning on Tuesday."

The potentially catastrophic storm could also produce "extremely dangerous" conditions like storm surge and rip tides along Mexicos coastline, forecasters warned early Monday, as Hurricane Willa sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. The western Nayarit and southern Sinaloa states could see up to 18 inches of rain, along with parts of western Jalisco.

Follow along with our live coverage of Hurricane Willa.

Please allow for the live blog to load.The establishment by Germanys far-right party, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), of an online portal to enable students to report teachers who are not politically neutral met a storm of protest earlier this month. While teachers in the country are required not to express their political views, critics argued that the measure had echoes of Germanys authoritarian past.

As The Independent reports today, teachers at one school have responded by reporting themselves en masse to the AfD  others may follow suit. In a letter to the AfD the teachers said they would, in line with applicable policies, continue to ensure that school students are empowered to understand the character of your party.

From history, they added, we know that what begins with denunciation and intimidation ends with the detention of dissenters in camps.

It is inevitable perhaps that a resurgent nationalism in Germany tends to ring louder alarm bells than it might do elsewhere  history, after all, casts its own shadow. The same is true in Italy where Matteo Salvini and his Lega Nord party came to power this year in alliance with the populist Five Star Movement. In Italy, anti-establishment and anti-migrant campaigning points have become government policy. Last week Mr Salvini announced a proposal to force ethnic shops to close by 9pm in order, apparently, to bring an end to antisocial behaviour by those frequenting such premises.

Yet the surge in support for parties that promote nationalism and seek power through robust leadership  while opposing immigration, pouring scorn on elites and doubting the advantages of globalisation  extends far beyond the borders of Germany and Italy. The Sweden Democrats took 18 per cent of the vote in that countrys general election last month. In Hungary, Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party won an overwhelming parliamentary majority in April. On Friday, Polands ruling Law and Justice party was warned by the European Court of Justice to end policies that give politicians greater power over judicial appointments. And a new poll in Spain has indicated support for the little known alt-right Vox party is increasing.

The swing to authoritarianism is not only evident in Europe of course. Strongman leaders, wearing patriotism on their sleeves, have come to prominence around the world; from the US and Brazil to the Philippines and beyond  and thats to say nothing of Russia or even North Korea.

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None of this means we should throw our hands in the air and conclude that the world is marching backwards to the dark days of the 1930s. Democracy and liberal values are a great deal more entrenched than they were then; the forces of globalisation and progress cannot be undone at a stroke simply at the whim of a few charismatic individuals. In Europe and in North America, the rule of law remains  for the most part  a strong bulwark against the development of authoritarianism as the continent has previously known it. The institutions of the EU  so belittled by those in this country who back Brexit  play an important role in that regard too. And we should not forget that the AfD won just 10.2 per cent of the votes cast in last weeks Bavarian elections.

Equally, though, it does no harm to remain vigilant against dark forces. We have seen in the Brexit debates that have dominated  and continue to dominate  political discourse in the UK how easy it is for populist causes to draw succour from the lazy appeal of the nation state, and to prey on those standard scapegoats: immigration, multiculturalism and political correctness. The language deployed by too many politicians even here uses needlessly violent imagery. The prime minister has been on the receiving end from members of her own party in the last few days. It is frankly appalling.

So no, we are not  we trust  retreading the bleak roads that led to global conflagration in 1939. But political disunity within and between states takes many forms and has many causes. We should guard against it, following the lead of Germanys teachers from whom modern lessons can be learned.After weeks of lies and misdirection, Saudi Arabia has finally admitted that Jamal Khashoggi died inside its consulate in Istanbul. The truth, however, is yet to emerge from the fog of deceit. There can be very few people in the around the world who will accept the Saudi explanation that a fist fight broke out, resulting in Jamal Khashoggis death.

The rest of the world still demands answers and the overwhelming evidence points to a deliberate, gruesome premeditated killing. The allegations of torture, and the butchery of Khashoggis body, are particularly shocking. Even more so if  as many commentators believe  they were deliberately ordered by the state.

A barbaric assassination and dismemberment which the Saudis have attempted to cloak in the shroud of their embassy and diplomatic immunity? Those crimes would rank amongst the very worst perpetrated in a diplomatic mission in modern times, with the use of diplomatic premises a terrifying development, indicating that Saudi Arabia has no regard for international law.

This case shows the legal crossroads that the international community has reached. A perfect storm of politics and law colliding means decisions as to what to do next are fraught with problems.

There are legal remedies available to Khashoggis fiancee though international bodies, but most of the legal consequences can be dealt with by Turkey. The question is how far Saudi Arabia will cooperate and how far Turkey will really want to push this issue. It is only if Turkey fails that others will take up the torch.

There are a host of legal measures that could be used bring the perpetrators to justice. Mohammed bin Salman may be untouchable inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and practically speaking any punishment meted out to him will come from within Saudi Arabia. However, international mechanisms can also be brought to bear upon the Saudi government.

Human rights groups have already called upon the United Nations to intercede and conduct a fair and transparent investigation. There are already a number of UN instruments, such as the Working Group on Disappearances and the Special Rapporteur for non-judicial executions, who might launch investigations and reports.

While UN findings may not immediately appear to be the most robust of responses to this apparent outrage, Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi regime have demonstrated consistently that they are sensitive to outside criticism, as evidenced by the severing of diplomatic ties with Canada. Any UN finding critical of bin Salman and Saudi Arabia would be a significant blow to their prestige.

The hit squad itself must also now become a legal target. The US enacted its global Magnitsky Act in 2016, enabling the US government to impose sanctions after human rights abuses by government officials around the world. They could stop any of the men gaining visas to travel to the US and ask for support from the EU. This would drastically reduce the movement of its targets and cause significant financial hardship.

Personal sanctions could be instituted against the men and perhaps broader sanctions restricting trade between Saudi Arabia and the West.

Many countries, including the UK, subscribe to the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, enabling the UK to bring charges and try individuals accused of committing serious crimes such as torture and crimes against humanity in domestic courts. Many of the alleged hit squad have now been named. Investigating those individuals, and the bringing of charges, would send a serious message that the British government is willing to uphold international law and human rights.

In the meantime, those individuals would be restricted in travel and would face arrest if they ever tried to come to the United Kingdom.

There is also the question of extradition. Turkey could ask for the extradition of the death squad and the Saudi consular officials who have now fled. There is no extradition treaty between Saudi Arabia and Turkey (or, for that matter, the UK)  but that does not necessarily prevent extradition. It would be rare but not unprecedented for an ad hoc agreement to be signed to extradite the men. A recent example of this was the attempt to extradite Rwandans accused of war crimes from the UK to Rwanda.

The Vienna Convention governs diplomatic immunity but does not allow murder and torture to take place on foreign soil; that would be a deliberate manipulation of international law. The punishment is political rather than legal as ambassadors can be withdrawn, diplomatic ties downgraded and financial sanctions imposed.

The Turkish prosecutors have the power to prosecute the death squad for murder, kidnapping and torture  but the question is whether Riyadh will cooperate by surrendering the individuals. The finely balanced politics make that outcome unlikely.

The UKs response has been strong in condemning the actions of Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, it should go further. We should seek to sanction the men responsible and be ready to prosecute them should they ever come to the UK.

Ben Keith and Rhys Davies are barristers who specialise in international lawNorthern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley has said the British government accepts an insurance policy is needed for the people of Northern Ireland post-Brexit.

However, she said no solution on the backstop can undermine the integrity of the UK.

Her comments come in the wake of Brexit minister Dominic Raab insisting that the UK can only relent on extending the transition period after March 29 as an alternative to the backstop.

Mr Raabs statements have been shot down by Irish ministers, with Junior European Affairs Minister, Helen McEntee, ruling out new red lines entering negotiations at this late stage.

The backstop  a mechanism to ensure that a hard border will not re-emerge on the island post-Brexit  has become the final hurdle in Brexit negotiations.

However, speaking today at a meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly (BIPA) in London, which is being attended by politicians from Ireland and the UK.

Ms Bradley said the UK is committed to upholding the Good Friday Agreement and to avoiding a hard border.

But she warned we cannot accept any proposal that threatens the economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom.

Both the EU and UK are in agreement that our future partnership is the answer to this and will provide the solutions in the long term, she said.

But to cater for a situation where a future relationship is not in place in time, we accept that an insurance policy is needed for the people of Northern Ireland.

She said the UK wants to find solutions to the outstanding problems with the backstop as set out by the Theresa May and said the UK remains confident for a positive outcome.

Ms Bradley also said Westminster believes wholeheartedly in devolution for Northern Ireland and asserted that she believes the stalemate in the Assembly can be resolved.

The plenary session of the BIPA will be dominated by Brexit with a discussion on the state of play taking place later today .

The session will also hear from Adrian ONeill, Irelands Ambassador to the UK. Tomorrow Michael Gove will address the second day of the session.Prime Minister Theresa May making a statement in the House of Commons in London about the European Council summit Photo credit: PA Wire

Theresa May has told MPs there may be limited circumstances when it is in Britain's interest to agree to a short extension to the transition period after it leaves the EU in March 2020.

In a Commons statement following last week's EU summit in Brussels, the Prime Minister said such an extension would be an alternative to activating the so-called Northern Ireland "backstop", intended to guarantee there is no return to a hard border with the Republic.

She stressed that in any circumstances the transition - currently due to end at the end of 2020 - would have to be over "well before" the end of the parliament expected in June 2022.

"There are some limited circumstances in which it could be argued that an extension to the implementation period might be preferable, if we were certain it was only for a short time," she said.

"For example, a short extension to the implementation period would mean only one set of changes for businesses - at the point we move to the future relationship.

"But in any such scenario we would have to be out of this implementation period well before the end of this parliament."

Mrs May faced a furious response from some Tory MPs after it emerged that the possibility of an extension to the transition period - currently due to run for 21 months - had been discussed by EU leaders in Brussels.

It prompted accusations the UK could be forced to pay billions into EU coffers for months - or even years - to come after it has left bloc.

The British Prime Minister said while the terms of the withdrawal agreement were now 95 per cent agreed, there remained an "impasse" over the issue of the Irish border.

She made clear, however, she would not accept a situation in which the UK could be kept "indefinitely" in either an extended period of transition or a backstop which tied the UK to EU customs rules.

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"We would not accept a position in which the UK, having negotiated in good faith an agreement which prevents a hard border in Northern Ireland, nonetheless finds itself locked into an alternative, inferior arrangement against our will," she said.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the UK Government had been forced to consider extending the transition period as a result of "its own incompetence".

"The Conservative Party has spent the last two years arguing with itself instead of negotiating a sensible deal in the public interest," he said.

"Their Brexit negotiations have been a litany of missed deadlines, shambolic failure and now they're begging for extra time."

Earlier Downing Street slapped down anonymous Conservative who used violent imagery to describe a possible coup to unseat Mrs May.

Weekend newspapers reported Tory backbenchers saying Mrs May would be "knifed" and she should "bring her own noose" to a meeting with MPs to discuss her Brexit plans.

Her official spokesman said Mrs May expected those in public life to avoid "dehumanising" and "derogatory" language.

"I don't intend to dignify those specific anonymous comments with a response," the spokesman told a regular Westminster media briefing.

"The Prime Minister has always been very clear that we must set a tone in public discourse that is neither dehumanising nor derogatory.

"Personal vitriol has no place in our politics."

The attacks marked the start of what is expected to be a tough week for the British Prime Minister, with some observers speculating that the number of MPs calling for her removal may reach the 48 figure which would trigger a vote of no confidence.

Mrs May spoke with Cabinet colleagues in lengthy telephone conference calls over the weekend, which Downing Street described as a chance to "give an update on the negotiations".

Meanwhile former UK Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson denied undermining the British Prime Minister after meeting the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, in Brussels.

Mr Duncan Smith said: "We are presenting some ideas which we think are constructive and we had a constructive discussion.

"Now we are going to go back and talk to the Government about it."

He added that whoever briefed in violent terms about the Prime Minister's future "needs to have the fullest weight of the Conservative Party upon them".

"It has nothing to do with our politics, it has nothing to do with this issue," he told reporters in Brussels, adding Mrs May had his "full support".The UK has said it will only relent to extending the Brexit transition period if the demand for the Irish 'backstop' is dropped.

The backstop - essentially an insurance policy to prevent the emergence of a hard Border on the island - has become a final sticking point in the Brexit negotiations amid escalating fears it will become a bargaining chip in the endgame of the divorce proceedings.

The UK's Brexit minister, Dominic Raab, said any extension to the transition period would only be considered as an alternative to the backstop.

"We must have a finality to any backstop - whether through a time limit or a mechanism that enables the UK to leave," he wrote in 'The Sunday Telegraph'.

European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee has accused Mr Raab of attempting to introduce "new red lines".

"Negotiations are always tough and particularly with Brexit they're very complex. But what we can't have happen are certain parts of the agreement or the negotiations which have already been committed to, have been agreed to in writing, to suddenly see new red lines introduced that absolutely contradict commitments that have already been made," she said.

That commitment to a backstop had been given repeatedly by the UK, Ms McEntee said. "To have essentially a new red line introduced saying that 'we won't move forward if the backstop is there or if it doesn't have a time limit to it' - that's really not how negotiations work," she told RTE Radio One.

Negotiators in Europe are looking at the idea of a UK- wide customs "shared space" as a means to break the stalemate in talks. The idea is being proposed in addition to the backstop, however, rather than a replacement for it.

A spokesperson for Tanaiste Simon Coveney said the progress needed to get a deal across the line would not be achieved in the media.

"What we need now is for the negotiators to get back to work in Brussels and finish the final 10pc of the Withdrawal Agreement. Ireland wants a close future trading deal with the UK but at this point the commitments already made need to be honoured," he said.

Labour leader Brendan Howlin said his party had "warned the Government repeatedly that we must not allow the Irish backstop to be part of the final horse-trading".

He said the backsliding on the Border issue suggested a no-deal was increasingly likely and raised the possibility of the Taoiseach being left having to "choose between no deal - and therefore Border controls - or no backstop, and the risk that the future EU-UK relationship will require border controls after all".

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin warned there "will be an 11th-hour moment when this thing has to come to a head".

But he said he had no indication the EU 27 would waver in their support for Ireland. He also claimed Ireland was "in no way prepared" for Brexit - no matter what the outcome.Some 899.5m worth of food and live animals were exported to the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland in 2017. (Niall Carson/PA)

A new report from the House of Commons in the UK has said there is an "insufficient" approach to considering specific agricultural concerns in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee states that the UK Government must explain how policy for farmers and growers in Northern Ireland will be devised in the absence of an Executive, and in advance of Brexit.

The report examines the future of agriculture in Northern Ireland post-Brexit in the context of the lack of devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Farming and growing plays a bigger part in the Northern Ireland economy than in the rest of the UK has significant differences to the sector in the rest of the country and will be particularly affected by Brexit because of this and due to its proximity to the Republic of Ireland.

The Committee expresses disappointment about DEFRA's "insufficient" approach to considering specific agricultural concerns in Northern Ireland and warns that particular structural and Brexit related challenges must be addressed quickly, with or without an Executive.

Chair of the Committee, Dr Andrew Murrison MP, said: "Brexit brings both opportunities and threats to farmers and growers in Northern Ireland. My Committee is calling on the UK Government to provide clarity and confidence for the Northern Ireland agricultural sector by making plain how a post-Brexit agricultural policy for Northern Ireland will be devised if the political impasse continues into the New Year."

The report said that Northern Ireland has a predominance of smaller, more marginal businesses means that the sector is particularly reliant on direct financial support to maintain a steady income.

The Committee expressed concern at DEFRA's limited engagement with farmers in Northern Ireland during its agricultural policy consultation, and concludes that there has been "insufficient recognition of key differences between Northern Ireland's agriculture sector and that of other parts of the United Kingdom."

Furthermore, the Committee is concerned that without a Northern Ireland Government the urgent challenges and opportunities of Brexit run the risk of being overlooked, leaving Northern Ireland's agriculture sector adrift without a dedicated, devolved policy framework. The Committee recommends that, if the NI Government is not restored by the end of the year, the Government should set out how it will develop post-Brexit agricultural policy for Northern Ireland.

Financial support for farmers in Northern Ireland

For the typically small farms of Northern Ireland, subsidies and payments are existentially significant. The Committee heard evidence that the UK Governments "public money for public goods" proposal and its desire to improve farm efficiency, while broadly welcomed, was designed with England in mind and could have a serious impact on farms in Northern Ireland if the scheme is not modified to reflect the very different character of farming in Northern Ireland.

Trade, cross-border supply chains and North-South cooperation

Northern Ireland's agri-food sector is closely integrated with that of the Republic of Ireland, and agricultural produce crosses the border frequently.

Some 899.5m worth of food and live animals were exported to the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland in 2017.

The Committee heard evidence that a no-deal scenario, whilst unlikely, could result in fresh milk, live animals, cereals and flour being unable to cross the border to the Republic of Ireland and perishable goods unable to access wider EU markets. The Committee warns that land-based businesses have not been given clarity on what no-deal, however unlikely, will mean for cross-border trade.

The agricultural workforce

Much of Northern Ireland's agricultural workforce is drawn from the European Economic Arena (EEA) and the Committee notes that it is "vital that the importance of agriculture to Northern Ireland's economy is reflected in the Government's approach to immigration and labour policy."

The Committee calls on the Government to establish mechanisms through which the sectoral priorities of Northern Ireland can be reflected in immigration policy, particularly for professionals such as vets, tradesmen like butchers and those with particular skills like pickers.Former Royal Bank of Scotland banker Myles Clarke has been appointed as CBRE Ireland's new managing director.

CBRE staff in Dublin were informed of the appointment in recent days.

Senior local personnel, including Johnny Horgan, executive director of capital markets at CBRE Ireland, Marie Hunt, executive director and head of research and Paddy Conlon, executive director, A&T occupier services at the Irish arm of the world's largest commercial real estate services firm, had been widely tipped as front runners for the managing director role.

Mr Clarke will join CBRE in mid-November. The Dubliner read economics at Trinity College Dublin and attained an MSc in Economics at the London School of Economics.

Mr Clarke served as COO of RBS Investment Bank in London. Other roles he held at RBS included head global syndicate and co-head European syndicate, RBS Markets & Banking.

Since leaving RBS in 2016, Mr Clarke has relocated back to Ireland with his family and has taken a sabbatical to focus on several projects in the areas of finance, real estate and technology as well as volunteering initiatives.

Late on Friday evening, CBRE staff in Dublin were informed that Mr Clarke's sabbatical included advising on a blockchain real estate coin offering in the US, advising on the launch of an Irish real estate fund and also mentoring and teaching economics and finance to disadvantaged young people.Says will organise conclaves of saints in state.

Namdeo Tyagi aka Computer Baba had resigned as minister of state after his request for BJP ticket for sadhus in the MP assembly polls was unheard.

Bhopal: Self-styled god man Namdeo Tyagi aka Computer Baba, who gave up his minister of state (MoS) post earlier this month after his request for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket for sadhus in the November 28 assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh was unheard, on Monday threatened to generate anti-BJP sentiments among the religious leaders by organizing series of conclaves of saints in the state in coming days.

The gadget-savvy god man who invariably carries a laptop with him to cultivate an identity as Computer Baba among his followers, issued a veiled warning to the ruling BJP by declaring that Sadhus and sants will say their Man Ki Baat (open up their mind) in the conclaves of religious leaders mulled in four major cities of Madhya Pradesh in coming days.

We will speak up on unchecked illegal sand mining in Narmada river and failure of state government to protect the cows in Madhya Pradesh in these conclaves, said Mr Tyagi.

Mr Tyagi announced that the Hindu religious leader were scheduled to meet in Gwalior on October 30, Khandwa on November 4, Rewa on November 11 and Jabalpur on November 23 to deliberate on the issues.

Saints and hermits across MP are scheduled to attend these conferences, Mr Tyagi claimed. He however said the scheduled programmes would be apolitical.

Computer Baba had performed Satta Parivartan havan (make offerings to fire seeking change of government), a day after he quit from the post of MoS allegedly in protest against the decision by the ruling BJP to turn down his demand for party ticket in the coming assembly elections, on October one.

Apparently upset with his anti-BJP postures, the ruling BJP has decided to rope in seer Avdeshanand Giri to mediate between sulking religious leaders and the party to address their grievances before the November 28 assembly elections in the state.Aston Martin is considering flying in car components and moving more parts through UK ports other than Dover to avoid possible border friction after Britain leaves the European Union, its boss told Reuters.

Chief Executive Andy Palmer said changing to alternative ports or flying in parts would add costs compared to sticking with Dover, where there are concerns among firms that the port may not be able to cope with new customs checks after Brexit.

London and Brussels hope to reach an agreement soon on Britain's exit from the EU. The automotive sector, however, is worried that if there is a hard Brexit or no Brexit deal port and motorway snarl-ups could disrupt production, affecting the movement of thousands of components and vehicles to and from the continent every day.

With just over five months until Brexit day, carmakers have triggered contingency plans such as moving shutdown periods, certifying models abroad and redrawing production schedules.

At stake is Britain's car industry, which employs roughly 850,000 people and is one of its few manufacturing success stories since the 1980s.

Aston, which this month became the first British carmaker in decades to list on the London Stock Exchange, predominately uses Dover for moving components.

"The European-sourced parts, which include the engine and the gearbox as a complete assembly, come back in from Europe so an alternative port is one way, predominately for lorries, and then reserving space on aircrafts for one-off shipping," Palmer told Reuters.

"You can get a few days of engines and gearboxes relatively easily into the cargo decks of a plane so whilst it's relatively expensive that is probably our primary backup," he said, adding the company only did so in an emergency at present.

Coventry and Birmingham airport, near the firm's central English Gaydon plant, and the port of Sunderland are among the locations the firm is considering for such contingencies.

'BETTER THAN NOT MAKING CARS'

With Britain due to leave the European Union on Mar. 29, Palmer said the plan would have to be approved by the board by the end of the year, in an example of decisions executives are needing to take without clarity on what Brexit will mean.

"There is undoubtedly a cost associated with it, but it's cheaper than not building cars," he said.

"I simply work to the worst and hope for the best."

After earlier this year switching its car approvals from Britain's vehicle agency to Spain's due to uncertainty over the validity of such licences, Palmer said its crossover DBX will also be approved there.

"You're forced to make a change," he told Reuters. "Once you set in place a process, you tend to stick with that process because it works."

The United States is also due to overtake Britain in 2018 as the firm's single biggest country market as the firm continues a strategy to mitigate Brexit risk with a U.S. sales drive, reducing its reliance on the EU.

Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday sought to reassure business leaders that the EU was still committed to a deal this autumn, which would avoid disruption next year.

Britain's biggest carmaker Jaguar Land Rover has warned that the wrong Brexit deal could cost the firm 1.2 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) per year with the firm's boss saying he still did not know whether his plants could still operate.

Despite the Brexit uncertainty, Aston successfully floated earlier this month but its share price has since fallen by over 20 percent.

Palmer said most shareholders knew the firm would deliver long-term value as it rolls out a series of new models.

"When we made the pitch to investors, I think almost all understood that this is basically a long-term story and it is all about value creation... and that's what we are going to deliver," he said.Hannah Wrixon only set up Get the Shifts, her startup that runs an app enabling hospitality businesses to source shift workers, in 2016. But the 42-year-old has always had an entrepreneurial spirit.

At the age of 11, she spent an entire summer holed up in her room making stuffed cuddly toys. But sales didn't go as well as expected.

"No one bought one - not even my Mum," said Wrixon. "I learned my first lesson in business: make sure there's a market for your product."

Her appetite for the hospitality industry also came at an early age. While she and her three sisters were growing up in south-east Clare, the family would spend summers and Christmas holidays with their father in London, where he ran a series of pubs.

"We were thrown behind the bar on summer holidays, from the age of 12," Wrixon says. "It gave me real love of talking to people and I always wanted to work in bars."

But when Wrixon finished school, her mother discouraged her from entering the pub trade.

"My feminist mother said, 'Go do something women can't usually do'," she says. "So I went to Shannon Aerospace to become an aircraft maintenance technician, as part of an initiative designed to encourage more women to get into engineering. But I got distracted and went to Australia at the age of 20. I was supposed to be there for a year, but I ended up spending six years there."

After a stint managing Irish bars in Perth and studying human resources, Wrixon returned to Ireland as a single parent in 2002, determined to forge a career in HR.

"But when I arrived home, I realised every other person in Ireland had also trained in HR," she says. "So I had to take another look at my life."

Around the same time, Wrixon was searching for childcare for her son around Limerick city . When she couldn't find what she wanted set up her own children centre in 2004.

Running the Aire Children's Centre led Wrixon to question why there wasn't a database of qualified childcare professionals she could call upon if she was short-staffed.

The quandary prompted her to set up a business in 2007 called Last Minute Minders, which connects parents and creches with childcare professionals willing to work at short notice. But a change in the way gardai vetted childcare workers put the brakes on Last Minute Minders, with clearance to work in one childcare centre taking up to three months. Wrixon relaunched the company in 2013, on the back of the new vetting rules.

"It did really well, with big companies like Google and Bank of America using us for when their staff had childcare emergencies," she says.

"In 2016, another person took over the branding and started running the business. I was doing courses with New Frontiers and Going for Growth and meeting these amazing women. They were encouraging us to ask what the business could pivot into.

"When I was out at a really busy bar that was totally understaffed, I got this eureka moment. I said to the guy running the bar, 'If you could get last-minute staff who were trained, would you do it?'. He said, 'Oh my God, absolutely'."

Capitalising on the technology behind Last Minute Minders, Wrixon founded Get the Shifts in late 2016. Get the Shifts provides hospitality and events businesses with workers such as baristas, bar staff, kitchen porters, caterers, chefs, waiters and cleaners on a shift-by-shift basis. Its clients include the Aviva Stadium, 3Arena, Thomond Park, and Aiken Promotions.

"Our clients all share one big problem: they want high-quality staff for irregular shifts," says Wrixon.

"They might do a big recruitment drive and spend a lot of money and time on it, but then can't afford to hold onto these temporary staff for long periods of time."

Get the Shifts interviews and screens the workers who sign up to the app. They are then trained by Dulann, a Waterford-based provider of online education, in areas such as health and safety. If the applicant is successful, they become what the company dubs a 'superstar'.

Hotels, restaurants, cafes, stadiums, caterers and festival organisers can use the Get the Shifts app to browse through these superstars and offer them work up to three hours before a shift is due to begin.

When the superstars show up for work, Get the Shifts' clients can verify their identify through the app's facial-recognition function and even sign off on extra hours worked at the end of a shift. The payroll administration is handled by Get the Shifts, which charges clients an hourly rate for each job to cover the sourcing of, and payment for, each shift worker.

Wrixon says the company's superstars are mostly students, stay-at-home parents, or people who want to earn extra money.

"We have people who use us as a second job, especially in the run-up to Christmas, when they want to pay for presents," she says.

The company is poised to create 700 new casual roles in the hospitality sector over the next 12 months, including 300 before Christmas. Some operators in the gig economy, such as Deliveroo, have been criticised for perpetuating job insecurity and leaving workers without traditional benefits such as sick pay, but Wrixon says: "I think it's very different for us. We don't put any pressure on people to take work - they are in the driving seat. We pay holiday pay and we pay very well."

Most of Get the Shifts' clients are located in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. However, the company recently secured a contract from the Eventist Group to supply staff for Christmas parties in Belfast and Dublin, and has another potential contract lined up to provide hotel housekeepers in Belfast.

"There are 1,800 new hotel rooms in Belfast and they don't have the housekeeping staff to cope with it," Wrixon says.

"Belfast will be our next market and that will be the testbed for the UK market. In March, we'll be going to Manchester, because it has a population similar to that of Ireland, and we know we can handle Ireland without overstretching ourselves. There are companies doing things similar to us in London, so we want to take the north of England first."

The fruits of Wrixon's labours paid off in May, when Get the Shifts was named Ireland's best startup at the National Enterprise Awards.

The company's five-strong team is based at Smithstown Industrial Estate in Shannon, a 10-minute drive from Wrixon's home in Sixmilebridge, and the entrepreneur is an avid cheerleader about the merits of operating a tech company from the west of Ireland.

"For a start, it's cheaper to develop technology here than in Dublin," says Wrixon, who is now a mother of three. "We had software priced in Dublin and it was 40pc more expensive. The people who developed our web-based app are based in Ennis and the mobile app was developed in Limerick. So I would encourage anyone interested in developing tech to come here."Irish FinTech company PerfectCard has been sold to Australian payment solutions provider EML Payments in a 6m deal.

PerfectCard provides incentive and corporate expense solutions including PerfectIncentive and the recently-launched Pecan Expense.

The acquisition will result in the expansion of PerfectCard in Ireland, with plans to increase the number of full-time employees over the next few years, the company said.

Under the deal EML has acquired 75pc of PerfectCard, having received Central Bank approval for the transaction in the past two weeks.

Commenting on the announcement, Nikki Evans, CEO of PerfectCard, described it as an important move for both companies.

"It allows EML to self-issue regulated payment products across the EU and gives them access to our innovative expense and corporate incentive solutions that they can grow in their existing markets," Ms Evans said.

"For us at PerfectCard, it will accelerate our growth and has opened up a huge amount of opportunities  for both the company and its employees."

Established in 2011, EML operates in 21 countries, with offices in Kansas, Stockholm, Brimingham and now Ireland. In its last financial year, it processed AU$6.7bn (4bn) transactions and has a market capitalisation of AU$400m (247m).

The companies also announced that PerfectCards base in Galway will now become EMLs global hub for technology and innovation.

The expected growth in the business will result in an increase in employment in Galway over the next two years.

Ms Evans will remain in her role as CEO of PerfectCard and will assume responsibility for EML European Issuing."We're all about personality; that's how we have won over the world". It's a description of the staying power of Meadows & Byrne from one of its directors Helen Coughlan.

But the phrase could easily be applied to the Cork woman's own career path, which started out guiding groups of US tourists on walking tours of York.

"I had no five year plan back in the day, my plan was just to make it through first semester in college. After a BA in English and Sociology, I did a HDip in Heritage and Tourism and I ended up over in York," she told Independent.ie.

"It was funny circle of nationalities; an Irish woman bringing these American tourists around the culture centre of York."

It wasn't long, however, before Helen returned home to save money for her "next whimsical adventure" but fate brought her on to the shop floor of Meadows & Byrne (M&B). Where she first properly met the interiors store's chief executive Freda Hayes.

"I had spent several summers when I was at school working at Blarney Woollen Mills and, when I got back, someone told me about M&B so I got in the door. One day, the local radio station came down to the shop to do an ad and I was plucked to go to the studios and read the ad."

As CEO of The Blarney Group, Freda Hayes oversees the development Blarney Woollen Mills and Meadows & Byrne. It was on her insistence that the ad be represented by one of the on-the-ground employees and Helen's radio appearance made an impact.

"Freda called into the shop one Saturday morning after the ad went live and she approached me about it. About five weeks later, the manager was out and she called me over to look at the pottery stock; 'count everything that you see and fill the gaps from the order two weeks ago', she told me.

"I gave her the order. I wasn't the right person, I was the only person. That would be my first purchasing order."

With M&B since the early 90s, Helen rose up the ranks to her current position on the board of the directors, largely influenced by Freda who taught her the ropes by making her "walk the walk". She experienced the merger with Blarney Woollen Mills in 2000 and rode the wave of the recession, which hit the business hard in 2008.

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"We had a template that we started from: an Irish company that is quality and design driven but not inaccessible. We wanted to sell something beautiful to the middle market without taking the proverbial. We opened the floodgates for customers to enjoy these interiors," she said.

"When the recession hit, it hit hard, and the biggest area that suffered was furniture, that was a huge part of our business; it fell apart overnight and there was a huge gap in the revenue stream."

The company had to adapt abruptly, and that required shutting down the logistics side of the furniture department - warehouses, trucks , personnel - and downsizing the store surface area, working the two companies out of one small space.

"We had to start converting the furniture in our stores into cash, and that brought us into an area where our ship began to steady. We also moved into the fashion arena as we needed to get our business growing again."

M&B never really broadcasted that departure from its core interiors product range, and that was a deliberate business strategy, but clothing began bought the business time.

The five year turmoil between the crash and when business began to grow again is marked by maternity leave for Helen, who has two children, Ava May (9) and Louis (4).

"I came back from maternity leave in 2013/2014 and met up with Freda who said 'I think we are going to go back into furniture' and it all happened very quickly, we just went from strength to strength."

Despite a currently booming enterprise, Helen maintains that the group isn't cocky about their growth trajectory.

"It's hard to have a crystal ball, I take nothing for granted. Right now there is Brexit uncertainty, Trump uncertainty, we have climate uncertainty; we still need to keep ourselves refreshed all the time.

"However, we'll still maintain our singular vision, we will always offer good quality and qood design at an affordable price."Tent cities. Long lines for food. People in rags. The mentally ill cast adrift on streets.

No, this is isn't the plot for a Cormac McCarthy novel: it's what you see in San Francisco. Or that's what it was like last month. And every time I've been there in the last five years.

I'm not describing a 'bad' part of the city, but most of the downtown area.

It's dystopian. Bright-eyed young coders and marketers scooter past unfortunate souls who defecate in the street. Star engineers and millionaire venture capitalists live alongside a permanent population of utterly destitute people.

Everybody admits to it being a problem but nobody seems to have an answer.

Until now.

Last week saw a very public spat on the question between some of San Francisco's most prolific tech entrepreneurs.

The biggest face-off was between the billionaire chief executives of Salesforce and Twitter, Marc Benioff and Jack Dorsey.

"Which homeless programmes in our city are you supporting?" Benioff goaded Dorsey on Twitter. "Can you tell me what Twitter and Square and you are in for and at what financial levels?"

Dorsey wasn't having it.

"Marc, you're distracting," he publicly retorted. "This is about me supporting Mayor @LondonBreed for *the* reason she was elected. The Mayor doesn't support Prop C, and we should listen to her. I support the Mayor, and I'm committed to helping her execute her plan."

'Prop C' is a legislative proposal for San Francisco that would add a 0.5pc tax on revenue above $50m (43m) for companies in the city. The intent is to channel that directly into homelessness relief.

It seems most companies are against the measure. This appeared to include Salesforce until Benioff changed his mind. Now he's out all guns blazing, challenging other tech leaders on why they won't support it.

After the initial exchange between Benioff and Dorsey, our own adoptive San Franciscan, Stripe founder Patrick Collison, entered the online debate.

"Am with Jack," he said, quote-tweeting one of Dorsey's tweets. "Marc [Benioff] is well-intentioned, but I trust Mayor Breed's expertise on homelessness over his."

Benioff generally doesn't take perceived challenges lying down. Asked about Collison's position in a subsequent interview with the Guardian's Sam Levin, he said: "Even though they've [Stripe] made $20bn dollars in San Francisco, they're not willing to give back at scale. Isn't that amazing?"

Benioff is one of the smartest entrepreneurs around, but he will know that while Stripe is indeed valued at $20bn, that's quite different to it having realised $20bn in any sort of expendable way. (It's not even clear that Stripe has made a profit yet.) But Benioff was on a roll. He continued his tirade in the interview, putting the boot into Dorsey most of all.

"He just doesn't want to give, that's all," he told Levin, referring to the Twitter founder. "And he hasn't given anything of consequence in the city. That's not a surprise to me. There's lots of CEOs and companies and billionaires in that category."

He rounded off his broadside with an observation that there are two types of wealthy San Franciscans; "people who are willing to give and people who are not willing to give When it comes to this [new law], you're either for the homeless or you're for yourself". Ouch.

Predictably, those in Twitter and Stripe don't see it that way, arguing that simply throwing more cash at the problem won't solve the structural problems behind San Francisco's homelessness. They also claim that there's no actual plan on what to do with the money.

Oddly, San Francisco's Democratic Party mayor, London Breed, agrees.

However, part of her opposition to the tax is that it might make the inner city less attractive to companies like Twitter and Stripe (both are in tough neighbourhoods; Twitter's headquarters is on a part of Market Street opposite dozens of homeless and mentally ill people).

By vocally opposing the measure, Twitter, Stripe and others may well be giving sustenance to that fear.

To outsiders, San Francisco's homelessness is baffling. How can a city so wealthy, with so many innovative companies and citizens, have what may be the first world's worst homelessness problem?

Some blame other US cities. For decades, east coast towns have given homeless people one-way tickets to the west coast. New York is the biggest culprit, with a reported annual budget of $500,000 for shifting the homeless away.

A Guardian investigation last year estimated that half of all homeless evacuations come from New York, with many people ending up in relatively kinder Californian climates.

Others point a finger at factors, such as San Francisco's tolerance to homelessness on streets (compared to colder, harsher police in the east and mid-west).

But there are also the tech companies themselves. They have created extraordinary wealth in San Francisco and now attract a flood of ambitious high-earners, ensuring a two-bed apartment rarely dips below $5,000 to $6,000 per month.

Tech firms haven't set out to cause social problems such as homelessness. But they are clearly a factor in an inability for poorer or mentally ill people to keep a foothold in affordable accommodation.

So should they step up and give more to help solve the problem?

Companies like Stripe say they are genuinely engaged in seeking solutions, through initiatives such as Yimby ('Yes, In My Back Yard'), a lobby group trying to increase the number of low-cost, high-density homes in California. Stripe donated $1m to Yimby earlier this year.

But the spat between Benioff and Dorsey may signify a breaking point for tolerance of homelessness in one of the world's richest cities. And this has to be a good thing. It shouldn't be an acceptable part of your day to routinely walk by people lying face down on a pavement.Siemens Chief Executive Joe Kaeser said on Monday that he would not attend the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, following the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The German engineering giant is one of the last companies to decide against sending its top executive to the "Davos in the Desert" after Saudi Arabia sought to cover up Khashoggi's killing before admitting to a "grave mistake".

"Siemens is a reliable and committed partner of The Kingdom and its VISION 2030. But for now, truth needs to be found out and justice applied," Kaeser said in a statement outlining his motivation not to travel to the conference, which was posted on his LinkedIn account.

"Time will tell how things will develop. And I do hope there will be clarity, transparency, and justice sooner rather than later," Kaeser said.

Three European powers - Germany, Britain and France - pressed Saudi Arabia to probe the killing, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said over the weekend that Germany would not export arms to Saudi Arabia while uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persisted.For nations of the eurozone, the annual budget process isn't over when a budget is drawn up.

The European Commission also gets a say. In Italy's case, the response from Brussels took less than three days. In a letter to the Italian government, the EU leadership said the draft included an unprecedented "deviation" and it demanded an explanation.

With no evidence that Italy is willing to reconsider its plans to spend big, signs point to an escalating standoff.

1 Why does the EU have a say on Italy's budget?

EU countries have to follow a set of fiscal rules spelled out in what's called the Stability and Growth Pact. Focusing on deficit and debt, the rules are designed to force members to maintain sound public finances and co-ordinate their spending policies. Monetary policy is the responsibility of the European Central Bank, and matters such as taxation are up to each country. But the EU expects its 28 members to heed the economic stability of the region as a whole.

2 What are the EU rules?

No country should have a budget deficit larger than 3pc of GDP or debt above 60pc of output, and governments must set annual targets to show they're moving in the right direction. The EU made the rules for eurozone countries stricter in 2013 following the sovereign debt crisis. The updated rules require nations to pursue a balanced budget by law, aimed at keeping mounting public debt in check.

3 How are the rules enforced?

The European Commission (EC), the EU's executive arm, monitors the finances of member states, reviews annual spending plans, identifies imbalances and issues recommendations every spring. These have to be endorsed by finance ministers and incorporated into the budget plans for the next year.

4 Who has a problem with the EU rules?

France, Belgium and Spain are among those that have received warnings or reprimands from the EU in recent years, though never a formal rejection of their draft budget plans or any sanctions.

Italy is now the nation in the EU's crosshairs. In a showdown that was building for weeks, the EC declared Italy's spending plans to be excessive. If Italy's explanation is deemed insufficient, the commission could take the unprecedented step of essentially rejecting the budget and asking for revised plans. Italian leaders have spoken of wanting the commission to tweak how it calculates deficits.

5 What exactly is Italy seeking to do?

Its budget calls for a deficit equal to 2.4pc of GDP, compared with a 0.8pc shortfall planned by the government that was swept out of power in March.

This first budget plan by a government of two populist parties makes assumptions about growth that Italy's own budget watchdog considers overly optimistic. It proposes accepting a wider deficit as the cost of delivering on promises such as a "citizen's income" for the poor, tax cuts and a lower retirement age. Under Italy's plan, the structural deficit is projected to deteriorate by 0.8pc, far from the 0.6pc improvement Brussels wants.

6 What happens to a nation that breaks the EU rules?

While Brussels ultimately has no real power over national budgets, governments are expected to take the commission's opinion into account and avoid a reprimand that could affect financial markets.

If the commission finds a country persistently breaks deficit rules, it could eventually open a so-called excessive deficit procedure - a process where the country has to reduce its deficit by a set deadline or risk sanctions of up to 0.2pc of output. The EU's enforcement credibility has come into question, such as when it opted not to penalise repeat offenders Spain and Portugal in 2016. France, too, has received leniency while Germany went unpunished when it broke the rules.

BloombergJohn C. Reilly and Steve Coogan attending the Stan and Ollie Premiere as part of the BFI London Film Festival at the Cineworld Cinema in London (Ian West/PA)

Steve Coogan has said he was drawn to making a film about Laurel and Hardy because it would not be a conventional biopic.

The comedian plays Stan Laurel opposite John C Reilly as Oliver Hardy in Stan & Ollie, which had its world premiere at the closing night gala of the BFI London Film Festival.

Arriving on the red carpet in matching bowler hats and kilts, Coogan told the Press Association: We cover a little bit of their heyday, but really its about them 20 years after they were famous and its about someones relationship when the lights are off and the adulation has died away in some ways.

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They came back together to do this live tour of Britain so we see them in the autumn of their lives and that it what makes it interesting and not just a conventional biopic.

Coogan added it was scary and exciting to take on such a famous figure, but said he did feel an affinity with Laurel.

He said: His career was in comedy, mine is, hes from the north, I am and I didnt feel like I was playing a martian. It didnt seem like a huge stretch.

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Whatsapp John C Reilly, Steve Coogan, Jon S Baird, Shirley Henderson, Rufus Jones and Nina Arianda at the Stan and Ollie premiere (Ian West/PA)

Hes an icon so it wasnt like I was super comfortable with it, but I felt like I had the best shot at getting it right out of anyone.

He added: We spent a few weeks rehearsing before the camera rolled to get the physical side of it right, the dancing, a lot of the physical comedy requires a lot of work. It was hard work but enjoyable.

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Reilly said the dance routines made the film a lot more aerobic than he was expecting.

He added: Laurel and Hardy made it look so nonchalant, but actually they rehearsed a lot to get it the way it is.

Stan & Ollie is released in UK cinemas on January 11.On the eve of sitting their Leaving Cert in 2001, the five members of Dublin band Melaton found themselves at the centre of a bidding war between four major music labels  Universal, Warner, Sony and German label Edel AG.

It was the stuff of dreams for the teenagers, who ultimately opted to sign to Sony UK. However, things did not work out quite as they had hoped and the experience has had a long-lasting impact on their lives, guitarist Andrew Brennan tells Independent.ie.

We got flown over to London, signed up, put up in a fancy hotel  all the usual cliches, trappings, whatever  came home a week later, did our Leaving Cert, and I didnt do great, surprisingly, says Andrew, who is now 37. I just didnt think it mattered. I didnt care about it. I thought the stars have aligned and this is happening for us now. I did honours for most subjects in the Leaving Cert and just took pass papers on the day.

Melaton were flown to the UK and put up for three months in the house where Radiohead had written OK Computer, a mansion in Bath, England, an incredible place. They supported Elbow, Ian Brown and JJ72 on tour. Drowned in Sound described their EP, Falling Star, as early U2 shot through with the haunting impact that first made us treasure Jeff Buckley.

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"Things happened to us in a very serendipitous way. When youre at that age, when things like that happen, you view them in a very Hollywood way. And we were like, This is it! Were going to be one of those stories! Its going to take off for us! says Andrew.

The band was tasked with writing three radio hits and Andrew feels the pressure to produce these songs was the beginning of the end. It completely compromised our creative process. Everything we started to produce started to sound different. It wasnt good. We stopped working as a unit. The whole thing just kind of disintegrated.

He adds, As soon as we signed the band was poisoned. It fell apart over about two and a half years.

Sony ultimately dropped them.

It went from, Yay, this is the greatest thing ever! to getting to a point where it ended and we felt like we were finished, says Andrew. Most of my friends were about to finish college and I didnt even have a Leaving Cert. I was 21 and it really felt like the world was ending. And it was the end of that world. You had to kind of imagine a new world and build it from scratch. That was s***, as you can imagine.

It was devastating, so much so that Andrew flew to Thailand immediately after they were dropped and lost my mind for about six months. Luckily, he met his future wife there and, with her help, says he managed to keep it together mentally, but he didnt pick up a guitar again for another two years.

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For me personally, and the rest of the lads, we didnt want to do anything else. We didnt want to do medicine in college and this was taking us away from that. There was nothing like that. This was our vocation, he says.

So to be that young and that kind of deluded, for want of a better phrase, and for it all to fall apart quite dramatically and starkly and literally have the rug pulled from under you, it was very tough to deal with.

Andrew began working in a bank, which he describes as an unbelievable slap in the face. Sunday nights, he quips, were rough for a few years. The friendships between the band members also suffered as they each walked away from the people who only now served as a reminder of what could have been.

When he did return to music, it was with another band. After several incarnations they became Pursued by Dogs in 2010. When they became sick of playing indie music they decided to write music we could play at house parties and their indie/dance hybrid style was born. In 2015 they added a female voice and piano to their all-male line-up with Suzanne Purcell.

Suddenly we were all people who wanted to do this seriously and to make it work. We believe in it, he says, admitting that it took him a while to allow himself to become emotionally invested given his previous experiences.

I think Ive more of a foundation in the rest of my life to be brave enough to care now, if thats not too Dawsons Creek! he laughs. The stuff is good enough so we should try something with it, but if it doesnt work out it wont be that big of a deal.

My dad asked me, Why are you still playing music?, not in an accusatory way, but I said if I was to get anything out of it Id like to just make an album, hold it in my hand and say that after all these years I did that and there it is. But even at that point if I had to walk away Id walk away.

He got to hold that album in his hand in April when Pursued by Dogs released their self-titled debut. And hes already looking forward to their sophomore release, which will feature tracks which better define where they are right now.

Their profile has been hard-earned. They had a sold out show at the Button Factory for the album launch followed by a small summer tour and Other Voices in December. Theyve supported Le Galaxie and HamsandwicH. Even so, they all rely on day jobs to pay the rent.

We couldnt do what we do without having jobs. Theres very little money to be made at our level or even several rungs above and it costs a reasonable amount of money to do what we do, he says.

I do know of big name bands in Ireland who have record deals, who play stadiums, who do still struggle money wise. Maybe thats because Dublin is an incredibly expensive city. I think were lucky that we all have jobs and that sustains us. We wouldnt make any money if we just did music.

These days his aspirations for the band are perhaps less starry than they might have been in the early days - he wants decent slots on the festival circuit, more gigs at venues like The Button Factory, another album. His advice to young musicians who might find themselves in a similar position to himself circa 2001 is, he laughs, to do the Leaving Cert.

Pursued by Dogs latest single 'Swap Dimensions' is out now. Listen on Spotify HERE42 outfits of indigenous communities have called bandh today.

Guwahati: The Assam government on Monday announced that it would not give permission for a proposed rally of 27 Bengali organisations in support of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, in Guwahati on November 17.

The Assam governments decision comes a day after a conglomerate of 42 organisations of indigenous communities called for a 12-hour bandh on Tuesday, which coincided with the scheduled meeting of the joint parliamentary committee with officials of home and external affairs ministries on the controversial bill.

The conglomerate of 42 organisations also asked the state government to clarify their stand on the rally besides warning that they would launch agitation if some groups are allowed to hold any meeting in support of the Citizenship Amendment Bill.

The bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 15, 2016, seeks to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, to provide citizenship to illegal migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, who are of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christian extraction. However, the act doesnt have a provision for Muslim sects like Shias and Ahmediyas, who also face persecution in Pakistan.

The bill also seeks to reduce the requirement of 11 years of continuous stay in the country to six years to obtain citizenship by naturalisation.

Referring the incident of March 2017 at Silapathar, where one such rally of Bengali organisations turned violent, Mr Sarma also asked the indigenous organisations to refrain from calling a bandh, which is against the order of the Guwahati high court. He regretted that Congress party has extended its support to the bandh.

Meanwhile, the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) accused the joint parliamentary committee on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill of acting according to BJPs demands.

Stating that it has left the people of Assam with no choice but to launch a stir, the KMSS adviser, Akhil Gogoi, said: The JPC is not a BJP committee, though an MP from BJP heads the panel. The committee went ahead with its plan in haste and there was no time for anyone to oppose the proceedings. That is why more than 40 organisations have called a 12-hour bandh in Assam on Tuesday.It was the great Eamon Carr of Horslips who told me about this trick that Colonel Tom Parker had in his repertoire, in the years before he discovered Elvis. He would be selling hot dogs, except there would be very little "dog" in them, as such, just a small bit of sausage sticking out at either end of the bun. And when the unhappy customer would return to complain, the Colonel would say something like: "Hey buddy, you dropped the dog!"

It mightn't have been very convincing, but life being so short, the old conman knew that the objective truth of the matter was nowhere near as important as the fact that he now had the customer's money in his pocket.

I heard this story again in recent weeks in a BBC series which was not about the Colonel, or even about Trump, but about the late Hafez Assad, the Syrian dictator - with the small variation that it was a hamburger rather than a hot dog that Assad was selling. And of course it was a metaphorical hamburger rather than the actual hot dog in Eamon Carr's story.

But it was the same story in the end, how this mean hustler would receive visits from western leaders who were convinced that Assad had agreed something with them, only to discover that they'd been gulled - whatever they thought they were getting, they would realise that there was nothing in it.

A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad, which concludes next Tuesday on BBC2, is brilliant in several ways, but especially in its dismantling of the mystique which all such dynasties seek to create around themselves.

Last week the second episode started in 2004 with the present leader Bashar Assad, son of the hamburger hustler, and Bashar's "first lady" Asma, who was raised in London of Syrian parentage, attending the opening of an opera house in Damascus. "Together they dream of reforming Syria, making it a respectable country on the world stage", the narrator says, with scenes from that lavish opening night along with the voice of Maria Callas singing something unbearably tragic. "Fourteen years later their country will be in ruins, over 10 million will have fled their homes, and half-a-million people will have been killed"

The Assad family can appear like a perfect collection of TV drama characters - they include the old man and his wife, both of them monsters; the son who was a "real man" and who was meant to take over the family firm, but was killed in a car crash; the really crazy son who scares even the other scary family members; the daughter who is regarded by the father as probably the best of them but who can't become leader because she's a woman; and Bashar, regarded as a weak sort, with his training as an eye doctor in London, and his liking of the music of Phil Collins.

Naturally it is he who is somewhat reluctantly thrust into the big job, and on whose watch the country will be totally destroyed - if he had only been a TV drama character, they would probably have changed that bit.

But the most compelling of all these players, is the "first lady" Asma, radiating grace and charm and all those other luminous qualities she believes she must be radiating, to give the impression that with her beautiful English manners she and the good doctor Bashar are indeed turning Syria into that "respectable country" they imagined at the opera house - and yet as one commentator put it, there is "that other strange part of her personality", her love of power. Which makes her "a modern first lady for an old-fashioned dictatorship".

Ah yes, "that other strange part of her personality". You could see it in her determination to go to the funeral of Pope John Paul II, to position herself and Bashar among the other world leaders, actually standing behind President McAleese but on the lookout for something a bit more in the superpower range.

Video of the Day

"Contains upsetting scenes," they warned us at the start. And they were not wrong about that either.

A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad (BBC2)

TELEVISION REVIEWRyanair staff allegedly involved in a "staged" photo that went viral on social media have been ordered to attend an investigation meeting.

RTE reported that the Portuguese-based staff have been told to attend the meeting in Dublin to face possible disciplinary action.

The airline has said that the photo, showing airline staff sleeping on an airport floor, was "staged" and criticised unions for engaging in "fake news". The photo went viral on social media last week and came amid claims staff were forced to sleep overnight at Malaga Airport.

A number of flights were diverted to Malaga on October 13 as Storm Leslie battered Portugal.

The airline initially apologised and said that, as it was a Spanish national holiday, hotels were fully booked and the crew had to spend a "short period of time in the crew room before being moved to a VIP lounge".

However, the airline later posted video footage on Twitter that it said showed staff had staged the photo.

"The publication of this video reveals the facts and exposes the SNPVAC union fake news/false claims," said a spokesman.

"This video proves that the original picture was staged and no crew 'slept on the floor'.

"All Ryanair offices and crew rooms are equipped for security reasons with CCTV cameras and notifications of same as required by GDPR."An Irish woman is to go on trial today accused of the murder of her fiance in Australia.

Cathrina (Tina) Cahill, from New Ross, Co Wexford, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of fiance David Walsh at their home in Padstow, Sydney, between February 17 and 18 last year.

The 29-year-old father of three, originally from Moran Park, Enniscorthy, died from a wound alleged to have been sustained at the Sydney property.

Ms Cahill (25) was remanded in prison in Sydney pending the trial beginning today, which is expected to last between five and eight weeks.

Australian police have made enquiries about potential witnesses living overseas and had spent time assessing the possibility if any could return to Sydney to provide evidence.

The couple had got engaged just five weeks before the death.

Ms Cahill's father, Daniel Cahill, told the 'Wexford People', in February last year, that he had learned of his daughter's arrest on the radio.

The charity worker said at that time: "The first I heard about Tina (being charged) was on the radio on Saturday morning.

"All we want to do is speak to her. Rita (Ms Cahill's mother) is broken up and in bits and we're just trying to cope."

Mr Cahill said his daughter had worked in Melbourne when she first emigrated before moving to Sydney, where she lived with two friends from New Ross.

"She worked in a variety of jobs and recently got a job with a traffic management company.

"She loved it over there," he said at the time.

Mr Walsh and Ms Cahill had met in Australia.

Mr Walsh's father, John 'Jonners' Walsh, passed away in December 2017 following an illness some 10 months after his son's death.

Police from Bankstown station in Sydney and the New South Wales Homicide Squad launched the investigation in conjunction with assistance from the Irish consulate in Sydney.

Padstow, the area where the couple had lived, is a suburb 22km out of Sydney and lies within New South Wales.

It is mostly a residential suburb close to a number of industrial facilities.A jury will resume deliberations tomorrow morning in the trial of a woman pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to the attempted murder of a civil servant, who was walking home from work.

Laura Kenna of no fixed abode, is accused of attempting to murder Fionnuala Bourke on Lower Drumcondra Road in Dublin on January 3, 2017.

The 35-year-old has also pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to assaulting Ms Bourke, intending to cause her serious harm.

Her Central Criminal Court trial heard that Ms Bourke was walking home from work around 5pm that day, when she was attacked by Ms Kenna with a knife. Her throat was slit and she suffered severe facial scarring.

The jury heard that the central issue was Ms Kennas state of mind at the time. The court heard from two Central Mental Hospital consultant psychiatrists, who gave conflicting opinions.

Anthony Sammon SC, prosecuting, gave his closing address to the jury on Friday.

Expand Close Laura Kenna outside court yesterday. Photo: Collins / Facebook

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Whatsapp Laura Kenna outside court yesterday. Photo: Collins

He said that the heartland of this case was Ms Kennas mental state at the time.

"The prosecution has to prove that this was done by a knowing mind," he said. "That has been proven by what Ms Kenna said."

She said afterwards that she had got a sharp knife to rob somebody and had selected Ms Bourke because 'she was only little'.

Mr Sammon told the jurors that, depending on their decision, 'this becomes either a penal matter or a medical matter'.

Barry White SC, defending, explained that the jury was entitled to decide on the balance of probabilities whether his client was legally insane at the time.

"You have to decide which of those two psychiatrists is likely to be correct in relation to her state of mind," he said.

He explained that, if satisfied that the doctor called by the defence was correct, that Ms Kenna did not know the nature or quality of her act, or didnt know it was wrong or couldnt refrain herself, then she was entitled to a special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

"Look to the witnesses," he suggested. "Ask: Which psychiatrist would I prefer to have treating or assessing a member of my family if they were in the unfortunate position of having a mental illness? I know which one Id prefer."

He noted that some of the jurors might have concerns for their own safety if Ms Kenna was to be walking the streets of Dublin tomorrow were they to return the special verdict.

"That would not be the case. You can sleep easy in your bed," he assured them.

"Ms Kenna will not be released from the care of the Central Mental Hospital until they are satisfied to recommend her release and thats something that will be considered by a board presided over by a High Court judge."

Mr Justice Robert Eagar outlined a number of verdicts open to the jury on each charge.

He explained that if it found, on the balance of probabilities, that Ms Kenna was suffering from a mental disorder as described, then the special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity should be reached.

"If you do not, on the balance of probabilities, you must continue and look at what the prosecution are seeking to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that she attempted to murder her and assaulted her," he said.

"If you're convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that she did attempt to murder her, youre entitled to enter a guilty verdict," he continued.

"If you find that youre not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that she attempted to murder Ms Bourke, then you must find her not guilty of that charge."

The jury spent less than an hour considering its verdict on Friday before asking the judge to re-read the evidence of the two psychiatrists.

Justice Eagar spent a number of hours doing so today, before sending the jurors home for the rest of the day.

They will resume their deliberations tomorrow morning.Grim find: Gardai at the scene on the canal near Sallins, Co Kildare, where the remains of Kenneth OBrien were found. Photo: Colin Keegan

MURDER accused Paul Wells initially told gardai the last time he saw Kenneth OBrien was over a cup of coffee days before he went missing and his gut instinct when he found out he was gone was that he had done a runner.

Mr Wells, who has admitted killing Mr OBrien and dismembering his body, told detectives when he was first questioned that Mr OBrien had been living like a king in Australia, and hated being home in Ireland.

The jury in his trial heard memos of two of the interviews he gave gardai after he was arrested on suspicion of Mr OBriens murder.

Mr Wells (50), of Barnamore Park, Finglas, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr OBrien (33) at that address between January 15 and 16, 2016.

He has admitted he shot him dead but said it happened when they struggled during a row after Mr OBrien turned up at his home with a gun.

The accused claimed Mr OBrien had wanted to have his own partner Eimear Dunne murdered and Mr Wells refused to kill her.

He said after he shot Mr OBrien, he panicked and dismembered the remains, which were later found in a suitcase and shopping bags in the canal in Co Kildare.

Now-retired Detective Garda Declan OBrien gave evidence as the first interview was read out to the jury by Gerardine Small BL, prosecuting.

The court heard the interview was carried out on February 6, 2016 at Naas Garda Station.

Mr Wells told gardai he had worked as a truck driver but was unemployed and had five children and six grandchildren. He asked for two headache tablets during the interview.

Mr Wells told gardai his own car was off the road and he only drove his wifes Audi A3.

Asked about Mr OBrien, he said he was my friend and that they met through a garage. Mr OBrien was a car enthusiast, he said.

Mr OBrien had been having an affair at the time and he turned to me about that we struck up a friendship and became very close.

He said Mr OBrien eventually got caught by Ms Dunne and there was murder - trouble between them.

Mr Wells also told gardai about an altercation after that in which a man came to Mr OBriens house and a legally held rifle was pointed out the bedroom window.

Mr OBrien would show him pictures of girls he was with and some of them were distasteful, he said.

He said Mr OBrien had fallen out with a man he worked with because the man had discussed an affair with Ms Dunne.

For a couple of months, it looked like Mr OBrien and Ms Dunne were not going to stay together. He told gardai about a text in which Mr OBrien had allegedly asked the woman he was having an affair with to get Eimear to hit her and have Ms Dunne charged. Mr Wells said he stayed out of it, never got involved and tried to be friends with both of them.

Mr OBrien had a roving eye, he said.

Mr Wells said he never met the woman Mr O'Brien had the affair with, and she lived a couple of doors away from Mr OBrien.

The affair seemed to blow over and they got on with their lives, but Ms Dunne had felt betrayed, Mr Wells continued in the interview.

He said one night, Mr OBrien had this girl in his car, showing off and he rolled it, totally trashing it. They were lucky to get out of it.

Mr OBrien later reported it stolen, put in an insurance claim and got 10,000, Mr Wells told gardai.

He continued to get on as friends with Mr OBrien and stayed in contact with him when he went to work in Australia. Asked if Mr OBrien sent him pictures of women while he was there, Mr Wells told gardai unfortunately, yeah.

He said Mr O'Brien had a number of relationships there and I dont condone that behaviour, adding that he had been with his own wife for 33 years.

Mr OBrien could be secretive, he would tell you what he wanted to tell you, he said.

He had no empathy but if you asked him to do something, pull out an engine, he would do it, Mr Wells told gardai.

He got carried away with the bright lights of Perth - he didnt want to come home, he said.

Mr OBrien was very quiet, very withdrawn when he returned home in 2015, Mr Wells said.

He was vague about plans and when Ms Dunne asked Mr Wells about it, the accused said he told her Mr OBrien should have told her where she stood.

Mr OBrien had said why the f**k would anyone want to live here and Eimear was watching him like a hawk.

Mr Wells said Mr OBrien told him he did not think he would stay and he wanted to get Christmas over with.

He had everything over there and was living like a king with constant good weather, playing around to his hearts content.

He knew Ms Dunne found it hard to get money out of Mr OBrien, he told gardai, and she had to do everything on her own.

Asked when he last saw Mr OBrien, he said it was the Monday before he went missing - January 11, 2016.

He was at Mr OBriens house from around 10.30am for about an hour and a half and they had a general chat in the kitchen. He said Mr OBrien was quiet, he left the room twice to take calls and it was hard to get conversation out of him.

Mr OBrien was on an iPhone 5, although he normally used an iPhone 6, Mr Wells continued.

One of their conversations was about a girl from Rwanda Mr OBrien said he was having an affair with and an altercation in which he gave a guy a couple of thumps.

He said Mr OBrien showed him pictures of a woman called Anna striking a pose. One was in a wildlife park with a ranger but most were of Anna and her body.

He printed 10 of these photos with the intention of giving them to Ms Dunne and put them in his wardrobe.

Asked if Mr OBrien had any enemies, he told gardai: Kenneth was volatile with drink, he would pick on the biggest fella in the room.

There were people he would have run ins with, he said.

Mr OBrien had had a legally held rifle and after he went to Australia it was put in a gun shop and his gave Mr Wells the gun cabinet, he told gardai.

He said Mr OBrien also told him in August 2015, he was approached by a neighbour who asked him to put shelves up and he ended up having sex with her.

He said Mr OBrien thought it was funny.

In cross-examination, Det Gda OBrien agreed with Michael OHiggins SC, defending, that it was not unusual for people to hold back in earlier interviews before disclosing material later.

Det Sgt Martin Long was in the witness box as Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, read out the memo of Mr Wells second interview, held later on the same day.

He said he would not say he had been a father figure to Mr OBrien, I would say elder brother.

He said Mr OBrien had confided in him about affairs he had and prostitutes he was with.

Mr Wells told gardai Mr OBriens boss in Australia was a bit of a boyo - prostitutes, drugs, the whole nine yards, he said.

He said Mr OBrien himself was not involved in drugs or gambling.

He got carried away with the bright lights, he said. When he worked hard he would make sure he rewarded himself.

He said Mr OBrien would be cavalier about it.

He said Mr OBrien said of Ireland that he hated the place but missed his son Charlie.

He had no emotion, no empathy, Mr Wells said.

He got the the impression that things were financially so bad for Ms Dunne that she was trying to sell her furniture.

Mr Wells said Mr OBrien told him he was paying money to a child in Cork but he did not delve into that.

One minute you would know where you stood with him, the next, he would clam up, Mr Wells said of Mr O'Brien.

He said his conversations with Ms Dunne would always turn to Kenneth and she would be digging for information.

The accused said he was loyal to friends and family. Asked if Mr OBrien was ever violent to Ms Dunne, he said: I dont know, he was a bit of a headcase to be honest.

He was volatile, he could turn on a whim, he said, be he never saw him violent to Ms Dunne.

I imagine she would give as good as she got, he added.

On the day Mr OBrien went missing, his wife told him Ms Dunne was looking for him and he called her. He was told Ms Dunne had collapsed while they were on the phone so he went to her house and for once in my life I broke and showed her the pictures on his phone.

The next day Ms Dunne asked to meet him and he showed her the photos again as there was no point in hiding.

The poor girl was in tears and truth be told, so was I, he told gardai.

Mr Wells told gardai Mr OBrien used to say he would treat her like mushrooms - keep her in the dark and fill her full of bullshit.

He said he was last in Ardclough - where Mr OBrien had had a garage- a long time ago, probably not since 2009, and he would have no reason to go up there.

Gardai asked him what his gut instinct was when Ms Dunne told him Mr OBrien was missing.

Done a runner, he replied.

The trial continues before a jury and Mr Justice Paul McDermott.The trial of an Irish woman accused of the murder of her fiance in Australia is set to begin on Tuesday.

Cathrina (Tina) Cahill, from New Ross, Co Wexford, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of fiance David Walsh at their home in Padstow, Sydney, between February 17 and 18 last year.

The 29-year-old father of three, originally from Moran Park, Enniscorthy, died from a wound alleged to have been sustained at the Sydney property.

Ms Cahill (25) was remanded in prison in Sydney pending the trial which was due to begin today but was adjourned until Tuesday.

The trial is expected to last between five and eight weeks.

Australian police have made enquiries about potential witnesses living overseas and had spent time assessing the possibility if any could return to Sydney to provide evidence.

The couple had got engaged just five weeks before the death.

Ms Cahill's father, Daniel Cahill, told the 'Wexford People', in February last year, that he had learned of his daughter's arrest on the radio.

The charity worker said at that time: "The first I heard about Tina (being charged) was on the radio on Saturday morning.

"All we want to do is speak to her. Rita (Ms Cahill's mother) is broken up and in bits and we're just trying to cope."

Mr Cahill said his daughter had worked in Melbourne when she first emigrated before moving to Sydney, where she lived with two friends from New Ross.

"She worked in a variety of jobs and recently got a job with a traffic management company.

"She loved it over there," he said at the time.

Mr Walsh and Ms Cahill had met in Australia.

Mr Walsh's father, John 'Jonners' Walsh, passed away in December 2017 following an illness some 10 months after his son's death.

Police from Bankstown station in Sydney and the New South Wales Homicide Squad launched the investigation in conjunction with assistance from the Irish consulate in Sydney.

Padstow, the area where the couple had lived, is a suburb 22km out of Sydney and lies within New South Wales.

It is mostly a residential suburb close to a number of industrial facilities.THE devastated daughter of a postman who was left in a permanent vegetative state after being shot at his home 10 years ago has said it's "not fair" that justice has never been served.

Robert Delany was just 27 when he was shot at his home in Tallaght, west Dublin on the morning of October 22 2008.

Robert, his partner and their two young daughters had been sleeping in the house when he heard a knock at their door. He was shot in the head as he looked out an upstairs window.

He survived but suffered serious brain injuries and remains in a permanent vegetative state.

Expand Close Postman Robert Delany was shot in October 2008 / Facebook

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Whatsapp Postman Robert Delany was shot in October 2008

Ten years on from the attack, his family has appealed for information about the shooting, saying they want justice for Robert.

His daughter Megan (17) told RTE's Crimecall: "Its not fair that we have to live our lives like this and whoever did it can live their life perfectly."

Roberts father Terry has also spoken on the programme - which will air tonight - about the devastating impact of the shooting.

"Robert is in a permanent vegetative state, he will never recover. Its described as medically between life and death.

"They say time is a great healer but in this type of situation, its not," he said.

Robert's mother Noeleen said that she is "broken-hearted" about what happened to her son.

She said: "Ill never get over it. I was broken-hearted for myself and also for his two girls to think that they didnt have a daddy anymore, it was devastating."

A total of nine people have been detained by gardai but there have been no arrests for a number of years.

The Delany family remain desperate for answers and his Sinead is urging for anyone with information about what happened to her brother to come forward.

In an emotional plea, she said: "Those responsible have sisters, parents, brothers, wives, their own children... and theyre not talking, thats the hard part.

"They could help us bring justice for Bob if they just spoke out."

The Herald previously reported that gardai believe that Robert was shot because he had tried to stop a pub row in south Co Dublin a couple of weeks earlier.

Following his intervention in the argument, Robert had been told: "We'll get you."

Gardai are asking anyone with any information to contact them through Crimecall on 1800 40 50 60 or at Tallaght Garda Station on (01) 666 6000.Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also spewed venom against India, claiming that state terrorism was being carried out in J&K.

New Delhi: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday meekly toed the Pakistan Armys line by claiming that atrocities are being perpetrated in Jammu and Kashmir and demanding a plebiscite. Completely ignoring Pakistans hand in violence in Jammu and Kashmir and the fact that it is harbouring men accused of cross-border terrorism and targeting India, including the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he tweeted, Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris... by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the (decades-old) United Nations Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

Predictably, the tweet drew a sharp reaction from New Delhi which termed the remarks deeply regrettable. India demanded instead that Pakistan take credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours.

Pakistans deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world, said the ministry of external affairs.

India has always dismissed as irrelevant suggestions for a plebiscite in Kashmir, asserting that the state is an integral part of the country and its citizens have willingly chosen a democratically-elected government.

Mr Khans Kashmir comment came on a day when the Indian Army asked the Pakistan military to take back bodies of two armed intruders from that country who were killed in a gunfight along the Line of Control (LoC) in Sunderbani sector of Jammu on Sunday. Three Indian Army soldiers had also been killed in the encounter.

Indian Army sources said a stern warning had also been issued to the Pakistan Army to restrain the operation of terrorists from Pakistani soil or territory controlled by it.

Mr Khans fresh suggestion for a plebiscite found support in the Valley where prominent cleric and politician Mirwaiz Umar Farooq wrote on Twitter, People of #Kashmir appreciate Pakistans concern, but to put an end to the appalling grind of repression and human right abuse that Kashmiris are suffering at the hands of Indian state urgently requires #Pakistan as a party to the dispute to do much more.

On Monday, Kashmir valley and parts of the Jammu regions Chenab valley were shut to mourn and protest the killing of seven civilians in an explosion and injuries to scores of others in it and subsequent clashes with the security forces in southern Kulgam and neighboring Anantnag district on Sunday.

The shutdown came on the eve of Union home minister Rajnath Singhs visit to Kashmir valley on Tuesday to review the law and order situation with governor Satya Pal Malik.

Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also spewed venom against India, claiming that state terrorism was being carried out in J&K.

After coming to power in August this year, it was being hoped that Mr Khan would take some effort to address Indias core concern of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Mr Khan has long been accused of being a stooge of the Pakistan Army and ISI. However, soon after his electoral victory, he had earned some goodwill in India by offering an olive branch to New Delhi.

The Pakistan Prime Minister had last month mooted a meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers in New York. New Delhi had initially agreed but later cancelled the meeting after the killing of Kashmiri policemen by Pakistan-backed terrorists in J&K and release of postage stamps by Islamabad glorifying slain terrorist Burhan Wani.A YOUNG mum is suspected of dropping her two teenage sons off to carry out a burglary spree in broad daylight.

Gardai in Greystones arrested a 14-year-old boy as he clambered out the window of a targeted house wearing socks on his hands last week.

It was one of four daylight break-ins and thefts in north Wicklow in the space of just a couple of hours.

Officers are confident of arresting his older teenage brother, who is also a juvenile, and are also investigating the role of the boys young mum, who is suspected of acting as the getaway driver and facilitator of the crimes.

In total, the teenage suspects targeted four properties in Greystones and Kilcoole on Wednesday afternoon last week, robbing a significant amount of cash and jewellery.

The suspects are considered members of a burglary gang, based in the Fettercairn area of Tallaght.

They previously had links to slain Fat Andy Connors, who was shot dead in August 2014.

The 14-year-old boy was released without charge after being questioned in Bray Garda Station and a file will now be prepared for the DPP.

This crew are considered an extremely prolific burglary gang who are suspected of being involved in burglaries all over the country. These are members of what are known as roving gangs, a senior source told Independent.ie.

While some people might be shocked that a young teenager of that age is involved in this type of organised criminality, the reality is that even younger kids are being used by these gangs for burglaries and thefts, the source explained.

In total, there were eight burglaries carried out in the locality over two days.

However, the other four incidents are suspected of being carried out by a local 18-year-old man who continues to avoid being locked up despite being responsible for a crime-wave involving dozens of incidents in the past year.

Last January, Independent.ie revealed that local gardai in north Wicklow had drawn up a detailed list of prolific burglary and theft offenders known as the Filthy 50, in a crackdown against the crime epidemic.

The initiative by an eastern garda division saw a dramatic drop in burglaries, but these figures are now increasing again.

Gardai have established that 22 of the Filthy 50 are based within the Bray garda district alone, which is part of the Wicklow division, where a special scoring card against criminals was drawn up, while another 18 are mostly based in Dublin in areas such as Tallaght, Rathfarnham and Ballybrack.

Also included in the Filthy 50 list are a number of different sets of brothers, most of whom are part of the Traveller community.

As part of the drive against the gangs, three members of a brutal Tallaght gang were arrested in Blessington last December after being linked to several burglaries, car thefts and shop robberies.

With longer, darker winter nights coming, there are fears that there will be another increase in burglaries nationwide in the coming months.

However, the Tallaght mob, busted by uniformed Greystones gardai last week, are suspected of mainly operating in afternoons and evenings, when home occupiers are at work, and they are suspected of carrying out dozens of these break-ins in recent months across the country.

Last December, the Herald revealed that two Traveller burglary gangs had joined forces to form an unholy alliance of dozens of male and female family members who were wreaking havoc across the country.

They are known to use young women relatives as high-speed getaway drivers, and the south Dublin outfit is largely made up of teenagers, some as young as 14.

Figures from the CSO, published this month, recorded a small drop in burglaries nationwide, with 18,360 incidents this year, a drop of 0.8pc on last year.

Following the release of the statistics, Eoin Dunne, of PhoneWatch, said: Across the southern region, there was a 5pc increase in burglaries, while North County Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Tipperary showed very concerning double-digit increases.Patsy Dan Rodgers outside his home on Tory Island, off the coast of Donegal. Photo: Frank McGrath

The King of Tory Island's biographer has paid tribute to the man who fought to keep the lifeblood, language and culture of the island alive.

Funeral arrangements are yet to be announced for Patsy Dan Rodgers (74), a community activist, artist, musician and the last man to hold the title of 'king' in Ireland.

Mr Rodgers passed away after a long illness at Dublin's Mater Hospital, 248km from the island but a short distance from his birthplace in the south inner city.

The father of four had spent his life campaigning for Tory Island, where he was taken as an adopted child aged four. He was crowned 'King of Toraigh' in the 1990s, when the family of the previous king, Padraig Og Rodgers, asked him to succeed their father.

"Ireland has lost a unique character, a very energetic and joyful character, a talented musician, artist, community activist - someone with a great love for Tory Island, the Gaeltacht and islanders. He'll be sorely missed," said biographer Art Hughes.

Dr Hughes's book 'Ri Thorai' (The King of Tory) was published earlier this year.

"I had the great privilege to work with Patsy Dan on his life story and I was hoping to get it out in time (before his death) and he enjoyed the book, I believe," Dr Hughes said. It is expected his funeral will take place on Wednesday or later, on Tory Island.

President Michael D Higgins was among those to pay tribute to Mr Rodgers, who is survived by his wife Caitlin and their four children. "His love for Toraigh Island and its people was evident in his art and his campaigns, and he was an outstanding ambassador for the island in all its welcoming diversity," said Mr Higgins.Kathleen Chada holds an angel with the names of her two sons Eoghan and Ruairi before leading a symbolic walk with friends and family members of murder victims in the Phoenix Park at the weekend. Photograph Moya Nolan

A grieving mum whose two sons were killed by their father has hit out at the Irish justice system following the recent eight-year sentence a man received for attempting to murder his four children.

Kathleen Chada's world was shattered when her husband Sanjeev murdered their sons Eoghan (10) and Ruairi (5) on July 29, 2013.

He killed the boys at Skehanagh Lower in Ballintubber, Co Mayo and their bodies were found in the boot of Chadas car, which he had crashed near Westport.

Speaking with RTE Radio Ones Sean ORourke this morning, Ms Chada said the punishment for domestic abusers is far too lenient.

Her former husband received a double-life sentence for his crimes, but in accordance with Irish law he will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years.

But memories of the horrific day came flooding back following the eight-year jail sentence a dad received for attempting to murder his four children.

Expand Close On July 29, 2013, Kathleen Chada's two sons Eoghan (10) and Ruairi (5) were murdered by their father, Sanjeev Chada (inset) / Facebook

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Whatsapp On July 29, 2013, Kathleen Chada's two sons Eoghan (10) and Ruairi (5) were murdered by their father, Sanjeev Chada (inset)

The stay-at-home father, who cannot be named, previously admitted to four counts of attempted murder at his family home in the south-east of the country in June 2016.

"Every line [in the media reports] resonated with me because it was relatively similar to my own situation," she said.

"He was a stay-at-home dad and there wasnt any long-term issues in the relationship just like my own.

"The judge set a sentence to 12 years and then brought it down to eight. And out of those eight years hell automatically get a quarter off, which brings it down to six.

"Hes already been in prison for a year so in five years' time hell potentially be out and on the streets again.

"The question is if hell be a danger to society, but it doesn't matter from my prospective. Hes a danger to his children and yet hes going to be allowed out.... I think its an absolute insult."

Ms Chada also criticised the suspended sentence of Atilia Kerekes (44) last week, who violently beat his wife after she refused to have sex with him.

"She had a protection order against him, but the judge said feelings were running high at the time and even gave him credit for his cooperation, for his employment record and for his guilty plea.

"I have an issue with credit being given for a guilty plea because it means a perpetrator doesnt have to face what theyve done," she said.

Ms Chada is participating in the Safe Ireland, Safe World conference being held in Dublin today and tomorrow.Brave: Claudia Scanlon (14) has bandages over 80pc of her body due to her EB disease

Claudia Scanlon (14) from Terenure in Dublin has a severe form of the 'butterfly skin' disease EB (epidermolysis bullosa), which leaves 80pc of her body covered in wounds.

This incredibly painful genetic condition causes the skin layers and internal body linings to blister and wound at the slightest touch.

One of only 300 people in Ireland with EB, Claudia has to be bandaged almost from head to toe. Her body is 80pc covered in bandages, which have to be changed every two days, an extremely painful process that takes several hours. Despite the difficulties, parents Liz and Gary try to ensure that Claudia, who is a Junior Cert pupil at St Louis High School, Rathmines, has as normal a life as possible.

"As a teenage girl, she wants to be out in society but she can feel left out and she has been very hurt by being excluded," said Liz. "EB dictates her life, she can't even take something as simple as a bus journey on her own, as she can't risk a fall or being bumped into.

"With social media today, everything is about appearances, which can be very tough, but beneath the bandages is a teenager with similar emotions, ideas and interests as others her age."

Claudia recently got to meet one of her sporting idols, rugby star Johnny Sexton, for a one-on-one interview about coping with pain and a host of other revealing questions.

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Breakthrough

Today, which marks the start of National EB Awareness Week, it was announced that a new gene therapy breakthrough will give new hope to people living with epidermolysis bullosa (EB).

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Researchers at UCD have produced a gel-like treatment containing a working gene which, they hope, will form functioning skin and dramatically improve healing.

The gel, which inserts a functioning gene into skin cells, has been theoretically proven to work with one strand of the disease.

Researchers are carrying out further studies to see if it will work on patient skin and on other forms of EB.

The best part of this therapy is that it does not involve painful skin-grafting procedures or risks associated with viral treatments in delivering functioning genes to the skin.

The gene therapy research has been carried out over the past nine years by Professor Wenxin Wang between NUIG and UCD, and has been part-funded by EB charity Debra Ireland through public donations.

Debra Ireland provides day-to-day support for EB patients and their families and also funds research programmes to find better treatments and possible cures for EB.

"If this treatment is successful, people living with EB will be able to apply a gel to their skin and it will improve wound healing and the forming of functioning skin," said Debra Ireland head of research Dr Sinead Hickey.

"This is not a cure, but this gel could make skin stronger and could improve life expectancy as a result.

"It may also prevent wounds in the first place. If there are no wounds then patients will suffer fewer infections, feel less pain, less itch and develop less skin cancer.

"A pharmaceutical company has now taken over the development of this gel, but it would not have come about without the public donations which funded the first three years of research."

This week is National EB Awareness Week and Debra Ireland is asking the public to get involved.

"Quite simply, EB is still classed as an incurable disease, and through public support we are funding gene therapy research in the hope of a breakthrough in either pain and skin management, or in battling the root cause itself.

"There are research projects similar to Professor Wang's out there, waiting to be funded, which could bring us a step closer to a cure.

"The answer lies in supporting technology that works on genes and changing DNA, and researchers such as Prof Wang and his team have shown us that the answer is there if we keep supporting EB researchers in their work."

Text the word BUTTERFLY to 50300 in order to make a 4 donation.A mother is suspected of dropping her two teenage sons off to carry out four daylight break-ins and thefts in the space of just a couple of hours.

Gardai in Greystones, Co Wicklow, arrested a 14-year-old boy as he came out the window of a house wearing socks on his hands.

Officers are confident of arresting his older teenage brother, who is also a juvenile, and are also investigating the role of the boys' young mother, who is suspected of acting as the getaway driver and facilitator of the crimes.

In total, the teenage suspects targeted four properties in Greystones and Kilcoole on Wednesday afternoon last week, stealing a significant amount of cash and jewellery.

The suspects are considered members of a notorious Traveller burglary gang based in the Fettercairn area of Tallaght, Dublin.

They previously had links to slain Traveller burglary kingpin 'Fat' Andy Connors.

The 14-year-old was released without charge after being questioned at Bray garda station and a file will now be prepared for the DPP.

"This crew are considered an extremely prolific burglary gang who are suspected of being involved in burglaries all over the country.

"These are members of what are known as roving gangs," a senior source told the Irish Independent.

"While some people might be shocked that a young teenager of that age is involved in this type of organised criminality, the reality is that even younger kids are being used by these gangs for burglaries and thefts."

In total, there were eight burglaries carried out in the locality over two days last week, but the other four incidents are suspected of being carried out by a local 18-year-old.

The Tallaght gang are suspected of mainly operating "during daylight hours" in afternoons and evenings when homeowners are at work. They are suspected of carrying out dozens of break-ins in recent months across the country.

Last January, it was revealed that gardai in north Wicklow had drawn up a detailed list of prolific burglary and theft offenders known as the 'Filthy 50' in a massive drive against the crime epidemic.

The crackdown saw a dramatic drop in burglaries, but these figures are now increasing again.

Gardai have established that 22 of the 'Filthy 50' are based within the Bray Garda district alone, which is part of the Wicklow division where a special 'scoring card' against criminals was drawn up.

Another 18 burglars on the list are mostly based in Dublin areas such as Tallaght, Rathfarnham and Ballybrack.

Also included in the 'Filthy 50' list are a number of different sets of brothers, most of whom are part of the Traveller community.Gardai at the scene on Homestead Court, Cabra, Dublin, where Amanda Carroll lived. Photo: Caroline Quinn

Gardai are expected to launch a murder probe this morning after a 33-year-old mother of two was apparently strangled to death in her Dublin apartment.

Amanda Carrolls body was found by her 16-year-old son at her apartment in Homestead Court, Quarry Road, Cabra, shortly after 2.30pm yesterday.

It is understood that marks and bruising on the womans head and neck have led gardai to believe that in all probability she was murdered by a man well known to her.

Gardai arrested a 35-year-old suspect in the Cabra area of the city at around 6pm yesterday. Officers are not looking for anyone else in connection with their investigation.

The man was being detained at Mountjoy garda station last night.

Ms Carroll was originally from the Champions Avenue area of Dublins north inner city but had been living in Cabra.

She also had a five-year-old son.

A post-mortem examination is due to take place this morning, which will determine what direction the Garda investigation will take.

Sources are investigating whether Ms Carroll was involved in an argument with a man known to her outside the apartment complex late on Saturday night.

The Garda Technical Bureau carried out an examination of the scene at the apartment complex throughout the afternoon.

Ms Carroll's body was removed from the scene about 9.30pm last night.

An ambulance pulled out of the gates of the complex, while residents looked on.

In Cabra last night, there was an overwhelming sense of sadness at the death of the young mother.

At a local chip shop, where the victim was a regular customer, tributes were paid to Ms Carroll who was described as a lovely young woman.

"She was a nice, happy, smiling girl. She was always really jolly," said a staff member.

Meanwhile, a resident at the apartments where Ms Carroll lived said: "It came as a terrible shock when we heard today about the death of a young woman and saw the gardai at the scene. When I found out I was just so upset."

Friends of the deceased woman also paid tribute to her on social media.

"Rest in peace, Amanda," said one. "Devastating," said another.

A relative of the victim told how he loved her so much.

Meanwhile, gardai have said that investigations in to the tragic death of Ms Carroll are continuing.Gavin Coyne, whose Dad Thomas is doing a parachute jump to raise cash for Heart Children Ireland Pic Steve Humphreys

Gavin Coynes parents Maria and Thomas hold a photo of their son at their home in Clare Hall Pic Steve Humphreys

THE father of a young Dublin boy who died in Britain while waiting for a heart transplant is raising funds to help other families, as the ultimate tribute to my son.

Thomas Coynes son Gavin (10), from Donaghmede, north Dublin, died in February 2017 after he was transferred to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.

Since his death, Gavins mother Maria has campaigned for Ireland to introduce a heart transplant service for children, and for improvements to the transplant transfer service to the UK.

On Saturday Thomas is set to take a parachute jump, with friends and colleagues from the property company CBRE, to raise funds for Heart Children Ireland.

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This is in memory of Gavin and to give back, to help other families who go through what we went through, Thomas said.

If we can improve the heart transplant service and the transfer service for children and their families, that would be such a great result.

But if we can raise this money for the charity, then it would be a very fitting tribute to our son.

The couple endured the hardest journey of their lives after Gavin, a pupil at Holy Trinity Primary School, fell ill only days after they returned from a family holiday to Florida.

He was diagnosed with heart failure after suffering what was thought to be a stomach bug.

The intelligent child, who had scored one of the highest maths and English test results his teacher had seen, was flown to the UK to be placed on the heart transplant list, as Ireland has no such service for children.

But the family had to arrange their own travel and arrangements in the UK  a matter that added to the distress.

We came back from Florida and Gavin started being sick and then within days we were told it was critical, Thomas said.

The charity were very good to us when Gavin was in hospital in the UK and after he passed away. There was a specialist psychologist for me to speak to after Gavin died.

I needed that help. My work was so good, supporting me while Gavin was in hospital, but a lot of people have to take time off work and have no funds when their child is in a UK hospital. Thats where this charity is vital.

Its a hard road to walk down and families need someone there to help.

In March 2017, officials from the Organ Donation and Transplant Ireland (ODTI) office met medical staff at Our Ladys Childrens Hospital in Dublin to discuss setting up a paediatric heart transplant scheme.

Irish children are transferred to the UK because of the small number of people requiring transplants and donor hearts.

Every child who needs a heart transplant should be entitled to it in Ireland, Thomas said.

My son was amazing. He never once moaned in his 10 short years on earth. I was very proud of him and I want to do my best for him and other children with this jump.

Around 30 people are taking part in the jump in Edenderry, Co Offaly.

To support Thomas, please visit herePresident Michael D Higgins has said he used the Government jet for a visit to Belfast on the advice of his office, rather than the PSNI.

Having initially appeared to blame the Northern Ireland police service for his use of the Lear jet, Mr Higgins has now said he was acting on advice from his own officials.

However, he repeatedly declined to elaborate on what advice lead him to use the plane last May rather than travel by road. A car was also sent from Dublin to pick him up at the airport in Belfast so that he could be in Queen's University to give an early morning lecture.

The Learjet costs about 4,000 an hour to operate.

Speaking in Drogheda today, Mr Higgins said: "I have visited Northern Ireland many times in the past seven years. I take the advice from my office. My office judges this trips in terms of... the considerations taken into account are logistics and security."

The controversy re-erupted after the BBC reported there was anger within the PSNI at the suggestion that it did not have sufficient resources to escort Mr Higgins from the border to Belfast.

Today, Mr Higgins said he was "grateful" to the PSNI "not just the assistance they provide in relation to my security but the courtesy the men and women have extended to Sabina and I".

He was repeatedly asked to clarify what security concerns were raised by his office but declined to do so.

Over the weekend, Sinn Fein presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada called on Mr Higgins to come clean on his reasons for travelling to Belfast on the Lear jet.

He flew to Belfast in a Lear Jet, funded by the taxpayer, while his car was driven from Dublin to Belfast to pick him up at the airport, she said.

Mr Higgins is now likely to face further questions on the issue during the final TV debate tomorrow night.The Congress on Monday also released a bank statement claiming that the Rs 24 lakh reflected in it is the amount returned to Choksis firm.

New Delhi: The Congress on Monday launched a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi government and demanded the immediate resignation of finance minister Arun Jaitley alleging conflict of interest as his kin received Rs 24 lakh as legal fee from a firm of PNB scam accused Mehul Choksi in December, a month before the case came to light, and returned the money to Mr Choksi on February 20 .

Using #ArunJaitlie MustResign, Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted, Arun Jaitlies daughter was on the payroll of thief Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile her FM daddy sat on his file & allowed him to flee. She received money from ICICI a/c no: 12170500316. Its sad that media has blacked out this story. The people of India wont.

Addressing a press conference, Congress leaders Sachin Pilot, Sushmita Dev and Rajeev Satav alleged that Mr Jaitleys daughter and son-in-law, both lawyers, allegedly received a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from Mr Choksi.

Mr Pilot said, Gitanjali Gems was engaged to retain Arun Jaitley Jis daughter Sonali Jaitley and son-in-law Jayesh Bakshis legal firm for a sum of `24 lakh. Choksi fled the country on January 4. On February 20, Sonali and Jayesh returned those 24 lakh saying we didnt do any work for them.

However, Mr Jaitleys son-in-law had earlier issued a statement stating that his law firm had returned the retainership the moment they came to know that the company was involved in a scam.

The Congress on Monday also released a bank statement claiming that the `24 lakh reflected in it is the amount returned to Mr Choksis firm.

Mr Pilot said, As people who owed money to Mehul Choksi/Nirav Modi came forward and deposited the money with the government after their fraudulent escape, why did FM Jaitleys daughter and son-in-law redeposit `24 lakh in the account of a company that had defrauded the banks and people of `26,306 crore? Why did they hide it?

The Congress alleged collusion on the part of the finance minister and said, Is this not a clear-cut case of collusion, connivance & conflict of interest on part of FM Arun Jaitley? Why were FM Jaitley, his daughter and son-in-law neither summoned nor questioned by CBI/ED/SFIO? Is it not a fit case to sack Shri Arun Jaitley and conduct a full independent investigation?The President and a former Taoiseach have led tributes to former Fine Gael TD Seymour Crawford and hailed his role in promoting cross-Border co-operation.

Mr Crawford, whose death at the age of 74 was announced yesterday, was a TD for the Cavan-Monaghan constituency and was first elected to the Dail in 1992. He was re-elected at every election until he retired in 2011.

He previously sat on Monaghan County Council.

An Ulster Protestant, Mr Crawford has been remembered for bringing a unique perspective to the table during a crucial period in the peace process and for his work in building relations North and south.

A farmer who once served as vice-president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr Crawford held a number of positions in the Fine Gael party throughout his career.

Former Taoiseach John Bruton said Mr Crawford helped "in many practical and undemonstrative ways to bridge gaps in mutual understanding that grew up between the communities on this island".

During his political career Mr Crawford was also vice-chairman of the British-Irish parliamentary body.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said his former colleague "played a crucial role in the work of the British-Irish inter-parliamentary body during one of the most important periods of the peace process, bringing his unique perspective to the table as the only Ulster Protestant member of the Oireachtas delegation".

"On a personal note, I had the privilege of working alongside Seymour during his final term in the Dail, and I know that I wasn't the only member of the current Government to listen and learn from him prior to his retirement in 2011," he said.

President Michael D Higgins also paid tribute to Mr Crawford and extended his condolences to his family and friends. "Seymour was a staunch representative of Monaghan values, of its culture and traditions. He was an early voice for cross-Border co-operation. All the traditions he represented were an important contribution to Irish life and to those of us who served with him in the Oireachtas," he said.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin also expressed his sadness at the death of the Fine Gael stalwart, recalling Mr Crawford's "wry sense of humour [and] a great sense of decency".

Heather Humphreys, who was co-opted to Mr Crawford's seat on Monaghan County Council, said he was not only a mentor but a close friend.Accusations of racism, questions over the spending of public money, and admissions of a series of driving offences - including one serious crash - it seems there is nothing that will sway the public off course in the run-up to Friday's vote.

The polls since the beginning of the campaign have shown little movement and two more at the weekend showed the electorate appears to be holding firm.

Michael D Higgins looks on course to be returned to the Aras for another seven years by a massive landslide - save something unprecedented occurring in the final days.

From the start, the accepted wisdom was that the election is the incumbent's to lose and, from the very first polls to the latest ones, we have seen only marginal movement for any of the candidates.

Mr Higgins is sitting pretty on between 68pc and 69pc of the vote, depending on which poll you cite.

His nearest competitor is Sean Gallagher, who is trailing in the early teens, and the remaining four challengers are all in single digits.

The lack of movement shows that nothing to date in this campaign has been enough to sway the electorate - not the messages brought forward nor the tough questions asked.

Mr Higgins has faced repeated questions about his use of public funds from his election rivals. The most recent furore focuses on his use of the Government jet to travel to Belfast to deliver a lecture.

He cited security advice that he could not be picked up at the Border - a suggestion which has seemed to cause anger in the PSNI.

But it would seem that the public at large have no concern over the costs associated with the presidency, or how they are spent and accounted for.

Meanwhile, for the most talked-about challenger, Peter Casey, the full impact of his controversial comments on the Travelling community has not yet been fully tested, but the early signs are it won't make or break his 2pc standing.

A Red C poll for the 'Sunday Business Post' was conducted between October 11 and 17, which means that at least part of the sample was taken after the Irish Independent published his comments about Travellers.

There has been some anecdotal commentary that his opinions, while out of step politically, may yet find an audience with some - but it is hard to imagine that, even if that is true, it will be a swing large enough to make him a real contender.

The same goes for the remaining contestants who, despite their best efforts, have moved negligibly in the latest round of polls.

There are still a few days to go and the underdogs will be at pains to point out that a week is a long time in politics.

It is true that the electorate will likely latch on in the final days of the campaign.

But the series of polls done to date show that, while they may be just snapshots in time, those snapshots point to an electorate who already have their minds made up.Presidential hopeful Senator Joan Freeman has left the door open for a second run for Aras an Uachtarain in the future if she's unsuccessful this time around.

Meanwhile, she denied she is disheartened by polls showing incumbent Michael D Higgins on course for a landslide victory, pointing out that the race could "change dramatically" in the coming days.

Ms Freeman, who founded suicide prevention charity Pieta House, said she'd "certainly think about it" when asked if she'd consider another bid for the presidency if she doesn't get elected this week.

She said she's been "so honoured and privileged" to have her name on the ballot paper and to meet people around the country during the campaign.

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"Ive fallen in love with Ireland because of the people," she said.

"They so want to make things better for their community and I want to do it for them as well. I want to lead them in that."

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The RedC/Sunday Business Post poll published at the weekend put Mr Higgins on 68pc - that's 56 points ahead of closest rival, businessman and former Dragons' Den star Sean Gallagher.

Ms Freeman's support was at 6pc.

She said she's focused on highlighting her message of supporting mental health and wellbeing and building stronger communities in the closing days of the campaign.

She questioned how much polls measure the "true facts that are on the ground" and added: "We all know that things could change dramatically in the next few days."

Ms Freeman said she's "so proud" of her daughter Aislinne for revealing she's in a same-sex relationship as she rebuffed claims her mother is a right-wing conservative with links to the Iona Institute.

Aislinne Freeman spoke of her relationship with her partner, Australian Marieke Altena, and how her mother is "100pc supportive off us as a couple".

She said she pleaded with her mother to publicly reveal her relationship with Marieke in the context of the Iona Institute claims and decided to do it herself.

Senator Freeman said today; "I feel bad for her that she felt like she had to do that.

"But she was so frustrated watching me for months denying anything to do with Iona. Im not a member of Iona but nobody would believe that.

"And she felt that she had to speak about it yesterday.

"But Im so proud of her. I wish she didnt have to do that. Im sorry that she did. But Im so proud of her because she was willing to tell the world about herself in order to save me."

She said her family have been "incredible" during the campaign and "just want everything to be the best for me".Campaign trail: Presidential candidate Joan Freeman with her daughter Aislinne (left) and Aislinnes partner Marieke Altena at the Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords. Photo: Caroline Quinn

Joan Freeman's daughter, Aislinne, has revealed for the first time that she is in a same-sex relationship, fiercely rebuffing claims that her mother is a right-wing conservative.

From the beginning of the presidential campaign, she said she had been exasperated by the claims that her mother has links with the Iona Institute, the socially conservative group that campaigned for a No vote in the marriage referendum.

Freeman has insisted she is not involved with Iona - but that is as far as she has gone publicly with the issue.

Out on the campaign hustings at the Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords, Co Dublin, Aislinne introduced the blonde woman by her side as her partner, Marieke Altena, who comes from the Blue Mountains area outside Sydney, Australia.

The couple met in Geneva when they were both working for the World Health Organisation.

Aislinne (32) has a doctorate in psychology and works as a health consultant, while Marieke works for the HSE.

Both women are very keen to put paid to the rumours of the Iona Institute link and to end the damage they fear it has done to Freeman's presidential campaign.

"Do you think she'd be involved with them, given their views?" asked Aislinne.

"That's not the kind of person she is. She is the most tolerant person I know."

Aislinne went on to reveal that, two years ago, she came out to her mother after starting her relationship with Marieke and that Freeman had "the best reaction" out of all the parents of anyone she knows in the LGBT community.

"She told me that she loves me and that all she wanted was for me to be happy," she says.

Aislinne said she pleaded with her mother to publicly reveal her relationship with Marieke in the context of the Iona Institute accusations - but that Freeman had refused, insisting she did not want to use family members in the campaign.

"She wants to protect the family - but we are coming out and saying it now ourselves," said Aislinne.

"She is 100pc supportive of us as a couple," she continued - with a wry quip that, in fact, her mother keeps asking: "So when are the two of you getting married?"

Asked how she felt Freeman's presidential campaign was going, Aislinne said she had faith in the electorate and believed "people will go out and vote for a better Ireland".

"Joan has kept her integrity and dignity and we are all so proud of her," she said. "She has done herself justice."

However, she admitted that the debates had been frustrating because all the talk has been about "the loan and Iona" and that nobody wants to talk about her vision.

"It's frustrating because Joan has so much to offer," she said.

At the Pavilions, Freeman received a warm reception, with a sizeable number of people coming up to tell her that they had been personally helped by Pieta House, the organisation she set up to prevent suicide and self-harm.

One man revealed he had left hospital only a week ago after a relapse.

"I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for Pieta House," he said.

He spoke highly of Freeman, but worries that she may be a loss to Pieta House if she won the presidency.

"But I don't mean that in a derogatory way," he said. "I think she's a great person."

Another woman revealed that her daughter made an attempt to take her own life at the age of 16.

"She wouldn't be here if Pieta House hadn't done all they could for her," she said.

Her daughter is now 31 and though she still suffers from depression, was confident enough in herself to stand up and make a speech at her wedding, she added.

Luighse Rutherford gave Freeman a copy of a book of new short stories, 'A Bowl of Irish Stew', that her father Gary has written, with all the proceeds going to Pieta House. With a print run of 1,000 copies, he hopes to raise 10,000.

"When my dad heard Joan was going to be here, he asked me to come down and give it to her," said Luighse.

Earlier, at the Stillorgan Shopping Centre in south Co Dublin, Freeman took a break from the hustings to go for a cup of coffee.

She became emotional as she revealed she left the last televised presidential debate feeling "deflated" in herself, after launching an attack on Michael D Higgins and Sean Gallagher.

"I'm not an aggressive person but I was aggressive - and it was my own fault," she said.

"The environment can be so toxic that it brings out something that's not real," she said, adding that she believed it is the competition.

"But I won't be doing that again.

"I was just trying to do my best in a difficult environment - I don't think it's anyone's natural environment," she said, asking why "should the environment be there to humiliate people?"

She believes that the way campaigns are fought needs to completely change, saying people had made their minds up before any of the candidates had spoken and that the Government had made its mind up.

"The whole thing needs to change," she said, adding that she worried young people might be put off from running in the next presidential election.More than 3,600 council-owned homes are lying vacant, despite the housing crisis.

New figures show almost one in every 33 houses and apartments owned by local authorities is lying idle, and that it takes an average of seven months to re-let a dwelling.

Yet the number of households assessed as qualifying for housing support stands at almost 72,000.

A report from the National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC), which oversees local authorities, says while the level of vacant stock is coming down, some councils need to improve the speed at which units are re-let.

The NOAC report says it takes an average of 28.9 weeks to re-let a council dwelling, but it is as high as 77 weeks in Sligo and 70 weeks in Leitrim.

The quickest turnaround times are in Westmeath at just under seven weeks, Laois at eight weeks, Monaghan at 9.5 and South Dublin County Council at just over 10.

"Nationally, there has been a welcome reduction in the level of vacant stock within local authorities, a trend which has continued from 2016," the NOAC report said.

"Coupled with that, the national average re-letting time has dropped significantly since 2016, down to 28.9 weeks."

It added that "11 local authorities have re-letting times of less than 20 weeks, with some local authorities making substantial reductions in average re-letting times".

"There are still authorities that need to improve average times, but the current trend is very welcome," it said.

The figures show that overall, some 3,631 houses and apartments - or 2.72pc of all council housing stock - are not tenanted.

As of December 31 last, councils owned 133,394 units, up from 131,375 the previous year, an increase of 1.5pc.

But there is a wide disparity in vacancy rates. The lowest vacancy rates of under 1pc are in Westmeath, south Dublin and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. In Fingal, the vacancy rate is 1.72pc, in Meath it stands at 1.76pc, it's 1.78pc in Kildare and 1.85pc in Wicklow. In Cork, it's 1.87pc.

The vacancy rate in Galway City stands at 2.9pc and it's 4.39pc in Dublin City. The highest vacancy rates are in Leitrim (5.86pc), Longford (4.78pc) and Donegal (4.42pc).

In some cases, vacant stock had been earmarked for regeneration and as a result fell out of use. Many of these units, called voids, are being refurbished and added to the stock. The figures also show councils sold 348 homes in 2017.Actress Selma Blair revealed this weekend that she has multiple sclerosis, a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord.

The Cruel Intentions actress, who was diagnosed in August, said she was disabled and now needs assistance on the set of Netflixs Another Life.

She wrote on Instagram: By the grace of the lord, and will power and the understanding producers at Netflix , I have a job. A wonderful job. I am disabled. I fall sometimes. I drop things.

My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken gps. But we are doing it. And I laugh and I dont know exactly what I will do precisely but I will do my best, she added.

Ava Battles, Chief Executive of MS Ireland said the fact that Selma has publicly addressed her condition on social media, will help raise awareness about MS in Ireland.

The fact that Ms Blair will create awareness is good because MS affects over 9,000 people in Ireland, and people perceive it to be an older persons disease, and they immediately associate it with a wheelchair user.

A lot of younger people who have MS want to change that perception. MS is usually diagnosed between the ages of 25 and 40, so thats important for people to know. People perceive it to be an older persons condition. But between the ages of 25 and 40 is the time when people are thinking of life, careers, family, so it has a huge impact on peoples lives.

It was great to see how she spoke about her friends and her colleagues and how they are assisting her, theyre assisting her to be able to stay at work, and thats really important for a person with MS.

Two to three more women than men are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Battles added.

Shes putting a very positive message across. You could see the comments underneath her post. People were saying its great that youve come out and spoken about it.

When people are diagnosed with MS theyre always looking to see someone who is out there working, talking about their MS, and it might encourage them that I can work, yes it can be challenging, but Im trying to manage my MS.

When you see a celebrity talk about MS, some people would certainly see it as a very positive thing.Cruises can be a sweet fit for solo travellers - offering a safe environment with lots of socialising, activities and excursions under one ticket.

But several readers have pointed out a problem: the dreaded single supplement, which can add hundreds to the cost. So how can solos work around this hefty extra?

First off, pick up the phone.

By all means Google the basics, but travel agents and tour operators (ask for their cruise specialists) will be able to tell you about the best lines for solo travellers, and the bespoke activities they provide - from cocktail parties to hosted dining, onboard dance partners or get-togethers ahead of shore excursions.

"Will there be other single travellers? How will we find them? Do we have to dine alone?" These are common questions asked by first-time solo cruisers, says Colum McLornan of Northern Ireland's Friendship Travel.

Cruise lines he suggests include Norwegian, one of the first to launch 'studio' staterooms together with dedicated lounges for single guests (a seven-night summer sailing from Barcelona costs from around 1,250pp, including flights, with Friendship) and Star Clippers, whose luxury tall ship Royal Clipper offers inside doubles without any single supplement on sailings from Barbados this winter (full-board, seven-night cruises start from around 2,400, with flights).

Read more in our cruise travel section here

P&O, Fred Olsen and Cunard do single cabins, Cruise & Maritime sets aside a limited number for single occupancy with up to 50pc off fares, about a fifth of Saga's ocean ship staterooms are for solos, and Celebrity is taking bookings for 16 solo 'suites' on its new Celebrity Edge, destined for the Med next year.

Royal Caribbean now offers 'studios' on several ships, too. Sunway has a Caribbean cruise on Anthem of the Seas out of New York next year from 1,675pp, for example, including flights.

Expand Close A Douro cruise takes in Salamanca. / Facebook

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River cruising is another option.

Uniworld tells me it has waived or reduced single supplements on several cruises next year, while Riviera Travel's Dublin office sells at least four cabins without single supplements on all river cruises, it says.

Next October, an eight-day River Danube cruise wholly dedicated to solo travellers sees guests get sole occupancy of twin cabins, including flights and meals, from 1,959pp.

The takeaway?

"There is no one best time for single travellers to cruise, but planning ahead and booking early is key to get the best value," says Kathleen Maher of Tour America. Solo options are improving, but they remain a fraction of overall capacity.

So now's the time to get planning for 2019... or even 2020.

Read more:Transgender and non-binary people are taking to Twitter to protest over an unreleased memo from the Trump administration that proposes changes to the way gender is defined.

The unreleased memo from the US Department for Health and Human Services calls for a tightening of the legal definition of sex, excluding transgender and non-binary individuals.

It reportedly said: The sex listed on a persons birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a persons sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.

If this proposed change is to be considered, it could affect an estimated 1.4 million Americans who identify as a different gender to that which they were assigned.

To protest against this memo, transgender and non-binary people have been using the hashtag #WontBeErased on Twitter, along with selfies and positive messages, to amplify their voices and raise awareness of the issue.

Along with LGBTQ+ organisations and charities, celebrities including Susan Sarandon and Laverne Cox have posted about the memo with messages of support.

Social media user Kelly said: I joined #WontBeErased because for the longest time I have remained silent about being transgender.

I want everyone to know how this effects people like me I will fight this with everything I have.

Some Twitter users posted on behalf of their transgender friends and family, who could be affected if policy were to change in the US.

This is my daughter... she is smart and beautiful and brave and has the biggest heart in the world... her future is bright and there are no limits on what she can accomplish... and she #WontBeErased #TransRightsAreHumanRights pic.twitter.com/WlyCcWkEdZ  Paria Hassouri, MD. She/Her. (@pariahassouri) October 21, 2018

Paria Hassouri, a paediatrician in California, said: I posted about my daughter using the #WontBeErased hashtag because I think its important for transgender people and families to be visible in the community Ultimately, this is about human rights and equal rights.

More than ever we need to come together and support particularly our kids who will be the policy makers of the future. I still believe that love is stronger than fear and hate.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.

We won't be erased.#WeWontBeErased.

And we won't stop fighting.  Sen. Sarah McBride (@SarahEMcBride) October 21, 2018

The online use of the hashtag was coupled with offline protests, which saw hundreds take to the street in New York and Washington DC on October 21 and October 22.Operation: Rescue workers gather at the site of the train derailment in Lian county in northern Taiwan. Photo: AP

One of Taiwan's fastest passenger trains derailed on a curve, killing at least 18 people and injuring more than 175 others.

The Puyuma express was carrying more than 360 passengers from a suburb of Taipei in the north to Taitung, a city on Taiwan's south-east coast, when it went off the tracks shortly before 5pm.

Most of the deaths were in the first car, and it was unclear last night whether other people were trapped in the train.

Some passengers were crushed to death, Ministry of National Defence spokesman Chen Chung-chi said.

"Their train car turned over. They were crushed, so they died right away," he said.

The Puyuma trains travel up to 150km per hour, faster than any other in Taiwan except for one express rail line.

At the scene, just south of the city of Luodong, the train's cars lay in a zig-zag formation near the tracks, with five carriages turned on their sides.

Local television reports said passengers tried to escape through windows and that bystanders gathered to help them before rescuers arrived.

Hours after the accident, one of the eight cars was still tipped over at about a 75-degree angle, with the entire right side destroyed.

Fearing people may be trapped beneath the car, firefighters with lights on their hard hats peered underneath as a crane prepared to upend it.

The firefighters were joined by soldiers and Buddhist charity workers who gathered on both sides of the tracks.

Soldiers removed bodies to identify them, but nightfall complicated the rescue work.

At the scene, searchers walked through an upright car with flashlights. The search-and-rescue work was to continue until early today to make sure everyone aboard was accounted for.

"The underlying cause should be investigated to the maximum extent to avoid anything like this happening in the future," Premier William Lai said. "We will make the whole thing transparent."

Ensuring rail traffic went back to normal was also a priority, he said.Abusive rant: A still from a video shows the man involved in the incident. Photo: David Lawrence/PA

A black disabled woman who was racially abused on a Ryanair flight to London has spoken about her shock over the incident.

Delsie Gayle was called an ugly black b****** by a white man sitting next to her on a flight from Barcelona to London Stansted on Friday.

The 77-year-old's ordeal sparked outrage after footage of the abuse was captured by a fellow passenger and posted on Facebook.

The row apparently broke out after Ms Gayle was unable to move out of her aisle seat quickly enough to let the man sit down in his window seat.

I feel really depressed about it. I go to my bed and say, What have I done?' I havent done anything (for him) to attack me because of the colour of my skin, she told ITV News.

Ms Gayle, a member of the Windrush generation who moved to Britain in the 1960s, tearfully revealed she did not know when she would recover from the incident because every time I remember I cry.

I feel very low, because he paid his fare to go on holiday, I paid mine, so why does he abuse me for that due to the colour of my skin? she said, adding if the man gets away with it he will do it to someone else.

I dont eat, I cant sleep. Im just lying down there, I dont eat. Im just lying down there and think Ive never gone through this with all my travelling.

She added: I was shocked, nobody ever said those words to me. I travel a lot, I go to Canada... and no-one has ever said those words to me.

Read More

The video, shot by UK resident David Lawrence, shows the man demanding the woman to move seats, while her daughter tells him her mother is disabled.

He replies: I dont care whether shes f****** disabled or not  if I tell her to get out she gets out.

The flight attendant then asks the woman if she would like to move to another seat and the woman tells him she would like to sit near her daughter.

The man interjects: Move her to another seat  I cant get in while shes sat there.

The woman responds: You smell. You need a wash.

Then, the man says: If you dont go to another seat, Ill push you to another seat.

Later in the argument, he says: Dont talk to me in a f****** foreign language you stupid ugly cow.

A fellow passenger tries to intervene, asking the man to stop being abusive.

But the man says: I will carry on as far as I can with this ugly black b******.

Read More

The flight attendant says the man is being super rude and tells him to calm down, while a number of passengers on the flight call for the man to be removed from the flight.

The Ryanair employee tells the man that the airline does not tolerate abusive behaviour and says he will discuss the matter further with his supervisor.

When contacted by Independent.ie, a spokesman for Ryanair said: "We have reported this to the police in Essex and as this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further."

A spokesperson for Essex Police said: Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.

"We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation."Both Verma and Asthana have accused each other of corruption and interference.

PM Modi on Monday summoned CBI director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana amid their public fight on bribery and corruption. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The on-going ugly fight between the top two officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation reached Prime Minister Narendra Modis office on Monday as he summoned director Alok Verma and his number two, special director Rakesh Asthana, to get details of the current happenings.

Though CBI sources neither confirmed nor denied the meeting, a PMO official was quoted in a report as saying, PM wants to know the full facts of what is happening.

Both Mr Verma and Mr Asthana have accused each other of corruption and interference. On Sunday, Mr Verma was called to the PMO where he met senior officials to address concerns regarding the functioning of the agency.

Last month, the CBI had filed an FIR against Mr Asthana on a Rs 3.88-crore bribe complaint from Hyderabad-based businessman Sathish Babu Sana, a witness in the money laundering case pertaining to meat exporter Moin Qureshi.

The meeting called by the PM to douse fire in Indias premier investigation agency came on a day when the CBI arrested its deputy superintendent of police, Devender Kumar, who worked with Mr Asthana and has been accused of forging statements against its chief, Mr Verma, and other senior officers.

Mr Asthana, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer, was dubbed as the PMs blue-eyed boy in a tweet by Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

The CBI, Mr Gandhi said, was being used as a weapon of political vendetta under the Modi government and that the premier investigation agency was on a terminal decline and at war with itself.

Mr Asthana is heading the special investigation team and is in charge of several sensitive cases, such as loan fraud by business tycoon Vijay Mallya and AgustaWestland chopper scam.

Taking to Twitter, the Congress president cited a media report where Mr Asthana has been named as an accused in a bribery case.

The PMs blue-eyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer, of Godra SIT fame, infiltrated as No. 2 into the CBI, has now been caught taking bribes, Mr Gandhi tweeted. Under this PM, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta. An institution in terminal decline thats at war with itself, he said.

The ruling BJP on Monday maintained that peoples faith in an institution like the CBI might get shaken by the ongoing tussle.

Asked about the agency registering a case against its own special director, BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi pointed out that there is also a report against its director, Alok Verma, a reference to Mr Asthanas complaint against him.

There are two reports, one is against the director and another against the special director. We would like peoples faith in the institution of the CBI to continue, she said.

Mr Kumar, the CBI deputy superintendent arrested on Monday, was earlier the investigation officer in the case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi. He faces charges of forgery in recording the statement of Mr Sana, who had alleged that he paid bribes to CBI officers, including Mr Asthana, to get relief in the case, sources said.

It has been alleged that Mr Asthana favoured businessman Mr Sana after he received a bribe by middleman and investment banker Manoj Prasad. Mr Prasad was arrested when he visited India on October 16, 2018.

It was earlier alleged that Mr Sanas statement was recorded on September 26 by the investigating team headed by Mr Asthana. But on review, it emerged that on Sept. 26 Mr Sana was in Hyderabad. The CBI said it has evidence in the form of hotel bills, etc. which prove his presence in Hyderabad on that day.

In its FIR against Mr Asthana, the CBI has claimed that Mr Sana told a magistrate that he had paid bribe to the special director over a 10-month period, beginning December last year.

The CBI carried out searches at Mr Kumars residence and his office at the agency headquarters on Saturday and Sunday, and claimed to have seized his mobile phones and iPads.

The CBI claims that nine phone calls were made by Manoj Prasads brother Somesh Prasad immediately after his arrest, including conversations with Mr Asthana.

Somesh Prasad has also been charged by the CBI. Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad are the sons of a former officer of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The CBI is also investigating the role of a RAW official.

The feud between Mr Verma and his deputy blew up in August when Mr Asthana complained to the CVC that the CBI chief had taken bribe from Mr Sana but had framed him.

Mr Asthanas letter to the CVC also listed 10 other instances of corruption, criminal misconduct and interference in the investigation of sensitive cases by the CBI director.

Earlier this month, Mr Asthana also accused the CBI chief of trying to frame him in the case of Gujarat-based company, Sterling Biotech.

Sterling Biotech is being investigated for a huge loan default. It was during this probe that Mr Asthanas name allegedly popped up in a diary in 2011 indicating receipt of `3.88 crore bribe.

The CBI infighting began last year when the director objected to the appointment of Mr Asthana as his number two, citing the Sterling Biotech case.

Mr Asthana, who was the CBIs acting chief then, was elevated nevertheless, after another officer was reportedly transferred overnight to the home ministry to make way for him.

In 2016, Common Cause objected to Mr Asthanas appointment as CBI special director as his name figured in a 2011 diary seized from Sterling Biotech  a company being probed by the CBI for money laundering  as the alleged recipient of payments worth Rs 3.88 crore

Mr Asthana, a 1984 batch IPS officer, had, as inspector-general of police (Gujarat), overseen the initial probe into the Godhra train burning. As a superintendent of police in CBI in 1997, he had arrested Lalu Prasad Yadav in the fodder scam.

Mr Asthana is being probed in six cases, . Reports claim Mr Asthana has always landed plush positions because of his proximity with the top brass in the Modi government.Italy's hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini has warned that his country would not become "the refugee camp of Europe" as he continued to attack France for dumping illegal migrants over the border.

Mr Salvini used social media to say he would not be taking lessons from Emmanuel Macron, the French president, or Christophe Castaner, his new interior minister, whom he dubbed "Macron and friends".

He tweeted: "The French interior minister accuses me of 'systematic refusal to every type of opening'. Are these the lessons from Macron and his friends who 'unload' migrants in Italian forests at night? No thanks."

He then issued an invitation to his French counterpart to visit Rome and rebuild the testy bilateral relationship.

The minister said Italy would continue to patrol the borders as he dispatched extra police to Claviere, the Italian alpine town that borders France, after three illegal migrants were dumped there by French gendarmes over a week ago. "Italy is no longer fearful, resigned to being the refugee camp of Europe and to taking orders from Brussels and Berlin," Mr Salvini said.

"I'm waiting for the French minister in Rome, but in the meantime we will continue to patrol the borders. We are a country that has lifted its head up again: those who have not yet understood that should realise it."

Last week, the French government admitted to an "error" after French police were identified driving across the border and caught on CCTV releasing the migrants without notifying authorities.

Tensions escalated between Rome and Paris when Mr Salvini released video of the incident on social media.

On Saturday the minister, who also heads the anti-immigrant League Party, tweeted in capital letters: "Update on Claviere, no more kidding around! I sent patrols."

Mr Castaner said he had no interest in intensifying the debate and looked forward to meeting Mr Salvini and finding common solutions. ( Daily Telegraph, London)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]Actress Selma Blair has revealed that she has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).

The 46-year-old, who has starred in films such as 'Cruel Intentions' and 'Legally Blonde', said she had suffered symptoms of the condition "for years" but was diagnosed in August.

Sharing an emotional post on Instagram, Blair said she was "OK", but admitted it had been "overwhelming in the beginning".

"I am disabled," she said. "I fall sometimes. I drop things. My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken GPS.

"But we are doing it. And I laugh and I don't know exactly what I will do precisely but I will do my best."

The actress stars in Netflix's forthcoming sci-fi drama 'Another Life', and told how the show's costume designer had been helping to dress her.

"She carefully gets my legs in my pants, pulls my tops over my head, buttons my coats and offers her shoulder to steady myself," she said.

Despite the diagnosis, Blair said she was "relieved" to find out and wanted to provide hope to others. "I want my life to be full somehow," she added. "I want to play with my son again. I want to walk down the street and ride my horse."

MS is an incurable condition of the central nervous system, which causes symptoms such as vision loss, pain, fatigue, muscle weakness and impaired co-ordination.

More than 6,000 people in Ireland suffer from MS, and it affects three times as many women as men.

Genevieve Edwards, of the MS Society in Britain, said: "We know lots of people in the MS community will be really grateful to Selma Blair for her decision to speak out. She'll raise vital awareness of the condition.

"MS is unpredictable and different for everyone so, as the actress revealed, you can live with symptoms for years and not receive a diagnosis. While there's no cure, there are a range of treatments available for the relapsing form of MS, and new developments are happening in research all the time.

"What's most encouraging about Selma's post is the attitude of her colleagues. Having the right support around you is crucial because, when your employer takes time to understand MS, you can enjoy a full working life for as long as you want or are able to."Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday warned US President Donald Trump against leaving a Cold War-era weapons treaty, saying the move could have unintended consequences.

The 1987 Intermediate- Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was negotiated by Mr Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan to eliminate all land-based nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges between 500km and 5,000km.

However, the US has repeatedly accused Russia of violating its terms, with both sides hinting at military retaliation in a dispute that threatens a return to the darkest of Cold War days.

Mr Gorbachev said President Trump's abandoning of the deal was a mistake.

"Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements. Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?" he said. "Quitting the INF is a mistake."

Speaking after a rally in Nevada at the weekend, Mr Trump said: "Russia has not, unfortunately, honoured the agreement so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out."

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said yesterday that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States would be "very dangerous" and lead to a "military-technical" retaliation.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin would seek answers from the US about its planned withdrawal when he meets John Bolton, the US national security adviser, who arrived in Moscow last night for two days of what are expected to be tense talks that are believed to be laying the groundwork for a second Trump-Putin summit.

US officials believe Moscow has deployed a ground system that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

The US fears the treaty also leaves it at a disadvantage against China, which is not a party to the deal.

British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson backed Mr Trump, saying Russia was making a "mockery" of the accord.

"Our close and long-term ally, of course, is the US and we will be absolutely resolute with the US in hammering home a clear message that Russia needs to respect the treaty obligation that it signed," he said during a visit to New York.

The 1987 deal ended a Cold War-era crisis, when the Soviet Union installed nearly 400 nuclear warheads pointed at western Europe.

The United States had responded by stationing Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe. ( Daily Telegraph, London)Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands of migrants from Central America en route to the United States, rest along the sidewalks of Tapachula city center, Mexico October 21, 2018. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

A Central American migrant making their way to the U.S. in a large caravan carries his son after arriving in Tapachula, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A Central American migrant, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S, is pictured as he waits to open the gate on the bridge that connects Mexico and Guatemala in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, October 21, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

President Donald Trump has tweeted that the US will begin cutting off, or substantially reducing aid to Central American nations over a migrant caravan travelling from Honduras through Mexico to the United States.

The throng of Central American migrants marching toward the US border has swollen to more than 5,000, despite Mexican efforts to stop them.

At first light they set out walking towards the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile long.

The group had exploded in size from the 2,000 people who had stopped overnight on Saturday.

Expand Close A Central American migrant, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S, is pictured as he waits to open the gate on the bridge that connects Mexico and Guatemala in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, October 21, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido / Facebook

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Whatsapp A Central American migrant, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S, is pictured as he waits to open the gate on the bridge that connects Mexico and Guatemala in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, October 21, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

They marched on yesterday through Mexico shouting slogans like "Si se pudo!" or "Yes, we could!"

As they passed through Mexican villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, they drew applause, cheers and donations of food and clothing from Mexicans.

Expand Close A Central American migrant making their way to the U.S. in a large caravan carries his son after arriving in Tapachula, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo) / Facebook

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Whatsapp A Central American migrant making their way to the U.S. in a large caravan carries his son after arriving in Tapachula, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, had gathered on Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo.

They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River.

Expand Close Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands of migrants from Central America en route to the United States, rest along the sidewalks of Tapachula city center, Mexico October 21, 2018. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino / Facebook

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Whatsapp Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands of migrants from Central America en route to the United States, rest along the sidewalks of Tapachula city center, Mexico October 21, 2018. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

More to followSaudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has called the son of Jamal Khashoggi to express condolences, the kingdom has announced.

The journalist was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, by officials that allegedly included a member of the royals entourage.

King Salman similarly made a condolence call as international pressure on the kingdom continues to rise, even after it acknowledged on Saturday that the Washington Post journalist was killed on October 2 at the consulate under still-disputed circumstances.

Expand Close The circumstances around Jamal Khashoggis death are still unconfirmed (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) / Facebook

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Whatsapp The circumstances around Jamal Khashoggis death are still unconfirmed (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that he will go into detail about the Khashoggi case in a speech in parliament on Tuesday, the same day a glitzy investment forum in Riyadh spearheaded by Prince Mohammed is to take place.

Saudi Arabias explanation that Mr Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight and 18 Saudis have been detained has been met with international scepticism and allegations of a cover-up designed to absolve Prince Mohammed of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials say a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul, laid in wait for Mr Khashoggi at the consulate and then cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

Why did these 15 people come here? Why were 18 people arrested? All of this needs to be explained in all its details, Mr Erdogan said.

Expand Close Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he will go into detail about the Khashoggi case in a speech in parliament on Tuesday (Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he will go into detail about the Khashoggi case in a speech in parliament on Tuesday (Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool)

The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the calls to Mr Khashoggis son, Salah, early on Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed express their condolences for his fathers death.

The call comes after a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage shows Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, at the consulate, just ahead of Mr Khashoggis arrival.

Mutrebs name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutrebs presence in Istanbul  nor that of a forensics and post-mortem expert, also on hand for Mr Khashoggis arrival at the consulate.

Istanbuls chief prosecutor summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give evidence on Monday, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported.

Prosecutors have previously questioned consulate staff; some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Mr Khashoggi disappeared.

Turkish news agency Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday that Mr Khashoggis fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has been given 24-hour police protection.

Also on Sunday, images that were obtained by TRT World, a Turkish news channel that broadcasts in English, showed Mr Khashoggi as he arrived at a police barrier before entering the consulate on October 2. The images, taken from security camera video, show the writer being searched before continuing towards the building.Workers survey the aftermath of the derailment in Yilan County, north-eastern Taiwan (AP Photo)

Taiwans president has pressed for a quick, transparent probe into the cause of the islands worst train crash in nearly three decades.

Crash investigators are examining the wreckage after the eight-car Puyuma Express ran off the tracks in Yilan County as it went around a bend where the maximum speed is 47 mph.

Video footage obtained by local media showed the train striking and toppling a beam and ripping down metal structures from above the tracks as it crashed.

Everyone cares a lot about the cause of the accidentTaiwan President Tsai Ing-wen

Eighteen people were killed and 187 injured in the crash that left most of the cars damaged and five overturned in a zig-zag pattern around the tracks. Rescuers searched through the night for more victims before work crews moved the derailed cars upright to assist the investigation.

Everyone cares a lot about the cause of the accident, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said in a statement from her office.

Therefore we request that the investigating departments must as soon as possible make clear the timing and situation of the whole accident from start to finish and be able to give citizens a report.

That report may take more than a day as investigators do interviews and check records, a Taiwan Railways Administration spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. The speed of the train was not being released due to the pending investigation, but has not been ruled out as a cause.

Expand Close Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has called for an investigation into what caused the crash (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has called for an investigation into what caused the crash (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

The Taiwan Railways Administration said it has not released any official video pending the investigation.

Survivors told Taiwans official Central News Agency the driver applied emergency brakes multiple times before the train derailed. One told local television reporters the train sped up after taking the curve.

Crash investigators checked inside and underneath the now-upright cars for evidence. The Yilan County prosecutor also surveyed the wreckage as her office talked to witnesses.

The six-year-old trains are designed to tilt when going around curves.

Taiwan Railways bought the Puyuma cars in 2011 from Japanese maker Nippon Sharyo. The seller said then that the trains were part of an upgrade of the line along Taiwans east coast.

Expand Close Eighteen people were killed in the crash (Taiwan Railways Administration via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Eighteen people were killed in the crash (Taiwan Railways Administration via AP)

The train that derailed had its most recent inspection and major maintenance work in 2017, Taiwan Railways director Lu Chie-shen said at a televised news conference.

Mr Lu offered to resign on Monday, an offer that is not unusual in Taiwan in such situations. It is not yet certain if his offer would be accepted or if he would be asked to stay as the investigation continues.

Five people killed including a nine-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl belonged to a single family. Three students and two teachers who died were from the same school.

Some passengers were crushed to death, Ministry of National Defence spokesman Chen Chung-chi said. Of the total injured, seven were still receiving intensive hospital care on Monday morning, county news liaison Liu Ya-chih said. No one had life-threatening injuries, she said.

The train had been carrying more than 360 passengers on a popular weekend route from a suburb of Taipei in the north to Taitung, a city on Taiwans southeast coast.People hold signs during a protest at the Embassy of Saudi Arabia about journalist Jamal Khashoggi (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the kingdoms policies and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

Turkish officials claim that a 15-man team tortured, killed and dismembered the writer, while Saudi Arabia maintains the 59-year-old died in a fistfight.

Here are some key moments in the disappearance of the Washington Post columnist:

 September 2017:

The Post publishes the first column by Mr Khashoggi in its newspaper, in which the former royal court insider and longstanding journalist writes about going into self-imposed exile in the US over the rise of Prince Mohammed. His later columns criticise the prince and the kingdoms direction.

Expand Close The UK said Saudi Arabias initial explanation about Jamal Khashoggis death was not credible / Facebook

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Whatsapp The UK said Saudi Arabias initial explanation about Jamal Khashoggis death was not credible

 September 28 2018:

Over a year after the Post published his first column, Mr Khashoggi visits the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, seeking documents in order to get married. He is later told to return on October 2, his fiancee Hatice Cengiz says.

 September 29:

Mr Khashoggi travels to London and speaks at a conference.

 October 1:

Mr Khashoggi returns to Istanbul.

Expand Close Footage of Mr Khashoggi arriving at the consulate (AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Footage of Mr Khashoggi arriving at the consulate (AP)

 October 2 2018  the day of his disappearance

 3.28am: A private plane arrives at Istanbuls Ataturk Airport carrying some members of what Turkish media later refer to as a 15-member Saudi assassination squad, including a man officials describe as a forensics and autopsy expert. Others arrive via commercial flights, Turkish officials say.

 1.14pm: Surveillance footage later leaked to Turkish media shows Mr Khashoggi walking into the main entrance of the Saudi consulate. No footage made public ever shows him leaving and his fiancee waits outside, pacing for hours.

 3.07pm: Surveillance footage shows vehicles with diplomatic licence plates leaving the Saudi consulate for the consul generals home just over a mile away.

 7pm: A private plane just arrived from Saudi Arabia carries six members of the alleged Saudi squad from Istanbul to Cairo, returning to Riyadh the next day.

 11pm: Seven members of the alleged Saudi squad leave on the other private jet to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which the next day returns to Riyadh. Two others leave by commercial flights.

Expand Close Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to reveal more details over the death (AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to reveal more details over the death (AP)

 October 3:

Mr Khashoggis fiancee and the Washington Post go public with his disappearance. Saudi Arabia says Mr Khashoggi visited the consulate and left shortly thereafter. Turkish officials suggest Mr Khashoggi might still be in the consulate. That night, Prince Mohammed tells Bloomberg: We have nothing to hide.

 October 4:

Saudi Arabia says on its state-run news agency that the consulate is carrying out follow-up procedures and coordination with the Turkish local authorities to uncover the circumstances of the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi after he left the consulate building.

 October 5:

The Post prints a blank column in its newspaper in solidarity with Mr Khashoggi, headlined: A missing voice.

Expand Close A man identified by Turkish officials as Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, right, pictured at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul (AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp A man identified by Turkish officials as Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, right, pictured at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul (AP)

 October 6:

The Post, citing anonymous Turkish officials, reports Mr Khashoggi may have been killed in the consulate in a pre-planned murder by a Saudi team.

 October 7:

A friend of Khashoggi tells the Associated Press that officials told him Mr Khashoggi was killed at the consulate. The consulate rejects what it calls baseless allegations.

 October 8:

Saudi Arabias ambassador to Turkey is summoned over Mr Khashoggis disappearance and alleged killing.

 October 9:

Turkey says it will search the Saudi consulate as a picture of Mr Khashoggi walking into the diplomatic post surfaces.

Expand Close Barriers block the road leading to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Barriers block the road leading to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (AP)

 October 10:

Surveillance footage is leaked of Mr Khashoggi and the alleged Saudi squad that killed him. Mr Khashoggis fiancee asks US president Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for help.

 October 11:

Turkish media describes Saudi squad as including royal guards, intelligence officers, soldiers and a post-mortem examinations expert. Mr Trump calls Mr Khashoggis disappearance a bad situation, and promises to get to the bottom of it.

 October 12:

Mr Trump again pledges to find out what happened to Mr Khashoggi.

 October 13:

A pro-government newspaper reports that Turkish officials have an audio recording of Mr Khashoggis alleged killing obtained from his Apple Watch, but details in the report come into question.

We're going to get to the bottom of itDonald Trump

 October 14:

Mr Trump tells CBSs 60 Minutes that were going to get to the bottom of it, and there will be severe punishment if Saudi Arabia is involved. The kingdom responds with a blistering attack against those who threaten it, as the manager of a Saudi-owned satellite news channel suggests the country could retaliate through its oil exports. The Saudi stock exchange plunges as much as 7% at one point.

 October 15:

A Turkish forensics team enters and searches the Saudi consulate, an extraordinary development as such diplomatic posts are considered sovereign soil. Mr Trump suggests after a call with Saudi King Salman that rogue killers could be responsible for Mr Khashoggis death. Mr Trump says his secretary of state Mike Pompeo will travel to the Middle East to investigate the case. Meanwhile, business leaders say they will not attend an upcoming economic summit in the kingdom which was the brainchild of Prince Mohammed.

 October 16:

A high-level Turkish official tells the Associated Press that certain evidence was found in the Saudi consulate proving Mr Khashoggi was killed there. Mr Pompeo arrives for meetings in Saudi Arabia with King Salman and Prince Mohammed. Meanwhile, Mr Trump compares the case to the appointment of now-US supreme court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing, saying: Here we go again with youre guilty until proven innocent.

Expand Close Turan Kislakci, head of the Turkish-Arab media association and a friend of Mr Khashoggi talks to the media near the consulate (AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Turan Kislakci, head of the Turkish-Arab media association and a friend of Mr Khashoggi talks to the media near the consulate (AP)

 October 17:

Mr Pompeo meets Turkeys president and foreign minister in the Turkish capital, Ankara. Turkish police search the official residence of Saudi Arabias consul general in Istanbul and conduct a second sweep of the consulate.

 October 18:

A leaked surveillance photograph shows a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage during several trips abroad walking into the consulate just before Mr Khashoggi vanished there.

 October 20:

Saudi Arabia for the first time acknowledges Mr Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, claiming he died in a fistfight. The claim draws immediate scepticism from the kingdoms Western allies, particularly in the US congress.

 October 22:

Newly-leaked surveillance footage shows a man appearing to wear Mr Khashoggis clothes leaving the consulate after his killing there. Another report says a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage made four calls to the royals office around the same time.US national security adviser John Bolton faces two days of high-tension talks in Moscow after President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from a landmark nuclear weapons treaty.

Mr Trumps announcement that the United States would leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty brought sharp criticism on Sunday from Russian officials and from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the treaty in 1987 with president Ronald Reagan.

Mr Trump said Russia has violated terms of the treaty that prohibit the US and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying ground-launched nuclear cruise missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles.

Expand Close Donald Trump has pulled out of the INF treaty (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Donald Trump has pulled out of the INF treaty (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it has produced and tested such a missile.

Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as telling state news agency Tass that leaving the treaty would be a very dangerous step.

It would cause the most serious condemnation from all members of the international community who are committed to security and stability.

Konstatin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russias upper house of parliament, said on Facebook that a US withdrawal from the treaty would mean mankind is facing full chaos in the nuclear weapons sphere.

Washingtons desire to turn back politics cannot be supported. Not only Russia, but also all who cherish the world, especially a world without nuclear weapons, must declare this, Mr Gorbachev was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency.

Expand Close Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty when he was president of the Soviet Union (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty when he was president of the Soviet Union (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File)

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said the UK stands absolutely resolute with Washington on the issue and called on the Kremlin to get its house in order, according to the Financial Times.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas said that Mr Trumps announcement raises difficult questions for us and Europe, but noted that Russia has not cleared up allegations of violating the treaty.

The Kremlin has not directly commented on Mr Trumps statement, but spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that after the last statements, explanations of the American side will be required.

Mr Bolton and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on Tuesday. On Monday, Mr Bolton meets with foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

US senator Bob Corker, a member of Mr Trumps Republican Party, warned that the withdrawal from the INF could lead to undoing other arms treaties. But he suggested that Mr Trumps statement could be aimed at pressuring Moscow rather than a firm determination to leave the treaty.

Maybe this is just a move to say, look  if you dont straighten up were moving out of this, he said. And I hope thats the case.The accused had tortured the woman following which she jumped naked from third floor of an apartment in Muhana area, to escape.

The accused had allegedly gang-raped the woman on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, SHO Muhana Police Station area Devendra Kumar said. (Representational Image)

Jaipur: Two men have been arrested for allegedly gang-raping a 23-year-old Nepali woman near Rajasthan's Jaipur, police said Sunday.

Based on the survivor's complaint, the accused Lokesh Saini, 19 and Kamal Saini, 24, were arrested late Saturday night, said ACP Jaipur South KK Awasthi.

The accused had allegedly gang-raped the woman on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, SHO Muhana Police Station area Devendra Kumar said.

According to the complaint, the accused had tortured her following which she jumped naked from the third floor of an apartment in Muhana area, around 18 km away from Jaipur, to escape.

The survivor is currently undergoing treatment at Jaipuria Hospital. Medical examination has been done and the matter is being investigated, the SHO added.Even though Ned Stark died in the first season of Game of Thrones, he remains to be one of the most important and loved characters of the show. Known to be honourable, fair and loyal, Ned Starks death ended up being the catalyst of all the major things that have happened on the show so far.

The fact that he is gone is still heartbreaking for fans. If his character would have been alive, the story of Game of Thrones would have been different altogether. But what if we tell you that he is making a comeback on Game of Thrones season 8.

fanpop.com

Yes, you read that right. You will get to see Sean Bean AKA Ned Stark on the show yet again for one last time. But wait, theres a catch.

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Wondering how his dead character will return on the show? Well, he will not exactly be a part of the story of season 8, and rather he will return for the reunion episode.

fanpop.com

Ned Stark recently revealed that the makers of Game of Thrones season 8 are shooting for a special reunion episode, and he will be a part of it.

It was the last episode, so we all got together They decided to get all the characters together for a bit for this big show in Belfast and he kind of hosted the evening, he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Game of Thrones season 8 will premiere in first half of 2019. While the makers havent yet revealed the release date for the finale season, fans think that the show will be aired in April.The #MeToo movement has created a storm on social media and big names including Anu Malik and Nana Patekar have been accused of sexual harassment. Its important, especially at this time, to talk about sexual consent  which is voluntary agreement of both the parties to engage in sexual activity.

Ayushmann Khurrana who is basking in the success of his recently released films Badhai Ho and Andhadhun also feels that it is important for men to understand consent  what it means and what it applies to.

Actor Ayushmann Khurrana has supported the #MeToo movement by saying that men should understand what consent is. Ayushmann visited the PVR Citi Mall here on Saturday to know the audience's reaction for his latest film Badhaai Ho.

Reacting to the #MeToo campaign that has gathered momentum in India, especially in Bollywood, Ayushmann told media, "The #MeToo movement is a good movement, but at the same time, I feel both parties should be given equal opportunities to share their account and to prove their innocence. Having said that, I feel women should be respected and they shouldn't be harassed.

BCCL

"There should be stringent rules at every workplace. It is not only about workplace, but I think that the code of conduct should be followed in every sphere of society, be it our family or where we live."

Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi has announced the formation of a committee of four retired judges and a lawyer to examine all issues emanating from #MeToo, a movement against sexual harassment. Actors like Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Hrithik Roshan have also taken a firm stand against their colleagues, who have been accused in sexual harassment cases.

Asked whether these kind of measures are necessary to curb harassment at workplace, Ayushmann said,"I think we should have taken these measures long time ago, but whatever measures we have taken are absolutely correct.

"Women should feel safe whether it's in journalism or sometimes we go to shoot, our films are in outdoor locations. We shoot there till late nights and not a single woman should feel unsafe there and men should understand what consent is and without that, you cannot do anything to anyone. No one can touch other person without his or her consent and if anyone does that, then strict action should be taken against that individual."

The #MeToo movement gained momentum in India after actress Tanushree Dutta accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of harassment.A UN-backed fund has approved USD 1 billion approved by the Green Climate Fund for a total of 19 new projects to help combat the climate change in developing countries. And out of this USD 1 billion, a total of USD 43.4 million have allotted to India to better the resilience to the climate change, especially faced by people living in coastal areas.

afp

The new project will be supported through the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP), and is an essential step for India in reaching its goals outlined in the Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

These global compacts call on every nation to end poverty and hunger by 2030, and to take strong action to ensure no one is left behind in protecting vulnerable people from the extreme impacts of climate change.

The 21st meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board ended on Sunday in Bahrain's capital Manama, approving over one billion dollars of new projects and programmes to support climate action in developing countries, and formally launching its first replenishment, a statement released by the fund said.

The 19 new projects amount to a total investment from GCF of USD 1,038 million, and including co-financing the projects will channel over USD 4,244 million of climate finance for low emission, climate resilient development.

afp

At the end of the four day meeting, the Board decided to launch the process for the Green Climate Fund's first formal replenishment, marking a key moment in the development of the world's largest dedicated fund for climate action.

Funding approved at the meeting in Manama includes projects linked to geothermal energy in Indonesia and greener cities in Europe and the Middle East.

Under the project, over 1.7 million people are expected to directly benefit from livelihoods support, with another 10 million indirectly benefiting from improved shoreline protection, the UNDP said in a statement.

In reaching the Sustainable Development Goals for gender equality and reduced inequalities, the project is focused on providing tangible benefits for women, female-headed households, young people and the elderly, and members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes.

Over 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 will be sequestered through restored ecosystems over the next 30 years.

"India's coastal areas are quite vulnerable to climate change and this project focuses on selected vulnerable areas of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha states. The new project, with GCF assistance, will not only help enhance resilience and adaptability, but also lead to emissions reduction while providing support to local communities for their livelihoods," said Ravi S. Prasad, Joint Secretary, Climate Change, Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, Government of India.

The Government of India will finance an additional USD 86.8 million toward the new project to mainstream and accelerate the impacts of the Green Climate Fund grant.

To protect life on land and below water as outlined in the 2030 Agenda, project activities will focus on the restoration and conservation of over 15,000 hectares of mangroves, coral reefs, seagrasses and saltmarshes. Communities, including local youth, will be trained to work with scientists in monitoring ecosystem health and coastal ecology, the UNDP statement said.

"In addition to helping communities establish more climate resilient livelihoods, this multi-dimensional project will contribute to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions  over 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 will be absorbed through restored ecosystems," said Francine Pickup, Country Director at UNDP India.

"It will also have considerable long-term environmental benefits including healthier ecosystems, better biodiversity conservation and improved buffering against climate change-driven extreme weather," said Francine Pickup, Country Director at UNDP India," Pickup said.

To strengthen climate risk-informed coastal management and infrastructure planning, the innovative project will create an online decision-support tool available via mobile phone for use by government officers, academic institutions, community members and scientists. The project will also build local knowledge of climate change and the associated risks via training and public education programmes.

pti

India's coastline is expected to be among the regions most affected by climate change globally. The Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are both predicted to be subject to extreme climate variability, with the frequency and intensity of cyclones and extreme weather events projected to increase, particularly on the eastern coastline, the statement said.

According to a report from the World Bank, an increase in global mean surface temperatures of 2C will make India's monsoon highly unpredictable, while a 4C increase would result in an extremely wet monsoon (which currently has a chance of occurring only once in 100 years) occurring every 10 years by the end of the century.

India has about 6,740 km of mangroves, including some of the largest mangrove forests in the world. Mangrove cover along India's coastline has decreased by 50 per cent in some areas, largely because of human pressures, including alteration of flow of freshwater from upstream. Sea-level rise is predicted to result in further reductions, it added.BJP has been able to contain dissidence in the party by replacing these leaders with their close relations in their respective assembly seats.

Bhopal: Ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya Pradesh seems to have found a safe way to beat a perceived anti-incumbency by replacing the non-performing MLAs and ministers with their relations in the November 28 Assembly elections in the state.

The party has successfully experimented with the strategy while dropping some influential party leaders in the selection of candidates for the two-phase assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, scheduled to be held on November 12 and 20.

BJP has been able to contain dissidence in the party by replacing these leaders with their close relations in their respective assembly seats.

While sitting BJP MLA Yudhbir Singh Judeo was replaced by his wife, another sitting party MLA Sunita Rathi was replaced by her husband in their respective seats.

The same strategy may be adopted during selection of candidates for the party for the coming assembly elections in MP. Party was mulling to change at least 70 out of 165 BJP MLAs this time and it would a herculean task for the party to pacify the sulking leaders who would be denied tickets, a senior BJP leader told this newspaper on Monday requesting not to be quoted.

Sources said that various surveys conducted by the party by different agencies to gauge the mood of the electorates ahead of the coming assembly elections, have suggested that there was no anger against the state government as such among the people.

But, the anti-incumbency has been noticed in some assembly constituencies due to non-performance of their respective elected representatives. Hence, it has been suggested to replace at least 70 sitting MLAs that included half a dozen minister in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, sources revealed.Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, 67, who had given a statement to the police against bishop Franco in the rape case of a nun, was found dead in St. Mary's Church in Dasuya in Jalandhar on Monday. The exact cause of his death is not known yet.

Family of father Kuriakose Kattuthara in Cherthala alleged mystery behind his death and demanded a detailed inquiry into his death.

"We never believe he committed suicide. He showed courage to act against the wrong activities of bishop Franco Mulakkal and my brother faced threats from various parts following it. He shared it whenever we talked over phone. Many nuns approached my brother when they faced problems from bishop Franco and my brother also questioned Franco about it. So it is sure that he had many rivals. So we strongly believe that there is mystery behind his death," said Johny Thomas Kattuthara, brother of Kuriakose Kattuthara.

It was found that he vomited over the bed. Blood pressure tablets were found at the spot. Probe is underway. In our notice, no security was provided to him: AR Sharma, DSP Dasuya, on death of Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, witness in Kerala nun rape case. pic.twitter.com/FWIXwcnoM5  TOI Cities (@TOICitiesNews) October 22, 2018

"We are going to lodge a complaint with Alappuzha district police chief in this connection. Today morning around 10.30am we received information about his death," said Johny, who is a businessman settled in Kochi.The world will soon enter another decade with 2020 approaching. With globalisation and commercialisation, countries are working towards better public policies, high-class infrastructure and gender equality in all spheres of life.

However, one area that hasnt seen any improvement in the last few years is women safety. Women continue to face harassment in all forms- physical, mental and emotional even at the most reputed workplaces. Rural areas are far more miserable.

Ever since the 2012 Nirbhaya rape case, an eerie feeling occupies the heart of every woman who is vulnerable to falling prey to psychologically-flawed men. A medical student who was given the epithet Nirbhaya by the country was raped brutally by six men in a moving bus six years ago. An Iron rod was inserted in her private parts due to which the victim ultimately succumbed to her injuries.

The incident had created a furore due to the unnatural and barbaric gangrape that was carried out. A similar incident from Jalpaiguri in West Bengal has stunned many. A tribal woman was raped and an iron rod was inserted in her private organs, the Times of India reported.

The callous act was conducted allegedly by a relative who was angry over a land dispute. The incident took place on Saturday night near a pond close to the womans home in Niranjan Pat locality.

The woman was called out of her home on the pretext of resolving the dispute while her husband was not at home. The nephew of the womans husband and his accomplice have been detained in this case, the Indian Express reported.

The survivor informed the police that the accused nephew had an iron rod with him who used it to rape and torture her. The man accompanying the accused didnt rape her, she claimed. A rickshaw puller then found the lady in an unconscious state and took her home.

She was taken to the Dhupguri hospital from where she was later shifted to the Jalpaiguri Sadar hospital. The police were interrogating the nephew and his companion in connection with the case.In an appalling case of gang rape, a 23-year Nepali woman was gang-raped in Jaipur by two men and she had to jump from the third floor without cloth on Friday night.

Two men have been arrested for allegedly gang-raping the 23-year-old woman here, police said on Sunday. Based on the survivor's complaint, the accused Lokesh Saini (19) and Kamal Saini (24) were arrested late on Saturday night, said ACP Jaipur South K K Awasthi.

The accused had allegedly gang-raped the woman on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, SHO Muhana Police Station area Devendra Kumar said.

According to the plaint, the accused had tortured her following which she jumped nude from the third floor of an apartment in Muhana area to escape.

The survivor is currently undergoing treatment at Jaipuria Hospital. Medical examination has been done and the matter is being investigated, the SHO added.An unfortunate trend has cropped up with premium hardware launches recently and the Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are no exception. Users are reporting glitches when it comes to saving camera photos , and the sound is a little off.

Some owners have been complaining online that their Google Camera occasionally fails to save an image after it's clicked. Though the bug itself isn't exactly frequent, it seems to be widespread enough to be an issue. Then again, your camera failing to save an image after you think you've just captured the perfect click is plenty frustrating by itself, without it happening multiple times. Even worse, this is something that's happened in the past with the Pixel 2 and 2 XL as well.

Specifically, the glitch seems to occur when a person takes a photo with Google Camera, and then switches to another app or locks the phone immediately after. On reopening, it looks like the last-clicked image's thumbnail is displayed on the gallery button in the camera app. However, actually opening your gallery shows it's not visible there. Because of this, it's believed to be a bug in Android rather than a hardware issue.

The second bug is with sound recording on the Pixel 3 and 3XL, although Google insists this is a feature. When recording video, users notice that audio tends to sound very tinny and distant compared to other devices, especially the new iPhone XS Max. However, the company has commented on the issue, saying it's how their device is designed. It's actually been tweaked to help outdoor video recording by eliminating the frequencies of ambient noise like cars, horns etc. Thankfully though, Google says they're continuing to tweak the feature, and will take the complaints into considerations.

The last bug is also for audio, but this time with output. Some users are complaining one of the front-facing stereo speakers is louder than the other. Google agrees on this, and explained on Reddit that it's by design. They don't really outright state how exactly this is a benefit, and it's even stranger that only the Pixel 3 XL has this problem, and not the Pixel 3.

Perhaps it's the fact that, given the notch at the top, there just wasn't enough space for the same audio driver the bottom has. Either way, Google should have really balanced it out or the main point of stereo speakers is lost.India is a leading global software hub, and Indians are acknowledged as some of the best programmers and coders. The country's hardware maker community, however, has been slow off the blocks, and hasn't quite reached the same heights. But what was a slow burn is now showing signs of a crackling fire.

And it's people like Rakesh Sharma who are headlining the occasional fireworks on what the Indian maker community is capable of achieving.

Rakesh Sharma with his scratch build

Among other things, Rakesh Sharma calls himself a 'modder' -- which is just a fancy term for someone who tinkers around and modifies the look and feel of your computer cabinet. Yeah, that big box into which your desktop monitor, keyboard, mice, webcam, Internet cable, and printer plug in. Rakesh regularly builds a visually appealing computer cabinets that are nothing short of works of art -- from scratch.

Hailing from Jodhpur, this 38-year-old works as a software developer, indulging in modding as a hobby in his spare time. He says he is a middle-class family, who fell in love with PCs in the early '90s. And he's widely considered one of India's best PC builders and case modders.

At the start of a project

"My first computer interaction was long ago with a 386-processor based PC, and we used to run DOS from 5.25 floppy disks with no HDD at that time," says Rakesh. "Comparing those days with modern computers that are equipped with considerable memory and storage, I feel very lucky to have witnessed how computers have evolved through the years."

Rakesh's passion for modding is inspired from electronics. As a teenager, he loved making electronic projects and audio amplifiers. Later at university, his interest in computer electronics fuelled his passion for modding. But indulging in his new-found passion wasn't exactly easy.

"In India, buying an attractive computer case and liquid cooling parts was a challenge and getting some liquid cooling parts from abroad was a nightmare and way too expensive for me," Rakesh recollects. "Therefore, I started building my own case and cooling solutions and enjoyed the process thoroughly. Today, here I am, totally addicted to the art of modding."

Insight into case modding and PC building

Before he gets to work on his fanciful PC builds, surely there must be some method to all this creative madness? "Theme and build ideas just pop up in my mind suddenly, and I don't exactly know how," Rakesh says, trying to explain his modding process.

The NightHawk taking shape

"I enjoy my modding time a lot, and to maximise the fun, I do modding with hand tools only - no 3D printers or laser cutter or power tools here. Since I work with hand tools, choice of materials is mostly wood, acrylic and aluminium."

Rakesh further emphasises that he usually works alone on his PC builds, which is why they take a lot of time to finish. He also sources all the material locally, to help him on all his scratch builds.

"I am a big fan of AMD products since my early modding days," Rakesh says, when asked about whether he likes Intel or AMD platforms. "I always had a very tight budget for a build, and AMD was the only processor that offered the best value for price and became my number one choice. Even now, with the new AMD Ryzen CPUs, the core count and performance are too good for me as a software developer." Both his home and office PCs run on AMD chips.

More pics of the NightHawk build

The finished NightHawk build

So what's the best-modded PC cabinet he has ever built? Rakesh beams. "My best case build till date is the 'Nighthawk Build', which was my entry for the Cooler Master Case Mod World Series 2018. The theme of the build was the famous Stealth Fighter plane Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk. Being a big fan of stealth fighter plans, my idea with the build was to make an open frame PC Case build with a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk fuselage on top."

And for his spectacular effort, Rakesh Sharma even walked away with the second prize in the event's best modded PC category. Before Nighthawk won him international accolades, Rakesh has been modding PC cases for a decade now.

Creating a mockup in a 3D visualization software

Putting it together in reality

Last year, he built a fully functional PC cabinet in the form of a military tank. The 'KTO Rosomak' is a Polish armored fighting vehicle, inside which Rakesh outfitted a fully functional gaming computer.

Inserting PC components inside the case

Finished case sitting on desktop, the KTO Rosomak

In 2016, Rakesh's 'Huffer' PC build was inspired by his love of heavy machines and Air Force engines. It was India's official entry into the 2016 Thermaltake CaseMod Invitational Season 2, an international event of PC builders and makers.

What looks like a piece of unfinished furniture...

... ends up looking like The Huffer!

Without internal hardware essential for a functional, working PC -- like a motherboard, processor, RAM, hard drive, graphics card, etc -- Rakesh spends anywhere between Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 for his case mod projects, which can take up to two months to complete. And this is money from his own pocket. Isn't that an expensive and time-consuming hobby, especially for a middle-class guy?

"Yes, sometimes people do comment that "case modding is useless and impractical and I should not waste my time on such things". I don't reply to such comments as I think this is true for everything," says Rakesh. "I make case mods for myself and if I enjoy it, which I do, it is good for me."

Challenges and opportunities

A lot has changed since Rakesh built his first PC case from scratch. "It was a fully transparent acrylic case with AMD Athlon X2 4000+ and 2GB DDR2 RAM," he recollects. Ask him about challenges to his modding journey, Rakesh is quick to reply. "As life is moving on, more priority and time is given towards family and responsibilities. So the challenge nowadays is to get some free time for modding. But I feel very lucky as my wife and family members are very cooperative in helping me do some good time management and spare some time for my hobby," he says.

Big open frame PC cabinet build by Rakesh Sharma

Besides life catching up, there are other industry challenges, too. Enough isn't being done to promote modding and PC building by the industry stakeholders. "Please look at modding supports and events conducted in other countries, whereas here in India, there are only a few modders," Rakesh claims. He also says brands don't get back when asked for hardware support for build ideas in India.

"Marketing teams of many brands like to give free hardware on social media in return for Likes and Comments and don't like to put efforts in planning some competition for hardware giveaway - where people can win rewards and recognition according to their creativity or mods rather than just doing a random pick." Rakesh believes that rewards and recognition have always been a great motivation for up and coming builders, and can result in creating passion for case modding in India.

What would he like to say to young modders and makers in India, who are just starting off with their journey? "Try to give your 100% in whatever you are doing, even in modding, and just enjoy the whole process," Rakesh says with a smile.Right now, French swimmer Benoit Lecomte is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, swimming for all he's worth.

He isn't the survivor of a plane crash or shipwreck though, he's just swimming across the entire ocean to make people remember how much plastic is in it.

Images courtesy: Seeker

At 51 years old, this isn't Lecomte's first rodeo. He's previously swum the Atlantic Ocean from Massachusetts to France in 1998; that times was to raise money for cancer research. But this year's swim is a grueling 8,851 km, from Japan to California, and he's just about crossed the 1,900 km mark. It's all worth it to him though, if it makes people sit up and take notice of the pollution we're causing.

Aside from a team of divers and medical professionals, there are also researchers accompanying Lecomte by sailboat. Whenever he stops and climbs aboard the boat for a meal or the night's rest, they study how his body is handling the situation. More importantly though, the entire time, they're also monitoring the health of the water around him, which will be used by the 27 or so research institutes he's partnered with, including NASA.

Unfortunately, it's not good news.

"We see two pieces of plastic on the surface every five minutes," Lecomte told Business Insider. The research team, who have outfitted the boat with special nets, say they're probably snagging something like four microplastics every minute along the journey.

That's scary by itself, thinking about how microplastics are reaching the middle of the ocean. But that's how currents work, carrying our pollutants out to sea along with everything else. That's what made what's known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: about 1.8 trillion pieces of plastics, weighing an estimated 80,000 metric tons, stretching across 1.6 million square kilometres. It's a giant pile of trash that we have no idea how to fix without possibly billions spent.

"What is very surprising to me and everyone on the boat is the amount of plastic that we found, and the fact that we found it everywhere," Lecomte said in disbelief. "Every time that I am in the water, it's another opportunity for me to get the attention of or inspire people to maybe limit their use of single-use plastic."In case the regular car horns just do not cut it for you anymore, why not opt for a train horn for your car instead? At least this is what Ajay Baisla, owner of a modified Mahindra Thar, thinks. And for the same reason, the guy shelled out near Rs 1 Lakh on the horn, which was imported from Canada.

In a recent video that has emerged online, a modified Mahindra Thar can be seen sporting an aftermarket horn worth Rs 1 Lakh. In case you are wondering, the horn alone does not cost that much. It is a complete pressure system, constituting of a horn worth Rs 25,000, a compressor costing Rs 48,000 and additional Rs 20,000 transportation charges, that is fitted on the Thar.

It is not for the roads, claims Ajay, as most of such aftermarket modifications are banned for use in the country. It is only for use while off-roading like during rallies, he adds.

As for its parts, three chimes of the horn can be seen on the front of the Mahindra Thar. The compressor, which also doubles up as a tyre inflator in case of an emergency, has been fitted at the rear end of the Thar and helps fill up an associated air tank to further blow out the horn.





Lokesh Swami/ YouTube

In order to blow the pressure horn, its compressor has to be activated with a button adjacent to the steering wheel, post which the driver can honk via another switch on the steering wheel.

It is unsure whether the owner of the vehicle will be able to keep the horn for long though, considering the stringent vigilance on after market products on vehicles these days, especially such horns and window films. And after all, even the number of the vehicle is pretty much visible in the video, lest the cops decide to pursue it for the one-of-a-kind horn.A Cobb County Sheriff holds sample ballots outside the Cobb County West Park Government Center where voters line up to early vote on Oct. 18, 2018 in Marietta, Georgia. Early voting started in Georgia on Oct. 15 for the states gubernatorial election. Indian American voters could play decisive roles in many races around the nation that are tight, and so it would behoove political candidates to engage more substantively with this vibrant and diverse community, writes the author. (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)If you're interested in submitting a Letter to the Editor, click here.

SubmitPalo Alto Networks has announced that Amit K. Singh will serve as its new president, effective Nov. 1. The Indian American previously was the president of Google Cloud and, most recently, Google's vice president of business and operations in emerging computing platforms. (LinkedIn photo)A trek to the Nepal border from Darjeeling took us back in time, to the British era... and on a tranquil and beauteous trudge over hills and vales.

Signing up for a trek from Darjeeling to Maneybhanjyang to the Nepal border past the Singalila National Park didnt prepare us for the history we would encounter. Or the sheer beauty that led us through hills and vales. A tradition that has become an intrinsic part of this regions ethos, which has sadly been relegated to a distant memory  The Land Rovers of the British Raj chugging along winding roads. These Land Rovers have been tarrying trekkers and travellers on the mountainous and steep inclines of Darjeeling since the British Raj. Legend has it that many old vehicles were left by the Britishers, local youth saw a livelihood in these antique beauties, and revamped them completely. So much so that the great Land Rovers classic body is no more. Its been fashioned for the terrain, and whats available in spare parts! The drivers are folklore here as they rev up the antique engine, cough up those mountainous curves. We were dropped off at a village on the foothills of the magnificent mountains, to be taken by the ever-smiling Land Rover driver towards Nepal, past small villages with tiny monasteries, and a few homes scattered with prayer flags flying high, to the border of Nepal. Many take a breather from the arduous climb, and incline with a welcoming hot sumptuous slurp of thukpa, and then trudge past the hills and winding paths gulping the freshest of air, revelling in the beauty.

Our guide was the very knowledgeable Nikhil, who takes aspirants for week-long treks. As newbie trekkers, we settled for a day trek going down! But first, was our altercation with the Land Rovers that sadly, have since, been banned (though some still chug along) tarrying trekkers and their luggage. No ordinary vehicle can make those turns. So it falls on these creaking beauties to manoeuvre those steep curves. Revamped and refurbished, from bumpers, seats, body, some still have the original chassis. They form the livelihood of the youth of this region. But because there are no proper papers for most vehicles, and parts are not in production, authorities have deemed them unfit and dangerous, banning them, much to the dismay of the drivers who want to see this part of hilly history prevail. These chugging vehicles were used on tea plantations in this rugged and twisty terrain. We had a smiling young Maneybhanjyang resident who made us sit in a bare grey vehicle which coughed and spluttered along sharp turns, giving us many a tense moment as it veered to, our surprise, towards nadirs and dangerous edges, safely. This Land Rover of ours even went up a grass-topped hill to stop for breakfast at a local shack where we welcomed hot piping tea in the nippy weather, and gobbled on scrambled eggs made by the lady of the shack. We hopped onto our antiquated beauty towards another small village with a beautiful monastery (taken care of by a family in the village). The monastery was specially opened for us. We paid our respects, and marvelled at the different forms of the Buddha and colourful depictions in this peaceful place of worship.

Beautiful flowers dotted our route through untouched surrounds.

The maximum number of Land Rovers Series 1 and 2 are operational along the Maneybhanjyang to Sandakphu and Phalut trail which is the most famous and beautiful trek in North Bengal. The Landie as its fondly called was famously conceived after a sketch on a beach by the chief designer of the British Rover Company in 1947 during the aftermath of World War II. Most of the surviving Landies are Series 1 and Series 2 (produced between 1948 and 1961). Our driver was heard complaining about how their livelihood was in danger, and spoke of his vehicle with a fondness of a long lost friend. Apparently the parent company was coming in for Land Rovers 70th anniversary celebrations to rever this age-old tradition soon. A tradition that might be banished as most of these fabricated vehicles are living on their last leg, with no spare parts available, and the authorities breathing down on them. A vehicle synonymous with the heritage of Darjeeling, one hopes that something can be done to help the drivers of this area and their creaking beauties.

We reached our base Tonglu and trekked back down after a hot meal of Wai Wai noodles. The trek seemed easy enough. And then we realised that going down meant going up many a hill for about 25 km! A mammoth task! The path was green, blooming with flowers like the famed magnolia spreading its scent, as we walked, huffed, puffed, and made our way up slowly, heaving, down steep inclines as our knees buckled. We took a breather at one peak where the air was crisp, the wind caressing our sweaty faces. We stopped at the shack to have their fermented beer made of ragi. Beautiful, tranquil and invigorating, we walked on, and in the distance, we heard those Land Rovers spluttering along. This is Army outpost land, with nary a village. We chanced upon one, waved at a few trekkers who braved the uphill, and gulped cold water from a stream, drank sweet tea with gusto with some Parle G biscuits

As first timers, we were out of breath. But awestruck by the beauty. We were reminded of a quote by mountaineer Erhard Loretan, All my life, I have never felt as happy on Earth as when Im getting closer to the sky. This is true as the untouched path, the sheer magnificence of the mountains, and the pristine air takes over those tired limbs as you walk along its not the destination that beckons, but the journey that invigorates.

Save the Land Rovers

The famous Land Rovers were brought during the 1950s by British tea planters who chose to stay back after the Independence. It was used as the mode of transportation in the tea gardens of Darjeeling. By the 60s, the Britishers left but the Land Rovers stayed back. The vehicles were used as public transport at all over Darjeeling, that also served the locals for more than three decades. These hardy touch antique vehicles are still serving in this rugged terrain of hills for the past 70 years.A new survey by AAPI Data and APIA Vote polled respondents on favorability of possible candidates for the 2020 presidential race, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (2nd from left), D-Vermont, the overwhelming favorite amongst Indian Americans, and Sen. Kamala Harris (center), D-California, receiving a more muted response with 52 percent viewing her favorably. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)Businessman Praful Patel was found dead Oct. 11 night from a gunshot wound, at the Stop & Go he owned in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Police described the Indian American as hardworking, well-known, and well liked. (Facebook photo)Hindu activists block a road to the Sabarimala Temple, at Vadaserikara town in Pathanamthitta district in Kerala Oct. 19. The pilgrimage season closed Oct. 22 and no women of menstruating age were able to pray in the temple, despite the Supreme Court order overturning the ban on women ages 10-50. (Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images)From the Open-Publishing Calendar From the Open-Publishing Newswire Indybay Feature Publish to Newswire Add an Event

"One Job Is Enough" Thousands Of SF Hotel Workers Rally & March Against Marriott Hotels by Labor Video Project

Sunday Oct 21st, 2018 9:10 AM Thousands of Unite Here Local 2 hotel workers from 7 striking Marriott hotels, other hotel workers, unionists and labor supporters rallied and marched in San Francisco on October 21, 2108. The workers are protesting and striking that they have to work two and three jobs to survive.



There are seven hotels owned by the Marriott including the former Starwood chain that are on strike in San Francisco with 2,500 workers on the streets picketing 24 hours a day.



The Marriott hotel corporation is the largest in the world with billions of dollars in profits but refuses to provide wages that allow workers to live without working two and three jobs. This action to support the Marriott workers was a national action with protests and marches throughout the country.



Additional media:



SF Marriott Workers Strike: A Class Battle For All Workers

https://youtu.be/R8M0mrxJpxA



Billionaires Pay Up! SF Unite HERE Local 2 Bohemian Club Workers Fight For Living Wage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsEyvHK4X1U



Stop Attacking Unite Here Local 2 SF AT&T Ballpark Centerplate Workers-Workers Vote To Strike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYQ_-pf4aE



Oakland Airport Unite Here 2850 Fast Food Workers Fight Union Busting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-BarHDMqR8



The ZIM'S HERE Local 2 San Francisco Workers Shut It Down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI8orA3Cg0o



SF Unite-Here Local 2 Hotel Workers Rally & March On Expiration Of Their 2009 Contract

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7xHpTBiT6M



SF 2014 Labor Day March Picket Union Busting Fisherman Wharf Hyatt and Radisson Hotels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCAL0ELEW8



35th Anniversary of the 1980 San Francisco Unite Here Local 2 Hotel Strike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u622q87NDR0



SF HERE Local 2 Hotel Workers Shut It Down In 1980 "Union Town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_0cY8XIKXE



For more information:

http://www.facebook.com/unitehere2/



Production of Labor Video Project

http://www.laborvideo.org Thousands of San Francisco hotel workers , unionists and labor supporters rallied and marched through the streets of San Francisco on October 21, 2018 to demand wages that would allow them to work at one job to survive.There are seven hotels owned by the Marriott including the former Starwood chain that are on strike in San Francisco with 2,500 workers on the streets picketing 24 hours a day.The Marriott hotel corporation is the largest in the world with billions of dollars in profits but refuses to provide wages that allow workers to live without working two and three jobs. This action to support the Marriott workers was a national action with protests and marches throughout the country.Additional media:SF Marriott Workers Strike: A Class Battle For All WorkersBillionaires Pay Up! SF Unite HERE Local 2 Bohemian Club Workers Fight For Living WageStop Attacking Unite Here Local 2 SF AT&T Ballpark Centerplate Workers-Workers Vote To StrikeOakland Airport Unite Here 2850 Fast Food Workers Fight Union BustingThe ZIM'S HERE Local 2 San Francisco Workers Shut It DownSF Unite-Here Local 2 Hotel Workers Rally & March On Expiration Of Their 2009 ContractSF 2014 Labor Day March Picket Union Busting Fisherman Wharf Hyatt and Radisson Hotels35th Anniversary of the 1980 San Francisco Unite Here Local 2 Hotel StrikeSF HERE Local 2 Hotel Workers Shut It Down In 1980 "Union TownFor more information:Production of Labor Video Project https://youtu.be/ZZ5TCuSIYL0

An IBEW union electrical was joined by his two sons in supporting the strike not just for the hotel workers but for their future.

Hotel workers marched on the Marriott Marquis hotel with is the biggest chain in the world.

California Federation of Teachers CFT contingent joined the march and also spoke in solidarity with the Unite Here Local 2 Marriott strikers.

Unite Here Local 2 striker joined the band as the solidarity musicians marched through San Francisco.

The Palace Hotel in San Francisco is one of the hotels owned by the Marriott which is being struck.

Striking women hotel workers who are room cleaners are at the Marriott Marquis are demanding jobs that do not require working more than one job.

The drummer musician at the march.

Workers joined at a rally on Market Street in San Francisco before marching through the city.

As workers marched through the street one worker used a manhole cover to drum in support of the strike.Fedspeak Doesn't Help Market Tea Leaves - 47 minutes ago Yesterday the markets fell despite all the Fedspeak from the Federal Reserve members. Will the markets reverse direction?

USDCAD Weekly MACD Trying to Positively Cross Tradable Patterns - Wed Nov 17, 10:30PM CST The (USDCAD) is catching its breath going into todays European morning, digesting yesterdays reclaiming of last weeks high. Significantly, the USDCAD is gathering steam in its upchannel extension... ^USDCAD : 1.25995 (-0.06%) FXC : 77.68 (-0.38%)

Triple Digit Rally For Wednesday Cotton Barchart - Wed Nov 17, 4:49PM CST December cotton got to within 4 points of the LOC high early in the midweek session. Futures ultimately closed 146 to 179 points in the black, with December nearly 200 points below the intraday high. ... CTZ21 : 120.21 (+0.43%) CTH22 : 117.00 (+0.07%) CTZ21 : 120.21 (+0.43%)Rogers was most recently senior product development and research manager at CommInsure. Prior to that, he worked at AMP, REST Industry Super, and BT Financial Group, across life insurance, advice, and superannuation.

With his extensive experience in life insurance, Will brings a great deal of knowledge and best practice to the role, said Chris Powell, managing director at Integrity Life. But its not just knowledge and experience that Will brings  he is also committed to innovating the way we develop products in the life insurance sector, responding to adviser and consumer demand for products and services that are adaptive to their needs and not bound by legacy systems and processes.To date, the Red Cross of Ottawa has received $1.2 million in donations for relief efforts in the city, while $1.6 million has been similarly collected for Gatineau. The Quebec government has also contributed some $3 million to help disaster victims. Even Ontario pitched in with $1.5 million to help fund post-tornado cleanup efforts.

But even with immense outside support, Ottawa-Gatineau residents whose homes have been ravaged by high winds still await word from their insurers before they can start repairs.

Arthur Jian, an Ottawa resident, told CTV News that his home was nearly leveled within just 45 seconds.

With the remains of his home considered unsafe and fenced off, Jian has prioritized securing a new place to stay for his family. However, like many residents displaced by the storms, he is unsure if the damage can be fixed, or if the remains of his home need to be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up.

When everything dropped into the kitchen you saw nothing but dust, smoke, everything. Now its time for me to start thinking more about how were going to deal with the house, he said.

Jian has been in close communication with his insurer on the matter, and is still waiting for a report from the contracting company.

He is not the only homeowner facing rebuilding issues.

In Dunrobin  where the tornadoes hit the hardest  some 30 homes were leveled. On top of those households, 20 other homeowners are also stuck waiting for their insurance providers to relay to them the next step, CTV News reported.Sameer Kulkarni, who is accused number five in the case, moved HC for a speedy hearing.

Seven persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded in the Malegaon town of Nashik district on September 29, 2008.

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Monday allowed the application moved by accused Sameer Kulkarni, seeking to expedite the trial in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case. Kulkarni, who is accused number five in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, had moved the high court, praying that appropriate directions be issued to the special NIA court for speedy hearing of the trial.

While hearing the application, a division bench of Justice S.S. Shinde and Justice A.S. Gadkari on October 9 directed the registrar (judicial) to submit a report on the status of the trial and also submit the number of applications pending before the court in connection with the case. Following this, a report was submitted before the court stating that the trial court had fixed October 26 for framing of charges and thereafter, the trial in the case would begin.

NIAs special public prosecutor Sandesh Patil also informed the court that the investigating agency was desirous of proceeding with the trial on a day-to-day basis.

Since the offence dates back to 2008 and the said case is pending on the file of the trial court/special NIA court for a very long time, we hereby request the special NIA judge to make an endeavour to conduct the trial of the said case preferably on a day-to-day basis and expedite the same, said the bench. It also said that the apex court and the high court had already passed orders for expeditious trial of the 2008 Malegaon blast case and that the same be implemented.

Seven persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded in the Malegaon town of Nashik district on September 29, 2008.Allowing insurers to release equity by directly neutralising in their balance sheets business that will no longer generate revenue in the future, ExPRO will facilitate the ongoing transfer of insurance contracts. The product will be available from the second quarter of next year.

We want to offer insurers an opportunity to optimise their portfolios long before entire portfolios accumulate for run-off, explained Gossmann, founder and owner of the specialist insurer where he will serve as managing director from April 01. With our innovative ExPRO approach, such a roll-over of expiring policies will soon not only be easier and quicker, but also more cost-efficient than the sale of legacy portfolios practised to date.

Gossmann, in his capacity as chairman of the management board at Schwarzmeer und Ostsee Versicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft SOVAG, is currently busy restructuring the business. He will be leaving as planned on March 31 once all measures have been implemented.

Meanwhile over at Gossmann & Cie., the management team and board members will be revealed in March 2019.

Together with Munich Res experts, we have now succeeded in developing a mathematical procedure that uses methods of complex data analysis to extrapolate future loss experience, noted Gossmann. For the first time, terminated or no longer renewed policies can be transferred to a third-party insurer on an ongoing basis and at a fixed price agreed in advance.

Headquartered in Hamburg, Gossmann & Cie. will operate throughout Europe.NAGICO saw 14,000 policyholders file claims across the two hurricanes, though getting people back on their feet hasnt been easy. Because of the extent of damage, resources were strained and hard to find, from contractors and adjusters, who were working around the clock, to a lack of building materials because of heightened demand.

Read more: Firm predicts $6 billion-$10 billion in insured losses from Hurricane Michael

While 2018 hasnt brought another duo of destructive forces to the Caribbean so far, NAGICO has approached the hurricane season with caution.

We have always provided advice at the beginning of the hurricane season and upon the approach of a hurricane. Policyholders generally heed our advice, and, in some instances, its part of their policy that they must board up their property, and take precautions and keep certain supplies in stock, said McSood Amjad, adding that obstacles at the government level have prevented mitigation measures from keeping up with weather threats.

Its more of a challenge in the Caribbean  we do provide our advice through the insurance associations and directly with authorities on how they can improve after a storm, but generally, governments take a while and with limited resources, it has been a challenge for the government to implement measures that will sufficiently mitigate the effects on policyholders or clients in the event of a storm.

Read more: Superstorm Sandy made us stop and re-think our flood strategy  WKFC

The Caribbean has weathered storms before, with a pair of hurricanes in the 1990s foreshadowing the kind of damage that Irma and Maria would later bring.

Historically, the largest losses would have come from Hurricanes Luis and Marilyn in 1995, said McSood Amjad, with NAGICO paying close to $250 million in claims after those events. Later, Hurricane Lenny in 1999 put the entire city of Philipsburg in Saint Martin six feet underwater. In light of the regions stormy past, there is a willingness to put better mitigation measures in place, but funding remains a problem.

There are measures in place that the local government has taken, however they are severely restricted by funding limitations, explained McSood Amjad.The Gleason Agency had a real focus in supermarkets and had developed a patented product called GleasonESP  electronic slip/fall prevention, Gleason says. We brought that to Grocers Insurance Company and they said, Thats great; you can use it on your accounts.

Leading with technology

With ESP in its arsenal, Gleason Agency stood out from the competition and started writing coverage for supermarkets up and down the East Coast. When Gallagher bought out the Gleason Agency, Gleason set out on his own, technology in hand.

I decided that I would play the entrepreneur, Gleason says, and instead of joining Gallagher, I left and took Gleason Technology and really focused on perfecting the technology and getting the technology out to retailers across the country.

During a fundraising round, Gleason Technology caught the interest of Argo Group, whose US president, Kevin Rehnberg, became a board member. Eventually, Rehnberg asked Gleason to join Argo to help clean up its US grocery and retail division. Almost immediately, Gleason got Argo out of small commercial business, where the company was selling insurance to owners operating just one or two grocery stores.

All of those experiences  technology, brokerage and Lloyds  really served me and put me in a unique position to say, lets get out of this stuff that is killing us, which was small commercial grocery stores and restaurants, and lets focus truly on the niche we really know how to serve, Gleason says. And with that niche, lets try to figure out a way to get our brokers to understand that we have true added value in the technology.

Empowering Argos brokerage partners by putting technology right at their fingertips has been one of Gleasons main priorities as the head of the specialty insurance unit.

We had to get back to really doing special things for our target niche, and that is, in my mind, really transitioning the company to a technology-driven risk management approach that we dont see very many people quickly latching onto, he says. What weve done is come up with a whole platform of technology that really makes us incredibly different than our competitors. Those components include not only Argo Risk Tech, which is the automation of compliance activities at the store level, but also first notice of loss reporting on the same platform that is done with a smartphone or a tablet or online.

Through that system, if theres an incident at a supermarket or restaurant, the client can simply pull out their phone, take a few photos of the damage, add any additional information and submit it so the claims adjusting can begin right away. The software also alerts grocery stores when its time for a regular inspection. The platform will then deliver metrics that allow a supermarket retailer to enforce their normal operating procedures and achieve a higher level of compliance.

Its made a huge impact on both the frequency and severity of losses that we see coming out of our supermarket clients, Gleason says.

The insurtech boom

With such a sharp focus on technology and its applications for clients, Argo spends a lot of time vetting solutions and bringing them to market. While the company develops tech products internally through its Argo Digital division, it also seeks out opportunities in the rapidly growing insurtech space.

Were always looking at how a company would be positioned to help us reduce our total cost of risk, improve our processing [and] deploy AI to data sets, Gleason says, adding that keeping an eye on openings for investment is part of that evaluation. We look to be a strategic investor in pretty much everything were looking at.

In the three years since Gleason came on board at Argo, he has been amazed at the growth in the number of solutions out there with practical uses for Argos grocery and retail customers.

Its fascinating for me to see all of these different startup companies that evolved in everything from AI to drone deployment to new management-type systems and rate/quote/bind/issue systems, he says. When Gleason and his team are sorting through tech propositions, they zero in on the technologys ability to reduce the cost of the transaction and address the cause of loss.

Both the retail/supermarket industry and the insurance industry are experiencing radical changes and the threat of disruption, which makes Gleasons work of staying on top of evolutions in tech doubly complex.

What were doing is leading with technology here and saying, We dont even want to talk about the insurance until we talk to you about technology, which is a very different conversation for a carrier to have with a broker, he says. Anything we can do to bring a solution to our client that allows them to easily and sustainably reduce their number-one cause of loss  thats what we focus on every day.Federal officials are investigating a Vermont roofing and construction company whose employee died in a fall at a job site in New Hampshire.

The Brattleboro Reformer reports the Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened an investigation into Jancewicz & Son of Bellows Falls after 33-year-old Derek Goldsmith died Sept. 22.

OSHA representative Edmund Fitzgerald says in an email the investigation is ongoing.

Goldsmith was a crew manager for Jancewicz & Son, whose corporate name is Home Improvement Company of Vermont Inc.

The roofing company has been cited for safety violations in the past, and it paid a $2,500 fine.

The president of Home Improvement Company has not responded to a request seeking comment. The companys attorney also couldnt be reached.

Information from: Brattleboro Reformer

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics ConstructionThe Peoples Insurance Company (Group) of China Ltd., the nations largest property insurer, cut the size of a planned first-time domestic share sale and indicated it will proceed when the market improves.

The company will offer a maximum of 1.8 billion A-shares, less than the 2.3 billion earlier approved by the Chinese securities regulator, the company told Hong Kongs stock exchange on Monday.

PICC will proceed at the optimal time in light of market conditions, according to the statement.

Stock markets in China have had a horrible year with more than $3 trillion wiped out since January, all of Frances stock market capitalization and then some. The Shanghai Composite Index is down about 30 percent since this years high to its lowest since 2014. Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index isnt far behind, with a 23 percent retreat.

Selling 1.8 billion shares would raise about $863 million, based on the firms last closing price in Hong Kong. That would make it the third-biggest first-time offering in China this year, behind Foxconn Industrial Internet Co. and Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission approved the firm to sell A shares last month.

PICC has been pushing for higher margins at its life insurance unit as overall premium-growth slows amid regulatory reforms in both the life and property and casualty sectors, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steven Lam said earlier this month.

Like Ping An Insurance Group Co., PICC is using AI and big data to recommend insurance products and provide health management to individual customers.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics Carriers ChinaLand OLakes Inc. and Gravie will expand their Farmer Health Insurance Plan in next year in Minnesota.

When a law was passed in Minnesota last year allowing agricultural co-op members to band together to purchase group health benefits, Land OLakes partnered with Gravie, a Minneapolis-based benefits marketplace, to design a health plan exclusively for farmer-owned co-op members.

Last year, a select group of Minnesota co-ops piloted the program, which resulted in hundreds of farmers and their families enrolling in coverage and on average, saving 10 to 20 percent.

Due to its success, the program is expanding. In Minnesota, the number of participating co-ops is growing by over 60 percent, and in 2019, eligible co-op members and their employees will be able to take advantage of the program. Additionally, Land O Lakes Inc. and Gravie are actively working to expand the program to other states, resulting in relief from high health insurance prices for farmers across the country.

Source: Land OLakes, Gravie

Topics Agribusiness MinnesotaThe engineer who sued Google after he was fired for blasting the company with allegations of anti-conservative bias wont get his day in court after all.

James Damores claims against the Alphabet Inc. unit will be heard behind closed doors in private arbitration instead of in a public courtroom under an agreement filed by lawyers on both sides in California state court in San Jose.

The re-routing of the case comes five months after a pro-employer ruling by the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court that made it harder for workers to keep discrimination complaints from being shunted into arbitration.

Another former Google employee who joined Damores lawsuit will also proceed in arbitration, while a third plaintiff has opted to drop out of the case, according to the filing. Two other men who applied but werent hired for jobs at the internet giant will continue to pursue their claims in court.

All the men accused Google of political and gender discrimination in the complaint they jointly filed earlier this year. They said Google reserves certain jobs for diverse individuals and defines that as black, Hispanic, veterans, persons with disabilities and women.

Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer for the men, declined to comment.

Related:

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.While there are some issues with the data, virtually every report shows the cyber insurance market growing. Aon Benfield had it growing 37 percent last year to $1.8 billion. Its profitable and the loss ratio is in the 30s or 40s, combined ratios are in the 60s. One report found 56 carriers writing cyber, another put the tally at more than 100 and Aon Benfield identified 170 carriers writing it now, up 30 from the year before, albeit with some only writing very little.

Whether there are 56 or 170, ISOs Maroun Mourad thinks more should be doing it.

There arent enough writers that are writing cyber in my opinion, he said.

Whether and how carriers should enter the cyber insurance market was the topic for panelists at the Super Regional P/C Insurer Conference sponsored by Wells Media Group and Demotech. The experts offered their insights into the state of the cyber insurance market and the challenges facing carriers thinking about entering the market. The panel can be viewed online on the SuperRegional.net site.

Mourad, president of Verisk ISO Commercial Lines, was one of the panelists. He is a data analytics and insurance leader who has grown businesses in U.S. and Europe and around the world for Gen Re, AIG and Zurich. He has served clients across underwriting, operations and general management.

The other cyber insurance panelists were:

Erica Davis, senior vice president and managing broker at JLT Re North America. This is a relatively new position for Davis. She was formerly with Zurich. At JLT Re, she leads the Cyber and E&O practice utilizing her underwriting experience and working with JLT specialty to design new cyber and other products.

Mario Paez, vice president and National Practice adviser at broker USI in the technology privacy and network risk practice in Minneapolis. He has more than 17 years in insurance, the last 14 as a broker and prior to that, as an underwriter with Chubb. He specializes in management of professional liability insurance with the focus on technology in network security and privacy. He provides risk analysis and management consulting for a variety of industries.

Matt Sherman, senior vice president of Specialty Reinsurance and programs division for NAS Insurance. Hes based in Los Angeles. NAS is a Lloyds coverholder and an MGA writing specialty lines including cyber. Sherman oversees development of turnkey reinsurance products for carriers. His unit creates private label and customizing tools including for cyber. Hes also a former carrier chief operating officer.

ISOs Mourad believes just about every carrier should be eyeing the development of a cyber product. His reason is customer demand; the demand is outstripping supply. Mourad said there are market segments and sub-segments  from the healthcare sector and payment providers to the restaurant or the mini-supermarket down the street  that are collecting personally identifiable information and all have exposures.

According to JLTs Davis, the number of carriers reportedly writing cyber doesnt really tell the story and can be misleading. What that translates to from a capacity standpoint is an estimated $1.5 billion in capacity, she said. The largest purchased tower is $720 million so youre utilizing less than 50 percent of the traditional capacity available. I look at that face value and say we dont need more carriers.

But she added that the line of business is growing at over 20 percent year over year, risk managers consistently cite cyber as a top three risk management concern, and the World Economic Forum lists cyber as the number one risk to businesses globally. For that reason, I think where we are today in terms of the towers that are being purchased isnt necessarily reflective of where the need will be going forward, she said.

Broker Paez thinks the answer to whether there is sufficient capacity in cyber also depends on the market being served, the specific industry class, the size of accounts as well as the agent-broker distribution network involved. He cites statistics of a 30 percent uptake overall. Paez, who works within the technology privacy and network risk area placing coverage, believes there is plenty of capacity with monoline underwriters with specialized underwriters to place very sophisticated, customized type of coverage. However, that doesnt mean that there isnt a need for other carriers to be involved whether its from a capacity standpoint or from an extension onto an existing traditional policy form. There is still need and desire to address this risk.

The bigger question is whats the best way for carriers to coordinate coverage for their insureds and agent-broker distribution, according to Paez.

Sherman suggested that when it comes to 100 or 170 carriers in the space, the 80-20 rule probably applies in cyber and that new players entering would be a good thing. Therere some major admitted players that are really doing the big boys cyber, the really large limit, large multinational companies. Those players are few and far between and theyre the international carriers that we know, he said. But its still the very early days for the product to make its way into mainstream America or small and medium enterprises. Thats still evolving and still happening.

Generally, more carriers in a market space is a good thing. Product innovation comes with that. Competition is good for the end-user. The more and more carriers that enter the space over time I think is ultimately good for the product and good for the market, USIs Paez added.

Dont Play Defense

How a carrier feels about entering can be important.

Davis thinks determining the internal risk tolerance is key because there is one subset that is scared of underwriting cyber and thinks of it as the wild-wild West and then there is the other half that is leaning into the product, thinks its sexy, its growing and its the future.

Its a challenge for organizations to determine where on the risk tolerance scale they fall but that once they determine that, they need to stick to it, according to the JLT executive. This is not a product space where you want to dabble. You want to make sure that youre invested in it, that youre partnering with the right vendor panels, the right reinsurance brokers, the right resources and models available to you because if youre going to make these decisions, youre going to want to make them in the most informed and practical way and you want to make sure you have organization alignment around that, she advised.

Sherman of NAS reminded executives that they must weigh more than their underwriting risk tolerance. There is the risk of a new venture, of educating brokers and agents, of educating the risk management team. Theres risk all along the food chain, not just the underwriting risk in introducing any new product, but certainly one that is constantly evolving, he stressed.

Sherman would be concerned about a carrier offering cyber from a purely defensive strategy of not trying to lose customers: [I]ts important for a carrier to be intelligent and thoughtful about the products they offer, he said. Just offering it as a defensive mechanism is sometimes not enough because you dont want to be short-sighted about being really expert in the space. I think as carriers are learning to understand the product and be defensive, they also need to be comprehensive in their coverage.

Paez suggested that brokers typically prefer five or six primary network security carriers, because the coverage is evolving, and they may reach a comfort level over time of working with them to meet specific needs.

You see the brokerage community tend to navigate towards the markets that are most flexible, ones where theyre most familiar with their specific form. Theres a comfort level there for their own E&O, and also just in terms of ensuring that product is going to respond in a thoughtful manner, he said.

That does not mean that other carriers cannot come in and unseat these incumbents, but it is a hurdle in terms of broker-agent education, he added.

Davis suggested that deciding to write cyber might be a polarizing decision within some carriers.

I think its sometimes hard to manage that message internally. People might still view cyber as being that scary line of business. Maybe you dont want to be at the leading edge of it. Maybe you want to see how it plays out, take a more reactive role in the market. I think just really understanding the fundamental challenges, some of which were talking about today lends itself to that, she said.

Davis said casualty actuaries might be one audience with reservations. They really have a hard time wrapping their head around the lack of modeling, the lack of actuarial data that exist in this product line. If youre somebody whos conditioned to need that information to make strategic decisions within your organization, then thats a challenge, she pointed out.

According to Paez, the need for learning about the risk and product extends beyond the carrier. I think theres a big need for additional agent-broker education on the various products, cyber insurance products and also, on the silent coverage that may or may not be available.

Not writing cyber comes with risk as well, according to Mourad. One is having insureds going to another insurer. Being an agent, the broker, an MGA or an insurer and basically saying, Hey, I really need this. My incumbent insurer is not providing it to me, give me a quote. Youre opening up your doors to the competition, said Mourad.

Accumulation of Challenges

The challenges around deciding whether to enter are many.

Davis stressed how the accumulation of risk keeps insurers from jumping in. [T]his product line puts us as an industry in a very uncomfortable place, she said. When the cyber product was first introduced, the focus was on individual risk selection and understanding like risk characteristics involved, for example, with a big retailer that might have 100 million records compromised.

What originally was intended as being first party business interruption and evolved to contingent is now full throttle supply chain, upstream, downstream business interruption cover for businesses who very likely are reliant at least to some degree on the same third-part providers who offer cloud service, she said.

Whats more, the industry is underwriting in this product through a rear -view mirror, she said, noting that loss ratios look good in the 30s and 40s but coverages are getting broader and broader; there are more and more entrants in the market, some of them bringing naive capacity; pricing is depressed in that the product performance from the past may not necessarily be reflective of how it develops going forward; and theres a lack of consistency and transparency about how the policies are underwritten. Structures, terms and pricing tend to feel like they are more driven by market forces that anything else, she said.

The talent demand around cyber is a legitimate worry, according to Mourad. There are costs. You need to grow profitably with speed and efficiently. If every single insurance company effectively wakes up next Tuesday and says, I want three cyber actuaries, four coverage form experts and a few underwriters, and I want to manufacture my own data, then youre looking at a $10 million hole, he said.

That is where Verisk and ISO come in as they can take care of much of that work.

Mourad said carriers sometimes hesitate around how much capital needs to be committed to writing the line and what the risk tolerance is against that surplus. But he said there are ways to get surplus or capital relief by the use of smart structured reinsurance agreements.

While some carriers may believe cyber is risky because not enough is known about it, Mourad dismisses that. In my humble opinion, commercial auto is riskier if you look at the combined ratios, right?

I still hold the view that everyone should be in the cyber insurance business, he said, however, perhaps not everyone should write cyber against their own balance sheets. That is where the MGAs like NAS and reinsurance partners like JLT can help insurers serve their clients but not necessarily absorb that risk onto the balance sheet.

Related:

Topics Carriers Cyber Agencies Excess Surplus Underwriting Reinsurance Market Insurance Wholesale Training Development Risk Management Professional LiabilityBrown & Brown Inc. has agreed to acquire the assets of the Hays Companies insurance operations. The deal for the Minnesota-based insurance broker with $200 million in revenues marks the largest acquisition ever by Brown & Brown in its 75-year history.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, Hays Companies is comprised of more than 700 risk management and employee benefits professionals in 32 locations across 21 states. The Hays Companies focuses on risk management, commercial insurance, employee benefits, consulting services, specialty programs and private client services.

The firm is #20 on Insurance Journals list of Top 100 Property/Casualty Independent Agencies with annual revenues close to $200 million, with more than $90 million of that in P/C insurance.

The transaction is expected to close in November 2018.

Jim Hays formed the Hays Companies 24 years ago. Since formation, Hays, along with Mike Egan, Bill Mershon, Steve Lerum and others have helped grow the firm.

The Hays Companies name, the executive group, and account teams will not change, according to Hays.

Hays Companies will operate as a region inside Brown & Brown Retail, one of four divisions. The Retail division brought in $940 million in revenues n 2017, which was 50 percent of the companys total.

The operations will continue to be led by Hays, as chief executive officer of the Hays Companies, and Egan will continue to serve as president/chief operating officer.

Following completion of the transaction, Hays will join Brown & Brown as vice chairman and will serve on the board of directors, and Eagan will become a regional president of the Brown & Brown Retail Segment. Eagan will continue reporting to Hays and Jim will report up to Powell Brown, CEO of Brown & Brown.

Based in Daytona Beach, Fla., Brown & Brown is one of the largest insurance brokers in the world and one of the most active acquirers of agencies. This year alone it has already done 19 deals with total annualized revenue topping $95 million.

Topics Mergers AgenciesWest Virginia Gov. Jim Justice says there will be no change in state funding for the state employees public insurance plan next year in a letter to the agencys director.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Justice said in the letter that state funding next year will total $575 million, which is unchanged from this year. The letter is required by law to be sent by Oct. 15 so the PEIA Finance Board can develop a benefits plan.

Justice pledged on Oct. 2 to put $100 million toward the insurance plan.

Justices chief of staff Mike Hall said in a statement that the additional funding isnt included because the governor has made a proposal, but it must be approved by the legislature. Hall said the intent of the $100 million is to create a PEIA stability fund separate from the general fund.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Mergers Workers' Compensation VirginiaThe drivers affiliated with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) demonstrated outside the aggregators firm office in Kurla

A protest was held regarding the same Monday, which resulted in lesser availability of cabs through the day and 3x surge pricing.

Mumbai: The Maharashtra Rajya Rashtriya Kamgar Sangh has declared an indefinite strike of Ola and Uber drivers in the city Tuesday. The strike has been called over low earnings. A protest was held regarding the same Monday, which resulted in lesser availability of cabs through the day and 3x surge pricing.

The drivers affiliated with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) demonstrated outside the aggregators firm office in Kurla. The drivers agitated outside their Kur-la office, demanding an increase in earnings. A few also went to their Andheri office but it was already shut. The drivers will not resume duty until their demands are met, said a spokesperson from the NCP. The protestors are demanding assured bu-siness of `3,000 per day and have stressed on inc-reasing trip rates on the backdrop of rising fuel prices.

The Asian Age tried to contact the aggregators, but both denied to comment on the issue. The drivers want to increase the trip rates due to rising fuel prices; this is not possible since the prices keep on fluctuating. There wont be any strike officially tomorrow, said a spokesperson.Insurance Office of America (IOA) has hired industry veteran Phillip Lane to its team as it adds locations in Brevard County, Fla. Lane joins the team as a risk management consultant.

Prior to joining IOA, Lane was a producer at J.W. Edens Insurance in Indialantic, Fla. There he led the commercial lines department in new commercial insurance business development and retention for well over a decade. His clients included industry leaders in contracting, manufacturing, banking, technology, and professional services.

Lane holds the commercial lines coverage specialist (CLCS) designation. He began his risk management career working as a certified child protective investigator with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), and currently serves as treasurer for both the Space Coast Licensed Roofers Association (SCLRA) and the Treasure Coast Roofing & Sheet Metal Association (TCRSA).

Insurance Office of America (IOA) is a full-service insurance agency founded in 1988. IOA is ranked 13th on Insurance Journals 2018 Top 100 Independent Property/Casualty Agencies report. Headquartered in Longwood, Fla., part of the greater Orlando community, IOA has more than 1,000 associates located in over 50 offices in the U.S. and London.

Topics FloridaIts the greatest need after a hurricane and sometimes the hardest one to fulfill: Electricity.

Almost two weeks after Hurricane Michael smashed into the Florida Panhandle on a path of destruction that led all the way to the Georgia border, more than 100,000 Florida customers were still without power, according to the state Department of Emergency Management website.

Martha Reynolds sat outside her mothers sweltering home Friday with relatives, including several young children, in a low-income Panama City neighborhood. The electricity has been off since the day Michael struck.

Candles and flashlights provide light after dark, she said, and they crank up a generator at night to power an air conditioner that cools four adults and five kids.

We try to eat off the grill and keep as much ice as we can, she said. Were all looking at each other, were all here, so thats a blessing.

A few streets over, Justin Wards family gathered under a canopy set up under a shady tree in front of their hot, powerless home.

Were making it. The power is on one street over. Its supposed to be on here tomorrow, he said.

While more than half the outages are in Bay County, where the storm came in between coastal Mexico Beach and Panama City, rural counties had a greater percentage of people without power eight days after the storm. That includes Calhoun County, where 86 percent of customers of the local electric cooperative had no electricity.

Were trying to make sure they understand how widespread the damage was and that were leveraging every resource that we possibly can to get it on as quickly as we can, said Jeff Rogers, a spokesman for Gulf Power, which serves most of Bay County and seven other counties in the region. It doesnt serve Calhoun. This was an unprecedented storm.

And its not an easy problem to solve quickly. In Bay County alone, thousands of utility poles were blown down or snapped in half like toothpicks. Power lines drooped over roadways or were tossed to the ground like piles of spaghetti.

Many transmission line towers  the enormous metal structures that bring electricity to substations that then route it into specific neighborhoods  were left in twisted piles or knocked to the ground.

Several power substations were damaged, and there were countless disrupted connections to individual homes.

New power poles and lines are going up quickly in a visible sign of progress.

Long lines of utility trucks snake through Panama City streets every morning on the way toward areas where service is still out. Workers suspended in buckets from nine trucks strung lines along just one street on Thursday, and the same scene was being repeated countless times each day.

Rogers said much of Gulf Powers electricity sources  solar, gas and coal plants  are outside the storm region, so the power is available once transmission lines, substations and utility poles and lines are repaired. It will just be a matter of flipping a switch.

A week after the storm, Gulf Power had replaced 5,600 utility poles, a process that can take as little as 10 minutes or much longer depending on damage to the pole, connections to it, as well as trees and debris that could make access to it more difficult, Rogers said.

Gulf Power has about 1,200 employees working on power restoration, supplemented by 6,200 people from 15 states who are helping out.

But even far from the hurricane-damaged coast, northern rural counties were also struggling. In Jackson County along the Georgia and Alabama borders, more than 80 percent of customers were without power a week after the storm.

Our electrical grid is totally destroyed, said Rodney Andreasen, the county emergency management director. Right now our biggest need is getting power back on. Power regeneration.

Rogers said one big concern is that people are getting used to dead power lines lying on the ground or drooped in front of homes. As service is restored, those lines could be deadly.

Told that there were families in Lynn Haven that were using power lines in front of their damaged houses as a makeshift clothes line, he said: Oh my goodness. Thats a little scary. Just stay away.

Were starting to turn on and people get complacent after being around them a little bit, he said. It has been a week without power and you get kind of used to not being wary around them.

___

Farrington contributed from Tallahassee, Florida.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics FloridaA Portland, Ore. cremation worker who says she was sexually harassed and fired after reporting she sustained a back injury when a heavy corpse fell on her has filed a lawsuit seeking $900,000.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that the sex discrimination and workers compensation discrimination lawsuit was filed last week in Multnomah County Circuit Court against Portland Cremation Center.

Court documents say the woman and a co-worker in August were carrying a heavy corpse up a narrow flight of stairs when the corpse fell and pinned the woman against a wall.

The lawsuit says she reported the injury and was fired the next day.

The lawsuit also says the womans supervisors created a sexually hostile workplace that included grabbing her breasts.

An attorney for Portland Cremation Center says the company denies any wrongdoing.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits OregonRobertson Ryan & Associates Inc. has added First Dependable Insurance in Las Vegas, Nev. with the addition of Tom and Vicky Raasch.

Tom and Vicky Raasch own First Dependable Insurance. Tom Raasch focuses on commercial insurance programs for business, but also manages risks for personal insurance programs such as auto, home and valuable articles. He has nearly 30 years of experience in insurance. Vicky Raasch has been a licensed property/casualty agent for 16 years.

First Dependables customer service team will also be joining Robertson Ryan. Nicole Williams is a licensed insurance professional and manages customer service and policyholders service focusing on personal insurance programs. Brittney Smolinski oversees service work and administration.

The First Dependable location at 1700 N Buffalo Drive, Ste 103 in Las Vegas, will remain, but will be changing over their brand to Robertson Ryan & Associates over time. An existing Robertson Ryan Agent, Ed Feriance, and his service team will be joining the Raasch team at their location.

First Dependable is an independently owned agency with services offered in California, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Robertson Ryan & Associates offers a range of solutions for business, benefits and personal insurance.

Topics NevadaWASHINGTON - October 22, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) A new Gallup poll released Monday shows support for making marijuana legal in the U.S. has reached a record high of 66 percent, up from 64 percent last year. Only 32 percent are opposed.

The poll found majority support spans the political spectrum, with majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents in favor. Support among Republicans grew to 53 percent, up from 51 percent last year, with opposition dropping to just 45 percent. Approximately two out of three voters support legalization in each of the four major geographic regions of the country.

The poll results come as voters in two states, Michigan and North Dakota, are considering ballot initiatives to legalize and regulate marijuana for adult use. Nine U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and one U.S. territory, the Northern Mariana Islands, have enacted laws making marijuana legal for adults 21 and older. Eight of those states and the Northern Marianas have also established systems for regulating commercial cultivation and sales. https://www.MPP.org

Statement from Steve Hawkins, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project:

"There is a growing sense among the U.S. population that it is time to end our nation's failed experiment with marijuana prohibition. People are sick and tired of adults being treated like criminals simply for consuming a substance that is, by every objective measure, less harmful than alcohol. Americans are more informed about cannabis than ever before, and they can now see that regulation is a viable and effective alternative to prohibition.

"There are not many issues out there that enjoy majority support among both of the major political parties and in every region of the country. This support is consistently translating into wins at the ballot box, and it should further motivate elected officials to take action at the state and federal levels. Hopefully lawmakers are paying attention to this clear trend in public opinion. If they ignore these poll numbers, they do so at the risk of seeing a drop in their own."

The Marijuana Policy Project is the nations largest marijuana policy organization. It has been a leading advocate for federal marijuana policy reform since its founding in 1995, and it has played a leading role in most major state-level reforms that have occurred over the past two decades. For more information, visit https://www.MPP.org.

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KELOWNA, BC - October 22, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Marapharm Ventures Inc. (CSE: MDM) (OTCQX: MRPHF) (FSE: 2M0) ("Marapharm" or the "Company") is very pleased to announce to its shareholders, that further to its news release of October 17, 2018, its first facility has been granted the final approval to commence operations, from the State of Nevada.

On Friday October 19th, the State of Nevada completed their final inspection of the first 5,000 sq. ft facility which is designated to the Company's Phenofarm Cultivation Licence. All permitting is complete for this licence and the final approval now allows for the immediate transition of plants to the new facility to complete their cycle and provide first harvest.

The Company's second 5,000 sq. ft facility, designated to the Econevada Cultivation and Processing Licences is pending final kitchen and equipment inspection.

"We are thrilled to announce the completion of the first building of our flagship cannabis facilities in North Las Vegas, which has a potential build-out to 300,000 sq. ft. Marapharm is open for business! We are positioned to be a long-term winner in this Las Vegas market." Linda Sampson, President and CEO

ABOUT MARAPHARM VENTURES INC.

www.marapharm.com

Marapharm is a publicly traded company investing in the medical and recreational cannabis space, since 2014. Marapharm has rapidly expanded to include having cultivation, production and dispensary locations in the key North American states of Washington, Nevada, and California, and are seeking expansion opportunities worldwide.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

facebook.com, twitter.com

STOCK EXCHANGES:

Marapharm trades in Canada, ticker symbol MDM on the CSE, in the United States, ticker symbol MRPHF on the OTCQX, and in Europe, ticker symbol 2M0 on the FSE. Marapharm also trades on other recognized platforms in Europe including Stuttgart, Tradegate, L & S, Quotnx, Dusseldorf, Munich, and Berlin.

Neither the CSE, the FSE nor the OTCQX has approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the CSE, the FSE nor the OTCQX accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

MARIJUANA INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT:

Canadian listings (CSE) will remain in good standing as long as they provide the disclosure that is rightly required by regulators and complying with applicable licensing requirements and the regulatory framework enacted by the applicable state in which they operate.

Marapharm owns marijuana licenses in California and Nevada. Marijuana is legal in each state however marijuana remains illegal under US federal law and the approach to enforcement of US federal law against marijuana is subject to change. Shareholders and investors need to be aware that adverse enforcement actions could affect their investments and that Marapharm's ability to access private and public capital could be affected and or could not be available to support continuing operations. Marapharm's business is conducted in a manner consistent with state law and is in compliance with licensing requirements.

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.

Copies of licenses are posted on Marapharm's website. Marapharm has internal compliance procedures in place and has compliance focused attorneys engaged in jurisdictions to monitor changes in laws for compliance with US federal and state law on an ongoing basis. These law firms inform any necessary changes to our policies and procedures for compliance in Canada and the US.

FORWARD - LOOKING STATEMENTS:

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", 'may", "will", "project", "should", 'believe", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward- looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward- looking statements are based on reasonable assumption but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and the forward-looking statements included in this news release should not be unduly relied upon.

SOURCE: Marapharm Ventures Inc.

www.marapharm.com or Linda Sampson, CEO, 778-583-4476, email info@marapharm.com

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October 22, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Technical analyst Clive Maund charts a small-cap oil and gas company with a play in Oklahoma's SCOOP region that he sees as a strong buy.

With a market crash drawing closer the only sector we will generally be buying at this time is the precious metals sector, which is about the only sector that has not participated in the "everything bubble," and is extremely unpopular and beaten down, and has demonstrated that it will behave in a counter-cyclical manner, i.e., go up when the market tanks. The oil sector is expected to go down with the market, for the obvious reason that a recession/depression reduces the demand for oil.

However, as ever, there are exceptions, and BNK Petroleum Inc. (BKX:TSX;BNKPF:OTCQX) is one of them, for the fundamental reason that Exxon is taking an interest in it, and technically it is very cheap and showing signs that it will soon take off higher. An important tactical consideration is that due to the proximity of a strong and clearly defined support level, we can set a close stop to get us out for a minor loss in the event of it being whacked by a sudden plunge in the broad market.

On the 6-month chart for BNK we can see that, following a quite heavy reaction from May through late July, the stock has tracked sideways in a narrow range, marking out what now looks like a Triple Bottom base pattern, which fits within a much larger base that we will soon look at on the 10-year chart. An interesting point to observe is how this presumed base pattern has formed at the low of a sharp high volume intraday spike lower back in June. The duration of this range has allowed time for the 50-day moving average to drop down close to the price and for downside momentum to drop out, as shown by the MACD indicator gradually working its way back up to the 0 line, which are usually necessary preconditions for a rally.

The volume pattern is bullish and of particular interest is the larger white candles that have formed over the past several days at the support, accompanied by a big build-up in upside volume that has driven the Accumulation line sharply higher so that it is at new highs  this is viewed as a quite strongly bullish development that is likely to lead to an advance and upside breakout. Thus, with the price still close to the lower boundary of the range, we are believed to be at a good point to buy here, especially as we can strictly limit downside risk and protect against the impact of a market crash by placing a stop just beneath the recent intraday lows, say at C$0.378.

The long-term chart is illuminating and reveals two important points. One is that BNK is historically very cheap: it got as high as about C$6.80 in 2011. The other is that a giant low Pan base has been forming in the stock since late 2014, or for nearly four years now, and with the rally from mid-2017 through May of this year on good volume, it is showing sings that it is getting ready to break out of it.

The conclusion is that BNK Petroleum is a strong buy here, and it is a relatively low risk play because the proximity of an important support level means that a relatively close stop may be set to limit loss in the event that the trade doesnt work out. Despite there being 232.7 million shares in issue, the stock trades in hopelessly light volumes on the US OTC market, where it should be avoided, for this reason.

BNK Petroleum website.

Clive Maund has been president of www.clivemaund.com, a successful resource sector website, since its inception in 2003. He has 30 years' experience in technical analysis and has worked for banks, commodity brokers and stockbrokers in the City of London. He holds a Diploma in Technical Analysis from the UK Society of Technical Analysts.

Disclosure:

1) Clive Maund: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: None. CliveMaund.com disclosures below. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: BNK Petroleum. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with BNK Petroleum. Please click here for more information.

3) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The author is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. The author was not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy.

4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of BNK Petroleum, a company mentioned in this article.

Charts provided by the author.

CliveMaund.com Disclosure:

The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maund's opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications. Although a qualified and experienced stock market analyst, Clive Maund is not a Registered Securities Advisor. Therefore Mr. Maund's opinions on the market and stocks can only be construed as a solicitation to buy and sell securities when they are subject to the prior approval and endorsement of a Registered Securities Advisor operating in accordance with the appropriate regulations in your area of jurisdiction.

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Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.aspVancouver, British Columbia - October 22, 2018 (Newsfile Corp.) (Investorideas.com Newswire) Jaxon Mining Inc. (TSXV: JAX) (FSE: OU31) (OTC: JXMNF) ("Jaxon" or the "Company") is pleased to announce completion of its fourth diamond drill hole, BB18-04, as part of its 2018 Phase One diamond drilling program which was designed to test the extent of the gold-bearing tourmaline breccia zone at its Red Springs project. Red Springs is located on its 100% optioned 44,000-hectare Hazelton property in the Skeena Arch area of northwest British Columbia, Canada.

Drilling Program Highlights:

BB18-04, a vertical (-90 dip angle) diamond drill hole with HQ core (63.5 mm in diameter), was completed to a depth of 147 metres.

BB18-04 intercepted a thickness of up to 51 metres of tourmaline breccia mineralization from a depth of 64.0 metres to 115.2 metres. The core exhibits multiple, naturally discontinuous occurrences of strongly silicified and sulphide mineralization over that depth (Figure 1-3).

BB18-04, drilled on the azimuth 125, confirms the down-dip extension of quartz tourmaline breccia mineralization in BB18-03 and Trench E. Previously released assays of the samples from the Trench E outcrop reported 5 metres grading 6.78 grams per tonne (g/t) gold including 2 metres grading 15.28 grams per tonne (g/t).

Results from BB18-04 and the previously reported BB18-03, both located 295 metres north of BB18-01 and BB18-02, confirm the continuity of the tourmaline breccia zone along that strike distance.

Drilling of the fifth hole, BB18-05, with a -70 dip angle on azimuth 165 is underway, reaching a depth of 186 metres. BB18-05 is designed for a total depth of approximately 400 metres and will test the IP chargeability anomaly which indicates further sulfidized mineralization at depth (Figure 4). BB 18-05 is drilled from the same pad used for BB18-04 and BB18-03.

Figure 1  Segments from 64.0 to 64.6 metres of drill cores from drill hole BB18-04 at Jaxon's Red Springs Project, which shows semi-massive silicified and sulphide mineralization

Figure 2  Segments from 83.0 to 83.7 metres of drill cores from drill hole BB18-04 at Jaxon's Red Springs Project, which shows very strong silicified and sulphide quartz tourmaline mineralization

Figure 3  Segments from 114.3 to 114.9 metres of drill cores from drill hole BB18-04 at Jaxon's Red Springs Project, which shows very strong silicified and sulphide quartz tourmaline mineralization

Tony Guo, Jaxon's COO, commented: "We are pleased that BB18-04 has intercepted a thickness of up to 51 metres of strongly silicified and sulphide tourmaline breccia mineralization. These results confirm the dip extension of the quartz tourmaline breccia mineralization already indicated by the Channel E sampling, BB18-03 and 295 metre strike continuity from BB18-01. We await the assay results that will confirm the amount of gold contained in this extension of tourmaline breccia mineralization at the Backbone."

About Jaxon's Red Springs Drilling Program

Jaxon's Phase One of a 2,000 to 2,200 metre diamond drilling program, consisting of up to eight drill holes on the Backbone gold-bearing tourmaline breccia zone, commenced on October 4th of 2018 at its Red Springs project, located on its 44,000-hectare Hazelton property in the Skeena Arch area of northwest British Columbia, Canada.

The Backbone gold-bearing tourmaline breccia zone is a 1000 metre long strike and up to 15 metre wide surface outcrop mineralization (Figure 4). This zone, per previously released assay results, indicates the mineralization existence of high-grade gold of up to 25.86 g/t with cobalt, copper, antimony and silver credits.

The first batch of samples is expected to be delivered to the lab for assay by early November of 2018. The drilling program is expected to be completed by the end of October 2018.

The objective of the Phase One drilling program is to determine the width, continuity and grade of gold-bearing tourmaline breccia mineralisation at depth. A further objective is to demonstrate the viability of IP geophysics as an exploration tool for the mineralisation at the Red Springs project and will provide the opportunity for further down-hole geophysics to better define the geometry of any mineralisation intersected during the program (Figure 5). In addition, it is anticipated that the results will add to Jaxon's knowledge of the nature of the tourmaline breccia mineralisation and its controls.

The Company will provide further information as it becomes available and will release updates on the progress of drilling over the coming weeks, including posting videos and photos on its website at www.jaxonmining.com.

Figure 4 - Backbone high grade gold-bearing tourmaline breccia zone at Red Springs Project

Figure 5 - 2D resistivity and 2D IP chargeability anomalies at Backbone tourmaline breccia zone

Qualified Person

Yingting (Tony) Guo, P.Geo., COO for Jaxon Mining Inc., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed the drilling program, prepared the scientific and technical information and verified the data supporting such scientific and technical information contained in this news release.

About Jaxon Mining Inc.

Jaxon is a precious and base metals exploration company with a regional focus on Western Canada. The Company is currently focused on advancing its Hazelton Project in north-central British Columbia and the More Creek Project (consolidating the Wishbone and Foremore properties) in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

JAXON MINING INC.

"John King Burns"

John King Burns, Chairman

For Head of Capital Markets for Jaxon Mining Inc., please call 778-938-4459, for Investor Relations enquiries, please call 604-609-6152, and for Corporate enquiries, please call 778-953-4256.

This news release may contain forward-looking information, which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release may include, but is not limited to, the Company's objectives, goals or future plans. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, those risks set out in the Company's public documents filed on SEDAR. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames, or at all. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law. Neither TSX Venture exchange nor its Regulations 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.

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Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.aspOctober 22, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Following last month's news that the Australian Government has no plans to revise its renewable energy target after 2020,

Arkapal Sil, Power Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the implications of this decision for the Australian renewable energy sector:

"The Australian government's recent decision (Sept 2018) not to revise the country's renewable energy target (RET) after 2020, in addition to scrapping the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), which aims to reduce emissions by 26% by 2030, has brought about a certain degree of investment uncertainty in the Australian renewable energy market.

"As a result of this uncertainty we may see Australia increase its conventional power capacity in order to maintain its annual base-load power requirements. According to GlobalData, 30% of Australia's total installed energy capacity in 2017 was generated from renewables, including 10% from solar and 7% from wind power. By 2030, this figure is estimated to be 57% with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5%. However solar PV capacity is likely to decline by a CAGR of 5% to 2030 while overall power demand is expected to increase by 20% from 2018 to 2030.'

"Owing to policy uncertainty and a lack of clarity on the future direction of the national energy sector some large international players are looking to exit the Australian renewable market. The Chinese wind turbine supplier and project developer Goldwind is reportedly looking to move out of the market by offloading its wind and solar assets. This is a significant development as the sector needs private investment to kick start projects with the high nature of their initial capital funding requirements. This is also despite the fact that the country is expected to exceed its 2020 renewable energy generation target of 33,000 GWh.

"Whilst the current uncertainty is limiting investment funding for large-scale renewable projects, smaller state funded projects have largely been unaffected as they strive to achieve their renewable energy targets. Victoria, has a renewable energy generation target of 25% by 2020 and 40% by 2025, while Queensland's target is 50% renewable energy by 2030. Companies like Windlab, Tilt Renewables, Genex Power, Kalina Energy and others continue to work on state funded renewable energy projects like the 336 MW Dundonnell wind farm in the State of Victoria.

"Any sort of regulatory intervention needs to be carefully thought through so as not to affect the commercial viability of the smaller players which could lead to reducing market competition."

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Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.aspIRELAND: Housing group occupies Cork's City Hall in protest

IRELAND: Peter Casey has accused the Taoiseach of going against the spirit of the constitution

IRELAND: Brian Rattigan pleads guilty to manslaughter of Declan Gavin 17 years ago

VIEWS: Blasphemy Referendum: Beware of unwelcome consequences

WORLD: VIDEO: Man who filmed racist incident on Ryanair flight does not regret it

BUSINESS: People encouraged to start search for Christmas jobs early

SPECIAL REPORT:Mental health:Josephs summer on the streets exposes failings of system meant to help vulnerable

SPORT: 'It was a pure disgrace': Officiating physio at Kerry semi-final 'appalled' by brawl

... SOME DISTRACTION

EXAMVIRAL:How to keep your children and pets safe this Halloween

CULTURE:Memories that linger: Remembering the Cranberries visit to Cork in 1991

FEATURES: How Paddy McGurgan is using his art form to make a differenceHe was attacked near Asalfa Metro Station at 1.30 am.

Mumbai: A Congress worker, Manoj Dubey, was hacked to death in Sakinaka on Sunday night allegedly over his political write-up on a social networking website. The police said that there were tensions between him and his counterparts from the BJP over the post, which led to the skirmish in a colony in Ghatkopar. The duo, however, came face to face again following an accident when Dubey was attacked with sword and killed.

The police said that Manoj Dubey was attacked near the Asalfa Metro station, at around 1.30 am, after he came face to face with the alleged accused, Suraj Singh along with party workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after their two wheelers brush passed each other.

Singh and Dubey had been at loggerheads with each other after the latter put up a post on his social networking profile alleging that BJP would lose election scheduled in 2019. The skirmish was also brought to the notice of the police after a non-cognizable (NC) complaint was lodged with the Ghatkopar police station by both of them against each other.

At the time of attack, Dubey was held by the party workers who brought the sword and hacked him over the skirmish that was triggered by the post, which also attracted several derogatory reactions against the leaders of the respective political parties.

We have detained some persons for interrogation and are probing the incident. The motive needs to be ascertained, said Navinchandra Reddy, deputy commissioner of police, Zone X.

Police said that after Dubey was attacked he was left outside a temple in critical condition. Locals informed the police and rushed him to Rajawadi Hospital where he was declared dead on arrival.

The police should have sensed this coming after the NC complaint was lodged. The attackers should be arrested, said a family member of Dubey.

The police have registered a case of murder as per the provisions of the IPC against Singh and others and teams have been formed to track down the accused persons.If the tax year had a harvest season, we are in the middle of it. The October budget is immediately followed by the publication of the Finance Bill.

This is the piece of law designed to give legal effect to the budget, and it was published last week.

There are few enough measures in the bill this year of interest to taxpayers generally which we didnt already hear in the finance ministers budget speech.

Good news rarely gets buried in the fine print, so the fine print of the Finance Bill typically contains bad news.

For instance, there is a new rule to ensure that short-term lettings, such as those arranged via Airbnb, dont benefit from the tax exemption granted under the Rent-a-Room scheme.

Rent-a-Room was aimed particularly at the student digs market.

It provides an exemption from tax for income up to 14,000 from renting a room in your house, and the exemption can also cover providing meals and laundry services.

A new 28-day rule confirms the existing Revenue interpretation that Airbnb lettings were not exempt from tax.

The room must be let out for a period of at least 28 days if the income is to qualify from the exemption, or if it is clear that the room is being let in the student or five-days-a-week markets.

But its not all bad news.

Some farmers will benefit from the relaxation of the income averaging rules, and stamp duty relief for young trained farmers is extended to 2021.

The tax exemption for compensation paid to unfortunate people who were affected by the Magdalen laundries is extended.

There are modest improvements to existing tax relief for investing in SMEs and promoting the film industry.

The availability of an existing three-year tax holiday for new companies is being extended to 2024.

In some instances, even where there is a small change, clearance from Brussels is required.

Even though improvements such as the regional boost for filmmakers are now on the statute books, they may not take effect for some time, if at all.

The most significant items in this bill are perhaps those which arent there.

There are no new incentives to develop the property construction or rental market at a time of crisis in the housing sector.

One existing measure, the Home Renovation Incentive scheme, due to expire at the end of this year, has not been extended.

Industry groups had been looking for improvements to the capital gains tax regime for entrepreneurs, and this did not figure either.

An opportunity to correct a defect in the law which created a tax trap for individuals in a management buyout has been missed.

Anyone looking for help or support in the Finance Bill in dealing with Brexit will be disappointed.

This may perhaps be explained by the Governments obvious reluctance to be seen to be anticipating possible outcomes of negotiations which have yet to conclude.

Nevertheless, no matter what outcome there will be, some preparation is necessary.

For instance, there was no sign of measures to simplify or defer the collection of Vat on imports from the UK when that country leaves the EU.

Such arrangements are already commonplace in several EU countries and could have been introduced without prejudice to any Brexit deal.

If the budget measures were modest, the Finance Bill is modest to the point of being reclusive.

Taxpayers seem to be at the back of the queue when it comes to the allocation of resources from this particular tax harvest.

Brian Keegan is director of public policy and taxation at Chartered Accountants IrelandBy Chiara Remondini

An increase in Italys bond-yield spread is a risk for its domestic banks and is adding to tensions in the financial system, according to cabinet undersecretary Giancarlo Giorgetti.

The spread is a risk for banks, which we cant ignore, Mr Giorgetti, a senior official in deputy prime minister Matteo Salvinis League, said in an interview with Il Messaggero.

The situation requires a serious and responsible approach from the government, he said. Italys budget standoff with the EU enters its next phase later today as Prime Minister Giuseppe Contes government faces a deadline to explain why it deviates from eurozone rules.

The bond spread, public debt held by banks, and new EU banking rules are straining Italys financial system, which may generate the need to recapitalise some institutions that already have capital fragility, Mr Giorgetti said.

Its 2019 budget deficit target of 2.4% of GDP is a ceiling and may not need to be used completely, he said.

Italys banks are reeling from the impact on their capital levels of soaring government bond yields, which touched a five-year high on Friday.

Theyre also sitting on a 260bn pile of non-performing loans, the biggest in the EU, from the last financial crisis.

Its important to start a frank and constructive dialog with the European Union, Mr Giorgetti said. Were responsible people and well do things in a responsible way, he said.

The 10-year yield spread over Germany, a key risk barometer, dropped from 341 basis points, the highest level in more than five years, after European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said on Friday that EU wouldnt interfere in the governments economic policies.

A spread greater than 400 basis points would not be sustainable for Italian banks, according to an October 7 note by Credit Suisse. A 200 basis-point broadening from the end of June would reduce the capital ratio of Italian lenders by 66 basis points, it said, which could trigger the need for capital increases. Moodys Investors Service cut Italys credit rank by one notch to Baa3, its lowest investment-grade rating

- BloombergCork is fast becoming one of Europes most active and growing tech regions with 29,000 employees, adding to rapid growth in Irelands technology industry.

Thats the message of IT@Cork chair Caroline ODriscoll as the voluntary tech bodys 12th annual Leaders Awards recognised winners from a range of indigenous and multinational companies.

Voxpro founders Dan and Linda Kiely were named as Tech Persons of the Year at the event.

Ms ODriscoll said: This year we had the highest number of nominations ever, and each year it becomes increasingly difficult to select winners because of the high calibre of contenders.

She said: The future for Cork tech is extremely bright. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate not only the winners but the nominees and most importantly the people who stand behind them  each award winner and nominee is powered by a team and I want to thank each and every one of the 29,000 employees working in our thriving, ground-breaking and boundary-pushing ICT sector.

The Multinational-Large Company award went to McKesson, which provides pharmaceutical and medical products to pharmacies and hospitals throughout the world.

Rory Lankford, from McKesson, is presented with the Multinational/Large Company of the Year Award by Jim Blair of Aspira and Orla Meagher of Investec.

Its technology centre in Cork is the first and only one outside the US and is a player in cybersecurity and software development.

The One to Watch winner is the rapidly expanding cybersecurity Smarttech247 based in Cork.

It also has offices in Krakow and Bucharest.

The Smart Technology Innovation award went to GridBeyond.

It provides demand-side response and energy services for large industrial and commercial clients.

The Tech Start-Up award was shared with two winners, Getvisibility and Altada.

Getvisibility is a cyber-security company that develops, sells and operates a disruptive artificial intelligence-driven software-as-a-service platform.

The product can be used by any firm to monitor sensitive data, in real-time.

Altada transforms data-rich clients into data-driven companies using an artificial intelligence platform to cleanse and organise data groups.

Tech Training Programme of the Year award went to Xanadu, a technology company that develops betting software.

Donal O Buachalla, Sarote Ni Ailpin, Stiofan O Murchu and Aoife Ni Dhuinnin of Gaelcholaiste Mhuire AG, winners of the Excellence in Education Award, are presented with their plaque by Michael Loftus of CIT, and Avril Ronan of Trend Micro.

It provides operational support and services for the Matchbook betting exchange.

The Corporate Social Responsibility award went to VMWare, which currently employs 1,100.

Excellence in Education went to Gaelcholaiste Mhuire, a 600-student school on the northside of Cork city.Reading Academy Online is tackling dyslexia and other reading problems, writes Ruth Doris

One in 10 people is affected by dyslexia, but despite the prevalence of the learning difficulty, which makes it harder for some people to learn to read, write, and spell, many teachers report that their training is inadequate.

Two teachers have now provided a solution: The Reading Academy Online, a course tailored for parents, caregivers, and teachers of struggling readers.

As teachers at St Oliver Plunkett National School in Co Dublin, one of four special reading schools nationally, Sarah Dieck Mc Guire and Sarah Lumsden Watchorn recognised the unmet demand for specialist teaching services for children with reading difficulties and dyslexia.

They decided to offer services outside of school, setting up The Reading Academy in 2015. They currently operate three centres running small classes at Greystones in Co Wicklow, Monkstown, Co Dublin, and Belmullet in Co Mayo.

While the Department of Education provides a number of specialist units within national schools and four designated schools for children with dyslexia, many students with reading difficulties are still struggling in mainstream classrooms.

In a class of 30, three will struggle with reading, while the other 27 will be fine, says Ms Mc Guire. So when the Government is looking at funding, they see it as a small percentage.

However, she points out that there are varying degrees of severity, and while a child with mild dyslexia will develop coping mechanisms, he or she will struggle to reach their full academic potential.

The Reading Academy has received very encouraging feedback. Parents have seen significant improvements in their childs attitude to reading and to their self-esteem. Resource teachers noticing their students progress have contacted the academy, asking about the methods they use, and whether they offer summer courses.

However, the founders realised that because of the scale of the demand and shortage of specially-trained teachers, another solution was needed. So they devised an online course based on the programme used in the centres. The course material is highly-structured and is suitable for parents, grandparents, caregivers, or resource teachers, regardless of experience, to teach a struggling reader.

The instructor doesnt need to take a course, but they learn as they teach. The course is based on the Orton-Gillingham approach.

Students are taught to understand the relationship between sounds and letters, and the how and why behind reading.

The programme is presented using a multi-sensory approach, so when students are writing words, theyre also saying them. and theyre tapping the letters. Sound-tapping is one of the most effective methods that students use to isolate each of these sounds, Ms Mc Guire explains.

Lessons use a variety of tools: Video, whiteboard animation, PowerPoint presentations, quizzes, and detailed lesson plans. There is also a fully-supported private Facebook group for questions and feedback.

The programme is led by the learner. Many teachers are driven by a curriculum  they teach the lesson and move on. This approach is the complete opposite; the learner moves on once theyve mastered the lesson.

Ms Mc Guire says the programme has no age bias and is also suitable for secondary school students and adult learners. However, she recommends waiting until children reach second class because of potential conflict with the phonics-based teaching in the mainstream school setting. Launched last month, the course costs 99 for a home licence for one to two learners; school licences are priced at 250 for one teacher and 360 for three or more teachers.

Ms Mc Guire is confident of the courses results.

By the time theyve completed the programme, we would be looking for them to be reading novels to work on their fluency and their vocabulary, she says.

While other programmes are available, she says the materials are costly. The business has received no outside funding to date. The founders have received business advice and mentoring through the Empower programme for female entrepreneurs.

The next step is to spread awareness of the online programme in Ireland, before looking to the UK. Ms Mc Guire says they are passionate about giving everyone the chance to learn to read.The safety and security of EU and UK citizens will be at serious and unnecessary risk unless urgent progress is made in Brexit negotiations, a British parliamentary body has said.

The British Home Affairs Committee said that unless comprehensive agreements are made on security issues, there will undoubtedly be cases where justice to victims of crime will be frustrated or denied and where criminals will be able to evade arrest for longer.

The committees warnings follow previous concerns here about the impact of Brexit, from the DPP Claire Loftus, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, and Chief Justice Frank Clarke.

The committee said a no deal Brexit was an increasingly plausible outcome, and flagged serious worries on issues relating to the European Arrest Warrant, access to security databases, and involvement in the EU police agency Europol.

It called on the British government to obtain long-term access to SIS II in order to identify individuals who pose a genuine threat coming into the country, and indeed from Britain and into the EU. It said losing access to SIS II would be a calamitous outcome for the UK.

The British government said it disagreed with their concerns about a lack of progress in negotiations.

However, it did share some of its concerns if agreements are not made, and admitted that an end to Britain being able to access EU databases such as SIS II would be detrimental both for the UK and EU member states.

The committee said it was becoming increasingly frustrated and concerned about the lack of progress in negotiations to date.

A no deal Brexit is an increasingly plausible outcome, but we are unconvinced that the government is planning adequately to prevent the most unthinkable of outcomes from becoming a reality, it said.

Without urgent action to make progress in these negotiations, and to put workable contingency plans in place, the safety and security of UK and EU citizens will be put at serious and unnecessary risk.

The British government disagreed and said the implementation period has to be time-limited with an end date of December 31, 2020.

The committee is unclear as to how the European Arrest Warrant will operate and what role the UK will have in Europol after Britain leaves next March.

The British government agreed it would be in the best interests of the UK and the EU for Britain to maintain its role with Europol.By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

A once-homeless mother of four is working toward an online learning degree to help turn her life around.

Roisin Kelly from Wexford is one of more than 1,000 students over the past four years of An Cosan Virtual Community College, whose flexible learning methods mean she can take most of her classes without even having to leave home.

Her background mitigated against her going back to education, ever since leaving school at 15 without the Junior Certificate, and becoming pregnant at a young age.

Extreme poverty and homelessness followed a string of bad luck for Roisin and her children.

I had to raise four kids alone, plus I had to work to put food on the table. But the only jobs I could get were casual jobs in bars, she said.

All along, I knew I could do more than that, that I was smart. But without an education, I wouldnt get the opportunity to get a better job. It felt like being trapped. It was so unfair.

But after completing a 10-week programme in 2016 that supports learners like herself to develop the skills and confidence for third-level study, Roisin is now in the second year of a three-year degree in leadership and community development.

Both courses are run by An Cosan Virtual Community College, an off-shoot of Dublin-based community education organisation An Cosan. Most of the programmes are delivered through online lectures and assignments, but face-to-face workshops are also provided in students local areas.

This model allows Roisin to take on studies she would not otherwise have been able to balance with family and other commitments.

I have been able to schedule my learning around my kids and work. I do it online and at my own pace, she said.

It is really convenient and is accredited by Institute of Technology Carlow, so it is as good as going to a university in Dublin.

As one of An Cosan VCCs community partner hubs, Southend Family Resource Centre in Wexford hosts two face-to-face sessions for each of Roisins degree modules. Learners can then log in at home or from their local hub for eight weekly online sessions.

The charges for courses range from 300 for single module programmes, up to 2,200 a year for three-year degrees.

The online learning model has helped to attract more than 1,000 students to An Cosan VCC courses over the last four years, with a limited bursary fund open for applications. Students are also helped to access a range of Government supports.

Assistance with running costs have also been provided from local education and training boards (ETBs), community training centres, local development companies and Dublin City Council.

However, with State funding limited to 57,000 a year, An Cosan VCC is calling on the Government to increase its funding by 350,000 so they can continue delivering more success stories like Roisins.

An Cosan chief executive Liz Waters, said women have been excluded from reaching their potential for too long because they choose to become mothers.

We believe that being a mother should never be a barrier to achieving an education. Thats why we provide an accessible way for learners to get the education they need and to be the best they can be, she said.

The idea is to educate women to degree level and enable them and their families exit poverty.

From abject poverty and the toll it took on her self-esteem and mental health, Roisin has been able through her continuing education to move confidently in just that direction.

I cant believe Im getting a degree. I never thought that would be possible, she said.By Ken Foxe

The Department of Health wanted to pay the new chairperson of the HSE 100,000 a year for a job that would involve working for just two days each week.

After negotiations with the Department of Public Expenditure, the fee was instead agreed at 80,000 a year, internal records have revealed.

The Department of Health wanted the pay package to be linked with its plans for a new starting salary for the new chief executive. Interviews for that role are scheduled for late this month.

The salary for the chief executive will be in the range of 250,000 to 300,000, with provision for a higher rate in exceptional circumstances.

Health officials asked that this information be kept confidential in communications with the Department of Public Expenditure.

In negotiations over a salary for the chairman  who was since been confirmed as Ciaran Devane  officials struggled to find a similar role for pay comparison.

In emails, they said the chair of Bord na Mona was paid 21,600 a year for between four and eight days per month, while the chair of CIE gets 31,500 annually for 10 half-day meetings each month and significant further time commitment.

An official explained the new HSE chair was seen as a key appointment.

One email from the Department of Health said the position would be on the basis of a more substantial role and time commitment than a standard chair and requiring a significantly higher level of remuneration than the standard rates.

In a preliminary business case sent on June 7, the department said it would be looking for an 80,000 salary for the role with a five-year term.

In it, they provided details of chairperson fees from the private sector including AIB, Smurfit Kappa, Bank of Ireland, and CRH.

Twenty minutes later, however, the Department came back to say it now believed a fee of 100,000 should apply to the two-day-a-week position.

An email from the Department of Health said: Our Sec Gen [Jim Breslin] has just contacted me from a meeting to say that following information received from Fiona Tierney [then chief of the Public Appointments Service] that the fee for the Chair position should be pitched at 100k.

The going rate for a non-exec director in the private sector for six meetings per year is 60k. For a chairman, that is likely to be 100k+.

The department said a recent board position advertised by AIB came with a 65,000 salary, while the chairman of Nama, Frank Daly, was paid a fee of 150,000.

On the basis of this additional information we wish you to consider agreeing to the higher rate of 100k rather than the 80k mentioned in the business case below, it continued.

The Department of Public Expenditure was unwilling to go higher, however, saying it was only prepared to sanction the 80,000 salary.

In a statement, the Department of Health said it had considered a fee of 100,000 for the role and that it had agreed upon that rate.

It said: Following consideration of the work involved for the Chairperson and that at least two days per week would be required to undertake the role, it was agreed that 80,000 was appropriate for the position.

They said the chairperson would have a key role in helping manage an organisation with 110,000 staff and a budget of almost 16bn next year.According to insiders, the prince is 'happier than ever' after it was last week revealed the couple would become parents next year.

The couple first started to tell family members they were expecting at Princess Eugenie's wedding at St George's Chapel in Windsor. (Photo: AP)

Prince Harry has revealed that he is hoping to have a baby girl with Meghan Markle when she gives birth in the spring.

The 34-year-old royal couldn't help but share his excitement at becoming a dad when a well-wisher yelled "Congratulations, I hope its a girl!" during a cycle race in Sydney.

Laughing, the Duke of Sussex replied: "So do I!", The Mirror reported.

According to insiders, the prince is "happier than ever" after it was last week revealed the couple, who married in May, would become parents next year.

And Prince Harry has remained protective over wife Meghan Markle during the whirlwind tour - insisting the 37-year-old take a break from official duties and rest up on the sixth day of their tour.

The Duchess, who is 12 weeks pregnant, was told by Prince Harry to "cut back" and stay at home as he cheered on Invictus Games athletes in Sydney on Sunday morning.

A Kensington Palace spokesman added: "After a busy programme, The Duke and Duchess have decided to cut back The Duchess's schedule slightly for the next couple of days, ahead of the final week and a half of the tour."

The pair are on day six of the tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji - and last night's Invictus Games ceremony ran over its scheduled time due to thunder storms.

The baby will be seventh in line to the throne but will not have a royal title, unless the Queen intervenes.

The couple first started to tell family members they were expecting at Princess Eugenie's wedding at St George's Chapel in Windsor on Friday and it is understood Meghan has already undergone her 12-week scan.Update 8.57pm: A solution must be found to ensure students at Ardgillan Community College in Balbriggan can go back to school soon.

Fianna Fail's Education Spokesperson Thomas Byrne says the issue needs to be resolved before the end of the mid-term break.

Transition Year students have been told to stay at home this week after one of the school buildings was found to be unstable.

The Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Education and Training Board have say they may have to relocate students or get prefabs on site to ensure they can accommodate everyone.

Mr Byrne says the Department of Education has to come up with something and expects the transition year students to be accommodated again by the end of the mid-term break.

"Certainly, I wouldn't accept it beyond of Halloween break," said the Meath East TD.

"Yes, we can accept it as an emergency this week, and for their safety, this has to happen, and their not an exam year.

"But really and truly, I would expect this to be resolved by the end of Halloween break."

- Digital Desk

Update 11.45am: No concern for other schools after 'significant structural issues' discovered at Balbriggan school

No plans are being made to check other schools built by the same company that constructed Ardgillan Community College in Balbriggan, Co. Dublin.

The school was forced to close one of its buildings after an engineer discovered serious structural issues during a fire safety audit.

Students may now have to be relocated or prefabs brought in to temporarily replace the 18-room building.

CEO of Dublin and Dun Laoghaire ETB, Paddy Lavelle says at the moment they do not have cause for concern regarding other schools built by Western Building Systems.

"I don't know to what extent other schools may have been affected," said Mr Lavelle.

"But each building is unique, I don't expect that it is the same type of issue everywhere.

"Certainly in our case it is something that's significant and that has to be addressed over the near time.

"There are schools that we have had that are dealt with by Western but none of them have identified with this type of issue."

Earlier: 200 students affected by closure of school building due to 'significant structural issues'

Up to 200 students at a school in Balbriggan in Dublin will be taking classes elsewhere this morning.

A section of the building at Ardgillan Community College was closed with immediate effect over the weekend after a fire safety assessment found "significant structural issues".

Ardgillan College in Balbriggan. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin.

The Department of Education along with school management took the decision to close part of the school in the interests of the health and safety of the students.

Paddy Lavelle, Chief Executive Officer in the Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Education and Training Board, says transition year students have been asked to stay at home this week.

"There are 910 students currently going to the school, there are about 90 transition years involved so they have been asked to stay at home and that will allow us to manage the rest of the students within the new school building which is the phase two building," said Mr Lavelle.

"We hope that after the midterm break there will be other arrangements to ensure that every student gets education from then on."

The decision to close Ardgillan Community College in Balbriggan was taken by management and the Department of Education on Friday, when a fire safety check highlighted the problem.

In a statement DDLETB said: "DDLETB and the School Management have emphasised that their absolute priority at all times is the health and safety of students and staff and the above measure is therefore considered appropriate."

Digital DeskA young girl who was awarded 550,000 after 'tram surfing' on the Luas line in Dublin is afraid to leave her house after abuse from Internet trolls.

Rebecca Kelly, of Pearse House, Pearse Street, Dublin, sustained a severe brain injury when she fell off the side of a tram eight years ago.Makeup pro Paddy McGurgan is using his art to shine a light on rising suicide rates and the darkness many people are trying to mask, writes Ruth OConnor

Makeup artist Paddy McGurgan is one of the Norths leading pro makeup artists and the owner of the Make Up Pro Store which has three studio shops in Derry, Newry and Belfast with plans to open one in Dublin in the coming months.

He has worked with some of the most famous faces in fashion and show business  from Yasmin le Bon to Mischa Barton, Christine Bleakley to Girls Aloud. McGurgan has been named European Creative Makeup Artist of the Year and Winner in the Professional Category of Illamasqua Distinction of Makeup Artistry and has worked at global fashion weeks and at the MTV Awards.

Prior to launching his own successful company, he also worked for some of the most prestigious cosmetics brands globally  household names such as MAC, Nars and Laura Mercier. Yet despite all this glamour, in conversation, he is softly spoken, generous with his time and utterly lacking in pretension.

While he has trained over 650 makeup artists and employs some 30 more, McGurgan constantly continues to explore and express his creativity through his creative professional photoshoots. The looks seen here are sure to provide plenty of inspiration to his customers, and to readers, as Halloween approaches  with the Devil look proving hugely popular so far to his fans.

However, while the makeup looks here are extraordinary in their creativity and their technical skill, there is also a deeper resonance behind these images. In the run-up to World Mental Health Day earlier this month, and using makeup as his medium, Paddy McGurgan created this You are worth more than your Darkness photo campaign to highlight rising suicide rates across the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as to open up a conversation around mental health issues in general, partnering with mental health charity, Action Mental Health, in doing so.

I think makeup can become almost addictive, says McGurgan on the phone from his Belfast store.

It can be used as a way to hide away. I draw a comparison: We take medication when we are unwell and it makes us better, but then people can become addicted to it and it then has a negative effect. I feel sometimes makeup can follow that same journey and it then loses focus of what its there to do  which is to instil a person with confidence, instil a sense of creativity and a way of presenting yourself as an individual. But used wrongly makeup can also result in a sense that you are never happy with what you see in the mirror no matter how much makeup you have on.

McGurgan says that social media carries a burden of blame in terms of its affect on peoples self-esteem. I recently had two experiences. One in which I dealt with a beautiful girl who has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. She could be a fashion model  she is truly beautiful. I did her makeup and the results were stunning. However she could not or would not post one of the photos wed created up on social media because she was terrified of her followers seeing her without her fuller brows and heavier makeup. She was afraid of their rejection.

The second situation was when I did makeup for a girl for her formal (debs). I could see her looking at herself in her phone  she didnt like it. After some discussion I realised that she didnt like how the makeup was photographing in Snapchat. My jaw hit the ground. It wasnt about what she looked like in real life  it was about how many likes shed get on the photos shed post at the event. This really is a perfect example of the stress and unnecessary pressure young women are putting themselves under when they should be dancing and enjoying themselves.

McGurgan was also prompted to produce this photoshoot by the death by suicide of a young woman, a friend-of-a-friend, in the past few months.

I was struck by how the darkness can creep up on you. By how the darkness can take such a stronghold. I knew I wanted to create something that reflected that other person inside of us  the dark side we have to sometimes wrestle with.

Paddy McGurgan

The idea of a beautiful young woman struggling with the dark side inspired the central black and white image of a silhouetted face-within-a-face that you see here. This young woman was a beautiful girl. She was super funky and trendy and into her makeup. So I wanted to do a beautiful face on one side  a typical look that you see on many young women. No matter how much beauty you see in someone, it doesnt necessarily follow that they see the same beauty in themselves.

Our rates of suicide are climbing, says McGurgan.

Even my own staff have been affected. Its an epidemic. I feel a responsibility to do anything I can by using my art to highlight the issue and to try to get the services in place for the people who need them.

makeupprostore.co.uk; paddymcgurgan.comA yes vote removes from the Constitution the criminalisation of irreverence and expresses support for persecuted people around the world, says Liam Herrick The current referendum on blasphemy presents us with a simple choice.

A no vote means retaining the anachronism of blasphemy in the Constitution, leaving open the possibility that a scientist or journalist could be prosecuted for insulting or even questioning the existence of a god.

A yes vote would mean ridding ourselves of this antediluvian provision and removing a wholly unnecessary and illegitimate restriction on our civil liberties and freedom of speech.

It has been argued that if we vote to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution, the use of blasphemous speech could become a problem in Ireland. But, we might ask, a problem for who?

The prohibition of blasphemy is not a protection for individuals; it is a protection for ideas and institutions. It does nothing to respond to genuine problems of division and racism. If anything, it risks heightening feelings of exclusion, because blasphemy laws are almost always used to defend the majority religion in a State.

If we vote to remove the constitutional offence of blasphemy, the State would still be under a legal obligation to protect individuals from harm. But it would no longer be under a constitutional obligation to protect

religious ideas from ridicule or undermining.

Irish society faces serious challenges of racism, discrimination, and hate- and hostility-based crime, as demonstrated by research carried out by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the European Network Against Racism, and the Hate and Hostility research Group.

But blasphemy laws exist to protect religious ideas, not people. Effective incitement-to-hatred and hate crime legislation is badly needed in this country.

It has been pointed out that blasphemy has not been successfully prosecuted in Ireland since 1885; though of course we do not know what has remained unwritten or unsaid for fear of the law over that period.

Still, the fundamental law of the State should express the values of the people.

As long as the offence is set out in the Constitution and in legislation, the State and the courts are left in the invidious position of determining questions of theology and sanctity, and the extent and quality of outrage that might follow from views on these subjects.

Apart from the practical difficulty this poses for public bodies, there is the more pertinent question of whether this could ever be a proper role for a modern State.

It is well settled that blasphemy laws pose a threat to the protection of human rights, by infringing free expression, and that there are other more appropriate ways of addressing the very real problems of discrimination and hate speech.

In 2011, the UN Human Rights Committee changed its concept of the defamation of religion, issuing a general comment stating that laws directed at lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with international human rights unless they are targetted at incitement to hatred against individuals.

This is essentially a question of the maturity of our society. Do we feel that we are robust enough to tolerate criticism or even ridicule of ideas or beliefs?

Certainly, there is such a thing as bad taste or indecency or insensitivity to the feelings of others  and broadcasters and publishers may well be open to criticism or perhaps even formal complaint processes when these lines are crossed; but the sanction of the criminal law has no business in adjudicating on such matters.

It is a peculiar type of paternalism that seeks to protect institutions that dont seek or require that protection. The main Christian churches are advocating a yes vote. The Catholic bishops main concern is that religious bodies should not be prevented from having a voice in public life.

As a state that has strong equality protections for individuals on the basis of religious belief, and which affords special legal status to organised religious bodies, Ireland clearly provides such strong protection.

The bishops second concern relates to the use of blasphemy to oppress minorities, including Christian minorities, in other parts of the world. By removing Ireland from the group of states that retain blasphemy laws, we show solidarity with those around the world who are persecuted on the basis of their beliefs.

There are, of course, other free speech issues that can and should be addressed without constitutional change. However, when we decide on the fundamental law of the State, we must concern ourselves with the choice before us, not with any questions we might prefer to have been asked.

We have an immediate opportunity to take a useful step forward to remove one of the few remaining elements of paternalism from Bunreacht na hEireann.

Free speech is the lifeblood of our democratic society. A yes vote removes from the Constitution the criminalisation of irreverence  something that has no place in a modern democracy.

Liam Herrick is executive director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.We should consider the irony of booting blasphemy out of the door while legitimising even more draconian curtailments of speech, writes Margaret Hickey.

The presidential campaign is overshadowing the other question to be put to voters when they go to the polls on Friday.

That question, whether to remove or retain Article 40.6 of the Constitution which makes blasphemy an offence, is not getting the discussion it deserves because it is seen as somewhat moot, a dead letter. That view is borne out by the fact that the last prosecution under blasphemy law in Ireland was in 1855.

In the Constitution, the offence of blasphemy specifically applies to Christianity. It was not until 1999 that the laws against blasphemy were broadened to protect other faiths too. This was not only to reflect a more religiously pluralist country but also to honour the constitutions own guarantee of religious equality.

For people of religious belief, blasphemy is a sin. In Christendom, the line between sin and crime, between Church censure and State prohibition, tended to be a very thin one, especially where major transgressions were concerned.

Today we have come a long way. The freedom to blaspheme God and his prophets, whatever the faith, is considered well within the limits of legitimate freedom of expression.

In 2005, when a Danish publication, Jyllands Posten, published cartoons mocking the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the Danish governments failure to take action against the paper sparked violent protests in Denmark.

When other western publications reprinted the offending images and politicians around the world defended their actions, the backlash escalated. Because the counter protest was fragmented and unco-ordinated, protesters felt somewhat isolated and vulnerable.

Later in 2015, when Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, well known for its ribald brand of ridicule, published cartoons of Mohammad, the papers office was stormed and 12 of its staff including its editor shot dead.

This time, world reaction was finely co-ordinated and overwhelming in its impact. World leaders including our taoiseach of the time, Enda Kenny, led a crowd of over a million in solidarity through the streets of Paris. The battle cry Je suis Charlie echoed around the world. It was an unprecedented global shout-out for freedom of speech and its setting in the very heartland of liberte could not be more iconic.

Since 2015, blasphemy has become a somewhat esoteric and dated concept. It does not even need a campaign to make the case for its removal from our Constitution.

Just a bit of embarrassing, old-fashioned verbal junk that needs to be swept away and the less said the better. Nobody seems to consider the irony of booting blasphemy out of the door while legitimising even more draconian curtailments of speech. Hate speech. Hate crime. These are the new blasphemies and they are far more wide ranging and repressive than the old blasphemies ever were.

The current presidential campaign is a good example of how easy it is to fall foul of the new orthodoxies and be branded a heretic against political correctness. When Liadh Ni Riada was discovered to have had expressed misgivings about the HPT vaccine, she was dragged before the auto da fe of orthodoxy to recant.

Liadh Ni Riada

She did, of course, explaining that her concerns merely related to the lack of clear information for parents from the HSE. But suppose she still held these misgivings, is she not free to hold them?

New information is always coming through on medical and scientific questions. It is the nature of science that the jury is rarely ever in. Surely the role of people in public life is to raise questions?

In this instance, Ms Ni Riada never brought the issue into the campaign. The thought police unearthed her views, such as they were, and held her to account for them.

Peter Casey, a professed enemy of political correctness, did not blink when branded a racist by a fellow candidate for his belief that the Traveller community is not a distinct ethnicity and that they should be treated like the settled community when it comes to allocating public housing.

Incumbent President Michael D Higgins, in comparing the life expectancy of Travellers with the rest of us and the higher rates of suicide among their young men, was, by inference, levelling even more serious and substantial charges against him.

This trick of inflating the issue to disarm a dissident is the stock and trade of politically correct enforcers. It is this trend to shut down reasoned discussion by branding and tagging sideline voices with pejorative labels that should worry us.

Freedom of speech is a precious value and should be defended on all fronts. It cannot be reduced to a campaign against prickly, religious fundamentalists as if they were its only enemies.

In fact, the religious demographic in this country is particularly tough skinned these days. Or perhaps it is

the lack of general sympathy for their sensitivities that keeps them from complaining.

The most recent standout act of blasphemy against the Christian faith and its god in this country was delivered by actor Stephen Fry when interviewed by Gay Byrne in his series, The Meaning of Life, in 2015.

Fry used the kind of language on air that is generally still spelt out in print with a lot of asterisks. There was no doubt about its falling foul of blasphemy but there is, of course, also the question of whether it also falls foul of profanity too.

Where we draw a line on that score is a related but distinct question, but here, too, the boundaries are rapidly fading from view. Freedom of expression is close to open borders in respect of both profanity and blasphemy in certain organs of media.

But we must not be fooled. New ideas of where and how freedom of expression should be limited are fast emerging. The politically correct becomes the politically enforced before you can say George Orwell.

Hardly surprising, it is journalists again who are often the first casualties. Sometimes it is the outlets they write for that deny them a voice. Tragically sometimes, when the newspapers show the same disregard for political and ideological boundaries, the consequences can be horrific.

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi of the Washington Post, who was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey, is the latest victim. He was writing about organised crime and its links to politicians in his native country, something that has already cost the lives of young journalists in Slovakia, Malta, and Poland in recent months.

Jamal Khashoggi

Of course, that is far, far down the road from planting a phobic or ist tag on a political or ideological opponent. But it is the same road.

Where we place the blocks or mines on the path of free speech has always been a contested discussion.

Quietly erasing blasphemy from our Constitution makes open season on religion official, but if there are parallel movements towards the suppression of other voices, including religious voices, including the voices of conscientious objectors, in the national conversation, then we will just have ushered in censorship under a new guise.

How far the defence of censorship goes may vary from time to time and place too place, but its breaches will carry a cost for those who cross the line and that is often a cost for truth too.Theresa May will insist the Brexit deal is 95% complete as she faces MPs after a weekend of vicious attacks from within her own ranks.

In a Commons statement after talks with EU leaders in Brussels, the British Prime Minister will say the "shape of the deal across the vast majority" of the withdrawal agreement is now clear.

She will tell MPs that since last month's fractious summit in Salzburg, "important progress" has been made on issues like security, transport and services.

Protocols have been developed on how Brexit will impact Gibraltar and the UK's military base in Cyprus.

"And all of this from the last three weeks alone, is in addition to the agreements we had already reached," she will say.

Mrs May will tell the Commons that "taking all of this together, 95% of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled".

But she will add: "As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.

I do not believe that any UK prime minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not.

Furious backbenchers warned the Prime Minister she is "drinking in the last chance saloon" after tensions flared over her negotiating strategy following a Brussels summit.

Senior Brexiteer Theresa Villiers criticised "disturbing" anonymous briefings to Sunday newspapers, including claims the PM was entering the "killing zone".

But Brexit minister Suella Braverman said her colleagues were "free to express themselves in the way they wish" and repeatedly refused to say she would back Mrs May in a confidence vote.

British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said the exit agreement must be finalised by the end of next month to allow new laws to be put in place in time for exit day.

Mr Raab suggested a transition extension could run for three months, but said the move would have to "solve" the Irish backstop issue.

Labour has warned Mrs May that it will not back her Brexit blueprint when it reaches the Commons.

Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said there is a "real lack of confidence" that Mrs May can bring back "anything by way of a good deal".

(PA Graphics)

PAThe importance of mutual ties may have been made obvious in the long meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Ranil Wickremasinghe.

In the space of one dramatic week, India-Sri Lanka ties, seemingly ready to implode, were patched up again. The importance of mutual ties may have been made obvious in the long meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Ranil Wickremasinghe. As a neighbouring nation of consequence, India has to continue to view the island as a desirable strategic partner even if Sri Lanka may have tended to lean towards China, but at considerable economic cost in infrastructure projects, as it found out in its struggles to service even the interest payments. Sri Lanka had to give away control of the Hambantota port for 99 years in lieu of the debt, which is when it may have realised the economic benefits of partnering with India on a wide range of infra projects, besides buying Indian cars and white goods that are still effectively priced because of lesser transportation costs.

A leaked Cabinet confidence last week about an assassination plot against President Maithripala Sirisena had deliberately spread misinformation about it being the Indian spy agency RAWs handiwork. The President rang Mr Modi and spoke at length to clarify the position. Mr Sirisenas colleague Rajitha Senaratne also clarified his President had said to the Cabinet that attempts were being made to implicate RAW in the alleged plot in order to create a wedge between the two nations. The feeling that there may be differences between Mr Sirisena and Mr Wickremasinghe about collaborating on projects vis-a-vis China and India had also caused a few furrows in New Delhi. Going by the list of projects India has been asked to help out with on the island, it does appear that Mr Wickremasinghes pro-India stance may have prevailed in wide ranging talks he held with the defence and home ministers, besides meeting his counterpart.

There are two views of Sri Lanka  the first in New Delhi of an important neighbour to be kept on our side to check Chinas increasing influence and economic clout and the other in Chennai of the country across the Palk Strait that keeps persecuting Indian fishermen for crossing the international maritime border. Just last week, Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami wrote to the PM to apprise him of the illegal actions of the Sri Lankan judiciary in sanctioning fishermen from the state and detaining them for not paying the hefty fine. It does appear New Delhi is far less inclined to bring up the subject of fishermens livelihoods and other related issues seriously enough to make any difference to the situation on the seas. The capital view tends to favour friendly relations despite Sri Lankas island mindset in order to serve the larger South Asian objective at a time when Maldives may also swing a bit away from Chinas influence when the Abdulla Yameen regime ends next month.The rate of growth at 15% was particularly striking  the average industrial growth rate recorded across all EU countries was a mere 1.2% in the period.

To put the performance in perspective, manufacturing now accounts for almost a third of all economic output by GDP, double of the share of a decade ago of 17%, and well above the global average, leaving countries such as Germany, the US, and the UK well behind.

The dramatic growth in Irish industrial production shows that Government policies to rescue the sector after decades of neglect and decline have borne fruit.

There has been a push by many governments across the world, and not just in President Donald Trumps America, to pull their economies out of the recession by pushing for more manufacturing in their home bases.

The results in Ireland have come about by incentivising foreign companies such as Intel, Medtronic, Schneider Electric, Cook medical Ireland, Boston Scientific, to name just a few.

But the indigenous sector has also moved significantly into the holy grail of advanced manufacturing and robotics with strong support from Enterprise Ireland.

Making it in Ireland; Manufacturing 2020 was the policy document released in the thick of the recession in 2012 as the Fine Gael Government came to power and needed to get Ireland back to work quickly.

Abroad, Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, introduced his Make in India programme in 2016 achieving spectacular success attracting investments from firms such as General Motors, and from Koreas oldest car manufacturer KIA.

In August, the Chinese government launched Made in China 2025, a state-led industrial policy that seeks to make China dominant in global manufacturing. The Chinese move, in particular, enraged President Trump who sees the move as one that may undermine his Make America Great Again mantra.

However, behind the bluster, US administrators know that manufacturing has become a very competitive game. Earlier this month, Washington released its Strategy for American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing.

The US administration said at the time: This century saw dramatic changes with significant decline in US manufacturing employment starting in the 1990s and accelerating losses during the 2008 recession.

In the face of intense global competition, the Trump Administration has taken strong action to defend the economy... strong actions are required to combat unfair global trade practices and help US manufacturers reach their full potential.

The UK has shown up as one of the laggards with industrial production growth of 1.6% in the year to August. It is finding difficulty moving up its production base from below 10% of national output where it has been stuck for the past decade.

Amid weaker international demand for British goods, its manufacturers have suffered negative growth in the first six months this year  meeting definitions for an economic recession in the sector.

They face a difficult autumn as the Brexit deadlock continues and Trumps trade sanctions hit exports. Englands misfortune could be Irelands opportunity.

But the fight for manufacturing jobs has become a key focus of so many major economies that it may not be a case of jobs moving from Britain to Ireland, but from Europe to Asia, or to the US.

On the immediate horizon, there is the worrying move by the White House which last week notified US Congress of its intent to start three separate trade agreement talks with Japan, the EU, and the UK.

The US has a trade deficit with all three of these regions. That means the US will buy fewer products made in Ireland, the rest of the EU, as well as from the UK and Japan.

John Whelan is a leading consultant on Irish and international trade.Farming families tend to understand instinctively that good times never last forever. Last years bumper crop, or price, gives way to this years shortage or revenue meltdown.

Those living in cities are perhaps less likely to accept that this is simply a fact of life and more likely to play the blame game when things go wrong.

We are five to six years into an economic recovery which many regard as our due after the big economic freeze of 2008 to 2012.

A variety of events starting with a mishandled Brexit, a conflict and-or financial meltdown could serve as the trigger, but the truth is that the good times do not go on forever, regardless of the circumstances.

Naturally, people focus on the problems that accompany prosperity, in particular, in the area of housing. But we need to take care to curb public and private spending so as to give ourselves room for manoeuvre in a downturn. The recent crash taught us some hard lessons.

We learned about the dangers of over borrowing at personal, household, corporate and national level. We discovered just how quickly borrowing costs can soar as confidence evaporates. It is sound economics to keep back funds for difficult times.

The finance minister has recognised this by allocating 500m a year to a rainy day fund, though 1.5bn is coming from the countrys sovereign wealth fund, a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Are we really doing enough to put aside funds for this event?

Governments need to keep decent reserves for priming the pump when finances are tight.

It makes sense from a business point of view. In harder times, you get far more bang for the taxpayers buck. Capital projects are less costly. Labour is cheaper.

But could the Government go further by selling off more State assets at a time of buoyancy in the property market and putting the proceeds into an enlarged fund? Total public expenditure in Ireland is now close to 60bn a year.

In this context, an annual 500m down payment is a modest sum indeed.

In the US, there is concern that only eight states have rainy day funds equivalent in size to 10% of annual expenditures. We are still way off what in our case would be a 6bn target.

We need to learn the lessons from previous recessions on the best methods of combating downturns. The Hamilton Project at the US Brookings Institute has come up with interesting findings. It examined measures undertaken during the great recession in America 10 years ago.

While the US Feds easy money strategy primed the pumps, then President Barack Obama administrations fiscal stimulus also helped to shorten the downturn. The US emerged from the crash much more quickly than Europe.

And the most effective individual measures? Programmes aimed at lower income people much more inclined to spend those funds quickly and in their local districts.

Economists such as Alan Blinder have concluded that public spending was more efficient than tax cuts in fostering recovery. However, well-targeted tax cuts also helped. The most effective being increases in child tax credits (seen as six times as effective as accelerated depreciation aimed at boosting capital investment by firms). However, economists also concluded that safety net programmes varied greatly in their effectiveness.

In the great recession, employment among males without a high school qualification fell 13%. The already poor and the young were hit hardest and have been slowest to feel the benefit of recovery, though most of the US is now at full employment. The next downturn could be accompanied by a rapid increase in the use of artificial intelligence leading to a sudden displacement in middle-level jobs.

Policymakers could face different challenges. One piece of advice to households would be to keep levels of debt at modest levels. There are signs that Irish people have learned the lesson of 18 years ago and that debt is still being paid down. But there should be real concern about the Governments failure to run a surplus at the top of the cycle, given the size of our national debt.

Businesses too should be alert to the experience of firms during recessions across the past few decades. Harvard academics Ranjay Gulati and Nitin Nohria studied 4,700 companies, examining their response to recession. They looked at three American recessions: 1980 to 1982; 1990-1991; and 2000 to 2002.

The periods covered included the three years before the recessions and the three years after the recessions. The picture is not a pretty one. Four in five of those that did not regain pre-recession sales levels.

Interestingly, firms that cut costs faster and deeper did not flourish. Such firms had only a one in five chance of pulling ahead of the competition when things got better. Equally, businesses that boldly invested more than their rivals did not fare particularly well either.

The real winners were those companies that combined defence and offence, cutting costs while investing for the future and when it comes to cutting g costs, securing efficiencies in operations and in supply chain management would appear to be the way to go.

Firms that slashed their workforce ended up with lower staff morale and found that they had lost much of their expertise. When the recovery came, they often had difficulty filling the gaps that had opened up.

As the authors conclude: Confronted by recession, many CEOs shift into crisis mode.

They lowered head-counts, preserved cash, shut down businesses, postponed fresh investment in research and development (R&D) or the purchase of assets. Sony is cited as a company that struggled to regain momentum following heavy cutbacks during the 2000 and 2008 recessions.

Hewlett Packard is cited as an example of a company that suffered from an overly aggressive, optimistic strategy. It ramped up spending on R&D by almost 10%, spent billions on acquisitions and on IT.

However, these initiatives strained the organisation. Top managements attention was spread too thin.

The authors cited the US retailer, Target which thrived through a clever mix of expansion and contraction. It actually increased its workforce by 10% while also shutting down underperforming facilities. It boosted service and shifted to high-end products. The company was able to take advantage of depressed prices to pick up property, plant, and equipment on the cheap.

It turns out that those who box clever win out during recessions which are often times of deep business transformation. But a good strategy will not suffice without sufficient financial firepower. The best generals can do little without weaponry at their disposal. A good general knows that an army needs decent food, clothing, and shelter.

This is something that cutback merchants tend to neglect as they set out to shred the cost base.

That said, whether one is a nation, an individual, or a corporation, it does not do to enter a tougher environment without the financial wherewithal and without a plan.I got the gig because I work at Kilkenomics, which is a portmanteau of Kilkenny and economics. There isnt a specific Kilkenny economic theory but if there was, Brian Cody wouldnt tell us about it anyway and youd only find out at the later stages of the championship.

Economics as entertainment is a long way away from where economics used to be. My earliest introduction to economics was in the late 80s when my older brothers were studying commerce degrees in college.

The economics books were grey. The covers didnt even have a picture on them. There werent even any of the sexily shaded spheres that youd see in science textbooks.

Now this was the late 80s, so in fairness, all textbooks were like this. There were no photographs of smiling German teenagers ice-skating or using a computer or helping an old person. Textbooks were meant to remind you that life is dull and full of problems.

We were just ships that pass exams in the night. Later in the 90s, I didnt do economics in school, partly because it appeared to be one of those subjects that was taught exclusively during the afternoon slump. When I peeked through the door at older students, they seemed to be comatose.

The radiators were on the October to March setting and the rooms was hotter than a bikram yoga studio.

Economics came from the Greek word oikonomia, meaning the law of the household. There is economy in religion, which refers to Gods handling of things. God would be fairly hands-off, in fairness. He could even be criticised as letting the market take care of things. But somewhere along the line people realised that economics had one crucial thing  a catchy end bit, and that end bit has gone on to finish off a plethora of words.

One of the first nomics was Reaganomics, and they named nomicses after every president since. We didnt have any nomicses because for most of the 90s and 00s, the economy was improving so we didnt ask too many questions about where the money came from.

But then after 2007 everyone wanted to know where their money went. This led to a boom in economics, and nomics followed as a result.

We started talking about Bertienomics  a largely cash-based one  and around the world other nomics mushroomed. Many everyday words have had an omics appended to them. Agronomics, Spousenomics, Babynomics, Cocoanonics, Coffeenomics, Beefenomics, Abenomics, Trumpnomics.

Theres no real limit to it  make up your own one: Absenomics  the economics of gyms and its opposite Nomnomnomics  the economics of comfort eating. Then the financial impact of what happens after too much comfort eating  Colonomics.

Menonmomonics  the economics of the Muppets. The point is, nomics is catchy  lets make it the umbrella term. Or better still, to reflect the inherent vagueness that comes with GDP figures, 15 different measures of unemployment, the touchy-feely consumer sentiment, lets call it Shnomics, the Nomics of Vague Life.

A huge part of shnomics has to be our predictable unpredictability, our irrationality, our emotions, our motivations. Who knows what that son of yours will do? Or your niece. Shes a law unto herself.

Shnomics is hard to define so its a great one to be an expert in because you cant be wrong. You can learn off a few phrases like it depends on a number of variables and if you pressed me for an answer Id have to say that it could go either way and I dont know really but if I had to guess I would say..

And since theres plenty of demand on TV and radio for being a commentator like that, the shnomic forecast is bright.

Colm ORegan appears at Kilkenomics from November 8 to 11.Given the title and purpose of the event on Friday, the majority of those present, not surprisingly, were women. The last day of the week is spot on for a gig like this.

Everybody gets to glam up, have a lovely meal, applaud a bit, and then not go back to work for the completely legit reason that the necessary networking took so long, you know.

I was the master of ceremonies, and though I say it myself, I launched the thing with some aplomb. Welcomed everybody warmly. Did the health and safety thing. Told the guests what was going to happen in the following few hours. Mentioned that this year is Concerns 50th anniversary.

At the end of all of that, I even managed to get down the podium steps in 4in heels without coming an embarrassing cropper, and got back to the round table, populated with VIPs, where I was to sit until my next task. I was kind of disappointed by CEO Dominic McSorleys response, though. He made with the puzzlement, rather than the plaudits.

I thought you were going to introduce me? he asked.

Pride cometh before a fall, exemplified right there. The one thing that mattered, I had forgotten to do. I fought my way back up to the podium, bellowed at 300 people to drop those forks and pay attention, and handed over, to the CEO, an audience seething with rage at having their smoked salmon with dots of Dijon dressing postponed right in front of them.

Give him his due, Mr McSorley rescued it.

Right royally, he rescued it, although when a man in the audience later came up to the CEO and told him hed been moved to tears by the speech, I couldnt help but wonder if the audience members emotional lability had not been helped along by starvation.

After that, it all went pretty well. The event was to hammer home the lesson that if you lift women out of subservience and servitude, if you educate them and give them skills, you lift an entire community and a total society. That has been proven all over the world, in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, where Concern operates. The speech given by the woman honoured with the Concern Women award hammered home to the audience that this is not something specific to Africa.

Cathriona Hallahan is managing director of Microsoft Ireland. The sort of woman you assume came from what Pat Kenny calls the leafy suburbs. You know the type. Silver spoon, definitely, for starters.

Moving swiftly on to being brought in the family Beemer to ballet and violin classes from the age of four, predestined to have an MBA by 22 and picked out, thereafter, by some Microsoft algorithm as an elite employee full of promise. The audience, by now content because they were at the coffee stage of the meal, sat back and prepared to listen to a bunch of management and techie speak. The relief, when neither materialised, was palpable.

That was because Ms Hallahan went straight to the personal.

Her childhood was Beemer-free. No violin lessons. No early MBA. Because her family background was somewhat less than privileged, she was needed, in her teens, to contribute to the collective income. Off she went and did a secretarial course.

To clarify for younger readers, these were training programmes that taught shorthand, touch typing, and how to make lists so your boss didnt double-book himself or forget his wifes birthday. And no, the gender in that last sentence is not a mistake.

Back in the days of secretarial courses, bosses were overwhelmingly male. In consequence, one of the skills secretaries needed, back then, was the ability to drop off and pick up dry cleaning. This skill didnt figure in secretarial courses. Young women had to learn it all by themselves, but practice makes perfect and they got lots of practice.

When Ms Hallahan finished the secretarial course, off she went and got a job in a small family firm for about three years. That was grand, except that at the end of it, the usual recurring recession struck and she had to go looking for another job, which she found in a small computer company. Its name was Microsoft.

Within a short time, her new boss spotted potential in her that she didnt know she had. She was encouraged, she says, to go back to college. Laughing at herself, she points out that of course, she had never gone to college in the first place. But she did, now, and, as she studied at third level for the first time, she was working her way up through Microsoft.

She gives no impression of having been hungry to reach the top, but she does no self-dismissal, either. Interestingly, while she doesnt go into any detail about her university degrees, she spends more time talking about having trained and qualified as an executive coach and encouraged colleagues in the company to do likewise. This generates a not-very-muted cheer from the rowdiest table at the event, which is dominated by Microsoft women having a great time and clearly not bound by any duty of deference to Cathriona Hallahan.

Now, executive coaching is whats often dismissively called a soft skill. If it figures on a CV, the chances are that the CV in question is thin to start with. Either that, or the executive coaching is thrown in towards the end along with other elements of self-expression like reading actual books and walking the Camino.

So for someone described as not only managing the continued growth and expansion of Microsoft Ireland but also representing the company on all strategic policy and public affairs issues, its significant that the issue of executive figures so largely in publicity material about her. It is unlikely it would figure so prominently in such material about a male managing director, perhaps because executive coaching is emerging as one of the ways to structure relationships in an increasingly female workplace.

One of the challenges that faces women in business is promotion.

It may not look like a challenge, but it is, because it disrupts pre-existing female friendships, and in my experience advising companies, is often poorly dealt with. Executive coaching tends to create a more formal framework and understanding around female relationships within a company.

That said, what every woman and man in the workplace needs is the simple brilliant service Hallahans first boss provided her with when he identified strengths in her that she didnt know she had. Thats the ultimate measure of business leadership.Business Govt Looks East to Revive Flagging Foreign Investment

Shipping containers are stacked at Yangons Asia World Port on Sept. 16, 2016. / The Irrawaddy

YANGONLooking to arrest a two-year decline in foreign investment, the government plans to hold a summit targeting investors from East Asia before the end of the year, a senior economic official said.

We are open to all countries are who eager to invest in Myanmar. But our main focus this time is East Asian countries, U Than Aung Kyaw, deputy director general of the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), told The Irrawaddy.

The Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) and the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) expect to hold the summit in December, according to DICA.

Our investment policy has turned to the East, U Than Aung Kyaw said. Among the East Asian countries and regions Myanmar is wooing are China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan and South Koreasome of which are already among the largest investors in the country.

U Than Aung Kyaw said Myanmars ASEAN neighbors offer a model for the policy, as many of the blocs member countries now source most of their foreign investment from East Asia, rather than the West. Most ASEAN countries receive more investment from the East. Thats why we expect more from them, he said.

However, he added, We welcome Western [countries] if they want to come.

Recently, the EU Trade Commissioner threatened to withdraw trade preferences from Myanmar due to human rights violation in Rakhine State. Experts have warned that the move could leave more than 400,000 garment workers without jobs.

Under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the government has launched several major efforts at economic reform, including the Myanmar Companies Law, which offers privileges to foreign investors and has made business regulations more efficient and effective. Despite these initiatives, however, the country has been mired in a chronic economic slowdown since 2016.

A UMFCCI survey for the second half of this year showed that all economic sectors are in a downturn. Foreign direct investment in Myanmar declined significantly to USD6.6 billion in fiscal 2016-17 from USD9.5 billion in 2015-16 as Western investors were turned off by damage done to the countrys image by the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine State.

Last week, the MIC launched the Myanmar Investment Promotion Plan (MIPP), a major initiative that aims to attract more than USD200 billion in investment from responsible and quality businesses over the next 20 years.

MIPP projects are expected to receive USD8.5 billion from fiscal 2021-22 to 2025-26; USD12.3 billion from 2026-27 to 2030-31; and USD17.6 billion from 2031-32 to 2035-36.

According to MIPP, the government aims to raise Myanmars ranking in the World Banks Ease of Doing Business Index to within the top 100 by 2020. Myanmar ranked 171st this year. Looking at some of the countrys ASEAN neighbors, Laos ranked 141st, the Philippines 113th, and Cambodia 135th.

The MIC has engaged numerous East Asian countries with its investment promotion activities, including Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, according to DICA.

We are doing investment promotion activities [with East Asian countries] in a rapid sequence. We plan to go to China soon, U Than Aung Kyaw said.

In September, the MIC also held a meeting with the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Myanmar with the aim of attracting more investment from the country.

On Tuesday, an MIC team organized investment promotion activities in Hong Kong, at which MIC president U Thaung Tun explained Myanmars current economic reforms, the Companies Law and various investment opportunities to the Hong Kong business community.

U Thaung Tun met with Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam to seek investment in Myanmars tourism sector, and also to get support for infrastructure management, vocational training and capacity training from the Chinese Special Administrative Region.

Meanwhile, U Thaung Tun and DICA director general U Aung Naing Oo are attending the 23rd Macao International Trade and Investment Fair in the Chinese enclave.

According to DICA, China is the largest investor in Myanmar among East Asian countries, while Hong Kong is ranked at No. 4. In fiscal 2018-19 fiscal year (August-October) the Yangon Investment Commission approved 75 projects in the industrial, hotel and service sectors by investors from China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Vietnam.Asia Cambodia Talks Fail to End Trade Sanction Threat, EU Says

Protesters chant slogans against Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen during the EU-Asia leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, October 19, 2018. / Reuters

BRUSSELS  Cambodia failed on Friday to allay criticisms of authoritarianism and rights abuses that threaten the countrys duty-free trading access to the European Union, the EUs top diplomat said after talks with its premier.

Brussels began a formal procedure this month to strip Cambodia of its special trade status, worth billions of euros a year, following July elections that returned strongman Hun Sen to power after 30 years in office and gave his party all parliamentary seats.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini held talks with the prime minister in Brussels during a summit of 51 European and Asian leaders. She said later she had not heard anything that would avert trade sanctions.

We discussed this, I cannot say that we found solutions to any of these issues, Mogherini told a news conference.

There is a lot of concern in Europe  about the dissolution of the opposition and the narrowed democratic space for political opposition and civil society.

The blocs review of Cambodias duty-free access to the EU means Cambodian sugar, garments and other exports could face tariffs within 12 months under EU rules and make the country less attractive for retailers exporting to Europe.

EU countries accounted for around 40 percent of Cambodias foreign sales in 2016. Clothing factories employ around 700,000 workers.

Its exports to the European Union were worth 5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) last year, according to EU data, up from negligible levels less than a decade ago, before the trade status.

Myanmar Also Accused

Dozens of Cambodians gathered outside the summit venue in Brussels to protest against Hun Sens policies.

He declined to answer questions from reporters, waving his hand and walking away when asked if he was concerned about the impending sanctions.

Mogherini also met Myanmars Minister for International Cooperation Kyaw Tin in Brussels and raised the prospect of similar trade sanctions to punish the country for what the West says is its ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.

A recent UN report accused Myanmars military of gang rapes and mass killings with genocidal intent in Rakhine State and called for its commander-in-chief and five generals to be prosecuted under international law.

Myanmar has denied most of the allegations in the report, blaming Rohingya terrorists for most accounts of atrocities.

We wont close our eyes to violations that the international community sees as worrying, Mogherini said. Our trade preferences have the respect for human rights at their core.Asia Durga Puja Brings Brief Burst of Joy to Hindu Refugees in Bangladesh

Worshipers display idols during the Hindu festival of Durga Puja in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Tuesday. / Mohibullah Mohib

DHAKA  Despite the heightened security, Hindus sheltering in the refugee camps of Coxs Bazar say this years Durga Puja was a much happier affair than last years celebration of the religious holiday, thanks to a helping hand from Bangladeshi authorities.

Local authorities also helped the roughly 100 families erect a pavilion for the festival and even supplied the small community with a weeks supply of electricity for the first time since they arrived late last year.

This time the Bangladeshi authorities have arranged everything for us, said Sumanta Rudra, a Hindu commune leader in the camps. Our Muslim neighbors in Myanmar who also came to Bangladesh have visited us during the celebration, he added.

Last year, having fled the latest outbreak of violence in Myanmars northern Rakhine State only weeks earlier, the newly arrived refugees marked Durga Puja in a far more modest fashion while taking shelter in an abandoned poultry shed.

Local Bangladeshi authorities later moved the Hindu families to comparatively improved accommodations.

Accompanied by traditional drum music, this years festivities kicked off on Oct. 14 and carried on into Friday afternoon.

We could not enjoy the Puja with such festivities in Myanmar. But its different here in Bangladesh and we are celebrating it here, Sumanta Rudra said, escorting the Hindu idols on their way for immersion.

Shishu Shil, another Hindu, said that in Myanmar they did not have experienced and skilled craftsmen to make the idols.

We used to celebrate in front of our temple and build idols with some hard paper, he said. But here we can enjoy a real festival. Its the first time in my life to see the festival like this.

Swarasati Das, however, was feeling nostalgic and said she would still prefer to be celebrating back home in Myanmar.

However, we have enjoyed the festival here, she added.

Coxs Bazar police chief ABM Masud Hossain, who visited the festivalgoers on Wednesday, said security had been stepped up for the holiday as a precaution.

We have covered all the costs for their festival and we even arranged two trucks so that the immersion of the idols could take place without any trouble, said Ukhia Sub-District Executive Officer Nikaruzzaman Chowdhury.

We also distributed family relief hampers that contain clothes and food items so that they can bring some joy on these days, he said.Burma Alleged Elephant Poachers Arrested in Irrawaddy Forest Reserve

A joint force stands around three alleged elephant poachers arrested in Pathein Township, Irrawaddy Region, on Thursday. / Thalek Kwar Police Station

PATHEIN, Irrawaddy Region  Police arrested three alleged elephant poachers and seized their small arms in a forest reserve in Pathein, Irrawaddy Region, on Thursday.

A joint force of forestry police, local police, Forest Department personnel and staff from the Emergency Elephant Rescue Unit (EERU) arrested the alleged poachers while on patrol in the Thalek Kwar forest reserve. One poacher got away.

We had to drive about 20 wild elephants off from some villages in Pathein Township recently. We assumed that there might be some elephant poachers around and carried out a patrol, and we arrested three elephant poachers, U Lin Lin Tun, who heads the EERU, told The Irrawaddy.

The joint force spotted two suspicious-looking men on Thursday at about noon along Chaungtha-Ngwe Hsaung Road. One of the men got away but the other was arrested and identified as Saw Htoo Nyaw, 32. He was found with two daggers and three bottles of poison.

After interrogating him, police also arrested Naing Htet Kyaw, 18, and U Kyaw Ta Thein, 56, in the Thalek Kwar forest reserve and seized poison, a percussion rifle, ball bearings for bullets and other items often used for hunting elephants.

Saw Htoo Nyaw and U Kyaw Tha Thein are from Pathein Townships Kyay Htauk Kwin village and were helping the poachers, Naing Htet Kyaw and Maung Aye, the man who escaped. Police said the two alleged poachers are from Mindon Township, in Magwe Region.

Police have accused the three men they caught of illegal weapons possession and of violating the Protection of Biodiversity and Conservation Areas Law. They are searching for Maung Aye.

Poachers can hunt elephants here because of the assistance of locals. While poachers get 6 to 10 million kyats [$3,796 to $6,326] for an elephant, locals who assist in the poaching only get at most 500,000 kyats ($316). It is not worth it to be arrested and have their lives ruined for that amount of money. So Id like to urge locals to stay away from poachers, said U Kyaw Myint Tun.

U Kyaw Myint Tun is the administrator of the Tin Chaung village tract and has won an elephant conservation award presented by State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Elephant poaching has been rampant in parts of Irrawaddy Regions Pathein, Ngapudaw and Thabaung townships adjacent to the Rakhine mountain range since 2011.

According to Irrawaddy police records, 59 wild elephants were poached in the region between January 2011 and May 2018.

The Forest Department says 115 wild elephants were killed in the last four years across the country.

In response to a rise in elephant poaching, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation said in August that it was planning to establish elephant conservation areas in Yangon, Bago and Irrawaddy regions.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.Burma Anti-Corruption Commission Rejects Request to Probe Yangon Govt Losses

School buses purchased by the Yangon government are parked in a compound near government offices on Jan. 10. A recent audit report says the government borrowed money to buy the buses without seeking approval from Parliament. / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The Anti-Corruption Commission said it will not take up a complaint about the billions of kyats worth of revenue the Yangon Region government lost out on over several years according to a recent report by the local Auditor Generals Office.

Former Yangon Region lawmaker Daw Nyo Nyo Thin, founder of Yangon Watch, an independent monitor of the governments performance, filed the complaint with the commission on Oct. 12 calling for an investigation into the losses revealed by the audit of the regions 2016-17 fiscal year budget.

Responding to the complaint, the commission said on Saturday that there was no need for it to investigate the losses yet because the government and auditor general will still working through the procedures that must follow the release of any audit report. It also pointed out that the incidents listed in the complaint predate Article 3 a (2) of the Anti-Corruption Law, which the complaint cites but only took effect in July when the law was amended.

According to the rules of the Union Auditor Generals Office, the Yangon government is required to respond to the audit findings within a reasonable period of time  to be set by the auditor general  and take immediate steps to stop any fraud, misappropriation, waste or losses brought to light by an audit, including any appropriate legal action.

The commission also said that it had learned that the Yangon auditor general would monitor the governments adherence to the procedures closely.

But the commissions decision has drawn mixed reactions.

Daw Nyo Nyo Thin, who filed the complaint, welcomed the commissions quick response and said she was encouraged to hear that the government was obliged to act on the auditor generals findings.

But she said she disagreed with the commissions interpretation of the law  that it wont take action because the incidents occurred before Article 3 a (2) took effect. She had picked out five of the many findings in the auditor generals report, under both the previous and current administrations, that she believed made the strongest cases for investigation.

Lawyer U Kyee Myint, a member of the Myanmar Lawyers Network, said that if the incidents occurred before Article 3 a (2) took effect the commission could still take action using the law as it was before it was amended.

Indeed, they should proceed with an investigation into the complaint, he said.

The report, submitted to the Yangon Parliament in September, has sparked heated discussion among local lawmakers. More than two dozen of them went through the findings in Parliament, raising questions about the irregularities and billions of kyats in public funds it said the government had lost out on.

But not a single government minister agreed to attend Parliament to discuss the findings.

We thought the government would respond to the lawmakers discussions and explain how it would take action on the findings. But it didnt, said Ko Nay Phone Latt, a regional lawmaker with the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD).

He said that in light of the commissions announcement on Saturday the lawmakers would continue to push the government for accountability.

Regional lawmaker U Kyaw Zeya, also with the NLD, said legislators would monitor the governments response to the report carefully.

He said if the government fails to take the necessary action, the Union Attorney Generals Office could order the Yangon Auditor Generals Office to investigate further or conduct its own probe. Lawmakers could ask the local auditor general to investigate further as well.

If we submit that proposal, I am sure it would be passed with a majority of votes in Parliament, he said.

U Kyee Myint said the government should inform the public of any action it was taking to address the reports findings over the course of no more than six months. If it fails, he said the lawyers would join with civil society groups in filing another complaint against the government with the Anti-Corruption Commission.The GHN45 howitzers were indeed very good, and with base-bleed shells, had the longest reach of all howitzers available then.

In 1987 soon after the Bofors story broke out, the late Ramnath Goenka persuaded me, to visit Sweden to ferret out what exactly took place there. I contacted Magnus Akerlund, a producer in Radio Sweden, which first broke the story. Mr Akerlund invited me to visit Stockholm to talk to the reporters covering the story. Radio Sweden had by then quite effectively nailed the Swedish Social Democratic Party of Olaf Palme as the main beneficiary of a bunch of pay-offs made by Bofors. It was also clear that some money was paid to Indian parties. One clearly was Win Chaddha, who for over a decade was the Bofors representative in New Delhi. Another party was the Hinduja brothers. But the last one was very interesting. It led to Austria.

I then proceeded to Linz in Austria to meet a man called Gan Eisenberger, who had recently been fired as the marketing director of Noricum, the howitzer manufacturing arm of the giant Austrian government-owned engineering company, Voest Alpine, after an Austrian parliamentary committee found him guilty of flouting Austrias neutrality laws. This committee also found some money missing in the accounts pertaining to this division. It was the equivalent of Rs 25-30 crore.

In the late 1970s Voest Alpine purchased the design for a relatively light and rugged 155 mm howitzer from Gerald Bull, a Canadian weapons designer. Mr Bull had designed field guns for NATO, but was soon driven out of business by US arms manufacturers. So he ended up selling designs and ideas to Saddam Hussein, then fighting a war with Iran. Mr Hussein liked the planned 155 mm howitzer and a deal was struck for Voest Alpine to make them. The conservative party led by Kurt Waldheim, which was quite sympathetic to Iraq also, then governed Austria. (Mr Waldheim was uncovered by the Jewish Documentation Center of Simon Wiesenthal to be a former Nazi and driven out of office). But before the conservatives went, 160 of the Gerald Bull-designed howitzers, the Noricum GHN45, were manufactured and assembled for shipment to Iraq. (Mr Bull was killed by the Mossad in Brussels in March 1990 as he had begun redesigning Scud missiles for Iraq to make them more accurate and nuclear- capable. He was also putting together a supergun that could lob shells from deep within Iraq into Israel).

But the Iraqi plan came to naught when Bruno Kreisky became the Austrian Chancellor. Mr Kreisky came from a prominent Viennese Jewish family and promptly scrapped the deal as it violated Austrias neutrality laws. Mr Kreisky was also a personal friend of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and was instrumental in making the Congress party a member of the Socialist International during the Emergency, much to the chagrin of George Fernandes German SDP friends. Chancellor Kreisky persuaded Indira Gandhi to take those 160 guns readied for the Iraqis to help him out. Indira Gandhi was obliged.

The GHN45 howitzers were indeed very good, and with base-bleed shells, had the longest reach of all howitzers available then. They were accurate, rugged and easy to maintain. They came out best in all the trials against more expensive guns. India would have benefitted greatly by entering into this deal as the Austrian government had also proposed to transfer the manufacturing technology and operations to India. They just wanted to be rid of the arms business, given the embarrassment it caused to the country. Like in all such deals a small something was also to be made to the Congress Partys war chest. In 1983, this money was also made over in advance, in anticipation of the formal order. (Indira Gandhi often made leader-to-leader deals of this kind. In 1970, she bought the Sukhoi7 fighter-bomber on Leonid Brezhnevs say so. The Su-7 proved a great success in 1971).

Mr Kreisky left office in 1983. In 1984 Indira Gandhi was assassinated and a new chapter began. Olaf Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden, soon befriended Rajiv Gandhi. Mr Palme too had an Indian connection. His aunt Anna Palme was the mother of Rajni Palme Dutt, at one time General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and a good friend of Indira Gandhi and Jyothi Basu during their UK days. Mr Palme was a big and respected name in world affairs and had strenuously opposed the US war on Vietnam. He inspired Rajiv Gandhi to take the initiative on nuclear disarmament. The quid pro quo for facilitating Rajiv Gandhis easy entry to the global high table was the purchase of the Bofors FH45 howitzer. Mr Palme was also facing a re-election and his partys coffers needed topping up. The Indian howitzer order would do the trick. The donation by the Bofors Foundation at Karlskrona to the Swedish SDP is proof of this.

This made the Austrians furious. Mr Eisenberger told the parliamentary committee that the funds they wanted accounted for were paid to the Congress party and that a kinsman of the Indian Prime Minister had received them. The Austrian government then advised the Indian government to have this money returned and close the matter. This was the first time the new Indian Prime Minister heard about it. He was furious. A very powerful minister in his government was summarily sacked. Now a way was sought to set this account right. Bofors was required to close this hole. This was being arranged via a Swiss banker Francis Laffont. The route went like this. Bofors pays Mr Laffont. Mr Laffont pays Voest Alpine and the money already paid in India stays where it is. In all probability, it was used up in the 1984 elections.

Mr Eisenberger also told me that Voest Alpines representative in Delhi, a man called Unterweger, was Ottavio Quatrochhis neighbor in New Delhi. Being expatriate businessmen, they became good friends. As was the well-established practice then, Mr Unterweger also cut a deal with Mr Quattrochi. What Mr Unterweger did not know was that Mr Quattrochi had similar deals cut with Bofors and Sofma, the French howitzer manufacturer. When the Voest Alpine deal collapsed, Mr Quattrochi was required to close that account, as did the Congress Party. So one more pay off stream was organized by Bofors to Mr Quattrochi to close this hole. The Quattrochi method of cutting deals with all competing suppliers is a common practice in India now. The best-suited item is chosen and it still keeps the Indian system and some palms greased. But more than that it is a way of getting money out of foreign companies for their own executives. Often more money goes to the foreigners than to the Indians. The Hinduja brothers take this to the next level.

People like the Hindujas have friends in all parties and many countries. Lest we forget, it was Atal Behari Vajpayee who wrote to Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao seeking closure of the Bofors case against the Hinduja brothers. And it was Srichand Hinduja who accompanied Brijesh Mishra to his meetings with British PM Tony Blair, and French PM Jacques Chirac after the nuclear tests in 1998. Vajpayee and Mr Mishra were actively canvassing for approval of the controversial proposed Hinduja power plant at Vizagapatam. The Hindujas first midwifed the Sukhoi30 deal during P.V. Narasimha Raos days. The Russians have now become canny and have their own special Indian flunky to do the bribing and manage their share of the take as well.

When I came back with my story, Goenka was not too happy with it. How could he? The person who knew most was sitting next to him (and V.P. Singh) plotting taking Rajiv Gandhi down. Goenka wanted to keep beating up Rajiv Gandhi. After the conspiracy with Zail Singh lapsed, Bofors became the stick to beat Rajiv Gandhi with. And Arun Shourie was his ever-willing henchman. He had replaced his brother-in-law Suman Dubey as the Editor of the Indian Express. But Goenka was happy that I had linked up the connection with Mr Quattrochi. From Mr Quattrochi to Sonia Gandhi was an inference.

The subsequent behavior of the successive governments did indicate that while there is something to hide, they were not in agreement on what to hide. The Congress kept sheltering Mr Quattrochi, and the BJP was more intent on shielding the Hinduja brothers. The fact is that the two roads crisscrossed, and neither the truth prevailed nor did the law take its course.Burma EUs Revoking of Preferential Trade Status Wont Affect Investment: DICA

A local garment factory in Yangon. / The Irrawaddy

YANGONThe EUs probable revoking of the Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP) will not have an impact on pending foreign investments in Myanmar, said a representative of Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), a government body under the Ministry of Planning and Finance.

The EU granted the GSP in 2013. It has been just five years. But before that, CMP [meaning cutting, making and processing, which refers to the garment industry] had already been exporting. I mean EU countries have never been the leading investors in Myanmar, Asian countries are, U Than Aung Kyaw, DICAs deputy director-general, told reporters at the Myanmar Investment Commission on Thursday.

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom announced on Oct. 5 that the bloc was considering withdrawing Myanmars preferential trade status due to human rights violations committed against the Rohingya in Rakhine State last year.

It may take months to do this; perhaps six months. Anyway, western countries are not major investors in Myanmar. We do have some investment from Britain and France but those are limited to oil and gas exploration. They dont invest in manufacturing, so their investments are not that significant, said U Than Aung Kyaw.

Myanmars manufacturing industry is mainly dominated by Asian investors, he added.

According to DICA, the transitional budget from April 1 to Sept. 30 this year showed Myanmar received $2 billion in foreign investment. Singapore was the largest investor with $700 million, followed by China with $300 million, Britain with $174 million and Japan with $134 million.

Garment exports, however, account for some 70 percent of Myanmars shipments to the EU, according to figures collected by the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association.

Though the EU has not made direct investments in the garment industry, most garment exports are shipped to the EU. No matter who makes the investmentJapan or Korea or China or Myanmar citizensin the garment industry, the majority of garment products are shipped to the EU. Therefore, it can be assumed that their orders might decline, U Khin Maung Aye, chairman of Hlaingtharyar Industrial Zone Garment Manufacturers Association told The Irrawaddy.

Foreign investment in Myanmar mainly goes into the manufacturing, property development, communications and energy industries, according to DICA.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.Business Investment Commission Racks Up Hong Kong Investment Interest in Myanmar

Hong Kong island night view. / Hong Kong Tourism Board

YANGON One week after the government announced their 20-year foreign investment promotion plan, Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) has held an event seeking more investment from Hong Kong, which already stands as one of the largest investors in the country.

MIC held their second Myanmar Investment Promotion seminar on Tuesday in Hong Kong. The first seminar was held there in June.

More than 150 Hong Kong companies and an official of Hong Kong SARs government, Secretary of Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau, attended the seminar, according to a press release issued by the event organizers.

Chairman of MIC, U Thaung Tun said the investment body is ready to create an investor-friendly environment and is already making investment regulations more efficient and effective for investors.

I am confident that many of you will consider investing in Myanmar, said U Thaung Tun to the audience.

According to the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), Hong Kong is the fourth largest investor in Myanmar after China, Singapore and Thailand. As of Sept. 30, Myanmar permitted $7. 87 billion in investment from Hong Kong so far this year which makes up 10 percent of total permitted foreign investment in Myanmar.

On Oct. 1, Myanmar granted tourist visa exemptions to Hong Kong and Macau SAR passport holders.

Given the close and friendly relations between Myanmar and Hong Kong, I am confident that the majority of the participants of this event will bring with them a deep understanding of Myanmar. I am equally certain that business executives and investors here in Hong Kong have been following, with keen interest, the positive changes in Myanmar said U Thaung Tun.

The chairman also stressed that Myanmar youth, who make up a large part of the population, are highly literate and highly motivated and so offer great a human resources potential for companies that are willing to harness it.

We welcome all investors to invest in our priority sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture and the livestock sector, the power sector, production of fishery products, export promotion and import substitution industries, logistics industries, education services, the healthcare industry, construction of affordable housing and the establishment of industrial estates, he added

U Thaung Tun met with Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam during the visit and discussed building closer economic ties.

According to the press release, the Myanmar delegation, led by Chairman U Thaung Tun and Yangons minister for electricity, industry, roads and communications, Daw Nilar Kyaw, and director-general of DICA, U Aung Naing Oo attended the seminar.

Myanmar needs $320 billion in investments for infrastructure by 2030, according to the press release. Foreign-direct investment in Myanmar declined by roughly $3 billion in the 2016-2017 fiscal year compared to 2015-2016. The Myanmar Investment Promotion seminar was held as part of Myanmars efforts to increase investment from East Asia countries.

Myanmars government expects foreign-direct investment to be a key driver of economic development according to the Myanmar Investment Promotion Plan 2018which was drawn up by MIC earlier this month. It aims to attract more than $200 billion over the next 20 years in responsible and quality investments.

According to DICA, MIC has engaged numerous East Asian countries through its investment promotion activities, including Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

Hong Kong is positioned to play a prominent role in facilitating the flow of trade and investment and closer links for economic integration between Hong Kong and ASEAN members including Myanmar. Hong Kong has also shown keen interest in potential investment opportunities brought about by Chinas Belt and Road regional development project.

In 2017, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam met State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar to discuss trade promotion between both countries and Myanmars important role in Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). She is the first Hong Kong chief executive to visit since the 1997 Handover.

During the visit, she said, attaching great importance to co-operation with Myanmar as well as other ASEAN members, Hong Kong expects that the Belt and Road Initiative and the development plan of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area of our country will lead us to a new economic era. With both Hong Kong and ASEAN along the Belt and Road, we hope to co-operate with Myanmar as well as other ASEAN countries to seize the opportunities arising from the Belt and Road Initiative.

In September, the Greater Bay Area Myanmar General Chamber of Commerce (GMGCC) was formed to promote cross-border investments and collaborations between the Greater Bay Area and Myanmar. The Greater Bay Area is made up of Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing and had a total of $1.58 trillion in GDP last year making it the fifth biggest economy in Asia

According the GMGCC, the chamber of commerce seeks to shape and facilitate sustainable and responsible investments along the Belt and Road routes, and connect the Greater Bay Area and Myanmar by creating a forum for meaningful exchanges of cutting-edge information, data and resources among stakeholders to drive multilateral policies, innovations and investments, serving as a platform for government bodies, business associations and local communities to better match resources, capital and professional services between Greater Bay Area and Myanmar.

A Myanmar delegation also recently attended the 23rd Macao International Trade and Investment Fair which creates trade promotion activities between Asian countries and Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs) through forums, discussions and exhibitions. This years exhibition theme was based on the BRI and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.

In June, a Myanmar delegation including the chairman of MIC and officials from a number of relevant ministries attended the third annual Belt and Road Summit in Hong Kong. The meeting focused on exploring new opportunities under the BRI.

Last month the Myanmar government signed an MOU on the China- Myanmar Economic Corridor, a part of the Chinese presidents ambitious foreign policy to build trade networks between at least 70 countries, connecting Asia, Europe and Africa. The estimated 1,700-kilometer-long corridor will connect Kunming, the capital of Chinas Yunnan Province, to Myanmars major economic checkpointsfirst to Mandalay in central Myanmar, and then east to Yangon and west to the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

During the visit to Hong Kong, U Thaung Tun said, I believe Myanmar will be a regional transportation hub in connecting the Middle East and the Mekong Region.Burma Tatmadaw, KNPP Troops Clash in Hpa Saung Township

KNPP troops train in a liberated area in Karenni State in September 2018. / KnIC

The Myanmar Army and the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) traded accusations of violating their six-year-old bilateral ceasefire agreement after the two sides troops clashed in Karenni State over the weekend.

The clash, which broke out at around 8 a.m. on Oct. 20, was the first since the two sides signed a ceasefire in 2012. No one was injured in the fighting.

According to a statement issued on Oct. 20 by the state government, seven KNPP members attacked a Myanmar Army (or Tatmadaw) unit earlier that day between Nan Kit and Ba Han Lot villages in Hpa Saung Township.

However, in a statement issued on Oct. 21, the KNPP said Tatmadaw troops had arrested two local men and forced them to serve as guides for a clearance operation. It said the Tatmadaws Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) 428, based in Mawchi Township, traveled to a KNPP-controlled area to conduct the operation, but did not use a regular, designated route agreed to in 2013. This use of a non-designated route triggered the clash, according to the KNPP.

Khu Daniel, a member of the KNPPs central committee, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the party would discuss the clash at its monthly meeting at the end of October.

He added that the tension in the area had eased since the Oct. 20 clash as the Tatmadaw had ended its clearance operation.

The state government said in its Oct. 20 statement that the alleged KNPP attack violated the ceasefire agreement between the Myanmar government and the KNPP and frightened the local population. The statement was signed by Colonel Myint Wai, the Karenni State security and border affairs minister, on behalf of the state chief minister.

Col. Myint Wai said his government condemned the action by the KNPP and demanded that the organization take steps to control its ground forces in order to prevent further fighting.

Under a bilateral agreement, the KNPP and Myanmar Army use designated routes for troop movements, and are supposed to give three days notice of any such movements. However, the KNPP said the Tatmadaw failed to comply with the bilateral agreement, as it failed to notify the KNPP liaison office ahead of time. The action caused grave concern that a similar incident to one in which four [KNPP] troops were killed by the Myanmar Army last year would occur, the KNPP statement said.

After learning from local residents that the Tatmadaw was moving into its area, the KNPP contacted the deputy commander of LIB 428, but the officer responded that the Tatmadaw had the right to operate anywhere within the Union and that the unit did not need to give prior notice.

Such a response not only violates the bilateral agreement but also undermine peace and stability in the region, the KNPP said.

Responding to the statement from the state government, the KNPP denied violating any agreements reached at either the state or the Union level since the beginning of the peace process. To the contrary, it was the Tatmadaw that failed to follow the terms of the bilateral agreement, the KNPP said.

The accusation by the state government is totally false, the KNPP said.

The KNPP signed a bilateral ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar government in 2012. Despite coming under pressure by the Myanmar Army and government to sign the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement during ongoing peace negotiations, the KNPP has yet to do so.Burma Villagers in Shan State Petition Govt to Cancel Coal Mine Plans

A man carries harvested crops across a field in Ywangan Township, Shan State, in 2017. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  Villagers in Shan State afraid of the potential environmental fallout from a planned coal mine say they have submitted petitions to local authorities urging them to cancel the project.

Sai Aung Tun, a community leader, said some 600 people from six villages in Kyethi Township signed letters submitted Monday to the township, district and state offices of the General Administration Department to stop the 2,209-hectare (5,459 acre) mine, which would feed an iron mine and steel factory on Mount Pinpet in the nearby township of Hopong.

He said the letters explain that the site contains not only farms, pastures and streams but also a cemetery, monastery, clinic and school.

Township authorities notified the community on Oct. 11 of the governments plans to lease the land to the steel factory and gave it 15 days to object.

The area was confiscated by the military in 1996 during a large-scale forced relocation campaign in central and southern Shan State that displaced more than 300,000 people. Three battalions eventually established bases on the site; one of them, Light Infantry Battalion 131, was granted a coal mining license there in 2009 by the military junta.

In March of this year, as part of a policy initiated by a quasi-civilian government in 2012 to return confiscated land, the military handed back 12 of the 2,428 hectares (6,000 acres) it had confiscated in Kyethi but kept the rest.

Mondays letters add that 55 villagers were forced to accept 24,000 kyats ($15.18) per acre as compensation in 2010.

Sai San Mai, a Shan State lawmaker representing Kyethi, said the iron mine and steel factory were nearly finished but villagers in Kyethi were uniformly opposed to seeing their land dug up for coal.

Our elected civilian government should have informed the villagers if we wanted to use it for agricultural purposes, but it did not do that and it wants to transfer it to the Ministry of Industry, Sai Aung Tun told The Irrawaddy on Monday.

We dont want this land to be excavated. Its impacts could be very bad because it could affect our health and environment. If the Nam Hen stream becomes affected from the mining, we would not be able to farm, he added.

The villagers said the stream was the only water source for thousands of hectares of farmland and more than 18,000 people in some 50 villages.

In their letter on Monday, they said that in 2015 a military-owned company, Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL), sold licenses for mining blocks within the Mong Gao concession area in Kyethi for 100 million kyat ($63,000) each. They said UMEHL took 17 percent of the profits from the mines when they started operating.

Sai Aung Tun said five companies  Kanbawza Development Co. Ltd., Soe Lwin Aung Co. Ltd., Sein Naga Co. Ltd., Yu Wai Yan Co. Ltd and Ngwe Yi Pale Co. Ltd  were set to started mining but were stopped in 2016 after hundreds of locals opposed their plans.Burma Yangon Govt Demands Apology from Eleven Media

Eleven Media Group chief reporter Phyo Wai (pictured) and his colleagues leave Tamwe Township Court last week. / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy

YANGONThe Yangon regional government has demanded that Eleven Media Group publish an apology in state-run newspapers for an incorrect story about the citys budget that prompted authorities to file a lawsuit. The move fails to fully comply with instructions issued by the Presidents Office last week that the city government should submit the dispute to the Press Council for mediation.

The Yangon government filed a suit against two editors and a reporter from Eleven Media Group earlier this month accusing them of incitement under Article 505 (b) of the Penal Code for allegedly publishing false information relating to the use of public funds. The three were arrested on Oct. 10 and detained at Yangons Insein Prison.

City authorities harsh treatment of the media organization attracted public criticism, as the story was primarily based on lawmakers discussion in the regional parliament of the auditor generals report on the government budget. The lawmakers themselves insisted the story was accurate.

Responding to the public outcry, President U Win Myint last week ordered the Yangon government to follow the Media Law, which says the Myanmar Press Council should attempt to settle complaints against the press before they reach the courts. Following the order, the Yangon government submitted a complaint letter to the Press Council last week.

The Council on Friday urged the Yangon government to withdraw its lawsuit against the three journalists so that it could begin mediation. The council cannot legally intervene in cases that have already been brought before the court.

But on the evening of the same day, rather than drop the case, the city government asked the Press Council to require that Eleven Media publish an apology in government newspapers.

Prior to publication, the contents of the apology must be approved by the Yangon government, the city government demanded in a letter signed by U Aung Kyaw Khiang, the director of the Yangon Government Office.

It was not immediately clear whether the Yangon government would agree to withdraw the case if the apology was forthcoming. U Aung Kyaw Khaing wasnt available for comment on Monday.

Press Council member U Myint Kyaw told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the council cannot begin any mediationeven at the governments requestuntil the court case is dropped.

I think they are playing an unfair game. Trying to settle the case while keeping the journalists behind bars is sort of taking the upper hand, he said.

At noon on Monday, Eleven Media managing director U Thein Myint told The Irrawaddy he had yet to hear anything more about either the withdrawal of the case or the demand for an apology.

Speaking to the media after a meeting with the Press Council on Friday, he said the journalists would have the final say in the apology.

Its up to them whether to apologize or not, he said.

Lawmaker U Nay Phone Latt said the governments demand contradicted the presidents order to attempt to settle the case with the help of the Press Council.

To do so, the case has to be dropped first. Now they are demanding an apology rather than withdrawing the case. Its not in line with the presidential directive, he said.

The lawsuit is not the first that the Yangon government has filed against Eleven Media.

In 2016, the companys CEO U Than Htut Aung and editor-in-Chief U Wai Phyo were sued for libel by Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein over an editorial accusing him of corruption. Eleven Media Group later issued an official apology and retracted the editorial that prompted the libel case.

The apology was printed in state-run newspapers in both Burmese and English.The government asked the worlds largest social media network to fully communicate security issues to users.

Japans government told US technology firm Facebook to better protect its users personal data following lapses this year affecting tens of millions of people globally.

The government asked the worlds largest social media network to fully communicate security issues to users, increase surveillance of providers of applications on its platform, and inform regulators of any change in security measures.

The request comes after Facebook this month said attackers stole data from 29 million user accounts. That followed the April revelation that personal data of nearly 87 million users was improperly accessed by British firm Cambridge Analytica.

Japans Personal Information Protection Commission, which investigated the Cambridge Analytica incident with authorities in Britain and elsewhere, issued a statement on Monday detailing its request to Facebook. The request carries no administrative orders or penalties and is not legally binding. Facebook has promised to detail on its Japanese-language website how it will address the request, the Commission said.

It also said the Cambridge Analytica incident potentially affected up to 100,000 users in Japan, and that the cyber attack may also have had an impact on users in Japan. Representatives of Facebook did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.Monday, October 22nd, 2018 (1:33 pm) - Score 7,565

The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has today confirmed that they intend to pursue tentative plans to setup a new administrative site blocking process (as opposed to requiring a High Court injunction), which would require broadband ISPs to block customers from accessing websites that facilitate internet piracy.

At present the largest ISPs (e.g. BT, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk) can only be forced, via a court order, to block websites if they are found to heavily facilitate internet copyright infringement (piracy), which is supported via Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. So far well over 100 piracy sites have been blocked as a result of this (including several thousand proxy sites and mirror domains).

The existing process can be both very expensive and time consuming for both Rights Holders and broadband providers, although ISPs did recently secure a useful ruling that indemnifies them against shouldering some of the costs for such blocking orders (here). At present this only applies to blocks that stem from the abuse of a Trade Mark.

Suffice to say that Rights Holders (e.g. BPI) have been pushing for the Government to develop a cheaper and easier approach, which was first hinted at in June 2018 (here). Today the Government published its response via a plan for tackling illicit streaming services and devices (e.g. Kodi boxes), which included proposals to explore a new administrative site blocking process that would do away with the need for court orders.

Sam Gyimah, UK Minister for Intellectual Property, said: Illegal streaming damages our creative industries. We have always been clear that media streaming devices used to access paid for material for free are illegal. Recent prosecutions have shown that if caught, sellers of boxes adapted in this way face fines and a prison sentence. Through our modern Industrial Strategy, we are backing our booming creative industries which is why we are taking further steps to tackle this threat and in our recent creative industries sector deal outlined support to create the right conditions for them to continue to thrive.

The Government confirmed today that it will: * Consider the evidence for and potential impact of administrative site blocking (as opposed to requiring a High Court injunction in every case), as well as identifying the mechanisms through which administrative site blocking could be introduced. * Work to identify disruptions that may be applied at other points in the supply chain, for example App developers, and further develop our understanding of the effect of new generation smart TVs on how this infringement occurs. * Undertake research into consumer attitudes/motivations towards use of ISDs in order to develop more effective strategies for reducing levels of use. * Deliver up to date training to Trading Standards officers via the established I.P in Practice courses.

We arent surprised by any of this, particularly in light of the current Governments internet safety strategy and their move to ban commercial porn sites (i.e. those that fail to include an approved Age Verification system). The systems now exist to make site blocking much easier and if they can take the courts of out that process then it will also become a lot more affordable.

At this stage were not sure what disruptions might also be explored alongside this change, although conceivably its possible that they may target Proxy and Virtual Private Network (VPN) services. Such services are often used to circumvent blocking systems with ease, but crucially many people also use them for remote working / support systems, free speech and other legitimate purposes.

Wed hope that if the Government do take such a path (at present they havent specifically spelled out what theyll do) then they act cautiously and only target those services that are dedicated toward supporting copyright infringement. For example, a web proxy that only takes users to a mirror of an offending site (i.e. they serve no other purpose than to facilitate piracy); existing court orders already extend to such proxies.

Meanwhile smaller ISPs will be concerned about whether the new approach is going to include them, not least due to the issue of cost. Admittedly the cost depends upon how deep in the network theyd want such blocking to go (e.g. a simple DNS based solution is cheaper than a complex network-level filter). People will of course always find ways around any of these restrictions.

One other concern is the issue of judgement and oversight. Somebody somewhere in the proposed administrative process is still going to have to review each site blocking request in order to prevent abuse, which is something that would also carry a cost (who pays?) and must be independent.October 16, 2018

Kelsey West, COB Marketing Director

POCATELLO  On Monday, Nov. 5, Rick Alexander, quality and support manager at ON Semiconductor, will speak on behalf of the Idaho State University College of Businesss Wells Fargo Speaker Series.

Lunch will be served at noon followed by Alexanders presentation from 12:20 to 1 p.m. in the Pond Student Union Ballroom on the Pocatello campus.

Alexander, a College of Business alumnus, will share his unique story of landing in Pocatello by chance, attending ISU and making his way through various management positions at ON. ON, a major Pocatello employer, supplies semiconductor technologies internationally for companies producing computing, communication, consumer, automotive, medical, industrial, military and aerospace equipment.

Originally from Southern California, Alexander ended up in Pocatello after running out of money during his post-high school travels around the country. Alexander worked in retail for several years, eventually landing a job at ON (formerly AMI) as a line operator in 1981.

I realized the company offered unlimited opportunities for people with the right skills, Alexander said. So, I made the commitment to start taking business classes as a non-traditional student while working full-time, often working 55 or more hours per week, and raising a family.

Despite many hours of lost sleep and hard work, Alexander graduated from the ISU College of Business with his Bachelor of Business Administration Degree.

After graduating, Ive worked my way through the management ranks at ON, including production lead, shift supervisor, production section manager, and as the production fab manager for 12 years, said Alexander.

As a fellow non-traditional student, working full-time with a family, Alexanders story is one that many students at ISU and the College of Business can relate to.

We are excited to have Rick speak about his experiences as a student in this type of situation that so many of our students are facing right now, said John Ney, College of Business Professional development director. I think it will be inspirational for our students and community members to hear about the success his journey has lead him to.

Thanks to generous contributions made by Wells Fargo, the College of Business Professional Development program is able to host an executive-level speaker each semester as part of the Wells Fargo Speaker Series. These events bring in a large crowd of students from throughout the University as well as community members and ISU faculty and staff, providing tremendous value for students planning their future careers.

The Speaker Series event is open to students, ISU employees and the public.





Data centre solutions provider Dell EMC has announced the release of software that can provide an automated means for isolating and recovering critical data that has been put under threat by ransomware or other destructive cyber attacks.

Cyber Recovery would provide "a last line of data protection defence", the company said in a statement, adding that the new software included "innovative automation, workflow and security analytics tools to ensure gold copies of critical data are isolated yet available".

The new software integrates with Dell EMC Data Domain that protects storage hardware and combines data isolation and business continuity to minimise the impact of a cyber attack. It also allows for a faster and greater chance of success in recovering critical data and systems.

"Malicious insiders and sophisticated cyber attackers, especially those who employ ransomware, are known to deliberately target data protection and back-up infrastructure, said Beth Phalen, president, Data Protection, Dell EMC.

We take a layered approach to data protection within the portfolio and with our Dell EMC Cyber Recovery software and Services, helping ensure true data isolation and a last line of data protection defence for business-critical data from a variety cyber threats.

Apart from the software, Dell EMC said it also offered Cyber Recovery Services which would provide solutions tailored to the needs of individual customers.

Bob Bender, chief technology officer of Founders Federal Credit Union, a company that uses the software, said: "Financial institutions are among the most targeted organisations for cyber attacks and our responsibility is to ensure the highest levels of security for our members and the financial assets they entrust us with.

"All it takes is for one successful intrusion or ransomware attack to seriously disrupt any business and if the bad guys are smart enough to know where your back-ups are, youre left with no protection.

"Dell EMC Cyber Recovery helps my team isolate all of our critical data off-network, giving us confidence in our business resilience in the event of a worst-case cyber attack scenario.The Australian Government is providing $7.5 million to energy infrastructure company Jemena to support an Australian-first trial of a renewable hydrogen-powered electricity generation facility in Western Sydney.

The project will use surplus solar and wind energy to power a 500kW electrolyser, splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen molecules  with hydrogen to be injected into Jemenas existing gas network in small amounts, demonstrating the potential of existing gas networks as a form of carbon-free energy storage.

The funding will be provided to Jemena through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor said as the proportion of intermittent generation increased, energy storage was becoming increasingly important to ensure the stability of the electricity grid.

He said the development of renewable hydrogen production, storage and export facilities at scale would also deliver economic benefits to Australian businesses and communities and provide reliable, affordable and low emissions energy to overseas trading partners.

The technology has been successfully trialled in the UK and Germany.

This project is an example of how the government is supporting Australian innovation and opening new markets for businesses, Taylor said.The Federal Government has provided grants from its Incubator Support initiative to three Australian technology businesses to commercialise new products, processes and services.

Tech hub Bridge Hub in Wagga Wagga has received $500,000; Spacecubed Ventures in WA has been given $247,000; and a partnership between the Innovation Centre Sunshine Coast and the Sunshine Coast Health Centre will get $120,000 to launch an incubator.

In a statement, Industry, Science and Technology Minister Karen Andrews said the three projects would receive funding to help local businesses work together, access world-class research and business expertise.

The Coalition Government recognises the crucial role incubators and innovative start-ups play in the economy and in creating high-value jobs, contributing to increased productivity and bringing new products and services to market  thats why were backing initiatives like Incubator Support," she said.

The grant for Bridge Hub will help Riverina agriculture and food businesses identify, test and commercialise new ideas to create business opportunities and jobs.

It will also provide a global platform for Australian start-ups, through partnerships with Israeli researchers.

Spacecubed Ventures will use its grant to run two programs for 160 start-ups and entrepreneurs in Perth, Port Hedland, Geraldton and Bunbury.

Innovation Centre Sunshine Coast and the Sunshine Coast Health Institute will establish an incubator program for 10 start-ups in the health, well-being and med-tech sectors.

Spacecubed Ventures and the Innovation Centre Sunshine Coast have already been granted funding under the initiatives expert-in-residence stream, which allowed them to bring in experts to deliver services directly to Australian entrepreneurs.

The Incubator Support initiative is part of the Australian Governments Entrepreneurs Program. Supported incubators assist start-ups to develop skills and connections locally and globally.Mozilla will start selling subscriptions to a VPN service, targeting a select set of users, from tomorrow onwards in the US.

In a blog post, the organisation that produces the Firefox browser among other software, said the sale of the ProtonVPN subscriptions was a means of raising revenue and that in coming months it would test out other means of bringing in cash as well.

Mozilla said it had chosen ProtonVPN after evaluating a long list of market-leading VPN services.

"ProtonVPN offers a secure, reliable, and easy-to-use VPN service and is operated by the makers of ProtonMail, a respected, privacy-oriented email service," Mozilla said.

"Based in Switzerland, ProtonVPN has a strict privacy policy and does not log any data about your usage of their service. As a company they have a track record of fighting for online privacy and they share our dedication to internet safety and security."

The service will cost US$10 per month, more than what it costs to take out a subscription to ProtonVPN directly.

"A portion of these proceeds will be shared with ProtonVPN, to offset their costs in operating the service, and a portion will go to Mozilla," the blog post said.

"In this way, subscribers will be directly supporting Mozilla while benefitting from one of the very best VPN services on the market today."

The Opera browser already offers a VPN in its desktop version, though this is more of proxy whereby one can access sites through the Americas, Europe, Asia and an optimal location.

Graphics: courtesy MozillaThe LBMA received 26 proposals from companies ranging from start-ups to major technology firms.

The LBMA did not insist on use of blockchain, but more than 20 of the 26 responses focused on supply chain tracking and incorporated the technology.

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is planning to help modernise and improve transparency in the industry with an approval process for companies using blockchain technology to track the movement of gold.

The embracing of the blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, aims to exclude from the global supply chain metal that is illegally mined or traded or used to finance conflict.

It comes after the revelation last year that a US refinery had accepted billions of dollars worth of gold smuggled from South America.

In March the LBMA asked its 144 members, who include most of the worlds largest gold refiners, banks and dealers, for proposals on how to track gold and prevent forgery.

Other commodities sectors have already leapt on the blockchain, a high-tech ledger that uses a shared database and can process and settle transactions in minutes without the need for third-party verification.

IBM partnered with shipper Maersk to create a blockchain-based trading platform for the shipping industry to improve efficiency, while diamond companies including De Beers have a blockchain platform to track diamonds.

The LBMA received 26 proposals from companies ranging from start-ups to major technology firms, LBMAs executive board director Sakhila Mirza told Reuters.

Mirza declined to name any of the companies but sources involved in the process said they included IBM. IBM did not reply to a request for a comment.

Rather than endorsing particular companies, the LBMA has opted to create a set of standards for services and an oversight committee to approve and monitor technology providers that meet them, Mirza said.

We need to set up criteria and standards that help us understand what is a credible blockchain solution, she said.

Once those have been appropriately established, the result would be a selection of service providers that meet the minimum standards.

The LBMA sought proposals not only to track gold from mines, many of them in far-flung areas, through to bank vaults and jewellery shops around the world - a task made doubly difficult because metal must be physically tagged before it can be traced - but also for security features for gold bars to prevent forgery.

The LBMA did not insist on the use of blockchain, but more than 20 of the 26 responses focused on supply chain tracking and incorporated the technology, Mirza said.

She said a first draft of the LMBAs standards for tracking systems would be put to consultation in the first half of next year with the process to approve service providers to start later in 2019.

(Source)The Federal Government has an excellent chance to do itself a favour and also gain some good karma by taking onboard a suggestion by the Treasury to tax big multinational technology companies based on their revenue. It would help the budget bottom line and represent some actual policy for a change.

Admittedly, the idea is not a new one, having been already floated by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

Just yesterday, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said he backed a global minimum fiscal regime for multinationals.

But there is no harm in following up on what is an excellent idea, to bring the cowboys of Silicon Valley into line.

In the case of the EC, a proposal was unveiled back in March to apply a blanket 3% tax on digital companies that had annual worldwide revenues of 750 million (US$925.6 million) and EU revenues of 50 million.

That the idea is a good one is borne out by the fact that it has got Google, one of the chief offenders, hot under the collar to the extent that it dispatched its chief economist, Dr Hal Varian, to Australia last week.

Dr Varian, no doubt, will attempt to massage opinion in Canberra to think the way Google does, after making the media rounds. He received largely sympathetic coverage in the Australian Financial Review, that august media organ that loves to cuddle up to corporations.

On the ABC, he waltzed through without any collateral damage, largely due to the ignorance of the host of the ABC PM program.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was an aggressive advocate for getting tax avoiders to pay their fair share when he was treasurer. But after ascending to the role of PM, he appears to be more involved in marketing stunts to keep his government from falling apart.

Big tech companies  Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple to name the big five  have been very good at hiding their actual sales by cooking the books and attributing them to other locations. Simple honesty has gone out the door and these tactics are actually considered clever.

The EU has the right idea and the fact that Australia is looking in that direction, and not, as it usually does, slavishly, in the direction of the US, is an excellent first step.

Inviting the EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager to visit Australia and deliver lectures all over the country on this very topic would be a good follow-up. She could educate the ACCC boss, Rod Sims, and Treasury officials as to how one should deal with companies whose one goal in life is to hide income through any means possible.

Regulators in smaller countries like Australia tend to be cowed by officials from big tech companies and go into their shells when confronted by them. Vestager has dealt with Google and Apple the way they should be handled, without a hint of fear or vacillation.

Ultimately, it all depends on whether the Morrison Government decides to take on big tech or not. That is the $64 billion question.Supermicro Computer, the server manufacturer at the heart of allegations of supply chain manipulation through implanting of chips on mainboards made for it by a Chinese supplier, has written to its customers saying that the story, put out by Bloomberg, is dead wrong.

Charles Liang, the company's president and chief executive, said in the letter that "no one has shown us a motherboard containing any unauthorised hardware chip, we are not aware of any such unauthorised chip, and no government agency has alerted us to the existence of any unauthorised chip".

Liang's denial comes soon after Apple chief executive Tim Cook took the unusual step of asking Bloomberg to retract the story which was published on 4 October. Supermicro's shares were badly hit by the story; they fell from US$21.40 to US$12.46 and are yet to recover, hovering around the US$15 mark.

Amazon Web Services manager Andy Jassy said in a tweet on Tuesday that Cook was right. "[The] Bloomberg story is wrong about Amazon, too. They offered no proof, [the] story kept changing, and [they] showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories. Reporters got played or took liberties. Bloomberg should retract [the story]," he wrote.

@tim_cook is right. Bloomberg story is wrong about Amazon, too. They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories. Reporters got played or took liberties. Bloomberg should retract. https://t.co/RZzuUt9fBM  Andy Jassy (@ajassy) October 22, 2018

In, Bloombergsecurity testing by Amazon in 2015 had revealed the existence of tiny chips that were not part of the original mainboard design and that this led to an extensive investigation by US Government agencies which found servers built using these boards in data centres belonging to the Department of Defence, on warships, and for processing data being handled by CIA drones.

The news agency said that major banks were also using servers made by Supermicro and that the government investigation led to several companies getting rid of the Supermicro equipment.

A few years ago, the same journalists, Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley, wrote a story, claiming that the US Government had prior knowledge of the Heartbleed bug, a serious vulnerability in OpenSSL, before it was announced. Bloomberg did not issue a follow-up after the story was denied.

Apple issued a detailed denial when the story was published. Later, its former general counsel, Bruce Sewell, said that the FBI had told him it had told him it had no knowledge of any probe into such an incident, as claimed by Bloomberg.

And the company took the additional step of writing to the US Congress denying the story. Chief security officer George Stathakopoulos said in a letter that the company had found no evidence to justify the claims made in the Bloomberg report.

There have also been strong denials from Amazon, the US Department of Homeland Security and the British National Cyber Security Centre.

Liang said in the letter: "Our motherboard technology involves multiple layers of circuitry. It would be virtually impossible for a third party, during the manufacturing process, to install and power a hardware device that could communicate effectively with our Baseboard Management Controller because such a third party would lack complete knowledge (known as 'pin-to-pin knowledge') of the design.

"These designs are trade secrets protected by Supermicro. The system is designed so that no single Supermicro employee, single team, or contractor has unrestricted access to the complete motherboard design (including hardware, software, and firmware)."

He added: "Each of our contractors has only the portion of the total engineering design of the motherboard that it needs to carry out its part in the manufacturing process.

"Modifications to the design plan must be confirmed with Supermicro, which then passes those modifications on to those downstream in the manufacturing process.

"If any single contractor attempts to modify the designs, the manufacturing process is structured so that those alterations would not match the other design elements in the manufacturing process.

"This makes it practically impossible for anyone to add an unauthorised hardware component that could both escape detection and function properly. This also ensures there are multiple quality checks built into each step of our manufacturing process."

Liang said for these reasons, he was confident that Bloomberg's allegations were wrong.

"...experts across the ecosystem, including FBI director Christopher Wray, NSA senior cyber security adviser Rob Joyce, director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, the Department of Homeland Security, the UKs GCHQ and even an expert quoted in the article itself, have questioned these allegations. Finally, Apple and Amazon have issued strong statements denying the claims," he said.Chinese citizens will have to register for online services that utilise blockchain technology using their real names, with the government publishing draft regulations to this effect for public consultation.

The South China Morning Post reported that the draft rules were open for comment until 2 November, but there was no indication of when they would take effect.

Beijing has not hesitated to impose restrictions on technologies that it feels will lead to events that could affect society in an adverse way as it sees them.

A ban on cryptocurrency exchanges was put in place last year and the government also prohibited any initial coin offerings. Chinese businesses have got around this ban by shifting their servers to foreign countries.

But thatfrom the jurisdiction of Chinese laws if they are citizens of China. Chinese investors who have invested in ICOs taking place abroad or have traded cryptocurrencies on overseas exchanges will also be trapped by these laws.

Cryptocurrencies can be held in China, and bought and sold, but the government has said clearly that any use of blockchain technology must benefit the real economy.

In August, China's Internet watchdog shut down several accounts on WeChat which were focused on blockchain and cryptocurrency news.

The SCMP report said the latest rules were published in the wake of an open letter being published on the ethereum blockchain by an activist, about the alleged cover-up of sexual harassment at a well-known university more than 20 years ago.

The letter was attached to an ethereum transfer to the poster and was visible to all users of the blockchain.

The report said the rules had not addressed the fact that data on a blockchain is not changeable and therefore runs counter to Chinese laws about user data.

It quoted Beijing-based lawyer Xu Kai as saying the new rules did not enforce the rights of users on blockchain platforms.The Communications Alliance has published a guideline to help telecommunications providers assist customers who are affected by domestic and family violence.

The publication follows Australias official national apology to survivors and victims of institutional child sexual abuse, and those affected by domestic and family violence, delivered by Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a special event at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday. The government also announced the launch of a national redress scheme.

CAs Industry Guideline: Assisting Customers Experiencing Domestic and Family Violence includes a range of tools providers can use to support customers across their operations.

It touches on topics including improved staff training, communicating with customers who are the victims of violence, and the prevention of technology-facilitated abuse.

The Guideline also contains advice on how to better assist customers who have experienced economic abuse in relation to their telecommunications services  a phenomenon that is often associated with physical violence.

CA says the Guideline is intended to educate providers on the prevalence of domestic and family violence and how it can overlap with telecommunications services, and focuses on the importance of being flexible and empowering customers.

CA chief executive John Stanton said: The prevalence of domestic and family violence in Australia is very disturbing, and every industry should work to fight this epidemic.

Providers need to be aware that many of their customers and staff will at some stage be affected by domestic and family violence. In these circumstances, telecommunications service can be a lifeline for victims, but  unfortunately - can sometimes also be used by perpetrators to compound the abuse.

While there are no simple solutions, we have worked with experts in this area to identify key areas of impact and how service providers can help.

The Guideline emphasises the importance of flexible responses to customers, as each individuals experience and needs will be unique, while enumerating specific tools such as privacy and safety procedures.

For example, an intimate partner may know most information used to verify a customers account and may therefore be able to gain access to new contact details or control a victims account. Telcos should work with each customer in this situation to create new identity verification procedures, so they are not linked to details the abuser has access to.

Stanton said CA had also devised new co-regulatory arrangements to enable victims of domestic and family violence whose mobile service is part of a telecommunications contract controlled by the perpetrator to exit the arrangement but still retain their original number - something that was not possible under previous rules.

A long-held number can often be a valued asset and a connection to friends and support, particularly when going through a traumatic period.

The Guideline was developed over the past year through a consultative process with Industry, consumer representatives, and community organisations.

Stanton said CA would like to acknowledge all those who participated, including the Economic Abuse Reference Group (EARG) and the Womens Services Network, as their extensive knowledge and leadership in the space was invaluable in creating the guideline.

Providers involved in the development of the Guideline included Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, amaysim, and Pivotel.

The Guideline builds on previous work, including last years registration of a variation to the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code to expressly provide that being a victim of family or domestic violence is a criterion for access to financial hardship assistance and publication of a revised Handling of Life Threatening and Unwelcome Communications Code that provides greater protection for Australian consumers against threatening and unwelcome communications including technology facilitated abuse, such as harassment by an abuser.

Stanton said the upcoming publication of a revised TCP Code will also strengthen a range of protections for all consumers.

This Guideline is a first step in an ongoing process. We will continue working with industry and community representatives to ensure appropriate implementation, and the Guideline is a living document that will be updated as we continue to learn."

To access the Guideline click here.'This is a very complicated murder,' Celik said, warning that the Turkish government would not be drawn into speculation.

Riyadh said on Saturday that Khashoggi, a former regime insider turned dissident, died during a "brawl" inside the consulate after a visit on October 2 to get documents. (Photo: File)

Ankara: The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Riyadh's Istanbul consulate was "savagely planned", Turkey's ruling party spokesman said on Monday, the first official indication from Ankara it believes a plot was hatched in advance.

"This was extremely savagely planned, and we are faced with a situation where there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this," Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesman Omer Celik told reporters in Ankara.

"This is a very complicated murder," Celik said, warning that the Turkish government would not be drawn into speculation. "Everyone (else) can speculate but we cannot speculate," Celik added.

He also dismissed claims of "bargaining" between Saudi Arabia and Turkey as "immoral". Riyadh said on Saturday that Khashoggi, a former regime insider turned dissident, died during a "brawl" inside the consulate after a visit on October 2 to get documents.

It added 18 Saudis were arrested in connection with his death and two top aides of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as three other intelligence agents, were fired.

Before Riyadh's admission, Turkish sources said a team of 15 Saudis were sent to Istanbul and killed Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince who moved to the United States last year and wrote for the Washington Post. Turkish pro-government media has said the team interrogated, tortured and decapitated Khashoggi but a pro-government columnist Abdulkadir Selvi on Monday wrote in Hurriyet daily that Khashoggi was strangled to death before he was cut up into 15 pieces. Celik pointed to CCTV footage published by CNN on Monday, which the American broadcaster claimed showed one of the Saudi officials acting as a body double for Khashoggi and leaving the consulate.

A senior Turkish official quoted by CNN said that the Saudi was "brought to Istanbul to act as a body double" for Khashoggi, adding: "This was a premeditated murder and the body was moved out of the consulate."

In the video a man, named by CNN as Mustafa al-Madani, left the consulate by the back exit wearing what appeared to be Khashoggi's clothes -- although the shoes do not match those the journalist appeared to be wearing in CCTV footage of him entering the consulate.Khan remarks came day after six civilians were killed after an explosive went off at an encounter site in Kulgam district of South Kashmir.

Islamabad: India should move to resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Monday.

His remarks came a day after six civilians were killed after an explosive went off at an encounter site in Kulgam district of South Kashmir. "Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris....by Indian security forces," Khan tweeted.

"It is time India realise it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people," he said.

Three militants were killed Sunday in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam district, while six civilians lost their lives in a blast following the gunfight there.

It is not the first time Khan has spoken about Kashmir. In September, New Delhi called off a meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, citing killings of Indian security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the release of Pakistani postage stamps "glorifying a terrorist and terrorism".

In his victory speech after the July elections, Khan expressed his willingness to improve Pakistan's ties with India and said that his government would like the leaders of the two sides to resolve all disputes, including the core issue of Kashmir, through talks.

He said good India-Pakistan relations will be beneficial for the entire region. India maintains that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country and Pakistan is in illegal occupation of a part of the state's territory.by Paul Wang

Zheng Xiaosong, 59, jumped from the top story of his residence. For the government "he suffered from depression". In recent years, due to the anti-corruption campaign, many Chinese bureaucrats have committed suicide. Tomorrow he was due to take part in the inauguration of the new mega-bridge between Zhuhai, Macao and Hong Kong.

Macau (AsiaNews) - The head of the Chinese representative office in Macao, Zheng Xiaosong, died yesterday morning, after jumping from the top floor of his apartment building. The Hong Kong and Macao Business Office in Beijing released a statement explaining that Zheng had been suffering from depression for some time.

The representative office (more precisely: Liaison Office), guarantees relations between the central government and the autonomous administrations of Macao and Hong Kong, influencing local politics.

Zheng, 59, had become director of the office last year, also joining the Central Committee of the Party.

The Beijing office statement is very sober in details and does not explain Zheng's condition before his death. It states that some representatives were sent to Macao to express their condolences to the family.

In recent years, hundreds of government bureaucracy personalities have committed suicide following involvement in the violent anti-corruption campaign launched by Xi Jinping. At present there is no evidence that Zheng was involved in any investigation.

The possibility of being accused of corruption, being dismissed and condemned is seriously weakening the reserve of official representatives, even those in high offices. Some psychoanalysts have confirmed to AsiaNews that among the members of the Party, even at a high level, psychosis and anxieties are widespread, including isolation, lack of trust in their collaborators, sleep disorders.

The Liaison office in Macao announced that the day before his death Zheng had met representatives of a think tank in his office. Tomorrow he was to have attended the inauguration of the new mega-bridge linking Zhuhai, in Guangdong, Macao and Hong Kong.by Wei Jingsheng

Chinese social networks are a buzz with rumors of a possible war between the two world giants. Many, blinded by nationalism, push China to counter the US in the South China Sea. And even Xi Jinping's think tanks are pushing for war, extolling a possible victory. For the great dissident in exile, the result of a confrontation would be the defeat of China and the end of the communist dictatorship in the country. But with much suffering for the Chinese people.

Washington (AsiaNews) - The current Chinese media has become accustomed to publishing articles without the author's name. In other words, as in some online media, one can talk nonsense irresponsibly. So I rarely read Chinese articles without authors' names. A few days ago, when I appeared in the same talk show with Professor Xia Ming, he reminded me that Xi Jinping might engage in some military operations in the South China Sea and threaten the United States in an attempt to stop the trade war. Because indeed Xi Jinping does not have any trade card to play, he needs to use a so-called "quality means", including the means of war.

I was shocked and thus scanned through the websites which liked to make irresponsible nonsense. Indeed, there were full screams of war. In the past two days, I saw Chinese warships provoking the US warships in the South China Sea. Thus I have to correct my prediction that Xi Jinping does not dare to launch a war.

Given a war between China and the USA, China will be defeated. However, Xi Jinping may not be so smart. His flatterers are constantly exemplifying, in the name of self-reliance, the Korean War, etc. They say that over all there are many advantages for China to win the war, even including that young American soldiers would not be the opponents to the Chinese army.

Both Chinese and foreign military experts, as long as they do not need to flatter or are not brain-damaged, are all clear that China would be defeated in a war between China and the USA. The so-called self-reliance, the Korean War and other claims are stinking chess tricks by outsiders that could not make the point.

There are many factors to determine the outcome of a war. We can compare and see the difference between the Korean War and the present day. At that time, the United States had ended the Second World War five years previously, without too many veterans and the society was generally filled with a disliking of war. However, China had just ended its civil war. Its military was experienced and was a winner. The morale was strong. This attitude offset the gap between weapons and equipment.

The Second World War did not touch the soil of the United States, with the new recruits lived a wealthy and stable life at home. They were not able to take hardship and endure difficulties. Yet, the Chinese people had been experiencing decades of war and were very hardworking and able to endure difficulties. This relative gap just offset the shortcomings of the supply shortage of the Chinese military. Coupled with the US military's long-distance overseas operations, it was not as flexible as the Chinese military. After these comparisons, it can be said that the two sides were evenly matched, and the final result was also an exact match.

The situation now is almost reversed. The military reform in China has made the military unsettled; the dictator lacks his own garrison or assault squad; the discipline and endurance of the Chinese soldiers are now less than that of the US military; years of peace have also caused the commanders short of prestige to convince their bosses and subordinates. The art of the Chinese military command is hard to predict, but lack of experience is surely a factor of disadvantage.

China's weapons and equipment are well known to everyone, and lag way behind what the USA can bring to the field. With what other advantages can it challenge the US military? Maybe that famous left-handed salute by Xi Jinping during the military parade, and the rhetoric he learned from the Cultural Revolution era. But can these things be useful?

Under the premise that both North Korea and Taiwan are too difficult, the Xi Jinping clique, which has no military quality, choosing the South China Sea, which then would make it fall into a trap without hope. The Navy is the strength of the United States and is an absolute strength. Can Xi use a few small islands on the South China Sea that cannot be moved to become an opponent of the US Navy? That would be the fantasy of a person with brain damage.

The result of launching a war in the South China Sea would make China forever lose its right to dispute in the South China Sea. This is basically a trap set up by the Trump administration. This is also the reason why Chinese netizens support Xi Jinping's war in the South China Sea. When this war is started, China will be defeated, and the Communist regime will die sooner. However, the Chinese people will fall into a catastrophe and be buried with the Xi Jinping clique that is suffering from this brain damage. The suffering of the Chinese people will make me feel unbearable.

In addition, this brain damaged Xi Jinping clique thinks the USA does not dare to fight in a war against China, as they see the Defense Secretary Mattis keeps hoping to talk friendly with China. Thus they began to provoke in the South China Sea in an effort to recover some public opinion for the Xi Jinping clique.

Yet, the Xi clique does not know that the US Secretary of Defense and President Trump are really playing a two-man comic show. In Sun Tzu's art of war, this is called using the illusion of unable to fool the others. When this clique cannot even see a simple trick like this, it does mean that the clique is a bad chess player.

Of course, we cannot blame them. That is because their abilities are used to flatter their boss and in trying to see what the boss wants, so it is difficult to ask them to be smarter than this brain-damaged level.Register with JOC.com and receive 5 free pieces of content for the first thirty days. After thirty days, you will receive 3 pieces of content and after sixty days you will receive 1 piece of content. To receive full access, Subscribe Today . You can also subscribe to our daily newsletter.

Registerby Caterina Zakharova

The great Ukrainian intellectual explains the reasons that push his people to demand independence from the patriarchate of Moscow. In Russia, state pressures and the exploitation of the Church are the order of the day. An independent Church would be a very important step towards the liberation of Ukraine from its Soviet past. But the problem is above all a spiritual one.

Kiev (AsiaNews) - The question of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has led to the rupture in communion between Moscow and Constantinople. What seems to many a nonsensical quarrel, hides spiritual and political problems. The autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church dates back to long before the invasion of Crimea and is desired and wanted by the Ukrainians to out an end to the political exploitation of the Russian Orthodox Church. These are main theses that the scholar Konstantin Sigov expresses in this interview. Sigov, 56, is a leading Ukrainian intellectual and an exceptional ecumenical personality. Philosopher, university professor, director of the Center for European Humanistic Research at the National University Academy of Kiev Mohyla.

"All of Ukraine was shocked when a mother asked for a funeral for her child and the priest refused because the child was baptized in the schismatic patriarchate of Kiev. Is it a political question? No, it's a spiritual question. How can you fail to show mercy to people just because they are not "canonical"? It means that the "canon" becomes an instrument of segregation, of isolationism, used to enclose millions of people into a "ghetto" just because they do not want to submit to the Kremlin. The question is not political but spiritual and moral, it is a question for the Church after all".

So is the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church a real need for your country?

Autocephaly has been requested for a long time, long before Porosenko, long before the Majdan and even the 2004 Orange Revolution. It dates back to the time when Ukraine gained independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Initiatives were immediately taken in the sense by the Ukrainian Church, and from one of these the Autocephalous Schismatic Church was born. If autocephaly had been given to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at that time, there would have been no schisms.

The experience of the past 25 years has shown that Moscow does not seek opportunities for dialogue in Ukraine, it is now clear that there is no hope of achieving anything in this sense. Yet we speak of millions of people, not tens of thousands, but of millions considered schismatic, even if there are no dogmatic differences between us and them, the saints are the same ... The only point on which there is no unity are relations with Moscow. In order for there to be diversity in unity and unity in diversity, a path of dialogue must be found. And if today there is the opportunity to overcome this situation - and this behooves all of us men of faith - it must be taken.

Of course, we still need to understand how. It is a difficult question that cannot be superficially resolved, simplifications are odious and potentially damaging, but nor can we cede to panic and immobilizing fear which only give rise to worse evils. This is not Christian it is fatalistic. Instead, everything depends on how the Spirit works, on our openness and on the degree to which we are capable of acting in communion, through dialogue.

So, on the one hand it is about having a willingness to dialogue to resolve the issue in a constructive manner, on the other obviously we need to see how this will be accomplished, in fact, even if the will is there, there is always the great risk of interference. The authorities of the Russian Orthodox Church are not free to present their personal point of view regarding ecclesiastical matters. It is absolutely clear that the Russian Orthodox Church suffers from the very strong influence of the Kremlin. After the latest cases in Moscow, where they assaulted the demonstrators and other people were arrested for no reason, it is very clear that there is strong pressure on the various social structures, and on the Church in particular, because it is the largest existing institution that does not belong to the state.

Would autocephaly eliminate the influence of Russian politics on the Church?

If we take into account what has happened in Russia in recent years, the increase in the use of violence against civil society; if we take into account that at currently there is no possibility of separating State and Church, spiritual power from temporal power - on the contrary, the pressure of the State on the Church is radically increasing, and thus the exploitation of the Church increases. Therefore for we Ukrainians, it is clear that the only possibility to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, to escape the influence of the State is to separate ourselves from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Personally I would prefer that there was less politics in this field. I think that at the stage where we are now, after all that has been done, we should ask all the political figures of all parties to leave bishops, believers and non-believers alone and presidents to refrain from becoming involved in this business, which is not a matter for Putin, nor Erdogan, nor Porosenko.

Is there not the risk that the national question becomes more important than the spiritual one in the new Ukrainian Church, that nationalism prevails?

The risk is always there, but the contexts are very different. The situation in Ukraine, in 27 years of independence, has never been monolithic nor will it ever be. There has always been plurality in Ukraine and this plurality will always be preserved; none of the Churches can become a State Church. Ukrainian civil society is convinced that in its diversity, in its rich mosaic, is its strength, its wealth and that therefore this situation should not change. At the same time I do not want to idealize reality: we must avoid any extremism, including the ethnocentric one, taking on the same role that it has today within the Russian Orthodox Church. For this reason, the young Ukrainian Church should have at heart the fact that the other Churches, not only Constantinople, but the Church of Georgia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Greece, are in dialogue with each other, and that Ukraine finally comes out of its isolation.

Above all, we will have to avoid violence in possible future redistribution of churches among the various patriarchates. The measure, the social rationality that belonged to the first months of the Majdan must be kept to the highest degree. All the foreigners who came to Kiev in those months were astonished by the fact that they did not find even one broken window, not one overturned car, the streets were clean ... This is the model we need today.

The situation is very delicate and precisely for this reason we need the solidarity of all Christians, not only of the Orthodox, but also of the Catholics. Everyone now understands that the question of dialogue between East and West depends on the situation in Kiev. So it is necessary that Kiev can carry on a direct dialogue and not be isolated.

I have been amazed to hear Moscow accuse Bartholomew of Papism. Neither Rome nor Constantinople have the same geopolitical ambitions that Moscow has today. Ambitions ranging from the annexation of territories to the idea that any European city in which there are Russian-speaking inhabitants is in fact a piece of the Russian world. It is clear that an independent Church would be a very important step towards the liberation of Ukraine from its Soviet past, and it is precisely this that today provokes Putins reaction. He does not want to let Ukraine go and will try to keep it by all means, including the exploitation of Church. This is why today the pressure on the Russian Orthodox Church is so strong; I am very sorry for the people who are subject to it and who bend to it.

Someone wrote that the question of Ukrainian autocephaly is a terrible anachronism in the 21st century, the attempt to live according to models of other times. History shows that patriarchy and autocephaly become important only when it comes to big politics. And when we talk about politics we forget the Church as a community of faithful.

In this regard, I would like to quote a comment by Father Zelinsky: if millions of people have been asking for it for more than 25 years, if they want their sacraments to be recognized, how can you tell them: go away? We speak of anachronism. And are not the relations between the State and the Church in Moscow such an anachronism? We must emerge from the logic of isolationism. Isolationism says that everything that is happens externally to us hurts us. If we leave behind this logic we can realize that the initiative that is being carried out can be for the good of the Russian Church itself. It is true: the Russian Orthodox Church would formally reduce the number of its faithful, but this could be for the best. In theology we speak of kenosis: the inner emptying that creates the space so that the power of the Spirit acts. This is an opportunity for the Russian Church to practice kenosis. It is not a question of quantity but of quality.

In 1996, when Estonia proclaimed its autocephaly, Eucharistic communion was interrupted for months. At that time I was in Oxford and there, in the same church, Metropolitan Kallistos, of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and Metropolitan Vasily, of the Patriarchate of Moscow celebrated. For them the interruption of communion was a tragedy; then the metropolitan Kallistos, one of the major theologians of Constantinople, publicly said that the Eucharist cannot be abused, that the Eucharistic communion cannot be interrupted: it is not done by doctrinal differences, nor can it be done by territorial questions. Who perpetuates this rhetoric? Kiev? On the contrary, Kiev wants to overcome the absence of Eucharistic communion between Churches that live in the same street in our city, in the same family. This is our task.Above: the Maersk Line's Leonidio at Adani Ennore Container Terminal, India. Photo credit: Maersk India.

Port of Chennai logged impressive growth in September, but a new/revised intra-Asia routing unveiled by Maersk Line to call at Ennore, instead of Chennai, could jeopardize the public port's growth efforts and increase competition among terminals on Indias east coast.

The port of call change on the Chennai Express Service (CHX)  prompted by Chennais chronic congestion  took effect with the Maersk Leonidio docking at the Adani Ennore Container Terminal (AECT) on Saturday.

The weekly CHX  reportedly employing a fleet of six vessels  now rotates as follows: Qingdao and Xingang, China; Busan, South Korea; Shanghai and Nansha, China; Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia; Ennore, Krishnapatnam, and Visakhapatnam, India; Tanjung Pelepas; Busan; and back to Qingdao.

As global trade increases, so does the congestion at existing ports. There comes a point when moving to a new port becomes inevitable. Which is why were shifting operations from Chennai to Ennore, Maersk stated in a customer advisory. And were doing it before anyone else.

Further, the carrier has highlighted other shippers benefits resulting from a congestion-free operation at Ennore, including a 24-hour vessel turnaround  aided by sophisticated marine infrastructure; quicker truck visits  estimated at three to four hours; round-the-clock cargo carting/customer services; and direct rail access with on-dock sidings.

The CHX call change  which marks Maersk's total exit from Chennai  is generally viewed as a watershed moment for AECT, which has remained a non-starter since operations partially started in October 2017, followed by an official opening in early January.

Ennores transport assets

Ennore is located about 15 miles north of Chennai. A key factor favoring Ennore is good/dedicated highway connectivity, a lack of which, combined with yard equipment shortages, ails cargo moving via Chennai.

Whats more, Adani is said to have invested Rs. 724 crore (about $98 million) in the Ennore facility, which features a 400-m (1,312-foot) quay, four rail-mounted quay cranes, 12 rubber-tire gantry cranes, and a capacity to handle 800,000 TEU annually in the first phase. The group has committed to invest Rs. 546 crore in the second phase, covering a quay line of 330 meters and a capacity of 600,000 TEU, which will increase AECTs total annual capacity to 1.4 million.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned advantages, the new Ennore terminal has struggled to attract regular/fixed ocean carrirer calls, essentially due to high vessel-related charges applied by the port authority. However, the new Maersk call addition is an indication that those price anomalies  which industry sources earlier put at a cost difference of $20,000 for an Ennore call verus its peers  have been addressed to create a more-conducive market environment.

JanuarySeptember Ennore port data collected by JOC.com illustrates that concern, as AECT handled just five ship calls in the nine-month period, representing 2,638 TEU.

As competition intensifies, terminals in the east coast region have been forced to offer mainline carriers deep discounts on service rates. For Chennai, much will hinge on how effectively it can capitalize on ocean carriers growing interest regarding transshipment operations there to take advantage of the liberalized cabotage policy enacted May 21.

Maersk accounts for roughly 20 percent of India's container freight, and the carrier has, in its recent trade analysis, sounded extremely bullish on the emerging market economy, with a heavier focus on technology advances.Rubric China Economy Freedom of religion India Islam Social Doctrine of the Church Vatican

Geographic area Afghanistan Africa Armenia Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Cambodia Central America Central Asia China East Asia East Timor Europe Georgia Hong Kong India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Lebanon Macau Malaysia Middle East Mongolia Myanmar Nepal North America North Asia North Korea Oceania Oman Pakistan Palestine Philippines Qatar Russia Saudi Arabia Singapore South America South Asia South East Asia South Korea South West Asia Sri Lanka Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Thailand Turkey Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan Vietnam YemenA student is shoved out of a classroom in this image from a security video at Goose Creek Elementary School.by Sumon Corraya

In 60 years of mission, he played a crucial role in the fight against poverty and in promoting education, healthcare and socio-economic development. In 1971, during the Bangladeshs War of Liberation, the Xaverian priest provided medical assistance to freedom fighters. For the services rendered to the nation, he received various honours.

Bagerhat (AsiaNews)  Some three thousand people, Christians, Muslims and Hindus, were waiting for the body of Fr Marino Rigon, a Xaverian missionary who died in Italy a year ago, in Bagerhat, southern Bangladesh.

His burial near the church of Shelabunia fulfils his last wishes after he dedicated 60 years of his life to the mission in Bangladesh.

For the contribution he made to the local community, Fr Rigon went to his grave in a coffin draped in the Bangladeshi flag accompanied by an honour guard.

The missionary, who was a great admirer of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize laureate for literature in 1913, translated 40 Bangladeshi literary works into Italian, as well as 350 popular songs and numerous poems.

The priest arrived in Dhaka at the age of 28. Thanks to his missionary work, at least 15 primary schools, a high school, several hospitals and clinics were created.

Fr Rigon provided training to needy people and contributed to their socio-economic development.

In 1971, during Bangladeshs War of liberation, he provided medical assistance to freedom fighters.

For services rendered to the nation, the Government of Bangladesh granted him honorary citizenship and in 2012 presented him with the Friends of the Liberation War award.

During the funeral, Mgr James Romen Boiragi, bishop of Khulna, celebrated a solemn memorial Mass.

During the homily, the prelate stressed that "Fr Marino Rigon did not work only for Christians, but for all men and women of faith. This is why everyone loves him.

For the bishop, He was an exemplary missionary. We must follow his ideals. He will continue to live in the hearts of the people of Bangladesh".

Bilkis Begum, a 55-year-old Muslim woman, was in the crowd of people who yesterday came to bid Fr Rigon goodbye.

"Father Marino Rigon loved me like a daughter, but he called me ma (mother), said the teary-eyed woman in a broken voice. He changed our socio-economic situation and for this reason we thank him. He was a living saint, for every faith."Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 22, 2018) - Thunderstruck Resources Ltd. (TSXV: AWE) (OTCQB: THURF) (The "Company" or "Thunderstruck") is pleased to announce that results of its Q3 field program has significantly increased the size of its Rama Creek copper-gold porphyry prospect. Rama is located on the main island of Fiji, 35 km west of the giant Namosi copper-gold district porphyry deposits, which are at the pre-feasibility phase and operated by a joint venture between Newcrest and Mitsubishi.

Recent field work at Rama included geological mapping, trenching and the collection of 287 samples. The work was focused on the previously discovered Senikura Gold Zone, located southwest of the Rama Creek Porphyry (see News Release March 1, 2018). A large and prospective area to the south is yet to be explored.

"The footprint of our porphyry target has effectively doubled to approximately 1.5 km in diameter," reports Bryce Bradley, President/CEO. "The results of the current program strongly suggest that the Senikura Gold Zone, which was previously interpreted as a separate and distinct gold target south of the porphyry system, is actually part of one large and well-mineralized hydrothermal system. This is a game changer as it demonstrates that Rama has potential to be a major copper-gold system."

Rama is on Thunderstruck's 148-square-kilometre Nakoro concession, which also hosts other highly prospective targets. Rama was explored by Anglo American in the 1970s, before the major pulled out of Fiji. Thunderstruck has since assembled a large property position in Fiji, including the Nakoro and Wainaleka concessions, which encompass copper-gold porphyry and epithermal gold targets, as well as two drill-identified copper-zinc VMS systems.

Building on earlier results, the company has quickly outlined what is shaping up as an important discovery at Rama Creek. The next phase of work will focus on additional geologic mapping and soil geochemical surveys, particularly in the developing Senikura Gold target, and an Induced Polarization (IP) geophysical survey to outline drill targets.

About Fiji

Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji, has a long mining history. It is on the prolific Pacific Ring of Fire, a trend that has produced numerous large deposits, including Porgera, Lihir and Grasberg. Viti Levu hosts Namosi, held by a joint venture between Newcrest and Mitsubishi. Newcrest published Proven and Probable Reserves for Namosi of 1.3 billion tonnes at 0.37% Cu and 0.12 g/t Au (5.2M ounces Au and 4.9M tonnes Cu). Namosi is now undergoing environmental assessment as part of the permitting process. Lion One Metals is now developing its Tuvatu Project, with Indicated Resources of 1.1 million tonnes at 8.17 g/t Au (294,000 ounces Au), and Inferred Resources of 1.3 million tonnes at 10.6 g/t Au (445,000 ounces Au). The Vatukoula Gold Mine has been operating for 80 years, producing in excess of 7 million ounces.

About Thunderstruck Resources

Thunderstruck Resources is a Canadian mineral exploration company that has assembled extensive and highly prospective properties in Fiji on which recent and previous exploration has confirmed VMS, copper and precious metals mineralization. Rama Creek is one of four projects, each of which is being marketed as potential joint venture opportunities. The Company provides investors with exposure to a diverse portfolio of exploration stage projects with potential for zinc, copper, gold and silver in a politically safe and stable jurisdiction. Thunderstruck trades on the Toronto Venture Exchange (TSXV) under the symbol "AWE" and United States OTCQB under the symbol "THURF".

For additional information, please contact:



Rob Christl, Investor Relations

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

P: 778 840-7180

or, visit our website: http://www.thunderstruck.ca



Figure 1: Rama Copper Map



Figure 2: Rama Gold Map

Appendix  Details of the Recent Field Work

Soils

Collection of an additional 191 ridge-and-spur auger soil geochemical samples was designed to provide high resolution coverage over the potential northwest extension of the Senikura Gold Zone target that returned trench results of 0.55 g/t gold over 37.6 metres; including 0.96 g/t gold over 11 metres (see the Company's March 1, 2018 news release).

In conjunction with a previous 228 auger soil samples collected the current results reinforce the apparent northwest trend of the Senikura Gold Zone, which is offset 1 km to the south of the interpreted centre of the Rama Copper-Gold Porphyry target (see the Company's May 17, 2018 news release). Current soil sampling to the northwest and southeast of the Senikura trench resulted in a total of 21 samples returning greater than 50 ppb gold; including 8 samples greater than 100 ppb gold, and up to 0.22 g/t gold in soil expanding the interpreted strike length of the Senikura target to 1 km in length.

Rock Sampling

A total of 60 rock grab samples were collected as part of detailed evaluation and geologic mapping of the Rama Copper-Gold Porphyry and Senikura Gold Zone targets. Of the 60 rock grab samples collected a total of nine (9) samples returned greater than 0.1 g/t gold or 0.10% copper and are considered anomalous. Three select rock grab samples of highly altered silicified vein breccia exposed in the Senikura trench returned assays of 0.52, 0.30, and 0.18 g/t gold. Within the Rama Creek Porphyry target, a total of 5 samples returned greater than 0.10% copper and up to 0.21% copper. Sampled outcrops comprised intensely silicified, sericite and potassic altered, stockwork textured magnetite-pyrite-chalcopyrite mineralized tonalite intrusive and associated zones of hydrothermal breccia indicative of a high-level porphyry environment.

Based on the results of geological mapping completed by the Company the Rama Creek copper-gold porphyry target exhibits strong northwest-southeast structural control. The copper-gold stockwork veined porphyry zone is separated from the Senikura Gold Zone to the south by wide northwest trending zone of hydrothermal brecciation. The predominance of gold primary mineralization and distal alteration assemblages to the south are interpreted to indicate that the Senikura Gold Zone represents a higher level manifestation of the same magmatic hydrothermal system. The implication being that significant potential for the discovery of additional porphyry mineralization at depth beneath the gold zone exists.

Trenching

A single short hand excavated trench was completed along the interpreted southern margin of the Rama Porphyry targets where previous auger sampling returned two consecutive soil samples returning 0.2 and 0.1 g/t gold, and 153 and 254 ppm copper, respectively. The trench excavated to a depth of 1 metre did not reach bedrock, however five channel samples collected over 10 metres returned anomalous gold and copper values averaging 32 ppb gold, and 161 ppm copper.

Stream BLEG Sampling

With the collection of an additional 31 stream BLEG geochemical samples the Company now has complete primary and secondary drainage coverage over an area of 20 square-km of the Rama Creek Copper-Gold Porphyry Prospect totaling 176 samples. The final phase of stream sampling was designed to expand the previously discovered Senikura Gold Zone. Combined stream sample results define an approximately 1 km diameter greater than 10 parts-per million (>90th percentile) copper in stream and coincident northwest elongate greater than 14 ppb gold (>90th percentile) geochemical anomaly encompassing the Senikura Gold Zone.

Qualified Person Statement

Kristopher J. Raffle, P.Geo. (BC) Principal and Consultant of APEX Geoscience Ltd. of Edmonton, AB, is a qualified person for the project as defined by National Instrument NI 43-101. Mr. Raffle has reviewed and approved the portion of the technical content of this news release as it relates to the Rama Creek and Liwa Creek Prospects.

During 20187 all stream sediment samples were submitted to Australian Laboratory Services Pty. Ltd (ALS) labs Perth for BLEG determination of gold. Auger soil samples were submitted for gold and multi-element geochemical analysis via a 25 gram (g) sample split subject ICP-MS. Prospecting and trench rock samples submitted for 30g gold Fire-Assay analysis and multi-element geochemistry by four-acid ICP-ES. Given the reconnaissance nature of the samples, Thunderstruck has relied on the external QA/QC of ALS which included the insertion of insertion of standard, blank and duplicate samples at a rate of 10% into the sample stream to confirm the accuracy of the reported results.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". Although Thunderstruck 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 Thunderstruck's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, Thunderstruck undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Colorado Resources Ltd. (Colorado or the Company) (TSXV  CXO) is pleased to announce receipt of permits for the construction of ten diamond drill platforms at its 100% owned, 178 sq. km Kinaskan-Castle property located 4 km west of the GT Gold Corps1 Tatogga Property1 in British Columbias prolific Golden Triangle. GT Gold Corp.1 (TSXV) recently announced newly discovered Au-Cu porphyry-style mineralization at their Saddle North1 prospect (GT Gold1 news September 10th and October 10th, 2018) in addition to high-grade Au-Ag mineralization at Saddle South1 (GT Gold Corp.1 news, September 4th, 2018), both located on the Tatogga Property. Regional geological mapping and airborne magnetic surveys demonstrate the continuity of geological, geophysical and topographic features between the Tatogga Property1 and Colorados Kinaskan-Castle claim blocks (see Map 1 and footnote 2, below).

At Kinaskan-Castle, work completed by Colorado during 2017 included geological mapping, geophysical studies, soil geochemical sampling and prospecting, resulting in the discovery of important gold- and copper-in-soils anomalies and high-grade gold mineralization in float samples (see Colorado press releases dated January 24th and June 6th, 2018). Additional induced polarization (IP) geophysical surveying completed by Colorado during August 2018 has revealed IP chargeability anomalies coincident with large gold and copper-in-soils geochemical anomalies which extend along an east-west trend for over 2,000 metres. The anomalies are interpreted to be sourced from underlying early Jurassic monzodiorite porphyry intrusive (+/-volcanic) rocks, potentially similar in age and lithology to those described at Saddle North1 by GT Gold1. At Castle, high-grade gold float samples were collected within the confines of, or bordering, the above described geochemical anomalies (see Map 2). Colorados porphyry-related gold-copper and high-grade gold anomalies have not yet been drill tested. Based upon geological-geochemical-geophysical information, and proximity to the Tatogga Property1, Colorado Resources recognizes good potential for the Kinaskan-Castle Property to host porphyry-style Au-Cu occurrences and/or high-grade Au (Ag) mineralization which may be similar to that recently documented at GT Golds1 Saddle North1 and Saddle South1, respectively.

Colorado President and CEO, Robert Shaw, states Compilation of Colorados technical studies completed in 2017 and additional regional geological information, combined with our 2018 IP surveys and the recent information published by GT Gold1 for the Saddle Zone1, has aided in the definition of numerous drill targets at Kinaskan-Castle. Now that Colorado has received diamond drilling permits, we can advance exploration within our advantageous land position in the emerging Saddle1-Castle district. Our Kinaskan-Castle drill permits are valid until March 31, 2023 and we are preparing to initiate our exploration program during the 2019 field season. In this context we want to thank the Tahltan Central Government and the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources for demonstrating their confidence in Colorados ability to complete these future exploration programs in a safe and socially - environmentally respectful manner.

Qualified Person

Bill Yeomans, P. Geo., is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 who reviewed the preparation of the technical data in this news release.

About Colorado

Colorado Resources Ltd. is currently engaged in the business of mineral exploration for the purpose of acquiring and advancing mineral properties located in the Golden Triangle British Columbia. The Companys main exploration projects within British Columbia include KSP, North ROK, and Kinaskan-Castle.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

COLORADO RESOURCES LTD.

Robert Shaw

Robert Shaw

President and Chief Executive Officer

For more information, please contact:

Colorado Resources Ltd.

Robert Shaw, President & CEO

T: (250) 768-1511

F: (250) 768-0849

TF (855) 768-1511

W: www.coloradoresources.com

NR 18-11

Cautionary Notes 1 and 2 release and figure

1 This news release contains information about adjacent properties on which Colorado has no right to explore or mine. Readers are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on the Companys properties.

2 The geophysical information displayed in Map 1 is public domain information available through the Geoscience BC Quest geophysical survey website at: Click Here

The data displayed in Map 1 represents a composite integration of geophysical surveys compiled by Quest, each with varying survey parametres including survey equipment, ground clearance, flight speed, flight line spacing and flight line orientation.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this news release, constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is used in applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and is subject to certain factors and assumptions, including: that the Company's financial condition and development plans do not change as a result of unforeseen events, that the Company obtains required regulatory approvals, that the Company continues to maintain a good relationship with the local project communities. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause plans, estimates and actual results to vary materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause the forward-looking information in this news release to change or to be inaccurate include, but are not limited to, the risk that any of the assumptions referred to prove not to be valid or reliable, which could result in delays, or cessation in planned work, that the Company's financial condition and development plans change, delays in regulatory approval, risks associated with the interpretation of data, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits, the possibility that results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, as well as the other risks and uncertainties applicable to mineral exploration and development activities and to the Company as set forth in the Company's Managements Discussion and Analysis reports filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information or statements, other than as required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Map 1

Map 2VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Balmoral Resources Ltd. (Balmoral or the Company) (TSX: BAR; OTCQX: BALMF) announced today that it has commenced a borehole electromagnetic survey (BHEM), being managed by Discovery Intl Geophysics Inc., on a series of recently completed and ongoing drill holes which are targeting nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum-palladium mineralization within the Grasset Ultramafic Complex (GUC) on the Companys wholly owned Grasset and Fenelon Properties in Quebec (see Figure 1).

All four holes completed to date, plus each of the two holes currently in progress, have successfully intersected sulphide mineralization within the GUC. The BHEM system will be used to guide follow-up drilling in each of the two areas currently being explored. In addition to surveying the recently completed and on-going drill holes, the BHEM system will probe several historic holes on the properties which have not been previously surveyed.

Drill testing is currently ongoing in two separate areas of the GUC. To the south, drilling is targeting vertical and lateral expansions of the Grasset nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum-palladium deposit and high-grade vein/breccia discoveries in the footwall to the H3 Zone of the Grasset deposit. Previous BHEM work in and around the deposit identified a series of conductive plates which generally correlate with the highest grade portions of the deposit.

The second drill is currently testing shallow targets in an area approximately eight kilometres northwest of the Grasset deposit, where 2015 drilling by Balmoral discovered nickel sulphide mineralization over significant widths within a high-level intrusive portion of the GUC (see NR15-04, April 9, 2015).

Drilling of targets within the GUC is expected to continue into November.

Mr. Darin Wagner (P.Geo. B.C. and Restricted Permit, Que.), President and CEO of the Company, is the non-independent qualified person for the technical disclosure contained in this news release. Mr. Wagner has supervised the Companys exploration activities since inception, has visited the properties on multiple occasions and has reviewed the technical content of this release.

About Balmoral Resources Ltd.  www.balmoralresources.com

Balmoral is a well-funded, multi-award winning Canadian-focused exploration company actively exploring a portfolio of gold and base metal properties located within the prolific Abitibi greenstone belt. The Companys flagship, 1,000 km2 Detour Gold Trend Project hosts the resource stage Bug and Martiniere West gold deposits and the Grasset nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE deposit. Employing an aggressive, drill focused exploration style in one of the worlds preeminent mining jurisdictions, Balmoral is following an established formula with a goal of maximizing shareholder value through the discovery and definition of high-grade, Canadian gold and base metal assets.

On behalf of the board of directors of

BALMORAL RESOURCES LTD.

Darin Wagner

President and CEO

For further information contact: John Foulkes, Vice-President, Corporate Development

Tel: +1 (604) 638-5815 / Toll Free: +1 (877) 838-3664

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, forward looking statements) within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements regarding the anticipated length of the current drilling program, the utility and usefulness of certain geophysical surveys , the correlation of geophysical anomalies to mineralization of interest to the Company, the assay results from sulphide or other mineralization intersected in on-going drilling and anticipated results and timing of the Companys exploration programs in general are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believes, expects, anticipates, intends, estimate, postulate and similar expressions or are those which, by their nature, refer to future events. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from the Companys expectations include those related to the mineral tenor of mineralization intersected on the properties, the success or failure of the geophysical contractors to survey individual drill holes and interpret the results from the surveys, factors relating to weather, staffing and costs which may be beyond the control of the Company, metal prices and economic considerations related to mining and exploration, access to financing to continue the Companys exploration activities and the financial stability of the other companies mentioned and the market fluctuations in prices for securities of exploration and mining stage companies. Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative. All of the Companys public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and readers are urged to review these materials, including the latest technical reports filed with respect to the Companys mineral properties.

This press release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.The Special Criminal Court (SCC) set up to try serious crimes committed in the Central African Republic (CAR) has not yet moved to its permanent premises, but holds its inaugural session in the capital Bangui on Monday October 22. The SCC, officially created in June 2017, is a mixed or hybrid court. It is part of the Central African judicial system whilst also having support from the United Nations and several Western countries. Some international lawyers  like the Prosecutor, two of the four investigating magistrates and some of the trial judges  will work alongside their Central African counterparts at the court. Key staff are now in place, notably within the prosecution and office of the investigating judges. These judges today elect their president.

Three-pronged justice

The Central African Republic (CAR) paints an interesting picture when it comes to criminal justice for mass violence. On paper, three types of court  or levels of jurisdiction  share the task of prosecuting suspected crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the country. The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has taken up the CAR situation and can act on crimes committed since 2002. But in 11 years of investigations the ICC has prosecuted only one person, former Congolese warlord and vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was finally acquitted on appeal in June 2018. Its investigations remain open, but its intervention will clearly be limited and symbolic. As for the SCC, it can investigate and prosecute crimes committed since January 2003. It has a five-year renewable mandate. So far, there has been no indication about its investigating strategy or the number of individuals it could try. Finally, the CARs ordinary courts, also known as criminal courts, can also try these crimes. They have the least resources, but are likely to end up handling the most cases. But it will be up to the SCC especially to fly the flag for strong, independent national justice  its Prosecutor, a Congolese military judge, is not answerable to any political authority  in a country where the judicial system has been decimated by decades of penury, political pressure and war.

New war crimes

The security situation is also a big challenge for this new court. The civil conflict is still ongoing and the central authorities only control a small part of the country. The courts inaugural session comes only days after the publication of new reports from the UN mission in the CAR (MINUSCA) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) on serious crimes perpetrated recently by certain armed groups, namely summary executions that could constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, allegedly committed in August and September in the Haute Kotto prefecture of central CAR.

According to HRW, rebels of the Seleka, one of the main warring groups, captured and executed at least nine civilians including seven women on September 6 near the town of Bria in Haute-Kotto province. Some two weeks before, at least 11 civilians were killed by the same armed group after clashes with a rival militia, according to the international NGO. These executions and assassinations are clear war crimes, committed by combatants who feel free to kill with impunity, despite the presence of UN peacekeepers, said HRW senior Africa researcher Lewis Mudge on October 12.

These executions and assassinations are clear war crimes, committed by combatants who feel free to kill with impunity, despite the presence of UN peacekeepers

The American NGO also says it has evidence of murders of at least eight other civilians in the same region since June, committed by anti-Balaka (self-defence militia created to counter the former Seleka coalition after it temporarily seized power in March 2013). The total number of victims could be higher, since certain families told HRW some of their relatives were still missing. The residents of nearby villages have continued to signal murders of non-armed civilians in fields around Bria, according to HRW, which says it has not been able to verify all the murder allegations because of limited access to the region and security problems.

MINUSCA warning

The UN mission MINUSCA says at least 30 people were killed and four others wounded in August and September in the same central region of the country. These crimes, many of which could constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, can be attributed to the ex-Seleka coalition and anti-Balaka, it said in an October 15 press release after an investigation launched a week earlier. According to the UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the abuses committed by these armed groups  murder, attacks on physical and mental integrity, attacks against civilians and protected sites like hospitals and schools  have forcibly displaced at least 32,000 civilians. MINUSCA says it will spare no effort in supporting the Central African authorities to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice because impunity is the main cause of the recurrent violence in the CAR. The scale of the challenge facing the SCC is already clear.INTRUST Bank Chairman and CEO Charlie Chandler recognized with Distinguished Business Leader Award

Monday, Oct. 22, 2018



MANHATTAN  Charlie Chandler, the chairman and chief executive officer of INTRUST Bank and the chairman, president and chief executive officer of INTRUST Financial Corporation, has been chosen as the 2018 Kansas State University College of Business Administration Distinguished Business Leader.



Established in 2001, the Distinguished Business Leader award recognizes alumni and friends of the College of Business Administration who have distinguished themselves from their peers in their chosen field, and who have consistently demonstrated outstanding service to the college. Individuals who receive the Distinguished Business Leader Award are inducted simultaneously into the prestigious College of Business Administration Business Leaders Hall of Fame.



"Charlie bleeds purple, and has been a dedicated and active supporter of K-State and the College of Business Administration for many years," said Kevin Gwinner, Edgerley family dean of the College of Business Administration. "It is my pleasure to present this award in recognition of his outstanding career and service to our college."



After earning a degree in business administration from Kansas State University in 1975 and an MBA in finance from Northwestern University in 1976, Chandler entered the management training program at First National Bank in Wichita, now INTRUST Bank. In 1996, he was elected chairman of the board, president and CEO of INTRUST Bank, becoming the fourth generation of Chandlers to lead the bank. In January 2009 he was elected chairman, president and CEO of INTRUST Financial Corporation. Under Chandler's leadership, INTRUST has become one of the largest independent banks headquartered in Kansas, building a network of more than 45 branch offices in Kansas and Oklahoma.



In addition to his career with INTRUST, Chandler is also a director of First Bank of Newton and Fidelity State Bank and Trust of Topeka, and is a member of the board of directors of Evergy Inc. He also serves on the board of trustees for Wesley Medical Center, is the president and board chair of the Kansas Society for Children with Challenges, co-chairman of the Greater Wichita Partnership, co-chairman of the Blueprint for Economic Growth, and serves on the board of The Navigators.



Since 2001, Chandler has served on the Kansas State University College of Business Advisory Council and is a member of the board of directors of KSU Foundation. In 2004, he was named a College of Business Alumni Fellow.



He and his wife, Marla, live in Wichita and have four children and six grandchildren.





On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 4:25 pm, Mr. Antonio Guterres < info@opendoors.com.tr > wrote: Attn: Beneficiary.





We write in regards to your delayed Contract/Inheritance Funds in the sum of Eight Million Five Hundred United States Dollars (US$8,500,000.00) which you are yet to receive as a result of your inability to raise the required fee(s) to conclude your Transaction.



The United Nations has decided to proffer a solution that will make it easier for all the Beneficiaries to receive their Funds. We understood that some Fees are required in order process and Transfer your Funds into your Account. We are also aware that most Beneficiaries do not have these required fees.



We have therefore deliberated with the Bank in charge of this payment to allow Beneficiaries the privilege of receiving their Funds in two (2) or three (3) installments. In this case, Beneficiaries will no longer be required to pay the fee at once but part of it depending on the number of installments such Beneficiary will like his/her Funds to be released to him/her.



Write the Bank and request that you want your fund to be transferred to your account by installments payment,(ATM & Wire transfer) so that once the first payments enters into your account you can then use money from there to facilitate the transfer of the remaining balance, once the first installments enters into your account withdrawal from your account to United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank Pennsylvania USA.Online transfer procedure.



The United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank USA. in Pennsylvania USA which is now in charge of your Payment has agreed to give the Beneficiaries the option of receiving their Funds at once, in two or three installments. Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number/your correct mailing address.





What a shame and embarrassment? If actually, you have spent money to execute this contract and have spent money in the hands of the fraudsters and impostors without achieving your goal in receiving this fund, what stops you from giving out one chance benefit of doubt and sacrifice with this token fee to see your fund payment successfully completed?



This will help the beneficiaries to pay part of the fee and receive part of their Funds with which such beneficiary can upset the remaining fee and receive his/her complete Funds.



To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (US$8,500,000.00).



However, Feel free to inform us how much you can raise should you cannot afford any of the above Mentioned installment so as for us to talk to the Bank to know how much out of your Funds they could release to you with the amount you can come up with.



This is the best the United Nations can do for you and you are advised to take advantage of this opportunity. Kindly, Get back to me immediately with your option so that i will forward you the contact person at the paying Bank in United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank in Pennsylvania USA. to indicate your preferred option.





Contact Person: Mr. Eric L Moore



Email: securitycheckingservice@yandex.com



Tel: + 1 567 281 0002





NOTE: Do not be shy to indicate the amount you have in hands (no proper-amount is so small to trigger installments-payment base on our discussion with the Bank) so that the first payment will move to your account for you to confirm the existence of the fund before your proceed for the balance.





Best Regards.





From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Mr. Antonio Guterres < info@opendoors.com.tr >

To:

Sent: Thursday, April 5, 2018 2:35 AM

Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary



Attn: Beneficiary.





We write in regards to your delayed Contract/Inheritance Funds in the sum of Eight Million Five Hundred United States Dollars (US$8,500,000.00) which you are yet to receive as a result of your inability to raise the required fee(s) to conclude your Transaction.



The United Nations has decided to proffer a solution that will make it easier for all the Beneficiaries to receive their Funds. We understood that some Fees are required in order process and Transfer your Funds into your Account. We are also aware that most Beneficiaries do not have these required fees.



We have therefore deliberated with the Bank in charge of this payment to allow Beneficiaries the privilege of receiving their Funds in two (2) or three (3) installments. In this case, Beneficiaries will no longer be required to pay the fee at once but part of it depending on the number of installments such Beneficiary will like his/her Funds to be released to him/her.



Write the Bank and request that you want your fund to be transferred to your account by installments payment,(ATM & Wire transfer) so that once the first payments enters into your account you can then use money from there to facilitate the transfer of the remaining balance, once the first installments enters into your account withdrawal from your account to United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank Pennsylvania USA.Online transfer procedure.



The United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank USA. in Pennsylvania USA which is now in charge of your Payment has agreed to give the Beneficiaries the option of receiving their Funds at once, in two or three installments. Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number/your correct mailing address.





What a shame and embarrassment? If actually, you have spent money to execute this contract and have spent money in the hands of the fraudsters and impostors without achieving your goal in receiving this fund, what stops you from giving out one chance benefit of doubt and sacrifice with this token fee to see your fund payment successfully completed?



This will help the beneficiaries to pay part of the fee and receive part of their Funds with which such beneficiary can upset the remaining fee and receive his/her complete Funds.



To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (US$8,500,000.00).



However, Feel free to inform us how much you can raise should you cannot afford any of the above Mentioned installment so as for us to talk to the Bank to know how much out of your Funds they could release to you with the amount you can come up with.



This is the best the United Nations can do for you and you are advised to take advantage of this opportunity. Kindly, Get back to me immediately with your option so that i will forward you the contact person at the paying Bank in United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank in Pennsylvania USA. to indicate your preferred option.





Contact Person: Mr. Eric L Moore



Email: securitycheckingservice@yandex.com



Tel: + 1 567 281 0002





NOTE: Do not be shy to indicate the amount you have in hands (no proper-amount is so small to trigger installments-payment base on our discussion with the Bank) so that the first payment will move to your account for you to confirm the existence of the fund before your proceed for the balance.





Best Regards.





From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary > From: Mr. John Singer <mr.johnsinger01@gmail.com>

> Subject: From Mr. AntAnio Guterres UN Secretary

> To:

> Date: Tuesday, July 24, 2018, 5:16 AM

> Attn:

> Beneficiary.

>

>

>

> We write in regards to your delayed

> Contract/Inheritance Funds in the sum of Eight Million Five

> Hundred United States Dollars (US$8,500,000.00) which you

> are yet to receive as a result of your inability to raise

> the required fee(s) to conclude your

> Transaction.

> The United Nations has decided to proffer a

> solution that will make it easier for all the Beneficiaries

> to receive their Funds. We understood that some Fees are

> required in order process and Transfer your Funds into your

> Account. We are also aware that most Beneficiaries do not

> have these required fees.A We have

> therefore deliberated with the Bank in charge of this

> payment to allow Beneficiaries the privilege of receiving

> their Funds in two (2) or three (3) installments. In this

> case, Beneficiaries will no longer be required to pay the

> fee at once but part of it depending on the number of

> installments such Beneficiary will like his/her Funds to be

> released to him/her.A Write the Bank

> and request that you want your fund to be transferred to

> your account by installments payment,(ATM & Wire

> transfer) so that once the first payments enters into your

> account you can then use money from there to facilitate the

> transfer of the remaining balance, once the first

> installments enters into your account withdrawal from your

> account to United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank

> Pennsylvania USA.Online transfer

> procedure.A The United Bank Of Africa

> attach to City Bank USA. in Pennsylvania USA which is now in

> charge of your Payment has agreed to give the Beneficiaries

> the option of receiving their Funds at once, in two or three

> installments. Therefore, you should send him your full Name

> and telephone number/your correct mailing

> address.

>

> What a shame and embarrassment? If actually, you

> have spent money to execute this contract and have spent

> money in the hands of the fraudsters and impostors without

> achieving your goal in receiving this fund, what stops you

> from giving out one chance benefit of doubt and sacrifice

> with this token fee to see your fund payment successfully

> completed?A This will help the

> beneficiaries to pay part of the fee and receive part of

> their Funds with which such beneficiary can upset the

> remaining fee and receive his/her complete

> Funds.

> To break this down:A Two

> Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of

> One Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only.

> Three Hundred Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release

> of Two Million United States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00)

> only.A Five HundredA Dollars ($500)

> fee which is the total fee will facilitate the release of

> your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the sum of Eight

> Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars

> (US$8,500,000.00).

> However, Feel free to inform us how much you can

> raise should you cannot afford any of the above Mentioned

> installment so as for us to talk to the Bank to know how

> much out of your Funds they could release to you with the

> amount you can come up with.A This is

> the best the United Nations can do for you and you are

> advised to take advantage of this opportunity. Kindly, Get

> back to me immediately with your option so that i will

> forward you the contact person at the paying Bank in United

> Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank in Pennsylvania USA. to

> indicate your preferred option.

>

> Contact Person: Mr. Eric L Moore

> Email: securitycheckingservice@yandex.com

> Tel: + 1 567 281 0002

>

> NOTE: Do not be shy to indicate the amount you

> have in hands (no proper-amount is so small to trigger

> installments-payment base on our discussion with the Bank)

> so that the first payment will move to your account for you

> to confirm the existence of the fund before your proceed for

> the balance.A

> Best Regards.

>

> From Mr. AntAnio Guterres UN

> Secretary From: jefft smith < jefftsmith04@gmail.com > Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2018, 5:46:48 AM MDT Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary

Attn: Beneficiary.









We write in regards to your delayed Contract/Inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million Five Hundred United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00) which you are yet to receive as a result of your

inability to raise the required fee(s) to conclude your Transaction.



The United Nations has decided to proffer a solution that will make it

easier for all the Beneficiaries to receive their Funds. We understood

that some Fees are required in order process and Transfer your Funds

into your Account. We are also aware that most Beneficiaries do not

have these required fees.



We have therefore deliberated with the Bank in charge of this payment

to allow Beneficiaries the privilege of receiving their Funds in two

(2) or three (3) installments. In this case, Beneficiaries will no

longer be required to pay the fee at once but part of it depending on

the number of installments such Beneficiary will like his/her Funds to

be released to him/her.



Write the Bank and request that you want your fund to be transferred

to your account by installments payment,(ATM & Wire transfer) so that

once the first payments enters into your account you can then use

money from there to facilitate the transfer of the remaining balance,

once the first installments enters into your account withdrawal from

your account to United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank Pennsylvania

USA.Online transfer procedure.



The United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank USA. in Pennsylvania USA

which is now in charge of your Payment has agreed to give the

Beneficiaries the option of receiving their Funds at once, in two or

three installments. Therefore, you should send him your full Name and

telephone number/your correct mailing address.





What a shame and embarrassment? If actually, you have spent money to

execute this contract and have spent money in the hands of the

fraudsters and impostors without achieving your goal in receiving this

fund, what stops you from giving out one chance benefit of doubt and

sacrifice with this token fee to see your fund payment successfully

completed?



This will help the beneficiaries to pay part of the fee and receive

part of their Funds with which such beneficiary can upset the

remaining fee and receive his/her complete Funds.



To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One

Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred

Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United

States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will

facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00).



However, Feel free to inform us how much you can raise should you

cannot afford any of the above Mentioned installment so as for us to

talk to the Bank to know how much out of your Funds they could release

to you with the amount you can come up with.



This is the best the United Nations can do for you and you are advised

to take advantage of this opportunity. Kindly, Get back to me

immediately with your option so that i will forward you the contact

person at the paying Bank in United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank

in Pennsylvania USA. to indicate your preferred option.





Contact Person: Mr. Eric L Moore





Email: securitycheckingservice@yandex.com

Tel: + 1 567 281 0002





NOTE: Do not be shy to indicate the amount you have in hands (no

proper-amount is so small to trigger installments-payment base on our

discussion with the Bank) so that the first payment will move to your

account for you to confirm the existence of the fund before your

proceed for the balance.





Best Regards.





From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Un office kominetivan@yahoo.com

Date: Saturday, 06 October 2018, 00:20AM -0700

Subject: Fw: UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION UNIT. UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION UNIT.

IN AFFILIATION WITH WORLD BANK ATTENTION BENEFICIARY: This is to bring to your notice that we are delegated from the UNITED NATIONS in Central Bank to pay 5 victims from your country who has being Victims of Internet scam .The United Nations has decided to pay you $8,500,000 USD(Eight Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars) each. You are listed and approved for this payment as one of the scammed victims to be paid this amount, get back to this office as soon as possible for the immediate payment of your $8,500,000 USD compensation funds. We have been having a meeting for the past Seven months which ended Three days ago with the former secretary to the UNITED NATIONS in the person of Ms Carmen

We found your email in our list and that is why we are contacting you, this has been agreed upon and has been signed by the United Nations Board of Directors and Trustees. You are advised to send your communication particulars, Full Names:

Age:

Occupation:

Country:

Telephone:

Fax numbers:

Mailing Address: A Scan Copy of your Identity:

Your file Reference below (RE-1077_V) Thanks and God bless you and your family. Hoping to hear from you as soon as you receive this email. Making the world a better place for the sake of humanity. Give him your File Reference (RE-1077-V) and you are free to contact him via telephone number which he will provide to you upon the receipt of your email. Best Regards, Yours Faithfully,

Call at +1(540)227-4859



Mr.Antonio Gutterres



To:

Date: Wednesday, 17 October 2018, 11:48PM -0700

Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary









We write in regards to your delayed Contract/Inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million Five Hundred United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00) which you are yet to receive as a result of your

inability to raise the required fee(s) to conclude your Transaction.



The United Nations has decided to proffer a solution that will make it

easier for all the Beneficiaries to receive their Funds. We understood

that some Fees are required in order process and Transfer your Funds

into your Account. We are also aware that most Beneficiaries do not

have these required fees.



We have therefore deliberated with the Bank in charge of this payment

to allow Beneficiaries the privilege of receiving their Funds in two

(2) or three (3) installments. In this case, Beneficiaries will no

longer be required to pay the fee at once but part of it depending on

the number of installments such Beneficiary will like his/her Funds to

be released to him/her.



Write the Bank and request that you want your fund to be transferred

to your account by installments payment,(ATM & Wire transfer) so that

once the first payments enters into your account you can then use

money from there to facilitate the transfer of the remaining balance,

once the first installments enters into your account withdrawal from

your account to United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank Pennsylvania

USA.Online transfer procedure.



The United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank USA. in Pennsylvania USA

which is now in charge of your Payment has agreed to give the

Beneficiaries the option of receiving their Funds at once, in two or

three installments. Therefore, you should send him your full Name and

telephone number/your correct mailing address.





What a shame and embarrassment? If actually, you have spent money to

execute this contract and have spent money in the hands of the

fraudsters and impostors without achieving your goal in receiving this

fund, what stops you from giving out one chance benefit of doubt and

sacrifice with this token fee to see your fund payment successfully

completed?



This will help the beneficiaries to pay part of the fee and receive

part of their Funds with which such beneficiary can upset the

remaining fee and receive his/her complete Funds.



To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One

Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred

Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United

States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will

facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00).



However, Feel free to inform us how much you can raise should you

cannot afford any of the above Mentioned installment so as for us to

talk to the Bank to know how much out of your Funds they could release

to you with the amount you can come up with.



This is the best the United Nations can do for you and you are advised

to take advantage of this opportunity. Kindly, Get back to me

immediately with your option so that i will forward you the contact

person at the paying Bank in United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank

in Pennsylvania USA. to indicate your preferred option.





Contact Person: Mr. Eric L Moore



Email:



Tel: + 1 567 281 0002





NOTE: Do not be shy to indicate the amount you have in hands (no

proper-amount is so small to trigger installments-payment base on our

discussion with the Bank) so that the first payment will move to your

account for you to confirm the existence of the fund before your

proceed for the balance.





Best Regards.





From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary Attn: Beneficiary.We write in regards to your delayed Contract/Inheritance Funds in thesum of Eight Million Five Hundred United States Dollars(US$8,500,000.00) which you are yet to receive as a result of yourinability to raise the required fee(s) to conclude your Transaction.The United Nations has decided to proffer a solution that will make iteasier for all the Beneficiaries to receive their Funds. We understoodthat some Fees are required in order process and Transfer your Fundsinto your Account. We are also aware that most Beneficiaries do nothave these required fees.We have therefore deliberated with the Bank in charge of this paymentto allow Beneficiaries the privilege of receiving their Funds in two(2) or three (3) installments. In this case, Beneficiaries will nolonger be required to pay the fee at once but part of it depending onthe number of installments such Beneficiary will like his/her Funds tobe released to him/her.Write the Bank and request that you want your fund to be transferredto your account by installments payment,(ATM & Wire transfer) so thatonce the first payments enters into your account you can then usemoney from there to facilitate the transfer of the remaining balance,once the first installments enters into your account withdrawal fromyour account to United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank PennsylvaniaUSA.Online transfer procedure.The United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bank USA. in Pennsylvania USAwhich is now in charge of your Payment has agreed to give theBeneficiaries the option of receiving their Funds at once, in two orthree installments. Therefore, you should send him your full Name andtelephone number/your correct mailing address.What a shame and embarrassment? If actually, you have spent money toexecute this contract and have spent money in the hands of thefraudsters and impostors without achieving your goal in receiving thisfund, what stops you from giving out one chance benefit of doubt andsacrifice with this token fee to see your fund payment successfullycompleted?This will help the beneficiaries to pay part of the fee and receivepart of their Funds with which such beneficiary can upset theremaining fee and receive his/her complete Funds.To break this down:Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of OneMillion United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three HundredDollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million UnitedStates Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee willfacilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in thesum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars(US$8,500,000.00).However, Feel free to inform us how much you can raise should youcannot afford any of the above Mentioned installment so as for us totalk to the Bank to know how much out of your Funds they could releaseto you with the amount you can come up with.This is the best the United Nations can do for you and you are advisedto take advantage of this opportunity. Kindly, Get back to meimmediately with your option so that i will forward you the contactperson at the paying Bank in United Bank Of Africa attach to City Bankin Pennsylvania USA. to indicate your preferred option.Contact Person: Mr. Eric L MooreEmail: securitycheckingservice@yandex.com Tel: + 1 567 281 0002NOTE: Do not be shy to indicate the amount you have in hands (noproper-amount is so small to trigger installments-payment base on ourdiscussion with the Bank) so that the first payment will move to youraccount for you to confirm the existence of the fund before yourproceed for the balance.Best Regards.From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Antonio Guterres moon67236235@gmail.com To: "undisclosed-recipients": ; Date: Wednesday, 17 October 2018, 11:48PM -0700Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary

Date: Saturday, 20 October 2018, 03:38AM -0700

Subject: Attn: , Important Information



Attn:







How are you doing today? This is to let you know that after our

meeting yesterday evening the UN SECRETARY have order us that anybody

that did not comply with this fee as stated here below that he/her

stand to lose the Fund because he gave us order to cancel anybody that

did not respond for his payment today.





To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One

Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred

Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United

States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will

facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00).





After making your choice out of the three options do use this

information of the payment details and proceed to send any of the fee

which you have choice fast through Money Gram or Western Union even

Ria Money Transfer Service without any delay.





Receiver Name: Melissa Amesbury

Receiver Address: 110 Hudson ave Greenville California 95947.USA.

Any Of The Three Payment. . . . . . . . . . . . . .







This is the new development concerning the receiver details so i will

advise your to make sure you follow the instruction and make sure you

comply with the payment without any further delay.





Listen and listen good i will not be happy for you to lose this Fund

after all my effort to hold it for you till now and not tomorrow you

start saying or blaming me or the UN SECRETARY because we have giving

you enough time to respond.





Think about it and do the right thing immediately for your information.





Waiting for your understanding.







Thanks for your understanding.





Mr. Eric Moore From: Eric Moore ericmoore027454@gmail.com Date: Saturday, 20 October 2018, 03:38AM -0700Subject: Attn: , Important Information

Date: Monday, 22 October 2018, 03:34AM -0700

Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary



Attn:





How are you together with your family?







This is to inform you that i am not happy the way you are delaying

this transaction and if you know that you are not capable to claim

this Fund why can you tell us plane so that i will instruct the paying

Bank through Eric Moore to cancel your Fund.





As it is now i am giving you the last chance for you to comply with

the payment by my instruction as stand here below.





To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One

Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred

Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United

States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will

facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00).





Receiver Name: Melissa Amesbury

Receiver Address: 110 Hudson ave Greenville California 95947.USA.

Any Of The Three Payment. . . . . . . . . . . . . .







Follow my instruction and send the fee then you can forward me the

payment details or send it directly to the paying Bank through Mr.

Eric Moore without any further delay.





This is my last warning to you so you better act fast about it.





Best Regards,







From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Mr Antonio Guterres antonioguterres87@gmail.com Date: Monday, 22 October 2018, 03:34AM -0700Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary

Date: Friday, 26 October 2018, 06:52AM -0700

Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary . Last Warning Of Board Of Directors



Attn:



I am notifying you that i contacted the paying Bank this morning

regarding my Agent that is out of town this morning for a serious

issued.



Now have it in mind that the receiver name have been change which you

should confirm with this details am giving you for the payment today.



Once again here is the information of the payment as you can see that

today is the deadline from the Paying Bank Board of Directors Okay.



Name : Karen Abrams

City : Lorain

state: Ohio

zip code : 44052

Country: USA

Amount: $200 Dollars



Meanwhile i can plead to the Board of Directors on your behalf again

so you better act fast about and follow my instruction immediately.



Have a Nice Day.



Waiting.



Best Regards,



From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Mr Antonio Guterres antonioguterres87@gmail.com Date: Friday, 26 October 2018, 06:52AM -0700Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary . Last Warning Of Board Of Directors From: MR.ANTONIO GUTERRES <depertmentdeskoffice@juno.ocn.ne.jp>

Date: Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 3:42 AM

Subject: UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION VICTIM FUND

To: <recipient@un.com>



UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION COMMITTEE,



Attention: Sir/,



SCAMMED VICTIM/ $2.5million COMPENSATION-REF/PAYMENTS CODE:066754.



We are delegated from the United Nations to pay 100 African/World 419

scam victims $2.5million each through United Bank for Africa (UBA),

which you are listed and approved for this payments as one of the

scammed victims, get back to us as soon as possible for the immediate

payment of your $2.5million compensation funds.



On this faithful recommendations, I want you to know that during the

last United Nations General Assembly meeting held in New York NY,

last years with the former President of United States President Barack

Obama and it was alarmed so much by the rest of the world in the

meetings on the lose of funds by various foreigners to the scam

artists operating in syndicates all over the world today, in other to

retain the good image of this country, the President of the leading

Countries in Africa is now paying 100 victims of this operators

$2.5million each, Due to the corrupt and in efficient banking systems

in Africa, the payments are to be paid by Pacific United Bank for

Africa under funding assistance by the Bank of American According to

the number of applicants at hand, 80 beneficiaries has been paid.



However, Half of the victims are from the United States and Asia, we

still have more 20 left to be paid the compensations of $2.5million

each only. Your particulars was mentioned by one of the syndicates who

was arrested in Canada as one of their victims of the operations, you

are hereby warned not to communicate or duplicate this message to

anyone for any reason and for whatsoever, The US/FBI secret service is

already on trace of the criminals.



For more vital information,You will receive your compensations payment

via ATM CARD of PAYMENTS or by electrinic WIRE TRANSFERS; I hereby

advised you to forward the following:



[1] Full Names:________________

[2] Contact address____________

[3] Direct Telephone No: ______



To Rev Father Goodluck Johnson as soon as possible. Reply through his

alternative email address below:(un2009x@gmail.com).



Yours In Service,



MR.ANTONIO GUTERRES.

United Nations Secretary-General.



CC:United Nations Compensation Committee.



CC:United Nations Anti-fraud Committee.

Date: Friday, 02 November 2018, 02:21AM -0700

Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary, Warning



Attn:



How are you doing together with your family? This is to notify you

that am not happy for the delay of this payment which you are to send

and claim your Fund from the paying Bank.



Listen and listen good i want you to know that the paying Bank said

that if you fail to comply with this fee today or first thing tomorrow

morning which they are to work half day then you will loose your Fund

and dont come back and say that i did not pass this information to

you.



Meanwhile know that the payment details is still the same and i am

waiting for the payment information as soon as you send it today.



Receiver Name : Karen Abrams

City : Lorain

state: Ohio

zip code : 44052

Country: USA

Amount: $200 Dollars



As soon as you send it which i have told you early that you should

make sure you forward your banking details where you will like to

receive your Fund to enable me forward it to the paying Bank through

Mr. Eric Moore today.



Waiting for your urgent respond.



Best Regards,





From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Mr Antonio Guterres antonioguterres87@gmail.com Date: Friday, 02 November 2018, 02:21AM -0700Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary, Warning

Date: Saturday, 03 November 2018, 06:51AM -0700

Subject: Attn: This Is Very Urgent



Attn:



How are you doing today? I want to remain you that today is the

deadline that we sign with the UN SECRETARY that if you did not

respond for this payment and clain your Fund today you will loose your

Fund.



My advise to you right now is to use this details as stated below here

and follow the instruction to comply with the payment today without

any further delay.



Receiver Name : Karen Abrams

City : Lorain

state: Ohio

zip code : 44052

Country: USA

Amount: $200 Dollars



Have it in mind that when sending the payment information that you

should send your banking details where you will like us to transfer

your Fund.



Thanks for your understanding.



Waiting.





Mr.Eric L Moore.



Tel: + 1 567 281 0002



Chief Financial Officer Citigroup From: Eric Moore ericmoore027454@gmail.com Date: Saturday, 03 November 2018, 06:51AM -0700Subject: Attn: This Is Very Urgent

Date: Monday, 12 November 2018, 01:29AM -0800

Subject: Attn: , Urgent Information



Attn:



Thanks for your quick respond and i wish to let you know that we the

Bank are following the instruction of the UN SECRETARY which the

smaller amount you are demanding to pay is the sum of $200 Dollars for

the first release of your part payment.



Kindly make the payment of $200 Dollars available and i will get the

receiver name from the Board of Directors and send it to you so that

you can proceed for the payment and get back to me as soon as

possible.





This is the only way out and you will never regret working with us

here and claim your Fund.





Waiting for your urgent respond.





Thanks for your understanding.





Mr. Eric Moore From: Eric Moore ericmoore027454@gmail.com Date: Monday, 12 November 2018, 01:29AM -0800Subject: Attn: , Urgent Information

Date: Tuesday, 13 November 2018, 04:46AM -0800

Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary

Attn:



How are you doing together with your Fund? This is to let you know

that the Board of Directors of the paying Bank are not happy the way

you are delaying this transaction and they said that if you know that

you are not capable of claiming this Fund that you should kindly open

up to us then to keep us silent.



Now they want to contact the FBI to take power from them before

cancelling your Fund from they system right away.



If you dont have the payment information for the payment of $200

Dollars which you are to send do get back to us to enable us reconfirm

it back to you immediately.



Waiting for your urgent reply.





Best Regards,





From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Mr Antonio Guterres antonioguterres87@gmail.com Date: Tuesday, 13 November 2018, 04:46AM -0800Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary

Date: Monday, 19 November 2018, 00:36AM -0800

Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary



Attn:





How are you doing together with your family? I find out that you are

not willing to claim this Fund because i contact the paying Bank and

find out that you have not responded to my instruction why?





If you dont have the complete money requested from the paying Bank why

can you tell them the amount you have right now and plead to them to

release part of your Fund to enable you have some Fund and claim the

rest from the Bank.





Please i dont want the FBI will confiscated your Fund at all because

by tomorrow you will start saying that the UN SECRETARY did not help

you out in this matter after i have pleaded to the paying Bank many

times which you dont know at all.





I want you to contact them immediately or tell me what you can be able

to send to them let me present it to they Board of Directors today for

your own good because we have to finish up this transaction this week

without any further delay.





Best Regards,





Waiting for your urgent respond.







From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary From: Mr Antonio Guterres antonioguterres87@gmail.com Date: Monday, 19 November 2018, 00:36AM -0800Subject: From Mr. Antonio Guterres UN Secretary

Date: Friday, 23 November 2018, 07:04AM -0800

Subject: From Wells Fargo Bank Attn:



Attn:





Thanks for your quick respond and i want you to follow the instruction

below here for the payment immediately and i promise you that your

life will never be the same at all.





To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One

Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred

Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United

States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will

facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00).



Write us the Bank and request that you want your fund to be

transferred to your account by installments payment,(ATM & Wire

transfer) so that once the first payments enters into your account you

can then use money from there to facilitate the transfer of the

remaining balance, once the first installments enters into your

account withdrawal from your account to Citi Bank. Online transfer

procedure.



After making your choice out of the three options do use this

information of the payment details and proceed to send any of the fee

which you have choice fast through Money Gram or Western Union even

Ria Money Transfer Service without any delay.





Receiver Name: Jay C Niven

Address: 400 ft Hill Ave bldg14 canandaigua ny 14424.USA

Any Of The Three Payment. . . . . . . . . . . . . .





NOTE: Do not be shy to indicate the amount you have in hands (no

proper-amount is so small to trigger installments-payment base on our

discussion with the Bank) so that the first payment will move to your

account for you to confirm the existence of the fund before your

proceed for the balance.





When sending the payment details dont forget to reconfirm your home

address with your direct telephone number to contact you also with

your Banking details where the transfer will take place alright.







Mr.Jay C Niven.







Tel: + 1 757 276-9125 From: info@wellsfargobank.com mrjaycniven@gmail.com Date: Friday, 23 November 2018, 07:04AM -0800Subject: From Wells Fargo Bank Attn:

Date: Wednesday, 28 November 2018, 05:45AM -0800

Subject: Attn: , Receiver Payment Notification



Attn:





How are you doing together with your family? This is to remain you

that we have finish the arrangement of your wire transfer so you

should make sure you respond for the payment to enable us transfer

your Fund today.





Now you are to proceed with the payment as you know that there is no

time to waste at all so use this details below here and make sure you

comply with the payment.





Receiver Name: Jay C Niven

Address: 400 Hill Ave bldg14 canandaigua ny 14424.USA

Amount: $200 Dollars





Also view the attachment of the receiver to enable you know who you

are sending the fee because his a UN SECRETARY Agent so you better try

and make sure you respond for the payment today so that the Board of

Directors will not cancel your Fund.





Once again dont forget to reconfirm your banking details when sending

this fee and your home address for security reason.





Thanks for your understanding.





Waiting for your urgent reply.







Mr. Eric Moore.

From: info@citibank.com ericmoore027454@gmail.com Date: Wednesday, 28 November 2018, 05:45AM -0800Subject: Attn: , Receiver Payment Notification







Date: Tuesday, 04 December 2018, 04:40AM -0800

Subject: From Wells Fargo Bank Attn:



Attn:





How are you doing today? This is to remain you that the Board of

Directors said that you should make sure you send this fee today

through Walmart to Walmart to enable us complete your wire transfer

into your account.





Meanwhile the options giving to you for the payment is stated below

here for your own good to enable us pick the payment and comply for

your transfer immediately.



To break this down:



Two Hundred Dollars ($200) fee will facilitate the release of One

Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000.00) only. Three Hundred

Dollars ($300) fee will facilitate the release of Two Million United

States Dollars (US$2,000,000.00) only.



Five Hundred Dollars ($500) fee which is the total fee will

facilitate the release of your Full Contract/inheritance Funds in the

sum of Eight Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars

(US$8,500,000.00).



After making your choice out of the three options do use this

information of the payment details and proceed to send any of the fee

which you have choice fast through Money Gram or Western Union even

Walmart Transfer Service without any delay.





Receiver Name: Jay C Niven

Address: 400 ft Hill Ave bldg14 canandaigua Ny 14424.USA

Any Of The Three Payment. . . . . . . . . . . . . .





When sending the payment details dont forget to reconfirm your home

address with your direct telephone number to contact you also with

your Banking details where the transfer will take place alright.







Mr.Jay C Niven.







Tel: + 1 757 276-9125 From: info@wellsfargobank.com mrjaycniven@gmail.com Date: Tuesday, 04 December 2018, 04:40AM -0800Subject: From Wells Fargo Bank Attn: If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more....Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 22)  The head of the Philippine Navy is defending President Rodrigo Duterte over a 16 billion frigate deal with South Korea.

Vice Admiral Robert Empedrad also dismissed any ethical question on the project.

Duterte recently confirmed he ordered former Special Assistant Bong Go to act on the complaint of Hyundai Heavy Industries to make sure the acquisition of frigates worth some 16 billion would proceed.

In a speech on Oct. 19, Duterte said, "Anybody who is complaining about graft and corruption, I will give you an audience any time."

Empedrad said there was nothing unethical about the Korean firm bringing the contract to the President's attention.

"There is none. Wala, wala. It's just a normal, parang gusto mong mag complain... Hindi ko kasi alam kung ano yung content pero wala namang ano, wala namang problema doon," Empedrad said.

[Translation: There is none. None, none. It's just a normal, it feels like you want to make a complaint... I don't know what the content was but there was no problem.]

Empedrad was among those at the center of the controversy when Congress investigated the deal early this year.

The issue came to light after Empedrad's predecessor, then Navy Chief Ronald Mercado was hastily fired last December for supposedly refusing to carry out the project.

Mercado had reservations about Hyundai's proposals, but Empedrad pushed for the deal and subsequently replaced Mercado.

Testifying before lawmakers in February, Go said his office merely endorsed the complaint just like thousands of others brought before his office.

Empedrad was in South Korea recently for a ceremony formally kicking off the construction of the frigates.

The first of two deliveries is scheduled in March 2020.

Emperad gave his assurance that he did not receive money for the deal.

"Wala kaming kinita na kahit singko centavos dito [We did not earn even five centavos from this], and I assure you, that our frigate will be delivered on time," he said.

However, although the deal is pushing through, administration's critics in Congress vow to continue their probe on the project.A malfunctioning power system is the probable cause of the disaster. The train, very popular among tourists, runs along the islands east coast. Tsai Ing-en pledges action. Mainland authorities extend their condolences.

Taipei (AsiaNews)  The death toll from the derailment of a train in Yilan County stood this morning at 18 dead and 190 injured.

Yesterday late afternoon, the Puyuma Express, from Shulin to Taitung, carrying 366 passengers, derailed at Xinma station. All eight carriages left the tracks, three ended up upside down.

This morning, the Taiwan Railways Administration announced that trains power system probably malfunctioned, causing the disaster.

The train is very popular on the island, because it runs along the east coast, with beautiful natural landscapes, much appreciated by tourists.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and Premier William Lai told relevant authorities to do all they can to assist the rescue effort and the people involved.

The railway administration said the families of those killed in the crash would receive compensation of NT.5 million (US,000).

Sundays accident was the worst on the islands railways in 37 years.

Mainland authorities on Monday sent condolences to the families of the victims and to the injured. Two of the later are from the Peoples Republic.

Train services were almost back to normal on Monday morning.Clearer food labelling needed to prevent allergy deaths





CALLS are growing louder for clearer food allergen labelling in Australia, following two high-profile deaths in Europe linked to international sandwich chain Pret a Manger.

Fifteen-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died in July 2016 after eating a Pret baguette containing sesame seeds, with no ingredient labelling on the product packaging.

Celia Marsh, 42, had a fatal allergic reaction after eating a flatbread she purchased from Pret in December last year that was labelled dairy-free but was found to contain yoghurt.

Current EU regulations say fresh food products prepared on site do not need individual allergen labelling, but signage listing allergens should be posted around the store.

After an inquest was held into Natashas death, Pret has announced it will implement full ingredient labelling on all its freshly made products as of next month.

MORE: Allergen food labelling failing, medical experts want government intervention

Australias current labelling regulations are similar to the EUs, and are being called out as confusing and needing urgent improvement.

Currently, potential food allergens must be declared if theyre ingredients, or components of food additives.

Cautionary allergen labelling  may contain traces or may be present  is voluntary, and theres no standard for how its measured.

Allergy support charity Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia (AAA) says with the increase in food allergies in the general population more and more people are now living with the risk of a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. Unclear or misleading labelling poses a serious danger.

Also in Australian Foods News

Australia, like other countries, has no criteria for use of free-from labelling.

Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia believes that something labelled free-from must be absolutely free from that ingredient.

Marketing a product as free from means you are targeting people with an allergy.

When the product is found to contain the allergen a great number of people are at increased risk because the claim attracts those with very limited food choices.

The most common allergens are peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, eggs, milk, sesame, wheat and soy, AAA states, and one in ten babies now suffers from food allergies.

The authors of a University of Melbourne study published this month are also calling for food labelling regulations to be tightened after their study found some people with allergies had anaphylactic reactions to packaged foods.

Lead researcher and Melbourne School of Population and Global Health Allergy and Lung Health Unit postdoctoral research fellow Giovanni Zurzolo is concerned that an allergen-specific PAL was missing in more than half the anaphylaxis examples recorded in the study.

Five Australians have died from a severe allergic reaction after eating food that failed to specify allergens in the past eight years.

The federal government funds the National Allergy Strategy towards improving clinical care and raising community awareness of allergies.A viral video of a police officer hitting a 14-year-old girl during an arrest has caused outrage in a Florida community.

The video -- posted to Instagram on Friday -- shows a girl being held down by two officers, one man and one woman. The male officer hits the girl in the side twice as he holds her shorts.

"Why you hitting her?" someone in the video yells. "She can't do that, her hands underneath her, the f*** you hitting her for?"

The police department in Coral Springs, about 30 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale, said in a statement on Facebook on Friday that the video does not show the entire incident that led to the arrest.

Police said the incident took place Thursday when officers were called to Coral Square Mall about unruly teens who had been harassing people and causing a disturbance. When officers met with mall security, a mother told officers one of the teens shoved her 5-year-old child to the ground. Mall security also told officers one of the teens hit another teen. Officers issued a trespassing warning to the unruly teens and barred them from the mall.

The teens then returned to the mall, police said, where a boy was taken into custody without incident, but the girl in the video began cursing and attempted to rile up the other teens. Officers tried to take the girl into custody, but police said she began to fight and resist arrest. It was at this time, police said, that they took the girl to the ground because of "her stature and aggressive behavior" and tried to get her to release her fists.

"As seen in the video she resisted arrest, and in order to have her to comply she was struck in the side to release her clenched fists - she was then handcuffed," the Coral Springs Police Department said in its Facebook statement.

As officers were trying to put her in the patrol car, police said she "violently kicked" one of the officers.

"The Coral Springs Police Department believes in transparency," the department's statement read. "It is important for people to have all of the facts before rushing to judgment of an officer's actions when faced with calls for service involving violent suspects -- regardless of their age or gender."

The girl's mother, Jessica Dennis, told CNN affiliate WSVN-TV it was difficult for her to watch the video.

"She clearly wasn't aggressive. Everyone could see she was laying there," Dennis said. "So I just want justice to be served."

Dennis told WSVN she hired attorney Meeghan Moldof, who said the officer used excessive force.

"It's clear from the video that my client was on the ground," Moldof told WSVN. "Her hands are under her belly, the officer's knees are on her back, and he's just gut-shotting her, like one after another."CENTRAL POINT, Ore.  A Prospect man is in custody after reportedly crashing his minivan on Saturday, pulling a stolen handgun on emergency personnel, then fighting with deputies who tried to handcuff him.

Deputies responded to reports of a rollover crash in the 9600-block of Blackwell Road just after 4:30 p.m. They arrived to find a blue Kia Sedona minivan that had veered off the roadway and into a ditch before crashing through a fence and into someone's yard. According to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO), a witness reported that the driver had been "driving recklessly" just before the crash.

Medics from Fire District 3 arrived first, followed by a JCSO deputy just minutes later. When the deputy spoke to the driver, identified as 35-year-old convicted felon Jacob Benjamin Hefner, Hefner reportedly ducked into his crashed vehicle and fished out a handgun.

JCSO said that Hefner initially refused the deputy's commands to drop the gun, but eventually agreed to place it on the ground.

When a second deputy arrived on scene, Hefner struggled against the deputies as they attempted to place him in handcuffs. After a brief scuffle, deputies took take Hefner into custody.

This case just goes to show that there are no routine calls in law enforcement, said Jackson County Sheriff Nathan Sickler. The deputies handled this stressful situation with courage and prevented anyone from being injured.

Investigators later learned that the handgun, a revolver, was reported stolen to Medford Police in September. Hefner was also found to be in possession of methamphetamine.

Hefner was assessed for injuries at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center and then lodged in jail on the following charges: felon in possession of a firearm; resisting arrest; unlawful possession of methamphetamine; driving while suspended/revoked; reckless driving. Bail at lodging was $45,000.

Hefner is also held on a no-bail detention warrant for a probation violation. The case has been referred to the Jackson County District Attorney for prosecution.SALEM, Ore. (AP) - A federal judge has denied a request by environmental groups to halt a 500-acre logging project in western Oregon.

The Capital Press reports in a story on Thursday that U.S. District Judge Michael McShane denied the request for a preliminary injunction of the logging project in the Umpqua National Forest.

Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild and Benton Forest Coalition in a lawsuit filed earlier this year contended the U.S. Forest Service violated environmental laws by not doing another environmental analysis after additional red tree vole nests were found.

But U.S. District Judge Michael McShane says requiring additional public comment each time more nests are found would lead to a never-ending process.

The voles are a protected species, but the Forest Service says the logging is in a non-high priority area for the species.EUGENE, Ore. -- Officials from Susan G. Komen Oregon and SW Washington have announced the cancellation of Eugene's Race for the Cure in 2019.

While saying good-bye to Race for the Cure in Eugene, we are opening the door to new opportunities to make a bigger, bolder impact on Komens mission and services, CEO Andy Asato said.

Asato told KEZI 9 News that a More Than Pink Walk will be held in Portland on Sept. 22. Komen will also hold a More Than Pink Brunch in Eugene on March 30 at the Valley River Inn.

(The brunch) will be a whimsical, fun affair, Asato said. People can come in costumes. It will involve teams and fundraising. But it will also involve the opportunity to share our story.

The event will feature a special storyteller who benefits from Komen programs in Oregon.

Asato blamed the changes on high expenses and an increase in the number of other charity walks.

We have many walks and runs now. You can almost count on one or two every weekend of the year, Asato said.

He said thats led to declining participation.

We want to be the best stewards of dollars, and we want to continue to bring community together, Asato said.

Asato thanked all the people who helped make the Eugene race happen, and he said he knows many of them will be coming with them.

Komen is a nonprofit organization that raises money to fight breast cancer.We dont hear enough about the OConnells of Cullohill, yet numerous members of this close-knit large family have been central in the development of the Irish food scene over the past decades.

Savour Kilkenny wishes to acknowledge the marvellous contribution that our neighbours from Co. Laois have made to the renaissance of real Irish food, by hosting this very special event for Savour 2018.

The OConnells attribute their culinary successes to their late mother Elizabeth, who was an extraordinary matriarch, gifted cook and savvy business woman.

Widowed while expecting her youngest child, Elizabeth reared her nine children in the peaceful farming village of Cullohill while simultaneously running OConnells pub (est. 1917), which was truly a gastro-pub long before the term was known!

Savour host Edward Hayden will speak to Tom, Richard, Blathnaid, Darina (Allen), Rory, and Patrick, to look at the history and influences behind the OConnell food legacy.

He will also discuss and explore the challenges of the industry and how Ireland should shape its food landscape for future generations.

This discussion promises to be full of insight and stories about how this special family all came to be amazing food revolutionaries.

This special event will take place on Saturday 27th October at the Marble Stage (The Parade) at 1:30pm. The event is free to attend.

Savour Kilkenny will also feature demos from the nations favourite chefs, as well as tours, workshops, and events to suit everyones tastes! Not to mention the buzzing marketplace in the heart of the city. For the full programme visit www.savourkilkenny.com

Savour Kilkenny, Marian Flannery, Festival Director, said she was particularly excited to welcome the OConnells to the festival and the event in their honour.Question: I want to sign up for Medicare Part A when I turn 65 on October 11, but I plan to delay enrolling in Part B because I work at a large company with great health insurance. How do I sign up for Part A, and when does it take effect? And how do I eventually enroll in Part B? Answer: You have a seven-month window to enroll in Part A, which is free and covers hospital services. The enrollment period begins three months before the month you turn 65 and ends three months after your birthday month. You can enroll in Medicare online at SocialSecurity.gov or visit your local Social Security office, even if youre not ready to receive Social Security retirement benefits yet. Go to the Apply for Benefits page to sign up for retirement or Medicare benefits. Also see the SSAs Checklist For Online Medicare Application for a list of information youll need to complete the application. (Those who are already receiving Social Security benefits are automatically enrolled in Medicare at age 65. They will receive a Medicare card in the mail three months before their coverage starts, which is the first day of the month of their 65th birthday.)

The timing of your enrollment in Part A will determine when coverage kicks in. If you sign up before the month you turn 65, your coverage will take effect on the first day of your birthday monthOctober 1, in your case. (If your birthday had been on the first of the month, your coverage would take effect the first day of the previous month, or September 1.) Sign up in the month you turn 65 and your coverage will take effect on the first day of the next month. If you sign up one month after your birthday month, your coverage will take effect two months after enrollment. Enroll two or three months after your birthday month and the coverage will take effect three months after the month you sign up. See When Will My Coverage Start? at Medicare.gov for a helpful table illustrating the time frames. For more information about the procedure, see the Medicare Benefits section of the Social Security Administration website. Also see How to Apply Online for Medicare Only. Because you have health insurance through a large employer, you dont have to sign up yet for Medicare Part A or Part B. Most people sign up for Part A at 65 because it is free (although some people delay signing up while working for a large employer so they can contribute to a health savings account -- see How Health Savings Accounts Work with Medicare for more information). But many people who have coverage through a large employer delay signing up for Part B, which carries a premium and covers outpatient care, such as doctors visits and tests. The same goes if youre covered under a spouses workplace plan. (However, if the employer has fewer than 20 employees, Medicare will be your primary coverage at 65, so in that case you usually need to sign up for Part A and Part B even if you have coverage at work.)Mark Jarvis, CEO & President of Giga Metals, discusses their current drill programs and key milestones.

Giga Metals Corporation (TSX.V: GIGA) aims to be a premier supplier of the battery metals that will be needed as the world progresses to a future powered by clean energy. They are currently focused on two of the key metals used in the batteries of electric vehicles: Nickel and Cobalt.



The growth in electric vehicles and energy storage is accelerating and, as a result, Giga Metals intends to fast track the development of the Turnagain Project. Their goal is to supply battery manufacturers with the high-quality nickel and cobalt feedstock that they require.



The company is also actively seeking other battery metals projects. There will be a shortage in these types of metals over the next decade as the clean energy revolution takes place.



I'm Jim Gordon and you're watching Market One Minute. I am joined by Mark Jarvis. He is the President and CEO of Giga Metals Corporation. Mark, thanks for joining us.Well, it's nice to be here.Great. Let's jump right in, let's talk a little bit about the Giga Metals project.Oh well, our Turnagain project in North Central British Columbia is a massive resource of sulfide nickel and cobalt. We have a 43-101 compliant resource estimate, where we've got more than 4 billion pounds of nickel, and 250 million pounds of cobalt in the measured plus indicated category.Plus in the inferred category, we've got another 4 billion pounds of nickel and 250 million pounds of cobalt. That's a truly massive resource. And, it's a low grade, open-pittable, low strip ratio. Just a really good looking project, particularly for this stage in the market cycle.Now, can you talk a little bit about the team you've got at Giga Metals?Well, we've got an excellent in-house mining engineer, Tom Milner with a long background of bringing in mines into production. We're using Chris Martin for metallurgical work and we're currently using Hatch to do some internal scoping studies for us. But ultimately, to lead to a prefeasibility study that we're targeting for the third quarter of next year.On our board, we've got some very good people. Lyle Davis is the Chairman of the Board and he's just a very good citizen. He used to work for the Vancouver Stock Exchange in the old days, chasing the bad guys. And, we've got Jon Hykawy, who has a battery metals expert. He speaks at conferences all over the world, and he's got a business going advising the end users of battery metals  how to source materials.And, we've also got Phil Robinson, who is on the investment committee for Pala Investments, which is a $3.7 billion dollar private equity group that is invested in our company.What can you tell our viewers about your current drill program?Well, we've been drilling for a couple of months now. We've done all the infill drilling. We've got two starter pits, and between them, we only had inferred resources. The starter pits are all measured plus indicated. And so we've done the infill drilling to lift those inferred resources to the measured plus indicated category, so we can take the project to prefeasibility.And then we've also drilled in fill holes in the starter pit areas just to get metallurgical samples because we're doing to extensive metallurgical test work. And we did less exploration drilling this summer than I had hoped, simply because there weren't helicopters available. There are so many fires in northern BC, you couldn't get a helicopter. So, we've saved some of the exploration excitement for next summer.Can you talk about the significance of class one nickel to Giga Metals?Well, nickel is a bifurcated market. Most nickel production in the world, more than half is what's called ferronickel. And it's a nickel from clay's that contains nickel and iron plus impurities. And that's solely targeted for the stainless steel market. If you want to produce something that can be used in batteries, you need to have something that is economically easy to upgrade to class one nickel, which is 99.8 per cent purity or better. And, that's what we've got.Really, the two sources for class one nickel are sulfide deposits, which is what we have, and then there's high pressure, high temperature acid leach projects, H-pal, which are very, very tricky. They can produce class one nickel, but the capital cost per unit is very high. That's our competition. And I think that we're certainly competitive with H-pal projects.And I have a last question. I know this is very exciting news for you, if the viewers don't know about this, can you talk a bit about the net smelter return sold to Cobalt 27?Well you know, in the current market for mining stocks it's getting more and more difficult to raise equity capital, particularly at prices that the company would like. And so, these innovative financing methods have developed. So, Cobalt 27, which is an amazing company, I think it's only been around for about less than two years, and they've raised something in excess of $700 million, with institutional investors to become a pure cobalt investment.After extensive due diligence, they decided they wanted to buy a net smelter return from us. So, we sold them a two per cent net smelter return for a million dollars U.S. in cash, plus 1.125 million shares of Cobalt 27. And so, we've really tied our fortunes to Cobalt 27. We are really happy with the management of Cobalt 27 and, that's our source of financing. We think we're well funded to get to prefeasibility and beyond.Mark, thanks for joining us.Very good, thank you.ROME (Reuters) - Italy told the European Commission on Monday it would stick to its contested 2019 budget plans in defiance of EU fiscal rules, but promised not to inflate its deficit any further in the years ahead.

In a letter to the Commission, Economy Minister Giovanni Tria said he recognized that the budget, which is set to hike next year's deficit to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), was not in line with the EU Stability and Growth Pact.

RELATED COVERAGE

EU says it will decide on Tuesday next steps on Italy budget

However, looking to silence growing alarm from EU allies, he said the government had to respond to years of anemic growth in the euro zone's third largest economy.

"(The budget) was a hard, but necessary decision in light of Italy's delay in catching up to pre-crisis levels of GDP and the desperate economic conditions in which the most disadvantaged citizens find themselves," Tria wrote.

The European Commission sent Rome a warning letter about the budget last week  the first formal step of a procedure that could lead to Brussels rejecting the package and imposing fines.

An EU spokesman said the Commission would decide on Tuesday its next step.

Underscoring the growing tensions, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said Italy had to be "careful" over its debt, while Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called on the EU Commission to reject the budget unless changes were made.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte dismissed Kurz's criticism as "incautious" and reiterated that Rome wanted to have "constructive dialogue" over the budget, which includes tax cuts, welfare hikes and a rolling back of tough pension reform.

"READ MY LIPS"

In a wide-ranging news conference, Conte also stressed that his government, which comprises the right-wing League and anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, had no intention of abandoning either the euro currency or the European Union.

"Read my lips. There is no way Italy will leave the euro," Conte said. However, he added that the European Union was damaging itself by not meeting the needs of ordinary people.

Italy's economy is still some six percent smaller than it was at the start of 2008, hobbled by a slew of long-standing problems, including a national debt mountain at around 131 percent of GDP  the second highest in Europe after Greece.

Conte predicted that growth would "take off" once government reforms were enacted. To help fund its expansionary program, the Treasury sharply hiked the deficit goal from a targeted 1.8 percent this year.

"For us, 2.4 percent is the ceiling," Conte said. "As the budget comes into force, we are ready to contain it. We are not obliged to reach that figure and we certainly won't exceed it.

Concerns over the budget have weighed heavily on Italian government bonds in recent weeks, with the spread between German and Italian benchmark 10-year paper hitting 5-1/2 year highs on Friday.

However, Italian yields headed on Monday for their biggest daily drop since June after Moody's held off cutting the country's credit rating outlook to negative.

Moody's downgraded Italy's rating to Baa3 - the lowest investment grade category - on Friday as expected. But investors had fretted it would also set the outlook at "negative" because of the budget proposals.Oct 22 (Reuters) - Lonmin Plc on Monday signed a $200 million metal purchase agreement, which will provide the platinum miner better liquidity as it awaits the closure of Sibanye-Stillwater's takeover of the company.

However, the new facilities still do not address "fundamental business challenges facing Lonmin and do not offer an opportunity to avoid the announced retrenchments and shaft closures," Chief Executive Officer Ben Magara said.

Strapped for cash, Lonmin had unveiled plans to cut 12,600 jobs and have a further 890 merger-related layoffs when Sibanye agreed to buy out the company in December.

The all-share deal got a green-light last month from South Africa's competition watchdog with some conditions that included Sibanye entering three short-term projects to avoid over 3,000 job losses. Lonmin said it remains committed to the proposed deal with the South African competition tribunal's hearing set for Nov. 12 to Nov. 14.

The funding agreement Lonmin has entered with an associate of Jiangxi Copper Company Limited is secured over Lonmin's assets and removes some restrictions present in the company's current debt facilities related to completion of the Sibanye deal.

The new transaction is expected to close within the week, Lonmin said. Lonmin will also settle its pre-existing term loan of $150 million and cancel its other pre-existing undrawn facilities with both its South African Rand and US Dollar lender groups.

(Reporting by Shariq Khan in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)

outside U.S. +91 80 6749 9759; Reuters Messaging: Reuters Messaging: shariq.khan.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))(Updates with closing prices) By Pratima Desai LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Copper prices hit one-week highs on Monday due to expectations of stronger demand after authorities in top consumer China said they would take measures aimed at bolstering growth and liquidity. Benchmark copper on the London Metal Exchange ended up 0.3 percent at $6,242 a tonne. It earlier touched $6,331.50 a tonne, the highest since Oct. 15.

China's central bank governor said last week it would roll out targeted measures to help ease company financing problems and encourage commercial banks to boost lending to private firms. "The news from China is encouraging for metals," said Eugen Weinberg, analyst at Commerzbank. "Measures that add liquidity will help in the short to medium term, but it won't solve the problem of indebtedness, a problem for some years now."

CHINA TAX: China's tax cuts next year could exceed the equivalent of 1 percent of gross domestic product, a central bank adviser said, in a sign policymakers might be considering another round of tax reductions. GROWTH: China's economic growth cooled to its weakest quarterly pace since the global financial crisis, with regulators moving quickly to calm nervous investors as a years-long campaign to tackle debt risks and the trade war with the United States began to bite. DEMAND: China accounts for about half of global copper demand, estimated this year at around 24 million tonnes. China is "multiplying its efforts to support the economy, and in particular, the infrastructure sector amid domestic and international headwinds," such as the trade war with the United States and high debt levels, Fitch Solutions said in a note. The country's demand for copper, an economic bellwether, "will improve over the coming months as property completions and grid investment pick up and demand from the autos and consumer sectors remain buoyant," the research house said.

TECHNICALS: Strong upside resistance for copper is at the 100-day moving average, currently around $6,320, and support is at $6,115, the 55-day moving average. STOCKS: Traders say significantly higher copper prices in China could encourage further outflows from LME-approved warehouses to those monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange.

LME copper stocks at 154,225 tonnes have tumbled 27 percent since Sept. 24, while those in ShFE warehouses are up about 27 percent over the same period to 140,789 tonnes. ALUMINIUM OUTPUT: Global primary aluminium output fell to 5.301 million tonnes in September from a revised 5.485 million tonnes in August, data from the International Aluminium Institute showed on Monday. PRICES: Aluminium traded 0.2 percent higher at $2,007, zinc gained 1.1 percent to $2,656, lead was bid up 0.6 percent to $2,005, tin rose 0.3 percent to $19,225 and nickel climbed 0.7 percent to $12,530 a tonne. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Top Base and Precious Metals Analysis - GFMS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Additional reporting by Tom Daly Editing by Helen Popper, Jane Merriman and Jan Harvey)

LME price overview COMEX copper futures Base metals news All metals news All commodities news Metals diary Foreign exchange rates SPEED GUIDES ))Spot gold remains above chart support that starts around $1,220 an ounce, says MKS (Switzerland) S.A. Trade concerns between the U.S. and China remain elevated and the ongoing U.S.-Saudi tensions are likely to continue to underpin a bid tone for bullion over the near term, MKS says. Supportive price action around $1,210-$1,220 should restrict declines amid current global political uncertainty, while a test through $1,230-$1,235 will likely squeeze further shorts out of the market and see gold toward $1,250. Just before 8:30 a.m. EDT, spot gold was down $3.40 to $1,223.10 an ounce.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

BBH: U.S. Treasury Yields, Global Stocks In Focus





Investors will be closing watching U.S. yields and global equity markets this week, says Brown Brothers Harriman. Asian shares rallied Monday, led by a 4.1% rise in the Shanghai Composite as policymakers in the country rolled out more measures to support the economy and equity market. The government also cut personal income taxes. U.S. stock-index futures were pointing to a slightly higher open on Wall Street. Meanwhile, the U.S. 10-year yield is edging higher and topped 3.20% Friday before stalling out, BBH says. Italian bonds continue to underperform, though the 10-year spread to Germany remains below last weeks high near 327 bp [basis points].The Federal Reserves Beige Book is scheduled for release Wednesday ahead of a Nov. 8 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. While this report is not market-moving, we would expect an upbeat picture of the economy to emerge, BBH says.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com(Adds details on succession, stake, background)

Oct 22 (Reuters) - Glencore Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg has told investors he plans to retire from the commodities trader and miner in three to five years, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Glasenberg has started training three to four people to succeed him in the job, but did not disclose the shortlist of candidates, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Glasenberg, who is also the company's second-largest shareholder with a 8.56-percent stake, according to Refinitiv Eikon data, said in recent investor meetings he would not sell his shares after retiring, Bloomberg added.

A spokesman for Glencore declined to comment on the report.

Glasenberg joined Glencore in April 1984 and has held the top job at the company's Swiss HQ since 2002. Growing up in South Africa during apartheid, he worked his way to the chief executive's post over a quarter of a century.

After earning an MBA at the University of Southern California in 1984, Glasenberg was hired as a coal trader in South Africa. His rise also included positions in Australia, Hong Kong and Beijing.

The London-listed company posted record earnings for January-June -- building on 2017 full-year results it said were the best yet -- but also that higher costs and lower prices for cobalt and other byproducts ate into profits.

Glencore's share price has come under additional pressure from its exposure to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and a U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation.

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru Editing by David Evans and Helen Popper )

1810, outside U.K. +91 80 6749 3863; Reuters Messaging: arathys.nair.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))The Herald reports:

The Government is condemning in the strongest possible terms the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives.

Those responsible for his death must be held accountable, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said in a statement. 

An investigation by the Saudi Governments general prosecutor has now found that Khashoggi was in the consulate when a quarrel broke out, escalating to a fatal fight.

Peters said: While this is an important admission, the killing by government operatives is deeply disturbing. Many questions remain unanswered. 

The disappearance created a diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia and the West, with many international firms pulling out of a high-profile investment summit, the Future Investment Initiative conference, due to take place later this month in Riyadh.

Trade Minister David Parker said that New Zealand officials will not attend the conference.Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 22)  There are not enough safeguards against dictatorship in the current proposal for a federal government, former senator Juan Ponce Enrile warned on Monday.

Enrile, an architect of martial law in the 1970s, pointed out that the transitory provision of the federal proposal allowed the transition commission to hold executive, legislative, and judicial powers.

"There is no appeal except the goodness, integrity, and restraint of the transition commission," Enrile told CNN Philippines' The Source.

A federal proposal by the Constitutional Commission first listed a 10-member transition commission, to be led by the incumbent president. A version forwarded by House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo controversially leaves the Vice President out of the line of succession if the president dies or is incapacitated.

"Suppose the President dies during the transition... suppose those 10 people will say, 'We cannot do it in the time frame that the proposals have envisioned,' and they prolong it, what would happen to the country?" said Enrile. "Either you become a civilian dictatorship or a military dictatorship by necessity."

At 94, the former defense minister is seeking a comeback at the Senate  after having posted bail amid his alleged involvement in the multi-billion pork barrel scam.

The discussion on federalism is one of the factors that prompted him to file for candidacy, Enrile said. He also said he was against a provision that the shift to federalism would be irreversible.

However, Enrile would not categorically say whether he was for or against charter change.

"I am for anything that will make something better for the country," said Enrile. "It could be beneficial if you remove some of the more burdensome features."

Enrile to scale down Senate campaign

While Enrile said he could still "physically manage" a Senate bid, he also said that he would change his system of campaigning.

"Probably I will not join rallies. I will not join caravans," he said. "But I will go to the people and visit them in the markets, malls, in their houses. I will go to radio stations and reach the people through the media."

He also said he would not make use of television commercials, and that he would only use "whatever I can raise out of the finances of my family, and whatever other people can donate."

"I do not have enough financial logistics," Enrile added.

The former senator is accused of getting 183 million in kickbacks in the pork barrel scam, where alleged mastermind Janet Lim Napoles supposedly funneled 10 billion from lawmakers' funds into bogus non-government organizations.

The anti-graft court Sandiganbayan allowed him to post 1 million in bail for plunder and graft charges last year. His camp argued he was in poor health and too old for detention  although he now maintains he is both physically and mentally fit for another Senate term.

Enrile's critics say that if he can manage another Senate run, then he can manage to do the time in detention. He said he regained his vigor after taking up an exercise regimen when he was released.

"You may laugh at this, but it's my fate in my maker," Enrile said of his long life. "He can make it short, he can make it long."

"Maybe if I was not released from that place, I would be dead by now," he added.New Delhi/Singapore, Oct 20 (PTI) India has exhibited measures to disrupt and deter the activities of terror groups and their patrons and would not hesitate to do so again if required, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Saturday, in a veiled reference to cross-border terrorism from Pakistan.

Sitharaman, speaking at a meeting of ASEAN defence ministers in Singapore, also said that the presence of terrorist infrastructure and support to terrorists in the "immediate neighbourhood" constantly tested India's patience and as a responsible power it exercised "great restraint" in dealing with the menace.

"However, India had exhibited measures to disrupt and deter the activities of terrorist groups and their patrons and would not hesitate to do so again if required in future," she said, according to a statement released by the Defence Ministry in New Delhi.

Sitharaman emphasised India's concern on the grave challenges to international peace and stability due to the threat of terrorism.

Condemning the use of terror as an instrument to further state policies, she said that the interplay between states and non-state actors used as proxies to foment violence had worsened this menace.

Speaking at the Fifth ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus), she reiterated India's view on the Indo-Pacific, as outlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as an open, balanced region, connected by open and secure seas, integrated by balanced trade and shaped by a rules-based order, and anchored in ASEAN centrality.

She asserted that India was committed to maintaining a sustained focus of its Act East policy in terms of economic, cultural and developmental engagement of the region.

The theme of this year's dialogue was 'Strengthening Cooperation, Building Resilience'. The dialogue adopted two resolutions on 'Countering the Threat of Terrorism' and 'Practical Confidence Building Measures'.

Sitharaman lauded the ADMM-Plus mechanism for emerging as a credible and effective platform forging practical cooperation among the members of the armed forces.

She informed the partners of India's active participation in all the ADMM-Plus mechanism contributing effectively to their success.

India and Myanmar are the co-chairs for the Expert Working Group for Military Medicine for this cycle and a standalone Field Training Exercise on Military Medicine will be held in Lucknow in March 2019 along with the release of ASEAN Military Medicine Handbook, Sitharaman said.

The defence minister emphasised India's commitment to a rules-based international order that was inclusive and democratic.

She reiterated India's desire to work both bilaterally with ASEAN member states as well as institutionally and welcomed Thailand's taking over the chairmanship of the ADMM-Plus.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Sitharaman also held constructive bilateral discussions with the defence ministers of the US, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, the statement said.

She also attended a meeting with the defence ministers of Russia, China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.

Sitharaman also held discussions with the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Teo Chee Hean and her Singaporean counterpart Ng Eng Hen.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)All 400 petrol pumps in the national capital, along with the CNG units, will remain closed today. The fuel stations will not be selling petrol, diesel or compressed natural gas from 6:00 am on Monday (October 22) till 5:00 am on Tuesday (October 23).

U.S. President Donald Trump announced his decision that the U.S. will leave the Cold War era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia. Activist Rehana Fathima, who had made an attempt to enter Sabarimala temple, has been expelled from the Muslim community for "hurting the sentiments of lakhs of Hindu devotees", the Kerala Muslim Jama'ath Council said.

Some big developments that are expected to happen today are: Petrol & diesel prices in Delhi are Rs 81.44 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.30) and Rs 74.92 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.27), respectively. Petrol & diesel prices in Mumbai are Rs 86.91 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.30) and Rs 78.54 per litre (decrease by Rs 0.28), respectively. Hurricane Willa has upgraded from Category 3 to 4 storm days before it is supposed to make landfall in Central Mexico

We at LatestLY will bring all the breaking and latest news and updates around the world. Stay with us for the latest updates of the day.New Delhi, October 21: Passengers on the Delhi-Male and Delhi-Goa flight of GoAir faced major inconvenience on Saturday, as both the planes were forced to return midway after developing a technical snag shortly after takeoff. The budget carrier has issued a note of apology.

Both the A320Neo plane used by the airline are powered by the Pratt & Whitney engines. While the Male-bound flight, number G8 174, left for the destination after one of the "faulty" components was replaced, passengers on the Goa-bound flight (G8 285) were asked to shift in another aircraft. IndiGo To Launch Flight Services to Male, Phuket From India, After GoAir Announced Expansion in Same Route.

"GoAir's Goa-Delhi flight G8 285 made a precautionary landing (yesterday) due to a faulty indication on cargo hold. GoAir sincerely regrets inconvenience caused to its passengers. GoAir is committed to highest degree of safety of its passengers and its own crew members and the crew," said the statement issued by GoAir on Sunday.

On the glitch involving the Male-bound flight, the carrier said, "GoAir Flight G8 174 from Delhi to Male suffered a technical glitch (yesterday). As per standard operating procedure, the captain decided to return to Delhi. Post landing, the glitch was identified and rectified by changing a component. The aircraft is currently operational."

GoAir is one of the prominent private flyers, launched back in 2011. The airline made its forays into the aviation market by offering inexpensive fares -- which earned it the tag of "budget carrier".

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 21, 2018 10:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Amritsar, October 22: Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is also the legislator from Amritsar (east), announced on Monday that he would be adopting the families of 61 people mowed to death by a speeding train near Jaura Phatak on Saturday.

Sidhu said he would be taking care of the bereaved families till his death, further claiming that he would ensure that at least one member of the household gets a job. Dussehra Event Organiser Saurabh Madan Mithu Releases Video, Claims 'Asked People 10 Times Not To Stand On Railway Tracks'.

Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar, who accompanied Sidhu at the press conference, said the party would be not be deserting the victims. "We will provide them all possible assistance," he added.

Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu distributes compensation cheques of Rs 5 lakh each from Punjab Govt to the kin of those who died in #AmritsarTrainAccident pic.twitter.com/8f5d2hmqMI  ANI (@ANI) October 22, 2018

Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the kin of each deceased, whereas, the Centre would be disbursing Rs 2.5 lakh to the bereaved families.

The Punjab government has also ordered a magisterial inquiry into the fatal incident. The probe report would be submitted within four weeks.

The Indian Railways, meanwhile, has ruled out an inquiry into the incident, attributing the tragedy to the tresspassing of Dussehra revellers. The driver of the Jalandhar-bound DMU train has been given a clean chit. Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani said he could not be blamed as "he was given a green signal".

Sidhu has questioned the Centre over the lack of questions raised against the Railway. "How come the driver and station guards could not spot such a large gathering assembled at the tracks," he questioned.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 22, 2018 05:55 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Chandigarh, October 22: Days after 59 people were killed in the tragic train incident in Amritsar, locals came out hard against the train driver's statement who said Dussehra revellers had pelted stones at the train. The driver had mowed down 59 people watching a Ravan effigy being burnt on October 19 at a ground adjacent to the tracks. On Sunday, one person was held and around 40 other unidentified people, were booked for clashing with security forces and pelting them with stones at the train accident site. Police said that a case was registered under relevant sections, including 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC against the protesters.

After the tragic incident, when the driver was interrogated, he said that he applied "emergency brakes" as he saw the crowd on the tracks but "still some people were caught in the path of the train". He also said that he continuously honked to get people off the tracks. The driver further added saying that he had not stopped his train because of stone pelting from the crowd at the accident spot. Train Driver Detained For Questioning, Says Not His Fault as 'Green Signal Was Given'.

The locals and onlookers rubbished the driver's claims and said the train did not slow down anywhere near the spot. Shailender Singh Shally, Councillor, Ward Number 46, Amritsar was quoted by PTI saying that the driver has lied in his statements and the train did not even slow down at the time of the incident. Amritsar Train Accident: Indian Railways Cancels 37 Trains, Diverts 16; View Complete List.

"I was at the spot. Leave alone stopping, the train did not even slow down. It seemed as if the driver wanted to mow us down. The train passed us in a matter of seconds. "Is it logically possible for us to pelt stones at the train when so many people were dead and injured around us? Is it possible for us to get our bearings after such an incident and pelt stones at a speeding train? The driver is lying," Shally added.

The incident took place last week, where a crowd of Dussehra revellers had spilled onto railway tracks near Joda Phatak when watching the burning of a Ravana effigy and some of them were run over by a train.

Officials informed that the maximum speed of the train, which was a Diesel Electrical Multiple Unit (DEMU) is 96 kmph, once brakes are applied, this kind of train stops completely in about 300 metres if empty, and in 600 metres if full. The official further informed that the last recorded speed of the train, according to Divisional Railway Manager (Ferozpur) Vivek Kumar, was 68kmph.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 22, 2018 01:35 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Noida, October 22: Two Paytm employees, including a woman, were among three persons arrested on Monday for allegedly trying to extort Rs 20 crore from the e-wallet giant's founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma after threatening to leak stolen personal data and information, Noida Police said here. The arrested woman, who allegedly masterminded the extortion bid, is the secretary of Sharma and the trio had threatened to leak the data and misuse the information to cause the firm loss and dent its public image, officials said. Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma Dances on 'Apni Toh Jaise Taise,' Watch Video

The three employees of the Noida-headquartered e-commerce and wallet firm were arrested late Monday afternoon by a team from the Sector 20 police station, while their fourth accomplice is still at large, a senior official said.

According to the police, those arrested are Sharma's woman secretary (identity withheld), her husband Roopak Jain and another Paytm employee Devnedra Kumar. The fourth accused, Rohit Chomal, is a resident of Kolkata and had allegedly made the extortion call to Sharma's brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma.

The owner of Paytm had made a complaint with the police that their employees, a woman and her aides, had stolen some data from the company and were blackmailing. They were demanding Rs 20 crore for not leaking it, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ajay Pal Sharma said. PayTM Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma Faces Flak For Donating 'Only Rs 10,000' to Flood-Hit Kerala Despite Being India's Youngest Billionaire

Taking immediate action on it, an FIR was registered and three persons, including the woman, arrested. They are being probed about the data and their modus operandi. Police will share the facts as they are unearthed, Sharma said. The SSP said they will seek their custody to interrogate them further and gather more details. Police were not clear as to what kind of data was stolen.

He said that the local police are in touch with their counterparts in Kolkata to track down Chomal, who allegedly made the extortion call to Sharma's brother.

The FIR was registered at Sector 20 police station and the accused were booked under the Indian Penal Code sections 381 (theft by clerk or servant of property in possession of master), 384 (extortion), 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt), 420 (cheating), 408 (Criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant) and 120 B (party to a criminal conspiracy).

Charges under the provisions of the Information Technology Act have also been pressed against the accused, the police said.

When contacted, Paytm confirmed in a statement that the Noida Police have arrested three people, including one female employee of Paytm, in the case of extortion. The employee along with two other accomplices attempted to extort money from Vijay Shekhar Sharma on the pretext of leaking his personal data. We are standing by our colleagues till the police enquiry reaches its meaningful conclusion, the company said.Lucknow, October 21: The son of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav was found dead at his residence in mysterious circumstances, police said Sunday. Abhijit Yadav's (22) body was found at his Darul Shafa residence and his family members informed the police, they said.

"As of now it seems to be an unnatural death... Whether the death is natural or not will be clear only after the post-mortem examination is conducted," a Lucknow Police official said. Know Which Party Holds the Majority in UP Legislative Council.

Lucknow: 22-year-old Abhijeet Yadav, son of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav, was found dead at his residence in Hazratganj earlier today. Postmortem report says he died due to "ante-mortem strangulation"*. Police investigation underway pic.twitter.com/dpyxFHW6we  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 21, 2018

He also said a mark resembling that of strangulation was also visible on the neck, but the police were awaiting the post-mortem examination report.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief over the death and prayed for the departed.Who doesnt love rice? Rice in any form tastes yummy. In India, rice is the staple grain and is prepared daily in some households. But nowadays people are more health conscious than ever and are avoiding rice because we all know that rice can contribute to high amounts of fat and lead to obesity, if consumed in excess. But a new study shows that one can cut the calorie content in rice with a simple trick or hack as we may call it. Menopause Could be Caused by Eating Rice.

A normal cup of rice contains around 240 calories. And scientists are developing a way to cut the calorie content by half. How? Just by adding a teaspoon of coconut oil to the water and then refrigerating the food for 12 hours after cooking, you can cut that. The research was presented in 2015 at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society involved looking at 38 different rice from Sri Lanka, as reported by Metro. Starch can be digestible or indigestible, also known as resistant starch. The researchers reasoned that if they could transform digestible starch into resistant starch, the that could lower the number of usable calories of the rice. Weight Loss Tips: 12 Harmless Habits That Are Making You Fat!

By adding the oil to the water, before adding half a cup of rice, simmering for 40 minutes and then refrigerating for 12 hours, they found there was 10 times more resistant starch, compared to normal starch. Resistant starch is not broken down in the small intestine where carbohydrates normally are metabolised into glucose and other simple sugars and absorbed into the bloodstream.

Team leader Sudhair A James, College of Chemical Sciences, Sri Lanka, says, Because obesity is a growing health problem, especially in many developing countries, we wanted to find food-based solutions. We discovered that increasing rice resistant starch (RS) concentrations was a novel way to approach the problem. He further explains, After your body converts carbohydrates into glucose, any leftover fuel gets converted into a polysaccharide carbohydrate called glycogen. Your liver and muscles store glycogen for energy and quickly turn it back into glucose as needed.

But he explains that the problem is the excess glucose that doesnt get converted to glycogen ends up turning into fat, which can lead to excessive weight or obesity. As the oil enters the starch granules during cooking, changing its architecture so that it becomes resistant to the action of digestive enzymes. James says, The cooling is essential because amylose, the soluble part of the starch, leaves the granules during gelatinization. Cooling for 12 hours will lead to formation of hydrogen bonds between the amylose molecules outside the rice grains which also turns it into a resistant starch. This means that fewer calories ultimately get absorbed into the body.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 22, 2018 11:06 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).A Kentucky couple recently received the shock of their lives when they found a two-headed copperhead snake in their yard. The Leslie County couple donated the "extremely rare" snake to the Salato Wildlife Education Center where it was born earlier this month. Salato Wildlife Education Center took to Facebook sharing pictures of the rare snake.

In the comments section, they wrote, "Both heads move, both sets of eyes move, and both tongues are functional. We do not yet know if both mouths can swallow food." Following which the wildlife centre's post went viral on social media. Announcing that the snake will be put on display from October 19, they wrote, "The centre staff are thrilled to host this unique animal - which was found in Leslie County - and we hope that it will thrive under our care and be an educational ambassador of native Kentucky species." They also mentioned that it does "not include Halloween Walk with the Animals" and that the health of the snake is of "utmost concern".

Here are pictures of the rare two-headed snake:

In the comments section, they also wrote, "Anomalies like two-headed animals rarely survive long in the wild, due to a multitude of reasons. They have an increased chance of survival in captivity." The photos were massively shared on different social networking sites with people expressing their horror on seeing it. After being posted on Thursday, the photo has over 1,800 shares and more than 300 comments at the time of publishing this article.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 22, 2018 04:09 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Islamabad, October 22: Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit three 'friendly countries' -- Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and China -- where he is likely to seek the monetary help of up to USD 13 billion for his cash-strapped government, a media report said on Monday.

Quoting sources, the Dawn newspaper reported that Khan would leave for Saudi Arabia on Monday and embark on a two-day visit to Malaysia on October 28 and to China early on November 3.

In the next two weeks Prime Minister Khan will visit three 'friendly countries' where he is likely to seek monetary assistance, the report said, days after Islamabad formally sought a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A member of the Khan's Cabinet said the prime minister was likely to take up the issue of financial aid with his hosts in the three friendly countries because Pakistan badly needed assistance to ease the current economic crisis. He said the government immediately needed USD 12 billion to USD 13 billion to ease the financial crisis and retire foreign debt. Imran Khan Rakes Up Kashmir Issue After Death of Civilians in Blast Near Kulgam Encounter Site.

"We need USD 8 billion to retire foreign debt and USD 5 billion to run the affairs of government," the unnamed minister said. "If we get good monetary support from our friendly countries then there is a possibility that we will not require support of the IMF," he added.

Pakistan formally approached the IMF on October 12 for a bailout to tide over the economic crisis. But some tough talking by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and the US on Pakistan's bailout plan, demanding absolute transparency on the country's debts, including those owned by China under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has upset Islamabad.

Pakistan Finance Minister Asad Umar last week said the government don't want to fully rely on the IMF. He said the loan programme with the IMF is almost final, but the government will have to see that the IMF does not place any "undoable conditions" for Pakistan in return.

According to Pakistan's Foreign Office, Prime Minister Khan is going to Riyadh on the special invitation of King Salman bin Abdel Aziz to participate in the Future Investment Initiative conference being held there from Tuesday to Thursday.

Interestingly, some countries are boycotting the conference in reaction to the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Cabinet minister said the prime minister would visit Malaysia for two days (Oct 28 and 29) and would meet his Malaysian counterpart Mahathir Mohamad and other government functionaries, the report said.

In his recent telephonic conversation with Mahathir, Khan had expressed his desire to learn from Malaysia's experiences. Khan would embark on an official visit to China on November 3 during which there would be discussions in detail on Pakistan-China strategic ties, the report said.

During his meetings in the friendly country, Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of the CPEC, said the sources.

Under the previous government there was an emphasis on infrastructure schemes, but the current government wanted projects involving agriculture, job creation and foreign investment take centre stage, the report said.

The USD 60 billion CPEC is the flagship venture of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at enhancing Beijing's influence around the world through China-funded infrastructure projects.

Cash-strapped Pakistan has already announced plans to cut a USD 8.2 billion railway project between the Karachi and Peshawar, the biggest under the CPEC, by about USD 2 billion to reduce the debt burden.

The Trump administration has been critical of China's Belt and Road Initiative, saying that it has saddled some developing countries with debts they cannot afford to repay.The Maldives' Supreme Court ended weeks of uncertainty by rejecting President Abdulla Yameen's challenge to his election defeat in September. The five-judge Supreme Court bench unanimously ruled that Yameen had failed to prove his claim that the election was rigged and that a fresh poll was unnecessary.

Within 48 hours of counting after the people of Maldives cast their ballot, it was clear that the united opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had won the election. Under international pressure, Yameen initially conceded defeat and said he would handover power to his successor on November 17. However, he then filed a challenge against the results accusing the opposition of a string of conspiracies from disappearing ink to a ring used to erase votes that had been cast for Yameen.

The country's independent Elections Commission, through its lawyers, had argued his petition was based on false allegations and should be dismissed. "The case was based on conjecture and conspiracy theories." Yameen claimed magic ink had been used to rig the election and that votes marked for him disappeared inside ballot boxes.

The Supreme Court bench last week refused to accept the testimony of three unnamed witnesses that Yameen's lawyers said would prove the election was fixed. After the verdict, Yameen went on national television to concede defeat a second time, making no reference to his challenge in the Supreme Court. "This is my final address to the nation before I leave," said the 59-year-old, whose term in office ends on November 17. "During my tenure, the most difficult thing for me was my failure to learn about the people. I just couldn't find out what shapes their wishes."

Opposition activists celebrated outside the Supreme Court in the capital Male after the decision was read out, effectively drawing a line under Yameen's five years of rule that has seen judges and political opponents jailed.

Opposition legislator Mariya Didi said Yameen -- who lobbied the Supreme Court in 2013 to nullify election results in his favour -- should now allow a smooth transition of power. "We are pleased that the court ruled unanimously to uphold the will of the people," Didi said on Twitter.

Since his election defeat, several high-profile political prisoners including his estranged half-brother Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the Maldives for 30 years until 2008, have been released from jail.

But, international pressure has to have contributed to Yameens decision to acquiesce to the court ruling. Ahead of court hearings in the capital Male last week, the United States had warned "appropriate measures" would be taken if the will of the Maldivian people was undermined.

Europe and India have also issued similar warnings in the past.

India, U.S. and the EU countries have been increasingly concerned by growing Chinese influence in the strategically positioned Indian Ocean archipelago, under Yameen's authoritarian rule. (With inputs from PTI and AFP)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 22, 2018 07:15 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Islamabad, October 22: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is on a state-visit to Riyadh to attend a top multilateral business conference, said his nation is "desperate for loans" at the moment. Khan exhibited his eagerness to avail financial assistance from Saudi Arabia while sidestepping a question on journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

While a number of European nations have decided to boycott the conference as a mark of dissent against the dissident journalist's murder, Khan said he could not extend a similar gesture as his government is eyeing major Saudi investment to bail them out from the current crisis. Turkey Says it Will 'Reveal All' Over Jamal Khashoggis Murder.

Speaking to the Middle East Eye reporter, the Pakistan PM said he is "concerned" over Khashoggi's death, but it would be against the diplomatic interests of Islamabad to skip to conference being hosted by Riyadh.

"The Saudi government will have to come up with an answer We wait for whatever the Saudi explanation is, he said, adding that those officials responsible for Khashoggi's death should be murdered.

On the economic condition of Pakistan, Khan claimed that the country is facing the worst debt-crisis in the last decade, which will adversely impact their population of 210 million people within the next two-three months.

The central bank foreign reserves have dipped to $8.1 billion -- a four-year low. According to officials in Islamabad, it would barely be enough to cover sovereign debt payments for the next 70-80 days. Meanwhile, the current account deficit has widened to $18 billion.

The International Monetary Fund, which offered Pakistan a bailout in 2013, has indicated a stern approach for a fresh round of negotiations. The austerity measures which will be proposed by IMF will not allow Khan to implement his vision of an Islamic welfare state.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 22, 2018 11:01 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Islamabad, October 22: Pakistan has reopened the friendship gate at the Afghan border in Chaman, resuming trade activities, Nato supplies and transit trade between the two countries, the media reported on Monday.

Pakistan had closed the border at Chaman and Torkham on Friday in connection with parliamentary elections in Afghanistan that had suspended trade activities in the border town Chaman and Spin Boldak, reports Dawn news. Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Crossing Closed After Tension over Its Fencing.

Hundreds of trucks carrying Nato supplies and transit trade goods crossed into Afghanistan after reopening of the border on Sunday. Pakistan had closed the border soon after the Kandahar Police chief, the governor and intelligence chief of Kandahar and a cameraman were killed in the firing in the Governor House.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 22, 2018 12:16 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Oct 22, 2018, 4:17pm ET

FCA sells parts supplier Magneti Marelli for $7.1b

Buyer Calsonic Kansei will become the 10th-largest supplier in the world.

FCA agreed to sell its captive parts manufacturer Magneti Marelli to Calsonic Kansei for $7.1 billion (6.2 billion euro) this weekend, setting the the stage for the KKR & Co. subsidiary to become the world's 10th-largest automotive parts supplier.

The deal is essentially a cash-raiser for FCA, whose leadership has been mulling several strategies to raise capital, including listing on the Milan stock exchange, Automotive News reports.

Stock markets have been wary of global trade instability and instability (both economic and political) in Italy, making a one-shot cash deal an appealing prospect for FCA.

Former FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne, under whose leadership the deal began to take shape, had originally favored separating the business by distributing shares to investors.

Other potential buyers for Magneti Marelli included private equity groups and at least one parts supplier.



Oct 22, 2018, 3:07pm ET

Feds crack down on Florida company using autonomous shuttle for school kids

The NHTSA says the company only received approval to operate a test project, "not as a school bus."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ordered French transportation operator Transdev to stop transporting school children on autonomous shuttles.

The company is accused of using EasyMile's EZ10 Generation II driverless shuttle as a school bus in the Babcock Ranch community in Southwest Florida. The NHTSA says the move was irresponsible and inappropriate.

An approval had been granted for a test program, but the company allegedly began putting actual children on the shuttles instead of testing in a controlled environment with only company employees on board.

"Transdev requested permission to use the shuttle for a specific demonstration project, not as a school bus. Transdev failed to disclose or receive approval for this use," the NHTSA said in a press release. "School buses are subject to rigorous Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that take into account their unique purpose of transporting children, a vulnerable population."

The agency has threatened to take further action, including a civil fine and voiding of the temporary importation authorization, if the company fails to comply.A Lehigh County woman admitted Monday to texting while driving, leading to an Allentown crash that killed a woman crossing the street.

Seneca Yvonne Harley, who turns 23 on Wednesday, was due for trial Lehigh County Court.

Instead, Harley pleaded guilty to homicide by vehicle, reckless endangerment and driving while texting in the Nov. 8, 2016, crash at Seventh and Linden streets in Allentown.

Patricia Deady, 56, was killed in the crash.

Harley, who previously lived in Allentown but now lists a Coplay address, remains free on $100,000 unsecured bail until she is sentenced Dec. 19.

Police said Harley was driving a Mazda and traveling south on Seventh Street when she went through a red light at the intersection with Linden Street.

Harley's Mazda collided with a Kia driven by Erlinda Aguilar, which was traveling west on Linden Street, police said.

Harley's car spun in the intersection and struck Deady, who was walking east in the crosswalk on the south side of Linden Street.

Deady and Aguilar were taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township for treatment of their injuries. Deady died at the hospital, authorities said.

Police said Harley was texting on her cellphone at the time of the crash.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.UPDATE: 1 confirmed dead after wreck involving Palmer police car

A Palmer Township police car was involved in a crash Monday afternoon on Route 248/Nazareth Road in the township.

Emergency personnel were called at 12:10 p.m. to Nazareth Road and Park Avenue.

Three officers were responding to an emergency call just before the crash, police said. A 46-year-old man who lives along Old Nazareth Road said he heard sirens first and then a bang.

A single police car was facing away from Park Avenue on a slightly raised median on Nazareth Road, with a crumpled green Toyota Camry perpendicular to it.

A person traveling in the Toyota was taken by ambulance to a local hospital for treatment.

Officers reported a "fairly large debris" path due to the crash.

Police were limiting Route 248/Nazareth Road to one lane going north.

Park Avenue was down to one lane toward Route 248, while Old Nazareth Road, which becomes Park Avenue, was closed eastbound at Seip Avenue.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.A nine-year-old boy died and four other people were injured in a Saturday evening crash in Berks County, authorities said.

A Nissan Altima was stopped at a red light on Route 61 in Tilden Township, when a tractor trailer driven by Joshua Knight, 38, of Gladwin, Michigan, rear-ended the car, Pennsylvania State Police said.

The Altima was pushed across both lanes of traffic and came to rest on the shoulder.

Yesier Diaz-Ramirez, of Hamburg, and an 8-year-old boy were sitting in the back of a Altima and suffered serious injuries, troopers said. The pair had to be freed from the wreckage, and were flown to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.

Diaz-Ramirez died Sunday afternoon; an autopsy is scheduled for Monday to determine the exact cause of death, the Lehigh County coroner's office said.

Three others in the Altima were taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital with unknown injuries, a 4-year-old boy who was also sitting in the back seat; driver Ramon Ramirez, 47; and front seat passenger Cristina Ramirez Burgos, 29.

Knight was taken to Reading Hospital for observation, troopers said.

The crash is under investigation by state police and the coroner's office.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.Head's up if you're driving west early Monday morning out of the Lehigh Valley.

A tractor-trailer crashed and burned about 5:20 a.m. on Interstate 78 in Hamburg, damaging the median and shutting the highway in both directions, Pennsylvania State Police report from the Berks County borough.

The driver, Jamal Abdul Haqq, 30, of Brooklyn, got out of the cab and was not hurt, police said.

Haqq was driving west in the right lane near mile marker 30 when he lost control, left the lane and hit a bridge abutment, police said. The truck then crossed both lanes and hit the center median before catching fire, police said.

Haqq was to be cited, police said.

The highway was closed westbound between Exit 35 in Lenhartsville and Exit 29A that leads to Roue 61 South and on to Reading, and eastbound between Exit 29A and Exit 30 for Hamburg, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation reported.

Traffic was detoured off the highway.

PennDOT was warning drivers on the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to expect westbound delays on I-78.

Smoke was still rising from the wreck after 9 a.m., according to a PennDOT camera. At 10:44 a.m., traffic appeared to be moving in one lane eastbound but exiting at Hamburg, and the wreck had been removed from the westbound side, but the highway remained closed in that direction, the camera showed. Traffic was moving in both directions at Exit 35.

By 10:56 a.m., traffic was moving in all lanes at the crash site.

The Hamburg Fire Company, the Shoemakersville Fire Company, the Strausstown Fire Company, the Bernville Fire Company, Port Clinton Fire Company, Hamburg fire police and V&M Towing assisted police at the scene.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.Maternity Services at the Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise and Trinity College Dublin are delighted to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding which will recognise Portlaoise Hospital as an affiliated clinical teaching centre for students of the Trinity College School of Nursing & Midwifery.

The Memorandum of Understanding will enable Portlaoise Maternity Services and the School of Nursing and Midwifery to co-operate in establishing teaching, research and clinical links and providing a suitable environment for undergraduate and postgraduate training and education in midwifery. It will also encourage and support research and work together for the provision of excellence in women and infants care

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed in the boardroom of the Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise by the General Manager of Portlaoise Hospital, Michael Knowles, Director of Midwifery, Maureen Revilles with Trinity College Dublin represented by the Head of Nursing and Midwifery Professor Anne Marie Brady and signed by Chris Morash, Vice Provost.

Maureen Revilles Director of Midwifery at the Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise said: The Maternity Services at Portlaoise Hospital are so pleased to formalise our academic partnership with TCD. This is an important development for the maternity department to become involved in the training of undergraduate midwifery students. This will help to raise the profile of the department as a progressive and vibrant service contributing to maternity care in Ireland. In the coming months we will be preparing for our NMBI site visit and approval and we will be appointing a Clinical Placement coordinator to support student midwives.

Michael Knowles, General Manager at the Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise said: This is a strong endorsement of the maternity services at MRHP which will enable us to strategically position MRHP Maternity Services as an employer of choice for undergraduate and post graduate students. The Hospital Management with the support of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group will continue to build on the developments that have taken place at the hospital in the last number of years, ensuring at all times the continuous delivery of excellence in women and infants care.Two friends one from Kildare and one Dublin were honoured last Friday at the National Bravery Awards for mounting a dangerous sea rescue of a man off the coast of Wexford.

They both received the award from the Ceann Comhairle Sean OFearghail TD for their outstanding acts of courage at the National Bravery Awards in Dublin.

Paul McInerney of Celbridge and Eugene Duff of Kimmage received Bronze Medals and Certificates of Bravery for their actions on 10 August 2017, when the holidaymakers noticed a man collapse and fall into the sea near Kilmuckridge, County Wexford.

The pair swam to the man as he was being pulled by the current into deep water and, with great difficulty, brought him back to shore.

The man had suffered a heart attack and, despite their efforts to save him using CPR, Mr Duff and Mr McInerney could not save him.

They were among 21 people being honoured at Fridays ceremony at Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park, Dublin.

The annual awards since 1947 have been administered by the Deeds of Bravery Council  which is also chaired by Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail TD who said, it is an honour to present awards to 21 deserving recipients and I thank them for their courage.Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.

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Support our mission and join our community now.A BUSINESSMAN was found not guilty of assaulting a former employee during an altercation at a rural County Limerick pub after a judge ruled the State had not proven its case.

Bernard Smith, aged 35, of Barconey, Ballyjamesduff, County Cavan, appeared before Newcastle West Court accused of assaulting Gerard Donegan at Donnellans Bar, Ballyagran, in the early hours of February 11, 2017.

Garda Joe Collins told Judge Mary Cashin that when he arrived at the pub at around 1.30am, the only person in the pub was the alleged victim  Gerard Donegan.

He said Mr Donegan was sitting on a bar stool in a pool of blood.

He said he had been assaulted by Bernard Smith earlier in the pub, said Garda Collins who added he noted Mr Donegan appeared to have sustained an eye injury.

Judge Cashin was told a formal complaint was made by Mr Donegan two days later and that he also supplied gardai with photographs of his injuries.

Garda Collins subsequently made contact with Mr Smith who attended at Newcastle West garda station on April 25, 2017. Medical reports were also obtained as part of the garda investigation.

In his evidence, Mr Donegan said he had been playing pool and was chatting with friends when he was approached by the defendant.

He claimed Mr Smith confronted him about a case he had lodged with the injuries board in relation to a hand injury he sustained at work.

He said the defendant was getting aggressive and was shouting and roaring before he gave him a smack into the side of the face.

I was pumping blood, I took out my phone and called the guards, he told Inspector Liz Kennedy adding that the pub cleared within a few minutes.

The witness told the court that he sustained a broken nose and had to undergo an operation at UHL following the incident.

Being cross-examined by solicitor Cathal Lombard, Mr Donegan said he had around six pints of Guinness but denied he was intoxicated.

He said he did not have a problem with Mr Smith but agreed he had stopped working for him some time earlier in a row over pay.

In his evidence, Bernard Smith said he arrived at the pub at around 9.30pm having attended a wake in the locality earlier in the day.

Rejecting Mr Donegans version of events, he said it was he who had approached him on the night.

He was trying to antagonise me, he was venting, he said claiming that Mr Donegan tried to hit him.

He stepped forward and took a swing at me, he said telling the court that Mr Donegan struck his head as he fell.

He banged his head off the bar or the ground, Im not 100% sure, he said.

Mr Smith said the incident happened near closing time and that there were between 10 and 15 people in the bar at the time.

He told the court he left a short time later and the first he became aware of the allegation was when he was contacted by Garda Collins.

Seeking to have the case dismissed, Mr Lombard submitted the State had not produced any witnesses to support its case.

He said there was no CCTV and no forensic evidence before the court.

He said the evidence of his client was in direct opposition to that given by Mr Donegan and that his client had to be given the benefit of any doubt.

Having considered the matter, Judge Cashin agreed saying she had a reasonable doubt and that the State had not proven its case against the defendant.

The charge was dismissed.A NIGERIAN man was granted bail after he appeared in court charged in connection with a significant drugs seizure in the city.

An estimated nine kilogrammes of herbal cannabis was located in a package when a property at Mount Kenneth was searched last Wednesday evening during an intelligence-led operation.

The search was carried out by Revenue officers who were assisted by gardai from the National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and members of the divisional drugs squad.

Emmanuel Moses, aged 45, who has an address at Glenlara House, Mount Kenneth faces two charges in relation to the seizure.

Detective Garda Denis OLeary told Limerick District Court the defendant made no reply when he was formally charged with possession of the drugs for the purpose of sale or supply.

During a brief hearing, he told Sergeant Adrian Whelan a file is being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions in relation to the matter.

There was no garda objection to a bail application which was made by solicitor Ted McCarthy.

Judge Marian OLeary noted this and she granted bail subject to the defendants compliance with a number of conditions.

Mr Moses was ordered to live at his address in Limerick and he must sign on three times a week at Henry Street garda station.

He has already surrendered his passport to gardai and he has given them details of his mobile phone number.

The matter has been adjourned until after Christmas for directions.

The drugs which were seized during last weeks operation have an estimated street value of 178,000.ENCOURAGING children to express emotions through drawing has been one of the main tenets of Limericks Childrens Grief Centre.

So an art competition is the perfect way to spread their message further. Sr Helen Culhane started the Childrens Grief Project in 2009 but the name was changed to Childrens Grief Centre because the Croom nun said: It is no longer a project.

Located on the South Circular Road, it is a free and voluntary organisation that supports children between the ages of four and 18 where parents have separated, divorced or where there has been a bereavement.

Since it started it has provided a space and place for around 1,000 children to explore their experiences of loss associated with bereavement and parental separation.

The Childrens Grief Centre launched their first annual primary school art competition to coincide with National Childrens Bereavement Week in November.

Over 250 primary schools from County Limerick and Clare have been invited to participate. On Friday, October 12, founder and director of the centre, Sr Helen and ambassador, Olive Foley met with the wonderful staff from Catherine McAuley National School to launch this exciting initiative.

The theme for the art competition is Someone Special and children are invited to paint or draw a picture, to write a story or a poem about someone who has a special meaning to them, said Sr Helen.

We have some wonderful prizes kindly sponsored by Essilor and winners will be invited to attend the Limerick City Library on Saturday, December 8 for an awards ceremony, she continued.

Cost per entry is just 2 and all funds raised go directly towards the Childrens Grief Centres building fund. Full information about the art competition can be found by visiting www.childrensgriefcentre.ie or by calling Katrina Morgan on 087 9851733. Get drawing or writing about that someone special!A LIMERICK Fine Gael councillor believes Peter Casey is pandering to the right wing in a bid to boost his presidential election campaign.

Councillor Michael Sheahan seconded the Derry businessmans nomination to contest this Fridays presidential election.

It paved the way for his name being put on the ballot paper, with neighbouring Tipperary County Council being the fourth decisive authority to nominate him.

Mr Casey has been roundly criticised for several comments he has made about Traveller ethnicity.

He initially described Travellers as people who just were camping on other peoples land, a view he has doubled down upon.

Now, questions are being asked of Limericks councillors who nominated him for a tilt at the highest office in the lane.

At a special meeting last month, Fine Gael councillor Michael Sheahan seconded Mr Caseys nomination after being proposed by Fianna Fails member in Newcastle West Michael Collins.

Asked if he would have seconded him had he known Mr Caseys views on Irish Travellers, Cllr Sheahan said: No, simple as that.

It was a strange comment. I honestly believe his advisors might have told him to go at it like Donald Trump did. He has already received a lift in the polls as a result. I think he has gone right wing to try and give himself a boost. Its a popular view with people. Im not sure if its a personal view of his, but its totally wrong, Cllr Sheahan told the Limerick Leader.

Solidarity councillor Cian Prendiville, who did not nominate a candidate and abstained in the vote, said: I think all those councillors, particularly those in Fine Gael and Fianna Fail need to come out and nail their colours to the mast and say this is not acceptable. What he is trying to do is whip up hatred, fear and prejudice.

The Green Party in Limerick has attempted to do just that, messaging the various party councillors on the social network site Twitter to ask if they share Mr Caseys views.

So far, none have responded.

Labours northside candidate Conor Sheehan said: The comments are both racist and dangerous. It should be clear in 2018 that racism will not be tolerated. The rate of male suicide in the Travelling community is six times higher than the national average.

Cllr Sheahan says he doesnt think there is any member of Limerick City and County Council who would share Mr Caseys views.

Mr Casey is up against incumbent president Michael D Higgins, Senator Joan Freeman, Liadh Ni Riada, Sean Gallagher and Gavin Duffy in Fridays election.LIMERICKS Adare Manor is to play host to 250 of the worlds most influential wedding planners this week at a summit taking place for the first time in Ireland.

World leading industry experts, including those who worked on Chelsea Clintons wedding and with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will attend Engage!, the global Luxury Wedding and Event Business Summit at the five star resort this week for a three day event.

Founded by Kathryn Acre and Rebecca Grinnals, Engage! Summits bring together professionals from around the world that work on events hosted for Royalty, Presidents, world leading luxury brands and Fortune 500 companies, to intimate private weddings and parties.

According to Failte Ireland, the overseas wedding market already generates around 70m in revenue for Ireland  in addition to the estimated 150m in spend which comes from overseas wedding guests.

Adare Manor said it was an immense opportunity to showcase what the resort has to offer for destination weddings and events worldwide.

Paul Heery, general manager at Adare Manor said the hotel was delighted to welcome the Engage! team and delegates to Ireland and Adare Manor.

This global industry leading event attracts the best of the best from around the world, who come together to discuss and share innovative ideas. One of the most popular industry events in the global calendar, it allows for open and honest networking in a non-client and non-competitive environment.

Careful attention is paid by Engage! to create an intimate atmosphere for every individual attending that blends structure and downtime, and here at Adare Manor, this is what we do best.

We take great pride in hosting this international delegation as we believe it is a huge opportunity for Adare Manor, Limerick and Ireland to have this summit here in Adare. The opportunity to showcase what we have to offer for destination weddings and events worldwide is immense.

The event is being supported by many Irish stakeholders, including Failte Ireland, Limerick City and County Council and Xena Productions.

Organisers Kathryn Acre and Rebecca Grinnals said: We believe in the magic of connection  of bringing together like-minded souls in a supportive environment, with the chance to inspire each other, challenge each other, and grow as an industry. In order to achieve this, it is very important for us to host in a suitable luxury resort that has scale and award winning service with complimenting wonderful intimate surroundings.

We are delighted to come to Ireland and Adare Manor, Hotel of the Year 2018 and we hope this magnificent backdrop will set the scene for an all inspiring Summit and an everlasting Irish relationship.

Paul Mockler, head of commercial development at Failte Ireland, said it was the first time Ireland has hosted an event like Engage!, and this weeks conference will give us the unprecedented opportunity to directly target 250 influential wedding planners.

Im confident that the top-quality Irish suppliers presenting at Engage! will provide these buyers with countless reasons to sell Ireland as a premier and unique wedding destination to their clients, he added.

Some of those attending include Bryan Rafanelli of Rafanelli Events, who boasts a portfolio of clients and work that includes Chelsea Clintons wedding and Christmas at the White House and Matthew Robbins of Matthew Robbins Designs, who was voted one of Americas Top Wedding Planners on Harpers Bazaars best of the best.

Also attending is Jes Gordon of Jes Gordon / Proper Fun, who has multiple signature style designs, which include collaborating and assisting on major film sets, including Interview with a Vampire and Dead Man Walking and whose clients have included Madonna, Barbara Streisand, Harrison Ford, Nicolas Cage, JFK Jnr, Woody Allen, Mel Gibson, Elton John and Sting.

Irelands Tara Fay and Peter Kelly are also on the speaking line-up.A Limerick man has been sentenced to ten years for the rape and persistent sexual abuse of his stepdaughter over six years.

Michael Moloney, 40, of Sycamore Drive, Bruff, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to eight counts of sexual abuse on dates between 2009 and 2015.

He was convicted last June by a jury on a charge of rape on a date between June 1, 2010 and August 31, 2010. He had pleaded not guilty to that charge.

The victim, Jenni Prunty, previously waived her right to anonymity allowing Moloney to be named in reporting the case.

She stated in a victim impact statement that Moloney damaged the trust she should have been able to have in her family and she now felt uncomfortable in the company of her own father. She said her brothers could not look at her in the same way because they felt, as she was their baby sister, that they let her down.

Ms Prunty said she resented her mother for bringing Moloney into their life. She said she had been left so hurt and broken by him (Moloney) that it was preventing her from having a proper relationship with her mother, whom she said she loves to bits.

Ms Prunty said she now views all men with suspicion, although she acknowledge it was irrational, she couldn't help feeling unsafe in the company of men. She grieves for the childhood she didn't have.

She disclosed the abuse to her mother in November 2015 and the woman immediately contacted the gardai. Moloney had already moved out of the family home at that stage, unrelated to the sexual abuse.

When Moloney was arrested in December 2015 he initially denied any inappropriate behaviour and suggested the allegations were a punishment or revenge on him for leaving the family house.

In a subsequent garda interview he acknowledged he may have touched Ms Prunty inappropriately while messing, referring to it as harmless fun and describing himself as a messer or a blackguard.

He continued to deny rape and said he had kissed her in a friendly way. He said he was passing it off as sport but then accepted he had been aroused by touching his stepdaughter.

Moloney finally accepted that whenever he got the opportunity to abuse Ms Prunty he did so.

He told gardai; I am deeply sorry for my actions. I will get a bit of help and get it seen to.

Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy described the victim impact as eloquent and said the abuse was a terrible burden for a young woman heading into adulthood. She said child sexual abuse devastates families and described Moloney's behaviour as persistent sexual abuse.

Ms Justice Murphy noted that Moloney still maintains his innocence in relation to the rape charge but ultimately admitted to gardai that he had sexually abused his stepdaughter more than 15 times between the ages of 10 and 17 years old.

She accepted that his pleas of guilty to the sexual assaults were a relief to Ms Prunty and acknowledged his good employment history and lack of previous convictions.

Moloney is now in a new relationship and has a young child with that woman.

Referring to the rape offence, Ms Justice Murphy commented the acknowledgement of guilt validates the complainant and admissions offer the strongest evidence of remorse and potential for rehabilitation.

Ms Justice Murphy sentenced Moloney to 10 years in prison for the rape offence and suspended the final two and half years of that term. She also sentenced him to a concurrent term of seven years with the final three and half years suspended for the sexual assault offences.

EVIDENCE

Paddy McCarthy SC, prosecuting  with Eoghan Cole BL  said that Ms Prunty dates the first incidence of abuse by reference to her 11th birthday.

She was watching television in a bedroom in Moloney's home when he lay down beside her, touched her on the breast and digitally penetrated her.

Some days later she was again in his home but went to bed in his son's room. Moloney invited her into his bedroom to watch a DVD. She began to fall asleep and tucked her hand under the pillow where she found a wrapper.

Moloney told her it was a condom and began to put it on after saying her he would show her how to use one. He then raped her. It lasted five minutes before he got up and went downstairs.

Mr McCarthy said the abuse occurred very often when Moloney would visit the family home and grope Ms Prunty's buttocks and breasts. On one occasion he also instructed her to bring him fresh underwear after he had a shower. He was standing naked in the bathroom when she brought it in.

In 2011 Moloney moved into the family home and Ms Prunty told gardai that he would sexually abuse her by groping her whenever he got the opportunity, touching her outside her clothes.

He married her mother in 2013. In the autumn of 2015 she said she was asleep on the couch, when she was awoken by Moloney touching her. He was naked. She told him to leave her alone and she got up.STUDENTS at the University of Limerick are to call on the university to reconsider its contract with a campus food service provider due to its ties to the direct provision system.

Aramark Ireland, which provides services to three direct provision centres in Ireland, runs seven restaurants and cafes on the UL campus.

The company also operates a number a number of on-campus vending machines.

As part of a student-led campaign, UL Student Life, the representative body for UL students, will now actively highlight the involvement of Aramark in running direct provision centres.

Students are also calling on the university to reconsider its contract with Aramark Ireland if they continue to profit from this inhumane system, UL Student Life said, in a statement.

UL Student Life will organise monthly demonstrations and boycotts of Aramark Ireland restaurants, which include the Eden restaurant, the Cube Cafe and the River Cafe on the UL campus.

The group also plans to meet with university staff to find a solution to the companys presence on campus.

Following the recent passing of a UL Student Council motion, UL Student Life is to campaign to bring an end to the current direct provision system by calling on the Irish Government to replace it in accordance with recommendations from relevant advocacy groups and governing bodies.

UL Student Life, on behalf of UL students, will also identify specific supports students living in direct provision require and provide a duty of care to fulfil these.

The group also plans to contact local TDs, to ask for their support in ending the direct provision centre in Ireland.

They will also provide students with information and awareness around the system of direct provision and Aramarks involvement with the system, the group announced in a statement.

The group has also pledged to support students who may currently be a part of the asylum seeking process.LIMERICK gardai hit the right notes after a social media appeal helped to reunite a musician with his lost saxophone.

Gardai have confirmed the owner of the instrument collected it last week after learning it was in the possession of gardai.

An appeal for information was issued earlier this month with gardai stating it would be music to the owners ear to get it back.

Paddy came into Henry St earlier to collect his Saxophone. Thanks to everyone who retweeted.



We get alot of property handed into us and it's very hard to find the owners. Great when we do get treasured possessions like this back where they belong. pic.twitter.com/3tkKbPXeWU  Garda Info (@gardainfo) October 20, 2018

In a follow-up tweet at the weekend, gardai stated the owner had collected the saxophone from Henry Street garda station.

We get a lot of property handed into us and it's very hard to find the owners. (Its) great when we do get treasured possessions like this back where they belong, said a spokesperson.

It has not been disclosed how the instrument came into the possession of gardai.THE Irish Chamber Orchestra will turn the spotlight on some of its own work for a show at Limericks University Concert Hall.

Principal conductor Jorg Widmann takes the baton for Spotlight on November 15.

A clarinetist and composer himself, Widmann takes a back seat in that respect putting the focus on another ICO commission, 2018:2, by his protege Sebastian Adams, a young composer and viola player.

Also on the programme is Puccinis Chrysanthemums, Stamitz Concerto for Clarinet B flat major and Tchaikovskys Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48. There are also shows at Cork CIT and City Hall, Waterford.

Tickets from www.irishchamberorchestra.com.

Meanwhile, the ICO has also announced that it has secured funding for a new Limerick City Youth Orchestra.

With support from the Creative Ireland Programme as part of a new National Creativity Fund, the ICO will create the orchestra for 12-18 year olds to meet weekly in a city centre venue. It will provide tuition to young enthusiasts, allowing them to perform and grow as musicians while at the same time broaden access to arts and culture within local communities.

We are very grateful to Creative Ireland for supporting this new initiative. We are passionate about supporting the next generation of young musicians. This new development allows us to provide the next stepping-stone on their musical journey, said Gerard Keenan, CEO of the ICO.Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 22)  Martial law architect Juan Ponce Enrile admitted that there were arrests and abuses under the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos' regime on Monday.

"There were arrests... There were abuses, just like abuses in other countries if you're conducting a counter-insurgency or law enforcement. You cannot control all the people under you," Enrile told CNN Philippines' The Source.

He even added, "I was the one who signed the arrest warrants."

The statement goes against Enrile's earlier remarks in a video with Marcos' son and former senator Bongbong Marcos. He challenged his critics then to name people who were unlawfully arrested during martial law, prompting martial law survivors like Nene Pimentel and Etta Rosales to speak up. Enrile now denies he made the comment at all.

"I did not say that. What I said was that we never adopted a policy to kill people with impunity," Enrile said.

Enrile claimed anyone who was arrested was only "inconvenienced for a while," one of at least eight false claims made in the video about the Marcos regime.

RELATED: 8 things Juan Ponce Enrile, Bongbong Marcos got wrong about martial law

The then-defense minister later turned on the Marcos regime, throwing his support behind late opposition senator Ninoy Aquino's widow Cory in the 1986 People Power Revolution. At the time, he attributed the turnaround to a discrepancy in the snap elections, in which Marcos declared victory.

"I know it is for a fact, that there had been some anomalies committed during the [snap] elections," Enrile said, according to a 1986 press conference transcript. "I search my conscience; and I felt that I could not serve a government that is not expressive of the sovereign will."

However, Enrile now claims that it was because of a rising military junta that he made the move  not because he was out to double-cross Marcos.

"I was the target of assassination," Enrile told The Source. "I knew there was a junta that was already established. I do not know whether President Marcos knew about that."

However, when asked whether he stood by whether Marcos cheated in the snap elections, he did not respond.

"In my own area of Cagayan Valley, Pres. Marcos asked me if the canvas was already over. And I said yes. But somehow, they wanted to review the canvas," Enrile recalled.

When asked why, he answered, "I don't know, I cannot surmise."

Enrile went on to say that he was "not disputing" the story of martial law victims  but he also accused them of orchestrating the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing, which left nine people dead.

"I'm sorry that some of them got hurt, but they started it," said Enrile. "They wanted to topple the government installed by the people, elected by the people, installed by the Constitution."

In his video with the younger Marcos, Enrile claimed there was a "working coalition" between opposition lawmakers in the Liberal Party and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Enrile's critics said he was being self-contradictory, and they would not bomb their own gathering if the allegations of a coalition were true.

The 94-year-old former senator also said he was sorry if he had hurt anyone in the past.

"Well I'm sorry if I hurt people. I never intended to hurt people. But that is what I know," he said. "If they can provide me with contradictory proof that I was wrong, I will accept [it]."I'll be on 1170 KFAQ this morning (Monday, October 22, 2018) at 8 a.m. with Pat Campbell to discuss the state questions on Oklahoma's November 2018 general election ballot. Tune into 1170 on your AM dial, or listen live on the internet. (UPDATE: Here is a link to my discussion of the 2018 Oklahoma state questions with Pat Campbell.)

I plan to post a detailed discussion of each of the five questions over the next few weeks, but for starters, here are links to the actual legislative proposal we are voting on.

When we cast a vote on a state question, we are acting as legislators, either enacting a constitutional amendment or approving a statute. True, we only can vote aye or nay, and there's no opportunity to propose an amendment, but we make the final decision on these proposed laws and constitutional provisions.

You wouldn't want a legislator to cast a vote without reading the bill; neither should you vote on a state question without reading the legislation you're being asked to approve. What you will see on your ballot paper -- the ballot title -- is not the legislation. It is a summary of the proposal that may reflect the biases of the people who did the summarizing. Best to think of the words on the ballot as a memory prompt, but nothing more.

Here are links to the Oklahoma Secretary of State website for each of the five state questions:

MORE: Here are links to my analysis and recommendation on each of the state questions.A returning patch of warm water in the Northern Pacific Ocean called "the blob" could spell wonky weather for the U.S. this winter. Or, that's what recent news reports suggest.

But as monstrous as its name sounds, "the blob" doesn't really have a major impact on the atmosphere and the weather beyond a couple hundred miles inland of the West Coast, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Live Science.

In 2015, the blob was blamed for a dry spell in the West and for prompting endless snow on the East Coast. But this is a questionable and "overly simple narrative," said Mike Halpert, the deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA. [Weirdo Weather: 7 Rare Weather Events]

Unlike El Nino  a climate cycle sparked by unusually warm water in the tropics that can have a major impact on the atmosphere and weather patterns  a blob of warm water that far up in the Northern Hemisphere has "fairly minimal" effects on the atmosphere, Halpert said. "In the tropics where El Nino is, the ocean drives the atmosphere, but up in the northern latitudes like the south of Alaska, the atmosphere drives the ocean," Halpert said.

Where did the blob come from?

The current "blob" in the Northeast Pacific is a result of a mega-high-pressure zone that took shape in the atmosphere above it. This higher-than-normal pressureover the Gulf of Alaska, which most likely formed as a fluke, sprinkled Alaska with a mild and warm autumn, free of major storms. The absence of heavy winds and drops in temperature heated up the North Pacific waters.

It wasn't the blob that created a high-pressure zone; it was the high-pressure zone that created the blob.

That being said, the blob itself can have some significant effects on the temperature along the West Coast, according to Nicholas Bond, the state climatologist for Washington and research scientist with the University of Washington and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at NOAA, who was the first to coin the term "blob."

"Prevailing winds from California to southeast Alaska blow from west to east," Bond said. In other words, they blow off the warm ocean onto land. In 2015, because of these winds, the coast was warmer than usual, he said. In June of that year, average monthly air temperatures were 1.8 to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 6 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal in the Western states.

But the effects can be felt for only a couple hundred miles inland, Bond said. Besides impacting nearby air temperatures, the "blob" doesn't "seem to play a big role in terms of wind and pressure patterns themselves," he said.

The blob might give the ecosystem a fright

Even though it likely can't be blamed for intensifying a "snowy" winter on the East Coast, "the blob" can certainly wreak havoc on ecosystems and marine creatures, Bond told Live Science.

In 2015, the warmer water led to red tide algal blooms and lessened the availability of food and nutrition in that part of the ocean, causing fish to venture far from their typical homes and sea lion pups and seabirds to wash up on California's coast.

"The lingering effects of the original blob [in 2015] are still being felt in Alaska fisheries," Bond said. Some of the fish that hatched in those warm waters should be getting big enough to be in the fishery, yet they're not, he added.

The numbers of Pacific cod and a few other fish have been reduced because they encountered a decreased amount of food early in their life cycle, due to the poor nutrition available in the warm waters.

In 2015, the blob had warmed waters between 2 and 7 degrees F (1 and 4 degrees C) above average. Similarly, in the northern part of the Bering Sea, the current ocean temperatures are around 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C) above normal, which will impact the "distributions of the fish and how well they do," Bond said.

But how much of an effect the blob will have in the coming months depends on how long it sticks around.

This high-pressure system will most likely shift and start to break down, causing stormier weather in the state, Bond said. If that happens, stormy weather will mix the warm waters with the surrounding cold waters, weakening the blob.

The current blob doesn't look as strong as it was in 2015, Bond said, "but you know Mother Nature has some tricks up her sleeve, and she doesn't always play fair," he said. "We'll just have to see."

Meanwhile, El Nino  the event that does have more of a predictable effect on the weather in the continental U.S. is currently forming in the tropics. But it isn't a particularly strong one, according to a new winter-outlook report released by NOAA.

During the years when there is a strong El Nino, winter weather for the continental U.S. is easier to predict, Halpert said. So, currently, because the developing El Nino is weak, our "ability to predict this winter is not particularly strong."

Originally published on Live Science.The color of a dog's coat could be linked to its health  at least for one globally popular pet.

Chocolate Labrador retrievers tend to live shorter lives and have a higher rate of skin and ear diseases than their black or yellow-coated peers, according to a new study published yesterday (Oct. 21) in the journal Canine Genetics and Epidemiology. [10 Things You Didn't Know About Dogs]

An international group of researchers examined data from more than 2,000 Labradors living in the U.K. in 2013. The data was collected as a part of research project called VetCompass, a collaboration between the University of Sydney and the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London. The group of around 2,000 Labs was randomly selected from a larger dataset containing more than 33,000 Labrador retrievers.

The researchers found that, within the sample set of the dogs they studied, the incidence of ear and skin disease was much more prevalent in chocolate Labs than in other Labs.

For example, rates of a common skin infection in dogs called pyotraumatic dermatitis  more commonly known as "hot spots"  were more than twofold higher in chocolate Labs than black and yellow Labs. Similarly, "swimmer's ear," or otitis externa, an infection of the ear canal, also turned up more often in chocolate Labs than in other colored Labs.

A Lab's fur color even seemed to be associated with how long the dog lived. The researchers found that non-chocolate Labs lived, on average, 12 years in the U.K., whereas chocolate Labs lived, on average, 10.7 years, a drop of more than 10 percent.

The researchers noted that the reason for these links  between fur color and dog health  are still unknown. Indeed, the finding "merits further investigation," the authors wrote in the study.

However, genetics plays a role, the researchers said.

"The relationships between coat color and disease may reflect an inadvertent consequence of breeding" dogs to be certain colors, lead author Paul McGreevy, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Sydney and chair of board of VetCompass, said in a statement.

A trait like a dog's fur color is dictated by the combination of two genes: one from the mother and one from the father. A gene can either be "recessive" or "dominant." The chocolate color in Labs is coded by recessive genes; this means that the puppies must receive one gene from each parent that codes for the chocolate color in order for the puppy to have chocolate-colored fur. (If the gene was dominant, the puppy would need only one gene to have the trait).

"Breeders targeting this color may therefore be more likely to breed only Labradors carrying the chocolate coat gene," McGreevy said. This restricts the gene pool, and the dogs in this smaller pool might be more predisposed to skin and ear conditions, which means their puppies are more likely to inherit them, according to the study.

It's unclear whether this holds true in other breeds, as well as in Labs around the world. Now, the researchers are conducting a similar study of Labs in Australia.

Originally published on Live Science.ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  Upward of 20 mammoths may have succumbed to disease from a poop-infested watering hole in Waco, Texas, during a severe drought in the last ice age. The new findings counter a past interpretation of this mammoth graveyard that suggested the animals died in a flood.

A new chemical analysis of mammoth teeth, as well as horse and bison chompers, from the 67,000-year-old graveyard, suggests that the thirsty animals converged at a water source in what is now Waco before they bit the dust.

The dental analysis also contained another bombshell: It revealed that the adult and juvenile mammoths weren't from one nursery herd, as was previously thought, but rather from two or more herds, said study researcher Don Esker, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geosciences at Baylor University in Waco. [Mammoth Resurrection: 11 Hurdles to Bringing Back an Ice Age Beast]

Esker presented the research, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, on Wednesday (Oct. 17) here at the 78th annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting.

Mammoth graveyard

Waco's mammoth graveyard is famous among paleontologists. The site contains the remains of 24 juvenile and adult Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi). In 2015, it became a protected national monument.

Don Esker, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geosciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, uses a micromill to collect tiny samples from a mammoth tooth. (Image credit: Don Esker/Baylor University)

Hoping to learn more about the mammoths buried there, Esker looked at a single mammoth tooth, analyzing its isotopes (isotopes are variants of an element that have different numbers of neutrons in their nucleuses). The results were surprising, he said. About seven years before the animal died, the isotopes in this tooth matched those found in bedrock located about 100 miles (170 kilometers) southwest of Waco, in the Austin, Texas, area, Live Science reported last year. The mammoth would have absorbed these isotopes by munching on vegetation growing in the bedrock.

The trip from Austin to Waco was a long way for a mammoth to travel, Esker said.

In the latest phase of his project, Esker got tiny samples from the teeth of two more mammoths, a bison and a horse whose remains lay in the Waco graveyard. He also got samples from a control mammoth from another site in Waco that died at a different time. Then, Esker took the teeth to East Tennessee State University, where he could use the only known high-precision micromill, which would help him drill miniscule samples from the teeth. (Esker said he tried to fly from Texas to Tennessee, but the airline wouldn't let him bring the teeth in his carry-on bag. "So, I got off the airplane and I drove 17 hours to the university" he told Live Science.)

Once at the Tennessee site, Esker worked with Chris Widga, head curator at East Tennessee's Natural History Museum. Widga had invented a computer-controlled micromill that could drill tiny samples, each representing 10 days of enamel growth, from each tooth.

"It's a really amazing system," Esker said.

Next, Esker sent the samples to Doug Walker, co-director of the Isotope Geochemistry Laboratories at the University of Kansas, for a strontium-isotope analysis. "[The results] kind of made my jaw drop," Esker said, "because they were not what I was expecting."

The animals in the graveyard had barely moved more than 40 miles (60 km) away from that spot during their lifetimes. The control mammoth "seems to have basically stood in one spot and munched its entire life," Esker said. "I'm exaggerating, but not too much." [Photos: Ice Age Mammoth Unearthed in Idaho]

Mammoth mystery

So, why were the new results so different from those taken from the first mammoth, the one that had traveled from the Austin area?

One possible explanation is that the first analysis was contaminated, Esker said. He didn't use the high-precision micromill technique on the first tooth, so for consistency's sake, Esker said he plans to reanalyze the first tooth on the micromill to see if the Austin results hold up.

A close-up photo of the computer-controlled micromill drilling into a 67,000-year-old mammoth tooth. (Image credit: Don Esker/Baylor University)

However, if the results hold true, this finding indicates that there is more than one mammoth nursery herd in the Waco graveyard, Esker said. [See Images of the Baby Woolly Mammoths]

This finding prompts another question: Why were there so many nursery herds in one spot? One hypothesis is that there was a drought. "Maybe Waco National Monument is the last good watering hole in central Texas," Esker said. "The mammoths are congregating there and dying."

There is another idea, introduced by Dava Butler, a graduate student in science education on the paleo track at Montana State University, but more research is needed to see if that explanation holds up, Esker said. Bulter proposed that it's possible that with all of the animals pooping there, the watering hole was a prime location for Microcystis, an extremely poisonous blue-green algae.

"Maybe what we've got here is all of these animals congregating around a watering hole, eutrophication [nutrients from poop entering the water] happening and an algal bloom" occurring, killing the animals there, Esker said. "That's why they're not going elsewhere to look for other water."

Moreover, recent analyses of ancient aquatic reptiles at the site reveal strange conditions that are reminiscent of algal poisoning. Reptiles have a slower metabolism than mammals, like mammoths, which means it takes longer for them to die from poisonous algae, Esker said. And because these animals die more slowly, they have more time to develop health conditions, he said. "There are lots of other things that could have caused these pathologies, but it is consistent with what we see with Microcystis," Esker said.

Next, Esker said, he's planning to look for markers of Microcystis in the soil, as well as investigate more ancient teeth.

"Providing I can replicate these [isotope] results [for the first mammoth tooth] with the new machine, there's more than one nursery herd at that site," Esker said. "And that goes better with a drought than a flood, because you generally don't have animals congregating to die in a flood."

Originally published on Live Science.The mother <i>Kayentatherium wellesi</i> and her 38 children. They are the only fossils of babies from an extinct mammal relative from the early Jurassic on record.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  About 185 million years ago, a hairy, beagle-size animal celebrated motherhood by having 38 babies in the same clutch, according to a new study of the skeletal remains of both mama and babes.

The animal, known as Kayentatherium wellesi, wasn't quite a mammal, but rather a cynodont, a mammal relative that lived during the Jurassic period. And the prodigious number of babies she had is more than twice the average litter size of any mammal living today, meaning that K. wellesi reproduced more like a reptile, the researchers said.

Moreover, these babies had remarkably small brains, suggesting that as mammals developed, they traded off small brains and big litter sizes for larger brains and smaller litter sizes, the researchers said. [In Photos: Mammals Through Time]

The discovery of the mother and her 38 offspring is extraordinarily rare, because these are the only known babies of a mammal precursor on record, the researchers said. Even though no eggshells were found at the site, the young were likely still developing inside eggs or had just hatched when they met their untimely deaths, according to the study, which was published online Aug. 29 in the journal Nature and presented here Oct. 18 at the 78th annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting.

"These babies are from a really important point in the evolutionary tree," study lead researcher Eva Hoffman, a graduate student of geosciences at the University of Texas, said in a statement. "They had a lot of features similar to modern mammals, features that are relevant in understanding mammalian evolution."

The extinct mammal relative with her clutch of 38 babies (Image credit: Eva Hoffman/The University of Texas at Austin)

The fossils were discovered more than 18 years ago in the early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of northeastern Arizona by study co-researcher Timothy Rowe, a professor of geoscience at the University of Texas. At first, Rowe thought the rock chunk he had excavated contained a single specimen. It wasn't until Sebastian Egberts, a former graduate student and fossil preparator at the University of Texas, began unpacking the slab in 2009 that he noticed a speck of tooth enamel in the rocky slab.

"It didn't look like a pointy fish tooth or a small tooth from a primitive reptile," Egberts, who is now an instructor of anatomy at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in the statement. "It looked more like a molariform [molar-like] tooth  and that got me very excited."

The baby Kayentatherium wellesi skulls are only about 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) long. (Image credit: Eva Hoffman/The University of Texas at Austin)

Micro-computed tomography (CT) scans revealed that the rock chunk included not just the mother, but also the jaws, teeth, skulls and partial skeletons of the babies. An anatomical analysis showed that the tiny bones were the same species as the adult. In addition, the babies' skulls had the same proportions as the adult, even though they were merely a tenth of the size.

In contrast, mammal babies are born with shortened faces and bulbous heads, which hold their big brains, the researchers said.

It's energy-intensive to have a big brain, and sizable noggins also make childbearing extremely challenging. Given that K. wellesi had a tiny brain and dozens of babies, it appears that the step in which mammals traded litter power for brain power hadn't happened yet in the early Jurassic, the researchers said.

"Just a few million years later, in mammals, they unquestionably had big brains, and they unquestionably had a small litter size," Rowe said in the statement. [Photos: These Mammal Ancestors Glided from Jurassic Trees]

This family tree shows how Kayentatherium wellesi is related to humans and other mammals. (Image credit: Eva Hoffman/The University of Texas at Austin)

The discovery of K. wellesi and her babies "is a once-in-a-lifetime type discovery that can have a huge impact on how we view mammal biology," Greg Wilson, an associate professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington, told Live Science.

"Our reproductive biology is such a central component to being mammal," Wilson said. "This fossil gives us a snapshot of the reproductive biology of an animal that was not quite mammalian yet. It gives us a window into the transition from what it means to be reptile to what it means to be mammalian."

Originally published on Live Science.Meet the real-life "chicken of the sea": a strange, pinkish-red creature with a body like a plump-breasted and decapitated chicken, earning the creature the name "headless chicken monster."

In truth, it is neither a chicken nor a monster. It's the swimming sea cucumber Enypniastes eximia, and scientists recently captured video of this bizarre, hen-mimicking swimmer in the Southern Ocean near eastern Antarctica, where it has never been seen before.

Footage shows the colorful sea cucumber drifting through the water; fins at the top and bottom of its tubby, translucent body almost resemble the stubby wings and legs on plucked, pink poultry ready for the pot. If you squint, you might think you're looking at the result of an ill-fated tryst between a chicken and Aquaman. [In Photos: Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures]

Not everyone recognizes the gelatinous sea cucumber's similarity to a chicken, though its appearance is undeniably peculiar. Photos of the crimson creature that were shared around the Live Science newsroom prompted comparisons to "a frilly pillow case," "a bloody flying squirrel," "a raw steak with fins" and "what you'd get if you asked a machine learning algorithm to make you a picture of a fish." [Editor's note: All of these are wrong; it looks like a floating chicken head.]

The so-called headless chicken monster, previously found only in the Gulf of Mexico, was recently detected by scientists with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), part of the Australian Department of the Environment dedicated to investigating Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The researchers used new camera technology to detect the swimming sea cucumber at a depth of about 9,800 feet (3 kilometers) below sea level, AAD representatives said in a statement.

On average, E. eximia measures between 2 and 8 inches (6 to 20 centimeters) in length; adults' colors can range from dark reddish brown to crimson, though juveniles are typically a paler shade of pink, according to a study published in 1990 in the journal Smithsonian Contributions to the Marine Sciences.

While most types of sea cucumbers spend the majority of their time on the sea bed, swimming sea cucumbers like E. eximia land only to feed, researchers reported in the 1990 study.

Cameras designed for the AAD expedition were deployed on fishing lines, according to a YouTube video the agency shared yesterday (Oct. 21). The equipment is durable enough to be tossed over the side of a boat and can operate reliably for extended periods of time in the total darkness and crushing pressures of the deep ocean, AAD program director Dirk Welsford said in the statement.

"Some of the footage we are getting back from the cameras is breathtaking, including species we have never seen in this part of the world," Welsford said.

In addition to offering glimpses of unusual marine life such asE. eximia, the new camera system reveals the complex interplay of life in Southern Ocean depths, Welsford said. It will help scientists to advise policy makers about conserving vulnerable ecosystems that are threatened by commercial fishing, Welsford explained.

Originally published on Live Science.At least five of the 16 "Dead Sea Scroll" fragments in the Museum of the Bible are fakes, an independent study has concluded.

The Museum of the Bible, which opened in Washington, D.C., last year, had been under scrutiny for publishing and displaying the texts despite their murky origins. The museum sent five of its alleged Dead Sea Scroll fragments to Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin for an investigation that included X-ray scanning and ink analysis.

The museum announced today (Oct. 22) that those five fragments "show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin"; in other words, they are not 2,000-year-old texts, but instead more-recent forgeries. The scroll fragments will no longer be displayed, the museum said.

The real Dead Sea Scrolls represent the earliest surviving pieces of the Bible's Old Testament. The hundreds of original scrolls were found in the mid-20th century in the Qumran caves in the West Bank of Israel. In the last two decades, more fragments have emerged on the antiquities market, prompting some suspicion about where they came from. [7 Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed]

Several of those newly surfaced fragments were purchased by the funders of the Museum of the Bible, the Green family, which owns the Hobby Lobby craft store chain. Scholars who spoke to Live Science last year had criticized the museum for publishing descriptions of the fragments in 2016 without fully investigating the origins of the texts. Some researchers raised concern that several fragments looked like fakes.

"My studies to date have managed to confirm upon a preponderance of different streams of evidence the high probability that at least seven fragments in the museum's Dead Sea Scrolls collection are modern forgeries, but conclusions on the status of the remaining fragments are still forthcoming," Kipp Davis, a scholar at Trinity Western University in Canada, said in today's press release from the museum.

Davis had been involved in the museum's initial 2016 publication of the scroll fragments, but later wrote about his questions concerning the authenticity of some of the texts.

The five "Dead Sea Scroll" fragments that had been on display have been replaced with three other fragments "pending further scientific analysis and scholarly research," the museum said in the statement. "Exhibit labels will continue to inform guests that there have been questions raised about the authenticity of these fragments and that further research will be conducted."

This is not the first controversy over the sources of the museum's collection. Last year, Hobby Lobby was ordered to pay a $3 million forfeiture and to hand over thousands of artifacts after illegally importing cuneiform tablets, clay stamp seals and other ancient Mesopotamian items from Iraq.

Original article on Live Science.St Lowitsch / Getty Images

More than 40 people were displaced after a major fire broke out early Saturday at a four-story apartment building in downtown Vallejo, officials said.

The blaze struck about 12:30 a.m. at a building on the 500 block of Georgia Street called Kimberly Apartments, according to the Vallejo Fire Department. There were no injuries.The Permian Basin, rich in oil, but plagued by labor, housing and pipeline shortages, may be losing some of its luster as energy companies look to other shale plays where costs are lower, markets are closer and hassles are fewer.

That description seems to fit the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas, where both investment and drilling activity is picking up. As the Permian has boomed over past years, the Eagle Ford has climbed slowly from the oil bust.

But signs point to the pace picking up as the Eagle Ford emerges as an alternative to oil and gas producers looking to get away from Permian crowds. Production from the oilfield has rebounded from a low of 1.1 million barrels of oil a day in August 2017 to a projected 1.5 million barrels a day in October  second only to the Permian, according to the Energy Department..

The number of operating drilling rigs in the Eagle Ford has more than doubled to 78 from the 2016 low of 33, according to the Houston oilfield services company Baker Hughes. The value of mergers and acquisitions in the Eagle Ford Eagle has already hit $15 billion this year, second to the Permians $45 billion, but well ahead of the $9 billion in SCOOP and STACK fields of Oklahoma and the $5 billion in the Bakken oil field of North Dakota, according to to Canadian financial services company Scotiabank. .

Subash Chandra, a managing director at Guggenheim Partners, a New York investment firm, said the Eagle Fords key advantage is that it is far closer to Gulf Coast refiners and export hubs, particularly the Port of Corpus Christi, than the Permian in West Texas.

The Eagle Ford is unique, with proximity to markets, Chandra said presented at the DUG Eagle Ford conference in San Antonio Thursday. The Permian is the surface of Mars.

The Permian remains the hottest shale play in the world, producing some 3.5 million barrels of oil a day and accounting for nearly one-third of U.S. crude output. But that success has outstripped many of the resources in West Texas, particularly pipelines. While several companies are racing to complete pipeline projects, the capacity shortage is expected to last into next year.

As a result, producers are discounting their oil in Midland because they can't easily ship it to Gulf Coast markets. In August and September, crude in Midland was selling for $20 a barrel less than along the Gulf Coast, according to the Energy Department.

Oil and gas companies, meanwhile, are beginning to redirect spending outside of the Permian, the Energy Department said in a report released Wednesday. So are services companies.

Paul Shearer, director of sales for Superior Silica Sand of Fort Worth, said the relative calm in the Eagle Ford was among the reasons the company developed a 4-million-ton-a-year frac sand mine south of San Antonio to focus on the Eagle Ford.

In the Permian, it was just such a frenzy out there, he said. We just felt like the dynamics were better in the Eagle Ford.

Stephen Chazen, the former chief executive of Occidental Petroleum Corp., also like the opportunities in the Eagle Ford. Earlier this year, his Magnolia Oil and Gas paid $2.7 billion to acquire some 360,000 acres in the shale play from EnerVest of Houston. At the DUG Eagle Ford conference, Chazen said his company will continue to look for deals to buy acreage around its Eagle Ford holding.

His goal is to grow Magnolias stock market value from $3.5 billion to $10 billion in 5 years. His strategy: wring out every barrel of oil from his acreage.

I'm not trying to accelerate production, Chazen said.  I'm trying to extract every barrel economically.

rdruzin@express-news.net | Twitter: @druz_journoWhen she was 18, Stacey Abrams suffered heartbreak: Her second boyfriend, a guy named Chad, broke up with her. Rather than wallow in a tub of ice cream, Abrams sought comfort in the computer lab at Spelman College, where she spent the evening creating a spreadsheet mapping out the next 40 years of her life.

Becoming the nation's first black female governor - a position she's now vying for in Georgia - was not part of the plan. But as she explains in her book "Minority Leader," a memoir-cum-self-help book subtitled "How to Lead From the Outside and Make Real Change," her goals were nonetheless lofty: By age 24, she planned to be the author of a best-selling romantic spy novel. By 30, she'd be a "millionaire running a corporation whose purpose I had not yet figured out." By 35, she'd be mayor of Atlanta.

Now 44, the Democratic candidate has achieved one of those three goals - at least partly. None of Abrams' eight novels became a best-seller, but the books did achieve another of her objectives: to show herself and other black women that they could be "as adventurous and attractive as any white woman." Abrams, a longtime fan of James Bond films and the soap opera "General Hospital" (she organized her college class schedule so she wouldn't miss an episode), wanted to help put more black women in starring roles and on the covers of novels - and she has.

"Her presence as a woman of color writing romance was a positive step," says Beverly Jenkins, a critically acclaimed romance novelist. "Representation matters."

Writing under the pseudonym Selena Montgomery, Abrams weaves intricate plots that befit their tantalizing titles. In "Reckless," a successful Atlanta lawyer becomes embroiled - professionally and romantically - with a handsome sheriff. "Secrets and Lies" pairs up sexy ethnobotanist Katelyn Lyda and Sebastian Caine, who may be a thief involved in the murder of Lyda's uncle. "Hidden Sins" follows the exploits of Mara Reed and Dr. Ethan Stewart as they spar and spark, chasing down a buried treasure.

Abrams' strong, complicated female characters both seduce and are seduced; they solve crimes and win cases. Her prose heats up when it needs to: "Summoning a will she didn't realize she possessed, Mara flattened her palms against his chest," reads one scene in "Hidden Sins." "The heart beneath raced with a vital speed, and her resolve wavered. Fevered kisses snaked a chain along her throat, burning away reason."

A graduate of Yale Law School and the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, Abrams wrote her first romance novel, "Rules of Engagement," during her third year at Yale. She worked on the books in the evenings and on weekends. Her last Selena Montgomery book, "Deception," was published in 2009.

"I miss her," Abrams writes of her alter ego, adding that she has other novels in various stages of completion, "including a teenage amnesiac superhero story, a kids' book about the mishaps of a nine-year-old alien, a finished legal thriller awaiting edits, and a final Selena Montgomery story."

Will we ever see those books in print? By email from the campaign trail, Abrams answered these and other questions about her life as a writer.

(BEGIN ITAL)(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)(END ITAL)

---

Q:(BEGIN ITAL)How has writing romantic suspense novels prepared you to run for - and hold - office?(END ITAL)

A: Leadership requires the ability to engage and to create empathy for communities with disparate needs and ideas. Telling an effective story - especially in romantic suspense - demands a similar skill set. Effective storytelling takes the reader into a life that is both familiar and foreign, enough of both to make space for others to feel empowered to tell their stories.

When I began writing novels, I read Aristotle to learn how to perfect structure, Pearl Cleage to sustain tension and Nora Roberts for characterization. Good romantic suspense can never underestimate the audience, and the best political leaders know how to shape a compelling narrative that respects voters and paints a picture of what is to come.

Q:(BEGIN ITAL)Several of your novels have recently been reissued. Why did you decide to put them out there rather than hide this part of your career?(END ITAL)

A: I have been privileged to write across multiple facets of my life: to write romance novels, to write memoir, to write about leadership, and to write tax and social policy articles. The act of writing is integral to who I am. I'm a writer, a politician, a tax attorney, a civic leader and an entrepreneur. I am proud of what I've accomplished.

Q:(BEGIN ITAL)In "Minority Leader," you write that your mother, who was a librarian for much of your childhood, taught you that books shape our "sense of the possible." How did they do that for you?(END ITAL)

A: My parents instilled in my siblings and me a love of reading and an active interest in the world around us. Our mother was a college librarian, and I remember leaving school as a young child and sleeping in the stacks, surrounded by books. In our home, we constantly read, and my father would tell us incredible bedtime stories.

My exposure to a diversity of experiences, ideas and places so distinct from my own opened up worlds, and those pages offered me possibilities families like ours, who weren't of means, might not have imagined. My reading tastes have always varied widely - from novels to the sciences and to historical works - but they are constantly grounded in curiosity and trying to place moments into context.

Q:(BEGIN ITAL)What will become of your unfinished book projects if you're elected governor?(END ITAL)

A: I'm always writing; however, right now, my focus is on winning this election and serving the people of Georgia as our state's next governor.

Q:(BEGIN ITAL)Many readers find it easy to make fun of romance novels. What do you have to say to critics of the genre? (END ITAL)

A: Telling a well-crafted story is hard. Full stop. Regardless of genre, good writing is good writing. Romance is one of the oldest forms of storytelling, and I'm honored to be in the company of extraordinary writers.

Q:(BEGIN ITAL)Do you read any novels by other politicians? Fellow Georgian Newt Gingrich? Bill Clinton? How about political novels - any favorites?(END ITAL)

A: I prefer my political writing in biographies, and my favorite is Robert Caro's compendium on LBJ.A Cotulla man has been sentenced to serve a 50 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault of a young girl.

District Attorney Audrey Louis showed during the sentencing hearing that Daniel Flores, 39, had at least twice molested a family member who was under the age of 14 in July 2016.

READ ALSO: Six men arrested after stolen Xbox leads to altercation in south Laredo

Court testimony showed that the child reported the offenses to her father and that a criminal investigation ensued.

Flores had recently successfully completed a probation sentence from a 2009 conviction for the possession of child pornography and was registered as a sex offender living in La Salle County.

"You're not sorry about this," the district attorney said while confronting Flores in court before District Judge Russell Wilson. "You did this over and over. You're just sorry that you got caught."

RELATED: 'It's a dream:' New details surface in sexual assault of 7-year-old Laredo girl

Wilson stacked the two 25-year sentences, meaning the first sentence must be served before before the second begins. Flores must spend at least a quarter century behind bars before he may seek a reduction of his prison term.

"My staff and I want to extend our thanks to the La Salle County Sheriff's Office and to Investigator Homar Olivarez for the in-depth and exhaustive investigation that led to this conviction and sentencing," Louis said. "Together, we have helped ensure that justice was served for the benefit of the child victim in this case."Italy's populist government told the European Union that it is willing to temper its budget for next year, but it needs to break deficit rules to help out its poorest citizens.

In a letter to the European Commission published Monday, Finance Minister Giovanni Tria said he won't let the country's budget deficit widen further than the 2.4 percent target for 2019. He said he knows that the plans don't comply with EU rules and he wants "constructive" talks with officials in Brussels. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said the shortfall could even come in below target.

The decision to increase spending was "difficult though necessary," Tria said in his letter. He cited slow economic growth and the "difficult economic situation the poorest segments of the Italian society are facing."

Conte and Tria have come under fire from European officials and investors since bowing to pressure from Italy's coalition heavyweights Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio to allocate resources to their key election promises: tax cuts, more benefits spending, and a lower retirement age. The Commission expressed "serious concern" about Italy's budget plans in a letter on Thursday.

Conte, speaking in Rome, said that the government was willing to cut spending if faced with economic difficulties. Over the weekend Cabinet Undersecretary Giancarlo Giorgetti said that the government can't ignore the risk to banks posed by this month's bond-market selloff.

EU commissioners will discuss Italy's budget at a meeting in Strasbourg on Tuesday, commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters in Brussels. They are likely to issue an unprecedented "negative opinion," according to an EU official with knowledge of the preparations. That will mean Italy has three weeks to submit a revised budget.

Italian bonds slipped after a rally earlier in the day. The spread over German 10-year yields widened by 3 basis points to 305 at 3:26 p.m. in Rome. The gap reached a five-year high of 341 basis points during trading on Friday.

Italian bonds have stabilized somewhat since EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici on Friday said he's not seeking a conflict with Rome. Italian assets also got support from Moody's Investors Service, which removed the immediate threat of a downgrade to junk at the end of last week. The rating agency cut Italy's rating to one step above junk on Friday and said the outlook is "stable" offering reassurance that a further cut isn't imminent.

The finance chief offered no indication that he plans to back down from the headline spending targets, paving the way for the EU to take the unprecedented step of demanding revisions.

"While recognizing the divergence of the respective evaluations, the Italian government will remain in a constructive and fair dialogue," Tria added. "The government is confident it can get investment and GDP growth moving again and that the recent rise in the government bond yields will be reabsorbed as the investors learn about all the details of the measures in the budget law."

He added that after 2019 the government doesn't intend to raise the structural budget deficit -- adjusted to take account of the economic cycle and one-time items.

Concern about the impact of market turbulence on Italian banks is among reasons for the government's softening of tone since soaring government bond yields could put banks' capital levels at risk. The country's banks are also sitting on a 260 billion-euro ($300 billion) pile of non-performing loans, the biggest in the EU, from the last financial crisis and recession. A spread greater than 400 basis points would not be sustainable for Italian banks, according to an Oct. 7 note by Credit Suisse Group.

Prime Minister Conte signaled that Italy may not implement some of its most controversial spending plans until later next year, which could potentially lead to a narrower deficit. While the move is unlikely to appease the EU Commission, it was a sign that the government in Rome is looking at ways to reach a face-saving compromise.

In the meantime, League leader Salvini saw support for his party surge in regional voting in the north of the country on Sunday. The League won 11.1 percent in the Bolzano area near the border with Austria compared with 2.5 percent in 2013 when it ran in coalition with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.

Salvini's coalition partner Five Star polled at less than 3 percent while a pro-autonomy party came first with more than 40 percent.

- - -

Bloomberg's Nikos Chrysoloras and Viktoria Dendrinou contributed.KABUL, Afghanistan - A soldier from the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan was killed Monday and two others were injured in an apparent insider attack by a member of the Afghan security forces, U.S. military officials here said.

The victims were not immediately identified, and no other details of the incident were released.

Afghan military sources said they were trying to confirm reports that an Afghan special operations forces commando had opened fire on U.S. troops in the Shindand region of western Herat province, killing one.

A Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Rob Manning, said later that the fatality in Herat was not an American. He declined to say whether any of the wounded were U.S. troops and referred further questions to the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban insurgent movement, said in a statement Monday evening that the assailant in Herat was a Taliban "infiltrator."

The incident came four days after two top Afghan security officials in southern Kandahar province were shot dead by a member of the provincial governor's security team.

The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin "Scott" Miller, escaped unhurt in the attack, which claimed the life of Afghan National Police Gen. Abdul Raziq, a fierce anti-insurgent fighter who was considered the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault Thursday in the compound of the Kandahar provincial governor.

The shooting by a lone attacker targeted a high-level meeting in Kandahar between U.S. and Afghan officials on plans to secure nationwide parliamentary elections Saturday.

Two Americans sustained gunshot wounds in the Kandahar attack, including Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey D. Smiley, according to four people with knowledge of the incident. Military officials have not identified the wounded, describing them only as a U.S. service member and a civilian.

Smiley has commanded the U.S. military assistance mission in southern Afghanistan since August, according to his National Guard biography.

After the Kandahar attack, some Afghans, including several national legislators, questioned the official version of the incident. Conspiracy theorists charged that the U.S. military was behind a plot to kill Abdul Raziq, a powerful regional security boss who was sometimes difficult for Afghanistan's civilian government to control.

Those alleging a foreign plot questioned why Miller escaped unharmed while senior Afghans in the same meeting died, and why U.S. military officials stressed strongly that Miller was not the target of the attack. Taliban spokesmen said Miller, Abdul Raziq and other Afghan officials were all targets.

Afghanistan's chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah, dismissed such rumors Monday after a meeting with Miller. He called them "mere propaganda aimed at stirring up trouble." The head of the country's intelligence service, Masoom Stanikzai, also dismissed such allegations.

Afghanistan's chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah, dismissed such rumors Monday after a meeting with Miller. He said people who spread them are just "helping the enemy."

The head of the country's intelligence service, Masoom Stanikzai, also rejected the allegations. Speaking to journalists in Kandahar, he gave a detailed account of the attack. He said the lone shooter, who was killed in the encounter, gave a false name when he enrolled recently in the provincial security service. He added that 15 other people have been arrested in the plot.

Stanikzai said that 15 minutes before the attack Thursday, the plotters received a phone call from "across the border," meaning Pakistan, giving them instructions. "It is clear that the enemies of Afghanistan planned this plot on the other side of the border" and worked hard on it, he said.

Insider attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan became a significant concern beginning in 2008. Since then, more than 100 incidents have been reported in which about 155 U.S. or coalition troops or contractors have been killed and 200 wounded by Afghans in uniform. The incidents peaked in 2012, then declined steadily as foreign forces withdrew and new protection and vetting measures were adopted.

However, several deadly assaults on U.S. forces in the past several years came at the hands of highly trained Afghan commandos. This has raised alarm, since such troops work closely with U.S. counterterrorism forces and are considered the best-trained and motivated of all Afghan security personnel.

Last month, an American soldier, Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy Bolyard, 42, of West Virginia, died of wounds he sustained in an insider attack in Logar province while working in a special unit formed to assist Afghan security forces and improve their combat capability. A second U.S. soldier was wounded in the incident. The shooter, a member of the Afghan National Police, was captured, according to news accounts.

In June of last year, an Afghan special operations forces commando opened fire on American troops, killing three and wounding one, at a firebase in the Achin district of Nangahar province. The victims were members of the U.S. Special Operations forces assisting Afghan forces on a joint anti-terrorism mission against the Islamic State.

One week later, an Afghan army soldier opened fire at a joint Afghan and U.S. military and training base in northern Afghanistan. One Afghan soldier was killed and seven Americans were wounded. NATO and U.S. officials said the attacker was shot and died on the way to a hospital. No foreigners died in that attack. Afghan officials confirmed that the shooter was an Afghan soldier; one said he was an army commando.

- The Post's Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.CARBONDALE (AP)  Georgia Doss has a spot on the north side of SIU Carbondales Campus Lake that would make any Southern Illinois angler jealous. Last Monday evening, in just over an hour, she pulled in 11 bluegill and redear sunfish.

And thats nothing special.

Oh Lord, Ive got a whole lot of bags full in my freezer, Doss said, cleaned and ready to eat. Yesterday I had two bags, level-full.

She catches so many fish on Campus Lake, Doss said shell be hosting a fish fry for 150 to 200 people at a family reunion next month, in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

The 76-year-old has been fishing Southern Illinois waters for 16 years, but theres nowhere she likes better than SIUCs 41-acre lake.

After my husband passed away, I didnt have nobody to go fishing with me. And people walk around this lake all the time, so some of them stop and talk to me, so Im not alone, Doss said. Everybodys real friendly.

But over the last several years, Doss sweet spot wasnt so sweet.

Campus Lake was frequently closed to all recreation from 2014 to 2017 due to an overabundance of blue-green algae. The algae rob the water of oxygen, harming plants and fish, and leech toxic substances into the water that can cause skin rashes and even serious illnesses in humans.

The explosive algal growth came from an excess of nutrients in the water, created by accumulating organic material, leaves, twigs and debris, as well as the output of 23 storm sewers that empty into the lake, The Southern reported.

The lake is receiving nutrients from this material, and the algae gets this persistent source of nutrients to grow, said Greg Whitledge, a professor at SIUCs Center for Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences. In the winter it decays and sinks down to the lake floor, and its own nutrients are released, and the next generation of algae uses them to bloom again.

It was a vicious, never-ending loop, Whitledge said, which left the lake unsuitable for use.

In the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2017, the university took big steps to change that.

It spent some $450,000 to drain six to eight feet of water from the lake, and clear the trash and debris from the shoreline and the shallows. Community volunteers pitched in to collect the junk and haul it away.

Doss walked by frequently to check on the work at her favorite fishing spot. I was walking out here, I remember they were digging up bicycles and fishing poles, Doss laughed. I said oh well, when it opens up, Ill be waiting.

Now that the work is completed, Campus Lake is back to being Southern Illinois best-kept-secret fishing hole, Whitledge said.

Each fall, Whitledges fish management class conducts a fish population density survey on the lake, using electrofishing  stunning fish in certain areas of the lake with minor electric shocks, in order to collect and count them.

Based on their findings, fish populations have recovered on their own, since the drainage and cleanup, Whitledge said, as his students saw the same abundance of largemouth bass, bluegill, redear sunfish and crappie that existed prior to the lake cleanup.

Within the last month, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources also stocked the lake with channel catfish, locally raised at Little Grassy Fish Hatchery, Whitledge said, which are the only species replenished by stocking.

Patient (or lucky) fishermen might also hook a yellow bullhead catfish, a warmouth sunfish, a longear sunfish, or one of the few giant grass carp remaining in the lake, a species stocked there years ago to eat away some of the lakes aquatic vegetation, Whitledge said.

Before the algae problems, Georgia Doss hooked a 63-pound grass carp in the lake, her biggest ever.

It took me 45 minutes to get him out, Doss said. I gave everybody some fish that wanted some, in the whole neighborhood.

Besides Carbondale community members like Doss, some students are taking advantage of Campus Lakes comeback.

I remember looking at it and seeing a mudhole, said Cohen Carter, a senior automotive technology major. But its been a thriving ecosystem since theyve filled it back up.

Since Campus Lake refilled, Carter has gotten serious about fishing, becoming the vice president of the Saluki Bassers, SIUCs bass fishing club and competition team.

In the spring, Carter said he regularly caught five to 10 bass in a few hours on the lake, ranging from 2 to 3 pounds.

Last semester Id see two to three kids out every weeknight fishing, Carter said.

This semester, Doss hasnt seen many students. But she hopes the news coverage will bring a few more out, to sit and chat with her.

And she doesnt even mind if that means people find out about her favorite spot.

Ive got another spot, she laughed. Right over there. And another, and another.With scores of contested races this year, Texas is at the center of the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of key local, state and federal races.

Voters can start casting ballots today. Here's the FAQ:

When can I vote early?

Harris County polls are open for early voting for 12 consecutive days ahead of Election Day on Nov. 6. The locations will open and close at different hours depending on the day, including from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for the first five days of early voting.

Oct. 22-26: 8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Oct. 27: 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Oct. 28: 1 p.m. - 6 p.m.

Oct. 29-Nov. 2: 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Where can I vote early?

The Harris County Clerk's office is operating 46 early voting locations throughout the county, with polls open every day until Nov. 2.

(Or click here to search locations in your area.)

What if I wait until Election Day?

On Tuesday, Nov. 6, you must vote at the polling location designated for your precinct of residence from 7 a.m to 7 p.m. Click here to find your polling location and voter-specific sample ballot.

***

What's on the ballot?

County, legislative and congressional seats are up for grabs in this year's Texas general election.Use our Voter Guide to search Houston's eight-county region for your county's ballot and hear candidates' top priorities for Texas.

***

What do you need to bring with you?

Here are the acceptable forms of voter identification, according to the Harris County Clerk's Office.

Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS); current or have expired no more than 4 years

Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS; current or have expired no more than 4 years

Texas license to carry a handgun issued by DPS; current or have expired no more than 4 years

United States citizenship certificate containing the person's photograph

Texas personal identification card issued by DPS; current or have expired no more than 4 years

U. S. military identification card containing the person's photograph; current or have expired no more than 4 years

United States passport; current or have expired no more than 4 years

Certified birth certificate

Copy of or original bank statement

Copy of or original government check or paycheck

Copy of or original current utility bill

Copy of or original government document with your name and an address (original required if it contains a photograph)

Voters who currently do not have an approved form of photo ID may apply for an Election Identification Certificate (EIC) at no charge with the Department of Public Safety. For more information: Call (512) 424-2600 or click here.

***

More voting resources:

Fort Bend County

Galveston County

Montgomery County

Brazoria County

Chambers County

Other counties

The League of Women Voters' guide

Houston Chronicle endorsements

Harris County Democratic Party

Harris County Republican Party

Search Houston electronic campaign finance reports

Campaign finance reports archive (back to 2001)

***

Jasper Scherer contributed to this article.The 11th annual Lebanese Food Festival at St. George Maronite Catholic Church starts Friday at 6 p.m. and will feature Lebanese cuisine, live music and dance performances.

The event runs Friday from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.Heaven welcomed a beautiful soul on Tuesday, October 16, 2018 when Guadalupe C. Martinez, Jr. passed away peacefully at home surrounded by his loving family after a long battle with Alzheimers disease.

The family will be receiving condolences on Saturday morning, October 27, 2018 from 9 to 11 a.m. at Joe Jackson North Funeral Chapels & Cremation Services, 1410 Jacaman Rd. Funeral Procession will depart at 11 a.m. from Joe Jackson North Funeral Chapels to St. Patrick Catholic Church for a Memorial Mass at 11:30 a.m.It's been languishing on the market for seven long years. At long last, the gorgeous Idaho ranch-style retreat of A-list actor Bruce Willis has sold ... for the drastically reduced price of $5.5 million.

Which is a sweet deal for a lakefront ranch property that features a 20-plus-acre aspen glade, a large lodge-style home, and a fabulous outdoor pool with waterfalls, a grotto, and several waterslides.

Idaho lodge realtor.com

Overhead view realtor.com

Agent Travis Jones of Engel & Volkers, who listed the home along with Grady and Heather Burnett of Keller Williams, told us the lodge ticked all the boxes for the buyers.

"The thing that really sold the home for these buyers was the combination of value and the fact that the property was a perfect fit for their needs," he says. "Plus, the fact that they are huge Bruce fans didn't hurt!"

Jones walked us through the property's history and explained why it had sat on the market for so long. The case of the languishing lodge came down to dollars.

"Bruce's estate was originally listed for $15 million way back in 2011, which was well above market value at the time," he says. "It was gradually reduced from there to the mid-$8 millions."

His team took over the listing in 2016 and took a different tack.

"We were able to negotiate a healthy price drop, and we listed for $6,495,000, and then dropped to $5,895,000. At that price, the home represented a very good value for the right buyer."

Bruce Willis' glade and gates realtor.com

Willis bought the 23-acre property in 2003 and proceeded to rebuild and add on to the main house, which now measures 8,400 square feet and has six bedrooms.

He added a detached guest house and gym, as well as several ponds and streams to the property. He also commissioned the incredible pool area, which is surrounded by heated pavers. The lodge's decks and driveway are outfitted with the same pavers, so there's no need to shovel snow during winter months.

Bruce Willis' cool pool realtor.com

The main home has a hunting lodge ambiance, with a cozy (yet spacious) sunken living room with wood pillars, built-in bookshelves, and a rock fireplace flanked by cathedral-style windows that provide views of the surrounding woods.

Lodge living room realtor.com

The home's kitchen has been totally updated and features dark wood cabinetry, steel-gray countertops, wrought-iron hardware, two glass-front Sub-Zero refrigerators, a Viking six-burner stove with double ovens, and two dishwashers.

Bruce Willis' Idaho lodge kitchen realtor.com

Upstairs, there's a luxurious 2,200-square-foot master suite with built-in bookshelves, a gas fireplace, and two heated balconies.

"The home is large and gracious, and offers room for several generations to come together and enjoy the Sun Valley area together. It's a true lodge-style home and offers a warm, welcoming vibe," Jones says.

Bruce Willis' Idaho lodge at night realtor.com

The property sits in a sweet spot between the towns of Ketchum and Hailey and is just a quick ride from Sun Valley, a popular mountain retreat for celebrities.

Willis also has been busy in the New York City real estate market. In January, he listed his spacious Upper West Side duplex for $17.75 million. One month later, he snagged an $8 million condo (also on the Upper West Side), where he's said to spend a lot of his time when he's not making movies.

The post Yippee Ki-Yay! After Seven Years, Bruce Willis Finally Sells His Idaho Lodge appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.Ireland's leading discount retailer Dealz has announced their partnership of Team Hope's annual shoebox appeal. To raise awareness of Team Hope and to support their annual appeal, Dealz stores throughout Ireland will, for the first time, act as a drop off point for the charity. In 2017, Team Hope collected and donated over 264,000 shoeboxes which were sent all over the world to countries such as Malawi, Ukraine, Romania, Congo, Lesotho and Kenya.

From now until Friday, 16 November, Dealz is urging customers to get behind Team Hope and create their own valuable shoebox which will be transported to the poorest countries in the developing world where children are hugely affected by poverty. The generosity of people all across Ireland will have a significant impact on their lives this Christmas. With both shoeboxes and products being available to purchase in Dealz, it has never been easier to create a little shoebox for a special little boy or girl living in the developing world.

Speaking about the Shoebox appeal and on behalf of Team Hope, Dealz Regional Sales Manager, Darren Jones, states: "We are delighted to be supporting Team Hope for the first time this year and are encouraging all of our customers to give what they can and support this great charity initiative. The Shoebox appeal is a great campaign which will hopefully bring a smile to children living in developing countries who may otherwise not receive a Christmas gift. Many of the families who will receive a shoebox from Team Hope are trying to survive on less than 1 a day."

Dealz has compiled a list of items which are available to purchase in-store as suggested items to include in the shoeboxes comprising daily essentials such as Colgate toothpaste and Dove soap which many of us living in Ireland take for granted. Also available to purchase in Dealz and ideal for including in shoeboxes are items such as coloring pencils and coloring books, puzzle sets as well as sweet treats such as Haribo and Starmix treat packs. To further encourage customers to get behind this worthwhile charity initiative, a full list of suggested Team Hope approved items will be on display in all Dealz stores.

Team Hope is an Irish, Christian development aid charity, working with children, and through them, into their families and communities mainly across Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union and Africa. Team Hope is best known for their annual Christmas Shoebox appeal, however, the charity does help children all year round through a variety of community development projects.

To find your nearest Dealz store, visit http://www.dealz.ie/store-finder/ or for more information on Team Hope, visit: www.teamhope.ie/christmas- shoebox-appeal/fill-a-box/Local News, Crime, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 22 2018

ClearYourCabinet.Com Gives New Yorkers Tools to Search for Nearest Drug Disposal Sites and Sign Up for Text and Email Reminders.

New York, NY - October 22, 2018 - Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood today called on New Yorkers to help fight the opioid crisis during National Prescription Drug Take Back Day by heading to Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood today called on New Yorkers to help fight the opioid crisis during National Prescription Drug Take Back Day by heading to ClearYourCabinet.com , a statewide initiative and website launched this past April dedicated to helping New Yorkers safely dispose of prescription drugs. As part of Attorney General Underwoods multi-levered approach to tackling the opioid epidemic, the initiative is aimed at helping New Yorkers take one of the simplest steps to prevent addiction by safely disposing of their unused drugs at drop-off sites around New York. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four out of five new heroin users start out by misusing prescription drugs; and according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a majority of abused prescription drugs were obtained from family and friends, often from the home medicine cabinet.

We can all play a role in curbing the opioid crisis in New York and across the country, said Attorney General Underwood. Im asking every New Yorker to take a look at their medicine cabinet, identify any unused prescription drugs, and then visit clearyourcabinet.com to find out where you can safely dispose of them this Saturday.

Building on national efforts to encourage Americans to bring unused prescription and over-the-counter drugs to designated sites for safe disposal, Clear Your Cabinet gives New Yorkers new tools to find their nearest drop-off locations and request email or text message reminders to go and dispose of their unused medication. The Attorney Generals office recommends that New Yorkers call to confirm the participation of all drop-off sites. The next National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is this Saturday, October 27th, 2018 from 10AM to 2PM.

The Attorney Generals Clear Your Cabinet initiative was launched through a collaboration with volunteers from some of New Yorks leading tech startups after a hackathon focused on the opioid crisis and hosted by the Attorney General's office in March 2018. In particular, the Attorney General would like to thank the organizers of Progressive Hacknight and Civic Hall for their assistance in this project.

In coordination with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, law enforcement agencies, national and community pharmacies, non-profits, and other institutions across New York will be hosting safe drop-off sites for New Yorkers to bring unused medication this Saturday, October 27th from 10AM to 2PM. Many of these sites will also collect unused medication year-round. To find a location near you, go to ClearYourCabinet.com . The Attorney Generals office recommends that New Yorkers call to confirm the participation of all drop-off sites.

Disposal of unused prescriptions and over-the-counter medication at these locations is no questions asked and free. New Yorkers cannot bring illegal drugs or needles and sharps (click here for more information on the disposal of needles/sharps). As a last resort, for communities without a safe disposal site nearby, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation recommends mixing medications (do not crush tablets or capsules) with water and then adding salt, ashes, dirt, cat litter, coffee grounds, or another undesirable substance, to avoid accidental or intentional misuse of drugs. To prevent unintentional consumption by scavenging humans, pets, or wildlife, do not conceal discarded drugs in food. Their full guidance is available here.

During the last National Prescription Drug Take Back Day in April 2018, 474.5 tons of unused medication were collected across the country. Nearly 40,000 pounds of unused medication were collected in New York State alone; thats heavier than the combined weight of six heavy-duty pick up trucks. By comparison, the largest criminal drug bust in the history of the New York Attorney General's office took approximately 70 pounds of heroin and fentanyl off the street.

In addition to advancing efforts for the disposal of unused opioids, Attorney General Underwoods multi-levered strategy to tackle New Yorks evolving opioid epidemic includes:Local News, Business & Finance, Press Releases, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 22 2018

Historic New Program Cleans Up Brownfield Sites, Returns Them to Active Use, and Protects Taxpayers From Liability.

Suffolk County, NY - October 22, 2018 - Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today announced that the County has secured nearly $500,000 through the Suffolk County Landbank Corporations revitalization efforts. The Landbank is presenting two checks to the County Comptroller for a total of $496,870 to cover incurred staff costs and the portion of proceeds from the sale of tax liens on brownfield properties. This payment represents the first time the Suffolk County Landbank has paid the County from revenue generated through the sale of tax liens.

The Landbanks work is paying dividends on multiple levels, said County Executive Bellone Not only is the Landbank cleaning up the environment, eliminating blight and returning properties to productive use, it is also protecting County taxpayers from the burden of making other taxing jurisdictions whole for the failure of owners of brownfield sites to pay property taxes. In addition to the nearly $500,000 being paid to the County today, the Landbanks efforts have generated $6 million in delinquent property taxes.

Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory said: The lingering effect tax-delinquent brownfield properties have can be devastating to communities, the economy and the environment. I am proud of the work we have done and continue to do through the Suffolk County Landbank to facilitate the redevelopment of these properties and put them back on the tax rolls.

Minority Leader Tom Cilmi said: Today the Suffolk County Landbank celebrates another important milestone as we, for the first time, return to the County nearly half a million dollars from the sale of brownfield tax liens.

Under an agreement between Suffolk County and the Landbank, County staff members are loaned to the Landbank and assigned to help facilitate the redevelopment of tax-delinquent, environmentally impacted brownfield properties and zombie homes. In 2018, the Landbank closed on the sale of tax liens for three brownfield sites that were to private sector buyers for cleanup and redevelopment. As a result of those transactions, the Landbank has sufficient funds to repay the County $255,099.29 for staff time incurred on behalf of the Landbank through June 2018. An additional $241,771.50 is being paid as its share of amounts of the lien sales pursuant to the agreement.

Before the Landbank was established, it was County policy not to take title to tax delinquent brownfield properties in order to protect taxpayers from liability, despite the owners failure to pay property taxes for many years. As a result, such sites remained contaminated and unused, with property taxes unpaid, often for decades. The creation of the Landbank has broken that cycle by shielding the County from liability, providing a mechanism for cleanups, and returning impacted properties to active use, creating jobs and enhanced tax revenues.

Under a 1915 State Law known as the Suffolk County Tax Act, in instances where a property owner fails to pay property taxes, the County is responsible for reimbursing unpaid taxes to local taxing jurisdictions. This resulted in cumulative costs to the County of $35 million a year in unpaid taxes that the County was obligated to pay to local taxing jurisdictions to make them whole for taxes left unpaid by property owners. Since its formation, the owners of 94 tax-delinquent properties added to the Landbanks list of brownfield properties, have paid $6 million in back taxes to avoid the sale of liens to new owners, and the Landbank itself has generated $1.1 million from tax lien sales, turning 6 properties over to new owners who are responsible for cleaning them up and returning them to active use.

In addition to its historic success in breaking the logjam that prevented cleanup and reuse of brownfield sites, the Landbank administers the only program on Long Island that converts zombie homes that create blight in local communities into clean, safe housing opportunities for first-time homebuyers. Since 2016, using the proceeds of a fund created through a settlement between New York State and lending institutions, the Landbank has worked with groups including the Long Island Housing Partnership, Habitat for Humanity, and United Way to transform blighted zombie homes into shining new housing opportunities for families, helping to stabilize neighborhoods.Tech & Science, Local News, Business & Finance, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 22 2018

Brings Space Industry Leaders Together to Give Local Industry a Boost.

Farmingdale, NY - October 22, 2018 - On Friday, Congressman Tom Suozzi (D  Long Island, Queens) hosted his 2nd Annual Long Island Aerospace and Defense Industry Suppliers Conference. This years conference brought together senior executives from Virgin Orbit, Northrop Grumman and BAE, as well as new and exciting companies like Launcher, a startup that is building rockets on Long Island. The Congressman led the panels focus on the boundless opportunities presented by the rapidly growing commercial and defense space industry and how Long Island can continue to be a key player by seizing 21st technologies to grow and expand business.

We need to be on the cutting edge and constantly innovating to remain competitive, said Congressman Tom Suozzi. Long Island is the Cradle of Aviation, we built the lunar module that landed on the moon and we can build rockets for the future. Long Island already has the Right Stuff to recapture the publics imagination, compete in this centurys space race and remind the world that Long Island is still the home of a vibrant community of high-tech aerospace and defense companies.

The featured speakers included:

Dan Hart, President, and CEO, Virgin Orbit

Max Haot, Founder and CEO, Launcher

Ricardo Gonzalez, Director of Space Systems, BAE

Chris Gettinger, Director, Advanced Propulsion and Systems, Innovation Systems, Northrop Grumman

Len Poveromo, Executive Director, Composite Prototyping Center

Space is undergoing a transformation with new capabilities from smaller, lower cost, spacecraft and launchers coming onto the scene, said Dan Hart, President, and CEO, Virgin Orbit. This is a time of opportunity for companies with bold visions and innovative staffs. At Virgin Orbit we are poised to enable the next generation of space-based commerce, scientific discovery, and security through our LauncherOne, a responsive air-launched satellite launch service. We appreciate Congressman Suozzis support and focus on the aerospace industry and space exploration in the 21st century.

Launcher is designing and building a rocket to launch the new generation of small satellites to orbit. We are designing and testing today on Long Island, and hope to eventually set up our manufacturing facility here too, said Max Haot, Founder and CEO, Launcher. We support Congressman Suozzis aspirations for Long Island and look forward to working closely with him to generate support for the endeavor, develop the necessary infrastructure, and build coalitions and partnerships to deliver on our mission.

We appreciate Congressman Suozzis work in assembling this distinguished panel of defense and commercial space businesses, which all contribute to next-generation technology pursuits for government and private sector customers, said Ricardo Gonzalez, Director of Space Systems at BAE Systems. Long Island is a hub for defense engineering and manufacturing, and shining a spotlight on the innovative work being incubated right here is an endeavor that we applaud.

I appreciated the opportunity to discuss Northrop Grummans cutting-edge work and additive manufacturing at Congressman Suozzis Aerospace and Defense Industry Supplier Conference. Our company is proud of our rich heritage on Long Island and our enduring advanced work in the community. We appreciate Congressman Suozzis leadership on National Security issues and for convening todays constructive forum, Chris Gettinger, Director, Advanced Propulsion & Systems, Northrop Grumman.

Its great to have a champion like Congressman Suozzi to shine a light on the aerospace industrys continued presence on Long Island and promote its expansion, said Len Poveromo, Executive Director of the Composite Prototyping Center. We have a storied history and are proud of our significant technology developments and contributions, to the industry. Long Island has the expertise, facilities and the passion to grow, continue to innovate and play a major role in the cutting-edge technologies for the next phase space exploration.A company that owns and operates a Massachusetts railroad system has been ordered to pay a five-figure settlement after violating federal whistleblower laws, federal labor officials say.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration says an employee of Springfield Terminal Railway Inc. was injured on the job at the company's facility in Andover. The day after reporting the injury, the employee was mandated to attend an investigative hearing, with possible disciplinary action or termination as an outcome.

Following the hearing, an OSHA investigation was opened, which determined the company violated the whistleblower provisions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act.

The company was ordered to pay the employee $10,000 in compensatory damages, $75,000 in punitive damages and attorney's fees. Additionally, it must re-train managers and employees on reporting procedures and expunge any reference to the reported injury and hearing from the employee's record.

"This order underscores the Department's commitment to protect employees who report injuries, or workplace conditions that could jeopardize employees' health and safety," OSHA Regional Administrator Galen Blanton said in a statement.

Springfield Terminal Railway Inc. is based in North Billerica and is a subsidiary of Pan Am Railways, Inc.Western Massachusetts is getting its scare on with terrifying hayrides, haunted houses and more as Halloween nears.

Among the many events is the Monster Mash Haunted Hayride at McCray's farm in South Hadley. A major production since its debut in 1991.

This haunted attraction began when Dan Augusto of Holyoke brought the idea to Doug McCray's grandfather, Don McCray, who allowed him to give it a try on the farmland. Alongside Dan, Doug also oversees the Monstrous production.

Monsters will come to life on McCray's Farm of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Scream Park is located at 55 Alvord St., South Hadley, and is open from 7 p.m. until the lines end. There will also be a Kiddie ride that operates between 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Adult rides are $25 for those 52 inches and over, and $15 for those under 52 inches. The children's monster mash is $5.

For more information, call 413-533-0775 or visit fearonthefarm.com, where you can also order tickets in advance.

Other Western Massachusetts events include:

Fright Fest at Six Flags New England: Fun for the children during the daytime, and chilling Halloween nightmares arrive when the sun sets during the weekend in Agawam. runs Friday through Sunday. For more information, call 413-786-9300, or visit Six Flags Fright Fests website.

DementedFX Haunted House: The attraction at 530 Main St. in Holyoke has been voted as the No. 1 haunted attraction in Massachusetts by the ScareFactor.com's "Fan Poll." It runs Thursday through Sunday, 6 to 11 p.m. Tickets prices for general admission are $25 but vary depending on whether the guests are alone or with a group of 12 or more. For more information, visit dementedfx.com.

MGM Springfield will host Halloween-themed events including "Flick or Treat," a series of spooky Halloween movies on Armory Square. Beginning Sunday, Oct. 28, MGM Springfield will play four scary films outside on Armory Square. Films include Young Frankenstein, Oct. 28; The Book of Life, Oct. 29; The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Oct. 30; and Poltergeist, Oct. 31. For details, visit mgmspringfield.com

Mike's Maze: An autumn tradition continues weekends through Nov. 4 at Warner Farm in Sunderland. Adults admission is $14 with students and seniors admitted for $12; ages 5 to 12 years pay am $11 fee, while those 4 years old and younger are free. For more details, visit mikesmaze.com

Springfield Museums Monster Mash on Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. is free with admission to the museums. Trick or Treaters to explore the museums in search of knowledge--and candy. For instance, if you want to learn more about the stars, visit Astronomy Hall and gather some information about the heavens as well as a Milky Way bar. Yes, The Grinch will be on hand,

Monster Bash at Holyoke Heritage State Park: Will take place Oct. 27, 1-3 p.m. $5 per child, and includes unlimited rides on the merry go round, music, crafts, a costume contest, and a parade with the Holyoke High School Marching Band. For more information, call 413-222-5620.

Halloween Ghost Tour in Lenox: Home of the late writer Edith Wharton, The Mount, at 2 Plunkett St., offers a ghost tours on Friday night. Tickets are $24 for adults, and $20 for ages of 12 and 18.

There will also be a tour on Oct. 31 from 8 to 10 p.m. Tickets,are $28 for adults, and $24 for ages of 12 and 18.

For more information, call 413-551-5111 or visit edithwharton.org.

13 Haunting Nights at Jiminy Peak: A Haunted Giant Swing Ride, Haunted Soaring Eagle Zipline Ride, Scare & Scream Package, and Christiansen's Tavern await guests at Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort at 37 Corey Rd Hancock on Friday and Saturday and again on Oct. 30 and 31. To purchase tickets, visit 13nightsatjiminy.com

Pre-Halloween Tour - Luminaries: Exploring Stockbridge Cemetery: On Thursday at 5 p.m., visitors have a chance to join Curator of Education Tom Daly for a walking history tour of Stockbridge Cemetery.

Tickets are $5 for general admission. Members and children 18 and under and enter for free.

Randall's "Corn'ucopia" Maze 2018: On Saturdays and Sundays, at Randall's Farm and Greenhouse at 631 Center St. Ludlow, guests can visit the farm to enjoy a hayride to the maze in between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

For children in between the ages of 5 and 12, tickets are $8. Tickets for adults are $8. Super-tickets which include an Elsie's Creamery Ice Cream Cone costs $12 for children, and $14 for adults.

Halloween Fest 2018: On Sunday, Western Massachusetts residents can wear costumes and trick or treat at the local store fronts in downtown Amherst from noon to 3 p.m.

Later, a costume parade will take place as well as a haunted house and select Carnival Games hosted at the Bangs Community Center. For more information, visit amherstma.gov.

Mister G's Halloween Fiesta: Latin Grammy winner Mister G will be returning to the Academy of Music to host his 7th Annual Halloween Fiesta on Sunday at 11 a.m.

Located on 274 Main St, Northampton, MA 0106. For more information, visit fiesta.mistersongs.com.

Toasted Owl Gives a Hoot Halloween Fun Run: Taking place at the Toasted Owl Tavern on 21 Main St. Northampton, on Sunday, the 5kRun/2kWalk will be begin at 10:30 a.m.

Participants can bring their dogs if they wish. For more information, visit dakinhumane.org.

Mischief at the Mansion: A two-floor Halloween Gala to raise funds for Wistariahurst Museum will take place on Saturday, 7 to 10 p.m.

Gala will include on-site makeup artist Mask Markers Face Painting, fall harvest treats with food provided by Log Rolling Catering, Cash bar and music provided by Cloud 9 Productions. Costumes are recommended.

For more information and ticket costs, visit wistariahurst.org.

WMAS-FM, 94.7 Halloween Ball: This year, the costume ball will take place at MGM Springfield, on Friday, 7 to 11 p.m. For more information and ticket prices, visit ticketmaster.com.

Cousin Earth, The Mary Jane Jones, and the Knots-Costume Party: On Saturday, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., the opportunity to see three bands throw a costume party will make its way to Gateway City Arts.

Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. For more information, visit gatewaycityarts.com

Halloween Spooktacular: The Holyoke Mall will be hosting Halloween Spooktacular, an event for children and families to enjoy, on Saturday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

The event will take place in the Holyoke Malls Lower Level Sears Court.

Children and Families will enjoy free pumpkin decorating, face painting, and a Halloween Magic Show by Ed Popielarczk. There will also be prizes donated by Mall Stores and restaurants, raffled off throughout the event. Refreshments to be served as well.

Costumes and Pumpkins are encouraged. For more information, visit holyokemall.com.

Halloween Mall-O-Ween: Visitors of the Holyoke Mall can trick-or-treat at participating stores on Oct. 31, 4 to 6 p.m.

For more information, visit holyokemall.com.

RJD2 to perform at Halloween part at Hawks & Reed:

On Saturday at 9 p.m.,

DJ and Multi-instrumentalist RJD2 will be playing

psychedelic

, electronica, hip-hop and rock music at Hawks and Reeds Performing Arts Center in Greenfield.

Tickets are $28 in advance, and $33 on the day of the show.

For more information, visit hawksandreeds.com website to learn more.U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Republican challenger Geoff Diehl met in Springfield Sunday for the second of three debates before the Nov. 6 general election.

The incumbent Democrat and Whitman state representative went head-to-head on a range of issues important to Western Massachusetts hosted by The Springfield Public Forum and the Western Massachusetts Media Consortium.

Here are 5 takeaways from the Springfield U.S. Senate debate:

Frederick J Gore

Warren and Diehl agreed that state marijuana laws should be protected

Despite coming to blows on an array of issues, the incumbent Democrat and her Republican challenger both agreed that the federal government should do more to protect states' marijuana laws.

Read More:

Diehl said he believes medical and recreational marijuana is a "states' rights issue," adding that Massachusetts voters "spoke loud and clear" on such policies.

Warren, in turn, pointed to legislation she and U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, have introduced to shield states that have legalized marijuana for recreational and medical purposes from federal crackdowns.

Calling the measure, "a good bipartisan bill," the Democrat argued that she needs "some allies down in Washington" to actually pass such legislation.

Don't Edit

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Warren took issue with the Trump administration's response to Puerto Rico hurricanes

Warren, whose office worked to help Puerto Rico hurricane evacuees find long-term housing in Western Massachusetts, again criticized the Trump administration's response to Hurricanes Maria and Irma.

The Democrat argued that officials have not done enough to help those displaced by the 2017 storms.

"It never should have happened that our fellow citizens would be left behind after such a devastating event ... Donald Trump's response to disaster relief was to throw rolls of paper towels at people in Puerto Rico. Donald Trump's response was to give himself an "A" and claim that only a handful of people were killed in the disaster instead of the actual number of people," she said.

Diehl, in turn, questioned Warren's response to disasters in Massachusetts, including the recent gas explosions in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover.

Don't Edit

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Diehl criticized Warren's rhetoric, said senator's 'obsessed' with Trump

The Whitman Republican blasted his opponent's recent criticism of Trump and Republican leaders, arguing that such rhetoric has contributed to the current climate in Washington.

"It is disappointing to see how Washington is functioning now. ... My opponent has made comments that are pretty disturbing," he said, adding that he wants to be a "different voice" if sent to Congress. "I have not acted like that up on Beacon Hill. I certainly will not follow the path as Sen. Warren."

Read More: Asked about name-calling, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and GOP opponent Geoff Diehl quarrel over civility in Washington

Diehl further argued that the senator is "obsessed" with Trump and "fixated on a president she can't work with."

"Sen. Warren, Donald Trump is not here in Massachusetts, and when you're campaigning around the country all the time neither are you," he said, referencing her rumored 2020 presidential aspirations.

Don't Edit

Shiva Ayyadurai supporters disrupted the debate

The debate was paused more than halfway through after a handful of audience members stood and vocally questioned why independent U.S. Sen. candidate Shiva Ayyadurai was not also on the debate stage.

The disruption, which resulted in the group being escorted from the studio, came as Warren was asked about her decision to release DNA results supporting her claims of Native American ancestry.

Ayyadurai, who has protested his exclusion from such forums, did not meet the Western Massachusetts Media Consortium's eligibility rules for participating in the debate.

Don't Edit

Frederick J Gore

Warren dodged questions on whether she will run in 2020

Despite Diehl's repeated suggestions that Warren is more focused on a potential 2020 presidential run than her 2018 bid, Warren largely dodged questions about whether she will fulfill her entire six-year term if re-elected.

"I will be there to work for the people of Western Massachusetts," she told reporters after the debate. "This is my job. I am not someone who decided six years ago that there was something to be made here. I got into this fight because I see how Washington keeps tilting further and further in favor of the rich and the powerful."

When pressed on whether she will run for president, Warren added that she is "working for the people of the commonwealth of Massachusetts."

Diehl, meanwhile, told reporters that he's "not running for president of the United States," but rather for what's best for Massachusetts residents.

Don't EditAs Columbia Gas of Massachusetts continues its mission to restore gas to thousands of homes across the Merrimack Valley before the winter season, the company is now warning customers of potential scam notices.

On Twitter the company shared visuals of a scam notice that read "SORRY WE MISSED YOU."

The fraud note, signed by a "Jose," also read, "We've left you an Entry Permit and Statement of Work Limitations form for you to review and sign. If you will be home, please call us to schedule a return visit."

Columbia Gas said any note from them is typically in the shape of a doorknob hanger, and will have the company logo and phone number on it.

"Please call us at 1-866-388-3239 if you are not sure about a note, phone call, email or person claiming to be affiliated with us," the company said on Twitter.

Columbia Gas is making its way through the more than 8,000 units impacted by the gas disaster that occurred in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover on Sept. 13, when over-pressurized lines sparked dozens of devastating fires and several explosions.

The company said on Sunday, Oct. 21, that more than 80 percent of main line pipe had been replaced, and just over half of gas service lines had also been replaced.

Though temperatures have already dipped well below freezing across Massachusetts, Columbia Gas has set Nov. 19 as a target date for when all homes and businesses affected by the gas disaster will be fully ready and restored with gas. More than 6,000 people have been displaced in alternative housing as their homes are fixed.

Read more:MASHANTUCKET, Connecticut - Three people were injured Saturday afternoon during a stabbing at a retail outlet inside the Foxwoods Casino grounds.

A 15-year-old teen was taken into custody, according to FOX61 in Hartford.

The incident took place Saturday at around 2 p.m. inside Tanger Outlets, a retail store on the property.

The three victims were all described as young adults, according to the television station.

Eyewitness News 3 is reporting the three were taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries that are considered not life-threatening.

The Nashantucket Tribal Police, which provide security at the casino, told the press that the scene was immediately contained, and no added security measures such as a lock down were needed.

Foxwoods Resort Casino issued a statement afterward that said:

"We want to express our gratitude to our onsite first responders for their professionalism and rapid response, which effectively intercepted the incident and ensured safety and security for our guests, tenants and employees. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with all those involved with or affected by this incident. As this is an active police investigation, we are unable to comment further at this time and are working closely with the Mashantucket Tribal Police."Authorities have identified the suspect in the Friday stabbing of a Massachusetts State Police trooper as 18-year-old Nghia Le of Manchester, NH.

David Procopio, State Police spokesman, said Le remains hospitalized at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester after he and the trooper he is alleged to have stabbed were airlifted there following the Friday afternoon confrontation.

Procopio said the 47-year-old trooper is currently listed in stable condition following surgery and is said to be in good spirits.

Le is accused of stabbing the trooper after a lengthy high-speed pursuit from the Vermont state border to Route 202 in New Salem where Le crashed his car.

As the trooper attempted to take Le into custody he allegedly pulled a knife and stabbed the trooper in the chest and neck several times.

Le was shot during the attack and is being treated for that gunshot wound.

Procopio said Le has been charged with armed assault with the intent to commit murder and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He is being held in lieu of $1 million cash bail pending arraignment sometime next week.

The name of the trooper has not been released.

Initial information indicated that Le has been involved in a car crash in Walpole, New Hampshire earlier in the day Friday.

At the crash scene, New Hampshire authorities said Le carjacked a Toyota Camry and fled, crossing into Vermont and traveling south on I-91 into Massachusetts.

That was when the trooper began following Le initially south on I-91 then eastbound on Route 2 from Greenfield. Authorities said Le then turned onto Route 202 in Athol and was traveling south when he crashed his car in New Salem.

Le also faces motor vehicle changes in Massachusetts and additional charges in New Hampshire.If all goes as planned, an underwater transmission cable for the nation's first commercial-scale offshore wind plant will land at a Cape Cod beach.

Barnstable officials on Thursday agreed to grant Vineyard Wind a power cable easement at Covell Beach in the village of Centerville. The vote followed negotiation of a host community agreement that will pay the town up to $32 million over the next 25 years.

Vineyard Wind, based in New Bedford, says it's on schedule to build its wind power station 34 miles off Cape Cod and 14 miles from Martha's Vineyard. The company plans 106 turbines in a $2 billion project, and hopes to be operational in 2021.

The state's Energy Facilities siting Board will have final say over the cable route, and environmental and fisheries considerations are part of the discussion. Other state and federal permits are still needed.

Vineyard Wind is a 50-50 partnership between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables, and was selected in May by state officials and utility representatives to supply 800 megawatts of renewable power to Massachusetts.

The project will reduce the state's carbon emissions by over 1.6 million tons per year, the equivalent of removing 325,000 cars, and power 400,000 homes, the company stated.

"We are thrilled to partner with the town of Barnstable as we move forward to make offshore wind a reality here in Massachusetts," said Vineyard Wind chief development officer Erich Stephens. "We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Town."

A beefed-up substation in Barnstable will tie electricity from Vineyard Wind into the New England power grid, with integrated battery storage.

Also today, Gov. Charlie Baker, Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Thaaning Pederson, and others will meet at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal. The company plans to sign a lease to use the state-owned pier for its staging operations.

Two other offshore wind farms, planned by Baystate Wind and Deepwater Wind, are planned off the coast of Massachusetts, and more could be in the works.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke last week announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold the next offshore wind auction - to include nearly 390,000 acres offshore Massachusetts - on Dec. 13, and 19 companies have qualified.

"I'm very bullish on offshore wind, and harnessing this renewable resource is a big part of the Trump Administration's made in America energy strategy," said Zinke in a statement.Comedian Louis C.K. surprised guests at a Saugus comedy club Saturday in his first set in the Boston area since he admitted to sexual misconduct last year.

Mike Clarke, the owner of the Giggle Comedy Club, told The Boston Globe that Louis C.K., of Newton, was in town visiting family and called him to see if he could perform.

This comes after a spate of surprise appearances in New York comedy clubs that left guests divided. Some felt it was too soon for the comedian to make a return, while others embraced him, giving him standing ovations.

Clarke said Louis C.K. briefly addressed the misconduct at the beginning of his set on Saturday night. Clarke told the Globe that the comedian asked the audience how their year was going, before saying his had been challenging.

Clarke said no one left the performance and that Louis C.K. was well received, according to the Globe.

In November 2017 Louis C.K. admitted to claims by several women that he masturbated in front of them. Many of the women told The New York Times that when they objected, the comedian made moves to torpedo their comedy careers.

After the Times detailed this accounts in a story, FX Networks ended their association with him, and canceled the release of his film "I Love You Daddy."

"He's a good friend, he's a good guy, and I believe people deserve second chances," Clarke told the Globe. "He did a great job last night."A 36-year-old man was stabbed multiple times by his coworker in Attleboro Sunday night, but is expected to recover.

The Boston Globe reported that police are still searching for the suspect, 42-year-old David Matta of Brockton. The stabbing happened around 8:37 p.m. outside of Gym Source on Townsend Road, where both men work.

The victim was stabbed in the upper and lower body at least three times, according to the Globe. He was brought to Rhode Island Hospital and is expected to recover.Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 22)  Police said the New People's Army (NPA) may be behind the massacre of nine people in Negros Occidental on Saturday.

C/Supt. John Bulalacao, Western Visayas police chief, said they are looking into possible rebel involvement based on witnesses' accounts.

"The incident may be perpetrated by the landowner, second this may be perpetrated by the other claimantsthird 'yung possible involvement of the New People's Army," Bulalacao told the media Monday.

Bulalacao said they have yet to identify the perpetrators but they are investigating some members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) who may have links to the NPA.

"Kung mapapansin rin 'yung hacienda may tillers and accordingly may 40 farmers na legitimate although some may have been linked to the New People's Army," Bulalacao added.

[Translation: The hacienda has tillers and around 40 legitimate farmers although some may have been linked to the New People's Army.]

He said the victims were new NFSW recruits. Based on their investigation, the victims were escorted to the plantation by the federation's core group members. The core group members briefly left the victims in their improvised tents before the new members were attacked.

"Based on the information we gathered itong mag biktima ay dalawang araw palang na miyembro ng National Federation of Sugar Workers so mga bago sila, at pinaalis sa isang lugar para mag-occupy doon, maisettle doon. Yung mga recruiters ng NSFW ay umalis and a few minutes binaril sila," Bulalacao said.

[Translation: Based on the information we gathered, these victims have been members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers for two days, they were new members before they were asked to settle in the area. The recruiters of the NSFW left and a few minutes the victims were shot.]

However, the NSFW in Negros Occidental denied that the incident was set up by its members.

Bulalacao said the NPA may have set up the attack to raise public doubt against the government.

"We came up with our angle, this was perpetrated by the New People's Army in pursuance of this campaign to discredit the Philippine government," he said.

Director General Oscar Albayalde, PNP chief, said a special investigation task group has been created for the case.

Meanwhile, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo echoed the police sentiments, saying the case may have been a communist-to-communist encounter.

In an interview with the government radio station Monday, Panelo said the slain farmers were communist recruits.

"Iyong federation ng farmers kung saan miyembro iyong mga taong ito, eh lumalabas na legal front ng CPP-NPA at iyong mga pinatay ay bagong recruit pa lang daw iyon the day before pinatay sila," Panelo told Radyo Pilipinas.

[Translation: The federation of farmers in which the victims were members of turned out to be a legal front of the CPP-NPA. And the slain farmers were said to be new recruits the day before the incident.]A Salisbury, Massachusetts, man was killed after he was hit by a vehicle in Seabrook, New Hampshire, Sunday night, according to WCVB.

According to the station, Seabrook Police said 51-year-old Andrew Dobson was hit on Ocean Boulevard around 8 p.m.

He was taken to a local hospital and later died from his injuries.

There was no word on the driver of the vehicle.

The crash remains under investigation.SPRINGFIELD - Looking like a sea of pink, runners and walkers hit the pavement on Sunday in support of breast health in Western Massachusetts.

The event, the Rays of Hope Walk & Run Toward the Cure of Breast cancer, was the 25th anniversary of the fundraiser, which saw thousands of survivors and supporters participating.

Many of the participants at the event came in teams. One of those teams was Las Luchadoras, which has been participating in Rays of Hope "for nine years strong," according to member Al Rodriguez, of Springfield.

"My wife is a survivor; we have been involved in Rays of Hope for 12 to 13 years," Rodriguez said, beginning when several close friends developed cancer. "Then nine years ago, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. We became even more involved in raising money for the cause."

"We are blessed to be here, because (cancer) affects so many people in so many ways," Rodriguez added.

Chairwoman of the event, Denise R. Jordan, said that the Rays of Hope Walk & Run started with 500 walkers and raised $50,000. Now in its 25th year, the event has grown to 20,000 participants and to date has raised $14.2 million.

"I'm elated and honored to be chair of the Rays of Hope 25th anniversary," Jordan said. She added that she was serving in memory of Tracy Benton Whitley, a longtime Rays of Hope advisory board member, who lost her battle with cancer in March 2017.

Under the welcome of large tents, pink balloons, music and colorful flags, participants took off in two different routes: 8K runners following a five-mile route, while walkers took a two-mile or five-mile route. All routes offered views of the beautiful fall scenery in and around Forest Park.

Along the walk routes, participants were entertained by several local musicians who volunteered for Rays of Hope.

Bryn Cartelli, season 14 winner of The Voice, took the stage and entertained the crowd by playing guitar and singing several of her hits.

In partnership with the Baystate Health Breast Network and Baystate Health Foundation, funding benefits research at the Rays of Hope Center for Breast Cancer Research [

] and the Baystate Health Breast Network, breast cancer programs and services, outreach and education, and awards grants to various community support programs and organizations.There are countless reasons behind voters' Election Day choices. Some always cast a ballot for Democrats, while others invariably vote for Republican candidates. There are voters who carefully weigh the views of the candidates before them, and then fill out their ballots with a focus on the issues rather than on party affiliation. Some voters feel it's best to go with their gut, letting instinct lead the way. And then there are the voters who cast their ballots based on what they hear from the Kremlin.

The folks in that last camp, of course, aren't generally aware of what has been influencing them, but it's there nonetheless.

Though there's been lots of talk about Russian meddling in our nation's 2016 presidential campaign, few have been focused on similar, ongoing efforts this year. Perhaps Friday's news should go a decent way toward changing that.

Charges unsealed at the end of last week allege that Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, is the "chief accountant" of a broad disinformation campaign intended to influence voters's choices in the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

Put plainly: What some have been feeling about certain candidates may be exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants them to feel.

This is the worst kind of nightmare for those who cherish our national experiment in self-rule, with power placed into the hands of the citizenry. In this scenario, voters believe they are making informed choices, but are actually being led astray by those doing the bidding of a ruthless dictator who wants most to undermine our nation's core democratic principles.

Details of the effort, called Project Lakhta, demonstrate clearly that efforts to foment discord did not end with the election of Donald Trump as president in November 2016. Not even close. Russia is still very much at it, and will continue to be. With voters set to head to the polls on Nov. 6, Justice Department officials decided that the indictment, which had been sealed for several weeks, should be made public in an effort to ensure that voters were made aware that what they were reading on social media might not at all be what it seemed.

Though Trump likes to term any legitimate report he doesn't agree with as "fake news," it's Facebook and Instagram and Twitter that have been spreading fraudulent tales peddled as truth. Russian operatives are using the social networks to spread what one might accurately term real fake news.

Friday's indictment was a warning: All that twitters isn't gold.Finally, President Donald Trump has expressed serious doubts about Saudi Arabia's ever-changing accounts of the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It's a step, but only a small one.

Because the president is continuing to yap about the significance of our nation's arms deal with the kingdom and the importance of not doing anything to mess up our alliance.

In other words, our chief executive still has a very long way to go.

Late on Saturday, in a telephone interview with The Washington Post, Trump, who had previously been acting as though he'd be willing to buy anything the Saudis were selling about what had become of Khashoggi, suddenly changed his tune. Of the kingdom's shifting accounts, he said that "obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies."

But he would go only so far.

He called Saudi Arabia "an incredible ally," and said that he hasn't at all changed his tune about the importance of maintaining last year's $110 billion arms sale to the kingdom.

"It's the largest order in history," Trump said. "To give that up would hurt us far more than it hurts them. Then all they'll do is go to Russia or go to China. All that's doing is hurting us."

With Trump in the White House, it's always about the bottom line. With Trump as president, everything is transactional.

What he's saying, boiled down: Sure, these guys may be lying killers, but we've got a big, beautiful weapons deal with them, and I'm not about to do something to screw that up.

And many of the sycophantic Trump toadies in the once-Grand Old Party just go along for the ride. Do they not see that their leader is driving the party of Lincoln and Reagan off a cliff? Can't they understand that our nation's president is supposed to be a moral leader, not merely someone looking to rack up some sweet arms deals?

The Saudis have been changing their story about Khashoggi since he disappeared after entering the consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. First, they said he'd left. Then, they effectively said they really didn't know much of anything. Except that all was just fine, don't you know. Finally, they admitted that he'd been killed, but claimed his death was accidental, occurring during a fistfight.

Yeah, sure. And they had just happened to have dispatched a team of 15, one reportedly carrying a bone saw, to the facility in Istanbul?

Turkey has said that it has evidence confirming Khashoggi's torture and gruesome killing inside the consulate, which it will be detailing imminently. If that becomes known, the only question remaining will be over the origin of the plot.

During his Saturday phone interview with the Post, Trump was asked if he believed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the murder of Khashoggi. His response:

"Nobody has told me he's responsible. Nobody has told me he's not responsible. We haven't reached that point. ... I would love if he wasn't responsible."

Because of that big, beautiful arms deal, no doubt.

Thankfully, at least a few Republicans in Congress have been speaking up about Khashoggi's murder and have been questioning Trump's continued blind allegiance to the kingdom. If the president won't lead, it's got to be up to Congress to fill that void.When Sen. Elizabeth Warren and GOP challenger Geoff Diehl were asked about name-calling in politics, each pointed the finger at the other.

At a debate sponsored by the Western Mass. Media Consortium in Springfield Sunday night, Diehl was asked about the president leveling ethnic slurs and calling pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels "Horseface" in a Twitter post.

"I certainly don't follow the same path that the president does on how I legislate, how I deal with people," Diehl, who served as Donald Trump's campaign co-chair in Massachusetts, said. "But at the same time my opponent has made comments that are pretty disturbing as well. She said that anybody who voted for the president was part of an ugly stew of racists, okay?"

Diehl continued: "I certainly won't follow the path of Senator Warren on trying to villainize and pit us together. That's not what our country needs right now."

Diehl then said President Trump's time in office has yielded "economic benefits" as well as international benefits through his repeated meetings with North Korea.

Turning to Warren, WGBY's Carrie Saldo, the debate moderator, noted the senator sent an email to supporters earlier this year calling Trump's budget chief a "mosquito" and members of the president's staff "bloodsuckers and henchmen."

"Okay so look, we called him a mosquito, you're right," Warren said. But "what we're really talking about" is hatefulness towards vulnerable groups, she added.

Diehl has toured the US-Mexico border with someone who associates with white supremacists and was recently endorsed by Vice President Mike Pence, who discriminates against LGBTQ groups, according to Warren.

"This is about ugly slurs and who's going to support that kind of ugliness that turns Americans against Americans, that turns people against people," Warren said.

Warren, who frequently spars with Trump on Twitter, is running for a second six-year term while acknowledging she is eyeing a White House run in 2020. Diehl is a state representative from Whitman.

Independent candidate Shiva Ayyadurai is also on the ballot.

Held at the WGBY studios in downtown Springfield, the debate was sponsored by the Springfield Public Forum, MassLive, The Republican newspaper, New England Public Radio, WGBY, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the Berkshire Eagle and WWLP 22 News.

Diehl fired back by saying Warren was recently at a rally with an anti-Israel speaker, Linda Sarsour.

"Senator Warren herself is one of the main reasons we have this lack of dialogue, this poisonous political environment," Diehl said, before turning to Warren's comments earlier this year in New Orleans, in which she called the US criminal justice system "racist."

Diehl, who has been backed by law enforcement unions and groups, said to Warren, "You said they're all racist."

"So I didn't anyone a name like that and you know that," Warren said. "Here's the deal, though: We've got heroes who work in law enforcement, who work in the judiciary, who work in every part of the criminal justice system and I work hard to support them. But we also have a serious problem in the criminal justice system."

Warren pointed to studies showing African Americans are more likely than whites to be arrested and prosecuted for the same crimes.

"We have a problem in the system," she said.CAMBRIDGE -- Attorney Michael Avenatti dismissed a Sunday Daily Beast story detailing his unpaid taxes as a "garbage piece" and a "regurgitation of many things that have already been reported."

"It's clearly a hit piece," Avenatti told The Republican / MassLive.com on Monday in an interview in Cambridge.

Avenatti is visiting the Boston area to participate in the launch of a new pro-Democratic PAC called Left of Center, created by two Massachusetts Democrats. Avenatti gained national attention through his representation of Stormy Daniels, the porn star who sued President Donald Trump.

He has since said he is considering a run for president in 2020.

On Sunday, the Daily Beast published an extensive story showing that Avenatti, his former law firm and a business he used to own owed millions of dollars in unpaid taxes, rent and legal judgments.

Many of the allegations have been published before. For example, CNN reported in July that Avenatti's law firm paid $800,000 to settle a case with the IRS relating to unpaid payroll taxes at the firm, which went bankrupt.

Asked about the Daily Beast piece during an interview, Avenatti said, "While there is some truth to the piece, I would describe it as far more fiction than fact." He said all the taxes he is responsible for have been paid.

Avenatti reiterated that if he runs for president, he will release his tax information. All presidents since the mid-1970s have released their tax information except for Trump.

"I'll release my tax returns and my tax information this afternoon if Donald Trump will likewise do the same," Avenatti said. "I'd be happy to compare our tax situations any day of the week."SPRINGFIELD -- U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Republican challenger Geoff Diehl sparred over gun safety, the federal response to hurricanes in Puerto Rico and public discourse Sunday as they met in Springfield for their second debate before the November election.

The senator and Whitman state representative went head-to-head on issues important to Western Massachusetts residents -- including questions submitted by the public -- during the hour-long WGBY-TV forum, which was briefly disrupted by protesters.

As in the first U.S. Senate debate, Donald Trump remained a reoccurring theme, with Warren taking issue with the administration's approach to an array of policies and Diehl -- who helped lead the Republican's Massachusetts campaign -- offering how he would differ from the commander-in-chief.

The incumbent Democrat, among many things, continued to criticize the Trump administration's response to Hurricanes Maria and Irma in Puerto Rico, arguing that officials have not done enough to help those displaced by the 2017 storms.

Warren, who worked to help evacuees that relocated to Western Massachusetts find long-term housing solutions, further took issue with questions the president has raised about hurricane-related deaths on the island.

"It never should have happened that our fellow citizens would be left behind after such a devastating event ... Donald Trump's response to disaster relief was to throw rolls of paper towels at people in Puerto Rico. Donald Trump's response was to give himself an "A" and claim that only a handful of people were killed in the disaster instead of the actual number of people," she said.

The Democrat, who pressed the White House to utilize the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Disaster Housing Assistance Program to help hurricane evacuees, added that if Diehl is sent to Capitol Hill he will work to benefit Trump over the people of Massachusetts.

Diehl, in turn, accused Warren of being "fixated on a president she can't work with."

"Sen. Warren's response shows just how obsessed she is with Donald Trump. To use a natural disaster to try to poke at him any way she can. Sen. Warren, Donald Trump is not here in Massachusetts, and when you're campaigning around the country all the time neither are you," he said.

The Whitman state representative, who repeatedly accused his opponent of focusing on the 2020 presidential election, also took issue with Warren's rhetoric, contending that her remarks on Trump and law enforcement, among other things, have contributed to current climate in Washington.

Diehl added that he would work to elevate public discourse if sent to Washington.

"It is disappointing to see how Washington is functioning now. I certainly don't follow the same path that the president does on how I legislate, how I deal with people. At the same time, my opponent has made comments that are pretty disturbing as well. ... I want to be a different voice," he said. "I have not acted like that up on Beacon Hill. I certainly will not follow the path as Sen. Warren."

Warren acknowledged that she and her campaign have been vocal critics of Trump and his administration. She, however, argued that such remarks have sought to stand up to those who pick on "the most vulnerable."

"This is about is ugly slurs and who's going to support that kind of ugliness that turns Americans against Americans, that turns people against people, that says, 'if there's a problem in your life, it's their fault," she said. "That's what Donald Trump and his campaign chair, Mr. Diehl, both support."

The senator, who joined Western Massachusetts students and activists in marching against gun violence earlier this year, also renewed her call for enhanced gun safety regulations, noting that they can occur without hurting companies like Springfield-based American Outdoor Brands, formerly Smith & Wesson.

Arguing that gun control is "a fundamental question on who government works for," Warren noted the lack of progress on the issue despite national attention following recent mass shootings.

"Right now, across this commonwealth and across America, people want to see some sensible gun safety rules put in place. After the shooting down in Florida, we saw 14-year-olds, 16-year-olds, 18-year-olds, come off the bench and say, 'Please, we don't want to have to worry about being shot at school, being shot on the playground -- please make some changes.' And what's happened? It hasn't happened," she said.

Diehl, meanwhile, argued that he believes it's important to preserve Springfield's machinist history and voiced support for creating a system of national reciprocity for firearms, so that individuals licensed in one state can legally carry them in any other.

Under a universal system, he argued, gun safety laws like those in Massachusetts can be deployed on across the country -- an idea the Republican argued he could ensure is heard among GOP leaders.

"If I go down to the Senate, I'll have a seat at the table because of my relationship with the administration and in a Senate that's in a majority controlled by Republicans to have that Massachusetts voice of reason for how we deal with guns," he said.

The hour-long debate, hosted by The Springfield Public Forum and the Western Massachusetts Media Consortium, came just two days after Warren and Diehl squared-off in a WBZ-TV debate -- one of three the candidates agreed to following Massachusetts' September primary.

They will go head-to-head for a final time before the Nov. 6 election at an Oct. 30 televised debate, sponsored by WCVB, The Boston Globe and the University of Massachusetts system.

U.S. Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai will also appear on the November ballot.

Supporters of the independent U.S. Senate hopeful, who sat in the audience for the forum, briefly halted the live event and were escorted out after chanting "let Shiva debate."

Ayyadurai has protested his exclusion from the U.S. Senate debates and filed suit against the University of Massachusetts, claiming it barred him from the late-October forum.SPRINGFIELD -- U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, pledged Monday to "fight for anti-discrimination provisions," including those that protect transgender individuals.

The senator, following an event in Springfield, spoke out against reports that the Trump administration is considering defining gender as a biological condition determined at birth -- a move which some have argued could undo Obama-era protections for transgender individuals.

Warren cast the reported effort as the latest example of the White House "trying to make discrimination more available all across the country."

"This is just fundamentally wrong. This is not who we are as a country, it does not reflect our best values," she said. "I will fight them on this, I will fight for anti-discrimination provisions."

Warren, who is up for re-election in November, further offered full-throated support for the Massachusetts ballot question that asks voters to weigh-in on the law that "adds gender identity to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in places of public accommodation, resort or amusement."

She argued that "'Yes' on (Question) 3 is 'No' on hate."

"That's who we are. We believe in the worth of every single human being and we do not discriminate," the senator said.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services is pushing an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in federally funded education programs.

HHS argued in a memo, which the newspaper reportedly obtained, that government agencies should adopt a uniform definition of gender based on biology, "that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable," according to the Times. It has proposed defining it as either "male or female, unchangeable and determined by the genitals that a person is born with," the newspaper reported.

If adopted, the definition could end the federal government's recognition of the more than 1 million Americans who have chosen to recognize themselves as another gender, undoing the Obama administration's efforts to loosen the legal concept in federal programs.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Geoff Diehl, who is looking to unseat Warren, largely refrained from commenting on the Trump administration's reported efforts to modify the definition of gender.

The Whitman state representative, who has said he plans to vote "no" on Question 3, however, offered that he believes "in individual freedoms and the protections of those freedoms."

"I think we have discrimination laws on the books that currently protect people. And, if Massachusetts laws related to identity work for the rest of the country, that's something I'm willing to consider," he added in a Monday interview.SPRINGFIELD -- With housing authorities struggling to meet demand due to growing waitlists, a low number of available apartments and aging infrastructure, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, called Monday for the federal government to build 3 million new housing units across the country.

Warren, who is up for re-election in November, made her pitch while discussing her proposed "American Housing and Economic Mobility Act" with Western Massachusetts housing officials, elected leaders and veterans advocates.

Arguing that there is currently not enough housing stock across the United States to serve those seeking affordable housing options, the senator argued that federal officials must do more to help middle- and low-income Americans currently on waiting lists.

"We are in a housing crisis in this country. It's not a crisis for rich people, it's a housing crisis for everyone else. There's been a real shift in how housing is built over the last couple of generations. More and more housing is available for upper income families and less and less housing is available for middle-class, for working-class, for working poor and the poor," she said. "The solution to that we knew from decades ago was to put federal support in so there was adequate housing built across the economic range."

The Democrat offered that the federal government can help expand the housing supply by making more money available for such units. Communities, meanwhile, could collaborate so their zoning and building codes are more uniform and brought up to 21st Century standards, thus reducing construction costs, Warren said.

She specifically proposed that the federal government build or rehabilitate 3.2 million new housing units for low-income and middle-class families, along with supportive infrastructure, like schools.

Warren, who noted that the legislation could create 1.5 million jobs at its peak, said estate taxes imposed on wealthy Americans, as well as private investments, would fuel the effort.

Beyond growing the affordable housing stock, the senator said her legislation also seeks to prevent and address discrimination in the public housing system, as well as provide assistance to first-time home buyers and others.

"It's a very ambitious bill, but that's because we have a very big problem and we need to address it and address it now," she said.

Warren's bill calls for: Creating a $10 billion competitive grant program that communities can use to build infrastructure as long as local governments overhaul land use rules that increase the costs of new affordable housing; investing $2 billion to support borrowers impacted by the 2008 financial crisis; and providing down payment grants to first-time homebuyers living in lower-income, segregated areas.

It, among other things, also seeks to expand the Fair Housing Act to prohibit housing discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status and source of income, including government assistance.

Holyoke Housing Authority Executive Director Matthew Mainville said he's "excited about what this bill means," noting that it could help more families find long-term stable housing or even purchase their own homes.

Soldier On Executive Vice President Steve Como, meanwhile, encouraged the senator to consider setting aside funding for veteran-specific housing projects, something which he argued could address current delays.

Warren thanked local officials for their feedback, stressing that she needs allies to not just pass the bill in Congress, but to promote it at the state and local level.

"I count on the fact you'll be there on the ground to help develop the right approaches to use this opportunity," she said.

The legislation, introduced late last month, has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee.Sen. Elizabeth Warren says her GOP opponent Geoff Diehl has defended President Donald Trump's "ugly rants."

Diehl, a Whitman Republican, has hit back, accusing Warren, a Cambridge Democrat, of being an obstructionist who traffics in "poisonous politics."

But Warren and Diehl had a moment of agreement at the Western Massachusetts debate on Sunday night in Springfield: Protecting states that are legalizing marijuana while the controversial substance remains illegal at the federal level.

"I think this is a states' rights issue," Diehl said, adding that he is referring to medical and recreational marijuana.

"Now my personal feeling is different than I think what the voters decided, but I also honor the will of the voters like when I led the ballot question to repeal the indexed gas tax, and thankfully the legislature left that alone, they did not try to intercept it and make changes to it," Diehl added.

Diehl, a state representative, criticized his fellow Beacon Hill lawmakers for rewriting the marijuana ballot question, noting they hiked taxes on recreational marijuana to 20 percent from 12 percent. They aided the "black market" by doing so and are "undermining" the work of law enforcement, he said.

Warren touted the bill she filed with Cory Gardner, a Republican from Colorado, that calls for the federal government to "back off" once a state, like Massachusetts, legalizes marijuana. The bill would grant marijuana businesses access to the banking system.

Warren blamed the Senate Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and said Senate Republicans won't bring it to a vote.

"So if we actually want to see this solved, we need a Democratic majority in the Senate, let's get a vote on this," she said.

Neither Diehl nor Warren criticized state regulators for the slow rollout for retail marijuana shops.

The Cannabis Control Commission has approved licenses for retail pot shops and independent testing labs, though there is no clear timeline for the start of recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts.

Warren and Diehl debated a number of topics over the course of an hour in a debate sponsored by the Western Mass. Media Consortium and held at the WGBY studios in downtown Springfield.

Members of the consortium include the Springfield Public Forum, MassLive, The Republican newspaper, New England Public Radio, WGBY, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the Berkshire Eagle and WWLP 22 News.There was a strong message to buy local at the 29th edition of the Galliova Awards for outstanding food and health writing, held at De Grendel wine estate on 19 October 2018 with the theme, 'Reminiscing the past, planning the future'.

Winners image supplied. Left to right: 2018 Galliova Awards winners  Abigail Donnelly (Broiler Champion), Liezl Vermeulen (Up-and-Coming Food Writer), Salome Delport (Health Writer), and Margie Els-Burger (Egg Champion). 2018 Galliova Food Writer Justine Kiggen (absent).

Reminiscing the past, planning the future

Local food legends

Image: Author's own. Note that's AI for Avian Influenza, not Artificial Intelligence.

Especially when youre starting out as a food writer or stylist, attending events like the Galliova Awards is the best thing you can do, as the magic dust of other creatives rubs off on you.

Poultry poetry narrative

Drum(stick) roll, please! And the winners are...

Justine Kiggen ofwas dialled on from Australia over Skype to celebrate her win as overall Galliova Food Writer of the Year in the main print media category.She shared how thrilled she was at the recognition, adding that its a team effort and its fabulous that low-carb is becoming part of the mainstream lifestyle now.Other excited winners on the day included Liezl Vermeulen was announced as 2018 Up-and-Coming Writer of the Year; with Salome Delport then 2018 Health Writer of the Year; and Margie Els-Burger the Galliova Egg Champion of the Year.And Abigail Donnelly made it two for two in taking home the Galliova Awards second-ever Broiler Champion accolade, following the now joint sponsorship of the Galliova Awards by the countrys broiler producers as well as egg producers, under the banner of the South African Poultry Association (SAPA).But theres more to the story than thatOn arriving at De Grendels beautifully panelled glass-walled tasting room with views of the surrounding valley, where we were served beef sliders, sesame chicken wings, tiny quiche bites, fresh veggie spring rolls and flutes of bubbly, still water and cappuccinos while reconnecting with old friends, some of whom we hadnt seen since last years Galliova Awards.There was a real coming together of those of us who write about food, those who style and create food and those who write about the others. Indeed, the Galliova Awards honour the overall promotion of South Africas local food culture, with health writers also recognised for their excellent balanced reporting on health and nutrition issues.MC Justine Drake, editor of, said she has attended all 29 years of the Galliova Awards and, in reminiscing, spoke of the changing media landscape. She first started work in the industry on an electric typewriter, with film in her camera, and smoking in her office. Nowadays, she said, If youre not on social media, youre not really there.Drake added that the future is looking bright in terms of awareness of the importance of eating well and wanting to know the farmers behind the food we eat. We are much more aware, which is a definite positive.This was followed by an address by Aziz Sulliman, current chairman of the SA Poultry Association, who said the last year was a tough one for the poultry industry but that he wants to encourage the use of proudly South African poultry products, as the situation has improved and has a beneficial impact on the economy.Illustrating the importance of knowing where your food comes from, he said while many lost their lives to the Listeriosis outbreak last year, when it came to local products, the strain could be traced back to not just the factory but even to the specific factory room and shift the outbreak stemmed form  we just cant do the same with imported food.As Willie Bosoga, chairman of the Egg Organisation missed his flight, we heard from Colin Oosthuizen. Drake applauded his extraordinary passion for the industry and love of food writers, mentioning that the egg and broiler boards are now joint sponsors of the Galliova Awards, so entries are welcomed for writing on both chicken and eggs.Oosthuizen showed a graph of how egg supply recovered from the impact of last years avian flu outbreak, and also spoke of the importance of buying local.Next was a break from the serious with a brain buster wooden cube puzzle challenge  the fastest fingers won a R2,000 Yuppiechef voucher.Wed worked up quite an appetite by this stage, so ate up the fresh farm bread served to each table, as well as delicious starters  we had a choice of the chicken mousse with croquettes, charred cos lettuce, Parmesan, tempura white anchovies, poached crumbed chicken egg, spinach and cos emulsion; or the vegetarian butternut ricotta tortellini with broth, honey, curried couchettes, Gorgonzola mousse and hazelnuts. Both were pronounced delicious, with plates scraped clean.This was followed by an address by Galliova judge Dorah Sitole, introduced by Drake with the words, If there was ever a food icon, its Dorah, who has faced many challenges in her life and effectively changed the way people think of food in Africa.Sitole began with the words that shes inherently very shy, and spoke of the honour of attending and winning at the Galliova Awards.Having judged the Galliova Awards for the past decade, Sitole shared that theres always a robust discussion amongst judges over scores, so that whoever wins is truly worthy. Offering advice to next years entrants Sitole said to make sure the recipes published are easy to follow and easy to understand  ask yourself if the average reader understand the instruction: Beat to a soft peakSitole shared that there were no winners in the online category this year, but we can expect clearer categories for this going forward, including blogging.Sitole is looking forward to this, as well as to a rise in PDF-form print entries for the 30th awards next year, aimed at saving on paper.Sitole also commented that South African standards are so high, yet the entries show that we still largely follow Western style in our food styling and recipes. She would like to see more authentic South African flavour reflected and reaching our readers.This was followed by a poetry narrative competition, where each table had five minutes to write a narrative of their own concoction, including the following words used in context: Bellybutton, drumstick,, steam train,and poached egg.With some displaying impressive rapping skills, this was a super amusing interpretation and proved that even the food stylists among us have a way with words. And De Grendel proved they have a way with food...After a main course of Karoo lamb neck, chermoula, tomato, feta, yoghurt, red onion, cucumber, spinach and jus poured at the table; or the equally delicious vegetarian crumbed wild mushroom with red pepper pesto, charred broccoli and Parmesan, it was time to celebrate the 2018 Galliova winners...1. Justine Kiggen 2. Hannah Lewry 3. Anke Roux 1. Liezl Vermeulen 2. Chiara Turilli 1. Margie Els-Burger 2. Chiara Turilli 3. Esther Malan 1. Abigail Donnelly 2. Margie Els-Burger 3. Herman Lensing 1. Salome Delport 2. Glynis Horning  Freelance writer3. Christa Swanepoel Drake concluded with the words that the local industry is world-class, thanking all the judges for their hard work, as well as Sapa for having believed in SAs food writers for 30 years now, and their "fight for the good fight".Watching the winners kiss their certificates and jump up and down while clapping their hands with glee, proves this industry is alive and well.Ending with dessert of citrus cheesecake, strawberry sorbet, Earl Grey jelly, white chocolate and almond crumble and raspberry-almond cake, with cappuccinos and thank yous, De Grendel proved itself a worthy host for these delicious awards, before we hopped onto shuttles back to the CTICC and Cape Town International - hopefully, to see each other again before the next award show.Two Massachusetts Democratic activists with extensive political experience are launching a new national political action committee that will endorse and campaign for Democratic candidates who do not agree with the party on every issue.

"The whole big tent theory seems to have diminished in practice in the Democratic Party," said Deb Kozikowski, who is founding Left of Center with Mara Dolan.

Democratic attorney Michael Avenatti, best known for representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, spoke at an event launching the PAC on Sunday and met with a reporter for The Springfield Republican / MassLive.com on Monday in Cambridge.

Advocacy for the PAC is part of Avenatti's broader work fundraising and campaigning for Democratic causes in advance of the November 2018 elections. Avenatti is also considering a 2020 presidential run.

"If the party's going to succeed, and especially if the party's going to succeed on a national level, then we're going to have to be more inclusive," Avenatti said.

Kozikowski and Dolan are well-known in Massachusetts politics. Kozikowski, of Chicopee, is the long-time vice chairwoman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. She works in political organizing nationally, advocating around rural issues and helping Democrats in rural areas.

Dolan is a communications professional who is currently consulting for Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin's campaign and recently worked for Senate President Stan Rosenberg. She previously produced her own political talk show and also worked as an attorney.

Kozikowski said she and Dolan developed the idea after having conversations about the divisiveness of labels - such as progressive or centrist - within the Democratic Party. Kozikowski said it is "unfortunate" that Democrats get distracted by labels rather than focusing on the goal of being a Democrat, which, she said, "is agreeing on 90 to 95 percent of the issues and being able to find ways to compromise and move forward on the things we can't agree on."

For example, Kozikowski said the chairwoman of the West Virginia Democratic Party said she found a dead fish on her lawn the day after West Virginia's Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

"Joe Manchin is not the perfect 100 percent vote, but Joe Manchin is a vote for West Virginia and Joe Manchin was a vote that saved the Affordable Care Act," Kozikowski said. "I think that is a good enough pedigree to be accepted for his warts and all."

Dolan pointed to a decision by some Democratic organizations to withdraw their support from Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen in Tennessee because Bredesen said he would have voted to confirm Kavanaugh. Dolan said even though she would not support Kavanaugh, she would rather have a Democrat in office who would vote with the party on the environment, civil rights, voting rights and other issues than a Republican "who votes the wrong way on everything."

"We can't afford to keep losing congressional races nationwide," Dolan said. "We've got to elect Democrats and stop excluding people simply because they don't agree with us on absolutely everything."

Left of Center plans to endorse candidates who "agree with us on at least 90 percent of major issues, have good character and temperament, and know enough about government to work for productive compromise on the rest," Dolan said.

She said the group is trying to represent the "enormous, unheralded quiet center that longs for stability but does not have enough of a voice in the current political landscape."

Once Left of Center endorses a candidate, the group will actively campaign for that person, assisting in organizing and messaging.

Avenatti has his own history of being on the outs with Democrats.

Avenatti represented Julie Swetnick, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Kavanaugh denied the allegations. Swetnick's accusations were not investigated by the FBI, which did look into allegations by two other women, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez.

After Kavanaugh was confirmed, CNN reported that some Democrats accused Avenatti of undercutting their case against Kavanaugh by bringing allegations that were less credible and more sensational than those of Ford and Ramirez. Swetnick alleged that Kavanaugh, in high school, spiked girls' drinks, grabbed girls without permission and attended parties where gang rapes occurred.

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, initially called on the FBI to investigate Swetnick's allegations, but in her speech explaining her decision to vote for Kavanaugh, Collins called Swetnick's claims "outlandish."

Avenatti noted that none of the Democrats who criticized him were willing to go on the record. He said he has no regrets about his role in the Kavanaugh hearing process. But he said the comments show that "A lot of these people see me as a threat, and they should see me as a threat because I'm not beholden to these folks. I don't owe anybody anything as it relates to establishment Democrats."

Avenatti dismissed Collins as "one of biggest frauds in the U.S. Senate" for calling for an FBI investigation, then saying Swetnick's claims were not credible. "She's entirely unqualified to make any such determination," Avenatti said.

Asked whether the Democratic Party has space for someone like Manchin, Avenatti said he is "not at all happy" about Manchin's vote for Kavanaugh, but "I certainly think the party needs to take a big tent approach and be more inclusive than exclusive."

"We have to also recognize that not all Democrats have the luxury of being in a place as progressive as Massachusetts," Avenatti said. "This is a very diverse nation, and a Democrat in one part of the country might be classified as a Republican in another part of the country."Attorney Michael Avenatti said Monday that he will decide in the next 60 to 90 days whether to run for president in 2020.

The Democrat has visited 15 states in three months and plans to visit eight more. He said he will base his decision on who else enters the race, whether he wants to "turn my life upside down" and subject his family to that, and whether he could live with a decision not to run if President Donald Trump is re-elected.

"I think there is a very limited number of people that can actually displace this president in 2020, and I don't think you're going to displace him by talking about puppies and daisies and giving inspiration to America," Avenatti said. "I think you're going to have to take the fight to him."

Avenatti gained national attention for his representation of Stephanie Clifford, the porn star known as Stormy Daniels, in her lawsuit against Trump. Trump's lawyer allegedly paid Daniels before the 2016 election to keep quiet about her affair with Trump.

Avenatti also represented one of the women who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

The New York Times profiled Avenatti as a media savvy, hard-hitting lawyer from Los Angeles who relishes high-stakes, high-profile cases. He did campaign opposition research for Rahm Emanuel's firm in the 1990s before going to law school.

Avenatti spoke to a reporter from The Republican/MassLive.com in Cambridge. He was visiting the Boston area to help launch a pro-Democratic political action committee on his way to a campaign trip in New Hampshire.

Avenatti's reasons for considering a presidential run seem to be more about the campaign than the job. "I think (Democrats) have a number of strong candidates. I think they have a number of people that would make an exceptional president," Avenatti said. "They do not have a number of people that can beat Donald Trump."

Avenatti said he matches up well against Trump, and he is only considering a run because Trump would be his opponent.

"I'm willing to take a lot of punishment, and I'm also willing to provide a lot of punishment," Avenatti said.

Avenatti's critique of the Democratic Party is about method, not policy. "The party has consistently been on the right side of issue after issue after issue in my view but hasn't necessarily engaged in the proper process or had a fighter mentality," he said. He believes too many Democrats continue to underestimate Trump's political strength.

Avenatti said there is little reason to think the way to beat Trump is by fielding a politician who is "similar to the other 16 or 17 very experienced, qualified politicians that he beat in 2016."

Avenatti warns in harsh terms about what he calls the "dire consequences for the republic" should Trump be re-elected, starting with the president's ability to reshape the U.S. Supreme Court.

Asked whether he believes the president has committed an impeachable offense, Avenatti said, "I think there's likely a number of things, but I don't think we have the concrete facts and the evidence yet to support it, with the emphasis on yet."

"I don't consider myself to be a savior or a chosen one or anything of that nature," Avenatti said. "But I have a unique skill set for this particular moment in time as it relates to this dumpster fire of a presidency that we find ourselves having to experience."

"The answer to Donald Trump is not to be kinder or gentler or more noble," Avenatti added. "I am generally for all of those things. But at this point, the people that depend on Democrats to protect their rights and the ideals that they hold so dear can no longer afford our gentleness."SPRINGFIELD -- Although Shiva Ayyadurai was not on the stage for Sunday's debate between Democrat Elizabeth Warren and Republican Geoff Diehl, supporters of the independent U.S. Senate candidate made their voices heard.

More than halfway through the hour-long debate between the incumbent senator and Whitman state representative, a group of audience members disrupted the televised forum to vocally question why Ayyadurai was not part of the debate.

The debate resumed following a brief pause, in which security personnel escorted the individuals out of the television studio.

Another man was removed shortly after for again speaking out about Ayyadurai.

Ayyadurai is on the November ballot, but did not meet the Western Massachusetts Media Consortium's eligibility rules for participating in the debate.

He protested his exclusion from the first U.S. Senate debate on Friday by sitting down in front of Warren's SUV, Statehouse News reporter Matthew Murphy tweeted. He was then removed by police.

Ayyadurai has also filed suit against the University of Massachusetts, claiming it barred him from the late October U.S. Senate debate.

Diehl, in response to reporters' questions, would not say whether he believes Ayyadurai should have been on the debate stage, offering that it was not his decision to make.

"It's not up to me to decide who comes to debates and I certainly have done everything I can to be a part of the political discussion in Massachusetts during this campaign," he told reporters. "Whether media outlets want to allow him to be a part of it, is really not my choice."

This story will be updated.The internet is currently abuzz with advertisements for "free" online language courses and online education. While developments in technology have undoubtedly created opportunities for more people to access education, the question still remains as to whether it is actually possible to learn a language solely with the use of an online platform. Whilst there are numerous advantages to using online platforms, there are equally as many disadvantages.

Online platforms are limited in their capacity to support group discussions, as well as the engagement with language facilitators and tutors. Many platforms are also unable to cope with the thousands of students that try to join online discussions. Language learners benefit greatly from human interaction within a classroom. Mark Edmundson (2012), an English professor at the University of Virginia, argued that online education creates a monologue and not a real dialogue in the learning environment. Classroom environments allow learners to express their opinions, participate in debates, and engage in face-to-face interaction with classmates and their instructor.Language facilitators are responsible for explaining material, answering questions and guiding learning based on students needs and language levels in real time. From an online perspective, this resource becomes diluted, as often there exists back and forth communication between the student and the facilitator over an extended period of time. Within a classroom environment, learners are immersed in the language and encouraged to speak. Learning takes place in a pro-active way with a balance of learner-facilitator interaction and group work. Language learners receive undivided attention from the facilitator, and the pace and content of the tuition is thus tailored to the learner accordingly.Two of the benefits of online courses are that they offer flexibility and convenient accessibility; however, they also require a greater amount of self-discipline, reading and time-management skills. Online courses tend to make it easier to procrastinate and they create a sense of isolation. These elements are not conducive to successful language learning. Motivation levels are likely to decrease when using online platforms, as learners have no real external influences to help keep them motivated and inspired.The quality and accreditation of online language courses is also a concern to most learners, as many online courses lack valid accreditation and certification. It is crucial to enrol in a course that provides legitimate information and that is accredited with a relevant board or organisation. A course that does not provide valid accreditation will serve no purpose or advantage to the learner. Wits Language School was established in 1997 and forms part of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Over the last 19 years, the school has built a reputation for providing high-quality language services and short learning programmes in a dynamic and international learning environment. Wits Language School endorses interactive teaching styles, uses up-to-date teaching methods, and employs experienced and highly qualified teachers who are mother-tongue speakers to assist all participants in their quest to learn a second language.Online learning should be considered a supplement and extension, rather than a replacement, to traditional classroom learning.As patients of spinal cord fractures continue to struggle with long duration consumed for complete recovery, surgeons and doctors continue to promote the use of bone growth stimulators. The Fact.MR forecast report on global bone growth stimulator market anticipates that global sales of these devices will bring in more than US$ 1.4 Bn by the end of 2017. Spinal fracture patients opting for bone growth stimulators is expected to rise due to increasing advancements in lowering patient discomfort. By the end of 2022, sales of bone growth stimulators in the global market is pegged to bring in US$ 1.91 Bn, exhibiting a steady growth at 5.3% CAGR.

Key Forecast Highlights

According to the report, bone growth stimulation devices will account for nearly 56% share on global bone growth stimulator revenues in 2017. Platelet-rich plasmas, on the other hand, will be observed as promising product segment, revenues from which are expected to showcase robust growth at 6.2% CAGR. By the end of 2022, a little over US$ 450 Mn worth of platelet-rich plasmas will be sold in the global market for bone growth stimulators.

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In the view of poor road infrastructure and inferior healthcare facilities existing in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region, the demand for bone growth stimulators is expected to gain grounds. These factors are boosting the incidence of spinal fractures in this region, compelling doctors towards adoption of bone growth simulation therapy. Moreover, manufacturers of bone growth stimulators are expected to benefit from low wage costs and high resource availability by setting up their manufacturing units across APEJ region. By the end of 2022, over US$ 225 Mn worth of bone growth stimulators will be sold across the APEJ market. North America is expected to remain the largest market for bone growth stimulator. The report predicts that high healthcare spending implemented in Canada and the US will urge manufacturers towards developing advanced bone growth stimulators. Meanwhile, revenues amassed from sales of bone growth stimulators in Europe will contribute US$ 600 Mn in revenues by the end of 2022. Towards the end of forecast period, North Americas bone growth stimulator market is likely to soar at a CAGR of 6.2%. Application of bone growth stimulators in delayed union & non-union bone fracture treatments is expected to gain traction, reflecting a revenue growth at 5.7% CAGR. Spinal fusion surgeries will account for nearly 25% of the global bone growth stimulator sales in 2017, while their application in oral and maxillofacial surgeries will procure around US$ 250 Mn in global revenues.

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Hospitals and clinics are expected to remain largest end-users of bone growth stimulator throughout the forecast period. With more than 43% share, over US$ 800 Mn worth of bone growth stimulators will be sold in hospitals & clinics across the globe by 2022-end. Home care end-use of bone growth stimulator, on the other hand, is expected to create an incremental opportunity of more than US$ 100 Mn by 2022 over 2017.

The report has also profiled leading players in the global bone growth stimulator market, which include companies such as Orthofix International N.V., Medtronic plc, Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc., Bioventus Inc., Stryker Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Arthrex, Inc., DJO Global Inc., Elizur Corporation, and Ossatec Benelux B.V.

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Technological progress across healthcare departments are now ensuring a holistic growth for the same. However, it primarily banks on various developments in treatments. Cell culture media in one such area that is giving the healthcare department an unprecedented boost by assisting it in developing vaccines and with quite a few new outbreaks in the recent past, this department has become all the more essential.

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Various biotechnological firms are incorporating cell culture as a division to study the intricate details of cells and tissues of different plants and animals in a conducive atmosphere. The vision is to derive the desired result for various treatments. The market is getting backed sufficiently by governments and private investors which are charting a future course for the market during the forecast period (2017-2023). It has been assured a substantial growth to a valuation of USD 1290.1 million during this time as reported by Market Research Future (MRFR) in its well-studied analysis.

Biotechnological firms are going to play a pivotal role in the success of this market, and that is quite evident from India Brand Equity Foundations declaration where the biotechnology industry in India was valued at USD 11 billion in 2016. This immense amount signals at its potential to trigger a substantial growth in regional cell culture media market and consequently, the global one.

On the flip side, its setup process incurs high cost which only a few companies can bear. The resultant product comes at a high price which again pushes the market on the backfoot. But India and China are the saving grace. With reasonably less workforce cost and establishment cost, they can deflate the total amount almost by 33% which in turn, is a lucrative offer for the global players.

Cell Culture Media Market  Segmental Analysis

The global cell culture media market can be segmented by type, application, and end-user.

Based on type, the market can be segmented into lysogeny broth, chemically defined media, protein-free media, serum-free media, classical media, and custom media. Among these, lysogeny broth is the chief market maker with almost 22.5% of the global share. However, chemically defined media can achieve the fastest CAGR of 9.6% during the forecast period.

Application-wise segmentation includes drug discovery and drug development, toxicity testing, cancer research, genetic engineering, tissue engineering & biochemistry, and stem cell research. With 23.8% of the entire market share, drug discovery and drug development segment is doing remarkably well. Meanwhile, the prevalence of cancer across nations is assisting cancer research to gain considerable ground.

By end-users, the market comprises biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies, research laboratories, academic institutes, and pathology labs. Biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies are leading the way by accounting for USD 386.5 million in 2016. However, research laboratories segment is also picking up speed boosted by government and private funding.

Cell Culture Media Market  Vendor Landscape:

Strategic partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions are having control over this competitive market. This is exemplified by Corning Incorporateds agreement with BioCision. Some of the key players in the cell culture media market include HiMedia Laboratories (India), Thermo Fisher Scientific (U.S.), BD Biosciences (U.S.), Lonza (Switzerland), Corning Incorporated (U.S.), Merck KGaA (Germany), and GE Healthcare (U.S.).

Cell Culture Media Market  Regional Outlook:

Considering regional expansion, the global market can be segmented into the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), and the Middle East and Africa (MEA).

Owing to a superior infrastructure and a huge patient pool, the Americas have turned into the biggest market for cell culture media. Prevalence of chronic diseases is boosting the market significantly. Europe comes next with similar kind of features to control the regional market. Government initiatives in the region are also commendable. However, the APAC region is surprisingly doing well. The eyes of many global players are on this region as plunging infrastructural cost in the zone can increase the profit margin.

Major TOC of Cell Culture Media Market Research Report  Forecast to 2023:

1 Report Prologue

2 Market Introduction

3 Research Methodology

4 Market Dynamics

5 Market Factor Analysis

6 Global Cell Culture Media Market, by Type

7 Global Cell Culture Media Market by Applications

8 Global Cell Culture Media Market, by End User

9 Global Cell Culture Media Market, by Region

10 Company Profiles

11 Conclusion

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Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comThe Dental Prosthetics Market is set to grow at a CAGR of 5.5% from 2016 to 2023 and reach an approximate value of USD 5.6 million by the end of the assessment period.

Dental prosthetics or prosthodontics have become highly common for the improvement of appearance and function of teeth which are damaged or have been lost due to unfortunate circumstances such as accidents. Market Research Future has recently published a comprehensive report which extensively analyses the global dental prosthetics market.

Dental care has grown considerably in the recent years, and consumers have become increasingly aesthetic focused which has driven the demand for dental prosthetics. Social media and the increasing influence of celebrities on picture sharing platforms such as Instagram have prompted an inclination toward achieving an aesthetic appearance which is influenced by beauty ideals presented on such social media websites. Moreover, emerging economies are witnessing a rise in per capita income which has resulted in higher disposable incomes, thus increasing the demand for prosthetic procedures. Incidentally, dental prosthetic procedures are more affordable in certain countries, thus encouraging increased dental tourism.

Digitalization of the dental industry has begun taking root. However progress is slow, and adoption of new technologies is low, thus restraining the growth of the global market. However, implant and prosthetic technology is constantly improving and is expected to produce opportunities for market growth.

Latest Industry News

Glidewell Dental has announced the opening of the Glidewell International Technology Center in Louisville Kentucky. The 8,500 sq ft center is aimed at teaching cutting-edge dental practices in an effort to keep fellow dentists abreast of new materials and techniques used in dental prosthetic procedures among others.

Prosthodontic clinic Dental Implants Miami Beach has installed a new dental microscope which is expected to improve the vision of the damaged tooth and allow the prosthodontist to treat the patient with lasting implants..

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Key Players for Global Dental Prosthetics Market

Market Research Future (MRFR) recognizes the following companies as the key players in Dental Prosthetics Market: There are plenty of large and small market players which operate in this market all over the globe.

Notable market players involved in the competitive landscape of the global dental prosthetics market include

Dentsply Sirona,

3M,

Zimmer Biomet,

Institut Straumann AG,

Nobel Biocare,

CAMLOG Biotechnologies AG,

Planmeca,

Osstem Prosthetics, and

Ivoclar Vivadent.

Segments for Global Dental Prosthetics Market

The global dental prosthetics market is segmented on the basis of type, type of material, end-user, and region. By type, the market is segmented into denture, crown, bridges, veneer, abutment, and inlays. Bridges make up the majority of the market due to the consistent demand for these prosthetics.

By type of material, the market is segmented into porcelain-fused-to-metal (PFM), metal, all-ceramic, and others. Of these, the PFM segment accounts for over a third of the total share due to the natural look this material lends and the strength that it has. Moreover, PFM doesnt chip as easily as pure porcelain or all-ceramic.

By end-users, the market is segmented into dental hospitals & clinics, and dental research laboratories.

Regional Analysis for Global Dental Prosthetics Market

North America dominates the market with a majority share due to the regions inclination toward the latest in medical advancements and the presence of a large patient pool that are demanding dental prosthetics. Europe closely follows North America in terms of market size due to a similar growth pattern

Meanwhile, the Asia Pacific is experiencing rapid growth due to the rising disposable incomes in the region as well as the rise of dental tourism which attracts international patients and market players. Patients travel to these countries to leverage affordable dental prosthetic and cosmetic services. Market players from around the globe have identified this trend and are strengthening their market position in the emerging economies of the region such as India, China, and South Korea.

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Phone: +1 646 845 9312HIV prevalence in Africa, specifically in Southern region is very high as compared to North African region. Approximately 1 out of 4 is suffering from HIV. Southern and Eastern region of Africa has one of the highest prevalence rate of HIV, about 19 million people have HIV. While HIV prevalence is low in North Africa but the number of cases of HIV are increasing rapidly. There is no cure for HIV but drugs manufacturing companies are investing huge money in R&D to develop drugs for HIV. Over 3000 patients were died in sub Saharan Africa due to HIV in 2015. Following 10 countries from Africa consists of 80% of total HIV burden which are South Africa, Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia, Mozambique, United Republic of Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment Market is growing moderately. Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.3% and expected to reach US$ 2.07 billion by 2023 from US$ 1.65 billion in 2016.

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Intended Audience

Hospitals and Clinics

HIV Diagnosis & Treatment drugs manufacturers

HIV Diagnosis & Treatment drugs suppliers

Government and Independent Regulatory Authorities

Research and Development (R&D) Companies

Market Research and Consulting Service Providers

Medical Research Laboratories

Potential Investors

Key Players for Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment Market:

Some of the key players in this market are: Abbott Laboratories (US), Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (Germany), Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (US), Cipla Inc. (India), F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd (Switzerland), Gilead (US), GlaxoSmithKline plc. (UK), Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc.(US), ViiV Healthcare group of companies (UK), Merck & Co., Inc. (US).

Segments:

Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment Market has been segmented on the basis of diagnosis which comprise ELISA Test, Saliva Tests, Viral Load Test, Western Blot, and Others. On the basis of treatment, market is segmented into Protease inhibitors (PIs), Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), Nucleoside or nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), Entry or fusion inhibitors, Integrase inhibitors, and others.

Regional Analysis of Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment Market:

Considering the scenario of the Middle East and African HIV Diagnosis & Treatment market, Africa is believed to be the largest market for HIV Diagnosis & Treatment. Moreover, the Rest of Middle East and Africa is growing and it is the second largest market for Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment. On the other hand, UAE market is expected to grow at significant rate in the Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment during the forecasted period. Saudi Arabia is likely to have a limited but moderate growth in the market.

The report for Middle East and Africa HIV Diagnosis & Treatment Market of Market Research Future comprises extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides detail information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regions.

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Detailed Table of Contents:

1. Report Prologue

2. Introduction

2.1 Definition

2.2 Scope Of The Study

2.2.1 Research Objective

2.2.2 Assumptions

2.2.3 Limitations

2.3 Market Structure

2.4. Market Segmentation

3. Research Methodology

3.1 Research Process

3.2 Primary Research

3.3 Secondary Research

3.4 Market Size Estimation

3.5 Forecast Model

List Of Tables

Table 1 Middle East And Africa Hiv Diagnosis & Treatment Market By Diagnosis

Table 2 Middle East And Africa Hiv Diagnosis & Treatment Market By Treatment

Table 3 Middle East And Africa Hiv Diagnosis & Treatment Market By Region

List Of Figures

Figure 1 Research Process

Figure 2 Porters Five Forces Model

Figure 3 Middle East And Africa Hiv Diagnosis & Treatment Market By Diagnosis

Figure 4 Middle East And Africa Hiv Diagnosis & Treatment Market By Treatment

Figure 5 Middle East And Africa Hiv Diagnosis & Treatment Market By Region

Figure 6 Middle East And Africa Hiv Diagnosis & Treatment Market By Region: Company Share Analysis, 2015 (%)

Continued

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Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comLatest Industry Trends and News

Leading technology Nvidia has reportedly expressed its intentions of introducing a new AI platform Clara in the recently held GPU Technology Conference. The AI will be mainly used for creating virtual medical imaging platform. With this move, the tech firm will set its foot in the healthcare sector.

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TriHealth, a healthcare provider based in Cincinnati is reportedly set to invest $10 Mn to integrate a part of IBM Watson Health Enterprise Imaging solution. The move will allow TriHealth to bolster its picture archiving and communication system infrastructure as well as engage AI capabilities for medical imaging.

Global Medical Imaging Market  Overview

Medical Imaging has become the core of modern medical diagnostics. The advanced imaging technologies that are available today have certainly improved the efficiency of diagnostic systems to a significant level. In recent years, the number of people undergoing diagnostic procedures has increased substantially with the rise in prevalence of acute and chronic diseases. Consequently, the demand for effective and more accurate diagnostic technologies has also gone up. Factors as such have reflected favorably on the Global Market for Medical Imaging.

The level of awareness about the advantages of early stage diagnosis has increased, which has resulted in a higher number of diagnostic procedures. This is considered as an important growth enabler for the global medical imaging market. In addition, factors such as rising geriatric population and arrival of cost-effective medical imaging systems are also making a positive impact on the market. In all of this, technology is playing an important role, as it is central to the particular healthcare vertical. Hence, market players are consistently making efforts to innovate and development more efficient medical imaging devices.

Global Medical Imaging Market  Key Players

Major participants of this market are

Carestream Health, Inc.

Esaote SpA

Fonar Corporation

Fujifilm Holdings Corporation

GE Healthcare

Hitachi Medical Corporation

Hologic, Inc.

Narang Medical Limited

Philips Healthcare

Samsung Medison Co. Ltd

Shimadzu Corporation

Siemens Healthcare

Toshiba Corporation

Global Medical Imaging Market  Segmentation

The Medical Imaging Market has been segmented on the basis of modality which includes ultrasound, computed tomography, x-ray, radiography, MRI, nuclear imaging, tactile imaging, echocardiography, thermography and more. On the basis of end user, market is further segmented into hospital/clinics, diagnostic centers, laboratories, and others.

Global Medical Imaging Market  Regional Analysis

The American region holds the major share of the global medical imaging market, owing to the existing well-established healthcare system, technological advancements, and the geriatric population. Due to the increasing acceptance of advanced imaging equipment multitude of products have been introduced by leading players. For instance, Vantage Galan 3.0T XGO Edition MRI by Canon Medical Systems USA, Inc. received approval from Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Galan 3T XGO Edition offers the ability to conduct high-quality neuroimaging exams, and higher-resolution images.

Europe holds the second position in the global medical imaging market. It is expected that the government support towards research & development expenditure.

The Asia-Pacific medical imaging market consists of countries namely China, Japan, Republic of Korea, India, Australia and the Rest of Asia-Pacific. The rising prevalence of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is propelling the growth of the market. According to a study published in the Circulation Journal in 2017, 80% of CVD deaths take place in low- and middle-income countries.

The Middle East and Africa holds the lowest share of the global market due to low development, lack of technical knowledge, and poor medical facilities.

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Major Table of Content

Chapter 1. Report Prologue

Chapter 2. Market Introduction

2.1 Definition

2.2 Scope of the Study

2.2.1 Research Objective

2.2.2 Assumptions

2.2.3 Limitations

Chapter 3. Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Primary Research

3.3 Secondary Research

3.4 Market Size Estimation

Chapter 4. Market Dynamics

Continued.

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At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.

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Email: salesteam@marketresearchfuture.comGlobal Patient Monitoring Devices Market  Key Players

There are plenty of large and small market players which operate in this market all over the globe:

GE Healthcare

Roche Diagnostics

BIOTRONIK SE & Co. KG

Abbott Laboratories

Siemens Healthcare

Philips Healthcare

CAS Medical Systems, Inc.

Spacelabs Healthcare

Honeywell International, Inc.

Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co

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Global Patient Monitoring Devices Market  Insights

The Global Patient Monitoring Devices Market has been evaluated as steadily growing market and it is expected that the market will continue to grow similarly in the near future. These monitoring devices continuously check patients vital signs by using a medical monitor. Patient monitoring devices market has various functions such as glucose monitoring, blood monitoring, temperature monitoring, cholesterol monitoring, weight monitoring etc. Electrocardiography is fastest growing sub-segment, it is largest in cardiac monitoring market and fastest growing in neurological device.

Electrocardiography is the process that checks for problems with the electrical activity of your heart. Electrocardiography is very helpful to diagnose unexplained chest pain or pressure, cause of symptoms of heart disease, to check how well medicines are working and see if they are causing side effects that affect the heart. Increase in consumer awareness is driving the market growth which expected to grow in same pace in near future. Patient monitoring devices manufacturers trying to make more advance, accurate and innovative device to provide desirable solution.

Global Patient Monitoring Device Market  Competitive Analysis

Koninklijke Philips N.V is multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Amsterdam focussed on electronics, healthcare, homecare and connected care. In August 2016 Philips launched medical grade Philips Health Watch thus expanding its product offerings in wearables section.

Honeywell International Inc. is a multinational company headquartered in the U.S. which manufactures a variety of commercial and consumer goods, aerospace systems and provides engineering services for broad range of customers. It has broad product segment in health wearable devices. In April 2018, Honeywell Life Care Solutions signed business collaboration with MobileHelp This collaboration will strengthen its brand loyalty and will provide better services for its customer base.

Global Patient Monitoring Devices Market  Segmentation

Patient monitoring devices Market has been segmented on the basis of product type which comprises of Central monitoring stations, Portable bedside monitors, Electrocardiogram (ECG) Devices, Hemodynamic Monitoring Devices, Fetal and neonatal monitors, Respiratory Monitors, Weight management monitors, Temperature monitoring devices, and others. On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into Hospitals and clinics, Ambulatory care centers, Home care and others.

Global Patient Monitoring Devices Market  Regional Analysis

North Americas patient monitoring device market is known to be the largest, owing to the high prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, increasing obese population, increasing acceptance of new technologies, increasing geriatric population, growing clinical research and development sector and presence of pharmaceutical giants. Additionally, increasing healthcare expenditure is likely to propel the growth of the patient monitoring device market in North America. Similarly increasing number of surgical treatment options is also likely to aid the market need for cardiac and neuromonitoring devices top their sole use in advanced surgeries.

Europe is the second leader in the patient monitoring device market. The European market is predicted to grow during the forecast period due to various government legislative reforms providing regulatory guidelines to manufacturing companies, the growing research and developments sector, established medical device market, need for advanced treatments along with the availability of proper health care infrastructure. Moreover, increasing funding for research and development has evolved new patient monitoring devices that are user-friendly as well as easy to carry. For instance, the European Commission stated that the R&D spending by the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sectors grew by 8.7% in 2014.

The Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest region in the global patient monitoring device market due to the presence of huge population suffering from diabetes, hypertension, and key pharmaceutical companies setting up their regional headquarters in Singapore, Japan, China, and Australia, increasing awareness for health, growing healthcare investment and increasing geriatric population. For Instance, in accordance to report published by the United Nations in 2015; between 2015 and 2030, the number of older persons aged 60 years or over in the world is predicted to grow by 56 %, from 901 million to more than 1.4 billion, out of which 66% of older population would reside in Asia-Pacific regions. This makes the region prone to chronic diseases which in turn increases the market demand for patient monitoring devices. These countries are quickly adapting to new technologies so as to improve the health of every citizen. Government is also supporting the same by investing in research and development in clinical research sector as well as in building proper healthcare infrastructure.

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The Middle East & Africa holds the least share in the market owing to the presence of low-income countries and low healthcare expenditure, especially within the African region. Within this region, the Middle East leads the market due to the presence of developed economies like United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and others. Moreover, rising geriatric population, developed healthcare infrastructure, rising number of skilled medical professionals fuels the regional market. This region has huge untapped markets which have a high potential for growth.

Major Table of Content

Chapter 1. Report Prologue

Chapter 2. Market Introduction

2.1 Definition

2.2 Scope of the Study

2.2.1 Research Objective

2.2.2 Assumptions

2.2.3 Limitations

Chapter 3. Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Primary Research

3.3 Secondary Research

3.4 Market Size Estimation

Chapter 4. Market Dynamics

Continued.

About Market Research Future:

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.

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Email: salesteam@marketresearchfuture.comby Tanya Gazdik , October 21, 2018

The Curacao Tourism Board is launching its first global marketing campaign with the theme "Feel It For Yourself."

Curacao's U.S. agency of record, Catch New York, came up with the concept for global implementation.

The more-than-seven-figure campaign will roll out via outdoors, digital and print, with key co-op partners. Primary media vehicles include JCDecaux, The New York Times, New York Media, Afar, Vector Media and Pattison Outdoor. It will run through 2019.

Curacao is not necessarily the lay-on-the-beach-all-day island, Hugo Clarinda, deputy director of Curacao Tourism Board, tells Marketing Daily. While you certainly can do this, we mainly look to target the adventurous traveler, someone who looks for activities such as water sports, kayaking, hiking or cliff jumping. Our typical traveler ranges from the age of 25-55 coming from not only the US and Canada, but six other countries."



The countrys past campaign, Right Now In Curacao, which broke in 2016, highlighted all the expected and unexpected reasons to visit the island.

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While the beach is a no-brainer, some people may not realize the history, nature and culture we have to offer, Clarinda says. Each ad showcased how we are not your average Caribbean destination, teasing consumers on what they could be doing 'Right Now."

While "Right Now in Curacao" was successful in providing Curacao a U.S. brand voice, the agency noticed that a large majority of visitors were coming from other places and for other reasons. After seeing how a tangible identity can make an impact, brand strategists saw this as an opportunity to shape that identity on a global scale.

The agency completed research and observed consumers in six key markets: the United States, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Colombia and Brazil, says Doug Spitzer, Catch New Yorks chief creative officer. Both former visitors and those who researched the island but did not visit were surveyed.

"The results found that 'Feeling Free' was the top theme that was both unique to Curacao and inspiring to travelers, Spitzer says. The sense of being free of all worries, feeling light and unencumbered, spiritually speaking. This extends to the idea that travelers can be truly themselves, without judgment.by Sara Guaglione , October 22, 2018



Forbes is partnering with NewCity Digital Limited to license its name to a new site focused on crypto markets, called Forbes CryptoMarkets.

Forbes CryptoMarkets  which launched in beta this morning  is also the result of a partnership with trade.io, a financial institution based on blockchain technology.

NewCity Digital is licensing the Forbes brand for the new venture and will run the Forbes CryptoMarkets site. Forbes, trade.io and NewCity Capital, a private investment company, are shareholders in NewCity Digital.

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Chien Lee, chairman of NewCity Capital and chairman of Forbes CryptoMarkets, states the partnership creates a trusted source for those seeking information on the new digital economy, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, cryptocurrencies, tokens and the companies underlying them.

The site will serve as a data-driven portal that tracks cryptocurrencies worldwide. Forbes CryptoMarkets team of data scientists and programmers are leveraging cryptocurrency exchanges and blockchain data to provide real-time pricing and volume information on several thousand cryptocurrencies.

As of Monday afternoon, Bitcoin ranked the highest.

The Forbes magazine and site cover the cryptocurrency and blockchain marketplaces,.

Headlines and blurbs from Forbes.com and other news sources covering cryptocurrency are aggregated on the Forbes CryptoMarkets site in a real-time newsfeed. The summaries link back to the full stories on their original sites.

The site will publish an initial five cryptocurrency indices worldwide. Crypto indices are weighted groupings of the most valuable crypto currencies.

These indices better reflect movements to a specific index and lessen the impact of a single large constituents market cap fluctuations, according to a spokesperson.

The indices include: Forbes CryptoMarkets Top 30 Global FB30, Top 10 Global "FB10, Top Cryptocurrencies Global, Top 10 Blockchain and DApps Global, as well as indices by sector, industry and cryptocurrency use-case.

The initial indices will be published as an informational tool to illustrate market trends. As of Monday, the "Indices" tab is working.

The site is led by David Feldman, Chief Technology Officer of Forbes CryptoMarkets. Feldman, who came from NewCity Digital, has formerly served as a partner at IBM and a Accenture Digital executive.

Forbes CryptoMarkets expects to offer the site in seven languages, including: English, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, French and Vietnamese.by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, October 22, 2018

Attorneys general in three states -- Texas, Nebraska and Arkansas -- are supporting the Federal Communications Commission's decision to roll back the Obama-era net neutrality rules.

They argue in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late last week that federal agencies are entitled to change their policies after a presidential election results in an administration change, as happened when President Obama left office in January of 2017 and Trump was sworn in.

So long as an agency acts within its realm of authority, its decision to alter a policy decision  or even reverse course  is not subject to a special, enhanced standard of review, the state attorneys general write in papers filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. A federal agency is not obligated to engage additional processes when reversing course from a previous administration. Decision makers can reconsider the same data and come to a different conclusion resulting in another interpretation and decision.

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Texas, Nebraska and Arkansas are asking the appellate court to reject attempts to reinstate the 2015 net neutrality rules, which prohibited broadband carriers from blocking or throttling online traffic and from charging companies higher fees for prioritized delivery. Last December, the Republican-led FCC voted 3-2 to revoke those rules, and to prohibit states from passing or enforcing their own net neutrality laws.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the prior regulations were "heavy handed" and depressed investment. But net neutrality proponents counter that the rules are necessary to prevent broadband providers from engaging in censorship, and from harming competitors.

In August, a host of organizations and tech companies asked the D.C. appellate court to invalidate the FCC's repeal, effectively restoring the Obama-era rules. Attorneys general from 22 other states -- including New York and California -- and the District of Columbia made a similar request.

Among other arguments, they say the agency lacked a good reason to repeal the 2015 rules, and that the repeal runs counter to directives that date to 2005, when the FCC first issued open internet policy principles.

Earlier this month, the FCC defended its repeal, arguing that Supreme Court precedent allows agencies to revise their approach. An agency is free to change its interpretation of an ambiguous statute so long as it 'adequately explains the reasons for a reversal of policy,' the FCC wrote in its legal papers, quoting from a 2005 Supreme Court case about broadband. The Supreme Court said in that case that the Communications Act was ambiguous about whether cable broadband is a telecommunications service.An innovative approach uses a biocompatible material to encapsulate probiotic bacteria and combines them with antibiotics to tackle treatment-resistant infections. Share on Pinterest A new approach for battling treatment-resistant bacteria proved successful in petri dish experiments. Every year, over 2 million people in the United States develop infections that are resistant to treatment, and approximately 23,000 people die as a result. These statistics have prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to deem drug resistance one of the biggest public health challenges of our time. Therefore, researchers are hard at work trying to develop ingenious ways of tackling so-called superbugs  bacteria that have become immune to antibiotic treatment. Lately, researchers have added probiotics to their arsenal against superbugs. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria found in foods, such as yogurt, kefir, pickles, or miso soup. Only a month ago, for example, a study suggested that simply consuming probiotics on a regular basis could reduce the need for antibiotics, thus helping to curb the drug resistance crisis. Now, researchers used probiotics to create a killer combination that destroyed two strains of treatment-resistant bacteria. The two co-senior and corresponding authors of the study are Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. Zhihao Li is the first author of the paper, now published in the journal Advanced Materials .

Using alginate to encapsulate probiotics The studys first author explains the problem of tackling antibiotic resistant infections with probiotics. On the one hand, he says, probiotics have been somewhat successful at tackling bacteria when applied to wounds. However, probiotics are usually not enough to destroy all of the bacteria found in a wound infection. On the other hand, Li says, adding antibiotic to the mix would kill too many bacteria, including the beneficial probiotics. So, Li and colleagues set out to find a workaround by enclosing the probiotics in a shell that protects them from being destroyed by the antibiotic. They chose a material called alginate to design the shell. Alginate stood out to the researchers as a good choice for two main reasons. Firstly, it is a component of the biofilm that bacteria naturally form when they are trying to shield themselves from antibiotics. Secondly, doctors already use the component in the treatment of wounds. We looked into the molecular components of biofilms, and we found that for Pseudomonas infection, alginate is very important for its resistance against antibiotics, Li says. However, so far no one has used this ability to protect good bacteria from antibiotics.Treatment with cannabis can relieve symptoms and improve quality of life in individuals with Crohns disease even though it has no impact on gut inflammation, according to new research presented at a conference recently. Share on Pinterest Cannabis oil relieved Crohns disease symptoms in a new, small study. The study is the first to show, contrary to medical opinion, that the beneficial effect of cannabis on Crohns disease is not the result of alleviating the gut inflammation that characterizes the condition. We know, says study leader Dr. Timna Naftali, who is a gastroenterology specialist at Tel Aviv Universitys Meir Hospital and Kupat Holim Clinic in Israel, that cannabinoids can have profound anti-inflammatory effects, but this study indicates that the improvement in symptoms may not be related to these anti-inflammatory properties. Dr. Naftali recently presented the study findings at the United European Gastroenterology annual meeting (UEG Week 2018), held in Vienna, Austria.

Crohns disease and symptoms Crohns disease is a severe type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a long-term condition that affects around 1.6 million people in the United States. In IBD, the immune system attacks tissue in the gastrointestinal tract, or gut, causing inflammation. In the case of Crohns disease, the inflammation can occur in any part of the gut between the mouth and the anus. The symptoms vary from person to person and can have a significant impact on quality of life. They include but are not limited to constant diarrhea, bleeding, constipation, pain and cramps in the abdomen, feeling an urgent need to go to the bathroom, and a sensation that the bowels have not emptied properly. Other symptoms of IBD, such as fatigue, appetite loss, weight loss, fever, and sweating at night, can accompany these. Another major type of IBD is ulcerative colitis, which mainly affects the colon or large intestine.

Cannabis and cannabinoids People have used cannabis, or marijuana, for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. The plant contains chemicals called cannabinoids that have specific effects in different parts of the body, including the immune system, the brain, and the rest of the central nervous system. The cannabinoids bind to cell receptors, or proteins, that receive signals that have specific effects inside cells. It is not easy for scientists to study the medicinal properties of cannabis because of legal constraints. Also, the concentrations of the psychoactive compounds in the plant vary widely. In the U.S., however, regulators are starting to ease restrictions on cannabis to allow more research to be done. Also, more and more states are legalizing its medical use. Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have not approved the use of cannabis as a medical treatment, they have approved the use of specific cannabinoids. These include nabilone and dronabinol, which some clinicians use to treat side effects related to cancer. Dr. Naftali says that many people with Crohns disease use cannabis regularly to relieve their symptoms. Doctors and scientists have always assumed that the relief was the result of some anti-inflammatory effect, and so Dr. Naftali and her colleagues decided to investigate this further.

Cannabis oil relieved symptoms They studied 46 people whose Crohns disease was moderately severe by randomly assigning them to two groups that received an 8-week treatment. In one group, the treatment consisted of cannabis oil, comprising 4 percent tetrahydrocannabinol and 15 percent cannabidiol. The other group took a placebo. The scientists used assessment tools that have been validated for research purposes to measure quality of life and severity of symptoms. They assessed gut inflammation by means of endoscopic exams and markers in blood and stool samples. After the treatment, there was a significant reduction in Crohns disease symptoms in the cannabis oil group compared with the placebo group. The results showed that 65 percent of the cannabis oil group met strict criteria for clinical remission of Crohns disease, compared with only 35 percent of the placebo group. The group that received the cannabis oil also showed meaningful improvements in measures of life quality, compared with the group that was given the placebo treatment.Researchers have found a way to predict a persons lifespan by studying the genetic variations in the human genome that are responsible for the inevitable process of aging. Share on Pinterest Genes hold the key to how long we will live, a new study suggests. We are all interested in living longer, healthier lives. From nutritional advice to lifestyle changes, researchers are hard at work unearthing the secrets to healthy longevity and sharing them with the public. However, while walking faster or eating fish may raise our chances of living longer, genes also have their say in predicting how long we live. New research delves deeper into our genetic fate. A new study presented at the American Society of Human Genetics 2018 Annual Meeting, held in San Diego, CA, suggests that our genetic variations can predict who will live longer. Paul Timmers, a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, is the first author of the paper, and he presented the study at the conference.

21 new genetic locations may predict lifespan Timmers and team wanted to discover the genetic factors that decide who gets to live longer. So, they matched genetic data on over half a million people with information on the lifespan of each of these individuals parents. The large sample allowed the researchers to gain statistical insights into the effects of individual genes. Overall, the researchers confirmed six genetic associations with aging that scientists had already established, such as the link between the APOE gene and the risk of developing Alzheimers. Also, the team uncovered 21 novel genetic locations that have a bearing on a persons lifespan. Using this new information, Timmers and colleagues devised a so-called polygenic score that predicted a persons survival. The score accurately predicted lifespan into deciles of expectation of life with a difference of more than 5 years from top to bottom decile. The studys first author explains what these findings mean, saying: Using a persons genetic information alone, we can identify the 10 percent of people with the most protective genes, who will live an average of 5 years longer than the least protected 10 percent. Paul TimmersRanveer Singh and Deepika Padukone's wedding took the nation by storm and left fans gasping for breath with the beautiful pictures.

After keeping mum for years and dodging the world's prying eyes and questions every single time, the couple's wedding announcement actually broke the internet in the process.

However, the gorgeous couple had a string of relationships in the past long before they finally found love in each other.

Here's a list of men Deepika dated before meeting Ranveer:

1. Nihar Pandya- Deepika and Nihar go back to the days when she moved from Bangalore to pursue her dreams in Mumbai. Rumour has it, that the two met in acting school back in 2005 and fell in love.

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2. Upen Patel- While there is no concrete proof that the two dated, rumours are rife that they had a thing when they were hot properties in the modelling world.

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3. Sid Mallya- This was one cosy affair with a lot of PDA. The gorgeous lady accompanied the business tycoon's son to many events and the couple was seen getting cosy during IPL matches.

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4. Ranbir Kapoor- This was one affair which apparently broke Deepika's heart. When they made their relationship public, they instantly became Bollywood's hottest couple and fans were crazy over their chemistry. She has always been vocal about this relationships and in reality, they continue to remain good friends and have worked in projects like 'Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani' and 'Tamasha' post their breakup.

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Coming to Ranveer Singh, his known relationships are not many in number actually. Here are two ladies from the showbiz world with whom he has been linked with:

1. Ahana Deol- Not many know this but Ranveer's heart was stuck on Ahana back in college, before she went on to date Aditya Roy Kapur.

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2. Anushka Sharma- Everyone knows that the two made a lovely couple and even did some great movies together. In fact, Ranveer made his debut opposite Anushka in 'Band Baaja Baarat'. Ranveer has always remained cordial towards her and there's no bad blood between them.

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It's kind of adorable to see how they went through multiple heartbreaks to finally find true love in each other. The couple is all set to get married next month and it will be nothing less than a fairytale wedding.On Sunday, Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh announced their November wedding and while we were still recuperating from this news, another celebrity has confirmed his wedding in December this year.

The celebrity in question is the ultimate 'King of Comedy', Kapil Sharma, who has lately been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

 Instagram

Reportedly, comedian Kapil Sharma is all set to get married to his girlfriend Ginni Chatrath on December 12 this year. The couple will tie the knot in Jalandhar and their wedding is expected to be a lavish one.

The couple will host a grand reception in Mumbai on December 14.

Kapil told IANS, "We wanted to keep it low key. But Ginni is the only daughter in her family. Her folks wanted the wedding to be on a lavish scale. And I completely understand their sentiments. My mother also wants the wedding to be lavish."

 Twitter

Kapil further said that he wanted to share the news with his fans and media sooner, but he kept mum because he was promoting his Punjabi film 'Son Of Manjeet Singh'. This is said to his first film as a producer.

"For the past few weeks, I've been promoting my Punjabi film. I didn't want to talk about the wedding during the promotions, although the media repeatedly kept asking," he said.

 Instagram

After entertaining us for months and making us laugh our asses off, Kapil Sharma had a nasty fallout with his co-actor Sunil Grover after Sharma's infamous mid-air fight. Many stars left the show, some came back but the damage was already done and the show went off-air citing bad ratings.

back in mumbai after one n half month.. now it's time to make u people laugh with the new season of #TKSS  pic.twitter.com/ce1FI7qmAa  KAPIL (@KapilSharmaK9) October 16, 2018

But now, Kapil is coming back to the TV screen with a bang with the new season of 'The Kapil Sharma Show' and let's just hope that things soon start falling in place for him. He even tweeted about his return to Mumbai.In a bid to restore confidence and bring about good results the Ministry of Basic Education is holding workshops around the country in regions to ensure uniformity in applying teaching skills.

Speaking to Botswana Guardian, Coordinator of School Turn Around, Tshwarelo Hosia revealed that they have been running workshops for the regions and so far they have covered five regions being Gantsi, Kgalagadi, Kgatleng, North West and Chobe.

The strategy wants schools to worry less about external factors because there has been a culture of shifting the blame, diverting attention from the school to outside forces.

We are saying even in the worst case scenario, if families were to become dysfunctional, schools must become functional. We are saying it is the duty of a principal to establish a unique and distinct culture which is different from the village culture. A student must realise that they are on holy ground which is different from where he comes from, said Hosia.

According to him the school head should establish a culture of hard work, a culture of reading by the manner in which he manages his own school. That is why no turn around strategy in the world has ever taken place without a strong principal. In fact, research says that there is a direct and intimate link between leadership and results. That is why as we move about, the response is overwhelming; our principals- you can ask them all over the region that we have covered- are saying that this workshop is one of a kind.

Unique because for the first time it is taking us to what we know we should be doing and we have not been doing. For in instance, we are taking the principals back to tried and tested methods which somewhat fell by the wayside. We are saying what is wrong with common planning, with common scheming, collaborative teaching, with peer teaching?

Teachers in the same department are working in silos and not necessarily as a team to support one another. The strategy says it is the duty of the principal to ensure that first of all there is harmony in the department; the school should become a professional learning community where there is exchange of notes and ideas on the best instructional practices. We are saying every day is an opportunity for the school to be better than yesterday.

Everything rests with the principal, knowing your teachers well means you know their strengths and weaknesses. It is the duty of the principal to ensure that gaps are identified and closed.Further teachers must be assisted on issues of lesson preparation, is this lesson planned, examining the quality of the lesson plan and how well the lesson plan will help the learners to learn better.

What is happening now is that people are lesson planning for the purpose of compliance because the school says that they should plan and they prepare lesson plans which are not necessarily scrutinised to check issues of quality. People are assessed occasionally for purposes of filling the performance forms but not necessarily to improve the instructions every day. This is where the problem is because performance improvement is seen as an external imposition, he said.



Strategy

The strategy came following the appointment of Dr. Collie Monkge as Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Basic Education. It is a component of the Education Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) coupled with a research that was done by the Ministry of Education.

The Ministry had engaged Professor Kipper as consultant to look into why academic achievement levels are very low in the ministry of basic education. Some of Professor Kippers observations were that the ministry must strengthen governance and accountability in schools since Principals had taken their feet off the pedal regarding supervision of the classroom. The strategy is about ensuring that the principal gets involved in classroom issues.

The teachers are coming from the same colleges and University of Botswana; they are the same as they have the same qualifications. Therefore what will differ is management, how the principal is managing the resources. Issues of deployment are the responsibility of the principal to ensure that he knows his teachers very well, who can teach a standard seven class, a low class, who can teach pure sciences and for what reason.

Hosea said they have been advising the teachers that the allocation of classes for results is the prerogative of the school head but that teachers say they want the classes to be allocated on a rotational basis. The Turn Around on the other hand demands that the principal use data as a basis for allocating classes. It is about getting the principal back into the classroom.

The principal must assume his rightful place as an instructional leader in the school set up. The principal cannot confine himself in office when the school is not really doing well. We are saying the quality of a school cannot exceed the quality of the principal or teachers.



Observation

The principals are being asked if they know what they are looking for when they go to observe a lesson. This is so, because sometimes people observe the teacher and care little about the learner. We remind the principals to look at the learners what are they doing and saying a teacher can dramatise the lesson, teach to impress the one who is observing.

Hosea says that during the observation one must ensure that all different cognitive skills are covered. This is because at times teachers complain that learners are unable to comply. The teacher determines the attitude of the learners. There is the issue of professional development, some people think it means the ministry must send you for further studies abroad, others say the in service department has died, well there is an element of truthiness in it, but where does professional development begin?

It begins at school level, when receiving new teachers, how does the principal immerse the new arrivals into the professional culture? Teachers can go as high as the principal wants them to go.Hosea said at the moment the culture of teaching is not about resources, it has collapsed because students are not given enough practice and feedback on time. Much as we appreciate there are challenges in resources, but the biggest resource at the disposal of the principal is the teacher.The establishment of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Botswana has contributed immensely to increasing access to tertiary education and diversifying learning programmes, Minister Ngaka Ngaka said last week during the Universitys 11th graduation ceremony.

Celebrated under the theme, Change the World, the Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology minister, encouraged graduands to be bold and use the skills they have aqcuired during their studies to change the employment landscape.

A more important dimension of this theme is that by being industry-ready, you will create, lead, and even grow your firms, said the minister citing Limkokwing graduates who have led the revolution in transforming media and other industries and even set up media houses, as an inspiration to the new graduants.

Botswana Gazette reporter, Sonny Serite, who was also one of the graduands, said he has always had the experience in the field but without a qualification until he got a scholarship in 2014. Speaking on behalf of the Botswana Media Fraternity Scholarship beneficiaries, Serite expressed gratitude to the founder and president of the global university, Prof Emeritus Tan Sri Dato Sri Paduka Dr Limkokwing for their achievements.

The face of the University, Mercy Thebe urged all the graduates to go and utilise their qualifications and change the country and the world than depend on being employed. You are the future innovators, motivators, leaders and caretakers. You have big responsibilities on your shoulders to move the world forward in a positive way, she advised.

Limkokwing High Flyer/ Industry Advisor, Atone Zwinani also encouraged the class of 2018 to go out there and be visionaries that transform industries and economies. It is not going to be easy, but keep on and have faith in your work, embrace every challenge and be a high flyer and a gem of Africa, said Zwinani.

Ngaka told the graduates to take an active part in the affairs of their university, adding that the Limkokwing Alumni Association is to be launched in the near future, therefore graduates should support it. So far, over 14 000 graduates from all over Africa have graduated from Limkokwing Botswanaand thousands more have travelled to the campuses in Malaysia and London.Residents of Makwate Village in Mahalapye East constituency are bitterly split over the decision to quarry Makwate Hill for the construction of Dibete-Mookane-Machaneng road.Makwate Village is situated 55 kilometres from Mahalapye. Arriving in the village, one is greeted by the hill, as it stands guard over the village.

Besides the hill, there is really nothing much to the village. That would perhaps explain the uproar that has since developed in Makwate. Information reaching this publication is that there is ongoing quarrying of the hill to produce concrete for construction of the road that passes through Makwate. However some residents feel that the Hill is a national heritage site, so unique, diverse and deserving of conservation.

They object to creating a burrow pit at Makwate Hill because they feel the hill has significant attributes of cultural and historical significance, spiritual and archaeological importance and is also home to many species such as birds, animals and plant life.The quarrying action, they say, will amount to irreversible destruction and kill their dreams of turning the hill into an eco-tourism development project that could benefit the Makwate community in future.

When the Botswana Guardian team visited Makwate Village recently, the area to be quarried was already fenced. Although there was no one at the site, it was evident that land clearing had already begun; the area had been debushed all the way to the hill. Jacob Coetzee, a resident of Makwate and a man who has been very vocal about the goings-on at Makwate said he was still in shock at the governments conduct.

He said it beats him why government would want to destroy a hill that they believe is worth treasuring. As if that was not enough, it seems government is not willing to listen to residents complaints and fears that the beautiful hill will soon be destroyed. My ploughing field is just 200m away from the area to be quarried, my home is 400m away and my business is only 750m away.

This whole thing will obviously affect my business because tourists passing by Makwate will no longer enjoy the beautiful view of the Hill when they fuel their cars at my filling station, he said. One elderly man, Elliot Tlhankane (69) said big machines have been moving up and down on the west side of the hill. He said contractors had been given surface rights to quarry and were now busy at work.

With despair and disappointment, so bitter it seemed to burn his tongue; Tlhankane said in all his life he perceived the hill special. Actually his entire life revolved around it. He had heard beautiful stories surrounding the hill and how their great grandparents once lived up there. Tlhankane reared his small livestock there when growing up.

That hill has many treasures that need to be preserved; we are shocked that the government is willing to destroy such a beautiful feature that boasts of a rich history. There are also graves up there because my parents shared with me the history behind this hill, Tlhankane said.

Quizzed on how a decision was reached to quarry the hill, Tlhankane explained that there had been meetings at the Kgotla with the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), land board and roads department present. He had always been against the idea of the burrow pit however he was shocked to learn at a later time that the process was going ahead and surprisingly, the village had agreed to the quarry.

The owner of Bodibeng Bar and General Dealer situated not far from the hill, Sarah Batsalelwang said she was also against the governments decision to destroy the hill. Batsalelwang argued that proper consultation was not done adding that she wishes the government should reconsider quarrying the hill.We have nothing against the road being constructed but we cannot celebrate development at the expense of destroying the hill.

Firstly we have not been presented with the Kgotla minutes that prove that indeed the people of Makwate agreed to the burrow pit and also we have not been given the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (EIA) by the DEA, Batsalelwang said.

Helpless frustration balled in her chest, Batsalelwang explained that they do not believe that the EIA was ever carried out. She said that they have been regular customers at Sefhare Land board offices trying to reason with them, hoping they will have a change of heart but to no avail. Land board has granted contractors surface rights to quarry, she said.

Batsalelwang added that the noise from the quarry would affect her business, My customers come here to relax, now imagine that with all the noise pollution from this side disturbing them? My flowers that beautify this place are most likely to die because of the dust but I was never consulted, she argued.

Meanwhile headman of Mmuabui Ward, Motswaudi Diau accused all those who are against the quarry as power hungry and want to stop developments in the village. He said he was present when residents of Makwate agreed that the hill be used to extract the needed concrete for the road and it was disturbing that some now want to interfere.

Diau labelled those who were against the quarry as outsiders who could not fully explain the culture of the Hill. What graves are they talking about; they cannot even prove what they claim. They will not quarry the entire hill but only a part of it that is even unnoticeable at the back, he said.Village Development Committee (VDC) Vice Chairperson Joel Koobeetswe said they have taken into consideration the peoples cries and wish for the quarry to stop while they assess the matter.

He acknowledged that the Hill had deeprooted culture that they need to take into consideration. We should be careful not to destroy what could be beneficial to us in future, he said.Another resident Sedie Rankhudu born and bred in Makwate claimed she has a plot not far from the hill however she also was not told of the developments. She had wished to turn the hill into a tourism site especially that the village was not very far from Parrs Halt border.

About 100 cars pass here daily now imagine if we were to beautify this place, make it look attractive, the dream was there but we had not shared it because we were still trying to brainstorm how best to present it, she said.Nevertheless it remains to be seen if their pleas will be listened to. According to the minutes of Sefhare Land Board Special board meeting held on the 13th -14th March 2018, the complaints of Makwate concerned citizens were dismissed and the application for the quarry approved.

However they have since appealed the Sefhare land boards decision to Ngwato land board in Serowe. Ngwato landboard acknowledged receiving the appeal on the 4th May 2018. The concerned residents are hoping for a positive response from Serowe however they are worried that the land board is taking long to respond despite the fact that the contractors are busy clearing the land.

When reached, Member of Parliament (MP) for Mahalapye East also Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Botlogile Tshireletso said she knew nothing about the matter. Tshireletso distanced herself from the matter saying the residents never told her of what was happening in Makwate.

The Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources, Conservation and Tourism could not respond to the questionnaire sent to them three weeks ago despite repeated efforts to reach the ministry. Alice Mmolawa, the chief public relations officer was always said to be held up in meetings or not available.Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 22)  The government can name the third telco in more than two weeks, a Cabinet official said Monday.

"On November 7, we will have a provisional new major player, barring any decision from the court," Information and Telecommunication Acting Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. said during a Senate committee hearing on the search for the third telco.

Rio referred to the legal complaint filed by a telco bidder. A Manila court had junked the temporary restraining order filed by NOW Telecom, which sued the National Telecommunications Commission for allegedly institutionalizing a "money-making scheme" in its requirements for companies who wish to bid for the slot.

"We are on track in fulfilling President Duterte's desired timeline, which is to have NMP (new major player) by November this year," Rio said.

If it all works out, the winning third telco may even have initial subscribers by mid-2019, he said.

"Bigyan natin ng six months or so yung third telco para makapagrollout ng kanilang imprastruktura, then ito naman baka by middle part of next year makakuha na sila ng subscriber by June," Rio said.

If the selected third major player fails to build its organization, the second winning bidder will automatically take its place to compete with Globe and Smart.

Eight companies have bought bid documents worth P1 million, including three foreign groups. Bidders are required to have congressional franchise.

Rio said one of the foreign bidders can be considered bigger than Globe and Smart.

The third telco will be selected using an automated technology. The computer will determine its level of commitment in terms of reach and speed.

Amid cyber security threats and data breaches worldwide, bidders are also required to declare that they will not be a national security threat.

"There's a provision that whoever will win must assure the government that it will not be a national security threat," Rio said.

But 17 days before government will announce the third telco, some issues have yet to be ironed out.

Senators want to make sure a common tower will not be monopolized.

"Meron kasing isang nag-suggest na dapat isang kumpanya lang o dalawang kumpanya lang ang pwedeng magtayo ang cell towers  kalokohan iyon. Dapat kung sinong pwedeng magtayo ng cell towers basta nasa regulasyon ay magtayo dahil kung maraming cell towers mas gaganda ang signal natin," Senate Public Services Comittee Chairman Grace Poe said.

In the next hearing, senators will tackle safeguards on national security for the the third telco.Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) Central Committee is said to have made a U-turn on the suspension of the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) from the Umbrella for Democratic Change.When Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) National Executive Committee announced the suspension of BMD last month, BPP associated itself with the decision.

BPP and BMD have been close allies in the coalition following the split of the BMD last year. Although BPP President Motlatsi Molapisi confirmed that the suspension was a collective decision of the NEC, during its series of political rallies, the BMD on the other hand maintained that BPP was not part of the decision. The party argues that the decision was made by Botswana Congress Party (BCP) and the Botswana National Front (BNF).

According to information reaching this publication BPP has since proposed a meeting with BNF tomorrow (Saturday) to discuss the matter. The meeting follows another that was held between BPP and BMD recently regarding the suspension. The BPP central committee is said to have decided to disassociate itself with the decision taken to suspend BMD.

BMD has for long been fighting in the same corner with BPP and many were taken by surprise when Molapisi revealed that they have endorsed the suspension. During the Saturday meeting BPP is expected to inform the BNF that it does not support the suspension of the BMD. According to sources, BPP will also question the participation of BCP in the NEC proceedings while its membership has not been confirmed.

BMD Secretary General Gilbert Mangole confirmed that they recently had a meeting with BPP. Mangole however stated that the meeting was a bilateral one that they can have with any of the UDC contracting partners. He said he is not in a position to share with the media what was discussed because the meeting was internal.

BPP Secretary General Venter Galetshabiwe confirmed the proposed meeting with BNF. At press time Galetshabiwe revealed that they had not yet received reply from BNF. We are not in a position to share with you what we would be discussing with our colleagues. Matters of bilateral are sensitive. There are issues that have to remain internal until such a time we believe have to be shared with the public.

So even after our meeting with BNF we might not be able to share with you what we discussed. Some of the matters of course might border on UDC but we always want to treat UDC matters with the sensitivity they deserve, he said.

BNF Information and Publicity Secretary Justin Hunyepa said he has not yet received information to that effect. He said all he knows is that they are busy with preparations for the Saturday rally in Gaborone. The rally will be addressed by Advocate Boko, Molapisi who is also UDC Chairman and UDC Vice President BCP leader Dumelang Saleshando.Former President Festus Mogae who is the Choppies chairman was recently forced to cut short his planned official trip abroad in order to come home and attend board meetings to resolve the financial losses the company suffered in Zimbabwe due to fraud by one of its directors.

Although it is public knowledge that Choppies Zimbabwe lost its money through fraud by one of their own, both Mogae and the group CEO for Choppies Distribution Centre Private Limited and Choppies Enterprises, Ottapathi Ramachandran have adopted a stance not to talk to the media but instead allow the court to decide.

Choppies allegedly incurred financial losses when one of its Zimbabwean directors and son to former Zimbabwe Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, Siqokoqela, looted an excess of USD51,000 (about P5.1m) worth of cash and goods from the outlets countrywide. Siqokoqela is facing 170 counts of fraud or theft.

Mphoko is a director of Nanavac Investments Private Limited, a local partner to the Choppies Distribution Centre (Proprietary) Limited. However, he is a shareholder in the retail business and a non-executive director. Choppies Enterprises Limited manages, controls, operates, and owns 93 percent of economic interest in Nanavac Investments Pty Ltd. This business is a separate entity from the listed Botswana entity Choppies Enterprises Limited.

Reliable reports coming from Zimbabwe indicate that Mphokos wife, Nomagugu, is also facing fraud charges for allegedly entering different Choppies outlets in Bulawayo and demanding cash. It is said she ordered 15 Choppies Supermarket managers in Bulawayo to unlawfully give her more than USD30 000 cash from their POS machines after threatening them with either deportation or dismissal. Nomagugu is facing 49 counts of extortion.



Trial dates

Siqokoqela appeared in court on Wednesday but the new trial dates had to be set at the request of his legal representatives who told the court that they need time to prepare. However, time has run out for his wife Nomagugu who has to face the court today (Friday).

Speaking to Botswana Guardian on behalf of Mogae, Private Secretary Rhee Hetanang said the former president prefers not to comment at least for now.

He says the matter is sub-judice and therefore he is constrained to address either the media and, or any third parties on the subject matter.The group CEO for Choppies Distribution Centre Private Limited and Choppies Enterprises, Ottapathi Ramachandran also declined to comment saying, I do know much about the case, I am not allowed to talk to the media before he referred this publication to the Choppies attorneys.

Speaking to Botswana Guardian in a telephone interview on Wednesday, Choppies Attorney Munyaradzi Nzarayapenga of Dube, Banda, Nzayapenga and Partners confirmed the particulars of the case. He said it is true that Siqokoqela Mphoko is facing charges.

He appeared today in court but the trial date had to be postponed and has been set to commence from 26 to 30 November 2018.

The matter was postponed following the request by his lawyers who told the court that they were not ready to start their defence and applied for a later date.Subsequent to their application both the applicants and defence attorneys agreed to block their entire week in order to accommodate the trial date.Nzarayapenga further confirmed that the trial of Mphokos wife will start today (Friday) 19 October 2018.



The case

Zimbabwean Newspapers recently went aboard with the story after Mphoko and his wife were arrested and charged for fraud at different dates. The Bulawayo based Chronicle wrote that Prosecutor Nkathazo Dlodlo told the court that between July last year and June this year, Mphoko proceeded to various Choppies supermarkets where he allegedly demanded varying amounts of cash, goods and services for various purposes from the employees without approval from the board.

The accused person deceived the employees into believing that he was the one at the helm of Choppies Zimbabwe and had authority to demand or collect anything he wanted from the business. He also told the employees that he had the authority to collect goods on a credit facility, which was a misrepresentation, said Dlodlo.

The court heard that on different occasions, Mphoko collected cash, groceries and an assortment of building materials and ordered personnel from the finance department to deduct the money from his salary.The accused person would then confront personnel from the finance department and order them not to deduct any amount from his salary.

There were occasions when he also misrepresented that he intended to replace the money through swiping from Point of Sale (POS) machines, said Dlodlo.The Chronicle further states that court papers show that, Mphoko by virtue of being a non-executive director, was entitled to a monthly gross salary of $10 000, company vehicle, fuel, telephone allowance and 3,53 percent of profit after tax as dividend at the end of each year.

Although he was not supposed to be directly involved in the day to day operations of the company, Mphoko allegedly masqueraded as the owner of the company in Zimbabwe and even threatened to either dismiss or deport employees of Indian origin for defying his orders.

The matter came to light in May 2018 when the Botswana-based Choppies group chief executive officer, Ottapathi Ramachandran, discovered that there were a series of financial imbalances while going through the company management accounting books.It was discovered that the company was prejudiced of $51 945, 53. The matter was reported to the police and investigations were conducted leading to Mphokos arrest and nothing was recovered.



Statement

Recently Choppies issued a statement saying that Mphoko routinely approached various Choppies supermarkets in Zimbabwe to demand and take cash from the cash Till points. He misrepresented to Choppies employees that, as a director, he is entitled to take money from the company via the tills.

When Choppies management became aware of this conduct, Mphoko was informed that he must desist from his actions. He was made aware that his actions do not constitute good practice and, in any event, conflict with Choppies internal policies.Despite being this, Mphoko persisted with his conduct. He was further warned that, should he continue, the matter would be reported to the police.

As his unacceptable conduct continued, charges were brought against Mphoko. This resulted in his arrest and arraignment before a Zimbabwean magistrate on 170 counts of fraud and theft. Mphoko has since been remanded out of custody on bail.CASEVILLE -- The Caseville United Methodist Church will celebrate its 150th Sesquicentennial anniversary next weekend.

A cake and ice cream reception will follow the 10 a.m. morning service on Oct. 28

Often referred to as the most photographed church in Michigan, the faith-based community is blessed to worship in the 144 year-old Gothic-inspired building, with its 70-foot-high steeple. The light in the steeple was used as a beacon to guide ships safely to the harbor on Saginaw Bay.

The tallest and most visible building in town remains largely unchanged since its construction in 1874.The church's elegant stained-glass windows and raised-tin wall and ceiling coverings is a lasting reminder of when people lived and worshiped differently.

Pastor Don and Vickie Wojewski welcome everyone to join them for their Heritage Celebration of a century and a half continuously preaching Jesus Christ as the Savior who died and rose again for the entire world.

May the Good News proclaimed in this church since 1868 along the shores of Lake Huron, be carried on until completion on the day of Jesus' coming back to earth.CARO  Demolition of some buildings at the Caro Center will start next week making way for a new Caro Psychiatric Hospital just outside the city of Caro.

A groundbreaking Friday kicked of the $115 million, 225,000-square foot hospital project. When completed in 2021, the hospital will have 200 beds and hire an additional 150 employees.

Seven former residential houses and Murray Hall will be demolished to make way for the new hospital, which will be on Wells Road just off Chambers Road south of the administration building.

"This is a real economic boost for the area," said Tuscola County Economic Development Corporation Director Steve Erickson. "They plan to use all local contractors and more jobs will be added when it opens."

The center currently has 349 employees and there are 398 other jobs that indirectly benefit from the center. The center's operation provides an economic impact of over $54 million in benefits.

"I feel real good about this moving forward," said Tuscola County District #3 Commissioner Kim Vaughan. "There were and still are other communities who want this hospital."

When it was first announced the state planned to build a new hospital, several other communities vied for it. Because of the devastating impact the loss of the center and its hundreds of jobs would have, Tuscola County officials lobbied hard to have the new hospital in Caro.

"Thank you for keeping the hospital here," said some of the state employees to the governor at the event.

Although the project started, a key aspect that has not been worked out is providing water to the center, which is in Indianfields Township.

Because the township does not have the means to finance the project, it comes down to the City of Caro or the county doing it, and each has reservations about being able to recoup the cost from water sales. Caro city and Indianfields Township officials keep saying an agreement is forthcoming.

Although municipal sewer runs from the city to the hospital, water does not. The state wants municipal water provided to the hospital, but the city, township and county officials have not reached an agreement as to who will be responsible for running the water line 1.9 miles to the center  at a cost of $2.4 million  even though it was announced in June 2017 that the hospital would be built in Caro rather than relocated elsewhere.

Construction is expected to start in the spring and take about two years to complete.

Caro Center's history dates to May 1914 when it was originally founded as the Michigan Farm Colony for Epileptics at Wahjamega. During its heyday, the center's capacity was 2,300. Currently, there are 150 patients, and when the new hospital is completed, 50 more patients will be added.PORT AUSTIN  A pile of clothes somehow caught on fire in a closet, causing an estimated $10,000 worth of damage at an apartment located at 299 Grindstone Road over the weekend.

According to Port Austin Fire Chief Don Zimmerman, firefighters were called to the scene around 1:05 a.m. Saturday morning to Bent Tree North Apartments. Zimmerman said the fire appeared to have originated in the closet of one of the rooms, but officials say the cause is undetermined.To the editor:

Just a note on the marijuana rumors. I will throw out some facts and figures, but what I would like you, the readers, to do is go to the website, Colorado marijuana problems. Make up your own mind; you dont have to agree with me.

2009-2012: Medical marijuana year, traffic deaths increased 48 percent.

2013-2014: First use of recreational marijuana, deaths increased 41 percent.

For the years from 2006 to 2014, traffic deaths related to pot increased 154 percent.

Emergency room visits on likely related group increased 77 percent; could be related to marijuana group increased 68 percent.

State school superintendent says marijuana is the No. 1 problem in Colorado schools today.

Marijuana users are three times more likely to use hard drugs. As for the money for schools, it isnt there, ask their teachers. Ask your doctor, ask your law enforcement, ask your ambulance crews.

Enough of my facts and figures, go look it up for yourself.

Clark Elftman

PigeonTo the editor:

Hello, this is Dr. Dwight Slater. It has been my honor and privilege to be serving the population of Huron and Tuscola counties for about 17 years now in two of the Thumbs best ERs.

If I have gained some of your respect, I would like to speak to you about two issues that will be on the ballot in the coming Nov. 6 elections. Though my political position or those of my patients will in no way detract from giving my best medical care to any patient whom I serve.

The issue of recreational marijuana will be on the Nov. 6 ballot. Medical marijuana has already been approved in Michigan. In rare instances, I concur that it can help some patients.

Though controlled, it is already used more extensively than is wise. Marijuana does affect judgement much like alcohol. People should not drive under its influence.

Colorados fatal car accidents have increased since they approved recreational use and are now attributing to at least 8 percent of the total accident fatalities. I have heard and seen situations where users have committed crimes ranging from murder, to theft, or abuse that they would not have done under normal conditions, according to character witnesses.

In the long term, there is evidence that this will hasten progress to Alzheimers dementia in older age. I will vote against approving recreational marijuana in Michigan and urge others to as well.

Secondly, I strongly support John James for U.S. Senator.

I knew him as a track star when he was a teen and ran with my sons. He was diligent, hard-working and good."

He graduated from West Point, became a special OPS Ranger qualified officer, then served as an Army Apache helicopter pilot in combat situations in the Middle East and was honorably discharged after eight years of service as a captain. This military experience gives insight, calmness in crisis, and international experience which can help keep America safe.

He has run and expanded his familys transportation business since he returned from the military in 2012, providing more than 100 new jobs for Michigan. He has earned an MBA and master of management degree from Penn State and the University of Michigan.

He has practical insight in how to advance small businesses which are the key motor of the U.S. economy. The largest farmers union of Michigan has endorsed him. He has wise positions on improving education beyond just throwing money at the problem. These are the keys to helping the disadvantaged people of Michigan of all races.

He holds conservative social positions. He is active in a local church, even humbly serving in the nursery. As a younger, 36-year-old African American with cultural and experiential insights, I believe he can help heal racial divides in Michigan. His total experience will help him serve well as a productive and wise senator.

Debbie Stabenow, the incumbent, with 43 years in government, has been a senator for 18 years and has been the primary sponsor of only nine bills, per her own website. She is an obstructionist to our current economic prosperity, a follower rather than a leader, and is in the far-left quartile of the U.S. Senators, per GovTrack.

I invite you to vote with me for John James for Senator.

Dwight Slater

PigeonUmbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) might lose out on a USD 3million (P30 million) windfall for the 2019 general election campaign should it fail to resolve its internal fights and forge ahead to expel Botswana Movement for Democracy.

Democratic Alliance (DA) and African Liberal Network (ALN) are said to have offered to mediate in Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) impasse which has polarised the coalition movement beyond reproach. UDC National Executive Committee (NEC) has since suspended BMD and speculation has been rife that the party might be expelled.

DA has bilateral relations with BMD and both are members of ALN. According to information reaching this publication DA President Mmusi Maimane and ALN leader Stevens Mokgalapa met with BMD leader Advocate Sidney Pilane in South Africa this past Sunday where they shared their desire to break the impasse.This publication has it on good authority that both the DA and ALN are prepared to commit about USD 3 million (P30 million) to the UDC 2019 election campaign but that can only happen if BMD is part of UDC.

The relationship between UDC and ALN-DA is consequent to BMD being part of the coalition.BMD has been accusing their partners in the UDC- Botswana Congress Party (BCP) and Botswana National Front (BNF) of using Advocate Pilane as a scapegoat for the UDC problems. BMD has been suspended on claims that its president has not received warm welcome from the public and members of the UDC.

Insiders within the BMD have revealed to this publication that a faction within the BMD NEC has initiated the talks with DA and ALN to intervene. This is said to have happened a fortnight ago. Information gathered suggest that Advocate Pilane seemed at the Sunday meeting to be willing to concede as Mokgalapa and Maimane persuaded him to consider letting go of some of the constituencies and wards for the sake of progress in the UDC.

Since the split of BMD which saw the formation of Alliance for Progressives (AP), there has been calls within the UDC for BMD to release some of its constituencies since the split has affected its capability to deliver on the 13 constituencies allocated it. BMD was yesterday (Thursday 18th) scheduled to make representation regarding the suspension. The party has since indicated that the suspension is a nullity and the grounds raised for the suspension are of no basis.

Following the Sunday meeting Maimane and Mokgalapa are said to have proposed to meet UDC President Advocate Duma Boko upon his return from Geneva where he traveled on Parliament official business. The meeting is expected to discuss the outcome of the meeting with the BMD leader and what can be done going forward to resolve the UDC problems.

BMD National Spokesperson Rasina Rasina said he is constrained to discuss the matter and referred all enquiries to Advocate Pilane, who could not be reached as his mobile phone rang unanswered. However, ALN leader Mokgalapa confirmed to this publication in a telephonic interview that they did meet Advocate Pilane on the UDC matter.

We met the BMD President and Secretary General Gilbert Mangole in Pretoria on Sunday. We are worried about the current situation in the UDC. We are going to be meeting UDC President on Friday when he returns because he has travelled abroad. We will meet him at the airport before he connects a flight to Botswana, said Mokgalapa.

He revealed that they could not meet Advocate Boko when he left for Geneva because of time constraints when he was connecting flights at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. The ALN leader meanwhile refuted claims that they have committed funding to the UDC 2019 election campaign. That is not true we have not committed any funding to UDC.

Remember only BMD in the coalition is a member of ALN. Other members of the UDC are not. We only have a relationship with them because we strongly believe in opposition coalition. We are only assisting in capacity building and strategies, Mokgalapa pointed out.

During the February 2018 UDC Congress at Boipuso Hall Maimane told members of the media that UDC is a viable project and the DA would do all it can to help the UDC win the 2019 general elections. He stated that with a united opposition possibility of taking over power from Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) is very likely. He explained that they would assist with strategies for campaigns and other resources including funding.

DA and ALN are said to have started work on campaign strategies for the UDC and an analysis has been made on how the election should be approached. Advocate Boko also last month revealed that a team of experts is working on the campaign strategy for the UDC which will ensure the coalition wins the 2019 general election.From a luxury spa in central Bangkok, Wei Siang Yu hopes to lure Thailand's latest tourist target: couples needing a bit of extra magic to make babies.

Billed as "second-honeymoon" breaks, Wei provides wellness treatments in tranquil surroundings designed to boost the chances of naturally conceiving and bearing a healthy child. The Singaporean national has ambitions of hosting thousands of couples next year paying 30,000 yuan ($4,325) each for a three-day program, and reckons around half of them will travel from China.

"We see a huge market in this new topic of lifestyle modification, which requires a balance of body, mind and soul," said Wei, a trained doctor who fronted TV programs in Singapore last decade such as 'Dr. Love's Super Baby Making Show.'

Thailand's fertility industry is chasing a new client: Chinese couples finally free to have more than one child. The nation is already Asia's top destination for medical tourism thanks to quality treatments at reasonable prices combined with access to sun-soaked beach resorts. Chinese travelers are an obvious target for new business as they make up the bulk of overall visitors to Thailand, where tourism underpins a fifth of the economy.

Having already ditched its one-child policy, China is planning to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have in order to slow the pace of its aging population. Wei is targeting the nation's women, who he says have endured out-of-reach quality healthcare and an education system that insufficiently tackles reproductive health.

"Most healthcare operators are rushing to tap this vast market," said Tanatip Suppradit, acting chief executive officer of Thonburi Healthcare Group, which is this month opening a $93 million fertility center in Bangkok. "The reasonable costs, good service and beautiful nature will definitely make Thailand the top destination for Chinese couples seeking these services."

Bangkok Dusit Medical Services's shares have climbed about 20 percent this year thanks partly to medical tourism, helping it become the most valuable hospital operator in the developing world. Foreign patients accounted for almost a third of sales and jumped 10 percent in the first half of 2018 from a year earlier. Growth from China was 30 percent.

Wei, who is also the founder of the Borderless Healthcare Group, offers his pre-pregnancy package in contracted day spa facilities and is planning a formal launch by year-end. Initial social media promotion fronted by Wei has already helped attract couples seeking the second-honeymoon experience, he said. The facilities may eventually expand to include overnight accommodation -- guests currently stay offsite.

"The couples are highly stressed because they have limited time" to have a child before aging complications set in, said Wei. "The gene pool needs to be maintained," he said, adding that many couples just lack the knowledge when it comes to doing the groundwork for a healthy birth.

Wei and his rivals face a tough challenge. History shows that increased wealth and education gained as economies develop make it near impossible to stop birth rates from falling -- regardless of government policies. Singapore's 1980s campaign to incentivize families to have three or more children spurred a brief uptick in births before they declined further.

China's decision three years ago to allow two-child families hasn't managed to boost baby numbers. Births fell 3.5 percent to 17.2 million nationwide last year, according to the Bureau of National Statistics. And divorces are showing more momentum than marriages.

China's campaign to encourage couples to have more babies "probably gives them more stress, because their peers and the whole society is expecting some outcome," said Wei. "So all this hasn't been easy."

- - -

Bloomberg's Xiaoqing Pi, Anuchit Nguyen and Natnicha Chuwiruch contributed.SHORELINE  Transportation officials admit the biggest problem hampering reliable commuter train service is the age and condition of the equipment.

The equipment is not performing reliably, said Richard W. Andreski, state Department of Transportation bureau chief for public transportation. The locomotives are chronically out of service. As soon as we get one back in service, we lose one. This is primarily because they need to be overhauled and have not all been put through an overhaul program.

He noted that is why the DOT is recommending a further reduction of one train in the afternoon.

The comments came during a meeting between the Shore Line East Riders Advocacy Group and transportation officials. Commuters scheduled the meeting to voice their frustration with late and canceled trains, poor communications, mismanaged replacement bus transportation and dangerous conditions in rail stations.

We know that the Achilles heel here is the equipment, said Carl L. Jackson, DOT rail administrator.

We have an overhaul program thats going to bring us two more locomotives in the next six months and then should bring us another locomotive before the end of the year that will help complement the service, he added.

Commuters were very vocal about the continuing problems plaguing the rails.

Something has to happen, were paying for a service to be on a train, said Lu Lahy of the Ivoryton section of Essex. Weve all conceded to being on a bus. The ceiling rains in. Weve had bugs on the bus. Weve stood on the bus because theyre overcrowded. Its just not acceptable.

Facing a crowd of about 25 commuters, transportation officials heard story after story of train problems.

Those of us who sit together on the bus every night, or the train, call it crap shoot every day, like how are we going to get home? said Jeri Duefrene of the Niantic section of East Lyme. She rides Shore Line East from Old Saybrook five days a week to her job as assistant to a director of patient services at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Our ride in the morning on Shore Line East has been good for a couple weeks, she noted. There were a couple weeks back I was 20 minutes late both days, which made me a half an hour late to my job. But the mornings have been OK, lately, its the crapshoot home, she said.

When trains are canceled, buses are utilized to transport commuters, yet this safety net has not always been reliable.

You seem so sure of the stuff youre saying, said Susan Feaster, who regularly commutes from Ivoryton, boarding Shore Line East in Westbrook to get to her job in a law office in New Haven, to officials.

Were the ones on the track. Were the ones that are commuting, so when Im telling you a bus did not show; it did not show up, she said.

This is the latest meeting; the group had met with transportation officials in Union Station Sept. 20.

At that time, DOT Commissioner James Redeker said he and other DOT officials are well aware there are problems and are taking steps to fix them and make the service better.

He blamed many of the recent problems on two key issues:

A decision by Amtrak, which runs the Shore Line East service under contract with the DOT, to do necessary undercutting to replace sections of track along the shoreline, requiring Shore Line East to route trains traveling in both directions over the same track, this past summer.

Some of the six locomotives used for the service are now well beyond their useful life and need to be overhauled, Redeker said. Now, all six locomotives, including four used daily for Shore Line East service and two that act as backups, are going to be refurbished, he said.

James DellaPietro, Amtrak superintendent of operations for the Northeast Corridor, said that on-time performance has been low the last couple months.

Youre looking at 63 percent operation, he said.

Most trains operated, but many operated with delays, said Andreski.

This sparked a lot of comments from the commuters.

Thats insane, said Feaster. As I said to Rich [Andreski] at the Union Station meeting, if that was the fruit of my labor, my work, Id be fired. I still stand by that. That is unacceptable, its just unacceptable.

This led to a lively discussion about the cost of monthly train passes and the possibility of reimbursement to the commuters who have been inconvenienced.

While there are no plans for reimbursement, the DOT will honor all November monthly passes through the end of the year. Tickets must be purchased between Oct. 22 and Nov. 16.

On Oct. 25, the track work will be completed and the trains will be operating on two tracks. Officials cautioned this does not necessarily mean all the problems will go away.

More work is planned for April through June 2019, when there will be one track between Branford and Milford.

Even with all the improvements on the tracks and with the trains, commuters are still worried about communication issues. Between the website, station overhead announcements and information boards, Twitter notifications and CT Rides customer service, commuters all agreed that communication is a problem that needs attention.

We are falling far short of good communication at this point, said Andreski.

Before the end of the month, a notification app will be unveiled to allow you to tailor your notifications so that when the information is posted, it will push it to you, instead of having to go seek it out,Andreski said.

Guilford resident Mike Castellano urged officials to take a serious look at the deplorable condition of the State Street station.

State Street station steps, he said. Theyre falling apart. Theyre broken. Somebody is going to get killed.

While all the transportation officials in attendance acknowledged there are problems, they said safe travel is their first priority.

My job, as the superintendent of operations, is to protect you out there, and Im going to do that, DellaPietro said.

If it requires you getting put on a bus, I apologize for that, he added. I do apologize for that, but Im going to take the safest action possible in that situation. My No. 1 responsibility for everybody is safety. No. 2 is 100 percent operational performance, but safety has to come into play first.A service member attached to the NATO Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan was killed and two others were wounded Monday in an apparent insider attack in Afghanistan, Resolute Support reported Monday.

"Initial reports indicate the attack was committed by a member of the Afghan security forces," Resolute Support said in a brief statement.

The statement did not identify the troops who were attacked or give their nationalities, but said the incident took place in Herat province in western Afghanistan near the Iranian border.

In an emailed statement, a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the incident and said the attacker was a Taliban "infiltrator."

The latest incident came four days after an insider attack in southern Kandahar that killed two top Afghan security officials and wounded two Americans and a coalition contractor.

Among the wounded was Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey D. Smiley, the general in charge of the U.S. military assistance mission to the Afghan security forces in southern Afghanistan.

The attack in Kandahar forced a delay in the province for parliamentary elections which were held across the weekend in the rest of the country, despite suicide attacks in Kabul.

Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday that the individual killed in Herat was not an American, but said he had no information on the nationalities of the two who were wounded, according to media outlets that were present.

In the NATO structure for Afghanistan, Herat province, bordering Iran, is part of Train Advise Assist Command-West, or TAAC West. Italy is the lead nation for TAAC-West, which also includes Badghis, Farah and Ghor provinces.

Other contributing nations for TAAC-West include the U.S., Albania, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Ukraine in training and assistance for the Afghan National Army's 207th Corps and the 606th Afghan National Police Zone, according to NATO.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy completed their second mission of their Arctic West Summer 2018 deployment Thursday. Mission 1802 was a scientific mission to study stratified ocean dynamics in the Arctic (SODA) for the Office of Naval Research.

The project, led by Dr. Craig Lee of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington, Seattle, aims to better understand how the Arctic environment affects the different water layers of the Arctic Ocean. Understanding these environmental factors may help better predict ice coverage in the region.

Approximately 100 Healy crew members and 30 scientists and engineers departed Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Sept. 14 for SODA. Once in the Arctic Circle, the team deployed an array of scientific equipment, which will monitor the region for the next year and transmit data back to scientists at the Applied Physics Laboratory.

As one of only two icebreakers in U.S. service, the Healy is uniquely suited to support these types of scientific missions in the Arctic. The Healy, a 420-foot icebreaker homeported in Seattle, hosts a full suite of sensors and equipment specifically designed to gather scientific data. Operating from the ship-based Science Technical Support in the Arctic laboratory (STARC), ship personnel provide technical assistance to visiting science teams to collect and gather data such as water conductivity, temperature, depth and sea floor mapping. In 2017, STARC personnel were instrumental in using side-scan sonar to locate the sunken shipwreck of the 110-foot crab fishing boat Destination, which capsized and sank in the Bering Sea, claiming the lives of all six crewmen aboard.

The unique capabilities of the icebreaker, coupled with the expertise of the ship's crew members, make Healy an ideal choice for missions such as SODA.

"The Healy is the only vessel we operate as a country that can get us this far into the ice," Lee said. "If we wanted to come this far up north, we need to have an icebreaker. For the Arctic, the Healy is the only choice other than chartering a vessel from another country."

The Healy crew is also responsible for the deployment of scientific equipment and for overseeing the safety of the visiting science team -- from ensuring no one falls overboard to standing polar bear watch while scientists are on the ice. During the SODA mission, the crew deployed navigation moorings, weather buoys, ice-tethered profilers and autonomous underwater vehicles known as Seagliders, and the crew's hard work has not gone unnoticed by Lee or his team.

"Our experience on this cruise has been exceptional," said Lee. "We've received fantastic support -- not just from a technical standpoint, but people were enthusiastic to get this done. You can tell the crew is focused on helping, rather than just doing their job. They make things efficient, get things done."

With less ice in the Arctic each year, the human footprint in the region is increasing. Whether it's tourism, commercial fishing, global shipping or a hunt for natural resources, knowing how Arctic ice forms and recedes gives an edge up to anyone planning to work in the region, which is why the Office of Naval Research has taken notice.

SODA is one of several multi-year studies to determine how to best proceed in the region. Knowing how and when conditions in the Arctic are favorable for transit allows the Department of Defense to plan and prepare for this increased human activity. Knowledge of the changing Arctic environment will ultimately improve our ability to better forecast weather and sea conditions, making it safer for future operations.

This knowledge also allows the U.S. Coast Guard, which leads the Joint Force in the Arctic, to support their full suite of missions in the Polar Regions, including responding to threats, facilitating emerging commercial activities and protecting sovereign rights in the Exclusive Economic Zone and on the Extended Continental Shelf.

Missions such as SODA underscore how important icebreakers are to the national Arctic strategy; that value, however, is threatened by an aging icebreaker fleet.

Presently, the U.S. Coast Guard maintains two icebreakers -- the Healy, which is a medium icebreaker, and the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star, which is a heavy icebreaker. Protecting national interests in the polar regions is essential to ensure the Coast Guard's national defense strategy and search and rescue capabilities are ready for action, but in order to do so, the icebreaker fleet needs to be modernized.

The 42-year-old Polar Star is showing its age. Reserved for Operation Deep Freeze each year, the Polar Star spends the winter breaking ice near Antarctica in order to refuel and resupply McMurdo Station. When the mission is complete, the Polar Star returns to dry dock in order to complete critical maintenance and prepare it for the next ODF mission. Once out of dry dock, it's back to Antarctica, and the cycle repeats itself.

If something were to happen to the Healy in the Arctic or to the Polar Star near Antarctica, such as getting stuck in the ice, the U.S. Coast Guard is left without a self-rescue capability, which is why recapitalization of the Polar Security Cutter fleet is so imperative. It's an initiative that has the attention of the service's top brass.

"As we move out on recapitalizing our polar icebreaker fleet, I am focused on a 6-3-1 approach," said Adm. Karl Schultz, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. "We plan to build six icebreakers for the high-latitudes, at least three of which will be heavy, but we can't be in the Arctic the way America needs us unless we build one now."

By contrast, Russia currently operates 41 icebreakers -- several of which are nuclear powered. In order to remain ready, responsive and relevant, recapitalization of the U.S. Coast Guard's icebreaker fleet is essential if the nation is to be a global leader in the Arctic. Without assets such as the Healy, research projects such as SODA would not be possible, and since SODA may guide the future of the U.S. armed forces and prepare the Coast Guard and DoD to better serve American interests in the region, investment in the icebreaker fleet is imperative. The 6-3-1 approach underscores the importance of protecting U.S. interests in the Arctic, but the U.S. Coast Guard will continue to lag behind countries such as Russia until that first one is built.China's Sub Force Is Growing More Powerful. This Is What the US Navy Needs to Do to Stay AheadStudent Vets Win Too as Court Unchains Obama Loan Protection

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of student veterans, despite having robust GI Bill education benefits, contend they were deceived into racking up federal loan debt through abusive practices of certain for-profit colleges. Last week these students, along with thousands of non-veterans, gained an easier path to loan forgiveness from a federal court ruling in Washington D.C. For more details, see this Military Advantage post.Regional Level Types Holtsgruva - not defined - Holt - not defined - Tvedestrand Municipality Agder County Norway Country

Key

List of minerals for each chemical element

Localities in this Region

In the area around where "Holtsgruva" appears on the map, at least 13 mines/quarries can be identified.However, nothing is known about them, and a Google search after Holtsgruva does not produce any result.Some are certainly feldspar quarries, but many of them might very well be iron mines.This is especially true for 1-7 and 8-9 because these are aligned along a near perfect straight line.This would correcpond well with a contact zone between granite and limestone.The others are more random orientated in relation to each other.There are several features on the altitude map that very well also could be mines/quarries, but these need field confirmation.On aerial pictures there is no trace of these localities to be seen, suggesting they might date back to the 1600-1700's.The Jensen Feldspar Quarry is supposed to be among these localities. This one is registered separately.This quarry was owned by Herm. Jensen, Risr in 1915.Coordinates  Kartverket - https://www.kartverket.noAfter years of anticipation and $850 million invested into the plant tabbed to build it, Ford celebrated the impending start of production on its resurrected midsize Ranger pickup Monday, Oct. 22 outside the Michigan Assembly Plant.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker says the $850 million invested into the Michigan Assembly Plant was aimed at readying it for the production of the Ranger and returning Bronco SUV. Ford also ceased production of the Focus and C-Max models at the plant to "make way for a massive retooling in preparation of the Ranger launch."

Dwayne Walker, president of UAW Local 900, said Monday marked an event a "long time coming" and that the workers were looking forward to starting production on the Ranger next Monday, Oct. 29.

"Ford truck fans demanded a midsize pickup that's 'Built Ford Tough' and we're delivering with our all-new Ranger that's specially designed and engineered for American truck customers," Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of global operations, said.

"At the same time, we're revitalizing our Michigan Assembly Plant and securing good-paying jobs for our hourly employees here in the U.S."

Ford celebrated the occasion with workers from the plant, executives with the automaker, United Auto Workers partners and members of the media for remarks and a chance to ride in the Ranger on its off-road course in the parking lot.

--

Ford reintroduced its midsize Ranger after a seven-year North American absence at the North American International Auto Show in Downtown Detroit back in January.

The Ranger will come equipped with a 2.3-liter EcoBoost engine, 10-speed auto transmission and high-strength steel frame backbone, and available in 2WD or 4WD. The 2019 Ford Ranger will come in XL, XLT and the Lariat trims, which will be available with chrome, sport or the FX Off-Road packages in either SuperCab or SuperCrew cab setups.

The automaker says the new Ranger will come with the optional FX4 Off-Road package, which has a terrain management system to the F-150 Raptor's. This means the technology will send power or brakes to each wheel as needed so drivers can keep their eyes on steering while off-road driving.

To play around with building your own Ranger and finding the right price, head to https://shop.ford.com/build/ranger/.

"The revitalization of the Michigan Assembly Plant and renewed production of the Ford Ranger is another exciting chapter in our state's comeback story," Gov. Rick Snyder said in a Ford news release. "This is also an opportunity to look toward its promising future with production of the all-new Ford Bronco on the horizon.

"I thank our partners at Ford for investing in Michigan and contributing to the Motor City's legacy as the automotive capital of the world."

The Michigan Assembly Plant opened in 1957 in Wayne, Michigan and started off building station wagons. At the event, Hinrichs said that the plant tells the story of the changing tastes of consumers' dating back to the 1950s.

In 1966, Ford started manufacturing the Ranger at plant and it eventually was recognized as one of the most profitable facilities in the world with the production of the Expedition and Lincoln Navigator.

"Ford is transforming its product lineup, building on truck, SUV and commercial vehicle strengths," the automaker writes in a release.

"Ranger is the first in an onslaught of all-new vehicles that will see Ford aim to replace more than 75 percent of its current North American portfolio by 2020."

--DETROIT, MI - The best-selling female artist in music history will perform one concert in Michigan on her just announced "Caution World Tour."

Mariah Carey will be at the Fox Theatre in Detroit on Friday, March 8, 2019. The North American leg of her tour kicks off in Dallas on February 27. Prior to that, Carey will be in Las Vegas to continue her residency at Caesars Palace.

Tickets for her upcoming tour (starting at $59.95) go on sale Friday, October 26 at 10 a.m.

Mariah Carey also plans to release her upcoming 15th studio album, "Caution," on November 16. If you pre-order a digital copy, you'll receive "The Distance," and her recent single "With You." This is Carey's first album since 2014.

Carey is the top-selling female artist of all time having sold more than 200 million albums. She's earned 18 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles.ANN ARBOR, MI - Ann Arbor recently launched a brand-new Office of Sustainability and Innovations with a mission of getting serious about addressing climate change.

"Our goal is to make Ann Arbor the most sustainable and equitable city in America," said Missy Stults, who was hired to lead the new office, which is focused on helping the city go green, as well as issues of equity through the local One Community initiative.

"Part of my job is to be the disrupter. We know where the future heads if we keep doing the same things that we're doing."

The city's goals include powering 100 percent of its municipal operations with clean and renewable energy by 2035, and reducing the broader community's carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2050.

But whether the new sustainability office will have the financial resources for the climate-action programs and projects it wants to roll out remains to be seen.

The City Council spent more than an hour last week debating a $313,000 funding proposal from Stults, who has put together an initial work plan for the sustainability office. Without eight votes for it from the 11-member council, it's stalled for now.

The proposal includes $200,000 for solar panels and other upgrades to create net-zero affordable housing through the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, $15,000 for three electric vehicle charging stations for city employees and the public, $10,000 for community outreach efforts, $14,000 for the sustainability office's staff to attend training, $10,000 in seed funding to start Ann Arbor's first "resilience hub," and $25,000 for studies and other pre-work necessary before implementing large-scale solar installations on city properties.

There also is another $39,000 proposed for staff raises and costs to hire sustainability office interns.

Four council members who raised concerns about the proposal -- Anne Bannister, Jack Eaton, Sumi Kailasapathy and Jane Lumm -- effectively blocked it from being approved, at least for now.

"I don't believe that anybody here denies that climate action is necessary, but this budget amendment actually doesn't accomplish very much for the amount of money that we're spending," Eaton argued.

"More importantly, I think it's bad budget practice for us as a council that is going to go through some dramatic change in the next six weeks to encumber the next council with this kind of spending."

Without enough votes, a majority of council members reluctantly agreed to postpone the matter to Nov. 19, which is when four new council members will take office. That's when Mayor Christopher Taylor and his allies, who want to fund climate action using part of the city's rebate from a new countywide tax, will lose their majority.

"I will support this postponement with a lot of regret," Taylor said. "I am indeed disappointed by the refusal of the council to enthusiastically support the amendment before us."

Some current and incoming council members don't agree with the mayor's camp on using the city's rebate from a new county mental health and public safety tax for efforts such as climate action.

Taylor said he thinks Ann Arbor's Climate Action Plan, which was adopted by the City Council in 2012 and never fully funded, is both ambitious and practical, yet it requires money to implement.

"We have money coming in to effect that implementation, and it's our obligation as stewards of the community to do so," he said.

Because the city has its own police department and does not rely on the county sheriff's office for day-to-day policing, it's getting a partial rebate from the new county tax, which will be levied for the first time in December, to avoid being double taxed for public safety.

That rebate is expected to amount to about $2.2 million or so per year for eight years, according to the city's calculations.

Through resolutions adopted ahead of the November 2017 vote on the new millage, the City Council communicated publicly that it planned to use its rebate funds for climate action, pedestrian safety and affordable housing. There's still debate about whether the council should follow through on doing that or whether it should put the money instead toward mental health and public safety.

The city's adopted budget for the current fiscal year, which started July 1, shows $715,177 in planned spending for the new sustainability office, and $1.11 million in expected revenue, including $880,000 for climate action from the county millage rebate.

Of the $880,000, only $75,000 was allocated in this year's budget, and that was intended to develop a climate action spending plan.

The millage rebate money isn't expected to come through until January, so the proposal before council is to borrow $313,000 from the city's general fund reserves for climate-action efforts and pay back the loan once the rebate is received in a few months. It's considered a budget amendment requiring eight votes.

The new five-person sustainability office is organized under the city administrator's office and was assembled largely through a reorganization of existing staff resources, with Stults, who was hired in July, leading a team of existing city staffers.

Stults, who has a doctorate degree from the University of Michigan in urban resilience to climate change, previously worked as a self-employed sustainability consultant in Ann Arbor and as a sustainability researcher at UM. The city has set her salary at $110,000.

Other members of the office include Matt Naud, the city's longtime environmental coordinator, who makes $91,225 per year, and community sustainability analysts Emily Drennen and Josh MacDonald, who make $47,000 and $46,000 per year, respectively.

Nate Geisler, the city's energy programs analyst, left the city this past year, leaving a fifth position in the new office vacant.

Eaton, D-4th Ward, argues it's bad budgeting practice to borrow against the city's reserve account based on future tax collections, even if the money is expected to come through in a few months.

"Personally, I want to spend the $200,000 on the net-zero affordable housing, because actually you can take a look at that project and you can see a reduction in energy use and a reduction in our carbon output. I think that's essential," he said.

"Everything that we build, we should be looking at that sort of outcome. I don't know that it should come out of the mental health millage."

Similarly, Eaton said, he doesn't think the sustainability office should have to put up the funds for purchasing electrical vehicles and charging stations, which is how the city has structured things right now.

While the climate action funding is on hold for now, the council did separately approve $98,337 last week for the purchase of three 2019 Chevrolet Bolt sedans, which are all-electric, plug-in vehicles.

The new Bolts mark the city's first step toward transitioning to an electric vehicle fleet as part of a new green fleets policy.

They will replace three Ford Focus sedans used by the city's water treatment plant, community standards and city hall staff.

The city's fleet fund, which collects money from different city departments for vehicle replacements, is paying $51,828 of the cost of the three EVs, while the sustainability office is paying the additional $46,509. It's proposed that the sustainability office also pay the extra $5,000 per EV charger.

If the city is going to get serious about climate action, Eaton argues, every department should factor it into its budget and it shouldn't have to be done as "ad-hoc extra spending" by the sustainability office.

Eaton said the climate-action proposal that came to council last week actually went through multiple iterations. When it was presented at a recent combined meeting of the city's Energy and Environmental commissions, he said, the funding request was $498,000.

"And some of us raised concerns about some of the expenditures within that $498,000, and within 48 hours there was an altered budget that reduced it to $313,000," he said.

Eaton said he and Bannister, D-1st Ward, met with Stults before last week's meeting and there was a proposal at that time to give two staff members each a $16,000-per-year raise retroactive to July 1.

Eaton argued other city workers weren't getting those same raises and it wouldn't be good practice.

In response to those concerns, Eaton said, the proposal before council reduces the raises to $8,000 each, while simultaneously adding two extra interns for $10,000 each. There's also $3,000 shown in the staff proposal for an "equity fellow."

"The moving target demonstrates to me that we really haven't thought through this," Eaton said.

Eaton said he's not against taking action on climate change, but he's against the proposal because of "these bad practices that we've watched unfold as this budget amendment moved forward."

Council Member Chip Smith, D-5th Ward, offered a different view, saying Stults has prepared a detailed plan and he supports it.

"I think if we don't pass this, people have a right to question whether we're seriously committed to doing our part for climate change," he said. "We have to start somewhere."

He added, "Dr. Stults has outlined a work plan for this group over the next year that is ambitious, that is something that can be accomplished and needs our support."

Council Member Zachary Ackerman, D-3rd Ward, said he's proud of the community debate over climate action versus mental health.

"We have on the one hand a group of citizens who very sincerely want to protect the mental health of their neighbors, and on the other side of this debate a group of avid activists and advocates who want to make the future of our world better and safer for all, and I'm proud that that is the debate in my hometown," he said.

Ackerman said he's proud that Ann Arbor voters have agreed to send more than $3 million per year to the county to support mental health services under the new millage. City taxpayers will be paying more than $5 million per year altogether under the new tax.

Ackerman argues the partial rebate coming back to the city's coffers should go to underfunded priorities such as climate action.

He said he's glad that $200,000 of the proposed $313,000 would go toward net-zero affordable housing.

"That is affordable housing that produces as much energy onsite as it consumes," he said. "That is an absolutely incredible thing."

Council Member Julie Grand, D-3rd Ward, said city officials have heard loud and clear from residents who want action on climate change.

"It's reflective of our community values," she said.

Grand disagreed with Eaton's take on the fact that the proposal was revised after going through review. She suggested it's good process to make changes based on feedback.

Kailasapathy, D-1st Ward, said her stance against approving the funding last week was a matter of process. She said there's a new City Council that's going to be seated in November and it's not a big delay to leave the decision for the next council to make.

"I feel that is the accountable way to go about it," she said, adding she sees it as a repurposing of mental health dollars.

Lumm, an independent from the 2nd Ward, said she opposes the proposal for budget process reasons, though she also does not agree with earmarking 40 percent of the city's millage rebate for climate action. She said that's fiscally irresponsible when the city has other competing priorities such as public safety and fixing roads.

"It's also not good budget process to approve pay increases outside the normal process," she said.

Lumm said she doesn't think many voters were aware, when they approved the tax last year, of the city's stated intentions to spend some of the money on climate action, as it wasn't stated on the ballot.

Lumm said the fact that the city is expected to receive about $2.2 million or more in annual unrestricted funds as a rebate from the county millage for the next eight years is unprecedented, and she wants to do a survey to seek broad input from taxpayers on how they'd like to see the money spent. The city is now planning to do a survey.

Lumm said the resolution before council is not a one-off funding request but instead could be the first step in a long-term commitment to spend millions of dollars on climate action programs.

"And I don't think that's wise," she said.

Lumm said she wants more public participation in the city's climate action plans, such as getting landlord input on an idea floated in the sustainability work plan to create a "green rental housing" program that would require property owners to meet minimum energy efficiency standards before receiving their rental licenses.

"We need to discuss it with them," she said.

Council Member Kirk Westphal, D-2nd Ward, said climate change is "the issue of our era" and he wants the city to take action.

"It has real increasingly negative consequences, not just for developing parts of the world, but right here in our backyard," he said. "And that's just going to increase. I think an investment like this, a commitment that even though it's a drop in the bucket -- I think this will come to serve the community very powerfully in the years to come."

Westphal is leaving office next month after losing his seat in the August primary to Kathy Griswold, who has argued the city should put the millage rebate toward mental health and public safety.

Council Member Chuck Warpehoski, D-5th Ward, also is leaving office next month after losing his seat to Ali Ramlawi, who has argued the city should put the millage rebate toward mental health and public safety, and if not that, then fixing roads.

Warpehoski noted a new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that there's only 12 years to act to reverse global warming.

"These 12 years we have is no time," he said. "It's just three council terms. If we're going to get serious about climate change, not even for my grandkids but for my own kids, we've got to act now."

He said he hopes some of those against the proposal will reconsider when they look at the severity of the climate crisis.

"And I hope that future councils will put their money where their mouth is," he said.

The postponed proposal, if approved, would allocate the $313,000 and authorize the sustainability office to move forward with implementing a 39-page work plan that includes various other sustainability ideas, including community solar, helping residents age in place efficiently and implementing a green rental housing program that could cost the city $331,000 to implement over three years and lead to anywhere from $5.1 to $15.2 million per year in annual energy savings.

The work plan also notes the city is putting $100,000 per year into a neighborhood grant program to support efforts that support the city's sustainability goals.

The idea of "resilience hubs" also is included in the work plan. They're described as neighborhood-based locations, such as community centers, that could support existing community needs while also serving as places providing shelter, food, water, medical supplies and a reliable energy supply during disasters or extended power outages.

Bannister said this has been a difficult decision for her and she's gone back and forth on it. She said she's impressed with the city's new sustainability manager and excited about what the office can do for the city, but she wasn't ready to support the proposal last week.

"I've really thought about this issue a lot," she said. "There's many things I like about it. I'm very excited about resilience hubs, and I'm even envisioning that the Library Lot could be like a Center of the City resilience hub for emergency preparedness -- I'd like people to mull that over. And then little resilience hubs in your neighborhoods."

Bannister said she also likes the idea of weatherizing homes and apartments, and she thinks more solar panels, EVs and EV charging stations would be great for the city.

"I'm not so excited about $14,000 to fly to conferences. I think that environmentalists should be leading the way in not hopping on airplanes for conferences," she said.

"But be that as it may, the bulk of the plan I do like."

Bannister said it's not so much a choice of mental health versus climate action for her. She said she wants to fund both, but she thinks it's premature to make any decisions before next month.

She said it's already been six years since the city adopted a Climate Action Plan, so she doesn't see it as a big delay to wait for the four new council members to be seated.

"I think that residents want to hear what their new officials have to say about this issue," she said.

Bannister noted the city's carbon emissions from municipal operations are only 2 percent of the community's overall emissions.

"The other 98 percent is from all the rest of us and our businesses and our homes," she said.

"As we go into the holiday seasons for everyone, let's think about our shopping and our travel," she said, encouraging others to find ways to reduce their carbon footprint, including eating less meat, and taking the mantra "reduce, reuse and recycle" to heart.

"This is the first step," she added. "I'm glad we've all gotten riled up about this, and let's take this momentum and move forward and be the leader and the role model that we want to be."

Smith said he was "so disappointed and angry" that there weren't enough votes for the climate action funding last week.

He read from the new UN IPCC report, saying disadvantaged and vulnerable populations are at a disproportionately higher risk of adverse consequences from global warming.

"Any increase in global warming is projected to affect human health, with primarily negative consequences," he said. "Lower risks are projected at 1.5 degrees Celsius than at 2 degrees Celsius for heat-related morbidity and mortality, and for ozone-related mortality if emissions needed for ozone formation remain high. Urban heat islands often amplify the impacts of heat waves in cities."

Smith said that means climate change has real consequences for a city like Ann Arbor.

"We might not think that we have any role to play in the larger global discussion of climate change, but there are very real impacts," he said. "Our infrastructure is crumbling, our roads in particular, because of climate change, because of more frequent wet weather events in the winter that cause more freeze and thaw."

Ackerman said he hopes continued community advocacy can convince the next council to vote to support climate action.

He noted the $313,000 being requested right now is only a fraction of a percent of the city's nearly $400 million annual budget.

Bannister asked Taylor why the city hasn't done more to financially support its climate action goals in the last six years.

Taylor recalled that he and former Council Member Sabra Briere, D-1st Ward, worked to get some funding in the budget, but it hasn't been until now with the county millage rebate coming that the city could identify adequate funding for climate action.

"Thank you for answering that, but I do think that that's still not a very good answer for a community of our wealth that we would let this go on," Bannister told the mayor.

In an interview in her office last month, Stults said her immediate focus was identifying projects the city could tackle in the next five years.

"We're certainly going to be focusing on how to kind of get carbon neutral at the city, but we're not going to stop there," she said.

"That's not going to move the needle significantly enough, so we're also looking at a number of community initiatives."

She said her office is approaching the issue of sustainability through an equity lens, which includes helping disadvantaged people such as those living in low-income housing, helping people lower their energy bills, making homes more energy efficient and healthy.

She said the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation is looking at the issue of helping people age in place.

"And they're going to go in possibly and do a whole bunch of retrofits in these homes, put in ramps and railings and other things," she said. "Well, if you're already touching a home, why don't we do efficiency at the same time?"

As for the idea of partnering with the Housing Commission, she said, "When I think about resilience, not only do I want a net-zero affordable housing unit, I want that unit off the grid. I want solar backup generators on that site so it can last for four or five days and people can operate, and their medicine can be cooled and they can have their defibrillators on demand, whatever they need, because we're powering it through renewable sources. So, we're thinking much bigger."

Longer term, Stults said, the question is how to achieve a 90 percent reduction in the community's greenhouse gas emissions.

"And honestly, I'm aiming for 100 percent -- I mean, how do we get to 100 percent renewable energy in the system?" she said, adding that's going to require working closely with DTE Energy to find opportunities to make the energy grid greener. "It's thinking about installations of renewable energy throughout the city."

Stults said her office can help the city fund new innovative ideas as they're being tested, but once they're proven, they should become part of business and usual for the city.YPSILANTI, MI - The newest member of Eastern Michigan University's Board of Regents was involved in the establishment of the Education Achievement Authority - an authority the EMU board later withdrew from.

Gov. Rick Snyder announced the appointment of his senior adviser and transformational manager Richard Baird to the EMU Board of Regents.

Baird, of Bath, was appointed to an eight-year term Friday, Oct. 19, while current EMU board member Michael Hawks was reappointed to another term on the governing board of the university.

Along with his role as a senior adviser and transformation manager for Snyder, Baird currently is treasurer for the Michigan Education Excellence Foundation and serves on the board for the American Center for Mobility. He has a bachelor's degree in history, religion, and economics from Albion College and honorary doctorates from Albion College and Eastern Michigan University.

Baird replaces Regent Michael Morris, whose eight-year term ends Dec. 31, 2018.

"I am pleased to hear of the appointment of Richard Baird and the reappointment of Michael Hawks to our Board of Regents," EMU President James Smith said in a news release. "They bring an impressive skill set and varied perspectives to the board - including a broad understanding of state government and higher education. I look forward to continue working with Mike and now Rich in crafting a strong and student-focused future at Eastern.

"I also want to extend the University's heartfelt congratulations to Regent Mike Morris, who has served with great distinction during two separate and eventful terms on the Board, including serving as the Board's chair."

Hawks and Baird will serve eight-year terms expiring Dec. 31, 2026. Their appointments are subject to the advice and consent of the Michigan Senate.

Baird is known within the Snyder administration as the "transformation manager" - acting as a talent recruiter, adviser and facilitator for the Republican governor and his team. Baird has been involved in key administration hires, the Education Achievement Authority and many other initiatives since Snyder became governor by winning the 2010 election.

Baird has been involved in education-related initiatives that some consider controversial under Snyder. He helped initially connect some members of the so-called "skunk works" education technology group, an initiative that was reshaped and taken over by former state schools chief Mike Flanagan.

Baird also was involved with the Education Achievement Authority, a state-run authority that has overseen some low-performing Detroit schools. The EAA was a partnership between the state, Detroit Public Schools and EMU to administer a number of schools that were taken by the state, removed from DPS, and put into the EAA, which is overseen by the state, with a majority of the board members appointed by the governor.

EMU's Board of Regents withdrew from the agreement with DPS that led to the creation of the EAA in February 2016, before the board finalized dissolution from the EAA in June 2017.

Snyder's Deputy Press Secretary Jordan Kennedy issued a statement regarding Baird's appointment, noting all of the governor's choices have professional background in the areas they are asked to serve.

"Gov. Snyder appoints people to boards and commissions who are qualified and have a professional background or a special interest in the various areas of responsibility," Kennedy said. "If the Governor appoints someone to a position, he feels confident they will do a good job representing all Michiganders as a voice on a board or commission. He appreciates the commitment appointees are making and that so many people step forward to offer their names for consideration."

EMU Spokesman Geoff Larcom said Baird has had a long history with both Eastern Michigan and higher education in general.

In 1980-81, Baird worked for EMU's Relations Office, which no longer exists, and was also interim alumni director.

"Rich Baird has an extensive and positive history as a higher ed board member, serving as a trustee at Albion College, including a stint as chair," Larcom said. "Rich also has a long history with, and demonstrated passion for, Eastern Michigan University. We look forward to working closely with Rich during an exciting time at Eastern."

Prior to dissolution, Eastern's involvement with the EAA had been a source of controversy on campus for several years, receiving criticism for poor academic performance and declining enrollment.

The Board of Regents said in 2014 it would withdraw from the EAA partnership if a faculty review found it had not improved, but when that review was finished in December 2015, the regents chose to postpone voting on the issue until February 2016.

Two consecutive EMU Board of Regents meetings were shut down in late 2014 and March 2015 when protesters of the EAA rang out with chants of "Black Lives Matter" and "The EAA is killing us."

Eastern signed on to be part of the interlocal agreement with the EAA on June 23, 2011, and voted at a December 2014 meeting to extend that partnership by at least one year, despite then-EMU President Susan Martin's recommendation for the regents to vote to withdraw from the school's agreement with the EAA.

Eastern severed ties with the EAA after a vote of no confidence in the regents by the EMU Faculty Senate in January 2016, alleging the regents violated the school's code of ethics by continuing a partnership with the EAA. The EAA ceased to exist in June 2017.

In addition to education issues, Baird identified himself as the governor's point man on Flint water issues.Eddie D. Spiller

FLINT, MI - A man sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1992 may be getting out of prison soon after he was resentenced Monday as part of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that deemed mandatory jail terms for juveniles unconstitutional.

Eddie D. Spiller was 17 in 1992 when he had planned to commit a robbery with two co-defendants, but the group later decided against it.

Spiller was trying to unload a gun that was to be used in the robbery when it accidentally went off - shooting and killing Ricky Taylor on Feb. 1, 1992, according to Spiller's attorney Sofia Nelson.

Spiller was sentenced to life in prison for Taylor's murder on Stone Street in Flint.

"I have the opportunity to perhaps lay the groundwork to return you to your family," said Genesee Circuit Judge Richard B. Yuille, as a group of Spiller's family and supporters gasped and began crying. "It makes me feel good."

There were cheers and tears inside Yuille's courtroom on Oct. 22 after Yuille gave Spiller a new sentence of 27 to 60 years in prison.

"I look forward to hugging him," said Spiller's sister, Ciara Spiller. "We've been fighting for his release for such a long time. We think about the family who lost a loved one and we pray for them every day."

Spiller has credit for almost 25 years in prison and his attorney told his family he could be paroled in the next six months because of the education and other credits for good behavior he earned while in prison.

"To the family of Ricky Taylor - ignorance cannot be an excuse," Spiller, now 44, told the court on Monday. "I sincerely apologize for what I put you though. An apology will never be enough. I am not a child of '92. I am not reckless or impulsive. I have been remorseful for a long time. I am not a danger. I have become a man of sound mind and heart."

The nation's highest court said its 2012 ruling invalidating mandatory life sentences for juveniles as a form of cruel and unusual punishment applied retroactively.

Judges can still sentence juvenile offenders to life sentences, but the sentence must be handed down after the judge is able to analyze the merits of the case.

The Genesee County cases that have the potential for resentencing date back as far as 1975, and include convicts who were as young as 15 at the time of the killing.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said his office was unable to contact Taylor's family.

"We thought in the interest of justice and fairness that Spiller be given an opportunity for parole," Leyton said. "We looked at his reentry plan. He does have family support and an opportunity to have an income. He has support from his church community."

Under Michigan law, first-degree murder was punishable only with life in prison without parole.

However, Gov. Rick Snyder in 2014 gave judges the discretion to sentence teen killers to life in prison or 25 to more than 60 years in prison to comply with the Supreme Court decision.

In 2016, in a 6-3 decision, the nation's highest court said its 2012 ruling invalidating mandatory life sentences for juveniles as a form of cruel and unusual punishment applied retroactively.

"I represent a lot of juvenile lifers - what the U.S. Supreme Court has said is these sentences are only constitutional if the individual has no chance to be rehabilitated," Nelson said. "I feel strongly that people can change and we have to look at how they have changed and give them a second chance."

Eddie Spiller has housing set up and will be employed through the Money, Attitude, Direction, Education Institute (MADE), according to his sister.

"Second chances are rare," Ciara Spiller said. "This is an opportunity where he will be able to devote himself to society."

Spiller will have to go before the Michigan Department of Corrections parole board and could be back in Flint in as little as six months, Nelson said.PORT HURON, MI -- Border patrol agents seized more than 280 pounds of cocaine Sunday, Oct. 21 during a routine inspection on the Blue Water Bridge near the U.S.-Canadian border.

Members of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Port Huron Anti-Terrorism and Contraband Enforcement Team were conducting inspections on the bridge between Port Huron and Sarnia.

Officers with the team selected a commercial truck shipment of berries headed for Canada to take part in an enforcement exam, according to a Customs and Border Protection news release.

It was during the inspection and a subsequent interview that four boxes containing plastic-wrapped packages of suspected narcotics were uncovered. A field test by officers turned up positive for cocaine.

In a criminal complaint filed Oct. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, the driver of the vehicle is identified as Dario Grujic, a Guelph, Ontario, Canada resident.

The inspection took place after Grujic told an officer he had a load of blackberries from Mexico that he'd picked up in Texas, per the complaint, and claimed he'd not witnessed the complete loading of the trailer.

An X-ray of the vehicle revealed four "anomalies" in the cab of the trailer, two of which were stacked behind the driver's seat and two on the sleeper bunk, according to the complaint.

The boxes were taped shut and contained individual kilogram-sized objects that were vacuum sealed. A total of 112 packages were found in the boxes, all testing positive for cocaine.

Grujic has crossed into the United States in the same truck a total of 25 times in the last six months as the driver, reads the complaint.

He's been turned over to Homeland Security Investigations. A detention hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 24.

The St. Clair County Sheriff's Office is also participating as part of the Border Enforcement Security Team.KENT COUNTY, MI - Four attorneys are seeking to fill two judicial seats in Kent County Circuit Court.

Curt Benson, Alida Bryant, Christina Elmore and Scott Noto are running to replace retiring judges Donald Johnston and Dennis Leiber.

Elmore, a Grand Rapids District Court judge, won the most votes - 38,245 - in the August primary. Benson, a Grand Rapids attorney and law professor, finished second, with 35,794, followed by Noto, with 27,394, and Bryant, with 26,852.

The candidates answered questions in an online voters' guide published by the League of Women Voters in conjunction with MLive.

Here are some of their responses, in alphabetical order.

Curt Benson

Curt Benton, 58, has worked civil and criminal cases. He is a legal author, tenured law professor and, for 17 years, host of the syndicated radio program, The Lawyers on WOOD radio.

He spent six years on the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education.

Benson concentrates on representing police officers in federal civil-rights cases.

"While a law school professor, I taught Evidence, Contracts, Civil Procedure and Insurance Law--the most pertinent and important subjects a Circuit Judge must master. My legal writings and book contributions usually focused on these areas and were written for other judges and lawyers and law students," he said.

"I have the practical, common sense, problem-solving skills necessary to properly manage a courtroom. But, a judge must, in the true sense of the word, be a legal scholar. A judge must know and understand the law. I am first and foremost a student of the law. I am also an educator, scholar, legal author, and presenter."

Alida Bryant

Alida Bryant, 52, represents indigent clients as a staff attorney at the Kent County Defender's Office. She has practiced criminal defense the last 24 years in district and circuit courts. She has worked with mentally ill clients who are participating a Treatment and Support Court (TASC).

"I have managed hundreds of cases a year and I have handled everything from retail fraud to murder. As a TASC member, I am excited to be part of a new movement in the Circuit Court. This is the first Circuit Court treatment program that we have in Kent County. ... Finally, the Circuit Court is taking a more direct role in providing a tool to our citizens which may help them to become a law abiding and productive citizen," she said.

"I not only understand the Circuit Court Judge's responsibilities, I also know first hand the limitations, problems and strengths of the position. I know the system. I am experienced. I have both the temperament and the passion for the job."

Christina Elmore

Christina Elmore, 51, is a Grand Rapids District Court judge. She served 13 years as a U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General officer and 10 years as an assistant state attorney general.

"Before taking the bench, I defended people charged with misdemeanors and felonies. I also represented parents and children in child abuse and neglect cases, as well as juveniles charged with crimes. At the same time, I received cases on a contract basis from the Attorney General's office, where I prosecuted individuals for failing to pay child support (a felony in Michigan). As a JAG officer, I was assigned to represent the U.S. government in tort claims and I prosecuted active duty members in courts-martial," Elmore said.

"In addition, I provided legal assistance to active duty members and their families on a variety of legal matters, including preparing wills and powers of attorney, to ensure peace of mind while defending our country."

Scott Noto

Scott Noto, 41, is a former active-duty Judge Advocate General and serves in that role in the reserves. He has also been a paratrooper in the military.

He has civil and criminal trial experience in state and federal courts, including court-martial cases. He once served a law clerk in Kent County Circuit Court. Now a private practice attorney, he has worked as both prosecutor and defense attorney.

"To take on the judicial yoke is to recognize that you are there to serve: you serve justice and the law, the parties and attorneys in the courtroom, and the people and communities who your decisions will impact. I volunteered to serve our country as a Solider in the Army, fully knowing the burdens and the risks. I volunteered for the Airborne. I'm proud to be a Paratrooper and proud to continue to serve our country in the Army Reserve," he said.

"I know what it is like for a small business, or a family, or a crime victim to go through the legal system. My military service, local roots, and broad practice experience commend me to this position. If I am elected, Kent County will get a judge who has never shied from difficult challenges and who, above all, knows what it means to serve."GEORGETOWN TOWNSHIP, MI - The owners of a condo were not home Monday afternoon, Oct. 22, when a buck broke into the home through a bedroom window.

The condo is located off of 28th Avenue, north of Port Sheldon Street, in Ottawa County.

Ottawa County Sheriff deputies spent over an hour on scene trying to detain the large animal without tranquilizing or shooting the buck, according to next-door neighbor Janice Tower, who recorded video as the buck ran out of the condo.

Workers were repairing a landscaping retaining wall when, all of a sudden, the buck darted past them and tried to jump through the window of a condo, Tower said.

"It didn't make it through the window the first time but then it jumped again through the bedroom window and got trapped," Tower said. "(The deer) apparently cut himself when he jumped through and was bleeding everywhere inside."

After the buck caused havoc throughout the home, it bolted across the courtyard of the complex and hid inside a nearby garage before escaping back into the wild.GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is looking into whether or not the Grand Rapids Police Department violated children's constitutional rights during a handful of recent incidents in which unarmed black youths were handcuffed at gunpoint.

Anthony Greene, an attorney with the ACLU's West Michigan lawyer's committee, sat in on a public forum Sunday, Oct. 21, in which residents and community members protested the police department's youth-interaction policy.

Greene spoke briefly at the conclusion of the two-hour session, which evolved from a previously planned "All Kids Matter" march on the police department. He said he plans to relate what he heard during the meeting to the other members of the committee.

"We've been tracking this issue," Greene said. "The question we want to answer, have these young people's constitutional rights been violated. And that's what we're looking at.

"We're looking at it very closely. Stay tuned."

After hearing Greene's public comments Sunday, Grand Rapids City Manager Mark Washington said everyone should be able to look into the problem.

"We're all trying to look into it," Washington said. "Just the like the media is looking into it, the community is looking into it, our commission is looking into it, 21st Century Policing is looking into it and now I'm looking into it."

During the last 19 months, Grand Rapids police have been publicly criticized by some in the community for their handling of four incidents in which unarmed black juveniles were stopped at gunpoint and handcuffed while police were investigating calls for service.

In each incident, the youth being detained were determined not to have any weapons and were let go. But each time, their families said the incidents left them traumatized and fearing police.

On Dec. 6, officers handcuffed 11-year-old Honestie Hodges at gunpoint outside her family's house while searching for her 42-year-old aunt, who is white. The incident led city commissioners to ask for the department to develop a youth-interaction policy.

The policy was vetted by several groups and unveiled in March.

Since then, two handcuffing incidents have sparked further outrage by some in the community. In both the Aug. 26 handcuffing of two 11-year-old twin brothers, and the Oct. 9 handcuffing of a 12-year-old girl, the police chief defended his officers' judgment.

"There has to be some indicia of these calls they're responding to," Greene said. "They can't just do this based on an anonymous call, if there's no indicia of reliability, which means there's some investigation that some criminal offense has taken place and is ongoing."

Greene said the ACLU of Michigan has had the topic on its horizon "for some time" but wanted to see how the new youth-interaction policy worked before following up on it.

He said the group will determine whether or not to open its own investigation, during which it would conduct interviews and collect records from the police department through the Freedom of Information Act.

While he declined to speak for the ACLU, he said his personal opinion as a Grand Rapids resident is that the police department has used "unreasonable force" toward children in the community.

"That's not the opinion of the ACLU, that's my personal opinion," he said.

Greene proudly touted the ACLU's recent victory in Grand Rapids in which a federal judge ruled that the police department's policy to arrest people for trespassing on business properties was not legal. The group filed a lawsuit against the city in 2013.

Last week, Judge Paul Maloney shared his opinion that the department had an "unconstitutional policy or custom whereby police officers arrest individuals for trespassing on property covered by a no-trespass letter without first informing the suspect that he or she must leave the property."

According to an ACLU report from June 29, 2017, the police department ended the policy and replaced it with a policy that requires a representative of the business to make it clear to police that they did not want an individual on the property and that the person has been told to leave.GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Finding rental housing can be a challenge in Grand Rapids.

To help, the city is offering three community meetings in the coming weeks for residents and individuals seeking housing in Grand Rapids. Each session will highlight the city's new Rental Assistance Center, fair housing laws and the city's new residential application fees ordinance.

The meeting schedule is as follows:

6:30-8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29, at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, 1205 Grandville Ave. SW

6:30-8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1, at St. Alphonsus Church, 224 Carrier St. NE

6:30-8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, at Baxter Community, 935 Baxter St. SE

The Rental Assistance Center is a two-year pilot program to help prospective low-income renters by linking them with social workers to overcome housing barriers, and eventually landlords when they're determined "rent ready."

Grand Rapids is paying $91,800 annually for the center, which can be accessed for free by prospective renters who don't earn more than 80 percent of the Area Median Income. In 2016, the AMI in Kent County was $59,668.

Examples of social-worker referrals through the center include security-deposit assistance, securing utilities, credit repair, income challenges and overcoming poor landlord references through housekeeping and "Good Renter" classes, and clearing debts owed to former landlords.

Representatives from a variety of nonprofit service providers will be on hand at the October and November meetings to share information about their respective housing-related resources. They include the Disability Advocates of Kent County, Dispute Resolution Center, Fair Housing Center of West Michigan, GR HomeShare, Grand Rapids Homes for All, Grand Rapids Housing Commission and Legal Aid of Western Michigan.

An additional session is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30 for rental-property owners and managers to learn more about the city's new residential rental application fee ordinance and how to ensure compliance. That meeting will be held in the ninth-floor commission chambers at City Hall, 300 Monroe Ave. NW.

In July, the city adopted its rental application fee ordinance to limit the amount landlords can charge for rental property application fees to not greater than the actual cost of the applicant screening.

The ordinance also requires landlords to refund application fees when an applicant is denied for any reason other than the criteria disclosed in writing prior to applying.

Violations of the ordinance will be subject to $100 and $200 fines for the first two offenses, respectively, and a $1,000 fine for each subsequent offense. The ordinance goes into effect Nov. 7.

Representatives from the Rental Property Owners Association and the Property Management Association of West Michigan are partnering to host the session for rental-property owners.

For more information about the meetings or the new ordinance, contact the city's community development department at 616-456-3677.WYOMING, MI - Police say a man whose body was found Friday, Oct. 19, on Plaster Creek Boulevard SW is a victim of homicide.

Benjamin Lamar Coates, 29, of Kentwood, was found dead around 5:20 p.m. off the side of the road of Plaster Creek Boulevard between South Division and Buchanan avenues.

Police considered the death suspicious, and said Monday, Oct. 22, that Coates was a homicide victim. Police would not disclose further information on the death.

Police asked anyone with information to call Wyoming Department of Public Safety at 530-7300 or Silent Observer at 774-2345.The Inner City Christian Federation, a nonprofit housing developer based in Grand Rapids, has purchased 28 properties scattered throughout the city for $2.6 million, all but two of which were owned by a Chicago-based investment group.

ICCF plans to sell 50 percent of the homes to low- to moderate-income residents within the next 10 years, with the goal of giving existing tenants the opportunity to purchase them. The nonprofit also plans to raise additional dollars to improve the properties, focusing on areas such as energy efficiency and environmental stability.

The homes were purchased from Residential Dynamics Group, and are part of ICCF's Community Homes Initiative. Last year, ICCF purchased another 177 properties in Grand Rapids and Lansing from RDG as part of the initiative.

"The growing demand and limited supply of housing in our city's core neighborhoods has led to rapidly escalating rents and home prices over the last several years, and we're concerned about the displacement of longtime residents," Ryan VerWys, ICCF's CEO, said in a statement.

"This purchase is one way that our community is coming together to stabilize the housing situation for families and individuals who might otherwise be forced to move or even become homeless."

The purchase was done through support of The Barnabas Foundation, CDV5 Foundation, the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation and Amplify GR, non-profit that has purchased more than 30 properties within the Boston Square, Cottage Grove and Madison Square neighborhoods and is working to revitalize the area.

Amplify GR was created by the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation and the Cheri DeVos Foundation.

"We are thrilled to support this expansion of ICCF's Community Homes Initiative through the Neighborhood Strong campaign, which has already funded critical repairs for 30 homeowners in the neighborhoods surrounding Boston Square and Cottage Grove," Jon Ippel, Executive Director of Amplify GR, said in a statement.

"Neighborhood Strong is the result of resident-driven solutions that have led to substantial investment, ensuring that all residents have real opportunities to live where they choose. We're particularly excited to help preserve affordable rents and increase homeownership opportunities for residents."MECOSTA COUNTY, MI - Authorities have identified the 47-year-old Stanwood man who was killed over the weekend outside a restaurant and bar in Mecosta County.

John Mast was killed after being shot multiple times around 11 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 20, outside Moe-Z-Inn in the village of Morley, according to the Mecosta County Sheriff's Office.

Sheriff Todd Purcell said both Mast and the alleged shooter were inside the bar when the shooter brandished a gun and pushed the victim out the front door and across the parking lot where the shooting occurred.

Purcell said the two men knew each other, but weren't friends or relatives. The sheriff said the men were patrons of the bar, not employees.

On Sunday afternoon, police arrested a male suspect at his parents' house in Austin Township after releasing his name and photo. He was taken into custody without incident, according to police, and a firearm was located.

Police said the man is expected to be arraigned on charges Monday afternoon at the Mecosta County District Court. An autopsy was also scheduled for Monday.

Purcell said the incident is being investigated as a homicide.

An employee of Moe-Z-Inn declined to comment about the incident when reached by MLive/The Grand Rapids Press.Luciano Marbon, 48, of Grand Rapids, has been identified as the construction worker who was killed Saturday in a workplace accident in downtown Grand Rapids.

Marbon was reportedly doing demolition work at 50 Monroe Avenue NW, a building that's being renovated into 130-room hotel and office space, when he was struck by a large piece of timber that fell from above.

The timber measured about 20 feet long, 12-inches wide and 2-inches deep. Marbon was reportedly hit in the back and shoulders, and was rushed to the hospital but later died from his injuries.

The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the incident.

Marbon was an employee of one of the subcontractors working on the site, according to CWD Real Estate Investment, the firm leading the redevelopment project.

"We are stunned and incredibly saddened by this and our prayers and deepest condolences go to Mr. Marbon's family," CWD said in a statement. "We will be working with the appropriate officials to help to determine the cause of this tragedy."

The company declined to comment further and would not provide the name of the subcontractor Marbon worked for. MIOSHA also declined to provide further information.LANSING, MI -- A Court of Claims judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit claiming Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Schuette has stacked his current office with political cronies.

The suit broadly claimed Schuette is using civil servants in his bid for governor, labeling AG employees as the "Schuette Political Enterprise." The liberal group Progress Michigan, led by plaintiff Hugh Madden, sued Schuette, claiming such operations are a violation of the Michigan Civil Service Commission Rules, according to court records.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray said all the plaintiff offered was "conjecture" and that the Civil Service Commission, not his court, has the authority in the matter.

"This Court cannot, and will not, intrude into the MCSC's 'sphere of authority' by permitting plaintiff to pursue a cause of action for an alleged violation of MCSC rules in a manner that is contrary to the MCSC's procedures, which mandates the use of grievance procedures," Murray wrote in his opinion.

Murray granted Schuette's motion for summary disposition, dismissing the case with prejudice, meaning it can't be filed again.

The suit claimed Schuette's "constituent relations representatives" were created within the AG's office to help him in past re-election efforts and in his current bid for the executive office.

Murray said there wasn't enough in the lawsuit to support such claims.

"Even a generous reading of plaintiff's allegations reveals nothing more than conclusory allegations about the creation of the CRR positions," Murray wrote in the opinion. "These conclusory assertions, unsupported by allegations of fact, do not suffice to state a cause of action."

The suit claimed Schuette hired people into the AG's office to reward past work on his campaign and to ensure they would work hard on his campaign in the future, according to court documents.

The suit also claimed that "individuals undertook political activity on behalf of defendant during or instead of the performance of their official duties with the Department of the Attorney General," according to court documents. This would be a violation of the Michigan Civil Service Commission Rules.

Murray said the lawsuit amounted to a fishing expedition.

"Finally, the Court rejects any contention by plaintiff that he is entitled to discovery on any of his claims," Murray wrote in the opinion. "The Court will not, under the guise of discovery, sanction a fishing expedition on the basis of conjecture, which is all plaintiff has offered in this case."

In a public statement following Monday's decision, Progress Michigan said it's clear Schuette has been using his office for political gain. Madden says he plans to appeal the decision.

"Whether it was campaigning for Jeb Bush or using taxpayer funded positions to do political work, Schuette has shown he's more interested in his own political career than working on behalf of the people of Michigan," Madden said. "Today's decision is a setback for accountability and transparency. I plan to appeal to the Court of Appeals to ensure the Schuette political enterprise no longer can use his office for political purposes."

Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, blamed the judge's decision on partisanship.

"Honestly, we're not surprised that a Republican judge would try to protect the Republican nominee for Governor two weeks out from an election, but we are disappointed that appears to be the case," Scott said.

Schuette spokesperson Andrea Bitely applauded Monday's decision.

"The Court made the correct decision, and today's dismissal is proof that this was a frivolous, politically motivated lawsuit," she said.Lara Trump, daughter-in-law to President Donald Trump, is visiting Michigan this week to stump for Republican political candidates including incumbent U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, governor candidate Bill Schuette and U.S. Senate candidate John James.

Lara Trump is married to Eric Trump, the president's son. She produces and hosts a program called Real News Update distributed through the president's social media channels.

She's expected to attend three events:

- A private reception with Bill Schuette taking place on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 12:30 p.m. at 220 E. Merrill St. in Birmingham, which opens up into a public gathering at 1 p.m. (more info here)

- A rally for Lena Epstein, the Republican candidate in the open 11th Congressional District, taking place on Oct. 23 at 2:30 p.m. at 17310 North Laurel Park Drive in Livonia.

- A rally for Walberg taking place Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 4 p.m. at 111 E. First St. in Monroe. (RSVP here)

- A rally for U.S. Senate candidate John James taking place Tuesday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Commonwealth Commerce Center at 209 E Washington Ave in Jackson. ( RSVP here

Lara Trump also came to Michigan earlier this year, when she attended the rally the president held in Washington Township.

Schuette is locked in the governor's race with Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. Walberg, an incumbent, is running to keep his seat against Democrat Gretchen Driskell. And James is challenging U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow for that seat.

More information about the Nov. 6 midterm elections:

Polls will be open in Michigan from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 6. Check Michigan's Secretary of State website to see whether you are registered and to preview your ballot.

MLive has partnered with the League of Women Voters of Michigan Education Fund to provide candidate information and other voting resources to Michigan readers.

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization that encourages informed and active participation in government. For specific information about the U.S. Senate candidates and other Michigan races, visit Vote411.org.SPRING ARBOR TWP., MI - A triple shooting in a Spring Arbor Township home Saturday evening was an apparent murder-suicide stemming from domestic and financial difficulties in the home, police said.

Michigan State Police have identified the victims as Gregory Heath, 61; Curtis Sturgill, 44; and Katherine Sturgill, 60, who were all found shot at 5:50 p.m. Oct. 20, in the 5200 block of Moscow Road in Spring Arbor Township.

Investigators determined Heath shot and killed Curtis Sturgill before shooting Katherine Sturgill and turning the gun on himself, dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

Katherine Sturgill was treated at the scene and then transported to Henry Ford Allegiance Health in Jackson, where she was later pronounced dead, police said.

All three lived together in the home and there are no outstanding suspects in the shooting, police said.

Investigators believe domestic and financial issues were primary motives in the fatal shooting, police said. There was no known history of police contact at the residence prior to the incident, they said.

The Spring Arbor Police Department, Spring Arbor Fire and Jackson Community Ambulance assisted at the scene.WAKESHMA TOWNSHIP, MI -- A man behind bars for the murder of his estranged wife led detectives to remains that police believe are the woman, missing since 2010, the Michigan State Police reports.

Detectives had been speaking with Doug Stewart in the time since he was convicted in 2011 of murdering his estranged wife, Venus Stewart, Michigan State Police Detective First Lt. Chuck Christensen said.

"Myself and Detective Sgt. Todd Petersen were in contact with him through the years up in prison," Christensen said.

Though the murder case had been solved, police have not had an answer about the location of Venus Stewart's remains.

On Monday, Oct. 22, Stewart led police to to the area of U Avenue East between 42nd Street and 39th street in the southern part of Kalamazoo County.

Venus Rose Stewart

"A year ago he finally admitted to us he killed her," he said. "Through conversations with him, we were able to make an arrangement to locate her remains."

Police located remains there and they are confident the remains are Stewart's because of information in the investigation and other items found at the location.

The excavation of the remains is going to be a long process, he said.

Detectives spoke with Venus' mother, Therese Ann McComb, and relayed the news to her.

"We are happy in that maybe we can provide some closure to the family and give Venus a proper burial," Christensen said.

Stewart, 32, was reported missing by her parents, Therese and Larry McComb, of Colon Township, on April 26, 2010.

Police originally said they believed Stewart was abducted by her estranged husband, Doug Stewart, 29.

In May 2010, police said they had evidence that an impostor posed as Doug Stewart in Newport News and that Doug Stewart was in Michigan at the time of Venus Stewart's disappearance.

In June of 2010, Doug Stewart was arrested in connection with Venus Stewart's abduction and alleged killing.

In March 2011, Doug Stewart was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree premeditated murder in Venus Stewart's death.NILES, MI -- No charges will be issued related to a fatal crash that killed a driver who was fleeing from police, the Berrien County Prosecutor's Office reports.

At 5:30 p.m. Saturday, July 28, the Niles dispatch center broadcast a "be on the lookout for" a man leaving Dale's Mini Mart intoxicated who had caused a disturbance, including a description of the vehicle with some unique particulars, the prosecutor's office said.

A deputy on patrol in a marked Berrien County Sheriff's Department vehicle observed the described vehicle in the City of Niles stopped at a green light and saw the vehicle almost hit a curb while accelerating, the news release states.

The deputy attempted a traffic stop using overhead red and blue lights, believing the information provided and observed was sufficient to stop the driver, suspecting he was intoxicated. The suspect vehicle pulled into a parking lot before abruptly leaving the parking lot and speeding off, the prosecutor's office said.

The suspect driver drove recklessly reaching speeds over 100 miles per hour and passed cars on Niles-Buchanan Road on the left and the right, according to the prosecutor's office.

The deputy maintained a distance and attempted to keep a view of the suspect vehicle. The deputy, having to slow for traffic, accelerated to maintain a view but discovered the suspect vehicle had left the roadway. Upon leaving the roadway, the suspect vehicle hit a tree, the prosecutor's office said.

The deputy and emergency personnel arriving at the scene had difficulty removing the suspect from the vehicle. He was transported to a South Bend hospital where he died, police said.

The Michigan State Police investigated the crash scene and determined the suspect vehicle was going 87 miles per hour when it left the road.

The driver was identified as David Bross, 24, of Three Oaks. Autopsy results indicate Bross' death was a result of the crash. His blood alcohol level was .17, the prosecutor's office said.

"It is important to note that law enforcement has a responsibility to the public to keep our roadways safe," Berrien County Michael Sepic said in the news release. "When police officers suspect a driver is operating while intoxicated, they have a duty to the public to attempt to stop that individual. This reduces the risk to the public of such a driver causing a crash. No charges will result from this crash, as this deputy was not criminally negligent, nor negligent at all, in the performance of his duties that July afternoon."MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI - Two candidates are vying to represent District 9 on the Muskegon County Board of Commissioners.

Incumbent Kenneth Mahoney, a Democrat, and Republican challenger Richard Holman will appear on the Tuesday, Nov. 6 general election ballot.

Kenneth Mahoney

This year, MLive Media Group partnered with the League of Women Voters of Michigan to provide candidate information and other voting resources to our readers. Each candidate was asked to answer a series of questions about their policy stances.

Information on all state and federal races and many of Michigan's county and local races will be available at Vote411.org - the election-information website run by the League of Women Voters Education Fund.

Muskegon County's District 9 covers the townships of Montague, Blue Lake, White River and Whitehall, the city of Montague and portions of Dalton Township.

Mahoney, 71, is a former Holton Public Schools math teacher.

Holman, 30, did not return a questionnaire and biographical information is unavailable. According to court records, Holman was convicted on two felony fraud charges in 2006 and 2011.

Several messages left with Holman seeking comment about his prior convictions were not returned.

Below is how Mahoney answered the questionnaire.

What are your top three priorities for Muskegon County and how would you address them?

KENNETH MAHONEY

We must continue to be proactive on financial issues to maintain the County's AA bond rating that includes maintaining a healthy fund balance.

The County needs to encourage the creation of modern infrastructure systems including broadband, air, rail, marine, and roads.

With sixteen townships, seven cities, and three villages Muskegon County has to develop a good working relationship with them and I will work personally to maintain good communications with them and all residents.

What policies do you support to increase jobs and help your residents improve their economic positions?

KEN MAHONEY

Jobs go together with a qualified workforce. Therefore, our career technical center, schools and colleges need our support to feed quality workers to our manufacturers and businesses. I will continue supporting our economic development director and other agencies such as Muskegon Area First and local chambers of commerce to encourage economic activity and growth.

In addition, the encouragement of tourism is an essential part of creating a vibrant Muskegon County.

What actions or policies do you support to protect the county's water, air and land for current and future generations while meeting community energy needs?

KEN MAHONEY

We have a countywide state-of-the-art sewage system that I support. The current commission is considering it as the site of future solar power generation. This will generate enough energy to help run the facility. I continue to work with the Health Department and local groups to monitor and regulate potential environmental problems countywide.

We've increased air quality in all public buildings and in establishments serving the public. We continue to work diligently with both the MDEQ and the EPA to ensure clean water in our environs. This enhances our public health, recreation, and property values for our residents.

What initiatives or policies do you support to help increase tourism and recreational activities in your municipality for residents and visitors?

KEN MAHONEY

The commission worked to attract both cruise boats and tourism buses to the area that has had an impact on tourism and our local economy. The commission maintains Heritage Landing to ensure a great venue for area festivals that also bring visitors to the area to enjoy the wonder that we delight in year around. In doing so, it is a tremendous boost to our economy.

What, if any, specific steps will you take to address inequalities facing women and minority populations in your municipality?

KEN MAHONEY

The County offers equal opportunity in our hiring practices that is a role model for all public and private entities. In addition, the county treats all applicants equally and does not use a screening device. This ensures that all applicants are treated fairly, with a hiring preference for veterans.OSCODA TWP, MI -- Oscoda Township will receive $1 million to help residents get clean drinking water and help clean up contamination around a former U.S. Air Force base.

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, announced on Monday, Oct. 22, that the money will come from two grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and will be used to connect homes using well water to the municipal drinking water system to protect residents from Per- and polyfluoroalkyl, or PFAS, exposure.

The township will receive $750,000 in Water and Waste Disposal Loans and Grants and $250,000 in Emergency Community Water Assistance Grants.

PFAS is contaminating water supplies and the environment across both peninsulas of Michigan.

"I am proud to announce these federal grants to clean up PFAS contamination around former Wurtsmith Air Force Base and ensure clean drinking water for Oscoda residents," Kildee said. "Families in Oscoda have waited too long for resources from the Air Force to protect their families from harmful chemicals. While I fought in Congress to get these funds for Oscoda to ensure drinking water for residents, the Air Force must do more to clean up the contamination that they caused."

More than 30 sites in 15 communities across Michigan have confirmed PFAS contamination in the soil, groundwater or surface water.

The PFAS contamination in Oscoda is linked to firefighting foam used at the former Paul B. Wurtsmith Air Force Base.The Central Board of Investigation (CBI)-led probe into AirAsia India's money laundering case may put Vistara's plan to start international flights on the back burner, Mint reported.

The common denominator between the two airlines is Tata Sons. The conglomerate owns a 49 percent stake in Air Asia India, and runs Vistara in a joint venture with Singapore Airlines.

AirAsia India is being investigated by the investigative agency for allegedly lobbying the government to get licences to fly internationally by manipulating policies and violating foreign investment norms.

Meanwhile, Vistara in June this year applied for rights to start international flights, after it got its 20th aircraft delivered.

The airline had detailed a plan to fly to destinations like Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand and other neighbouring countries, the news daily reported. It was hoping to fly out from October.

As the probe continues, the CBI may force the government to withhold the permission sought by Vistara to fly internationally, people familiar with the matter told the paper.

"With the general elections coming up next year, bureaucrats may be wary of granting Vistara overseas flight permits in the backdrop of CBI investigating another airline," a source was quoted as saying.Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here.Yes Bank

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Yes Banks second-largest shareholder Madhu Kapur will not give up her joint rights as a co-promoter on the banks board.

Sources said a joint promoter holding proposal if agreed upon, will allow Kapoor to nominate himself or one of his affiliates on the board of Yes bank even after his exit as MD and CEO.

The mid-sized private lenders co-promoter Rana Kapoor, who is currently also the managing director and chief executive officer at the bank, has approached Madhu Kapur, wife of late co-founder Ashok Kapur, to resolve the family dispute that first emerged in public in 2013.

Madhu Kapur will not give up her rights as a promoterThey (Kapur and her children) went to court because the promoters rights were unilaterally exercised (by Rana Kapoor), now we have got our joint rights legally, there is no way we will give that up, according to sources close to Madhu Kapur.

The source added that Madhu Kapur, her son Gaurav Kapur and daughter Shagun Gogia have been wanting to have a conversation and resolve the issue.

Calls made and an email sent to Madhu Kapur and Yes Bank remain unanswered.

Rana Kapoor, who will cease to be the MD and CEO of Yes Bank from January 31, 2019, has in the past month, tried to make several attempts to resolve the dispute to arrive at a consensus to appoint a successor.

According to reports, Kapoor has approached Kapur and her daughter with a proposal to combine stakes and voting rights of the two promoters to form a joint single promoter group in order to avoid any legal hurdles on the appointment of a new chief of the bank.

We dont know how the joint promoter group can work...Our fight was for the rights, if that continues, we will resolve itOur legal teams are meeting and all of this will take time. If there is a meeting of minds, then we can reach a consensus, said one of the sources.

In June 2015, the Bombay High Court had ruled that both promoters must follow the articles of association and that Ashok Kapur's family can exercise its rights as his successors after he was killed in the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008. The other side had challenged this judgment.

Both Kapur and the bank have challenged the ruling before a division bench.

Kapoor is hopeful that a joint promoter group will help both sides to name directors on the Yes Bank board without violating its knotty and contentious articles of association (AoA).

A Yes Bank official confirmed of about 3-4 meetings by Rana Kapoor in his personal capacity as the banks co-founder but the talks have remained non-conclusive.

Rana Kapoors wife and Madhu Kapurs sister Bindu Kapoor was also present at most meetings.

On September 17, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut short Rana Kapoors term as the chief of Yes Bank from the proposed three months to five months up to January next year. The banks request seeking additional time till April and then September 2019 was also rejected by the banking regulator.

At present, Kapoor, also through his promoted entities, owns around 10.66 percent while Kapur, along with her associate firms, holds around 9.23 percent in Yes Bank. The combined holding of the promoter group will be around 20 percent.Fintech company Cube Wealth, a wealth creation app, has raised over USD 2 million in equity funding from prominent international angel and seed investors from Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, Europe, Singapore and India, a statement said Monday.

The company said the investment will be used to grow the depth of the product and expand reach in more markets in India after Mumbai and Kolkata.

Cube Wealth is founded by Satyen Kothari, promoter of Citrus Pay, which was sold for USD 130 million in 2016, claimed as the largest fintech cash deal in India.

The start-up will use the funding to add additional asset partners and develop a network of sales and marketing partners and independent financial advisors across the country that can service customers that demand more performance than the standard mutual fund and insurance options, the statement said.

Specifically built for Indian professionals, Cube Wealth is Indias only automated wealth tech app that works on the concept of disciplined long term wealth creation.

"We believe the hard-working Indian middle class deserves better wealth creation options and advice and service than the standard insurance policy or mutual fund that is sold to them today.

"All in an app that is simple to use and automates wealth creation for them while letting them have control at all times. Our mission is to make one million Indian professionals financially independent," Kothari, CEO of the company, is quoted as having said in the statement.Jet Airways owes banks nearly Rs 8,000 crore.

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Private carrier Jet Airways said it has cancelled its proposed deal with TruJet for wet leasing of some of its regional jets over the latter's apparent failure to meet with the deadline on terms of agreement.

Earlier in the day, a source had said that the deal for wet leasing of up to seven ATR planes to TruJet by the Jet Airways had hit air pocket due to regulatory issues and pilots problems.

"Jet Airways has called off the proposed agreement with a regional carrier (TruJet) as the terms were not met within stipulated timelines," a Jet Airways' spokesperson told PTI in response to a query on the deal.

The two carriers had attempted to stitch a deal on ATR planes earlier last year as well, but even after months of back and forth, Jet Airways failed to phase them out.

The Naresh Goyal-owned private carrier, partially owned by Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi, has been battling cash crunch following two quarterly back-to-back losses.

"The plan to wet lease up to seven ATRs from Jet Airways is on hold as of now. If it comes back to the negotiation tables at all, it will be only next year," an industry source told PTI.

Currently, Jet Airways has 15 ATRs in its fleet.

TruJet, which operates its services on regional and Udan routes from Hyderabad to various destinations, has an all-ATR fleet.

"Jet Airways is not in a position to provide adequate number of ATR pilots along with the aircraft as a number of pilots have quit the carrier in the recent past. Instead, it wants TruJet to dry lease these planes, which is an economically viable proposition for the regional carrier," the source said.

A wet lease is an arrangement under which one airline provides an aircraft, its complete crew, maintenance and insurance.

As against this, in a dry lease the lessor gives out only aircraft to a lessee airline or operator.

TruJet spokesperson was also not available for comments.

"Leasing in an ATR from the market is not an issue but getting trained pilots for this type of aircraft is certainly a problem. So, a dry lease does not make economic sense at all," the source said.

"However, considering the deteriorating financial health of the carrier, certain apprehensions around its future remain. This is another reason for deferring the deal at this stage," as per the source.

A TrueJet spokesperson had in August old PTI that the carrier was working on options to induct up to seven aircraft from Jet Airways.

TruJet had earlier said that it is planning to acquire five to seven ATRs and expand the network to 20 more routes by the end of FY19.

Amid financial distress, Jet Airways has been delaying payments to its various vendors and has still not paid the September salary to its senior management, pilots and engineers.

The airline has also reportedly Jet Airways asked 15 managerial level employees from various departments including engineering, security and sales to leave the carrier in October besides grounding eight of its narrow and wide-body planes.live bse live

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Indian markets witnessed a sell-off on Friday with the Nifty 50 index tanking almost 150 points.

The index slipped 1.6 percent while the S&P BSE Sensex witnessed a fall of 1.2 percent for the week ended October 19.

Selling in large-cap names such as RIL, TCS, as well as renewed concerns about liquidity conditions in the NBFC space, dented investor sentiment.

RBI opens banking tap to ease liquidity crunch at NBFCs also failed to lift sentiment. The provision will allow banks to free up Rs 50,000-60,000 crore of liquidity which banks can lend to NBFCs till December 31.

Post the IL&FS crisis NBFCs are facing a credit crunch, with liquidity drying up and banks reluctant to lend to the sector. We maintain a cautious view on this sector, Hemang Jani, head of advisory, Sharekhan by BNP Paribas said.

We prefer private banks such as HDFC which have a healthy CASA ratio. Investors with patience and a longer holding period can systematically accumulate corporate lending banks such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank over the next 6-9 months for handsome gains (better than benchmark indices) over 24-30 months, he added.

Given the fact we have expiry in the coming week, markets are likely to remain volatile.

As long as the index trades below 10450-10480 zones it could slip towards its crucial support and recent swing low of 10200-10138 zones.

On the upside, multiple hurdles are seen at every small bounce towards 10500 levels.

Big News:

Earnings will remain to be the talking point this week as well. As many as 38 companies will be reporting results for the September quarter later today which include names like Asian Paints, Can Fin Homes, GlaxosmithKline Pharma, HOEC, Hindustan Zinc, Oberoi Realty, Omax Auto, Welspun India etc. among others.

Asian Paints: Net profit is likely to grow by 3.8% YoY to Rs 546 crore

Hindustan Zinc: Net profit is likely to fall by 21% YoY to Rs 1781 crore

Oberoi Realty: Net profit is likely to rise by 145% YoY to Rs 256 crore

Technical View:

Nifty formed a bearish candle on the weekly scale

Three levels: 10138-10200, 10380, 10500

Max Call OI: 11000, 10600

Max Put OI: 10000, 10200

Stocks in news:

HDFC Bank: HDFC Bank, the country's second largest private sector lender, has reported a healthy 20.6 percent year-on-year growth in Q2 FY19 profit to Rs 5,005.73 crore, driven by net interest income (NII), other income and operating income.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance's Q2 FY19 net profit grew 43.6 percent year-on-year to Rs 293.10 crore due to a reduction in expenses.

Private life insurer SBI Life Insurance posted a 11 percent year-on-year (YoY) increase in its September quarter net profit at Rs 250.53 crore. The new business premium for Q2FY19 saw a 9 percent increase YoY to Rs 2,221.92 crore.

Technical Recommendations:

We spoke to 5nance.com, and heres what they have to recommend:

ITC: Buy| Target: Rs. 306 | Stop-Loss: Rs. 275 | Return: 6%

NIIT Technologies: Buy| Target: Rs. 1,288| Stop-Loss: Rs 1,220 | Return: 4%

Avenue Supermart: Sell| Target: Rs 1,201 | Stop-Loss: Rs. 1,268 | Downside: 3%

: The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.Aurobindo Pharma Ltd.

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Shares of Biocon gained nearly 4 percent intraday Monday after CHMP has issued a positive opinion recommending approval of Ogivri.

Biocon and Mylan N.V. announced that the European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has issued a positive opinion recommending approval of Ogivri 41, a biosimilar to Roche's Herceptin (trastuzumab), company said in release.

The positive CHMP opinion is based on data submitted as part of the Marketing Authorization Application which included similarity assessment in analytical testing, preclinical and clinical studies.

The CHMP positive opinion will now be considered by the European Commission. The decision on approval is expected by the end of 2018.

Ogivri is indicated for treatment of patients with HER2 positive early breast cancer (EBC), metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and metastatic gastric cancer (MGC).

Arun Chandavarkar, CEO and Joint Managing Director, Biocon said, "This is the third molecule from our collaboration portfolio to receive positive opinion from the European CHMP. We shall continue to execute on our biosimilars strategy of expanding affordable access to high quality products targeting critical illnesses like cancer."

Research house Citi has maintained buy call on Biocon with a target of Rs 800 per share.

According to Citi company's Biosimilars business is at an inflection point and being among the front-runners in most products make the risk-reward favourable.

The company remains a top pick in pharma space, it added.

At 10:19 hrs Biocon was quoting at Rs 681, up Rs 22.55, or 3.42 percent on the BSE.

For more market news, click hereAsian Paints Ltd

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Shares of Kansai Nerolac Paints touched 52-week low of Rs 378.60, plunged more than 9 percent intraday Monday after company posted weak numbers in the quarter ended September 2018.

The companys Q2 (July-Sept) net profit shed 15.6 percent at Rs 122 crore against Rs 144.6 crore in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, revenue was up 11.2 percent at Rs 1,294 crore against Rs 1,163.6 crore.

The operating profit or EBITDA fell 11.6 percent at Rs 195 crore versus Rs 220.6 crore.

Margin was down 390 bps at 15.1 percent versus 19 percent.

H. M. Bharuka, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Kansai Nerolac Paints said, "During the quarter demand was dampened. Factors like GST rate changes in July leading to destocking by dealers, lingering monsoons over many parts of India and a delayed festival season affected demand for both Decorative and Industrial customers.

At 14:33 hrs Kansai Nerolac Paints was quoting at Rs 389.20, down Rs 27.05, or 6.50 percent on the BSE.

For more market news, click hereIT industry body Nasscom said it has signed a letter of intent with the Hiroshima government to work together in creating Japan-India IT corridor to facilitate partnerships between companies from both nations.

"The Hiroshima government will co-invest with Nasscom in creating Japan India IT Corridor that could be at the forefront of promoting B2B cooperation and talent transfer from India to Japan," Nasscom said in a statement.

This project will be formally initiated by early 2019 on mutual consent, it added.

Both parties will undertake a process of thorough due diligence with assistance of relevant partners and local companies, focused on talent availability; local demand potential and; policy benefits and funding support to determine the mutual viability and long-term feasibility of setting up an IT corridor in Hiroshima, the statement said.

"Both parties agreed to setup IT corridor in Hiroshima with incentive package that could be extended to the Indian tech companies that come forward to adopt this platform while forming partnership with Japanese companies," the statement said.

It added that the IT corridor will allow Indian companies -- with their prowess in software services -- help Japanese manufacturing firms adopt digital transformation and create innovative product and solutions lines.

The partnership is also expected to help create IT jobs in Hiroshima and India as well as facilitate talent transfer from India to Japan.

"For achieving sustainable growth in Hiroshima, what we lack is a cluster of IT and software industry," Atsuhito Uemaru, Chief of Innovation Promotion, Hiroshima Prefectural Government, said.

Uemaru added that through the collaboration, Hiroshima would like to serve as a gateway for Indian companies to enter the Japanese market and vice versa and "to build an ecosystem beneficial for the growth of both Indian and Hiroshima companies".IL&FS Transportation Networks | The company defaulted on the interest on non-convertible debentures due on August 25, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

There is no plan to offer government a bail out to cash-strapped Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS), a top government official told Moneycontrol, dismissing speculation that the groups newly constituted board is likely to ask the Centre for a rescue programme.

The government will not infuse fund in to IL&FS. However, the government is there to give any other kind of support to the company, wherever required, the official said today.

The government is fast tracking the dues of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) towards IL&FS and will ensure that there is a fair dispute settlement mechanism with state governments and as well as the state-owned authority that develops and maintains highways.

The process will begin as early as 60 days, the official said.

The government is looking to settle claims raised by IL&FS against NHAI without going through arbitration process.

However, according to reports, the infrastructure lending major has arbitration claims worth Rs 70,000 crore with NHAI.

In addition, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs is working on a well defined settlement framework, along with a roadmap and will present it to the companies tribunal in its next hearing on October 31.

MCA has filed for a moratorium of up to three months at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) so that the debt-laden company is ring fenced from creditors and from further legal and regulatory proceedings.

NCLAT has also asked the five largest lenders to IL&FS to respond on the government's request for a moratorium. The next hearing on the matter has been fixed for November 13.

According to the government, IL&FS Group, has infrastructure and financial assets exceeding Rs 1.15 lakh crore and is struggling to service around Rs 91,000 crore in debt, led by mismanaged borrowings in the past.

Moneycontrol had earlier during the day reported that the rights issue of IL&FS is likely to be pushed to March next year and that the immediate priority of the new board is to look at the sale of core assets to raise money.

From October 5-19, Rs 4,500 crore issue was on offer by IL&FS, as per an exchange notification. However, the issue did not take off.

While large institutional investors like Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) are ready to infuse capital into the group, they are waiting for asset sales in the next 2-3 months so that the short term cash crunch can be managed effectively.

On October 1, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved the takeover of IL&FS board by government nominees, saying mismanagement at the crisis-ridden financier makes it a fit case of supersession of the board under Article 241 of the Companies Act.

The decision to supersede the existing board was taken after the ministry of corporate affairs (MCAs) Regional Director, Mumbai submitted a report from that brought out serious corporate related deficiencies in the IL&FS holding company and its subsidiaries. The board was suspended and a new six-member board led by Uday Kotak was constituted.Representative Image

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Prices of petrol and diesel fell for the fifth straight day across the country on October 22, bringing some respite to consumers who have been saddled with higher fuel expenses for the past couple of months.

The price of petrol price fell by 30 paise a litre and that of diesel fell by 28 paise a litre in Mumbai.

The revised prices of the two fuels in the city stood at Rs 86.91 a litre and Rs 78.54 a litre, respectively, according to Indian Oil Corporation (IOC).

In Delhi, petrol was being sold at Rs 81.44 per litre and diesel was retailing at Rs 74.92 per litre, down 30 paise and 27 paise overnight, respectively.

The fall in prices was steeper in Chennai. Petrol and diesel prices fell 32 paise a litre and 29 paise a litre, respectively. Petrol was retailing at Rs 84.64 per litre and while diesel was retailing at Rs 79.22 per litre.

Petrol & Diesel Rates Nov 15, 2021 Petrol Rate in Mumbai Nov 15, 2021 Current Petrol Price Per Litre 110 110 View more Diesel Rate in Mumbai Nov 15, 2021 Current Petrol Price Per Litre 0 View more Show

In Kolkata, price of petrol fell 29 paise to Rs 83.29 per litre, while that of diesel fell 27 paise to Rs 76.77 per litre.

City Petrol price Price change Diesel price Price change (Rs/litre) (rise)/fall in (Rs/litre) (rise)/fall in paise/litre paise/litre Bengaluru 82.08 30 75.31 27 Bhopal 84.63 31 76.34 28 Hyderabad 86.34 32 81.49 30 Lucknow 78.89 29 72.92 26 Port Blair 70.09 25 70.05 25

Here is a look at petrol and diesel prices in some of the other major cities in India:

Prices of petrol and diesel fell by a minimum of Rs 2.50 per litre across the country on October 5, when the government cut excise duty on the two fuels by Rs 1.50 a litre and asked oil PSUs to subsidise them by another Re 1 a litre.

The government further appealed the state governments to cut value added tax (VAT) on fuels. But many states, including Delhi, refused to cut VAT on petrol and diesel.

To protest the Delhi government's decision to refuse cutting VAT, the Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA) called a strike on October 22, shutting down around 400 petrol pumps, along with linked CNG dispensing units, in the national capital.

Meanwhile, Odisha on October 22 became the first state in the country to sell diesel at a higher price than petrol.

A litre of diesel cost 13 paise more than a litre of petrol in Bhubaneswar, with diesel priced at Rs 80.40 per litre and petrol priced at Rs 80.27 per litre.

(With inputs from PTI)Financial creditors of the embattled company Jaypee Infratech (JIL) including home buyers, fixed deposit holders and financial institutions have voted online on six issues, including the appointment of a new resolution professional (RP).

These stakeholders have also voted for appointment of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP to assist the RP, buyers' objections to related party transactions between JIL and Jaypee Associates (JAL), a lower fee for the RP, acceptance of resignation of seven independent directors and approval of Form G for invitation for expression of interest, sources said.

CoC members had, at the second meeting held on October 17, unanimously decided to conduct the voting through electronic means. The meeting was presided by insolvency resolution professional Anuj Jain. The IRP had apprised the CoC members that the voting portal will be open from 5 PM on October 19 until 12 PM on October 22.

The results of voting that ended on October 22 will be known after 48 hours, sources said

The CoC was reconstituted on October 11 following the IBBI circular dated September 14 that made it clear that only those financial creditors be included as part of the CoC who have submitted their claims with the chairperson. The total number of homebuyers who were part of the CoC is 22,482 with the total value of claim at Rs 13,660 crore and voting share of 58.2 percent, 557 are FD holders with a total claim value of Rs 19 crore. As many as 13 banks are part of the CoC with a total claim value of Rs 9,783 crore and percentage voting share of 41.7 percent, sources said.

The first agenda put to vote was to do with the appointment of Vijaykumar V Iyer as a resolution professional to replace the Interim Resolution Professional Anuj Jain for the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process. At the first CoC meeting held last month, homebuyers had rejected the reappointment of Anuj Jain as resolution professional, sources said.

The second item that came up for voting was to do with the appointment of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP to assist the resolution professional in connection with the corporate insolvency resolution process of the company.

The proposed fee of the resolution professional (who will be assisted by DTTILLP) at Rs 48.50 lakh per month, plus OPE, and GST, as a part of the insolvency resolution process costs to be paid out of the cash flows of the corporate debtor was also put to vote. At the CoC meeting last week, Kuldeep Verma, authorised representative of homebuyers had submitted that some home buyers had requested for re-negotiating the RP fee, they said.

Homebuyers objections to related party transactions between JIL and JAL were also put to vote. At the meeting held on Wednesday, the authorised representative of home buyers submitted that he had received concerns from homebuyers on profit money being paid to JAL as a contractor. The IRP had clarified that although the master contract is with JAL, the payment for site works is made directly in the account of JALs sub-contractors and only the indirect costs such as reimbursement of manpower/ staff, GST/other tax or other costs pertaining to JIL works had been paid to JAL.

They also voted for the approval of Form G (invitation for expression of interest). The authorised representative of home buyers had sought clarification if the Form G shall be published in the overseas newspaper as well. IRP clarified that as per mandatory requirement, Form G shall be published in one English and one regional language newspaper in India and the same shall be uploaded on the IBBI website.

Other issues that were discussed at the meeting last week included homebuyers call for a forensic audit into the affairs of JIL and clarification on the role of IRP in fixing RERA timelines. The chairperson clarified the RERA timelines have been fixed by the authority before the start of CIRP process and IRP has no role in fixing the revised timelines of delivery of flats, sources said.

The issue of Rs 750 crore plus interest penalty available with the National Company Law Tribunal Allahabad following the August 9 Supreme Court order was also discussed. Nine associations of homebuyers have filed an application with the NCLT seeking direction to release the amount for construction of incomplete projects. The next date of hearing is November 27.

In August this year, the apex court had said the insolvency proceedings against Jaypee Infratech will be dealt with by the Allahabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The court had also ordered the reconstitution of the companys Committee of Creditors in light of recent amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) that permit homebuyers to be a part of the resolution process. The Rs 750 crore that Jaiprakash Associates had deposited with the Supreme Courts registry were also transferred to the NCLT.

Jaypee Infratech homebuyers may have a 62 percent say in the committee of creditors, but this voting share does not guarantee that the resolution plan will sail through, homebuyers had said in a letter written to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), Chairperson MS Sahoo. Jaypee Wishtown homebuyers claimed that the present voting rules were skewed and bound to result in liquidation by design. They asked Sahoo to look into the issue and resolve the alleged bias rules.

On October 4, allaying fears of more than 25,000 homebuyers, Sahoo had told IANS all voting-related obstacles in JIL's resolution have been removed. We have addressed the voting issue it appears to me that not all 25,000 people have joined the Committee of Creditors (CoC); only 10,000 have joined. You have to count voting for 10,000 only. The Electoral College is 10,000.

Though the amended Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) treats homebuyers as financial creditors and thus a part of the CoC that takes all crucial decisions, the law mandated that those who abstained from voting will be treated as a negative vote.

The NCLT had on August 10 last year, admitted IDBI Banks plea to initiate insolvency proceedings against the JIL for defaulting on Rs 526-crore loan. While admitting the plea of IDBI Bank, the NCLT had appointed Anuj Jain as IRP to manage the companys business.

Unnati forms are now available online. You can Get up to 50 lakhs seed money for your innovations/inventions if:

1. You are an SC/ST Entrpreneur with a role & stake in the startup with a great innovation

2. You have an innovation that has social impacthttps://t.co/lVfzrrhEWE

 Priyank Kharge (@PriyankKharge) October 22, 2018

Entrepreneurs from Karnataka belonging to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes that have a role and a stake in a startup that is involved in "great innovation" can now get up to Rs 50 lakh as seed funding, the state's Social Welfare Minister said in a tweet."Unnati scheme also caters to entrepreneurs irrespective of caste. The only need to have any innovation that will have social or economic impact in rural or urban areas," Kharge said.

Unnati scheme also caters to entrepreneurs irrespective of caste. The only need to have any innovation that will have social or economic impact in rural or urban areas. https://t.co/NsZg2VVTRQ Priyank Kharge (@PriyankKharge) October 22, 2018

The Karnataka Government has launched the scheme to identify, mentor and promote young entrepreneurs from the SC/ST communities.

It aims to identify technology innovations by entrepreneurs from marginalised sections of the society.

The scheme will have two major streams -- technology, and innovations for social impact.

It is open to all startups that are less than 4 years old, and are registered as an entity in Karnataka.

Also, at least 50 percent of the workforce of these startups must be engaged in Karnataka. Above all, at least one entrepreneur of the startup must belong to the SC/ST communities, and must hold a substantial share in the company.Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

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Big bull Rakesh Jhunjhunwala added Fortis Healthcare and SpiceJet to his portfolio, while increased stake in Dewan Housing Finance Corporation, or DHFL, as well as NCC during the quarter ended September, according to data available as of October 16.

Jhunjhunwala buys shares through his company Rare Enterprises, in his own or wife Rekhas name as well as in the name of Rakesh Radheshyam Jhunjhunwala. Name of companies in which Jhunjhunwala or persons acting in concert held more than one percent stake are disclosed in the shareholding data released by the BSE as of October 16.

As many as 13 companies have declared their shareholding pattern for the September quarter. Jhunjhunwala kept his stake constant in seven out of 13 companies which includes Agro Tech Foods, Firstsource Solutions, Man InfraConstruction, MCX, and The Mandhana Retail Ventures.

He raised his stake in housing finance company DHFL during July-September quarter when the stock crashed 57 percent on the back of IL&FS-led liquidity crisis fears in the NBFC space.

As per the latest shareholding pattern, Rakesh Radheshyam Jhunjhunwala held 3.19 percent stake in Dewan Housing Finance Corporation by end of September quarter. The ace investor increased his stake in the company by 43 basis points from 2.76 percent in the June quarter.

The carnage on D-Street can be seen in Jhunjhunwalas portfolio, who is referred to as Indias Warren Buffett by some. According to Forbes India, the ace investor is ranked 61 among Indian billionaires with a net worth of USD 2.5 billion.

Most of the stocks in the Jhunjhunwalas portfolio fell up to 58 percent from July till date which includes DHFL (down 58%), Jaiprakash Associates (down 54%), SpiceJet (down 32%), Aptech (down 24%), and Agro Tech Foods (down 20%), among others.

Jhunjhunwala also added SpiceJet, which has fallen 32 percent in the quarter till date and almost 50 percent so far in 2018. He raised his stake in the low-cost airline to 1.25 percent.

Most of the airline stocks have been hit due to rising ATF prices, thanks to a swift rise in crude oil prices, along with the rise in competition.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala also added Fortis Healthcare to his portfolio by acquiring over 2 percent stake (1.25 crore shares) in the company for the quarter ended September. The stock rose marginally from the quarter to date but has fallen by about 14 percent so far in 2018.

Jhunjhunwala sold off his stake in three companies as of data collated on October 16  Crisil, Jaiprakash Associates and Lupin  for the quarter ended September.live bse live

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Here are the stocks that are in news today:

Results on Monday: Asian Paints, CCL Products (India), Schaeffler India, Sundaram Finance Holdings, Hatsun Agro Product, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, Welspun India, Can Fin Homes, Manali Petrochemicals, Oberoi Realty, Kalyani Steels, Kalyani Investment Company, Hindustan Oil Exploration Company, Maharashtra Scooters, Omax Autos, Genus Power Infrastructures, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, Oriental Hotels, Hindustan Zinc, DCM Financial Services, INOX Leisure, Kansai Nerolac Paints, Jubilant Life Sciences, Lumax Industries, Lakshmi Machine Works, Sicagen India

HDFC Bank Q2: Profit grows 20.6 percent to Rs 5,005.73 crore versus Rs 4,151 crore; net interest income increases 20.6 percent to Rs 11,763.41 crore YoY. Gross NPA flat at 1.33 percent QoQ.

ICICI Lombard Q2: Net profit was up 43.7% at Rs 293.1 crore against Rs 204 crore, YoY Rs 2.5/Sh

Aleor Dermaceuticals, JV between Alembic Pharma and Orbicular Pharmaceutical has successfully cleared its first United States Food and Drugs Administration (USFDA) inspection

Persistent Systems Q2: Profit rises to Rs 88.14 crore versus Rs 87.35 crore; revenue increases to Rs 835.55 crore versus Rs 834.28 crore (QoQ).

Bhageria Industries Q2: Profit jumps to Rs 28.21 crore versus Rs 10.65 crore; revenue rises to Rs 126.62 crore versus Rs 91.76 crore (YoY)

Piramal Enterprises: Company strongly refutes all baseless rumours of any sort/form that have been floating around with respect to its real estate loan portfolio companies.

Tata Steel: Wholly owned indirect subsidiary of the company, TS Global Minerals Holdings Pte Ltd entered into an agreement to divest its entire stake in its wholly owned step down subsidiary Black Ginger 461 Pty Ltd which in turn holds 64 percent in Sedibeng Iron ore Pty Ltd, South Africa which is the operating company. The stake has been divested to IMR Asia Holding Pte Ltd which is a group company of IMR Metallurgical Resources AG ('IMR'), a global metals and mining group headquartered in Switzerland.

Bhansali Engineering Polymers Q2: Profit falls to Rs 16.88 crore versus Rs 25.10 crore; revenue jumps to Rs 349.98 crore versus Rs 247.94 crore YoY.

SBI Life Insurance Q2: Profit rises 11 percent to Rs 250.53 crore versus Rs crore; new business premium increases 9 percent Rs 2,221.92 crore YoY.

Biocon: European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has issued a positive opinion recommending approval of Ogivri 41, a biosimilar to Roche's Herceptin (trastuzumab).

Sadhana Nitrochem Q2: Profit surges to Rs 28.74 crore versus Rs 0.83 crore; revenue jumps to Rs 84.13 crore versus Rs 15.68 crore YoY.

Lupin: Lupin Neurosciences, a specialty pharma division said Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), the scientific committee of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), has adopted a positive opinion recommending the marketing authorisation of NaMusclaim (mexiletine hydrochloride) for the symptomatic treatment of myotonia in adults with non-dystrophic myotonic (NDM) disorders.

Wockhardt: CARE revised companys rating for long-term bank facilities (fund based) as BBB-; Negative from A; Negative and short term bank facilities (non-fund based) as A3 from A1.

SH Kelkar and Company: Ratul Bhaduri resigned as Executive VP and Group CFO of the company.

SKF India: Board meeting is scheduled to be held on October 24 to consider unaudited financial results for the quarter and six months ended September 2018; and a proposal for buyback of fully paid-up Equity Shares of the company.

ICICI Securities Q2: Profit increases to Rs 132.6 crore versus Rs 129.5 crore; revenue rises to Rs 457.8 crore versus Rs 455.3 crore YoY.

Reliance Power: Wholly owned subsidiary Sasan Power won an arbitration award against North American Coal Corporation (NACC). NACC's claim of around $32 million (around Rs 235 crore) consisting of liquidated damages, interest and legal cost has been dismissed.

Container Corporation: Company signed agreement with Kribhco Infrastructure.

Bulk Deals

Indiabulls Housing Finance: William Blair Emerging Markets Growth Fund sold 24,79,838 shares of the company at Rs 691.84 per share on the NSE.

Repco Home Finance: Taiyo Greater India Fund sold 4,27,000 shares of the company at Rs 312.7 per share on the NSE.

Cantabil Retail: Shankar Growth Fund sold 1,02,805 shares of the company at Rs 132.36 per share on the NSE.

(For more bulk deals, click here)

Analyst or Board Meet/Briefings

Ashika Credit Capital: Company announced postponement of board meeting on November 6.

Tata Sponge Iron: Board meeting is scheduled on October 24 to consider the opportunities for growth and consequent options for funding.

Oberoi Realty: Conference call to be held on October 23 to discuss Q2FY19 results and business updates.

Welspun India: Conference call to be held on October 23 to discuss Q2FY19 results.

Indiabulls Ventures: Board meeting is scheduled on October 24 to consider the preferential issue and its price for the equity shares of the company to certain foreign investor(s).

Mahindra Logistics: Conference call is scheduled to be held on November 2 with several analysts/ institutional investors/ funds to brief them on the unaudited standalone and consolidated financial results for Q2FY19.

Adani Power: Board meeting is scheduled on October 31 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Tech Mahindra: Board meeting is scheduled on October 30 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Tube Investments: Board meeting is scheduled on November 2 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Edelweiss Financial: Board meeting is scheduled on October 26 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Eros International: Board meeting is scheduled on October 26 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Astec Lifesciences: Board meeting is scheduled on October 26 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Bodal Chemicals: Board meeting is scheduled on October 25 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Monsanto India: Board meeting is scheduled on October 29 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

OnMobile Global: Board meeting is scheduled on October 29 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Matrimony.com: Board meeting is scheduled on October 31 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Zydus Wellness: Board meeting is scheduled on November 2 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.

Aurionpro Solutions: Board meeting is scheduled on October 27 to consider financial results for the quarter ended September 2018.live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

N Chandrasekaran-led Tata Sons wrote off Rs 28,651 crore in its telecom business last fiscal, which lowered its net profit by 76 percent, The Economic Times reported. Fund managers tracking the group told the paper that Chandrasekaran will now have to deliver growth and profit.

Tata Sons focus next fiscal will be on growth, and cash flows will stay ahead of capital expenditure, a top official told the paper. The group has started taking some steps like selling its mobile service business of Tata Teleservices to Bharti Airtel as it was struggling due to competition.

A source told the paper that write-offs on the balance sheet for its telecom arm will be completed by March next year, while other capital infusions to amp up businesses will be undertaken this year.

The conglomerate reported a 14 percent year-on-year rise in total revenue in March. Profit after tax declined to Rs 4,379 crore, the company said in filings with the Registrar of Companies.

The group made attempts at consolidating its stake across Tata companies to simplify its cross-holdings and help raise funds for entities that wanted to cut their debt and invest, the filing read.

Chandrasekaran has pushed heads of over 100 Tata companies to focus on core businesses and markets within India. Sources told the paper that group companies are already cutting down on small businesses and subsidiaries.

There are quite a few fledgling insurance, steel, hotels and retail businesses that will contribute in a few years. The chairman is taking strategic decisions with an eye on the future, sources added.

Tata Sons combined revenue exceeds $100 billion, but the group derives a big share of dividends from its largest group company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) which reported a consolidated revenue of $19 billion in March.

Tata Trusts and group companies hold around 79 percent stake in Tata Sons, with the balance held by individual investors including the Tata family.

Tata Sons has sought shareholder approval to change its status from a public company to a private company. Its standalone revenue includes dividend from group companies and brand equity subscriptions. Consolidated profit depends on performance of 218 subsidiaries, 34 joint ventures or associates and yields in equity investments, the filings stated. It recently approved a plan to invest Rs 10,161 crore in the groups finance, insurance, defence, realty and retail companies.With around Rs 1 lakh crore worth of used cars expected to be sold in 2018-19, business in the used car segment could rise to more than half that in the new car segment, The Financial Express reported.

Sellers of used cars sold 3.6 million units in 2017-18, while those of new cars sold 3.2 million units over the same period.

The primary drivers of sales of used cars are the rising aspirations of people and easy financing, the news daily reported.

Most sales of pre-owned cars are now from the organised space and the sector is slated to grow rapidly over the next few years.

Speaking to the publication, Ashutosh Pandey, Chief Executive Officer at Mahindra First Choice Wheels said that the company's business is currently growing at around 40-50 percent.

"Volumes could well double over the next three to four years," he said.

With an estimated growth of 10-15 percent year on year, the used car segment is growing at roughly twice the rate at which the new car segment is currently growing.

Customers are also attracted by the kind of deals offered at dealerships that sell all brands of cars.

Apart from the attractive pricing on these cars, dealerships offer extended warranties, free services for six months, exchange offers and loans, the news paper reported.

The top selling cars are usually ones like Alto, WagonR, Swift and Santro, which account for around 60 percent of all units sold.

Customers are reportedly more confident about buying these pre-owned vehicles because of the warranties offered on them.

The value of cars typically depreciates by as much as 30 percent over the first year, and 5-10 percent a year after that.

"Anyone buying a two-year-old car will pay approximately 60-65% of the value of a new car," Ashish Kale, President, Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA), told the paper.

Kale also said that a three-year-old Honda City could potentially be bought for the price of a new premium hatchback.

The boom in the used-car business is now forcing all of the industry's big names into the space. Auto manufacturers like Hyundai, Maruti Suzuki, and Mahindra & Mahindra all have subsidiary companies operating in the space.A protester raises a placard reading "#MeToo" during a rally against harassment at Shinjuku shopping and amusement district in Tokyo, Japan, April 28, 2018. Picture taken April 28, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato - RC19441C57D0

On the lines of #Metoo, a group of 15 people, including a former French diplomat acquitted in a sexual abuse case in 2017, has launched a #MenToo movement, asking men to come out and speak openly about the sexual harassment faced by them at the hands of women.

The campaign was launched here Saturday by NGO Children's Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting (Crisp) to protest against the #Metoo movement, false cases against men among others.

Speaking on the occasion, National President of Crisp, Kumar V Jahgirdar said the group would fight for gender-neutral laws and demand punishment for those filing false cases under #MeToo campaign. Noting that #MeToo was a good movement, he, however, said it should not be misused to fix somebody by levelling false allegations.

"This movement has only resulted in bringing disrepute to men who have worked hard to earn respect in society," he said.

Later, talking to reporters, Jahgirdar said unlike #MeToo victims, who bring about sexual abuse stories that happened a couple of decades ago, the #MenToo stories would be related to recent incidents.

On #MeToo movement, Jahgirdar further said if the affected women have genuine case of sexual misbehaviour, they should take legal recourse, instead of putting out stories on social media. Former French diplomat Pascal Mazurier, who was accused of sexually abusing his daughter and later acquitted by a city court in 2017 also took part in the protest.

He said #MenToo campaign was not at all a counter to #MeToo campaign, but to address the problems of men who do not speak up against women's atrocities. "There is real pain among men.. They are also suffering, but they are not coming out in the open against women and their misdemeanors," he said. The false allegations levelled on men in #MeToo campaign not only destroys children's future, but also families, Pascal noted. "We make laws to protect women.

That is fine, but let us not forget half of humanity are men," he added. Pascal is facing a court battle after his wife had moved the Karnataka High Court challenging a city-based court's verdict acquitting him. Pascal's wife has custody of their three children.

The #Me Too movement has gathered pace over the past few days with a number of women speaking out on sexual harassment at their workplace and support for them has been pouring in from various quarters. Former Union Minister MJ Akbar, film personalities like Alok Nath, Subhash Ghai, Nana Patekar and Vairamuthu have been accused of sexual harassment by a number of women under the #MeToo movement.The Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Rs 444-crore public issue to list on BSE, NSE as on 12 October 2020. It witnessed an overwhelming response from investors as it was subscribed to 157.4 times, which is the top response in 2020 so far.

Bangladesh will evaluate cautiously a recent Indian offer asking the country to use its Kolkata and Haldia ports for transshipment to make coastal shipping more cost effective for bilateral trade, officials and reports said here on Monday.

Bangladesh is yet to approve India's proposal which was floated several months ago.

The Financial Express newspaper carried a report saying Bangladesh's shipping ministry officials decided to evaluate the proposal "warily" as its own Chittagong and Mongla seaports were upgrading their capacity.

Shipping Secretary Abdus Samad said Bangladesh would take a decision on the proposal after a thorough consultation with the government and non-government stakeholders.

"If the stakeholders recommend, we will discuss on this proposal," shipping secretary Abdus Samad told the newspaper.

Other officials concerned said they would review the decision keeping in mind the interests of Chittagong and Mongla as their capacity was rising.

They, however, said the issue was likely to be discussed in the upcoming shipping secretary-level talks scheduled for October 24-25.

India said the initiative would shift cargo from the costly land route and create an opportunity for Bangladeshi garment exporters to reach European and American markets avoiding congestion at the Chittagong port.

Currently, ships are allowed to transport only bilateral cargos from Kolkata and Haldia ports, while they are barred from carrying international cargos under a coastal shipping agreement.

Both Kolkata and Haldia have ample capacity to handle the volume but the Chittagong and Mongla ports were constructing several terminals as well to enhance its capacity.

Bangladesh Cabinet last month approved a draft agreement to allow India to use Chittagong and Mongla ports to transport cargo to its northeastern states.

Bangladesh readied the draft for signing the deal with India, while officials said Nepal and Bhutan could be included in the agreement if they wished to use the two ports.

The two countries had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the use of the two ports during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Dhaka in June, 2015.

India-Bangladesh trade grew 38 per cent to USD 9.1 billion over the last four years while on a year-on-year basis, the trade grew 24 per cent in 2017-18.

This was followed by nearly 22 per cent growth in April-July 2018 while officials said keeping in tune with the trend, bilateral cargo movement through coastal shipping was also rising.Arvind Kejriwal AAP

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal hit out at the BJP, Congress and the INLD, saying these parties indulge in caste politics and the Aam Aadmi Party talks about building schools and hospitals.

Kejriwal recalled his first brief 49-day stint in power when he resigned over the Jan Lokpal Bill issue, saying his aim was never to capture power and he never clung to power.

"People don't leave a chowkidar's job even, but I kicked the CM post in 49 days. We are not here for power, we want to build nation and nation cannot be built by fights over temple and mosques, by pitching Jats and non-Jats, but by building schools, hospitals and roads," Kejriwal said addressing a public gathering in Beri in this district.

Kejriwal and Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia visited three government schools at Beri in the district on October 22.

Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal, he accused these parties of doing caste politics.

"They come to you and seek votes in the name of caste...," he alleged. At the same time, he told the gathering that he does not need power, but sought support for AAP, saying it will provide a viable alternative if it forms the next government in Haryana.

"Those who want to have good hospitals, good education, cheap power, it is your responsibility to bring AAP to power," he said.

"Will Chautala, Khattar and Hooda give you schools, those of you who think Kejriwal can, raise their hands. Purpose of my life is not to capture power, but bring a change in your lives," he said trying to strike a chord with people.

He also said that the next elections in Haryana will be fought on issues like school, hospitals, farmers, jawans, water and power.

Kejriwal said that he visited Beri after a few elders and youths from the town had visited his Delhi residence a few days back and told him that they were impressed with the change they have witnessed in government schools in Delhi.

"They said they have seen schools in Delhi and lamented that the condition of schools in Beri was bad. We visited three schools today and met some parents there. We visited one girls school, which has five classes with only two teachers... The intent of the government here does not seem to bring a real change in education system," he alleged.

He said that before the AAP came to power, the condition of government schools in Delhi was worse.

"Change doesn't come by mere speeches, but you have to work hard for this. And Manish Sisodia worked hard to bring about this change. Had you ever heard that teachers of government schools being sent to the US and the UK for training...Results of government schools are even better now and many people are pulling out their children out of private schools and admitting them in government schools in Delhi," he said.

He said many private schools used to fleece students by charging exorbitant fees and effecting hike every year.

"We issued orders that no fees will be increased, despite this 197 schools hiked fees and out of this 160 fees have refunded the increased fees back to students. The remaining have been ordered to immediately refund the fees or else government will take over such schools," he said.

"We opened new government school in Rohini, out of which majority have come after leaving private schools," he said.

"Likewise, we brought change in Delhi's government hospitals. Anyone visiting Delhi's government hospitals, they are provided free treatment. New Mohalla clinics are coming up, we are providing cheapest power in the country, we give Rs 20,000 per acre compensation to farmers to crop damage.

"Three years of works done in Delhi shows that other parties in power have been looting the country for last 70 years. The country is not poor, government has enough money, but they have been looting," he said.

He also asked what the BJP, Congress and the INLD have done in Haryana when they formed governments.

"Key lies in your hands, you have to decide," he told the people appealing them to bring AAP to power in Haryana.A UN-backed fund has approved USD 43.4 million for enhancing climate resilience for millions of people living in India's coastal communities as part of its efforts to combat extreme impacts of climate change.

The grant is a part of more than USD 1 billion approved by the Green Climate Fund for 19 new projects to help developing countries tackle climate change.

The new project will be supported through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and is an essential step for India in reaching its goals outlined in the Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The 21st meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board ended Sunday in Bahrain's capital Manama, approving over one billion dollars of new projects and programmes to support climate action in developing countries, and formally launching its first replenishment, a statement released by the fund said.

"India's coastal areas are quite vulnerable to climate change and this project focuses on selected vulnerable areas of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha states. The new project, with the GCF assistance, will not only help enhance resilience and adaptability, but also lead to emissions reduction while providing support to local communities for their livelihoods," said Ravi S Prasad, Joint Secretary, Climate Change, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India.

The 19 new projects amount to a total investment from GCF of USD 1,038 million, and including co-financing the projects will channel over USD 4,244 million of climate finance for low-emission, climate-resilient development.

At the end of the four day meeting, the Board decided to launch the process for the Green Climate Fund's first formal replenishment, marking a key moment in the development of the world's largest dedicated fund for climate action.

Funding approved at the meeting in Manama includes projects linked to geothermal energy in Indonesia and greener cities in Europe and the Middle East.

Under the project, over 1.7 million people are expected to directly benefit from livelihoods support, with another 10 million indirectly benefitting from improved shoreline protection, the UNDP said in a statement.

In reaching the Sustainable Development Goals for gender equality and reduced inequalities, the project is focused on providing tangible benefits for women, female-headed households, young people and the elderly, and members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes.

Over 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 will be sequestered through restored ecosystems over the next 30 years.

The Government of India will finance an additional USD 86.8 million toward the new project to mainstream and accelerate the impacts of the Green Climate Fund grant, it said.

To protect life on land and below water as outlined in the 2030 Agenda, project activities will focus on the restoration and conservation of over 15,000 hectares of mangroves, coral reefs, seagrasses and saltmarshes. Communities, including local youth, will be trained to work with scientists in monitoring ecosystem health and coastal ecology, the UNDP statement said.

"In addition to helping communities establish more climate-resilient livelihoods, this multi-dimensional project will contribute to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - over 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 will be absorbed through restored ecosystems," said Francine Pickup, Country Director at UNDP India.

"It will also have considerable long-term environmental benefits including healthier ecosystems, better biodiversity conservation and improved buffering against climate change-driven extreme weather," said Francine Pickup, Country Director at UNDP India," Pickup said.

To strengthen climate risk-informed coastal management and infrastructure planning, the innovative project will create an online decision-support tool available via mobile phone for use by government officers, academic institutions, community members and scientists. The project will also build local knowledge of climate change and the associated risks via training and public education programmes.

India's coastline is expected to be among the regions most affected by climate change globally. The Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are both predicted to be subject to extreme climate variability, with the frequency and intensity of cyclones and extreme weather events projected to increase, particularly on the eastern coastline, the statement said.

According to a report from the World Bank, an increase in global mean surface temperatures of 2C will make India's monsoon highly unpredictable, while a 4C increase would result in an extremely wet monsoon (which currently has a chance of occurring only once in 100 years) occurring every 10 years by the end of the century.

India has about 6,740 km2 of mangroves, including some of the largest mangrove forests in the world. Mangrove cover along India's coastline has decreased by 50 per cent in some areas, largely because of human pressures, including alteration of flow of freshwater from upstream. Sea-level rise is predicted to result in further reductions, it added. PTI NSA NSA .image for representation

Congress and BJP raised the issue of alleged discrepancies and bogus voters in the Electoral Rolls in Telangana with Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat, who began a three-day visit to the state to review prepardeness for the December 7 assembly polls.

At a meeting held by Rawat, who is heading a 11-member Election Commission team, with nine recognised political parties in the state, Congress claimed there were about 68 lakh 'discrepancies' in the rolls released on October 12.

Senior Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy, who attended the meeting, said he conveyed the party's stand to the EC team that the "discrepancies" should be removed.

"I pointed out that there is a case pending in the high court on the issue. Now this becomes a court-monitored electoral roll. If the EC tries to go ahead and conduct polls on the basis of such flawed electoral rolls with full of discrepancies running into lakhs it will be the greatest disservice to democracy in this country," he told PTI.

He said the Congress with the help of a team of experts had identified the 'discrepancies' in the voters list after the draft roll was published on September 10.

"We still believe that there about 68 lakh discrepancies in the list released on October 12," Reddy added.

He also alleged that the EC officials misguided the Hyderabad High Court over the discrepancies during the hearing of the petition filed by the Congress.

The petition seeking to declare as illegal the special revision of voters in the state is scheduled to come up for next hearing on October 30.

The court had earlier restrained the EC from publishing the roll but gave the go ahead on October 11 after the commission informed that claims and objections can be submitted even after the rolls were released.

Senior BJP leader Indrasena Reddy said his party made a complaint about bogus voters that are still existing in the electoral list.

He also said his party suggested that ambulances and vehicles, which are used to refill cash in ATMs, should also be subjected to checks to control illegal money flow.

CPI Telangana Secretary Chada Venkat Reddy said the EC should keep tabs on the illegal money and liquor flow for free and fair elections.

All nine parties, including ruling TRS, attended the meeting. The is the first visit of the top EC officials after the election schedule for the state was announced.

According to an official release issued ahead of the visit, the team would meet all the electoral officers and Superintendents of police of all the districts on October 23.

On October 24, it will hold meetings with Senior officials of Income Tax Department, Railways, airport and various banks.

On the last day of its visit, the team is expected to meet Chief Secretary SK Joshi and DGP Mahendar Reddy and address the media before leaving for Delhi.

The EC had on October 6 announced the election schedule for five states, including Telangana.

The polls to the 119-member Telangana assembly were originally scheduled to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections next year, but the house was dissolved on September 6 as per a recommendation by the state cabinet.Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi  July 16

Appreciating the carpet makers' skills that turned the "Made in India" logo into a big brand worldwide, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday that handicrafts were a source of inspiration during the freedom struggle too.

Addressing the India Carpet Expo at Varanasi via video conference, Modi said it is for the first time that the expo is being organised at the Deendayal Hastkala Sankul in Varanasi, a PMO statement said.

He mentioned Varanasi, Bhadohi and Mirzapur as important centres of the carpet industry, while dwelling upon the government's efforts to encourage handicrafts and small and medium industries.

He said India has a long tradition of handicrafts, and Varanasi has played a key role in this regard. On the occasion, he remembered the great saint poet, Kabir, who himself was a weaver and belonged to the same region.

The PM said handicrafts were a source of inspiration and self-reliance during the freedom struggle. In this context, he mentioned Mahatma Gandhi's 'satyagraha' and 'charkha'.

Modi said India is the biggest producer of carpets today with about 35 per cent of the global market share.

The prime minister spoke of the impressive export performance of the carpet industry sector.

He said the rising middle classes and the support provided to the carpet industry are the two key factors behind the growth of this sector.

Modi appreciated the skills of the carpet makers which turned the "Made in India carpet" a big brand.

He spoke of the government's logistic support to the carpet exporters and in creation of world class laboratories to ensure its quality. He also spoke of other measures, including provision of credit facilities to set up modern looms.

Modi said the Union Government is committed to ensuring the skill and hard work of the carpet makers becomes one of the strengths of the nation.Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan wished all Hindu citizens on the occasion of Diwali. Prime Minister Imran Khan wishes a happy Diwali to all Hindu citizens, tweeted Prime Ministers Office in Pakistan.

India should move to resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Monday. His remarks came a day after six civilians were killed after an explosive went off at an encounter site in Kulgam district of South Kashmir.

"Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris....by Indian security forces," Khan tweeted.

"It is time India realise it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people," he said.

Three militants were killed Sunday in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam district, while six civilians lost their lives in a blast following the gunfight there.

It is not the first time Khan has spoken about Kashmir.

In September, New Delhi called off a meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, citing killings of Indian security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the release of Pakistani postage stamps "glorifying a terrorist and terrorism".

In his victory speech after the July elections, Khan expressed his willingness to improve Pakistan's ties with India and said that his government would like the leaders of the two sides to resolve all disputes, including the core issue of Kashmir, through talks.

He said good India-Pakistan relations will be beneficial for the entire region.

India maintains that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country and Pakistan is in illegal occupation of a part of the state's territory.India Pakistan

The Indian Army has asked the Pakistan military to take back bodies of two "intruders" from that country who were killed in a gunfight along the Line of Control in Sunderbani sector of Jammu on Sunday, official sources said.

Two heavily armed Pakistani intruders and three soldiers were killed Sunday in the gunfight after the Army foiled an infiltration bid along the LoC.

The intruders were believed to be members of a Border Action Team (BAT) comprising Pakistan Army jawans and trained militants, an Army officer said on condition of anonymity on Sunday.

The sources said the Pakistan Army has been informed through established communication channels to take the bodies of its nationals, who were wearing combat uniform.

Army sources said a stern warning has been conveyed to the Pakistan Army to restrain terrorists operating from its soil.

The incident on Sunday took place at around 1:20 PM.

The sources said five to six Pakistani intruders crossed the LoC and fired on Indian Army patrol in the Sunderbani sector.

They said since the talks between DGMOs (Director General of Military Operations) of the two countries on May 29, the Indian Army has been maintaining "utmost restraint" to uphold the ceasefire pact along the LoC despite regular provocative actions from across the border.

However, Pakistan Army has been vigorously attempting to send terrorists across the LoC and seven infiltration bids have been foiled by the Indian Army since May 30, in which 23 terrorists have been killed.

Reports suggest concentration of a large number of terrorists in launch pads across the border and they are desperate to infiltrate into India before the onset of winter.Jainism emphasises the importance of non-violence for human welfare and compassion, President Ram Nath Kovind said.

The President was speaking after inaugurating the 'Vishwashanti Ahimsa Sammelan' (world peace and non-violence conference) at Mangi Tungi in Nashik district.

The event was organised by the Bhagwan Shri Rishabhdev 108-feet Vishalkai Digambar Jain Murti Nirman Committee.

The President said in the Jain tradition, the principle of 'Ahimsa Paramodharma' (non-violence is the highest religious principle) is aimed at human welfare and compassion and not just shunning physical violence.

He said Bhagwan Mahavir gave special importance to 'Apirigraha'-- not taking more than what is essential to survive.

"Humankind is exploiting nature indiscriminately. Ruthless consumption and accumulation of resources is increasing. Due to this, phenomena like climate change is emerging as a challenge. Following the Jain tradition shows us the way out," Kovind said.

Jainism teaches people to live and let live, Kovind added.

At the event, the President presented the first Bhagwan Rishabhdev International Award, comprising Rs 11 lakh and a citation to the Teerthanker Mahaveer University at Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh. The university chancellor Suresh Jain accepted the award.

Speaking on the occasion, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis assured adequate funding for the development of the Jain religious place Mangi Tungi.Gandhinagar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe ahead of India- Japan annual summit at Mahatma Mandir, in Gandhinagar on Thursday. PTI Photo(PTI9_14_2017_000045B)

Strengthening of ties in key areas of defence, trade and infrastructure will top the agenda when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Japan next week, the country's envoy Kenji Hiramatsu said.

At an interaction at the Brookings India think tank, Kenji said talks are on between the two sides on strengthening maritime cooperation, including the signing of the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement.

"We are also expecting to sign agreement between Indian Navy and Japan's Naval Defence Force with regard to maritime domain awareness and security issues. We would like more cooperation in this domain too," he said.

Kenji said the two sides are hoping to start a formal negotiation process on the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement.

"Also defence equipment and technology cooperation, we have agreed to have joint research activities with regard to unmanned vehicles and robotics," he said.

The envoy, however, added that he cannot "predict what will happen" during the visit and anything concrete can come out only after discussions between the two prime ministers.

The defence forces of the two countries share a robust security cooperation with the two sides participating in bilateral and trilateral drills.

He said for the first time the armies of the two countries will participate in a joint military drill in Mizoram next month, while Japan will be an observer in 'Cope India' -- an Air Force drill between India and the US.

Modi will be in Japan on October 28 and 29 for the annual summit between the prime ministers of the two countries. It will be the fifth annual summit between Modi and Abe and their 12th meeting overall since 2014.

"Under the framework of the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan, the two leaders will have wide-ranging discussions over two days on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest," the Ministry of External Affairs said on the visit last week.

Responding to a question on India wanting to procure the Soryu-class submarine from Japan, Kenji said, "We are in the process of discussing (the matter) between the Japanese government and private sector," he said, adding that there is no final decision on collaborating with India for the project yet.

With regard to US-2 amphibious aircraft, he said discussion is on with the Indian side on the project and some progress will be made in due course.

India and Japan are collaborating on high-speed railway, which has been planned between Mumbai and Ahemdabad. The project has been facing resistance over acquisition of land.

Japan is also funding the project and Kenji said the first tranche of loan has been transferred.

Responding to a question on the topic, he said the initiative is "very symbolic" between the two countries, and Modi and Abe had decided to go ahead with "this very important project".

He exuded confidence it "will be completed on time as scheduled".

Land acquisition, he noted, is a very important aspect of the project and the Japanese and Indian team is working very closely.

Kenji said he has "100 percent trust" on the Indian team dealing with high-speed railway and hoped that the Centre and the state government will find way to ensure the project is completed.

He said that to boost connectivity, India has identified several infrastructure projects in the northeastern states that would eventually help in connecting India with neighbouring countries.

Kenji noted that Japan was the biggest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to India and will continue to do so.

Asked about the Asia-Africa growth corridor, a joint initiative of India and Japan, he said the two countries and their private companies are trying to identify concrete projects and collaboration prospects.

Speaking on Quad, a grouping of India, Australia, Japan and the US to promote the shared vision on Indo-Pacific, he said the process is steadily growing.

He added that there are other formats such as Japan-India-USA trilateral dialogue and Japan-India-Australia trilateral dialogue and many avenues to achieve common goal.

"Quad is not sole mechanism to promote this," Kenji said.

Both countries have "convergence" of views on Indo-Pacific, he said. The Indo-Pacific region has been witnessing growing assertiveness of China.

Kenji said maritime cooperation was very important in the region and India and Japan are looking at ASEAN countries, including Indonesia and Vietnam, for a trilateral cooperation. He, however, added that there was nothing concrete to elaborate further on the matter.

On the progress made after the signing of India-Japan nuclear deal, he said Japanese firms are interested in providing high-technology equipment to India and discussions have begun on this.

When asked on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he said ministers and negotiators are working very hard for this. At the bilateral level, he said, there have been lots of discussions to address each other's concerns.New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh with Chinese State Councillor and Minister for Public Security Zhao Kezhi, in New Delhi, Monday, Oct 22, 2018. (PIB Photo via PTI) (PTI10_22_2018_000104B)

Home Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart held delegation-level talks which was also attended by union minister Kiren Rijiju, an MP from Arunachal Pradesh, the border state over which India and China are locked in a territorial row.

Rijiju was part of the Indian team led by Singh but his name later apparently did not figure for talks with the Chinese delegation, led by Zhao Kezhi, China's Minister of Public Security, said an official in the Ministry of Home Affairs privy to the development. The official did not want to be identified.

However, as the restricted meeting between Singh and Zhao was in progress, a message was sent to Rijiju, who was at his residence, to reach North Block, which houses the Home Ministry and where the delegation-level talks was supposed to be held in minutes, the official said.

After receiving the message, the junior home minister rushed to North Block and attended the delegation-level meeting between the two sides, where an India-China security cooperation agreement was signed, the official added.

A home ministry spokesperson declined to comment.

Rijiju hails from Arunachal Pradesh, which China considers as a "disputed" territory. China does not issue regular visas to people from Arunachal Pradesh but gives staple visa, which India has been protesting strongly. India considers Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of the country.

It was not immediately not known whether, at the restricted meeting, Singh informed his Chinese counterpart about Rijiju's participation in the delegation-level talks held shortly afterwards.

During the visit of the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh in April 2017, China warned it would take "necessary measures" to defend its territorial sovereignty and interests, saying India "obstinately" allowed the Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the "disputed" parts of the Northeastern state, causing "serious damage" to the bilateral ties.

China routinely protests visits of Indian leaders to Arunachal Pradesh.

In November 2017, China objected to President Ram Nath Kovind's visit to the northeastern state, saying India should refrain from "complicating" their border dispute when bilateral ties were poised at a "crucial moment".

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Arunachal Pradesh in February 2015, China said it has never recognised the state and is "opposed" to the prime minister's visit to the "disputed area".

A similar protest was also lodged by China when Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had visited Arunachal Pradesh and Beijing said her tour of the "disputed area" is not conducive to peace in the frontier region and asked New Delhi to create an "enabling environment" to resolve the border row.Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal

AAP convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal visited households in the New Delhi area to collect donations and ask for votes for his party in next year's parliamentary polls. People were "very happy" with the work done by the Delhi government and they will give donations and votes to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), he said.

Kejriwal's cabinet colleagues, including Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, MPs and MLAs, along with AAP workers, also took to the streets, visiting people in various parts of the city seeking donations and votes for the party.

Interacting with the residents of his New Delhi Assembly constituency, Kejriwal said the BJP MPs in Delhi did nothing except "creating hurdles" in the work of the AAP government.

The donation campaign -- "Aap Ka Daan, Rashtra Ka Nirman" -- was launched by Kejriwal last Monday.

The campaign will go on for four months, with around 3,000 AAP workers going door to door in all the seven Parliamentary constituencies in Delhi.

Kejriwal said it was immaterial for Delhi as to who became the next prime minister, adding that if the AAP won any Lok Sabha seat in the national capital, it would get work done with whosoever was in power at the Centre.

"We will tell people not to get concerned about who becomes the next prime minister. The BJP MPs did nothing for Delhi.

"By the way, nobody knows who will be the next prime minister. All (parties) are in a poor shape," he said.

The AAP, which has already announced party in-charges for all the seven Lok Sabha constituencies, intends to go to the voters asking for votes by claiming that its government has achieved "excellent" results in health, education, water and power supplies.

Issues like the Delhi Metro fare hike, alleged "failures" of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs and the ongoing sealing drive in the city are also likely to be raised during the campaign.The Congress on Monday accused the Modi government of conniving with fraudsters who had escaped the country and cited "conflict of interest" to say Finance Minister Arun Jaitley should be sacked after his daughter and son-in-law, both lawyers, allegedly received a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from fugitive Mehul Choksi.

In the 44 months till January 2018, the Modi government witnessed an unprecedented 19,000 'bank fraud cases' involving Rs 90,000 crore, Congress leader Sachin Pilot said at a press conference along with party colleagues Rajiv Satav and Sushmita Dev.

He also alleged that 23 fraudsters escaped India under the government's watch after duping the country of over Rs 53,000 crore.

Pilot said a sinking economy, banking frauds and flying fraudsters form part of BJP's-Jaitley's 'New India' and demanded that the minister should resign on moral grounds.

"Successive escapes of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and others reflect that Modi government is not a guardian of public money' but a travel agency' facilitating fraud, fleece and fly to foreign shores' of willful bank defaulters," the three leaders said in a statement.

"Arun Jaitley, being Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, his daughter Sonali Jaitley and son-in-law Jaiyesh Bakhshi proceeded to accept a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from Mehul Choksi's fraudster company Gitanjali Gems Ltd in December 2017," Pilot alleged.

However, Jaitley's son-in-law had earlier issued a statement stating that his law firm had returned the retainership the moment they came to know that the company was involved in a scam.

"Is this not a clear-cut case of Collusion, Connivance' & Conflict of Interest' on part of FM Arun Jaitley? Why were FM Jaitley, his daughter and son-in-law neither summoned nor questioned by CBI/ED/SFIO?" the leaders asked in the statement.

"Is it not a fit case to sack Shri Arun Jaitley and conduct a full independent investigation?" they added.

Pilot and the other leaders also sought to know why no action was taken against Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi, Geetanjali Gems Ltd and others, despite FIRs and multiple complaints.

"Who protected them?" they asked.

"Why were daughter and son-in-law of FM Arun Jaitley paid Rs.24 lakh by Mehul Choksi's Gitanjali Gems Ltd. without doing any work, as admitted by them? Who else are the clients of Chambers of Jaitley & Associates' paying retainership of lakhs of rupees and why should their names not be made public, including amounts received?

"As people who owed money to Mehul Choksi/Nirav Modi came forward & deposited the money with Govt after their fraudulent escape, why did FM Jaitley's daughter & son-in-law redeposit Rs.24 Lakh in the account of a company that had defrauded the banks & people of Rs.26,306 Cr? Why did they hide it?" the statement from the three leaders said.

Addressing the press conference, the Congress leaders said the Modi government was more loyal to "conmen" than to the common man as "it not only helped them escape the country after defrauding banks worth crores, but also provided them protection and legal protection".Honda Africa Twin is a 1000cc off-road bike priced at Rs 12.90 lakh

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nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

The stellar rise in Royal Enfields popularity and volumes will likely remain unchallenged for some more time as Honda is yet to finalise its product offensive in the same segment.

A senior official from Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI), the second largest two-wheeler maker, said though the niche segment controlled by Royal Enfield is very important to the company, it is yet to have a challenger brand.

That is one of the biggest challenges for us. We have been undertaking customer surveys and product development. As of today, I am sorry to say we dont have anything concrete to say, Minoru Kato, President and CEO, HMSI told Moneycontrol.

At present, Honda does not have a product in its global portfolio that could be a like-to-like challenger to the Royal Enfield range. Honda has the CB1100 that carries the 1970s styling, strapped with a four cylinder engine unit, along with the Rebel, a modern day cruiser.

Honda has been most vocal about its ambitions in the segment that is otherwise dominated by Royal Enfield.

But others too have plans.

Classic Legends, the vertical of Mahindra & Mahindras two wheeler business, will bring back the Jawa brand to India with the launch of a 300cc bike on November 15. With a retro, modern classic look, the Jawa will compete against the 350cc models of Royal Enfield. This will be the first real attempt by any company to take on Royal Enfields product range.

Two years ago Pune-based Bajaj Auto did try to position its roadster called Dominar against Royal Enfield backed by an advertising and marketing campaign that mocked bikes of Royal Enfield. However, the Dominar, which is Bajajs most powerful bike sells just around 1,500-2,000 units a month.

Last year, Honda formed a team that was tasked to hunt for solutions against the Royal Enfield range. This even included a bike that could be modelled around the Scrambler, a modern-day roadster from Volkswagen-owned Italian biking giant Ducati.

But Hondas motorcycle range has not had a very fruitful run in the domestic market. More than half of Hondas domestic volumes accrue from sale of scooters, even though its motorcycle offering of 11 models is more than twice the five models that the scooter segment sells.

At 1.1 million units, Hondas sales grew 6.26 percent, less than half of the industrys growth of 13.18 percent during the first half of the current financial year, according to data supplied by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).

Hondas current motorcycle range have engines ranging between 110cc-250cc and are targeted at the commuter and budget performance segment. Royal Enfields smallest engine is a single cylinder 350cc and the biggest will be seen on the soon-to-be-launched twin cylinder 650cc.

The Eicher Motors-controlled Royal Enfield saw sales of 8.01 lakh last year, a growth of 23 percent over 2016-17 volumes of 6.51 lakh. The company has reported remarkable growth in the past few years.

From monthly sales of 14,500 units recorded in 2013, Royal Enfields domestic monthly run rate has zoomed to 70,000 units as of last month. The Classic range is the most cherished brand within this portfolio accounting for more than 60 percent of its volumes.Abraham C Mathews

In November 2014, Rolling Stones magazine published a harrowing account of a brutal gang-rape of a student (referred to only as Jackie) of the University of Virginia at a fraternity party. Soon after, other journalists re-investigated the story to find several inconsistencies, with the Washington Post all but calling the victims account entirely fabricated. To its credit, Rolling Stones withdrew the story, and appointed the Columbia Universitys journalism school to audit the editorial process that led to the debacle, and their report also published in full by the magazine. Still, two defamation lawsuits found the magazine liable to pay almost $5 million in damages.

So yes, lets get that out of the way: Some accounts of sexual harassment (like in every other walk of life) can be false. Having said that, the accusations of sexual assault that have surfaced in the last year, be it in the United States, or here in India, have been simply more credible than they have ever been. Almost every allegation seems to be, by-and-large, corroborated by accounts of others with similar experiences, and accusers are no-longer anonymous. [Not to mention that these accusers are also, most often, accomplished women who have earned their right to be taken seriously by their professional body of work, and are now putting their reputations (for credibility, at the very least) on the line].

All the same, for a movement as anarchic as #MeToo, one is constantly befuddled by the boundaries being pushed, as well as the societal response to accusations. What constitutes a credible #MeToo allegation, and at what point does the society punish the person through ostracism, rather than wait for due process to take due course?

To be sure, it is self-defeating to define limits to what can be alleged, by whom, and how. Nevertheless, a consensus should gradually emerge that a #MeToo allegation is an allegation about habitual conduct by people in positions of power (mostly by virtue of employment, and sometimes by authority  a government servant, priest, or a sports-team selector, for instance) who prey on people they wield power over. #MeToo will then become a warning in public interest, rather than the anarchic minefield that it is now threatening to become, defeating its very purpose.

That is not to say that solitary instances of abuse, or abuse in inter-personal relationships, are not by themselves condemnable. However, social punishment, by boycott, should be reserved for serial predators (such as, lets say Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey or MJ Akbar, all still allegations). Scriptwriter Varun Grover found out this month that he did not even have a name or face to discredit, so as to prove his innocence. In such a case, perhaps society must adopt a stance of watchfulness (without necessarily presuming him innocent), rather than banish him as has happened. Trust, but verify, survivors accounts, to borrow from the auditors aphorism. Similarly, individual instances of abuse are still best left to the courts.

There are other moral dilemmas. Senior advocate Indira Jaising publicly withdrew from representing one of her clients after multiple accounts of rape emerged against him. Professionally, such withdrawal is untenable, perhaps even illegal; but the only effective way of censuring sexual offenders is by not engaging with predators (against whom credible accounts have emerged). After all, harassment is so rampant only because violators know they will never suffer consequences, thanks to victims silence, and plausible deniability.

We must also contend with the legal fallout of these allegations. To say that an accused should not resort to defamation lawsuits is unfair. After all, the law is meant to discourage false and frivolous character assassination. However, this might be a good occasion to revisit the recent judgment by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court upholding punishment for defamation under criminal law. Perhaps a Constitutional Bench can reconsider whether defamation must be purely civil in nature (punishment in the form of compensation).

After all, in the #MeToo era, speaking out is no longer a question of exercising free speech, but an Article 21 protection of the right of women to work without being harassed. Decriminalising defamation would also allow judges to apply a lower standard of examining whether such an incident is likely to have happened (as it does in civil cases) rather than whether it definitely happened, and consider corroborating accounts of other accusers.

One must not also forget the root-cause. The concentration of power among men who then turn a blind eye to what they see as minor peccadilloes of their peers. Last week saw the disturbing press conference by Malayalam female actors after the official film-workers body seemed to be taking a stance more protective of a high-profile accused colleague, rather than the victim, also an accomplished female actor. We have to rethink how masculine our workplaces have become, and effectively dismantle these power structures, especially in superstar-driven professions.Chinese device maker Xiaomi is all set to host a three-day Diwali festive sale starting October 23. The sale, on until October 25, will be held on Xiaomis official website mi.com. Apart from exclusive discounts and offers on products, Xiaomi will also offer attractive cash back and coupons.

When, where and how to avail Diwali with Mi offers

The three-day Diwali with Mi sale will go live from October 23 to 25. The sale will be hosted on Mi.com and Xiaomi has already launched a dedicated page listing all the products and their offers.

As part of the sale, Xiaomi is offering smartphones, powerbanks, accessories including fitness band, earphones, televisions among others.

In addition to the regular deals, Xiaomi has tied up with financial entities such as SBI, Paytm, MobiKwik, ixigo to provide exclusive offers to buyers. Customers using SBI credit cards will get 10 percent or Rs 750 instant discount on a purchase value of Rs 7,500. Paytm users will get flat Rs 500 cashback on purchase of Redmi Note 5 Pro and POCO F1.

Mi LED Smart TV 4A 32-inch and 43-inch models will come with Rs 500 discount on payments via Amazon Pay. Additionally, MobiKwik users will get 20 percent SuperCash capped at Rs 2,000 and ixigo users will receive coupons worth Rs 3,500 on the purchase of smartphones.

Xiaomi is also offering discounts on products bought through offline channels. The offline sale will last until November.

Diwali with Mi offers

Mi Smartphones

Redmi Note 5 Pro 4GB/64GB variant will be available at Rs 12,999. The smartphone retails at Rs 14,999 on regular sale days. Redmi Note 5 Pro 6GB/64GB variant will be available at Rs 14,999, down from Rs 16,999.

Redmi Y2 (4GB/64GB), a camera-focused smartphone, will be available at Rs 10,999 during the sale, a discount of Rs 2,000.

Mi A2 Android One will come with a discount of Rs 2,000 and will be available at Rs 14,999, down from its original price of Rs 16,999.

Poco F1 (Rosso Red edition) will be available at Rs 20,999, a discount of Rs 1,000 on its original sale price of Rs 21,999.

Mi TV on sale

Xiaomis Mi LED Smart TV 4A (43-inch variant) will come with a flat discount of Rs 1,000 and will be available at Rs 21,999.

Mi Accessories on sale

Mi Power Bank 2i 20,000mAh variant will be available at Rs 1,399 whereas the 10,000mAh black colour variant will be sold at Rs 699.

The Mi Bluetooth headset (Basic Black) will come at Rs 799, Mi Bluetooth audio receiver (White) will be available at Rs 899. Prices of Mi earphones and Bluetooth Speaker (Basic 2) have been reduced to Rs 599 and Rs 1,599, respectively.

Mi Re 1 Flash sale

Xiaomi will hold a Re 1 flash sale every day at 4 pm where the company will offer two products for Re 1. Mi Home Security Camera 360 and Poco F1 Steel Blue (6GB RAM/128GB) will be on sale on October 23.

On October 24, the Mi Compact Bluetooth Speaker 2 and Redmi Note 5 Pro Gold (4GB RAM/64GB) will be available for Re 1.

On October 25, the Mi LED TV 4A PRO 49-inch television and Mi A2 smartphone will be on sale for Re 1. However, Xiaomi will be offering only limited stocks for the flash sale.As Saudi Arabia faced intensifying international scepticism over its story about the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a senior government official laid out a new version of the death inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that in key respects contradicts previous explanations.

The latest account, provided by a Saudi official who requested anonymity, includes details on how the team of 15 Saudi nationals sent to confront Khashoggi on October.

2 had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and then killed him in a chokehold when he resisted. A member of the team then dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.

After denying any involvement in the disappearance of Khashoggi, 59, for two weeks, Saudi Arabia on Saturday morning said he had died in a fistfight at the consulate. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold, which the senior official reiterated.

Turkish officials suspect the body of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was cut up but the Saudi official said it was rolled up in a rug and given to a "local cooperator" for disposal. Asked about allegations that Khashoggi had been tortured and beheaded, he said preliminary results of the investigation did not suggest that.

The Saudi official presented what he said were internal Saudi intelligence documents which appeared to describe an initiative to bring dissidents home to Saudi Arabia, including the specific one involving Khashoggi. He also showed testimony from those involved in what he described as the 15-man team's cover-up, and the initial results of an internal probe. He did not provide proof to substantiate the findings of the investigation and the other evidence.

This narrative is the latest Saudi account that has changed multiple times. The authorities initially dismissed reports that Khashoggi had gone missing inside the consulate as false and said he had left the building soon after entering. When the media reported a few days later that he had been killed there, they called the accusations "baseless."

Asked by Reuters why the government's version of Khashoggi's death kept changing, the official said the government initial account was based on "false information reported internally at the time."

"Once it became clear these initial mission reports were false, it launched an internal investigation and refrained from further public comment," the official said, adding that the investigation is continuing.

Turkish sources say authorities in Turkey have an audio recording purportedly documenting Khashoggi's murder inside the consulate but have not released it.

Riyadh dispatched a high-level delegation to Istanbul on Tuesday and ordered an internal investigation.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he is not satisfied with Saudi Arabia's handling of Khashoggi's death and said questions remain unanswered. Germany and France on Saturday called Saudi Arabia's explanation of how Khashoggi died incomplete.

A According to the latest version of the death, the government wanted to convince Khashoggi, who moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views, to return to the kingdom as part of a campaign to prevent Saudi dissidents from being recruited by the country's enemies, the official said.

To that end, the official said, the deputy head of the General Intelligence Presidency, Ahmed al-Asiri, put together a 15-member team from the intelligence and security forces to go to Istanbul, meet Khashoggi at the consulate and try to convince him to return to Saudi Arabia.

There is a standing order to negotiate the return of dissidents peacefully; which gives them the authority to act without going back to the leadership" the official said.

"Asiri is the one who formed the team and asked for an employee who worked with (senior royal adviser Saud) al-Qahtani and who knew Jamal from the time they both worked at the embassy in London, he said.

The official said Qahtani, who worked for the crown prince, had signed off on one of his employees conducting the negotiations.

CHOKEHOLD

According to the plan, the team could hold Khashoggi in a safe house outside Istanbul for "a period of time" but then release him if he ultimately refused to return to Saudi Arabia, the official said.

Things went wrong from the start as the team overstepped their orders and quickly employed violence, the official said.

Khashoggi was ushered into the consul general's office where an operative named Maher Mutreb spoke to him about returning to Saudi Arabia, according to the government's account.

Khashoggi refused and told Mutreb that someone was waiting outside for him and would contact the Turkish authorities if he did not reappear within an hour, the official said.

Khashoggi's fiance, Hatice Cengiz, has told Reuters he had handed her his two mobile phones and left instructions that she should wait for him and call an aide to Turkey's president if he did not reappear.

Inside the consul's office, according to the official's account, Khashoggi told Mutreb he was violating diplomatic norms and said, "What are you going to do with me? Do you intend to kidnap me?"

Mutreb replied, "Yes, we will drug you and kidnap you," in what the official said was an attempt at intimidation that violated the mission's objective.

When Khashoggi raised his voice, the team panicked. They moved to restrain him, placing him in a chokehold and covering his mouth, according to the government's account.

"They tried to prevent him from shouting but he died," the official said. The intention was not to kill him."

Asked if the team had smothered Khashoggi, the official said: "If you put someone of Jamal's age in this position, he would probably die."

MISSING BODY

To cover up their misdeed, the team rolled up Khashoggi's body in a rug, took it out in a consular vehicle and handed it over to a "local cooperator" for disposal, the official said. Forensic expert Salah Tubaigy tried to remove any trace of the incident, the official said.

Turkish officials have told Reuters that Khashoggi's killers may have dumped his remains in Belgrad Forest adjacent to Istanbul, and at a rural location near the city of Yalova, 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Istanbul.

Turkish investigators are likely to find out what happened to the body "before long," a senior official said.

The Saudi official said the local cooperator is an Istanbul resident but would not reveal his nationality. The official said investigators were trying to determine where the body ended up.

Meanwhile, operative Mustafa Madani donned Khashoggi's clothes, eyeglasses and Apple watch and left through the back door of the consulate in an attempt to make it look like Khashoggi had walked out of the building. Madani went to the Sultanahmet district where he disposed of the belongings.

The official said the team then wrote a false report for superiors saying they had allowed Khashoggi to leave once he warned that Turkish authorities could get involved and that they had promptly left the country before they could be discovered.

Sceptics have asked why so many people, including military officers and a forensics expert specializing in autopsies, were part of the operation if the objective was to convince Khashoggi to return home of his own volition.

The disappearance of Khashoggi, a Saudi insider turned critic, has snowballed into a massive crisis for the kingdom, forcing the 82-year-old monarch, King Salman, to personally get involved. It has threatened the kingdom's business relationships, with several senior executives and government officials shunning an investor conference in Riyadh scheduled for next week and some U.S. lawmakers putting pressure on Trump to impose sanctions and stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

The official said all 15 team members had been detained and placed under investigation, along with three other local suspects.TOKYO, JAPAN - NOVEMBER 11 : Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) shake hands during an arrival ceremony in Tokyo, Japan on November 11, 2016. (Photo by Toru Yamanaka / AFP / Pool/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Japan hopes to clinch a military logistics pact with India that will allow access to each other's bases, Tokyo's envoy said on Monday, in a tightening of security ties seen as designed to balance China's growing weight in the region.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting Japan this weekend for an annual summit with his counterpart Shinzo Abe, and the proposed Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement between the two militaries is on the agenda.

Under Modi and Abe, bilateral relations have rapidly expanded and the two countries conduct three-way naval exercises involving the United States in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

Japan's ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, said it was only natural for the two militaries to have a logistics-sharing agreement because of the large number of manoeuvres they were carrying out each year.

"We hope to start formal negotiations with regard to signing of the ACSA. It is high time we had mutual logistics support," he said.

Under such a pact, Japanese ships would get access to fuel and servicing at major Indian naval bases including the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which lie near the Malacca Straits through which a large amount of Japan's but also China's trade and fuel supplies are shipped.

India's navy, which is increasingly sending ships further out as a way to counter China's expanding presence in the Indian Ocean, would get access to Japanese facilities for maintenance.

Modi's government signed a similar agreement with the United States in 2016 ending years of hesitation by previous administrations that worried about upsetting China.

Beijing has in the past expressed concern about multilateral and complex exercises, calling them destabilising to the region.

Hiramatsu said Japan and India had a great deal of convergence with respect to freedom of navigation and transparency in the Indio-Pacific region.No 5 | Saudi Arabia | $61.9 billion | Fall by 16% (Image: Reuters)

Jordan said on Sunday it would not extend the 25-year deal that allows Israel to use two tracts of territory along its border just as Israel said it was still planning to negotiate an extension.

Much of the land in Baquora in the northwestern part of the kingdom and Ghumar in the south is used by Israeli farmers, some of whom were given private land ownership rights and special travel rights under a 1994 peace treaty between the two countries.

The agreement will expire next year.

King Abdullah has been under increasing public pressure to end the arrangements with Israel. He told senior Jordanian politicians the kingdom wanted to exercise its "full sovereignty" over the two areas, Petra state news agency said.

"These are Jordanian lands and they will remain.." the monarch said. In an "era of regional turmoil" his kingdom -sandwiched between Syria to the north, Iraq to the east and Israel to its west - Jordan wanted to protect its "national interests," Abdullah said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking after Abdullah's comments on Sunday, acknowledged that Jordan wanted to exercise its option to end the arrangement.

But he said Israel "will enter negotiations with it on the possibility of extending the current arrangement".

Under the terms of peace treaty, the lease would be automatically renewed unless either of the parties notified the other a year before expiry that it wished to terminate the agreement, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Negotiations over ending the "special regime" of the two areas would be tough with Jordan facing thorny legal issues to reclaim the land where Israeli laws now apply, officials said.

Jordan is one of only two Arab states that has a peace treaty with Israel and the two countries have a long history of close security ties.

They have also been expanding economic ties in the last year including a major deal to export billions of dollars of Israeli gas to the kingdom through a pipeline that crosses their northern borders.

But the peace treaty with Israel is unpopular and pro-Palestinian sentiment widespread in Jordan. Activists and politicians have been vocal against a renewal they say was humiliating and perpetuates Israeli "occupation" of Jordanian territory.

Political ties have also become strained over the Middle East peace process. An incident last year in which an Israeli security guard killed two Jordanian citizens within the Israeli embassy compound added to the tension.

Under an annex to the peace agreement, Israel uses about 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of agricultural land in the southern sector of its border with Jordan in the Wadi Araba desert where cash crops are exported to European and U.S. markets.

In the Baquora area, known in Hebrew as Naharayim, Israeli citizens ownership rights date back to 1920's, when Russian Jewish engineer, Pinhas Rutenberg, obtained a concession in British mandated Palestine to build a power plant.

In the 1994 peace treaty, Jordanian sovereignty over the area was confirmed but Israelis retained private land ownership and special provisions that allow free Israeli travel.Donald Trump

President Donald Trump has said that "full efforts" were underway to halt the progress of thousands of Honduran migrants toward the United States.

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther(n) Border," Trump tweeted on Sunday.

"People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable! "The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party.The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Riyadh's Istanbul consulate was "savagely planned", Turkey's ruling party spokesman said, the first official indication from Ankara it believes a plot was hatched in advance.

"This was extremely savagely planned, and we are faced with a situation where there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this," Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesman Omer Celik told reporters in Ankara.

"This is a very complicated murder," Celik said, warning that the Turkish government would not be drawn into speculation. "Everyone (else) can speculate but we cannot speculate," Celik added.

He also dismissed claims of "bargaining" between Saudi Arabia and Turkey as "immoral".

Riyadh said on October 20 that Khashoggi, a former regime insider turned dissident, died during a "brawl" inside the consulate after a visit on October 2 to get documents.

It added 18 Saudis were arrested in connection with his death and two top aides of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as three other intelligence agents, were fired.

Before Riyadh's admission, Turkish sources said a team of 15 Saudis were sent to Istanbul and killed Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince who moved to the United States last year and wrote for the Washington Post.

Turkish pro-government media has said the team interrogated, tortured and decapitated Khashoggi but a pro-government columnist Abdulkadir Selvi on October 22 wrote in Hurriyet daily that Khashoggi was strangled to death before he was cut up into 15 pieces.

Celik pointed to CCTV footage published by CNN on October 22, which the American broadcaster claimed showed one of the Saudi officials acting as a body double for Khashoggi and leaving the consulate.

A senior Turkish official quoted by CNN said that the Saudi was "brought to Istanbul to act as a body double" for Khashoggi, adding: "This was a premeditated murder and the body was moved out of the consulate."

In the video a man, named by CNN as Mustafa al-Madani, left the consulate by the back exit wearing what appeared to be Khashoggi's clothes -- although the shoes do not match those the journalist appeared to be wearing in CCTV footage of him entering the consulate.A human rights activist holds picture of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a protest outside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey October 9, 2018. REUTERS/Osman Orsal

Turkey's pro-government media published new claims linking Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to reveal the "naked truth" about the case.

Erdogan said at the weekend he would give new details in a speech on October 23 about the disappearance of Khashoggi, who was murdered almost three weeks ago after stepping inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

After over two weeks of near silence, Saudi Arabia has now admitted Khashoggi was killed in the consulate but the kingdom's explanations are seen even by its allies as contradictory and unsatisfying.

The case has shone the spotlight on Crown Prince Mohammed, who has spearheaded a glitzy new reform drive for the kingdom but now faces a stream of allegations -- denied by Riyadh -- that he ordered the killing of the Washington Post contributor.

US President Donald Trump, who has resisted pressure to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia, initially said Riyadh's version of events was credible but then accused the kingdom of lying.

Turkish pro-government daily Yeni Safak said Saudi security official Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, the alleged the leader of the operation, called the head of Prince Mohammed's office, Bader al-Asaker, "four times after the murder".

"The circle is tightening around the crown prince," said one of its headlines.

Abdulkadir Selvi, whose columns in the Hurriyet daily are closely watched for indications of Erdogan's thinking, gave what he said were new details and said Prince Mohammed had to take responsibility.

Selvi said Khashoggi was strangled by a Saudi assassination squad, in a process that took up to eight minutes. Then Salah Muhammed Al-Tubaigy, a lieutenant-colonel in the Saudi forensic department, cut the body into 15 pieces while listening to music.

"We cannot close this file until the crown prince is brought to account and removed from his post. For 50 years we cannot live with a crown prince who is an enemy of Turkey," said Selvi.

In the past weeks, Turkish media and officials speaking to international media have claimed that audio recordings prove Khashoggi was tortured before being decapitated although no concrete evidence of their existence have emerged.

Several senior members of Trump's Republican Party said they believed Prince Mohammed -- who has close relations with the president's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner -- was linked to the killing.

Senator Bob Corker called for a "collective" Western response if a link is proved.

Erdogan has still stopped short of directly pointing the finger at Riyadh, with analysts saying he preferred to authorise the leak of incriminating information to pro-government media to pressure the kingdom.

He has twice held telephone talks with King Salman on the crisis, with some analysts arguing Erdogan was seeking to preserve Turkish-Saudi relations through the ageing monarch while sidelining his headstrong son Prince Mohammed.

Riyadh on October 20 finally admitted that Khashoggi had died in the consulate -- blaming a brawl -- and announced the firing of five top officials and the arrest of 18 others in a probe.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, the smooth former envoy to Washington and fluent English speaker, on October 21 appeared on Fox News to blame a "rogue operation" by individuals who "exceeded their responsibilities" and then "tried to cover up for it".

"We are determined to find out all the facts. And we are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder," he said, denying any link to the crown prince.

Saudi's official news agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed had phoned Khashoggi's son Salah to express their condolences.

Khashoggi went to the consulate on October 2 to get documents ahead of his upcoming wedding to his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who has now been given 24-hour protection according to Turkish state media.

Five employees from the Saudi consulate were testifying to prosecutors on October 22, Anadolu said, with 22 foreign and Turkish workers expected to give statements in total.

The timing of the controversy could not be worse for the crown prince as he prepares to host a key investment summit on October 23, overshadowed by big name cancellations.

Dozens of executives from bankers Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to ride-hailing app Uber to Western leaders like International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde have pulled out of the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII), dubbed "Davos in the desert".

Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would not export arms to Riyadh "in the current situation", despite Germany's approval last month of $480 million worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018.

In a rare joint statement, Britain, France and Germany said there was an "urgent need for clarification" on what happened to Khashoggi and Riyadh's account had to "be backed by facts to be considered credible".With the five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court terming Section 57 of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016, as 'unconstitutional', there is clear panic among government authorities and private entities who were insisting on Aadhaar for each and every purpose.

Surprisingly, government agencies, like the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the department of telecom (DoT), seem to be more afraid than private entities and have come out with a clarification on media reports about disconnection of over 500 million mobile subscribers who had used only Aadhaar for know-your-customer (KYC) while buying a new SIM.

However, under the pretext of clarification, what both, DoT and UIDAI, have done is to mislead mobile subscribers by playing with words. Plus, in the press release, they have added one more 'authentication' for issuing new SIM cards through a mobile app.

One thing is clear: Those mobile subscribers, who have obtained new SIM cards by using only Aadhaar as KYC, will not face any disconnection. There are two reasons for this. First, nobody, including mobile operators and the government, wants to reduce by almost 50% the number of mobile subscribers in the country. And, secondly, such subscribers can submit photocopies of officially valid documents (OVD) like passport, driving licence, permanent account number (PAN) card, voter's ID card issued by the Election Commission of India, job card issued by NREGA duly signed by an officer of the state government, and letter issued by UIDAI.

On 26 September 2018, the Supreme Court, while upholding the constitutional validity of Aadhaar, struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, disallowing private entities from possessing the Aadhaar numbers of individuals. The judgement also barred telecom companies and online wallet services from seeking the unique identity number of consumers.

Section 57 of the Act permits private entities to use Aadhaar information to authenticate identity of the person.

After the judgement, DoT secretary, Aruna Sundararajan, had said that the DoT, UIDAI and telecom operators would make sure that the telecom regulations and service-providers are in compliance with the Supreme Court verdict on Aadhaar.

According to the common media release from DoT and UIDAI, there are news reports which state that almost half the total number of mobile subscribers are at the risk of disconnection. It says, "The joint statement clarifies that the Supreme Court in its judgement in Aadhaar case has nowhere directed that the mobile number, which has been issued through Aadhaar e know-your-customer (eKYC), has to be disconnected. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason for panic or fear at all. People should not believe in such rumours."

Here is what the Supreme Court had stated in its order, especially on Section 57...

"The decision to link Aadhaar numbers to SIM cards and to enforce a regime of eKYC authentication clearly does not pass constitutional muster and must stand invalidated. All telecom services providers (TSPs) shall be directed by the Union government and by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to forthwith delete the biometric data and Aadhaar details of all subscribers, agencies or private sector operators. Moreover, this provision within two weeks. The above data and Aadhaar details shall not be used or purveyed by any TSP or any other person or agency on their behalf for any purpose whatsoever." (Page 961/962 of the SC Order)

The Order further said: "Insofar as Section 57 in the present form is concerned, it is susceptible to misuse inasmuch as: (a) It can be used for establishing the identity of an individual for any purpose. We read down this provision to mean that such a purpose has to be backed by law. Further, whenever any such 'law' is made, it would be subject to judicial scrutiny. (b) Such purpose is not limited pursuant to any law alone but can be done pursuant to any contract to this effect as well. This is clearly impermissible as a contractual provision is not backed by a law and, therefore, first requirement of proportionality test is not met. (c) Apart from authorising the State, even any body corporate or person is authorised to avail authentication services, which can be on the basis of purported agreement between an individual and such body corporate or person. Even if we presume that legislature did not intend so, the impact of the aforesaid features would be to enable commercial exploitation of an individuals biometric and demographic information by the private entities. Thus, this part of the provision, which enables body corporate and individuals also to seek authentication, that too on the basis of a contract between the individual and such body corporate or person, would impinge upon the right to privacy of such individuals. This part of the Section, thus, is declared unconstitutional," the apex court had stated.

The Aadhaar judgement also mentions about a letter issued by TRAI on 6 January 2016 on the new procedure (Aadhaar linked eKYC) for subscriber verification. Following these recommendations, the DoT, on 16 August 2016, issued a direction to launch an Aadhaar eKYC service across all licensed service areas for issuance of mobile connections.

The apex court says, "TRAI and DoT do have a legitimate concern over the existence of SIM cards obtained against identities, which are not genuine. But the real issue is whether the linking of Aadhaar cards is the least intrusive method of obviating the problems associated with subscriber verification. The state cannot be oblivious to the need to protect privacy and of the dangers inherent in the utilization of the Aadhaar platform by telecom service providers. In the absence of adequate safeguards, the biometric data of mobile subscribers can be seriously compromised and exploited for commercial gain. While asserting the need for proper verification, the state cannot disregard the countervailing requirements of preserving the integrity of biometric data and the privacy of mobile phone subscribers. Nor can we accept the argument that cell phone data is so universal that one can become blase about the dangers inherent in the revealing of biometric information." (Page 960)

Later, on 23 March 2017, the DoT directed all telecom licensees to re-verify all existing mobile subscribers (prepaid and post-paid) through Aadhaar based eKYC process.

The Supreme Court, stated, "...we do not find that the decision to link Aadhaar numbers with mobile SIM cards is valid or constitutional. The mere existence of a legitimate state aim will not justify the means, which are adopted. Ends do not justify means, at least as a matter of constitutional principle. For the means to be valid, they must be carefully tailored to achieve a legitimate state aim and should not be either disproportionate or excessive in their encroachment on individual liberties." (Page 961)

The Bench also mentioned the contention submitted by senior advocate Shyam Divan. In his submission, Mr Divan had stated, "Section 57 is also patently unconstitutional inasmuch as it allows an unrestricted extension of the Aadhaar platform to users who may be government enables the seeding of the Aadhaar number across service providers and other gateways and thereby enables the establishment of a surveillance state. The impugned provision enables the spread of applications and Aadhaar dependent delivery systems that are provided not from Consolidated Fund of India resources but through any other means."

He also submitted that Section 57 also enables commercial exploitation of an individuals biometrics and demographic information by the government as well as private entities.

Here is what Section 57 is:

57. Act to prevent use of Aadhaar number for other purposes under law.

 Nothing contained in this Act shall prevent the use of Aadhaar number for establishing the identity of an individual for any purpose, whether by the State or any body corporate or person, pursuant to any law, for the time being in force, or any contract to this effect:

Provided that the use of Aadhaar number under this section shall be subject to the procedure and obligations under section 8 and Chapter VI.

The five-judge Bench, in its ruling said, "Section 57, to the extent, which permits use of Aadhaar by the State or any body corporate or person, in pursuant to any contract to this effect is unconstitutional and void. Thus, the last phrase in main provision of Section 57, i.e., or any contract to this effect is struck down."

The release issued by DoT and UIDAI also talks about no restrictions on telcos for keeping authentication data. It says, "The Court has also not asked to delete all the eKYC data of telecom customers after six months. What the apex Court has asked that UIDAI should not keep authentication log for more than six months. The restriction of not keeping authentication log beyond six months is on the UIDAI and not on the telecom companies. Therefore, there is no need for telecom companies or authentication user agencies (AUAs) / KYC user agencies (KUAs) to delete authentication logs at their end. They are, in fact, required to keep authentication logs at their end as per Aadhaar regulations to resolves any consumer grievances." Here is what the Supreme Court orders states: "Retention of data beyond the period of six months is impermissible. Therefore, Regulation 27 of Aadhaar (Authentication) Regulations, 2016, which provides archiving a data for a period of five years is struck down." As per Aadhaar (Authentication) Regulations 20(2) and 20 (3), authentication logs needs to be maintained by the ASA for two years. Upon the expiry of the period of two years, the authentication logs should be archived for five years. Upon the expiry of five years or the number of years required by the laws or regulations governing the entity whichever is later, the authentication logs should be deleted except those logs, which are required to be retained by a court or for pending disputes.The major indices of the Indian stock markets suffered a correction on Monday and closed with losses over Fridays close. On the NSE, there were 508 advances, 1,261 declines and 297 unchanged. The trends of the major indices in the course of Mondays trading are given in the table below:

The key Indian equity indices managed to trade in the green initially. However, as the trading session progressed, the market correction set in and the major indices closed with losses.

Lending major HDFC Bank reported a 20.6% increase in its net profit to Rs5,005.73 crore during the quarter ended September 30, 2018, as compared to Rs4,151.03 crore in the year-ago period. The Bank's total income for the quarter under review was at Rs28,215.2 crore, up by 21.2% from Rs23,276.2 crore for the corresponding period last year. According to the lender, net interest income (interest earned less interest expended) for the period grew by 20.6% to Rs11,763.4 crore, from Rs9,752.1 crore for the year-ago quarter, driven by asset growth and a net interest margin for the quarter of 4.3%. HDFC Bank shares closed at Rs1,993.00, up 1.38% on the BSE.

Lupin has received approval for its Triamcinolone Acetonide Ointment USP, from the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to market a generic version of Mylan Pharma's Triamcinolone Acetonide Ointment. It is an anti-inflammatory ointment. Lupin shares closed at Rs883.35, up 0.35% on the NSE.

NBCC bagged two orders worth Rs1,376.53 crore for Redevelopment of Ayur Vigyan Nagar Campus of AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) at New Delhi, Pkg.-I/Phase I (Order value: Rs837.77 crore) and Redevelopment of Charbagh, Lucknow Railway Station and adjoining Land Parcels (Order value: Rs538.76 crore). NBCC India shares closed at Rs53.30, up 0.95% on the BSE.

Gayatri Projects bagged three new orders worth Rs403.96 crore from Bihar State Road Development Corporation Limited (BSRDC). The companys shares closed at Rs165.00, down 2.86% on the BSE.

Alembic Pharma has successfully cleared its first US FDA inspection of its new formulation manufacturing facility located at Karakhadi, Gujarat with zero observations. The companys shares closed at Rs580.05, down 4.61% on the BSE.

Tejas networks has received a purchase order of Rs111 crore from Sterlite Technologies for Indian Navys country wide next generation digital communications network. Tejas would be supplying terabit capacity DWDM systems and high performance Layer-3 Multi Gigabit Ethernet switches. The companys shares closed at Rs267.80, down 2.81% on the BSE.

Kansai Nerolac reported Q2 FY19 standalone results with net sales at Rs1,414.87 crore (Rs1,287.89 in the same period a year ago), up 9.9% year-on-year. Profit after tax was at Rs121.99 crore (Rs144.63 crore in the same period a year ago), down15.7% year-on-year. Earnings per share were at Rs2.26 (Rs2.68 in the same period a year ago).

Glaxosmithkline Pharma reported Q2 FY19 standalone results with revenues at Rs816.31 crore (Rs836.26 crore in the same period a year ago), down 2.4% year-on-year. Profit after tax was at Rs100.77 crore (Rs130.32 crore in the same period a year ago), down 22.7% year-on-year. Earnings per share were at Rs5.95 (Rs7.69 in the same period a year ago).

Jubilant Life Sciences reported Q2 FY19 consolidated results with total revenues of Rs2,269.49 crore (Rs1,642.04 crore in the same period a year ago), up 38.2% year-on-year. Net Profit was at Rs210.41 crore (Rs128.26 crore), up 64% year-on-year. Earnings per share were at Rs13.50 (Rs8.29 in the same period a year ago).

The top gainers and top losers of the major indices are given in the table below:

The closing values of the major Asian indices are given in the table below:Not too long ago, that is, on 8 August 2018, in response to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha on the subject of Online RTI Applications, Dr Jitendra Singh, minister of state in the prime ministers office (PMO), had stated that only citizens of India have the right to seek information under the provisions of the Rght to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) are not eligible to file an RTI application, he is reported to have stated. Would that mean the NRIs are not citizens of India? In that case, what is the governments definition of an NRI?

Delhi-based RTI activist, commodore (Cmde) Lokesh Batra (retd) filed an RTI application with the department of personnel and training (DoPT) after the ministers statement to get some clarity on the definition of an NRI. He states, As I understand it, NRIs are very much citizens of India, holding an Indian passport, but whose stay abroad exceeds 182 days in any financial year. Thus, NRIs also have the right to seek information under the provision of the RTI Act, 2005.

In fact, the government, in its circular in 2013 had stated under Right of NRIs that under the current provisions of the RTI Act, NRIs can file RTI applications seeking information either from a particular Mission or Post abroad or from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) itself. Accordingly, a fee of Rs10 per application, equivalent in local currency is accepted by Missions and Posts abroad. Despite this, the minister made a statement, in August 2018, that NRIs cannot file an RTI application, although they have been given the facility in over 176 countries through missions and posts.

In the RTI requisition to the DoPT, the information that Cmde Batra sought through email, soon after the ministers statement, was:

Definition of an NRI;

Certified scanned copies of a complete set of documents and notings relevant to Lok Sabha unstarred question No. 3535, starting from the time the question was first received in DoPT up to the time a response was finalised and forwarded to the Parliament (Lok Sabha).

As DoPT failed to provide the information, Cmde Batra filed a complaint to the chief information commissioner (CIC) saying that, since the DoPT did not respond to his RTI application, it should be treated as deemed refusal to provide information as per Section 7(2) of the RTI Act. Hence, he appealed to the CIC to inquire into the matter and take appropriate action and also impose penalties under Section 20(1) & 20(2) of the RTI Act.

Cmde Batra also filed a complaint with Deepa Jain, under secretary, MEA protesting against the non-reply to his RTI requisition. She replied to Cmde Batra thus: Reference your trailing mail dated 25 September 2018 in the matter of your RTI application. It may be noted that your application was received in this ministry for point (a) i.e. "Definition of an NRI" through DoP&T which was initially transferred to Under Secretary (US) (Coordination) in MEA and now has been forwarded to the concerned CPIO, i.e., Lakshmikant Kumbhar, US (OIA-II), Room No. 1023, Akbar Bhawan, New Delhi, Tel: 24197930, Email: [email protected] Reply would be sent by the above-mentioned CPIO to you directly. Deposition of additional fee (if required) would also be intimated to you by them.

To that, Mr Kumbhar wrote back to Ms Jain stating, Information requested by Commodore Lokesh Batra about the definition of NRI does not pertain to OIA-II Division. This division deals with the welfare of NRIs. Hence, I have transferred (online) the RTI request to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which deals with the citizenship issue. You may advise the DoPT accordingly.

Cmde Batra pointed out to Ms Jain: With reference to your trailing post, the division that deals with the welfare of NRIs, ought to know, if their target persons (availing welfare measures) are Indian citizens, holding Indian passports OR are they persons of Indian origin but have changed the citizenship and are holding foreign passports (after surrendering their Indian passports)? The entire issue is related to the eligibility of NRIs for filing RTI applications under the RTI Act.

Cmde Batra also pointed out that, in 2013, when eIPO facilities for filing RTI in most Indian missions abroad were made available for Indians residing abroad, the term NRIs was used by the MEA. To prove his point, he provided a 23-page document which the MEA and the PMO had sent him, when he had earlier asked for these documents in 2013. He pointed out that the deliberations with MHA concluded that NRIs are Indian citizens.

Says an exasperated Cmde Batra, On the 39th day of my RTI application dated 27 August 2018, the MEA again forwarded my application to Lakshmikant Kumbhar, US(OIA-II) & CPIO, MEA and to Pramod Kumar, Director (Foreigners) & CPIO, MHA. I need this information as, despite the record in 2013 wherein NRIs have been given the right to file RTI applications in Indian missions abroad, why is the minister contradicting it in the Lok Sabha?

Commodore Batra is patiently waiting for the CIC hearing.

You may also like to read: https://www.moneylife.in/article/nris-cant-use-rti-anymore-says-indian-govt/55027.htmlWARRINGTON >> A male juvenile has been arrested for allegedly making threats against Central Bucks High School South on Tuesday. "We are pleased to announce that the high school campus and surrounding neighborhoods are safe from this threat. Now we have identified a suspect and charged them in connection with the threat," said Warrington Police in a statement. Warrington Police...October 22, 2018 Khashoggi Drama - A Deal Is No Longer Possible - Erdogan Demands That MbS Goes The Khashoggi saga continues to influence Middle East policies. On Friday the Saudi regime admitted that Khashoggi was killed in its consulate in Istanbul. Since then they have changed their story twice: After weeks of denying involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance, Saudi Arabia said that he was killed in the Istanbul consulate, saying his death was the result of a "fistfight". A Saudi source close to the royal palace later told CNN that the Washington Post journalist died in a chokehold. On Sunday, its foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, went further, describing Khashoggi's death on Fox News as a "murder" and a "tremendous mistake." Mohammad bin Salman, the Saudi clown prince and effective ruler, does not seem to have any good media advisors. By not sticking to one story all further Saudi accounts will immediately come into doubt. The Saudis originally claimed that Khashoggi had left the consulate. We now know why they felt safe to make that claim. CNN has a new Turkish story of a decoy which was send out to make it look as if Khashoggi left. They provide pictures to prove it: One member of the 15-man team suspected in the death of Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was captured on surveillance cameras around Istanbul on the day the journalist was killed, a senior Turkish official has told CNN. CNN has obtained exclusive law enforcement surveillance footage, part of the Turkish government's investigation, that appears to show the man leaving the consulate by the back door, wearing Khashoggi's clothes, a fake beard, and glasses. While Khashoggi was half bald, the decoy in Khashoggi's cloth seems to have full hair.

bigger Bit by bit the Turkish government leaks more of the sorry tale. It helps to keep the issue on the political agenda. YeniSafak, an Erdogan aligned broadsheet, claims (Turkish, machine translation) that Khashoggi was put on the phone with MbS while he was in the consulate. He was allegedly told to return to Saudi Arabia. After he rejected to do so he was killed. A later YeniSafak report (Turkish, machine translation) says that Saudi teamleader in the consulate, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, made a total of four calls to bin Salman's office manager Badr bin Mohammed Al Asaker in Riyadh. Al Asaker is the head of the crown prince's foundation and his 'invisible hand'. Mutreb allegedly used the cell phone of the consul. Another call was made to the U.S., presumably to Khalid bin Salman, the brother of MbS who is the Saudi ambassador in Washington DC. Khalid has since returned to Riyadh. Al Jazeerah Arabic had earlier reported of such calls, and of 19 additional WhatsUp calls to MbS himself. If the news of these calls proves to be true, the killing of Khashoggi was undoubtedly premeditated murder on the direct order of the clown prince.

bigger Turkish police also found an abandoned car that is owned by the Saudi consulate. It can be seen on CCTV footage of the consulate on the day that Khashoggi was killed. All this proves that the spy-craft of the Saudi assassination team was abysmal. All cellphone networks store records of each call. Any foreign official's phone in Turkey is under surveillance of the country's intelligence service. Only some throw-away phone with an anonymous prepaid card could have given some protection. It seems that the Saudi team simply did not care. It tried to obscure the incident by removing the body, but did otherwise little to hide the operation. They likely expected to get away with this. Their boss, MbS, certainly did: As the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi escalated into a diplomatic crisis, Prince Mohammed was shocked by the backlash. He couldnt understand why Mr. Khashoggis disappearance was such a big deal, according to people who recently interacted with the prince.

...

On Oct. 10, eight days after Mr. Khashoggi went missing, Prince Mohammed called Jared Kushner, the adviser and son-in-law to President Trump, according to people briefed on the phone conversation. Why the outrage, Prince Mohammed asked in English.

...

The princes confusion soon turned into rage. He was really shocked that there was such a big reaction to it, said a person close to the royal court. He feels betrayed by the West. He said he would look elsewhere and he will never forget how people turned against him before evidence was produced. No one seems to care how many Yemeni's Mohammad bin Salman kills each day. There was no harsh reaction when MbS kidnapped the Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri, nor when he incarcerated nearly 400 princes and tortured them to steal their money. Why would anyone care about Khashoggi? Because that is how human psychology works: The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.

Josef Stalin We humans care way more for a single persons we know, than for a mass of people we have no relations with. Khashoggi was a personal friend of Erdogan. He was a columnist at the Washington Post, the CIA's most favored news outlet. Mohammad bin Salman is an enemy of both. Neither the neocon opinion editor of the Post, Fred Hiatt, nor Erdogan have any love for the Saudi clown prince. They would of course raise a ruckus when given such a chance. They will pile on and air the Saudi's dirty linen until MbS is gone. Yesterday the New York Times exposed the twitter brigades the Saudis hired to manipulate the public. Today the Washington Post has a detailed report of Saudi influence peddling through U.S. stink tanks. The Middle East Institute, CSIS and Brookings get called out. Lobbyists for the Saudis are canceling their contracts. More such reports will come out. Years of lobbying and tens of millions of dollars to push pro-Saudi propaganda have now gone to waste. The affair is damaging to Trump. He built his Middle East policy on his relations with Saudi Arabia. But he can not avoid the issue and has to call out MbS over the killing. His own party is pressing for it. Yesterday the Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, dismissed the Saudi version of the story on CNN and called (vid) for consequences: "It is my sense, I don't know yet, but based on the intel I have read, based on the other excerpts that I have read, it is my thinking that MbS was involved in this, that he directed this and that this person was purposefully murdered."

...

There has to be a punishment and a price paid for that.

...

Do I think he did it? Yes, I think he did it. [...] We obviously have intercepts from the past that point to involvement at a very high level, so let's let play this out. On Sunday Erdogan was on the phone with Trump. The Turkish readout of the call hints at negotiations over Syria, the lifting of sanctions against Turkey and other issues. But the Khashoggi case has now gone too far to allow for a deal to be made over it. Erdogan's mouthpiece, the somewhat lunatic columnist Ibrahim Karagul, gives an insight into Erdogan's thinking and sets out his aims: The real trap was set against Saudi Arabia. Even though a Saudi Arabia-U.S.-Israel rapport was established and discourse about shielding the Riyadh administration from Iran, the objective was to destroy Saudi Arabia through Salman and Zayed. The next front after the Syria war was the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia. They never understood this, they could not understand it. Turkey understood it, but the Arab political mind was blinded. Now Saudi Arabia is in a very difficult situation. The world collapsed over them. Crown Prince Salman is going through a tough test via Zayed, who has control over him. If the gravity of the situation after the facts revealed with the Khashoggi murder is not comprehended, we will witness a Saudi Arabia front in less than a few years.

...

The Riyadh administration must dethrone Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at once. It has no other choice. Otherwise, it is going to pay very heavy prices. If they fail to quash the trap set up targeting Saudi Arabia through bin Zayed, they will be victims of Trumps You wont last two weeks statement, and the process is going to start to work in that direction.

...

This duo must be taken out of the entire region and neutralized. Otherwise they are going to throw the region in fire. Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed is Mohammad bin Salman's mentor and partner in crime in Yemen. MbZ is smarter than MbS - and will be more difficult to dislodge. Erdogan announced that he will describe more details of the case on Tuesday in a speech to his party's parliament group. He will probably not yet play the tape from inside the consulate that Turkish intelligence claims to have. But he may well confirm the revealed phone calls and threaten to release their content. Erdogan's aim seems clear. The chance for deal is gone. MbS has to go. He will try to play the case out until that is achieved. Posted by b on October 22, 2018 at 15:47 UTC | Permalink Comments next page  next page The Exhibit X Fiction Series showcases experimental and innovative fictions: from new novels to anti-novels, from criti-fictions to cross-genre writing, from hypermedia to the avant-popto whatever comes next, whatever that may befictions that, as yet, have no name.

Morris Collinss first novel, Horse Latitudes, was published in 2013 and was reissued by Dzanc Books in 2019. NPR described Horse Latitudes as gripping and wildly entertaining A hybrid narrative that's part thriller, part surreal noir, and part tropical gothic, it reads like a collaboration between William Faulkner, Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Hunter S. Thompson, as directed by David Lynch. Other fiction and poetry has recently appeared in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Chattahoochee Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Nimrod among others. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.

Joanna Scott is the author of twelve books, including the novels Arrogance, Tourmaline, and Careers for Women, and two collections of short fiction, Various Antidotes and Everybody Loves Somebody. Her many awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her novel, The Manikin, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her stories have been included in Pushcart Prize anthologies and Best American Stories. She is the Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English and the Director of the Literary Arts Programs at the University at Rochester.

A Shuttle to the events will be provided: Exhibit X Shuttle Schedule: 4:45pm: from Flint Loop to Salon 6:00pm: from Flint Loop to Hallwalls 8:00pm: Hallwalls to North campus

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2015It was a great way to put faces to names and learn about our business, continued Ponte. As for demand, brokers are feeling that as well. Theres a finite amount of capital for MICs.

Fisgard was among 20 exhibitors, and its Mortgage Portfolio Manager Joanne Vickery says that brokers clamoured to get into the educational sessions. To Vickery, it elucidates how difficult regulators have made mortgage funding, however, it has presented the space with an opportunity.

We sold out, she said. Theres definitely more interest in alternative lending now.

The MIC community is fairly small in Canada, but it is hoping it can develop outsized influence. Fisgard, for example, has witnessed a substantial uptick in volume and hired another underwriter.

One of the things that weve always brought to brokers is to make sure they understand capital management because its definitely important, said Vickery. Weve never had a problem but we try to bring awareness to brokers. When theyre calling for deals, we let them know there are deadlines on our money and if the commitment isnt signed or brought back at the appropriate time, weve earmarked those funds and well have to use it for something else.In its latest annual Mortgage Consumer Survey, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation found that would-be borrowers vastly preferred their brokers to have a deep knowledge of the mortgage process.

The study, which polled 4,000 recent mortgage consumers in April this year, also found that a majority of Canadian home buyers found their brokers via recommendations, thus emphasizing the role that an established reputation plays in the industry.

In particular, first-time buyers leaned towards brokers that have more information on mortgage/purchase fees and closing costs. Repeat buyers preferred brokers to have information on closing costs and types of mortgages.Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Mick Mulvaney has asked the Inspector General Office of the Federal Reserve to conduct a formal investigation into controversial writings by Eric Blankenstein, policy associate director of the agencys Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending division, according to an Associated Press report.

In September, a report by The Washington Post detailed blog posts by Blankenstein including one in which he claimed that a majority of hate crimes were hoaxes.

Mulvaneys move follows a letter from the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees at the consumer watchdog, expressing concerns about Blankenstein remaining in his role.Questionnaire

Has a Court of Appeals ever found you to be ineffective during trial? Have you ever had a malpractice claim filed against you that was either settled or taken to trial?

How many civil cases have you handled that required more than five pretrial hearings before the potential trial court?

What do think the temperament of a judge should be? What in your personality, if anything, do think you would have to aware of?

Have you ever had a lien filed against you and why? If so, has it been fully paid?

Have you ever been accused of, indicted for or convicted of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude? If so, what was the offense and how was it disposed of?

Have you ever been subjected to discipline by the State Bar of Texas? If so, what was the discipline and why?

Republican

Jeff Robnett

1. Jeffrey Todd Robnett

2. Age 56

3. Married to Dila Robnett; 9 children6 adopted; Ella, 14 months; Jett, 15 months; Jace, 3 years; Storrie, 4; Lilly, 7; Colt, 9; Oliver, 13; Sara, 27. One child from previous marriage, Brenna, 17

4. High School DegreeMidland High School, Midland, Texas, 1980; Undergraduate degreePrinceton University, Princeton, New Jersey, 1984; Law degreeTexas Tech School of Law, 1988.

5. December 1988 law school graduation date; May 5, 1989 license date; State of Texas; Federal/TexasWestern and Northern Districts.

6. 30 years lived in Midland

7. Criminal (including juvenile), Family, Civil (plaintiff and defendant, including oil and gas law), Probate.

8. 2000, I reported a clients (a sitting judge) unlawful actions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was the subject of a grievance by the client. I successfully appealed this matter to the Texas Board of Disciplinary Appeals.

2006, I paid a fine of $800 after I was accused of failure to open a proper bank account after a lawyer friend of mine, who was using a vacant office in my office suite, was critically injured in an automobile wreck and was no longer able to practice law.

9. I have no arrest or criminal record.

10. In 2000, I had a lien relating to 941 payroll taxes due to paying the incorrect amount of payroll taxes. This lien was released upon payment of the proper amount.

11. I have tried between 5 and 10 jury trials per year--criminal (including juvenile), family and civil jury trials in my 30-year career.

12. Respect the law and the legal system. Ensure that the law is applied properly in each case. Never legislate from the bench. Always be fair, just and impartial. Embody a judicial temperament and demeanor characterized by respect for all participants in the judicial system, even people who some may say do not deserve such respect as a result of their actions and behavior. Move the docket efficiently and keep the Courts business organized. Be a cheerleader to the public regarding the judicial system we are so fortunate to have in Texas and in Americaemphasis on those citizens who ignore jury duty.

13. See no. 12 above. In addition, I think my personality is well suited to be the 441st District Judge. I am calm, deliberate, organized and dedicated to whatever task is at hand. I like people, practice the Golden Rule and think a good sense of humor is essential to success, especially in difficult situations, where appropriate, of course.

14. Dont be lazy. Rule quicklytake matters under advisement as seldom as possible and only when absolutely necessary. Be on time, especially relating to jury trials. Make sure attorneys and court participants know what is expected of them in any given situation. Make sure court orders are timely submitted after a judicial decision is made.

15. Judges should ensure the proper application of and adherence to the law, not make the law. 99 percent of the time the various courts of Appeal, including the highest courts in Texas (or the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals or U.S. Supreme Court in the area of constitutional law) have interpreted the law. It is the duty of a Texas District Court Judge to respect and embrace the concept of stare decisis  that is to ensure that the law is enforced correctly and consistently.

16. There may be instances where a newly passed law hasnt been tested in the trenches of trial courts or interpreted by higher courts--like same sex marriagesI am trying a case of first impression in this area of the law Feb. 21. In the absence of knowing how a new law is to be enforced, there is always legislative intent analysis. A Texas District Court judges role, however, in my opinion, is not to create law in any instance, even where an injustice or inequity existsthis is the province of the Texas legislature.

17. Very few civil case require this many pretrial hearings  the approximate average for my practice is three pretrial hearings. I estimate the applicable number with three pretrial hearings to be 150 to 200 cases over 30 years. Keever vs. Ellis County State Bank is an exception to this  my recollection is seven pretrial hearings on this matter, which is a reported case.

18. I have never been found to be ineffective during representation of a client or during a trial. I have never had a malpractice claim or lawsuit filed against me.

19. As a trial lawyer for 30 years, probably 60 percent of my work is managing a docket. After a criminal case reaches a first trial setting, that case is subject to trial every week thereafter. Plus newer cases are continually reaching a first scheduled trial date. In short, effective case/docket management is vital to a successful trial practice for me as a trial lawyer. Always being prepared and continuing to represent new clients and run a business is the ultimate test of a trial lawyers docket management success. I have filed less than 10 motions for continuance in my 30 years because I always work hard to be prepared and announce READY when my cases are called to trial. You can confirm this fact be asking our Midland district judges about me.

20. I served on the MISD school board. Most of, if not all of my extracurricular activity and service involves my childrens activitiesremember seven of nine Robnett children ranging in age from 15 months to 13 years old live at home. Sports, cheer practice, and church-related activities are a priority outside of school and consume most of my time. I am also active in college-related events such as the Princeton Club and Princeton alumni events..

In summary, I bring to this campaign and will bring to the 441st bench the lessons and practices of my lifetime. This is all I can bring. I am the product of Midland Schools, Princeton University and Texas Tech Law School. At Tech, I was ranked second in my law school class and received the Judge Meade F. Griffin Outstanding Law School Student Award as awarded by the law school faculty. I am a father who is raising nine children along with my wife, Dila. I am a Christian who is reliant upon the Lord and not afraid to tell people of my beliefsystem. I am also not afraid of admitting my weaknesses. You will never know me from simply reading these responses, seeing a campaign sign or watching/hearing a television or radio political ad. I urge you to seek out the judges and lawyers of Midland and ask them about me and all the candidates for the 441st. And dont stop there  seek out the clerks in the Midland County and District Clerks offices. Seek out law enforcement personnel I have questioned during trials. Seek out the bailiffs and the courthouse security officers. In fact, seek all the information you can before you decide who you will support in this campaign. I am confident that you will discover that I am the right choice and am ready to serve as the next 441st District Judge. My work number is 4326826140 and my cell number is 4326643643 if you desire to speak with me directly. Thank you for your support.

Democrat

Sara Ruth Spector

1. Sara Ruth Spector

2. Age. 53

3. My parents are both deceased. My father was a psychiatrist and my mother worked as a model and the theater industry prior to marrying my dad. I have 2 brothers. One is an engineer for NASA and the other is a physician in Houston.

4. I graduated Richfield High School in Waco, Texas. I graduated the University of Texas in Austin, Texas with a degree in government with special honors in 1986. I graduated the University of Texas Law School in 1989 where I was chosen by faculty to be one of 20 students out of a class of 500 to teach legal research and writing to first year law students.

5. November 1989.

6. 1990-1999 and 2016- present.

7. I worked as a civil and criminal practitioner. I worked as a regional attorney for Department of Protective and Regulatory Services for 5 years in which I practiced elder law, child protection law, employment law, immigration law and administrative law. I worked as Assistant District Attorney for ten years representing the state in both criminal and civil matters. I currently concentrate on criminal defense and CPS matters.

8. No

9. No

10. No. If so, has it been fully paid?

11. I lost count but over 20 civil and over 50 criminal trials.

12. Interpreting the law, managing dockets, assessing appropriate sentences in criminal cases and creating an environment in which the legal community can efficiently impart justice to the citizens are the duties which I believe are paramount for a District Judge.

13. I agree with Chief Justice John Robert's view of judicial temperament -"lack of pretense...openness and general trustworthiness". ... I think the one thing that can define my career is my tenaciousness. I believe anything can be achieved through hard work and determination.

14. Balancing judicial efficiency while allowing both sides enough time to articulate legal and equitable issues so justice is achieved.

15. Interpretation of the law requires one to research the relevant statutes and appellate authority while listening to the argument of counsel and rule accordingly.

16. "Social Justice" and "inequity" are loaded terms that have different meanings to different people. One must interpret the laws and constitution of the United States not to effectuate an outcome but to uphold the law and the Constitution of the United States. To quote Justice Anton Scalia "I sleep very well at night knowing what I am supposed to do, ...which is to apply the Constitution. I do not always like the result. Very often, I think the result is terrible. But that's not my job. I'm not king. And I haven't been charged with making the Constitution come out right all the time."

17. Over 100

18. No. No

19. As an assistant district attorney in rural counties, I worked tirelessly to move an overloaded criminal docket with an understaffed office. One has to balance doing a complete and thorough job on each case with the inequities and burdens that the passing of time creates. As an experienced public servant, I can tell you it is your duty to work after five and on week ends and yes even on holidays to keep the docket moving so that justice is achieved.

20. I have performed and volunteered for Community Theaters almost all my life. In Law School I served as the student member of the Honors Counsel which decided punishments for students found to have cheated in law school. I formed the original Midland Teen Court Board of Directors and helped transition it from the Junior League to an independent entity. I was on the Board of Directors of Midland March of Dimes. I volunteered for MARC of Midland. I volunteered for the legal clinic run by Casa De Amigos in the 1990's. I was an officer in the Midland County Criminal Defense Lawyer's Association and was responsible for bringing and running one of Midland's first live CLE"s to this area. I was on the board of Directors of CASA of Bastrop County. I served on the Board of Directors of the Literacy Counsel of Bastrop County. I volunteered for Meals on Wheels in Medina County. I am a member of the State Bar of Texas and the Midland County Bar Association.





Operational excellence and quality customer service has won Encon a place in a business league table in the Sunday Times.

This year Encons sales are up 13% to 258 million, but the rising margins since 2014 have seen profits more than triple to 13.5 million.

The Sunday Times Grant Thornton Top Track 250 League Table is now in its 14th year. It lists the top 250 private mid-market growth companies in Britain which have achieved the biggest sales by managing risk and choosing the right strategic options.

Insulation manufacturer Encon ranks 98th in the list, alongside the Stewart Milne Group, Keepmoat Homes, as well as Waterstones and Holland and Barrett.

Chief Executive Stuart Moore said: The previous few months have been positive for our business, despite the building industry still experiencing a slight nervousness with investors and political uncertainty.

The Encon Group will continue to face challenges with suppliers on stock availability, delivery lead times and price fluctuation. In spite of these challenges, the commitment, drive and smart decision making of our teams has enabled us to maintain growth.

By continually improving operational excellence and quality customer service, we deliver results.Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 22)  Senator Antonio Trillanes IV lauded the decision made by a Makati Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge Monday, junking Justice Department's petition to have him arrested.

Trillanes spoke to the media Monday after receiving the resolution from Judge Andres Soriano of Makati RTC Branch 148.

The senator thanked God and Soriano whom he said "single-handedly... upheld justice and the rule of law in our country despite extreme pressure coming from the Duterte regime."

Trillanes went on to say Soriano personified hope "at this point."

Branch 148 of the Makati Regional Trial Court rejected the Justice Department's petition for an alias arrest warrant and travel ban against Trillanes.

The cases against Trillanes stemmed from Proclamation No. 572 issued by President Rodrigo Duterte in August which voided amnesty given to the senator by former President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III.

Trillanes called today's events a "very critical period" in the nation's history.

The resolution stated, "The court finds and so holds that Trillanes did file his amnesty application in the prescribed form in which he also admitted guilt for his participation in the Oakwood Mutiny, among others, and in which he further recanted all previous statements that he may have made contrary to said admission."

In the resolution, Soriano did, however, state Proclamation No. 572 was "a purely executive act and prereogative."

He said Trillanes failed to prove it was unconstitutional.

The senator's camp has 10 days to comment on the proclamation.

Trillanes, however, said he would continue to do his job.

"I will not be driven by hate. Nothing changes. I will be the same critic as I was before. I'm just upholding my role in the... in our democracy as a member of the opposition," he said.

Malacanang issued a statement on the decision of the RTC saying they respected the court's decision on the denial of DOJ motion on Trillanes' arrest.

At the same time, the Palace said and welcomed the "affirmation of the validity of the proclamation issued by the President as it signifies that this administration is not engaged in the political persecution of its critics but is only enforcing the law against anyone who goes against its command."

Meanwhile,Integrated Bar of the Philippines President Abdiel Fajardo told CNN Philippines News Night the RTC decision affirms the doctrine of "immutability of judgement."

Meaning the decision, because it was made final, cannot be disturbed.President Trump signs Executive Action on Western Water Oct 19 2018 View Photos

President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum to promote the reliable supply and delivery of water in the west.

Trump was Mondays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:

So this is a big day for the Central Valley, California. And I want to thank everybody for being here. This is a vital action. In my opinion, its vital to improve access to water in the American West.

Whats happened there is disgraceful. Theyve taken it away. Theres so much water, they dont know what to do with it, and they send it out to sea. For decades, burdensome federal regulations have made it extremely difficult and expensive to build and maintain federal water projects. You all know about that.

Millions of Americans in the West depend on critical water infrastructure to irrigate farmland, provide water and power, and support our economy. Some of the best farmland in the world, by the way, cant be used because they dont have water. But they actually have a lot of water.

In a few moments, I will sign a presidential memorandum to dramatically improve the reliable supply and delivery of water in California, Oregon, and Washington.

We are honored to be joined by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Where is Kevin? Come here, Kevin. He traveled a long way to be here. And Representatives Devin Nunes, Jeff Denham, David Valadao, and Tom McClintock. These are tremendous people. They love this country. They love the state. And I appreciate you all being here. Thank you, fellas. This is very important.

And they are the ones that really led this drive because it was  it was so unfair. I was telling the story that I was with Devin, driving up this beautiful highway, and Im looking at farmland. And it was bone dry. And theyd have a little patch  just a little patch in the corner of such beautiful green. A tiny percentage of this massive area. And then Id go step further, and youd see another one. Big, big area. Hundreds of acres. And youd have just a little patch.

And I said, Could I ask a question? Do you have a drought? Is there a problem? No, we dont have a drought. We have so much water, but they dont let the water come down into the valley and into the areas where you need the water.

And I said, Ive never seen anything  what do they do? They route it into the Pacific Ocean. And I say, Why do they do that? And the reason  I dont even want to discuss it, its so ridiculous.

But you have so much water coming from way up north. And youll have  Devin told me this, numerous people told me this  the best farmland, potentially in the world, if you had water. The land itself  the soil  gives you the best farmland, Ive heard, in the world. What that could mean for California and for the economy of California  because youre talking about hundreds of thousands of acres of land where the water is so plentiful and the land is the best there is. So Ive heard that from many different farmers.

So today, Im directing Secretary Zinke and Secretary Wilbur Ross to streamline approvals for federal water infrastructure and to eliminate all unnecessary burdens, significantly speeding up the environmental review and approval process. We will have it done very, very quickly.

Were also speaking to the EPA, and theyre all ready to go. As soon as I sign this, theyre ready to go.

So the big problem was the federal approvals. They were un-gettable and now theyre very gettable. Were going to have them in very fast time because of the gentlemen standing behind me. Nobody else brought it up to my attention; it was them.

In particular, we will resolve the issues blocking completion of the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project in California. And this will be done within a record period of time. Nobody will ever see anything like this.

Because its basically been looked at  I dont know if you guys  for years. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent looking at it. But thats all they do; they look. Nobody does anything about it.

The Klamath Irrigation Project in Oregon and the Columbia River Basin in Washington  all of these states benefit tremendously in terms of jobs, in terms of the environment. I think its important to say the environment.

Together, we rebuild our water infrastructure. Well do something that hasnt been done in  how many years has that been since weve done a project like that?

REPRESENTATIVES MCCLINTOCK AND DENHAM: New Melones was 1979.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. Thats a long time. And this is even bigger. This is a bigger impact than anything theyve done, even from 1979. And make our communities more beautiful places to live, and work, and grow. And make them so environmentally incredible.

And so its a great honor to be signing the new memorandum, and this will move things along at a record clip. And you have a lot of water. I hope you enjoy the water that youre going to have. Okay? (Laughter.) The farmers are going to enjoy it. Great for the farmers. Great for the people. Great for recreation. Great for everything you can think of.

And now, the next time I ride up that road, I think were going to see a lot of green. Its going to be 100 percent green instead of 4 percent green.

So Ill sign it right now.

(The presidential memorandum is signed.)

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Very important. And who should get this pen? I think 

REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTHY: Lets give that to Devin.

THE PRESIDENT: I think so, right? I think Devin.

REPRESENTATIVE NUNES: Thank you very much.

THE PRESIDENT: So hell get the one that I actually used, but Im going to give the other guys one anyway. (Laughter.) Just dont tell them, okay? All right?

Its funny, Ive watched Presidents over the years, and they sign one letter at a time. (Laughter.) One letter. One. And you look at it, and its really terrible. And so I do it this way. Right? Its a little bit better.

REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTHY: One point I want to make about this: I want to thank the President, because this is just another campaign promise hes keeping. For you, if youre not out West  from Washington, Oregon, to California  water is one of the most critical issues. And the most difficult part of about this  this will streamline. This will bring more water not only to Washington and Oregon, but throughout the Central Valley.

And it is true, this is the best farmland in the world. But the amount of jobs and the ability to keep our food safe. But this could bring more than a million acre-feet of water, just within the valley itself. And this is something all of us have been working a great deal on, especially within your district as well, David.

REPRESENTATIVE VALADAO: Well, in my district, its not just farm ground. There are actual communities that rely on this water. So some of this water will actually go into homes of people who have been desperately needing this water for a long time. So it affects people in the workplace. It helps put them back to work. But it also helps them live a normal life with a steady water supply for those communities.

So thank you, Mr. President.

REPRESENTATIVE MCCCARTHY: Thats the number-one issue you ran on.

REPRESENTATIVE NUNES: Yeah. I mean, this is an issue weve been working on for a long time, Mr. President. So I want to thank you for signing this today. It really is the first time since John F. Kennedy that weve had a U.S. President actually come to the Valley and act on what he said he was going to act on. And so that goes back to the 1960s.

So, Mr. President, thank you. You came out there not once, but twice. You made a commitment in 2016. And, today, hes fulfilling the commitment because we have been overlooked for a very long time in the central part of California, which is the breadbasket of the world.

So thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTHY: Jeff, youve been on this issue.

REPRESENTATIVE DENHAM: Yeah. Taking away our water takes away our jobs, takes away the economy and the largest agriculture industry in the country. But its also our green power  our hydropower. And the state is trying to double our flows right now and push more water out to the ocean that will just cripple our economy and affect our drinking water.

And so, Lake Don Pedro is also going through FERC re-licensing to make sure that we actually are building and fixing our dams, as well as making sure that weve got that water for the future. So this is a critical help to the entire Valley.

REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTHY: And Tom has been the committee chair, making a lot of the (inaudible).

REPRESENTATIVE MCCLINTOCK: Oh, yeah. Well, Ill tell you what I learned chairing the Subcommittee on Water and Power. Droughts are natures fault; they happen. But water shortages are our fault; thats a choice that we made a generation ago when we began imposing laws that have made the development of our water resources cost-prohibitive.

This order today and the other actions by this administration, and the bills that have been passed out of the House, move us back toward an era of abundance as the cornerstone of our water and power policy, rather than the scarcity and rationing that two generations of bad laws and bad regulations have imposed on one of the most water-rich regions of the country.

THE PRESIDENT: Its funny, when I met with the farmers  great people. Met with a lot of them. And we were in a group at the end  everybody came together. And I said, Gee, I feel so badly about the drought that you people are suffering. They said, We dont have a drought. We have so much water. And I said, Explain this to me. Then I said, How did this ever happen? That was the one thing they couldnt explain: how a thing like this could happen.

So you have tremendous land. And, literally, I have heard, in terms of the land itself, its as good as it gets anywhere in the world for farming. But they cut off, artificially  I mean, the water used to come down. They cut it off artificially.

So were going to re-open it the way it used to be, and its going to be great. Its going to be great for the economy. Its going to be great for the farmers, and for a lot of other reasons. And, I guess, employment, youre talking about a lot  youre talking about a lot of people.

So were very happy about it, and these are the people that get the credit, not me. Theyre the ones that brought it to my attention, and very strongly. And Devin was incredible. He was  it took about two minutes to explain. I said, This cant be possible.

But all you have to do is look at those dry-as-a-bone fields. And then you look at a little patch  the most green, most beautiful thing youve ever seen. The whole thing can be like that. And its tens of millions of dollars coming into the state of California, and other states.

And we look forward to doing it. Its my great honor.

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.Sonora, CA  Another California Transportation Commission allocation of over a half-billion dollars funded wholly or in part by SB1 includes more regional highway infrastructure repairs.

Among 50-plus added projects that are moving forward is an $8 million culvert repair and replacement one targeting highways in Alpine, Amador and Tuolumne counties. The locations include Highway 4 between north of Backpackers Campground and west of Highland Lakes Road in Arnold; Highway 207 between the Highway 4/207 intersection and Mt. Reba Road in Bear Valley; and Highway 108 between east of Eureka Valley Campground and east of Douglas Creek.

Another project, which addresses preventative bridge maintenance, will renovate a number of spans. Among them are Stockton Creek Bridge on Highway 49; Snake Ravine Bridge on Highway 132 in La Grange; Blitz Creek Bridge on Highway 120 in Oakdale; and Duck Creek Bridge Highway 4 in Farmington.

This allocation builds on a year of funding approvals that have allowed us to move more than $15 billion worth of projects forward, states Caltrans Director Laurie Berman. She adds that Caltrans has so far completed 53 SB 1 projects, a number anticipated to grow to 100 by Dec. 31 with more on the horizon for next year.

In the last year, she adds that Caltrans crews have repaired more than 2,900 potholes, replaced or repaired more than 740 lane miles of pavement, repaired more than 37,500 feet of guardrail, replaced or repaired nearly 950 highway lights and traffic signals, restriped more than 2,000 miles of highway and fixed 800 roadway signs.

Funds from SB 1, the transportation infrastructure bill that Governor Jerry Brown signed in April 2017, invest $54 billion over the next decade to fix roads, freeways, and bridges, also devoting dollars towards transit and safety. It included increases to the gas tax and vehicle licensing fees. These funds, split equally between state and local investments, will help Caltrans to fix more than 17,000 lane miles of pavement, 500 bridges, and 55,000 culverts by 2027.

Voters will decide next month whether to repeal the funding as part of the ballot measure Proposition 6.NOTE: This story originally published in 2015:

Over the last 150 years the San Antonio Express-News has covered many gruesome and ugly crimes.

Few though were as horrid as those associated with the infamous Texas serial killers in the slideshow above.

Tommy Lynn Sells was the most recent of Texas' notorious serial killers to meet his fate through the prick of a Texas Department of Criminal Justice hypodermic needle.

He was put to death a little more than a year ago for the murder of 13-year-old Kaylene "Katy" Harris. While imprisoned, Sells confessed to many more murders. Officially, he was suspected in about seven others at the time of his execution.

Other serial killers in recent Texas history have also been put to death by the state. Some died while serving their time and others remain serving out life sentences. One, however, is scheduled to be released in 2018.

Information gathered from www.biography.com , Wikipedia, murderpedia.org and San Antonio Express-News story archives.Two Harris County judges accounted for more than one-fifth of all children sent to the states juvenile prisons last year, driving up the countys Texas Juvenile Justice Department commitments even as those figures fall in the rest of the state.

The two courts  overseen by Judges Glenn Devlin and John Phillips  not only sent more teens to juvenile prison, but they also sent them younger and for less-serious offenses than the countys third juvenile court, where Judge Mike Schneider presides. And, from all three courts, the kids sent to state lockups were almost all  about 96 percent  children of color.

The high incarceration numbers surfaced in a judicial grievance filed earlier this year against one of the three jurists, and experts said the data raise red flags regarding local judicial practices.

This confirms to me that Houston is still the center of the pipeline to juvenile detention, said Jay Jenkins, project attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

Since 2014, the number of kids the county sends to youth prisons has doubled, a shift some experts attributed to an increase in aggravated robberies, while others chalked it up to judicial preference. But whatever is behind it, the recent incarceration uptick comes amid a long-term decline coupled with a growing acknowledgment that state-run juvenile prisons can be costly and unsafe.

The judges that overuse the state are making a true mistake, said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, advocating instead for the use of probation or county-run detention facilities. Thats not speculation  thats data-driven, thats results-oriented.

Last year, Harris County made up about 15 percent of the states population but, among the three courts, it accounted for 25 percent of kids sent to juvenile prisons.

Devlin questioned the numbers from the county and state, as did a staff member in Phillips office. But neither judge commented on the findings. They, like Schneider, are up for re-election in November.

Uptick in incarcerations

Over the past four years, Texas courts have consistently sent around 800 young people  ages 10 to 17  to the states juvenile prisons, according to TJJD data. But while the statewide figure has remained steady, Harris Countys share of it has ballooned. In fiscal year 2014, the county sent 101 youth to TJJD. Last fiscal year, the county sent 199.

Some of that increase likely stems from an uptick in certain types of offenses, including aggravated robberies. Four years ago, 1,248 kids in Harris County faced charges serious enough to make them eligible for a TJJD sentence; by last year that number was up to just over 2,000, according to figures provided by Phillips court.

That increase may not be enough to explain why the incarceration numbers have doubled in the same time frame and, more importantly, it doesnt explain why there has been a dramatic increase in two of the courts and more modest uptick in the third.

Both the 313th and 314th Juvenile District Courts  overseen by Devlin and Phillips, respectively  sent at least two times as many kids to TJJD last year as they did in 2014, while Scheiders 315th District Court sent 1.4 times as many as before. Phillips, who had the highest incarceration numbers of the three, sent 88 kids to juvenile prison last year while Schneider, on the low end, sent 36.

But, even though the raw number of commitments is rising across the three courts, only two jurists sentenced a higher percent of eligible kids to the states five secure lockups than they did four years ago. The data provided by Phillips court substantiated the state and county incarceration numbers, and included additional details about racial breakdowns and the number of children eligible to be locked up in state facilities.

Devlin sentenced 9.39 percent of eligible kids to TJJD in 2014 and 11.2 percent last year, while Phillips went from 8.5 percent to 14.1 percent.

Schneider sent 6.74 percent of eligible kids four years ago and 5.1 percent last year, according to court data.

You always hear that courts are their own little fiefdoms and this certainly shows that, said Michele Deitch, a juvenile justice expert and senior lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Clearly theres huge discrepancies. Thats the most striking thing, how differently the courts are treating these kids.

Although the charging decisions are up to prosecutors, sentencing lies in the hands of the judges.

This is the way theyve chosen to exercise their discretion, Chief Public Defender Alex Bunin said. I dont think theres anything we can impose on them to change that.

Earlier this year, Bunin filed a judicial grievance against Phillips, alleging racial sentencing disparities, a tendency to refuse plea deals that avoid incarceration and statements showing bias, adding up to what he said was a willful violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Between April 2017 and February 2018, Judge Phillips sentenced a higher percentage of juveniles to TJJD than either of the other two juvenile district judges, and as much as both combined, the complaint notes. The majority of these cases involved African-American and Hispanic males.

Though the grievance  given to the Houston Chronicle by an outside party  was filed in June, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct does not confirm or comment on grievances unless they result in public sanctions, a process that state officials said can take more than six months.

Phillips court coordinator said the judge is prohibited from commenting on unresolved grievances, but state commission executive director Eric Vinson said there are no such limitations.

Younger and less-violent

In addition to packing off more kids to juvenile prisons, judges in the 313th and 314th district courts sent them younger and for lower-level offenses than the 315th District Court.

Overall, kids headed to TJJD out of Schneiders court were slightly older than those coming from the other two courts. In fiscal year 2017, according to state data obtained through a public records request, Schneider sent no 13- or 14-year-olds to TJJD, while the other courts sent 18 combined.

If theyre that age, very rarely do you see cases like that where you have exhausted all the local (alternatives), Schneider said. Its just hard to imagine, although they might exist.

And, while more than 80 percent of the kids sent to juvenile prison from Schneiders court were charged with the serious offenses of aggravated robbery or aggravated assault, the other two courts tended toward less-serious offenses. About half of the kids both Devlin and Phillips sent to state-run juvenile lockups had less-serious charges such as burglary, evading arrest and unauthorized use of a vehicle.

Its no surprise that the bulk of the kids committed (to juvenile prison) have committed aggravated robbery, Deitch said. Thats to be expected. But whats less expected is youre seeing a lot more kids with simple burglary and simple robbery and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle from the 313th and 314th courts.

Were giving up more

The vast majority of Harris County kids  an average of 96 percent  sent to juvenile prison were children of color, according to state data.

Statewide, it was just under 83 percent. But that disparity may be more reflective of local demographics, policing and charging trends than it is of judicial bias or sentencing practices, experts said.

I think it has a lot to do with whos being brought into the system, Bunin said. Basically, were giving up more on those children.

Those figures were most pronounced in Phillips court, where 16 percent of TJJD-eligible black kids were sent to state facilities in 2017, versus 5 percent of eligible white kids.

The number of children of color sent to prison is impacted by racial disparities in the adult criminal justice system; the presence of responsible adults in a kids life is one of the factors judges weigh in deciding whether to let a child stay on probation or send them to prison. But with roughly 100,000 men and women of color locked up in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, minority kids are less likely to have that supervision available, Schneider said.

Disproportionately, the placement outside of the home is when theres not family resources for supervision, he said. Kids of color are disproportionately likely to have a parent that is incarcerated, which means that you are at a disadvantage in terms of being supervised.

Makes them worse

Amid a long-term, statewide decline, Harris Countys recent shift back toward juvenile incarceration sparked concerns among legislators, lawyers and advocates who worried that state prisons can make troubled kids worse.

Locking kids up does not necessarily make them do better and sometimes as research has shown, it actually makes them worse, said state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, a lawyer who practices in juvenile courts. Because then youre putting them in custody with much worse kids.

Indeed, one of the major findings from the Counsel of State Governments 2015 Closer to Home report was that kids locked up in state-run facilities are 21 percent more likely to be arrested again than their peers who stay under some type of supervision closer to home.

To Lauren Rose, youth justice policy director with Texans Care for Children, that figure suggests a natural solution.

Rather than sending youth away to state lockups, judges should rely on their local juvenile probation departments secure facilities for their highest-risk youth, Rose said. To ensure the county facilities have adequate space and youth are matched up with the right services, lower-risk youth who do not need to be confined should be kept out of lockups and, instead, get the supports they need in the community.

And in theory, according to Schneider, thats already what should be happening.

If you look at the way its worded in the family code youre never supposed to put a kid in a secure facility to punish them, he said. If you only put them there for rehabilitation and you exclude any notion of punishment, your numbers are going to go down because nowadays theres so much rehabilitation available in the community.

There are some legislative solutions, advocates said. Previously, lawmakers helped limit the juvenile prison population with sweeping reforms, including removing misdemeanors from the list of eligible offenses back in 2007 and adopting a regionalization bill in 2015 to keep kids closer to home.

Now, Rose said, they could further limit the types of offenses eligible for a TJJD commitment.

But Whitmire said the possibility for change lies in the hands of jurists.

Since 2007, when we sent almost 5,000 kids to the state, were now under 1,000, Whitmire said. Everyones got it statewide, in large and small communities  except our two judges.

keri.blakinger@chron.com| BY Ricki Green |

Following significant growth over the last 12 months, Interbrand Australia has appointed former New York-based Interbrand chief communications officer Paola Norambuena to the position of chief strategy officer (CSO).

Norambuena has been lured home to Sydney to further grow Interbrand Australias world-class brand experience capabilities.

With more than 18 years experience across global integrated brand, marketing and creative strategies, Norambuena has curated every level of the brand experience for business including Microsoft, GE, Xerox, Kelloggs, McDonalds, P&G, John Deere, AT&T, Nielsen, NBCUniversal and Mars.

Says Nathan Birch, CEO, Interbrand Australia: Paola brings unique global insight to the power of brand experience, having been instrumental in driving brand and business growth for numerous brands internationally over the years.

Norambuena also led the development and growth of Interbrands Best Global Brands report, its Webby Award-winning news source, brandchannel, and ran partnerships with the New York Stock Exchange and Facebook.

Says Norambuena: The best part of any brand work is its direct and positive impact on the business itself  certainly, financial growth and expansion, but just as important is its impact on the business people and their relationship with the company. Thats the power of great branding  its an asset that builds a business long term.

Interbrand has been my home for 12 years in New York, and its wonderful to now be joining such a talented Interbrand team in Australia that is primed for further growth across some iconic Australian brands.

Says Birch: Its great to be bringing in such great talent from all around the globe after achieving significant growth this year, including having created a number of exciting new brands, grown businesses, and developed innovative brand experiences locally and globally.Authorities have identified a body found in Lake Lyndon B. Johnson as Charlotte Moye, an Alabama woman who went missing after floodwaters swept through an RV park in Junction last week.

Moye's body was found in the 700 block of Circle Drive near Kingsland shortly before noon Tuesday, the Burnet County Sheriff's Office said in a post on Facebook Saturday.

RELATED: Before and after photos show flooding in Central Texas

She was taken to the Travis County Medical Examiner's Office for an autopsy where she was identified using dental records sent by the Kimble County Sheriff's Office, according to the post.

Moye went missing Oct. 8. She was the fourth and final victim of the recent Junction flooding, the Junction Police Department reported over social media.

Kimble County Sheriff Hilario Cantu thanked those who helped with rescue efforts and said damages from the flooding are still being assessed across the county.

"Junction is still recovering from the river's effects upon us all, and we are beginning to bring things in the area back to some sense of order," Cantu said in the post. "Although this was a terrible disaster, we are thankful that deaths and injuries weren't greater."

In a text Saturday, Cantu identified the other three victims as Joseph "Joey" Huss Jr., 55; Michael "Mike" McGee, 65; and Darin Hartman, 51. Huss and McGee were from Flomaton, Alabama, and Hartman was a San Angelo resident.

RELATED: Missing driver recovered from Sabinal River identified

Moye's brother, Steve Turner, told the San Antonio Express-News last week that Moye and two of his best friends, Huss and McGee, had been staying at a local RV park when the flooding occurred. They were working on a pipeline project, Turner said.

"We travel all over the place and you'd never think of something like this happening," he said on Oct. 9, referring to pipeline workers. "It's been pretty tough."Note: This is a Just a Taste review, which the Express-News does soon after a restaurant or bar opens to give our first impressions.

If youve heard about the new Folklores Coffee House deep on the citys South Side at all, its probably for the cafes inclusion of cannabis-derived CBD oil in a few menu items. Thats also probably the least subversive  not to mention interesting  thing owners Emilie and Joel Tatu Herrera have unleashed with their new venture.

A better name for the business might be Tatus Caffeinated Wonderland.

The first challenge the Herreras have issued with the cafe is an examination of just how far down a rabbit hole of playful reinvention a business can go and still count as a coffee shop.

The second is a challenge to us as a dining public to see magic and whimsey in a part of San Antonio so far past the redeveloped charm of Southtown that it might as well be Kansas despite its South Flores Street address.

RELATED: 5 S.A. sandwiches to eat outside while you still can

On the menu: You can, if you must, order a pedestrian cup of coffee at Folklores.

That would, of course, mean missing out on the Sheena ($4.25), a steamy mug of banana-infused milk spiked with espresso and cinnamon then topped with a bruleed banana half. It would mean forgoing the Siouxie ($4.25), a frothy cup of Abuelita chocolate and espresso capped with a jumbo toasted marshmallow. And it would certainly mean sacrificing a chance to order the Joker in the Pack ($4.25), which is much closer to a hot bowl of breakfast cereal than a cup of coffee, with colorful Froot Loops floating on top and garnishing the saucer below.

Do those sound more like dessert than a pick-me-up? Well, fear not. Despite their over-the-top presentation, most of the drinks at Folklores are well balanced with a deep-roasted coffee bitterness and impressive restraint on the sugar.

The CBD Coffee ($6) was by far the least impressive thing to hit my table. Its a modest cup of what one barista described as Cuban-style coffee dosed tableside with 25 milligrams of cannabidiol. Meh. It tasted burnt and bitter in a medicinal way.

For my money, Id rather have the infinitely more trippy Moonstomp ($5). Its two shots of espresso over a chilled Hostess Ding Dong in a mug garnished with whipped cream, sprinkles and a cold Twinkie.

RELATED: Tamales, cherry cobbler back at Bill Miller's

Under the colorful goofball fearlessness lies a serious mission. The Herreras went into Folklores with the desire to create a sense of community in a neighborhood with few places to actually hang out and meet ones neighbors. Its literally written on the walls in a sign welcoming people of all races, religions, sexual orientations and more.

And its a trip worth taking.

Location: 5007 S. Flores St., 210-455-7829, Facebook: @southsidecoffeehouse

Hours: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday through Wednesday

Paul Stephen is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | pstephen@express-news.net | Twitter: @pjbites | Instagram: @pjstephenCherry cobbler is rising from the dead for this week only at Bill Miller Bar-B-Q.

The popular barbecue chain is rolling out a series of "spooky" specials to celebrate Halloween and announced the fan favorite would be available while supplies last from Oct. 22-28 for $1.65 per portion.Kratos would be proud. Next years big PAX South video game festival in San Antonio will host God of War director Cory Barlog for its opening Storytime keynote.

PAX South runs Jan. 18-20, 2019, at the Convention Center.

Barlog has made quite the mark in the video gaming industry with his War work. In addition to helming one of the most critically acclaimed games of 2018, Barlog also served as lead animator on the original 2005 God of War, and won a BAFTA for his writing on the 2007 sequel, God of War II, which he directed.

The new God of War recasts series protagonist Kratos in an unforgiving Norse wilderness, where the burly Ghost of Sparta must hack and slash through myriad threats while protecting and mentoring his young son, Atreus. The review aggregator Metacritic has more than 100 positive critic reviews (none negative or mixed) for the reboot, and lists God of War as the top PlayStation 4 game of 2018.

Doing a sequel to a beloved game is a unique challenge, and so is rebooting a franchise for a modern audience  Cory Barlog has done both, PAX co-founder Jerry Holkins said in a news release. We're overjoyed to have him join us at PAX South. If I get the chance, I'm gonna tell him about this place I know in San Antonio where they make the guacamole with Orange Juice instead of Lime. It sounds crazy, but it works.

PAX, or Penny Arcade Expo, celebrates all aspects of gaming culture, from video games and virtual reality to tabletop games and other unplugged diversions. Attendees enjoy hands-on access to the latest games, along with panels, concerts, esports tournaments and other activities.

PAX South launched in San Antonio in 2015. Other PAX shows include PAX West in Seattle, PAX East in Boston, PAX Aus in Melbourne, and PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia.

PAX South 2019 tickets are now on sale, with three-day badges for $85 and single-day passes for $42.

Rene A. Guzman is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | rguzman@express-news.net | Twitter: @reneguz| BY Lynchy |

Leading post production company PixelBox has announced a new collaboration with music studio SYN in the Philippines market.

SYN is the vision of three founders, partners and very good friends Simon Le Bon, Yasmin Le Bon and Nick Wood (pictured left). In 1991 the trio fashioned an agency to produce creative commercial music for brands and media and committed their first initials to its name.

With studios in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Beijing and now Manila, SYN are a global force who share PixelBoxs passion to produce meticulously crafted creative communication that propels their clients visions to their full potential

PixelBox GM Stephen Douglas says As technology continues to create new possibilities, its easy to focus on the visual aspects of communication. But theres more to storytelling than meets the eyes. What reaches your ears is equally as important. The right music and sound design can captivate an audience and evoke their emotions as much as a series beautifully crafted images.

Nick Wood says SYN has always strived to collaborate with best visual artists, film makers and creators who share of our passion for great storytelling through stunning visuals and sound. Collaborating with Chris and PixelBox is a fantastic opportunity for us to unite our unique set of skills under one roof and bring a fresh and creative approach to music, sound design and visual post production.

Simon Le Bon says Over the course of three decades, SYN has become an increasingly important part of my creative life. Writing and recording with Nick and other members of the SYN team has enabled me to discover and develop musical aspects which I would never have visited within the confines of Duran Duran. I love the company and everything we stand for and the partnership with PixelBox is an amazing creative opportunity that I fully support.

Nick and the SYN team share the same vision and desire to bring quality to the Philippines and the region as myself. SYN share our passion for creating world class work that works, and this new partnership enables us to bring something new and exciting to the region and help raise the creative bar even higher. adds PixelBox MD/founder Chris Thorp.Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents recently rescued 24 individuals who were being smuggled in a truck near Freer.

READ MORE: Laredo stash house operator sentenced for role in fatal human smuggling attempt

The incident happened when a box truck approached the primary inspection area of the Border Patrol checkpoint on U.S. 59. An immigration inspection of the truck's driver determined he was a U.S. citizen.

While at the primary inspection area, a Border Patrol K-9 alerted to the presence of possible concealed contraband in the vehicle. Agents referred the driver to secondary inspection, at which point the driver accelerated and drove away from the checkpoint.

Agents pursued the vehicle for approximately two miles before the driver pulled over. The driver was arrested, and a search of the vehicle revealed 24 individuals in the cargo area. Despite the temperature inside the cargo area being over 100 degrees, none of the undocumented immigrants required medical attention.

READ MORE: Reward offered for Laredo man suspected in burglary

The driver and immigrants were arrested, and the vehicle was seized by Laredo Sector Border Patrol. The case has been referred to Homeland Security Investigations.Numerous photos and rows of countless, meticulously-labeled binders with pages full of memories line the shelves of a small room inside the ERA Roberts & Wilkins office.

It's a relatively small piece of a life's-worth of gathering anything Ramona Roberts believed to be of historical significance.

"She was a collector," said Jana Cannon of the late Ramona, who died Oct. 17. "That's the best way to describe her."

Stepping in to the office suite Ramona shared with her husband, J. B. Roberts, is almost overwhelming  not in a bad way. Pictures, paintings and framed objects labeled with dates and their significance cover the walls. There are also arrowheads, collections of various items from travels and more of those labeled binders in boxes.

Multiple people who knew her told The Herald Ramona was a history buff  one of Hale County's most significant banks of historical knowledge.

Monte Monroe, Texas historian and a close friend of Ramona's, said she built and maintained "one of the finest collections of regional history and genealogy in all of the Texas Panhandle, if not West Texas."

She was in the minority of people who keep things like old letters, notes, objects or seemingly insignificant art and she recorded them, he said.

"The most remarkable thing she did was that she organized and compiled a substantial archive," Monroe said. "It not only relates to her family, but also to the history of Texas, the history of the United States, the history of the South Planes and the Panhandle, where we all live."

Her information was historically backed up, he said.

"It's unbelievable what she knew," said Beverly Wall, a friend of Ramona's.

Few others in Hale County can hold a candle to Ramona's knowledge it'll be missed.

"She was brilliant," Wall said of Ramona. "She never forgot anything historical. She could just tell you."

While she kept much of her collections, she also enjoyed sharing it with local museums and sharing her knowledge with anybody who was interested. For example, the Southwest Collection currently has 650 boxes of material Ramona donated  and there's still more to come.

J.B. Roberts, Ramona's husband, said her love of history began during his time in the United States Air Force. Both of their mothers had taken an interest in their genealogy and as they learned and shared more of their information with J.B. and Ramona, it became a kind of competition between the young couple.

"We absolutely got enthralled because our family was involved in all of the early history of America," J.B. said. "I'd always tease her. I'd say 'honey, my folks were here a lot earlier than yours.'"

That sparked her interest and hunger to know more. She also loved travel just as much. A globe in Ramona's office is filled with red pushpins that show every place she went.

"She would take copious notes of wherever they went, what they did and what they saw," Cannon said.

She'd write out her memories then have Cannon, personal secretary to Ramona, go over them and make edits for grammar and clarity.

Cannon has read through Ramona's personal archives and helped her polish the final products. So besides Ramona's family, Cannon knew her best.

Everyone who spoke with The Herald said Ramona had a big heart and cherished her family and friends.

"She was probably one of the kindest, most loving and generous people I know," Cannon said. "She really was."

Rodney Watson, a friend of Ramona's and a retired museum director, said Ramona had a knack for making you feel important.

"It didn't matter who you were," he said. "She treated you like somebody and made you feel special. Like I said, she was one of my biggest supporters through the years worked at the museum. Even when I worked there before as just a starving artist, she treated me like somebody special."

She'd purchase greeting cards in the bulk and have them on hand for just about every occasion. Debbi Wilkins, one of Ramona's former co-workers, said friends' birthdays and holidays rarely passed without Ramona sending a note.

And she never threw any cards she received away, Cannon said.

Monroe said that's what makes her and her collection so unique. She wanted to remember everything and to record every possible piece of history she could. And she continued to do it through her last days.

"She will be greatly missed by many, many people," he said.CIA Director Gina Haspel departed for Turkey on Monday amid a growing international uproar over Saudi Arabia's explanation of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to people familiar with the matter.

The visit by the U.S. spy chief comes as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a speech planned for early Tuesday vows to reveal the full extent of what his aides are calling a Saudi-directed murder and attempted coverup.

The arrival of the director suggests an effort by the U.S. intelligence community to assess the information the Turks have, including what Turkish officials have said is audio that captures the killing. Intelligence officials are increasingly skeptical of the Saudi account and have warned President Donald Trump that the idea that rogue operators flew to Istanbul and killed Khashoggi without the knowledge or consent of Saudi leaders is dubious, a White House official said.

On Monday, Trump told reporters that "I am not satisfied with what I've heard" from Saudi Arabia and pledged to get to the bottom of what happened.

"We have top intelligence people in Turkey. We're going to see what we have. I'll know a lot tomorrow," he said. "They'll be coming back either tonight or tomorrow morning. But we have people in Saudi Arabia and in Turkey."

A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment. Other officials spoke about the director's travels on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the trip.

The chief concern for Washington is that Erdogan will reveal details about Khashoggi's killing that implicate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, who has been a key ally for the Trump administration.

On Saturday, the Saudi government acknowledged that Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents after he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The 33-year-old prince has denied any knowledge of the killing and his top diplomat, Adel al-Jubeir, called it a tragic "rogue operation" by a group of people acting outside Mohammed's consent.

A U.S. official who has not heard the audio that purportedly captures the killing but is familiar with its contents said it does not corroborate Saudi Arabia's version of events that Khashoggi's death was the result of a fistfight.

Turkish investigators concluded days ago that Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a Saudi team dispatched to Istanbul.

At least 12 members of the Saudi team are connected to Saudi security services, and several have links to Mohammed, according to a review of passport records, social media, local media reports and other material.The fifth man to plead guilty in a massive hack of female celebrities' nude photos is a former high school teacher from central Virginia.

Christopher Brannan, 30, appearing at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond on Monday, admitted that he illegally accessed more than 200 Apple iCloud, Facebook and Yahoo accounts and downloaded people's personal pictures and videos.

Brannan also hacked into the account of his sister-in-law, who was a minor at the time, as well as current and former teachers and students at Lee-Davis High School, where he taught special education until 2015, according to court records.

A Hanover County Public Schools representative declined to comment.

Prosecutors have agreed to recommend a sentence of 34 months in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 25; he has also agreed to pay restitution.

Brannan, like others implicated in what prosecutors call "Celebgate," used social engineering to maneuver his way into celebrities' social media accounts, using research to figure out their security questions and sending fake Apple emails to get login information.

He used a Russian program called Elcomsoft to download entire iCloud accounts.

He would trade user names, passwords and stolen photos online, according to court documents, and at least once he worked with someone else to get into an email account.

The 2014 hacks exposed hundreds of celebrities' personal photos, many of which were shared on the anonymous forum 4chan.

In 2016, Ryan Collins, 38, of Pennsylvania became the first person caught in the celebrity hacking; he served 18 months in prison. George Garofano, a 27-year-old from Connecticut, is serving an eight-month sentence. Emilio Herrera, 33, of Chicago is serving 16 months; Edward Majerczyk, a 31-year-old also from Chicago, was given a nine-month sentence.

In court papers in Brannan's case and others, prosecutors did not name the celebrities, but some have identified themselves.

Jennifer Lawrence and other actors whose nude photos were stolen described the hacks as a sex crime, but the men involved have pleaded guilty only to computer and identity-theft charges.

"[He] was lonely, not socially active, and essentially replacing his own lack of social interaction with the viewing of photos of the lives of others," Herrera's attorneys wrote in arguing that their client should not be labeled a sex offender.

Most of the perpetrators, like Brannan, victimized people they knew personally as well as the celebrities. All of the cases were investigated out of Los Angeles then transferred to federal districts.NEW HAVEN  Police are investigating an overnight threat via social media regarding Wilbur Cross High School, according to a release.

The threat has prompted the New Haven Police Department to support the security measures already in daily practice at the school, police said.

At this time, the specific origin and credibility of the message have not been determined, but it remains under investigation, police spokesman Officer David Hartman said.

Police and other support has been provided to the school and its security team in order to maintain a safe school environment for all students and staff, Hartman said in the release. Wilbur Cross remains in session and is on a regularly scheduled half-day today (Monday).

Three male students entering the school around noon, who did not give their names, said they were unaware of any threats that were made.

New Haven schools have effective security measures in place and rely on a close working relationship with the New Haven Police Department, Hartman said.

This with the deployment of school resource officers in the districts many buildings, assure the students, employees, visitors and faculty who use them are kept safe, Hartman said in the release. The BOE uses a notification system, through which parents and educators are notified and kept apprised of such events. This system was successful this morning in getting the message out.

The Board of Education completed the third phase of its Board of Education Security Alarm Fire Emergency Response program  which used money from a state bonding project  in the week that school started this year. The BESAFER program gives emergency personnel remote access to cameras within the citys schools and, in the case of an emergency, key card access to a locked down school.

As part of the program, the district has also restricted the number of entrances to every school.

Superintendent of Schools Carol D. Birks said student safety is a top priority.

The collaboration and planning with the New Haven Police Department, School Security, Central Office and Wilbur Cross Administration allows for us to respond to security issues quickly and proactively as we work diligently to maintain safe and healthy learning environments for all New Haven Public School students, she said in the release.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.comWASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's allies are hoping that testimony this week before the House of Representatives will provide them with new ammunition against the FBI and the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

On Wednesday, leaders of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees are scheduled to hear closed-door testimony from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. On Thursday, committee members are set to interview George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to Trump's campaign who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

It will be the first time that Papadopoulos, one of the first people in Trump's orbit to fall under FBI investigation, has spoken to congressional investigators.

For more than a year, congressional panels investigating Russian interference have wanted to speak with Papadopoulos about his outreach to two Russian nationals during the campaign, as well as his interactions with a London-based professor, Joseph Mifsud, who told him in April 2016 that the Russians had dirt on then-Democratic nomineeHillary Clinton in the form of thousands of her emails.

The House Judiciary and Oversight Committees launched their joint investigation in October 2017, about a week before Papadopoulos pleaded guilty.

He was cooperating with the special counsel until last month, when he was sentenced to 14 days in jail. After that, Papadopoulos volunteered to be interviewed by Congress.

Papadopoulos has emerged as an early key figure in the Russia investigation. FBI officials have told Congress that they first opened a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign and Russia after an Australian diplomat reported in late July 2016 that Papadopoulos had described having a conversation with Mifsud about Clinton's emails.

But Republicans have been skeptical of that timeline. Papadopoulos has been stoking their theories in recent media interviews and Twitter comments, in which he has alleged that he was set up by Western intelligence agencies.

In a letter to congressional committees sent Monday, a lawyer for Papadopoulos told the committee that he was prepared to discuss his interactions with nine individuals.

They include Mifsud, the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer and Stephen Halper, a Cambridge professor who worked as an FBI source and interacted with Papadopoulos and two other Trump aides.

Papadopoulos has suggested on Twitter that he thinks each may have been working with British or other Western intelligence services in an effort to set up the Trump campaign.

In her letter, attorney Caroline Polisi wrote that Papadopoulos would have preferred to testify publicly "in the spirit of full transparency."

"We understand that is not an option at this time, but would welcome the opportunity to do so at a later date," she wrote.

Rosenstein's interview is expected to focus in part on reports that he suggested taping the president's conversations or seeking to use the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Rosenstein offered to resign in the wake of those reports, but Trump has since said that he has no plans to dismiss Rosenstein from his post.

Last week, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., leader of the House Freedom Caucus, called for Rosenstein to resign if he did not testify before the Judiciary and Oversight panels.

After it was announced that Rosenstein would speak only with the leaders, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a House Freedom Caucus co-founder, called the terms "unacceptable," insisting that he schedule an interview with the full committees.

Democrats and some of the witnesses in the panel's probe have accused Meadows, Jordan andtheir allies of trying to use the committees' investigation to undermine federal law enforcement agencies and spin a public narrative that favors the president.Peter Newell was a free-spirited artist who took pleasure in the whimsical side of life.

And it was in Jacksonville in the early 1880s when Newells artistic spirit took flight.

Newell, who became a famous cartoonist and illustrator, came to Jacksonville from Bushnell in 1880 at the age of 18 to take a job drawing crayon portraits of local people at the photography studio of Clendenon & Nichols.

Newells talent was quickly apparent, and he spent much of his free time honing his skills, while, at the same time, amusing himself. Talent such as his must be satisfied, so, in the after-gallery hours, he made those fascinating humorous sketches which he submitted to such periodicals as Harpers Bazaar and the New York Graphic, which was one of the first illustrated newspapers, wrote Mabel Hall Goltra, a Jacksonville resident who penned a short biography of Newell in 1946.

The success of the sketches accepted by national periodicals encouraged Newell to leave his Jacksonville job and study at the Art Students League in New York City in 1883-84.

He tolerated academic training only three months, believing that the value of his work  its originality  would be sacrificed by adapting it to accepted methods, wrote an unknown author of an article on Newell for the Dictionary of American Biography.

Disliking the constraints of structured art study, Newell returned to his old job at Clendenon & Nichols on the east side of the Jacksonville square. Soon after his return to Jacksonville, he made an unsuccessful attempt at becoming a commercial artist in Springfield.

And one sketch that has survived from Newells brief stay in the capital city gives some idea of his humor. The drawing, advertising his Springfield studio, shows Newell crossing a muddy Springfield street. Standing in the middle of the street, one foot is raised with mud clinging to it while the other foot is buried up to his shoe top.

On Feb. 5, 1885, Newell married Leona Ashcraft at the home of his friend and former employer, Samuel Nichols, in Jacksonville.

The Newells lived in Jacksonville until 1886, when they went to New York City, where he achieved success contributing illustrations to Harpers Magazine, Harpers Weekly and Harpers Bazaar.

Newell also gained some notoriety with the publication of childrens books, including Topsys and Turvys in 1893 and The Hole Book in 1908. He also illustrated works of fiction, notably John Kendrick Bangs A House-Boat on the Styx in 1896 and The Pursuit of the House-Boat in 1897. And he drew characters for one edition of Alice in Wonderland.

His strength lay in whimsical interpretation of nonsense set forth in simple and direct terms, wrote one biographer of Newell. He was inventive rather than imaginative, giving a certain zest to his own cartoons which is not felt in his illustrations of the ideas of others.

Newell died at Little Neck, New York, in 1924.

This Way We Were story was first published March 13, 2000.A crew of anti-gay protesters rallied outside the federal courthouse Friday afternoon, announcing they have sued the Houston Public Library over a city-sponsored Drag Queen Story Hour which they say violates their freedom of religion.

Opponents of the story hour have also turned out to protest the library events, which began last summer in Montrose, the citys historic gay enclave. Similar drag queen events have been hosted around the country with the aim of providing role models for children.Houston police arrested two people who were caught in a truck that was stolen in an armed robbery, authorities said.

An officer discovered that the Toyota Tundra was stolen around 1 a.m. Monday near Scott and Elgin. It had been taken in an armed robbery Sunday in west Houston.A 20-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl was arrested Friday by San Antonio police.

Caleb Rosario was taken into custody on suspicion of aggravated sexual assault of a child, according to jail records.

Rosario was 19 when the alleged assault occurred, according to the affidavit.

RELATED: Fired SAPD detective arrested in connection to botched sex crime investigations

The girl told police she had begun talking to Rosario through Snapchat and one day at the end of September she packed a bag and sneaked out of her house so Rosario could pick her up, according to an arrest affidavit.

Rosario took her to his home, authorities said. At one point he showed her a loaded gun and asked her if she wanted to shoot herself or wanted him to shoot himself. The girl said no, according to the affidavit.

Shortly after, Rosario sexually assaulted the girl, police said.

The girl told police that Rosario discovered her family was looking for her, so he dropped her off at a McDonald's on Interstate 10 and South New Braunfels Street, according to the affidavit.

The girl told police she left behind her underwear. When police searched his apartment, they found underwear that fit girl's description, the affidavit says.

Police arrested Rosario on a $75,000 bond shortly after the victim identified him in a photo lineup. He remained in jail Monday, according to jail officials.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | fsabawi@mysa.com|@FaresInSAA man was found with a stab wound in his stomach Sunday near the Hays Street Bridge, police said.

Police said they were first called to the Hays Street Bridge at about 9:30 p.m. for a disturbance, but responding officers didn't find anything.Bexar County was on track Monday afternoon to break the 2016 record for first-day early voting in a general election, with more than 24,000 ballots cast by 4 p.m. and two hours still to go before the polls close.

This is somewhat unexpected but, boy, does it feel good, a smiling Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen told reporters at a news conference.

Bexar County elections officials lauded a near-record turnout on the first day of early voting Monday, while officials, including U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro chastised the long lines and wait times voters found at many polling sites.

Callanen said the department planned for a presidential election but was still surprised by the number of voters.

As of 4 p.m., 24,502 people had cast their ballots in the county. In the 2014 midterm elections, there were 13,436 votes after the first day. Bexars record first-day total for general election early voting in 2016, a presidential year, saw 35,431 people cast ballots.

The first day of the elections was not seamless, as printing issues at several sites led to long lines and wait times, drawing the ire of Castro and state Sen. Jose Menendez.

Callanen said those delays, partly caused by the unexpectedly high turnout, were exacerbated by printing issues at Las Palmas, Encino and Somerset polling places earlier in the morning.

At those sites, poll workers couldnt print each voters label after verifying their registration status. The labels are used to ensure each voter gets the correct ballot. Poll workers were forced to write that material by hand Monday morning.

Callanen maintained that elections department wasnt aware of any glitches in the voting machines or the laptops used to verify registrations.

Castro lambasted the difficulties and said its not the first time this has happened in Bexar County.

This has been a recurrence, a constant thing in Bexar County elections for several cycles now, and it needs to stop, Castro said.

The congressman was at Las Palmas polling site Monday morning when the printing troubles led to wait times of about an hour and a half for more than 100 voters.

The situation at the site was further worsened by the fact that poll workers only had one laptop to check registrations. As a result, only two of the sites eight voting machines were being used at any one time.

Usually, there are more computers to check folks in, Castro said. A poll worker said they ordinarily have three.

Callanen denied those assertions at the news conference later in the day. She said the site usually has one laptop.

The department deployed staff and another laptop to Las Palmas Monday afternoon to expedite the voting process.

Its been a busy day, Callanen said. Its been a frustrating day for a lot of people.

Castro also worried that people who were forced to leave because of the delays would not return again to cast their ballots. But Callanen said she doubted that, arguing there are still two weeks of early voting and Election Day.

The long wait times werent exclusive to sites with printing issues. The Lions Field site, at 2809 Broadway, was seeing lines to rival Election Day, one voter said, and there were long lines snaking through the stacks at Tobin Library at 4134 Harry Wurzbach.

At 2 p.m., a long line curved around the polling place at Lions Field. A few people at the end of the line decided to leave and try again later, and the crowd just outside the entrance said they had been waiting for at least an hour.

Ernestina Jacobs, 71, said she usually votes on the first day of early voting at this polling place. She said she cant remember waiting longer than five minutes in the past. Jacobs attributed the delays to the amount of races on the ballot this year.

I wish I wouldve timed it better, said Rachel Nichols, 66, a counselor who came to vote in between patients.

Nichols said she was forced to push back her afternoon appointments, but she  like others in the crowd  didnt express frustration or exasperation at the wait times. They said, if anything, it actually made them hopeful.

It doesnt seem like a bad thing that people are turning out to vote, said Jennifer Hermann, 36, who was holding a baby at the front of the line.

Staff writer Elaine Ayala contributed to this report.

Dylan McGuinness covers local politics and the Bexar County government for the Express-News. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | dylan.mcguinness@express-news.net | Twitter: @DylMcGuinnessWASHINGTON  President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. would begin cutting off, or substantially reducing aid to three Central American nations over a migrant caravan heading to the U.S. southern border.

Trump tweeted: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.The National Weather Service is warning residents in South Central Texas of the possibility of renewed flooding this week as the remnants of a Pacific hurricane move through Mexico into Texas.

An additional 2 to 3 inches of rainfall is expected to affect the area, including San Antonio, through Wednesday, with isolated totals of up to 4 inches. Chances for rain begin Monday night but it is most likely to occur Tuesday and Wednesday.

That may not sound like a lot of moisture, but with the ground already saturated from more than 10 days of wet weather, the extra few inches may cause additional flooding.

RELATED: Hurricane off Mexico on track for South Texas

"The best chances for moderate to heavy rainfall look to be on Wednesday," reads a forecast from the NWS. "With how saturated the ground is even just a few inches of rainfall could lead to new and/or renewed river flooding and some minor street/road flooding."

Flooding could affect all of South Central Texas, but the Colorado, Llano, Nueces, Frio and Rio Grande river basins are most at risk, meteorologists said.

The rain will be generated by a region of low atmospheric pressure, which has been sitting in the southwestern area of the U.S. for the past week, in combination with the remnants of Hurricane Willa, which will move into South Texas on Wednesday.

Temperatures are expected to be in the 50s and 60s Monday through Thursday.

The good news, according to the National Weather Service, is that South Central Texas could see some relief from the rain beginning Thursday. Friday and Saturday should be dry with highs in the 70s.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

Caleb Downs covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com |

cdowns@mysa.com | @calebjdownsThe woke have become a joke. The left is devouring itself.

It happened when #MeToo collided with #BlackLivesMatter.

The collision of hashtags  which was caught on video and has now been viewed by more than 6 million people  occurred on a street corner in Brooklyn, N.Y., in front of a convenience store.

It was there that a 53-year-old white woman named Teresa Klein recently accused a 9-year-old African-American boy of groping her. Klein yelled that she had been sexually assaulted, and the boy was the offender. And when the boys mother yelled back at Klein, our victim did what a lot of white people do when dealing with black people: She called 911.

Apparently, thats a thing. When in doubt, call the cops. Two black men are removed from a Philadelphia Starbucks by police as they wait to begin a business meeting. An African-American graduate student at Yale University who fell asleep in the common room of a dormitory is questioned by police after a fellow student reports her. In California, an 8-year-old African-American girl gets turned in for selling water outside her apartment building without a permit.

Liberals and conservatives alike are always talking about how we need to be colorblind. Hows that working out, folks?

Law enforcement is being weaponized by white people against black people, for perceived offenses both big and small.

Guess which category Kleins complaint falls into?

Heres how the emergency call went:

I was just sexually assaulted by a child, Klein told the dispatcher. In the background, the traumatized boy was crying hysterically. Meanwhile, our victim kept saying: Im calling the police! Im calling the police! Through it all, the boys mother appeared to be caught between anger and disbelief.

The son grabbed my ass and she decided to yell at me, Klein told the 911 operator, referring to the boys mother. It was a frightening scene.

The message of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and the dramatic testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, is that women who claim to be victims of sexual assault must always be believed. Not sometimes. Always.

For what its worth, I believed Ford. I also believed Kavanaugh. I think each was giving us their truth, as they knew it.

Be that as it may, Im ashamed at how slow men have been to figure out just how widespread the problem is in our society. Im all-in on the idea that we have to take much more seriously the whole concept of sexual assault against women.

Media creeps, Im looking at you. We have now learned that there have been plenty of instances where a reporter, editor, anchor, or commentator takes advantage of his fame  and then has the gall to go before the camera and sit in judgment over accused individuals like Kavanaugh.

But what Im not all-in on is the idea that every woman should be believed. Its difficult to be a Hispanic or African-American male  or even to simply have a historical understanding of how often weve been wrongly accused of crimes we didnt commit, especially those of a sexual nature  and then go merrily along with the idea that everything a woman says has to be swallowed whole.

For those who want to push back and insist that women dont make this stuff up or imagine assaults that never occurred, I have to ask: Does that include Klein? If so, you might want to rethink that.

As for what all this has to do with the hashtags, its obvious. A lot of women are on edge in the #MeToo era. After years of not reporting sexual assaults, some of them now have a hair trigger for anything that comes close.

Of course, this is also the #BlackLivesMatter era, and African-Americans are on edge as well. They helped spread the video showing what Klein had done. No one is going to put up with anything from anyone anymore.

Dubbed Cornerstore Caroline on social media, Klein has since returned to the store to view security-camera footage. It revealed that what brushed up against her was the boys backpack. According to the footage, the boy didnt touch her. No harm, no foul.

Klein acknowledged as much to reporters, before looking into a camera and apologizing publicly to the boy she had only days earlier attacked. Young man, I dont know your name, she said. But Im sorry.

What a mess. Are we enlightened yet?

ruben@rubennavarrette.comIn this election, Im voting No on Propositions A, B and C, and Im asking that you vote No as well. My reason is clear. I will not turn my back on San Antonio, on my community or on my children.

These propositions, brought by the leadership of the San Antonio firefighters union, do just that. They turn their back on progress, they turn their back on representative government, and they turn their back on our ability to build the best future we can for our children.

Proposition A will undo generations of work toward equity. It was only 40 years ago that San Antonio went from at-large representation on City Council to single-member district representation. The hard work to get equal representation was started by our parents and grandparents, by the generations who fought against poll taxes and political machines. Proposition A will turn the clock back to a time when the interests of a few held sway over the entire city.

District 5, the district I represent, is just now beginning to see progress on equitable funding to meet its long-neglected needs. Last year, my colleagues on the council agreed with me that equity funding was the best approach to meet the citys future. They understood that it benefits every council district when all residents enjoy the same quality of streets and sidewalks, of parks and libraries, of housing and drainage infrastructure. Proposition A would make it too easy for a disgruntled few to dismantle the work of deliberative, representative and focused government.

This proposition alone would destabilize good city government and make our city a high risk for public investment. The pace of progress weve come to rely on, especially in places like District 5, would come to a crawl.

Proposition B turns its back on our future. It hamstrings future City Councils by limiting their options to choose from the top-shelf of potential city managers, the level of manager that our residents deserve. The proposition limits city manager terms to eight years and caps the salary at 10 times that of the lowest paid city employee. We dont place that kind of limit on other professionals, not when we want to attract the best.

This proposition is unquestionably aimed at our current city manager, but its off its own target because it applies to managers to come, not the present one. And its troublesome to me that the firefighters union leader, Chris Steele, has himself been in elected union office for 14 years, and yet would hold the citys top executive to a limit he doesnt respect.

Proposition C is a brazen power grab. It gives the firefighters union the unilateral power to walk away from the negotiating table and hand the process to an unelected arbitrator. Again, the proposed amendment turns its back on good governance, built on representative deliberation. What proposition C says is that your voice doesnt matter, that the firefighters union leaders can bypass your city elected representatives  all of whom are term-limited  and appeal to someone you didnt elect.

Weve been waiting for the union to come to the negotiating table. Their answer is to turn the table over and walk away. I cant vote Yes to that. I wont turn my back on my childrens future, on representative governance, on the work of generations past. I ask that you not turn your back either and vote No this election.

Council member Shirley Gonzales represents District 5.In the second debate between Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Beto ORourke, Cruz erroneously called J Street, which has endorsed ORourke, rabidly anti-Israel.

Actually, J Street is a pro-Israel and pro-peace organization. It maintains that a two-state solution is the only way to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Its goal is to assure that Israel will remain both Jewish and democratic.

In addition, J Street strongly opposes BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions), which anti-Israel organizations advocate.

Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl

Compost good

Re: Pairs food-waste compost feeds the land, front page, Friday:

This article reminded me of an excellent documentary by Deborah Koons Garcia called Symphony of the Soil.

I am very glad to see there are people such as Kate Gruy Jaceldo helping to restore health to the soil.

Lucy Sim, Kerrville

Enabling the Saudis

In general, whatever ugly behavior one political party accuses the other of, they have both been guilty of at some time.

But now Donald Trump is pulling his party ahead. So the Democrats acted like a mob over Brett Kavanaugh? Well, Trump is now acting like the mob of history and story.

He gives the Saudis more than twice as long to make up a story explaining Jamal Khashoggis disappearance as he gave for the investigation of Christine Blasey Fords testimony. That tops every lie and cheat hes ever done.

The character of our Supreme Court is at least as valuable as all the exaggerated amount of money the U.S. makes from Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis indeed were at fault and they are allowed to get away with it, then we might as well install a drug cartel or the Mafia at the head of our government.

Jane Clark, KerrvilleThe Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services ministry have voiced concern over the controversial appointment of Acie Lumumba as head of the newly-created Finance ministry communications committee.

Deputy Information minister Energy Mutodi, told the Daily News yesterday that the appointment came as a surprise to them, as they were never consulted.

I am afraid that the appointment of a communications chairperson in the ministry of Finance may undermine the role that is to be played by the Information ministry. Most governments realise the world over that not all ministers, especially those appointed for their technical expertise have good communication skills, hence the need for an Information ministry that communicates government policy to the public, Mutodi said.

Lumumba, whose real name is William Gerald Mutumanje, was appointed to chair a communications taskforce in the Finance ministry.

However, Ncube came under fire over the appointment, which was made on Friday, as several citizens, argued this was an ill-informed decision.

The Finance minister, who is one of the technocrats appointed by Mnangagwa after the July 30 elections, has however, not yet made public the names of the other members of the committee.

But Mutodi, yesterday said if all government ministries were to go by Ncubes stance, the government will end up with an inflated workforce.

If all ministries manned by technocrats would resort to communications chairpersons we will eventually have a bloated workforce and a duplication of duties as the Information ministry must continue to maintain its oversight role on all policy communications.

We have a minister, a deputy minister and a permanent secretary in the Information ministry and I think this is enough staff complement to cover government communications. We even further have a deputy chief secretary for presidential communications hence the need for us to limit recruitment of any additional communications personnel at government level, Mutodi said.

He further said that people with a passion for communications such as Lumumba could assist as members of the ZBC board that they are currently putting together.

Lumumba, who is a former Zanu PF member, quit the liberation movement in 2016, citing failure to deliver on its electoral promises.

He later launched his own opposition party, Viva Zimbabwe, after he was fired as the chairperson of a steering committee on the Zimbabwe Youth Empowerment Strategy for Investment, amid allegations of misappropriation of funds meant for the Zimbabwe Youth Council.

He was also at the centre of controversy after he was filmed performing a sexual act with his partner. The sex tape was recovered from his house during a police raid.

Lumumba, who has three unresolved fraud cases, was also previously in the eye of a storm when he was accused of lying that he had obtained a degree from the prestigious Harvard University.

 DailyNews

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Related Zimbabwe Latest NewsThe Beitbridge community has rejected a multimillion dollar citrus project proposed by Schweppes Zimbabwe Limited in the Shobi Block for fear that it would disrupt cattle ranging and disempower the already marginalized villagers.

The project was going to run under Beitbridge Juicing (BBJ), a subsidiary of Schweppes.

The project which was supposed to cover 4 000 hectares of citrus plants was thrown out by stakeholders during a meeting held at Beitbridge Rural District Council Boardroom on Friday last week.

Traditional leaders and councilors vehemently rejected the project after a presentation by BBJ representatives. They argued that the citrus plant would disempower 5 600 households that are all dependent on cattle ranching.

Chief Sitaudze who was in the meeting appreciated Schweppes for offering the project to Beitbridge but regretted the negative effects it would have on the ordinary villager. He asked Schweppes to approach Government for underutilized farms in the district.

The MP for BeitbridgeWest, Ruth Mavhungu said she is not aware of the project.

Five wards with 43 000 cattle or 48% of the total number of cattle in the district were going to be affected by the project. Official figures also show that 82% of the districts goats and 52% of goats will be affected.

The wards are 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 whereby ward 8 is by the border with South Africa and Botswana, and part of ward 9 is by the border with Botswana.

They said grazing land would be lost forcing villagers to find pasture across the border in Botswana where cattle will be shot for straying.

The meeting was also attended by officials from different Government departments.

BBJ manager Charles Tembo referred The Mirror to the company public relations officer Unaiswi Nyikadzino who could not be reached by the time of going to print.

The community, councilors and traditional leaders including chief Sitaudze and Headman Mazibeni turned down the proposal.

We appreciate you for bringing such a project to Beitbridge but we implore you to bring projects that do not clash with existing community projects.

Representatives of residents of Shobi Block have made it clear to you that the land in question is their grazing land. If you implement this project we will soon hear that Zimbabwean cattle are being shot across the border in Botswana for straying.

We have made this decision in order to protect the already existing development. We are not dismissing you but we are only saying that bring development that does not create conflict, said Chief Sitaudze.

 Mirror

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Related Zimbabwe Latest NewsThis is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1442 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why were doing this fundraiser and what weve accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, more original reporting.

Chimps like to copy human visitors to the zoo  Ig Nobel Prize The Conversation

Man, 72, killed by group of aggressive rogue monkeys throwing bricks at him from tree Daily Mirror

A 9-year-old Canadian girl figured out a brilliant way to sell all her Girl Scout cookies Quartz

UNs 10-year plan to tackle worlds drug problem has been spectacular failure as production and consumption soar, report says Independent. Not to mention a spectacular waste of money.

Indonesias Indigenous Languages Hold the Secrets of Surviving Disaster Foreign Policy

Denmark wants to make climate impact labels mandatory for food TreeHugger

Germanys great environmental failure Handelsblatt

Eating Locally and in Season: Is It Really Better for the Environment? TruthOut

Police Body Camera Bursts Into Flames; New York Pulls 2,990 From Use NYT

Uber Ambitiously Eyes 2021 for Food-Delivery Drones Launch WSJ

Australia

Syraqistan

2018

India

China?

UBS Warns Staff Over China Travel After Banker Held In Beijing: Source International Business Times

Brexit

Brexit: a total lack of substance EUReferendum.com Theresa May faces fight for her leadership as mutinous Tory MPs warn she is drinking in last chance saloon Independent. Seems two weeks doesnt pass now without May facing another similar revolt  if you believe the UK MSM. On the other hand, one shouldnt entirely forget the story of Peter and the wolf.

Class Warfare

Kill Me Now

Count on Hillary Clinton running again in 2020 NY Post. I remind readers that to post a link is not necessarily to endorse its reasoning  I throw this one up as a spur to reader comments. Enjoy!

Tariff Tantrum

Thousands in U.S.-bound migrant caravan pour into Mexican city Reuters

Mexico opens border to migrant women and children from Honduras; caravan plans to travel to US FirstPost

The Pieties of the Liberal Class Counterpunch

Trump Transition

Antidote du Jour:

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1441 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why were doing this fundraiser and what weve accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, more original reporting.

By Julie Dermansky, a multimedia reporter and artist based in New Orleans. She is an affiliate scholar at Rutgers Universitys Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. Visit her website at www.jsdart.com., NY. Originally published at DeSmog Blog

In Mexico Beach, Florida, Russell Kings house is the only beachfront property that survived Hurricane Michael with little damage. But the fact it survived the latest record-breaking hurricane doesnt give King peace of mind. Can it withstand the next storm that comes its way?

Climate scientists predict that storms will continue to intensify, and King takes this to heart, worrying the next one could take down his house. I met King on October 14, four days after Hurricane Michael made landfall and wiped out a large portion of Mexico Beach, a small town on Floridas panhandle. The storm swept into the area with winds of up to 155 miles per hour (mph), just two shy of reaching a Category 5 storm designation.

Sand Palace, Russell Kings House in Mexico Beach.

Kings home, which he owns with his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, was built to withstand 240 mph winds, well beyond the standards of the current building code. Nearby houses built to the latest code all sustained substantial damage. Most of those still standing will likely need to be torn down. About a mile east on Highway 98, the main road along the coast, the top two floors of a four-story house moved from the beach to the road. The bottom floors were obliterated.

Owners of a home built to the latest building code in Mexico Beach, Florida, retrieve belongings from the top two stories that were pushed by Michaels storm surge onto Highway 98.

Owner shows me on his cellphone what his four story home looked like before Hurricane Michael.

I was preparing to camp out in my car on the beach near Kings home when he graciously invited me in. We still have dry beds, he said. That night we talked over candlelight about climate change and politics.

King, a former Air Force Lt. Colonel and practicing lawyer, is a Republican, but voted for Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election because he sees Donald Trumps stance on climate science as a threat to the country. Lets get to the facts and truth, and dont worry about if it comes from the right or the left, King said.

It troubles him that people are confusing the message with the messenger when it comes to science. King pleads with his climate-denier friends to watch Al Gores latest film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, and form their own opinions, rather than going along with what politicians say.

As the sun came up, we gazed out from the balcony over the destruction below. The few structures still standing appeared damaged beyond repair. Many others were completely gone.

Home on Mexico Beach near the Kings home.

Boat sandwiched between homes in Mexico Beach, Florida.

This is what my view is going to be for a long time, King said. He worries things will never be the same there, and feels terrible for his neighbors. Many of the houses in Mexico Beach were decades old, owned by middle-class families who wont have the money to rebuild to the current building code, even though the code is not strong enough to protect from a storm like Michael.

A command center for first responders and the military was set up to the right of his house, in the midst of an apocalyptic landscape of cars wrapped around bare trees and cement slabs where houses once stood. To the left of his house destruction stretched as far as the eye could see. The view of the beautiful beach is marred by the remains of the towns wooden pier, now ripped apart.

Russell King and his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, in Mexico Beach, Florida, a couple blocks from their home.

Im tired of politicians lying to us. The American people need to understand they are lying, King said. The people who are denying climate change are not telling the truth.

He likened the misinformation campaign against climate science to the campaign to protect the tobacco industry, which claimed cigarettes were no threat to human health. He was well aware that the fossil fuel industry is using the same tobacco industry playbook and lobbyists to sow doubt about climate change. There is nothing clean about coal, King said, just like there is nothing healthy about smoking cigarettes.

Kings nephew, on the other hand, is not convinced that humankind is playing a key role in changing the climate, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, and doubts that there is much humans can do now to slow the warming climate. He voted for Trump and, though he doesnt agree with everything Trump does or says, readily repeats common climate denial talking points.

On October 15, I photographed hand-painted signs on Highway 98 that said: Make Mexico Beach Great Again. As I focused on the signs and documented the destruction, a number of helicopters flew over, one of them with President Trump and the First Lady aboard. They were surveying the damage from the air before visiting Lynn Haven, a small town next to Panama City.



City Hall in Mexico Beach, Florida.

Building damaged by Hurricane Michael with a message for Trump.

Trump described the destruction as tough to see, but the experience had no effect on his stance on climate change. Following his visit to Florida and Georgia to see the storms damage, he told Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes that he doesnt deny climate change but then went on to say the climate would swing back on its own.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, who is trying to win a Senate seat, is, like Trump, a climate change denier. Scott reportedly banned the use of the terms climate change and global warning by the staff of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. During an October 14 press conference at a command center outside of Panama City, he reiterated his stance that climate science is undecided.

Most of the people I spoke to in Mexico Beach held the view that the climate is changing, but that it has little to do with humankind. Despite their personal loss, they told me that they have faith that God and the Trump administration will help them rebuild.

Highway 98 in Mexico Beach, Florida.

Owner of the Driftwood Inn inspecting the damage to his hotel in Mexico Beach, Florida.

I met the owner of the Driftwood Inn in front of his hotel on Highway 98. Forty-two years down the drain, he said, surveying the damage to his beloved inn. When asked what he thinks about humanitys role in the recent record-breaking storms, he didnt see a connection. He mused that Democrats will likely blame Trump for Hurricane Michaels damage. Inside the shell of his hotel, tears ran down his face as he looked out on to the Gulf.

Further up the road, I climbed over big chunks of highway collapsed onto the beach in order to get to the El Governor Motel, an area landmark also badly damaged by the storm. There was a familiar whiff of red tide. For a moment, my breathing was restricted and the back of my throat felt scratchy.

As the storm approached, many wondered if it might break up a persistent red tide event that has lingered since last year, following Hurricane Irma and resulting in an unprecedented fishkill. I found my answer in that moment and the next day when I found dead fish along the Gulf shoreline: Hurricane Michael did not clear this persistent bloom of toxic algae affecting both Florida coasts.



President Trumps entourage flying over El Governor Motel in Mexico Beach during a visit to survey Hurricane Michaels damage.

Hurricane Michael damage in Mexico Beach, Florida.

Though King was the only person I met in Mexico Beach who advocated that society should take whatever actions possible to prevent further global warming, hes not the only one calling out politicians for their denial on climate change. The American Meteorological Society responded to President Trumps 60 Minutes interview with a letter to Trump that both confirms the scientific consensus on climate change and states: You also said that scientists are making this political, which is misleading and very damaging. The scientific community welcomes all who commit to the pursuit of understanding through science, irrespective of their political views, religious beliefs, and ethical values.

King believes politicians who continue to deny science for their own personal gain lack a conscience. Though he is glad his home withstood Michael, it is little consolation to him, knowing that the path humans are on is leading to planetary peril.

Sign on a tree in Lynn Haven, Florida.

On my way out of the area, I stopped in front of a home in Lynn Haven that had been crushed by trees. As I photographed a sign tacked to a damaged tree offering free firewood to anyone who cut it, I ran into David Passey, an external affairs director for FEMA, who I met a few days earlier.

Waffle House in Callaway, Florida, damaged by Hurricane Michael.

He is based in California, and said hed be headed back west soon, where the risk of wildfires continues to rise due to warming temperatures. That morning, he received an advisory stating that power companies were preemptively shutting off power in six counties in Northern California that were under threat of a new round of fires. It was the first time he believes PG&E had taken such a defensive move. He told me the company reasoned it would lessen the damage if fire arrived, and make it possible to restore equipment faster.

Back at my desk just outside of New Orleans, I am aware that my own house would not likely survive a Category 4 storm. The National Weather Services storm surge chart shows my location under water with a Cat 4 storm.

With the midterm elections heating up, I reached out to climate scientist Michael Mann for his thoughts on politicians culpability around climate change.

He did not mince words: Climate change-denying politicians are quite literally putting people in harms way by refusing to acknowledge the heightened threat posed by hurricanes supercharged by warming seas, Mann said. They are putting humanity in harms way by denying the larger climate threat and blocking policies in support of climate action.

Brandy Wood Jessen spray-painting a message on the roof of a home on Highway 98 in Mexico Beach, Florida.

Main image: Sign in Callaway, Florida, damaged by Hurricane Michael. Credit: All photos by Julie Dermansky for DeSmogThis is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1441 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why were doing this fundraiser and what weve accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, more original reporting

Conventional wisdom is that the failure of major grocery chains in recent years like Marsh Supermarkets, A&P/Pathmark, and Tops is due to their inability to keep up with disruptors.

Conventional wisdom is wrong.

As Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt explain in a new article scheduled for American Prospect, Private Equity Pillage: Grocery Stores and Workers at Risk, the seven large grocery chains that filed for bankruptcy since 2015 all were victims of private equity firms overloading them with debt, which in turn kept them from investing in updating stores and their product lines. No similar publicly traded grocery chain suffered a similar fate during this period. And as the authors and others like your humble blogger have pointed out, private equity firms extract so much in fees relative to their meager equity investments in the funds they manage that they profit even when they drive the companies they bought into a ditch.

Appelbaum and Batt tell the story of three of these bankruptcies in detail. Southeastern Grocers, Tops, and Fairway. I can attest that two of the stores in the Southeastern portfolio that my family once shopped at, Winn Dixie and Piggly Wiggly, got much less of their business over time. They pretty much abandoned Winn Dixie, when they once shopped there occasionally. Its an old-looking store, not great housekeeping standards, with mediocre fresh foods. The nearby Piggly Wiggly has done better by virtue of being owned locally. It had a very good wine section in the middle of an otherwise uninspired store; a relocated store has much better produce and carryout foods and added flowers. But otherwise, Publix is the grocery chain in the area to beat. From the article:

The bankruptcy of Southeastern (SE) Grocers, owned by private equity firm Lone Star Funds, provides a classic example of how PE drives companies into bankruptcy while extracting millions of dollars for themselves and their investors. It is the owner of well-known brands BI-LO, Fresco y Mas, Harveys Supermarket, and Winn-Dixie, located in seven southeastern states Lone Star first bought out the predecessor of SE Grocers, BI-LO, in 2005 in a leveraged buyout and took the company private. It ran the company into bankruptcy by 2009 and emerged from Chapter 11 in 2010. It tried to sell the chain to publicly-traded Kroger and employee-owned Publix Super Markets, but they were not interested. After 6 years of ownership, Lone Star was overdue in paying promised outsized returns to its investors. So it executed a dividend recapitalization  meaning that it loaded the company with even more debt and used the debt to pay dividends to itself and its investors. Between 2011 and 2013, it paid itself and its investors $838 million in dividends  money that could have been used to make the stores more competitive. The struggling company, meanwhile, became saddled with interest payments on these loans. One loan of $475 million used to pay dividends required SE Grocers to pay $205 million in interest between 2014 and 2018. Lone Stars owner, John Grayken, is a billionaire who famously renounced his U.S. citizenship to avoid paying taxes. As if this wasnt enough debt, Lone Star sent SE Grocers on a buying spree rather than invest in existing stores. In 2012, it bought out Winn-Dixie for $590 million, adding 660 stores and 63,000 employees. In 2013, it added another 165 stores (Harveys, Sweetbay, and Reids) in an LBO worth $265 million, as well as 22 Pigggly Wiggly stores in an LBO worth $35 million. Lone Star renamed the company Southeastern Grocers. By 2014, the company had an unsustainable debt overhang of $1.32 billion due to dividend payments and leveraged buyouts. Looking for cash, the company sold the real estate of a distribution center for $100 million and several stores for $45 million, and then required the affected entities to pay rent on the buildings they used to own  further undermining their financial stability  referred to in financial parlance as a sale/leaseback. In need of more cash, Lone Star managed to obtain a series of revolving credit loans and debt financings between 2014 and 2017, but the loans werent enough to keep it going. By March 2018, SE Grocers filed a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcyWhen the company exited bankruptcy in June, 2018, about 2,000 workers had already lost their jobs. The deal reduced debt from $1.1 billion to $600 million, with creditors swapping debt for equity, and the company agreeing to close 94 stores affecting thousands more workers jobs.

In the case of SE Grocers, the sale of real estate and then its leaseback at an inflated price played only a marginal role. It was central to the demise of Marsh Supermarkets:

In the case of Marsh Supermarkets , private equity cashed in on its rich real estate before throwing it into bankruptcy. The private equity buyout dates to 2006, when the Indianapolis-based company with 116 groceries and 154 convenience stores was up for sale due to losses it incurred during the grocery wars of 2005. Prospective buyers were thin until a footnote in one of the companys financial reports showed that Marshs real estate was worth $100 to $150 million more than listed on its financial statements.by September 2006, Sun [Capital Partners] took Marsh private in a leveraged buyout. Soon after it acquired the chain, Sun did a sale-leaseback deal for the real estate of many of Marshs stores, raising tens of millions of dollars for itself and obligating the supermarket stores to pay rent on locations they had previously owned. Sun also sold Marshs headquarters building and saddled the grocery company with a 20-year lease to 2026 at an annual rent of $2.8 million, scheduled to increase 7 percent five years later. Over the next decade, the supermarket chain struggled. Finally, with only 44 stores remaining in 2017, it went bankrupt, auctioning off the majority and closing 18. Richard Feinberg, professor of consumer science and retailing at Purdue University noted that Marsh might have remained competitive, like other smaller chains that managed to perform well. But this, he said, would have taken an additional investment that Sun clearly did not want to do.

Appelbaum and Batt stress that grocery stores are essential for communities; indeed, when poor urban neighborhoods are trying to redevelop, a grocery store (as opposed to a convenience store whose idea of produce is a few apples, oranges, and bananas, and if you are lucky, a tomato) is a critical piece. Even the little story I found about the relocation of a Piggly Wiggly near my mothers house, in an upscale area where everyone has a car and can easily drive to shop, shows how much people value having a store close at hand:

Owners Andy Virciglio and brothers Basim and Naseem Ajlouny hoped to re-open in Crestline Village after they had to shut down their store at the corner of Euclid Street and Oak Street in November 2014 because the landlord chose not to renew their lease. Piggly Wiggly had been tenants there for 30 years. A CVS/Pharmacy has since opened at that location We were fortunate to be able to find this property, Naseem Ajlouny said. Weve had good support from the city, from the board of education and school system and from residents. People were there to support us. The old Crestline Pig didnt go quietly before closing. A Facebook page called Save the Pig quickly earned thousands of likes, and community members gathered at the Emmet ONeal Library to share memories of the store. Community support has been humbling, Ajlouny said. They needed and wanted this store to come back.

The article describes how the new store has enlarged its wine section, now has the best craft beer selection in the region, added more organics and improved its store labeling of organic and non-GMO foods. Appelbaum and Batt describe how most grocery chains face similar pressures to update their selections:

Grocery chains employ 2.77 million workers, distributed in small towns and cities across the country. They still account for the majority of food at home purchases and are an important source of jobs in local communities. Their continued presence is important to the local economy and to a sense of community in the neighborhoods they serve. What next for regional supermarkets and the jobs of workers in this sector in the coming years? Heightened demand for one-stop-shopping, organics, a wide variety of healthy products and services, online ordering and delivery, and more. Grocery chains find they must race to emulate the most innovative products and services while containing prices. This takes deep financial pockets.

Yet as with SE Grocers, private equity owners dont want to spend the money. The authors compare the trajectory of the biggest grocery chains Kroger,s to number two, Albertsons, which is owned by Cerberus. Albertsons carries a vastly higher debt load than Krogers or Publix. Albertsons has lost money for three of the last four years. Moodys downgraded Albertsons debt twice this year. Cerberus tried to take Albertsons public in April 2018, but cancelled the deal, as it had a fall 2015 IPO attempt. Cerberus then tried to have Albertsons do a reverse merger with Rite-Aid, but large Rite-Aid shareholders were opposed, so that deal was scuttled too.

Appelbaum and Batt argue that Cerberus could continue to bleed Albertsons or could invest to restore its chains and exit at a higher valuation as a result of improved performance. They quietly chide public pension funds like CalPERS for sitting pat:

The answer may hinge on what public pension funds do. These funds have increasingly invested in private equity, despite its unsavory and anti-worker practices, lured by the promise  if often not the reality  of higher returns. The question of whether the big pension funds should avoid private equity, or use their investment to reform its practices, has been hotly debated. (Pension funds cling to the hope of high yields despite the reality that half the private equity funds launched since 2006 have not beaten the stock market and many more have failed to provide returns high enough to compensate for the added risk of these illiquid investments.). CalPERS  the California Public Pension fund has a large stake in Albertsons via its investment in the Cerberus fund that owns the supermarket chain. Will CalPERS, which has responsibility for managing the retirement savings of California public sector workers, many of whom live in communities served by supermarkets Albertsons owns, insist that Cerberus abandon attempts at a quick exit, extend the time they are willing to hold the grocery chain, and commit to making investments that will improve store operations and increase profits?

The authors describe how Kroger, which has kept investing in its business, has not only been investing in its plant, but in improved online shopping, digital displays, employee training, and faster checkout. It is also increasing worker wages and benefits and devoting a billion dollars to bolstering its pension fund.

Appelbaum and Batt set forth a series of reforms to prevent private equity firms from pillaging companies:

Limit total debt leves, including capitailzed leases. The authors dont recommend how to achieve this; a simple way would be to restrict the tax deductibility of interest expenses plus operating lease charges above a certain level. Prohibit the payment of dividends for the first two years after a private equity purchase. This rule is already in place in Europe. Require private equity firms to disclose all fees and expenses that they and their affiliates charge Stop treating private equity owners as passive investors and acknowledge their role as joint employer along with the operating companies they own. The notion that portfolio company management has any independence from their overlords is a fiction to everyone but the courts, which allow private equity investors to escape from liability under the WARN Act (which requires 60 day notice of a facility shutdown) and under ERISA for termination of a pension plan.

It may see that bringing private equity to heel is an impossible task. But the great trusts of the Gilded Age and early 20th Century were even more dominant, yet the were eventually leashed and collared. The more the public understands how often their behavior is self-serving and destructive, the more support there will be for prohibiting those practices.This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1447 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why were doing this fundraiser and what weve accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, more original reporting.

By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

As my high school English teacher, Gordon Muir  RIP  used to say, Strike me pink and call me Rosy!

Last week, The Economist endorsed the idea of the right to repair  albeit obliquely, in Repair is as important as innovation. The article discussed a recent Festival of Maintenance, described as a conference dedicated to keeping things in good nick.

Over to The Economist:

Events about making new things are ten a penny. Less common are events about keeping things as good as new. Maintenance lacks the glamour of innovation. It is mostly noticed in its absencethe tear in a shirt, the mould on a ceiling, the spluttering of an engine. Not long ago David Edgerton of Kings College London, who also spoke at the festival, drove across the bridge in Genoa that collapsed in August, killing 43 people (pictured). Were encouraged to pride ourselves on all being innovators and entrepreneurs, he said. Maintenance is often dismissed as mere drudgery. But in fact, as he pointed out, repairing things is often trickier than making them.

The article didnt discuss the sustainability element of a right to repair, but instead focused on measuring the economic importance of maintenance  a topic I wont consider here. Instead, I will focus on the right to repair movement, the importance of which The Economist acknowledged:

In March California became the 18th state in America to introduce a bill supporting the right to repair, by obliging manufacturers to make manuals more widely available to customers and independent repair shops. The European Commission has proposed something similar for dishwashers, washing machines and the like. Some think they have the right to repair public property, too. One speaker at the festival, who called himself the guerrilla groundsman and masked his identity with a helmet, described his surreptitious efforts to clean bridges and repaint signs in Cambridge without authorisation. In a disposable society, to repair is to rebel.

US DHS Not Yet Hip to the Right to Repair Program

Motherboard ran an article last week, DHS Seized Aftermarket Apple Laptop Batteries From Independent Repair Expert Louis Rossman, that discusses the latest attempt to stifle a right to repair for Apple products  which is part of an ongoing series of similar abominations I have analyzed in several previous posts, including Apple Battery Debacle: Yet Another Reason to Support a Right to Repair and Apple Spends Big to Thwart Right to Repair in New York and Elsewhere.

According to Motherboard:

Earlier this year, Louis Rossmann, the highest-profile iPhone and Mac repair professional in the United States, told Motherboard that determining the difference between counterfeiting and refurbishing is going to be the next big battle between the independent repair profession and Apple. At the time, his friend and fellow independent repair pro, Jessa Jones, had just had a shipment of iPhone screens seized by Customs and Border Patrol. Rossmann was right: His repair parts were also just seized by the US government. Last month, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized a package containing 20 Apple laptop batteries en route to Rossmans store in New York City. The laptop batteries were en route from China to Rossmann Repair Groupa NYC based repair store that specializes in Apple products. Apple and customs seized batteries to a computer that, at [the Apple Store], they no longer service because they claim its vintage, Rossmann, the owner and operator of Rossmann Repair Group, said in a YouTube video. They will not allow me to replace batteries, because when I import batteries that are original theyll tell me the theyre counterfeit and have them stolen from by [CBP].

What set off CPBs watchdogs? According to Motherboard:

A CBP spokesperson told Motherboard in an email: CBP officers and trade specialists detained the shipment and submitted samples to CBPs Consumer Products and Mass Merchandising Centers for Excellence and Expertise (CEE), the agencys trade experts, who determined the batteries to be counterfeit. According to the phrasing of the complaint, it was the use of the Apple logo on the batteries and not the batteries themselves that CBP took issue with. It is assumed that if something has that Apple logo on it, it must be counterfeit, Rossmann said. It couldnt be that someone who has these batteries sold them to me. It couldnt be that someone took these batteries out of machines that were on demo in stores.machines that they owned, packaged them up and sent them to me, Rossmann said. No, they must be counterfeit. Theres no other explanation for it.

As Ive previously discussed, Apple has fought right to repair initiatives tooth and nail. With respect to the latest CPB seizure, Motherboard reports:

this isnt the first time the Department of Homeland Security has seized the property of third party repair stores. In May, CBP seized iPhone LCD screens worth a total of $1,727 from prominent right to repair advocate Jessa Jones. In 2013, ICE agents raided independent repair stores in South Florida and seized between around $300,000 in parts apple claimed were counterfeit. In Norway, customs officials seized repair parts headed for an independent repair shop there. Apple ultimately lost a lawsuit against a Norwegian repair shop after it claimed the owner violated Apples trademark by using unauthorized parts; the court ruled that he was free to import and use them.

Jerri-Lynn here: for further details on the lawsuit against the Norwegian repair shop, see my previous post, Four Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, andRepair.

How Might This Shake Out?

Well, Motherboard previously analyzed such a scenario:

Legal experts told us that importing genuine parts for the purpose of repair is not illegal. From our earlier article: The US Department of Justice, for its part, has said that gray market goods are legal to import as long as they are not substantially different from the original

product; this is called parallel importation. Congress did not intend the criminal provisions to apply to [company logos] on so called parallel imports or gray market goods, in which both the goods and the marks are genuine, but which are sold outside of the trademarks owners authorized distribution channels, the DOJs criminal resources manual states. Similarly, the  first sale doctrine protects the ability of people to resell goods that have trademarked logos on them; even if the parts are refurbished or repaired, the trademark holder has still gotten money from the first sale of that good. Aaron Perzanowski, a trademark, copyright, and intellectual property law professor at Case Western Reserve Universitys School of Law, told me that Joness parts likely cant be considered counterfeit. Assuming that: (1) the cable bearing the Apple mark is a genuine Apple product, (2) the cable used on these screens is the same as the one Apple uses in the U.S., and (3) the importer/seller clearly communicates that the screens are a non-Apple aftermarket product, then Apples case for treating these as counterfeit goods is very weak, Perzanowski said in an email. Refurbished or repaired products are generally permissible under trademark laws first sale doctrine, so long as they are clearly labeled as such. This strikes me as an abuse of trademark law by Apple, he added, one clearly designed to maintain its stranglehold over the repair market and, ultimately, to force customers to buy new hardware

Whats Next?

Just because advocates promote a right to repair doesnt mean such a right will be recognized and widely available, practically speaking, And just being right, from a legal perspective, doesnt mean the 900 pound Apple guerrilla is going to surrender, and allow those who wish to avail themselves of third-party repair services- or fix their devices themselves to proceed unchallenged. Apple remains committed to thwarting such initiatives.

Absent widespread adoption of a right to repair, consumers are likely to discard their malfunctioning electronic devices even though these devices might  with the benefit of a small, low-cost repair  continue to provide further years of useful service.

Without the necessary repair, a consumer is likely to throw the device away, and replace it with another. And that behavior will only exacerbate the planets waste problem.Two teenagers were hospitalised with injuries after being viciously attacked in two separate incidents in Clonmel over the weekend.

A 19 year-old youth was attacked by approximately six other people at the Cashel Street Car Park in Clonmel town centre while he was walking home between 9pm and 9.30pm. He was punched and kicked by the gang. His mobile phone was also broken during the incident.

A Clonmel Garda spokesman said the assault victim was treated for facial injuries at South Tipperary General Hospital but fortunately wasn't seriously injured.

On Sunday afternoon, a 14 year-old boy took a short cut through the grounds of St Luke's Hospital at Glenconnor, Clonmel when he was set up by two males wearing balaclavas and hoody tops and armed with hurleys. He suffered head injuries in the attack, which happened around 2pm. The teenager was taken to the nearby South Tipperary General Hospital and continues to be treated there for his injuries today.

Gardai investigating both assaults have appealed to anyone who saw suspicious activity in the Cashel Street Car Park area on Saturday night and St Luke's Hospital grounds and Glenconnor/Western Road areas of Clonmel on Sunday afternoon to contact Clonmel Garda Station at (052) 6122222.(Natural News) Harvard Law Professor and former board member for the ACLU, Alan M. Dershowitz, has some scathing remarks regarding the integrity of the modern day American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

When left-wing activists interrupted and obstructed the Congressional hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the ACLU cheered them on. When Democrat Senators Dianne Feinstein and Cory Booker brought forth gang rape allegations against the honorable Brett Kavanaugh, the ACLU jumped on board with the allegations. Even though there was no corroboration of the evidence against Kavanaugh, the ACLU spent money trying to destroy his reputation, instead of defending his innocence.

Because the ACLU did not argue for a presumption of guilt during the Kavanaugh proceedings, they exhibited a double standard. The ACLU once argued for due process rights for any and all Americans, that a person was innocent until proven guilty. The ACLU used to believe in the rule of law. Because they blindly jumped on board with the sexual allegations against Kavanaugh, the ACLU committed credibility suicide.

ACLU has become a Democrat Party Super Pac, supporting false accusations and mob rule

As Alan M. Dershowitz points out, the ACLU no longer believes in civil liberties for all. The organization can no longer see past identity politics. The ACLU board members are more concerned about whats good for the left, what is good for the Democratic party. They focus on one-sided issues, defending people of color, and doing what is best for the LGBT community. They no longer view people as individuals, with inalienable rights. The ACLU only looks out for those who fit into a stereotypical mold; they no longer speak out on behalf of American civil liberties regardless of color, gender, political party, or sexual affiliation. The ACLUs double standard on civil liberties has made the organization part of the problem. Because they dont impartially view each accusation, because they believed Kavanaugh was guilty until proven innocent, they have joined the left with their mob accusations and mob rule.

Dershowitz points out, since President Trump was elected, the ACLU has become just another Democrat Party Super Pac, committed to opposing President Trump and the Republican Party at every turn. The ACLU spent more than a million dollars to stop Judge Kavanaughs confirmation and they didnt base their decision on anything related to Kavanaughs judicial record.

ACLU national political director, Faiz Shakir admitted that the ACLU got involved with the Kavanaugh confirmation battle because People have funded us and I think they expect a return. Shakir is a former Democrat Party operative who jumped on board with the sexual allegations to defame Kavanaugh.

Once upon a time, the ACLU was rich in principle, not rich with funds from the Democrat party. Once upon a time, the ACLU defended the unpopular and supported the rights of the accused. Now the organization is taking millions of dollars from radical leftists in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and other places where political power is more important than the rights of people.

ACLU mum on real civil liberty issues

Since Trump was elected, the ACLU has stood quiet as conservative voices across the internet have been accused of hate speech. Prominent conservative and libertarian voices on the internet have been censored, shadow banned, and demonetized without any due process, but when has the ACLU defended them? The ACLU has been mum when innocent peoples offices are raided, files seized, because someone accused them of working with Russia to undermine American democracy. The ACLU refuses to defend those accused of being a Nazi or white supremacist. The ACLU doesnt say a word when students are accused of sexual misconduct and tried in kangaroo courts. The innocents only matter to the ACLU when the ACLU has political power and influence to gain.

Before Trump, the ACLU operated with a $60 million budget. In their annual report for 2017, the ACLU admitted they received unprecedented donations. Now they have net assets totaling over $450 million, and their partisan bias is bleeding through everything that they do. Their television ads sound just like activist propaganda from left wing organizations such as MoveOn. The ACLU is now pleasing their donors and working with the Democrat Party to spend more than twenty-five million on Midterm Election ballot initiatives for Democrats.

Todays ACLU is not the ACLU that once operated on principle. Dershowitz summarizes it well: A true civil libertarian transcends identity politics and cares about the civil liberties of ones political enemies because he or she recognizes that this is the only way that civil liberties for everyone will be preserved.

Sources include:

GatestoneInstitute.org

NaturalNews.com(Natural News) It might seem like flushing something down the toilet means it magically disappears, but unfortunately everything that goes down there ends up somewhere. This means that the many people who flush unused medications rather than throwing them in the trash can because they think theyre being responsible are actually polluting the environment. This is especially true of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications.

According to the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, and as reported by NBC News, an alarming one in six Americans over the age of 12 is on some type of antidepressant or other psychiatric medication. And many of those people are disposing of their unused drugs by flushing them down the toilet. In addition, these chemical medications also enter the water supply via the urine and feces of the people taking them.

The result? Researchers from the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, England, have warned in a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, that our waterways are severely polluted by these drugs, causing great harm to marine life.

Bathed in drugs

Our aquatic life is bathing in a soup of antidepressants, Professor Alex Ford of the University of Portsmouths Institute of Marine Sciences, told the U.K.s Daily Mail. Antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications are found everywhere, in sewage, surface water, ground water, drinking water, soil, and accumulating in wildlife tissues. They are found in sea water and rivers and their potential ability to disrupt the normal biological systems of aquatic organisms is extensive.

Professor Ford also stressed that these animals are not only exposed to such pollutants on a one-off basis but are bathed in drugs for their entire lifecycle.

He added, Laboratory studies are reporting changes such as how some creatures reproduce, grow, the rate at which it matures, metabolism, immunity, feeding habits, the way it moves, its colour and its behaviour.

Part of the problem, according to Dr. Helena Herrera from Portsmouths School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, is that many doctors prescribe psychiatric medications without having any idea of how they can linger in the environment and damage marine life. (Related: What our poop is telling researchers  Wastewater studied to learn if drug manufacturers are a major source for contamination of waterways.)

The research teams suggestions  which were aimed at the United Kingdom, but are equally applicable in the United States  include:

Upgrading water treatment plants to meet with existing EU regulations regarding estrogens which end up in the water system via the contraceptive pill, and which would also mitigate the antidepressant problem;

Making patients (and doctors) aware of the problem and urging them to return unused medications to the pharmacy where they were obtained; and

Putting pressure on Big Pharma to alter these medications in such a way that they break down safely rather than leaving a trail of destruction.

Are so many antidepressants really necessary?

According to Harvard Health, there was a shocking 400 percent increase in the use of antidepressant drugs between 1988 and 2008. While some scientists insist that this increase is because depression was a previously overlooked disease, Harvard Health noted:

There is some overuse and has been a major factor in the 400% increase.

Since these drugs have serious side effects, are known to be ineffective, and are destroying the environment, perhaps the solution is not to upgrade treatment plants but to stop over-prescribing toxic drugs? (Related: Antidepressants burden users with extreme side effects.)

In any event, if you do need to dispose of antidepressant or other drugs, the FDA provides an informative article about how to do so safely.

Discover the truth about depression and antidepressant drugs at Psychiatry.news.

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

NBCNews.com

Health.Harvard.edu

FDA.gov(Natural News) Having anxiety and depression disorder can greatly affect a persons life. In fact, depression is the number one cause of disability worldwide. To alleviate the symptoms of these psychiatric disorders, psychotropic and antidepressant drugs are often prescribed by physicians. In addition to this, there are also a number of general practitioners that recommend the use of homeopathic therapies as a substitute or in conjunction with conventional medicine. According to the results of a study in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, patients that consulted with certified homeopathic practitioners had the most significant improvements in depression compared to patients that were given conventional care.

Anxiety and depression disorder can affect almost anyone, regardless of age or gender. Although there are psychotropic drugs and antidepressants that can be used for treating psychiatric disorders, these conditions are still left untreated 75 percent of the time. Psychotropic drugs tend to be expensive, which is why not many people are able to access them. On the other hand, there are also cases where patients take the prescribed drugs but their condition still doesnt improve. In addition to this, psychotropic drugs are also known for causing unwanted side effects like sleep disorders, loss of bone mass, and weight gain.

Homeopathy is a holistic system of healing that involves the use of natural products to restore health. It is commonly used for treating diseases like diarrhea, allergies, insomnia, lower back pain, and psychiatric disorders. Unlike conventional drugs, homeopathic drugs are relatively inexpensive and do not cause adverse side effects.

To determine the effects of homeopathic medical practice on patients with anxiety and depression disorder, a population-based epidemiological cohort study was conducted. For this study, three major groups were observed. One group of patients consulted with practitioners that prescribed only conventional drugs while another prescribed homeopathic drugs along with conventional medicine, Lastly, the third group consulted with certified homeopathic practitioners. Overall, the study had 710 participants. The study was conducted for a period of 12 months, with information being collected through questionnaires and a series of follow-up interviews.

Results of the study showed that patients that consulted with certified homeopathic practitioners used psychotropic drugs less yet they also exhibited the most significant clinical improvement. Compared to patients that consulted with conventional practitioners, the patients that consulted with homeopathic practitioners were 1.7 times more likely to have improved conditions. The researchers attributed this to differences in homeopathic diagnosis and management since certified homeopathic practitioners are trained in both homeopathic and conventional medicine. Homeopathy is also specifically catered to each individual so the given treatments were more appropriate. Aside from this, the researchers also attributed the results to the inefficacy of conventional drugs.

From these results, it can be determined that homeopathy is an effective treatment for anxiety and depression. This shows that homeopathy is a safe and inexpensive alternative for harmful and ineffective psychotropic drugs. (Related: Study: Antidepressant drugs actually cause many people to have worse depression.)

Fast facts about homeopathy

Homeopathy was developed by a German doctor and chemist named Samuel Hahnemann. This practice was primarily based on the Law of Similars, which just says that in order to cure certain diseases, substances that induce the same symptoms in healthy people. Unlike conventional medicine, homeopathy supports the symptoms instead of suppressing them. Aside from this, the studies conducted by Hahnemann also revealed that lowering the dosage of the substance makes the medicine more effective.

Nowadays, homeopathic medicines, which are produced in tablet, liquid, or powder form, can be found in grocery stores, pharmacies, and health food stores. Since these medicines contain small dilutions of substances, they are generally safe for everyone, including infants, children, and pregnant women. Aside from this, they are also environmentally friendly and cruelty-free.

Learn more natural ways to treat depression by visiting Health.news today.

Sources include:

Science.news

BMCComplementAlternMed.BioMedCentral.com

ADAA.org

UnityRehab.com

PsychCongress.com

HomeopathyCenter.org

BritishHomeopathic.org

Homeopathy-SOH.org(Natural News) A local news affiliate out of Charlotte, North Carolina, recently aired a segment about the infamous 5G wireless technology thats right now being rolled out in select cities nationwide. And many local Charlotte residents, the report divulged, arent at all happy about it.

The segment, available for viewing at Brighteon.com, explains how smaller wireless towers are popping up all over the place, including in peoples front yards, as 5G technology requires many more cell towers than normal, packed closely together alongside one another, in order to work.

A bit smaller than your average lamp post, these 5G towers, the reporters explain, have to be spaced every 100 to 500 yards apart, meaning there will end up being thousands of them in some neighborhoods, and potentially millions of them throughout the entire city.

Soon, Charlotte will be one of just about a dozen cities to get 5G service from AT&T, but it comes at a price, the reporters state. Thousands of small cell towers might be headed to your neighborhood  and might even be in your front yard.

5G technology has barely been tested, and will likely harm many

Besides their unsightliness, these 5G towers are known to emit high amounts of radiation. And with so many of them on the verge of being densely placed throughout cities like Charlotte, many people are concerned about the public safety implications.

There really are reasons for serious concern that 5G could be a major public health catastrophe, an interviewee from the segment states. We should not be experimenting on our children and ourselves by making it widespread without adequate safety data.

Numerous studies show that 5G has barely even been tested compared to previous wireless iterations like 4G and 3G, both of which come with their own unaddressed health risks. But 5G will likely be off the charts in terms of the electromagnetic pollution it will create, which is why at least one study emphasizes that precaution in the roll out of this new technology is strongly indicated.

Hundreds of scientists tell FCC to stop 5G rollout

This would explain why 225 scientists from 42 countries sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last June urging the federal agency to consider the potential impact of a full-scale 5G rollout across the United States.

We already know from research out of England that 5G test towers are causing some people to suffer insomnia, nosebleeds, and even stillbirths.

We are seeing babies dying in the womb as these transmitters are situated outside peoples bedroom windows, says Mark Steele, a 58-year-old resident of Gateshead in Northern England where 5G towers are already being deployed. Its a humanitarian crisis.

President Trump signs executive order accelerating deployment of 5G

The FCC is thus far not taking any of this seriously, however. Just the opposite, in fact. The federal agency is reportedly planning to impose new rules that would drastically limit the ability of local governments to say no to 5G towers.

According to PublicIntegrity.org, the FCC is planning to vote in favor of rolling back the environmental review process for 5G infrastructure, and President Donald Trump seems to be in full support of this, having signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to use all viable tools to accelerate cell tower deployment on both rural and federal lands.

Those towers are going to go up, and youre going to have great, great broadband, President Trump is quoted as saying.

To keep up with the latest news on 5G deployment, be sure to check out EMF.news.

You can also catch more uncensored video content by visiting Brighteon.com.

Sources for this article include:

Brighteon.com

NaturalNews.com

PublicIntegrity.org(Natural News) The Twitter thought police recently blocked a widely-respected, pro-life news outlet from accessing its account over a four-year-old tweet that contained facts about how homosexual men are prominent carriers of sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs).

Dr. Gerard M. Nadal, a molecular biologist and microbiologist who also serves as president and CEO of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, had tweeted for LifeSiteNews back in 2014 about a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) annual report that contained official statistics on the spread of STDs within the LGBT community.

Rather than tow the leftist line that notable rises in STD spread are a result of homophobia, Dr. Nadal instead pointed to the facts. He tweeted that theres an upward trend in unprotected sex among homosexual men in particular, and that 60 percent of homosexual men who are infected with STDs dont even bother to reveal this important information to their sex partners.

To back these claims, Dr. Nadal linked to data not only from the CDC, but also from The New York Times and a study published in the journal AIDS Behavior. In other words, it wasnt opinion he was sharing at the time, but undeniable fact  along with the fact that homosexual men have a substantially higher risk of contracting anal cancer due to their sexual behavior, another fact that the thought police doesnt want to go mainstream.

Even so, Twitter and its hordes of non-playable characters (NPCs) were apparently triggered by the tweet. LifeSiteNews says it received a notification from Twitter on October 18, 2018, indicating that the tweet, which was completely neutral and entirely factual, violated the tech giants rules against hateful conduct.

Twitter further accused LifeSiteNews of promoting violence, and threaten[ing] and harass[ing] other people on the basis of  sexual orientation  or serious disease.

It seems as though Twitter wants more people to die from STDs, anal cancer and AIDS

This was pretty much the only explanation LifeSiteNews received from Twitter, which offered the news site two options to regain access to its account: either remove the offending tweet or initiate an appeal process.

Again, there was nothing in the tweet in question that was even remotely of an opinionated nature  and even if there was, this would still qualify as free speech, right? Wrong. The tech cabal, as weve seen in recent months, cares nothing about free speech or the First Amendment, and would rather put more peoples lives at risk by withholding true, factual information than dare to violate the unstated and always evolving rules of political correctness.

This total intolerance for even reporting government health department statistics that reveal the health dangers of homosexual activity betrays what Peter Thiel, himself a homosexual, previously called a totalitarian mindset in Silicon Valley, stated Steve Jalsevac, co-founder and president of LifeSiteNews.

Twitter is now trying to force news agencies to report only what is acceptable to their personal, biased views and shutting down balanced, factual reporting on the homosexual issue.

One day before LifeSiteNews was targeted by the Twitter thought police, Peter LaBarbera from Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH.org) had a similar experience. LaBarbera says he was banned from Twitter over a 2016 tweet that described homosexual acts as a sin that spreads disease.

If Twitter no longer allows its users to advocate for healthy behaviors on its platform, and to defend their sincere moral and religious beliefs  shared by billions worldwide  then it will devolve into a bland, politically correct echo-chamber, LaBarbera stated.

Jalsevac agrees, having himself stated that the whole situation of ongoing and blatant censorship by the social media mafia is dangerous because a free press is one of the basic and necessary foundations for a genuinely democratic society.

For more news about leftist censorship of truth, be sure to check out Censorship.news.

Sources for this article include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com(Natural News) Search engine giant Google claims that it doesnt skew search results in any particular political direction, and that its entire platform is completely neutral when it comes to pulling up information for users. But is this actually true?

Jim Stroud from The Jim Stroud Show said that Google is lying about being non-partisan during a recent episode of his show, available for viewing Brighteon.com.

While there are some good uses for Google, when it comes to politics, the company of do no evil is about as left-leaning as they come  which is why Stroud ultimately decided to ditch the Google platform entirely and switch to DuckDuckGo instead.

By relying on Google to be a non-partial arbiter of information, I place them in this authoritarian position to guide my views and opinions, Stroud states.

If you search for the word platform, and I search for the word platform, we may get different results because Google takes into account our various search histories, our social media connections, our locations, and so forth, because Google wants to give you the best results  and more often than not, those results tend to be personalized. With that being said, Google has been known to cook the books from time to time.

Be sure to watch this full segment of The Jim Stroud Show at Brighteon.com below:

Most Google search results support liberal candidates and left-leaning social positions

Stroud shows a clip of Jay Strubberg from Newsy explaining the obvious variances in search results on Google for political candidates, for instance, using an outside analysis as evidence of foul play.

When it comes to political candidates and issues, a new study claims Google gives more liberal-leaning search results, Strubberg explains. Analysis by CanIRank.com found Googles top search result pages were 40 percent more likely to have a left or far-left slant.

The study searched for 50 politically-themed key words or phrases, and some of the results are what you would expect. Minimum wage tended to yield more liberal results, while does gun control reduce crime? resulted in more conservative ones. Searchers for financial regulation and federal reserve found mostly non-partisan links.

Using the political opinions of four different people to further hone down Googles skewed algorithms, CanIRank.com found that 16 percent of political search terms pulled up no right-leaning results at all  which the site declared to be potentially problematic for democracy.

Another study by The University of Maryland found Google searches for Democratic presidential candidates led to more supportive websites than searches for Republican candidates, Strubberg adds.

Stroud searches for idiot images on four major search engines; only Google pulled up almost all pictures of President Trump

Stroud himself decided to conduct his own experiment using the search term idiot to see what various popular search engines pull up in their image sections. Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo all pulled up a variety of images, while Google was the only one to pull up, almost exclusively, pictures of President Trump, his sons, and other Trump-related imagery.

Stroud then initiated searches for hillary clinton is to see how each of these same search engines auto-filled in the rest. Yahoo completed the sentence with words like a witch or a criminal, as did DuckDuckGo. Bing pulled up mostly negative with a few positive sentence completions, while Google, as to be expected, pulled up only positive fill-ins like a democrat and even is president  even though Hillary Clinton never has been, and never will be, president of the United States.

This is why I switched the default search settings on my browser to DuckDuckGo, Stroud concludes.

I want to form my own opinion about controversial topics from a variety of sources, not just select sources designed to steer me in a certain direction. I want what I thought Google was giving me.

Be sure to watch his full segment at Brighteon.com

Sources for this article include:

Brighteon.com

NaturalNews.com(Natural News) Conventional treatments for cancer, such as chemotherapy and radiation, are known for targeting even healthy cells. The damage induced on healthy cells by non-selective targeting these cancer treatments lead to side effects like diarrhea, anemia, infertility, mood changes, and weight loss. To avoid these side effects, people are now turning to traditional medicine for potential cancer treatments. One study, which was published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine, revealed that the traditional Chinese formulation known as Qingjie Fuzheng has anticancer activity.

Liver cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death in both men and women. High mortality rates of liver cancer can be attributed to its poor prognosis since its difficult to treat it once it has already spread to other organs. Similar to other types of cancer, liver cancer is usually treated using chemotherapy or radiation. However, as previously mentioned, these types of therapy cause adverse side effects.

One alternative treatment for liver cancer is Qingjie Fuzheng. This traditional Chinese formulation is composed of four different herbs, namely: Hedyotis diffusa, malt, astragalus, and Scutellaria barbata. Aside from its anticancer activity, Qingjie Fuzheng also has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antibacterial activities. Although it is already used as an alternative cancer treatment, none of the previous studies conducted on it have determined the mechanism behind its anticancer activity.

A study conducted by researchers from Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Fujian Medical University was the first to identify the underlying mechanism behind Qingjie Fuzhengs anticancer activity. The researchers were able to determine this using cell culture and animal model experiments. For the cell culture, the researchers made use of human and mice hepatocellular carcinoma cells since hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type of liver cancer. Upon treatment of the cells with Qingjie Fuzheng, they were able to observe reduced cell viability, showing that Qingjie Fuzheng does have anticancer activity.

To further establish the anticancer activity of Qingjie Fuzheng, the researchers used a hepatocellular carcinoma mouse xenograft model. They subjected the mice to Qingjie Fuzheng treatment for a period of seven days before removing the tumor and analyzing it for cell density, colony formation, apoptosis, and protein expression. Tumor analysis revealed that Qingjie Fuzheng effectively reduced tumor weight without affecting body weight, signifying that the treatment is cytotoxic against cancer cells only. In addition to this, the number of cancer cells in the tumor was significantly reduced since many of them were induced to undergo apoptosis. The results also revealed that apoptosis of the cancer cells followed either the extrinsic or intrinsic pathways, which involve death receptors and the mitochondria, respectively. This was determined based on the expression of proteins involved in both pathways.

Overall, the results of this study prove that Qingjie Fuzheng can be used as an alternative cancer treatment since it is able to specifically target cancer cells and cause them to undergo death receptor or mitochondria-dependent apoptosis. With the discovery of an alternative cancer treatment, high mortality rates of liver cancer can be reduced. (Related: Liver cancer deaths are skyrocketing as food becomes increasingly TOXIC due to pesticides and herbicides.)

Risk factors for liver cancer

Since prognosis of liver cancer can be difficult, it is important for people who are at risk to be vigilant and to take better care of their health. Risk factors for liver cancer include the following:

Type 2 diabetes

Excessive alcohol consumption

Obesity

Smoking

Liver cirrhosis

Hepatitis

Exposure to aflatoxins

Learn more about how Qingjie Fuzheng can be used to treat cancer by visiting ChineseMedicine.news today.

Sources include:

Science.news

Journals.SagePub.com

Cancer.net

Cancer.org

MayoClinic.org

MedicalNewsToday.comNorth Korea warned Washington through its state media Tuesday that a declaration ending the Korean War shouldn't be seen as a bargaining chip in denuclearization talks  but suggested lifting sanctions might be.

The North's official news agency issued a commentary claiming Pyongyang has taken significant measures to end hostile relations between the two countries but said the U.S. is "trying to subdue" it through sanctions, a not-so-subtle call for Washington to lift sanctions if it wants further progress in their stalled nuclear negotiations.

The commentary said a declaration replacing a 65-year-old armistice to formally end the war "is not just a gift from a man to another," and added, "it can never be a bargaining chip for getting the DPRK denuclearized."

The DPRK is short for the North's official name  the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The commentary was directed at supporters of the U.S. policy to maintain maximum pressure and sanctions on North Korea until it has made clear and significant moves to denuclearize.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo  a vocal advocate of that policy  is expected to travel to Pyongyang soon to try to revive the negotiation process and set the stage for a second summit between President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong Un.

The commentary echoes a speech by North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, at the United Nations last week in which he claimed North Korea is ready to implement the agreements Trump and Kim made during their first summit, in Singapore in June, but also accused Washington of failing to demonstrate its willingness to ease tensions and build mutual trust.

"Without any trust in the U.S., there will be no confidence in our national security," he said, "and under such circumstances there is no way we will unilaterally disarm ourselves first."

The North's emphasis on lifting sanctions and building trust above all else puts a spotlight on the rift between its position and Washington's since the Singapore summit, when Trump and Kim issued a vague statement about a nuclear-free peninsula without describing when and how it would occur.

Negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have since been rocky, with neither side able to agree on a starting point and widespread skepticism in the United States over whether Pyongyang is serious about renouncing an arsenal it sees as the only way to guarantee its safety.

Hopes for progress in the talks got a boost last month, when South Korean President Moon Jae-in met with Kim in Pyongyang for their third summit.

The summit resulted in a joint statement in which the North expressed willingness for a "permanent" dismantling of its main nuclear facility in Nyongbyon  if the United States takes corresponding measures  and the dismantling of a missile engine test site and launch pad in northwestern North Korea.

What the North would see as corresponding measures wasn't specified. But Tuesday's commentary and the U.N. statement suggest sanctions are a primary concern.

The 1950-53 Korean War ended in what was intended to be a temporary ceasefire. Moon and Kim are pushing for the end-of-war declaration by December. The declaration would be less difficult to make than a formal peace treaty, and Moon says he and Kim have agreed such a "political declaration" wouldn't require the pullout of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.President Donald Trump is stopping in southern Illinois to support Republican Rep. Mike Bost's re-election bid.

Trump has scheduled a rally with Bost on Saturday at Southern Illinois Airport in Murphysboro. His campaign said he's expected to discuss his America First agenda and the need for Illinois voters to help protect and expand the Republican majority in Congress.

President Trump looks forward to celebrating the booming economy thats delivering more jobs and bigger paychecks with the hardworking men and women of Illinois," said Michael Glassner, chief operating officer to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., in a statement.



Bost is in a tight race against Democrat Brendan Kelly, the St. Clair County state's attorney.

The 12th Congressional District is one of four GOP-held seats that Democrats are targeting as they try to take control of the House.

Voters in the once reliably Democratic district supported Trump in 2016.Three people are dead and at least seven others have been wounded in shootings across the city of Chicago Sunday.

Two of the victims were killed in the 100 block of North Lockwood just before 2 a.m. Sunday morning, according to police. The victims were sitting in a parked car when shots were fired, striking both victims.

A 21-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene with a gunshot wound to her head. A 26-year-old man was shot multiple times and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Police have no further information on the slayings, and are still investigating the shooting.

At 3:41 p.m. Sunday afternoon, police say that three men were shot in the 400 block of North Springfield. One of the victims, a 37-year-old man, was shot in the head, and was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai a short time later.

The other two victims, a 34-year-old man and a 32-year-old man, were both taken to local hospitals, where they are being treated for non-life threatening injuries.

Here are the other shootings in the city Sunday:A suspect has been arrested in connection with a fatal shooting that left a 2-year-old boy dead earlier this month, marking Chicago's youngest homicide victim this year.

Alexander Varela, 27, of Chicago, was charged with one felony count of murder, one felony count of attempted murder, and one felony count of aggravated battery in the shooting of two people, including toddler Julien Gonzalez.

CPD

Julien was fatally shot while sitting with family outside his home in the city's Hermosa neighborhood on Oct. 6. The boy was with an 18-year-old man near the mouth of an alley in the 2200 block of North Kilbourn when the shots were fired, police and the Cook County medical examiners office said.

Police said Varela was not the gunman but was involved in a physical altercation and "directed a second offender to shoot into a crowd of people, fatally wounding the 2-year-old toddler and injuring the 18-year-old man."

The senseless murder of a toddler caught in gun crossfire, prompts an emotional outcry from the Hermosa community Monday evening. Neighborhood residents band with police to plead for information leading to an arrest. NBC 5s Dick Johnson reports.

Julien, who lived in the Clearing neighborhood, was struck in the neck and rushed to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:39 p.m., authorities said. The man was shot in the left leg and taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where his condition was stabilized.Four American tourists and a Costa Rican guide were killed in a weekend rafting accident in the Central American country, authorities said Sunday.

The men from Miami have been identified as Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo and Andres Denis. They were in Costa Rica for a bachelor party.

"What was meant to be a weekend to remember for 14 friends turned into a living nightmare," Chris Comas, who survived the incident, said in a statement.

Three rafts flipped on the Naranjo river Saturday around 3 p.m. and the five victims were carried away downstream, according to Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Organism. Other passengers managed to cling to the rafts and some were rescued by another guide in a kayak.

"Throughout the dangerous ride down the river, all of us struggled to stay above water, swallowing lots of it on the way down as our bodies ricocheted against the rocks in the water while struggling to survive," Comas said. "Most of us were ultimately able to grab hold of rocks or barriers in or around the water and await the rescue teams to get to us."

The local guide was Kevin Thompson Reid, described by his boss as one of his most-skilled guides.

All of the victims died from asphyxia as a result of drowning, Walter Espinoza, the director of the Organization of Judicial Investigations, confirmed to NBC 6.

The case is being investigated as negligent homicide, Espinoza said. The rafting company, Quepoa Expeditions, will also be under investigation.

In total, there were 14 tourists aboard the rafts and five guides, officials said. Authorities said the river was swollen by rains and the National Emergency Commission maintained an alert in the area due to the possibility of flooding.

The Americans arrived in Costa Rice Oct. 18 and had been renting a house in Playa Hermosa de Jaco, according to the Costa Rican government.

The Red Cross said via Facebook that the rafts overturned near Liverpool de Quepos.

Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado expressed his dismay about the accident on Twitter.

The U.S. Department of State confirmed the deaths.

"We are saddened by news of rafting accident in #CostaRica. We can confirm 4 U.S. citizens died as a result of the accident. We extend our deepest condolences to their families and loved ones, and extend our gratitude to Government of Costa Rica for their support in this tragedy," U.S. Department of State spokesman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter.

Friends have set up a GoFundMe to help pay for funeral costs.An argument escalated into a backyard shooting at a toddler's birthday party in South Texas, leaving four men dead and a fifth man wounded, authorities said Sunday.

The shooting happened at a child's first birthday party Saturday afternoon in Taft, 12 miles north of Corpus Christi, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. Sgt. Nathan Brandley said those involved were distant relatives. Authorities did not say what the men were arguing about, but said the shooting occurred in the backyard of a residence.

A 20-year-old man was in custody Sunday, Brandley said. The man's 37-year-old father was also a suspect, but he had not yet been arrested, Brandley said.

Brandley identified those killed as 62-year-old Juan Espinoza Sr., 20-year-old Juan Sandoval III, 22-year-old Jeremy Sandoval, and 25-year-old Nicky Sandoval. He said the three younger men were Juan Espinoza Sr.'s grandsons.

The wounded man, 43-year-old Juan Espinoza Jr., was airlifted to a Corpus Christi hospital. Brandley said he was expected to survive.In recent months, the Trump administration has repeatedly put off the release of its long-awaited Mideast peace plan. Now, the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents may put the plan into a deep freeze.

Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was meant to be the linchpin of the plan, providing key diplomatic cover to both Israelis and Palestinians. But with the Saudi prince's credibility facing serious questions following Khashoggi's death, President Donald Trump may soon have to rethink his Mideast strategy.

"It definitely complicates their plans to release their proposal, if indeed they have one," said Dan Shapiro, who served as President Barack Obama's ambassador to Israel.

Trump took office promising a new approach to peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians.

Criticizing decades of failure by his predecessors, he named a Mideast team headed by his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner. The team has deep ties to Israel and the West Bank settler movement.

The Trump administration notably refused to endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state, distancing itself from the two-state solution favored by the international community for more than two decades.

Instead, Kushner's team turned to the Saudis, hoping that the kingdom's deep pockets and prestige in the Arab world could somehow help bring the Israelis and Palestinians together.

Kushner struck up a special relationship with the crown prince, portraying him as a swashbuckling force, a leader who could help modernize a troubled region. Last year, Kushner paid a secret visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss his strategy for Israel and the Palestinians.

But long before the current crisis over Khashoggi's death, the peace plan ran into in trouble.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was invited to Saudi Arabia twice last year to talk to Prince Mohammed about the emerging American proposal.

Palestinian officials say that in briefings with the Saudis, Abbas raised objections after concluding the plan would fall far short of his goal of establishing an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Aides say Abbas believes the Americans want to keep him quiet by attracting large sums of money from Gulf Arab investors to develop the Palestinian economy. With the Palestinian front quiet, the United States could then proceed with the broader aim of creating an Israeli-Saudi alliance to serve as a regional counterweight to Iran.

In the meantime, his relations with the Americans have deteriorated. Abbas severed ties with the White House after the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December and then moved its embassy to the holy city. Relations worsened as the U.S. cut hundreds of millions of dollars of direct and indirect aid to the Palestinians.

Amid this backdrop, Abbas has already said he will not accept the White House initiative, arguing that Trump is unfairly biased in favor of Israel.

At the same time, Prince Mohammed's credibility has taken a beating with a series of questionable decisions in recent months. He has pushed for an unsuccessful blockade of Qatar, led a bloody and unpopular war in neighboring Yemen and abruptly cut off ties with Canada after its foreign minister criticized Saudi Arabia.

Although the prince has not been directly implicated in the death of Khashoggi at a Saudi Consulate in Turkey, the slaying has raised further questions about his suitability to lead.

A U.S. official familiar with the peace effort said the team remains committed to its plan and does not expect the crisis surrounding the Khashoggi killing to affect it.

The official added, however, that the team has not yet discussed the matter since the Saudis confirmed Khashoggi's death over the weekend, and plans a discussion in the coming days. He said it remains unclear when the proposal will be made public. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.

Israel and the Palestinians, wary of antagonizing the Saudis, also have said little about Khashoggi's killing. Israel has not commented, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week boasted in speeches about improved behind-the-scenes ties with moderate Arab countries, an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia. Abbas, meanwhile, expressed his "absolute confidence" in the Saudis last week.

Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador, said that even if Trump agrees to work with the Saudis, the weakened Prince Mohammed is not in a position to "break taboos" and push the Palestinians into making concessions that are unpopular in the Arab world.

And on the international stage, he said other actors, including the U.S. Congress and the Europeans, will have deep misgivings about engaging with the crown prince, who is known by his initials MBS.

"That Saudi partner needs to be predictable, needs to be reliable, needs to be responsible. What this incident tells us is that that's not the Saudi partner we have right now," he said. "None of them are likely to sit with MBS anytime soon to strategize on regional matters and he will be seen as a pariah."

Mkhaimer Abusada, a Palestinian analyst, said he thinks the Khashoggi killing will have a "huge effect" on the crown prince's own behavior as well.

"I think from now on, he is going to count his steps carefully and stop being that impulsive," he said. "The Palestinians will reject the U.S. peace plan when it's officially on the table and MBS will not be in any good position to wield any pressure on the Palestinians to accept it."Hartford Police have arrested four men after they were found with an assault weapon inside of a vehicle in Hartford on Saturday.

Officers received a call from a concerned citizen about multiple men with guns inside of a vehicle in front of 1786 Broad Street.

An investigation led to the apprehension of four male suspects in a vehicle.

Police recovered two Glock nine millimeter pistols. Officers said one of the guns was stolen out of Bristol and had been converted into a fully automatic pistol. It contained a 50-round capacity ammo drum with 27 live nine millimeter rounds.

All four men were arrested and charged. Police said two of the men are convicted felons.

Officers said 22-year-old Nelson Caqvias and 25-year-old Luis Morales-Reyes are facing charges including pistol without a permit, theft of a firearm, possession of an assault weapon and high capacity magazines.

Police said 35-year-old David Fernandez and 21-year-old Roberto Delgado are facing charges including criminal possession of a firearm, theft of a firearm, possession of an assault weapon and high capacity magazines.The cause of a Hartford house fire is under investigation on Monday morning.

Fire officials said they received a call about a fire on Hartland Street around 8:30 a.m.

According to firefighters, there was a fire in the basement of the home. It caused smoke damage in the basement and inside the home.

In total, seven people live in the home. The four people who were home at the time of the fire made it out safely, firefighters said.

It is unclear if the residents will be allowed back in the home.

Investigators are working to determine the cause of the fire.The Small Business Administration has opened a second Disaster Loan Outreach Center in Hamden for the week of October 22 to assist people impacted by the May 15 tornadoes and severe storms.

According to the SBA, businesses and non-profits can borrow up to $2 million and loans between $40,000 and $200,000 are available for renters and homeowners to cover damage that was not covered by insurance.

Any businesses that might have some economic injury as a result of the storms or any kind of physical or structural damage, explained Victoria Munoz, who is with SBA. The same thing for homeowners that might have suffered any personal property losses.

SBA officials said they will assist people with their applications. The process takes about 20 minutes.

The Hamden location is at the Miller Memorial Center on Dixwell Avenue. It will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the week and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. It closes permanently, Monday, October 29.Former Dallas County Schools Board President Larry Duncan pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion Monday in connection with the corruption case that brought down the agency last fall, NBC 5 Investigates has learned.

With his wife and two family members sitting in the front aisle, Duncan, who led the DCS board for more than a decade, stood before U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn Monday morning and said, "guilty your honor."

Lynn set sentencing for March 8. With the plea deal, Duncan could spend a year behind bars.

Former Dallas County Schools Board President Larry Duncan has pleaded guilty to tax evasion, NBC 5 Investigates has learned.

Erin Nealy Cox, United States Attorney for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas; SAC Eric Jackson, Dallas FBI and IRS SAC Tamra Cantu outline the guilty plea received Monday from former Dallas County Schools board president Larry Duncan.

Duncan resigned from DCS on May 17, 2017 amid ongoing investigations into a multi-million budget gap, the agency's controversial stop-arm camera program and a sale-leaseback land deal that will cost taxpayers millions.

DCS once managed school bus service for 12 North Texas communities -- all of whom were left to find new bus providers or begin their own service after Dallas County residents, after seeing more than 100 reports filed by NBC 5 Investigates, voted to shut down the 172-year-old agency in November 2017.

In July, Dallas County Schools will be shut down forever. In November 2017 voters acted swiftly to close the 172-year-old agency after more than 100 reports from NBC 5 Investigates revealed corruption and staggering financial mismanagement that cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Watch the entire NBC 5 Investigates' special report, "Big Buses, Bigger Problems: The $25 Million DCS Land Deal."

In papers filed Monday, federal prosecutors say Duncan used more than $184,000 of the $245,000 in campaign contributions he received to pay for things that were not related to his re-election bid. That included making car payments for his wife and withdrawing cash from his campaign account to pay for personal expenses.

NBC 5 Investigates began questioning those campaign contributions last year and we discovered Duncan received nearly a quarter of a million dollars in contributions from people connected to one company - Force Multiplier Solutions - the school bus camera company that had millions of dollars of DCS contracts.

Duncan insisted all of his campaign donations were legal.

NBC 5 News

Prosecutors said Duncan did not report that money as income on his taxes filed between 2012 and 2016 -- resulting in a loss to the IRS of nearly $40,000 Duncan has agreed to now pay plus interest.

In 2016 alone, prosecutors said Duncan received more than $112,000 from Leonard that he used for his own personal benefit and that he "knowingly and willfully filed a false and fradulent tax return for tax year 2016 by omitting the $112,179.84 in income he received directly or indirectly from Leonard during 2016.

The CEO of FMS, Robert Leonard, has already pleaded guilty to bribing other public officials to win those contracts -- including millions in bribes to former DCS Superintendent Rick Sorrells and hundreds of thousands in bribes to former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway.

Our cameras spotted Duncan at the federal courthouse this morning where he is expected to appear in front of a judge -- he has agreed to a plea that could put him in prison for up to one year.

NBC 5's Jack Douglas Jr and Frank Heinz contributed to this report.

Larry Duncan Plea Documents

What to Know Ruiz Food Products is recalling 2,490,593 pounds of ready-to-eat taquitos

The onions used in the food were possibly contaminated with salmonella and listeria

The government encourages people not to eat any taquitos already purchased and to throw them away

More than 2.4 million pounds of ready-to-eat taquitos have been recalled due to possible contamination with salmonella and listeria, the Food Safety and Inspection Service announced.

The recall includes meat and poultry taquitos produced between July 1 and Oct. 10, 2018, by Ruiz Food Products, according to a Friday press release from the FSIS. The affected products are 4.5-pound cases of Go-Go Taquitos in Beef Taco & Cheese Taquitos," Buffalo Style Cooked Glazed Chicken Taquitos" and Chipotle Chicken Wrapped in A Battered Flour Tortilla." The items were shipped nationwide.

There have been no confirmed reports of illness from customers eating the food. But the FSIS said people should not eat taquitos already purchased and to throw them away. The agency encouraged people to contact their healthcare providers if they are concerned.

Ruiz Food was notified on Oct. 16, 2018, that the diced onions used in the taquitos were being recalled by their supplier because of possible contamination.

Salmonella can cause diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. Diagnosing the illness requires a blood or stool sample, as other illnesses cause similar symptoms.

Listeria can cause diarrhea, fever and other similar foodborne illness symptoms.The capital murder trial began Monday for the man accused of killing a Dallas pediatric dentist three years ago.

Authorities allege that in September 2015, 33-year-old Kristopher Love was hired as the triggerman in a murder-for-hire plot against pediatric dentist Kendra Hatcher.

Detectives say Brenda Delgado became obsessed with her ex-boyfriend's new relationship.

Dallas County Sheriff's Department

Hatcher was found shot in the head in the parking garage of her Uptown apartment.

Love could face the death penalty if he is found guilty. Delgado was captured in Mexico but will not face capital punishment as part of an extradition agreement.

Much of the trial concentrated on Delgado, rather than Love, as she is a central figure in the case.

She will face her own trial at a later date.

Lead prosecutor Kevin Brooks told the jury in his opening statement 'after [Paniagua] broke it off with Brenda [Delgado], she could not let go. You'll see evidence that Brenda started following him."

Paniagua testified that he ended the on-and-off again two-and-a-half-year relationship with Delgado in February of 2015 but remained "platonic friends" with her and would sometimes run into her.

"I would go running at the Katy Trail and sometimes when I was running she would be running the opposite direction," said Paniagua.

Prosecutors contend Delgado began to follow Paniagua and any woman he dated  first one woman, and then Hatcher.

"And Brenda is able to tell that this thing is moving fast, and Brenda is extremely upset," said Brooks. "And Brenda very quickly comes to the decision that she wants Kendra Hatcher killed."

Paniagua was asked if he ever told Delgado about Hatcher, he responded he only told Delgado he was in a relationship and it was going well.

Two people, including a family member of Delgado, took the stand for the state on Monday saying Delgado approached them offering money and a new car if they would attack Hatcher, and possibly Paniaugua as well.

"She said she wanted me to hit [Hatcher] with a bat," said Moses Martinez. "And that's when I told her I didn't want to do that, hurt somebody innocent."

Jennifer Escobar also took the stand and told a similar story.

"To follow around Hatcher and basically eliminate her. [Delgado] had so many ways," Escobar said.

Love is accused of accepting the murder-for-hire plot in exchange for money and drugs.

He is accused of gunning down Hatcher as she returned home and then leaving with an accomplice in a getaway vehicle.

Dallas County has not sent anyone to death row since 2013.

The trial will continue Tuesday morning.

The capital murder trial begins Monday for the man suspected in the killing of a Dallas pediatric dentist three years ago.Early voting has begun across Texas for approximately 15.8 million people who are registered to vote in the midterm elections.

The number of registered voters is a 4 percent increase from those registered to cast a ballot in the March primaries. Texas has added 1.6-plus million registered voters since 2014's midterm elections, with young voters helping to drive that increase.

Voting began Monday in Texas and the early voting period extends to Nov. 2. Election Day is Nov. 6.

The statewide race receiving the most attention is the challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke is mounting for the seat held by Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.The Topeka headquarters of Payless Shoesource will be auctioned online this week, after more jobs were eliminated by the company.

The company on Friday eliminated 35 merchandising positions in Topeka as part of what it calls a new merchandising structure. The jobs will either transfer to Dallas or not be filled.

The online auction of the nearly 307,000-square-foot headquarters will be held Monday through Wednesday, with a starting bid of $1.25 million.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports Payless officials haven't said exactly how many jobs have been eliminated in Topeka or if any divisions will be left here. At least 350 employees have been laid off, but more positions were moved to Dallas.

Payless has been restructuring after emerging from bankruptcy. It is relocating most of its corporate headquarters to Dallas.A 12-pound chunk of the moon that fell to the Earth as a lunar meteorite has been sold at auction for more than $600,000.

Boston-based RR Auction announced Friday the $612,500 winning bid for the meteorite, composed of six fragments that fit together like a puzzle, came from a representative working with the Tam Chuc Pagoda complex in Ha Nam Province, Vietnam.

RR predicted it would get $500,000 at auction.

The meteorite was found last year in a remote area of Mauritania in northwest Africa.

It is considered one of the most significant lunar meteorites ever found because of its large size and because it has "partial fusion crust" caused by the tremendous heat that sears the rock as it falls to Earth.A potential catastrophic Hurricane Willa swept toward Mexico's Pacific coast with winds of 145 mph (230 kph) Monday night, threatening a stretch of high-rise resort hotels, surfing beaches and fishing villages.

Farther south, Mexican officials reported 12 deaths related to heavy rains from Tropical Storm Vicente.

After briefly reaching Category 5 strength, Willa's maximum sustained winds weakened some. But it remained "extremely dangerous" and was forecast to bring "life-threatening storm surge, wind and rainfall" to parts of west-central and southwestern Mexico ahead of an expected Tuesday landfall, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Hotel workers started taping up windows, and officials began evacuating people and shuttered schools in a low-lying landscape where towns sit amid farmland tucked between the sea and lagoons. A decree of "extraordinary emergency" was issued for 19 municipalities in Nayarit and Sinaloa states, the federal Interior Department announced.

Officials said 7,000 to 8,000 people were being evacuated from low-lying areas, mostly in Sinaloa state.

The hurricane was expected to pass over or near the Islas Marias  a set of islands about 60 miles (96 kilometers) offshore that include a nature preserve and a federal prison  early Tuesday.

Forecasters said Willa would then blow ashore in the afternoon or evening somewhere along a 140-mile (220-kilometer) stretch extending from the resort town of Mazatlan to San Blas.

It was projected to weaken somewhat before hitting land but was still expected to be extremely dangerous.

Yamile Bustamante, assistant general manager at the Crown Plaza de Mazatlan, said hotel executives were not ruling out the possibility of evacuating guests but were awaiting instructions from authorities.

The governments of Sinaloa and Nayarit ordered coastal region schools to close and began preparing emergency shelters.

Enrique Moreno, mayor of Escuinapa, a municipality of about 60,000 people on Willa's track, said officials were trying to evacuate everybody in the seaside village of Teacapan. He estimated 3,000 were affected but he expected some would try to stay.

"The people don't want to evacuate, but it's for their security," he said.

About 60 miles (100 kilometers) up the coast in Mazatlan, with a metropolitan-area population of about 500,000, Mayor Jose Joel Boucieguez said officials prepared shelters and were closely monitoring low-lying areas. Mazatlan is a popular vacation spot and home to a large number of American and Canadian expatriates.

Late Monday, Willa was centered about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of the Islas Marias and 195 miles (310 kilometers) south-southwest of Mazatlan. It was moving north at 9 mph (15 kph).

Hurricane-force winds extended 35 miles (55 kilometers) from the storm's center, and tropical storm-force winds were up to 125 miles (205 kilometers) out.

The U.S. hurricane center warned that Willa could bring 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 centimeters) of rain  with up to 18 inches (45 centimeters) in some places  to parts of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa states, with flash flooding and landslides possible in mountainous areas.

Farther south, Tropical Storm Vicente weakened and was expected to dissipate soon, but it still dropped heavy rainfall that caused dangerous flooding in southern and southwestern Mexico.

Officials in Oaxaca state said seven adults and five children had lost their lives in drownings or mudslides.A Latina woman was with family visiting from Guatemala when she says they were verbally harassed by a white woman for conversing in Spanish at a Virginia restaurant.

The family was confronted inside Andys restaurant in Lovettsville.

"She asked for passports; she said that she knew everybody in Loudoun County to get us out of here, and she started saying that we were supposed to speak English, but I'm like 'were not talking to you,'" said the victim, who asked to remain anonymous. "They're here visiting and they dont know English, so how do you want them to speak English when theyre here just visiting?"

Part of the incident was caught on video.

You dont freeload in this f------ country, the woman is heard saying on the video. You get the f--- out, back to your f------ country.

Police were called but no charges were filed.

The owner of the restaurant said the woman who harassed the family is not welcome back.

The Spanish-speaking victim said her 7-year-old daughter was present during the profanity-laced attack. She told Telemundo 44 that she is sharing her story because of her daughter and hopes that other victims of bias-motivated harassment also speak out.

"It's not fair that they do this to us, and even less acceptable if there are children present. It's not fair for any child to have to go through that. You just don't do that," the woman added.Just hours after writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, a man strolled out of the diplomatic post apparently wearing the columnist's clothes as part of a macabre deception to sow confusion over his fate, according to surveillance video leaked Monday.

The new video broadcast by CNN, as well as a pro-government Turkish newspaper's report that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office from the consulate around the same time, put ever-increasing pressure on the kingdom. Meanwhile, Turkish crime-scene investigators swarmed a garage Monday night in Istanbul where a Saudi consular vehicle had been parked.

All this came on the eve of Prince Mohammed's high-profile investment summit in Riyadh, which has seen a raft of the world's top business leaders decline to attend over the slaying of the writer for The Washington Post. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said he would not attend the conference but would discuss counter-terrorism efforts with Saudi officials, met with the crown prince on Monday night.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also has promised that details of Khashoggi's killing "will be revealed in all its nakedness" in an address he'll make before parliament around the same time Tuesday.

"We are faced with a situation in which it was a brutally planned (killing) and efforts were made to cover it up," said Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party. "God willing, the results will be brought into the open, those responsible will be punished and no one will dare think of carrying out such a thing again."

The kingdom's announcement Saturday that Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" was met with international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he was "not satisfied with what I've heard," regarding Khashoggi's death. He added: "We will know very soon."

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would enter the consulate to get a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer, according to Turkish media reports.

Surveillance video on CNN showed the man in Khashoggi's dress shirt, suit jacket and pants, although he wore a different pair of shoes. It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a "body double" and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The man walks out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then takes a taxi to Istanbul's famed Blue Mosque, where he goes to a public bathroom, changes back out of the clothes and leaves. He later eats dinner with his accomplice and goes back to a hotel, where footage shows him smiling and laughing.

The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate was seen leaving the building in Khashoggi's clothes.

In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said he had left the consulate by its back door. Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote Oct. 8 that Khashoggi had left, and that claims the kingdom "have detained him or killed him are absolutely false, and baseless."

The fact that the Saudi team would allegedly have a man walking around in Khashoggi's clothes would suggest a premeditated plot to kill the writer.

A separate report Monday by newspaper Yeni Safak said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage seen on trips to the U.S., France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed's office. It said another call went to the United States.

Yeni Safak cited no source for the information. However, pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Khashoggi's killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces. Yeni Safak reported last week that Saudi officials cut off Khashoggi's fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate as his fiancee waited outside.

Officials in Saudi Arabia have not answered repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press in recent days, including on Monday. Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutreb's presence in Istanbul or the presence of a forensics and autopsy expert at the consulate before Khashoggi arrived.

Last week, a leaked photo apparently taken from surveillance footage showed Mutreb at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggi's arrival. Mutreb's name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

By nightfall, Turkish police began searching an underground car parking garage in Istanbul's Sultangazi district. Surveillance footage on TRT showed what Turkish security officials described as suspicious actions, including an image of a man moving a bag from one vehicle to another.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Khashoggi's son, Salah, early Monday. Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggi's death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told the AP that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his father's criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion. The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

Five Turkish employees of the consulate also gave testimony to prosecutors Monday, Turkish media reported. Istanbul's chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony. Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.Monday is here, South Florida, and NBC 6 has the top stories you need to know for the day.

Weather wise, it'll be less humid with slightly cooler conditions Monday with highs in the low to mid 80s in South Florida.

No. 1: Four men from South Florida are among the victims of a rafting accident in Costa Rica. Officials there say the group was on a river about two hours south of the capital when the accident happened.

No. 2: Former congressman Ron DeSantis and Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum went head-to-head in a debate Sunday night. The nationally televised event featured everything from taxes, to healthcare, to crime, and hurricane recovery.

No. 3: Two weeks of early voting kicks off Monday in Florida. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in most of South Florida. Don't forget you'll need a photo ID to cast your ballot.

No. 4: Six people are waking up in a Jacksonville hospital following a violent shooting Sunday, while three remain in critical condition. The suspect remains on the loose this morning.

No. 5: More than 7,000 Central American migrants have crossed from Guatemala into Mexico on their way to the United States. The group says they are running away from violence and poverty in their home countries.

No. 6: After last week's nail-biting victory, your Miami Dolphins are waking up disappointed Monday after losing their match-up against the Detroit Lions. The Phins are now 4-3 ahead of a big divisional meeting against the Patriots this weekend.The Miami-Dade Police Department said the suspect involved in a cross-county chase who fled after shooting at an officer apparently shot himself.

The incident began in Florida City with a crash in which injuries occurred at SW 33th Street and U.S. 1.

The suspect fled from the scene but an MDPD officer witnessed the crash.

The suspect has been identified as Michael Sardinas, 29, who appears to be registered as a sex offender.

"As the officer attempted to conduct a traffic stop on the vehicle, the driver fired several shots at the officer and continued fleeing northbound on the Florida Turnpike," MDPD said in a statement. "The vehicle came to a final stop at approximately mile marker 127. As the officers approached the vehicle, they discovered the subject suffering from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound."

MDPD aviation units participated in the chase that crossed from Miami-Dade into Broward, Palm Beach and Martin County jurisdictions.

The condition of the officer who was shot at is not yet known. Police did not confirm the suspect died from his injuries. However, footage from the scene shows a yellow tarp placed atop what appears to be a body.What to Know A 70-year-old woman was found dead inside her Upper West Side home with a laceration to her neck, police said

Police found Susan Trott unconscious and unresponsive inside her home on West End Avenue Sunday morning

No one has been arrested in connection with Trotts death, but police are investigating the incident as a homicide

A 70-year-old woman was found dead inside her Upper West Side home with a cut to her neck, a grisly discovery police made after following a trail of blood from the living room to the bedroom over the weekend, authorities said.

Authorities tell News 4 police have identified a person of interest in the death of Susan Trott, who was found unconscious in her West End Avenue home near West 95th Street just before 5 a.m. Sunday. Cops showed up to investigate after Trott's business partner called 911, saying she hadn't been seen in days.

The person of interest is a woman who lives in the same building, and authorities are exploring the relationship, if any, between the two women, police officials said.

"We believe all the pieces of that puzzle are within that building," said NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea.

Trott, who had a laceration to her neck, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. It's not clear if that person of interest is in custody; police are expected to provide additional details later Monday.

Detectives say it is likely she had been dead for at least a day; there were no signs of struggle or forced entry and nothing was stolen, officials said.

Neighbors said Trott lived in the building for more than a decade. They described her as an animal lover who was well known in the neighborhood.

"I started crying when I heard about it because she left to feed the birds," said one neighbor, Sandra May Flowers.

Another neighbor, Helen Stein, described Trott as generous, a bit eccentric and a woman with strong opinions. It's not clear what kind of work Trott did.

Other neighbors said they were shocked by the killing in the doorman-staffed building.



"It's not possible to just walk [around], for an unknown person who is not known in the building to come here," said Susanna Molnar. "My gosh, this is shocking -- very very shocking. Shocking. In this building?"

"There is a doorman, so it had to have been someone inside," said Jack Demler.

"That made me very scared," he said. "I mean, just for her as well, you're thinking you can trust somebody to let them into your apartment."What to Know A man has been arrested in the sex attack of a young woman who was ambushed in her suburban New Jersey home, prosecutors said

Muhammed Sharif, 40, of Irvington, was charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and burglary

The attack put many residents in Maplewood on edge

A suspect was arrested in the home ambush and sex attack of a young woman that shook residents of a tight-knit New Jersey suburb, prosecutors said Sunday.

Muhammad Sharif, 40, of Irvington, was arrested Saturday and charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and burglary, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office said.

Police say the woman young apparently encountered the man around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday in Maplewood and he followed her home.



Then he sexually attacked her.



It's not clear how much time elapsed between the first encounter and the home invasion, nor was it clear if any words were exchanged in that encounter.

Sharif was being held at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark pending a court appearance. It wasn't immediately clear whether he had an attorney.

The investigation was ongoing.What to Know An immigrant arrested after delivering pizza to an Army base, and later ordered released, has been arrested again

A federal judge ordered Pablo Villavicencio's release last July after his case became a flashpoint in the national immigration debate

The judge said the release was necessary because his imminent removal from the United States was no longer reasonably foreseeable

The Ecuadorean immigrant who was held for deportation after he delivered pizza to a Brooklyn Army installation, before a judge ordered his immediate release last July, has been arrested after allegedly assaulting his wife and keeping her from calling police.

Pablo Villavicencio, whose arrest became a national cause and a flashpoint for the immigration debate, was taken into custody early Monday on a fourth-degree misdemeanor and was still in a Nassau County detention center as of mid-morning, sources said.

According to court documents, Villavicencio allegedly pushed his wife against a wall and slapped her body after an argument, and then purportedly took her phone so she could not call for help. (The criminal mischief charge relates to the alleged taking of the phone, interfering with her ability to call police.)

His lawyers did not immediately have a statement on his arrest. ICE officials said Villavicencio will not be taken into custody while he has pending immigration applications.

Villavicencio was arrested on June 1 while making a delivery to the garrison in Fort Hamilton. When he arrived at Fort Hamilton, guards requested identification, and he produced a city identification card. A background check showed he had been ordered to leave the United States in 2010 but stayed.

But he walked out of an immigration detention center in New Jersey last July and was greeted with hugs from his jubilant wife and two young daughters.

Hours earlier, U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty wrote of Villavicencio, "Although he stayed in the United States unlawfully and is currently subject to a final order of removal, he has otherwise been a model citizen."

The judge said Villavicencio could remain in the United States while he exhausted his right to try to gain legal status. Villavicencio applied to stay in the U.S. after he married a U.S. citizen, with whom he has two young girls, ages 2 and 4.

The judge cited those children and said they are U.S. citizens.

"He has no criminal history," the judge wrote. "He has paid his taxes. And he has worked diligently to provide for his family."

The judge ruled after putting a government lawyer on the spot over the effort by immigration authorities to enforce a 2010 deportation order. He questioned the need to detain and quickly deport the 35-year-old Villavicencio.

"Well, the powerful are doing what they want, and the poor are suffering what they must," the judge said after hearing Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Cordaro defend the government's actions.

"I mean, is there any concept of justice here or are we just doing this because we want to?" the judge asked. "Why do we want to enforce the order? It makes no difference in terms of the larger issues facing the country."

The case attracted widespread attention amid a crackdown by the administration of President Donald Trump on illegal immigration. Trump, a Republican, has said his policies are designed to keep the country safe.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said at the time that the federal government had "cruelly" kept Villavicencio from his wife, Sandra Chica, and two daughters "for no legitimate reason."What to Know The largest ship ever built for Great Britain's Royal Navy is visiting New York for a week

The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth sailed into New York Harbor on Friday carrying about 1,500 sailors

The ship is anchored in view of the Statue of Liberty and can be seen by Staten Island Ferry commuters

The largest ship ever built for Great Britain's Royal Navy is visiting New York for a week.

The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth sailed into New York Harbor on Friday carrying about 1,500 sailors.

Commanding officer Capt. Jerry Kyd called the visit "very symbolic of the intimate relationship the Royal Navy has with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps."

The ship is anchored in view of the Statue of Liberty and can be seen by Staten Island Ferry commuters.

The 932-foot warship carries up to 60 aircraft.

British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson welcomed the Queen Elizabeth to New York.

He called the ship "a symbol of our commitment to our #security and the security of our allies" on Twitter.What to Know A party turned to 'chaos' when the floor of a clubhouse near Clemson University collapsed and left 30 people injured, police said

The NYPD has suspended the use of a certain kind of body camera 'effective immediately' after one of them exploded

The helicopter that crashed into the East River, killing its five passengers, is still offering the same kind of flights at a discount

Monday, Oct. 22, 2018

Happy Monday! Bundle up this morning, but you may not need it come the afternoon. It will be less chilly with highs reaching the mid-50s. As always, get the latest forecast at nbcnewyork.com/weather.

1. 'Chaos': 30 Injured After Floor Collapses During Party in SC

A party turned to "chaos" when the floor of a clubhouse near Clemson University collapsed and left 30 people injured, police said.

Authorities were called to The Woodlands Apartments clubhouse in South Carolina after the building's first story floor gave way during a private party with Clemson University students and others. Chief of Police Jimmy Dixon described the scene as "chaos."

Video posted to social media showed people dancing before the floor caved in and crashed to the next level of the structure, leaving a large hole in the middle of the room. Dozens of people fell through while many still standing looked on or recorded the incident with their phones. People could be heard shouting and screaming in the footage.

Read more here.

2. Thousands of Body Cameras Pulled After One Explodes: NYPD

The NYPD has suspended the use of a certain kind of body camera effective immediately after one of them exploded.

A police officer was wearing a Vievu model LE-5 body-worn camera on a midnight tour on Saturday night when he noticed that it was smoking and took it off, the NYPD said.

Not long after, the camera exploded, according to the NYPD. No one was injured by the explosion, the department said.

Read more here.

3. Schumer: Operator in Deadly Chopper Crash Offering Discounts

The company that operated the doors-off helicopter that crashed into the East River in March, killing its five passengers, is still offering the same kind of flights at a discount despite the fact that its under federal investigation, Sen. Chuck Schumer said.

The five passengers drowned when they were unable to free themselves from their harnesses after a chopper operated by FlyNYON crashed into the water and rolled over on March 11.

FlyNYON is now offering a 40 percent October sale discount on the exact same doors-off flights, Schumer said.

Read more here.

For the latest entertainment news and things to do, tune in to New York Live, Monday through Friday at 11:30 a.m. on NBC 4 New York.What to Know Trump says his intention to scrap a landmark arms control agreement Russia follows years of violations in developing prohibited weapons

More than 2.4 million pounds of ready-to-eat taquitos have been recalled due to possible contamination with salmonella and listeria

In a candid Instagram post, actress Selma Blair revealed she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after experiencing symptoms for years

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US Will Pull Out of Intermediate-Range Nuke Pact, Trump Says

President Trump says his intention to scrap a landmark arms control agreement Russia follows years of violations by Moscow in developing prohibited weapons, and "we're not going to be the only one to adhere to it." The Kremlin said the pullout "would be a very dangerous step." Britain said it stood "absolutely resolute" with the U.S., while Germany called Trump's move "regrettable." Heiko Maas said in a statement that the three-decades-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is "an important pillar of our European security architecture" and Trump's announcement "raises difficult questions for us and Europe." The 1987 pact prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 miles to 3,400 miles.

Saudi King, Crown Prince Call Slain Writer Khashoggi's Son

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the son of Jamal Khashoggi, the kingdom announced, to express condolences for the death of the journalist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by officials that allegedly included a member of the royal's entourage. King Salman similarly made a condolence call as international pressure on the kingdom continues to rise, even after it acknowledged the Washington Post journalist was killed Oct. 2 at the consulate under still-disputed circumstances. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said details of Khashoggi's killing "will be revealed in all its nakedness" in a speech in parliament, the same day a glitzy investment forum in Riyadh spearheaded by Prince Mohammed is to take place.

Growing Caravan of Migrants Pushes Deeper Into Mexico

Thousands of Honduran migrants hoping to reach the U.S. stretched out on rain-soaked sidewalks, benches and public plazas in the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, worn down by another day's march under a blazing sun. Keeping together for strength and safety in numbers, some huddled under a metal roof in the city's main plaza. Others lay exhausted in the open air, with only thin sheets of plastic to protect them from ground soggy from an intense evening shower. Some didn't even have a bit of plastic yet. "We are going to sleep here in the street, because we have nothing else," said Jose Mejia, 42, a father of four from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. "We have to sleep on the sidewalk, and tomorrow wake up and keep walking. We'll get a piece of plastic to cover ourselves if it rains again." The group's advance has drawn strong criticism from President Trump, who lashed out again at the Democratic Party over what he apparently sees as a winning issue for Republicans a little over two weeks ahead of midterm elections.

2.4M Pounds of Taquitos Recalled Over Salmonella Concern

More than 2.4 million pounds of ready-to-eat taquitos have been recalled due to possible contamination with salmonella and listeria, the Food Safety and Inspection Service announced. The recall includes meat and poultry taquitos produced between July 1 and Oct. 10, 2018, by Ruiz Food Products, according to a Friday press release from the FSIS. The affected products are 4.5-pound cases of Go-Go Taquitos in Beef Taco & Cheese Taquitos," Buffalo Style Cooked Glazed Chicken Taquitos" and Chipotle Chicken Wrapped in A Battered Flour Tortilla." The items were shipped nationwide. There have been no confirmed reports of illness from customers eating the food. But the FSIS said people should not eat taquitos already purchased and to throw them away. The agency encouraged people to contact their healthcare providers if they are concerned.

Actress Selma Blair Reveals She Has Multiple Sclerosis

In a candid Instagram post, actress Selma Blair revealed she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after experiencing symptoms for years. The "Cruel Intentions" and "Legally Blonde" star said she received her diagnosis on Aug. 16 after a friend encouraged her to see a doctor. "I have had symptoms for years but was never taken seriously until I fell down in front of him trying to sort out what I thought was a pinched nerve," Blair wrote. "I have probably had this incurable disease for 15 years at least. And I am relieved to at least know. And share." Multiple sclerosis is a disease that affects the central nervous system and interferes with the communication between the brain, spinal cord and the rest of the body, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Symptoms vary but can include difficulty walking, numbness, muscle spasms, weakness, vision impairment and fatigue.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus Gets Career Achievement Award for Comedy

After a 35-year acting career and with two iconic television characters to her name  Elaine Benes of "Seinfeld" and foul-mouthed Vice-President Selina Meyer  Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been honored with the Mark Twain Prize for lifetime achievement in comedy. The 57-year-old actress received a stream of testimonials from celebrities including Jerry Seinfeld, Stephen Colbert and 2010 Mark Twain recipient Tina Fey--touching on the multiple aspects of her career. Fey paid tribute to Louis-Dreyfus at the award ceremony by tracking the similarities between their lives. Louis-Dreyfus is the 21st Mark Twain recipient, joining a list that includes Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Carol Burnett. Bill Cosby, the winner in 2009, had his award rescinded earlier this year after he was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.NBC News has debunked a handful of allegations that President Donald Trump and others have spread about the caravan of thousands of Honduran migrants that is headed north in the hopes of crossing the U.S. border.

There is no evidence the caravan is being led by anyone other than Hondurans, despite Trump alleging that "a lot of money has been passing to people."

A former senior intelligence official who continues to be briefed on current intelligence told NBC News that there is also no evidence that any Middle Eastern terrorists are hiding in the caravan. That's in contrast to a tweet from the president implying the opposite. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, is able to gather biometric data as migrants pass between the borders of Central American countries.

Click here for more by NBC News on five myths about the caravan that are disputed by the facts.What to Know Sgt. Steven Floyd was killed during the riot, and three other staffers were taken hostage at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center.

16 inmates were charged with murder, kidnapping, assault and other crimes following the Feb., 2017 uprising. Two others face lesser counts.

The first trial begins Monday, a full year after the inmates were indicted on riot-related charges.

The star prosecution witness in the trial of four Delaware inmates charged with murder, kidnapping and other crimes after a fatal prison riot, played a key role in the disturbance and likely ordered the killing of a prison guard, a defense attorney claimed during opening statements Monday.

Attorney Jason Antoine also warned jurors that they will encounter a lot of inconsistencies during the trial, which could last up to four weeks, and that the prosecution's case is based on "unreliable inmate information."

Inmates at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, Delaware's maximum-security prison, rioted Feb. 1 last year, killing prison guard Steven Floyd and taking three other staffers hostage. Two other prison guards were released by inmates after being beaten and tormented. A female counselor was held hostage for almost 20 hours before tactical teams burst through a wall with a backhoe and rescued her.

"The attack was vicious, it was tragically effective, and it was planned," prosecutor Nichole Warner told jurors Monday before reciting a chronology of the riot, which she said broke out after Floyd called in prisoners from the recreation yard.

Floyd was immediately overcome by inmates, who stuffed him in a mop closet and repeatedly beat and stabbed him. Tactical responders found him handcuffed in his office, face down in about 2 inches (5 centimeters) of water. Warner said he died of multiple blunt trauma and stab wounds.

While investigators have been unable to pin down exactly when Floyd was killed, Warner indicated that fellow guard Joshua Wilkinson, who was taken hostage, heard Floyd being attacked several hours after the riot had begun.

"He heard Sergeant Floyd whimpering, he heard objects hitting a body," she said. "And when the attack was over, he heard Sergeant Floyd moaning for a period of time. And then, he didn't."

The defendants say prosecutors have no evidence that they planned or participated in the riot, only unreliable testimony from other inmates trying to gain leniency or prison privileges.

"The only thing they're willing to sacrifice is the innocence of others," said inmate Wayne Staats, one of two defendants representing themselves. Staats described inmates who have agreed to testify for the prosecution as "opportunists."

Jarreau Ayers, who also is representing himself, urged jurors to "question every single thing," and to not feel pressured by society to return a guilty verdict in the closely watched case.

"At the end of the day, don't allow the magnifying glass, or the light being so bright, to deter you all from doing what you think is right," he said.

Antoine, representing Roman Shankaras, rejected Warner's claim that his client was a "mastermind" behind the riot and "a shot caller."

Antoine said Shankaras was expecting only that inmates would stage a peaceful demonstration to protest conditions at the prison, which an independent review conducted after the riot found to be understaffed, overcrowded and poorly managed.

"He didn't sign up for murder. ... All my client wanted was to be treated with dignity, and the proper way a prisoner should be treated," Antoine said.

"It's going to be garbage evidence in and garbage evidence out," added Antoine, who suggested that the driving force behind the riot is Royal Downs, a former Baltimore gang leader and convicted killer who will be the state's star witness.

Antoine described Downs, who avoided possible convictions on kidnapping and conspiracy charges by pleading guilty to a single count of riot, as "one of the most dangerous and influential people" in Delaware's prison system.

"He has the power to green-light people. ... Green-light means take somebody out," Antoine said. "He was the one, probably the one, who ordered the final hit on Floyd, and now he's working for the state."

"The scary thing is that Royal Downs could be walking the streets when this case is over," Antoine added.

Attorney Benjamin Gifford, representing inmate Deric Forney, reminded jurors that the defendants are presumed innocent, and that the prosecution "has to tear down every reasonable doubt" before they can be convicted.

"One-hundred-twenty-six were in the building," he noted. "That's a lot of potential suspects."

The first witnesses called by the prosecution were former Delaware State Police Sgt. David Weaver, the chief investigating officer in the case, and Roger Cresto, a crime scene investigator for the agency's homicide unit.

Much of the afternoon was spent with Cresto being tediously led by prosecutor John Downs through some 200 photos showing the prison building where the riot occurred, weapons such as homemade knives and mop and broom handles, blood spatters, and, finally, Floyd's battered body on the debris-strewn floor of his office, covered with mattresses.

Testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday, with Wilkinson, one of the guards who were taken hostage, among the expected witnesses.Some 3,000 Central American migrants stormed into Mexico from Guatemala on Friday with hopes of eventually arriving to the United States. Busloads of Mexican federal police were gathering in Ciudad Hidalgo and a Mexican military helicopter flew along the river in anticipation.

Here is a look at the differences between the Guatemala-Mexico border and the U.S.-Mexico border between Tijuana and San Diego where members of a migrant caravan arrived last spring.

WHAT'S THE GUATEMALA-MEXICO BORDER LIKE?

The official border crossing is a bridge connecting the cities of Tecun Uman, Guatemala and Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. A gate onto the bridge on the Guatemalan side was closed Friday and blocked by police. But rafts also cross the swift-moving Suchiate River, moving cargo and people between the two countries day and night, typically without much government interference. Locals said they had been warned by Mexican authorities not to carry people. At times Mexico has stepped up its immigration patrols along the border, but it has had more success patrolling the roads leading away from the crossing where migrants catch rides or walk along the roadside.

WHAT'S THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER LIKE?

The U.S.-Mexico border between Tijuana and San Diego is the world's busiest land border crossing. It is also the most heavily fortified segment between both countries and now sees comparatively few illegal crossings. In some places in the area, the U.S. has installed three layers of walls and fencing. There is also bright lighting, roads patrolled by the Border Patrol and surveillance technology.What to Know A security guard shot a man who broke into the lobby of WTTG, the local Fox station in Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon.

Police said the man was trying to get into the building and broke the glass of two doors to the studios.

"Surreal to be reporting on this," Fox5 reporter Lindsay Watts posted on Twitter.

A security guard shot a man who broke through two doors and entered the lobby of WTTG, the local Fox station in Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon.

The suspect, 38-year-old George Odemns, said he wanted Fox 5 to make contact with President Donald Trump, sources told News4. D.C. Police Commander Melvin Gresham said at a press conference that he could not confirm that possible motive.

D.C. police said Odemns was trying to get into the building on Wisconsin Avenue NW at Harrison Street. He kicked out the glass of two doors and was able to enter the lobby.

A female security guard told Odemns to stop as he continued into the main building, according to police reports. When he didn't stop, she fired.

Sources also told News4 that the guard tried to subdue Odemns with pepper spray.

Odemns was not armed, Gresham said. No one else was injured.

Odemns was taken to George Washington University Hospital with a wound to the upper body. He remains in stable but critical condition.

Police say he was charged with second-degree burglary, which carries a sentence of two to 15 years if a conviction is made.

Odemns is homeless and has a history of contacting local news stations, including Fox 5, WUSA and News4, in long, rambling emails. In August, he was charged with assault on a police officer who was attempting to break up a verbal argument, according to police documents.

Fox 5 staffers wrote about the incident on Twitter as it unfolded.

"Everyone is okay," anchor Jim Lokay tweeted. "Sources tell us suspect tried to get into our secure building. Security guards opened fire."

"Man was conscious as he was transported into ambulance a few minutes ago. Surreal to be reporting on this," wrote reporter Lindsay Watts about 3:30 p.m.

Video inside of Fox5s lobby after a 38-year-old man was shot by a security guard after he tried to break in to the building. credit: Bill Glasser pic.twitter.com/Q7WOnRyb1R  Allison Papson (@AllisonPapson) October 22, 2018

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said she met with police chief Peter Newsham to discuss the situation.

Police said the call for the shooting was made about 3 p.m. They are checking surveillance cameras in the area for more information.

No further information was released immediately on the intruder's motive. Police did not identify the security guard or specify her whereabouts.

Glad to hear my friend. https://t.co/ZPnL6dygmQ  Rick Yarborough (@ricknbc) October 22, 2018Mexican authorities have taken over a search for three people missing in the Pacific off Baja California after a fishing boat caught fire over the weekend.

Fifteen people were pulled from the water by the crew of the San Diego-based charter fishing boat Time Machine, which happened to be near the burning Mexican vessel Saturday night, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

"We were close to the burning vessel, and then we began to hear people start screaming, the boat's owner Mike Koesterer said.

Koesterer called the Coast Guard, which sent a helicopter, cutter and a 45-foot boat. Mexican authorities sent two boats.

Koesterer's 19-year-old son jumped into the water and started bringing people to the family's boat.

"When we got there, he didnt hesitate  he went right in at night, he said.

Two survivors needed urgent medical attention and were flown by helicopter to San Diego, USGS officials said.

The 13 remaining survivors aboard the Time Machine were transferred to a Mexican vessel and taken to the port city of Ensenada south of Tijuana.Election Day is just two weeks away, but if you can't make it to the polls on Nov. 6, you have some other options.

Enter your address in our Voter Information Tool to find your polling place and learn about what's on your ballot:

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Here's how to vote early or by absentee ballot in D.C., Maryland and Virginia:

Washington, D.C.

Early voting began at 8:30 a.m. Monday at One Judiciary Square, the downtown office building that houses the D.C. Board of Elections. Thirteen other early-voting locations around the city will open Friday.

Early voting polling stations will be open from 8:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. Early voting ends Nov. 2.

Voters in D.C. can also request an absentee ballot, but the Board of Elections must receive the absentee ballot by Oct. 30.

Maryland

Early voting in Maryland will be held from Oct. 25 until Nov. 1. Anyone who is eligible to register to vote can vote, according to the Board of Elections.

A full list of polling places can be found on the board of elections' website here, and sample ballots can be found here.

Absentee ballots can be requested until Oct. 30 if you want to receive a ballot by mail. If you want to download your ballot, you have until Nov. 2.

Your absentee ballot must be postmarked on or before Election day, and received by 10 a.m. Nov. 16 to be counted.

Virginia

Virginia voters have just over a week left to request an absentee ballot to complete by mail.

The state doesn't have early voting but allows absentee voting if you can't make it to the polls on Election Day for a variety of reasons. The deadline to request an absentee ballot to be mailed to you is 5 p.m. Oct. 30. You can do so online or by contacting or visiting a registrar's office.

Absentee ballots must be returned to your local general registrar's office by 7 p.m. on Election Day, which is Nov. 6.

Voters can also complete an absentee ballot in person through Nov. 3.Ironworker Randy Bryce spent months gearing up to try to unseat House Speaker Paul Ryan in November's election, cleverly cultivating an "Iron Stache" persona for a candidacy that was as colorful as it was unlikely.

Then Ryan decided to retire, transforming a faint upset hope into a race Democrats are dreaming of as the possible capstone in a favorable midterm election.

"It would be fantastic," Mike Tate, former chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, said of the prospect of picking up Ryan's old seat. "It would be very, very sweet for Democrats in Wisconsin. The only thing sweeter would be beating (Gov. Scott) Walker."

To avert that fate, Wisconsin Republicans are turning to Bryan Steil, a Ryan protege and political newbie hoping to maintain his mentor's legacy, keep the district in Republican hands and deny Democrats the symbolic victory of taking the speaker's congressional seat.

"Bryan Steil fits the district well," said Republican strategist Mark Graul. "It's a similar background that Paul Ryan brought to it when he first ran many years ago."

Or as Tate puts it more bluntly: "He even looks like (Ryan). It's like, God, it's his mini-me."

Indeed, from a distance it's difficult to distinguish between Ryan and Steil (pronounced like "style"). Ryan is 48 and Steil is 37, but they're both slender and dark-haired.

Both grew up in Janesville, a blue-collar city of 50,000 about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Madison, and attend the same Catholic church. Both hail from prominent families. Ryan's father was a federal prosecutor; Steil's father served as a University of Wisconsin System regent and as the first chairman of the state lottery board.

Steil, who announced his campaign just days after Ryan announced his retirement, spent a year as an aide in Ryan's Washington office in 2003. He's now an attorney for Milton plastics manufacturer Charter NEX Films and has served as a regent himself since 2016.

Bryce has branded him a Ryan "clone"  something Steil rejects.

"I can tell you, everybody brings their own background to the table," Steil said.

Bryce, a Racine ironworker and union supporter, has been trying to break into politics since Walker signed his signature law stripping public workers of their union rights in 2011. He's run twice for the Legislature and once for Racine's school board, losing each time.

He announced his bid for Ryan's seat in June 2017, touting himself as "Iron Stache," a play on his mustache. He became a hit with Democrats nationwide, riding an introductory video where he weeps as his mother talks about having multiple sclerosis. He generated more than $6 million in contributions by the end of this past July, compared with $750,000 for Steil.

"It would be fantastic to replace Paul Ryan with a working person," Bryce said. "Paul Ryan isn't going to be on the ballot, but his ideas are. He hand-picked someone to follow in his footsteps."

Bryce has baggage. He has failed to pay child support and has been arrested nine times, first for drunken driving in 1998 and more recently for protesting Republican policies. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC aligned with Ryan, launched one ad calling Bryce a "deadbeat dad" and another featuring Bryce's police officer brother denouncing him as showing contempt for police.

Bryce acknowledges he's made mistakes.

"Like I try to teach my son, if you make a mistake, own up to it, learn what there is to learn and move on," he said.

The 1st District  a mix of rural hamlets and farms and urban centers, including Milwaukee's southern suburbs  is seen as leaning Republican. GOP lawmakers redrew the boundaries in 2011 to consolidate Ryan supporters, and Donald Trump carried the district by 10 points in 2016. A New York Times/Siena poll in mid-September showed Steil with a slight lead.

The Great Recession ravaged the district, most dramatically when General Motors in 2008 abandoned a Janesville assembly plant that had employed thousands. The area is finally recovering, bolstered by Foxconn Technology Group's decision to build a massive flat-screen plant in Racine County.

Asked for their top two priorities, Steil said growing high-wage jobs and lowering health care costs through price transparency and health savings accounts. Bryce responded that he wants to preserve the Affordable Care Act and other social programs such as Medicaid.

Jim Welker, an 82-year-old retired judge from Janesville who described himself as libertarian-leaning, said Bryce lacks any sort of political background while Steil studied at Ryan's knee.

"He knows something," Welker said of Steil while hanging out with his buddies at a Janesville coffee shop. "This other guy (Bryce) is kind of a know-nothing."

George Poppas, an 87-year-old former Janesville alderman, piped in from across the table that Bryce's arrests are embarrassing.

"He's a scoundrel," Poppas said.

That got Phil Blazkowski, a 75-year-old semi-retired community planning consultant who described himself as an independent, fired up.

"He's grown up since then," Blazkowski said. "You ought to forgive and forget. The House is supposed to represent common people and he's a common person."

"Very common," Welker chuckled. "We don't have very many loonies around here so maybe Bryce will get one or two votes."Senior White House advisor Jared Kushner on Monday sought to play down growing tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying that the Trump administration is still "more of a fact finding phase" than a response phase.

"With regards to the situation in Saudi Arabia, I would say that right now as an administration, we're more in the fact-finding phase, and we're obviously getting as many facts as we can from the different places, and then we'll determine which facts are credible," Kushner told commentator Van Jones at a Citizen by CNN forum in New York City.

"After that, the president and the secretary of State will make a determination as to what we deem to be credible and what actions we think we should take," said Kushner, who is also President Donald Trump's son-in-law.

Kushner's comments reflected one side of a two-sided debate that is taking place within the Trump administration, over how forcefully to respond to Khashoggi's reportedly brutal and extrajudicial death. The killing has sparked international outrage at Saudi Arabia and at its powerful crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman.

Kushner is the closest ally that the crown prince, often referred to as MBS, has within the Trump White House. Both Kushner and MBS are in their 30s, and extremely rich and powerful. Their relationship is based on both personal affinity and geopolitical opportunity.

Kushner also emphasized the importance of Saudi Arabia's role as a U.S. ally in the Middle East, and said that broader "strategic objectives" should play a role in determining America's response to Khashoggi's suspicious death inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

"We have to be able to work with our allies, and Saudi Arabia's been I think a very strong ally in terms of pushing back against Iran's aggression, which is funding a lot of terror in the region, whether it's the Houthis in Yemen or it's Hezbollah or Hamas, we have a lot of terrorism in the region," Kushner said. "We have to be able to pursue our strategic objectives, but we also have to deal with, obviously, what seems to be a terrible situation."

Asked by Jones what advice Kushner had for Mohammed bin Salman about how to handle the Khashoggi affair, Kushner advised the crown prince, "just to be transparent. Fully transparent. The world is watching. This is a very very serious accusation and a very serious situation. Just to make sure you're transparent and to take this very seriously."

But so far, transparency has been almost entirely absent from the Saudi response to Khashoggi's death on Oct. 2. For nearly two weeks, Saudi officials insisted that Khashoggi had walked out of the Saudi Consulate after a brief visit to apply for a marriage license.

Evidence quickly mounted to indicate that this was not what happened. Security footage and visa travel documents showed that more than a dozen Saudi intelligence officers arrived in Istanbul in the days before Khashoggi was killed, and left immediately afterwards. The Turkish government also said it had tapes showing Khashoggi was tortured, murdered and dismembered inside the consulate.

Turkish officials have yet to make any such tapes available to the public, but they offered a gruesome counter narrative to the Saudi version of events.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia completely changed its story and admitted for the first time that Khashoggi died inside the consulate. The kingdom claimed that a fight that broke out between the nearly 60-year-old writer and several Saudi intelligence operatives, and that Khashoggi was killed in the fight. Saudi officials also said that several people had been arrested in connection with the death, although they declined to identify them.

The Saudi explanation and response, however, failed to address several key questions about Khashoggi's death. It was received with almost universal skepticism by both American foreign policy experts and U.S. allies overseas.

It was unclear whether this unsubstantiated Saudi account of Khashoggi's death is one of the "facts" that Kushner was talking about when he said the White House was gathering facts to determine which "facts are credible." A White House spokesman did not return a request from CNBC to clarify Kushner's remarks.

Trump has so far resisted calls to punish Saudi Arabia for the killing. But it was clear this weekend that the president has grown frustrated with the shifting Saudi stories about what happened. "Obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies" coming from Saudi Arabia, Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday.

But Trump stopped short of accepting the theory that Khashoggi's killing was ordered or approved in advance by MBS, a theory that, if true, could poison the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia's de facto leader.

"Nobody has told me he's responsible. Nobody has told me he's not responsible. We haven't reached that point ... I would love if he wasn't responsible," Trump said of the crown prince.

This story first appeared on CNBC.com. More from CNBC:Four American Indian groups in Maine will receive more than $400,000 from the federal government to respond to the impact of the opioid epidemic in native communities.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is sending the money for substance abuse and community health projects, primarily focusing on opioids. The money is going to the Passamaquoddy Indian Township Tribal Government, Aroostook Micmac Council, Penobscot Indian Nation and Wabanaki Health and Wellness.

The largest grant is going to the Passamaquoddy government to fund a project called "Passamaquoddy Tribal Opioid Response Initiative." The grant is for more than $140,000.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and independent Sen. Angus King say Wabanaki Health will also receive about $140,000 to increase the capacity for medication-assisted treatment and develop other substance abuse prevention projects.Authorities say the 18 people in a limousine and two pedestrians who were killed when the vehicle crashed off a rural upstate New York road earlier this month all died from the impact of the accident.

New York State Police say Friday that results of autopsies conducted at Albany Medical Center confirmed all 20 victims in the Oct. 6 crash in Schoharie died from "multiple severe traumatic blunt force injuries."

State police say they're still awaiting the results of toxicology tests, including for the driver, 53-year-old Scott Lisinicchia. Officials have said he wasn't properly licensed to drive the vehicle, which state police said was "unserviceable" at the time of the crash.

The investigation into the crash is continuing.

The limo company's operator has been charged with criminally negligent homicide.The family of a Massachusetts teacher who was brutally murdered by a student is encouraging people to show altruism in her name on the fifth anniversary of her slaying.

Colleen Ritzer was 24 when she was slain by a student at Danvers High School, and now her family marks Oct. 22 with a drive for acts of kindness.

"As we mourn the loss of this caring, energetic and passionate young woman we also look to honor who she was -- a positive and kind individual," her family wrote on Twitter Monday morning. "Join us today as we spread #Kindness4Colleen in her honor."

Five years ago today the world lost Colleen Ritzer. As we mourn the loss of this caring, energetic and passionate young woman we also look to honor who she was - a positive and kind individual. Join us today as we spread #Kindness4Colleen in her honor. pic.twitter.com/mSLlFKSnBJ  Kindness for Colleen (@KindnessColleen) October 22, 2018

Philip Chism, who was 15 at the time of the slaying, was convicted of raping and murdering Ritzer in 2015 and sentenced to life in prison in 2016.The early voting period for the general election is about to get underway in Massachusetts.

Starting on Monday and through Nov. 2, voters who wish to do so may cast their ballots in advance of Election Day, which is on Nov. 6.

Each city and town has its own times and locations for early voting. Details are available through the Massachusetts Secretary of State's website or by contacting local city and town elections officials.

Voters also have the option of requesting an early ballot by mail.

Ballots that are cast early are put in envelopes to be counted on Election Day.

This will be the second state election in which early voting is available in Massachusetts. The first was the 2016 presidential election.Photo: The Canadian Press The Canada Post logo is seen on the outside the company's Pacific Processing Centre, in Richmond, B.C., on June 1, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The union representing 50,000 Canada Post employees says it will begin rotating strikes if a deal isn't reached by the deadline early Monday morning.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers says strikes will begin at 12:01 a.m. Monday in Victoria, Edmonton, Windsor and at 1:01 a.m. in Halifax and will last for 24 hours.

CUPW President Mike Palecek says Canada Post has refused to talk about issues that matter to the union, which include job security, an end to forced overtime, better health and safety measures and gender equality.

The union says mail will still be delivered in those cities, but will be delayed.

Canada Post says it has an offer on the table that includes wage increases, job secuirty, improved benefits and no concessions.

Spokesman Jon Hamilton says mail will be delivered in all other locations across the country in the event of a strike.

He says they remain committed to negotiating a deal.Fire crews in Rhode Island spent several hours battling a blaze that destroyed a Newport home.

Newport Fire Chief Brian Dugan says a total of seven people were inside the 2-family home at the time of the Sunday afternoon blaze. All of the people got out safely.

Dugan says the second and third floors of the house are a total loss between damage from fire, water and the roof collapsing. He also says the first floor has severe water damage. Crews remained on the scene Sunday night to monitor.

Dugan says it's believed the fire began on the second-floor deck and spread quickly. Investigators are working to determine the cause of the fire.

The displaced people are being assisted by the American Red Cross.Three people were injured following a collapse inside an old mill building in Rhode Island Monday morning.

The collapse happened around 9:30 a.m. inside an old mill in Pawtucket on Esten Avenue. One construction worker became trapped when the second floor of the building smashed into the first, sending all the debris into the basement.

Two male workers were able to get out on their own. The third, a female worker, was trapped. She was conscious as firefighters removed her from the rubble.

Everyone that was hurt was hospitalized.

The building is home to the old School House Candy company. It's being gutted inside to make way for new housing.A fire has forced a Rhode Island yacht club to close down temporarily for repairs.

The blaze at the Bristol Yacht Club was reported at about 2 p.m. Sunday.

Bristol Fire Chief Michael DeMello says it appears the fire was caused by someone throwing a cigarette butt or some other smoking material into the mulch. The fire then spread to the building, which suffered significant damage.

It took about three hours to extinguish the fire. No injuries were reported.

Club Commodore Ruth Souto said in a statement "we are a community and will work together to overcome this unfortunate circumstance."A 51-year-old man was killed after being hit by a Jeep on the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border Sunday evening, according to authorities.

Seabrook police say officers responded to Ocean Boulevard at the Salisbury, Massachusetts, border just after 8 p.m. for a report of a motor vehicle crash involving a Jeep and a pedestrian.

The victim, identified as 51-year-old Salisbury resident Andrew Dobson, was taken to Portsmouth Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased.

The name of the Jeep's driver has not been released.

The crash remains under investigation, and anyone with information is asked to call Seabrook police detectives at 603-474-5200.A man is dead and a woman is in critical condition after a shooting at a home in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

Authorities say police responded around 9 p.m. Sunday to a home on Lakeview Drive. Officers found Kris Dube and his girlfriend, Kathleen Moran, both 36, suffering from gunshot wounds.

Dube was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Attorney General Gordon MacDonald. Moran was taken to a hospital in critical condition.

MacDonald said other residents were home during the incident, but none were physically harmed.

Anyone with information is asked to call 603-223-4381.In the current landscape business continuity is about a lot more than natural disasters: Denial of service attacks, ransomware and even network outages can undermine business continuity, and while moving applications to the cloud might seem like a viable solution, cloud providers arent immune to outages.

These are just a few of the problems being tackled by the companies featured in this roundup of business-continuity startups. (See how we chose the top 10 companies listed in this roundup.)

Youll notice that blockchain, machine learning and networking play a big role in their work, and rightly so. Blockchain helps decentralize data; machine learning helps automate backups and recovery; and reliable networking is a must because you cant have continuity if you cant access your data.

The startups below offer everything from blockchain-based distributed storage to virtualized storage and data management to swarm-computing-based databases. Any one of them could be the upstart that completely reconfigures the storage and business continuity landscape, which is why well be watching them.

What they do: Provide a hybrid-cloud, open-source storage platform

Year founded: 2015

Funding: $7.5M in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz

Headquarters: Berkeley, Calif.

CEO: Haoyuan Li, a Computer Science his Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley who served as a software engineer for Conviva.

Problem they solve: As machine learning, data analytics, and AI make app-to-app communications business critical, business continuity takes on new meaning. Business continuity is now about more than just protecting data and making it available to knowledge workers. Now, business continuity means that data must be usable (unified) and instantly accessible to any application anywhere in the world, in any cloud, on any infrastructure.

Moreover, many analytics, such as with cybersecurity, must be executed in near real-time to have value, meaning any bottleneck exposes your data, applications, and business to risk.

How they solve it: Alluxios memory-centric virtual distributed storage system provides global access to all of the data in your enterprise  on-premises, in the cloud or hybrid. Applications have a single point of access to multiple independent storage systems regardless of physical location.

Server-side API translation converts from a client-side interface to any storage interface. Alluxio manages communication between applications and file or object storage, eliminating the need for complex system configuration and management. File data can look like object data and vice versa. If you have multiple versions of HDFS in your enterprise, Alluxio also gives an application the ability to talk to different versions of the same storage.

Alluxio clusters act as a read/write cache for data in connected storage systems. Temporarily storing data in memory or other media near compute accelerates access and provides local performance from remote storage. This capability is even more critical with the movement of compute applications to the cloud and data being located in object stores separate from compute.

Intelligent caching and data management ensure fast performance, data protection, business continuity and high availability. Caching is transparent to the end user and utilizes read/write buffering to maintain continuity with persistent storage. Intelligent cache management utilizes configurable policies for efficient data placement and supports tiered storage for both memory and disk (SSD/HDD).

Alluxio fits within existing frameworks and enforces the security already in place. User authentication, authorization, access-control and data-encryption policies from both applications and storage are applied within Alluxio. Support is provided for multi-tenancy, Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos and encryption.

Competitors include: Hedvig, Mesosphere, Databricks and Puppet



Customers include: Alibaba, Baidu, Barclay, CERN, ESRI, Google, Huawei, Intel and Juniper

Why theyre a hot startup to watch: Alluxio is the classic case of a computer science student tinkering with the beginnings of a startup while still in school. After graduating, Li turned his lab experiment into the startup Tachyon, which has since been renamed Alluxio.

Alluxio has one round of funding from one investor, but its $7.5M from Andreessen Horowitz, which is a good backer to have.

Alluxio has is a long list of impressive customers that include Alibaba, CERN, ESRI, Google and Intel, among others.

The companys concept of unified data at memory speed is compelling. As Big Data, AI, IoT, and other compute/memory/storage-intensive applications continue to penetrate the enterprise, new methods for breaking through bottlenecks will be critical. Moreover, Alluxios data unification and intelligent caching make business continuity almost a byproduct of their architecture.

What they do: Provide decentralized data storage that relies on blockchain to protect the integrity of data

Year founded: 2014

Funding: $22.3M, which includes a $1M investment in March 2018 led by NEO Global Capital, and a $19.5M ICO raised in January 2018.

Headquarters: Singapore

CEO: Pavel Bains, who previously served as CEO of Storypanda and as Studio Director for Threeweave Software

Problem they solve: Centralized database storage creates a number of problems, from heightened risk of data breaches (such as the Equifax, Yahoo!, and British Airways breaches) to a lack of data integrity (how do you know the data hasnt been tampered with?) to a lack of system reliability (with a centralized system, a single point of failure can knock everything offline).

How they solve it: Bluzelles decentralized database service uses blockchain technology to provide software applications with improved security, reliability and integrity of their data. All of the data in the database is replicated based on the concept of swarm computing; the nodes comprising the swarm are geographically dispersed, thus providing business continuity in the event of natural or human-caused disaster.

According to Bluzelle, this decentralized approach is able to scale in step with business needs, rather than forcing you to predict (and pay for) peak capacity. Moreover, since data is diced up and distributed across many non-deterministic locations, security and business continuity are improved. Even in the unlikely evePhoto: The Canadian Press Central American migrants making their way to the U.S. arrive by foot to Tapachula, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A ragged army of Honduran migrants streamed through southern Mexico on Sunday heading toward the United States, after making an end-run around Mexican agents who briefly blocked them at the Guatemalan border.

They received help at every turn from sympathetic Mexicans who offered food, water and clothing. Hundreds of locals driving pickups, vans and cargo trucks stopped to let them clamber aboard.

Besi Jaqueline Lopez of the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula carried a stuffed polar bear in a winter cap that seemed out of place in the tropical heat. It's the favourite  and only  toy of her two daughters, 4-year-old Victoria and 3-year-old Elisabeth, who trudged beside her gleaming with sweat.

A business administration graduate, Lopez said she couldn't find work back home and hopes to reach the United States, but would stay in Mexico if she could find employment here.

"My goal is to find work for a better future for my daughters," she said.

In dozens of interviews along the journey, they have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption in Honduras.

After praising Mexico for its no-nonsense response when police at a southern border bridge pushed the migrants back with riot shields and pepper spray, U.S. President Donald Trump again hammered Democratic Party opponents over what he apparently sees as a winning issue for Republicans a little over two weeks ahead of midterm elections.

After blaming the Democrats for "weak laws" on immigration a few days earlier, Trump said via Twitter: "The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat party. Change the immigration laws NOW!"

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther (sic) Border," he said in another tweet. "People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!"

Hundreds of migrants from the caravan did just that  applied for refugee status in Mexico in the southern city of Ciudad Hidalgo.

But a far bigger group forded the Suchiate River from Guatemala to the Mexican side individually and dozens at a time, and resumed the trek at first light, marching 10 abreast on the highway.

"Si se pudo!" they chanted in Spanish  "Yes, we could!"

The throng grew even larger than when the migrants arrived at the border bridge Friday, swelling overnight to 5,000 or so.

It was not immediately clear where the additional travellers came from since about 2,000 had been gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. But people have been joining and leaving the caravan daily, some moving at their own pace and strung out in a series of columns.

Their destination Sunday was the city of Tapachula in Chiapas state. Under a blazing sun, small groups of 20 to 30 paused to rest in the shade of trees on the side of the road, and by afternoon the caravan had evolved into long lines of walkers straggling for miles.

Jesus Valdivia, of Tuxtla Chico, Mexico, was one of the many who pulled his pickup truck over to let 10 or even 20 migrants hop in at a time, sometimes causing vehicles' springs to groan under the weight.

"You have to help the next person. Today it's for them, tomorrow for us," Valdivia said, adding that he was getting a valuable gift from those he helped: "From them we learn to value what they do not have."

Passing freight trucks were quickly boarded by dozens of migrants, and straining tuk-tuks carried as many as a half-dozen.

Brenda Sanchez of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who rode in Valdivia's truck with three nephews ages 10, 11 and 19, expressed gratitude to "God and the Mexicans who have helped us."

She even had kind words for Mexican police: "We are very grateful to them because even though they closed the doors to us (at the border), they are coming behind us taking care of us."

Federal police monitored the caravan's progress from a helicopter and had a few units escorting it. Outside Tapachula, about 500 black-uniformed officers briefly gathered along the highway on buses and in patrol units, but they said their orders were to maintain traffic and not to stop the caravan. They moved on toward the city before the caravan reached them.

As the migrants passed through villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, locals applauded, shouted encouragement and donated supplies.

Maria Teresa Orellana, a resident of Lorenzo, handed out sandals. "It's solidarity," she said. "They're our brothers."

Mexico's Interior Department said in a statement that federal and Chiapas state authorities were providing assistance to migrants, including legal counselling for those who applied for asylum. It released a video showing workers doling out food, medicine and medical treatment.

In comments to reporters after a rally in Elko, Nevada, on Saturday night, Trump said of Mexico's response: "I just want to say, on behalf of the American public, that we appreciate what Mexico is doing. They've really stepped up, and it will not be forgotten."

Trump also repeated: "I will seal off the border before (the migrants) come into this country, and I'll bring out our military, not our reserves."

Mexican authorities had refused to allow the caravan mass entry from Guatemala, instead accepting small groups to process asylum requests and handing out some 45-day visitor permits. An estimated 1,500 were still on the Guatemalan side of the Suchiate, hoping to enter legally.

But police could do little if anything in the face of the throngs who avoided the official entry point and crossed the notoriously porous border elsewhere.

Migrants marching north Sunday said they gave up on Mexico because the application process was too slow, and most wanted to continue to the United States anyway.

"We're warriors, we got to get to the place we got to get to. We're gonna keep on going and we're not gonna stop," Luis Puerto, 39, of Colon, Honduras, said in English.

For Puerto, that place is North Carolina, where he has a wife and two daughters. He said he was recently deported from the United States after a brush with the law that he did not specify.

"We are going to get to the border of the U.S.," he said. "I am not going to stop. I don't care if I die."Event will be held at community hospital

A FREE awareness evening for young adults with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)/ME and fibromyalgia will be held in Newbury on Tuesday.

The event, at the West Berkshire Community Hospital, will be hosted by the West Berkshire Fibromyalgia Support Group, as well as The Department of Pain Medicine at the Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH), Reading.

The aim of the evening is to provide information and support to young people in the area and to publicly launch the service evaluation research project.

Alice Gostomski, of the West Berkshire Fibromyalgia Support Group, said: There will be members of our local fibromyalgia support group at the event.

Our members will be happy to meet some new faces at the event and hear how others deal with these debilitating conditions over a cup of coffee.

We hold meetings, usually once a month, at the West Berkshire Community Hospital and would be pleased to welcome some new members to join our group.

Clinical lead for pain medicine at the Royal Berkshire Hospital Dr Deepak Ravindran said: We are inviting anyone aged 16 to 30 years old, who is registered at one of the 13 practices within the West Berkshire area to take part in our research project.

Anyone from the area who completes the survey will be put into a prize draw to win a 100 Amazon voucher.

We hope that those who are not eligible for the prize draw will take part in the survey too, as their input is valuable to determine the nature of the conditions, the symptoms and support that people receive; how they manage the condition, whether with drugs or other therapies; whether and how they socialise; whether they suffer from depression and anxiety and if they feel their condition is understood by family, peers, colleagues and others.

The service evaluation research project was provided with a grant by Healthwatch West Berkshires Community Engagement Programme and match-funded by Greenham Trust through The Good Exchange.

The event will take place on Tuesday, from 6pm until 9pm, at the West Berkshire Community Hospital.

For further information about the research survey, visit www.facebook.com/westberksfibro or email youngadultswithfm@gmail.comBRIDGEPORT  Tupi or not Tupi? Thats the question that was posed to Connecticut Beardsley Zoo fan on the zoos Facebook page. The zoo was looking for a new for its new baby giant anteater and offered voters three options  Tupi, Gancio and Damiano.

All were South American names or terms, in honor of the anteaters, which hail from that area of the world. Tupi was the resounded winner of the poll, with 63 percent of the vote. Gencio was a distant second, with 25 percent of the vote and Damiano go 12 percent.Photo: Martin Johansen

Arguably the biggest electoral shocker in the Okanagan came in Oliver, where newcomer Martin Johansen ousted longtime mayor Ron Hovanes after an elbows-up campaign focused on public safety.

Johansen, who is the current building services manager with the City of Kelowna, moved to Oliver in February with plans of retirement. That will take place in the new year, with Johansen working part time until then to fulfill mayor's duties.

Out of the gate, he says his biggest priorities will be to get to know the other councillors  including three re-elected incumbents  and advocate for a citizens survey" to take the pulse of the town.

To get an idea what the people are thinking. I feel there is a bit of divisiveness in the community, by the way the vote unfolded.

He envisions the survey would focus on issues like quality of life, value for taxes and budget priorities.

Because Oliver is under 5,000 people and on the provincial RCMP contract, town hall has limited say on how policing is delivered. Regardless, the mayor-elect says he will push for the creation for a coordinated enforcement committee, that will get RCMP and other stakeholders to one table.

Getting some data on what the problems are and where the problems are, thinking ahead to budget, which isnt that far away, he said, musing about private security, increased bylaw or even CCTV cameras.

Id like to get some feedback from the people out there on the streets living it every day, he added.

Hovanes, who had been mayor since 2011 and from 2005 to 2008, took heavy criticism throughout the campaign for a rise in violent crime in the town. Spurred on by a pair of murders this summer, citizens organized a public forum on crime, with some laying blame at the feet of town hall.

Hovanes was flying to Ottawa Sunday for a meeting with the federal minister of infrastructure on the much-needed canal upgrades.Photo: The Canadian Press Vancouver mayor-elect Kennedy Stewart smiles while addressing supporters in Vancouver on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

On the heels of his narrow victory in Vancouver's dramatic mayoral race, observers say Kennedy Stewart's biggest challenge will be leading a council fractured across party lines as he tries to deliver platform promises like increasing housing supply.

The former NDP MP, who ran as an Independent, will lead 10 councillors divided across four parties with an even split between progressives and members of the right-leaning Non-Partisan Association.

Vancouver is one of the few cities in Canada that operates on a party system.

"We're going to need a new civic engineer who knows how to build bridges and not walls," said Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University.

That could mean making strategic compromises and more open dialogue in council chambers instead of behind caucus doors, he said.

While Kennedy's platform included a subway line extension and new approaches to fighting the opioid crisis, his primary campaign focus has been clear: Housing. Among his plans on the file are immediately hiring a renters' advocate and increasing supply by 85,000 new units, including 25,000 non-profit rentals, over 10 years.

Following his victory, Kennedy told reporters he wants the conversation to move beyond housing by the end of his four-year term. He said he's confident he can do so by working with all members of council.

"I've been talking with them all the way through, all the way through this race and I think there are ideas we share in common and we're just going to have to go policy by policy and make sure we're not alienating anyone. I'm confident we can do it," Stewart told reporters following his victory speech.

Patrick Smith, a political science and urban systems professor at Simon Fraser University, said the upcoming federal election will likely work in Stewart's favour as the federal Liberals court votes and open the coffers for public projects.

"He may be astute enough to be able to produce some initiatives on the housing front," Smith said, adding that will require building alliances.

Stewart edged out contender Ken Sim of the NPA to win the election with a lead of fewer than 1,000 votes in the race to replace outgoing Mayor Gregor Robertson, who did not run for re-election.

Robertson's party Vision Vancouver entered the race weak, with its mayoral candidate Ian Campbell bowing out days before the nomination deadline. It won no seats on council.

Smith said it all but marks the end of the party after 10 years in power.

"It's the old adage, never say never in politics. But we're going to say a very strong maybe," Smith said.

Meantime, the Green party saw significant gains, winning three of 10 councillor seats. Two of its candidates, incumbent Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, each won more votes than Stewart or Sim.

"It's in one way a Green sweep in Vancouver. I think it also reflects values. At the core of it, Vancouver still acknowledges the importance of sustainability," he said, even if voters disagreed with Vision's strategy for achieving it.

Sim has not conceded the election, saying after results came in early Sunday morning that more votes needed to be counted and he would seek advice in the coming days.

The NPA did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday afternoon.A new study shows that not exercising could be as bad for the health as smoking, heart disease and diabetes.

The study was published in the latest issue of the JAMA Network Open journal. For this the researchers followed up health, exercise and lifestyle data of 122,007 participants over 23 years to reach these conclusions. Women seemed to benefit more in terms of health when they included exercise in their routines. In addition people of all ages benefited in terms of health when they exercised regularly.

Image Credit: Vovaklak / Shutterstock

The participants of this study went through health tests at Ohio's Cleveland Clinic between 1991 and 2014. One of the senior authors of the study, Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Wael Jaber explained that participants who were unfit on a treadmill or in an exercise stress test seemed to have a poorer outcome when it came to all cause death rates compared to those who had diabetes, smoked or were hypertensive. He called these results as most pronounced and objective than even seen before and also said that they were surprising.

According to the researchers it is well known that being sedentary maybe harmful for health but this is the first time a study has shown that not exercising could be worse than smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure and even end-stage disease. Persons who did not exercise, they explain, had a 500 percent raised risk of death compared to those who exercised. Those who got minimal exercise also had a 390 percent raised risk of death, they noted compared to those who regularly exercised. The risk of dying was twice as much among those who fared poorly on the treadmill compared to those who had kidney failure on dialysis.

Jaber explained that some are ultra exercisers who tend to push their bodies to extremes. It has been believed that extremes might be bad for health. Jaber said that they found that there is no ceiling for the benefit of exercise. This means that even ultra exercisers have a lower risk of dying compared to those who do not exercise.

The authors write, Cardiorespiratory fitness is inversely associated with long-term mortality with no observed upper limit of benefit. Extremely high aerobic fitness was associated with the greatest survival and was associated with benefit in older patients and those with hypertension.

The researchers noted that whole people of all ages and both genders benefitted from exercise, women benefited more than men. Jaber said that being sedentary now should be considered to be a disease that has a prescription, which is called exercise.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 23 percent of Americans get the recommended amount of exercise per week.WHAT: 11th World Stroke Congress brings together leading international stroke experts and an unparalleled scientific program covering epidemiology, prevention, acute care, recovery and rehabilitation in 100s of sessions and oral posters. Congress is attended by stroke professionals, researchers, policy makers, survivors and caregivers from around the world. #worldstroke2018

WHERE: Montreal, Canada, Palais des Congres

WHEN: October 17 - 20, 2018

MEDIA OPPORTUNTIES: Stroke experts and people with lived experience of stroke will be available for interviews.

TODAY'S CONGRESS HIGHLIGHTS

Late-breaking trials

Basilar artery occlusion Endovascular intervention versus Standard medical Treatment (BEST) Trial: Primary results of a multi-centre randomized controlled trial. The BEST trial, a Chinese-government funded multi-centre trial, compares the benefit of endovascular treatment (ET) to standard medical care. Presenters Dr. Raul Nogueira of Emory University and Dr. Xinfeng Liu of Nanjing University (China) will present the study, which found patients treated with ET achieved significantly better outcomes. (11:10 am, Hall B)

Randomized controlled trial of the safety and efficacy of dabigatran etexilate vs. dose-adjusted warfarin in patients with cerebral venous thrombosis (RE-SPECT CVT) (11:30 am, Hall B)

EXtending the time for Thrombolysis in Emergency Neurological Deficits - EXTEND (11:50 am, Hall B)

Sphenopalatine ganglion stimulation to augment collateral perfusion primary in acute ischemic stroke: Primary results of the IMPACT-24B pivotal trial (12:10 pm, Hall B)

HOT TOPIC: Less wealthy countries struggle to meet greater need with far fewer resources

Why are low-and middle-income countries so hard hit by stroke and what can be done about it? This vital question will be discussed today at the World Stroke Congress in Montreal with the presentation of an action plan by Dr. Mayowa Owolabi of Nigeria, who leads the Lancet Neurology Commission on Stroke in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

"Low- and middle-income countries bear over 80 per cent of the global burden of stroke, but have less than 20 per cent of the global resources to combat it," said Dr. Owolabi.

The aging population and the increases in risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes are driving up stroke rates. Strokes occur, on average, 15 years earlier in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. Dr. Owolabi is championing a prevention and treatment action plan to reduce premature mortality from stroke by one-third by 2030 and fundamentally and substantially improve stroke services across the globe, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

HOT TOPIC: Building momentum to address sex differences in stroke

Women bear a greater burden of stroke than men and leading stroke experts will look at incidence and mortality rates, the impact of traditional risk factors on women versus men, the quality of care women receive compared to men, and international efforts in Europe and North America to address the challenges. "There's no question that there is an urgent need for worldwide collaborations to develop better understanding about sex and gender differences in stroke incidence, presentation, prevention and treatments," said Dr. Aleksandra Pikula, a stroke neurologist with expertise in stroke in young adults/women at the University Health Network in Toronto. "Only successful collaborations can improve care and recovery, especially for women, who have poorer functional outcomes and lower quality of life than men after stroke."

Source: http://www.heartandstroke.ca/Brainlab unveils ExacTrac Dynamic at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) meeting in San Antonio, Texas. This forward-thinking universal concept for radiotherapy patient positioning and monitoring offers value on multiple fronts, including expanded clinical indications, broad technological advancements, enhanced user and patient experience, and technology consolidation. ExacTrac Dynamic is the next generation of ExacTrac X-Ray, a clinically proven positioning and monitoring solution for radiotherapy treatments. Since its release in 1999, ExacTrac systems have been used in more than one million treatments worldwide.

ExacTrac Dynamic addresses a full range of patient positioning and monitoring requirements that heretofore have been achieved, in most cases, by employing multiple systems combined with different internal tracking and surface scanning technologies. ExacTrac Dynamic is seamlessly integrated with a wide range of high-end linear accelerators and designed to deliver high precision tracking and verification while addressing the challenges associated with treating moving targets, all of which are critical requirements for delivering extremely effective and high doses in precision radiotherapy. Developed in close collaboration with leading experts in radiation oncology, ExacTrac Dynamic introduces a new dimension in patient positioning and monitoring.

"We had the opportunity to be the first institution to enter into a strategic partnership for the development of ExacTrac Dynamic, as we were looking for a technology that could become the new standard for patient positioning and monitoring in Copenhagen," commented Lars Dahl Allerup, New Business Development Manager, Corporate Procurement, Capital Region of Denmark. "As a long standing partner of Brainlab, we have always been convinced of the superior performance of ExacTrac X-Ray for cranial treatments. What is important for us moving forward is to source technology like ExacTrac Dynamic that allows us to continue treating cranial indications but also take care of the larger patient population at the Herlev Hospital and Rigshospitalet, with a platform re-designed to monitor all external beam treatment indications."

Thermal tracking adds fourth dimension

New high-speed surface tracking incorporates 300,000 3D surface points to externally monitor patient position and detect movement during treatment. Each of the surface points acquired by the ExacTrac Dynamic structured light system are matched to a heat signal generated by a thermal camera, creating another dimension in which to track the patient's position consistently and with great accuracy. The advanced surface tracking with ExacTrac Dynamic is not impacted by room lighting, reflections or skin tone, and has very low latency.

Internal motion caused by normal respiration must be addressed to ensure safe and effective treatments. In addition to external tracking, integrated X-Ray monitoring with ExacTrac Dynamic verifies the patient's position internally with real-time imaging, at any treatment position. The system offers ways to monitor clinical indications that are complicated by internal motion with additional workflows, such as deep inspiration breath hold and internal anatomy verification, providing confidence in true dose sparing of critical anatomy. This integrated combination of both internal and external tracking provides a new level of precision in radiotherapy.

Complete package for all workflows

Customers will still take advantage of the benefits they've always relied on with ExacTrac X-Ray, including superior performance, non-coplanar capabilities and submillimetric precision. Cranial positioning and monitoring offers streamlined immobilization, non-coplanar imaging, Mu-triggered monitoring and gantry-angle triggered monitoring.

ExacTrac Dynamic simplifies frameless fixation with three moldable thermoplastic mask options designed with patient comfort in mind. Deep integration with linear accelerators from both Elekta and Varian Medical Systems allow positioning and monitoring workflows to function seamlessly, including automatic patient loading, gantry triggered imaging and automated beam-hold.

"We've taken a quantum leap forward with ExacTrac Dynamic, delivering a solution that addresses a full range of patient positioning and monitoring beyond what is achievable with linear accelerators alone," said Stefan Vilsmeier, Brainlab President and CEO. "This positioning technology will be an influential force in moving precision radiotherapy forward, with a well-engineered, user-centric workflow and GUI design. Before, hospitals typically incorporated two to three different systems to meet the positioning and monitoring needs for all clinical indications in radiotherapy. Now they have a one-stop solution in ExacTrac Dynamic, aiming to increase versatility and patient volumes while economizing costs and resources."Exelixis, Inc. today announced results from two analyses evaluating the effect of PD-L1 expression or prior treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors on the efficacy of cabozantinib in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The findings are being presented this week at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress being held October 19-23 in Munich, Germany.

An analysis of data from the CABOSUN and METEOR trials demonstrated that cabozantinib improved clinical outcomes regardless of PD-L1 status in patients with advanced RCC, relative to sunitinib or everolimus, the respective comparator arms for each trial. The late-breaking abstract [LBA 34] is being presented today in the Genitourinary Tumors, Non Prostate poster discussion session starting at 2:45 p.m. CEST (local Munich time).

Tumor tissue from 110 patients in the CABOSUN trial and 306 patients in the METEOR trial were evaluated to determine whether PD-L1 expression (1% of tumor cells) predicted outcomes or response to treatment. The findings showed that PD-L1 expression was associated with shorter median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in both METEOR and CABOSUN. Treatment with cabozantinib, however, improved PFS and OS compared with everolimus (METEOR) and sunitinib (CABOSUN) in both PD-L1 positive and PD-L1 negative patients.

"As cabozantinib has become a new standard of care for the treatment of advanced kidney cancer, there is great interest in identifying biomarkers to help select for patients who would potentially derive the most clinical benefit," said Toni Choueiri, M.D., Director, Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and lead investigator. "While evidence suggests that patients who are negative for PD-L1 have less benefit with immune checkpoint inhibitors, this analysis demonstrated that cabozantinib may be an effective treatment option regardless of PD-L1 status for patients with advanced kidney cancer."

An additional analysis evaluating the activity of cabozantinib in 69 patients with advanced RCC who progressed on immune checkpoint inhibitors [abstract 879P] will be presented by lead investigator Bradley McGregor, M.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, at ESMO on Monday, October 22 in a poster display session at 12:45 p.m. CEST. This retrospective analysis found that cabozantinib was active in patients previously treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, either alone or in combination with anti-VEGF or other therapies. At a median follow-up of 12 months, objective response rate was 33 percent, disease control rate was 79 percent and the one-year overall survival rate was 53 percent.

"With a growing number of options available for advanced kidney cancer, physicians need to consider multiple factors when selecting and sequencing treatments for patients," said Michael M. Morrissey, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Exelixis. "The findings from these additional analyses demonstrate the potential benefit with cabozantinib for patients regardless of PD-L1 expression as well as after treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors, reinforcing its role as the TKI of choice for advanced kidney cancer."As an advocate for the genomics age, Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), will showcase its renowned CRISPR expertise at a series of European-focused events.

The genomics solution provider is well-known across the United States for its innovative nucleic acid-based products including oligonucleotides and PCR solutions, genes and gene fragments, NGS, functional genomics and CRISPR genome editing.

In order to increase the accessibly of its extensive CRISPR range of solutions to European markets, the company will be attending the Precision CRISPR Drug Discovery & Gene Therapy Europe Congress in London, October 22-24th and at the 4th Annual Genome Editing Congress, also in London on the 8-9th November 2018.

Delegates at these shows will have the opportunity to discover IDTs range of solutions and benefit from the companys expertise at booth and via various presentations.

IDTs ethos is centered around advocating for researchers in the genomics age and has an extensive R&D program dedicated to developing the best possible genomics tools.

The CRISPR range of solutions is fully comprehensive and has been developed through rigorous research of each component of the CRISPR-driven, double-stranded break generation, critical for gene disruption and DNA insertion by homologous recombination.

The range includes an optimized Alt-R CRISPR-Cas9 system that outperforms other CRISPR approaches for producing on-target, double-stranded DNA breaks.

This system features a novel HiFi Cas9 nuclease, Alt-R HiFi Cas9 Nuclease V3, that delivers highly efficient genome editing with reduced off-target effects, even in primary cells.

The enzyme has been recently described in a Nature Medicine paper in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Porteus research team from Stanford University which demonstrated the robust on-target editing and minimal off-target cleavage achieved by HiFi Cas9 at therapeutically relevant loci, in hard-to-edit human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells.

In addition, IDT provides an Alt-R CRISPR-Cas12a (Cpf1) system, opening up CRISPR editing to additional areas in genomes, guide RNA (gRNA) design tools and NGS solutions for analysis of CRISPR editing events.

The systems offer all the necessary tools and reagents for CRISPR experiments from design to analysis, including design tools, nucleases, nickases, recently-released CRISPR-Cas9 XTcrRNA, single guide RNA (sgRNA), tracrRNA, a new homology-driven repair (HDR) enhancer, electroporation enhancers, controls, and expression plasmids.

As well as off-the shelf solutions, IDT also offers custom solutions providing custom libraries, other CRISPR enzymes, formulations, and other CRISPR tools.

For those unable to attend the shows, or for more information, researchers can access IDTs expertise by attending a webinar titled Increasing genome editing efficiency and specificity with optimized CRISPR-Cas9 guide RNAs on Wednesday, October 24th 2018, 4pm CET.

Ashley Jacobi, Senior Staff Scientist in the Molecular Genetics Research and Development group at IDT, will compare the on-target and off-target editing events observed with different gRNA formats in transformed and primary cell lines, and provide guidelines on when to use each gRNA in the context of Cas9 source (plasmid, mRNA, ribonucleoprotein complex) and cell type.

IDTs DECODED online newsletter also provides a wealth of useful educational information on CRISPR, including recorded webinars.Results from a phase 3 clinical trial indicate that patients who have not benefited from standard therapy for ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by back pain and sacroiliac-joint damage, may have another treatment option in the biologic drug ixekizumab. The findings will be presented at the American College of Rheumatology's annual meeting in Chicago (October 20-24, 2018) and simultaneously published in the ACR journal, Arthritis & Rheumatology.

Approximately 30 to 40 percent of patients with AS do not achieve adequate disease control or symptom relief from tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors, the currently recommended treatment for AS. In addition, some patients may not be eligible to receive the recommended treatment due to contraindications. The cytokine IL-17 is thought to play a role in the development of AS, and IL-17 inhibitors are effective in some patients, but they have not been evaluated exclusively in patients who have not experienced symptom relief with TNF inhibitors.

To test the strategy in these patients, Atul Deodhar, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and his colleagues conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 clinical trial of ixekizumab, a high-affinity monoclonal antibody that selectively targets IL-17A, in patients with AS who experienced a previous inadequate response or intolerance to TNF inhibitors. For the trial, 316 patients were randomized 1:1:1 to placebo, ixekizumab every 2 weeks (IXEQ2W), and ixekizumab every 4 weeks (IXEQ4W), with an 80-mg or 160-mg starting dose.

At week 16, 30.6 percent and 25.4 percent of patients in the IXEQ2W and IXEQ4W groups, respectively, demonstrated significant improvements in the signs and symptoms of AS, compared with 12.5 percent of patients in the placebo group. There were statistically significant differences reported as early as week 1 with ixekizumab treatment. Also, significant improvements in disease activity, function, quality of life, and spinal inflammation were observed with 16 weeks of ixekizumab treatment versus placebo. Treatment-related adverse events were more frequent with ixekizumab than with placebo. One death was reported, in the IXEQ2W group.

"Many people with this chronic, debilitating disease are still searching for an effective treatment. These positive results provide support for ixekizumab as a potential treatment option for patients with AS, including those who have had an inadequate response to treatment with TNF inhibitors, a difficult-to-treat population," said Dr. Deodhar.Immunotherapy with nivolumab and low-dose ipilimumab could become a new first line treatment in patients with some metastatic colorectal cancers following late-breaking results from the CheckMate-142 trial reported at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich. The drug combination shrank tumours and had beneficial effects on survival in patients with microsatellite instabiliy (MSI)-high metastatic colorectal cancer.

Around 4% of metastatic colorectal cancers are MSI-high, also called mismatch repair deficient. This means that tumour cells have mutations in the genes that usually repair DNA. Patients with MSI-high tumours have shorter survival (~14-19 months) than those with non-MSI-high tumours (~17-25 months), when treated with chemotherapy in a first-line setting.

The phase II CheckMate-142 trial previously showed that in patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer that is resistant to chemotherapy, immunotherapy with nivolumab and low-dose ipilimumab provided durable clinical benefit and manageable side effects, leading to approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Today researchers report for the first time the CheckMate-142 results in patients who have received no prior treatment for MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. The study enrolled 45 patients. The median age was 66 years and 51% were male. Patients were followed-up for a median of 13.8 months for the primary endpoint of objective response rate.

The objective response rate was 60% and 7% of patients had a complete response. Some 84% of patients had tumour shrinkage. It took a median of 2.6 months to respond to treatment. The median duration of response, median progression-free survival, and median overall survival have not yet been reached. The 12-month progression-free survival and overall survival rates were 77% and 83%, respectively.

Other trials have tested high-dose ipilimumab combined with nivolumab, but CheckMate-142 used low-dose ipilimumab with nivolumab, which resulted in less toxicity. Treatment-related grade 3 and 4 toxicities were reported in 16% of patients and 7% discontinued therapy due to treatment-related adverse events.

Study author Prof Heinz-Josef Lenz, Co-Leader, Gastrointestinal Cancers Program, University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, US, said: "The combination of low-dose ipilimumab and nivolumab has a durable clinical response and is well tolerated as first line treatment in patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. The data suggest that nivolumab and ipilimumab may be a first line treatment option for these patients."

Commenting on the results for ESMO, Prof Thierry Andre, Head of Medical Oncology, Hopital Saint-Antoine, Assistance Publique - Hopitaux de Paris, France, said: "Nivolumab plus low-dose ipilimumab is effective in most patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. Patients improve dramatically and some return to work. It means healthcare systems can be confident that resources are being targeted effectively. This is in contrast to other metastatic cancers (melanoma, lung or kidney) where it is more difficult to select patients who benefit from immunotherapy."

Andre noted that these phase II results could lead the manufacturer to ask the FDA to approve this immunotherapy combination for the first line treatment of MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer, but the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will probably require a randomised phase III trial. The ongoing phase III KEYNOTE-177 study in MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer is comparing first line treatment with pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy with or without targeted therapy and the first results are expected in 2019. Andre said: "Another question is whether the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab is superior to nivolumab alone for the first line treatment of patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. Previous results from CheckMate-142 suggest, with indirect comparisons, improved efficacy with nivolumab plus low-dose ipilimumab relative to nivolumab alone in previously treated patients with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer."Immunotherapy with pembrolizumab improves survival in patients with head and neck cancer that has recurred or metastasized, according to late-breaking results from the KEYNOTE-048 study reported at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich.

The current standard treatment for metastatic or recurrent head and neck cancer is platinum-based chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil (5-FU) with cisplatin or carboplatin) plus the EGFR inhibitor cetuximab. Around 35% of patients respond to treatment, which leads to a median survival of just over ten months.

The phase III KEYNOTE-048 study examined whether the anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody pembrolizumab could prolong survival and slow cancer growth compared to standard treatment. KEYNOTE-048 enrolled patients with head and neck cancer who had not received prior chemotherapy or biologic therapy for recurrent or metastatic disease. Patients were randomly allocated in a 1:1:1 ratio to: 1) standard treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy (5-FU with cisplatin or carboplatin) and cetuximab (the control group); 2) pembrolizumab alone; or 3) a novel combination of pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy.

At ESMO 2018 researchers presented results on pembrolizumab alone compared to standard treatment in patients expressing PD-L1, a marker of immune activity, and on the novel combination compared to standard treatment in all patients regardless of PD-L1 expression.

In the first comparison, 301 patients received pembrolizumab and 300 patients had standard treatment, with median follow up of 11.7 and 10.7 months, respectively. The patient demographics and disease characteristics were similar between the treatment arms.

In patients with tumor and/or surrounding cells expressing PD-L1 (combined positive score [CPS] >20), overall survival was significantly longer with pembrolizumab (14.9 months) than standard treatment (10.7 months, hazard ratio [HR] 0.61, p=0.0007). Some 23.3% responded to pembrolizumab and 36.1% responded to standard treatment. Median response duration was longer with pembrolizumab (20.9 months) than standard therapy (4.5 months). There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 0.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.75-1.29).

"Patients with PD-L1 expression live longer when they have initial treatment with pembrolizumab," said first author Prof Barbara Burtness, Yale School of Medicine and Co-Director, Development Therapeutics Research Program, Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, US.

The results were similar in patients with a lower cut point of PD-L1 expression (CPS >1). Overall survival was significantly longer with pembrolizumab (12.3 months) compared to standard care (10.3 months, HR 0.78, p=0.0086). Some 19.1% on pembrolizumab responded to treatment compared to 34.9% on standard chemotherapy. Median response duration was longer with pembrolizumab (20.9 months) than standard chemotherapy (4.5 months). There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 1.16, 95% CI 0.75-1.29).

In the second comparison, 281 patients received the novel combination of pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy and 278 received standard treatment, with median follow-up of 13.0 and 10.7 months, respectively. (2) Patient demographics and disease characteristics were similar between treatment arms. Overall survival was prolonged with the combination (13.0 months) versus standard care (10.7 months, HR 0.77, p=0.0034). Response rates were 35.6% for the pembrolizumab combination and 36.3% for standard treatment. There was no difference in progression-free survival between groups (HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.77-1.10).

Side effects in the three treatment groups were as expected. Pembrolizumab alone was less toxic than standard treatment. Pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy and standard treatment had similar toxicity.

Burtness noted that compared to standard care, pembrolizumab alone had a lower response rate and numerically shorter progression-free survival, but significantly longer overall survival. She said: "Pembrolizumab appears to prolong life even when the cancer continues to grow, suggesting that it should be a first line therapy in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer. Whether pembrolizumab is given alone or with chemotherapy may depend on PD-L1 expression and we are conducting analyses to answer this question."

Commenting on the findings for ESMO, Dr Tanguy Seiwert, Head and Neck Cancer Programme Director, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, US, said: "This is the first study to show superior overall survival over the decade-old standard of care, platinum-based chemotherapy and cetuximab, and establishes PD-L1 CPS as a valid marker for head and neck cancer that should be routinely measured in these patients."

But he added: "The challenge is that treatment benefit is not equally distributed but depends on a biomarker. Hence, PD-L1 CPS expression will likely inform our choice between the two new options - pembrolizumab alone, with a favourable side effect profile, and pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy, which may be used in a larger group of patients. Higher PD-L1 expression is associated with more benefit but the exact cut points have to be determined, and individual patient characteristics will play an important role as well. Separate analyses are needed in patients who have tumors with low or absent PD-L1 expression, where there is potentially less benefit."

Regarding the need for further research, Seiwert said: "The usefulness of other biomarkers to select patients for treatment, such as tumour mutational burden, should also be examined."AstraZeneca and Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., (Merck: known as MSD outside the US and Canada) today announced detailed results from the Phase III SOLO-1 trial testing LYNPARZA (olaparib) 300 mg tablets twice-daily as a maintenance treatment for patients with newly diagnosed advanced BRCA-mutated (BRCAm) ovarian cancer who were in complete or partial response following 1st-line standard platinum-based chemotherapy.

Results of the trial confirm the statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) for LYNPARZA compared to placebo, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 70% (HR 0.30 [95% CI 0.23-0.41], P<0.001). With median 41 months of follow-up, the median PFS for patients treated with LYNPARZA was not reached compared to 13.8 months for patients treated with placebo. Of those receiving LYNPARZA, 60% remained progression-free at 36 months, compared to 27% of women in the placebo arm. The data were presented at the Presidential Symposium of the ESMO 2018 Congress (European Society for Medical Oncology) in Munich, Germany, and published simultaneously online in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Sean Bohen, Executive Vice President, Global Medicines Development and Chief Medical Officer, AstraZeneca said: "There is currently a significant unmet need in the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer because 70% of women relapse within the first three years after their initial treatment. The remarkable results of the SOLO-1 trial, which showed that 60% of women with newly diagnosed, advanced BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer remained progression-free at three years, highlight the potential of LYNPARZA as a maintenance therapy in the 1st-line setting."

Roy Baynes, Senior Vice President and Head of Global Clinical Development, Chief Medical Officer, Merck Research Laboratories, said: "Our collective goal in oncology research is to improve long-term outcomes for people living with cancer. Based on the SOLO-1 trial results, LYNPARZA is the only PARP inhibitor to have demonstrated a significant and clinically meaningful improvement in reducing the risk of progression for newly diagnosed patients with advanced BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer following platinum-based chemotherapy. We are working with regulatory authorities as quickly as possible to seek approval of LYNPARZA for these patients."

Kathleen Moore, Co-Principal Investigator of the SOLO-1 trial and Associate Director for Clinical Research, Stephenson Cancer Center at The University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, said: "Women with ovarian cancer are often diagnosed with advanced disease, which unfortunately is associated with poor long-term survival rates. The newly diagnosed setting is our best opportunity to achieve a sustained remission, since once a patient's ovarian cancer recurs, it is typically incurable. The SOLO-1 results demonstrate the potential of LYNPARZA maintenance therapy earlier in the treatment pathway and reinforce the importance of identifying a patient's BRCA mutation status at the time of diagnosisthese results could change the way we treat women with advanced BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer."

The SOLO-1 safety profile was in line with that observed in prior clinical trials. The most common adverse events (AEs) 20% in patients taking LYNPARZA in the trial were nausea (77%), fatigue/asthenia (63%), vomiting (40%), anemia (39%), diarrhea (34%), constipation (28%), dysgeusia (26%), arthralgia (25%), abdominal pain (25%), neutropenia (23%), headache (23%), dizziness (20%) and decreased appetite (20%). The most common Grade 3 adverse reactions were anemia (22%) and neutropenia (9%). Seventy-two percent of patients on LYNPARZA remained on the recommended starting dose. Additionally, 88% of patients on LYNPARZA continued treatment without an AE-related discontinuation. Further, 48% of patients on LYNPARZA did not have a dose interruption as a result of an AE.

Per SOLO-1 protocol guidelines, patients who demonstrated a complete response (no radiological evidence of disease) at 2 years stopped treatment with LYNPARZA; patients who demonstrated a partial response and who in the opinion of the treating physician can derive further benefit from continuous treatment, were treated beyond 2 years.

AstraZeneca and Merck are exploring additional trials in ovarian cancer, including the ongoing GINECO/ENGOTov25 Phase III trial, PAOLA-1. This trial is testing the effect of LYNPARZA in combination with bevacizumab as a maintenance treatment for patients with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer, regardless of their BRCA status. Results are expected during the second half of 2019.

LYNPARZA is a first-in-class poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor approved in the US since 2014. LYNPARZA has a broad clinical-development program and AstraZeneca and Merck are working together to deliver LYNPARZA as quickly as possible to more patients across multiple cancer types, including prostate and pancreatic cancers.

LYNPARZA is not currently FDA-approved for advanced BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer treatment in the first-line maintenance setting. LYNPARZA is indicated for the maintenance treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer in response to platinum-based chemotherapy regardless of BRCA mutation status, and for the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer patients with a germline BRCA-mutation previously treated with three or more lines of chemotherapy. Physicians should select advanced ovarian cancer patients for therapy based on an FDA-approved companion diagnostic. Please see complete indications below.Julie Lopez, 21, has been tested regularly for sexually transmitted diseases since she was a teenager. But when Lopez first asked her primary care doctor about screening, he reacted with surprise, she said.

"He said people don't usually ask. But I did," said Lopez, a college student in Pasadena, Calif. "It's really important."

Lopez usually goes to Planned Parenthood instead for the tests because "they ask the questions that need to be asked," she said.

As rates of sexually transmitted infections steadily rise nationwide, public health officials and experts say primary care doctors need to step up screening and treatment.

"We know that doctors are not doing enough screening for STDs," said David Harvey, executive director at the National Coalition of STD Directors. The failure to screen routinely "is leading to an explosion in STD rates," he said, adding that cutbacks in funding and a lack of patient awareness about the risks make it worse.

The federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set guidelines for annual screening for sexually active individuals. Among them: women under 25 should be tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia, and men who have sex with men should get tested for syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea.

However, testing does not always happen as recommended. For example, only about half of sexually active women ages 16 to 24 with private health plans or Medicaid were screened for chlamydia in 2015. The rate was slightly better in California.

Nationally, reported cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are at an all-time high, CDC data show. In one year, from 2016 to 2017, nationwide rates of chlamydia rose by 7 percent, gonorrhea by 19 percent and syphilis by 11 percent.

Rates of congenital syphilis, which passes from mother to baby during pregnancy or delivery, increased by 44 percent during that time. Nearly one-third of the congenital syphilis cases are from California. The state also saw a record number of STDs last year: more than 300,000 cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia and early syphilis among adults.

Because sexually transmitted infections are often asymptomatic, screening is essential. Untreated STDs can lead to serious health problems, such as chronic pain, infertility or even death.

"Providers and primary care providers play a crucial role in combating these rising STD rates," said Dr. Laura Bachmann, chief medical officer for the CDC division of STD prevention. "If providers don't ask the questions and don't apply the screening recommendations, the majority of STDs will be missed."

State governments don't have enough money to combat the rising number of cases, in part because federal STD funding for them has remained stagnant, Harvey said. Last year, he said, $152.3 million in federal funding was appropriated for prevention, the same as eight years earlier.

Experts cite several reasons primary care physicians don't routinely diagnose and treat STDs. They may worry that they wont be compensated for providing STD services, or they may not be familiar with the most up-to-date recommendations about testing and treatment. For example, the CDC in 2015 updated the medications it recommends to treat gonorrhea.

Perhaps most commonly, many family physicians are reluctant to discuss sexual health with their patients. One study showed that one-third of adolescents had annual visits that didn't include any discussion about sexuality.

"We're in this situation with health care providers and patients  each waiting for the other to start [the conversation]," said Dr. Edward Hook, professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham School of Medicine. "Doctors worry if they ask patients about their sexual history that it will somehow be offensive to them."

Dr. Michael Munger, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said he remembers that his conversations around sexual health were uncomfortable at first. "There are a lot of challenging conversations you can have with patients," he said. "But this is important. If we don't do it, who will?"

Rob Nolan, a writer from Los Angeles, said he gets tested every six months, but he prefers to do so at the Los Angeles LGBT Center rather than during visits with his regular doctor, who rarely asks about sexual health.

Nolan, who said he has had experience with STDs, considers the clinic's staff to be more knowledgeable about sexual health than those at a regular doctor's office. "They just seem specialized in it," he said. "And there is zero shame when you are in the clinic."

Physicians also may have other, more immediate health issues to address during the short time they have with patients. Taking a sexual history and talking about sexual health falls to the bottom of many doctors' priorities, said Dr. Leo Moore, acting medical director of the division of HIV and STD programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Julia Brewer, a nurse practitioner at Northeast Community Clinic in Hawthorne, Calif., said she screens for STDs as a regular part of women's health exams. But she said her colleagues frequently refer cases to her rather than having the conversations themselves. "The family providers are overwhelmed with diabetes and high blood pressure," she said. Sexual health, she said, can end up being an "afterthought."

The L.A. County public health department, which identified STDs as a key priority for the next five years, recently sent representatives to doctors' offices to teach providers how to address sexually transmitted infections. They distributed information detailing screening recommendations, sample sexual history questions and treatment guidelines.

The Los Angeles County Medical Association also plans to get the word out to doctors through social media and other efforts. "It's an epidemic and we have to treat it that way," said CEO Gustavo Friederichsen. "Doctors have to feel a sense of urgency."

Dr. Heidi Bauer, who heads the California Department of Public Health's STD control branch, said the state also is trying to educate doctors so they will screen more routinely. The department provides both in-person and online training for doctors to learn about STDs, and publishes downloadable information with current guidelines.

At the same time, Bauer urged the federal government to make its screening recommendations more comprehensive. Outside of pregnancy, for example, there are no recommendations for routine syphilis screening for women. "We are seeing this huge re-emergence of syphilis," she said. "We haven't been testing and syphilis is very challenging to diagnose."

The CDC plans to review the recommendations in the next year, Bachmann said.

KHN's coverage in California is supported in part by Blue Shield of California Foundation.Photo: The Canadian Press Conservative leader Andrew Scheer waves to supporters as his wife Jill joins him on stage, following a pre-election event in Ottawa on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer marked the start of the one-year countdown to the 2019 election with a campaign-style speech that took direct aim at the Liberal government's record  on everything from carbon taxes, to ethics, to budgetary deficits.

Scheer even did an impression of the man he succeeded as leader of the Tories  former prime minister Stephen Harper  as he criticized the Trudeau government's handling of the federal finances.

"Remember those? Remember those teeny, tiny temporary deficits?" a smiling Scheer said Sunday inside an Ottawa convention centre as he held up his right thumb and index finger for the laughing crowd of party supporters.

Scheer was referring to the Liberals' 2015 pledge to run annual shortfalls of no more than $10 billion and to balance the books by 2019.

After winning power from Harper, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abandoned the vow, citing a weaker-than-expected economy and a need to invest in the country's long-term growth. The Liberals produced a shortfall of $19 billion last year and have yet to provide a timetable to return to balanced books, despite the stronger economy.

The deficits are expected to be central to the Tory attacks in the lead up to the next election on Oct. 21, 2019.

Back in 2015, Harper frequently targeted Trudeau's deficit promise while he was on the campaign trail. Harper, widely known for being serious, made a bit of a splash with meme-makers on social media when he made a similar teeny-weeny hand gesture about the Liberals' shortfall pledge.

"He'll run, he says, a modest deficit, a tiny deficit  so small you can hardly see the deficit," a sarcastic, hunched-over Harper said of Trudeau at the time.

In his speech Sunday, Scheer ran through a list of other areas where he believes the Liberals have vulnerabilities.

He focused on the Liberals' centrepiece carbon tax plan  which he called a "revenue plan" to fill government coffers  and on the ethical issues that have led to reprimands from the federal ethics commissioner.

Scheer noted how the ethics commissioner ruled Trudeau himself had contravened the Conflict of Interest Act in relation to his vacation on a private island in the Bahamas owned by the Aga Khan.

He also pointed to the failed Energy East pipeline that was to transport crude east from Alberta  a project he vowed to revive, if elected  as well as an updated North American trade agreement he argued failed to bring any gains for Canada.

In the "one-year sprint to the finish," Scheer told his supporter the Liberals will throw everything they have at the Tories.

"It's going get worse, it's going to get nasty," said Scheer, who insisted Trudeau also has the news media and pundits on his side.

Recent polls have suggested the Liberals are in a relatively good position ahead of the Tories and the NDP  but a lot can change in 12 months.Photo: The Canadian Press Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, exits a secure area to speak to reporters, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

House Democrats are expected to reopen the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election if they win the majority in November. But they would have to be selective in what they investigate.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, has said his party would have to "ruthlessly prioritize the most important matters first."

The Republican-led Intelligence Committee was the only House panel to investigate Russian meddling, and its investigation is now closed. Republicans say they found no evidence of collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump's campaign.

Democrats say Republicans ignored key facts and important witnesses and want to restart parts of the investigation if they win the House. But some Democrats also worry that there could be a political cost if they overreach.

Schiff and other lawmakers say they are closely watching special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and the Senate's Russia probe to look for gaps that they could fill. And if Mueller issues any findings, their investigative plans could change.

"My sense is that we want to be precise," says California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic member of the intelligence panel.GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn morePhoto: The Canadian Press The Imperial Oil logo as seen at the company's annual meeting in Calgary, Friday.

Imperial Oil Ltd. has restarted oil production at Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories almost two years after being forced to suspend shipments on a pipeline threatened by slope stability concerns at a Mackenzie River crossing near Fort Simpson.

The Calgary-based company says it has been shipping oil from storage since last month on Enbridge Inc.'s Line 21 pipeline, which extends from Norman Wells into northern Alberta.

Replacement work on a two-kilometre section of the 870-kilometre pipeline began in May after it received regulatory approval and was completed in September.

Imperial says more than 100 employees and contractors have been working to restart operations and production is expected to increase in the weeks ahead to around 10,000 barrels per day, consistent with rates before the shutdown.

Imperial's Norman Wells operations will also resume supplying Northwest Territories Power Corp. with electricity.

The operation generates electricity for its own use, and sells surplus power to NTPC, which supplies the town of Norman Wells.

"The return to regular operations will increase economic benefits to the local communities," said John Whelan, Imperials senior vice-president of upstream in a news release.The Watcher gets his own comic as part of Marvel's The Reckoning War

The Watcher steps up for Marvel's The Reckoning WarSorry!

This content is not available in your regionPhoto: The Canadian Press Matthew Vincent Raymond, charged with four counts of first degree murder, is escorted from provincial court in Fredericton on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018.

The man charged with murder in a Fredericton shooting spree that left four people dead says he should be "exonerated" immediately because of temporary insanity.

"This has to be settled now, so I will be exonerated today," Matthew Raymond told the judge during what was supposed to be a brief appearance Monday in provincial court.

"I should not have been in prison at all. I am not guilty due to at least temporary insanity. The evidence is all right there, he has every bit of evidence, it shows exactly what has happened. I am not guilty."

The lean, bearded 48-year-old is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Fredericton police constables Sara Burns and Robb Costello, and civilians Donnie Robichaud and Bobbie Lee Wright.

The four were gunned down Aug. 10 outside a Fredericton apartment complex in a siege that ended when police shot the gunman.

The case returned to court Monday to set a date for a preliminary hearing, but Raymond interrupted as his lawyer addressed Judge Julian Dickson.

"Your honour, may I interrupt? I have something really important to say, I have a statement to make," Raymond said.

"I am not guilty by, at least, temporary insanity."

Dickson told Raymond he would have an opportunity "to purse every possible defence available to you," but Monday's hearing was not the time.

"This is a violation of my rights," said Raymond, who ignored defence lawyer Nathan Gorham's plea to sit down.

Gorham said the Crown has revealed most of the evidence against his client, including witness accounts and Raymond's own statements. He said he was trying to help the court move things along quickly.

Raymond, wearing an orange jumpsuit and a grey sweatshirt, told the judge his life has been threatened while in jail, including someone who threatened to cut his head off. And he objected to the clothing he had been given to wear.

"The clothes I have on, I have on every time I come in here. I do not have the proper clothing at all, it's a violation of my rights," he said.

"I should not even be in these clothes. I have never been given the proper clothes."

Raymond has not yet made a formal plea. The case will return to court Oct. 29 to set a date for a preliminary hearing on the first-degree murder charges.

Raymond is alleged to have fired upon four people from his apartment window with a long gun, killing two civilians as they loaded a car for a trip, and two police officers who responded to the scene.

Costello, 45, was a 20-year police veteran with four children, while Burns, 43, had been an officer for two years and was married with three children.

Robichaud, 42, had three children and had recently entered into a relationship with 32-year-old Wright when they were killed.

Former friends and acquaintances of Raymond have offered varying memories of the accused murderer, ranging from a boy who retreated into video games, a pleasant supermarket co-worker and an increasingly isolated loner in recent years.

Some business owners have described Raymond as becoming reclusive and occasionally unpleasant in the year before the alleged shootings.Chennai:

The Central government on Monday expressed hope exports would touch an all-time high in 2018-19.

Commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan underlined the commitment of the government to address concerns of labour-intensive leather and textiles sectors.

Our exports will reach a record figure both in rupee and US dollar terms, he told reporters here after an interactive session with exporters, but did not quantify the figure.

Also Read | US will pull out of nuclear deal with Russia, says Trump

He said the government would address the concerns such as easier availability of credit from banks and boosting schemes like the merchandise exports from India scheme, in the wake of the challenges in a global environment.

The commerce secretary said the export scenario in the region, especially in Tamil Nadu, was healthy, and lauded exporters for their performance despite protectionism and unilateralism.

Despite the challenges, the exporters have been doing well over the last two-and-a-half years and weve since been having a steady growth, he said.

On the country signing a free trade agreement with the European Union, he said, It is on the table and we will do our best to expedite it (pact).

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.Milan:

Fiat Chrysler said Monday it was selling its Italian auto parts unit Magneti Marelli to Japan's Calsonic Kansei (CK) in a deal worth 6.2 billion euros. It said the merged company will rank in the top 10 auto parts suppliers globally with annual sales of 15.2 billion euros ($17.6 billion). There will be a multi-year supply agreement with Fiat Chrysler.



This agreement will underscore "the combined entity's commitment to maintain Magnetti Marelli's operations in Italy and sustain its industrial footprint and employment levels," a joint statement said.

Also Read | Gold smuggling on rise along India-Myanmar border: Report

The deal should be closed in the first half of 2019, it added.



CK is controlled by US investment house KKR.



Fiat Chrysler said earlier this year that it planned to hive off its auto parts unit. Mike Manley, the new head of Fiat Chrysler, said the deal will boost growth at Magneti Marelli which will remain one of the group's most important business partners. Unions welcomed the deal.

"It is a great opportunity for growth," said Fim-Cisl's Marco Bentivogli.

"The guarantee on all current employment in our country is important," he added.

Also Read | Break the myths about gold loans with Muthoot's MATTU & MITTU



Magneti Marelli, founded in 1919, employs some 43,000 people and operates in 21 countries. Sales last year came to 8.2 billion euros.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

A 35-year-old woman, who was raped and an iron rod was inserted in her private parts allegedly by her relative on Saturday night has undergone a surgery in a government hospital in West Bengals Jalpaiguri district, an official said on Monday.

Doctors operated on her at the Sadar hospital said the woman is in the intensive care unit.

She is being administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. She is in serious condition but is stable, doctors attending the victim said.

Also Read | Sunny Leone's 'Veeramadevi' lands up in controversy, protesters warn 'Padmaavat-like' protests in Bengaluru

The callous act was conducted allegedly by a relative on Saturday near a pond close to womans house at Niranjan Pat locality over a land dispute, police said.

He had called the woman, a mother of three, out of her home on the pretext of resolving the land dispute, raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron road in her private parts, the Jalpaiguri superintendent Amitabha Maiti told reporters.

According to police report, the womans husband, a labourer, was away from home when the horrendous incident happened.

Read More | 542 swine flu deaths, 6,803 cases in India this year

Two other persons who accompanied the accused did not rape or torture the victim, they said.

Meanwhile, the arrested accused and his associate, has been sent to police custody. They were detained by the police on Sunday and arrested in the evening after interrogating them, said police.

Police also said the alleged relative had confessed to his crime during interrogation and had said that he had committed it out of personal anger.

Police is on the lookout for the third person, who is absconding, said Maiti.

(With PTI inputs)New Delhi:

A row of controversy has strangled the southern part of India with protestors claiming a Padmaavat-like protest if their demands are not met. Sunny Leone has landed herself amid another buzz as she was cast in a multi-lingual film Veeramadevi and the Pro-Kannada outfit Kannada Rakshana Vedike Yuva sene on Monday revolted saying that it was an insult to a historical figure.

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The protest extended to such extremities that a couple of youth also cut their hands with blades so that the seriousness of their intentions were made clear. R Harish, the president of the groups youth wing, claimed that it was not right to have Sunny Leone play a historical character, who had supported Hindus.

Harish said, Leone is popular as a porn star and it such a person should not play a historical character, who is not only an icon of Kannada but also someone who built many temples.

The casting will hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus and to dominate their demand, the protestors promised to disrupt a performance by Sunny Leone in Bengaluru on November 3. The agitated protestors threatened that they have bought at least 230 tickets for the performance, and will disrupt the event is she doesnt stay away from the movie.

Also Read | Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh are finally tying the knot! November date fixed

The protesters' fight was against Sunny acting as a historical character and not against her acting in any movie that was not historically important. Harish asserted that they want her to quit this movie. He warned, Else, we will also have to protest like people in Rajasthan did against the movie Padmaavat.

Harish M said on the November 3 event: This is a Kannada event and we have even accommodated Raghu Dixit in it, adding The event comes under my purview, I cannot do anything about objections to a movie that I have nothing to do with.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

Social activist in Bihar's Muzaffarpur Tamanna Hashmi filed a complaint case against Navjot Kaur Sidhu, wife of Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, seeking registration of a case against her for fleeing the scene of a train accident in Amritsar in which nearly 60 people died on Friday, and making a false alibi that she was not present at the site when the accident occurred. Four persons from Bihar were killed in the incident.

According to the complaint, Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who was the chief guest at a Dussehra function in Amritsar, and the organisers were solely responsible for the incident and the court should therefore take cognizance of the matter and order a trial against her.

Chief Judicial Magistrate Arti Kumari Singh has fixed November 3 as the date for its hearing.

Hashmi also said the footage of the incident shown on television had hurt him deeply. He requested for initiating a case against Navjot Kaur Sidhu under Indian Penal Code sections 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class), 336 (act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) among others.

If held guilty, the accused could be sent to jail for three months to two years.

Congress MP Sunil Jakhar and Punjab minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, however, came forward in defence of Sidhu and sought to put the blame on the Railways officials for the incident.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who has gone to Israel, reviewed the situation through video-conference with the state government officials and asked them to expedite the process of providing relief and compensation to the families of those dead and to the injured. People angry over the train accident had pelted stones and clashed with security personnel on Sunday. They sat on the railway tracks, where the accident happened, and protested. They were later removed by authorities.

Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued notices to the Railways and the Punjab government, observing that it cannot be called a "sane act" for people to sit on railway tracks, but the "negligence on the part of the district authorities is apparent" as well in this "bizarre and horrific incident".

(With PTI inputs)



For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

BJP national secretary H Raja on Monday apologised in the Madras High Court for his alleged derogatory remarks against the judiciary. Following his apology, the court dropped contempt proceedings against Raja for the alleged remarks made.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader tendered his unconditional apology in the Madras High Court in a suo motu contempt proceeding against him for his alleged derogatory remarks against the judiciary.

Also Read | Amit Shah is `today's Chanakya', says Union AYUSH Minister Shripad Naik

Raja, in his affidavit, stated that he was emotional when he made the remark and tendered his unconditional apology for it as he appeared before a division bench of justices C T Selvam and M Nirmal Kumar on Monday.

The contempt proceedings against the BJP leader were initiated suo motu by the division bench on September 17.

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The court had earlier directed Raja to appear before it, noting that any attempt at disrespecting the judiciary could lead to promotion of fascism.

In September, Raja was charged with a criminal case after he picked up a fight with policemen in Pudukottai district.

The incident happened on the route for the immersion procession of Ganesha idols. Raja was told that the procession through a particular route was not allowed in view of a court order. Then, Raja had allegedly made derogatory remarks against the judiciary and called the police "anti-Hindu" and "highly corrupt".

Read More | Halloween costumes you can steal from your favourite celebrities

(With inputs from agencies)

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

Responding sharply toA Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's remarks on Kashmir,A India on Monday said instead of making comments on internal affairs of another country, Islamabad should take "credible action" to dismantle terror infrastructure operating from its soil.A A A A

Referring to incidents of violence in Kashmir, Khan, in a tweet, said that time has come for India to realise that it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.A A A





"Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris....by Indian security forces," Imran Khan tweeted. A

Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people. a Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) October 22, 2018

Responding to Khan's remarks,A Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said:A "The remarks made by Pakistan's Prime Minister in his tweet today are deeply regrettable. Instead of making comments on India's internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues.





"Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours," Kumar said. A





It is not the first time Khan has spoken about Kashmir.A A In his victory speech after the July elections, Khan expressed his willingness to improve Pakistan's ties with India and said that his government would like the leaders of the two sides to resolve all disputes, including the "core issue" of Kashmir, through talks.A A





He had said good India-Pakistan relations will be beneficial for the entire region. A A meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan was announced on the sidelines of the United National General Assembly.A





However, in September, New Delhi called it off, citing killings of Indian security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the release of Pakistani postage stamps "glorifying a terrorist and terrorism".A





India maintains that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country and Pakistan is in illegal occupation of a part of the state's territory.A





(With PTI inputs)

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reportedly summoned the two top officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Rakesh Asthana and Alok Verma, amid their public fight over bribery and corruption allegations.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a bribery case against Rakesh Asthana, who had written to the government listing several charges against his boss Alok Verma. On Sunday, the CBI tried to defend its Alok Verma following allegations of corruption levelled against him by Rakesh Asthana saying they are "false and malicious".

The CBI claims to have analysed nine phone calls immediately after middleman Manoj Prasad was arrested in the alleged bribery case against Rakesh Asthana to allege that there was panic after the middleman's brother got "wind" of the arrest.

Meanwhile, the CBI arrested its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar in connection with a bribery case involving Rakesh Asthana.

The investigative agency has registered a case against Asthana on the basis of claims made by a businessman, Sathish Sana, probed by him in a separate case, that he was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 crore by Manoj Prasad, an investment banker based in Dubai to get relief from repeated summons and a clean chit in the case.

In his letters to the Cabinet Secretary and Central Vigilance Commission, Asthana had written about 10 cases of alleged corruption and irregularities against Verma, levelling serious corruption charges in some of them. One of the cases pertained to Sathish Sana, a businessman facing probe in a corruption case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi in which Asthana had alleged on August 24 that Sana paid Rs 2 crore to Verma to get relief in the case. Asthana had also alleged that Verma delayed his team's request to arrest Sana in the case.

Devender Kumar, who was the investigating officer in the Qureshi case, has been accused of forgery in recording the statement of businessman Sathish Sana, a key witness in the case.

Serious credibility crisis in CBI, govt to be blamed: Congress

On Monday, the Congress Monday said there is a serious credibility crisis in the CBI with its top officers accusing each of massive corruption and blamed "vested interests" within the government for bringing the agency to "such a pass". Terming the issue "very serious", Congress leader Sachin Pilot accused the government of interference in the CBI and asked why it was silent on the issue.

"How do we trust the CBI to look at corruption issues when their top people are themselves involved and allegations are flying thick and fast? The fact that it has reached this point tells you how long and how deep the rot may be within this government," Pilot told reporters at the Congress headquarters.

People's trust in CBI should continue: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party said on Monday said people's faith in an institution like the CBI should continue. Asked about the agency registering a case against Rakesh Asthana, BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said there is also a report against Alok Verma, a reference to his deputy Asthana's complaint against him.

"There are two reports, one is against the director and another against the special director. We would like people's faith in the institution of the CBI to continue," she told reporters.

(With PTI inputs)

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

India and China signed a first-ever agreement on security cooperation which will strengthen and consolidate assistance in counter-terrorism, organised crimes, drug control, human trafficking and exchange of information, marking a new beginning between the two countries.

The agreement was signed by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and China's State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi. The move came a year after a border stand-off between the Indian Army and the China's People's Liberation Army at Doklam on the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction.

The name of Arunachal Pradesh MP and Union minister Kiren Rijiju, who also attended the meeting, did not figure for talks with the Chinese delegation initially, according to a report.

Later, a message was sent to him to reach North Block which houses the Home Ministry and where the delegation-level talks was supposed to be held in minutes, an official in the Ministry of Home Affairs privy to the development told news agency PTI.

Rijiju's participation is considered as a significant development as the minister hails from Arunachal Pradesh, which China considers as a "disputed" territory. China routinely protest visits of Indian leaders to Arunachal Pradesh. India considers Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of the country.

During the visit of the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh in April 2017, China warned it would take "necessary measures" to defend its territorial sovereignty and interests, saying India "obstinately" allowed the Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the "disputed" parts of the Northeastern state, causing "serious damage" to the bilateral ties.

(With agency inputs)

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.Photo: The Canadian Press This undated photo provided by the Gwinnett County Police Department on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018 shows Officer Antwan Toney.

The search continued Monday for the second of two teenage suspects in the fatal weekend shooting of a police officer near a school in the Atlanta area.

Authorities said Sunday they believe 18-year-old Tafahree Maynard fatally shot Officer Antwan Toney a day earlier as he checked a report of a suspicious car parked near a school in the Snellville area, Gwinnett County Police said in a statement.

Maynard remained at large Monday morning and should be considered armed and dangerous, police said. He faces charges of aggravated assault and felony murder. The shooting happened near a middle school about 25 miles (40 kilometres) northeast of Atlanta.

"Tafahree Maynard needs to turn himself in," Gwinnett County Police Chief Butch Ayers said at a weekend news conference.

Police said Maynard wasn't at a Gwinnett County house Sunday evening where a SWAT team deployed to serve a search warrant for him. An official statement appealed to the public for tips on Maynard's whereabouts.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a gun at an officer during the pursuit after Toney's fatal shooting, police had said earlier.

Toney died at a hospital over the weekend from his wounds, police said. The 30-year-old from Southern California had been with the Gwinnett County Police Department for nearly three years, serving in his first police job.

"The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community," Ayers said.

Toney and other officers initially responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle near a school, police said. When the officers approached, someone in the vehicle opened fire and Toney was hit. Then the vehicle sped off.

According to police, Pretlow drove the vehicle away after the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants. An officer searching the area later encountered Pretlow around p.m. Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots, according to a statement. Pretlow was not hit and fled into some woods. He was subsequently taken into custody by U.S. Marshals.New Delhi:

The doors to Sabarimala Temple finally closed on Monday night, six days after opening for the first time since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on entry of women of menstruating age. Despite the apex court's verdict not a single woman, aged between 10-50, managed to enter into the Lord Ayyappa temple.

Over the past six days, a dozen of women, including activists and journalists, attempted to reach the temple despite being heckled, hassled and threatened, but they were forced to retreat.

The iron gates to the shrine were opened on Wednesday and every day since then women of the "barred" age group madebrave but futile attempts to enter the shrine. Six women were prevented from entering the temple Sunday alone.

Kerala women's rights activist Rehana Fathima and Hyderabad journalist Kavitha Jakkal, wearing helmets and khaki, and surrounded by a police contingent, could manage to go up to Valiya Nadappandhal, the queue complex located a few metres away from the holy 'pathinettam padi', the 18 sacred steps, but not beyond.

Several people, including journalists, were injured on Wednesday as police cracked down on protesters who were up inarms against Kerala's Left Front government for its decision to enforce the Supreme Court order.

On Monday, another woman trying to enter into the temple was forced to retreat by agitated protesters amid tight security arrangements.

On Monday, police officials asked the media to vacate the areas in and around Sannidhaman and Pamba as they had received inputs of a targeted attack being planned on the media.

Bindu, a Scheduled Caste activist, who was proceeding to Pambaat the foothills of Sabarimala temple from where devotees under take an arduous 5 km trek to the shrine, was given police protection at her request, officials said.

However, when the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus she was travelling on with police personnel was about to reach Pamba, a group of BJP workers and those opposing the entry of girls and women aged between 10 and 50 years into the temple, blocked the road and forced her to alight.The woman was escorted to safety in a police jeep.

The police said they would provide protection to the women devotees to reach the temple, but cannot help beyond that. Darshan is something which can be done with the consent of the priest, said Kerala Inspector General S Sreejith had said.

(With agency inputs)







For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.Cameroon President Paul Biya easily won elections this month to extend his 36-year rule by another seven years.

Biya obtained 71 percent of the vote in the one-round Oct. 7 election, the head of the Constitutional Council, Clement Atangana, said Monday. Security forces and police deployed in large numbers in all major cities to prevent protests as Atangana announced the result in the capital, Yaounde.

The outcome means that Biya, who's already Africa's second-longest serving head of state, will continue to rule the central African nation until at least the age of 92.

The election was overshadowed by a bloody separatist insurgency in the nation's two Anglophone regions that has left more than 400 civilians dead since 2016. Voters in the Northwest and Southwest regions largely stayed indoors and some of those who did cast their ballot said they received death threats from insurgents. Voter turnout was lowest in the Northwest region, at 5 percent, compared with 53 percent nationwide, according to Atangana.

Opposition candidate Maurice Kamto came in second with 14 percent of ballots cast, with the remainder of votes shared by seven other candidates, Atangana said. Kamto alleges that the poll was fraudulent and filed a petition to get it annulled, while one of the candidates on the results sheet withdrew a day before voting to back Kamto. The Constitutional Council rejected Kamto's and 17 other petitions against the vote.

Cameroon's opposition has never been able to effectively unite and unseat Biya, who assumed the presidency in 1982 after holding the post of prime minister for seven years. His closest challenge came in the country's first democratic elections a decade later when the Anglophone politician John Fru Ndi won more than a third of the vote. Since then, Biya has always secured at least 70 percent of the vote.

Opposition candidates allege that there's rampant bias in the electoral commission, which is mainly staffed with ruling party representatives, and the Constitutional Council, whose members Biya appointed.BERLIN - In a move that could put further pressure on President Donald Trump to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Sunday evening that her government would not approve new arms exports to the kingdom until further notice.

"There is an urgent need to clarify what happened - we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account," she said at a news conference. "I agree with all those who say that the, albeit already limited, arms exports can't take place in the current circumstances," Merkel said. While the move affects future deals, exports that have already been approved to the second-biggest foreign market for German arms equipment will proceed for now.

Germany is the first major U.S. ally to cast doubts over future arms sales after the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and the move is likely to put pressure on bigger exporters, including the United States, to do the same. Trump has ruled out suspending arms exports but faces bipartisan calls to hold the perpetrators behind the writer's killing accountable.

Since the Oct. 2 disappearance of Khashoggi, companies and governments worldwide have come under pressure to abandon their ties to the Saudi Arabian leadership. Saudi Arabia first denied allegations that it was behind the columnist's disappearance, but later claimed that Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in a "fistfight" with more than a dozen Saudi officials. While Trump has sent mixed messages - both calling the Saudi investigation "credible" and accusing the Saudis of "deception" - key U.S. allies in Europe agree that Riyadh's explanation does not add up.

On Monday, one of Merkel's closest allies - Economy Minister Peter Altmaier - pressed other European Union member states to also halt arms sales until we "know what happened." The German government has said it was seeking to coordinate an international response to the Khashoggi case, but Merkel did not tie her decision to temporarily halt sales to measures taken by other major exporters, including the United States.

As of last year, more than a dozen other EU member states were selling military equipment to the Saudis, with France ranking as the second-biggest exporter after Britain, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

In a country already facing economic uncertainty over its decision to leave the E.U., the dismantling of Saudi ties could have severe repercussions. In the first six months of 2017 alone, Britain sold Riyadh military equipment worth about $1.4 billion, with thousands of British jobs dependent on the sales.

Germany today only accounts for a relatively small share of European sales to Saudi Arabia, after years of curbing exports to the kingdom amid human rights concerns. By the time the German coalition government was formed this spring, the country had become one of Saudi Arabia's most outspoken critics, prompting the withdrawal of the Saudi ambassador and of Saudi investments in the country.

In the weeks before Khashoggi's disappearance, however, the German government had quietly backed away from its earlier promise to no longer sell military equipment to the Saudis. In September, it confirmed the export approval of four artillery positioning systems to Riyadh. Overall, Berlin has agreed to export equipment worth more than $460 million to the Saudis this year.

Sunday's announcement to become the first major country to suspend new arms exports to Riyadh is yet another policy reversal. Merkel's critics argue that her shifting stance toward the Saudis leaves her in no good position to lecture other Western leaders on human rights.

While Germany's complicated dealings with the Saudis raise doubts over the longer-term sustainability of Merkel's exports ban, her decision still puts other leaders in an uncomfortable position at a sensitive time.

In the United States, Trump is under pressure to act after a bipartisan group of senators triggered global Magnitsky Act sanctions procedures two weeks ago. The Magnitsky legislation forces Trump to determine whether any country or individual responsible for the writer's disappearance should be held accountable.

If the United States imposed sanctions on Saudi Arabia, other major arms exporters such as Britain would likely also be forced to take similar measures. But in Berlin, top officials now hope that their move to suspend future sales could pressure other European allies into following suit, even if the United States refrained from doing so.

Germany's export stop will have little impact "if at the same time other countries fill this gap," Merkel's ally Altmaier acknowledged Monday.Photo: The Canadian Press Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) members stand on picket line along Almon St., in front of the Canada Post regional sorting headquarters in Halifax on Monday, Oct.22, 2018 after a call for a series of rotating 24-hour strikes.

A small business group is calling for a quick end to rotating walkouts by Canada Post employees and warns a prolonged strike could bite into profits ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is also urging Canada Post to rein in spending to reduce costs.

Walkouts by employees with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers began today in Victoria, Edmonton, Windsor, Ont. and Halifax.

The union, representing 50,000 postal employees, has been bargaining separate contacts for rural and urban carriers over the past 10 months.

A Canada Post spokesman says business will proceed as usual at other locations but mail and parcels will not be picked up or delivered where walkouts are taking place.

Federal Labour Minister Patty Hajdu says she is monitoring the situation and encourages both sides to continue negotiations until a settlement is reached.Photo: The Canadian Press

The restart of crude oil production at Imperial Oil Ltd.'s Norman Wells oilfield after a two-year shutdown means both economic optimism and cleaner air for the 800 or so residents of the remote Northwest Territories town.

"Obviously, a producing plant is going to require people and that creates employment, creates activity in our community," interim town manager Darren Flynn said.

"So we're absolutely delighted that they're back on line."

Imperial announced Monday that an employee-contractor workforce of about 100 had restored oil operations, adding it plans to gradually increase output to about 10,000 barrels per day, about the same level it was at before being shut down in December 2016.

Production was halted after slope stability concerns at the Mackenzie River crossing near Fort Simpson led to Enbridge Inc. suspending its 870-kilometre Line 21 pipeline that extends from Norman Wells into northern Alberta.

After receiving regulatory approval, replacement work on a two-kilometre section of the pipeline began in May and was completed in September.

Imperial began shipping oil from storage on the line last month.

The resumption of production means Imperial will resume supplying Northwest Territories Power Corp. with surplus electricity from its power plant, it said. The plant is fuelled by natural gas produced with the oil from its wells.

The electricity is expected to allow the power company to withdraw diesel-fuelled generators it employed to bolster power capacity while the oilfield was off line, Flynn said.

"They (diesel generators) make quite a bit of noise and, of course, you get the exhaust that comes off of it," he said.

"It's my understanding that (Imperial) is burning off natural gas in order to produce their's, so that definitely is a cleaner way to generate electricity than using diesel."

Imperial had identified its Norman Wells oilfield as a non-core asset and was trying to sell it prior to the shutdown. In an email, spokeswoman Lisa Schmidt said it is still considered to be on the market.n a big announcement today, tokenized securities startup DESICO announced its plans for its own official Security Token Offering (STO) of DESI tokens. Tokenized securities are currently gaining steam as the blockchain sector continues to mature.

DESICO is conducting a fully compliant STO as an EU member with all the necessary licenses. Originally planning a utility token ICO due to regulations, DESICO is now able to pursue its own STO following the acquisition of the necessary financial brokerage license. This license now allows them to issue security tokens for their own business and platform (DESICO).

By conducting an STO on their own platform, using their own model, DESICO aims to show the public that they believe in their own system and product, as well as its effectiveness. Conducting an STO for their own platform allows DESICO to pave the way for its future clients, running its business on the same model that will be used for clients.

DESICO CEO and co-founder Laimonas Noreika explained in a recent interview, that out of all the security token platforms, we are the ones who are doing our STO the same way that we promise we will do for our clients, who will be eligible to do the same in the future. Mr. Noreika also mentions that the STO model being demonstrated for Desi tokens will be a great example for future clients to see how the process will look for them in the future.

DESICOs STO crowdsale will begin on November 7th, and will be classified as a Revenue Participation Note (RPN), with quarterly payouts to investors. This type of security token does not constitute as ownership of DESICO, but allows token owners to receive 12.5% of the total revenue earned by DESICO. (The total number of DESICO security tokens represents revenue sharing of 12.5% of DESICOs total revenue. The number of tokens held by the investor determines how much of that 12.5% of revenue is paid out to the token holder.)

Using the RPN security model allows investors to share in the profit and success of DESICO, without needing to give their attention to other shareholders rights, such as voting, etc.

DESICO will operate under a joint venture with Crowdfunding, Brokerage, and E-Money license holders. There will be no cap on revenue payouts for token holders.

Further Details

The DESICO STO will have three stages  pre-sale (stage 1), crowdsale (stage 2) and hard cap (stage 3). Pre-sale (stage 1) will begin on November 7th 2018, and will have a cap of $1 million. Crowdsale (stage 2) will start in January 2019, with a hard cap of $5.75 million. The rest will be sold to institutional investors at hard cap price (stage 3). Payment will be made via cryptocurrency and then converted to Euros.

STO Price Per Token:

Pre Sale  $0.98

Crowdsale Part 1  $1.07

Crowdsale Part 2  $1.09

Hard Cap Price  $1.15

The minimum investment for retail investors will be $230, with a maximum investment of $5,750,000. Accredited investors will have a minimum investment requirement of $143,750, with no cap on maximum investment.

Investors must also pass KYC and AML requirements. According to current laws, only US investors must be accredited. DESICO allows US companies to add an additional $5.75 million from non-US retail investors to their security offering. While most platforms are limiting access to institutional and accredited investors due to regulatory issues, DESICO creates an opportunity for projects to access $5.75 million per year from Main Street investors.

About DESICO

DESICO is a platform to issue and trade tokenized securities in full compliance with the law. DESICO will operate under crowdfunding law, financial markets law, and the European e-money directive for the Republic of Lithuania, which allows ICOs to issue Tokenized Securities to raise capital. Using DESICO, ICO-funded businesses will also have the ability to oversee their funds in the form of crypto or FIAT. DESICO is currently in its fundraising period, with a team of experienced managers in the fintech and entrepreneurial space.

DESICO is based in Paris, and in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania), which achieved the third most ICO capital raised in quarter 1 of 2018, with the U.S. and China having the first and second most capital raised. As for those who question DESICOs choice of location, Mr. Noreika responds by stating that several Fintechs (e.g. Revolut) are operating with licences out of Lithuania for EU passporting reasons.BRIDGEPORT  Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.

Oscar Ziggy Hernandez stood staring at jurors, his lip upturned in a snarl, as they found him guilty of fatally stabbing his girlfriend, seriously wounding her friend and fleeing with his 6-year-old daughter.

It took the jury of eight men and four women nearly two and a half days to convict the 41-year-old former Stamford cook of murder, attempted murder, first-degree assault and risk of injury to a child.

He faces up to 100 years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 4 by Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo.

We are very happy with the verdict, said a man, who identified himself as a relative of the dead woman, as he and other family members left the Fairfield County Courthouse.

It was a difficult case, but the jury worked consciously to reach the appropriate verdict, Senior Assistant States Attorney Joseph Corradino said later.

But it was clear from the moment they began deliberations on Thursday that the jury struggled to reach a verdict.

On two occasions the panel asked to hear the recorded testimony of a number of the states witnesses during the week-and-a-half trial, only to reconsider their request after being told by the judge the length of time it would take to hear all the recordings.

When the jury finally emerged from the deliberation room late Monday afternoon to announce its verdict, one juror was crying.

Were still processing, said another juror, as he left the courthouse.

Hernandez was accused of stabbing his girlfriend, 26-year-old Nidia Yubi Gonzalez, and her friend, Brenda Castellano, at his Greenwood Street home in the early morning of Feb. 24, 2017, and then fleeing with his 6-year-old daughter. He was captured following a high-speed chase in central Pennsylvania.

During his testimony on Wednesday, Hernandez claimed that his girlfriend  to whom he at times referred to as his wife  and her best friend stabbed each other, following a drunken argument over a cell phone.

Though just a few feet away in a bedroom, Hernandez said he didnt hear the women yelling at each other, but walked out into the grisly tableau after hearing a bottle break. He claimed he then slipped in the blood and fell on Castellano.

I asked Yubi what has happened. She said, this is my issue in a really soft voice, Hernandez testified. I took the knife away to see what I could do and I slipped on the blood, because I was wearing beach sandals.

Gonzalez was stabbed six times in the left side of her neck, a blade plunging through her windpipe and carotid artery and causing her death, according to testimony during the trial. Castellano was stabbed multiple times in her front and back. She survived one blade thrust that went from one side of her body nearly through the other side.

Corradino and Assistant States Attorney Emily Trudeau claimed Hernandez killed his girlfriend after learning she was cheating on him and stabbed Castellanos when she tried to intercede.

After a while, he stopped stabbing and he was kicking me and looking to see if I was dead, Castellano testified. I prayed to God that I could stop breathing for just a minute so that he would think I was dead and stop stabbing, I held my breath and eventually he left. I then dragged myself and I started screaming for help.

The couples landlord, who lived above them, told police he and his wife heard a scream from the basement apartment. They went into the basement and saw the two women lying in pools of blood.WILTON  In a vituperative first debate, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes and Republican challenger Harry Arora repeatedly accused each other of distorting facts to suit their political purposes.

Arora painted Himes, who has represented the 4th District for almost 10 years, as a spinmaster who speaks mumbo jumbo, saying one thing on CNN and another to his constituents. Himes charged that Arora traded in alternative facts to justify his right-leaning positions.

In the first minute of the debate at Wilton High School, Arora accused Himes of trying to avoid sitting with him on stage at a candidate forum in Norwalk in August. Throughout the rest of the hour and a half debate hosted by the League of Women voters, the candidates continued to spar.

They disagreed on how the country should move forward on health care, voting rights, immigration, guns and climate change. Arora called Himes a socialist; Himes said Republicans used that term only when they lacked good ideas of their own.

Himes, who worked at Goldman Sachs and the affordable housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners prior to his election in 2008, defended the Affordable Care Act, saying it has led to more people having health insurance, even if the system still had some kinks. He defended the need for the government to intervene in the health insurance market because a free market does not mean that everyone will have coverage, which he said was an American value.

(The ACA) dramatically improved the situation in health care in this country, Himes said.

Arora, a commodities trader who launched a Greenwich hedge fund after working at Enron and Amaranth Advisors, said the Affordable Care Act is uneven, unfair and inefficient. If he were designing a new health care system, he said he would separate people with pre-existing conditions into their own subsidized health care pool and allow healthy people more options.

Both candidates liked how the Obama-era law had provided coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and expanded Medicaid.

When discussing security for the Nov. 6 election, Arora said he supported voter identification laws and believed that voter fraud was a significant issue.

Fraud is a very big thing in elections we need to counter, he said. He brought up the idea during an unrelated question later in the debate adding, Elections are always won on the margin. The last one vote can influence the election.

Numerous studies on voting fraud have been conducted by universities and media outlets and concluded that incidence of voting fraud is infinitesimally small. News21, a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found just 56 cases of noncitizens voting between 2000 and 2011.

Himes pointed out this fact and suggested voter suppression is the real issue and is being pushed in red states to benefit Republican candidates.

Himes and Arora also disputed what percentage of illegal immigration is due to border crossings versus individuals over-staying their visas. Arora, who was born in India and became a U.S. citizen in 2004 after coming to the U.S. for graduate school, said he backed a compassionate but firm approach to illegal immigration, but was short on specifics of what that would entail.

Arora criticized Himes for opposing a House bill on immigration floated by the GOP in June, which provided $25 billion in funding for a border wall, barred the separation of children from their parents at the border and provided a legal path to citizenship for undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children  as long as border security funding was not reduced in the future.

The bill, endorsed by President Trump, overwhelmingly failed when 112 Republicans and all Democrats voted against it.

It was a brutal, brutal bill, said Himes, who was born in Peru. He favored a Senate bill that was never called in the House that would provide more money for border security (but not a wall, which he called stupid), create an e-verify system where employers could electronically check their job applicants citizenship status and supported a rigorous path to citizenship for people currently in the U.S. undocumented, setting criteria like holding down a job, learning English and paying a fine for breaking the law.

Both candidates agreed climate change was a priority, but pitched different visions for how to reduce carbon emissions.

Aroras plan was negotiation with other high-polluting countries. He wanted to convince other countries to reduce their carbon emissions before the United States takes more steps toward emission cutting. He worried about America being taken advantage of by other countries who continue to pollute and steal business from the regulated U.S.

Himes suggested the U.S. should lead on climate change by supporting automobile gas mileage requirements and regulating energy efficiency through building codes. He also supported a fully-refundable carbon tax.

While Himes appeared to have more supporters in the more than 200 person crowd, both candidates won some applause at times throughout the debate. During closing remarks, Himes won a standing ovation  and boos from a few  for promising to stand up to President Trump, listing many of his headline-grabbing comments.

Before Himes was elected in 2008, the 4th District Congressional seat was held by Republicans since 1989. Pitching himself as an independent lawmaker, Himes listed times when he has angered Wall Street and his party, through his authorship of the Dodd-Frank bill and his later vote to change it in 2016. Arora described Himes, who chairs a coalition of moderate Democrats as a rubber stamp for the Democratic party.HAMDEN  The Legislative Council unanimously accepted a $110,287.50 grant this week to fund the needed repair of the Chatterton Way Bridge, which spans Jepp Brook.

Town Engineer Mark Austin said in a letter to the council that the Chatterton Way Bridge was found to be in need of repairs in 2010, when the town assessed all the bridges in the community.

In the years since, the state Department of Transportation has determined it to be in fair to worse condition, and strongly recommends that it be repaired or replaced, Austin said.

The bridge project will encompass design, construction, and administration and consist of slip lining rehabilitation of the existing structure, reinforcement of the existing stone retaining walls and other ancillary improvements, Austin said. We will use our internal staff for plan design and administration and bid the repair work.

Mayor Curt B. Leng said the plan hopefully would allow the work to be done without a major impact on the neighborhood.

The proposed construction will allow us to rehabilitate the bridge in its existing location with what we hope will be minimal disruption to the neighborhood, Leng said in a statement.

The town was able to secure the funding through the 2018 State Local Bridge Program, Austin said. The measure was created by the state Legislature in 1984 to help municipalities defray the cost of bridge repair, according to the DOT.

In Connecticut, there are more than 3,400 bridges and culverts on municipally maintained roads. Construction and maintenance of these expensive structures is the responsibility of the cities and towns who own them, wrote DOT officials on the departments website. This program provides for State grants to municipalities for the removal, replacement, reconstruction or rehabilitation of local bridges.

The grant will pay for approximately half of the project, with the rest to come from existing bonded funds, Austin said.

Construction is expected to begin in April and be completed by the end of June, according to documentation submitted to the council.

Councilman Brad Macdowall, who represents the residents of Chatterton Way, said in a statement Friday he was pleased to see the repairs move forward.

Im really excited for the bridge to get some much-needed TLC. Town Engineer Mark Austin went above and beyond for the grant to make sure we are protecting the integrity of the bridge and the safety of those who use it, Macdowall said. We desperately need to repair the bridge, and Im very happy that it can be done with minimal cost to Hamden taxpayers.

william.lambert@hearst

mediact.comMIDDLETOWN  The state will soon begin a three-year project to erect an 8-foot high anti-suicide barrier along the entire length of the Charles J. Arrigoni Bridge as part of an overhaul expected to extend the spans usability by 40 years.

The state Department of Transportation is incorporating these preventative measures, which will replace the current railings and add 3 feet of height to the current 5-foot high ones, into its upcoming rebuild of the spans undergirding.

The walls would consist of thin wire mesh or non-clingable wire fencing, according to the DOT.

The $37 million project on the four-lane bridge over the Connecticut River between Middletown and Portland is scheduled to start in 2019, with an anticipated completion in fall 2021. That cost does not include the price for fencing, yet to be determined by the DOT.

Police have responded to more than 80 reports of possibly suicidal people on the bridge since 2008.

It will be difficult to defeat: Anyone with any intention of either thrill seeking or harming themself would find it extraordinarily challenging to defeat the fencing. The design makes it very hard to get over, and the height, said DOT spokesman Kevin J. Nursick.

A fence thats specifically anti-suicide of this caliber, Im not sure weve done that before, he said.

The Arrigoni Bridge, built in 1938, is 3,420 feet long, and consists of two three-hinged arch spans, each 600 feet long, over the river.

Safety measures such as the fence have enjoyed success in other areas, Mayor Dan Drew said in a post Saturday on his Facebook page.

The barriers will be very similar to fencing on the new Tappan Zee Bridge, or Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, in New York, which spans the Hudson River, the mayor said.

Research shows that many suicides are impulsive. When deterred, theyre often avoided altogether, said Drew, who added officials expect it will significantly reduce suicides from the bridge.

I was shocked, after my election in 2011, to learn of how many people take their own lives there. Youd be shocked, too, if you knew, as very few are actually reported, Drew said. The police and fire departments are often up there multiple times in a week to rescue people threatening to or considering jumping.

The main spans over the river, including the superstructure above and deck below (which has 5-foot fencing) were rehabilitated in a very encompassing project completed in November 2012, Nursick said.

When were rehabilitating the approach spans, the newest standards for a structure like this would be the 8-foot fencing, along the highway lead-ups to the bridge, Nursick said. It wouldnt make a whole lot of sense to leave the main spans without the 8-foot fencing.

The work will extend the bridges service life by about 40 years with routine maintenance. Traffic lanes are expected to be reduced to one lane in each direction during the deck replacement phase for about 18 months, according to the state.

Every bridge has a life cycle. As the structure ages, the level of work being performed generally increases in intensity, said Nursick, who likened it to someone who buys a new car. While the vehicle is in its first years, maintenance entails changing the oil, tires, brakes and other routine upkeep.

By the time you get to 100,000 miles, youre going to need more of a rehabilitation project for that car  maybe get the paint fixed, get an alignment, change the transmission fluid, get the A/C serviced.

The same thing happens with a bridge. You do the routine maintenance, but, at a certain point, overwhelmingly, farther out in the life span, you have to do something a lot more substantial like a rehabilitation or a complete replacement project, Nursick said, to keep it safe and extend the useful life of the bridge.

Its costly and a lot more intensive and thats to be expected when these bridges get to that age, he said.

Before the project begins, the DOT agreed to install six suicide prevention call signs, three on each side of the structure.

Middletown and Portland police have often been called to the bridge for incidents involving people intending to harm themselves.

Middletown Capt. Sean Moriarty, who retired last month, very likely saved a teen from jumping off the Arrigoni Bridge, he said.

The girl was about 15, and during the course of their 15- to 20-minute conversation, he convinced the girl to come down, Moriarty said.

She was not looking too good, leaning over the side of the bridge. We just chatted for a while. She had some issues at home and she had been thinking about going over.

Without having to use any force  just by talking and engaging with her  I was able to get her come down and get her the help she needed, Moriarty said.

Once complete, Nursick said, the barrier will be impossible for people to breach.

Theres no way youre getting over it. Those bridges have concrete parapets that acts as a countermeasure for vehicles going over the bridge. On top of that wall, you have fencing, it may be 5 feet, but when its 5-foot fencing on top of a concrete wall its awfully high now.

Its not mountable, Nursick said, pointing to chain-link fencing, which has openings large enough for people to get hand- and footholds.

This stuff very narrow holes, theres no place to get your feet or fingers into theres no way to get over it.

Managing Editor Cassandra Day can be reached at cassandra.day@hearstmediact.com or Twitter @cassandrasdis.Photo: Twitter/Lali

The provincial police officer who crashed into a car at high speed and killed a five-year-old boy during a surveillance operation will likely be sentenced to jail time.

The Crown and the defence submitted a joint proposal to the court today in Longueuil, Que. recommending that Patrick Ouellet be given an eight-month sentence.

The judge will render his decision at a later date.

Ouellet was convicted in July of dangerous driving causing the 2014 death of Nicolas Thorne-Belance.

The maximum sentence for the offence is 14 years in prison.

The police officer addressed the court today, expressing his sympathy to family members of Nicolas, who were in the courtroom.

Ouellet's trial heard he was travelling at more than 120 km/h in a 50 km/h zone when he hit the vehicle carrying the boy.NEW HAVEN  While Miranda Dunbar, an associate professor of biology at Southern Connecticut State University, studies the physiology and ecology of mammals, bats stick out to her for doing everything wrong as mammals  such as exhibiting reciprocal altruism and the ability to adapt to virtually any structure or habitat.

In fact, according to Dunbar, while humans tend to create negative connotations for nocturnal animals as creepy or evil, bats are not just clever, they also have some traits that humanity could stand to emulate, Dunbar said.

Were finding that bats have an enormous vocabulary of sorts, and it speaks volumes to their intelligence, she said in reference to the specific calls bats make.

They have calls only their friends recognize, calls only their family recognize and calls between parent and offspring that we liken to lullabies, she said.

But within the last decade, a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans has rapidly spread among the bat population in New England, cuasing an infection called white-nose syndrome. According to Dunbar, the effects leave a clump of white fuzz on bats muzzles and wings, which deteriorates the quality of their skin.

Its a devastating epidemic, she said.

Because the effects of white-nose syndrome often take place while bats are hibernating, Dunbar said bats are often awakened from their slumber during the winter so the immune system can take care of the infection, but they are subsequently emaciated when their fat reserves are spent during the hibernation period.

Rising global temperatures have created an atmosphere for the fungus to survive in colder months in cave settings, Dunbar said. Additionally, the fungus can often be transported into caves through human contact.

Connecticuts bat population

According to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, little brown bats and big brown bats are the two most common species in the state, and are much more populous than the other six species native to Connecticut.

The DEEP says a little brown bats wingspan is about 8-10 inches, whereas a big brown bats wingspan is about 1 foot.

Although the little brown bat species population has been destroyed by the white-nose syndrome infection, Dunbar said the research community has shifted to focus on positives: big brown bats appear to be surviving, she said. She anticipates that much of the research this winter will focus on what is unique about the survivors of white-nose syndrome.

Theres been a shift in the field, she said.

Although many people may hold a position of ambivalence, annoyance or fear toward bats, Dunbar said the animal is a major boon to Connecticuts ecosystem.

Bats provide more ecosystem services than so many other mammals, she said. Bats worldwide are pollinators and seed dispersers. Locally in Connecticut, they are natures best pesticide.

Bats feed on pests that pose a threat to summer recreation activities and crops and livestock. Dunbar said that, as the insect population increases, farmers are using more pesticides and the overall crop yield is falling. A A Citizens Guide to Creating Pollinator Habitat in Connecticut by Dr. Kimberly Stoner, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. notes that bats also serve as pollinators of some plant species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in an online post in September about $1 million in grants to 39 states and the District of Columbia to support the fight against the bat-killing fungal disease white-nose syndrome, noting that the disease has killed millions of North American bats in recent years, decimating many populations and putting several species at additional risk of extinction.

Bats are crucial to our nations farmers and foresters, helping control pest insects such as beetles and locusts and significantly reducing the amount of toxic pesticides that would otherwise be needed, according to the service. Studies estimate bats save farmers at least $3.7 billion per year in lost crop revenue and pesticide savings.

The funds will help states support a national strategy for the disease, which includes increasing bat survival rates, preventing further spread and preparing for the potential arrival of the disease in new areas, the wildlife service noted.

According to the DEEP, one little brown bat can eat 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour, which Dunbar said is two to three times the bats weight.

Additionally, while global warming appears to have led to the sustained viability of the white-nose syndrome fungus, it also increases the life span of the pests that bats ordinarily feed on, increasing the risk for a pandemic.

It begs the question of malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses that could require attention in the future, she said. Itll be interesting to look at bat decline and whether theres an increase in West Nile Virus.

The DEEP Wildlife Division has been actively engaged in studying WNS at the state, regional and national levels since 2007, officials said.

This issue is extremely important and has significant impacts to both ecosystem health and economics, DEEP spokesman Chris Collibee said. It continues to be one of our major research and management priorities. We are always happy to see that other partners have an interest in and concern for this devastating wildlife disease.

Dunbar said ecologists are showing interest in researching global health risks under global warming, and she expects there may be answers soon.

Even if people dont often see the nocturnal creatures, Dunbar said she suspects people may begin to notice bats absence if white-nose syndrome doesnt slow down.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.comNEW HAVEN  Donald Henry Lee called Milford police and threatened to kill himself because he was being discharged from Yale New Haven Hospital and had no place to go.

After being escorted from the hospital and told to come back if he felt suicidal or homicidal, Lee went to Milford Hospital, telling the admissions nurse, I just tried to kill myself.

Lee died the next morning, the third anniversary of his mothers death.

Lees sister, Tina Schwarz of Windham, Maine, was devastated by her brothers death. But she is also concerned, as a pediatric registered nurse who has worked with patients who have mental health issues, that that area of care is not given the resources it needs.

The problem affects all ages, she said. It just seems to be getting worse. I think its very difficult and its not an easy system for adults to access, with long waiting lists and doctors who wont see patients with diagnoses such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

Also, according to Angela Mattie, professor of health care management and organizational leadership at Quinnipiac University, who also teaches at Quinnipiacs Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, mental health treatment has become complicated by the opioid crisis, with many patients suffering both mental illness and addiction, and we as a society and a hospital industry are not equipped to deal with it, Mattie said.

Were flooding our emergency departments with these types of patients, Mattie said. Theyre not equipped for any long-term care for patients with psychiatric diagnoses or addiction diagnoses. There arent enough outpatient facilities either, she said.

Schwarz has another lesson she wants people to learn from her brothers suicide. She wants health care providers to help families be more aware of family members mental health issues, so that family members are aware of mental health needs and how desperate people can get.

The bottom line for Schwarz, however, is they should have monitored him for a longer period of time to assess him and possibly be able to access resources for him to not be so desperate ... or reach out to me to help him. Those are guidelines from the Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals and other health care providers.

Vincent Petrini, senior vice president of policy and communications at Yale New Haven, issued a statement that said: While we cannot comment on the specifics of this situation, it clearly underscores the extraordinary complexity that surrounds these types of cases. Our team is dedicated to ensuring that we provide the highest level of care for all patients in distress and work hard to address all underlying issues and concerns. We share in the grief of the family and friends of this patient and will continue to focus on addressing the devastating outcomes of illness.

Schwarz had only recently been in regular contact with her brother; their relationship was not close in recent years. From what she was able to piece together from a police arrest report, hospital records and from Lees caseworker at the Bridges Healthcare agency in Milford, Schwarz came to the conclusion that Lee, 48, who had a history of threatening and attempting suicide, could have been saved.

The doctor who discharged her brother stated that Lee was suicidal because he was homeless, not because he was mentally ill (Lee was bipolar, according to hospital records), and therefore there was no reason to keep him in the hospital, records show. His sister said she believes that the reason for someones threat shouldnt matter, and that since her brother told medical staff he would kill himself he should have been kept under watch.

At elevated risk for self-harm

Lee had been brought to the hospital because he had threatened suicide during a court hearing for his arrest after getting into a fight with his roommate and losing his apartment.

He was admitted to the Emergency Department at Yale New Haven at 12:35 p.m. on Dec. 14, his hospital records show. The next morning, he was irritable and upset because his phone had been lost (the hospital sent it to Schwarz after her brothers death).

According to a nurses notes in Lees chart, at 1 p.m. Dec. 15, Lee was notified that he would be discharged today. [Patient] not in agreement with plan. The nurse noted that Lee called Milford police and expressed SI [suicidal ideation] during call. The police in turn called a psychiatric social worker and the psychiatrist who was discharging Lee.

Yet, at 1:07, the doctor wrote, [Patient] at elevated risk for self-harm but driver of presentation seems to be lack [of] housing as opposed to psychiatric illness. Unfortunately, [patient] rejecting of housing options (emergency shelter) that have been offered. Suicidal threats are conditional on housing. Do not think that [patient] has acute psychiatric condition that is treatable with further hospitalization.

Forty-eight minutes later, Lee was escorted off unit by staff, according to the nurses notes.

I think that he was in such a state of impulsiveness and just being distraught over the court issues and being homeless that if they had kept him another 24 hours, he might have gotten past that, Schwarz said. He was in such an acute state of distress. Who knows what would have happened.

Schwarz tried to text her brother after he left the hospital, but, since his phone was lost, he never received it.

Lee showed signs of distress from the time he arrived at Yale New Haven, telling a nurse, When you all discharge me from here I am going to kill myself as soon as I get out, according to his records. He threatened to overdose on his medication and lie down on the railroad tracks.

Schwarz doesnt know why her brother went to Milford Hospital but said a security officer saw Lee sitting on a bench before he entered the hospital. From what I could piece together, from all the information I had, he was out there for about an hour taking all the medications he could take, she said.

He was admitted at 6:26 p.m. on Dec. 15, according to his Milford Hospital records, with a diagnosis of poisoning by butyrophenone and thiothixene neuroleptics, intentional self-harm. Both drugs are anti-psychotic medications.

But Milford Hospitals medical records state, under presenting symptoms: [Patient] states I just tried to kill myself. States was released from Yale and told them he would so he took 45 Mg Klonopin, 15 tabs of haloperidol, 100 metoformin [sic] 100 mg and 3 bottles of lantus, and a bottle of glipizide, patient unsteady.

Klonopin is used to treat anxiety, panic disorders and seizures. Haloperidol (sold as Haldol) is an anti-psychotic drug; Metformin and Glipizide are used to treat diabetes. Lantus is a brand name for insulin.

The medical history goes on to state that Lee at first had stable vital signs and was alert and oriented. He rapidly became lethargic and was intubated. Lees blood pressure dropped and his heart rate rose to 140 beats per minute. As time went on, his kidneys failed. He went into shock.

At 9:28 a.m. Dec. 16, the records state, The patients sister has been contacted and told that he is in critical condition and is unlikely to live through this. She will call his estranged children. Lee had two daughters, Schwarz said.

Lee died at 9:43 a.m.

I tried to call back right after his death to try to talk to the doctors who were covering him and nobody called me back, Schwarz said.

My biggest regret is not calling my brother to follow up on that Friday (Dec. 15), Schwarz said. I assumed that I would be contacted if he was discharged or for follow-up discussion (as I had been called when he was admitted on Thursday  or that he would call me. I drove home from work Friday  thinking I should call him on my drive home, but did not have the number accessible. My next thought was I would call the next day on Saturday. I never had that chance.

Confusion and anger

Schwarz said that, while her brother could be difficult, particularly with medical professionals, at Yale New Haven, compared to other past hospitalizations, he was pretty cooperative overall until he found he was being discharged. He got pretty angry and upset.

Schwarz, who began her career at Yale New Haven Childrens Hospital, said she believes that her brothers threats to kill himself were a signal that he should not have been discharged.

It confuses me and makes me angry, given this man, who had past suicide attempts  comes into the hospital saying hes suicidal, repeats his intention the next morning, and hes medically cleared because his suicidal thoughts werent due to any medical illness or psychiatric illness. It was just due to the fact that he didnt have a home, Schwarz said.

In all of my professional practice, we always ask, Do you have a plan? Because if you have a plan then thats a problem, she said. His pattern in the past if a situation he was in overwhelmed him  he would get angry and impulsively ingest medication that he had available. She said Lee had overdosed in the past on medication.

The Joint Commission issued a Sentinel Event Alert in February 2016 about detecting and treating suicide in all settings. Mattie said the Joint Commissions guidance addresses suicide on three levels:

First, if a patient is in acute suicidal crisis, a safe health care environment under one-to-one observation is called for, Mattie said. If the patient is at low risk of self-harm, they make referrals to behavioral health and other providers within one week, she said. Finally, if someone is thinking about suicide but not planning to act on those thoughts, the provider should give them the number to the national suicide hotline and restrict access to lethal means. The hospital should assess the patients state of mind multiple times, according to the Joint Commission.

While Connecticut has one of the lowest suicide rates in the country, according to spokeswoman Diana Lejardi of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, the numbers have been rising. According to the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the number of suicides has risen every year since 2013, from 333 to 402 in 2017. The National Suicide Prevention Lifelines number is 800-273-TALK (273-8255).

But the guidance doesnt always mirror the real world. Its all well and good in theory, but what happens is we dont have psychiatric beds. We are woefully underbedded for psychiatric beds, Mattie said.

Our lack of ability to address these issues is really a poor statement for our society, Mattie said. Its a problem thats not going to go away. For every bed in the emergency room taken up by a psychiatric patient who were probably ineffectively treating  were causing a backup for someone who may be having a heart attack.

Kind of a jokester

Donald Lee had not had an easy life. He was bipolar and diabetic and struggled with drug abuse. He was kind of a typical teenager who got into trouble occasionally, but he was pretty mild-mannered than most people I knew, Schwarz said. He was easy to get along with when we were growing up. He was kind of a jokester.

But Lee grew apart from his family, Schwarz said. Also, three years before his death, two uncles had died close together and his mother had died 10 months later.

When I would see him in passing over the years, he was very happy to see me in those moments of time, but it was difficult to maintain a relationship with him, Schwarz said. When he opened up this line of communication the last time, I was hopeful.

What I want is this to not happen to anybody else, Schwarz said. No family member to deal with this and I want to make sure that something happens there. 

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382.WEST HAVEN  The dead will walk  and talk  again Saturday evening when the West Haven Historical Society holds its annual Graveyard Lantern Tour on the Green.

The program, a local tradition, will run from 5-7 p.m. Tickets are $5 for adults and $2 for children 12 and under and must be purchased at the Poli House, 686 Savin Ave., the night of the event.

Groups of 15-20 people at a time will be escorted from the Poli House to the Green for the start of the graveyard tour. Free cider and doughnuts will be available for those attending.

This year, the society will bring to life some of the best-known men and women who are household names that most West Haveners will recognize.

One of those individuals is Alma Pagels, a Swedish immigrant who lived to 101 years old and was a longtime teacher and principal in West Haven, for whom Pagels School is named.

Also making an appearance will be Israel Kelsey, an entrepreneur and businessman, son of George Kelsey, the man who is largely credited with establishing Savin Rock, and who was one of the richest men in West Haven.

Hannah Candee Painter, wife of Thomas Painter, will be one of several women who will make an appearance and discuss her life with one of West Havens most famous citizens. Painters husband is the man portrayed on the citys flag, who warned people that the British were about to invade the town on July 5, 1779.

Several other West Haven citizens will talk about their lives and contributions to the community, which dates back to 1648 when West Farms was first settled.

The deceased people will be portrayed by students from the University of New Haven, continuing a tradition that began several years ago.

Several members of the Historical Society will join with students in creating the appearances.NEW HAVEN  Dr. Michael Simons, a cardiologist at the Yale School of Medicine whose endowed chair at the school was removed last month and who was accused of sexual misconduct against a junior researcher in 2014, has sued the university and President Peter Salovey to regain his appointment.

Simons, who was suspended as chief of cardiology for five years because of an amorous letter he wrote to a female junior colleague, now an associate professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and was accused of harassing her as well, blamed the loss of his appointment on public pressure from self-styled activists who issued an ultimatum to Simons on Sept. 20 when he was in London, where he has a residence, the lawsuit states. He was told to either resign from his prestigious endowed chair at the Yale School of Medicine, or the appointment would be taken from him, according to the lawsuit.

Simons complaint states that he was given a deadline of noon Sept. 21. He filed his lawsuit that day, claiming that he will suffer catastrophic reputational harm that cannot be compensated in monetary terms in the absence of judicial relief.

Simons, whose suspension as chief of cardiology was later shortened to 18 months but who has not retaken the position, wrote in an email to the New Haven Register in 2014: I have taken responsibility for what I did, briefly pursue a junior but not subordinate colleague. But the latest charges used to justify the Medical Schools actions are both false and defamatory and I am deeply troubled by them. Simons also had been removed as director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, which is composed of more than 110 undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral trainees and faculty, despite promises that would not happen, his complaint states.

Simons case became public again earlier this year when he was removed as the Robert W. Berliner Professor of Medicine, an endowed chair to which he was appointed in 2008, and instead given the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professorship of Cardiology.

Simons suit states that Salovey wrote to him June 22 to congratulate him on the new chair, saying that endowed chairs are awarded to those whose scholarship has brought distinction to the university and that I am delighted to convey our pleasure in your accomplishments.

However, after complaints that Simons had been given a new honor despite his sexual misconduct, Yales Office of Public Affairs and Communications issued a clarification on Sept. 6, which stated: In the past months, the Berliner family expressed concerns that Dr. Simons continued to hold this professorship. In light of these concerns and to appropriately honor the newly recruited School of Medicine Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine, the Berliner Professorship was reassigned to Dr. Eric Velazquez, and Dr. Simons accepted a transfer to the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professorship. In making this transfer, the University had no intention to confer a new honor on Dr. Simons.

Dr. Robert Berliner, who died in 2002, was a former dean of the Yale School of Medicine.

However, more than 600 Yale medical school faculty, students and alumni wrote an open letter to Salovey to voice our disgust and disappointment with this decision, according to a Yale Daily News report. That number has since grown to 1,000, according to the student newspaper.

In his lawsuit, Simons characterizes the opposition to his receiving the new honor as activists loosely affiliated with an emerging movement galvanized by an intolerance to perceived sexual misconduct, known colloquially by the symbol #MeToo.

Then on Sept. 20, medical school Dean Robert Alpern gave Simons until noon the next day to resign or the chair would be taken away, the lawsuit states. Simons claims Alpern told him Yale would pay him an annual amount equivalent to the payout from the chair, approximately $140,000 per year, with adjustments each year to reflect the expected growth in the financial value of the chair.

Alpern wrote an email to the medical school community on Sept. 21 announcing that he had removed Simons from the Von Zedtwitz professorship. When Dr. Michael Simons was transferred from the Berliner Chair to the Von Zedtwitz Chair, it was not my or the universitys intention to confer a new honor on Dr. Simons. An endowed chair is an honor, but our intention in transferring chairs was not to bestow a new honor on the chair holder, Alpern wrote.

However, it has become clear that members of our community perceive the transfer of chairs as bestowing a new honor, and that this action is viewed as a statement about our values. I acknowledge the strength of the communitys perception, and I am extremely concerned about its impact on the communitys well-being, he said.

Simons states in the lawsuit that he is widely regarded as one of the nations leading cardiologists and that Yales action will irreparably harm him by limiting his ability to obtain grants, publish papers and will undermine the significant progress Dr. Simons has made, and is making, combating cardiovascular disease.

He calls the removal of his honor unconscionable, a violation of his contract and says the universitys unseemly pandering to the rage of activists is a disproportionate response to those whose sensibilities are perhaps too tender to appreciate Dr. Simonss need not [to] pay for a lifetime for an offense that has already been adjudicated and put to rest.

The Yale Daily News quoted a statement from the executive board of the Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine, which said, Regardless of the outcome of one lawsuit, the energy surrounding this is going to inspire the university and the med school to look harder at these issues and make progress forward against sexual harassment in terms of enduring policy changes.  It should also galvanize the administration to examine issues affecting gender and race inequality in general.

On Sept. 5, the Yale Women Faculty Forum issued a report stating that sanctions against faculty members who are found guilty of sexual misconduct often do not punish the offender in any substantial way and said graduate and professional students especially need better protections against sexual misconduct.

Simons is represented by lawyer Norman Pattis. Both Simons and Pattis were asked for further comment. Yale Universitys communications office also has been asked for comment. The Register also emailed the doctor whom Simons approached in 2013. None has yet to respond.

Offering the chance to have a faculty position named for them or someone they wish to honor is one way Yale appeals to donors. According to a Yale website, Endowed chairs enable Yale to attract outstanding academic talent to the faculty. Because the endowment secures the position itself, it enables Yale to appoint a distinguished professor whenever a position becomes vacant, building a tradition of leadership in the selected discipline. The endowed chair is widely recognized as the most prestigious honor a university can bestow on an accomplished faculty member.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382.India and Croatia on Monday signed two agreements to facilitate cultural exchange and diplomatic cooperation.

The agreements were signed and exchanged by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Croatian counterpart Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

The two leaders discussed stepping up cooperation in political, trade and investment, health and pharmaceuticals, science and technology, tourism and culture. They also exchanged views on multilateral cooperation.

Buric, who is on a one-day visit to India, is the first Croatian foreign minister to visit the country after 17 years.

-ANIDespite misleading claims by opponents, including the Connecticut Business & Industry Association , the Connecticut Retirement Security Program is not a state-run retirement plan. CBIA refuses to acknowledge the facts about what the program actually does and the positive impact it will have for Connecticut businesses and residents.

It is a completely legal, private sector solution to a growing retirement savings crisis and a September survey of more than 800 age 50+ voters  of all political leanings  found that 77 percent support the program.

The plan is built on statistics from the Boston College Center for Retirement Research that shows Americans face a $7 trillion retirement savings deficit. That is the difference between what people have saved and what they need to save for retirement. We know that less than 5 percent of people walk into a bank and open an IRA account, yet that number increases by 15 times if offered the ability to save through automatic payroll deduction.

Lets be clear about the responsibilities of businesses in Connecticut under the new law. It does not apply to a business that already offers a pension, 401K or other retirement savings vehicle. Businesses with five or more employees that dont have a retirement savings option must offer the employee the opportunity to participate in the new program or any other qualified retirement savings option they choose.

It is disingenuous to claim that employers will be responsible for selling participation to their employees. The law states no such thing. Employers are only required to distribute provided materials about the retirement savings option to their employees. They must transmit employee savings contributions to the vendor selected by the employee. This will be no different than any other payroll withholding a business is already responsible for, such as Social Security, FICA, health care, and others .

Employers who did not offer retirement plans in the workplace due to a lack of adequate resources to manage such plans, or a lack of ability to access a plan that does not eat up the employee savings in exorbitant fees, will now have the ability to do so. The truth is that there will be little if any cost to a business for any aspect of this program and the ability to offer a savings program is likely to make small businesses more competitive, not less.

Employees will have the ability to opt out of this voluntary program. If they choose to participate, they can select the percentage of their pay that they want save. The default rate is 3 percent, however employees can increase or decrease that amount based on the limits in effect under federal rules established for all Roth IRA accounts.

The CRSP is a conservative approach to solve an impending retirement savings disaster. Several states are already implementing similar plans, without partisan or business opposition. The CSRP will help alleviate Connecticuts fiscal problems by helping to make residents better prepared for retirement through a partnership with private investors and businesses. If we can get residents to save at least $1,000 a year over 10 years, the state can save more than $90 million in social services programs. This is the right solution at the right time.

Nora L. Duncan is state director of AARP Connecticut.Police are asking for the public's help in identifying a masked man who robbed Valley National Bank of $10,000 on Saturday.

Police are asking for the public's help in identifying the masked man who robbed a Hackensack bank of $10,000. (Courtesy Hackensack Police)

At around 12:30 p.m., the man - clad in a green jacket and his face concealed with a black cap and grey cloth - approached a bank teller at the branch in Hackensack and demanded money, police said.

He displayed an unknown object wrapped in black duct tape to the teller, who complied and placed about $10,000 in cash in the robber's bag, authorities said.

The man fled on foot and was last seen headed towards the Target across the street, cops said.

Authorities searched the area, including the use of a Bergen County Sheriff's K-9 team, but were unable to find any leads.

Police are asking anyone with information to contact police at 201-646-7761.

Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have a tip? Tell us.UPDATE: Search continues for Jersey Shore fisherman who went missing at beach

Friends and family as well as local police are still looking for a fisherman who disappeared after he went to an Ocean City beach early Saturday to go crabbing and didn't return.

Sam DeLarso's family became concerned when he hadn't returned to his Somers Point home around 5 p.m., according to his daughter, Samantha DeLarso.

One of DeLarso's sons then went to to the spot on the northern end of Ocean City that his father has frequented for decades and found his truck and some crabbing gear in the vehicle, Samantha DeLarso said by phone Monday afternoon.

The family then called police and the U.S. Coast Guard was later notified.

Samantha DeLarso said a witness who was on the beach that morning saw a man in waist-deep water between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. His daughter said her 53-year-old father was going to gather crabs for bait so the family could go fishing later that day.

"We were waiting on him and he just never showed up with the bait," she said of her father. "We all eat, breathe and live fishing. At 5 o'clock we said, something's wrong. Physically, he can't be on his feet for that long."

MISSING PERSON!!!! I never in 1 million years thought Id have to make a post like this but my dad, Sam DeLarso, is... Posted by Samantha DeLarso on Sunday, October 21, 2018

Small boats searched the area through the evening Saturday for the married father of a three adult children with help from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Shearwater, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

The Coast Guard resumed looking for the fisherman at first light Sunday with help from Ocean City police, which conducted a search of the shoreline. The U.S. Coast Guard called off the search at 1 p.m.

An Ocean City spokesman said the search resumed Monday morning.

Friends and family who have boats are also out searching the back bays in the area for any sign of DeLarso, a lifelong fisherman. Even people from the area who the family doesn't know have offered assistance, Samantha DeLarso said.

"Everyone's keeping their eyes open," his daughter said.

Police describe DeLarso as 5-foot-10, 200 pounds. He was last seen wearing wearing blue jeans, a button down shirt and waders.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.When a teacher accused of sexually assaulting two students asked one of his alleged victims not to report him to police, the victim asked, "What if I tell the truth?"

"If you tell the truth, I'll go to jail and my family will be destroyed," he allegedly replied.

Cumberland County prosecutors laid out these details from a recording of the conversation during a Monday morning detention hearing for Isaias Garza, head teacher with the Bridgeton Public Schools' ExCEL program, an accelerated learning program for middle school students.

Garza, 50, of Vineland, is charged with multiple counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault and second-degree sexual assault, as well as one count of second-degree official misconduct and one count of witness tampering.

After hearing arguments, Superior Court Judge Joseph Chiarello granted Garza's pre-trial release.

A round of applause from about 60 of Garza's friends and family broke out in the gallery after Garza was ordered released. His supporters, some of whom hugged in the hallway after the hearing, declined to comment.

The alleged assaults occurred more than a decade ago at the district's ExCEL program building on Washington Street, at Garza's home and at a victim's home, prosecutors allege.

The kids were allegedly assaulted on various occasions between 2004 and 2008, starting when they were 13.

Prosecutors say Garza contacted one of the now-adult victims multiple times recently and asked him not to speak with police. He allegedly offered the victim money to remain quiet.

The first victim came forward in September and suggested police speak with one of his siblings, who may have also been victimized, Assistant Prosecutor Rosina Rachuba explained during Monday's hearing.

Investigators interviewing Garza about the allegations made by the first victim asked if the second child had ever spent the night at his home in Vineland. While he initially said he did not, Garza later said that the child had stayed over three times, Rachuba stated.

Twenty minutes after completing that interview on Sept. 24, Garza arrived at a restaurant where the second victim worked and urged him not to speak with police, Rachuba said. Investigators have a recording of that conversation.

And more visits followed, culminating in an Oct. 11 meeting, which the victim also recorded, in which Garza promises money.

"I don't have much, but what I can give you I'll give you with love," Rachuba stated Garza told the victim. "I'll protect you. I'll help you with your papers. You don't have to talk."

The victims are undocumented immigrants.

Garza allegedly counseled the victim to say the sleepovers were innocent events and that he repeatedly visited Garza's house because he admired the teacher's family.

Rachuba argued against Garza's release, pointing to his alleged efforts to tamper and saying that he poses a danger to the victims.

Defense attorney Kevin McCann questioned why Garza didn't try to influence the first alleged victim and countered that his recent contacts with the second victim began when that young man reached out to Garza to say police were asking him questions.

Garza counseled his former student to tell the truth, McCann said, but also told him that he wasn't obligated to speak to police. As for his visits to the restaurant, McCann noted that Garza is close friends with the owner and dines there often.

McCann noted that supporters had written 50 to 60 letters of support for his client. Garza, who is a U.S. citizen, came here from his native Mexico in the early 1990s and has worked for the Bridgeton district for more than 23 years.

"This guy is a pillar of the community," McCann told the judge.

In granting his release, Chiarello noted that Garza has no criminal record. The judge made several conditions for release, however, including that he have no contact with the victims, not return to the business where the second victim works until the case is resolved, and report weekly to court administration. He also must surrender his passport.

Garza is suspended with pay pending the outcome of the case and is barred from entering school property.

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.UNION CITY -- The two side exchanged discovery evidence in court this morning as the case of the a Jersey City police officer accused of leaving the scene of a Hoboken crash moved a step closer to trial.

Attorneys for Officer Pedro Clavero and the other driver, Carmen Compres, spoke briefly at the hearing in Union City Municipal Court before Judge Kenneth Lindenfelser set Nov. 19 at 11 a.m. for the next hearing. The matter was moved to Union City because Compres is employed by Hoboken as a crossing guard.

Clavero, who said on the accident report that the crash occurred while he was on duty in a marked police vehicle and responding to a call, has filed a counter complaint against Compres, 62, of Hoboken. Clavero says Compres failed to yield to an emergency vehicle during the incident on June 14 at 2:33 p.m.

Compres said this morning that discovery evidence includes video that captured the crash. Discovery is evidence that each side can be requested from the other that could be used in the trial. The exchange of the evidence allows each side to prepare for the trial.

Compres was annoyed that Clavero has not pleaded guilty to the leaving-the-scene-of-the-accident charge, and that the matter is now slated for a fifth hearing. Prior to the hearing, she said "This could happen to anybody. It could happen to you."

On the day of the crash, Compres was driving her Subaru Forester north on Jackson Street toward the intersection of Paterson Avenue. She said she heard the siren of an emergency vehicle but did not see one, according to the crash report.

She previously told The Jersey Journal that she saw no flashing lights and continued through the intersection. That's when Clavero's Ford Explorer slammed into the front driver side of the Subaru, according to the crash report.

Compres said she made eye contact with the driver in the marked police SUV, but he did not get out. She said the Ford backed up and drove away. Her vehicle suffered an estimated $1,500 in damage, she said.

Hoboken investigators found a license plate at the scene that connected Clavero to the crash, a source said.

A Jersey City spokeswoman previously said Clavero was responding to a call at the time of the crash. She also said the crash and its aftermath are under investigation within the department and that Clavero's job status has not changed as a result of the incident.

Clavero is represented by Steven Sciancalepore and Compres is represented by Rafael A. Triunfel.JERSEY CITY  Council members are breathing a sigh of relief after a Hudson County Superior Court judge on Friday ruled the council does not have to hold another vote on the potential relocation of the Katyn monument.

Judge Peter Bariso's decision means the council can skip a second public hearing focused on the Katyn statue. The first Katyn hearing, at the council's June 13 meeting, lasted for six hours and kept council members on the dais until 3 a.m.

Bariso's ruling also sets the stage for a special election that will ask voters whether to repeal the council's June 13 ordinance that authorized moving the Katyn statue from Exchange Place to York Street.

It's not clear when that referendum will be scheduled. It must be held before the end of the year and it cannot be held on Election Day because the deadline to add questions to that ballot passed in August.

The Exchange Place monument commemorates the 1940 massacre of over 20,000 Polish people by the Soviet Union. The city has proposed moving it one block south, saying the relocation will allow local business group Exchange Place Alliance to build a city park where the statue now stands. Opponents of that plan say the park can be built around the statue.

After the council voted at its June 13 meeting to move the statue, a committee of voters formed to repeal that ordinance. It collected enough petitions to force the council to reconsider their action.

On Sept. 12, the council was faced with introducing a measure that would have rescinded the June 13 ordinance. Of the eight members present, three voted yes and five abstained. City Clerk Robert Byrne declared the measure a failure, meaning it would not advance for a second vote and public hearing.

The committee challenged Byrne's decision, arguing the measure passed first reading because there were three yes votes and zero no votes. Bariso rejected that argument, ruling that the council's rules state that measures cannot pass unless they receive an affirmative vote by a majority of council members present.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.JERSEY CITY -- A 20-year-old Jersey City man originally charged with murdering a 17-year-old boy at a church party and wounding two girls will face eight years in prison after pleading guilty to reckless manslaughter.

Daequan Jackson also pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault for wounding the girls, who were 12 and 16 years old at the time of the Aug. 9, 2016 shooting during a party in the basement of Holy Ghost Tabernacle Ministries on Communipaw Avenue, officials.

Jackson is expected to be sentenced to eight years for the reckless manslaughter of Leander Williams, 17, and he will have to serve nearly seven years before becoming eligible for parole. He is to be sentenced to two five-year terms for the aggravated assault counts. All terms will run concurrently, officials said.

He also faced gun charges, but those will to be dismissed as part of the plea deal agreed to on Oct. 5 before Hudson County Superior Court Mirtha Ospina in the Hudson County Administration Hearing. Ospina will sentence Jackson on Jan. 4.

Officials said Leander was carrying a gun when he was shot twice in the head near the front door of the crowded church hall. The 16-year-old girl suffered a wound to her upper body. The 12-year-old girl ran to nearby Crown Fried Chicken with wounds to her upper body, officials said.

During pretrial motions, Hudson County Superior Court Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez ruled that a particular video would be admissible at trial, but that other photographs and videos depicting Williams with a gun or guns would not be admissible as it would be cumulative in nature, a court document says.

Galis-Menendez also ruled that the victim's juvenile record would not be admissible at trial, according to court documents.

A warrant had been issued for Jackson's arrest on Aug. 18, 2016 and his photo was published in The Jersey Journal and other media outlets across the area. He surrendered a few days later.

Jackson would have faced 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murder at trial.A 43-year-old man admitted Friday to posting a threatening message on Facebook next to a picture of U.S. Rep. Chris Smith.

DeReal Finklin, a Plainfield resident, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree cyber harassment.

Finklin spent 91 days in jail after he was arrested in July and will not receive any additional time. However, he will get probation, a mental health evaluation and was ordered to have no additional contact with Smith.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

In a statement announcing the plea deal, Smith, R-4th Dist., said he asked prosecutors to "consider a path forward that is most likely to ensure that Mr. Finklin gets the mental health care he appears to critically need."

DeReal Finklin appears in court on August 10. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Finklin's aunt, Gwen Jones, previously told NJ Advance Media that "he should be in a mental health institution, not a courtroom.

"He doesn't have to be treated differently, but he needs to be treated fairly because of those issues," she said.

Finklin was arrested after a retired law enforcement officer spotted a Facebook message from an account called "Israel Bey" that showed a picture of Smith with the message "Dead Man Walking," authorities have said. He also posted the following message: "Anybody outside of my blood in Monmouth or Ocean County on my Facebook account, you are dead."

Monmouth County Superior Court Judge James J. McGann saw those posts as a credible threat to the community and decided to keep Finklin behind bars.

Smith represents parts of Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean counties, and he has local offices in Freehold, Plumsted and Hamilton.

He is up for re-election in November and faces a challenge from Democrat Josh Welle.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the town where Finklin is from. He is from Plainfield.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tipsTwo Neptune Township teenagers on Monday admitted their role in a shooting earlier this year that left a 10-year-old boy dead and his mother wounded.

Karon Council, 18, and Jah-Del Birch, 17, were each charged with murder in the Feb. 21 slaying of Yovanni Banos-Merino, who was in his Asbury Park apartment when Council opened fire at the residence. Council's accomplice, Birch, was with him when the incident occurred. They were each facing 30 years to life in prison.

Both Council and Birch pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated manslaughter, which carries a sentence of 10 to 30 years in prison. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors will recommend Council, who also admitted to second-degree possession of a weapon, be sentenced to 25 years in prison. Prosecutors are seeking a 10-year prison sentence for Birch. Both teens, who also pleaded guilty to second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, will need to serve at least 85 percent of the sentence before they are eligible for parole.

Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 11.

A spokesman for the prosecutor's office, Charles Webster, said prosecutors consulted with the family of Banos-Merino before agreeing to the deals.

Yovanni Banos-Merino, 10, was shot in his home in Asbury Park. (Submitted photo)

Banos-Merino was in his first-floor Ridge Avenue apartment when Council and Birch came to his home because they had an issue with the young boy's brother, Council's attorney, Paul Zager, previously told NJ Advance Media.

Court documents said a woman who answered the door told Council and Birch that the person they were looking for was not home. A short time later, the documents state, Council and Birch returned to the house and Council opened fire.

Banos-Merino was fatally wounded by gunfire. His mother also suffered a gunshot wound, but she was treated and released from an area hospital, authorities have said.

After the shooting occurred, Council fled to South Florida where he was arrested by U.S. Marshal's.

A spokesman for the Marshal's said Council, who went by the street name "Boogie," was a member of the Bloods gang. However, that was not confirmed by members of law enforcement in New Jersey.

Editor's Note: An initial version of this story inaccurately reported the terms of the plea agreements. Both Council and Birch will need to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences before they are eligible for parole.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tipsAt least two buildings collapsed as crews battled a massive, multi-alarm fire that destroyed several businesses in Dover's commercial district Monday.

Helicopter footage of the scene showed flames shooting through the roof of one building and thick smoke pouring from the blaze, near West Blackwell and Warren streets. Smoke continued to rise from the burned debris as of late Monday night, some five hours after initial reports of a fire.

Four buildings or portions of the structures collapsed, according to Dover Public Safety Director Daniel DeGroot.

Live video from the scene shared on Twitter captured one building collapse as authorities moved bystanders further away from the scene.

Building collapsed as firefighters battle 7 alarm blaze in downtown Dover. Fire still raging out of control. pic.twitter.com/hhzWx1ednq  Anthony Johnson (@AJohnsonwabc7) October 22, 2018

Multiple area fire departments worked to battle the flames as of 7:15 p.m, he said. There were no reported injuries.

The fire was initially reported around 3:30 p.m. as smoke in Barry's Luncheonette on North Warren Street, according to DeGroot.

NewsCopter 7 is over the scene as firefighters battle a fire in Dover, New Jersey. https://t.co/pFxB7irHWW  Eyewitness News (@ABC7NY) October 22, 2018

"Please stay clear of the area until the fire has been contained and everyone is safe," Dover Mayor James P. Dodd said in a Facebook post shortly after 4 p.m.

#BREAKING: DOVER,NJ (Morris County) - Firefighters on scene of a multiplie alarm fire at 3 N Warren St. Dover Mayor James Dodd told RNJ 4 buildings have collapsed. pic.twitter.com/YtvFjCADWj  Jay Edwards (@JayEdwardsWrnj) October 22, 2018

Raging 6 alarm fire burns in Dover, NJ. So far no reports of injury but half a dozen towns helping to battle the blaze. pic.twitter.com/ewtDca1vDS  Anthony Johnson (@AJohnsonwabc7) October 22, 2018

Officials could not immediately provide more details. It was unclear how many people were displaced by the blaze. The damaged buildings appeared to include storefronts with apartments above.

Moment the building collapsed in Dover, NJ today during a 7th alarm building fire. Posted by Anthony Preziosi on Monday, October 22, 2018

A spokesman for the Morris County Prosecutor's Office said an investigation was underway, but could not provide more details.

BREAKING: A 7-alarm fire here in #Dover continues to wreak havoc on the city. @DoddMayor tells us every time crews make progress in knocking this fire down, it starts right back up again. Stay tuned for all the latest details tonight on @FiOS1NewsNJ pic.twitter.com/MMnpT2xB19  Stephen Milewski (@TheSkiReport) October 22, 2018

Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook.The GOP never met a method of voter disenfranchisement it didn't like. Gerrymandering, voter purges, closing polling places, limiting early voting, even pulling old folks off buses...One thing is clear, Republicans don't want you to vote. They lead the nation in creative disenfranchisement.

The finest GOP minds of a generation have spent decades figuring out ways to keep demographics they find undesirable from the polls, and it has worked. Half the nation doesn't bother to show up even during presidential elections so as you can imagine traditional turnout for midterms is appallingly low.

When voter ID laws, enacted to combat non-existent voter fraud, don't work they resort to blunter methods like removing minority voters from the rolls. Take the Georgia governor's race for example. Georgia's secretary of state has been challenging thousands of minority voter's registration in advance of this November's election.

The Democrat in Georgia, Stacey Abrams, has the chance to be the first African-American woman ever elected governor in the state of Georgia. The secretary of state's actions have obviously provided great benefit to Abram's opponent, who just happens to be the same secretary of state.

His name is Brian Kemp and, you guessed it, he's a Republican. This is similar to what's happening in North Dakota, right now, where Sen. Heidi Hietkamp is in a close race to retain her U.S. Senate seat. Thousands of Native Americans had an extra obstacle to voting thrown their way with the introduction of new voter ID requirements. This would disproportionately affect Native Americans due to some ridiculously specific address requirements.

When encouraging voters that their vote won't matter doesn't work, Republicans will straight up take your vote away.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.Jay Webber has been doing his best to cast Democrat Mikie Sherrill, his opponent for the 11th district seat in Congress, as the dark, fire-breathing radical in this race. But in reality, he is the fringe candidate.

This is not just because of her sterling background as a Navy veteran, helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, or sensible defense of our health care coverage or gun safety, a good fit for the northern suburbs of our state.

It's also Webber's bear hug of President Trump and a Republican party that's careened to the far right, along with Webber's alarming record in New Jersey, where he's been a strict ideologue in the state legislature, that show he's far too extreme for this district.

Let's look at the facts. To start, the relatively moderate Republican retiring from this seat, Rodney Frelinghuysen, and Rep. Leonard Lance (R-7th dist.), both voted against their own party's giant tax cuts that primarily benefitted the wealthiest and corporations, and particularly hurt New Jersey, by curtailing our ability to deduct state and local taxes from our federal tax bill.

Sherrill is against that too. Webber is the outlier in defending it. He does so with the implausible caveat that he wants to reinstate our tax deduction, when the rest of his party doesn't. In fact, Republicans just passed a bill to make it permanent.

They have exploded our federal deficit, and to "solve" this, Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan - who just campaigned for Webber - are now threatening to cut Medicare and Social Security. They are also still vowing to repeal Obamacare.

Their last effort, which failed by a single vote, would have kicked 23 million off health insurance and gutted protections for people with conditions like cancer or diabetes. Unlike Sherrill, Webber supports a repeal, which could come up for a vote next year again if Republicans keep control.

Webber claims he wants to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but it's just not true. All the Republican plans to do that have been debunked as bogus. They would require insurers to sell you a policy, but at whatever outrageous price they want.

More informative is Webber's actual voting record in our state. The lawyer and Assemblyman has repeatedly refused to defend coverage for various pre-existing conditions. He was the only legislator to vote against requiring coverage for the treatment of opioid addictions, and one of just three to oppose coverage for hearing aids for children. Really?

His other votes are just as extreme. Webber voted against paid leave for new parents. He opposed gay marriage in 2012, and before that, civil unions. Rather than debate the best way to stop the cruel and discredited practice of gay conversion therapy, he refuses to denounce it at all.

Mikie Sherrill, Democratic candidate for New Jerseys 11th Congressional District, chats with The Star-Ledgers Tom Moran during an editorial board meeting in Newark. Posted by NJ.com Opinion on Thursday, October 18, 2018

And unlike Sherrill, a former target shooter whose father is a hunter, Webber is also fanatical on guns, opposing even reasonable safety laws. He refused to ban firearms for suspected terrorists, and repeatedly voted against universal background checks - until this year, after announcing his run for Congress.

He opposes abortion rights, arguing that Roe v. Wade sinks the U.S. into "a culture of death," and campaigned with Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who would deny millions health coverage, restrict the rights of women and LGBTQ people, and in Cotton's case, even refused our state federal aid after Hurricane Sandy.

Webber's been trying to distract from all this by lighting other brushfires. He blatantly lied when he accused Sherrill of saying she wants to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. She does not, and never has. She's worked closely with Homeland Security, and agrees that we must enforce our laws, but humanely.

Yet Webber still won't concede this. Instead, he points to a speaker at a June rally against family separations who took the podium after Sherrill left, and a few "radical" protestors carrying signs. Please.

Sherrill is a centrist who knows her district is neither blue nor red. She's vowed to fight for money to replace the crumbling rail tunnels into Manhattan, for a better tax deal for the middle class, and against any effort to weaken protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

Judge Sherrill by the people she runs around with, Webber demands. Well, judge him by that measure too - and above all, his own record, which proves that he's far too extreme for the people of this district. The better choice is Mikie Sherrill.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.California often leads the country in legislation designed to protect or promote minorities or marginalized individuals. Or - putting it another way - California often drives people nuts with legislation mandating things those people think government should just leave alone.

California is doing both right now.

Last month the California legislature passed a bill to require all publicly-traded companies doing business in that state to have female representation on corporate boards or face stiff penalties. By the end of next year each board would need to have at least one woman as a voting member. By 2021 boards with five members would need two women and boards of six or more would need at least three women.

The sponsor of S826, Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, said "Gender diversity on corporate boards is associated with increased profitability, performance, governance, innovation and opportunity."

The National Association of Women Business Owners agrees with her. They cite "numerous independent research studies" showing gender diversity on boards is beneficial to corporations and creates meaningful cultural change in the workplace.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation the last day of September after women's groups strongly pressed him to do so. Bill opponents dislike quotas in general and also argued such a law would discriminate against men and force companies to place unqualified women in positions of power. Companies that don't comply could be fined $100,000 for a first-time violation and $300,000 for subsequent violations.

And as you'd expect in California, the new law defines a woman as any person who self-identifies as female regardless of that person's designated sex at birth.

A majority of major US corporations on the S&P 500 have at least one woman on their boards, reports show, but only 25 percent have two or more. California is slightly behind the norm with only 15.5 percent of corporate board seats held by women. That's 565 women compared to 3,080 men. Half of the most recent California IPOs went public with all-male boards.

Last year the Pennsylvania legislature passed a resolution urging both public and private companies to have a minimum of 30 percent women on their boards. California previously tried to accomplish that by passing several resolutions, but there were no enforcement powers. So when board composition didn't change significantly, the legislature took a tougher stance.

Several European countries have mandated female representation for years. Norway, for instance, requires boards to consist of 40 percent females.

It's not going to be easy for California to enforce this law. Most corporations also have stockholders who must approve any changes to charters and bylaw requirements. Director candidates generally also have to be approved by stockholder votes.

It's going to take time for corporate leaders to identify and vet female board candidates, prepare proxy statements, schedule meetings and do all the other things necessary for stockholder approval. Then I wonder what might happen if stockholders don't vote to approve the nominated females by the state's deadline.

Opponents of the bill point out it is likely to be challenged on constitutional grounds of equal protection, and others warn no state can make laws affecting the governance of companies incorporated elsewhere.

Companies and agencies receiving significant amounts of state or federal monies must often comply with government-mandated rules for board composition. That makes sense when they're spending public money, but I'm not sure it makes sense for stockholder corporations. I understand the good intentions of the bill sponsors but their approach to diversity seems very heavy-handed.

New Jersey often follows California's lead. I wonder if we will this time.

A former assemblywoman from Jersey City, Joan Quigley is the president and CEO of North Hudson Community Action Corp.

Submit letters to the editor and guest columns at jjletters@jjournal.comWASHINGTON -- Guess we can call this one "Cory Booker's Law."

New Jersey's Democratic U.S. senator may not have to choose between running for re-election or running for the White House in 2020 under a bill before the state Senate Budget committee in Trenton.

The measure would ensure that he can run for both if he chooses.

Legislation introduced by state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, would allow Booker, D-N.J., or anyone else to appear on a November ballot both as a candidate for president or vice president, and for U.S. Senate or House.

Current law doesn't prevent anyone from doing so, but the bill "clarifies" that the prohibition on holding more than one state elective office does not apply to running for Congress and the White House simultaneously.

New Jersey public officials have not been able to hold more than one elective office since 2008, though those already in office could continue to run for re-election to those posts.

Booker's Senate office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

He raised $7.7 million for his 2020 re-election through Sept. 30, more than any other incumbent up for re-election that year, according to an NJ Advance Media analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.

Booker is considered among the top-tier candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 should he decide to run. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has taken to calling him out by name at his campaign rallies.

A CNN poll released earlier this month had Booker tied with former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential nominee, for fifth place with 5 percent.

Former Vice President Joe Biden led with 33 percent, followed by U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 13 percent; Kamala Harris, D-Calif., 9 percent; and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with 8 percent.

Booker has campaigned for Democrats around the country this fall, including in 2020 early-voting states Iowa and South Carolina. Last weekend, he campaigned for Democratic gubernatorial nominees Andrew Gillum in Florida and Stacey Abrams in Georgia, either of whom would be that state's first black governor.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook.

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.Three contemporary playwrights meet in a bar to determine whose work is the more disturbing and offensive.

"My 'Killer Joe' shocks audiences with its violence and misogyny," Tracy Letts declares.

Neil LaBute replies, "I am America's most acclaimed and derided misanthrope, as my 'Fat Pig' and 'In the Company of Men' prove."

Martin McDonagh responds, "Hold my Guinness," silencing them both by tossing the script to "The Pillowman" onto the bar.

McDonagh's 2003 tragic comedy is the stuff of nightmares. Set in an unnamed totalitarian state in some dystopian time, it attempts to raise questions of the value of art (particularly troubling or subversive art) and the boundaries of censorship.

During an investigation of serial killings of children, a pair of police detectives are interrogating a writer whose stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the actual crimes, in their meticulous descriptions of horrific abuses perpetrated against children. Is the writer the killer, or somehow controlling a madman?

McDonagh has said he wanted to explore the extremes of storytelling in the model of classic fairy tales. The writer Katurian's works are indeed the grimmest of tales, making "The Pillowman" a thoroughly disgusting piece. Yet McDonagh's characters and the world he weaves together nevertheless compel the audience not to look away.

What:

Presented by the NOLA Project, "The Pillowman" is a psychological journey that many would likely prefer to avoid. However, director Mark Routhier, despite some missteps, has a largely fine cast to pull off the gruesome material.

Michael Aaron Santos gives what may be his finest performance as Tupolski, the lead detective of the interrogation. Through a swaggering demeanor, Santos shows that there's more to this straightforward "good cop" than what meets the eye. With a clever and slyly shaped characterization, his own motivations and pathology remain an enigma to be unraveled by the audience.

Meredith Owens is Ariel, the "bad cop" of the routine. She and Santos spar with each other as much as with the writer, as her background and involvement in the case reveal a deeper, personal drive. The role is written as a male character, and while Owens builds the suspense well, the cross-gender casting provides more gimmick than actual effect as it undercuts the power of certain revelations. It is also unconvincing seeing Owens as the sadistically ferocious torturer.

As the writer Katurian, James Bartelle is the confused captive, unsure at first of what crimes he's being questioned about. He is eerily effective as he relates the content of several of his stories to the detectives, showing a distinct courage propelled by the passion he has for his own tales, a self-sacrificial drive.

One emotion that fails to come across, however, in an often glib approach to the role is a sheer sense of absolute terror and fear. Has the dictatorial state in which he lives influenced the macabre nature of his writing, and has the combination of the two left Katurian inured to true feelings of fear?

The moments of direct violence depicted in McDonagh's world are only the beginning. The near-pornographic levels of violence, however, are largely unseen but described with gratuitous detail in Katurian's retelling of his stories.

One story, for example, "Little Jesus," centers on a young girl who believes herself to be the second coming of Christ. Her atheistic parents mock her and heap cruel abuses upon her that mirror the Passion of Christ, including a crown of thorns fashioned from barbed wire, a crucifixion, piercing with a spear, and finally, burying her alive.

With its blending of religious themes within its grotesqueries, it could be a story lifted directly from a collection of Flannery O'Connor. But unlike the Southern Gothic master, in McDonagh's apparent nihilistic view of the future of society and humanity, any sense of hope or redemption is abandoned. Acceptance of such a worldview as presented by Katurian is the most damning aspect of the piece.

Bartelle's own brother, Michael Joel Bartelle, plays Michal, Katurian's developmentally challenged brother who is enamored with the writer's tales, asking to hear them over and over again like a child and his bedtime stories. The revelations of abuse within their own family, forecast early on, add to the distress of it all.

In supporting roles, Nadia Eiler and Wade Rogers effectively portray some of the doomed children who appear as Katurian tells his stories.

Routhier keeps the drama taut but overplays the comedic aspects. The give-and-take between the two cops and Katurian starts to fall into schtick, which may make the sudden moments of violence more jolting, but loses some of the psychological depth that could be more thoroughly explored.

The physical production at Lusher Charter School's Lion's Gate Theater impresses. The stark interrogation room, designed by Steve Schepker and coldly lit by Joshua Courtney, is chilling. When it opens up to reveal the mind of Katurian and his stories, the creepiness escalates, notably through Matt Jackson's sound designs. Megan Harm's costumes in those scenes are notable. The special effects by Rebecca Elizabeth Hollingsworth pack a punch.

"The Pillowman" will not be to everyone's taste and the depravity of the work results, while with serious reservations, in a recommendation, due to the quality of most of the performances.A Metairie man is dead and his girlfriends son has been booked with manslaughter after an argument over money devolved into a fatal beating, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office.

After about 24 hours in the hospital, Cort C.J. Knower was pronounced dead Thursday (Oct. 18)  his 57th birthday  at University Medical Center in New Orleans, said Mark Bone, chief death investigator for the Jefferson Parish coroners office. Knower died of blunt force trauma to his head and neck, Bone said.

Former Terrytown man booked with 45 counts of making child pornography

The Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office arrested Noah Monteforte, 22, of Metairie, early Thursday morning and booked him with second-degree battery, said Capt. Jason Rivarde, spokesman for the department. Investigators upgraded the charges to manslaughter after Knower was pronounced dead about 11:46 p.m. that night.

Knowers brother, John, 55, identified Monteforte as the son of Cort Knowers live-in girlfriend. The couple had been squabbling about money hed lent to his girlfriend that was not repaid, John Knower said.

She called her son over there, and he come over beat my brother and killed him, John Knower said Monday. Over $60, my brother died.

The fight occurred Wednesday night at the Belmont Place apartment Curt Knower shared with his girlfriend in Metairie. The 911 center received a call around 11 p.m. requesting medical help for Cort Knower, Rivarde said.

Monteforte was released from jail Thursday on a $30,000 bond for the second-degree battery charge. The Sheriffs Office rearrested him Friday on the manslaughter charge. He was being held Monday at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center on a $200,000 bond.

No one else was arrested in the case.

Cort Knowers death is just the latest tragedy for a family still mourning the July 2012 stabbing death of his daughter, Tanya Knower, 27.

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As alleged in her fathers case, Tanya Knower died at the hands of a lovers relative.

Joan Faye Hartman, 60, the mother of Tanya Knowers fiance, was convicted in 2015 of manslaughter for stabbing her twice in the back and once in the stomach at a Slidell-area home.

Still grief-stricken, John Knower recalled Hartmans chilling words to authorities about the killing: When I heard she was dead, I was relieved.

Woman on trial in son's fiancee's stabbing death: 'I wanted her dead'

Cort Knower was never the same after his daughters death, John Knower said.

John Knower and his wife, Jennifer, made the trip from Tennessee over the weekend to settle his brothers affairs. The Knower brothers grew up in Metairie. Cort Knower, the oldest, graduated from East Jefferson High School in 1980.

Cort Knower worked as an electrician by trade. His brother described him as good-natured, friendly and with a great sense of humor.

My brother was a character, John Knower said. The kids loved him. He always cut up with the kids.

Cort Knower didnt have any insurance, but a friend loaned his family enough money to cover the costs of cremation. Relatives and friends gathered Sunday for an informal memorial.

We did a celebration of his life, John Knower said. We boiled shrimp, fried catfish and had a good time in my brothers name. Thats what he would have wanted.Music fans attending the second day of the Country Smooth Fest presented by Country Smooth American Premium Whiskey enjoyed sunshine and cool breezes Sunday (Oct. 21) at NOLA Motorsports Park in Avondale. After Saturday's rain, the beautiful fall weather was much appreciated, though sunglasses and a good cowboy hat came in handy.

"We had a good crowd yesterday despite the rain," said Country Smooth founder and CEO Lori Carcich.

Headliners included Justin Moore on Sunday and Louisiana's own Hunter Hayes of Beaux Bridge on Saturday. Other musical headliners appearing on the two stages at the family-friendly festival were: Joe Nichols, Granger Smith, Tyler Farr, Josh Abbott Band, Raelynn, Lindsay Ell, William Michael Morgan and Deejay Silver. Local and regional up-and-coming country acts were also featured.

Saturday's headliner Hunter Hayes told Carcich that being from Louisiana has trained him to be able to perform despite foul weather. "It had been misty all day," Carcich said. "But the minute he jumped on stage it began to pour. And he didn't miss a beat."

The new music festival also featured booths offering a variety of food and beverages, cowboy hats and silver jewelry, plus souvenir caps and t-shirts from each performer. Games for kids included a pumpkin toss and casting for plastic fish.

"This is their first music festival," Carcich said. "NOLA Motorsports Park is an amazing venue with so much room and endless opportunities. We're committed to having another fest here next November."

The Country Smooth whiskey brand is less than two years old. "What better way to launch an Americana whisky brand than with a country music festival in Louisiana," Carcich said.Meghan Markle was spotted wearing Krewe sunglasses while in Sydney, Australia, according to the brand's Instagram, making the New Orleans-based eyewear brand officially duchess-approved. Markle and Prince Harry were on hand for the Invictus Games.

Markle has been seen wearing their Gravier Matte Black 24K aviator sunglasses at least twice: Once when she paired them with an ivory dress and beige trench coat, a snap of which was shared on Krewe's Instagram, and another time while on the water with Prince Harry. The second time was noted in Fashionista's blog, Meghan Markle Wore a Thing.

New Orleans native Stirling Barrett created Krewe here in 2013, and the line continues to be designed locally.

Barrett told Fast Company his team is inspired by the city "to create colorful and unique designs," which are often named with nods to local streets and landmarks.

Since its birth, a handful of celebrities have been seen sporting the Krewe shades, like Gigi Hadid, Emma Watson, Blake Lively, Beyonce and Serena Williams, who recently celebrated her wedding in New Orleans.

"The connection between product and place doesn't matter to everybody," Barrett told Fast Company. "But as designers, we know that New Orleans permeates the products we make, even if the customer doesn't fully understand it. It's fine if they just take away the sense that a New Orleans brand is able to execute elevated design."The 2018 New Orleans Film Festival is underway, offering a feast of viewing options for local cinephiles. But with more than 220 screenings scheduled to play out over nine days at venues across town, sifting through the schedule can be an onerous task. Lucky for you, weve done the heavy lifting. Below, you can find out all thats happening on Day 6 of the festival (Monday, Oct. 22), including a best bet for those who want to get right to the good stuff.

Todays best bet: Bathtubs Over Broadway (director: Dava Whisenant; 1 hour 27 minutes)

It all started as a gag. Steve Young, a longtime writer for The Late Show with David Letterman, was tasked with finding goofy records to play as part of a regular bit on the late, great CBS talk show. It was then that he discovered industrial musicals -- full-fledged productions written and performed for corporate conventions and sales meetings mostly during the 1950s and 60s -- and sent him on what he calls an eccentric adventure to uncover as much as he could about this largely overlooked, largely forgotten and undeniably strange American musical genre.

Director Dava Whisenant follows him down that rabbit hole in her documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway, a film that, in addition to being as delightfully bizarre and satisfyingly whimsical as youd expect from a film built around Youngs dry sense of humor, ends up being both a surprisingly touching and inspirational ode to the artistic impulse in all of us.

As a bonus: Youll be humming songs like My Bathroom and Diesel Dazzle to yourself when its all over.

Now, just to be clear, the musicals at the center of Whisenants film werent hacky, terrible, low-budget productions. Well, OK, some of them were. But the best of them, as Young makes clear, were stunningly well-produced and -- although they were never meant for consumption by the general public -- featured the work of such stars as Florence Henderson, Chita Rivera, Tony Randall, Martin Short and Dom DeLuise. (Indeed, Henderson, Rivera and Short are interviewed in Whisenants film.)

Remember Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, the guys behind Fiddler on the Roof? Even they did industrial musicals for a time.

Thats because industrial musicals also paid exceptionally well -- better than pretty much any other showbiz job at the time, Short says. According to Bathtubs Over Broadway, they were often produced on budgets that dwarfed many major Broadway shows -- sometimes by millions of dollars.

That being said, theres an undeniable and appealing absurdity to it all. After all, were talking about shows like an opera by Ragu Foods called Raguletto, American Standards The Bathrooms are Coming, General Motors Diesel Dazzle and something described in the film as the Johnson & Johnson sunscreen musical of 78.

Recordings were often made as convention souvenirs -- sometimes, less often, the performances were captured on film -- and then, after a 1950s and 1960s heyday, the practice began petering out in the 1970s. The age of the industrial musical was largely over, and largely forgotten.

Thats where Young comes in, with his accidental obsession -- one shared with a handful of other wonderful weirdos -- to find, collect and preserve as many of those old recordings as possible.

Every new one that we find is a puzzle piece added to a very large jigsaw puzzle that we cant make out what the overall picture is supposed to be, Young says in the film. But were assembling some picture of America in the 20th century that has never quite been seen before.

Now, thanks to his obsession, and Whisenants film -- which ends with a positively delightful original production number -- we can see that picture. We can also, unexpectedly, enjoy it, in what turns out to be not only one of the most endearing and entertaining documentaries in the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival lineup, but one of the most endearing and entertaining documentaries of 2018, period.

Screening info: 6:30 p.m. Monday (Oct. 22), The Broad Theater.

9 must-see movies at the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival

Todays If-Youre-Lucky-Enough-to-Score-a-Ticket pick: Roma (director: Alfonso Cuaron; 2 hours 15 minutes) Alfonso Cuaron, the Mexican auteur behind 2013s Oscar-winning Gravity, delivers an acclaimed semi-autobiographical drama that promises to be a factor in this years award-season push. Telling the story of a middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City and their live-in housekeeper, it is being hailed as one of the best films of 2018, one that is mesmerizing, lyrical and emotionally resonant. It won the prestigious Golden Lion in August at the Venice Film Festival, and then was named a runner-up for the Peoples Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. -- Screening info: 7:15 p.m. Monday (Oct. 22), Prytania Theater.

Plan B pick: Cane River (director: Horace B. Jenkins; 1 hour 30 minutes) Originally released in 1982, this Natchitoches-set tale of star-crossed lovers in one of Louisianas free communities of color hasnt been seen in 36 years -- and was once thought lost. After the rediscovery of a print in 2013, however, it has been fully restored and makes its return to the screen at the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival. Screening info: 7:45 p.m. Monday (Oct. 22), at the Contemporary Arts Center main theater, 900 Camp St.

Plan B pick: Nailed It (director: Adele Pham; 59 minutes; free event) Its a remarkable statistic: More than half the nail salons in America are Vietnamese-owned. So how did that come to be? Director Adele Pham takes viewers on a journey of discovery that involves the fall of Saigon, a flood of immigration from South Vietnam to the United States -- and, believe it or not, actress Tippi Hedren. Locals will find themselves wishing Phams cameras would have visited with New Orleans thriving Vietnamese community, but even without that, she comes up with a fascinating cultural examination. Screening info: 6:30 p.m., The Ranch Theater at the Contemporary Arts Center.

Full schedule for Monday (Oct. 22)Two children died in a fire Sunday night (Oct. 21) after they got separated from the adults while trying to escape a mobile home in Belle Chasse, authorities said. Their names have not been released.

The boy was 7 and the girl was 9, according to the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal. The three adults in the mobile home escaped and remain hospitalized Monday morning. Two dogs were also killed in the fire.

Update: Community rallies around family after 2 children die in fire

The fire was reported Sunday night in the 11000 block of La. 23 (map), and the fire marshal said investigators were actively working the scene Monday morning.

Ashley Rodrigue, public affairs director for the state fire marshals office, said the investigation is ongoing, but early observations indicate the fire started in an addition to the home that may have served as a family room. Investigators believe the room was unoccupied when the fire started and that an electrical malfunction may have sparked the fire.

Investigators also had not found evidence of working smoke alarms in the home, though they are working to determine if that was the case.

This fire may have been discovered later than, of course, anyone would have preferred, Rodrigue said. It just caused for a chaotic situation.

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Rodrigue said five people inside the home were trying to escape when the children got separated and were unable to get out. One of the adults, identified as the mother of the children, is being treated at a hospital for smoke inhalation and burns after attempting to enter the home to get to the children. The other adults are being treated for smoke inhalation.

The Plaquemines Parish Coroners Office said the autopsies were underway Monday morning to determine a cause of death.

The fire marshals office in a written statement said it was working with Belle Chasse Volunteer Fire Department, Plaquemines Parish Sheriffs Office and the coroners office to determine the origin and cause of the fire.

Speaking with reporters Monday morning, Rodrigue stressed the importance of ensuring smoke detectors in the home are installed and working properly. She noted the state provides free smoke detectors for those who cannot afford them through its Operation Save a Life program.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporter Michelle Hunter contributed to this story.

Carlie Kollath Wells is a morning reporter at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Have an early-bird tip? Send it to her: cwells@nola.com or Twitter @carlie_kollath.A Thibodaux man died Sunday night after the car he was driving hit the rear of a dump truck in the Killona area of St. Charles Parish, Louisiana State Police said Monday (Oct. 22).

Todd Cashio, 33, died at the scene of the crash, which occurred on Louisiana 3127 near Highway 3141, police said in a news release. State troopers were notified of the accident at 7:20 p.m.

Cashio was driving a Nissan Altima south on Louisiana 3127 when he hit the right rear of a disabled Mack dump truck that was partially blocking the left lane and median opening, the news release said. The Nissan ran off the road and into a ditch.

Cashio was wearing a seat belt, police said.

It is not known if impairment played a role in the accident, police said. Toxicology tests on Cashio are pending.

The driver of the dump truck, a 47-year-old New Orleans man, was not injured, authorities said. The man showed no signs of impairment and voluntarily provided a blood sample, which will be evaluated by the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab, police said.

The crash remains under investigation.A young sister and brother who authorities said died while trying to escape a fire at a Belle Chasse mobile home on Sunday night (Oct. 21) have been identified as Madison Branton, 9, and Jordan Beckham, 7, respectively. The childrens mother on Monday was still being treated at a hospital for burns and smoke inhalation, according to the Louisiana State Fire Marshals office, after trying but being unable to reach to her children.

Plaquemines Parish Coroners Office Chief Investigator Dr. Charles Guey, who identified the deceased children, said both siblings died of smoke inhalation and burns. Two other adults in the home at the time of the fire  the grandparents of the childrens mother  were treated for smoke inhalation, according to Guey and Louisiana State Fire Marshals Office.

Two dogs were also killed in the fire in the 11000 block of La. 23, said Ashley Rodrigue, a spokeswoman for the fire marshals office. Firefighters from the Belle Chasse Volunteer Fire Department were called to the blaze shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday, she said.

Earlier: 2 children killed in Belle Chasse fire, authorities say

The children died after becoming separated from the adults while trying to escape the mobile home, the fire marshals office said in a news release. Guey, who had spoken with the childrens mother, said the children attended Belle Chasse Academy.

The Belle Chasse Academy community is profoundly shocked and saddened by the deaths last evening of two of our students, Belle Chasse Academy School Leader Jane Dye said in a statement on Monday. Mere words of condolence are inadequate to convey to the families the heartbreaking loss we feel.

Dye said school counselors were available Monday for students and staff. Starting Tuesday, additional mental health and grief counselors would be available on campus.

Our prayers and thoughts are with the students families and friends on this unutterably tragic occasion, Dye said.

Melissa Jenner, a friend of the family, said the whole Belle Chase community is grieving alongside the family. The childrens single mother, had just moved into her grandparents home in the last few months in order to complete school.

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Everybody knows everyone here so it really hit home, said Jenner. This is just devastating.

The investigation is ongoing, but early observations indicate the fire started in an addition to the home that may have served as a family room, Rodrigue said. Investigators believe the room was unoccupied when the fire started and that an electrical malfunction may have sparked the fire.

Whether there were working smoke detectors in the home is still under investigation, Rodrigue said from the scene Monday, but noted the very tragic situation, occurred without time for all members of the family, who had been sleeping or in bed, to safely escape.

The mobile home is located just off the highway, also known as Belle Chasse Highway, in a grassy area with a gravel drive. The charred remains of the home exposed the pointed frame of the highway-facing bedroom where Rodrigue said the children were found. The smell of charred wood hung in the air Monday morning.

Callen Huval, 32, arrived at his father-in-laws Belle Chasse mobile home, which sits next to the one that caught fire, late Sunday or early Monday after the blaze had already been extinguished.

Huval said his father-in-law described watching TV and then suddenly hearing some women screaming for help. His father-in-law went outside and saw the fire, but by then, little could be done, Huval said, adding, He was helpless.

Late Monday morning, Huval sat on the steps of his father-in-laws mobile home and reflected on the news.

Its horrible, said Huval, his 2-year-old daughter standing on a step next to him, clutching a doll. I cant imagine.

Stay with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune for more on this developing story.

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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.I think we can all agree that Silicon Valley needs more adult supervision right about now.

Is the solution for its companies to hire a chief ethics officer?

While some tech companies like Google have top compliance officers and others turn to legal teams to police themselves, no big tech companies that I know of have yet taken this step. But a lot of them seem to be talking about it, and Ive discussed the idea with several chief executives recently. Why? Because slowly, then all at once, it feels like too many digital leaders have lost their minds.

Its probably no surprise, considering the complex problems the tech industry faces. As one ethical quandary after another has hit its profoundly ill-prepared executives, their once-pristine reputations have fallen like palm trees in a hurricane. These last two weeks alone show how tech is stumbling to react to big world issues armed with only bubble world skills:

As a journalist is beheaded and dismembered at the direction of Saudi Arabian leaders (allegedly, but the killers did bring a bone saw), Silicon Valley is swimming in oceans of money from the kingdoms Public Investment Fund. Saudi funding includes hundreds of millions for Magic Leap, and huge investments in hot public companies like Tesla. Most significantly: Saudis have invested about $45 billion in SoftBanks giant Vision Fund, which has in turn doused the tech landscape  $4.4 billion to WeWork, $250 million to Slack, and $300 million to the dog-walking app Wag. In total Uber has gotten almost $14 billion, either through direct investments from the Public Investment Fund or through the Saudis funding of the Vision Fund. A billion here, a billion there and it all adds up.

[Kara Swisher answered your questions about her column on Twitter.]

Facebook introduced a new home video device called Portal, and promised that what could be seen as a surveillance tool would not share data for the sake of ad targeting. Soon after, as reported by Recode, Facebook admitted that data about who you call and data about which apps you use on Portal can be used to target you with ads on other Facebook-owned properties. Oh. Um. Thats awkward.No matter what sort of spread youve planned for your Thanksgiving dinner, it wont be a patch on the glorious feast that has been laid out at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. Thats where Jez Butterworths thrilling new play The Ferryman opened on Sunday night, with a generosity of substance and spirit rarely seen on the stage anymore.

There is, for the record, a whopping celebratory meal at the center of this endlessly vibrant work, directed with sweeping passion and meticulous care by Sam Mendes. Its main course is a goose, which has figured as a living creature in earlier scenes, and the repast appears to be more than enough to feed the 17 revelers gathered at an overladen table in rural Northern Ireland in 1981.

But the real sustenance provided here comes from the sheer abundance within a work that picked up most of the awards on offer during its London run last year. This is theater as charged and cluttered and expansive as life itself. And the three and a quarter hours and 21 speaking parts required to tell its story  which is at once a shivery suspenser, a hearthside family portrait, a political tragedy and a journey across mythic seas  barely seem long enough to contain all it has to give us.

The last time a new drama with this breadth of scope and ambition appeared on Broadway was seven years ago. That was Mr. Butterworths Jerusalem, in which a small-time, middle-aged country drug dealer (played by a monumental Mark Rylance) became a majestic emblem of an ancient, heroic England.But the analysis provides a broad assessment of the relative financial strength of the two parties in what is expected to become the first midterm election to surpass $5 billion in total spending. And it hints at how the two sides might allocate their resources as Democrats try to capitalize on their energized base to claw control of the House away from Republicans and make inroads on the state level and, less likely, in the Senate.

The Republican cash advantage could allow the party to bolster financially strapped campaigns that still have a chance, and fund an emerging strategy of nationalizing the race around President Trump and culturally divisive issues like immigration and the confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Republicans are issuing ominous warnings about liberal mobs deploying dirty tactics to help Democrats smear conservatives and push the country toward socialism.

Were seeing parity in the money race, and I expect both sides to be taking a pretty hard look at their races in the next week or two, so that they can cut some, and double or triple up on others, said Michael J. Malbin, the executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes campaign fund-raising and spending.

The bigger strategic issue for candidates, party committees and super PACs, he suggested, will be how they adjust to Mr. Trumps efforts to nationalize the midterm elections in a manner that defies recent political norms.

President Trump in the last two weeks has managed to dominate free media coverage in a way that is firing up his base, and the value of that cannot be measured in the same way you measure super PAC advertising or party committee spending, he said.

On the Democratic side, a pair of top super PACs  Priorities USA Action and the League of Conservation Voters PAC, known as the LCV Victory Fund  last week launched a joint $300,000 digital get-out-the-vote advertising campaign. The ad, which is intended to mobilize young voters and voters of color in four competitive House districts, seemed to suggest that a vote for Republicans is a vote for white nationalism.WARSAW  The populist message of Polands governing party  steeped in religion, bound by traditional values and animated by historical grievance  failed to gain ground in Warsaw in elections on Sunday, a sign that the party may not have broadened its support among more moderate voters.

According to exit polls, the party also did not appear to gain support in most of Polands other major cities. But it showed strength in poor and rural communities where its message has its deepest resonance, the exit polls suggest.

The elections, for local and provincial offices, were the first nationwide since the Law and Justice party swept to power in parliamentary elections in 2015.

It could take up to two days for all the votes to be tallied and official results released. While the parties and local news media rely heavily on exit polling, conducted by the international market research firm IPSOS, they provide only a rough guide.With their eyes trained on a gilded frame containing a smeared, half-formed image of a distinguished gentleman, a small group of potential bidders gathered Friday night over cocktails at Christies New York and heard the pitch: here was the first portrait generated by an algorithm to come up for auction. The portrait, produced by artificial intelligence, hung on the wall opposite an Andy Warhol print and just to the right of a bronze work by Roy Lichtenstein.

There were some smiles and at least one frown. Two people snapped cellphone pictures of the work, which looked as though someone had taken a sponge to a 17th-century oil portrait. The arrival of what some call the infant stages of the next great art movement at one of the worlds leading auction houses was greeted nonchalantly, with a nod of understanding and a sip of mezcal margarita.

Christies is hoping for a more explosive reaction on Thursday, when the gavel comes down on Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy, formally testing the art markets interest in AI art. The work  estimated at $7,000-$10,000  was a collaboration by the members of Obvious, a French trio composed of a student of machine learning and two business school graduates, none of whom have a background in art. There was no paint or brushes involved, just an algorithm that learns to imitate sets of images fed by humans  in this case, thousands of portraits spanning the 14th century to the 20th.Julia, you lead the charge for authentic and flawed female characters in comedy, Jacobson said. Every time you create a character, you open a door, a door for another generation of young women to goofily walk through.

She hung out with the guys, but without changing who she was to please them, Glazer said.

The two filmed an elaborate sketch with a professional dance troupe practicing the signature Elaine Benes dance, then brought the troupe on stage for a final performance. (The dancers attempt to engage the crowd  which skewed older  failed.)

The actress Ellie Kemper of the Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt spoke in a video tribute about that same influence, noting how important it was that Louis-Dreyfus also produced Veep.

Its crucial that women have those positions, to promote women, she said.

The comedian Keegan-Michael Key said that men have it easy. Its the women like Julia who have fought to create the path for other women to follow. Open doors, change the dynamic.

Some tributes tripped over the very tropes they were trying to mock, perhaps intentionally.

She was one of the guys, George Shapiro, one of the producers of Seinfeld, said in a video tribute.

The other women who have received the Mark Twain Prize are Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Ellen DeGeneres and Carol Burnett.How many were pushed out? Did some just quit?

The 17 lawyers from 11 firms will not discuss their departures in any detail, so its unclear. The firm of one lawyer, Sam Silver, who withdrew before Mr. Cosbys second criminal trial, has sued Mr. Cosby for nonpayment.

While there are good reasons someone might decide to change lawyers like shirts, its certainly unusual and often indicative of rifts, like a dispute over tactics, experts said. And it most often happens in cases with high-profile clients who have lots of money and expectations, especially if its a case laden with emotion.

Patricia Duff, a multimillionaire Democratic fund-raiser, went through 21 law firms in the 1990s while locked into a divorce and child custody battle with her ex-husband, the billionaire Revlon chairman Ronald O. Perelman.

In recent days, Mr. Cosby, who is serving a three-to-10 year sentence for sexual assault, has decided to use three new lawyers  Brian W. Perry, Barbara A. Zemlock and Kristen L. Weisenberger  from the same Harrisburg, Pa., firm. They will pursue his appeal.

Mr. Perry, a former deputy district attorney, is chairman of the Pennsylvania Supreme Courts criminal procedural rules committee. He has also been asked by Mr. Cosbys wife, Camille, to bring what she characterizes as the ethical lapses of the trial judge, Steven T. ONeill, to the attention of Pennsylvanias Judicial Conduct Board, an unusual dual role.Bodyguard

When to watch: Starting Wednesday, on Netflix.

This six-part political thriller was a huge hit in England, so Google carefully if you want to avoid spoilers  and you definitely do want to avoid spoilers because Bodyguard is full of twists and tension. Richard Madden stars as David Budd, a war veteran with a knack for interrogations who winds up as a bodyguard for a high-ranking politician, Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes).

The shows biggest asset is its pacing. It flips, effectively, from breakneck speed to slow, white-knuckle tension. Those shifts also create a pervasive, addicting sense of unease, that nothing is quite right and everyone should be treated with suspicion. Complete logical integrity is not always the shows forte, but those missteps arent ruinous; bingeing diminishes the problems even further.The ghost story shape-shifts because ghosts themselves are so protean  they emanate from specific cultural fears and fantasies. They emerge from their time, which is why Jacobeans saw ghosts wearing pale shrouds and Victorians saw them draped in black bombazine. Its tempting to regard these apparitions as dark mirrors  Tell me what you fear and Ill tell you who you are. Im reminded of the governess in The Turn of the Screw, who arrives at her new posting and is delighted to discover that her room has two full-length mirrors, an unimaginable luxury and a clever bit of narrative forecasting; she will soon encounter mirrors of a different sort in the form of two ghosts (or are they?) haunting her young charges.

Explore the New York Times Book Review Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See whats new in October: Among this months new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books.



However, ghost stories are never just reflections. They are social critiques camouflaged with cobwebs; the past clamoring for redress. The writer Philip Ball has described traditional ghosts as social conservatives who enforce norms  the visitors to Ebenezer Scrooge, for example, or the ghost of Hamlets father, who protests the horror of his murder as well as the offense of it: Murder most foul, as in the best it is; / But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

In the modern ghost story, especially the American kind, something different occurs. Ghosts protest norms  slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration  the norms that killed them. Among the slew of new books, you will find such ghosts in Jesmyn Wards Sing, Unburied, Sing, Hari Kunzrus White Tears, Natashia Deons Grace, Angela Flournoys The Turner House, Brit Bennetts The Mothers. These novels are impossible to generalize; they are as various as the spirits who inhabit them: the blues musician avenging himself on the white hipsters who stole his music in White Tears, the ghost of a young boy killed in Mississippis Parchman Farm prison in Sing, Unburied, Sing. But the spirits all speak with an authority older than any norm or nation. In Grace, an enslaved woman on the run is shot by bounty hunters but hovers on earth. She will not leave her child; she will try to trump death.

These ghosts are of Americas making. And in testifying to their deaths at the hands of police, poverty and racist violence, they lead us back to the nations foundational crimes of chattel slavery and genocide  as well as its energetic amnesia. The historian Thomas Laqueur has noted that unlike in Germany or South Africa, with their prevalence of monuments, museums and plaques to national crimes, there is no remotely comparable memorial culture in the United States to the legacy of slavery.

If the crimes of Americas origin are routinely whitewashed in public life, they remain central to its literature, in which the nation has been depicted not only as haunted but cursed, from Hawthorne on. His novel The House of the Seven Gables tells the story of the unhappy Pyncheons, who live under an ancestral hex for cheating a family out of their home. The notion of a curse flows through the work of Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy. Its the central strand in Faulkner, as J. M. Coetzee described it: The theft of land from the Indians or the rape of slave women comes back in unforeseen form, generations later, to haunt the oppressor.1. Some 7,000 Central American migrants have been making their way toward the U.S. border. Above, Honduran migrants in Mexico.

The Mexican government, under pressure from the U.S., tried to halt the asylum seekers progress as they crossed the border from Guatemala. But thousands defied orders to submit themselves to immigration processing and instead continued their journey north.

Caravans of this kind usually number in the hundreds and pass unnoticed. This group is by far the largest on record, and it has received heavy attention from the news media. Jamal Khashoggis final hours.

Security camera footage of Mr. Khashoggis last day was leaked to Turkish news media ahead of President Recep Tayyip Erdogans televised address to Parliament today. He has promised to reveal the true details of Mr. Khashoggi death.

Mr. Khashoggi is seen, at one point, holding hands with his fiancee, leaving a marriage office. They are pictured above visiting the apartment building where they were planning to live. Then they took a taxi to the Saudi consulate  where the dissident journalist would meet his brutal fate.

Another new piece of evidence: After Mr. Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate, a member of the Saudi team left the building dressed in the journalists clothes, surveillance images showed. In Nigeria, more than 55 people were killed in a new eruption of communal violence. Security has become a key campaign issue ahead of a presidential election there in February. [The New York Times]

 Officials in Moscow withdrew permission for an annual commemoration of the victims of Stalinist repression. [The New York Times]

 Swedish prosecutors indicted a woman who tried to prevent the deportation of an Afghan man by refusing to take her seat on a flight. He was eventually deported, and the woman could face up to six months in prison. [The New York Times]

 Ryanair faced a torrent of criticism after its staff failed to remove a passenger who had racially abused a seatmate before a flight from Barcelona to Stansted Airport, north of London, took off. [BBC]

 King Abdullah II of Jordan said he would cut off Israelis free access to two tracts of land where Jews have had land-use rights under a 1994 peace treaty. [The New York Times]

 The Trump administration is considering narrowing a legal definition of gender as an immutable condition assigned at birth. That could roll back protections for transgender people. [The New York Times]

 The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona received a building permit  136 years after the churchs construction began. [The New York Times]It is a very tough time for us, Ms. Li said.

Wang Jinquan, director of the pet nutrition and food processing research office at the government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said in August that the timing of the disappearance of American-made pet food from online marketplaces was coincidental. He said that China had recently aimed its enforcement efforts only at those brands that failed to meet laws and regulations.

Chinas General Administration of Customs did not respond to requests for comment.

Robert B. Zoellick, a former United States trade representative, said in an interview in Beijing last month that pet food could be an area for compromise between the two countries.

Theres an expansion of the pet culture here, so dont we want to keep them healthy? he said. In this case, youve got very lovable, cuddly consumers.

But for now, pet food may remain a hostage of the trade war. Ms. Ren, Dadas owner, recently found online and bought a scarce bag of Canidae, but she was told that it was stuck in customs. She canceled instead.

I would rather cook it myself, she said. Dogs are like humans: If you have good food, you wont go to the hospital as often.Get the DealBook newsletter to make sense of major business and policy headlines  and the power-brokers who shape them.

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McKinsey & Company was in the spotlight on Monday after The New York Times reported that the consulting firm had prepared a report that may have played a role in Saudi Arabias effort to target its online critics.

Back story: After the country announced economic austerity measures in 2015 in the hopes of offsetting low oil prices and controlling a widening budget gap, McKinsey measured public reception of the policies. The companys report highlighted three people who drove the largely negative conversation about the moves on Twitter. One of the Twitter users was subsequently arrested and a second said that two of his brothers had been arrested and that his cellphone had been hacked. The account of a third user, who was anonymous, was shut down.

The response: McKinsey said in a statement that the report was an internal document based on publicly available information and not prepared for any government entity. McKinsey said it had seen no evidence of the report being misused, but added that it was horrified by the possibility, however remote that the document played a role in a crackdown on dissidents. The company said it was investigating how the document was shared.Even so, how can this years study be squared with last years study?

Mr. Vigdor said the two studies were broadly consistent when considering the effect both on workers employed at the time of the increases and workers who might soon seek employment. The minimum-wage increases helped people who were already working low-wage jobs, hurt people who werent yet working, and had a somewhat negative effect on pay over all. (Mr. Vigdor and his colleagues have revised the earlier paper so that the large negative effect they initially found after the second minimum-wage increase was smaller: an average loss of $74 a month instead of $125.)

Other researchers were more skeptical. When last years study came out, Ben Zipperer, an expert on the minimum wage at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, pointed out that it failed to adequately account for the fact that Seattles economy was growing rapidly when the minimum wage increases took effect.

In a booming economy, Mr. Zipperer argued, we would expect to see fewer workers employed at low wages  not because employers decide its not worth hiring people, but because the competition for workers bids up wages, and many low-paying jobs disappear and are replaced by somewhat higher-paying jobs.

Alternatively, many potential low-wage workers may decide its too expensive to live and work in Seattle even with the benefit of a higher minimum wage, leading them to leave the city or not migrate there in the first place.

In either case, it would be the boom, and not a minimum-wage increase, that was reducing the number of hours worked at low wages.

In an interview, Mr. Zipperer said he was unconvinced by the authors attempt to square this years findings with last years. He said that the relatively low number of people making less than $15 an hour in Seattle, the linchpin of the effort to reconcile the results, is consistent with the citys booming labor market, which the authors still havent properly addressed.In the next 60 seconds, people around the world will purchase one million plastic bottles and two million plastic bags. By the end of the year, we will produce enough bubble wrap to encircle the Equator 10 times.

Though it will take more than 1,000 years for most of these items to degrade, many will soon break apart into tiny shards known as microplastics, trillions of which have been showing up in the oceans, fish, tap water and even table salt.

Now, we can add one more microplastic repository to the list: the human gut.

In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics.

This is the first study of its kind, so we did a pilot trial to see if there are any microplastics detectable at all, said Philipp Schwabl, a gastroenterologist at the Medical University of Vienna and lead author of the study. The results were astonishing.Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times.

Reporting on Abraham Lincolns second inauguration just over a month before Robert E. Lees surrender, a New York Times reporter juxtaposed the scene of the inaugural ball that took place in the patent office in Washington to his memory, two years earlier, of when the same location housed the wounded and dying.

Tonight, he wrote. Beautiful women, perfumes, the violins sweetness, the polka and the waltz; but then, the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of the old wounds and blood and many a mothers son amid strangers, passing away unintended there.

That reporter was the poet Walt Whitman. During the Civil War, The Times employed a large staff to cover the war all across the country, sending information with unprecedented speed by way of railroad and telegraph. The rapidly evolving and war-torn country provided tales of journalists that were as rich as their reports. A grief-stricken Samuel Wilkeson, the Washington bureau chief, found his dead son on the battlefield at Gettysburg. In Charleston, a correspondent named Jasper was accused of espionage and forced to flee the South in disguise.Mr. Kamber was working for The New York Times and Mr. Hondros for Getty Images. Both were on the government-controlled side of Monrovia, a city perched on a peninsula where rebels lobbed mortars into densely populated areas from across a bridge. Both sides relied on ragtag bands of drugged up child soldiers.

It was kids in T-shirts and flip-flops as high as kites, said Mr. Kamber, who worked for weeks amid the chaos alongside Mr. Hondros. It was a kind of madness.

Documenting the conflict from the rebel side was British photographer Tim Hetherington, connected to his two friends across the front line by only the arc of projectiles.

Im sure Tim had pictures of rebels firing mortars, and Chris and I were in the other part of town where the mortars were landing and killing civilians, said Mr. Kamber, who compared photos with Mr. Hetherington after the war.Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his Republican opponent, Marcus J. Molinaro, have agreed to a televised debate on Tuesday, after more than a week of wrangling, dodging and barbs over who was more afraid to face the other.

The debate would be Mr. Cuomos first one-on-one face-off with his general election opponent for governor; in previous years, he has participated in debates with his Republican challenger as well as other minor-party candidates.

It may also represent the best chance for Mr. Molinaro  who trails by 23 points in the most recent public poll, and who was unknown to nearly 50 percent of respondents  to make his case against a two-term incumbent with millions in his campaign fund, widespread name recognition and an invigorated Democratic base.

Mr. Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, had spent days goading and railing at Mr. Cuomo for being too arrogant to debate. On Friday morning, after two days in a row of The New York Post depicting the governor in a chicken suit on its front page, Mr. Cuomo unexpectedly agreed to a debate  at 8 a.m. on Saturday, on the radio, with less than 24 hours lead time.Updated, 11:12 a.m.

Good morning on this nippy Monday.

Six New Yorkers became infected with measles last week, creating a bit of a health scare in parts of Brooklyn.

The citys Health Department, which is monitoring the situation closely, said the cases are mostly contained within a small cluster in the Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg.

Heres what you need to know.

How widespread is this?

We know that the main child who was affected was a child who was unvaccinated and traveled to an area in Israel that was undergoing a measles outbreak, said the departments acting commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

Its very likely that the child brought it back and it then spread to five other children  from 11-months-old to 4-years-old  in the Brooklyn community.An undocumented immigrant garnered national attention in June after he was taken into custody by immigration authorities while delivering a pizza to an Army base in Brooklyn, and was then ordered released by a judge.

But now, the delivery man, Pablo Villavicencio Calderon, has been arrested and charged with criminal mischief in the assault of his wife.

According to court documents, Mr. Villavicencio, 35, pushed his wife against a wall and slapped her Thursday at their home on Long Island. He then took her cellphone to prevent her from calling the police. The police later found her phone in Mr. Villavicencios pocket.

Mr. Villavicencio, an Ecuadorean immigrant, was due in court Tuesday, according to a spokesman for the Nassau County district attorneys office. He was detained in the county jail, and his lawyers were not immediately available for comment.Cornelius E. Gallagher, a seven-term Democratic congressman from New Jersey and champion of civil liberties who was jettisoned from his seat by his own party in 1972 after his district was redrawn and he was charged with tax evasion, died on Wednesday at his home in Monroe Township, N.J. He was 97.

The cause was brain cancer, his granddaughter Courtnay Stanford said.

Serving in the House of Representatives from 1959 through 1972, Mr. Gallagher was a strong supporter of privacy rights as the government grew more obsessed with secrecy and dependent on lie detectors and data gathering. He also introduced legislation on behalf of students who had treatable learning disabilities but were being written off as hopelessly uneducable.

An early advocate of Senator John F. Kennedys 1960 presidential candidacy, he vigorously promoted bills to establish the Peace Corps and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and was the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson considered asking Mr. Gallagher to be his running mate before settling on Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota.A 35-man British commando team had been lost on a 1942 mission to sabotage the plant. Britain then enlisted the Norwegian volunteers under Mr. Ronneberg for Operation Gunnerside, endorsed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Air attacks were not ordered for fear of heavy casualties to Norwegian workers and a low probability of success because the heavy water had been distilled in a basement fortified against bombs.

After training in Britain, the group parachuted into Norway. A four-member advance team with a radio and supplies went first, in October 1942. Six others followed in February. They rendezvoused at a cabin 40 miles from the target, at Vemork, on the forested plateau called the Hardangervidda, a national park today.

Blizzards stalled them for a week. Finally, they moved out. One man was designated to break off from the team to maintain radio contact with London. Nine others set off with rations for five days, explosives, fuses, Tommy guns, grenades, compasses and a pair of metal shears that Mr. Ronneberg had picked up at a London hardware store. That final item would prove critical.

They skied by night, rested by day and reached the gorge late on the night of Feb. 27, 1943. Steep slopes plunged 1,000 feet to the Mana River. The power plant was perched on a ledge halfway up the far slope. A guarded suspension bridge over the river led to the front entrance. At the back was a railway line and the German troops barracks. Guards patrolled the tracks and a wire fence around the back entrance.

There was no easy way in. There were so many things that were just luck and chance, Mr. Ronneberg told The Times. There was no plan. We were just hoping for the best. They decided to try the back way.

They waited for hours after midnight, watching the changes of night-shift workers and guards. Then, 75 yards upstream, they climbed down into the windswept gorge, clinging to shrubs and branches to break falls. They crossed the river on an ice bridge, then slogged up the far slope, waist-deep in snowdrifts. They saw guards on the suspension bridge, but the rushing river and the plants hum masked their own noises.President Trump and the far right preach not the end of globalization, but their own strain of it, not its abandonment but an alternative form. They want robust trade and financial flows, but they draw a hard line against certain kinds of migration. The story is not one of open versus closed, but of the right cherry-picking aspects of globalization while rejecting others. Goods and money will remain free, but people wont.

The current United States trade war is a case in point. Commentators lament that Mr. Trump is tearing up the rules America itself created more than 80 years ago and conjure up visions of the 1930s, when nations and empires dreamed of total self-sufficiency. Yet they overlook the fact that the actions of the president and his influential trade representative Robert Lighthizer betray no desire to withdraw from the world market.

Quite the opposite. The express effort is to use unilateral action to bully other countries, China in particular, into better market access for American products. The point of comparison is not the dreams of economic self-sufficiency of the 1930s but Ronald Reagans assault on Japanese competition in the 1980s. The basic philosophy that we have is that we want free trade without barriers, Mr. Lighthizer explained to Congress in August.

In Britain, the Brexit campaign was built on the demand to take back control and fear-mongering about refugees and immigrants. Withdrawal from the world economy was never on the program. On the contrary, the Brexiteers championed a pivot from the European economy to the global one unfettered by the regulations of Brussels and the European Court of Justice. Almost all negotiations since the vote to leave have been in pursuit of a vision in which the free flow of goods and money across the channel can be preserved while labor migration can be squelched. A recent report from British and American think tanks close to the Brexiteers proposes a new free trade agreement between the two countries that could act as an embryonic World Trade Organization 2.0 that would target more directly Chinese state subsidies for industries and the lingering state-provided social services like the National Health Service.

The pattern of right-wing alter-globalization is repeated in Germany and Austria, where the Alternative for Germany and the Austrian Freedom Party have recently recorded electoral wins. Neither party proposes national self-sufficiency or economic withdrawal. In their programs, the rejection of economic globalization is highly selective. The European Union is condemned, but the language demanding increased trade and competitiveness is entirely mainstream. The Alternative for Germany takes fiscal conservatism to an absurd degree with criminal charges demanded for policymakers who overspend. Both parties call for no inheritance tax and burdensome regulations, even as they make new promises for social spending.America is facing a crisis on which, for once, Democrats and Republicans can agree: low voter turnout in local elections. Nationwide, only 27 percent of eligible voters vote in the typical municipal election.

New York City is typical. In 2017, 25 percent of the citys registered voters participated in the mayoral contest. In Los Angeles turnout has been so low  20 percent of registered voters in 2017  that the City Council has used cash prizes to encourage voting. The numbers get even worse as you go down the ladder to county, school board and special elections.

The result is that an extraordinarily unrepresentative set of residents determines how local governments distribute services and spend the almost $2 trillion that local governments control. In some places, that means that politically active conservative, wealthy, older, white voters have disproportionate sway over local government. In others that means that organized and energetic unions can move policy their way. Seldom is that control shared across the spectrum  and democracy suffers as a result.

This isnt a new problem, and its causes are fairly obvious: Many local elections are held on dates other than national elections. Sometimes its a different day; sometimes its an off-year, in between midterms and presidential votes. Its hard enough getting people to vote for president and Congress; its even harder to get them out again to vote for county and city officials.Antarcticas Southern Ocean has been exploited for its teeming bounty, from the top of its food chain to the bottom, for more than 200 years. Seal hunters arrived there in the late 1700s and by 1825 fur seals were nearing extinction. Hunters then turned to other seal species, and to penguins, to extract oil from their body fat. Whaling arrived at the turn of the 20th century, with the hunting pressure driving some species from Antarctic waters.

Even krill, the tiny shrimplike creatures that are a key source of food to whales, penguins, seals and seabirds, are being scooped up in hundreds of thousands of tons per year. Now that the continent is undergoing tremendous disruption from the warming climate, strong multilateral action is imperative to protect it and its surrounding seas.

This week, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, comprising 24 nations and the European Union, is meeting in Hobart, Australia, to consider proposals to protect three areas off Antarcticas coast totaling 1.2 million square miles. Plans for marine reserves off East Antarctica, which offer critical habitat to emperor and Adelie penguins, and in the Weddell Sea, which would shelter whales and penguins, have been on the table for several years, blocked so far by Russia and China. Both of those areas also harbor cold-water corals, glass sponges and other creatures found nowhere else on earth.

Now, a new proposal is up for consideration to establish a marine sanctuary surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctica is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet and the Peninsula region is facing multiple pressures, including climate change variability, an increase in tourism as well as intense fishing for krill, which has led to starvation among some populations of penguins.Despite all the construction cranes that can be spotted around New York City, it is still the rare woman who gets to design a major building in this town.

Annabelle Selldorf and the late Zaha Hadid realized various high-profile New York projects. Now, as the lead architect for Greenwich West, a 30-story condominium rising in Hudson Square, Francoise Raynaud joins the select group.

Mrs. Raynaud, 59, is based in Paris and relatively unknown here, but she has made a name for herself at home with public and private projects, including libraries, cinemas, corporate headquarters and housing. She founded her own firm in 2005, after nearly two decades working for starchitect Jean Nouvel, much of it heading up his projects in Asia.

I was the specialist of towers in the office, she said in an interview in Greenwich Wests sales gallery, which will open in late October.Lawrence M. Krauss, a prominent theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, announced on Sunday that he would retire from the university at the end of the academic year after several women accused him of sexual misconduct.

In announcing his departure, Dr. Krauss denounced the universitys investigation, which found that he grabbed a womans chest at an event in 2016, and claimed he had been treated unfairly. He has been on paid leave since March and the dean of his department recently recommended that the professor be dismissed from the university.

To be clear, I have never harassed or assaulted anyone and have most certainly not exhibited gender discrimination in my professional dealings at the university or elsewhere, Dr. Krauss, 64, who joined Arizona State in 2008, said in a statement on Twitter. I look to the future for new and different challenges and opportunities.

He will remain on paid leave, drawing a salary of $265,000, until his retirement in May, the university said. Dr. Krauss said the university had not allowed him to present his side of the story or let him cross-examine witnesses.On Sunday afternoon, Lauren Ambrose strode out of Henry Higginss Wimpole Street house and up the aisle of the Vivian Beaumont Theater for the last time.

Since the first performance on March 15, she has played what Jesse Green of The New York Times called a feral and then luminous Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady nearly every day and twice on Wednesdays  through antibiotics fog and deep personal loss and rollicking high school matinees.

On Sunday, just before she went to dress for her final performance, Ms. Ambrose, who is leaving to shoot M. Night Shyamalans new series for Apple, spoke, with perfect diction, about saying goodbye to Eliza  and the boots she wouldnt mind snagging on her way out. (Laura Benanti starts in the role Tuesday.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

What have you learned about Eliza that you didnt know at the first preview?

How alone she is at the beginning and how much she needs everyone in the play to make her transformation. And how funny the character is. I guess I learned how to trust the writing, how to fall and let the words catch me. That has come after 200 plus performances. You get to kind of soar, which is exciting and fun and daring. The words are your net.About that exploration: It yielded the kind of unexpected discoveries  virtually all of them easily accessible by Metro or tram for those uninterested in a 35-mile ramble  that I had all but given up hope of finding in hyper-gentrified tourist magnets like Paris. To cite just a few (a handful of which I owe to the Enlarge Your Paris guys, the others to happenstance): I hiked in a forest, had a close encounter with the actual embalmed heart of Louis XVII and listened to a cumbia band in an immense former marble factory alongside French hipsters drinking American I.P.A.s. I gazed in awe at some of the most ugly-beautiful Brutalist buildings Id ever seen, ate an exquisitely poached filet of whiting with spring peas at a serene restaurant where the bread comes in a miniature burlap sack, and ambled around an empty museum filled with sleek 1930s furniture that, in the absence of any other visitors or even (as far as I could tell) a guard, I found exceedingly hard not to sit on.

My first mistake: Wine at lunch. (Soon repeated.)

Heres one thing to know before trying to walk the perimeter of Paris in a week: The city and its pleasures will no doubt conspire against you. On my very first day, after a morning spent pushing north from my hotel along the Boulevard Soult, past a locksmith business, a car-insurance agency, a shoe repair shop and other emblems of everyday Parisian life, and after a foray into the unlovely suburb of Bagnolet, I found myself very badly in need of lunch. So I plunged a few blocks into the city and installed myself at an outdoor table at a busy cafe in the 19th arrondissement called La Pelouse. One 11-euro plat du jour, a carafe of chilled Brouilly and a creme caramel later, I found the idea of rising to my feet  much less continuing my trek  less than appealing, especially with the ever-entertaining human pageant playing out before me on this busy corner in Belleville. After that, I made a promise to myself to exclude wine from lunch for the remainder of the week. (Its a promise I would fail to keep.)

If a single observation stands out from that first, long days walk, which ended just before sunset in Pantin, alongside the recently restored and promenade-lined Canal de lOurcq  a site Mr. Delourme had referred to more than once as the Champs-Elysees of Le Grand Paris  its that Pariss edge areas have for the past century served as a vast laboratory for bold and occasionally bonkers architecture.

Beyond the Boulevards des Marechaux, the inner ring of surface streets that mark the limits of the Paris most visitors know, the uniform ranks of Haussman-era buildings give way to a crazy-quilt of styles and eras, from the orange-brick HBMs (Habitations a Bon Marche) erected near the city limits in the 1920s and 30s as affordable dwellings  no longer very affordable at all  to their much-maligned successors, the megalithic postwar housing projects known as HLMs (Habitations a Loyer Modere). The latter represent the most visible if not the most loved aesthetic legacy of the architect and urban planner Le Corbusier, whose Leviathan visions of collective living haunt the outer areas of Paris like pre-cast-concrete ghosts. (Speaking of Le Corbusier, on the fourth day of my walk I would happen upon his home and studio in a western suburb; the building is perfectly human-scale and pleasant. Go figure.)Recreational marijuana is now legal in Canada, giving adults the right to buy, carry and share up to 30 grams , or slightly over an ounce, of dried cannabis at one time  enough weed to roll roughly 60 joints. But where you can use it and how it is sold varies by province and territory. And dont even think of trying to bring a joint back across the border.

Heres what you need to know if youre heading to Canada for weed.

How old do I have to be to buy legally?

You must be 19 to buy, possess and consume cannabis in most of Canada, including British Columbia. The minimum legal age is 18 in Alberta and Quebec, although Quebecs newly elected government has pledged to raise the minimum age to 21. And everyone in your group needs to be of age: Sharing with minors is a crime.

Where can marijuana be purchased?

While the number of shops is expected to grow, options remain limited. Retail stores have yet to open in Ontario, where the government is moving forward with a tightly regulated private retail model scheduled to begin April 1.

And only one shop has opened in British Columbia so far  in Kamloops, B.C.

Global News, a Canadian television network put together a province-by-province list of government-run, private and online outlets where you can get your hands on some bud. Roughly a dozen legal cannabis stores have opened in Quebec, including three in Montreal , Quebecs largest city. Global News points out at least three more are scheduled to open later this month, including another in Montreal .LAS VEGAS  Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for governor of Nevada, knows how to rile up a crowd this election season: Just point to the state to the west.

Are we going to keep Nevada the Nevada we all love, this independent Western state, or are we going to turn into California? Mr. Laxalt asked at a rally in Elko with President Trump on Saturday.

Mr. Trump jumped in a moment later, assailing Californias embrace of so-called sanctuary cities, where local authorities limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. By the way, a lot of people in California dont want them, either, he said of such cities. Theyre rioting now. (Actually, they are not).

Its not only in Nevada. California would seem to be on the ballot in a number of states where Republicans are facing tough re-election battles this fall. In Nevada, Texas, Colorado and Florida, California is being hoisted as a symbol of high taxes, liberal social policy, lax immigration enforcement and an interventionist government run amok. The state figures in laugh lines and attack lines wielded by candidates for the House and Senate, for governor and for state legislative seats.The mayor of Oakland, Calif., has ordered an end to a Police Department policy that required job applicants to disclose whether they had been sexually assaulted.

Since at least 2012, the Oakland Police Department had used a form that allowed staff members to conduct background checks on recruits. When signed by the applicant, the form authorized the release of confidential information, including whether a person had been sexually assaulted, school transcripts, credit history and criminal records, according to Johnna Watson, a public information officer for the department.

Oaklands mayor, Libby Schaaf, also called for the department to team up with the Oakland Police Commission on a top-to-bottom review of how the department recruited and hired to ensure no other barriers discourage the hiring of women or minority applicants, she said in a statement on Sunday.

Sexual assault survivors have persevered through trauma, and their resilience is a character quality we respect, honor and welcome in Oakland, Mayor Schaaf said.But a hiring spree of immigration judges under President Trump could make the process faster and potentially more effective, so that alternative is still on the table.

The final three ideas under review  making it harder to apply for asylum, extending the use of GPS ankle monitors, and speeding up enforcement of deportation orders  also carry potential pitfalls.

Ankle monitors are typically used to track migrants for a few months after they cross the border. The new proposal would require the devices to be worn for the full duration of immigration cases, which take about two years to decide on average  a very long time to have to wear such a device. The proposal would require more funding, since it would require a much larger number of ankle bracelets.

The final proposal calls for changing current deportation procedures, under which migrants are given a date by which they must leave the country or report to an immigration office for deportation. Homeland Security officials cautioned that trying to deport people immediately could leave some children stranded  if their parents leave home for court, for example, and never come home. The policy could also further deter people from showing up to court.

In an interview at the height of the family separation controversy over the summer, Stephen Miller, the presidents senior adviser on immigration issues, said that voters would support efforts to crack down at the border. I have absolute confidence, as does the entire administration, that the American public wants us to have a fully secure border with predictable consequences for illegal entry, he said.

One way or another, the arrival of thousands of new migrant families will inevitably affect political races in border states like Arizona. These days, the Greyhound bus stations in Tucson are overflowing with new arrivals, and shelters are so full that some migrants are being checked into local motels.

Every day, every bed has been taken in the last couple weeks, said Gretchen Lopez, who runs the Inn, a migrant shelter in the basement of a Methodist church in Tucson. I see no indication that it is slowing.AMES, Iowa  It was hard to miss him at the homecoming parade.

The band was booming. The floats were floating. And there he was  in the middle of it all  hands waving, hair flying.

Hi, Bernie! someone shouted from the sidewalk.

How you doing? he shouted back.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has not yet announced he is running. But for several blocks in this college town on Sunday afternoon, he was certainly marching.

From the front of a group of Iowa State College Democrats, Mr. Sanders, widely assumed to be preparing another presidential candidacy, inspired cheers and chants, his mere presence whipping up the kind of political excitement this early-voting state knows so well.

But if Democratic euphoria was the theme of the day, Mr. Sanders also sounded a cautionary note about the partys prospects in the midterm elections on Nov. 6.[Make sense of the people, issues and ideas shaping the 2018 elections with our new politics newsletter.]

According to a 2016 poll conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics, only 42 percent of Americans between the age of 18 and 29 said they support capitalism (the gender breakdown: 49 percent of men and 35 percent of women). Fifty-one percent said they opposed it, and when asked if they thought of themselves as capitalists, 67 percent of men and 83 percent of women said no.

The figures among Democrats tell a similar story. A poll in August found that the number of Democrats who express a positive view of socialism  57 percent  has remained relatively consistent since 2010, when it was 53 percent. But the number of Democrats who held a positive view of capitalism has fallen by almost 10 percentage points since 2016, from 56 percent to 47 percent.

Given everything that we see in the news every day, it is a disheartening time to be a young American, said Alyssa Thompson, 18, a certified nursing assistant from Greene, Maine. She worked long hours at a gas station kitchen to pay for her C.N.A. certification and said the first words she associated with capitalism were greed and abuse.

In the short term I dont think we can end capitalism or do away with corporations, she said. But with democratic socialism I think we can bring those corporations under democratic control, hold them more accountable and encourage them to act in the interest of the public by paying higher wages, improving working conditions and creating jobs on American soil.

This election year, the Democratic strategy for winning control of Congress relies largely on moderate candidates in a mix of urban, suburban and rural districts and battleground states like Nevada. A handful of democratic socialists have been nominated, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Rashida Tlaib in Michigan, in reliably Democratic House districts.Florida. Singing: Sunshine and sea breeze, soft sand and palm trees. Retirement mecca, party central, Little Haiti, Little Havana  a state with elections so close, theyre legendary. And in 2018, Florida is living up to its reputation, with a tight governors race catering to political extremes. A lefty mayor from Tallahassee  Are yall ready to flip Florida blue  versus a Trump-loving former congressman. Make America great again. The result could be a litmus test for where the state, and maybe even the country, are headed in 2020. So, who are the candidates? This is the Democrat, Mayor Andrew Gillum. He pulled off a surprise victory in the primary, beating out six other candidates. My wife refers to me as Seabiscuit. Gillums got that made-for-media inspiring back story. Hes one of seven kids, the first to graduate from high school and college, and he was the youngest person ever elected to the Tallahassee City Commission. Gillum could be Floridas first black governor. Hes become a bit of a national star. But hes also wrapped up in some controversies: An ongoing corruption probe, since youve been mayor. We want to make sure that any individual that participated in that is held fully accountable. The Republican, Ron DeSantis: He made a name for himself by appearing on Fox News  a lot. Put up or shut up. DeSantis, a self-described conservative warrior, has impressed many Republicans, including Trump. A tough, brilliant cookie. Hes got Ivy League credentials and served in the military. JAG officer. DeSantis went to Congress in 2012, but recently resigned so he could focus on his campaign. Hes also had some stumbles, like when he said this about Gillum the morning after the primaries: You know he is an articulate spokesman for those far-left views. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up. Yeah. It drew accusations of a racist dog whistle. So, what about the issues? DeSantis has endorsed almost every Trump policy, from repealing the Affordable Care Act to moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He also hates tax increases and so-called sanctuary cities. Gillum: He might be the most liberal candidate for governor in Floridas history. He wants to overhaul I.C.E., raise the minimum wage and fight the N.R.A. Polls show that both messages are getting pretty good reception in Florida. So yeah, of course, the race is neck and neck. This is Florida. The rules are different here.what Mr. Trump said

the facts

This lacks evidence.

There is no evidence that unknown Middle Easterners have infiltrated the migrant caravan heading toward the United States southern border. Reporters with The New York Times and other news media outlets traveling with the caravan say they have not seen any Middle Easterners in the group. No government agency has confirmed Mr. Trumps claim.

Trump said there are terrorists here, said Irineo Mujica, the director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a transnational group that has organized the caravans for years. Does he mean women? Children? The bombs must be diapers.

Mr. Trumps tweet came soon after a Fox & Friends segment in which Pete Hegseth, a co-host, cited a claim from the president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, that his government had arrested over 100 ISIS fighters. Mr. Hegseth floated the possibility that terrorists could have infiltrated the caravan. Asked by a co-host whether he was sure that was true, Mr. Hegseth conceded that it hasnt been verified.

This month, Mr. Morales said at a conference in Washington that Guatemala had arrested almost 100 people highly linked to terrorist groups, specifically ISIS and they have also been deported to their countries of origin.Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. Im Lisa Lerer, your host.

[Get On Politics delivered to your inbox.]

A big irony of the final stages of these midterms is that after all of the special elections, domestic and foreign policy crises, and general craziness out of Washington over the past nine months, the fundamentals of this race look pretty much like they did at the beginning of the year.

Thats good news for Republicans, who spent much of the summer worried that they could face a blowout in the House and maybe even the Senate. For the G.O.P., boring is ideal.

Republicans today feel confident about the Senate, a fight thats largely happening on red-state turf. Democrats are optimistic about the House, but their expectations have tempered a bit from a few months ago, when they thought their party could rack up dozens of victories. Smart strategists seem to be circling around Democrats winning about 30 seats  enough for them to take control, but not a sweeping margin.WASHINGTON  A security guard shot and wounded a man who forced his way into a local television station, the police said Monday, stoking renewed fears that journalists have become targets in a highly polarized political environment.

The shooting occurred about 3 p.m. at WTTG Fox 5s building in Northwest Washington when the irate man kicked his way through two sets of glass doors to enter the lobby, the police said.

In the lobby, the man was confronted by a security guard employed by the station. The guard fired her weapon, striking the man apparently in the torso. The man was not armed, the police said. Nobody else was injured.

Normally, the doors can be opened only with a building pass or if a security guard buzzes in a visitor, said Dustin Sternbeck, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department.HOUSTON  While competing for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Donald J. Trump posed a biting question to voters: Why would the people of Texas support Ted Cruz when he has accomplished absolutely nothing for them?

More than two years later, President Trump visited Texas to answer his own question: because Mr. Cruz now supports Mr. Trump.

It got nasty, Mr. Trump acknowledged about their contest as he addressed an arena full of supporters on Monday on behalf of Mr. Cruzs campaign for re-election to the Senate. And then it ended. And Ill tell you what  nobody has helped me more with your tax cuts, with your regulation, with all the things that were doing, including the military and the vets, than Senator Ted Cruz.

If ever there were a moment during this midterm election race that reinforced just how much Mr. Trump has claimed control of the Republican Party, it came during the rally at Houstons Toyota Center. While many elected Republicans remain privately dismayed by the president for various reasons, they have put aside their qualms to embrace him during this campaign season, as demonstrated by Mr. Cruz, one of Mr. Trumps last and most virulent opponents during his journey to the White House.L.G.B.T. activists mobilized a fast and fierce campaign that included a protest outside the White House on Monday to say transgender people cannot be expunged from society, in response to an unreleased Trump administration memo that proposes a strict definition of gender based on a persons genitalia at birth.

The existence of the draft memo, the administrations latest effort to roll back the recognition and protection of transgender people under federal civil rights law, was reported by The New York Times on Sunday morning.

Within hours, the hashtag #WontBeErased circulated on social media. By Sunday evening, a rally for transgender rights took place in New York; another took place on Monday in Washington.

With the White House as their backdrop, speakers repeated the phrase We will not be erased, which has become a rallying cry against the proposal. The 45-minute rally, attended by what appeared to be at least several hundred people, repeatedly referred to the coming midterm elections and encouraged people to vote.RABAT, Morocco  In a widespread crackdown, sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco are facing arbitrary arrest, banishment to remote sections of the country and, lately, outright expulsion, analysts and rights advocates say.

Rights advocates contend that the raids, which government officials acknowledge, began in the summer and were coordinated with Spain and the European Union to stem the tide of migrants to the Continent. The Moroccan government says they were aimed at only undocumented migrants and human trafficking.

The crackdown began in June and intensified in late July, after at least 600 migrants successfully crossed to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in northern Morocco, rights groups say. Sub-Saharan migrants, even some with valid residency permits, described wholesale roundups in which they were herded onto buses with little more than the clothes they were wearing and taken to cities hundreds of miles to the south.

Abdoulaye N., 31, a Senegalese immigrant who, like other migrants interviewed for this article, asked that only his given name be used for fear of reprisals, was one of those swept up in the raids.MEXICO CITY  When American and Mexican officials prepared to meet in Guatemala in July, one issue in particular was weighing on the United States.

A caravan of hundreds of Central American migrants had trekked through Mexico a few months before, seeking passage into the United States. American officials wanted to know: Would Mexico agree to force such migrants to apply for asylum there, instead of letting them enter the United States?

The Mexicans said no.

Today, with many thousands more in transit, by far the largest single movement of migrants north in decades, the pressure to resolve the issue has reached new heights.

With a proposal broached last July known as a safe third country agreement seemingly off the table  it has been rejected by Mexicos president-elect  Mexico again finds its migration system in a state of crisis, and in the cross hairs of American officials.KABUL, Afghanistan  An Afghan commando opened fire on members of the American-led NATO coalition in western Afghanistan on Monday, killing one and wounding two, officials said.

The shooting, at the Shindand base in Herat Province, intensified concerns about a rise in the kind of so-called insider attacks that, at their peak in 2012, almost derailed the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

It came just days after a brazen attack by a Taliban infiltrator among the Afghan forces in southern Kandahar Province that killed an important Afghan police commander and wounded an American brigadier general.

In the Kandahar attack, the top American and NATO commander, Gen. Austin S. Miller, was present, but officials said he was unhurt and it was clear he had not been the target.TAIPEI, Taiwan  The conductor of a train that crashed in northern Taiwan, killing 18 people, had reported problems with the power system multiple times before the accident, the local news media said Monday.

Among the dead in the Sunday afternoon crash were eight members of a family returning from a wedding, Taiwans railway authority confirmed. An additional 190 people were injured in the islands worst such accident in 37 years.

On Monday morning, the Taiwan Railways Administration released a 12-second video of the moment the Puyuma Express train derailed in northeast Taiwans Yilan County. The train was carrying 366 passengers.HONG KONG  Walter Kwok, a Hong Kong property tycoon who was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1997 and later ousted, in a dramatic family conflict, from the business his father had founded, died on Saturday in Hong Kong. He was 68.

His wife, Wendy Kwok, confirmed his death in a statement but did not specify the cause. He had been hospitalized since August after having a stroke.

Mr. Kwok was one of Hong Kongs most prominent developers when he was targeted by a mainland gangster who had an audacious plan to kidnap the citys richest businessmen and ransom them for tens of millions of dollars.

The gangster, Cheung Tze-keung, known by the nickname Big Spender for his profligate ways in Macau casinos, kidnapped Mr. Kwok in September 1997, nearly three months after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese control.This story was updated on Nov. 5, 2018.

The dirty work of democracy is often compared to the making of sausages, but Australians almost take that maxim literally  turning Election Day into a countrywide barbecue, in which the grilling of hot dogs is optional but voting is compulsory.

More than 96 percent of eligible Australians are enrolled to vote. Of those, more than 90 percent typically turn out to cast ballots for a federal election, far more than the 55 percent of eligible Americans who participated in the 2016 presidential election.

Australians are induced to vote with both sticks and carrots. Shirkers can be fined up to nearly 80 Australian dollars if they fail to show at the polls. But voting, which always takes place on a Saturday, is also made easy and efficient, and is often accompanied by a community barbecue that includes eating what locals affectionately call democracy sausages.

As Americans prepare to vote in the midterm elections on Nov. 6, we asked our readers in Australia to share their experiences and feelings about compulsory voting and explain the ins and outs of the process.SYDNEY, Australia  Australia sought to atone for a decades-long epidemic of child sexual abuse on Monday, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued an official apology that acknowledged the governments systemic failures to protect the nations children.

The apology, delivered to a gathering of victims in Canberra, the nations capital, was the culmination of a five-year government inquiry that exposed widespread sexual abuse. The investigation was perhaps the most far-reaching inquiry of its kind undertaken by any country, examining abuse across a range of religious and secular institutions. Investigators found that thousands of children were sexually abused and countless instances of accusations were ignored or covered up.

We are sorry, Mr. Morrison said in the Great Hall of Parliament, as victims, advocates and officials held hands.

Sorry you are not protected, he said. Sorry you are not listened to. We are sorry for refusing to trust the words of children, for not believing you. As we say sorry, we also say we believe you.MOSCOW  President Trumps national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said on Monday that he had directly criticized Russian officials for meddling in United States elections although, he said, their actions had not had any effect on electoral outcomes.

Mr. Bolton, who was in Moscow to discuss United States plans to withdraw from a nuclear disarmament treaty, told the Echo of Moscow radio station that election meddling came up during his meetings with senior officials, including the Russian foreign minister and the chief of the countrys security council.

Moscows meddling has strained relations with the United States and has prompted a special counsel investigation in Washington into whether members of Mr. Trumps campaign team and administration colluded with the meddling or obstructed the investigation into it.

Mr. Bolton said he had been blunt with the Russians, according to a transcript of his interview, which the radio station translated into Russian for broadcast and posting on its website.Most European leaders  especially the Germans  believe other weapons systems deter the Russians, including air- and ground-launched missiles. For them, Mr. Trumps decision to abandon one of the few remaining treaties controlling nuclear weapons fits a narrative of America First at the expense of existing, long-term alliances, like NATO  and is the latest in a series of abandoned agreements, from the Paris accord on climate to the Iranian nuclear deal.

In this case, they see few advantages from leaving the treaty. Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, called the move a gift to Russia that exposes Europe to a growing nuclear threat, because as the United States enters an arms race, Russia can quickly deploy new weapons in numbers.

The German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, called the decision regrettable, noting that it poses difficult questions for us and for Europe since it is the Europeans who are in range of the Russian missiles, not the United States.

Mr. Gorbachev, unsurprisingly, decried the Trump decision as reckless, asking: Do they really not understand in Washington what this can lead to?

Moreover, the Europeans believe Mr. Trumps strategy  praising Mr. Putin when the two appear together as they did in Helsinki, then letting his aides step up pressure  is, if anything, emboldening the Russian leader. They were stunned to see Russia send a hit squad to Britain to try to kill a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei V. Skripal, despite having exchanged him in a spy-swap years before. And Russia continues to freely meddle in European politics, most recently trying to block the accession of Macedonia to both NATO and the European Union.

But the European reaction has been disorganized. While NATO countries have put more troops in Baltic nations and Poland, and are preparing a huge military exercise in the North Atlantic, there is no agreed-on strategy over what red lines should be set to respond to Russian activity. Nowhere is that clearer than in the realm of cyberwarfare, where Europeans are spending more money on collective defense, but NATO has no offensive capability and no agreement about what kind of interference by the Russians calls for a response.

For his part, Mr. Putin has calibrated his actions with care. He denies that the Russian deployment of what the West calls an SSC-8 missile violates the treaty. And he has accused the United States  long before Mr. Trump was elected  of violating the treaty itself, arguing that antimissile batteries it has placed in Europe could be used to fire other missiles that violate the ban on weapons that can reach 300 to 3,500 miles.LODI, Italy  At the beginning of the school year, as most of the elementary students chatted over warm plates of pasta in the cafeteria, about a dozen immigrant children unwrapped sandwiches around three tables in a spare classroom with slanted purple blinds, drab office furniture and a form reading, Students who bring lunch from home.

I wanted to go back to the cafeteria, said Khadiga Gomaa, a 10-year-old Egyptian girl.

Khadiga and the others did not belong to an Italian breakfast club of poorly behaved students. They were segregated from the rest of the pupils at Lodis Archinti school because they had lost their daily lunch subsidy.

And that was because they failed to meet a new, and critics say punitive, requirement introduced by the towns mayor, a member of the governing and anti-immigrant League party.ISTANBUL  In the continuing frenzy of media attention to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi before a much-anticipated statement by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish media have published poignant photographs of Mr. Khashoggi and his fiancee in the last hours and days of his life.

Mr. Khashoggi and Hatice Cengiz, who is Turkish, are seen holding hands as they visit the local marriage office and enter the building where they had bought an apartment that they were furnishing before he went to the appointment at the Saudi Consulate from which he never emerged.

Ms. Cengiz has been provided with police protection, according to Mehmet Fatih Oke, director of the Turkish Arab Media Association and a friend of Mr. Khashoggi. Ms. Cengiz had not come under any specific threat, but the protection was a precaution, he said.The passenger who made the recording, David Lawrence, posted the video on Facebook; it has been viewed millions of times and been reposted by many users.

The police asked anyone with information to call them.

Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported, the police said in a statement. We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation.

But Mr. Turner said that because Ryanair is an Irish company and the incident happened on the ground in Spain, the man most likely could not be prosecuted in Britain. He criticized the airline for not alerting the Spanish authorities while the plane was still on the tarmac.

@Ryanair have tolerated criminal behaviour, Mr. Turner said on Twitter.

The man started ranting at the woman on the aisle after he tried sliding past her during boarding.

The woman, who has arthritis, did not get up speedily enough for his liking, and by the time Mr. Lawrence had taken out his cellphone to record, the womans daughter was defending her.

Dont tell me what to do, he answered. If I tell her to get out, she gets out.

A flight attendant tried to calm the man and the womans daughter. But after the flight attendant moved out of the cellphone video frame, the man grew even angrier.

The woman soon got up to sit with her daughter, and the flight attendant told the man he would speak to a supervisor.The team of Saudi agents that killed the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul brought a body double who resembled Mr. Khashoggi and wore his clothes as part of a cover-up, Turkish and Saudi officials said Monday.

Turkey leaked security camera video footage on Monday showing the look-alike strolling the streets of Istanbul shortly after Mr. Khashoggi had been killed inside the Saudi Consulate.

The impostor was easily recognizable in part because he wore different-colored shoes than Mr. Khashoggi was when he entered the consulate. A Saudi official as well as another Saudi briefed on the kingdoms investigation into the killing confirmed the ruse.

The inclusion of a body double in the squad is the latest indication that the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist last seen on Oct. 2, occurred during a premeditated plot by the Saudis to abduct or kill him and hide what they did.WASHINGTON  The death of an Army soldier after a blast in southern Afghanistan this month was the result of a series of oversights by a military unit that frequently used a small strip of desert as a patrol route and observation post, prompting Taliban militants to bury explosives nearby, military officials familiar with the matter said.

The death of the soldier, Specialist James A. Slape, casts an unwelcome spotlight on the United States prolonged presence in Afghanistan. Despite the Pentagons claims that American troops are mostly relegated to advising and assisting their Afghan counterparts, they still undertake some of the same types of missions common at the height of the conflict, when more than 100,000 Western troops were deployed there.

After the explosion that killed Specialist Slape, Taliban militants recovered part of his left leg and paraded it through a bazaar in the Garmsir District, according to the officials. It was a grim reminder that, even as the United States courts peace talks with the group, the Taliban continues to wage a brutal, unsparing war, and to use the projection of violence as a demonstration of its influence and endurance.

Specialist Slape, 23, of Morehead City, N.C., was the eighth American to die in Afghanistan in 2018. Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for the American-led mission in Afghanistan, declined to comment, saying that the attack was still under investigation.You need Saudi Arabia to be at the center of this coalition, said Daniel B. Shapiro, a former United States ambassador to Israel. Right now, its unlikely you would find any member of Congress or western European leader willing to sit with the crown prince for consultation.

On Monday, the Turkish drip of well-aimed leaks about the Khashoggi case escalated with the revelation that after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the Saudis sent out a body double dressed in Mr. Khashoggis clothes as a decoy. The news raised new doubts about the Saudi explanation that Mr. Khashoggi was killed accidentally in a fistfight, suggesting instead a premeditated plan to eliminate him.

Saudi Arabias shifting responses to the accusations have hindered its efforts to contain the story. And as each new Turkish revelation has undercut the latest Saudi explanation, the cumulative effect has been a severe blow to the reputation of the kingdom and of Prince Mohammed, known by his initials as M.B.S.

Lasting damage to Saudi Arabias standing could ripple across the region, affecting conflicts from Libya to Yemen while making it harder for the Trump administration to press for a peace deal in the Holy Land and build a multilateral alliance against Iran, two of its key goals for the Middle East.

What we are seeing in the region are expressions of loyalty to Saudi Arabia, but they mask real concerns among Saudi Arabias close allies about the viability of the current regime and about how its behavior is going to affect the region, said Lina Khatib, the head of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.WASHINGTON  The Trump administration, confronted with further evidence of a cover-up in the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, veered on Monday between defending the value of its alliance with Saudi Arabia and pressing the Saudi government for answers.

The White House sent the director of the C.I.A., Gina Haspel, to Istanbul to help the Turkish government with its investigation into the killing, according to an official. But in Riyadh, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held a wide-ranging meeting with Saudi Arabias crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is suspected of playing a role in the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident.

Mr. Mnuchin, who canceled his attendance at this weeks Saudi investment conference in the wake of Mr. Khashoggis killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, traded views with Prince Mohammed on economic ties and counterterrorism initiatives, as well as on the investigation into Mr. Khashoggis death, according to a Treasury Department spokesman.

There are also fresh doubts about the Saudi governments claim that Mr. Khashoggi was strangled accidentally after he got into a fist fight with 15 Saudi operatives, with video of a body double surfacing on Monday. A Saudi operative donned Mr. Khashoggis clothes after he was killed and left the building to create a misleading trail of evidence, surveillance images leaked by Turkey show.One out of every three residents identifies as a Catholic. And there are more than four million Catholics in the city and seven surrounding counties.

So when a series of scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church unfolded in rapid-fire succession this summer, New York gasped.

First came accusations of sexual abuse by a premier American cardinal, Theodore E. McCarrick, who quickly resigned but left in his wake lingering questions about the role Pope Francis played in covering up the predatory behavior.

In August, an 884-page grand jury report out of Pennsylvania landed with a thud, offering a grim catalogue of seven decades of child abuse by more than 300 priests.

And last month, the attorneys general of New Jersey and New York followed Pennsylvanias lead, announcing investigations into claims of clergy abuse and cover-ups, joining five other states that have started similar inquiries. Last Thursday, Pennsylvania dioceses said they had received subpoenas for documents as part of an investigation by the United States Justice Department.

The revelations have forced a painful reckoning that continues to reverberate across the five boroughs, among the devout and the lapsed, young and old, newcomers and native-born. Their disparate internal struggles offer a window into the rich complexities of Catholicism in one of the most diverse cities in the world.

[Tell us how the recent abuse allegations have affected your faith.]

Im grappling with my own uncertainties about the whole situation, she said. But its more so accompanying each other through that pain, and seeing how Christ is present with us.

Through these groups, Ms. Abat said, she has been able to share and understand her anger about the sex scandals with other young Catholics.

Today, Ms. Abat is not only a practicing Catholic, she is also involved with multiple faith ministries across New York City. She leads Ascension Adults in Action, a group of parishioners at the Church of the Ascension on the Upper West Side. She offers support to young adults who participate in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, an organization of lay volunteers who spend a year working in the citys poorest communities. She is also on the ministry team for Charis NYC, which offers retreats to young adults.

It definitely makes me angry, she said. But it doesn't make me want to leave. If anything, it makes it more urgent for me to stay, not to abandon this church and the people who are in it because we need to heal together. And I cant do that by leaving.

Eventually, Ms. Abat said she was able to come to peace with her identity as a Catholic. Her temporary break from Catholicism, she said, strengthened her faith and has allowed her to better cope with the recent scandals.

I questioned a lot of things, she said about her decision to step away from the church. All the rules and all the hierarchy and all of that was just something I was very opposed to, and I needed some time away from that.

For a time in high school and college, Raya Abat, 27, left the Catholic Church. She had grown up attending two churches near her home in Morningside Heights in Manhattan, Notre Dame and Corpus Christi.

"I was angry at God. I was angry at the Catholic Church, he said. But then, I forgave.

Mr. McGarvey did leave the church for a few years, disillusioned by the lack of support he felt when he finally opened up about the abuse. But he said he never stopped believing. In the end, a sense of duty toward the faith drew him back in.

God gave the Devil over a hundred years to try to destroy his church, he said. The best way that hes going to try to do that is within. I'm not going to let the Devil get the best of me.

Though he remains skeptical of clergymen and the Vatican hierarchy, Mr. McGarvey said he has never allowed the abuse to damage his faith in God. To do so, he said, would let evil win.

Decades later, Mr. McGarvey was among the victims who received a monetary settlement from the Diocese of Rockville Centre as part of its Independent Compensation and Reconciliation Program . He now lives in Jamaica, Queens, and goes to Mass weekly at Our Lady of the Cenacle Church.

I hate saying his name, said Mr. McGarvey, now 52. I thought I had a father figure, you know, because my dad wasnt there. And he took advantage of me.

Mr. McGarvey said he was 16 when he was first sexually assaulted by the Rev. Robert Brown, a priest at his local church, Sienna Parish in Franklin Square, N.Y. Mr. McGarvey, who had joined the churchs youth ministry in search of guidance, said the abuse went on for 14 years. It only ended when the priest died.

For Thomas McGarvey, being a follower of the Catholic Church is not only an act of devotion, it is also an act of resistance.

Ill probably still have a nativity scene in my house for Christmas. I have a rosary and have stamps of the Virgin Mary, Mr. Sanchez said. I still believe these are all good things. I just cant keep supporting the church as an institution.

He still occasionally accompanies his parents to Mass. And he acknowledges his soft spot for the Catholic faith.

After coming out, Mr. Sanchez said he initially convinced himself that the church didnt hate me for being gay. He even joined an Upper East Side church that had an L.G.B.T.Q. group. But he ultimately found it impossible to worship in a church that was hostile to homosexuality, even if there were havens where he had felt welcome. Even if this church is liberal, he said. It doesnt mean that the whole Catholic Church is.

But Mr. Sanchez recently stopped going to church after learning from news reports that a priest he had idolized in Ecuador had sexually abused teenagers. Feeling betrayed, Mr. Sanchez said he had grown increasingly vocal with friends and on social media about his concerns about sex abuse in the church, especially after the grand jury report.

Everything I grew up around was Catholic, said Mr. Sanchez, who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and moved to the United States with his family about four years ago.

It was an instinctual response. He was raised Catholic in Ecuador, where he attended a Catholic school. He went to Mass every Sunday. He had been an altar server.

It was a very dramatic time, said Mr. Sanchez, 21, a student at Baruch College. I went to church. Just praying. I really relied on that.

Fernando Sanchez relied on his faith after he told his family he was gay when he was a senior in high school.

The grand jury report exacerbated her internal struggle. I get so angry because of the systemic abuse, she said.

Complicating her decision about whether to participate as a Catholic is a fear of showing a lack of respect toward her parents, and her Irish heritage. Her mother, she said, wishes she and her five siblings were very pious, fervent supporters of the Catholic Church.

Yet she wound up at a Jesuit university, and some of her favorite academic pursuits have involved studying the history of the church.

At this point I dont really know if I identify as a Catholic, she said, adding, Thats something Im still trying to figure out.

Ms. Schliep has largely stopped going to church. When she does accompany her boyfriend to Mass, she feels guilty receiving communion. To participate in the sacrament feels disrespectful to her friends and relatives who remain steadfast in their beliefs.

I felt I didnt fit in, said Ms. Schliep, who is 21 and studying English and history. I also didnt believe in a lot of the tenets of the Catholic Church. The fact that there are no female priests has always bothered me.

She grew up in a family with deep Irish-Catholic roots; her parents took her to Mass every Sunday near their home in New Jersey. But as she got older she realized that her positions on many social issues  like abortion and same-sex marriage  were at odds with the churchs central teachings.

Theresa Schliep, a senior at Fordham University in the Bronx, wrestles with whether to still identify as a Catholic.

The one thing I remember my dad telling me, as a young boy, is: Dont let others cause you to lose your salvation, he said. I never understood what he meant by that. But as I've grown older, and now that I have children, I understand a little more.

Mr. David said he wanted his children to grow up with a strong sense of faith so they, like him, can adhere to the principles of Catholic social teaching and its emphasis on selflessness, service and charity as a road to salvation.

Mr. David, who grew up in Kentucky, now attends Sunday Mass at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Brooklyn Heights with his wife and two children, who are being raised in both the Catholic and evangelical traditions.

As Catholics were sort of accustomed to just waiting for people to tell us how its going to be, what the church rules and regulations are, he said. Christ lives and dwells in us. And so I think, as lay people, we have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. I think its time for us to stand up and say, This is unacceptable.

The Pennsylvania report, he said, provides an opportunity for lay Catholics to demand more accountability.

We are broken people, and so it doesnt shock me that this has taken place. What shocks me more is sort of the response to it, he said. Thats what I think disappoints and what leaves people cynical and bitter and frustrated.

Jacques David, 50, said he believes the cover-up of sexual abuse shows the church hierarchy has not adhered authentically to what Jesus taught.

I do miss it, Mr. Dougherty said about the church. I love the Catholic Church, but I cant go there anymore right now until they fix this.

Mr. Dougherty said he would consider returning to the Catholic Church only if comprehensive reforms were implemented and state laws were changed to prosecute priests accused of older crimes. He said he sometimes thought about all the money he donated over the years, and how it was used.

Since then, Mr. Dougherty said, he has been attending an Episcopal church on Park Avenue. He likes that women can be ordained priests, and the Episcopal Churchs views on sin: light on guilt and heavy on compassion.

I was thinking about my brother and all hes been through and just the enormity of it all, Mr. Dougherty said. How could I be a part of this? I felt like a hypocrite.

As an elementary school student in Pennsylvania, Shaun Dougherty was repeatedly molested by a priest who would pull him onto his lap and grab his genitals as they drove around in a car. Shaun Dougherty is among the victims mentioned in a grand jury report released in 2016 about sex abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, he said.

Shaun said, Youre helping them fight me. Youre helping them raise money by collecting at church. Its never going to change unless parishioners change, Daniel Dougherty recalled. I had to do some soul-searching and he was right.

Daniel Dougherty, 58, said he could no longer stomach providing financial and volunteer support for an institution that had so deeply scarred his brother.

But he walked away two years ago at the behest of his younger brother, Shaun Dougherty, who was sexually abused by a priest as a child.

Daniel Dougherty was an active parishioner at the Church of St. Mary in Long Island City in Queens for 29 years, volunteering as an usher and attending Mass regularly.

For me personally, its another deeper conversion, Ms. Jimenez said. Now its time for me to reach a higher level in the sense of my faith. Its a test of our faith. But when your faith is tested, it makes you stronger.

This, they said, is how they approach the current scandals shaking the church.

Anything that is not at the reach of our hands is at the reach of Gods hands, he said.

Mr. Jimenez, 57, added that his faith had allowed him to let go of worries that would have, in the past, cost him sleep.

If I did not have the faith and if I wasnt rooted in God the way I am, I would be having an anxiety attack every night, said Ms. Jimenez, 56.

The couple had always been active in the church, but they experienced what they described as a deep conversion in the late 1990s, during a three-day Cursillo retreat.

She sings in the choir at The Parish of St. Joseph and St. Mary Immaculate in the Rosebank neighborhood of Staten Island, and volunteers with parish faith groups. She has even begun attending Mass daily.

"You can show everyone that this is not going to stop us, Ms. Jimenez said. And that, if anything, we're going to do even more.

In the face of the churchs sexual abuse scandal, Rosanna and Antonio Jimenez made a decision: to get even more involved, and not shy away from the church.

A big part of my decision to be Catholic was to meet people. Kun Seung Lee, 31 Manhattan

Most of Kun Seung Lees classmates moved away from the city when they graduated from New York University a few years ago, but he stayed to work for an accounting firm. Born in South Korea, Mr. Lee, who is known as Pete, suddenly found himself without many friends in a fast-paced city that began to feel isolating.

He sought solace in the Catholic Church.

Mr. Lee, 31, began attending a Korean Mass at the St. Francis of Assisi Church in Midtown Manhattan, just a few blocks away from Koreatown. There, he found a bustling community of newly arrived immigrants and other Koreans his age.

It served not only as a place of worship but also as a place of gathering and keeping in touch with people with similar situations to mine, said Mr. Lee, who lives in Murray Hill and now works at a private equity firm.

He said that although his decision to be Catholic was socially driven, he came to appreciate the church even more as he learned about its teachings. He frequently volunteers for church and charity events.

He has remained steadfast amid the sex abuse revelations, which he strongly condemns and finds really disturbing. Mr. Lee said it was unsurprising that there were a few bad apples in an institution as vast as the Catholic Church and he commended Pope Francis for the way he has handled the issue.

Quite frankly, if that happened to someone I personally knew, or if the perpetrator was someone I knew in the church, then it would take a lot of soul-searching and reflection.How many screens do you check each day? Smart watch, phone, tablet, laptop and desktop? More? On those screens, how many social sites do you visit and how often? Its an accepted fact that digital media has changed the communications dynamic and in many more ways than people recognize. For the last several years, communications professionals  on the client and agency side  have treated digital media as a new and growing group of social outlets, a place to post information billboards or a wait-and-see mystery. This isnt the complete picture of the digital media landscape.

Once PR practitioners pursued the big placement. But, the New York Times, USA Today or Washington Post feature  still cause for champagne-popping celebration  may have less reach than the story that goes viral on social media with hundreds of shares that add up to millions of influencer connections. The bigger that conversation, the further the reach, drawing in people from the furthest points of the health ecosystem circle-of-influence, creating awareness and driving change.

Whats changing is more than the number and type of social media outlets. Digital technology enables new ways of relating to information, even through whats still being labeled traditional media outlets. Digital communications transform how media works, whether its the 200-year-old newspaper or a two-month old blogging platform.

Digital media is inviting readers to become part of the narrative. When the Wall Street Journal publishes an important story geared for the Tuesday print edition  thanks to digital media  readers are already viewing the story online Monday night and talking about it on social media that evening. Opinions are being formed, allies and pundits taking sides and positive and negative comments appearing before the traditional media hit takes center stage. The information exchange game is in motion hours before the paper appears at the corner newsstand.

As communications professionals, we need to tell stories with impact and resonance. We need to move beyond thinking about securing the big placement to sparking the big conversation that changes mindsets and behaviors. We can no longer look at pursuing traditional media and driving social media conversation as mutually exclusive; theyre parts of the same tactical synthesis. Overall, the story is the spark that drives interest and real engagement. Its what builds brand awareness and the call-to-action to improve peoples lives.

At the heart of this new information environment is an ability to search, access and engage in seconds. SEO and hashtags have the power to connect with topics that are important to our lives with specificity. The smart phone has enabled a 24/7 I want to know now engagement mindset. Now, takes precedence over complete information. To compete in fast-breaking news environments, top traditional media reporters often post initial comments on Twitter and file their longer stories hours later. In the meantime, an army of content bloggers have taken center stage with 280-character Twitter posts, ample length to convey key points and drive social engagement.

To make sure that target audiences assess client news objectively, communication pros must educate their clients to consider how information changes hands. While the Wall Street Journal might be a safe bet to cover a story with objectivity, winning over a social media pundit and seeing their positive tweet may have equal influencer value.

The transformative effects of the digital conversation become apparent in how we research information in every area of our lives, from cooking to politics. The applications of this transformation to how we relate to our personal health are already apparent and are making their mark  and waves  on how consumers consider their right to know and ultimately engage.

Many consumers expect to own their health journey, said Michael Heinley, Partner, Health, Finn Partners, and former WebMD VP of Corporate Communication. Reporters are also consumers and approach access and timing of company information through the lens of: are you worthy of my trust? Failure to move quickly is seen as stalling or massaging the facts.

Likewise, if we consumers go to the doctors office for a blood test, were no longer content to wait for the paper results. In many cases, theyre available online for our access the same moment that the physicians office is notified. Here, curiosity  once cited as the danger that killed the cat  saves lives. Spurred to action, we may do our own research on the risks and possibilities the results reveal. Though not fully informed on how to translate results into next-steps action, were infinitely more aware  albeit anxious  before receiving that physicians office voice message: The doctor would like you to come in to discuss your lab tests.

Digital information is creating healthcare democratization, especially in an age when we rely less and less on a consistent primary care physician and have become our own health historians. As access to information is critical to our families wellbeing, we now need our health data at hand. Life-enhancing wearables link to our smart phones and alert us to irregular heart rhythms, adjust diabetes insulin pumps and even fine-tune neuro-implantables to better control Parkinsons tremor. Digital access is improving lifestyles for people with chronic conditions through cloud-based services that enable people to store and access health records while on the go. Personal investment in digital communications  driving news and social engagement  is the mark of the early adapter.

We no longer wait for tomorrows paper when its news thats vital to our pocketbook or medicine chest. Digital media unleashes the power of now, and as agencies, we must harness it, or our clients will be left behind, or worse. More importantly, from the moment fast-moving social media reporters share a point of view on their channels, physician leaders, patient advocates and other reporters interact and put their stake in the ground. The sharing of accurate, authentic and compelling editorial and content is how we facilitate a conversation that has influence and causes ripples to spread ever outward, affecting positive change. If we embrace our core mission to make a difference through health communications  to enable people to make informed decisions through access to information  we will find a way to help clients in the highly-regulated health space find better avenues to social and digital platform use. If not, others will tell their versions  accurate or not  of our stories for us.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for American ExpressWhile Ariana Grande has taken a social media break following her split with fiance Pete Davidson, Davidson has now spoken about their breakup publicly...in one of his stand-up sets.

As The Hollywood Reporter recounts, Pete performed at a benefit show in Los Angeles Saturday night that also featured Judd Apatow, comedian Tig Notaro and Benmont Tench, co-founder of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Following Tench's rendition of the Tom Petty classic "American Girl," Pete took the stage and immediately commented on his personal situation.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Pete referred to Tench's performance by saying, "Who the f*** wants to follow that? Am I not going through enough that I have to f***ing follow that?"

He then continued, "Well, as you can tell, I dont want to be here. Theres a lot going on. Anybody have any open rooms? Anybody looking for a roommate?

The SNL star then referred to the fact that both he and Ariana had gotten numerous tattoos dedicated to each other.

Ive been covering a bunch of tattoos, thats fun. Im f***ing 0-for-2 in the tattoo department," he added. "Yeah, Im afraid to get my mom tattooed on me because shed leave.

As previously reported, Ariana was seen wearing a Band-Aid on her finger to cover up the word "Pete" when she taped the upcoming NBC special A Very Wicked Halloween.

Ariana and Pete split last weekend; they got engaged in June after dating for just a few weeks.

Prior to her social media break, Ariana wrote to her fans on her Instagram Story last week, "Its very sad and were all tryin very hard to keep going. love u. and thank u for bein here always."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.



The World Economic Forum today objected to the use of the Davos brand in connection with other events, such as Saudi Arabias Future Investment Initiative set to begin Oct. 23.

In its statement, the WEF says it draws attention to its policy not to organize conferences on behalf of a specific government, always preserving its independence and impartiality.

It maintains the use of the Davos brand for any other event other than the annual winter confab of the globes high-rollers and celebrities in the Swiss town can only lead to confusion and may mislead the public, members of the World Economic Forum and the media as it may imply that the World Economic Forum is responsible for, or part of, that event.

The WEF and Davos promise to use all means to protect the Davos brand against illicit appropriation.

More than 30 heads of states and 1,000 top business executives have confirmed that they will be attending the 2019 Davos meeting.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans event has been rocked by high-profile desertions following the torture, dismemberment and murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.Simpi Baked from Clara and Edenderrys Rosderra Meats are attending SIAL International Food Fair in Paris this week. The event in Paris is the biggest business-to-business (B2B) trade event in the world this year.

The Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine, Andrew Doyle T.D., along with the Chairman and CEO of Bord Bia leads a record 35 Irish food companies to SIAL this weekend (21-25 October) with thirty-two of the companies to feature on the Ireland  Origin Green pavilion.

SIAL takes on increased importance this year given the uncertainty surrounding the UK`s future relationship with the EU. While Brexit impacts on all food and drink sectors, exporters from the Prepared Consumer Foods (PCF) category are particularly exposed and, not surprisingly account for 30% of the Irish companies at SIAL with eight of them participating for the first time. While PCF exporters performed well in 2017 at 2.8 billion, an increase of 12% on the previous year, the UK accounted for 1.8 bn. or 62% of its value.

Irish exporters are clearly acting on their strategies - reported in the Bord Bia Brexit Barometer - to diversify into new markets (85%) with Europe a priority market for 86%. In addition three-quarters reported sales growth in non-UK markets in the past 12 months, with 76% favouring trade fairs such as SIAL as platforms for driving growth.

Minister Doyle spoke of the government`s support for food and drink exporters.

"The record presence at SIAL shows the confidence of Irish food and drink companies in meeting the challenges of Brexit and the ever-changing requirements of the international marketplace. The fact that a third of those here are first time exhibitors at SIAL demonstrates clearly the strategy to shift away from reliance on one market, opening up to opportunities in Europe and further afield to reduce their risk to trading volatilities.

"As a government we recognise that success in the marketplace requires investment in planning and innovation and I believe Budget 2019 reflects our commitment to the industry. On the marketing and promotion front we have increased Bord Bia`s budget by 5 million to implement its export growth strategy for the industry. While the UK market continues to perform well with an increase in exports again this year it is prudent to increase our footprint internationally and SIAL gives us an opportunity to do that with 160,000 trade visitors from 110 countries."

Tara Mc Carthy said that since the Brexit vote Bord Bia has worked closely with the industry, ad specifically with the UK-exposed companies to measure the risks to their growth strategies and to explore diversification options in new markets where appropriate. Many of the companies at SIAL participated in building this data through the Brexit Barometers and the Market Prioritisation reports over the past two years.

We now understand better the risks around Brexit and the measures we need to take to support companies get the right products into the right markets to ensure sustainable growth.

"With the support of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine we are now developing our 'Plan to Grow' service through which we will work with companies across all sectors to identify priority markets for them individually, develop marketing strategies, interrogate market and consumer research trends as well as enhancing brand and product differentiation in association with our Thinking House."

Bord Bia Chairman Dan Mac Sweeney paid tribute to the Irish farmers and food processors whose continuous drive for excellence under the Sustainable Assurance Schemes and the Origin Green Charter set Ireland apart from competitors at SIAL in providing solutions to international buyers.

The power the Origin Green programme to differentiate our offering at SIAL and provide solutions to food buyers struggling to meet the demands of their consumers for sustainably produced food sets Ireland apart and is vital to securing premium positioning for Irish product in Europe and further afield. Ireland`s Origin Green farmers and food processors are providing the independent assurances that increasingly appeal to buyers and give us an edge as we compete with over 7,000 exhibitors at SIAL to win the business that our industry needs to grow in a post-Brexit trading environment and meet the targets of Foodwise 2025.

While the EU is already home to 38% of our meat and 31% of our dairy exports Bord Bia`s Market Prioritisation Report identified real growth opportunities for PCF in Europe. This is evident for the first seven months of this year when Ireland exported 1.32bn in PCF to Europe with non-UK European markets delivering growth. In the first seven months of 2018 the value of PCF exports to Denmark alone have more than tripled compared to 2016 to 24.5m. Emerging eastern European countries have been very positive also  Hungary and Romania values have grown 400% and 347% respectively over the past two years though from low bases. France, Germany and the Netherlands have delivered steady growth in recent years with potential growth in Belgium and Sweden also.

Noreen Foley, Business Manager at Hassatts Bakery, a first time PCF exhibitor is looking to SIAL to deliver new business in Europe and beyond. We are growing our business in UK, US, Canada and France but are looking to SIAL to secure new listings in our key European target markets of France, Germany, Switzerland and Poland, and we are excited about other opportunities that might come out of the show. We are confident our award winning range of luxury Biscuits and Savoury Crackers and our motto of `Passion and Indulgence in every bite` will appeal to buyers of high-end products.

To maximise the impact of Irish exporters at SIAL Bord Bia has been working with them in the run up to SIAL to ensure that they are fully equipped with the facts around sustainability and our UN commitments, to ensure the buyers appreciate the dedication of our farmers and food producers to attaining the highest standards of quality and sustainability.

In advance of SIAL Bord Bia also pinpointed key European buyers through its targeted digital marketing campaign, highlighting the attendance of Origin Green members at SIAL and inviting them to explore business opportunities with them.

In addition to the 32 companies at SIAL Bord Bia is also supporting Origin Green companies attending SIAL to follow up on business leads they struck at Marketplace International 2018 in the RDS earlier this year within a dedicated zone at the Ireland pavilion.A former Garda who survived an IRA bomb attack in Offaly in 1976 is to be laid to rest today.

The lifelong injuries suffered by the late Portlaoise Garda Detective Tom Peters demonstrate the futility of violence, according to the Chief Superintendent of the Laois Offaly Garda Division.

Chief Supt John Scanlon, the Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan and Garda Headquarters have paid tributes to the retired detective who died on Saturday, October 20.

On October 16, 1976, Det Peters was among five Gardai blown up by an IRA bomb at Garryhinch on the Laois-Offaly border. One garda, Michael Clerkin was killed instantly while Det Peters suffered extensive injuries which culminated in the loss of his sight and hearing.

Both Chief Supt Scanlon and Minister for Justice Flanagan were present in November 2017 when Det Peters was presented with his Scott Medal for bravery with his colleagues and the relatives of Michael Clerkin.

Chief Supt Scanlon extended sympathies to the Peters family, wife Betty and daughters Elma and Breidette. He said it was important that Tom's bravery was honoured at the Garda College in Templemore last year.

"Our thoughts are with his wife and family who cared for him over the last 40 years. I met Tom and his family a number of times and knows how much it (the Scott Medal) meant to him," he said.

Chief Supt Scanlon said the injuries suffered and endured during Tom's life should be seen in the context of violent times.

"He was the living embodiment of the futility of violence," he said.

Chief Supt Scanlon said it was important that such attacks are not airbrushed out of history.

"We should forgive but we should never forget," he said.

Det Peters and his colleagues were called to Garryhinch after Portlaoise Gardai received a tip-off that Minister Flanagan's father and then TD, Oliver J Flanagan was to be targeted that night.

The Laois-Offaly TD paid tribute to Det Peters.

"He was a garda who displayed great courage and bravery in the performance of his duties. I want to acknowledge that he paid a huge sacrifice and displayed great fortitude in the years since," said Minister.

Minster Flanagan extended his sympathies to the wife and family of the late detective.

A statement from Garda Headquarters in the Phoenix Park also paid tribute.

"An Garda Siochana is saddened to hear of the passing of Tom Peters. The courage shown by Tom Peters and his colleagues, Jim Cannon, Ben Thornton, Gerry Bohan & Michael Clerkin, who lost his life that night, was recognised in December 2017 when they were presented with the Gold Scott medal by the then Garda Commissioner," said the statement.

Funeral Details

Tom's remains will repose privately. Funeral will arrive at SS Peter & Pauls Church, Portlaoise at 5pm on Sunday evening. Requiem mass at 11am on Monday followed by interment in SS Peter & Pauls Cemetery.Fianna Fail TD for Offaly, Barry Cowen has said that a Sustainable Transition Forum should be established to support the Midlands economy if, as expected, Bord na Mona continues with its plan to make in excess of 300 employees redundant this week.

Deputy Cowen was speaking ahead of the expected announcement of major job losses across Bord na Monas peat business.

The Government cannot just leave this region and in particular these communities on its own after such an announcement.

I have personally written to An Taoiseach requesting his support in the establishment of such a forum. The Government cannot wash their hands of this devastating blow; they must support the workers and the local economy," he said.

Additionally, I have written to EU Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, and other Commissioners, seeking a meeting at their earliest convenience to discuss how the EU fund can support, workers, their families and contribute towards enterprise and innovation fund in the affected region.

Fianna Fail believes that a Sustainable Transition Forum is desperately needed to alleviate the impact of the job losses, and to plan and prepare the local economy to make the transition to other forms of enterprise on old Bord na Mona bogs," he said.

Such a forum would comprise representatives from the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Bord na Mona, the ESB, the existing workforce, the local authorities, public representatives, Enterprise Ireland and research facilities.

A primary objective must be to secure funding from both carbon taxes collected and from the European Union to alleviate the problems associated with transitioning to a low carbon business model and economy.

I firmly believe that any transition will only work if there is buy-in and support from the communities directly affected. The forum must agree collectively on the future use of lands and properties, in addition to exploring potential diversification measures.

Finally, we need an enterprise and innovation fund to help realise the potential for alternative job creation in the region. The workforce in situ at present are incredibly talented and skilled; we must find ways of using these skills to keep quality employment in the Midlands, concluded Cowen.Offaly fiddle star Ademar O'Connor has yet again claimed a national title at the 2018 Ed Reavy Festival in Cavan.

Musicians from every province in the country converged on the Cavan Crystal Hotel over the weekend to stake their claim to a number of Irish trad titles.

Teenager Ademar O'Connor, who plays multiple instruments, came out on top and was named the winner in the Ed Reavy International Fiddler Competition 2018, which had been contested by over 20 competitors from all over the country.

Anna McCarthy from Dublin was second while Jamesie Wray in Donegal was 3rd in the hotly contested final, which was adjudicated by the legendary Oisin Mac Diarmada.

The victory for Ademar comes just months after he claimed six medals at the All-Ireland flaw, including two golds. The talented musician has won multiple Fleadh titles, starting at a young age alongside his brothers, Theodore and Arthur, who plays in Irish trad band, Ruaile Buaile.

The three brothers have also appeared on numerous national television programmes, including RTE Late Late Toy Show in 2010.After naming Asthana in FIR, CBI arrests its deputy SP, SIT

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Oct 22: The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested deputy SP, SIT, CBI in connection with the Moin Qureshi case.

This action is part of the ongoing investigation being conducted after the CBI had named its Special Director Rakesh Asthana in the case.

War in the CBI: Modi set to intervene, speak to chief and deputy

The investigative agency has registered a case against Asthana on the basis of claims made by a businessman, Sathish Sana, probed by him in a separate case, that he was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 crore by Manoj Prasad, an investment banker based in Dubai to get relief from repeated summons and a clean chit in the case, they said.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 17:06 [IST]'If Delhi is to be saved from Islamic State': Giriraj Singh urges people to vote for BJP

Rahul should be sent back to school to know what ministries exist under Centre: Giriraj Singh

All places named after Mughals should be changed: Giriraj Singh

India

oi-Vikas SV

New Delhi, Oct 22: Union Minister Giriraj Singh on Monday (October 22) not just praised Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for changing the name of Allahabad to Prayagraj, but also demanded that all places named after Mughals be changed.

The Uttar Pradesh Cabinet last week passed a resolution to rename Allahabad to Prayagraj ahead of the Kumbh Mela. Prayag was the erstwhile name of Allahabad that was changed by Mughal emperor Akbar in 16th century.

Yogi defends renaming of Allahabad, says those opposing it have 'zero understanding of history'

"Khilji looted Bihar but Bakhtiarpur is named after him. Names of around 100 places were changed, including Bihar's Akbarpur. Yogi Ji took a good step. I will demand that in the entire country and in Bihar, the names connected to Mughals should be changed," Giriraj Singh told ANI.

Of the 6 lakh cities, towns and villages in the country, around 704 are named after the first six Mughal Emperors - Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb - who were at the helm when the dynasty was at its strongest. The most evident legacy is that of Akbar, who has 251 villages and towns named after him, said an Indian Express report.

There are close to 70 Akbarpurs across the country, followed by 63 Aurangabads.

Last August, Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi was re-named to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam road.

Akhilesh slams Yogi govt over proposed move to rename Allahabad as 'Prayagraj'

The Congress along with Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party had criticised Yogi government for re-naming Allahabad to Prayagraj. Congress had said that the change would diminish the importance that Allahabad had in the country's freedom movement. Former UP chief minister and Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav had also attacked the Yogi Adityanath government's move to rename Allahabad, stating that the present dispensation wanted to show their work only by "renaming".

Hitting back at those opposing his government's decision to re-name Allahabad, Yogi Adityanath said those questioning the move have zero understanding of history and traditions.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 13:30 [IST]Amritsar tragedy: SAD seeks Sidhus sacking, FIR against his wife, Dussehra event organisers

India

oi-PTI

Aritsar, oct 22: The Shiromani Akali Dal core committee Sunday demanded immediate sacking of Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and registration of a murder case against his wife and Dussehra event organisers, saying they were "responsible for abetting" the Amritsar tragedy.

The core committee, which met here under the chairmanship of former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and was attended by SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal and other senior party leaders, also rejected the magisterial inquiry ordered by the Congress government, a party release said.

Amritsar tragedy: Locals continue to sit-in protest, demand compensation for victims

"The party demands a judicial probe by a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court instead," a party release said.

Terming the man-made disaster as "unparallel on account of the criminal negligence and sheer abetment by the function organisers", the SAD core committee condemned the "cover up" operation allegedly launched by chief minister Amarinder Singh and demanded registration of a fresh case in the matter on statements of the victims' families.

The core committee said similar to what it has been doing to every other section of the society, the Congress government was now muzzling the voice of the poor by instituting a tailor-made inquiry with the sole aim to give a clean chit to the culprits and putting the blame on the Indian Railways. It said this was being done despite the fact that the victims' families were ready to present "irrefutable evidence" against a Congress councilor and Navjot Kaur Sidhu for abetting the tragedy.

Blame game continues on Amritsar issue but police have information about the programme

The SAD panel said the evidence against the councilor and Sidhu was present in the public domain and the same should be taken into account while proceeding against both of them.

It said taking all these facts into account, there was no possibility of a free and fair inquiry by a magistrate who was reporting to Cabinet minister Navjot Sidhu and his family.

It also condemned the "casual attitude" of Navjot Singh Sidhu.

The core committee said it was condemnable that the state was refusing to take action against the Congress leaders despite worldwide condemnation of the incident and the demand "to prosecute the guilty, however high and mighty they may be." It noted that even the heads of States, including those of Russia, Canada and Pakistan, have expressed shock at the tragedy. It said the entire world was watching and if the government failed in giving justice to the victims, it would invite international condemnation to itself as well as the country.

The committee also passed a resolution, calling for Rs 1 crore compensation to each of the victims' families as well as grant of a government job to the next of their kin. It said a separate government programme should be initiated to adopt the victims' children.

The SAD panel also served an ultimatum to the government to register a fresh case on statements of the victims' families and institute a judicial probe besides giving the demanded compensation, failing which it would initiate an agitation to ensure justice to the victims.

Senior leaders who attended the meeting, included SGPC president Gobind Singh Longowal.

PTI

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 1:05 [IST]Anna University November/ December exam 2018 hall tickets download date

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Chennai, Oct 22: The Anna University November/ December exam 2018 hall tickets will be released soon. Once released the same would be available on the official website.

The date for the release of the hall ticket has been confirmed., The hall tickets would be released on October 31 2018.

The university recently announced the revaluation results of undergraduate examinations that were held in the month of April and May. The result of the main exam was released in July, after which students applied for revaluation. Once the hall ticket is released, it would be available on coe1.annauniv.edu.

How to download Anna University hall tickets 2018:

Go to coe1.annauniv.edu

On the home page enter user ID and password.

Click on login

View your hall ticket

Take a printout

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 16:58 [IST]PIL in SC challenges Centre's ordinances on powers to extend tenure of Directors of CBI, ED

As war between 1 and 2 hots up, CBI backs its director

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Oct 22: The CBI tried to defend its Director Alok Verma following allegations of corruption levelled against him by his deputy Rakesh Asthana, charged by the agency with bribery charges last week, saying they are "false and malicious".

In his letters to the Cabinet Secretary and Central Vigilance Commission, Asthana had written about 10 cases of alleged corruption and irregularities against the CBI Director Alok Verma, levelling serious corruption charges in some of them.

Rafale: Govt upset with CBI director meeting Arun Shourie, Prashant Bhushan

One of the case pertained to Sathish Sana, a businessman facing probe in a corruption case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi in which Asthana had alleged on August 24 that Satish Sana paid Rs. two crore to Verma to get relief in the case.

Asthana had also alleged that Verma delayed his team's request to arrest Satish Sana in the case.

The complaint was referred to Central Vigilance Commission by the government which is looking into it.

Gujarat-cadre officer Rakesh Asthana, currently number two in the CBI, has also cited instances of alleged irregularities and violation of rules and regulations against Verma.

In an unprecedented operation, the CBI registered an FIR against Asthana and his Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar, and two alleged middlemen Somesh Prasad and Manoj Prasad on the basis of a statement from Sana that bribe was paid to the middlemen to get relief in repeated questioning by the Asthana's Special Investigation Unit.

Asthana had alleged that he had moved a file for the arrest of Satish Sana on September 20, 2018 which was held by the CBI Director Alok Verma and was later referred to Director of Prosecution who demanded the evidence file.

He had alleged that it was his team which opened a Look Out Circular (LOC) against Satish Sana who was stopped at immigration and prevented from fleeing the country.

In a late night statement, CBI spokesperson said allegations that Director CBI was not aware of LOC issued against Satish Sana is incorrect.

"DCBI had seen and ratified the proposal to issue LOC on May 21, 2018," he said.

The spokesperson said contention that Director CBI made an attempt to stop Satish Sana's arrest is false and malicious.

"The allegation has been made to deflect the charge of receipt of bribe money by CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana and the other public servant named in the FIR," he said.

The agency FIR is based on allegations levelled by Satish Sana, who was facing CBI charges, before magistrate under section 164 of the CrPC.

How the ugly spat between the CBI's top 2 is hurting India's premier agency

The statement attached in the FIR does not make any mention of any direct meeting or call between Asthana and Satish Sana or any direct and confirmed interaction between the two.

"Satish Sana was called to the CBI for examination/inquiry on multiple occasions in October/November, 2017. During October/November, 2017, there were four instances in which notices were given to Sana. In order to get relief from frequent notices, Satish Sana approached one Manoj Prasad in Dubai in the month of December, 2017," the spokesperson said.

He claimed Rs. 2.95 crores was paid to the public servants through Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad and Satish Sana was able to obtain relief in the on-going investigation in the Moin Qureshi case.

Subsequently, there were no notices issued to him till mid of February, 2018, the spokesman said.

He said on February 19, 2018, again notice was issued to Satish Sana who flew to Dubai and met Manoj Prasad.

"Subsequently, there were no notices issued till end of May/early June, 2018," he said.

The spokesperson claimed that an LOC was issued to prevent Satish Sana's escape from the country on May 16 (by the team of Asthana which was probing the matter).

On the basis of LOC, Satish Sana was stopped from going abroad by immigration office at Hyderabad on September 24 on the basis of the Look Out Circular.

"Subsequently, he was called by investigation officer on October 1, 2018 and again on October 3. Faced with continued harassment, Sana got his statement recorded with the Magistrate Court regarding the entire transaction," he said.

Satish Sana also contacted Manoj Prasad to get relief from appearance due on October 9, which was promised by Manoj. He had promised to obtain relief till 25th as requested by Satish Sana, the spokesman said.

"This relief was obtained with the promise of payment of Rs. 2 crore, of which, Rs. 25 lakh was paid on October 10, 2018," he said.

Manoj Prasad was caught on 16th October when he came to India to get the remaining Rs. 1.75 crore, the spokesperson alleged.

"On 20th, Satish Sana once again recorded his statement with the concerned court corroborating the facts he mentioned in the complaint," he said.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 6:48 [IST]Guided by ex-Pak army officials, operating in buddy pairs: Why the Poonch encounter has dragged so much

BAT attack, infiltrations keeps Indian Army on its toes

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Srinagar, Oct 22: The Indian Army is gearing up to fight a huge infiltration bid planned by Pakistan. As part of the plan, Pakistan has decided to send in at least 300 of its terrorists into Indian soil.

The terrorists have now shifted focus to the Pir Panjal area as they find the terrain to be more favourable. It may recalled that in a BAT attack by Pakistan, three Indian soldiers were martyred on Sunday. However the Army successfully managed to foil an infiltration bid by killing two heavily armed terrorists.

The Army is moving at a quick pace to ensure that the terrorists are cleaned up before the winter sets in. Some areas of North Kashmir is already receiving heavy snowfall and some of the mountain passes for ingress remain blocked.

3 Indian soldiers martyred: It was a BAT attack say officials

Recently, Corps commander of Srinagar-based 15-Corps Lieutenant General AK Bhatt said, "more than 250 militants are ready to infiltrate into this side of LoC (from Pakistan) but our soldiers are ready to foil their attempts,"

He further added that there would be more infiltration attempts in the coming months, but are forces are on high alert to foil such attempts.

General Bhatt put the number of active militants in Kashmir valley at around 300, including fresh recruits. He said that people in south Kashmir should take a lesson from people in north Kashmir "who haven't sheltered any militant outfit."

He said that since 1947, these people from north Kashmir have given them full support. We will try our best to help these people and recruit more and more boys from this area," he said.

Pakistan is clear about what it wants to do. It has been fighting India on several fronts, which also includes a propaganda war. The BAT attack, recent killings of the SPOs and the warning to resign is part of the propaganda war. Further the Hizbul Mujahideen has been directed to recruit heavily in the Valley. With the number of terrorists going up within the Valley, one has witnessed an encounter every single day. Further a hit-list of the top commanders too has been prepared and eliminating them would be crucial to curb the menace, officials also say.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 13:26 [IST]CBI books its second in command: Part of bribe allegedly paid at Press Club Delhi

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Oct 22: The Central Bureau of Investigation booked its second in command, Rakesh Asthana in a bribery case linked to meat exporter Moin Qureshi. This was a charge levelled by CBI director, Alok Verma in his complaint to the Cabinet Secretary two months back.

The case was registered on the basis of a complaint by Satish Sana, facing probe in the 2017 case allegedly involving Qureshi. He had alleged that the officer had allegedly helped him get a clean chit. It may be recalled that the CBI had arrested Manoj Prasad, an alleged middleman when he returned to India from Dubai in October 2016.

As war between 1 and 2 hots up, CBI backs its director

The FIR also went on to state that a part of the payment was made in the parking lot of the Press Club, New Delhi. 'Believing them and to get rid of unbearable harassment and mental agony being faced by me and my family, I arranged and paid an amount equivalent to INR Rs 1 crore to Manoj Prasad at his office in Dubai. Thereafter on being informed by Somesh Prasad about the details of one Sunil Mittal, his contact person, I arranged payment of Rs 1.95 crore to Mittal. This payment was made on December 13 2017 at about 9.25 pm in the parking area of the Press Club of India, Rasina Road, New Delhi through my office person namely Purohit."

It was alleged by Sana that Prasad and his brother Somesh had taken money to arrange a clean chit for him.

The CBI moved against Asthana following the arrest of a Dubai based middleman Manoj Prasad. Moin Qureshi was raided by the Income Tax department in 2014 and his messages with former CBI director A P Singh had led to Singh's resignation as member of the Union Public Services Commission. In 2017, the CBI registered a case and this was one of the many major cases being handled by Asthana.

How the ugly spat between the CBI's top 2 is hurting India's premier agency

A complainant in the case, Sana Satish had on October 4 named Asthana before the Magistrate. He also claimed that he was being harassed by CBI officers to pay more. It was also detained how Rs 3 crore had been paid over a period of 10 months from December 2017 onwards.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 7:41 [IST]Chhattisgarh polls: CPI surprises by announcing 5 candidates names

India

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Raipur, Oct 22: Less than a week after the Communist Party of India (CPI) announced its alliance with Ajit Jogi's Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) for the upcoming Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, the former on Saturday, October 20, revealed names of five contestants for the two-phase election, leaving many surprised.

It was being said that the CPI was given just two seats after it joined the grand alliance between the JCC and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for the elections. It was agreed that the CPI would field candidates from the two seats of Dantewada and Konta and in lieu of that, the Left party and its affiliated labour unions would campaign for the JCC-BSP candidates in some constituencies. However, the CPI's announcement of five candidates now has raised fresh questions.

Chhattisgarh: Can BJP beat NOTA challenge in CM Raman Singh's district Rajnandgaon?

The five candidates that the CPI have announced are: Mangal Ram Kashyap from Jagdalpur; Ramchandra Nag from Kondagaon; Radhika Sori from Keshkala; Nandram Sori from Dantewada and Manish Kunjam from Kota, said a report in Naidunia.

Chhattisgarh will go to elections on November 12 and 20 and the counting of the votes will take place on December 11. Four other states - Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Mizoram and Telangana are also going to polls around the same time.

In the 2013 elections, the CPI contested in 13 seats but failed to win a single seat. It polled over 86,000 votes and had a vote share of 0.7 per cent. The figure was worse than its show in the 2008 and 2003 elections respectively when it got 1.1 per cent vote share. It though failed to win a single seat on both those occasions.

Assembly elections: BJP announces candidates for Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Mizoram polls

Can the CPI gain from Mayawati and Jogi magic given the fact that everything is fine with its alliance with the BSP-JCC tie-up?

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 7:33 [IST]Man calls railway cops informing about bomb threat; security beefed up in Mumbai

Hardik Pandya on customs seizing Rs 5 crore watches: Allegations of crossing legal boundaries are unfounded

Hardik Pandya clarifies watch was worth Rs 1.5 cr, not Rs 5 cr, voluntarily declared items brought by me

In pics: Indian Railways gets first pod hotel at Mumbai Central station; Details on Price, facilities here

No protection, no hearing until we know where you are, SC tells Param Bir Singh

Congress worker murdered in Mumbai

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar P

Mumbai, Oct 22: A Congress worker was allegedly killed by unidentified men in Mumbai's Ghatkopar on Sunday. The Congress worker has been identified as Manoj Dubey.

Relative says, "He (Manoj Dubey ) shared a post on Facebook that Congress will form govt in 2019 on which BJP and Bajrang Dal workers posted rude comments.The altercation led to a fight with swords in which he was killed."

According to reports, the worker had a political rivalry with other party workers.

Police are investigating the case at the moment.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 11:01 [IST]COVID-19 in Delhi: Daily cases count stood in excess of 60 nearly 25 times during July-Oct

Delhi: Fire rages on at Bhalswa landfill site

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Oct 22: In what would certainly add to Delhi's air quality woes, a fire has been raging at the Bhalswa landfill site in Delhi since October 20.

Delhi's air quality oscillated between "poor" and "very poor" category Sunday as authorities have warned of days of severe pollution ahead.

The fire at Bhalswa landfill site broke out at 2 pm on October 20, a Delhi Fire Service official said, adding firefighting was still going on at the site.

Three fire tenders are working to douse the blaze, he said.

[NGT seeks report on 'mountain' dumps at landfill sites in Delhi]

Last year, the National Green Tribunal has rapped the Delhi government for lack of infrastructure to deal with "mountain dumps" of decaying garbage at various landfill sites in the city. The green panel had then noted that Delhi generated nearly 14,100 metric tonnes of garbage per day and the authorities lacked the requisite infrastructure and appropriate technical capacity to deal with such huge amounts of waste. The tribunal also directed the city government to submit a report on the status of cleaning the major drains which join river Yamuna.

[Delhi: Garbage dumping in Ghazipur banned]

In September 2017,Lt Governor Anil Baijal on Saturday banned garbage dumping in Ghazipur with immediate effect.

OneIndia News with PTI inputsDelhi HC rejects plea challenging purchase of new buses for DTC

India

oi-Vikas SV

New Delhi, Oct 22: The Delhi High Court on Monday (October 22) rejected a plea which challenged the state government's decision to procure 500 standard floor buses (SFBs) for the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC).

The proposed procurement was opposed by a differently-abled person, Nipun Malhotra, who has moved two PILs challenging the Delhi government and the DTC's decision to buy 2,000 standard floor buses (SFBs) instead of the low floor buses (LFBs) for the national capital. After hearing arguments of both sides, the high court had earlier reserved its decision on the procurement of 500 SFBs.

Old diesel cars to be seized in Delhi

On October 10, the AAP government and DTC urged the Delhi high court to permit procurement of 500 standard-floor buses for the national capital, saying that these vehicles were primarily meant for rural areas on the city outskirts where the roads were poor.

Malhotra, represented by advocate Jai Dehadrai, contended that SFBs were not disabled friendly as they were mounted on truck chassis and their height prevented differently-abled persons from boarding them.

Taking note of disability rights activist Nipun Malhotra's petition, the Delhi High Court issued a stay on the tender in June this year, saying that the government is "bent upon treating the disabled as non-existent, or, in any case not having any rights." The government then appealed to the Supreme Court, citing the urgent need for new buses, the repeated difficulties in finding bidders for low floor buses, and the existence of a high number of low floor buses in the current fleet.

Soon, one single card for all modes of public transport across the country

The Supreme Court then granted an easing of the stay order in August, stating that the government can go ahead with acquiring 500 standard floor buses - on the condition that it also add 500 low floor buses. The government has gone back to the Supreme Court on September 7, requesting that it be permitted to acquire the entire fleet of 1,000 buses, as the tender has already been cleared.

OneIndia News with PTI inputs

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 15:50 [IST]Grappling with internal problem, Pakistan PM taking twitter route to solve Kashmir problem!

India

oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla

New Delhi, Oct 22: Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan seems to be under tremendous pressure to deliver not only internal politics of Pakistan, diplomatic issues but also to bail out economy of the country which is sinking. But he also has to keep the real masters in the country happy - the military - to remain in power. So he keeps talking about the Kashmir issue.

Imran Khan vows to make Pakistan 'cleaner than Europe'

Imran Khan tweeted: "[I] strongly condemn the news cycle of killing of innocent Kashmiries in IOK by Indian security forces. It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UNSC resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people."

On which the official spokesperson of ministry of external affairs Raveesh Kumar said: "The remarks made by Pakistan's Prime Minister in his tweet today are deeply regrettable. Instead of making comments on India's internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues. Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours. Pakistan's deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world."

Sidhu loves Pakistan more than South India: Here is why

Strategic experts say, "This could be a desperate attempt by the Pakistan premier to divert attention from the home front as Imran Khan's popularity is going down drastically. So he is making all kinds of efforts to wrest it but he has still to learn a lot in politics and Kashmir is not as simple as in issue that can be solved by twitter messages."

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 21:18 [IST]Hoping to pull 'rabbit out of the hat', BJP ropes in magicians to woo voters in Madhya Pradesh

India

oi-Vikas SV

Bhopal, Oct 22: Anti-incumbency is a major factor in any election and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is seeking a fourth term in the state, knows it well. Not only is the BJP battling anti-incumbency, the main oppostion, Congress, is also looking in a better position this time, when compared to the 2013 elections.

The BJP main campaign pitch would be to highlight the achievements of Chouhan-led-government during his three terms. The saffron party is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that their campaign reaches every corner of the state. The latest ploy adopted by the BJP for this is to rope in magicians to highlight the work done by the Chouhan government in the last 15 years.

Madhya Pradesh elections: Will the strong undercurrent of disunity hurt the Congress?

The party would be roping in magicians to highlight the work done by it in the last 15 years and compare it with that of the previous Congress government, state BJP spokesman, Rajnish Agrawal told PTI.

"We have plans to hire magicians for campaigning and publicity," he said, adding that magic shows would be organised at market places to reach out to voters, especially in rural and semi-urban areas.

Times Now survey predicts win for BJP in Madhya Pradesh, Congress to do better than 2013

The number of magicians to be utilised for this is yet to be decided. But, the BJP hopes to start the magic shows soon and budget allocation for these activities is also being worked out, Agrawal said.

"With this art, we are going to tell people about what the BJP government has done for people, especially the weaker sections of society in Madhya Pradesh in the last 15 years," he added.

A campaign by magicians will reportedly begin next week and cover 151 rural constituencies, with magic shows lasting between 25-30 minutes.

Magicians to weave magic for BJP in Gujarat

Even during the Gujarat Assembly elections last year (2017), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had deployed an army of magicians to woo the voters. The group of professional magicians not only entertained the masses with their tricks but also spread the message of the BJP's development agenda. BJP overcame anti-incumbency in Gujarat and state assembly elections with a clear majority.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 12:28 [IST]How advanced is Pakistan's cruise missile technology

India

oi-Vikas SV

New Delhi, Oct 22: Missiles, on one hand, can wreak widespread devastation when used, but on the other serve as effective strategic deterrent. India and Pakistan have developed a wide range of missiles over the last 3-4 decades, thanks to the hostile relations between both the neighbours.

In ballistic missiles technology, India seems a tad ahead of Pakistan largely due to formidable Agni series of missiles. Agni-5 has a range of 5,000 kms, and Paksitan, so far, has not come up with any missile that has longer range than Agni-5. Pakistan's answere to Agni-5 is Ababeel missile which has a range of 2,200 kms. But it must be said comparisions about 'who is ahead' and 'who is behind' cannot be made just based on range of missiles. Ababeel is equipped with MIRV technology, whereas it is not clearly known if Agni-5 has MIRV capabilities. Many experts, however, do claim that India has tested Agni-5 with MIRV.

MIRV technology enables a single missile to carry multiple warheads each of which can be programmed to strike different targets.

Coming to cruise missiles, India's well known cruise missiles are BrahMos and Nirbhay, while that of Pakistan is Babur or Hatf 7 missile.

Can Ababeel deceive India's missile defence system?

Difference between cruise and ballistic missiles:

Ballistic are launched on a sub-orbital flight trajectory and spend most of their flight out of the atmosphere. It travels well outside the atmosphere and then the warhead detaches and hurtles back to earth. Cruise missile, on the other hand, are jet-propelled pilot-less aircraft designed to strike distant targets with great accuracy. They fly close to terrain, as compared to ballistic missiles, and even speeds are much lower.

Comparison between Babur and Nirbhay:

Babur is a short-range, turbojet-powered ground-launch cruise missile whose development began in 1990s. With a launch weight around 1,500 kg, it is capable of carrying a 450 kg payload up to 700 km.

Nirbhay is a long-range, subsonic cruise missile designed and developed in India by the Defence Research and Development Organisation. The missile has a range of more than 1000 km, weighs about 1500 kg and has a length of 6 metres.The missile is powered by a solid rocket booster for take off which is developed by Advanced Systems Laboratory(ASL).

Both Babur and Nirbhay can carry nuclear as well as conventional warheads. When it comes to accuracy of striking targets, Nirbhay has a clear upper hand. The Circular Error Probability (CEP) of Nirbhay is as low as 1-2m as compared to 10m of Babur.

Nirbhay can be launched from all three platforms; ground, air, and water. In case of Babur, the known launch vehicles have all been mobile, land-based platforms, according to defenceupdate.in.

From Babur to Ghaznavi: About names of Pakistani missiles

Some reports, however, say tha Babur-III is the naval variant of the land-based Babur-II, which was tested in December 2016.

Although Pakistan claims that a that a submarine version of Babur was tested successful, Indian Navy has refuted such a claim. Babur's stealth capability, when compared to Nirbhay, is also questionable. When it comes to terrain hugging capability, Nirbhay can fly as low as 5 mts from surface and can circle over the target so as to strike with great precision.

Nirbhay can also be mounted Su-30 MKI and launched from air, whereas same cannot be said about Babur. Babur does not have air force version because of smaller range and heavy weight.

Nirbhay problem's:

Many of the tests of Nirbhay in the past have failed or have been partially successful. The first completely successful test of Nirbhay came only in November last year. The sub-sonic missile, designed to carry a 300-kg nuclear warhead, had failed during its first test in March 2013. Though the second test in October 2014 was a partial success, the third and fourth tests in October 2015 and December 2016 also flopped, leading to talk that the project may have to be scrapped.

BrahMos:

India's most potent cruise missile is BrahMos which is a medium-range ramjet supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarine, ships, aircraft, or land. It is the fastest cruise missile in the world.

Last week, China claimed to have successfully test-fired a supersonic missile, HD-1, touted as a potential competitor to BrahMos missile. Reports hinted that Pakistan could be one of its buyers. China has also claimed that HD-1 is a comprehensive weapon system consisting of missile, launch, command and control, target indication and comprehensive support systems. Beijing also claimed that the new missile could be cheaper than the BrahMos.Uttarakhand: IAF plans to set up firing range at Khalia Top; locals object

India

pti-PTI

Pithoragarh (Ukd), Oct 22: The Indian Air Force (IAF) is planning to set up a firing range at Khalia Top, a popular tourist spot close to the India-China border near Munsiyari in this district of Uttarakhand. It will be the first major strategic infrastructure project to come up on the Indian side close to the border after the India-China war of 1962, officials associated with the proposal said.

"The IAF needs a firing range in this area because of security reasons and Khalia Top near Munsiyari town fits the bill with its perfect altitude," Air Marshal Devender Singh Rawat said. Located at a height of 12,500 feet which is the standard parameter set for firing ranges, Khalia Top is the ideal site for the project, he said.

Rawat had visited the spot recently along with a team of IAF officers to get the feedback of locals on the proposal. The aerial distance between Khalia Top and the India-China border is around 41 km. Khalia Top, a meadow around 7 km from Munsiyari town, is the main attraction for tourists visiting the town. However, locals have opposed the proposed project as they feel an IAF firing range will destroy the popular tourist spot and render hundreds of local youths jobless besides harming the Himalayan flora and fauna. The locals, who met Rawat, said Khalia Top is the only tourist attraction in Munsiyari town that attracts over 50,000 people every year. "Khalia Top is not just a tourist attraction, but home to over two dozen rare Himalayan animal and bird species," Ram Darmashaktu, resident of Munsiyari town, said.

The locals also told the IAF team that the tourism industry in Munsiyari was providing employment to over 3,000 persons from 41 nearby villages. The IAF officer, however, maintained that the project will not be harmful to the ecology as target practice with low-intensity dummy bombs, weighing only three kgs, will be carried out at the range for only two months (October-November) during the year. Smoke emanating from these dummy bombs dissipates within seconds and will cause no harm to the ecology, the IAF team said.

"Only low-intensity dummy bombs are dropped during practice at such ranges that make noise like crackers and their smoke stays only up to five seconds. This practice of the Air Force will take place only during the months of October and November," Air Marshal Rawat said. Sub Divisional Magistrate, Munsiyari, K N Goswami said the IAF's proposal and the opposition of locals is being forwarded to the state government for clearance.

PTIWATCH: Grandma told me not to cry, Rahul Gandhi's video tribute for Indira Gandhi

Mehul Choksi deposited money in Arun Jaitley's daughter's bank account, says Rahul Gandhi

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Oct 22: Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Raipur said that Mehul Choksi deposited money in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's daughter's bank account."

Antigua examining Mehul Choksi's extradition request: Government

Earlier in the day, Rahul Gandhi demanded Arun Jaitley's resignation alleging that his daughter was "on the payroll" of Mehul Choksi, the prime accused in the multi-crore PNB fraud case.

Taking to Twitter, he alleged that Jaitley "sat on the file and allowed him (Choksi) to flee". The Congress chief claimed that the media had "blacked out" the story but the people of the country would not.

He gave an ICICI bank account number from which money was allegedly transferred to Jaitley's daughter .

"Arun Jaitlie's daughter was on the payroll of thief Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile her FM daddy sat on his file and allowed him to flee (sic).

"She received money....

"It's sad that media has blacked out this story. The people of India won't," he tweeted, using the hashtag 'ArunJaitlieMustResign'.

PNB scam: If Choksi wants case details, let him return to India, ED tells Interpol

The Congress has alleged that Jaitley's daughter and son-in-law, both lawyers, allegedly received a retainership of Rs 24 lakh from Choksi.

However, Jaitley's son-in-law had earlier issued a statement stating that his law firm had returned the retainership the moment they came to know that the company was involved in a scam.

(with PTI inputs)

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 20:21 [IST]UP BJP chief to workers: Have tea with Dalits, make them understand votes are cast on nationalism, not caste

MP elections: BJP wants 7,000 suggestions from each constituency

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Bhopal, Oct 22: With the battle in Madhya Pradesh hotting up, the BJP is all set to roll out its prosperous MP campaign. This campaign is aimed at creating enthusiasm and optimism among the voters in the state.

The BJP says that though this programme, the party wants to make the MP polls a participative election. This would ensure that the voters shun complacency and come out and vote in large numbers.

Senior Congress leaders ready with their list of candidates in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh

The party would deploy methods such as crowdsourcing suggestions for the party manifesto, hold discussions with the people through tea sessions. This would be held in every constituency. View of the people on how to make the state prosperous would also be sought.

Party president Amit Shah will give a deadline to meet the targets as these views sought from the people will be incorporated into the manifesto. The party would accept suggestions through phone calls, WhatsApp and messages. The party plans on installing 20 suggestion boxes in every constituency in the state. The party would also put up electoral suggestion booths in railways stations, airports and malls. The suggestions would in turn be uploaded to the central server that the party would set up.

Assembly tickets in MP may get delayed as BJP conducting internal voting on candidates

In addition to this every Sunday a tea session would be held, where the people would get a chance to share their views with the party leaders.

The party expects to seen at least 7,000 suggestions from each constituency. There would also be high tech rates that would be deployed during the campaign.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 13:48 [IST]Nine calls hold the key in the case against CBIs special director Asthana

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Oct 22: There were nine calls that came under the scanner of the Central Bureau of Investigation in the alleged bribery case against the CBI special director Rakesh Asthana.

The CBI analysed nine calls immediately after middleman Manoj Prasad was held. The investigative agency has registered a case against Asthana on the basis of claims made by a businessman, Sathish Sana, probed by him in a separate case, that he was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 crore by Manoj Prasad, an investment banker based in Dubai to get relief from repeated summons and a clean chit in the case, they said.

War between CBI's top 2 downs morale of India's premier investigating agency

Surprisingly, Asthana, the second-in-command in the agency, had intimated the cabinet secretary nearly two months ago that Sana had allegedly paid a bribe of Rs 2 crore to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Chief Alok Verma to get relief in the case.

The agency, however, claimed on Sunday that Sana had appeared before the magistrate and stated that he made payments between December 2017, and October 2018 to a middleman, who had cited his purported connection with Asthana to ensure relief for him.

On the basis of his claims, the agency arrested Manoj Prasad on October 16 when he was returning from Dubai to allegedly collect an installment of the agreed bribe amount.

Nowhere in the statement, which is now part of the FIR, made public nearly five days after registration, Sana had mentioned any direct meeting, interaction or payment of bribe to Asthana.

The call data analysis suggests that the phone calls were allegedly exchanged between Asthana and a senior officer of another intelligence agency, who sought o conform the details of the middleman's arrest.

The calls were also exchanged between the senior officer and the wife of the middleman Somesh Prasad, brother of the middleman Manoj Prasad and others, the CBI says. Four calls were exchanged between Asthana and the senior officer on October 17, 2018, a day after the arrest. They claimed that Somesh Prasad, "somehow" got news of the latter's arrest on October 16, 2018 and immediately called his contact, the senior officer of the intelligence agency on the same day.

How the ugly spat between the CBI's top 2 is hurting India's premier agency

A call was then made by the officer to Somesh within a minute, they claimed.

Next day, the intelligence agency officer allegedly called Asthana to purportedly know the situation. Three more calls were exchanged between the two, the agency claimed.

The officer of the intelligence agency also spoke to the wife of Somesh Prasad, they claimed. In addition to the call exchanges, the agency is also depending heavily on the Whatsapp messages recovered from Manoj Prasad's phone, they claimed.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 16:38 [IST]The UTC Symphony Orchestra will present a free fall concert in the Roland Hayes Concert Hall in the UTC Fine Arts Building at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday. It was originally scheduled for Sunday.

It features Five, a composition by Dr. Kenyon Wilson, Interim Chair of the Division of Music, to commemorate the five soldiers killed in Chattanooga in 2015. Also featured is the performance of principal hornist Christine Pope in Mozarts Horn Concerto No. 3. The concert begins with the English Folk Song Suite written by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a well-known English composer and folk song collector who volunteered as an ambulance driver for the Royal Army in World War I, which ended 100 years ago November 11. It concludes with Capriccio Italien, a piece by Tchaikovsky that was conceived during his visit to Rome and includes richly contrasting folk themes and dance melodies. This 65-member college/community orchestra includes university music majors and non-majors from UTC and Chattanooga State, UTC music faculty members, area music educators, and other talented amateur and professional musicians from the region. The orchestra is conducted by Sandy Morris.

Christine Pope is a native of Dalton. She attended Florida State University, where she studied with Bill Capps and received Bachelor of Music degrees in Music Theory and Horn Performance. Christine also holds a Master of Music degree in Horn Performance from the University of Connecticut. Ms. Pope has performed with orchestras throughout the United States including the Eastern Connecticut Symphony, The Napa Valley Symphony, the Mendocino Music Festival Orchestra, the Chattanooga Symphony, the Rome Symphony, and the Gadsden Symphony. She currently plays principal horn in the UTC Symphony as well as the Cleveland Orchestra of Tennessee and appears in frequent solo and chamber music performances. She teaches piano and brass at the Creative Arts Guild in Dalton and has many years of experience as a piano technician, tuning and repairing pianos. She also received a Master of Chinese Medicine degree from Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine in Sugar Grove, N.C., and owns and practices acupuncture as Life Gate Acupuncture in Dalton.

A former Fulbright Scholar to Azerbaijan, composer Kenyon Wilson is professor and interim chair of Music at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is the winner of the 2014 Heartland Symphony Orchestra Composition Contest and the 2013 Hillcrest Wind Ensemble Composition Contest. Dr. Wilson has received commissions from the University of North Dakota, Hokusho University (Japan), Morehead State University, Tennessee Technological University, Charlotte Tuba Ensemble, International Music Camp in North Dakota, and the International Tuba/Euphonium Association. His recent work, Five, written in response to the July 2015 terrorist attack in Chattanooga, was a finalist for the American Prize in Composition and winner of the 2016 Carolyn Thompson and Roger Brown Community Engagement Award. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education at Tennessee Technological University, a Master of Music Theory degree at Baylor University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Georgia. Principal tubist of the Augusta Symphony and Tuscaloosa Symphony orchestras, he has performed solo recitals in the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, and serves on the board of directors for the International Tuba/Euphonium Association.Rajasthan polls 2018: Some interesting facts from history

India

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Jaipur, Oct 22: Two hundred Assembly seats in Rajasthan will go to elections on December 7 and the results will be declared on December 11, along with those in the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Telangana. Rajasthan is one of those few states in the country that still sees a stable two-party competition and the power changing hands every five years. Though the state had once been a bastion of the Congress, the BJP tasted success in this state for the first time in 1990 and he two parties have been in and out of power over the last 28 years, especially since the 1993 election.

Rajasthan elections: Can BJP counter the Rajput fury?

In the 2013 Assembly election, the BJP had a sweeping victory by winning 163 out of 200 seats, while the Congress won just 21. The National People's Party won four seats while the BSP won three seats.

Here are some interesting facts about Assembly elections in Rajasthan:

Rajasthan has gone to polls 14 times since 1952 when the first election was held and of these, the Congress has won nine times and the BJP four. The Janata Party formed government once (1977).

The Congress had one-sided dominance in the state's politics till 1977 when it lost power for the first time and the Janata Party came to power, just as it had at the Centre. Bhairon Singh Sekhawat became Rajasthan's first non-Congress chief minister. He was also the state's first BJP chief minister who took office in 1990.

The Congress returned to power in 1980 and continued till 1990 when the BJP came to power for the first time. However, President's Rule was imposed in the state in the wake of the Babri demolition in December 1992 and it continued for a year when Sekhawat returned to power. It is so far the only time that the BJP came to power in Rajasthan by winning two consecutive elections (1990 and 1993).

In 1990, the BJP won 85 out of 200 seats while in 1993, its tally went up to 95.

The two parties have come to power every five years since then. While Sekhawat served between 1993 and 1998, Ashok Gehlot was the chief minister between 1998 and 2003 and 2008 and 2013. Current Chief Miniser Vasundhara Raje served between 2003 and 2008 and then between 2013 and 2018. Can she match Sekhawat's feat of becoming chief minister for consecutive terms?

Also Read | Senior Congress leaders ready with their list of candidates in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh

The Congress succeeded to win 150-plus seats in the Assembly election for the first time in 1998 when Gehlot became the CM.

The BJP's show of winning 163 seats in the 2013 edition has been the most emphatic in the state's history. In 2003, it came to power by winning 120 seats.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 15:15 [IST]UP BJP chief to workers: Have tea with Dalits, make them understand votes are cast on nationalism, not caste

Rajasthan elections: Can BJP counter the Rajput fury?

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Jaipur, Oct 22: Among the five states that go to polls, the BJP will find the going hardest in Rajasthan, analysts have pointed out. There are several issues that the BJP that is in power in the state is facing.

While anti-incumbency is one factor, Rajasthan has also had the revolving door policy and every recent election in the last four rounds has seen an alternate party coming to power.

Senior Congress leaders ready with their list of candidates in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh

While these are some factors that could worry the BJP, the other issue is relating to the Rajputs, which has been a traditional vote bank of the party. The relation with the Rajputs have been on the downslide since 2016. The recent move by Manvendra Singh, MLA and son of former union minister and Rajput leader, Jaswant Singh has only made matters worse for the BJP.

There have been a series of incidents in the recent past that have angered the Rajputs. Chief Minister, Vasundhara Raje had opposed the choice of Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as the state unit chief. The encounter of Anandpal Singh and the Padmavavat controversy have also angered the Rajputs to a large extent.

The Rajput influence:

The Rajputs have a major influence in Rajasthan. They account for 12 per cent of the state's population and have an influence in at least 24 assembly seats. The Rajput base was set for the BJP in a big way by Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who was a three time CM of Rajasthan.

Rebels may spoil even the last hope for the BJP in Rajasthan Assembly elections

Another incident that has angered the Rajputs is the manner non which the sealing of the main entrance of the Rajmahal Palace took place during an encroachment drive. Padmini Devi of the erstwhile royal family had taken out a public protest against the sealing of the main entrance of the palace. The Rajput community feel that Raje had insulted the family and said that the manner in which the entrance of the palace was locked was wrong.

The Padmaavat protests too has angered the Rajputs no end. The community felt that the government had wronged them by giving permission to shoot the film in Rajasthan.

Although the government had banned the film at the time of its release, the community felt that the action had come too late.

BJP seeking opinion on 98 seats in Jaipur to send names to the CEC

The encounter of Anandpal Singh too became a rallying point for the Rajputs against the government. Singh a gangster hailed from the Ravana Rajput community. The Rajput bodies demanded a CBI probe into the killing despite the Ravana Rajput community being considered as an inferior caste.

The Rajputs are also upset with Raje for opposing the choice of Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as the state unit chief. The BJP's central leadership had suggested this to placate the Rajputs, but Raje remained adamant and Rajya Sabha MP, Madanlal Saini, an OBC was made the state unit's chief.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 11:55 [IST]BSNL cancels 4G tender after DoT directs it not to use Chinese telecom gear

Sabarimala row: BSNL transfers activist Rehana Fathima who tried to enter temple

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 22: BSNL on Monday has begun its disciplinary procedures against its employee Rehana Fathima, who created a stir by climbing the hill at Sabarimala for offering prayers at Ayyappa temple.

[Sabarimala row: Activist Rahul Easwar granted bail]

BSNL officials said that Rehana has been transferred to the Ravipuram branch in Kochi and more action will follow after the completion of an internal enquiry.

The Ernakulam-based model-activist, who was posted as a telephone mechanic in Kochi boat jetty branch of the government undertaking till recently, has now been given a post that involves zero relations with the public, media reports say.

The police had registered a case against Rehana on Sunday over her social media post, which allegedly hurt religious sentiments.

[Sabarimala: Police told mediapersons to vacate Sannidhanam, Pamba]

Rehana, along with a woman journalist from Hyderabad had tried to enter the Ayyappa shrine despite ardent protests by devotees against the Supreme Court verdict. She however could not enter the shrine and the Kerala Dewaswom Minister had subsequently called out the 'activists' saying that a temple is no place for such activities.

On October 19, protestors demonstrating against the Supreme Court's decision to allow women of all ages to enter the shrine vandalised her home after she tried to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.

The Muslim body also asked the Ernakulam Central Muslim Jama'ath to revoke her family's Mahallu membership. The council's president A Pookunju said her attempt to enter the temple was against Hindu rituals.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 23:17 [IST]SC to decide tomorrow when to take up petitions against Sabarimala verdict

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar P

New Delhi, Oct 22: The Supreme Court will tomorrow take up the hearing of writ and review petition with regard to the entry of women in age group 10-50 in Kerala's Sabarimala temple. There are 19 review petitions pending before the Supreme Court in connection with the Sabarimala temple.

CJI Ranjan Gogoi led Bench said that he Court is aware that there are 19 petitions and will decide on the listing tomorrow.

Sabarimala: Police told mediapersons to vacate Sannidhanam, Pamba

The Supreme Court on October 9 had turned down a request for an urgent hearing of a review petition against its September 28. "The review petition will be listed in the usual course," said a bench comprising Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph in response to the request for an early hearing before the Supreme Court goes on vacation on October 12.

Sabarimala: Two women stopped by protesters from trekking towards Shrine, forced to return

The restriction on women was first challenged in Kerala High Court which ruled in 1991 that it was part of an age-old tradition and not discriminatory under the Constitution. In 2006, the Indian Young Lawyers Association had filed a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the practice, saying it was discriminatory in nature and against gender justice.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 11:49 [IST]Senior Congress leaders ready with their list of candidates in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh

India

oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla

New Delhi, Oct 22: All claims made by Congress president Rahul Gandhi of transparency in ticket distribution in forthcoming Assembly elects have fallen flat as there is free for all kind of situation in the Congress on the issue. Senior leaders from Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are demanding for bulk tickets for their supporters as usual and state in-charge and screening committee surrendered by showing their helplessness.

Sources said that senior leaders have their own list of candidates and putting pressure on the leadership to get names from the list approved. To get their list approved, these leaders are camping in Delhi from very long which is impacting election campaign in their respective states. The unity campaign of Rahul Gandhi seems to have failed to influence these leaders. A senior party leader quipped that all the unity is shown only for photo opportunity.

Rebels may spoil even the last hope for the BJP in Rajasthan Assembly elections

Ever since CD on the haggling of ticket has been released, there is apparent tension between state party in-charge P L Punia and state president Bhupesh Baghel. The Bharatiya Janata Party has already declared 77 out of 90 seats taking a clear edge over the Congress in Chhattisgarh. Sources said that Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath, former chief minister Digvijay Singh and CLP leader Ajay Singh tried to make a group but it failed on the issue of ticket distribution. In-charge of the election campaign committee Jyotiraditya Scindia is also entangled in the same exercise. Former MPCC chief Suresh Pachauri is not expecting more than 10-12 seats for his supporters by showing good bonding with Kamal Nath and Scindia.

On the other hand Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan has already indicated a big chunk in the ticket distribution. Sources say that he also wants to ensure that Rajasthan Congress president Sachin Pilot must not get half the number of ticket what he gets. He also wants Pilot must take the responsibility of satiating the other groups by distributing tickets from the remaining seats. But Pilot is not ready to relent as he feels that no better chance could be than this to become chief minister of the state.

Congress only Pan-India party, allies be ready for sacrifices: Khurshid

The way senior Congress leaders are fighting over distribution of tickets, political experts are apprehensive that if the Congress would be able to properly utilise anti-incumbency against the three BJP-rules states.Many more leaders are in contact with me: Tejashwi Yadav after former MLA rejoins RJD from JD(U)

Tejashwi starts Save Constitution march; BJP questions credentials of the Yadav family

India

oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla

New Delhi, Oct 22: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (United) have targeted very aggressively the second leg of Samvidhan Bachao Nyay Yatra (save constitution justice march) led by former deputy chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav when he started it from Saran district in Bihar.

The yatra has started from October 21 and will go on till October 24 and it will pass through Chapara, Siwan, Gopalganj and Betia districts.

Rabri Devi, Tejashwi Yadav get regular bail in IRCTC scam case

The RJD's yatra is against the deteriorating law and order situation in the state and wrong policies of the Bihar government. The RJD is saying that Tejashwi Yadav will expose the Bihar government and will tell people about injustice meted out to his father. He will also tell people about rising graph of crime in the state.

Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson of Bihar Anand Jha told Oneindia that the RJD is taking about misrule in Bihar while the RJD government led-by his father and mother has been synonym to the misrule (jungle raj) in Bihar. Leaders of RJD themselves are involved in criminal acts. Gaya MLA of RJD is in jail; a women MLA of RJD is in jail as liquor was recovered from her residence; one MLA is behind bars for demanding ransom; another MLA is in jail for allegedly murdering son of a judge; one more MLA and his son is in jail on murder charges.

'No differences between us', says Misa Bharti on Tejashwi-Tej Pratap rift

Jha asked, "Will Tejashwi Yadav tell that why is he occupying the residence to be meant for deputy chief minister and high court had to intervene. I can tell many reason why Lalu Prasad is in jail and he and his family does not have answer for the money amassed by the Yadav family."

This is to remind that Tejashwi Yadav is known among the ruling alliance as Twitter Babua (twitter kid) who tweets without any reasoning. Jha said that intention of Tejashwi is not to help people of Bihar in anyway rather to further the tradition of illegally occupying properties and to capture the coffer of Bihar to loot it once again. The first leg of yatra was also rejected by people of Bihar so will happen this time.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 20:10 [IST]Telangana: CM Rao asks TRS candidates to have personal touch with electorate

India

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Hyderabad, Oct 22: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who is also the chief of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), has asked the party's candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections to meet beneficiaries of the government schemes in person or through their aides.

On Sunday, October 21, Rao chaired a workshop in the state capital where he handed out a list of government schemes and its beneficiaries from all constituencies, Telangana Today reported. It was learnt that an average of 60,000 voters were benefitting from at least one state government-introduced scheme directly.

Telangana polls: EC to distribute voter slips, monitor inducements through mobile app

Rao asked the party candidates to encourage the voters to renew the TRS's mandate so that it can continue with its work towards the growth and development of the state which was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014.

Telangana, which has 120 Assembly seats (one is nominated), will go to the polls on December 7 and the results will be declared on December 11. This is only the second election in the history of the state after the TRS won the 2014 election by bagging 63 seats. The election was necessitated after Rao dissolved the Assembly ahead of the scheduled end of its tenure.

The chief minister will address public meetings in at least 100 constituencies over a period of 50 days ahead of the December 7 polls.

Swami Paripoornananda joins BJP ahead of Telangana Assembly elections

"We want to cover at least 40-50 constituencies before the notification is issued on November 12. Thereafter, we will focus on constituencies where there is some competition from opposition parties until the last day of electioneering," Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Kadiyam Srihari was quoted as saying.

He also said that the issues of dissent had been resolved in almost all constituencies and claimed that all the party leaders were working closely to ensure that the party achieves success and Rao becomes the CM again.

The TRS candidates were also asked to set up back offices in their respective constituency headquarters immediately for better coordination with party leaders and workers.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 15:34 [IST]Telangana polls: EC to distribute voter slips, monitor inducements through mobile app

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Hyderabad, Oct 22: The Election Commission of India wants to ensure that the entire polling process in Telangana is free, fair and corruption free.

With cash and booze set to play a major role, the EC has come up with a series of measures to ensure that the whip is cracked.

Swami Paripoornananda joins BJP ahead of Telangana Assembly elections

This time the EC is using an application called C-Vigil. Through this Android application, the people can upload photographs and videos of the violations of the model code of conduct. This in turn would be monitored by the Election Commission. The EC says that within five minutes of a violation being reported, the returning officer of the constituency will have to pass on the information to the mobile unit.

This time the EC officials will distribute voter slips on the eve of the elections. Earlier it was the political parties which used to distribute the slips 48 hours prior to polling. The EC however decided to do away with this practise as it suspected that it would be misused to induce the voters or campaign at the last minute.

Assembly elections: BJP announces candidates for Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Mizoram polls

For the elections, 70,000 police officers and 275 companies of paramilitary forces are being deployed. This is in addition to the personnel of the state machinery, excise and income tax departments officials being deployed to monitor the polling process.

The agencies are also conducting vulnerability mapping and critical analysis of poll areas.

The source of the threat, incidents of intimidation are being taken into consideration based on past incidents. The commission would in turn launch confidence building measures in such areas by visiting and interacting with the voter.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 15:25 [IST]Top BJP leaders pay homage to ND Tiwari; Congress accuses appropriating legacy

India

oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla

New Delhi, Oct 22: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to have tried giving the message to the people of Uttar Pradesh that the Congress does not have respect for its leaders other than the Nehru-Gandhi family in a state where Congress has been able to make some dent among the Brahmin community in view of some recent developments. Knowing all this the Congress accused the BJP of appropriating its leaders.

However, the fact of the matter is that former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand N D Tiwari had friends across the party lines and his proximity with another former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav is known to everyone. He was close to some Bharatiya Janata Party leaders as well which was reflected while paying homage to the mortal remains of the departed leaders while senior Congress leaders were conspicuously absent from the final journey of the veteran politician. Leaders from other parties beelined to pay their respect to him.

Despite some controversies surrounding him, he commanded a great clout and respect not only in Uttar Pradesh but Uttarakhand as well. Actually the three-time UP chief minister's mortal remains were escorted from Delhi to Lucknow by deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma which was received chief minister Yogi Adityanath at the airport and to BJP leadership along with Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) present there but Congress was represented largely by leaders like Ammar Rizvi, Pramod Tiwari and Sanjay Sinh, who are termed as constituency leaders in the state.

Former UP CM ND Tiwari passes away on his 93rd birthday

Both the former chief ministers from the Samajwadi Party Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav paid their homage to the departed leader while BSP was represented by its senior most leader after Mayawati Satish Mishra.

The Uttar Pradesh government had announced two-day state mourning. From the airport, the body of Tiwari was taken to UP Assembly where UP governor Ram Naik, Bihar governor Lalji Tandon and other leaders paid homage. Tiwari served Uttarakhand as its chief minister, governor of Andhra Pradesh and Union minister with portfolios such as finance, foreign affairs, industry, petroleum and labour in the Rajiv Gandhi government.

The body of Tiwari was later brought to Uttarakhand's Pantnagar district in an air ambulance and brought to Kathgodam Guest House for people to pay homage to their leader. UP minister Baldev Olakh had accompanied it from Lucknow. The last rites were held with full state honours in his home district of Nainital.

Meanwhile, the Congress accused the BJP of appropriating Tiwari's legacy, blamed Tiwari's son, Rohit Shekhar, for the thin party presence. "We wanted Tiwariji's mortal remains to be brought to the UPCC office but our request was turned down by Rohit," said a Congress leader. But Tiwari's personal secretary Mukesh Sharma denied the Congress accusation.

Deputy CM Dinesh Sharma's condolence message says that Tiwari's stature was second to none. The BJP seems to have walked the extra mile. A long-time Gandhi family loyalist, Tiwari had announced support for BJP ahead of the 2017 Uttarakhand assembly elections but had stopped short of joining the party.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 10:27 [IST]Members of farmers' body detained in Lucknow for trying to burn effigies of PM Modi, Shah

UP Legislative Council chairman's son strangulated by mother

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar P

Lucknow, Oct 22: Uttar Pradesh Council chairman Ramesh Yadav's son Abhijeet Yadav was murdered by his mother, according to the police investing the case.

SP (east) Sarvesh Mishra on death of UP council chairman's son Abhijeet Yadav told ANI, " When police reached the house, his family said that it was a natural death so they don't want investigation. On suspicion, police sent the body for postmortem & found that he was strangulated to death."

Son of UP Legislative Council chairman found dead

"His mother confessed that the deceased came drunk in the night (20 Oct) & was arguing with her, after which she committed the crime. Police have arrested her. Further investigation is underway, " said the police officer.

UP: Urdu poet attacked with acid after he confronted men who allegedly harassed a girl

The son of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav was found dead at his residence in mysterious circumstances, police said Sunday. Abhijeet Yadav's (22) body was found at his Darul Shafa residence and his family members informed the police.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 10:21 [IST]Figure 2: Graphene sheets grown on top of single crystal copper foil. (Left) Very high quality single crystal monolayer graphene was obtained on single crystal copper foil, and (right) multilayer graphene (from 2 to 10 layers) on a single crystal copper-nickel alloy foil. Figure 3: Crystals change orientation to minimize surface energy. Members of the team, DING Feng, ZHANG Leining, and DONG Jichen, contributed a model and theoretical calculations on 'colossal grain growth' that was observed and studied through experiments. SHIN Hyung-Joon drew attention to the importance of the initial "texture" of the polycrystalline metal foils and the role this plays in colossal grain growth. In the presence of large amounts of vacancies within the crystal structure (5 percent in these molecular dynamics simulation), the crystal orientation changes to minimize the surface energy.

(A) Schematic of the quartz holder that the copper (Cu) foil is suspended from, (B) photograph of the configuration shown schematically in (A). (C) Photograph of the annealed single crystal Cu foil (about 2 cm  8 cm), next to a ruler. (D) X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra of the three regions in the annealed single crystal Cu foil indicated by P1-P3 in (C).

A research group at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), have published a new method to convert inexpensive polycrystalline metal foils to single crystals with superior properties. It is expected that these materials will find many uses in science and technology.

The structure of most metal materials can be thought of as a patchwork of different tiny crystals, bearing some defects on the borders between each patch. These defects, known as grain boundaries (GBs), worsen the electrical and sometimes mechanical properties of the metal. Single crystal metals, instead, have no GBs and show higher electrical conductivity and other enhanced qualities that can play a major role in multiple fields, such as electronics, plasmonics, and catalysis, among others. Single crystal metal foils have attracted great attention also because certain single crystal metals, such as copper, nickel, and cobalt, are suitable for the growth of defectless graphene, boron nitride, and diamond on top of them.

Single crystals are normally fabricated beginning with a 'crystal seed'. Conventional approaches, such as the Czochralski or Bridgman methods, or others based on the deposition of thin metal films on single crystal inorganic substrates, achieve small single crystals at high processing costs.

To unlock the full potential of such metal structures, the IBS team led by Rodney Ruoff at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), along with JIN Sunghwan and SHIN Hyung-Joon, invented the "contact-free annealing" (CFA) technique. CFA involves heating the polycrystalline metal foils to a temperature slightly below the melting point of each metal. This new method does not need single crystal seeds or templates, which limit the maximum crystal size, and was tested with five different types of metal foils: copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum, and palladium. It resulted in a 'colossal grain growth', reaching up to 32 square centimeters for copper.

The details of the experiment varied according to the metal used. In the case of copper, quartz holders and a rod were used to hang the metal foil, like clothes suspended on clothes lines. Then, the foil was heated in a tube-shaped furnace to approximately 1050 degrees Celsius (1323 degrees Kelvin), a temperature close to copper's melting point (1358 K) for several hours in an atmosphere with hydrogen and argon, and then cooled down.

The scientists also achieved single crystals from nickel and cobalt foils, each about 11 cm2. The achieved sizes are limited by the size of the furnace, so that one could expect production of larger foils with 'industrial' processing methods.

For platinum, resistive heating was used because of its higher melting temperature (2041 K). Current was passed through a platinum foil attached to two opposing electrodes, then one electrode was moved and adjusted to keep the foil flat during expansion and contraction. The research team expects this trick to work for other foils, because it also worked for palladium.

These large single crystal metal foils are useful in several applications. For example, they can serve to grow graphene on top of them: the group obtained very high quality single crystal monolayer graphene on single crystal copper foil, and multilayer graphene on a single crystal copper-nickel alloy foil.

The new single crystal copper foil showed improved electrical properties. Collaborators, YOO Won Jong and MOON Inyong at Sungkyunkwan University, measured a 7% increase in the room temperature electrical conductivity of the single crystal copper foil, compared to the commercially-available polycrystalline foil.

"Now that we have explored these five metals and invented a straightforward scalable method to make such large single crystals, there's the exciting question of whether other types of polycrystalline metal films, such as iron, can also be converted to single crystals," note first author of the study, JIN Sunghwan, and his supervisor Ruoff. Ruoff enthusiastically concludes "Now that these cheap single crystal metal foils are available, it will be tremendously exciting to see how they are used by the scientific and engineering communities!"War between CBIs top 2 downs morale of Indias premier investigating agency

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delh, Oct 22: Everything is not right within India's premier agency the Central Bureau of Investigation. The spat between the CBI director, Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana refuses to die down.

Last month Verma had gone on to accuse Asthana of intimidating officers who were probing corruption cases against him. Now in another development, the CBI named its special director, Asthana as an accused in a bribery scandal.

The case on hand relates to the one against Moin Qureshi, a meat exporter who has been under the scanner of both the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED). Both Asthana and Verma have not been on the same page where this case is concerned. Recently both had disagreed on a particular file in this case. The disagreement was over whether the proposal of the CBI officials to seek custodial interrogation of four accused should be sent to the CBI's Director of Prosecution or not.

Verma felt that the file should be examined by the DoP, while Asthana was opposed to the idea.

Meat exporter Moin Qureshi arrested by ED

War of the top 2:

In September, Verma had rejected allegations that he had tried to thwart investigations into important cases which included the one concerning the IRCTC scam in which former Bihar chief minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav is an accused.

Asthana had dashed off a later to the Central Vigilance Commission in which allegations against Verma had been made. Verma responded through the CBI's spokesperson and said that it is unfortunate that baseless allegations are being made without proper verification of facts.

Verma, it may be recalled had resisted Asthana's elevation as special director on the ground of alleged corruption. Asthana was however given a clean chit by the CVC and the same was also approved by the Supreme Court. The matter however did not end there and Verma objected to the CVC's decision of recognising the special director as the officiating head of the agency in his absence.

The CBI spokesperson had said, it is stated that the CVC has sought for certain case files from CBI on the basis of a complaint filed by the special director, CBI. In its response to the CVC letter, the chief vigilance officer of CBI has pointed out that the complaint is an attempt by the complainant (Asthana) to intimidate the officers of CBI who are investigating his role in at least half a dozen cases. The CBI said the CVC should opine on the maintainability of the complaint and consider it malicious in order to protect the integrity of the organisation."

CBI names its No. 2 man Asthana as accused No. 1 in bribery case

Spat kills morale:

This fresh spat between the top two of the country's premier agency has been a downer for many within the agency. Some officials that OneIndia spoke with say that this is not good for the agency. The morale is clearly down and in such spats, officers often end up taking sides.

In the long run this sort of an environment would only hamper investigations. There would be two sides within the agency and the power tussle would severely hamper the agency's functioning the official also said.

When asked if the government could step in and sort out the problem, an officer said it could, but the role would be limited. The Home Ministry at best could advise the officers to set aside differences and more importantly stop going public. The SC has clearly marked the jurisdiction of the CBI and has often spoken about its autonomy.

How the ugly spat between the CBI's top 2 is hurting India's premier agency

Fresh trouble:

New trouble emerged between the top two after the CBI named Asthana for allegedly demanding and taking bribe from a businessman who was under investigation in the Moin Qureshi corruption case by a special investigation team headed by Asthana.

It may be recalled that the CBI had informed the Central Vigilance Commission that it was probing Asthana in six cases of corruption.

The CBI moved against Asthana following the arrest of a Dubai based middleman Manoj Prasad. Moin Qureshi was raided by the Income Tax department in 2014 and his messages with former CBI director A P Singh had led to Singh's resignation as member of the Union Public Services Commission. In 2017, the CBI registered a case and this was one of the many major cases being handled by Asthana.

A complainant in the case, Sana Satish had on October 4 named Asthana before the Magistrate. He also claimed that he was being harassed by CBI officers to pay more. It was also detained how Rs 3 crore had been paid over a period of 10 months from December 2017 onwards.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 9:44 [IST]On pollution bureaucrats have adopted a dont take any steps attitude says SC

No protection, no hearing until we know where you are, SC tells Param Bir Singh

Why no prosecution against media outlets who out rape victims identity: SC

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Oct 22: The Supreme Court has sought to know why there has been no prosecution against media outlets who out the identity of rape victims. The observations were made by Justice Madan Lokur.

When a media outlet or journalist outs the identity of a rape victim, especially a child, why is there is no prosecution, Justice Lokur sought to know.

SC to decide tomorrow when to take up petitions against Sabarimala verdict

Don't media regulators like the Press Club of India, Editors Guild, IBF, NBSA have a duty to inform the police about the offence, the judge also asked.

Sabarimala: Board disagrees with the agenda to demonstrate

Justice Lokur said that the NBSA affidavit shows not a single criminal prosecution was launched against journalists committing offences like outing the identity of sexual abuse victims. If you do not prosecute a person for doing something criminal, then why are you here in the first place, Justice Lokur said.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 13:59 [IST]Under pressure, Saudi admits killing Khashoggi huge and grave mistake

International

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Riyadh, Oct 22: Saudi Arabia has eventually called the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, a "huge and grave mistake" but aimed to protect its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from the deepening crisis over the issue, saying he was not aware of it, Reuters reported.

Riyadh has come under increasing international pressure, even from its tested ally, the United States, over the disappearance of Khashoggi after he entered the consulate in Istanbul on October 2. It first denied his death but ultimately admitted it.

Saudi announces Khashoggi's death, Trump believes their explanation

Admitting the renowned journalist's murder, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on US broadcaster Fox that the operation was a "rogue operation", Reuters said. He said the individuals overdid their responsibilities, taking a dig at the agents who gruesomely killed 60-year-old Khashoggi.

"They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it," Jubeir was quoted as saying.

The US was still not convinced though. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said Riyadh's admission that Khashoggi was killed was a "good first step but not enough". He though said that there was no reason to discuss sanctions against Saudi Arabia, the Reuters report added.

Khashoggi' disappearance: Britain official pulls out of Saudi conference

Germany, Great Britain and France have also put more pressure on Saudi Arabia to produce facts on the incident with German Chancellor Angela Merkel even threatening to stop exporting arms to Riyadh.

On Sunday, October 21, the Saudi Press Agency informed that Saudi King Salman and the crown prince had called the deceased journalist's son to express condolences, the Reuters report added.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 10:03 [IST]Talks with China will not help says USA NSA on situation on Ladakh

20 members of a family removed from US flight after mask of 1 slipped under nose

US stand on China unlikely to change even if Dems win midterm polls: Experts

International

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Beijing, Oct 22: The US is set for its midterm elections on November 6 but even if the Democrats see a change in their fortunes and make a comeback in the polls, it is unlikely that the US's policy towards China will change, feel observers.

According to a report in South China Morning Post (SCMP), Zhao Quansheng, director of the Centre for Asian Studies at American University in Washington, said in an event in Beijing that there exists a "bipartisan consensus" in Washington in favour of a hard line stance against the Chinese.

China is planning to build an artificial moon, and its eight times brighter than the real one

"The likelihood of a change in China policy is very limited," Zhao was quoted as saying at the forum on US-China relations on Thursday, October 18.

In the high-stake midterm elections next month, the Republicans and Democrats will lock horns in all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate. Polls have indicated that the Republicans will have a tough task to hold both the houses, especially the House of Representatives.

For US President Donald Trump, the midterm elections are of big significance and an adverse result for the Grand Old Party could show down his 'administrative blitz'. However, there could be little change in Washington's stand vis-a-vis China and the Congress could pass bills that take a tough stand on Beijing.

According to the diplomatic observers, the Democrats were likely to back US businesses that seek action to curb what they feel unfair Chinese trade practices like alleged theft of intellectual property and technology transfers by force.

India relieved as China's foray into North Sri Lanka is stalled

"Even if Trump loses in the midterms, the sentiments he has fanned in Washington will persist," a Chinese government adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, was quoted as saying by SCMP.

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Story first published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 9:58 [IST]Reillys recommended changes could reduce public access to the site by eliminating a proposed Ogden Slip esplanade and the proposed hotel, as well as by having traffic on East North Water Street significantly restricted, according to the email. Other recommendations were to reduce the height and bulk of the podium, create a security plan for the park and riverwalk and better use Lake Shore Drive access ramps for below-grade parking and deliveries.AT&T began sending notices last month to about 5,400 low-income subscribers in the Chicago area and downstate that they would will no longer receive the monthly Lifeline credit on their landline bills as of November, adding about $120 per year to the cost of the service. (Robert F. Bukaty / AP)Some of their brotherly high jinks followed them into the business. As kids, they played a game in which they pelted each other with licorice candy, which they both hated, the rule being that each candy could be thrown only once. They kept doing it at work, and one time Randy froze a licorice gumball before chucking it at his older brother, breaking his finger. That was the last time they played.For Rzeznik, who is married and has a nearly 2-year-old daughter, the change-my-life moment came in November 2014, when he drank himself into unconsciousness. Upon reawakening, he checked himself into a rehab center and spent three months getting sober. "I got away from everything and everybody until I felt like I could function," he says. "And then I called (Takac) on the phone and said, 'I want to meet you and talk to you.' I apologized for my part of what went wrong in our relationship and he apologized for his part and then it was sort of left behind."Theres the inveterate storyteller, Uncle Pat (Mark Lambert) who loves the Aeneid, wherein the ferryman Charon delivers the spirits of the dead across the river, just as long as they are buried. Theres the embittered radical, Auntie Pat (Dearbhla Molloy), a woman old enough to remember the Easter Rebellion, who is trapped by her own pain and condemned forever to find neither peace nor sanctity. Pat is both the Irish conscience of the play and a warning in herself. She represents the price paid when we are beholden only to our own history. And theres senile Auntie Maggie Far Away (Fionnula Flanagan), who regales the children with old stories in moments of lucidity, but also functions as an emblem of human longing for the past.In this piece now at the Greenhouse Theater Center, Private Peaceful (Peaceful is his real last name) is the only storyteller. You sit down in your seat and watch the young man, played by the gifted Irish actor Shane ORegan, recount his life, from falling quietly in love with his brothers girl at home, to his determination in battle, to his love for his older brother. The show is performed on an empty stage. Aside from his own immersive capabilities, the only help available to ORegan are a few sound cues and a single bed which, when turned on its size, takes upon itself the representation of barbed wire and trenches.What to do with any gifts you may have received: Typical etiquette says that the couple should return any engagement, shower or wedding gifts they've received, even if they were personalized, Kay says. But if the guests insist that the would-be couple keep the gifts, do so. Mike Cramer, who called off a wedding about four years ago, says that when he and his ex-fiancee returned gifts to guests, most people told him to keep whatever they had sent. "I don't think I took everyone up on it," Cramer recalls, "but I did get a really nice coffeemaker out of the whole thing." He did not, however, get the ring back.Supporters are hoping funding will come through to keep the clinic open. A Change.org petition to save the center has more than 1,500 signatures. I think if funding did come through, we would be ecstatic, said Karen Teitelbaum, Sinais president and chief executive officer. I know I personally would be ecstatic if we were able to somehow magically find $800,000 dollars to let us keep operating, adding that the difficulty in funding for refugee services is not unique to Touhy, as fewer organizations are able to secure funding often based on how many refugees an organization serves. It really is a result of whats going on nationally, she said. I know its not just Chicago, but nationally, refugee centers are all seeing the drop.Rowes team randomly assigned 54 adults with cystic fibrosis to either take the triple-drug regimen or be in a comparison group. In the comparison group, patients with one F508del mutation took placebo pills, while patients with two copies of the mutation took tezakaftor and ivakaftor alone.I could feel myself starting to die. I woke up about two days later in the Green Zone to learn that I flat-lined for 15 minutes straight. I also learned something that still gives me chills to this day, and the medical team just pulled off a miracle.  They got a faint pulse back. And as they were taking me to the Black Hawk helicopter  my scouts were waiting out there. They stopped the medical team and they took the stretcher from them and said, Hes our lieutenant, were putting him on that bird.Practice Management System Market to 2025 Outlook : eClinicalWorks, Crunchbase Inc., Medical Information Technology, Cerner Corporation

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New Research Report on Global Practice Management System Market has been added to The Insight Partners Database which offers comprehensive insights into the industry trends, growth drivers, significant challenges, lucrative opportunities, latest technological advancements, and the competitive landscape.The practice management system market is anticipated to grow with a significant rate in the coming years, owing to factors such as, rising initiatives of government, increasing number of geriatrics in the global population. 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The Global Hybrid Operating Room Market is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR of 12.5% during the forecast period 2017-2023.The Global Hybrid Operating Room Market is segmented by techniques, applications, and end users. On the basis of techniques, it is segmented into fluoroscopy & data acquisition, rotational angiography, digital subtraction angiography, and others. On the basis of applications, it is segmented into cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery, thoracic surgery & endobronchial procedures, and others. On the basis of end users, it is segmented into hospitals, clinics, medical research firms, and others.Get Sample PDF Illustration @Hybrid Operating Room Market - SketchA hybrid operating room is an alternative to conventional operating room equipped with advanced medical imaging systems and devices which support high quality interventional imaging and minimally invasive surgeries. It has complex environments in which numerous surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, and technicians work together. These are major factors that will drive growth of the market over the forecast period. Moreover, rising demand for advanced operating rooms and advanced equipment in healthcare domain across the world is expected to boost growth of the market.On the other hand, higher cost of hybrid operating room may hinder growth of the market during the forecasted period.Key Players for Global Hybrid Operating Room MarketMarket Research Future (MRFR) recognizes the following companies as the key players in Hybrid Operating Room Market: There are plenty of large and small market players which operate in this market all over the globe.Some of the key players in the Global Hybrid Operating Room Market are Cook Medical Inc. (US), Eschmann Equipment (UK), General Electric Company (US), Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. (US), Maquet Holding BV & Co. KG (Germany), Mediflex Surgical Products (US), Mizuho OSI (US), NDS Surgical Imaging (US), Koninklijke Philips N.V (the Netherlands), SISCO Ltd (India), STERIS plc.(US), and Siemens Healthcare GmbH (Germany)Segments for Global Hybrid Operating Room MarketRegional Analysis for Global Hybrid Operating Room MarketThe global hybrid operating room market consists of four regions namely the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa.The global hybrid operating room market is segmented into four regions including America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East & Africa. America dominates the global market due to governments backing more research and development activities in healthcare sector. Moreover, recent advances in the life sciences has boosted growth of this market. Europe holds the second position in the market as more number of people being encouraged for research and development and well-established & advanced healthcare sector. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market due to the presence of huge opportunities and continuously increasing demand advanced hybrid operating room. Asia Pacific have undertaken various initiatives to educate people and surgeons about hybrid room. In particular, India is expected to be an emerging and the fastest growing market.On the other hand, the Middle East & Africa holds the lowest share in the global hybrid operating room market due to limited development in healthcare sector.Get Prime Discount on Report @Some Brief Table of Contents of ReportChapter 1. Report PrologueChapter 2. Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope Of The Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 LimitationsChapter 3. Research Methodology3.1 Introduction3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size EstimationChapter 4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restrains4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic IndicatorsTOC ContinuedBrowse Complete Report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Statistical Report, Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact Us:Market Research FutureHadapsar, Pune  411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone: +1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comSome people might be quicker to overlook that conversation the FBI taped him having on the telephone with then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He and the governor were heard disrespectfully discussing which African-American might be worthy of an appointment to Obamas vacated U.S. Senate seat. The issue wasnt which African-American candidate might do the best job for Illinois, but which would provide the most political capital for Blagojevich, who is now a convicted criminal.Contract Research Organizations Services Market 2018 SWOT Analysis by Major Eminent Players: Medidata Solutions, Quintiles, inVentiv Health, Covance, ICON Plc

Contract Research Organizations Services Market

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Contract Research Organizations Services Market By Type (Clinical, Drug Discovery and Pre-Clinical) and Service (Technology, Project Management/Clinical Supply Management, Patient & site Recruitment, Data Management, Laboratory, Regulatory/Medical Affairs, Investigator Payments, Medical Writing, Bio-statistics, Clinical Monitoring, Quality Management/ Assurance and Other Services) - Global Industry Analysis And Forecast To 2025Contract Research Organizations Services Market: Industry OutlookThe contract research organization services (CROs) are the services that offers help to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and therapeutic gadget to industries as research outsource services on an agreement basis. The CRO can provide such as development of biopharmaceutical, biologic test advancement, clinical research, preclinical research, commercialization, clinical management of trials, and the pharmacovigilance. The CROs are intended to lessen the costs for organizations producing new drugs and medicines in specialty markets. The services are expected to improve passage into medication market, and make advancement easy, as the requirement for vast pharmaceutical organizations to do everything 'in house' is currently redundant.Access sample copy of this report @Contract Research Organizations Services Market Segmentation:On the basis of Product, the market is further divided into Clinical, Drug Discovery and Pre-Clinical. The clinical section is leading the market owing to requirement of thousands of people.On the basis of End User, the market is further divided into Technology, Project Management/Clinical Supply Management, Patient & site Recruitment, Data Management, Laboratory, Regulatory/Medical Affairs, Investigator Payments, Medical Writing, Bio-statistics, Clinical Monitoring, Quality Management/ Assurance and Other Services. The Clinical Monitoring section is dominating the market with highest market share owing to factors like; economical, burden reduction on the management, expertise and other factors.Contract Research Organizations Services Market: Regional InsightsThe North American region is leading the global Contract Research Organizations Services Market due to; more number of trails undertaken, more outsourcing, rise in the initiatives by the government, rise in the R&D activities, increasing funds for the R&D, etc.Contract Research Organizations Services Market, By RegionNorth America U.S. Canada MexicoEurope Germany UK France Russia Italy Rest of Europe...Contract Research Organizations Services Market: Competitive AnalysisThe leading players in the market are. The major players in the market are profiled in detail in view of qualities, for example, company portfolio, business strategies, financial overview, recent developments, and market share of the overall industry. Medidata Solutions Quintiles inVentiv Health Covance ICON Plc Pharmaceutical Product Development LLC (PPD) Charles River Laboratories (CRL) ParexelBrowse Full Report With TOC @Major Table of Contents:Chapter1. Introduction1.1. Report DescriptionChapter2. Executive Summary2.1. Key HighlightsChapter3. Market Overview3.1. Introduction3.1.1. Market Definition3.1.2. Market Segmentation3.2. Market Dynamics3.2.1. Drivers3.2.2. Restraints3.2.3. Opportunities3.3. SWOT AnalysisChapter4. Market Analysis by RegionsChapter5. Contract Research Organizations Services Market, By Type5.1. Introduction5.2. Global Contract Research Organizations Services Revenue and Market Share by Type (2014-2018)5.2.1. Global Contract Research Organizations Services Revenue and Revenue Share by Type (2014-2018)5.3. Clinical5.3.1. Global Clinical Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)5.4. Drug Discovery5.4.1. Global Drug Discovery Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)5.5. Pre-Clinical5.5.1. Global Pre-Clinical Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)Chapter6. Contract Research Organizations Services Market, By Service6.1. Introduction6.2. Global Contract Research Organizations Services Revenue and Market Share by Service (2014-2018)6.2.1. Global Contract Research Organizations Services Revenue and Revenue Share by Service (2014-2018)6.3. Technology6.3.1. Global Technology Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.4. Project Management/Clinical Supply Management6.4.1. Global Project Management/Clinical Supply Management Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.5. Patient & site Recruitment6.5.1. Global Patient & site Recruitment Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.6. Data Management6.6.1. Global Data Management Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.7. Laboratory6.7.1. Global Laboratory Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.8. Regulatory/Medical Affairs6.8.1. Global Regulatory/Medical Affairs Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.9. Investigator Payments6.9.1. Global Investigator Payments Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.10. Medical Writing6.10.1. Global Medical Writing Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.11. Bio-statistics6.11.1. Global Bio-statistics Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.12. Clinical Monitoring6.12.1. Global Clinical Monitoring Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.13. Quality Management/ Assurance6.13.1. Global Quality Management/ Assurance Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)6.14. Other Services6.14.1. Global Other Services Revenue and Growth Rate (2014-2018)Chapter7. Contract Research Organizations Services Market, By RegionChapter8. Company Profiles...CONTINUED FOR TOCTo avail discount, please click on the link @Data MiningData is extensively collected through various secondary sources such as annual reports, investor presentations, SEC filings, and other corporate publications. We also refer trade magazines, technical journals, paid databases such as Factiva and Bloomberg, industry trade journals, scientific journals, and social media data to understand market dynamics and industry trends. Further, we also conduct primary research to understand market drivers, restraints, opportunities, challenges, and competitive scenario to build our analysis.About Crystal Market Research:Crystal Market Research is a U.S. based market research and business intelligence company. Crystal offers one stop solution for market research, business intelligence, and consulting services to help clients make more informed decisions. It provides both syndicated as well as customized research studies for its customers spread across the globe. The company offers market intelligence reports across a broad range of industries including healthcare, chemicals & materials, technology, automotive, and energy.Contact:Crystal Market ResearchJudy304 South Jones Blvd, Suite 1896,Las Vegas NV 89107,United StatesToll Free: +1-888-213-4282Email: sales@crystalmarketresearch.comCloud Based Digital Asset Management Market 2018 Global Market to Reach USD 5660 million By 2022 Including Key Players : Adam Software Nv, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Opentext Corporation, Celum, Canto

Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Industry

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On  Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market 2018 Global Market to Reach USD 5660 million By 2022 Including Key Players : Adam Software Nv, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Opentext Corporation, Celum, Canto.Description:-The Cloud Based Digital Asset Management industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, Cloud Based Digital Asset Management market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of 18.40% from 1470 million $ in 2014 to 2440 million $ in 2017, The analysts believe that in the next few years, Cloud Based Digital Asset Management market size will be further expanded, we expect that by 2022, The market size of the Cloud Based Digital Asset Management will reach 5660 million $.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comThis Report covers the manufacturers data, including: shipment, price, revenue, gross profit, interview record, business distribution etc., these data help the consumer know about the competitors better. This report also covers all the regions and countries of the world, which shows a regional development status, including market size, volume and value, as well as price data.Besides, the report also covers segment data, including: type segment, industry segment, channel segment etc. cover different segment market size, both volume and value. Also cover different industries clients information, which is very important for the manufacturers.Sections:-Section 1: FreeDefinitionSection (2 3): 1200 USDMajor Player DetailAdam Software Nv (Aprimo)Adobe Systems IncorporatedOpentext CorporationCelumMediabeacon, Inc.Canto, Inc.Widen Enterprises, Inc.Webdam (A Shutterstock Company)BynderNorthplainsMediavalet, Inc.CognizantSection 4: 900 USDRegion SegmentationNorth America Country (United States, Canada)South AmericaAsia Country (China, Japan, India, Korea)Europe Country (Germany, UK, France, Italy)Other Country (Middle East, Africa, GCC)ContinuedEnquiry About Report @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsSection 1 Cloud Based Digital Asset Management DefinitionSection 2 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Major Player Share and Market Overview2.1 Global Major Player Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Revenue2.2 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market OverviewSection 3 Major Player Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Introduction3.1 Adam Software Nv (Aprimo) Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Introduction3.1.1 Adam Software Nv (Aprimo) Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Revenue, Growth Rate and Gross profit 2014-20173.1.2 Adam Software Nv (Aprimo) Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Distribution by Region3.1.3 Adam Software Nv (Aprimo) Interview Record3.1.4 Adam Software Nv (Aprimo) Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Profile3.1.5 Adam Software Nv (Aprimo) Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Specification3.2 Adobe Systems Incorporated Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Introduction3.2.1 Adobe Systems Incorporated Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Revenue, Growth Rate and Gross profit 2014-20173.2.2 Adobe Systems Incorporated Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Distribution by Region3.2.3 Interview Record3.2.4 Adobe Systems Incorporated Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Overview3.2.5 Adobe Systems Incorporated Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Specification3.3 Opentext Corporation Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Introduction3.3.1 Opentext Corporation Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Revenue, Growth Rate and Gross profit 2014-20173.3.2 Opentext Corporation Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Distribution by Region3.3.3 Interview Record3.3.4 Opentext Corporation Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Overview3.3.5 Opentext Corporation Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Specification3.4 Celum Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Introduction3.5 Mediabeacon, Inc. Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business Introduction3.6 Canto, Inc. Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Business IntroductionSection 4 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Region Level)4.1 North America Country4.1.1 United States Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.1.2 Canada Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.2 South America Country4.2.1 South America Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.3 Asia Country4.3.1 China Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.3.2 Japan Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.3.3 India Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.3.4 Korea Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.4 Europe Country4.4.1 Germany Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.4.2 UK Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.4.3 France Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.4.4 Italy Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.4.5 Europe Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.5 Other Country and Region4.5.1 Middle East Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.5.2 Africa Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.5.3 GCC Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Size and Market Segmentation (Industry Level) 2014-20174.6 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Region Level) Analysis 2014-20174.7 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Region Level) AnalysisSection 5 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Type Level)5.1 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Type Level) Market Size 2014-20175.2 Different Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Type Level) Market Size Growth Rate 2014-20175.3 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Type Level) AnalysisSection 6 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Industry Level)6.1 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Industry Level) Market Size 2014-20176.2 Different Industry Trend 2014-20176.3 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Industry Level) AnalysisSection 7 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Channel Level)7.1 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Channel Level) Market Size and Share 2014-20177.2 Global Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Market Segmentation (Channel Level) AnalysisContinuedBuy 1-user PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.Global Transformer Oil Market: Industry Key Player - Nyans AB, Sinopec Corp., ExxonMobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Cargill Incorporated, Apar Industries Ltd., Gulf Oil Middle East Ltd., Ergon Inc.

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A new report titled Global Transformer Oil Market Prospects, Outlook and Growth Analysis for the Period 2024 has been included in the enormous research repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) that compiles various facets of the Transformer Oil Market at a global level portraying a holistic analysis of the marketplace along with intelligence on key participants. The report covers an unbiased analysis on various market aspects, emphasizing major trends giving direction to the market, key opportunities paving new growth avenues, key drivers pushing the markets growth and challenges and restraints hindering the market for Transformer Oil Market across the globe.To Get Sample Copy of Report Click here @Transformer oil is an oil used in oil filled transformers for insulation purposes. It is also used as a coolant and to prevent arcing and corona discharges in a transformer. The report provides in-depth analysis and forecast of the transformer oil market on the global as well as on regional level. It further includes value chain analysis to help understand the industry thoroughly. Value chain analysis comprises detailed evaluation of the roles of various entities involved in the transformer oil industry, from raw material suppliers to end-users.Various processes employed in the manufacture of transformer oil have been included in the value chain analysis. Porters five forces model has been included to determine the degree of competition in the market during the forecast period. Furthermore, market attractiveness analysis has been conducted to analyze application segments that are expected to be lucrative during the forecast period. This is based on various factors such as market size, growth rate, profitability, raw material procurement, and competition in each application segment.The report includes forecast for the period from 2018 to 2024 in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). Quantitative data has been derived through extensive secondary research of the global transformer oil market. Secondary sources typically include company websites, relevant magazines, government documents, and press releases. The top-down approach has been adopted to derive the regional numbers from global revenue and volume figures. Furthermore, the bottom-up approach has been employed to derive data for various product type and application segments based on demand for transformer oil in each geographical segment. A combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches helps in validation of the quantitative data of the market. The data was further validated with the help of primary research with industry experts to ensure accuracy of derived numbers.Detailed analysis of various factors driving the global transformer oil market has been included for astute decision making. Impact of these drivers during the forecast period has been included with data to substantiate research findings. Furthermore, factors restraining market growth have been included for better understanding of the market. Impact of these restraints has been analyzed over the forecast period. The report also comprises various opportunities available for market growth over the next eight years. Opportunities entail untapped or recently explored factors that are anticipated to drive the transformer oil market during the forecast period.Browse Complete Report with TOC @The global transformer oil market is divided on the basis of product type as mineral oil, silicone based and bio based transformer oil. The mineral oil segment is further classified into naphthenic oil and paraffinic oil. Based on application type, the transformer oil market has been segmented into power transformers, distribution transformers and others application segment.In terms of region, the market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Demand for transformer oil in each application segment type has been analyzed and forecast for a period of eight years. The report comprises detailed analysis of all the segments in the regional and global markets and forecast based on current and future trends in the industry in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn).The report also comprises profiles of leading companies in the transformer oil market. These include Nyans AB, Sinopec Corp., ExxonMobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Cargill Incorporated, Apar Industries Ltd., Gulf Oil Middle East Ltd., and Ergon Inc. among others. Various attributes of these companies such as company overview, business strategies, and recent developments form the core of the company profiles section.This report segments the global transformer oil market as follows:By ProductMineral OilNaphthenic OilParaffinic OilSilicone basedBio basedBy ApplicationPower TransformersDistribution TransformersOthersBy RegionNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeU.K.ItalySpainFranceGermanyRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaJapan & KoreaIndiaASEANRest of Asia PacificLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaMiddle East & Africa (MEA)GCCSouth AfricaRest of MEAEnquire about this Report @About Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:Thermal Imaging Market Analysis & Technological Innovation by Top Key Players - FLIR Systems, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Leonardo DRS, Testo SE, L-3 Technologies, Seek Thermal, ULIS & more

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The global thermal imaging market is anticipated to generate commendable returns in the forthcoming years, owing to the escalating demand for thermal cameras across numerous application domains, primarily the automobile and military industries. The thermal imaging technology enables aircrafts to fly in extreme darkness and detects targets through smoke & clouds. The rising acceptance of UAVs with advanced video cameras in armed and civilian operations is a major contributing factor for market growth. In a recent turn of events, Rega, a Swiss rescue agency, utilized thermal imaging technology in a rescue operation to track a missing person stuck in mountains. The system was mounted on a Rega aircraft prior to flight, which was able to quickly locate the man by using a highly sensitive thermal imaging camera and optical sensors. Thus, the implementation of thermal imaging can immensely expedite rescue operations, thereby boosting thermal imaging market share in the years to come.MarketStudyReport.com Adds New Thermal Imaging Market 2018  2024 research report providing information and data By Product, By Technology, By End-Use, By Application Industry Analysis, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast spreading across 380 Pages with table and figures in it.The Asia Pacific market is largely driven by the rising demand for thermal cameras in smartphones and the availability of low-cost imagers. The MEA thermal imaging market is expected to witness a sharp growth owing to the favorable infrastructure development trends and the rising demand across oil & gas industries in the region.Request a sample of this premium report at:Key vendors in the thermal imaging market include FLIR Systems, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Leonardo DRS, Testo SE, L-3 Technologies, Seek Thermal, ULIS (Sofradir), and Fluke Corporation, among others.Thermal Imaging Market is projected to surpass USD 10 billion by 2024. Technological advancements in thermographic imagery have led to the development of mobile solutions for numerous applications including surveillance, remote sensing, and space imaging. The performances of thermal cameras is based on their bandwidth and spectral sensitivity for a broad range of applications. The emergence and incorporation of communication interfaces have favorably impacted the user adoption, driving the thermal imaging market growth.The thermal imaging market is characterized by the compliance of these products with industry standards such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1801 standard, the Ingress Protection (IP) rating 65,67 and the regulations imposed on the export of such devices including the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Such regulatory compliances ensure the device?s reliability and performance even under adverse conditions and prevent misuse and trafficking for illegal purposes.Scopes & vision goggles offer the flexibility of day and night time use even under adverse weather conditions such as fog or smoke. Riflescopes enable military personnel to read off the target?s heat signatures for the most accurate position decision. Most riflescopes feature several color palates for better visualization and are more expensive than the monochrome models. Geopolitical unrest and the need for technologically-equipped border patrol are expected to drive thermal imaging market growth for the segment.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:Cooled cameras are more expensive and bulkier owing to the requirement of cryogenic cooling units; however, they provide superior imagery and are therefore are preferably used in life sciences, healthcare, special industrial detection, and automotive applications. With their superior sensitivity, the cooled camera is largely suitable for long-range imaging in low-contrast scenes. Nuclear power plants, airports, pipelines, high-security buildings, correctional facilities, and other sensitive areas also benefit from detailed imagery offered by cooled camera systems.Table of Content:Chapter 1. Methodology & ScopeChapter 2. Executive SummaryChapter 3. Thermal Imaging Industry InsightsChapter 4. Thermal Imaging Market, By Product (Revenue, Shipment)Chapter 5. Thermal Imaging Type Market, By Technology (Revenue, Shipment)Chapter 6. Thermal Imaging Market, By End-Use (Revenue, Shipment)Chapter 7. Thermal Imaging Market, By Application (Revenue, Shipment)Chapter 8. Thermal Imaging Market, by region (Revenue, Shipment)Chapter 9. Company ProfilesFor More Details on this Report At:Scope of this Report:The burgeoning popularity of thermal imaging in the medical industry is yet another driving factor for market growth in the imminent years. In a recent turn of events, Israeli researchers have demonstrated that the use of thermal imaging can provide a feasible radiotherapy monitoring tool to support treatment optimization. The researchers developed a technique to detect tumors in a thermal image and evaluate changes in the tumor and vasculature during radiotherapy, corroborating this in a study of 6 patients having advanced breast cancer. The escalating adoption of thermal imaging technology in a wide range of applications across numerous industries would thus substantially enhance thermal imaging market size in the future.Related Report:United States Uncooled Thermal Imaging Market Report 2018In this report, the United States Uncooled Thermal Imaging market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Blog:Industry Trends: CT and PET Scanners Market By Key Vendors: Philips, Toshiba, Shimadzu, Hitachi 2018-2025

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report CT and PET Scanners to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies the global market size of CT and PET Scanners in key regions like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central & South America and Middle East & Africa, focuses on the consumption of CT and PET Scanners in these regions.This research report categorizes the global CT and PET Scanners market by top players/brands, region, type and end user. This report also studies the global CT and PET Scanners market status, competition landscape, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, sales channels and distributors.CT machine, also called X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT) or computerized axial tomography scan (CAT scan), makes use of computer-processed combinations of many X-ray images taken from different angles to produce cross-sectional (tomographic) images (virtual 'slices') of specific areas of a scanned object, allowing the user to see inside the object without cutting. Digital geometry processing is used to generate a three-dimensional image of the inside of the object from a large series of two-dimensional radiographic images taken around a single axis of rotation.Medical imaging is the most common application of X-ray CT. Its cross-sectional images are used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes in various medical disciplines.Get Free Sample Report of the Research Study at:The global market volume CT Scan and PET Scan increased from 10394 Units in 2012 to 12669 Units 2016. The average growth rate is about 5.07%. The market value of CT Scan and PET Scan reached 6439.37 million USD in 2016 and it was 5887.59 million USD in 2012. The CAGR of the market value is about 2.26%.North America, Europe and China are the leading production regions of CT Scan and PET Scan. Among them, China is the largest production region in 2016 with 5470 Units in volume. It is about 43.18% of the world total production share. North America and Europe are the following regions with 27.17% and 15.64% of total production share in 2016. Japan also took about 9.47% of the world total production share in 2016.Europe is the largest consumption region of CT Scan and PET Scan in 2016. There are 3527 Units of CT Scan and PET Scans consumed in Europe in 2016. Europe took about 27.84% of the global total consumption. North America and China are the following regions with 24.93% and 15.95% of total consumption share in 2016.The global CT and PET Scanners market is valued at 6600 million US$ in 2017 and will reach 7710 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 2.3% during 2018-2025. The objectives of this study are to define, segment, and project the size of the CT and PET Scanners market based on company, product type, end user and key regions.The following manufacturers are covered in this report, with sales, revenue, market share for each company:GE HealthcareSiemens HealthcarePhilipsToshibaShimadzuHitachiNeuroLogicaNeusoft MedicalShenzhen Anke High-techUnited-imagingRead Complete Research Report at:The study objectives of this report are:To study and analyze the global CT and PET Scanners market size (value & volume) by company, key regions, products and end user, breakdown data from 2013 to 2017, and forecast to 2025.To understand the structure of CT and PET Scanners market by identifying its various subsegments.To share detailed information about the key factors influencing the growth of the market (growth potential, opportunities, drivers, industry-specific challenges and risks).Focuses on the key global CT and PET Scanners companies, to define, describe and analyze the sales volume, value, market share, market competition landscape and recent development.To project the value and sales volume of CT and PET Scanners submarkets, with respect to key regions.To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.Table of Contents1 Study Coverage1.1 CT and PET Scanners Product1.2 Market Segments1.3 Key Manufacturers Covered1.4 Market by Type1.4.1 Global CT and PET Scanners Market Size Growth Rate by Product1.4.2 CT Scanners (Only Including CT System)1.4.3 PET-CT Scanners1.5 Market by End User1.5.1 Global CT and PET Scanners Market Size Growth Rate by End User1.5.2 Head1.5.3 Thoracic Cavity1.5.4 Heart1.5.5 Abdominal and pelvic1.5.6 Extremities1.5.7 Others1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered2 Executive Summary2.1 Global CT and PET Scanners Market Size2.1.1 Global CT and PET Scanners Revenue 2013-20252.1.2 Global CT and PET Scanners Sales 2013-20252.2 CT and PET Scanners Growth Rate by Regions2.2.1 Global CT and PET Scanners Sales by Regions2.2.2 Global CT and PET Scanners Revenue by Regions3 Breakdown Data by Manufacturers3.1 CT and PET Scanners Sales by Manufacturers3.1.1 CT and PET Scanners Sales by Manufacturers3.1.2 CT and PET Scanners Sales Market Share by Manufacturers3.1.3 Global CT and PET Scanners Market Concentration Ratio (CR5 and HHI)3.2 CT and PET Scanners Revenue by Manufacturers3.2.1 CT and PET Scanners Revenue by Manufacturers (2013-2018)3.2.2 CT and PET Scanners Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)3.3 CT and PET Scanners Price by Manufacturers...List of Tables and FiguresFigure CT and PET Scanners Product PictureTable CT and PET Scanners Market SegmentsTable Key Manufacturers CT and PET Scanners CoveredTable Global CT and PET Scanners Market Size Growth Rate by Product 2018-2025 (K Units) & (Million US$)Figure Global CT and PET Scanners Sales Market Share by Product 2013-2025Figure CT Scanners (Only Including CT System) Product PictureTable Major Manufacturers of CT Scanners (Only Including CT System)Figure PET-CT Scanners Product PictureTable Major Manufacturers of PET-CT ScannersTable Global CT and PET Scanners Market Size Growth Rate by End User 2018-2025 (K Units)Figure HeadFigure Thoracic CavityFigure HeartFigure Abdominal and pelvicFigure ExtremitiesFigure Others...About Us: QYResearchReports delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us:Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.comAsia Pacific Dental Implants Market Outlook, Forecast & Major Industry Participants includes Osstem Implants, Danaher Corporation, Zimmer Biomet and Henry Schein

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The research report Asia Pacific Dental Implants Market analysis based on Product, Material, End-use, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 - 2024 by Graphical Research. says, Asia Pacific Dental Implants Market size is set to surpass USD 915 million by 2024.Rising prevalence of edentulism in developing countries such as India and China will drive Asia Pacific dental implants market growth. Edentulism is a major contributor of disease burden for oral health problems in the Asian countries. As per recent studies by government organizations, prevalence of edentulism in China accounted for 8.9% whereas India accounted for 15.3% in 2017. Additionally, increasing number of baby boomers aged 65 years and above suffering from oral disorders will further boost demand for dental implants in the coming years.Request for a sample of this research report -Rising dental tourism in Asia Pacific will propel business growth. Low cost of dental treatment in developing countries such as India and China will lead to increase in number of patient visits for dental procedures. Such factors will increase affordability leading to remarkable market growth. However, limited reimbursement and lack of skilled professionals in emerging countries will impede business growth over the coming years.Parallel-walled dental implants segment accounted for USD 149.7 million in 2017 owing to superlative versality of the implants. Parallel-walled implants render excellent aesthetic benefit, thus increasing customer demand. Furthermore, these implants utilize digital technology such as CT and CAD/CAM for improved navigation and imaging. Aforementioned factors should boost segmental growth in forthcoming years.Titanium dental implants accounted for more than 72% market share in 2017. Strong mechanical properties, excellent biocompatibility and high strength are major factors making it a preferable choice of biomaterial for fabrication of dental implants. Such beneficial features of titanium implants will augment segmental growth.Browse key industry insights from this 2018 report Asia Pacific Dental Implants Market in detail along with the table of contents at:Hospitals segment contributed over USD 160 million in 2017. Increasing number of multi-specialty hospitals throughout the country offering dental care services and specialized treatments will augment segmental growth. Additionally, rising prevalence of gingival or periodontal diseases among adults aged 45 years and above in developing countries will spur patient visits to hospitals thereby, propelling segmental growth.India dental implants market will grow at a lucrative 7.4% CAGR over the forecast timeframe. This growth is attributable to increasing prevalence of oral disorders along with rising dental tourism in the country. High disposable income, changing demographics, rising healthcare expenditure along with affordable prices of tooth implants in India will act as positive contributing factors for market growth in the substantial years.Some of the established market players in Asia Pacific dental implants market are Osstem Implants, Danaher Corporation, Institut Straumann AG, Dentsply Sirona, Zimmer Biomet and Henry Schein. Industry players are adopting geographical expansions and new product launch to expand market share and product portfolio. For instance, in August 2016, Zimmer Biomet introduced TSVT & TSVM-1 HA dental Implants, having advanced features. This new product launches will help in expanding firms product base.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Segments We Cover:Asia Pacific Dental Implants Market Statistics, By ProductTapered implants, Parallel walled implantsAPAC Dental Implants Market trends, By MaterialTitanium, ZirconiumAsia Pacific Dental Implants Market Growth, By End-useHospitals, Dental Clinics, OtherThe above information is provided for the following countries:Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, OtherRelated Reports:1. Asia Pacific Dental Practice Management Software Market Share by Component (Scheduling, Patient Communication, Invoicing/ Billing, Payment Processing, Insurance Management, Dental Charting), By Delivery Mode (On-premise, Web-based, Cloud-based), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam), Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018  2024Key players in this market are Curve Dental, Carestream Dental and Henry Schein.2. North America Dental Practice Management Software Market Size by Component (Scheduling, Patient Communication, Invoicing/ Billing, Payment Processing, Insurance Management, Dental Charting), By Delivery Mode (On-premise, Web-based, Cloud-based), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada), Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018  2024Key players in this market are Carestream, Curve Dental, Henry Schein and Patterson CompaniesAbout Graphical Research:Graphical Research is a business research firm that provides industry insights, market forecast and strategic inputs through granular research reports and advisory services. We publish targeted research reports with an aim to address varied customer needs, from market penetration and entry strategies to portfolio management and strategic outlook. We understand that business requirements are unique: our syndicate reports are designed to ensure relevance for industry participants across the value chain. We also provide custom reports that are tailored to the exact needs of the customer, with dedicated analyst support across the purchase lifecycle.Contact Us:Parikhit B.Corporate sales,Graphical ResearchEmail: sales@graphicalresearh.comWeb:Global Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Market Report to Showcase ofr Top Companies and Players - 2023

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Key players operating in therapeutic drug monitoring market are F. Hoffmann-La Roche (Switzerland), Siemens Healthineers (Germany), and Abbott (US).Therapeutic drug monitoring market is expected to reach USD 1.63 billion by 2023 from USD 1.23 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 5.9% during forecast period. Growth of this market is majorly driven by rising number of organ transplant procedures and the use of TDM in traditional anticancer therapies.Get Free Market Updates Now atTechnological advances in tests used to monitor therapeutic drugs, increased knowledge of pharmacogenetics and pharmacokinetics of drugs, need for better healthcare in developing countries, and rising prevalence of psychiatric diseases and cancer are the major drivers for the market. Adjunct technologies such as biomarker identification using proteomics to accurately identify clinical outcomes and genetic testing are expected to benefit the growth of the therapeutic drug monitoring market.Objectives of the Study To define, describe, and forecast the therapeutic drug monitoring market on the basis of technology, product, class of drug, end user, and regions To provide detailed information about factors influencing market growth (drivers, restraints, opportunities, and industry-specific challenges) To strategically analyze the micromarkets with respect to individual growth trends, prospects, and contributions to the overall market To analyze market opportunities for stakeholders and provide details of the competitive landscape for key players To forecast the size of the market segments with respect to four major regional segments, namely, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World (RoW) To profile the key players in the market and comprehensively analyze their market positions and core competencies To track and analyze competitive developments such as mergers and acquisitions; product development; and research and development activities in the therapeutic drug monitoring marketGet Discount Now atNorth America is expected to account for more than half the therapeutic drug monitoring market share in 2015. It is the prime market for therapeutics drug monitoring due to the high awareness and acceptance of the benefits of therapeutic drug monitoring and growing healthcare expenditure.Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Market, By Class of Drug1 Introduction2 Antiepileptics3 Antiarrhythmic Drugs4 Immunosuppressants5 Antibiotics6 Bronchodilators7 Psychoactive DrugsMajor players in the therapeutic drug monitoring market include F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG (Switzerland), Siemens Healthcare (Germany), Thermo Fisher Scientific (U.S.), Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. (U.S.), and Danaher Corporation (U.S.).Click now for more Details, Queries and Discount, Other Information on this study Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Market by Product (Consumables, Equipment), Technology (Immunoassays, Proteomic Technologies), Class of Drug (Antiepileptics, Antibiotics, Immunosuppressants), End User (Hospital Labs, Private Labs) - Global Forecast to 2020 research @Competitive landscape covers the various strategies adopted by industry players to maintain their position in the therapeutic drug monitoring market. The company profiles comprise the basic views on the key players in the therapeutic drug monitoring market and the product portfolios, developments, and strategies adopted by market players to maintain and increase their market shares.Break-up profile of primaries: By Company Type- Tier 1-33%, Tier 2-40% and Tier 3-27% By Designation-C-level-21%, D-level-36% and Others-43% By Region-North America-43%, Europe-31%, Asia Pacific-18%,and RoW-8%Therapeutic drugs monitor market, increased knowledge of pharmacogenetics and pharmacokinetics of drugs, need for better healthcare in developing countries, and rising prevalence of psychiatric diseases and cancer are major drivers for therapeutic drug monitoring market.Contact:sales@reportsandreports.com / Call +1 888 391 5441ReportsnReports provides you the further information and more details with intelligence needs for your business. Access to in-depth market trends helps companies to assess the market effectiveness.Mr. HrishikeshTower B5, Office 101,Magarpatta City SEZ,Pune-411013, IndiaTop 10 Companies in Global Oncology Drugs Market and their Competitive Analysis

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Coherent Market Insights has announced the addition of the Global Oncology Drugs Market Size Status and Forecast 2026, The report classifies the global Oncology Drugs Market in a precise manner to offer detailed insights about the aspects responsible for augmenting as well as restraining market growth.This report studies the global Oncology Drugs Speaker market, analyzes and researches the Oncology Drugs Speaker development status and forecast in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Rest of the World. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like Roche, Celgene, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Sanofi, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lily and Merck & Co.Request a sample copy:Oncology drugs and medications have become a blooming business for players in the pharmaceutical industry. Major pharmaceutical companies are focused on manufacturing and development of oncology drug. Market players have oncology drugs in pipeline, which are expected to be in the market as potential medications in near future. Also, the global oncology market is expected to gain a significant traction with the increasing prevalence of cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide, which accounted for around 14 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths in 2012. The number of new cancer cases is projected to rise to 22 million in near future. The major competitors are focused on developing efficient treatment for specific type of cancer which is expected to be a prominent factor to augment the global oncology drugs market.Top 5 company described for competitive analysis in detail:1. Roche is a world leader in oncology, which is engaged in developing new approaches for advanced cancer treatment. Roche operates in two segments, which includes pharmaceuticals and diagnostics with annual sales of US$ 39.1 Bn and US$ 11.5 Bn respectively. Roche is at the forefront of cancer immunotherapy with ten investigational drug candidates currently in the clinical development phase. In 2016, the company entered into 10 new clinical collaboration agreements to explore drug combinations for maximizing therapeutic benefits and develop the lead immunotherapy drug. The company has set up imCORE, a network of 21 academic institutions working with Roche to advance research into cancer immunotherapies, thus contributing to enhance the global oncology drugs market in the near future.2. Johnson and Johnson operates in three business segments namely consumer, pharmaceutical and medical devices. The business of Johnson & Johnson is conducted by more than 230 operating companies located in 60 countries worldwide. In 2016, the company has invested around US$ 9.1 Bn in research and development activities. Janssen, the pharmaceutical division of J&J registered the oncology drug sales of around US$ 5.9 Bn among the total pharmaceutical therapeutic area sales. Janssen is focused on strategic collaborations for the development of cancer therapeutics, which in turn favors the oncology drugs market. For instance, in November, 2017, Janssen collaborated with Zymeworks, Inc. to develop six bispecific antibodies based on Azymetric and Effector Function Enhancement and Control Technology (EFECT) platforms for research, development, and commercialization with a potential to generate US$ 1.5 Bn. High sales of IMBRUVICA (ibrutinib) and DARZALEX (daratumumab) were due to increasing patient uptake, additional country launches, and additional indications, which contributed to the growth of oncology drugs.3. Pfizer, Inc. develops oncology therapies that provide maximum efficacy while minimizing adverse effects on the patient. The current portfolio of oncology drugs covers a range of cancers. The company studies these therapies alone and in combination with other treatments to improve the lives of cancer patients. Pfizers overall strategy is anchored on innovation for developing new medicines and vaccines through collaborations and business relationships which is expected to bolster the oncology drugs market. For instance, Pfizer partnered with Merck KGaA for building a strong portfolio in immuno-oncology, Biolnvent International AB to develop antibodies to advance the novel technology platform of cancer vaccine as well as business relationship with IBM Watson for drug discovery by identifying potential new targets and combination therapies in immune-oncology.4. Novartiss aims to develop approaches for extending the lives of people suffering from cancer, by adopting the strategy to use science-based innovation for delivering better patient outcomes in growing areas of healthcare. Novartis operates in two business segments namely Novartis Oncology and Novartis Pharmaceuticals, which together form Innovative Medicines Division. The Novartis Oncology segment contributed around 39% of its net sales, it was valued around US$ 12.8 Bn. Increase in revenue is attributed to the strong performance for oncology products Tafinlar + Mekinist, a combination therapy for advanced melanoma, and Jakavi, for blood cancers. Novartis is leading provider of cancer treatments, following the acquisition of oncology products from GlaxoSmithKline in 2015. In 2016, the company collaborated with Surface Oncology to bolster the cancer immunotherapy pipeline that will provide access to four preclinical programs. Also, with a licensing agreement with Xencor, it plans to co-develop two bispecific antibodies designed to target acute myeloid leukemia and B-cell malignancies, thereby aiding the growth of oncology drugs market.5. Sanofi operates through two business segments namely pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Sanofi gains insights through its network of collaborations with biotech companies such as Immunogen and Evotec, academic cancer centers such as Institut Gustave Roussy, Institut Curie, and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, enabling superior use of software, analytics, and new technology, which helps to increase its productivity, maximize return on R&D investment, and accelerate the development of new products. Sanofi Oncology has a large number of collaborations and alliances to support its R&D portfolio. In 2015, Sanofi collaborated with Regeneron focusing on cancer immunotherapy to generate high value development candidates in the emerging field of immuno-oncology and to accelerate its development pipeline in the oncology drugs market. In 2016, the company entered into a collaboration with Innate Pharma to develop innovative bispecific antibody formats engaging natural killer (NK) cells to kill tumor cells. Also, it collaborated with Warp Drive Bio to develop drugs targeting human oncogenes, thus accelerating the innovations for oncology drugs.* Novel and targeted oncology drugs manufactured by the major competitors in oncology drug market are geared towards the treatment of specific type of cancer with premium prices, without generic competition from the competitors, as these biologic treatments have an enhanced patent protection. Strategic collaborations and rise in research and development is the basic approach adopted by the manufacturers, as it helps to develop and access knowledge and increase the understanding in new areas of science, thereby accelerating the global oncology drugs market.*The major strategic collaborations included in the competitive analysis include:-Sanofi and Regeneron collaborated to develop REGN2810, with an overall expenditure of US$ 325 million each towards developing the therapy currently in the Phase I-Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) and CytomX Therapeutics collaborated to develop four target cancer therapies using CytomXs Probody drug discovery platform. The collaboration would provide CytomX with a net US$ 1.2 Bn.Else place an Inquire before Purchase Global Oncology Drugs Market Size, Status and Forecast 2026:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comEurope Dental Practice Management Software Market Key Players are Curve Dental, Carestream, Henry Schein and Patterson Companies.

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The research report Europe Dental Practice Management Software Market analysis based on Component, Delivery Mode, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018  2024 by Graphical Research. says, Europe Dental Practice Management Software Market size is set to surpass USD 690 million by 2024.Rising geriatric population will spur DPMS revenue size over the forecast period. Elderly population is highly vulnerable to various dental disorders. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the prevalence rate of edentulism in European population aged 65 to 74 years is 20-50%. Similarly, dental caries and periodontitis are major dental issues found in older population in Europe. Thus, increasing elderly population requiring dental care will stimulate market growth.Request for a sample of this research report -Technological advancements in dental practice management software (DPMS) is another major factor driving industry growth. Advancements such as cloud-based software that offer enhanced benefits is poised to increase customer preference. Text messaging in this software facilitate better communication and enables changes in the appointment schedule. Thus, improved user-friendliness owing to technological advancements will expand business growth in foreseeable future.However, dearth of skilled professionals for operating technologically advanced dental practice management software will hamper business growth over the coming years.Patient communication component segment will grow at a remarkable 10.9% CAGR over the forecast timeframe. This component offers favorable features to dental practitioners such as reminders, fax, e-mail and text messages. It allows interaction with large number of patients efficiently. These benefits will impel segmental growth in upcoming years.Web-based segment accounted for largest share and is forecasted to grow at 10.4% CAGR over the forecast timeline. Web-based delivery mode offers greater flexibility and convenience to dental users. It includes all the components necessary for efficient functioning including reporting, billing, scheduling, treatment planning, and other components.Browse key industry insights from this 2018 report Europe Dental Practice Management Software Market in detail along with the table of contents at:UK dental practice management software market will grow at significant rate of 11.4% CAGR owing to increasing number of advanced technology software in the country. UK offers various dental practice courses for practitioners. Moreover, rising elderly population should impel market growth during the forecast timeframe.Some of the established market players in Europe dental practice management software market are Curve Dental, Carestream, Henry Schein and Patterson Companies. Industry players are focusing on geographic expansion and partnerships for enhancing market reach. For instance, in February 2018, Curve Dental and Battery Venture signed an agreement for equity investment. The strategy aimed to encourage product innovation, provide best quality services and accelerate growth.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Segments We Cover:Europe Dental Practice Management Software Market Statistics by ComponentScheduling, Patient communication, Invoicing/billing, Payment processing, Insurance management, Dental charting, OthersEurope Dental Practice Management Software Market Trends by Delivery ModeOn-premise, Web-based, Cloud-basedThe above information is provided for the following regions and countries:Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, Netherlands, SwedenRelated Reports:1. Asia Pacific Dental Practice Management Software Market Share by Component (Scheduling, Patient Communication, Invoicing/ Billing, Payment Processing, Insurance Management, Dental Charting), By Delivery Mode (On-premise, Web-based, Cloud-based), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam), Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018  2024The major market players in Asia Pacific dental practice management software market are Curve Dental, Carestream Dental and Henry Schein.2. North America Dental Practice Management Software Market Size by Component (Scheduling, Patient Communication, Invoicing/ Billing, Payment Processing, Insurance Management, Dental Charting), By Delivery Mode (On-premise, Web-based, Cloud-based), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada), Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018  2024.The major market players in Asia Pacific dental practice management software market are Curve Dental, Carestream Dental and Henry Schein.About Graphical Research:Graphical Research is a business research firm that provides industry insights, market forecast and strategic inputs through granular research reports and advisory services. We publish targeted research reports with an aim to address varied customer needs, from market penetration and entry strategies to portfolio management and strategic outlook. We understand that business requirements are unique: our syndicate reports are designed to ensure relevance for industry participants across the value chain. We also provide custom reports that are tailored to the exact needs of the customer, with dedicated analyst support across the purchase lifecycle.Contact Us:Corporate sales,Graphical ResearchEmail: sales@graphicalresearh.comWeb:Mammography Equipment Market - Key Futuristic Trends and Competitive Landscape 2025

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This study researches the market size of Mammography Equipment in United States, European Union and China, presents the Mammography Equipment production, consumption, value, product price, market share and growth rate by companies, type and application, history breakdown data from 2013 to 2018, and forecast to 2025.For top companies in United States, European Union and China, this report investigates and analyzes the production, value, price, market share and growth rate for the top manufacturers, key data from 2013 to 2018.Mammography is a specific type of breast imaging that uses low-dose x-rays to detect cancer early  before women experience symptoms  when it is most treatable.Request For Free Sample Of The Report @North America was the largest regional market in 2017.In 2018, the market size of Mammography Equipment is xx million US$ and it will reach xx million US in 2025, growing at a CAGR of xx% from 2018; while in China, the market size is valued at xx million US$ and will increase to xx million US in 2025, with a CAGR of xx% during forecast period.In this report, 2017 has been considered as the base year and 2018 to 2025 as the forecast period to estimate the market size for Mammography Equipment.In United States, European Union and China market, the following companies are covered:BayCareDilon TechnologiesGE HealthcareHologicPhilips HealthcareSiemens HealthcareSonoCine...Market Segment by Product TypeTomosynthesisBreast UltrasoundBreast MRIMammographyNuclear ImagingBioelectric ImagingBreast ThermographyObtain Report Details @Market Segment by ApplicationHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersKey Regions split in this report:United StatesChinaEuropean UnionRest of World (Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)The study objectives are:To analyze and research the Mammography Equipment status and future forecast in United States, European Union and China, involving sales, value (revenue), growth rate (CAGR), market share, historical and forecast.To present the key Mammography Equipment manufacturers, presenting the sales, revenue, market share, and recent development for key players.To split the breakdown data by regions, type, companies and applicationsTo analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.To identify significant trends, drivers, influence factors in global and regionsTo analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the marketIndustry Insights with Latest And Upcoming Trends @About Us-QYResearch, established in 2007, focuses on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, and data base &seminar services. The company owns large basic databases (such as National Bureau of Statistics Database, Customs Import and Export Database, Industry Association Database, etc.), expert resources (including industry experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D in industries of energy, automotive, chemicals, medical ICT consumer goods, etc.), professional survey team (the team members obtained more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years deep expert interview experience), and excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team).QYResearch has more than 4000 global well-known customers, covering more than 30 industries including energy, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, agriculture, etc. Company services cover one-stop solution as Data-Analysis-Suggestion-Consulting Implementation. Research regions cover China, US, EU, Asia, Middle East and Africa, South America, Australia, and other regions in the world. QYResearch built research or marketing centers in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong), USA, Canada, Germany, UK, France, etc. Currently, QYResearch has become the first choice, worthy and trusted consulting brand in Global and Chinabusiness consulting services.Contact Us-USA OfficeAdd: 17890 Castleton St. Suite 218 City of Industry,CA 91748E- mail- marketing@qyresearch.comTel:+1-6262952442(International)But they were both caught by the red light of a laser sight before they could reach the gate. At least 10 shots rang out. The 18-year-old was hit in the back and the leg, and Julien was shot once in the neck. The teen survived, Julien did not.Advance Wound Care Global Market 2018: Key Players  Cardinal Health, 3M Company, BSN medical GmbH, DeRoyal Industries, Vivostat A/S

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Advance Wound Care IndustryDescriptionWiseguyreports.Com Adds Advance Wound Care -Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities and Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecast To 2023 To Its Research DatabaseAdvanced Wound Care products for the wound healing process are generally prescribed by clinicians after a visit to the doctor or hospital.Advanced Wound Care products generally includes film and foam dressings, hydrogels, alginates and hydrocolloids. Such products are largely focused on keeping the wound hydrated to encourage healing, following the philosophy that a moist microenvironment promotes the natural healing process (human cells require water to live and grow) without occluding the wound.In 2017, the global Advance Wound Care market size was 6940 million US$ and is forecast to 10700 million US in 2025, growing at a CAGR of 5.6% from 2018. The objectives of this study are to define, segment, and project the size of the Advance Wound Care market based on company, product type, application and key regions.This report studies the global market size of Advance Wound Care in key regions like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central & South America and Middle East & Africa, focuses on the consumption of Advance Wound Care in these regions.This research report categorizes the global Advance Wound Care market by players/brands, region, type and application. This report also studies the global market status, competition landscape, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, sales channels, distributors and Porter's Five Forces Analysis.The various contributors involved in the value chain of Advance Wound Care include manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, intermediaries, and customers. The key manufacturers in the Advance Wound Care includeCardinal Health3M CompanyBSN medical GmbHDeRoyal IndustriesVivostat A/SAdvanced Medical Solutions GroupLifeScience PLUSMiMedx GroupLifeNet HealthRequest for Sample Report @Market Size Split by TypeAeterial UlcerBurnsDiabetic Foot UlcerPressure UlcerSurgical WoundsVenous Lge UlcerOtherMarket Size Split by ApplicationInpatient FacilitiesOutpatient FacilitiesMarket size split by RegionNorth AmericaUnited StatesCanadaMexicoAsia-PacificChinaIndiaThe study objectives of this report are:To study and analyze the global Advance Wound Care market size (value & volume) by company, key regions/countries, products and application, history data from 2013 to 2017, and forecast to 2025.To understand the structure of Advance Wound Care market by identifying its various subsegments.To share detailed information about the key factors influencing the growth of the market (growth potential, opportunities, drivers, industry-specific challenges and risks).Focuses on the key global Advance Wound Care manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the sales volume, value, market share, market competition landscape, SWOT analysis and development plans in next few years.To analyze the Advance Wound Care with respect to individual growth trends, future prospects, and their contribution to the total market.To project the value and volume of Advance Wound Care submarkets, with respect to key regions (along with their respective key countries).To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Advance Wound Care are as follows:History Year: 2013-2017Base Year: 2017Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2025Leave a Query @Table of Contents1 Study Coverage1.1 Advance Wound Care Product1.2 Key Market Segments1.3 Key Manufacturers Covered1.4 Market by Type1.4.1 Global Advance Wound Care Market Size Growth Rate by Type1.4.2 Aeterial Ulcer1.4.3 Burns1.4.4 Diabetic Foot Ulcer1.4.5 Pressure Ulcer1.4.6 Surgical Wounds1.4.7 Venous Lge Ulcer1.4.8 Other1.5 Market by Application1.5.1 Global Advance Wound Care Market Size Growth Rate by Application1.5.2 Inpatient Facilities1.5.3 Outpatient Facilities1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered2 Executive Summary2.1 Global Advance Wound Care Market Size2.1.1 Global Advance Wound Care Revenue 2016-20252.1.2 Global Advance Wound Care Sales 2016-20252.2 Advance Wound Care Growth Rate by Regions2.2.1 Global Advance Wound Care Sales by Regions2.2.2 Global Advance Wound Care Revenue by Regions....11 Company Profiles11.1 Cardinal Health11.1.1 Cardinal Health Company Details11.1.2 Company Description11.1.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.1.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.1.5 Recent Development11.2 3M Company11.2.1 3M Company Company Details11.2.2 Company Description11.2.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.2.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.2.5 Recent Development11.3 BSN medical GmbH11.3.1 BSN medical GmbH Company Details11.3.2 Company Description11.3.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.3.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.3.5 Recent Development11.4 DeRoyal Industries11.4.1 DeRoyal Industries Company Details11.4.2 Company Description11.4.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.4.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.4.5 Recent Development11.5 Vivostat A/S11.5.1 Vivostat A/S Company Details11.5.2 Company Description11.5.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.5.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.5.5 Recent Development11.6 Advanced Medical Solutions Group11.6.1 Advanced Medical Solutions Group Company Details11.6.2 Company Description11.6.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.6.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.6.5 Recent Development11.7 LifeScience PLUS11.7.1 LifeScience PLUS Company Details11.7.2 Company Description11.7.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.7.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.7.5 Recent Development11.8 MiMedx Group11.8.1 MiMedx Group Company Details11.8.2 Company Description11.8.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.8.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.8.5 Recent Development11.9 LifeNet Health11.9.1 LifeNet Health Company Details11.9.2 Company Description11.9.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of Advance Wound Care11.9.4 Advance Wound Care Product Description11.9.5 Recent DevelopmentBuy Now @Continued...Contact Us: Sales@Wiseguyreports.Com Ph: +1-646-845-9349 (Us) Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (Uk)About Us: Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres: Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt Ltd Pune  411028 Maharashtra, Global Ph: +91 841 198 5042Global Orthodontic Supplies Market Detail Analysis focusing on Key Players like Align Technology, Straumann group, DENTSPLY Sirona, American Orthodontics

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The global orthodontic supplies market growth has observed a commendable incline since the last few years, primarily on account of the rising cases of malocclusion across the globe, in addition to the substantially growing proportion of dental carries and periodontal diseases.The 2018-2024 report on global Orthodontic Supplies market explores the essential factors Of Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare industry covering current scenario, market demand information, coverage of active companies and segmentation forecasts.Notable industry competitors are 3M, Align Technology, Straumann group, DENTSPLY Sirona, American Orthodontics, Patterson Companies, Henry Schein, G&H Orthodontics and DENTAURUM. These players concentrate on strategic decisions to develop new technologically advanced products. Also, merger and acquisitions have helped the companies to increase their product portfolio.Request a Sample of this premium Orthodontic Supplies Market Research Report@With rising awareness regarding the timely treatment of such rapidly occurring dental disorders, the demand for orthodontic supplies will only serve to increase in the years to come. These disorders are particularly prominent in smaller children, the rising populace of which is bound to impel orthodontic supplies market. The growing demand for these supplies has led to prominent industry players striving hard to bring forth a slew of highly advanced products that would serve to expand the commercialization matrix of orthodontic supplies market.For instance, 3M Oral Care, a subsidiary of the Minnesota based globally renowned multinational conglomerate 3M Company, has scarcely introduced a new product in the marketplace. Called the 3M Clarity Ultra Self-Ligating Brackets, this product falls under the Clarity brand range, which is already inclusive of the reputed 3M Clarity Aligners and 3M Clarity Advanced Ceramic Brackets. Apparently, reports claim that the Clarity Ultra has been suitably designed to offer rotational control as well as enhanced versatility, eliminating the requirement for ligatures.Rise in awareness among the people regarding oral health in Latin America region will augment the orthodontic supplies market. Growing healthcare expenditure, rising awareness among the people regarding oral healthcare and rising need to address the orthodontic disorders will boost the orthodontic supplies industry growth. Also, the increase in number of initiatives taken by the government for oral healthcare and flourishing medical tourism in country such as Mexico will help in boosting the growth of orthodontic supplies market growth in Latin American region.Increase in demand for invisible removable braces in the European region will enhance the business growth. The rise in awareness among the people about their physical appearance in Europe region has escalated the demand for use of technologically advanced invisible removable braces. Rise in technological advancements and increasing awareness of aesthetic alternatives to traditional braces will increase the demand for invisible removable braces for orthodontic treatment.Request a Discount of this premium Orthodontic Supplies Market Research Report@If sources are to be believed, these brackets have been precoated with the 3M APC Flash-Free Adhesive for the purpose of bonding. Incidentally, the Clarity Ultra Self-Ligating Brackets encompass no visible metal parts, and in addition, are also stain-resistant and translucent. Manufactured with smooth ceramic edges and surfaces for ensuring the comfort of the patient, these brackets indeed will create a revolution of sorts in the orthodontic supplies market.Orthodontic Supplies Market will exceed USD 7 billion by 2024; as per a new research report.Indian orthodontic supplies market will witness 12.6% CAGR during the projection years, owing to increasing prevalence of untreated patients with orthodontic disorder such as malocclusion. Also, increasing disposable income will enhance the capacity of country population to spend on healthcare services driving the industry growth.Children & Teenagers patients segment held majority with total revenue of over USD 3.2 billion in 2017. Increase in number of teens suffering from teeth misalignment issues and growing accessibility to public healthcare insurance policies for child dental treatments will propel the orthodontic supplies industry market.View Full Report At:Related ReportGlobal Heart Valve Repair Market Growth (Status and Outlook) 2018-2023Heart Valve Repair Market report of 2018 provides a detailed market overview as well as industry analysis for of companies, manufacturers and distributors covering data on gross margin, cost structure, consumption value, sale price and more.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email:sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Welding Consumables Global Market Analysis 2012-2017 and Forecast 2018-2023

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GET SAMPLE REPORT @The global Welding Consumables market will reach xxx Million USD in 2017 and CAGR xx% 2018-2023. The report begins from overview of Industry Chain structure, and describes industry environment, then analyses market size and forecast of Welding Consumables by product, region and application, in addition, this report introduces market competition situation among the vendors and company profile, besides, market price analysis and value chain features are covered in this report.Product Type Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Major Company of Product Type etc.):Plasma Transferred Arc & Laser Cladding (PTA)Covered (Stick) Electrodes (SMAW)Gas-Shielded Flux-Cored Wires (FCAW)Self-Shielded Flux-Cored Wires (FCAW)OthersCompany Coverage (Sales Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Main Products etc.):Lincoln ElectricESABColfaxITWBohlerAir Liquide WeldingTianjin Golden BridgeKobelcoTianjin BridgeHyundai WeldingArcon Welding EquipmentThermadyneMEC-MesserObaraAtlantic ChinaKiswelNittetsuPanasonicFroniusKemppiSandvik Materials TechnologyApplication Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Different Demand Market by Region, Main Consumer Profile etc.):Infrastructure ConstructionShipbuildingEnergyAutomotiveGeneral IndustrialOthersRegion Coverage (Regional Output, Demand & Forecast by Countries etc.):North AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaACCESS REPORTTable of Contents1 Industry Overview1.1 Welding Consumables Industry1.1.1 Overview1.1.2 Development of Welding Consumables1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 Upstream1.2.2 Downstream1.3 Cost Analysis2 Industry Environment2.1 Policy2.2 Economics2.3 Sociology2.4 Technology3 Welding Consumables Market by Type3.1 By Type3.1.1 Plasma Transferred Arc & Laser Cladding (PTA)3.1.2 Covered (Stick) Electrodes (SMAW)3.1.3 Gas-Shielded Flux-Cored Wires (FCAW)3.1.4 Self-Shielded Flux-Cored Wires (FCAW)3.1.5 Others3.2 Market Size3.3 Market Forecast4 Major Companies List4.1 Lincoln Electric (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.2 ESAB (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.3 Colfax (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.4 ITW (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.5 Bohler (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.6 Air Liquide Welding (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.7 Tianjin Golden Bridge (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.8 Kobelco (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.9 Tianjin Bridge (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.10 Hyundai Welding (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.11 Arcon Welding Equipment (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.12 Thermadyne (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.13 MEC-Messer (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.14 Obara (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.15 Atlantic China (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.16 Kiswel (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.17 Nittetsu (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.18 Panasonic (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.19 Fronius (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.20 Kemppi (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.21 Sandvik Materials Technology (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)5 Market Competition5.1 Company Competition5.2 Regional Market by Company6 Market Demand6.1 Demand Situation6.1.1 Demand in Infrastructure Construction6.1.2 Demand in Shipbuilding6.1.3 Demand in Energy6.1.4 Demand in Automotive6.1.5 Demand in General Industrial6.1.6 Demand in Others6.2 Regional Demand Comparison6.3 Demand Forecast7 Region Operation7.1 Regional Output7.2 Regional Market7.3 by Region7.3.1 North America7.3.1.1 Overview7.3.1.2 by Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico)7.3.2 Europe7.3.2.1 Overview7.3.2.2 by Country (Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Russia, Spain etc.). CONTINUEDFOR ANY QUERY,Contact Us:Office No. 212/213, B Block 2nd Floor,Parmar Chambers,Phone Number: 020 - 2612 696Email: info@research2reports.comWebsite -Research 2 Reports offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe.Office No. 212/213, B Block 2nd Floor,Parmar Chambers,Phone Number: 020 - 2612 696Water Sink Global Market Analysis 2012-2017 and Forecast 2018-2023

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GET SAMPLE REPORT @The global Water Sink market will reach xxx Million USD in 2017 and CAGR xx% 2018-2023. The report begins from overview of Industry Chain structure, and describes industry environment, then analyses market size and forecast of Water Sink by product, region and application, in addition, this report introduces market competition situation among the vendors and company profile, besides, market price analysis and value chain features are covered in this report.Product Type Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Major Company of Product Type etc.):Stainless Steel Water SinksCeramic Water SinksArtificial Stone Water SinksOthersCompany Coverage (Sales Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Main Products etc.):FrankeKohlerBlancoElkayAmerica StandardMoenOulinRocaTekaDuravitJOMOOHuidaArtisanPrimySonataMorningJust ManufacturingApplication Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Different Demand Market by Region, Main Consumer Profile etc.):Bathroom Water Sinks  Kitchen Water Sinks  OtherRegion Coverage (Regional Output, Demand & Forecast by Countries etc.):North AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaACCESS REPORTTable of Contents1 Industry Overview1.1 Water Sink Industry1.1.1 Overview1.1.2 Development of Water Sink1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 Upstream1.2.2 Downstream1.3 Cost Analysis2 Industry Environment2.1 Policy2.2 Economics2.3 Sociology2.4 Technology3 Water Sink Market by Type3.1 By Type3.1.1 Stainless Steel Water Sinks3.1.2 Ceramic Water Sinks3.1.3 Artificial Stone Water Sinks3.1.4 Others3.2 Market Size3.3 Market Forecast4 Major Companies List4.1 Franke (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.2 Kohler (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.3 Blanco (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.4 Elkay (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.5 America Standard (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.6 Moen (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.7 Oulin (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.8 Roca (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.9 Teka (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.10 Duravit (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.11 JOMOO (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.12 Huida (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.13 Artisan (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.14 Primy (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.15 Sonata (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.16 Morning (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)4.17 Just Manufacturing (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)5 Market Competition5.1 Company Competition5.2 Regional Market by Company. CONTINUEDFOR ANY QUERY,Contact Us:Office No. 212/213, B Block 2nd Floor,Parmar Chambers,Sadhu Vaswani Road, Pune - 411001Phone Number: 020 - 2612 696Email: info@research2reports.comWebsite -Research 2 Reports offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe.Office No. 212/213, B Block 2nd Floor,Parmar Chambers,Sadhu Vaswani Road, Pune - 411001North America Microgrid Market Global Analysis By AC Microgrid, DC Microgrid, Hybrid | Caterpillar Inc, Tesla, Virdity Energy Solutions, EnSync Inc, Toshiba

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MarketStudyReport.com Adds New North America Microgrid Market 2018  2024 research report providing information By Connectivity (Grid Connected, Off-Grid), By Grid Type (AC Microgrid, DC Microgrid, Hybrid), By Source (Diesel Generators, Natural Gas, Solar PV, CHP), By Storage (Lithium-Ion, Lead Acid, Flow Batteries, Flywheel), By Application (Healthcare, Educational Institutes, Military, Utility, Industrial/Commercial, Remote)North America Microgrid Market is predicted to reach over USD 7 billion by 2024. Aging grid infrastructure coupled with stringent government policies toward adoption of sustainable power technologies will stimulate North America microgrid market. Economic competitiveness, low power cost & transmission losses and reliability are key the parameters that will encourage the product penetration. In addition, ongoing funding toward the development of distributed generation technology will enhance the industry landscape.Flow batteries accounted for over 5% of North America microgrid market in 2017. Ongoing investment pertaining to the integration of sustainable grid coupled with innovations toward the development of cost-effective and efficient storage technologies will propel the industry growth. key features including long life cycle and higher efficiency will further encourage the product adoption over available substitutes.Request a Sample of this premium Research Report@Canada microgrid market is predicted to reach deployment of over 400 MW capacity by 2024. Growing electricity demand across remote and off grid areas along with upsurge in investments toward the adoption of clean energy technology will complement the business growth. Furthermore, ongoing development of distributed energy sources to minimize the dependency on conventional grid will enhance the industry outlook. In 2016 Canada government made an investment of USD 2.4 billion for developing wind and solar energy sources.Ongoing adoption of captive power plants across the manufacturing and industrial sector for ensuring regulated power production will foster North America microgrid market. Increasing investment toward the expansion of decentralized grid coupled with rising investments for the expansion of infrastructure and power sector will accelerate the business growth. For instance, in 2016, the government of Canada, announced an investment of about USD 900 million were financed toward installation of numerous energy sources and R & D across the country.Natural gas microgrid market will grow on account of stringent government measures pertaining to the adoption of lower emission fuel as a replacement for conventional fuel sources. Ongoing investment toward exploration of unconventional fuel reserves owing to escalating gas demand will enhance the industry outlook. Amren Corporation in 2017, developed an advanced microgrid which utilizes, solar, natural gas and wind energy as a source along with an integrated battery storage and automation system.Top Manufacturers in global market are given bellow: ABB, Schneider Electric, Alstom, Siemens, Honeywell, Caterpillar Inc, Tesla, Virdity Energy Solutions, EnSync Inc, Toshiba, Hitachi, Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Lockheed Martin, Exelon and Power Analytics Corporation.Request a Discount on standard prices of this premium Market Research Report@Increasing high-end power consumption across the industries on account of development of new HVAC systems and heavy load machineries will foster the microgrid market. Growing electricity demands across hospitals, retail outlets, automotive, manufacturing operations, offices and industries will encourage product penetration across commercial and industrial application. For instance, as per EIA, the commercial and industrial sector in 2017 accounted about 4.5% and 22.4 % of the primary energy consumption respectively.The above information is provided on a regional and country basis for the following:U.S., Canada, MexicoBy Connectivity Grid Connected Off-GridBy Grid Type AC Microgrid DC Microgrid HybridBy Source Diesel Generators Natural Gas Solar PV CHPBy Storage Lithium-Ion Lead Acid Flow Batteries FlywheelBy Application Healthcare Educational Institutes Military Utility Industrial/Commercial RemoteTable of Content@Chapter 1. Methodology & ScopeChapter 2. Executive SummaryChapter 3. Commercial Drone Industry InsightsChapter 4. Competitive LandscapeContinued@........................Data TablesTABAL 1. North America Microgrid industry 360 degree synopsis, 2013 - 2024TABAL 2. Global North America Microgrid market, 2013 - 2024 (USD Million)TABAL 3. Global North America Microgrid market, by joint type, 2013 - 2024 (USD Million)TABAL 4. Global North America Microgrid market, by joint type, 2013 - 2024 (Units)TABAL 5. Industry impact forcesTABAL 6. Knee Replacement market by region, 2013 - 2024 (USD Million)TABAL 7. Knee Replacement market by region, 2013 - 2024 (Units)TABAL 8. Primary Knee Systems market, by region, 2013 - 2024, (USD Million)TABAL 9. Revision Knee Systems market, by region, 2013 - 2024, (USD Million)TABAL 10. Partial Knee Systems market, by region, 2013 - 2024, (USD Million)To View Full Report@About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email:sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices Market  Bayer, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Mona Lisa N.V., DKT International, Egemen International, OCON Medical, Bernstein Liebhard LLP, Bersil

Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices Market

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The key players of the Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices Market are making moves like product launches, joint ventures, developments, merges and accusations which is affecting the Global Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices Market and Medical Devices Industry as a whole and also affecting the sales, import, export, revenue and CAGR values.We at Data Bridge Market Research take the help of Porter's Five Forces Analysis that explains what the threats of new entrants, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of customers, bargaining power of suppliers, and Industry rivalry to the organizations are.Global Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices, By Product Type (Hormonal IUCD, Copper IUCD), By End-User (Hospitals, Gynecology Clinics, Community Healthcare), By Geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Rest of the World)  Forecast to 2024Get a Preview of the Report @Some of the major market players in this market are  Bayer AG, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Mona Lisa N.V., DKT INTERNATIONAL, OCON Medical Ltd, Pregna International Limited, MedWOW Global, SMB Corporation of India, Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd, GYNEAS, Melbea Innovations, Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd, Melbea AG, Medicines360, ALLERGAN, Agile therapeutics Inc., Among others.Market Analysis:The Market of Global Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices Market is expected to reach USD 4,851.2 million by 2024 from USD 3,684.1 million in 2016, at a CAGR of 3.5% in the forecast period 2017 to 2024. The new market report contains data for historic years 2015, the base year of calculation is 2016 and the forecast period is 2017 to 2024.The major factors driving the market for Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices (IUCD), such as growing awareness of contraceptive, increased rate of unplanned pregnancies, rising number of initiatives undertaken by the private firms, technological advancements and favourable insurance for IUCDs.Global Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices MarketIntrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) is a T-shaped, small-sized, birth control device that is inserted into womans uterus to prevent pregnancy. These devices are highly economical, effective, and safe birth control devices. Their major role is that they prevent pregnancy for a long period of time and prevent the chances of ectopic pregnancy. They are considered to be 99.0% effective in preventing pregnancy. There are two types of intrauterine devices copper-releasing intrauterine devices and progesterone-releasing intrauterine devices. Copper-releasing intrauterine device works by releasing copper. This copper enhances the inflammatory reaction in the uterus which prevents fertilization of eggs. Progesterone-releasing intrauterine device works by releasing progestin, which thickens the cervical mucus and creates the barrier to sperms.In 2016, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration pharms approved Bayer AGs low dose levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system. It marketed in the United States under the brand name KyleenaTM. Kyleena releases the lowest daily dose of the hormone levonorgestrel in an intrauterine system for up to five years. This is very effective protection against pregnancy, using the smallest T-shaped body available today.Allergan in 2016 launched single-handed Liletta IUD inserter.For More Details In-Depth Inquiry @Segmentation: Global Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices MarketThe global market for intra-uterine contraceptive devices by the following sub-categories is presentedBy Product Type Copper IUCD Hormonal IUCDBy End-User Hospitals Gynecology Clinics Community HealthcareBy Geography North America South America Europe Asia-Pacific Middle East and AfricaFACTORS DRIVING GROWTH IN THE GLOBAL INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE DEVICES MARKETThe increased rate of unplanned pregnancies:The rate of unintended pregnancy is increasing year after year, and the government initiatives regarding birth control and use of intra-uterine contraceptive devices in on the rise.In 2010, at least 36.0% of pregnancies in every United States were unintended. In 2011, nearly half (45.0% or 2.8 million) of the 6.1 million pregnancies in the United States were unintended. In 2011, there were 45 the rate of unintended pregnancies was 45 per 1,000 women in an aged group between 15years 44years. According to a journal published by the lancet global health, 156 million abortions (141 million173 million) occurred in India in 2015. The rate of abortion was 47 per 1000 women. 3.4 million Abortion occur in health facilities (22.0%). 11.5 million abortion abortions were done through medication (73.0%), 2.2 million abortions were surgical (14.0%).According to national center for biotechnology information, in 2012 there were 85 million reported pregnancies, out of which 40.0% of all pregnancies were unintended. Of these, 50.0% ended in abortion, 13.0% ended in miscarriage, and 38.0% resulted in an unplanned birth.Download Detailed TOC @Table of Contents:1. INTRODUCTION2. MARKET SEGMENTATION3. MARKET OVERVIEW4. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY5. PREMIUM INSIGHTS6. GLOBAL INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE (IUCD) DEVICES MARKET, BY PRODUCT TYPE7. GLOBAL INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE (IUCD) DEVICES MARKET, BY GEOGRAPHY7.2. NORTH AMERICA INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE (IUCD) DEVICES MARKET7.3. EUROPE INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE (IUCD) DEVICES MARKET7.4. APAC INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE (IUCD) DEVICES MARKET7.5. SOUTH AMERICA INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE (IUCD) DEVICES MARKET8. GLOBAL INTRA-UTERINE CONTRACEPTIVE (IUCD) DEVICES MARKET, COMPANY SHARE8.1. COMPANY SHARE ANALYSIS: GLOBAL8.2. COMPANY SHARE ANALYSIS: NORTH AMERICA8.3. COMPANY SHARE ANALYSIS: EUROPE8.4. COMPANY SHARE ANALYSIS: ASIA PACIFIC8.5. COMPANY SHARE ANALYSIS: SOUTH AMERICA8.6. COMPANY SHARE ANALYSIS: MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA9. COMPANY PROFILES9.1. BAYER AG9.1.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.1.2. SWOT (STRENGTH, WEAKNESS, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS)9.1.3. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.1.4. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.1.5. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS9.1.6. DATA BRIDGE ANALYSIS9.2. TEVA PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES LTD.9.2.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.2.2. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.2.3. SWOT (STRENGTH, WEAKNESS, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS)9.2.4. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.2.5. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS9.2.6. DATA BRIDGE ANALYSIS9.3. ALLERGEN PLC9.3.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.3.2. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.3.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.3.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS9.3.5. DATA BRIDGE ANALYSIS9.4. DKT INTERNATIONAL9.4.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.4.2. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.4.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.5. SMB CORPORATION9.5.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.5.2. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.5.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.5.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS9.5.5. DATA BRIDGE ANALYSIS9.6. OCON MEDICAL LTD.9.6.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.6.2. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.6.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.6.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS9.6.5. DATA BRIDGE ANALYSIS9.7. MONA LISA N.V.9.7.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.7.2. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.7.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.7.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS9.8. MEDISAFE DISTRIBUTION INC.9.8.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW9.8.2. REVENUE ANALYSIS9.8.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO9.8.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS10. RELATED REPORTSScope of the report1. Strategic recommendations in key business sections in light of the market estimations.2. Market share and size of all the foremost industry players3. Strategic proposals for the new participants4. To understand the future outlook and prospects for Global Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices Market analysis and forecast 2018-2024.5. Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of the market strategies, geographic and business segments, and product portfolios of the leading players in the trocars marketComplete Report Details @Frequently Asked Questions: What will the market size be in 2024? What are the key factors driving the global market? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key players in the market? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players? What will be the growth rate in 2024? Which strategies are used by top players in the Global Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Devices Market?About Us:Data Bridge Market Research set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Contact:Data Bridge Market ResearchTel: +1-888-387-2818Email: sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.comEHR-EMR Market 2023 Top Key Players are Cerner Corporation, Allscripts, General Electric Company, McKesson Corporation, Epic Systems Corporation

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Market Research Future (MRFR), estimates that the size of the global EHR-EMR Market will grow at a CAGR of 10.9% over the forecast period of 2017-2023. MRFR forecasts that the global market will increase from USD 70 billion in 2016 to USD 120 billion by the end of 2023.Get Premium Sample Copy @Competitive Landscape:The global EHR-EMR Market is highly competitive and is characterized by the presence of a few established players. Many new entrants are keen on entering the market, and the existing players are implementing various strategies such as partnerships, mergers, acquisition, product launches, etc. to sustain their market position. Notable players in the market include Cerner Corporation (U.S), Allscripts (U.S), General Electric Company (U.S), McKesson Corporation (U.S), Epic Systems Corporation (U.S), QSI Management, LLC (U.S), eClinicalWorks (U.S), and Greenway Health, LLC (U.S).The global EHR-EMR market is primarily driven by an increase in the volume of medical records which requires proper management and storage. EHR-EMR provides the advantages of better accessibility, improved communication, data aggregation, and integration. EHR-EMR also lower staffing requirements and thus reduce health care costs, also reducing the scope of human errors. It is on account of these advantages that the global EHR-EMR market is proliferating. Technological advancements in EHR-EMR technology such as Blockchain, Byod, Artificial Intelligence, Opensource fuel the growth of the market. Cloud-based solutions also provide growth opportunities. Small healthcare providers who cannot make up-front investments are opting for free and web-based services which also eliminates the need for infrastructure and maintenance. Government funding is a crucial driver of the market. Governments in various economies are funding projects to automate health record systems which induce the demand for EHR-EMR. The growth of the healthcare and life-sciences industry also reflect positively on the EHR-EMR market. On the flip side, various factors are likely to slow down the momentum for the EHR-EMR market. The growth of the market is inhibited by the economic slowdown at a global level which results in lack of capital and operational constraints. Even though both developed and developing countries exhibit high interest in automating health record, the introduction of EHR-EMR systems is obstructed by available technology which is inadequate to support the system and insufficient funds to migrate from the existing system to an electronic system. The high cost of implementing EHR-EMR system is a limiting factor to the market growth. Switching to EHR-EMR involves high costs of computers, electrical wiring and a vast amount of electricity supply. Health administrators and governments perceive the cost of implementing EHR-EMR systems very high and thus resist adoption. Additionally, lack of skilled staffs with adequate knowledge of computer and disease classification are vital issues. Other factors include resistance from medical professionals to switch to an electronic system and change their behaviors and attitudes, and lack of data processing facilities which are barriers to the implementation of EHR-EMR.Segmentation:The global EHR-EMR Market has been segmented on the basis of types and mode of delivery. By types, the market has been segmented into emergency care, perioperative care, mobile applications for doctors and nurses and others. By mode of delivery, the market has been segmented into on-premise and cloud-based.Industry Updates:In June 2018, MTBC announced the release of a blockchain technology fused with an EHR platform. Called Hyperledger, the blockchain EHR will facilitate access of health records through smartphones. MTBC is a healthcare information technology company which provides practices with web-based solutions through its EHR platform.Regional Analysis:Geographically, the market spans the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Americas is dominating the global EHR-EMR market. Broad adoption of EHR-EMR, the presence of major players in the region and growth in the number of services in hospitals boost the growth of the market in the region. Europe is the second largest market after the Americas owing to growing adoption of IT in the healthcare sector for patient administration and engagement. Asia Pacific is slated to emerge as the fastest growing market due to escalated demand for software solutions in the healthcare sector and rising expenditure on healthcare facilities in the developing economies of the region. The Middle East & Africa market is expected to exhibit steady growth over the forecast period.Table of Content1 Report Prologue2 Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope Of The Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations3 Research Methodology3.1 Introduction3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size Estimation4 Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restrains4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4.6 Technology Trends & AssessmentContinuedReports Enquiry @About US:Market Research Future (MRFR), enable customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact Us:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone: +1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comMedically Prescribed Apps Market 2027 Top Key Players are Pathfinder International, Fueled, Y Media Labs, ArcTouch, Intellectsoft US, InnovationM anad More

Medically Prescribed Apps Market

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Namely Medically Prescribed Apps Market Report has Been Published by Market Research Future Which Covers All the Geographical Locations with Demand, Trend Analysis with near about Forecasted results and Also Covers the Market Expectations.The Global Medically Prescribed Apps Market Key Players are Pathfinder International (U.S.), Fueled (U.S.), Y Media Labs (U.S.), ArcTouch (U.S.), Intellectsoft US (U.S.), InnovationM (India), Sourcebits Technologies, WillowTree, Inc (U.S.), OpenXcell (India), Contus (India), Savvy apps (U.S.)Get Premium PDF Copy @Market Overview:Medically prescribed apps are software applications which is designed to help individuals manage their medical routine, calculate medical data, help acquire information regarding the availability of doctors, determination of critical health parameters, provide e-prescriptions, notifies about new treatment options and much more. They have been on the rise lately and finds its application in diabetes management, multi-parameter tracker, cardiac monitoring and others. These apps offer a variety of applications ranging from treatment-related recommendations to self-managing diseases, and they can be downloaded from the Google's Play Store or Apple's App Store. A diverse range of benefits and ease of use has proven to be a driving factor for the market growth. Medically prescribed apps are experiencing enormous demand and gaining acceptance among consumers. The global medically prescribed apps market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 18.8% over the forecast period 2017-2027, reveals a study by Market Research Future (MRFR). This thriving growth can be attributed to the ubiquity of smartphones and proliferation of mobile apps. Medically prescribed apps are helpful in monitoring diseases such as diabetes and obesity as they require continuous supervision; rise in patient pool of diabetes and other such lifestyle disease has contributed significantly to the growth of the medically prescribed Apps market. Rising prevalence of cancer and other chronic diseases, rise in geriatric population, unhealthy lifestyle, and lack of physical activity has spurred the growth of these apps. Additionally, increase in R&D activities, and broad adoption of medically prescribed apps, growing awareness for fitness are adding fuel to the growth of the market. Medically prescribed apps, however, have not been very successful in proving their efficacy and their reliability thus far has been questionable. The aged pool of patients and less tech-savvy patients who are not well acquainted with smartphones may face trouble using these apps which is a significant constraint to the market growth. Lack of awareness among patients, inadequate healthcare infrastructure in specific areas and unavailability of smartphones are factors impeding the market. Medically prescribed apps have also been reported to have produced inaccurate data and misidentify diseases.Segmentation:The global medically prescribed apps market has been segmented based on types, devices, operating system and application. By types, the market has been segmented into wellness management apps, diseases and treatment management apps, womens health & pregnancy apps, diseases specific apps, and others. By Devices, the market has been segmented into personal digital assistant, smartphone, tablet computer, and others. By operating system, the market has been segmented into windows, android, iOS system, and others. By application, the market has been segmented into diabetes management, multi-parameter tracker, cardiac monitoring, and others.Industry Trends/Updates:In June 2018, a company developing mobile medical applications for the management of chronic diseases, Tilak, announced the achievement of CE marking for Odysight, its first mobile medical game in Ophthalmology. Odysight can be availed only through medical prescription on the App Store and Google Play.Regional Analysis:The key markets of the global medically prescribed apps market include the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. The Americas lead the medically prescribed apps market owing to growing prevalence of chronic diseases, unhealthy lifestyles, high expenditure on healthcare, increasing government aid and concentration of major key players in the region. North America is a major contributor of the region due to presence of countries like US and Canada which have robust technology and healthcare sector. The Americas is followed by Europe. Strong economic conditions and government support for R&D activities favor the growth of the market in the region. Asia-Pacific is slated to emerge as the fastest growing market for medically prescribed apps due to rapidly growing healthcare sector in developing countries such as China and India, wide adoption of medical apps and prevalence of chronic diseases in the region. On the other hand, poor economic conditions, low literacy rate, low internet penetration and lack of awareness in the Middle East & Africa region restricts the growth of the market.Collect More Enquiry @Table of Content1 Report Prologue2 Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope of the Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations3 Research Methodology3.1 Introduction3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size Estimation4 Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restrains4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4.6 Technology Trends & Assessment...Continued!About US:Market Research Future (MRFR), enable customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact Us:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone: +1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comVisual Content Market 2018 Global Analysis By Key Players  123RF, Dreamstime, Fotolia, Getty Image, Shutterstock, Alamy

Visual Content Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On  Visual Content Market 2018 Global Analysis By Key Players  123RF, Dreamstime, Fotolia, Getty Image, Shutterstock, Alamy.Description:-The analysts forecast the global visual content market to grow at a CAGR of 7.86% during the period 2017-2021.Visual content marketing refers to content marketing that employs visual content rather than text content. Visual content includes images, videos, illustrations, vectors, and others. The global visual content market deals with the supply and licensing of pre-produced images and videos that are used for various purposes. Marketers and consumers use visual content to communicate messages and themes effectively. Visual content allows organizations to enhance engagement, generate leads, and increase brand awareness.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comCovered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global visual content market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of visual content.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography: APAC Europe North America ROWThe report, Global Visual Content Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors 123RF Dreamstime Fotolia Getty Image ShutterstockOther prominent vendors Alamy AP Images Depositphotos Dissolve Photofolio Pond5 Reuters Pictures Story & Heart VideoBlocks WingClipsMarket driver Growing digital marketing aiding the growth of global visual content market For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge Lack of appropriate licensing and legal regulations For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend Growing demand for short videos and compact images for mobile devices For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be? What are the key market trends? What is driving this market? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Enquiry About Report @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsPART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Research MethodologyPART 04: Introduction Key market highlightsPART 05: Market landscape Market overview Market size and forecast Five forces analysisPART 06: Market segmentation by product Global visual content market by product Global visual content market by still images segment Global photos market by representation format Global visual content market by video footage segmentPART 07: Market segmentation by application Global visual content market by application Global visual content market in editorial application Global visual content market in commercial application Global visual content market in other applicationsPART 08: Market segmentation by license model Global visual content market by license model Global visual content market for still images product segment by license model Global visual content market for RM still images product segment Global visual content market for RF still images product segment Global visual content market for RM video footage product segment Global visual content market for RF video footage product segmentPART 09: Market segmentation by geography Global visual content market by geography Visual content market in North America Visual content market in Europe Visual content market in APAC Visual content market in ROWPART 10: Key leading countries US Germany UKPART 11: Decision frameworkPART 12: Drivers and challenges Market drivers Impact of drivers on key customer segments Market challenges Impact of challenges on key customer segmentsContinuedBuy 1-user PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.Distance Learning Market Global Forecast to Develop and Opportunity by 2022 | Depth analysis by Leading Players  EduKart, Indira Gandhi National Open University, SchoolGuru, Symbiosis, Avagmah, DLP India

Distance Learning Market

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Global Distance Learning Market Report 2018 explores future trends for supply, demand and market growth rate, market size, prices, trading, competition and value chain as well as Key Players of the industrys information with forecast from 2018 to 2022.Global Distance Learning Market Overview:According to Market Analyst, Global Distance Learning Market is projected to grow at a healthy growth rate from 2018 to 2022.Request Report Sample@With the slowdown in world economic growth, the Distance Learning industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, Distance Learning market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of 5.16% from 319 million $ in 2014 to 371 million $ in 2017, According to Market Analyst in the next few years, Distance Learning market size will be further expanded by 2022, The market size of the Distance Learning will reach 482 million $.Distance learning is a mode of delivering education and instruction to students via non-traditional settings such as study notes and online course materials on an individual basis without any face-to-face interaction. The rapid growth in broadband penetration has led to an increase in the number of Internet users, and this is expected to expand of Distance Learning Market.On the Basis of Type of Learning Segmentation, Market Can be Sub segmented Traditional distance learning, Online/blended distance learning, Certifications and part-time courses. the traditional distance learning segment accounted for the major market shares and dominated the industry. The market comprises of universities that use traditional methods of delivering education, such as printed material, and conclude courses by conducting offline examinations at various centers across the country.Purchase this premium research report with 125 Pages and No. of Table of contents, List of table atThe Market is segmented and projected on the basis of major key players:1 EduKart2 Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)3 SchoolGuru4 Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning (SCDL)5 Avagmah6 DLP India7 Edureka8 EMERITUS Institute of Management9 Hughes Global Education10 Sikkim Manipal University And More.The market for Distance Learning can be segmented on the basis of the following Criteria:The Market is segmented and projected on the basis of major Region Segmentation1 North America Country (United States, Canada)2 South America3 Asia Country (China, Japan, India, Korea)4 Europe Country (Germany, UK, France, Italy)5 Other Country (Middle East, Africa, GCC)Grab Your Report at an Impressive Discount @The Market is segmented and projected on the basis of Product Segmentation:1 Traditional distance learning2 Online/blended distance learning3 Certifications and part-time coursesThe Market is segmented and projected on the basis of Industry Segmentation:1 SCHOOL2 Training institutionKey Questions Answered in this Report:1 What will the market size be in 2022?2 What are the key factors driving the Distance Learning Market?3 What are the challenges to market growth?4 Who are the key players in Distance Learning Market?5 What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players?TABLE OF CONTENTS1 Distance Learning Definition2 Global Distance Learning Market Major Player Share and Market Overview3 Major Player Distance Learning Business Introduction4 Global Distance Learning Market Segmentation (Region Level)5 Global Distance Learning Market Segmentation (Type Level)6 Global Distance Learning Market Segmentation (Industry Level)7 Distance Learning Market Forecast 2018-20228 Distance Learning Segmentation Type9 Distance Learning Segmentation Industry10 Distance Learning Cost Analysis11 ConclusionAbout UsBusinessindustryReports.com is digital database of comprehensive market reports for global industries. As a market research company, we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their business. Our mission is singular and well-defined  we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Media ContactBusiness Industry ReportsPune  Indiasales@businessindustryreports.com+19376349940The driver of the Toyota, Jennifer Balice, 36, of Lemont, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The driver of the Porsche, Arunas Augustaitis, 62, of Elk Grove Village, died later at a nearby hospital.Attractive and In-depth Analysis of Market Business Intelligence Opportunities, Top Trends, Drivers, Challenge, Analysis by Regions, Research Methodology and Forecast to 2018- 2025

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The report studies the global market for Business Intelligence and presents reliable forecasts regarding the markets future growth. The historical development patterns exhibited by the global market are studied in detail to present actionable insights for players looking to capitalize on the opportunities in the market. The report is titled Global Business Intelligence Market Research Report 2018 and is available for sale on the official website of Research N Reports.For Sample Copy of this Report:The report also looks into influential external factors likely to affect the development of the Global Business Intelligence Market in the coming years. These include the technological framework of the industry and likely advances expected in the coming years, consumer preference patterns, economic environment, and the demand for alternative technologies and devices. The report presents studied 2018-2025 forecasts for the Global Business Intelligence Market.To offer a clear understanding of the global Business Intelligence market, several questions have been addressed in the research study concerning the growth of the global Business Intelligence market. It is also been discussed with respect to projected growth rate of the global Business Intelligence market in the near future. Also, depending on the ongoing trend of the market, the region which is anticipated to witness high growth in the next few years is studied in detail.Avail Discount on this Report:With all the data congregated and scrutinized using SWOT analysis, there is a vibrant picture of the competitive scenario of the Global Business Intelligence Market. Openings for the future market growth were uncovered and preoccupied competitive threats also textured.The drifts and inclinations of this market were studied and it shows that there was an illustrious strategic direction observed. By the avaricious market background and using the persistent norms, approaches, and tendencies of other leading markets for citations, market information was understood.Get Enquiry on this Report:Table of ContentsGlobal Business Intelligence Market Research ReportChapter 1 Business Intelligence Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Global Market ForecastAbout UsOur research will change the way you think about problems. We provide global consulting that can transform businesses and give you an experience of innovative solutions and outcomes.Research N Reports helps clients harness the power of innovation to thrive on change. We have successfully guided businesses throughout the world with our market research reports. We are uniquely positioned to lead digital transformations, thus creating greater value for clients by presenting growth opportunities in the global market. Our profound experience provides a clear and confident vision to help clients navigate the future. Research N Reports techniques encompasses both qualitative and quantitative modes to provide customized and highly flexible tailored research studies so that you get information that is just the best-fit to make informed strategic organizational decisions. Research N Reports helps clients decode the future to be more successful and innovative.Contact us:(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.comStudy Report Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market Analysis By Top Key Players Like OVH, AWS, United Interne, DreamHost, Kamatera, TekTonic And Global Forecast 2018-2022

Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market

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Global Virtual Private Server Market Report 2018 explores future trends for supply, demand and market growth rate, market size, prices, trading, competition and value chain as well as Key Players of the industrys information with forecast from 2018 to 2022.Global Virtual Private Server Market Overview:According to Market Analyst, Global Virtual Private Server Market is projected to grow at a healthy growth rate from 2018 to 2022.Request Report Sample@Virtual private servers offer the functionality of dedicated server while running on a shared hosting platform. In virtual private server, the user have more control over their environment than other hosting servers. In addition, several VPSs are installed on one power full dedicated server and all run independent. The major growth drivers of the virtual private server market growing network security and privacy concerns and the increasing vulnerabilities in signaling system in various countries. In addition, the growing momentum of digitization of various industry verticals in various regions is projected to drive the growth of virtual private server market during the forecast period.Virtual Private Server market segmented on the basis of organization type. Organization type segment further sub segmented into large enterprises and small & medium enterprises. Due to high adaptation rate in small and medium enterprises, the small and medium enterprises sub segment is projected to have high market growth during the forecast period.On the Basis of Industry Vertical Segment, Market Can Sub segmented into Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI), Energy and utilities, Manufacturing, Healthcare and life sciences, Government and defense, Aviation, Hospitality, Transportation and logistics, IT and telecom. The telecom and IT industry vertical is expected to be fastest growing, as it is considered as an important element in the economic and social growth of a country. The loss of data and valuable information can severely hamper the operations of the telecom companies.On the Basis of application segment, The Market is segmented in BFSI, Transportation, Healthcare, Hospitality, E-Commerce, Telecom, Public Sector, and others sub segment. Due to high data security concern in BFSI, the BFSI sub segment is anticipated to largest market in global virtual private server market during the forecast period.Regionally, North America is holding the largest market share for virtual private server market due to rise in demand from various industry verticals. The Asia pacific is projected to hold maximum market share for virtual private server in near future. Europe is fastest growing market for virtual private server due to increase in penetration of internet.Purchase this premium research report with 125 Pages and No. of Table of contents, List of table atThe Market is segmented and projected on the basis of major key players:1 OVH2 AWS3 United Interne4 DreamHost5 Kamatera6 TekTonic7 AD Hosting8 Bluehost9 Vidahost9 Sasahost LimitedThe market for Virtual Private Server can be segmented on the basis of the following Criteria:The Market is segmented and projected on the basis of major Region Segmentation1 North America Country (United States, Canada)2 South America3 Asia Country (China, Japan, India, Korea)4 Europe Country (Germany, UK, France, Italy)5 Other Country (Middle East, Africa, GCC)Grab Your Report at an Impressive Discount @The Market is segmented and projected on the basis of Product Segmentation:1 Cloud VPS2 VPS SSD3 VPS Cloud RAMThe Market is segmented and projected on the basis of Industry Segmentation:1 Financial Service2 Insurance3 Healthcare4 Telecom and IT5 GovernmentKey Questions Answered in this Report:1 What will the market size be in 2022?2 What are the key factors driving the Virtual Private Server Market?3 What are the challenges to market growth?4 Who are the key players in Virtual Private Server Market?5 What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players?TABLE OF CONTENTS1 Virtual Private Server (VPS) Product Definition2 Global Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market Manufacturer Share and Market Overview3 Manufacturer Virtual Private Server (VPS) Business Introduction4 Global Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market Segmentation (Region Level)5 Global Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market Segmentation (Product Type Level)6 Global Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market Segmentation (Industry Level)7 Global Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market Segmentation (Channel Level)8 Virtual Private Server (VPS) Market Forecast 2018-20229 Virtual Private Server (VPS) Segmentation Product Type10 Virtual Private Server (VPS) Segmentation Industry11 Virtual Private Server (VPS) Cost of Production Analysis12 ConclusionAbout UsBusinessindustryReports.com is digital database of comprehensive market reports for global industries. As a market research company, we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their business. Our mission is singular and well-defined  we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Media ContactBusiness Industry ReportsPune  Indiasales@businessindustryreports.com+19376349940Data Center in ANZ Market 20182021 : Growth Drivers, Opportunities, Trends, and Forecasts

Data Center in ANZ Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On  Data Center in ANZ Market 20182021 : Growth Drivers, Opportunities, Trends, and Forecasts.Description:-The analysts forecast the data center market in ANZ to grow at a CAGR of 8.29% during the period 2017-2021.A data center is a centralized facility used for data computing, processing, and storage. It includes high-performance servers, networking equipment, storage arrays, and supporting services such as powering and cooling solutions. Data centers are established by either large-scale enterprises or enterprises offering cloud-based services. Enterprises build colocation and managed hosting data center facilities and rent them to other large enterprises and SMEs.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comCovered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the data center market in ANZ for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers data center investment organizations as a vendor for the overall market along with a list of vendors operating in individual segments, namely the IT infrastructure and power.The report, Data Center Market in ANZ 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors CenturyLink Datacom Digital Realty Equinix IBM Metronode Nextgen Group NEXTDC Spark Digital Fujitsu Global SwitchOther prominent vendors Amzon Web Services (AWS) Australian Data Centre Australian Pacific Data Centres (APDC) Canberra Data Centres Google Interactive Macquarie Telecom Group Microsoft NTT Communications Pierdc Polaris Data Centre Rackspace Sungard Availability Services Syncom Telstra Verizon Enterprise Vocus Communications YourDCMarket driver Need for managed service data centers and colocation. For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge Higher construction and installation costs. For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend Adoption of modular/mini data center. For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be? What are the key market trends? What is driving this market? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Enquiry About Report @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsPART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Research MethodologyPART 04: Introduction Key market highlights Market overviewPART 05: Market landscape Market size and forecastPART 06: Five forces analysis Five forces analysisPART 07: Market segmentation by IT infrastructure IT infrastructure Power management solutions General construction Cooling solutions Rack Security solutions Data center infrastructure management (DCIM)PART 08: Market driversPART 09: Impact of driversPART 10: Market challengesPART 11: Impact of drivers and challengesPART 12: Market trendsPART 13: Vendor landscape CenturyLink Datacom Digital Realty Equinix IBM Metronode Nextgen Group NEXTDC Spark Digital Fujitsu Global Switch Other prominent vendorsContinuedBuy 1-user PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.Profiling Top Vendors in New Research Report on E-Commerce Platforms Software Market 2025 - Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, YoKart, VTEX, WooCommerce, Tictail, Oracle, Salesforce

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E-commerce software used by online stores, makes inventory management easier, adds or removes products, calculates taxes, manages Web sites and performs other tasks required to fulfill customer orders. E-commerce software can also be called shopping cart solutions, shopping cart software, e-commerce website creators, online shop builders, or e-commerce platforms, and its sole purpose is to allow customers to sell their products online.Research N Reports has added a new intelligence statistical report titled as Global E-Commerce Platforms Software Market status, forecast and size 2018 to 2025 which gives a detailed outlook of the various factors that enable the growth of the market. It also states about the insights stretched into various sectors that pose drivers, restraints and opportunities which further helps the markets pace in the forthcoming years.Ask for sample copy atLeading companies profiled in this report:Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, YoKart, VTEX, WooCommerce, Tictail, Oracle, Salesforce, IBM Digital, Miva etc.This surveyed report accumulates a wide-ranging statistic acquired by proving the research methods and getting the information from trusted sources within the businesses. It also consists of expert estimations to provide readers a much stronger point of view in terms of the E-Commerce Platforms Software global market.Important points of this market research report: This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward-looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsAsk for discount copy atAccording to the research report, the global market for E-Commerce Platforms Software is witnessing a continual rise in its valuation with the advancement in technologies, which is impacting the consumer behavior and, accordingly, their purchasing patterns to a great extent. In addition to this, the rising penetration of internet and the surge in mobile surfing are anticipated to boost the demand for E-Commerce Platforms Software market across the world, states the research report.This statistical surveying research study presents an all-inclusive evaluation of the worldwide market for E-Commerce Platforms Software, taking various industry parameters, such as the capacity of production, product pricing, demand, supply, and sales dynamics, returns on investments, and the growth rate of the overall market into consideration.The prime objective of this research report is to provide a deep insight into the global market for E-Commerce Platforms Software to the key market participants and assist them in making rewarding strategies to gain an edge over competitors.Table of ContentsGlobal E-Commerce Platforms Software Market Research ReportChapter 1 Global E-Commerce Platforms Software Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, ExportChapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market ForecastAbout Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently, we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact:Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr,Houston, TX, Pin  77064,+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com,Dermatophytic Onychomycosis Treatment Market Study by New Business Strategies by Top Key Players Operating Globally Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc, Bayer AG, Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd, Allergen, Inc.

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Nail onychomycosis or fungus infection is caused by a fungus called Trichophyton rubrum and Trichophyton mentagrophytes. However, few cases may also be caused by yeasts and molds. Fungi grow and spread due to conditions of warmth and moisture. The infection begins as a white or yellow spot under the tip of the nail and as it spreads deeper into the nail, it causes potentially painful nail discoloration, thickening, and development of crumbling edges. Onychomycosis commonly affects toenails than in fingernails, as toenails are often confined in a dark, warm, moist environment inside shoes where fungi can thrive. Old age people are more likely to be affected by the disease due to suppressed nail growth and immunity, and other complications.Download PDF Brochure of Research Report:The global dermatophytic onychomycosis treatment market size was valued at US$ 2,596.8 million in 2017, and is expected to witness a CAGR of 12.6% over the forecast period (2018  2026).Market DynamicsMajor driver for growth of the dermatophytic onychomycosis treatment market is high prevalence of dermatophytic onychomycosis worldwide. According to a study published in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology in 2013, the mean prevalence of dermatophytic onychomycosis in Europe and North America was 4.3% in the population-based studies and 8.9% in the hospital-based studies. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention statistics in 2017, around 23 million people in the U.S. are affected by this disease each year.Increasing geriatric population across the globe is another major factor driving growth of the market. According to the Population Prospects report by the United Nations, the number of people aged 60 years and above would reach 1.3 billion by 2025.Dermatophytic Onychomycosis Treatment Market - Top Key Vendors Operating GloballyKey players operating in the dermatophytic onychomycosis treatment market include, Bausch Health Companies, Galderma S.A., Celtic Pharma, Anacor pharmaceuticals, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc., GlaxoSmithKline, Topica Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Moberg Pharma AB, Bayer AG, Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd, Allergen, Inc., Cipla Ltd, Medimetriks Pharmaceuticals Inc., Sanofi S.A., NovaBiotics Inc., and Merz Pharma.Request for Customizarion of Research Report:Dermatophytic Onychomycosis Treatment Market - Market Taxonomy:Global Dermatophytic Onychomycosis Treatment Market, By Therapy Type:Systemic TherapyTopical TherapyDevice-based TherapyGlobal Dermatophytic Onychomycosis Treatment Market, By End User:HospitalsDermatology ClinicsRetail PharmaciesOthersKey features of the study:This report provides in-depth analysis of dermatophytic onychomycosis treatment market, and provides market size (US$ Mn) and compound annual growth rate (CAGR%) for the forecast period (2018  2026), considering 2017, as the base yearIt elucidates potential revenue opportunities across different segments and explains attractive investment proposition matrix for this marketThis study also provides key insights about market drivers, restraints, opportunities, new product launches or approval, market trends, regional outlook, and competitive strategies adopted by the leading playersIt profiles leading players in the global dermatophytic onychomycosis treatment market based on the following parameters  company overview, financial performance, product portfolio, market presence, distribution strategies, key developments and strategies, and future plansKey companies covered as a part of this study include Bausch Health Companies, Galderma S.A., Celtic Pharma, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc, GlaxoSmithKline, Topica Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Moberg Pharma AB, Bayer AG, Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd, Allergen, Inc., Cipla Ltd, Medimetriks Pharmaceuticals Inc., Sanofi S.A., NovaBiotics Inc., and Merz PharmaInsights from this report would allow marketers and the management authorities of the companies to make informed decision regarding their future product launches, technology up-gradation, market expansion, and marketing tacticsThe global dermatophytic onychomycosis treatment market report caters to various stakeholders in this industry including investors, suppliers, product manufacturers, distributors, new entrants, and financial analystsStakeholders would have ease in decision-making through the various strategy matrices used in analyzing the dermatophytic onychomycosis treatment market.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comWater Taxi Market Trend, Revenue & Regional Analysis 2018-2024 By Top Companies - Beneteau, Brunswick Boat, Azimut-Benetti, Ferretti Group, Princess Cruises

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Water Taxi Market for Sail boats are leading the product segment and will continue its dominance with approximately 78% volume share over the next seven years. Substantial production of these boats coupled with their high usage for covering short distances will primarily drive the industry growth. Cost effective nature of the product will further support the segments dominance. Ferries will witness over 6% CAGR from 2018 to 2024 owing to their lesser travel rates as compared to the counterparts. They are used for the passenger transportation, majorly for the work purposes. Their proliferating production is another factor positively influencing the industry growth till 2024.Get Sample Copy of This Report @North America water taxi market share will dominate the overall industry, surpassing USD 287 billion by 2024. Established marine industry coupled with presence of prominent manufacturers will primarily contribute towards the revenue generation. The marine transportation has witnessed increasing passenger traffic in the countries including Canada and U.S., further supporting the regional dominance. Asia Pacific market will witness growth at over 5% from 2018 to 2024 owing to their increasing production of across the region. Easy availability of cheap labor along with shifting consumer preference towards usage of these taxis due to increasing traffic congestion on roads and railways will drive the regions growth.Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis:1. Brunswick2. Beneteau Group3. Ferretti4. Azimut-Benetti5. Sunseeker6. Bavaria Yachtbau7. Princess8. American Sail Inc9. Catalina Yachts10. MacGregor11. Hobie Cat Corporation12. Hunter13. Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.Make an Inquiry for purchasing this Report @Water Taxi Market By Product Yachts Cruise Ferries Sail boatsWater Taxi Market By Fuel Battery powered or electric Diesel Hybrid OthersDiesel is expected to dominate the water taxi market with over 58% volume share by 2024. Strong prevalence of the fuel in the marine industry coupled with high presence of diesel-driven taxis across the globe will essentially contribute to the revenue generation. Hybrid taxis will exhibit over 5% CAGR over the next seven years owing to provision of various benefits including lesser noise and water pollution. Strengthening penetration of green movement will further promote their usage, further propelling the industry growth.Increased preference towards the product has led to regular innovations which in turn will drive the market size from 2018 to 2024. Advent of autonomous water taxis is a trend which has gained traction among the customers and industry participants. They are totally battery-powered by solar panels and water energy and range from about 80 to 100 kilometers. Adoption of vessel tracking data from the automatic identification system of U.S. Coast Guard is another technological advancement that assists in measuring ship dwell time. These emerging trends are expected to offer stable growth prospects to the market over the forecast timeframe.Browse Report Summery @Ferretti, Sunseeker, Brunswick, Beneteau Group, and Azimut-Benetti are among the prominent water taxi industry vendors. Other noticeable players include Catalina Yachts, Hunter, Mac Gregor, American Sail Inc., Bavaria Yachtbau, and Princess. The industry participants are continuously focusing towards continuous advancements to gain competitive edge. They are increasingly adopting emerging technologies such as autonomous water taxis and marine hybrid propulsion to enhance their visibility in the industry.About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone:1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Tunneling and Rock Drilling Equipment Market 2023: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast - Atlas Copco AB, Bessac - Tunnels & Microtunnels, Hitachi Zosen Corporation, Sandvik Construction, SANYHE International Holdings Co. Ltd.

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Tunneling and rock drilling equipment is machinery used to create huge holes in the earths subsurface. The holes can be used to construct infrastructure projects such as underground tunnels or to extract minerals.Get the Sample Report:A rapid increase in technology is the primary driver of the market. As technology has developed, it has enabled tunneling and drilling at the most critical areas too. Also, the monitors and sensors make way for the smooth functioning of the tunneling and drilling process, thus increasing the demand for it. Advancements in the tunneling process and the latest trend of dismantling tunnels are expected to create future opportunities. However, the tunneling and rock drilling equipment need timely maintenance, which could be a restraint for the market.The market is segmented on the basis of type, application, and geography. Based on type, the market is segmented into medium-sized, large-sized, heavy-sized, and other. On the basis of application, the market is segmented into mining and construction. Geographically, it has been analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.For Purchase Inquiry:Comprehensive and Competitive Analysis of Leading Market Players-Atlas Copco AB-Bessac - Tunnels & Microtunnels-Hitachi Zosen Corporation-Sandvik Construction-SANYHE International Holdings Co. Ltd.-HERRENKNECHT AG-AKKERMAN-ASTEC INDUSTRIES INC.-China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group CO. LTD.-China Communications Construction Company Limited.Table of ContentChapter: 1 INTRODUCTION1.1. REPORT DESCRIPTION1.2. KEY BENEFITS1.3. KEY MARKET SEGMENTS1.4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY1.4.1. Secondary research1.4.2. Primary research1.4.3. Analyst tools & modelsChapter: 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2.1. CXO PERSPECTIVEChapter: 3 MARKET OVERVIEW3.1. MARKET DEFINITION AND SCOPE3.2. KEY FINDINGS3.2.1. Top investment pockets3.2.2. Top winning strategies3.3. MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS, 20163.4. PORTERS FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS3.4.1. MARKET DYNAMICS3.4.2. Drivers3.4.3. Restraints3.4.4. OpportunitiesChapter: 4 GLOBAL TUNNELING AND ROCK DRILLING EQUIPMENT MARKET, BY TYPE4.1. OVERVIEW4.1.1. Market size and forecast4.2. MEDIUM-SIZED4.2.1. Key market trends4.2.2. Growth factors and opportunities4.2.3. Market size and forecast4.3. LARGE-SIZED4.3.1. Key market trends4.3.2. Growth factors and opportunities4.3.3. Market size and forecast4.4. HEAVY-SIZED4.4.1. Key market trends4.4.2. Growth factors and opportunities4.4.3. Market size and forecast4.5. OTHER4.5.1. Key market trends4.5.2. Growth factors and opportunities4.5.3. Market size and forecastClients & Testimonials: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:David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free (USA/Canada):+1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1?855?550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:Antifungal Agents Market illuminated by new research report, 2017-2023

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Anti fungal agent is a drug that detects and eliminates fungal pathogens from foreign body with minimal toxic side effects to the body. The global market for anti fungal agents is expected to reach approximately $102 billion by 2015. The anti fungal agent market growth is increasing due to rise in number of patients suffering from hygiene related diseases in developing countries and some of the developed countries.Get Access to TOC / Sample Report @High penetration of conventional drugs used in the treatment of fungal diseases is reducing the growth for anti-fungal agent market. Though these restraints are dominating the market, the application of anti fungal drugs market has initiated the growth of anti fungal agent market. The challenges faced by this market are expected to resolve, as companies are concentrating on advancement in technologies that reduces the cost and increases the efficiency of the treatment. The report provides intelligence on patent analysis that provides forecasted market trends for anti fungal agents. The report also provides intelligence about competitive landscape for key companies engaged in this business.Key companies included in company profiles are Asperqillus, Alternaria, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, Glaxosmithkline, Bayer Healthcare, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck & Co., Kramer Laboratories, Enzon Pharmaceuticals, and Gilead.For More Details on this Report visit @KEY BENEFITS Key developmental strategies of the top market players are analyzed in this report so that companies involved in development of anti-fungal agents can get competitive intelligence of their competitors The report provides market estimation for drug types, therapeutics, applications and geographic segments that are derived from current market scenarios and expected market trends. Market attractiveness analysis has been included for various product segments, therapeutics, techniques and geographic regions with detailed analysis of factors responsible for rapid growth of the market segments In depth analysis of key market drivers, restraints and opportunities are discussed for anti-fungal agent market with impact analysis Value chain analysis, Porters five force model, top investment pockets (GE9 Cell Matrix) are analyzed and presented in detail in the report so that decision makers receive clear picture of anti-fungal agent marketSecondary research:We refer a broad array of industry sources for our secondary, which typically include; however, not limited to: Company SEC filings, annual reports, company websites, broker & financial reports and investor presentations for competitive scenario and shape of the industry Patent and regulatory databases for understanding of technical & legal developments Scientific and technical writings for product information and related preemptions Regional government and statistical databases for macro analysis Authentic new articles, web-casts and other related releases for market evaluation Internal and external proprietary databases, key market indicators and relevant press releases for market estimates and forecastPrimary research:Our primary research efforts include reaching out participants through mail, tele-conversations, referrals, professional networks and face-to-face interactions. We are also in professional corporate relations with various companies that allow us greater flexibility for reaching out industry participants and commentators for interviews and discussions, fulfilling following functions: Validates and improves the data quality and strengthens research proceeds Further develops analyst teams market understanding and expertise Supplies authentic information about market size, share, growth and forecastsOur primary research interview and discussion panels are typically composed of most experienced industry members. These participants include; however, not limited to: Chief executives and VPs of leading corporations specific to industry Product and sales managers or country heads; channel partners and top level distributors; banking, investments and valuation experts Key opinion leaders (KOLs)Send Enquiry on this report @About usAllied Market Research, a market research and advisory company of Allied Analytics LLP, provides business insights and market research reports to large as well as small & medium enterprises. The company assists its clients to strategize business policies and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.Allied Market Research provides one stop solution from the beginning of data collection to investment advice. The analysts at Allied Market Research dig out factors that help clients to understand the significance and impact of market dynamics. The company amplies clients insight on the factors, such as strategies, future estimations, growth or fall forecasting, opportunity analysis, and consumer surveys among others. As follows, the company offers consistent business intelligent support to aid the clients to turn into prominent business firm.Contact:David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free (USA/Canada):+1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1(855)550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:New Repport On Camera Module Market Global Forecast 2018-25 Estimated with Top Key Players like Toshiba Corporation, Sharp Corporation, Samsung Electro-Mechanics , LG Electronics, Cowell E Holdings Inc.

New Repport On Camera Module Market Global Forecast 2018-25 Estimated with Top Key Players like Toshiba Corporation, Sharp Co

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UpMarketResearch published an exclusive report on Camera Module market delivering key insights and providing a competitive advantage to clients through a detailed report. The report contains 110 pages which highly exhibits on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability. This report focuses on the Camera Module market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type, segments and application.Get Free Exclusive PDF Sample Copy of This ReportUpMarketResearch can customize the report as per your need. Camera Module research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period. It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and Camera Module iness policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Camera Module Industry global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2018  2025.The following manufacturers are covered in this report: Toshiba Corporation Sunny Optical Technology (Group) Company Limited Cowell E Holdings Inc. Partron Co., Ltd. Lite-On Technology Corporation Sharp Corporation Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., Ltd. LG Electronics Inc. STMicroelectronics N.V. Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd.For more information on this report, please visit:Camera Module Production by Region United States Europe China Japan Southeast Asia India Central & South AmericaGlobal Camera Module Market: Product Segment Analysis CMOS CCDCamera Module Breakdown Data by Application Medical Smartphone & Tablet Pc Automotive Defence & Space Industrial & Security Consumer ElectronicsAsk For Discount @The report categorizes the market into segments by companies, end-use, type and potential regions. As an enterprise owner or a market entrant, the report offers you a comprehensive analysis beneficial for you to take a positive traction as and when needed. It offers a complete study of analytics necessary to decide on trending segments and potential market areas to operate.The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, SCOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.Key StakeholdersCamera Module ManufacturersCamera Module Distributors/Traders/WholesalersCamera Module Subcomponent ManufacturersIndustry AssociationDownstream VendorsTo buy this report please visit:Key Reasons to Purchase: To gain insightful analyses of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Camera Module Industry Analysis and Forecast 2018-2025 and its commercial landscape Learn about the market strategies that are being adopted by your competitors and leading organizations To understand the future outlook and prospects for Camera Module market analysis and forecast 2018-2025.Customization of the Report:UpMarketResearch provides free customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About UpMarketResearch:UpMarketResearch () is a leading distributor of market research report with more than 800+ global clients. As a market research company, we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their Camera Module iness. Our mission is singular and well-defined  we want to help our clients envisage their Camera Module iness environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United StatesFermentation Equipment Market Analysis by Top Key Players - Krones, Ss Brewtech, Criveller, JVNW, GW Kent, Brauhaus Technik Austria, Keg King and More

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Global Fermentation Equipment Market Report provides complete industry analysis, market outlook, size, growth, opportunities and forecast 2023. This report will assist in analyzing the current and future business trends, sales and revenue forecast. It provides top manufacturers information along with Manufacturing Cost Analysis, Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and growth.In this report, Information covers the present scenario (with the base year being 2017) and the growth prospects of global Fermentation Equipment market for 2018-2023.Over the next five years, ( Information) projects that Fermentation Equipment will register a xx% CAGR in terms of revenue, reach US$ xx million by 2023, from US$ xx million in 2017.Request a sample of this premium report at:This report presents a comprehensive overview, market shares, and growth opportunities of Fermentation Equipment market by product type, application, key manufacturers and key regions.To calculate the market size, Information considers value and volume generated from the sales of the following segments:Segmentation by product type: All-Grain Equipment Brew Kettles Burners Fermenting Equipment OtherSegmentation by application: Brewhouses Brewpubs Home Brewing Commercial OtherThis report also splits the market by region:Americas, United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, APAC, China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, India, Australia, Europe, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, Spain, Middle East & Africa, Egypt, South Africa, Israel, Turkey, GCC Countries.The report also presents the market competition landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the major vendor/manufacturers in the market. The key manufacturers covered in this report:Krones, Ss Brewtech, Criveller, JVNW, GW Kent, Brauhaus Technik Austria, Keg King, Kinnek, GEA, METO, Hypro, BrewBilt, Psycho Brew, Newlands System, Portland Kettle Works, DME Brewing Solutions.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:In addition, this report discusses the key drivers influencing market growth, opportunities, the challenges and the risks faced by key manufacturers and the market as a whole. It also analyzes key emerging trends and their impact on present and future development.Research objectivesTo study and analyze the global Fermentation Equipment consumption (value & volume) by key regions/countries, product type and application, history data from 2013 to 2017, and forecast to 2023.To understand the structure of Fermentation Equipment market by identifying its various subsegments.Focuses on the key global Fermentation Equipment manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the sales volume, value, market share, market competition landscape, SWOT analysis and development plans in next few years.To analyze the Fermentation Equipment with respect to individual growth trends, future prospects, and their contribution to the total market.To share detailed information about the key factors influencing the growth of the market (growth potential, opportunities, drivers, industry-specific challenges and risks).To project the consumption of Fermentation Equipment submarkets, with respect to key regions (along with their respective key countries).To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.Table of Contents2018-2023 Global Fermentation Equipment Consumption Market Report1 Fermentation Equipment Market Overview2 Manufacturers Profiles3 Global Fermentation Equipment Market Competition, by Players4 Global Fermentation Equipment Market Size by Regions5 North America Fermentation Equipment Revenue by Countries6 Europe Fermentation Equipment Revenue by Countries7 Asia-Pacific Fermentation Equipment Revenue by Countries8 South America Fermentation Equipment Revenue by Countries9 Middle East and Africa Revenue Fermentation Equipment by Countries10 Global Fermentation Equipment Market Segment by Type11 Global Fermentation Equipment Market Segment by Application12 Global Fermentation Equipment Market Size Forecast (2018-2023)13 Research Findings and Conclusion14 AppendixMore Details on this Report:About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Blog:The pair forced the driver to take them to an ATM, but the driver only had $12 in his checking account and the cash machine would not dispense any money, police said. The pair kept the driver hostage for about an hour before stopping in a Walmart parking lot near Glen Ellyn. The driver was able to run away, and the two men drove away with his car, according to police.Artificial Intelligence Software Market to 2023 - Braina, nanoRep, Reach Accountant, IPsoft, A.L.I.C.E. AI Foundation, Ada Support, Astute Solutions, Axonize, Ideal

Global Artificial Intelligence Software Industry

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Artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and other animals. In computer science AI research is defined as the study of "intelligent agents": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solvingDownload PDF Report Sample @The global market size of Artificial Intelligence Software is $XX million in 2017 with XX CAGR from 2013 to 2017, and it is expected to reach $XX million by the end of 2023 with a CAGR of XX% from 2018 to 2023.There are 3 key segments covered in this report: geography segment, end use/application segment and competitor segment.For geography segment, regional supply, application-wise and type-wise demand, major players, price is presented from 2013 to 2023.This report covers following regions: North America South America Asia & Pacific Europe MEA (Middle East and Africa)The key countries in each region are taken into consideration as well, such as United States, China, Japan, India, Korea, ASEAN, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, CIS, and Brazil etc.For end use/application segment, this report focuses on the status and outlook for key applications. End users also can be listed.For competitor segment, the report includes global key players of Artificial Intelligence Software as well as some small players.Inquire for this Report @The companies include: Braina, nanoRep, Reach Accountant, IPsoft, A.L.I.C.E. AI Foundation, Ada Support, Astute Solutions, Axonize, IdealThe information for each competitor includes: Company Profile Main Business Information SWOT Analysis Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin Market ShareWe also can offer customized report to fulfill special requirements of our clients.TABLE OF CONTENTSChapter 1 Executive SummaryChapter 2 Abbreviation and AcronymsBuy Now @Chapter 3 Preface3.1 Research Scope3.2 Research Methodology3.2.1 Data Collection3.2.2 Data Analysis3.2.3 Data Validation3.3 Research Sources3.3.1 Primary Sources3.3.2 Secondary Sources3.3.3 AssumptionsChapter 4 Market Landscape4.1 Market Overview4.2 Classification/Types4.3 Application/End UsersChapter 5 Market Trend Analysis5.1 Introduction5.2 Drivers5.3 Restraints5.4 Opportunities5.5 ThreatsChapter 6 Industry Chain Analysis6.1 Upstream/Suppliers Analysis6.2 Artificial Intelligence Software Analysis6.2.1 Technology Analysis6.2.2 Cost Analysis6.2.3 Market Channel Analysis6.3 Downstream Buyers/End UsersChapter 7 Latest Market Dynamics7.1 Latest News7.2 Merger and Acquisition7.3 Planned/Future Project7.4 Policy DynamicsChapter 8 Trading Analysis8.1 Export of Artificial Intelligence Software by Region8.2 Import of Artificial Intelligence Software by Region8.3 Balance of TradeChapter 9 Historical and Current Artificial Intelligence Software Market in North America (2013-2018)9.1 Artificial Intelligence Software Supply9.2 Artificial Intelligence Software Demand by End Use9.3 Competition by Players/Suppliers9.4 Type Segmentation and Price9.5 Key Countries AnalysisChapter 10 Historical and Current Artificial Intelligence Software Market in South America (2013-2018)10.1 Artificial Intelligence Software Supply10.2 Artificial Intelligence Software Demand by End Use10.3 Competition by Players/Suppliers10.4 Type Segmentation and Price10.5 Key Countries AnalysisResearch Reports Inc. is one of the leading destinations for market research reports across all industries, companies, and technologies. Our repository features an exhaustive list of market research reports from thousands of publishers worldwide.#766, 99 Wall Street, New YorkNY 10005, United StatesOut of the hundreds of thousands of new buildings across the world, only a select, exceptional few go on to be successful in the International Property Awards. From those, only three can be crowned the overall Worlds Best architecture, interior design and property development. Over the past year, a panel of over 80 expert judges, chaired by four UK Lords, have studied and assessed over 2,100 entries from 115 countries for Global Cloud Security market research report provides company profile for Trend Micro, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), Intel Security (California, U.S.), Symantec Corporation (California, U.S.), IBM Corporation (New York, U.S.), Cisco systems (California, U.S.), CA Technologies, Inc. (New York, U.S.), CSC (Virginia, U.S.) and Others. This market study includes data about consumer perspective, comprehensive analysis, statistics, market share, company performances (Stocks), historical analysis 2012 to 2017, market forecast 2018 to 2025 in Oscar winning director Guillermo del Toro confirmed Monday his next movie will be an animated take on Pinocchio for Netflix, and multiple sources in Portland's film community said he will film the movie here.

Netflix declined to comment on its Portland plans and the studio housing "Pinocchio," ShadowMachine, did not immediately respond to a request for official comment. But sources in the city's film community expect the new "Pinocchio" will bring an infusion of animation jobs over the next few years.

And it could be one of three major animation productions under way in the Portland area during that period.

Hillsboro-based Laika is preparing to start production on its sixth stop-motion film, and sources say another Netflix movie, "Wendell and Wild," is likely to film here, too.

Tim Williams, executive director of the Oregon Governor's Office of Film & Television, declined to comment on any projects that haven't publicly confirmed their Portland plans. But he acknowledged that the city's profile within the stop-motion ecosystem is on the rise.

"Now we're establishing ourselves as a destination for this type of artist and this type of animation," Williams said. Oregon, like other states, offers tax credits and other incentives to productions that film here but Williams declined to comment on specific incentives the Netflix films may receive.

Stop-motion is an exacting, old-fashioned process in which animators film puppets a single frame at a time, adjusting the puppets slightly between frames to simulate motion. Portland has been a focal point for the technique since the 1970s, when pioneering animator Will Vinton founded his eponymous studio after winning a best-animated short film Oscar for his film "Closed Mondays."

Vinton died earlier this month at age 70. But his former company, which changed its name to Laika after Nike co-founder Phil Knight acquired it, has made four Oscar-nominated animated films during the past decade at its Hillsboro production studio. Its fifth movie, "Missing Link," is due in theaters next spring.

Despite Laika's surge in output, work has been episodic for local animators. Laika brought in hundreds of people to work on each production, but most found themselves having to travel to studios in Hollywood, London or elsewhere to stay employed between productions.

"Pinocchio" could change that, particularly if it helps expand the city's foundation of skilled animators and lure more productions to Portland.

Netflix announced "Pinocchio" Monday, describing it as a retelling of the tale best known for Disney's animated version. It was originally an 1883 children's book by an Italian writer, Carlo Collodi.

According to Netflix, del Toro sets his version in Italy during the 1930s, an ominous period amid the rise of fascism and the stirrings of World War II.

Del Toro's most recent movie was "The Shape of Water," for which he won both best director and best picture at this year's Oscars. He had previously directed "Hellboy," "Pacific Rim" and "The Devil's Backbone."

Netflix said veteran Portland animator Mark Gustafson will serve as co-director; he previously served as animation director on Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

Animation studio ShadowMachine, known for the Netflix series "BoJack Horseman," will house "Pinocchio," according to Netflix. ShadowMachine has studios in Los Angeles and in Northwest Portland; three people familiar with the company's plans say it will film Pinocchio here. The sources asked not to be named because they have not been authorized to speak about the production.

Meanwhile, the sources say a separate Netflix movie, "Wendell and Wild," will likely also film in Portland. It's from the comedy duo Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, to be directed by one of the best-known stop-motion animators, Henry Selick. Selick was Laika's creative chief and directed its first feature, "Coraline," but left the studio soon after that film's 2009 release.

"We've really done well and I'm very excited about these developments in the animation industry locally," said Williams, head of the Oregon film office. "I'm doing everything I can to nail it down."

Neither of the Netflix productions has a release date and it's not clear if they will get a wide theatrical release before Netflix begins streaming them.

Correction: Mark Gustafson is co-director of "Pinocchio," not animation director.

-- Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699WASHINGTON -- A bill in Congress takes aim at the dominance of Google and Facebook in controlling how Americans receive their news, proposing to help news companies correct an imbalance that threatens their existence.

The House bill would give publishers a temporary anti-trust exemption to negotiate for better treatment by the tech giants, ensuring that Americans receive access to trusted sources of news.

Almost three out of four people in the United States now receive their news from platforms controlled by the duopoly of Facebook and Google. The companies take in 73 percent of all digital advertising revenue in the United States, and 83 percent of the digital ad growth.

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., wants to give news publishers a chance to level the playing field through his bill, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.

If approved, the legislation would allow publishers of local newspapers and websites a limited "safe harbor" from anti-trust laws to collectively negotiate with digital platforms for a bigger share of revenue.

Publishers would also seek greater transparency about the algorithms that control what news shows up on those platforms, said David Chavern, president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, a trade group of 2,000 news organizations that support the legislation.

"The platforms now control the economics of the news business largely, and this is something we need to address," Chavern said in an interview.

News organizations have seen their digital audience grow over the past decade, but revenue declined by $31 billion between 2006 and 2016 as Facebook and Google dominated the market for ad dollars, according to the Pew Research Center.

The legislation in Congress would limit the anti-trust exemption to 48 months and require any deal to benefit the public and the broader news industry, rather than a select few companies.

Cicilline, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, said his bill has the support of local and national news publications across the nation.

Among the companies that would potentially benefit is Advance Local, which operates al.com, cleveland.com, lehighvalleylive.com, MassLive.com, MLive.com, NJ.com, NOLA.com, OregonLive.com, PennLive.com, SILive.com, Syracuse.com and other local digital properties.

Cicilline's bill, H.R. 5190, has not advanced out of committee since it was introduced in March. It has one co-sponsor, Rep. Mark DeSaunier, D-Ca., and no companion legislation in the Senate.

The House is unlikely to act on the bill in the lame-duck session after the midterm elections on Nov. 6.

Chavern, of the News Media Alliance, said he expects the bill to be reintroduced next year when the 116th Congress is seated. He said the new bill will likely have a prominent Senate sponsor and bipartisan support.

If publishers win the temporary anti-trust exemption, the industry would gain leverage and could threaten to deny Facebook, Google and other digital platforms the ability to distribute the publishers' news reports, video and other original content.

"You have to have the capacity to make that threat in a coordinated way," Chavern said. "Most importantly, we don't think the platforms want to be blamed for making the newspaper industry go under."

The legislation would apply to all print and digital news organizations, including online-only publishers such as Vox and Slate, Chavern said.

Facebook and Google officials did not respond to a request for comment about the proposed anti-trust exemption.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751The owners of a shuttered Gresham bakery fined by the state after refusing to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple want to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lawyers for Aaron and Melissa Klein, the former owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, filed a petition Monday asking the high court to overturn the state's order to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they turned away.

The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries imposed the damages in 2015 after finding the Kleins had violated state anti-discrimination law. The Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the order, and the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case earlier this year.

That leaves the U.S. Supreme Court as the final avenue of appeal, but the odds it will hear the case are long.

The court receives requests to review 7,000 cases each year, but it typically accepts fewer than 150.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado bakery in a similar case.

But that 7-2 decision hinged on the narrow finding that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was hostile to Phillips' religious beliefs, comparing them to slavery and the Holocaust. An opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy said the commission failed to maintain religious neutrality.

The Kleins' attorneys said the Colorado case left unanswered the central question of the case, which they framed as a First Amendment issue: whether the government can force business owners to create a message contrary to their religious beliefs.

"Freedom of speech has always included the freedom not to speak the government's message," said Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty, the Texas-based law firm representing the Kleins. "This case can clarify whether speech is truly free if it is government mandated."

The Kleins closed their bakery in 2016, but they've remained figureheads for the religious liberty movement. Crowdfunding efforts launched in 2015 raised more than $500,000 for them, and they paid the $135,000 damages award into an escrow account as appeals continued.

-- Elliot NjusAbout two dozen supporters of the far-right Patriot Prayer group gathered Monday on a closed Clark College campus to protest a Washington ballot initiative.

Leader Joey Gibson told the ralliers that Monday's rally was a warm-up for Wednesday when he said they will return to the campus to try to talk to students about the importance of gun ownership.

Clark College President Bob Knight in a letter last week shut down campus Monday after the rally was announced. He encouraged students, staff and faculty to avoid the campus for the day if possible.

Only three or so students showed up. They followed Gibson and his supporters on a 15-minute walk from campus to the Interstate 5 overpass, where they waved U.S. flags and signs that urged people to vote no on Initiative 1639, which would raise the minimum age of semi-automatic rifle purchasers to 21 from 18. It would also impose a 10-day waiting period for semi-automatic purchases and require buyers to take firearms training.

Annabelle Forteo said she attends Clark College two days a week and was annoyed that one of those days was interrupted by the closure.

Forteo enjoys Gibson on social media and has shown up to a few of his protests before. She said she came Monday to support his message and protest the closure of campus.

"What's wrong? They are just practicing their freedom of speech," Forteo said. "There's no violence here."

The last Patriot Prayer rally drew anti-fascist counter-protesters and turned violent, as several have in the past.

Monday, only three people came to speak out against Gibson's message. They were encircled and shouted at by the Patriot Prayer members before they moved on.

The Oregonian/OregonLive covered Monday's event in Vancouver. Follow live updates by reporter Molly Harbarger below.Randi Weingarten, president of the nation's second largest teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, will make three appearances in Portland Tuesday to urge reelection of Oregon's Democratic governor, Kate Brown.

Employee unions, particularly public employee unions, are key to Brown's base of support. Together, they have contributed more than $1 million to her campaign, including at least $120,000 from AFT and $150,000 from the Oregon Education Association, an affiliate of the largest national teachers union, the National Education Association. Unions have also provided her with important phone banking, door knocking and other grassroots support.

The second of Weingarten's three appearances will be at a get-out-the-vote phone banking event at the Oregon Labor Center in Southeast Portland.

Reelection of Brown, who is one of just 16 Democratic governors, also is crucial to employee unions. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Janus case against public employee unions have weakened them. And a victory by Brown's Republican challenger, Knute Buehler, would be a blow to the unions that have so staunchly backed Brown.

Buehler's strong pledge to dial back the expense of Oregonian's underfunded public employee pension system by more than $500 million a year, given the state's $22 billion public pension shortfall, has drawn the ire of union leaders. They side with Brown, who has said she would protect public employees' pensions.

Weingarten, through a spokeswoman, said her message at the Portland events "

will stress the importance of supporting and voting for candidates

like Gov. Brown."

"

Governor Brown is exactly the kind of governor Oregon needs for the working families of the state to prosper," Weingarten saidl "She stands up for well-funded public schools, affordable college, and healthcare so nobody is one illness away from bankruptcy. That's why educators and health care professionals are supporting her."



Weingarten's first event will be a 3 p.m.

press conference with Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center nurses, who are represented by her union.

-- Betsy HammondThe Animal Legal Defense Fund sued Monday to compel the federal government to act on climate change as a similar lawsuit filed by a group of young activists is on hold.

The plaintiffs include scientists, nature enthusiasts and wildlife advocates who say they fear for their safety because their research or interactions with nature are hampered by increased severity of wildfires, mudslides, flash flooding, avalanches and disappearing snowpack and edible native plants.

They contend they have a fundamental right to be left alone "free from human interference'' in the wilderness.

They're asking a federal judge to declare that the U.S. government is violating that right by contributing to a dangerous concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Among them is Michael Goetz of Portland, an Animal Defense Fund member who recounted in the suit waking up on a backpacking trip to wildfire smoke that was so intense he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.

Another is wilderness guide Cody Shotola-Schiewe of Portland who said he's faced increased rock fall and avalanche dangers on Mount Hood climbs. Portland resident Ian Petersen is an avid backpacker who bemoaned the "growing number of bad air days'' from fire smoke that have cut short his hiking trips in Oregon, according to the suit.

Will Gadd, an outdoor adventure athlete who recently became the first to climb a frozen Niagara Falls, is also a plaintiff.

"He has witnessed ice and glacier melt while climbing in conditions that are much more dangerous today than they were years ago when he first began climbing,'' the suit says. "Will is harmed by the government's actions and inactions to stem the severity of climate change because he is prevented from reasonably and safely exercising his right to wilderness on which he relies for his physical and mental well-being as well as his global status as an outdoor adventurer and educator.''

The lawsuit names the U.S. Department of Interior, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense and other agencies.

The new suit comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked a high-profile climate change lawsuit that 21 young activists brought against the federal government in Eugene.

That lawsuit alleges the government has violated young people's constitutional rights through policies that have caused a dangerous climate.

Chief Justice John Roberts' order on Friday freezes trial proceedings, which were due to start Oct. 29, and gave lawyers for the young activists until Wednesday to provide a response. The U.S. Department of Justice had asked the high court to dismiss the case, saying political process, not the courts, should address the issue.

The new lawsuit takes a different approach, said Carter Dillard, the Animal Legal Defense Fund's senior policy adviser and one of the attorneys involved in the case.

While the first suit focuses on constitutional rights to life, liberty and property and protection of public trust resources, this one focuses on "the simple right to be let alone, the right long recognized and protected under banners like privacy and liberty," Dillard said in an email.

"The right to be let alone has been protected in the context of things like freedom from state surveillance and the government's intrusion into our bodily autonomy," he said.

"The Constitution certainly has to account for threats to national well-being and continuity, like climate change, and we think the jurisprudence on privacy and liberty is one place where it accounts for that threat," he said. "How could the government shirk it's most basic responsibility, and argue otherwise?"

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonianBy R. GREGORY NOKES, Special to The Oregonian

There aren't many places where Oregon pioneer Peter Burnett is esteemed for his role in western history. But Oregon City, California, is one of them. No, that's not a misprint. There is such a place and it's connected in history to Oregon's Oregon City.

The other Oregon City is eight miles north of Oroville in California's Butte County, in what was once highly productive gold mining country. A historic marker credits Burnett for leading a wagon train of 150 Oregon miners who "arrived here in autumn of 1848 to establish the town of Oregon City."

Burnett led the first major wagon train to Oregon in 1843 and was elected first governor of California in 1849.

The town is on a high flat butte known as Table Mountain and is reached from Oroville via a twisting 20-minute scenic drive on Cherokee Road overlooking Lake Oroville, the reservoir behind Oroville Dam. A covered two-lane bridge leads into town. The nearby dam and reservoir have flooded many of the once-productive mining areas along the Feather River.

Only a handful of people live in Oregon City now, but it was once a boom-town of a thousand or so inhabitants, boasting stores, saloons and a dance hall. Miners worked the nearby Feather River and the creeks and streams that crisscross the area, finding abundant gold. Quartz mining followed. But when the gold ran out, the town headed toward ghost town-oblivion, although it never quite got there.

While most of the original structures in Oregon City are gone, streets remain with names such as Oregon Gulch Road and Oregon City Trail, which wind among a gentle forest of oak trees. Ground ruptured from mining activity is evident nearly everywhere. There is also a cemetery with dozens of graves, many dating to the mid-1800s.

One building that does remain is the one-room Oregon City School, built in 1877 to replace an earlier structurethe first school had a canvas roof. The school held classes until 1922, when it closed for lack of students. It is maintained in reasonably good shape by the Butte County Historical Society.

Several California schools named for Burnett have recently changed their names because of his racist policies as governor. But there has been no such reaction in Oregon City. A large black and white portrait of Burnett is on one wall of the school under a chart displaying the alphabet in cursive script.

Burnett tells in his autobiography how he organized the wagon train to California when he became convinced that reports of gold strikes at Sutter's Mill and elsewhere were accurate. "I at once went into the streets of Oregon City [Oregon]. . . in eight days we had organized a company of one hundred and fifty stout, robust, energetic, sober men, and fifty wagons and ox-teams and were off for the gold mines of California.'' He had only recently been elected to Oregon's first Territorial Legislature, but resigned.

In the process, Burnett opened the first wagon road between Oregon and California, connecting the Applegate Trail in Oregon to the partially completed Lassen Cut-off in California. People in Oregon had been among the first outside California to learn of the 1848 gold discoveries, and it is said that fully two-thirds of Oregon's white male population headed south seeking their fortunes.

Burnett did not himself stop to mine at Oregon City. He continued on to the Yuba River where he mined for a time at Long's Bar. But 50 or so of the men traveling with him, hearing of gold strikes in the area, stayed behind and settled into the new town they named for the town they left in Oregon. While many soon returned to Oregon with ample gold in their pockets, other miners flocked to the region, and the town grew.

As for Burnett, he soon tired of mining and left his Yuba River claim. He went farther south to Sutter's Fort on the Sacramento River. There,

where

he helped establish the city of Sacramento and, just a year after arriving in California, won election as governor.

Burnett has been widely reviled elsewhere for his racist policies -- he wanted the West to be exclusively populated by whites, excluding blacks and Chinese, while predicting Native Americans would all perish in wars with whites. Along with such tone-deaf missteps as changing the traditional day of Thanksgiving from a Thursday to a Saturday, his racism overshadowed the contributions he made to the development of the early American governments in both Oregon and California.

But if Burnett's egregious policies touched residents in California's Oregon City, they have long since been forgotten, or overlooked. What is remembered is the wagon train captain and future governor who brought the men who built the town.

Oregon City's heritage is observed each Memorial Day weekend when residents gather from Oroville and other nearby towns for a community steak and chicken barbecue near the school.

R. Gregory Nokes, former reporter and editor for The Oregonian, is the author of "The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett: Oregon Pioneer and First Governor of California,'' published in 2018 by Oregon State University Press.Hammond, who was raised in Quincy, was wounded near Kumwha, North Korea, as his six-man patrol unit was ambushed on Aug. 14, 1952. He separated from his unit and called in an artillery strike on his attackers. He was killed but saved the rest of his unit. His posthumously awarded Medal of Honor is part of the All Wars Museum at the veterans home, and he is buried in the homes cemetery.By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press

With the sun bearing down, retirees Norm and Kathy Daviess of Dundee stood in the shade of a prison wall topped with coiled razor wire, waiting for three immigrants to come out.

It's become a familiar routine for the Air Force veteran and his wife, who are part of an ad hoc group of volunteers that formed after the Trump administration transferred 124 immigrants to the federal prison in rural Sheridan.

The Oregon prison had never been used to hold immigrants apprehended for being in the country without permission. President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy was used to justify imprisoning more than 1,600 people and left the usual facilities short of space.

Almost half of those sent to the prison outside Sheridan, an economically struggling town 50 miles southwest of Portland, five months ago are from India, many of them Sikhs  part of an influx of Indian nationals entering the U.S. in recent years. Other detainees came from Nepal, Guatemala, Mexico or a dozen other countries.

"Zero tolerance" made Sheridan an unusual way station for migrants from around the world. Now, those who pass an initial screening and post bond are being released. And Norm and Kathy Daviess, along with more than 100 other volunteers  retirees, recent college graduates, lawyers, clergy  have lined up to help.

"The best part of this is seeing the big smile on their face, to be out, to have this burden done with," said Kathy Daviess, 71, who wore a floppy white hat as she and her husband stood outside the prison on a recent afternoon. As drivers, the two are ready to go to the prison, a half-hour from their hometown of Dundee, at a moment's notice.

The freed migrants generally travel onward in a day or two to other states where they have relatives or friends. The volunteers provide transportation, interpreter services, legal counseling, food, shelter and moral support. They raised more than $12,000 to pay bonds for migrants who couldn't come up with the money themselves.

A Sikh temple in nearby Salem also offers the immigrants religious services and a place to recover.

Many of the detainees made long, dangerous journeys to reach the U.S., and all either turned themselves in to seek asylum or were nabbed by border agents when they arrived. Since "zero tolerance" took effect in May, everyone who enters the country illegally is charged with a crime.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the crackdown is necessary to eliminate illegal immigration and because abuse of the asylum system has caused a surge in illegal border crossings.

"For those who crossed the border illegally, those were the consequences brought upon them," said Sheridan Mayor Harry Cooley, who worked at the Oregon prison for 21 years and is not among the volunteers. He was less certain about migrants who request asylum at points of entry, noting it isn't illegal.

"It would be unfathomable if they were detaining those people rather than just turning them away," Cooley said, but then added it seemed justifiable to detain the immigrants while their stories are verified. "The previous policy was catch and release, which I definitely don't agree with."

The prison is Sheridan's largest employer. The mayor says the town of 6,000 has paid little attention to the migrant issue.

The volunteers are mostly from other communities in the Willamette Valley, including Salem and Portland.

Kathy Daviess said she got involved because "we've got a legal system, and it's supposed to apply to everyone." Her husband, who spent his career with the Air Force in uniform and as a contractor, felt the immigrants were being denied due process.

The migrants were granted access to lawyers after the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon filed a lawsuit alleging they were held largely incommunicado. The detainees told federal public defenders they were initially confined to cells for up to 23 hours a day. "It's not right. We don't do that," Norm Daviess said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Kathleen Moss, from nearby Carlton, said it's been rewarding to coordinate around 60 drivers and people offering respite centers.

"It's kind of taken over my life," the nutritionist and advocate for foster children said.

To help the immigrants seek asylum, making a case that they fled dangerous conditions back home, Innovation Law Lab has "plugged in" 80 volunteer attorneys, legal assistants and other specialists, said Victoria Bejarano Muirhead, development director of the Portland group.

Volunteers have watched detainees emerge from the prison, surveying the nearby forests, hills and fields for the first time since they arrived.

One man borrowed a phone to make a video call to his wife in Nepal as Katy Mitchell, who manages Innovation Law Lab's operations in Sheridan, gave him a ride.

"I couldn't understand their conversation in Nepali, but I could understand the love and excitement in their voices seeing each other's faces and talking for the first time in many months," Mitchell said. "He sat there clutching his heart with the biggest grin on his face and she couldn't stop giggling with joy."

On a recent day, Carlos Marroquin, from El Salvador, and Abdoulaye Camara, from Mauritania, watched the countryside, tinged in autumnal colors, flash by as volunteer Cynthia McCracken drove them from the prison.

"It's been so long, waiting for this moment," Marroquin, sporting a fresh haircut and wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, said in Spanish with a big grin. "I feel an enormous gratitude for all these people, because they helped us in an incredible way: the community, lawyers."

McCracken, of Newberg, Oregon, took Marroquin and Camara to the Dasmesh Darbar Sikh temple in Salem, where they showered, ate and relaxed. She noted she's driven 12 men from the prison gates.

Freed immigrants often sit outside on the temple grounds, taking in the fresh air near a driveway lined with red, white, yellow and pink flowers.

"It's wonderful. I think it's a dream," Karandeep Singh, an immigrant from India, said inside the temple as music featuring the soft patter of tabla drums filtered from a speaker. An ornate Persian carpet lay at his feet.

For Mitchell, being involved in the team effort has been bittersweet.

"I feel lucky to be witness to this joy, but pained to know the suffering it's rooted in," she said.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselskyUPDATED 6:10 p.m.

***

The judge overseeing Jeremy Christian's double-murder case said Monday she'll allow families members of the two men who died on the MAX train to testify at his trial scheduled next year.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht rejected a request by defense attorneys to order a blanket prohibition on the family testimony. They had argued that jurors could become biased by sympathy for the families.

Although the trial is still eight months away, defense attorneys and prosecutors are in court this week to ask Albrecht to decide more than 50 requests on what she will permit during the proceedings.

Christian, 36, is charged with aggravated murder in the stabbing deaths of fellow passengers Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche in May 2017. If jurors find him guilty, they could also be asked whether he should be sentenced to death.

Albrecht denied most of the defenses first batch of requests, while saying she needed more time to research others before ruling. Prosecutors have yet to argue for their requests. The hearing is scheduled to stretch into Tuesday and Wednesday.

Christian sat throughout the morning and into the afternoon without causing any disturbances -- in stark contrast to early hearings when he shouted out in court and held up a piece of paper depicting a Dont Tread on Me flag.

Friends and relatives of Namkai-Meche attended the hearing, but Micah Fletcher, a third man who police say was stabbed by Christian but survived, and members of Bests family weren't there.

Prosecutors say all three men stood up to Christian on the train that day as he berated two African American teenagers, one of them who was wearing a hijab.

Christians defense attorneys, Greg Scholl and Dean Smith, have been working to reduce the likelihood that jurors will pick up on the level of public outrage over the killings. The judge also denied a defense request to limit or prohibit the prosecution from showing graphic video of the stabbings and autopsy photos.

Ryan Lufkin, a deputy district attorney, told the judge that the videos and photos are extremely relevant because they tell the story of what happened and how Christian attacked his victims in the neck with such precision.

Albrecht also denied a defense request to restrict the movements of jurors in the courthouse hallways so they dont chance across the families of the victims, who might be visibly upset or possibly crying. Albrecht said its almost inevitable that jurors might come into contact with the families at some point outside the courtroom or courthouse.

If such a case arises, she said she will need to decide if the encounter jeopardizes Christians right to a fair trial.

We will certainly need to be on the alert, Albrecht said.

She did say that Fletcher and the victims families should be given separate rooms nearby where they can sit while court isnt in session, for their comfort. That could help keep them apart from jurors.

Albrecht also denied a defense request to receive extra peremptory challenges, in which Christians attorneys could remove prospective jurors from consideration without having to give a reason.

Scholl said theres been a great deal of prejudicial coverage about his client through media stories -- and that prompted this need. Lufkin, the prosecutor, argued that the judge already has grounds to dismiss any prospective juror who has been exposed to media coverage that could bias that jurors judgment.

Although prosecutors havent said yet whether they will seek the death penalty, Christians lawyers have been preparing a vigorous defense.

Defense-hired psychologist Mark Cunningham spent a few hours Monday afternoon testifying about studies he said show juries do a poor job of predicting which murder defendants will seriously hurt or kill others while in prison. The danger posed by murder defendants to other prisoners is one factor jurors consider in deciding whether to sentence defendants to death.

-- Aimee GreenA federal judge Monday sent tax dodger Winston Shrout, a prominent sovereign citizen with an international following, to prison for 10 years for issuing fake financial documents to banks and the U.S Treasury and failing to file tax returns from 2009 to 2014.

"You're 70 years old. This may well be a life sentence,'' U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones said. "I'm well aware of that.''

The sentence was half the 20-year term that a prosecutor sought, but far more severe than the probation that Shrout's defense lawyer urged.

Shrout aimed to cheat the Treasury and banks and preached his illegal schemes to hundreds of others in paid seminars across the country and abroad, including about a dozen people who were convicted of fraud themselves for following Shrout's teachings, according to the prosecutor.

Shrout, of Hillsboro, testified at his trial that he hadn't filed a federal tax return for at least 20 years.

"He's not just trying to rob a bank. He's actually and consistently advocating for others to rob a bank,'' said Scott Wexler, the U.S. Tax Division trial lawyer who prosecuted Shrout. "Defendant is a tax cheat and convinced others to scheme against the government and perform their own fraud.''

Wexler asked the judge to send Shrout to prison for two decades to send a strong message to his fervent followers that their actions are illegal and they must "choose a different path.'' If the court were to allow Shrout to walk out of the courtroom with no prison time, it would only embolden his supporters to continue to flout the law, Wexler argued.

"People are paying attention,'' Wexler said.

Defense lawyer Ruben Iniguez said the court must consider Shrout's personal circumstances, noting Shrout has no prior criminal record and the offense wasn't a violent crime. He also described some of Shrout's ailments, including hernias, hip replacements, back pain and cataracts.

Iniguez further argued that the Shrout never intentionally set out to defraud the government but had delusional thoughts that clouded his judgment.

Shrout didn't invent the fraudulent financial documents he used but learned from others and was "gullible'' and "delusional enough to believe them and spew them out,'' Iniguez said.

"To send this man to prison, in my humble opinion, would be a travesty,'' Iniguez said.

None of the financial documents Shrout sent to banks or the U.S. Treasury were honored because they were so outlandish, his lawyer said. The only actual losses to the government were from his failure to pay taxes, Iniguez said.

But Wexler said Shrout knew exactly what he was doing, and he should also be held responsible for the amount of money he intended the government to lose.

Shrout made and issued more than 300 fake "International Bills of Exchange'' on his own behalf and for credit to third parties. The government said Shrout falsely claimed the bills had value and purported them to be worth more than $100 trillion.

The government proved at trial that from 2009 through 2014, Shrout received over $500,000 in gross income through pension payments, speaking fees at seminars where he espoused his theories abroad, as royalty payments for the sale of DVDs and other products he sold, and for private client consultations through his business Winston Shrout Solutions in Commerce, yet never filed a single tax return.

Shrout admitted further on the witness stand, "So I stopped paying income tax, and I stopped filing for income tax returns. That's been well over 20 years ago."

Wexler noted that neither Shrout's indictment nor his conviction deterred his activity as he continued to promote the fake financial documents in weekly video podcasts.

Iniguez said Shrout took down his website recently.

"He now understands fully this is over. He is done," Iniguez said.

Shrout, wearing a blue plaid shirt and khaki pants, stood and told the judge, "I'm very sorry this whole thing happened. ... At trial, I took full responsibility for everything I've done. I certainly have no intention in continuing on in the matters that seem objectionable to the court. If I have offended anyone in any matter, then I ask for your forgiveness."

Shrout stood before about 20 supporters, including his common law wife, and members of his large family, confirming to the court that he has 18 children -- 12 sons and six daughters.

The judge found Shrout mentally competent to aid in his own defense before his sentencing. But the judge said it was clear Shrout holds grandiose ideas about who he is and what he can do and had advocated for hundreds of people, if not thousands, to not pay their taxes.

"There's no question your intention was to sign these documents and have these be effective for trillions of dollars," whether or not "anybody was a damn fool to follow them," Jones said.

The judge ordered Shrout to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on Nov. 25 and pay $191, 226 in restitution to the IRS.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonianA retired lawyer in Hawaii who moved to Oregon in 2012 is accused of evading $744,000 in personal income taxes.

A federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Bruce L. Lamon, 63, alleging he failed to pay taxes from 2008 through 2013, and hid rental property income and car purchases.

Lamon worked in commercial litigation at a firm in Honolulu from 2006 through 2012, when he retired and moved to Hillsboro.

Since his retirement, he's accused of using cashier checks to pay for cars but placing the cars in his ex-wife's name. He's also accused of buying rental properties in Oregon using the name of a Hawaii-based company to avoid detection by the Internal Revenue Service.

Lamon, who has not yet appeared in court on the indictment, couldn't immediately be reached by phone or email.

According to an indictment, he's accused of placing the title of a 2013 Subaru Legacy in the name of his former wife after paying for it with a $21,065 cashier's check in November 2012. Five months later, he's accused of using a $12,500 cashier's check, plus cash and a trade-in car, to buy a 2013 Toyota Prius but registering the car and putting the title in the name of his ex-wife.

On July 5, 2013, he's accused of paying $72,000 in cash for a Beaverton home, purchasing it in the name of Ward Hill LLC, a company registered in Hawaii, according to the indictment. He also paid for other properties in Hillsboro and Portland in this manner, the indictment alleges.

Lamon also is accused of making a false statement on a court document in May 2016 in an application claiming he was indigent in a civil case he filed against the National Transportation Safety Board.

Asked whether he received any rental income, interest or dividends in the prior 12 months, Lamon falsely wrote that he hadn't, according to the indictment. At the time, he had regularly been receiving rent from tenants for his properties in Beaverton, Hillsboro and Portland, the government alleges.

His civil claim against the National Transportation Safety Board, accusing it of withholding information on any radar activity involving the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in 2014, was dismissed. The plane had 239 people on board and was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, when air traffic control staff lost contact with it.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonianUpdated at 4:20 p.m.

A tanker truck hauling carbon dioxide crashed into a dozen vehicles on Interstate 5 in Southeast Portland Monday then rolled over near a highway exit, injuring three people and causing a portion of the roadway to be closed temporarily in both directions, authorities say.

The three injured people were taken to hospitals in the area and are expected to survive, according to Portland police. The crash was reported around 2:25 p.m. near Southeast Yamhill Street and Water Avenue.

The truck was heading northbound when it rolled over at the Water Avenue exit. Police said 12 vehicles were hit before the rollover. A police investigation is ongoing to determine what led to the truck collisions. No citations or arrests have been announced.

I-5 was initially closed in both directions from the northbound I-5 exit to Southeast Water Avenue, according to police and the Oregon Department of Transportation. The southbound lanes were reopened as of 3:40 p.m.

The transportation department advises northbound traffic to I-5 exit at I-405. The closure and delays are expected to last for several hours.

The identities of the people involved have not yet been released.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBaileyDavid Lawrence had just settled into seat 22F on a Ryanair flight on Thursday when he heard a commotion brewing on the other side of the plane.

A few rows behind him, a ruddy-faced man with gray hair and dark-rimmed glasses was yelling at a black woman seated along the aisle.

"I heard this man shouting at this woman, saying, 'You're in my way, get out! I don't want you here next to me!' " Lawrence told The Washington Post in a phone interview Sunday. "I couldn't believe what I heard."

Lawrence grabbed his phone and started to record the encounter, which took place before a flight from Barcelona to London Stansted Airport. By then, the woman's daughter had come up and confronted the man.

"She said, 'Who are you talking to? Don't shout at her, that's my mother, she's disabled,'" Lawrence recalled, noting that the elderly woman had boarded the plane in a wheelchair. "He then was saying, 'I don't care.'"

In the video, the man can be heard yelling back at the younger black woman, all while other passengers continue shuffling down the aisle. A male flight attendant with his back to Lawrence's camera apparently attempts to calm the situation, to little effect.

"I tell you, I hope somebody sits there," the man tells the elderly woman, gesturing toward the empty middle seat between them. "'Cause I don't want to sit next to your --..." The rest of the sentence is unclear, though he appears to call her "sickly," "fat" and "ugly."

The flight attendant then asks the woman whether she would like to sit elsewhere.

"Put her to another seat!" the male passenger shouts, before turning to the woman. "I tell you this. If you don't go to another seat, I'll put you to another seat!"

The elderly woman says something back at him, prompting the man to retort angrily: "Don't talk to me in a f---ing foreign language, you stupid ugly cow!" and then "Ugly black bastard!"

The shouting had a mixed effect on surrounding passengers. One man, wearing a black T-shirt and sitting in the row directly behind, physically tried to intervene, sticking his hand between the seats in front of him and telling the irate passenger to keep his voice down.

"Stop," the man in the black shirt pleads. "There's no need for that at all. Just stop. It's really easy to close your mouth."

Lawrence, while recording the video, can be heard saying, "Throw him off the flight. Throw him off the flight. Get rid of him!"

Eventually, the elderly woman asks to sit next to her daughter and begins to move out of the row, visibly fed up.

To his surprise, Lawrence said, the flight took off shortly afterward, with no apparent repercussions for the male passenger, who effectively enjoyed "extra leg room" in a row to himself.

"I thought the flight attendant was going to call someone and escort the man off the flight," Lawrence told The Post. "They moved the woman instead of moving him. That was shocking to me."

He decided to upload his video to Facebook the following day out of frustration.

"It was just so disturbing," Lawrence said. "Because there was no response from the other passengers on the flight at the time, I thought, OK, well, somebody needs to know what happened here. That's why I kept the video running and captured as much as I could."

Over the weekend, the video garnered nearly 3 million views and has been shared tens of thousands of times. Lawrence later uploaded the video to YouTube, where it has more than 100,000 views.

Scores of commenters expressed outrage over how the matter was handled and demanded to know why Ryanair's flight crew didn't remove the male passenger before the plane took off.

Representatives for Ryanair did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday. However, the Dublin-based budget airline company said in a Twitter post Sunday that it was aware of the video and had reported the incident to Essex Police.

"We operate strict guidelines for disruptive passengers and we will not tolerate unruly behavior like this," Ryanair told BBC News. "We will be taking this matter further and disruptive or abusive behavior like this will result in passengers being banned from travel."

Essex Police confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it was investigating the matter and encouraged people with information to contact them.

"Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported," the police department told the news site. "We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation."

The woman's unnamed daughter told HuffPost UK that her mother, identified only as "Mrs. Gayle," is a 77-year-old retiree who immigrated to Britain from Jamaica in the 1960s. They were returning from a vacation to mark the anniversary of the death of Gayle's husband, the daughter added.

"She's been feeling really down and depressed, so I thought the trip would raise her spirits," Gayle's daughter, 53, told the news site. "The underlying reason behind the man's abusive behavior comes down to the fact that my mum is a black woman and he didn't want her sitting next to him. He says it in the video."

Gayle's daughter said the encounter left her outraged and her mother "upset and very stressed, on top of the grief that she's already experiencing."

Lawrence, 56, told The Post that he spoke with the mother and daughter after the flight and said they were both disappointed and disgusted. His parents also were part of the "Windrush generation," immigrants who moved from the Caribbean to Britain from 1948 to 1971, so Lawrence said he could understand why the elderly woman agreed to switch seats rather than escalate the situation.

"The racism they suffered on a daily basis is historic. Our parents have learned over the years - because they have never received any kind of justice - they've just learned to live with it," Lawrence said. "They kind of have this attitude, like, 'Well, what can we do?' sort of thing. The lady was like, this has happened so many times. I just want to go home."

Lawrence has since posted multiple more times about the incident on social media, urging people to put pressure on Ryanair for turning "a blind eye to racial discrimination." The airline's acknowledgment of his video was hardly a sufficient apology, he said.

"It's not good enough," he said. "It certainly falls so short of what we expect an airline to provide for, in terms of protecting their customers. It's shameful. It's shameful."

-- The Washington Post, Amy B. WangJoachim Roenneberg, one of World War II's greatest heroes, has died. He was 99.

On Sunday, Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg called Roenneberg "a hero" and "one of our finest resistance fighters."

Roenneberg's World War II team, trained by the British military, parachuted into Norway on Feb. 17, 1943. They believed it was a suicide mission.

But the nine Norwegian saboteurs not only managed to survive, they just might have saved humankind.

Ten days after they arrived back in their country, which was occupied by Nazi Germany, the resistance fighters trekked down a snow-packed mountain to a heavily guarded hydroelectric facility in Telemark. They silently worked their way inside and destroyed its heavy water, dealing a debilitating setback to Adolf Hitler's attempts to build the first atomic bomb.

Heavy water, or deuterium oxide, is "a form of water with a unique atomic structure and properties coveted for the production of nuclear power and weapons."

Roenneberg, who became a journalist after the war, credited ''thorough preparation, excellent intelligence and a good portion of luck (for the mission's success)," he told the Associated Press in 1993. "Not in the least the last. To pull off a sabotage action like that without even cocking a gun is just unbelievable.''

The team, led by the 23-year-old Roenneberg, skied into a heavily-guarded military area, avoiding detection by scaling mountains in the middle of the night. After they completed their unlikely mission, they escaped to neutral Sweden more than 200 miles away, despite having more than 3,000 German troops in pursuit. Wrote NPR of the long-shot mission:

For every setback, there was a solution. When they landed miles off target during a storm, they found crucial supplies in a mountain cabin. When they needed to cut a padlock at the plant, they used a pair of metal shears that Roenneberg had brought along by chance.

One of the most nerve-wracking moments came after the explosives had been planted. The saboteurs had cut the fuses to give them only 30 seconds to escape. They scrambled out of the plant and started, again, to climb.

Roenneberg and his team recognized that their successful mission was meaningful to the Allied war effort, but they didn't realize how meaningful until two years later when the U.S. ended the war in the Pacific by dropping the first atomic bombs on Japan.

"Because then we knew that what we had done had been of great importance," Roenneberg said in 2013. "But not until then."

Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris starred in a 1965 movie about the mission called "The Heroes of Telemark."

-- Douglas PerryThe oddball adventures of the denizens of Dreamland will continue, with the news that Netflix has renewed "Disenchantment" for two more seasons. As the Hollywood Reporter and other sources are noting, the animated series from Portland native Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons," will continue, for a total of four seasons of 10 episodes per season.

"Disenchantment" is an off-kilter fantasy revolving around a rebellious princess named Bean (voiced by Abbi Jacobson, of "Broad City"), a demon (Eric Andre) and an elf (Nat Faxon).

As the Hollywood Reporter article says, Netflix doesn't reveal viewership numbers, but the Nielsen company "suggested that the series, Groening's first new show in 20 years, was sampled by more than 4 million viewers during its opening weekend."

During an interview with us at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Groening said he and fellow executive producer, Josh Weinstein, who developed the show with Groening, "agreed at the beginning that we were going to plot the show as if it were drama, and then add jokes."

While "Disenchantment" has its own tone, Groening mentioned some influences.

"We did a 'Game of Thrones' reference, 'Fractured Fairy Tales,' definitely 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,'" said Groening, adding other inspirations came from "The Wizard of Oz," and moments in movies by Buster Keaton and W.C. Fields.

"As James L. Brooks, executive producer on 'The Simpsons,' once said, if you steal from a black and white movie, it's an homage," Groening joked.

-- Kristi TurnquistWe mandated that the placard be city-designed, city-provided and three-dimensional, Hopkins said. There was some talk it could be a stencil or something painted on the wall. This requires an actual piece of material  yet to be designed  that will be difficult to duplicate or counterfeit. Something that will be affixed to the wall that will really stand out, as opposed to something just painted on there.Goose Creek, SC (29445)

Today

Overcast. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 54F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.A talk organized by Voice of the Faithful has been canceled.

Sr. Janet Fulgenzi, victims assistance coordinator for the Diocese of Saginaw, had been scheduled to share what the diocese is doing to protect children on Oct. 22 in Midland. The meeting was canceled because of the recent death of Bishop Joseph Cistone.

Voice of the Faithful is a group of Catholics who are concerned about the church and its future. Its goals are to support survivors of clergy sex abuse, to support priests of integrity and to shape structural change within the Catholic church.

For more information, contact Norbert Bufka 989-835-2832 or www.votf.orgAn event to raise money for the Nepal Project and to offer the community a chance to learn more about Nepal, is set for 6 to 7:30 p.m. today at Jefferson Middle School, 800 W. Chapel Lane in Midland.

The program will feature Nepali food, music, henna, Rudraksha beads for making bracelets, coloring of the Nepal flag for younger children, Nepali students writing children's names in Nepali, Nepali items for sale and the singing of the Nepali National Anthem in Nepali by Adams Elementary School students.Mondays forum aired live on WTTW was a brief, 25-minute discussion unlike the hourlong bitter debates that have marked the campaign for Illinois governor. The meeting was the final in-person clash between the two candidates whose race in the west and northwest suburban district has drawn millions of dollars in advertising from both sides. That money is a clear indicator both Republicans and Democrats see the race as a key national contest in determining which party controls the U.S. House next year.Earlier this month Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple's CEO Joins Stellar Line-Up for 2018 International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners." The conference begins on Wednesday where Tim Cook will deliver the keynote.

While in Europe Cook has met with European partners in Germany and Paris. Below are a few of the Jumbo photos that he's been sending to his Twitter site. We'll keep adding photos as he posts them during this trip.(Click on any of the photos below to enlarge)















Next Tuesday Apple will be launching new products. The main focus will be on delivering a new iPad Pro with Face ID that has a more iPhone X look to it. The other major focus will be on a new low cost MacBook, with Bloomberg and others expecting a MacBook Air makeover.

Samsung is one of Apple's competitors that make every effort to steal some of the media's attention away from Apple product announcements to something of their own. Samsung purposely showcases their next-gen Note smartphones one month ahead of the next-gen iPhones, for example.

Today Samsung struck again by introducing their all-new new laptop for millennials called the "Flash" to get ahead of Apple's lower cost MacBook announcement. Samsung states that the new laptop offers a distinguished design as it comes with a retro-style keyboard and a dotted pattern on the cover.

Choi Young-gyoo, senior vice president of Samsung's PC business team: "To appeal to more millennial consumers, we worked with Samsung's design center in the U.K. while developing the new laptop."

Samsung said the most powerful feature of the new laptop is fast internet speed that supports up to 1.7 gigabytes per second. The new laptop, which will be sold at 810,000 won in South Korea (US$715), is powered by Intel's latest wireless LAN card that supports 802.11 ac 2x2 Gigabit Wi-Fi for a faster internet speed. Also the laptop is optimized for KT's GiGA WiFi network service.

The Flash laptop has a 13.3-inch Full HD display and offers a wide 178-degree viewing angle. The laptop enables users to use the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) card, which is five times faster than a MicroSD card. To prevent security breaches, the Flash laptop also supports a fingerprint scanner and Windows Hello security features.





Samsung said the Flash laptop will come in three colors: linen white, twill charcoal and soft coral as noted in their marketing photo above.

Samsung Working on Laptops with Foldable Displays

In 2016 rumors were swirling that Samsung was getting out of the PC business and at one point the rumor pointed to Lenovo possibly paying $850 million for the Samsung unit.

At present, it appears that Samsung is doubling down on PCs. Last week TechRadar rated the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro the best 2-in-1 laptop on the market beating out the Google Pixel, the Dell XPS 15", Microsoft Surface Book, Lenovo and others.

While Samsung's new 'Flash' notebooks announced today are aimed at millennials, Samsung is now working on something quite radical: Laptops with a foldable display.

During a showcase event earlier today introducing the new Flash notebooks, a company official stated that Samsung is now working on the development of new laptops that will introduce new form factors including one with a foldable display as part of its efforts to innovate personal computer products.

Lee Min-cheol, vice president at marketing for PCs at Samsung clarified his comment by stating "like foldable smartphones, Samsung is collaborating with display makers to develop laptops with foldable displays that will not just simply fold in and out but create new value and user experience, amid the changing market trends for laptops."

Another area of development, according to Lee, is that they're working to develop large AMOLED displays for laptops with panel makers.

Knowing there's some doubt about Samsung's commitment to the PC market, Lee said that "PCs play a centric role among IT products in increasing connectivity with other mobile devices, so we will continue developing innovative PCs with partners like Intel, Microsoft and KT."



Good Monday Morning, Fellow Seekers.

Two weeks out from Election Day, that Democratic blue wave we've been hearing so much about might look a little less certain. But the party's path to control of the U.S. House of Representatives continues to run through Pennsylvania.

Surveying the state's political topography, the crew at Crystal Ball, the prognosticating newsletter run by University of Virginia political sage Larry Sabato, is awarding upgrades to a pair of Pennsylvania races. One isn't particularly surprising, though the other may come as a relief to a certain incumbent United States congressman.

Moving from "Lean Democrat" to "Likely Democrat" is the all-incumbent 17th District race in western Pennsylvania, pitting Democratic U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb against Republican Rep. Keith Rothfus; and the 8th District race in northeastern Pa. between incumbent Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright and Republican John Chrin.

As we've observed before, national Democrats need to flip 23 seats to recapture the majority in the House.

At least a half-dozen of those seats are in Pennsylvania, where, thanks to a court-imposed congressional map, the Democrats' chances of eating into what is currently a 12-6 majority for Republicans in the Keystone State's 18 congressional districts currently looks a lot more realistic.

Political analyst Charlie Cook, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, currently lists the 8th and 17th District seats are "likely Democrat" in his latest rankings list. Ditto for the 5th and 6th District seats, both open, in suburban Philadelphia.

The shift for the 17th District isn't particularly surprising. Rothfus has long been considered one of the GOP's problem children and is among those races that are considered expendable

Nathan Gonzales at Inside Elections has the Cartwright seat listed as "lean Democratic" in his rankings list, ditto for the Lamb/Rothfus race in western Pennsylvania and the 7th District race in the Lehigh Valley between Democrat Susan Wild and Republican Marty Nothstein.

Democrats currently hold an average 7.7 percent lead on the generic ballot, according to the RealClear Politics polling average.

But Republicans have been energized by President Donald Trump on the trail, and the lingering effects of the Kavanaugh confirmation fight. That's been confirmed by recent polling data casting doubt on the expected Democratic blue wave.

"Barring a big, positive late change in the political environment in favor of Republicans, the bare minimum for Democratic House gains is in the mid-to-high teens," Crystal Ball's Kyle Kondik writes. "The needed 23-seat net gain is not that far beyond that and there are many different paths Democrats can take to achieve it. So the GOP is still at a disadvantage overall."

The bottom line?

"The battle for the majority comes down to a district-by-district slog," Kondik writes.

And a big part of that fight will be fought in Pennsylvania.

The rest of the day's news starts now.

The Daily News' John Baer nails it in his new column. Above all, the Pennsylvania Legislature protects itself.

The Inquirer updates on the race for Montgomery County's 4th Congressional District.

Four years after the fact, state Rep. Vanessa Brown, D-Philadelphia, is finally scheduled to go to trial today, The Inquirer also reports.

The Morning Call (via the AP) has the rundown on this weekend's U.S. Senate debate between Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Lou Barletta.

BillyPenn fact-checks that Bob Casey ad claiming Lou Barletta voted to strip coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and rules it "True." Great minds, and all.

The Incline answers all your Pittsburgh transportation questions.

Here's a very dapper gent for your #Philadelphia Instagram of the Day:

WHYY-FM has your voters guide to the 2018 midterm elections.

A spike in drug deaths has the Franklin County coroner asking for a bigger budget, WITF-FM reports (via the Public Opinion of Chambersburg).

In the Lehigh Valley's 7th District, Democrat Susan Wild outraised and outspent Republican Marty Nothstein in the most recent reporting period, PoliticsPa reports.

Forget about winning the Senate. The plan for Democrats now is to staunch their losses, Politico reports.

Roll Call explains the high stakes for Medicaid at the polls next month.

WolfWatch.

Gov. Tom Wolf has no public schedule today.

What Goes On (Nakedly Political Edition).

5 p.m: Reception for Rep. John Galloway

5:30 p.m.: Reception for Rep. Alex Charlton

Hit both events, and give at the max, and you're out a mere $12,500 today.

You Say It's Your Birthday Dept.

Best wishes go out this morning to our PennLive colleague Sue Gleiter who celebrates today. Congrats and enjoy the day.

Heavy Rotation. Here's an absolute classic from The Only Ones to get your work week rolling.



Monday's Gratuitous Hockey Link.

Chicago's Cam Ward made an absolutely epic save on Sunday, but it wasn't enough to rally the Blackhawks past Tampa. The 'Bolts won 6-3, with a record 33 shots on goal. Yikes, it's like the defense stayed home.

And now you're up to date.The third time seeking buried treasure was not the charm for a Pennsylvania man searching for gold at a famous author's home in New Mexico.

Instead, the man, identified as Robert Miller of Pine Grove in Schuylkill County, Pa., was arrested and charged for allegedly breaking in and trespassing at the New Mexico home of Forrest Fenn, all in search of treasure described in one of the author's poems, WNEP-TV reports, adding:

Police in New Mexico say Miller went onto Fenn's property armed with a hatchet looking for clues that would lead him to millions in gold.

WNEP quotes a family member as saying this is Miller's third attempt at finding that treasure -- but the first time it landed him in handcuffs.

Now, the family was mounting a GoFundMe campaign for some $25,000 for lawyers in order to get Miller out of hot legal water in New Mexico, WNEP writes.

At last report, Miller was out on bail in New Mexico.

Meanwhile, all that buried gold remains unfound.Bost and Davis were with Trump during the presidents last visit to Illinois in July. At the time, the president traveled to a steel plant in Granite City, where officials have credited his steel and aluminum tariffs for allowing the facility to reopen. But the union representing the workers who got their jobs back is working for Kelly.Mother-son arguments rarely end well, but very few ever result in gunfire.

Yet police in Philadelphia say that's precisely what happened Sunday evening as a mother allegedly shot her "argumentative" 15-year-old boy in the leg.

As FOX29 and 6ABC in Philly report, the mom is identified as 38-year-old Rhonda Alvin of the city's Logan section.

Police tell 6ABC the woman's 15-year-old son told arriving officers he had been shot in the left leg by his mother.

The teen confirmed the two had been arguing before she shot him, but the topic of the argument that ended in gunfire was not specified.

The incident happened around 6 p.m. Sunday at a home on the 4600 block of North 12th Street.

Alvin was taken into custody and charged with aggravated assault, endangering welfare, simple assault, and related offenses, FOX29 reports.

The boy, who was not named in the media reports, was taken Einstein Medical Center in stable condition.

Police recovered two firearms, both belonging to Rhonda Alvin, at the home, 6ABC adds, noting she does have a permit to carry the firearms.A 4 a.m. welfare check at a home in western Pennsylvania quickly became a use of potentially deadly force by Pa. state police.

As the Butler Eagle and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, Pa. state troopers responding to a welfare check at a home in Butler County early Sunday ended up shooting a woman at the residence who they say pointed a shotgun at them.

The woman, identified as Brittany Ann Kitner, 36, allegedly pointed the shotgun at the two responding troopers from a residence on the 800 block of Newcastle Road -- but she did not fire shots.

But the two troopers did fire "at least one time into the hip region" of the woman, state police told the Post-Gazette, which adds:

Kitner was transported to an area hospital. Her condition was unknown.

One of Kitner's friends had called state police for the welfare check, but the exact reasons for this were not immediately specified.

The Troop D Major Case Team, the Butler County District Attorney's Office and the PSP Internal Affairs Division are investigating the shooting, according to the Butler Eagle.Dick Winters, a native of Ephrata in Lancaster County, was the commander of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Division, in World War II.

His story became famous when it was told in the book and miniseries called "Band of Brothers."

Winters parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

According to history.com, "In the early hours of June 6, 1944, he and other members of his company parachuted into Normandy, where later that day hundreds of thousands of Allied troops would land during the D-Day invasion. With their commander missing in action-he had been shot down by German anti-aircraft fire--Winters assumed control of Easy Company. Under his guidance, the troops destroyed a German artillery battery near Utah Beach in a battle known as the Brecourt Manor Assault. His actions earned him a Distinguished Service Cross and promotion to captain.

Led by Winters, Easy Company went on to take part in the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of the Dachau death camp and the occupation of Hitler's Alpine retreat, the Eagle's Nest."

The book "Band of Brothers" by Stephen Ambrose followed Easy Company's journey from basic training. A miniseries based on the book was aired by HBO in 2001.

In 2006 Winters wrote his own book called "Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memories of Major Dick Winters."

Winters died Jan. 2, 2011. His personal belongings are part of the collection at the Hershey-Derry Twp. Historical Society where they are displayed in a re-creation of his home office.

A statue of him is the centerpiece of Ephrata's Veterans Plaza. The statue is a replica of one of him that was erected in France and dedicated June 6, 2012.WASHINGTON - Four days after Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl amid criticism of his handling of clerical sex abuse, Washington's archbishop released a list of 31 members of the clergy who had been "credibly accused" of abusing minors dating back 70 years.

Wuerl included the list in a letter to clergy, calling the move "a necessary step toward full transparency and accountability and the process of healing."

None are in active ministry. Eighteen of the clergy had been arrested, and 13 were never arrested. Of those not arrested, five were listed in a publicly searchable database of accused priests. Fourteen of the 31 men are still alive.

The letter names of 28 clergy members of the archdiocese and three priests who were part of religious orders, or independent communities.

The letter states that "there has not been an incident of abuse of a minor by a priest of the archdiocese in almost two decades." It does not say how recently accusers came forward, how many victims were abused by priests, nor whether all cases were taken to civil authorities.

Archdiocesan spokesman Ed McFadden said about six of the names had not been made public before, but it was not clear how widely publicized abuse allegations were against the remaining priests.

Some were arrested, including Raymond Callahan, convicted in 1971, and Francis Benham, whose abuse was first reported in 1979 and who was arrested and convicted in 2005. One priest, Thomas Lyons, was not reported as an abuser until after he had already died.

One accused priest, Paul Twiddy, whose alleged abuse was first reported in 1965, remained active in ministry on and off for decades. Twiddy returned to ministry in 1968, was reported again in 1971, returned to limited ministry in 1980 and retired in 1986. He died in 2009.

McFadden called the list a first step and said the process of releasing all information related to abuse "will take months."Archdiocesan officials say the list it released is complete, but additional details may be added.

Since 1948, there have been 1,184 priests in the Washington, D.C., archdiocese.

The letter comes amid huge turmoil in a part of the U.S. church that had seemed until recently to have evaded the abuse crisis. But in June, Washington's previous archbishop - ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a popular figure in the U.S. church - was suspended amid allegations that he abused children and adults. He later resigned. McCarrick is not on the list because he was not a priest in the archdiocese when the abuse he was accused of allegedly occurred.

On Friday, Wuerl, a top ally of Pope Francis, officially retired after months of criticism that he had mishandled abuse allegations when he was in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and had not been transparent in Washington, either. However, his much-anticipated retirement wasn't immediate - Francis said he would keep Wuerl on as an administrator while his replacement is found.

Clergy members as well as parishioners have been asking for the archdiocese to be more forthcoming about priests accused of sexual abuse. McFadden said Wuerl had approved moving forward with a full audit some time ago and that "the compilation released today was ready for release within the past week."

"We are fully examining everything," McFadden said.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Wuerl called the list "a painful reminder of the grave sins committed by clergy, the pain inflicted on innocent young people, and the harm done to the Church's faithful, for which we continue to seek forgiveness. . . . Our strong commitment to accompany survivors of abuse on their path toward healing is unwavering."

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, called the list a "hastily assembled PR stunt." In a news release, a spokeswoman for the group said the list was incomplete and did not include the names of some priests who had been accused of sexual abuse. The group also called into question the use of the term "credibly accused."

"We call on the Archdiocese to immediately release the names of every priest, whether living or dead, religious order or diocesan, along with accused seminarians, bishops, nuns, brothers and lay employees," SNAP said.

U.S. prosecutors across the country are starting to look into sexual abuse of minors in their local Catholic communities, including in nearby Baltimore.

There are 196 Catholic dioceses or archdioceses - organizing regions - in the United States, according to the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. More than 50 of those have in recent years published lists of accused priests, said Terry McKiernan, whose site BishopAccountability.org advocates that such lists be released.

Even when the accused clergy are long deceased or removed from ministry, it can still be psychologically powerful for victims to see a comprehensive list of names published, McKiernan said.

"There's enormous value for a survivor in knowing that his or her perpetrator abused someone else. It's a sad fact, but it's a validating fact," he said.

The publication of such lists frequently spurs other victims, abused decades ago, to report their abuse for the first time. In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said last week that the state's massive grand jury report listing more than 300 accused priests has prompted 1,272 phone calls to a state-run clergy abuse hotline since the report's publication in August. Previously, the hotline had received 300 calls over a two-year time span, Shapiro said. Some of the new reports might eventually lead to criminal prosecutions.

McKiernan said that even if some priests cannot be held accountable, every diocese should still publish a comprehensive list.

"I think there's an enormous burden in every parish, in every diocese all over the world, of these unaddressed injuries. I think until that dark area of our history is entirely brought into the light, there's just going to be something wrong with the church," McKiernan said.

Responding to those who would consign this decades-old abuse to history and move on, McKiernan said: "Even when it is history, that means we have a responsibility: to study it, to learn from it and to not repeat it. And that's something the lists can do for us."

(c) 2018, The Washington Post * Michelle Boorstein, Julie ZauzmerA man accused of trying to drive his pickup truck into the crowd at a church picnic was justly convicted of reckless endangerment and other crimes, a state appeals court has found.

In reaching that conclusion, the Superior Court panel discounted Shawn E. McDonell's claim that there wasn't enough evidence to prove he intended to run any of the parishioners down.

McDonell's arrest stemmed from a July 1, 2016 incident during a congregational picnic that drew 50 to 75 people to New Life Christian Church in Butler County's Jefferson Township.

Judge Anne E. Lazarus noted in the Superior Court's opinion that McDonell, now 39, had been told by church officials he wasn't allowed to attend the picnic. He did drive his wife to the affair, however.

Soon after dropping her off, McDonell drove back to the church. When the parking lot attendant stood in front of McDonell's truck to try to get him to stop, McDonell raced on, forcing the attendant to jump out of the way to avoid being hit, Lazarus noted.

"McDonell drove his truck towards the area where people were gathered for the picnic, but stalled before he reached it," she wrote.

Actually, it was a bit more dramatic than that. Lazarus cited the church pastor's testimony that he saw McDonell's "red pickup truck coming down (off) the parking lot, down over the hill in the field and began to make a left-hand turn towards the kids and the area where our church families were."

The church's security officer testified the truck was heading toward the area where bouncy houses had been set up for the children.

McDonell later claimed his truck had a mechanical problem that prevented him from stopping, Lazarus noted.

In denying McDonell's appeal, Lazarus rejected his argument that prosecutors took too long to bring him to trial. Her panel affirmed the jury's decision to convict him last year of reckless endangerment, defiant trespass and disorderly conduct and a conviction by a county judge on a harassment charge.

McDonell was sentenced in January to 72 months of probation.A Dauphin County judge made the right call when she convicted a Steelton man of trying to lure two schoolgirls into his car, a state Superior Court panel ruled Monday.

That decision, covered in an opinion by President Judge Emeritus Correale F. Stevens, means Eliud Montanez-Castro can't escape the prison sentenced he received for the April 2016 incident in Swatara Township.

Montanez-Castro, 36, had tried to persuade the state judges there wasn't enough evidence to support his convictions on child luring, disorderly conduct and harassment charges.

County Judge Deborah E. Curcillo convicted Montanez-Castro of those crimes during a nonjury trial last year. She sentenced him to 11 1/2 to 23 months in county prison.

Township police said Montanez-Castro accosted the ninth-grade girls as they were walking to school on South Harrisburg Street. The girls told police Montanez-Castro pulled his car sharply to the curb so that his driver's side window was right beside them.

Montanez-Castro told the girls to pick a number, and when each did, he told one she was the winner, police said. The girls reported that he called the winner "Mommy," told her she had won a prize and held a can of soda and a water bottle with no label out the car window.

He held those items in such a way that the girl would have to approach within grabbing distance to get them, police said. They said the girls, who were scared about what was happening, walked away. One promptly reported the incident to her school principal. The girls later identified Montanez-Castro from photo arrays.

In his unsuccessful appeal, Montanez-Castro argued there was no evidence he had any nefarious intent, since he never threatened the girls or ordered them to get into his car.

"The totality of circumstances allows for the reasonable inference that (Montanez-Castro) did not stop two random girls on their way to school to give them a drink and send them on their way," Stevens wrote in rejecting those claims.

He found Curcillo was correct to conclude Montanez-Castro's "manipulative and suggestive words and enticements were designed to gain the minor girl's entry into his car to her own detriment."A Kentucky man has been returned to Pennsylvania and accused of committing a rape at Franklin & Marshall College in late 2017.

Lancaster police said Felicius Bucyukundi, 22, is charged with offenses including rape, sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault. Police said that earlier this month they obtained a warrant to arrest Bucyukundi, who lives in Louisville, Ky. Police said he was extradited to Pennsylvania on Saturday and, following arraignment, sent to Lancaster County Prison in lieu of $200,000 bail.Welcome to your Voters Guide to Pennsylvania's 2018 general election.

Republicans and Democrats across the state will head to the polls Nov. 6 to vote for candidates for governor, U.S. Senate, Congress and the state Legislature.

PennLive partnered with The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania to gather information from candidates running for these offices.

This guide includes four searchable databases:

Statewide races to elect nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and the U.S. Senate

Pa. House

Pa. Senate

U.S. Representative.

Any candidate who has not yet submitted their information, but would like to be included in PennLive's online voters guide should send an email to newstips@pennlive.com.By Mark Rozzi

And they call themselves leaders? What cowardice that Republican state Senate leaders Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, and Jake Corman, R-Centre, couldn't bring the statute of limitations reform bill up for a vote.

State Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks (PennLive file)

The Senate needed to do its job. And it didn't.

I know this will not be lost on their constituents.

What did these Republican Senate leaders not get about the statewide grand jury report?

Did the GOP leaders not comprehend that when predators harm children and their employers knowingly covered up the crimes, they violated the law and therefore subjected themselves to liability?

The majority Senate leadership demonstrated once again they are hell-bent on carrying the water for the Catholic Church and by extension, all the other organizations that have gotten away with raping children because of ridiculous statutes of limitation.

Scarnati accused me of not being willing to compromise on SB261, which overwhelmingly passed the House 173-21 in September. He claimed that no one from the other side was willing to negotiate and that he was negotiating with himself. He claimed that no counter solutions were offered.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

To date, I was never presented with language proffered by Scarnati, which I now understand was floated by the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference.

We were never informed about the amendment being debated in the Senate Republican Caucus, and what information we had was gathered piecemeal and forwarded to us through victims, lobbyists and the media, who waited all day long to try and determine what was under consideration.

I was promised several meetings by text from Scarnati to negotiate, but they did not take place. I made it clear to him I was available. On Oct. 12, I held a press conference stating that I was willing to compromise on a few things, but not the two-year retroactive window.

I sent via text message to him on Monday morning that I could consider a fund to begin in 2019 followed by a window to open in 2020.

Never heard back.

It is a travesty of justice.

A window that does not include institutions is not a window at all. Victims have endured a lifetime of suffering as a result of being sexually abused and then having that abuse covered up by the institutions.

The product before the Senate is an insult to victims and to the due process of law. It seems that only where bishops are concerned, due process becomes an issue. Look at how the redacted report went to the Supreme Court.

What ever happened to the separation of church and state?

Why is state government concerned with bailing out an institution that systematically harmed children?

Those organizations - like the church, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, like the Boy Scouts, like the Methodists - created the mess. They should own it, and deal with it, like the bishops of New York. At least those dioceses helped hundreds of survivors through their OWN compensation funds.

Let's talk about excuses.

Scarnati's favorite: the retroactive provision is unconstitutional. But it's in his latest proposal now.

We knew Archbishop Charles Chaput and the bishops would fall back on their decades-old excuses.

You know - memories fade, people die, evidence disappears. That's true, and it's why most victims can't bring suit.

But the grand jury report exposed the role of the church's hierarchy, and the church's own records held the proof.

So the church once again pleaded for mercy in the Sunday bulletins and through their grade schools, claiming they'd go bankrupt if a window was enacted.

The church's "bias of omission" is that any bankruptcy on the part of the Catholic Church has been voluntary to protect their assets and shield them from civil litigation.

Shame on them.

Of course, they immediately supported Senator Scarnati's idea of a compensation fund. After all, a tribunal would give the bishops and the insurance companies immunity from discovery, and it would keep the crimes of predators secret.

The bill would allow us to sue the pedophile priests - but think about that. These priests are housed and insured by the church and basically paid a stipend. The ones who have been defrocked or who have voluntarily left the church are nowhere to be found, because the church doesn't keep those records.

For the record, no church has gone out of business because of civil court actions.

Let's not forget, that this is not just a Catholic problem. One in four girls and one in five boys will be abused by the time they reach 18.

The sexual abuse of children is a worldwide epidemic, and the world is watching.

The bishops of Pennsylvania have had every opportunity, time and again, to do the right thing.

Now they have attracted the attention of federal investigators.

Let me be clear. To exclude institutions from the window is just another step toward denying victims the relief they desperately deserve.

And I, for one, will not stand for it.

This is not a true "window to justice."

Our colleague and friend, the late state Representative Mike O'Brien, in addressing the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference of Bishops said, "Your eminences and your excellences ... One word from you, and these bills will sail through the House, sail through the Senate and make their way to the governor's desk. If you do not give that word to do the right thing, there is nothing either eminent or excellent about you."

What the elected officials in this building seem not to realize is that there has been a sea of change in public opinion about abuse, with the #MeToo movement, the #TimesUp movement, and now the move to impanel grand juries across the country.

Don't underestimate victims of childhood sexual abuse. They are on fire.

You only see strong victims out in front. But thousands stand behind them.

Victims have waited this long. We are not going away.

I'm asking the Senate to come back into session and vote on the version of S.B. 261 that overwhelmingly passed the House, 173-21.

There are no scheduled votes after Election Day. I'm asking constituents to call their senators before Nov. 6 and urge them to come back and get this done.

We will get the "window to justice" passed, as was intended by all of the grand jury recommendations over the past 14 years.

State Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Democrat and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, represents the Berks County-based 126th House District. He writes from Harrisburg.Petoskey to have second leaf pickup later this weekThe EU said in a statement that beyond urging Russia to stick to the treaty it also expects "the United States to consider the consequences of its possible withdrawal from the INF on its own security, on the security of its allies and of the whole world."Sukari, the lions' 3-year-old daughter, was in the enclosure during the attack and Zuri is described as an "attentive and protective mother," who is usually keeping an eye on her cubs, according to the zoo. But Packer said Sukari did not appear to be "at risk from anything."231 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

BERLIN (Reuters)  Germanys Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the United States should consider the consequences, both for Europe and for future disarmament efforts, of pulling out of an international treaty aimed at eliminating a class of nuclear weapons.

President Donald Trump justified his decision, announced on Saturday, to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) by saying that Russia had not stuck to its side of the 1987 bargain.

The treaty  has for 30 years been an important pillar of our European security architecture, Maas said in a statement issued on Sunday. We have often urged Russia to address serious allegations that it is violating the agreement. We now urge the U.S. to consider the possible consequences.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by John Stonestreet)105 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

By Delphine Schrank

TECUN UMAN, Guatemala (Reuters)  Thousands of Central American migrants traveling together to enter the United States have hunkered down in shelters in a southern Mexico city along its border with Guatemala, according to local officials.

The migrants pose a tough challenge to the Mexican governments pledge to stop the illegal travelers plans to press ahead to the U.S. border.

More than 5,100 migrants have been registered in three shelters in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo, while another 2,000 had camped out for the night in the towns central square, said Gerardo Hernandez, head of the local governments emergency services.

Its really full. You cant even walk, theres just so many people, he said referring to the plaza. So far, theyre all peaceful, thank God.

In a statement on Saturday night, Mexicos federal government said nearly 900 migrants had arrived by unauthorized means, while 640 had been processed after being allowed to cross into the country via the international border crossing on the Suchite River that divides Guatemala from Mexico.

Earlier in the day, the presidents of Honduras and Guatemala said about 2,500 migrants had either already been repatriated to Honduras or were in transit back home, many using free bus tickets doled out by Guatemalan police.

Throngs of people continued to wait on the bridge border crossing, where on Saturday morning many pressed for limited opportunities to plead their case to immigration officials, while many others opted to cross the river illegally, either on jury-rigged rafts or by swimming.

The migrant rights group Pueblos Sin Fronteras also counted thousands of mostly Honduran migrants nearby Cuidad Hidalgo, although the figures did not exactly match.

Some 2,000 Honduran migrants were already back home after giving up on continuing to Mexico, Guatemalas President Jimmy Morales said at midday press conference in Guatemala City alongside his Honduran counterpart, President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Hernandez said about 500 migrants were in transit back to Honduras, a roughly 12-hour trip by road.

We are working to provide a peaceful and safe return trip and avoid that these movements keep happening in the future, said Morales.

The leaders of all three countries have come under intense pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who for days has warned that the caravan must be stopped. Trump has made it a political issue in the Nov. 6 mid-term U.S. congressional election, threatened to cut off regional aid, close the U.S.-Mexico border and deploy troops there if Mexico failed to halt the migrants.

Hernandez noted that migrants from elsewhere in the region had joined the caravan, along with others from outside the region, though he did not cite specific nationalities. He added that planes would be used to fly children back home.

The migrants seemed confused over their next moves while it was equally unclear how Mexican authorities would react to so many unauthorized arrivals.

This is not a caravan anymore. This is an exodus, said Ruben Figuerora of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, standing on the muddy bank of the Mexican side of the Suchite river, as a line of young male migrants walked past him after crossing on a raft.

SOME TURNING BACK

Most of the migrants spoken to by Reuters said their ultimate goal was to reach the United States. Some said they hoped to stay in Mexico, but that they had no idea how to get the documents needed to do so.

Others decided they needed more time to determine what comes next.

For now well wait, said Honduran migrant Alexander Alvarado.

Most of the people now caught trying to enter the United States illegally hail from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, among the poorest and most violent countries in the Americas.

The caravan members ranged from farmers and bakers to housewives and students.

Osman Melgar, who nursed a bleeding gash on his shin, suffered when he fell as dozens of people packed on the bridge began fleeing Mexican police using tear gas, according to several eyewitnesses.

Many, including 40-year-old Adriana Consuelo, paid raftsmen 25 pesos ($1.30) to ferry them across the river on vessels constructed of giant rubber tires with wooden planks tethered across them.

After making it across the river to Mexico, Conseulo headed to a taco restaurant to eat saying, No one checked my documents.

(Reporting by Delphine Schrank; Additional reporting by Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City and David Alire Garcia in Mexico City; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Tom Brown and Daniel Wallis)1.5k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

A Facebook prank in North Carolina has proved that Trump supporters are terrified of the anti-fascist group Antifa.

On Saturday several dozen right-wing, pro-Trump protesters gathered at a North Carolina Outdoors store due to a rumored violent Antifa event that was going to take place there. They brought their Confederate flags and pro-Trump regalia, and presumably their guns and rifles. They shouting and vowing to fight to defend the peaceful shopping center from an Antifa attack.

Fake Antifa rally sends protestors to North Carolina camping store https://t.co/gv1tBzBWdB  FayettevilleObserver (@fayobserver) October 22, 2018

But, as things turned out, there was no Antifa attack. It appears that with all their passion they fell victim to a simple Facebook prank. The rumored Antifa demonstration did not happen. It appears to have been nothing more than a joke that was started by an unknown person or group on Facebook.

A local newspaper, the Gaston Gazette, reported that there was actually a Facebook page for Gaston County Antifa and they actually did broadcast a large-scale Antifa rally at the shopping center. They posted on Facebook next to a picture of what appear to be right-wing protesters:

PSA for all the Gaston County Antifa out there:

This is what we will be up against Saturday October 20th at Gander Mountain.

This is the fascist circle jerk of trash talkers who voted Trump and are threatening to crash our Gastonia rally. From the gym to the gun range, we are training and preparing.

According to the Gazette:

They had posted earlier in the week that group members from at least 10 states were planning to gather in front of the Gander Outdoors store in the Franklin Square shopping center in Gastonia. Other than the Facebook page, theres no evidence of any such group actually existing in Gaston County, but that didnt stop those spreading the rumors. Even local website CharlotteStories ran a widely shared article about the fake rally.

After these posting, rumors of an Antifa rally spread throughout all week throughout the area. Yet on Saturday only a few dozen counter-protestors and a few police officers showed up. Nobody from Antifa was even there.

Those who came told the Gazette they had heard the rumors about Antifa members planning to burn the giant American flag at the shopping mall.

We dont care if its a prank, a Trump follower told the Gazette. Were going to show up because whats going to happen is theyre going to call this and then we aint going to show up and then theyre going to really burn down an American flag and its going to cause someone to seriously have problems.

Cleveland County Sheriffs Major Joel Shores said that the Facebook page is not linked to a real-life group in Gaston. Nevertheless, one of the Trump supporters who attended the rally make a vow: Were going to guard the mall until we know Antifa aint coming, he said.

The residents of Gaston will no doubt sleep easier at night knowing that they are being protected by such fine, upstanding citizens.305 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

It is very clear that all Republicans, but especially President Donald Trump, are growing increasingly desperate as the midterm elections grow near.

While they had initially planned to base their November campaigns on the great economy and the wonderful benefits of their tax plan, they have discovered that those ideas arent working.

Most American voters know that neither the economy nor the tax plan benefit them, but instead benefit big corporations and the super-rich.

This has left Republican candidates grasping at straws to find issues and messages that resonate with swing voters. And what they are left with is their main fallback issue: racism.

The GOP has met with great success when they use racism, bigotry and fear to motivate voters. Because of this they have been able to sell average Americans on their programs which actually hurt average Americans economically.

The most recent example of this is the great danger (according to Trump) that Americans are facing from the army of migrants who have left Central America in a caravan, heading to invade the United States. If you listen to Trump and others on the right-wing youd think that a few thousand poor refugees were threatening the very safety of the United States, with its 325 million people and a $20 trillion economy.

Trump has been tweeting about the dangers of the caravan almost nonstop. And he has been blaming Democrats for everything, and saying they need to pass new immigration laws. Of course he is ignoring the fact that the entire federal government  and two-thirds of state governments  are controlled by Republicans.

One tweet this morning illustrates Trumps approach, and shows that he thinks race-based fear will help the GOP in this years elections:

Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.

Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Trumps desperate ploys probably wont salvage the midterms for the GOP, although his appeals to racism and fear have worked before.

In an opinion piece for The Hill, Juan Williams outlined other examples of Republican candidates basing their campaign messages on racism. In a piece entitled GOP plays the bigotry card in midterms Williams gave the following examples:

In California, Republican incumbent Rep. Duncan Hunter is running an ad accusing his opponent of being a radical Muslim who tried to infiltrate Congress. Ammar Campa-Najja, the Democrat, is an American of Palestinian and Mexican ancestry who worked in President Obamas White House.

In Ohio, Republicans ran an ad against Democrat Aftab Pureval, suggesting that he supported terrorism backed by the late dictator Muammar Gaddafis regime in Libya. The only basis for that claim is that Pureval worked at a law firm that handled some Congressionally-mandated settlements for terrorism lawsuits against Libya.

In Virginia, Republicans are trying to save Rep. Dave Brat by running an ad claiming his opponent, a former CIA operative, doesnt want us [voters] to know that she taught at an Islamic school nicknamed Terror High, a terrorist breeding ground. In reality, the school is an elite religious, prep school of Islamic Americans  the kind of religious private school Republicans typically support through voucher programs.

Williams closes his piece by making a disturbing observation:

With just over two weeks to go, we are now getting a clear picture of what the GOPs closing argument will be to voters in the 2018 Midterms. It will be anti-immigrant bigotry. This is the frightening, ghoulish state of American politics in October 2018.498 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

A new poll shows that Democrats, Latinos, and African Americans are all more enthusiastic about the midterm election than Republicans.

Mark Murray of NBC News described the voter enthusiasm numbers in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll:

The highlight is the unprecedented enthusiasm. 65% of all voters have high interest in the upcoming midterm elections. We have never seen that for any other midterm cycle for our poll dating all the way back to the 2016 midterm cycle. You end up seeing 72% of Democrats having high interest. 68% of Republicans high interest. But also whats very notable is you end up having Latinos, women and younger voters with much higher enthusiasm and interest in the election than in our previous surveys this year.

And whats really interesting about that higher interest from Latinos, women, and millennials is it translates to a lead on the congressional preference, having a 50% to 51% lead. Among likely voters, its 8. What stands out is that normally in midterm election environments, you end up having Republicans with the edge among likely voters. Their voters, the ones who traditionally go to the polls. A lot of the parts of the Democratic voters dont. Our poll shows Democrats having the edge in the likely voter model.

Here is the chart:

Video:

A new poll shows that Democrats, Latinos, and African Americans are all more enthusiastic about the midterm election than Republicans. https://t.co/wXHuPXwKoo pic.twitter.com/DKicsyHgOH  Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) October 22, 2018

Democrats Are Ready To Vote

The poll shows that Democratic enthusiasm is not diminishing a just two weeks out from Election Day. It also reveals that Republicans cant match Democratic excitement. The Democratic enthusiasm has been visible in special elections, the 2017 election, and 2018 primary elections. It has been a consistent presence and factor.

The red flags for Republicans are key constituencies that normally vote majority Democratic are more excited than ever for this midterm election. If women, millennials, college-educated white voters, African-Americans, and Latinos show up in higher than average midterm numbers, election night will be a bloodbath for the GOP.

The lesson that Trump and the Republican Congress appear to have taught Democrats is that if they want a Congress who will represent them, they have to vote in midterm elections.

Republicans have a big problem, and there arent enough Trump rallies to fix it, because Democrats arent just angry. Theyre showing up to vote.

For the latest election news, join our Blue Wave 2018 group.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

Follow Jason Easley on Facebook.393 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

By James Oliphant

SPOTSYLVANIA, Virginia (Reuters)  The last time U.S. congressional elections were held in this central Virginia district, Meg Sneed voted for the Republican incumbent, Representative Dave Brat. Her friend, Cheryll Lesser, did not vote at all.

Last week, the two women sat in the second row at a campaign event in a martial arts studio listening to the Democrat running against Brat, Abigail Spanberger. They nodded in agreement with much of what she had to say.

But the real reason they were there was basic: Donald Trump. They dont like the president, and they were not about to vote for anyone, like Brat, who supports him.

More than the policy, its the animosity he is fostering within the country, Sneed said of Trump.

Voters such as Sneed and Lesser are a significant reason why Democrats now believe that in the Nov. 6 congressional midterm elections, the party can win more than the 23 seats they need to seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Some predict Democrats could take as many as 40 seats by flipping districts like Brats in Virginia.

Earlier this year, Brats seat was considered safe. But if a so-called blue wave materializes, it would roll through a district like his, which includes pockets of suburban voters who increasingly have been turning away from Republicans.

Republicans are playing defense in more and more places, said Doug Heye, a former official at the Republican National Committee. The Democrats map continues to get bigger. The Republicans map continues to get smaller. Thats a real problem.

If Democrats do take the House, much of Trumps agenda would be stalled, and his administration would fall under greater scrutiny.

Republicans are favored to retain the Senate. While Democrats need a net total of just two seats there to control that chamber, they must also defend seats in a several conservative states.

Democrats have poured resources not only into Brats district, but others that have come onto their battleground list, in places such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Southern California and other parts of Virginia such as the district currently represented by Republican Scott Taylor.

They have been backed in the effort in Virginia by deep-pocketed advocacy groups such as House Majority PAC, which started running anti-Brat television ads last month, and NextGen, funded by California billionaire Tom Steyer, which decided this summer to launch efforts to turn out young voters in the district.

In response, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican political action committee, is running ads attacking Spanberger, a sign that the party is genuinely worried about losing the seat.

IN MY GRILLE

Brat is a high-value Democratic target for several reasons.

In 2014, he shocked the political order by beating then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary. Since taking office, he has aligned himself with the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, which has become a reliable ally of the Trump White House.

Last year, as protesters crashed his events in the midst of a House push to repeal former President Barack Obamas healthcare program, Brat remarked that women are in my grille no matter where I go.

Those words have followed him ever since.

In September, Brat held his first town hall in a year and did so with supportive audience of older veterans.

Sarah Montgomery, a librarian for the U.S. Department of Defense who attended Spanbergers event in Spotsylvania, said that after Brats district was redrawn in 2016 to include her home, she researched him, and the video of his grille remark was the first thing she found.

He obviously has no respect for women, she said.

The firestorm over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault while in high school, came at a perilous moment for Brat, given his already difficult reputation with some women voters.

Trump has played a part. Both Sneed and Lesser were angry that he chose to attack Kavanaughs accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, at a rally last week.

It was disgusting, Lesser said.

Kavanaugh was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Saturday. Democratic activists hope discontent with his nomination will linger through November.

Republicans, however, see the Kavanaugh fracas as galvanizing conservatives who have been looking for a reason to come out and vote in Novembers elections.

It has mobilized and energized Republican voters in a way that only a Supreme Court nomination can, said Matt Gorman, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the party that supports House candidates like Brat.

Brat has been a solid supporter of Kavanaugh, even though the House served no role in his nomination, and reasserted that support last week in a Facebook post.

His campaign rejected the notion that he is not supportive of women, pointing to his efforts to combat human trafficking and the opioid epidemic and the passage of tax reform last year.

Congressman Brat has worked hard on issues affecting women since day one, said a spokesperson, Katey Price.

A MODERATE TONE

A 39-year-old former officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, Spanberger looks like she could be the face of the Resistance, the woman-driven protest movement against Trump.

But she has been careful to not alienate the independent and moderate voters she needs to win the district. At the Spotsylvania event, she didnt mention Trump, Brat or Kavanaugh, focusing on domestic-policy issues such as healthcare and education.

Asked for her position on Kavanaughs nomination, her campaign declined to comment.

Instead, Spanberger touched on the thing that attracted voters such as Meg Sneed to her: turning down the volume in the civic discourse.

Weve reached a place where we need to restore a level of civility to our conversations, she told the crowd.

Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, said it remains Brats race to win, and that Kavanaugh may be the issue that pulls him over the finish line.

Its still a southern district, Davis said. Theres nothing like a good fight to keep your base in line.

(Editing by Jason Szep, Cynthia Osterman and Jonathan Oatis)By Andrew Osborn and Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW (Reuters)  Russia said on Monday it would be forced to respond in kind to restore the military balance with the United States if President Donald Trump carried through on a threat to quit a landmark nuclear arms treaty and began developing new missiles.

Trump drew a warning of military-technical retaliation from Moscow after saying on Saturday that Washington would withdraw from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which rid Europe of land-based nuclear missiles.

The INF treaty, signed by then-President Ronald Reagan and reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 at a time of unprecedented East-West detente, required the elimination of all short-range and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles held by both countries in Europe.

Its demise could raise the prospect of a renewed arms race, and Gorbachev, now a frail 87-year-old, has warned that unraveling it could have catastrophic consequences.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday called Trumps withdrawal plan a matter of deep concern for Moscow.

Such measures can make the world more dangerous, he said during a daily conference call with reporters.

Despite repeated Russian denials, U.S. authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice.

Trump said the United States would develop equivalent weapons unless Russia and China agreed to a halt in development. China is not a party to the treaty.

Peskov said President Vladimir Putin had repeatedly warned that the demise of the treaty would force Moscow to take specific military steps to protect its own security.

Scrapping the provisions of the INF treaty forces Russia to take measures for its own security because what does scrapping the INF treaty mean?, said Peskov.

It means that the United States is not disguising, but is openly starting to develop these systems in the future, and if these systems are being developed, then actions are necessary from other countries, in this case Russia, to restore balance in this sphere.

BOLTON IN MOSCOW

Trumps national security adviser John Bolton is due to hold talks with senior officials in Moscow later on Monday and to meet Putin on Tuesday.

Peskov said Trumps decision to quit the pact would be a subject for discussion and that Moscow was looking for a detailed explanation as to why Washington had decided to turn its back on the treaty.

The INF treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to forego all nuclear ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km, eliminating an entire category of weapon.

The Soviet Union scrapped hundreds of SS-20 ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads which had a range of 5,500 km, as a result. Many of them had been pointed at Europe.

NATOs decision to station Cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles in Europe provoked waves of protests in the 1980s from anti-nuclear campaigners who felt their deployment would turn Europe into a potential nuclear battlefield.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Bonn, West Germany, and campaigners formed a protest camp at Greenham Common, in Britain, the site of Cruise missiles.

EUROPEAN ALARM

The 28-member European Union called the INF treaty a pillar of European security architecture which had resulted in the destruction of almost 3,000 nuclear and conventional warheads and continued to play an important non-proliferation role.

The United States and the Russian Federation need to remain engaged in constructive dialogue to preserve the INF Treaty, Maja Kocijancic, the blocs spokeswoman for foreign affairs and security policy, said in a statement.

The world doesnt need a new arms race.

Trumps statement has alarmed some European countries.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Trump on Sunday to stress the importance of the treaty, his office said on Monday. The German government said it regretted Trumps decision, saying NATO would now have to discuss the development.

China also condemned Trumps move on Monday, saying it was wrong to unilaterally pull out of the treaty.

In Moscow, Peskov said there was a six-month period for Washington to withdraw from the INF treaty once it had given official notification it was leaving, something he noted it had not yet done.

That meant the question of Russia acting to restore the military balance between Washington and Moscow was not for today or tomorrow, he said.

Peskov denied U.S. accusations Russia had breached the treaty, alleging that the United States was the one at fault and had been steadily undermining it.

Putin has said many times said the United States de facto is taking measures that are eroding the conditions of this treaty, said Peskov, referring to strike drones and anti-missile systems capable of destroying short- and intermediate-range rockets.

(Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow, Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Sudip Kar-Gupta, and by Michael Martina in Beijing; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Richard Balmforth)426 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

By James Oliphant

PHOENIX, Ariz. (Reuters)  For most of this year, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has run what has been viewed widely as one of the best races in the nation. But with less than a month to go to Election Day, there are doubts whether she can make it across the finish line.

Her matchup with Republican Martha McSally appears to be tightening at the same time that some voters are casting their ballots with the start of early voting in the state. That is unwelcome news for Democrats, who just weeks ago believed they had a chance to gain more than the two seats they need to take control of the Senate.

Since the furious battle over the Oct. 6 confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the national picture seems to have shifted. Republicans have taken an upper hand in states such as Tennessee and Texas  and have stayed competitive in places like Florida and Indiana.

That makes Arizona and neighboring Nevada the best hopes for Democrats to flip seats held by Republicans. Democrats have a better chance to assume control of the House of Representatives, where they need 23 seats to become the majority. Should they take either chamber, much of Trumps agenda would be thwarted and his administration would be subject to greater oversight.

The odds, however, have always been against Sinema, a member of the House who is seeking to replace retiring Republican Jeff Flake. Arizona has long been a right-leaning state, one that has come, in a sense, to embody the divisive politics of President Donald Trump.

This is the build that wall state. The state of anti-immigrant former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, where Flake was basically driven from office because of his criticism of Trump. It has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in 30 years.

But Sinema surprised observers by building an early advantage in the race. She had little competition for her partys nomination and built a steady edge over McSally, also a member of the House, who had to stave off two challengers, including Arpaio.

CENTER LINE

Sinema has billed herself as an independent voice while courting the moderates she needs to win, even as some left-wing progressives have groused that she has been too cautious.

She stayed quiet for much of the Kavanaugh fight, only opposing his confirmation at the very end. She has backed the efforts of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, amid calls from some in her party for its abolishment. Asked last week about supporting Medicare For All, a universal healthcare policy favored by many Democrats this election season, she said she wants more practical solutions.

Much was made locally about Sinemas choice to not endorse the Democratic candidate for Arizona governor, David Garcia, a progressive. She has not appeared at events with Garcia and other members of the Arizona congressional delegation.

Her centrist approach, however, won over Steve Jensen, 63, a disabled veteran and longtime Republican who attended a Sinema event in central Phoenix last week. Jensen said he had come to disdain the politics by fear on the Republican side and did not like that McSally increasingly seemed to be aligning herself with the president.

Most of McSallys votes to me seem to be going along with Trump, Jensen said.

Sinemas candidacy stands in marked contrast to that of Representative Beto ORourke in conservative Texas, the Democrat who is running against incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz unabashedly as a left-wing progressive.

STILL A LIBERAL

Sinema seems now to be in a better position than ORourke to win her race while receiving much less national attention.

She has run the best Democratic campaign that I have seen here for a long time, said Chad Campbell, a Phoenix-based Democratic strategist.

That has made her a top target of well-funded conservative advocacy groups who have bombarded the airwaves in an attempt to stop Sinema and boost McSally. Campbell conceded that the ads have chipped away at her lead.

Many of the ads have a common theme: Sinema has misrepresented herself; she is a stealth liberal disguising herself as a moderate. Sinema began her political career in Arizona as a member of the Green Party, but joined a moderate Democratic caucus when elected to the House in 2012.

Shes trying to go right, right, right, former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, told a Phoenix radio station last week. Shes still a liberal.

McSally, a former Air Force fighter pilot, has run multiple ads showing Sinema protesting the Iraq War while dressed in a pink tutu. One conservative group, Defend Arizona, sent out an anti-Sinema mailer last week that depicted a mushroom cloud over Phoenix.

Its clear shes engaged in desperate and ugly behavior, Sinema said after a campaign event last week.

A national Republican source told Reuters that the party believes the attacks on Sinemas image are effective and will persist through the rest of the campaign.

McSallys campaign has turned to high-powered surrogates for help. On Friday, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Senate from Utah, appeared with her at a rally in the town of Gilbert. Trump will hold a campaign event this Friday for McSally in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb.

We are literally in a dead heat right now for this Senate seat and this Senate majority, McSally told the crowd while blasting Sinema as unpatriotic.

Tim Bushnell, 60, of Fountain Hills, Arizona, who attended the rally, said he could not vote for Sinema. Her history is pretty radical-left, he said.

Sinemas campaign believes she can weather the attacks because she spent money early in the race on ads defining herself to voters while Republicans were still fighting among themselves. She is still raising money, taking in $7 million in the third quarter.

If Sinema prevails, she will be able to argue that her moderate strategy may be the best way for Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. If she loses, any hope her party has of taking the Senate likely will fade with her.

(State of Play is a weekly examination by Reuters political correspondent James Oliphant on the key races, players and issues in the run-up to U.S. congressional elections in November that will determine which party controls Congress)

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Jason Szep and Leslie Adler)Since 2009, millions of monthly readers rely on and trust PoliticusUSA for real independent liberal news. We arent owned by a corporation, we dont take any special interest money. We have no shareholders, and we are here to deliver you the unfiltered truth that the mainstream media and their corporate owners dont want to talk about.

PoliticusUSA is completely independent, and our goal is to bring you the news with truth and integrity. We are committed to keeping the news free to every reader, but we could use your help. For as little as $1, you can support PoliticusUSA, and keep delivering the message to the corporate media that both sides dont do it. The facts still matter, and truth rises above all.

Please give today, and if you cant donate subscribe to our newsletter."The special counsel pokes into every aspect of my social, family, personal, business and political life, seeking something - anything - he can use to pressure me, to silence me and to try to induce me to testify against my friend Donald Trump," Stone said in a recent videotaped fundraising appeal. "This I will not do. When I say I won't roll on the president, what I mean is I will not be forced to make up lies to bring him down."288 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that he will reveal to the public details of his countrys investigation into the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The announcement by Erdogan will increase even further the pressure on Saudi Arabia to come clean about what happened on October 2nd after Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Meanwhile, congressional leaders in the United States were saying that Saudi Arabia and its crown prince should face severe consequences for the death of the writer in the consulate.

When Erdogan announced that he would go into detail about the Khashoggi case in a speech in the Turkish parliament he increased hopes that the truth about Khashoggis killing would finally be brought to light.

There have been several conflicting accounts about what really happened to Khashoggi, who was a strong critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Erdogans comments came after Saudi Arabia issued a statement Saturday morning in which they finally acknowledged that 59-year-old Khashoggi had died in their consulate.

The statement did not end the controversy, however, since their explanation that the writer was killed in a fistfight was not believable and was met with widespread skepticism in the United States and throughout the world.

Most people believe that Saudi Arabia has been involved in a cover-up as they have tried to protect Prince Mohammeds reputation and absolve him of any responsibility for the murder. In their statements on Saturday Saudi Arabia said 18 individuals had been arrested and several of their intelligence officials had been fired.

The accounts of the circumstances surrounding Khashoggis death have greatly differed in Turkey. There, the news organizations have reported that Khashoggi was killed by a Saudi hit squad of 15 people. They reported that the 15 Saudi assassins came to Turkey to kill the the Washington Post writer and then left the country a few hours later in their private jets.

Why did these 15 people come here? Why were 18 people arrested? All of this needs to be explained in all its details, Erdogan said in his statement to parliament.

Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported also reported that Istanbuls chief prosecutor summoned 28 staff members of the Saudi consulate to testify in their inquiry into Khashoggis death.

It appears that as their investigation continues Turkish officials may be the ones to ultimately reveal to the public the truth about what happened to the courageous journalist who was killed because he spoke up and criticized the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia.On October 22, the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti ran a story on President Vladimir Putin giving an order to draw up a list of counter-sanctions against Ukraine in retaliation for that countrys sanctions against Russia. RIA Novosti cited a statement on the Kremlins website which described the measures as a response to actions of Ukraine that are unfriendly and contrary to international law, (and) are related to the introduction of restrictive measures against citizens and legal entities of the Russian Federation."

According to the RIA Novosti story, relations between the two countries soured after a coup, the return of Crimea to Russia, and the beginning of the conflict in the Donbas. At no time is Russian complicity in the latter two developments mentioned.

First, Polygraph.info and others have thoroughly refuted the claim that the 2014 Maidan revolution was a coup.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a coup as a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics, such as the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.

In the case of Ukraine, there is ample evidence to show that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled from Kyiv and finally from Ukraine altogether not because he feared for his life or was threatened with actual violence, but rather on his own volition to avoid prosecution for numerous crimes he had allegedly committed while in office.

Protests did not turn violent until after government snipers and riot police killed several protestors on February 20.

Security camera footage and eyewitness testimony shows Yanukovych had prepared to leave Kyiv the day before, and two days prior to the signing of the February 21 agreement, which was to end the violence on the streets of the capital. Yanukovych fled Kyiv in the early morning hours of February 22, not long after signing the agreement.

As for Crimea, it did not return to Russia. Putins government staged a largely bloodless takeover of the peninsula, taking control of the local parliament in Simferopol using military force, and then within a few weeks staged a referendum which was not observed by any reputable international election monitors. The United Nations adopted a resolution stating the referendum had no validity, and so most of the worlds nations recognize Crimea as a territory of Ukraine under Russian occupation.

Lastly, Russian officials have denied involvement in the military conflict in Donbas despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Russian claims that the conflict in eastern Ukraine was a spontaneous local uprising have been contradicted by some of the key Russian operatives involved. The rebels have been shown to possess large numbers of serviceable tanks, armored vehicles, and heavy artillery, among other military hardware. Russian authorities have yet to come up with a plausible explanation for the rebels surplus of Russian military equipment, although on one occasion they claimed all this was dug out of abandoned mines.

Given the loss of its territory and the fact that the war in Donbas has killed over 10,000 people and displaced nearly two million others, it is Russia, not Ukraine, that objectively bears responsibility for the worsening of relations.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.Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Cloudy skies. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 76F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Considerable clouds this evening. Some decrease in clouds late. Low around 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.Chloe Johnson covers the coastal environment and climate change for the Post and Courier. She's always looking for a good excuse to hop on a boat.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.The head of the country's intelligence service, Masoom Stanikzai, also rejected the allegations. Speaking to journalists in Kandahar, he gave a detailed account of the attack. He said the lone shooter, who was killed in the encounter, gave a false name when he enrolled recently in the provincial security service. He added that 15 other people have been arrested in the plot.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.Joseph Cranney is an investigative reporter in Columbia, with a focus on government corruption and injustices in the criminal legal system. He can be reached securely by Proton mail at jcranney@prontonmail.com or on Signal at 215-285-9083.Holding onto a partially full bottle of pills from your last hospital visit?

Instead of leaving those drugs in your bathroom cabinet, consider bringing them to Mayo for National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, sites around the country will ask people to bring in their old, half-empty bottles of pain pills or other prescription drugs, to prevent unsafe disposal or appropriation.

Drug Take Back Day is aimed at the easy, safe collection of unused prescription drugs.

In 2016, 6.2 million Americans misused prescription drugs, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Many of those drugs were taken from home medicine cabinets and were obtained by family and friends, according to the survey.

But prescription drugs can also be taken out of the trash, if not properly disposed of.

Mayo Clinic will have a box to collect prescription drugs in the patient entrance on the west side of the Gonda Building.

The next-closest locations with take-back boxes are the Red Wing Police Department, the Fillmore County Sheriffs Office, and the Fillmore County Fire Station.

The box in the Gonda Building is anonymous, and accepts any type of medication, said Mayo Clinic spokeswoman Heather Carlson-Kehren.

Those who cant make it to the Take Back Day location on Saturday can always drop prescription medications in to the permanent collection box at the Olmsted County Government Center, she added.

That box is located in the vestibule of the Adult Detention Center and can be accessed 24/7/365.In "Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North," author and translator Robert Ferguson tells the story of Olof Ohman, a Swedish immigrant farmer living in Douglas County, Minnesota, who in 1898 discovers a large, flat stone with cryptic writing on it while trying to wrestle an Aspen tree off his farmland. The stone is soon deciphered:

"Eight Goths (Swedes) and 22 Norwegians on a journey of discovery from Vinland westward. We had a camp by two skerries one days journey north from this stone.

We were out fishing one day. When we returned home we found ten men red with blood and dead. AVM (Ave Virgo Maria), save us from evil.

Have ten men by the sea to look after our vessel fortune days journey from this island. Year 1362."

Eventually Ohman sells the stone to a Norwegian-American named Hjalmar Holand, who spends the rest of his life trying to prove the stones authenticity.

The story of the Kensington Runestone, as it came to be called, is but one of the stories Ferguson relates in his book which while not a traditional narrative of the Scandinavian countries will still give readers more than a taste of Nordic history interspersed with some of his own experiences living and working there.

During World War II, as Ferguson tells, the Blucher, a German cruiser, sank as it made its way up the Oslo fjord past the island fortress of Oscarsborg on April 9, 1940. The sinking of the Blucher was to be the high point of Norwegian resistance during the war. Norway would remain occupied, along with Denmark, for the next five years while Sweden would enjoy a technical status of neutrality.

In Norway, a puppet regime was installed, strikes were outlawed, political activity banned. Those who resisted were arrested and often deported. As it became apparent that the Germans were losing the war, the brutality only increased. As Ferguson succinctly puts it: "The Norwegians had a hard war."

Ferguson also examines the image of Scandinavian women traditionally seen by the rest of the world as, "beautiful, complex and erotic" but also "enigmatic, haughty and troubled." He spends some time on the cliche of Scandinavian melancholy in a discussion with one of his fellow translators who tells him, "people here arent any happier than they are anywhere else" (and presumably not unhappier either).

Ferguson explores Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsens effect on Norwegian society and the Danish existentialist Soren Kierkegaard and his theories of spiritual development.

Today Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are modern industrialized social welfare democracies integrated with the rest of the western world, far removed from their isolated, poor and somewhat backward past. In "Scandinavians," Robert Ferguson weaves together both past and present in a fascinating tale fit for reading on a cold winter night on the edge of an icy fjord.I will vote for keeping most of them in elected office

I will vote to replace most of them

I will vote to replace some of them

I will vote for just a few, if any

I will not vote

Vote

View ResultsStaff Sgt. Angelo Guevarra, from the Guam Air National Guard 254th Comptroller Flight, left the island over the weekend for a deployment in support of Operation Inherent Resolve in Southwest Asia.

The Guard asks the public to support Guevarra and other members of the Guard on deployment.

"We thank the people of Guam, especially the employers, for their continued support of our airmen and their families," said Maj. Gen. Roderick Leon Guerrero, the adjutant general for the Guam National Guard. "We also have airmen from the 254th Security Forces Squadron who are currently deployed or supporting missions around the world. Please keep Sgt. Guevarra and our airmen in your thoughts and prayers now and for the duration of their deployment."

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Guevarra and other airmen are scheduled to be deployed for six months.

Meanwhile, eight airmen from the Guam Air Guard 254th Red Horse Squadron returned to Guam on Sept. 18, after supporting military construction projects at various locations in South Korea for six months.Donate Search Fat Tofu and Local Deluxe on indiegogo.com to learn more about their Japan tour and donate to the bands' online fundraisers. Contributors will receive a gift in return depending on their donation amount. Gifts include stickers, pins, T-shirts, vinyl records, CDs, cover songs, music lessons and live shows. Follow the bands on social media for updates on future shows: Facebook: Fat Tofu and Local Deluxe Twitter: @FatTofuGu and @LocalDeluxeGU Instagram: @fattofumusic and @localdeluxegu

Halloween Hellraiser Binary Sunset presents Halloween Hellraiser with Fat Tofu and Local Deluxe, featuring Okas Point on Friday, Oct. 26. Proceeds from the show will benefit the bands Japan tour. Halloween costumes are encouraged. Must be 18 years old or older to enter. When: Doors open at 9 p.m. Show starts at 10 p.m. Where: Old Traditions, Tumon Admission: $10 (comes with goodie bag)

From dim hole-in-the-wall bars and pumped street performances, to upscale hotels and lit concert stages, two local bands have played just about everywhere on island, and their next gig will be taking them to the land of the rising sun.

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Addressing their fans, pop rock band Local Deluxe and reggae ska band Fat Tofu announced an opportunity to tour five cities in Japan in April 2019. The bands are hoping to raise a combined $11,000 to fund the tour.

Local Deluxe, which isnt just your favorite go-to grub at McDonalds, sprouted to life in the summer of 2016, said guitarist and vocalist Christian Sumalpong. The band's trio includes Sumalpong, bassist Christian Delgado and drummer Gino Datuin. The band released their first self-titled four-track EP in May 2017.

Were more on the pop punk side, Sumalpong said about their music, adding theyre influenced and inspired by the sounds of Blink 182, but modern.

Fat Tofu formed in July 2015 when pizza nights blurred into random music rehearsals, said guitarist and vocalist Jordan Hardy. The six-member band includes Hardy, bassist Bryan Padua, drummer RJ Aguon, saxophone player Simon Tan, trumpet player Tim Dominguez and trombone player Jeremy Bevacqua. The band released their first self-titled EP in the fall of 2015 and their second EP, Heart Eater, in April.

Our style has become a bit more mature ... we try to make horns dominate in our music, Hardy said, citing The Beatles, Grammy-nominated soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote and American blues rock band Alabama Shakes as inspirations.

Opportunity to tour abroad

Between school and work, members from both bands found time to play the music they love with a local fan base begging for the sound and sensation Local Deluxe and Fat Tofu bring.

The local music scene has surged with shows put on by the likes of both bands, and island music fans can appreciate the time and talent each offers to Guam.

Early next year, the bands two front men hope to ignite the same spark of passion that bleeds with every guitar or bass string plucked, drum beat or horn blown  but in Japan!

The opportunity to tour the land of the rising sun arose during Sumalpongs vacation with friends in October 2017 in Japan, he said.

After a night out enjoying a live performance by visiting California-based rock band Chon, Sumalpong took photos with the American group and they connected over music. One of the bands members eventually extended them an opportunity to tour Japan, too.

Fast-forward almost a year later and the offer still stands. Now, the two bands are gearing up for another great milestone in their musical journey: their first international show.

Sumalpong said, I wasnt sure if anything was going to happen. ... I didnt think we would ever tour.

Hardy added, Even now as its approaching, it kind of doesnt feel real, but its also so real. We have to work hard, get our butts off the chair and start doing stuff. Weve always wanted to play in Japan.

The two frontmen are looking forward to traveling with friends, playing alongside Japan-based bands and hopefully rallying some Japan fans, because as a band, you always want more people to hear your stuff around the world, Sumalpong said.

Funding campaigns launched

To reach respective fundraising goals  $6,000 for Fat Tofu and $5,000 for Local Deluxe  the two bands have started separate Indiegogo fundraisers online. The proceeds will go toward lodging, plane tickets, booking and gear rental  with any leftover used to help fund exclusive merchandise.

Indiegogo, an online crowd funding campaign similar to GoFundMe, lets contributors donate any amount of money, and receive a gift in return.

Depending on the amount donated, from $5 to $500, contributors can receive tokens of appreciation from the band as small as stickers, pins and T-shirts, to bigger ticket items such as song covers, music lessons and live shows.

We dont like asking for money, thats like, weird, Hardy said. But as leaders of our bands, we feel like weve got to help our band members make this goal happen.

Sumalpong added, Were working together to help each other out, so were not feeling the pressure and stress of raising money.

While most are still in the planning stages, the bands hope to put on shows every month to raise funds for the tour in April. The first fundraising show starts at 10 p.m. Friday at Old Traditions in Tumon.

Hardy described the upcoming performances as, a big party at the end of every month.

To their longtime and new fans, Sumalpong and Hardy shared their gratitude for the support that helped the bands get to this point.

Thank you for coming to the shows, singing along to our stuff, pushing us to keep making music, Hardy said. Especially our families, too, for putting up with our stuff.

Sumalpong said it was nice having people invested in us ... and buying merchandise.

Advice for aspiring artists

For up-and-coming musicians and aspiring artists who are looking to land as sweet a gig as Local Deluxe and Fat Tofu, the two frontmen advocate diving right into the scene, but also keeping diverse interests all the while.

A lifelong music lover, Sumalpong initially thought hed attend a music school, but ended up playing the more direct route on stage with his friends.

I wasn't really doing anything with music, but there was an urge, he said. If youre young and want to be a musician, just do it. That's pretty much what happened with Local Deluxe.

Sumalpong remembers attending a music festival when he heard Fat Tofu performing, thinking, I want to do that!

And he did. Local Deluxe formed and they went on to make music and play shows as opportunities trickled through.

Sumalpong's best advice: If you really want to do it, you just have to get up, go out and do it. Once youre there, you cant stop.

Hardy offered his two cents, adding, Don't stop learning.

He said, Whats cool about me and Chris is that  yeah  we like to play music, but we like to do other things, too. He likes to do photography. I like to do graphic design.

Both musicians graduated from the University of Guam with a degree in marketing, which has helped them promote the bands' shows. They create flyers and market all events online and through social media.

It helps to learn every aspect (of the music industry). Don't stick to one thing, Hardy said. Its good to do that, too. It means youre focused, but its good to have different skills.

Building Guam's music scene

As the musicians continue to build on bands theyve only started recently, both frontmen have eyes turned toward a future filled with possibility and, hopefully, more limelight.

Sumalpong is hoping a full-album release is in the cards for Local Deluxe. The band is currently working on another EP in the meantime.

Hardy said, Finishing an album is a good goal, but going on tour is another level, and he definitely hopes to continue leveling up.

Hes also keeping an open mind with their future music, saying, Maybe later on it wont just be ska. It might be some soul, some jazz.

Above all, each artist enjoys sharing their platforms with others. Hardys even devoted his time to creating content, such as recording sessions, for other bands.

As they prepare for their first international tour, which will be made financially possible by the community, it's important to know the time and talent they offer the islands budding music scene now will serve as stepping stones for the next group of Guam bands ready to make their mark on the world.

Hardy said, We have a lot friends in the music scene and we like helping them out. Were all in the same scene and we want to keep building it.George was passionate about the things he did believe in, said Chicago Teachers Union recording secretary Michael Brunson, a longtime friend who described Schmidt as a mentor. George was a fearless individual, and he was not afraid to be the only one in the room speaking his mind. He had this thing where if he thought you were doing anything that was contradictory to the principles that we were supposed to be standing on or what we believed in, he would call you out and hed say it.On Sunday, the Washington Post (paper edition) published a lengthy tribute to Jamal Khashoggi, its former columnist. The article is worth reading. Joby Warrick, Loveday Morris, and Souad Mekhennet present a more nuanced and informative account of Khashoggi than the Post has been willing to render until now.

I think the Post has recognized that its portrait of Khashoggi as a pro-democracy saint needs to be modified slightly now that even the New York Times has rejected it. Ambiguity needs to be acknowledged, but still must always be resolved in the light most favorable (from a Western readers point of view) to Khashoggi.

In the end, I think the Post fails to dance its way around the two most important facts about Khashoggi: his longtime participation in the repressive Saudi regime and his support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Khashoggi worked for and backed the Saudi Arabian regime for decades. (Thus, its not surprising that he ended his friendship with Osama bin Laden who was trying to overthrow the Saudi regime). The Post credits Khashoggis claim that he nonetheless supported democracy and tried to work from within to promote freedom. However, it provides no evidence of this.

Thus, when the Post writes that the murder of Khashoggi echoes previous slayings of writers and dissidents, its important to remember that many of these slayings were at the hands of a regime Khashoggi worked for.

If Khashoggis approach was to bore from within, why didnt he use the same approach under the current Saudi regime? After all, despite the brutality (which doesnt distinguish it from its predecessors), the current regime is more reformist than the ones Khashoggi backed.

The answer may lie in palace intrigue. I suspect, though, it is also had to do with the current regimes policies, which are less anti-Israel and probably less sympathetic towards anti-West Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, than its predecessors.

This leads to the second reality the Post tries to dance around  the Brotherhood. The Post says this about Khashoggis relationship with that anti-America, terror supporting outfit:

Friends say Mr. Khashoggi had a complex view of the Muslim Brotherhood and other political Islamists, particularly in his later years. He believed that democracy in the Middle East was impossible unless moderate Islamists were allowed a voice, acquaintances said, but also he disdained extremism, and his social leanings were decidedly secularist. His idea was that we shouldnt be an enemy to them, said a Saudi friend who requested anonymity because of the risk of official retaliation. Its wasnt his mentality. He was more liberal, more Western.

When the best Khashoggis friends can do is describe the relationship as complex, theres reason to suspect it was problematic. Thats a more accurate description, I think.

In any case, Khashoggis writings about the Brotherhood arent terribly complex. They are well summarized in a column he wrote for the Washington Post called The U.S. is wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Middle East is suffering for it. Khashoggi argued that Americas aversion to the Brotherhood is the root of a predicament across the entire Arab world because it stands in the way of democratization.

This claim is dubious at two levels. First, regimes in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia arent taking their cues from the U.S. when they combat Muslim Brotherhood. They know a mortal enemy when they see one.

Second, the Muslim Brotherhood isnt a freedom loving, pro-democracy outfit. On this point, here was the best Khashoggi could do:

The Muslim Brotherhoods political practices [in Egypt] could have matured and become more inclusive, and the unimaginable peaceful rotation of power could have become a reality and a precedent to be followed.

Anything is possible, even the unimaginable. But U.S. policy-makers shouldnt tilt in favor of an anti-West, anti-Israeli terror supporting organization on the off-chance that one day it might mature and become more inclusive.

The purpose of Khashoggis article seems to have been to persuade Congress not to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Yet, Khashoggi made no effort to show that the designation is undeserved (i.e. that the U.S. is wrong about the Brotherhood). He simply argued that the designation impolitic.

That depends on ones politics. Khashoggis were Islamist. The Post fails to show that things were significantly more complex than that.I have wondered why the #MeToo is limited to women complaining of sexual abuse by men. What about boys and girls and men and women who have been abused by male and female homosexuals, respectively? I have thought their cases should fall under the hashtag #WhatAboutMeToo? With the exception of the charges against Kevin Spacey, such cases seem not to have emerged in any context other than that of the Catholic Church.

You remember New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. He humiliated himself in distinctive fashion during the Judiciary Committee hearings on the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh. Like all the other Democrats, he sought to hitch his wagon to the concluding #MeToo chapter of the hearings when the clock struck 13.

Rick Moran writes at PJ Media: A gay man who describes himself as a liberal Democrat is accusing New Jersey Senator Cory Booker of sexually assaulting him in 2014The man, who wishes to remain anonymous for now, penned a lengthy open letter that was posted on Twitter. In the letter he describes the assault that occurred in a bathroom following a meeting at his workplace, where the two met. Moran links to the letter posted here on Twitter. As Moran puts it, the letter goes into excruciating detail.

Now this may be too good to be true: The victim says he contacted journalist Ronan Farrow, the father of the #MeToo movement, who requested a phone conversation but never got back to him after the victim gave Farrow his number. Will someone please contact Farrow for comment?

Bookers accuser has contacted attorney Harmeet Dhillon to discuss the details of his case. According to the accuser: This included the precise date, location, some corroborating photographic evidence and two possible hearsay witnesses that I had told my story to subsequent to the incident. It was, at the very least, much more probative evidence than what was brought forth during the Kavanaugh debacle.

As Moran acknowledges, the story may be a hoax. It sounds to me like the accuser may be a prankster seeking to make the points implicit in his story, as Moran formulates them: For example, are only women to be believed unconditionally about sexual assault? If so, what possible reason is there not to believe a gay man? Indeed, the story sounds to me like it has been finely calculated to help us unlearn a lesson or two on which the Democrats insisted in their unhinged efforts to defeat the Kavanaugh nomination, such as the doctrine that accusation equals guilt. I will reach out to Cory Bookers for comment this morning.PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 18:56:01

A.M. Best Senior Managing Director to Address ICMIF Americas 2018 Event in Colombia

A.M. Best

Midori Honda, +52 55 1102 2720, ext. 102

Market Development Director,

A.M. Best America Latina

midori.honda@ambest.com

or

Christopher Sharkey, +1 908 439 2200, ext. 5159

Manager, Public Relations

christopher.sharkey@ambest.com

or

Jim Peavy, +1 908 439 2200, ext. 5644

Director, Public Relations

james.peavy@ambest.com

A.M. Best Senior Managing Director Andrea Keenan will discuss the potential impact technology will have on the insurance industry over the next 25 years during a presentation at ICMIF Americas 26th Annual Conference, which is scheduled for Nov. 19-21, 2018, in Cartagena, Colombia.

Keenans presentation, which will be part of a session, titled, InsurTech: Revolutionizing Insurance from Within, will include a broader view of the technological advances that are likely to affect the global insurance industry, along with changes that are anticipated in society, the economy, risk management, and ultimately, in the insurance industrys business models. Her presentation is scheduled for 9 a.m. local time on Tuesday, Nov. 20.

This years conference will focus on how cooperative and mutual insurers can future-proof their businesses to ensure sustainable competitiveness and the ability to remain resilient in an ever-changing world. It will be held at the Hilton Cartagena Hotel. A.M. Best will sponsor the welcome reception at 7 p.m. local time on Monday, Nov. 19.

Keenan heads up industry relations for A.M. Best and oversees its relationships and communications with insurance and financial service industries throughout the Americas, including the United States, Latin America, Canada and the Caribbean.

Carlos De la Torre, senior director of A.M. Best America Latina in Mexico City, will be attending the conference. To arrange a meeting, email carlos.delatorre@ambest.com.

Midori Honda, market development director, also will be in attendance to discuss the process for obtaining a Bests Credit Rating. To arrange a meeting, email midori.honda@ambest.com.

To learn more about the ICMIF Americas 26th Annual Conference, please visit the events website.

A.M. Best is a trusted source of insurance market insight and data, and the only global credit rating agency with a unique focus on the insurance industry. Best's Credit Ratings are a recognized indicator of insurer financial strength and creditworthiness. Visit http://www.ambest.com for more information.

Copyright  2018 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. and/or its affiliates.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 19:29:46

Press Information

Polaris Market Research

Contact us-





Mr. Neel



Corporate Sales, USA



Polaris Market Research



Phone: 1-646-568-9980



Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com



Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com



Mr. Neel

Manager

1-646-568-9980

email

https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/





# 541 Words

Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.comWeb: www.polarismarketresearch.comManager1-646-568-9980

The worldwide Automotive Aftermarket market is anticipated to reach USD 519.2 billion by 2026. In 2017, the tire segment dominated the global market, in terms of revenue. In 2017, North America accounted for the majority share in the global market.The automotive aftermarket market is highly competitive. Vendors offer products and services required for repair and maintenance for wide range of cars, trucks, vans, and buses. Consumers consider factors such as quality, price, convenience, and vehicle age before making informed decisions about repair and maintenance offered by market players.Request sample copy of this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-aftermarket-market/request-for-free-sample Top Key Player In Global Market: -Royal Dutch Shell PLCDenso CorporationJohnsons Controls Inc.Exide Technologies, Inc.3M CompanyDelphi Automotive PLCMagneti Marelli S.p.AGoodyear Tire & Rubber CompanyRobert Bosch GmbHCooper Tire & Rubber Company.The expanding global automotive industry, along with increasing average age of vehicles majorly drives the market growth. Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of proper maintenance and repair of vehicles, which supports market growth. Other factors driving market growth include greater need for long distance travel, technological advancements in telematics technologies, and changing lifestyles. New emerging markets, emerging consumer demographics, and sale through online channels would provide growth opportunities for automotive aftermarket market in the coming years.Established industries, technological advancements, and high investment in R&D are factors expected to drive the market growth in the region. Asia-pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This is due to economic growth in countries such as China and India, leading to rising living standards and high disposable income. Expansion of global players into these countries to tap market potential boosts the market growth. Favorable regulations for production of automotive aftermarket components, and poor road infrastructure in developing countries such as India, and Pakistan are expected to augment market growth during the forecast period.Make Inquiry about this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-aftermarket-market/inquire-before-buying The various types of automotive aftermarket products include tire, wheels, battery, lighting, exhaust components, body parts, accessories, telematics, and others. The tire segment is expected to lead the market during the forecast period. Tires are easily damaged by external factors and need to be replaced periodically. There has been an increasing demand of radial tires owing to low rolling resistance, higher durability, and enhanced service.About Polaris Market ResearchPolaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to our customers.Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@ polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.comPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 07:03:01

Calsonic Kansei and Magneti Marelli to Create a Leading Independent Automotive Components Supplier

The combined business will operate under the name Magneti Marelli CK Holdings *

Magneti Marelli CK Holdings* will have total revenues of EUR 15.2 billion, creating a top ten global independent automotive components supplier

FCA will enter into a multi-year Supply Agreement with Magneti Marelli CK Holdings*, underscoring the combined entitys commitment to maintain Magneti Marellis operations in Italy and sustain its industrial footprint and employment levels

The new combination will maintain the existing Magneti Marelli operational HQ in Corbetta, Milan

The agreement represents a transaction value of EUR 6.2 billion

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (FCA) (NYSE: FCAU/MTA: FCA) announces that it has entered into a definitive agreement (the Transaction) to sell its automotive components business Magneti Marelli S.p.A. (Magneti Marelli) to CK Holdings Co., Ltd. (CK Holdings), a holding company of Calsonic Kansei Corporation (Calsonic Kansei), a leading Japanese automotive component supplier. Following the closing of the Transaction, CK Holdings will be renamed as Magneti Marelli CK Holdings*. The combined businesses of Calsonic Kansei and Magneti Marelli will create the worlds 7th largest global independent automotive components supplier based on total revenues.

The agreement represents a transaction value of EUR 6.2 billion. The Transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2019 and is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

The Transaction represents a unique opportunity to combine two successful businesses to create one of the leading global independent automotive components suppliers, with combined revenues of EUR 15.2 billion (JPY 1,975 billion1). The combination is a decisive step towards both companies strategic ambition to become a leading globally-diversified tier-one supplier.

The combined company will be well positioned to serve its customers around the world due to its enhanced scale, financial strength and the highly complementary nature of its combined product lines and geographic footprint. The new entity will operate out of nearly 200 facilities and R&D centers across Europe, Japan, the Americas, and Asia Pacific.

FCA has also agreed to a multi-year Supply Agreement that will further strengthen a mutually beneficial relationship for both Magneti Marelli and FCAs expanding model range and which will sustain Magneti Marelli's Italian business operations, positioning it strongly for continued growth and success in the future.

The combined company will be led by Beda Bolzenius, currently CEO of Calsonic Kansei, based in Japan. Ermanno Ferrari, CEO of Magneti Marelli, will join the Magneti Marelli CK Holdings* board.

Commenting on the transaction, Mike Manley, CEO of FCA, said: Having carefully examined a range of options to enable Magneti Marelli to express its full potential in the next phase of its development, this combination with Calsonic Kansei has emerged as an ideal opportunity to accelerate Magneti Marellis future growth for the benefit of its customers and its outstanding people. The combined business will continue to be among FCAs most important business partners and we would like to see that relationship grow even further in the future. The transaction also recognises the full strategic value of Magneti Marelli and is another important step in our relentless focus on value creation.

Beda Bolzenius, CEO of Calsonic Kansei, said: Our industry has gone through fierce change in recent years and the phase to come will be even more dynamic. It is exciting to form a strong platform for Calsonic Kansei and Magneti Marelli to work together and create a competitive automotive supplier which is extremely well placed among the global Top Ten. Together, we will benefit from complementary geographic footprints and product lines, while our respective customers will benefit from an increased investment in people, processes and innovative new products.

Ermanno Ferrari, CEO of Magneti Marelli, said: This is a transformational day for both Magneti Marelli and Calsonic Kansei, creating as it does a global business of exceptional range, reach, expertise and future prospects. This is a moment of great opportunity for all our people to be part of a secure, growing and independent company of considerable scale that can look to the future with energy, ambition and confidence."

London, 22 October 2018

About Calsonic Kansei

Calsonic Kansei is a global manufacturer of a comprehensive product line of auto parts specializing in thermal products, exhaust systems, interiors and electronics. A wholly owned portfolio company of KKR, Calsonic Kansei is headquartered in Saitama, Japan and has recently celebrated its 80th anniversary. It delivered consolidated revenues of EUR 7.7 billion (or JPY 998 billion1) for fiscal year 2017, which ended March 2018.

For additional information about Calsonic Kansei Corporation, please visit Calsonic Kanseis website at www.calsonickansei.co.jp/english/index.html

About Magneti Marelli

Magneti Marelli is a leading global automotive components manufacturer founded in 1919 and headquartered in Corbetta, Milan. It specializes in lighting, powertrains, electronics, exhausts, suspensions, shock absorbers, and motorsports. The company has been a subsidiary of FCA and its predecessor companies since 1967. Total revenues for 2017 were EUR 8.2 billion (or JPY 1,066 billion1).

Contact details

For FCA and Magneti Marelli  mediarelations@fcagroup.com

For Calsonic Kansei:

Finsbury

Calsonic.kansei@finsbury.com

Japan:

Nicola McGowan +81 (0)70 3857 8699

Ayako Okamoto +81 (0)80 9898 5591

For Italian Media:

Community Group

Auro Palomba auro.palomba@communitygroup.it

Pasquo Cicchini pasquo.cicchini@communitygroup.it +39 3451462429







* The legal entity name is subject to shareholder approval.

1 Exchange rate: EUR 1/ JPY 130





AttachmentPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 21:32:46

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Published by

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ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446

Moderators: Bryan Arkwright, William Baker, Fred Bazzoli, Tory Cenaj, Kevin A. Clauson, PharmD, Todd Eury, Heather Flannery, John D Halamka, Rajiv Leventhal, MD, Ron Ribitzky, MD, Tom Savel, MD, Ted TannerNEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / Convege2Xcelerate healthcare blockchain Conference (#ConV2X) is proud to announce its 2ndannual conference agenda panel moderators. The event which is beinghelp at Columbia University on October 24th, 2018 - will bring together some of the best minds in Healthcare to moderate over 90 C-level and academic honored market leaders across 45 sessions discussing blockchain and health technologies  cover use-case and application technologies such as AI, IoT, machine learning, and telehealth. Founder and Publisher, Tory Cenaj, of Partners in Digital Health, commented: "we are honored to have such a distinguished roster of moderators who champion health innovations to drive better outcomes for institutions and patients not only in the US but around the globe."Moderators: Bryan Arkwright, William Baker, Fred Bazzoli, Tory Cenaj. Kevin A. Clauson, PharmD, Todd Eury, Heather Flannery, John D Halamka, Rajiv Leventhal, MD, Ron Ribitzky, MD, Tom Savel, MD, Ted Tanner. About the Honored Moderators:Bryan T. Arkwright is a Managing Consultant with Schumacher Clinical Partners Consulting and Physician Advisory Services focusing on Telehealth / Telemedicine Strategy and Operations. William Baker heads the NYU Global Debate Fund, housed in the Business & Society Dept. of the Stern Business School and is the CIO for Baker Consulting Associates (BCA) based in Dallas, Texas. As a leading authority on debate training, strategy & operations, Will is one of the top corporate debate consultants in NYC. Fred Bazzoli is Editor in Chief at Health Data Management and coordinates editorial operations, with oversight of digital news, print publicationsand special projects. Fred was most recently senior director of communications at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. Tory Cenaj, is Partners in Digital Health, Founder and Publisher of the innovative online journal Telehealth and Medicine TodayTM. She has extensive experience in healthcare publishing and communications, managing medical journals, publication planning, continuing medical education, and digital health portfolios. Kevin A. Clauson, PharmD is an associate professor at the Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences in Nashville, TN, USA. Dr. Clauson previously served as founding director of the first World Health Organization Collaborating Center to prioritize mobile health (mHealth) initiatives in its work plan.Todd Eury, Founder of Pharmacy Podcast Network and Director of Strategy and Business Development at New Season and leads his team in B.D. and marketing efforts of the nations leading provider of Medication Assisted Treatment to support communities in the addiction recovery sector of healthcare. Building community networks with political leaders, health-systems, law enforcement, and behavioral health organizations to reach more patients sufferingwith the disease of opioid addiction. Heather Flannery is the Health Circle Global Lead at ConsenSys and the Co-Founder and Board Chair of Blockchain in Healthcare Global ("BiHG"), a new trade association organized under the IEEE ISTO launching in Q4 2018. She chairs the IEEE SA P2418.6 Standards Development Working Group (blockchain in healthcare and life sciences) and serves as the FY19 Co-Chair of the global HIMSS Blockchain in Healthcare Task Force.John D. Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dean of Technology for Harvard Medical Schoo, is responsible for all clinical, financial, administrative, and academic information technology, serving 3,000 doctors, 12,000 employees, and 1,000,000 patients. As chairman of NEHEN, Dr. Halamka oversees clinical and administrative data exchange among the payers, providers, and patients in Massachusetts. Dr. Halamkaspecializes in the adoption of electronic health records and the secure sharing of healthcare data for care coordination, population health, and quality improvement.Rajiv Leventhal is Managing Editor of Healthcare Informatics, covering healthcare IT leadership and strategy for the renowned, award-winning publication. Since 2012, he has been covering the daily impact of regulatory measures on Healthcare Informatics CIO and CMIO-based audience and has takenkeen interest in areas such as patient engagement, health information exchange, mobile health, healthcare data security, and telemedicine.Ron Ribitzky, MDis Founder & CEO of R&D Ribitzky. An entrepreneurial driver and enabler of pragmatic innovation, Dr. Ribitzky is a highly accomplished Physician executive with 30 years of cross-functional experience in Healthcare IT, Life-Sciences Informatics, and Precision Medicine. Dr. Ribitzky has broad and deep hands-on, managerial, and scientific technology expertise that includes AI, analytics, UX prototyping,blockchain, semantic services, and NLP, among other.Tom Savel, MDis a Health IT physician executive at the CDC. 15+ years creating bridges and solutions at the intersection of technology, healthcare, and public health. Always striving to leverage the power of technology innovation to transform public health. Passionate presenter and educator of this rapidly ever-evolving, multidisciplinary field. An advocate of servant leadership. Profoundly honored to have worked at the CDC since 2003.Ted Tanner is Co-Founder and CTO of PokitDok and a creator of DokChain, blockchain for healthcare. Focused primarily on Artificial Intelligence and Agent-Based Systems, Ted has held architect positions at both Apple and Microsoft and held instrumental roles in several start-ups, including Digidesign (IPO and acquired by Avid), Crystal River Engineering (acquired by Aureal Semiconductor), VP of R&D at MongoMusic (acquired by Microsoft) and Co-Founder and CTO of BeliefNetworks (acquired by Benefitfocus). Event Sponsors: ConsenSys Health, BurstIQ, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cadent Medical Communications, Healthcare Informatics, Health Data Management, HealthVerity, Izzy, Nonnatech, Pharmacy Podcast, SimplyVital & 1800pr. About ConVerge2Xcelerate Conference (#ConV2X)The ConVerge2Xcelerate Conference focuses on practical and next-generation discussions on healthcare and blockchain use-case and applications by academic, established and emerging growth industry leaders - taking a close look at what is driving innovation and changes in our healthcare delivery systems today.Hosted by Columbia University, the 2nd annual event will be held in NYC on October 24, 2018. The event will bring together over 90 C-level and academic honored market leaders across 50 sessions discussing blockchain and health technologies. The one-day event will cover technologies such asPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 13:03:03

Namics will join Merkle expanding its capability and geographic footprint in EMEA

Dentsu Aegis Network Announces the Acquisition of Namics AG

Germany/Switzerland

Dentsu Aegis Network

Judith Weiand

judith.weiand@dentsuaegis.com

or

UK

Simpatico PR

Lorna Keegan/Sarah Ramamurphy

+44 (0) 207 439 9275

merkle@simpaticopr.co.uk

Dentsu Aegis Network today announces that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Namics AG, a leading full-service digital agency in Switzerland and Germany. Following the acquisition, which is subject to approval from the German competition authority, the company will become Namics - A Merkle Company.

Namics digital experience, creative and service design expertise complements Merkles already significant customer experience (CX) and marketing technology practice in the region. An important step in Merkles strategy to increase its global footprint, it provides further scale and depth to Merkles people-based marketing capabilities, in particular in the areas of business transformation strategy, digital consulting and technology implementation across Adobe Experience Cloud, Sitecore, Salesforce and SAP and other leading technology partners.

All Namics 550 digital specialists based in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, St. Gallen, Zurich and Belgrade will join Merkle, bringing its EMEA regional employee numbers to over 2000. Founded in 1995, Namics provides strategic consulting, concept development and creative, as well as technical implementation, with a strong focus on user experience. Its clients include ABB, Credit Suisse, Migros, Swiss Life, UBS, and Victorinox in Switzerland and ADAC, Boehringer Ingelheim, Kaufland, Kuka and smart in Germany.

Giulio Malegori, CEO, Dentsu Aegis EMEA, said: I am delighted to welcome Namics into the Dentsu Aegis Network. This acquisition brings scale to our existing presence in the German and Swiss markets in EMEA. Their services complement Merkles unique capabilities, creating a compelling offer that will help clients transform their brands in the digital economy.

Michael Komasinski, president, Merkle EMEA, said: This acquisition provides important scale to our business in EMEA, adding new markets and an established service offering that fits perfectly with our existing marketing technology and CX practice. With an enviable client base and a shared vision, Namics accelerates our strategy to extend Merkles people-based marketing capabilities across EMEA.

Bernd Schopp, CEO Namics, said: Becoming part of Merkle and Dentsu Aegis Network is a fantastic opportunity for Namics as we have a shared vision of helping clients become winners in digital transformation. Our customer advocacy approach to delivering digital marketing, communication and commerce solutions will be further strengthened by Merkles data, analytics and CRM capabilities. This is an incredibly compelling offer to our clients. We are excited about the opportunities this move provides.

Merkle is a leading, data-driven, technology enabled, global performance marketing agency that specialises in the delivery of unique, personalised customer experiences across platforms and devices.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

About Dentsu Aegis Network

Part of Dentsu Inc., Dentsu Aegis Network is made up of ten global network brands - Carat, Dentsu, dentsu X, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, Merkle, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum and supported by its specialist/multi-market brands. Dentsu Aegis Network is Innovating the Way Brands Are Built for its clients through its best-in-class expertise and capabilities in media, digital and creative communications services. Offering a distinctive and innovative range of products and services, Dentsu Aegis Network is headquartered in London and operates in 145 countries worldwide with more than 40,000 dedicated specialists. www.dentsuaegisnetwork.com

About Merkle

Merkle is a leading data-driven, technology-enabled, global performance marketing agency that specialises in the delivery of unique, personalised customer experiences across platforms and devices. For more than 30 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading non-profit organisations have partnered with Merkle to maximise the value of their customer portfolios. The agencys heritage in data, technology, and analytics forms the foundation for its unmatched skills in understanding consumer insights that drive people-based marketing strategies. Its combined strengths in performance media, customer experience, customer relationship management, loyalty, and enterprise marketing technology drive improved marketing results and competitive advantage. With 5,500 employees, Merkle is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, with 24 additional offices in the US and 25 offices in Europe and APAC. In 2016, the agency joined the Dentsu Aegis Network.

About Namics

Founded 1995, Namics is a leader in digital transformation in Switzerland and Germany. With a commitment to high quality standards, Namics mission is to lead its clients from vision to reality and thereby enabling market advantages and efficiency gains. Namics focuses on the end-to-end user experience and based on this, the right measures on a strategic, technological and operative level.

Namics is a one-stop shop for strategic consulting, innovative concepts, creative work, as well as technical implementation involving a variety of disciplines. Composed of 550 digital enthusiasts, Namics runs offices in St.Gallen, Zurich, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg and Belgrade. Amongst others, Namics is working for ADAC, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bucherer, Daimler AG, DriveNow, Hansgrohe, Hoval, Jelmoli, Kaufland, KUKA, Medela, Migros, Swiss Life, UBS and Victorinox.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 19:28:40

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Polaris Market Research

Contact us-





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Corporate Sales, USA



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# 681 Words

Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.comWeb: www.polarismarketresearch.comManager1-646-568-9980

Electric vehicles are one of the fastest growing mode of transport which have adopted smart technologies. It constitutes of electric buses, cars, trucks, and electric bikes. The market is maturing at a fast rate due to increasing demand, initiatives to expand electric vehicle charging stations, and diverse vehicle models. Large number of consumers have become more familiar with these technologies and the trend is spreading fast across the world economies.The global electric vehicles market is anticipated to reach USD 912 billion by 2026 according to a new study published by Polaris Market Research.Get Sample Copy @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/electric-vehicles-ev-market/request-for-free-sample Major Key Manufacture:-- Volkswagen Group- Tesla- BMW- Mercedes- Toyota- BAIC Corporation- General Motors- Ford- Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi.Government initiatives to accelerate the shift of their nations vehicle fleet from combustion to electric drive has led to rapid growth in the sale of the electric vehicles. Some of the actions undertaken in 2018 by the federal and state regulators in this regard include Evolve NY (an electric vehicle expansion initiative in New York), funding opportunities for advanced electric vehicle projects by the U.S. Department of Energy, and rebate programs for EV charging stations in Ohio, U.S. Oil dependence benefits, climate change, and clean air are the most crucial factors for different governments across the world to promote the electric vehicles among consumers. Apart from these factors, one another significant parameter includes economic benefits from manufacturing of the future electric car industry. The automobile manufacturing hubs such as the United States, Germany, and Japan will have much to lose if they do not support the transition to electric vehicles.Inquire More or Share Questions If Any before the Purchase on This Report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/electric-vehicles-ev-market/inquire-before-buying Electric vehicle sales & production has witnessed a tremendously rapid growth due to numerous advanced technological developments. The manufacturing companies have undertaken R&D concerning the design, range, and maintenance of these vehicles. In 2017 ten big companies (Tesla, BAIC, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota, and five others) had more than 50,000 in annual sales as compared to five such companies in 2016.Snapshot  Table Of Content1. Overview and Scope2. Executive Summary3. Electric Vehicles Market Insights4. Electric Vehicles Market Size and Forecast by Product Type5. Electric Vehicles Market Size and Forecast by Vehicle Type6. Electric Vehicles Market Size and Forecast by Power Source Type7. Electric Vehicles Market Size and Forecast by Regions8. Company Profiles.Browse Complete Report Details @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/electric-vehicles-ev-market/ Asia is the most popular region for the growth of electronic vehicles with China as the most significant global player. Other Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan along with China have been major battery providers. Increase demand from India for the electric vehicles has also contributed towards the growth of this regional market. However, the global industry is also subjected to some restraints such as high product price. Electric vehicles are highly priced and are not affordable by each consumer, especially in the countries with lower economic growth. Moreover, the maintenance of the electric bikes is costly and requires frequent charging and changing of batteries. Some battery related issues also include lead emissions from few batteries and the energy storage systems, are some of the factors restraining the market growth.About us Polaris Market ResearchPolaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities.Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@ polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.comPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 19:29:18

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# 773 Words

Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.comWeb: www.polarismarketresearch.comManager1-646-568-9980

Global Fatty Acid Esters Market is expected to grow from USD 1.23 billion in 2017 to USD 1.68 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 3.5% during the forecast period.Increasing demand for different derivatives of fatty acid esters in wide range of end-use industries is expected to further augment its current demand over the forecast period. These products owing to their natural ability to stabilize emulsions are among the most important components of the personal care and food industry. Due to their emulsifying property, fatty acid esters especially the monoglycerides find diverse applications as components of nano and liposomal formulations for drug delivery systems in pharmaceutical industry.Request sample copy of this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/fatty-acid-esters-market/request-for-free-sample Fatty Acid Esters Market top major key player includes Berg + Schmidt, Alnor Oil Co. Inc., ongyan Zhuoyue New Energy Co. Ltd. , Emery Oleochemicals Group , P&G Chemicals , Wilmar International Limited , BASF S.E. , Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) , Cargill Inc., KLK Oleo , P&G (Procter & Gamble) Chemicals, Cargill, The Seydel Companies, DuPont, Estelle Chemicals, Stepan Company and World Chem Industries.Low solubility of these products in the groundwater helps in behaving as light non aqueous phase liquid source along with relatively small area of influence. Fatty acid esters do not improve the solubility of the hydrocarbons as individual components or as a whole such as the mono or poly aromatic hydrocarbons. These Individual fatty acid compounds are comprised of low aqueous solubility nature, low mobility and low volatility. However, autoxidation mechanisms and the hydrolysis results in generation of more of the mobile and equally biodegradable components. Hence, with such advantages in the end-use products in addition of these fatty acid esters, demand for these products is expected to increase further.Properties of these products depend mostly on the category of vegetable oil. Different mixtures of these esters are generally referred to as biodiesel. Fatty acid methyl esters, which is one of the most common esters of fatty acid bears the similar physical properties as that of conventional diesel, with the advantages of being biodegradable and non toxic. Hence, with such importance in a variety of industrial applications demand for these products are anticipated to rise further in the future.Make Inquiry about this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/fatty-acid-esters-market/inquire-before-buying The report provides an extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of the market trends and growth prospects of the Global Fatty Acid Esters Market, 2017-2026. This report comprises a detailed geographic distribution of the market across North America, Europe, APAC and South America, and MEA. North America is further segmented into U.S., Canada. Europe is divided into Germany, UK, Italy, and Rest of Europe. Asia-Pacific is bifurcated into China, India, Japan, and Rest of Asia-Pacific.Competitive LandscapeThe global Fatty Acid Esters Market is still in a burgeoning stage. The Asia Pacific regions growing food & beverage, chemical, personal care industries etc are the major driving sources of demand of these products. China, India, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia etc. are not only the major consumers but also leading producers globally. Increasing production of vegetable oil in the region has been the primary factor driving its demand. The rapidly increasing capacity for palm production in this region along with its strong and developing integration of raw materials is major reason for the reorganization of the global fatty acid esters industry.Browse Complete Report Details @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/fatty-acid-esters-market/ Key SegmentsProduct Type Glycerol Monostearate Medium Chain Trigylcerides Isopropyl Esters (Myrsitate & Palmitate) OthersApplication Type Lubricants Pharmaceuticals Personal care & Cosmetics Surfactants OthersRegion North Americao U.S.o Canada Europeo Germanyo UKo France Asia-Pacifico Chinao Indiao Japano Rest of Asia-Pacific Latin Americao Brazilo MexicoMiddle East and Africa.About Polaris Market ResearchPolaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to our customers.Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@ polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.comPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 10:05:02

Provides Real-Time Data Sharing & Improved Workflow Automation

FlexTrade Integrates ipushpull Real-Time Interoperability Platform into FlexNOW EMS

FlexTrade Systems, Inc.

James Tolve, 516-304-3601

516-395-0549

james.tolve@flextrade.com

FlexTrade Systems (@FlexTrade), a global leader in multi-asset execution and order management systems, today announced the integration of ipushpull (iPP), a real-time interoperability platform, with its FlexNOW execution management system to provide users with access to iPPs live data sharing and workflow automation between desktop applications, messaging platforms, in-house systems and cloud services.

We chose ipushpull because they are the leader in automatically connecting grids of data across any connected application in the cloud, said Rhyd Lewis, FlexNOW product manager. Integrating iPP with FlexNOW benefits our clients since they can easily access their trade data via other third-party applications.

Applications available via iPP include Excel, Symphony, OpenFin, ChartIQ, databases and many others, which provides secure and compliant messaging directly into FlexNOWs trading blotter. Additionally, iPPs analytics module provides improved data analysis, which makes it easy to track what clients are accessing; what they are using; and the ability to create specific alerts to track client behavior and activity.

David Jones, CTO of ipushpull, comments, ipushpulls partnership with FlexNOW provides a seamless, efficient workflow. We are delighted to be part of FlexNOW and look forward to providing our data sharing and workflow automation to push access-controlled data to their clients in the quickest and most cost-effective way.

FlexNOW, an out-of-the-box, broker-neutral execution management system, is built to address the needs of hedge funds and mini-primes who require a streamlined, multi-asset trading system at the click of a button. Designed to handle trading for equities, futures and options, FlexNOW is MiFID II compliant; provides connectivity to leading market data providers; easily integrates with any order management system (OMS) via FIX and API; and comes with its own built-in transaction cost analysis functionality.

About FlexTrade Systems, Inc.

Founded in 1996, FlexTrade Systems, Inc. is the industry pioneer in broker-neutral algorithmic trading platforms for equities, foreign exchange and listed derivatives. With offices in North America, Europe and Asia, FlexTrade has a worldwide client base spanning more than 225 buy-side and sell-side firms, including many of the largest hedge funds, asset managers, commodity trading advisors, investment banks and institutional brokers.

About ipushpull

Based in London, the award winning ipushpull platform provides real-time interoperability as a service. Used across sell-side and buy-side, and front to back office, ipushpull improves workflow efficiency by allowing cross application secure, audited, access-controlled live data sharing, collaboration and workflow automation. The API first platform handles static, live and streaming data with APIs, integrations and connectors into many data platforms and services.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005

FlexTrade Systems integrates ipushpull real-time interoperability platform into FlexNOW EMS. Will provide access to live data sharing and workflow automation between desktop applications, messaging platforms, in-house systems and cloud services.2. Provide opportunity to the areas that need it the most. When you ride through the highest crime areas of Chicago, the problem is patent: There are no grocery stores, no drugstores, no cleaners, no banks, no gas stations, no opportunity. Where does a teen who wants a part-time job after school go? The gangs are ready to fill that void.PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 15:23:57

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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / Paul Mann former COO of High Hampton Holdings Corp, responded to the company's October 16th, press release announcing the resignation of its Chief Executive Officer David E. Argudo and the termination of COO, by stating, "I am issuing this press release to clarify what I know to be the real reasons that High Hampton fired the majority of its US operations team". On August 11th 2018, the Senior Human Resources Manager Tom Sykes, Chairman of the Board of Directors Richard Polanco, and CEO of High Hampton David Argudo, received a complaint under whistleblower policy from Paul Mann the COO of the company. The complaint identified, amongst other things, financial irregularities, large payments to entities that had no contracts with the company, co-mingling of funds between High Hampton and other public companies, non-compliant issuance of securities to unaccredited US investors, and a complete lack of oversight and governance within the accounting and corporate finance departments. The complaint also stated that the company's Audit Committee Chairman and Director, Robert (Bob) Allen, had verbally been made aware of these issues previously, but had chosen not act on the allegations. "High Hampton's CFO, Fiona Fitzmaurice, Vice President of Corporate Finance, Christian Scovenna, and an undisclosed principal were identified among those involved in the multiple alleged wrongdoings. Supporting documentation which included, but was not limited to, contractual impersonation of the CEO, large payments to companies based out of mailboxes at UPS stores and instructions on how to submit false invoices for private placements of company shares, warranting further investigation were submitted to the Chairman of the Board and the executive management of the company resulting in the CEO calling for a forensic audit of the company's books and records. A demand that was refused by the head of the Audit Committee, Robert (Bob) Allen. Previous requests from the CEO to the CFO and VP of Corporate Finance for access to company documents and banking records had been repeatedly denied, a move which was also fully supported by board members, Mr. Allen and Mr. Scovenna. However on September 27th at 9:58 a.m., with sufficient documentation to support the allegations of impropriety and deceptive practices, Vice President of Corporate Finance, Christian Scovenna, was fired by CEO David E. Argudo. On September 28th at 6:05 a.m., Director and Audit Committee Chairman, Robert (Bob) Allen acknowledged Scovenna's firing by suggesting in an e-mail, that Fiona Fitzmaurice, the company's CFO, assume Scovenna's duties. No press release was issued by the board or the company to disclose this material event. Subsequently, Mann and several members of the High Hampton team were all terminated and Mr. Argudo resigned from his position as CEO and Director. All inquiries related to this press release should be directed to: Mr. Paul Mann pmann@ viaetechnology.com604 805 9565About Paul Mann.Mr . Mann is a 30 year veteran of the tech industry and has been accredited with founding, managing and leading more than 13 companies in both the public and private market sectors. About High Hampton Holdings Corp.High Hampton Holdings Corp. is a CSE listed Canadian cannabis sector investment company focused on opportunities in the California cannabis space. SOURCE: Paul MannPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 15:02:01

New SaaS Legal Operations Solution Can Save $250,000 Per Year in Staff Time Savings and Reduced Legal Spend

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mitratech today announced the launch of TeamConnect Essentials, an easy-to-use, quick-to-implement SaaS legal operations solution designed for legal departments who want to leverage built-in best practices validated by 30 years of Mitratechs client experience.

Essentials is built on Mitratechs TeamConnect platform and acts as a central hub for all legal operations, including integrated matter management, outside counsel management, e-Billing, Microsoft Office integration, and reporting, delivered as an adaptable, cloud-based solution.

Thirty percent of FORTUNE 500 companies currently use TeamConnect as a platform for legal department innovation. Weve taken our experience with those customers and others, coupled it with a streamlined implementation program, and created a unique solution for legal departments earlier in their transformation journey, said Chris Kraft, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Mitratech. And since its built on TeamConnect, it can grow and adapt as our customers needs change.

Castleton Commodities International (CCI) joined Mitratech's Product Advisory Program and has been providing hands-on product validation since May.

We didn't need a large enterprise-platform-sized solution, said Howard A. Law, Vice President, Counsel, CCI. We needed something simple, with a price point to match. TeamConnect Essentials is also very user-friendly and integrates with other applications we use every day, like Outlook.

The time savings delivered by TeamConnect Essentials , coupled with the reductions in legal spend driven by automatically enforcing billing guidelines and improving the accuracy and payment of invoices, can save legal departments at least five percent annually. For most companies, that can amount to a significant return.

How can in-house legal teams benefit from implementing TeamConnect Essentials?

First, there are significant cost savings, including $250,000 per year in estimated staff time savings for a legal department of 10, and an average of 5 percent reduction in legal spend. How?

Essentials can reduce the effort to open and assign new matters and budgets by 75 percent, cut the time spent generating reports for business users by 90 percent, and reduce the time spent storing and referencing matter documents by 75 percent, as well as saving 50 percent of attorney time per week searching and reconciling matter data.

Legal Departments enjoy an immediate reduction in outside counsel legal spend of 5 percent through the enforcement of billing guidelines on invoices from outside counsel.

The TeamConnect Essentials framework for fixed fee and capped AFAs ensures that important attorney negotiations are enforced and savings are realized.

Attorneys can save a minimum of 30 minutes in processing each invoice via electronic review and approval.

IT and hardware costs are eliminated when compared to on premises solutions.

Visibility of reporting reduces the effort involved in allocating work across resources to maximize productivity.

In addition, legal outcomes are improved with Essentials:





Clients learn from their single source of truth how to avoid litigation, reduce settlements, and improve legal outcomes.

A central hub for legal operations improves the organizations ability to quickly respond to situations, reducing exposure and costs.

TeamConnect Essentials is commercially available today. For more information, visit http://www.mitratech.com/ or visit booth #204 at the Association of Corporate Counsels Annual Meeting in Austin, Oct. 22-24 for a demo.

ABOUT MITRATECH

Mitratech is a proven global technology partner for corporate legal professionals who seek out and maximize opportunities to raise productivity, control expense, and mitigate risk by deepening organizational alignment, increasing visibility, and facilitating collaboration across the enterprise. Serving 1,200 organizations of all sizes across the globe, we represent almost 40 percent of the Fortune 500 and over 500,000 users in over 160 countries.

With Mitratechs proven portfolio of end-to-end solutions, operational best practices spread throughout the enterprise, standardizing processes and accelerating time-to-value. By unlocking every opportunity to drive progress and improve outcomes, Mitratech is helping legal teams rise to the challenge of serving the evolving needs of the modern, dynamic enterprise.

For more info, visit: www.mitratech.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b7889781-d261-410b-953f-a5cdf98ed99eAccording to Goldstein Research, Norway Automotive Industry is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 8.0% during the forecast period, 2017-2025.

Norway Automotive Industry

PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 05:58:28

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# 393 Words

99 Wall Street, Suite No:- 527Global Sales Manager6465687747

According to Goldstein Research, Norway Automotive Industry is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 8.0% during the forecast period, 2017-2025. Norway has a fast developing an automotive industry which in present scenario is being driven by the high adoption of electric vehicles. Sales of new diesel cars witnessed a huge fall in 2017, to 23% from 31% in 2016 in Norway. The government is taking initiatives such as incentives & tax concessions in order to promote the sales of electric vehicles. Norways new objective is 200,000 electric vehicles (7% of total existing vehicle fleet) by 2018 which is providing huge opportunities for the automotive industry market players to expand their business in Norway in electric vehicles segment.Browse Full Report:Further, Zero-emission, generally all-electric and few hydrogen-powered cars registered 20.9% of total sales in 2017. This signifies an upsurge over 2016, when electric and hybrid cars accounted for 15.7% and 24.5% respectively of total sales, making Norway a global leader in electrifying road transport.The Norway Automotive Industry Report highlights the competitive outlook of major Norway players and other global players with a presence in Norway, which includes the business strategies, product portfolio, revenue distribution, financial analysis, R&D activities, and investments. The in-depth analysis of automotive industry report will help the clients to assess their business strategies as per the competitive environment in the market space.Download Exclusive Sample Report:Major players of the Norwayautomotive industry discussed in the report are: Daimler AG, Porsche AG, Volkswagen, Audi AG, BMW, Ford Motor Company, Opel Automobile GmbH, Skoda Auto, Groupe Renault, Hyundai Motor Company, Robert Bosch GmbH, Continental AG, Denso Corp, Johnson Controls Inc., Magna International Inc., BASF SE, Mahle GmbH, Behr GmbH, Bridgestone, Michelin, Goodyear and Sumitomo Rubber,etc.Further, Norway Automotive Industry Report encompasses the major trends & growth opportunities, market dynamics, and other growth factors. The Automotive Industry outlook also comprises of key challenges for the market players, risk analysis, SWOT Analysis, BPS analysis, and Market Attractiveness. The report also includes the expert analysis which provides a complete overview of the market post analysis of the economic, political, environmental & social factors of each region and country.Browse Similar Report:Browse Some more region-specific on the automotive industry to get deeper insight into the market.India Automotive IndustryGermany Automotive IndustryNorway Electric Vehicles Market

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According to Goldstein Research, Norway electric vehicles market is anticipated to reach USD 24.8billion by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 18.6% during the forecast period, 2017-2025. Norway has been ahead in the adoption of renewable energy & environment-friendly solutions such as electric vehicles, and thus Norway acquires 29% market share of global electric vehicles. Norway has the most successful implementation of electric cars, which is possible only due to government environmental policies that include incentives & tax concessions. Moreover, high curiosity among the consumers towards advancing variations in the battery, charging facility at home & own garage, and government role in the development of commercial EV charging stations is driving the market. Further, based on technology type segmentation, battery EV segment accounted for the largest market share of 55.0% in 2017. Whereas, plug-in hybrid vehicles segment is growing at higher CAGR and is anticipated to dominate the market by the end of forecast period.Browse Full Report:Market SegmentationOn the basis of our in-depth analysis, NorwayElectric Vehicles Market can be segmented as follows:By Technology Type Battery Electric Vehicles Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles Hybrid VehiclesBy Vehicle Type Passenger Cars Commercial Vehicles Two-WheelersBy Charging Infrastructure Type CCS Type 2 AC Normal Charge Tesla Supercharger ChademoBy Charging Station Type Normal Charging Inductive Charging Super ChargingNorway Electric Vehicles MarketOutlook 2025 contains a detailed overview of the Norway electric vehicles market. On the basis of our in-depth analysis, market can be segmented in terms of market segmentation by technology type, vehicle type, charging infrastructure type and charging station type.Download Exclusive Sample Report:The Norway Electric Vehicles Market Report highlights the competitive outlook of major Norway players that includes business strategies, product portfolio, revenue distribution, financial analysis, R&D activities, and investments. The in-depth analysis of electric vehicles market report will help the clients to assess their business strategies as per the competitive environment in the market space.Major players of the Norway electric vehicles market discussed in the report are Daimler AG, General Motors Corporation, Toyota Motor Corporation, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, BYD Auto Co. Ltd., Volkswagen AG, BMW AG, Honda Motor Co. Ltd., Hyundai Motor Company, etc.Further, Norway Electric Vehicles Market Report encompasses the major trends & growth opportunities, market dynamics and other growth factors. The Electric Vehicles Market outlook also comprises of key challenges for the market players, risk analysis, SWOT Analysis, BPS analysis and Market Attractiveness. The report also includes the expert analysis which provides a complete overview of the market post analysis of the economic, political, environmental & social factors of each region and country.Browse Similar Report:Browse The global report of Electric Vehicles Market to get more insights into the market.PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 17:09:06

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NEWPORT BEACH, CA / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / NuLife Sciences, Inc. (OTCQB: "NULF") announced today that it has made the decision to relocate its corporate headquarters from Newport Beach, CA to Lafayette, LA.According to NuLife Chairman Louis J. Resweber, this move is part of an overall strategic redirection of the Company, and should result in a significant reduction in operating costs on a going forward basis.In August, NuLife entered into a merger agreement with LJR Security Services, Inc., which was based in Lafayette, and which is focused on the life safety and electronic security industry. In early October, the Company announced that it had elected Resweber, the former Owner of LJR Security, as its new Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer.In making this move, Resweber explained that (over the past five years) Lafayette area has been recognized as: - the # 1 metropolitan area in the entire U.S. for overall economic growth, according to Area Development magazine; - the # 5 city in the nation for new job development, according to a study conducted by Business Facilities magazine; - the # 6 city in the United States for the pace of economic growth, as ranked by the Burea of Economic Analysis; - one of the Top 10 small cities, in terms of economics and foreign direct investment, according to FDI Magazine; - one of the Top 25 performing cities (for the 6th time in 7 years) according to an index from the Milken Institute; - one of the Top 10 healthiest U.S. cities, according to a Gallup-Healthways poll published by 24/7 wallstreet.com; - and Lafayette was also named the "Happiest City in America" in a Wall Street Journal "Market Watch" report based on a National Bureau of Economic Research study conducted by the University of British Columbia and Harvard. "We are extremely proud to call Lafayette our new home," said Resweber, "and we are thrilled to relocate into our new corporate headquarters in the beautiful Park Tower Complex - owned and beautifully managed by Rault Resources - which is still one of the most desirable and architecturally stunning hi-rise edifices in the entire Acadiana Region." For Resweber - a native of Acadiana - this relocation marks a "homecoming" of sorts, after a 35-year business career that has included corporate transfers to California, Texas and other parts of Louisiana. Having begun his career in Lafayette, in the late 1970's, Resweber actually participated in the Grand Opening of the Park Tower in 1983, which was originally known as the Celeron Building. Resweber was an employee of Celeron Oil & Gas Corporation, the only Lafayette-based public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (CEL), at that time. Our New Corporate Headquarters  NuLife Sciences  Park Tower Complex  400 East Kaliste Saloom Road  Lafayette, LA  70508-8517In addition to its move to Lafayette, Resweber reported that the Company is also currently in the process of searching for a strategic location in the Houston, Texas area from which it can spearhead planned operations in that state."From these two locations, we feel we will be perfectly positioned to execute our business plan of pursuing emerging merger and acquisition (M&A) opportunities in the rapidly-growing, $22 billion domestic security industry," said Resweber."In fact, since August, in the short time since we announced our strategic change of direction - and our tactical move into the electronic security sector - we have already generated tremendous interest among independent alarm dealers and systems integrators in our unique portfolio of products and services," Resweber concluded. - About LJR Security Services, Inc. / Gulf West Security Network, Inc.:LJR Security Services, Inc. and Gulf West Security Network, Inc. are primarily focused on the development and expansion of its own proprietary alliance of independently-branded life safety and property protection service providers, fire alarm and fire suppression system installers, video surveillance specialists, smart home designers, commercial systems integrators, structured wiring professionals and electrical contractors. Member Companies within the Gulf West Network are specifically active in the engineering, design, sales, installation, inspection, after-market servicing and remote monitoring of electronic intrusion alert ("security alarm") and fire detection ("fire alarm") systems for both the residential and commercial markets. For more information on LJR Security / Gulf West, please visit: www.ljrsecurity.com www.gulfwestsecurity.com . - Safe Harbor Disclosure: This News Release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control. The Company's actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including those set forth below and elsewhere in this News Release. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this News Release regarding the consummation of the proposed Merger, the timing of the same, the actual performance, timing and commercial viability of therapies under development, as well as statements regarding growth strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenue or losses, projected costs, prospects and plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. When used in this News Release, the words "will," "may," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "expect," "project," "plan" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such identifying words. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this News Release. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or other information contained herein. Potential investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that its plans, intentions and expectations suggested by the forward-looking statements included in this News Release are reasonable, including the Merger, and the time currently expected to close the Merger, the Company cannot assure potential investors that these plans, intentions or expectations will be achieved. The Company discloses important factors that could cause its actual results to differ materially from its expectations under "Risk Factors" in its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year-Ended September 30, 2017, and elsewhere in this News Release. These cautionary statements qualify all forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or to persons acting on its behalf. For additional information regarding the Merger and the MergerPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 18:03:16

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Stays On Track To Beat 2018 TargetJERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / The Kibali gold mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo is continuing to deliver performance improvements across the board and is expected to post record results for the quarter to September, Randgold Resources chief executive Mark Bristow said here today.Speaking at a briefing for local media, Bristow said the mine was operating at or above its designed throughput, recovery and hoisting capacity on the back of the ramp-up in underground production, access to higher grade underground ore and the optimisation of its automated materials handling system."This confirms our mid-year view that Kibali is trending to significantly outperform its full-year production guidance of 730 000 ounces," Bristow said."During this time the mine also successfully transitioned from contractor mining underground to owner mining by an all-Kibali and almost entirely Congolese team, and commissioned its third hydropower station, Azambi. It is worth noting that this is the first industrial-size power plant built by Congolese contractors, and the expertise they gained in the process augurs well for the development of the country's engineering sector."Bristow said with the mine now operating at full capacity and steady state, the focus on finding fresh ounces to feed its high production-rate had intensified, and its exploration teams were working on the conversion of resources to reserves, as well as finding new resources."With the completion of its seven-year capital investment programme, Kibali is now poised to start returning capital to the investors who funded the development of this large and complex project in a remote part of the DRC," Bristow said."Even though Kibali has only moved into full underground production this year, it has already made a major contribution to the Congolese economy. To date, its in-country contribution amounts to almost $2.5 billion in the form of taxes, permits, infrastructure development, salaries and payments to local suppliers. In the third quarter of this year alone, Kibali spent more than $40 million on local contractors."Bristow also announced that Kibali had reached an agreement with the Ministry of Finance on the reimbursement of outstanding TVA (value added tax), which amounted to $218 million in total. The agreement allows for $40 million to be paid upfront, while the balance will be settled on an offset basis. In another significant development, the Ministry has agreed to exempt local goods and services purchased by Kibali, from TVA."We see the government as a key partner in our long term commitment to the creation of value for all stakeholders in the DRC and we engage with them on a broad range of issues, including the challenges which arose from the implementation of the country's new mining code," he said.He noted that so far this year, Kibali had spent more than $1.3 million on local community development projects, most recently on the launch of the Durba large-scale water distribution system.ENQUIRIES: Mark Bristow Kibali chairman & Randgold CEO +44 788 071 1386 Willem Jacobs Randgold GM operations Central & East Africa +243 820 678 040 Kathy du Plessis Randgold investor & media relations +44 20 7557 7738 randgold@ dpapr.com Website: www.randgoldresources.com Graham Shuttleworth Randgold financial director +44 779 771 1338 Cyrille Mutombo Randgold country manager DRC +243 990 104 774 / +243 815 842 990 CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this news release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the US Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the future price of gold, the estimation of mineral reserves and resources, the realisation of mineral reserve estimates, the timing and amount of estimated future production, costs of production, reserve determination and reserve conversion rates. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as 'will', 'plans', 'expects' or 'does not expect', 'is expected', 'budget', 'scheduled', 'estimates', 'forecasts', 'intends', 'anticipates' or 'does not anticipate', or 'believes', or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results 'may', 'could', 'would', 'might' or 'will be taken', 'occur' or 'be achieved'. Assumptions upon which such forward-looking statements are based are in turn based on factors and events that are not within the control of Randgold Resources Limited ('Randgold') and there is no assurance they will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Randgold to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to mining operations, including political risks and instability and risks related to international operations, actual results of current exploration activities, conclusions of economic evaluations, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, as well as those factors discussed in Randgold's filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (the 'SEC'). Although Randgold has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Randgold does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. CAUTIONARY NOTE TO US INVESTORS: The SEC permits companies, in their filings with the SEC, to disclose only proven and probable ore reserves. We use certain terms in this report, such as 'resources', that the SEC does not recognise and strictly prohibits us from including in our filings with the SEC. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any parts of our resources will ever be converted into reserves which qualify as 'proven and probable reserves' for the purposes of the SEC's Industry Guide number 7. RANDGOLD RESOURCES LIMITED Incorporated in Jersey, Channel IslandsPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 08:42:45

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According to Goldstein Research, South Korea consumer electronics industry is anticipated to reach USD 15.3billion by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 7.6% during the forecast period, 2017-2025. South Korea has been ahead in technology adoption and development. Also, there is increasing adoption of smart homes & smart offices devices & electronics in the region. Such advance developments along with the presence of many top global players in the region is driving the growth of South Korea consumer electronics industry. Samsung Electronics & LG Electronics are the two leading companies across the world in consumer electronics industry and they are headquartered in South Korea, thus inducing the growth of the market. Further, based on product type segmentation, television segment acquired the largest market share of 43.7% in 2017 and it also has nearly 80% penetration in South Korea. Following television segment, refrigerators take up second largest market share, which is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 7.71% over the forecast period.Browse Full Report:Market SegmentationOn the basis of our in-depth analysis, South KoreaConsumer Electronics Industry can be segmented as follows:By Product Type Visual and Audio Products Television Laptops Speakers Others (Headphones, etc.) Major Home Appliances Air Conditioner Refrigerator Washing Machines Dish Washers Others (Cooktops, Etc.) Small Home Appliances Food Processors Microwave Ovens Iron Others (Kettle, etc.)By Pricing Model Low Cost Products Medium Cost Products High End Products (Customized or luxury Brands)By Distribution Channel Online Distribution Channel Offline Distribution ChannelBy Business Model Business to Business (B2B) Business to Consumer (B2C)South Korea Consumer Electronics IndustryOutlook 2025 contains detailed overview of the South Korea consumer electronics industry. On the basis of our in-depth analysis, market can be segmented in terms of market segmentation by product type, pricing model, distribution channel and business model.Download Exclusive Sample Report:The South KoreaConsumer Electronics Industry Report highlights the competitive outlook of major South Korea players that includes business strategies, product portfolio, revenue distribution, financial analysis, R&D activities and investments. The in-depth analysis of consumer electronics industry report will help the clients to assess their business strategies as per the competitive environment in the market space.Major players of the South Korea consumer electronics industry discussed in the report are: Samsung, LG Electronics, Sony, Panasonic, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Haier Consumer Electronics Group, Logitech International, Onida Electronics, Toshiba, Videocon, Hitachi, Ltd., Hisense, TCL, etc.Further, South Korea Consumer Electronics Industry Report encompasses the major trends & growth opportunities, market dynamics and other growth factors. The Consumer Electronics Industryoutlookalsocomprises of key challenges for the market players, risk analysis, SWOT Analysis, BPS analysis and Market Attractiveness. The report also includes the expert analysis which provides a complete overview of the market post analysis of the economic, political, environmental & social factors of each region and country.Browse Similar Report:Browse the research report on India Consumer Electronics Industry for an in-depth analysis of the consumer electronics industry.PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 09:04:01

Splash Worldwide Welcomes Andrew Starling and Beth Axworthy to Lead Global Business Development and Marketing

Splash Worldwide

Shannon Deoul, 310-450-1482

Creative technology company Splash Worldwide has announced the addition of Andrew Starling and Beth Axworthy to drive global business development and coordinated marketing initiatives across the companys seven offices. Both based in Splashs flagship London office and reporting to CEO Paul Stonebridge, Starling will serve as Global Business Development and Marketing Director with Axworthy serving as Global Business Development and Marketing Manager. The duo joins Splash from Hogarth, bringing proven success in driving business growth through innovative strategies.

Splash has shown continued growth year-over-year as the traditional industry models shift and both existing and new clients find value in our agility to deliver their creative messages at scale worldwide, said Stonebridge. Andrew and Beth bring a deep understanding of industry trends and experience with driving rapid business growth in this sector. Were thrilled to have this dynamic team in place to organize and execute new strategies and support the efforts of both myself and our CRO Erik Semmelhack.

Starling and Axworthy both spent the past five years at Hogarth where they established its global business development department and played a key role in driving the companys strong annual growth. Prior to Hogarth, Starling spent eight years working in business development at BBC Worldwide; he also has extensive experience with management consulting in the media sector, both in London and New York. Axworthy, prior to her tenure at Hogarth, specialized in business development and marketing for the pharmaceutical and clinical research industry. Both bring a proven track record of success with building sustainable growth, managing and integrating global teams, and a high level of industry expertise.

Splash has differentiated itself in the market by focusing on building an impressive technology component supporting creative production, asset management, and delivery, said Starling. The robust tech capabilities already in place, flexible nature of being an independent company, a proven track record with some of the worlds leading companies, and Splashs end-to-end production offering are a powerhouse combination. Beth and I are looking forward to telling the Splash story more widely and supporting Splashs long-term success.

About Splash Worldwide

Splash is a creative technology company that unleashes creativity for everyone, everywhere. With multi-disciplinary insight, creative, production, technology, consulting and innovation teams, we collaborate with clients to create impactful content and distribute it within the right ecosystems. Our offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, Portland, Amsterdam, Dubai, and Singapore serve the worlds largest brands and bridge the gap from concept to delivery. https://splashworldwide.com/

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Splash Worldwide welcomes Andrew Starling and Beth Axworthy to lead global business development and marketingPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 17:30:59

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22th October 2018 - Luxury Replica provides totally amazing products from Swiss. Swiss watches, the syntagm which breaks stereotypes and make things be durable, making people choose quality instead of quantity. Switzerland is a country of banks, ski resorts and, of course, hours. What person on our planet does not know about this accessory, which has become one of the symbols, glorifying the power and impeccability of the country to the whole world. Swiss watches on the wrist of their owner silently talk about his delicate taste, rationality and perfection of style. This unique piece of wardrobe, which hails from a small country located in the heart of Europe, is not only an element of exact time, it is an absolute sign of the success of its owner. Why does the whole world prefer this particular category of watches? Why do people want to wear exactly Swiss chronometers, preferring them instead of Japanese, American or French?The website of Luxury Replica provides a large range of products from diverse Swiss brands, that can easily suit your needs and preferences. Not only simple images of the watches, but also detailed and really thorough description of each and every product is provided.Why should you consider the Luxury Replica services? Lets start with the fact that Swiss watches have the longest history, which is calculated not even in decades, but in whole centuries of human existence. Swiss watches are a traditional fashion accessory of a status person. Thus, influential people emphasize their high level, demonstrate luxury and wealth. It is known that many of these Swiss models are of high cost, and therefore not everyone can afford to buy such a product. This feature distinguishes chronographs among various standard variants and fakes. Real Swiss watches can be identified by the following features, and the Luxury Replica products suit these criteria indeed. First, models are created in Switzerland. 50% of locally produced parts are used for manufacturing; second, quality control. Each product can be thoroughly checked by experts;Next, the stigma. The corresponding mark can be seen only after passing the quality control.About Luxury Replica:Luxury Replica is an online shop of Swiss watches. If you are wondering to acquire for yourself a nice Swiss watches, then you came at the right place, because the Luxury Replica services will be able to suit all your needs.Contact:Company Name: Luxury ReplicaWebsite: https://luxuryreplica.toPR-Inside.com: 2018-10-22 15:21:00

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Yingzi Technology FPF Future Pig Farm, the intelligent engine that will drive forward the transformation and improvement of pig farming. It will revolutionise the pork industry!NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2018 / On the morning of October 19th, as the Platinum Sponsor of the 2018 Leman Pig Conference, Yingzi Technology held the "FPF Series Product Launch Conference" at Zhengzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center, and officially released the series products of its "FPF" Yingzi engine. It is understood that this is the third big product launch conference held by Yingzi Technology in 7 months after the global launch of its Pig Face Recognition 2.0 on July 16.What is the Yingzi Tethnology?Yingzi Technology was co-founded by a group of outstanding industrial scientists and IT talents in 2017. Based on Internet of Things, big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and other emerging technologies, it's committed to integrate agriculture with Internet to empower the entire "farm-to-table" industry chain, providing intelligent business ecosystem platform services and "BAG" digital solutions for this industry.The co-founders of Yingzi Technology include CEO Dr.Jackson He(has once been the general manager of Intel Asia Pacific R&D Co., Ltd.), VP&CSO Dr. Haitao Jiang ,CTO Jason Xie, and CDO Dr. Qilai. They all have an experience in Silicon Valley over 20 years and are extensively experienced in high-technology areas like artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and internet of things.What is the FPF Intelligence Engine?As reported, "FPF " (the abbreviation of Future Pig Farm) pioneers a method of moving pig farm to the Internet, and represents a digital image of the farm and its production management on the Internet.The Yingzi Intelligence Engine is an intelligent business ecosystem based on artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, big data, blockchain, genetic engineering and other technologies. It will provide "BAG" digital solutions for the entire swine industry from "farm to table" including farm, feed, management, trade, slaughter, supermarkets, tables and other industry links.What products the "FPF" contains?Use a formula to illustrate this question:FPF = Yingzi Intelligence Engine + IoT Hardware of FPF series + Mobile/Internet Applications.More specially, the Yingzi Intelligence Engine = pig industry experts / technology + IT experts / technology. The intelligent business ecosystem platform Yingzi-created, like the car engine, will empower a full transformation and upgrade of the swine industry. What are the strengths of FPF series products?At the first, the FPF series of IoT products are digitally threaded, and it means there is a human-pig-object-farm connection and digitalization on the Internet. At the same time, this intelligent connection also realizes automatic collection of data instead of hand-input, removing obstacles for the digitalization of the swine industry.Secondly , the FPF, supported by the Intelligence Engine, is to provide the industry with an Internet pig farming platform which has tremendous capabilities that traditional farm management systems can't obtain, such as intelligent data calculation and analysis, intelligent control of equipment, automatic tasks push, and individualized and precise management of pigs.Finally , FPF is a platform of industry-wide synergies and capabilities and resources sharing. It provides a variety of collaborative tools to make farming no longer a relatively isolated work, but a collaborative, socialized production activity. It's functions such as Veterinary Assistant, Peer Exchanges, etc., are not limited to only farmer, but achieving an industry collaboration by integrating third-party services and applications.In summary, Intelligence Connection + Internet Intelligence Platform + Synergic Farming= FPF.Guangzhou Yingzi Technology LTD.Monica Wang675183529@ qq.comSOURCE: Guangzhou Yingzi Technology LTDIn the 1990s, the whole region settled down and dropped off the list of major American concerns. But in recent years, instability, poverty and violence have combined to revive fears that Central America imperils the peace and security of the United States. Unfortunately, it has not gotten the focused attention it once had  much less the kind of help these countries need to address their problems effectively.The federal government on Sunday said there are no missing names of beneficiaries in the ongoing verification of the liquidated Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL) workers.

The supervising Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, said on Thursday while addressing pensioners in Lagos, the account of those verified would be credited with their entitlements this week.

The minister said the verification exercise, which was meant to end on October 22 (today), has been extended by additional one week to ensure all qualified beneficiaries were attended.

Mrs Ahmed said the verification exercise and payment of all entitlements of the pensioners was based on the recent directives and approval of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The minister was represented by the head of the federal government delegation on inspection tour of the various centres and secretary, Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), Mohammed Dikwa.

Mr Dikwa said adequate measures have been put in place to address some challenges being encountered since the exercise started last week Monday, fast track the process and get every pensioner properly verified.

He appealed to the pensioners to be patient and remain orderly, adding that after the verification exercise, 50 per cent payment of entitlements would be made in this first tranche from this week.

The process was supervised by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to ensure the exercise was transparent and credible.

Also, the biometric capturing of all verified pensioners will address cases of duplicity and ensure seamless payment of the remaining 50 per cent to entitlements of the ex-workers.

For those who are deceased and missing documents, he said, separate desks have also been created in the three centres, in Kano, Enugu and Lagos, to ensure they are verified to enable them receive their entitlements.The United States Ambassador to Nigeria, William Symington, says that Nigeria is the seventh largest integrated market in the world, with more endowments than most countries.

Mr Symington made the remark on Monday in Ilorin while delivering the Convocation Lecture at the 34th Convocation Ceremony of the University of Ilorin.

The lecture was entitled: Citizen Leadership and the Link between Economic Diversity and Economic Good Governance.

He observed that with the abundant human and natural resources in the country, Nigeria has wonderful and incredible beauty, while urging Nigerians to help the country succeed.

Mr Symington was of the opinion that Nigeria is wonderfully endowed and beautiful, adding that anyone that has traversed the length and breadth of the country would appreciate its beauty.

He added that one of the most beautiful forests can be found in Cross River State, while a trip to Ikogosi Warm Spring and Badagry beach would attest to the beauty and splendour of Nigeria.

According to the envoy, Nigeria, like its citizens, are incredibly blessed and gifted.

Mr Symington reiterated that the relationship between Nigeria and the United States is that of good partners with good intention.

The Nigerian people have the spirit of the country; they are friendly, diverse, resilient and hardworking. I believe in the Nigeria Dream, he said.

He therefore urged the citizens to be proud of Nigeria irrespective of their tribe or state of origin.

I believe in (the) Nigeria(n) dream, I have high hope that Nigeria can be great.

Nigerians should be thinking of what they can do to make Nigeria beautiful and be the giant of the world, the Ambassador added.

The US envoy described the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), as a very laudable programme of national integration and encouraging a sense of service to the nation.

He, therefore, called on the graduating students to use the opportunity provided by the NYSC in rendering service to the nation.

Earlier, the Vice Chancellor, Sulyman Abdulkareem, urged the graduating students to make a positive difference wherever they find themselves.

(NAN)Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, has called for a transparent and thorough investigation into the death of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in a meeting on Monday with Saudi Arabias foreign minister, the foreign minister of the Asian nation said.

Mr Khashoggis killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul has drawn international criticism, with the kingdom on Sunday, calling it a huge and grave mistake, while adding that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware of the case.

Indonesias foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, said Mr Widodo had met Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir and expressed concern over the case.

Indonesia hopes the investigation being carried out is transparent and thorough, Mr Marsudi said after the meeting at the presidential palace, which she attended.

Saudi minister calls Mr Khashoggi killing a mistake.

They made the mistake when they killed Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it, Mr Al-Jubeir said.

The weeks of denial and lack of credible evidence in the face of allegations from Turkish officials that Mr Khashoggi had been killed, have shaken global confidence in ties with the worlds top oil exporter.

U.S. Treasury Secretary, Stephen Mnuchin, said Saudi Arabias admission that the Washington Post columnist was killed in a fistfight was a good first step but not enough, though he added it was premature to discuss sanctions against Riyadh.

Three European powers  Germany, Britain and France  pressed Riyadh to provide facts, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would not export arms to Saudi Arabia while uncertainty over Mr Khashoggis fate persisted.

Late on Sunday, the Saudi Press Agency said both Saudi King Salman and Prince Mohammed had called Mr Khashoggis son, Salah, to express condolences.

Mr Jubeir had extended condolences to Mr Khashoggis family earlier on Sunday. Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this, he said.

He said the Saudis did not know how Mr Khashoggi, a Saudi national and U.S. resident, had been killed or where his body was.

He also said Prince Mohammed was not responsible.

Mr Khashoggi vanished after entering the consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

After two weeks denying any involvement in the 59-year-olds disappearance, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, died during a fight in the building.

An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold.

Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms, Germany, Britain and France said in their joint statement.

Indonesian President, Joko Widodo

There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened  beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

The White House said late on Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump had spoken to French President, Emmanuel Macron and the two had discussed a range of issues including circumstances surrounding Mr Khashoggis death.

Reflecting international scepticism over its account, a senior Saudi government official laid out a new version that contradicts previous explanations.

The latest account includes details on how 15 Saudis sent to confront Mr Khashoggi had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and killed him in a chokehold when he resisted.

A member of the team dressed in Mr Khashoggis clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.

Turkish officials suspect Mr Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate by the Saudi agents and his body cut up.

Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting Mr Khashoggis murder.

In a speech on Sunday, Turkish President, Recep Erdogan appeared to suggest he was getting ready to release some information about the Turkish investigation, and would do so at his weekly speech on Tuesday to members of his ruling AK Party.

Mr Erdogan has remained largely silent on the case, although Turkeys pro-government newspapers have released information about events at the consulate.

Turkeys Anadolu agency said early on Monday that Messrs Erdogan and Trump had spoken on the telephone and agreed that all aspects of the case needed to be cleared up.

For Saudi Arabias allies  particularly in the West  the question will be whether they believe that the prince, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability. King Salman, 82, has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to him.

I am not satisfied until we find the answer. But it was a big first step, it was a good first step. But I want to get to the answer, Mr Trump said, when asked about the Saudi investigation and Riyadhs firing of officials.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said that obviously theres been deception, and theres been lies.

He had suggested last week that rogue killers might have been responsible for Mr Khashoggis death, a comment critics called an effort to play down the crisis.

A leading Republican U.S. senator said he believed the crown prince was behind the killing, adding that the Saudis had lost credibility in their explanations of his death.

Yes, I think he did it, Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN, referring to the crown prince.

King Salman ordered the dismissal of five officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court adviser seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohammed, and Deputy Intelligence Chief, Ahmed Asiri, Saudi state media reported on Saturday.

The king also ordered a restructuring of the intelligence service, to be led by Prince Mohammed, suggesting the prince still retained wide-ranging authority.

Some governments and prominent executives have said they would pull out of a forthcoming investment conference in Saudi Arabia.

According to the senior Saudi official, the Saudi team rolled up Mr Khashoggis body in a rug, took it out in a consular vehicle and handed it to a local cooperator for disposal.

(Reuters/NAN)The United States sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait on Monday in the second of such operation this year, amid China tensions.

The warships passed through Taiwan Strait as the U.S. military increases the frequency of transits through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.

The voyage risks further heightening tensions with China but will likely be viewed in self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support by President Donald Trumps government, amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.

Reuters was first to report U.S. consideration of the sensitive operation on October 20.

The ships transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, Commander Nate Christensen, deputy spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in a statement.

The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows, he added.

Taiwans defence ministry said it closely monitored the operation and was able to maintain the security of the seas and the airspace as it occurred.

There was no immediate comment from China.

The U.S. Navy conducted a similar mission in the straits international waters in July, which had been the first such voyage in about a year.

The latest operation shows the U.S. Navy is increasing the pace of strait passages.

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan, but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is the islands main source of arms.

The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than 15 billion dollars in weaponry since 2010.

China views Taiwan as a wayward province and has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island.

It raised concerns over U.S. policy toward Taiwan in talks earlier with U.S. Defence Secretary, Jim Mattis, in Singapore.

As the United States prepared for a fresh passage through the strait, it told Chinas military that its overall policy toward Taiwan was unchanged.

Mr Mattis delivered that message to Chinas Defence Minister Wei Fenghe personally on October18, on the sidelines of an Asian security forum.

Minister Wei raised Taiwan and concerns about our policy. The Secretary reassured Minister Wei that we havent changed our Taiwan policy, our one China policy, Randall Schriver, a U.S. assistant secretary of defence who helps guide Pentagon policy in Asia, told reporters traveling with Mattis.

So it was, I think, a familiar exchange.

Taiwan is only one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a bitter trade war, U.S. sanctions, and Chinas increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea.

Taiwans relations with China have deteriorated since the islands President Tsai Ing-wen from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party swept to power in 2016.

Beijing, which has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, responded to the July passage with a warning to the United States to avoid jeopardising peace and stability in the strategic waterway.

It has also viewed U.S. overtures toward Taiwan with alarm, including its unveiling a new de facto embassy in Taiwan and passage of the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages U.S. officials to visit the island.

Military experts say the balance of power between Taiwan and China has shifted decisively in Chinas favour in recent years, and China could easily overwhelm the island unless U.S. forces came quickly to Taiwans aid.

China has also alarmed Taiwan by ramping up military exercises this year, including flying bombers and other military aircraft around the island and sending its aircraft carrier through the narrow Taiwan Strait separating it from Taiwan.

(Reuters/NAN)The suspended executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Usman Yusuf, on Monday forcefully gained entrance into the Abuja head office of the scheme with the help of several security operatives.

Workers and staff union with a handful of security officials stationed at the gate tried to restrain Mr Yusuf from entering but were overpowered by several police officers on his entourage.

Many staff members of the scheme where tear-gassed in the melee by almost 50 police officers that Mr Yusuf came with.

They tear-gassed our men and women. They almost shot when we tried to stop them. Now he is in his office with many police officers guarding him, Omameji Abdulrazak, the workers union chairman said.

Mr Yusuf was suspended last weekend by the governing council who also set up a panel to probe allegations against him.

The executive secretary was previously suspended by the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, in July 2017 over alleged gross misconduct and fraud but was in February controversially reinstated by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Similarly, Enyantu Ifenne, the chairperson of the governing council of the scheme announced his second suspension on Thursday over similar allegations of fraud and infractions.

The chairperson of Friday reacted to fears of Mr Yusuf being reinstated the second time despite piles of allegations.

The fears also became rife on Friday especially after he resumed work despite Thursdays suspension. But the chairperson said he was only allowed to pack his things and that he will be locked out on Monday.

He (Yusuf) was here today (Friday) because we allowed him to use yesterday and today to clear his office. By Monday he is not going to be allowed in, he will be locked out, Mrs Ifenne had told our correspondent.

Yusuf forcefully enters office with police support Yusuf forcefully enters office with police support Yusuf forcefully enters office with police support Yusuf forcefully enters office with police support

Workers of the union are currently protesting at the gate of the scheme.

The presidency is yet to react to the latest controversy amid reports Mr Yusuf has President Buharis backing.

More details later. The Nigerian government says it will take appropriate steps to restore peace at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

This was disclosed by the health minister in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES on Monday afternoon.

The state-run health insurance provider was thrown into a fresh crisis on Monday when the Executive Secretary, Usman Yusuf, ignored his indefinite suspension by the governing council of the agency.

Mr Yusufs suspension was announced by the council on Thursday to allow a panel the council set up probe allegations of misconduct and fraud against him.

Despite being ordered to stay away from Monday, Mr Yusuf stormed the headquarters of the scheme with a contingent of about 50 police officers and forced his way into his office.

Workers and a handful of security personnel at the gate on Monday morning were tear-gassed and harassed in the melee.

Reacting to the developments in a telephone conversation with PREMIUM TIMES Monday afternoon, the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, said he was yet to be properly briefed.

I have not being properly briefed on the development at the NHIS. I have called for a meeting and once I get full details of what is happening, I will send my report to the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).

I can only assure you that government will take appropriate steps to restore peace in NHIS and ensure that the scheme fulfills its mandate, he said.

Mr Adewole had himself been at odds with Mr Yusuf over the running of the NHIS. The minister was the first to suspend the executive secretary last July at a time the governing council had not been put in place, also over alleged gross misconduct and fraud.

The immediate reaction of the executive secretary back then was to question the authority of the minister to suspend him, although he eventually stayed away from office until February when he was controversially reinstated by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Mr Adewole had also asked a panel to investigate the allegations against Mr Yusuf. Documents in possession of PREMIUM TIMES revealed that the panel indicted the official and recommended sanctions.

Since his reinstatement, the agency has been enmeshed in infighting as Mr Yusuf and some senior officials traded accusations of fraud.

Eight months later, Mr Yusuf was again handed another suspension over allegations of fraud and misconduct by the schemes governing council inaugurated earlier in March.

While announcing his suspension to journalists on Thursday, Enyantu Ifenne, the chairperson of the governing council, said several executive infractions that we can not ignore had been observed, noting that the council resolved to suspend Mr Yusuf because it was inundated with petitions and infractions against him.

PREMIUM TIMES on Friday published details of nine infractions allegedly committed by Mr Yusuf as released by the governing council.

In one of which was about insubordination, the council noted that its chairperson in particular had been subjected to verbal assaults, unruly outbursts and various forms of unprofessional behaviour by the controversial executive secretary.

Also reacting to Mondays siege, Mrs Ifenne said the council had no position yet as it was yet to meet.

Give us sometime to digest what is going on. Once we sit, we will brief you, she told our correspondent.

Meanwhile, workers at the two Abuja offices of the NHIS downed tools over the Monday incident and are currently protesting at the head office of the agency, calling on President Buhari to do the needful.

The needful is for the President to remove Mr Yusuf and bring in somebody who can salvage this agency which is at the brink of collapse, Chris Achi, the secretary, Senior Civil Servants of the NHIS explained.

Calls to Mr Yusufs known official telephone line hit the voicemail. A voice of a man had earlier told our reporter its a wrong number when several attempts were made on Thursday to reach Mr Yusuf through the line. Officials in the scheme however confirmed the number is that of Mr Yusuf.

The presidency is yet to react to the latest controversy.The immediate past governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has arrived the Federal High Court in Lagos to begin his criminal trial.

Mr Fayose, accompanied by officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, arrived the courts premises at about 8.30am amidst armed police officers.

The former governor is facing an 11-count charge of conspiracy and money laundering.

When he walked into the court and sat down, he smiled at the cameras, posed for the photographers, and asked them, Have you taken enough?

His arraignment before Mojisola Olatoregun is currently underway.

File photo of Former Ekiti governor, Fayose, in court for his trial Former Ekiti governor, Fayose, arrives court for his criminal trial Former Ekiti governor, Fayose, arrives court for his criminal trial Former Ekiti governor, Fayose, arrives court for his criminal trial Former Ekiti governor, Fayose, arrives court for his criminal trialThe immediate past governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, was arraigned Monday before a Lagos Division of the Federal High Court over an 11-count charge of conspiracy and money laundering.

Mr Fayose, and his company, Spotless Limited, pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

The judge, Mojisola Olatoregun, ordered that he be remanded in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and then adjourned till October 24 for hearing of his bail application.

According to the EFCC, Mr Fayose received 1.2 billion to fund his 2014 gubernatorial campaign in Ekiti State, a sum they said he ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act.

Mr Fayose arrived at the court premises at about 8.30 a.m, accompanied by EFCC officials and armed police officers.

Femi Fani-Kayode, a former aviation minister and member of the Peoples Democratic Party, was also in court to show solidarity.

Im here to let people know that hes not alone, I know what hes going through because Ive been there before, Mr Fani-Kayode told journalists after the court sitting.

Mr Fani-Kayode said the federal government has subjected every member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party to one form of persecution or another.

The charges against Mr Fayose are reproduced below:

IN THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT

IN THE LAGOS JUDICIAL DIVISION

HOLDEN AT LAGOS

CHARGE NO:..

BETWEEN

FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA ) COMPLAINANT

AND

1. MR. AYODELE FAYOSE DEFENDANTS

2. SPOTLESS LIMITED

CHARGE

COUNT 1

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE and MR. ABIODUN AGBELE (now facing another charge) on or about 17th June, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, took possession of the sum of N1, 219, 000, 000.00 (One Billion, Two Hundred and Nineteen Million Naira) to fund your 2014 gubernatorial campaign in Ekiti State, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) and (4) of the same Act.

COUNT 2

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE on or about 17th June, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, without going through the financial institution received cash payment in the sum of $5, 000, 000 (Five Million Dollars) from SENATOR MUSILIU OBANIKORO, the then Minister of State for Defence, which sum exceeded the amount authorised by law and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Sections 1 and 16 (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 16 (2) (b) of the same Act.

COUNT 3

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE on or about 7th April, 2015 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did retain in your fixed deposit account No: 9013074033 with Zenith Bank Plc, the sum of N300, 000, 000.00 (Three Hundred Million Naira) which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 4

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE and SPOTLESS LIMITED between 17th June, 2014 and 4th August, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, took control of an aggregate sum of N317, 000, 000.00 (Three Hundred and Seventeen Million Naira) by depositing same into the Zenith Bank Plcs Account No: 1010170969 belonging to SPOTLESS INVESTMENT LIMITED, a company controlled by you and members of your family and which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 5

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE between 26th June, 2014 and 27th August, 2014 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, took control of an aggregate sum of N305, 760, 000.00 (Three Hundred and Five Million, Seven Hundred and Sixty Thousand Naira) in your Zenith Bank Account No: 1003126654 which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 6

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE between 18th June, 2014 and 23rd June, 2014 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did procure DE-PRIVATEER LIMITED and one ABIODUN AGBELE to retain in their Account No: 1013835889 domiciled with Zenith Bank Plc, Apapa branch, Lagos, an aggregate sum of N719, 490, 000.00 (Seven Hundred and Nineteen Million, Four Hundred and Ninety Thousand Naira) on your behalf, which sum formed parts of proceed of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18 (c) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

Former Ekiti governor, Fayose, arraigned, remanded in EFCC custody Former Ekiti governor, Fayose, arraigned, remanded in EFCC custody

COUNT 7

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE and SPOTLESS LIMITED on or about 4th August, 2014, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use the sum of N270, 000, 000.00 (Two Hundred and Seventy Million Naira) to acquire a property at Plot 1504, Yedsema Street, Maitama, Abuja from one RABI KUNDILI, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 8

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE between 12th November, 2014 and 20th August, 2015, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use an aggregate sum of N1, 151, 711, 573 (One Billion, One Hundred and Fifty One Million, Seven Hundred and Eleven Thousand, Five hundred and Seventy Three Naira) to acquire chalets 3 and 4, 6 and 9 of the property situate at Plot 100 Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island, Lagos in the name of JJ TECHNICAL SERVICE, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 9

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE between 23rd April, 2015 and 30th April, 2015 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use an aggregate sum of N200, 000, 000.00 (Two Hundred Million Naira) to acquire a property known as No. 44, Osun Crescent, Maitama, Abujain the name of MOJI OLADEJI (your elder sister), which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 10

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE between 23rd April, 2015 and 30th April, 2015 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did use an aggregate sum of N270, 000, 000.00 (Two Hundred and Seventy Million Naira) to acquire a property known as Plot 1504 Yedseram Street, Maitama, Abuja in the name of SPOTLESS INVESTMENT LIMITED, which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15 (2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.

COUNT 11

That you MR. AYODELE FAYOSE on or about 30th January, 2015 within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did procure STILL EARTH LIMITED to retain in its account with First City Monument Bank (FCMB), the sum of N132, 500, 000.00 (One Hundred and Thirty Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand Naira) for your benefit, which sum formed part of the proceeds of your unlawful activity, to wit: gratification which you received from SAMCHASE NIGERIA LIMITED and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18 (c) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.The Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, on Monday continued his protest against the outcome of the All progressives Congress (APC) primaries in his state as he accused the National Chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole, of colluding with a cabal in Lagos to write fake results which produced Dapo Abiodun as the partys governorship candidate for the 2019 election.

Mr Amosun made the allegation in an interview with journalists shortly after swearing-in the new Chief Judge of the state, Mosunmola Dipeolu, at the governors office in Abeokuta, the state capital.

He alleged the involvement of former governors Bola Tinubu (Lagos) and Segun Osoba (Ogun) in the alleged fraud, citing their silence on the matter as evidence of their consent to it.

The President already knows there was no election in Ogun State. He knows that they just went to Lagos, write all results, and that what they did is fraud. If the National Working Committee or the National Chairman said there was any election in Ogun State, It was all fraud. That is what I said, Mr Amosun stated.

The outgoing governor, who could not hide his bitterness, insisted that there were no genuine primaries by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party, aside the one which produced Adekunle Akinlade as governorship candidate.

Mr Amosun had initially announced Mr Akinlade as consensus candidate before the NWC of the party insisted on conducting direct primaries. The NWC, after the controversial primaries declared Mr Abiodun governorship candidate of the party. The Ogun APC leadership, loyal to Mr Amosun, however conducted a rival primary that produced Mr Akinlade.

Mr President already knows, there was no election in Ogun State, other than the one we held, the governor said.

The issue of Chief Osoba and Asiwaju and co, what we said was that there was a deafening silence from their end, and silence means consent. You can record me and publish out in your newspapers

Former Lagos state governor, Bola Tinubu. [Photo credit: THISDAYLIVE]

We have not heard one word from any of them. Was there any election in Ogun State? Yes or No? They should come out and those that are hiding behind one finger, they cannot come out. People at this level should be courageous enough to take position, to come out , to come and tell us whether there was election.

On governorship, the day they said they did it or not, the one that we had, there was live telecast, people even witnessed. They all came that they are changing again. They removed Leke Adewolu, Mikail Kazeem. All of those ones are nothing but fraud, the governor said.The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, on Monday said he believes he has the support of the majority of his partys state governors.

Mr Oshiomhole was reacting to the reported plot by some APC governors to remove him from office.

The party chairman had on Sunday in a statement by his press secretary, Simon Ebegbulem, alleged that conservatives within the party are ganging up to pass a vote of no-confidence in him.

He said in the statement that his sin was his refusal to allow continued impunity and circumvention of due process being perpetuated in some states.

He added that he was not surprised by the gang-up, as he never had the illusion that the process of reforming the party was going to be an easy one.

Mr Oshiomholes spokesperson, however, called back the statement shortly after he sent it to journalists.

The party chairman, who fielded questions from State House correspondents in Abuja on Monday, said only one or two of the 23 state governors under the APC platform were vehemently opposed to his leadership style.

Maybe there is one or two governors who have issues and those issues can only be resolved democratically within the spirit, the letter and all the relevant positions of the APC constitution, the APC Election guidelines and of course the Electoral Act.

The Electoral Act is completely blind and our partys rules also are completely blind to power but its sensitive to procedures; it is sensitive processes.

The good news is that overwhelming majority (of the governors), we have about 23 governors, I think maybe one or two may have some situations they would like to see differently.

But that is the way the world is, but we should uphold the rules. But, it is not correct to suggest that there is a move to remove me.

Yes, one governor has publicly said he would ensure that Im removed  that is fine. The beauty of democracy is anyone or two could say something but the majority is what matters.

But even those two when they have deeper reflection would recognise that what I have done is to stubbornly insist that the rules are obeyed, nothing more nothing less.

Although Mr Oshiomhole did not mention the one or two governors who were opposed to his leadership following the primaries in their states, PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported the disaffection of some governors. Some of these include Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara and Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun.

In Zamfara, Mr Oshiomholes executives and Mr Yari have blamed each other for the violence and confusion that characterised the partys primaries in the state.

In Ogun, Mr Amosun on Monday accused Mr Oshiomhole and a Lagos cabal of committing fraud in the governorship primaries in Ogun State where a candidate opposed by the governor emerged in a parallel primary. The APC headquarters has since recognised Dapo Abiodun as the partys governorship candidate in the state to the chagrin of Mr Amosun.

Former Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun [Photo: The Guardian Nigeria]

Mr Oshiomhole, who described the ongoing political outcry in some quarters as his finest moment, said he would continue to support the interest of the ordinary members of the party against those of the powerful elements or political bigwigs.

He said he was very encouraged by the level of participation of members of the party in the political processes including the just concluded partys primaries across the country.

He however declined comment on the Mondays Supreme Court ruling which set aside an interim order of the Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt, which gave the APC, the go ahead to conduct its Ward, Local Government and State Congresses in Rivers State.

The Supreme Court nullified the congress that produced the current APC leadership in the state, a ruling that could have wider ramifications on the ruling party.

Mr Oshiomhole said he needed lawyers interpretation of the ruling before passing any comment.The Allied Congress Party of Nigerias (ACPN) presidential candidate in the 2019 general elections, Oby Ezekwesili, on Sunday at a forum in India spoke on the plight of the remaining Chibok girls and the need to promote girl-child rights.

Mrs Ezekwesili, co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement, was nominated for the Mother Teresa Awards 2018 alongside many women rights advocates from all over the world.

According to the organisers, among those nominated for this years edition were Shirin Ebadi (Nobel Laureate 2003), Tawakkol Karman (Nobel Laureate 2011), Rula Ghani (First Lady of Afghanistan), Yeonmi Park (North Korean refugee), Nadia Murad (Nobel Laureate, Yazidi Refugee & UN Goodwill Ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking).

The former director general of chief ministers strategic Reform Unit (SRU), Salman Sufi, won this years edition of the award.

The ex-minister on her Twitter handle said she spoke on the plight of missing Chibok and Dapchi schoolgirls kidnapped by the Boko Haram insurgents.

She said; I am a voice to the 219 young women who were taking away by terrorists when they went to school. I have been a champion for them even up till date, until all of them are rescued. We already have 107 that came back and 112 of them are still with the terrorists.

Mrs Ezekwesili reportedly lamented the neglect faced by the female gender and gender subjugation all over the world.

It is against social justice for us to look away and to ignore the cries of women in any way. It is against social justice to pretend as if things are not wrong around us.

Lets have it at the back of our minds saying I will diminish, if I diminish a girl-child. Ill be disempowered if I disempower a girl-child. Thats at the level of individuals, she admonished.

Hammering on gender equality, Mrs Ezekwesili highlighted that both females and males should be given equal opportunity towards being successful.

We go to the level of policy then to the level of legislation, community and the nation at large.

Women and boys should be allowed to thrive in equal opportunity and in the way to go.

The memorial award dedicated to the late Mother Teresa, a philanthropist and humanitarian, and is bestowed as an honour to individuals or organisations who aim to promote peace, harmony and social justice.

There are ongoing campaigns to ensure the freedom of Leah Sharibu, the abducted Dapchi schoolgirl who was kidnapped in Dapchi, Yobe State in 2017.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how international organisations, non-governmental organisations and individuals have been campaigning vigorously to ensure her release, despite threats from the insurgents that they will keep Miss Sharibu a perpetual slave.Bello Adoke, a former Nigerias attorney general, has extolled the virtues of deceased former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Legbo Kutigi.

Mr Kutigi, CJN from January 2007 to December 2009, was announced dead in London by his family on Sunday.

He was 78.

Tributes have poured in from all classes and corners of Nigeria since the announcement, which he family said came following a protracted illness.

In a short but glowing tribute he sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Monday, Mr Adoke said he was particularly troubled by the news, especially as it reminds him of all the ways he had been greatly impacted by the late eminent jurist.

His demise is a personal loss. He touched my life in a most phenomenal way. He was always willing to assist and offer advice to those who flocked around him.

He, it was, that encouraged me alongside Justices Ejiwunmi, Acholonu and Katsina-Alu to take Silk in 2006 and appointed me to the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC).

I recall with nostalgia the very able manner he presided over the meetings of the LPPC. Apart from democratized the process, he encouraged robust consideration of applicants for the Rank in line with set rules thereby ensuring fairness and transparency in the appointment of Senior Advocates of Nigeria, Mr Adoke said.

The former top Nigerian law officer said the family of Mr Kutigi and Nigerians in general should accept solace in the distinguished life he lived.

The Nigerian Judiciary has indeed lost yet another cerebral jurist and shining star.

He was an accomplished administrator and consensus builder who brought his immense wealth of experience to bear on his service to the country in various capacities he was called upon to serve, Mr Adoke said.The Norwegian Ambassador to Nigeria, Jens-Petter Kjemprud, on Monday disclosed the plan by the Embassy to increase visas issuance to Nigerians.

Mr Kjemprud told the News of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the embassy would soon be discussing the possibility with the VFS Global and the Nigerian-Norwegian Chambers of Commerce (NNCC).

According to him, the number of Nigerians issued visas to Norway has been quite small.

We really want to see more Nigerians engage with Norwegians in the near future. But we know that the visas issued to Nigerians have been quite few.

The embassy is planning to discuss with VFS Global and the Nigerian-Norwegian Chamber of Commerce (NNCC) to increase the number of visas to Nigerians soon, he said.

The ambassador noted that out of the 870 visa applications from Nigerians last year, only 370 were issued, adding that more Nigerians needed to be issued visas.

Mr Kjemprud also disclosed that out of the 600 visa applications received by the embassy from Nigerians between January and August this year, only 290 of them were issued visas.

He said that Nigerians were always applying to visit Norway for family, business and official reasons, as well as for tourism.

The ambassador expressed optimism that the issuance of more visas to Nigerians would promote people-to-people relationships, trade, investment opportunities and other exchanges between both countries.

He said that there was currently a growing interest of more Norwegian fishery companies in doing businesses in Nigeria, as well as promoting exchanges with their Nigerian counterparts.

(NAN)The executive secretary of the Nigeria Christian Pilgrim Commission (NCPC), Tor Uja, says the commission will commence the 2018 pilgrimage to Israel on November 24.

Mr Uja made this known on Monday at the Living Faith Church, Goshen City, Keffi, Nassarawa state during the 2018 Training and Orientation for the Federal Medical team selected for the 2018 pilgrimage.

He said the commission had been holding strategic meetings with all stakeholders involved in the Pilgrimage Operations to ensure the 2018 the exercise was hitch free and rewarding.

The NCPC boss said the commission was trying its best to make sure that the cost of Pilgrimage was affordable.

NCPC is not making profit out of Pilgrimage. N680, 000 is the cost of a pilgrim to Jerusalem, Israel and back. It covers both to and fro airfare, visa processing, all forms of insurance, tour of Holy Sites, hotels accommodation and feeding.

A second category is for those who want to go to Rome in addition and it goes for N870, 000, he said.

Mr Uja explained that the federal medical team were selected strictly on merit and did not have to know anybody to help them.

According to him, the team was selected with the blind eyes of justice, but with open eyes of merit.

He urged the team to give maximum medical attention to all pilgrims.

The cleric also emphasised on the need to sustain and improve on the previous pilgrimage records of zero mortality and reduced absconding, in the 2018 pilgrimage.

The commission was able to achieve this feat because of the improved medical screening put in place by the commission, he explained.

He congratulated members of the federal medical committee for their well-deserved appointment and described them as Distinguished Medical Personnel who have served the country in different capacity.

Mr Uja said that the commission was based on two pillars; firstly, its true commitment to Christ and secondly its commitment to Nigerias nationality.

We want the world to know the beauty of Jesus Christ and the salvation of Christ, secondly, the Christian Pilgrimage should be the Nigerian nationality.

Earlier, the chairman of the 2018 Pilgrimage federal medical committee, David Atuwo thanked the commission for considering them fit by selecting the team to serve in this capacity.

He explained that the objective of the committee was to ensure zero mortality and reduce morbidity.

(NAN)As Xenophobia on Sunday reared its ugly head again in South Africa, Nigerians lost more than nine shops to arsonists in Hillbrow, central Johannesburg.

The publicity secretary of Nigerian Union in South Africa, Habib Miller, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the telephone from Pretoria on Monday that South Africans committed the act.

Mr Miller said the union had informed the Nigerian Mission in South Africa and was expecting their response to the development.

Nine Nigerian businesses have been looted and burnt. The incident began on Sunday and continued till Monday, October 22.

Businesses affected range from restaurants, internet cafe, bar, groceries and stores.

At the time of the incident, electricity in the area was cut off. One of the businesses affected is owned by Mr C.J. Ubah, a bar owner at Fife Street, he said.

Mr Miller called on the police to come to the rescue of Nigerians by protecting their lives and property.

The union is monitoring the situation. We have not received any report of casualty on any Nigerian, but the situation is still tense because there are fears that the looting will resume in the night.

We have also advised Nigerians in the area to adopt safety measures by being alert, Mr Miller said.

At least 184 Nigerians have been killed in xenophobic attacks between 2016 and this year in South Africa, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.

(NAN)The Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, has denied rejecting the recent promotion of three Assistant Inspectors-General of Police to the rank of Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG).

The Police Service Commission (PSC) approved the promotion of three AIGs on Wednesday.

A statement by the Police Spokesman, Jimoh Moshood, an acting deputy commissioner of police, on Monday in Abuja, said contrary to media reports, there was no tension in the police force.

The force wishes to categorically reject the story as untrue and unfounded.

There is no tension in the Police and the Inspector-General of Police did not reject DIGs promotion as alleged, he said.

Mr Moshood said the IGP had promptly approved the postings of the newly promoted DIGs and AIGs to their duty posts via internal signals.

He, therefore, urged the public to disregard and the report.

(NAN)The Supreme Court has nullified the May 19 to 21 congress of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State.

In a ruling on Monday, the apex court described the conduct of the congress as a serious violation of court order and berated the Court of Appeal which nullified a high court order against the controversial congress.

Following an ex-parte application by aggrieved members of the APC, led by Abdulahi Umar, a high court in the state instructed the party members to suspend plans for the conduct of its local government congress on May 12, pending the determination of the substantive application alleging the marginalisation of some of its members.

Rather than comply with the court order, the APC filed an application at an Appeal Court and proceeded to conduct its primaries on basis of the application filed.

The national leadership of the party, led by its former chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun issued a statement directing a postponement of the congress from May 12 to 19 and consequently directed the Rivers State APC to proceed with the conduct of the congress.

In a decision on the matter on May 31, the lower court presided over by a judge, Chinwendu Nwogu, said the APC conducted its congress in outright violation of subsisting court orders. The judge described the said congress as a nullity.

However, in a counter ruling, the Appeal Court in Rivers State in its ruling by the lead judge, Isarah Akeju, overruled Mr Nwogus nullification of the APC congress, resulting in a fresh application by Mr Umar at the Supreme Court.

A five member panel of the apex court on Monday, led by Centus Nweze berated the appeal court for affirming the congress and warned that the court would not tolerate attempts to undermine its decision by any Nigerian.

It is unfortunate and wrongful for the Court of Appeal to entertain a party in contempt of a valid court order, to the extent of granting judicial favour by way of stay of execution of an injunctive order.

It is a serious matter for anyone to flout a court order and in the instant case, it is clear that the respondent (APC) was in grave disobedience of two lawful court orders.

It is sacrilegious, ill-fated and a suicide mission for the Court of Appeal to have departed from various decision of the Supreme Court that any party in contempt of court ought not to be granted judicial discretion and in this matter, appeal court is bound to follow Supreme Court final decision, the court ruled.

The now voided congress produced the currently recognised chairman of the APC in Rivers, Ojukaye Amachree, an ally of transport minister, Rotimi Amaechi.The Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) has released four Final Accident and Serious Incident Reports which occurred between July 2004 and August 2015 in Nigeria.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the reports which included seven safety recommendations were released by the AIB Commissioner, Akin Olateru, at a news briefing on Monday in Lagos.

The reports included the accident involving Bristow Helicopters (Nigeria) Ltd.; Sikorsky S-76C+ Helicopters with the registration number 5N-BGD, which occurred on Aug. 12, 2015 at the Oworonshoki area of Lagos.

It also included the accident report on Pan African Airlines Nigeria Ltd. Bell 412 EP Helicopter with the registration number 5N-BDZ, which crashed near SEDCO Energy Platform on July 26, 2004, a few minutes after takeoff.

It also released reports on two serious incidents involving an Emirates Boeing 777-200 Aircraft with registration number A6-EWD which occurred on July 6, 2015.

Also released was the report in respect of Aero Contractors Nigeria Ltd. B737-42C Aircraft with registration number 5N-BOB that occurred on July 21, 2015.

He noted that some of the accidents and serious incidents would have been averted if parties involved had adhered to safety policies in the industry.

Mr Olateru said the Bristow Helicopter, which crashed into the Lagoon had six fatalities including the two pilots, while six others onboard sustained serious injuries.

He explained that the helicopter experienced sudden un-commanded pitch up, yaw and rolled for about 12 seconds until it impacted water at about 15:31 hours.

According to him, the pilots were neither able to make any form of distress call to Air Traffic Controllers (ATC), SEDCO Express Rig nor communicate with the passengers before impact.

Rescue operation was swift, prompts and carried out by local fishermen who were in the area.

There were six fatalities, including two crew members and six seriously injured passengers.

The crew members were recovered the following day. The helicopter was destroyed, but there was no post-impact fire, he said.

Mr Olateru disclosed that the aircraft manufacturer, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, had complied with the AIBs recommendation to redesign the affected control pushrod assembly which was the main causal factor of the incident.

He noted that the purpose of accident investigation was not to apportion blame or liability, but to prevent future recurrence of such incidents.

The AIB commissioner said his administration had been able to release a total of 21 final reports since January 2017 which makes up 52.5 per cent of AIBs total of final reports released since its creation in 2007.

He said the bureau currently had 23 outstanding reports, adding that it was working vigorously to clear the backlog as soon as possible.

(NAN)The Federal Government Girls College, Gboko, Old Students Association is set to stage a protest over the death of a 13-year-old girl following alleged rape by a lecturer of Benue State Polytechnic, Andrew Ogbuja, and his son, Victor.

Before her death last Wednesday at Benue State Teaching Hospital, the victim was a Junior Secondary School 1 student at the Federal Government College, Gboko, Benue State.

The girl, a cousin of the lecturers wife, was allegedly raped by the suspects for three years while she lived with them.

While Mr. Ogbuja was arrested by the police, arraigned before a Makurdi Upper Area Court in August 2018 and remanded in prison custody, his son fled.

Following the death of the girl, the old students association of the school announced they will hold a protest march in the Federal Capital Territory on Tuesday to the National Human Right Commission, Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Justice, and police headquarters to demand justice.

The autopsy report revealed that the young lady died from severe health complications, including the dreaded Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF); which arose from a six-year series of vaginal and sodomic abuse from members of her extended family, the group said.

This is an outrage to FGGC Gboko, all female children, all women, Benue State, Nigeria and indeed the World. The advent of social media has brought to the fore the raging menace of child abuse and rape within our homes, communities, and nations. It is time that social media is also used to stop this menace.

As a body, we demand that the perpetrators, indeed murderers, be called to justice and severely punished. Messrs Andrew Ogbuja and Victor Inalegwu Ogbuja should be arrested for homicide and charged with first degree murder.

They should be made to feel the full wrath of Lady Justice. They should bear the brunt of the law in quantum measures. It was not enough for them to hurt young (***Ochanya***) from age eight; they had to repeat the barbaric sessions within a 6-year period.

We can only describe such tendencies as animalistic, with special apologies to animals. As such, they deserve jungle justice. No mercy. This is our demand. No mercy. No plea bargains. Swift justice, the old students association said in a statement.A Federal High Court in Abuja has on Monday ordered the Nigerian Police Force to pay N50 million to Charles Oputa, PREMIUM has learnt.

According to Mr Oputas lawyer, Inihebe Effiong, Justice John Tsoho also asked the police to publish an apology in two national newspapers to his client.

Charles Oputa, popularly known as Charly Boy, accused the police of invading the Unity Fountain in Abuja on August 8, 2017 to attack him and his group with teargas canister and wild police dogs.

This was during the Resume or Resign protest he led with other activists against prolonged absence of President Muhammadu Buhari from Nigeria. The president was then in the UK on medical vacation.

Giving the account of the judgement, Mr Effiong said the court held that protest is a constitutionally guaranteed right provided it is done peacefully.

The respondents admitted in their counter affidavit that it was in the bid to protect members of the public and public properties from the miscreants who suddenly took over the protest that the men and officers of the respondents had to use teargas canisters and hot water canon in order to disperse the hoodlums. But that the rRespondents stated that the teargas and water canon were not directed at the applicant.

This assertion according to the court, lacks substance as teargas circulates and affects all persons within the premises. And the atmosphere generally affected which causes cough.

The court found that the applicant has disclosed a reasonable cause of action against the respondents and that the respondents violated the fundamental rights of the applicant to dignity of the human person, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association as enshrined in Sections 34, 39, and 40 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), he said.

He however said Mondays judgment sends unequivocal message to the Nigerian police that they have no power to stop or disrupt peaceful protests by Nigerians.

The police, by this judgment, cannot invent flimsy excuses to stop citizens from exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. I am highly elated by this victory for democracy.

Also, the secretary of the OurMumuDonDo Movement, Raphael Adebayo, in a statement, said: The OurMumuDonDo Movement wishes to express satisfaction over the judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja on the unprovoked attack of the police on its members during the ResumeOrResign Protest.

This development is a sign that the Nigerian judiciary is indeed committed to upholding the supremacy of our countrys Constitution.

Efforts to get the reaction of the police lawyer, O. M. Atoyebi, at the time of filling this report were unsuccessful.That fact seems lost on other school districts, too. In the last decade, no Illinois district has alerted the state board of education that an employee may have broken the mandated reporting law, according to the board. The board did sanction three educators because of child-abuse reporting failures, all during the last school year. Each was related to a high-profile sexual abuse case at Gavin South Middle School in Lake County. After the state was alerted to the mandated reporting failures through news reports, all three educators were charged with crimes and two were convicted.American Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs, Tibor Nagy, is expected to visit Nigeria and five other countries on promoting stronger trade and commercial ties between the United States and Africa.

According to a statement released on the U.S. state department website on Monday, Mr Nagy would visit the United Kingdom, France, Togo, Guinea, and Mali from October 29 to November 10.

During his trip, Assistant Secretary Nagy will focus on promoting stronger trade and commercial ties between the United States and Africa, harnessing the potential of Africas youth, advancing peace and security through partnerships, and conveying the United States unwavering commitment to Africa.

According to the statement, the Mr Nagis final stop on the trip would be in Nigeria, where he would deliver a speech at Baze University on U.S.-Africa relations.

The final stop on the trip will be Abuja, Nigeria. Assistant Secretary Nagy will have meetings with government officials, members of the American business community, religious leaders, civil society organizations, youth groups, and he will deliver a speech at Baze University on U.S.-Africa relations, the statement highlighted.

Similarly, Mr Nagy would visit Lome, Togo on November 1, Conakry, Guinea, November 2-4, and Bamako, Mali on October 4-7, where he would conduct bilateral meetings with the three government officials and meet with the countries alumni of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).

Nagy will then travel to Lome, Togo on November 1 where he will meet with Togolese government officials, and lead a regional U.S. Chiefs of Mission Conference.

In Conakry, Guinea, November 2-4, Assistant Secretary Nagy will conduct bilateral meetings with Guinea government officials, host a business roundtable, and meet with alumni of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).

In Bamako, Mali on October 4-7, Assistant Secretary Nagy will hold meetings with Malian government officials, host a trade and entrepreneurship roundtable, and meet with YALI alumni.The State Security Services (SSS), has denied that five of its personnel aided Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to escape from his Umuahia home on September 14, 2017.

Mr Kanus whereabouts was unknown, until he surfaced in Israel recently, after the alleged September 14 raid by a combined team of the Army, Police and the DSS at his home in Umuahia, Abia.

The Service wishes to state that the news is fake, mischievous and defamatory. It is nothing but a figment of the imagination of the originators, he said.

A statement by the Public Relations Officer of the service, Peter Afunanya, said the purported report was fake, mischievous and defamatory.

He said the stock in trade of Mr Kanu and his collaborators, was to peddle rumours, gossips and propaganda aimed at subverting the government, its key agencies and officials,

He said the service was aware of some unscrupulous elements keen on exploiting the situation to constitute a nuisance to the freedom of Nigerians as guaranteed in the Constitution.

Mr Afunanya said the elements were also keen on disrupting the forthcoming 2019 general elections.

The DSS will not idly standby and watch these undesirable elements achieve their aims, he said.

(NAN)The Presidential Panel on the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS) Reforms for the North Central Zone has received 27 complaints and will hold public sitting on the complaints from October 22 to October 25.

The Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Tony Ojukwu, said this on Monday in Abuja in his welcome remarks at the commencement of the panels public sitting.

According to Mr Ojukwu, the essence is to increase access to the services of the commission.

And to seek accountability where there is evidence to indicate that officers or officials of SARS have been involved in acts amounting to human rights violation in the course of carrying out their law enforcement duties.

Also, to provide opportunities for fair hearing to both complainants and alleged violators and to main stream human rights norms and tenets into the operations and administration of SARS in line with global best practices.

The Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo had, in August, requested the NHRC to constitute the panel to hear and investigate complaints against SARS and to make recommendations.

Mr Ojukwu said the specific terms of reference of the panel are: To investigate the veracity of allegations of human rights abuses and abuse of power made against SARS within the last two years.

To independently review and render advice on any value added by SARS, from a public safety and security perspective, and make recommendations to government.

In his goodwill message, Benjamin Okolo, a deputy supereintendent of police, representing the Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris, said the police would co-operate with the panel and abide by the outcome.

We have already started some reforms and we believe that the outcome of this panel will equally enhance what we are doing.

Mr Okolo assured the panel that nobody would be victimised, intimidated or harassed for airing their views or submitting complaints.

For his part, Idris Bawa of the Nigeria Policing Program (NPP) said the public hearing would add value to reforms in the Police Force.

In his keynote address, Akingbolahan Adeniran, from the presidency said the public hearing would enhance all aspects of community policing for better performance.

According to him, the aim is to adequately regulate activities of the police and efficiently direct intelligence gathering.

We expect the police to appear more as an intelligent driven organisation and work has already started in this area; very soon the police will be more proactive, Mr Adeniran said.

(NAN)The Nigeria Police Force said it had arrested three suspected kidnappers and armed robbers in Masaka, Nasarawa and Kano states.

The suspects are: Hawa Yinusa, 22, gang leader, Nura Dahiru, principal suspect and Buhari Hamisu a.k.a wiseman, principal suspect.

Acting DCP Jimoh Moshood, the Force Public Relations Officer, disclosed this while addressing journalists on the arrest on Sunday in Abuja.

Mr Moshood listed exhibits recovered from them as three AK47 rifles,38 rounds of AK47 ammunition, one Honda Hennessey car belonging to the victim and one cutlass used for killing their victims.

The spokesman said that Ms Yinusa, the leader, had led so many kidnapping gangs; for several kidnappings of prominent Nigerians, including one Aisha Haruna, a businesswoman.

The suspect, Hawa Yinusa, further went to court and sworn to an affidavit claiming that the victim was her sister before she died and was in the process of withdrawing from the Bank N1million belonging to the victim before she was arrested, he said.

He said that Messrs Dahiru and Hamisu were mobilised into the criminal gang by Ms Yinusa, adding that one of the suspects died during a shootout with the police.

Mr Moshood said the suspects have carried out several kidnappings between Abuja, Nasarawa and Plateau states.

They have also been involved and confessed to other forms of kidnappings of innocent people, collecting their ATM Cards and withdrawing their money before releasing them.

Some of their victims have come forward to the police investigator and identified them. They will be charged to court on completion of investigation.

In a related development, Mr Moshood said Kasim Abdulganiyu has been arrested for giving false information and misleading the police.

He said that the suspect gave a false information that led to the search of the house of Ibrahim Zakari, former Director-General, National Intelligence Agency (NIA) in Kaduna, Kaduna State.

He said that the suspect informed and made voluntary statement to the police on 20th August, 2018 that firearms and ammunition were stocked in the house of Zakari before the police obtained and executed a valid search warrant in the house on August 28.

The search was witnessed by the security guards and no relatives of the owner of the house or any other person apart from the security guards were living in the house as at the time the search was conducted.

The police team also had no knowledge that the house belong to Zakari before the search warrant was executed, he said.

He said that Mr Abdulganiyu of No. 21 Colorado Crescent, Ministers Hills, Abuja, would be arraigned in court for giving false information and telling falsehood to mislead police action without further delay.

(NAN)The police said they have completed investigation into the multiple Offa robbery incidents and sent the case file to the Kwara State Attorney-General, Kamaldeen Ajibade, as instructed by the Attorney-General of the Federation.

The police gave an update on the shocking robberies in which 31 people were killed, a police station sacked and six banks robbed on April 5.

Investigation into the matter has been concluded by the police and the case file sent to Attorney General of the Federation who directed that the case file be sent to the Kwara State Attorney General for prosecution which the lolice has complied with since August, 2018.

The Force has been waiting on the Kwara State Attorney General to take over the suspects from the police for prosecution, police spokesman Jimoh Moshood said today.

Mr Ajibade, the Kwara State attorney-general is also a senior advocate of Nigeria.

Mr Moshood gave the update in a reaction to an accusation by a member of the Kwara House of Assembly, Abdulrafiu Abdulrahman, that the police were about to treat the case of recently arrested suspects said to be dealing in human parts, the same way the Offa robbery suspects were treated.

The police arrested Offa robbery suspects in Kwara State and took them to Abuja, where they made public confessions about their role and also implicated some politicians in the state, including Senate President Bukola Saraki.

Mr Abdulrahman, who is Chairman of House Committee on Information, alleged that there was a plot by the police to use the eight suspected human parts dealers, when transferred from the state to the Force Headquarters, Abuja, as instrument of political victimisation.

He alleged further that the police were working to force some of the suspects to implicate prominent clerics and top politicians in the state in the matter.

But Mr Moshood debunked the allegations.

He said investigation into the case is still ongoing and the police will definitely make the outcome public.

Any individual or group found to be connected with this heinous crime will be arrested and prosecuted. The Force has no any plan to implicate any personality in the matter and there is no any cause for any innocent person(s) to be afraid of the law. The Force will not allow itself to be cowed, or obstructed from ensuring that the dictate of the law prevails in all matters, Mr Moshood said.The Social Democratic Partys candidate in the September 22 and 27 Osun gubernatorial polls, Iyiola Omisore, has denied being promised a senatorial ticket by the All Progressive Congress after he drummed support for the party in the rerun election.

The former federal lawmaker representing Osun East came third in the poll while the Peoples Democratic Partys Ademola Adeleke and Gboyega Oyetola of the APC emerged second and the first respectively.

Mr Omisore was speculated to have been promised a senatorial ticket for Osun East senatorial district in the 2019 elections amongst other juicy offers including the retrieval of his international passport seized by the EFCC.

Meanwhile, in an interview a day after the Osun election, the APC national chairman, Adams Oshiomole, denied placing a monetary offer before Mr. Omisore as a way of seeking his support.

When quizzed, Mr Oshiomole was quoted to have said; I dont like those words automatic tickets. I was careful even after the meeting we had with our lawmakers not to use those words.

Also, former aviation minister and a PDP chieftain, Femi Fani-Kayode, mockingly stated on Saturday that Mr Omisore was jilted by the APC.

So my former cousin Iyiola Omisore did not get the Senatorial ticket for Ife East from the APC after the dirty job he did? The only thing he got from them was his passport. Some just got served. It never pays to sell ur (your) soul to the devil. His infamy and treachery is legendary, Mr. Fani-Kayode posted on Twitter.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the Director of Gboyega Oyetolas Campaign Organisation in Osun East, Ajibola Famurewa, is the APC senatorial candidate for Osun East.

However, in a telephone interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Omisores media aide, Jide Fakorede, said his principal was never promised a senatorial ticket.

We were never promised any senatorial ticket. Fine, there was an agreement but no senatorial agreement, he said.

Reacting to the issue of a travel ban on Mr Omisore, Mr Fakorede, in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday, stated that his principal was erroneously indicted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2016 and there was nothing like seizure of international passport.

Omisore was wrongly alleged in 2016 and he surrendered himself to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for investigation and was given a clean bill of health by the anti-graft body after a thorough investigation.

It is on record that no case was instituted against him in any court of our land and neither was he arraigned before any court either. His international passport was never seized as being speculated too. He has been enjoying his freedom and has even presented himself for election into public office passing through all security screenings,  Mr Fakorede said.

He added, The basis for placement on the watch list and travel ban is to ensure that those answering EFCC charges are held within the country and for someone not having a current case with the anti-graft agency, there may be no basis to restrict his movement.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how Mr Omisore was arrested on July 3, 2016, for allegedly collecting N1.3 billion from a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, who is being prosecuted for allegedly mismanaging billions of dollars meant to procure arms and ammunition for the Nigerian military during the Goodluck Jonathan-led government.

The former Osun State deputy governor eventually agreed to refund the cash, and also gave the anti-graft commission a draft of N130 million, bringing the first installment of the repayment plan to N300 million.

APC, EFCC React

Speaking on the promise of a senatorial ticket, the APC national publicity secretary, Lanre Issa-onilu, told PREMIUM TIMES that he was not aware of such promise.

Mr. Omisore told the world why he backed up APC in that election and he stated his reasons clearly. I cant recall if there was any promise made. We dont have such information and it is not in the public (domain).

Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the anti-graft agency, Wilson Uwujaren, when contacted, said he did not have information on the matter.

Let me cross-check and get back to you very soon, he told PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday.

However, after the interview, Mr Uwujaren refused take further calls from the reporter. Later on, his telephone was switched off.There appears to be a silent crisis in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) over the nomination of the partys candidates for the 2019 general elections.

This development came to the fore on Sunday as Simon Ebegbulem, the spokesperson of the partys National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, issued two statements in rapid succession indicating some unnamed influential party leaders were up in arms against Mr Oshiomhole.

In the first statement, Mr Ebegbulem indicated the party leaders were plotting the removal of Mr Oshiomhole through a vote of no confidence, over the decisions of the party on disputes arising from the primaries in some states.

He stressed that the contentious decisions were not unilaterally taken by the chairman and were in any event for the good of all party members.

These influential stakeholders, according to grapevine, have begun to mobilise to pass a no-confidence vote on the leadership of Oshiomhole, having failed to impose their preferred candidates on the party in the nomination process, the first statement said.

The crime committed by Comrade Oshhiomholes leadership is his disdain for impunity and circumvention of due process perpetrated in some of the states at the pleasure of some influential stakeholders.

Oshiomhole has not, since stepping in the saddle, taken any unilateral decision in the running of the party affairs. All decisions, so far taken, passed through the mills of NWC deliberative sessions and enjoyed unanimous resolutions. The records are there. History will justify Comrade Oshiomhole and posterity will vindicate him.

Mr Ebegbulem said the party is in safe hands with Mr Oshiomhole as it moves towards victory in the 2019 general elections.

He said the choice of the chairman to rebrand the party, break the norms and do things the right way was the cause of issues, alleging that those he referred to as conservatives were finding it difficult to accept Mr Oshiomholes ways.

The spokesperson said the clear message of the chairman and his leadership was that the party, and not pseudo political empires in the states, have the power to superintend the primary elections for the nomination of the partys candidates in the general election.

He said the party will not surrender its functions to any other entities, as it is ready to always moderate the divergent tendencies and mediate the disparate political camps in the interest of party cohesion.

Mr Ebegbulem said it was sad that while the national chairman was working round the clock, some stakeholders had thrown selfish political agenda into the mix to threaten the building of institutional capacity for the APC.

He, therefore, urged these persons that rather than resort to needless perfidy at the threshold of a general election, they should imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship, bolstered by the fact that the Oshiomhole leadership was propelled more by its interest in propriety in which victory for the party could be grounded.

He assured all in the APC of the chairmans respect and readiness to work with them for the good of the party.

However hours later, Mr Ebegbulem released another statement withdrawing the former, stating the earlier statement was not authorised by the chairman.

He said the earlier statement was issued in error, as the chairman still enjoys the maximum support of party members.

On Sunday, October 21, 2018, I issued a statement on alleged plans by some stakeholders to move against the leadership of the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole led All Progressives Congress (APC).

I want to state categorically that the statement was not authorised by my principal, Comrade Oshiomhole, and I hereby withdraw the statement. I deeply regret the error.

Mr Ebegbulem therefore said Mr Oshiomhole will speak on the issues affecting the party when there is the need to do so.

The seeming fissure in the ruling party is a fallout of the acrimonious primaries that produced its candidates for the 2019 general elections.

The primaries were trailed by controversies with a few states like Zamfara, Ogun, Lagos and Kaduna still to resolve the issues.

For Zamfara, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) disqualified the APC from fielding candidates for the various elections because the party failed to meet the deadline for conducting primaries.

The party has, however, challenged the position of INEC, insisting it will present candidates, arguing that it has produced its candidates by consensus as voting is not the only mode recognised by electoral laws for producing candidates.

While the state governor, Abdulaziz Yari, claimed primaries held in the state, a governorship aspirant, Kabiru Marafa, faulted the partys position presented by Mr Oshiomole that candidates emerged through consensus in Zamfara.

Reports from the state said a state high court has issued an interim order restraining INEC from disqualifying APCs candidates from the state.

In Kaduna, APC named incumbent Shehu Sani as its candidate for Kaduna Central Senatorial District, while the governor, Nasir El-Rufai, and his supporters kicked against this and called for primary election.

The panel sent to the state conducted the primary which was boycotted by Mr Sani, and declared an aide to Mr El-Rufai, Uba Sani, as winner.

This led to the resignation of an angry Mr Sani from the party on Saturday.

Similarly in Ogun State, the governor, Ibikunle Amosun, whose candidate lost in the governorship primary, said he will not support the partys candidate, Dapo Abiodun.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how two separate governorship primaries were held in the state by different factions of the party.

While the faction loyal to Mr Amosun adopted Adekunle Akinlade as its consensus candidate, the primary conducted by the committee sent by the APC headquarters in Abuja produced Mr Abiodun as the candidate.The International Energy Agency (IEA) Monday on said it is not worried Saudi Arabia will cut oil supply in response to any potential sanctions over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

IEA chief, Fatih Birol, however told Reuters that analysts and industry stakeholders must deploy common sense as political developments may impact energy markets.

On October 2, Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi political establishment, was reportedly killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The reported death has in the last few weeks sparked a global outcry.

The journalist was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The Saudis, under intense pressure to explain Mr Khashoggis whereabouts, have offered conflicting accounts. They initially said he had left the building unharmed on 2 October but on Friday admitted for the first time he was dead, saying he had been killed in a fight. This claim met widespread scepticism.

On Monday, when asked about the uncertainty surrounding Saudis politico-economic relationship with the rest of the world, Mr Birol said the issues may affect the global oil market.

There are many geopolitical, non-energy related issues, which could also have further impact on the oil markets, he told Reuters.

In the last few days, analysts have expressed concerns in oil markets over whether Saudi Arabia, the worlds biggest crude oil exporter, might retaliate against any punitive measures by global powers over Mr Khashoggis death.

Theres a strong challenge for the key producers to increase production and comfort the markets, Mr Birol explained further. I appeal to all the producers and consumers to have common sense in the very difficult months we are entering.

Speaking on the sidelines of an LNG conference in Nagoya, Japan, the IEA chief said he did not think that Saudi Arabia would cut production. He added, however, that there are significant worries about the market because of falling supply from Venezuela and Iran amid strong demand growth.

There is potential we will see even higher prices than current ones and it comes, as it always does, at a bad time for the global economy, he said.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has said that it has no intention of unleashing a 1973-style oil embargo on Western consumers and will isolate oil from politics.

There is no intention, Saudi Energy Minister, Khalid al-Falih, told Russias TASS news agency when asked if there could be a repetition of the 1973-style oil embargo on Monday.

Top U.S. lawmakers took turns to chastise Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday and said they believed he ordered the killing of Mr Khashoggi. Several U.S. lawmakers have suggested imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia in recent days while the kingdom, the worlds largest oil exporter, has pledged to retaliate to any sanctions with bigger measures.

This incident will pass. But Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics, Mr al-Falih said.

My role as the energy minister is to implement my governments constructive and responsible role and stabilizing the worlds energy markets accordingly, contributing to global economic development.

The Saudi official said that if oil prices went up, it would affect global economy and trigger economic recession. He explained however that with Iranian sanctions coming into full force next month, there was no guarantee oil prices would not go higher.

When asked if the world can avoid oil prices hitting $100 per barrel again, he said he cannot give a guarantee because he cannot predict what would happen to other suppliers.

He said, We have sanctions on Iran, and nobody has a clue what Iranians export will be. Secondly, there are potential declines in different countries like Libya, Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela.

If 3 million barrels per day disappears, we cannot cover this volume. So we have to use oil reserves, he said.

The minister also disclosed that Saudi Arabia would soon raise output to 11 million barrels per day (bpd) from the current 10.7 million, adding that global supply next year could be helped by Brazil, Kazakhstan and the United States.The Presidential Committee on Northeast Initiative (PCNI) on Monday began a five-day capacity building training for 500 teachers in Borno State.

Speaking at the opening of the training in Maiduguri, PCNIs Vice Chairman, Tijjani Tumsa, said the exercise was designed to address challenges facing the education sector caused by the Boko Haram insurgency.

He explained that teachers would be exposed to modern teaching techniques; safety and security tips as well as psychological support.

Mr Tumsa said: This is the second batch of beneficiaries of the training exercise to strengthen the capacity of teachers in teaching techniques, safety and security measures in schools environment and trauma counseling.

He noted that training was imperative to check the spate of examination failure, encourage academic excellence as well as science and technology development.

According to him, some 500 teachers were trained under the first batch of the programme in Borno, while over 1, 000 others benefited from the training exercise in Adamawa and Yobe States.

Tumsa said that the programme was implemented in collaboration with the University of Maiduguri.

Also commenting, Shettima Kullima, the Chairman, Borno State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), described the exercise as timely.

Mr Kulluma said the exercise would go a long way to address challenges bedeviling the basic education sector in the state.

The SUBEB boss, who was represented by Ali Dogo, said that some teachers had either been killed or abducted, while 520 schools and over 5, 000 classrooms were destroyed by the Boko Haram insurgents in the state.

(NAN)The Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, on Sunday flagged off the building of 500 houses to replace homes destroyed by Boko Haram insurgents in Gajiram, headquarters of Nganzai Local Government Area.

Nganzai, an agrarian local government, about 90km from Maiduguri, the state capital, was among the communities that were badly hit by the Boko Haram onslaught.

Gajiram, ancestral home of former military head of state, Sani Abacha, was created in 1991.

Despite its slow pace of socio-infrastructural development, the local government is known for its large population spread across hundreds of villages and hamlets.

Thousands of poor residents, mostly women and children, were forced to flee their communities to Maiduguri at the height of the Boko Haram hostilities.

Following series of attacks by the insurgents, the larger part of the local government was left in rubble with various electricity and communication installations completely vandalised.

Despite the acclaimed return of peace to some parts of the state, the people of Nganzai local government can only return to Gajiram, the council headquarters, which is for now the safest zone for them.

For many months, over 3000 households made up of at least units of six family members camped in tent houses provided by the UN agencies and dilapidated houses in the local government headquarters.

Governor Shettima, while laying the foundation blocks for the houses at Gajiram insisted that the project, a first of its kind, must be completed by the end of the year.

The governor also took 16 trucks of foods, beddings, assorted bales of used clothes which were distributed to the displaced persons through the coordination of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA).

Addressing the people in their local language,, Mr Shettima assured them of support.

He said the apartments as well as weddings and blankets provided was meant to help them cushion the harsh effect of the coming harmattan cold.

The senator representing Borno north district, Abubakar Kyari, thanked the governor for his support.

Building 500 units of houses is unprecedented as it has never been done in any part of the state outside Maiduguri, Mr Kyari said.

Earlier, the executive chairperson of SEMA, Yabawa Kolo, said of the 16 trucks of relief items brought to the town, more than half contained different kinds of food items and condiments meant for direct distribution to the IDPs.

One of the residents and a prospective beneficiary, Modu Mustapha, said he was happy about the development.

I am a 32-year-old father of four children, but today my family and I are homeless because my house has been burnt down.

We live out there in the camp, and life has been very difficult for us. Aside the accommodation need, we also lack water here, he said.Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields said when he was in college he studied Lamar Jackson film: Theres not many guys who are like Lamar Jackson. Heres what else Fields said.Farmers in Logo and Ukum Local Governments of Benue, who were displaced by the protracted crisis with herdsmen, have returned to their villages, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports.

The farmers, who spoke with journalists in several villages in the two local governments, said they were enjoying sweet peace in their natural abodes.

The journalists were led to the villagers by Adeyemi Yekini, a major general and Commander, Operation Whirl Stroke (OPWS), the security outfit charged with maintaining peace in Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba States.

Among villages visited were Jootar, Gov and Iorja in Logo, as well as Gajem and Gbeji in Ukum. The five villages were under the control of Fulani militia until the bandits were rooted out by OPWS.

NAN reports that throughout the period of the occupation of their lands, the villagers were quartered in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), scattered through Benue.

Speaking to journalists, at Gov, the village Youth Leader, Torngee Iorhemba, commended the federal government for sending OPWS to curtail the activities of the militia.

Mr Iorhemba disclosed that the arrival of the special forces had helped them to return to their homes, adding that they were enjoying a very cordial relationship with the personnel of OPWS.

OPWS has helped us so much; their presence has helped us to return to our homes. Our only challenge now is that we dont have any clinic and portable water, he said.

He said the farmers were happy to move freely to the markets and to their farms.

At Chambe, Thaddeus Tsav, a community leader, said the villagers were happy to be back to their respective houses.

We are happy that we can travel freely along the Anyii-Gbeji road that was a death trap during the crisis, he said.

Mr Tsav, however, said the dreaded militias were still in the bushes in some parts of the areas, but added that the troops were doing a fantastic job in the field.

Richard Nyajo, Chairman, Logo Local Government, who also spoke with journalists, said most of the farmers took refuge at the NKST Primary School IDPs camp at Anyii.

Since the arrival of OPWS, tremendous peace has been achieved, he said.

Mr Nyajo said out of the 35,000 IDPs that were initially quartered at the camp, 27,000 had successfully returned to their homes, leaving a total of 7,000 IDPs at the camp.

Mr Yekini, in his remarks, said a total number of 150,000 IDPs had so far returned to their homes in Benue, and expressed optimism that other IDPs would return to their villages before December.

He disclosed that there were still some areas that his men were yet to access due to the terrain, but said that series of operations were underway to clean up such areas as the dry season was approaching.

Meanwhile, Francis Ayagah, Chairman, Gwer West Local Government, has confirmed that a total of 33,000 IDPs, out of the 34,000 earlier displaced in the local government, had successfully returned to their homes.

Mr Ayagah, however, said the returnees had no place to sleep and food to eat.

He urged government and donor agencies to come to their aid.

The Chairman of Guma Local Government, Anthony Shawon, he did not know the number of IDPs that had so far returned to their respective villages.

The returnees are many, but I do not know their number, he said.

The journalists also visited the Sub-sector II Operation Camp of OPWS at Gov, in Logo during the tour, and interacted with the officers.

(NAN)The abducted wife of the Chief of Adara in Kachia Local Government, Kaduna State, Victoria Galadima, has been freed in the early hours of Sunday.

Confirming her release, Kaduna Police Command Public Relations Officer, Yakubu Sabo, said the woman is currently under medical examination at Kachia General Hospital.

According to him, efforts are being intensified to secure the release of her husband, Maiwada Galadima, who is still being held hostage alongside his driver, identified as Timothy.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that four people including a policeman were killed by the abductors on Friday before taking away the monarch, his wife and driver.Following recent unrest, the Nigeria Police have advised travellers who intend travelling through Kaduna to consider taking alternative routes.

Police spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood, said this measure is imperative to forestall attack as the police is working to maintain calm in troubled area.

He said this while featuring on Sunrise Daily, a programme on Channels Television Monday morning.

We advise those who will be passing through Kaduna, because Kaduna is gateway to so many states to the north, top make use of alternative routes. They can by-pass Kaduna metro for now because the 24 hours curfew is only within Kaduna metro and in Kajuru Local Government.

There are quite a number of alternative routes that can make use of. The announcement has been made since yesterday and we want those who have relatives who want to travel to advise them to make use of alternative routes to by-pass alternative routes.

Mr Moshood said adequate security service has been made for those who will be making use of the train service from Abuja to Kaduna and other parts of the country.

He added that the curfew imposed on Kaduna metropolis will be lifted as soon as normalcy returns.

Before now, the announcement have been made that there is 24 hours curfew. We so much believe that as soon as normalcy is restored and evaluation of this normalcy is done, the curfew will wind down, if not completely but restricted to some places.

Earlier on Sunday, there was tension in Kaduna metropolis following the rumour of reprisal violence from the Kasuwar Magani area of the state on Friday.

The Kaduna State Government in reaction imposed a 24-hourcurfew on Kaduna town and its envrions.

At least 55 people were confirmed killed in the Kasuwar Magani violence that had a religious undertone.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the Kaduna State Government on Friday imposed a 24 hours curfew on Kasuwar Magani.

Many residents of Kaduna metropolis on Sunday rushed indoors as irate youth burnt old tyres along Katsina road, Ibrahim Taiwo road, Lagos Street and Ahmadu Bello Way.The Edo State House of Assembly has elected its former speaker, Justin Okonoboh, as deputy speaker at a chaotic session Monday morning.

The Majority Leader of the assembly, Roland Asoro, told PREMIUM TIMES, at 1:35 p.m. on Monday that Mr Okonoboh was elected to replace the removed deputy speaker, Victor Edoror.

There were reports of shootings in the assembly.

The former deputy speaker, Mr Edoror, has been suspended from the House for three months, alongside two other lawmakers, Foly Ogedengbe (APC, Owan East) and Ganiyu Audu (APC, Etsako West 1).

We needed to have a new deputy Speaker because of the excesses of the impeached deputy Speaker, The Punch newspaper quoted the Speaker, Kabiru Adjoto, as saying.

I and 20 other members of the House remain committed to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and cannot leave the party.

We are even more committed to Governor Godwin Obaseki and the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019, Mr Adjoto said.

Mr Okonoboh, the new deputy speaker, was removed as speaker in August 2017 during a chaotic session that had lawmakers throw punches at one another.

The chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State, Dan Orbih, blamed the APC for the crisis in the state assembly.

I think the problem in the Edo State House of Assembly is actually a reflection of the general problem the APC has caused to the larger Nigerian society. They have shown clearly that they dont have what it takes to run the affairs of most of the states where they are in power, Mr Orbih told PREMIUM TIMES.

It is rather shameful that these things are happening, especially when the national chairman of the party is from that state, he said.The vice presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi, on Monday said Igbo leaders and governors of the zone never disagreed with his nomination but disagreed with the process.

Mr Obi who visited Governor David Umahi in the Government House Abakalikii said he was in the state to seek the support of Mr Umahi.

Umahi is our leader, he is a man of impeccable character. He was at the centre of the storm but I want to tell the people that Umahi and Igbo leaders were misrepresented badly.

Igbo leaders never disagreed with my nomination as VP candidate but disagreed with the process; but I am here to solicit for your support, he said.

The former Anambra governor said the believes the current ruling party in Nigeria, APC, was mismanaging the economy.

PDP as a party is desirous of returning to power at the center not just because we want to return to power but because we have seen that in our country Nigeria every indices of development today is heading south and we cannot continue that way.

In terms of borrowing and all other indices everything is heading south. So PDP wants to come back and continue rebuilding the nation, Mr Obi added.

Reacting, Mr Umahi commended the former governor for his humility and described him as an asset to the country and the PDP.

He promised to support Mr Obi and the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

He noted that the zone will still meet with Mr Abubakar to discuss his plans for the region.

I have every reason to be happy very with you. There is no way even if I was nominated I will be the vice presidential candidate. I still have more than four years as a governor. Secondly, we have always supported ourselves. During my campaign, you came and even gave us vehicles.

A lot of people have understood that there is nobody that is against our son, nobody has anything against you and thats why everywhere you go, the South-east governors will roll out their drums. But no governor in the South-east will say the process, I approve of it; and he (Obi) didnt approve of it. He told me, look if I were in your position, I will be angrier and that is an honest man who understands what his people are saying.

And so sir, you have done very well because what you did is to save the party. I feel that all these noise they are making is marketing the party. You have saved the party and I want you to keep on explaining to those who didnt understand so that they can understand.

With this, the presidential candidate has said look I am coming to the South-east to discuss with you. We South-east people have never gone into presidential election with negotiation, nobody has thought of that. This is the only opportunity we are going to have to ask the

presidential candidate what is it that you are going give us.

Probably, if we didnt raise eyebrow about that, we would have probably gone into the victory and we now begin to say we are now marginalised. I will never repent on that that which is going to come to South-east. When we see what is going to come to South-east, we will sit down and ask what Ebonyi will get. We have close to 1.5 million votes but we are working to deliver 1.3 million votes. Thats the fact and with that we will be saying what is coming to South-east and what is it that will come to us, this is very important.

I am a straight forward person. If we are giving support to PDP, we are giving support to PDP and there is no doubt about that. We are PDP, no more no less.

Sir, we will give you the support but we must see our presidential candidate to discuss with us what he has for South-east and Ebonyi.The over one month strike declared by the Ekiti State chapter of National Union of Local Government Employees, (NULGE), was on Sunday night called-off.

The News Agency of Nigeria, (NAN) reports that the decision to end the strike followed the intervention of Governor Kayode Fayemi.

A communique issued at the end of an emergency meeting of the union in Ado Ekiti, signed by its state chairman, Bunmi Ajimoko, and state secretary, Aleru Sulaiman, confirmed the development.

According to the union, ending the strike had become necessary as a result of the part payment of their accumulated leave bonuses, owed by the Fayose administration.

The communique disclosed that some of the workers had started to receive bank alerts.

The union thus asked its members to resume work on Monday in all the 16 local government areas.

The union commended Governor Fayemi for his intervention in ensuring the payment of the leave bonuses.

NULGE, Ekiti State, held an emergency meeting today, Sunday, 21st October, 2018, and resolved that since the money approved as part payment of 2016 leave bonus has dropped in various local government accounts and some staff members have started receiving alerts of the payment, the Union wishes to suspend over ONE month old strike action today.

All members of the union are hereby directed to resume full activities at their various local government councils and boards and commissions from this day.

NULGE uses this medium to also l thank members for their patience, perseverance and solidarity during the course of our struggle

Finally, the Union wishes to appreciate the government of Dr. John Kayode Fayemi for his prompt intervention, the communique added. (NAN)The Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal has delivered its ruling on an exparte application brought by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to cross-check all materials used for the September 22 and 27 governorship poll.

In the ruling, the party was granted the permission to inspect, examine, scan and photocopy all rejected ballot papers and other election materials used for the election.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the PDP candidate in the election, Ademola Adeleke, filed a petition last Tuesday at the tribunal sitting in Osogbo to challenge the victory of the governor-elect, Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Mr Adeleke, who claimed he polled the highest number of votes in the election, asked the tribunal to cancel the victory of Mr Oyetola and declare him the winner of the election.

On Thursday, members of the PDP stormed the state high court in Osogbo, the state capital, where the election petition tribunal is sitting and blocked its entrance. The alleged that the tribunal had been disbanded by the president of the court of appeal.

Meanwhile, the head of media and publicity of the Court of Appeal, Saadatu Musa, in a message sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, stated that the tribunal was only reshuffled and not disbanded.

However, on Monday, the tribunal said the two applications by the PDP were aimed at serving the petitions and other processes on the second and third respondent respectively.

According to a judge, Peter Obiora, who delivered the ruling on behalf of the chairman of the tribunal, Muhammad Siraju, the essence of granting the applications was to bring the proceedings to the attention of the respondents in the substantial suit.

He said the parties involved should be assured that the tribunal would do everything constitutionally possible to ensure justice prevails.

While addressing the public, the applicants counsel, Nathaniel Oke, said the applications was to allow them to properly serve the second respondent (Gboyega Oyetola) and third respondent (APC).

The tribunal, after granting the applications also said the respondents (Gboyega Oyetola and APC) are to serve as observers during the exermination and inspection of the election materials.

Speaking with PREMIUM TIMES on Monday, the PDP head of media and public communication, Bamidele Salam, confirmed the ruling. He noted that all hands should be on deck as events unfold.

The APC director of publicity, Kunle Oyatomi, in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday evening, had charged the PDP to respect the tribunals processes.

Let the justice system plays itself out and our politicians are obligated to respect the decisions of the court, Mr Oyatomi said.Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State on Monday swore in Mosunmola Dipeolu as the new Chief Judge of the state.

The swearing was held during the state Executive Council meeting at the Governors Office in Oke- Mosan in Abeokuta, the state capital.

Mr Amosun, charged Mrs Dipeolu to discharge her duties without fear or favour adding that the position demand lots of responsibilities.

This swearing in comes with a lot of huge responsibilities and more is demanded of you knowing the status of the state in Nigeria, he said.

He also urged her not to be unmindful of Gods grace in her life, saying that the office she occupies now is a great office in the legal profession in the state.

The governor, further enjoined the new chief judge to provide the right leadership for the judicial arm to compliment the other arms of government.

Responding, Mrs Dipeolu thanked the governor for believing in her and giving her the privilege and honour to serve the state in the capacity of the chief judge.

She promised to discharge her duty without fear or favour, soliciting the continued support of the government to the judiciary.

I will not disappoint the state, our forebears, my colleagues, I will not drop the ball and I will always keep the flag flying, Mrs Dipolu promised.

(NAN)The late major general, Tunde Idiagbon, was a very rare example of what loyalty to fatherland and to a superior should be, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Monday.

Tunde was strong, loyal and extremely committed to the cause of positively changing the narrative about Nigeria, which the administration set out to do at that time, Mr Buhari said.

Speaking, Monday, when he received APC governorship aspirants and members of the party from the three senatorial zones of Kwara State at State House, Mr Buhari recalled how his former deputy, from Kwara State, who was on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia when the administration was overthrown in 1985, insisted on returning to the country despite the political uncertainty especially as he had learnt that Mr Buhari, as Commander-in-Chief at that time, had not been killed in the take-over.

The president added that the late Mr Idiagbon rejected the offer from the King of Saudi Arabia to bring members of his (Idiagbon) family from Nigeria to the Kingdom, as he was his guest at that time, and eventually returned to Nigeria to suffer arrest like he (Buhari) did.

Mr Buhari further enjoined Nigerians to remain faithful and loyal to the country in all their dealings.

You dont have to be in uniform to be loyal. What I said long ago in 1984 is still valid today. We have no other country but Nigeria. Others who feel they have another country may choose to go. We will stay here and salvage it together, he said.

Gen. Tunde Idiagbon [Photo: Pulse.ng]

President Buhari thanked the APC stakeholders for the position they have taken to continue to support the party regardless of the outcome of the primaries and assured them that, with the unity displayed so far, APC will form the government in Kwara State after the 2019 elections.A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, has vowed to unseat the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun State in 2019.

Mr Bankole is the governorship candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADC).

Speaking on Monday at his official introduction as the candidate of the party at its headquarters in Onikolobo area of Abeokuta, the former federal lawmaker said ADC has the structure to sack the ruling party at the polls in the state.

He expressed appreciation to party members for electing him as the governorship candidate and assured the party that he would not waste its ticket.

I am exceedingly happy to be nominated as our partys gubernatorial candidate. I am grateful to this massive structure you have built in the last six years, especially in the last two years, he said.

I promise that I will not, in any capacity, play with the ticket that you have given me. I believe I can speak on behalf of all other candidates that come February and March 2019, we will deliver.

I am speaking with all confidence with the work that you have done in the last two years, and still doing, most of it covertly. We are in for a shot at the seat in this state. We are dependent on God and the work that we have done and still doing especially at grassroots level, he stated.

I assure you that the economic complexities of Ogun State are not difficult. And the motto of our party Mass Employment is something that we will follow.

The chairman of the party in the state, Wale Egunleti, said the journey had been tough, but the party had been strengthened by the resolve to abide by democratic principles and distinguish itself from those who engaged in acts detrimental to democratic ethos.

In the light of recent events in which primaries by other parties were marred by violence and are even subject to litigation, we in the Action Democratic Party have set ourselves apart by conducting primaries in a most peaceful manner, which will remain as a point of reference for years to come, he said.

The partys boss described Mr Bankole as a tested and trusted leader whose competence and readiness for the task of effectively governing Ogun can not be questioned.

Mr Bankole, then elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, became Speaker of the House of Representatives in November 2007 after Patricia Etteh was forced to step down over allegation of contract fraud.While knocking on doors in neighborhoods, Rooney recalled how he met a couple who had a for-sale sign on their front lawn and explained how they were moving out of Illinois because of the long debate that led to a state budget impasse and also the public pension crisis.The message this time was more about how to be supportive both as an individual and how the faith community can be supportive of victims. Theres been a lack of training across the board on this topic to pastoral staff and leaders, and that was a huge void we needed to try and fill, McDonnell said. In the event a victim goes to any faith for help, we want to provide commonality in our voice in the way we respond to victims. We want to do the right thing.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.







1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.HAMILTON, N.Y., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace by Susan Thomson, associate professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate University and former program officer for the United Nations Development Programme, examines the ambitious political and social roots of President Paul Kagame and the ruling RPF.

Rwanda image by Aubrey Graham

Truly the only study available of its kind, Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace features Thomson's unique perspective, as she worked for the UN when the Rwandan Patriotic Front came to power in 1994, marking the end of the civil war between the Hutus and Tutsis.

In her study, Thomson analyzes Rwanda's instability and Kagame's political methods to demonstrate that the "clean streets, renovated restaurants, new hotels, and espresso bars" are only a reality for a privileged few. Thomson uncovers the truth behind the shiny surface and describes the modern traumas that have been kept under wraps.

Catharine Newbury, author of The Cohesion of Oppression, describes the study as both "accessible and nuanced," commending Thomson for her decision to back her years of research with the "experiences of ordinary Rwandans."

If your media organization is interested in learning more about the book or interviewing Thomson, please reach out Daniel DeVries.

Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace is published by Yale University Press, ISBN: 9780300197396

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300197396/rwanda

Media Contact:

Daniel DeVries

Media Relations Director, Colgate University

[email protected]

315-228-6395

SOURCE Susan ThomsonREDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Goldman Sachs recognized Course Hero's CEO, Andrew Grauer as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2018 at its Builders + Innovators Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Goldman Sachs selected Grauer as one of 100 entrepreneurs from multiple industries to be honored at the three-day event. Grauer cofounded Course Hero, an online learning platform that has helped over 20 million students find practice problems, study guides, videos, class notes, and 24/7 tutoring with step-by-step explanations for every subject they are studying, in 2006 while attending Cornell University.

"It's an honor to be recognized by Goldman Sachs," said Grauer. "Course Hero's vision is a world where every student graduates confident and prepared. We have our sights set on this future every day, in everything we do and a passionate team collaborating to make this world a reality."

"A dynamic economy depends on dynamic entrepreneurs who disrupt industries and occasionally give birth to entirely new sectors," said David M. Solomon, Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. "The purpose of Builders + Innovators is to support emerging leaders in their quests to innovate faster in order to grow their ideas. We are pleased to recognize Andrew Grauer as one of the most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2018."

For nearly 150 years, Goldman Sachs has been advising and financing entrepreneurs as they launch and grow their businesses. In addition to honoring 100 entrepreneurs, the summit consists of general sessions and clinics led by seasoned entrepreneurs, academics and business leaders as well as resident scholars.

This recognition contributes to what has already been an incredible year of awards earned by the Course Hero team. In January the mobile app was honored as a Mobile Star Best Educational App , in April Course Hero took home two Best Places to Work awards and was named a finalist for the annual EdTech Digest awards and in September, Andrew Grauer was named to the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal's Upstart 50 list.

About Course Hero

Course Hero is an online learning platform where members can access over 20 million course-specific study resources contributed by a community of students and educators. The platform includes practice problems, study guides, videos, class notes, and step-by-step explanations to help with every college class  from economics to literature, biology to history, accounting to psychology, and everything in between. Course Hero has been recognized as one of the 2017 Technology Fast 500 by Deloitte.

Connect with Course Hero at www.coursehero.com or on LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , and Pinterest .

For more information, contact:

Grayling PR for Course Hero

[email protected]

Andrew Williams

[email protected]

SOURCE Course Hero

Related Links

http://www.coursehero.com

TULSA, Okla., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Emerging Fuels Technology, Inc (EFT) has executed a license agreement with Red Rock Biofuels LLC ("RRB") under which EFT will provide its TL8a Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology to provide additional FT capacity for RRB's biorefinery in Lakeview, Oregon, USA. EFT has also received a "notice to proceed" from RRB to commence design of its FT system to be installed at the Lakeview biorefinery.

RRB is a subsidiary of IR1 Group LLC ("IR1"), which has built and operated over 325 million gallons of biofuels production capacity and is constructing the Lakeview biorefinery.

IR1 will build a global portfolio of biorefineries to convert waste woody biomass into renewable jet and diesel fuels. Through a proprietary integration of existing technologies, IR1 makes the long-commercialized Fischer-Tropsch process economic at the biomass scale. By using forest and sawmill residues IR1 will also reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires by removing waste biomass from overstocked forests.

Kenneth Agee, President of EFT said:

"We are looking forward to working with Red Rock Biofuels on this project, which represents the third commercial license EFT has sold and the first license of our second generation TL8a catalyst/reactor system which requires half as much catalyst volume for the same output capacity as our first generation TL8 catalyst. This means the reactor size is also cut in half for the same capacity. We expect the TL8a system will be a major portion of our licensing activity in the foreseeable future."

Terry Kulesa, CEO of IR1 and RRB said:

"We are pleased to be working with EFT on their TL8a catalyst/reactor system, which will provide additional FT capacity for our Lakeview biorefinery."

About Emerging Fuels Technology, Inc.

Emerging Fuels Technology (EFT) is a technology company focused on methods for producing synthetic fuels and specialty products from a variety of feedstocks such as natural gas, biomass, municipal solid waste (MSW) and bio-derived oils. EFT is one of the world's foremost authorities on Fischer-Tropsch (FT) and related synthesis, licensing the core technologies and upgrade packages for 500 to 10,000 BPD applications. www.emergingfuels.com

About IR1 Group LLC and Red Rock Biofuels LLC

IR1 Group LLC has built and operated over 325 million gallons of biofuels production capacity and is currently constructing the Red Rock Biofuels LLC biorefinery in Lakeview, Oregon. IR1 brings a core set of project development disciplines to move projects through feasibility, development, finance, design & engineering, procurement, construction and operations. www.ir1group.com

Red Rock Biofuels LLC is building a biorefinery in Lakeview, OR that will annually convert approximately 136,000 dry tons of waste woody biomass into 15.1 million gallons of renewable jet, diesel and gasoline blendstock fuels. www.redrockbio.com

SOURCE Emerging Fuels Technology, Inc.

Related Links

http://emergingfuels.com/

DALLAS, Oct. 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (NYSE: JEC) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Energy, Chemicals and Resources (ECR) segment to WorleyParsons Limited (ASX: WOR) for $3.3 billion, consisting of $2.6 billion in cash and $700 million in WorleyParsons ordinary shares. The transaction value represents a multiple of more than 11.5 times trailing twelve-month (TTM) adjusted EBITDA for the ECR business1.

Following the completion of the transaction, Jacobs will be focused solely on its two higher growth, higher margin lines of business  Aerospace, Technology, Environmental & Nuclear (ATEN) and Buildings, Infrastructure & Advanced Facilities (BIAF).

"For Jacobs, this transaction marks an inflection point in our portfolio transformation focused on more consistent, higher-margin growth as a leader solving the world's critical challenges," said Jacobs Chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou. "The increased financial flexibility we gain from this sale better positions us to invest in our ATEN and BIAF businesses, focusing our premier talent and expertise on technology, innovation and sustainable solutions that are priorities for our infrastructure and government services clients. These capabilities, along with our strong backlog and efficient global platform, will further strengthen our global leadership in these segments to drive meaningful value creation."

The company will report results for fiscal 2018 on Nov. 20.

"While we are in the process of finalizing our fiscal 2018 results, our current view is materially consistent with previously announced guidance for the year," said Jacobs CFO Kevin Berryman. "In addition, we continue to believe that the adjusted EPS guidance provided for fiscal 2019 remains appropriate, keeping in mind that such guidance did not reflect any impact from the pending transaction announced today."

"Upon closing of this transaction, we plan to initially apply proceeds to pay down floating-rate debt," Berryman added. "Beyond that, our strong financial flexibility and free cash flow will support incremental profitable growth investments and capital returns to shareholders, consistent with our record of disciplined allocation yielding attractive growth and value creation. And of course, Jacobs will continue to benefit from our ECR business' earnings and cash flow through the closing of the transaction."

Use of Proceeds

Upon closing, Jacobs expects to receive approximately $2.6 billion in net proceeds from the transaction, which initially will be used to pay down floating-rate debt, while also maintaining a disciplined approach to deploy capital for increased shareholder value, including mergers and acquisitions. The company will provide further details about its capital allocation strategy, as well as its updated pro forma financial outlook, at the company's investor day on February 19, 2019.

WorleyParsons Equity

Together, ECR and WorleyParsons will be a global leader with the talent, industry sector, customer and geographic diversity needed to compete and win. The structure of the transaction enables Jacobs to benefit from the near-term upside created by the combination and the oil and gas market recovery.

At the close of the transaction, Jacobs will receive approximately 58.2 million shares of WorleyParsons stock, which will equate to approximately 11 percent of WorleyParsons ordinary shares based on WorleyParsons' outstanding shares post-close. The shares will be subject to a six-month holding requirement (but not earlier than Aug. 31) following the transaction's closing.

Approvals and Time to Close

The Jacobs Board of Directors and the WorleyParsons Board of Directors each have approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of calendar 2019, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Advisors

Perella Weinberg Partners LP is serving as financial advisor to Jacobs, and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP is serving as legal counsel.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz also served as legal advisor to Jacobs. Centerview Partners provided financial advice to the company.

Conference Call

Jacobs will host a conference call tomorrow, Monday, Oct. 22, at 8:00 AM ET to discuss this announcement with the financial community. The conference call can be accessed by dialing (866) 324-3683 (U.S./Canada) or (509) 844-0959 (international), and by entering the passcode 9868327. A replay will be available by dialing (855) 859-2056, or (404) 537-3406. Use the code 9868327 to access the replay.

Interested parties can listen to the conference call and view accompanying slides on the investor page at www.jacobs.com.

About Jacobs

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.

Aerospace, Technology, Environmental and Nuclear

Through its ATEN business, Jacobs stands as one of the world's largest diversified government services providers. ATEN's talent force of approximately 15,500 professionals support operational mission planning and execution, cybersecurity, scientific research, environmental planning, assessment and remediation, and nuclear solutions for government and commercial clients.

Buildings, Infrastructure and Advanced Facilities

Jacobs' BIAF business provides complete solutions delivery for private and public-sector clients in high growth markets of water, transportation, aviation, buildings, life sciences and electronics. With a talent force of more than 33,000 professionals providing a range of services from planning and design through construction- and program-management and operations utilizing a number of delivery platforms.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

Pro-forma adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA") for the Energy, Chemicals and Resources ("ECR") business is calculated by adding back depreciation and amortization expense to ECR segment operating profit (as defined in Jacobs' quarterly filings on Form 10-Q and annual reports on Form 10-K). Additionally, CH2M results (including depreciation and amortization) associated with the ECR segment are included on a pro-forma basis as if the acquisition occurred as of the beginning of the trailing twelve-month ("TTM") period presented. Finally, other corporate adjustments deemed related to ECR which were not previously reported in the ECR segment operating results have been allocated to the ECR segment as noted below. The following table reconciles ECR segment operating profit to the Adjusted TTM EBITDA. Amounts are shown in thousands, except Enterprise Value to Adjusted TTM EBITDA ratio:

Non-GAAP Reconciliation Table TTM ended 6/29/2018 ECR Segment Operating profit $ 205,965 Depreciation and Amortization $ 52,800 Other corporate and pro forma adjustments $ 26,300 Adjusted TTM EBITDA $ 285,065



Enterprise Value $ 3,300,000 Enterprise Value/Adjusted TTM EBITDA 11.58

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements as such term is defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and such statements are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provided by the same. Statements made in this press release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding whether and when the transaction between Jacobs and WorleyParsons will be consummated and the anticipated benefits thereof. Although such statements are based on management's current estimates and expectations, and currently available competitive, financial, and economic data, forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and you should not place undue reliance on such statements as actual results may differ materially. We caution the reader that there are a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what is contained, projected or implied by our forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the possibility that Jacobs and WorleyParsons may be unable to obtain regulatory approval or that other conditions to closing the transaction may not be satisfied, such that the transaction will not close or that the closing may be delayed; general economic conditions; the possibility of unexpected costs, liabilities or delays in connection with the transaction; risks that the transaction disrupts our current plans and operations; the ability to recognize the benefits of the transaction; the amount of the costs, fees, expenses and charges related to the transaction; the outcome of any legal proceedings related to the transaction; the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the Stock and Asset Purchase Agreement. For a description of some additional factors that may occur that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements see our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 29, 2017, in particular the "Risk Factors" discussions thereunder as well as our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company is not under any duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform to actual results, except as required by applicable law.

For additional information contact:

Investors:

Jonathan Doros, 214-583-8596

[email protected]

Media:

Lorrie Paul Crum, 303-525-2916

[email protected]

__________________________

1 TTM based on June 2018. See reconciliation table at the end of this press release.

SOURCE Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.jacobs.com

DARMSTADT, Germany, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, the vibrant science and technology company which operates its healthcare business in the U.S. and Canada as EMD Serono, today announced new and updated results from expansion cohorts of two ongoing M7824 Phase I clinical trials (NCT02517398 and NCT02699515) at the ESMO (European Society for Medical Oncology) 2018 Congress in Munich, October. New data presented include the first presentation of results for M7824 in advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN), biliary tract cancer (BTC) and esophageal cancers (esophageal squamous cell carcinoma [ESCC] and esophageal adenocarcinoma [EAC]). In addition, updated data for M7824 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and gastric cancer add to the growing evidence for M7824's clinical anti-tumor activity in a number of challenging cancers.

"We are excited to share encouraging updated and new data for M7824, including four additional difficult-to-treat cancers," said Luciano Rossetti, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Research & Development for the Biopharma business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. "The results we've seen to date will enable us to target those tumors and settings with the highest potential to impact people living with cancer, as we move into the next stage of our development program with this bifunctional immunotherapy."

New data from an ongoing Phase I expansion cohort (32 patients, NCT02517398) showed signs of promising early clinical activity in patients with refractory metastatic second-line SCCHN, especially in HPV-positive SCCHN patients. As presented during the Proffered Paper Head and Neck cancers session, the overall response rate (ORR) was 15.6%, with a numerically higher ORR in HPV-positive patients (36.4%, 4/11 patients experienced a partial response), with two additional delayed responses resulting in a 54.5% clinical response rate for the HPV-positive population. At ASCO 2018, data from the dose escalation cohort of a Phase I, open-label study in advanced HPV-associated cancers (including SCCHN) were presented in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, which showed that M7824 delivered an ORR of 41.7% in HPV-positive tumors. These new data from the SCCHN expansion cohort add to the evidence of encouraging activity in HPV-positive tumors. A total of 11 patients (34.4%) experienced Grade 3 treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) and no Grade 4 or 5 TRAEs were seen. The most common TRAEs were rash (18.8%), asthenia (15.6%), pruritus (15.6%), hypothyroidism (15.6%), increased alanine aminotransferase (12.5%), increased aspartate aminotransferase (12.5%) and skin neoplasm (12.5%).

Updated results (now with longer follow-up and independent review committee [IRC] assessed data) from an ongoing Phase I trial (NCT02517398) in patients with previously treated, advanced NSCLC, demonstrated an ORR of 37.0% (10/27 patients) and progression free survival of 9.5 months in patients with PD-L1+ tumors (1%). In patients with high PD-L1+ expressing tumors (cut-off of 80% using the 73-10 assay; 80% cut-off with 73-10 assay is most comparable to 50% cut-off with the 22C3 test based on internal comparability studies), ORR was 85.7% (6/7 patients). Grade 3 TRAEs occurred in 23 patients (28.8%) and Grade 4 TRAEs occurred in 2 patients (2.5%): hypokalemia and decreased blood magnesium and increased amylase and lipase levels. The most common TRAEs were pruritus (21.3%), maculopapular rash (18.8%), decreased appetite (12.5%), asthenia (11.3%) and rash (10.0%).

New data from an ongoing expansion cohort (NCT02699515) in Asian patients with BTC who had progressed after platinum-based first-line treatment, demonstrated clinical activity with M7824 treatment. The ORR among the total of 30 patients was 20%, as assessed by IRC. Responses were observed across all PD-L1 levels and duration of response ranged from 8.3 months to 13.9+ months. Grade 3 or higher TRAEs were experienced by 10 patients (33.3%). The most common TRAEs were rash (10%) and lipase increase (10%). Three deaths due to adverse events were reported: one due to septic shock (bacteremia, etiology unknown) and two due to interstitial lung disease (ILD; reported term: interstitial pneumonitis). Both patients with ILD were Japanese, which is consistent with the higher incidence of drug-induced ILD observed among Japanese patients compared with the non-Japanese population.1

Three additional posters featuring new data from two cohorts of ongoing Phase I studies in patients with ESCC and advanced EAC (studies NCT02699515 and NCT02517398 respectively) and updated data in gastric cancer (NCT02699515) were also presented. These data provide further indications of the potential of M7824 in cancers with significant unmet needs.

To date more than 650 patients with various types of solid tumors have been treated across the program with M7824. The safety profile is consistent with that observed with other PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors. Previously described rash/skin lesions (keratoacanthomas, SCC, hyperkeratosis) associated with transforming growth factor- (TGF-) inhibiting therapies have also been observed.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, has recently initiated a trial to investigate M7824 compared with pembrolizumab as a first-line treatment in patients with PD-L1 expressing advanced NSCLC. The multicenter, randomized, open-label, controlled study is evaluating the safety and efficacy of M7824 versus pembrolizumab as monotherapy treatment.

M7824 is an investigational bifunctional immunotherapy that brings together a TGF trap and 'fuses' it with the anti-PD-L1 mechanism. Designed to simultaneously block the two immunosuppressive pathways, M7824 is thought to control tumor growth by potentially restoring and enhancing anti-tumor responses. M7824 is an important part of a novel combination approach that seeks to harness the power of the immune system and address the tremendously complex nature of difficult-to-treat tumors.

Notes to Editors

Accepted abstracts supported by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany slated for presentation are listed below. In addition, a number of investigator-sponsored studies were accepted (not listed).

Title Lead Author Abstract # Presentation Date / Time (CEST) Location M7824 (TGF -trap/anti-PD-L1) Proffered Paper Session M7824 (MSB0011359C), a bifunctional fusion protein targeting PD-L1 and TGF-, in patients (pts) with advanced SCCHN: results from a phase 1 cohort BC Cho 1048O Mon, Oct 22,

2:45  4:15 PM

(3:00 PM lecture time) ICM, Room 14B Poster Sessions Updated results of M7824 (MSB0011359C), a bifunctional fusion protein targeting TGF- and PD-L1, in second-line (2L) NSCLC L Paz-Ares 1463P Sat, Oct 20,

12:30  1:30 PM Hall A3  Poster Area Networking Hub Assessment of PD1/PD-L1 colocalization in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using brightfield double labeling and quantitative digital image analysis T Mrowiec 1931P Sun, Oct 21,

12:45  1:45 PM Hall A3  Poster Area Networking Hub M7824 (MSB0011359C), a bifunctional fusion protein targeting PD-L1 and TGF-, in Asian patients with pretreated biliary tract cancer: preliminary results from a phase 1 trial C Yoo 757P Sun, Oct 21,

12:45  1:45 PM Hall A3  Poster Area Networking Hub M7824 (MSB0011359C), a bifunctional fusion protein targeting PD-L1 and TGF-, in patients with post-platinum esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC): preliminary results from a phase 1 cohort B Tan 643P Sun, Oct 21,

12:45  1:45 PM Hall A3  Poster Area Networking Hub Phase 1 study results from an esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) cohort treated with M7824 (MSB0011359C), a bifunctional fusion protein targeting transforming growth factor  (TGF-) and PD-L1 CC Lin 642P Sun, Oct 21,

12:45  1:45 PM Hall A3  Poster Area Networking Hub Updated results from a phase 1 trial of M7824 (MSB0011359C), a bifunctional fusion protein targeting PD-L1 and TGF-, in patients with pretreated recurrent or refractory gastric cancer YJ Bang 661P Sun, Oct 21, 12:45  1.45 PM Hall A3  Poster Area Networking Hub

About M7824

M7824 is an investigational bifunctional immunotherapy that is designed to bring together a TGF- trap and 'fuse' it with the anti-PD-L1 mechanism. M7824 is designed to simultaneously block the two immunosuppressive pathways  targeting both pathways aims to control tumor growth by potentially restoring and enhancing anti-tumor responses. M7824 is currently in Phase I studies for solid tumors.

About Biliary Tract Cancer (BTC)

BTC is a collective term for a group of rare and aggressive gastrointestinal cancers, made up of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCC), extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (eCC), and gallbladder carcinoma (GBC).2,3,4 Surgery is the only curative treatment, but most patients present with advanced disease and therefore have a limited survival.4 Approximately 140,000 cases of BTC are estimated to occur annually world-wide.5 However, incidence of BTC varies in different parts of the world: the incidence of cholangiocarcinomas is rising in the Western world, with reports of up to 2 in 100,000. By contrast, in Asian countries, the incidence is much higher.3 GBC also has an incidence of 2 in 100,000, but is much more prevalent in parts of South America.3 Collectively these cancers present late in the majority of patients and long-term outcomes for resectable patients are poor with median survival in the advanced setting less than 1 year.4,6,7,8

All Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Press Releases are distributed by e-mail at the same time they become available on the Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Website. Please go to www.emdgroup.com/subscribe to register online, change your selection or discontinue this service.

About Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Almost 53,000 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 KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, generated sales of  15.3 billion in 66 countries.

Founded in 1668, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany holds the global rights to the "Merck" name and brand except in the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials.

References

Hanaoka M et al, eds. Drug-Induced Lung Injury. Singapore : Springer; 2017. https://www.springer.com/us/book/9789811044656 Blair A B et al. Immunotherapy as a treatment for biliary tract cancers: A review of approaches with an eye to the future. Current Problems in Cancer (2017) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.currproblcancer.2017.10.004 Goldstein D et al. New molecular and immunotherapeutic approaches in biliary cancer. ESMO Open (2017). Published online 2017 Mar 27. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1136%2Fesmoopen-2016-000152 Jain A et al. Molecular profiling of biliary tract cancer: a target rich disease. Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology (2016) 7(5): 797803. https://dx.doi.org/10.21037%2Fjgo.2016.09.01 Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. The Lancet 2015;385(9963):117171. GBD. Mortality and causes of death collaborators. global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2013. Lancet 2013;2015:11771 Marcano-Bonilla et al. Biliary tract cancers: epidemiology, molecular pathogenesis and genetic risk associations. Chin Clin Oncol 2016;5:61. no 5. http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/cco.2016.10.09 Hezel AF et al. Genetics of biliary tract cancers and emerging targeted therapies. J Clin Oncol 2010;28:353140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1200/JCO.2009.27.4787

Contact: Brenda Mulligan, +1-978-821-5345

SOURCE Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, GermanyAs a part of this alliance, select content from SCMP will be published on Times of India's digital, mobile and web platforms, and Times of India will be SCMP's primary partner in India for content syndication. This partnership will be the first of its kind between SCMP and any media company in India. The unique alliance will give Times of India's readers access to international news from China and Hong Kong.

India has the world's second largest English-speaking population and a rapidly expanding internet user base, which is expected to reach 850 million by 2022. This partnership is a bold step towards the growing base of Times of India's digital platforms, which has a significant number of monthly readers across web and mobile.

SCMP is undergoing a significant transformation as it expands from being Hong Kong's paper of record to a global media company. It has added three digital media platforms to its portfolio  Abacus, Inkstone and Goldthread  and entered into partnerships with key media around the globe. This partnership also bolsters SCMP's recent expansion in the Southeast Asia region, which includes new hires and its first China Conference outside of Hong Kong, to be held in Kuala Lumpur this October.

Margot Ling, GM, Greater China, Times Bridge, said, "It brings us immense pleasure to be a part of this unique alliance. In this era of connected worlds, Indian readers are always on the lookout for news from across the globe, and this partnership will enable them to easily access content from Greater China, due to Times of India's high reach."

"As an independent, English newspaper reporting on China, India is a natural market for SCMP," noted Gary Liu, CEO, SCMP. "In our increasingly interconnected world, this partnership will give Times of India readers further insight into China and will continue to expand SCMP's global reach."

Puneet Gupt, COO  News, Times Internet, said, "As the leading digital news platform in India, Times Of India is dedicated to bringing both local and global insights to its readers. This strategic partnership with SCMP creates a gateway for our readers to understand more about Greater China via our digital platforms.

About Times Bridge

Times Bridge is a leading investments firm with a mission to bring the world's best ideas to India and share India's best insights with the world. Its current portfolio includes Airbnb, Coursera, Houzz, Uber, Thrive and MUBI, among others. By providing unmatched market leadership to its select partners and by harnessing the assets of The Times Group, India's largest media company, Times Bridge accelerates growth and immersion across the Indian subcontinent for leaders who believe in winning in and learning from India.

For more information, visit http://timesbridge.com and follow @timesbridge on Twitter.

About South China Morning Post

South China Morning Post is a leading global news company that has reported on China and Asia for more than a century. Founded in 1903, SCMP is headquartered in Hong Kong, where it is the city's newspaper of record, with a growing correspondent staff across Asia and the United States. SCMP's vision is to "Elevate Thought" and its mission is to "Lead the global conversation about China". Additionally, SCMP publishes a portfolio of premium lifestyle and fashion titles in Hong Kong including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Esquire, and Harper's BAZAAR. SCMP is also home to Abacus, a digital news brand focused on China's tech industry; Inkstone, a daily news brief for those curious about China's growing impact around the world, and Goldthread, a social first, video-driven platform created for digital explorers and the globally curious.

SOURCE South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd.CHICAGO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Yes Lifecycle Marketing , the leading multichannel marketing services and technology provider, today announced the company will operate under the name Yes Marketing and has relaunched its website, reflecting a renewed vision on empowering brands to harness the value of their consumer relationships.

Through a unique combination of marketing services, robust data and advanced technologies, Yes Marketing will be their clients' trusted advisor in all marketing efforts, providing end-to-end customer journey enablement, from awareness through acquisition to loyalty. The company's integrated, services-based and technology-agnostic approach will empower marketers to engage consumers along each lifecycle stage.

"Our mission is to connect brands with consumers to drive engagement and build brand advocacy," said Jim Sturm, president, Yes Marketing. "Our robust technology capabilities, world-class marketing services teams and best-of-breed data assets help our clients get to 'yes' with their consumers  'yes' to becoming a new customer, to buying more, to spending more and to becoming loyal brand advocates."

Yes Marketing will continue to invest in its technology and services roadmap in order to meet the needs of its clients and support additional marketing capabilities including digital acquisition, integrated social and display advertising, personalized communications and loyalty program management. These integrated services will further enhance Yes Marketing's capabilities to support a full range of multichannel communications, including email, programmatic media, web, social, mobile, mobile messaging, e-commerce, and direct mail.

"As a company dedicated to exceeding our clients' expectations, we understand the importance of adapting to our clients' needs in order to provide the highest level of service and drive incremental business results," said Michael Iaccarino, CEO and chairman, Infogroup, parent company of Yes Marketing. "Our new name and direction embody our commitment to be our clients' trusted advisor when it comes to building relationships with their customers that result in lifetime loyalty and drive revenue."

For more information about Yes Marketing and its integrated services and solutions, click here.

About Yes Marketing

Yes Marketing focuses on enabling marketers to engage, acquire and retain consumers along each stage of the consumer journey with a brand  from awareness through consideration, purchase and lifetime loyalty. This is accomplished through a unique combination of expert marketing services, best-of-breed technology and proprietary data assets that enable brands to create and deliver truly personalized, data-driven customer experiences with the help of a single vendor with an integrated technology and service offering. To learn more, call 1-877-937-6245, email [email protected] or visit www.yesmarketing.com.

About Infogroup

Infogroup is a leading provider of data and data-driven marketing solutions. Infogroup provides data, technology and services that help marketers acquire new customers and maximize the value of existing relationships. The company's data and marketing solutions help clients of all sizes, from local SMBs to FORTUNE 100 enterprises, increase sales and customer loyalty. Infogroup provides both digital and traditional marketing channel expertise that is enhanced by access to our proprietary data on 280 million individuals and 24 million businesses. For more information, visit www.infogroup.com .

Contact:

Jennifer Mulligan

Phone: 312-648-6005

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Yes Lifecycle Marketing

Related Links

http://www.yeslifecyclemarketing.com

DALLAS, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, the world's leading voluntary health organization devoted to fighting cardiovascular disease and stroke, wants stroke survivors to know that while life may be different after a stroke, rehabilitation can help you regain some independence, decrease chances of another stroke and provide new goals for you to work toward.

Worldwide, stroke is the No. 2 cause of death and is a leading cause of long-term disability. Stroke is more disabling than it is fatal. However, stroke is largely beatable through high-quality rehabilitation and patient support and implementation of the Association's Rehabilitation Guidelines.

October 29 is World Stroke Day, and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association is working with Medical City Healthcare in North Texas to help spread awareness of the need to act fast at the onset of stroke symptoms and the importance of rehabilitation.

"Rehabilitation is key to recovery after stroke," said Parita Bhuva, MD, Interventional Neurologist with Medical City Healthcare's Texas Stroke Institute. "But up to a third of people who have a stroke do not participate in a rehab program."

Stroke rehabilitation can help patients build their strength, capabilities and confidence, potentially regaining skills and returning to independent living. Rehab can also help patients better manage other conditions they have, which may affect daily living or their risk for a second stroke.

"Stroke recovery begins the moment you suspect a stroke," said Dr. Bhuva. "The sooner a person can be treated for stroke, the more likely they are to have a successful outcome." Dr. Bhuva advises everyone to be ready to act FAST if they suspect a stroke.

The acronym F.A.S.T. stands for:

Face Drooping - Does one side of the face droop or is it numb? Ask the person to smile. Is the person's smile uneven?

- Does one side of the face droop or is it numb? Ask the person to smile. Is the person's smile uneven? Arm Weakness - Is one arm weak or numb? Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?

- Is one arm weak or numb? Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward? Speech Difficulty - Is speech slurred? Is the person unable to speak or hard to understand? Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence, like "The sky is blue."

- Is speech slurred? Is the person unable to speak or hard to understand? Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence, like "The sky is blue." Time to Call 9-1-1 - If someone shows any of these symptoms, even if the symptoms go away, call 9-1-1 and get to a hospital immediately. (Tip: Check the time so you'll know when the first symptoms appeared.)

Education about F.A.S.T is a part of the American Stroke Association's Together to End Stroke initiative, nationally sponsored by Medtronic. Together, the two organizations aim to help people to easily recognize the stroke warning signs to improve stroke outcomes.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Together to End Stroke initiative, nationally sponsored by Kindred Rehabilitation Services, raises awareness that stroke is largely beatable through high-quality rehabilitation, patient support and implementation of the AHA/ASA's Stroke Rehabilitation and Recovery Guidelines.

For more information, visit www.StrokeAssociation.org.

About the American Heart Association

The American Heart Association is devoted to saving people from heart disease and stroke  the two leading causes of death in the world. We team with millions of volunteers to fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies and provide lifesaving tools and information to prevent and treat these diseases. The Dallas-based association is the nation's oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. To learn more or to get involved, call 1-800-AHA-USA1, visit heart.org or call any of our offices around the country. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the American Stroke Association

The American Stroke Association is devoted to saving people from stroke  the No. 2 cause of death in the world and a leading cause of serious disability. We team with millions of volunteers to fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies and provide lifesaving tools and information to prevent and treat stroke. The Dallas-based association officially launched in 1998 as a division of the American Heart Association. To learn more or to get involved, call 1-888-4STROKE or visit StrokeAssociation.org. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association receives funding mostly from individuals. Foundations and corporations donate as well, and fund specific programs and events. Strict policies are enforced to prevent these relationships from influencing the Association's science content. Financial information for the American Heart Association, including a list of contributions from pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers, is available at http://www.heart.org/corporatefunding.

SOURCE American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA)This potential vote will be a little different in that instead of a memorandum of understanding between the city and Smart City Media, of New York, it will be an actual contract. The contract seeks to allow Smart City to locate eight electronic informational kiosks in Aurora, seven in essentially downtown locations, and one along Route 59.The Allergan Foundation donation will contribute to the expansion of "Heroes MAKE America" at Fort Hood in Texas. As part of its support, Allergan welcomed current Fort Hood students to its Waco manufacturing facility for an event featuring U.S. Congressman Bill Flores of Texas. During the visit, "Heroes MAKE America" students toured Allergan production lines and visited with employees, several of whom are veterans of the U.S. Military. Members of The Allergan Foundation Board, Allergan's leadership team and Rep. Flores, a member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, visited with the students and delivered remarks thanking them for their service.

"Allergan is proud to support American veterans as a sponsor of Heroes MAKE America. Service members returning from active duty have many of the same qualities that manufacturers seek in their employees including a strong work ethic and commitment to excellence. By building upon these qualities and providing veterans with the training and skills needed for a successful career in manufacturing, Heroes MAKE America is laying the foundation for America's next generation of manufacturers to excel in the global economy," said Wayne Swanton, Allergan Executive Vice President of Global Operations and a Board Member of the National Association of Manufacturers.

"On behalf of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee and the 17th District of Texas, I offer our sincere thanks and appreciation to the Heroes MAKE America students for their service to our nation. In addition, we thank the Manufacturing Institute and its sponsors including The Allergan Foundation for providing our veterans with remarkable opportunities to advance their skills and to build successful careers to support their families' futures," said Rep. Bill Flores.

"Heroes MAKE America is grateful for the support of The Allergan Foundation and all of our sponsors who are committed to expanding this important program for our veterans. U.S. manufacturers are in need of highly-skilled workers and Heroes MAKE America is successfully connecting them with dedicated and qualified candidates who have devoted their lives to serving our nation," said Carolyn Lee, Executive Director of NAM's Manufacturing Institute.

As a longtime member of NAM, Allergan is committed to supporting manufacturing in the United States. Allergan's global operations include multiple U.S. manufacturing sites located in four states.

About The Allergan Foundation

The Allergan Foundation is a U.S.-based, private charitable foundation committed to providing a lasting and positive impact in the communities in which Allergan employees live and work. The Allergan Foundation focuses its support on charitable efforts dedicated to promoting access to quality healthcare and improving patient diagnosis, treatment, care and quality of life. Established in 1998, The Allergan Foundation has donated more than $84 million to a wide variety of philanthropic pursuits globally. For more information, visit The Allergan Foundation website at www.AllerganFoundation.org.

About Heroes MAKE America

Heroes MAKE America is a full-time, Department of Defense approved SkillBridge program aimed at closing the manufacturing skills gap by training our transitioning service members with critical skills and placing them on a path toward a rewarding manufacturing career. The program arms transitioning service members with in-demand qualifications and industry-specific certifications needed for today's manufacturing workforce. Manufacturers highly value the core elements of military training that allow America's soldiers to be the best in the world. The teamwork, commitment to mission, communication and critical thinking skills that are essential to mission success are also essential to manufacturing success. Heroes MAKE America launched in early 2018 at Fort Riley in Kansas.

About The Manufacturing Institute

The Manufacturing Institute, the nonprofit affiliate and social impact arm of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), drives programs and research to promote modern manufacturing and jumpstart new approaches to growing manufacturing talent.

About Allergan plc

Allergan plc (NYSE: AGN), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a bold, global pharmaceutical leader. Allergan is focused on developing, manufacturing and commercializing branded pharmaceutical, device, biologic, surgical and regenerative medicine products for patients around the world.

Allergan markets a portfolio of leading brands and best-in-class products for the central nervous system, eye care, medical aesthetics and dermatology, gastroenterology, women's health, urology and anti-infective therapeutic categories.

Allergan is an industry leader in Open Science, a model of research and development, which defines our approach to identifying and developing game-changing ideas and innovation for better patient care. With this approach, Allergan has built one of the broadest development pipelines in the pharmaceutical industry.

Allergan's success is powered by our global colleagues' commitment to being Bold for Life. Together, we build bridges, power ideas, act fast and drive results for our customers and patients around the world by always doing what is right.

With commercial operations in approximately 100 countries, Allergan is committed to working with physicians, healthcare providers and patients to deliver innovative and meaningful treatments that help people around the world live longer, healthier lives every day.

For more information, visit Allergan's website at www.Allergan.com.

CONTACTS: Allergan:

Investors:

Daphne Karydas

(862) 261-8006





Media:

Amy Rose

(862) 289-3072





Lisa Brown

(862) 261-7320

SOURCE Allergan plc

Related Links

www.allergan.com

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Ameren Missouri, a subsidiary of Ameren Corporation (NYSE: AEE), announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire, after construction, a wind generation facility of up to a 157-megawatts (MW) to be located in northwest Missouri. Today's agreement, along with the previously-announced planned addition of a 400 MW wind generation facility in northeast Missouri, continues Ameren Missouri's planned growth of renewable wind energy by 2020.

"Our transition to cleaner forms of generation is building momentum," said Michael Moehn, president of Ameren Missouri. "Investing in renewable generation, with the majority in Missouri, benefits our customers and the communities we serve by keeping rates steady and increasing economic activity."

The facility, developed by EDF Renewables North America, will be located in Atchison County. When operational in 2020, energy produced by the wind facility will power an estimated 47,000 homes. This new generation will help Ameren Missouri meet its goal of reducing carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, based on 2005 levels.

Ameren Missouri's planned additions will create approximately 280 jobs at the peak of construction, as well as several permanent jobs when the turbines are in service.

"Between the substantial improvements in the wind turbine technology, and declining prices, it makes a lot of sense for us to be making this significant investment," said Ajay Arora, vice president of power operations and energy management at Ameren Missouri. "As we grow renewable energy, we're also preparing smart technology upgrades for the state's energy grid. Combined, they will create long-lasting, positive impacts for our customers."

Both wind facility transactions are subject to a number of conditions, including approval from the Missouri Public Service Commission and obtaining a timely and acceptable transmission interconnection agreement from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.

Today's announcement is the second major step in implementing Ameren Missouri's Integrated Resource Plan, a 20-year outlook that supports cleaner energy in the state. The plan is consistent with Missouri's Renewable Energy Standard passed by voters in 2008. Planned investments include approximately $1 billion to build wind generation projects in Missouri and possibly neighboring states, resulting in at least 700 MWs of new wind-generated energy by 2020. Ameren Missouri also expects to add 100 MWs of solar-generated energy over the next 10 years, with 50 MWs targeted to come online by 2025.

Ameren Missouri has been providing electric and gas service for more than 100 years, and the company's electric rates are among the lowest in the nation. Ameren Missouri's mission is to power the quality of life for its 1.2 million electric and 130,000 natural gas customers in central and eastern Missouri. The company's service area covers 64 counties and more than 500 communities, including the greater St. Louis area. For more information, visit Ameren.com/Missouri or follow us at @AmerenMissouri or Facebook.com/AmerenMissouri .

Forward-looking Statements

Statements in this release not based on historical facts are considered "forward-looking" and, accordingly, involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed. Although such forward-looking statements have been made in good faith and are based on reasonable assumptions, there is no assurance that the expected results will be achieved. These statements include (without limitation) statements as to future expectations, beliefs, plans, strategies, objectives, events, conditions, and financial performance. In connection with the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, we are providing this cautionary statement to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. The following factors, in addition to those discussed under Risk Factors in Ameren's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, and elsewhere in this release and in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, could cause actual results to differ materially from management expectations suggested in such forward-looking statements:

regulatory, judicial, or legislative actions, and changes in regulatory policies and ratemaking determinations, such as Ameren Missouri's requested certificate of convenience and necessity for a wind generation facility and proposed renewable energy standard rate adjustment mechanism filed with the MoPSC in June 2018 , and future regulatory, judicial, or legislative actions that change recovery mechanisms;

, and future regulatory, judicial, or legislative actions that change recovery mechanisms; the effects of changes in federal, state, or local laws and other governmental actions, including monetary, fiscal, and energy policies;

the effects of changes in federal, state, or local tax laws, regulations, interpretations, or rates, amendments or technical corrections to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), and any challenges to the tax positions we have taken;

the effects on demand for our services resulting from technological advances, including advances in customer energy efficiency and private generation sources, which generate electricity at the site of consumption and are becoming more cost-competitive;

the cost and availability of fuel, such as ultra-low-sulfur coal, natural gas, and enriched uranium used to produce electricity; the cost and availability of purchased power, zero-emission credits, renewable energy credits, and natural gas for distribution; and the level and volatility of future market prices for such commodities and credits, including our ability to recover the costs for such commodities and credits and our customers' tolerance for any related price increases;

disruptions of the capital markets, deterioration in our credit metrics, including as a result of the implementation of the TCJA, or other events that may have an adverse effect on the cost or availability of capital, including short-term credit and liquidity;

the actions of credit rating agencies and the effects of such actions;

the construction, installation, performance, and cost recovery of generation, transmission, and distribution assets;

the effects of strategic initiatives, including mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures;

the impact of current environmental regulations and new, more stringent, or changing requirements, including those related to carbon dioxide and the related proposed repeal and replacement of the Clean Power Plan, other emissions and discharges, cooling water intake structures, coal combustion residuals, and energy efficiency, that are enacted over time and that could limit or terminate the operation of certain of Ameren Missouri's energy centers, increase our costs or investment requirements, result in an impairment of our assets, cause us to sell our assets, reduce our customers' demand for electricity or natural gas, or otherwise have a negative financial effect;

the impact of negative opinions of us or our utility services that our customers, legislators, or regulators may have or develop, which could result from a variety of factors, including failures in system reliability, failure to implement our investment plans or protect sensitive customer information, increases in rates, or negative media coverage;

the impact of complying with renewable energy portfolio requirements in Missouri ;

; labor disputes, work force reductions, future wage and employee benefits costs, including changes in discount rates, mortality tables, and returns on benefit plan assets, and other assumptions;

the inability of our counterparties to meet their obligations with respect to contracts, credit agreements, and financial instruments;

the cost and availability of transmission capacity for the energy generated by Ameren Missouri's energy centers or required to satisfy Ameren Missouri's energy sales;

legal and administrative proceedings;

the impact of cyberattacks, which could, among other things, result in the loss of operational control of energy centers and electric transmission and distribution systems and/or the loss of data, such as customer, employee, financial, and operating system information; and

acts of sabotage, war, terrorism, or other intentionally disruptive acts.

New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all of such factors, nor can it assess the impact of each such factor on the business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained or implied in any forward-looking statement. Given these uncertainties, undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements. Except to the extent required by the federal securities laws, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements to reflect new information or future events.

SOURCE Ameren Missouri

Related Links

http://www.ameren.com

ROHNERT PARK, Calif., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A constantly challenging question for parents and students is this: Is college worth it? The simple answer remains yes. The wage gap between college and high school graduates has only grown larger and now stands at about $460 per week, more than $750,000 in a lifetime of work. This takes into account the nearly $40,000 in debt that a graduate leaves college with. Unfortunately, this decision has become more difficult due to pressures that student loan debt places on borrowers. For those overwhelmed by this burden, Ameritech Financial, a document preparation firm, assists borrowers in applying for and maintaining enrollment in federal programs, such as income-driven repayment plans (IDRs), that might lower monthly payments.

"With the high cost of going to college and the large amount of debt that most students accumulate, it's important to look at higher education as an investment," said Tom Knickerbocker, Executive Vice President of Ameritech Financial. "For those who have already taken on too much debt, we can help borrowers find the right IDR and assist them in navigating the sometimes complex process of applying for programs that may possibly lower their monthly payment based on income and family size."

Despite better outcomes for college graduates, experts suggest that families and students carefully consider cost-saving strategies. For example, parents need to be very realistic with their children about how much they can contribute and warn them against taking on too much debt. Students need to understand the difference between private loans and federal loans, which generally have lower interest and have more protections than private loans. Another strategy is to get a clear picture of the real price of attending a college with net price calculators, which consider all factors in going to college.

Local community colleges, once considered to be mere extensions of high school, should be closely examined. Many have partnerships with four-year institutions that guarantee transfers if certain academic goals are met. The cost is much lower and could even allow for living at home for two years, cutting cost and debt nearly in half. The standard rule of thumb for borrowing is to take out no more in loans than a student will earn in their first year's salary. This means becoming very clear about what their job prospects are and being very aggressive about pursuing them as they go through college. Experts recommend making the most of internships and industry connections while in school so that students are ready to attack their student loan debt immediately after graduating.

"For good or bad, families and students have to look extremely carefully at college cost and how that will affect life after college," said Knickerbocker. "For those that end up running into trouble, we can help make your life more manageable by guiding you through the IDR application process and even help you keep up with required yearly recertifications."

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.

Ameritech Financial Newsroom

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 Images

college-student-in-front-of.jpg

College Student in Front of Admissions Office

Credit: dehooks/Bigstock

image2.png

Related Links

Ameritech Financial home page

Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRza8MbLvuM

SOURCE Ameritech Financial

Related Links

http://www.ameritechfinancial.com

ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- PAE won a five-year contract award by the Army Contracting Command Orlando in partnership with Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation for the Enterprise Training Services indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract. PAE will provide training and training assistance; exercise planning, management and support; and training systems and range operations and maintenance. PAE is one of three large business awardees and will compete on task orders worth up to $2.4 billion.

"PAE has an impressive background of providing holistic training programs in 48 countries over the last 12 years," said PAE CEO John Heller. "This training has successfully enhanced partner nation capacity, bolstered U.S. foreign relations and protected U.S. national security objectives. We look forward to continuing that support with ETSC."

The contractual work requires quick response training for allied forces and operational training to specific U.S. Army units in a variety of environments.

"We're going to train the customer wherever they want us to train them on whatever needs they have for training," Heller said. "Our agility combined with our quality knowledge-based training solutions make PAE the perfect partner to help the U.S. Army perform their mission."

About PAE

PAE is a leading provider of enduring support for the essential missions of the U.S. government, its allied partners and international organizations. With over 60 years of experience, PAE supports the execution of complex and critical missions by providing global logistics and stability operations, technical services and national security solutions to customers around the world. PAE has a global workforce of approximately 20,000 people, operates in more than 70 countries on all seven continents and is headquartered in Arlington, Va.

For additional information, please visit our website http://www.pae.com or follow us at @PAE_Company, LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube.

SOURCE PAE

Related Links

http://www.pae.com

ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. today announced the acquisition of Issaquah, Washington-based Richter International Consulting LLC. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded by Dave Richter in 2002, Richter International designs customized international benefits programs for multinational companies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and their employees. Offerings include expatriate health plans, international employee assistance plans, international medical and security assistance programs, traveler medical insurance, business travel accident insurance, disaster preparedness and remote site medical facilities. Dave Richter and his associates will continue to operate from their current location under the direction of Leslie Lemenager, head of Gallagher's international region employee benefits consulting and brokerage operations.

"Richter is one of the leading independent international benefits brokers on the West Coast, with particularly strong footprints in the technology and NGO sectors," said Leslie Lemenager. "I am delighted to welcome Dave and his associates to Gallagher."

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE:AJG), a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. The company has operations in 34 countries and offers client service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Investors: Ray Iardella Media: Linda J. Collins VP  Investor Relations VP  Corporate Communications 630-285-3661/ [email protected] 630-285-4009/ [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Related Links

http://www.ajg.com

SYDNEY and HONG KONG, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- LexisNexis Risk Solutions today at Sibos, the world's premier financial services event, released its cybercrime insights report for Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

The report was created using statistics of actual cybercrime attacks originating to and from the ANZ region, during April to June 2018. These results are the most current available. The ThreatMetrix Digital Identity Network ("The Network") detected the attacks during real-time analysis and interdiction of fraudulent online payments, logins and new account applications.

The Network analysed over 81 million ANZ transactions, revealing that at 138 per cent the growth in the percentage of financial services attacks originating from ANZ is higher than any other region around the world.

Out of the 81 million ANZ transactions analysed, more than 16 million bot attacks occurred in the region, a 33 per cent increase when compared to Q1 data. This indicates a ramping up of cybercrime in ANZ and perhaps coincides with the advent of the New Payments Platform (NPP).

Cybercrime costs global markets over US$600 billion, or nearly 1 per cent of global GDP last year. The growth of new technologies, incomplete risk management systems, inefficient risk detection process and the prevalence of bad actors leveraging underground markets, as well as digital currencies, all contribute to this global challenge. Australia has appeared in the list of top 10 cybercrime attackers 9 times in the last 14 quarters between 2015 to the second quarter of 2018. The report reveals that attackers are seeking out regions on the opposite side of the world. The results show that Australia ranks as a top 5 attack destination from bad actors in the U.S., U.K. and China in the analysis of this most current data set.

In addition, 599 sanctions violations events occurred from countries on the U.N. sanctions list and that were using a proxy IP in Australia or New Zealand. In other words, bad actors were attacking countries, pretending to be from ANZ.

"Criminals are targeting financial institutions where they are weakest  their customers," said Thomas C. Brown, senior vice president, U.S. Commercial Markets and Global Market Development, LexisNexis Risk Solutions. "If a bank customer's identity has been spoofed, the likelihood of fraudsters or illicit financiers gaining access to bank systems to conduct account takeover or account login attacks or money laundering is high. When the right technology, data and analytics are leveraged, though, banks are able to more accurately identify and stop bad actors while enabling legitimate customers to have a low-friction banking experience."

Contact Jean Creech Avent for a copy of the report: [email protected]

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions

LexisNexis Risk Solutions harnesses the power of data and advanced analytics to provide insights that help businesses and governmental entities reduce risk and improve decisions to benefit people around the globe. We provide data and technology solutions for a wide range of industries including insurance, financial services, healthcare and government. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, Georgia, we have offices throughout the world and are part of RELX Group (LSE: REL/NYSE: RELX), a global provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. For more information, please visit www.risk.lexisnexis.com and www.relx.com.

Contacts:

Scott McFarlane

Managing Director

Teneo Strategy

+852 3655 0506

[email protected]

and

Jean Creech Avent

Director, Public Relations

LexisNexis Risk Solutions

+1 770 862 7978

[email protected]

SOURCE LexisNexis Risk Solutions

Related Links

http://www.risk.lexisnexis.com

BOSTON, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida-based Bankers Insurance recently expanded the use of Hi Marley's intelligent conversation platform to handle property claims from the first major hurricane of the 2018 season  Hurricane Florence.

"We recognized the potential of Hi Marley's platform to provide value to both our customers and our claims team, particularly during a catastrophe," said Steve Messina, SVP of Insurance Operations at Bankers Insurance. "At this time last year our customers were impacted by two of the worst hurricanes in recent history  Harvey and Irma. This year, we dedicated ourselves to becoming better equipped to assist our customers through daily and catastrophic claims alike." To achieve that goal Bankers utilized Marley to establish contact with customers impacted by Florence - even those who were evacuated. In addition to establishing contact, Bankers' utilized Marley to share specific mitigation tips and solicit photos, and video depicting the extent of damage to covered property which were utilized to triage losses immediately.

Bankers Insurance has seen measurable results using Marley. "Compared to Irma claims last year, we have seen significant impact in handling Florence claims with Marley. Average days to contact and average days to inspect have both reduced by more than 50%. Claims closed within 30 days has jumped from just 2% to a meaningful 30%. And, the feedback from our customers has been tremendous," said Steve Messina.

Michael Greene, CEO of Hi Marley, said, "We are pleased to see the level of customer service that Bankers has been able to provide to its customers affected by Florence. The interactions during the storm reaffirm our mission at Marley to enable insurance companies to deliver on their promise to be there for customers when they need it most. Bankers has a well-earned reputation for excellence in serving customers. They've pushed our thinking on the possibilities for Marley to transform the insurance customer experience. We are thrilled to have Steve and his team as partners."

About Bankers Insurance

Bankers Insurance Group is a subsidiary of Bankers Financial Corporation and the corporate parent of its insurance companies. From modest beginnings in 1976, the Group has grown steadily into a recognized industry leader. While our companies offer a wide variety of standard insurance products, Bankers has also been extremely successful in designing and marketing niche products to meet insurance needs that are not covered by more traditional products. For more information, visit: http://bankersinsurance.com

About Hi Marley, Inc.

Hi Marley, based in Boston, MA, has built the first intelligent conversation platform specifically designed for the insurance industry. The Marley platform enables insurance companies to communicate with their customers through messaging and deliver a fast and easy customer experience. It's built for insurance, with industry-specific artificial intelligence and functionality. The platform has flexible APIs and requires zero integration to get started. For more information, visit us at: www.himarley.com

CONTACT: Paul Yanosy, [email protected]

SOURCE Hi Marley, Inc.

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SHANGHAI, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Bitcurate, a pioneer in crypto data intelligence solutions, today launched its crypto market intelligence platform, which utilizes expert analysis, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning to provide real-time insights and data analysis for investors. The program dashboard is personalized according to cryptocurrencies, empowering investors with evidence-based insights as the crypto market moves.

"Bitcurate knows that the best investment strategies are data-driven," says Victor Lee, CEO of Bitcurate. "However, the market today is fragmented, making it difficult and time-consuming for investors to find the accurate, wide-ranging information they need to make calculated decisions. That's why our platform tracks millions of data points every day, streamlining comprehensive crypto information into the market intelligence you need, when you need it."

Bitcurate's big data approach crunches data points from across social media, chats and forums, trading data, exchange APIs, the crypto futures market, and other financial instruments, processing 5 million-plus sentiment data points daily. Meanwhile, Bitcurate's sentiment analysis engine verifies and monitors news sources and live sentiment for the most comprehensive insights, with an accuracy of 86%.

"Ninety percent of crypto movements are sentiment-driven, but there's a lot of noise happening in the market right now," says Daren Tan, CTO of Bitcurate. "We use the latest sentiment analysis tools and industry standard quant analysis from Wall Street to process and analyze millions of data points, to understand the nuances and provide crypto investors with the knowledge they need to invest with confidence."

Bitcurate subscribers can personalize their dashboard to follow the cryptocurrencies they seek and quickly grasp critical information, including the real-time exchange rate, sentiment score as determined by Bitcurate's proprietary algorithm, recent price changes, market capitalization, and circulating supply. Users can also catch up on the latest cryptocurrency news thanks to a news and tweet feed, as well as receive real-time alerts for any breaking news or major market changes. Meanwhile, a coin list also ranks all cryptocurrencies by dollar value, volume, sentiment, and Bitcurate rating. Currently, Bitcurate is in an exclusive invite phase for beta customers.

Bitcurate was founded in 2018 by CEO Victor Lee and CTO Daren Tan in the aim to equip crypto investors with straightforward, evidence-based information. The team is comprised of diverse talents from across the finance, corporate, data science, and product industries, as well as former employees of Omnicom, Facebook, SCB, Zhongan and Loopring.

About Bitcurate

Bitcurate is a crypto market intelligence platform that analyzes millions of data points daily on exchanges, trading data, tech stacks, social media, search and latest news to help you gain an unfair advantage, today. Based in China and Singapore with a pan-Asian network of experts and partners, the Bitcurate team boasts in-depth experience across the finance, corporate, data science, machine learning and enterprise product, leveraging their combined expertise to provide crypto data solutions for customers and partners alike. For more information on Bitcurate, please visit https://bitcurate.co/.

 2018 Bitcurate. All rights reserved.

SOURCE Bitcurate

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https://bitcurate.co/

PETALUMA, Calif., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Many businesses try to lead through logic without inspiring others. For the purposes of this article, "leadership" is anything that convinces clients or employees to follow. Logical leadership is done with skillful management, great timing and good deals. Using limited-time offers, sales or bonuses to compel someone into performing a specific role are all examples of logical management. By comparison, inspiring leaders and companies set a path that others want to follow. Entrepreneurs can be inspiring by consistently reflecting a feeling or belief held by their followers. Brandon Frere, CEO of Frere Enterprises and other ventures, thinks that there is no reason that a company shouldn't try to be inspiring as well as logical.

"A company needs to ask itself why it exists. That question should be answered with a real feeling or belief," said Frere. "Many of my companies exist to be advocates for fairness, another exists to help its members gain freedom through mastery of the financial game."

When entrepreneurs know why their company exists, they can differentiate their company from their competition. To figure this out, an entrepreneur needs to analyze the core belief or feeling that makes their followers care about them in the first place. Whatever answer they discover reveals the primary value of their business, and it is the primary way a business carves out an inspiring identity.

The pursuit of inspiration shouldn't stop companies from using logic. Logic is successful management and it is a multiplier for whatever the company can accomplish. Inspiration can lead to a clarified vision, a differentiated company and people who understand the company's beliefs. Good management can optimize whatever resources a company has available to them in the most efficient manner. If inspiration steers, then logical management navigates.

"To be a leader, you should share your vision of a better world," said Frere. "A strategy is essential, but it is only useful if people care about the cause. In order to get others to love what you do, you need to explain why you do what you do. Convince people that your company not only has value but also represents a value."

About Brandon Frere

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 website, www.BrandonFrere.com, is used as a means of communicating many of the lessons, fundamentals and information that 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 often 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.

BrandonFrere.com

Related Images

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Super Business Man

Credit: Flynt/Bigstock

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Related Links

Brandon Frere website

SOURCE Brandon Frere

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http://www.BrandonFrere.com

DOVER, Del., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE: CPK) will host a conference call on Monday, November 12, 2018, at 10:30 a.m. ET to discuss the Company's financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2018. The earnings press release will be issued on Thursday, November 8, 2018, after the market closes.

To participate in this call, dial 855.801.6270 and reference Chesapeake Utilities Corporation's Third Quarter conference call.

To access the replay recording of this call, the accompanying transcript, and other pertinent quarterly information, use the link CPK - Conference Call Audio Replay, or visit the Investors/Events and Presentations section of Company's website at www.chpk.com.

Chesapeake Utilities Corporation is a diversified energy company engaged in natural gas distribution, transmission, gathering and processing, and marketing; electricity generation and distribution; propane gas distribution and other businesses. Information about Chesapeake Utilities Corporation and the Chesapeake family of businesses is available at www.chpk.com or through the Company's IR App.

Please note that Chesapeake Utilities Corporation has no affiliation with Chesapeake Energy, an oil and natural gas exploration company headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

For more information, contact:

Beth W. Cooper

Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

302.734.6799

SOURCE Chesapeake Utilities Corporation

Related Links

http://www.chpk.com

But the change before the City Council would eliminate that provision altogether, which is similar to what state law says. Richard Veenstra, Auroras corporation counsel, said the section of the city code being changed had not been rewritten since 1969.CHICO, Calif., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Seniors in Sonoma County will soon have a team of professionals in place to help guide the important and often complex process of selecting the right residential care solution when living independently is no longer possible. Community Care Options, a 20-year veteran in Senior Living referral services, announces today the signing of a new franchise agreement in Sonoma County, Calif. The new franchise location, owned by franchise partners Lisa and Chris DiBartolo, anticipates beginning operations Fall of 2018, joining two existing corporate locations in Chico, Calif. and Fort Myers, Fla.

"This year, we've expanded beyond our corporate operations in California and Florida to open our first Community Care Options Senior Referral Service franchises in Sonoma County," says Greg Asher, Managing Director of Franchise Sales, Community Care Options. "We're particularly excited to forge this new relationship with Lisa and Chris DiBartolo given their knowledge of the Sonoma market and deep expertise in Senior Living operations."

Lisa DiBartolo brings more than 20 years of experience in Senior Living. Her roles have included assisted living marketing and management, as well as home care client management. Her experience in these roles gives her a deep understanding of the market and ensures she can help her clients find the right fit, one that matches lifestyle, care needs and budget.

"Having deep experience with Senior Living, we gave careful thought to selecting the right brand for our business in Sonoma County. Based on the franchise's leadership and success, Community Care Options Senior Referral Services became an obvious choice for us," explains Lisa DiBartolo, owner of the Sonoma franchise. "It's such a needed service for seniors, at no cost to them. I plan to make it my mission to know all available Seniors Living options in Sonoma County, so we can help Seniors and their families make important decisions with care, compassion and dignity."

Franchise opportunities are readily available in the state of California, Florida and Nevada. Individuals interested in pursuing a Community Care Options Senior Referral Service franchise are encouraged to visit www.communitycareoptions.com or call Greg Asher at 530-894-2114.

About Community Care Options, Senior Referral Services

With the mission to make the transition from living independently to a senior living community easier and more successful for seniors, Community Care Options opened its doors more than 20 years ago.

Whether the decision is to downsize and transition into a community with others in the same phase of life, or to find additional care due to limited mobility or memory loss, Community Care Options Senior Referral Service helps locate the best residential care that fits their clients' needs by providing up-to-date information and education in a supportive and respectful way.

Owners of Community Care Options Senior Referral Service Franchises are experts in every aspect of senior living in the communities they serve. Using knowledge and expertise, Senior Advisors will present a comprehensive assessment of options with the goal of finding a residential care solution that matches their lifestyle, care needs and budget. Aiding with all aspects of relocation including a move from an existing home to appropriate Independent, Assisted Living or Memory Care Facilities, Community Care Options aims to make the transition a positive experience for everyone. With just one call, Community Care Options takes the complexity out of looking for senior housing options. For more information, visit www.communitycareoptions.com.

Media Contact

Greg Asher, 530-894-2114

[email protected]

SOURCE Community Care Options

Related Links

http://www.communitycareoptions.com

RENO, Nev., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Corporate Visions, the leading marketing and sales messaging and skills training company, has named Mike Finley its Chief Customer Officer. In the new role, Finley leads Corporate Visions' North American Sales Teams, as well as its Customer Success and Customer Engagement teams. He's responsible for developing and implementing sales, renewal, and expansion strategies to optimize performance and growth of the company.

"As VP Customer Success over the past two years, Mike has masterfully handled and collaborated with all three of the teams he's now leading," said Erik Peterson, CEO of Corporate Visions. "In addition, Mike's been an outstanding performer as a salesperson, as a sales manager, and as leader of our Customer Success operations. I fully expect him to push our North American sales efforts to new heights."

Prior to serving as VP of Customer Success, Finley held a number of key roles at Corporate Visions since joining the company in 2007, including VP of Strategic Accounts, Director of Strategic Accounts, VP Sales West, Global Accounts Director, and Sales Consultant.

The new role will create a vital and fundamental link, he says, between the two main facets of the company's sales strategy.

"This role is about forging the connection between acquisition and renewal and expansion sales," Finley said. "I feel that's a really important connection for us to make, because so often they operate independently. This role signals our commitment to driving even greater alignment between our strategic sales and customer success efforts."

The role, he said, is in large part the result of an increased focus on customer retention and expansion, which Corporate Visions' own research found requires a tailored messaging approach.

"This is really about turning our customers into lifelong customers, and driving value over the entire lifetime of that relationship," he said.

Finley says he's bullish about the caliber of the company's sales team. "We've got a world-class sales team, so our challenge is to constantly improve upon that," he said. "How do we keep putting the pieces in place to continue executing at a world-class level?"

About Corporate Visions, Inc.

Corporate Visions is a leading marketing and sales messaging, content, and skills training company. Global B2B companies come to us when they want to:

Create Value  Break the status quo and differentiate your solutions from competitors

 Break the status quo and differentiate your solutions from competitors Elevate Value  Build a more effective business case to justify executive decisions

 Build a more effective business case to justify executive decisions Capture Value  Maximize the profitability of each deal

 Maximize the profitability of each deal Expand Value  Renew and expand existing customer revenue

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE Corporate Visions, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.corporatevisions.com

GREENWICH, Conn., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- JLOFTS Greenwich, CT apartments that offer magnificent contemporary residences in addition to spacious, chic office spaceboast an open, modern design with European-style kitchens as well as high ceilings. A multitude of fabulous amenities set it apart from other residences. Additionally, JLOFTS enjoys a prime Greenwich location, within walking distance to shops and restaurants, and with an easy commute to Manhattan, Westchester and all of Connecticut. JLOFTS shares four tips for getting in the Halloween spirit.

Decorate Your Apartment. Officially kick off the Halloween season by decorating your JLOFTS Greenwich apartment with eerily elegant statement pumpkins, a Halloween wreath, and some antique candles with orange and black candlesticks. Set out a spooky welcome mat and some simple door decor to get in the spirit. Inside, add some floral arrangements in seasonal colors with a bit of greenery on a table or windowsill. Metallic accents will also add an aura of mystery and creepy allure to your table setting.

Host a Halloween Movie Night. Gather friends and neighbors for a Halloween movie night in the JLOFTS Clubroom. Curl up in front of the big screen TV and sleek gas fireplace with a ghoulishly good cocktail from the bar or a pumpkin spice latte while munching on your favorite Halloween treats. Don't forget the popcorn and candy!

Attend a Haunting Local Event. There are always exciting things to do in Greenwich, CT. This month attend a ghoulishly good local event. Don't miss this year's wickedly elegant Jay Soiree on October 27th from 7 to 11 pm for an evening of live music, dancing, cocktails and appetizers, psychic readings, and surprise apparitions. Don Halloween-themed, yet elegant attire from cocktail dresses and/or blazers to "Dark Shadows" smoking jackets and "Pride & Prejudice" zombie gowns. Then, on October 28th embark on an adventure at the Bruce Museum. From 1 to 3 pm, Art Adventures: Spooky Printsa drop-in program for children ages four and up and their families. It is free with museum admission, so don't forget to take in some beautiful art, science, and natural history exhibitions.

All Treats, No Tricks. JLOFTS residents enjoy an exclusive 10% discount at the J House Hotel, Restaurant and Spa. Treat yourself to something special and head to the J House for dinner and live music every night from Thursday to Saturday. Then, unwind after a long evening out with a soothing Spa treatment such as a massage or specialty facial.

About JLOFTS

With an outstanding walking score of 75, JLOFTS Greenwich CT Apartments are close to all. Recently named on Money Magazine's list of 'Best Places to Live,' Greenwich has high-end shops and boutiques and quality dining options within walking distance. JLOFTS Greenwich apartments offer young professionals and families a low-key alternative to a congested urban lifestyle.

SOURCE JLOFTS

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https://jloftsgreenwich.com

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Decentralized Insurance Conference (D1Conf) will take place on October 2829, 2018, in Prague, the Czech Republic. The event will be focused on both technical and business aspects of creating insurance apps using blockchain. Organized by Etherisc, a startup developing a protocol for decentralized insurance apps, D1Conf will feature 16 sessions, three panels, and two workshops.

D1Conf speakers (part 1) D1Conf speakers (part 2)

"Decentralization will drive the next generation of insurance," claims Stephan Karpischek of Etherisc. "D1Conf brings together the brightest minds working on decentralized insurance."

Journalists are invited to visit the conference for free (see below). D1Conf is sponsored by Etherisc, Nexus Mutual, Witnet Foundation, Protofire, Asure, and POA Network.

Workshop day (Oct 28)

The session day will be preceded by two workshops, to be held on October 28.

The first workshop will focus on the business and legal aspects of launching a new insurance product. Providing tips and tricks, the workshop is ideal for anyone with a basic understanding of the insurance product lifecycle.

The other workshop will give attendees hands-on experience with developing / deploying a blockchain-based insurance product in a matter of hours. Anyone attending is required to have a laptop and basic coding skills.

Sessions day (Oct 29)

Agenda:

"A Decentralized Mutual for the Ethereum Community" ( Hugh Karp , Nexus Mutual)

, Nexus Mutual) "Blockchain-Native Investment Assets" ( Reinis Melbardis , Nexus Mutual)

, Nexus Mutual) "Decentralizing Social Security" ( Fabian Raetz , Asure)

, Asure) "Business Process Modeling and Execution in Ethereum" ( Casey Kuhlman / Jan Hendrik Scheufen, Monax)

/ Jan Hendrik Scheufen, Monax) "The Opportunities of Blockchain for Inclusive Insurance" ( Michiel Berende , Etherisc)

, Etherisc) "DAOs as Infrastructure for Product Lines" ( Joel Martinez , HurricaneGuard / Alpen Sheth, Etherisc)

, HurricaneGuard / Alpen Sheth, Etherisc) "Generalized Mining and the Third-Party Economy" ( Jake Brukhman , CoinFund)

, CoinFund) "Building Alternative Insurance Value Chains on Blockchain" (Risto Rossar, Black Insurance)

"xDai Chain: Decentralized Insurance and the Benefits of the Stable Chain" ( Igor Barinov , POA Network)

, POA Network) "Exploring Insurance Primitives for Blockchain" ( Matt Tyndall , ConsenSys)

, ConsenSys) "Insurance Risk Tokenization on Blockchain" (Theo Freybote, Ten Sigma)

"Decentralized Cell-Phone Insurance" ( Jonathan Staude / Eugene Dylko, Protchain)

/ Eugene Dylko, Protchain) "The Incumbents View: How Is the Insurance Industry Using Blockchain?" ( Magdalena Ramada Sarasola , Willis Towers Watson )

, ) "Working with Regulatory Bodies: Lessons Learned from the FCA Sandbox" ( David Ambrose / Luis Novella, Vivat Group)

/ Luis Novella, Vivat Group) "Blockchain Use Cases for Agriculture and Agriculture Insurance" (Stavros Tekes / Gregory Mygdakos, AgroApps)

Three additional panels will discuss the insurance of cryptocurrency wallets, "insurability of uninsurable risks," and the quality of oracles.

2017 recaps: https://blog.etherisc.com/tagged/d1conf

How to enroll

Register at https://d1conf.com and get 20% off by using the "d1conf2018" promo code.

Journalists may attend the conference for freereach out via [email protected] for a media code.

About the organizer

Etherisc develops a protocol for decentralized insurance apps, creating an alternative to traditional insurance. The company's mission is to make the purchase and sale of insurance more efficientreducing operational costs, increasing transparence, and democratizing access to reinsurance investments. More: https://etherisc.com .

Media Contact:

Natalia Usenia

[email protected]

+1 408 705 4666

SOURCE Etherisc

Related Links

https://etherisc.com

"ARDS is under-recognized because these patients are often extremely ill and have other life-threatening conditions, such as shock, pneumonia, or trauma. Since diagnosis depends on the patient meeting a number of criteria, it is easy for one of the criteria to be attributed to another acute condition, rather than to ARDS," said Dr. Michelle Ng Gong , chief of Research, Critical Care at Montefiore Health System and professor of medicine and of epidemiology & population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "By using new technology we hope to help clinicians identify ARDS as early as possible, when treatment may be most effective."

Funded by a $1.2 million Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant, the new tool will screen patients throughout Montefiore and flag people at risk of developing ARDS. Once identified, clinicians will receive guidance on the best practices for treating patients with the condition.

To create the screening tool, researchers and data and computer scientists are building off of Montefiore Einstein's existing AI platform, combing through years of de-identified patient data to determine dozens of critical, objective data points for ARDS. After developing a profile, the AI will run in the background of the electronic medical record system, flagging any patients who match the profile created for ARDS. This ARDS-specific tool is an extension of the work already conducted by the Critical Care and health data teams at Montefiore Einstein, which shows that AI can improve outcomes for people with another lung conditionsevere acute respiratory failure.

"We have seen the power of AI and predictive analytics to accurately pinpoint patients at risk for other critical conditions and believe AI can be effective in helping clinicians identify patients with ARDS too," said Parsa Mirhaji, M.D., Ph.D., director of Clinical Research Informatics, director of the Center for Health Data Innovations at Montefiore Einstein and associate professor, Systems and Computational Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "The ultimate goal is for AI to become a standard tool for clinicians, helping them provide the best care for our patients."

About Montefiore Health System

Montefiore Health System is one of New York's premier academic health systems and is a recognized leader in providing exceptional quality and personalized, accountable care to approximately three million people in communities across the Bronx, Westchester and the Hudson Valley. It is comprised of 11 hospitals, including the Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and close to 200 outpatient care sites. The advanced clinical and translational research at its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, directly informs patient care and improves outcomes. From the Montefiore-Einstein Centers of Excellence in cancer, cardiology and vascular care, pediatrics, and transplantation, to its preeminent school-based health program, Montefiore is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system providing coordinated, comprehensive care to patients and their families. For more information please visit www.montefiore.org. Follow us on Twitter and view us on Facebook and YouTube.

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Montefiore, is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Einstein is home to 697 M.D. students, 181 Ph.D. students, 108 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 265 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 1,900 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2017, Einstein received more than $174 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States through Montefiore and an affiliation network involving hospitals and medical centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn and on Long Island. For more information, please visit www.einstein.yu.edu, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook , and view us on YouTube .

SOURCE Montefiore Health System

Related Links

https://www.montefiore.org

BOSTON, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- empow, creators of a new kind of security information and event management (SIEM) system that detects and responds to cyber-attacks in real time and without rules, today announced it has been named a "Distinguished Vendor" in the 2019 TAG Cyber Security Annual.

A visionary in the development of next-generation SIEM technology, empow has become part of an exclusive list of renowned cyber security companies recognized by Dr. Edward Amoroso, CEO of TAG Cyber. Dr. Amoroso assembled this prestigious list to coincide with the three-volume 2019 TAG Cyber Security Annual, which is available today for free download. Volume 2 of the report includes information about empow.

"The TAG Cyber team is unique in how it brings world-class cyber-security analysis to the entire industry," said empow Founder and Chief Executive Officer Avi Chesla. "By striving to 'democratize' its analysis, TAG Cyber ensures the cyber-security community evolves, and continues to learn and adapt over time."

In its third year of publication, the TAG Cyber Security Annual is designed to provide direct advisory guidance  at no cost  to enterprise cyber security professionals. The organization helps cyber defenders more effectively deal with the industry's technical challenges, including integrating cyber-security analytics across the kill chain, introducing automation to streamline security workflow, and adopting cloud infrastructure for enterprise applications and systems.

"empow's unique ability to analyze and understand human-readable threat intelligence reports enables it to understand the fundamental nature and intent of any event," said Dr. Amoroso. "With this deep understanding of intent, they can then detect and respond to advanced attacks automatically."

The 2019 TAG Cyber Security Annual is available for free download from the empow and TAG Cyber websites.

About empow

empow is the developer of a new kind of security information and event management (SIEM) system that detects cyber attacks and automatically orchestrates adaptive investigation and mitigation actions in real time, without the need for human-written rules. empow's innovative use of AI, including natural language processing (NLP), machine learning and cause-and-effect analytics, automatically understands the fundamental nature or intent of threats, finds the actual attacks hidden in the "noise," and marshals the right security tools to respond when those attacks occur. This capability enables the empow SIEM to serve as an active "brain" for security infrastructure that detects, confirms and stops attacks before they can cause harm, while also maximizing the value of existing security infrastructure and slashing the need for human intervention. empow is headquartered in Boston, with an R&D office in Tel Aviv, and customers distributed across North America and Europe.

SOURCE empow

Related Links

www.empowcybersecurity.com

INDIANAPOLIS, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- First Wave Innovation Lab at Delta Faucet Company is introducing the Glass Rinser, an innovation familiar to bars and restaurants, reimagined for residential homes. The Glass Rinser is the brainchild and first product of First Wave Innovation Lab, a collection of engineers, innovators and explorers whose sole purpose is to ideate and unveil revolutionary products in the world of faucets, showers and related products that change the way people think about water.

"The Glass Rinser is a perfect example of what our Innovation Lab can accomplish, taking a product with longstanding commercial value and reimagining it for use in home kitchens," said Missi Tate, senior marketing manager at Delta Faucet Company. "Our market research showed us that customers were interested in a solution to more efficiently and effectively rinse items at the kitchen sink, so we decided to make that concept a reality."

The result is a product that functions much like the one at any local coffee shop but is designed to work in home kitchens. Additional features and benefits include:

Versatile and convenient : The First Wave Glass Rinser is simple to use. The rinsing spray is center-positioned to clean out a variety of drinking vessels, such as baby or water bottles, smoothie containers and glasses of all sizes. You push downward. Water jets upward.

: The First Wave Glass Rinser is simple to use. The rinsing spray is center-positioned to clean out a variety of drinking vessels, such as baby or water bottles, smoothie containers and glasses of all sizes. You push downward. Water jets upward. Powerful, yet sleek: The powerful spray rinses away residue and dust. The low-profile nature ensures it will not disrupt the overall design of the sink area.

The powerful spray rinses away residue and dust. The low-profile nature ensures it will not disrupt the overall design of the sink area. Effective and simple to install: The rinser is easily installed on sinks alongside any new or existing faucet. The design allows water to funnel directly into the sink with no concern about making a mess.

To test these features before mass-producing the Glass Rinser, First Wave Innovation Lab is utilizing Indiegogo's Enterprise Services, which enables established companies to accelerate innovation by engaging directly with Indiegogo's global community of more than 10 million users. The Indiegogo users are early advocates and market validators for soon-to-launch products, suggesting improvements and ensuring their success.

"We're excited to partner with Delta Faucet and its new brand, First Wave, to bring new and innovative products to market," says Gwen Nguyen, Vice President of Indiegogo Enterprise Services. "The launch of the Innovation Lab at Delta Faucet is another great example of large companies taking a lean, startup approach to testing and validating innovation. Indiegogo and its global community of early adopters are thrilled to be part of this transformation at First Wave."

Exclusive pre-offers for the Glass Rinser will be available for a discounted price starting October 22 and through November 19. Following the Indiegogo campaign, the First Wave team will evaluate interest in the Glass Rinser and determine a production strategy.

Learn more about the First Wave Innovation Lab at Delta Faucet Company, and check out the Glass Rinser on Indiegogo today.

About First Wave Innovation Lab

First Wave Innovation Lab is a collection of engineers, innovators and explorers whose sole purpose is to ideate and unveil revolutionary products that change and enhance the way people interact with water. Creating new products based on consumer demand, the team of trailblazers is committed to cutting edge, functional innovation, exclusively for Delta Faucet Company. Learn more at www.firstwavelab.com .

About Delta Faucet Company

Founded by Masco Corporation in 1954 with the introduction of the single-handle faucet, Delta Faucet Company is proud to be America's faucet innovation leader, featuring Delta, Brizo and Peerless products. A WaterSense partner of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Delta Faucet is a global organization that offers kitchen faucets, bath faucets, shower heads, shower systems, toilets and related accessories, selling products in more than 53 countries. For more information, visit www.deltafaucet.com.

About Indiegogo

Indiegogo is the place for entrepreneurial projects to move quickly from concept to market, amplified by a community of backers who believe the world benefits when every idea gets an equal shot at success. Indiegogo empowers people around the world to fund what matters to them. As the world's first crowdfunding platform, campaigns have launched from almost every country around the world with millions of dollars being distributed every week due to contributions made by the Indiegogo community. At its core, Indiegogo is the equal opportunity platform dedicated to democratizing the way people raise funds for any project creative, entrepreneurial or cause-related. The company was launched in 2008 and is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles and New York. For more information, visit Indiegogo.com and follow us at Twitter.com/indiegogo and Facebook.com/indiegogo.

SOURCE First Wave Innovation Lab

Related Links

http://www.firstwavelab.com

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- In support of residents of the Florida Panhandle who continue to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, Florida Blue, the leading health insurer in the state, has increased its financial commitment to the recovery effort to $500,000.

The company pledged $100,000 immediately after the storm hit, but as reports surfaced of ongoing devastation and continued lack of resources, and after visiting the Panhandle with members of his leadership team, Florida Blue CEO Pat Geraghty authorized the increased level of financial support in an effort to help hasten the region's recovery.

"While the storm itself has passed, the suffering felt by residents in Northwest Florida will have a lasting impact," Geraghty said. "Our employees, members, friends and families have all been affected by this terrible storm. We are committed to doing all we can to aid in the recovery while helping to bring a sense of normalcy back to the community we serve."

Additionally, the company is preparing 1,000 Florida Blue care packages containing food, utensils, toiletry items, detergent, trash bags, a first-aid kit and other items. Each box is intended to sustain two adults for seven days. The care packages will be assembled by Florida Blue employees in Jacksonville and delivered to the region.

Florida Blue also is offering the following health services to residents of impacted areas:

With some hospitals closed or damaged and mobility difficult, Florida Blue has expanded health care services for members within the impacted area. Members can seek help at any facility and will be covered at the in-network level. The company also has suspended referral and prior authorization requirements for a number of services.

For non-emergency injuries and illnesses, any resident of an evacuation zone who has online or phone access can receive free online or telephonic care from a medical professional 24 hours/day through Teladoc. Residents can visit www.teladoc.com/Michael or call the hotline at 855-764-1727. No insurance is required.

A free bilingual help line for emotional support, available 24 hours/day at 833-848-1762. Florida Blue, in partnership with New Directions Behavioral Health, is offering the support line for both English and Spanish speakers. No insurance is required.

For Florida Blue members residing in counties under a state of emergency, early refills on maintenance medications are available at in-network pharmacies in Florida . In affected areas of Alabama , Georgia , North Carolina and South Carolina , early refills may be requested at pharmacies on a case-by-case basis. For questions about early refills for prescriptions that require prior authorization, members should contact Florida Blue at the number on their member ID card or call 1-800-FLA-BLUE (1-800-352-2583).

. In affected areas of , , and , early refills may be requested at pharmacies on a case-by-case basis. For questions about early refills for prescriptions that require prior authorization, members should contact Florida Blue at the number on their member ID card or call 1-800-FLA-BLUE (1-800-352-2583). For round-the-clock information about benefits, providers and more, Florida Blue members with internet access can log into their account at www.floridablue.com or download the Florida Blue mobile app.

Additionally, affected residents can register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for assistance by calling 800-621-FEMA (3362) or going online to www.disasterassistance.gov.

About Florida Blue

Florida Blue, Florida's Blue Cross and Blue Shield company, has been providing health insurance to residents of Florida for nearly 75 years. Driven by its mission of helping people and communities achieve better health, the company serves more than 5 million health care members across the state. In total, Florida Blue and its affiliated companies serve 16 million people in 29 states. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., it is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

SOURCE Florida Blue

Related Links

http://www.floridablue.com

SUNNYVALE, California, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

HashedIn's iSaaS offering ushers in a new era of SaaS solutions that are Integrated, Customer-focused, Analytics-driven, and AI-led. With the launch of a dedicated Product Development Service, the company forecasts a revenue growth of 300% in the last quarter of the year on an annual basis.

HashedIn's iSaaS offering is helping SaaS product development companies as well as enterprises worldwide to drive innovation to meet new business challenges. HashedIn forecasts tremendous revenue growth in the coming quarter. The innovation portfolio of enterprises is necessitating them to develop new business models to compete with the new age start-ups.

HashedIn's latest iSaaS offering has helped many companies worldwide to transform or augment their SaaS model. The company has strong partnerships with SalesForce, Redis Labs, and AWS. With their advanced developmental capabilities and technical expertise in developing SaaS solutions, the team leverages tools and accelerators required to drive research and innovation.

The team has always focused on embracing new capabilities and technological breakthroughs to deliver a wide range of SaaS solutions. This includes Integrations, Cloud Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence & Machine learning, Business Analytics & Data Engineering, Modernization of legacy applications, and Digital Transformation.

"Our unique boot-camp and product development focus has helped us develop the expertise and a culture of innovation in IT and SaaS projects, which has been instrumental in driving the success of our iSaaS offering," said Harshit Singhal, Chief Business Officer, HashedIn Technologies. He added, "This culture, focus and passion for developing our own products have led us to develop assets and accelerators for the businesses to deliver much faster than competition. This along with our consultative approach and innovation-driven culture has helped us grow tremendously in the last quarter and we are confident about the future."

About HashedIn

HashedIn is an IT services and consulting company that builds intelligent SaaS solutions. With nearly a decade of SaaS expertise, HashedIn has built robust solutions for 100+ clients worldwide, including companies like Corel, Myntra, Mahindra, and Aruba

For more information:

Visit website: http://www.hashedin.com

Read case studies: https://hashedin.com/case-studies/

Media Contacts:

Ankur Richhariya

VP - Global Service

HashedIn Technologies

Sunnyvale, CA 94085, United States

Phone: +1(669)268-2247

Email: [email protected]



SOURCE HashedIn Technologies Private LimitedCORALVILLE, Iowa and OAKLAND, N.J., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- IDx, a leading AI diagnostics company, and Topcon, one of the world's leading ophthalmic device manufacturers, have signed an exclusivity agreement that will allow the companies to scale delivery of AI-based diagnostic solutions in the U.S. market.

The agreement grants exclusive rights to IDx in the U.S. as the only autonomous AI company permitted to sell its products with the Topcon NW400  an easy to use, robotic fundus camera. Topcon continues to collaborate with other partners in the AI space for solutions that fall outside of this autonomous agreement.

In turn, IDx has agreed to assign Topcon's NW400 as the only robotic desktop fundus camera with less than a 55 degree field of view to be integrated with IDx-DR, an autonomous AI system that instantly detects diabetic retinopathy in fundus images.

"The importance of ease of use and consistently high image quality to successfully implement autonomous AI diagnostics in the front lines of care cannot be stressed enough," said Michael D. Abramoff, MD, PhD, founder and CEO of IDx. "Topcon is truly the innovative market leader in developing highly automated, consistent and easy to use retinal imaging systems. Together we can prevent visual loss and blindness by ensuring the safety, accessibility, and affordability of early disease detection."

Both companies have a history of innovation. IDx received FDA clearance for IDx-DR in April 2018, marking the first time the FDA has cleared an autonomous AI diagnostic system that does not require a physician to interpret images or results. Topcon introduced the first commercial back-of-the-eye spectral domain (SD) and swept source (SS) optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems and more recently announced the widely successful Maestro and Triton OCTs.

"Our partnership with IDx further solidifies our position as a pioneer in the eye care business," said Fumio Ohue, Managing Executive Officer of Topcon. "Our efforts to deliver better workflow solutions, imaging technology, and AI tools to eye care providers will be complemented by our work with IDx to bring autonomous diagnostics to a growing population of people with diabetes."

The recent FDA clearance of IDx-DR followed a clinical trial that demonstrated the autonomous AI system's ability to safely deliver specialty-level diagnostics in primary care settings. Novice operators received minimal training on how to capture images using the Topcon NW400 and IDx-DR's image quality AI. They successfully produced a diagnostic result 96% of the time by consistently capturing the high-quality images needed for IDx-DR to make a disease assessment.

Topcon recently announced the release and class II clearance of Topcon Harmony, a diagnostic data management application with vendor-neutral connectivity that enables software providers like IDx, EHRs and third-party manufacturers to seamlessly integrate diagnostic results into one central location for eye care providers.

About IDx

IDx is a leading AI diagnostics company on a mission to transform the quality, accessibility, and affordability of healthcare. Founded in 2010 by a team of world-renowned clinician scientists, the company is focused on developing clinically-aligned autonomous algorithms that detect disease in medical images. By enabling diagnostic assessment in primary care settings, IDx aims to increase patient access to high-quality, affordable disease detection.

The company's first product, IDx-DR, is an FDA-cleared AI-based diagnostic system designed for use at the front lines of care to detect diabetic retinopathy. IDx-DR is intended for use by health care providers to automatically detect more than mild diabetic retinopathy in adults (22 years of age or older) diagnosed with diabetes who have not been previously diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy. IDx-DR is indicated for use with the Topcon NW400, an easy to use and highly accurate robotic fundus camera.

IDx is developing additional AI-based diagnostic systems for the detection of macular degeneration, glaucoma, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, and stroke risk. Prior to this current round, IDx had been funded by a group of private angel investors since the company's founding in 2010.

About Topcon

Topcon is a comprehensive ophthalmic device manufacturer within the worldwide ophthalmic community. It introduced the world's first commercial back-of-the-eye spectral domain (SD) and swept source (SS) optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems, which have driven innovation in eye-care.

More recently, Topcon Healthcare Solutions started to enhance not only its hardware but also its software solutions. To become the leader in diagnostic software, Topcon has developed a new strategic division whose primary objective is to create world-class software solutions for the eye-care industry and beyond. The company's products enable the collection and visualization of a wide range of imaging and clinical data while providing quantitative and clinical analysis capabilities.

Topcon's software gives clinicians access to patient exam data captured from OCTs, Visual Fields, Fundus cameras, and other Topcon and third-party devices. Topcon leverages its image management software called Synergy, where practitioners gain access to DICOM and non-DICOM information stored in a central, cloud-based environment. Additionally, Topcon now provides an integrated service that connects practitioners to an extensive network of reading services to assist in the management of sight-threatening eye diseases.

IDx

2300 Oakdale Blvd

Coralville, IA 52241

Phone: 319-248-5620

www.eyediagnosis.net

IDx Media Contact: Topcon Media Contact: Linda Healan John Trefethen Amendola Communications Vice President, Global Marketing & Product Design 1-404-725-7117 1-201-599-5100 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE IDx

Related Links

http://www.eyediagnosis.net

In a TIF district, assessed value is frozen for the purposes of taxation at the time of the formation of the TIF. As redevelopment occurs and assessed value of the property increases, the difference between the frozen value and the increased value goes into a fund, known as the increment.PROVIDENCE, R.I., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Proterra, a leading innovator in heavy-duty electric transportation, announced that the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) is deploying three 40' Proterra Catalyst E2 electric buses. RIPTA unveiled the buses at a press conference earlier today with Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Rhode Island received $14.4 million in VW funding and chose to invest the bulk of it in clean transit, with the intent to replace approximately 20 retiring diesel buses with new, all-electric zero-emission vehicles. This deployment marks the first step toward achieving this goal.

The milestone represents one of the first deployments to use funding from the Volkswagen AG (VW) diesel emissions settlement. The lease program provides RIPTA with an opportunity to evaluate the combined economic, environmental and performance benefits of deploying all-electric buses. The buses will be tested extensively and staff will be trained in the maintenance and charging of the vehicles before they are put in service.

"We are joining other forward-thinking transit authorities that are already employing electric bus technology," said Scott Avedisian, CEO of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA). "We travel the state, and having a greener fleet is important to the neighborhoods we travel through  particularly urban areas with known air quality issues. Taking the bus rather than commuting alone in your car is good for the environment. Taking an electric bus is even better."

This deployment reinforces RIPTA's commitment to reducing emissions after nearly a decade of sustainable transit initiatives. In 2010, RIPTA began making substantial investments in cleaner vehicles, efficient facilities, green building initiatives and service improvements. Rhode Island currently has 73 hybrid buses and with the addition of zero-emission buses, low and zero-emission vehicles will comprise approximately 36 percent of the state's bus fleet. Proterra's buses will replace three aging diesel buses on current RIPTA transit routes, with a focus on serving communities that suffer from poor air quality and high asthma rates.

"We believe Rhode Island is one of the first states to use VW settlement funds to deploy battery-electric buses and has set an example for other states by committing the majority of its funds to zero-emission transit," said Proterra CEO Ryan Popple. "We're proud to work with RIPTA to provide electric buses that will offer Rhode Island passengers -- particularly those in areas that suffer the most from harmful diesel emissions -- a quieter, more comfortable ride and a cleaner environment."

About Rhode Island Public Transit Authority:

RIPTA is the statewide transit authority for Rhode Island, with its buses connecting people to the places they need to go. Last year, it provided approximately 16 million passenger trips on its fixed-route service.

About Proterra:

Proterra is a leader in the design and manufacture of zero-emission, heavy-duty electric vehicles, enabling bus fleet operators to significantly reduce operating costs while delivering clean, quiet transportation to local communities across North America. The company's configurable Catalyst platform is capable of serving the full daily mileage needs of nearly every transit route on a single charge. With unmatched durability and energy efficiency based on rigorous U.S. certification testing, Proterra products are proudly designed, engineered and manufactured in America, with offices in Silicon Valley, South Carolina, and Los Angeles. For more information, visit: http://www.proterra.com and follow us on Twitter @Proterra_Inc.

SOURCE Proterra

Related Links

http://www.proterra.com

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Intermedia, a leading unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and cloud application provider to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and the partners that serve them, today announced the availability of cloud Exchange 2019, the latest version of the world's most popular business email platform from Microsoft.

Improved end user experience

Cloud Exchange 2019 comes with new security, performance, management, and calendaring capabilities, delivering a more robust experience for end users. Plus, cloud Exchange 2019 from Intermedia is backed by J.D. Power-certified 24/7 support and a 99.999% uptime service level agreement.

The new features of cloud Exchange 2019 will especially benefit those organizations that rely heavily on calendar sharing. These new features include:

Better Out of Office: Users have additional options when setting up automatic replies. With these options, users can: Block their calendar for a specified period Decline new meeting invitations during a specified period Cancel meetings during a specified period





Users have additional options when setting up automatic replies. With these options, users can: Do Not Forward: Users can set a meeting so that attendees can't forward the invitation to someone else





Users can set a meeting so that attendees can't forward the invitation to someone else Default End Date: Users are able to set a default end date when creating recurring series instead of leaving it as no-end-date



Along with cloud Exchange 2019, latest Intermedia Office Apps and Outlook 2019 also available

In addition to cloud Exchange 2019, Intermedia also offers Intermedia Office Apps (powered by Microsoft Office 365), which now includes the latest features of Office 2019. Intermedia Office Apps delivers the most essential productivity applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. These applications can be accessed anytime, anywhere, from virtually any device, with users receiving automatic updates to the latest features found in Office 2019. Outlook-only users or their system administrators will also be able to download Outlook 2019 from Intermedia per their licensing agreement.

Why Intermedia?

Intermedia is the largest independent provider of cloud Exchange and the premier provider for businesses and partners seeking a cloud alternative to Office 365 for their Exchange email needs. Intermedia was the first cloud company to offer cloud Exchange in 2000 and first-to-market with Exchange 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. It was also the first to offer private-label cloud Exchange.

As an industry leader in providing cloud communications and collaboration services, Intermedia is the PC Magazine Editors' choice for Exchange Email.

According to PC Magazine, "With unlimited mailbox storage, 24/7 phone support, and a 99.999%, financially-backed uptime SLA, Intermedia is already at the head of the pack in terms of features and capabilities. But now add a dedicated support team that handles email migration and setup for you for free, and it's very hard to go wrong with this service." (May 8, 2018)

Easing the transition to the cloud

Intermedia partners and customers can preview cloud Exchange 2019 for free, and Intermedia will begin offering Exchange 2019 for sale in conjunction with Microsoft's soon-to-be-released Windows Server 2019.

As always, Intermedia's Cloud Concierge team provides expert onboarding and migration at no additional cost. Intermedia's onboarding experts have migrated over one million mailboxes to date.

"Intermedia is dedicated to providing customers and partners with best-of-breed solutions and the most current versions of the cloud applications that are essential to their success," said Michael Gold, CEO of Intermedia. "It is the combination of this commitment to integration and our advanced security, mobility, and support that lets our customers focus on their business, rather than IT and infrastructure, while still staying ahead of the technology curve."

Get more information about cloud Exchange 2019 from Intermedia.

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 Intermedia UniteTM, the all-in-one cloud communications and collaboration platform that combines a full-featured phone system with web and video conferencing, file sharing and backup, and much more, with the desktop and mobile apps that allow for anytime access from virtually any device, as well as business email, identity and access management, security, and archiving.

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.

Contact:

Robert Gold

Intermedia

314.750.0880

[email protected]

Katie Halloran

LEWIS for Intermedia

619.308.5222

[email protected]

Cloud Concierge is either a registered trademark or trademark of Intermedia.net, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks, service marks, trade names and product names referenced in this press release are the property of their respective owners. J.D. Power 2017 Certified Assisted Technical Support Program, developed in conjunction with TSIA. Based on successful completion of an audit and exceeding a customer satisfaction benchmark for assisted support operations. For more information, visit www.jdpower.com or www.tsia.com.

SOURCE Intermedia

Related Links

www.intermedia.net

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- "I previously worked on a farm," said an inventor from Stanwood, Wash. "It just made sense to me to try to save farmers time and money when harvesting hay."

He developed the HARVEST VAC to combine various procedures when processing hay bales. The machine would eliminate other requirements to harvest the hay to provide noticeable cost savings. Additionally, it would reduce the likelihood of hurting crop production.

The original design was submitted to the Federal Way office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 17-FED-1991, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com.

SOURCE InventHelp

Related Links

http://www.inventhelp.com

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- An inventor from De Soto, Texas, has developed the WAYMAKER, a modified automobile seat that will assist individuals with entering and exiting a vehicle. A prototype is available.

"My husband was a tall man, and his health had declined due to Parkinson's disease. It was difficult for him to get in and out of our car due to his height and limited mobility," said the inventor. The WAYMAKER helps to elevate and support an individual. This will enhance comfort and maneuverability when entering and exiting a vehicle. It may allow individuals to travel with greater frequency and with less dependence on others. This modified seat will save users time and effort. Finally, it offers a reliable and user-friendly design.

The original design was submitted to the Dallas office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 17-DLL-3460, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com.

SOURCE InventHelp

Related Links

http://www.inventhelp.com

ZUG, Switzerland, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The sharing economy is not limited to physical assets. Aside from cars, apartments, and bicycles, users can now share their Internet Protocol addresses (IPs). IPSX has just launched on mainnet as the first marketplace that allows both individuals and companies to rent IPs from thousands of different places around the world. It uses blockchain technology to a create a decentralized exchange platform where tech companies can securely integrate an unlimited number of IPs from multiple providers.

The IPSX platform will help companies and individuals monetize something they never realized was an asset  their unused IP addresses. Any large company that uses IPs at their backbone will benefit from a marketplace where they can make use of it to further develop their business.

How IPSX Works

In today's landscape, multiple businesses, like Data Mining and VPN service providers constantly face problems such as a lack of IP addresses (particularly when companies have spikes in demand), untransparent IP costs, poor quality of IPs, inflexible contracts, tedious user experience, and obsolete technology.

IPSX solves this problem by mapping out all the existing IPs and creating a network where supply meets demand. Through latest technology integrations via SDKs and APIs (until recently there was no framework for securely integrating an unlimited number of IPs), companies can rent IP addresses from any data center or other providers in the world, as well as rent their unused IP addresses to whoever needs them. This way, any company can become a provider or a requester.

IPSX users can monetize their IPs through a dedicated Ethereum-based transaction system that enables direct payments between requesters and providers, increases the liquidity level of the IPs and allows any actor that has available IPs to take part into a multi-billion yearly business that otherwise would be closed.

Main Features

Transparent, flexible costs where users will only pay for what they use.

where users will only pay for what they use. High-quality IPs that are not already banned and are easily interchangeable.

that are not already banned and are easily interchangeable. Easy management for both individuals and large corporations that can manage all their rented IPs from one easy-to-use interface that does not require technical knowledge.

for both individuals and large corporations that can manage all their rented IPs from one easy-to-use interface that does not require technical knowledge. Security provided by blockchain and smart contracts.

Reviews

Independent reviews are already praising the platform for its useful service. They appreciate the wide variety of international IPs that can be rented on IPSX for any amount of hours or weeks, or for the amount of traffic they use. This is a significant improvement on traditional VPN providers since it lets users pay exactly for what they use. More so, users have commented on how easy it is to use IPSX, taking them only five minutes between order and activation.

Building Services on Top of the IPSX Ecosystem

The mainnet encompasses only a small portion of the IPSX team's vision, which promises more features to come shortly. The most prominent features to come are:

Extending the possibility of sharing additional resources beyond IP addresses (for example, storage capabilities).

Adding a layer of services. Several directions considered are cybersecurity, Big Data, and micro-tasks services.

Launching a grant program for people or companies that want to join the IPSX ecosystem and that want to build services on top of the IPSX platform.

About IPSX

IPSX is a decentralized exchange platform for sharing IPs and a framework for building applications on top of the existing IPs shared by the community members and companies. Using smart contracts, blockchain protocols, and a utility token incentivized mechanism, it allows users to share IPs all over the world in a reliable and open source environment.

For more details about IPSX, please visit https://ip.sx/ or write an email at [email protected].

SOURCE IPSX

Related Links

https://ip.sx

CHICAGO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago is hosting the Chicago's stage of Dedalo Minosse traveling exhibition, opening on October 24th to November 2nd (Monday to Friday, 10:00 am  5:00 pm).

Promoted by ALA - Assoarchitetti and Regione Veneto, the Dedalo Minosse biennial prize, is currently in its tenth edition, traveling through Italy and all over the world, reaching different locations - in the two years - exporting the best of Italian architecture and trends to various European countries, to North and South America, Asia and Oceania.

Italian Architectural Traveling Exhibition Dedalo Minosse Will be on Display at The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago Fondazione Inarcassa Logo

This traveling exhibition is a summary of the main exhibition held in Vicenza and travels the world, touching several stages for two years, thanks to agreements between ALA Assoarchitetti, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Italian Institutes of Culture and Italian and foreign associations. The travelling exhibitions are an opportunity to export the prize and the image of Italy, as well as to promote the culture and quality of architecture in the world.

The Chicago event has been organized with the support of the Inarcassa Foundation and takes place in conjunction with the presence of a delegation of about 40 architects and engineers attending the "2nd International Workshop," promoted by the Foundation.

Dedalo Minosse International Prize for commissioning a building aims to boost the quality of architecture looking at final result, analysing and focusing on project and constructive plan process and giving a special attention to people who determine the success of the work: the architect and the client, supported by the project executors (the building firms) and the public administrations.

In particular, thanks to the collaboration with local Bodies and Associations of architects and companies, the Award involves not only professionals working in architecture related fields, but a wider international audience, made up of clients, investors, administrators and professionals.

For those interested in attending at the opening on October 24th at 6:00, RSVP on Eventbrite or send an e-mail to [email protected]

ALA  Assoarchitetti

The Association of Professional Architects, ALA - Assoarchitetti is an Italian non-profit organization aimed to promote and represent the social and civil values of the profession of architect and civil engineer with regards to the government, public opinion, economic and social forces at a central, regional and local level.

Inarcassa Foundation

Inarcassa Foundation supports, developes, promotes and protects architects and engineers who practice their profession on an exclusive basis. The Foundation was created as a support structure for the figure of the freelance Architect and Engineer in the performance of his daily work, through the provision of various services.

Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago

Italian Cultural Institutes serve as an ideal meeting place for intellectuals, artists, and cultural operatives, as well as for ordinary citizens, both Italian and foreign, who wish to establish or maintain a relationship with the Italian country.

Contact Information:

Anna Bay

Olympus Marketing US Inc

224-227-9816

[email protected]

SOURCE ALA - AssoarchitettiBuilds market leadership in raised without antibiotics and organic value-added chicken

MISSISSAUGA, ON, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Maple Leaf Foods (TSX: MFI) today announced the closing of its acquisition of two poultry plants and associated supply from Cericola Farms, a privately held company.

Located in Bradford, Ontario and Drummondville, Quebec, the two plants collectively process approximately 32 million kg of chicken annually.

Maple Leaf has also secured 100% of the processed chicken volume from Cericola's primary processing plant located in Schomberg, Ontario, and holds an option to acquire this asset and associated plant supply in three years.

Cericola specializes in air-chilled processing of antibiotic free and animal by-product free ("AABF") and organic poultry products. This acquisition provides Maple Leaf Foods with additional supply and value-added processing capability to advance its leadership in higher value categories. Maple Leaf Foods has transitioned most of its flagship Maple Leaf Prime chicken brand to Prime RWA, where the Canadian market is growing at approximately 25% annually. Chicken is the most consumed and fastest growing meat protein segment in North America.

The transaction was financed from a combination of cash-on-hand and drawings under the existing credit facility. The acquisition is expected to be accretive to Maple Leaf's earnings in 2018.

Forward-Looking Statements

This document may contain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law including statements regarding: the acquisition of the Schomberg, Ontario primary processing plant, future supply and processing of without antibiotics and organic chicken, and accretion to Maple Leaf's earnings in 2018. These statements are not guarantees of future events and involve assumptions and risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Some of these assumptions and risks and uncertainties are described in more detail in the Company's filings made with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed, implied or forecasted in such forward-looking information and there is no assurance that any such future events will occur. Maple Leaf does not intend to, and Maple Leaf disclaims any obligation to, update any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

About Maple Leaf Foods

Maple Leaf Foods Inc. is a leading consumer protein company, making high quality, innovative products under national brands including Maple Leaf, Maple Leaf Prime, Maple Leaf Natural Selections, Schneiders, Schneiders Country Naturals, Mina, SWIFT, Lightlife TM and Field Roast Grain Meat Co.TM. The Company employs approximately 11,500 people and does business in Canada, the U.S. and Asia. The Company is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario and its shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (MFI).

SOURCE Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Related Links

http://www.mapleleaffoods.com

On Friday October 19 th , the State of Nevada completed their final inspection of the first 5,000 sq. ft facility which is designated to the Company's Phenofarm Cultivation Licence. All permitting is complete for this licence and the final approval now allows for the immediate transition of plants to the new facility to complete their cycle and provide first harvest.

The Company's second 5,000 sq. ft facility, designated to the Econevada Cultivation and Processing Licences is pending final kitchen and equipment inspection.

"We are thrilled to announce the completion of the first building of our flagship cannabis facilities in North Las Vegas, which has a potential build-out to 300,000 sq. ft. Marapharm is open for business! We are positioned to be a long-term winner in this Las Vegas market." Linda Sampson, President and CEO

ABOUT MARAPHARM VENTURES INC.

www.marapharm.com

Marapharm is a publicly traded company investing in the medical and recreational cannabis space, since 2014. Marapharm has rapidly expanded to include having cultivation, production and dispensary locations in the key North American states of Washington, Nevada, and California, and are seeking expansion opportunities worldwide.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

facebook.com, twitter.com

STOCK EXCHANGES:

Marapharm trades in Canada, ticker symbol MDM on the CSE, in the United States, ticker symbol MRPHF on the OTCQX, and in Europe, ticker symbol 2M0 on the FSE. Marapharm also trades on other recognized platforms in Europe including Stuttgart, Tradegate, L & S, Quotnx, Dusseldorf, Munich, and Berlin.

Neither the CSE, the FSE nor the OTCQX has approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the CSE, the FSE nor the OTCQX accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

MARIJUANA INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT:

Canadian listings (CSE) will remain in good standing as long as they provide the disclosure that is rightly required by regulators and complying with applicable licensing requirements and the regulatory framework enacted by the applicable state in which they operate.

Marapharm owns marijuana licenses in California and Nevada. Marijuana is legal in each state however marijuana remains illegal under US federal law and the approach to enforcement of US federal law against marijuana is subject to change. Shareholders and investors need to be aware that adverse enforcement actions could affect their investments and that Marapharm's ability to access private and public capital could be affected and or could not be available to support continuing operations. Marapharm's business is conducted in a manner consistent with state law and is in compliance with licensing requirements.

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.

Copies of licenses are posted on Marapharm's website. Marapharm has internal compliance procedures in place and has compliance focused attorneys engaged in jurisdictions to monitor changes in laws for compliance with US federal and state law on an ongoing basis. These law firms inform any necessary changes to our policies and procedures for compliance in Canada and the US.

FORWARD - LOOKING STATEMENTS:

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", 'may", "will", "project", "should", 'believe", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward- looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward- looking statements are based on reasonable assumption but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and the forward-looking statements included in this news release should not be unduly relied upon.

SOURCE Marapharm Ventures Inc.

Related Links

http://www.marapharm.com/

NORTHFIELD, Ill., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Medline has been awarded a group purchasing agreement for lab distribution services with Premier. Effective January 1, 2019, the new three-year agreement allows Premier members, at their discretion, to take advantage of special pricing and terms pre-negotiated by Premier for lab distribution services.

Evolving for Today's Challenges

As health system and hospital executives are increasingly focused on sustainable cost control, clinical labs are being asked to deliver high-quality care with better outcomes at reduced costs. At the same time, labs are facing staff shortages.

"Critical patient decisions are made every day based on tests conducted in a clinical lab. Medline's lean, vertically integrated business model offers lab customers compelling financial solutions rooted in customized logistics and access to real-time data," says Diana LeFebvre, Lab & Diagnostics division president, Medline. "We look forward to collaborating with Premier's alliance of approximately 4,000 hospitals and 165,000 other providers and organizations invested in helping clinical labs navigate market demands so more dollars and time can be allocated toward patient care."

From Savings to Strategy

With more than 40 distribution centers strategically located across the country, Medline offers Premier members access to a broad product portfolio from hundreds of manufacturers. Hospitals, independent labs, and physician office labs have a new distribution option to balance their needs for clinical quality with savings and efficiency.

Learn more about Medline lab distribution capabilities at https://www.medline.com/pages/supply-chain/lab-distribution-solutions/.

About Medline

Medline is a global manufacturer and distributor serving the healthcare industry with medical supplies and clinical solutions that help customers achieve both clinical and financial success. Headquartered in Northfield, Ill., the company offers 550,000+ medical devices and support services through more than 1,600 direct sales representatives who are dedicated points of contact for customers across the continuum of care. For more information on Medline, go to www.medline.com or www.medline.com/social-media to connect with Medline on its social media channels.

SOURCE Medline

Related Links

https://www.medline.com

THOREAU, N.M., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (IWSH) Foundation's 2018 Community Plumbing Challenge (CPC) began today in Thoreau, New Mexico. The CPC's focus is the Navajo Water Project, an initiative of the nonprofit organization DigDeep that was among the 2018 recipients of the U.S. Water Prize. The initiative's goal is to help ensure that every American has clean, running water forever. The CPC, which runs through Friday, is hosted by the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School in Thoreau, a small town in Northwestern New Mexico.

The Navajo Nation CPC assembles a multi-disciplined team of skilled tradespeople to execute plumbing and construction projects that will improve living conditions in approximately 10 households nominated by U.S.-based nonprofit organization DigDeep. Inside homes, a range of bathroom and kitchen renovations will be carried out, including the installation of new basins, taps, toilets, water tanks, water pumps, and hot- and cold-water pipework. These renovations and repairs are required in order for these homes to be connected to water supply systems. Meanwhile, efforts outdoors will address the installation of, and connection to, new wastewater systems.

After the morning's welcome ceremony, participants in the exclusive Ambassador Program took part in the "Water and Sanitation Crisis in America Roundtable: Government & Industry Working Together for Solutions" at the Thoreau Chapter House. In addition to focusing on issues concerning tribal lands, the roundtable looked at issues facing the more than 1.6 million people across the U.S. without access to clean water and safe sanitation.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and representatives from the offices of U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-Santa Fe, and U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-Albuquerque, attended the welcome ceremony and roundtable. Also in attendance were officials from LIXIL, Reliance Worldwide, Milwaukee, GE Appliances, Winsupply of Albuquerque, Indian Health Services, Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, New Mexico Environment Department, New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department, DigDeep, the Mechanical Contractors Association of New Mexico, as well as Tom Bigley, director of plumbing services for the United Association, and representatives from numerous plumbing local unions.

Heinrich said the geography of the Navajo Nation is so challenging that multiple things must be done at the same time to be able to create the basic infrastructure in places like Thoreau. The federal Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project will result in hundreds of miles of new supply line, but remote areas such as Thoreau may remain out of reach for the time being.

"That still doesn't connect people in these really remote areas," he said. "You have to have multiple different approaches, and having skilled labor come and make sometimes really basic fixes that make things work in somebody's own home? That's just invaluable, absolutely invaluable, and so I think we need to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time, really build on these partnerships, look at how we do the same sort of approach for electrification in many of these remote locations, and all work together as a team."

Work on the projects is scheduled to be completed by Friday. A 90-minute community forum and presentation will be held at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Baca-Prewitt Chapter House. The farewell ceremony is set for 6 p.m. Friday at the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico. To learn more about the event, visit the project website at www.commplumbing.org or email [email protected].

Visit www.iwsh.org.

SOURCE The International Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Foundation (IWSH)

Related Links

http://www.iwsh.org

TORONTO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - New Gold Inc. ("New Gold" or the "Company") (TSX:NGD) (NYSE American:NGD) announces the departure of Cory Atiyeh, Executive Vice President, Operations, effective October 22, 2018.

With the recently announced sale of the Mesquite Mine and the sale of Peak Mines earlier in the year, New Gold is repositioning itself as a leading, Canadian-focused intermediate producer with a simplified operational structure focused on two operating assets. Over the coming months, Renaud Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer, will work directly with the General Manager of Rainy River, Chuck Hennessey, and the General Manager of New Afton, John Ritter, to provide support and oversight for both operations, particularly at the Rainy River Mine during this critical ramp-up period.

"The entire New Gold team would like to thank Cory for his significant contribution to the Company over the past 12 years, and we wish him all the best with his future endeavours. On a personal note, I would like to thank him for his assistance during my transition as his knowledge, perspective and contribution have been invaluable," stated Renaud Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer. He continued, "I am looking forward to working directly with our General Managers at Rainy River and New Afton as we execute on our strategic direction and create sustainable value for our shareholders."

About New Gold Inc.

New Gold is a Canadian-focused intermediate gold mining company. The Company has a portfolio of four producing assets in top-rated jurisdictions. The New Afton and Rainy River Mines in Canada, the Mesquite Mine in the United States and the Cerro San Pedro Mine in Mexico (which transitioned to residual leaching in 2016), provide the Company with its current production base. In addition, New Gold owns 100% of the Blackwater project located in Canada. New Gold's objective is to be a leading intermediate gold producer, focused on the environment and social responsibility. For further information on the Company, please visit www.newgold.com.

SOURCE New Gold Inc.

Related Links

www.newgoldinc.com

CHICAGO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- NextLevel Health Partners, Inc., a Medicaid managed care company, today announced an innovative partnership with NowPow, a Chicago-based health technology company, to better manage and address the social determinants that impact the health and wellness of residents across Cook County. NextLevel Health coordinators will use NowPow e-prescription methods as a way to deliver personalized community resources based on factors such as patient conditions, address, age, gender and preferred language.

"Quality healthcare is influenced by numerous social determinants that doctors have no control of, and that reality impedes the care that they can provide," says Dr. Cheryl Whitaker, CEO of NextLevel Health. "This partnership will empower our staff and physicians to provide even better, more targeted care to patients who need it."

"This tool allows our care coordinators to understand the available resources in the community that each patient comes from," says Dr. Dianna Grant, Chief Medical Officer of NextLevel Health. "It empowers them to understand, in real time, what resources every member has access to so they can direct them to the right place. This level of insight and customization has the power to transform health care for all of our members."

NowPow utilizes data analytics to create a complete community resource directory that connects people to high-quality community resources that help address their chronic health and social conditions. NowPow, a women-owned and women-led technology company headquartered in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, powers communities with critical knowledge of how to manage disease and improve total community health. The company is built on the scientific research of founder Dr. Stacy Lindau, who pioneered the idea of an e-prescribing community that connects healthcare to self-care. From stress management and smoking cessation to fitness classes and family planning, NowPow's multi-sided referral platform makes it easy to leverage data and turn it into actionable insight.

"NowPow is excited to partner with NextLevel Health to embed personalized, high-quality, hyper-local referrals into their managed care model," says Rachel Kohler, NowPow's CEO. "NextLevel Health is an ideal partner as we continue to innovate to improve population health outcomes. As one of few South Side-based tech companies, we are galvanized by the opportunity to work with a partner who shares our commitment to hiring from the communities we live and work in."

NextLevel Health offers a cloud-based health information technology (HIT) system that allows users to see their health information, health profile, medications, doctor's visits and tests, as well as provides access to health education, including videos and articles. Both NextLevel Health and NowPow share a commitment to hiring from within the communities in which they serve. The innovative partnership between the two socially minded health technology organizations represents an inventive approach to eradicating both medical and social ills using technology.

For more information visit www.nextlevelhealthil.com.

About NextLevel Health Partners, Inc.:

NextLevel Health is a managed care health plan for Cook County residents with Medicaid and for Cook County residents in the Managed Long-Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) program (Medicare and Medicaid). NextLevel Health Partners, Inc. assists in managing and coordinating your care with a deeper understanding of you, your community, and your health, one-on-one, right in your own community. NextLevel Health Partners best serves their community by increasing access to health care, building strong partnerships in the neighborhoods they serve and by understanding important local issues.

About NowPow:

NowPow equips hospitals, healthcare centers, and community organizations with the ability to provide after-visit "e-prescriptions" for nearby vital resources that are important for health and wellbeing. NowPow's microtargeted resources empower healthcare providers to offer a greater level of care with the potential for improved health outcomes.

SOURCE NextLevel Health Partners, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.nextlevelhealthil.com

NEW YORK, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- North America Electric Passenger Car Market By Vehicle Type (Hatchback, Sedan and SUV), By Technology Type (Battery Electric Vehicle and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle), By Driving Range, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05593640



According to "North America Electric Passenger Car Market By Vehicle Type, By Technology Type, By Driving Range, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023" electric passenger car market is projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 18% by 2023 on account of growing demand for cleaner automobiles.Moreover, governments in major North American economies are providing subsidies on electric vehicles in order to encourage their adoption, which is consequently pushing demand for electric passenger cars across the region.



Additionally, technological advancements in automotive industry coupled with continuous expansion in the region's charging infrastructure is further anticipated to fuel growth in North America electric passenger car market over the next five years. Few of the renowned companies currently invested in the electric passenger car market in North America include BYD Company Limited, BAIC Motor Corporation., Ltd, Tesla Inc., BMW AG, Volkswagen AG, General Motors Company, Nissan Motor Corporation, Audi AG, Ford Motor Company, and Renault SA, among others.



"North America Electric Passenger Car Market By Vehicle Type, By Technology Type, By Driving Range, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023" discusses the following aspects of electric passenger car market in North America:

Electric Passenger Car Market Size, Share & Forecast

Segmental Analysis  By Vehicle Type (Hatchback, Sedan and SUV), By Technology Type (Battery Electric Vehicle and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle), By Driving Range, By Country

Competitive Analysis

Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities



Why You Should Buy This Report?

To gain an in-depth understanding of electric passenger car in North America

To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next five years

To help industry consultants, electric passenger car distributor, distributors and other stakeholders align their market-centric strategies

To obtain research-based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material

To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players

To avail 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get the research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs



Report Methodology

The information contained in this report is based upon both primary and secondary research.Primary research included interaction with electric passenger car distributor, distributors and industry experts.



Secondary research included an exhaustive search of relevant publications like company annual reports, financial reports and proprietary databases.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05593640



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

NEW YORK, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- North America Retail Analytics Market By Component (Software & Services), By Deployment Mode (Cloud & On-Premise), By Application, By End User Sector, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013  2023



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05593643



According to "North America Retail Analytics Market By Component, By Deployment Mode, By Application, By End User Sector, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013  2023" retail analytics market is projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 19% by 2023, owing to increasing demand to reduce CAPEX/OPEX across retail sector, and rapid adoption of SMACT (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud & IoT) technologies.Increasing number of retail chains, emerging demand for pricing optimization and rising adoption of omni-channel business model are also expected to fuel the market in the coming years.



Moreover, increasing internet and mobile adoption rate, dynamic consumer demands and changing consumption pattern are likely to further aid the market growth. Some of the major players operating in the North America retail analytics market are IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, SAP SE, Oracle Corporation, SAS Institute Inc., Qlik, Infor, Tibco Software Inc., Tableau Software, Sisense, etc.



"North America Retail Analytics Market By Component, By Deployment Mode, By Application, By End User Sector, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013  2023" discusses the following aspects of retail analytics market in North America:

Retail Analytics Market Size, Share & Forecast

Segmental Analysis  By Component (Software & Services), By Deployment Mode (Cloud & On-Premise), By Application, By End User Sector, By Country

Competitive Analysis

Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities



Why You Should Buy This Report?

To gain an in-depth understanding of retail analytics market in North America

To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next five years

To help industry consultants, retail analytics market distributor, distributors and other stakeholders align their market-centric strategies

To obtain research-based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material

To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players

To avail 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get the research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs



Report Methodology

The information contained in this report is based upon both primary and secondary research.Primary research included interaction with retail analytics market distributor, distributors and industry experts.



Secondary research included an exhaustive search of relevant publications like company annual reports, financial reports and proprietary databases.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05593643



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, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Oman Logistics and Warehousing Market Outlook to 2022 - By Freight Forwarding, Express Delivery, Warehousing Services, Cold Storage, Third Party Logistics and Value-Added Services" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The report also covers the overall comparative landscape in Oman logistics and warehousing market with company profiles for major players. The report concludes with market projection for future of logistics and warehousing services for Oman logistics and warehousing market.

Oman Logistics and Warehousing Market Overview and Size



Logistics service in Oman comprises a range of activities that look over at the procurement as well as final delivery of raw material and finished products. These services include freight forwarding, warehousing and other value added services such as customs brokerage, inventory management, order fulfillment and product repair. The government of Oman is in the process to bring down the economy's dependence on oil and gas sector by diversifying into other industry verticals.



The logistics sector has gained special focus of the government due to its potential and the geo-strategic location of Oman. With political uncertainty in gulf area, Oman offers a safe by-pass to some of the major trade lines of the world. Oman has developed four Free Trade Zones over the years which give benefits like 100% foreign ownership, 10 year tax exemption, lower quota requirement of Omani workers and zero custom duties.



Oman Freight Forwarding Market Size

The freight forwarding industry in Oman witnessed an increase during 2012-2017. Creation of GCC Customs regulations harmonized regional trade regulations in the region. Additionally, with the rising industrial activities in the country due to the entry of number of leading foreign players, the demand for freight forwarding has surged in the country.



Oman Freight Forwarding Market Segmentation

By freight movement: The freight forwarding industry grew during the review period 2012-2017. The sea freight segment dominated Oman freight forwarding despite a sharp decline compared to previous year majorly due to increase in roadways trade among GCC neighbors. The road freight segment despite being second by volume has the smallest contribution by value on account of cheap rates as compared to air freight. The air freight segment followed road freight segment in Oman freight forwarding market during 2017.



By International and Domestic Freight: International freight forwarding has accounted for majority of the revenues for overall Oman freight forwarding market in the year 2017. The country exports significant amount of Mineral fuels and derivatives, Vehicles -Parts and Accessories, Organic chemicals, Aluminum and articles, Fertilizers, Iron and steel to other countries and imports machinery and mechanical appliances, vehicles- parts and accessories, mineral fuels and derivatives, electrical machinery and equipment and parts, articles of iron or steel, natural or cultured stones and metals etc.



Competitive Landscape of Oman Freight Forwarding Market

The freight forwarding industry in Oman was observed as highly fragmented with the presence of both domestic as well international freight forwarders in the country. On the basis of revenue, major freight forwarding companies amongst the air freight segment includes - DHL Express, FedEx, TNT, UPS and others.



Oman Warehousing Market

A key driver behind Oman's significant warehousing market growth is the location, considering that it is an intermediary trade corridor leading to it being an ideal pit stop for goods being transported between the western and Asian regions. Warehousing is gaining prominence due to economic diversification, air port and sea port upgrades, expansion of industrial parks and free zones

By end users: The food and beverage industry is the predominant user of warehousing facilities for the preservation and storage of processed food and beverage products and registered the highest contribution to the Oman warehousing market revenue in 2017. The chemical industry followed food and beverage considering the high level of delicacy involved when handling industrial chemicals.

By business model: The industrial/retail freight segment dominated overall Oman warehousing market with a massive revenue share in the year 2017. The rise in the industrial sector over the years gave an opportunity to the warehousing market to increase in numbers making a positive impact on the warehousing industry. The container freight, cold storage, agriculture and other segments collectively captured the remaining revenue share in Oman warehousing market in the year 2017.



Oman Express Logistics Market

The express logistics market in Oman witnessed an increase during 2012-2017. Express mail services are available throughout Oman, and represented by all major express delivery firms such as Oman Post, Aramex, DHL Express, TNT, UPS, and FedEx. These giant firms mostly deliver documents, mails, cargos in small quantities.

The domestic express segment dominated Oman express logistics market with a massive revenue share in 2017.

Competitive Landscape of Express Logistics Market

The express logistics industry in Oman was witnessed to be moderately concentrated with the presence of major players in primarily international express segment. Companies in the country are also offering value added services such as online tracking, door-to-door pickup, same day delivery, special delivery location and personalized delivery services to the customers.



Oman Express Logistics Market Future

Growth in the E-commerce market will drive the express delivery market for B2C business segment. Huge growth in B2C parcel market volumes and consumers of e-commerce are now demanding more convenient methods of collecting their parcels as well as more efficient methods of returns.



Oman Logistics and Warehousing Market Future Outlook and Projections

Over the forecast period, Oman logistics and warehousing market is expected to incline. The country will focus on upgrading its logistics infrastructure especially in the seaports, constructing regional and international logistics service centers, improving the efficiency of connection between Oman and other countries, thereby becoming a modern logistics hub in near future.

Companies focusing towards data driven technologies like ERP, electronic data interchange, customs and accounting software, GPS, bar code system, RFID, automatic retrieval system, robotics, drones and other technologies are further expected to boost the demand for logistics and warehousing services within Oman.

Various Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed between Oman which includes agreements with India, USA, Singapore and GCC countries will lead to boost the country's trade relations in long term.



Companies Mentioned



Agility Logistics ( Oman )

) Al Madina Logistics

Allied Logistics

Aramex Oman

Avvashya CCI Logistics

Badar Shipping Agencies

Bahwan Logistics

BHT Logistics

CEVA Logistics Gett

DHL Express

Enhance Oman Logistics

FedEx Oman

GAC logistics

ILS Logistics

Logwin Logistics and Golden Global Logistics

Majan Shipping

Muscat International Shipping & Logistics

Oman Post

Oman Shipping Company SAOC

Oman Warehousing Market Oryx Logistics

Pentagon Freight Services

Ships Agency and International Logistics (SHIPCO)

Sohar Shipping Transport and Trading Agencies

TNT Express

UPS

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/m8d3l6/oman_logistics?w=5

Did you know that we also offer Custom Research? Visit our Custom Research page to learn more and schedule a meeting with our Custom Research Manager.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

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VANCOUVER, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CSE: PVOT /OTCQB: PVOTF / FRA: NPAT) ("Pivot" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has signed a Letter of Intent to create a Joint Venture ("the Joint Venture") with Cartagena Inc., a subsidiary of Mexico-based Licorera Del Sur. The Joint Venture will develop and commercialize cannabis-infused non-alcoholic beverages using Pivot's patented, water-soluble powdered cannabis technologies combined with Cartagena's fine spirits and flavoured extract formulations. In addition, the Pivot and Cartagena Joint Venture will have extensive access to sales, distribution and marketing expertise.

Highlights:

Pivot to create a Joint Venture with Cartagena Inc. for cannabis-infused non-alcoholic beverages;

The Joint Venture will commercialize cannabis-infused beverages to be sold in Canada , California , EU and Latin America markets, where and when regulations permit;

Extensive research and development already completed by both parties;

Low calorie, rapid onset non-alcoholic cannabis-infused beverages to be offered as an alternative to alcohol;

Pivot's patented, water-soluble cannabis-oil-to-powder technologies offer the beverage industry a ready-made solution that addresses stability, taste, odour and solubility issues;

Cartagena Inc. is exclusively responsible for the international expansion of Licorera Del Sur. The group specializes in crafting multiple types of spirits with a focus on agave-based alcoholic beverages, including tequila, mezcal and agave liquor while also producing premium vodka, rum, aguardiente and whisky. With over 35 years of experience, 2000 employees, three modern state-of-the-art distilleries, thirteen bottling plants and global distribution capabilities, Licorera Del Sur is well positioned to enter the cannabis-infused beverage space through Cartagena Inc., capitalizing on the recent legalization of cannabis in Canada. The group will also get ready for the potential legalization of cannabis in Mexico.

Pivot Pharmaceuticals has an extensive library of patents and formulations that are perfectly suited for the food and beverage industry. Research and development performed by Solubest Inc., Pivot's Israeli-based partner, has shown positive results for the Company's cannabis powder technologies. Test formulations that have been successfully developed are stable, tasteless, odourless, colourless, and completely water-soluble.

Mr. Paul Bou-Nader, Managing Director of Cartagena Inc. stated "We are excited to partner with Pivot to create low calorie, rapid onset cannabis-infused beverages. This is a brand-new category of beverages and we are happy to be early movers in the space. Pivot's intellectual property and formulations will allow us to accelerate the commercialization of several potential products. We look forward to bringing our creations to market very soon."

Dr. Patrick Frankham, CEO of Pivot stated, "We are thrilled that Cartagena Inc. has agreed to enter into this Joint Venture. Their world class team of experts and award-winning product lines combined with Pivot's industry leading intellectual property portfolio will result in consumers being able to enjoy cannabis-infused beverages that taste good, are stable and consistent, science-based and provide the experience they are looking for without the side effects of alcohol. This is yet another milestone moment for Pivot as we will once again monetize our intellectual property portfolio. The importance of having patent protection should also not be underestimated. We realize that there are several companies offering cannabis-infusion technology but we are confident that our portfolio of issued patents is strong and defensible."

About Cartagena Inc. and Licora Del Sur

Cartagena Inc. is a subsidiary of Mexico based Licora Del Sur. Our exclusive mission is to expand the international reach of the group as well as the introduction of our Premium Mezcal brand "Mexcalia" to international markets. We thrive to serve a diverse market in the most efficient way offering our existing and potential clients with a multitude of solutions and products to suit their needs and support them in the development of their own private label brands as well as the commercialization of our existing brands through beneficial distribution agreements internationally. We specialize in crafting multiple types of spirits with a focus on agave based alcoholic beverages including tequila, mezcal and agave liquor. We also produce and bottle premium vodka, rum, aguardiente and blended scotch whisky. Our group controls the craft of the spirits mentioned above but is also proudly vertically integrated controlling the production of glass and PET bottles, plastic and wooden caps and closures as well as the design of bottles, labels and packaging material. For further information please visit Cartagena Inc. or Licorera Del Sur

About Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development and commercialization of therapeutic pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals using innovative drug delivery platform technologies. Pivot's wholly-owned medical cannabis products division, Pivot Green Stream Health Solutions Inc. ("PGS" or "Pivot Green Stream"), conducts research, development and commercialization of cannabinoid-based nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals. Pivot's wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary, Pivot Naturals, LLC, based in Costa Mesa, California, will manufacture and supply finished powderized cannabis products such as food additives, capsules, bulk powder and stick packs to the California market. PGS has acquired "RTIC" Ready-To-Infuse Cannabis oil-to-powder technology and Thrudermic Transdermal Nanotechnology (transdermal); acquired worldwide rights to BiPhasix Dermal Drug Delivery platform technology (topical), Solmic Solubilisation technology (oral), and Solumer Oral Drug Delivery technology; and an option to acquire worldwide rights to TriVair Nasal and Pulmonary Breath-Propelled Drug Delivery Systems for the delivery and commercialization of cannabinoid, cannabidiol (CBD), and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-based products. For more information please visit pivotpharma.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:

Except for historical information contained herein, the matters set forth above may be forward-looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements. Words such as anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, intend, and similar expressions, as they relate to Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc., Pivot Green Stream Health Solutions Inc., Pivot Naturals, LLC, or its management, identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs of management, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, such as the failure to meet the conditions imposed by the CSE or other securities regulators, the level of business and consumer spending, the amount of sales of Pivot's products, statements with respect to internal expectations, the competitive environment within the industry, the ability of Pivot to continue to expand its operations, the level of costs incurred in connection with Pivot's expansion efforts, economic conditions in the industry, and the financial strength of Pivot's customers and suppliers. Pivot does not undertake any obligation to update such forward-looking statements. Investors are also directed to consider all other risks and uncertainties.

SOURCE Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc.VANCOUVER, British Columbia, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Premier Health Group (CSE: PHGI) (OTCQB: PHGRF) (Frankfurt: 6PH) (the "Company" or "Premier Health"), a Company focused on developing innovative approaches that combine human skill-based expertise with emerging technologies for the healthcare industry, is pleased to announce that the Company's common shares traded on the OTC Markets Group Inc.'s OTCQB Venture Market in the United States, under the symbol "PHGRF", are Depository Trust Company ("DTC") eligible, effective October 22, 2018. DTC is a subsidiary of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation and manages the electronic clearing and settlement of share transactions for publicly-traded companies.

The OTCQB Venture Market is for early-stage and developing U.S. and international companies that must be current in their reporting and undergo an annual verification and management certification process. DTC eligibility allows Premier Health shares to be more easily and economically transferred between brokerage accounts electronically within the United States. DTC is the largest securities depository in the world, providing clearing and settlement efficiencies for brokers, as well as various other services.

In addition to the OTCQB, shares of Premier Health continue to trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange.



ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Dr. Essam Hamza, MD"

Chief Executive Officer

About Premier Health

Premier Health is a Canadian company that is strategically poised to take advantage of business opportunities in the global health care industry. We are developing innovative health care approaches that combine human skill-based expertise with emerging technologies, and will set the gold standard for services in locations of interest worldwide. Premier Health's subsidiary, HealthVue is focused on developing proprietary technology to deliver quality healthcare through the combination of connected primary care clinics with telemedicine and artificial intelligence (AI). We currently have an ecosystem of over 100,000 active patients and have plans to rapidly increase that number both domestically and internationally. The HealthVue team has a strong track record of successfully creating value in healthcare and technology enterprises. The Management team has deep clinical, financial and operational expertise and a passion for improving healthcare for all patients.

Cautionary Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on Premier Health's expectations, estimates and projections regarding its business and the economic environment in which it operates, including with respect to the implementation of its shareholder communications initiative and the timing thereof. Although Premier Health believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements and readers should not place undue reliance on such statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and Premier Health undertakes no obligation to update them publicly to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances, unless otherwise required to do so by law.

The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

PREMIER HEALTH GROUP INC.

440 - 890 West Pender Street

Vancouver, BC V6C 1J9

For Additional Information Contact:

Premier Health Group Inc.

http://www.healthvue.com

Email: [email protected]



SOURCE Premier Health Group Inc.EL PASO, Texas, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A briefing on journalist Emilio Gutierrez-Soto's asylum hearing has been postponed while advocates for the award-winning Mexican reporter wait for an immigration court to find lost records.

Advocates for Gutierrez are available by phone as they await court action.

Gutierrez and his advocates  including representatives of the National Press Club, the University of Michigan's Knight Wallace Journalism Fellowships and the Missouri School of Journalism  waited in an immigration court for more than two hours before learning that the presiding judge in the case, Robert Hough, could not find key records from the Board of Immigration Appeals. The judge said he has not read the records, which the BIA transmitted to him in May. The records are critical to the case because they include a 500+ page amicus brief signed by numerous journalism and free press organizations. They are the basis for the BIA's decision to order a new asylum hearing.

The winner of the National Press Club's 2017 Press Freedom Award, Gutierrez fled to the United States after his reporting on military corruption in Mexico made him the target of death threats. Although he entered the country legally and has abided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was detained for eight months earlier this year, winning release only after journalism organizations filed a habeas corpus case against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service.

"We are flabbergasted that federal records have gone missing in this case and that it is delaying justice once again," said William McCarren, executive director of the National Press Club.

Gutierrez and his son, Oscar, flew to El Paso for the hearing from Michigan, where Emilio Gutierrez is spending the year at the prestigious Knight-Wallace Journalism fellowships at the University of Michigan.

"These documents are absolutely central to Emilio's case. It is astonishing to find out that the judge has not read and fairly considered evidence that so many journalists involved in Emilio's case have taken the time read carefully over the past several months," said Lynette Clemetson, director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship. "At its heart, this case is about the freedom and safety of journalists. Our hope now is that journalists covering this case will scrutinize the court's ability to give Emilio a fair hearing."

Gutierrez asked the court to switch the case to an immigration judge in Michigan, closer to where the two men now live, but Hough has refused. He denied the Gutierrezes' asylum claim in July, 2017 but the Board of Immigration Appeals has ordered a new hearing based on evidence of Gutierrez's long career as a reporter and the growing danger to journalists in Mexico, now the most dangerous place in the Western hemisphere for reporters.

"This is the latest strange twist in a case that's so strangely unfair it's hard not to conclude that Emilio is the victim of prejudice  against Mexicans and against journalists," said Kathy Kiely, Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri Journalism School

Contact: Kathy Kiely, 202-256-4748, National Press Club Press Freedom Fellow and Lee Hills Fellow in Free Press Studies, Missouri School of Journalism

Bill McCarren, 202-727-7787, National Press Club executive director

Lynette Clemetson, 202-255-7585, director Knight-Wallace Fellowships, University of Michigan

SOURCE National Press ClubPROVO, Utah and ORANGE, Conn., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Axcend Corporation today announced that its Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer, Milton L. Lee, Ph.D., has received the prestigious 2018 Csaba Horvath Memorial Award.

The Award was presented to Professor Lee during ceremonies held last Thursday at the 18th Annual Csaba Horvath Memorial Award Symposium on the campus of Yale University in Orange, Connecticut. Following the award presentation, Dr. Lee delivered the Keynote Lecture, titled "Novel Technologies for Portable Capillary Chromatography."

Milton L. Lee, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Axcend Corporation (center), receives the 2018 Csaba Horvath Memorial Award from Tom Melninkaitis, President of the Connecticut Separation Science Council (left) and Attila Felinger, Ph.D., President of the Hungarian Society for Separation Sciences (right) on Thursday, October 18, 2018 Thursday at the 18th Annual Csaba Horvath Memorial Award Symposium on the campus of Yale University in Orange, Connecticut.

According to CSSC President, Thomas Melninkaitis, "The Csaba Horvath Memorial Award has been presented annually since its creation in 2000. This Award is designed to recognize the top chemist in the world in the field of Separation Science, someone whose work 'exemplifies and will continue to provide for the advancement of separation science in the future.'"

Professor Milton L. Lee, Ph.D. Career Synopsis

Dr. Lee has been a member of the faculty of Brigham Young University since 1976 and is currently the Emeritus H. Tracy Hall Professor of Chemistry. He is best known for his research in capillary separation techniques and mass spectrometry detection. He has authored/coauthored over 590 scientific publications and has delivered over 500 technical presentations during his career.

Dr. Lee has received numerous industry awards during his career of over 40 years, including being named three times as one of the 100 most influential people in the field of analytical sciences by The Analytical Scientist magazine in 2013, 2015 and 2017. In addition, he has mentored over 100 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers during his time in academia.

Among the scientific awards that he has received for his achievements in research and professional activities are

the M.S. Tswett Chromatography Medal (1984),

the Keene P. Dimick Chromatography Award (1988),

the American Chemical Society Award in Chromatography (1988),

the Russian Tswett Chromatography Medal (1992),

the Martin Gold Medal (1996),

the Latin-American Chromatography Congress Medal (1998),

the M.J.E. Golay Award (1998),

the American Chemical Society Award in Chemical Instrumentation (1998),

an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden (1998),

in (1998), the Dal Nogare Award (1999),

the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Achievements in Separation Science (1999),

the California Separation Science Society Award (2005),

the Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award (2008),

R&D 100 Awards from R&D magazine (1993 and 2008),

magazine (1993 and 2008), Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Fields of Analytical Chemistry (2008),

the American Chemical Society Award in Separations Science and Technology (2012), and

the LC/GC Europe Lifetime Achievement Award (2014).

"It's hard to encapsulate the impact one person can have in a given industry, so I applaud the members of the CSSC for choosing Dr. Lee as its recipient of the 2018 Csaba Horvath Memorial Award ," said Glen Mella, Axcend Co-Founder and CEO. "It has been a delight knowing and working with Milt, and I look forward to many exciting accomplishments together in the months and years ahead."

Dr. Lee is also an entrepreneur and has been involved in inventing, commercializing and transferring technology from his research laboratory at BYU into the private sector. In addition to co-founding Axcend with Mella in 2018, Professor Lee also

Co-founded Lee Scientific in 1984 to develop supercritical fluid chromatographic instrumentation, a company acquired in 1988 by Dionex.

in 1984 to develop supercritical fluid chromatographic instrumentation, a company acquired in 1988 by Dionex. Founded Sensar Corporation in 1991 to develop unique time-of-flight mass spectrometry instrumentation, a firm acquired in 2002 by LECO.

in 1991 to develop unique time-of-flight mass spectrometry instrumentation, a firm acquired in 2002 by LECO. Founded Torion Technologies in 2001 to develop a hand-portable gas chromatography-mass spectrometry system, a company acquired in 2015 by Perkin Elmer.

"Dr. Horvath was both a friend and a mentor, so I am humbled to receive this award that was named in his honor," Dr. Lee said. "And to my peers at the CSSC, the Connecticut Mass Spectrometry Discussion Group, and the Hungarian Society for Separation Sciences, I say 'Thank You.'"

About Axcend

Axcend is a provider of innovative, compact nano-flow, gradient high-performance liquid chromatography (LC) systems that deliver dramatic improvements in portability, ease-of-operation, rapid and convenient deployment, and coupling to other analytical systems (such as mass spectrometers). Its award-winning Axcend Focus LC was unveiled in February 2018 at the Pittcon conference and trade show. For more information, call 801-376-9088, email [email protected] or visit www.AxcendCorp.com

Axcend, the Axcend logo and Axcend Focus LC are trademarks of Axcend, LLC. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

PRESS CONTACT:

David Politis, 801-556-8184, [email protected]

SOURCE Axcend

Related Links

http://www.axcendcorp.com

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/745103/Red_Sea_International_Logo.jpg )



(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/768772/Red_Sea_Housing.jpg )



RSH is the largest manufacturer of modular buildings in the Middle East and North African region with over 40 years' experience in the oil & gas, affordable housing and remote buildings sector - providing both long-term and short-term rental solutions to its clients.

With the acquisition of Modular Rental Solutions, RSH expands its footprint into the temporary rental market in the GCC by providing quality rental solutions for clients seeking short-term rental options.

"The market today lacks a full-service capability in this important sector," said RSH V.P. Paolo Pedroni. "Clients today need the ability to source all their requirements under one roof whereby they are assured the difficulties of operating in a remote location or under tight timelines can be achieved economically and efficiently," said Pedroni. "Modular Rental Solutions is one of the leading rental companies in Dubai and this acquisition will enable RSH to expand its footprint and provide more services to our client base who require alternative solutions."

Paul Backwell, the previous Managing Partner of Modular Rental Solutions expressed, "We are excited to take this business to the next level with Red Sea Housing. The footprint and operating facilities of RSH further strengthens the experience of Modular Rental Solutions in this arena."

This acquisition also lays foundation to the formation of Red Sea Rentals, the rental solutions wing of RSH, which will offer customers a fleet of prefabricated and modular buildings, and related infrastructure equipment to rent, suited to building & construction, oil & gas, mining, infrastructure, government, events, and education sectors.

PR Contact

Rakhi Raghavan

[email protected]

+971-4883-8589

http://www.redseahousing.com



SOURCE Red Sea Housing ServicesWASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A whitepaper released today by the Alliance for Safe Biologic Medicines calls on the World Health Organization (WHO) to implement a harmonized naming protocol for biologic medicines to help keep patients safe. Names  of products, people, places - are important in many settings but perhaps nowhere more important than in the medical arena where confusion could be dangerous. Harmonization of naming practices for biologic medicines is seen as essential for maintaining a safe supply of biologic medicines. Regulators and physicians believe WHO is best positioned to lead this effort.

Biologic medicines have revolutionized the treatment of many chronic illnesses and less expensive versions of these important medicines are becoming available. However, because biologics are made using living cells, no two products from different manufacturers will be the same. Distinguishable names for biologics made by different manufacturers enable doctors to prescribe, pharmacists to dispense and regulators to track biologics with specificity.

According to the newly released paper, regulators, physicians, and patients are supportive of international harmonization of biologic names and are calling on the WHO to implement the proposed naming system so that it is available for regulators to use.

The paper is based on a roundtable discussion on international harmonization of biologic nomenclature held April 11th in Washington DC. Participants included representatives from the U.S. FDA and Health Canada, major physician and pharmacist societies, and patient advocates. The forum was sponsored by the Alliance for Safe Biologic Medicines (ASBM) and Scientific American, which prepared the paper.

The World Health Organization has examined biologic naming extensively. In 2014, the WHO's Expert Group responsible for medicine naming recommended the WHO implement a voluntary international standard of naming for all biologics using a "biologic qualifier" or BQ. The BQ is a four-letter suffix that would be appended to the root scientific name  the International Nonproprietary Name (INN) - assigned by WHO. Biologic medicines with a certain level of similarity would have the same INN so the BQ would distinguish each biologic by a different manufacturer, thus enabling regulators to attribute any problems to the exact product. This is important due to the very sensitive nature of biologics and the risk of an unwanted immune response by patients.

Despite wide support for the BQ proposal outside of WHO as well - regulators support it by a 2-to-1 margin as do large majorities of surveyed physicians in the US (66%) and Canada (68%) Australia (79%) and in Latin America (94%)  WHO has not yet implemented the system its expert committee recommended.

In the absence of action by WHO, regulators around the world have begun to act independently. The FDA implemented its own BQ-like naming system in 2015, and Japan has adopted a different distinct suffix system. Canada is looking for global harmonization but considering a regional approach as an alternative. If not reconciled soon, the divergent naming practices could make prescribing, dispensing and tracking difficult in a global economy and impede access to these life-saving medicines.

"A regulator's job is not confined to the corners of their geography," says Anthony Ridgway, acting director of the Centre for Evaluation of Radiopharmaceutical and Biotherapeutics at Health Canada, who participated in the forum. Continued lack of clarity globally makes identification and association of adverse reactions across jurisdictions, and resolution of problems, more difficult. A harmonized international naming standard would help patients who fill prescriptions while travelling internationally, for example.

The BQ's benefits might be felt most by lower- and middle- income countries without their own robust pharmacovigilance systems. "The WHO is indispensable in building a global system of pharmacovigilance for biologics," says Michael Reilly, ASBM's executive director.

ASBM released the paper simultaneously at the WHO's 67th International Consultation on Nonproprietary Names, in Geneva, Switzerland; and at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Chicago, IL. The paper is also available at www.safebiologics.org.

CONTACT: Michael Reilly, [email protected], 202-222-8326

SOURCE Alliance for Safe Biologic MedicinesThe fascinating mingling of jewellery with other fashion products, including bags, beauty elements, apparel, art works and other accessories, will be on elaborate display at Jewellery Life Pavilion 2.0.

"Jewellery Life Pavilion 2.0 was embraced by our clients and guests at its launch in 2017," says Teddy Tan, Event Manager, China Jewellery Fairs, UBM China (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. "It was a winning proposition for all. It resulted to increased awareness about the brands and products of our exhibitors, whilst our buyers had valuable 'face time' with current or potential suppliers and an opportunity to preview and review the products right there."

Bringing a signature style all their own to the pavilion are several notable jewellers, including Kelly Xie Fine Jewelry, Chic Chu Fine Jewelry, designer brand Alice, and international precious gems supplier P.N. Gems. Joining them are overseas fashion brands, including Gdesignare (Philippines), KeCapunG (Indonesia), Nature SIAM (Thailand), PERA (Singapore), TSAR (Malaysia), WannaSuvarnamani Co., Ltd (Thailand) and Gem (Singapore).

What's more, the cooperation between the Shanghai International Brand Jewelry Center and Shanghai Jewellery Fair is instrumental in providing the unifying thread between various lifestyle elements, such as clothing, handbags, leather, cosmetics, home furnishings and artworks. Carrying these elements through to everyday life unlocks a whole new way of living for the Chinese high end consumer. This is particularly true for millennial consumers, aged 20 to 34, who are major drivers of China's lifestyle market. According to consultancy Bain & Co's 2017 China Luxury Report, cosmetics, women's wear and jewellery were the top categories for this age group, helping boost their sales by 20% annually.

Knowing what resonates with consumers, what next? This is where the Shanghai Jewellery Fair comes in. Launching the "CrossoverShining Your Life" programme, experts in their field are at hand to showcase snippets of an exquisite lifestyle: jewellery designers, apparel designers and makeup artists transform the looks of the models; a fitness trainer advises the models on their postures; and an interior designer sets up the backdrop for the scenes. All these are aimed to encourage and inspire.

A summit during the fair sets the stage for brainstorming for more crossover ideas; the kinds that would spark innovations and perhaps alliances that will open up business opportunities for all involved. Speakers renowned in their field will provide insights on the promising future of crossover collaboration and how the jewellery business can harness such alliance. They are:

SHIRLEY HOU , JEWELLERY DESIGNER. Shirley is the president of Inchee Jewelry, a promising independent designer brand that got the nod of esteemed publications BAZAAR Jewelry and Jewellery News Asia. She has graced a CCTV programme as a special jewellery entrepreneur guest.

, JEWELLERY DESIGNER. Shirley is the president of Inchee Jewelry, a promising independent designer brand that got the nod of esteemed publications BAZAAR Jewelry and Jewellery News Asia. She has graced a CCTV programme as a special jewellery entrepreneur guest. MICHELLE MA , JEWELLERY DESIGNER. Michelle is the Design Director and CEO of Inchee Jewelry. She holds a Polished Diamond Grader certificate, a Colored Stones Grader certificate and a Pearl Grader certificate from the International Gemological Institute.

, JEWELLERY DESIGNER. Michelle is the Design Director and CEO of Inchee Jewelry. She holds a Polished Diamond Grader certificate, a Colored Stones Grader certificate and a Pearl Grader certificate from the International Gemological Institute. ECHO YU , INTERIOR DESIGNER. Echo is the Executive Director of HFS|BE Design (China Division). She finds pleasure in creating the home her clients want.

, INTERIOR DESIGNER. Echo is the Executive Director of HFS|BE Design (China Division). She finds pleasure in creating the home her clients want. JOY HUO , MAKEUP ARTIST. Joy's creativity and keen sense of fashion has led to her successful time at Paris Wedding Photography, where she worked as stylist, and at Shanghai Disney Resort for several years.

, MAKEUP ARTIST. Joy's creativity and keen sense of fashion has led to her successful time at Paris Wedding Photography, where she worked as stylist, and at Shanghai Disney Resort for several years. SOFIYA LIN , MAKEUP ARTIST. One of the 10 stylists at CCTV2010, Sofiya sharpened her skills by working with several well-known brands earlier in her career, including LINING, GAP, JEE and Huatai Jewelry.

, MAKEUP ARTIST. One of the 10 stylists at CCTV2010, Sofiya sharpened her skills by working with several well-known brands earlier in her career, including LINING, GAP, JEE and Huatai Jewelry. CHEN GURONG, FITNESS TRAINER. Ten years of teaching yoga has led Chen to establish her own studio, Flame Yoga.

FIONA TAM , APPAREL DESIGNER. Fiona got her start in the costume design profession following studies at Donghua University and Bunka Fashion College. She specialises in designing wedding dresses, and gowns for all occasions.

, APPAREL DESIGNER. Fiona got her start in the costume design profession following studies at Donghua University and Bunka Fashion College. She specialises in designing wedding dresses, and gowns for all occasions. SUMMER LIU , APPAREL DESIGNER. Summer launched her own apparel brand, MixVintage. She delivers her vintage style clothing to the US and Israel market.

Mr Tan of UBM China (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd says reinventing the jewellery exhibitions landscape by injecting crossover elements such as these is the Shanghai Jewellery Fair's contribution in supporting and further advancing China's jewellery market. "It's no secret that it contracted in recent years, but it's been recovering slowly but surely since 2017," he says. "Jewellers' efforts to improve design and respond to the needs of today's consumers through astute market research are starting to bear fruit."

Asia-Pacific Jewellery & Watch Expo

Another exciting feature buyers should watch out for at the Shanghai Jewellery Fair is the third annual Asia-Pacific Jewellery & Watch Expo. The result of UBM Asia's strategic alliance with the Shanghai NIU International Exhibition Co., Ltd, this classic feature transmits the different life philosophies and attitudes of designers through their works. Each jewellery and timepiece has as much a story to tell as the art works that will also grace the expo.

Chinese Culture Pavilion

An innovation making its debut this year is the Chinese Culture Pavilion. Exhibitors in this pavilion will explore connections between jewellery characteristics and the five elements that are central to the Chinese culture - metal, wood, water, fire and earth. "We believe these represent the five kinds of energy that make up the universe," says Tan. "Each one of them provide a guiding direction for the works of the artists exhibiting in this pavilion." Exhibitors will showcase related products in booths under the corresponding five themes, thus allowing buyers to find products easily.

Host City

It will be remiss not to mention the host city of Shanghai as a "fair highlight" itself.

"Chinese luxury shoppers account for over CNY500 billion (USD73 billion) in annual spending, representing almost a third of the global luxury market," consulting firm McKinsey says in its latest report. Shanghai leads Chinese cities in terms of purchasing power - CNY 567 billion or USD88.5 billion in the first half of 2017.

"The city is the most ideal host for our fair," says Tan. "It offers jewellers a springboard to establish or expand their presence not only in the City of Chic that is Shanghai, but also its neighbouring cities."

Learning and Networking

Tan adds, "We designed the fair to enable buyers to see products in person, as well as enable them to network with other industry players through various social-business events. Through our series of informative seminars, buyers will get first-hand look at upcoming trends in the marketplace."

Equally important perhaps it the visual feast that is the backdrop of the exhibition, which not only looks good, but also feels good. "We conceptualised the fair so buyers and our 400 exhibitors can do transactions in a business-friendly yet sophisticated environment," Tan says. "Good design creates good business."

The China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair - Shanghai 2018 will run from 7 to 10 December at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center.

Pre-registration now open

Online pre-registration is now open at https://www.shanghaijewelleryfair.com/en-us/Visiting/Visitor-Registration. Avoid the long lines at the fair. Register now and get your visitor's badge in advance. Pre-registration ends on 23 November 2018.

UBM Global Jewellery Events Calendar 2018 & 2019

Exhibitions Dates Venue Mainland China China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair - Shanghai 7 - 10 December 2018 Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair - Shenzhen 19 - 22 April 2019 Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center Hong Kong region



Asia's Fashion Jewellery & Accessories Fair - March Edition 27 February - 2 March 2019 AsiaWorld-Expo - Hong Kong June Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair 20 - 23 June 2019 Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre Asia's Fashion Jewellery & Accessories Fair - September Edition 16 - 19 September 2019 AsiaWorld-Expo - Hong Kong September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair 16 - 20 September 2019 18 - 22 September 2019 AsiaWorld-Expo - Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre Taiwan region Taiwan Jewellery & Gem Fair 2 - 5 November 2018 Taipei World Trade Center Japan Japan Jewellery Fair 28 - 30 August 2019 Tokyo Big Sight Exhibition Center India Gem & Jewellery India International Exhibition 8 - 10 March 2019 Chennai Trade Centre Kolkata Jewellery & Gem Fair 6 - 8 April 2019 Milan Mela Complex - Kolkata Hyderabad Jewellery, Pearl & Gem Fair 14 - 16 June 2019 HICC, Novotel - Hyderabad Delhi Jewellery & Gem Fair 28-30 September 2019 Pragati Maidan - Delhi Singapore Singapore Jewellery & Gem Fair 26 - 29 October 2018 Marina Bay Sands Middle East Jewellery Arabia Bahrain 20 - 24 November 2018 The Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre Turkey Istanbul Jewelry Show II 11 - 14 October 2018 CNR Expo Center - Istanbul Istanbul Jewelry Show I 21 - 24 March 2019 CNR Expo Center - Istanbul Russian Federation JUNWEX St. Petersburg 30 January - 3 February 2019 EXPOFORUM - St. Petersburg JUNWEX New Russian Style 22  26 May 2019 All-Russian Exhibition Centre - Moscow JUNWEX Moscow, JUNWEX Watch 22 - 26 September 2019 All-Russian Exhibition Centre - Moscow

For exhibiting details, please contact: Sales Department, Jewellery Fairs, UBM China (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. Tel: (86) 20 8666 0158 Fax: (86) 20 8667 7120 E-mail: [email protected] For visiting details, please contact: Visitor Promotion Department, Jewellery Fairs, UBM China (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. Tel: (86) 20 8667 2808 Fax: (86) 20 8667 7120 E-mail: [email protected] www.shanghaijewelleryfair.com



Notes to Editors:

The China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair - Shanghai is organised by UBM, which in June 2018 combined with Informa PLC to become a leading B2B information services group and the largest B2B Events organiser in the world. Please visit www.ubm.com/asia for more information about our presence in Asia.

SOURCE UBM China (Guangzhou) Co., LtdDALLAS, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ryan, a leading global tax services and software provider, has been named to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption's 100 Best Adoption-Friendly Workplaces list. This prestigious award recognizes companies that exhibit family values by supporting employees with generous adoption-benefit programs.

The list compares financial reimbursement and paid leave offered to parents who adopt, based on surveys of organizations across the United States. The premier organizations are recognized for leading the charge to provide better adoption benefits in the workplace. Together, they represent a diverse group of companies across 22 industries.

"The adoption of a child brings unique financial challenges. I discovered this firsthand through one of our employees who was preparing to adopt two children from another country," said G. Brint Ryan, chairman and CEO of Ryan. "His journey inspired us, knowing there were other Ryan employees and families experiencing this. As a result, our adoption-friendly work benefits were implemented to support our associates who choose the caring path of adopting a child into their loving family environment."

To support and encourage employees who choose to grow their families through adoption, Ryan provides up to $5,000 in reimbursement for qualified expenses in connection with the final adoption of every child. The Firm also provides eight weeks of paid leave for employees who adopt children.

"An increasing number of organizations are recognizing that providing adoption benefits is, in the words of Dave Thomas, 'the right thing to do' not only to grow stronger families, but also to build an organizational culture that promotes loyalty, productivity, and employee well-being," said Rita Soronen, president and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. "I want to thank all the organizations on the Best Adoption-Friendly Workplaces list for helping to create brighter futures for children who need our help the most."

To view the complete 100 Best Adoption-Friendly Workplaces list for 2018 and find other adoption resources for employers, visit adoptionfriendlyworkplace.org.

About the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is a national, nonprofit public charity dedicated exclusively to finding permanent homes for the more than 150,000 children waiting in North America's foster care systems. Created by Wendy's founder Dave Thomas who was adopted, the Foundation implements evidence-based, results-driven national service programs, foster care adoption awareness campaigns and innovative grantmaking. To learn more, visit davethomasfoundation.org.

About Ryan

Ryan, an award-winning global tax services and software provider, is the largest Firm in the world dedicated exclusively to business taxes. With global headquarters in Dallas, Texas, the Firm provides an integrated suite of federal, state, local, and international tax services on a multi-jurisdictional basis, including tax recovery, consulting, advocacy, compliance, and technology services. Ryan is a six-time recipient of the International Service Excellence Award from the Customer Service Institute of America (CSIA) for its commitment to world-class client service. Empowered by the dynamic myRyan work environment, which is widely recognized as the most innovative in the tax services industry, Ryan's multi-disciplinary team of more than 2,200 professionals and associates serves over 14,000 clients in more than 50 countries, including many of the world's most prominent Global 5000 companies. More information about Ryan can be found at ryan.com. "Ryan" and "Firm" refer to the global organizational network and may refer to one or more of the member firms of Ryan International, each of which is a separate legal entity.

MEDIA CONTACT

Patty Sullivan

Director, Communications

Ryan

469.399.4721

[email protected]

SOURCE Ryan

Related Links

http://www.ryan.com

"With the 2018 midterm elections quickly approaching, cybersecurity is top-of-mind for many Americans," said Russ Schrader, NCSA's executive director. "NCSA, DHS and thousands of supporters are committed to reiterating the message that everyone shares a role in protecting cyberspace. If internet users nationwide do their part to follow basic cybersecurity practices, citizens and the country at large will be safer and more secure."

As technology providers continue to advance approaches to protecting our nation's systems, they are striving to develop solutions across the entire technology stack. With increased connectivity across all industries, it is important that government and industry work together to address needs of our critical infrastructure  both now and in the future. Technology companies are regularly partnering with government organizations to provide security guidance. For example, Intel is among a handful of companies that collaborated with NIST's National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence to provide authentication solutions for government workers who use mobile devices. Along with many peers, Intel is focused on developing solutions that help mitigate security concerns for the government.

NCSAM's Week 4 theme showcases the importance of safeguarding the country's critical infrastructure. With that top of mind, the high demand for professionals to protect the internet and the country's infrastructure has yielded an unmatched number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs. Cultivating the next generation of cybersecurity professionals  whether it's students, veterans returning to civilian life or individuals re-entering the workforce  is essential. There is a tremendous gap in the quantity of qualified professionals to fill open cybersecurity jobs. Many of these positions are open in industries that keep water flowing from our faucets, lights on at our homes, money in the bank and food on the kitchen table.

Protecting the nation's 16 sectors of our nation's critical infrastructure is a shared responsibility between government and industry  both technology providers and critical infrastructure owners and operators. In addition, there are steps that individuals can take to protect themselves, their information, the larger community and our critical infrastructure during October, CISR Month 2018 and year-round:

Lock down your login : Fortify your online accounts by enabling the strongest authentication tools available, such as biometrics or a unique one-time code through an app on your mobile device. Your usernames and passwords are not enough to protect key accounts like email, banking and social media.

: Fortify your online accounts by enabling the strongest authentication tools available, such as biometrics or a unique one-time code through an app on your mobile device. Your usernames and passwords are not enough to protect key accounts like email, banking and social media. Keep a clean machine : Keep all software on internet-connected devices  including PCs, smartphones and tablets  up to date to reduce risk of infection from malware.

: Keep all software on internet-connected devices  including PCs, smartphones and tablets  up to date to reduce risk of infection from malware. When in doubt, throw it out : Cybercriminals often use links in email, social posts and texts to try to steal your personal information. Even if you know the source, if something looks suspicious, delete it.

: Cybercriminals often use links in email, social posts and texts to try to steal your personal information. Even if you know the source, if something looks suspicious, delete it. Safer for me, more secure for all : What you do online has the potential to affect everyone  at home, at work and around the world. Practicing good online habits benefits the global digital community.

: What you do online has the potential to affect everyone  at home, at work and around the world. Practicing good online habits benefits the global digital community. View, download and share the Week 4 infographic to learn more about the role critical infrastructure plays and how you can help keep its systems and networks more secure.

To learn more about CISR Month and how you can get involved, visit the DHS website.

On Nov. 1 in Anchorage, AL, NCSA will host a CyberSecure My Business workshop in partnership with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). NRECA is the national service organization dedicated to representing the national interests of the 895 cooperative electric utilities they serve that provide power to 42 million people in 47 states. NRECA's Rural Cooperative Cybersecurity Capabilities (RC3) Program is sponsoring a Cybersecurity Summit in Anchorage in collaboration with the Alaska Power Association. The full-day RC3 Cybersecurity Summit  which includes the NCSA workshop  will focus on the cybersecurity challenges facing small- and medium-sized electric utility companies and is a free event open to all electric utilities in Alaska. More than 90 percent of Alaskans receive electricity from either a cooperative or a municipal (publicly-owned) utility, and these utilities supply power to more than a half-million Alaskans from Barrow to Unalaska, through the Interior and Southcentral and down the Inside Passage. The RC3 Summit will provide a unique opportunity for all of Alaska's electric utilities to come together and discuss cybersecurity challenges. It will share invaluable information on how these companies  that are so vital to the state's infrastructure  can integrate cybersecurity controls into their overall risk management strategy. NRECA's RC3 Program is funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory under Award Number DE-OE0000807. To learn more about the event, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/emerging-priorities-in-energy-research-day-rc3-summit-anchorage-ak-tickets-49663084623

Week 4 Resources

Cofense , the leading provider of human-driven phishing defense solutions world-wide, this month is helping global organizations stay cyber-aware by releasing their 2018 State of Phishing Defense Report, which analyzed approximately 135 million simulated phishing emails, 800,000 emails reported into the Cofense Phishing Defense Center and nearly 50,000 in-the-wild phishing campaigns analyzed by Cofense Intelligence. According to a recent press release, "The findings highlighted that thus far in 2018, one in ten reported emails were verified as malicious and more than half of those were tied to credential phishing where a fraudulent email attempts to gather login and system information from users." The report also contains the most current phishing susceptibility, resiliency and reporting rates across major industry verticals. The report is available free here: https://cofense.com/state-of-phishing-defense-2018/

, the leading provider of human-driven phishing defense solutions world-wide, this month is helping global organizations stay cyber-aware by releasing their 2018 State of Phishing Defense Report, which analyzed approximately 135 million simulated phishing emails, 800,000 emails reported into the Cofense Phishing Defense Center and nearly 50,000 in-the-wild phishing campaigns analyzed by Cofense Intelligence. According to a recent press release, "The findings highlighted that thus far in 2018, one in ten reported emails were verified as malicious and more than half of those were tied to credential phishing where a fraudulent email attempts to gather login and system information from users." The report also contains the most current phishing susceptibility, resiliency and reporting rates across major industry verticals. The report is available free here: https://cofense.com/state-of-phishing-defense-2018/ Cybersecurity Practice Guide SP 1800-12 : This guideline developed by the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) and industry partners provides federal agencies using mobile devices standards-based, commercially available cybersecurity technologies to provide secure authentication. Intel Authenticate is a key component in the guideline, leveraging hardware-based technology for robust multifactor authentication.

: This guideline developed by the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) and industry partners provides federal agencies using mobile devices standards-based, commercially available cybersecurity technologies to provide secure authentication. Intel Authenticate is a key component in the guideline, leveraging hardware-based technology for robust multifactor authentication. DHS Critical Infrastructure Cyber Community (C) Voluntary Program : This no-cost program helps organizations of all sizes and in all industries combat the cyber threat. C supports industry in increasing cyber resilience by promoting awareness and the use of the National Institute for Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework.

: This no-cost program helps organizations of all sizes and in all industries combat the cyber threat. C supports industry in increasing cyber resilience by promoting awareness and the use of the National Institute for Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework. ESET's Cybersecurity Awareness Training is a free on-demand, interactive video training that business can send to their employees to help them become more cyber aware. The interactive, gamified videos are a fun, effective way to teach and educate employees about cyber threats in the workplace and help keep your business safe. https://www.eset.com/us/cybertraining/

Cybersecurity Awareness Training is a free on-demand, interactive video training that business can send to their employees to help them become more cyber aware. The interactive, gamified videos are a fun, effective way to teach and educate employees about cyber threats in the workplace and help keep your business safe. https://www.eset.com/us/cybertraining/ Raytheon: The best ideas come from diverse teams of people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Raytheon Company partnered with the Center for Cyber Safety on a new scholarship program designed to encourage college women to pursue cybersecurity degrees. Administered by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, the annual Raytheon CCDC Women's Cybersecurity Scholarship will award scholarships to two females that participate in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition annually. Each scholarship will include an internship opportunity in Raytheon's Intelligence, Information and Services' Cybersecurity and Special Mission area. Raytheon is the title sponsor of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, a tournament to choose the U.S. collegiate team that can best protect computer networks against real-world cyber threats. For more information about the Raytheon CCDC Women's Cybersecurity Scholarship, including eligibility requirements, visit https://iamcybersafe.org/scholarships/raytheon-womens-scholarships/ now through February 1 .

The best ideas come from diverse teams of people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Raytheon Company partnered with the Center for Cyber Safety on a new scholarship program designed to encourage college women to pursue cybersecurity degrees. Administered by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, the annual Raytheon CCDC Women's Cybersecurity Scholarship will award scholarships to two females that participate in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition annually. Each scholarship will include an internship opportunity in Raytheon's Intelligence, Information and Services' Cybersecurity and Special Mission area. Raytheon is the title sponsor of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, a tournament to choose the U.S. collegiate team that can best protect computer networks against real-world cyber threats. For more information about the Raytheon CCDC Women's Cybersecurity Scholarship, including eligibility requirements, visit https://iamcybersafe.org/scholarships/raytheon-womens-scholarships/ now through . Wells Fargo : The Cybersecurity Talent Shortage: A Career Opportunity for All Generations

As technology innovation increases the need for information security, the talent gap for cybersecurity professionals has never been greater. Wells Fargo Chief Information Security Officer Rich Baich addresses the skills needed and the opportunities available for both new and tenured job seekers.

https://staysafeonline.org/blog/cybersecurity-talent-shortage-career-opportunity-generations/

As technology innovation increases the need for information security, the talent gap for cybersecurity professionals has never been greater. Wells Chief Information Security Officer addresses the skills needed and the opportunities available for both new and tenured job seekers. Generali Global Assistance : In an effort to support NCSAM's mission of generating more awareness about cybersecurity threats and the steps everyone can take to better protect themselves and the customers they serve, Generali Global Assistance is offering ScamAssist to all consumers for free during the month of October 2018! ScamAssist is a consumer service that takes solicitations our customers receive, performs expert research of the solicitations and delivers case-by-case assessments on the likelihood of it being a scam, thereby reducing the chances of a customer inadvertently providing funds or sensitive information to a criminal.

Learn more here: https://us.generaliglobalassistance.com/blog/reducing-consumer-risk-scamassisttm/.

: In an effort to support NCSAM's mission of generating more awareness about cybersecurity threats and the steps everyone can take to better protect themselves and the customers they serve, Generali Global Assistance is offering ScamAssist to all consumers for free during the month of October 2018! ScamAssist is a consumer service that takes solicitations our customers receive, performs expert research of the solicitations and delivers case-by-case assessments on the likelihood of it being a scam, thereby reducing the chances of a customer inadvertently providing funds or sensitive information to a criminal. Learn more here: https://us.generaliglobalassistance.com/blog/reducing-consumer-risk-scamassisttm/. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework: The NIST Framework, which was created through collaboration between industry and government, consists of standards, guidelines and practices to promote the protection of critical infrastructure. The framework's prioritized, flexible, repeatable and cost-effective approach helps owners and operators of critical infrastructure manage cybersecurity-related risk.

In-person and Virtual Events

Symantec Webinar: Safeguarding the Nation's Critical Infrastructure on Tuesday, Oct. 23 , 1:00 p.m. EDT / 10:00 a.m. PDT Week 4 will emphasize the importance of securing our critical infrastructure and highlight the roles the public can play in keeping it safe. Speaker: Curtis Barker , Symantec

Register Here: https://www.symantec.com/about/webcasts?commid=330288

Week 4 will emphasize the importance of securing our critical infrastructure and highlight the roles the public can play in keeping it safe. Speaker: , Symantec Register Here: https://www.symantec.com/about/webcasts?commid=330288 Symantec Webinar: Is The Cloud Safe? Ensuring Security on the Cloud, Thursday, Oct. 25 , 2:00 p.m. EDT /11:00 a.m. PDT When switching to the cloud, many nonprofits wonder how cloud apps and services, such as Microsoft Office 365, G Suite, Box, and Amazon Web Services, will affect their organization's security. Cloud apps and software offer a multitude of benefits to nonprofits when it comes to keeping their devices and data safe. In this 60-minute webinar hosted by Deena Thomchick , Symantec's senior director of cloud security, we will cover the many security benefits of switching to the cloud. You will learn:

When switching to the cloud, many nonprofits wonder how cloud apps and services, such as Microsoft Office 365, G Suite, Box, and Amazon Web Services, will affect their organization's security. Cloud apps and software offer a multitude of benefits to nonprofits when it comes to keeping their devices and data safe. In this 60-minute webinar hosted by , Symantec's senior director of cloud security, we will cover the many security benefits of switching to the cloud. You will learn: Benefits of adopting cloud apps and services



What you are responsible for and what your cloud provider is responsible for when it comes to security



Risks to look out for when using cloud apps and services



How to mitigate risks with security best practices for email, endpoints (including laptops and mobile devices), content and users

To learn more, visit https://page.techsoup.org/symantec-is-the-cloud-safe-webinar-10252018

#ChatSTC Twitter Chat: Safeguarding the Nation's Critical Infrastructure, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018 , 3:00 p.m. EDT/ noon PDT Our day-to-day life depends on the country's 16 sectors of critical infrastructure, which supply food, water, financial services, public health, communications and power along with other networks and systems. A disruption to this system, which is operated via the internet, can have significant and even catastrophic consequences for our nation. This #ChatSTC will emphasize the importance of securing our critical infrastructure and highlight the roles the public can play in keeping it safe.

Our day-to-day life depends on the country's 16 sectors of critical infrastructure, which supply food, water, financial services, public health, communications and power along with other networks and systems. A disruption to this system, which is operated via the internet, can have significant and even catastrophic consequences for our nation. This #ChatSTC will emphasize the importance of securing our critical infrastructure and highlight the roles the public can play in keeping it safe. Securing Election Systems Against Cyber Attacks: Risks and Solutions for 2018, 2020 and Beyond, Tuesday, Oct. 30 , Washington, D.C. , 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. at CSIS Headquarters

Following the 2016 election, in which election systems in at least 21 states were targeted by malicious cyber actors, several studies have put forth proposals to secure election systems against cyber threats and restore public trust in the election process, but implementing consistent baseline security practices remains challenging. The danger is not that an attack is likely to alter voting results across the nation, but that hackers will be able to infect relatively few computers and still seed doubt about the legitimacy of the elections. U.S. elections are managed through a hodgepodge of systems that vary from state to state, including paper ballots, electronic screens and even some Internet voting. Join Raytheon and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) for a discussion about progress that has been made since the 2016 election and assess ongoing efforts at the state and national level to secure election systems. Panelists from U.S. Election Assistance Commission, DHS and the Center for Internet Security will also discuss what gaps and vulnerabilities still remain, and what steps can be taken in preparation for the upcoming elections. Register here.

Following the 2016 election, in which election systems in at least 21 states were targeted by malicious cyber actors, several studies have put forth proposals to secure election systems against cyber threats and restore public trust in the election process, but implementing consistent baseline security practices remains challenging. The danger is not that an attack is likely to alter voting results across the nation, but that hackers will be able to infect relatively few computers and still seed doubt about the legitimacy of the elections. U.S. elections are managed through a hodgepodge of systems that vary from state to state, including paper ballots, electronic screens and even some Internet voting. Join Raytheon and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) for a discussion about progress that has been made since the 2016 election and assess ongoing efforts at the state and national level to secure election systems. Panelists from U.S. Election Assistance Commission, DHS and the Center for Internet Security will also discuss what gaps and vulnerabilities still remain, and what steps can be taken in preparation for the upcoming elections. Register here. Identity and Authentication: The Road Ahead presented by the FIDO Alliance, the National Cyber Security Alliance, and the Better Identity Coalition, Friday, Nov. 2 , Washington D.C. , 9:30 a.m.  3:00 p.m. at Venable LLP Last year, 16.7 million Americans were victims of identity fraud and there was a 389% increase in the number of records containing identity information stolen in breaches. Participants in this forum will examine the importance of better identity and authentication in cybersecurity and discuss the roles government and industry should play to improve the state of identity security in 2019. Featuring government speakers from the FTC, OMB, NIST, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Registration website: https://connect.venable.com/26/1387/compose-email/invitation-(2).asp

Resources to Help You Stay Safer Online Year-Round

DHS Stop. Think. Connect. Resources : DHS' Stop. Think. Connect. page shares cyber tips and resources, ways to get involved with the global online safety awareness campaign, toolkits for all segments of the community, videos, promotional materials and more.

: DHS' Stop. Think. Connect. page shares cyber tips and resources, ways to get involved with the global online safety awareness campaign, toolkits for all segments of the community, videos, promotional materials and more. BBB Cybersecurity : The Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB) has created a business education resource to provide small and medium-sized businesses with valuable tools, tips and content to help them manage cyber risks and learn about cybersecurity best practices in the modern business environment.

: The Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB) has created a business education resource to provide small and medium-sized businesses with valuable tools, tips and content to help them manage cyber risks and learn about cybersecurity best practices in the modern business environment. #CyberAware Newsletter : #CyberAware is a monthly newsletter created for parents by NCSA. Each month, the newsletter shares family online safety news and resources and the latest from the Stay Safe Online blog.

#CyberAware is a monthly newsletter created for parents by NCSA. Each month, the newsletter shares family online safety news and resources and the latest from the Stay Safe Online blog. LockDownYourLogin.com : Usernames and passwords are no longer enough to keep your accounts secure. Anyone with your username and password can access your account. Visit LockDownYourLogin.com to easily learn how to move beyond the password and better secure your online accounts.

Usernames and passwords are no longer enough to keep your accounts secure. Anyone with your username and password can access your account. Visit LockDownYourLogin.com to easily learn how to move beyond the password and better secure your online accounts. OnGuardOnline: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's OnGuardOnline portal provides news, tips, resources, videos and more to help you, your family and the larger community stay safer and more secure online.

About National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) was created as a collaborative effort between government and industry to ensure every American has the resources they need to stay safer and more secure online. Now in its 15th year, NCSAM is co-led by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance, the nation's leading nonprofit public-private partnership promoting the safe and secure use of the internet and digital privacy. Recognized annually in October, NCSAM involves the participation of a multitude of industry leaders  mobilizing individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, nonprofits, academia, multinational corporations and governments. Encouraging digital citizens around the globe to STOP. THINK. CONNECT. NCSAM is harnessing the collective impact of its programs and resources to increase awareness about today's ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape. Visit the NCSAM media room: staysafeonline.org/about-us/news/media-room /.

About the National Cyber Security Alliance

NCSA is the nation's leading nonprofit, public-private partnership promoting cybersecurity and privacy education and awareness. NCSA works with a broad array of stakeholders in government, industry and civil society. NCSA's primary partners are DHS and NCSA's Board of Directors, which includes representatives from ADP; AT&T Services Inc.; Bank of America; CDK Global, LLC; CertNexus; Cisco; Cofense; Comcast Corporation; ESET North America; Facebook; Google; Intel Corporation; Marriott International; Mastercard; Microsoft Corporation; Mimecast; NXP Semiconductors; Raytheon; Salesforce; Symantec Corporation; Visa and Wells Fargo. NCSA's core efforts include National Cyber Security Awareness Month (October); Data Privacy Day (Jan. 28); STOP. THINK. CONNECT., the global online safety awareness and education campaign co-founded by NCSA and the Anti-Phishing Working Group with federal government leadership from DHS; and CyberSecure My Business , which offers webinars, web resources and workshops to help businesses be resistant to and resilient from cyberattacks. For more information on NCSA, please visit staysafeonline.org/about-us/overview/ .

SOURCE National Cyber Security Alliance

Related Links

http://www.staysafeonline.org

TSX.V: SCZ

FSE: 1SZ

VANCOUVER, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Santacruz Silver Mining Ltd. (TSX.V:SCZ) (the "Company" or "Santacruz") is pleased to provide an update from the Phase I drill program ongoing on the Veta Grande, Armados, and Navidad veins that form part of the Company's Veta Grande Project located in the Zacatecas mining district, Zacatecas, Mexico (see press release dated July 9, 2018). Diamond drilling is well on its way to better define the Veta Grande and Navidad veins from surface while an underground drill rig will be used to better define the Armados vein. To date, 19 drill holes totalling 6,165 metres have been completed.

Initial drill results at the Navidad vein are confirming high-grade vein intersections near surface and close to existing mine workings. Highlights include drill hole NA18-006 that intersected 668.84 grams per tonne silver, 0.17 grams per tonne gold, and 0.12 percent copper (698.35 grams per tonne silver-equivalent) over 1.95 metres (approximated true width), from 56.6 metres to 58.75 metres. In addition to this, the Veta Grande vein is also confirming strong mineralization to the north.

Carlos Silva, COO of Santacruz, commented; "With these drill results at the Navidad vein, and higher grade intercepts along the northern strike of the Veta Grande vein, we continue to demonstrate the potential of this high-grade mineralized district." Mr. Silva added; "We recently identified the potential of the Navidad vein, which has never been systematically explored, and results thus far are extremely encouraging. Drilling is continuing with an additional 14,000 metres of diamond drilling budgeted."

Veta Grande Project Assay Results

VEIN DDH From To Length True Width Au Ag Pb Zn Cu AgEq mts. mts. g/t % g/t ARMADOS AR18-006 184.85 185.2 0.35 0.33 0.63 68.00 2.92 10.40 0.35 948.66 ARMADOS AR18-007 No Significant Intersections ARMADOS AR18-008 113.95 114.65 0.7 0.36 0.06 304.00 0.00 0.83 0.02 363.28 NAVIDAD NA18-001 159.5 160.35 0.85 0.51 0.20 65.41 0.00 1.08 0.40 199.75 NAVIDAD NA18-001 72.25 73.75 1.5 0.36 0.00 105.00 0.04 0.07 0.00 111.21 NAVIDAD NA18-002 67.15 68.1 0.95 0.82 0.01 284.00 0.00 0.00 0.07 293.42 NAVIDAD NA18-002 88 89.55 1.55 1.34 0.57 19.29 0.56 2.07 0.26 253.26 NAVIDAD NA18-002 94.35 95 0.65 0.56 1.60 69.00 4.71 9.52 0.89 1124.46 NAVIDAD NA18-002 127.75 129.65 1.9 1.65 0.81 38.16 3.25 11.30 0.01 960.57

Including 128 129 1 0.87 1.12 55.00 5.64 16.80 0.01 1456.14 NAVIDAD (ALTO) NA18-003 67.9 70.95 3.05 2.34 0.17 35.00 0.79 5.72 0.07 451.73 NAVIDAD NA18-004 79 81.1 2.1 1.48 0.12 312.67 0.00 0.53 0.29 393.25 NAVIDAD NA18-004 111.1 111.6 0.5 0.38 0.30 0.00 0.00 1.42 0.16 132.83 NAVIDAD NA18-004 112.85 113.45 0.6 0.46 0.33 0.00 0.00 6.12 0.10 421.96 NAVIDAD NA18-004 116.05 116.4 0.35 0.27 0.36 18.00 1.44 1.39 0.25 231.75 NAVIDAD (ALTO) NA18-005 No Significant Intersections NAVIDAD (ALTO) NA18-006 56.6 58.75 2.15 1.95 0.17 668.84 0.00 0.00 0.12 698.35

Including 56.6 57.5 0.9 0.82 0.29 1220.00 0.00 0.00 0.12 1258.54 NAVIDAD (ALTO) NA18-006 61.75 62.55 0.8 0.75 0.02 128.00 0.00 0.00 0.07 138.17 NAVIDAD (ALTO) NA18-006 65.6 66.45 0.85 0.77 0.03 92.76 0.00 0.00 0.03 98.61 NAVIDAD NA18-006 165.85 166.2 0.35 0.27 0.59 259.00 0.00 0.00 0.28 341.91 SAN LORENZO (NAVIDAD) NA18-006 168 170 2 1.88 0.56 129.15 0.00 3.03 0.63 444.62 VETA GRANDE (ESPERANZA) VG18-004 443.95 446.25 2.3 2.26 0.05 43.87 1.43 1.40 1.02 333.48 VETA GRANDE (LA FLOR) VG18-004 459.2 465.55 6.35 4.86 0.16 30.48 0.14 0.70 1.89 337.29 VETA GRANDE VG18-005 425.6 429.55 3.95 3.03 0.13 57.51 1.47 1.82 1.87 490.30

Including 426.65 427.1 0.45 0.34 0.07 195.00 10.20 11.20 5.79 2117.88

Silver equivalent (AgEq) in the drill results assumes $1,331 per ounce Au (Pau), $16.73 per ounce Ag (Pag), $1.13 per pound Pb (Ppb), $1.53 per pound Zn (Pzn), and $3.14 per pound Cu (Pcu) with 100-per-cent metallurgical recovery. The formula used in the calculation is as follows:

EqAg (g/t) equals [(Au multiplied by Pau divided by 31.1035) plus (Ag multiplied by Pag divided by 31.1035) plus (Pb multiplied by Ppb multiplied by 22.05) plus (Zn multiplied by Pzn multiplied by 22.05) plus (Cu multiplied by Pcu multiplied by 22.05)] divided by (Pag).

Quality control/quality assurance program

All drill core was logged, photographed and cut in half with a diamond saw. Half-core samples were sent to SGS Minerals Services in Durango, Mexico (17025 accredited), for preparation and analysis. Drill core samples were analyzed for 33 elements by four-acid digestion of a 0.5-gram sample followed by an ICP-AES (inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy) finish. Overlimit for Pb, Zn and Cu were further analyzed by sodium peroxide fusion of a 0.5-gram sample followed by ICP-AES finish. Au and Ag was also analyzed by fire assay of a 30-gram sample followed by AAS (atomic absorption spectroscopy) finish for Au and gravimetric finish for Ag.

As part of the company's quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) program, independently certified control samples (standard and blank pulp samples) were inserted in each analytical batch. Field duplicate samples were also submitted for analysis. The control and duplicate sample results were then checked to ensure proper QA/QC.

Qualified persons

The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Van Phu Bui, BSc, PGeo, who is independent of the company and a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101.

About Santacruz Silver Mining Ltd.

Santacruz is a Mexican focused silver company with two producing silver projects (Veta Grande Project and Rosario Project) and two exploration properties (Minillas Property and Zacatecas Properties). The Company is managed by a technical team of professionals with proven track records in developing, operating and discovering silver mines in Mexico. Our corporate objective is to become a mid-tier silver producer.

'signed'

Arturo Prestamo Elizondo,

President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

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.

Forward looking information

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is used in applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and is subject to certain factors and assumptions. In making the forward-looking statements included in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, that the Company's financial condition and development plans do not change as a result of unforeseen events, that third party mineralized material to be milled by the Company will have properties consistent with management's expectations, that the Company will receive all required regulatory approvals, and that future metal prices and the demand and market outlook for metals will remain stable or improve. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause plans, estimates and actual results to vary materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause the forward-looking information in this news release to change or to be inaccurate include, but are not limited to, the risk that any of the assumptions referred to prove not to be valid or reliable, which could result in lower revenue, higher cost, or lower production levels; delays and/or cessation in planned work; changes in the Company's financial condition and development plans; delays in regulatory approval; risks associated with the interpretation of data (including in respect of the third party mineralized material) regarding the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; the possibility that results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, as well as the other risks and uncertainties applicable to mineral exploration and development activities and to the Company as set forth in the Company's continuous disclosure filings filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information or statements, other than as required by applicable law.

Rosario Project

The decisions to commence production at the Rosario Mine, Cinco Estrellas Property and Membrillo Prospect were not based on a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability, but rather on a more preliminary estimate of inferred mineral resources. Accordingly, there is increased uncertainty and economic and technical risks of failure associated with this production decision. Production and economic variables may vary considerably, due to the absence of a complete and detailed site analysis according to and in accordance with NI 43-101.

Veta Grande Project

The decision to commence production at Veta Grande Project was not based on a feasibility study on mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability. Accordingly, there is increased uncertainty and economic and technical risks of failure associated with this production decision. Production and economic variables may vary considerably due to the absence of a complete and detailed site analysis according to and in accordance with NI 43-101.

SOURCE Santacruz Silver Mining Ltd.

Related Links

www.santacruzsilver.com

NEW YORK, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Honeywell International Inc. ("Honeywell" or the "Company") (NYSE: HON). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether Honeywell and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here to join a class action]

On August 23, 2018, Honeywell disclosed that "the Company's Bendix asbestos-related liability is estimated to be $1,693 million as of June 30, 2018. This is $1,083 million higher than the Company's prior estimation." Honeywell further advised investors that "Bendix asbestos-related insurance assets are estimated to be $187 million as of June 30, 2018, which is $65 million higher than the Company's prior estimate." Then, on October 19, 2018, Honeywell filed a quarterly report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") for the quarter ended September 30, 2018. In its quarterly report, Honeywell advised investors that "the SEC's Division of Corporate Finance had reviewed Honeywell's prior accounting for liability for unasserted Bendix-related asbestos claims" and that "[o]n September 13, 2018, following completion of Corporation Finance's review, the SEC Division of Enforcement advised that it has opened an investigation related to this matter." On this news, Honeywell's stock price fell $1.72 per share, or 1.11%, to close at $153.47 on October 19, 2018.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

[email protected]

888-476-6529 ext. 9980

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

Related Links

http://pomerantzlawfirm.com

DUBLIN, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Future of the Singaporean Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Singaporean defense budget is valued at US$11 billion in 2018, and registered a CAGR of 2.99% during the historic period.

The Future of the Singaporean Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2023, published by Strategic Defence Intelligence, provides readers with detailed analysis of both historic and forecast defense industry values, factors influencing demand, the challenges faced by industry participants, analysis of industry leading companies, and key news.

Singapore has the most technologically advanced armed forces among the Association of Southeast Asian Nation states. The capital expenditure allocation, which stood at an average of 3.7% during the historic period, is projected to increase to 4.0% over the forecast period. Although the Singapore Defense Force is considered to be the best equipped and well-trained force in Southeast Asia, the country plans to continue its procurement of advanced military hardware in order to counter the threats to national security.



The budget in the historic period was mainly driven by the threats posed by terrorist organizations such as the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI), and other regional terrorist groups. The MoD is expected to invest in land based C4ISR, infrastructure construction and physical security of critical infrastructure among others.



Singapore procures the majority of its advanced and high-end defense equipment from foreign companies, with aircraft accounting for the largest share during 2014-2018. Historically, the US has been the largest supplier of weaponry to Singapore. The other significant imports to the country were armored vehicles, missiles, sensors, engines, air defense systems, and naval weapons. On the same time, Singapore also finds a place in the world's top 30 defense exporters, owing to strong government support and successful attempts at product diversification by domestic companies. Singapore primarily exports defense equipment to Oman and the UAE. The country has also initiated the production of its own ships and artillery.

Scope

The Singaporean defense budget is valued at US$11 billion in 2018, and registered a CAGR of 2.99% during the historic period. The budget in the historic period was mainly driven by the threats posed by terrorist organizations such as the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI), and other regional terrorist groups.

in 2018, and registered a CAGR of 2.99% during the historic period. The budget in the historic period was mainly driven by the threats posed by terrorist organizations such as the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI), and other regional terrorist groups. The capital expenditure allocation, which stood at an average of 3.7% during the historic period, is projected to increase to 4.0% over the forecast period. Although the Singapore Defense Force is considered to be the best equipped and well-trained force in Southeast Asia , the country plans to continue its procurement of advanced military hardware in order to counter the threats to national security.

, the country plans to continue its procurement of advanced military hardware in order to counter the threats to national security. The MoD is expected to invest in land based C4ISR, infrastructure construction and physical security of critical infrastructure among others.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction

1.1. What is this Report About?

1.2. Definitions

1.3. Summary Methodology

1.4. About Strategic Defense Intelligence

2. Executive Summary

3. Market Attractiveness and Emerging Opportunities

3.1. Current Market Scenario

3.1.1. Primary Threat Perception

3.1.2. Military Doctrine and Strategy

3.1.3. Military Fleet Size

3.1.4. Procurement Programs

3.1.5. Social, Political and Economic Environment and Support for Defense Projects

3.1.6. Political and Strategic Alliances

3.2. Defense Market Size Historical and Forecast

3.2.1. Defense expenditure expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.14% during 2019-2023

3.2.2. Countering terrorist threats, acquiring sophisticated military equipment and overseas training requirements are expected to drive defense expenditure

3.2.3. Defense expenditure as a percentage of GDP is expected to average 3.0% during 2019-2023

3.3. Analysis of Defense Budget Allocation

3.3.1. Capital expenditure allocation is expected to increase over the forecast period

3.3.2. Singapore's defense capital expenditure to value US$536.4 million in 2023

3.3.3. Per capita defense expenditure to increase over the forecast period

3.4. Homeland Security Market Size and Forecast

3.4.1. Homeland Security (HLS) is expected to grow at CAGR 8.27% over the forecast period

3.4.2. Border protection and cyber security are driving the country's homeland security budget

3.4.3. Singapore considered at some risk' of terrorist attack

3.4.4. Singapore scores 0.0 on the Terrorism Index

3.4.5. Singapore faces a moderate threat from foreign terrorist organizations

3.5. Benchmarking with Key Global Markets

3.5.1. Singapore has the second highest defense expenditure in Southeast Asia

3.5.2. The country's defense budget is high compared to other Southeast Asian countries

3.5.3. As a percentage of GDP, Singapore's defense expenditure ranks among the top 20 in the world

3.6. Market Opportunities: Key Trends and Drivers

3.6.1. Top 10 Defense Sectors by Value (US$ Million) - Projections over 2018-2023

3.6.2. Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) - Physical Security

3.6.3. C4ISR - Land-based

3.6.4. Military Infrastructure and Logistics - Infrastructure Construction

4. Defense Procurement Market Dynamics

4.1. Import Market Dynamics

4.1.1. Defense imports are expected to increase over the forecast period

4.1.2. The US dominated Singaporean defense imports from 2013-2017

4.1.3. Aircraft was the major defense import during 2013-2017

4.2. Export Market Dynamics

4.2.1. Arms' export expected to increase over the forecast period

4.2.2. Oman emerged as the biggest importer of Singaporean defense equipment

4.2.3. Ships accounted for the majority of defense exports between 2013 and 2017

5. Industry Dynamics

5.1. Five Forces Analysis

5.1.1. Bargaining Power of Supplier: Low to Medium

5.1.2. Bargaining Power of Buyer: Medium to High

5.1.3. Barrier to Entry: Medium

5.1.4. Intensity of Rivalry: High

5.1.5. Threat of Substitution: High

6. Market Entry Strategy

6.1. Market Regulation

6.1.1. Defense policy requires investments in training and technology to develop domestic capabilities

6.1.2. Favorable FDI policies to attract foreign OEMs

6.2. Market Entry Route

6.2.1. Budgeting Process

6.2.2. Procurement Policy and Process

6.2.3. The transfer of technology is a key entry strategy for foreign OEMs

6.3. Key Challenges

6.3.1. Restricted availability of production discourages foreign investments

6.3.2. Limited defense budget discourages investors from entering market

7. Competitive Landscape and Strategic Insights

7.1. Competitive Landscape Overview

7.1.1. Singapore's defense sector has a mix of domestic and foreign competitors

7.2. Key Foreign Companies



8. Business Environment and Country Risk

8.1. Economic Performance

8.1.1. GDP per Capita

8.1.2. Gross Domestic Product

8.1.3. Exports of Goods and Services (LCU Billion)

8.1.4. Imports of Goods and Services (LCU Billion)

8.1.5. Gross National Disposable Income

8.1.6. LCU per US$ (Period Average)

8.1.7. Market Capitalization of Listed Companies

8.1.8. Market Capitalization of Listed Companies as a Percentage of GDP

8.1.9. Total Government Cash Surplus/Deficit as a Percentage of GDP

8.1.10. Goods Exports as a Percentage of GDP

8.1.11. Goods Imports as a Percentage of GDP

8.1.12. Services Imports as a Percentage of GDP

8.1.13. Services Exports as a Percentage of GDP

8.1.14. Net Foreign Direct Investment

8.1.15. Net Foreign Direct Investment as a Percentage of GDP

8.1.16. Mining, Manufacturing, Utilities Output

9. Appendix



Companies Mentioned



Boeing

Singapore Technologies Aerospace (ST Aerospace)

Singapore Technologies Electronics (ST Electronics)

Singapore Technologies Kinetics (ST Kinetics)

Singapore Technologies Marine (ST Marine)

Thales

ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/qxkbx8/singapore_defense?w=5

Did you know that we also offer Custom Research? Visit our Custom Research page to learn more and schedule a meeting with our Custom Research Manager.

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

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Aurelie Vandevoorde, Head of the Impressionist & Modern Art Department, Sotheby's France : "Once again, unseen works with prestigious provenance were celebrated by the market. This is evidenced by the remarkable results of our various auctions over the past three days, and in particular by the exceptional performance of the collections sold throughout the week. These works, most of which had never appeared on the market, sparked great enthusiasm from collectors around the world and set several world records."

The highest price for the week was achieved by an outstanding cast of Auguste Rodin's iconic Penseur, Petit modele, which sold for $2,775,505 in the Modernites auction. The original Penseur, created in 1880, was part of a commission for a gateway inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy for the Musee des Arts Decoratifs de Paris. The first smaller models were made from 1903 onwards, such as the present work that was cast before 1920. It remained in the same family for close to a century and had never before appeared at auction.

About Sotheby's

Sotheby's has been uniting collectors with world-class works of art since 1744. Sotheby's became the first international auction house when it expanded from London to New York (1955), the first to conduct sales in Hong Kong (1973), India (1992) and France (2001), and the first international fine art auction house in China (2012). Today, Sotheby's presents auctions in 11 different salesrooms, including New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris, and Sotheby's BidNow program allows visitors to view all auctions live online and place bids from anywhere in the world. Sotheby's offers collectors the resources of Sotheby's Financial Services, the world's only full-service art financing company, as well as the collection, artist, estate & foundation advisory services of its subsidiary, Art Agency, Partners. Sotheby's presents private sale opportunities in more than 70 categories, including S|2, the gallery arm of Sotheby's Global Fine Art Division, and three retail businesses: Sotheby's Wine, Sotheby's Diamonds, and Viyet, the online marketplace for interior design. Sotheby's has a global network of 80 offices in 40 countries and is the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (BID).

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Medium | Pinterest | Snapchat

Weibo | WeChat | Youku

Paris | 33 (0)1 53 05 53 66 | Sophie Dufresne | [email protected]

SOURCE Sotheby's

Related Links

http://www.sothebys.com

CHICAGO, Oct. 22, 2018 PRNewswire/ -- Conventional wisdom has it that volunteering is good for you, and a study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) shows that to be true for people with lupus volunteering in a peer support and education program.

The study, "The Effect and Psychosocial Impact of a Longstanding Telephone Peer Counseling Service on Volunteers with Systemic Lupus Erythematos," was presented at the American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals annual meeting on October 22 in Chicago.

"Previous studies have demonstrated the value of peer counseling programs for people living with lupus and other chronic health conditions. In the current study, we set out to assess the impact on the volunteers themselves," said Priscilla Toral, LCSW, program manager of LupusLine/Charla de Lupus (Lupus Chat) at Hospital for Special Surgery. "We found that similar to the way the service helps callers, the counselor role positively impacts volunteers' ability to cope with and manage lupus and reduces isolation."

LupusLine offers peer support and education to people with lupus and their families. Established in 1988, the service is available to the public with a toll-free phone number. In addition to the United States, volunteers have counseled callers from Canada, Europe, South America, Jamaica, China and India.

The study found that in addition to having the opportunity to help others, counselors gained valuable knowledge about lupus from the 18-hour volunteer training program. Monthly seminars helped them work through challenges and provided a space for them to reflect on their illness.

"While having lupus may affect one's self-esteem adversely, being able to use this experience to help others can be empowering," said Roberta Horton, LCSW, ACSW, assistant vice president, Department of Social Work Programs at Hospital for Special Surgery. "Volunteers also benefit from the feeling of mutual support, personal development, and further lupus knowledge gained through ongoing group meetings, educational seminars and individual supervision."

For their study, researchers distributed a 43-item online survey to volunteers. The counselors, all female, ranged in age from 30-79, with 30% between the ages of 60 and 69. They had served as a counselor for an average of 12 years.

The researchers reported the following findings:

In terms of satisfaction, 91% of counselors indicated they were very satisfied with their role.

The top reasons for becoming a counselor included an opportunity to help others affected by lupus (100% of respondents) and enhancing personal growth/development (73%).

When asked about their reasons for continuing as a counselor, 82% said it was to meet others impacted by lupus and 73% identified the support of program staff.

Most respondents (73%) reported that they had a better understanding of lupus since becoming a counselor.

In relation to coping, 64% indicated that they have coped better with lupus since becoming a counselor.

The majority of counselors (73%) reported feeling less alone since volunteering.

Almost half of the volunteers (46%) reported feeling less depressed since becoming a peer counselor.

When asked if monthly seminars help them to better cope with lupus, 78% agreed, and 89% of counselors reported that the seminars provide a space for them to reflect on their disease.

The volunteers indicated that the most rewarding part of their role was "educational information that helps me understand lupus better" and "the opportunity to be outside of my own illness and connect with others."

"The study reinforces the two-way flow of psychosocial support received by counselors through their support of callers and ongoing connections with peers and program staff via monthly seminars," said Toral. "Our findings also highlight the continued relevance of a phone support service to people with lupus and opportunities for further research on the volunteer impact of peer-staffed programs."

About Hospital for Special Surgery

HSS is the world's leading academic medical center focused on musculoskeletal health. At its core is Hospital for Special Surgery, nationally ranked No. 1 in orthopedics (for the ninth consecutive year) and No. 3 in rheumatology by U.S.News & World Report (2018-2019). Founded in 1863, the Hospital has one of the lowest infection rates in the country and was the first in New York State to receive Magnet Recognition for Excellence in Nursing Service from the American Nurses Credentialing Center four consecutive times. The global standard total knee replacement was developed at HSS in 1969. An affiliate of Weill Cornell Medical College, HSS has a main campus in New York City and facilities in New Jersey, Connecticut and in the Long Island and Westchester County regions of New York State. In 2017 HSS provided care to 135,000 patients and performed more than 32,000 surgical procedures. People from all 50 U.S. states and 80 countries travelled to receive care at HSS. In addition to patient care, HSS leads the field in research, innovation and education. The HSS Research Institute comprises 20 laboratories and 300 staff members focused on leading the advancement of musculoskeletal health through prevention of degeneration, tissue repair and tissue regeneration. The HSS Global Innovation Institute was formed in 2016 to realize the potential of new drugs, therapeutics and devices. The culture of innovation is accelerating at HSS as 130 new idea submissions were made to the Global Innovation Institute in 2017 (almost 3x the submissions in 2015). The HSS Education Institute is the world's leading provider of education on the topic of musculoskeletal health, with its online learning platform offering more than 600 courses to more than 21,000 medical professional members worldwide. Through HSS Global Ventures, the institution is collaborating with medical centers and other organizations to advance the quality and value of musculoskeletal care and to make world-class HSS care more widely accessible nationally and internationally.

SOURCE Hospital for Special Surgery

Related Links

http://www.hss.edu

DUBLIN, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Future of the Swedish Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Future of the Swedish Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2023, provides readers with detailed analysis of both historic and forecast defense industry values, factors influencing demand, the challenges faced by industry participants, analysis of industry leading companies, and key news.

Security threats from Russia and the deployment of troops in overseas peacekeeping missions, the Swedish government is expected to concentrate on procuring advanced land defense systems, communication systems, and sophisticated air defense equipment. Sweden's homeland security (HLS) expenditure is projected to increase in the coming years, driven by investments to counter the rise of organized crime within the nation, and threats from global terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.



Sweden, the fifth-largest country in Europe with respect to land area, is expected to invest US$34.7 billion cumulatively in strengthening its armed forces over the forecast period. Despite a considerable increase in the country's total defense budget, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP is predicted to maintain an average of 1.01% during the forecast period.



The arms procurement over the forecast period, with an increased focus on aircraft, anti-submarine warfare equipment, and submarines, is to be the driving factor in increasing the capital expenditure. Furthermore, the MoD is expected to invest in multirole aircraft, artillery systems, covertte modernization, engineering support vehicles, mine sweeper vessels, transport aircraft, training aircraft, anti-ship missiles, maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare assets among others. The average allocation for capital expenditure is expected to be 36.5% over the forecast period.



Scope

Sweden , the fifth-largest country in Europe with respect to land area, is expected to invest US$34.7 billion cumulatively in strengthening its armed forces over the forecast period.

, the fifth-largest country in with respect to land area, is expected to invest cumulatively in strengthening its armed forces over the forecast period. Despite a considerable increase in the country's total defense budget, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP is predicted to maintain an average of 1.01% during the forecast period.

The arms procurement over the forecast period, with an increased focus on aircraft, anti-submarine warfare equipment, and submarines, is to be the driving factor in increasing the capital expenditure. The average allocation for capital expenditure is expected to be 36.5% over the forecast period.

The MoD is expected to invest in multirole aircraft, artillery systems, covertte modernization, engineering support vehicles, mine sweeper vessels, transport aircraft, training aircraft, anti ship missiles, maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare assets among others.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction

2. Executive Summary

3. Market Attractiveness and Emerging Opportunities

3.1.1. Primary Threat Perception

3.1.2. Military Doctrine and Strategy

3.1.3. Military Fleet Size

3.1.4. Procurement Programs

3.1.5. Social, Political and Economic Environment and Support for Defense Projects

3.1.6. Political and Strategic Alliances

3.2. Defense Market Size, Historical and Forecast

3.2.1. Swedish defense expenditure expected to register a CAGR of 2.14% during the forecast period

3.2.2. Modernization initiatives, peacekeeping missions, and perceived threats from Russia are expected to fuel Swedish defense expenditure

3.2.3. Defense expenditure as a percentage of GDP is expected to decline marginally during the forecast period

3.3. Analysis of Defense Budget Allocation

3.3.1. Capital expenditure allocation is expected to increase during the forecast period

3.3.2. Capital expenditure is expected to grow at a CAGR of 2.40% over the forecast period

3.3.3. Per-capita expenditure is expected to increase during the forecast period

3.3.4. Others segment accounts for a majority of the defense budget with an average share of 37.3% over forecast period

3.3.5. Others segment to account for the largest share of Swedish defense budget

3.4. Homeland Security Market Size and Forecast

3.4.1. Swedish police budget is expected to increase during the forecast period

3.4.2. Homeland security expenditure will be driven by Sweden's efforts to counter organized crime

3.4.3. Threat from international terrorist organizations

3.4.4. Sweden is faced with Moderate risk of terrorism

3.4.5. Sweden faces moderate threat from terrorist organizations

3.4.6. Sweden has a terrorism index score of 3.8

3.5. Benchmarking with Key Global Markets

3.5.1. Swedish defense expenditure is expected to remain modest during the forecast period

3.5.2. The country's defense budget is moderate compared to other leading spenders

3.5.3. Sweden allocates a lower share of GDP to defense compared to countries with significant global defense expenditure

3.6. Market Opportunities: Key Trends and Drivers

3.6.1. Top 10 Defense Sectors by Value (US$ Million) - Projections over 2018-2023

3.6.2. Land-Based C4ISR

3.6.3. Fighters and Multi-role aircraft

3.6.4. Cyber Security

4. Defense Procurement Market Dynamics

4.1. Import Market Dynamics

4.1.1. Defense imports registered a decline during 2013-2017

4.1.2. Sweden aims to diversify arms imports

4.1.3. Aircraft accounted for the majority of defense imports

4.2. Export Market Dynamics

4.2.1. Sweden emerged as the 14th largest global arms exporter during 2013-2017

4.2.2. Swedish defense exports tend to be inclined towards Asian and Middle-Eastern countries

4.2.3. Swedish forays into non-European defense markets

4.2.4. Aircraft account for the majority of Swedish defense exports

5. Industry Dynamics

5.1. Five Forces Analysis

5.1.1. Bargaining power of supplier: low

5.1.2. Bargaining power of buyer: high

5.1.3. Barrier to entry: medium

5.1.4. Intensity of rivalry: high

5.1.5. Threat of Substitution: high

6. Market Entry Strategy

6.1. Market Regulation

6.1.1. Swedish offset policy facilitates defense partnerships with different countries

6.1.2. Swedish defense industry is open to foreign direct investment

6.2. Market Entry Route

6.2.1. Budgeting Process

6.2.2. Procurement Policy and Process

6.2.3. Acquisition of a domestic defense company is preferred entry route

6.2.4. Foreign OEMs gain industry access through joint research and development programs

6.2.5. Foreign investors enter the market through direct sales

6.3. Key Challenges

6.3.1. Cancellation of projects due to low defense budget deters investors from entering the market

6.3.2. The absence of multipliers in the offset policy discourages foreign suppliers

7. Competitive Landscape and Strategic Insights

8. Business Environment and Country Risk

8.1. Economic Performance

8.1.1. GDP Per Capita

8.1.2. GDP, Current Prices (US$ Billions)

8.1.3. Exports of goods and services, current prices (LCU billions)

8.1.4. Imports of goods and services, current prices (US$ billions)

8.1.5. Gross National Disposable Income

8.1.6. Local Currency Unit per US$ (period average)

8.1.7. Market Capitalization of Listed Companies (US$ Billions)

8.1.8. Market Capitalization of Listed Companies (% of GDP)

8.1.9. Government Cash Surplus/Deficit as % of GDP (LCU)

8.1.10. Goods Exports as % of GDP

8.1.11. Goods Imports as % of GDP

8.1.12. Services Imports as % of GDP

8.1.13. Services Exports as % of GDP

8.1.14. Foreign Direct Investment, net (BoP, current US$ Billions)

8.1.15. Net Foreign Direct Investment as % of GDP

8.1.16. Mining, Manufacturing, Utilities Output (LCU Billion)



Companies Mentioned



Akers Krutbruk

BAE Systems AB

Dynasafe AB

Logica and Niscayah

Nammo Group

Saab

Scanjack AB

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/x6hfbd/swedish_defense?w=5

Did you know that we also offer Custom Research? Visit our Custom Research page to learn more and schedule a meeting with our Custom Research Manager.

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

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CHICAGO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

News Facts

Tidal Workload Automation, one of the world's leading providers of enterprise-class workload automation for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced that its Tidal platform has achieved Powered by Oracle Cloud status and is now available in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, offering vital new enterprise-class automation capabilities to Oracle Cloud customers.

Tidal Workload Automation is one of the first enterprise-class workload automation solutions to achieve this status, providing Oracle customers with new opportunities to embrace and leverage the power of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure . Enterprises can now use Tidal to automate and orchestrate their mission-critical workloads running in Oracle Cloud and hybrid environments  providing a higher level of performance, security, scalability, and rapid time-to-market for the critical business processes vital to success.

"Tidal is changing the landscape for customers seeking to run and optimize their critical business workflows in the Oracle Cloud and hybrid environments," says Rick McNees, CEO of Tidal. "We manage the complex interconnections and interdependencies between applications, systems, and platforms  regardless of where those assets are running. Tidal manages the entire job scheduling and workflow automation process as a seamless whole, delivering precise orchestration and flawless execution of business workloads without surprises or pitfalls. Tidal is also a single-pane-of-glass solution that's easy to use  point-and-click, no scripting required. This combination of performance and ease-of-use is where Tidal excels."

Mr. McNees continues, "Tidal currently serves many Oracle Applications customers, including users of Oracle's JD Edwards, Oracle's PeopleSoft, and Oracle E-Business Suite, and we look forward to helping them in the transition to Oracle Cloud and hybrid environments. Our participation in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace extends our commitment to the Oracle community and enables customers to easily reap the benefits of Tidal. We look forward to helping Oracle customers around the world achieve their business goals."

Tidal in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace  The Oracle Cloud Marketplace is a one-stop shop for Oracle customers seeking trusted business applications and service providers offering unique business solutions, including ones that extend Oracle Cloud Applications. The marketplace offers an intuitive user interface to browse and search for available applications and services, as well as user ratings and reviews to help customers determine the best business solutions for their organization.

Tidal at Oracle OpenWorld, October 22-26, Moscone Center, San Francisco  Visit Tidal at Oracle OpenWorld. Stop by at Kiosk P-8 in the ERP Exhibition Area, Section 101, for a hands-on demo, and attend our theatre session, "Improving Your Business Outcomes with Workload Automation," on Tuesday, October 23, 11:30 am, at The [email protected] South-Theatre 2.

Oracle Cloud is the industry's broadest and most complete public cloud, delivering enterprise-grade services at every level of the cloud technology stack including platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and data as a service (DaaS). By recognizing the Powered by Oracle Cloud status, Oracle acknowledges that Tidal Workload Automation has been tested or verified to be powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This achievement offers customers confidence that the partner's application is supported by the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure SLA guarantee, ensuring they have full access and control over their cloud infrastructure services as well as consistent performance.

About Tidal Workload Automation

Tidal is one of the world's leading workload automation platforms for hybrid, multi-cloud environments. It's an enterprise-class single-pane-of-glass solution to help manage, automate, and orchestrate business processes, applications, data, middleware, and infrastructure. With more than 35 years of experience  and more than 600 enterprise customers across the globe  Tidal delivers unparalleled value and results in digital automation. Tidal is an affiliated business of the Dillon Kane Group / STA Group, a Chicago-based provider of innovative technologies for diverse industries since 2002. More than 250 Dillon Kane technologists, strategists, and subject matter experts are currently developing tomorrow's digital automation solutions, including the orchestration of cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

About Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) is Oracle's partner program that provides partners with a differentiated advantage to develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle's products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base, and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to be recognized and rewarded for their investment in Oracle Cloud. Partners engaging with Oracle will be able to differentiate their Oracle Cloud expertise and success with customers through the OPN Cloud program  an innovative program that complements existing OPN program levels with tiers of recognition and progressive benefits for partners working with Oracle Cloud. To find out more, visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Tidal Contact Information:

William Bloomstein

[email protected]

(617) 721-9445

SOURCE Tidal Workload AutomationFERNDALE, Mich., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Valentine Distilling Co., known for its world-class, high-quality spirits has yet again made another strategic investment in the company. Valentine is pleased to welcome National Sales Manager, Sarah Warde, to the team. Come early November, Warde will be responsible for brand product market distribution.

Warde brings a wealth of beverage industry knowledge acquired from previous experience through her many positions as an Area Manager, District Manager, and On-Premise Sales Director totaling eight years at Great Lakes Wine & Spirits, District Manager for three years at Rodney Strong Vineyards, and as a Sales Consultant for five years at Viviano Wine Importers/J. Lewis Cooper Co.

"I'm honored to take a position with the Valentine Distilling Co. team," said Warde. "I can't wait to continue with the success the distillery has already had in its first 11 years."

With Warde's powerful expertise joining the team, the award-winning craft distillery intends to continue to increase its brand posture and expand into various markets.

"During our first 11 years, we have seen tremendous growth in Michigan and select states. As we embark on establishing a more national and international footprint, it was the right time to bring on an experienced national sales manager. Hiring Sarah is going to help take Valentine Distilling Co. to the next level," said Rifino Valentine, president and founder of Valentine Distilling Co. "We're extremely excited to welcome her to our team, and I know her extensive industry knowledge is exactly what we need to move Valentine further on the map throughout the next 10 years."

The National Sales Manager position is a newly added position for Valentine Distilling Co.

About Valentine Distilling Co.

Established in 2007, Valentine Distilling Co. is an American pioneer of small batch spirits. Valentine Distilling Co. is dedicated to American ingenuity, quality manufacturing, and small batch distilling using old-world techniques that create superior products. The company's award-winning vodka, gin, and bourbon are available in seven states, Western Europe, and Ontario.

www.ValentineDistilling.com | www.facebook.com/ValentineVodka | Media Kit

Contact: Ashleigh Laabs

Phone: (989) 780-4090

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Valentine Distilling Co.

Related Links

http://www.valentinedistilling.com

TORONTO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - VERDEMED HOLDINGS INC. ("VerdeMed" or the "Company") proudly announces its sponsorship of the 3rd Annual Kahner Global Cannabis Private Investment Summit, on October 23, 2018, at the offices of Bennett Jones in First Canadian Place.

The Summit will explore the opportunities and risks of investing in the cannabis industry. The event is the leading cannabis investing educational summit offered exclusively to high net worth investors and family offices.

Jose Bacellar, President & CEO of VerdeMed, will participate in a panel discussion, Where is Medical Marijuana Going? Latin America: The Next Frontier, together with Benjamin Caplan, MD (founder of CED Clinic) and moderator Kevin McGovern (Chairman & CEO, McGovern Capital and The Water Initiative).

For more information, please visit www.verdemed.com

Jose Bacellar

President & CEO

About VerdeMed

VerdeMed is a Canadian pharmaceutical cannabis company with the mission of improving the health of millions of patients in Latin America. VerdeMed brings a unique combination of Canadian cannabis industry expertise, Latin American smart capital, international pharmaceutical business knowledge, superior regulatory affairs capabilities, and top-tier medical insight.

Based in Toronto, VerdeMed's multi-level and multi-market approach aims to bridge the gap between the pharmaceutical cannabis landscape in Europe and North America and unmet clinical needs in Latin America. The Company's international footprint provides strategic access to market innovations, as well as well-known proven cannabis therapies.

Over the next few years, VerdeMed plans to introduce to the Latin American market a range of cannabinoid-based medications that are expected to be approved by the principal regulatory agencies in the region, including ANMAT, Anvisa, COFEPRIS, DIGEMID, Invima, and ISP. VerdeMed is uniquely positioned to help producers and distributors address the high regulatory hurdles in Latin America for Canadian products. The Company is aiming to become the platform of choice for global innovators entering markets in Latin America with new medical cannabis products.

VerdeMed has offices in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Canada. The Company intends to build management teams and recruit pharmaceutical regulatory affairs partners in Argentina, Mexico, and Peru by the end of 2018, as part of its strategic plan to create a unified business footprint within the principal legal markets in Latin America for medical cannabis and cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals.

Jose Bacellar

President & CEO

Jose Bacellar is uniquely qualified to lead efforts across multiple jurisdictions, having assisted a number of companies in North America to expand into Latin America. He brings extensive professional experience in the pharmaceutical industry, and he has relevant experience in the medical cannabis industry. Prior positions he has held include Head of Business Development, Canopy Latam; interim COO, Canopy Health (UK); Head of Business Development, ACIC Pharmaceuticals (Canada); CEO, Vetnil (Brazil); and CEO & President, Bombril S/A (Brazil).

Jose Bacellar holds a B.Sc. in Economics and an M.Sc. in Business Administration from the Universidade de Sao Paulo (FEA/USP), and has received an Award of Business Leadership from the Rotman School of Management - University of Toronto. Mr. Bacellar is also a strategy consultant alumnus of McKinsey & Company.

SOURCE Verdemed Holdings Inc.

Related Links

https://www.verdemed.com/

NEW YORK, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Achieving enormous growth and momentum, Fastbase, the popular extension to Google Analytics, is now analyzing an incredible 6 billion website visitors from 900,000 top brands and businesses each month from around the world.

The software has become increasingly popular among large companies that export products or have dealers or distributors in countries where it's difficult to identify customers. Fastbase solves this issue by disclosing which companies have visited a website and the products that have been viewed. To access this free tool, Google Analytics users can sign-in at http://analytics.fastbase.com to view their website visitors for the past 12 months. To view unlimited traffic, access key business contact information, and email addresses, users can upgrade to the Fastbase Premium version for just $45 USD/month.

In addition to being able to tell which companies are visiting a website, Fastbase's new InMarket Leads software can now tell companies which businesses are searching on Google for their products or services. The software not only discloses information on over 130 million companies that are searching on Google everyday, but also lists the companies that are visiting a business's website. This information is a powerful alternative or supplement to Google Ads. The new InMarket Leads tool has just been launched in a beta version and is available now at http://inmarketleads.fastbase.com .

About Fastbase, Inc.

Fastbase is a U.S.-based company founded in 2015. As one of the fastest-growing software companies in the world within Big Data, Fastbase now analyzes over 6 billion website visitors from over 900,000 companies and top brands from around the world.

SOURCE Fastbase, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.fastbase.com

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the premier provider of legal services to technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises worldwide, announced today a partnership with Paladin, a groundbreaking pro bono platform with a mission to increase access to justice for clients in need. The partnership will expand the firm's attorneys' opportunities for growth and participation in pro bono work.

Paladin's software solution will help WSGR continue to deliver rewarding pro bono opportunities to its attorneys by way of increased efficiency and real-time communication. WSGR will use the platform to streamline the process of providing targeted opportunities to its attorneys in various locations and areas of interest, as well as to assist in tracking ongoing engagement in firm pro bono initiatives, including, for example, WSGR's recently announced commitment to support the Lawyers for a Sustainable Economy initiative.

"WSGR's commitment to pro bono in numerous practice areas and service to community in general have long been areas the firm and its employees have poured resources and heart into," said WSGR Of Counsel and Pro Bono Counsel Luke Liss. "We are always looking for ways to streamline the process of connecting our people to new opportunities and to more efficiently track engagement and outcomes."

As Paladin partners with premier companiessuch as Lyft and VerizonWSGR also recognizes the many benefits of the partnership. "When we learned of Paladin and the story of its founders, we immediately recognized that their team shares the unique spirit of innovation and positive energy common to the great companies WSGR has worked with over the last nearly sixty years," Liss said. "We are very excited to partner with Paladin to help develop its law firm platform, with the goals of enhancing and streamlining internal engagement, as well as to facilitate new opportunities to collaborate on pro bono initiatives with our clients."

"Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is well known for its leadership in technology and innovation, and we couldn't be more thrilled to partner with their team to develop the next generation of pro bono tools," said Kristen Sonday, Paladin's co-founder and COO.

About Paladin

Paladin's mission is to increase access to justice by helping legal teams run more efficient pro bono programs. It works with in-house legal teams, law schools, and law firms to centralize pro bono opportunities, increase engagement, and capture outcomes and impact. Thus far, Paladin has helped facilitate work with LGBT refugees, domestic violence survivors, and low-income entrepreneurs, among others. Paladin is based in New York with an office in Chicago, where it was part of last year's Techstars class. For more information, please visit www.joinpaladin.com.

About Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

For more than 50 years, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati has offered a broad range of services and legal disciplines focused on serving the principal challenges faced by the management and boards of directors of business enterprises. The firm is nationally recognized as a leader in the fields of corporate governance and finance, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, securities litigation, employment law, intellectual property, and antitrust, among many other areas of law. The firm also supports worthy agencies and individuals in need by providing legal services, financial support, and volunteer services. Annually, WSGR provides more than 45,000 hours of pro bono legal work. The firm's attorneys have provided pro bono assistance to approximately 400 nonprofit agencies in fields such as healthcare, education, the arts, and the environment, as well as to numerous individuals. With deep roots in Silicon Valley, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati has offices in Austin; Beijing; Boston; Brussels; Hong Kong; London; Los Angeles; New York; Palo Alto; San Diego; San Francisco; Seattle; Shanghai; Washington, D.C.; and Wilmington, DE.

For more information, please visit www.wsgr.com.

SOURCE Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Related Links

http://www.wsgr.com

The need is great and growing for warriors. According to a Harvard study, the costs of care for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the next 40 years could reach $4 trillion to $6 trillion. And the war isn't just affecting veterans. Family members work to adjust to a new normal when they give up paid employment to become caregivers, affecting their quality of life. WWP has invested more than $1.1 billion in its programs and services that assist the rehabilitation and recovery of our nation's brave men and women so they can have a future to look forward to.

"The long-term resiliency and well-being of the military community at the national and grass-roots levels require diverse and innovative care solutions," said Bardorf. "Wounded Warrior Project cannot do it alone and is committed to working as a force multiplier in the communities where our nation's warriors live, work and re-integrate. Strategic collaboration among best-in-practice veteran and military organizations helps to augment our existing programs to ensure that critical gaps in care are managed effectively, in communities that need it most."

These important investments expand impact for our nations' warriors by empowering other veteran's service organizations to do more for the populations they serve. This approach also enables WWP to increase the awareness around the major issues facing all service members, such as toxic exposure, increased employment opportunities, and suicide prevention.

The complete list of WWP's final tranche of 2018 grantees are below:

National Military Family Association http://www.militaryfamily.org/

Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) https://www.taps.org/

Elizabeth Dole Foundation https://www.elizabethdolefoundation.org/

Homes for Our Troops https://www.hfotusa.org/

Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) https://www.vfw.org/

Boulder Crest http://www.bouldercrestretreat.org/

The Honor Foundation https://www.honor.org/

Our Military Kids http://ourmilitarykids.org/

Vail Veterans Program https://www.vailveteransprogram.org/

HillVets https://www.hillvets.org/

Comfort Crew https://www.comfortcrew.org/

American Bar Association https://www.americanbar.org/aba.html

The War Horse https://www.thewarhorse.org/

Warrior Reunion Foundation https://www.warriorreunionfoundation.org/

Blue Star Families https://bluestarfam.org/

Military Family Advisory Network (MFAN) https://militaryfamilyadvisorynetwork.org/

Vietnam Veterans of America https://vva.org/

To learn more, contact our government and community relations team via Mattison Brooks or visit https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/programs/community-partners.

About Wounded Warrior Project

Since 2003, Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) has been meeting the growing needs of warriors, their families, and caregivers  helping them achieve their highest ambition. Learn more: http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/about-us.

SOURCE Wounded Warrior Project

Related Links

https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org

YIWU, China, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Yiwugo.com, the official website of the largest commodity wholesale market in the world, held the press conference for the Cross-Border Exclusive Project in the Hall A of Yiwu International Expo Center on October 21. The project aims to provide a reliable and convenient online supply channel for small and medium-sized cross-border e-businesses. The event was attended by officials of China Commodities City Group and various partner organizations, and dozens of journalists.

According to the data from Yiwu Municipal Bureau of Commerce, in the first half of 2018, the number of Yiwu's cross-border e-commerce sellers exceeded 120,000, and the city ranked second in China in terms of the density of cross-border e-business companies. There are several major factors contributing to such impressive figures, one of which is the large supply of primary good sources. Thanks to these sellers' dedicated efforts, products from Yiwu have been able to quickly flow to the world through various mainstream cross-border e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress, Dunhuang.com and Amazon.

For the sellers in Yiwu, it is fairly convenient to purchase goods from the markets in the city. However, when working to facilitate small and medium-sized cross-border e-businesses outside Yiwu, they are not able to purchase the goods as easily, a problem that needs to be solved urgently. As the official website of the China Commodities City, Yiwugo.com launched the Cross-Border Exclusive Project, in order to provide favorable conditions to small and medium-sized cross-border e-commerce sellers in various regions around the world. The suppliers listed in the Project have been carefully selected, to meet the purchase demands in the following aspects:

First, the suppliers must have a good integrity record, guaranteed product quality, and they must meet relevant foreign trade standards and requirements.

Second, they must cater to the product needs of foreign customers. As one of the largest commodity export bases in China, Yiwu has been supplying products to more than 210 countries and regions. Many suppliers there have long histories of foreign trade and their products have been increasingly popular among foreign customers, such as the knitted underwear in America, the affordable digital products in India, and the beautiful home furnishings and clothing popular among African customers.

Third, they must have a guaranteed delivery capacity and accept small shipments. Suppliers in Yiwu have long been accustomed to mass production, which reduces production and inventory costs, thereby realizing the best cost performance. However, small and medium-sized cross-border e-commerce sellers on platforms such as AliExpress, Dunhuang.com, and Amazon are usually engaged in small or retail business and therefore want to place small and fast orders. Facing such requirements, the suppliers chosen for the Project heave made a considerable effort in flexible production and inventory optimization to meet the procurement needs of the small and medium-sized cross-border e-commerce sellers.

Fourth, they must have certain e-commerce capabilities, which include high-quality product images, and detailed, precise descriptions, so that small and medium-sized cross-border e-commerce sellers can easily forward the information to their stores.

SOURCE YiwugoIslamabad, Oct 22 : At least 19 people were killed and over 40 others injured in a head-on collision between two passenger buses in Pakistan's Punjab province on Sunday night, police and media said.

According to reports, the accident happened on Multan road in Dera Ghazi Khan district, reports Xinhua news agency.

One of the passenger buses was completely destroyed in the accident, reported TV channel ARY News, adding that the bodies of the dead and injured were retrieved after cutting parts of the buses.

A hospital official said the death toll might further rise as several injured were in critical condition.

Police officials in the area said the accident happened due to speeding and negligence of one of the bus drivers.

According to official data, around 9,000 road accidents are reported every year in Pakistan, claiming more than 4,500 lives on average annually.Tapachula (Mexico), Oct 22 : Hundreds of migrants remained at the Rodolfo Robles bridge crossing point over the Suchiate river on the Guatemalan border on Sunday, waiting to cross into Mexico to continue their journey to try and reach the US.

On Friday, a large group tried to enter Mexico by breaking down the gate at the frontier. A number of the unarmed Mexican police stationed at the site were injured when the hundreds of migrants stormed the gate and pushed into Mexican territory, reports Efe news.

The Guatemalan government said on Sunday that it has repatriated a total of 953 of the migrants to Honduras, most of them by bus but a few by air, according to its special plan to return them to their country.

Of the approximately 5,400 migrants who set out from Honduras a week ago, some 2,000 have returned to Honduras but 3,000 more are continuing with their plan to get to the southern US border.

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that his administration was doing all it can to prevent the migrant caravan from crossing the border into Mexico, warning that his government would not allow them to enter the US.

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our southern border. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the US will turn them away. The courts are asking the US to do things that are not doable!" said Trump on Twitter.

"The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!" the President wrote in another tweet.

Earlier on Sunday, thousands of Honduran migrants who left their country in a caravan heading north resumed their journey after fulfilling Mexico's migration requirements to ensure that the US southern neighbor did not deport them if they had entered that country illegally.

According to officials with Mexico's Civil Protection service, more than 3,000 migrants are en route along the 40-km stretch between Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where they announced that they intend to spend Sunday night.

A force of more than 600 state and federal police have set up a roadblock some 5 kilometres outside Tapachula, apparently with the aim of halting the massive caravan before it reaches the city.Riyadh, Oct 22 : The King of Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince sent their condolences to a son of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who died at his country's consulate in Istanbul, Saudi state media reported.

The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said on Sunday that the Monarch, Salman bin Abdulaziz, and his son, Mohammed bin Salman, telephoned Salah Jamal Khashoggi to express their condolences, reports Efe news.

Salah thanked the king and expressed his "sincere gratitude" to Prince Mohammed for the calls, according to separate press releases published by the SPA.

Saudi Arabia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said in an interview with US television channel Fox on the same day that Prince Mohammed had no knowledge of Khashoggi's death.

In that interview, al-Jubeir described the death of Khashoggi as "a grave mistake" and said that those responsible will be held to account.

The Saudi authorities at first denied the death of the regime-critical journalist.

On Saturday, the Saudi authorities said that Khashoggi died in the course of a "fight" with agents who were trying to interrogate him in the legation.

The UK, France and Germany said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia's version of Khashoggi's death needs to be supported by "facts" to be considered "credible".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the suspension of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia on the grounds that they cannot be done under the "current circumstances", in reference to the Khashoggi case.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that he will reveal details about the Turkish investigation of the alleged murder of the journalist on Tuesday.

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had been missing since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.Sydney, Oct 22 : The Australian Prime Minister on Monday apologized and asked for forgiveness on behalf of the nation to the thousands of victims affected by acts of paedophilia and other abuse when they were under the care of national institutions.

"Today, we apologize for the pain, the suffering and trauma inflicted upon victims and survivors as children, and for its profound and ongoing impact," Scott Morrison said in Parliament House.

The Royal Commission that investigated the institutions' response to sexual abuse of minors presented its final report in December last year with more than 400 recommendations that included compensation for the victims.

This followed events that the Commission described as a national tragedy.Bogota, Oct 22 : At least nine people were killed and five more were missing after heavy rains triggered a mudslide in northern Colombia on Sunday, the fire department said.

The early morning rains caused a mudslide that buried several homes in a poor neighbourhood, most of them made of wood, in the port city of Barrancabermeja, reports Xinhua news agency.

"We recovered nine bodies... Five of them were minors and four adults," Fire Department Chief Alexander Diaz said. "Fortunately, three children managed to get out when the mudslide hit and are alive."Moscow, Oct 22 : Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has questioned the intelligence behind US President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from a key Cold War nuclear weapons treaty.

Gorbachev, who signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said on Sunday that Trump's move is a reversal of efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament, the BBC reported.

Trump said Russia had been "violating (the INF) for many years". He said the US would not let Russia "go out and do weapons (while) we're not allowed to".

The US insists the Russians have, in breach of the deal, developed a new medium-range missile called the Novator 9M729 -- known to Nato as the SSC-8, the BBC said.

It would enable Russia to launch a nuclear strike on Nato countries at very short notice.

Russia has denied the accusation and condemned the plans. It even threatened to retaliate.

"I don't know why President (Barack) Obama didn't negotiate or pull out," Trump said earlier in a campaign rally in Nevada last week. In 2014, Obama had accused Russia of breaching the INF after it allegedly tested a ground-launched cruise missile.

The New York Times reported on Friday the US was considering withdrawing from the treaty in a bid to counter China's expanding military presence in the western Pacific.

However, he chose not to withdraw from the treaty under pressure from European leaders, who said such a move could restart an arms race.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin would be seeking an explanation from visiting US National Security Adviser John Bolton, the BBC reported.

"This would be a very dangerous step that, I'm sure, not only will not be comprehended by the international community but will provoke serious condemnation," Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

He also told the news agency RIA Novosti that if the US continued to behave "clumsily and crudely" and backed out of international agreements, "then we will have no choice but to undertake retaliatory measures, including involving military technology". "But we would not want to get to this stage," he added.

Analysts told the BBC Russia sees the Novator 9M729 as a cheaper alternative to conventional forces.

The last time the US withdrew from a major arms treaty was in 2002, when President George W. Bush pulled the US out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Germany was the first US ally to criticise Trump's latest move, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urging Washington to consider the consequences both for Europe and for future disarmament efforts.

The INF had banned ground-launched medium-range missiles, with a range of between 500 and 5,500km.

It was signed near the end of the Cold War -- a period between 1945 and 1989 marked by intense international tension due to the quality of relations shared between the two super powers -- the US and USSR -- and overshadowed by the threat of nuclear conflict.

In the past five decades the US and Russia have signed a range of joint agreements to limit and reduce their substantial nuclear arsenals, the BBC report said.

Gorbachev was the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union who was appointed in 1985. His domestic reforms and nuclear disarmament deals helped end the Cold War. He resigned as Soviet president in 1991 after Soviet republics declared independence.New York, Oct 22 : At least 30 people have been injured when a floor collapsed during a party held at the Clemson University in the US' South Carolina, police said.

The Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity annual homecoming party was just getting started on Sunday when the floor gave way, the BBC reported.

Some of the attendees broke bones as they fell from the common area into the basement of the off-campus apartment complex. Videos of the collapse posted online showed graphic footage.

Emergency responders were at the scene in minutes, and 23 people were taken to hospital.

"The beat was about to drop and literally the whole floor collapsed," student Larissa Stone told Greenville News. "People are hurt. People are bleeding. I had blood on my sneakers. It was really bad."

"Everybody was jumping, next thing you know... I can feel myself falling," attendee Leroy Pearson told news channel WSPA-TV. "I blacked out, and there (were) girls everywhere with blood all over their face."

The "Clemson Student Affairs is working to determine how many of those injured were Clemson students, and to notify other institutions if one or more of their students were in attendance", the varsity statement said.

The building where the party took place at the Woodlands of Clemson apartment complex was reportedly built in 2004.London, Oct 22 : Giant mice are killing millions of endangered Tristan albatross chicks on a remote island in the South Atlantic, threatening the rare seabird species with extinction, a wildlife organisation has said.

According to a study from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), at least two million chicks are being lost on an annual basis.

Just 2,000 pairs of albatrosses remain on the Gough Island -- a remote UK Overseas Territory, which is considered world's most important seabird colonies, hosting more than 10 million birds.

The albatrosses mate for life and produce just one egg every other year.

The rodents that were introduced to the 91-sqkm volcanic island by sailors during the 19th Century have learned to eat the eggs and chicks of the many millions of birds that make the island their home.

Video cameras have recorded groups of up to nine mice eating the chicks alive. Parents have been recorded returning with food to find their chicks dead in the nest. At this rate extinction looks certain within decades, the BBC reported.

Adapting to the limited resources on the small island by developing a taste for seabird eggs and chicks, the mice have become "super-sized". They are about 50 per cent larger than a domestic mouse.

"Many of the seabirds on Gough are small and nest in burrows," said Anthony Caravaggi of the University College Cork, in Ireland.

"The chicks are smaller and have no escape route, so for an opportunistic mouse these chicks constitute relatively easy prey.

"The mice have done so well growing bigger and have now moved on to attacking all seabirds, even Tristan albatross chicks, which are far bigger than other, smaller sea-going birds."

"Not will only the Tristan albatross be lost in a very short span but a large number of other species as well," said Caravaggi. The Atlantic petril and MacGillivray's prion will follow suit.

The RSPB and the Tristan da Cunha government, who are custodians of Gough island, have developed a plan to wipe the mice out completely by 2020.

It would be an enormous logistical challenge, involving chartering a ship from South Africa, which will carry two helicopters and a load of poisonous, cereal pellets.

These will then be spread across the island by the helicopters. They contain an anticoagulant which should kill the mice within 24 hours.

"Ridding islands of invasive species has been done on around 700 islands worldwide," said Alex Bond, from the Natural History Museum, another author on the paper.Ahmednagar (Maharashtra), Oct 22 : At least eight passengers were killed when a private bus in which they were travelling rammed into a stationery truck on the Pune-Aurangabad highway, on Monday, an official said.

According to Ahmednagar Police Control official Riyad Inamdar, the incident occurred at around 5.20 a.m. when the bus was speeding from Aurangabad to Pune.

When the bus approached the Wadegavhan area, it suddenly lost control and banged into the truck parked beside the highway.

The victims died on the spot while over a dozen injured have been rushed to hospitals in Shirur, Inamdar said.Washington, Oct 22 : The UN's drug strategy of the past 10 years has been a failure, according to a report by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), which has called for a major rethinking of global policy on illegal narcotics.

The report released on Sunday claimed that UN efforts to eliminate the illegal drug market by 2019 through a "war on drugs" approach has had scant effect on global supply while having negative effects on health, human rights, security and development, CNN reported.

According to the report, drug-related deaths have increased by 145 per cent over the last decade, with more than 71,000 overdose deaths in the US in 2017 alone.

At least 3,940 people were executed for drug offenses around the world over the last 10 years, while drug crackdowns in the Philippines resulted in around 27,000 extrajudicial killings.

The IDPC, a network of 177 national and international NGOs concerned with drug policy and drug abuse, is urging the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs to consider a different approach to narcotics strategy for the next 10 years in the run-up to a March 2019 summit in Vienna, Austria.

"This report is another nail in the coffin for the war on drugs," said Ann Fordham, the Executive Director of IDPC, in a statement.

"The fact that governments and the UN do not see fit to properly evaluate the disastrous impact of the last ten years of drug policy is depressingly unsurprising."

The UN was not immediately available for comment on the report, reports CNN.

In 2017, Mexico, for example, recorded its most murderous year on record due to soaring levels of drug-related violence.

As previously reported by CNN, the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography revealed that there were 31,174 homicides over the course of the year -- an increase of 27 per cent over 2016.Patna, Oct 22 : A 70-year-old woman's tongue was chopped off after she was branded a witch in a Bihar village in Rohtas district, police said on Monday.

Rajkali Devi was attacked in Redia village with traditional weapons and a part of her tongue was cut off leaving her seriously injured, Tilauthu police station in-charge Pramod Kumar said.

The Dalit widow was admitted to a hospital and a First Information Report was registered on Sunday on the complaint by her granddaughter.

The granddaughter, who was sleeping with Rajkali Devi, at the time of the attack said three villagers forcibly entered their house late on Saturday and chopped off her grandmother's tongue accusing her of practicing witchcraft.

A man hunt was underway to nab the culprits.

Branding women as witches and torturing them -- often to death -- continues to prevail in parts of rural Bihar.

The Bihar Human Rights Commission had been asking the government to expedite probes and trials in cases related to offences under the Prevention of Witch Hunting Act, 1999.Hong Kong, Oct 22 : A $20-billion bridge connecting Hong Kong and Macau to the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai is set to finally open this week, marking the completion of the longest sea-crossing bridge ever built, nine years after construction began.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend a ceremony in Zhuhai on Tuesday, along with top officials from Hong Kong and Macau, with the bridge opening to public traffic Wednesday, CNN reported on Monday.

The 55 km bridge was originally due to open in 2016, but repeated delays pushed that to this year.

It is a key element of China's plan for a Greater Bay Area covering 56,500 square km across southern China, and encompassing 11 cities, including Hong Kong and Macau, that are home to a combined 68 million people.

Proponents of the idea say the bridge will cut journey times between the cities from three hours to 30 minutes, which they say will enable commuters and tourists to easily move around the region.

Despite the focus on drive time however, private car owners in Hong Kong will not be able to cross the bridge without a special permit.

Most drivers will have to park at the Hong Kong port, switching to shuttle bus or special hire cars once they are through immigration.

Shuttle buses cost $8-$10 for a single trip depending on the time of day.

The bridge project has come in for fierce criticism in Hong Kong, where there was little public demand or appetite for greater links to either Macau or Zhuhai, and fears the city will be swamped by tourists from mainland China, CNN said.

In 2016, Hong Kong saw 56.7 million tourist arrivals, compared to 37.6 million for the UK, a much larger country.Washington, Oct 22 : NASA has used certain characters from modern myths such as the "Hulk" and "Godzilla" to name its new set of 21 gamma-ray constellations constructed in celebration of its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's 10th year of operations.

Fermi has mapped about 3,000 gamma-ray sources -- 10 times the number known before its launch and comparable to the number of bright stars in the traditional constellations.

"For the first time ever, the number of known gamma-ray sources was comparable to the number of bright stars, so we thought a new set of constellations was a great way to illustrate the point," NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's Elizabeth Ferrara who led the constellation project said in a statement.

"Developing these unofficial constellations was a fun way to highlight a decade of Fermi's accomplishments," Julie McEnery, the Fermi project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said.

Comic book fans who know the backstory of Hulk, the big, green, angry alter ego of Bruce Banner, whose experiments with gamma rays went terribly wrong, could easily appreciate NASA's pick in naming one of its constellations.

Gamma rays are the strongest form of light. They pack enough punch to convert into matter under the right circumstances, a transformation both Banner and the Hulk would certainly appreciate.

NASA's choice of Godzilla constellation is linked to its trademark weapon "heat ray," a fiery jet. This bears at least a passing resemblance to gamma-ray jets associated with black holes and neutron stars.

Godzilla ranks as one of cinema's most famous monsters and is among the most recognisable symbols of Japanese popular culture.

In the original 1954 movie, nuclear weapons tests disturb the creature's deep ocean habitat, and it emerges from the sea to wreak havoc in Japan.

The 21 gamma-ray constellations also include famous landmarks -- such as Sweden's recovered warship, Vasa, the Washington Monument and Mount Fuji in Japan -- in countries contributing to Fermi science.

Since 2008, Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) has been scanning the entire sky each day, mapping and measuring sources of gamma rays, the highest-energy light in the universe.

The emission may come from pulsars, nova outbursts, the debris of supernova explosions and giant gamma-ray bubbles located in our own galaxy, or supermassive black holes and gamma-ray bursts -- the most powerful explosions in the cosmos -- in others.

"Fermi is still going strong, and we are now preparing a new all-sky LAT catalog," said Jean Ballet, a Fermi team member at the French Atomic Energy Commission in Saclay.

"This will add about 2,000 sources, many varying greatly in brightness, further enriching these constellations and enlivening the high-energy sky!"Islamabad, Oct 22 : Pakistan has reopened the friendship gate at the Afghan border in Chaman, resuming trade activities, Nato supplies and transit trade between the two countries, the media reported on Monday.

Pakistan had closed the border at Chaman and Torkham on Friday in connection with parliamentary elections in Afghanistan that had suspended trade activities in the border town Chaman and Spin Boldak, reports Dawn news.

Hundreds of trucks carrying Nato supplies and transit trade goods crossed into Afghanistan after reopening of the border on Sunday.

Pakistan had closed the border soon after the Kandahar Police chief, the governor and intelligence chief of Kandahar and a cameraman were killed in the firing in the Governor House.London, Oct 22 : Irish low-cost airline Ryanair has been slammed after failing to remove a racist passenger onboard a flight from Barcelona to London.

According to a video shot by a fellow passenger, the incident took place onboard the flight on Friday after a woman was unable to move out from her seat quickly to let the man enter and sit in his window seat, reports Xinhua news agency.

Then the man shouted at the woman while her daughter told him her mother was disabled.

Although a fellow passenger and a flight attendant tried to intervene and calm the man down, he replied that he would carry on as far as possible with "this ugly black bastard".

A number of passengers on the flight called for the man to be removed from the plane, but he was still allowed to stay on it, which sparked public outcry after the video was viewed for more than 4 million times on Facebook.

David Lawrence, the passenger who recorded the widespread video, told BBC on Sunday that he was "shocked" that Ryanair "allowed something like this just to go unchecked".

"We operate strict guidelines for disruptive passengers and we will not tolerate unruly behavior like this," Ryanair replied. "We will be taking this matter further and disruptive or abusive behaviour like this will result in passengers being banned from travel."

The airline tweeted on Sunday that it has reported the incident to the police.

Founded in 1984, Ryanair is one of the largest airlines in Europe, serving 37 countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia.Hyderabad, Oct 22 : Rohingya refugees living here have appealed to the Indian government to mount pressure on Myanmar to create conditions conducive for their safe return.

Worried over reports that India may deport them, the refugees said they would return on their own once assured safety. They also want Myanmar to grant them citizenship and return their lands.

The deportation of seven Rohingya Muslims earlier this month has left refugees across Indian cities worried.

The seven Rohingya, who were held in a Assam jail since 2012 for illegally entering India, were handed over to the Myanmar government after the Supreme Court turned down a plea to stop the government from deporting them.

The deportation prompted UN High Commissioner for Refugees (Unhcr) to remind New Delhi that the international laws required nations to refrain from sending refugees back to countries where they could still face danger.

About 18,000 Rohingya refugees registered with Unhcr are living in India. Of them, 4,000 of them have found a home in Hyderabad.

About a million Rohingya reported to have fled Myanmar to escape persecution by armed forces. Majority of them have taken refuge in Bangladesh.

While thanking the Indian government for allowing them to live all these years, the refugees appealed to the government not to turn them back as they still face danger to their lives in Myanmar.

"Don't send us back. Instead, bomb us here. At least we will have graves here. We don't even get a burial there," said Sultan Mahmood, one of the refugees, told IANS.

He recalls how they fled to escape persecution in Myanmar's Rakhine state and landed up here.

"We have seen them butchering many people and setting our houses on fire. That memory still haunts us. We shudder to even think of going back there," Sultan, who came to India with his wife and two children including 19-year-old physically handicapped, who is completely bed-ridden.

"Peace has not been restored there. How can we go back?" asks another refugee, Haroon Mohammed Idris, who along with his wife and four children arrived in India in 2012.

Haroon, who lost 20 members of his family including parents, siblings in the crackdown by Myanmar's armed forces, said if sent back they would also meet the same fate.

Sitting in the dirty surroundings in refugee a habitation of small huts in Balapur, 80-year-old Ameer Hussain is worried over the future of his six-member family.

With his 32-year-old son in custody of Myanmar authorities for 13 years, he has no earning member in the family.

The local police visit the refugee camps and check their cards.

"We extend all our cooperation because we are neither terrorists nor criminals," said Ameer.

They agree that the attempt by some of their countrymen to obtain Aadhaar and other cards meant for Indian citizens is wrong.

"We appeal every day not to indulge in such illegal activity," said Bilal Hussain, who is incharge of the camp at Balapur, one of the 25 refugee camps in the old city of Hyderabad.Ranchi, Oct 22 : The opposition parties in Jharkhand have agreed to fight the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by forming an alliance, a state Congress official said here on Monday.

The four opposition parties are the Congress, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P).

"The initial round of talks have taken place in New Delhi. The Congress, JMM, RJD and JVM-P have agreed in principal to fight the polls together. The second round of talks will take place in the last week of this month also in New Delhi to finalise on seat sharing," Kishore Sahdeo, the state's Congress spokesperson, told IANS.

JMM General Secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya said: "We have agreed to fight the Lok Sabha polls in alliance to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The seat sharing will be decided in the coming days."

The Congress and JMM had cemented an alliance for the first time in Jharkhand in 2004 and won 13 of the 14 seats.

The Congress, JMM and RJD had also fought in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in alliance but it did not make much impact.

The BJP had alone won 12 out of the 14 Lok Sabha seats that year.

Meanwhile, Congress sources said that the Left parties have also approached them to become part of the alliance.

"The role of the Left parties in the alliance is not clear. The central party leaders will decide over the issue," a party source told IANS.

The JMM is biggest opposition party in the Jharkhand Assembly with 18 seats.

JMM wants the opposition parties to accept party Executive President and former Chief Minister Hemant Soren as the Chief Ministerial candidate for next year's Assembly polls.Bengaluru, Oct 22 : Global professional services company Accenture has acquired California-headquartered DAZ Systems, a provider of Oracle ERP (enterprise resource planning) Cloud services for an undisclosed amount.

With this deal, DAZ's more than 300 professionals will join Accenture's Oracle Business Group, Accenture said in a statement on Monday.

The acquisition further bolsters Accenture's Oracle capabilities to help organisations deploy and integrate enterprise performance management and human capital management applications.

"DAZ has extensive experience implementing Oracle Cloud solutions, which complements Accenture's established credentials across the Oracle Cloud portfolio," said Bhaskar Ghosh, Group Chief Executive, Accenture Technology Services.

"Organisations demand proven expertise, as well as new innovative solutions and methods to help them transform their businesses. DAZ will help us continue to deliver the very best thinking and capabilities to our clients," Ghosh said.

Headquartered in El Segundo, California, DAZ was founded in 1995. It has delivered more than 500 successful Oracle implementations to-date.Chandigarh/Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 22 : Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, who had given statements against Kerala nun rape accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district on Monday, police said.

Kattuthara's family in Kerala suspects foul play.

The Punjab Police said a probe is underway into the 62-year-old priest's death. "Our team has gone to the spot and is investigating the matter," a Dasuya police official said.

Kattuthara was found dead in a room in the St. Mary's Church in Dasuya town, around 180 km from Chandigarh. He was under the Jalandhar diocese which is headed by Mulakkal.

Kattuthara had openly given statements against the Mulakkal after the Kerala nun accused the latter of raping her.

Jose Kattuthara, the brother of the deceased, has complained to the police in Alappuzha in Kerala raising suspicion about the circumstances in which the priest was found dead.

The deceased priest's cousin K.Johnny told the media in Kerala that he got a call from Punjab that Father Kuriakose Kattuthara was not responding to the knocks on his door.

"When they forced open the door, he was found dead," Johnny said, adding that his cousin was not sick. However, he was suffering from lifestyle diseases.

"Ever since he took a position against Bishop Mulakkal, he feared something bad might befall him," said Johnny.

The deceased priest, in some interviews, had already expressed apprehension about his fate after openly supporting the victim nun and speaking against the bishop.

Mulakkal was arrested in September 21 on charges of raping a nun repeatedly between 2014 and 2016. He was sent to two-week judicial custody on September 24.

Mulakkal secured bail on October 16 from the Kerala High Court and left for Jalandhar the same day after walking out of the Pala sub-jail near Kottayam.Sydney, Oct 22 : Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten made a "national apology" in the parliament to thousands of victims affected by acts of paedophilia and other abuse when they were under care of national institutions.

Later, the prime minister also apologised to the hundreds of child sex abuse victims that had gathered in Parliament House for the occasion.

It is the first time an Australian Government acknowledged the failures of government's faith-based institutions and other organisations to keep children and young people safe.

Morrison told the victims: "We believe you, your country believes you."

The prime minister paid tribute to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard for setting up the Royal Commission inquiry saying it was a day to confront the failure to listen to believe and provide justice.

The Opposition Leader Bill Shorten told the gathering "our nation let you down. Today we offer our nation's apology with humility, with honesty, with hope of healing now and with a fire in our belly to ensure that our children will grow up safe in future."

Morrison asked those gathered in the Great Hall to join hands as he relayed the apology to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. "Today we say we are sorry. Sorry you are not protected. Sorry you are not listened to. We are sorry for refusing to trust the words of children, for not believing you."

He said the nation was sorry that the perpetrators of abuse were relocated and shielded, rather than held to account, that records were withheld and destroyed and accountability avoided.

The Royal Commission that investigated the institutions' response to sexual abuse of minors presented its final report in December last year with more than 400 recommendations that included compensation for the victims.

(Rekha Bhattacharjee can be contacted at vijaybhatta56@gmail.com)New Delhi, Oct 22 : The Congress on Monday demanded the sacking of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for "allowing" bank frauds to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore and letting fraudsters like Vijay Mallya to flee the country.

Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Jaitley, Congress leader Sachin Pilot said that under the current Bharatiya Janata Party government "an unprecedented 19,000 bank fraud cases involving Rs 90,000 crore" have taken place.

"At least 23 bank fraudsters have left India under their watch after duping the country by over Rs 53,000 crore.

"The successive escapes of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and others reflect that the Modi government is not a guardian of public money but a travel agency facilitating fraud, fleece and fly to foreign shores by wilful bank defaulters," Pilot told the media here.

"Modi and Jaitley cannot remain silent anymore, they cannot point fingers at the opposition for his own misdeeds. Corruption is writ large over this government whether it is the Rafale deal, thousands of crore becoming NPAs or the escape of Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksia -- the list is endless.

"These are the people (Modi and Jaitley) who were officially helping the fraudsters, legally safeguarding them and politically protecting them to escape and run away," said Pilot.

He demanded the immediate sacking of Jaitley and an independent probe into his alleged "collusion, connivance and conflict of interest".Palghar (Maharashtra), Oct 22 : A shocking incident of two Rajasthani women having been allegedly "sold off to recover dowry" has come to light on Monday in Virar town here, officials said.

Following sustained efforts by social activists, Virar Police on October 9 booked a dozen persons including a chartered accountant and a businessman, besides their family members and other associates, in the case, Investigating Officer Lakshmi Borkar told IANS.

According to the complaint, the two women -- both sisters in their 20s, hailing from Rajasthan -- were married on March 10, 2015 with two brothers, businessman Sanjay Raval and Varun Rawal, a CA -- both based in Virar, around 60 km from Mumbai.

Six months after their wedding, the Ravals and their family members started harassing the sisters for dowry as the Sanjay and Varun wanted to buy a shop to launch a new business.

Somehow the victims' family managed to raise Rs 5,00,000 and handed it over to the Ravals, but later they demanded another Rs 4,00,000.

The two daughters-in-law said it was not possible for their middle-class parents to raise such a huge amount again, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

The sisters were subjected to physical torture and mental trauma by their husbands and members of the Raval family.

On August 30, the Raval family took the two women to a village in Rajasthan's Pindwara town of Sirohi distict and kept them in captivity.

For 10 days, several men including some relatives came and physically abused the two sisters and then ordered them to go back to the Raval family in Virar.

They sent an unknown person to accompany the two sisters to Virar, but when the train stopped at Vasai, their escort seized their bags and barred them from getting off.

This led to an altercation in full view of the co-passengers inside the train and the escort said they could not get off at Vasai but at Mira Road, in adjoining Thane district.

The escort was also heard shouting that he had "paid Rs 1,50,000 for the two women and now he would recover that amount fully before freeing them".

Fortunately for the distraught sisters, some co-passengers intervened and allowed them to deboard at Vasai before the train departed.

The sisters went back to their home in Suman Complex and narrated their sad plight to the neighbours.

A few neighbours accompanied the sisters to the police to lodge a complaint against the Raval family, but for nearly a month, the police reportedly dodged the issue.

It was only after the neighbours and some local social activists approached the higher police authorities that the complaint was finally registered on October 9 naming 12 accused in the case.

They include: the victims' husbands, Sanjay and Varun Raval, their father-in-law Mohanlal Raval, mother-in-law Leeladevi Raval, some uncles, aunts, a few relatives and other outsiders.

Borkar said an investigation was underway and no arrests have been made.

Independent sources revealed that the two prime accused Raval brothers -- Sanjay and Varun -- have reportedly gone underground.

The police have slapped serious charges against them under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) pertaining to dowry demand, mental and physical torture, kidnapping, Borkar added.Chennai, Oct 22 : The Congress has not officially declared Rahul Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in which its main objective is to defeat the BJP and usher in a progressive government at the Centre, senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram has said.

"Congress has not officially declared Rahul Gandhi as its Prime Ministerial candidate. On the contrary, when two or three persons (in the party) spoke about, the AICC denied it and told people not to speak about it," he told Tamil TV channel News18.

The former Union Finance Minister said the question of prime ministership was not an issue at all for the Congress party.

"Rahul Gandhi has not said this. The Congress has not said it wants to bring a person as prime minister. We will decide on the issue (of PM) once the alliance wins and the alliance partners will sit and decide on it," he said.

Chidambaram said the main objective for the Congress was removal of the Bharatiya Janata Party government and ushering in a progressive government that does not take away human rights, does not threaten people and does not indulge in tax terrorism against traders and entrepreneurs but provide security to women and children and give a fair and remunerative price to farmers for the farm produce and to farm workers.Beijing, Oct 22 : China on Monday strongly opposed the US' decision to walk out of the decades-old nuclear arms treaty with Russia, saying the "wrong" move will have a negative impact on the world.

Beijing also said it was even "more wrong" if the pull-out by Washington had to do with China.

"We oppose the unilateral pull-out by the US. We have to stress that this fallout itself is wrong and it is even more wrong to bring China as a reason," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said here.

US President Donald Trump last week announced that his country would withdraw from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, citing Moscow's violations of terms of the pact.

The agreement inked between the US and then Soviet Union required them to eliminate the ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between approximately 300 and 3,400 miles.

Trump said that since Russians violated the pact and China was no party to it, so it was best to the walk out the deal.

The US administration thinks that restriction on developing these missiles will put Washington at a disadvantage in the face of growing rivalry with Beijing.

"It plays an important role in advancing nuclear disarmament process and upholding global strategic balance and stability," Hua added.

"We believe the relevant country will cherish this longstanding and hard-won outcome to fully realize the negative impact of this deed. The issue should be resolved through peaceful dialogue and prudently."Tokyo, Oct 22 : Japan on Monday urged Facebook to improve the protection of personal data following a string of incidents in which the information of millions of users of the social networking site was leaked.

The Personal Information Protection Commission adopted a resolution on Monday asking Facebook to take measures to prevent similar incidents, the first such warning by the body to the social media giant, reports Efe news.

The document said that personal data of Facebook users included in their profiles or browsing history were automatically transferred to Facebook when they viewed an outside website that had Facebook's "Like" button, even when the users did not click on the button.

The Commission asked Facebook to provide clear explanations about how it uses personal data, take the consent of users to transfer their data to other platforms and to respond properly to those who make a request for their data to be deleted.

Around 29 million Facebook accounts were hacked in September, including several million in Japan, while around 100,000 Japanese users were affected by the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, according to the report by the Japanese commission.

The panel also ordered Facebook to report the conclusions of its internal investigation into the breach by the political-data firm.

The committee is a supervisory body responsible for the protection of personal data in Japan and is also responsible for issuing orders to companies based in the country, linked to compliance with national regulations.Mumbai, Oct 22 : The Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) on Monday said it will issue show cause notices to actor Alok Nath and actor-director Sajid Khan, who have been accused of sexual harassment and violation.

In a statement, FWICE said a show cause notice will be sent to Alok as his response to its affiliate association Indian Film and Television Directors' Association (IFTDA), was not "satisfactory", and because Sajid did not respond to the letter of IFTDA on being accused of sexual harassment and molestation by a few female members of the industry.

"The FWICE along with IFTDA pledge to support the victims of sexual misconduct, irrespective of the gender, with our full strength and might," read the statement.

This step follows a meeting between top officials of FWICE and members of IFTDA.

It has been made mandatory for each production house to form a separate 'Special Redressal Committee' in accordance with the Vishakha guidelines to closely monitor such incidents occurring on their projects (film/serial). This committee will empower the victims to come out with such issues openly and help eradicate such malpractices from the industry completely.

"The committee shall extend full support to the victim to go ahead with the case and all the legal guidance and help shall be offered to the victim till the judgment on the case is awarded by the court of law," the statement read.

This comes amidst the raging #MeToo movement, as part of which women have come forward to share their unsavoury experiences with people in positions of power. Writer-director Vinta Nanda named and shamed Alok of sexually violating her 19 years ago, while Sajid has been named by multiple women for his unacceptable behaviour.New Delhi, Oct 22 : Intensifying its attack on the Modi government over bank frauds, the Congress on Monday demanded sacking of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for "allowing" bank frauds to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore and "letting" fraudsters like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi to flee the country.

Calling for Jaitley's resignation, Congress President Rahul Gandhi alleged that the Finance minister's daughter Sonali Jaitley was "on the payroll" of fugitive Mehul Choksi, wanted in Rs 13,500 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

"Arun Jaitlie's daughter was on the payroll of thief Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile her Finance Minister daddy sat on his file and allowed him to flee. She received money from ICICI a/c no: 12170500316," Gandhi tweeted.

Taking the fight to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Jaitley, Congress leader Sachin Pilot said that under the Bharatiya Janata Party government "an unprecedented 19,000 bank fraud cases involving Rs 90,000 crore" have taken place.

"At least 23 bank fraudsters have left India under their watch after duping the country by over Rs 53,000 crore.

"The successive escapes of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and others reflect that the Modi government is not a guardian of public money but a travel agency facilitating fraud, fleece and fly to foreign shores by wilful bank defaulters," Pilot told the media here.

Pilot questioned as to why Sonali Jaitley's legal firm accepted retainer fee from Choksi despite the Prime Minister's Office, the Finance and Corporate Affairs Ministry as well as various investigative agencies being aware of the fraud by Nirav Modi and Choksi.

"Sonali Jaitley and son-in- law, Jaiyesh Bakhshi proceeded to accept a retainership from Choksi's fraudster company in December 2017. A sum of Rs 24,00,000 was also received by them.

"This amount was redeposited on Feb 20 2018, well after both Nirav Modi and Choksi had fled the country," said Pilot.

"These are the people (Modi and Jaitley) who were officially helping the fraudsters, legally safeguarding them and politically protecting them to escape and run away," said Pilot demanding both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister to speak up.

Alleging it to be a clear-cut case of "collusion, connivance and conflict of interest", the Congress questioned why Jaitley, his daughter and son-in-law have not been summoned or questioned by CBI and other agencies probing the scam.

The Congress demanded to know why action was not against Choksi and Nirav Modi despite multiple FIRs and complaints and also who facilitated their escape from the country.

Prime accused in the PNB fraud case, Nirav Modi and Choksi are under probe by both the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate.Panaji, Oct 22 : Declined permission for an appointment with ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, the Congress on Monday said its leaders would seek a meeting via video conference.

"We have tried meeting him on so many occasions, but our requests for an appointment were turned down. We will seek an appointment with the Chief Minister for a meeting via video conference," said Congress Legislature Party spokesperson Aleixo Reginaldo at a press conference in Panaji.

He said Parrikar was meeting BJP legislators and leaders, but had not agreed to meet a single Congress MLA since his return earlier this month from AIIMS in Delhi.

The Congress reaction comes days after Parrikar's aides said the Chief Minister had chaired a meeting, via video conference, of the controversial Investment Promotion Board, which cleared business proposals worth several hundred crore.

Questions are being raised about the meeting by the Opposition and civil society groups, which claim that the meeting was conducted in Parrikar's absence with no video conference, hence rendering its clearances as invalid.

Parrikar is being treated for advanced pancreatic cancer.

Leader of Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar, who was also present at the press conference, said the BJP-led coalition government should heed to the party's request for a medical bulletin with an update on Parrikar's health.

IANS

maya/prsNew Delhi, Oct 22 : A fire that started at the sprawling Bhalaswa garbage landfill site in the capital on Sunday night is yet to be controlled, officials said.

One of three saturated landfill sites of Delhi, around 100 sq. mtr area of the Bhalaswa dumping yard caught fire last night. Officials said the area that caught fire had exposed garbage and was not covered with debris. Harmful chemical vapours and gases from the landfill sites which frequently catch fire pose threat to Delhi's air-quality, already recorded as very poor.

"Some garbage was not covered and it caught fire. We are trying to cover it using debris," Sanjay Jain, Engineer, Department of Environment Maintenance Services (DEMS) at North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), told IANS.

Delhi fire sevices officials said several fire tenders were rushed to the site late Sunday night, while three fire tenders are still stationed there.

The Bhalaswa landfill is spread over 40 acres and has gained about two metres in height since 2017, officials said. About 2,000 tonnes of mixed garbage is dumped here everyday.

Delhi has three landfills - Ghazipur in the east, Okhla in the south and Bhalaswa in the north. Only the one at Bawana in the northwest is a "engineered solid waste dumping and processing site".

According to the 2016 solid-waste management rules, a landfill site must not exceed 20 metres in height, must not be older than 22-25 years and must have a clay-lining at the bottom to save the land and ground water.New Delhi, Oct 22 : Describing as "unacceptable" the existence of 5,133 vacancies of judges in "Higher Judicial Service" and "Lower Judicial Service", the Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the State governments and the High Courts whether the time for the ongoing recruitment of 4,180 judicial officers could be shortened.

Passing a suo motu order on the huge number of vacancies in the subordinate judiciary across the country, the bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul sought the response from the High Courts/State governments as it noted that the recruitment process for filling 4,180 posts was already underway.

At a function on October 3 to felicitate Justice Gogoi upon his elevation as the Chief Justice of India, he had said that in the coming 3-4 months, he would focus on filling up about 5,000 vacancies in the subordinate judiciary in order to tackle a backlog of over 2.6 crore cases.

He had, however, said that mere filling of vacancies would not solve the problem.

Seeking details as to when the recruitment process/processes for filling 4,180 posts for "Higher Judicial Service" and "Lower Judicial Service" was initiated and was expected to be complete, the top court wanted to know if the time being taken was beyond the seven-month schedule formulated by the top court in the Malik Mazhar Sultan case.

Under the schedule, the process for recruitment has to commence on March 31 and be completed by October 31 of the calendar year.

The court said that the time limit fixed by it (top court) from the initiation of the recruitment process till its completion was the "outer limit" and not the "minimum period of completion."

However, "If the time taken has exceeded the schedule fixed by this Court, the reasons thereof be furnished by the Registries of such High Courts/concerned authorities of the State where the recruitment is done through the Public Service Commission(s) which are in default", the court said in its order.

Noting that there was a mismatch in the number of vacancies, the number of posts for which recruitment process is underway and those still pending, the apex court also sought details of the vacancies that have occurred since the current recruitment process commenced.

The court also sought information whether "infrastructure and manpower available in the different states is adequate if all the posts that are borne in the cadre are to be filled up."

Directing that all the information sought by it should reach the Secretary General of Supreme Court by October 31, the court appointed four amicus curiae who are responsible for different states and would be assisting the court in the hearing of the matter.

Senior counsel Shyam Divan has been appointed amicus curiae to assist the court for Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and the north-eastern states.

Senior counsel K.V. Vishwanathan would be assisting the court as amicus curiae for Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Kerala.

For Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, Punjab and Haryana, the court has asked senior counsel Vijay Hansaria to assist the court.

Advocate Gaurav Agrawal has been appointed amicus curiae to assist the court for Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura and Uttarakhand.

The court listed of the matter for further hearing on November 1.New Delhi, Oct 22 : In the wake of the CBI registering a corruption case against its Special Director Rakesh Asthana, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the BJP has turned the CBI into a "national disgrace".

"During the Congress rule the Supreme Court had termed the CBI a caged parrot, Modi government has surpassed the Congress record and in its greed to victimize political opponents, it has turned the agency into a national disgrace," he said in a tweet.

The CBI on Sunday announced filing the case against Asthana for allegedly accepting a bribe to settle a case of meat exporter Moin Qureshi, who is facing multiple cases of money laundering and corruption.

Earlier, Asthana had filed a complaint against CBI Director Alok Verma accusing him of interfering in the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation corruption case involving the family members of Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad.Kunduz (Afghanistan), Oct 22 : Taliban key commander Mullah Mansoor, the military operational chief of the outfit, was among 21 armed insurgents who were killed in Afghanistan's Kunduz province in a crackdown, officials said on Monday.

Army spokesman Ghulam Hazrat Karimi told Xinhua news agency that about 30 more militants were injured and the Taliban militants were expelled from several villages in Imam Sahib district over the past several hours.

Meanwhile, Mahboubullah Sayedi, the Governor of Imam Sahib district said three security forces were killed and six others injured since the clash erupted in the district late on Sunday.

However, according to villagers, four civilians were killed, including women and children and five others were injured due to the ongoing fighting in Imam Sahib district.New Delhi, Oct 22 : The US Embassy along with TiE Global launched two programmes on Monday to provide mentorship to 30 young, innovative women from across India to help them scale up their enterprises.

During an event "Women Entrepreneurs Conclave 2.0 - Engaged and Empowered" held in the national capital, the Embassy announced that top-three scale-up fellows will be sponsored for a visit to the US as AIRSWEEE Global Fellows and will be mentored by a host US organisation that will provide them a window to global best practices.

According to the Embassy, the All India Roadshow on Women's Economic Empowerment through Entrepreneurship (AIRSWEEE) Scale-Up Fellows programme will be funded by the US State Department.

"Economies where women have greater equality are those that thrive. To get there requires a strong, visible push to level the playing field," MaryKay Carlson, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy, said at the event.

"AIRSWEEE has engaged members of TiE globally and drawn into sharp focus the significant multiplier effect that can be created by investing in women," said Vijay Menon, Executive Director, TiE Global.: New Delhi: Vijay Gokhale, an Indian Foreign Service Officer of the 1981 batch, took over as Foreign Secretary of India from S. Jaishankar on Jan. 29, 2018. . Image Source: MEA/IANS

Vijay Gokhale, an Indian Foreign Service Officer of the 1981 batch, took over as Foreign Secretary of India from S. Jaishankar on Jan. 29, 2018. Image Source: MEA/IANS

New Delhi, Oct 22 : India and Myanmar on Monday reviewed all matters related to their bilateral ties, including the Rohingya refugees crisis, and signed a crucial memorandum of understanding for the appointment of an operator of port that will boost connectivity.

According to a statement issued by the External Affairs Ministry, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale called on Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi during the course of which all matters relating to bilateral cooperation as well as matters pertaining to international and regional matters of common interest, including developments in the Rakhine State, were discussed.

A new crisis erupted in August last year following an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group that led to a violent response by the Myanmar Army in Rakhine.

This resulted in an exodus of Rohingya refugees from Rakhine in Myanmar to Bangladesh.

New Delhi has sent relief material for the refugees in both Rakhine and Bangladesh.

The Rohingya people do not enjoy citizenship status in Myanmar and are sparingly given refugee status in Bangladesh.

In December last year, India and Myanmar signed an MoU to develop Rakhine state.

After meeting Suu Kyi, Gokhale called on Transport and Communications Minister and discussed matters related to connectivity and transport infrastructure being developed by India in Myanmar.

Following the meeting, Gokhale and U Win Khant, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Communications, signed the MoU for the appointment of a private port operator for the operation and maintenance of Sittwe Port, Paletwa Inland Water Terminal and associated facilities that are part of the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport Project.

The project connects Sittwe Port with Mizoram state in northeastern India.

"This is a significant step in the implementation of India's Act East Policy, as its signing will enhance Myanmar's connectivity including with India and add to the development of the whole region, particularly in the Rakhine and Chin states of Myanmar," the ministry statement said.

"It would also add to local infrastructure capacity and help in creating more job opportunities for the local people."

Following this MoU, the process of identifying bidders to maintain these facilities will be initiated by floating a request for proposal.

During the course of his visit, Gokhale also called on the Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Defence Services, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

"All matters relating to border security, bilateral cooperation, Myanmar's peace process as well as the situation in northern Rakhine state were discussed during the meeting," the statement added.Shimla, Oct 22 : After over a decade of flip-flops and litigation, a multi-million dollar hydropower project was re-allotted on Monday by the Himachal Pradesh government to state-run Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd (SJVNL).

The Cabinet, led by Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, allotted the 960-MW Jangi-Thopan-Powari project in Kinnaur district to SJVNL, the company operating the 1,500 MW Nathpa Jhakri plant, India's largest hydro project in the state.

The generation capacity of the Jangi-Thopan-Powari project has now been reduced to 780 MW to meet the newly framed environmental laws, a government official told IANS.

This hydropower project, one of the most viable ones, requires an investment of over Rs 10,000 crore and aims to generate 4,000 million units per year. It was to be commissioned by 2017.

The project was originally allotted to Netherlands-based Brakel Corp. It later included Adani Power as a consortium partner in the project.

But the Himachal Pradesh High Court annulled it on October 7, 2009, on a plea by Reliance Infra, one of the bidders.

Brakel moved the Supreme Court but withdrew the petition to pursue remedies suggested by the apex court in its order on April 1, 2014.

The previous Congress government in the state had forfeited Brakel's up-front premium of Rs 280.69 crore and the damages of Rs 2,717 crore levied on it for causing a loss to the state exchequer by delaying the project.

Brakel had clarified that Adani Power -- which was included as a consortium partner in the project -- had deposited the upfront premium.

The upfront premium of Rs 280.69 crore is still lying with the government.

The state government had signed an agreement with Brakel in 2008, two years after the project was awarded to the Dutch company, for starting the pre-construction activities for the project.

The government, as per the pact, was entitled to earn Rs 250 crore annually by selling the free power provided by the project.

Officials say if all goes well, it will require another nine years for the project to go on stream. That would take it to 2027.New Delhi, Oct 22 : The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Centre to inform it about the number of observation homes for housing juveniles and also those having video-conferencing facility across the country.

A bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta said, "All observation homes and Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs) should have video conferencing facility."

The court sought state-wise details of the video conferencing facilities in the observation homes and the JJB as it noted that children from observation homes have to travel long distances where JJBs are located.

The court gave Centre four weeks to come back with the details.

Noting that in Odisha there were two observation homes and children have to travel 5 to 6 hours to be produced before the JJB, the court said the same situation prevailed in Madhya Pradesh. "You can't take a child to 200 km. Just have video conferencing facilities in observation homes and JJBs", the court said.

The hearing is rooted in the report of the Justice A.K. Goel (since retired) and Justice Uday Umesh Lalit on the appalling conditions in the observation homes and district jail in Haryana's Faridabad district bordering Delhi.

On the overcrowding of prison, the court recalled that "bail is a rule and jail an exception" and said that this should apply in all the cases of petty offences or where poor people are involved.Mumbai, Oct 22 : Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam on Monday accused Maharashtra's Minister for Cooperatives Subhash Deshmukh of fraudulently withdrawing funds from the government, and asked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to sack him immediately.

The Mumbai Congress chief said that Deshmukh and his son Rohan duped the state government of more than Rs 24 crore using fake documents.

Nirupam said that Deshmukh got a sanction for Rs. 24.81 crore from the Ministry of Agriculture under the National Agricultural Development Programme.

"This amount was sanctioned by the Minister in the name of setting up a milk chilling and milk powder manufacturing plant in Solapur. However, the minister and his son Rohan withdrew Rs 5 crores in two phases for their firm, Lokmangal Multi-State Cooperative Society Ltd.," Nirupam alleged.

The Minister submitted several forged and fabricated documents from various government departments, Nirupam said.

"However, when the concerned officials of these departments were asked to provide copies of permissions issued by their offices, they said that no licences, permissions or orders of any kind were issued by them to the Minister's Lokmangal Group," Nirupam said.

Citing information received under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, he added that four plants run by the Lokmangal Group are non-functional while one plant doesn't exist at all.

When contacted by IANS, an aide to the Minister declined to comment.

"Why is the CM hesitant in taking action against this corrupt Minister if he is not hand-in-glove with him," Nirupam asked.

Nirupam said that a few years ago, the Lokmangal Group had been barred by the Securities & Exchange Board of India for mobilizing around Rs 75 crore from more than 4,700 investors between 2009 and 2012 in violation of the Companies Act.New Delhi, Oct 22 : The Supreme Court on Monday asked media regulatory bodies -- Press Council of India, News Broadcasting Standards Authority, Editors Guild of India and Indian Broadcasting Foundation -- if they have reported to police about media persons or organizations who have divulged the identity of rape victim in violation of statutory prohibition.

"You have to function under law, and the law says such persons (who disclose the name of a rape victim) will be prosecuted," said the bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta.

The court today asked the regulatory bodies to file an affidavit stating whether they have informed the police about such cases and, if not, then why they did not inform police about such offenders.

"If publications commit criminal offences, they should be prosecuted. Somebody has to prosecute them. You have not prosecuted even a single person," the court said, comparing the approach to a "velvet fist in velvet glove. "

Asking the counsel appearing for the media regulatory bodies why they did not take steps to inform the police, the court asked them if they thought that disclosing the identity of a rape victim was a penal offence.

Admitting that disclosing the name of a rape victim was a violation of law, the media regulatory bodies said they have to function under the norms.

Brushing aside the claim by a counsel that they have a robust system to deal with such cases, the court mockingly said you claim that the "complainant is satisfied after ten years, and you say you have a robust system."

The matter is rooted in the hearing of a plea against Patna High court order prohibiting media from reporting Muzaffarpur shelter home rape cases.Rabat, Oct 22 : One migrant was killed and 13 Moroccan soldiers were injured when some 300 illegal Subsaharan African migrants forced their way to the Spanish enclave of Melillia, the Moroccan Interior Ministry announced on Monday.

The ministry said in a statement that 141 illegal migrants were arrested when the Moroccan authorities intervened to foil their attempt to storm the border fence separating Spanish enclave Melilla from Morocco on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Thirteen soldiers were wounded during this operation and were rushed into a hospital in the northern city of Nador to receive medical treatment, the statement said.

While climbing the fence of the occupied city of Melillia, one person died after falling from the top of the fence and 22 assailants were injured by barbed wire before they were transferred to the hospital, it added.

"Following these illegal acts, the Moroccan authorities decided to repatriate all the participants in this assault to their countries of origin in accordance with the law," the ministry said.

Morocco has become a hub for African migrants who seek to reach Europe for a better life. Thousands of migrants try to flee poverty and unrest in Africa each year via Morocco to Europe, either by land into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla or by sea often in flimsy vessels.

Between January and August, Morocco thwarted at least 54,000 attempts to smuggle illegal immigrants into Europe, compared with 39,000 attempts a year earlier, according to the Moroccan government.Chandigarh, Oct 22 : While remaining underground, the organizer of the Dusshera event, where at least 59 people were crushed by a speeding train, on Monday released a video claiming he had taken all permissions, and that appeals were made to people standing on the tracks to vacate the area.

Saurabh Madaan Mithu, a close aide of Punjab cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and his wife Navjot Kaur, released a video on Monday from an undisclosed location claiming that he, his councillor mother and other organisers had nothing to do with the tragedy.

"We had taken all necessary permissions and ensured proper safety measures inside the ground where the Dusshera event was held. The people who gathered on the railway tracks were outside the ground. We made several appeals to them to vacate the tracks," Madaan claimed in a choked voice, seeking pardon.

He said the police and fire brigade were also present at the ground where the Ravan effigy was burnt on Friday evening around 7 pm.

However, video footage of the event showed one anchor, in the presence of Madaan and Navjot Kaur, boasting that over 5,000 people were standing on the tracks and even if 500 trains crossed the tracks, these people will not move.

Seconds later, the Jalandhar-Amritsar DMU (diesel multiple unit) came speeding down the tracks and crushed scores of people, leaving at least 59 dead and dozens injured.

The people standing on the tracks could not hear the hooter of the approaching train in the noise caused by the bursting crackers when the Ravan effigy was set on fire.

There are allegations that Sidhu's wife, Madaan and other organisers fled the spot when the tragedy struck. They did not stay back to help the victims, including injured.

No case has been registered by the Punjab Police against the organisers of the event so far.

Despite that, Madaan and others continue to be underground while Sidhu has been on the offensive saying his wife and aides did nothing wrong and the blame for the accident was on the railway authorities.

Sidhu has questioned the railways for not holding a probe into the incident and giving a clean chit to the train driver and other staff for the lapses that led to the accident.

Calling the incident as a "massacre", the opposition Shiromani Akali Dal is demanding registration of a case of murder against Navjot Kaur, Madaan and other ruling Congress leaders who organised the Dusshera event.Bengaluru, Oct 22 : The Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) on Monday said it would mediate and hold a reconciliation meeting between Kannada actress Sruthi Hariharan and actor Arjun Sarja, who she had accused of sexually harassment.

"The members of KFCC has met over the sexual harassment allegations. We will soon hold a meeting between Arjun and Sruthi to resolve the issue," KFCC president S.A. Chinne Gowda told reporters after the film body's meeting.

The film association will address all the sexual harassment complaints that are brought to its notice, Gowda said.

The 29-year-old actress on Saturday shared in a Facebook post that the 54-year-old multi-lingual south Indian actor had sexually harassed her on the sets of a film in 2016.

"During a (film) rehearsal, we delivered our lines and Mr Arjun hugs me. With no forewarning or permission, he runs his hands intimately up and down my back. He pulls me closer with my body taut against his and asks the director if we could use this idea of foreplay in the scene," the actress had stated in her post.

Former KFCC president Sa Ra Govindu, however, asked why it took the actress two years to raise the issue.

"Sruthi should have brought the incident to our attention long ago," Govindu said.

Earlier in the day, Arjun's father-in-law and senior Kannada actor Rajesh had lodged a complaint against the actress with the KFCC for defaming the actor (Arjun).

A few women also staged a protest in front of the film chamber's office in the city centre during the day, demanding a "ban" on Sruthi in the Kannada film industry.

Arjun, popularly known as 'Action King' and acted in over 150 movies across Tamil, Telugu and Kannada languages, had, however, dismissed the allegations as "false".

The actor had said he would soon file a defamation suit against Sruthi.

Bengaluru-based Sruthi, who has acted in several Kannada and Malayalam films since 2012, had said the incident left her "aghast" and that she could not raise the issue when it happened as there was no internal complaints committee in the film industry.

The ongoing #MeToo movement has given her courage to speak up, the actress said addressing media on Sunday.

Several Kannada actors and directors have also expressed their support to the actress.New Delhi, Oct 22 : The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a PIL seeking to lower the marriageable age of a male from 21 years to 18 years and imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 observing that no public interest was involved in it.

The Public Interest Litigation was moved by advocate Asok Pande. The court was unmoved as Pande repeatedly urged it to waive the cost of Rs 25,000.

"If any 18-year-old person approaches us with this kind of plea, we will give him the cost deposited by you," Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said.

Pande has contended that when 18-year-old can vote in elections and choose their representatives, then why there should be such a higher age bar for marriage.

He cited the provisions of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, the Special Marriage Act and the Hindu Marriage Act which provide for the marriageable age for men and women and contended that they were violative of fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution.New Delhi, Oct 22 : Delhi Metro's Blue Line, connecting Dwarka to Noida and Ghaziabad, developed a snag during Monday evening rush hour, forcing people to delay their journey.

The snag detected in one of the trains at Mandi House station while going towards Dwarka, according to the Delhi Metro Rail Corp (DMRC).

"The train has a technical issue which was reported around 8:05 pm at Mandi House station while going towards Dwarka (Up Line). As a result, trains are delayed on Blue Line especially on Up line," the corporation said.

An official told IANS that the snag lasted about 40 minutes and that trains were running normal by 8.40 p.m.New Delhi, Oct 22 : The NITI Aayog on Monday hosted the fourth edition of its annual lecture series here which focused on leveraging artificial intelligence for inclusive growth.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the lecture in which the keynote address was delivered by NVIDIA Corporation's President and Co-Founder Jensen Huang. The address was followed by a panel discussion.

However, the contents of the lecture were not made available to the public or the media.

"I congratulate Jensen Huang, Founder, President and CEO of NVIDIA for an insightful talk on 'Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Inclusive Growth' at the NITI Aayog lecture earlier this evening," Modi tweeted after the lecture.New Delhi, Oct 22 : Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and in the defence and security sector will be high on the agenda when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe will hold their annual bilateral summit this month, Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu said on Friday.

Modi will be visiting Japan on October 28-29 in what will be his third visit for the annual bilateral summit.

India is the only country with which Japan holds an annual bilateral summit while India holds a similar summit with Russia too.

Speaking at a briefing organised by the think-tank Brookings India here, Hiramatsu referred to Modi's statement that Japan is the cornerstone of India's Act East Policy.

He recalled the joint statement issued following last year's annual bilateral summit in India which called for a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.

"I am sure in the (upcoming) meeting, the two leaders will discuss the region in more concrete terms," Hiramatsu said.

Last year, a quad comprising India, Japan, the US and Australia was revived that seeks to work for peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.

"The quad had a second meeting in June this year and the process is steadily growing," the Ambassador said.

He also said that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) regional bloc has to play a central role in the Indo-Pacific region, a view that India also holds.

Regarding cooperation in the defence and security sector, Hiramatsu said that India and Japan, along with the US, regularly hold the Malabar naval exercise.

"From November 1 to 14, the ground-based defence forces of Japan and the Indian Army will hold a joint exercise in Mizoram that will also include counter-terrorism exercise," he said.

He also that the air defence forces of Japan and the Indian Air Force too will also hold a join exercise soon.

Stating that India has shown interest in Japanese submarines, he said that talks are going on for this though there has been no outcome as yet.

"We are also discussing a Japanese high tech amphibian aircraft also and I hope there will be progress made in this regard (during the summit)," Hiramatsu said.

He also indicated that a mutual logistics support agreement might be signed following the summit.

On the strong trade and investment relationship between the two countries, he said that Japan is the largest investor in the infrastructure sector in India.

"We will continue with our Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) programme in India," Hiramatsu said.

"Last year, the highest financial aid was provided under the ODA."

Stating that Japan is working on key connectivity projects in northeastern India, the Ambassador said that work is on on national highways in the states of Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

"Another road is being developed connecting the Assam-Bhutan border with the Meghalaya-Bangladesh border," he stated.

He also said that India offers a lot of business opportunities to Japanese companies.

"Prime Minister Abe says a strong India is in Japan's best interest," Hiramatsu said.

Regarding the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he said that Indian is an important partner for Japan during the discussions going on for this.

RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 Asean member states and the six states with which this regional bloc has existing free trade agreements - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.Bengaluru, Oct 22 : Software major Infosys on Monday jointly unveiled the 4.0 version of Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework for industry, utilities and infrastructure enterprises, with Finland-based consulting and engineering firm Poyry plc.

"The Kriti 4.0 version AI framework addresses lifecycle management challenges industry, utilities and infrastructure enterprises face in operational technology (OT) systems," said the city-based IT behemoth in a statement here.

The Vantaa-based Finnish firm serves clients globally in energy and industrial sectors and provides engineering services in its core markets.

"The new version applies AI, cognitive/machine learning and Machine to Machine (M2M) capabilities to the industrial environment by identifying critical enterprise systems and assets and provides better understanding of their behavior to create value for their customers," said the statement.

Infosys AI platform executes complex, advanced analytics and machine learning models, exchanging information with Poyry's RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability, safety) methodology.

Launched in April 2017, the Nia software collects an enterprise data from people, processes and legacy systems into a self-learning knowledge base and automates repetitive business and IT processes, freeing human role in solving customer problems.

The new framework also empowers decision-makers with real-time knowledge for operating and maintaining their OT systems, using predictive and prescriptive analytics.

The new platform also reduces system maintenance costs and operation shutdowns and improves reliability, employee and environmental safety.

"In digital world, our clients need to leverage their assets to create tangible RoI (return on investment) in a short time. Our IoT services are focused on impacting top line and bottom line, leveraging capabilities to remote-monitor products and assets, prevent breakdowns and analyse data to optimise performance across the production system," said Infosys engineering services head Nitesh Bansal.

Poyry's energy business group president Richard Pinnock said in Krti, real-time data from critical assets was converted to information with computing and business intelligent algorithms, enabling proactive prescriptive decision-making.Guwahati, Oct 22 : At least 60 organisations, including the Congress, have called a 12-hour Assam bandh on Tuesday to protest against a meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee with the Ministries of Home and External Affairs over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016.

The bill seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, drawing opposition from several organisations in Assam.

The BJP government in Assam, led by Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, has made adequate preparations to maintain peace and normalcy in the state.

The bandh called by the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) is supported by at least 60 organisations and pressure groups in Assam.

The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which is a partner of the BJP-led alliance government in the state, is organising a rally in protest against the JPC's proposed meeting with the MEA and MHA on Tuesday. The AGP said that at least 50,000 people will participate in the rally.

The organizations have called the bandh against the JPC meeting with the officials of MHA and MEA without visiting Assam for a second time to take on board every shade of opinion. Although the JPC, led by BJP MP Rajendra Agrawal, had visited Assam in May this year, not all organisations and leaders could meet it.

Sonowal on Monday held a meeting with senior ministers and BJP leaders to discuss the bandh called by different organisations. The government also issued directives to employees to report for duty on Tuesday.

Police have been asked to arrest the bandh supporters, and traders told to keep shops and business establishments open, failing which their trade licences will be cancelled.

The BJP leaders who met the Chief Minister on Monday also urged the government not to accord permission to a November 17 meeting of Bengali organisations in Guwahati, supporting the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016.

"The proposed meeting on November 17 is likely to result in law and order issues. We will not allow the November 17 meeting," said Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

He said that according to a Gauhati High Court order, calling a bandh is illegal. "The court has termed the bandh as illegal. We have to follow the court's order. Those calling a bandh will have to pay for the damages that they cause," he added.

The KMSS clarified that the organisation does not support calling bandhs, but a bandh call on Tuesday was necessitated as the BJP-led government in Assam is behaving in a dictatorial manner. "We cannot allow the government to make Assam a second Jammu & Kashmir or a Tripura, where the indigenous people have become a minority," said KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi.New Delhi, Oct 22 : Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday honoured senior advocate Fali Sam Nariman with Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration and said Nariman was one of the best eminent jurists in India.

"We are all seeing the turbulence in the legal fraternity including the judiciary. We have seen what happened in the recent days. Keeping all these in mind I call upon the young law practitioners to stand for justice," Naidu said after felicitating Nariman at his official residence.

"He is was one of the best eminent jurist in India and this felicitation doesn't add any glory to him. Instead this honour makes younger generation to take him as an inspiration" he added.

Naidu said that Nariman had always displayed an impeccable sense of justice, a deep sense of duty and profound concern for his fellow human beings.

Nariman is a distinguished Indian Constitutional jurist and senior advocate to the Supreme Court of India. Over the years, he has been the recipient of several honours and awards, both at national and international levels.

Remembering former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Naidu said that his integrity, wartime leadership and role in shaping of the Green and White Revolutions remain an inspiration for the entire country.

The Vice President also asked the youth to follow the values of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

"Your ideologies may be different but one should follow the values of Gandhi and Nehru whose ideas were to serve the poorest of the poor" he added.New Delhi, Oct 22 : A 54-year-old man suffering from depression has been held for killing his minor son in the national capital, police said on Monday.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Anto Alphonse said Om Prakash earlier worked as a vegetable vendor. "He was in debts and had a tense relation with his wife that is why he was depressed."

The officer said Prakash, who hails from Jind and currently resides in Najafgarh, killed his only son Deepak on Friday by poisoning and strangulating him in her wife's absence.

"When his wife returned home, she saw him trying to suffocate the child with a blanket. She immediately raised an alarm and the man fled," the police said.

The wife later noticed some dark powder around the son's mouth and one thick thread tied around his neck. Some scratch marks were also there on the neck.

The victim's mother took him to Rao Tularam Memorial Hospital with the help of their neighbours, where the son was declared brought dead.

Prakash was spotted by the police on Sunday in Bahadurgarh. He told the police that he was under depression due to a debt of Rs two lakh and wanted to die.Washington, Oct 22 : US President Donald Trump said on Monday that his country will begin cutting off or reducing aid to three countries in Central America, citing migrant caravan heading to the US border.

"Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US," said Trump in a morning tweet, Xinhua reported.

"We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," the US President added.

Regarding the incident as a "national emergency," Trump said in another tweet that he had alerted the US Border Patrol and Military as "it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States."

Over the weekend, thousands of migrants, mostly from Honduras, have swarmed into Mexico after passing the Guatemalan border. Media reported that Mexican police, watching vigilantly alongside, did not disturb the migrants' journey.

It was the latest among Trump's tweets warning against serious consequences about the migrant people who were heading toward the United States, seeking asylum.

Official data showed that the Trump administration has sharply slashed aid to the three countries in Central America, projecting a roughly 40-percent plunge in aid in the financial year of 2019 compared with that of 2016.New Delhi, Oct 22 : India on Monday described as "deeply regrettable" Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's remarks on Twitter in which he condemned "the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris" in Jammu and Kahsmir.

"The remarks made by Pakistan's Prime Minister in his tweet today (Monday) are deeply regrettable," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in response to queries from the media.

"Instead of making comments on India's internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues," Kumar said.

"Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours."

Kumar also said Pakistan's "deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world".

Khan in a tweet earlier in the day said: "Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris... by Indian security forces. It is time India realise it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people."

His remarks came after seven civilians were killed in an explosion in Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam district on Sunday shortly after a gunfight that had left three militants dead.Cape Town, Oct 23 : South Africans have been urged to fight gender-based violence in the guise of religion and faith.

Minister of Women in the Presidency Bathabile Dlamini made the appeal on Monday, reports Xinhua news agency.

"We condemn the acts of gender-based violence that occurred in the guise of religion and faith," Dlamini said at the trial of Nigerian Pastor Timothy Omotoso and two co-accused in the Port Elizabeth High Court, Eastern Cape Province.

Dlamini, along with Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane and Eastern Cape Premier Phumullo Masualle, attended the trial, indicating the high attention the government was attaching to the case.

"This is a turning point for everyone to ask themselves what they have done to protect women, especially the justice system," Dlamini said while addressing the public outside court.

Omotoso is charged with rape and human trafficking, while the two co-accused women are accused of recruiting girls from all over the country for purposes of sexual exploitation.

The three are facing more than 60 charges that include racketeering and rape.

The 58-year-old televangelist allegedly trafficked more than 30 girls and women who were from various branches of his church to a house in Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, where he allegedly sexually exploited them.

Omotoso was arrested on April 20 last year. According to prosecutors, some of the alleged victims were as young as 13 years old.

The case has sparked public interest in South Africa, where there is a history of so-called holy men taking advantage of their congregations.

"Today we find adults who took children to places of worship who are accomplices since they also contributed to the grooming of these children as sex slaves," Dlamini said.

"We condemn the hijacking and use of our own buildings and sites for illegal religious practices," she said. "What is happening in these places of worship is human trafficking...

"These abuses can be in churches, in synagogues, in mosques, on mountains, under the sea and in heaven above," she said.United Nations, Oct 23 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a thorough investigation into the circumstances leading to the death of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"The Secretary-General stresses the need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Khashoggi's death and full accountability for those responsible," his deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said on Monday, reports Xinhua news agency.

The UN issued a statement over the weekend, saying that its chief was "deeply troubled" by the confirmation of the death of Khashoggi. The Secretary-General also extended his condolences to Khashoggi's family and friends.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday called the killing of Khashoggi a "huge and grave mistake" while insisting on the innocence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Saudi Public Prosecution announced on Friday the death of the Saudi journalist amid growing pressure from some Western countries on the kingdom to explain the disappearance of the missing journalist following a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.Mumbai, Oct 23 : Actor Samir Kochhar will be funding a documentary which revolves around the life of people from the LGBTQ community.

Some students from a university in Ranchi approached Samir with the idea of funding the documentary. It will be about how people from the community deal with their issues after the Supreme Court decision to de-criminalize homosexuality.

"I think in today's time people have become more receptive and open about such topics. I believe what matters is a story and this is something which needs to be told. I feel proud to be part of this change and help them get the recognition they deserve," Samir said in a statement.

"I can't talk in detail about it right now. But all I can say is that this is basically an effort to bring a small change in the life of people after the decision on Section 377 (of the Indian Penal Code) by highlighting their stories and struggles through that phase so they get their place in the society," he added.

Samir feels that "change has already taken place".

"The fact that people are now openly accepting their relationships and rights is a sign that it is only moving forward. And now they can claim their rights and don't have to be shy about anything. Also, such documentaries can add up to this in a big way," he added.Kolkata, Oct 23 : Amid the bickering at the top in the CBI that saw the agency arrest one of its senior officials, anti-BJP parties in West Bengal on Monday accused the Modi government of reducing the agency into a "political tool".

The internal war within the CBI took a new turn on Monday with the agency arresting its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar following bribery allegations against CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana, the number 2 who is at war with Director Alok Verma.

"If such is the situation in the country's top most independent investigating authority, then who will the common people rely on? If the government attempts to take control of an independent agency, such a situation is bound to arise," West Bengal Congress President Somen Mitra said.

The state's ruling Trinamool Congress, whose leaders were previously interrogated and arrested by the agency in several cases including the Saradha ponzi scam, termed the chain of events within the CBI as "laughable".

"Those who raise questions on others' integrity and credibility are found to be corrupt themselves. I saw a news headline that said CBI raids CBI office. It is like a thief is going to catch another thief. There is nothing more laughable than this," Trinamool Congress MP and party supremo Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee said.

Left leaders also accused the BJP of using CBI for its political benefit.

"CBI is being used as a political tool. It is quite evident if you see the progress in the Saradha and Narada probe. The CBI sends notices to the accused when elections approach and then goes off to sleep when the elections get over," CPI-M MP Mohammad Selim said.

The arrest of CBI official Kumar on Monday comes a day after the agency registered an FIR against Asthana and several others for allegedly accepting bribes to settle a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, who is facing multiple cases of money laundering and corruption.

The CBI has alleged that bribes were given at least five times in December 2017 and October 2018.Bengaluru, Oct 23 : A dozen ministers and leaders of the ruling Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) coalition government on Monday jointly launched their campaign for the five by-elections in Karnataka on November 3.

With Dussehra holidays ending on Sunday, senior leaders and ministers of the both the parties have fanned out in the three Lok Sabha and two assembly segments to campaign for the joint candidates, a Congress official told IANS here.

The three parliamentary seats are Ballari (reserved), Mandya and Shimoga while the two Assembly seats are Jamkhandi in Bagalkote district and Ramanagara near Bengaluru.

Former Congress Chief Minister and party leader in the Assembly Siddaramaiah addressed public meetings and participated in rallies in Ballari for its candidate V.S. Ugrappa, a senior legislator in the legislative council.

In Jamkhandi, Deputy Chief Minister G. Paramehswara campaigned for Congress candidate Anand Siddu, son of Siddu Nyamagouda, whose death in a road accident on May 28 necessitated the by-election.

"We are confident of winning in all the five seats as our alliance partners have fielded joint candidates to prevent division of secular votes and defeat the BJP at any cost," said a Congress leader.

In the Shimoga contest, the party's state unit president Dinesh Gundu Rao and Revenue Minister R.V. Deshpande participated in the campaign for JD-S contestant Madhu Bangarappa.

"We have joined hands to keep communal forces out; both at the Centre and state levels. We will be successful," asserted Parameshwara.

In Mandya and Ramanagara, where JD-S candidates are in the fray, district leaders and cadres campaigned and held roadside meetings and went on door-to-door canvassing.

L.R. Shivarama Gowda is the JD-S contestant in Mandya.

In Ramanagara, JD-S contestant Anitha, wife of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, will campaign from Tuesday.

For the BJP, party's state unit president B.S. Yeddyurappa, K.S. Eshwarappa, C.T. Ravi and Shobha Karandlaje campaigned in Shimoga where the former's son B.Y. Raghavendra is contesting.

BJP's legislator B. Sriramulu campaigned for his sister and party's contestant B. Shanta in Ballari (Scheduled Tribe).

BJP's candidates are Siddaramaiah from Mandya, Srikant Kulkarni from Jamkhandi and L. Chandrashekar from Ramanagara.

Besides candidates of the three main parties, about 30 independents are in the fray in all the five seats.

Vote count will be held on November 6.\Los Angeles, Oct 23 : With the upcoming release of "Silencio," Mexican director Lorena Villarreal believes that her film is an important step not only for herself but also for all women.

"Now is the time to prove what we are able to do," Villarreal said on Sunday, referring to the opportunities that Hispanic women have in both Mexico and the US, not only in the film industry but also in other aspects of life, reports Efe news.

With the feminist movement in full swing, women were "less afraid" to express themselves and were producing "great change" step by step, the Mexican director said.

Villarreal also said that any woman who wants to be an actress, an astronomer or a doctor should not falter or be afraid, adding that she was contributing to a "great movement" with "Silencio," which meets international quality standards thanks to the thorough work of a very diverse team.

In addition to directing the film, the Los Angeles resident also wrote and co-produced "Silencio," which tells the story of Anna, a successful single mother portrayed by Melina Matthews, whose child is abducted by a group of people seeking to get a hold on a powerful stone discovered by the kid's grandfather.

The film - which takes place in Mexico's mysterious "Zone of Silence" - also features John Noble, known for his performance as Denethor in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.Tehran, Oct 23 : Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said his country will manage to abort anti-Iran sanctions by the US, Press TV reported Monday.

"Many countries have shown readiness to do business with Iran" despite US sanction threats, Zarif was quoted as saying, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Serious measures" must be taken by European states to protect the Iranian nuclear deal before Washington imposes the second round of sanctions on November 4, he added.

According to the Iranian Minister, Britain, France and Germany, three European signatories to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, have made commitments and proposals despite some unresolved technical details.

Other countries which attach great importance to the international pact, including Russia, China and Japan, "are ready to implement their part", Zarif noted.

"We are selling our oil (and) we are able to maintain our economy," he vowed.

The US has been pushing its allies to slash oil imports from Iran since the beginning of this year.

Senior US officials have said Washington aims to cut Iran's oil exports to zero "to force Tehran to change its behaviour in the region".

New US sanctions on Iran's oil exports are set to kick in on November 4.Rome, Oct 23 : Russia should be allowed to rejoin the G8 group of nations and international economic sanctions should be lifted against Moscow, Italy's Premier Giuseppe Conte has said.

"We need to have (Russian President Vladimir) Putin at the G8 so we can tackle and solve problems that are currently intractable because we are not all the discussion table," Conte told reporters here on Monday ahead of his visit to Moscow this week.

Conte said there were "traditional relations and major economic ties" with Russia that under Putin's leadership could be re-launched and new commercial partnerships be forged between companies.

On the issue of the sanctions imposed on Russia after its 2014 invasion of Crimea, Conte said: "Our position is clear. They are a means to end. But you don't solve problems with trade restrictions."Rome, Oct 23 : Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has defended anti-migrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, rejecting accusations that he was racist or xenophobic.

"I often meet Salvini and exchange ideas. He's been called a racist and xenophobe but I have never encountered a trace of this," Conte told reporters at the Foreign Press Association here on Monday.

"The truth is that there has been a change in immigration policy. But the security degree not abolish the right to asylum or international protection," Conte went on.

Conte was referring to decree issued by the populist government in early October which toughens the rules for refugees and asylum-seekers and has been widely criticised on human rights grounds.

Dubbed the 'Salvini decree', the measures must be voted into law by the Italian Parliament with 60 days.Tehran, Oct 23 : Iran's top diplomat has said that a dialogue with the US remains open if it honours the 2015 Iranian international nuclear deal, IRAN daily reported.

US President Donald Trump could pave the way for dialogue by adhering to the 2015 deal the US "illegally" pulled out of earlier this year, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying, reports Xinhua news agency.

Zarif highlighted "mutual respect" required for dialogue.

"The US has failed to respect its legal obligations, its treaty obligations," Zarif noted.

Tehran has said it will not enter the talks with Washington under the spell of anti-Iran sanctions.

Meanwhile, Trump has voiced readiness to meet with Iran's leadership over the enduring issues between the two countries.

Following Trump's decision to quit Iran's nuclear pact on May 8, the US vowed to re-impose sanctions on Iran while punishing nations that have business links with Iran.

Washington's astounding withdrawal from the landmark nuclear deal was globally criticized. Some of Washington's major European allies have been working to prevent the nuclear deal from collapsing.Australian owned Property Bay Pty Ltd has signed purchase contracts to create a world class eco-resort and tourist destination on Dunk Island on Australias Great Barrier Reef.

The asset backed unit token project will start with an initial US$110 million capital raise, which will in-part be funded by crypto currency, with construction commencing in the first quarter of 2019 on a glamping site, 5-star hotel, swimming pools and other amenities.

The IM (Information Memorandum) is available by application.

Named by Captain Cook in 1770 after the First Lord of the Admiralty and First Earl of Sandwich George Montagu Dunk.

The Island is a pristine tropical Great Barrier Reef island situated 4km off the coast of tropical north Queensland near Mission Beach and is known as The Island of Peace and Plenty.

Its also famous for its restorative qualities due to former journalist and Senior Editor of the Townsville Bulletin Edmund James Banfield moving there in 1897 after being told he had 6 months to live. Banfield lived and wrote there, extending his life by 26 years before eventually dying in 1926.

Dunk Island, and surrounding palm-fringed Mission Beach is an incredibly idyllic area, where rainforest meets reef  with this project we intend to bring significant tourism, and in turn jobs, to the local community. says Tim Sommers spokesman and Co-Founder of Property Bay. 

The Dunk Island project will be a global first with technology and eco-tourism the primary drivers.

The aim is a zero-carbon footprint with Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, self-driving buggies and related tech underpinning the environment, Sommers said.

"The Island economy will be entirely driven through a utility token model that not only will be exchanged for goods and services, but will also reward customers for their energy footprint."The American hotel giant Hilton has picked Parramatta for a new 245-room luxury hotel, in a move harshly described by the Australian Financial Review as an "unlikely location".

Located 25 kilometres west of Sydneys CBD, Parramatta is a major business and commercial hub and a growing destination for business events.

The new hotel will replace the former AMP building at 20 Macquarie Street, which was once the tallest building in Parramatta.

It will be demolished with construction of a 90-metre building to kick off in 2020.

There are more than 540 Hilton hotels around the world.

Western Sydney Business Chamber director David Borger welcomed the news.

I think weve really arrived as a city when we have brands like Hilton considering business here, he told The Daily Telegraph.

It used to be that if a city had a cathedral theyre doing well, but now its about getting Apple or Hilton.

Ledrae Hotels director Lionel Chang says he is thrilled to be bringing Hilton to Parramatta.

We have owned the building on the corner of Macquarie Street and Marsden Street since 1994 and look forward to this exciting transformation, he says.

With Macquarie Street being the oldest and most well-known street in Parramatta, we cannot think of a better address for what will be a fantastic hotel.A turreted beachfront terrace on Port Phillip Bay topped the nation's weekend auction sales, as clearance rates tumbled across the capital cities.

Sydney's weekend clearance rate dropped to 44 percent according to Domain, with Melbourne not faring too much better at 48 percent.

The deterioration had market watchers anticipate auction clearance rates dipping into the 30s.

SQM's Louis Christopher noted three previous times when Sydney auction clearance rates sunk into the 30s.

"That was in October/November 2008 during the GFC, May 2004 after the NSW vendor stamp duty was introduced and July 1989 when the cash rate hit 17 percent."

Domain chief analyst Nicola Powell said the trend suggested there would not be any improvement before the year is out.

"I think this is what we are going to see for Sydney for the rest of the year," she told Fairfax Media.

Dr Andrew Wilson at My Housing Market advised the marketed had "plunged to new depths" on Saturday in the toughest market conditions since the economic shock of the GFC.

"A rising crisis of confidence is now gripping markets with buyer and seller wariness," he noted.

CoreLogic noted there had been increase in auction volumes with 2,119 homes taken to auction across the capital cities, up from 1,851 over the previous week.

But it was still lower than the same time last year when 2,519 auctions were listed.

Preliminary CoreLogic results showed a clearance rate of 49.8 per cent across the capital cities, considerably lower than the 64.7 percent in mid-october last year.

"It marked the fourth consecutive week where the clearance rate has been below 50 per cent," Kevin Brogan noted.

Melbourne was host to 1,088 auctions.

The most expensive home sold in Melbourne was a four-bedroom terrace house with rooftop turrets at 213 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park (top) for $5.3 million after a $5.1 million opening vendor bid which was matched by a bidder.

Two other parties had flagged interest, but chose not to bid, and, after post auction negotiations, the sole bidder raised the offer by $200,000.The AFR columnist Christopher Joye has speculated the affluent Wentworth voters "might inflict massive financial losses on themselves in what is one of Australia's most investment-orientated electorates."

He was suggesting the electorate was playing dice with a Labor government and its housing policies as potentially detrimental.

Joye noted, according to the last census, the proportion of investment properties in Wentworth is 42 per cent higher than the national average (specifically, 44 per cent versus 31 per cent of all homes).

In addition to being an electorate of landlords, there is an unusually large number of renters in Wentworth, some of whom who might welcome Aussie house prices falling 10 per cent to 15 per cent, which is "base case before factoring in Labor's policies."

Joye noted RiskWise Property Research predicts that if Labor comes to power at the next Federal Election, the situation will get much worse with house prices slumping a further 9 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne as a result of its policies to eliminate negative gearing and hike capital gains tax (CGT) by 50 per cent for anyone who holds assets for 12 months or more.

"Extensive RiskWise modelling shows that, nationally, dwelling prices would fall nine to 12 per cent should the proposed changes to tax legislation be voted through," the RiskWise authors concluded.

The report found that Labor's proposal to eliminate negative gearing would be equivalent to a 23 per cent increase in interest repayments for a new property investor, lifting theeffective annual mortgage rate from 5.10 to 6.25 per cent.

The 50 per cent increase in CGT further reduces the net present value of a property by two percentage points assuming an historically low 4 per cent rate of annual capital gains.

Joye wrote the timing of Labor's policies could not be worse with the banking royal commission having wiped $42 billion off the value of the major banks - hammering super funds' equity portfolios - while limiting borrowers' access to credit.

"Even though Australian lenders have consistently maintained among the lowest mortgage default rates in the world, they are rationing credit to home owners because they are worried about breaching Labor's byzantine responsible lending laws, which have entangled the royal commission's activists.

"This is intensifying the correction in the housing market, which after appreciating almost 50 per cent since March 2012 has given back 4 per cent to 5 per cent of its value since October 2017 (and more than 7 per cent in Sydney).

"And with record numbers of apartments in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane still under construction, this pain is only likely to worsen."

Joye concluded that "the silver lining is that the bursting of the housing bubble blown by the RBA's ultra-cheap monetary policy has coincided with an economic boom fuelled by a highly competitive exchange rate and elevated commodity prices."I believe that Fides offers the best bank connectivity solutions on the market today and am proud to represent them.  Alexandra Liechti, Vice President, Client Relations and Marketing, Fides Treasury Services

Fides Treasury Services Ltd., the global leader in multi-bank connectivity and communications, has announced the hire of Alexandra Liechti as Assistant Vice President, Client Relations and Marketing.

Liechti brings more than 12 years of banking expertise to Fides, including 11 years at UBS. Most recently, she was Relationship Manager for External Asset Managers at Credit Suisse.

Global organizations trust Fides because we are committed to providing the highest level of service to our clients from day one, said Simon Kaufmann, Fides Head of Client Relations and Marketing. I am pleased to have Alexandra on board to help extend our reach while maintaining our commitment to customer service as we continue to innovate and grow.

Reporting to Kaufmann, Liechti will be responsible for strategic business development, client relations and account management for the industry-leading Fides multi-banking product portfolio.

I believe that Fides offers the best bank connectivity solutions on the market today and am proud to represent them, said Liechti. I look forward to playing an integral part in the companys market expansion.

Fides will be showcasing its award-winning multi-banking products and solutions for corporate treasurers at the AFP Treasury & Finance Annual Conference in Chicago, Nov. 4-7, 2018.

ABOUT FIDES

Fides is the global leader in multi-bank connectivity and transaction communications.

With the industrys largest bank connectivity network, Fides helps over 3,000 active clients communicate with more than 10,000 banks globally. Our geographic reach spans 170 countries across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions.

Committed to helping corporations optimally connect and interact with their banks for over a century, Fides solutions deliver critical multi-bank account statement, payment workflow and reporting capabilities that allow treasury and finance teams to easily, accurately and securely communicate with their banks through any possible channel such as SWIFT, EBICS, SFTP or any alternative network.

Press Contact: Please email marketing@fides.ch for all press inquiriesBy partnering with UNCF, we are supporting Fisk and Tennessee State students as they pursue their college degrees and chart their career plansin the auto industry or wherever their interests may lead.

Today, UNCF (United Negro College Fund) and Nissan North America announced a new scholarship program for students from Fisk University and Tennessee State. This award is the latest in Nissans long-standing history of supporting diversity and inclusion by providing scholarships to students attending historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

For more than 15 years, Nissan has been an invaluable supporter of UNCF, said Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO, UNCF. With their commitment, our students and the HBCUs that support them will continue to have a greater impact on their communities, ensuring a better world for us all.

The Nissan Scholars Program is available to sophomores and juniors and will provide a total of four $5,000 scholarships for two students attending Fisk University and two students attending Tennessee State majoring in business, computer science or engineering. Additionally, the four students will have the opportunity to engage with Nissan leadership through summer internship opportunities and on-campus informational sessions.

Nissan is committed to enriching peoples lives, and education is a major driver in helping people achieve their full potential, says Vicki Smith, senior manager, Corporate Social Responsibility. By partnering with UNCF, we are supporting Fisk and Tennessee State students as they pursue their college degrees and chart their career plansin the auto industry or wherever their interests may lead.

According to a landmark study commissioned by UNCF, Fisk University and Tennessee State are valuable economic engines in their community, collectively generating $507 million in total economic impact, and 4,192 in jobs for the state of Tennessee.

Applications for the Nissan scholarship will be accepted through Nov. 2. Please visit UNCF.org/Nissan for more information or to apply for a scholarship.

About UNCF

UNCF (United Negro College Fund) is the nations largest and most effective minority education organization. To serve youth, the community and the nation, UNCF supports students education and development through scholarships and other programs, strengthens its 37 member colleges and universities, and advocates for the importance of minority education and college readiness. UNCF institutions and other historically black colleges and universities are highly effective, awarding nearly 20 percent of African American baccalaureate degrees. Its logo features the UNCF torch of leadership in education and its widely recognized motto, A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a wonderful thing to invest in. Today, UNCF supports more than 60,000 students at more than 1,100 colleges and universities. Learn more at UNCF.org or for continuous news and updates, follow UNCF on Twitter @UNCF.

About Nissan North America, Inc.

In North America, Nissan's operations include automotive styling, engineering, consumer and corporate financing, sales and marketing, distribution and manufacturing. Nissan is dedicated to improving the environment under the Nissan Green Program and has been recognized annually by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency as an ENERGYSTAR Partner of the Year since 2010. More information on Nissan in North America and the complete line of Nissan and Infiniti vehicles can be found online at http://www.NissanUSA.com and http://www.infinitiusa.com, or visit the U.S. media sites NissanNews.com and infinitinews.com.As an open initiative, the Democracy Learning Channel invites faculty and students across the country to participate in a discourse focused on the history, purpose, and value of democracy and our democratic institutions.

Campus Compact and panOpen this week announced the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate and the National Constitution Center as the first contributing organizations to the Democracy Learning Channel (DLC), a recently-announced initiative from panOpen and Campus Compact that will provide free tools and guidance for college instructors to advance student civic learning through panOpens Open Educational Resources platform. These organizations represent the first contributors to this project among other content partners expected to join this fall.

Materials provided through DLC will be organized into a cross-disciplinary range of curated courses focused on student civic learning. Content will be overseen by panOpen and Campus Compact and developed with the help of partner organizations and content experts representing diverse perspectives. Materials will be available under Creative Commons licenses to ensure that instructors can use and alter materials to suit the needs of their classrooms.

Were excited to work with the Edward M. Kennedy Institute and the National Constitution Center to build the Democracy Learning Channel, said Andrew Seligsohn, president of Campus Compact. Their expertise in the field of civic engagement will help instructors provide creative, engaging, and experiential learning opportunities for students, helping us better meet our goal of assuring that students are prepared to engage responsibly in public life and politics.

Whats unique about this project is that organizations like the Edward M. Kennedy Institute and the National Constitution Center are contributing their voices to a civic learning experience that is inherently collaborative, said Brian Jacobs, founder and CEO of panOpen. As an open initiative, the Democracy Learning Channel invites faculty and students across the country to participate in a discourse focused on the history, purpose, and value of democracy and our democratic institutions.

Understanding the Constitution is essential for all Americans, said Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. Our free and nonpartisan Interactive Constitution has received more than 19 million hits since its online launch, and we are about to launch a Classroom Edition that will include materials for teachers and videos with Supreme Court justices. We are excited whenever groups like Campus Compact and panOpen distribute the Interactive Constitution to an even broader audience.

Its never been more important for students to understand how our government works, and we look forward to collaborating with great partners like Campus Compact and panOpen to take the work we do at the Institute every day and extend it beyond our walls. The Democracy Learning Channel is an exciting vehicle to expand access to important educational materials, said Caroline Angel Burke, vice president of education, visitor experience, and collections at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.

The first courses of the Democracy Learning Channel will be released this fall and made available to pilot immediately. This work is a part of Campus Compacts Education for Democracy, a non-partisan initiative that pledges to help heal and reinvigorate democracy by engaging students in courses, programs, and activities designed to develop the knowledge, skills, and motivations essential for responsible and effective participation in democracy.

About Campus Compact:

Campus Compact is a national coalition of 1000+ colleges and universities committed to the public purposes of higher education. Campus Compact supports institutions in fulfilling their public purposes by deepening their ability to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility. As the largest national higher education association dedicated solely to campus-based civic engagement, we provide professional development to administrators and faculty to enable them to engage effectively, facilitate national partnerships connecting campuses with key issues in their local communities, build pilot programs to test and refine promising models in engaged teaching and scholarship, celebrate and cultivate student civic leadership, and convene higher education institutions and partners beyond higher education to share knowledge and develop collective capacity. Visit http://www.compact.org.

About panOpen:

Designed by educators, panOpen is a learning platform that realizes the promise of open educational resources (OER) by providing all of the components required for their widespread use. panOpen offers complete peer-reviewed content, customization tools, assessments, analytics, LMS integration, and a means of financially sustaining campus-based OER efforts. With panOpen, faculty will adopt enhanced interactive OER as they would a commercial textbook, with confidence in the quality and reliability of the content. panOpen preserves the virtues of OERradically reducing textbook costs and freeing faculty from the constraints of commercial copyrightwhile delivering the quality, features, and ease-of-use faculty expect from their learning materials. The result has enormous implications for pedagogical practices, changing the relationships of instructors and students to their educational content. For more information, visit http://www.panopen.com and follow @panopen on Twitter.

About the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate:

The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate is a nonprofit organization in Boston envisioned by the late Senator Ted Kennedy; it is dedicated to educating the public about the important role of the Senate in government, encouraging civic participation, and invigorating civil discourse. Through digital exhibits, interactive educational offerings, and topical programs, the Institute engages students and visitors in a conversation about the essential role each person plays in our democracy and in our society. Learn more via emkinstitute.org.

About The National Constitution Center:

Distributing digital educational content nationally and internationally, the National Constitution Center is proud to be a primary source for civic education and information about the U.S. Constitution. The core of our educational resources is the Interactive Constitution, hailed by USA Today as an internet sensation. Averaging about 500,000 unique page views per month, this nonpartisan online tool presents the full text of the U.S. Constitution and features essays by leading scholars that detail areas of agreement and disagreement across a range of legal and philosophical perspectives. The National Constitution Center has pledged to bring it to every student in America. The Interactive Constitution was made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and under the advisement of the American Constitution Society and The Federalist Society. For more information, visit constitutioncenter.org.We are excited about this proven fabric innovation as it directly answers the wearers needs for dependable FR protection in a more comfortable, breathable fabric from a brand they trust  Nomex.

DuPont Safety & Construction today announced the launch of Nomex Comfort, an innovative lightweight fabric combining the legendary flame resistant (FR) protection of Nomex with enhanced comfort and breathability.

In talking with safety managers and wearers, we understood that one of their key challenges is finding not only compliant but comfortable PPE, said John Richard, Vice President and General Manager for DuPont Kevlar and Nomex. We are committed to constantly discovering and delivering solutions that matter and help solve our customers toughest challenges, and that is what has led us to launch a new fabric in the North American industrial market; Nomex Comfort. We are excited about this proven fabric innovation as it directly answers the wearers needs for dependable FR protection in a more comfortable, breathable fabric from a brand they trust  Nomex.

DuPont Nomex is synonymous in the industry with the term protection and delivers proven protection to millions of people and critical processes around the world  empowering endless possibilities. New Nomex Comfort provides inherent FR protection you expect from Nomex with an optimized blend that enhances comfort and breathability  delivering comfort without compromise.

Nomex Comfort is the latest innovation in protection for the oil and gas, petrochemical and general manufacturing industries. While this new material is the lightest weight Flame-Resistant Personal Protective Equipment (FR PPE) fabric to meet NFPA 2112 and NFPA 70E standards, Nomex Comfort provides enhanced inherent heat and flame protection. It also absorbs much less moisture than cellulosic fibers such as cotton and viscose, therefore, garments made of Nomex Comfort can dry faster, making the wearer feel more comfortable. It will be available in a variety of colors and weights, providing more options when choosing professional FR personal protection equipment (PPE).

Nomex Comfort fabric is being launched at the National Safety Council Congress and Expo taking place in Houston, Texas, Oct. 22-24, 2018, and it will be featured in Bulwarks booth #3021 and as part of the shows Best in Show New Product Showcase. Nomex Comfort fabric will be exclusively offered by Bulwark in their iQ Series Mobility line.

About DuPont Safety & Construction

DuPont Safety & Construction, a DowDuPont Specialty Products Division business, is a global leader in products and solutions that protect what matters  people, structures and the environment  and enables its customers to win through unique capabilities, global scale and iconic brands including Corian, Kevlar, Nomex, Tyvek, Styrofoam and Filmtec.

About DowDuPont Specialty Products Division

DowDuPont Specialty Products, a division of DowDuPont (NYSE: DWDP), is a global innovation leader with technology-based materials, ingredients and solutions that help transform industries and everyday life. Our employees apply diverse science and expertise to help customers advance their best ideas and deliver essential innovations in key markets including electronics, transportation, building and construction, health and wellness, food and worker safety. DowDuPont intends to separate the Specialty Products Division, which will be called DuPont, into an independent, publicly traded company. More information can be found at http://www.dow-dupont.com.

The DuPont Oval log, DuPont and all products, unless otherwise noted, denoted with ,  or  are trademarks or registered trademarks of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company or its affiliates.We strive to provide the highest quality care, while creating an office environment that builds patient trust. Were committed to making you smile. - Dr. Michael Derakhshan

Dental Care Alliance (DCA) is proud to announce its newest affiliated office, Advanced Dental Care of Riverview is now open. Located at 13018 S US Highway 301 in Riverview, Florida, the practice provides general and cosmetic dentistry, including Invisalign, whitening, and more.

Drs. Thuy Nguyen and Michael Derakhshan are excited to being treating patients in this new office. We are proud to be a part of the growing Riverview community and its surrounding areas. We look forward to treating patients at our new, state-of-the-art office, said Dr. Nguyen. Dr. Derakhshan added, We strive to provide the highest quality care, while also creating an office environment that builds patient trust. Were committed to making you smile.

To celebrate the opening of this new location, the Advanced Dental Care of Riverview team will host a ribbon cutting celebration on November 16th from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. All are welcome to attend to meet the staff, tour the brand new office, and enjoy refreshments and prizes.

This is Advanced Dental Cares 22nd location. The practices offer full-service dentistry with compassionate care. Advanced Dental Care is proud to accept most insurance plans and offer flexible financing options, and most offices have extended or weekend hours available for their patients convenience.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Sarasota, FL, Dental Care Alliance supports nearly 300 affiliated dental practices in 16 states, including Advanced Dental Care of Riverview, making it one of the largest multi-branded dental support organizations in the country. DCA-affiliated practices provide a full suite of dental services, including general dentistry, hygiene, pediatric dentistry, orthodontics, endodontics, periodontics and oral surgery. DCAs mission is to improve the practice of dentistry by partnering with and supporting dental professionals, so they can create a lifetime of healthy smiles for their patients.Dr. Akbari to discuss digitalization in the insurance industry

AKnowledge Partners, LLC, a global advisory firm providing high-impact consultative strategies, solutions and advice to the worlds leading executives, Fortune 1000 companies and private equity firms, today announced that its CEO, Dr. Homaira Akbari, will be presenting at the 10th Annual International Conference of the French Insurance Federation (FFA): Pushing back the limits of insurability, which is being held on October 26, 2018 in Paris, France.

Dr. Akbaris panel, Digital insurability, will discuss how a better access to data and higher processing power drive new opportunities for expanding insurability while managing the challenges related to cyber risks and data protection. The panelists include:



Homaira Akbari, President and CEO, AKnowledge Partners, LLC

Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO, Atos

Shirine Khoury-Haq, COO, Lloyds of London

Victoria Saporta, Chair of the Executive Committee, IAIS

Pierre de Villeneuve, Chairman, BNP Paribas Cardif

(Moderator) Anna Maria DHulster, Secretary General, The Geneva Association

About FFAs Annual International Conference

Over the years, FFAs Conference has become the leading event for the insurance industry in Europe, bringing together the most important decision-makers of the insurance world as well as the business and political worlds in general. This year marks the Tenth Anniversary Edition. For additional information, visit https://www.ffa-conference-internationale.fr/en/

About Dr. Homaira Akbari

Dr. Homaira Akbari is President and CEO of AKnowledge Partners, LLC, a global strategy advisory firm providing services to leading private equity funds and large corporations in the sectors of Internet of Things, Cyber Security, Big Data and Analytics, and Supply Chain Visibility. Dr. Akbari serves on the Board of Directors of several Fortune 500 companies including Banco Santander S.A., Landstar System, Inc., Gemalto N.V., and Veolia.

About AKnowledge Partners, LLC

AKnowledge Partners, LLC, is a global advisory firm providing high-impact consultative strategies, solutions and advice to the worlds leading executives, Fortune 1000 companies and private equity firms. AKnowledge Partners services have guided clients in the technology sectors of The Internet of Things (IoT), Security, Big Data and Analytics. For additional information, visit http://www.aknowledge.us.

Media and Analyst Briefings

To schedule a briefing with AKnowledge Partners, please contact AKnowledges PR team at barry@eych2.com.The Aloette team was so thrilled to welcome butter LONDON to the Astral family, so it was only natural that we started working towards featuring them in our new A-List program, said Cathy McKenna, President of Aloette Cosmetics

Aloette Cosmetics, North Americas premier age-defying beauty brand, recently released the second Aloette A-List box featuring a cult-favorite butter LONDON nail lacquer. A-List is a membership-based program, which offers a unique beauty experience with bi-monthly boxes, exclusive product discounts and offers and insider news. The fall-inspired October box includes butter LONDONs Patent Shine 10X Nail Lacquer in the shade British Khaki. The two clean-beauty brands are joined together in more ways than one after Astral Brands, Inc. announced the completed purchase of butter LONDON in July 2018. This family of beauty brands redefines clean beauty with innovative product offerings and high-performance beauty solutions for women and men around the globe.

The Aloette team was so thrilled to welcome butter LONDON to the Astral family, so it was only natural that we started working towards featuring them in our new A-List program, said Cathy McKenna, President of Aloette Cosmetics. We launched this box as a way for beauty lovers to treat themselves every other month to high-quality beauty products, and this stunning nail lacquer is the perfect addition.

The second A-List box features Aloettes limited-edition Gloss on the Go (Day + Night) Travel Lip Compacts; Lip Difference lip treatment; Soothe N Smooth Lip Balm and Lip Exfoliator; and British Khaki Patent Shine 10X Nail Lacquer. In addition to the bi-monthly beauty box, all A-Listers receive a 15% discount on all full-priced items on the Aloette website, exclusive support from an Aloette Beauty Consultant, plus much more.

Aloette has always been committed to clean beauty products, and its been a pleasure spotlighting another brand that aligns with that movement, said McKenna. butter LONDON is a cruelty-free brand known for their commitment to Feel Good Beauty without sacrificing quality.

butter LONDON's creme nail polish comes in its renowned, good-for-you 8-Free formula that omits Formaldehyde Resin, DBP, Toluen, Camphor, Ethyl Tosylamide, Xylene or TPHP. This high-shine polish is a fall essential with a wearable khaki green colour thats perfect for everyday. Equipped with a dense curved brush applicator, this polish allows maximum precision for salon-like application. Part of butter LONDONs Patent Shine 10X collection, this long-lasting polish glides on smoothly for a pigmented, gel-like cushion finish and shine that remains on the nails for up to 10 days of wear. Fortified with innovative Diamond Powder, this polish is proven to promote brighter, stronger, healthier nails with each use.

Astral Brands, Inc. is the name behind a family of beauty brands dedicated to innovation in the clean and clinical beauty category. Established as a leader in natural and plant-based skincare and color cosmetics, the Atlanta-based company operates through its portfolio of four distinct brands: Aloette, COSMEDIX, PUR and butter LONDON.

In addition to polish, Aloettes A-List box includes a 20 percent off coupon for a nail polish purchase on the butter LONDON website (US only). The October box is available to order through October 30th, while supplies last http://www.aloette.com/a-list.asp.

About Aloette Cosmetics

Aloette is America's premier age-defying beauty brand, providing women of all ages and origins with the highest quality skincare and cosmetic products available, as well as the most rewarding home-based business opportunities in the health and beauty industry. Incorporating cutting-edge cosmetic ingredients and technology, Aloette offers an array of innovative makeup and skin solution lines designed to deliver superior results. Aloette Cosmetics is an Astral Brands company. For more information, visit https://www.aloette.com/index.asp.

About butter LONDON

Founded in 2005 by a British entrepreneur and Londons premier fashion manicurist, butter LONDON catapulted into the runway world bringing a refreshingly hip and haute fashion sense to nails. This trailblazing luxury approachfueled with a better-for-you ingredient philosophyquickly made butter LONDON the first world-renowned, high-fashion 3-Free nail lacquer brand. Today, we create fun, imaginative, good-for-you products for eyes, lip, face and nail using the same ingenious Crafted with Care approach to formulations. Our nail lacquers are now 8-Free and our clean makeup collection is always free of parabens, mineral oil, petrolatum, sodium lauyl sulfate, phthalates, BHA and triclosan. We believe makeup and nail polish should be easy, leave you feeling happy and looking polished...for Feel Good Beauty you can trust.

For more information on butter LONDON, visit http://www.butterlondon.com.AngelMD Logo Raydiant's new breakthrough status confirms that safe, effective tools to give doctors better information about in utero well being are necessary and timely.

In the United States, roughly one out of every three babies born in the United States are delivered via cesarean section. According to key stakeholders, nearly half of these c-section deliveries are medically unnecessary. These major surgeries carry risks such as postpartum hemorrhage, rupture of the uterus, cardiac arrest, infection, complications from anesthesia, and much more.

Raydiant Oximetry, Inc. is a California-based company that has developed a safe and noninvasive technology that directly monitors a baby's oxygenation during pregnancy. For clinicians who are dissatisfied with the lack of tools available to assess the baby during childbirth, this technology will lead to improved decision making and better care to mother and baby. Today, the company is announcing that it has been awarded Breakthrough Device status by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"The FDA's approval for a Breakthrough Medical Device status is an incredible validation for the work that we are doing," said Raydiant Oximetry CEO Dr. Neil P. Ray. "Not only does it accelerate the path towards FDA approval, it's also a public health validation that what we have been developing is a global priority for the health of mothers and babies."

The FDA's Breakthrough program is targeted towards medical devices that address significant unmet clinical needs. It provides an expedited pathway to approval for market access. This pathway affords the sponsor a priority review with senior personnel and less pre-market clinical data for expedited approval.

It is baffling that the public outcry over our current c-section rate isn't louder than it is, said AngelMD Lead Investor Dr. Wendy Whittington. Raydiant's new breakthrough status confirms that safe, effective tools to give doctors better information about in utero well being are necessary and timely. Tools to enable doing the right thing are welcome and necessary in this pivotal time for our healthcare system.

AngelMD announced in September 2018 that a group of its investors had completed a funding round in Raydiant Oximetry. The company is now working on building its next generation prototype, to improve accuracy and reliability, which is slated for completion in February of 2019.

About AngelMD

AngelMD is an investment and networking platform connecting innovative medical startups, physicians, investors, and industry partners. Leading physicians from all over the US have joined AngelMD to help source, evaluate and advise companies in biotechnology, medical device, and healthcare technology. For more information, visit http://www.angelmd.co

About Raydiant Oximetry

Founded in 2016, Raydiant Oximetry, Inc. is a medical device company that has developed a novel fetal monitor to improve patient outcomes for both mothers and babies during childbirth. This safe, non-invasive technology is the first of its kind in the industry, and is poised to become the standard of care for fetal monitoring during childbirth. Raydiant Oximetry, Inc. is currently in residence at the Fogarty Institute for Innovation in Mountain View, California. Visit http://raydiantoximetry.com/Apostrophe Logo This partnership with Forbes reflects Apostrophes commitment to excellence and innovation, and Im proud be included in this esteemed group of leaders.

Kathy Keating, CTO and Co-Founder of Apostrophe, a common sense healthcare savings platform for self-insured employers, has been accepted into Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives.

Keating was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of her experience. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honors.

We are honored to welcome Kathy into the community, said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Technology Council. Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.

As an accepted member of the Council, Kathy has access to a variety of exclusive opportunities designed to help her reach peak professional influence. She will connect and collaborate with other respected local leaders in a private forum. Kathy will also be invited to work with a professional editorial team to share her expert insights in original business articles on Forbes.com, and to contribute to published Q&A panels alongside other experts.

Finally, Kathy will benefit from exclusive access to vetted business service partners, membership-branded marketing collateral, and the high-touch support of the Forbes Councils member concierge team.

Joining the Forbes Technology Council is a great way to collaborate broadly across our industry. I love sharing what Ive learned with those I mentor, and Im confident Ill learn plenty from my peers in the Council, said Kathy. This partnership with Forbes reflects Apostrophes commitment to excellence and innovation, and Im proud be included in this esteemed group of leaders.

ABOUT FORBES COUNCILS

Forbes Councils is a collective of invitation-only communities created in partnership with Forbes and the expert community builders who founded Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). In Forbes Councils, exceptional business owners and leaders come together with the people and resources that can help them thrive.

For more information about Forbes Technology Council, visit forbestechcouncil.com. To learn more about Forbes Councils, visit forbescouncils.com.

ABOUT APOSTROPHE, INC.

Apostrophe is a common sense healthcare savings platform that delivers better healthcare benefits at lower costs to self-insured employers. Female-founded and guided by simplicity, transparency and love, Apostrophe is radically rewiring healthcare by changing how the money flows between employers, providers and members. With first-class concierge service and a curated suite of digital solutions, Apostrophe delivers benefits that actually feel like benefits and savings of 20% or more in the first year for its customers.

Based in Denver, Colorado, Apostrophe is a certified B Corporation and a Techstars graduate. For more information, visit http://www.apostrophehealth.com.

###

For information or to schedule an interview, contact:

Brett Schklar

Chief Marketing Officer, Apostrophe

303-883-2449

brett@apostrophehealth.comPersonal Injury Attorney Teresa Li

Personal injury attorney Teresa Li, founder of the Law Offices of Teresa Li, PC, recently won $2.5 million in a case, the insurance policy limit, on behalf of a client (plaintiff) who was struck by a motor vehicle while walking in a crosswalk. The case was filed in Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, Case No. 18 CV321503. As her client, who suffered emotional distress due to the accident, did not speak English, Li was able to take the case because she is bilingual (Chinese and English).

According to court documents, the plaintiff was crossing Highway 280 with the pedestrian walk signal on when the defendant, who was trying to turn right, hit her. The defendant was cited by the police for violation of Vehicle Code Section 21950(a) for failure to yield to pedestrians.

Court documents further state that because of the accident, the plaintiff sustained permanent loss of smell and traumatic brain injury, as well as psychological and emotional injuries. Court documents also state that she has not been able to work since the accident.

About Teresa Li, Law Offices of Teresa Li, PC

Teresa Li has been repeatedly selected by Super Lawyers Magazine as a Super Lawyers Rising Star and has been included in the Top Women Attorneys in Northern California list. Practice areas include brain injury, truck, bike and motorcycle accidents, wrongful death and more. Li is a member of the Litigation Counsel of America, in which only 0.5% of attorneys are invited to join. For more information, please call (888) 635-3259, or visit http://www.lawofficesofteresali.com. The law office is located at 315 Montgomery Street, 9th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104.

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.Gartner, the worlds leading IT research and advisory company, recently included knowledge sharing platform Bloomfire in its 2018 Market Guide for Digital Content Management for Sales. The guide includes profiles of leading vendors who provide software solutions for content owners to improve the delivery of internal- and external-facing content to salespeople.

According to Bloomfires COO, Mark Hammer, Bloomfires inclusion in the Gartner guide emphasizes the importance of being able to efficiently transfer knowledge throughout the sales process. If sales-related content and knowledge is spread across repositories, inboxes, and the minds of different employees, that knowledge is never going to have the impact that it could be having, said Hammer. Bloomfire brings that content together in one searchable place so that everyone can find the information they need to do their best work and move deals forward.

For sales teams that use Bloomfire, that often means being able to quickly find answers to prospects questions and locate the right sales content for their prospects buyer stage, industry, and use case.

Bloomfires powerful search engine is the key to the platforms ability to quickly connect teams with the knowledge they need. Bloomfire deep indexes all content uploaded or directly posted to the platform, including the words spoken in audio and video files, so that users can find what theyre looking for with a simple keyword search. Bloomfires search engine even infers searcher intent so that users see all relevant content, not just exact keyword matches.

The Bloomfire platform also integrates with Salesforce, Slack, and Google Chrome so that users can search for content from their Bloomfire Community without leaving the applications theyre already using.

The 2018 Market Guide for Digital Content Management for Sales is now available at http://www.gartner.com.

To learn more about the Bloomfire Knowledge Sharing Platform, visit http://www.bloomfire.com.

About Bloomfire

We recognize that in most organizations, knowledge is siloed. Information and research sits unshared on servers and laptops across the organization  and in the minds of the people that are a part of it. Bloomfire exists to democratize knowledge so that people can find the information they need to do impactful work. The company's easy-to-use, cloud-based Knowledge Sharing Platform and Insights Platform are used by hundreds of thousands of employees at leading companies for empowering sales and marketing, customer service, insights, and other teams. For more information or to schedule a demo, visit http://www.bloomfire.com.We are thrilled to be collaborating with MoAD on the publication and distribution of their books as we work together to build upon their important mission of connecting all people through their shared African heritage.Chris Gruener, Cameron publisher

Cameron + Company, publisher of quality books with a focus on photography, art, food and wine, childrens, and publications of regional interest, is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) on a series of art books. These publications reflect MoADs mission as a contemporary art museum that celebrates Black cultures, ignites challenging conversations, and inspires learning through the global lens of the African diaspora. MoADs commitment to showcasing the African diaspora through art, presented with the highest aesthetic standards, aligns perfectly with Cameron + Companys dedication to publishing books that need to be books. Celebrating the distinction of such an alliance, Publisher Chris Gruener says, We are thrilled to be collaborating with MoAD on the publication and distribution of their books as we work together to build upon their important mission of connecting all people through their shared African heritage.

Our first set of publications is a trilogy of books that highlight the exceptional past, artistic present, and groundbreaking future of the museum. Cameron + Company takes experience, history, multiple disciplines, vibrancy, relevance, and more to produce stunning books that provide a lasting legacy to the MoAD mission, says Cameron Creative Director Iain Morris.

Artists and topics featured include:



Toyin Ojih Odutolas solo exhibition, A Matter of Fact, which showcases the work of the Nigerian-born New York artist, inviting us to consider the social construct of class within the intersection of race, identity, sexuality, and gender. Ojih Odutola had her first major museum solo exhibition at MoAD, which was followed by a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City in early 2018. We and the museum are beyond excited to give fans of this quickly rising artist the chance to own a part of not only our history, but art history, as it happens, says Mark Sabb, director of marketing and communications at MoAD.

The next book in the series, Ficre Ghebreyesus: City with a River Running Through, is from an exhibition currently on view at MoAD that features the work of Eritrean-American artist Ficre Ghebreyesus. Highlighting his evocative, often surreal landscapes, which convey myriad influences, from the craft markets of Eritrea to the musical polyrhythms of the Black diaspora, the work addresses the forces that shaped the artists life. The book includes an essay by Ghebreyesuss wife, Elizabeth Alexander, a world-renowned poet and president of the Mellon Foundation, who wrote the best-selling memoir, The Light of the World, about Ghebreyesus after his death. Ghebreyesuss life and work speak so deeply about African diasporic experiences in our very recent past to today. More often we think about West Africa. But Ficres life and work reminds us of the essential nature of the entire continent and life in East Africa, the Horn of Africa, and its adjacencies in the Middle East. Then there are his travels through Europe and the United States. It is the textured geographies and the navigation of cultural exchange within diaspora that we all share. The artist evokes this spirit so beautifully, especially through his vivid use of color and by choosing water and the voyage as consistent themes in his work, says MoAD CEO-Director Linda Harrison.

The third in the series, Coffee, Rhum, Sugar & Gold, which coincides with the museums first original touring exhibition, explores the legacy of European colonialism in the Caribbean through the work of nine contemporary artistsAngel Otero, Adler Guerrier, Phillip Thomas, Leonardo Benzant, Lucia Hierro, Lavar Munroe, Andrea Chung, Ebony G. Patterson, and Firelei Baez. Whether connected to the Caribbean by birth or focused on the region by choice, the exhibiting artists use their work as a means of examining the relationship between the power structure, those who are controlled by it, those who benefit from it, and those who actively seek to liberate themselves from it.

Cameron + Company is delighted to build on this partnership with the Museum of the African Diaspora, which is an exciting and natural collaboration between a San Franciscofounded art publisher and a contemporary art museum that celebrates artistry and personhood.

About Cameron + Company

Founded in 1964 by aerial photographer Robert Cameron, Cameron + Company is a boutique publishing house that creates and distributes books that need to be books, with a focus on photography, art, food and wine, childrens, and publications of regional interest. Visit us at http://www.cameronbooks.com.

For more information, please contact:

Chris Gruener, Cameron + Company

707.559.5794; chris@cameronbooks.com

About MoAD

Opened in 2005 in San Franciscos Yerba Buena arts district, MoAD, a contemporary art museum, celebrates Black cultures, ignites challenging conversations, and inspires learning through the global lens of the African diaspora.

For more information about MoAD, visit The Museums website at moadsf.org.

For media information or visuals, visit their online press gallery or contact:

Mark Sabb

Director of Marketing and Communications

415.318.7148

msabb@moadsf.org

Online http://moadsf.org/press-center/

General Information

The Museum is open WednesdaySaturday 11am6pm and Sunday 125pm. Museum admission is $10 for adults, $5 for students and senior citizens with a valid ID. Youth 12 and under always get in free. For general information, the public may visit the museums website at moadsf.org or call 415.358.7200. MoAD is located at 685 Mission Street (at Third), San Francisco, CA.Colombia is a country full of untapped study abroad potential, and CEA hopes to provide the kind of programming there that allows more U.S. students to experience it.

CEA Study Abroad recently announced their newest program destination: Colombia. As one of the first U.S. international education providers to venture into this one-of-a-kind country, CEA looks forward to helping students discover everything Colombia has to offer, while giving them access to a high-quality education at the Universidad de La Sabana. Students will attend courses taught in English by La Sabanas predominantly Colombian faculty, learning alongside Colombian students.

I am excited for CEA to expand its portfolio into a non-traditional study abroad destination. It enhances the study abroad landscape and opens up more opportunities for students, said Caroline Walsh, Senior Vice President of Program Development. Im particularly proud to have partnered with the Universidad da la Sabana. Im confident students will feel at home on their campus, challenged by the academic rigor of the institution, and integrated into student life.

CEAs thorough, on-the-ground research of Bogota, Colombia, and Universidad de La Sabana clinched the decision to create new study abroad programming there, allowing U.S. students to experience one of the richest Latin American cultures while furthering their education. Factors contributing to CEAs decision include:



According to the U.S. State Department, 21st century Colombia is equally as safe as the most popular European study abroad destinations, including Spain, France, the U.K., and Germany.

Situated just north of Bogota city limits, Universidad de La Sabana features a beautiful, green campus resembling that of U.S. liberal arts colleges, and modern facilities, including several specialized laboratories for STEM, finance, journalism, and media studies students.

Colombia is a country full of untapped study abroad potential, and CEA hopes to provide the kind of programming there that allows more U.S. students to experience it. U.S. universities and students have already expressed a growing interest in Colombia as a study abroad destination, and CEA has exuberantly stepped up to the plate to meet their needs. Ms. Walsh summed up her teams approach perfectly: Our goal at CEA is to develop unique, high quality academic opportunities around the globe. We are excited that Colombia is the first of many new locations that we will be launching.

About CEA Study Abroad: Established in 1997, CEA Study Abroad provides international study and internship programs to U.S. university students, focusing on the holistic student experience of living and learning abroad. CEA offers programs in 22 locations, across Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The U.S. office is located in Phoenix, AZ.Monica Eaton-Cardone Celebrates Women in STEM for Global Diversity Awareness Month Equity for gender and race in STEM leadership will come from a balance of education, mentoring andaccording to Monica Eaton-Cardoneit will not happen until technology is democratized and the economic playing field has leveledenabling everyone to have an equal chance to succeed.

Women identifying as Latina, Black or Asian represented 35.3% of the total female population of the U.S. in 2015and that number is projected to rise to 50.6% by 2060. Despite this fact, women of color hold just 11% of all science and engineering jobs. The problem is even more pronounced at upper levels of management, where nonwhite women hold just 5% of senior and executive management positions and 4% of board seats.1 Equity for gender and race in STEM leadership will come from a balance of education, mentoring andaccording to Monica Eaton-Cardone, a global FinTech executiveit will not happen until technology is democratized and the economic playing field has leveledenabling everyone to have an equal chance to succeed.

China has near-parity between men and women in tech professions. In a survey by Silicon Valley Bank, it was learned that in China, nearly 80% of tech companies have women in C level jobs. In the U.S., its 54%.2 Eaton-Cardone points to the fact that technology is taught alongside other standard academic subjects in school, just like language or mathematics. Globally, the gender gap among children of primary school age dropped from more than 5% to 2% in 2016, according to a February, 2018, UNESCO report.3 We need to start early and foster a greater interest in science and technology education among young girls and people of color. Many of them will end up discovering an interest in the subject they didnt realize they had, noted Eaton-Cardone.

Eaton-Cardone recognizes that the world needs role modelswomen who have taken chances, faced educational and hiring challenges, pushed through on their own merits, seen opportunities to disrupt a field, and beat the oddswomen who have looked past gender and color.

Diana Trujillo, an engineer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is an example in fortitude. She is one of the first Hispanic women to break into the aerospace industry. Growing up in Colombia during the 1980s, she dreamt of escaping the civil unrest. She immigrated to the U.S. with $300 in her pocket and eventually received a degree in aerospace mechanics and biomechanics.4

Joycelyn Elders, the daughter of sharecroppers in Arkansas, went on to graduate as her high schools valedictorian and the first person in her family to attend college. Rising through medical practice and public health administration, in 1993 she became the 15th surgeon general of the U.S.the second woman and first African-American to hold that position.5

To whom did these women look for inspiration? Marie Curie, Polish physicist and chemist, who pioneered research on radioactivity after pressing forward and sacrificing much to gain an education, gave courage to generations of women. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S., and went on to create an internship program to help female medical students expand their skillsraising the bar for female professionals.

As a businesswoman in finance and technology, Monica Eaton-Cardone challenges women to bring positive change to tech innovations and reach equity on the merits of their production She offers strategies for women who are in STEM or are aspiring to STEM careers:

1. Mentorship: In a field as competitive as science and technology, its important to have an advocate who can show you the ropes and open doors for you. Melinda Gates is able to leverage her influence to forward women in finance. Her Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company which funds female and minority-led venture capital endeavors.6

For 15 years, LOreal USA has recognized postdoctoral female scientists with its Women in Science Fellowship, awarding grants to advance its research. The initiative encourages women to fend off resistance and prevents burn-out, an especially challenging scenario for minorities.7

She adds that women shouldnt simply seek a mentor for themselves; but, rather, should pay it forward and become a mentor to others. This can ease the transition from education into a career, and can even be accomplished online. CEO Sarah Haggards Tribute (findyourtribe.org) is an example of an online community pairing mentors and mentees, powered by an app.8

2. Track your merits: Measure your worth and keep track of your production record and statistics. Never depend on others to do it. STEM is all about objective outcomes and values. Its hard to deny statistics; your value will be right there, in black and white.

Eaton-Cardone recommends documenting all training, certifications, accolades, industry articles, research grants, fellowships and committee appointments. When sitting down with those in authority to determine your path, your merits translate into value for the organization.

3. Leverage and promote your wins: Let your story and voice be heard and remembered. Start in your local community, and engage employees, as well. Consider establishing programs to tutor students from area schools, or offer internships to provide hands-on experience. Host a STEM career day and spotlight different tech roles which will be hiring when students graduate, and demonstrate the skills theyll need to land those jobs.

From that point, you can position yourself for speaking engagements to business groups, penning articles, and posting blogs to education and business organizations. Set an example and enable younger women to reach higherfrom your pedestal.

STEM education is the best way to help ensure that women of diverse backgrounds and cultures have the experience and flexibility to be contributing to society a few decades from now. The women who will discover the cure for cancer or lead a mission to Mars are todays girls in need of inspiration and role models.

Monica Eaton-Cardone welcomes the chance to discuss opportunities for women in STEM at upcoming industry events. She has been a featured panelist at TRUSTECH, the IATA World Financial Symposium and TRANSACT, and is also available for interviews, panelist opportunities and future speaking engagements. For more information, visit http://monicaec.com.

About Monica Eaton-Cardone:

An acclaimed entrepreneur, speaker and author, Monica Eaton-Cardone is widely recognized as a thought leader in the FinTech industry and a champion of women in technology. She established her entrepreneurial credentials upon selling her first business at the age of 19. When a subsequent eCommerce venture was plagued by revenue-leeching chargebacks and fraud, Eaton-Cardone rose to the challenge by developing a robust solution that combined human insight and Agile technology. Today, her innovations are used by thousands of companies worldwide, cementing her reputation as one of the payment industrys foremost experts in risk management, chargeback mitigation and fraud prevention. As CIO of Global Risk Technologies and COO of Chargebacks911, Eaton-Cardone leverages her global platform to educate merchants on best practices in fraud prevention and to spotlight the competitive and economic advantages women can bring to the technology workforce. Her nonprofit organization, Get Paid for Grades, invests in students to inspire a new generation of innovators. Get to know Eaton-Cardone at http://monicaec.com.

1. Staff Writer. Women of Color in the United States. Catalyst.Org. 12 October 2017. Web

2. Lacy, Sarah. Women in Tech Are Rising Higher in China Than in the U.S. The Atlantic. 13 November 2017. Web.

3. Radu, Sintia. Around the World, Girls Still Face Challenges in STEM Education. U.S. News and World Report. 12 October 2018. Web.

4. Mulvey, Kelsey. One Female Engineer Shatters Spaces Glass Ceiling. Chase.Com. 1 August 2018. Web.

5. Staff Writer. Joycelyn Elders Biography. Biography.Com. 2 March 2018. Web.

6. Marinova, Polina. Why Melinda Gates has been Funding female VCs Through her Secretive Investment Firm. Fortune. 30 May 2018. Web.

7. Staff Writer. LOreal USA For Women in Science. LorealUSA.Com. 2018. Web.

8. Staff Writer. About Tribe. FindYourTribe.Org. 2018. Web.Consulting magazine Names the 2018 Women Leaders in Consulting Even though women make up about a quarter of the consulting profession, their overall impact is significantly greater, Kornik says. Its simply astounding how womenand particularly these 13 womenare shaking up the consulting profession.

ALMs Consulting magazine honors the profound difference women continue to make for their clients and their firms at the Women Leaders in Consulting Gala Awards Dinner on November 8 at the New York Palace Hotel. Debbie Simpson, a Senior Partner and Chief Financial Officer for the Boston Consulting Group, is being recognized with Consulting magazines Lifetime Achievement Award.

Simpson is a member of the BCGs Executive Committee, Operating Committee, and other core management teams. As CFO, she is responsible for the firms global finance function and financial matters, and she leads the BCGs global functions. Simpson joined BCG in 2001 and became CFO in 2007.

In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award, Consulting magazine will honor 12 other award recipients, including six Excellence in Leadership winners: Eileen Coveney of L.E.K. Consulting; Gina Gutzeit of FTI Consulting; Protivitis Ashley Hartley; Kara Murphy of Bain & Company; EYs Sonia Sande; and KPMGs Sandy Torchia.

The Excellence in Client Services award winners are: Jodi Bednar of West Monroe Partners; Mercers Cindy Gentry; Jessica Jarvis of ZS; and Pam McDonald of Impact Advisors. And the Future Leaders Award winners are: AT Kearneys Neeti Bhardwaj; and Cognizants Amanda Halabi.

Now in its twelfth year, the Women Leaders in Consulting award continues to grow in popularity and stature, said Joseph Kornik, Publisher & Editor in Chief of Consulting magazine. The quality of the nominations and the accomplishments of the winners continue to shock us every yearthe Women Leaders in Consulting gala is one of the highlights of our year.

As the publication of the consulting profession, Consulting magazine is honored to shine a light on the accomplishments of these women leaders and the firms they represent. Even though women make up about a quarter of the consulting profession, their overall impact is significantly greater, Kornik says. Its simply astounding how womenand particularly these 13 womenare shaking up the consulting profession.

The Women Leaders in Consulting will be featured in the December issue of Consulting magazine, which will be available on December 7. Online coverage can be found after that date on http://www.consultingmag.com. Please visit http://at.alm.com/womenleadersinconsulting2018 for additional dinner details.

About Consulting magazine

Consulting magazine is the flagship publication of the consulting profession featuring the latest information on consulting careers, thought leadership and corporate strategies. In addition to providing industry insights, Consulting hosts award dinners as part of our Achievement Awards serieshonoring Women Leaders in Consulting, The Top 25 Consultants, The Rising Stars of the Profession, and The Best Firms to Work For.

About ALM

ALM, an information and intelligence company, provides customers with critical news, data, analysis, marketing solutions and events to successfully manage the business of business. ALM serves a community of over 6 million business professionals seeking to discover, connect and compete in highly complex industries. Please visit http://www.alm.com for more information, and visit http://www.alm.com/events/ to learn about our upcoming events. Please follow us on Twitter @ALMMedia.Contract Logix New Product Line "Weve leveraged everything weve learned over our long history about mitigating contract risk and built it into these products that can be accessed anytime and anywhere via all of todays modern browsers and devices. Around our offices we like to say, Your Risk Stops Here!

Contract Logix, a long-time innovator of market-leading contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions, announced today the launch of its new product line. The launch coincides with the companys sponsorship of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Annual Meeting which began today in Austin, Texas.

One of the longest-tenured players in the CLM marketplace, and one of the industrys true pioneers, Contract Logix has reimaged and rearchitected its product line from the ground up, utilizing the most modern, state-of-the-art technologies in the process.

Designed with ease-of-use and maximizing user adoption in mind, the new products leverage the companys 12 years of experience helping businesses identify and minimize the amount of risk inherent in their contracts. The software helps professionals responsible for drafting, negotiating, approving, and managing contracts avoid:



Missed Renewal & Expiration Dates

Lack of Compliance and Governance

Broken Contractual Obligations

Unauthorized Data Access

With the launch of our new product line weve leveraged what weve learned over our long history to provide contract management software thats extremely easy to adopt by everyday business users, says Contract Logix CEO, Rick Ralston. But more importantly weve leveraged everything weve learned over that time about mitigating contract risk and built it into these products that can be accessed anytime and anywhere via all of todays modern browsers and devices. Around our offices we like to say, Your Risk Stops Here!

The worlds largest annual gathering of in-house and corporate counsel, the ACC Annual Meeting #ACCAM18 welcomes more than 3,000 attendees for 3 days of educational sessions, workshops, networking events, and exhibits by leading vendors serving the corporate counsel community. Contract Logix will be providing demonstrations of both its Express and Premium contract management software at its booth in the exhibit hall -- #202.

The Express product provides a secure central repository to store and manage data on contracts, contacts, and organizations, as well as all the documents associated with them. It also enables tasks and reminder alerts, so companies never miss an important contractual deadline, as well as reports and dashboards to keep track of contracts.

The Premium product provides all the capabilities and benefits of Express, plus complete contract lifecycle management, including: contract authoring, negotiation/redlining, approvals, and execution. It even allows users without full system access to request or submit contracts. Finally, it offers powerful reports and dashboards to help analyze the performance of a companys contracting processes.

About Contract Logix

Since 2006 Contract Logix has been an innovator and provider of contract lifecycle management software. Leveraging the knowledge gained over our many years in the industry, we deliver products that are easy for everyday business users to adopt, yet powerful and secure enough to help them minimize the legal, financial, and brand risk inherent in their contracts. Our products enable professionals in the legal, administrative, procurement, finance, and sales operations electronically draft, negotiate, approve, execute, and manage their contracts. With Contract Logix your risk stops here. To arrange for a live demonstration, call (866) 371-4445 x101, email demo@contractlogix.com, or complete the form here.These two outstanding business leaders will provide additional guidance and leadership to our company as we move into our next phase of growth

Deep Labs Inc, the leaders in AI driven persona-based intelligence, announced the appointment of Reginald Van Lee and Michael Dreyer to its Board of Directors effective November 1, 2018.

These two outstanding business leaders will provide additional guidance and leadership to our company as we move into our next phase of growth, said Deep Labs CEO, Scott Edington.

It is a distinct honor to serve on the board of Deep Labs, said Van Lee, Deep Labs offers transformative technology solutions to both public and private sector customers, whether it is fraud prevention or consumer identification, Deep Labs is leading the way its customers tackle their toughest problems.

As a veteran in the Payments and Financial Services industries, I am excited to join the board of a company that is changing how organizations leverage Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to solve their most pressing challenges, said Dreyer.

About Reginald Van Lee

Reginald (Reggie) Van Lee is the retired Head of Commercial Business & Executive Vice President of the global management and technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In this capacity, Reggie focused on cyber security, deep analytics and regulatory compliance. He is the co-author of the book, Mega communities  How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits Can Tackle Todays Global Challenges Together.

Amongst many notable accolades, Reggie received the 2008 Black Engineer of the Year Award, Consulting Magazine named Reggie as one of the top 25 consultants in the world in 2008, and he was identified as one of the 2009 Washington Minority Business Leaders by the Washington Business Journal. Reggie has co-authored a number of articles on the topic of strategy implementation. These articles have appeared in publications such as The Journal of Business Strategy and Business Horizons. He has appeared on ABC-TVs World News This Morning and CNBC, and co-led the Urban Enterprise Initiative, which focused on driving enhanced competitiveness of small businesses in Harlem.

Reggie holds a Bachelors and Masters in Civil Engineering from MIT and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard University.

About Michael Dreyer

Michael (Mike) Dreyer is the Chief Operations Officer of Silicon Valley Bank and is responsible for bank and non-bank operations worldwide. Dreyer oversees SVBs core operations, enterprise project management, client service and information technology teams.

Before joining SVB, Mike was President and COO of Monitise, where he was responsible for the design, build, and operations of its technology globally, and he ran the companys Americas business.

Previously, Dreyer was the CIO of Visa Inc., responsible for the company's systems and technology platforms. Prior to his role at Visa, Mike was CIO of Inovant, where he oversaw the development and management of Visa's global systems technology. Additionally, Mike held senior positions at American Express, Prime Financial, Inc., Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Downey Savings, Bank of America, and the Fairmont Hotel Management Company.

Dreyer holds a Bachelors in Psychology and a Masters in Business Administration from Washington State University.

About Deep Labs

Founded in 2016 by a team of experienced Payments and Signals Intelligence experts, Deep Labs has created a platform that leverage persona-based dynamic adaptive risk & propensity profiles to address customer problems ranging from Account Takeover, AML, and False Declines to Credit Applications, Account Onboarding, Market Decisioning, and Identity Verification for Two-Sided Marketplaces. For more information about Deep Labs, visit: http://www.deep-labs.com.

Contact Information:

media@deep-labs.com

+1 (877) 504-4544Domio logo Domio has the strongest team working on disrupting the real estate industry at its intersection point with the hospitality market.

Domio, a technology hospitality company that is revolutionizing the apartment hotel, announced that it has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Tribeca Venture Partners, with participation from SoftBank Capital NY and Loric Ventures. The capital will be utilized to accelerate the development of the Domio technology platform and scale its apart-hotel brand globally. The company previously raised $5M in equity and convertible debt financing from individual and angel investors within the real estate industry.

The Series A investment comes on the heels of Domio announcing a $50M joint venture with Upper 90 in September to exclusively fund the leasing and operating of as many as 25 apartment-style hotels for group travelers. The first apart-hotel property  Domio Baronne ST.  is slated to open in New Orleans on December 1st 2018. Domio properties cater to group travelers with spacious accommodations that provide those traveling with friends or family a more consistent and affordable option, which costs 25 percent less, on average, than similarly-sized hotels. The average booking on Domio is for five guests and a median sized unit offers three bedrooms and 1,500 square feet, which is five times the average hotel size in the U.S.

Were excited to have investors such as Tribeca, SoftBank Capital NY, Loric Ventures, and Rubicon VC on board to capitalize on the multi-trillion dollar opportunity in front of us as the hospitality industry moves to asset-light management and global travelers seek alternative accommodations, said Domio CEO Jay Roberts. The asset and operations-heavy approach of traditional hotels has made it difficult for them to meet the growing demand from travelers for larger, apartment style properties and marginalized the investment opportunity in this burgeoning market. Our proprietary technology and data models drive market and building selection, while our asset-light model enables Domio to efficiently operate apart-hotel accommodations to provide guests the experience they want while increasing the profitability of our properties.

Unlike OTAs or vacation rental companies, whose listings are made up of properties from millions of different owners, Domio operates its apart-hotel accommodations from end-to-end. This control means all current and future Domio properties are branded and designed similarly to offer a higher standard stay across locations, and provide guests the comfort of home with the quality of a hotel.

Domio has the strongest team working on disrupting the real estate industry at its intersection point with the hospitality market, said Brian Hirsch, Managing Partner of Tribeca Venture Partners. Their leadership team is made of seasoned executives who have spent their careers managing global real estate investment deals, redesigning the future of hotels, and optimizing the consumer experience through technology and data science. This expertise, combined with Domios technology platform and asset-light model, makes the company extremely capital efficient while at the same helping to usher in a new era in hospitality. Were thrilled to be working with them as they continue to scale rapidly.

Domio has hosted over 70,000 guests to date across its existing properties in Austin, Nashville, San Diego, Boston, New Orleans, and Honolulu. The companys utilization of software to optimize accommodations has enabled it to grow sales 400% YoY with an occupancy rate of over 82%  close to 20% higher than the hotel average.

About Domio

Domio is a leading travel technology platform that is revolutionizing group travel by scaling its branded apartment-hotel concept. Travelers staying at a Domio property can enjoy the comfort of a home and the confidence of a hotel. With one-click, travelers can now join more than 80,000 guests to date in booking a Domio property across 8 markets with plans to triple its footprint over the next 12 months. For more information visit https://staydomio.com.

About Tribeca Venture Partners

Tribeca Venture Partners is an early and growth stage New York based venture capital firm that partners with top entrepreneurs primarily in the NYC area leveraging emerging technologies and business models to create and disrupt huge markets. For more information visit: http://www.tribecavp.com.Leadership and Integrity Award at EMC 10 "Our Daily Energy News" service has already made a difference in the industry!" -- Jack Doueck, Co-Founder.

The winner of the 2017 Leadership and Integrity Award was UGI Energy Services.

Over the last 25 years, UGI Energy Services has contributed over $9,000,000 in philanthropic efforts to improve the community and strengthen the well-being of those that are in need, said Jack Doueck, Co-Founder of Energy Marketing Conferences and Advanced Energy Capital. In 2017 alone they contributed over $800,000 to support low income families in need of clothing and educational sponsorships.

The ten nominees are retail energy companies who have exemplified fine leadership qualities, the highest level of ethics, and benefit their customers, community, environment as well as internal stakeholders, said Larry Leikin, Co-Founder of EMC and CEO of TrustedTPV. It was a close race, but UGI took home the award.

All previous awardees can be found at https://energymarketingconferences.com/retail-energy-awards/

Energy Marketing Conferences also a partnership with EIN to create a Daily News Feed for competitive energy. Each and every day, EMC will be publishing the most important news of the day in retail energy. Articles are relevant, informative and unique. The articles are published on the EMC webpage: https://energymarketingconferences.com/daily-energy-news/.

Our monthly newsletter that is distributed to about 15,000 retail energy executives is packed with educational articles written by a host of competitive energy industry professionals. We are now excited to be able to provide daily news as well, said Jack Doueck. We started the new free service in September and we have already received great feedback.

The next Energy Marketing Conference will take place on April 3rd 2019 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston Texas. This is the largest gathering of retail energy professionals in North America.

There will be 65 exhibitor booths, 6 interactive panels, 8 executive workshops, 50 speakers, a networking breakfast, a luncheon and a vibrant networking reception with live music.

To view the agenda and register for the Houston Conference click here: https://energymarketingconferences.com/houston-2019/

To watch a two minute highlight video of the last Houston conference click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjXa4RjRZZk

About Energy Marketing Conferences:

The mission of Energy Marketing Conferences LLC is to provide the competitive energy industry with exciting conferences in premium locations at extremely affordable prices. The goal of the conferences is to bring together hundreds of energy companies, utilities, marketers, vendors and suppliers in the competitive energy industry to network and learn more about our industry. EMC is the largest gathering of retail energy executives in North America and it takes place twice a year: Houston Texas in the Spring and New York City in the Fall.We are excited to bring together entrepreneurs and investors with expertise in technologies that are transforming our lives, said Margaret Anderson Kelliher, CEO and president of the Minnesota High Tech Association.

The Minnesota Venture Conference, hosted by the Minnesota High Tech Association on Nov. 7, 2018, will bring together hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors and executives to highlight innovative technologies and startups in Minnesota and across the Midwest.

The day-long event will feature panels and pitches in three hot tech topics in venture capital: artificial intelligence/ data analytics, blockchain technology, and cybersecurity. In addition, the conference serves as a networking event to connect investors and entrepreneurs. A new conference app allows startups to profile their companies online and schedule meetings onsite. The conference is being held at the Radisson Blu Minneapolis Downtown. For more info and registration: MnVenture.org.

We are excited to bring together entrepreneurs and investors with expertise in technologies that are transforming our lives, said Margaret Anderson Kelliher, CEO and president of the Minnesota High Tech Association. The revamped Minnesota Venture Conference will play an important role in building the relationships startups need to succeed, expanding opportunities for venture capital investment in the Midwest, and strengthening our states innovation economy.

Opening session:

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development Commissioner Shawntera Hardy, along with Margaret Anderson Kelliher

Artificial Intelligence/ Data Analytics

Keynote and panelist: Gene Munster, Managing Partner/ Cofounder, Loup Ventures

Panelists:



Brittany Clements, Allianz Life Ventures

Pat Dillon, MN-SBIR

Ryan Weber, Great North Labs

Pitch companies include: Big Wheelbarrow, DataChat, HabitAware, Virtue Analytics, Medpather, Pitchly, Scanalytics, and Traive.

Blockchain Technology

Keynote: Mike Jacobs, Senior Distinguished Engineer, Optum

Panelists:



Russ Felker, West Monroe Partners

Ezra Galston, Starting Line

Chris Swanson, U.S. Bank

Peter Johnson, Jump Capital]

Pitch companies include: CoCreateX, Protocol46, Silicon Prairie Portal & Exchange, and Soundpruf

Cybersecurity

Keynote: Jadee Hanson, Chief Information Security Officer, Code42Climate change and its devastating impact are real. We know that industrial agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. We also know that regenerative agriculture - one that restores health to the land - is a promising solution. -Savory Institute co-founder & CEO, Daniela Ibarra-Howell

BOULDER (Oct. 22, 2018)  Long before regenerative became an agricultural buzzword, ecologist Allan Savory had a big idea: overgrazed and damaged grassland could be restored to health and productivity through Holistic Management focused on properly managed livestock. Today, Savorys vision meets new rigorous verification teeth with The Savory Institutes Land to Market program and its new Ecological Outcome Verification protocol. The first product to bear the on-pack EOV seal is EPIC Sweet & Spicy Sriracha Beef Bites which EPIC Provisions will debut on Oct. 22 at its online marketplace.

Savorys goal is to positively impact 1 billion hectares (2.47B acres) of grasslands through Holistic Management by 2025. Land to Market is a farmer-led, collaborative sourcing program that prioritizes regenerative agriculture as a solution to critical environmental issues such as climate change, and water and food security. More than three years in the making, Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) was developed in collaboration with land managers, scientists, agronomists, and ecologists, including OVIS 21 in Argentina, and Michigan State University (MSU). EOV is a contextually-relevant, scalable soil and landscape assessment methodology that tracks outcomes in soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem function on participating farms and ranches.

Climate change and its devastating impact are real. We know that industrial agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. We also know that regenerative agriculture - one that restores health to the land - is a promising solution, says Savory Institutes co-founder and CEO, Daniela Ibarra-Howell. Through our global network of Hubs, we are uniquely poised to support farmers and ranchers with tools, knowledge and implementation support to improve their land and livestock management, and a rigorous outcome-based verification program that demonstrates the measurable benefits of regenerative agriculture, she adds.

While other farm-based consumer labels rely on regulation and inspection, EOV is results-based and conferred only when data (specific indicators of ecosystem health) trends positively. Measurement is required at the beginning of the program and then annually, with some long-term indicators read every 5 years. Currently being prototyped across the Savory Hub Network, it will eventually roll out on thousands of farms and ranches globally.

"Ecological Outcome Verification creates a common language, through a set of metrics, to measure grassland regeneration across the world. It allows us to share, in a scientifically sound manner, the thousands of success stories of farmers bringing their land back to life," says Pablo Borrelli, a major contributor to the EOV protocol and leader of OVIS 21, the Savory Hub in Argentina.

EOV gives the consumer access to tangible science that is traceable directly back to healing landscapes, says Jason Rowntree, Savory science advisor at MSU.

Through the early support of brand partners EPIC Provisions, UNION, Applegate , and Zukes Natural Pet Treats and Supplements in Land to Market, Savory is amplifying its vision: consumers will soon be able to choose wool, leather, dairy and meat products carrying the EOV seal and know they are investing in a regenerative claim that can be trusted to support farmers measurably improving the environment. Verified farms and ranches will be listed in a regenerative supplier roster from which participating brands and retailers can access livestock-derived supply.

More information can be found at https://www.savory.global/land-to-market/eov/ with video at: https://youtu.be/JxTtXabC2TM.

About the Savory Institute

The Savory Institute, a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization, facilitates large-scale regeneration of the worlds grasslands through Holistic Management. Together with Savorys global network of Hubs, the Savory Institute equips farmers and ranchers around the world with education, training, and implementation support to achieve success within their cultural and ecological contexts. Savory Institute also removes barriers and creates enhanced conditions for large-scale progress by informing policy, engaging the marketplace, and increasing public awareness. Savorys long-term goal is to positively influence the management of 1 billion hectares of grasslands by 2025, thereby contributing to global climate-, water- and food-security. Savory is headquartered at 1500 28th Street, Boulder, CO 80303. Tel: 303.327.9760. Additional news and information about the organization is available at http://www.savory.global, and Facebook.VICTREX AE 250 based thermoplastic composite solutions  Victrex Victrex will present their results on the potential of lower melting PAEK polymer solutions to address unmet challenges around the large-scale automation and production of PAEK thermoplastic composites, including functionalization by hybrid overmolding.

How PAEK thermoplastic composites and related hybrid overmolding processes can open a broader range of manufacturing options for aerospace parts will be one of the central topics at the ITHEC 2018 - 4th International Conference & Exhibition on Thermoplastic Composites, October 30th-31st in Bremen, Germany. Several companies, including Victrex, will present their results on the potential of lower melting PAEK polymer solutions to address unmet challenges around the large-scale automation and production of PAEK thermoplastic composites, including functionalization by hybrid overmolding.

The combination of an innovative VICTREX PAEK polymer and reinforcing carbon fibers offers mechanical properties that are consistent with the requirements for structural aerospace applications. The resulting VICTREX AE 250 based thermoplastic composite solutions take center stage in papers and poster presentations at the upcoming ITHEC conference and serve to demonstrate how PAEK thermoplastic polymers continue to be an active source of innovation. Forty years after the invention of polyetheretherketone (PEEK) the best is yet to come.

VICTREX AE 250 PAEK process advantages

Composites based on traditional PAEK polymers, such as PEEK and related polymers, need to be processed at temperatures in the range of 360C - 400C (680F - 752F). With a melting temperature of 305C (581F), our newest polymer processes at between 340C -360C (644F -680F), allowing composite parts to be manufactured faster and cheaper with added functionality using fast automated lay-up, out of autoclave processing, hot stamping and injection overmolding," explains Dr Stuart Green, Market Technology Manager at Victrex. Dr Green will present his research work in a poster illustrating how VICTREX AE250 unidirectional prepreg tape is compatible with a range of lay-up and consolidation techniques, including automated fiber placement (AFP), oven and press consolidation.

Conference participants can expect an insight into the highly dynamic evolution of composites technology and the wide span of the associated field of research. Other presentations include, for instance, injection forming of gears on high-performance CF-PAEK drive shafts (Herone GmbH, Germany), the assessment of interface strength in overmolded structures (Fiber Institute, Germany), and the developments and future challenges of processing thermoplastic composites (TenCate Advanced Composites, The Netherlands).

For further information on Victrex composites, please visit: https://www.victrex.com/en/compositesOne of the leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) Cognitive Machine companies, Jvion, announced the move of its business and solution to Microsoft Azure. The change represents the next step in Jvions journey and a strategic decision designed to help ensure the scalability, flexibility, and speed of Jvions Cognitive Machineone of healthcares leading AI solutions.

The decision to move off Amazon AWS and onto Microsoft Azure was really a no brainer for us, said Ritesh Sharma, Jvions COO. Azure offers us the safety and reliability that healthcare customers demand while maintaining the flexibility that they need to define their own path to the cloud. With Microsoft, our clients gain access to a unified programming model, identity model, security model, and management model for both on-premise and cloud implementations.

A key aspect of Jvions core differentiation is the ability to implement the companys Cognitive Machine without the risk to revenue and performance associated with typical predictive model builds. The machine has the flexibly to start firing patient-specific risk and intervention outputs across multiple target clinical areas and populations with the fastest path to ROI. Azure delivers the complimentary capabilities that help amplify Jvions differentiation and scale to meet projected demand.

Health and life science companies require a trusted cloud service partner with a business model that doesnt compete with their customers, said Chris Sakalosky, Vice President of Microsoft US Health & Life Sciences. Together, we are creating the next generation of AI-powered solutions at the scale required to transform entire companies. Jvions decision to choose Microsoft Azure as their trusted platform to make AI accessible everywhere for everyone in the health industry exemplifies our collaboration and dedication to Health and the democratization of AI.

With the AI health market set to explode over the next five years, Jvion is well positioned through the companys collaboration with Microsoft. The biggest industry bets are on solutions aimed at improving patient outcomes, reducing healthcare costs and reducing time-to-market in drug discovery. This traction is driven in part by a shifting industry business model that is transitioning from historic and evidence-based care to real-time, outcome-based care enabled by a preventative care model.

Weve watched Microsoft make huge investments in its cloud platform and that work is paying off, said Sharma. What Microsoft brings to healthcare is the ability to drive value from the data that providers have today while delivering the flexibility and approach that will drive value and performance into the future. This relationship and our move to Azure reflect the shared trust and commitment that our organizations have to empowering healthcare organizations and ultimately improving the way care is delivered.

Read more: Dennis Schmuland, Microsoft US Health & Life Sciences Chief Health Strategy Officer interviews Jvion COO Ritesh Sharma about switching to Azure, as well as impact and benefits of bringing AI to health & life sciences organizations.

About Jvion

Jvion delivers healthcares only Cognitive Clinical Success Machine. Using Eigen-based technology, the machine does what simple predictive analytics or machine learning models cannot. It goes beyond high-risk patient populations to identify those on a trajectory to becoming high risk. It determines the interventions that will more effectively reduce risk and enable clinical action. And it accelerates time to value by leveraging established Eigen Spheres to drive intelligence across hospitals, populations, and patients. Stop being predictive. Start being cognitive.

###Matt Dyer has been appointed president and CEO of LeasePlan USA. As LeasePlan USAs new president and CEO, Dyer will lead the company in its strategy to Whats next in the mobility space.

LeasePlan USA announces Matt Dyer as the companys new president and CEO, effective January 1, 2019. Previously the Managing Director for LeasePlan UK, Dyer brings with him more than 20 years experience working for LeasePlan and a wealth of industry knowledge.

As LeasePlan USAs new president and CEO, Dyer will lead the company in its strategy to Whats next in the mobility space. In a company poised to disrupt the industry, he will play an integral role in driving the digital transformation taking place at LeasePlan USA. Dyers previous experience leading key initiatives that put the customer first will further promote LeasePlan USAs strong focus on optimizing the client experience.

During his tenure as managing director at LeasePlan UK, Dyer played a key role in developing the companys innovation strategy. Dyer also oversaw the successful launch of CarNext.com, a pan-European marketplace for high-quality used cars, in the UK which allows drivers to buy, lease or subscribe to vehicles from LeasePlans own fleet as well as third-party partners. In his previous role as Managing Director of LeasePlan International, Dyer worked directly with LeasePlan USA and senior management to grow the global business in the U.S. market.

The LeasePlan USA business is one that I hold in very high regard, said Dyer. Im very much looking forward to working with LeasePlan USA and all of our customers to continue the great success that the company has.

About LeasePlan

LeasePlan is one of the worlds leading Car-as-a-Service companies, with 1.8 million vehicles under management in over 30 countries. Our core business involves managing the entire vehicle life-cycle for our clients, taking care of everything from purchasing and maintenance to car re-marketing. With more than 50 years experience, we are a trusted partner for our corporate and mobility service clients. Our mission is to provide whats next in mobility via an Any car, Anytime, Anywhere service  so you can focus on what's next for you. Find out more at http://www.leaseplan.com.We are now delivering a comprehensive global program for patient recruitment to complement that of our industry leading physician network. - M3 Global Research CEO Anton Richter

New Patient Access Offering Built Upon M3s Extensive Worldwide Network and Panel Experience

M3 Global Research, part of the M3 Group and the leader in global healthcare data collection, today announced the availability of a new Patient Access offering.

M3 has initiated this strategic move to meet the changing demands of the market and help focus on patient-centricity as well as the wider healthcare stakeholder ecosystem.

M3 Global Research is ever evolving to support the needs of our clients as their business focus changes, says M3 Global Research CEO Anton Richter. While weve been providing patient access for our clients for several years, patient research has become a primary concentration for manufacturers. This is why, to meet this evolving requirement, we are now delivering a comprehensive global program for patient recruitment to complement that of our industry leading physician network.

M3 is taking this innovative approach to patient recruitment by leveraging its extensive network of relationships gained from years of experience as a leading physician panel company and a network of 4.5 million physicians worldwide.

M3s expert patient access team was carefully assembled based on their experience with recruiting patients, delivering patient projects, and working with clients to achieve the best outcomes for their studies. These multilingual team members are specialized in innovative recruitment techniques and ensuring engagement with a strong focus on compliance and data protection. This is particularly important when working with sensitive patient data in the post-GDPR landscape.

While M3 has always worked closely and successfully with patient associations and advocacy groups to recruit patients for the M3 Global Research community, it is now taking the opportunity to formalize some of those partnerships and ensure that the support of the patient community is recognized.

M3s qualitative and quantitative research with patients helps inform decisions in product development, adherence, treatment pathways, and education  and it rounds out M3s already established offering of physicians and payers in the healthcare space. Patient Access gives patients a voice and empowers them to influence the care and prognosis of those who follow in their footsteps.

For more information about M3 Global Researchs new Patient Access product, contact: Tom Pugh Tom.Pugh@eu.m3.com or +44 203 725 7922.

ABOUT M3 GLOBAL RESEARCH

M3 Global Research, part of M3 Inc., provides market research recruitment, data collection, and support services reaching respondents in 248 markets across 70 countries worldwide with a strong emphasis on the healthcare space. Working in highly regulated industries, M3 maintains ISO 26362 and 27001 certifications, providing data collection and project management capabilities covering a broad spectrum of quantitative and qualitative techniques.

ABOUT M3 GROUP

The M3 Group operates in the US, Asia, and Europe with over 4 million physician members globally via its physician websites which include mdlinx.com, m3.com, research.m3.com, doctors.net.uk, medigate.net and medlive.cn. M3 Inc. is a publicly traded company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (jp:2413) with subsidiaries in major markets including USA, UK, Japan, S. Korea, and China. The M3 Group provides services to healthcare and the life science industry. In addition to market research, these services include medical education, ethical drug promotion, clinical development, job recruitment, and clinic appointment services. M3 has offices in Japan, UK, France, Germany, Brazil, and South Korea.

CONTACT

Press contact Sue Krause, Sr. Marketing Director at +1 202 293 2288 or email at marketing@usa.m3.com or visit http://www.M3GlobalResearch.comIn addition to feeling somewhat impersonal, social media can expose us to a range of negative thoughts and emotions.

Manhattan Mental Health Counseling, a psychotherapy private practice in NYC that accepts insurance, has issued a warning about the potential health risks of using - and overusing - social media. There already exists a comprehensive body of research speaking to the impact social networks may have on ones mental and emotional well-being, explains Natalie Buchwald, Founder of Manhattan Mental Health Counseling.

A 2014 experiment by California State University, for example, linked Facebook addiction to the same part of the brain associated with gambling and substance abuse. A study carried out over several years by professors Holly Shakya and Nicholas Christakis found a direct link between increased Facebook activity and decreased mental health. A 2017 survey by the Royal Society for Public Health found that most social networks appear to have a negative effect on the mental well-being of people aged 14-24.

Further, alongside smartphones and dating sites, social media has been linked on numerous other occasions to an upturn in major depression across multiple demographics.

I want to make it clear that I am not demonizing social media, explains Natalie Buchwald. On the contrary, I think its a wonderful tool when used in moderation. Its an excellent means of self-expression, an outlet for new modes of creativity, and a great way to network. That said, our society has never seen anything like it - which is precisely why we need to tread carefully.

At this point, it is not clear whether social media causes conditions such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia, or simply exacerbates them. There can be no doubt that there is a link, notes Natalie. Its the extent of that link that requires further research.

In addition to feeling somewhat impersonal, social media can expose us to a range of negative thoughts and emotions, says Natalie. It can expose our insecurities, sap our attention, and lead to bouts of obsessive, anxious behavior. Anyone who is already prone to depression or any other form of mental illness could very well find their conditions worsened by extensive use.

Natalie continues that the widespread lack of affordable mental health counseling creates even further problems. That is part of the reason she created Manhattan Mental Health Counseling, which allows New Yorkers to work with a dedicated psychotherapist and pay using their health insurance.

Natalie intends to do whatever she can to help New Yorkers achieve better overall mental health - whether their illness stems from an obsession over likes or something else altogether.

###

Manhattan Mental Health Counseling is a full-service psychotherapy private practice based in New York. We provide specialized care at an affordable price by accepting many of the insurances which are popular in New York.Nissan car owners can learn more about the services that are done to their vehicles by checking out Matt Castrucci Nissan's service pages.

To help area Nissan drivers get a better understanding of what the dealership does, Matt Castrucci Nissan is showcasing different service pages on its website. The dealer specializes in many different services and these service pages give customers the chance to learn more about what is offered and what each service consists of.

The dealerships service menu includes, but is not limited to, oil changes, coolant flushes, tire balances, front end alignments and part repair. Current service pages on the website cover oil changes, alignments, tire rotations and headlight replacements. Consumers can expect more pages to populate the site in the near future, as they are in the process of being built.

Each page features information on a specific service as well as links to other helpful pages on the site. These pages allow customers to order parts, schedule service appointments, view service coupons and learn more about the team at Matt Castrucci Nissan.

All service pages also contain answers to frequently asked questions about that particular service. Those wondering how often their oil should be changed can learn just that by reading the oil change page. Nissan recommends that drivers get their oil changed once every 3,000 to 7,000 miles depending on driving conditions.

Prospective and current customers who would like to learn more about the services offered at Matt Castrucci Nissan are encouraged to contact the dealership directly. Matt Castrucci Nissan can be reached over the phone at 855-299-1946 and is located at 3013 Mall Park Drive in Dayton, Ohio.WHAT  Catholic Relief Services and Paulist Productions are hosting a complementary cocktail reception for a special one-night-only movie event of the recently digitally remastered classic ROMERO: COLLECTORS EDITION, which chronicles the amazing transformation of an apolitical, complacent archbishop, Oscar Romero, into a committed leader who started a revolution without guns, without an army, without fear; Romero fought with the only weapon he had  the truth. A special introduction to the movie will be given by Bill OKeefe, vice president for government relations and advocacy for Catholic Relief Services, and John Sacret Young, writer and executive producer of ROMERO: COLLECTORS EDITION.

WHEN and WHERE  6 p.m. ET Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, at Landmarks E Street Cinema: 555 11th St NW, Washington, DC 20004. Register for the event here: https://www.romerofilm.org/crs.

WHY  Paulist Productions is proud to partner with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) on the re-release of this film. Through film screening events and their text campaign, they hope that this film will bring awareness to the social injustices that continue around the world today. CRS is the official international humanitarian organization of the Catholic community in the U.S. CRS saves, protects and transforms lives in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. To support CRS and its efforts, donations can be made by texting RELIEF to 30644.

ABOUT SAINT OSCAR ROMERO  Oscar Romero was a remarkable priest who was canonized as a saint on Oct. 14 in Rome. Romero served as the Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, from 1977 until 1980 amidst political unrest, during which the government launched a terror campaign against the countrys guerillas in an attempt to crush them. In a homily the day before he was assassinated, Romero called for soldiers to end the violence in his country: In the name of this suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven each day more tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I order you, in the name of God, stop the repression. The words of Archbishop Romero continue to be relevant today with the social injustices suffered by many refugees and the persecution of the church in other Central American countries, including Nicaragua.

Romero was beatified in San Salvador on May 23, 2015, in a ceremony that drew an estimated 250,000 people, which is believed to be the largest religious gathering ever held in Central America. In a written statement at that Mass, Pope Francis praised Romero as one of the best children of the church for the way he supported the poorest and most marginalized in society.

MORE INFORMATION  For more information on the event or ROMERO: COLLECTORS EDITION, or to schedule an interview with John Sacret Young or Fr. Tom Gibbons, CSP, Paulist Productions, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or KWandra@CarmelCommunications.com) of Carmel Communications.PaymentFlo Inc. today announced Checkflo, a new cloud service for printing and delivering checks, that will drastically improve the way businesses send money. The service is available today.



In 2016, there were 17.3 billion check payments, with a value of $26.83 trillion in the U.S.

Paper checks have declined slightly but remain extremely popular, largely because they are simple and easy for the recipient of the payment.

Operationally, printing and mailing paper checks creates friction.

With Checkflo, businesses can import check payments directly from their accounting software, from a simple CSV file or by manually entering payment information onto Checkflos secure online platform. Once the check payments are imported, users can choose to send by mail or overnight courier.

Checkflo will change how businesses operate, empowering millions of businesses with a faster, safer and cheaper way to send check payments. Checkflo provides an intuitive and user-friendly experience for customers, allowing them to quickly get setup and start using the service. Most companies will be able to start sending checks in less than one day using their existing bank accounts, as no prefunding or intermediary accounts are required.

We are very excited about the launch of Checkflo! said Dickson Jay, President of Checkflo. Our specialized checks have advanced security features that businesses can customize with their branding, turning ordinary payments into marketing opportunities. With Checkflo, a company can save precious time and money by essentially outsourcing their accounts payable, enabling them to focus on other priorities at the office.

I do everything in my power to not pay by check as it is a tedious and time-consuming process with too many steps involved. said Corey Krakower, VP Business Development of Checkflo. This innovation will streamline check payments and add the flexibility of paying vendors anytime, and from anywhere. Using Checkflo is easy and efficient, as uploaded check payments are instantly processed, printed and mailed on the same business day from our headquarters.

The launch of Checkflo will be showcased at the Money2020 exhibition in Las Vegas, Nevada. Checkflo will have a promotional booth located in the conferences Startup City from Monday October 22 to Wednesday October 24.

Companies can sign up now at checkflo.com, or can contact Checkflo for more information by emailing info@checkflo.com or by calling 1-855-561-4273.

About PaymentFlo Inc.

PaymentFlo is a financial technology start-up based in Montreal, Canada. We create payment solutions for businesses and consumers. We have delivered over 1 million checks. PaymentFlo is fully PCI DSS 3.2 compliant, which is the key security standard within the payments industry."We are honored to be selected by World Oil as a 2018 finalist in the Best Digital Transformation category. This nomination provides us with increased motivation to continue delivering unique and differentiating industry solutions," Omar Kulbrandstad, CEO.

MicroSilicon is a proud finalist of the 2018 World Oil Awards for Best Digital Transformation Technology. Award finalists were selected from hundreds of entries from around the world by a select committee of industry experts. Winners were announced at a gala ceremony on October 11th at the Houstonian Hotel, Houston, TX.

MicroSilicons Quantum RF* system provides E&P Operators with a unique and differentiated flow assurance workflow that relies on digitized chemical properties of the well fluid as it passes from wellhead through surface production facilities. The Quantum RF technology takes the measurement data while the fluid remains at wellhead conditions and without the need to send personnel to location to take a sample, which means that the measurement accuracy is not degraded by fluid exposure to oxygen, atmospheric pressure and temperature.

Unlike chemical measurement systems that require sampling and transportation for lab analysis, Quantum RF data does not require the use of external solvents or time-consuming gravimetric apparatus. Data is available within seconds of the fluid passing through the sensor section. That data is then immediately transmitted to the cloud for processing by AI-driven feature extraction algorithms and subsequent feedback into Customer data streams. Additionally, Quantum RF technology provides unique benefits that build on the immediacy of the chemical data during any change in flow assurance treatment so that the Operator gets real-time feedback on the improvement (or sometimes degradation) caused by that change in treatment.

We are honored to be selected by World Oil as a 2018 finalist in the Best Digital Transformation category. This nomination provides us with increased motivation to continue delivering unique and differentiating industry solutions, said Omar Kulbrandstad, MicroSilicon CEO. This achievement would not have been possible without the support we received and continue to receive from our Customers, as well as from our highly motivated and committed employees.

It is a real honor to be among the top industry leaders named as finalists for the 2018 World Oil Award, and in particular for Best Digital Transformation Technology, said John Lovell, VP Technology and Strategy. We look forward to continuing collaboration with our Customers to provide unique and valued digital flow assurance solutions around the world.

About MicroSilicon

MicroSilicon is the world's innovation leader for real-time fluid characterization using electromagnetic and quantum chemical technology and for which they won an Alliance Startup Award at Rice University, Houston, in 2015 and Best-in-Show Award at SPE ATCE, Dallas in 2018. They are now developing a range of digital flow assurance products and services including corrosion, scale and asphaltene sensing. They are based in Houston, TX with operations primarily in Middle East, Canada and USA. http://www.microsiliconinc.com

*Mark of MicroSilicon IncSince our founding, we have shown continuous improvement year over year, largely due to our ability to turn ideas into reality at lightning speed. Our talented team of professionals is key to our phenomenal growth, and the passion they bring to every project has fueled that growth.

Pillar Technology, part of Accenture (NYSE: ACN), an industry-leading software consultancy known for solving complex problems through exceptional digital solutions, has been named to the 23rd annual Columbus Business First Fast 50, the prestigious ranking of the regions fastest-growing private companies. Ranked #29, Pillar was selected due to its impressive double-digit percentage growth over the last three years. This is the 7th year that the company has been included on the list. Honorees were recognized at an awards luncheon on Oct. 17 at the Hilton Columbus Downtown.

We are extremely proud to be included as a Fast 50 company and pleased to be recognized for the expertise we bring to our market segment, said Bob Myers, Pillar Technologys co-founder and Managing Director. Since our founding, we have shown continuous improvement year over year, largely due to our ability to turn ideas into reality at lightning speed. Our talented team of professionals is key to our phenomenal growth, and the passion they bring to every project has fueled that growth.

Pillars past client work includes creating an autonomous vehicle virtual driver for a leading American automaker; enabling precision farming for an international agricultural leader; and creating next-generation infotainment solutions for a Fortune 25 automaker. Currently, Pillar has been tasked with building the Smart Columbus Operating System, the data framework at the heart of the smart city movement in Columbus, Ohio. Pillar has also been awarded a grant by JobsOhio to build an autonomous vehicle research and development center in Central Ohio to accelerate advanced mobility efforts.

This is outstanding recognition for Bob and his entire team, and underscores why Accenture identified Pillar Technology as a leading digital innovator and made them the newest member of the Accenture Industry X.0 team, said Craig McNeil, managing director and head of Accenture X.0 for N. America. Were looking forward to continuing to integrate Pillars expertise and solutions into our capabilities to deliver even greater business value for our clients.

In August 2018, Accenture acquired Pillar Technology, a move intended to expand the companys Industry X.0 practice. Accenture Industry X.0 helps companies address the shift to digital products and services, transform their engineering, manufacturing and field operations, and digitize their enterprises.

TWEET THIS: @Pillartech earns spot on @columbusbiz1st #2018Fast50 list. https://tinyurl.com/ydzd6dry

About Pillar Technology

Pillar Technology is an innovative technology consulting firm known for rapidly solving complicated problems through exceptional digital solutions. With more than 20 years of experience uncovering and executing industry-disrupting opportunities, the talented and diverse team of professionals turns ideas into reality at lightning speed. Pillars four collaborative work environments include Columbus, Detroit, Des Moines, and a listening post in Silicon Valley. In August, Pillar was acquired by Accenture and will become part of Accentures Industry X.0 practice. For more information, go to https://pillartechnology.com.

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions  underpinned by the worlds largest delivery network  Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With 459,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at http://www.accenture.com.Samuel H. Pond, Managing Partner of Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano is honored as the Beasley School of Laws inductee into the 21st annual Temple University Gallery of Success. The Gallery of Success pays tribute to Temple alumni who have applied their knowledge from Temple to further innovate their studied fields.

Mr. Pond graduated from Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1984 and has concentrated his practice in workers compensation litigation since 1986. He attributes much of his successful legal career to his time at Temple and gives back to the Beasley School of Law as an Adjunct Professor teaching a class on workers compensation. He is a firm believer in investing in the next generation of leaders, leading him to establish the Pond Lehocky Trial Advocacy Scholarship with Partner Jerry M. Lehocky in 2013. Mr. Pond also created a thriving internship program for law students at Pond Lehocky with his partners, which includes Beasley Law School students every year. It offers students hands-on experience in a professional legal environment and with a culture centered on client service and using the Firms resources to make a difference.

2018 marks the 30th anniversary of Mr. Pond practicing as a workers compensation claimant attorney, an accomplishment that was made possible through the education and resources provided by Temple Beasley School of Law. Every fall, Temple honors a new class of inductees who are showcased in The Gallery of Success exhibit for the year. The exhibit is located on the lower level of Mitten Hall.We found that TIMIAs revenue financing was aligned with our sales growth and objective to be capital efficient as we scale our business, said Rick Orr, CEO & Co-Founder, RealSavvy Inc.

Real Savvy, Inc (RealSavvy) announced today that TIMIA Capital Corporation (TIMIA or the Company) has put in place a US$2.5 million revenue financing for the Austin, Texas-based software company.

Known for its leading productivity and digital marketing platform for real estate professionals, RealSavvy offers an all-in-one solution including custom websites and native mobile apps powered by a fun, Pinterest-style home search (IDX) and predictive CRM built to help agents work with their clients.

We found that TIMIAs revenue financing was aligned with our sales growth and objective to be capital efficient as we scale our business, said Rick Orr, CEO & Co-Founder, RealSavvy Inc. The overall value proposition for us was a great fit as we have a proven revenue-producing model that is ideally suited for non-dilutive growth capital.

RealSavvy will use TIMIAs investment to fuel growth and expand to new markets in Georgia, Florida and California having already established a large footprint across Texas.

This is an important first step for TIMIA, as the U.S. SaaS market represents a significant opportunity for us to bring revenue financing to the broader North American startup ecosystem said Greg Smith, CIO of TIMIA. As emerging startups scale their revenue from $2M to $10M, we believe the value proposition of TIMIAs revenue financing accelerates expansion. RealSavvys management understands their market, are efficient with their capital, and the Companys growth metrics creates great alignment for our offering.

RealSavvy Board Member, Stephen Oskoui, is optimistic about the future saying, As an early investor and Board member, I am excited to see RealSavvy work with TIMIA to accelerate the growth and value of the company. The revenue financing model keeps the focus on long-term sustainable growth and enables companies to achieve significant goals without diluting founders, employees, or early investors.

About RealSavvy

Founded in 2014, RealSavvy provides custom websites for brokers and agents where they can collaborate with buyers throughout the home search. Buyers can search real estate listings, and then pin a home listing they like on a personalized board, which they can share with others involved in their home search. RealSavvys target customers are real estate brokerages who utilize the companys first-in-class platform to enable their agents to work more easily and efficiently with their clients. Complete with beautiful front end websites, award winning branded apps, rich home search experience and predictive CRM, RealSavvy is built to drastically enhance its customers ability to capture and convert leads to home buyers and sellers. Visit http://www.realsavvy.com to learn more.

About TIMIA Capital Corporation

TIMIA Capital Corporation is a specialty finance company that provides growth capital to technology companies in exchange for payments based on monthly revenue. This alternative financing option complements both debt and equity financing, while allowing entrepreneurs and existing stakeholders to retain ownership and control of their business. TIMIAs singular focus is the fast growing, global, business-to-business Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS) segment. We align ourselves with entrepreneurial management teams growing their sales from $1 Million to $10 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue. For more information about TIMIA Capital Corporation, please visit http://www.timiacapital.com

For more information, please contact:

Melissa Horton

Durrell Communications

(519) 221-6682 melissahorton(at)durrellcomm.comRed Cat Propware, a global developer of drone analytics, today announced that its founder and CEO, Jeff Thompson, will present at the Crypto Invest Summit scheduled for October 22nd  October 24th, 2018 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California.

The Crypto Invest Summit is the leading conference & summit focused on sustainable investing in blockchain technologies, and Mr. Thompson will present on the Pitch Stage on Wednesday, October 24th, 2018 at 11:15am PST.

Mr. Thompson will discuss the companys security token offering.

He will also discuss the companys recent launch and progress of its beta program for its Black Box Data Analytics platform. Red Cats drone black box flight recorder is the first distributed system with security and encryption that regulators and insurance companies can trust. The companys drone analytics and flight log storage allow flight replay with customizable reports that can determine fault or performance issues. The companys Black Box Data Analytics Beta User Program is currently accepting applications at http://www.redcatpropware.com/#/beta_application.

Interested parties can also visit Red Cat Propware representatives in booth 323 at the event.

ABOUT RED CAT PROPWARE

Red Cat Propware is an analytics and storage company utilizing artificial intelligence. Red Cat's drone black box flight recorder is the first distributed system with security and encryption that regulators and insurance companies can trust. The companys drone analytics and storage allow flight replay with customizable reports that can determine fault or performance issues. Red Cat Propwares features include encrypted flight logs, distributed blockchain encryption, drone self-diagnosis AIWere enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with an international leader like CSL Behring and connect them with the regions top research institutions to develop promising technologies that have real market potential.

The University City Science Center and global biotechnology leader CSL Behring, which has its operational headquarters in King of Prussia, PA, are partnering to identify and help commercialize potential new medicines at research and academic institutions across the Greater Philadelphia region.

Through the partnership agreement, the Science Centers framework for technology commercialization, services and support  which starts with the QED Proof-of-Concept Program that advances scientific breakthroughs  along with the Science Centers network of research and academic partners, will provide the support and infrastructure for CSL Behring to efficiently evaluate promising technologies from multiple institutions. Researchers at academic and research institutions through the region will be invited to submit proposals for projects with a focus on therapeutics that fit within CSL Behrings areas of expertise, including inflammatory and autoimmune diseases; hematological and coagulation disorders; transplantation; cardiovascular and metabolic diseases; respiratory diseases; and neurological disorders.

Projects selected for further review will be matched with CSL Behring advisors, who will work with the researchers to develop proof-of-concept plans for the technologies. Altogether, awarded projects will receive a total of up to $250,000 in research funding from CSL Behring, together with scientific and in-kind support including reagent generation and consultancy on drug development strategy. The partner institution will add up to another $50,000.

Innovation has been key to our success for more than 100 years and we are pleased to collaborate with the Science Center and academic partners to advance innovation in a region of strategic importance to CSL says Andrew Nash, CSLs Senior Vice President of Research. By working together to focus on novel targets that are supported in whole or in part by proof-of-concept data, we continue delivering on our promise of developing new medicines that save and protect the lives of people around the world.

For the last 10 years, the Science Centers commercialization platform has been a unique and effective resource for sourcing new ideas, technologies and research, says Peter Melley, Director of New Ventures at the Science Center. Were enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with an international leader like CSL Behring and connect them with the regions top research institutions to develop promising technologies that have real market potential.

Since QEDs inception in 2009, the Science Center and QED participating institutions have awarded over $6 million in combined funding to 34 projects. Those projects have gone on to raise over $22 million in follow-on funding. To date, a total of 10 technologies have been licensed through the program, and eight companies have been launched.

The Science Center and CSL Behring intend to accelerate the innovation and advancement of research ideas that otherwise might not come to fruition into developed products. The partnership between the Science Center and CSL Behring is especially timely in light of the Greater Philadelphia Regions growing reputation as a biotechnology hub.

About CSL Behring

CSL Behring is a global biotherapeutics leader driven by its promise to save lives. Focused on serving patients needs by using the latest technologies, we develop and deliver innovative therapies that are used to treat coagulation disorders, primary immune deficiencies, hereditary angioedema, inherited respiratory disease, and neurological disorders. The companys products are also used in cardiac surgery, organ transplantation, burn treatment and to prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn. CSL Behring operates one of the worlds largest plasma collection networks, CSL Plasma. The parent company, CSL Limited (ASX:CSL;USOTC:CSLLY), headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, employs more than 22,000 people, and delivers its life-saving therapies to people in more than 60 countries. For inspiring stories about the promise of biotechnology, visit Vita CSLBehring.com/vita and follow us on Twitter.com/CSLBehring.

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Dr. Nancy Durso of SGF's Fredericksburg, VA location Our event is intended to inform people about the importance of early fertility intervention. The earlier couples seek help from a fertility specialist, the more treatment options that are available to them, and the better their outcomes.

Last month, Shady Grove Fertility (SGF) began seeing patients at their brand new locations in Fredericksburg, VA and Richmond, VA. While the practice has eight locations in Northern Virginia and is the largest fertility center in the state, the Richmond, VA location marked the first location for SGF in Southern Virginia. These new locations allow for greater convenience for patients in those regions and offer a full complement of fertility services. For in vitro fertilization (IVF), Virginia patients have convenient access to SGFs state-of-the-art IVF center in Fairfax, VA.

The new Richmond location is led by physician Dr. Erika Johnston-MacAnanny and the new Fredericksburg location by Dr. Nancy Durso. Both award-winning board-certified reproductive endocrinologists are veterans in the field and committed to providing highly individualized care for the one in eight couples who face infertility.

To help spread awareness about local infertility treatment options, SGF is hosting free events in each of the new locations in October, November, and December. The Richmond event What to Expect When Youre Not Expecting will answer important questions about when to see a fertility specialist, as well as common causes of infertility, what to expect during the physician consult, fertility testing, and financial options.

Our event is intended to inform people about the importance of early fertility intervention. The earlier couples seek help from a fertility specialist, the more treatment options that are available to them, and the better their outcomes, says Johnston, who will be hosting the Richmond event on Tuesday, October 23 at 6:00 p.m.

In Fredericksburg, information seekers are invited to attend a free seminar with Rosalie Gunson, CRNP on Wednesday, November 7 at 8:00 p.m. and with Dr. Nancy Durso on Thursday, December 13 at 7:00 p.m. Since it can be intimating for people to think about seeing a fertility specialist, at this event, we walk attendees through the entire process from start to finish so there are no surprises. We understand that patients are coming to see us during a deeply sensitive time in their lives, and were here to offer them every advantage to getting pregnant, adds Durso.

In addition to educating the community and offering resources about infertility, one of the practices top priorities is making access to fertility care more affordable, which is why they participate with over 30+ insurance providers and why they created innovative financial programs for their patients such as their signature Shared Risk 100% Refund Guarantee and Shared Help Programs. With these new VA locations, more people now have access to financial plans that are exclusive to SGF patients. In the Shared Risk Program, 82% of patients take home a baby; the rest receive a refund to support other family building endeavors.

Another advantage for patients at SGF are the integrated support resources that are available to help ease the emotional stress and challenges of treatment. In helping to support the whole patient, SGF offers infertility support groups throughout the VA region with trained mental health professionals, in addition to individual and couples counseling.

All educational events and support groups are complimentary but require interested parties to register to attend. For those unable to attend an in-person event, the practice also offers weekly online webinars on a variety of infertility topics. Visit the SGF calendar of events page on their website for more details.

To schedule an appointment with a physician in Richmond, Fredericksburg, or another SGF location, contact their New Patient Center at 1-877-971-7755.

About Shady Grove Fertility (SGF)

SGF is a leading fertility and IVF center of excellence with more than 50,000 babies born and counting. With 32 locations throughout MD, PA, VA, D.C., GA, and FL, we offer patients individualized care, accept most insurance plans, and make treatment affordable through innovative financial options, including treatment guarantees. More physicians refer their patients to SGF than any other center. Call 1-888-761-1967 or visit ShadyGroveFertility.com."Our distribution partners are doing a great job, and pilot customers are clamouring to roll out SHM installations throughout their building portfolios."

SHM Controls Inc. ("SHM Controls" or the "Company"), a developer of a IIoT HVAC control system (the SHM Controller) and wireless sensor technologies, has successfully closed its USD $500,000 capital raise ahead of schedule.

SHM Controls attracted the interest of angel investors, VC funds and investment bankers from the Pacific Northwest, Florida, and New York during this most recent capital raise.

Given the substantial investor interest, and the significant increase in the Company's pipeline of pending and potential installations in British Columbia and across the US, the Board of SHM Controls approved an oversubscription of an additional USD $500,000 with a second and final close for the round on January 31st 2019.

"I'm excited about the year to come. I've got the capital necessary to execute my plan, and our pipeline is exceeding expectations," says SHM Controls' CEO Oded Malky. "Our distribution partners are doing a great job, and pilot customers are clamouring to roll out SHM installations throughout their building portfolios."

"We already have our 2019 sales forecast in the funnel! It's great to see the results of Oded's disciplined execution and steadfast approach. As an angel investor, this is exactly the type of CEO, team, and company I like to back," added Sean Melrose, early SHM investor and now VP Finance, SHM Controls.

About SHM Controls Inc.

SHM Controls is headquartered in Vancouver, BC. SHM Controls has developed a low-cost smart wireless IIoT HVAC controller for buildings and offices that reduces energy consumption by up to 30%, offers full remote access, control, and automated email/text alerts in the event of mechanical equipment failure. It transforms a building's existing set of independent thermostats into a networked array of Industrial IoT sensors, controlled and optimized by a system-wide machine learning, energy saving algorithm. Dozens of building installations in the Pacific Northwest and the US Eastern Seaboard have demonstrated unprecedented energy savings over the 5 year data collection period. For more information, visit http://www.shmcontrols.com

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This press release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and may also contain statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are not representative of historical facts or information or current condition, but instead represent only the Company's beliefs regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of the Company's control. Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "will continue", "will occur" or "will be achieved". By identifying such information and statements in this manner, the Company is alerting the reader that such information and statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such information and statements. In connection with the forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release, the Company has made certain assumptions. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information and/or forward-looking statements that are contained or referenced herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. All subsequent written and oral forward- looking information and statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf is expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice.

SOURCE SHM Controls Inc.

For further information: Oded Malky, Chief Executive Officer, SHM Controls Inc., T: 604-637-7025 Ext 801, oded@shmcontrols.com; Sean Melrose, VP Finance, SHM Controls Inc., T: 604-483-5544, sean@shmcontrols.comIn working with SmartGift, weve been able to further enhance the customer experience, making it even easier for shoppers to deliver smiles.

New York, NY, Oct. 22, 2018 -- The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) revealed the winners of the 2018 Global Smarties Awards and the North America Regional Smarties following a celebration of talent.

SmartGift and 1-800-Flowers.com were honored with the Global Gold and North America Gold in the Mobile Payments / Commerce category for driving business impact and experience execution through the power of mobile.

The teams also collected the North America Silver award in Messaging for utilizing SMS as a platform to humanize the digital gift exchange leading to higher customer engagement and conversion.

The winners were selected by the MMA's independent North America juries comprised collectively of 46 renowned, senior brand and agency professionals under the guidance of jury presidents, Peter McGuinness, Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer at Chobani and Norman De Greve, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, CVS Health, for the Global and North America competitions, respectively.

To be recognized in such transformative categories as mobile payments/commerce and messaging on a global level is an amazing honor. We are thrilled to continuously innovate with our partner 1-800-Flowers.com and keep pushing the boundaries of whats next, said Monika Kochhar, CEO and founder of SmartGift. Winning these coveted awards highlights our leadership in gift commerce innovation as well as our commitment to providing best-in-class mobile experiences and results for all of our brand partners.

I am proud of our team's hard work on this initiative and thrilled to see it recognized by the MMA, said Amit Shah, Chief Marketing Officer, 1-800-Flowers.com. In working with SmartGift, weve been able to further enhance the customer experience, making it even easier for shoppers to deliver smiles.

The 2018 entries were first pre-screened by a council comprised of over 100 senior level mobile marketers prior to judging by the independent jury. The campaigns are judged on four criteria with business impact accounting for 40 percent of each entrant's overall score while creative, strategy and execution each made up 20 percent. A video highlighting the 1-800-Flowers.com and SmartGift campaign can be watched here.

About SmartGift

SmartGift is a next generation consumer and personalization platform for brands and retailers that empowers their customers to buy for others with confidence. Its quick, easy and smart flow solves for the shopping persona when people are gifting or purchasing for others by removing the inherent friction. SmartGift is a conversational, peer to peer, gift first pay after model that opens new opportunities for online commerce. The deep insights that the company gathers helps retailers and brands to become more people-centric in their marketing and personalization experiences. For more information about SmartGift visit https://smartgiftit.com/.

About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)

The MMA is the worlds leading global non-profit trade mobile marketing association comprised of more than 800-member companies, from nearly fifty countries around the world. Our members hail from every faction of the mobile marketing ecosystem, including brand marketers, agencies, mobile technology platforms, media companies, operators and others. The MMAs mission is to accelerate the transformation and innovation of marketing through mobile, driving business growth with closer and stronger consumer engagement. Anchoring the MMAs mission are four core pillars; to cultivate inspiration by driving innovation for the Chief Marketing Officer; to build the mobile marketing capabilities for marketing organizations through fostering know-how and confidence; to champion the effectiveness and impact of mobile through research providing tangible ROI measurement; and to advocate for mobile marketers. Additionally, MMA industry-wide committees work collaboratively to develop and advocate global best practices and lead standards development.

Members include: 1-800-Flowers.com, AdColony, Allstate, Ally Financial, American Express, AT&T, Bank Of America, Campbells, JPMorgan Chase, Chobani, Choice Hotels, Citi, Clear Channel Outdoor, Colgate- Palmolive, Dunkin Brands, eBay, E*TRADE, Electronic Arts, ESPN, Facebook, Ford, Foursquare, Google, GroundTruth, , Hilton Worldwide, IBM Watson, LinkedIn, Marriott International, Match Group, Mastercard, McDonalds, Microsoft, MillerCoors, OpenMarket, Pandora, Pfizer, Pinterest, PlaceIQ, Procter & Gamble, R/GA, RetailMeNot, Salesforce, Samsung, Snap Inc., Spotify, SUBWAY, Target Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, , T- Mobile, TUNE, Turner Broadcasting, Twitter, Uber, Ubimo, Unilever, Vibes, Walmart, Zurich and many more. The MMAs global headquarters are located in New York with regional operations Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) and Latin America (LATAM). For more information about the MMA please visit http://www.mmaglobal.com.Sourceability is proud to announce five newly signed distribution agreements with the following companies. The unique product offerings from these quality electronic component manufacturers will benefit Sourceability customers globally. All five product lines will be immediately available through Sourceabilitys global sales team as well as its e-commerce marketplace, Sourcengine (http://www.sourcengine.com).

Were very excited to partner with these quality manufacturers and expand our reach into the design-in phase for our customers. Sourceability is enhancing our FAE and technical sales competence and will continue to do so, said Jens Gamperl, CEO of Sourceability. We are focused on growing in this area, in addition to the heavy investments we have made into our global distribution locations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany and the United States.



Leshan Radio Co., Ltd.: Founded in 1970, Leshan Radio Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as LRC) is located in the historic and culture city--Leshan. We cooperated with ON-SEMI, a Joint Venture since 1995 for producing Small Signal SMD. In order to meet huge customer demand, we established our own factory, APS at Chengdu, the center of West China Development. We are a comprehensive electronic enterprise majored in manufacturing of discrete semiconductor devices. In 2018 we plan to ship 53 billion pcs, serving customers in various fields all over the world.

Silicon Power: Founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic data storage industry experts, Silicon Power is committed to delivering outstanding product and service quality. Headquartered and with our own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, we have become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products.

ZOWIE Technology Corporation: Founded in 1994, ZOWIE Technology Corporation is a leading designer and manufacturer of advanced discrete semiconductor products. All the products of Zowie are the worlds first leading technology through its own newly constructive design, manufacturing and superior materials. With innovated technology, Zowie is proud to bring the worlds smallest 4A to 6A chipform bridge diodes and able to help users to improve the current end product design and to miniature product size and dimension of the power charging system of smart devices.

Adam Tech: Adam Tech is a Worldwide Interconnect Manufacturer with over 30 years experience in manufacturing connectors, cable assemblies and custom solutions. We have the capability to design and develop virtually any existing or new technology connectors using our patented, automated production process which offers the board solution for all of a customers interconnect needs while providing quality, functionality or cost improvement.

KINGWAHOO ELECTRONICS CO, LTD: Founded in 1968 in Taipei County, Taiwan, specializing in over-current R&D, production and sale of overvoltage protection elements; products through UL, CUL, VDE, TUV, CQC and other international certification.

About Sourceability: Sourceability develops technology that allows our customers to operate in and navigate the electronic component market, providing them with the best opportunity to find success. The backbone of Sourceability is quality and logistics. We have invested heavily in our global distribution centers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany and Miami. Each distribution center is supported by regional offices to maintain an understanding of customer supply chain needs. Sourceability will continue to innovate, building upon their initial success by investing in their core beliefs that have made them successful: innovation, customer empowerment, and integrity.The Srijan team is the perfect complement to Crains own engineering team. On this ambitious, wide-ranging replatform project, there was no challenge that Srijan and Crain's teams could not meet together. - Mark Felton, Sr. Technical Account Manager, Acquia

Srijan today announced it has been selected as a finalist for the 2018 Acquia Engage Awards in the category Lightning in a Bottle. The Acquia Engage Awards recognize the world-class digital experiences that organizations are building with the Acquia Platform.

More than 100 submissions were received from Acquia customers and partners, from which 43 were selected as finalists. Nominations that demonstrated an advanced level functionality, integration, performance (results and key performance indicators), and overall user experience advanced to the finalist round, where an outside panel of experts will select the winning projects.

Srijan is working with Crain Communications, one of the largest privately owned business media companies, to deliver a unified Drupal 8 platform for its multiple brand sites. As a part of its Component Based Development approach, Srijan leveraged the Acquia Lightning feature to support Crains multi-site architecture. Srijan teams also used Acquia Hosting to support the multi-site setup, and Acquia BLT to set up development and deployment pipelines.

With a total of five sites currently live with the new architecture, the project involves another eight sites to follow over the next few months. Both teams are working hard to launch the remaining sites, and the nomination was a welcome news amidst all the work.

Talking about the project, Mark Felton, Sr. Technical Account Manager, Acquia said, The Srijan team is the perfect complement to Crains own engineering team. On this ambitious, wide-ranging replatform project, there was no challenge that Srijan and Crain's could not meet together.

The results speak to the close collaboration between the Srijan and Crain teams during the course of the project. We are honored to be among the finalists for the Acquia Engage Awards, alongside Crain Communications. Its been a challenging project, which gave us the opportunity work with new technologies and deliver a great digital experience with Drupal 8. said Ashish Goyal, President - USA & Head of Global Sales

The project is a complex one, and leverages the best that Drupal 8 had to offer. Ishan Mahajan, Program Manager, Srijan said, The Component Based Development approach is a milestone for companies with multi-site architecture, and this nomination comes as a huge boost to the teams at both organizations, who worked hard to make this happen.

Winners will be announced on October 24, 2018, ahead of this years Acquia Engage Conference, which will be held in Austin, Texas, from November 7-9, 2018.

Acquia partners and customers are tackling the biggest challenges facing marketers, developers, and digital teams, said Joe Wykes, senior vice president, global channels and commerce at Acquia. This years Acquia Engage Award nominees show whats possible when open technology and boundless ambition come together to create elegant, world-class customer experiences. Theyre making every customer interaction more meaningful with powerful, personalized experiences that span the web, mobile devices, voice assistants, and more. Their work is inspiring, and were proud to recognize their accomplishments.

The Acquia Experience Platform offers a suite of technologies for easily building digital experiences at scale, across the web, mobile sites, native applications, voice assistants and more. The platform allows businesses to manage the deployment and iteration of those experiences in the cloud, and intelligently optimize how they are tailored for specific audiences using machine learning.

The full list of finalists for the 2018 Acquia Engage Awards are posted to Acquias website.

About Srijan

Srijan builds and modernizes digital systems to help enterprises adapt to changing business models and market demands. The company is headquartered in New Delhi, and has offices across USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Australia, and Germany. The company delivers services across Data Science, API Management, Drupal, DevOps, IoT, and Machine Learning. Among their key clients have been: Crain, Sealed Air, Flight Center, OPEN Magazine, Vogue, On Corps, Zoho, TUI, and Conde Nast Traveller. Srijan team combines keen business sense and technology expertise to power digital transformation for enterprises across industries. For more information, please visit: http://www.srijan.netTacticalFlashlight.com - Your Go-To Source for Tactical Flashlights! TacticalFlashlight.com is excited to not only be a resource but also an online destination for tactical flashlight reviews, ratings and a full line of products.

TacticalFlashlight.com is pleased to announce that it is expanding the production line in order to offer a more complete package to the tactical market. The website will very soon offer a complete array of affordable and high quality tac lights while also carrying other tactical equipment and gear for a variety of purposes.

No matter if a customer is a professional or hobbyist looking for tactical flashlights or accessories for hunting, camping, home defense or any other purpose, http://www.tacticalflashlight.com will be front and center to meet all these needs. Through new partnerships with main distributors and retailers in the flashlight and tactical equipment sector, the website plans to be the go-to online source for everything tactical!

Major technological advancements in recent years have made tactical flashlights the superior product in terms of lighting, durability and multi-purpose capability. There is now a need for expert providers in this sector who can offer both an extensive range of products and first rate knowledge to consumers in order to ensure they buy the best tac light that suits their specifications.

TacticalFlashlight.com is ideally positioned to provide this service; with maturity in the flashlight marketplace and an online store offering both high quality and affordable products. The website plans to carry well-known and respected brands including Streamlight, SureFire, Fenix, Olight, 5.11, Blackhawk, Pelican, Nitecore and more. Industries and sectors that will benefit from TacticalFlashlight.com include law enforecement, military, navy, coast guard, hunting, camping, fishing, hiking, bushcraft, outdoors, home defense, self defense and personal protection.

Tony, the general manager of TacticalFlashlight.com, said: We have decided to bring together a comprehensive online one-stop-shop for all things tactical; including flashlights, headlamps, backpacks, bug-out-bags, vests, knives, multi-tools, survival gear, freeze dried food and more.

"Our team has a deep appreciation of the whole tactical marketplace so it makes sense for us to expand and work to establish Tacticalflashlight.com as one of the leading website sources when people think of tactical gear. As well as selling a whole array of products, we're also envisioning to provide expert and insider advice on topics from which tac light to buy for your rifle to the most ideal EDC flashlight for the price.

About TacticalFlashlight.com

TacticalFlashlight.com is an online resource and marketplace for men and women alike who are interested in the ever-expanding tactical sector. The site will specialize in a wide range of tactical flashlight products for rifles, pistols and everyday carry (EDC). The move into providing a more comprehensive selection of tac gear and accessories will likely expand TacticalFlashlight.com's customer base potential, helping it grow as a valued resource for Americans looking to buy tactical equipment.Specialist analytics and financial technology firm Real Estate Foresight (REF) has published the annual analysis exploring the relative performance of the housing markets in China at a district level, covering over 170 districts in 20 major cities and focused on January-July 2018 price and volume growth metrics* for new home sales markets. The underlying raw data comes from SouFun-CREIS database, from REFs data partner China Index Academy in Beijing.

TOP PICKS

Jintang County in Chengdu, Xinzhou District in Wuhan, and Huangpu in Guangzhou are among the top picks for relative upside potential for the next 1-2 years, based on the metrics and cross-referenced with additional data and qualitative checks from the local sources.

IN HINDSIGHT

The last years report, based off the January-July 2017 data, contained a number of predictions for districts that were forecast to see a sustained momentum, future upside, and expected downside. These have proven to be highly accurate over the past year and showcase the power of the data-driven analysis.

Four out of five district picks outperforming on certain volume growth metrics but under-performing on price growth last year, have gone up substantially on price growth in 2018. The slowdown has shown clearly in 2018 in all five districts highlighted last year for the top price growth performance but at substantial sales volume declines. All five districts picked in 2017 for sustained momentum have maintained a strong price growth rate in 2018.

The individual data points may be sketchy, yet the power of the volume of data is that some aggregate patterns can be amazingly predictive as our analysis is showing again this year, says Robert Ciemniak, Founder-CEO of Real Estate Foresight.

BROADER PATTERNS

There is no district that would be a top performer on both price growth AND volume growth over all other districts, the same case as in the previous reports.

Compared to a year ago, the median of price growth rates has come down to +13% from +23%, but the median of volume growth turned less negative to -6% from around -33%. The strongest price growth (average year-to-date price compared to equivalent period for 2017) was in Qingbaijiang in Chengdu, close to +70%, although with the volumes declining substantially. The dispersion of performance across districts continued with a similar pattern, much wider over the past three years compared to 2015.

In the current stretched cycle of tightening, the policy has become more and more targeted and differentiated between cities but increasingly also between districts within the cities  that's the next level of differentiation, added Ciemniak.

-----

To request a media copy of the 2018 China Districts report or previous reports, please email research(at)realestateforesight.com

*Note that the price growth is measured as changes in the simple year-to-date average price, hence the growth figures may be influenced by changes in the product type sold (e.g. high-end vs lower-end, villas vs high-rise).

-----

About Real Estate Foresight Ltd

Real Estate Foresight Ltd (REF) is an independent real estate analytics, research and financial technology firm based in Hong Kong and established in 2012. Combining data science with primary research, REF helps developers, investors and fund managers assess opportunities in real estate markets focusing on China. REF can provide truly independent views as the company is not involved in any brokerage, trading or fund business.

Visit http://www.realestateforesight.com for more information, stay connected @reforesight on Twitter.

Contact

Robert Ciemniak | media(at)realestateforesight.com

Source: Real Estate Foresight Ltd

ENDIncept, a leading Northeast Ohio based marketing firm, has announced the expansion of its business with a second office space located at The University of Akron and in partnership with The Gary L. and Karen S. Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing and Ronald R. and Diane C. Fisher Institute for Professional Selling. This partnership will leverage the growing and diverse talent pool of The University of Akron students while providing these students with practical experience in their field.

Were thrilled to be partnering with the University of Akron, states Sam Falletta, Incepts Chief Executive Officer. The education I received at the University of Akron and my first job working for the Taylor family were two of the more impactful opportunities of my career, and I am delighted that this partnership is in place to help accelerate the growth of tomorrows sales and marketing leaders in the region.

Incept is a leading marketing partner that provides on-demand marketing and sales services to local and national clients. Theyve developed award-winning multi-channel marketing and lead generation campaigns for some of the countrys most recognizable brands, including Serta, AARP, and the American Red Cross.

This partnership is a perfect example of how the Taylor Institute fulfills its mission of Where Theory Meets Practice, Jacob Farrar, Director of the Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing, states. Students in the Department of Marketing will gain valuable real-world experience that will translate into immediate impact on their initial jobs upon graduation.

The Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing and The Fisher Institute for Professional Selling are nationally recognized for their programs in marketing and sales. These institutions produce top-notch graduates and The Fisher Sales Institute for Professional Selling is one of only 13 certified, professional sales program in the world. The Taylor Institute was founded to help students gain practical experience in all forms of direct marketing and to promote direct marketing as a career opportunity.

Were excited to provide these outstanding sales and marketing students opportunities to utilize the skills they have learned to help drive growth for our clients, states Darren Hudach, Incepts Chief Growth Officer. Gathering this experience during their college career is going to give them a significant advantage in their first role after graduation and provide several of them opportunities to continue their development at our headquarters in Canton, Ohio.

There will be a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially open the Incept Communications Center at The Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing on Friday, October 26th at 12 pm.

About Incept

Incept is a leading telemarketing partner focused on engaging, converting, and retaining their clients customers through interactions designed to strengthen relationships. Throughout the last 20 years, Incept has partnered with some of the nations most successful companies, including Microsoft, Honda, and the American Red Cross to develop the most effective multi-channel marketing and B2B lead generation campaigns to drive faster and more profitable growth for their clients. Learn more here: http://www.inceptresults.com

About The Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing

The Gary L. and Karen S. Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing was established at The University of Akron in 2003 with a major gift from Gary and Karen Taylor, UA alumni and leaders in direct marketing. The Institute was founded to educate undergraduate and MBA students in the specialized ideas, issues and techniques of Direct/Interactive Marketing. Learn more here: https://www.uakron.edu/cba/centers-and-institutes/taylor/index.dotVenture Construction Group of Florida Takes a Stand Against Domestic Violence The work that Legal Aid does in our community is absolutely vital. We are honored to sponsor this event and support their efforts. Our staff is dedicated to raising awareness and had a great time at the 5K, says Stephen Shanton, president, Venture Construction Group of Florida.

Venture Construction Group of Florida (VCGFL) sponsored the Legal Aid Service of Collier County (LASCC) Take a Stand Against Domestic Violence 5K Run/ Walk. The fundraiser was held on Oct. 13 and the timed race began at the Wesley United Methodist Church at 350 S. Barfield Dr. Hundreds of families, businesses and community members joined the cause. The days festivities included music, face painting, balloons, and refreshments. All raised funds benefitted Legal Aids Domestic Violence Unit.

The work that Legal Aid does in our community is absolutely vital. We are honored to sponsor this event and support their efforts. Our staff is dedicated to raising awareness and had a great time at the 5K, says Stephen Shanton, president, Venture Construction Group of Florida.

Headquartered in Naples, Legal Aid provides high-quality free civil legal advice, representation, and education to those in need throughout Collier County. Legal Aid provides access to legal help for vulnerable populations, including victims of domestic violence, children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned, families who are at risk of homelessness, seniors and veterans who are denied access to health care or other benefits, and other groups of at-risk individuals.

Tina Nash, founder of the 5K and Legal Aid Advisory Board Member, is a domestic violence survivor. Nash designed the race to raise awareness about domestic violence and to advise those at risk where to turn for help.

According to the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, during fiscal year 2015-2016, advocates throughout the state created 113,907 tailored safety plans, provided a total of 412,454 hours of advocacy and counseling services, and received 122,999 domestic violence hotline calls from individuals seeking emergency services, information, and safety planning assistance.

These statistics are staggering and there is definitely a need for support services. We are dedicated to helping increase awareness and reduce these numbers. This event is a great way to help raise funds and show our support to end domestic violence, says Sandra Lawson, director of operations, Venture Construction Group of Florida; founder of Gemmas Angels Foundation Boca Raton.

VCGFL sponsors a variety of charities throughout the state each year through its major corporate giving campaign.

About Venture Construction Group of Florida

Founded in 1998, Venture Construction Group of Florida (VCGFL) is an award-winning leader in construction, restoration, renovations, roofing, storm damage repairs, and 24/7 emergency services throughout Florida, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Bahamas and the Caribbean. Specializing in industrial/ commercial projects, VCGFL assists property managers, condominium boards, homeowner associations, association boards, hotels and business complexes with general contractor services, specialty construction, historical restoration, water and flood mitigation, and property repairs due to fire, flood, water, wind and hurricanes. VCGFL holds leading industry awards including the Coatings Pro Contractor Award, Pro Remodeler Forty Under 40 Award, Qualified Remodeler Top 500 Remodelers Award, Qualified Remodeler Master Design Award, Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association S.T.A.R. Spotlight and Community Service. CEO Stephen Shanton is a proud member of the prestigious Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). Entrepreneur Magazine hails YEC Consists of Some of the Most Well-Respected Minds in Entrepreneurship. With offices in Boca Raton, Ft. Myers, Naples, Orlando, Stuart, Tampa, San Juan, and Nassau, VCGFL is committed to operational excellence and exceptional customer service. VCGFL takes care of the details every step of the way including roofing, siding, windows, drywall, flooring, paint, gutters to rebuilding properties after major storm events from hurricanes, tornadoes, and hailstorms. VCGFL carries the industrys leading accreditations and is an exclusive certified National Storm Damage Center Preferred Contractor, Windstorm Insurance Network WIND Certified Umpire, WIND Certified Appraiser, WIND Certified Fellow, Certified Member of the United Association of Storm Restoration Contractors, Platinum Preferred Certified Contractor with the National Insurance Restoration Council. VCGFL is a proud member of Insurance Appraisal and Umpire Association (IAUA), Restoration Industry Association (RIA), Property Liability and Resource Bureau (PLRB), Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association (FRSA), Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) Industry Members Association (EIMA), National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). VCGFL is a registered U.S. Federal Government Contractor and holds leading certifications including Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor, Mule-Hide Legacy Contractor, Certified CertainTeed Contractor and Duro-Last Certified Contractor status. VCGFL credentials have been vetted and screened through independent third party Global Risk Management Solutions. For more information call 866-459-8351 or visit us online at http://www.VCGFL.com.

About Legal Aid South Collier County LASCC

Legal Aid Service of Collier County is a private, non-profit law firm that provides free civil legal services to Collier County residents who face matters of life-changing significance. Legal Aid provides a critical safety net for the community by serving thousands of economically needy residents in Collier County. Learn more at http://www.CollierLegalAid.org.

The VentureClash competition continues to introduce some of the worlds most innovative and promising early-stage companies to all that Connecticut has to offer.

Connecticut Innovations (CI), the leading source of financing and ongoing support for Connecticuts innovative, growing companies, today announced the winners of VentureClash, $5 million global investment challenge for early-stage companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things. The final pitch event was held on Thursday, October 18, at the Yale School of Management in New Haven.

In all, nine companies from six different countries participated in the final pitch event. VentureClash judges awarded six companies with investments, mentoring and customer introductions to help them grow and succeed.

The winning companies are required to establish a presence in Connecticut.

Voiceitt received the top investment award of $1.5 million. Based in Israel, Voiceitt is developing the worlds first speech recognition technology designed to understand non-standard speech and help restore communication channels for a combined 10.4 million people in the United States and Europe who suffer from speech disabilities.

Two second-place winners were each awarded a $1 million investment:



DOZR: A Canadian company that has developed a marketplace for the online rental of heavy equipment, enabling business owners to earn additional revenue from their idle equipment and allowing contractors to rent equipment at lower rates than traditional rental companies.

-IronYun: A Stamford-based next-generation, AI deep-learning, big-data video search business-to-business software company providing enterprise customers with hyper-converged, private cloud computing and big-data video software products.

Three additional finalists were selected to each receive a $500,000 investment award:

CloudKPI: An Irish company developing an insight engine that enables SaaS businesses to predict likely outcomes.

Invixium: A Canadian manufacturer of modern biometric solutions for markets needing strong user authentication, convenience and data analytics.

Paygilant: An Israeli technology company working to prevent mobile payments fraud on mobile devices in the preauthorization phase.

The other finalists were:



Kasko: A London-based digital insurance intermediary bridging the gap between the digital and insurance economies.

Panoply: An Israeli startup developing a smart data warehouse, using machine learning and natural language processing to automate data integration, data management and query optimization.

SnapSwap: A Luxembourg-based company offering white-label end-to-end know-your-customer (KYC) services for financial institutions and businesses.

The VentureClash competition continues to introduce some of the worlds most innovative and promising early-stage companies to all that Connecticut has to offer, said Matt McCooe, CEO of CI. From the initial application period through to the finals, we were so impressed with the caliber of leadership and the depth of innovation represented by the companies involved in the competition. We thank them for their efforts and commitment and look forward to working with the companies to help them make Connecticut a center point of their growth strategy.

This year, VentureClash also identified an early winner in the process: Aureus Analytics, which provides insurance industry solutions to measure customer experience. Hosted on an AI platform, its solutions combine both explicit and implicit data to determine a "Sentimeter" (CX) score for all customers, in real time. Anurag Shah, CEO of Aureus Analytics, is working with the Connecticut Innovations team to close an investment in the next few months.

We have always said that we never let the VentureClash competition get in the way of a good deal, said McCooe. Aureus was in the process of raising a round, and we wanted to participate. We learned about the company through Startup Bootcamp, and we knew we wanted to join the round. Were delighted to name Aureus our early winner of VentureClash 2018.

The finalists, representing the most promising early-stage companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things, pitched their ideas in front of a live audience and a panel of judges at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Conn. The judges included investors and subject-matter experts from Greycroft Partners, Oak HC/FT, Real Ventures, Stanley Ventures, Teamworthy Ventures, Travelers and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

In addition to the company pitches, Thursdays event also featured a keynote address from Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale University, where she serves as Director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory as well as the Canine Cognition Center, a research facility that studies how dogs think about the world.

The VentureClash competition started with applications from 300 companies from more than 15 countries. After two rounds of judging, nine finalists were named, and they then went on to compete at the live pitch event.

Event partners and sponsors included Aetna; aventri; Bernstein; Boehringer Ingelheim; Diameter Health; Disruptive Technologies; Elm Street Ventures; FML; Harman; Hartford Healthcare; Magellan Health; MasterCard; Medtronic; Nassau Re; NatWest Markets; Payflex; Pitney Bowes; Health Venture; ISG; Stanley, Black & Decker; startlab powered by Bank of Ireland; The Hartford; Shipman & Goodwin; Sikorsky Innovations; Synchrony Financial; Teamworthy Ventures; Travelers; Updike, Kelly & Spellacy; Voya Financial; Webster Bank; Yale University; and Yale Universitys Office of Cooperative Research.

For more information on qualifications, requirements, guidelines and application, visit http://www.ventureclash.com.

About VentureClash

VentureClash is Connecticut Innovations global venture challenge focused on early-stage companies. The challenge identifies promising companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things that will receive investments from a $5 million award pool and the support of resources around Connecticut. To learn more, visit http://www.ventureclash.com.

About Connecticut Innovations Inc.

Connecticut Innovations is Connecticuts strategic venture capital arm, providing funding and strategic support to early-stage technology companies. In addition to equity investments, CI provides grants that support innovation and collaboration through CTNext, and connections to its well-established network of partners and professionals.

To learn more, visit http://www.ctinnovations.com.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.Translating the enduringly popular tale Aladdin, Yasmine Seale says, made me feel like there was a plan in my life all along and everything had been leading to this moment. Speaking from a sun-drenched room in her home in Istanbul, she explains, It was written down in the 18th century by a Frenchman, Antoine Galland, based on the story he was told by a young Syrian traveler named Hanna Diyab, so it is both a product of France and also of the Arab world. I grew up in France and studied French literature, with a particular interest in the 18th century, and then went to university and studied Arab literature. So its a text that combines my two great interests.

In November, Norton will publish Seales rendering of Aladdin as a standalone volume introduced by Paulo Lemos Horta, a scholar of world literature and cross-cultural collaborations. Seale says Horta suggested releasing Aladdin in advance of her translation of the complete text of The Arabian Nights, which will appear in stages over the next five years and which includes Aladdin. We realized that Aladdin is not available to buy separately except in childrens versions, and as a result people dont really know the story. This became particularly striking during the controversy about the casting of Disneys live-action film. All these opinion pieces were being written about how they should cast Arabs, with people arguing back and forth about cultural authenticityabout a story that was set in China to begin with and wasnt particularly Arab. We thought it would be useful for people to be able to read the full text, which is usually buried in these massive volumes that are quite inaccessible.

Seale continues: It was very important to us to rehabilitate Aladdin as the product of an exchange and a mutual fascination. Paulo wrote a whole book about thisMarvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nightsand he devotes a chapter to the idea that, rather than see Aladdin as Gallands projected vision of the East, its more plausible to think of it as Diyabs vision of France. Diyab was brought to Versailles and presented to the king; theres a section in his diary about the princesses he meets that has striking similarities to the princess in Aladdin, and the splendor and luxury he saw at the French court also find their way into the story. There are also passages whose details are lifted from travelers accounts we know Galland was reading at the time. Aladdin is probably a mixture of an older story Diyab heard in Aleppo, where he grew up, and his own experiences and insights, mixed with Gallands observations from when he lived in Constantinople as secretary to the French ambassador, mixed with, no doubt, 100 other things. Thats what made it such a strange and slippery object to translatebecause its not a stable text.

Seales version of Aladdin is more direct and conversational than previous English translations. I was trying to bring out the freshness, vivacity, and wit I saw in the original French; Galland was an incredibly witty and playful person. I didnt want to do what a lot of other translators of the Nights have done, which is to translate it into deliberately archaic language. The 19th-century translators all did this, Richard Burton most famously; his translations, even by Victorian standards, are incredibly florid and elaborate. It was a way of creating this sense of distance from the world these texts came froma sense that the East was unfathomable, strange, and alien. I wanted to bring out the modernity that is already in the text.

Aladdin is one of the orphan tales of The Arabian Nights, written down in French by Galland from Diyabs oral versions and not found in any earlier Arabic manuscripts. Translating the 14th-century Arabic texts is a completely different experience, Seale comments. Gallands style is fairly close to what we would recognize as English prose, but in the Arabic there is no punctuation; clauses are separated by the word wa, which means and, or the word fa, which can mean so, or then, or however, or because. As a translator, you have to intervene to shape the narrative and create a readable English paragraph. To want authenticity in The Arabian Nights is a bit of a misnomer: these are stories that have continually shifted, that are constantly changing, that are made of their accretions and layers.

Seale gives the tales narrator, Scheherazade, as an example. In the framing story that begins the Nights, this king kills his unfaithful wife and decides to take a new woman every night and kill her in the morning, she explains. Scheherazade intervenes and says, I will save my sisters from this fate. What we know about her from the story is that she has collected books, she has a library, she has studied and memorized tales from previous times and the history of bygone ages. She is in this sense a translator and reinterpreter of these stories. Thinking about Scheherazade helped me think about the whole text as a series of conduitsstories being channeled through a series of vessels, Scheherazade being one. Every single person who has written them down, every translator, everyone whos added to this ocean of stories, is a kind of boatman ferrying the stories along. It makes sense to me, rather than thinking about this binary of original and translation, to break down that boundary. Its a very interesting time now; we are thinking about translation in looser ways, admitting the idea of translation as a creative act and maybe putting aside the idea of fidelity to the original as the only standard of a translations quality. In the case of The Arabian Nights, it really doesnt apply. Fidelity to what? When you have a story that exists in 80 different versions, you have to make choices. To translate the Nights means continuing to shape the stories and acknowledging that you are bringing your own sensibility to them rather than pretending it doesnt exist.

Seales own sensibility, shaped by a cosmopolitan, multicultural background, gives her a special sense of kinship with Aladdin. My mother is Syrian, but my father was a mix: his parents were Russian and Tunisian, he had grown up in Britain, and both my parents wrote in English. I grew up speaking and hearing three languages: French, English, and Arabic. For a long time I felt that I was just going to be French; my studies focused on French literature, and that was going to be my identity. Then I thought, No, I must learn Arabic and understand it properlythats part of my heritage. Thats why this work has been so pleasurable; I feel I can bring all that to the table and I dont have to choose. Gallands description of Topkapi Palacewhich I can see from my windowfinds its way into the descriptions of the mythical palaces in Aladdin, but so do Diyabs experiences at the palace of Versailles. Aladdin is neither just an Orientalist fantasy, nor is it just the vision of a Syrian person in France; its both at the same time, and I find it moving that it can be both.For a second time, publishers have won an appeal in the long-running Georgia State University (GSU) e-reserves lawsuit. However, the case was once again remanded to the district court, giving district court judge Orinda Evans yet another crack at deciding the case.

In a concise 25-page decision filed on October 19, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously vacated Evans' latest decision in part, and upheld it in part, and once again sent the case back to her with instructions for weighing what would be her third verdict. The appeals court also threw out the award of attorneys fees against the publishers.

The appeals court decision is the latest twist in the now decade-old copyright case. First filed in April of 2008 by three academic publishers (Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Sage Publications, with support from the Copyright Clearance Center and the AAP) the suit alleges that GSU administrators systematically encouraged faculty to offer students unlicensed digital copies of course readings (known as e-reserves) as a no-cost alternative to traditionally licensed course-packs.

In 2012, Evans first ruled against the publishers, finding that GSU's copying was fair use in all but five of 48 instances presented at trial. In October, 2014, however, the 11th Circuit reversed for the first time, and sent the case back to Evans with instructions to re-balance her four-factor fair use analysis in more holistic manner and to give the fourth fair use factor (market effect) additional weight in her overall analysis.

 The law, Pryor wrote for the panel, precludes Evans from revisiting issues already decided and affirmed. 

In her March, 2016, remand decision Evans did give the fourth factor more weightbut she also went back and re-did parts of her fair use analysis for each claim in the suit, including a closer look at the pricing and actual permissions revenue at stake for each claim in prior years. In Fridays opinion, the appeals court held that Evans erred in doing so.

The district court interpreted our earlier decision to instruct it to change its fourth-factor analysis for the 31 excerpts for which digital permissions were available, but the district court misinterpreted our mandate, the decision, written by Judge William Pryor, reads. The only error we identified in the district courts treatment of the fourth factor was that, in weighing and balancing the relative importance of the factors, it undervalued the severe threat of market harm posed by the Universitys non-transformative copying. We did not instruct the district court to revisit its earlier findings that factor four favored infringement when we instructed it to reweigh the factors on remand. The law, Pryor wrote for the panel, precludes Evans from revisiting issues already decided and affirmed.

The decision did not come as a surprise, as Pryor raised this very issue during the appeal hearing in July of 2017.

In addition, the Appeals court also held that Evans once again employed an inappropriate, mechanistic approach to weighing the four factors of her fair use test. Although the district court heeded our instructions in Cambridge II when it recognized that some factors are more important than others, the opinion states, it failed to break free of its erroneous arithmetic approach and to give each excerpt the holistic review the Act demands.

The court did, however, uphold Evans decision not to reopen the record in the case after the last appeal, as the publishers had requested. After the first appeal decision, the publisher plaintiffs sought to introduce new evidence that digital permissions were in fact available for a number of works considered at trial, which, the Appeals court held, Evans was within her rights to reject.

The case now heads back to Evans with instructions that will almost guarantee she returns with more infringement findings in her third opinion.

"The district court must reinstate its earlier findings that factor four strongly disfavors fair use for 31 of the 48 excerpts," the opinion states. "The district court must eschew a quantitative approach to the weighing and balancing of the fair-use factors and give each excerpt the holistic, qualitative, and individual analysis that the Act demands. And the district court must omit any consideration of price from its analysis of the third factor."

Barring a settlement, the decade-old case could still be far from a resolution.

In a statement, The Association of American Publishers (AAP) said it was "gratified" by the decision. "In reversing the district courts erroneous findings and vacating the award of attorneys fees," the statement reads, "the appellate panel for the second time rejected what it called a mathematical formula of fair use in favor of a qualitative consideration of each instance of copying in the light of its particular facts."

In a post on the blog In the Open, Kevin Smith, Dean of Libraries at the University of Kansas, who has followed the case closely from the beginning, says the latest decision seems mostly to point out out how "trivial" the case has become.

"After working on it for one year, two months, and three weeks, the court produced a decision in only 25 pages, which sends the case back, yet again, for new proceedings in the district court," Smith writes. "The saddest thing about this case is that, after ten years, it continues to chew over issues that seem less and less relevant. Library practices have evolved during that time, and publishing models have changed. Open access and the movement toward OERs have had a profound impact on the way course materials are provided to students. So the impact of this case, and of any final decision, if one ever comes, will be negligible. The plaintiff publishers actually lost a long time ago, they simply lack the wisdom to recognize that fact."

We will update this story with more reactions as they come in.Aside from the vandalism caused by students in their protest against student brutality, there have also been incidences of theft. A group of students, reported by social media, took the whole process to a hilarious notch when they stole a pot of banku being prepared by a security man.Karikari-Bondzie replaces Jerry Ahmed Shai who has been made the substantive CEO of the Authority.

Ahmed Shai became the substantive CEO after Mr. Samuel Atta Mensah resigned as the CEO few months after being in office.

I am extremely grateful to the president of the Republic of Ghana for appointing me to the high office of Deputy CEO, Coastal Development Authority. Thanks for the belief in me. Your magnanimity is beyond my imagination and I pledge never to let you down", Karikari-Bondzie wrote in a statement.

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Politics is a complex business. I know the huge expectations of our coastal belt. God be my helper, I will work with the CEO, other colleagues as well as the Board and Ministry to bring the needed Development to the people of the four regions.

Background

During the 2016 general elections, President Akufo-Addo pledged to create three development authorities to help accelerate development.

President Akufo-Addo created the Coastal Development Authority, together with the Middle Belt and Northern Development Authorities, and tasked them to implement the Infrastructure for the Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP).The re-election will extend Biya's 36-year rule by seven years and makes him one of Africa's longest standing leaders.

The 85-year-old president has been ruling the French West African nation since 1982 and is the second longest-serving ruler in Africa, after Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.

Oppositions describe election as fraudulent

The opposition candidates have described the election as fraudulent.

Joshua Osih, the candidate of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) had described the October 7, 2018, election as apartheid.

He argued that the Anglophone people in the North West and South West regions did not vote in the last election.

Cameroon opposition candidate, Maurice Kamto, who led the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) had claimed victory in the presidential election and called for the cancellation of the result ahead of the final announcement.

Court dismisses petition

The Cameroon court last Thursday, dismissed Kamto's petition, which called for the cancellation of the election, on the basis of massive and systematic fraud.

The courts president, Clement Atangana declared that the petitions were deemed unjustified by all members of the Constitutional Council unanimously.Dr Okonjo-Iweala made this known on Sunday, October 21, 2018, in a statement issued by her spokesperson, Paul Nwabuikwu.

Nwabuikwu said such falsehood is being disseminated on social media showing the former minister supporting one political interest or the other.

This misuse of the ministers name comes in many forms. There are fake newspaper articles published under her name.

Fake quotations canvassing certain views which are falsely attributed to her. Even fake audios in which someone pretends to be the former finance minister have been going around.

Most of these are typically disseminated on WhatsApp and other forms of social media. In one recent example, a video of the minister was cleverly edited, leaving out crucial information and context to give a totally false impression.

The statement added that Dr Okonjo Iweala is very capable of speaking for herself if and when she wants to and does not need the help of anyone to do that.

The spokesperson urged the media and the public to crosscheck the authenticity of any quotations, articles, audios and videos attributed to Dr Okonjo-Iweala before giving them credence or going public with them.

Facebook to assist Nigeria fight fake news

Two week ago, the Nigerian government announced that it has received a boost from the giant social networking platform, Facebook, to help fight fake news in the populous African nation.

Lai Mohammed, Nigeria's Minister of Information and Culture, stated that the boost is in furtherance of the National Campaign Against Fake News in the country.Out of the 140 countries studied, the highest placed African economy was Mauritius at 49 with the closest being South Africa in 67. Majority of the ranked countries from the continent languish in the bottom third with the only non-African countries in that category being Venezuela, Haiti and Yemen.

This abysmal performance in one of the key reports on measuring economic progress reiterates the deplorable state Africas economy finds itself, at least for a while now. And below is a breakdown of the four primary factors responsible.

Market monopoly and low innovation

The principal reason it is difficult for African countries to break into the top half of this index is market monopoly. The concerned economies have varying degrees of unhealthy relationships between politics and business, which leaves the control of the means of production with a few.

The best situation ought to be an open space for interested entrepreneurs or corporations to compete at an individual pace. Rather, key sectors including transportation, petroleum and energy, usually have the government as a sole provider of services.

In the few cases where there is private participation, prices and supply are dictated by big corporations in liaison with corrupt politicians. This effectively eliminates the required competition needed to improve the ability of the market to meet demand at the least cost to African consumers, who have the lowest income earnings globally.

It also translates to the loss of modifications necessary to increase consumer choice and satisfaction. With the consumer having little to no option of rejecting a commodity, the traditional channel of communication in the market is eliminated, hence the eventual weakness of their economies over time. Perhaps what can be considered the closest factor to market competitiveness is innovation - the process of idea generation geared towards maximising gains from investments.

While the rest of the world is frequently updating to the latest inventions in robotics and artificial intelligence, none of the lowly ranked African countries has successfully embraced science and technology in their educational systems to start with. Not to make mention of the different sectors of the economy.

For instance, agriculture, which contributes most to the GDP across the continent, is still manually practiced - probably with the exception of a few state-owned corporations. Whereas, leaders of these countries should already know that modernising an important sector like agriculture ought to be the first on their economic agenda if they truly desire to be competitive.

Unfavourable business environment

The Business Enabling Environment (BEE) in most parts of the continent is a far cry from what should be a tolerable minimum. This means that factors that determine the BEE of an economy, specifically regulatory policies and business laws, cannot generally be considered tolerable in Africa. As such, it constitutes a lot of challenges for businesses to thrive.

For example, starting a business or registering a property in most places in sub-Saharan Africa usually takes longer than normal, an effort that ordinarily should not exceed 1 to 3 work days. In Nigeria for instance, it typically takes 6 weeks to register a business. Same as Cameroon, while in places like DR Congo, Niger and Burundi, it may take longer.

It is one reason sub-Saharan Africa is recognised as the worst place for entrepreneurs and, consequently, these bureaucratic delays are a red flag when studying the competitiveness of an economy. One might even consider the low degree of competition among state-owned enterprises, bigger corporations and micro-and small enterprises (MSEs) as telling signs of why Africa will find it hard to score high in the study.

These red tapes coupled with the weak protection of private properties complicates the decision-making process for value chain actors, like farmers, local merchants and the consumer. In the end, it makes the amount of value they add to the economy as a function of market competition to be quite low.

But these challenges can be avoided if African governments could simply stop imposing unnecessary regulations. However, with that unlikely to happen any time soon, the business environment will remain hostile.

Weak human capital

This has more to do with how Africans contribute to the GDP of their countries - a considerably low quota due to the deplorable state of education and quality of life.

The ability of an average African worker to significantly contribute to the market process has remained relatively stagnant for decades while the youth population continues to grow without an increase in job availability or skills.

This puts the market value of the skill set of an average African worker among the lowest in the world - according to the recent Human Capital Index of the World Bank Group (WBG).

It has created a wide gap between the availability of required skills and modern industrial demand for labour. It is also the same reason why 70 per cent of the continents labour force finds itself in the Agricultural sector.

Meanwhile, education is the key to driving human productivity. In fact, the more countries invest in technical education nowadays, the farther their economies are likely to improve in areas of science and technology.

For the concerned African countries, the next step in improving their human capital is to invest more in education. Other needs like health, security and nutrition can always follow.The Occasion

The transmigration of Prophetess Naomi to Yeyeluwa Oodua is generating so much reaction from religious Nigerians. Everyone appear to wonder why the Christian prophetess preferred to be the wife of a traditional god-king, the Ooni of Ife, who rules the spiritual homeland of the Yoruba race.

What Fellowship Can Light Have with Darkness

She is called a hypocrite and a backslider, who prefer to ignore the admonition in 2 Cor. 6:14(Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?). She had just extinguished the lightness in her and wed the authority of traditional religious belief. Christianity and Islam are the light of Nigeria - One is the sun, the other the moon, while traditional religion is considered as darkness.

Many wonder, what attracts the Prophetess of Light to The God-King of Darkness and a serial divorcee  like her, he claim to be a committed Christian; was she carried away by the lure of royal grandeur, comfort, fame and wealth or she had foresaw the union as beneficial to propagating Christianity in the homeland of Yoruba traditional religion; or is this union a strategic move to orchestrate an Esther-like take-over of the throne of darkness by the prophetess of light.

The Children of Light

Nigerian is often designated as the most religious nation on earth, bulk of the population professing the Christian or Islamic faiths; some would even give statistics as 50% Christian and 50% Muslim or tilts the percentage to favour the one they belong, often times nothing or little as 0.0-something% is rationed for traditional religious believers.

With the exception of Wole Soyinka, most Nigerias elites claimed to be titanic adherents in the religions of light, with titles like Alfas, Uztazs, Prophets, Apostles, Deacons and Knights. Some are ordained ministers, clerics, priests, evangelist etcetera. But in reality, very few of them are total adherents of this faith; most practice religious syncretism, married to light but whore and romance with darkness.

Romance with Darkness

The romance with darkness is not an exclusivity of the Nigeria elite, even the masses  up to the poorest. Survival in Nigeria is a tough one, lives are dependent on fate and fortunes; to protect ones fortune, a spiritual firewall must be erected. Every day, children of light will kneel or let the forehead kiss the ground to erect higher fortress against assault on their fortunes by spiritual thieves and enemies of progress.

And when misfortune crawl in through any crevice bore by a transgression, the rest Jesus Christ or Prophet Mohammed (SAW) and embrace the Hosts of Traditional Power in the name their individual language ascribes. Covens and Shrines became the places of succor not Mosques and Churches.

Many Nigerians, who confess the Christian and Islamic faith also delves into, consult and patronize traditional spiritual powers; for it appears that the powers of darkness is more potent and powerful than the powers of light.

The Powers of Darkness

Most Nigerians fear traditional spiritual power, they acknowledge its potency. It delivers instant judgment, provides maximum security of lives fortunes, is the greatest fortifier and giver of instant wealth, luck and health. Good poor church or mosque people would not hesitate to consult traditional spiritual power when they cannot afford money to solve their problems and knowing that the Church rarely gives even as it takes more; traditional power which is more affordable (a mere token of kolanuts or local chicken) can protect them and their families from the attacks of bad belles that causes all manner of sickness from common cold to HIV AID, from bad planning and decisions that causes poverty and misfortune.

The rich and the wealthy wants to protect their lives, riches and wealth from physical and spiritual enemies, the bury rams, cows and sacrifices human to protect their properties and fortify their lives. Politicians engages in bizarre rituals to garner followers, keep them perpetually spellbound, perceive or uninterested while they mislead and steal.

Some frustrate justice by unleashing spiritual bugs that afflict judges thus, turning judgments in their favour. Armed personnel, from the Military to armed robbers fortifies themselves the traditional way against bullets, mortars and missiles  Swindlers, fraudsters (419, yahoo-yahoo), sacrifices animals, mutilate humans and eat shits and carcasses to be able to bring victims under spells (mugu-mutizing).

But many Nigerians are too religious to visit or enter shrines and covens. Then other solutions present themselves.

Read Also: The empire of Sodom and the Nigerian campaign

The Hybrids of Light and Darkness

But some Christians and Muslims would not dare visit or consult traditional spiritualists, due to the scandal it would generate or the shame they cannot bear. What we see is the traditional spiritualist transforming themselves into lightbearers  as Islamic clerics and Christian ministers. They are selve style Alfas, Uztaz and Marabouts, as Pastors, Prophets, Apostles and Evangelist. They open temples for casting out demons, thwarting misfortune, attracting good fortunes and predicting fortunes and good will.

They know the Quran and the Hadits and look like they love the Prophet; they quotes Bible verses and talk as if they sat with Christ on that banquet table of the last supper. Muslims and Christians alike visit them, consult them with the assurance that they had not transgressed, even when they are subjected to preposterous rituals that had no scriptural basis (Quran and Bible).

The Reality

Islam and Christianity may be the most popular religions in Nigeria, but the reality is that traditional religion is the most powerful. Adherents dont organize crusades or big Tafsir gatherings to espouse their beliefs or engage in grandiose healing and deliverance programmes. The potency and affordability of their practices had convinced many Nigerians to patronize it, and often go for it as last resort for swift solutions and judgment.

No religious Nigerian in his right senses will accept this, but the syncretism cannot be overruled; at least at one point in the lives of most practicing Nigerian Muslim or Christian, they had consciously consulted and patronize the traditional spiritual powers. Many will do it again if it guarantees them security, wealth, power, comfort and whatsoever they desire, without thinking twice about Jesus or the Prophet nor the gruesomeness and fetishes of the rituals or sacrifices involve.

I wonder why we are surprise Prophetess Naomi Sikekunda Ogunwo would not want to be Olori Yeyeluwa Sikenunola.

Written by Mbuyazi Emmanuel.Punch reports that the founder of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, also known as Winners Chapel, made the appeal in a memo read during the service at Faith Tabernacle, Ota, on Sunday, October 21, 2018.

According to the popular preacher, members of his congregation and every Christian must fast and pray in order to prevent the impending calamity that could come with the 2019 general elections.

Why the Living Faith founder wants Nigerians to pray and fast for seven days

Bishop Oyedepo further explained: "Recent elections that held in some states and some quarters across Nigeria are pointers to the need for divine intervention for the rescue of our nation to avert the breakdown of law and order in the forthcoming general elections in this coming year."

"Political thuggery has assumed a new dimension in Nigeria, where many voters were not able to access the polling booths because they did not belong to the group that must win. Some even resisted access even to the point of killing the opposition.

"If anyone is not sure of returning home from going to cast his vote and would not want to risk his life for that, how then do we determine the winner? This is how much the soul of Nigeria is in distress and would require divine intervention for rescue.

"There is nothing wrong with a 'must win' determination, that is what the spirit of sportsmanship is all about, but this must be channeled through legitimate means only and not by killing the people one claims he wants to serve.

"Today, we cannot tell how much arms some individuals or group may have piled up to accomplish their political ambitions, by being determined to kill innocent Nigerians that may stand in their way. We have no choice but to pray for God to heal our land and deliver us from all forms of election crises."While threatening to continue the strike, the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union, COEASU said it would not be intimidated by the no work no pay policy of the Nigerian government.

In a statement released in Abuja, the National President of COEASU, Nuhu Ogirima said the union is ready for a prolonged battle with the government.

''As we conclude the first phase of the national strike, we urge you all to be not distracted by the intimidation and threat of no work no pay. The threat should rather strengthen our resolve that enough is enough of exploitative work. Its no pay no work! So, do brace up for a prolonged battle  it is a no retreat no surrender action, for if we refused to stand for COE system now, we may not get it right again. He said.

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The union also said the no work no pay policy is a sign of insensitivity and irresponsibility towards the law-abiding labour force of the country.

Where salaries are paid, it is the cooperative societies membership subscriptions and Unions dues that are being used to service/augment government allocation for salaries. So, if we didnt threaten government no pay no work, why would government threaten us with no work no pay because were now requesting the government to pay us full salary, by the strike, he queried.A recent report by Stutern shows the list of the most employed graduate courses in Nigeria. The list comprises of 20 universities and polytechnic courses.

According to Stutern, Medicine, Library and Information Science, and Marketing are the most employed graduate courses.

This, therefore, means that graduates who study the following courses will find it easier to a job than graduates who study other courses.

Here are the top 20 courses that increase your chances of getting a job easier and faster.

1. Medicine

2. Library and Information Science

3. Marketing

4. Quantity Surveying

5. Physiology

6. Management Information System

7. Law

8. Civil Engineering

9. Computer Engineering

10 Statistics

11. Computer Science

ALSO READ: 8 common academic related slangs in Nigerian Universities

12. Computer Engineering

13. Electrical and Electronic Engineering

14. Physics and Astronomy

15. Biochemistry

16. Medical Laboratory Science

17. Psychology

18. Chemical Engineering

19. Accountancy

20. EconomicsIt seems a refreshing change for the rapper in a year that has been sort of a mixed experience for her. This includes the passing of a loved one.

Here are few things to know about Queen Latifah:

1. A rapper and an actress

Queen Latifah signed with Tommy Boy Records in 1989 and released her debut album "All Hail the Queen" under the label. Her early appearance behind the camera saw her play a lead role in the sitcom "Living Single" which lasted from the year 1993 to 1998.

Her prominence on the show exposed her up to bigger opportunities in acting. One of her popular films include "Barber Shop 2: Back In Business" appearing alongside Ice Cube.

2. Grammy Award winner

Queen Latifah's 1993 album "Black Reign" produced a song 'U.N.I.T.Y'. It successfully earned her a Grammy award. On the track she talks about the issues affecting women. These include street harassment, domestic violence, and slurs used to represent the gender in hip-hop.

3. A show host with $60 million net worth

The personality of being a show host is one of the features that helped her stand out. She reportedly produced a talk show "The Queen Latifah Show" which originally ran from September 13, 1999 to August 31, 2001.

According to a 2017 rating published by Bankrate, she is valued at $60 million in net worth.

4. Daughter to divorced parents

According to reports, Queen Latifah's parents divorced when she was 10-years-old. This boosted her closeness to brother Winki. The pair reportedly comforted each other during trying times.

5. Mother Rita Owens passed away in 2018ALSO READ: Here's what Femi Kuti discussed with President Macron

"Vice President Osinbajo came to me, to my house for support, he's standing here and Ii am saying this here, but I told him I can't support because of my father's support and he understands because he's my friend, so he understands," Femi said.

Osinbajo wanted to see the Afrikan Shrine - Femi Kuti

On Saturday, October 2018 during the just concluded Felabration 2018, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo visited the New Afrikan Shrine in Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos.

Osinbajo had visited the shrine on the invitation of Femi Kuti after the VP had requested to have a feel of what the shrine looks like.

During Osinbajo's visit to the New Afrikan Shrine on Saturday, October 20, 2018, Femi told the crowd at the Felabration 2018 all that transpired between himself and the VP.

"He said he wanted to come to shrine to see what everybody is saying about Shrine and I am happy that he came and saw that we are not crazy here. He said he didn't know this place was this big," Femi said.The movie which was directed by Kemi Adetiba had top Nigerian celebrities as well as the cast at the premiere. The black carpet saw actors and actresses channel their inner royalty.

Sola Sobowale, Funlola Aofiyebi-Raimi, Toyin Aimakhu, Ini Dima-Okojie, Ebuka, Ireti Doyle, Adesua Etomi, Kemi Adetiba, Mo Abudu, and others attended the premiere.

The movie 'King of Boys' premiered at 8pm and lasted three hours although as Kemi Adetiba hinted during her opening speech, the cinema version would be slightly different than the one watched at the premiere.

King of Boys follows the story of Alhaja Eniola Salami, (played by Sola Sobowale) a businesswoman and philanthropist with a checkered past and a promising political future. She is a pillar in the society loved by many, feared by most, and truly known by a select few.

As her political ambitions see her outgrowing the underworld connections responsible for her considerable wealth, she is drawn into a power struggle that threatens everything she holds dear.

Speaking ahead of the movie premiere, Kemi Adetiba expressed her delight at finally being able to tell such a compelling story. After the huge success of The Wedding Party, I wanted to try my hands on a different style of storytelling, one that would show my versatility as a director and a storyteller. Yes, the process of making the movie might have been tedious, as we shot in over 75 different locations, but we are very proud of what weve created, and we cant wait to share this with the world, she remarked.Upon being arrested, the following were recovered; three AK47 rifles, 38 rounds of AK47 ammunition, one Honda Hennessey car belonging to a victim and one cutlass.

On Sunday, October 21, 2018, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Jimoh Moshood issued a statement issued that named the other two suspects as Nura Dahiru, also known as Ula, and Buhari Hamisu, also known as Wiseman. . The statement reads, Arrest of vicious and notorious kidnap-for-ransom gang led by a woman, Hawa Yunusa, from Masaka, Nasarawa State, who leads so many kidnapping gangs has been arrested for several kidnappings of prominent Nigerians, including one Aisha Haruna (a businesswoman) referred to as Zainab by her family and friends, who was kidnapped and later killed and abandoned by this gang in the bush at Uke town, Nasarawa State.

ALSO READ: Bobrisky offers helping hand to man reportedly living with HIV, promises N200k every month

They robbed and killed Aisha Haruna and stole her car, a Honda Hennessey. They have since changed the colour of the Honda car.

The two other suspects Nura Dahiru a.k.a Ula and Buhari Hamisu a.k.a Wiseman were recruited by Hawa Yinusa.

The gang terrorized the Abuja, Nasarawa and Plateau States environment through kidnap-for-ransom of innocent people, forced ATM withdrawals.From the UK to New York to Ghana, designers from all over the world are set to showcase their designs on the runway of PFWAFRICA2018 at the Main Banqueting Hall, Oriental Hotel.

Get familiar with our first 10!

1. VonRay

Hailing from Shreveport, Louisiana by way of NYC, VonRay has over 10 years of Fashion Styling, Design, Film, Mentoring and Production experience. The Dynamic Duo is comprised of Dennis R. & Latasha H. The brand has worked with several celebrities & industry officials; their past Accessory & Apparel Designs and Style work has been featured in (covers & editorial spreads included) publications such as Heed Magazine, Marie Claire, Urban Ink, Beyond Classically Beautiful, Stylish Curves, Lane Bryant's Blog, Just Jared, Eclec Magazine, Huffington Post (Style) and more.

2. JPKouture by Hadassah

JPKouture ethos is that every plus size lady is beautiful and their clothes should complement and enhance this beauty, hence building the confidence of a curvy lady. This motivated JPKingdom CEO to birth JPKOUTURE by Hadassah in 2013, a brand dedicated to designing and producing fabulous pieces using Exotic fabrics with Modern and Sultry twist.

JPKouture specializes in creating beautiful couture pieces with blend of ankara, sequin, lace, etc. Each piece is carefully designed to enhance the curves and create elegant silhouette for full figured ladies, making her feel beautiful and flawless. JPKouture by Hadassah is the pioneer of the Plussize movement in Africa and also the founder of PLUSSIZE.

3. O'Saunders

OSaunders is a fashion brand which completely represents the ideology of modern day woman taste in fashion. The brand started in 2010 by Olabisi Saunders, a fashion graduate with the aim of providing uniquely crafted garments and accessories which give a sense of confidence, luxury, modernity and functionality to women of different sizes and colour. The OSaunders brand provides both ready to wear and high-end dresses to complement the modern day woman.

4. SGTC Clothing

An SGTC WOMAN is Bold, Confident and not afraid to stand out and make a Statement with Fashion. SGTC CLOTHING is a contemporary Afrocentric, ready-to-wear Fashion Brand that celebrates women of all Figures. In just 2 Years and over 250 designs under its belt, the journey has been that of intense hard work and firm consistency. From a little tribe to building a culture of presenting African prints, especially Ankara, in a unique way thousands of people globally want to be a part of.

5. Modavi Couture

Modavi Couture is a Nigerian Ready-to-wear fashion brand. In business for approximately two years, it caters to women with different fashion styles, dress sizes and shapes. Modavi Couture believes in self confidence, that every woman is beautiful in her own unique way and is eager to add some fabulousity to the already fabulous self.

6. Ashanti Swimwear

Ashanti Swimwear is a Ghanaian owned unique African print swimwear line. Designed this line to tell the story of African culture & fashion, its mission is to see women in all shades and sizes around the world embrace and celebrate the true meaning of traditional African culture & prints in the luxury swimwear industry.

African fashion and culture is evolving around the world and the swimwear industry must evolve with this change and increasing demand because beauty is beyond shade and size. Ashanti's prints and patterns represent timeless African royal culture and every pattern and colour represents a unique meaning of life. Ashanti Swimwear launched in November 2016 and in just over a year the brand built a very strong social media presence due to creative promotional videos and images. Ashanti Swimwear has been worn by Hollywood celebrities Gabrielle Union and Kelly Rowland and has been featured in ELLE Magazine, Huffington Posts, Daily Mail, Yahoo News, Cosmopolitan, CNN, BuzzFeed, Essence, Pop Sugar, Madame Noire, E News, Bravo TV and many more.

7. Scarlett & Jo

Scarlett & Jo was founded by Gifi Fields the veteran  say vintage, designer whose career started in the 1960s. Gifi has always been an innovator and is credited with designing and producing the first ra-ra skirts amongst many other iconic designs and shapes. Also well known for producing beautiful prints, and soft flowing fabrics, with Scarlett & Jo he has set about designing new fun and feminine cuts and shapes that enhance the full figured woman. There is a consistent illusion of the hour glass that Scarlett & Jo produces that work with women of all shapes. Some say Gifi has invented cuts and shapes that have made all women curvy.

8. Perlicious

Falling in love very early for African fashion, and the miscegenation of cultures, Sarah CODJO, native Beninese and African native decided to put her pearl talent in the heart of her life. After a diversified professional life, she decided to embark on entrepreneurship and put her creativity into her professional life in 2008 in Dakar, then returned to base in Benin in 2009. Since then, she has already realised seven collections, a minimum of one hundred (100) unique pieces made entirely by hand, under the name PERLICIOUS Accessories.

Since 2012, she has represented Benin, her country of origin, at fashion shows, exhibitions and cultural meetings, in the following countries: Benin - France - Ethiopia - Kenya - South Africa - Malawi. PERLICIOUS proposes a creative, personalized, inclusive (all sizes matter) and rich fashion .

9. Areke by Juliet

Areke by Juliet is a jewellery line founded by miss world Kenya 2004, TV producer, Musician, Actor and mother of Two girls  Juliet Atieno Ochieng. Areke is inspired by the bold unapologetic African woman and uses locally available materials like Brass, Leather, Beads, sisal and cow horn to create one of a kind pieces. The brand workshop is based in the biggest slum in Africa KIBERA where talented youths are engaged and helped in the carefully hand crafted needed in designs thus creating employment and empowerment to them.

10. Morin.O

Morin.O is a contemporary leather accessories brand inspired by artistic Innovation and ethnic designs for the sassy,confident and fashionable individual. The brand is known for production of exclusive handcrafted leather accessories to accentuate style, giving a platform of personal expression for that priceless fulfilment.A Statement issued by the Chief the Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi on Sunday, quoted, Gen. Francis Behanzin as making the promise when he led a delegation of the Sub-regional body on a courtesy visit to INEC headquarters in Abuja.

Behanzin said the purpose of the visit was to, among other things, find out about INECs preparation for the 2019 general elections and the challenges it was facing, in view of Nigerias large voter population of over 80 million.

He expressed appreciation to the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu for his contributions to the improvement of the electoral process and sustenance of democracy across the West African sub-region.

Oyekanmi quoted Yakubu in his response as explaining the Commissions preparations for the 2019 polls.

Yakubu said the Commission had developed, validated and was already implementing its 2017  2021 Strategic Plan, the Election Project Plan and had also released the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the 2019 General Elections since Jan. 9.

He said the Commission also carried out the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) that allowed citizens who just turned 18 years and other Nigerians who had never registered the opportunity to do so.

He informed the delegation that over 14.5 million voters were registered during the exercise between April 2017 and August 2018.

This new figure will be added to the almost 70 million citizens already in the national Voter Register after due processes.

He added that the country might have about 83 million voters after the register had been cleaned up.

Yakubu observed that conducting general election in Nigeria could be likened to conducting an election for the whole of ECOWAS.

He informed the delegation that Nigeria currently has 91 registered political parties out of which 89 will field candidates for various positions in the next year general elections.

Yakubu, who is also the President, ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC), said Nigeria has fulfilled its promises to the body since his election as its President in Cotonu, the Republic of Benin in March 2017.

These, according to him, include the location of the ECONEC Secretariat in Nigeria and the organisations visit to many member countries.

He expressed the hope that by the end of March 2019 when his tenure would end, more countries would have been visited.

Yakubu said the Electoral Commission in Guinea Conakry recently asked INEC for help to clean up the countrys voter register, which was done, while Nigeria also observed the elections in Mali.

He said that INEC had supported other Electoral Commissions in the ECOWAS Sub-region, especially in the area of voter registration.

He added that Burkina Faso and Ghana were also provided with ballot boxes. He identified finance as the major challenge facing ECONEC.

He said that while each member country is expected to pay $5,000 per annum, he was of the opinion that ECONEC would still require some support from ECOWAS.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!We have lived with the Fulani people for ages; we have nothing against them. Even the Fulani people know that we have nothing against them, Ortom said in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media and ICT, Mr Tahav Agerzua.

The statement, which was made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Makurdi, recalled that Benue people voted overwhelmingly for former presidents Shehu Shagari and Umaru Musa YarAdua in 1979, 1983 and 2007 respectively.

We also voted for President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, he said.

He said that Shagari and Yaradua reciprocated the support they received by patronizing Benue people through federal appointments and projects.

But from my findings, majority of Benue residents are opposed to the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC, because they have failed to register any positive federal presence in the state.

Many people also feel that the APC-led federal government has failed to secure lives and property, he claimed.

The governor promised to work with his predecessor, Dr, Gabriel Suswam, to bring development to the state.

The statement said that Ortom and Suswam had put the past behind them and had resolved to work together.

Ortom thanked the Tiv Area Traditional Council for brokering peace between him and his predecessor, pointing out that the duo would be better off if they worked together.

He assured workers that everything was being done to ensure that the last Paris Club Refund that was withdrawn by the federal government, was returned to the state so that part of their salary arrears would be cleared.

In the meantime, Suswam has appealed to Ortoms close aides to educate the people on the governors achievements and his challenges.In the suit filed on March 29, 2018 by his lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, to enforce his fundamental rights, Charly Boy explained how "over 100 from the F.C.T. Police Command invaded the Unity Fountain in Abuja on August 8, 2017 and attacked" him and his group "with teargas canisters, hot water cannon and wild police dogs" during the resume or resign protest during President Muhammadu Buhari's absence from Nigeria on account of his medical vacation in the United Kingdom.

Charly Boy alleged that he collapsed in the process and was rushed to the hospital.

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He also stated that the police attacked them due to claims that their protest over the Presidents absence, which had exceeded 90 days on the second day of their daily sit-out protest, had gone international and brought serious embarrassment to the country.

Delivering judgment on Monday, October 22, 2018, in the case marked as Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/343/2018Justice John Tsoho held that there was no evidence that miscreants invaded or stormed the premises of the protest as alleged by the police.

On whether the Applicant is entitled to stage the protest, the court held that protest is a constitutionally guaranteed right provided it is done peacefully and that even if miscreants were on the scene to hijack the protest, the Respondents possess enough security measures to dislodge such persons and maintain law and order.

"The Respondents (the Police) need not exercise an uncommon aggression and mayhem to wade off alleged miscreants Tsoho ruled.

"The law is that the court has the right to grant redress to anyone whose right is violated and the Applicant is entitled to a remedy.

"Relief 4 is granted and the Respondents are ordered to publish an apology to the Applicant in 2 National Newspapers for violating his Fundamental rights. The sum of 50 Million Naira is awarded against the Respondents as General and Exemplary damages," said Tsoho.

The court also ordered perpetual injunction against the Police from violating the fundamental rights to dignity of the human person, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly and association.

ALSO READ:

Reacting to the judgment, Effiong described the judgment as a resounding victory for democracy, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in the country.

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"This judgment sends unequivocal message to the Nigerian Police that they have no power to stop or disrupt peaceful protests by Nigerians. The police by this judgment cannot invent flimsy excuses to stop citizens from exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. I am highly elated by this victory for democracy. Effiong said.

Reacting to the judgment, the National Secretary of the OurMumuDonDo Movement, Raphael Adebayo, in a statement said that the judgment has raised the confidence of Nigerians in the judiciary.

"The OurMumuDonDo Movement wishes to express satisfaction over the judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja on the unprovoked attack of the police on its members during the ResumeOrResign Protest. This development is a sign that the Nigerian judiciary is indeed committed to upholding the supremacy of our country's Constitution.He also called on them not to insult people who do not believe in their ideology.

Atiku said this in a statement which he posted on Twitter on Sunday, October 21, 2018.

He said For everyone who supports me, I ask you to conduct yourself respectfully, even with people who do not agree with you.

There will be insults, falsehoods, threats and innuendo. Ignore them and stay focused on the task of rebuilding Nigeria.

South-West will get SGF position

Also, the Director General, Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation, Chief Gbenga Daniel has said that the position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) will be given to the South West region if Atiku wins in 2019.

Daniel said this at an interactive session with newsmen in Lagos state on Sunday, October 21, 2018.

According to The Nation, hesaid We need to understand that the candidate has control over who becomes his running mate during the election and who becomes the SGF if he wins.

The decisions on major offices are being given serious consideration and no zone or region will be marginalised.

The offices of Senate President and Speaker of the House of Reps will be decided after the polls and based on what plays out in both houses.

Aside from major slots, I think what is paramount to the people of the South West is restructuring of the country, which Atiku is very serious about.

So the issue for the South West is not personality or slot issue per say because personalities come and go but restructuring Nigeria is significant and more symbolic than zoned offices.

Mbaka says Atiku will win

In a related development, the founder of Adoration Ministry in Enugu state, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbakahas revealed that Atiku Abubakar will defeat President Buhari in the 2019 presidential election.Fayose arrived the Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos, in a white bus manned by stern looking security operatives, on Monday, October 22, 2018.

Fayose is being arraigned for alleged fraud and misappropriating billions of taxpayer funds. He has been slammed with an 11-count charge.

The showman

Fayose made a show of taking himself to EFCC headquarterson Tuesday, October 16, while spotting a black T-Shirt with the inscription: EFCC, Im here.

The former governor is under investigation for allegedly receiving N1.3 billion from the Office of the then National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, through then-Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro.

The EFCC also has a N1.3billion poultry fraud case against Fayose.

A former Attorney General of the Federation, Chief Kanu Agabi (SAN), will serve as Fayoses lawyer through his trial.He said the PDP had ruled the country for 16years before 2015 and all they brought to Nigerians was misery and underdevelopment.

Musa said that the opposition party almost completely ruined the economy with massive corruption and plunder while in power.

The governor said though all was not well with the country under the present All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government, Nigerians should never risk having any hope in the PDP to make things better.

Musa said that the PDP lacked the moral right to ask for a return to power, and a credible alternative was needed to turn things around in the country.

I do not understand the hype about PDP returning to power. I just do not understand. Return to do what? The party that created many problems for 16 years while they were in power? No way!

Things are not too good at the country at the moment, but I think the country would be worse if the PDP is allowed to return. We saw what they did for 16years and they will definitely mess things up further.

Nigerians should not trust the PDP with power. We will be disappointed. What we need in the country right now is a credible alternative that would deliver good governance and respond to our needs, he said.

Musa said that money had over the years influenced Nigerian politics, resulting in the emergence of unpopular leaders.

The former governor said Nigerians must be prepared to change the narrative by voting according to their conscience in 2019 and beyond.

He said the country was currently faced with a number security and economic challenges, among others, calling for governments creative intervention to address.

Musa suggested the economic restructuring of the country to bring back privatised public corporations to government control for provision of more efficient services to the people.Kanu, who hasnt been seen publicly since September 14, 2017, made a special picture and video appearance from Israel on Friday, October 20, 2018.

Kanu fled his fathers compound in Afaraukwu, Abia State, in September of 2017 after soldiers deployed to the Southeast for Operation Python Dance allegedly stormed the house and tore the place down.

There were insinuations that Kanu was killed during the operation, but his re-appearance last week and a statement from his associates and family members, have now put paid to those.

Kanusbroadcast from Israel is still being talked about.

Here are 10 talking points from his speech:

1. Kanu says hell be bringing back hell with him

In a husky tone, Kanu thunderedmy dear fellow Biafrans, I have returned full time and Im coming back and Ill bring hell with me".

2. Kanu loves calling Nigeria Zoo

I promised the Zoo that I will be coming to Biafra and I came. I do not recognise the court of the Zoo. I want the people of the Middle Belt to rise and join IPOB," Kanu said.

Recall that Kanu was facing trial in Nigeria for illegal possession of firearms, gun-running, treasonable felony and secession. He was still on bail when he disappeared.

3. He explains how he got out of the country

According to Kanu,"IPOB military intelligence evacuated me from my compound when the Army of the Zoo attacked me. I am in Israel and the efficiency of MOSSAD (Israeli intelligence agency) will be replicated in Biafra, we shall hunt everyone down to avenge the death of IPOB members".

4. Kanu had nice words for Fayose who is standing trial for corruption

I want to send my solidarity to and assure him that Biafra will stand by him in this hour of need. We will have a special place for him in Biafra. I thank all my sureties that stood by me. My unavailability was forced on me," Kanu said.

5. The python dancers killed Kanus dog

In Kanus words; The Army of the zoo killed my dog Jack and few other people in my compound, I am sorry for what my sureties are passing through but I want to assure them that they will have a special place in Biafra. I shall not be honouring the court invitation.

6. Kanu says he didnt jump bail

The notion that I jumped bail is a fallacy in law. I did not jump bail. On the 14th of September 2017, the terrorists of the zoo came to kill me. They know if I go to court, Nigeria will burn and I was forced to leave. I did not jump bail. The zoo called Nigeria cannot jail me.

"I will fight till the last day. Chief Justice Binta Nyakos court failed to ask Nigerian army why they invaded my home. Nigerian court is a Kangaroo court. I did not jump bail, I left because the court failed to protect me," Kanu said.

7. In case anyone was still in doubt, Kanu says hes not a citizen of Nigeria

"I am not a Nigerian. I already renounced Nigeria in 2015. I am a Biafran with British Nationality. I cannot be tried by a court I do not recognise. I do not recognise Nigeria . I can only come to the court with UN supervision," Nnamdi Kanu thundered.

8. No election in Biafra land, Kanu swears

Heres how he put itIPOB will liberate Biafra and we will not take part in any election until we get a referendum and this is not negotiable, we will achieve this by every necessary means. We thank Israel for all the contributions they made to IPOB," Kanu said.

9. The Kanu proclamation

"I decree that there is no longer South East or South South Nigeria. It shall be known as Biafra. Without referendum, nothing will happen in Nigeria. IPOB will not participate in any election and that position will never change," Kanu said.

10. Kanu says IPOB is so huge right nowAccording to Daily Post, Uwazuruike said Kanu is working for the Department of State Services (DSS).

The MASSOB leader called on Igbos to disregard the IPOB leaders comments during his broadcast on Sunday, October 21, 2018.

2019 election

Uwazuruike also told all South-Easterners to disregard Kanus call for a boycott of the 2019 general election.

The IPOB leader, during his broadcast, said Igbos will not participate in the election until a referendum is carried out.

In his response, the MASSOB leader said Nnamdi Kanu is calling for effective boycott of elections, referendum and sit at home, which MASSOB/BIM abandoned long ago, because of its adverse effects on Ndigbo. These issues are not practicable and the young man does not and cannot have effective control over them.

Even if the people obey the order, the Nigerian Constitution empowers President Buhari to appoint anybody to run the affairs of any state, where elections were not held.

Kanus disappearance arranged by DSS

Uwazuruike also said that Kanus disappearance and resurfacing was arranged by the DSS.

Not many of his ardent followers truly know that Kanu is not sincerely working for the Independence of Biafra. His coming to Nigeria, his arrest, detention, trial, release on bail and his alleged disappearance and resurfacing, were all prearranged by the DSS.

If Mazi Kanu was sincere, he should have disclosed how he was spirited away from his Afara Ukwu country home, when the soldiers struck. How did he disappear from his country home?

How did he survive the onslaught, even when he claimed that about 28 people were killed during the military operation in his home? How did he leave Nigeria and what document did he use to traverse all the nations before arriving Israel? We couldnt have forgotten so soon that the DSS seized all his travel documents, he added.This is coming after photos of him praying at the Wailing Wallin Jerusalem surfaced on social media on Friday, October 19, 2018.

During his broadcast, he called on everyone listening to observe a minute of silence for the 28 people who he said gave their lives to save him from the military.

Kanu said that the plan of the Nigerian government was to assassinate him under the guise of a military exercise.

You will recall that soldiers attached to Operation Python Dance 2allegedly launched an attack on his fathers compound on September 14, 2017.

Hails Fayose

In his broadcast, the IPOB leader hailed the former Governor of Ekiti state, Ayo Fayose for his support, and said that IPOB stands with him in his time of persecution.

Kanu also thanked Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, Archbishop Anthony Obinna and many others for standing for the truth.

The IPOB leader expressed gratitude to the US President, Donald Trump and Israels Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu for standing with the Biafra group.

I will come back

The IPOB leader also vowed to return to Nigeria, adding that no mortal can kill him. His words: I will return and I will bring help with me.

Kanu thanked members of IPOB for standing their ground in the face of opposition and specially praised the women wing of the group in Akwa-Ibom and Imo states who protested.

He promised to ensure that those that carried out the assault on Igbo land will pay.

Gives condition to appear in court

Speaking on the allegations that he jumped bail,Kanu described it as false, adding that he was preparing to come to court before the alleged attempt on his life.

The IPOB leader also said that he is willing to come appear in court if the international community gives him assurances of his safety.

2019 Election

Speaking on the upcoming general elections, Kanu accused the North of registering children.

He also said that the people of Biafra are enlightened people, adding that they will not take part in what he called a charade.

We will not be part of anything until there is a referendum," he added.

Grant Kanu presidential pardon

Meanwhile, a group known as Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide (ONYCW) has to grant Nnamdi Kanu presidential pardon.This development followed the impeachment of Hon Victor Edoror, from his position as deputy speaker.

In a news by supporters of the member tried to stop the impeachment process which led to the commotion that happened at the assembly.

He was replaced by the former speaker of the house, Justin Okonobor.

According to, Osaigbovo Iyoha, representing Eredo East in the assembly, the impeachment notice was signed by 16 members, out of the 24 lawmakers in the House.Force Commander, Major-Gen. Adeyemi Yekini, made the disclosure in Makurdi on Monday while addressing newsmen on the incident.

Yekini said that the suspects were killed on Sunday night following a distress call received by the troops in Zaki Biam.

He said that the suspects, who attacked parts of the town with the aim of robbing the people of their property, were killed by the Special Forces during exchange of gunshots.

Our troops in Zaki Biam got a distress call that part of the town was under attack by Gana boys who came to rob people of their property. So the troops responded immediately and during the exchange of gunshots, three of them were killed, he said.

The commander said that the troops also recovered two weapons and several ammunitions from them.The pastor insisted that Nigerians must always speak the truth to power and do away with what he termed a culture of Hypocrisy.

He made this statement on Sunday, October 21, 2018, while speaking at the thanksgiving service to mark the 16 anniversary of Foursquare Gospel Church Asokoro, Abuja.

Pastor Bakare observed that some politicians have rendered themselves gods due to the level of authority they have, forgetting that "God brought them there and he has a way of removing them,".

He Stated that There is so much corruption in this country. But show me a country in the world which has no corruption. What is the solution? We are the answer to the dilemma of Nigeria but we keep playing church. We are the reason Nigeria is the way it is. You and I are responsible,

Pastor Bakare made reference to Genesis 6:12 and Phil 4:10  14 and 18 to describe the problem of corruption. He also insisted that the solution should be people-driven.

When Samuel (in the Bible) entered the city, the king trembled but when some pastors visit Aso Villa, they are the ones shaking. All they want is photo opportunity (with the President), he said.The supporters, while speaking to newsmen, accused the former VP of abandoning them.

According to Daily Post, they also declared support for President Buhari and called on youths across the country to do the same.

Announcing their defection, the spokesman of the group, Comrade Sunusi Ababai said For several years now, we have been working hard for the development of Atiku Care Foundation. A lot of promises were made when we started.

They told us that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar needed a platform to reach out to the masses at the grass root. We were committed because there were a lot of programmes from healthcare delivery, education, entrepreneurship, and youth and women empowerment.

We started with our own money. Nobody gave us a dime because we believed that Atiku meant well for the nation; but unfortunately, we were abandoned at a time structure of the Foundation became solid. We were waiting all these while for Atiku to finance the programmes, only for us to hear how he splashed Dollars in Rivers state just to win the PDP presidential primaries.

We worked for him without money, but he did not even appreciate our efforts and contributions. We believe that if such a person is given the mandate, he will disappoint Nigerians. So, our support for President Buhari is based on our personal conviction that he is the Messiah Nigeria needs now.

We call on Nigerians, particularly, the youths to rally round President Buhari and give him the mandate to correct what the PDP-led government has plunged this country into for over 16 years they held on to power.

Atiku cautions supporters

Meanwhile, has called on his supporters to ignore those spreading false rumours about him.

The PDP presidential candidate asked them not to insult people who do not believe in their ideology.

Mbaka predicts winner

founder of Adoration Ministry in Enugu state, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka has predicted the winner of the 2019 election.

The outspoken priest, while speaking to his congregation recently, revealed thatAtiku Abubakar will defeat Buhari in the 2019 presidential election.Amosun stated this when he fielded questions from State House correspondent of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) after a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Sunday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that prior to Sundays meeting with the president, Amosun had visited the presidential villa for over four times within the past three weeks where he met separately with the president and the Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo.

The APC National Working Committee is believed to have forwarded the name of Prince Dapo Abiodun to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the partys governorship candidate in the 2019 general elections.

Abiodun was declared winner of the Ogun State APC governorship primary by the APC NWC panel sent to conduct the primary in the state.

This declaration was against Gov. Amosuns preferred candidate, Abdulkabir Adekunle Akinlade, who was elected as the governorship candidate of the party in another primary conducted by the states APC officials.

Amosun had allegedly accused some political interest group of `misinforming President Buhari about `political equation in Ogun.

But, the governor pledged his political loyalty to the president and vowed to support his political ambition in 2019, saying, however, he would hand over the mantle of leadership to his preferred candidate, Adekunle Akinlade, in 2019.

Amosun, who was accompanied on Sundays visit to the presidential villa by the Alake of Egbaland Oba Adedotun Gbadebo III and a former Minister, Senator Iyabo Anisulowo, renewed his allegiance to the APC.

He said: We will stick with (President Buhari) him. So, I want them to know that we are not going anywhere.

Im going to be with the APC, we are in the APC and even after his second term, which by the grace of God and the support of all Nigerians he will win.

Oba Gbadebo, who also spoke after the meeting, said his visit to President Buhari, whom he described as his boss in the army, was a routine one.

Anisulowo, one-time minister of state for education, said the people of Ogun would vote massively for President Buhari and all APC candidates in 2019.In a protest letter on Monday, October 22, 2018, Mohammed expressed anger over the decision of the APC to drop his name from the list of candidates for the 2019 general election.

Similarly, Kaduna central lawmaker, Shehu Sani at the weekend.

Sani fell out with his state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, whose candidate  Uba Sani -- emerged winner of the primary election in Kaduna state.

l had joined the APC and remained with it against all odds in the belief that it will constitute a veritable platform for the realization of those democratic ideals which I hold very dear, that honor and integrity will be the ultimate ethos of the patty and, most importantly, that internal party democracy will always be the norm. However, only posterity can affirm the extent to which the APC has committed to and reflected these values.Ekweremadu recently got the PDP ticket to represent Enugu West Senatorial district for the fifth time.

However, it appears that the 56-year-old lawyer and politician is dissatisfied with the treatment meted out to him by the PDP especially after the Port Harcourt primary election which produced Atiku Abubakar as the presidential candidate.

Ekweremadu as Atikus running mate

Sources say there is a general feeling that Ekweremadu has been sidelined by the PDP after Atikus emergence.

While condemning Ekweremadus alleged maltreatment, a Senator who craved anonymity said Ekweremadu would have made a better vice presidential candidate for the PDP.

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There is a clear grand conspiracy against Senator Ekweremadu and it is just unfair, a source told Vanguard. The issue is not even the mishandling of the processes leading to the emergence of former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, as the running mate to PDPs presidential candidate, in which the South East leaders were totally sidelined. The issue is a deliberate attempt to sideline the Senator in the emerging scheme of things within the party.

I am not talking about him not being nominated as vice presidential candidate. In any case, he has shown more interest in restructuring and other key South East interests than in vice presidential ticket. In the discussions leading up to our consideration of the aspirants and eventual decision to give a block vote to Atiku, he always said that the South East should go for the substance than for sheer title.

To show that the sidelining of Ekweremadu was deliberate, none of the key actors have even reached out to him. The announcement was made on Friday, but Obi only started moving round on Sunday, in the evening. And I did not see him move with the National Chairman or National Secretary. It would have been ideal for Obi, Prince Uche Secondus and some other senior party leaders to have flown into Enugu that Saturday to meet with South East leaders.

Assuming Atiku heard that there was a subterranean effort to substitute him, wouldnt he have since rushed home or even canceled his trip out of Nigeria that Saturday to address the matter? And was it too much for him or Uche Secondus to pick a phone to call Ekweremadu, especially given the role he has played in calming the angry South East party leaders?

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A PDP leader in the South also said that Ekweremadu was treated unjustly despite "taking bullets" for the party.

No, look at the way they treated Ekweremadu. When all of them left, Ekweremadu remained to fight for the survival of this party. How many of them would have resisted the temptation not to defect in the face of the intimidation, harassment, prosecution and persecution meted out on him? As a person, he had nothing to lose if he had defected then. In fact, he had everything to gain. He probably would have been the senate president because he was offered the slot.

Then, when you people now return, you feel that people, who have held this party to survive, do not matter again simply because you got a presidential ticket. Also, even Saraki knows that if DSP had not been loyal, they would have gotten at him (Saraki) long ago. All the trials Ekweremadu was put through were all because of Saraki. But when it was the turn of Saraki to be there for him, he failed him. And as we speak, how many days is this after the primary? Atiku is yet to call DSP.

You dont treat a man who has been taking bullets on you peoples behalf like that. Well, I wish them and PDP well, but they should know that action begets reaction and they will pay the price for this mistreatment of people, who have laboured for the party at the toughest time. And if Ekweremadu leaves, we will hold these people responsible," he declared.

A member of the Atiku Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCO) told that Ekweremadu was not sidelined by Atiku.

"How can Ekweremadu complain about being sidelined? There is no how His Excellency [Atiku] will sideline Ekweremadu. He is a ranking member of the party. He is a valuable member of the party and I am sure he is not leaving. It is all politics and everyone will be happy at the end of the day," the source said.

Like Akpabio, like Ekweremadu?

ece-auto-gen

A PDP chieftain who spoke to on the condition of anonymity said the decision to leave the APC may not be far from the lawmakers court cases.

Im not saying that DSP [Ekweremadu] cannot leave on the basis of maltreatment, the source said. You should also remember that the EFCC is also on his neck over alleged corruption. This APC administration has shown that the only way to evade prosecution is to join the party. You see what is happening with Akpabio, Omisore and Obanikoro.

It is not our wish that he leaves especially with our plan to rid this country of the bad luck that the APC has brought upon us. Ekweremadu is a grassroot politician and everybody knows this. Well work to prevent his defection from our great party, the PDP chieftain assured.

Calls put through to Uche Anichukwu, spokesman to Ekweremadu for a reaction, went unanswered.

I will revert to you on the matter you raised, he replied later to a message sent to him on Monday, October 22, 2018."No one is going to stop us, after all we've gone through" said 21-year-old Aaron Juarez, who was accompanied by his wife and baby and was walking with difficulty because of an injury.

"We are tired, but very happy, we are united and strong," added Edwin Geovanni Enamorado, a Honduran farmer who was part of the caravan, who said he was forced to leave his country because of intimidation by racketeering gangs.

The caravan left San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras -- 700 kilometers (430 miles) to the south -- last weekend, following a call on social networks relayed by a former Honduran deputy.

AFP

On Sunday morning, about a thousand migrants, including women and children, were still stranded on a border bridge hoping to enter Mexico legally via Guatemala.

Mexican authorities insisted those on the bridge would have to file asylum claims one at a time in order to enter the country.

The authorities opened the border to women and children who were then taken to a shelter in the city of Tapachula, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico.

Rafting the River

AFP

Throughout Saturday, around 900 migrants -- tired of waiting on the bridge -- resorted to crossing the Suchiate River below on makeshift rafts and police did not intervene as they clambered up the muddy riverbank on the Mexican side.

They are now heading to Tapachula, the next stop on a journey of at least 3,000 kilometers to the border between Mexico and the United States.

The caravan has triggered escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric from US President Donald Trump on Twitter.

He has threatened to cut aid to the region, deploy the military and close the US-Mexican border if authorities did not stop the migrants.

At a rally on Saturday, he suggested the caravan was politically motivated.

"The Democrats want caravans, they like the caravans. A lot of people say 'I wonder who started that caravan?'" he said in Elko, Nevada, where the caravan has become an issue in the upcoming US mid-term elections.

Before the march resumed, he thanked Mexican authorities on Saturday for their efforts to block it.

"Mexico will not allow irregular entry into its territory, much less violent," Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Friday evening in a video message.

'Politically motivated'

AFP

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and his Guatemalan counterpart Jimmy Morales met on Saturday and agreed the caravan was politically motivated.

"This migration has political motivations," said Morales, "which is violating the borders and the good faith of the states and of course putting at risk the most important thing, people."

Hernandez also deplored "the abuse of people's needs" for "political reasons."

"Without a doubt, we have a lot to do so that our people can have opportunities in their communities," he said.

jpegMpeg4-1280x720Guatemala has organized a fleet of buses to take Hondurans back to their country and by late Saturday 300 people had returned.

The migrants are generally fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence.The former senator divulged that their 12 hour meeting in Nairobi revolved around Kenyas politics and dismissed claims that his decision to support the DP is for selfish financial benefit.

"Please Church leaders I urge you to pray for leaders from my Luhya community who think I am in a commercial venture by doing what I am doing", Khalwale said.

Khalwale who was speaking at a fund raiser in Eldoret on Sunday divulged that he had annalysed Kenyan politics and realized that it is impossible to defeat DP William Ruto who has always been on the winning side of Kenyan politics.

Pulse Live Kenya

DP Ruto knows me and I know him well because we have been friends and we have also foughtThat is why I have decided not to waste my time elsewhere," Said the former lawmaker.

Khalwale who lost to Wyclife Oparanya in the Kakamega gubernatorial race took a swipe at Musalia Mudavadi terming his political ambitions a dream.

"When Mudavadi goes to get a running mate like Jeremiah Kioni and think he will make it then it's a dream "I have long experience in Kenya's politics and I know it's not possible to defeat a government candidate in an election," Khalwale said.

ece-auto-gen

In the clearest indication of his intentions and where his political future lies, Khalwale fell short of declaring that he has ditched Ford Kenya PartyGREECE: Aktor has used commercial-off-the-shelf controllers from HIMA to automate the operation of level crossings on the mixed traffic Athens  Piraeus route .SENEGAL: Following the completion of testing, Alstom has begun shipping 15 Coradia Polyvalent electro-diesel trainsets for the 55 km Train Express Regional line which is being built to connect central Dakar with Blaise Diagne International Airport.UK indie factual producer Barcroft Media has become the latest content firm to head for the social network, bringing a brand-new original interactive series, Most Incredible Homes, to Facebook Watch.





The 5 x 12 series travels the globe to enable viewers to experience what it calls the worlds most unique and extraordinary properties, from a luxury jungle tree house in tropical Costa Rica to a car-shaped home created by a petrol-head in Austria. The series was created for Facebook Watch. Executive producers for Barcroft Media are Sam Barcroft and Peter Wyles. Barcrofts showrunner is Jude Parker.The Most Incredible Homes will premiere on 3 November, with episodes dropped weekly and, each week, the programmes community on Facebook Watch will get the chance to vote for their favourite property at the end of the show with viewers ultimately deciding which is their favourite via Facebooks new video polling feature. Additional content featured on the Most Incredible Homes page will include a 360 walk around of the properties featured in the show and a reaction video from the winning home owners of each episode.It will be available free to view on Facebook Watch via mobile devices, desktop and Facebook's TV apps.Having launched 15 shows on Facebook Watch over the past year, we have seen how communities congregate around compelling shows, commented Barcroft Media CEO Sam Barcroft. Naturally were excited to take things to the next level with this interactive original series.SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Several countries including the United States and China agreed in principle on Saturday to multilateral guidelines to manage unexpected encounters between their military aircraft, joining 10 Southeast Asian nations already in the pact.U.S. President Donald J. Trump confirmed on October 20 that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The agreement, signed between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1987, sought to ban both countries armed forces from keeping ground-based nuclear missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

White House officials, especially National Security Advisor John Bolton, have been pushing to abandon the treaty as they believe it is limiting Washingtons ability to counter Chinas growing nuclear arsenal in East Asia. U.S. military officials have estimated that as many as 95% of Beijings missiles fall in the intermediate range covered by the INF, making it impossible for the United States to counter this build-up.

American officials have also pointed to intelligence that suggests Moscow has been in violation of the treaty with its new 9M729 missile system. Although U.S. officials have not been able to present this evidence, which they say is highly classified, NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg confirmed on October 2 that the Alliance believes the Russian system goes against the rules of the agreement. All of the allies agree that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the (INF) Treaty, Stoltenberg said. Speaking after a NATO defense ministers meeting on October 4, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis warned Moscow that it must return to compliance with the INF Treaty or [the United States] will need to respond to its cavalier disregard of the treatys specific limits.

Even so, there are concerns among some European allies that withdrawing from the treaty could unnecessarily escalate tensions with Moscow and remove all limits from its nuclear behavior. Bolton is set to travel to Moscow next week, during which time he could officially inform Russian officials of the American withdrawal.

Atlantic Council analysts discussed the significance of a U.S. withdrawal from the INF and its potential implications for U.S.-Russian relations. [Check back for more analysis].

Damon Wilson, executive vice president of the Atlantic Council:

The challenge for the administration, as has been the case so often, is that a momentous decision is first announced almost as an aside comment from the president (as in this case) or a short tweet, failing to frame the rationale behind such a significant decision.

Without a rollout strategy that points out the well-reasoned case for such a decision, the administration runs the risk of headlines, especially in Europe, that lead with, Trump withdraws from INF undermining another plank of the international arms control regime and the international liberal order.

A well-planned rollout would ensure the full narrative is understood. That is, Russia has been cheating for years with no consequence, gutting the INF Treaty of any purpose, other than to constrain the United States; this administration, rejecting bad deals, is no longer going to accept that.

Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security:

This was the right move. Russia has been cheating on this treaty for years and there was no hope of getting Moscow to return to compliance. It doesnt make sense for the United States to be unilaterally constrained by limits that dont affect any other country.

Moreover, building INF-range missiles will allow us to increase our firepower in Asia to counter Chinese aggression and coercion. This may prove to be a historical step that ensures a favorable balance of power for the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia for years to come.

Evelyn Farkas, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Councils Eurasia Center, Future Europe Initiative, and Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security:

It is regrettable that we are withdrawing from the INF treaty, but the American hand has been forced by Russia. The Russians have been in violation of this treaty for years and its time for them to understand that there will be consequences for their dangerous nuclear policy.

I do hope that U.S. actions prompt the Russians to wake up and conduct serious negotiations over conventional and nuclear arms control.

John E. Herbst, director of the Atlantic Councils Eurasia Center:



"Moscow has been violating the INF Treaty for years at no cost. The Obama Administration complained about this with no result. The Trump Administration would be justified in leaving the treaty, but the smarter move would be to use that threat as a lever to persuade our till this point silent Allies to agree on a set of stiff counter measures if Russia violations continue. Such measures could include withdrawal from the treaty."

David A. Wemer is assistant director, editorial at the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidAWemer.

This article appeared originally at Atlantic Council.Even calculating for the rising threat from China, leaving the INF puts the United States in a worse strategic position than if it were to stay in.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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 10/22/2018



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

premiered and introduced fans to five new intriguing couples during Sunday night's Season 6 episode on TLC.features couples separated by land and sea preparing to bring the foreign fiances to the United States so they can tie the knot within 90 days. Otherwise, the American individuals would risk losing love and having their significant others return to their home countries.Season 6 of stars Kalani Faagata , a 29-year-old from Orange County, CA, and Asuelu Pulaa , a 23-year-old from Samoa; Eric Rosenbrook , a 40-year-old from Baraboo, WI, and Leida Margaretha , a 29-year-old from Indonesia; and Jonathan Rivera , a 32-year-old from Lumberton, NC, and Fernanda Flores , a 19-year-old from Mexico.The remaining couples are Ashley Martson , a 31-year-old from Mechanicsburg, PA, and Jay Smith , a 20-year-old from Port Maria, Jamaica; and Colt Johnson , a 33-year-old from Las Vegas, NV, and Larissa Christina , a 31-year-old from Brazil.'s sixth season is also supposed to star Steven Frend , a 20-year-old from Bowie, MD, and Olga Koshimbetova , a 20-year-old from Russia, but they did not make an appearance in the debut episode.Below is the latest on each couple, according to the new episode.Ashley, a bartender and mother of two, was previously engaged twice but called off both engagements because the men had cheated on her. Ashley therefore took a break from men and continued to be a strong independent woman, but then she met Jay at a bar during a vacation to Jamaica.Although they parted ways after spending time in Jamaica, Ashley revealed Jay contacted her on social media once she returned to the United States.Ashley called Jay "the life of the party." While he's young, she believes he's mature for his age. Ashley subsequently went back to Jamaica, and after eight days, he proposed marriage to her. Ashley said Jay brings light to her life."Jay is very attractive so he gets attention everywhere we go, and people will say I'm crazy that typical Jamaican men run through women and are very smooth and going behind their girlfriends' back with other women and stuff," Ashley told the cameras."I'm pretty sure that's how he used to be, but I'm hoping he's changed his ways."Ashley applied for the K-1 visa and Jay only had one more step before getting approved -- an interview.Ashley then met her friend Natalie for coffee to discuss her relationship with Jay. Natalie was "terrified" by the relationship because she had heard Jay cheated on Ashley. When the girls visited Jamaica together, Natalie allegedly overheard Jay saying he was having sex with two other women at the time.Despite Natalie's concerns, Ashley didn't really care about what Jay did in Jamaica when she wasn't there."I can't expect Jay to be 100 percent behaved while he's living in Jamaica... honestly, if Jesus came down from heaven right now and said he cheated on me, I wouldn't do anything about it... But if Jay cheats on me here in the U.S., I'd have to send him packing and send him back home," Ashley explained.Jay then opened up about his wild past, how he's a tattoo artist with many girlfriends. Jay even once stole the woman his father had been dating from Florida and used her from money. However, Jay said he really loved Ashley and "prayed to God" he was ready to be a husband.Jay lived with his pregnant sister Poochie since their mother is actually in the United States working. Jay said Natalie came up with "a crazy-ass lie" about how he had allegedly cheated on his fiance, so he was a bit concerned about becoming a member of Ashley's social circle.Jay insisted he stopped messing around after meeting Ashley and he's "a lover," not "a cheater."Colt, a software engineer, lives with his mother, Debbie, and two cats, Cookie Dough and Sugar. Debbie cooked and cleaned for Colt, and she even drove him to work every day because they shared a car.Ever since Colt's father passed away, they grew very close and began living together. Colt called himself a "mama's boy" and said he adored her.Colt revealed he spends most of his free time with his cats and he's definitely an introvert. After striking out a few times trying to date American girls online, he decided to look outside of the country, and that's when he met Larissa from Brazil.When Colt met Larissa in Cancun, Mexico, it only took five days for him to realize he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Colt therefore proposed marriage, and she said "yes." Colt found Larissa to be beautiful and intelligent, and he admitted she was okay with the fact he lives with his mother.Larissa was waiting for her visa to travel and asked Colt to put off the flight by several hours, but Colt wasn't wiling to pay a fee and be reckless with his money. Colt said Larissa had a "false" idea of life in America, as she seemed to think he was a millionaire.Colt acknowledged Larissa was more emotional and he's more of a rational person so it could present problems for them down the road.Colt then met with his two cousins, and they hoped Larissa wasn't using him to come to the United States. They feared he may get hurt or used, but Colt said he would come to regret never taking a risk on love.After not speaking with Larissa for a couple days, he video chatted with her and explained he had booked her a flight for two weeks from that day, and in the meantime, he was anticipating her visa would arrive.Larissa expected to come to America right away, and so she was upset and disappointed, but Colt vented her expectations about money and Americans were unrealistic and she may receive "a rude awakening" upon getting settled in the United States.During a vacation to Mexico with his best friend, Jonathan, a real estate broker, fell hard for Fernanda. Jonathan said Fernanda is a showstopper and the world stopped when he met her.Jonathan said Fernanda brings out the best in him and she's a "fiery Latina" -- not "a yes woman." While there's a big age difference between them, Jonathan was apparently the person in the relationship who was hesitant about leaving his bachelor lifestyle behind.Fernanda worried Jonathan wasn't ready to settle down and get married, but Jonathan did propose marriage to her after dating for three months.Fernanda's visa was approved, and so Jonathan was heading to Mexico to pick her up.Jonathan shared how he helps Fernanda out financially and serves as her provider. Not only did he buy her a Jeep and put money towards her schooling, but he also bought her breast implants.Jonathan figured family and friends would think Fernanda was using him and just wanted to live in America, but he insisted she was going to be a perfect wife and had absolutely no doubt about that.Jonathan then met up with his best friend Dani at a bar, saying Fernanda understood their friendship and was fine with it. Dani felt protective of him and attempted to make certain of the fact Jonathan was ready to commit. She was also concerned, however, by Fernanda's young age.Jonathan was nervous about his family accepting and coming to love his fiance.Jonathan then traveled to Mexico to help Fernanda pack. They spent five days in Mexico together, and after Fernanda had an emotional goodbye from her family and friends, she headed to the United States to be with her love.Fernanda was smitten with Jonathan, whom she called handsome. She viewed America as a perfect place with people who have perfect lives, but she anticipated missing her loved ones whom she had to leave behind.Once Jonathan brought Fernanda home to his apartment, the power was out and they had to sleep together on a couch. Fernanda joked about him being poor.While looking through Jonathan's dresser that night, Fernanda stumbled upon a pair of black-lace underwear that definitely didn't belong to her. Jonathan was in shock and wondered what else could go wrong.Jonathan said the underwear belonged to an ex-girlfriend whom he had nothing to do with anymore. Fernanda wanted to trust and believe her fiance, but the panties left her with doubts and fears.Jonathan acknowledged he "messed up" and his first night with his future wife sucked because of his actions.Kalani has a five-month-old son named Oliver and said being a single mom is very challenging. However, she loved having a supportive family -- her mother, father, sister and brother. Kalani revealed she was raised Mormon and her father wants her to marry a Caucasian man with a lot of money.However, Kalani fell for Asuela, a 23-year-old who happens to be Oliver's biological father. Kalani said he grew up in a fishing village and has never left Samoa. She said he feeds pigs and chickens and cracks coconuts and they come from completely different worlds.Kalani met him when she had traveled to Samoa and Asuelu worked as the activities director of the resort she was staying at.During Kalani's second visit to Samoa, she decided to lose her virginity, which was a huge deal, and got pregnant. Kalani's family worried Asuelu was taking advantage of her, and her father apparently "flipped out" when he found out she was expecting a baby.Kalani felt "a looming shame" around her, but she and Asuelu moved forward with a K-1 visa anyway. Asuelu was arriving in the United States within a few days so they could get married and Asuela could become a hands-on father.Asuelu was "the opposite" of what Kalani's father, Low, wanted for his daughter, but he tried not to ask too many questions. While Low didn't approve of Asuelu's relationship, he noted it was too late to have an opinion and he just needed to protect his little girl and grandson.Low was concerned about Asuelu's age and the fact he was moving into a very fast life rather than island life. Kalani was nervous for Low to meet her father, as his approval meant the world to her. Kalani needed Asuelu to win over her entire family.Kalani revealed she's extremely close to her sister, Kolini, who hated Asuelu and didn't approve of their romance. Kolini was told Asuelu had cheated on her sister, but Kalani said their relationship was "off" at the time, and so she forgave him and moved on.Kalani took responsibility for embellishing the story of Asuelu's cheating at the time, making him look like "an assh-le" because she was upset and needed to vent to someone about the situation. Kolini wasn't sure whether she could buy Kalani's story that she had lied about "a bunch" of stuff.Kalani left the table crying, and Kolini told their girlfriends she hated Asuelu for coming in the middle of them. Kolini wanted her sister to be happy, so she was going to try to be supportive as possible.Eric, an avionics technician and former U.S. Marine, was previously married for 20 years but they divorced in 2016. Eric has three daughters, ages 21, 19 and 11, and said it's a very tough job but he loves them very much.Eric said he attempted to date in America but things didn't work out.After determining he was destined to be single, he tried his last hand and posted an ad on an international website. Leida, a teacher, model, actress and medical school graduate from Indonesia, was one of the first women to respond to his ad.Leida seemed so fantastic that Eric wondered whether he was being catfished, but when he traveled to Indonesia for the first time to meet her, Eric discovered Leida was real and she was "the most beautiful woman" he's ever seen.After only two days together, Eric proposed marriage. His family members told him he's crazy because Leida is close in age to his eldest daughter, but Eric called her "the one."Leida's K-1 visa had been approved, so Leida was only a few days away from moving to Wisconsin with her. Leida has a five-year-old son, Alessandro, and he was also coming to the United States.Eric said Leida's parents are wealthy and was used to living a lavish lifestyle -- including maids, chefs and drivers -- so he hoped life in Wisconsin would be enough for her. Eric had yet to tell his fiancee anything about his apartment and hoped she could adapt to his "lower lifestyle."Eric predicted everything would be fine, and he was hopeful Leida would be just fine in America. He was just excited for her to arrive so they could begin their lives together.Eric had to ask Tasha to move out so Leida can move in, and Tasha wasn't exactly thrilled with the situation. Tasha didn't understand Leida's motives for moving to the United States when she was wealthy in Indonesia. Tasha worried it was "all a game" to her father's future wife.Eric was then shown having lunch with his youngest two daughter and their mother. The exes still worked as a team, and so Eric's former wife tried to understand the dynamic and express approval. Leida, however, had an issue with child support since there is no such requirement in a divorce in Indonesia.By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 10/22/2018



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

star Rachel Walters has revealed the status of husband Jon Walters ' immigration visa and whether the couple would be interested in starring on a future spinoff of the TLC reality series.During an informal interview with blogger John Yates on Instagram Live, Rachel gave fans an update on her long-distance marriage."We are trying to save money still for the visa. There is no progress... It could be a minute," Rachel said , revealing that the visa could cost anywhere between $10,000 and $11,000."I think if we weren't doing this with a lawyer, it would be a lot cheaper. But we don't want to do something wrong or miss something... and have then deny us."Rachel had previously revealed on the Tell All special for : Before the 90 Days that obtaining an immigration visa for Jon to permanently move to the United States would cost "an absurd amount of money." She therefore said at the time the visa was "non-existent."Rachel and Jon's fans attempted to help the couple in financial constraints by setting up two separate GoFundMe pages to raise money; however, the pages were removed from the Internet hours later."Yeah, we did ask them to take it down. Basically, people are pretty much throwing money at us like, 'Please, please, I want to help you.' It is really touching that people want to do this, but it feels wrong going on TV and then saying, 'Okay, now can we have your money?' with nothing in return," Rachel explained in her interview."I feel like if anyone wants to do something for us, we just don't want to just take it, say thanks, and never speak to you again."But the reality TV stars subsequently heard about the Cameo app, which allows fans to request personalized video messages from their favorite celebrities in exchange for a fee. For example, Rachel will wish someone in particular a happy birthday and receive $30 for the video."It's sweet and people seem to be enjoying it. So we feel if anyone wants to donate, we'd rather give something back... Sometimes the easy way isn't the right way to do it," Rachel revealed.In addition, fans are able to tip Rachel or John for the personalized message. Rachel revealed she once received an extra $50 from someone."It's cute and it's silly, but it's a lot of fun," noted the mom of Ella and Lucy.As for whether Jon and Rachel would be onboard to star on a future TLC spinoff of , Rachel replied, "I think so. I think so.""It's been a blessing in disguise in a sense," said Rachel, whose storyline with Jon would fit into the premise of : Happily Ever After? or : What Now?."I kind of like [being recognized in public]; I'm not going to lie. Yeah, we would do it again. I think we're getting used to the trolls and the insults."Rachel and Jon starred on Season 2 of : Before the 90 Days, which premiered on August 5. Viewers witnessed the couple's engagement and marriage on the TLC show.The pair met for the first time in England in late 2017 after getting to know each other over the phone and video chat for a year-and-a-half.Rachel and Jon just revealed last week on their joint Instagram page dubbed "Follow Our Fairytale" that Rachel, who currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, will be visiting Jon in England this December for their honeymoonKenya Moore celebrated her pregnancy at a royal-themed baby shower.

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The 47-year-old "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" star was feted by friends and family Saturday in Atlanta ahead of her child's birth.

Moore spent time with husband, Marc Daly, her "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" co-stars Porsha Williams, Cynthia Bailey and Kandi Burruss and other guests at the historic Academy of Medicine building.

"#mythrone words cannot express the joy and happiness I feel in my heart. So overwhelming to have a room of people who came to celebrate the impending life of #babydaly," Moore captioned a group photo Sunday on Instagram.

"These are my riders and I love you all so much," she added.

"More photos to come. #fairytale #happyending #royalbabyshower #heirtothethrone #family #love #kenyamoore."

Bailey also posted a series of pictures from the party on Instagram, including a snapshot of Daly cradling Moore's baby bump.

"The beautiful royal couple @thekenyamoore & her hubby Marc #babydaly #kenyasbabyshower #beautifulcouple #royalbabyshower," she wrote.

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Moore announced her pregnancy during the Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 10 reunion in April.

She said in an interview with E! News in September that she is waiting to learn the baby's sex until she gives birth.

"Everything is good and healthy," the star said.

"This is the home stretch and I'm being as healthy as I possible can and being as positive as I can."Newsweek, with the help of Statista Inc., recently released a list of the World's Best Hospitals for 2019. Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center has been ranked as the 154th best hospital in the U.S.Even when performed in different languages, music is seen by many as a way to unite others, whether across borders or in the same town.Fred Smith laughs in the audience as Michael Thurmond pokes fun at him during his presentation. Former Georgia Assembly representative and current Chief Executive Officer of Dekalb County Michael Thurmond presented the story behind his book, A Story Untold, on October 21, 2018 in Athens-Clarke County Public Librarys Appleton Auditorium. (Photo/Ryan Cameron rac86114@uga.edu)In this fast-paced world with so much information, perhaps overwhelming and available with a click of a button, sometimes it is good to just step back and breathe.

 An inspiring book by Susan and Todd Montgomery, What Really Matters Now.

Events at the Chamber point out what is important in the realm of things.

A good cause. Investing in our future leaders is benefiting our entire region. Leadership NW for 2018-2019 has an enthusiastic class of 18 from the manufacturing, retail, educational, financial, non-profit, accounting and healthcare business sectors. They will perfect their leadership skills while learning about the infrastructure of northwest Connecticut and addressing a challenge that needs their attention.

Sharing lifes treasures. We had the privilege of listening to Women of Strength & Courage the WOW Forum: KJ Johansen, Lisa Bresson, Jamie Pleva-Nickerson, Sara Laschever, Lesley Jane Seymour, Jeanne Street, Silvia Baldini and Sarah Calhoun. Each described the circumstances that shaped their lives through laughter, entrepreneurship, communication, leadership, perseverance and passion.

Giving back to the community. We are in the midst of the United Way Campaign, It All Starts With One! The Campaign Leadership Team, headed by Carla Dubois of Peoples United Bank, is working tirelessly distributing materials for you to circulate among your companies, colleagues and friends. Over 200 volunteers are giving back to 25 agencies assisting 58,000 individuals in 26 communities. They know what is important in the realm of things.

The spirit of cooperation. Throughout the last 6 weeks, the Chamber has had the privilege of collaborating with the Torrington Historical Society that resulted in the successful Torrington House Tour. We worked with Prime Time House, the NW CT Arts Council and friends hitting the trails to find the Tails of NW CT. TD Bank, Conquest, Northwest Regional Workforce Investment Board and The Warner Theatre were the Major Sponsors for WOW. Torrington Savings Bank, Pequot HealthCare and Chamber Insurance Trust, the Major sponsors of the NW CT Business Survey, will host the Economic Summit on Nov. 15. All of this is possible because of the generosity of many partners who believe in Business Working Together.

The small miracles and blessings. I often smile at the many photos of my grandchildren. They are handsome, beautiful and brilliant and fortunate to have perfect parents. I hope you are showered with miracles to sustain you in tough times and blessings in good times. In the end, that is what really matters!

JoAnn Ryan is President & CEO of the NW CT Chamber of Commerce. You can reach her by email: joann@nwctchamberofcommerce or phone: 860-482-6586.BROOKFIELD  A man died after a motorboat capsized in Candlewood Lake Sunday afternoon, according to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The DEEP reported around 12:30 p.m. that Environmental Conservation officers responded to a report of a capsized 17-foot motorboat. The men were recovered; one was reported as safe and unharmed and the other was taken to Danbury Hospital where he was pronounced dead.China has eased its winter smog rules as the country faces threats from natural gas shortages and economic pressures, signaling that the push for better air quality may take a back seat to production growth.

On Sept. 27, the newly-named Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued a revised air quality plan for the region surrounding Beijing during the winter, when pollution from coal-fired factories has traditionally combined with emissions from heating systems to produce smog.

Officials have been trying to avoid the mistakes that stirred public anger last winter after the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) banned coal-fired heating in 28 northern cities. The deadlines were set before gas and electricity projects were completed, leaving homes and schools in the cold.

The top planning agency was forced to backtrack last December and lift the coal ban, but not before gas demand soared and prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG) hit record highs.

The NDRC vowed it would not repeat the "shortcomings" of last winter's gas crisis. In August, Vice Minister of Finance Liu Wei said that attempts to convert coal-fired boilers to gas must secure a "matching supply source" from now on.

Last week, Vice Premier Han Zheng repeated the warning, telling local officials it is "absolutely forbidden" to leave residents without heat.

The attempts to control coal use last winter created a long list of consequences.

Seasonal production curbs on steel, along with cement and other high energy users, led to more problems as the market reacted to fears of supply limits by raising prices, providing an incentive to boost production outside the restricted zone.

In July, the cabinet-level State Council said it would expand the smog fight with production limits in 82 cities.

But the new rules for the coming winter suggest that enforcement will not be as strict.

The plan released jointly by central government agencies and six provincial-level regions will turn implementation over to local authorities, who have been told "to avoid the 'one-size-fits-all' method when it comes to curtailing the output of polluting industries," the official Xinhua news agency said.

The rules call for emissions limits to "be strictly implemented on heavily-polluting sectors including thermal power, steel, petrochemicals and cement."

A differentiated approach

But the plan also urges "a differentiated approach, with companies excelling in pollution control to be exempt from output restrictions."

The plan does not define emissions that may be considered as "excelling," leaving the door open to local discretion and production growth.

According to the government's China.org.cn website, the interagency plan will be implemented in only the original 28 cities, leaving the State Council's earlier decision on expansion to 82 cities in doubt.

The designated areas include Beijing, Tianjin and cities in Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and Henan provinces, the official English-language China Daily said.

The revised plan targets a three-percent reduction in average concentrations of small smog-forming particulates known as PM2.5 and a similar decrease in the number of heavily polluted days over a six-month period compared with a year before.

The reductions are less burdensome than the five-percent cuts proposed in an earlier version of the plan seen by the South China Morning Post in August.

"In addition, the two targets are well below the cuts of 'at least 15 percent' set out in last year's plan," the paper said.

The heating season runs from Nov. 15 to March 15, but pollution reduction targets apply to the period lasting from Oct. 1 to March 31.

The government site stressed the tougher aspects of the new rule, saying that localities must formulate three-year action plans to reduce smog and standardize warning systems.

The cities were required to update their analyses of pollution sources by the end of September, and provincial forecasting centers were ordered to acquire seven-day forecasting capabilities.

But other reports pointed to looser requirements.

Ma Jun, director of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, said that this year's pollution reduction goals are "considerably lower than those of last year," China Daily reported.

The paper cited last winter's "hasty gas-for-coal conversion projects and the shutdown of enterprises, which have caused public outcries."

"This year's approach is much more gentle and targeted," Ma said.

The leniency of the new plan is already having an effect on the steel market, which has suffered from years of excess capacity and overproduction. More steel production could trigger further responses from the United States, which slapped tariffs on steel imports from China in August.

"The fear is that China's steel mills, already operating at elevated run rates, will keep churning out metal over a seasonally weak time for demand," an analysis by Reuters said. "That risks flooding the domestic market, with the ensuing danger of more Chinese steel spilling out to the rest of the world."

A migrant worker steps out of his accommodation in an area next to a coal-fired power plant in Beijing during a smog-free day and the last day of the city's first 'red alert' for air pollution, Dec. 10, 2015. Credit: Reuters Cause for concern

Foreign steelmakers may have cause for concern that the smog plan will lead to a price slump, it said.

But the eased restrictions of the new smog rules appear to be driven by forces that the government will find hard to avoid.

The first is criticism of last year's botched fuel-switching program after photos of freezing school children were posted online.

By shifting decision-making for conversions and factory cutbacks to local officials, the central government may limit the backlash against its own authority, whether the public complains about smog, gas shortages or production shutdowns.

Another reason for less rigid enforcement is the economy, which is already under pressure from the tariff war, whether higher steel production prompts more U.S. penalties or not.

Last week, the government reported economic figures that may heighten concerns.

Growth of gross domestic product fell to 6.5 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, down from second-quarter growth of 6.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported.

The quarterly growth was the lowest in nearly a decade, international news agencies said.

With the new smog-control policy, the central government is walking a tightrope, delicately balanced between cutting pollution and keeping economic growth from falling too far.

For the time being, policymakers appear to be leaning toward the growth side, but interpreting the government's motives in formulating the final version of the winter plan may be a close call.

"Though concerns over economic growth may be there, I guess the government is trying to step back from the heavy-handed approach that resulted in disruption to energy supplies last year," said Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at the National University of Singapore.

The ambitious fuel-switching plan for the last heating season pushed local governments to take "arbitrary short-term measures to meet targets," Andrews-Speed said.

Whether growth concerns have driven the new policy or not, this year's anti-smog effort will play out as economic pressures mount.

The latest NBS report suggests that softening in the manufacturing sector could accelerate if smog controls force factory shutdowns over the winter.

Industrial production growth dropped to 5.8 percent in September, dipping from 6.1 percent in August, the NBS said.

The most recent survey for the official manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) found a slower rate of expansion in September with a reading of 50.8, down from 51.3 in August. Any figure below 50 would indicate contraction.

But so far, production of crude steel has kept rising through good times and bad, posting a string of monthly output figures over 80 million metric tons through September after topping the mark in May for the first time in history.

A softening of year-to-year growth rates with a 2.7-percent increase in August may even be in doubt, since a calculation based on year-earlier NBS figures shows a gain of 7.6 percent. The agency reported a 6.1-percent increase in production for the first nine months of the year.

Hard to maintain momentum

The momentum may be hard to maintain in the face of economic cooling, tariff pressures and pollution controls, but the transfer of decision-making to local authorities could turn this winter into an open season for industrial growth.

Still, there are signs that provinces are pressing steelmakers to clean up their act.

In Hebei province surrounding Beijing, environmental authorities are requiring all mills to meet stricter emission standards by 2020, Reuters said in a separate report.

The new standards call for PM2.5 emissions to be kept to within 10 micrograms per cubic meter. Concentrations in the province averaged 65 micrograms per cubic meter last year, but readings fell to a low of 31 micrograms in September, Reuters said.

This month, Beijing officials also reported an improvement in PM2.5 readings before the start of the heating season.

In the first three quarters of 2018, the average PM2.5 density declined 16.7 percent from a year earlier to 50 micrograms per cubic meter, the city's environmental protection bureau said.

Despite the reported readings, smog has returned to Beijing and the surrounding region twice in the past week.

The first bout prompted the city to post a yellow alert, the third-highest in its color-coded warning system.

The second over the past weekend forced 10 cities in Hebei province to issue a second-level orange alert.

Under anti-smog rules, heavy industrial plants are required to lower production by at least 20 percent, Reuters said.A top ruling Chinese Communist Party official who headed Beijing's representative office in the former Portuguese enclave of Macau has died after a fall from his apartment block, the government said.



China's cabinet-level Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office said Zheng Xiaosong, the director of the central government's liaison office in the gambling hub, died on Saturday night after "falling from the building at his residence in Macau because he was suffering from depression."



"The central organization department and the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office dispatched comrades in charge of this matter to Macau on Oct. 21 to offer condolences to the family of comrade Zheng Xiaosong," the office said in a statement on its website.



Zheng's death came on the eve of a reported visit to neighboring Zhuhai by China's president, Xi Jinping, to open the world's longest sea-bridge connecting Zhuhai, Macau, and the former British colony of Hong Kong across the Pearl River estuary.



A source familiar with the workings of Chinese politics said Zheng hadn't been in his post for very long, and was known to many as the former secretary of late former foreign minister and vice premier Qian Qichen, a key diplomat in the administration of Jiang Zemin.



But the source said Zheng's death may be more closely linked to the recent detention of his predecessor at the Macau liaison office, Li Gang.



"Just before director Zheng's [death], his predecessor ... Li Gang was disciplined by the party, although I don't think he was subjected to a criminal prosecution," the source said.



"It seems today's officials ... are all suffering from depression."



Untimely deaths



The number of reported untimely deaths of Chinese officials appears to have risen since Xi launched his anti-corruption campaign on taking power in 2012. Analysts say the campaign has been highly selective, focusing on rival factions within the ruling party.



In 2015, Beijing ordered a probe into deaths of its officials from "unnatural causes" following a rise in the number of reported suicides among them, calling on government departments and agencies to compile data on deaths, including place, circumstances, and apparent causes of death of Communist Party and government officials who have recently died of "unnatural causes."



Reports must detail whether the person was confirmed to have committed suicide. If so, details of how, where, and why must be given, the order states. Details of any subsequent investigation must also be given, according to directives posted in the public domain at the time.



If suicides are listed, the reasons behind them must also be listed. Respondents must pick from a list of seven possible factors contributing to a reported suicide, including "stress," "depression," and "party discipline," the directives said.



The order was issued by the Communist Party's organization department, which is in charge of personnel and recruitment.



United Front work



Long Zhenyang, a former editor of a Hong Kong newspaper backed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, who fled the city to seek asylum in the United States citing political persecution, said the director of Macau's liaison office is expected to play an important role in the party's "united front" work to boost Beijing's overseas support and influence.



"The office ... is responsible for carrying out united front work through various organizations that it doesn't directly control," Long told RFA. "That includes overseas political figures, including democratic representatives," Long said.



"This is because Macau is a gambling center; it is a platform for international united front work, which is all done in Macau," he said.



"But there are also a lot more opportunities for corruption there, for example with regard to elections for representatives to the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference."



"All of that has to be approved by the liaison office, so it is a kind of protective political umbrella. It also controls mainland Chinese-invested companies," Long said.



Political purges



He said official suicides are fairly common since Xi began his round of political purges in the guise of the anti-corruption campaign.



"Against such a background of political purges, nobody's sudden death should be seen as remarkable," Long said. "If you look at other departments and agencies; they have mostly now already been purged once, and now they are gradually being purged a second time."



An employee who answered the phone at the Macau Central Liaison Office on Monday declined to comment on Zheng's suicide.



"I don't really know much about this; I only just got here," the employee said. "We haven't engaged with the media on this matter. Where did you get this phone number?"



"I don't know anything about this; I am just an employee. How would I know anything about stuff that goes on between leaders?"



Calls to the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, and to the State Council press office, rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.



Opening ceremony for bridge



According to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper, Xi is expected to attend the opening ceremony of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge on Tuesday, but won't be crossing over to the Hong Kong side, although marine police will patrol in Hong Kong waters during his visit.



Party newspaper The People's Daily confirmed on Monday that Xi would make "an inspection visit" to Guangdong, including a visit to Zhuhai.



The SCMP cited official sources as saying that the opening date for the 55-kilometre (34-mile) bridge was announced at short notice because of security requirements for Xi.



Construction of the bridge began in 2009 and has been dogged by delays, budget overruns, corruption prosecutions, and the deaths of construction workers.



Guangdong resident Chen Fenming said local police had stepped up surveillance and detention of local People's Liberation Army (PLA) veterans in the city ahead of Xi's visit.



"Central government leaders are coming here because of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, so they have locked [my brother Chen Fengqiang] up just like that," Chen told RFA. "This is totally arbitrary."



Reported by Wong Siu-san and Lau Siu-fung for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Gao Feng, Qiao Long, Jing Yuan, and Hwang Chun-mei for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.Thousands of people took to the streets on the democratic island of Taiwan at the weekend to call for a referendum on independence, and to protest Beijing's continuing program of diplomatic isolation ahead of local elections next month.



The protest came as President Tsai Ing-wen struggles to maintain her commitment to a peaceful status quo in the face of growing saber-rattling from Beijing, and growing support for formal statehood at home.



Waving placards that read "We want a referendum!" and "Oppose Annexation!" in a reference to Beijing's growing political influence on the island, the demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters in Taipei.



"We want to tell China to stop bullying Taiwan," Alliance leader Kuo Pei-horng, 63, told the crowd. "Taiwanese people want to be their own masters."



The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, which has been administered by the remnants of the KMT's Republic of China since it fled to the island after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong's communists in 1949.



But Beijing sees the island as part of "One China" awaiting "reunification," and has put pressure on its diplomatic partners to isolate Taipei on the international stage.



Recent polls show that the majority of Taiwan's 23 million population identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, and that there is broad popular support for continued self-rule. But Beijing has threatened to invade, should the island seek formal nationhood.



A vote on independence would require an amendment to current laws, which bar referendums on changing the constitution or sovereign territory, and President Tsai would be unlikely to allow such an amendment for fear of sparking armed confrontation with China.



Ruling party ban



The DPP forbade its members from taking part in the weekend rally, while municipal authorities limited the size of the demonstration by denying it traffic management resources, sources told RFA.



Yang Tsung-li, spokesman for march organizers the Formosa Alliance, hit out at the DPP over the ban.



"The DPP has written it down in black and white that the future of Taiwan must be determined by the people through a referendum," Yang told RFA.



"Why have the activities of the civil society and the Formosa Alliance ... become the target of party discipline? This is unbelievable."



DPP deputy secretary-general Hsu Chi-ching said a legal amendment allowing the president to allow referendums in situations where the island's sovereignty or national security is under threat has only been on the statute books for less than a year.



"Why are they in such a hurry to deal with this matter?" Hsu said. "I think we should respect the fact that Taiwan is a country with freedom of speech, and that everyone is allowed to express themselves, but there is no need to make such accusations."



Independence campaigner Chen Nan-tien said he would continue to talk to the DPP and persuade them not to ban their activists and members from participating in the independence campaign.



DPP rally



Meanwhile, some 10,000 people turned out for an official DPP rally in the southern city of Kaohsiung.



Carrying placards of Winnie-the-Pooha satirical reference to Chinese president Xi Jinping banned in Chinasome marchers sought to highlight the opposition nationalist Kuomintang's links with the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, and oppose Beijing's eventual goal of "liberating" Taiwan.



Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chi-mai told the crowd that the proliferation of Taiwan-owned businesses in China had led to rising unemployment and financial difficulties in Taiwan, and said they may now be returning in the face of an escalating trade war between Beijing and Washington.



Kaohsiung city council chairwoman Kang Yu-cheng said China was using secret financial funds and fake social media and internet accounts to try and influence elections in Taiwan, and called on local people to unite to protect the island's freedoms, democracy and human rights.



Reported by Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Chung Kuang-cheng for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.The Myanmar Army and an ethnic armed group in eastern Myanmars Kayah state have blamed each other for breaching a bilateral cease-fire agreement during a weekend clash in Hpa Saung township that left no casualties.

The national armys Light Infantry Brigade 428 clashed with soldiers from the Karenni Army, the armed wing of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) on Oct. 20.

The KNPP signed a cease-fire accord to end hostilities with the Myanmar military in March 2012. The group had signed a previous cease-fire agreement with the former military government in 1995, but that pact held up for only three months.

Saturdays skirmish was the first time in six-and-a-half years that the two sides engaged in fighting.

The KNPP issued a statement on Saturday accusing the Myanmar army of violating the agreement in the latest hostilities, while the Kayah state government issued a statement of its own the same day, in which Colonel Myint Wai, the state security and border affairs minister, denounced the ethnic group for the clash and urged it to control its troops.

Though RFAs Myanmar Service could not reach local government officials for comment, a KNPP official insisted that the clash clearly violated the cease-fire agreement signed at the state level.

Khu Plu Rae, a KNPP secretary, told RFA that the ethnic army did not make any missteps under the current cease-fire arrangement, because the Myanmar military failed to inform it in advance that it was moving its troops.

The KNPP talked with an official in charge of the liaison office in the Kayah state capital Loikaw as well as with local military officials on Saturday and Sunday, he said.

A deputy commander of the LIB-428 told us that the army can go anywhere in the Union, and it doesnt need to report it, Khu Plu Rae said.

We will discuss this issue with the local government later this month, he said. We will remind them about the terms of the agreement which requires that they maintain their routine and inform us [about their movements].

Clashes of the past

The KNPP is one of 11 ethnic armed groups that have not yet signed the governments nationwide cease-fire agreement (NCA).

The bilateral pact it signed in 2012 requires troops from both sides to maintain their routine movements and inform each other of changes in their locations three days in advance.

The fight occurred while the government, the national military, the 10 ethnic armed groups that have signed the NCA, and the ones that have not, are planning to hold another round of peace talks in November.

Such clashes routinely took place [in the past], but the number of incidents decreased after the signing of the NCA, Padoh Saw Kwe Htoo Win, vice chairman of the NCA-signatory Karen National Union (KNU), told RFA.

In informal meetings, Myanmar government representatives and those from NCA signatory groups have agreed to hold firm on the national cease-fire accord and to strive to build trust with each other to avoid hostilities, he said.

The KNPP has been in talks with Myanmars peace negotiation team to get involved in the nationwide peace process spearheaded by State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi through a series of formal negotiations under the 21st-Century Panglong Conference which began in August 2016.

She intended to hold peace talks every six months, but only three sessions of talks have been held to date.

The government wants to hold three more rounds in 2018 and 2019 to reach its goal of laying out the basic principles of a peace accord that will end seven decades of civil war in Myanmar.

So far, the parties to the talks have agreed on 51 basic principles involving the political sector, the economy, and land matters, but they have yet to reach an accord on the security sector.

Reported and translated by Nandar Chann for RFAs Myanmar Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.An aerial photo shows burned villages near Maungdaw township, where security forces clashed with Muslim militants, in western Myanmar's Rakhine state, Sept. 27, 2017.

Judicial officials in western Myanmar's Rakhine state declined on Monday to say whether any members of a Muslim militant group responsible for deadly attacks in 2016 and 2017 are among the 747 people that they have sentenced for violating the criminal code and laws related to antiterrorism activities in the restive region.

Courts in northern Rakhine state have not determined whether those sentenced, who are part of a larger group of 778 Rohingya investigated and charged under Myanmars criminal code, weapons acts, anti-terrorist act, or the Unlawful Associations Act, are members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), said Tin Maung Lat, head of the states judicial office.

The courts have to investigate and hear from the accused as to whether they committed the crimes they have been charged with or not, but they are not working on determining their nationality, religion, and organizations to which they belong, he said during a press conference on Monday.

Furthermore, the courts didnt succeed in determining whether they are ARSA members, he said.

ARSA carried out attacks on three border guard stations in northern Rakhine state in October 2016 and on 30 police outposts and an army base in the region in August 2017, prompting two crackdowns by Myanmar security forces targeting civilians from Myanmars stateless and despised Rohingya Muslim minority.

Those who have been detained in connection with the attacks are believed to be held in northern Rakhines Buthidaung township prison and in a detention facility in the state capital Sittwe.

RFAs Myanmar Service and the online news service Democratic Voice of Burma earlier sent a letter to Rakhine states judicial department to find out whether the courts had determined the detainees to be members of ARSA.

Rakhine authorities have also issued nearly 6,200 arrest warrants, but have only arrested a dozen people from that group, Tin Maung Lat said. The government has also declared more than 5,700 people fugitives.

The brutal crackdowns, which the Myanmar government has defended as necessary counterinsurgency operations against Muslim terrorists, together drove more than 800,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh where they live in massive displacement camps.

Some of them are waiting to return to Myanmar under a repatriation agreement that the country signed with Bangladesh last November, but the program has yet to fully begin, and only several dozen have returned.

But rights groups and U.N. agencies have expressed deep concern over whether Myanmar officials can guarantee the safety of returning Rohingya, who are viewed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and systematically discriminated against.

Besides basic rights, the refugees want Myanmar to grant them long-denied citizenship and to return their lands.

Refugees appeal to India

Rohingya refugees living in India, meanwhile, have appealed to the New Delhi government to increase its pressure on Myanmar to create conditions conducive for their safe return, amid reports that they may be deported, the online news service Can-India News said Monday.

In response to that move, Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, reminded the Indian government that international law requires nations to refrain from sending refugees back to countries where they may still face danger.

Win Myint, chairman of Rakhine states Information Committee, said that Muslims who didnt flee to Bangladesh can live safely in the state.

There are many Bengalis who didnt flee to Bangladesh, and they can live safely in Rakhine, he said, using a derogatory name for the Rohingya. So, we will work on ensuring safety for the ones who will return home from Bangladesh.

They will become citizens if they are eligible according to the Citizenship Law, he added.

Momad Sharif, a Muslim who returned from a Bangladesh refugee camp in September, said it is safer to live in northern Rakhine state than it is to live in Bangladesh, where military and border guards must maintain security in the refugee camps.

ARSA members keep killing people in the Bangladesh camps, he said. Before I returned back home, ARSA members took six people, and no one knows whether they are still alive.



Reported by Min Thein Aung and Khin Khin Ei for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.Authorities in northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have jailed the Uyghur former host of a popular childrens television show, according to sources, who said he was targeted for producing a program that detailed the financial struggles of three young students.



A source with ties to the XUAR recently told RFAs Uyghur Service that Erkin Tursun, the host of the Hopeful Eyes show on the official Ili Television Station in the XUARs Ili Kazakh (in Chinese, Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, was arrested by police in Ghulja (Yining) county in March and later sentenced to as many as 11 years in prison.



The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that after Tursun produced a program last year to public acclaim entitled The World is Beautiful and Filled With Love and Caredocumenting the bid by three Uyghur children to attain an education in the face of poverty Hopeful Eyes was shut down and he became the key figure in an investigation by local authorities.



A staff member at Ili Television Station told RFA that there is no such person working here, when asked about Tursun, but said that further details were inconvenient to discuss over the phone and suggested that the interviewer make inquiries in person.



But an employee at Ghulja countys Hudiyaryuz township police department, which a source told RFA had orchestrated Tursuns arrest, confirmed that the television producer had been taken into custody, although he said it was by police from a neighboring township.



The Jiliyuz Police Department, the employee said when asked who was involved in Tursuns arrest, adding that he had later been turned over to authorities in Ghulja city.



When pressed on the reason behind the detention, the employee said that the information is beyond my knowledge and scope of work, before refusing to answer any further questions.



Tursuns arrest and sentencing came despite nearly 30 years working as a journalist at Ili Television Station, during which time he produced more than 10 programs that received regional and national awards.



Tursun was among a dozen people from Ili to receive a Most Progressive Person award from the government, was once recognized as one of Ghuljas Four Elite people for the work he had done to benefit society, and was actively engaged in organizing cultural and sporting events for the community, as well as historical field trips for local pupils.



Camp network



Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring strong religious views and politically incorrect ideas have been jailed or detained in political re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.



Western governments have increasingly drawn attention to re-education camps in the XUAR in recent months as media reports detail the stories of Uyghurs who have been detained in the facilities.



U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert recently said the U.S. government was "deeply troubled" by the crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang, adding that credible reports indicate that individuals sent by Chinese authorities to detention centers since April 2017 number at least in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions.



Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the re-education camps, which equates to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region.



The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), a U.S. congressional advisory panel, recently issued an annual report on Chinas human rights situation, calling it dire and on a continued downward trajectory, by virtually every measure.



Of particular concern is the mass, arbitrary, internment of as many as 1 million or more Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in political reeducation camps in western China, the report said.



Senator Marco Rubio, CECC chairman, and Representative Chris Smith, co-chairman of the body, said they plan to introduce the Xinjiang Uygur Human Rights Act, which would direct U.S. resources to address gross violations of universally recognized human rights, including the mass internment of over a million Uyghurs and other predominately Muslim ethnic minorities in China and the intimidation and threats faced by U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.



Chinese authorities had earlier denied the existence of internment camps, but last week they launched a state media propaganda blitz extolling the success in countering extremism of what they now call "employment training centers.



Chinas state-run news agency Xinhua quoted a senior Chinese official as saying that Muslims in Xinjiang must practice Chinese-style Islam to promote ethnic solidarity and religious harmony in the troubled region.



Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.Senior Afghan officials have praised voters who cast ballots in weekend parliamentary elections that were plagued by violence and organizational problems, saying the turnout shows that Afghans are rejecting the ideology of Taliban militants.

"The Taliban wanted to build a stream of blood, but the Taliban was defeated and the Talibans thoughts and ideas were rejected," Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah told a cabinet meeting on October 22.

Around 4 million out of 8.8 million registered voters in a country of more than 30 million cast their ballots over the two-day voting at more than 4,500 polling centers across the country, according to election authorities, despite deadly militant attacks in which dozens of people were killed and delays caused by technical and organizational problems.

The Taliban had issued several warnings in the days leading up to the poll demanding the more than 2,500 candidates for the lower house of parliament withdraw from the race and for voters to stay home.

Preliminary results of the parliamentary elections, which were seen as a key test of the governments ability to provide security across the country, were expected to be released on November 10 at the earliest. Final results will likely be out sometime in December, an election commission spokesman has said.

Originally scheduled for 2015, the vote was delayed for three years amid disputes over electoral reforms and because of the instability following NATOs handover of security responsibilities to Afghan forces at the end of 2014.

The Afghan people want a system based on the people's vote, and in fact, we have witnessed a historical moment, said Abdullah, who also admitted there were shortcomings during the vote.

Voting was extended to a second day on October 21 after hundreds of polling stations were closed on the first day of voting due to technical and security issues.

But only 253 of the 401 polling centers that were scheduled to be open on October 21 were operational, with the remainder closed for security reasons, election authorities said.

At some of the centers that opened for voting, there were insufficient ballot papers and voter rolls were "either incomplete or nonexistent," Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) spokesman Ali Reza Rohani said, adding, "most of the problems we had yesterday still exist today."

The ECC said it had received more than 5,000 complaints of irregularities from voters and candidates, and the Interior Ministry said 44 people had been charged with "illegal interference in the election and fraud.

However, President Ashraf Ghani said in a televised address to the nation after polls closed on October 21 that the election turnout showed that voters "have the power and will to defeat their enemies."

Ghani also challenged the Taliban to "show if your way or the way of democracy is preferred by the people."

In a tweet on October 21, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg commended "the millions of Afghan men & women who have exercised their democratic right to vote & the Afghan security forces who have provided security for the elections despite great challenges.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement released on October 20 that it was encouraged by the high numbers of Afghans who braved security threats and waited long hours to cast their votes.

UNAMA said the elections, which it described as "the first completely run by Afghan authorities since 2001," were an "important milestone in Afghanistans transition to self-reliance."

With reporting by TOLOnewsBISHKEK -- A former adviser to ex-President Almazbek Atambaev is being held on suspicion of financial fraud after being detained in Russia and brought back to Kyrgyzstan by law enforcement authorities.

Ikramjan Ilmiyanov is one of several associates of Atambaev, who has been at odds with his handpicked successor, to be arrested or dismissed in recent months and accused of corruption.

Media reports said Ikramjan Ilmiyanov was detained in Russia on October 20 in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Kyrgyz State Committee for National Security (UKMK) then brought him to Bishkek.

The Birinchi Mai District court in the Kyrgyz capital ruled the same day that Ilmiyanov must be kept in pretrial detention until November 28.

The UKMK had announced on October 19 that Ilmiyanov, who served as an adviser and deputy chief of staff under Atambaev, was placed on a wanted list.

Facing the constitutional limit of a single term, Atambaev stepped down in November 2017 after backing then-Prime Minister Sooronbai Jeenbekov in the Central Asian country's October presidential election.

Following his election as head of the ruling Social Democratic Party on March 31, Atambaev began publicly criticizing Jeenbekov.

Two Atambaev allies who also served as prime minister when he was president, Sapar Isakov and Jantoro Satybaldiev, were arrested in June on corruption charges.

In April, Jeenbekov fired several other Atambaev allies, including Prosecutor-General Indira Joldubaeva and UKMK chief Abdil Segizbaev, who had been criticized for a crackdown on opposition politicians and independent journalists.

Some politicians and lawmakers have called in recent months for an investigation into some of Atambaev's decisions while in office.

In early October, the Supreme Court ruled that the immunity enjoyed by the country's former presidents was unconstitutional.A Crimean Tatar woman felt she was unfairly sentenced by a Russian court to community service for "insulting a police officer" and many people agreed with her. She did her time with a little help from her new friends.ALMATY -- An ethnic Kazakh man from China, Omirbek Bekaly, says his 80-year-old father died in a so-called "reeducation camp" in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Bekaly told RFE/RL on October 22 that his father, Ibrahim, died a month ago but that he had only learned about it this weekend.

UN human rights officials said in August that an estimated 1 million Muslims were being held at "counterextremism centers" in China and that millions more have been forced into reeducation camps.

The UN agency said the northwestern Xinjiang Province had been turned into "something that resembles a massive internment camp."

Bekaly is one of several whistle-blowers in Kazakhstan who have raised the issue of the camps in Xinjiang.

He says he spent more than seven months in such a camp himself in 2017 after Chinese authorities arrested him when he visited relatives in Xinjiang.

In August, a court in Almaty refused to extradite Sairagul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese citizen who was wanted in China for illegal border crossing.

Sauytbay fled China in April and testified at her trial in Almaty that thousands of ethnic Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Muslims in Xinjiang are undergoing "political indoctrination" at a network of "reeducation camps."

She testified that Chinese authorities had forced her to train "political ideology" instructors for reeducation camps, giving her access to secret documents about what she called a state program to "reeducate" Muslims from indigenous ethnic communities.

Uyghurs are the largest indigenous community in Xinjiang, followed by Kazakhs, and the region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz and Hui, also known as Dungans. Han, China's largest ethnicity, are the second largest community in Xinjiang.

On October 19, the state-run China Daily newspaper said in an editorial that Muslims in Xinjiang were vulnerable to foreign extremist propaganda and needed education and vocational skills.

The editorial accused the Western media of "double standards" when it comes to reporting on Xinjiang, adding that the "false picture" of the province in the foreign media was "aimed at smearing the Chinese government".

With reporting by ReutersThe head of the Russian human rights group Memorial says an agreement has been reached with municipal authorities in Moscow to go ahead with an annual remembrance ceremony near the former KGB headquarters for the victims of Soviet dictator Josef Stalins purges.

Ekho Moskvy radio quotes Memorial chairman Yan Rachinsky as saying members of his nongovernmental rights group met with representatives of the Moscow mayors office on October 22 to discuss their revocation of permission to hold the ceremony at its usual location -- the Solovetsky Stone at Lubyanka Square in central Moscow.

Agreement was reached that the event will, in fact, take place at the Solovetsky Stone as usual, Rachinsky said.

Memorial has held the ceremony at Lubyanka Square every year on October 29 since 2006.

But the group said on October 19 that the Moscow mayors office withdrew the authorization it had already granted for the event to take place at Lubyanka Square in 2018.

Memorial said city officials initially suggested holding the ceremony outside the city center, but the rights group said that option was unacceptable.

The group said it had received authorization to hold the event by the Federal Protection Services (FSO), the Interior Ministry, and the Central Administrative District.

Memorial insists that the traditional site -- outside the office of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB -- is key to honoring the victims of repression.

In the past, speakers at the Solovetsky Stone memorial have read aloud the names, ages, occupations, and dates of execution for some 30,000 Muscovites -- only a small portion of the estimated 1 million or more killed by Soviet authorities in 1937-38.

The Solovetsky Stone was erected in Lubyanka Square in 1990 to honor victims of political suppression in the Soviet Union.

It consists of a large stone that was brought from the Solovetsky Islands -- the location in northwestern Russia of the Solovki prison camp within the Soviet GULAG system.

With reporting by Ekho MoskvyMINSK -- Belarusian officials, foreign diplomats, and representatives of Jewish organizations have gathered in Minsk for three days of events commemorating the killing of thousands of Jews during World War II.

The commemorations mark the 75th anniversary since an estimated 22,000 Jews brought by the Nazis from other European cities were executed between October 21-23, 1943.

On October 22, an event was held at Minsk's Yama (the Pit) memorial to mourn the more than 5,000 people from the city's Jewish ghetto who were killed on March 2, 1942.

The three-day commemorations also include concerts, conferences, and the screening of documentaries.

Before World War II, some 900,000 Jews lived in Belarus.

The Minsk ghetto, created soon after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, housed nearly 100,000 Jews. Most of them perished in the Holocaust.A soldier in the NATO-led Resolute Support mission was killed and two others wounded on October 22 by an apparent insider attack in the western province of Herat.

A statement from the NATO missions headquarters in Kabul said: "Initial reports indicate the attack was committed by a member of the Afghan security forces.

The Czech military said the three soldiers were from the Czech Republic. It said the two wounded soldiers were taken to the Bagram military hospital and their injuries were not life-threatening.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in an e-mailed statement.

It was the latest in a series of attacks in which Afghan forces have turned their weapons on international troops with whom they were working.

On October 18, a gunman wearing a uniform of the Afghan security forces opened fire on a gathering of security chiefs in Kandahar that included the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller.

Three people were killed -- including the powerful provincial police chief in Kandahar, General Abdul Raziq -- but Miller was not injured.

U.S. Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley was among 13 people wounded in that attack.

Based on reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, and dpaRussia's independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper has quoted a purported security aide of Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin as saying that Prigozhin was involved in several attacks against his opponents, including at least one killing.

Prigozhin, known as Vladimir Putins chef because of his work to organize catering events for the Russian president, has been indicted by U.S. investigators for allegedly trying to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He also is accused of playing a key role in Russia's support for pro-Russia separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine.

Novaya Gazeta reporter Denis Korotkov's article on Prigozhin was published on October 22, less than a week after a funeral wreath was anonymously sent to the journalist's home with a note calling him a traitor to his country.

Unknown persons last week also left a basket containing a severed ram's head and red carnations at the newspapers office with a note, saying "To Novaya Gazeta's chief editor with greetings to you and Korotkov."

Novaya Gazeta -- which has had five of its reporters killed since 2000 for their work -- says Russian authorities are conducting a smear campaign against Korotkov in response to allegations he has endangered the lives of Russian soldiers families by publishing personal information about Russian military pilots in Syria.

Korotkov's October 22 article about Prigozhin is based on a series of interviews he conducted with Valery Amelchenko, a former convict who claimed he worked as a security aide for Prigozhin.

Korotkov quoted Amelchenko as admitting that he personally orchestrated attacks on several of Prigozhin's rivals, including the killing of an opposition blogger in northwest Russia, on Prigozhins behalf.

Amelchenko also was quoted as saying several people who work for Prigozhin had traveled to Syria in 2017 to test an unknown poison on Syrians who refused to fight for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. Novaya Gazeta corroborated the account with two other sources.

Amelchenko disappeared on October 2 shortly after meeting Korotkov and telling the journalist that he was being followed.

Korotkov said he received a call from Amelchenko's phone later that day and when he went to the man's house, he found two mobile phones and what looked like his shoe lying on the ground.

Amelchenko is now on a Russian police list of missing persons.

Pirgozhin is alleged to have financed and directed the Internet Research Agency -- a St. Petersburg-based firm involved in online influence operations on behalf of the Kremlin.

The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions against Prigozhin in December 2016 for providing support for Russias involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine.

Another member of Prigozhin's security detail, Oleg Simonov, is suspected of attacking the husband of a lawyer of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's Anticorruption Foundation and injecting him with poison.

Simonov died in 2017 under murky circumstances.

Media in Russia and in the West have linked Prigozhin to the Vagner group, a private Russian paramilitary organization whose contractors have reportedly taken part in the wars in Syria and eastern Ukraine.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on October 22 that the Kremlin "has seen the article" about Prigozhin but was not aware of any confirmation of the published information by the competent organs."

With reporting by Novaya Gazeta, AP, RIA, Interfax, and TASSRussian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree setting the stage for "special economic measures" in response to what the document calls Ukraine's "unfriendly actions" against Russian citizens and companies.

In the decree signed and posted on the Kremlin website on October 22, Putin instructs the government to draft a list of Ukrainian firms and individuals to be targeted for economic sanctions.

The decree also orders the government to outline the sanctions and says it can be cancelled if Ukraine lifts all restrictions it has imposed against Russian citizens and companies.

Like the United States and the European Union, Kyiv has imposed sanctions on Russian tycoons, companies, and other entities in response to Moscow's seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and its support for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In June, Putin signed a law on countermeasures against the United States and other countries that have sanctions against Russia.U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan have agreed in a phone call that the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul must be fully explained, the Turkish presidency has said.

"Erdogan and Trump agreed the Khashoggi case needs to be cleared up with all aspects," a statement by the president's office said early on October 22, according to the Anadolu news agency.

The remarks came shortly after the Turkish president said he would make public on October 23 the "naked truth" about the dissident's killing.

Riyadh initially said the 60-year-old journalist had left the Saudi Consulate unharmed on October 2, but on October 20 said he was killed in a "fistfight" inside the building -- a claim that has been met with global skepticism.

The Saudi foreign minister on October 21 called Khashoggis killing a "rogue operation" and an "aberration."

Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News that those responsible would be held accountable for "this huge and grave mistake."

Trump, in an interview published on October 21, criticized the explanation by Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally, saying that "obviously theres been deception, and theres been lies."

Trump has repeatedly said over the past week that he opposes any effort to jeopardize more than $100 billion in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but that he would consider sanctions on the kingdom.

Britain, Germany, and France, meanwhile, issued a joint statement condemning Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, saying there is an "urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened."

Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, dpa, and APU.S. President Donald Trump says he is still not satisfied with what he has heard from Saudi Arabia about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but he also does not want the United States to lose investments from Riyadh.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, disappeared on October 2 after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to pick up documents for his upcoming marriage.

Riyadh initially denied knowledge of his fate before saying he was killed in a fight in the consulate -- a changing position that has been greeted skeptically by several Western governments.

"I am not satisfied with what I've heard," Trump told reporters at the White House on October 22. "I don't want to lose all that investment that's been made in our country. But we're going to get to the bottom of it."

Trump said he spoke with the crown prince on October 22. He also said there are Americans in Saudi Arabia and U.S. intelligence officers in Turkey working on the Khashoggi case who will return to Washington by October 23.

Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate by Saudi agents and that his body was cut up. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting the murder of the 59-year-old.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he will release information about the investigation in a speech on October 23.

Turkish surveillance video leaked on October 22 shows a man leaving the diplomatic post apparently wearing Khashoggis clothes as part of a deception aimed at spreading confusion about his fate.

Meanwhile, Turkish crime-scene investigators late on October 22 had surrounded a Saudi consular vehicle parked at an Istanbul garage.

The Saudi Consulate on October 22 was refusing to grant Turkish investigators permission to search the car, which has diplomatic license plates.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpaU.S. and Turkish troops are expected to begin conducting joint military patrols in the next few days around the Syrian city of Manbij, the Pentagons top commander for the Middle East says.

Army General Joseph Votel, who is head of U.S. Central Command, told reporters that the patrols will begin after training for the mission is completed. That is expected to last "several more days," he added.

Manbij is held by a U.S.-backed alliance dominated by a Kurdish militia considered by Ankara to be "terrorists, and Turkey in the past has threatened to attack the city to clear out the fighters, who were instrumental in defeating Islamic State (IS) militants in 2016.

The patrols are part of an agreement set in June by Washington and Ankara to ease tensions in the region near the Turkish border.

U.S. and Turkish troops previously have been conducting separate patrols in the border region.

"We're right on track with where we want to be," Votel said. "We've been through a very deliberate and mutually agreed upon training program."

He did not specify the size of the patrols or what weapons they might feature.

Turkey and the United States support different antigovernment rebels in Syria's seven-year civil war, while Russia and Iran back Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government.

Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups have also been involved in the fighting but have mainly been driven from their strongholds.

Based on reporting by AP and ReutersU.S. national-security adviser John Bolton has denied Russian allegations the United States is threatening to withdraw from a nuclear arms treaty in an attempt to blackmail Moscow over what Washington says is a new medium-range nuclear missile being developed by Russia.



Bolton was quoted as making the comment late on October 22 after talks in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -- two days after President Donald Trump declared that the United States would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).



Bolton also said Washington has not yet made any decision to deploy missiles in Europe targeting Moscow if the Trump administration scraps the 1987 treaty.



Russias Foreign Ministry said Lavrov and Bolton on October 22 discussed the prospect of interaction between our countries, including in the interests of settling regional conflicts, effectively fighting against terrorism, and the maintenance of strategic stability.



Earlier on October 22, Lavrov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that a U.S. withdrawal from the INF treaty could make the world "more dangerous" and force Moscow to take steps to restore the balance of power.



European allies of the United States also have expressed concern and the European Union's Executive Commission urged Washington and Moscow to negotiate to "preserve this treaty."



Peskov said Russia wants to hear "some kind of explanation" of the U.S. plans from Bolton, who was expected to meet on October 23 with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu before heading into talks with President Vladimir Putin.



"This is a question of strategic security. And I again repeat: such intentions are capable of making the world more dangerous," Peskov said.



"Any action in this area will be met with a counteraction, because the strategic stability can only be ensured on the basis of parity," Lavrov said on October 22 before his talks with Bolton. "Such parity will be secured under all circumstances. We bear a responsibility for global stability and we expect the United States not to shed its share of responsibility either."



The INF treaty prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing, or deploying ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers.



Peskov repeated Russian denials of U.S. accusations that Moscow is in violation of the treaty and said that the United States has taken no formal steps to withdraw from the pact as yet.



Before meeting with Lavrov on October 22, Bolton also met with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Putin's Security Council.



Russian Security Council spokesman Yevgeny Anoshin said Bolton and Patrushev discussed "a wide range of issues [involving] international security and Russian-American cooperation in the sphere of security."



Ahead of the meetings, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said Russia hoped Bolton would clarify the U.S. position on the treaty.



French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Trump on October 21 and "underlined the importance of this treaty, especially with regards to European security and our strategic stability," Macon's office said in a statement on October 22.



European Commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told reporters the United States and Russia "need to remain in a constructive dialogue to preserve this treaty and ensure it is fully and verifiably implemented."



The German government regrets the U.S. plan to withdraw, spokesman Steffen Seibert said on October 22, adding that "NATO partners must now consult on the consequences of the American decision."



German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said a day earlier that Trump's announcement "raises difficult questions for us and Europe," but added that Russia has not convincingly addressed the allegations that it had violated the treaty.



U.S. officials say Russia has been developing a nuclear-capable missile system known as 9M729 for years in violation of the INF treaty. Washington made its accusations public in 2014.



Russia denies the U.S. accusations and claims that some elements of the U.S. missile-defense systems in Europe violate the INF treaty -- a charge that Washington denies.



NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said on October 22 that "in the absence of any credible answer from Russia on this new missile, allies believe that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty."



The INF, agreed four years before the Soviet Union's collapse, was the first arms-control treaty to eliminate an entire class of missiles.



Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out, Trump told reporters on October 20 during a campaign stop in the state of Nevada.



The United States is "not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [when] we're not allowed to," Trump said.



The announcement brought sharp criticism from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the treaty in 1987 with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.



"Getting rid of the treaty is a mistake" that would reflect a "lack of wisdom" in Washington, said Gorbachev, 87, adding that leaders "absolutely must not tear up old agreements on disarmament."



In Britain, Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said on October 21 that his country stands "absolutely resolute" with Washington on the issue and called on the Kremlin to "get its house in order."



U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican-Kentucky) criticized Bolton, and said on Fox News he believes the national security adviser was behind the decision to withdraw from the treaty.



"I don't think he recognizes the important achievement of Reagan and Gorbachev on this," Paul said.



Bolton has been a critic of a number of treaties including arms-control pacts.



Many U.S. critics of Trump's promise to withdraw say that doing so now hands a victory to Russia because Moscow, despite evidence that it is violating the treaty, can blame the United States for its demise.



Critics also charge that withdrawing from the pact will not improve U.S. security and could undermine it.



Aside from the INF dispute, other issues are raising tensions between Moscow and Washington at the time of Bolton's visit, including Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria as well as alleged Kremlin interference in U.S. elections.



Lavrov said October 22 that Russia would welcome talks with the United States on extending the 2010 New START treaty, which limits numbers of Russian and U.S. long-range nuclear weapons such as ICBMs, beyond its 2021 expiration date.



Meanwhile, Peskov, when asked to comment on remarks Putin made on October 18, said Putin stated that Russia would not launch a nuclear strike unless it is attacked with nuclear weapons or is targeted in a conventional attack that threatens its existence.

With reporting by Reuters, Interfax, TASS, RIA, AFP, RBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and Mike Eckel in WashingtonExperts and analysts are struggling to grasp the implications of the growing likelihood that the United States will withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. As U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton holds talks on the matter with counterparts in Moscow, RFE/RL takes a look at some of the more interesting reactions.

Political Ploy?

While most Russian analysts have been slow to comment, state media in Russia have been putting forward the notion that U.S. President Donald Trump's statements against the INF Treaty are not to be taken at face value.

The state RIA Novosti news agency quoted an unidentified "diplomatic source" in Brussels as saying Trump's statement has "an election context."

"Just days before the elections to Congress, he wants to show his electorate that he can make decisions that will upset the president of Russia," the source was quoted as saying.

The pro-Kremlin tabloid website Argumenty Nedeli quoted an unidentified "high-ranking Russian diplomatic-military source" as saying that Trump's statement was a ploy to get the upper hand in talks with Russia on nuclear issues.

"The business president is simply raising the stakes before negotiations like he always does," the source said. "Now a banal exchange of concessions both by us and by the Americans will begin."

Thomas Graham, former specialist on Russia for the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, told the daily Kommersant that the withdrawal indications could just mean that Bolton, who has long opposed any arms-control treaties with Russia, has caught the president's ear.

"Only time will tell if this decision is final," he said. "In the administration there are high-ranking figures who support the treaty and who would like to continue working with Russia to regulate contentious issues."

Russian Violation?

Since 2014, the United States has argued that Russia has been in violation of the INF Treaty because it is developing an intermediate-range, ground-launched cruise missile that is provisionally known as the 9M729. The Trump administration said last year that Moscow had begun deploying the new weapon.

Russia has denied that it was violating the treaty and has countercharged that some elements of a U.S. antimissile system in Europe violate it.

Writing for the Brookings Institution, former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Steven Pifer has argued that unilaterally withdrawing from the agreement in this way would be a mistake that would leave Washington to blame for killing a major element of global arms control.

Withdrawing from the treaty would also enable Moscow to deploy the 9M729 without any restraints, Pifer added. It could also further the erosion of U.S. relations with its allies in Europe, he said, noting that no European countries have expressed concerns over the 9M729.

Pifer concludes that a smarter approach would be to get on one page with Europe and urge NATO allies to raise the possible violation directly with Moscow. At the same time, Washington could take "treaty compliant" steps such as deploying additional bombers in Europe that would send a serious signal to Russia.

"The INF Treaty likely has entered its final days," Pifer wrote. "That's unfortunate. The Trump administration should make one last push, with the help of allies, to get Moscow back into compliance. And, if that fails, it should have ready a presentation that will win the inevitable fight over who killed the treaty."

Demonstrating Russia's alleged violations would probably require the United States to declassify some sensitive intelligence information, Pifer noted.

Stephen Sestanovich, a former U.S. National Security Council senior director for policy development under Reagan, writing in The American Interest, largely agreed with Pifer, saying that keeping the treaty is important because it "keeps Russian capabilities under legal limits."

"Yes, Moscow will probably keep nibbling at the edges of the INF deal, but the only way it can launch a big buildup is by withdrawing from the treaty itself -- something it clearly hesitates to do," he wrote.

China Gambit

Sestanovich notes that U.S. military planners are concerned about the INF Treaty because it restricts Russia and the United States but leaves China free to develop the weapons it bans.

"Military competition between China and the United States will obviously be the Pentagon's top priority in coming years," he wrote. "But the idea that this need decisively devalues the INF Treaty seems -- at the very least -- premature."

He says that for the foreseeable future, the United States and its allies deter China with a combination of air- and sea-launched weapons.

"It's not impossible to imagine that over time we and our allies will come to think that medium-range, ground-based missiles -- the kind the INF Treaty keeps us from having -- would add meaningfully to deterrence of China," he wrote. "But this is not a near-term prospect. In fact, virtually every U.S. ally in the region would reject the idea."Cancun mayor presenting project for overpasses to help with traffic

Cancun, Q.R.  The new administration of Benito Juarez is preparing a federal request to construct overpass bridges in Cancun.

Maria Elena Hermelinda Lezama Espinosa, municipal president of Benito Juarez, says that the administration is preparing a request for federal resources for the construction of overpasses on Rodrigo Gomez Avenue and Kilometer Zero of Cancun, which if granted, will speed up mobility on both roads.

I have had meetings with the federal deputies for Quintana Roo to attend to matters related to federal resources for the benefit of the municipality, said Cancuns mayor Maria Elena Hermelinda Lezama Espinosa.

The overpasses will be similar to the existing bridges at Boulevard Luis Donaldo Colosio, and according to the mayor, will help with traffic flow along those areas. For now, the proposal will be presented to the Chamber of Deputies to obtain the resources.

City officials are currently adding the final touches before presenting their request which includes a feasibility study at Bonampak, Kukulcan and Coba avenues as well as along Rodrigo Gomez (Kabah) with Jose Lopez Portillo.An independent diamond industry analyst and consultant said although exceptional and one-off diamonds are hard to assign a value to them, the Pink Legacy will likely fetch $2.64 million per carat when it goes under the hammer next month in Geneva.

Paul Zimnisky, CFA told Rough & Polisheds Mathew Nyaungwa in an exclusive interview that the 18.96 carats stone was one of the most extraordinary diamonds due to the quality of its colour.

His comment dovetails with Christies auction, which projected the fancy vivid pink to fetch between $30 million and $50 million.

Meanwhile, Zimnisky said De Beers Lightbox had registered an initial demand for the larger-carat sized products than anticipated.

The companys 1-carat solitaire pendants and some of the 1-carat total weight stud earing sets that had sold out days after its launch were now being restocked.

NB: Zimnisky has a monthly industry report called "State of the Diamond Market":

http://www.paulzimnisky.com/products

Below are excerpts from the interview.

Christies has projected that the Pink Legacy will fetch between $30 million and $50 million. Do you think this is achievable?

This is one of the most extraordinary diamonds in the world due to the quality of the color. With these truly-exceptional, one-off diamonds its almost impossible to assign a fundamental value to them. A lot of times the final price is set by how the buyers are feeling in the moment. That said, the high-end of the range is certainly achievable, which equates to $2.64 million per carat. For comparison, in 2010 the Graff Pink sold for $1.86 million per carat, which equates to $2.15 million in 2018 dollars, and last year the Pink Promise sold for $2.14 million per carat. Hopefully the diamond does not self-destruct like the Banksy work at Sothebys a few weeks ago!

Prices for top-quality large pink diamonds are said to have increased exponentially over the years driven by collector demand. Where is this demand coming from?

The buyers of these diamonds tend to be people or companies that have hundreds-of-millions or billions of dollars, so even though these diamonds cost millions of dollars they represent a relatively small percentage of the buyers net worth. Diamonds like this can provide some diversification to portfolios that already hold everything else you can imagine.

Do you consider a diamond as a form of investment?

Not really, especially not for most people. The minimum price point of an investment-quality diamond is in the hundreds-of-thousands or millions of dollars in my opinion. In addition, the transaction costs are very high, the liquidity is low, and the holding period necessary tends to be quite long.

What is your recommendation, should one decides to invest in a diamond?

I would say if you are going to invest in a diamond, a nice pink is probably the way to go. There just always seems to be demand for nice pinks, and relatively speaking, there are very few of them. As mentioned above, the worlds primary source of pink diamonds, the Argyle mine in Australia will be ceasing production within the next few years as the mines economic resource has been exhausted. This will keep supply limited. Blue diamonds have also done well, as have reds, but reds are extremely rare.

Are there any prospects of new mines that produce fancy pinks as Rio Tintos Argyle mine in Australia, which is the main producer of quality fancy pinks, is set to close by 2020?

Argyle produces the majority of pink gem-diamonds globally in volume and value terms, and pretty much all of the red diamonds in the world, which are even exponentially rarer than pink diamonds. However, there are other mines in the world that have produced pink diamonds. In recent years, ALROSAs Almazy-Anabara mine in Russia, Lucapas Lulo mine in Angola, and Petra Diamonds Williamson mine in Tanzania have all produced pink diamonds.

De Beers Lightbox started trading last month and some items have already sold out. What is your take on this development?

So, to be specific, the items that sold out were the 1-carat solitaire pendants and some of the 1-carat total weight stud earing sets (1/2-carat each). As of the second week in October, some of these items have been restocked. I recently spoke with a Lightbox representative and my understanding is there was more initial demand than anticipated for the larger-carat sized products, but more are being produced as we speak, and most items should be fully restocked within a few weeks.

Skeptics suggest the sold out items dont necessary reflect demand as this was a marketing gimmick by Lightbox. Do you accept this school of thought?

Its understandable that some would suspect that given how steep the Lightbox price discount is relative to other lab-created diamonds on the market, however I dont believe that to be the case. The Lightbox representative that I spoke with described the company as a relatively small e-commence startup, with just a few employees, and despite being owned by De Beers, the company is being run as an independent entity, so it will take some time to get fully up and running. More diamonds are currently being produced at the factory in Ascot, England and production will be augmented by the new factory in the western United States when construction is complete.

Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&PolishedShareholders of ALROSA PJSC elected a new Supervisory Board to govern the company at the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders held on October 22, 2018.

According to voting data, the ALROSA Supervisory Board was elected as follows:

1. Nikolay Alexandrov  First Deputy Head of Municipal District Suntarsky Ulus of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

2. Maria Gordon  Member of the Supervisory Board of PJSC ALROSA, Member of the Supervisory Board of PJSC Moscow Exchange.

3. Evgenia Grigorieva  Minister of Property and Land Affairs of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

4. Kirill Dmitriev  CEO, JSC Russian Direct Investment Fund Managing Company.

5. Ilya Yelizarov  Assistant to the Head of the Federal Agency for State Property Management.

6. Sergey Ivanov  Chief Executive Officer  Chairman of the Executive Committee of PJSC ALROSA.

7. Dmitry Konov  Chairman of the Executive Committee of PJSC SIBUR Holding.

8. Galina Makarova  until 2015 - Permanent Representative of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Saint Petersburg.

9. Sergey Mestnikov  General Director, Non-profit Organization Target Fund of Future Generations of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

10. Alexey Moiseev  Deputy Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation.

11. Aysen Nikolaev  Head of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

12. Anton Siluanov  First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation  Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation.

13. Vladimir Solodov  Acting Chairman of the Government of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

14. Oleg Fedorov  member of the Supervisory Board of PJSC ALROSA, member of the Board of Directors of PJSC IDGC of North-West.

15. Alexey Chekunkov  CEO of the Far East and Baikal Region Development Fund.



Chairman of the Supervisory Board, as well as the composition of special-purpose committees will be determined at the next meeting of the Board.

Convention of the extraordinary meeting of shareholders of PJSC ALROSA for the election of the new Supervisory Board was initiated by the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) represented by the Ministry of Property and Land Affairs of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) that holds 25% of the Companys shares.

For reference:

The ALROSA Supervisory Board governs the company. The functions and competence of the Supervisory Board include the sustainable development of the company and strategy shaping, as well as monitoring of compliance with the principles of corporate governance, including protection of the interests of all shareholders, regardless of their holdings, employees of the company and its partners, timely and complete disclosure of information and transparency of business.[MANILA] A regional forum on climate change adaptation, co-hosted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), provided an opportunity to discuss innovative technology and financing to build resilience to disasters and climate adversities.



Participants of the 6th Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum (1719 October) discussed, for example, the merits and demerits of using improved hydraulic rams or hydrams, which are devices capable of pumping water up heights without using electricity or fossil fuels.

Many of our countries dont have resources set aside for a disaster so they have to rely on budgetary allocations, which takes money away from existing programmes and priorities Ananya Basu, Asian Development Bank

With the help of a hydraulic ram, you can pump water up to 100 metres without any energy, said Vivek Dhar Sharma, national programme assistant at the Global Environment Facilitys small grants programme in Nepal. This kind of technology can be especially useful in highland areas, adding that hydrams have the advantage of being able to be manufactured locally and parts, such as valves, are readily available in most countries of the region.



While solar-powered water pumps are also environment-friendly, they are comparatively costlier to install and maintain and many countries of the Asia Pacific region have to import them.



Hydrams, which are powered by the kinetic energy of flowing water, gravity and hydraulic pressure, easily justify the theme of the forum  Enabling Resilience for All: Avoiding the Worst Impacts.



The forum, co-hosted by the Climate Change Commission of the Government of the Philippines, the Government of the Republic of Palau, and the ADB, also considered innovative financing to tackle the effects of climate change.



Ananya Basu, principal economist at the ADB, discussed a relatively new funding model that is suitable for dealing with natural disasters. In 2016, ADB introduced contingent financing, which is organised in advance and can be spent at the sole discretion of the borrowing country up to a pre-arranged maximum amount.



Many of our countries dont have resources set aside for a disaster so they have to rely on budgetary allocations, which takes money away from existing programmes and priorities, Basu told SciDev.Net. We dont want that and they dont want that either. Insurance can be expensive. Our assistance fills the gap for immediate money needs.

Contingent financing has already been approved for the small-island developing states of Palau, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga, but Basu said other countries can avail of it. A key advantage is that funds can be disbursed within 24 hours, far shorter than the seven days it can take humanitarian groups to mobilise funds , she said.Its usually in the first couple of days that you need to control indirect costs, Basu said. Time matters and you dont want health epidemics spreading in the wake of a disaster, she added.Over 1,000 scientists, government officials, development experts and representatives from civil society as well as businesses attended the forum, the largest gathering of adaptation practitioners in the Asia Pacific region.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Asia & Pacific desk.By merging the ancient art of origami with 21st century technology, researchers have created a one-step approach to fabricating complex origami structures whose light weight, expandability, and strength could have applications in everything from biomedical devices to equipment used in space exploration. Until now, making such structures has involved multiple steps, more than one material, and assembly from smaller parts.

"What we have here is the proof of concept of an integrated system for manufacturing complex origami. It has tremendous potential applications," said Glaucio H. Paulino, a professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a leader in the growing field of origami engineering, or using the principles of origami, mathematics and geometry to make useful things. Last fall Georgia Tech became the first university in the country to offer a course on origami engineering, which Paulino taught.

The researchers used a relatively new kind of 3D printing called Digital Light Processing (DLP) to create groundbreaking origami structures that are not only capable of holding significant weight but can also be folded and refolded repeatedly in an action similar to the slow push and pull of an accordion. When Paulino first reported these structures, or "zippered tubes," in 2015, they were made of paper and required gluing. In the current work, the zippered tubes -- and complex structures made out of them -- are composed of one plastic (a polymer) and do not require assembly.

The work was reported in a recent issue of Soft Matter, a journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The primary authors are Paulino; H. Jerry Qi, a professor in Georgia Tech's George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; and Daining Fang of Peking University and the Beijing Institute of Technology. Other authors are Zeang Zhao, a visiting student at Georgia Tech now at Peking University; Qiang Zhang of Peking University; and Xiao Kuang and Jiangtao Wu of Georgia Tech.

An Emerging Technology

There are many different types of 3D printing technologies. The most familiar, inkjet, has been around for some 20 years. But until now, it has been difficult to create 3D-printed structures with the intricate hollow features associated with complex origami because removing the supporting materials necessary to print these structures is challenging. Further, unlike paper, the 3D-printed materials could not be folded numerous times without breaking.

Enter DLP and some creative engineering. According to Qi, a leader in the emerging field collaborating with Fang's group at Peking University, DLP has been in the lab for a while, but commercialization only began about five years ago. Unlike other 3D printing techniques, it creates structures by printing successive layers of a liquid resin that is then cured, or hardened, by ultraviolet light.

For the current work, the researchers first developed a new resin that, when cured, is very strong. "We wanted a material that is not only soft, but can also be folded hundreds of times without breaking," said Qi. The resin, in turn, is key to an equally important element of the work: tiny hinges. These hinges, which occur along the creases where the origami structure folds, allow folding because they are made of a thinner layer of resin than the larger panels of which they are part. (The panels make up the bulk of the structure.)

Together the new resin and hinges worked. The team used DLP to create several origami structures ranging from the individual origami cells that the zippered tubes are composed of to a complex bridge composed of many zippered tubes. All were subjected to tests that showed they were not only capable of carrying about 100 times the weight of the origami structure, but also could be repeatedly folded and unfolded without breaking. "I have a piece that I printed about six months ago that I demonstrate for people all the time, and it's still fine," said Qi.

What's Next?

What's next? Among other things, Qi is working to make the printing even easier while also exploring ways to print materials with different properties. Meanwhile, Paulino's team recently created a new origami pattern on the computer that he is excited about but that he has been unable to physically make because it is so complex. "I think the new system could bring it to life," he said.A team led by scientists at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages for NASA, has calculated that if liquid water exists on Mars, it could -- under specific conditions -- contain more oxygen than previously thought possible. According to the model, the levels could even theoretically exceed the threshold needed to support simple aerobic life.

That finding runs contrary to the current, accepted view of Mars and its potential for hosting habitable environments. The existence of liquid water on Mars is not a given. Even if it is there, researchers have long dismissed the idea that it might be oxygenated, given that Mars's atmosphere is about 160 times thinner than that of Earth and is mostly carbon dioxide.

"Oxygen is a key ingredient when determining the habitability of an environment, but it is relatively scarce on Mars," says Woody Fischer, professor of geobiology at Caltech and a co-author of a Nature Geoscience paper on the findings, which were published on October 22.

"Nobody ever thought that the concentrations of dissolved oxygen needed for aerobic respiration could theoretically exist on Mars," adds JPL's Vlada Stamenkovic, lead author of the Nature Geoscience paper.

Finding liquid water on Mars is one of the major goals of NASA's Mars program. In recent months, data from a European spacecraft have suggested that liquid water may lie beneath a layer of ice at Mars's south pole. It has also been hypothesized that water could exist in salty subsurface pools, because perchlorate salts (compounds of chlorine and oxygen) have been detected at various places on Mars. Salt lowers the freezing point of water, which means that water with perchlorate in it could potentially stay liquid despite the freezing temperatures on Mars, where summer nights on the equator can still dip down to -100 degrees Fahrenheit.

That hypothetical salty water is what interested Fischer and Stamenkovic. Oxygen enters water from the atmosphere, diffusing into the liquid to maintain an equilibrium between the water and the air. If salty water were close enough to the surface of the Martian soil, then it could effectively absorb oxygen from the thin atmosphere.

To find out just how much oxygen could be absorbed, Stamenkovic, Fischer, and their colleagues Michael Mischna at JPL and Lewis Ward (MS '14, PhD '17) at Harvard, did two things: First, they developed a chemical model describing how oxygen dissolves in salty water at temperatures below the freezing point of water. Second, they examined the global climate of Mars and how it has changed over the past 20 million years, during which time the tilt of the axis of the planet shifted, altering regional climates. The solubility and climate models together allowed the researchers to infer which regions on Mars are most capable of sustaining high oxygen solubilities, both today and in the planet's geologically recent past.

The team found that, at low-enough elevations (where the atmosphere is thickest) and at low-enough temperatures (where gases like oxygen have an easier time staying in a liquid solution), an unexpectedly high amount of oxygen could exist in the water -- a value several orders of magnitude above the threshold needed for aerobic respiration in Earth's oceans today. Further, the locations of those regions have shifted as the tilt of Mars's axis has changed over the past 20 million years. During that time, the highest oxygen solubilities have occurred within the past five million years.

The findings could inform future missions to Mars by providing better targets to rovers searching for signs of past or present habitable environments, Stamenkovic says.The Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against an investment adviser with a history of violating the securities laws for defrauding his close friends and community members.

According to the SEC's complaint filed October 16, 2018, from at least 2014 through at least 2017, Bruce J. Fixelle solicited investments from close friends he met through a local community organization, telling them that he was going to invest their money in initial and secondary offerings, which he would then sell before the end of the trading day. Fixelle described his trading strategy as safe and successful. In reality, rather than investing these funds, he allegedly used investor money to pay mounting personal debt and personal expenses.

In 2014, Fixelle and a company he controlled, Genesis Advisory Services Corp., were charged by the Commission with violations of Rule 105 of Regulation M. Among other sanctions, they agreed to pay disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties of over $1.5 million.

The SEC's Retail Strategy Task Force and Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (OIEA) encourage investors to check the background of anyone selling or offering them an investment using the free and simple search tool on Investor.gov. Investors can also use the SALI feature to find information about certain people who have had judgments or orders issued against them in SEC court actions or administrative proceedings.

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal district court in New Jersey, charges Fixelle, Genesis, and another company he controlled, Aurora Capital Management LLC, with violating the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, as well as Sections 206(1), 206(2) and 206(4) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and Rule 206(4)-8 thereunder. The Commission is seeking a permanent injunction, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains along with prejudgment interest, and civil money penalties.

The SEC's continuing investigation is being conducted by Janna Berke, Andrew Dean, Kerri Palen, Richard G. Primoff, and Sandeep Satwalekar and supervised by Lara Shalov Mehraban. The SEC's litigation will be led by Ms. Berke, Mr. Dean, and Mr. Primoff. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.Two South Florida men have agreed to lifetime bars from participating in penny stock offerings to settle charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that they facilitated a pump-and-dump scheme involving shares of a Sunrise, Florida company that purported to be in the beauty products business.

The SEC alleges that attorney Mark E. Fisher of Boca Raton, Florida and businessman Joseph F. Capuozzo of Sunrise, Florida received millions of shares of Valentine Beauty Inc. in connection with a pump-and-dump scheme orchestrated by Eddy U. Marin, who controlled Valentine. Earlier this year, the SEC charged Marin and a stock promoter with fraud for their roles in the scheme. The SEC alleges that Fisher and Capuozzo coordinated with Marin and others to launch a marketing campaign touting Valentine's purported operations. Once the promotional campaign increased the liquidity and price of Valentine's stock, Fisher and Capuozzo sold a significant portion of their shares, collectively reaping more than $150,000 in stock sale proceeds.

In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida today announced criminal charges against Fisher and Capuozzo.

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal court in Miami, charges Fisher and Capuozzo with violating the registration provisions of Sections 5(a) and (c) of the Securities Act of 1933 and the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 10b-5(a) and (c) thereunder. The complaint also charges Fisher with violating antifraud Rule 10b-5(b) of the Exchange Act. Fisher and Capuozzo have agreed to settle the SEC's charges and be barred from the penny stock industry. Capuozzo also agreed to be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company. The settlement with the SEC, which is subject to court approval, also permanently enjoins Fisher and Capuozzo from violating the charged provisions of the federal securities laws and provides that the court will decide the amounts of disgorgement, interest, and civil penalties at a later date.

The SEC's investigation was conducted by the Enforcement Division's Microcap Fraud Task Force and Lina M. Fernandez in the Miami office, and supervised by Elisha L. Frank. Wilfredo Fernandez is leading the SEC's litigation. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.A small school district in affluent Marin County isnt where youd expect the legacy of the Civil War to be a topic of debate. But the school district in question bears the name Dixie  and in our overheated times, thats enough to spark the cultural equivalent of a brushfire.

The battle has been ugly, with residents resorting in recent days to legal warnings, pilfered lawn signs, character assassination and charges of racism, writes Jill Tucker, who spoke to parents and school officials on both sides of the fight.

At the center of it all is a snug district in northern San Rafael with just four schools and 2,000 students, nearly all of them white. Dixie dates to 1863, and a number of parents dont like being associated with a name that was synonymous with the pro-slavery rebellion of 11 Southern states. On the other side are families who see no reason to change the way things are; they even claim the Dixie in question was a Miwok Indian of the era, Mary Dixie.

There has been talk before of changing the name, Tucker reports, but now the push is gaining traction. What lies ahead is uncertain  except that common ground is hard to find in todays America, and historical symbols can roil even the most seemingly placid landscapes.

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Top of the News

About-face: Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf ordered an end to the Police Departments policy of asking job applicants to disclose whether they had been sexually assaulted. The decision came hours after the publication of a Chronicle story by Kimberly Veklerov that revealed the practice.

Grounds-eye view: Politicians take positions. Tech titans spar on Twitter. But people living on the streets are the ones wholl be most affected by Proposition C, the proposed business tax that would raise an extra $250 million to $300 million annually for homeless services in San Francisco  so thats who reporters Kevin Fagan and Dominic Fracassa talked to.

Packing it in: City leaders in Brisbane want voters to approve a plan that would allow up to 2,200 homes on a former railyard along San Franciscos border. When you consider that Brisbane only has 4,700 residents, its no wonder that Measure JJ is the talk of the town.

Life with AIDS: They survived the plague that killed their friends in the 1980s and 90s, but more than 60 percent of older adults with HIV in San Francisco suffer from depression and/or anxiety. We thought they had all these services, theyre OK, one advocate told reporter Erin Allday. I think to some extent we took the eye off the ball.

Larger than life: Give Morgan Neville credit for versatility: The filmmakers follow-up to Wont You Be My Neighbor?, his beguiling tribute to Fred Rogers, is a documentary on cinematic impresario Orson Welles. I think if things went too smoothly, it made Orson nervous, Neville told Jessica Zack. Hed do his best to throw a hand grenade into every situation.

Hire, hire: Youve seen the Help Wanted signs, now crunch the numbers: Californias unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent in September, the lowest recorded figure since the current measurement system was introduced in 1976.

Not cool, Juul: Teenagers beguiled by the bright flavors of Juul e-cigarettes often dont realize the nicotine product is highly addictive, according to a new study by Stanford University researchers. The San Francisco company responded with a statement assuring skeptics, We agree that underage use of Juul is completely unacceptable.

Global warning: Sure, you can crack fatalistic jokes about the dangers posed by climate change. But cynical humor ... is not going to get us out of this mess, writes columnist Caille Millner. Instead, she applauds a lawsuit on the topic filed against the U.S. government by 21 young Americans, and asks, Why not make fighting climate change our next national challenge, like putting a man on the moon once was?

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.

Faith in science: Aron Wall is a devout Christian. Hes also a Stanford University physicist who studies black-hole thermodynamics who just received a $100,000 prize known as the Oscars of Science. To Wall, belief and research are inseparable.

Take a bow: Warriors beat reporter Connor Letourneau introduces us to the teams most devoted employee, Eric Housen. Want proof? When he was equipment manager, Housen made himself available 24/7 by sleeping on a cot in the teams practice facility  for three entire seasons.

Youve got to flush this: The 49ers collapsed against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday after being booted from a prime-time slot, and their sloppy, turnover-prone play made the TV executives look like geniuses, Scott Ostler writes.

Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

The Kicker

Not all transportation consultants are alike. Meet W. Marion Ivey, a former Marine Corps drill instructor who has just wrapped up a series of week-long sessions with members of BARTs janitorial staff. The crews were brought up-to-date on the best ways to clean stations and trains where old-fashioned grime is the least of their problems. The polite term is industrial hygiene; BART patrons wont be surprised to the learn that the disposing of biohazards  use your imagination  was a full days class in itself.

Bay Briefing is written by John King and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here and contact King at jking@sfchronicle.comSan Franciscos McRoskey Mattress Co., which was founded in 1899 and has manufactured high-end mattresses in the city since that time, has been sold to the Fresno company Pleasant Mattress.

To really be relevant, we saw the need to have a luxury brand to be the jewel of our portfolio, Pleasant Mattress CEO Rion Morgenstern said.

McRoskey has a showroom on Market Street in San Francisco and locations in Palo Alto and San Rafael. The company has about 26 employees total, and its current sales staff will remain in place. But its San Francisco manufacturing facility on Minnesota Street will close, with 13 factory employees there laid off, according to Robin Azevedo, whose family founded McRoskey.

Azevedo will become a brand ambassador for McRoskey. She has known Morgensterns family for years, so Pleasant felt like the right company to acquire McRoskey, she said.

We have customers across the nation that buy our mattress, and this is an opportunity to expand retail and show the product with more people, and thats been in my mind for a number of years  how we might do that, Azevedo said. And weve had inquiries over the years, of people showing interest (in) acquiring the business.

Pleasant Mattress is renovating a 25,000-square-foot space at its Fresno campus to manufacture McRoskey products, the company said. Production is scheduled to begin in January, and the area will also include space for a showroom. Pleasant Mattress also plans to immediately begin handling McRoskeys manufacturing, distribution and marketing.

The decision to end manufacturing in San Francisco was made because Pleasant has a facility in Fresno, Azevedo said, and McRoskey is looking to expand its showrooms in Northern California. Pleasant will be hiring eight to 10 employees to work in McRoskey Mattress manufacturing in Fresno, Morgenstern said.

Its really about bringing together two companies to do what theyre the best at, Morgenstern said. The manufacturing just happens to be in Fresno for my company, and has been for 60 years.

Pleasant Mattress is a significantly larger company and aims to bring McRoskey mattresses, which sell on average from $5,000 to $7,000 for a queen-size set, to a larger audience, including internationally.

The McRoskey brand is a San Francisco heritage product that we really believe is competitive on both the national stage and the international stage, Morgenstern said.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Pleasant Mattress has been making mattresses since 1959 and employs 160 people.

SFMade, a nonprofit that champions manufacturing in the city, has often promoted McRoskey as a local manufacturer, and the company has offered tours of the factory.

Patrick Marks, owner of San Franciscos Green Arcade bookstore, has partnered with Azevedo and McRoskey to host literary events at the mattress companys Market Street showroom. The company is a San Francisco staple, he said, and has been part of the community with such activities as being a sponsor of the annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theatre.

Its a multigenerational business, and it still will be, since Pleasant Mattress is also family-owned, Marks said.

Sophia Kunthara is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sophia.kunthara@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SophiaKuntharaNext year, lenders will have access to a new FICO credit score that will  for the first time and with the consumers permission  include information from a persons checking or savings account, such as income and outgo, balances and overdraft behavior, FICO of San Jose announced Monday.

FICOs traditional, widely used credit scores rely only on information about a persons credit usage and payment history drawn from the persons report at one of the three big credit bureaus. It does sell other scores, such as FICO XD, which use so-called alternative data, such as payment history from cable and utility databases, but this is done without the consumers permission.

The new Ultra score is designed to help people who otherwise would be denied credit because their traditional score is too low or they have no credit history. FICO is positioning it as a second chance for borrowers after lenders have looked at their traditional FICO score. However, some lenders may look at it before looking at a potential borrowers traditional score. In that case, it could end up hurting borrowers who otherwise might have gotten credit, or better credit terms.

FICO emphasized that consumers dont have to allow access to their bank account information.

We are being very explicit about the fact that to help you, you need to maintain an average balance of about $400 a month and not run negative balances, said Sally Taylor-Shoff, a scores vice president with FICO.

The new score also could help mainstream lenders compete with startups such as Petal, a credit card issuer that looks, again with permission, at an applicants bank account information, said Matt Schulz, chief industry analyst with Comparecards.com. He added that banks have been doing this internally for years, meaning that if a checking account customer wants credit, the bank will look at the customers checking account history.

UltraFICO will be available only when lenders pull a report from Experian, the credit bureau thats partnering with FICO and Finicity on the product. Finicity, based near Salt Lake City, is a data aggregator that will pull information from a persons bank account, summarize it and send it to Experian. Finicity will not include information about where consumers are writing checks or using their debit cards, at least for now.

We want to make sure that information (about merchants) doesnt get in, to the report or lending decisions, said Chi Chi Wu, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

The three companies say they will begin a pilot program early next year and UltraFICO will be broadly available to lenders mid-2019.

However, thats only if lenders use it. FICO has proven that its really hard to supplant the traditional FICO score with something else. FICO has a hard time supplanting its own scores when it comes out with a new thing, said credit expert John Ulzheimer.

FICO 9 came out in 2014 and even though it has been four years, it has not been as widely used as FICO 8, which came out in 2009, said Ted Rossman, an analyst with Creditcards.com.

Short term, Rossman said UltraFICO is probably good for consumers because it will give more of them access to credit. But thats happening at a time when the economy is booming and delinquency rates are low.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Some people might get into these loans under the best-case scenario and not be able to pay them back when downturns or recessions occur, he said.

And although the types of information lenders can access is limited for now, he wonders what could happen if lenders start using other information, such as a persons assets.

This might be opening a little sensitive area when it comes to income and assets equaling credit worthiness, he said.

Schulz said, There has been a lot of effort made over the last few years to try and get scores for people who have little to no credit. This seems like a big step in that direction. Its about expanding the universe of borrowers that banks can lend to. Invariably in that group there will be some folks who maybe dont need credit or shouldnt get credit. But this is really, primarily, a move to help banks expand the pond they are fishing in for customers.

Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpenderTwo suspects in a brazen daylight robbery of a cell phone store in American Canyon on Saturday were booked into Napa County Jail after leading police and a California Highway Patrol aircraft on a chase in two counties.

Investigators said Lamar Crawford, 20, of San Francisco and Alexander Briones, 23, of Oakland were arrested and will face felony charges after they attempted to evade police by changing cars in Contra Costa County, which allowed officers to converge on them.

The trouble began at 5:40 p.m. when two men wearing hoodies entered a T-Mobile store in the southern Napa County town of American Canyon and began ripping cell phones and Apple watches from the stores displays, police said.

The men ran out of the store with the loot and jumped into a black Lexus. Witnesses reported seeing them head north on Highway 29. An American Canyon patrol car caught up to the vehicle and attempted to make a traffic stop, but the Lexus suddenly accelerated, leading police to call off the vehicular pursuit, according to a department news release.

The CHP aircraft spotted the fleeing Lexus and tracked it after a description was put out over police radios. The suspects drove the Lexus to Concord, swapped vehicles and drove the new getaway car to Pittsburg, where they tried to make another switch, but police were waiting for them.

Briones, who had seven warrants for his arrest in three counties, violently resisted arrest and was taken into custody after a short struggle and the assistance of a Pittsburg Police K9, Kyra, the release said. Briones was later treated for bite wounds, police said.

Crawford, who is listed as a San Francisco transient, fled on foot and was captured a short time later, police said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Both men were charged with felonies for robbery, burglary, recklessly evading police and hit-and-run. They were being held Sunday in Napa County Jail on $100,000 bail. Briones, who was also charged with resisting arrest, had an additional $725,000 tacked onto his bail for the outstanding warrants.

Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimriteA San Francisco law designed to clear the sidewalks of homeless people inspired bitter debate when it was approved by voters in 2010, but records obtained by The Chronicle show police have rarely enforced it in recent years.

The citys sit/lie ordinance allows police officers to issue a ticket or misdemeanor citation to anyone sitting or lying on the street between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Fifty-four percent of voters supported the law despite complaints it would criminalize the homeless.

Sit/lie infractions peaked at 1,011 in 2013, but since that time they have steadily declined, falling to 114 last year, according to Superior Court records. Misdemeanors tracked by police spiked at 195 in 2016 and then similarly declined by almost half the next year.

The department and city realized many years ago that we cannot arrest our way out of the homeless crisis, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman.

Officials say the department now focuses on steering homeless people to shelters, one-stop Navigation Centers and health services, prompting the reduction in citations.

Keep in mind, arresting someone for a misdemeanor essentially gives the suspect a new ticket and a court date, said Sgt. Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman. They dont actually go to jail. They get the new ticket and are sent on their way from the scene.

Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

But does a drop in sit/lie citations alone reveal the story playing out on San Francisco streets?

Overall, San Francisco has 36 quality of life laws, and police have been using another tool  California Penal Code 647(e) for improper lodging  to relocate or prosecute homeless people, said Brian Pearlman, managing attorney for the San Francisco public defenders misdemeanor unit.

The whole thing is really just a waste of time because you are just shifting people around the city, Pearlman said. If you dont have any shelter and you keep moving along, you are not going to get cited, so its kind of silly.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, called the practice wholly ineffective and inhumane. ... Homeless people are running frightened at this point and quickly leaving when police are near because they are confiscating peoples survival gear and doing the 647 misdemeanor charge.

Former Mayor Mark Farrell led several high-profile street sweeps over the past year, including one in April that removed about 40 tents from the Tenderloin.

Send tips to The Scanner Send ideas or tips about public safety in the Bay Area to scanner@sfchronicle.com. See More Collapse

But, according to records we obtained, incidents of alleged lodging without permission peaked in 2016 with 533 and are now at about half that number. The biggest jump came in 2015, when the number exploded from 29 cases to 242.

Randy Quezada, a spokesman for the citys Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the reduction in citations is a testament to new cooperation between city outreach workers and law enforcement, with an aim to shift from tickets to shelters and services.

We are getting better at coordinating every day, Quezada said. The cops are really taking to this new approach.

Nationally, the legal pendulum has also swung away from clear-the-streets laws. Last month, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided that any ordinance outlawing sleeping outdoors is unconstitutional if homeless shelters arent available.

California, the court said, cannot criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless.

While the judges said a city could not ban sleeping on a sidewalk at all hours, they were less clear about partial bans such as the sit/lie ordinance.

Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

How Californians

are killed, and why

Californias annual report on homicides is a typically grim document, but reasons for optimism can be found amid the bloodshed.

While the state saw 1,829 killings in 2017  a startling number to be sure  the death rate represents a 6 percent drop from 2016 when adjusted for population growth. The homicide rate went down 21 percent over the past decade and has decreased by more than two-thirds since 1980.

The news was even better in the Bay Area, where the 15 largest cities enjoyed a dip from 277 homicides in 2016 to 235 last year.

Still, statewide progress in cutting the death toll has slowed in recent years and murders are still taking a disproportionate toll on young men of color. Guns are a central theme of the violence.

The state report contained insight into who killed whom in 2017 and how they accomplished the deed. Here are some of the findings:

Gangs blamed: Authorities said 30 percent of killings with a known motive were gang-related, 33 percent were traced to an unspecified argument, 8 percent were a result of domestic violence and nearly as many deaths were tied to robberies or rapes.

Guns do the job: A firearm was used in 71 percent of killings in which the weapon was known, and the gun was typically a pistol.

Big gender and racial gaps: Eighty percent of those killed were male. In cases where a victims race was known, 45 percent were Latino, 27 percent black and 19 percent white.

Of those arrested for homicide, 48 percent were Latino, 25 percent were black and 20 percent white; 88 percent were male.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 37 percent of California residents are white, 39 percent Latino and 6.5 percent black.

Victim ages diverge: Latino and black homicide victims tended to be younger, with 45 percent of Latino victims and 40 percent of black victims ages 18 to 29. White victims were older on average, with 60 percent over 40.

Young men still dominate booking logs: Half of people arrested on suspicion of murder were from age 18 to 29.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Domestic violence stark: Males were more likely than females to be killed by a stranger  39 percent of victims versus 13 percent. But women were far more likely than men to be slain by a spouse  21 percent of victims versus 0.3 percent.

Female victims were killed in their home 52 percent of the time, while the biggest proportion of male victims lost their lives on the street.

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.

Death Row grows, a little: California hasnt executed anyone since 2006, and many prosecutors have lost their taste for seeking capital punishment. Still, nine men and two women were sentenced to death in 2017. Five of the defendants were tried in Riverside County.

Life changes fast

A man who spent nine years and three months behind bars awaiting trial on murder charges walked out of jail a free man Thursday evening, apparently becoming the first beneficiary of a new California law that significantly narrows the felony murder rule.

Neko Wilson pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of robbery and other charges on unrelated cases. He hasnt technically been sentenced, but the most time he could get for those crimes is nine years, meaning hes already paid his dues.

Its just a little overwhelming, Wilson said on Friday. Im blessed, you know, to have a second chance.

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

The wheels of justices sudden change of pace shocked Wilson. Its been nearly a decade since prosecutors accused him of helping to plan a robbery that resulted in the double murder of Fresno County couple Gary and Sandra De Bartolo. But just 18 days after Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB1437, Wilson was eating tacos with his family.

The new law allows prosecutors to charge a suspect with murder only if he or she actually killed someone, solicited the crime or acted with reckless indifference to human life when someone was slain. The law is retroactive and could vacate the murder convictions of hundreds of inmates across California.

Wilson said hell now put his paralegal certification to work and help others entangled in the criminal justice system. Hes planning to work for his twin brothers Modesto nonprofit group Advocates for Justice.

San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Jacque Wilson, Neko Wilsons brother and attorney, said Thursday that he too was in a state of disbelief. His brother went from a potential death sentence to a potential life sentence to freedom.

As a public defender you think you know a lot, Jacque Wilson said. And you dont.

Roundup: The biggest crime news from the past week

 The Diocese of San Jose released a list of former clergy members who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. However, the diocese failed to note that one of these former priests is currently in San Joses Main Jail on molestation charges filed after he was banned from the church.

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

 The city of Oakland canceled its popular First Fridays street party for next month after a shootout injured six people.

 A record number of East Bay inmates have been registered to vote in the November 2018 midterm election.

 Two men were arrested and one was critically wounded after being shot by a federal police officer at San Franciscos Aquatic Park.

 A long-running sting operation targeting illicit massage parlors in San Jose shut down more than 100 businesses, but details were light on how many people were arrested.

The Scanner is a weekly feature from The Chronicles breaking news team featuring stories from the crime beat. Follow the team on Twitter: @meganrcassidy, @EvanSernoffsky, @SarRavani, @Josh_Koehn, @ctuan, @gwendolynawu, @ted_d_andersenThe Trump administration is moving forward with its much-criticized plan to strip working rights from about 100,000 foreign citizens in the U.S., many of whom live in the Bay Area.

The Department of Homeland Security has announced that its new rule to ban the spouses of H-1B visa holders from working will be issued next month.

Some U.S. workers would benefit from this proposed rule by having a better chance at obtaining jobs that some of the population of the H-4 workers currently hold, the department said in the notice, as way of explanation for its actions.

In other words, this move is part of President Trumps Buy American, Hire American executive order, which was signed in 2017.

The Trump administration has already slowed the flow of H-1B visas, which are a linchpin of the Bay Areas technology industry.

Trump himself has made it clear that he wants to make major changes to the controversial visa program. But its particularly cruel for his administration to launch a broadside against H-1B visa holders by banning their spouses from working.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have estimated that 93 percent of H-4 visa holders are women from India.

Many of these women are highly educated; most are in their prime working years. By stripping H-4 visa holders of their right to work, the Trump administration is effectively denying a discrete group of women the opportunity to have economic independence and to provide for their families.

The rule change will also have an outsize impact on the Bay Area.

Many Bay Area residents who hold H-4 visas have told news organizations that, should the Trump administration go forward with this rule change, they and their families will probably have to leave the area or even the U.S.

Thats a brain drain this dynamic region can ill afford.

The Trump administration must leave the H-4 visa program alone.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.Congestion is getting worse in San Francisco, and finally city officials have someone to blame: Uber and Lyft.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority released a new study that found ride-hailing companies are responsible for about half of the increase in the citys traffic congestion from 2010 to 2016, the six years the authority studied.

Vehicle hours of delay on the major roadways increased by 40,000 hours on a typical weekday, the authority wrote in the study. When compared to employment and population growth and network capacity shifts (such as for a bus or bicycle lane), transportation network companies accounted for approximately 50 percent of the change in congestion.

A recovering economy, lots of new jobs, and increases in the citys population all contributed to more traffic congestion over this six-year period, the study found.

But ride-hailing has had the biggest impact of all.

The transportation network companies are responsible for about half of the decline in average speed during most times of day.

They increase congestion throughout the city, but especially in the parts of town that were already busiest.

Theyre increasingly crowding out transportation options that have much lighter impacts on traffic.

According to recent studies, between 43 percent and 61 percent of (transportation network company) trips substitute for transit, walk, or bike travel or would not have been made at all, the authority wrote in the study.

Of course, Uber and Lyft have contested the studys methodology and its conclusions.

But the smarter solution would be for them to start negotiating with the city now.

Consumers love ride hailing for its convenience and reliability, but the backlash is growing.

Concerns about the way the companies treat their drivers are growing. Congestion pricing, once considered a joke in the Bay Area, has emerged as a serious possibility. A San Francisco tax on ride-hailing trips is scheduled for the November 2019 ballot. If evidence about ride-hailings impacts continue to pile up, it may be only the first industry tax of many.

If Uber and Lyft want to protect their businesses, the companies would be wise to cooperate with local officials on real ways to mitigate the impact of their activities instead of offering knee-jerk resistance to requests for data and regulations.

The alternative might be far more restrictions than they expect  and far sooner than theyre expecting them.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.Chris Sugidono / Associated Press 2014

Californias emergency health care system is heavily dependent on the quick work of our first responders. For the past 50 years, private emergency medical technicians and paramedics have been paid to be reachable during their work breaks in case there is a nearby emergency. It is the same way that other essential public safety personnel operate, including police officers, firefighters and public EMTs and paramedics. It is the heart of emergency response.

But trial attorneys are trying to end this long-standing practice and require private, but not public, EMTs and paramedics to be completely unreachable during work breaks, putting patient care at risk. If successful, dispatchers wouldnt be allowed to reach ambulance crews while they are on break, even if they were a block away from the emergency or the only ambulance available. The result could be devastating to Californias health care system, as private EMTs and paramedics respond to more than 75 percent of the states 911 calls.John Cox, the Republican candidate for governor, made a brief stop in Santa Clara on Monday to boost efforts to repeal the states recent gas tax increase and, not incidentally, slam Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, his Democratic election rival.

The 12-cent-per-gallon gas increase passed last year by the Legislature forces too many Californians to choose between food for their tables or gas for their cars, Cox said.

The rising cost of housing in California is forcing people to move away from the cities they love and the work they enjoy, Cox said, and the higher gas tax is making long commutes even more expensive.

I believe the voters will hold the political class responsible and repeal the tax hike by voting for Proposition 6 on the Nov. 6 ballot, he said.

That political class emphatically includes Newsom, Cox said.

Gavin Newsom has had eight years in Sacramento and eight years as mayor of San Francisco, when he ran that city into the ground, Cox said. We wont let him do that to California.

Cox said Newsoms union backing will prevent him from trying to cut gasoline prices or reform construction practices that he said make it so expensive to build highways in the state.

Newsom is the status quo, Cox added. Hes not going to make changes, but I will.

The lieutenant governor, who is running well ahead of Cox in the polls, opposes Prop. 6. He argues that repealing the gas tax increase would eliminate $5 billion a year thats used for road and bridge improvements and transportation projects across the state.

Gas tax opponents have been on a bus tour of the state since last week, trying to get their message to voters. About 40 people showed up for Mondays 8 a.m. rally.

Visibility has been a problem for Prop. 6 supporters. They are being outspent by the initiatives opponents, which include labor unions, transportation organizations, the California Alliance for Jobs business group and the California Democratic Party.

Its a David versus Goliath campaign, said Carl DeMaio, the conservative San Diego radio personality behind the repeal effort. But polls show the race is tightening up.

DeMaio complained that the ballot title of Prop. 6 approved by Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra doesnt mention that it will repeal the gas tax hike, saying instead that it eliminates certain road repair and transportation funding.

Democrats want to trick and fool and deceive voters into voting no on something they want to vote for, DeMaio said.

Cox was joined at the rally by two other GOP candidates, Greg Conlon, who is running for state treasurer, and Konstantinos Roditis, a candidate for state controller.

In Sacramento, meanwhile, labor groups that represent firefighters, California Highway Patrol officers and engineers lined up on the steps of the state Capitol for a rally opposing Prop. 6.

I think its fair to say our members spend more time driving Californias freeways and county roadways than most, said Doug Villars, president of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, which represents 15,000 current and retired officers. We know how critical it is to make our roads, our bridges and our overpasses in California safer. We are finally in the process of investing in our infrastructure. Prop. 6 would take us backwards.

Chronicle Sacramento Bureau chief Melody Gutierrez contributed to

this report.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuthThis article, Watch NASA release 450,000 gallons of water in 1 minute, originally appeared on CNET.com.

NASA calls it the "Ignition Overpressure Protection and Sound Suppression water deluge system" and it is truly a sight to behold.

Just watch it in action:

In just over a minute the system releases roughly 450,000 gallons of water, sending it 100 feet into the air. The goal: reduce the extreme amount of heat and energy generated by a rocket launch.

NASA

For reference, that's not too far off the amount of water required to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

This test was conducted Oct. 15 at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39B in Florida in preparation for Exploration Mission-1, which is set to launch in June 2020. It will be the first uncrewed flight of the Space Launch System, a huge rocket arrangement NASA has been working for over a decade, set to be the most powerful booster ever built.Two suspects in a brazen daylight robbery of a cell phone store in American Canyon on Saturday were booked into Napa County Jail after leading police and a California Highway Patrol aircraft on a chase in two counties.

Investigators said Lamar Crawford, 20, of San Francisco and Alexander Briones, 23, of Oakland were arrested and will face felony charges after they attempted to evade police by changing cars in Contra Costa County, which allowed officers to converge on them.

The trouble began at 5:40 p.m. when two men wearing hoodies entered a T-Mobile store in the southern Napa County town of American Canyon and began ripping cell phones and Apple watches from the stores displays, police said.

The men ran out of the store with the loot and jumped into a black Lexus. Witnesses reported seeing them head north on Highway 29. An American Canyon patrol car caught up to the vehicle and attempted to make a traffic stop, but the Lexus suddenly accelerated, leading police to call off the vehicular pursuit, according to a department news release.

The CHP aircraft spotted the fleeing Lexus and tracked it after a description was put out over police radios. The suspects drove the Lexus to Concord, swapped vehicles and drove the new getaway car to Pittsburg, where they tried to make another switch, but police were waiting for them.

Briones, who had seven warrants for his arrest in three counties, violently resisted arrest and was taken into custody after a short struggle and the assistance of a Pittsburg Police K9, Kyra, the release said. Briones was later treated for bite wounds, police said.

Crawford, who is listed as a San Francisco transient, fled on foot and was captured a short time later, police said.

Both men were charged with felonies for robbery, burglary, recklessly evading police and hit-and-run. They were being held Sunday in Napa County Jail on $100,000 bail. Briones, who was also charged with resisting arrest, had an additional $725,000 tacked onto his bail for the outstanding warrants.

Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimriteIn 2016, the Midwest lifted Donald Trump to his upset victory in the presidential race. Two years later, many Democrats believe the region will be the site of their greatest success on election day.

Democrats sense widespread opportunity to make significant gains in a region that until this year they feared had shifted decisively to the Republicans.

The comeback is fueled not only by energized liberals and college-educated suburbanites who have recoiled at the president. Its also driven by some white working-class women who voted for Trump too. Its a coalition that Democrats hope will lift them to victory this year and guide their efforts into 2020.

Its kind of amazing how fast things have moved, said Democratic pollster John Anzalone. Looking at the map, its going to hopefully be the big signal. Its going to be the heart of our success.

At the Senate level, Democratic incumbents in states Trump carried in 2016  Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin  all hold double-digit leads in the polls, which has allowed the party to focus on Senate candidates running in more-GOP-leaning states.

That advantage has extended to statewide contests. Democrats appear likely to keep governorships in Pennsylvania and Minnesota (a state Trump narrowly lost) while flipping Michigans. They also are running even or holding small leads in races for three other Republican-controlled seats: Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, a state Trump won by nine points.

Republicans in those states said they have struggled to energize some of Trumps core supporters in an election in which he is not running.

Trump has been an anomaly as a candidate, said Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan Republican Party chairman. The people that voted for him are not traditional Republicans. Theyre Trump Republicans. The cultural divide is getting them closer to our side, but we havent figured out how to get them down-ticket.

In contests for House seats, Democrats hope to flip close to a dozen seats across Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Some of the congressional districts in those states were carried by Trump but won by Democrats in previous elections.

As goes the Midwest, so goes the nation, said Democrat Celinda Lake, whos done extensive polling in the Midwest. If we have a good night in the Midwest, then were going to have a good night all around.

Adam Wollner is a McClatchy Newspapers writer.CLEMSON, S.C.  The floor of a clubhouse near Clemson University where a large party was taking place collapsed early Sunday, hurtling dozens of people into the basement, authorities said.

About 30 people were taken to local hospitals after the center portion of the floor at the clubhouse caved in around 12:30 a.m. during a private party. Clemson City Police said no one was trapped and none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Video posted on social media shows a large portion of a floor on the first level of the building caving in as people were dancing, causing dozens to fall through to the floor below.

Clemson sophomore Larissa Stone told the Independent Mail of Anderson that the room was packed and a popular song was playing when the floor collapsed.

So everyone was jumping. The beat was about to drop and literally the whole floor collapsed, she said. It happened so quickly. I stood up, and everyone was trying to climb out. People are under other people. People are hurt. People are bleeding. I had blood on my sneakers. It was really bad.

Partygoers screamed, and those who didnt fall stood on portions of the first floor that remained and gazed below in shock. Some people standing on the sidelines pulled out their cell phones to record the floor collapse.

A witness who attended the party said people were jumping and then suddenly he heard a boom.

All you seen was falling, everybodys hands up in the air, Franzie Pendergrass told WYFF-TV.

Leroy Pearson said he tried to help injured people and saw what he thought looked like broken ankles and legs. It was crazy, Pearson said.

Police said the event was a private party by a group that had leased the clubhouse at the Woodlands Apartments, about three miles from Clemson.

Property manager Tal Slann said the condominium complex was built in 2004-2005. He said he could not comment on whether there was a limit on the number of people who could use the clubhouse at one time.

I can tell you there was a party. I can tell you there was a floor collapse. There were injuries. They were not life-threatening. Nobody was trapped, he said.PANAMA CITY, Fla.  Amy Cross has a hard time explaining the stress of living in a city that was splintered by Hurricane Michael. Shes fearful after hearing gunshots at night, and shes confused because she no longer recognizes the place where shes spent her entire 45 years.

I just know I dont feel real, and home doesnt feel like home at all, Cross said.

Health workers say they are seeing signs of mental problems in residents more than a week after Michael, and the issues could continue as the natural disaster turns into a long-term recovery that will take years.

Tony Averbuch, who leads a disaster medical assistance team that is seeing 80 to 100 patients daily in tents set up in a parking lot of the badly damaged Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, said some people are showing signs of fraying.

Its not hard to imagine: Just getting to the treatment site involves navigating streets with roadblocks and fallen utility lines, and the hospital building itself was ripped open by Michaels powerful winds.

In any kind of disaster what we find is that people have been exposed to circumstances that are well beyond what they normally deal with day to day, said Averbuch, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

For Cross, that meant getting new prescriptions for medicine she takes for depression. Were in shock. This is a lot. Its heartbreaking, she said.

Signs of trauma arent a surprise for those who studied people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Damage in Mexico Beach was similar to that in southern Mississippi, where entire communities were flattened by wind and storm surge, and Panama City could take years to rebuild, as did parts of New Orleans after the metro area flooded.

Dr. Irwin Redlener of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University observed widespread, long-lasting psychological effects after Katrina. One study found that, five years after the storm, parents reported more than 37 percent of children had been clinically diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or a behavior disorder.

Redlener says thats in part because parents are overwhelmed and are less able to buffer their children from bad experiences. They survived a major catastrophic event, which is good. But everything they knew is gone, he said.

Dr. Emily Harville, an associate professor at Tulane Universitys School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, said most people will be back to where they were within a year or so, but others will have difficulty for a longer period.

There will be a small group that continues to have long-term mental health issues, she said.

Jay Reeves is an Associated Press writer.SNELLVILLE, Ga.  A police officer on Monday shot and killed an 18-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another officer in the Atlanta area over the weekend, police said.

Tafahree Maynard was one of two men charged in the fatal shooting Saturday of Gwinnett County police Officer Antwan Toney. Police believe Maynard shot Toney, and law officers had deployed a dragnet as he faced charges of aggravated assault and felony murder.

Police received a tip about Maynards whereabouts early Monday, Police Chief Butch Ayers said. Dozens of officers went door-to-door in a search for him.

Two officers searching a shed behind a house encountered Maynard, who failed to comply with verbal commands, Ayers said. Maynard initially had his hand behind his back and when he showed his hand, he was holding an edged weapon in his hand, the chief said.

One officer fired a stun gun at Maynard and the other fatally shot him from about 5 or 6 feet away, Ayers said.

I would like to say that the danger to the community is over, Ayers said at a news conference, adding that police would continue to investigate any potential charges against people who may have provided assistance to Maynard during his attempt to escape justice.

Toney was responding to a call around 2:30 p.m. Saturday about a suspicious vehicle near Shiloh Middle School in the Snellville area, about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta. When the officers approached, someone in the vehicle opened fire and Toney was hit, police said. Then the vehicle sped off.

Toney died at a hospital from his wounds, police said.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault. According to police, Pretlow drove the vehicle away after the shooting and fled along with other occupants.SALEM, Ore.  With the sun bearing down, Norm and Kathy Daviess stood in the shade of a prison wall topped with coiled razor wire, waiting for three immigrants to come out.

Its become an oddly familiar routine for the Air Force veteran and his wife, part of an ad hoc group of volunteers that formed in recent months after the Trump administration transferred 124 immigrants to a federal prison in rural Oregon.

The detainees were among approximately 1,600 immigrants apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border and then transferred to federal prisons in five states after President Trumps zero tolerance policy left the usual facilities short of space.

Almost half of those sent to the prison outside Sheridan, an economically struggling town 50 miles southwest of Portland, on May 31 are from India, many of them Sikhs  part of an influx of Indian nationals entering the U.S. in recent years. They also came from Nepal, Guatemala, Mexico and a dozen other countries.

Zero tolerance made Sheridan an unusual way station for migrants from around the world. Now, those who pass an initial screening and post bond are being released. And Norm and Kathy Daviess, along with more than 100 other volunteers  retirees, recent college graduates, lawyers, clergy  have lined up to help.

The best part of this is seeing the big smile on their face, to be out, to have this burden done with, Kathy Daviess, 71, said as she and her husband stood outside the prison on a recent afternoon. As drivers, the two are ready to go to the prison, a half-hour from their home in Dundee, at a moments notice and often wait there for hours as the detainees are processed.

The freed migrants generally travel onward in a day or two to other states where they have relatives or friends. The volunteers provide transportation, interpreter services, legal counseling, food, shelter and moral support. They raised more than $12,000 to pay bonds for migrants who couldnt come up with the money themselves.

A Sikh temple in nearby Salem also offers the immigrants religious and other services, and a place to recover.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment.

Andrew Selsky is an Associated Press writer.Visitors to No. 705 Jiron Independencia Street, in Peru's northwestern town of Trujillo, are instantly transported back in time to a childhood of past, not necessarily of their own.



The building houses a Toy Museum featuring some 5,000 mostly antique toys from pre-Columbian cultures to mid-20th century European manufacture.

"It's a very rich (collection) because I (mostly) limited myself to toys that predate the 1950s," before they were mass produced, Peruvian artist and collector Gerardo Chavez told Xinhua.

Opened in 2001, the museum is divided into four areas: the Feminine room, with toys dating from 1840, the Masculine room, with toys dating from 1910, the Folk Art room featuring handcrafted toys, and the Pre-Hispanic room, exhibiting the oldest toys, mainly from the Chimu and Chancay cultures of ancient Peru.

Two guides are on hand to explain the history and unique features of the collection, including Liz Aponte, 28, who is studying to become a licensed tour guide.

"I was very excited to work at this museum, alongside artist Gerardo Chavez, who is a great painter, a great master," said Aponte.

Many visitors "tell us about their childhood," she noted.

Chavez said he was inspired to open such a museum "simply by the nostalgia of childhood, the nostalgia of not having had toys as a child."

Born into a family of modest means, Chavez had no toys except the ones he made himself from materials he came across.

Some of his favorite items on display are a whistle made by the Viru culture, cars and trains, tricycles, wooden horses, lead soldiers, rag dolls, porcelain dolls, and dollhouses from around the world.

"Some are donations (but) I bought the large share of the toys from the places I visited," said Chavez.

That's how "the world of toys gradually became internationally popular, because it's not just Peruvian," he said of the collection.

The museum, he believes, pays tribute to "the beauty of antique toys because they were made by hand ... and because man made these objects not just to entertain children, but also to preserve their childhood."

The collection has grown in recent years, leading Chavez to consider opening a second museum in Peru's capital Lima, to showcase another 2,000 relics of childhood from different cultures.



China will have better capability in maritime search, rescue and firefighting as it moves closer to putting the world's largest amphibious aircraft into use.

Developed and built by State-owned aircraft giant Aviation Industry Corp of China, the AG600 carried out its first water-based takeoff and landing at Jingmen Zhanghe Airport, one of China's leading amphibious airports in Jingmen, Hubei province, on Saturday.

President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to researchers and engineers of the program to express his congratulations, encouraging them to continue to strive to build a strong aviation industry.

The success of the first waterborne flight of the AG600 marked another significant achievement through independent innovation by China's aviation industry, Xi said.

Leng Yixun, a senior project manager in charge of the AG600, said on Saturday after the water test that AVIC is poised to speed up the aircraft's flight tests and plans to deliver it to users as soon as possible.

Once delivered, the AG600 will mainly be tasked with performing maritime search and rescue operations as well as firefighting activities.

It can also be refitted to conduct environmental inspections, resource surveys, anti-smuggling operations as well as personnel and supply transport, said Huang Lingcai, chief designer of the AG600.

Lu Guangshan, AVIC's chief engineer, explained that the seaplane is very suitable for maritime operations as it is much faster than ships and is more flexible, being able to land on waters that some ships have difficulty approaching.

The aircraft is 37 meters long with a wingspan of 38.8 meters, which makes it roughly the size of a Boeing 737. Powered by four domestically designed WJ-6 turboprop engines, the seaplane has a maximum takeoff weight of 53.5 metric tons. These specifications make it the world's largest amphibious aircraft, surpassing Japan's ShinMaywa US-2 and Russia's Beriev Be-200.

The aircraft is designed for land and water takeoffs and landings, and has an operational range of more than 4,000 kilometers. It is capable of carrying 50 people, besides the crew.

When assigned to fight forest fires, it can collect 12 tons of water from a lake or sea in 20 seconds and then use the water to douse blazes over an area of about 4,000 square meters, according to AVIC.

A market prospect report by AVIC forecasts that the market will need about 280 AG600s in the coming decade.

Development of the AG600 was approved by the central government in June 2009. Construction of the prototype began in March 2014 and was completed in July 2016.

The seaplane made its maiden flight in December in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, taking off and landing at an airport, and it has conducted many land-based test flights since then.

The amphibious plane is one of three large-sized aircraft to emerge from the nation's effort to become a top-tier player in the global aviation sector, joining the Y-20 strategic transport plane  delivery of which began in July 2016 to the People's Liberation Army Air Force  and the C919 narrow-body jetliner, which is being flight-tested.

The AG600 has become China's second amphibious aircraft after the SH-5, which was developed in the 1970s for military use. More than 10,000 researchers and engineers took part in the AG600 program, AVIC said.WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump on Monday said a caravan of migrants making their way toward the United States included criminals and unknown Middle Easterners, and blamed Democrats for the state of immigration law.

The unknown Middle Easterners Trump mentioned are a new cohort on the presidents recent list of bad people he says want to cross the border into the United States.

At a political rally Friday, Trump said some people traveling in these groups headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border included bad people, criminals, not little angels, and tough, tough people. He did not mention Middle Easterners.

In his morning posts on Twitter on Monday, Trump attempted to stoke fear about the caravan and urge voters to blame Democrats  even as his own party, Republicans, controls the House and the Senate  repeating what the president has pitched as a Republican mantra just two weeks before the midterm elections.

Think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Trump said.

The president has also claimed, without evidence, that the Democrats had funded the caravan of migrants heading to the United States. There is no proof of that.

On Monday, the president did not elaborate on the unknown Middle Easterners that he suggested are traveling among the migrant families seeking asylum in the United States. The phenomenon is not a new one, although it has not proven to be a significant problem over the years.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when lawmakers pursued measures to close immigration loopholes, the notion of Middle Eastern smuggling rings penetrating U.S. borders became part of a list of fears about the countrys vulnerabilities. But there have not been any instances of attempted terrorism plots by people from Middle Eastern countries who illegally crossed the southern border. There is only one example of a terrorist coming across the northern border, in a 1999 plot.

The White House on Monday did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump has threatened to close the southern border in response to the latest caravan of Central American migrant families traveling north toward the United States. And he has threatened to stop providing foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador if the countries do not to more to stop the migration movement.

The Trump administration is also considering new immigration policies with the hope of stemming the flow from Central America, including a new version of the controversial family separation policy.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.Activists in the LGBT community mobilized a fast and fierce campaign Sunday to say transgender people cannot be expunged from society, in response to an unreleased Trump administration memo that proposes a strict definition of gender based on a persons genitalia at birth.

The existence of the memo, the administrations latest effort to roll back the recognition and protection of transgender people under federal civil rights law, was reported by The New York Times on Sunday morning.

Within hours, the hashtag #WontBeErased circulated on social media. By Sunday evening, a rally for transgender rights took place in New York; another was planned for Monday in Washington.

You saw such a massive response because this attack on the trans community is essentially trying to erase the trans community from the face of this country and were not going to stand for that, said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of GLAAD, an advocacy group for LGBT people.

The Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government funding, according to the memo obtained by The Times. The new definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable and determined by the genitals a person is born with. Any dispute about ones sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

Roger Severino, the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the department, had declined to answer detailed questions about the memo.

The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who recognize themselves as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said, This is a really intrusive policy that doesnt make any sense scientifically.

She said she and her staff woke up Sunday to the news of the memo and quickly planned a response. The hashtag #WontBeErased felt appropriate to them.

What this feels like to transgender people is trying to make us invisible, trying to say that we dont exist, trying to say that we are nothing, she said.

The hashtag took off on social media, as people posted photos of themselves or family members to show the faces of transgender people  who, they noted, would continue to exist regardless of the governments definition of gender.

On Sunday evening, supporters said, a few hundred people gathered at Washington Square Park in New York City to endorse transgender rights. The crowd included high-profile advocates such as Sara Ramirez, known for her role in Greys Anatomy, and Indya Moore, who is transgender and plays a transgender woman on the FX show Pose.

Another rally was scheduled to take place outside the White House on Monday.

The policy that was proposed in the memo would be among the most significant efforts to reverse the Obama administrations more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged their civil rights protections embedded in the health care law.

Experts said the policy would apply to issues of sex discrimination, such as students who are denied access to the school bathroom that aligns with their gender identity or a transgender woman who is refused a female room assignment at a hospital.

Under the proposed policy, such discrimination would not be protected in the view of the federal government, said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, which works for LGBT rights and helped organize Sundays rally.

But in practice, he said, transgender people would still have legal protection because the courts have ruled that they are covered under the umbrella of sex discrimination.

It just means the struggle will be that much harder, he said, adding that the government may decide not to tell institutions how to follow the law and may not enforce the law when discrimination occurs.

Ellis, the president of GLAAD, said she saw a swift response from the LGBT community Sunday but hoped to also engage with other communities, including the medical industry and Hollywood.

This brings the civil rights fight to a whole new level when you are trying to completely erase a group of people, she said. But we are ready to fight this.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.Bill Montgomery / Houston Chronicle

OAKLAND (BCN)



The Alameda County Coroner's Office has identified the man killed Saturday morning in Oakland when an Amtrak train struck his car as 46-year-old Pablo Mancia-Guardado.



A northbound Amtrak Capitol Corridor train slammed into the car driven by Mancia-Guardado, an Oakland resident, about 10:20 a.m. Saturday where 50th Avenue crosses the tracks between Coliseum Way and San Leandro Street in Oakland, said Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods.



It couldn't be confirmed tonight why the car was on the tracks, or whether Mancia-Guardado may have ignored lowered crossing gates and flashers.



Seventy-one passengers were aboard the Sacramento-bound train, and no passengers or crew were injured, Woods said. The train suffered some damage to the lead car (the locomotive was pushing the train), and passengers transferred to another trainset to resume their trips.



A 45-year-old transient has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a fatal drive-by shooting in Menlo Park in 2011, San Mateo County prosecutors said today.



Jermaine Jones was convicted in March of the murder of 19-year-old Stockton resident Carl Purvis Jr. in the area of Newbridge Street and Almanor Avenue on the evening of Aug. 18, 2011.



Jones pulled up alongside Purvis' car and fired several shots into it. Purvis was hit in the abdomen and was able to drive a few blocks away but pulled to the side of the road and bled to death, prosecutors said.



Jones was eventually arrested in Stockton in October 2014 with the murder weapon in his car.



The murder conviction came after a 23-day trial and four days of jury deliberations. At his sentencing hearing Friday, several of the victim's family members spoke, as did Jones, who again denied responsibility for the murder, prosecutors said.



Along with the prison sentence, Jones was ordered to pay more than $9,000 to the victim's father plus other restitution yet to be determined.



Jones' defense attorney Eric Hove was not immediately available to comment on the sentencing.





Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.The 2018 World Conference on the Virtual Reality (VR) Industry was held in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, Oct. 19-21. It witnessed the signing of 157 agreements and projects in the Honggutan New District, core of the VR industry base in Nanchang, with a total contract value of over 63.15 billion yuan (US$ 9.1 billion).

Jiangxi will work together with the enterprises to develop a world virtual reality industry base, pledged Wu Xiaojun, vice governor of Jiangxi provincial government at the signing ceremony.

The American high-tech enterprise Microsoft signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Oct. 20 to locate a new incubator project focusing on both on virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) in Nanchang.

Alain Crozier, CEO of Microsoft Greater China Region, was confident with the cooperation with Jiangxi. He said Microsoft was exploring and cultivating VR talents in Jiangxi to enter and serve the world.

George He, Lenovo president and managing partner of Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, said it had already set up a new company for developing AR (augmented reality)/VR (virtual reality) technology. "I think a new platform for AR/VR is very valuable, and it can promote the development of the entire AR/VR industry and help new technology landing in China."

As early as 2016, the Nanchang Municipal Government held a global release and promotion conference of China (Nanchang) virtual reality industry base, which launched construction of the first such national base and also the world's first virtual reality industry plan.

According to the provincial industry and information technology commission, Jiangxi has cooperated with over 150 enterprises worldwide to invest 63.15 billion yuan (US$9.1 billion) in the VR industry so far.OAKLAND (BCN)



A Hawaiian Airlines flight headed from San Diego to Maui was diverted to Oakland International Airport this morning, airport officials said.



Airport officials didn't say why the flight was forced to land under an alert that was called in at 9:30 a.m.

More Bay Area News Cadillac collides with Muni bus on Mission, flips  SUV driver allegedly flees scene on foot

The flight tracking website FlightAware shows that Hawaiian Airlines Flight 37 due for Kahului took off at 8:42 a.m. from San Diego and briefly went out to sea before turning around and heading to Oakland, where it landed at 10:39 a.m.



No injuries were reported.



No other information on the incident was immediately available.



A Hawaiian Airlines flight headed from San Diego to Maui was diverted to Oakland International Airport this morning, airport officials said.



Airport officials didn't say why the flight was forced to land under an alert that was called in at 9:30 a.m.



The flight tracking website FlightAware shows that Hawaiian Airlines Flight 37 due for Kahului took off at 8:42 a.m. from San Diego and briefly went out to sea before turning around and heading to Oakland, where it landed at 10:39 a.m.



No injuries were reported.







A man was fatally shot early this morning in Oakland, police said.



Officers responded at about 5 a.m. to a shooting in the 2300 block of East 12th Street, where they found the man with at least one gunshot wound, police said.



The man's name has not been released. No other information about the case was immediately available.







The cause of a one-alarm fire at a house in San Jose early this morning is under investigation, fire officials said.



The blaze at a home in the 3900 block of Hamilton Park Drive was called in at 1 a.m. and was under control by 1:36 a.m., according to San Jose fire officials.



No injuries were reported. One adult was displaced by the fire and is being assisted by the American Red Cross, fire officials said.







A fire early this morning at a home in Fremont left four people displaced, a battalion chief said.



The fire was reported at 2:09 a.m. at a two-story home in the 1100 block of Bennett Court.



The blaze apparently started in an outside shed and spread to the home and attic, Fremont Fire Battalion Chief Don Linneman said.



The fire was eventually extinguished around 2:40 a.m. with no injuries reported, Linneman said.



The cause of the fire is under investigation but it is not considered suspicious, he said.







Santa Rosa police have identified a motorcyclist who died Sunday after a collision Saturday night with a Honda Civic as Gregory Moore, 48, of Santa Rosa.



Moore was riding a 2007 Suzuki motorcycle east in the No. 2 lane of state Highway 12 around 9:20 p.m. Saturday when the driver of a 2015 Honda Civic turned right from a driveway into the No. 2 lane of the highway near Indian Creek Drive, Santa Rosa police Sgt. Summer Gloeckner said.



Moore was thrown from the motorcycle when it struck the back of the Honda. The motorcycle was traveling at a high rate of speed and it appears the 56-year-old Santa Rosa woman driving the Honda did not see the motorcycle before pulling out into traffic, Gloeckner said.



The Honda driver and a passenger were not seriously injured and they remained at the scene after the collision, Gloeckner said.







A 45-year-old transient has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a fatal drive-by shooting in Menlo Park in 2011, San Mateo County prosecutors said today.



Jermaine Jones was convicted in March of the murder of 19-year-old Stockton resident Carl Purvis Jr. in the area of Newbridge Street and Almanor Avenue on the evening of Aug. 18, 2011.



Jones pulled up alongside Purvis' car and fired several shots into it. Purvis was hit in the abdomen and was able to drive a few blocks away but pulled to the side of the road and bled to death, prosecutors said.



Jones was eventually arrested in Stockton in October 2014 with the murder weapon in his car.







A Santa Rosa man is scheduled to be arraigned in Sonoma County Superior Court on Tuesday afternoon for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in Rohnert Park in 2011.



The girl was walking in the area of Redwood Drive and Rohnert Park Expressway in November 2011 when a man who was following her forced her into Hinebaugh Creek and sexually assaulted her, according to the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety.



The girl described her assailant and the state Department of Justice analyzed DNA collected during a medical exam, but it did not match any known records at the time and a suspect was never arrested, public safety officials said.



In February, William Deen Brown, 39, of Santa Rosa, was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a woman in Rohnert Park. Brown's DNA was collected and it matched the DNA collected after the sexual assault in 2011, public safety officials said.







A project to build 30 affordable apartment units for veterans in downtown Pittsburg is being revived with some minor changes.



On Tuesday, the Pittsburg Planning Commission will hear from officials with Berkeley-based Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, who have submitted a proposal for a three-story apartment building at 901 Los Medanos St., with five parking spaces on site and 25 more across the street.



That parking arrangement marks a change from plans the Planning Commission approved in June 2011 that included a parking structure. The project was never built because of funding difficulties, and the "structured" parking made the project more expensive, a Pittsburg city staff report says.



Twenty-seven of the 30 apartments would have one bedroom; two would have two bedrooms; and one would be a studio unit.



The Planning Commission is expected to see a presentation on the project and provide initial comments.







Two recently orphaned mountain lion cubs from different locations in Northern California are now playing and bonding at Oakland Zoo, zoo officials said today.



The cubs, a male and a female, are both 9-10 weeks old and are being tended around the clock by Oakland Zoo veterinarians, zoo officials said.



The male cub is now at 20 pounds and the female cub is smaller at 8.4 pounds. The zoo has released video and photos of the two animals wrestling, playing and sleeping together.



Because the two cubs were orphaned too young to have survival skills to be released, they will be permanently placed at a facility when they are strong enough, according to the zoo.





Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.Fireworks appear to be the cause of a garage explosion Sunday afternoon in southeastern San Jose, police said.



Police responded about 3:09 p.m. Sunday to a house in the 4100 block of Moonflower Court, a few blocks east of San Felipe Road, to a report of an explosion in the garage there.



Two men were taken to a local hospital. Police Sgt. Enrique Garcia said one man was at first considered to have suffered life-threatening injuries, but Garcia said both men's injuries are now considered non-life-threatening.



The San Jose Police Department bomb unit, which discovered the fireworks in the garage, is investigating. Several nearby homes were evacuated as bomb squad personnel safely removed the fireworks, Garcia said.







The Alameda County Coroner's Office has identified the man killed Saturday morning in Oakland when an Amtrak train struck his car as 46-year-old Pablo Mancia-Guardado.



A northbound Amtrak Capitol Corridor train slammed into the car driven by Mancia-Guardado, an Oakland resident, about 10:20 a.m. Saturday where 50th Avenue crosses the tracks between Coliseum Way and San Leandro Street in Oakland, said Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods.



It couldn't be confirmed Sunday why the car was on the tracks, or whether Mancia-Guardado may have ignored lowered crossing gates and flashers.



Seventy-one passengers were aboard the Sacramento-bound train, and no passengers or crew were injured, Woods said. The train suffered some damage to the lead car (the locomotive was pushing the train), and passengers transferred to another trainset to resume their trips







Two men were arrested Saturday night in Pittsburg, suspects in a T-Mobile cell phone store robbery in American Canyon north of Vallejo that was followed by a law enforcement pursuit, mainly from the air, police said.



The T-Mobile store robbery was reported at 5:40 p.m. Saturday, with two men ripping cell phones and Apple watches from displays. The men then left in a black Lexus headed north on State Highway 29.



Police said officers found the Lexus headed east on State Highway 12 (Jameson Canyon Road) between Napa and Fairfield, and tried to make a traffic stop. The Lexus accelerated; police gave chase for a short time, but called it off because the Lexus was being driven recklessly at high speeds.



A California Highway Patrol helicopter was asked to join the search, and its crew located the Lexus in Concord. The two suspects switched to another car there, and the CHP crew followed the different car to Pittsburg, where police said the two were trying to change vehicles yet again when they were confronted by Pittsburg and American Canyon police officers.



The two men tried to flee. One of them, 20-year-old Lamar Crawford of San Francisco, was captured by Pittsburg police a short time later. The second man, 23-year-old Alexander Briones of Oakland, was captured by officers from both departments, police said, with the help of a Pittsburg police dog. Briones had to be treated for injuries inflicted by the dog.



Crawford and Briones were taken to the Napa County Jail, where they were being held Sunday evening on suspicion of felony charges including robbery and evading police officers. Briones had several outstanding warrants from three counties, as well.



Napa County Sheriff's detectives are leading the ongoing investigation. Anyone with additional information is asked to call detectives at (707) 253-4591.







A woman who was crossing a street near the intersection of Curtner Avenue and Briarwood Drive in San Jose was struck and killed by an older model SUV on Friday night, according to police.



Police said the collision took place near Willow Glen around 6:53 p.m. Friday. The woman who was struck and killed was crossing from the south side of Curtner Avenue to the north side of the street.



A woman who was driving a 1998 Ford Explorer hit the woman. She was later pronounced dead.



San Jose police said this is the 34th fatal collision of the year and the 15th vehicle vs. pedestrian death. The victim is the 36th death in fatal collisions this year.







At least one person suffered major injuries following a hit-and-run collision on southbound Interstate Highway 880 in Oakland early Sunday morning, according to the California Highway Patrol.



The CHP said the collision occurred on the freeway just north of Fruitvale Avenue around 4:06 a.m. According to the CHP, at least two vehicles were involved in the collision, but witnesses told the CHP that up to five vehicles may have been racing on the southbound freeway at the same time.







A man was killed Sunday on U.S. Highway 101 at the Nave Drive overcrossing in Novato, apparently struck by a car while walking in a traffic lane, the California Highway Patrol said.



The man, who had not been identified by 8:30 p.m. Sunday, was hit by a car headed north on the freeway shortly before 7 p.m. said CHP Officer Andrew Barclay. The driver of the car, who was not injured, stopped and is cooperating with CHP investigators, Barclay said.



Initial reports that the victim had been thrown from a car proved incorrect, Barclay said. It wasn't immediately apparent why the man was walking in the traffic lanes, he added.







Felton Fire Protection District crews have put out a 3-alarm house fire in unincorporated Santa Cruz County, according to fire dispatch.



The blaze was first reported around 4 a.m. on Forest Road in the area of Summit Avenue in Felton. The fire was contained to one structure, and there were no reports of injuries.



The cause of the fire is under investigation.





Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.MORGAN HILL (BCN)



There is no credible threat to schools in Morgan Hill today after several parents and students reported a social media post that allegedly threatened a school with the initials "BMS" on Snapchat on Sunday, according to police.



Morgan Hill police Sgt. Bill Norman said early this morning that officers received the reports from parents and students Sunday night and posted on their Twitter account around 11 p.m. Sunday that they were investigating the threat.



Britton Middle School is in the Morgan Hill Unified School District, but Norman said there is no credible threat to schools in the district. He added that the person who posted the threat closed their account.



According to Norman, multiple other agencies, including San Jose and Santa Clara police, received reports of similar texts being seen by parents and students in their areas. Norman said the Snapchat post may be tied to a similar threat that is being investigated by police in Benson, Ariz., which is 160 miles southwest of Phoenix.



Benson police announced on their Facebook page around 8 p.m. Sunday that they were investigating a similar threat and all schools in the Benson Unified School District would be closed today.



Morgan Hill police will be at all schools today to make sure all students, parents and faculty feel safe.



Anyone with information on the case is advised to call Morgan Hill police at (408) 779-2101.





Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.OAKLAND (BCN)



Two recently orphaned mountain lion cubs from different locations in Northern California are now playing and bonding at Oakland Zoo, zoo officials said today.



The cubs, a male and a female, are both 9-10 weeks old and are being tended around the clock by Oakland Zoo veterinarians, zoo officials said.



The female cub was found last month in Lake County after a property owner heard chirps that sounded like a bird for about a week. The cubs make the chirping sound when they are calling for their mother, according to zoo officials.



The property owner finally reported the cub to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife when its health seemed to be deteriorating. The severely dehydrated cub was emaciated and covered with parasites and burrs. It was initially placed with Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue.



Officials believe a car about 5 miles away may have killed the cub's mother.



"While we don't know for sure what caused this female cub to become orphaned, we do know that one of the biggest threats to mountain lions in California is traffic, with 107 animals killed by automobiles in 2016 alone," said Amy Gotliffe, director of conservation at Oakland Zoo.



The female cub was transferred to the Oakland Zoo on Oct. 11, and was carefully introduced to the male cub, which had arrived in late September.



The male cub was orphaned after its mother was fatally shot by a property owner under a legal kill order, because the animal was killing sheep in the area, officials said.



The male cub is now at 20 pounds and the female cub is smaller at 8.4 pounds. The zoo has released video and photos of the two animals wrestling, playing and sleeping together.



"We're happy that these two cubs are doing very well, although it's heartbreaking they were orphaned," said Dr. Karen Emanuelson, the zoo's director of veterinary services. "We saw first-hand how much our now-older mountain ions enjoyed, needed and bonded with each other as orphaned cubs themselves, so we are very glad these two cubs are providing companionship to each other as well."



Because the two cubs were orphaned too young to have survival skills to be released, they will be permanently placed at a facility when they are strong enough, according to the zoo.





Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)



A school board member and a county supervisor will on Monday announce plans for a police substation on Leland Avenue in the Visitacion Valley area staffed by bilingual officers who speak Chinese and Spanish.



In June, School Board Member Shamann Walton and Supervisor Hillary Ronen secured resources to open the first police substation on San Bruno Avenue with Cantonese, Mandarin, Taiwanese and Spanish bilingual officers. Walton and Ronen are two of the movers behind the Leland Avenue substation, as well.



Walton is also a candidate in the District 10 supervisors race.



He and Ronen will both be present at Monday's formal announcement, scheduled for 1 p.m. at the corner of Leland Avenue and Desmond Street. Also expected to be on hand are members of the Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Association and the Visitacion Valley Chinese Residents group.









Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.OAKLAND (BCN)



Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf says she has ended a Police Department practice in which applicants for officer positions were asked to authorize the release of their confidential records, including those that would disclose whether they were victims of sexual assault.



Schaaf said in a statement released Sunday night, "Additionally, I directed the department to partner with the Oakland Police Commission to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the department's recruitment and hiring process to ensure no other barriers discourage the hiring of women or minority applicants."



The mayor said, "Sexual assault survivors have persevered through trauma, and their resilience is a character quality we respect, honor, and welcome in Oakland."



The practice of asking applicants to authorize the release of their confidential records was disclosed in a San Francisco Chronicle story.



The Oakland Police Department didn't respond to a request for comment on the matter.





Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.AMERICAN CANYON (BCN)



Two men were arrested Saturday night in Pittsburg, suspects in a T-Mobile cell phone store robbery in American Canyon that was followed by a law enforcement pursuit, mainly from the air, police said.



The T-Mobile store robbery was reported at 5:40 p.m. Saturday, with two men ripping cell phones and Apple watches from displays. The men then left in a black Lexus headed north on State Highway 29.



Police said officers found the Lexus headed east on State Highway 12 (Jameson Canyon Road) between Napa and Fairfield, and tried to make a traffic stop. The Lexus accelerated; police gave chase for a short time, but called it off because the Lexus was being driven recklessly at high speeds.



A California Highway Patrol helicopter was asked to join the search, and its crew located the Lexus in Concord. The two suspects switched to another car there, and the CHP crew followed the different car to Pittsburg, where police said the two were trying to change vehicles yet again when they were confronted by Pittsburg and American Canyon police officers.



The two men tried to flee. One of them, 20-year-old Lamar Crawford of San Francisco, was captured by Pittsburg police a short time later. The second man, 23-year-old Alexander Briones of Oakland, was captured by officers from both departments, police said, with the help of a Pittsburg police dog. Briones had to be treated for injuries inflicted by the dog.



Crawford and Briones were taken to the Napa County Jail, where they were being held this evening on suspicion of felony charges including robbery and evading police officers. Briones had several outstanding warrants from three counties, as well.



Napa County Sheriff's detectives are leading the ongoing investigation. Anyone with additional information is asked to call detectives at (707) 253-4591.









Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.OAKLAND (BCN)



A Hawaiian Airlines flight was diverted to Oakland International Airport today when a cockpit light warned there was a possible issue with an engine component required for flying over water, airline officials said.



Hawaiian Airlines Flight 37 departed San Diego International Airport at 8:25 a.m., bound for Maui. Shortly after takeoff, however, the cockpit light illuminated, an airline representative said.

RELATED: Man on Ryanair yells racist insults at a black woman and she's the one who has to change seats



The pilot diverted to the Oakland airport to have the engine component inspected. The plane, an Airbus A321neo aircraft, landed in Oakland without incident and the 178 passengers and seven crewmembers deplaned, the airline said.



A new departure time is being determined, according to the airline.Teaching programming skills to children is becoming a new trend in China, promising higher potential for the country's future artificial intelligence (AI) development but also causing concern over the rise of the pressure on students.

China's plan for AI development, issued by the State Council last August, called for the introduction of programming courses in primary and secondary schools, encouraging non-governmental participation in developing and promoting software and computer games for programming education.

As the country attaches greater importance to the computer literacy of its next generations, more and more companies are emerging to fill this niche.

Statistics show that more than 200 start-ups aiming to help children learn coding skills have started in China, with approximately 1.3 billion yuan (about US$193.3 million) of investment flowing into this field during the first eight months of this year.

Meanwhile, many Chinese parents are increasingly convinced that just like Hanyu (Chinese characters), Pinyin (Romanized Chinese), and English, coding is a new basic skill that every child should acquire.

Apart from policy incentives, a more important factor leading to the "programming education fever" may be the hidden relationship between performance in programming competitions and school enrollment.

As some non-publicly funded schools have listed programming competition results as standards for enrolling students, Chinese parents feel greater urgency to send their children to after-school classes so they will have better enrollment odds.

This has aroused concern that programming might turn into another source of pressure on students instead of a brain development activity.

A document issued in September by the Ministry of Education said the papers, certificates and medals in national contests should be printed with the approval number from the ministry and "not for student admission at primary and middle schools."

According to Zhang Hualiang from Zhejiang Provincial Education Department, there is not yet a clear-cut answer to the question whether programming competitions fall into the category of those strictly regulated contests.

The Ministry of Education is making a list of contests allowed to be organized among primary and secondary students, which is expected to offer a solution to the growing concern.You are here: China

Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province, held the 2018 World Conference on VR Industry from Oct. 19 to 21, bringing together over 2,000 participants from 18 countries and regions.

The event focused on the technological development of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and 5G communications. It also played host to a VR expo for enterprises to display their latest VR products.

China's VR industry has witnessed rapid growth in recent years, and its expanding market potential attracted global VR developers, including Microsoft, Qualcomm, HTC, Lenovo and Huawei, to the conference.

Favorable policies for companies and talents



During the conference, Microsoft signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Oct. 20 to establish a new incubator project centering on VR and mixed reality (MR) in Nanchang.

Alain Crozier, CEO of Microsoft Greater China Region, said he is confident with the cooperation with Jiangxi, and that Microsoft is exploring and cultivating VR talents in Jiangxi.

Crozier added that the local government leaders paid close attention to experts' lectures on VR technology, which suggests the province is serious about developing the VR industry.

The Nanchang municipal government recently announced it will set up a 1 billion-yuan (US$144 million) public-private joint angel investment fund specifically for the VR/AR industry incubation and investment development. The local government has also committed to rewarding and subsidizing viable VR/AR inventions and talented individuals in the field.MEP Siegfried Muresan (PPE / PNL) has submitted this week an amendment to the European Parliaments interim report on the EU post-2020 multiannual budget and demands EUR 2 billion for projects and actions aimed at strengthening and defending the rule of law in the European Union (EU).

The amendment refers to the budget allocated to the European Unions Rights and Values Programme. This program was proposed by the European Commission in the draft of 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework, to fund projects that promote the rights and values of the European Union in member states.

The program can finance, among other things, information and communication campaigns, training activities, exchange of good practice and analytical monitoring. All legal entities from member states, namely governmental institutions as well as non-governmental organizations, media outlets, etc. are eligible.

The European Commission initially proposed three components of the program: equality and rights, citizens participation in the democratic life of the EU and combating violence. For these components, the Commission has allocated around EUR 565 million in the project for all seven years of the budget implementation.

Subsequently, the European Parliament proposed a fourth component: promoting democracy and the rule of law. Given the importance of this fourth component, Siegfried Muresan asked for an adequate funding and the increasing of the total budget of the program from EUR 565 million to EUR 2 billion.



Aboneaza-te la newsletter aici. Iti multumim ca citesti cursdeguvernare.

We see that both in Romania and other EU member states, fundamental values of the European Union, such as democracy, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, are being constantly attacked. We are witnessing misinformation campaigns, fake news and even anti-European statements made by populist politicians. Often, these attacks come from outside the European Union, from the opponents of the European democracy. That is why, through this program, we want to defend the EU values and provide citizens and civil society with the necessary tools to defend themselves from these attacks. We have asked for an increase in the budget for this European Union program from EUR 565 million to EUR 2 billion, precisely to ensure that in the seven years of the budget implementation there will be enough funds to run programs in all 27 member states of the European Union, says Siegfried Muresan.

Siegfried Muresans amendment is to be voted in the Budget Committee and then in the plenary of the European Parliament. If it will get through the Parliaments vote and be approved, Siegfried Muresans proposal will be found in the European Parliaments mandate on the final negotiations with the EU Council on 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework of the European Union.Monday, Oct. 22 (at 11:59 p.m.) marked the final day to register to vote online in California. Now, it's time to vote. And you have a few ways to get the job done.

P.S.: Don't worry if you missed the deadline, you still have options. We'll get into that in more detail below.

Voting by mail

If you'd like to vote by mail, you have until Oct. 30 to request a ballot. To do so, you have a couple options:

Fill out the California vote-by-mail ballot application and mail it in to your county's elections office.

If you've received a sample ballot, there's a form on the back you can rip off, fill out and mail in.

You may also be able to request a form online at your county's election website. Here's a directory of the sites from the Secretary of State's office.

You can request one in person at a county elections office.

Once you fill out your mail-in ballot, it has to be postmarked and sent off by Nov. 6. You can also drop it at a ballot drop-off location or turn it in at a polling place on Election Day.

Voting early in person

If you want to vote in person (or want to get the sticker), but can't make it on Nov. 6, you can head to one of your county's early voting locations. You'll vote just like you would in-person on Election Day, but you can do it anytime the designated polling location is open.

Early voting locations and operating hours are listed by county on the secretary of state's website.

Vote on Election Day

If you're a procrastinator, you have until 8 p.m. on Nov. 6 to vote in person in California. Your polling location is printed on the back of your voter guide and sample ballot. You can also find out where to go by typing in your address here.

If you missed the deadline to register or change your address:

You can still file a provisional ballot by voting early (at one of your county's early voting spots) or voting in-person on Election Day. Your ballot will be counted once your registration is approved by the county and before the final votes are tallied on Dec. 6.

Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at amartichoux@sfchronicle.com.

Start receiving breaking news emails on wildfires, civil emergencies, riots, national breaking news, Amber Alerts, weather emergencies, and other critical events with the SFGATE breaking news email. Click here to make sure you get the news.To the ultra-wealthy Astor family, their tea house in Rhinebeck, NY, was a follya throwaway building they commissioned for fun. Connected to the main house via miniature railroad, it was a place where patriarch Vincent Astor could steal away for tea, or something stronger, with friends.

Sixty-five years after it was built, and long after the Astor estate in Rhinebeck was split up and sold, Marc Jacobs cofounder Robert Duffy picked up the tea house, and the 44 acres around it, for $2.31 million. He completely renovated the place, turning it into an opulent six-bedroom family home in New Yorks Hudson Valley.

Hes now selling the 5,000-square-foot house for $7 million.

Exterior realtor.com

In an interview with Elle Decor, Duffy described first discovering the abandoned teahouse in the 1980s, when he lived in a weekend house nearby. Originally, the buildings centerpiece was its octagon-shaped main room, with arched doorways and two brick wings on either side. At the time, Duffy and his friends would go to the teahouse to hang out and have fun.

In the early 2000s, an elderly couple bought the teahouse and expanded it with the goal of eventually moving in. But they abandoned the project midway through, and it sat vacant for seven years until Duffy bought it in 2013.

He immediately set about fixing the previous owners architectural mistakes, replacing the buildings stucco exterior with antique brick. The columns that flanked the front door were covered in a Styrofoam-like substance that crumbled at a touch.

My fingers actually sank into it when I touched one, Duffy told Elle Decor.

He replaced the spongy columns with antique, cast-iron pillars his designer Richard McGeehan found in London. Together, the pair redid the interior to fit Duffys uncompromising taste. The homes original, octagonal tea room became the living room, which Duffy decorated with antique Persian rugs, 1910-era portraits in gilded frames from artist Charles Webster Hawthorne, an armoire from Morocco, and a lacquered English secretarys desk.

Living room realtor.com

The north wing of the house has the master bedroom, master bath, dressing room, two additional bedrooms, and the library, while the south wing has two bedrooms, a full bathroom, kitchen, dining room, and office.

Hallway realtor.com

Master bedroom realtor.com

Master bath realtor.com

The kitchen is clean and white, with stainless steel appliances, white subway tile backsplash, and a chefs island. The formal dining room has hand-painted wallpaper.

Kitchen realtor.com

Dining room realtor.com

Elsewhere, theres a 65-foot-long saltwater pool and pool pavilion, guest barn, treehouse, and maintenance barn.

Pool realtor.com

The Astors were, at one point, Americas wealthiest family. In the early 1800s, the family's progenitor, German immigrant John Jacob Astor, built a fur trading and real estate empire.

Four generations later, Astors great-great-great grandson Vincent built the tea house at Ferncliff, the familys 2,800-acre estate in Rhinebeck. He inherited the bulk of his familys wealth at the age of 20 (his father having died on the Titanic), and was the familys last true patriarch.

After his death in 1959, he donated his fortune to the Vincent Astor Foundation, and his widow later subdivided and sold Ferncliff.

Duffy isnt the only notable person to have bought a piece of the former Astor estatephotographer Annie Leibovitz owns a house there, as does former Google chairman Eric Schmidt. Schmidts property, Astor Courts, was the site of Chelsea Clintons wedding in 2010.

The post Tea House Once Owned by America's Wealthiest Family Is Being Sold for $7M appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.RIO DE JANEIRO  In the lead up to Brazils elections, Peter Rooker struggled to find a presidential candidate he believed in out of a field of 13. He was sure of one thing, though: He would not vote for far-right congressman Jair Bolsonaro or Fernando Haddad of the scandal-tainted leftist Workers Party.

But it was precisely those two candidates who emerged from an inconclusive first round of voting and will meet this Sunday in a runoff  and Rooker isnt happy about it.

I wish I could support a good candidate instead of having to choose the lesser of two evils, said the 22-year-old event promoter from the southern city of Curitiba.

Rooker isnt alone. Twenty-five percent of voters supported one of the other candidates in the Oct. 7 first round. Because voting is mandatory in Latin Americas largest nation, those voters now must pick between Bolsonaro and Haddad, potentially swinging the election depending on what they decide.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, is reviled by many for his praise for Brazils 1964-1985 military dictatorship, and for offensive comments about gays, blacks and women. Haddad, the hand-picked successor to jailed former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is hurt by the reluctance of many to return to power the Workers Party, which governed Brazil from 2003 until early 2016.

Centrist voters are orphans right now, said Carlos Pereira, a political analyst with the think tank Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro.

Many Brazilians are expressing their disdain for the candidates through memes, hashtags and profile picture banners. After the first round, some Facebook users added a Not him frame to their photo, referring to Bolsonaro, while others put banners saying, Not the Workers Party or Id rather pay a fine than vote.

On the campaign trail both candidates hammer at what voters dislike about the other and no claim seems to go too far. Haddads team recently published a video likening Bolsonaro to Adolf Hitler, while the far-right candidate uses his daily Facebook Live chats to compare the Workers Party to North Korean or Venezuelan regimes.

In the first round, Bolsonaro got 46 percent of the votes, compared to Haddads 29 percent. Heading into the second round, polls say Bolsonaros support has increased to nearly 60 percent.

He has won widespread support by positioning himself as the antithesis to the Workers Party and much of the ruling establishment. He notes he has not been convicted of corruption  unlike many of Brazils top politicians  and promises to crack down on crime and fill his Cabinet with former and current generals.

Opinions about the Workers Party also divide the country. Many credit the administrations of da Silva, president in 2003-10, with lifting tens of millions out of poverty. Yet for many its impossible to forget that the sprawling Car Wash corruption scandal involving kickbacks to politicians happened while the party was in power.

Beatrice Christofaro is an Associated Press writer.TAPACHULA, Mexico  Thousands of Central American migrants resumed an arduous trek toward the U.S. border Monday, with members bristling at suggestions there could be terrorists among them and saying the caravan is being used for political ends by President Trump.

The caravans numbers have continued to grow, and the United Nations estimated that it currently comprises some 7,200 people. And they are still far from the nearest border crossing  some 1,140 miles away from McAllen, Texas. The length of the journey could double if they go to Tijuana-San Diego, as many did in another caravan earlier this year. That one shrank significantly as it moved through Mexico, and only a tiny fraction  about 200 of the 1,200 in the group  reached the California border.

While such caravans have occurred semi-regularly over the years, this one has become a particularly hot topic ahead of U.S. midterm elections just two weeks away, and an immigrant rights activist traveling with the group accused Trump of using it to stir up his Republican base.

It is a shame that a president so powerful uses this caravan for political ends, said Irineo Mujica of the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras  People Without Borders  which works to provide humanitarian aid to migrants.

Some have questioned the timing so close to the vote and whether some political force was behind it, though by all appearances it began as a group of 160 who decided to band together in Honduras for protection and snowballed as the group moved north.

No one is capable of organizing this many people, Mujica said, adding that there are only two forces driving this: hunger and death.

A team of AP journalists traveling with the caravan for more than a week has spoken with Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans, but has not met any Middle Easterners, who Trump suggested were mixed in with the Central American migrants.

It was clear though that more migrants were continuing to join the caravan.

Denis Omar Contreras, a Honduran-born caravan leader with the Pueblo Sin Fronteras  said Trump should stop accusing the caravan of harboring terrorists.

There isnt a single terrorist here, he said. We are all people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. And as far as I know there are no terrorists in these four countries, at least beyond the corrupt governments.

The migrants, many of them with blistering and bandaged feet, left the southern city of Tapachula under a burning sun Monday bound for Huixtla about 25 miles away.

Carlos Leonidas Garcia Urbina, a 28-year-old from Tocoa, Honduras, said he was cutting the grass in his fathers yard when he heard about the caravan, dropped the shears right there on the ground and ran to join with just 500 lempiras ($20) in his pocket.

We are going to the promised land, Garcia said, motioning to his fellow travelers.

Caravan leaders have not defined the precise route or decided where on the U.S. border they want to arrive, but in recent years most Central American migrants traveling on their own have opted for a more direct route that took them to Reynosa, across the border from McAllen.

Mark Stevenson is an Associated Press writer.JERUSALEM  In recent months, the Trump administration has repeatedly put off the release of its long-awaited Mideast peace plan. Now, the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents may put the plan into a deep freeze.

Saudi Arabias powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was meant to be the linchpin of the plan, providing key diplomatic cover to both Israelis and Palestinians. But with the Saudi princes credibility facing serious questions following Khashoggis death, President Trump may soon have to rethink his Mideast strategy.

It definitely complicates their plans to release their proposal, if indeed they have one, said Dan Shapiro, who served as President Barack Obamas ambassador to Israel.

Trump took office promising a new approach to relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Criticizing decades of failure by his predecessors, he named a Mideast team headed by his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner. The team has deep ties to Israel and the West Bank settler movement.

The Trump administration notably refused to endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state, distancing itself from the two-state solution favored by the international community for more than two decades. Instead, Kushners team turned to the Saudis, hoping that the kingdoms deep pockets and prestige in the Arab world could somehow help bring the Israelis and Palestinians together.

Aides say Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas believes the Americans want to keep him quiet by attracting large sums of money from Gulf Arab investors to develop the Palestinian economy. With the Palestinian front quiet, the United States could then proceed with the broader aim of creating an Israeli-Saudi alliance to serve as a regional counterweight to Iran.

A U.S. official familiar with the peace effort said the team remains committed to its plan and does not expect the crisis surrounding the Khashoggi killing to affect it. The official added, however, that the team has not yet discussed the matter since the Saudis confirmed Khashoggis death over the weekend, and plans a discussion in the coming days. He said it remains unclear when the proposal will be made public. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mkhaimer Abusada, a Palestinian analyst, said he thinks the Khashoggi killing will have a huge effect on the crown princes own behavior.

The Palestinians will reject the U.S. peace plan when its officially on the table and MBS will not be in any good position to wield any pressure on the Palestinians to accept it, he said.

Josef Federman is an Associated Press writer.WASHINGTON  Without offering evidence to support the claim, President Trump on Monday said a large caravan of Central American migrants includes criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.

He also threatened to end foreign aid to countries from which most members of the caravan are from. That includes Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Trump has proposed foreign aid cuts before only to have Republican and Democratic lawmakers reject them and allocate the funds through massive spending bills Trump was forced to sign to avert government shutdowns on his watch.

Mexican forces tried to slow the large group of migrants as they crossed over the border from Guatemala. Citing violence and a lack of jobs, the migrants are trying to enter the U.S. over the objections of Trump and many Republican lawmakers.

U.S. officials have said most of the group are Hondurans. But now the commander in chief says he has alerted U.S. Border Patrol and military leaders that the caravans approach amounts to a national emergency.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in, Trump tweeted Monday.

He did not provide an explanation for the claim, including whether he received the alleged information from U.S. intelligence officials. Trump frequently makes false statements that appeal to and fire up his conservative base; the crucial congressional midterms are just two weeks away.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when lawmakers pursued measures to close immigration loopholes, the notion of Middle Eastern smuggling rings penetrating U.S. borders became part of a list of fears about the countrys vulnerabilities. But there have not been any instances of attempted terrorism plots by people from Middle Eastern countries who illegally crossed the southern border. There is only one example of a terrorist coming across the northern border, in a 1999 plot.

The president, who last week said he would send active-duty American military troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, added he has alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy (sic).

Sending active-duty troops to the border for a domestic law enforcement matter would require congressional approval. Both chambers, however, are slated to be in recess until the week after the Nov. 6 elections. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars a sitting president from using the military as a police force, but he could ask the House and Senate to grant him a waiver  though Senate Democrats would likely block it.

Trump ended his first tweet with a demand that Congress Must change laws! He told his followers every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!

Remember the Midterms! he wrote Monday. So unfair to those who come in legally.

The New York Times contributed to this report.

John T. Bennett is a Tribune News Service writer.Where to Stay in Dresden

Follow the Fountains to Dresdens Historic Core

Eat Ice Cream in a Clam Shell in Dresden





SIDEWALK SAFARI SPOTLIGHT: What are some other great cities to visit in Germany? Have you thought about spending a What are some other great cities to visit in Germany? Have you thought about spending a weekend in Frankfurt with day trips to Heidelberg and Speyer? What about discovering all the things to do in Hamburg , the port city in the north of Germany that helped the Beatles get their big break.

Try to Tell the Old from the New in Dresden

The squares surrounding Frauenkirche Dresden are among the most impressive of the city. Note the mottled colors of the bricks. The ashen ones were recovered from the original structure. The unblemished stone is modern, was used to fill in the gaps in material, and is made of a substance more resistant to oxidation giving the structure this textured look. Open fields nearby hint at the destruction during the war.

Explore Dresden Neustadt (New City)

Dresdens Art Nouveau Treasures

Dresdens Zwinger Palace

Discovering Dresden: A City Reborn

Drink a Beer al Fresco

Eat a Hearty Breakfast at Schwerdtner in Dresden

Visit Dresdens Groer Garten

Blaues Wunder

Tour the Inside of Frauenkirche Dresden

Take A Day Trip from Dresden to Leipzig

Things to Do in Dresden Map

Check out this helpful map to find the various things to do in Dresden discussed in this post.

Is Dresden Worth Visiting?

Did you enjoy this post about things to do in Dresden Germany in 2 days? Sharing is caringSTATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Grasmere residents Carl and Angela Acierno celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 16, 2018 at the Stone House at Clove Lakes Park.

The couple, who met while attending Brooklyn College, were married in Our Lady of Grace R.C. Church in Brooklyn on June 22, 1968. They moved to Grasmere after their wedding, and have lived in same home for 40 years.

The recent celebration to mark the occasion included many friends and family who came from New Jersey, Long Island and Pennsylvania.

Members of the couples original wedding party who attended the event included Juliet Romagnano, Mrs. Aciernos sister.

(Family photo)

Mrs. Acierno, 70, was born and raised in Brooklyn, and she graduated from Lincoln High School. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in education, and Master of Arts degree in speech and oral interpretation from Brooklyn College.

Mrs. Acierno was a speech teacher at Brooklyn College for five years. Before that, she was a manager for four years at Lois Shore Rebuilders in Manhattan. She retired once her children were born. In her spare time, she enjoys writing music and attending Broadway plays.

Born in Manhattan, Mr. Acierno, 73, grew up in Rosebank. A graduate of St. Peters High School, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in education from Brooklyn College. He earned his Master of Arts degree in guidance counseling, supervision and administration from Brooklyn College.

He was a guidance counselor at P.S. 317 in Brooklyn for 15 years, retiring three years ago. Prior to that, he was a teacher at P.S. 161 in Brooklyn for 20 years.

In his spare time, he enjoys playing cards, weather watching, and is an avid Mets fan.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Acierno do volunteer work for the Epilepsy Foundation on Staten Island.

The couple enjoyed traveling together to many destinations, including London, Paris, Monaco, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Jamacia and St. Thomas.

The couple had four children during their 50 year marriage: Michael Acierno of Great Kills, Erica Acierno-Clench of Dongan Hills, the late Jonathan Acierno and the late Danielle Acierno.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Pete Davidson opened up about his breakup with Ariana Grande for the first time Saturday at a comedy show, according to a published report.

Its been a week since the couple called it quits and ended their engagement.

The Saturday Night Live star, who hails from Great Kills, made his first public appearance Saturday, co-hosting the comedy show Judd & Pete for America -- benefiting Swing Left at Largo at the Coronet in West Hollywood -- with Judd Apatow.

Well, as you can tell, I dont want to be here, Davidson said during the show, according to E! News. Theres a lot going on. Anybody have any open rooms? Anybody looking for a roommate?

He went on to tell the crowd: "Ive been covering a bunch of tattoos, thats fun. Im f------ 0-for-2 in the tattoo department. Yeah, Im afraid to get my mom tattooed on me. Thats how bad it is.

Davidson, 24, was able to joke about his breakup with Grande, specifically about his decision to get the tattoos.

So, obviously you know, we broke up or whatever but when me and her first got engaged we got tattoos, he said, according to E! News. And it was like in a magazine like, Was Pete Davidson stupid? And 93 percent of it said yes, Davidson reportedly told the audience. So my boy, he was like, Dont listen to that s--- man. Theyre literally f------ haters. And Im like, yeah, f--- that. Im not stupid. And the other day we were in my kitchen and he was like, Yo bro. Turns out you were stupid.

Davidson got multiple Ariana-inspired tattoos: One a black bunny ear mask behind his left ear, and another with the initials AG on his thumb.

Last week, Grande covered her Davidson-dedicated body art with band aids during Wicked 15," a television special celebrating the Broadway production.

Celeb magazines and gossip columns started spreading the news in June that Grande and Davidson were engaged just a week after they announced their relationship via Instagram.

TMZ reported that Davidson spent $93,000 on Grandes engagement ring. It was a VVS1 clarity 3.03 carat diamond set in platinum, made by Manhattan-based Greg Yuna. Grande reportedly gave the ring back to Davidson last week.

The split comes after Grande and Davidson announced they would postpone their wedding after multiple news sources confirmed rapper Mac Miller, 26, died from an apparent drug overdose inside his San Fernando Valley home last month.

He struggled with substance abuse for years, and things seemed to spiral after his high-profile break up with Grande in May 2018. Grande and Miller began dating in 2016.

FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Peter Lisi, who owns several properties -- including the Paramount theater building -- along Bay Street with several partners, says the North Shore without the New York Wheel will be just fine.

Our properties are 97 percent occupied. The vacant spots we own are scheduled for future development that was dependent on the NY Wheel, but whether it comes or not we are continuing with our development," he said.

"It [The NY Wheel project] hasnt affected anything. [Businesses] are still paying their rent. I think Hurricane Sandy damaged the businesses more than the NY Wheel, he said.

In less than a week, the former contractor for the New York Wheel may have the right to auction the parts of the 630-foot tourist attraction. And that could be the demise of the highly-anticipated project -- once expected to fuel the boroughs economy and citys tourism industry -- that has been in the works for the last six years.

Since the project was halted in May 2017, the NY Wheel has been battling in court with its former contractor Mammoet-Starneth. The project was also marred with news of Rich Marin, the founder and CEO, stepping down from the helm of the project.

With $450 million of private money already invested in the NY Wheel, its lead investors -- particularly Jeffrey Feil of the Feil Organization and Lloyd Goldman, a New York real estate developer -- are asking the city to provide tax exempt bonds to fund the remainder of the project, which is estimated to cost nearly $1 billion, according to sources.

And Mayor Bill de Blasio has flat out said no to providing the bonds.

So what happens to the North Shore business community, particularly in St. George, if the ill-fated Wheel never gets built?

I have been hearing about the North Shore renaissance for years. ...It was supposed to come with the Homeport, and then that failed. ...Weve seen nothing but failures on the North Shore for years, so another failure will not deter developers, said Lisi.

However, some business owners were lured to Staten Island by the NY Wheel.

One of the main reasons we invested so much time, energy and money in Staten Island was because of the Wheel and other development on this side of the Island, said Vic Rallo, celebrity chef and owner of Surf restaurant in Urby. It would be a shame if this beautiful waterfront was dealt another blow, recovery and redevelopment takes all parties to participate, including the city of New York.

Said Will Smith, president and operating partner of the Staten Island Yankees, which is located next door to the Wheel site: The Wheel isnt something we lost. It was extra. But we cant count on the gains as great as we could have [if its not built]."

It will be a bummer, but well keep going and continue to improve and thrive. ...But it would be tremendous if we saw the completion of the Wheel, he added.

The companion project to the Wheel has been Empire Outlets. Although the project is being developed by separate entities, the two have been billed as the main catalysts for attracting tourists to the borough. Its principals say they believe the citys first outlet mall will thrive without the Wheel.

We look forward to seeing millions of visitors enjoy an incredible shopping and dining experience at Empire Outlets after it opens this coming spring as New York Citys first and only outlet center," said Joseph Ferrara, principal of BFC partners, developer of Empire Outlets.

"Our studies show that Empire Outlets is now poised to become one of the top three outlet centers in the nation  and fast-growing interest in Empire Outlets from international tourism officials has shown that Staten Islands revitalized North Shore is already becoming a world-class destination. While the New York Wheel team has faced a challenging process, we hope the Wheel will move forward and bring economic benefits to Staten Island and our entire city, he added.

Some experts say the Wheel was never going to help local businesses thrive.

The truth is no one is going to get off the Staten Island Ferry, walk 10 blocks and go grocery shopping at KeyFood, said Scott Plasky, first vice president of the Manhattan-based Marcus & Millichap, who has closed more than $60 million worth of retail properties on Staten Island.

I think every single [business] that services the people who live and work in that community are fine. ...I just dont see it [the Wheel not being built] crippling the ecosystem there he added.

MORE RECENT STORIES ABOUT THE NY WHEEL:

FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK and TWITTERSTATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A supervising sergeant is accused of stuffing panties into the mouth of a fellow detective during an incident in the locker room at the 72nd Precinct stationhouse in Brooklyn, according to multiple published reports.

Media accounts identify the sergeant at the center of the incident as Ann Marie Guerra. She lives in Rossville, according to public records.

Guerra, second in command at the precincts detective squad, allegedly had her fellow Finest gagging because she left used panties in plain sight in the unisex locker room, according to accounts in the Daily News and the New York Post.

When confronted, Guerra allegedly thrust a pair of panties into the mouth of Det. Victor Falcon on Oct. 7, according to the reports.

A complaint was reportedly filed against Guerra with the NYPDs Equal Employment Opportunity Office.

"There is an active Detective Bureau Investigation case regarding the 72 Detective Squad, said a statement from the NYPDs Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.

However, the probe has nothing to do with the alleged panty incident, a source with knowledge of the investigation told the Advance.

An NYPD spokesman did not immediately answer a request for information about Guerras job status.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Astronauts on the International Space Station captured stunning views of an Aurora Borealis last month.

The Expedition 56 crew took a time-lapse video of the aurora stretching over northern Canada as it passed the country at night on Sept. 18.

The aurora -- named for the Roman goddess of dawn -- is a mysterious and unpredictable display of light in the night sky, according to NASA.

The Aurora Borealis, also known as the northern lights, is a common occurrence at high northern latitudes. Auroras usually appear as a milky greenish color, but can also show red, blue, violet, pink and white.

In the video above, the Aurora Borealis hovered above Earths surface with sunlight peeking through in the background. It passed over major cities in Canada including Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Montreal.

Beyond Earths limb, many stars are visible from this vantage point of the Space Station, NASA said on its website.

Auroras can appear as long, narrow arcs of light, often extending east to west from horizon to horizon, according to NASA. They can stretch across the night sky in bands that kink, fold, swirl and ruffle.

Auroras are a spectacular sign that our planet is electrically connected to the sun, NASA said on its website. These light shows are provoked by energy from the sun and fueld by electrically charged particles trapped in Earths magnetic field.

Time-lapse over #Canada at night from the @Space_Station on Sept. 18, 2018. Aurora Borealis over northern Canada hovers above Earths surface with sunlight peeking through in the background. Major cities seen include Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Montreal. pic.twitter.com/WyVoQCawMH  NASA Astromaterials (@Astromaterials) October 17, 2018

Earlier this month, a NASA photographer captured photos of the International Space Station as it flew past the sun.

The time-lapse video was made up of nine frames of photos, which shows the orbiting laboratory with a crew of three onboard as it transits the sun. The photos were captured on Oct. 7 from Suffolk, Va., by NASA photographer Joel Kowsky.

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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!More than 1400 calls to the Triple Zero emergency call service were unable to be connected during a Telstra network outage in May, the government's formal report into the incident reveals.

After the first serious disruptions to the emergency lines since 1961, the Department of Communications has made 11 recommendations, including seven directly to Telstra, with action to improve back-ups on the network and introduce live reporting.

Fire damage at the Telstra cable pit east of Orange.

The Department of Communications announced a formal investigation into the outage the day it occurred on May 4, with assistance from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

The ACMA investigation found a total of 3912 emergency calls were made that did not connect during the disruption. Of those, 1433 weren't connected due to the disruption while the remainder weren't connected because the caller voluntarily ended the call when it reached a voice announcement or terminated the call while waiting for an operator.As chief executive of the world's biggest asset manager, Larry Fink began the year with a call to the thousands of companies that the firm holds stakes in: Show how they make a "positive contribution to society."

Now Fink's BlackRock, overseeing more than $US6 trillion ($US8.4 trillion) of other people's money, is facing a comparable challenge, stuck between conscience and the implacable demands of the bottom line.

The Saudi government confirmed that Jamal Khashoggi had died after an argument at the consulate. Credit:AP

While BlackRock and the rest of the financial industry have targeted Saudi Arabia as a massive revenue generator, they were compelled to act in the wake of reports that US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. On Saturday, the Saudi government confirmed that Khashoggi had died after an argument at the consulate.

"The world for businesses is not black and white," Fink said in an interview Tuesday.Australian dairy farmers are pushing the big supermarkets to put a 10 cent levy on all milk, while independent suppliers remain cynical about drought relief approaches from Coles and Woolworths.

A Change.org petition launched by Queensland Dairyfarmers organisation calling for all milk at Coles and Woolworths to be increased by 10c per litre was approaching the 110,000 signature mark on Monday.

Gippsland Jersey co-owner Steve Ronalds is one dairy farmer cynical of drought levies for milk. Credit:Annmaree Stattan

Farmers from across the country are also calling for a guarantee from the supermarkets that a temporary fee on home brand milk will go directly back to milk suppliers.

The big supermarkets have unveiled plans over the past month to help farmers in drought-affected areas by applying extra fees to some home brand milk items. However, critics including Agriculture minister David Littleproud have questioned why the levies only applied to a few products across the supermarkets and whether all suppliers will get a cut of the funds raised.Schools in NSW are falling behind in achieving writing progress and growth for the most disadvantaged students but are leading the country in extending the top students because of the state's high number of selective schools, a new analysis of NAPLAN results has found.

The Grattan Institute report, which looks at student progress rather than NAPLAN achievement, has found that NSW secondary students are making two months' less progress than the national average in writing, the worst across all five states included in the analysis.

A spokesman from the NSW Department of Education said there are too many variables to compare progress between states. Credit:Louise Kennerley

NSW primary students are making about a month's less progress than their peers in Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory in reading and writing.

The report also found that NSW schools are far better at lifting high-achieving students than at growing disadvantaged students, while Victorian schools are better at catering to disadvantaged students, who are achieving four months' more progress than the national average.So a Vietnamese, a Chinese and an Australian walk into a restaurant. "Sorry, gentlemen," says the maitre d'. "You can't come in here without a Thai."

The joke may come from my precious copy of Crap Dad Jokes, but the punchline is delivered by the happy mix of south-east Asian influences on the menu at Chubby Cheeks, a smart new Paddington eatery from Songpol and Lyn Manoonpong of Mona Vale's stylish Armchair Collective cafe.

Crispy skin master stock free range chook with special satay sauce. Credit:Christopher Pearce

Working with executive chef David Claesson, Thai-born head chef, Em Meechai has drawn on his time at Luke Nguyen's Red Lantern restaurant to come up with a pan-Asian mix that sees "crackling pork belly" ready to wrap in cos leaves with a smoky eggplant relish, mingling with Vietnamese soft rice-paper rolls of mushroom, tofu and seaweed.

That said, the Thai wins. Crunchy, frail, black squid ink crackers ($18 for three) carrying juicy slivers of roast duck, roasted rice and sawtooth coriander in a tangy dressing make a good, if pricey, intro to the whole sweet and sour narrative.A serial criminal and long-term drug addict has admitted he did not stop taking drugs after killing university student Clea Rose, rehabilitation, time in jail, with family support or after the birth of his son.

However, at a sentence hearing on Monday for breaking a prison guard's neck while high on the drug ice the 27-year-old man told the court he was now off drugs.

"I've been able to deal with a lot this past year," the man said, "I think I'm in a position where I can change my life."

The Canberra Times has chosen to refer to the mans role in the death of student Clea Rose - in which he stole a car and during a police chase struck the woman - and so cannot name him because he was a child.A Canberra man will fight allegations of drug dealing after police found a book titled the Cocaine Diaries in his apartment last Wednesday.

The book contained Blackberry device codes, documents tendered in court on Monday allege.

During the raid on James Coles Phillip flat police also allegedly found a handwritten drug recipe, cocaine, Inositol (a known cutting agent for cocaine), knuckledusters and more than $100,000 in cash.

Police allege they found cocaine, cash and knuckledusters in the raid. Credit:ACT Policing

There was no one home at the time of the raid but Mr Cole, 34, was arrested at Canberra Airport after getting off a flight on Sunday. On Monday, he pleaded not guilty to the charges in the ACT Magistrates Court.Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush has said a front-page story in Sydney's Daily Telegraph branding him "King Leer" made him appear as though he was a "criminal" in a "police lineup", as he sues the newspaper for defamation in the Federal Court.

Mr Rush, 67, is suing publisher Nationwide News over two news stories and a newsagent poster published in late 2017, which alleged "inappropriate behaviour" towards a female actor during a 2015-16 Sydney Theatre Company production of King Lear. Mr Rush, who performed the titular role, has vehemently denied the claims.

Geoffrey Rush arriving at court on Monday. Credit:Nick Moir

The woman was not named in the stories but was later revealed to be Eryn Jean Norvill, who played King Lear's daughter Cordelia in the production. The court has heard she did not speak to the Telegraph for its stories.

In his opening address to the court on Monday, Mr Rush's barrister Bruce McClintock, SC, said the Telegraph was "desperate" and "looking for a [Harvey] Weinstein story" after being "gazumped" by the Herald's stories on former Nine presenter Don Burke.A loaded gun found in the basement car park of a waterfront apartment building at Circular Quay has been linked to a Sydney bikie gang member who stands accused over the shooting death of former Comanchero boss Mahmoud "Mick" Hawi.

Yusuf Nazlioglu, 37, was charged with multiple firearms offences on Monday after the loaded .22 calibre revolver was located by detectives in the car park of the exclusive Bennelong Apartments in Macquarie Street, nicknamed "the Toaster".

Mr Nazlioglu, a member of the Lone Wolf outlaw motorcycle gang, is in custody, charged with murder over the death of Mr Hawi in the car park of the Rockdale Fitness First in February this year.

It is understood Mr Nazlioglu had been living in the Toaster at the time of the shooting.NSW minister David Elliott says he does not need to disclose free travel across Israel with ClubsNSW because he used $20,000 of taxpayers money to fund most of his trip and just "occasionally took a spare seat on the bus".

Mr Elliott, the minister for Corrections, Counter-Terrorism and Veterans Affairs, and his deputy chief of staff billed NSW taxpayers an estimated $20,279.14 to attend the 2017 Premiers Anzac Ambassadors Program in Israel, which is a tour funded by ClubsNSW.

All state MPs must record any contributions to travel worth more than $250 in their annual register of disclosures, released last week.

Rockdale Labor MP Steve Kamper and Miranda Liberal MP Eleni Petinos, also enjoyed the ClubsNSW-funded tour, which took them with ClubsNSW chief executive officer Anthony Ball and six students, to Athens, Lemnos and Crete, followed by a tour of Israel to commemorate the centenary of the charge of the Fourth Light Horse Brigade at Beersheba.

Ms Petinos and Mr Kamper both declared the travel in their disclosure reports, but Mr Elliott, who joined the group for at least three days in Israel did not.Furious members of the Cilento family have warned they will mount an all-out PR war against the Queensland government for refusing to reverse its decision to dump the name Lady Cilento from the childrens hospital.

The government announced in September the four year-old Lady Cilento Children's Hospital at South Brisbane would be renamed the Queensland Childrens Hospital, after about 900 staff signed a petition calling for a change to the hospitals name.

The Lady Cilento Childrens Hospital in Brisbane will be renamed. Credit:Christopher Frederick Jone

The name was chosen by the former LNP Newman government in 2013.

Lady Phyllis Cilento settled in Brisbane in 1928, where she became renowned throughout the city as a general practitioner with a dedicated passion for obstetrics and womens and childrens health.Instead, licensed snake catchers in Victoria can be called for a fee to come and collect the snake, or the Environment Department can issue advice on its helpline. Other preventative tips include keeping the house clean and the lawns cut short. Its also important to keep pets away from snakes. Often its hard for pet owners to see the wound or the bite so its crucial that animals that are displaying signs such as vomiting, salivation, lethargy  or collapsing  are taken straight to the vet. Tiger snake by 19th-century illustrator Arthur Bartholomew. Credit:Museums Victoria What to do if you are bitten

If you are bitten by a snake, the first step is to call triple zero. While waiting for emergency services to arrive, stay as still as possible, as movement can shift poison around the body. And despite the common myth, its wrong to attempt to suck the venom out of the wound. The identification of the venom later can help to later identify the type of snake, which helps to prescribe an anti-venom. The Royal Flying Doctor Service also advises not to wash the area of the bite, cut the bite or apply a high tourniquet. Instead, they advise to tightly bandage with a pressure bandage if possible, then splint and immobilise the area to stop the spread of venom.

University of Melbourne venom expert Dr Timothy Jackson says the most important thing to do is to get to a hospital. "It is true many bites do not result in serious envenoming or cause life-threatening consequences: however, every bite should be treated as if it could be," he said. "The most important thing for people to do is get to a hospital as rapidly as possible while remaining calm. It doesn't matter whether you have been bitten or envenomed or not - let the doctors worry about that." What happens when snakes bite

While it is estimated hundreds of people are bitten each year by snakes, a recent study by the University of Melbournes Australian Venom Research Unit found only 35 people died from snake bites between 2000 and 2016 in Australia. Dr Jackson said the effect of every snake bite is different. "It depends on a lot of things, the combination of the amount of venom delivered, the physiology of the person," he says. "We sometimes see people collapsing rapidly, sometimes people feel fairly well and then feel sick hours later. There is a huge variation in response." According to the Australian Snakebite Project, the nation's most comprehensive study into snake bites, which was completed over a decade, the clinical effects of snake venom resulted in:

Coagulopathy (disorder that causes excessive bleeding) (73 %)

Myotoxicity (a toxic effect on muscles) (17%)

Acute kidney injury (12%)

Severe complications included cardiac arrest (2.9%)

Major haemorrhage (1.6%) The research found of the 23 people involved in the study who died from snake bites, 10 died from cardiac arrests, and six from intracrainial haemorrhages (bleeding inside the skull). One patient collapsed after a snake bite following an afternoon run while the outside temperature was 46 degrees while another was involved in a motor vehicle accident after being bitten by a snake. Another died from acute kidney injury. The bite site is generally the lower or upper limbs but rarely the torso or the head. Which snakes bite

According to the Australian Snakebite Project, the most common bites are from brown snakes (41%), then tiger snakes (17%) and red-bellied black snakes (16%). "The venoms are different," says Dr Jackson. "The important consequence from both brown and tiger snakes is quite similar, which is the way they affect the blood. They attack certain components of the coagulation cascade which allows blood to clot after injury. Both venoms attack in a similar way, though brown snakes do it faster and harder, and have more potent toxins in their venom. "The end result is the blood can't clot  then any bleeding, especially internally, can become very dangerous. "With tiger snakes we see more neurotoxicity, so an effect on the nervous system. That's rare with brown snakes."

Of the 23 deaths reported over the decade long study between 2005 and 2015, 17 deaths were attributed to brown snakes, and four to tiger snakes (two other deaths are from unknown species). Dr Jackson said the red-belly black snake bites tended to be much less serious. "It's the much less dangerous of the three. Most people will not need anti-venom - though let the doctor decide that." This is due to the fact brown snakes are generally attracted to rodents - generally more rural areas - while tiger snakes are drawn to water, predominantly feeding on frogs and lizards and occasionally small mammals and birds.

Brown snakes can be found Australia-wide, but in Victoria they are generally found in the rural areas, while tiger snakes are the most common in Melbourne and surrounding suburbs. Nathan Stamkos, the department's regional manager of environmental compliance, says snakes emerge at this time of year from their winter hibernation to bask in the sun and to search for food and a mate. The recent sunny weather also means people are spending more time outdoors and it is quite likely they will encounter a snake, he said. Eastern brown snakes are the most common in north-east Victoria with the occasional tiger snake or red-bellied black snake, which are usually found around wetlands, creeks and rivers.Prince Harry has spoken about the importance of conservation during his visit to Fraser Island.

Just after noon at his first official event on day seven of the royal tour, Prince Harry was met by the Butchulla people and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in Pile Valley.

He took part in a traditional smoking ceremony and then unveiled a plaque for the dedication of the forests of Fraser Island to the Queens Commonwealth Canopy initiative, taking it upon himself to fold up the red sheet that covered the plaque afterwards.

Delivering a speech to a group of about 70 locals and dignitaries, and about the same number of journalists, Prince Harry said Fraser Island, the worlds largest sand island, was World Heritage-listed for its exceptional beauty, biodiversity and cultural significance.Barack Obama asked Kevin Rudd to be on standby to support a forthcoming US missile strike on Syria, but failed to tell him when it was called off.

Australia and Canada were both left "swinging in the breeze", the former Australian prime minister reveals in his new book.

Mr Rudd writes that the US president had twice phoned to tell him America's intentions. Mr Obama asked that Australia and other US allies publicly call on America in advance to strike Syria after its regime used chemical weapons on its own people.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd with former US president Barack Obama. Credit:David Foote- Auspic/DPS

It was in support of Mr Obama's famous "red line" threat against Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad, a threat he failed to act upon.Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has returned to Australia after seven weeks overseas, just as recriminations commence following the Liberals' drubbing in his former seat of Wentworth.

Independent Kerryn Phelps was 1616 votes clear of her Liberal rival Dave Sharma on Monday and was expected to win the seat, though the count remains significantly closer than first thought.

Mr Turnbull and his wife Lucy arrived at Sydney Airport early on Monday from Singapore, where they had visited their son Alex, who used social media to urge a vote against the Liberal Party in Saturday's byelection.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull leaves his Point Piper home on Monday morning. Credit:Chris Pearce

The Turnbulls had spent six weeks in New York, where they own property, opting to leave Australia shortly after Mr Turnbull was ousted from the prime ministership in a party coup in August.Industrial Relations Minister Kelly O'Dwyer has warned of a "bleak future" for Australia if a Labor government tears up workplace laws in deference to the ACTU, which is holding nine rallies across the nation on Tuesday.

"The ACTU wants a return to the dark days of mass union militancy, it wants workplace division and disruption, it wants the ability to flagrantly break any industrial laws it doesnt like," Ms O'Dwyer said.

The minister rebuked the union peak body for "risking employee welfare by inciting breaches of the law" to participate in the rallies, including one in Melbourne that is expected to attract 150,000 people and shut down the city's construction projects and waterfront. Rallies are also expected in Sydney, Wollongong, Gladstone, Cairns, Mackay, Darwin, Rockhampton and Townsville, following one in Perth last Thursday.

Kelly O'Dwyer says a Labor government influenced by the ACTU would deliver industrial chaos. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The ACTU insists that the rallies should not be considered as industrial action - which may only be undertaken as part of enterprise agreement negotiations - but as political protests, dismissing criticism of its plan to shut down Melbourne as an attack on free speech.There is no doubt that the situation involving children on Nauru cannot continue to be ignored. Action must be taken to resolve this issue, Mr Neumann wrote. In a call that has influenced debate on the law, former Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs called last week for all sides to compromise and pass the law if needed as a practical way to help the children. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reiterated an offer first made in 2013 to accept 150 asylum seekers every year. Loading Labor has previously attacked the idea of imposing a lifetime ban on entry to Australia for the asylum seekers who are settled in New Zealand, but it is now willing to accept it and is seeking other changes. It set out a new process last week to ensure faster medical help for the children, but has now gone beyond that plan to try to get the families resettled permanently.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale called on Monday for all the children and families on Nauru to be brought to Australia immediately for medical attention, while Greens MP Adam Bandt put forward a bill in the lower house to make that happen. A Greens spokesman said the Greens did not support a lifetime ban for those left behind on Nauru but could support one just for those refugees who are sent to New Zealand. Defence Industry Minister Steve Ciobo said Labor had shown "zero credibility" on border control and had an "appalling" track record on the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers by boat. South Australian Liberal MP Tony Pasin told Sky News that "nobody put more people in detention than the Labor Party and nobody took more out than the Liberal Party". There were 2,726 asylum seeker arrivals by boat under the Labor government in 2009 and this increased to 6,555, then 4,565, then 17,204 and 20,587 in the subsequent four years before the Coalition took power in 2013. The arrivals fell to 160 in 2014 and zero the following year.

The latest move from Labor is a significant backdown from its stance in October 2016 when Mr Shorten said the lifetime ban law does seem ridiculous and many of his caucus colleagues slammed the idea. At the time, Sydney Labor MP Linda Burney said voters had told her policy was inhumane, western Sydney MP Mike Freelander said the bill was crude and sad while Labor senator Helen Polley told the ABC's Lateline program she could not see herself supporting the lifetime ban. Mr Neumann set out three amendments to the lifetime ban legislation to secure Labor approval: Guaranteed acceptance of New Zealands offer and the removal of all children and their families from Nauru to New Zealand. We trust you have been engaging already with the New Zealand government on arrangements to move vulnerable asylum seekers as soon as it becomes possible to do so;

Ensuring that any lifetime ban is only applicable to the cohort transferred to New Zealand. Your government has argued consistently and continues to argue that the issue of concern is specific to New Zealand due to the unique Trans-Tasman Travel arrangements we have in place. As closing the so-called back-door entry from New Zealand is your objective, then limiting the legislation to New Zealand will achieve this outcome; and Limiting the legislations application to the Special Category Visa (subclass 444) which enables open travel of New Zealand citizens into Australia. Doing so would effectively establish a framework that mirrors the agreement reached with the United States that is already in place and has seen over 400 refugees transferred to the United States without any concerns raised over the potential for back-door entry into Australia. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull proposed the lifetime ban in October 2016, but could not get the numbers to get it through Parliament, with the Labor caucus objecting to it and refugee advocates calling it unnecessary. Labor senator Lisa Singh attacked the cruel law in the debate two years ago. The new decision by shadow cabinet will need the approval of the Labor caucus at a meeting on Tueday.

Labor has made clear that we will consider supporting the government if you seek to consult and negotiate with New Zealand appropriate conditions, Mr Neumann wrote in his letter to Mr Coleman. We urge you to take this offer as a priority and fully utilise any offer made by New Zealand. The community concern about the children on Nauru has intensified the debate in Parliament, with crossbenchers including Cathy McGowan and Rebekha Sharkie demanding a solution. The leading candidate in the Wentworth byelection, Kerryn Phelps said she would absolutely work in concert with other crossbench MPs to gain the release of children and families if she secured victory and entered Parliament. The report of the medical and mental state of children on Nauru makes it a humanitarian crisis, Dr Phelps told Fairfax Media.The Senate president says some past police raids on politicians' offices were "improper" and may have breached parliamentary privilege.

Liberal senator Scott Ryan, who presides over the upper house, also said his government's telecommunications-snooping laws fail to protect parliamentarians adequately from intrusion.

Senator Ryan told an estimates hearing on Monday that he and House of Representatives speaker Tony Smith had raised concerns with the federal police about its failures to comply with search-warrant guidelines, adding he believed the current guidelines were outdated.

The Senate's finance and public administration committee were discussing the right of the AFP and intelligence agencies to use "intrusive powers" against parliamentarians.Prime Minister Scott Morrison is facing growing demands to release asylum seeker children from Nauru as he opens urgent talks to shore up control of Parliament after a brutal byelection swing against the government.

Mr Morrison is taking steps to remove some children from the island as the issue emerges as a top priority for the likely winner of Saturday's Wentworth byelection, independent Kerryn Phelps.

Fairfax Media understands the number of asylum seeker children on Nauru has fallen from about 80 to 63 in recent weeks and is expected to fall further as more families are sent to the United States, but this is not enough to quell the new demands in Parliament.

Dr Phelps said she would absolutely work with other crossbench MPs to gain the release of children and families if she secures victory in Wentworth, where she has a significant lead in the vote count.What to do with the pot of pokies winnings left mysteriously unclaimed by punters each year?

In NSW, state law gives the government wide discretion to determine this, so long as there is a "community benefit".

This is how a Jackie Chan blockbuster flop and the world's richest greyhound race came to be among the biggest beneficiaries of a fund designed to redistribute gambling prizemoney back to the broader NSW community.

The 2017 sci-fi thriller Bleeding Steel, which featured Chan duelling with an evil villain atop the sails of the Sydney Opera House, was funded in part by a one-off direct grant of $850,000 from the NSW government.London: British Prime Minister Theresa May has stared down political opponents in her own party, insisting her government would hold our nerve on a Brexit plan that could see the UK spend years following EU rules after losing any say in how they are made.

Britain's weekend newspapers were full of rumours of plots to oust May, including a particularly incendiary report of an MP in her own party who predicted she would be assassinated by Eurosceptic colleagues this week.

One MP told The Sunday Times the Prime Minister would enter a political killing zone this week, and another told the Mail on Sunday she should bring her own noose if she went to a backbenchers meeting.Ankara, Turkey: A man appearing to wear Jamal Khashoggi's clothes left the Saudi consulate in Istanbul following his killing there, according to a surveillance video, while a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage made four calls to the royal's office around the same time, reports said on Monday.

The reports by CNN and a pro-government Turkish newspaper came just a day before Prince Mohammed's high-profile investment summit is to begin in Riyadh and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised that details of Khashoggi's killing "will be revealed in all its nakedness". Meanwhile, Turkish crime-scene investigators swarmed a garage on Monday night in Istanbul where a Saudi consular vehicle had been parked.

All this yet again adds to the pressure Saudi Arabia faces over the slaying of the Washington Post columnist. The kingdom's claim on Saturday that Khashoggi died in a "fistfight" met international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on October 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.By hinting that he might reveal details of Khashoggi's killing that could implicate the crown prince, Erdogan is sending tremors of anxiety through much of the far-flung coalition that has lined up with Saudi Arabia to crush the Islamists. The coalition ranges from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the Persian Gulf to the strongmen in Egypt and eastern Libya. For weeks after Khashoggi disappeared, Crown Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials insisted that he had left the consulate freely and that they knew nothing of his whereabouts. Then, in a new version of events, the royal court said that in fact Khashoggi, 59, had been accidentally strangled in a brawl with Saudi intelligence agents. The agents' mission, the Saudis say, was to persuade him to return voluntarily to the kingdom. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Credit:AP The crown prince, they insisted had no knowledge of what happened and did not get answers about it for more than two weeks.

"There obviously was a tremendous mistake made," Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Sunday in an interview on Fox News, adding, in a message, to Khashoggi's relatives: "Our condolences go out to them. We feel their pain." If the Saudis hoped their new explanation would limit the furor, they were disappointed. US President Donald Trump, who initially called the Saudi claims credible, sounded increasingly dubious. "Obviously, there's been deception and there's been lies," the President said in an interview with The Washington Post. "Their stories are all over the place." Some noted that, for all his bluster, Erdogan was still giving a 48-hour warning to the Saudis and holding back from providing details about Khashoggi's death. The delay, some argued, might be intended to allow for some kind of accommodation with the Saudis.

In part because of the kingdom's importance as a regional power and a trading partner, Erdogan has long treated Saudi Arabia very differently from the United Arab Emirates, its closest Arab ally. The Emirates, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, is widely regarded as the leader of a campaign across the region against election-minded Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood, which is closely allied with Erdogan's Justice and Development Party. The Emirates worked in tandem with Saudi Arabia to try to turn back the Arab Spring uprisings. They lobbied Washington, used their Pan-Arab news media and gave financial support to old-school authoritarians around the region. As Brotherhood-style Islamist parties rose in power after the Arab Spring uprisings, the Emirates tried to push its Arab allies as well as the United States and Britain to outlaw the Brotherhood as a terrorist group. Saudi Arabia did so, but the Americans and the British have not. Last year, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia also worked together to isolate and blockade Qatar over its support for Brotherhood-style Islamists.

Erdogan and the UAE are more or less openly hostile to each other. Turkey helped support Qatar in the face of the blockade by sending troops and airlifting in goods. But even as Erdogan railed against the Emirates, he maintained cordial relations with Crown Prince Mohammed, mindful perhaps that at age 33 he might rule the kingdom for five decades to come. In the immediate aftermath of Khashoggi's disappearance, that pattern still held. Erdogan was a personal friend of Khashoggi's, who had worked for decades as a star commentator in the Saudi-owned media and was also a former Brotherhood member with many friends in the group. Loading Yet even after Erdogan was briefed on intelligence reports that Saudi agents had assassinated and dismembered his friend, Turkish officials said, the president refrained from publicly accusing the Saudis, to avoid a full diplomatic rupture.

Turkish officials noted that Khashoggi was not a Turk so his killing did not necessarily need to be a Turkish issue. Some hinted broadly that Erdogan might be willing to move on if the Saudis would offer almost any explanation that acknowledged Khashoggi's killing  even blaming it on a "rogue operation" to deflect blame from Crown Prince Mohammed. But after the apparent failure of the Saudi's latest narrative, Erdogan began sending very different signals. Pro-government news outlets are now demanding that the Saudis admit that senior figures in the royal court ordered the assassination, as Turkish officials speaking on the condition of anonymity have said they can show through audio recordings and other evidence of the killing. Some are even calling for Crown Prince Mohammed to be held to account, stripped of his power or removed from his position as heir to the throne. Erdogan, too, made an apparent swipe in that direction Sunday. "And right now, what does the world say about whom?" he said, in an apparent reference to the crown prince. "We will look into all of this."Amman: Jordan has said it will not extend the 25-year deal that allows Israel to use two tracts of territory along its border, despite Israel saying it is still planning to negotiate an extension.

Much of the land in Baquora in the north-western part of the kingdom and Ghumar in the south is used by Israeli farmers, some of whom were given private land ownership rights and special travel rights under a 1994 peace treaty between the two countries.

The agreement will expire next year.

Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged that Jordan wanted to exercise its option to end the arrangement. Credit:AP

King Abdullah has been under increasing public pressure to end the arrangements with Israel. He told senior Jordanian politicians the kingdom wanted to exercise its "full sovereignty" over the two areas, Petra state news agency said.PWR Hour celebrates 5th anniversary during Global Entrepreneurship Week

PHILIPSBURG:--- PWR Hour was launched on November 23, 2013, during Global Entrepreneurship Week and quickly became St. Maartens premier networking event for entrepreneurs and professionals. To date, this event alone has brought together more than 1000 entrepreneurs and professionals together. Keynote speakers that have spoken at the PWR Hour include Mr. Imran McSood, chairman of Nagico, Mr. Jean Arnell, co-managing director of COMPUTECH, and Arun Jagtiani, chief executive officer & founder of Island Real Estate. Though there are a few success stories of businesses starting after receiving tips at a PWR Hour, one notable one is Wes Johnnycakes. They provide frozen Johnny cakes which are available at several local supermarkets and can be fried without having to be fully thawed.

During Global Entrepreneurship Week 2018 on November 14, PWR Hour will celebrate 5 years of connecting and inspiring local entrepreneurs and professionals. PWR Hour is now produced by Produce Wealth Revolution Agency (aka The PWR Agency), St. Maartens first business incubator, started by serial entrepreneur Ife Badejo. In addition to offering affordable office and meeting spaces for start-ups and small businesses, the PWR Agency provides business support services to help entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses successfully.

More than a year later of the hurricanes of 2017, it is evident that these kinds of experiences are important to support business growth. According to the Chamber of Commerce there has been a significant increase of new businesses in 2018. Many of these businesses do not have the resources such as high performing teams and marketing budgets to help them operate efficiently and market their business accurately. PWR Hour was designed to help address these challenges by providing information and connecting businesses to work profitably together.

On November 24, the theme is Dominate Digitally. There will be a mini workshop highlighting key strategies to build more resilient businesses, reach larger audiences, and operate more efficiently. Another key element of this PWR Hour is the business matching. Start-ups and small business owners, who are interested, will be able to match with several potential clients and collaborators in a unique way.

With St. Maartens economy being made up of about 89% small businesses, the role of entrepreneurs and small businesses is imperative to the economic recovery of this nation. Therefore, at the PWR Hour, there will be a prelaunch of a resource which will assist entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small business owners to connect, do business with each other and solutions to some of the more pressing business challenges.

As PWR Hour celebrates its 5th year, there will be a few prizes in store that evening. Location will be announced shortly. Registration is $30, includes refreshments materials and admits two persons. For more information or to register, email the business and events coordinator, Kharl Oliver at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .PHILIPSBURG:--- As part of Basic Education and Literacy month, recognized by Rotary International during the month of September, the Rotary Club of St. Martin Sunset decided to focus on honoring teachers.

The members of the club conducted surprise appearances to 10 teachers around the island who exemplify, Service Above Self.

"Too often such teachers go unnoticed and we as a club wanted to award those who have made an enormous impact in the lives of their students through innovative teaching, advocates on the importance of basic education and literacy, assist colleagues in executing their respective roles and are community service minded," the club stated.

The respective school board or school management selected each teacher, who was gifted with a breakfast box, gift certificate from various vendors, jewelry, and a certificate of appreciation from the club.

The educators honored were;

Tr. Leonard Mussington, a teacher at Ecole Herve Williams, has been an educator for more than 30 years. He is one of the pillars of the Ecole Nina Duverly, in Marigot, which was damaged due to the passing of hurricane Irma. Mr. Mussington has been an avid promoter for the use of English in the classroom and is a pioneer for bilingualism in and outside the classroom.

Tr. Joycelyne Hamlet-Fazer, a teacher at Ecole Emile Choisy, has been an educator for more than 30 years on St. Martin. She is and always has been a dedicated and exemplary educator who has made it her duty to integrate St. Martins culture and the outside world in her lesson plans.

Tr. Rita Carty has been a dedicated and committed educator for more than 30 years at the Methodist Agogic Center (MAC). Amidst her past students is the current president and some members of The Rotary Club of St. Martin Sunset.

Tr. Naina Gianchandani has dedicated 25 years to teaching at the Learning Unlimited Preparatory School, and she continues to portray a love for teaching. She ensures that no student is left behind.

Tr. Marianne Tefft, an educator at the Montessori School, has been inspiring her students through literature and nurturing their writing skills. She made an emotional comment by stating, Teachers do what we do because of the joy it brings us. It was a pleasure and surprise to be appreciated this way.

Tr. Henneke Horjus has made an enormous impact in the lives of her students at the Caribbean International Academy (CIA) through innovative teaching and creating a positive learning environment.

Tr. Yvonne Kartoredjo was highlighted from the Hillside Christian School board for being an outstanding educator and inspiring her students with creative methods in the classroom.

Tr. Shaina Fernandes, a teacher at the St. Joseph school, was beyond surprised when she received the gifts of appreciation from the club. Although she is not currently teaching, the Catholic School Board selected her because of her commitment to education and support to all teachers at the school.

Tr. Uredise Stanford was chosen by the Seventh- Day Adventist School Board because of her overall dedication and commitment towards her students.

Tr. Januaira Leonard was recognized by the Division of Public Education as a hardworking teacher. School manager Mrs. Parotte, of the Oranje School, considers Tr. Leonard as her right hand.

The Rotary Club of St. Martin Sunset would like to thank the School Boards and Management, Angelic Nails and Spa, Zhaveri Jewelers, Good Food and Mojitos, Addicted Hair Salon, Yummzys, Melange Bar and Grill, Chef B Cooking, I Love SXM Beach Bar, Exquisite Caters, Georginas Nails, BBOX, Always Enchanted, Different Shades by Altisha Pantophlet, Ambrosia Restaurant and Exquisite Designs and Decorations, for making the presentations possible.

The Rotary Club of St. Martin Sunset would like to thank all educators for their continued hard work and years of service to our students and being the backbone of our educational system.St. Eustatius:--- Reports reaching the media in Sint Maarten from reliable sources in Sint Eustatius on Sunday afternoon indicate that the Dutch Government is once again displaying a show of force ahead of the court case called against it by the coalition Government of Sint Eustatius.

As was the case ahead of the court case which Commissioners Derrick Simmons and Charles Woodley called against Island Governor Julian Woodley in June of 2017, the Dutch government seems to be nervously flexing its muscle by having the marine ship Pelikaan in the harbour, and deploying a large contingent of extra police and military personnel to patrol the island in rental vehicles.

The case against Island Governor Woodley, who was protected by the Dutch Government, was won by the Commissioners. This led to an embarrassing situation for former Minister Plasterk in the Dutch Parliament, who was forced to admit that the Commissioners claim that Governor Woodley had violated the law was confirmed by the court.

Many observers familiar with the petition filed by the coalition government feel that the case that is called for upcoming Tuesday the 23rd of October will also go in the plaintiffs favor. This would deal an even bigger and more painful blow to the Dutch Government. State Secretary Knops is already under heavy pressure from both houses of Parliament in the Netherlands for the manner in which he has been dealing with the BES islands.

According to local observers, the show of force by the Dutch Government is surprising and unnecessary, since Statians, unlike the Dutch, have no history of violence, and always settle disputes with the Dutch Government peacefully and by legal means.

In that respect, they see the Dutch Governments latest flexing of its muscles as a way to intimidate the people of Sint Eustatius, just as it did in Indonesia when that colony exercised its right to self-determination back in 1947. It is to be hoped, however, that history will not repeat itself now that the Dutch Government is once again being legally challenged, and that it will respect its own legal system and the international rule of law, regardless of the outcome of the court case.PHILIPSBURG:--- Leader of the NA MP Jacobs has been closely following the case of the Minister of Teatt and his former cabinet worker which has escalated in an ugly manner in the press, on radio talk shows, on social media and rampantly throughout the community with growing dismay.

Whilst other legal troubles plaguing the Minister of VROMI and the highest ranking office of the Prime Minister also has the attention of the MP and the community. These two cases are being handled by the justice system, and whilst we expect them to take their course, the inevitable fall-out for the sitting government and by extension the people of St. Maarten cannot be ignored either.

As such, the coalition of 8 should take matters into their own hands and swiftly, as MP Jacobs believes their lack of action in this regard will only hurt St. Maarten in its quest to prove to Kingdom Partners that we can handle the messes in our own backyard. The ministers in question should be called to order and asked to resign in the best interest of St. Maarten.

The recent allegations of sexual harassment of an employee by a Minister cannot be tossed aside and flippantly discounted, as it was in the last press briefing by the Minister TEATT who stated that it is under investigation and therefore could not be clarified.

This has only created more questions:

What or whom is being investigated and by whom?

Who pressed charges on whom?

What are the charges?

If the Minister is indeed being investigated it will require the involvement of a judge granting the prosecutor permission to do so. Has a request been submitted by the prosecutor to the judge? If indeed, there is an official investigation with sufficient evidence then it is in the Ministers best interest to honorably step down before it goes any further in defining the function he now holds.

This type of investigation will put the Minister and by extension the country through a spectacle of international proportions which diverts way too much attention of the government and the country from the very important tasks of assisting the vulnerable in our society who are still reeling from the after-effects of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, rebuilding and diversifying our economy, and our very important tourism sector.

The case must go through its process, and justice must be served. No employee, regardless of sexual orientation, should be coerced or bribed into partaking in any sexual acts against their will or risk losing their jobs. This is a phenomenon that is rife around the world and St. Maarten is no exception. Usually, it is a female worker being harassed by a male superior and has no proof which can be used in court.

If the alleged victim or victims in this case, as the me too cry has already started, has not pressed charges and this is a campaign smear, then they should be exposed as such and justice can follow its course. But if the victim has pressed charges and the Minister (or the matter) is being/will be investigated, it would behoove the Minister to do the Honorable thing and resign before it comes to that and handle the case as a citizen and not as an appointed member of the Council of Ministers.

Has St. Maarten not endured enough?\We need gigabit broadband networks\

Posted by Publisher Telecommunication

Broadband expansion is gaining momentum in Baden-Wurttemberg. Broadband availability of 50 Mbit/s increased by 3.3 per cent in the second half of 2017 alone. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of ?blank spots?, especially in rural areas. The fourth Broadband Infrastructure Day was held at LAPP?s European headquarters to boost further expansion.

The world leader for integrated solutions in the field of cable and connection technology and the distribution network operator, Netze BW, sent out invitations to attend the event. More than 100 representatives from local and regional authorities, public utilities and construction service providers learned about funding opportunities as well as constructional and legal options. ?This event enables us to bring all partners together at one table and the platform concept backs faster implementation,? explains Norbert Kramer, Key Account Manager EVU/Telecom, who is responsible for the broadband market at LAPP. Matthias Gro, Head of Service Management and Telecommunication at Netze BW also emphasised: \Broadband expansion is a monumental task. It requires willingness on the part of everyone involved to cooperate.?

Thomas Strobl, Deputy Minister President and Minister for Digitalisation of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, underlined at the event just how important the rapid expansion of broadband is for the sate. ?We need gigabit broadband networks. Particularly for industry in the region, that is a decisive factor when choosing a location.? According to the Minister, more than 6,000 kilometres of glass fibre cables have been constructed in the region over the last two and a half years alone.

Network expansion reaches its limits though, especially in rural areas, where expansion is often not profitable. ?That?s why the public sector needs to subsidise network expansion,? explains Strobl. This is necessary where telecommunication providers do not invest and where accordingly the market does not function. ?My aim is to ensure equal living conditions throughout the whole of Baden-Wurttemberg also, and particularly, where this is concerned. Fast Internet must be available in rural areas to the same extent that it is here in Stuttgart or in other urban areas\, says Thomas Strobl.

The event also included workshops where participants were shown new methods for broadband network construction and given a practical demonstration of air assisted installation of LAPP glass fibre cables into the connecting pipes. Netze BW also provided lots of practical tips on planning construction and operations.

Headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, LAPP is a leading supplier of integrated solutions and branded products in the field of cable and connection technology. LAPP?s portfolio includes standard and highly flexible cables, industrial connectors and cable entry systems, customized system solutions, automation technology and robotics solutions for the intelligent factory of the future, as well as technical accessories. LAPP?s core market is in the industrial machinery and plant engineering sector. Other key markets are in the food industry as well as the energy and the mobility sector.

LAPP has remained in continuous family ownership since it was founded in 1959. In the 2016/17 business year, it generated consolidated revenue of 1,027 million euros. LAPP currently employs approximately 3,770 people across the world, has 17 production sites and around 40 sales companies. It also works in cooperation with around 100 foreign representatives.This article was first published in the SN Military.Space newsletter. If you would like to get our news and insights for national security space professionals every Tuesday, sign up here for your free subscription.

As the Pentagon moves to stand up a U.S. Space Command and Congress debates whether it makes sense to create a Space Force, a central focus is to defend satellites from orbital weapons that would seek to damage or destroy U.S. assets in space.

Washington policymakers are gripped by the prospect of enemies shooting missiles or lasers at U.S. systems. But that is only a small piece of the puzzle, says Jeffrey Gossel, senior intelligence engineer at the Space and Missile Analysis Group of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. [Trump's Space Force Plan Revealed by VP Mike Pence]

More attention should be paid to the larger space infrastructure that Russia and China are putting on orbit, Gossel argues. Many space systems are not weapons but still provide powerful capabilities for watching what the United States is doing and developing strategies to counter U.S. advantages.

"[A]s we think about space as a warfighting domain, it's not those weapons that are as important as what our enemies have on orbit," Gossel says during a recent Mitchell Institute event on Capitol Hill. His office is part of the intelligence community but supports the Defense Department. He anticipates that the future U.S. Space Command will be his largest customer.

"The sexy thing in Washington for years has been those offensive capabilities that our adversaries are building."

Jeffrey Gossel, Space and Missile Analysis Group

His point is that if a military conflict extended into outer space, it's imperative the United States knows in precise detail the type of satellites and sensors that other countries have on orbit because those would be potential targets for the U.S. military.

'Know Everything About the Satellite'

The weapons "aren't the things that we are going to have to shoot down," Gossel says. "When we start to do military operations in space, the intelligence community has to spend more time looking at what enemies have on orbit in a forensic way, to understand everything about that satellite  the materials, the power source, every intricate little detail of the spacecraft, we need to know." [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Concepts Ever]

"If we wanted to put a cyber effect, shoot a laser, you only want to cause a specific effect and you don't want anyone to know you did it, you need to know a lot about that satellite and sensors. From an intelligence perspective we have to concentrate more on those things, not on the guns they're shooting."

The U.S. government also should have a deeper understanding of what intelligence foreign powers are getting from space that they provide their military operators, such as signals intelligence, optical and radar imagery, Gossel says. "That's what's important. We want to keep them from having that data."

Gossel cautions that he was only speaking generically about space threats as the specifics are classified.

'What Can They See and Hear?'

"The order of battle for space is greatly increasing, it has tremendously increased over the last decade," he explains. Order of battle is military-speak for how many weapons platforms adversaries have at their disposal. What this means in space is that enemies might have co-orbital weapons to destroy satellites but of greater concern is their deployment of satellites that collect intelligence.

"We need to know what they can see and what they can hear," Gossel asserts.

Space was militarized decades ago but it wasn't until China tested a weapon that shot down its own satellite in 2007 that Gossel saw any reaction in D.C. That event began the conversation about the national security ramifications of other countries moving to challenge the United States is space. The Pentagon since then has increased spending on space systems and technologies to defend U.S. satellites. But Washington's focus on the use of weapons in space misses the larger picture. "We need to shift our thinking to what our adversaries have on orbit. Understanding that might be what we should spend our money on."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.The Apollo 7 command module is festively lit near a presentation stage for the Apollo 7 50th anniversary celebration at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas on Oct. 20, 2018.

DALLAS  Walt Cunningham was hoping the parachutes had opened.

A member of the United States' first three-man space crew, Cunningham, together with Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele, were on their return to Earth 50 years ago Monday (Oct. 22), having spent the prior 11 days conducting the first piloted test of the Apollo spacecraft in orbit. All that stood between the Apollo 7 crew and the end to their mission was seeing their drogue and main parachutes deploy.

"We flew into overcast conditions," said Cunningham, recalling his re-entry into the atmosphere at a gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 7 mission held by the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas on Saturday (Oct. 20) "We got down to about 22,000 feet and we couldn't see anything." [Apollo's First Crewed Trip to Space Happened 50 Years Ago]

Judging by their rate of descent, Cunningham and his two crewmates figured their drogue chutes must have worked. But their situation remained unclear.

"Our three main chutes were to open at about 11,000 feet and we still could not see anything. We felt [the chutes deploy] a little bit, but we couldn't see how many had opened. So again we checked our watches and rate of descent, but we did not get out of the clouds to see our chutes until about 500 feet," said Cunningham.

As Cunningham is still around to attest (Eisele died in 1987; Schirra died in 2007), Apollo 7 landed safely, though a bit off-kilter.

"It wasn't totally upside down, it was on its side," said Cunningham, describing his spacecraft's "Stable 2" orientation before balloons inflated to right the capsule.

Lifted out of the Atlantic Ocean into a helicopter that would land them on the deck of the USS Essex aircraft carrier, Cunningham, Schirra and Eisele were in for one more surprise.

A U.S. Navy helicopter recovers the Apollo 7 crew of Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham after their splashdown on Oct. 22, 1968. The 11-day flight tested the Apollo command and service modules in Earth orbit, paving the way to the moon. (Image credit: NASA)

"One of the guys on the helicopter had a bottle a booze and offered us a drink," revealed Cunningham to both laughter and applause.

The guests at the Frontiers of Flight Museum  including eight of Cunningham's fellow astronauts  toasted his success on Saturday.

"Walt, congratulations on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 7 mission. We have been talking about this for a few years and it's finally here and it is fabulous," said Cheryl Sutterfield-Jones, president and CEO of the museum.

Seated adjacent to the display of his command module, Cunningham regaled the audience with details of the Apollo 7 flight, prompted by the event's emcee, radio host Mark Davis.

"Fifty years ago this week, 50 years ago right now, Walt Cunningham, Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele, America's first three-man crew, were paving the path to the first moon landing that would happen less than a year later. At splashdown 50 years ago Monday, Apollo 7 was an unmitigated success," said Davis.

"It is really an honor to be here today on the 50th anniversary of one of the most important days of my life," said Cunningham. "Apollo 7 was a part of the one the most extraordinary achievements in our nation's history."

The first crewed mission of NASA's lunar landing program, Apollo 7 launched on a Saturn IB rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Oct. 11, 1968, 19 months after a fire claimed the lives of the Apollo 1 crew atop the same launch pad. Cunningham, Schirra and Eisele had been the backup crew for the Apollo 1 astronauts.

"We thought, rightly or wrongly, that we could overcome all of the obstacles and that our goal was worth the risk," said Cunningham.

"We were not there for the fun of it, nor for the notoriety and certainly not for the money," he added. "During Apollo 7, I earned $660."

Walt Cunningham, with his wife Dot, pose in front of the Apollo 7 command module at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018. The couple were the guests of honor at a 50th anniversary gala for the Apollo 7 mission. (Image credit: collectSPACE.com)

The mission confirmed that the Apollo command and service modules were capable and ready to support sending subsequent crews to the moon. Among the guests joining the gala Saturday were four of the 24 astronauts who made that journey: Bill Anders of Apollo 8, Thomas Stafford of Apollo 10, Charlie Duke of Apollo 16 and Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17.

The evening event served as a fundraiser for the Frontiers of Flight's Exploration Space Initiative, which includes the museum's planned Space Flight Gallery that will open in phases beginning in 2019. The new exhibition will return to display an Apollo-recovered moon rock and feature a new interactive kiosk where guests, and particularly children, will be able to learn more about Cunningham.

"Walt Cunningham is a mandatory learning subject for kids in school," explained Sutterfield-Jones. "In Texas, we have something called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills and as part of those standards it says, 'learn something about Walt Cunningham.'"

During the gala, renowned portraiture artist Maceij Maga unveiled his latest work, a charcoal rendering of the Apollo 7 crew with their command module, which will be displayed near the capsule in the new space gallery.

The evening also included a tribute from Texas' Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who with his wife served as the celebration's honorary chair.

"Apollo 7 was a crucial flight," said Patrick. "Had Apollo 7 not gone as perfectly as it did, then we would not have made the timetable to land on the moon as President Kennedy set by the end of the decade. This flight, that capsule, Walt Cunningham, Wally and Donn paved the way for us.

See more photos from the Frontiers of Flight Museum's Apollo 7 50th anniversary gala at collectSPACE.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2018 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.



ABCs newest comedy about a unique yet relatable family comes out of the gate strong. Is it saddled with a slightly tedious title and an opening sequence too much like The Goldbergs? Yes it has both those flaws. However, other than a truly lame line of dialogue and a somewhat tasteless joke, there are no other jarring weaknesses. Its the 1970s, an era I am very familiar with. And by that I mean I have seen every episode of CHiPs, The Bionic Woman, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Wonder Woman. So I know everything naturally. Thankfully, this show isnt about to lean on nostalgia, choosing to showcase its characters in the pilot instead. There are several of them, and I love that the pilot manages to give them all something memorable to do.



The Clearys are mighty in number. No less than eight boys! The self-proclaimed middle child Timmy is our narrator, and the casting of Jack Gore is perfect. Hes weary of being lost in the kerfuffle and overshadowed by his older siblings drama and achievements.And musical theater seems like a promising outlet. Unfortunately, an audition into a nearby childrens theater costs money, and as Mrs. Peggy Cleary (Mary McCormack) says, they dont have the wherewithal for any of the boys to be special. (Special also includes having asthma or requiring store-bought ketchup). The pride and joy of the Cleary blood is Lawrence (Sam Straley) the luscious-locked oldest son who is destined for the priesthood. Until he announces that hes quitting seminary. This news is most unwelcome to second son Eddie (Caleb Foote) who fears he will be asked to take up the collar next. But eavesdropping tattletale Frank (Sawyer Barth) spills Eddies dirty laundry. A secret girlfriend! Eddie brings said girlfriend Wendy to meet his mom, who has some very cutting things to say about the longevity of their relationship. Thankfully, Wendy knows the way to a moms heart. For now, shes on the nice list. The last of the older boys is Joey (Christopher Richards), the smooth talker. He borrows his bros money without asking and utilizes his treehouse to spy on the lady next door. Joey does give Timmy some helpful advice on how to raise money for his audition though. Then theres William (Andy Walken), a bookworm and sci-fi fan (boy is he going to be thrilled in a few years when Star Wars comes out). Pat (Santino Barnard) is the second youngest, with sophisticated taste buds and adorable glasses. The youngest is Baby Cleary.Favorite scenes of the pilot were Mike (Michael Cudlitz)s heart to heart with Lawrence out in the desert. Cudlitz is really great in this pilot, and he shines here. Mike is honest with Lawrence about how he wanted his son to get a job that was more respected. Mike, a World War II veteran, works in a weapon manufacturing facility. His own father spent his life working in a coal mine. He speaks to Lawrence about how he only plays a tiny role in making other peoples visions a reality and how that stings sometimes. Some version of a college degree is all he asks Lawrence to consider. And when Mike describes the one part that he made on the rocket, its unexpectedly poignant. His job might be mundane, but he takes pride in it.The next great scene was Timmys audition. Hes struck nearly mute the first time he gets up on stage. Unbeknownst to him, his mom (and Frank) have just come in the back. She gets that pitying mom face on, the ones moms get before they rush over with a Band-Aid. But then the piano starts. William got up on stage to help his big brother. Timmys voice gets stronger, and joy takes over. Peggy leaves, declaring to Frank that hes excellent. Timmy gets understudy, and the episode ends with Peggy making him a costume. Theres something about family supporting each others dreams that gets to me every single time.Fringe Knots:Frank sleeping under the table is something that I also did as a kid when my large family visited friends or family with smaller houses. Its considered the best part of the floor to sleep on, because people are less likely to sleep on you.Also, Franks commitment to blabbing is admirable.("I'm sorry. I didn't hear about the priest part. I only heard about Eddie's secret girlfriend.")Every scene with the boys crushing each other to get food is spot on!Wendy literally looks like a Madame Alexander Wendy doll!



Hours before we continue the second half of our season, I'm back! And boy do we have some things to discuss. Mostly about how much I still don't like Peach but the whole dad thing is a pretty heavy talking point as well, not to mention that whole Peach getting murdered aspect, too. It would be an understatement to say a lot has happened in my absence. So, let's pick up where I last left you, just after the infamous eight seconds between Joe and Beck.



The Captain





As Beck and Joe lay in bed and lament the sex that barely happened, we are treated to both of their inner monologues on the subject. As Beck gets a text from "The Captain", she excuses herself to bathroom to exchange messages about meeting up with him as Joe watches the conversation from her old phone. Convinced The Captain could be someone to worry about, Joe of course decides to follow Beck to the meet-up only to discover that The Captain is Beck's dead father who, obviously, is not very dead, and that they are meeting up for a Charles Dickens festival. As Joe stands in the shadows of the festival, Beck interacts with the new family her father has married into and it's clear that neither party is a fan of the other. Beck eventually discovers Joe at the festival, but he is able to play this off since he is an avid book lover. After introducing Joe to the family and inviting him to eat with them later, we learn that most of Beck's stories about her father were true. He was an addict and he did overdose. However, the overdose did not kill him. He instead left Beck and her mom after a relapse and ended up getting clean, thanks to a blogger with kids, which would end up being his new family. Rather than tell that terrible story to everyone, Beck simply tells people that her father is dead, because it's easier, and true to her in a figurative sense. This is a real thing people do, too. I once saw a family have a memorial service for another family member they considered dead to them. This stuff happens, people! Anyways, dinner predictably isn't a very cheery meal and ends with Beck storming away from the table. Joe leaves to comfort her and offer suggestions on how to move forward (including "jokingly" asking if she wants him dead), but she blows up at him as well and asks him to leave. Next, it's her dad's turn to try and salvage things. She calms down a bit more, but things are still not sunshine and roses. Later that night, Beck remembers a bit of Joe's advice and begins working on a story for class, which is later praised by Blythe in a text message. Despite receiving a text from Peach saying she needs help moving things because she has bed bugs, Beck shows up a Joe's apartment. In light of the great story she was able to write due thanks to his advice, she has come to apologize to him by letting him redeem his eight seconds. Not expecting this visit, Joe has left tons of evidence of his stalking around the apartment, but he is able to cleverly hide all of it as he and Beck make out all over the apartment. Things are all good for Joe in the end. He has Beck, the sex was better, and he managed to returnto Peach's bookshelf while she was out of her apartment.Now a solidified part of Beck's life, Joe is now subjected to spending time with Beck's friends, all of whom he despises. Peach, of course, is his least favorite, because, well, Peach is just so hard to be around. It doesn't help that she's constantly trying to see through his lies and referring to him as "Joseph" is a condescending tone. She even tries to bait him into incriminating himself for the theft of her book that has now been returned to her. She is unsuccessful. When Beck's friend, Annika, comes to the bookstore and offers to help bring more attention to the store via social media, Joe does a deep dive and discovers and old photo of her with Peach, who had a distinctly different nose than she does now. Joe convinces Annika to post the photo now and shortly after, a mysterious new page posts a video of drunk Annika saying some fairly racists sounding things, resulting in a massive drop in Annika's reputation. Joe's money is on Peach (as is mine), but she of course would never admit to doing such a thing. If that wasn't enough, Peach gets worse. When Beck tells her about a jobs-for-hire opportunity she's received, Peach pretends to just realize she's friends with an important publisher, Roger, she could have introduced Beck to this entire time. She insists on a party at Joe's bookstore to set up the meeting, which Joe agrees to because he loves Beck and she thinks she wants this. As Beck and Roger begin talking, Peach engages Joe in conversation as they watch. Joe mentions he's running now, which Peach uses as an opportunity to take a dig at his eight second mishap. A few undercut insults later, Peach declares that Beck is lucky to have her, because she doesn't usually know what's best for herself, but Peach knows. Joe later sneaks away from the party with Peach's bag to do some research and discovers a strange photo of Beck in her notebook. While returning the bag, he overhears Peach and Roger having a conversation about getting Beck to drop out because her stuff isn't great. Joe decides he has to get into Peach's laptop and steals it, but returns it to her place in time for her to come to his apartment and accuse him of stealing it in front of Beck. Joe then confronts Beck about not sticking up for him to Peach and tells her Roger isn't actually interested in her writing, but she refuses to believe this and leaves a bit angry. During this time Joe is able to crack Peach's laptop code (beckalicious) and learns that Peach is completely obsessed with Beck and wants her all to herself. Beck also learns Peach isn't so great when Roger tries to take advantage of her and tells her the truth when she refuses him. She blows up at Peach and heads back to Joe, so they can spend the night together. They're interrupted, however, when Peach calls to say she's killing herself, but Joe discovers from her food intake log that the pills she's taken are nowhere near enough to kill a person. Of course, he looks terrible when he tries to suggest something, and they decide it's best if he leaves. The next day, Joe attacks Peach with a rock on her morning run and leaves her for dead. Thinking he's won, he returns to find Paco's mom's boyfriend unconscious in the hallway and learns that Paco has drugged him. Joe saves him and is beaten to a pulp for his struggles. However, he's still blissful about Peach's death, until Beck calls to say she's visiting Peach in the hospital. Continuing to play the part of the supportive boyfriend, Joe shows up with a balloon at a gathering to support Peach's recovery and Peach stares daggers at him the entire time. While Joe and Beck enjoy a moment alone in the kitchen, Peach comes to interrupt. Despite standing right next to Joe, Peach tells Beck that "Joseph" should leave because "male energy" isn't good for her "healing space" and tells her to give Joe his balloon back. She doesn't say this to Joe directly because she can't handle confrontation right now. If that wasn't enough to annoy him, Joe finds a flight itinerary in Peach's bag for her and Beck to go to France, which he deduces is her final attempt to have Beck all to herself. Even more, Beck tells him the next day that Peach asked her to come with her for the weekend to her estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. He tries to warn her that Peach is in love with her, but Beck doesn't want to hear it and leaves the store mildly peeved at Joe. It's not all bad, though! Paco's mom is grateful Joe hasn't pressed charges and offers him one no questions asked favor he can cash in at any time. So, there's that. But, back to his problems. Joe decides he won't let Peach get away with any of this and is determined to get to her estate, even after his car has a run-in with a deer and leaves him with a large gash and a concussion. He tries to search the house and sew up his wound while Peach and Beck are out for the day, but his concussion-induced hallucinations/memories of the weekend he suspected Candace was cheating on him get in the way, as does his fainting onto the floor. He comes to just in time for Beck and Peach to return, which starts a fun little sneaking journey for Joe to find the gun he ends up seeing in Peach's purse. This journey begins with him peeing in a jar after watching Peach watch Beck take a bath, and ends with him under a bed while Peach tries to incite a drug/alcohol induced threesome with their friend, Raj, on top of said bed. Beck realizes what's going on (her and Peach making out was a pretty strong hint) and decides she wants none of this, leaving Peach and Raj to have their own fun while Joe is forced to listen and exchange cute messages with Beck.The next morning, Beck confronts Peach about the night before, but Peach turns it around and accuses Beck of remembering the night wrong so she didn't have to take responsibility for her part in the evening. Rude. Beck leaves, completely fed up with Peach, leaving Peach and Joe alone in the house. Joe decides the only course of action is to shoot Peach, but he has one last Candace hallucination that involves shouting, which obviously catches Peach's attention. When he comes out of it, Peach knocks him out and then holds him at gunpoint as we realize she's figured pretty much everything about Joe out, especially when she sees Benji's watch on his wrist. He reminds her that since he stole her laptop, he's seen all the pictures she has of Beck and says that his associate (Paco, of course!) will release everything if he dies. He tries to negotiate a sort of peaceful truce between them, but Peach just opts to try and murder him. The resulting chase/struggle ends with Peach's demise, which Joe decides to frame as a suicide, given her history. Things are looking good for Joe as he cashes in his favor with Paco's mom to get himself stitched up and Beck asks him to stay with her after Peach's funeral, solidifying him as the most important person in her life now. However, he undoubtedly left fingerprints all over that estate, not to mention that the jar he peed in is still there as well, so that could easily put a damper on his current happiness.I'm not letting this die, I'm too stubborn for that. For week one, I'm going to nominate Beck herself as the book of the week, as she truly became an open book to us. We got to further explore her nuances and learn all of her secrets. If not all of them, at least her biggest secret: her father isn't dead. While she has been lying to everyone about this secret, she also sort of hasn't. Her father, the man she knew and loved, truly is dead for all intents and purposes. However, minus the new, less than perfect family, he's better off than he was, and I really hope she realizes this and starts trying to form a better relationship with her father in the future.Happily, week two gave usto sink our teeth into. A classic tale of revenge, Joe gave this book to Paco to teach him that value of being patient and outsmarting your enemy, rather than attacking outright without thinking of the repercussions. Unfortunately, Paco wants to end his mom's relationship now and doesn't heed any of Joe's advice from the book. Coincidentally, Joe also doesn't take this advice when he decides his best course of action is to bash Peach over the head with a rock during her morning run. To Joe I would say, practice what you preach, and don't attack Peach.For week three, I'll call Peach the open book. Granted, we're only getting a look at things from Joe's perspective, but most of these things just objectively make her a bad person. It's fun to watch Joe criticize everything Peach does, especially when he does half of those things as well in less obvious ways. Now that we've read Peach for the Beck-obsessed person that she is, we really know most of her motivations and can put her on the same level as Joe. He murders for Beck, and she (probably) fakes suicide attempts for Beck. How fun. Though I never condone Joe's murderous ways, I will say Beck is probably better off without Peach, and I'm much happier knowing I won't have to listen to her constant condescension every episode.In my opinion, this show has continued to improve as it's gone on. The tension has really increased as I continue to care more about what happens to Joe and Beck, especially when I realize that Joe has had an overall very positive effect on Beck's life. She's no longer dating a cheating boyfriend who doesn't care about her, her writing has become more inspired, she's overall happier, and now she's back down to just one stalker since her controlling, manipulative "best friend" is dead. Now, I 100% do not approve of any of the methods used to get Beck's life to its current state, but the life of present-day Beck is objectively better than it was when we first met her. I can't wait to see what twisty paths we'll be taking in these last four episodes, and I have high hopes for a gripping finale.Where do you stand with Joe now? Are you happy we've seen the last of Peach? Do you think Joe will remember he needs to go back to that house and hope the cops haven't found all of the incriminating evidence against him? Sound off in the comments below!The on-again, off-again and long-awaited merger between Danbury-based Praxair and Linde AG gained its final regulatory approval on Monday and the transaction creating the worlds largest industrial gas company is expected to close by the end of the month.

The deal will create a merger of equals with the companies having equal representation on the board of directors. Steve Angel, current CEO of Praxair, will remain as CEO of the new company, which will be called Linde and be worth $46 billion.

The closing of the all-stock transaction is expected to take place by Oct. 31. The companies have more than 80,000 employees across more than 100 countries. They serve more than two million customers.

Today marks an important milestone in the formation of our new company, Angel said in a statement. It is a privilege for me to lead the talented people of two world-class organizations as we come together to form the undisputed leader in our industry. I am confident this team will create long-term value for all Linde plc stakeholders.

Shares of Praxair will end on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 30, and Linde shares will start on Oct. 31 under the symbol LIN. Linde is based in Munich and shares will stop selling on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Oct. 26 and start under the symbol LIN on Oct. 29. As part of the agreement, Praxair shareholders will receive one share of Linde for each share of Praxair stock. Linde AG shareholders will receive 1.54 shares of Linde plc for each share tendered.

The merger creates a company with market capitalization of approximately $90 billion, according to Linde officials. The deal will leverage the strengths of each company, Linde officials added, with Lindes expertise in engineering and technology and Praxairs specialty in operations.

Linde officials said value driven by targeted annual synergies and cost efficiencies are expected to save the new company $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion over the next three years.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said he has not heard from Praxair officials on what impact the merger will have on the companys headquarters in the city. Praxair employs about 400 people in Danbury after moving its headquarters from the Matrix Corporate Center into the Berkshire Corporate park in 2016. Praxair paid $20 million for the former GE Capital building, with the purchase and renovation of the building assisted by a $30 million state incentive package.

Ive heard nothing about it and generally thats a good thing, Boughton said. I think they are committed to the Danbury area.

On Monday, Praxair and Linde AG gained conditional approval from the Federal Trade Commission, pending the sale of nine industrial gas markets to allay antitrust concerns. The approval was the last major hurdle for the merger following the August approval by the European Union.

The leadership team of Linde plc will consist of three executives from each company.

The merger of Linde and Praxair is a compelling and transformative combination and an unparalleled opportunity for the customers, shareholders and employees of our combined company, Wolfgang Reitzle, who will serve as chairman of Linde plcs board of directors, said in a statement.

Following several failed attempts to merge starting in 2016, the companies announced a definitive business combination agreement in June 2017. Since then, the companies have faced challenged such as union opposition, shareholder skepticism and demanding antitrust regulators.

The writer may be reached at cbosak@heastmediact.com; 203-731-3338Democratic Republic of Congo opposition leaders are heading to South Africa to try to agree on a single candidate to challenge President Joseph Kabila's anointed successor with time running out before the December vote.

Months after announcing they would back one person to run against Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, there's still no consensus on who it will be. The delay is eroding the opposition's ability to capitalize on the broad-based support a single candidate could command. A failure to unify would fracture the opposition vote and increase Shadary's chances of becoming the next leader of the world's main source of cobalt and Africa's biggest copper producer.

"It's essential the opposition designate a unity candidate as soon as possible," said Stephanie Wolters, head of the peace and security research program at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa. "If you look at recent opinion polls, it's almost impossible that Shadary could beat a unity opposition candidate in credible elections."

While the official campaign for the Dec. 23 vote kicks off in late November, Shadary -- the nominee of the ruling Common Front for Congo, or FCC -- is touring the country and holding rallies. Opposition candidates already face challenges in getting their message out because most of their rallies have been banned or violently dispersed since September 2016.

The highest-profile candidates candidates still in the running -- Felix Tshisekedi, the head of Congo's largest opposition party, and Vital Kamerhe, who finished third in a 2011 presidential election -- are among the leaders traveling to South Africa this week, their spokesmen Paul Tshilumbu and Michael Moto said Monday from the capital, Kinshasa.

An opinion poll published in July by New York University's Congo Research Group found Tshisekedi and former Katanga Governor Moise Katumbi would be the most popular candidates, each gaining 19 percent of the vote. Jean-Pierre Bemba would finish just behind on 17 percent, the survey showed.

Katumbi, a onetime Kabila ally who has been in self-imposed exile for more than two years, was blocked by Congolese authorities in August from returning to the country to register his candidacy. Bemba, acquitted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court in June, has been disqualified by the electoral commission because of a second conviction by The Hague-based court for witness-tampering.

There are seven prominent opposition politicians who aspire to be the next head of state that have pledged to support a single candidate.

Kamerhe and Tshisekedi want the opposition's flag-bearer to be picked this month to have enough time to mobilize people and resources, Kamerhe and Tshilumbu said. Others, including Bemba, Katumbi and Martin Fayulu, who is authorized to run, want the seven leaders to agree on a common manifesto before selecting someone to head the campaign.

"We mustn't put the plow before the oxen," Bemba said in an interview. The leaders will discuss a common agenda and the candidate at their meeting in South Africa, Tshilumbu and Moto said.

Another issue sure to come up for debate is the demand that the electoral commission, known as CENI, reverse plans to use touch-screen voting that they've derided as "cheating machines" and in violation of Congolese law. They also insist on the removal of millions of voters from the electoral roll they say are fictional.

"We don't support the voting machines, but will not boycott the elections because that would be abdicating and giving a present to Kabila," Tshilumbu said. Bemba said a final and collective decision would eventually need to be made on how to respond if CENI doesn't acquiesce.

The opposition leaders' popularity is geographically concentrated, so pooling votes will be crucial not just to winning the presidency, but also the national and provincial parliaments which choose the prime minister, senators and 26 governors.

Katumbi, Bemba, Kamerhe and Tshisekedi can all marshal considerable support in different parts of the country. Three of the still eligible candidates are bound to be disappointed but they, as well as the excluded potential kingmakers, say the primary goal is to defeat Kabila's candidate.

"I will bow to it and campaign with my base for whoever is chosen," Kamerhe said in an interview. "If anyone plays solo, he'll lose the opposition the opportunity to have a real change of power."Following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, there have been many calls for reexamining the U.S.-Saudi relationship, even for imposing sanctions. As an economist, I understand there are diplomatic fine points to this relationship that lie beyond my expertise, but still: It is worth reviewing the economic and exchange-based reasons why U.S.-Saudi relations have been so robust.

First, trade between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is currently about $24 billion per year. You might think that the U.S. is now energy-independent, but many U.S. allies, most notably Japan, rely on oil imports. Part of the larger U.S. foreign policy stance is promising those allies freedom from major supply disruptions.

The Saudis typically have recycled their petrodollar surpluses, investing them in American enterprises. As for the other major regional powers: Turkey doesn't have the oil, and Iran, with its much larger population, is more likely to invest surplus revenue at home (and furthermore is afraid of confiscation, given its longstanding pariah status). Whether you like it or not, the Saudis are America's natural business ally.

The connections between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia run much deeper than the import-export ledger, however. One feature of the geography of Saudi Arabia is that its major oil fields stand apart and can be taken over without controlling the major Saudi cities. That is one reason why the Saudis were so wary of Saddam Hussein.

That risk means the Saudis are especially dependent on American military protection. In turn, the U.S. knows it has a lot of leverage over the Saudis, and therefore making deals with the Saudis involves easier enforcement and lower transaction costs. The same cannot be said of deals with Iran. So in the Saudi-Iran rivalry, the U.S. ends up siding with the Saudis.

Historically, Iran has been a very difficult country to capture or control, and the population has fought fiercely to defend Iranian territorial integrity. Iran doesn't need American protection to the same degree as do the Saudis, and so Iran is more willing to be prickly or openly hostile to the U.S.

Iran shared a border with the former Soviet Union (though not Russia) and shares Caspian Sea rights with Russia, and the two countries often have had close and cordial relations. Iran also is easier than Saudi Arabia for China to reach with its One Belt, One Road initiative, which aims to build close ties with the countries to its west. In sum, Iran is going to diversify its geopolitical bets, which pulls it away from the U.S., even if the issues surrounding nuclear weapons and support for terrorism somehow were resolved.

When it comes to the Saudis, America has strongly encouraged the government to take what is effectively a fairly pro-Israel stance, including in security and military cooperation. There is no comparable deal to be had with the less dependent Iran or Turkey, and so this also leads to a relatively close relationship with the Saudis. Whether for reasons of geography, military power or economics, Israel and Saudi Arabia are America's natural partners in the region.

The Saudis in the past (less so now) have been an oil swing producer, with the ability to lower the price and damage the financial prospects of President Vladimir Putin's Russia. That too has kept the U.S. interested in good relations.

Of course, the Saudis have abused their position. They are dependent on the U.S., but they also know America has few other potential regional partners for cooperation on such a large scale. And so the Saudis have engaged in human-rights abuses over the decades, figuring it may harm but will not irrevocably damage relations with America.

Americans may now feel they have gone too far with the killing of Khashoggi, but America has been complicit in such a relationship for decades. The death penalty is used against Saudi political prisoners, and had been used against women found guilty of adultery. It's a familiar pattern: The Saudis won't do as much to respect human rights as Americans might like.

Still, America should now demand higher human-rights standards from the Saudis, as well as from other allies, and I rue the turn the Trump administration has taken in the opposite direction. But I cannot help but feel that too much of the discussion of Khashoggi is being used to skewer President Donald Trump and his hostility toward the media, rather than being set in a broader understanding of American history with the Saudis. There is too much rage and not enough analysis of why ties with the Saudis have proven so strong.

For better or worse, tolerating the killing of Khashoggi is the kind of foreign policy decision that the U.S. has been making for many decades. Americans are now behaving like Captain Renault in the movie "Casablanca," shocked to discover that there is gambling in the casino. And they will be shocked again when their protestations do not, in fact, set everything right.

- - -

Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream."I t is time to think about cities  the megacities that drive global growth. One reason is that a forecast a few days ago from Euro- monitor predicted that Jakarta, with 35.6 million people, would have passed Tokyo by 2030 to become the worlds largest city. Another is that Oxford Economics predicts that the London conurbation will pull clear of Los Angeles to become the urban area with the third largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, after New York and Tokyo, by 2035.

Start with London, since we are here and these are bumpy times. Then lets think about the way urbanisation is dominating the emerging world. Then the tough question: can megacities flourish in ways that protect the environment?

Go back 40 years and the received wisdom was that London would continue to lose population. It had peaked in 1939 at 8.6 million but had shrunk to around 6.5 million by the early 1990s. This was welcomed by officialdom. There was even a Location of Offices Bureau founded in 1963, whose job it was to push jobs out of London. They ran cute ads on the Tube: Move out of London  get more out of life.

Now we are probably around nine million. The most recent official estimate was for 2016 and that was 8,787,892, which may well have been underestimated. If you take the urban agglomeration  London plus its commuter zone in the home counties  it is closer to 15 million. It is this mass of people that generates the GDP and creates the market.

Why is this happening? Why is London still pulling ahead of Paris, the only other global city in Europe?

There is no comprehensive answer, but we can see elements of it. One is that service industries need to cluster. You can manufacture things more or less anywhere, as the world does nowadays. But excellence in services needs clusters of clever people. So, as the balance of output shifts from manufacturing to services, megacities that can offer a wide range of services prosper relative to second-tier cities which cant, however competent and attractive they may happen to be.

London benefits on this count as the magnet for professional expertise from abroad, for it is host to the largest non-national professional community on earth. An ever more global economy needs a handful of these magnet cities, perhaps as few as one in each time zone. These include New York and London, maybe Singapore, and presumably Mumbai, Shanghai and Tokyo. London has the advantage of being particularly open to foreign talent  leading to the question as to what extent it will retain that quality in the years ahead.

If urbanisation has, until relatively recently, been a feature of the developed world, that is now changing. It is not just a question of Jakarta passing Tokyo, though if that does indeed happen it will be the first time since the Industrial Revolution that the largest city in the world is not in a developed country. London was the first city to have more than five million people, New York 10 million and Tokyo 20 million.

If you take a conurbation of more than 10 million people as a megacity, there are now 33 such cities in the world, according to Euromonitor. Out of these, 26 are in developing countries. By 2030 there will be another 39 megacities, of which 31 will be in the developing world. Indeed, by then the pecking order in terms of size will be Jakarta, Tokyo, Karachi, Manila and Cairo (which will have become Africas largest city, with a population of nearly 30 million).

To many this will seem a troubling prospect, but I suggest that we should try not to see the giant cities of the emerging world through Western eyes. They may look chaotic  Cairo certainly does  but they may offer a better standard of living to their citizens than would be available in the rural areas. People flock to cities because they offer opportunity. Infrastructure inevitably takes time to catch up. In the meantime, technology is helping.

Electric bikes and scooters are making cities quieter. Shenzhen in China has been billed as the first quiet megacity, with electric buses as well as scooters. Technology platforms are improving public transport. Cities are becoming better at managing water supplies, sometimes of necessity. Witness Cape Towns response to the recent severe drought: it cut water usage in half.A memory: Im 10 years old and, for the first time, allowed to walk to a local newsagent, without my parents. A first bite of freedom  it tastes of fizzy cola bottles and Freddos, plus Sugar magazine and magnet earrings to celebrate independence.

Weeks later, at a friends house; returning from a similar solo walk, this time with marshmallows (that wed later toast in a toaster, starting a small fire and a long pocket-money repayment scheme). Almost home, my friend recognised a slow Peugeot; her dad was following us. Hed been worried, he explained! She cried  shed thought he trusted her; she felt betrayed.

That wouldnt happen today. Now teens are willingly  because its the caveat that gave them an iPhone  tracked on apps such as Life360. Spouses do the same, submitting to 24/7 surveillance.

Mostly the techs use is benign. But its growing, fast. At dinner with a friend last week, she watched her babysitters boyfriend arrive via her homes CCTV app and grew frenzied. Should I say something? But shell know Im watching...

I was beach-side in Greece last week, logging into my Ring video doorbell every time it buzzed with a motion alert.

Mostly it was squirrels and foxes; hardly the right way to switch off on holiday, but the apps make it easier to deal with deliveries or watch over your home; theyre helpful life companions.

Is tech-stalking OK, though?

Run by flaw-filled humans, they can be tools for abuse: the woman whose partner started controlling her wi-fi usage and blocking her from their homes smart heating; the doorbell cameras used to track cheating spouses; Amazons listening device Alexa recording and disseminating private conversations.

The robots can be brilliant household additions.

But we need to think twice about what power we allow them to wield.

Play by the rules this Halloween

Halloween: how soon is too soon? Houses in my road are already dripping with fake cobwebs. Social media is full of moaners anticipating trick-or-treaters with dread. But theres a strict etiquette around my way: kids knock at houses with pumpkins and ignore the rest. Those who want to get involved, do; those who dont, hide.

My personal rule is: the pumpkin stays out for the little kids until 7pm-ish  then it disappears when the drive-by teenagers arrive, tumbling out of their parents 4x4s for a sugar-grab, then getting back in the car to the next house.

Too lazy to deserve my Haribo.

I get a sinking feeling about Titanic II

Australian firm Blue Star Line says its back on track with plans to create Titanic II, a full replica with all the luxury of today, after legal wrangles delayed the project.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic / IMAGE NET

The ship will follow the same route as the original, apparently, sailing from Southampton to New York. But why replicate building what was literally a sinking ship?

Theres obviously a whiff of PR about it all  the Australians are already dangling the exclusive rights for global partners to leverage the Titanic ll brand for use in their licensing, advertising and marketing campaigns.

But what bad taste. More than 1,500 died on the original Titanic.

Theres also  despite the best efforts of the film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet  a suggestion of historical ignorance about the ships fate at Blue Star Line.

It braggingly promises passengers an authentic Titanic experience.

Surely in the cruising world, the Titanic experience is the one holiday ending you want to avoid.

Safety first, and particularly online

A study from consumer group Which? finds Amazon and eBay selling potentially deadly carbon monoxide and smoke detectors.

While high street shops sell only certified models which meet safety standards, outmoded legislation means online trading is Wild West.

Amazon and eBay withdrew the products once alerted by Which? but more will crop up.When it comes to buying your annual winter pair of boots, the temptation is to filter price low to high on Net-a-Porter or toddle off to Topshop, but sitting somewhere between the high end designer and high street brands are a bevy of boutique bootmakers well worth a gander.

They're making shoes that are infinitely more aesthetically interesting than anything youll find on the high street and as good quality as most household name designers, minus the price tag.

Whether youre looking for an of-the-minute cowboy style or something more classic, these are the brands that fashion girls the world over are loving right now.

1. Aeyde

Founded in 2015 by Luisa Krogmann and Constantin Langholz-Baikousis, Berlin-based Aeyde exploded on the street style scene this season, with everyone from Lucy Williams to Blanca Miro seen sporting their strappy sandals and cowboy boots. All the shoes are crafted in Italy from the finest calf leather and each comes with a hand sewn signature stitch; a symbol of the brands commitment to superior craftsmanship. And the quality shows - as someone who spent the whole of Paris Fashion Week pacing the streets in their Leandra style, I can attest to their supreme comfyness.

Good quality, comfortable and super chic footwear at prices starting from 250? Thats what Id call a bootie unicorn.

2. Neous

Currently in its sixth season, Neous is a brand born from a ten-year friendship between fashion stylist Vanissa Antonious (ex-Harpers Bazaar Australia and Harpers Bazaar UK) and Alan Buanne, a trained cordwainer whos designed footwear for Peter Pilotto, House of Holland and Nicholas Kirkwood. The brands Bauhaus-inspired bold, minimalist designs are constructed in supple calfskin and meltingly soft suede, and come on Italian lasts and hand-carved wooden block heels. Simple yet striking, these boots are as comfortable as they are chic.

Boots from 545. Neous.co.uk

3. By Far

Like your shoes chic but noticeable? Look no further than cult cordwainers ByFar.

The Bulgarian brand only launched back in 2016 but its come a long way in a short time, and already boasts high-profile fans like Miroslava Duma, Aimee Song and the Haim sisters. All their styles, which are handmade in a family-run factor in Italy, err on the right side of vintage-looking, and the colourways and heel heights make them versatile enough to feel like special everyday shoes. This summer ByFar became the go-to brand for Carrie Bradshaw-inspired, square-toed sandals and their winter offering is no less tempting, with low-heeled Victoriana lace up and silky sock boots aplenty.

Boots from 430. Byfarshoes.com

4. Maryam Nassir Zadeh

New York designer, retailer, and showroom owner Maryam Nassir Zadeh is one of those cool girls whose brands is really just an extension of her own enviable personal style. An interplay between vintage references and art school flourishes, Zadehs kooky-cool designs have long been insider favourites among the style set.

Prices start from $476. Mnzstore.com

5. Dorateymur

Turkish born Dora Teymur launched his namesake brand, Dorateymur, in 2012 while studying Accessory and Footwear design at Cordwainers School at the London College of Fashion. His contemporary, sculptural shoes, all handcrafted in Portugal, are instantly recognisable for their dandyish Louis XVI-esque aesthetic and his Nizipi boots, with their trademark silver ring adornment, have become a style staple for fashion girls in the know.

Fans of the brand will be pleased to hear that for autumn hes added a capsule collection of handbags to the range.At the 2017 Invictus Games in Toronto, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry made their first public debut as a couple.

Fast forward twelve months and the now married couple attended their second Invictus Games in Sydney over the weekend as part of their first official royal tour, which commenced shortly after it was announced that the newlyweds are also expecting their first child in spring 2019.

Although a lot has changed, some things havent - one being Meghans go-to brand for jeans.

While it was her prophetic 'Husband Shirt' that hit headlines at the 2017 Invictus Games, fashion fans were also quick to uncover the brand behind the actress's perfect distressed jeans.

Meghan Markle wears Mother Denim at the Invictus Games in 2017 / Getty Images

The answer? LA-based brand Mother Denim, which had remained relatively under the radar. Thanks, though, to the new duchess, the denim brand is a secret no more, especially as she continues to champion the brand in her royal life.

On day five of their royal tour Meghan arrived at the first day of the 2018 Invictus Games wearing a pair of Mother Denim jeans for a second year running.

Meghan wearing The Looker Not Guilty jeans by Mother Denim at the Invictus Games (Getty Images for the Invictus Games) / Getty Images for the Invictus Ga

In contrast to the previous year's distressed blue style, this year Meghan opted for a smarter black pair called The Looker Not Guilty jeans which retail for $196 (150).

Ever since Meghan shined a spotlight on the American denim brand, it has been easy to spot the A-list approved jeans in other stylish star's wardrobes (and Instagram feeds).

You name a celebrity and theyve worn them: the Kardashians? Check. The Hadids? Of course.

Gigi Hadid wearing Mother Denim / Robert O'neil/Splash News

Jourdan Dunn, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Mila Kunis, Emma Roberts and Kristen Stewart are also all firm fans of the brand, wearing them on several occasions. Meanwhile, Miranda Kerr loves them so much she designed a capsule collection for them in 2017.

With so many options to choose from, it's easy to see why so many celebs have made Mother Denim a staple in their off-duty looks. From their perfectly form-fitting skinny jeans to distressed high-rises and funky ruffled flares, the brand has every pair of jeans you could ever want.

Get Meghan Markle's Look

The Looker Not Guilty by Mother Denim, $196, Shop them now

Get Gigi Hadid's Look

Inside Crop Step Fray by Mother Denim, 250, Shop them now

Get Kendall Jenner's Look

Looker Ankle Fray by Mother Denim, $205, Shop them now

Get Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's Look

Cha Cha Fray Jeans by Mother Denim, 181, Shop them nowReview at a glance









I t is not every comedian who is introduced by Naomi Campbell, but then Dave Chappelle is no ordinary comedian. And this was no ordinary show, featuring not one, but two stand-up superstars as well as a supermodel.

Chappelles lifelong friend Jon Stewart was at his intelligent, satirical best. The former Daily Show host bemoaned his avocado-wrinkled skin and swiped at the folly of Brexit before focusing on Americas own self-inflicted wounds. It is a fair bet that after his account of a Twitter beef with Donald Trump he wont be receiving an Oval Office invite for a while.

If Stewart took time to build momentum Chappelle hit the ground running with uncompromising reflections on the heroin problem in Ohio, where he lives, and school shootings. The multiple Grammy and Emmy winner had an inventive solution to gun control. If every black person registered one he was sure the government would soon curb ownership.

His spellbinding appearance was brief but wide-ranging. One moment he was critiquing a Chuck Berry sex tape, the next calling Kanye Wests behaviour when meeting Donald Trump a manic episode, then discussing slavery and #MeToo. Insightful, articulate and at the height of his powers throughout.

The end the evening took a self-indulgent turn when the stars, plus support act Mo Amer and Michelle Wolf, who performed at this years White House Correspondents Dinner, gathered onstage. Amer and Wolf could barely get a word in as the headliners riffed and bantered Rat Pack-style during a fawning Q&A session.

Stewart recalled how he and Chappelle started out gigging in the same Middle Eastern restaurant and were paid in hummus. The rest of us were doing comedy, he was comedy, he said. On the basis of tonights set he still is.

October 22 (020 7589 8212, royalalberthall.com)Review at a glance









T his tragic-comic biopic is mostly set in 1953, the year Hollywood comedy legends Stan Laurel and Ollie Hardy toured the UK and Ireland in hopes of revitalising their careers and mending their friendship (damaged by Ollies willingness to make a movie, 1939s Zenobia, minus Stan).

Steve Coogan, these days, resembles a cross between Ryan Gosling and an anorexic moose, making him just right to play Laurel. Coogan nails the accent and signature moves.

Just as importantly he makes us believe in the flesh and blood man, who was the brains behind the operation. Coogans performance makes you want to hoot out loud. He also makes you want to shiver. Hes like a man possessed. Has Stan been inside him, all this time?

John C Reilly is just as incredible as Hardy. This actor makes great films greater and has been quietly doing so for years (did you notice him in Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Boogie Nights or Magnolia?). When Hardy and Laurel have an almighty row, Hardy accuses his partner of being a hollow man.

Perfect partners: Stan & Ollie co-stars Steve Coogan and John C Reilly / Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP

Reillys eyes let you in on a secret: this is Ollies private fear about himself. Reillys fat suit does its work well, but its Ollies multi-layered soul that makes the bigger impression. Someone give Reilly an Oscar. Please.

Stan and Ollie trailer

The writing by Jeff Pope (Oscar-nominated for Philomena) is delicious. He explores co-dependency, whips up hilarious lines for Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda (playing the chalk and cheese wives) and lampoons a post-war Britain dominated by oleaginous fixers (Rufus Jones is spot-on as the duos tour manager) and brain-dead toffs.I t's November 5, which means our minds can now turn to firework displays - even if we wont be standing in muddy fields and eating toffee apples in the cold.

We all know that today is when we light a bonfire and set off fireworks, but why do we do this? And who was Guy Fawkes?

Here's everything you need to know about Bonfire Night.

roven-images/Unsplash

What is Bonfire Night?

Every year people gather around in early November to celebrate Bonfire Night across the UK.

There are firework displays in public parks across the country and people light bonfires with an effigy to represent historical figure Guy Fawkes.

This quintessentially British activity each year refers to an event which could have changed the course of British history almost 400 years ago.

When is Bonfire Night 2020?

Bonfire Night 2018 - In Pictures 1 /13 Bonfire Night 2018 - In Pictures Fireworks over the skyline of Canary Wharf at the Royal Docks, east London. PA Fireworks over the skyline of Canary Wharf at the Royal Docks, east London. PA Fireworks over the skyline of Canary Wharf at the Royal Docks, east London. PA Fireworks light the sky as part of Diwali festival celebrations in Mumbai on November 4, 2018. AFP/Getty Images A lantern puppet is illuminated as part of the River of Light Festival, a free firework and light arts installations event hosted by Liverpool and Wirral city councils. PA Fireworks explode over the Mersey as part of the River of Light Festival, a free firework and light arts installation event hosted by Liverpool and Wirral city councils PA Fireworks in Whitley Bay. PA Participants parade through the town during the annual Bonfire Night festivities in Lewes, Britain, November 5, 2018. REUTERS Participants parade through the town during the annual Bonfire Night festivities in Lewes, Britain, November 5, 2018. REUTERS An effigy of Boris Johnson carrying the head of Theresa May is paraded through the streets of Lewes in East Sussex, southern England, on November 5, 2018, during the traditional Bonfire Night celebrations. AFP/Getty Images Participants parade through the town of Lewes in East Sussex during an annual bonfire night procession held by the Lewes Bonfire Societies. PA An effigy of Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May paraded through the streets of Lewes in East Sussex, southern England, on November 5, 2018, during the traditional Bonfire Night celebrations. AFP/Getty Images Participants parade through the town during the annual Bonfire Night festivities in Lewes, Britain, November 5, 2018. REUTERS

This year Bonfire Night falls on a Thursday, but every year it is celebrated on November 5.

Who was Guy Fawkes and what was the Gunpowder Plot?

In 1605, a group of Roman Catholic activists arranged "the Gunpowder Plot", an attempt to assassinate the Protestant King James I.

At the time, King James I reigned over a Protestant England but Robert Catesby and his band of 12 Catholics wanted greater religious tolerance and more freedom to practice their religion.

Guy Fawkes, an explosives expert, along with the rest of the group plotted to assassinate the king and blow up the Palace of Westminster during the state opening of Parliament.

Fawkes smuggled 36 barrels under the House of Lords into a cellar. However, he was caught and sent to the Tower of London, tortured to give up the names of his co-conspirators and then executed in January 1606 for high treason.T hieves on bicycles were committing more than 30 crimes a day in London at the height of a surge in offences this summer, new figures reveal.

They carried out a total of 910 offences in June, including 166 muggings and 618 snatches or thefts  the highest monthly total in three years.

The spike in cycle crime this summer came as the Met recorded a reduction in the number of offences involving mopeds and scooters.

One senior detective said there was evidence that some criminals were switching to cycles to avoid new police tactics targeting moped thugs .

The data shows there was a total of 6,900 offences involving suspects riding bicycles in 2017 compared with 4,379 crimes in 2015, a rise of nearly 60 per cent. Latest figures from the Met show cycle crimes continuing to rise this year, although at a lower rate.

There was a marked increase in the number of thefts, which has risen from 3,226 in 2015 to 4,693 offences last year. The number of robberies on bikes more than doubled over the same period with 586 offences in 2015 and 1,185 in 2017.

Figures also show that while the number of offences was rising, there was a significant fall in the number of crimes being solved.

Overall, less than three per cent of all offenders using bikes were caught in the eight months to last August, compared with more than four per cent in 2016. In cases of theft  usually phone snatches from pedestrians which are more difficult to solve  police solved just 26 out of 3,095 cases over the same period.

Keith Prince, a Tory member of the London Assembly, who obtained the figures, said: While the number of cycle-enabled crimes has rocketed, the proportion of offenders being caught is consistently falling.

"This is deeply damaging  criminals know that there is a dwindling possibility that they will be brought to justice, meaning that they have an incentive to offend over and over again.

Detective Superintendent Lee Hill said: We have in place policing tactics and are proactively targeting through daily operations those who use any stolen two-wheeled vehicle to commit crime, including pedal cycles.

Day bike thugs took tv crews 15k camera

Laurel Irving managed to take a photo of the thief escaping on his bicycle with the stolen equipment. / DM Published Images

Crime by bicycle robbers in London came to global attention when masked raiders forced an Australian TV crew to hand over a 15,000 camera as they recorded a news item in June on the Grenfell fire.

Reporter Laurel Irving and cameraman Jimmy Cannon were at Islingtons Exmouth Market working for Channel 7s Sunrise show when they were approached by two men in balaclavas.

Reporter Laurel Irving and cameraman Jimmy Cannon were pre-recording a segment on the Grenfell fire in Exmouth Market when they were approached by a pair of men in balaclavas / Seven News

One threatened Mr Cannon with a gun in his jacket, forcing him to hand over his camera. Ms Irving tried to wrestle it back before Mr Cannon convinced her to let go and the robbers, above, rode off.

Ms Irving said: We werent scared, just annoyed. I just grabbed the camera and Jimmy said Hes got a gun, so I said Show me the gun, and it was at that point I realised that I was being silly and it was dangerous so I let go.F ormer English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson has sacked his legal team ahead of his court appearance on Tuesday, according to reports.

The 35-year-old is due to appear in court accused of contempt of court and could be sent back to jail for the crime, for which the maximum sentence is two years' imprisonment.

According to the Times, in a video interview with German website PI News, Robinson said: I sacked my solicitors because they tried to broker a deal where I apologised and I admit guilt, and then if I do, that then I go home.

Im never going to do that, Id rather go to jail for the next 25 years than accept guilt for telling the truth.

Robinson is accused of committing contempt of court by filming people in a criminal trial and broadcasting footage on social media.

The Huddersfield grooming trials were allegedly put at risk by Robinson, as he was accused of flouting reporting restrictions.L ondons public health director says she is ashamed of the failure to tackle the capitals homelessness crisis.

Professor Yvonne Doyle said budgets for preventative healthcare were being reduced year after year  with any extra health cash being used to put the roof back on the hospital.

A total of 54,280 households are in temporary accommodation in London  over two thirds of the national total. The number of rough sleepers is more than double the figure a decade ago.

Professor Doyle, London director of Public Health England, told a conference on the state of the capitals health services: Its been the most extraordinarily difficult time in the last five years. Its probably the most fragmented time I have ever experienced. We have not made progress on homeless people. That is one of the areas Im ashamed of.

The number of families in temporary housing is a key measure of public health and the problem has been getting worse.

The national average is 3.3 per 1,000 households but in Haringey it is 27.4, with 3,147 families in temporary housing in 2016/17, and in Newham it is 37.5 (4,457 families). A total of 7,484 people slept rough in London in 2017/18, slightly down on the previous year but about twice the number in 2010.

Changes in 2012 moved responsibility for public health from the NHS to councils, which have faced their own funding crises, particularly over social care.

Public Health England is charged with improving healthy life expectancy and reducing the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor areas. It is judged against measures including homelessness, child poverty, obesity, smoking, physical activity, teenage pregnancies and mortality rates for under-75s.

It gets about three to four per cent of the national health budget. Prevention funding is meagre compared to treatment and cure, Professor Doyle told the Standard. She said PHEs borough analysis showed homelessness rising year after year.

Its not surprising  we can see it visually. Its something we in public health feel very poorly about.

We are not going to deliver prevention unless we establish a way of funding it that is stable and secure. We cannot promise to keep stretching ourselves further and further while we are being cut, cut, cut, cut.

"When extra funding appears it puts the roof back on the hospital. Undoubtedly the roofs do need putting back. But when you start talking about health and wellbeing its much more ephemeral  its hard to grasp.



The grand event manifesting China's commitment to trade liberalization and economic globalization is right around the corner. Starting from Nov. 5, the China International Import Expo (CIIE) will open the country's market further to the world as many exporters, including those from Pakistan, plan to take advantage of this unique opportunity.



A look at China's market reveals that it is the world's biggest destination for agricultural products including grains, cotton, sugar, meat, and milk  and Pakistan produces almost all of these in abundance. Connecting the agro potential of Pakistan with China's opening up measures like CIIE will help in exploring new trade avenues.

One-third of Pakistan's total agricultural export is rice. Just a few years back, China was the second largest buyer of Pakistan's non-basmati type rice but the continuously evolving arrangements have changed the scenario. Nonetheless, traders and governments from both countries have recently shown a willingness to resume their high-volume trade. After a positive response from the Chinese side to Pakistan's request for preferential treatment during Free Trade Agreement (FTA) discussions, it is expected that the commodity's export to China will increase.

Pakistan is the world's fourth largest producer of cotton and has Asia's third largest spinning capacity. Several factors, including higher competitiveness of products and the U.S. dollar's surge against the local currency, boosted its textile exports to around 9 percent in the last financial year.

Fruits also form a strong part of Pakistan's export base. Most prominent among these is a citrus variant known as kinnow which hit record high export figures of 370,000 tons in the 2017-18 season. Experts believe that Pakistan has an immediate capacity of exporting 50 to 80 thousand tons of kinnow to China in the next three years.

Mangoes, revered as the king of fruits in Pakistan, are another of its major exports. Shipping starts in the month of May but is mostly headed to Europe. This year's increased queries from Chinese buyers, however, will lead to an expanded share in China.

China has been investing extensively in its partner countries' agricultural sectors, primarily for two reasons. First, augmented farm produce will help resolve their local food security issues, and second, they will be able to export the surplus to China.

One such partnership among agriculturalists of Pakistan and China has been in the production of hybrid wheat. Around 150 Chinese experts from Sinochem Group Agriculture Division, China's biggest agricultural inputs company, have recently visited 20 cities in Pakistan and taught modern methods to local farmers. China's hybrid wheat, using the two-line hybrid technique, has been successfully harvested on a large scale in Pakistan; and data from a subsequent study by Pakistan's Guard Agricultural Research depicts that production in central regions rose by 45 percent.

Pakistan and China have also been working together on farming hybrid rice. Chinese scientists made a month-long visit to Pakistan last year after Pakistan requested help in introducing hybrid rice in all of its four ecological zones. A training program was carried out for Pakistani researchers, scientists and farmers in the production of hybrid rice, with the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) anticipating a high yielding harvest.

Another ambitious project launched by China is the "Agricultural Education, Science and Technology Innovation League." In a ceremony held in Beijing this year, the University of Sargodha became the first public sector university from Pakistan to join the initiative. In addition to advancing cooperation on technical application, policy dialogue and talent cultivation, the league will promote agricultural research among participating countries.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of the BRI, will play an important role in stepping up agricultural trade between the two countries. Although road connectivity exists in the form of the Karakoram Highway, it is limited only to the northern areas of Pakistan. With CPEC extending to the extreme southern end, it will be possible to transport agricultural products to enhance bilateral trade.

China is modernizing Pakistan's railway network as well. Several projects have been started on the ML-1 line and are progressing fast despite Pakistan's recent elections. After their completion, the freight capacity will further improve the transportation of agricultural produce from Karachi to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Xinjiang will benefit most from these connectivity projects because it serves as the first stop for goods arriving from Pakistan. Furthermore, the Chinese government's efforts to make the province agriculturally self-sufficient will be augmented by the Pakistani imports.

Cooperation in agricultural research and trade forms a part of several joint ventures undertaken by China and Pakistan to provide the best products for their people. It is an area which has a tremendous capacity for expansion. If stakeholders from both countries put more focus in this direction, profits can be assured for importers and exporters alike.

Daniel Hyatt is a Pakistan-based freelance journalist and commentator.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.N eighbours of a retired teacher who was killed in a suspected gas explosion at a block of flats today said: Were lucky to be alive.

Ratna Alexander, 81, died when fire ripped through the building in north-west London early yesterday. A woman and a baby were rescued by firefighters as 40 people were led to safety following the blast at a first-floor flat in Harrow.

A neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: We truly feel very lucky and happy to be alive as when we first looked out of the window we didnt know how big the fire was going to be or how fast it was spreading.

Were really sad Ratna lost her life. Some people have temporarily lost their homes and are misplaced. The looks on their faces last night were just awful.

A mother held her baby up to a second-floor window as people scrambled to gather sheets to catch the child before firefighters arrived. One said: We came outside after waking up and saw someone ringing on all the doors, shouting, Get out, get out, get out!

A lady came out of the window on the second floor with the baby. People were shouting, Catch the baby! as they couldnt get out. I was going to say, Dont throw the baby, the fire brigade are on their way, but I couldnt get my words out because I was so panicked. Then I saw the fire engines. The emergency services were amazing  they were here in about four minutes.

Fire crews used a nine-metre ladder and platform to pluck the baby and a man and a woman to safety from the block of 10 flats.

Mrs Alexander is said to have taught maths at a south London secondary school and is believed to have two children and three grandchildren.

A neighbour said: She was friendly [towards us] when we moved in, she brought us a bunch of a flowers and a card. She used to love feeding the birds. She had her own tree and would fill up the bird feeders every day. She loved animals. She was really well presented, very articulate and intelligent.

Mrs Alexander had lived in the area for more than 30 years.

Last night floral tributes were left at the scene in Fulbeck Way.

Police said there were no signs that the fire was suspicious. A spokesman said the womans death was being treated as unexplained.T he Board of Deputies, the countrys main representative body of the Jewish community, has resisted calls to sever links with the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn after this years anti-Semitism storm.

The group met for an October Plenary meeting yesterday, following suggestions that it should terminate contact with Corbyn, whose response to the row has been widely criticised as insufficient. But Marie van der Zyl, the boards president, has refused. If the Board were to stop engaging with Labour, we would lose all our power, she said. Suspending relations with the party may create headlines but it would get us nowhere. I have always said that engagement does not mean concessions.

The board had been asked to consider cutting ties by one of its members after several accusations of anti-Semitism against the Labour leadership. This included Corbyn liking a mural depicting heavily stereotyped Jewish bankers playing Monopoly on the backs of slaves.

The Labour Party was engulfed by the storm when it stalled on adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances definition of anti-Semitism over the summer.

It finally agreed to adopt the resolution in full in September.

The Board of Deputies has had little contact with the Labour Party since then, but that communication channels are still open. Labour MPs Luciana Berger and Dame Louise Ellman are also members of the BoD.

Van der Zyl paid tribute to Labour MPs, including Berger and Dame Margaret Hodge, who have received anti-Semitic abuse, saying that cutting links to the party would hang out to dry those fighting the good fight.

Ideal coverage for BBC man in Sudan

BBC correspondent Peter Martell launched his book First Raise a Flag at Lambeth Palace last week. Its an account of reporting from war-torn South Sudan. Among his audience was Baroness Cox and BBC diplomatic editor James Landale. Martell recalled that being a journalist offered a greater chance to explore the country than the aid workers and diplomats stuck behind barbed wire fences. I lived in a tent I had originally bought to go to a music festival, he told the assembled dignitaries. Later I was lucky and graduated to a corrugated iron shack.

--

With Nick Clegg accepting a Facebook job in Silicon Valley, initial suggestions were that Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, his wife, would quit law. The fact I have resigned from my current firm does not mean I will give up my job as a lawyer, she wrote on Instagram. How presumptuous of you to assume that  bet you would not do that to a man!

Im McQueen Bee

Steve McQueen, the Turner Prize and Academy Award winner, says self-belief trumps his literacy issues. I never thought I was anything other than brilliant, McQueen says. My whole life has been people underestimating me and me transcending those expectations.

I could always draw. I had imagination. My imagination was never hindered by the fact of my reading being bad. Never, never.

McQueen, a Goldsmiths graduate, briefly attended a New York film school. People didnt know who Cezanne was, he says. I mean, come on.

Times Up makes a film festival stand

BFI London Film Festival festivities continued this weekend, as Persol hosted a party at Unit in Mayfair on Saturday night, ahead of last nights closing gala of the annual film showcase.

Actor Sai Bennett, designer Marissa Montgomery and presenter Zara Martin came together for a DJ set from Jarvis Cocker. Russell Tovey and Anya Taylor-Joy also attended, with Andrea Riseborough proudly sporting a Times Up badge. As a founder of Times Up UK, Riseboroughs stand for women in Hollywood goes beyond a badge. Her new film, Nancy, is the first the actor has produced with her new majority-women production company. The drama, which she also stars in, was created by 80 per cent female crew and 60 per cent people of colour.

Asked if she would like to make a return to blockbusters, the Death of Stalin star said recently that that would f***ing kill me, I dont know whether I could deal with the misogyny.

--

Grayson Perry dazzled at the Alternative Miss World Pageant at Shakespeares Globe this weekend. The event, which has been described as a combination of extremely rude, very camp Christmas panto and pansexual beauty pageant, was first held in its founder Andrew Logans Hackney flat in 1972.

Pageant Party: Grayson Perry (Getty Images) / Dave Benett/Getty Images

SW1A

The Johnsons arent the only political dynasty in town, as Amber Rudd would have you know. Speaking on Nick Robinsons Political Thinking podcast, the former Home Secretary was quick to correct Robinsons assertion: Theyre a sort of mini Johnson family, the Rudds, arent they? Rudd, whose brother Roland is an influential PR and chairman of Open Britain, replied: Theres nothing mini about us. Especially if youre going to compare us to the Johnsons.

--

New research from CapX, run by the Centre for Policy Studies, reveals a clear split on political leanings and breakfast habits. Playing against Marxist type, your 66-year-old, muesli-muncher is more likely to vote Conservative. Regular eaters of fry-ups predominantly vote Labour. Unsurprisingly, Remain voters showed a fondness for European fare, polling a 19 per cent lead in the consumers of croissants category. Brexit means breakfast

Quote of the DayT wenty-nine Nobel Prize winners have warned Theresa May a hard Brexit could cripple science.

The world-leading scientists banded together in a letter to the Prime Minister, as well as European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, to say a hard Brexit could seriously damage research.

The letter, also signed by six Fields Medal mathematicians, said creating new barriers would inhibit progress to the detriment of us all.

Theresa May has been warned by world-leading scientists that a hard Brexit could 'cripple' them / Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Nobel winner and Crick director Sir Paul Nurse, one of the signatories to the letter, said: "Science and research matter for economic growth, health and quality of life, and the environment.

"The overwhelming negativity of scientists towards a hard Brexit should be a wake-up call.

"A hard Brexit could cripple science and the UK government needs to sit up and listen.

"We need a deal that replaces the science funding lost because of Brexit, that preserves freedom of movement for talented scientists, and that makes them feel welcome in this country."

A government spokesman said: "The UK plays a vital role in making Europe a pioneering base for research and values the contribution that international researchers make to the UK.

"This will not change when we leave the EU. We will seek an ambitious relationship on science and innovation with our EU partners, exploring future UK participation in mutually beneficial research programmes, and will continue to support science, research and innovation through our modern industrial strategy.

"We have a proud record of welcoming the world's brightest scientists and researchers to work and study here, and after we leave the EU we will have an immigration system to support this."T heresa May has said the Government must hold its nerve as Brexit negotiations entered their final stages.

The Prime Minister addressed the Commons to say that the Tories must "not give in to those who want to stop Brexit with a politicians' vote."

Theresa May said the Government must hold its nerve

She added that she "did not want nor expect to extend the Brexit transition period past the end of 2020."

Mrs May added that there may be circumstances in which a short extension to the transition period after Britain leaves the EU is a preferable option.

However, in a statement to the Commons, she said the transition period would have to be completed well before the end of the parliament in June 2022.

"There are some limited circumstances in which it could be argued that an extension to the implementation period might be preferable if we were certain it was only for a short time," she said.

"A short extension to the implementation period would mean only one set of changes for businesses at the point we move to the future relationship.

"But in any such scenario we would have to be out of this implementation period well before the end of this parliament."

Mrs May added: "The Brexit talks are not about my interests, they are about the national interest.

"And the interest of the whole of the United Kingdom. Serving our national interest will demand that we hold our nerve through these last stages of the negotiations - the hardest part of all.

Jeremy Corbyn said the Government was "losing control" / Getty Images

"It will mean not giving in to those who want to stop Brexit with a politicians' vote.

"Politicians telling the people they got it wrong the first time and should try again."

In her highly-anticipated statement on Brexit, the Prime Minister said that 95% of the Brexit withdrawal agreement had been completed and "broad agreement on structure and scope" of future relations with EU was reached.

However Jeremy Corbyn said the government was hamstrung by its own divisions, and that the Prime Minister was "losing control."

Mrs May also condemned the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and demanded answers about his death.

The Prime Minister's comments came before a statement on the case by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Mrs May told MPs: "I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms.

"We must get to the truth of what happened."

The Prime Minister's remarks in the Commons followed former foreign secretary Boris Johnson urging a robust response to Saudi Arabia over Mr Khashoggi's death.

Britain should "refuse to turn a blind eye" to the murder of the dissident journalist and pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the brutal civil war in Yemen, Mr Johnson said in his Daily Telegraph column.

The former foreign secretary drew parallels between the Istanbul killing and the Novichok attack in Salisbury in March, calling them "state-sponsored plots" designed to "send a terrifying public warning" to opponents.

The Gulf kingdom admitted on Friday that Washington Post columnist Mr Khashoggi, a vocal critic of Riyadh, was killed at its Istanbul consulate but claimed he died after a fight broke out.M Ps have condemned disturbing and violent language used towards Theresa May branding it unacceptable.

It comes after a Conservative backbencher spoke to the Sunday Times about Mrs May's Brexit negotiations, saying: "The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted. Shell be dead soon.

Another senior brexiteer claimed "she should bring her noose" to the 1922 Committee.

MPs have taken to social media to condemn the language used with some calling for the identity of the backbencher to be revealed.

Tory MP Sarah Wollaston said: Shame on the spineless cowards on my benches who hide behind anonymity to use such disturbing and violent language about their own colleague & PM Theresa May totally unacceptable.

"Have they learned nothing following the assassination of Jo Cox.

Labour MP Yvette Cooper wrote: I dont know who it is. Maybe we should all be told because it might stop him using such violent, dehumanising language against a woman again.

"Dont care how much people disagree with PM, targeting her with talk of knives, killing & nooses is irresponsible and vile.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the comments normalised violence at a time when female MPs were facing increased hostility.

Brexiteer Mark Francois said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the language was "unacceptable" but that he would not tell Chief whip Julian Smith how to do his job.

He hit out at a "bunker mentality" in Downing Street, telling Today: "The problem is that there is a lot of frustration on the backbenches at the moment, both among Leavers and Remainers, at the general state of play.

"When you try to convey that to Number 10, no-one is listening."

Pro-Remain Tory Anna Soubry attacked him on Twitter afterwards, saying: "I am appalled that my colleague MarkFrancoisMP failed unequivocally to condemn the disgraceful and dangerous language used by a fellow Conservative MP against the PM @BBCr4today he even tried to excuse it. Shameful."



The prime minister's official spokesman said: "I don't intend to dignify those specific, anonymous comments with a response.

"The PM has always been very clear that we must set a tone in public discourse that is neither dehumanising nor derogatory. Personal viterol has no place in our politics."

Mrs May is set to speak in the Commons later, insisting that the Brexit deal is 95 percent complete.

She is expected to say that the shape of the deal across the vast majority of the withdrawal agreement is now clear.P lastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds could be banned within a year under radical government plans to tackle pollution.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove has launched a consultation on new laws banning the items, which he said can devastate the world's oceans and wildlife.

The government is hoping to introduce the ban between October next year and October 2020.

The consultation, which applies to England only, will consider exemptions to make sure people who need plastics to deal with medical conditions or accessibility issues are not affected.

Under Government plans, pharmacies would still be able to sell plastic straws and restaurants, pubs and bars could stock the items to be used on request.

It is estimated that 4.7 billion plastic straws, 316 million plastic stirrers and 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds are used each year in England.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove launched a consultation on the plans / AP

Mr Gove said on Monday that the ban would be a boost to efforts to "turn the tide on plastic pollution".

He said: "Our precious oceans and the wildlife within need urgent protection from the devastation throw-away plastic items can cause.

"In England we are taking world-leading action with our ban on microbeads, and thanks to the public's support have taken over 15 billion plastic bags out of circulation with our 5p charge.

"I commend retailers, bars and restaurants that have already committed to removing plastic straws and stirrers. But we recognise we need to do more.

"Today we step-up our efforts to turn the tide on plastic pollution and ensure we leave our environment in a better state than we inherited it."

Greenpeace has urged big companies to do more to cut down on plastic packaging / Getty Images

Around 10 per cent of cotton buds are flushed down toilets, often ending up in waterways and oceans, the Government said.

It is hoped millions of pounds could be saved annually on clean-up efforts of used plastics, which can take years to break down.

Greenpeace UK's political adviser Sam Chetan Welsh commended ministers for doing "the sensible thing", but urged big companies to do more by cutting down on plastic packaging.

He said: "Our society's addiction to throwaway plastic is fuelling a global environmental crisis that must be tackled.

"Ministers are doing the sensible thing by looking to ban single-use plastic items that can be easily replaced with better alternatives or that we can simply do without. But this should be just the start.

"If we are to protect our oceans from the scourge of plastic, the flow of waste needs to be cut off at the tap. And that means the companies producing and selling all this packaging must take responsibility for it and cut down the amount of plastic ending up in our shopping baskets."

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, welcomed the consultation, saying many restaurants and hotels have already begun taking action to cut down on plastics.

She said: "We wholeheartedly welcome this consultation on an issue of vital importance and one which hospitality has already taken significant action.

"Since UKHospitality's Unpack the Future of Hospitality summit in the spring, thousands of pubs clubs, restaurants and hotels across the UK have changed their straws and stirrers to biodegradables, or adopted policies that cut or eliminate their use in their venues.A Ryanair passenger who launched a racist tirade at a fellow passenger may "get away with it" due to the airline wanting to get the plane off the ground, a shadow transport minister said.

The man was filmed calling the elderly woman in the seat next to him an "ugly black b******", and shouting "don't talk to me in a foreign language you stupid ugly cow".

Ryanair sparked outrage after apparently failing to remove the man , with Labour MP for East Hull Karl Turner saying the airline "failed spectacularly".

The footage was recorded on October 19 on Ryanair flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted by Kent resident David Lawrence, who uploaded it on to social media.

Mr Turner, who is a qualified barrister and was once Labour's shadow attorney general, tweeted: "Suspect the pressure to turn this aircraft around quickly and get it airborne meant that they have allowed this alleged offender to remain on the aircraft. He may now get away with it."

He added: "@Ryanair failure to deplane the alleged racist offender, handing him over to the Spanish authorities probably means that he isn't now prosecuted."

He added: "Unfortunately because @Ryanair is registered in Dublin not in the UK the alleged offence could only be tried by UK authorities if it was 'in flight' to the UK. Section 92(1) Civil Aviation Act s.92(4) defines 'in flight'.

"If this incident had have happened on an alternative airline under 'British Control' or it was already 'in flight' to the UK the prosecuting authorities could have prosecuted."

The footage was recorded on a flight from Barcelona to London Stansted / David Lawrence/Facebook

Footage shows the man shouting at the woman to move seats while her daughter tries to stand up to him, telling him her mother is disabled.

He replies: "I don't care whether she's f****** disabled or not - if I tell her to get out she gets out."

The man then calls her "an ugly f****** c***" and tells staff to move the woman to another seat, adding: "if you don't go to another seat I'll push you to another seat".

The womans daughter, 53, told the Huffington Post the row had started because her 77-year-old mother's arthritis meant it took her some time to move out of the way so the man could reach the window seat.

The airline said the incident had been handed over to Essex Police / Ryanair

She said she had taken her mother, who is a Windrush Generation migrant who came to the UK from Jamaica in the 1960s, on holiday to mark one year since the death of her father.

"My parents were married over 50 years. She's been feeling really down and depressed, so I thought the trip would raise her spirits."

She continued: "I know that if I was behaving like he was or any other black person for that matter, police would have been called and we would have been kicked off the flight."

The budget airline tweeted on Sunday that it had seen the footage and reported the incident to Essex police.

It added: "As this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further."

A spokeswoman for Essex police said: "This incident, which we were made aware of this morning, is believed to have taken place on a plane at Barcelona Airport.

"Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.A n off-duty Scotland Yard murder detective allegedly racially abused a Somalian toilet cleaner and threatened to smash him against a wall, a misconduct hearing has heard.

Detective Chief Inspector Glen Lloyd is accused of threatening and abusing Abdi Yare after using a toilet in St Pancras International railway station which had been shut for cleaning.

The alleged incident happened at around 1am on May 11 last year, when Lloyd was off-duty, a police misconduct panel at the Empress State Building in London heard on Monday.

In a statement given to police at the time, Mr Yare claimed that Lloyd told him: "N***** f****** get out of the way let me do my urine or I will urine on the floor.

"F*** your mother and your dad."

Lloyd, who has a "significant amount of experience and expertise with hate crime and diversity", denies using racist or abusive language.

Mr Yare, 38, said he came to the UK in 2004 and had been in the job for around a year at the time of the alleged episode.

He appeared before the hearing to confirm those were the words allegedly used and claimed that Lloyd had made him fear for his safety.

Mr Yare, who declined to use an interpreter and spoke in his second language English, told the hearing: "He tried to abuse me, told me the word n*****, that's what he said.

"He said I will smash you on the wall. I was panicking at the time. I was scared for my life.

"He was a very aggressive man. He was very close to me."

Heather Oliver, for Lloyd, said: "You felt there was a threat to your life?"

He replied: "Yes of course."

Following the alleged incident, station manager Sami Khan said Lloyd looked "distinguished" wearing a light grey pinstripe suit and appeared to be "self-pleased and smug" and was "trying to brush off the situation, saying 'everything's fine"'.

Mr Khan, who has worked at the station for a decade, said Mr Yare had not made a single complaint before and appeared "really upset", and mentioned how he felt his family honour had been violated by the comments.

"His body language was a bit aggrieved and that's what caught my eye", he added.

Mr Yare added that he thought Lloyd had spoken with an American accent.

The men's toilets at the station are closed for cleaning between 1am and 5am, with a barrier and blue sign erected to say they are shut, the hearing heard.

Ms Oliver suggested no racist or abusive language was used and that Mr Yare was in fact annoyed at Lloyd using the urinals when they were closed for cleaning.

She said: "Did you develop an allegation of racist abuse to divert attention away from your own aggressive behaviour?"

Mr Yare said: "No."

James Berry, for Scotland Yard legal services, told the panel: "It's not suggested that Mr Lloyd is anything other than of good previous character.

"He has a significant amount of experience and expertise with hate crime and diversity."

If the alleged incident took place it would be an "aberration" in his conduct, Mr Berry said.

Mr Berry added that there was no direct evidence of what was said, saying: "In essence the panel are going to have to decide between Mr Lloyd's account and Mr Yare's account."

Mr Yare told the hearing he had not pursued a criminal complaint because "someone can go behind bars" but proceeded with the misconduct hearing so "next time he shall not behave like that."

Lloyd has been placed on restricted duties by Scotland Yard.

The hearing is expected to last five days.A pensioner who fell victim to vile racial abuse while on a Ryanair flight has tearfully said if the situation had been reversed, she believes passengers would have rounded on her and called police.

Footage showed Ms Gayle being racially abused on a flight from Barcelona to London Stansted on October 19.

The airline had faced a backlash after it chose to move the woman, leaving the unidentified man in his seat.

She told the ITV: I feel very low. He pays his fare, I pay mine. So why did he abuse me for that? Because of the colour of my skin.

The footage was recorded on Friday on Ryanair flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted / David Lawrence/Facebook

He should have moved and I didnt want to sit there and for him to abuse me anymore.

She added: Why [is] he treating me because the colour of my skin, thats how I look isnt it? Because if I had done that to him Im sure they would have called the police take away with me.

Because I know if I do it to him I know everyone on the plane would try to attack me. And because Im black, Im sad to say that, they didnt want to get involved with me.

Ms Gayle said she would not fly with the budget airline again, as she did not feel respected.

David Lawrence filmed the verbal attack and said he chose to do so because he wanted to the world to know what happened.

Footage of the incident posted to his Facebook account has been viewed over 4.5 million times.

Ryanair

Ms Gayles daughter, Carol, said she believed the man should have been removed instead of her mother.

She said: He should be moved or taken off the plane and nothing was done. And I know if that was a black person racially abusing an elderly woman the police would have been involved. It would have been a different matter .

When I saw the video I felt like he was the victim, that the way Ryanair were treating it.

Ryanair tweeted on Sunday that it had reported the incident to Essex Police.

It added: "As this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further."

A spokeswoman for Essex police said on Sunday: "Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.S audi Arabia has finally confirmed that journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who first vanished two weeks ago, was murdered.

Mr Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to get marriage documents while his fiancee waited for him outside.

Saudi Arabia had initially denied any knowledge of Mr Khashoggi's whereabouts and insisted he had left the building alive.

But on Friday officials for the kingdom said Mr Khashoggi, who wrote for the Washington Post and was a critic of the Saudi government, said he had died after a "fist fight" at the consulate before describing his death on Monday as murder.

Last week it had emerged that a seven-minute audio recording of his death captured his final moments in which he was allegedly tortured and dismembered while still alive inside the consulate.

Pressure is still growing on Saudi Arabia to give a full explanation of what happened to Mr Khashoggi.

Here's what we know so far

Turkish forensic police officers arrive the residence of the Saudi consul for investigation in Istanbul / EPA

Mr Khashoggi, born in Medina in October 1958, was an author and former editor of Al-Arab News Channel and newspaper Al Watan.

He was the nephew of arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who became known for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal of 1985-1987.

The 59-year-old was a leading critic of crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman, and fled Saudi Arabia in June last year.

A US resident, he started writing for the Washington Post as a columnist in September last year.

What happened?

Mr Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

He had gone to finalise paperwork so he could marry his Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz.

She was outside and says she did not see him leave. Mr Khashoggi is believed to have been killed during the visit.

Turkish officials say police searching the consulate found evidence Mr Khashoggi was killed there.

Turkish forensic police arrive at the Saudi embassy in their probe into the alleged killing of Jamal Khashoggi / EPA

They say they believe a 15-member Saudi "assassination squad" killed Mr Khashoggi at the consulate, but has yet to publish any evidence of him being killed.

Authorities are believed to have a seven-minute audio recording of him screaming as he was being allegedly interrogated, tortured and dismembered.

Pro-government newspaper said Mr Khashoggi's fingers were severed during the interrogation and he died within minutes.

Saudi Arabia denied allegations he was murdered and his body cut up, describing them as at the time as "baseless".

Donald Trump said Saudi Arabia was being treated as "guilty until proven innocent" / Getty Images

The Gulf country also dismissed accusations Mr Khashoggi was murdered by a hit squad inside the countrys consulate in Istanbul as lies and that they had nothing to do with his disappearance.

Donald Trump also appeared to move to the defence of Saudi Arabia, saying the Gulf state was being treated as "guilty until proven innocent", and said the king had no knowledge of what happened.

The US president wrote online: "Just spoke to the King of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened to our Saudi Arabian citizen.

But on Friday Saudi Arabia finally admitted its agents had killed Mr Khashoggi after he entered the consulate, saying he had died after a "fist fight".

The kingdom denies that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or King Salma were involved.

Trump said he was "not satisfied" with this account of Mr Khashoggi's death and added sanctions were possible - but stopped short of halting an arms deal.

On Monday the country's foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir described Mr Khashoggi's death as murder and blamed it on a "rogue operation".

Jamal Khashoggi went missing on October 2 / AFP/Getty Images

What now?

Pressure is growing on Saudi Arabia to explain what happened to Mr Khashoggi after he walked into the consulate days ago.

The country's Consul General in Istanbul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, has been sacked and placed under investigation over Mr Khashoggi's alleged torture and murder.

Mr al-Otaibi fled Turkey after the alleged killing.

The development came as world leaders intensified pressure on Riyadh over Mr Khashoggi's disappearance, as a frequent companion of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was named in reports as a possible suspect.

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Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his G7 counterparts said they were very troubled by the case of the missing dissident journalist and insisted those responsible must be held to account.

The kingdom said 18 suspects are now in custody and that intelligence officials have been fired.

Mr al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia was determined to find out all the facts and "to punish those who are responsible for this murder".

Mr Khashoggi's fiancee has reportedly been given 24-hour police protection.

The UK, France and Germany have issued a joint statement on Mr Khashoggi's death, saying there is an "urgent need for clarification" on what happened. Flash

Russia will respond to actual moves of the U.S. following its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) instead of the withdrawal itself, a Russian lawmaker said Sunday.





"We should respond not to the very fact of Washington's withdrawal from the treaty but to its practical steps when it is free to do whatever it wants," Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia's Federation Council upper parliament house, told Rossiya 24 television channel.





"As our president has said, Russia has all the military technical premises for that, its reaction will be rapid," he added.





On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement.





Earlier on Sunday, a number of Russian officials warned Washington against withdrawing from the treaty, saying such moves would be very dangerous.





The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.





Moscow and Washington have been accusing each other of violating the arms control agreement in recent years amid increasing tension between the two countries.



H ackers targeted the website of the so-called 'Davos in the Desert' conference to show a distressing image of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The website, bearing information about Saudi Arabias Future Investment Initiative, was briefly hacked.

It showed a mocked-up picture of the Washington Post journalist about to be beheaded by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The site was subsequently taken down completely.

Underneath the shocking image, a message read: For the sake of security of children worldwide, we urge all countries to put sanction on the Saudi regime.

The image was shared widely on social media following the hack, with thousands of people grabbing screenshots of it.

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The 'Davos in the Desert' conference is a major investment conference which starts in Riyadh on Tuesday. Several global corporations have announced they will not attend since the death of Mr Khashoggi, including Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Uber.

Coming nearly three weeks after the journalists disappearance, the Saudi response to the scandal has been met with scepticism, with President Trump saying: Their stories are all over the place.T he worlds longest sea bridge linking the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau is set to open this week, nine years after construction began.

The 15 billion Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge will officially open on Tuesday in a ceremony that Chinese president Xi Jinping is expected to attend.

Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge 1 /12 Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge Officials say it will cut travel time and boost business AFP/Getty Images The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge will be officially opened on October 23 EPA The bridge's opening has been hit by a series of delays AFP/Getty Images The crossing includes three separate steel bridges AP The bridge will be mostly used by private shuttles and freight vehicles EPA The crossing connects Hong Kong to Macau and the Chinese mainland EPA The crossing includes two artificial islands and an underwater tunnel AFP/Getty Images This is one of the artificial islands which connects to the underwater tunnel AFP/Getty Images The bridge seen at night from Lantau island in Hong Kong AP A ferry sails past the Zhuhai-Macau-Hong Kong Bridge AP The bridge is the world's largest sea crossing AP The bridge looks spectacular lit up at night AP

Measuring 55km, the crossing consists of three steel bridges, two artificial islands and one undersea tunnel.

It spans the Lingdingyang channel, connecting the major cities of Hong Kong and Macau with the Chinese mainland at Zhuhai, in Guandong province.

The bridge is intended to cut travel times and boost business in the region / AFP/Getty Images

The bridge is part of a plan to transform the Greater Bay Area into a high-tech region to rival Californias Silicon Valley, by connecting 11 major Chinese cities in total.

It was initially planned to open in 2016, but has been hit by a series of delays.

Hong Kongs transport secretary, Frank Chan Fan, said: The bridge is not just a mega transport infrastructure jointly built by Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau.

The collaboration between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau in terms of trade, finance, logistics and tourism will be strengthened. Hong Kong will assume a more proactive role in the development of the Greater Bay Area.

The bridge consists of two artificial islands and an underwater tunnel / AFP/Getty Images

The bridge is due to open to traffic on Wednesday, but private cars will only be able to use it upon successfully applying for a special permit.A n extremely dangerous and potentially life-threatening storm is barrelling towards Mexico during what has been called the eastern Pacifics most active hurricane season on record.

Hurricane Willa in the eastern Pacific has grown rapidly into a near-Category 5 storm, which could produce life-threatening storm surge, wind and rainfall in Mexico in the coming days.

The storm is expected to batter parts of the western coast between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta and is expected to make landfall in Nayarit or southern Sinaloa on Tuesday evening.

A hurricane warning was posted for Mexicos coast between San Blas and Mazatlan and tropical storm warnings were raised from Playa Perula to San Blas and Mazatlan to Bahia Tempehuaya.

Hurricane Willa off Mexico's Pacific coast / AFP/Getty Images

Willa had maximum sustained winds of 155mph on Monday morning and was centred about 195 miles south of Cabo Corrientes, moving north at around 5mph.

Tourists enjoy the beach in Mazatlan where an arrival of Hurricane Willa is expected / AFP/Getty Images

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the eastern Pacific has just experienced its most active hurricane season since records began in 1971.

Michael Lowry, strategic planner at FEMA, wrote: Today Willa blossomed into the ninth Category 4 or 5 hurricane of 2018. This record is especially astounding in the absence of a strong El Nino.

The hurricane "continues to rapidly strengthen," the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, adding that Willa will likely produce a life-threatening storm surge.

US Storm season 2018 1 /13 US Storm season 2018 Houses sit in floodwater caused by Hurricane Florence Reuters The homes and businesses along US 98 are left in devastation An antique car is inundated by floodwaters from the Waccamaw River caused by Hurricane Florence Chet Bundy stands in the kitchen of the trailer home he was in after Hurricane Michael hit Getty Images Bo Lynn's Market starts taking water in the town of Saint Marks Hurricane Michael leaves Mosley High football field damaged AP Florida Task Force Two Search and Rescue continue work of searching areas after hurricane Michael People navigate floodwaters caused by Hurricane Florence near the Waccamaw River LeClaire Bryan, mother of country music artist Luke Bryan, takes a picture of her home after it was severely damaged by Hurricane Michael FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2018 file photo, devastation from Hurricane Michael is seen in this areal photo over Mexico Beach, Fla. The tropical weather that turned into monster Hurricane Michael began as a relatively humble storm before rapidly blossoming into the most powerful cyclone ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, causing wrenching scenes of widespread destruction.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) Gerald Herbert AP Lisa Shackleford carries her pet dogs as she wades through flood waters in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence Reuters Satellite image shows (L-R) Tropical Storm Florence, Tropical Storm Isaac and Tropical Storm Helene in the Atantic AFP/Getty Images

By Sunday afternoon, the storm was located about 225 miles southwest of Cabo Corrientes, on the coast of Jalisco state.

Forecasters estimated that total rainfall will range between five to 15 inches across stretches of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa states.

Hurricane Willa has strengthened to Category 4 storm in Pacific waters off the coast of Mexico / AFP/Getty Images

Hurricane Willa follows Tropical Storm Vicente, which formed in the Pacific off southern Mexico on Saturday and weaken as it hovered along the coast on Sunday.

It had maximum sustained winds of 40mph and the centre of the storm would likely "remain just offshore or near the southern coast of Mexico through Tuesday morning," according to the NHC.S audia Arabian royals have called the son of Jamal Khashoggi to express their condolences, after the kingdom admitted the journalist had been murdered.

It came as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan promised to reveal the naked truth surrounding his death.

Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman both contacted Mr Khashoggi's son, Salah, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Mr Khasoggi, known as a critic of the government, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and never came out.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman has contacted the journalists son / PA

Saudi Arabia admitted on Friday its agents killed Mr Khashoggi after he entered the building.

However, it denies Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or King Salman were involved.

Saudi Arabia denies King Salman or the prince had any involvement in the death / REUTERS

Saudi Arabia stated 18 suspects are in custody and intelligence officials have been fired in relation to the incident.

His death has since been described as a murder by Saudi Arabias foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir, who promised to punish those who are responsible.

As the Saudi government has stated it will release further details as they become available, Turkish President Erdogan has vowed to reveal more information on Tuesday.

President Erdogan will give a speech on the situation on Tuesday / REUTERS

"I will make my statement about this issue on Tuesday at the party group meeting," Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul, Al Jazeera reports.

"We are looking for justice here and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth.

President Erdogan and US President Donald Trump spoke on the telephone to discuss Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu agency said on Monday morning.

"Erdogan and Trump agreed the Khashoggi case needs to be cleared up with all aspects, it stated.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had gone to collect documents for his wedding / AP

The UK, France and Germany have issued a joint statement on journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death.

It stated there is "an urgent need for clarification" on what happened inside the Istanbul consulate.

It was previously reported that Turkish officials believe Mr Khashoggi was murdered and his body dismembered.

The late journalist entered the Saudi consulate to get papers for his upcoming marriage.

His fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish national, waited outside for him and alerted authorities after the writer did not emerge from the building.F oreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Saudi Arabias official claim that journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a fight at the countrys consulate in Istanbul was not credible.

He acknowledged that the UK had close security and business links with Saudi Arabia but if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true the UK will act accordingly.

He was backed by Prime Minister Theresa May who condemned the killing in the strongest possible terms and added we must get to the truth of what happened.

It comes after Saudi Arabia admitted on Friday that Washington Post columnist Mr Khashoggi, a vocal critic of Riyadh, was killed at its Istanbul mission.

Mr Hunt told MPs: We have an important strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia involving defence and security co-operation which has saved lives on the streets of Britain. We also have a trading partnership that supports thousands of jobs.

Saudi Arabia has admitted the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi / AP

So whilst we will be thoughtful and considered in our response, I have also been clear that if the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true, they are fundamentally incompatible with our values and we will act accordingly.

Mr Hunt said that the Turkish-led investigation needed to establish who authorised the dispatch of 15 officials from Saudi Arabia to Istanbul, when the Riyadh government first learned of Mr Khashoggi's death, why there was a delay in allowing investigators into the consulate, why Mr Khashoggi's death was not disclosed until October 19, some 17 days after it happened.

He said: "The actions Britain and our allies take will depend on two things: firstly the credibility of the final explanation given by Saudi Arabia, and secondly on our confidence that such an appalling episode cannot - and will not - be repeated."

Boris Johnson also called for action over the journalist's death / PA

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson urged a robust response to Saudi Arabia over Mr Khashoggi's death.

Britain should "refuse to turn a blind eye" to the death of the dissident journalist and pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the brutal civil war in Yemen, Mr Johnson said in his Daily Telegraph column.

Mr Johnson said "we cannot just let it pass", and, while the UK has crucial trade and security links with the Gulf State, "the UK and the US must lead other countries in holding Saudi Arabia properly to account".

Barriers block the road leading to Saudi Arabia's consulate, background, in Istanbul. Turkey will "never allow a cover-up" of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, a senior official in Turkey's ruling party said yesterday. / AP

Turkish government sources have claimed that Mr Khashoggi was tortured and murdered by a hit squad flown in from Riyadh.

The Saudis initially dismissed the allegations as baseless, without providing an explanation as to how the writer disappeared after entering the consulate on October 2.

A number of Saudi nationals have since been arrested, while deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have been dismissed, state TV reported.

Labour's leadership seized on the events in Istanbul to call for arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be halted.

In the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn said "condemnation is not enough" from the Government.A gigantic and perfectly rectangular iceberg has been spotted in the Antarctic by NASA scientists.

The enormous block of ice, known as a Tabular berg, is thought to be a mile in length, experts said.

It was found off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, near the Larsen C ice shelf, by scientists flying over the region.

The icebergs sharp angles and flat surface suggest it was recently calved from the ice shelf, NASA Ice researchers said.

@NASA_ICE/NASA

And it was not the only iceberg formed as a geometric shape the scientists spotted on their flight over the Atlantic last week.

Triangular iceberg surrounded by different types of sea ice, off the Larsen ice shelf in the Weddell Sea / @NASA_ICE/NASA

NASA experts shared images online of a triangular berg found nearby in open water in the Weddell Sea on the same trip.

Speaking to Live Science, NASA ice scientist Kelly Brunt explained how such perfectly shaped bergs form.

She said Tabular icebergs are made through a process a bit like a fingernail growing too long and cracking off at the end.

They are often rectangular and geometric as a result, she continued.

Scientists took the image as part of its operation IceBridge, in order to help understand how ice has changed in recent years.

They intend to study the calving process of icebergs as a way of measuring melting due to global warning.T his is the horrifying moment a train derails in Taiwan, killing at least 18 and injuring over 100.

The eight car express train ran off the tracks on a bend where the maximum speed is 47 miles per hour.

It had been carrying more than 360 passengers on a popular weekend route from a suburb of Taipei in the north to Taitung, a city on Taiwans southeast coast.

It was the worst train crash in Taiwan for nearly three decades.

In the footage, the train can be seen striking and toppling a beam and ripping down metal structures from above the tracks.

A police officer inspects luggage from the train / AFP/Getty Images

Eighteen people were killed and 187 were injured. Five of the people killed, including a 9-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, belonged to a single family.

Three students and two teachers who died were from the same middle school.

Some passengers were crushed to death, Ministry of National Defence spokesman Chen Chung-chi said.

The speed at which the train was travelling has not been released due to a pending investigation however it has not been ruled out as the cause.

The train had been carrying 360 passengers at the time / AP

Passengers told Taiwans Central News Agency that the driver applied emergency brakes multiple times before the train derailed.

One local told television reporters the train sped up after taking the curve.

Taiwans president Tsai Ing-wen has called for a quick, transparent probe into the cause of the crash.

Taiwan's presidnt Tsai Ing-wen speaks at a press conference at the scene of the crash / AP

In a statement she said: Everyone cares a lot about the cause of the accident. Therefore we request that the investigating departments must as soon as possible make clear the timing and situation of the whole accident from start to finish and be able to give citizens a report.

The train that derailed had its most recent inspection and major maintenance work in 2017, Taiwan Railways Director Lu Chieh-shen said Sunday at a televised news conference.T wo children died after migrants were frantically rescued when a boat they travelled in sunk.

This vessel was just 50 metres from Turkey's western coast.

The coastguard said 17 people were rescued from the water and another 17 found on the shore, early on Monday.

The pair of child victims died at hospital, their nationalities and those of the survivors have not been specified.

Harrowing footage from IHA shows a young woman being hauled from the sea in the arms of a man, held limp across his body.

Rescuers continued to search the sea / Getty Images

He races her down the coastline, near Bodrum, to a group where of people including police officers, before attempting to rouse her and make her stand up.

She is then placed on the floor, where she lays limply, and a traffic officer in high-vis tries to resuscitate her.

After this attempt she is picked up and swiftly taken to an ambulance, it is unclear if she survived.

A crying woman then stands with her hands together in the back of an emergency vehicle, as she weeps and says my baby.

Other video shows adults and children taken to ambulances.

A flotation ring for a child was seen near the incident.

Divers swam in the water to continue to look for potential victims of the incident.

One witness, speaking to cameras on the coastline, said: "We first thought there was a fight, then we saw that they were migrants. There were one woman, sorry two woman and two children and one man, we rescued them.

He added that they were very crowded aboard the vessel they had been on.

People rushed to the scene after hearing cries for help / Getty Images

Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu said residents in Gumbet alerted authorities to the scene, after hearing cries for help.

Rescue crews searched the area for more survivors.

Turkey became a main launch point for more than a million migrants taking the sea route to EU territory in 2015.

Many sought to flee conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

The number of migrants was drastically curtailed by a 2016 accord between Ankara and the EU.

This came after hundreds died crossing to Greek islands, a few miles off the Turkish shore.

Mediterranean arrivals to the EU bloc totalled 172,301 in 2017, down from 362,753 in 2016 and 1,015,078 in 2015.T he UK has been urged to take back two suspected ISIS members, from a group dubbed The Beatles, by a senior US military commander.

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey are each accused of being part of a four-man group, given the nickname due to their British accents, suspected of 27 beheadings.

Major General Patrick Roberson, commander of US special ops, called on the UK to take back British Islamic State fighters.

Asked by the BBC whether Elsheik and Kotey should be repatriated to the UK, Maj Gen Roberson said: "We would certainly like them to be."

A Kurdish security officer, center, walks Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh to seats for a media interview / AP

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US were "working very hard to make sure that the countries of origin get these foreign terrorist fighters back into their custody", he said.

Kotey and Elsheikh are accused of belonging to the cell which included Mohammed Emwazi, known as "Jihadi John", who was killed in a US air strike in 2015.

While the fourth supposed member was Aine Davis, who has been jailed in Turkey.

They are accused of being in a group with one-time Londoner Mohammed Emwazi, known as 'Jihadi John' / Reuters

The group is suspected of involvement in numerous killings in Syria and Iraq, including those of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning as well as US citizens James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig.

Emwazi was filmed carrying out a number of the murders.

Videos of these were broadcast online.

Kotey and Elsheikh were raised in the UK and are believed to have been detained by Kurdish forces in Syria in January.

They have been stripped of their British citizenship.

The pair may face a federal trial in the US after the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was "insufficient evidence" for them to be tried in the UK.

Elsheikh's mother Maha Elgizouli has mounted a High Court challenge over the UK's sharing of evidence with US authorities.

This has been done under a "mutual legal assistance" agreement.

She says it was "unlawful" for the Government to do so unless it obtains assurances the pair will not face execution if convicted in the US.

Alleged IS members Alexanda Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh / AP

Lawyers for Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who is contesting Ms Elgizouli's case, said it was not yet known whether the pair will be charged in the US,

However, they stated there is the "most powerful interest" in a proper investigation of their alleged crimes.

The case is being heard by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and Mr Justice Garnham.T housands of victims of sexual abuse whose lives were shattered and traumatised by the Catholic church and other institutions received an emotional apology from premier Scott Morrison today.

In a formal announcement of national regret, Mr Morrison came close to tears as he delivered the apology in Parliament House. Hundreds of survivors and their families travelled to Canberra for the address, in which the prime minister spoke of an abomination that had been hiding in plain sight for too long. He said: Today as a nation we confront our failure to listen, to believe, and to provide justice, adding: We say sorry.

Mr Morrison said it was time Australia confronted the silenced voices, the muffled cries in the darkness  the pleas of tortured souls, bewildered by an indifference to the unthinkable theft of innocence. Why werent the children of our nation loved, nurtured and protected? Why was their trust betrayed?

Why did those who know cover it up? Why were the cries of children and parents ignored? Why was our system of justice blind to injustice? Why has it taken so long to act? Why were other things more important than this, the care of innocent children? Why didnt we believe?

A four-year inquest that delivered its final report in December revealed shocking evidence from more than 17,000 survivors and heard allegations against government, church and private institutions, as well as prominent individuals. More than 200 prosecutions have begun.

The government has already accepted 104 of the commissions 122 recommendations, including redress payments, with the other 18 still under examination. It has also established a new office of child safety, to report to the prime minister.

MPs stood for a minutes silence following the apology, which came with the announcement of government plans to create a museum and research centre to raise awareness of the impacts of child sexual abuse.

Mr Morrison promised the nation would never forget the horrors they suffered, and pledged the government would report on the progress of a Royal Commissions recommendations every year for the next five years.

While many survivors and campaigners went to Canberra to hear the apology, many are still calling for far more work to be done to address the history of abuse. Flash

Sudan and the United Nations Development Programme on Sunday signed a deal worth 21 million U.S. dollars to support host communities of South Sudanese refugees in Sudan's White Nile State, said Sudan's Commission of Refugees in a statement.





The deal is to be implemented in three stages, according to the statement.





The two sides on Sunday launched the first stage of the deal to provide the host communities with machinery and equipment including tractors, agricultural harvesters and water pumps at the cost of 2.2 million dollars, the statement said.





The most important stage of the project is the rehabilitation of the agricultural projects, provision of electricity and re-cultivation of lands, Hamad Al-Jizouli, Sudan's commissioner of refugees, was quoted in the statement as saying.





He said that the White Nile State, on the border with South Sudan, is currently hosting over 150,000 South Sudanese refugees inside camps and more than 88,000 refugees in the cities around the state.





A recent UN report indicated that the number of the South Sudanese refugees in Sudan reached 762,900 as by Sept. 15.





South Sudan has been witnessing a civil war since December 2013, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese citizens to neighboring countries including Sudan.





On Sept. 13, South Sudan's conflicting parties signed a final peace deal in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa after negotiations brokered in Khartoum by Sudan government with a mandate by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development in Africa.Saudi Arabia describes Khashoggi as 'murder'

The kingdom had initially said Mr Khashoggi left its Istanbul consulate alive when his disappearance was first reported, before later saying that the Washington Post columnist died during a fight.

But in an interview with Fox News, Adel al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia was determined to find out all the facts and to punish those who are responsible for this murder.

He extended his condolences to Mr Khashoggis family for what he said was a huge and grave mistake during a rogue operation.

His comments came as it was reported that Mr Khashoggi's fiancee has been given 24-hour police protection.

May to describe Brexit deal as 95 per cent done

Theresa May will insist the Brexit deal is 95 per cent complete as she faces MPs after a weekend of vicious attacks from within her own ranks.

In a Commons statement after talks with EU leaders in Brussels, the Prime Minister will say the shape of the deal across the vast majority of the withdrawal agreement is now clear.

She will claim important progress had been made on issues like security, transport and services but she will not accept the EUs backstop on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Does Harry want a girl?

Prince Harry has seemingly suggested he is hoping his new baby is a girl.

In a video posted from the Invictus Games in Sydney, a well-wisher calls out their congratulations and says they hope the new royal addition is a girl.

Harry then replies: So do I.

Harry and Meghans tour of Australia continued this morning with the Duke receiving a traditional aboriginal welcome on Fraser Island.

The Duchess of Sussex rested at a luxury resort but royal aides said Meghan was tired rather than ill.

Chilly weather on the way

Britons can expect a shock to the system this week as temperatures dip sharply after a spell of unseasonably warm weather.

Parts of northern Scotland could even see sleet and flurries of snow, while further south the mercury is unlikely to go beyond single figures, the Met Office says.

London saw a balmy 21 degrees Centigrade on Saturday as hundreds of thousands took to the streets for the People's Vote march, but even the capital will feel chilly by the weekend.

The drop in temperatures comes as a report by the organisation NHS Providers warns this winter is likely to be even more difficult than the last for NHS trusts, staff and patients.

Seann Walsh survives on Strictly

The comedian and his married professional partner Katya Jones had been at the centre of a media storm after they were photographed kissing two weeks ago.

Judges decided to send Capital FM DJ Hope and her professional partner Graziano Di Prima home last night after the couples dance-off.

On this day

1797: The first parachute descent was made, over the Parc Monceau in Paris, by Andre-Jacques Garnerin, from a balloon.

1910: American-born Dr Hawley Crippen was convicted at the Old Bailey of poisoning his wife Cora. He was hanged on November 23 at Pentonville Prison.

1937: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived in Berlin to meet Hitler, study housing conditions and hear a concert by the Nazi District Orchestra.

1966: KGB master-spy George Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs where he was serving a 40-year sentence.

1974: A bomb exploded in Brooks Club in London, near a restaurant where opposition leader of the time Edward Heath was dining.T ime to face the facts that once you hit your forties, unless you are blessed with super-sonic genes, your skincare routine needs an overhaul.

Long gone are the days when a simple cleanse and go was possible; mature skin needs a lot of TLC to perk it up  from re-plumping and restoring suppleness to hydrating and preventing dryness and lines that increase as we age.

Collagen and elastin  the proteins responsible for young looking skin - have slowed down, so in order to get your glow back you need to treat your skin to the right products.

Finding the right ones though can be hard; there is always a new product or ingredient that promises to make you look ten years younger in weeks

Whats more, the rise of lotions, essences, masks, oils and balms  never mind the good old day creams and moisturisers  can prove a minefield of confusion.

So, to help clear up matters, here is our guide to the best skincare products for your 40s and beyond.

No 7 lift & luminate triple action day cream

Theres something rather comforting about a triple action cream  one application and my mature skin concerns (onset of lines, saggy chin and uneven pigmentation) felt like they were being looked after. Although it is quite a thick cream, it settles into the skin magically without leaving any grease and after a few days I noticed what it said on the pot  my skin did feel firmer, especially around the jowl area. As a moisturiser it is by far the best as it instantly hydrated my very dry skin. A bonus too that with an SPF of 15 it protects skin from the sun.

25 | Boots | Buy it now

Clarins double serum

If youre going to invest in any aspect of your skincare regime, this serum is where to put your money. Serums contain a higher amount of active ingredients, including vitamin C to brighten and smooth and hyaluronic acid to hydrate the skin. In terms of anti-ageing, serums are king and just two tiny pumps of this magically glided over my skin, giving it an almost instant feeling of hydration and cleanliness. A little goes a long way with this one.

57 | Clarins | Buy it now

Decleor lift and firm mask

This product really packs a punch. Rehydration is the best way to restore mature skin that has become dull and lacklustre and by using a deeply hydrating mask you are giving your skin a huge boost. This is a highly effective mask which is applied directly to wrinkles to soften the skins indentation and when used twice a week, left skin feeling firmer and plumper. Plus it smells rather nice too.

50 | Decleor | Buy it now

Vanderohe No.1 nourishing face serum

Although this is a serum, it feels more like a face oil which glides onto the skin easily and melts quickly into the skin. The mixture of different notes  including a blend of rose hip, rose geranium, lavender and myrrh essential oils - give it a strong floral fragrance which is very relaxing at bedtime. From the first drop skin feels totally hydrated and provided you get a good few hours of sleep it can work its magic overnight to leave skin feeling soft and smooth in the morning.

Yes to grapefruit glow-enhancing vitamin C booster

It's the secret skin-boosting ingredient you need to know about as it is one of the few proven anti-ageing skincare ingredients known to encourage collagen production.

It was a dream to use and even though it can be added to your normal skincare products we used it alone and skin felt fresh and dewy and it penetrated the skin really well. As vitamin C is a tricky ingredient it can be quite expensive in a lot of products but this is a cheap and cheerful one which we love.

9.98 | Feel Unique | Buy it now

Aurelia cell repair night oil

Mature skin can often look dull and lifeless due to numerous factors so it is very important to oversee the problem by incorporating a face oil into your skin routine. It is this product that can go a long way in helping restore moisture and encourage glowing skin. The fact this one works overnight means it has more of an intense effect soaking into the skin as you rest. It is very lightweight and smells gorgeous so can help promote sleep too.

62 | Aurelia | Buy it now

Dermalogica sleep cocoon night gel cream

Unsurprisingly, this is meant to be used as the last step to night-time skincare and like the name suggests it literally does envelope your skin in a comforting way. It worked wonders totally repairing flaky skin left over from sunburn to the face. Top marks also for the fact the French lavender essential oil is a proven natural scent that helped lull us to sleep.

72.50 | Dermalogica | Buy it now

La Roche-Posay eye cream

Some people find it a faff to add in eye cream to their skincare routine but for mature skin it is vital. In fact, it is known that the skin is 40 per cent thinner and more sunken around your eyes, so using a specialised formula like this one does have amazing benefits. As well as reducing redness and puffiness around the delicate area it left skin feeling well-nourished and calm.

25 | Boots | Buy it now

La Prairie Skin Caviar Luxe Cream Remastered

La Prairie is hands-down one of the best beauty brands but a face cream with this price tag is bound to cause a few wrinkles. However, it is the ultimate in luxurious pampering that  unlike any other skincare I have used  had an almost instant effect. I saw a difference in day one and my skin did indeed feel silky and smooth. It truly looks (and smells!) good enough to eat too; a lightweight cream that absorbs easily and wakes up the skin and senses.

362 | John Lewis | Buy it now

Verdict:D ave Grohl gave a young blind rock and roll fan the thrill of a lifetime when he asked him to take a seat on stage beside him during a concert in the US.

The Foo Fighters frontman invited the young blind boy and his family on stage with the band at a gig in Minnesota.

Grohl dedicated 2017 hit The Sky is a Neighbourhood to the boy, and asked security to give him a seat on stage alongside his parents for the family occasion.

Music website Consequence of Sound reported that the boys name is Owen. They shared details of a message believed to be from his mother Stacey, who commented on the Chicago-based music sites Facebook page.

The post read: Owen is in fact blind, he also has Autism, Crohn's Disease and developmental disabilities.

Owen loves concerts so much. He was definitely not tired, he likes to be held up front at most shows and we take turns [holding him] up so he can dance.

"Dave Grohl and all of the crew were incredibly kind to our family.

Fans were quick to hail the rock and roll superstar a star for the gesture.

Grohl has become known for being exceptionally generous to fans at shows.K atie Price has reportedly splashed 1,000 on a new puppy to take her mind off things just one week before her bankruptcy hearing.

The model is facing a second bankruptcy court hearing in the coming days after being given 12 weeks to try to rectify her financial situation back in August.

But a source claims that Price, 40, has decided to spend some money on a new furry friend after being left devastated by the loss of German Shepherd Queenie earlier this year.

An insider told The Sun: Katie's last German Shepherd was run over and killed by a takeaway driver and recently it's been weighing heavy on her mind.

She sold off loads of her animals but she thinks a dog would help take her mind off everything going on in her life right now.

They added that everybody is supporting her because a puppy would keep her busy and away from partying.

Hearing: Katie Price faces bankruptcy court next week / John Phillips/Getty Images

Standard Online has contacted representatives for Price for comment.

Earlier this year, Price was left inconsolable after beloved pooch Queenie was allegedly run over by a driver.

According to Price, the driver of the van failed to stop and report the incident and left her to die in the road.

I'm absolutely Devastated heartbroken my faithful loving family dogs life Queenie has been shortened as she was killed by a heartless delivery driver who ran into our dog seeing her struggle and drove off without telling us and left her to die, she wrote.

Very disappointed a human being can be this heartless. Security cameras show this and we have reported to police! DEVASTATED is a understatement.

Queenie was given to Price as a present by husband Kieran Hayler for her 38th birthday back in 2016.C hris Hemsworth gave a hitchhiker the surprise of his life in Australia after he picked him up from the side of a road.

The Thor star shared an Instagram video of himself and friend Luke Zocchi picking up lucky tourist American musician Scott Hildebrand, in Brisbane, who had just arrived in the country from Mexico.

As the pair approached Hildebrand, Hemsworth told the camera: Were going to Byron, well give him a lift.

Zocchi added: Little does he know were getting a chopper.

The duo left Hildebrand stunned as they got out of the car, shaking his hand as they welcomed him to Australia.

Clips later showed the trio preparing for the helicopter ride with stunning views in-shot.

Sharing the video online, Hemsworth jokingly captioned the post: Picked up a hitchhiker, wasnt a serial killer which we were stoked about and just happened to be a kick a** musician Scott Hildebrand @scotthilde #WelcomeToAustralia @australia@zocobodypro.

Speaking about the experience, Hildebrand told E! News: The experience was so cool and unexpected.

They're so nice and I couldn't believe it was happening!"

Fans of the 35-year-old actor flocked to the comments to hail the pair legends for the move.

In pictures: Chris Hemsworth 1 /12 In pictures: Chris Hemsworth Happy couple Chris Hemsworth and his pregnant wife Elsa Pataky Jason Kempin/Getty Images Oscar news Chris and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce the nominees at the 86th Academy Awards Nominations event Kevin Winter/Getty Images Behind the scenes Chris is interviewed after his Oscars announcement Kevin Winter/Getty Images Super hero Natalie Portman as Jane Foster and Chris as Thor (2011) Fresh-faced Chris as Kim Hyde om Home and Away (2006) Channel 5 Perfect pair Chris and Elsa Pataky at the Rush premiere in Rome Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images Rough and ready A less preened look for A Perfect Getaway (2009) Allstar High School hit Chris tries his hand at horror in The Cabin in the Woods (2012) Saving the universe It's Thor to the rescue in Avengers Assemble (2012) Protective Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) with Kristen Stewart as Snow White and Chris as Eric Phwoar Thor! Chris suits his armour so well All action Red Dawn (2012) wit Dean Morgan AP Photo/Film District

One user wrote: Omg i would pass out if i was hitch hiking and @chrishemsworth rocked up.. omg how could you not know who chris is lol i mean cmon hes THOR!!!! cool video tho love it!!! [sic]

Another commented: Love everything about this, just so so good! Still smiling thinking about it.B roken Love Island couple Georgia Steel and Sam Bird managed to avoid an awkward reunion at a club night by appearing 10 minutes apart.

The couple, who got together on the ITV2 show, announced they had split last week with a devastated Bird suspicious of his girlfriends loyalty.

And the duo were both booked to appear at a club night in Gloucester last week but neither of them wanted to drop out, leading to a plan to avoid locking eyes.

Both were pictured on social media attending the club night but never appeared to be in the same room.

A source told OK! Online: Their appearances were about 10 minutes apart.

When Georgia came in, Sam went into the cheesy room upstairs but still stayed in the club. Neither of them spoke.

Love Island's Georgia Steel and Sam Bird move in together

The insider added that they heard Bird speak about Steele but Steele allegedly didnt refer to her ex.

Shortly after their split, Bird claimed that it was because of her ex that the relationship had failed. Steel denied any third party involvement in their split.

In a now-deleted Instagram statement, she wrote: Last night Sam told me he was going to the press so I just want to make clear ahead of any interviews that there was NO third party involved in the break up between him and I.

Sam thinks I cheated because he went through my phone, read and took screen shots of banter I had between me and my best mate which hes now threatening to sell to the press.

The banter was about my ex-boyfriend from which hes then put two and two together and come up with an imaginary scenario.

In an interview with The Sun, Bird claimed that Steel led a double life behind his back and that he was left heartbroken reading messages between her and a friend talking about staying with her ex-boyfriend overnight.E ight celebrities will be trying their hands at becoming the nations agony aunts all in the name of charity.

A host of famous faces will answer the phone lines and help out members of the general public with their everyday and very real problems as part of Channel 4s Stand Up To Cancer appeal.

Theyll be on hand to consult on everything from marriage break-downs to sordid affairs, throwing in their own personal heartache stories too.

Ahead of the one-off special, heres everything you need to know about Celebrity Call Centre

On call: Eight celebrities will answer the phones for Stand Up To Cancer / Channel 4

Whos taking part in Celebrity Call Centre?

Comedian pals Mo Gilligan and Joel Dommett will be answering the calls alongside Made In Chelsea star and Queen of the Jungle Georgia Toffolo.

Actor Tyger Drew-Honey, Girls Aloud star Kimberley Walsh and Pineapple Dance Studios Louie Spence will also lend their expertise to worried callers seeking advice.

Completing the line-up is fiery TV cleaner Kim Woodburn, who was recently involved in a public spat of her own on Loose Women, and Countdown whizz Rachel Riley.

Pictured: Kim Woodburn / Channel 4

What is the special for?

Celebrity Call Centre is just one of the many programmes and ways Channel 4 are raising money for cancer charity, Stand Up To Cancer.

The charity itself was founded in 2008 by media professionals in the US, with Channel 4 and Cancer Research finding a home for the campaign in the UK in 2012.

On Friday October 26, a night of live TV and music, with everything from comedy sketches to hit performances, will round off the fundraising on screen.

Throughout all shows associated with the charity, hard-hitting personal stories from those affected by cancer will air.

When is Celebrity Call Centre on?S trictly Come Dancing star Vick Hope has revealed that producers were called in before the final decision to eliminate her over Seann Walsh was given.

And, speaking on Capital Radio Breakfast on Monday, the DJ revealed that there had been a conversation between producers before head judge Shirley Ballas gave her decision to save Walsh and Jones.

In response to Roman Kemp raging that it isnt the best kisser who goes through, Hope said: We had to have a dance off as well.

Eliminated: Vick Hope became the fourth celebrity to leave the competition / BBC/Guy Levy

It was very strange because after the dance off, then the judges have to give their decisions but there was a bit of a conflab with some producers and then they gave their decisions.

It was just stunned silence in the studio, it was a really weird atmosphere.

Since the comments, a BBC spokeperson told Standard Online: "It is categorically untrue to imply that producers tell the Judges how to score or who to save. Each judge votes on each dance independently, based on its merits and in their expert opinion alone.

"The Judges use an electronic voting pad to transmit their score or choice of who to save to the production gallery which is then locked in and cannot be changed. Only after this does a Producer speak to the judges, advising them on how long they have to speak and reminding them to give a reason for their decisions. The process was exactly the same this weekend."

Kemp also asked Hope about speculation Ballas wasnt her biggest fan during the show, with Hope admitting she had never been spoken to like she was in week one when her dance was heavily criticised.

Hope said: I think Ive gotta be careful what I say here, because you never know what someones thinking.

Saved: Seann Walsh and Katya Jones dancing the Quickstep / BBC / Guy Levy

And it was from week one that people were suggesting there was something there, I dont know. Its been consistent and Saturday night I really felt it was just weird, wasnt it?

Fans were outraged when Walsh was saved over Hope and new professional Di Prima , the only one of the three newcomers to have a celebrity partner this year.

Many blasted the show for being a fix after Walshs Quickstep earned him a place in next weeks Halloween special despite recently hitting the headlines for kissing his married partner Jones.

Jones and Walsh were pictured in a boozy clinch after a night out earlier this month. Both have since apologised for their indiscretions.

Vick Hope presents Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp and Sonny Jay. Tune in to Capital Breakfast, weekdays from 6am  10am and Saturdays from 6am  9am.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"I have been very interested in this meeting, given the fact that we have a plan that we will need to develop and sign, a plan that includes actions in the field of medical science and technology. Moldova is very near and dear to us. We have found very many shared interests. We have established the main coordinates to guide our future collaboration, we have established the main guidelines for action, including the people to be in touch with the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Moldova, and we have reiterated our support for the reforms started there and why not continue to work on reform and how we want to change the system there for the better. We are talking about collaboration in the field of the e-health agency that we are creating now, collaboration in the field of transplantation and medicines. There is a transplant agency in Moldova that works very well at this time and our collaboration will be like Eurotransplant, that is, to trying to harmonise the legislation in the field and co-operate on all levels of transplantation," said Pintea.

Radu thanked for the support offered by the Romanian side for the implementation of Moldova's healthcare reforms."We have begun implementation of reforms in the system of medicine and public health, which, I hope, will lead to the attainment of those European standards that we all want for the Republic of Moldova, speaking of which I would like to thank the minister for her support to us implementing these reforms in order to get something that will make Moldovan doctors no longer want to leave the country and have the opportunity to practice their profession in our republic. We have also discussed a plan of actions for 2018 - 2020, under which we will exchange experience and doctors, we do collaborations to implement healthcare management systems and we conduct many other projects that we have heard that the Romanian Government is ready to support, and we will take over the reform experience for our emergency system, which we want to be as effective as Romania's," said Radu.She added that the reform of primary medicine is currently under way in Moldova, moving on to hospitals."The reform of primary medicine is in full swing now. I think it is a positive thing that the Moldovan doctors will have wages comparable to those in Romania and Europe following the implementation of this reform. We have a hospital reform to do. We will take over Romania's experience with that," she said.

AGERPRESDIICOT officials have confirmed that a public institution has filed a complaint about the publication of the protocol by Valcov, alleging violation of Article 303 of the Criminal Code, which references the disclosure of state secret information.

Judicial sources told AGERPRES that the institution that submitted the complaint is SRI.In this case a criminal case has been opened regarding the misdeed.On August 24, the Attorney General's Office announced having opened a criminal case in connection with the publication by Valcov of that protocol and started criminal prosecution of negligence in keeping state secret information, which is criminalised under Article 305 in the Criminal Code.The case was opened after Darius Valcov posted on his Facebook page a protocol of collaboration between SRI and the Attorney General's Office regarding "co-operation for the fulfilment of their tasks" concluded in December 2016.On December 8, 2016, the Prosecutor's Office with the Supreme Court of Justice concluded two protocols with the Romanian Intelligence Service: a co-operation protocol establishing the actual conditions of access to the non-secret technical systems of the National Centre for Interception of Communications and a protocol on co-operation between the Romanian Intelligence Service and the prosecutor's office for the fulfilment of their duties according to the law - classified state secret, secret level.Regarding the second protocol, the Attorney General's Office stated that on March 22, 2018, it initiated the steps for declassification and asked SRI for agreement to do so."The object of the Protocol references co-operation on detecting crimes against national security, terrorist offences and crimes committed by the military personnel of the Romanian Intelligence Service, notifying the prosecutor's office about the crimes detected by SRI and communication of information in accordance with the provisions of Law 50/1991 on the national security of Romania, of Law 14/1992 on the organisation and functioning of SRI and of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The protocol expired on March 13, 2017, by mutual agreement of the parties involved. At the same time, the Attorney General's Office asked the Romanian Intelligence Service to communicate whether or not it maintains the classified nature of the document, "explains the Attorney General's Office.

AGERPRESRomania is the only state to have allocated resources from Structural Funds dedicated to the riparian areas of the Danube River, and there have been several axes through the Regional Operational Programme (POR) that refer both to the infrastructure development and to the culture and tourism supply, Victor Negrescu, Minister-delegate for European Affairs stated in an interview granted to AGERPRES.

In the official's vision, other states that receive Structural Funds haven't made this decision, Romania planning in this context to invite partner states to do the same "because after all, these cohesion funds, these Structural Funds can also have this objective in order to regionally support cooperation."

On the other hand, the minister also spoke about the fact that Bucharest could become a Danube port with the help of European funds, and so would have much to gain from the tourist and commercial point of view. He showed that the Romanian authorities can convince the European Commission to fund this project from European money. At the same time, this would mean capitalizing on a huge tourist potential, as many tourists who are cruising on the Danube have to stop in Giurgiu to visit the capital.Romania will take over as of 1 November the presidency of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) for one year, and as such it will propose that additional financial resources be allocated for the development of this region's potential, Negrescu added. The minister-delegate for European Affairs also said that Romania is prepared to take over the presidency of the Council of the European Union as of 1 January 2019 and specified he is not anxious as our country has the resources to matter increasingly more at European level.As regards his being on certain lists of possible ministers to be reshuffled, Negrescu showed he does not hold that piece of information but in his opinion, each person who temporarily holds a position must do his/her job the best way he/she can.AGERPRES: What responsibilities does Romania assume once it takes over the presidency of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) on 1 November?Victor Negrescu: This is an extremely important element for our country, because we can practically give a new direction to this strategy. In fact, our main objective for this presidency is to reinvigorate this strategy by promoting a series of ideas, extremely precise projects.As a matter of fact, it is the second time Romania is holding the presidency of this strategy and when we ran last year we set out to take advantage of the opportunity provided by our presidency of the Council of the EU so as to also bring to the forefront of the European agenda the EU Strategy for the Danube Region. Practically, starting from this new statute that Romania will have, our country intends, first of all, to talk very much about connectivity. I am referring here that we talk about the potential this region has and the way we can improve connectivity in the Danube region. Using the Danube as a navigable means but also using the existing potential in the region in terms of attracting additional European financial resources.Another objective in completing this revival idea is the operationalisation of the technical, administrative, secretariat side. In fact, Romania has applied at the beginning of the year, alongside Austria, for the management of this strategy, and, ahead of other competing countries, Romania and Austria have won the opportunity to hold the technical secretariat for three years, which will allow us to use European resources to manage this European structure.In fact, in this team, together with the Austrian partners, Romania's role will be to manage the financial resources and activity in relation to the communication side of the strategy. This is an essential thing, because we believe it is important to communicate more to potential partners and beneficiaries the opportunities offered by this form of collaboration.In addition to connectivity and revitalization, and the administrative part, we have two other equally important goals. An objective relates to the part of the exchange of experience, we are very keen on this because we believe that there are different experiences in the effective management of the Danube, both as regards the environment and the transport side, and we would like to improve this exchange of experience to create as many synergies as possible. Including synergies in the legal framework for regulating the Danube River or activities on the Danube. In this logic, Romania really has added value that it brings to this exchange of experience. Our country is the only country that has allocated resources from the Structural Funds to the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region, which is a positive thing.Last but not least, the fourth important element for us refers to clusters. That is, we want to take advantage of the potential offered by the large number of clusters around the Danube Region to talk about this form of collaboration that involves collaboration between local authorities, associative actors, the business environment, the trade union environment. There is even a very great effervescence, especially in Romania, around these clusters, which are able to attract very, very many European funds.AGERPRES: What does the Danube bring for us, as a country?Victor Negrescu: The Danube offers many opportunities. First, it is a navigable canal. As far as transport is concerned, the Danube has a potentiality still unfulfilled. Unfortunately, some regulations still do not allow us to use the full potential of the Danube. Moreover, perhaps not all states in this region have the same interests in using this potential in terms of transport and that is why Romania has made important efforts to support all states in order to make the Danube a true navigable canal that can be used for transport, including freight transport. In this sense, we actually work with the Bulgarian partners to support them in this respect, because this transport is also an alternative to the traditional means of transport.Moreover, projects using the Danube as a central element can be voted on. I would mention here that there are funding opportunities through the Danube Program, but there are subsequent funding opportunities through the funds available in Brussels that can be accessed as a result of projects or initiatives around the Danube Region. Thus, I would mention an important project called Danubius Ri, one of the most important European projects in the field of environmental and biodiversity research. It is a project which Romania participates in, which we are very proud of, and it is a vivid proof of the fact that we can also attract European resources for projects that make explicit reference to the Danube and its potential.Last but not least, I would mention the financing infrastructure for the Danube Delta, a means of financing, the ITI [Integrated Territorial Investments - ed.n.] specifically created for this area of Romania. This has been possible precisely in the light of the distinctive nature of the Danube Delta region and can be further exploited and used and, why not, in other member states as well.AGERPRES: What examples can we follow from the Danube countries that have done more in this respect?Victor Negrescu: First of all, we must say that all of Romania is included in the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region. This is extremely important because, basically, when we launched this Strategy, initiated by Romania and Austria, we thought from the start that there is a huge potential throughout Romania to use the resources of the Danube.Starting from this, indeed, we seek to see successful models, and hence, we will greatly stimulate exchanges of experience because they truly exist. In particular, one should see here the positive example given by Vienna, how it profits from the Danube for tourism promotion, but also for the commercial transport and development of clusters around the Danube.Austria and Germany have succeeded in highly developing port infrastructure. In this sense, we should perhaps take over these positive examples to develop our own port infrastructure and, in this logic, Giurgiu municipality has accessed financial resources available directly at Brussels in partnership with the Austrian partners and, with those funds, will build a port infrastructure in Giurgiu. I think that example should be replicate in other parts of the country. So, there are things that are happening. Unfortunately, we are not talking enough about these things. That is why our presidency of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region can allow us to reinvigorate this strategy, to give more visibility to this strategy, to show the potential offered by this strategy and to bring as many stakeholders as possible, participants, partners around the Danube and the potential offered by the Danube as a whole.AGERPRES: Why do you think there is not enough talk about this topic?Victor Negrescu: The strategy was officially launched in 2011 and there have been some moments when there was a great deal of visibility on this strategy. Things have evolved depending on the countries that held the presidency, and perhaps one thing that has diminished interest in the Strategy was the fact that macro-regional strategies do not, unfortunately, benefit from their own financial resources.The amount allocated is a specific one, of just over 200 million euro, and this may have reduced the attractiveness also because those financial resources specifically support software projects, conferences, meetings, information campaigns, and have supported less the substantial projects, especially those relating to infrastructure.That is why Romania sets out, during the EUSDR presidency, to think a few regional initiatives that can be put on the European agenda, taking advantage of the fact that we will hold the presidency of the Council of the European Union. That is why we aim to convince the European partners that in the future funding lines managed directly by Brussels - I refer here to Horizon Europe, the future Erasmus programme or transport programmes - to introduce a reference to the need to support regional initiatives coming from these macro-regional structures recognized by Brussels.So, more specifically, if a working group is developed, funded by our macro-regional programme, which thinks about the development of port infrastructure and the states gather together, come up with ideas, it would be good for the projects that result from the working group to benefit from the funds provided from the funding available in Brussels. Either those evoked or those managed by the European Investment Bank. So it is important to offer continuity to these ideas that already exist but which need to materialize in concrete and larger projects.AGERPRES: At the moment, does the initiative have 200 million euro at its disposal?Victor Negrescu: Approximately 270 million euro. We are talking about an entire European budget. So the sum is small related to every year. But what is important to mention is that other macro-regional policies do not benefit from additional resources, in principle. How is money allocated for macro-regional policies, but also for crossborder or transnational programmes? The European budget is negotiated and each state agrees to reallocate an amount from the country allocated budget to these forms of regional cooperation. So we, at the level of the Danube Region, have agreed to share this contribution together. Certainly, it may be agreed upon that the amounts be higher in the future. It is a consensus and it represents the average of the other macro-regional policies.I want you to know that this macro-regional policy is the second largest macro-regional strategy at EU level. We also have member states and non-member states, which gives the situation some particularity, including the Republic of Moldova, which are part of this macro-regional strategy. This presents a very great opportunity in terms of interconnecting member countries with non-member countries, for example the countries of the Western Balkans, which we are talking about very much at this time.As I said earlier, taking over the presidency of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region is a great opportunity for Romania. We relied a great deal on this opportunity when we decided to run last year. There were competitors, but the member states chose Romania and we are glad. We believe that we can make an active contribution in such a way that this macro-regional strategy benefits from the necessary support.AGERPRES: Do you have an estimate of how much money would Romania need to bring to the end of the projects you are thinking of?Victor Negrescu: First of all, we want to create synergy between the projects supported by regional cooperation and the projects that the EU funds directly. It is important to have continuity with the initiatives already taken. We are talking about feasible and viable projects, and if this synergy, defined and guaranteed by Brussels, is created, those infrastructure projects that will bring added value will surely ensue.These regional projects, not just in Romania, will certainly generate a surplus to the budgets of the member states and then a plus to the European budget. Things connect and highlight what Romania has evoked very often in recent times, the need for continuity between the East and the West, perhaps even between the North and the South. The idea of continuity was evoked at the Summit of the Three Seas and it is important for us to talk more and more about these issues. In fact, during our Presidency of the Council of the European Union we will talk about this aspect of connectivity.AGERPRES: You have evoked the example of Vienna. Do you think it would be beneficial for Bucharest to become a port on the Danube?Victor Negrescu: I think this is a long-standing project for Romanian decision makers. Obviously, such a project should, first of all, be evaluated. It needs to be viable, consistent, to involve many actors, both in the public and private environments so as to assure us that such an initiative is viable in the medium and long term. From the information I have, I know that the European institutions were interested in this project in the past and, obviously, to the extent that Romania will come up with a detailed presentation, we can certainly identify solutions, perhaps even financing, by using the resources of the European Strategic Investment Fund, included. Such projects are extremely important. It is equally important to explain and materialize them.From my knowledge, I know that a good part of the infrastructure that was begun can still be used, which would mean that such a project would not start from scratch, it would already start with a certain degree of implementation.AGERPRES: How important would that be for Bucharest?Victor Negrescu: The capitals connected to the Danube have profited a great deal. We look at Vienna, we look at Budapest - extremely eloquent examples of what the added value brought by the Danube to the tourist offer, the commercial exchanges means... All of these things are natural as soon as a big city is connected to the Danube. I'd simply bring to mind here the guided tours on the Danube. They are currently more and more developed and as regards Romania, the tours still stop at Giurgiu, and then the tourists come to visit Bucharest. Had there been a direct connection, those tourists would certainly come directly to Bucharest and could benefit much more from the tourist offer of the Romanian capital city.We already have potential on the Danube and I'm talking about the fact that the cities are connected. We have smaller towns, such as Giurgiu, and we have bigger towns, such as Galati, and why cannot it benefit from this context? Perhaps even Tulcea, because there is a connection with the Danube Delta there as well. I think we should use this chain of Danube connected communities and create around them what I have just said earlier, as a priority to us, the idea of development clusters, using the Danube's potential.I know that these things I bring to mind could seem particularly technical, red-tape, but other countries have already accomplished them. Starting from such ideas, things can be achieved that people can see in their daily lives.AGERPRES: You have recently been to see the Romanian ports at the Danube. How do they look like? As far as I know, they look awful. Why is it that so far nothing has been done?Victor Negrescu: First of all, those who have the responsibility are those who should explain these elements. Ever since we started to focus more on this strategy, we have had several talks with the ministries in charge, be they the Transport Ministry, the Development Ministry or other institutions involved. Efforts have intensified to access the available European funds. I know that part of these structures have already received resources to improve their activity.Hopefully this effort will continue in the next period. I have as example the Giurgiu municipality that has accessed European funds to build an intermodal port. I believe we should talk about these positive examples, too, with funds directly accessed in Brussels. There, things are progressing and I know that other localities do the same to improve the tourist offer around the Danube, to refurbish the esplanades and other matters of this kind. Lately, the Tulcea municipality and the Tulcea County Council have promoted the initiative for the modernization of the esplanade. So, things are happening. They should happen faster. Certainly, this is true for many things in Romania and I hope that many things will be improved.There are countries that are capitalising on the potential more and countries that perhaps do not make enough of it. Romania is aware today more than ever of this potential and by taking over this presidency, it wants to reinvigorate the interest for using this potential I have largely described in our talk. In order to do that, we have set out to organise more than 50 actions targeting our country's presidency of the EUSDR. All ministries are in.You must know that at the level of this region, there are priority areas, there are sectoral working groups - Environment, Transports, Culture and that come together, come with initiatives that support this idea of connectivity and synergy among states. Surely, by organizing these meetings in Bucharest and in other places, too, we will be able to give a plus to the initiatives in the field. I was speaking earlier about the clusters' potential. It is enough to browse the web and you'll see that tens of clusters exist that have lately developed in Romania, that use the Danube's potential, access European money and make a special effort to develop all kinds of innovative solutions to use the Danube's potential.AGERPRES: At the Gov't level, what is the importance of this initiative? How is it perceived? I mean, is enough priority granted to it? If you're saying that so far it has been somewhat overshadowed, how will it be from now on?Victor Negrescu: I am positive that this presidency of the EUSDR will allow us to generate interest from all of the institutional actors. This is not about the gov't. The political actors do back the initiatives that refer to the Danube and I think that no matter their political colour, everybody believes it is important to use this potential in a very efficient way. It is yet important that we take the following steps too.That is why we have placed the EU Strategy for the Danube Region as a priority also for our presidency of the Council of the EU, because we want to go further and this next step particularly refers to the need to be able to access additional financial resources so as to use this potential. Like I said, Romania is the only state that has allocated from the Structural Funds, resources dedicated to the Danube's riparian areas. Through the Regional Operational Programme, there have been several axes that also relate to the infrastructure development and to the culture and tourist offer, and this makes Romania an example for other member states.Sadly, other states receiving structural funds did not make this decision, which is why we'd like to invite the partner states to do the same because, after all, these cohesion funds, these structural funds could have this target, too to support regional cooperation. Besides, if one looks at the cross-border or cross-national programmes, depending on how one refers to them, one can see that Romania is an important beneficiary of these resources, even in the south area of the country, and not only, and in this sense financing was granted for the erection of the basic infrastructure, road infrastructure, included, of connection and of other fixed assets and this is a good thing. We must access more funds in this sense so that we create a development area around the Danube. A development area that obviously must not refer only to the cities that are already benefiting from the Danube, but to the Danube's path entirely.AGERPRES: In the project of Romania's new energy strategy, recently launched in public debate, the idea of a new hydro power plant on the Danube is emerging. has there been any talk on this project recently?Victor Negrescu: There hasn't been any recent discussion that I was informed about. So, let us ask first the colleagues with the Energy Ministry. There are a lot of projects. We listed these initiatives or projects, among which the ones you have brought to mind. Naturally, we deal with the coordination part of the relation with the partners in the region and this means of European cooperation, and we wish to start from this list, obviously, to see what to do next.Surely, like you said before, potential exists and there already are projects, older or newer. They must benefit from financing. The fact that the macro-regional Strategy does not benefit from dedicated resources caps this potential. That is why we want to make this connection, this synergy with the available Brussels' funds.AGERPRES: In reference to the government reshuffle, your name pops up on certain lists that circulate in the public space. Could you comment on this information?Victor Negrescu: We have no list. Tomorrow [19 October, ed. n.] we shall take over the presidency of the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region, in Bulgaria. We have a lot of work to do to be ready for the presidency of the EU Council. These are important tasks. Each person who ephemerally fills a position must do their job the best way they can. This has been my priority all the time. And it will further be my priority to carry out my activity the best way I can by observing the ruling programme, too, and yet by observing the objectives Romania has got and in particular these two objectives already brought to mind are national interest topics which I manage proudly and with the wish to demonstrate that the Government of Romania is capable of dealing with challenges of such magnitude.AGERPRES: Do you believe a continuity must exist at the level of the ministry's leadership in this period, when we prepare ourselves to take over the presidency of the EU Council and the presidency of the EUSDR?Victor Negrescu: I wish to say we are on schedule with all these elements. Like I said, we are taking over the EUSDR presidency, we have a list of documents, we have very clearly planned activities, we have set objectives, approved by the gov't.For the presidency of the EU Council, all our foreign partners who have visited Romania have brought to mind the important preparedness level of Romania and the spirited programme we table. I am positive that we can accomplish what we have set out to do and that after all, those who trusted us will see at the end of our activity that we did our job. Obviously, all of these things are not on one person's shoulders. The most important thing one can do as a dignitary is make sure that things are well organized so that they run smoothly regardless of the one who is temporarily holding the office.AGERPRES: Is Romania ready at this time to take over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union?Victor Negrescu: Romania is ready to take over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. I'm certain we are on schedule with all the elements regarding the organization, both politically and logistically. We recently had the visit of the Secretary General of the Council of the European Union who in his talks with the members of the Cabinet and with the other Romanian dignitaries brought to mind that we have made significant efforts so as to be ready for this moment. He found that there is a very good level of preparedness as regards the knowledge of the files and the involvement regarding these negotiations. This was also brought to mind by the representatives of the Council's General Secretariat, who have also been in Romania lately, in Sibiu included, to see the preparation level of the Summit that is due there next spring.These things bring me joy because they demonstrate that work can bring results and I believe that any office holder must understand they have a huge responsibility and that to represent Romania in its relations with our European partners and the accomplishment of these missions is a responsibility I personally am very proud that I could have them and I'm sure that we can successfully fulfill these objectives for Romania.AGERPRES: Are you nervous?Victor Negrescu: One has no reason to be nervous in politics or this administrative activity. I have convictions and my conviction is connected to the fact that Romania is a state that can count more and more at European level, a state that can have a substantial contribution to the European decision-making process. I am positive that our country has very well prepared people in this field, people who know what they have to do.I'm positive that Romania's presidency of the Council of the European Union will be successful because we know our mission, because we will respect what the meaning of this responsibility which entails this role of mediator we often talk about and I'm sure that for six months, Romania and the Romanians, in particular, will show that our country has understood what belonging to the European Union involves and that after all, we can have a positive contribution to what the construction of the European Union's future means.According to the decision published on Monday in the Official Journal, this Committee will include representatives of several ministries - the Ministry of Environment, Regional Development and Public Administration, the European Funds Ministry, the Ministry of Finance, as well as the National Regulatory Authority for Community Services and Public Utilities, the National Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Fund Administration.

The main objectives of this Committee will be: "the identification of the actions needed for the implementation of the EC Directive 2008/98 of the European Parliament and of the Council of November 19 2018 on waste, and repealing certain directives; the recovery of the gaps existing at national level, in reaching the objectives set by the European directives in waste management; the implementation of the priority governance measures stipulated by the National Waste Management Plan, in managing municipal waste."According to the same decision, participating in this Committee's meetings will also be, as guests, the representatives of other public entities, specialists and representatives of the civil society.Moreover, the Committee has the obligation to present, on a monthly basis and upon the PM's request, reports regarding the meeting of the objectives for which it was created in the first place.

AgerpresThe chairman of the Select Parliamentary Committee for the Justice laws' package, PSD (Social Democratic Party, major at rule, ed. n.) deputy Florin Iordache, declared on Monday for RFI that the recommendations from the Venice Commission will not be entirely considered and said he is disappointed that this European forum "prejudged, without waiting for CCR (Constitutional Court of Romania, ed. n.) decision."

According to Iordache, "the Venice Commission basically has two opinions: one opinion on the Justice laws and one opinion on the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code."

"We are waiting in the following days for the two reports to be published, because in the report on the laws of Justice there were made some amendments, after discussions, and in the other we are to wait the CCR's decisions with priority. (...) I was disappointed, because they prejudged and we only asked for one thing: let us wait for the CCR's decisions too, we can not only listen to one point, yours, let us see what the Court has to say, and between the two, because for us the CCR's decisions are of priority, we will choose the best solution. It was seen in the first report as well, the one for the Justice laws, that there were many mistakes, which were then recognized and amendments were made," he added.Asked if all the recommendations from the Venice Commission will be taken over, Florin Iordache replied: "No, of course not. I said it there too, for example, that a recommendation the Venice Commission insisted on was the one with the special section and I said that this recommendation cannot, under any circumstance, be taken over, especially now since it has been proven that over half of the Romanian magistrates had case files, this section proves its usefulness."Iordache said that the Romanian authorities did not request the assistance of the Venice Commission. According to Iordache, the CCR's decisions are priority."For us, the CCR's decisions are priority. That is what I said there and this is what I'm saying to you, because, in the end, among the CCR's objectives are that of putting in accordance the Romanian legislation with the European legislation and with the treaties which Romania is a party to," the PSD deputy added.Iordache also says that the Parliament is the only authority in Romania that can amend a law."I have not seen until now a communication or a desire to communicate from the president. All I saw were criticism from the president. It's not normal to criticize your own country, in Brussels, of all places," Florin Iordache said.The Romania Together Movement (RO+) considers that following the recent verdict of the Venice Commission "the felons' puppets have lost all legitimacy to amend the justice package and the criminal codes."

In a Monday release, RO+ says the promoters of the changes to the justice package and the criminal codes "have lamentably failed the test before the Venice Commission professionals."

"With the verdict of the Venice Commission, the PSD - ALDE coalition has lost the last shred of legitimacy to credibly lead the debates on the organization of justice and criminal policy in Romania," the release states, and goes on to note that the conclusions of the Venice Commission "are devastating" for the PSD - ALDE coalition."PSD, ALDE and UDMR have lied to us: despite the leaders of the ruling coalition cynically assuring the Romanians in ill-faith that the adopted amendments were purportedly intended to meet the requirements of the Venice Commission, the recently released conclusions prove the opposite. According to the Commission, which is unanimously accepted as the top-important European body of justice professionals, the changes adopted by Romania's ruling majority undermine the independence of the judiciary and seriously affect the Romanian state's ability to fight corruption, organized crime and violent crimes," the release said.According to RO+, the ruling coalition is doubly discredited: from a legal point of view "for the regulatory chaos created and for the lack of professionalism in imposing legislative changes"; and from a political point of view, "for the lawmaking method used to serve criminal interests and for ignoring the magistrates' and the society's opposition to these changes."RO+ underscores that the public debate on justice and the rule of law must be restarted on new bases, "but not by those who have taken Romania 15 years back, through the attempted restoration of the party-state, and by setting mechanisms in place to protect public money embezzlement," the release states.RO+ also considers that the immediate repeal of the amendments to the justice laws is necessary (the repeal of Law No. 207/2018 amending the Law on judicial organization, of Law No. 234/2018 amending the rules on the Superior Council of the Magistrates, and Law No. 242/2018 amending the statutes of magistrates, as well as Emergency Ordinances 90/2018 and 92/2018).RO+ states that a fresh start is needed, based on the completed draft to reform the judiciary package put up for public debate in 2016, and that all proposed amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure which were found by the Venice Commission to "undermine the state's ability to combat serious forms of crime, including crimes of corruption and organized crime" must be dropped."Any proposal to amend the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code should start from a previous public debate with magistracy experts and academics to identify criminal policy solutions that are compatible with Romania's international commitments and with the European directives," the cited source concludes.The Technical University of Cluj Napoca (UTCN) is about to launch the Tech EMBA major, for all those interested or operating in the IT and technology field, in partnership with the Hull University from the UK.

The new curricula will include courses of infrastructure management, cyber security, software management and innovation, reads a release sent to AGERPRES on Monday.

"The new major, Tech EMBA, is meant to cover the needs of the digital economy as an essential source of economic growth and transformation of an increasingly larger area of the economy in Transylvania and Romania. The new structure of the EMBA programme, with 2 majors, General and Tech, will offer both specialized knowledge in the two areas and also a necessary common base meant to develop critical and strategic thinking to the use of both majors," the head of the EMBA programme in Cluj Napoca, PhD Andrew Taylor, said in the release.

In their turn, the UTCN representatives underscored that, nowadays, any economic field relies on Information Technology, wherefrom the need for a high quality education in information technology and management fields.

"Thus, the new major, Tech EMBA, initiated through a joint effort of the Hull University and the Technical University of Cluj Napoca is perfect in covering this need," said Daniela Popescu, UTCN pro-rector, in charge with the University Management and the Relation with the Socio-Economic Environment field.

The EMBA programme is internationally accredited by the The Association of MBAs and The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The courses will take 2 years to complete and will be held by international professors from the Hull University. The graduation diploma of EMBA Hull University, which will be received after completing the 2 years, is internationally recognized.Does the US Deep State really want to provoke a thermonuclear world war with Russia, China and Iran at the same time? The recklessness and confusion of US policies provoking major crises on every side certainly suggests so. Yet the truth may be even more terrifying.

The dangers of nuclear war and global conflict should literally be regarded as suicidal and insane. Yet the policies being repeatedly urged on President Donald Trump by Democrats and Republicans in both chambers of Congress, the hysterical and delusional mainstream US media and even the top defense and national security officials Trump has himself appointed seem to allow for no other conclusion.

On September 4, Trump, who won his shock election victory two years ago campaigning on a policy of pulling back from needless confrontations and conflicts around the world, threatened to launch a full-scale military invasion of Syria even if that meant clashes with Russian and Iranian forces too.

Second, that same day, the Pentagon gave two Russia warships directly to the chaotic, ferociously anti-Russian government of Ukraine for potential use against Russia.

Third, the very next day, September 5, US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke suggested a military blockade against Russia as a serious option to cut off Moscows booming oil and natural gas exports to Western Europe.

Fourth, On October 2, US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison, a former United States senator threatened a preemptive nuclear strike against Russian missiles deployed in their own country.

Should Russias alleged new system become operational, Hutchison told reporters, At that point, we would be looking at the capability to take out a missile that could hit any of our [European allied] countries. Countermeasures would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation.

Hutchison then tried to backtrack on the threat but the term take out she used to describe possible US unilateral action against the alleged missiles cannot plausibly be interpreted as other than a threat of direct military action.

Fifth, in November, scathing new sanctions aimed at crippling Russias ability to carry out financial transactions around the world will go into effect. They have already been passed virtually unanimously by both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities and with the hate-crazed support of the mainstream media.

Judged in isolation, these measures  eagerly egged on and supported by Theresa Mays craven government in the United Kingdom  amount to criminal irresponsibility for the survival of the entire world.

But there is even more: Sixth, not content with being obsessed with provoking a full-scale thermonuclear war with Russia, a country whose leadership and people have repeatedly proven their abhorrence of such a prospect, the United States is simultaneously provoking full scale conflict with China  its largest debtor and most important trading partner, and with Iran.

US military officials have told CNN that the US Navy wanted to send warships and aircraft through the South China Sea in November to send a message to Beijing. One has to wonder exactly what message they truly have in mind.

And on October 4, Vice President Mike Pence issued a blunt warning to China that the US would not back down from what it sees as Chinese threats and attempts at intimidation.

To add to the chaos, Trump is now also blundering into a full-scale diplomatic row with Saudi Arabia following the bizarre and obscene murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, ironically a leading figure in urging the disruptive and revolutionary US policies that have brought chaos and misery to the peoples of the Middle East throughout this century.

Trump and his irresponsible son-in-law Jared Kushner have only themselves to blame for witlessly giving Saudi Arabias ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) a free hand in the first place. But already, the Saudis are threatening to boost global oil prices to $200 or even $400 per barrel if the US government and Congress are themselves reckless enough to condemn or sanction them in response to the murder of Khashoggi.

Such threats, if carried out, would certainly provoke a global economic crisis. But it first victim would inevitably be the government of Saudi Arabia, which is already dangerously fiscally vulnerable precisely because of MBSs own disastrous economic policies.

The only rational explanation for this combination of aggressive, chaotic confrontational actions and policies in every direction is that Washington policymakers are determined to destroy their own country and take down the world with them. But the true explanation is even more terrifying: They quite simply do not realize what they are doing.

Before World War II, British politician Winston Churchill called for a full-scale military alliance with the Soviet Union as the only realistic way to deter the catastrophe of a Second World War and the conquest of Europe by Nazi Germany.

Instead, Churchill saw a stupid, ignorant, irresponsible British national leadership complacently allowing Europe to descend into chaos and destruction.

To explain the coming doom he saw so clearly, Churchill in Parliament quoted a long forgotten 1890 verse by the Irish editor and wit Edwin James Milliken about a terrible train disaster

The pace is hot, and the points are near,

And Sleep hath deadened the drivers ear;

And signals flash through the night in vain.

Death is in charge of the clattering train!

The same judgment should be made of US policymaking today. In the White House, the Department of Defense the State Department, both houses of Congress and the great institutions of the US media, the story is the same. No sane and responsible person is in control any more.

Death is in charge of the clattering train.With the announcement of President Trumps decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty, the issue of Russias response rises to the fore. First of all, the US decision is not yet official. It can still be reconsidered. After the formal notification the treaty will still have another six months of life left. Moscow is ready for talks at any level at any time. The US administration is in for a rough patch. Opposition to the decision is strong in Congress, with many American pundits and NATO allies expressing their disagreement. Germany has already criticized the move. Its not over yet. There is still a chance to save the landmark agreement. But if the worst happens and the INF Treaty is relegated to history, Russia will hardly kneel down and surrender. It will respond. It has options.

Since the US currently has no ground-launched, intermediate-range missiles, Russia can easily extend the range of its Iskander missile systems to encompass all of Europe, with American military assets as their prime targets. Moscow can field ground-launched Kalibr cruise missiles. The number of conventional and nuclear-tipped air- and sea-based cruise missiles in Europe and nearby waters can be easily increased. The Russian navy and air force now have the capability to attack the continental US with intermediate-range missiles by launching them beyond the reach of air-defense systems. This capacity can be increased. Russian naval ships armed with cruise missiles could drop anchor in countries like Venezuela or Nicaragua on a rotational basis. Long-range aviation bombers could use the air bases there too. Russia has never before threatened the continental US, but now it will have to. After all, it wasnt the one who started all of this.

As one can see, Moscow has a long list of potential responses up its sleeve. Its very important to realize that, unlike in the 1980s, Russia has the intermediate-strike capability to threaten the US continent. It could hit Alaska with medium-range weapons right now. Times have changed.

The idea behind the move is to link the INF Treaty with the New START Treaty in order to make Russia more tractable. But Russia is currently modernizing its strategic arsenal, with new resources becoming operational, while the US still has a long way to go developing, testing, and introducing new systems in order to upgrade its abilities. That will take years. By endangering the New START Treaty, the US is shooting itself in the foot.

This bilateral relationship is at a low ebb, but its wrong to use arms-control agreements as bargaining chips. To employ the terminology of the Helsinki Act  sanctions, Ukraine, Syria, and accusations of election meddling should all go into one basket, while arms control, as well as the issues related to military activities, should go into another. The bilateral agenda should be compartmentalized, not linked. The individuals who worked on the Helsinki Act were very professional and hard-working and will forever be respected and remembered. They managed to accomplish a mission that seemed at first glance to be a tall order.

Its hard to understand how dangerous an unfettered arms race is. US politicians may underestimate it. Its true, the US has a much larger GDP, but Russias military programs are far less costly and much more efficient. Russia gets a bigger bang for its buck. This is the reality the US has to reckon with, whether it likes it or not.

Its more productive to discuss the issue with professional military officers, especially those who have retired and are free to express their opinions. For a lot of reasons, the issues of arms control are not being seriously addressed by officials. Thats when a dialog between retired military professionals and pundits comes in handy.

The US is returning to the days of George W. Bush when the administration tried to avoid binding treaties. The logic behind this was that any binding treaty can be breached, so why tie ones hands? Anything can be done in good faith. But administrations come and go. Different people have different interpretations of what has been agreed upon. You cannot depend on the goodwill of personality. Only a binding, written agreement can guarantee the efficiency of verification procedures. And it is better if it is ratified, so as to codify the confidence-building provisions that have been agreed upon.

There is one more detail of fundamental importance. If the two leading military powers have failed to curb the race in strategic nuclear forces, there is no chance that hypersonic weapons, space-based systems, long-range conventional missiles, and cybersecurity warfare activities will ever be controlled. The arms race will spread to other domains.

The races in various domains will sap resources. Weve already seen that. And then well have to start from scratch like our predecessors had to do. But this time there is no guarantee that well be successful. The world has become too complicated.

One thing is evident  the arms race that the US has unleashed will not make that country stronger. Remember the problem of national debt? And one more thing  the US will be forever held responsible for whats going to happen. History teaches us that the people who work to control deadly weapons are the wise ones. Those who refuse to do so are  something else. Its best to think twice before making a decision to dismantle what has been created with so much blood, sweat, and tears, rather than to jump the gun and then pay dearly for a mistake that could have been easily avoided.The UAE (United Arab Emirates) is upgrading eight of its 28 AH-64D Apache helicopter gunships to the latest E standard. The UAE will also receive nine newly built AH-64Es. Work on the upgrade will begin in early 2019. In 2017 the UAE sought to get 37 AH-64Es but that plan has been revised. The current order is part of that. The UAE has been using its AH-64s a lot in Yemen since 2015 and has lost two. Many others are in need of refurbishment.

The UAE first began acquiring AH-64s in the early 1990s. After 2001 UAE undertook several AH-64 upgrade programs. At first, this was to upgrade existing AH-64As to the D standard as well as buying 30 new AH-64Ds in 2010. There were delays in the AH-64 expansion program but with the current order that is moving forward with older AH-64s being remanufactured to not only extend their service life but also upgrade to the E standard. The goal is to expand and upgrade the AH-64 fleet to 60 AH-64Es by the early 2020s. Most of the UAE AH-64s are in the 10th Army Aviation Brigade (which is a joint command with the air force) while some others are assigned to the Special Operations Command.

The AH-64E made its first flight in 2008 and the U.S. Army received its first ones in 2011. The AH-64E showed up in Afghanistan during early 2014 for field testing. There the 24 AH-64Es with an aviation battalion performed as expected. The E model benefits from three decades of operational experience. The AH-64 entered service in 1986 and the last of these AH-64As was taken out of service in 2012 for upgrade to the AH-64D standard. The AH-64B was an upgrade proposed for the early 1990s but was canceled, as was a similar C model upgrade, because of Cold War budget cuts. Some of these canceled improvements were in great demand. Thus the B and C model upgrades were incorporated in the AH-64D Block I (1997). The AH-64D Longbow (because of the radar mast, making it possible to see ground targets and flying obstacles in all weather) models began appearing in 2002. By the end of the decade, 634 army AH-64Ds will be upgraded to the new AH-64E standard.

AH-64Es have more powerful and fuel-efficient engines, as well as much improved electronics. AH-64Es also have Internet-like capabilities enabling these gunships to quickly exchange images, video, and so on with other aircraft and ground troops. Each AH-64E can also control several UAVs and launch missiles at targets spotted by these UAVs. The AH-64E radar has longer range and onboard computers are much more powerful than earlier ones. The electronics are easier to upgrade and maintain. The combination of improved fire control and Internet capabilities greatly increases the combat effectiveness of the AH-64E.

The 10 ton AH-64E carries a pilot and a weapons officer, as well as up to 16 Hellfire missiles (plus the 30mm automatic cannon). Sorties average three hours. The AH-64 can operate at night and has a top speed of 260 kilometers an hour.

In addition to the U.S. Army, the AH-64E is in service with many foreign nations. Neighboring Saudi Arabia ordered 70. Israel, Kuwait and Egypt also bought in. Many of these are being upgraded to the E standard. There are about 1,100 AH-64s (mostly American) in service and most are being upgraded to the E standard.India is refusing to talk with Pakistan until the Pakistani military at least reduces its Islamic terror activity in Kashmir. Pakistan denies there is any such thing, despite a growing body of evidence from captured Islamic terrorists, documents and electronic intercepts. Pakistan has found that their best tactic in the face of all this evidence is to just continue denying while putting all the blame on India. Even veteran diplomats find this approach tiresome and repugnant. Pakistani elected officials (and many more retired civil and military personnel) have admitted this but often quietly because the Pakistani military does not respond well to public criticism from anyone inside Pakistan.

In the last month, Pakistan has ordered its Islamic terrorists operating in Kashmir to terrorize the locally recruited police as well as their families. There are about 26,000 of these SPOs (Special Police Officers) in Kashmir and the threats caused about fifty resignations. India responded by increasing the pay of SPOs, especially those with years of experience. The intent of the terrorist threat is to destroy the local police and force India to bring in outsiders to provide local policing. This would make it easier for the Pakistani terrorists to carry out another mission; make it more difficult to hold elections, especially those that elect local officials. Most Kashmiris are hostile to both of these Pakistani efforts but there is not much they can do about it. As long as there are a few hundred Islamic terrorists out in the hills, and those Islamic terrorists are willing to take a lot of casualties (which they are as a result of engaging in a high-risk activity like kidnapping locals and killing those who are police) Pakistan can keep Indian Kashmir in disarray.

While more young men from Kashmir are joining the Pakistani Islamic terror groups police point out that these recruits are not trained (often for a year or more), like the ones from Pakistan are and rarely last more than a year before getting killed or dying from disease or accidents or getting captured and jailed. Pakistan can bring over more of their trained Islamic terrorists but the losses getting across the border are high and despite their training, the imported Islamic terrorists dont last long either. Pakistani planners believe if they can amp up the violence in Kashmir the Indian forces will react and that will mean more pain and loss for civilians because the paramilitary police prefer to avoid casualties at all costs and thus deal harshly with any civilians suspected of harboring Islamic terrorists. The civilians usually have no choice and thats why its so important to have local police, who can determine who is a victim and who is supporting the Islamic terrorists. Pakistan is willing to impose more and more pain on the Kashmiri population because after more than 20 years of this nothing has worked. Most Moslem Kashmiris are not interested in becoming part of Pakistan (they know how it is over there) but there are a minority of Kashmiris who do support Pakistan and thats enough for Pakistan to keep the violence going but not enough to win. Apparently, Pakistan believes they have nothing to lose with their burn the place down approach.

Afghan Angst

The Afghan Taliban is divided over the issue of being controlled by Pakistan and being held responsible for the growing number of Afghan drug addicts. Then there is the role of Pakistan in sustaining the chaos Afghanistan has suffered since the late 1970s (when Russian backed Afghan communists tried to start a revolution). The communists were followed by a Russian invasion, drug gangs, an Islamic revolution, civil war and Pakistan seeking to take control in the 1990s with their Taliban movement. Pakistan did serve as a base for millions of Afghan refugees and thousands of Afghan rebels during the 1980s but that led to Pakistan believing it could continue to support violence in Afghanistan if it was deemed to be serving Pakistani interests. The Pakistani created and supported Taliban had control of Afghanistan (or at least most of it) from the late 1990s until 2001. That led to the American invasion and Pakistan continuing to support the drug gangs and Taliban while assisting the U.S. in its war on terror. Many Americans want to just leave. The problem is just getting out leaves Afghanistan at the mercy of Pakistan, Iran and Russia, as well as all the drug gangs, Islamic terror groups and numerous Afghans who oppose the drugs and all the outside interference. The drugs and Islamic terrorism will still be major exports. The West can leave Afghanistan but the ills of Afghanistan wont leave the West and that is just fine with Pakistan.

A growing number of Afghan Taliban leaders want peace and an end to being manipulated by the Pakistanis. Despite that, the senior Afghan Taliban leader and the Pakistani generals are not inclined to consider peace talks because of all that money from the drug gangs as well as the ability to control (or at least disrupt) Afghanistan. The U.S. recently repeated its accusation that Pakistan had done nothing about the Pakistan sanctuary for the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network and several other Islamic terror groups that do the bidding of the Pakistani military.

Direct peace talks between Afghan Taliban leaders and the United States, which is now a possibility, are very risky for the Taliban and their Pakistani patrons because the existence of their sanctuaries in Pakistan, while denied by the Pakistani military, are an open secret in Pakistan where it is also obvious that the Pakistan military and its intelligence agency (the ISI) handles these sanctuaries. Those sanctuaries make it possible for the Afghan Taliban to plan and organize attacks on internal enemies (factions that oppose Pakistani control). Peace talks between the Americans and factions of the Afghan Taliban are just one of the problems the Afghan Taliban face. There has been growing internal unrest, mainly between factions that believe they are serving Pakistan at the expense of Afghans. On an individual basis, more Afghan Taliban veterans are quitting to join ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) because they see the Afghan Taliban becoming more of a drug gang security force than anything else. Other Taliban veterans just quit. The Afghan Taliban is gradually losing its true believers (in the original goal of establishing a religious dictatorship in Afghanistan) and turning into mercenaries.

Whatever the Afghan Taliban evolves into the Pakistani military will have a major role to play. The Pakistani military does what it wants in Afghanistan, just like it does in Pakistan, where the military is very much above the law and can usually act like it. That is not a secret because about half the time since Pakistan was created in 1947 the military has openly run the government (after a coup) until popular opposition (and frustration at the task of governing) forced the generals to allow elections again. The Afghan Taliban insist their main goal is to get foreign troops out of Afghanistan but say nothing about suppressing the widely unpopular drug trade. Moreover terrorism related deaths are overwhelmingly caused by the Islamic terrorists, mainly Taliban and Haqqani Network attacks. These men die protecting the drug production that has turned millions of Afghans into addicts and crippled efforts to build the economy and educate the children. Few Taliban really believe they are doing anything good for Afghanistan or the average Afghan.

To maintain control of the Afghan Taliban the ISI calls on another of their protected Islamic terror groups; the Haqqani Network. This group was once a faction in the 1990s Afghan civil war but always had a good relationship with the ISI. Over the last two decades Haqqani have turned into a criminal gang that also manages terror operations in Afghanistan for ISI. Because of that Haqqani, at the behest of ISI, also became part of the current Afghan Taliban senior leadership. Most Afghans know all about this and are not happy with how the Pakistani military gets away with it. This has caused a split in the Afghan Taliban with several factions still working for drug gangs but refusing to take orders from the ISI controlled Afghan Taliban leadership.

Since 2015 there has been a lot more violence in Afghanistan and most of it has involved fighting between Islamic terror groups as well as with local tribal militias and Afghan security forces. What drives this extraordinary degree of violence is the drug trade, which is seen as a quick path to wealth by many uneducated and unemployed Afghans. While Taliban attacks on urban areas are always big news outside of Afghanistan what is important to the Taliban is control of key rural areas where opium and heroin are produced as well as the routes to external markets (usually via Pakistan, as well as Iran and Central Asia). The routes to Pakistan are also important for importing chemicals (to turn opium into heroin), weapons and other illegal suppliers.

The Americans have revised their strategy in Afghanistan to recognize the key importance of Pakistan. This is where most of the heroin moves from Afghanistan to world markets (via the Port of Karachi) and where the Pakistan military makes sure whatever the Taliban in Afghanistan needs gets safely to the Afghan border. Since 2oo2 the U.S. has respected Pakistani demands that the Taliban leadership sanctuary in Quetta (the capital of Baluchistan Province and near the Afghan border and Kandahar province, where most of the worlds heroin comes from) not be attacked by American UAVs. Apparently those conventions are being reviewed while all military aid to Pakistan has been halted. Pakistan received over $33 billion in aid since 2001.

Halting all military aid to Pakistan has caused the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistan military to reconsider their strategy towards the drug trade and efforts to maintain influence over Afghanistan by sponsoring lots of violence inside Afghanistan. By continuing to refrain from hitting Afghan Taliban sanctuaries Pakistan has an incentive to continue allowing NATO to move supplies from the port of Karachi, by road, into Afghanistan.

Afghan Sanctuaries

Meanwhile the remnants of the Pakistani Taliban hide out in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. A favorite hideout for all sorts of Islamic terrorists, smugglers and outlaws is Nangarhar province where the Afghan military and American forces are constantly seeking out all manner of Islamic terrorists (Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, ISIL and both flavors of Taliban). For example on August 25th an American air strike killed the head of the Afghan branch of ISIL. This sort of thing slows down but does not stop ISIL efforts to expand its operations in into Pakistan. This is something the Pakistani military would rather not dwell on because Pakistan prefers to insist that Afghanistan and the Americans are not doing enough to suppress Islamic terrorists who are hostile to Pakistan (especially the Pakistani Taliban).

The Afghan-Pakistan branch of ISIL (Wilayat e Khurasan or just Khurasan) has found it is possible to operate in Pakistan. First ISIL had to find existing groups that were at war with the Pakistani government and done so by successfully adapting to the military counter-terrorism efforts. The two most hospitable groups were the rebellions Baluchi tribesmen in Southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan). The second haven was urban areas in Sind and Punjab provinces. These two provinces contain most of Pakistans population and economic activity. This is also where most of the better educated (and often unemployed) ISIL recruits can be found. There were already some ISIL support networks in these urban areas and ISIL has learned how to use them for organizing attacks. While ISIL attacks in Baluchistan can be attributed (by the military) to Baluchi separatists or other Islamic terror groups that survive there , the attacks in Sind and Punjab are generally accepted as ISIL efforts and that embarrasses the military.

All Quiet On The Pakistani Media

The Pakistani military won a major victory in 2018 that they prefer not to publicize. The loser here has been Pakistani press freedom and all that goes with it. The key to calling this a victory is the military gaining control over the courts, especially the highest tribunals beyond which there is no appeal. The military can now act freely to intimidate and silence any media critics. The intimidation comes in many forms. One is to have ISI (military intelligence) agents break into the homes of uncooperative journalists and steal items related to investigations of military misconduct. The victims usually suspect the ISI because if you have been active online or in print or electronic media criticizing the military the ISI will send you a message. Burglary is one of the milder forms of ISI media intimidation. If a Pakistani online critic lives outside the country the ISI will threaten parents or other kin who still live in Pakistan. The threats often include kidnapping and torture if their overseas critic does not shut up. If the victims in Pakistan seek out the police and courts for protection they receive no help. Few of these offshore online critics and family in Pakistan continue to defy the ISI. This sort of thing explains why a mid-2018 survey found that 88 percent of Pakistani journalists admitted that they self-censor to avoid problems with the military (which now prefers to be referred to as the Institution.)

Kidnapping and injuring kin of foreign critics is often risky for the ISI because the UN and many foreign nations are already pressuring the Pakistani military to halt its support for Islamic terrorism against neighbors and police terrorism against critics inside Pakistan. That is less of a problem as the military escalated its use of coercion against uncooperative Pakistani mass media. Recent examples of this can be seen in the blocking of the distribution of the Dawn newspaper in early May because Dawn printed an interview with a former prime minister (Nawaz Sharif) who admitted that the 2008 Islamic terror attacks on India in Mumbai were the work of a Pakistan based Islamic terrorist group that has long, and still does, receive support and sanctuary by the Pakistani military. The military also sought to suppress news of a recent book by Asad Durrani, a former (1990-92) head of ISI (military intelligence) that was written with a former head of RAW, the Indian equivalent of ISI. These two intel experts compare perspectives and it does not look good for the Pakistani military. As a result Durrani was barred from leaving the country for any reason. Durrani and Sharif are but the latest (and among the most senior) Pakistani insiders to go public with details of how the Pakistani military operates. The military wants to minimize the damage these traitors inflict on the reputation and credibility of the military. A growing number of Pakistanis believe it is too late for that.

While the Pakistani military is gradually losing its popular support due to relentless and growing opposition inside Pakistan, the military still controls nuclear weapons. Worse there are a growing number of generals who are true believers in Islamic radicalism (some have even joined Islamic terror groups after retiring). These true believers are a minority in the military leadership but that fact that they exist and the fact that Pakistan was able to build nuclear weapons via corrupt practices (and then secretly offer some of the tech for sale) makes a lot of people inside and outside Pakistan nervous.

Dawn continued to report on that Sharif interview, the book and the reaction of readers inside Pakistan and worldwide. Details of the 2008 Mumbai attack are well documented and widely accepted worldwide and were included book Dawn gave a lot of attention to. But to discuss this in inside Pakistan can get you into trouble. Sometimes fatal trouble. Dawn is the oldest and most read English language newspaper in Pakistan. The military had suspended distribution of Dawn in areas that the military controls (because of military bases, military operations or because the military controls much of the local economy.) This sort of thing backfires because the military cannot control the Internet and as the news gets through anyway people are eagerly seek it out and embrace it. Among those embracing this news are many Pushtuns in the northwest who are openly blaming the military for all the Islamic terrorism and chaos in the Afghan border areas where most Pushtun live.

China Tries Harder

As India achieves a higher GDP growth rate than China and will soon have more people than China it has become popular for Indians to seek other comparisons. That does not work out well. India is playing catchup with China when it comes to explosive economic growth and India has several serious shortcomings compared to China. For one thing the Indian workforce is less educated than the Chinese. This is due to the rampant corruption throughout Indian public education. China, in comparison, has far higher standards in public education. While China has problems with corruption the problem is much more severe for India, especially in the government. This means key decisions (like military procurement and educational or other reforms) are delayed for years, or decades, because of the corruption and political deal making. Its a cultural thing and India will have to work hard to become competitive with China. On a practical level Indian military capabilities are inferior to the Chinese because of the corruption and government sloth. For example the Indian military cannot get needed new weapons or essential support to keep existing one operational. Efforts to improve roads and other infrastructure in border areas claimed by China are way behind schedule because the government delays and procrastination. These are not new problems but have been around for centuries. China overcame them and if India does not China will always have the upper hand in tech, economy and military power.

September 25, 2018: In northwest Pakistan (North Waziristan) the government has ordered customs officials to strictly enforce import-export rules and block any Afghan imports that do not have the proper paperwork. That means an Electronic Import Form, which is available, for a fee. Many Afghans refuse to get the forms because they see it as a ploy by Pakistan to impose fees to get goods into Pakistan, particularly perishables (like fruit and vegetables). Pakistan didnt demand the paperwork when they reopened the border to trade in May.

September 24, 2018: In northwest Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) a policeman guarding polio vaccination workers was shot dead on the first day of another major vaccination effort. Pakistan is on the brink of eliminating polio, with only four cases of it so far this year. Afghanistan is having more of a problem (because of more widespread Taliban violence) and has had 14 cases of polio so far this year. The only other nation on the planet with cases of polio is Nigeria and there the vaccination efforts are sharply reducing the number of cases. Vaccination teams are particularly vulnerable because they must visit the most remote and lawless areas to deliver the vaccination to vulnerable children. Parents tend to favor the vaccination and given the proliferation of cell phone service it is rather easy to call in or text a tip about some threat to the vaccination effort. In the last decade the main obstacle has been Islamic terror groups who ban polio vaccinations and attack anyone trying to deliver the vaccine to children. Islamic terrorists in general tend to believe the vaccination teams are spying for the government and that the vaccinations are a plot to sterilize or kill Moslems. In Pakistan and Afghanistan there are still religious problems with vaccination. The Afghan Taliban now openly support the vaccination program but there still some rural areas where local Moslem clerics or teachers continue to denounce the vaccinations. There is a similar situation in Pakistan, where some fringe Islamic groups still try and kill members of the vaccination teams. Despite the death threats there was another major effort in 2017 to vaccinate vulnerable Afghan and Pakistani children against polio. In 2016 there were 20 cases of polio in Pakistan and 13 in Afghanistan. There were four in Nigeria, a country that is expected to be free of polio this year or next. Despite this continued resistance polio cases in Afghanistan and Pakistan continues to decline. For Afghanistan there were fewer cases in 2017 and 2016. In Pakistan the situation is similar with about the same number of cases in 2017. Nevertheless the global vaccination effort has worked. In the 1980s, when the polio elimination effort began there were 350,000 cases in 125 countries. For the last several years there have been fewer than a hundred cases worldwide. After a few years of no reported cases polio will gone, as happened with smallpox in the 1970s.

In Pakistan a journalist for the Dawn newspaper is accused of treason for interviewing a former prime minister (Nawaz Sharif) who admitted that the 2008 Islamic terror attacks on India in Mumbai were the work of a Pakistan based Islamic terrorist group that has long, and still does, receive support and sanctuary by the Pakistani military. While most of the world accepts this as true the Pakistani military wants to discourage Pakistanis from publishing this sort of thing. Treason is a capital offense.

September 22, 2018: In northwest Pakistan (North Waziristan) an army patrol clashed with a group of Islamic terrorists crossing the border from Afghanistan. Seven soldiers and nine of the intruders (apparently Pakistani Taliban) were killed during the battle. The surviving Islamic terrorists fled back into Afghanistan.

September 21, 2018: India cancelled a high level meeting with Pakistani officials because of the uproar in India over continued Pakistani violence on the border and in Kashmir. Imran Kahn, the new Pakistani prime minister, suspected of being under the control of the Pakistani military has quickly shown that is true. Kahn has come out and praised the Pakistani military not matter what the generals do and that includes imposing media censorship and making public criticism of the military a punishable (legally or otherwise) offense. India has been subjected to these tactics for decades and there is little patience left for Pakistan to turn itself around. That means India is more inclined to meet force with force and, for example, carry out more attacks at Islamic terrorists targets inside Pakistan. While that could mean nuclear war, India is apparently not dissuaded by that anymore.

September 18, 2018: Due to the worsening economy in Iran (made worse by the American revival of sanctions in March) over 15 percent of the three million Afghan refugees still in eastern Iran have returned to Afghanistan so far this year. Nearly all of these Afghans are Shia who feared returning as long as the Afghan Taliban (and ISIL) were active in Afghanistan. These two groups, and Sunni Islamic terror groups in general, consider Shia heretics and targets them for death on a regular basis. But Iran has made returning to Afghanistan easier by increasing its support for the Afghan Taliban. This gesture is also a favor to Pakistan, which Iran is trying to maintain good relations with (as Pakistan is also an ally of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is the only Moslem nation with nukes).

September 17, 2018: In Bangladesh police commanders are complaining that NGOs (non-government organizations) and the UN are discouraging Rohingya refugees from returning to Burma. Thats not hard to do but the accusations are disputed by the UN and NGOs, What is undisputed is that the NGOs do often have their own foreign policy and a tendency to try and work the mass media to persuade or coerce governments to work for them. This has led Bangladesh to impose restrictions on what the 41 NGOs operating in the Rohingya refugee camps.

September 12, 2018: In northwest Pakistan (South Waziristan) a truck from Pakistan was seized by Afghan police as it crossed into Paktika province. The truck from Pakistan carrying over half a ton of ammonium nitrate (used for explosives). Two Haqqani Network members were arrested and it was discovered that the ammonium nitrate came from a Haqqani base across the border in Pakistan (South Waziristan). This shipment of ammonium nitrate was headed for Ghazni province where Islamic terrorists were planning another series of attacks.

Bangladesh again proclaimed that it would never assimilate the Burmese Rohingya refugees, even those the Rohingya are ethnically Bengali and share the same religion as Bangladeshis. Most of the Burmese Rohingya comes from families that have been in Burma for over a century and most speak Burmese and consider themselves Burmese. There has also been some intermarriage with ethnic Burmese (who are East Asian, like most Chinese rather than Indo-European as most Bangladeshis are) which means many Burmese Rohingya no longer look like Bengalis.

September 6, 2018: China has agreed to establish multiple hotlines along their mutual border and also between the defense ministries of both nations. This revives previous efforts to establish a hotline. In 2016 China and India have worked out and agreed to details of a hotline for commanders on both sides of the LAC (Line of Actual Control). Also known as the MacCartney-MacDonald Line the LAC is the unofficial border between India and China. The LAC is 4,057 kilometers long and is found in the Indian States of Ladakh, Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal, and Arunachal. On the Chinese side it is mostly Tibet. China claims much territory that is now considered part of India. There have been hundreds of armed confrontations over the last few years as one side or the other accuses foreign troops of crossing the LAC. The agreement fell apart when India went ahead, despite Chinese protests, and expanded its military ties with the United States. China has a history of expecting nations to do China an extra favor if they want a hotline arrangement. In the case of South Korea the hotline agreement did not go into effect until after South Korea cut some of its military ties with Taiwan. A hotline is nothing new for China. There has been one with North Korea since the 1950s. This enabled senior Chinese military leaders to pick up a phone and call their North Korean counterparts to quickly deal with any mutual problems. In 2008 China and the United States approved an agreement for a communications hotline followed in 2011 by a similar agreement between China and South Korea. A hotline like this is quicker and more accurate than waiting for the usual diplomatic channels to be used (and having to depend on the mass media in the meantime.)

September 4, 2018: The recent death of Jalaluddin Haqqani, 79 year old founder of the Haqqani Network, was revealed by the Afghan Taliban. Jalaluddin Haqqani was thought to have died in 2o14 but that was actually when he became so disabled that he turned over control of the network to his successor (Siraj Haqqani). This transition was smooth and Siraj Haqqani continued to cooperate with the Taliban and maintain subservience to ISI (Pakistani military intelligence). Because Jalaluddin Haqqani helped Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders escape Afghanistan in 2001 there has always been a sense of mutual dependence. For that reason Haqqani leaders were able to help deal with the mid-2015 power struggle within the Taliban and thwart the recruiting efforts of ISIL. Given that Haqqani works for ISI, Pakistan had to approve, if not help bring about this new arrangement.

September 2, 2018: The United States told Pakistan that $300 million in military aid was suspended because continued refusal of Pakistan (specifically the military) to shut down Islamic terrorist operations inside Pakistan. The Pakistani military showed, in 2014, that it could do so against Islamic terror groups (Pakistani Taliban, ISIL) that threatened the Pakistani government. But Pakistan has refused to admit it protects Islamic terror groups, like the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani Network and several groups that carry out attacks in India.

August 31, 2018: In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) Iranian border guards clashed with Iranian Sunni separatists who were based in Pakistan and returning to Iran to carry out an attack. Four of the separatists were killed and three wounded while survivors fled back into Pakistan. The Iranian forces suffered one wounded.Bay of Plenty

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View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nzThe Anglican Church will be in Tauranga next month to make a formal apology for giving land gifted to it by local iwi, to the crown.

On November 30 1838, local iwi transferred the land known as Te Papa to the Church Missionary Society.

After the battle of Gate Pa, the Battle of Te Ranga and the Bush campaign, the crown put pressure on the church to sell the land to the Crown for European settlement.

In a statement provided to SunLive by Priority One, it says the Anglican Synod recently agreed to make a formal apology to Tauranga Moana iwi for this situation, providing a step towards the social, spiritual and economic recovery that Tangata Whenua have waited patiently for.

Two events have been planned to recognise the outcome:

The first event will be Archbishop Emeritus Sir David Moxon, Puhirake Ihaha of Ngati Tapu, Peri Khu of Ngai Tamarawaho and Dr Alistair Reese of Te Kohinga will explain the background for the benefit of the Tauranga Moana community.

This will take place on Monday November 12, from 7pm till 9pm, at Baycourt.

The second event will follow on taking place on Saturday December 1.

Anglican Church leaders have been invited by Ngai Tamarawaho and Ngati Tapu leaders to make their formal apology.

Tangata Whenua and Tauranga Moana civic and church leaders and community will be present as witness and in support.

This will take place on Saturday December 1 from 9am till 2pm.Bay of Plenty

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View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nzResidents around the Bay of Plenty have reported bee swarms around various parts of the region.

Apiculture New Zealand says swarming season across New Zealand can begin as early as August and run through until January.

Swarms are the act of colony reproduction. While the process is entirely natural, it does not necessarily occur every year.

Honey bees are the only type of bees that swarm.

Swarming is a process that occurs when a new honey bee colony is formed. The queen bee will leave the colony along with about 60 per cent of the worker bees.

The swarm can contain thousands to tens of thousands of bees. When bees swarm the air is full with thousands of excited bees searching for a place to cluster and trying to keep track of the queen.

After a short distance of flying, the swarm will cluster together in a suitable place while scout bees look for a new nest cavity.

According to a statement on the Mossops Honey website, if you have a swarm on your property, do not panic and do not try to remove the swarm yourself.

Bees only sting for self-defence and will only do so when threatened, reads the statement.

Swarms cluster temporarily until they can find a suitable new home. This can take a couple of hours or a couple of days.

"If the bees are not bothering you, leave them and they will normally remove themselves once a new home has been found.

However if you or a family member, including pets, are allergic or could be allergic to bees, try to remain indoors until the swarm has left or has been collected.

If you do have a swarm come into your backyard, check out Apiculture New Zealands website for a list of swarm collectors in the Bay of Plenty region here.SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A state trooper recently deployed to the city of Syracuse to help combat violence was injured Friday night during a traffic stop that escalated into a police chase, state police said in a news release.

The trooper, whose name was not released, was assigned to the "Syracuse Initiative" -- a program aimed to help crack down on the recent violence -- including the shooting deaths of a 12-year-old, 15-year-old and 19-year-old, all killed within eight days of each other earlier this month in Syracuse.

The trooper stopped a Dodge Caravan at 10:46 p.m. Friday after he saw the driver fail to keep right on Tallman Street, state police said.

While interviewing the driver, 25-year-old Steven Cruz, the trooper saw drugs in the center console of the minivan, state police said in a news release.

Troopers opened the driver's door and asked Cruz to exit the vehicle, but Cruz refused to get out, state police said.

"(Cruz) drove off causing the door to slam on the trooper's left arm," the state police news release said.

State police chased the minivan down several city streets, with help from Syracuse police. Cruz suddenly stopped the minivan in the middle of Gordon Avenue, where he jumped out and ran inside his home at 114 Gordon Ave.

Troopers and city police found Cruz hiding in the attic of his home.



Cruz was taken into custody after a brief struggle, state police said. He was then transported to the state police barracks in North Syracuse.

State police charged Cruz with second-degree assault, a felony; and seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, third-degree fleeing a police officer in a motor vehicle, second-degree obstructing governmental administration, resisting arrest and reckless driving, all misdemeanors. Cruz also was issued several traffic tickets, including one charging him with driving without a license.

Cruz was sent to the Onondaga County Justice Center before his arraignment in Syracuse City Court.

State police took the injured trooper to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, where he was treated for minor injuries and released.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week ordered the deployment of extra state troopers to Syracuse.

Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh had requested the extra help from the state, which deployed additional troopers for up to 10 daily patrols to be coordinated with city police, Cuomo's office has said.



The governor also has said the state will expand intelligence sharing with local law enforcement on gang operations and add an investigator to the Onondaga Crime Analysis Center and the Gang Violence Task Force.

The state Department of Correction and Community supervision also will monitor parolees in Syracuse for recent gang involvement, restrict the access of parolees to high-crime areas, and conduct unannounced home visits and curfew checks.

The state will also expand the use of GPS monitoring for high-risk parolees in Syracuse, using a model applied this summer in the Bronx.

Cruz remained in jail Sunday night, records showed.CAMILLUS, N.Y. -- State police said they used a Taser on a Syracuse man after he ran from a vehicle they tried to pull over this weekend in the town of Camillus.

Troopers struck 26-year-old Devin J. Manni with the Taser after he ran from them and "failed to obey all commands to stop," state police said in a news release.

Manni, of 625 Wolf St., was charged Saturday night with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, resisting arrest, second-degree obstructing governmental administration and driving while intoxicated, all misdemeanors. He also was charged with unlawful possession of fireworks, a violation.

State police accused Manni of driving drunk and being in possession of methamphetamine.

Troopers saw a gray Audi fail to stay in the driving lane on West Genesee Street in the town of Camillus at about 11:20 p.m. Saturday. When they tried to pull the car over, the driver turned into the parking lot of an apartment complex on Whedon Road, state police said.

State police said Manni was driving the Audi and jumped out of the car. Troopers chased after Manni as he ran.

After they Tasered him, Manni became compliant and was taken into custody, state police said.



Manni was taken to the Onondaga County Justice Center in Syracuse before his arraignment.

Jail records show Manni is being held without bail for a parole violation.

Records show 26-year-old Devin J. Manni was sentenced to 1 1/2 to 3 years in state prison in 2012 for attempted burglary and grand larceny, and again in 2016 when he was sentenced to 2 to 4 years for burglary.SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- SUNY Upstate Medical University gave at least six other employees secret paid off-campus assignments like the one received by Upstate's former CEO that is being investigated by state and local officials.

The six kept their titles and salaries, but were banned from working on Upstate property. They had to quit their jobs at the end of their off-campus assignments, promise to never sue Upstate and keep the arrangements secret.

Upstate could not provide a full accounting of what work, if any, they did during these assignments.

Katharine F. Mooney

Katherine F. Mooney, Upstate's former chief nursing officer, got an off-campus assignment in 2014 that kept her on the state payroll for 12 months at full pay. Her annual salary at the time was nearly $205,000.

Upstate said it cannot find records of what she did. Mooney did not respond to interview requests from syracuse.com.

Upstate's use of off-campus assignments has come under scrutiny since syracuse.com revealed the SUNY campus paid Dr. John McCabe, former CEO of University Hospital, $660,500 for a 14-month off campus assignment that involved no work.

The payment to McCabe was part of a secret non-disclosure agreement Syracuse.com obtained through a freedom of information law request.

McCabe said he wanted to return to Upstate's faculty when he left the CEO job in early 2017, but Upstate wanted him to "disappear." As part of the agreement, he agreed to quit Upstate's faculty and clinical staff.

The deal with McCabe is being investigated by the offices of the state comptroller, Onondaga County District Attorney and state Inspector General.

Private-sector employers often provide severance pay to employees who are laid-off or offered buyouts, but SUNY and other state agencies are prohibited from using taxpayer money to do so.

"There's no such thing as severance payment for anybody in state service," said Joe Sano, executive director of the Organization of New York State Management Confidential Employees.

Kathy Yeldon, president of CSEA Local 615, one of the unions at Upstate, said Upstate often uses off-campus assignments to silence and get rid of some employees.

"This is a loophole they have found to pay hush money," Yeldon said.

Details of the other six off-campus assignment deals are contained in confidential agreements syracuse.com obtained from Upstate through a freedom of information law request. syracuse.com requested copies of any off-campus assignment agreements similar to McCabe's that Upstate entered into with employees over the past five years.

All six were non-union management-confidential employees. Mooney was the highest paid. The others' annual salaries ranged from about $106,000 to $180,000. The length of the off-campus assignments ranged from three to 12 months.

Mooney's agreement says during her off-campus assignment she was to serve in an advisory capacity to McCabe, University Hospital's former CEO, "... on matters related to the business of SUNY Upstate."

McCabe signed the agreement on behalf of Upstate.

McCabe said the agreement was drafted and monitored by Upstate's human resources and labor relations staff. He said he had no contact with Mooney after informing her of the change in nursing leadership at Upstate. He did not say why she was replaced.

All six former employees were required to file reports describing their assignments and duties.

syracuse.com filed a freedom of information law request for documents describing the employees' assignments and duties.

Upstate said it could not find documents for Mooney and three other employees.

It provided heavily redacted reports with entire pages blacked out for the other two employees. Upstate said disclosing the information would constitute "an unwarranted invasion of privacy." syracuse.com appealed Upstate's suppression of that information. In response, SUNY directed Upstate to disclose some of the information that had been redacted. syracuse.com is waiting to receive those revised records.

One of the redacted reports for James H. Watson, former executive director of Upstate's Biotech Accelerator, showed his three-month off-campus assignment involved telling companies that used the facility his job was being eliminated.

The other redacted report for Mary Wasilewski, a former human resources manager, showed her assignment was to provide brief biweekly reports on human resources topics of her choosing such as telecommuting and employee motivation. The reports were completely blacked out.

Neither Watson nor Wasilewski responded to requests for interviews from syracuse.com.

The other three former employees who received off-campus assignments were: Cynthia Dowd-Greene, an associate vice president; Catherine North, a nursing administrator and Lynette Pittinger, clinical director of Upstate Women's Health Network. Pittinger declined to comment on her off-campus assignment. Dowd-Greene and North did not respond to requests from syracuse.com for interviews.

Upstate previously provided syracuse.com with unredacted copies of monthly reports McCabe filed during his off-campus assignment. Those reports show he didn't do any work for Upstate during his assignment.

Upstate did not respond to questions about its use of off-campus assignments.

McCabe's off-campus deal is one of several issues that have shaken the Upstate campus this year.

An Upstate senior vice president and chief of staff resigned in May after less than 15 months on the job following revelations he lied about his past.

An interim CEO hired to run Upstate's hospital quit in March after 14 months on the job.

Dr. Danielle Laraque-Arena announced last month she will resign as Upstate's president in December.

Joanie Mahoney, who is stepping down as Onondaga County executive to become chief operating officer at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will serve in an advisory role at Upstate during the management transition.

Contact James T. Mulder anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-470-2245NEW HARTFORD, N.Y. -- Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, will visit Central New York Tuesday.

Trump will be in New Hartford Tuesday at 4 p.m. for a rally for U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-New Hartford). During an editorial board meeting with syracuse.com Monday, Tenney said the event is not a fundraiser.

Anyone interested in attending will need a ticket. Details on tickets will be made public Tuesday morning, according to a spokesman for Tenney.

Tenney said Trump will also stop in Rome, though details of that stop were not immediately available Monday.

Trump is the latest high-profile politico to stump for Tenney, who is running for reelection against Democrat Anthony Brindisi of Utica.

In August, President Trump visited Utica to headline a fundraiser for Tenney. It was the first time a sitting president visited the city in since Harry Truman in 1948.

That fundraiser event raised more than $650,000 for Tenney and the GOP.

House Speaker Paul Ryan toured Upstate New York last week to raise money for Tenney and fellow Republican U.S. Reps. John Katko and Elise Stefanik.

President Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, visited Syracuse earlier this summer, as did Vice President Mike Pence.

Eric Trump is executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., took over running their father's business empire when Trump was elected president.

Reporter Mark Weiner contributed to this report.U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Monday said she will support the construction of a street-level community grid to replace the elevated portion of Interstate 81 in Syracuse.

Until now, Gillibrand declined to take a position on the issue, saying it was up to Central New Yorkers to choose the best option for replacing the 1.4-mile viaduct that cuts through the heart of Syracuse.

Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said during a visit to Syracuse on Monday that she decided to speak out after discussions with community stakeholders who favor the grid over a tunnel or new elevated highway.

"Given where the stakeholders are -- and given what I have heard from the community in the last several years -- I really think the community grid is the better approach to not only revitalization, but to support all members of our community," Gillibrand said.

The senator made her comments while meeting Monday with reporters and editors at syracuse.com and The Post-Standard.

With her decision, Gillibrand becomes one of the most prominent political voices in New York to come out in favor of the community grid.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. John Katko, R-Camillus, have declined to take a position on the I-81 project, insisting the decision must be driven by the community, not elected officials.

Last year, Katko was among six House members from Upstate New York who urged Gov. Andrew Cuomo not to let the cost for the redevelopment project influence the state's studies on the highway's future.

A tunnel connected to a street-level boulevard would cost about $3.1 billion, according to state studies. A new elevated highway would cost about $1.7 billion, and the community grid would cost about $1.3 billion.

The federal government typically pays about 80 percent of the costs of interstate highway projects.

Elected leaders favoring a tunnel or rebuilt viaduct include incoming Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and state Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-DeWitt.

Gillibrand said the tunnel is clearly the least desirable option.

"I disagree with the tunnel folks because I think you're just going to have a bypass of downtown," Gillibrand said. "Unfortunately, when you don't invest in a downtown long-term, your city becomes less attractive. If you create thoroughfares and routes to skip downtown, what you get is boarded up storefronts and you get a hollowing out of cities."

She added, "I've seen this across New York. If you want a vibrant economy, create a vibrant downtown."

Gillibrand had been leaning toward the community grid option, she said, but after meeting with community leaders Monday it cemented for her that it's the right decision.

The senator met privately with a broad sample of stakeholders to discuss her decision. Those at the meeting included representatives of neighborhood groups, community and business leaders, and Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh.

"I just don't see where the support from the tunnel comes outside of folks who want the mall (Destiny USA) to be the only destination in Syracuse for economic growth," Gillibrand said.

A state study recommending one of the options for Interstate 81 is due to be completed in January.

Gillibrand is opposed in the Nov. 6 election by Republican Chele Farley. Gillibrand is running for her second six-year term in the Senate after winning a special election in 2010.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican challenger Marc Molinaro will debate Tuesday in their only scheduled exchange before next month's election.

Cuomo, a Democrat seeking a third term, balked at debating Molinaro for weeks before both sides agreed to Tuesday's debate. The one-on-one event will be taped Tuesday afternoon and broadcast at 7 p.m. on WCBS-TV in New York City. Viewers outside New York City should check their local CBS affiliate for viewing times, though many upstate stations have announced 7 p.m. broadcasts.

Polls suggest Cuomo is far ahead in the race.

Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, said one debate is insufficient and that he wants at least two more, held in Buffalo and the state's Southern Tier with Pennsylvania.

"As usual, the forgotten upstate New Yorker is getting screwed by Andrew Cuomo," Molinaro said.

Cuomo's campaign spokeswoman Dani Lever said it was Molinaro, not Cuomo, who had been the delay -- though Molinaro's campaign began calling for a debate with Cuomo months ago.

"After days of ducking the debate, we're glad Marc Molinaro has finally agreed," Lever said in an email. "See you tomorrow."

Cuomo had resisted calls to debate until last week, when he suddenly agreed to a New York City radio debate with Molinaro scheduled for the next day. Molinaro protested, saying the debate should be broadcast statewide. Cuomo agreed to Tuesday's debate invitation Sunday night and Molinaro followed suit Monday morning.

The debate won't feature the three third-party candidates: Libertarian Larry Sharpe, Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins or former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, an independent.

"A single debate without all the candidates hurts democracy," Miner said in a statement responding to Monday's debate announcement. "New Yorkers deserve better."Syracuse, NY - A paid campaign worker for state Senate candidate John Mannion is facing a misdemeanor for forging a signature on a petition for the 50th Senate District seat.

Daniel Deragon, 24, of Camillus, was charged this month with forgery after an investigation stemming from invalided Reform Party signatures on a nominating petition. A state Supreme Court justice ruled in August that Deragon forged the signature of a woman who no longer lives in New York state.

Mannion will remain on the Democratic, Working Families Party and Women's Equality Party lines in November. Robert Antonacci, currently the Onondaga County Comptroller, will appear on the Republican, Conservative, Independence and Upstate Jobs Party lines.

The Onondaga County District Attorney's Office opened an investigation into Deragon soon after Judge Norman Seiter's Aug. 15 ruling booted Mannion from the Reform Party ballot line. Prosecutor Melanie Carden said Deragon is facing third-degree forgery charge for allegedly signing the name of Meghan Mallaro.

Mallaro, now known as Meghan Carranti, signed an affidavit that states she's lived in North Carolina for the past two years and did not sign the petition.

Deragon collected signatures for the Mannion campaign, said Ian Phillips, Cayuga County Democratic chairman and Mannion's campaign manager.

"As soon as we were made aware of his misdeeds, he was immediately let go from the campaign," Phillips said.

Deragon's arrest came after Antonacci's campaign challenged the signatures collected by Mannion to appear on the November ballot.

In his decision, the judge said he believed Mannion had no knowledge of Deragon's fraud. Mannion testified that he did not immediately supervise Deragon's work in collecting signatures.

Deragon's case remains open in Onondaga Town Court.

Forging signatures has led to charges from the DA's office in the past.

In 2007, former city GOP chair Bob Gardino was charged with forging three signatures on petitions for a number of Republicans seeking the Independence Party line. Gardino was granted an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, meaning the charges were dropped after he stayed out of trouble for six months, according to court records.

In 1993, campaign workers for two Syracuse mayoral candidates were charged for forging dozens of signatures as part of a wider probe into irregularities in petition drives. Timothy Glisson, a Joe Nicoletti aide, forged the signatures of about 30 voters and Thomas A. Smith, a Joe Fahey volunteer, forged 40 signatures, a prosecutor said at the time. Both Glisson and Smith were fined.SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A pair of candidates in a hotly contested Congressional race sparred today over their competing policies on background checks and gun laws.

U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney accused her opponent, Anthony Brindisi, of wanting to take the New York SAFE Act nationwide. Brindisi countered that he has opposed the SAFE Act and his primary concern is installing universal background checks at the federal level -- something he said Tenney opposes.

Brindisi and Tenney met Monday with the editorial board at syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. They butted heads frequently over their ideas for healthcare, tax plans, gun control and their records in Albany and Washington.

Tenney, a Republican first elected to Congress in 2016, said the United States already has universal background checks, thanks to the "Fix NICS" law signed by President Donald Trump last year.

Brindisi, a Democratic State Assemblyman, said the existing laws on background checks don't go far enough and he'd like to see them expanded.

The Fix NICS bill was an amendment to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. It was signed into law by President Donald Trump last year, after receiving bipartisan support in Congress.

It aims to strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) by requiring all federal agencies to report criminal convictions to the Attorney General's office. Those convictions can then be included in federal background checks.

The law improves the existing background check system, but does not necessarily require a background check for all gun purchases.

Under Fix NICS, background checks are required by any federally licensed gun dealer. Unlicensed sellers -- at trade shows or some private dealers, for example -- can still sell guns in some states without a background check. This is commonly referred to as the gun show loophole.

Fix NICS had bipartisan support in both houses of Congress and received the backing of gun control groups as well as the National Rifle Association.

Brindisi Monday demanded a nationwide background check policy.

"The one thing I'm for which [Tenney] is against is expanded background checks," he said.

"I voted for broader background checks with the NICS Fix," Tenney replied.

Brindisi continued to question Tenney over whether she would support universal background checks. She countered that Brindisi wants to expand New York's gun control policy -- known as the SAFE Act -- nationwide.

"He's supporting the SAFE Act," she said. "He's saying he wants to take the SAFE Act nationwide."

Brindisi voted against passage of the SAFE Act in 2013. That act broadened the definition of assault weapons and put magazine limits on firearms, among other provisions.

Until recently, Brindisi had an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association, mainly due to his SAFE Act vote. He was recently downgraded to an "F."

Tenney maintains an "A" rating from the NRA.

Both have said they oppose an assault weapon ban.

The two also discussed money in politics. The race in the 22nd has again seen a huge infusion of outside cash as Democrats and Republicans in Washington D.C. battle over control of the House of Representatives.

Brindisi said he wants to overturn Citizens United -- a 2010 Supreme Court decision protecting independent political expenditures as free speech -- to get dark money out of politics.

He said Tenney is bought and paid for by special interest groups, which have influenced her votes on things like deregulating the finance industry and repealing Net Neutrality.

Tenney balked at Brindisi's characterization, calling him deceitful and linking his political contributions to powerful Democratic Party interests like George Soros, Nancy Pelosi and Ray Halbritter, CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises.

Tenney said she supports transparency of money in politics, but would not vote for a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

"I think the court has spoken on Citizens United.. It's a first amendment right," Tenney said.Tajiri, the baby son of famous April the giraffe, was supposed to depart New York for a new North Carolina wildlife facility by the end of October.



But the move for the one-year-old reticulated giraffe won't happen, Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, N.Y. announced in a Saturday morning Facebook post.



Without going into specifics, the park wrote that "requirements and deadlines were not satisfied in the given time frame to make the scheduled transfer by the end of this month possible."



"In the interest of maintaining honesty, integrity and transparency, Animal Adventure Park must announce that it has unexpectedly canceled the transfer of Tajiri the Giraffe," the post said. "The safety, security and welfare of our animals remains priority number one, and we feel it is best at this time, to keep Tajiri in place, at home, at Animal Adventure Park."



More than a million viewers watched Tajiri's April 15, 2017 birth in a live stream on YouTube, which has since been viewed more than 15 million times.



In September, Animal Adventure Park announced a partnership with The Wildlife Conservation Center in Arrington, Va., to move Tajiri to the WCC's new facility "outside of Raleigh."



Plans were approved over the summer for the Carolina Wildlife Conservation Park, which is actually located in Harnett County near Lillington.



With the transfer canceled, Animal Adventure Park said it will begin construction next week on a new building and future exhibition for Tajiri and possible companion.



"The park anticipates this project will take three to four weeks to reach completion," the post said. "This will allow a timely transfer to the new space, prior to extreme cold weather, and give April the Giraffe ample time to prepare for her expected calf in 2019."



Tajiri's new space will affect the expansion of the Wilds of Asia exhibit and likely delay its 2019 opening, the park said.

-- By Aaron Moody, The News & Observer, North CarolinaSNELLVILLE, Ga. (AP) -- Two teenage suspects, including one who is still being sought by police, are facing charges in connection with the fatal shooting of a Georgia police officer who was killed while responding to a suspicious vehicle parked near a school, authorities said Sunday.

Authorities said they believe 18-year-old Tafahree Maynard fatally shot Officer Antwan Toney on Saturday afternoon in the Snellville area, Gwinnett County Police said in a statement. Maynard remained at large early Sunday and should be considered armed and dangerous, police said. He faces charges of aggravated assault and felony murder.

"Tafahree Maynard needs to turn himself in," Gwinnett County Police Chief Butch Ayers said at a press conference.

Police said Maynard wasn't found in a house in the county that was searched Sunday evening. Authorities said in a statement that a SWAT team was sent to serve a search warrant for Maynard at the home "but he was not there and is still at large." The statement called on the public for help in finding the suspect.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a firearm at an officer during the pursuit after Toney's fatal shooting, police said earlier.

Toney died at a hospital from his injuries, police said. The 30-year-old from Southern California had been with the Gwinnett County Police Department for nearly three years. It was his first police job.

"The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community," Ayers said.

Toney and other officers responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle near a school, police said. When the officers approached, someone in the vehicle opened fire and Toney was hit. Then the vehicle sped off.

According to police, Pretlow drove the vehicle from the scene following the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants. An officer who was searching the area later encountered Pretlow about 3 p.m. Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots. Pretlow was not hit and fled into a wooded area. He was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals about 11:30 p.m.

The shooting happened near Shiloh Middle School, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. would begin "cutting off, or substantially reducing" aid to three Central American nations over a migrant caravan heading to the U.S. southern border.

Trump tweeted: "Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S."

The three countries received a combined more than $500 million in funding from the U.S. in fiscal year 2017, though it was not immediately clear how much Trump is seeking to cut.

The Monday morning tweets marked the latest escalation by the president, who is seeking to re-inject immigration politics into the national conversation in the closing weeks of the midterm elections.

On a three-day campaign swing to Western states last week, Trump raised alarm over thousands of migrants traveling through Mexico to the U.S. and threatened to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border if they weren't stopped.

As the migrants continued their northward march about 900 miles from the U.S. border, Trump tweeted that, "Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan.

He added: "I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy." White House officials could not immediately provide details.

A Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, said the Pentagon has received no new orders to provide troops for border security.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018I knew little about Virginia Woolf  be it her writings, her time at Cambridge, or the people she surrounded herself with when heading to this exhibition inspired by her work. I was apprehensive that the links between the art displayed and the writer herself would be obscure to me. Having only stumbled through A room of ones own, I was sure to be unable (as often happens in Cambridge) to understand any of the, no doubt, highly intellectual references to her work.

It became clear however, as soon as I walked in, that this was not the case. The connection the exhibition has to Woolf is not direct or in any way predictable. It is using her writing and her personal connections, both through her sister Vanessa Bell and her artistic contemporaries, as a springboard to demonstrate the persistence of the central issues explored in her works. Domesticity, space, interiors and exteriors, the self and the selfs relation to others; these issues are addressed and fought with by artists ranging from Woolfs contemporaries to works created in 2018.

The curator has not hung the works chronologically; Claude Cahuns self-portraits (1928-9) which explore shifting gender identities through elaborately staged backdrops hang near Zunela Muholis 2015 studio self-portraiture Bona, Charlottesville  similarly staged and exploring similar issues. Birgit Jurgessens 1975 Housewives Kitchen Apron is hung nearby to a picture of Sheila Legges performance art piece Surrealist Phantom of Sex Appeal (1936) in which her face was covered with flowers. A clear thread links these works. Artists questioning femininity, domesticity, and expectations of women.

Powerfully, Genevieve (1978), a piece by Shana Lutker, is based on the Parisian hospital the Salpetriere. Here, over 5,000 women who were diagnosed with hysteria were housed. Woolf was diagnosed with hysteria herself and the artist cleverly suggests a lineage of ideas about womens bodies (Jennifer Brea) that extends to the present.

They are hung so seemingly incongruously to demonstrate that the issues which the exhibitors deal with are not attached to a decade or even an artistic epoch, but are sustained areas of interrogation.

These issues appear timeless. However, the intention of the exhibition is not just to demonstrate that issues surrounding domesticity and the self hold true today. In highlighting these themes, the Fitzwilliam provides a window into the too-often overshadowed matrilineal network that connects women.

Emma Talbot in her 2016 piece Interpret my dream Tapestry expresses exactly the problem that the exhibition begins to solve. On the tapestry is written the phrase I dreamt I was squeezing paint out in a dark studio. Paintings by OLD MEN covered the walls. They lurked by their work in thick knit jumpers. In the context of the exhibition this poses the question: where would our room, our studio, sit in a world exclusively dominated by paintings of old white men by old white men?

Woolf urges to think back through our mothers. She does not refer to the female bloodline here, but instead towards the said matrilineal network and the artistic lineages from which we can draw inspiration when forging our own rooms and deciding with whom are (we) going to share (them) with and on what terms.

France-Lise McGurns illustrations cover the walls of this exhibition. And yet, the freehand figures spanning every available white space, neither crowd nor detract from the others work. The wall paintings instead make the room entirely owned by the artists; the art is not being displayed, it belongs there. This exhibition gives us a nudge forward. It asks us to tap into the network of female creativity that surrounds us. It also shows us what it looks like to really own the space.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.Google Nest Hub combines the Google Assistant with a 7-inch screen, allowing a graphic display of your schedule, weather, and commute traffic all at the command of your voice.

Theres more in there too: It has a good speaker for playing music, will act as a digital photo frame when not otherwise in use, and you can use it to watch your favorite shows if you have a compatible pay TV service, or monitor the feed from your home security cameras.

Update: The Google Home Hub has since been renamed the Google Nest Hub and its price has been reduced from $149 to $129. Youll find more information about that in this story announcing the larger Nest Hub Max. Weve updated this review accordingly.

In many ways it mirrors what a modern Android phone can already do, but with a better speaker and a bigger, always-on screen. Theres a lot to like about this impressive little gadget, and its thoughtfully designed software is a big improvement on a smartphone.

The design

The Google Nest Hub will almost certainly surprise you with its small size. When you look at photos of the device, you expect something bigger. I think thats because the wide white bezel makes it look like the 9.7-inch iPad The Google Nest Hubs 7-inch display is closer to an oversized iPhone XS (6.5-inch screen) or Pixel 3 XL (6.3-inch display).

Dont get the wrong idea though. For what it does, the Home Hubs screen is just the right size, although I do wish that white bezel was a bit thinner and Im curious how it would look in a different color.

Google said the screen is meant to appear to float and I suppose it does, but to me it really looks like a tablet PC attached to a fabric-covered base, and its available in four soft colors: chalk, charcoal, aqua, and sand.

It measures 7 by 4.65 by 2.65 inches (18 by 12 by 7 centimeters) and weighs 16.9 ounces (480 grams).

Adam Patrick Murray/IDG The Google Nest Hub is much smaller than it appears in photos.

At first glance it looks like it might have a camera, but that spot in the center above the screen is the light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen brightness. Google said it made a conscious decision to not add a camera to the device, so people would feel more comfortable having it around the house.

I believe its a sound choice. People already fear smart speakers are listening to them unawares. The last thing Google needs is anyone worrying about being spied on. It could easily be seen as a shortcoming, on the other hand, if you like to make video calls, perhaps with members of your family in distant locations. Its a personal preference. You can use the Home Hub to make voice calls to local businesses or anyone in your Google contacts list.

The rest of the Home Hub is pretty minimal. Theres a hardware mute button at the top rear of the screen and a volume rocker on the rear right side of the screen.

The power connection is a barrel connector, not a USB connector like smaller smart speakers. Thats because of the power required. The wall adapter for the Home Hub puts out 14 volts at 1.1 amps, which is several times more power than is possible over a 5-volt USB connection.

The display

The 7-inch screen is bright, sharp and the colors are good. The brightness changes with ambient light and when the lights go off in the evening, it switches to a clock display that is almost too dark to seethats just what you want if this ends up next to your bed.

When its not being used to provide information, the display can either show a clock or a selection of images from a personal Google Photos library or curated images and artworks.

Adam Patrick Murray/IDG Google Nest Hub

The success of this personal photo mode depends on how much you use Google Photos. The artificial intelligence built into the service is quite good and allows you to search for pictures of, say, a beach, your dog, a vacation you took, or your children and pull them all together without having to manually create an album. Of course, you can curate your own album and have only those photos appear.

Google hasnt revealed the resolution of the display, but I dont think that matters too much. I didnt find the screen lacking and a product like this is much more about what it can do than tech specs.

Audio performance

The Google Nest Hub wont replace your audio system but it packs enough oomph to happily fill most rooms with sound. The audio is good although its small size means it really lacks the ability to produce any sort of deep bass.

It connects to Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora, and Deezer. You can stream many radio stations through the voice interface too. The screen shows details of the track or radio station youre listening to.

Adam Patrick Murray/IDG The Google Nest Hub displays album art and other information about the music youre listening to.

A surprise though was that the smaller Google Home Mini sounded a little bit louder when the same song was played on both at maximum volume. An iPhone app developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health confirmed it. Left in the same spot, the phone measured an average continuous sound level (LAeq) of 78.7dB from the Google Nest Hub and 80.3dB from the Google Home Mini.

Making use of the display

The Google Nest Hub does everything a Google Home smart speaker can do, but with the added visual interface.

Ask about traffic on your way to work, for example, and youll get a live traffic map showing where the delays are. Ask about the weather for the rest of the week and youll see a day-by-day rundown.

One of the slickest uses is for recipes. The software repackages the information on a cooking site and presents it in an easy-to-read format. The ingredients are displayed one-by-one and then the cooking instructions are presented step-by-step. Youll press a button or tell it to move on to the next step when youre ready and if the recipe calls for cooking for a specific length of time, a shortcut to a timer for that period appears on screen.

A lot of this depends on the intelligence behind the device and thats getting better all the time, but its still not perfect. For example, it cant tell you whats on TV tonight, and when I asked about flights to London it read out the cheapest flight and how long it took, but the corresponding information didnt come up on the screen.

Smart home integration

The best thing about the Home Hub is the way it pulls Google Home and Google Assistant-compatible devices together onto a common interface, all accessible through voice commands.

Products from Google-owned Nest work best, as you might expect: You can use voice or the touchscreen to adjust a Nest thermostat or stream video from a Nest home security camera. If you have a Nest Hello video doorbell, an image from it instantly appears on screen when someone rings the bell.

Adam Patrick Murray/IDG The Google Nest Hub is a good companion for smart home systems.

I also tested the Google Home with a few non-Google products, such as a TP-Link Kasa security camera. Hey Google, show me the office was all that was required to bring up a feed from the camera on the display. I didnt need to install or program a TP-Link to get this done. Thats a step beyond the phone experience, where you still need to use a TP-Link app to see the camera feed. Device compatibility, of course, is dependent on the third-party manufacturer.

You can browse your smart home devices by product group or by room. For example, you can quickly see all the Chromecast-enabled devices and what they are playing. The same screen lets you stop playback on some while keeping others going. Or you can browse to, say, the living room and on a single page control the lights, turn the music down and check the temperature.

Adam Patrick Murray/IDG The Google Nest Hub has a very good user interface for controlling smart home devices.

The promise of a smart home is that all these gadgets will work together in harmony and weve always appeared to be a long way from that. The Home Hub takes a step towards that future where an entire house is controlled from a single interface.

But, the Home Hub wont replace your phone. The Google Home app is still where new devices are added and where basic control and settings for the gadgets on your network reside. And because it doesnt have a radio for the popular Z-Wave or ZigBee networking systems used by smart home gadgets, youll still need to use an additional controller for anything that doesnt use Wi-Fi. In this respect, the Home Hub is a smart interface to your smart home, but its not where ultimate control resides.

A final thought: another screen in your home

If youre trying to cut down on screen time and the amount of time you spend on the Internet, beware of what the Google Nest Hub might do to those goals. I found the photo frame mode constantly drawing my attention when I walked into a room and my eyes kept darting to it every time it changed photos.

I installed it in my dining room and it quickly became all too easy to stream the TV news or whatever else was on while I ate a meal. I dont want to spend more time staring at a screen, so its a temptation I need to resist. If youre trying to reduce screen time like me, carefully consider whether you want to introduce another display into your home.Bottom line: It is going to be time consuming and expensive for Super Micro to run its own investigation looking for tiny spy chips allegedly implanted on boards through a sophisticated supply chain compromise. If the investigation is successful, the only key takeaway will be finding nothing malicious.

As the speculation continues over Bloomberg's report of small malicious chips found by Apple and Amazon, Super Micro has sent out letters to its customers informing them of an ongoing internal investigation. Although the company still denies any compromise has been made, it will still perform due diligence in confirming that no such hardware modifications have been made.

Up until now, all parties accused of being involved have vehemently denied that any evidence has been found. Apple CEO Tim Cook even said, "They need to do that right thing and retract it." US intelligence officials have also not found any evidence to corroborate the story.

Despite the complete lack of evidence found so far, Bloomberg is sticking to its story. Super Micro did not say how long its own investigation would take nor when it will reveal its findings.

In addition to sending a letter to customers, Super Micro also sent letters to Senators Marco Rubio and Richard Blumenthal. The letter to Congress states that Super Micro "has seen no evidence of any unauthorized components," and that "a more detailed response," will be issued later this week.

One of the issues with this accusation is that it is inherently difficult to disprove the existence of a bug. It is reasonably easy to verify that all components on a board match a schematic that has been approved by a design engineer, but when the issue is with the design itself nearly any component can be a suspect.

Short of going through every product piece by piece, Super Micro is going to have a lot of work cut out that is not intended to find anything at all.Citizens of Spain will have the longest life expectancy around the world in the next 20 years, a study has predicted.

Spain Tops 2040 Life Expectancy Ranking

The country rose from number 4 in 2016 to the top of the pack this year with a life expectancy of 85.8 years old by 2040. In comparison, Japan, which previously held the top rank for the longest life expectancy in the world, is now at a close second with 85.7 years.

Completing the top 10 are Singapore (85.4 years), Switzerland (85.2 years), Portugal (84. 5 years), Italy (84.5 years), Israel (84.4 years), France (84.3 years), Luxembourg (84.1 years), and Australia (84.1 years).

The ranking is based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study estimates from 2016. It took into consideration the top five premature mortality determinants such as high blood pressure, high body mass index, elevated blood sugar, and alcohol and tobacco consumption.

The results were published in the journal The Lancet.

Life Expectancy Around The World

The study also found that life expectancy around the world increased an average of 4.4 years. As a whole, the global life expectancy rose from 73.8 years in 2016 to 77.7 years by 2040. China, Indonesia (from 117th to 100th), Nigeria (157th to 123rd), Portugal (23rd to 5th), Poland (48th to 34th), Turkey (40th to 26th), and Saudi Arabia (61st to 43rd) are among the countries that moved up the ranking.

China, in particular, made a huge jump from 68th on the list to 39th, boasting of a life expectancy of 81.9 years by 2040. The East Asian superpower has overtaken the United States which dropped from the 43rd spot to 64th this year, the worst decline for a high-income nation. An average American is expected to live until the age of 79.8 years old by 2040.

Canada (from 17th to 27th), Norway (from 12th to 20th), Australia (from 5th to 10th), Mexico (from 69th to 87th), Taiwan (from 35th to 42nd), and North Korea (from 125th to 153rd) also dropped in the rankings.

The future of the world's health is not pre-ordained, and there is a wide range of plausible trajectories," stated Kyle Foreman, the lead author of the study. "But whether we see significant progress or stagnation depends on how well or poorly health systems address key health drivers."

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.A total of 22 personal possessions of the beloved physicist, the late Stephen Hawking, will be auctioned at Christie's by the end of October.

Months after the cosmic visionary passed away, the online auction and private sales organization announced its science sale that will also feature papers by prominent scientists Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. The auction will be open for bids starting Oct. 31 until Nov. 8.

In Memory Of Stephen Hawking

On Monday, Oct. 22, Christie's announced the online sale that will include wheelchairs, scientific papers, some of the awards received, and a few others. One of the most coveted items in the list is a copy of his doctorate thesis, Properties of Expanding Universe, which was written in 1965 when he was 24 years old.

Only five copies of the Ph.D. thesis exist  although a digital copy was made available online for free by Cambridge University Library's Open Access Week last year. The copy of the thesis available for auction is signed by Hawking by hand. It is expected to fetch 100,000 to 150,000 or about $130,000 to $195,000, according to AP News.

Meanwhile, Hawking's wheelchairs have become a symbol for his disability. The scientist was diagnosed with motor neuron disease at the age of 22 and was eventually strapped into his wheelchair, unable to walk again.

Throughout his life, he went through several high-tech wheelchairs. One of the wheelchairs included in the sale has an estimated price of 10,000 t0 15,000 or about $13,000 to $19,000.

The auction will also include the original script from one of Hawking's appearances on the animated television series, The Simpsons, and a copy of his best-selling book A Brief History of Time signed and with a thumbprint.

All items will be on display in London from Oct. 30. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Stephen Hawking Foundation, which facilitates scientific researches, and the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

Stephen Hawking Dies

Hawking passed away on March 14 in his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76 years old. He is now buried between Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton at the Westminster Abbey.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.U. S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, took the unusual and risky step of standing on Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge to film a 30-second TV ad that touts his assistance upgrading Louisiana's roads and bridges.

The spot opens with Graves, who on Nov. 6 will be seeking his third term in Congress, facing the camera while 18-wheelers and other cars and trucks are approaching in the background.

The Republican noted that the lane near the Washington Street exit is the sole spot on the coast-to-coast interstate where traffic narrows to one lane.

"There is a reason for that," he says in the ad. "It is stupid."

Graves then describes how he has helped generate aid to upgrade the exit as well as other improvements on I-10 and I-12.

Shawn Wilson, secretary for the state Department of Transportation and Development, said Friday he was surprised, to put it mildly, when he saw the ad with Graves standing on I-10.

Wilson noted that it is illegal for pedestrians to be on the interstate.

"I would hope he would not do that," the DOTD chief said of Graves. "I would say officially my hope is others don't try it."

+2 New project to be 'game changer' in easing traffic on BR interstate, officials say Desperate for affordable fixes to daily traffic problems near the Interstate 10 Mississippi River bridge, Gov. John Bel Edwards and other stat

Wilson also said he conveyed his views to the congressman.

When the ad was done and how long it took for camera crews and others is unclear.

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The spot was reportedly filmed during the height of afternoon rush hour to help make a point.

Graves appears to be standing near speed bumps that separate I-10 from the exit lane.

The exit is notorious for being the source of daily traffic jams.

The two lanes of eastbound traffic leaving the Mississippi River bridge regularly includes cars and trucks whose drivers suddenly find themselves headed to Washington Street unless they can quickly wedge their way into the adjacent eastbound lane.

Wilson said Graves and the rest of the Louisiana congressional delegation, including U. S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, deserve credit for teaming up in the name of road and bridge improvements.

That includes a $60 million federal grant that is financing I-10 improvements between Lafayette and Henderson, which then freed up money to make improvements around Washington Street.

A $360 million project to widen I-10 from the split to the I-10/12 split will make other changes around Washington Street too.

That plan is being financed with federal bonds.

Grave's office did not respond to request for comments Thursday or Friday.

The congressman faces three longshot challengers in the Nov. 6 contest.Louisianas lawmakers have traveled the country to meet with colleagues and attend conferences since their legislative sessions ended, trips that have cost taxpayers nearly $120,000.

Twenty-four of 105 House members and 17 of 39 senators attended events in a dozen states, including Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida and Nevada.

Lawmakers went to gatherings of the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C.; the Southern States Energy Board in Biloxi, Mississippi; the National Conference of Insurance Legislators in Salt Lake City, Utah; the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in Boston; and the Council of State Governments in Kentucky, among others.

Data provided to The Associated Press by the Legislature showed the trips cost the House nearly $58,000 and the Senate just under $60,000 for expenses like airfare, hotel rooms, taxi fare, meals, registration fees, parking charges and the daily per diem paid to lawmakers for attending work-related meetings.

The most popular events to attend for Louisianas lawmakers were the annual gatherings of the Southern Legislative Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, and the National Conference of State Legislatures in Los Angeles. That California trip was also among the most expensive for lawmakers, because of the cross-country travel.WASHINGTON  U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, R-Alto, is facing a trio of challengers in his November bid for a third term representing the sprawling 5th Congressional District in northeast Louisiana.

Abraham, a physician and veterinarian, has turned in a consistently conservative voting record in Congress since he was first elected in 2014. Hes facing a Democrat, a Libertarian and a former Republican-turned-Independent on the Nov. 6 ballot.

In an interview, Abraham touted the success of the House GOP in pushing through their agenda over the past two years, pointing in particular to the package of tax cuts passed earlier this year and a significant hike in military spending.

He also highlighted federal funding for dredging of rivers in the district and improvements to ports  noting the work could boost the regions economy and allow its farmers to ship grain to market  as well as levee upgrades after flooding hit portions of the district in 2016.

The 5th Congressional District, which includes the cities of Monroe and Alexandria, covers the northeastern part of the state and stretches across the Felicianas and the northern portions of the Florida Parishes. A portion of the district also hooks down to take in a slice of Acadiana.

Congressman seeking federal assistance for Louisiana soybean farmers amid market disruption with China A north Louisiana congressman is asking for help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide relief to state soybean farmers during the

The congressional seat is generally considered to be reliably Republican. Voters there overwhelmingly backed President Donald Trump in 2016 and re-elected Abraham that year with more than 80 percent of the ballots cast.

There havent been any public polls of the race but election forecasters generally consider Abraham a safe bet for re-election. He holds a massive fundraising advantage over his opponents with more than $477,000 in the bank, according to federal campaign finance filings.

Two of Abrahams opponents  Democrat Jessee Fleenor and Independent Billy Burkette  painted the congressman as out-of-touch with the average working folks in the district and insufficiently attentive to the needs of some of his constituents.

Abraham brushed off that criticism, saying hes got a lot going on as far as Congress is concerned and has been hard at work trying to tackle a number of issues in Washington on behalf of his constituents.

A crisis facing soybean farmers  whove been hard hit by Chinese retaliatory tariffs levied as part of a trade dispute with the Trump administration  has been a particularly time-consuming focus, Abraham said. The mostly rural district is a major producer of soybeans.

Abraham, 64, is contemplating challenging Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, in 2019. Although Abraham has made moves to position himself for a potential run, he said he still hasnt decided whether hell end up running for governor and claimed he hasnt sat down and given that much consideration.

'Outsider' launches challenge to John Bel Edwards for governor, but GOP heavyweights remain mum on plans A year out from election day, Gov. John Bel Edwards has drawn his first official Republican opponent in the 2019 governor's race, but other po

But Abraham said he wouldnt let a campaign against Edwards in 2019 distract from work in Congress if voters send him back to Washington for a third term.

If I couldnt do (both), I wouldnt run for governor, Abraham said. I understand very clearly what the people elected me to do.

Abraham was a political neophyte when he won the seat in 2014. He emerged from a crowded field of fellow Republicans challenging embattled incumbent Vance McAllister. Abraham handily beat Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, a Democrat, in the runoff.

McAllister, a Republican businessman whod won the seat in a special election the year before, became mired in scandal after a local newspaper posted a video of the married congressman kissing an aide in his Monroe congressional office.

Fifth District kisses U.S. Rep. Vance McCallister goodbye North Louisiana voters kissed U.S. Congressman Vance McCallister goodbye on Tuesday.

Fleenor, a 34-year-old vegetable farmer from Loranger in Tangipahoa Parish whos never run for political office before, said he dived into the congressional race after no other Democrats signed up to take on Abraham.

Fleenor said he views as "cold hearted" a number of policies Abraham supports  such as work requirements for recipients of food stamps and tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy  as well as Abraham's opposition to the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The 5th Congressional District, Fleenor noted, includes some of the states poorest parishes.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Fleenor hasnt raised nearly as much cash as Abraham  Fleenors reported bringing in just over $12,400 in campaign contributions  but said hes trying to close the gap by crisscrossing the district in his used pickup truck and speaking to every local civic organization thatll have him.

Fleenor said hes repeatedly challenged Abraham to a debate and is frustrated the incumbent hasnt taken him up on the offer.

Fleenor noted that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district  a holdover from past decades when conservative Democrats dominated the state  and said he hopes heightened energy this year from young voters and Democrats will drive up turnout and push him to victory.

Country doctor in 5th District runoff Pundits around the country focused on the kissing congressman and the Duck Dynasty cousin, but it was a country doctor who squeaked into the

Noting Abrahams considerable wealth  the newspaper Roll Call estimated Abrahams wealth at $4.8 million based on financial disclosure forms  Fleenor said Abraham is out of step with constituents living paycheck to paycheck.

To be represented by a multi-millionaire whose hobbies include flying his private airplane is just untenable, its just a crying shame, Fleenor said. Even more so than that, the only ideas he seems to put his name behind are just earth-shatteringly heartless.

Abraham disputed that criticism. He noted he grew up in the Delta, went to school with a wide cross-section of residents and treated low-income patients for years as a rural doctor.

Thats just foolish. Theres nothing wrong with being successful in business, Abraham said. That doesnt mean you cant have compassion and cant give back.

Burkette, 49, said hes spoken with a number of voters while campaigning whove complained of trouble getting responses to issues from Abrahams office. Burkette, who gathered 18 percent of the vote while unsuccessfully challenging Abraham as a Republican in 2016, contended that Abraham hasnt done enough to address the areas specific problems, including roads and other infrastructure.

Im not trying to throw Ralph Abraham under the bus. Hes a super nice guy, Burkette said. But hes not taking care of business for the people of the 5th District, hes just not.

Burkette, who lives near Clinton in East Feliciana Parish, is a member of the Louisiana Band of Choctaw Indians and said hes given up other work to campaign full time. He criticized Abraham for not fighting hard enough in Washington and said Abraham has avoided making waves to put himself in a better position to run for governor.

Burkette made national  and even international  headlines when police arrested him at the Louisiana Secretary of States office just after hed signed papers to run for office. The East Feliciana Sheriffs Office had filed a warrant for his arrest on a count of impersonating a police officer.

+2 Louisiana tribe ousts chief who was arrested when he signed up to run for the U.S. Congress CLINTON  Billy Burkette received international attention for his campaign earlier this summer when he was led away in handcuffs after officia

Burkette said he wasnt impersonating anyone  hes commissioned as the police chief of the Louisiana Band of Choctaw Indians, a state-recognized tribe currently seeking federal recognition  and said the warrant stemmed from an argument at a drivers license office.

The arrest, Burkette said, was a politically motivated smear intended to keep him from winning the election. The case is currently in legal limbo, he said, with a court date scheduled for just after the Nov. 6 election.

This whole thing has been trumped up to give me a black eye and hurt my campaign, Burkette said, adding that he thinks the arrest and subsequent publicity have seriously hurt his chances.

Burkette said hes running against Abraham to give the district more constituent-focused representation. Burkette acknowledged hes facing an uphill climb against the incumbent but hoped to force Abraham to be more responsive if he ends up being re-elected.

If it takes me to run to make him do his job, Im okay with that, Burkette said. As long as the people are being represented, thats the main issue.

Libertarian Kyle Randol, of Monroe, didnt respond to messages from The Advocate. But on his campaigns Facebook page, Randol describes himself as an ardently principled libertarian whod work to dramatically downsize the federal government, leaving work like building and maintaining roads to private industry and the free market.

There are pragmatic answers to all the questions about roads, security, infrastructure and everything else that governments have taken over and convinced the masses that only they can provide, Randol wrote in a post earlier this month. GIVE FREEDOM A CHANCE. The vast majority of your life functions through voluntary interactions and with products and resources made through the FREE-market.Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commissionThe first rule of storytelling, according to Katurian K. Katurian, the main character in The Pillowman, is dont believe everything you read in the paper.

Fair enough. But please believe this: The Pillowman is not for the faint of heart.

Presented by the NOLA Project (through Nov. 3 at Lushers Lions Gate Theater) and directed by Mark Routhier, The Pillowman is a pitch-black comedy about the investigation of a string of child murders. It is a gruesome, Kafkaesque psychological thriller that elicits gasps, startled yelps, and unexpected laughs. It depicts murder and torture. And it is, if one can stomach the content, a delightfully macabre evening of theater.

The play takes place in the police interrogation room of an authoritarian dictatorship. A pair of detectives, Tupolski and Ariel (Michael Aaron Santos and Meredith Owens, in a terrific pas de deux of good cop, bad cop) are questioning a writer, Katurian (James Bartelle), whose lurid stories seem to have inspired a serial murderer of local children.

Did he do it? Certainly not, he says. But you have to admit, it does look a little suspicious.

Playwright Martin McDonagh, whose work includes The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, as well as screenplays for In Burges and recent Oscar winner Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, weaves a narrative that questions the motives of everyone involved: the cops, the writer and the writers developmentally delayed brother (Michael Joel Bartelle), whos brought in to soften up the suspect.

As Katurian, James Bartelle is the shows unsteady center. Unexpectedly caught in a game of cat and mouse, his powerful performance swings from confusion and compassion to anger and violence and back again. He also plays the role of storyteller, as McDonaghs script is rooted in the characters fondness for creepy fables and fairy tales. With titles like The Little Apple Men, "The Three Gibbet Crossroads and, of course, The Pillowman, each tale gets a proper recitation from Bartelle, and the chilling effect recalls grisly urban legends told at late-night sleepovers or ghastly ghost stories around a campfire.

Katurians brother Michal is played deftly by Bartelles real-life brother, Michael Joel Bartelle, in his first onstage appearance in New Orleans. The engaging pair provide the play with an emotional warmth that offers a glimmer of humanity in this otherwise cold-hearted place.

As the investigating officers, Santos and Owens poke and prod (and worse) as they interrogate the brothers with leering contempt, though the case exposes the cracks in their own uneasy partnership. Santos plays the good cop with a slippery slyness, while Owens alternates between an anxious simmer and a raging boil.

The cast is rounded out by a pair of young actors, Wade Rogers and Nadia Eiler, whose wide-eyed innocence is a foil to the meanness around them, reminding audiences whats at stake in the investigation.

The set, designed by Steve Schepker and lit by Joshua Courtney, is outstanding, as the bare interrogation room opens up to reveal a house of horrors. Frightful effects are fortified by the productions sound design (Matt Jackson), props (Jamie Bird), and special effects (Rebecca Elizabeth Hollingsworth).

New Orleans is certainly a town that revels in the spooky sights and sounds of the Halloween season, and every year opportunities for fright nights abound, whether its the horror-movie hijinks of haunted houses, the parade of ghouls at the Krewe of Boo, or the madding crowd on Frenchmen Street. This year, the NOLA Project rivals them all with a violent, uncomfortable piece of theater that will likely haunt audiences well after the curtain falls.

***********************

'The Pillowman'

WHEN: through Nov. 3

WHERE: Lushers Lions Gate Theater, 5426 Freret St.

TICKETS: $20-38

INFO: www.nolaproject.com or (504) 302-9117A 27-year-old man was shot and wounded early Monday morning, according to a release from the New Orleans Police Department.

The incident occurred in the 2500 block on North Tonti Street about 12:05 a.m. The victim had just dropped his friend off at home when he heard one shot getting out of his car. He realized he had been struck by a bullet and took his own ride to a hospital for treatment, police said.

In other matters recently handled by local authorities:

 As Halloween nears, federal officials are warning that counterfeit makeup, cosmetics and contact lenses may be contaminated with lead and other toxins.

The feds in the New Orleans area, as well as their local partners, on Monday were planning to announce a large scale crackdown on such products, which are popular accessories for Halloween costumes but pose a hazard.

The agency leading the crackdown is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations.

 Kenneth Dalcour, 29, is wanted on allegations that he tried to kill a person at the victims home in the 6900 block of East Hermes Street in New Orleans East, police said.

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

Dalcour allegedly locked himself and the victim in the victims home and then tried to drown the victim in a bathtub full of water, police said. Dalcour also allegedly punched the victim and squeezed the victims throat before the victim managed to escape and call police while Dalcour fled. Dalcour is wanted on a count of attempted murder, among other counts, police said.

Anyone with information can call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111.

 New Orleans police investigated three robberies between Sunday morning and early Monday, two of which were at gunpoint.

Lawrence Martin, 42, was arrested on allegations that he stole items at gunpoint from a Family Dollar in the 1800 block of Almonaster Avenue in St. Roch about 9:30 a.m., New Orleans police said.

About 1:25 p.m. at the corner of Peach and Hollygrove streets in Hollygrove, a group of youths pushed a 23-year-old man off his bicycle and took his bike. The victim had minor injuries, police said.

About 3:05 a.m. in the 800 block of Delery Street in the Lower 9th Ward, a 31-year-old man who stepped out to investigate the window to his car being smashed was robbed at gunpoint of his keys then his vehicle, police said.

 A man had life-threatening wounds after a shooting about 12:25 a.m. in the 400 block of Peter Road in Harvey, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said. No other details were immediately available.While Sydney prices hit an average of $1.65 per litre last week, buyers in Melbourne had some respite from the $1.66 a litre it reached late last month, with prices down slightly to $1.52. However, prices in Melbourne are rising again, heading up to $1.57.

Prices rose last week to hit a national average of $1.59 a litre, the highest since July 2008, according to the Australian Institute of Petroleum.

Petrol prices have risen to a decade high, making fuel costs the largest weekly purchase for some families.

Filling up the car with petrol is now the single biggest weekly purchase for most families, Mr James said.

"In capital cities with a discounting cycle, petrol prices could fall as low as $1.43 a litre but may still be as high as $1.70 cents a litre when the discounting cycle ends. Average Australian unleaded petrol prices will hold $1.50 to $1.60 a litre."

High prices have been driven by major oil producers strangling supplies, and global investment volatility, particularly the rising trade war between the US and China.

Oil cartel OPEC and Russia had been steadily reducing their oil production levels for the last two years, and while they agreed to lift production rates in June, a series of falls in other nations have offset any increases.The federal government's top energy adviser Kerry Schott says the plunging cost of renewables will force Australia's remaining coal plants to close even earlier than planned, as mining giant BHP renewed calls for a price on carbon to urgently slash national emissions.

The Morrison government's failure to produce an emissions reduction plan for the electricity sector and general inaction on climate change have been credited with helping to drive a massive negative swing in the Wentworth byelection, which is expected to cost it the seat and force it into minority government.

The nation's energy ministers are due to meet in Sydney on Friday to discuss the Morrison government's bid to lower prices and improve reliability. Efforts to cut greenhouse gas emitted by electricity generators are not on the agenda.

Respected energy chief Kerry Schott. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The federal Coalition insists coal will remain a vital part of Ausralia's energy mix for decades, despite a major UN climate report this month calling for the industry to close down by 2050 to avert the worst climate disasters.When chef Koichi Minamishima accepted three hats for his eponymous Richmond sushi-ya at the recent Good Food Guide Awards, no one doubted the restaurant deserved it. But Minamishima-san might have, 20 years ago.

Then Boeing Cho, armed with a tiny photograph, was collecting him "bewildered, with his big suitcase" at Melbourne airport, to begin work as a chef at Kenzan, where Minamishima stayed for the next 15 years.

Shige Nakano behind the sushi bar. Credit:Simon Schluter

How many of Melbourne's great Japanese chefs have trod that path? It's a lot: Kentaro Usami, ex-Kappo and Izakaya Den; Shigeo Yoshihara of Tempura Hajime; Komeyui's Motomu Kumano, and Yoshiki Tano of Yu-u. All sharpened their knives and skills at 38-year-old Kenzan before striking out alone.

Kenzan is often accused of remaining unchanged in its almost four decade rule. And praised on the same account.Good morning, Canberra.

Happy Tuesday! And what a Tuesday it's set to be, because we're in for a top of 29 degrees! (Yes, you did read that right). Hopefully you get a chance to leave your desk and soak up some of that warm sunshine while you have the chance, because it's expected to drop back down to 21 tomorrow.

But before you rush out the door to go enjoy those rays, here's what's making headlines in Canberra this morning.

Coffee cart owner says seven-day kiosk proposal not viableJoin Richard Glover, one of Australia's most well known journalists and broadcasters, as he talks about how this country used to be. In his new book, The Land Before Avocado, Glover takes us on a journey to an almost unrecognisable Australia, including an early Canberra.

Join Richard Glover for a literary dinner where he'll recount his early days in Canberra and his memories of the iconic Gus' Cafe Credit:Richard Briggs

He spent his teenage years here after his parents bought a local newsagency. His father was friends with the other local shopkeepers, including Gus, who ran the the iconic cafe around the corner in Civic.

Glover recounts that on one bright autumn day, in March 1970, Gus decided to pop a couple of chairs on the pavement outside his premises. He thought people might care to take their refreshments in the sun and watch the passing parade as hed seen people do in Europe. According to his father, Glover writes, the police soon arrived in force, ordering the handful of chairs be taken back into the cafe.

Gus  Viennese born, a refugee from the Nazis  acquiesced. He understood how to treat a uniformed man, he writes.A major traffic artery through a bustling retail and restaurant strip in Sydney's inner west has been closed for more than eight hours due to an ongoing police operation.

Newtown's King Street was closed in both directions between Missenden Road and Carillon Avenue from about 11am on Monday, as police negotiated with a man on an apartment building balcony.

Police said the man does not pose a threat to the public.

The negotiations have continued throughout the day and into the evening peak, causing headaches for bus and car commuters, as well as business owners.The man accused of murdering young comedian Eurydice Dixon in Carlton North has been charged with three fresh offences.

Jaymes Todd, 19, on Monday appeared via video link before Melbourne Magistrates Court, which was told he had been served with three extra charges on top of the existing counts of murder and rape.

Jaymes Todd arriving at the Melbourne Magistrates Court in June. Credit:Jason South

Mr Todd, of Broadmeadows, is accused of sexually assaulting and murdering Ms Dixon in the early hours of June 13.

Charge sheets confirm Mr Todd has also been charged with two counts of intentionally touching Ms Dixon in a sexual manner and one count of attempted rape, also on June 13.A survey of our recent prime ministers whereabouts on Monday: Kevin Rudd, in Canberra, promoting his new memoir by dripping out criticisms of his former colleagues. Malcolm Turnbull, in transit from his exile in New York, blamed for the Liberals trouncing in Wentworth. Tony Abbott, on the backbench of the House of Representatives, his expression blank, but his leg jiggling madly as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten addressed the victims of institutional child sex abuse.

Then there was Julia Gillard, who came back to Parliament House, where she was dealt (and doled out) some brutal treatment during her prime ministership, to be there for the national apology.

Gillards last act as prime minister was to order a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, and its political culmination was on Monday.Kia and Hyundai Venture Into Robotics of the Future

 Kia and Hyundai to develop robotics technology in three areas: wearable robots, service robots, and micro-mobility

 Hyundai Vest Exoskeleton (H-VEX) and Chairless Exoskeleton (H-CEX) industrial robots increase efficiency and prevent work-related accidents

 Robot-Artificial Intelligence targeted for future innovation and growth

SEOUL - October 22, 2018: As a key part of Hyundai Motor Group, Kia Motors is innovating with robotics technology through development of the Hyundai Vest Exoskeleton (H-VEX) wearable industrial robots. Following the Hyundai Chairless Exoskeleton (H-CEX) demonstration conducted at the Hyundai-Kia North American factory last August, the company plans to verify H-VEXs success through extensive testing at the end of 2018.

In early 2018, Hyundai Motor Group identified Robot-Artificial Intelligence as one of five areas of future innovation and growth. The company established a designated robotics team in its strategic technology headquarters to focus on the development of related tech, and is expanding its cooperation with associated sectors.

Hyundai Motor Group is developing technology in three areas of robotics: wearable robots, service robots, and micro-mobility. The company is also working in partnership with other talented domestic and international companies that possess robotic and artificial intelligence technology.

The first H-CEX was developed for industrial use. It is a knee-joint protective device that helps maintain a workers sitting position. Weighing in at 1.6kg it is light yet highly durable, and can withstand weights of up to 150kg. With waist, thigh and knee belts it can be easily fitted and adjusted to the users height.

Along with the H-CEX, the Hyundai Motor Group team plan to test and apply the H-VEX in its North American factories at the end of the year. H-VEX is a device that alleviates pressure on workers neck and back by adding 60kg of strength to the user when their arms are used overhead. It is expected to be very effective at preventing injury and increasing work efficiency.

There are a variety of applications and fields that robots can be developed for, such as wearables, service robots and micro mobility. Hyundai Motor Group showcased the Hyundai Medical Exoskeleton (H-MEX), which assists paraplegics and elderly people with walking and traversing staircases, at the 2017 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). It is currently in the process of being approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in Korea, and by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for commercialization as a medical device.

Another Hyundai Motor Group development in robotics, the Hyundai Universal Medical Assist (HUMA), can be applied to the waist and legs to strengthen the muscles while walking, enabling users to achieve a running speed of 12km/h and making it one of the fastest wearable robots in the world.

Other than wearables, robots that can improve the quality of a users life are being created. The Hotel Service Robot can, among other functions, take care of room service and guide guests around a hotel. The robots will be tested at the end of the year at South Koreas Haevichi hotel and resort, and the Rolling Hills hotel.

The Sales Service Robot that was modelled last year can explain car details to customers. It is equipped a with natural language conversation system, artificial intelligence, and a mobility function, providing the ability to consult with customers about vehicle models in showrooms. It is currently in the design and development stage, and a prototype is expected to be available early next year. A prototype electric vehicle charge manipulator that automatically charges an electric vehicle when it stops in front of the device, will also be previewed by 2020.

Hyundai Motor Groups robotic personal mobility is a next-generation single-person mobility platform so versatile it can slowly traverse with two wheels to avoid obstacles indoors, and then morph into a three-wheeled mode of transport with improved stability for use outdoors.

Hyundai Motor Group is making substantial investments in the robotics field, considering it one of the promising fields for mobility, and actively securing related technologies. On 10 September 2018 it initiated a strategic investment in the US-based artificial intelligence technology start-up Perceptive Automata to secure human movement prediction technology. The company is also cooperating with Chinas top vision technology equipped artificial intelligence start-up, DeepGlint.

A $4.5 million (US dollar) AI Alliance Fund was created in cooperation with SK Telecom and the Hanwha Asset Management company to invest in promising start-ups with competence in artificial intelligence and smart mobility.

Dr. Youngcho Chi, Executive Vice President of Strategy & Technology Division and Chief Innovation Officer of Hyundai Motor Group said, The field of robotics has the potential to usher in a new era in our industry. The possibilities for the technology are endless  frrom future mobility solutions and industrial productivity aids to vital military applications, we think the future is better with robots. The huge collective experience within the Hyundai Motor Group will facilitate rapid progress in the coming years. We are excited about current developments, and very optimistic for the use of this technology to improve lives around the globe.Production Start of Ford 2019 Ranger Midsize Pickup and a New Era for a Storied American Factory







LEARN MORE: 2019 Ford Ranger Story Archive - The Auto Channel

Ford today invited more than 3,000 employees and a cadre of journalists from The Auto Chanel (more from them later) from its newly transformed Michigan Assembly Plant to experience the best of the all-new Ranger on an on-site, off-road course

Ford has invested $850 million in Michigan Assembly to retool the plant to build the all-new Ford Ranger and future Ford Bronco

2019 Ford Ranger is part of an onslaught of new vehicles coming between 2018 and 2020, when the company aims to replace 75 percent of its U.S. portfolio

WAYNE, Mich., Oct. 22, 2018  When many of Michigan Assembly Plants 3,000 workers gather today at the plant, they will be celebrating a rebirth in more ways than one.

The festivities mark a renaissance for a plant just outside of Detroit that has experienced the highs and lows of the American auto industry for the past six decades. The occasion also signals the rebirth of Ford Ranger, the mid-size pickup that will return to American roads early next year after an eight-year hiatus, fully modernized for todays truck buyer.

The special celebration to mark the kickoff of Ranger production will include leaders from Ford and the United Auto Workers. Plant employees, media and others will have a chance to ride in the Ranger on a custom-built, off-road course in the parking lot of the plant.

Ford truck fans demanded a midsize pickup thats Built Ford Tough, and were delivering with our all-new Ranger thats specially designed and engineered for American truck customers, said Joe Hinrichs, Fords president of global operations. At the same time, were revitalizing our Michigan Assembly Plant and securing good-paying jobs for our hourly employees here in the U.S.

Ford has invested $850 million to build exciting new vehicles at Michigan Assembly Plant, including the all-new Ranger for North America and the highly anticipated new Ford Bronco, scheduled to begin production in 2020.

For Michigan Assembly, a sprawling 369-acre plant in Wayne, Mich., which opened in 1957 building station wagons, the start of Ranger production marks a new era.

Beginning in 1966, the plant began a 30-year run of building Bronco, one of the original sport utility vehicles that gained popularity in post-War America. Michigan Assembly gained acclaim as being among the most important and profitable factories in the world when it made Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators from 1996 to 2008.

Early this year, Michigan Assembly ended production of the Focus small car to make way for a massive retooling in preparation for the Ranger launch.

The factory is set to build two high-profile vehicles again in the Ranger and all-new Bronco as American appetite for pickups and SUVs continues to grow.

The revitalization of the Michigan Assembly Plant and renewed production of the Ford Ranger is another exciting chapter in our states comeback story, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said. This is also an opportunity to look toward its promising future with production of the all-new Ford Bronco on the horizon. I thank our partners at Ford for investing in Michigan and contributing to the Motor Citys legacy as the automotive capital of the world.

Ford is transforming its product lineup, building on truck, SUV and commercial vehicle strengths. Ranger is the first in an onslaught of all-new vehicles that will see Ford aim to replace more than 75 percent of its current North American portfolio by 2020.

UAW-Ford members take pride in relaunching the all-new Ranger right here in Michigan, said UAW-Ford Vice President Rory Gamble. Our UAW brothers and sisters take great care in the quality and craftsmanship customers will discover when they experience the relaunch of this iconic nameplate.

Ranger is designed for todays midsize truck buyer who blends city living with off-the-grid adventure. The midsize pickup will deliver utility, capability and technology those customers want and need.

Powered by a 2.3-liter EcoBoost engine and class-exclusive 10-speed automatic transmission, Ranger will deliver driver-assist technologies and connectivity features as well as best-in-class payload, gas towing and gas torque.

We have been waiting for this day for a long time, said Michigan Assembly Plant Manager Erik Williams. The Ranger is back home in the U.S., and our employees at Michigan Assembly Plant are thrilled to be able to build it for our customers.

Ranger offers such innovative technologies as standard Pre-Collision Assist with Automatic Emergency Braking, available Blind Spot Information System with class-exclusive trailer coverage, and available SYNC 3 with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.

An available FX4 Off-Road Package includes Terrain Management SystemTM, which provides multiple selectable drive modes and all-new Trail ControlTM to help get through the toughest challenges. About Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is a global company based in Dearborn, Michigan. The company designs, manufactures, markets and services a full line of Ford cars, trucks, SUVs, electrified vehicles and Lincoln luxury vehicles, provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company and is pursuing leadership positions in electrification, autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions. Ford employs approximately 201,000 people worldwide. For more information regarding Ford, its products and Ford Motor Credit Company, please visit www.corporate.ford.com.Steinbachs three candidates for the mayors chair and 10 challengers for council seats responded to a final question from The Carillon this time on the timely topic of cannabis legalization. A plebiscite question on the Oct. 24 ballot will ask Steinbach residents whether or not retail cannabis stores should be allowed in Steinbach. Earlier this year the province mandated that any municipality wishing to completely prohibit cannabis sales could only do so through a plebiscite.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Steinbachs three candidates for the mayors chair and 10 challengers for council seats responded to a final question from The Carillon this time on the timely topic of cannabis legalization. A plebiscite question on the Oct. 24 ballot will ask Steinbach residents whether or not retail cannabis stores should be allowed in Steinbach. Earlier this year the province mandated that any municipality wishing to completely prohibit cannabis sales could only do so through a plebiscite.

All candidates were asked the following question: Steinbach residents will vote in a plebiscite on Oct. 24 whether or not to allow licensed retail cannabis stores to operate in the city. If approved, what sort of regulations do you believe city council should implement, if any, to regulate this type of business.

"On July 17, council could have said, no to Should licensed retail cannabis stores be allowed in Steinbach? Instead, council chose to have a binding plebiscite included in the Oct. 24 election and all of council voted in favour of this other than Mayor Goertzen," says mayoral candidate Paul Neustaedter.

"Council should have had the courage to lead on this issue and to do the right thing; instead they have left this up to the public."

Neustaedter says he is willing to provide leadership when it comes to safety in the community. He notes that a study recently released by CAA illustrates there are too many unknowns and variables with the legalization of marijuana, as well as how dangerous it is to be driving while under the influence.

"Why would council want to rush into something like this that we know is a harmful substance especially to youth? Ive heard people ask, What type of message was council trying to send?," he said.

"When it comes to safety, elected officials need to do their joblets keep our youth safe and not have cannabis stores in Steinbach."

Candidate Earl Funk says the city will need to adhere to provincial regulations and guidelines, if retail cannabis stores are approved.

"We would also have to look at our bylaws and zoning and our focus must be to keep it as far away from schools or any public places that youth conjugate."

Funk said he would also be in favor of putting it in our zoning bylaws as a conditional use, so that applications must come to council through a public process.

Candidate John Fehr says if cannabis sales are approved the city will need to consider regulating land use through zoning regulation such as only allowing dispensaries in certain commercial zones, limiting the number of outlets, and limiting the distances where cannabis sales shops could be located, such as schools, parks, and other youth-oriented facilities.

He says some communities have implemented licensing fees specifically for these dispensaries as well.

"We also need to consider the effect it will have for people in the vicinity where people will be able to use cannabis, most notably with regards to the smoking of marijuana. Some Canadian cities have adopted bylaws designating specific cannabis smoking areas and to prohibit smoking of cannabis in public places."

"Council will need to address these issues very quickly and perhaps others as it does its due diligence, if the people of Steinbach decide to allow the sale of cannabis here."

Incumbent Michael Zwaagstra says when the federal government announced its intention to legalize recreational cannabis, he was concerned that it was rushing ahead without a clear plan. He notes even today, police still do not have a universal roadside test to assess cannabis impairment.

He notes Manitoba municipalities have the ability to ban the retail sale of recreational cannabis, if a majority of voters approve the ban in a plebiscite.

"Should Steinbach residents vote to approve the sale of recreational cannabis, then I would support zoning restrictions that keep retail cannabis stores as far away as possible from schools and other places where young people congregate. I would also make it a conditional use in the zoning bylaw, meaning that a public hearing would be required before any particular location is approved."

Candidate Jake Hiebert looks to his 39 years of work as a police officer when considering cannabis retail stores.

"I have seen first-hand the damage and devastation that drug use has on the unsuspecting user," he said, adding that 98 percent of drug users and dealers identified their first experience with drugs to be marijuana, which ultimately lead to more powerful drugs.

"Having first-hand knowledge regarding the negative effects of marijuana on the individual and society as a whole, I will not be in favour of licensed retail cannabis stores in Steinbach," he said.

"I am not naive to believe that people will not be using and abusing cannabis. However, having it readily available to the recreational user is something I cannot and will not support."

Hiebert supported marijuana being available for medicinal purposes through licensed pharmacies.

Candidate Mitesh Kumar believes that cannabis stores should be required to maintain a list of the names of recreational cannabis buyers, which would be available for public inspection.

"This will always keep some sort of social pressure on recreational cannabis buyers that the publicmay find it out."

Kumar says society must educate and take measures to keep current and future generations safe from drug abuse and addition.

He says legalizing cannabis is the right approach, because the current situation leads to wasted resources.

"Given a choice I would have liked to see community free of cannabis, but we have to live with current realities and find solutions. Not allowing cannabis stores in city will only complicate the situation related to loss of revenue, movement and illegal business, especially when Steinbach has limited law enforcement resources," he said.

Kumar adds that he would advocate for bylaw regulations which allow strictly regulated stores in commercially zoned areas except downtown, restricted use of cannabis leaf images, and maintain a reasonable distance between stores and public places involving children.

Incumbent Jac Siemens notes that the provinces licensed retail cannabis act has suggestions to follow for possible regulations.

"I think that like other municipalities we should make it a separate use in our zoning by-laws," he said.

"The regulations needed are to sell cannabis in our commercial zoning only and it should be a stand-alone facility."

Siemens said regulations as to where cannabis can be consumed include not within 300 meters of a school, health care facility, recreation facility or retail establishments. He said further determination will be needed to decide what forms cannabis can be consumed in including recreational and medical uses.

"Like many regulations put into place by the City of Steinbach enforcement of regulations will be an issue," he surmised.

Incumbent Susan Penner said councils first course of action should be to meet with groups most likely impacted by the change, primarily RCMP, Hanover School Division and the local health care community.

"The mayor and council should take the concerns and suggestions mentioned by these groups into consideration before making any decisions on regulating cannabis, as they are on the front lines and have more expertise on the subject," she said.

Whatever the result, Damian Penner says he will respect the voice of Steinbach citizens, arguing for less government involvement in the lives of individuals and day-to-day business operations.

"The province has already set forth regulations that apply to all operating retail cannabis stores, and I would respect and implement the regulations as set forth by the province of Manitoba," he said.

Penner points to requirements like retail cannabis operations be designated for a commercial zone, be a standalone store, and be at least 300m from any school, playground, or park.

"I feel any regulations beyond these would be an attempt by city council to prevent a retail cannabis store from locating to Steinbach, which would not be respecting the voice of the citizens if voted in favour."

Cyndy Friesen says municipalities have some options to consider regarding retail cannabis stores.

"Regulations surrounding the location of these stores would need to be established. Council would need to decide land use planning and zoning for cannabis retail stores."

Friesen says council would need to decide if more distance than 300 meters was needed for buffer zones around schools, community centres, daycares, and playgrounds.

"Council should also rely on the CAO to give them direction and guidance as to options and feedback surrounding this topic," she said.

If retail cannabis stores are approved, candidate Adam Crookes says the city needs to act as fast as possible to make sure citizens are protected.

"We are somewhat heading into uncharted waters and we need to make sure we follow the provincial code, as well as come up with the right bylaws that will protect all of our citizens," he said.

Crookes suggests that the city should reach out to similar sized cities in the United States to see what has worked and what hasn't.

"Then we can decide what is the right plan for the direction we want to take the city," he said.

"We need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we have a drug problem already in the Southeast, and so we need to make sure to protect the most vulnerable."

Candidate Alan Wiebe says it is important to remember that the cannabis zoning process is subject to the same public hearing requirements for any by-law amendments or conditional use applications under the Municipal Act.

"This means that people in Steinbach can voice their concerns on proposed changes to bylaws or applications requesting special exceptions for retail cannabis stores. Cannabis stores should only be permitted in commercial zones at a minimum distance from schools; public recreation areas; other cannabis stores; and residential neighbourhoods."

He also suggests stores should have signage requirements to prohibit the depiction of the cannabis leaf to mitigate exposure to minors, provide fact sheets for public awareness on responsible cannabis use, be required to submit a security plan and be required to have two staff on shift at all times.

"Additional considerations for retail cannabis by-laws, including public consumption, should be determined by public engagement and recommendations on local level regulatory frameworks implemented in places where retail cannabis has already been legalized," he said.

Bill Hiebert also wants to see zoning put in place to ban such businesses from setting up shop near schools, daycares or residential areas.

"If approved, I think children's safety would be my primary concern," he said.

"Cannabis retail stores shouldn't be where one could simply walk to from a school. I would want to limit access and visibility as much as possible to protect vulnerable, impressionable kids from getting illegal access somehow."

Hiebert acknowledges that Manitoba has the legal age for cannabis consumption at 19, but points to studies that have shown negative impacts on neurological brain development for users 25 years and under.

"I would like to see the city partner with Southern Health to further educate the public on cannabis use and the health risks involved, so that residents are better able to make informed decisions about their health," he said.Women and Power is a series about women and their relationship to power: how they get it, how they lose it, how they wield it, what they sacrifice for it, and what they hope it will help them achieve. Photo: Amanda Demme. Hair by Mahfud Ibrahim for Exclusive Artists using Chanel Les Beiges and Oribe Haircare. Makeup by Steven Canavan at LAtelier NYC using NARS

ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE.

Jenny Holzer, the 68-year-old Conceptual artist who, in the late 1970s, began papering lower Manhattan with posters bearing Truisms shed written  aphoristic sayings like ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION CAN BE A FORM OF FREEDOM and AMBIVALENCE CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE  has become an idol for our online era. On Twitter, various Holzer bots tweet out her maxims, which read as if they anticipated the medium. (Holzer has nothing to do with the accounts but says she appreciates their humor.) On Instagram, where she appears as a hashtag more than 38,000 times, you can see her words as they appear in the world: on benches, movie marquees, LED panels, light projections.

In real life  which is where Holzer, who does not use social media, prefers to exist  she gave permission last fall for We Are Not Surprised, a #MeToo offshoot, to use her Truism ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE in an open letter, signed by 9,500 non-male artists, writers, and curators, condemning entrenched sexism in the art world. In January, Lorde appended one of Holzers Inflammatory Essays, the more aggressive screeds she wrote after the Truisms, to the flaming-red dress she wore to the Grammys.

Its easy to account for Holzers contemporary appeal. Were a culture swimming in indiscriminate words  text messages, news feeds, words on screens, words on billboards  and her old-school maxims slyly lay language bare in all its guises: as cliche, harangue, manipulation, seduction, survival tactic, discomfiting bringer of truth. At a time when hashtags and slogans and memes have never had more power to go viral, her art co-opts the authoritative language of advertising, internet culture, and self-help and asks us to question the power it has to define us.

On a late-September afternoon, Holzer sits across from me at an oak table in her Dumbo studio, narrating projects past and present as they flash by on a TV screen. There is the 1985 Times Square LED sign that made her famous: PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT. Theres Lady Pink, the mural and graffiti artist, wearing an ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE shirt. We watch her spectacular 2017 display at Britains Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchills ancestral home, where, in stark white letters, she beamed firsthand accounts of war. (One reviewer, writing in the Guardian, called it coldly magnificent and brutal, like being caught inside  the searchlights of helicopters or prisons.)

The Truisms were anonymous at first. I have made much of my work sex-blind and anonymous so that it wouldnt be dismissed as the work of a woman, Holzer said in a 1992 interview. She tells me something similar now when I ask about her uniform of black jeans, nondescript black sneakers, and a gray mens button-down. Im kind of a cross-dresser, she says. I dont want to be looked at or dismissed, or even attract anybody, as a female. Its like, Hey, look at the work. What do you think? or Talk to me. 

She grew up among horse people in Ohio (her mother taught riding), and there is something solidly midwestern about her: pragmatic, understated, straightforward. Im glad to be useful, she says simply, when I ask about lending her work to the Not Surprised letter. I have a complex about not being useful.

Since the early 90s, Holzer has done mostly LED signs and stone benches as well as light projections on the facades of culturally or architecturally important structures. A street artist at heart, she occasionally engages in anonymous public actions. Last year, in response to the Parkland shooting, she created LED billboards (STUDENTS WERE SHOT; THE PRESIDENT BACKS AWAY) and put them on trucks she sent to cities around the country. She also collaborated with Drake at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Monsters and Men, a movie about police brutality. In the atrium of the theater, Holzer projected the names of people killed by police between 2015 and 2018. Names appear and disappear in violent, rapid succession, like lives snuffed out by a gun.

Her writings have always been socially conscious, concerned with power and its manipulations, as well as the satellites that orbit it: money, sex, violence, sexism, love, death. Indeed, hanging all around us are abstract paintings that reproduce redacted declassified government documents from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Political art can often feel limited, the conclusions were meant to draw all too obvious. But Holzer leaves the dot-connecting to us. The Truisms were written in multiple, often contradictory voices and registers and are both funny and unsettling. Its not so much left, right, center as it is about what happens to people in the world, Holzer says of her work. People do the same ghastly and good things time and time again.

Photo: Amanda Demme

ANGER OR HATE CAN BE A USEFUL MOTIVATING FORCE.

Three weeks before Holzer and I meet, she speaks with me by phone from her home in Hoosick Falls, New York. She is about to leave for Spain to prepare for a retrospective that opens at the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao in March, so she has pulled an all-nighter. My apologies for idiocy, she says.

She was born in 1950, the oldest of three children (her brother was killed in a motorcycle accident in his early 20s), in the small town of Gallipolis, Ohio. Her father owned a car dealership that his father-in-law (a small-time Buckeye magnate who also owned gas stations) had given him. Holzer describes her father as sort of there and not there  the result of a head injury. He came home from boarding school one day and took a running dive off the board, but there was no water in the pool yet, Holzer recounts. As a child, she found him confusing: Here was this great big handsome man who was just not quite right.

She remembers her mother, with whom she was close, as quite bright but unfulfilled. My mother really should have had, oh, four or five jobs, given her energy, Holzer says. She spent a lot of time deadheading roses and using Roundup, which is ex post facto terrifying, she says. Shed kill every weed in any number of acres, and the second a rose would start to lose a petal, it would have to be lopped off immediately.

As wry as she is about her mother, Holzer grows serious when talking about her childhoods darker aspects. When I ask why she signed the We Are Not Surprised letter, she says that as a girl she was repeatedly assaulted. It started before firm memory, she says, and he continued until I was old enough to remember. She is quiet. I had that experience, and its dreadful, and its horrifying that theres no equality between the sexes  in pay, in respect. It wasnt hard to sign on for something like that.

She tells me that around age 4, she began to wear a carpenters belt, in which she placed a slingshot, a Swiss Army knife, and other weapons. I felt good, going around the backyard with that, she says. I wanted to have the tools, given what I knew about what people do. Irrational rages, assaults, and so on.

Still, she believes good things can be made of her horrific experience. I had to do a lot of thinking early on about power relations, and independence of thought, of living. She resolved to make her own money to control her fate. I ask how old she was when she decided this. Oh, 5, 6. Again, I saw my very smart, extremely capable mother attacking roses.

YOU MUST DISAGREE WITH AUTHORITY FIGURES.

When she was a child, Holzers only exposure to art was Life magazine; she remembers seeing photos of Georgia OKeeffe and Pablo Picasso in his bathing suit. Although she drew avidly as a young girl, she dropped it in grammar school to be a regular person, she says. She remembers a dedicated junior-high art teacher who encouraged her nonetheless, allowing her to make real art, like painting and sculpture, as opposed to embroidered tea towels. She got a glimpse of what might be.

She attended three colleges in four years: Duke, the University of Chicago, and Ohio University, where she transferred to concentrate on art. During graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design, she made abstract paintings while experimenting with conceptual projects. She shaped bread crumbs into triangles and octagons, then photographed pigeons eating geometry. She sliced up her unsuccessful paintings and turned them into long, like half-mile-long, ropes, then photographed them by the ocean  she calls that endeavor romantic and pointless.

She painted her studio, every inch, in a blue acrylic wash, her favorite project shed done to that point, but her teachers, mostly men, didnt agree. A group of professors almost threw me out of RISD when I was pretty vulnerable and quite sincere about trying art, she says. One said to me something like, Youre the sort of person who wouldve worked on the nuclear bomb. Can you imagine? She recalls almost falling down the steps after leaving her critique with him. She became suicidal. More desperate and speedy than depressed, she says. That was my flavor. Self-loathing.

Salvation came in the form of acceptance at the famed Whitney Independent Study Program. (She graduated from RISD in absentia.) At the Whitney, her painting was going away, as she puts it, and she realized the way forward was to drop the image, which was just abstract color, and go whole hog with the content.

The Truisms were partly inspired by the Whitneys critical-reading list, which was heavy on philosophy, Marxist texts, and cultural criticism. A series of Burma-Shave billboards from her Ohio girlhood also played a role. Theyd have maxims, she says. Youd get them one at a time on interminable car trips with your parents  e.g., NO LADY LIKES / TO SNUGGLE / OR DINE / ACCOMPANIED BY A PORCUPINE / BURMA-SHAVE. Holzer distilled Enlightenment ideas into the epigrams of advertising and self-improvement: Derrida and Burma-Shave, she says.

Photo: Amanda Demme

MOTHERS SHOULDNT MAKE TOO MANY SACRIFICES.

In 1989, when she was 39, Holzer had two prestigious solo shows, at the Dia Art Foundation and the Guggenheim, and was chosen for the 1990 Venice Biennale, the first woman ever selected to represent the U.S. In the lead-up to the shows, she was also pregnant and gave birth to her daughter, Lili. This all took place over two years, and Lili had her second birthday in Venice, so it was gruesome. Kind of glorious and gruesome, Holzer says.

Her selection for the Biennale was not without controversy, especially among more traditional-minded male critics, many of whom thought her writing was banal and her involvement with mass-media technology and techniques not the stuff of art. In The New Republic, Robert Hughes called her work failed epigrams that would be unpublishable as poetry  their prim didacticism so reminiscent of the virtuous sentiments that the daughters of a pre-electronic America used to embroider on samplers. But she won the Golden Lion for Best Pavilion for work that included a new series called Mother and Child  programmed into 12 LED signs, it was distinctly female and more personal than usual. (When she is criticized now, which is not often, its generally for retreading familiar ground; in 2006, New York Times critic Roberta Smith called photographs documenting her public pieces snoozy.)

The Biennale text drew in part on Holzers experience as a new mother. When I ask about a mistake that still haunts her, she tells me its having a baby and doing all three shows at once (her pregnancy was a surprise). I couldnt be in the moment and calm for my daughter, she says, and I know she suffered. Im really sorry about that. She especially regrets working at home while she prepared. I tried to work in the house so that even though she was with the babysitter, I could walk through. I think maybe that made her feel like I was an insect, something that flies in and out. Still, she spins the period in her characteristically bleak yet optimistic way: I wouldnt care to repeat it, but its funny to think that no man has had a C-section, a baby, and done those three shows in two years. Hey.

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR CONSTITUTING MEANING.

The day we meet, she has just returned from Spain and is suffering from jet lag. Im sleep-deprived, so please plan to write all my answers, she emails me. Make them a bit quirky yet deep, moving, indelible. When I arrive, she takes me on a tour of the Redaction paintings hanging around her studio. The obscured lines of text have been painted over in blocks of palladium and gold leaf. The colored rectangles evoke Suprematist paintings, early Frank Stella, and the work of Ad Reinhardt.

She began combing through the National Security Archive online during the Iraq War, trying to understand the decision-making process behind an engagement that confounded her. Now its her midnight reading material, as she suffers from chronic insomnia. One quite beautiful painting is based on a firsthand account from an Afghan man who was forced at gunpoint to kneel in the snow; layers of palladium cover the mans handwritten memory of interrogation. In another, all the redacted material is overlaid in gold, save one line: THEN THE OPTIC BECOMES HOW LEGALLY DEFENSIBLE IS A PARTICULAR ACT THAT PROBABLY VIOLATES THE CONVENTION, BUT SAVES LIVES.

Its like a creepy Truism. Holzer has created shiny aesthetic objects out of words so awful or secretive they had to be blotted out. Do the paintings draw us in and make us look? Or distance us from the horror? She doesnt tell us how to think about it. Which means, of course, that we do.

*A version of this article appears in the October 15, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!Abolish the Senate? Not so Fast!

Commentary

In our long Western tradition, the changing conceptions of what a senate ought to be are intimately related to changing conceptions of human nature. They thus serve as a kind of mirror with which to see ourselves as we grapple with the most important political question: How should we make laws?

The senates of ancient Greece and Rome, despite their differences, shared an underlying classical model of human nature considered universally true: Human beings are willful and impulsive, and therefore prone to error in the measure that their actions are heated and hasty.

For the pagan, this was an eternal truth of human nature. For the Christian, human beings were once perfect in Eden, but fell into sin and error through disobedience to God.

Common to both pagan and Christian beliefs, however, was the commonsensical belief that will and emotion originate in the heart and appetitive parts of the body, whereas reason originates in reflection, in the head.

Accordingly, our standard picture of humanity has been of a divided being tormented by a lifelong internal struggle between will and reason, each vying to be master by making the other a slave.

This master/slave metaphor emerged naturally from slave societies, in which freedom was not defined as the ability to do whatever you might want as long as you dont harm someone else, but as not being a slave. The goal of all free people was to be a rational being who was master of his or her own passions.

Human Nature

As it was for the body, so it should be for the body politic. The architects of the ancient democracies felt that the public passions, like the private passions, should be acknowledged and heard, but never given control over the whole political body.

So, in the Greek democracy under Demosthenes, for example, a senate comprising older and more experienced citizens proposed the laws, and the people voted on them, yea or nay. But the law-making initiative was with the senate.

The laws came down from the senate to the people, rather than the other way around as in the modern democracies, in some of which even convicts are considered part of the people, and allowed to vote on the laws.

For the founders of America and Canada, the master/slave metaphor was accepted as an obvious fact of personal and political life: The people and their factions will tend to be emotional, willful, and prone to error and, in a simple majoritarian democracy, will always crush minorities.

Constitutions must be designed to block this tendency. Hence, an appointed Upper House or Senate equating to reason and filled with wiser and older people, who have a stake in the country but are untouched by politics, must have the right to frustrate, and even to block, the will of the people in a Lower House. To omit such a check on the impulsivity of the people is to render them slaves to their own passions.

In retrospect, however, it seems clear that the changing role of senates in the West (the American Senate became popularly elective in 1913, while the Canadian Senate is so far still appointive) is an institutional reflection of how human nature is (re)imagined at particular historical periods.

In conservative periods of high skepticism concerning natural human goodness, the safety check of an appointed Senate has always been called for to protect the people from themselves! Restraint is then the cry.

Conversely, in a modern liberal period when a belief in natural human goodness runs high, we hear loud cries for more direct democracy, to change appointive Senates to elective, and even for the abolition of senates entirely, because they are widely viewed as an intolerable brake on the pure (and purely good) will of the People. Freedom is then the cry.

The core question is whether or not unchecked human will is good by nature. Modern liberals will tend to say yes, and conservatives, no.

Popular Will

Ever since the Romantic sentiments that arose in the late 18th century when thinkersand poets such as Wordsworth, Shelley, and Whitmanfirst began so forcefully to insist on natural human goodness, and hence to argue that we are corrupted not by ourselves but by imperfect laws and institutions, the trend of the Western democracies has been to argue that human nature, passions, and appetites must be less restrained.

This is clearly visible today in our widespread release of legal and moral restraints on sex, divorce, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, euthanasia, drugs, natural gender distinctions, and much else.

In 2013, a former leader of Canadas Parliamentary Opposition published an open letter to Canadas senators in the National Post in which he opined that the greatest weakness of our appointed Senate as presently constituted is that Senators are unelected and unaccountable to electors. The Senate lacks the democratic legitimacy required to command public support.

If we accept the liberal belief that the will of the people is usually and inevitably good, then he is right on, as they say. But if we accept the conservative view that the unalloyed will of the people ought to be restrained and improved by independent sober second thoughtthat reason (a senate) must always stand ready to correct will (a Commons, or House of Representatives), and not the other way around, then such a view is quite wrong-headed.

It all boils down to the acceptance or rejection of the master/slave metaphor of human nature.

The weakness of the recurring liberal effort to dissolve the metaphorby conflating will with reasonis obvious and visible in the political gridlock that manifests when two elective bodies each claim democratic legitimacy.

The weakness of the conservative case is the paucity of senators of sufficiently high character and independent mind who refuse in principle to self-corrupt or to become slaves of popular will.

This is the mirror in which we are reflected.

William Gairdner is an author living near Toronto. His latest book is The Great Divide: Why Liberals and Conservatives Will Never, Ever Agree (2015). His website is WilliamGairdner.ca

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.African Swine Fever Found in Southwestern China, Confirming Spread Throughout Country

African swine fever (ASF) has now spread across China to the southwestern reaches of the country, officials say.

Two new outbreaks, announced on Oct. 21, occurred at farms in Zhenxiong County, in Yunnan Province. All 545 of the pigs reported to have been infected have died, including 298 at a farm in Niuchang Town, and 247 at a Muxiang Town farm.

Yunnan is the 11th region in China to report an outbreak of the virus, since the first case of ASF was detected in northeastern China in early August. The others are Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jilin, Shanxi, and Tianjin City (a directly governed municipality).

ASF is a highly contagious disease affecting pigs and wild boars; there is no cure or vaccine. However, the disease isnt known to be harmful to humans, even if infected pork products are consumed.

Since the trade dispute between China and the United States began, one of the countermeasures China enacted was retaliatory tariffs on U.S. pork. While China decided to buy pork from other countries instead to improve supply, the outbreak of ASF has proved detrimental to domestic pork production.

Foreign pork imports may have caused the ASF to spread to China in the first place. Chinas alternative sources for pork include Russia, where the ASF virus has plagued the local pig population for the past decade, according to the website Pig Progress, which is run by Proagrica Media, an agriculture market-research firm. Russia has culled more than 2 million pigs since the initial ASF outbreak in Russia in 2007.

Before the first ASF case occurred in August, China had stopped importing pork from the United States. Instead, it imported 240,000 tons of frozen pork from Russia during the month of August, according to Chinas state media reports. After the outbreak of ASF, that news was quickly censored by the Chinese regime, according to a Radio Free Asia (RFA) report published on Oct. 17.

In August, scientists at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization had told scientific journal Science that the illness likely arrived in China via imported pork products, and that a genetic analysis indicated the virus found in China is closely related to a strain circulating in Russia.

Chinas national Animal Health and Epidemiology Center confirmed after DNA sequencing that the ASF virus found in China was indeed the same strain as Russias, according to the RFA.

Chinese authorities have repeatedly tried to assure the public that the outbreak has been dealt with. However, different regions have continued to report outbreaks of the ASF.

Ms. Xu, an ASF expert in China who participated in ASF prevention and disease control told RFA in the same report that whether in terms of management or biotechnology capacity, China is unable to stop the spread of the ASF virus.

Chinese authorities have repeatedly published news stressing that infected pork in China is still edible because the virus can be killed by cooking for 30 minutes at high temperature. However, Xu said that though there havent been any reports of human infection, it may not mean infected pork is safe. As with the avian flu virus, the ASF virus may mutate, she told RFA.

China is also severely restricting testing of the virus. Only the Animal Health and Epidemiology Center is allowed to conduct tests; even provincial-level disease control laboratories can only send samples, Xu said.

Ren Ruihong, a former senior executive at the Red Cross Society of China, told RFA that pig farmers may also be concealing the spread of the disease due to the pressures of making a livingwhich is likely to aggravate the spread of the virus.Flags fly outside a Bombardier plant in Montreal in this file photo. (The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz)

Bombardier Sues Mitsubishi Over Alleged Theft of Aircraft Trade Secrets

MONTREALBombardier is suing Mitsubishi Aircraft in the United States over alleged trade secret misappropriation.

The Quebec aerospace company alleges some of its own former employees passed on documents containing trade secrets to Mitsubishi before going to work for the company.

The 92page legal complaint filed in a Seattle court on Oct. 19 also targets Aerospace Testing Engineering & Certification (AeroTEC), which supports the Japanese multinational in the development of its MRJ airline, as well as several exBombardier employees.

None of the allegations contained in the court documents have been proven in court.

A Mitsubishi spokesman says the allegations are unfounded and the company says it will prove so in court.

AeroTEC did not respond to a request for comment on Oct. 21.

Bombardier alleges Mitsubishi Aircraft and AeroTEC recruited no less than 92 of its former employees from both Canada and the United States.

The former workers named in the lawsuit allegedly forwarded documents regarding the certification process to Transport Canada and its American counterpart, the Federal Aviation Administration.

The process is incredibly costly, timeconsuming, and complexeven for the most experienced of aircraft manufacturers who have gone through that process and developed trade secrets to face it more efficiently, the document reads.

This process is essential to the process of ensuring newly developed planes are given permission to fly.

Bombardier recently went through the process during the development of the C Series program, which was plagued by delays and cost overruns. The aircraft was later rebranded A220 after Airbus took a majority stake in the program.

Bombardier has spent about a decade and several billion dollars bringing the C Series from concept to realization and this is not abnormal for an airplane that has been imagined from the drawing board, the court documents state.

Bombardier alleges that Mitsubishi specifically recruited employees who had experience with the certification process and broke the law when it used confidential documents obtained from these employees in order to accelerate the timelines for its own MRJ airline.

The MRJ, which can transport up to 90 passengers, is scheduled to enter service in 2020, much later than the original 2013 date.

In one case cited in the court documents, one of Bombardiers exworkers allegedly used a personal Yahoo email to transfer very sensitive and secret information concerning the Global 7000 and 8000 programs as well as exchanges with Transport Canada on device certification. Other similar exchanges allegedly occurred through private accounts, this time through Gmail.

We dont take this issue lightly, Bombardier spokesman Simon Letendre told The Canadian Press in an email. Bombardier intends to take all necessary measures to protect its intellectual property.

Bombardier is seeking unspecified financial damages as well as an injunction barring Mitsubishi Aircraft and AeroTEC from using confidential information allegedly obtained from exemployees.

The Quebec aircraft manufacturer is also asking Mitsubishi and its partner to stop recruiting within its workforce to get access to privileged information.Brexit Deadlock May Make ECB Reticence on Risks Hard to Sustain

The European Central Banks prospects for gradually weaning the economy off monetary support could yet be tested by a big unknown its officials dont mention much: a disorderly Brexit.

Policy makers have given limited prominence to that risk despite divorce talks between the U.K. and European Union repeatedly stalling before the countrys departure in less than six months. In the economic analysis ECB President Mario Draghi reads out at every decision, it was last specifically cited in 2016, and his Executive Board colleagues havent referred to it often this year.

That reticence may be getting harder to sustain as the political standoff stokes increased speculation over the regions outlook. The next chance for policymakers to address it is at their meeting on Oct. 24-25, when theyll review their plan to conclude bond purchases this year and set up a possible rate hike in late 2019.

Brexit is the big elephant in the room for the euro areas economy, said Karsten Junius, chief economist at Bank J Safra Sarasin in Zurich. A lot of people are trying to guess the nitty-gritty of interest-rate increases that are still about a year out, but are ignoring one of the regions key economic risks.

The ECB could conceivably disagree. The main growth risks it specifically cited in September were rising protectionism, emerging market vulnerabilities, and financial market volatility.

Muted Impact

When Draghi has spoken on the topic, hes tended to play down the economic risks. Questioned by EU lawmakers in September on the implications of a no-deal Brexit, he said ECB estimates show the impact should be, in the aggregate, quite muted.

In a statement for the International Monetary Fund meeting in Bali this month, he said a disorderly outcome could pose a significant downside risk to financial stability but the overall risk should be limited. He told EU leaders at a summit two weeks ago in Brusselswhere Brexit talks again failed to achieve a breakthroughthat the direct effects would be limited for the euro area, though some countries are more exposed.

We estimate that crashing out of the EU could cost Britain almost 5 percent of annual GDP by 2030, through reduced openness. For the euro area, the impact would be far smallertrade patterns suggest it could be a fifth of that, maybe less, said Jamie Murray, of Bloomberg Economics.

Also in Bali, Executive Board member Yves Mersch cited Brexit as a risk to growth. But at the same time, Dutch central-bank president Klaas Knot said in an interview that officials would be well advised to wait and see how a range of external threats to the economy play out.

They are downside risks, but they might not materialize, or materialize to a lesser extent than we thought, he said.

No Alarm

ECB officials will have a chance to say more on the topic next month when the institution publishes its semi-annual Financial Stability Review.

The central bank has good reason to shun the matter as long as possible though. It may wish to avoid raising the alarm over a hypothetical worst-case scenario that could even incite public debate, and it has no say in negotiations.

Neither Vice President Luis de Guindos nor chief economist Peter Praet referred to Brexit in speeches last week, and policy makers are now in a blackout period before the Oct. 25 meeting.

One euro-zone central bank officialspeaking on condition of anonymitysaid a failure to reach a Brexit deal could necessitate a downward revision of ECB forecasts and possibly slow the process of normalizing monetary policy. The ECB declined to comment.

Isolated Factor

Any dilemma for the ECB on the matter is still nothing compared with the Bank of England, which must brace for any U.K. impact and until now has based its forecasts on the assumption that Brexit will be followed by a smooth transition.

Brexit is very much an isolated factor, said Samuel Tombs, an economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in London. Clearly a no deal would hurt the German and French economies as well, but I dont think thats very likely to overwhelm the pain felt in the U.K.

Draghi will reveal the latest ECB view on economic risks at a press conference after Governing Council meeting. The Financial Stability Review will be in mid-November and the final rate decision of the year, featuring new quarterly economic forecasts, will be in Decemberlittle more than three months before the U.K. exit date of March 29.

Deadlines are approaching, the rhetoric is turning a little bit more negative, said Dean Turner, an economist at UBS Wealth Management, looking ahead to this weeks decision. I wouldnt be surprised if they flag risk around Brexit.

By Carolynn LookChinas Growing Unemployment Crisis

The losses caused by the Sino-U.S. trade war to China are the divestment of foreign investors and the relocation of the global industrial chain. Along with the resetting the industrial chain are capital outflows and unemployment for several developing countries, including China.

The United States has become a safe haven for global investors due to the reform of the tax system and the loosening of supervision. In August, there were 201,000 new jobs in the United States, and the unemployment rate was down to 3.9 percent. However, Chinas serious unemployment problem has become worse due to the massive withdrawal of foreign capital.

Unemployment Statistics With Chinese Characteristics

The Chinese regime has been expanding its censorship. In recent months, even negative news concerning the trade war, unemployment, loss of foreign exchange reserves, stock market and the real estate market have become sensitive topics subject to censorship. Despite this, there are still various methods available for measuring the severity of Chinas unemployment.

In mid-August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced that the unemployment rate in urban areas nationwide was 5.1 percent in July, rising 0.3 percent from the previous month.

Scholars analyzing the Chinese economy never trust this kind of data. It might be called statistics with Chinese characteristics. Starting this April, the authorities changed the method of measuring unemployment from using a reported urban unemployment rate to a surveyed unemployment rate. Meanwhile, they also commissioned a team of team of experts to write a paper called Comprehensive Analysis of the Surveyed Unemployment Rate Reflected in Nine Issues to prove that the surveyed unemployment rate was more reliable than the previous reported urban unemployment rate. However, all experts know that unemployment rate surveys with Chinese characteristics do not reflect reality either.

The data provided by the government only accounts for urban unemployment, and ignores the hundreds of millions of working-age rural unemployed. In 2017, the Meteor Federation of Journalists (also known as the Youth Media Association) conducted a survey on the actual unemployment rate and published its findings in an article titled Chinas Unemployment Ratethe Hidden Truth.

Key points from the article may be reiterated as follows: the total Chinese population in 2016 was 1.383 billion, including 907.47 million people between the ages 16 and 59. Deducting 68.6 million students enrolled in high schools, universities, and vocational school leaves a working-age population of 838.87 million, accounting for 60.7 percent of the total population. According to statistics, the total number of employed was 774.63 million.

However, the study brought up a critical issue: Chinese peasants do not retire and are included in the employed category for life. Elderly peasants, defined as those over the age of 60, numbered 129.28 million, a number that must be subtracted from the total employment figure. As a result, the real number of employed, working-age Chinese was 646.75 million  a difference of 192.12 million compared with the total number of working-age Chinese not enrolled in education or training. By this metric, the real Chinese unemployment rate is 22.9 percent.

Demographic statistics from this year paint a mirror image of the 2016 situation. The real rate of unemployment is still over 22 percent, even without factoring in the effects of the Sino-U.S. trade war that began this March.

At present, there are three factors exacerbating Chinas unemployment crisis.

Dual Impact of the Trade War: Withdrawal of Foreign Capital and Surge in Unemployment

The withdrawal of foreign capital from China that began this year has become irreversible. Although the Chinese authorities maintain stubborn resistance to this shift, the Ministry of Commerce acknowledged at a regular press conference held on Sept. 20 that tariffs imposed by the United States on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods have affected six categories, including the electromechanical industry and light industries such as textiles. Among the affected enterprises, foreign companies accounted for 50 percent. The Ministry of Commerce claims the U.S. tariffs harm not only the interests of Chinese and American companies and consumers, but also the security of the global industrial chain. The last sentence refers to the fact that foreign capital is withdrawing or considering withdrawal from China.

On Sep. 13, the American Chamber of Commerce in China and the AmCham Shanghai published a survey conducted on more than 430 US companies in China. Thirty-five percent of the companies surveyed have transferred production from China to other countries such as those in Southeast Asia, or are considering doing so.

According to statistics from Japans Kyodo News, 60 percent of Japanese companies have been transferred or are in the process of transferring from China to other countries, while the remaining 40 percent are deliberating on how to withdraw funding.

As for Taiwan-funded enterprises, the Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei reported on Sept. 16 that Taiwanese factories manufacturing shoes for Nike, Adidas, Under Armour and other brands have moved their production lines to Southeast Asia and India.

In order avoid the tariffs about implemented by Washington, even Chinese-funded enterprises and manufacturers are moving. Many Chinese factories are transferring their assembly lines abroad.

The Hong Kong-based Kerry Logistics Network Limited, Asias largest shipping and logistics company, is currently moving its production lines for customers in different countries from China to Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar and even Laos.

What kind of impact does the withdrawal of foreign capital have on Chinese employment? A widely quoted figure is that according to official estimates, the total number of people directly employed with all foreign-invested enterprises is more than 45 million people. In addition, there are countless suppliers and upstream and downstream enterprises that rely on foreign capital to survive, involving hundreds of millions of people.

According to Bloomberg News, on Sept. 11, Chinas chief economist Zhu Haibin of JPMorgan Chase & Co. stressed in his research report the profound impact of tariffs on China: if the United States imposes a 25 percent tariff on $200 billion worth goods exported from China, and China does not retaliate, it may leave three million people unemployed. If China uses the following methods to retaliate, including imposing counter-tariffs on U.S. good and depreciating the yuan by 5 percent, then 5.5 million people will lose their jobs and the GDP will decrease by 1.3 percent.

Chinese workers gather around potential employers at a local job center on September 18, 2015 in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Chinas AI Policy Leads to Structural Unemployment

Like many developed countries, the Chinese labor force faces increasing competition with robotic production.

A September report published by China Development Research Foundation and Sequoia Capital China, a venture capital firm, shows that several companies in export manufacturing industries in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces have reduced their labor pool by 30 to 40 percent over the past three years. In the past decade, Hangzhou Wahaha Group, a Chinese beverage company, has reduced the number of workers in its assembly line from around 200 or 300 to just a handful of personnel.

Robots competing for jobs once done by humans occurs in many countries, making unemployment an unavoidable trend in many cases. Some governments are considering various kinds of robot taxes to make up for the loss of human taxpayers.

Xavier Oberson, a professor and tax lawyer at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, advocates taxing robots proportional to their productivityespecially considering that a robot can generally replace more than one person. He recommended that funds accumulated through these taxes be used for social security funding and training for the unemployed.

South Korean and French politicians have also put forward similar proposals, hoping to use increased taxes to increase unemployment welfare. The Chinese authorities are aware of the increase in unemployment brought by AI, but apparently have not considered specific countermeasures.

Increasing Social Security Taxes Leads to Increased Unemployment

On Aug. 27, the State Administration of Taxation issued a tax reform to be implemented on Jan. 1 next year. The new policy introduces two major changes. First, it will be impossible for enterprises to conceal the actual number of employees and avoid paying social security taxes. According to the China Corporate Social Security White Paper 2018 released by the independent social security agency 51 Shebao in late August, 73 percent of Chinese companies were not in compliance with state regulations, i.e. they were not paying the social security fees as demanded of the actual wages. After the new policy is implemented, the possibility of companies escaping social security taxes will be greatly reduced.

The tax reform will increase the corporate tax rate from 31 percent (13th highest in the world) to the second-highest in the world at 44 percent.

The implementation of the new social security tax policy increases the burden on enterprises will increase. Many media have published articles discussing this issue. According to the author of In the Next Year, Please Prepare for Unemployment, if a company pays one employee 10,000 yuan ($1,440) a month, the company needed only to pay the lowest social security tax in the past, but going by the new policy, the employee has to pay an additional 640 yuan ($92) per month while companies have to pay an additional 1,860 yuan ($268) per employee per month, making the additional cost for hiring an employee more than 20,000 yuan ($3,200) a year. For a small company with around 10 employees, it will cost an additional 200,000 plus yuan ($32,000) a year. The increase in costs directly reduces the profits of small and medium-sized businesses, which will be forced to lay off workers in order to survive.

The trade war has not yet ended, but its impact on China is gradually emerging. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not want a trade war with the United States. Beijing has long acted as if opening up the market to Western countries is a special privilege it has afforded the West, while failing to recognize the thanks that Chinas economic prosperity owes to the international trade system.

Ever since 2003, when the CCP announced its peaceful rise, it has been trying to change the international rules.

In 2014, Xi Jinping publicly proposed his diplomatic guiding principles: It is necessary to comprehensively consider and use both international and domestic markets, international and domestic resources, and international and domestic rules.

Since the existing guardian of these rules is the United States, if the CCP were to rewrite and dominate the standards of international conduct, it would have to challenge the United States. But when the trade war came, it was unexpected, and China did not have enough assets for competition.

He Qinglian is a prominent Chinese author and economist. Currently based in the United States, she authored Chinas Pitfalls, which concerns corruption in Chinas economic reform of the 1990s, and The Fog of Censorship: Media Control in China, which addresses the manipulation and restriction of the press. She regularly writes on contemporary Chinese social and economic issues.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.Chinese J-10 fighter jets fly on display over the Yangcun Air Force base of the People's Liberation Army Air Force in Tianjin on April 13, 2010. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinese Air Force Loses Jet in Crash Near Site of Wargames

Pilot dead after J-10 fighter jet caught fire and exploded in Zhanjiang, southern China

A J-10 fighter crashed in southern China in the afternoon of Oct. 18, killing the pilot. The crash occurred in the city of Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, which is host to the first ASEAN-China Maritime Training Exercise that started on Oct. 22 and is scheduled to last until Oct. 28.

A woman who works in Zhanjiang spoke with The Epoch Times about the incident on Oct. 19. She reported that the fighter caught fire while airborne and that the pilot seemed to have no chance to use his parachute. The womans name has been omitted to protect her identity.

I was told that they were doing a military drill, but the fighter caught fire in the air. The debris was crashed in the rice paddy, she recalled.

Though Chinese media kept silent after the accident, with no posts on Weibo or other social media, many local people shared videos and photos with their friends on WeChat, a Chinese equivalent to Facebook.

In video shot by onlookers, the wreckage of the fighter jet and the pilots body could be on the ground and in the rice paddy. Some parts of the plane were still smouldering, and the yellow aircraft number 7411 is visible, is is the emblem of the Peoples Liberation Army.

According to Hong Kongs Apple Daily, the fighter was a J-10S with two airmen on board, both of whom died.

An insider said the accident occured close to the PLAs Suixi Air Base, and the fighter belongs to the Air Force Sixth Brigade of the PLAs Southern Theater Command.

The fact that the aircraft crashed just days before the beginning of the ASEAN-China Maritime Training Exercise makes it a matter of particular sensitivity for the Chinese authorities, which have kept silent about the accident thus far.

Multiple member states of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, are represented at the military exercises in Zhanjiang  including Singapore, Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar.

The J-10S is a tandem-seated trainer variant of the J-10A, created by lengthening the fuselage. The second seat is for a weapons operator.

The J-10, and the Chinese aircraft industry in general, faces steep challenges in terms of quality and original design.

Development on the J-10 began in 1986. It was designed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute and made its first flight in 1998. It was accepted into service in 2003, but has a long history of accidents typically caused by engine failure.

The J-10 uses the Russian AL-31FN turbofan engine, which is based on the AL-31F designed for Sukhoi Su-27 fighter. China tried to make its own engine, the WS-10, to replace AL-31FN. Since 2006, WS-10 engines have been installed in some J-10 fighters.

At least seven J-10 fighters have crashed between 2014 and 2016, killing multiple pilots and people on the ground. A crash in June 2016 killed Yu Xu, the first woman to fly the J-10.L: A poster of Lake Honghu on a fridge at a fruit market in Hurstville, NSW. (Mimi Nguyen Ly/The Epoch Times) R: A photo of the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, in 2018. A group of Chinese have raised concerns over an upcoming performance, Lake Honghu, coming to the Sydney Opera House on Nov. 4, 2018, calling it part of the Chinese Communist Party's strategy to wield soft power and exert influence in Australia. (Loritta Liu/The Epoch Times)

Chinese Show to Debut in Australia Is Regimes New Soft Power Tool, Critics Say

Some Australian-Chinese are calling out what they say is a new attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to export influence to Australia via soft power, by raising their concerns about a modern Chinese concert titled Lake Honghu to debut in Sydney and Melbourne in November.

The production, to be shown at the Sydney Opera House for one day on Nov. 4, and at the Melbourne Recital Centre for two days on Nov. 7-8, centres around the military conflicts between the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party) and the CCP that occurred around 1930 in Hubeipart of the Chinese Civil War between the two groups that spanned 1927 to 1950.

The powerful Chinese opera  tells a story of freedom and hope on the shores of Lake Honghu, the Sydney Opera House website reads.

But some critics say the performance will be devoid of any such qualities, and that its more artistic propaganda thats aimed at promoting communist ideology and glorifying the CCP.

The Honghu opera is not about freedom or hope, reads a statement from the Australian Values Alliance (AVA), a Chinese-Australian community group opposed to the CCPs influence in Australia. They have launched an online petition.

In 2016, the AVA had raised concerns about concerts which celebrated former CCP leader Mao Zedong, which were eventually cancelled. In 2017, the AVA held protests against the performance Red Detachment of Women, by the National Ballet of China which was held at the Arts Centre Melbourne.

[Lake Honghu] follows the Chinese communist thinking to justify violence, hatred under the theme of class struggle, the AVA statement said.

Ding Li, an editor from the Chinese version of Voice of America (VOA), refers to the production as artistic propaganda in Australia in an article he wrote for VOA.

Profit and Propaganda for the CCP

The organizers of Lake Honghu have alleged links to the CCP, raising fears that the opera is another tactic in the CCPs toolkit and plan to exert influence in Australia, Chen Yonglin, a former consul for political affairs in the Chinese consulate in Sydney who defected from the CCP in 2005, told Chinese language Epoch Times.

The host for both Sydney and Melbourne shows is listed on the websites of Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Recital Centre as Ausfeng Event Productions (Ausfeng). Ausfeng has been hosting a multitude of events that are sponsored by CCP media and endorsed by CCP entities.

One example is the recent Happy Spring Festival Chinese Culture Series held in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, a series of many events over the 2018 lunar new year period. On the event series official website, a list of partners include CCP bodies like the Chinese regimes Ministry of Culture, the Chinese Embassy, and the Consulate-Generals for Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. The main media sponsors of the event include the news website of the CCPs mouthpiece newspaper, Peoples Daily.

Ausfengs chairman is Robert Feng (Feng Dunping). He is also a key member of the Australia China Economics, Trade & Culture Association (ACETCA).

According to testimony submitted to Australian parliament by academic Clive Hamilton and researcher Alex Joske, the ACETCA has maintained close ties for over a decade with the CCP, and one of the CCPs key United Front Work Department (United Front) groups in Australia, the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China (ACPPRC) (pdf).

The CCPs United Front is tasked with carrying out influence operations among overseas ethnic Chinese communities, including in Australia (pdf), and has been a key apparatus in the CCPs propaganda warfare campaign since the time of Mao Zedong (pdf).

Chen, a member of the AVA, alleges that Ausfeng is making money from engaging in so-called Sino-Australian cultural, economic, trade and tourism exchanges and cooperation, as well as immigration agents and visas.

They help apply and get visas and help arrange the trips for Chinese performance groups, rent venues, and then help promote and advertise [the performances]. They make money from it.

Chen believes that the reason that many cultural performances are supported by the Chinese Consulate, is because these activities are invested by the Chinese regime, the boss is the Chinese regime. The Chinese consulate is definitely a representative of the Chinese regime to support these projects.

According to Professor Feng Chongyi, a University of Technology Sydney Associate Professor in China Studies and also a member of the AVA, some Chinese organizations have taken the opportunity to promote such China-Australia cultural exchanges for profit and propaganda.

[They are] turning it into a commercial operation and cultural industry, bringing Chinese programs from mainland China. They are not only gaining profits [for the CCP and themselves], but also use such activities to show their loyalty and patriotism to the Chinese Communist Party, Feng told The Epoch Times.

Ausfeng has not responded to The Epoch Times request for comment. Robert Feng could not be reached for comment at the time of the articles publication.

Propaganda and Networking

Alongside Ausfeng, Lake Honghu in Melbourne is also co-organised by three other groupsthe Hubei Association of Australia, the Australian-Hubei Chamber of Commerce, and the Huaxing Arts Group of Melbourne, according to Chinese media.

Feng has raised questions about the three groups relationship to the CCP.

The three groups initiatives have previously received support from the Chinese Consulate General and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO), an office under the Chinese central governments State Council.

The OCAO is a Chinese government agency responsible for drafting, planning, and implementing policies for overseas Chinese affairs, according to academic and author Clive Hamilton, in his book, Silent Invasion.

The three groups are headed by the same chairman, Zhou Jiuming, according to their website. Zhou Jiuming is listed as one of the honorary presidents in the seventh term of the seventh advisory group of the ACPPRC.

On Feb. 28, the Huaxing Arts Group of Melbourne co-sponsored the Chinese Spring Festival Gala held in Melbourne at the Palais Theatrean event that was supported by the CCPs Consulate General, and hosted by OCAO.

The event was subsequently broadcasted by CCTV4 the following day. CCTV stands for China Central Television, and is the official Chinese state broadcaster.

The three groups have not responded to requests for comment from The Epoch Times, and Zhou Jiuming could not be reached for comment by the articles publication.

The OCAO in Beijing has also given millions of dollars to Nanhai Media, a Sydney-based media company, for the latter to put on Lunar New Year celebration events in Sydney, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The OCAO recommends the use of traditional festivals for propaganda and networking purposes, according to secret OCAO documents that were uncovered by New Zealand academic James To, and cited by Silent Invasion.

The deputy chief of OCAO, He Yafei, was quoted by Silent Invasion as saying: As the standing of overseas Chinese rises abroad they will have the desire to collect their power in order to push forward the development and advancement of China.

Communist Elements in Lake Honghu

The upcoming Lake Honghu concert claims to be a modern take on the original Chinese revolutionary opera titled The Red Guards of Lake Honghu, or Honghu Chiweidui in Chinese. The original production debuted in 1959 (although some sources also say 1956) in Wuhan City, Hubei Province and was later adapted into a film in 1961.

The original opera presents a partially fictional account of how the CCPs Red Army incited local people to fight against the KMTs Nationalist Army for control of a village, namely the Honghu Base Area, in 1930. The opera portrays the Red Army and its chief, He Long, in a positive light and employs songs that glorify them.

In their statement, the AVA questions the productions content.

The Red Army killed massively during the Long March, especially targeting the landowners, many of whom were innocent peasants, the AVA said in their statement. They killed  to the extent [that] it was against humanity.

The killings remind us of the brutal acts of the Nazi Germany that targeted Jews for massacre  [The Red Army] are now portrayed [in the Lake Honghu concert] as heroes; how would this be fair to those who were killed?

The lyrics in one song titled: Wave after Wave in Lake Honghu, read: The Communist Party is benevolent, greater than the East Sea.

Feng told The Epoch Times that the operas messages and content are reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, which contributed directly to the unnatural deaths of tens of millions.

It is horrible to look back  It is murder and does not respect human rights at all. It is a very violent cultural form, Feng said.

However, this is part of the Party culture, and the CCP continues to propagate this culture overseas, a culture thats so incompatible to todays world.

Li of VOA pointed out the organizers change of the concerts name from Red Guards on Lake Honghu to Lake Honghu in its promotions. At a press conference for the show on Oct. 10, the production still had Red Guards in its title.

The words Red Guards are well associated with the political Chinese Cultural Revolution in modern discourse. Li believes the omission of Red Guards downplays the political connotations of the production in an effort to make the show sound appealing to Westerners.

But Lake Honghu is actually the political activity of the CCPs massive international communications strategy, Feng tells The Epoch Times. He says that while the opera is being shown under the guise of promoting culture, it is actually part of the CCPs many efforts to exert its cultural and political influence overseas.

The Sydney Opera House released a statement in response to The Epoch Times request for comment.

Lake Honghu in Concert is being presented by a third-party venue hirer, Ausfeng Event Productions. It is not part of the Sydney Opera Houses artistic program.

Ausfeng is a regular venue hirer at the Opera House. On this basis, the Opera House approved its venue hire application for a concert  This decision does not represent a view by the Opera House as to the content of the show.

A contact person speaking for the Melbourne venue where Lake Honghu will be performed, the Melbourne Recital Centre, told The Epoch Times over the phone that they do not have any comments to make.

Nina Yan of the Chinese language Epoch Times contributed to this report.

Watch Next:

Australias China Experts Discuss Chinese Communist Party Infiltration in Australia

The conflicts between two different values systems, and the conflicts between the two political systems are issues that cannot be ignored.Death Toll in Costa Rica Rafting Accident Includes Four Americans

A rafting accident on Oct. 20 in Costa Rica left four Americans dead in addition to their guide, the U.S. State Department confirmed.

We are saddened by news of rafting accident in #CostaRica. We can confirm four U.S. citizens died as a result of the accident. We extend our deepest condolences to their families and loved ones, and extend our gratitude to the Government of Costa Rica for their support in this tragedy, said Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, in a statement.

Anthony Castro, one of the group of 14, was on the Naranjo River with five guides, spread across three rafts.

The group was in Costa Rica for a bachelor party, according to Castro, who started a fundraiser after the deaths on GoFundMe. The bridegroom, Luis Beltran, was among the survivors.

Weve all been friends for many years and we knew we wanted to do something special for our friend before his wedding. We planned a few activities, one of them being a white-water rafting tour on the Saturday of our trip, Castro wrote.

All of Us Were Careening Down the River

It was windy and raining when the group first arrived at the river but the tour guides said the conditions were okay less than an hour later.

Within five minutes of being out on the river, all three rafts capsized, and everyone ended up in the water, Castro wrote. Everyone struggled to get back on the rafts, with some efforts being successful, but ultimately the rafts continued to capsize due to the immense current. Within minutes, all of us were careening down the river with life jackets and helmets just trying to stabilize and find something to hold on to.

Everyone struggled to stay above the water and dealt with heavy blows from rocks that were in or around the water. Most of the group was able to hold on to the rafts or grab rocks or other barriers in or around the water, but not the five deceased.

Luis, the man we hoped to celebrate all weekend, lost a brother and we all lost four great friends during this vacation which went horribly wrong, Castro said.

We are saddened by news of rafting accident in #CostaRica. We can confirm 4 U.S. citizens died as a result of the accident. We extend our deepest condolences to their families and loved ones, and extend our gratitude to Government of Costa Rica for their support in this tragedy.  Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) October 21, 2018

Search and Rescue

A search and rescue operation involving 120 people was launched for the group, reported Q Costa Rica.

The call that the rafts flipped came in at 3:20 p.m. local time and the fifth body was recovered by 9 p.m.

Authorities said the Santos area, where the accident occurred, was swollen from the Naranjo River tributary. Rafting takes place year-round in Costa Rica, the most popular Central American tourist destination, known for its peaceful atmosphere and wide range of environmental zones. But the wet season brings heavy rains and flooded rivers, increasing the danger of outdoor activities like rafting.

The four Americans were identified as Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo, and Andres Dennis; the Costa Rican tour guide who died was identified as Kevin Thompson Reid.

Costa Rican officials joined American officials in offering condolences.

Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada said on his official Twitter account: In the name of the government and people of Costa Rica I would like to express our deepest sorrow for the accident this afternoon at the Naranjo River in Quepos. I would like to thank all the emergency and security teams that worked diligently, and I have instructed authorities to help the victims families.

From NTD.tvDecentralization Plan Could Expel 2.7 Million From Mexico City

MEXICO CITYA plan by Mexican president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would move the offices of as many as 31 government agencies, and their employees, out of the capital to different cities around the country.

The plan, which seeks to promote even development in different regions, could lead to an exodus of as many as 2.7 million government workers and their families from Mexico City by some estimates, though other, more conservative estimates put the figure lower.

Although the policy is referred to as decentralization, Dolores Franco, president of the Urbanists College of Mexico, told The Epoch Times that she sees that title as misleading.

Theyre calling it decentralization, but it would be more accurate to call it deconcentration, she said. Its about deconcentrating activities from Mexico City, but it doesnt necessarily give more power to state and municipal governments.

Kristobal Melendez, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research (CIEP) in Mexico City, told The Epoch Times that decentralization could help promote development in poorer regions of Mexico, a country that has long struggled with geographic inequality.

Theres a lot of inequality in the distribution of resources in Mexico, he said. Almost the entire federal government is concentrated in Mexico City, and other states should have that opportunity as well.

Melendez says plans to attract private investment to southern Mexico have struggled, and that the kind of government-directed stimulus offered by decentralization could be successful.

Mexico City is on a level of development where it can compete with European countries, while some municipalities in poor states have similar poverty levels to places in Africa, he said. Its important to break that pattern, and one of the ways we can do it is through decentralization, which would bring work opportunities to other places.

Melendez more conservatively estimates that around 500,000 people, mostly federal employees and their families, will leave Mexico City as a direct result of the decentralization plan. Mexico City will likely suffer in some ways because of the implied decline in economic activity, but Melendez says that North Americas largest city could also see some benefits from reducing its population.

Mexico City is overpopulated, and that causes problems like traffic congestion and strains on the water supply, he said. We could put the resources we spend on those problems to better use: There would be fewer people, and the people who stay will have a better quality of life.

Mixed Reactions

Of course, many of the thousands of employees whose jobs will be moved out of Mexico City will not want to leave. Workers at the Culture Secretariat, which will be the first government agency to move, to the city of Tlaxcala, have reacted angrily to the proposal, staging protests outside of Lopez Obradors campaign headquarters.

Maria de los Angeles Medina, president of the Culture Secretariats workers union, railed against the plan at one protest.

Workers arent accessories that you can just send to another state without even listening to our needs, she said.

Lopez Obrador later clarified that the process of moving secretariats will be gradual, and that employees wont be forced to move. But job losses in Mexico City will be hard to avoid.

Gene Towle, a managing partner with the Mexico City real estate research firm Softec, is skeptical that moving government employees will promote development in the cities that receive them.

What generates development and wealth isnt necessarily government jobs, its actually productive jobs, he told The Epoch Times. The question is whether this is a strategy that could attract people to move and invest in these communities in other types of jobs.

Towle also thinks that, notwithstanding improvements in video-conference and other communication technologies, capital cities still serve an important purpose, and dispersing government offices around the country could make Mexican government much less efficient.

If you look around the world, theres not a single country that has done this effectively, he said. In 10,000 years of government, the way most national governments organize is to have the central government powers in one spot so that they can coordinate cheaply and easily.

For the plan to work, Towle says that it would be necessary to roll back federal regulations and devolve powers to the states to avoid a high social cost in time and money of traveling between different cities to visit government agencies.

He noted that for an entrepreneur to open a hotel, he or she needs to visit nine different government agencies to get permits. This is a reasonable task if all those agencies are located in Mexico City, but considerably more difficult if they are distributed in nine different cities around the country.

What would originally have been a two-day trip could become a one-month boondoggle, he said. But if this is accompanied with significant deregulation, significant decentralization of powers to localities, so you dont have to go to the places, then it could work.DNA Ties Convicted Killer to 1999 Louisiana Cold Case

DNA science has solved another cold case.

This time it was the 1999 murder of Louisiana State University student Kassie Federer which has finally been closed.

Federer was only 19 and studying psychology at LSU when she was shot to death by an unknown attacker inside the Park Boulevard apartment she shared with her roommate around 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 13, 1999, WAFB reported.

Law enforcement officials said her attacker broke through a dead-bolted door and chased the teen student around the apartment before finally fatally shooting her, according to the Daily Beast.

It does appear that she had time to grab a phone in an attempt to call 911, one police officer told Americas Most Wanted, according to WBRZ.

WBRZ reported that Federer was attacked after coming home from school. Her apartment was not ransacked, which suggests the attack was not motivated by robbery.

Further, Federers body was fully clothed, which seemed to rule out a sex-based assault.

The only thing missing from her apartment was her knapsack.

Her dog was shut inside her bedroom, and the lights were on when the building manager found the body about an hour after the crime had occurred.

The only piece of evidence, besides the body itself, was a single glove which did not belong to either of the apartments residents, Fox News reported.

19 Years Later, DNA Identifies the Killer

After 19 years, DNA science has developed to the point where the trace amounts left inside the glove found at the scene could be processed. And the DNA, when tested, returned a match.

The suspect is a 49-year multiple rapist and murderer named Travis Green.

On Oct. 16, Baton Rouge police Sgt. Don Coppola Jr. announced that an arrest warrant had been issued for Green on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated burglary in Baton Rouge related to the 1999 crime, the Beaumont Enterprise reported.

Green is currently on death row in Livingston Texas jail for raping and murdering a 19-year-old girl in Houston, Texas, just 11 days before killing Federer. He was also convicted of raping and murdering an 82-year-old woman.

Because Green will be in prison for the rest of his life, East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore does not plan to try green, WAFB reported. That way, Federers family will be spared the ordeal of reliving their daughters death through a trial.

Case Closed but Pain Lingers

I feel like this is closing this part, but nothings going to ever close the hole in my heart, Kassies mother Debby Durapau told The Daily Beast.

I dont know what closure is. This is something I dont think Ill ever come back from. I think of her every day.

Durapau told WAFB, Thats been the hardest thing for me. I know that shes gone, I know shes not coming back, but just the thought that someone shot my daughter at about 3:30 in the afternoon in her apartment.

People say, Oh just wrong place. No, she was in the right place. That person came into her place.

Its been a long time coming, Kassies father, Warren Federer, told The Daily Beast.

Its a big burden off of us. We know hes not going to be out there doing that to somebody elses daughter.

I want to thank everyone for their prayers and comments. I am still numb and dont know how I will feel tomorrow, Federer said.

My wife and I, Debby and her husband, our sons, and everyone else whose lives ever crossed paths with Kassies have waited a long time for some answers.

From NTD.tv

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A story of tragedy, faith, and resistance in the face of brutal totalitarianism, Memoir of a Communist Slave is one mans journey to uncover what he believes has held him and his people hostage for too long.Trumps Approval Rating at Record High, According to Poll

With the midterm elections approaching, approval ratings for President Donald Trump are going up, with a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll giving him a record high 47 percent overall approval rating. According to the same poll, thats an increase from 44 percent in September, 44 and 46 percent in August, 45 percent in July, and 44 percent in June.

Notably, Trumps current approval rating is two points higher than President Barack Obama had with registered voters in the same poll in late October 2010, just before Obamas first midterm election.

Trump has a 49 percent overall disapproval rating, according to the poll, which surveyed 900 registered voters and has a margin-of-error of about 3 percentage points. But his disapproval rate is at an all-time low, the highest being a 57 percent disapproval rate in January and April, according to the same poll.

A YouGov poll taken Oct. 20 to 21 gave Trump a 40 percent approval rating and a 52 percent disapproval rating among 1,000 likely voters, with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. But his favorability varies widely by party. According to that poll, his favorability among Republicans was 87 percent; among Democrats, 11 percent; and among independents, 35 percent.

An Oct. 22 Rasmussen poll of 1,500 likely voters also showed Trump with a 47 percent favorability rating. Similar to the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll, Rasmussen also shows Obama near Trump around this time eight years ago: 47 percent approved of his job for the month of October 2010, while 52 percent disapproved.

Pollsters are looking at Trumps favorability as a weather vane for the midterms, especially in states where elections are contested. And both Republicans and Democrats are using his presidency to motivate their base to vote.

Trump has been traveling the country to campaign for Republican congressional candidates for the past several weeks, trying to create enthusiasm for the midterms, so that his party can maintain control of Congress. Historically, the presidential party takes a hit in the midterms after the first presidential election, and Trump is hoping to reverse that trend.

Theres something about that Make America Great Again that just worked, but Keep America Great, its very important because everything we do, they can destroy very quickly if the wrong people get into office, Trump said at a rally in Mesa, Arizona, on Oct. 19, referring to his campaign slogan.

Under Republican leadership, America is booming, America is thriving, America is winning, because we are finally putting America first.

Pollsters have consistently predicted the House being won by Democrats and the Senate by Republicans next month, but even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) isnt willing to say take it to the bank as she did in May 2016 when predicting Donald Trump wouldnt win.

If the election were held today, Democrats would handily win the House, she said during CNNs Citizen forum Oct. 22. I can only speak in the present tense, because you never know in another couple of weeks.

Did you enjoy this article? Continue to read more stories here.A still from 1011's drill music video "No Hook." YouTube took down the video after a request from police in London. (Metropolitan Police)

Drill Rap Music Deemed Incitement to Violence in UK, Free Speech in US

Chicago's drill music scene finds its way to London

Emerging from Chicagos South Side, drill music is known for its dark and violent lyrics that often reflect the harsh realities of gang life.

Like grime in the 2000s, drill rap has become a controversial topic in the UK music world, with London police associating the hip-hop subgenre to the recent surge of violent crime in the capital.

In the UK, authorities are trying to restrict parts of the drill music scene that they believe incite violence.

Whereas in the United States, drill music is more likely to be seen as speech protected by the First Amendment.

Measures After Online Feuds Turn Real

Several murders in the UK have been linked to drill music videos.

In a killing last May, music producer Dean Anthony Pascale-Modeste was walking down a street in south-east London when he was surrounded by men on mopeds and stabbed 14 times. He was heading to a recording session with two men associated with a gang called Splash.

Both Splash and their rivals B-side had traded insults with one another in drill rap videos uploaded to YouTube.

Such violent acts have led authorities to start imposing restrictions.

Since July 2016, Londons Metropolitan Police has requested Google to remove a total of 98 drill music videos from YouTube. As of Oct. 4 this year, it had taken down 61. The online platform rejected 20 of those requests and 17 are pending.

Glamorizing Violence?

This isnt the only case where London police have restricted speech.

Over a two-year investigation, local police officers kept track of the 1011 drill music group in West London, and said they found evidence that the groups rap lyrics and social media activities were promoting violence.

Several of their videos referred to actual murders and stabbings, and contained graphic threats and gun hand gestures that authorities say incited violence against their rivals 12World.

All five members of that group whose online videos were viewed over 15 million times, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit violent disorder in June after police found them armed with machetes. The group appeared on British hip-hop DJ Tim Westwoods TV channel last October.

According to court documents, 1011 had planned a revenge attack on their rivals 12World, who filmed themselves verbally abusing and threatening the grandmother of a 1011 member in a drill rap video uploaded to YouTube.

In addition to time behind bars (ranging from 12 months to 3.5 years) members of 1011 were handed court orders, called Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs), preventing them from making drill music glorifying violence.

Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Southworth said in a statement that the music was being used to incite violence.

This is one of the first times, if not the first time we have succeeded in gaining CBOs that take such detailed and firm measures to restrict the actions of a gang who blatantly glorified violence through the music they created, Southworth said.

The CBOs ban the men from meeting in public to make music without permission from police for the next three years. They must also notify police of any new official music videos within 24 hours of publication.

Further restrictions in uploaded music videos or live performances include, not being allowed to reference specific postcodes, street names, certain gangs, gang members names including pseudonyms, or referring to their death or injury.

In a case in September, eight members of another West London gang were issued with similar CBOs and were sentenced to a total of 15 years and two months, after an altercation that left one minor with life-threatening injuries.

An increasing number of CBOs like these are being applied for and granted, said Detective Constable Steve Renny in a statement.

We are not trying to prevent young peoples artistic expression but when music is being used to encourage violent attacks we must act, as the public would rightly expect us to do so, said Renny.

A Reflection of Reality

Drill rappers describe the music is an expression of their lived reality.

Drill music erupted on the international scene in 2012 when YouTube videos by Chicago drill rapper Chief Keef went viral, and his hit I Dont Like was re-mixed by Kanye West.

Raw, repetitive, with heavy beats, it references gang life including weapons, illicit drugs, and attacking rivals.

Those beats infiltrated hip-hop, and a strand of the genre soon embedded itself among south Londons public housing projects.

The thing that really made drill music popular was that it was so raw and very uncut, it wasnt commercial, said Branden Tatum, a radio personality who grew up on Chicagos Southside.

It was different from the gangsta rap of 2012, he said. They are just saying what theyve been through, telling their struggle on how they have to live their life.

Charlie Ransford, director of science and policy at Cure Violence, a Chicago-based global non-profit, says the music itself isnt a driver of the violence.

The music, rather than causing it, is more characteristic of people already wrapped up in violence, he said.

UK drill rapper Siddique Kamara, who was cleared of murder charges earlier this year before he was stabbed to death in August, spoke about the link between knife crime in London and drill music in June on Link Up TV.

You see with the crime thats happening right now, music does influence it. Youve got to put your hands up and say drill music does influence it, said Kamara, 23, who was part of the Moscow17 group.

He added, But knife crime and gun crime has been going on way before drill music, so if you want to talk about 10 years, 20 years, people were still getting cheffed up [attacked with knives].

Just Wait On It   pic.twitter.com/V2MfHw2bu9  Moscow Music (@Moscow17Music) March 27, 2017

British DJ Tim Westwood is with band members from Moscow17 in the tweet above, including UK drill rapper Siddique Kamara (3L) who was stabbed to death in August and Rhyhiem Ainsworth Barton (R) who was shot dead in May.

Crossing the Line?

In legal trials, rap music lyrics have been used as evidence in hundreds of cases in the United States and the trend is growing in the UK as well. But American authorities havent taken the road of restricting speech of convicted gang members in their music videos.

According to the National Coalition Against Censorship, unlike obscenity the U.S. Supreme Court has never treated violent content as an exception to First Amendment protection, even though the opportunity has presented itself several times to the Court.

It says the only exceptions were when the speech in question constitutes actual incitement to lawless action where the threat to public safety is imminent.

Simon Harding, a professor of criminology at the University of West London likened certain drill music videos to a poison pen letter wrapped up in a musical quilt.

It moves away from being a message to a form of hate speech directed at an individual, he said.

Christian Parenti, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York said that if police were to restrict selected violent videos in the same way in the United States, it would have to be through fighting words.

Fighting words must involve an actual threat towards a specific person that could immediately unfold into violence.

Even so, Parenti hints that some videos might cross the line, even before they come under fighting words.

Im sure these videos, when they are not fighting words, and just speech in general, they do contribute [to violence] to some extent, he said.

He added, Its the risk of horrible ideas having traction vs the risk of unbridled state censorship and the repression of ideas.3 Strong Earthquakes Strike Off Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Top video shows earthquake-proof bed

Several strong earthquakes hit off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, on Oct. 22.

The strongest quake was registered as a 6.8-magnitude on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It had a depth of 6 miles.

A 6.6 magnitude earthquake and a 6.5 magnitude earthquake also hit in the same area, about 140 miles southwest of Port Hardy, Canada. They also had a depth of 6 miles.

Several 4.0 or greater earthquakes also struck around the same area.

Geophysicist Amy Vaughan told The Associated Press that there may have been some other aftershocks. Vaughan says the quakes were felt onshore. No injuries were reported, she said.

The National Tsunami Warning Center wrote that a tsunami in the area is not expected, AP reported.

Ring of Fire

British Columbia, like the rest of western North America, is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire that encircles the Pacific Ocean, the worlds most seismically active area. About 90 percent of the worlds earthquakes are registered in the region.

British Columbia, namely Vancouver Island, has been struck by powerful earthquakes in the past. In 1946, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the island, and it was felt as far away as Portland, Oregon. Two people died in the quake, which also caused severe damage in the area.

Earlier this year, a report said that a 9.0 earthquake could hit off the West Coast of Canada, which would kill thousands of people and cause massive tsunami waves around the West Coast.

Its difficult to predict when it will happen again. We do know its occurred about 20 times in the past 10,000 years, Dr. John Clague, an earth sciences professor at Simon Fraser University, said to GlobalNews.

The report made note of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit near Vancouver Island in the year 1700. The quake caused a tsunami that hit the east coast of Japan. Some Native American tribes also have oral traditions that speak about a giant earthquake as well as a tsunami-like flooding event along the West Coast.

According to a forecast model of the 9.0 earthquake produced by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the tsunami generated from such a quake would impact all of the west coasts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, and would bring impacts to East Asia.

This geologically active region, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, not only hosts erupting volcanoes but also produces megathrust earthquakes capable of generating devastating, ocean-crossing tsunamis. By comparing the tree rings of dead trees with those still living they could tell when the last of these great earthquakes struck the region. The trees all died in the winter of 1699-1700 when the coasts of northern California, Oregon, and Washington suddenly dropped 1-2 m (3-6 ft.), flooding them with seawater, the Pacific Warning Center wrote.Former Leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg speaks at a Liberal Democrat Party Conference fringe event at the Hilton Hotel on Sept. 17, 2018 in Brighton, England. (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Facebook Hires Ex-UK Deputy Premier Clegg to Lead Lobbying

Facebook Inc. hired Nick Clegg, Britains former deputy prime minister, to run its lobbying efforts, as governments around the world debate how best to regulate the social media giant.

As leader of the Liberal Democrats, Clegg was at the heart of the British government from 2010 to 2015. Hes also a former member of the European Parliament who knows his way around the institutions of the European Union.

Cleggs hire comes as Facebook is under fire from regulators, politicians, and authorities around the world on issues ranging from user privacy breaches, to the proliferation of fake news and hate speech on its platforms. He speaks French, Dutch, and German.

Bringing a former local politician on board could especially help the Silicon Valley giant in the U.K., where it is under investigation for letting the data of millions of users end up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that worked on Donald Trumps 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

In an example of the kind of scrutiny Facebook is now coming under, the U.K. Parliaments Culture Committee on Oct. 20 released details of what it said was an anonymous political campaign to reject Prime Minister Theresa Mays Brexit plan. The Committee said it found evidence that more than 250,000 pounds ($327,000) had been spent on targeted ads pushing for a harder Brexit. The committee said it was impossible to tell who was behind the campaign.

Facebook said that, as of Nov. 7, all advertisers will have new requirements before they can place political ads in the U.K. We know we cant prevent election interference alone and offering more ad transparency allows journalists, researchers, and other interested parties to raise important questions, the company said in a statement.

On his Facebook page, Clegg wrote: The company is on a journey which brings new responsibilities not only to the users of Facebooks apps but to society at large. I hope I will be able to play a role in helping to navigate that journey. His title at Facebook will be vice president, Global Affairs and Communications.

Clegg is no stranger to controversy. When he agreed to form a coalition with Prime Minister David Camerons Conservatives in 2010, Clegg led his party into government for the first time since World War II. But the move went down badly with the party supporters. The two parties werent natural bedfellowsthe Lib Dems are left of center. And there was a particular issue around university tuition fees that bombed with supporters.

In the 2015 general election, the Liberal Democrats lost all but 8 of the 57 lawmakers they had returned to Parliament 5 years earlier. Clegg quit as leader and lost his own seat in last years surprise election.

A low point in his career came in 2012, when a contrite Clegg apologized in a political advertisement for promising to oppose any increase in tuition fees: We made a pledge, we did not stick to it, and for that I am sorry. It generated a series of spoofs online.

Clegg replaces Elliot Schrage, who stepped down in June after a tumultuous decade at the company, which featured a period of rapid growth, an initial public offering, and the beginning of the fallout of the privacy scandals. Schrage will stay on as an adviser.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote: The challenges we face are serious and clear and now more than ever we need new perspectives to help us through this time of change.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Sandberg were deeply involved in the hiring process and talks to hire Clegg began over the summer. Clegg will start on Oct. 22 but the familyhe has three sonswont move to California until 2019, according to a person familiar with the talks. Cleggs wife, Miriam, is Spanish and a top trade lawyer.

Facebook has hired heavily from Washington, in its communications department and beyond. Its head of global policy, Joel Kaplan, used to work for President George W. Bush. Alphabet Inc.s Google and Uber Technologies Inc.also both battling regulatory scrutiny and reputation damagerecently hired former political advisers for senior public policy roles.

Google in 2016 had hired Caroline Atkinson, an economic adviser to President Barack Obama, to steer its global policy efforts before stepping aside from that role last year. And in 2015, Uber hired as its senior vice president for public policy Jill Hazelbaker, a former campaign press secretary for Michael Bloombergs 2009 re-election campaign as New York City mayor and for Senator John McCains 2008 presidential campaign.

By Robert Hutton & Natalia DrozdiakTrading Post Ltd to expand reach through MOU with Radio New ZealandFlorida Politician Who Shot Man at Point-Blank Range Resigns From Job

Warning: Potentially disturbing footage

A city commissioner in Lakeland, Florida, is facing second-degree murder charges for shooting and killing a man who allegedly shoplifted from his military surplus store on Oct. 3. He resigned from his job, according to a new report.

Surveillance footage of the incident was released to the public, showing Michael Dunn shooting the man as he was trying to exit the store.

Dunn, who was inaugurated to a four-year term in January 2018, appeared in court on Oct. 22 to request bond, WTSP reported.

He was booked into the Polk County Jail on Friday without bond after he was indicted by a grand jury.

In another WTSP report on Oct. 22, Dunn also resigned from his position after he was charged with murder.

It is with a heavy heart that I submit this letter to you. Wherein I am tendering my resignation as Commissioner of the SW District of Lakeland effective October 20, 2018. Being born and raised in Lakeland, this city means a great deal to me and always will. Thank you to the residents of Lakeland for having given me the opportunity to serve, he wrote in a letter announcing his resignation.

The video footage shows Dunn shooting and killing Cristobal Lopez. Police said that he tried to steal a hatchet from the business.

An investigating officer said Lopez didnt make any threats to Dunn and was holding the blade of the hatchet in his hand.

Dunn also told police that he shot Lopez because he was stealing. According to WFLA, hes not protected under Floridas stand your ground law, said State Attorney Brian Haas.

The grand jury carefully considered the evidence it was presented to it and they did their job and thats what were going to go forward on, said Haas. It is the policy of my office to comply with and abide by the Stand Your Ground Law, however, I have determined that this case and the actions of Mr. Dunn fall outside the protection of the Stand Your Ground Law, he added.

Dunns lawyer, Rusty Franklin, said he disagrees with Haass statement.

There was a video. It clearly shows that the shoplifter was wielding an axe, said Franklin, WFLA reported.

He had no choice but to protect himself and thats what we hope this trial will prove and we will prove it in a courtroom, not in the media, he said.

In Florida, a person who is convicted of second-degree murder can get life in prison or life on probation with a fine of up to $10,000. When a weapon is involved, there is a mandatory sentenced of 25 years in prison.

Dunn will appear in court on Nov. 6.Virgil reading his Aeneid to Octavia and Augustus, 1788, by Angelica Kauffmann. A legend in ancient Roman history tells of Octavia, the sister of the Emperor Augustus, who faints when hearing Virgils verses, which remind her of the early death of her son. (Public Domain)

Guide to the Classics: Virgils Aeneid

The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil is an epic poem in 12 books that tells the story of the foundation of Rome from the ashes of Troy. It was probably written down in Rome from 30 B.C. to 19 B.C. during the period of the Emperor Augustus.

The poem is named after the Trojan hero Aeneas, the son of Venus (Aphrodite in Greek mythology) and Anchises, a Trojan aristocrat. Aeneas leads the survivors from the sack of Troy through the Mediterranean, and ultimately to the site of (future) Rome. The Aeneid is, therefore, a classic foundation narrative.

As with other ancient epics, our hero has to remain resolute in the face of significant divine hostility. Juno, queen of heaven and goddess of marriage, despises the Trojans because she lost a divine beauty contest known as the Judgment of Paris. Venus wins the Judgment by giving a bribe to Paris, a Trojan prince who acts as judge. The bribe is in the form of Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris prefers this bribe to the bribes of the other two contestants, Juno and Minerva.

Unfortunately, Helen is already married to the Spartan king Menelaus, and so the Trojan War follows soon after. Juno takes badly her loss in the beauty contest, and hates everything Trojan, both during the war and after. The hatred and vindictiveness shown by Juno to the Trojans anchors the whole Aeneid, and it only comes to an end in the final book.

Stealing From Homer?

The Aeneid is written in dactylic hexameters, the same meter as the two Homeric poems, the Iliad and Odyssey (although it is written in Latin, not in ancient Greek).

In many ways, the Aeneid is written in emulation of Homers works by a poet who may have known them off by heart (that is my view, anyway). Scholars sometimes talk about the Odyssean part of the Aeneid (Books 16, because Aeneas travels through the Mediterranean, a bit like Odysseus), and the Iliadic half of the poem (Books 712, on the theme of war in Italy).

A new reader of the Aeneid with a background in Homer can usually identify many passages that have Homeric resonances.

Indeed, many readers through time have felt that Virgil is too reliant on Homer. There is a story that Virgil needed to defend himself from this charge by saying that it is easier to steal Herculess club than steal one line from Homer.

It must be stressed, however, that in Virgils case, we are dealing with someone who was totally immersed in Greek and Roman literature, rhetoric, and philosophynot just the works of Homer. He was an astonishingly well-read poet, and this breadth of learning is embodied in his poems. In this sense, the criticism of Virgil of plagiarizing Homer, or quasi-plagiarism, seems rather unreasonable.

A Deserted Heroine

The thematic connections of the Aeneid to earlier myth and literature come to the fore in the depiction of Dido, the queen of Carthage. Dido is the great tragic figure in the first half of the poem (notably in Books 1, 4, and 6), after a romance and sexual liaison with Aeneas.

The figure of the deserted heroine was a favorite theme in Greek myth and literature, and Virgil duly draws on it for his depiction of Dido. Such heroines included Medea, Phaedra, Ariadne, and Hypsipyle. There was also an early Roman depiction of Dido by Gnaeus Naevius (270201 B.C.) in his epic The Punic War.

Thus, it would be a mistake to reduce Virgils Dido to some kind of re-creation of Homers Calypso, or Circe, or Nausicaa (all from the Odyssey). Indeed, Virgils audience may have responded to the tragedy of Dido in the Aeneid by thinking of another North African queen: Cleopatra (6930 B.C.), with whom both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony had flings. So the general point here is that the reader of the Dido books is invited to engage with many different mythical and historical narratives.

Virgils method of composition of his poetic works was slow and deliberate, and quite un-Homeric in all kinds of ways. Homer (ca. 700 B.C.) was a highly skilled oral poet who used this expertise to create his story, whereas Virgil (7019 B.C.) lived in a thoroughly literate society. The pace of poetic creativity could be very slow.

The Georgics, an earlier poetic work by Virgil on the subject of agriculture (2,188 lines), seems to have been written at a rate of about one line a day. And the Aeneid itself (9,883 lines) works out to about three lines a day. Little wonder that it is so succinct and complex.

The Aeneid is certainly not the easiest read from the corpus of ancient literature. There is some evidence that Virgil wrote it first in prose, before developing the poetic version. It is also an unfinished poem, although still remarkably polished.

Returning Home

Even though the Aeneid is a foundation narrative where the Trojans struggle to find a new home after the destruction of their city, it is important to stress that it is also a return (that is, a Greek nostos).

Troy was founded by Dardanus, an obscure mythological hero, and in Virgils poem, he did so having left from a place called Corythus (perhaps modern Cortona in Tuscany). The story in the Aeneid is that many generations laterafter the sack of TroyAeneas leads his people back to Italy as a kind of new Dardanus.

Aeneass quest, then, is both a new mission to a new land and a return to the ancestral land of the first Trojan. The return journey of a hero from war was a favorite Greek mythical narrative (including the Odyssey, of course). Virgil follows suit in the Aeneid, but offers a much more complex notion of the heroic return.

Aeneas is a very different kind of epic hero from Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey, not the least because he is imbued with a whole series of distinctly Roman values. He is a much more religious kind of hero, someone who makes it his business to follow the path that has been ordained for him and his people.

A characteristic epithet for Aeneas is pius (pious, duty-bound, dutiful). Indeed, his whole quest is really to unravel the mysteries of fate, and then duly to act upon them. He tends to focus on the greater good, sometimes with an element of personal suffering (perhaps along Stoic lines). For instance, he deserts Dido (in Book 4) because Jupiter reminds him through the god Mercury that Italy is meant to be his fated home, not Carthage in North Africa.

The Aeneid looks back to a time well before the foundation of the city of Rome, and forward to the realities of Roman imperialism up to Virgils own day. The past and the future often seem entangled in all kinds of ways, and then there is the question of Virgils own political outlook. Is the poem designed to justify and support Romes imperialist agenda?

The English poet W.H. Auden was rather unsympathetic to Virgil in his poem Secondary Epic (1959):

No, Virgil, no:

Not even the first of the Romans can learn

His Roman history in the future tense.

Not even to serve your political turn;

Hindsight as foresight makes no sense.



No, Virgil, no:

Behind your verse so masterfully made

We hear the weeping of a Muse betrayed.

The Aeneid, therefore, is focused on the grand scale: on the city of Rome and its empire, its formation, and its destiny within the order of the Olympian gods. Scholars, poets, and critics, often against a background of modern wars (such as World War II or Vietnam), have agonized over the question of Virgils own attitude to war and the Augustan imperial agenda, which receives some considerable attention at critical moments in the Aeneid.

Augustus, after all, seems to have been a generous patron of the poet, and a certain amount of text-specific adulation might have been expected. Auden certainly felt that Virgil traded in his poetic respectability (your political turn a Muse betrayed). But there have also been plenty of others who are prepared to claim that Virgil yearns for peace, and actually undercuts the explicit patriotism about Rome and Augustus.

A Violent End

The final scene of the Aeneid tends to polarize critical views on the basic thrust of the poem. Whereas the Homeric poems end in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility, Virgils Aeneid ends with unremitting violence.

Aeneass great Italian warrior rival Turnus has been wounded in single combat, and pleads for his life on his knees. Aeneas seems to mull over an act of clemency, but in a sudden fit of rage he kills Turnus on the spot. The poem ends with a description of Turnuss limbs going slack and his life going resentfully to the shades below.

The sudden end of the Aeneid, with such a violent turn, has proved very challenging and unsatisfying for many readers. Virgils own death before the final completion of the poem in 19 B.C. added a further element of debate. Would he have changed the end of the poem? There was also a legend that he had left instructions for his assistants to burn the manuscript of the Aeneid, should he die before its completion.

The sudden and brutal end of the poem precipitated various sequels, most famously a Supplement to Aeneid Book 12 by the humanist cleric Maffeo Vegio (ca. 140658). This was basically a 13th book of the Aeneid told in 630 lines and written in 1428.

Vegio continues the narrative where Virgil leaves off, justifying the death of Turnus and telling ultimately of the deification of Aeneas. The presence of sequels like this indicates just how confronting and original the Aeneid is, so much that later poets needed to normalize it.

There is every reason to think that Virgils Aeneid became a classic as soon as it was written and published. And it has remained so until this day. Many parts of the Aeneid have influenced Western literature and art, especially the sack of Troy and Aeneass departure from it (Book 2), the tragedy of Dido (Books 1, 4, and 6), and his journey to the Underworld (Book 6).

The last of these, Aeneass journey into the Underworld in Aeneid Book 6, fundamentally influenced the poet Dantes (12651321) own narrative of life after death. Virgil is his guide through the Inferno and Purgatorio, which says something about the high regard of poet for poetbearing in mind, of course, that Virgil was a pagan.

When Dante first sees the shade of Virgil, he greets him in a way that could hardly be more fulsome:

Are you then that Virgil, and that fountain, that pours out so great a river of speech? O, glory and light to other poets, may that long study, and the great love, that made me scan your work, be worth something now. You are my master, and my author: You alone are the one from whom I learnt the high style that has brought me honor.

Chris Mackie is a professor of classics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Anjem Choudary speaks during a rally calling for muslims to refrain from voting in the 2015 general election during outside the Regents Park mosque in London. (Niklas Halle'n/AFP/Getty Images)

UK Islamic Extremist Preacher Linked to Terror Plots Released From Prison

For two decades, British Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary stayed one step ahead of the law, until 2016, when he was jailed for encouraging others to join the ISIS terrorist group.

But Choudary was released on Oct. 19 after serving only half of his five-year sentence and, according to one organisation, his extremist ideology as still as as hard as a rock.

Walking the tightrope between free speech and terrorism, Choudary was never directly involved in any terror plots, but fanned the flames of extremism that spawned them.

Security and counter-terrorism expert Will Geddes said that Choudary is possibly the most influential extremist figure outside of ISIS itselfan assessment shared by other experts on the subject.

Choudary was linked to many individuals who went on to commit acts of terrorism, including the beheading of British Army soldier Lee Rigby, the 7/7 bombings that killed 52 people in 2005, and the London Bridge attack in 2017 that killed eight people.

He also helped radicalise hundreds of British nationals who went on to join ISIS.

Describing him as horrifically influential character, Geddes says that Choudary is more of a threat than hook-handed preacher Abu Hamza, who is currently serving a life sentence in the United States.

Starting Fires, Not Getting Caught

Under European rights laws, the UK is more restricted in how it can handle threats like Choudary.

Choudary faces strict controls as part of his parole, including a ban on internet use, a ban on preaching or attending certain mosques, and travel restrictionseffectively muting him.

Theres not a great deal, in theory, that he can do, said Geddes. But it wouldnt be a huge surprise if he finds ways to circumnavigate those [restrictions].

A trained solicitor, Choudary kept one step ahead of the law while he set the fires of extremist ideology under the cover of different organisations.

As soon as the fire started getting out of control, the authorities would come over and stamp on it, said Geddes. He would then set up another fire, then authorities would stamp that out, extinguish it and he would move onto the next.

Each time, he was not close enough to the fire to be able to pin it directly on him.

For example, Choudary founded al-Muhajiroun in 1996, dissolving it in 2004 just before a government ban came into play. He then went on to set up various aliases, including Islam4UK, Muslims Against Crusades, Call to Submission, Islamic Path, and London School of Sharia.

Choudary, married with five children, famously encouraged jihadis to follow his example and live off the British welfare system known as job seekers allowance something he dubbed jihadi seekers allowance.

Choudary was eventually found guilty of inciting people to join a terrorist organisation.

Ideology Still as Hard as Rock

Choudary was released automatically after serving half of his five-year sentence, following standard parole protocol. He will serve the remaining half under license.

Counter-extremism organisation Quilliam said that Choudary had shown no signs of softening his ideological stance.

We didnt see any development. His ideology is still as hard as rock, said Salah al-Ansaril, a senior researcher at Quilliam, and a former imam of London Central Mosque.

Al-Ansaril is worried about what happens when the controls on Choudary are lifted.

He says that the only way to deradicalization the threat of Choudarys narrative is through open debate about Islamic extremism what he calls the political ideology of Islamism.

Al-Ansaril says communities should not shy away from the key role that ideology plays in driving extremism.

The threat of radicalisation is still the same as when Choudary went into prison two years ago, he says.

The only difference is that ISIS and similar group are weaker, but their ideology is still attractive to some kinds of mentality. 

Last year, 36 people were killed in Islamic extremist attacks in the UK, including a suicide bomb at a concert in Manchester, northwest England, that killed 22 people.

Earlier this year, Interior Minister Sajid Javid said that 25 Islamic extremist plots had radicalization in the past five years, with 500 live operations, and 20,000 people on a watchlist.

The UK has the most pervasive surveillance powers in the Western world and a controversial de-radicalization program that requires some 400,000 front-line staff to report those who show signs of extremism.

Al-Ansaril says that deradicalisation can work, pointing out that several people within his own organisation are reformed extremists, including former director Adam Dean who once belonged to Choudarys Al-Muhajiroun.Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor Alexander Acosta speaks onstage during the 2018 Concordia Annual Summit in New York City on Sept. 25, 2018 (Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Labor Department Unveils Plan for Affordable Retirement Coverage

New rule allows small businesses to pool together to offer 401(k) plans for their employees

WASHINGTONThe Trump administration has unveiled a new plan that would expand retirement coverage opportunities for millions of small businesses.

The Department of Labor on Oct. 22 released a new rule that allows small companies to band together to offer 401(k) plans to their employees. Through the Association Retirement Plans, small businesses will gain access to affordable workplace retirement coverage.

Unlike large corporations, small firms dont have economies of scale and, hence, they lack bargaining power. By pooling together, they will benefit from better negotiating power and lower administrative costs.

Many small businesses would like to offer retirement benefits to their employees, but are discouraged by the cost and complexity of running their own plans, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta said in a press release.

Association Retirement Plans give these employers a simple and less burdensome way to offer valuable retirement benefits to their employees. The proposed rule helps working Americansand their familiestake care of themselves in their retirement years.

Almost 38 million private-sector workers dont have access to a retirement savings plan through their employers, according to the Labor Department.

Under the new rule, an association of employers in a city, county, state, or multi-state metropolitan area could offer these retirement plans to their members.

A particular industry nationwide could also offer the plans. Even sole proprietors and their families will be able to band together with peers and gain access to such plans.

Under the proposal, the plans could also be sponsored through professional employer organizations, which provide payroll, benefits, and human resources support to their client companies.

The rule will be open for public comment and may go into effect in early 2019, following comments and revisions.

On Aug. 31, President Donald Trump issued an executive order instructing the Treasury and Labor departments to expand retirement plan coverage for small businesses, part-time workers, sole proprietors, working owners, and other entrepreneurial workers.

Small Employers Lack Funds, Resources

According to a 2015 study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), only 23 percent of the workers in firms with fewer than 50 workers are participating in retirement programs. The participation rate goes up to 60 percent for companies with more than 1,000 workers.

Due to their size, small businesses face difficulties in providing retirement benefits to their workers. A recent Pew Charitable Trusts survey found that these difficulties mainly stem from the high costs, limited resources to administer plans, and lack of employee interest.

The U.S. Chamber praised the Labor Departments initiative.

The proposal will allow small businesses to pool resources together to offer retirement plans, resulting in lower plan fees and fewer administrative burdens, Aliya Wong, executive director of retirement policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

Combined with new association health plans announced this year, small employers can now offer a complete benefit package to employees and have the ability to compete for the best talent.

Earlier, the Department of Labor finalized rules for association health plans (AHPs) that went into effect on Sept. 1. The AHPs make affordable health insurance more accessible to small businesses by enabling them to band together.

Several chambers, farm bureaus, and associations throughout the country have already started to offer health plans to their members, Acosta said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerces small-business summit on Oct. 3.

Under this approach, chamber of commerce and industry associations have the authority to almost stand in the shoes of small and midsize businesses and offer healthcare as if they were the employer, Acosta explained.

Many small-business owners face high health insurance premiums and limited coverage options due to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Now, through these plans, they can gain many advantages enjoyed by large employers.

Small business owners can reduce their health care costs by as much as 40 percent, Acosta said.Latest NOAA Update: Hurricane Willa Becomes Category 5 Storm

Top video shows cruise ship getting impacted by Hurricane Michael

The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories for Hurricane Willa and Tropical Storm Vicente.

Willa Update

Hurricane Willa strengthened to become a rare Category 5 hurricane and is still forecast to slam into west-central Mexico.

In the latest advisory from the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) at 11 a.m. ET, Willa has winds of 160 mph and is a potentially catastrophic storm.

The system is expected to produce life-threatening storm surge, wind, and rainfall over west-central and southwestern Mexico, the agency warned. The storm is 155 miles from Las Islas Marias, Mexico.

A hurricane warning is in effect for San Blas to Mazatlan, including Las Islas Marias. A tropical storm warning is in effect for Playa Perula to San Blas and north of Mazatlan to Bahia Tempehuaya.

Willa is forecast to accelerate toward the north-northeast and move over or very near the Islas Marias early Tuesday and make landfall along the southwestern coast of mainland Mexico in the hurricane warning area Tuesday afternoon or evening, the agency said.

BREAKING: Willa strengthens into a "potentially catastrophic" Category 5 hurricane as it inches closer to Mexico https://t.co/5g7opiiWwK pic.twitter.com/pDu9k3L0pP  BNO News (@BNONews) October 22, 2018

Willa is a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Some strengthening is still possible today. Slight weakening is forecast to begin on Tuesday, but Willa is expected to be an extremely dangerous major hurricane when it reaches the coast of Mexico, according to the agency.

It added that hurricane-force winds are expected to start on the afternoon of Tuesday. Tropical storm conditions are expected by Monday night.

Forecast models from the NHC predict that the storm will continue into north-central Mexico by Wednesday. Earlier forecast models showed that Willas remnants could make it to southern Texas by the end of the week.

Vicente

Tropical Storm Vicente, located to the southwest of Willa, is looking less organized, but is expected to produce heavy rains and flooding over southern Mexico. It has winds of 145 mph.

Vicente is moving toward the west-northwest near 12 mph and a turn to the northwest is expected today followed by a turn to the north-northwest on Tuesday, the agency said. On the forecast track, the center of Vicente is expected to approach the southwestern coast of Mexico on Tuesday. Maximum sustained winds are near 45 mph with higher gusts. Weakening is forecast, and Vicente is expected to become a tropical depression by tonight or Tuesday. The cyclones circulation is expected to dissipate near the southwestern coast of Mexico by Wednesday.

The NHC noted that the storm is a small tropical cyclone and winds only extend 45 miles from its center.

Hurricane Michael Update

The death toll for Hurricane Michael has increased to 36 across several states, but the hardest-hit state was Florida.

Authorities told CNN on Oct. 20 that another woman was found dead in Bay County, Florida, bringing the death toll to 26 in the state. Ten other people died in North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.

Officials didnt reveal details of the womans death.Migrant Caravan Adds Thousands as Hondurans Burn American Flags and Trump Cuts Aid

The migrant caravan heading to the United States from Central America entered Mexico on Oct. 21, and has been moving northward as thousands more migrants have joined the group on their journey. Meanwhile, American flags were burned in Honduras in support of the caravan while U.S. President Donald Trump followed through on a threat and cut aid to Central American countries.

Refusing to wait at the Guatemala-Mexico border and proceed orderly as requested by Mexican authorities, the group broke through the border and has continued toward Americas southern border.

By Oct. 22, they had reached Tapachula, almost 2,000 miles (3,135 kilometers) from the U.S. border.

The group had swelled to roughly 7,000 by Monday, stretching more than 2 miles, reported Los Angeles Times. That was 2,000 more than just a day prior.

Another group of 1,000 entered Guatemala from Honduras on Sunday, rushing north trying to catch up to the caravan and some 1,000 or more were at the Guatemala-Mexico border trying to pass through.

Migrants have received help along the way, receiving donated water, food, and clothing. Locals driving pickups, vans, and cargo trucks have also given them rides, as they did on Oct. 21.

The caravan included people who have been deported from the United States for being there illegally or possibly for committing other crimes.

Its time for me to go back to the United States. Its a country where I can live my life, unlike Guatemala, Job Reyes, 36, told the Washington Post.

Thats just how it is, added Imner Anthony Fuentes, 29. They catch you, and you try to get back.

Ramon Izaguirre, 20, was deported just a month ago.

All my life is there, waiting for me, he told the Times. I miss my Playstation. I miss Buffalo Wild Wings. I miss my car.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Trump Cuts Aid

President Donald Trump and his administration have threatened to cut aid if the caravan wasnt stopped, and he said on Monday that he will make good on the threat.

Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them, he said on Twitter.

The three countries received more than $500 million combined in funding from the United States in the fiscal year 2017.

He said that the immigration laws in the United States need to change and blamed the Democrats for not voting to change them.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic]. Must change laws! he said.

Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally, Trump said.

Mexicos president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1, said the United States should welcome all migrants. And said on Sunday that the United States, Mexico, and Canada should invest in Central America and southern Mexico.

He who leaves his town does not leave for pleasure but out of necessity, he said.



Burning American Flag

Critics of the caravan have noted that the flags seen among the group include Honduran and Guatemalan flags, but no American flags.

Back in Honduras, meanwhile, multiple American flags were set on fire by people apparently protesting in favor of the caravan at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

The flag had also been painted with a swastika.

Another picture from the BBC appeared to show a second American flag burning. Other photos showed the group burning tires and holding Honduran flags.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From NTD.tv

Did you enjoy this article? Continue to read more stories here.Would-be immigrants sit atop a border fence separating Morocco from the north African Spanish enclave of Melilla on Feb.19, 2015. (Angela Rios/AFP/Getty Images)

Morocco to Deport 141 Migrants Arrested at Spanish Enclave Fence

RABATMorocco said on Oct.22, it would deport 141 migrants who were arrested a day earlier as they tried to storm a border fence with the Spanish enclave of Melilla.

One migrant died after falling off the seven-meter high metal barrier on Sunday, while 22 others and 12 security personnel were injured, the interior ministry said.

Around 200 people got over into Melilla and were taken to a reception center, Spanish authorities said. But the rest who failed would be returned to their home countries, Morocco said, without giving details of the nationalities.

Morocco, which other Africans can visit without visas, has become a major gateway for migrants into Europe since Italy tougher line and EU aid to the Libyan coastguard curbed the number of people coming from Libya.

More than 6,000 migrants have made it to Melilla and Spains nearby territory Ceuta so far this year, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Others pay smugglers to get them across the 14 km (9 miles) of sea to Spain.

The vast majority of arrivals in Spain are men, primarily from Guinea, Mali and Morocco, the UNHCR says.

In July, 800 migrants stormed the Ceuta fence triggering a crackdown by Moroccan authorities which has been bussing migrants to the south of the country away from the borders with Spain.

Under a bilateral agreement, Spain returned 24 migrants to Morocco on Saturday who had reached the Chafarinas islands, another Spanish territory off the North African coastand another 116 migrants who had managed to jump the border fence of Ceuta in August.Police clash with 'Antifa' members and anti-Trump protesters during a protest on June 4, 2017 in Portland, Oregon. Leftists always resort to violence to achieve their objective after all other means have been exhausted. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Progressive Utopia Is Anti-Democratic

Violence is their last weapon

Progressivisms turn toward violence and mob justice in recent weeks has been remarkable and sudden. However, it can be understood in the context of a progressive utopia.

The extraordinary outbreak of disruptions of the U.S. Senate, the vandalizing of Republican offices across the country, and the harassment of government officials and elected representativesas well as their familiesin restaurants and other public places represent a breakdown of the most basic standards of decency and civility in public life.

Every big political party has its extremist fringe. Most striking in this case, however, is the condoning, minimizing, and even endorsement of such tactics by Democratic Party leaders.

Passions have been stoked by a number of Democrats, among them Rep. Maxine Waters of California, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and others, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who announced that civility would return when the Democrats regained power.

There are several explanations for this. Here, I want to explore the anti-Democratic core of the assumptions behind it. Such thinking dangerously combines a utopian vision of a future ideal society, a deterministic view of the forces that will produce it, and a strong will to speed up the inevitable, to enforce the transformation.

Utopian schemes, whether literary creations or practical attempts to form model communities, have one thing in common. As Hal Draper put it, Utopianism was elitist and anti-democratic to the core because it was utopianthat is, it looked to the prescription of a prefabricated model, the dreaming-up of a plan to be willed into existence. Such schemes depended on the will of those who planned or created them, and little, if at all, on the wishes of those who peopled them.

Most of the schemes came to little in practice and didnt last long. However, they functioned as a critique of existing society. They invited comparison of their ideal intentional community to the ills and evils of actually existing society.

When a view of history as preordained is added in, we have a potent mix. One form of this kind of determinism is the view that progress toward the ideal is inevitable, an onward and upward movement toward the hope of a better day, as President Barack Obama put it. Talk of success is inevitable because we are on the right side of history and our opponents on the wrong side became a constant theme of Obamas rhetoric and that of his team.

In this view, history has agency and progresses in a single direction, as if it had a set course independent of peoples striving and struggles. Its what historian Herbert Butterfield diagnosed in 1931 as The Whig Interpretation of Historyjust a decade before World War II with its slaughter of millions, the Holocaust, nuclear weapons, and other horrors that seemed to dash such illusions once and for all.

A Potent Mix

Now, when you add a utopian vision (an ideal society, one that has never existed in the real world) to a belief in a predetermined course of history (with you on the right side of it) and both of those to a political movement to support history along its preordained course, you have a potent mix indeed.

You might think that if the world were heading on a predetermined course, you would have no need of human will. However, when progressives root the inevitability of victory in actual historical forces, the enlightened elite or the working class or the woke, the next step is to see themselves, their party, and their leader as the embodiment of those forces.

They stand on the right side of history, while those who stand in the way of its arc, which bends in the preordained direction, are enemies of progress, whatever their intentions.

All these features are seen in extreme form in the totalitarianism of the last century, in Communism and Nazism (with its thousand-year Reich). The revolutionary party becomes the ruling elite and imposes its will in every nook and cranny of civil society, subjugating family, schools, and churches to the all-powerful state it controls.

Violence is key to such movements.

Democratic institutions, through which the enemies of progress may seek to slow or halt the inevitable, must be undermined. We see these tendencies already, though still in mild form, in the United States, not least, paradoxically, among those progressives who accuse the elected government of fascism.

For example, those progressive guardians of the Constitution, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, are expected to ignore the Constitution itself and impose their will to hasten progress. By an act of will, the unelected justices from the narrowest conceivable of elite circles thus removed all legal protections from the unborn child and redefined marriage to break the link between sex, children, and parenthood.

The court, under progressive control, becomes a means to undermine the Constitution and override democratic processes that stand in the way of a secular-liberal vision of progress.

Supreme Court Versus Legislation

Through such means, almost all the advances of the sexual revolution were imposed initially by the Supreme Court, not adopted by legislation.

However, the court isnt, in the end, immune to democracy. When a president is elected who is committed to judicial restraint and the return of legislation to the legislature, the defeated progressives are enraged.

They see the defeat of all they have worked for through a liberal majority in the Supreme Court and control of the administrative statehence, their determination to ignore democratic norms and processes, to de-legitimize and defeat the elected president, and to bring him down by any means necessary.

Paul Adams is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Hawaii and was a professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University. He is the co-author of Social Justice Isnt What You Think It Is and has written extensively on social welfare policy and professional and virtue ethics.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev, inaugurate the construction of the first nuclear power plant, during a forum of inter-regional cooperation between Russia and Uzbekistan in Tashkent on Oct. 19, 2018. (Alexey Nikolsky/AFP/Getty Images)

Russia and Uzbekistan Enhance Economic Ties to Counter Chinas Growing Investments

Russia and Uzbekistan inked cooperation deals valued at a total of $27 billion on Oct. 19, in part motivated by Moscows desire to counter the rise in Chinese investment in Uzbekistan, according to Russian media.

Uzbekistan, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, and Russia signed 785 bilateral agreements and memorandums at the conclusion of a two-day interregional forum held in the Central Asian countrys capital of Tashkent, according to an Oct. 19 article by Uzbekistan media UzDaily.

Russia Deals

Of the agreements signed, 242 of them relate to trade and economic cooperation deals worth $1.2 billion. Additionally, 136 agreements involve the implementation of joint investment projects, with a total value of $1.4 billion.

Among the Russian companies that have signed deals is IMZ Avtokran, which will create a $10 million joint venture for the assembling of modern truck cranes in the Navoi Free Economic Zone, located in Navoi City.

Also among the agreements are six deals with financial institutions in the two countries totaling $864.6 million, one of which involves the National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of the Republic of Uzbekistan and Russias state-owned bank Sberbank. The two agreed to allocate a credit line of $200 million.

According to an Oct. 19 article by Reuters, Russias Gazprom signed a production-sharing agreement for the Dzhel gas field in Uzbekistan, where it aims to produce about 300 million cubic meters a year at peak, a small volume by the regions standards. Additionally, Russian businessman Andrei Filatov signed an agreement with an Uzbek state firm for a project to develop a gas field and build a chemical plant.

The two countries have also begun a geological survey to find a suitable location for the construction of Uzbekistans first nuclear power plant, which will cost about $11 billionfinanced largely by a soft loan from Russia, according to Reuters.

In total, 79 joint ventures, 23 new trading houses, and 20 wholesale distribution centers will be created in Uzbekistan through deals with Russia, according to UzDaily.

An editorial published by Russian news site Gazeta noted that while Russia continues to be one of Uzbekistans main trading partners, other states, such as China, are ready to challenge that status.

Beijing intends to use the same strategy that it has utilized in other countries within the Central Asian region, including Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan: investment in exchange for resources and loyalty, the article said.

Uzbekistan is rich in natural resources, with gold deposits estimated at about 5,300 metric tons and uranium reserves estimated to be about 190,000 tons, according to official data from the Uzbek government. Currently, Uzbekistan is one of the worlds biggest exporters of uranium.

China has a serious interest in Uzbek uranium. According to the World Nuclear Association, in May 2014, Chinas state-run China General Nuclear Power Group agreed to buy $800 million of uranium until 2021. In 2013, 1,663 tons of elemental uranium went to China.

Chinas One Belt, One Road

The motivation behind Chinas interest in Central Asia, according to Gazeta, is that it considers the region important for its One Belt, One Road (OBOR, also known as Belt and Road) initiative.

Beijing announced OBOR in 2013 as a plan to build up trades routes linking China, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. While Beijing has claimed that the initiative is a bid to enhance regional trade, many observers say that what China really intends with OBOR is to increase geopolitical influence and persuade countries to aid its economic and political agendas.

One key OBOR project in Uzbekistan is the construction of the Kamchiq Rail Tunnel, which was built by Chinas state-run China Railway Tunnel Group in cooperation with Uzbekistans national carrier Uzbek Railways. The project was financed by a $350 million loan from Chinas state-run Export-Import Bank of China. The 19-kilometer (11.8-mile) tunnel, which began operating in 2016, is part of the AngrenPap railway line in eastern Uzbekistan.

According to a Feb. 28 article on Chinas official OBOR website, the value of total OBOR investment projects in Uzbekistan was worth an average of at least 10 billion yuan annually (about $1.44 billion).

According to Uzbek government agency, the State Committee on Statistics, Uzbek foreign trade turnover for the first nine months of this year totaled about $23 billion, with China ranking first in foreign trade with about $4.4 billion worth of trading deals, followed by Russia at No. 2 with about $4.1 billion.

Azhdar Kurtov, editor-in-chief of the National Strategic Issues academic journal, explained the difference between Russian and Chinese investments in Uzbekistan.

Russia can give Uzbekistan what it needs to modernize its industryRussian technologies, Kurtov said in an interview with Russian daily newspaper Izvestia. It is one thing to build roads for the transport of goods between China and Europe, and another to create new industries in Uzbekistanwhich Russia is trying to do.Swedish Student Who Tried to Stop Mans Deportation to Afghanistan Is Indicted

Elin Ersson, the 21-year-old Swedish student who tried to stop an asylum seeker from being deported to Afghanistan, was indicted on Oct. 19, over her failed attempt to stop a flight from Gothenburg to Turkey in July.

Ersson, a student at the University of Gothenburg, livestreamed herself on Facebook refusing for approximately 15 minutes to sit down on the plane, as fellow passengers and flight attendants told her to be seated so the flight could depart.

She claimed that a 52-year-old man was going to be deported to Afghanistan, where he most likely will be killed. She also discussed a younger man being deported, holding up a picture of him at one point, but later learned that he wasnt on the flight, so she began protesting the older mans removal.

Im trying to change my countries rules. I dont like them, she added later.

Near the end of the video, which was approximately 15 minutes long, she said: I have not committed a crime. The footage was viewed more than five million times.

Swedish student Elin Ersson halts plane in anti-deportation protest

Elin video protest has gone viral Millions of people have watched how the Swedish student stopped the supposed deportation of an Afghan refugee. Many have called her a hero others have criticized the action pic.twitter.com/HChtgBedIV  James E Daspit (@treasurecolecto) October 21, 2018

Indictment

The indictment was filed in a district court in Gothenburg and stated that Ersson would be prosecuted for crimes against the aviation law, reported the Guardian.

Prosecutors said that she didnt comply with the captains request and repeatedly refused to sit down so the flight could leave.

She did so with the intention of preventing the plane from departing, James von Reis, one of the prosecutors, told Swedish news outlet Svenska Dagbladet.

She faces up to six months in prison if convicted.

Erssons lawyer, Thomas Fridh, told the New York Times that his client didnt violate any laws. During the entire action she was prepared to follow the orders of the captain on board, and she left the plane as soon as the pilot decided that she should do so, he claimed.

Ersson added that she was just trying to protest the deportation.

https://t.co/5tPtxw4sbd The man whose deportation Elin Ersson tried to prevent  Pieter Degroote (@pidegroote) October 22, 2018

Protest Gone Wrong

Ersson, an activist, was alerted to the scheduled deportation of two men, the 52-year-old man, and a 26-year-old named Ismail Khawari. She tried to pinpoint which flight would be deporting them and bought a ticket for that flight.

But the younger man, Khawari, was not on the flight, reported Deutsche Welle.

Khawari ended up being deported the following day.

The 52-year-old man, meanwhile, had been convicted of battery and was being deported after serving two years in prison.

From NTD.tvThe aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson transits the South China Sea while conducting flight operations on April 9, 2017. (Z.A. Landers/Courtesy U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters)

Taiwans Defense Ministry Says Two US Warships Traveled Along the Taiwan Strait

TAIPEIThe United States sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait, Taiwans defense ministry said on Oct. 22, in a move that could anger Beijing amid heightening U.S. tensions with China.

The ministry said it was in full control of the situation during the U.S. warships route through the Taiwan Strait, the self-ruled islands defense ministry said in a statement. The U.S. navy conducted a similar mission in July.

Last week, Reuters reported that the United States was considering a new operation to send warships through, aimed at ensuring free passage through the strategic waterway.

China views Taiwan as a wayward province and has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island. It raised concerns over U.S. policy toward Taiwan in talks this week with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Singapore.

Even as Washington mulls ordering a fresh passage through the strait, it has been trying to explain to Beijing that its policies toward Taiwan are unchanged.

Mattis delivered that message to Chinas Defense Minister Wei Fenghe personally last Thursday Thursday, on the sidelines of an Asian security forum.

Minister Wei raised Taiwan and concerns about our policy. The Secretary reassured Minister Wei that we havent changed our Taiwan policy, our one China policy, said Randall Schriver, a U.S. assistant secretary of defense who helps guide Pentagon policy in Asia.

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is the islands main source of arms. The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.

US- China Flashpoints

Taiwan is only one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a bitter trade war, U.S. sanctions, andthe Chinese regimes increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea.

Mattis told Wei last Thursday that the worlds two largest economies needed to deepen high-level military ties so as to navigate tension and rein in the risk of inadvertent conflict.

Some current and former U.S. officials say U.S. warship passages in the Taiwan Strait are still too infrequent and note that a U.S. aircraft carrier hasnt transited the Taiwan Strait since 2007, during the administration of George W. Bush.

When the last two U.S. warships, both destroyers, sailed through the Taiwan Strait in July, it was the first such operation in about a year.

Beijing, which has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, responded to the July passage angrily, accusing the United States of threatening stability in the strategic waterway.

It has also viewed U.S. overtures toward Taiwan with alarm, including its unveiling a new de facto embassy in Taiwan and passage of the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages U.S. officials to visit the island.

Military experts say the balance of power between Taiwan and China has shifted decisively in Chinas favor in recent years, and the Chinese regime could easily overwhelm the island unless U.S. forces came quickly to Taiwans aid.

The Chinese regime has also alarmed Taiwan by ramping up military exercises this year, including flying bombers and other military aircraft around the island and sending its aircraft carrier through the narrow Taiwan Strait separating it from Taiwan.

Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen said last week the island will increase its defense budget every year to ensure it can defend its sovereignty, including resuming domestic development of advanced training aircraft and submarines.

At this time, Chinas intimidation and diplomatic pressure not only hurt relations between both sides but seriously challenges the peaceful stability in the Taiwan Strait, she said in a National Day speech in Taipei on Oct. 10.

Her remarks came ahead of island-wide local elections in late November that are seen as a bellwether for her ruling partys performance in presidential elections due in 2020.

By Yimou Lee & Phil StewartTeen Embarks on Epic 450-Mile Journey to Deliver Pizza to Terminally Ill Man

What could have driven an 18-year-old to travel 450 miles to deliver a stranger two pizzasin the middle of the night?

The stranger, Rich Morgan, was a regular customer of Steves Pizza in Battle Creek, Michigan, some 25 years ago. Rich and his wife, Julie, loved the pizza there and havent found better pizza since.

Although they have since moved away to Indianapolis, they were planning to travel to Michigan to celebrate Julies birthday and enjoy some of Steves Pizza once again.

But they found themselves rushing to the ER instead. Rich, who had been battling cancer for two years, was told he only had a few weeksor even daysto live, and was placed in hospice care, according to wife Julie, who recounted the story in a Facebook post on Oct. 16.

Just a Text Message

When Julies father, David Dalke, found out about the situation, he secretly called the pizza restaurant on Oct. 13. Dalke explained Richs situation and placed a small request.

If you ever make it happen, just a text message to Rich and Julie that youre sorry they couldnt make the trip, Dalke recounted to CNN about what he asked for on the phone.

Dalton Shaffer, one of the managers of the restaurant, was the one to answer the call. Dalton works at Steves Pizza and is the grandson of Steve, the original owner of the restaurant. Dalton called Dalke back several minutes later, and asked what Richs favorite pizza was.

I said, Wait a minute, did you understand that I am in Indianapolis? Im not next door?' Dalke recounted the conversation, according CNN.

Dalton would need to travel a distance of 450 miles (225 miles each way) to deliver the pizza from Michigan to Indianapolis where Rich was staying. Thats about three and a half hours each way, or seven hours in total.

Dalton said he understood that, and would leave after he closed the store, Julie recounted in the Facebook post.

Dalton did not let anyone at his work know hed be setting off that night, according to ABC News.

I did call my brother, he told ABC News. I said Im gonna be in Indianapolis, if something happens to me, thats where to look. I wasnt expecting anybody to find out.

At 2.30 a.m. on Oct. 14, a car entered the residence where Rich and Julie had been sleeping, and Dalton emerged with two pizzas. They were pepperoni and mushroomRichs favorite.

Sometimes a slice of pizza is more than it appears to be! Read on for the story of an epic pizza delivery and the    Julie Morgan     

Dalton said the family gave him a hug. They offered to put him in a hotel for the night, but he said he had to head back for the next work shift, starting the same day. He made it back to Battle Creek by around 8 a.m. on the same day.

Dalton also did not accept any money for the pizzas.

It would be the familys last pizza togetherRich passed away Oct. 20, according to Julie.

Days before Richs passing, she shared to Facebook the story of how a teenage boy made great effort to personally deliver pizza to a stranger and his family. She wrote: While thank you hardly seems adequatefrom the bottom of my heart, thank you, Dalton from Steves Pizza in Battle Creek, MI, for making your epic middle of the night pizza delivery!

From NTD.tvTrump Is Reducing Aid to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala for Failure to Stop Illegal Immigrants

President Donald Trump announced he will reduce or stop aid to the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala for their failure to stop their citizens from entering the United States illegally.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S., he said in an Oct. 22 tweet. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

In 2017, the United States sent about $530 million in aid to the three countries. Around a million of their citizens have been apprehended by Border Patrol trying to enter the country illegally since 2013 (pdf).

Caravan

Trumps announcement comes after Honduras failed to stop an organized group of several thousand people, who openly proclaimed their plan was to emigrate to the United States. Most of them likely cant legally enter the country, let alone resettle here.

The group dubbed a caravan was at least in part organized by the leftist Liberty and Refoundation (Libre) party, which controls almost a quarter of the Honduran legislature and advocates socialism.

After the caravan passed to Guatemala, one of the organizers, former Libre lawmaker Bartolo Fuentes, was detained by Guatemalan police and set for deportation back home for violating immigration rules, Honduran security ministry stated.

Mexico attempted to stop the caravan from entering but ultimately failed, and some 2,000 gathered on the Mexican side of the border with Guatemala by the night of Oct. 21.

Inexplicably, however, the crowd swelled to about 5,000 as it continued the march toward the United States, The Associated Press reported, adding that Mexican law enforcement passively looked on.

Between 5,100 and 7,200 migrants were registered in three shelters in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo and another 2,000 were camped in the town square, Fox News learned from Mexican officials.

Logistics

While the caravan is mostly portrayed in media as traveling on foot, that appears to be unlikely. The caravan was photographed Oct. 18 in Guatemala City and the next day in Ciudad Hidalgo on the Mexican border, which is over 150 miles, or a 50-hour walk, according to Google Maps.

A man wearing the same green reflective vest worn by the caravan leaders was inviting people to enter a semi truck, as recorded in a video freelance journalist Anne Laurent posted on Twitter on Oct. 21. She said she took the video in southern Mexico while covering news about the caravan for ABC News. The same man was photographed on Oct. 20 in Ciudad Hidalgo helping people off a makeshift raft used to cross the Suchiate River, which marks the westernmost part of the border between Guatemala and Mexico.

The caravan participants attempted to break through the border crossing barriers at a bridge over the river, but failed, with many instead opting to wade across the river or cross it on rafts and enter Mexico illegally.

Facebook user Enrique Vitanza posted the video on his page on Oct. 16 that shows the migrants getting paid what appears to be 50 Guatemalan quetzals each (around $6.50). The video appears to have been taken in Chiquimula, Guatemala, on Oct. 16. The source of the money and the identities of the men handing it out have not been verified. Vitanza said the video was sent to him from Guatemala.

Closing the Border

Trump said he will deploy the military and close the southern border to stop the caravan from coming through.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States, Trump said in an Oct. 22 tweet. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emerg[enc]y. Must change laws!

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Mexicos government has said throughout the past week that it would register the migrants and process requests for asylum, and that those attempting to skip the process would face deportation. But the size of the caravan will test Mexico, which has sought help from the United Nations to manage the issue.

Central American migrants who reach the United States commonly apply for asylum, but most arent eligible because they arent fleeing state persecution, but instead escaping abysmal conditions in their countries.

El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala all suffer from high rates of poverty and violent crime; their murder rates are some of the highest in the world.

Boon for Cartels

Mexican cartels stand to make millions off the caravanif it reaches the U.S. borderas they control the human smuggling routes and extract thousands of dollars in fees from each border crosser.

We are concerned that these migrants may be victimized by human smugglers or others who would exploit them, U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo said in an Oct. 21 statement. We also are deeply concerned by the violence provoked by some members of the group, as well as the apparent political motivation of some organizers of the caravan.

Immigration Laws

Trump has blamed weak immigration laws for the influx of illegal immigrants from Central America. Hes further blamed Democrat lawmakers for unwillingness to cooperate on changing the laws.

Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! he said in an Oct. 22 tweet. Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.

Democrats are unlikely to engage Trump on policies that may be perceived as a win for his administration before the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

Reuters contributed to this report.Trump Supporters Line Up 24 Hours Ahead of Texas Rally at 18,000-Seat Arena

Supporters of President Donald Trump lined up 24 hours ahead of a scheduled rally in Texas at the Toyota Center.

The line to see President Trump at his latest rally, as he tours extensively just weeks ahead of the highly-anticipated midterm elections, began taking shape more than one full day before it was set to start at the 18,000-seat arena, reported the Houston Chronicle.

Lisa Brewer claimed the first spot in line around 10 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 21. By nightfall, more than 175 people had joined her. The rally in Houston is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m.

I just got out of bed and ran down here, Brewer, a freight logistics manager, told the Chronicle. I didnt know people would be here right after me. She was joined by her daughter-in-law Jami Brewer.

Glen Collins and his fiancee, DeeJay Miller, got in line on Sunday after ditching a plan to spend the night in a hotel after driving 180 miles to Houston.

We thought wed get down here at 6 a.m., but when I drove down here to scout it out, I seen the line and I said We cant take our chances. We just gotta sit out here,' said Collins.

Its a sea of @realDonaldTrump and @tedcruz supporters. The line is now spilling into Discovery Green, blocks away from Toyota Center. This is 7+ hours before the rally. #KHOU11 pic.twitter.com/GrL7mbJRlg  Stephanie Whitfield (@KHOUStephanie) October 22, 2018

Set to appear with the president at the rally is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), fighting for re-election against challenger Rep. Beto ORourke. Other Republican officials and challengers will likely join President Trump as well.

Stephanie Whitfield, a reporter with KHOU, said that thousands of people camped out at the Toyota Center early Monday morning. At 6:42 a.m. CDT, she said around 3,000 people were in line.

In a video she recorded around seven hours prior to the start of the rally showed the line snaking around multiple blocks.

Its a sea of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz supporters. The line is now spilling into Discovery Green, blocks away from Toyota Center. This is 7+ hours before the rally, she wrote on Twitter.

Today at the WH: Pres has lunch with @VP. Departs in afternoon for Houston for fundraiser and political rally. On the rally scoreboard, brings @POTUS to 37 MAGA rallies in 18 states since taking office. His first in Texas. Will offer show of support for reelection of @SenTedCruz. pic.twitter.com/CIvFwZa32d  Mark Knoller (@markknoller) October 22, 2018

Rallies Popular

The Make America Great Again or MAGA rallies have proven extremely popular, resulting in long lines and difficulty getting into the venues.

People who got into different rallies said they needed to get in line around seven hours before the rally starts in order to to get in, and theyre usually in the standing-room-only section.

Following the Texas rally, President Trump had rallies planned in Mosinee, Wisconsin; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Murphysboro, Illinois.

The Houston rally will be his first in Texas since taking office, according to Mark Knoller of CBS.

President Trump will have held 37 MAGA rallies in 18 states since taking office after the completion of the Toyota Center event.

From NTD.tvToronto Mayor John Tory accompanies his mother Elizabeth Tory to vote at an advanced polling election station in Toronto on Oct. 10, 2018. Voters across Ontario are casting ballots on Oct. 22 to elect their next municipal governments. (The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette)

Watch These 10 Communities as Municipal Elections Held in Ontario

Here are 10 communities with interesting elections to watch:

Toronto

Canadas most populous city initially appeared set for a sleepy election with no significant challenger to incumbent Mayor John Tory, and a 47ward structure in place. But Premier Doug Fords abrupt decision to slash the size of the citys council to 25 seats in the middle of the municipal campaign thrust the local race into the national spotlight.

The citys former chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat joined the mayoral race, becoming Torys main competitor. Meanwhile, the citys reduced electoral map has resulted in veteran councillors being pitted against each other in their bids for reelection.

Brampton

Patrick Brown, the former leader of Ontarios Progressive Conservatives, is trying to make a political comeback by running for mayor in this city northwest of Toronto. He was forced to resign the party helm in January amid allegations of sexual misconduct he denies, months before the Tories went on to win a majority under Ford.

Brown jumped into the mayoral race after his campaign to become the chair of Peel Region was cut short by Ford turning the post into an appointed role. Brown is up against incumbent Mayor Linda Jeffrey, who has slammed him as an outsider trying to use the mayors job to rehabilitate his political career.

London

This southwestern Ontario city will be the first in Canada to use ranked ballots in a municipal election. Unlike the widely used firstpastthepost system, ranked ballots will see voters pick their first, second, and third choices. If no candidate receives an absolute majority on the first ballot, the lastplace candidate is eliminated and their supporters secondchoice votes are counted. That continues until one candidate receives more than 50 percent.

The citys mayoral race itself is wide open as current Mayor Matt Brown isnt seeking reelection. Full results arent expected on election night due to the time its expected to take for ranked ballots to be tabulated.

Niagara Falls

Former Liberal legislator Kim Craitor is running for mayor of the city. He faces three competitors including incumbent mayor Jim Diodati, who announced this summer that he was battling Hodgkins lymphoma. Craitor resigned from Ontarios legislature in 2013 citing mental exhaustion. In 2014, he ran successfully for a seat on Niagara Falls city council.

Since that time, it was revealed that Craitor was asked to resign by thenpremier Kathleen Wynne after an internal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment that he denies. Diodati, meanwhile, recently told local media that doctors had declared him cancerfree.

Cambridge

Former Liberal transportation minister Kathryn McGarry, who lost her Cambridge riding to the Progressive Conservatives in the spring provincial election, announced this summer that she will seek the mayors job in Cambridge. McGarry, a former nurse, has promised to bring a collaborative approach to city hall and has listed tackling a lack of affordable housing as a key priority.

She faces Doug Craig, a former teacher who has been the mayor of the city since 2000. He has said the opioid crisis is the top social issue facing Cambridge and has promised a multistep plan to address the problem.

Thunder Bay

This northern Ontario city will elect a new mayor after incumbent Keith Hobbs announced in July that he would not seek reelection. That news came a year after Hobbs was charged with extortion and obstructing justice in July 2017.

He has denied the allegations and the case is still before the courts. Former Liberal cabinet minister Bill Mauro, who was defeated in the spring provincial election after 15 years as a legislator, is amongst the candidates vying to succeed Hobbs.

Sarnia

Mike Bradley was first elected as Sarnias mayor in 1988. Since then he has won reelection eight times. Two years ago, Bradley was formally sanctioned by his fellow councillors after allegations surfaced that he bullied city staff.

Bradley faces veteran city councillor Anne Marie Gillis in his bid for reelection. Gillis previously ran against Bradley unsuccessfully in 2000.

Ottawa

Mayor Jim Watson is seeking reelection in the nations capital after winning office in 2010 and again in 2014. He was previously a provincial legislator for the Ottawa region, elected in 2003 and again in 2007. Watsons main contender is former city councillor Clive Doucet, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2010.

St. Thomas

A pair of political veterans are seeking spots in this southwestern Ontario communitys municipal government. Former Conservative MP Joe Preston, who represented the area federally for four terms, announced he will challenge incumbent mayor Heather Jackson, who is seeking a third term. Meanwhile, former Liberal speaker Steve Peters is running for a council seat.

Milton

Ontarios longest serving mayor, 81yearold Gord Krantz, will seek reelection in Milton this fall. Krantz, who has been on Milton council since 1965, has served as mayor since 1980. Businessman Wasim Ahmed and IT professional Mian Amir Naeem are running to unseat Krantz.(L-R) Paul Preston, Liz Ritchie, Chriss Street, and Donald Wilson at the second New California State Convention in Irvine, Calif. on Oct. 6, 2018. (David Zhang/The Epoch Times)

Why Some Californians Want to Break Away to Form a New State

IRVINE, Calif.More than 160 Californians from 32 counties recently attended New Californias second constitutional convention. New California is a movement to break away from current California and form a new state.

The movement claimed independence for the new state on Jan. 15Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The activists in this movement say theyve followed Article 4, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, and are using the same process that West Virginia used in separating from Virginia in 1861.

When asked why MLK Day was chosen to proclaim independence, Paul Preston, the founder of the movement, said that like King, they want to assert the constitutional protection of their rights. We feel that connectivity [of Martin Luther King Jr.] to New California has to be there. It is very strong, and very significant.

Preston said the new state held its first constitutional convention on July 21, following the issuance of a declaration of independence, and has been receiving tens of thousands of phone calls and emails supporting the movement.

Totalitarian Mentality

Throughout U.S. history, new states have been formed for a variety of reasons. Why would Californians break away from the Golden State, the richest state in the union? California, which has the largest economy among the states, would be the worlds fifth-largest economy in the world by GDP, if considered as a nation on its own.

The reasons go all the way back to the original founding of the United States, said Donald Wilson, one of the speakers at the convention. New California is about how maximizing liberty and enhancing the role of individuals, he said.

Wilson is the author of St. Andrews American Revolution, which tells the history of how the founding fathers got their original ideas about liberty, the Constitution, and the First and Second amendments.

Really, thats whats happening right now. People looking to build New California want to get out from the totalitarian mentality that people who run California have started to go toward, Wilson said. He added that individuals should run their own lives instead of letting the government tell individuals how to live.

The whole story of history is about the march of tyranny against human liberty, Wilson said.

Preston noted there are four types of totalitarian systems in the modern world: religionism, fascism, communism, and socialism, all of which denied peoples God-given rights. In California, the blending of communism and socialism has taken away the republican form of governmentwhich was guaranteed by the U.S. Constitutionfrom the people in California, he said.

Making History

Most of the conventions attendees have been appointed as state senators and assemblypersons for the new state. They offered many different reasons for joining the movement.

Dane Senser, the San Luis Obispo County chairman for New California, said he moved to the Golden State originally from Chicago. Over the years, he has grown discouraged by the government because of regulations, taxes, expensive gas taxes, laws about drinking straws, and so on.

He planned to move to Las Vegas on April 5, after his retirement, but heard Prestons radio program about New California before moving day arrived. Instead of moving, he organized a town hall meeting for Preston on April 12 in his county. To his surprise, 200 people showed up, and he became the chairman of the new state movement in his county.

This is history in the making, and it is for our freedom and liberty, Senser said.

Senser, who was the co-founder and served as vice president for California Missing Children years ago, said he was inspired by President Donald Trump: President Trump got everybody thinking. We can win, and we can be winners.

Senser wore a red shirt with WINNING printed across the front, and a small U.S. flag printed at the heart of the capital letter G.

God at Work

Broadcaster Will Johnson, the state senator and chairman of San Joaquin County for New California, is black and an Arkansas native. A former Democrat, he found upon coming to California that it was hard to be both a Democrat and a Christian.

I cant comprehend that someone can consider himself a Christian, and, in the same breath, call himself a Democrat, said Johnson.

Johnson found new hope after Trump was elected: Because of Donald J. Trump, I see God working in this country. Johnson praised the presidents nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and said, I would never have thought that we would have a Supreme Court where there would be a majority of people believing in God.

Johnson joined the so-called walk away movement to leave the Democratic Party, and has been going everywhere wearing two kinds of T-shirts: One is printed Trump is your president, and the other is printed Vote Dem. Out.

During the Oct. 5-6 convention, two leaders, Paul Taylor and Liz Ritchie, made passionate speeches that urged immigrants living in California to join the New California movement. They also appealed for new immigrants to obtain citizenship and vote for the family values and freedom that drew them to come to the United States.

Taylor was a Republican candidate in this years primary for the U.S. Senate; Ritchie is the assemblywoman of Contra Costa County for New California.

David Zhang contributed to this report.After a series of adjustments by a pair of insurance carriers, a subset of Connecticut residents getting coverage through the states public health exchange could see sharp drops in their premium rates next year, though coupled with higher deductibles to cover initial care.

Open enrollment for Access Health CT begins Thursday, Nov. 1, with Anthem and ConnectiCare again the only two carriers to offer coverage in the upcoming year through the state public health insurance exchange. This years open enrollment runs through Dec. 15, with Access Health CT in the midst of a monthlong outreach campaign that concludes Oct. 30 with a 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. session at Rogers Park Middle School at 21 Memorial Drive in Danbury.

Weighted across plans, Anthems Access Health CT rates are dropping 2.6 percent on average for Anthem members, and rising 2.9 percent for ConnectiCare members enrolled through the state exchange, excluding the impact of credits members might be able to claim on their federal taxes. For Access Health CT silver plans in Fairfield County, a past popular option, rates average nearly $630 a month on average in 2019.

As the case in past years, carriers are able to cap premiums in plans offered through state health exchanges by embedding significant deductibles that range from $1,300 to $6,000 before an individual can put in a claim for qualifying medical coverage.

This will be our sixth open enrollment since we started operations, said new Access Health CT CEO James Michel, speaking last week at a board meeting in Hartford aired on CT-N. Every open enrollment since (2013) has been different from year to year; however, this year will present the most changes to the plans that are offered in the exchange.

Yellow renewal notices should hit mailboxes starting Wednesday, with three fewer plans available this year for 17 in all.

As the case in other states, Access Health CT plans were thrown into flux last year after the Trump administration curtailed funding for cost-sharing reductions that had previously been authorized under the federal Affordable Care Act. Like other carriers nationally, Anthem and ConnectiCare covered the shortfall in 2018 plans by embedding higher premiums in silver plans that cover 70 percent of medical expenses.

Carriers have adjusted since their actuarial assumptions to reflect the federal CSR mandate, which combined with a loosening of Connecticut restrictions on coinsurance is helping to lower rates on those silver plans by 18 percent, according to Grant Ritter, a Brandeis University researcher who spoke last week at the Access Health CT board meeting. Rates will rise slightly on bronze plans that offer the lowest reimbursement ratios.

To their credit, the insurance companies said, If you just gave us the flexibility, we could come up with a silver plan using ... factors like tiered (plan) design, and we can save some money, Ritter said. Can we expect another 18 percent next year? I dont think so. ... They cant keep going back to the same well.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulmanNORWALK  The first time Larry Schwartz donated blood, he was 19 years old and nervous.

It was June 6, 1977, at a community blood drive in his hometown of Westbury, Long Island. He took part at his mothers suggestion.

I guess I wasnt into it and I guess it wasnt what you call fun, said Schwartz, now 61.

He had no plans to donate again, and in fact, he didnt for another five years. But in 1982, he was encouraged to donate again, this time by a colleague.

So, I decided to get on board, he said.

Schwartz knows each date and place he has donated pints of blood. Hes now retired but had a career as a statistician and said his love for numbers led him to create spreadsheets about blood donations, household utilities and gas mileage. His notes and a spreadsheet detail every single blood drive hes visited since 1977.

On Monday, Schwartz donated his 100th pint of Type O blood at the East Norwalk Library.

Im trying to promote that this is a good thing, he said. I know Ive gone overboard but its a nice thing to do.

Hes collected a series of pins the Red Cross distributes to honor frequent donors. He has 12 pins, one for each gallon donated, and theyre labeled accordingly. He received his first pin in 1985, after almost eight years of donating. He collected his second pin eight years later. According to his spreadsheet, some years he donated five or six times.

I know that by doing this Im helping cancer patients, trauma patients, sickle cell patients, burn victims and patients with chronic diseases," he said. Those people tend to use donor blood. They need the services, he said.

Even though most people are eligible to donate, only 4 percent of the population does, said Pat Pattonelli, collections team supervisor with the American Red Cross. Hes worked with the organization 16 years and said the Red Cross needs 500 pints of blood per day to ensure Connecticuts 31 hospitals and acute care centers have adequate amounts of blood. To find a blood drive, go to redcrossblood.org.

Through medical advancements, the need for blood isnt as great as it once was, Pattonelli said, but there is still always a demand. He said the Red Cross is currently in critical need because demand is outweighing supply.

Schwartz tries to stick to blood drives in Norwalk. Since he donated 41 years ago, hes given blood in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.

"Hes that kind of a person, that when he does something he commits to it," said his wife, Sharyn Taymor, who was at the blood drive Monday.

She said that in 2009, after Schwartz returned from visiting their son at school in India, he was turned away from donating because he had traveled outside the country. American Red Cross staff members told him he was ineligible to donate for a year.

"He was crushed," Taymor said.

Schwartz remained humble Monday, saying he knows others who have donated just as much or more than him. Without pressing too hard, he tries to encourage others to donate one hour of their day to donate to a good cause, he said.

In addition to frequent donors being rewarded with warmth, pins and gratitude, he said, they also get good snacks.WASHINGTON - Saudi Arabia's belated explanation for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi drew deep skepticism Sunday from congressional lawmakers and mounting bipartisan calls for the kingdom - and possibly Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally - to face severe repercussions.

Senior Republicans and Democrats proposed sanctions on the longtime U.S. ally, the expulsion of the Saudi ambassador and the cutting of arms sales, among other possible punishments. Lawmakers also said that the United States should refuse to have relations with Mohammed and demand that Saudi Arabia replace him as crown prince if he is found to be responsible - as members of both parties said they believe will happen.

"It's my thinking that MBS was involved in this, that he directed this and that this person was purposefully murdered," Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union Sunday, referring to the crown prince.

Corker - who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee - called for a "collective response" by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany if an investigation reveals that the crown prince was behind Khashoggi's killing inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

"Sanctions should be put in place for anybody who has had anything to do with it," the Tennessee Republican told CNN's Jake Tapper.

During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said the Saudi ambassador should be formally expelled from the United States if an investigation reveals the crown prince's involvement. The suggestion echoed a call from Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., a day earlier.

Also appearing on "Meet the Press," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., called a strong response to the Saudi government.

"We've got to get to the bottom of this," Tillis said. "In Saudi Arabia, you don't do something of this magnitude without having clearance from the top. We need to find out who that is and hold them accountable."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said that he believes the crown prince is ultimately responsible - and should pay a price.

"You'll never convince me that he didn't do this," Graham said on Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures"

"Saudi Arabia is an ally, but this behavior is outside the norm to the point that the people involved need to be removed, in my view," Graham added. "Saudi Arabia is a country. MBS is a person. And I am willing to separate the two."

President Donald Trump has continued to voice support for the crown prince, even as he has backed away from describing Saudi Arabia's story as credible.

"Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies," Trump said in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post when pressed on the many discrepancies in the changing accounts from the Saudis. "Their stories are all over the place."

He did not call for the ouster of Mohammed and instead praised his leadership, calling the prince "a strong person; he has very good control."

Gen. Joseph Votel, who heads U.S. Central Command, told reporters traveling with him in the Middle East that America's political leaders were addressing the situation surrounding Khashoggi's death.

"We haven't changed anything with respect to our ongoing military relationship with Saudi Arabia. They have been a good partner for us for a long period," Votel said. The kingdom is an important counterterrorism partner for the Pentagon and a major purchaser of U.S. arms.

"From my perspective, we are continuing to do the things that we have normally been doing in our military-to-military relationship with them; we will until we get some instructions to do something different," he said. "And I've been told nothing, so we'll continue to do what we're supposed to do."

On Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said on "Fox News Sunday" that he was certain that Mohammed was responsible for Khashoggi's disappearance and death, reasoning that "there's no way 15 people are sent from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to kill a dissident without the approval of the crown prince."

"It stretches credulity to think that the crown prince wasn't involved in this," Paul said, urging the United States to sever relations with Mohammed and calling for his replacement.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., called Saudi Arabia's shifting explanations about the incident "a mess."

"You don't bring a bone saw to an accidental fistfight," he said on "State of the Union," referring to reports that Khashoggi was dismembered with a bone saw. "So, the Saudis have said a whole bunch of crap that's not right, accurate or true."

In an interview Sunday with Fox News Channel's Bret Baier, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that an investigation is underway to determine how Khashoggi was killed and what happened to his body. He pushed back against Paul and others who have said they are certain the crown prince was involved, arguing that it is "very surprising" that lawmakers who are "6,000 miles away" could make such declarations about what happened.

"There is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty," al-Jubeir said, deploying an argument that Trump himself made in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the moment "a relationship-altering event for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia."

"We ought to suspend military sales, we ought to suspend certain security assistance, and we ought to impose sanctions on any of those that were directly involved in this murder," Schiff said said on ABC's "This Week." "This really ought to be something that causes us to do a re-examination of our relationship with Saudi Arabia."

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who is also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that despite the Saudi government's denials, its intentions were clear.

"Obviously, there was an intent, I believe, to kill him," King said of Khashoggi. He said that the U.S. should take some retaliatory steps, such as delaying arms sales, but also warned that the U.S. "not hurt ourselves," given the value of the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

"What happened here was savagery, and we can't go along with their cover story," King said.

Paul has recommended curtailing arms sales to Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi's killing and other aggressive ventures, arguing on "Fox News Sunday" that "that's the only thing the Saudis will listen to." He criticized Trump's argument that the United States shouldn't scrap the latest $110 billion arms deal over concern for the American jobs those contracts support. The figure is in dispute, and Trump has been criticized for inflating both the monetary value of the deal and the number of jobs it supports.

"I don't think arms should ever be seen as a jobs program," Paul said. "We should never sell arms to any country unless it's in our national security interest."

"This is just another in a line of long instances of Saudi insults to the civilized world," the senator added.

Paul has been one of the most critical voices in Congress on Saudi policy, pointing out that the kingdom has financially supported and offered haven to extremists, and arguing that its air campaign in Yemen's civil war "actually increases our national risk."

He said he reckoned that if Congress had a vote in the next couple of weeks to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, "we would win overwhelmingly, so I think the powers that be will try to prevent us from having that vote."

Congress cannot vote to block Saudi arms sales until those arms sales are announced, leading Paul to muse Sunday that "the arms sales will go on. I think they will avoid announcing the arms sales to prevent us from blocking them."

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., has blocked the transfer of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia over concerns that they might be used against civilians in Yemen - a reason that several members of Congress have said in recent days that a vote to block arms sales is largely moot.

It is likely that the House will vote next month on a measure to curtail U.S. military, intelligence and air support for the Saudi campaign in Yemen under the War Powers Resolution, but it is unclear what its prospects of passage are. Last year, the Senate could not muster enough support to pass a similar resolution.

Paul said the United States could exercise "incredible leverage" over Saudi Arabia by curtailing support for its air campaign, as the kingdom's planes are all American - meaning they need U.S. servicing and support.

"The Saudis need us much more than we need them," he said, figuring that the Saudi air force "can't last more than a couple of months" without U.S. backing.

---

The Washington Post's Missy Ryan in Qatar contributed to this report.

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Video Embed Code

Video: Members of Congress on Oct. 21 called for Saudi Arabia to face repercussions in the aftermath of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death.(Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

Embed code:LAS VEGAS - In all of her 63 years, Linda Powers has never felt more politically engaged. She's never felt more on edge. She's never felt so much was at stake.

So on Friday afternoon, over the din of beans being ground and lattes made, she joined a half dozen other Republicans sitting at the back of a strip mall coffee shop here, calling voters to urge them to cast their ballots.

"This midterm is different than any before," she said. "With the divisions in the country - and the Democrats are making it that way - everybody will get out and vote their party line. We'll see who feels stronger about it."

Across town, Aby Rojas knocks on door after door, sustained by bottled water filled with chia seeds and finding it hard to believe anyone could feel more strongly about the election. She's a been a hostess for nearly 20 years at Paris Las Vegas. Her husband is here on a special visa that Trump is threatening to end, and she fears he could be deported.

"It's more personal for people now because of President Trump," she said. "They're really going after us. We have to do something."

The campaign in Nevada may be the ultimate test of Democratic enthusiasm versus Republican organization, which is becoming a defining characteristic of the 2018 midterms - and a mirror image of 2016, when a sophisticated Democratic organization was upended nationally by the raw energy of the Trump movement.

Many of the trends bubbling up around the country in this midterm cycle are at a full boil here. The race in Nevada is a test of whether Republicans can still compete in a purple state and weather the demographic shifts that are about to hit them in other states. And it's a test of whether the controversial confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will buttress Republicans - or Democrats.

Both sides are aggressively targeting potential voters, and Democrats are particularly going after Hispanic voters, who has been a growing part of the population and, Republicans worry, could be motivated to blunt the ability of a build-the-wall president to enact his agenda.

Both sides see it as one of the premier battlegrounds this year, with President Donald Trump rallying voters in Elko on Saturday and former President Barack Obama coming to Las Vegas on Monday. Almost every election here is competitive - congressional contests, the governor's race and the U.S. Senate contest between Republican incumbent Dean Heller and Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen. The results could dictate how each party approaches the future, including a 2020 presidential contest, in which Nevada will play an early role.

In 2016, Nevada was a rare bright spot for Democrats - Hillary Clinton won the state, and Democrats won a Senate seat, two congressional races and control of the state legislature. If a blue wave has been building, these House and Senate contests would seem to be the easiest to win. But that's not been the case; the campaigns here are among the tightest races in the country, offering hope to Republicans that they can stem a Democratic onslaught and giving Democrats even more trepidation over their chances.

"I think the enthusiasm is real, but I'm nervous. I don't think it's going to be a wave," said Megan Jones, a longtime Democratic consultant working on independent expenditures this year. "It's more of a tide. And I'm not sure yet if it's low tide or high tide."

"It's a coin toss. I wouldn't be surprised if Democrats won every race and it was super close, and I wouldn't be surprised if Republicans won every race and it was super close," said Peter Ernaut, a veteran Republican consultant. "Which is just a weird place to be."

The 2016 election raised alarms for Republicans here. In a year in which Trump effectively tapped into a populist movement of voters angry about losing homes, jobs and wages - something Nevada has in droves - they lost.

Democrats relied on a powerful political organization, built up over decades of work by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and dominated by a union of casino workers, and created what Democrats felt was their own little blue bubble.

Republicans vowed to make a more concerted investment, one they hoped would help them protect vulnerable Heller, the only Republican incumbent running in a state that Clinton won.

The Republican National Committee moved in to model their organization on what the Obama campaign did in 2008 and 2012, recruiting and training volunteers to organize in their own communities. They have trained more than 2,000 people in the state - compared with 5,000 nationally in 2016 - and by August had made 1 million contacts, the same amount as they did during the entire 2016 campaign.

"They are here in a way that they have not been here before. They are organized better than they have been before - even in Clark County, the Democratic stronghold," said Jon Ralston, a top political analyst here who is the editor of the Nevada Independent.

"The Republican Party here has been a compete joke," he added. "But the RNC has been organized. They didn't do it two months ago, as they've tried in the past. They've been here for a while."

For the first time, Republicans have a full-time staffer aimed at building relationships with communities traditionally skeptical of Republicans, including Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans. The program is not overtly political, instead trying to build positive relationships by working on issues such as choosing schools or helping new residents get settled.

They also have hired a voter registration director for first time, which has helped narrow a Democratic advantage.

"We're in a very, very good position given we've built this grass-roots army to turn out the voters we need to turn out," said Dan Coats, the Nevada state director for the RNC. "They're recruiting their neighbors and people in their community."

But the RNC has a lot of catching up to do, for as it has improved, the existing Democratic organization has been buttressed by newfound enthusiasm in toppling Trump.

The Culinary Union Local 226 is the dominant political force in the state, with 57,000 members, and on a recent weekday it was buzzing with activity.

Every day but Sunday, about 200 union members canvass from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. They go in bilingual teams, clad in red shirts and knocking on doors of inconsistent voters, pleading with them to get to the polls this time.

"The RNC can staff up all they want. We've been in this for 83 years," said Bethany Khan, spokeswoman for the culinary union. "The long-term investment of protecting our community is there - and it's not funded by billionaires."

They have pamphlets on each of the Democratic candidates. They talk about school classroom sizes, health care and minimum wage. But the most animating factor is the man not on the ballot.

"Trump makes me a Democrat," said Bryan Eble, an unemployed 57-year-old as he held his dog at the door and told the team of culinary workers that he would vote early.

A few blocks away, Darrell Ballard, a 52-year-old who is semiretired, stood at his door and recounted how he hadn't had a drink for nearly 10 years before election night in 2016.

"I got drunk that night," he said. "Motivated? Yeah. I'm into this more than any other election in my life."

Early voting started in Nevada on Saturday, and both campaigns see the next few days as critical for understanding who may have an edge in the state. It's a test for the Republican's vaunted new campaign infrastructure, just as it will test whether Democratic enthusiasm translates to votes. The vote tally on Saturday indicated Democrats were turning out in big numbers - approaching presidential-year turnout - and running slightly ahead of Republicans in Washoe County, a swing area in the northwestern part of the state.

A recent NBC News/Marist poll, which had Heller up by two points over Rosen in the Senate contest, found that 89 percent of likely Democratic voters considered the midterms "very important," compared with 82 percent of likely Republican voters.

But Democrats are also seeing some evidence that Republicans are closing the gap. The turning point seemed to happen around the time of the Kavanaugh hearings - something Heller and his supporters frequently bring up.

Democrats, led by Rosen, are pushing health care as the issue they think most resonates with voters. It's the topic door-knockers bring up during canvassing, and it's the first thing Rosen usually talks about.

Democrats also have focused on Trump's immigration policies in an effort to turn out Hispanic voters, whose turnout plummets during midterm years.

The Republican strategy in the closing weeks seems far more focused on turning out rural areas that are less diverse. It was a concession that Trump appeared to make during his rally with Heller on Saturday, when the opening of early voting brought the start of a parade of high-profile figures to buttress the legions of volunteers who have been canvassing Nevada for months.

"Do we have many Hispanic Americans here?" Trump asked, shrugging. "Eh. Not the most, not the most. I'd give it 5 percent. That's OK."

Earlier, outside of the culinary union headquarters in downtown Las Vegas where much of the Democratic push is organized, a mariachi band played, and soon former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage. He removed his aviator sunglasses and his navy blazer, decried the current state of politics and accused Trump of making a mockery of global diplomacy.

"I'm so tired of Democrats walking around saying, 'Woe is me. Things are so bad.' I've had it up to here," Biden said.

"Folks, it's time to get up! Lift our heads up!" he shouted. "Remember who the hell we are. Take back the Senate and change the world as we know it. Now, now, now, now."JERUSALEM - Jordan's King Abdullah II announced Sunday that he does not plan to renew parts of the country's 24-year-old peace agreement with Israel, amid public pressure to rebuke the Israeli government following the U.S. Embassy's move to Jerusalem and ongoing violence in Gaza.

In Israel, the announcement was received with surprise. Analysts said it was a populist move by the king aimed at opposition groups. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, appeared unruffled by the announcement. He said relations with Jordan were still strong.

The deal was signed in November 1994 by Abdullah's father, King Hussein, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The parts Jordan wants to revoke relate to two parcels of land Jordan leased to Israel for 25 years. Known as Baqoura and Ghumar in Arabic and Naharayim and Zofar in Hebrew, the lease on the two territories - one to the north and another farther south - ends in one year. Jordan had until Thursday to make clear to Israel it would not renew the arrangement.

"Baqoura and Ghumar are Jordanian lands and will remain Jordanian and we will exercise full sovereignty over our territory," the king said, according to a royal court statement.

The peace treaty with Israel is deeply unpopular in Jordan, where people claim that successive Israeli governments have failed to live up to water-sharing agreements. Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories is also a source of anger among Jordanians.

Speaking at an official memorial for Rabin, who was assassinated by an Israeli citizen in 1995 because of his push for peace, Netanyahu played down the king's announcement, saying he would try to negotiate an extension to the existing arrangement.

He said the agreement between Israel and Jordan was one of true peace and "an important asset to both countries."

In Jordan, however, the decision to downgrade its arrangement with Israel sparked celebrations. There has been a push in recent months to cancel the lease agreement and demand that Israel return the land. Both areas are used for agricultural purposes.

Large-scale protests over the weekend urged the king to reclaim the Jordanian territory.

After the king's announcement on Sunday, Jordanians took to social media, calling it a "historic and wise decision."

Abdullah also tweeted: "Baqoura and Ghamar have always been at the top of our priorities and our decision to terminate the annexation of Baqoura and Ghumar from the peace treaty is based on our commitment to take all necessary decisions for Jordan and Jordanians."

Throughout the years, there have been sporadic periods of tension between the two countries. Three years after the agreement was signed, a Jordanian soldier opened fire, killing seven Israeli schoolgirls visiting one of the territories now under discussion. Ahmad Daqamseh spent 20 years in prison but was released after Jordanian lawmakers petitioned on his behalf.

More recently, relations have been strained over the status of the flash-point al-Aqsa Mosque compound, referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem and in the aftermath of a shooting at the Israeli Embassy in Amman in which two Jordanian citizens were killed.

"From my point of view, this is not as dramatic as it sounds," said Shaul Mishal, a professor of Jordanian and Palestinian politics and history at Tel Aviv University. "Historically speaking, the relationship between Israel and Jordan has existed for many years, and, simply put, Jordan cannot exist without Israel."

He said it was likely that Netanyahu had known about the decision beforehand and that "it is symbolic, more than anything else, to gain the support of the opposition."

"I'm not surprised at any development in the relations between the two states," said Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to Jordan. "But Jordan faces particular difficulties with regards to water and energy, as well as an addition of 1.5 million Syrian refugees to its population. These circumstances indicate that it is in Jordan's own interest to continue adhering to the peace treaty," he said.VIRGINIA  A big wooden box now sits in front of the Cass County Health Department, and its filled with the communitys blessings.

The departments Blessing Box has been at home in front of the departments building in Virginia for a few months and has seen a lot of use, clinic director Tiffany Angelo said.

We started it in June of this year, she said. Its been well-utilized by the community.

The idea for the box  that people who find themselves in need can take a blessingor two from those available in the box  comes from a similar box in Beardstown. Staff members at the Cass department saw the idea on Facebook and thought it would be nice to bring the idea to Virginia. Its taken off.

Right now weve had a lot of different donations, Angelo said. Any non-perishable food items, any hygiene products. Were taking soap, shampoo, baby diapers, baby wipes, baby food, as well. In the summer, we had a lot of home-grown produce from staff members and members of the community. We had baskets that they would fill.

The health department, with the help of the community, keeps it stocked with a range of goods, much of it donated.

The department is always looking for donations for the box, especially as the temperature begins to drop, Angelo said. While the donation of actual items is appreciated, monetary donations that department staffers can use to buy items to stock the box also are welcome, she said.

We are definitely not restricting anything, she said. We also have a Community Closet but, as far as the Blessing Box, people donate in the community so we can fill it when we have holes. Were always up for donations. People can bring them in or go ahead and stock them in the box, if need be.

Angelo credits the community for its support in maintaining the box, itself a donation from Virginia High School shop teacher Darin Waters, who gifted the box to the health department and installed it.

It warms your heart when you come in and see that its empty, she said. It lets you know that people really need it, especially as the months are getting colder.The expiration of the Farm Bill is putting the brakes on conservation programs important for many Illinois farmers and ranchers.

While the legislation largely stalled over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the people who grow food and livestock also were impacted.

Ryan Stockwell, director of sustainable agriculture for the National Wildlife Federation, said farmers like him are unable to apply for the Conservation Stewardship Program, which helps protect natural resources while improving profitability.

And in these economic times and the way that the commodity prices are for farmers right now, thats a really important program to have, Stockwell said. But because of the expiration, farmers looking to sign up for that program are not able to do so. That just adds another challenge for farmers.

Stockwell added the Farm Bill gives farmers and ranchers the tools they need to protect waterways, support habitat and wildlife, and secure agricultural land for the next generation.

In Illinois, 70 percent of land is used for agriculture, and more than half of that is owned by absentee owners, those who rent or lease.

Carol Hays, executive director of Prairie Rivers Network, said the Farm Bill expiration could mean farmers who are currently using conservation practices may not be able to continue.

Conservation programs become a way for farmers who rent land to cover the cost of conservation or to share the cost, Hays explained. And these days, for many farmers, Farm Bill programs are the only way they can afford those practices.

She added that farmers and ranchers are facing too many other uncertainties and need the Farm Bill to be finalized.

While weve had gaps or extensions in current Farm Bills, we really dont know what that looks like in a regime like we have right now with tariffs, for example, or with changes in tax laws that can impact farmers and landowners, Hays said.

Congress is not expected to take up the Farm Bill again until after the midterm elections.EDWARDSVILLE  County officials will meet to find approximately $78,000 in savings from the latest county budget proposal, and the Finance and Government Operations Committee is expected to take a final vote Wednesday.

The committee spent about three hours paring down approximately $448,000 from the general fund budget, which pays for most of the day-to-day expenses. That amount is the difference between last years tax levy and the proposed levy for next year.

The committee also wants at least a plan to fix an anticipated shortfall in funds for social security payments, which could exhaust those funds reserves in a few years.

The total budget is expected to be approximately $140 million. Of that, about $48.7 million is in general fund expenses, about $64.15 million in special revenue spending, and $8.9 million in capital improvements.

Several committee members objected to the tax levy increase, which amounts to about a 1.5 percent increase over the current levy.

I dont want any increase, Committee member David Michael, R-Highland, said.

Agreeing with him were Tom McRae, R-Bethalto, and Phil Chapman, R-Highland.

I thought these were some of the things we were going to do differently, McRae said. My vote would be a zero percent (increase) on the levy.

The committee, along with Board Member Michael Parkinson, D-Granite City, who attended, then started looking at individual items to cut.

First considered were several new positions. Eventually they agreed to cut one new court security and two facilities maintenance positions requested.

Also cut was an unfilled position in the IT department, along with some of that departments travel budget.

They were eventually able to get down to a $78,000 difference. A number of possibilities were considered, including cuts to the Madison County Historical Museum, which is already being cut; additional county-wide cuts in travel; and some specific positions.

Committee Chair Lisa Ciampoli, R-Collinsville, eventually agreed to have County Administrator Doug Hulme to form a committee including Ciampoli, Hulme, Auditor Rick Faccin and a few others to come up with the final budget cuts.

The committee will meet again at 4 p.m. Wednesday. That time was chosen to give the county time to put up the officials notice in time to comply with the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

There is some urgency to final approval of the budget, which takes effect Dec. 1. It must be available for inspection for 15 days before the full County Board votes on it.

That meeting is set for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 21, the day before Thanksgiving. There was some talk at the Finance Committee meeting about changing the date, but no formal recommendation was made.

Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447.Secretary of State Jesse White is cautioning investors to be aware of schemes and risks associated with potentially fraudulent marijuana-related investments.

Investments in marijuana business ventures are becoming more common as more states legalize it for medicinal or recreational use. But fraudsters are using the increased publicity to convince investors to hand over money for risky or outright fraudulent ventures.3 hours ago

3 Stocks to Buy for a Santa Rally

Consider Adding These 3 Stocks for an End of Year Santa Rally Over the years, investors and traders will pick up on certain trends that tend to play out time and time again. This experience can really pay off in the long run, as patterns repeat themselves in financial markets more often than not.

Read ArticleThere are two or three weekends in the fall when Mt. Pleasant braces for party-heavy activity, particularly in the neighborhoods with heavy student populations.

Central Michigan University event weekends -Welcome Weekend, Homecoming, and on even years Western Weekend  are notorious in recent years for large and loud gatherings causing a higher volumes of police calls for service.

Those incidents even spurred a multi-year education effort and strict enforcement of city ordinance to combat the issue, and it may be working.

As Mt. Pleasant Police close the books on Western Weekend -the last of the three this fall- the numbers tell a story: Welcome Weekend, Homecoming and Western Weekend all had significant drops in citations and arrests compared to the last few years.

In total MPPD officials issued 39 total citations and made 15 arrests from 7 a.m. Friday through 7 a.m. Sunday including five tickets for nuisance party violations, a heavy focus of the education and enforcement efforts.

Thats a 77 percent drop from 2016, when the same agency issued 22 tickets for nuisance parties alone during Western Weekend.Female DJ accused of dark web cat killing

BANGKOK: Animal rights groups are pursuing legal action against a female club DJ who they accuse of brutally killing an adopted kitten for bitcoins.

crimeanimals

By Bangkok Post

Monday 22 October 2018, 08:24AM

Police have questioned a DJ accused of crushing kittens for bitcoins but say so far they have no hard evidence. Photo: Bangkok Post / file

The groups said the kitten killing was featured in a video streamed on a secret website operated for people who monger violence.

However, police said they have not found any evidence to prosecute the DJ.

An animal welfare organisation and Watchdog Thailand (WDT) said yesterday (Oct 21) they would seek a meeting today with Pol Maj Gen Sutthiphong Wongpin, acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau, over the case.

The move came after a police complaint was filed by Isaraporn Samutklalin, 29, with Phetkasem police accusing a 30-year-old DJ of brutally killing a one-month-old male kitten she had recently adopted.

Following the complaint, another woman also came out to accuse the DJ of committing animal cruelty against one of two cats she had given to the DJ.

Police questioned the DJ and searched her condominium in Bangkok but found no evidence to support the accusation and said they could not press charges for the time being.

Phetkasem Police Deputy Chief Lt Col Sunthon Malawet said police still have to wait for results of a forensic examination on the kitten after Ms Isaraporn insisted on the DJ handing back the kittens remains.

In her complaint, Ms Isaraporn accused the DJ of killing the adopted cat and disembowelling it.

She previously posted on the social media her suspicion that the DJ may have killed the cat in a live stream on a dark website in exchange for anonymous electronic cash.

Ms Isaraporn said the dead cat was one of four cats her sister, who is a veterinarian, had put up for adoption.

Ms Isaraporn said the DJ agreed to take one of the kittens, but when she later tried to follow up on the cats condition the DJ denied collecting the animal from the charity group handling the adoption.

However, video footage from a security camera showed she did collect the kitten, Ms Isaraporn said.

After being pressured to return the kitten, the DJ finally returned its corpse saying that it had been run over by a car.

Veterinarian Phattharanan Sajjarom, who works for Watchdog Thailand, said a preliminary forensic exam found the kitten's body bore evidence of a car accident.

The DJ is also facing another legal complaint from Nopparat Khamburanawit, who claims the DJ made up a story about how she lost one of two cats she sold her.

The DJ said the cat ran away from a veterinarian clinic in Bangkok.

However, Ms Nopparat said the clinic denied this. The unknown fate of cat has the woman concerned for its safety.

Killing kittens for fetishists online was one of the early rumours about the sometimes dreaded and secretive dark web lurking below the regular World Wide Web. Such reports have recurred, as recently as July.

According to the reports, which usually quote someone who knows someone who saw it, a site called Cruel Onion Wiki featured (according to several reports on Reddit.com) scantily clad or semi-nude women crushing and killing small animals  including kittens  under their feet.

Read original story here.KIS FUN RUN 2018

Start From: Saturday 17 November 2018, 06:30AM to Saturday 17 November 2018, 11:00AM Mon. Tue. Wed. Thu. Fri. Sat. Sun.

KIS Phuket is holding its second annual KIS FUN RUN 2018 at King Rama 9 Park on Saturday 17 November 2018 at 6.30- 11 AM,aimed to raise funds for The Good Shepherd Center, Phuket Town. Last year the event was very successful, raising more than 200,000THB in aid of the Queen Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer Foundation. This year, aiming to make it an even more successful event, KIS has invited all teachers, staff and students from the 11 branches of Kajonkiet Group which consists of more than 5,000 students. There will be 3 distances to run ; 800 M, 2 KM and 4 KM. If you would like to join the event or to become a sponsor, please contact act@kisp.academy or call 076 684 445-8. Together, we can make a difference !Man blames slippery road for near-bridge crash

PHUKET: Two people escaped serious injury when the car they were travelling in slid off the road and overturned onto a water mains beside a bridge in Chalong early this morning (Oct 22).



By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 22 October 2018, 10:35AM

The two people inside the car escaped serious injury. Photo: Supawatkun Amnuay Khunnalack

The two people inside the car escaped serious injury. Photo: Supawatkun Amnuay Khunnalack

The two people inside the car escaped serious injury. Photo: Supawatkun Amnuay Khunnalack

Chalong Police and rescue workers were called to the scene, near the entrance to Land & Houses Park housing estate on Chao Fa East Rd, at 2am.

The car, a white Phuket-registered Honda Jazz, was on its side still resting on the water mains pipe.

The driver, Pinyo Fisri, 45, told police that it was raining at the time and he lost control of the car, which slid off the road, overturned, and landed on the water mains.

Mr Pinyo and his passenger managed to climb out of the car themselves. They were taken to Vachira Phuket Hospital for treatment of minor injuries to the head and legs.

Chalong Police have yet to reveal if any charges will be pressed for the accident.Winter Wonderland to honor Gordy Osthus this year, opens Nov. 26

This year, the Watertown Optimist Club dedicates the Winter Wonderland in honor of the man who helped create it - Gordon "Gordy" Osthus.A local park in Gainesville, Florida has been renamed in Tom Petty's honour last Saturday which would have been his 68th birthday that day.

The Northeast park was Petty's frequent spot for many long years. Many friends, family and hundreds of attendees were present at the dedication ceremony.

During the ceremony, Gainesville Sun reports that Petty's younger brother, Bruce said that the two Petty brothers grew up in this park. He adds, My cousin reminded me the other day of my remark that it was a sanctuary, and it really was. It was a place for us to escape and be kids and have fun. The fact that we are doing this today, and the part we played in it, makes it so much more special.Videos

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos.Boom times are back for at least one company in Canadas oil heartland.

Canadian Pacific Railway may match or exceed its record 2014 pace of 110,000 crude carloads next year as a pipeline crunch stokes demand for shipping by train, chief executive officer Keith Creel said Thursday in an interview from Calgary, where the company is based.

The demand is there, Creel said. Maybe a 100,000 run rate goes to 110 or 120. Theres a bit of a range between 100,000 and 120,000, but I wouldnt expect anything above that.

The run-up to oil shipment levels last seen four years ago, when Canadas benchmark crude price reached almost $90 (U.S.) a barrel, comes as producers endure record discounts for their crude because of a dramatic lack of pipeline space.

Western Canada Select crude is trading in the $20s now, with the discount to the U.S. benchmark reaching $50 a barrel earlier this month, the most on record in Bloomberg data stretching back to 2008. Producers are being forced to sell their oil for less largely because of the higher costs of shipping it by train to U.S. fuel producers, but also because an abundance of American supplies and the start of refinery maintenance season on the Gulf Coast are undercutting demand for the imports.

Canadian Pacific, the countrys second-largest railroad, handled about 23,000 carloads of crude in the third quarter, executives told analysts Thursday, almost tripling the tally from the same period a year ago. That fuelled a 63 per cent quarterly climb in revenue from energy, chemicals and plastics  the fastest increase among major commodities at the railroad.

Rival Canadian National Railway Co. is on pace to carry about 70,000 carloads of crude annually, chief financial officer Ghislain Houle told an investor conference last month.

An average North American tank car holds about 700 barrels of crude, according to Bloomberg Intelligence railroad analyst Lee Klaskow. That would put Creels most optimistic outlook for next year at a rate of about 230,000 barrels a day, the equivalent of 8.5 per cent of last years daily average production from the oilsands and more than OPEC member Gabon can produce.

Hopes for a quick fix to Canadas pipeline bottleneck dimmed in August, when a Canadian federal appeals court quashed the permit for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, potentially delaying its start for another year.

The Trans Mountain ruling was definitely material in the discussion with oil producers, Creel said Thursday.

At least one Canadian oil producer already has struck a significant deal to ship more crude by rail. Last month, Cenovus Energy Inc. announced arrangements with Canadian National and Canadian Pacific to transport about 100,000 barrels a day from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Creel made the comments after Canadian Pacific reported record adjusted profit of $4.12 (Canadian) a share for the third quarter, in line with the $4.10 forecast provided Oct. 4. Revenue surged 19 per cent to $1.9 billion.

Canadian Pacific was little changed at $261.11 in Toronto on Friday, while up about 14 per cent for the year  compared with a 4.6 per cent decline for Canadas benchmark stock index. The shares reached a record high earlier this month, propelled by strong sales performance in multiple commodities.

Like Montreal-based Canadian National, Canadian Pacific is pledging not to neglect longtime customers such as grain or coal producers. Additional pipelines will eventually be built, which will make demand for crude-by-rail virtually disappear, Creel said.

We have to be very strategic in what we bring on the railroad because we have a responsibility to our existing customers that were here before crude and will be here after crude, the CEO said. I enjoy the crude business, but weve got to make long-term decisions that are best for the company overall.

Even as it reaches new deals to carry crude by rail, usually for three to five years, Canadian Pacific has been targeting other energy shipments such as liquefied petroleum gas and refined products. That diversification, the CEO said, will strengthen the companys business in the long run.

Were not planning our business around crude, Creel said. Pipelines are a competitive threat. Its the preferred method of moving crude when the capacity becomes available. Once crude goes away, we certainly expect to have other revenue streams to take its place.Toys R Uss long fall in the U.S. continues to wreak havoc in the toy industry, with toy makers like Hasbro taking hits as they struggle to find new partners to sell their products. Hasbros third quarter earnings came in lower than expected Monday ahead of the 2018 holiday season.

Hasbros sales suffered at home and overseas, with a seven per cent drop in revenue in the United States and Canada, and a whopping 24 per cent drop internationally. In total, net revenue were down 12 per cent from last year at US$1.57 billion. Analysts had predicted net revenue of US$1.71 billion, according to Refinitiv, a Thomson & Reuters company that estimates financial risk for investors.

Executives attributed the companys disruptive year to the downfall of Toys R Us, which was the biggest toy retailer in the United States and sold a great deal of Hasbro products until it filed for bankruptcy and completed the liquidation process. The summer saw the last remaining stores close their doors. While the void left by Toys R Us represents a huge opportunity for companies like Target, Walmart and Amazon, its had a crippling effect on toy makers like Hasbro that are struggling to build relationships with new retailers and move excess inventory.

The segments quarterly performance was negatively impacted by the loss of Toys R Us revenue and not meeting all shipping demands late in the quarter across an expanded retail footprint, the company said in a news release. Toys R Us is still operating in Canada.

On a conference call with investors, chief executive Brian Goldner said Hasbro is restructuring its supply chain operations to fill shipments for new retailers, many of which are smaller than the company was used to. Next year, Goldner said, Hasbro will build a warehouse in the Midwest to help improve shipping time and flexibility.

Its great when all these different retailers want to take toys in but it results in higher costs and more supply chain disruption, said Linda Bolton Weiser, an analyst with D.A. Davidson. Theyve done a good job replacing about 1/3 of the lost volume already.

Toys R Us also owed Hasbro roughly US$59 million last September, and the companys bad debt expenses also bit into Hasbros performance this year.

The biggest shock in revenue drops came from the companys partner brand products, which fell 37 per cent. The category, which includes big licensed brands like Disney Princesses and Star Wars, was hurt by a lack of new material like blockbuster movies that generate interest in toys and other products.

The damage to revenue from Toys R Us didnt come as a shock, Bolton Weiser said. The only surprise was the drop in partner brands, Bolton Weiser said, but sales should bounce back with new Frozen and Toy Story films next year.

The underwhelming earnings report comes on the heels of a USA Today report that Hasbro will be making a round of job cuts, which should trim less than 10 per cent of its workforce. Hasbro employs more than 5,000 people, with about half of its employees working in the United States. On a conference call with investors Monday, chief financial officer Deborah Thomas said Hasbro is expecting to rack up US$50 million to US$60 million in severance charges from the cuts.

Hasbros rival, Mattel, is grappling with the same void left by Toys R Us. In July, Mattel announced that it would cut nearly 2,200 jobs, almost a quarter of its workforce, The Post reported.

Executives didnt want to speculate on the call about whether the losses from Toys R Us would dent the fourth quarter, but remained optimistic about the upcoming holiday season and rebuilding its business without Toys R Us.

This is a year of transition for us, chief executive Goldner said on the call. In 2019 well return Hasbro to growth.Sheryl Sandberg is excited that Nick Clegg is joining Facebook.

She said so on Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg liked her post. Thumbs up!

I feel sorry for Mr. Clegg. Gosh, hes going to move his entire family to Menlo Park, which is going to feel strange to the onetime MP from Sheffield Hallam. I suppose it looks rather globaliste for the social media monster to have nabbed the erstwhile U.K. politician, no doubt for a gazillion bucks. His resume appears so on point, what with his time in Brussels, his leadership of the Liberal Democrats, his coalition with David Cameron  he was deputy prime minister, for Petes sake  his Dutch mother/Spanish wife/half-Russian father background, his current work on the Brexit dilemma. He speaks five languages!

In this context it seems so, well, flaccid to hear of Cleggs latest title: vice-president, global affairs and communications.

We know that Mark Zuckerbergs company is in ever deepening trouble on the global affairs front. Pick your Congressional hearing/EU testimony/Rohingya slaughter/fake news/election interference/stolen data/something about only 30 million people having their access tokens stolen by hackers. (Facebooks defence: it could have been worse!)

So no surprise the company wants to massage the message, and who better to run that file than a politician who gets how Europe works. (Europe doesnt like Mr. Zuckerberg.)

We will await the first hint of trouble.

Oh, interesting, its already here!

Why did Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, announce the hire? Wasnt it silly of Zuckerberg to like the announcement, making the appointment sound so middle school. And why didnt the company pre-empt Sandbergs note by issuing a formal press release? And for that matter, why, at least as of Friday morning, had Zuckerberg said nothing? He did appear in a photograph posted by Sandberg of the new corporate threesome, but come on.

This bothers me. It bothers me because Zuckerberg already bears the reputation of an autocrat/dictator who controls the company through special-class shares and who  wasnt this just recently?  lost the WhatsApp founders reportedly because the organizational reporting structure had changed and the WhatsApp guys no longer had direct access to the king.

I guess the king grew weary of the founders concerns about protection of personal data.

Even though Nick Clegg is used to working within the realm of a monarch, I just cant imagine he will be comfortable as a direct report to, OK, lets call him a czar.

Oh, this makes sense: hes not! He will be reporting to Sheryl Sandberg, reaffirming that Zuckerberg takes no ones corporate counsel except, allegedly, Sandbergs. The COO certainly can stay on message. Recall her appearance last month on Capitol Hill where once again the ethos of Facebook was trotted out like a jingle from a soft drink commercial  making the world a better place, etc.

In announcing Cleggs hire on Facebook, Sandberg acknowledged that the company is on a critical journey, albeit one with loads of friends. Every day people use our apps to connect with family and friends and make a difference in their communities. If we can honor the trust they put in us and live up to our responsibilities, we can help more people use technology to do good.

One of the first responders on Facebook questioned that outcome. Sheryl, you must help us, please! WhatsApp took millions of dollars to spread fake news in brazilian elections. You must do something! That reference is to allegations that the campaign of far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, described by the Guardian as a pro-torture, dictatorship-praising populist, has used WhatsApp to spread fake news and discredit opposition candidate Fernando Haddad.

Just another day in the Facebook saga.

The intractable Zuckerberg remains fortified against all comers by those aforementioned shares, and his antiquated governance structure that has him performing the dual roles of chairman and CEO.

The battlements are crumbling. Earlier this month I wrote about Trillium Asset Management and its shareholder proposal to split the two corporate functions because, you know, this isnt the 80s. The complaints over shaky corporate governance at Facebook will only grow, I wrote then. This week, the state treasurers from Illinois, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, along with the New York City Pension Funds, joined with Trillium in pushing for change.

They have a social and financial responsibility to be transparent, said New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer in a release, addressing Facebooks outsized role in society and the U.S. economy. Thats why were demanding independence and accountability in the companys boardroom. As trustee of the city pension funds, Stringer oversees $197 billion (U.S) in assets under administration.

Zuckerberg cant keep ducking this. Technically his share position gives him cover. But suasion and public reputation count for a lot too. Eventually he will have to wake up to the realization that hes on the wrong side of this.

I wonder what Nick Clegg thinks. Perhaps he can see the future, and an imagined Facebook of tomorrow that will be more suited to his reputation.

Read more about:Watch for the approval earlier this month of the LNG Canada megaproject to kick off a global building boom in new liquefied natural gas export facilities.

A lengthy slump in world gas prices had given the $40-billion (U.S.) LNG Canada the appearance of a fantasy, in an world energy market where long-term planning horizons of 20 years and more routinely consign high-profile projects to a drawer after their indefinite postponement.

But LNG prices broke out of their 2015-2017 price funk last winter, and have since stabilized at a four-year high.

Once again, China figures into a world business trend: That countrys Beijing-mandated conversion from coal to gas has driven demand  and prices  so powerfully upward that 2019 will see a record number of LNG projects greenlighted.

The new LNG terminals will be built and become operational with unusual speed, because most were planned years ago, awaiting the current forecast of sustained increased demand.

That forecast is for an increase in demand of between 25 per cent and 55 per cent by 2023  in just five years time.

So the wraps have come off LNG projects this year in the U.S., with still more U.S. projects certain to be approved in 2019. Other huge LNG facilities will be approved in 2019 in Qatar, Russia and Mozambique.

LNG Canada, centred on an $18-billion (U.S.) marine terminal in Kitimat, B.C., will employ more than 4,500 people during its construction phase, and 950 permanent workers once exports to Asian markets commence by 2025.

While gas is a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming, it is much more environmentally benign than the coal it will in most cases be replacing.

A Trump brand name in value decline

Expect more Trump-branded properties to follow the example last week of condo owners at Trump Place at 200 Riverside Dr. in Manhattans pricey Upper West Side voting to remove U.S. President Donald Trumps surname from the facade of their building.

That makes at least seven hotel and condo properties to drop their Trump branding since the 2016 U.S. presidential election that put Donald Trump in the White House.

In 2017, the then-Trump International Hotel and Tower, a 65-storey Toronto landmark, cut its ties with the Trump Organization, the New York-based holding company for the Trump familys business interests.

The Toronto property, initially operated and partly owned by the Trump Organization, was plagued with financial difficulties almost from its opening in 2012.

Now operated by Marriott International, it is to be rebranded next year with the Marriott luxury banner St. Regis.

The Trump Organizations troubles in Toronto turned out to be a harbinger for the developers entire portfolio. Besides Toronto, hotels and condo complexes in Panama and elsewhere in Manhattan have also ended their Trump affiliation.

Trump-branded properties, including one in Vancouver, have become a target for protesters angry with the U.S. presidents policies, a phenomenon that began in earnest with Trumps ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.

Discomfort among condo residents with protestors has prompted most of the severed ties with Trump Organization.

Property management and ownership are minor factors at Trump Organization, which has long derived most of its revenue from simply licensing the Trump name.

So, while the company is a private firm with opaque finances, it can be surmised that its fortunes are in decline with the eroding value of its brand.

Carbon tax politics

So far, four provinces are repudiating Ottawas avowed imposition of carbon-pricing regimes in all 10 provinces.

But while Ottawas opponents on the issue have been vocal, the Trudeau government has mostly kept its views to itself.

That is a classic strategy: dont respond until youve heard the broad sweep of opposing points.

A federal election campaign expected next year is the Trudeau governments opportunity to aggressively pitch Canadians on the merits of carbon pricing, something it hasnt done since unveiling its carbon-pricing policy.

There is, to start, near unanimity among climate-change experts that no substantial progress can be made on global warming without putting a price on carbon emissions. And the Trudeau governments policy is revenue neutral, as it remits back to residents of each province every nickel collected there.

That upends the rallying cries of Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his Saskatchewan counterpart, Scott Moe, that carbon pricing is a tax grab.

On the campaign hustings, the Liberals will declare that Ford wants to take away the $532 cheque Ottawa will cut for every Canadian family of four in carbon-pricing rebates, a sum that rises as the carbon levy does. (From $20 a tonne of CO2 emissions to $50 over three years.)

Alberta will proceed with its carbon-pricing plan if Ottawa makes progress on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

And business lobbies protesting that companies are excluded from the rebates can be appeased by including them.

Meanwhile, business is not a united front in its opposition. In a report last week, the business-backed C.D. Howe Institute asserted that Carbon pricing continues to be the most cost-effective option for achieving emissions reductions across the country.

Read more about:Wendy Landry is worried about affordable housing, accessible public transit and infrastructure.

Her checklist of issues, which reads like a snapshot of big-city newspaper headlines, encapsulates some of the challenges facing the small northern Ontario community of Shuniah, east of Thunder Bay, where shes been acclaimed to a second term as mayor.

Like most of the 417 municipalities where local elections are taking place on Monday, Shuniahs campaign unfolded quietly in the shadow of Torontos more high-profile race.

Most of the airtime was consumed by the citys bruising battle with the provincial government over the size of city council, but the list of issues dominating Torontos campaign trails is known well beyond its borders.

Its contents resonate with voters across the province, Landry said, adding many of the concerns typically framed as unique to big cities transcend town lines and are relevant in communities of all sizes.

Landry cites mass transit as one of the top issues facing much of northern Ontario, including her community of about 2,700 people.

Residents, she said, have few if any options for traversing the hundreds of kilometres between communities and require a broader bus network.

Other municipalities have tried to take action on transit over the past four years, with some turning to the private sector for either inspiration or direct help.

Innisfil, Ont., struck a partnership with Uber that sees the ride-hailing company provide service to designated areas for a flat fee subsidized by the town.

More recently, Belleville, Ont., established an Uber-style bus service in which residents travelling at night request pickups from buses that then follow routes based on demand rather than pre-determined stops.

Landry said accessible housing is another broadly relevant issue, adding the existing supply is not well-suited to the needs of an aging and changing population.

Liz Huff, retiring councillor for Leeds and the Thousand Islands in eastern Ontario, agrees. She said the single-family homes that dominate rural communities like hers become too unwieldy for seniors whose health needs may grow complex over time.

Anecdotes from the provinces many election trails suggest candidates also find themselves frequently fielding questions on the interconnected issues of infrastructure and taxation, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

Executive Director Pat Vanini said nearly every jurisdiction has a pet infrastructure project that galvanizes local debate, adding they can range from roads to flood-water management systems to internet coverage.

While the projects may vary, Vanini said theres a universal, perennial question underpinning the discussions.

The question has always been, how do we pay for it?  Vanini said.

Huff added that taxation becomes a particularly contentious issue in municipalities that dont provide curbside garbage pickup or local water treatment services.EDMONTONA youth has pleaded guilty to manslaughter at the start of a murder trial into the 2015 deaths of two Edmonton Macs store workers.

The teen, who was 13 at the time of the killings, admitted to manslaughter in the shooting death of clerk Karanpal Singh Bhangu.

He also pleaded guilty to wearing a disguise with intent and robbery with a prohibited restricted firearm.

The teen pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of the other employee, Ricky Cenabre.

Bhangu and Cenabre were working alone on a night shift at two different Macs store locations when they were robbed, beaten and shot about 20 minutes apart.

Police arrested the youth along with two men following a car chase.

Inside the vehicle, officers found a gun, machete, bandanas and duffel bags filled with cash, cigarettes and lottery tickets.

Laylin Delorme was convicted earlier this year on two counts of first-degree murder and the third accused has yet to go to trial.

The victims were both immigrants to Canada. Bhangu, 35, had moved from India four months before he was killed. Cenabre, 41, had come to Canada five years earlier from the Philippines.

Read more:

Murder-trial jury sees footage of second deadly Macs store robbery

Man convicted of first-degree murder in slaying of two Macs convenience store clerks

Is U.S.-style gun violence really new to Canada? Experts say our problems are not that different

Read more about:EDMONTONWith the legal doors now open on cannabis, some advocates are asking if theres still a place for medical marijuana in the equation or is the federal government just burning the joint from both ends.

Thats what 64-year-old cannabis activist Linda Northcott is wondering. Whether you produce for yourself, for your family, is there now a real need for medical? she said.

In 2011, Northcott turned her Eastwood home, next to Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, into what she calls the Cannabis Cottage  a community resource where medical users go to use their prescriptions or work them into other consumable products, like honey, spice, butters, creams, extracts, and more.

She doesnt charge for her services, considering herself a volunteer attending to societys sick.

Thousands of people are dealing with health disorders that need immediate attention, Northcott said. Through the cannabis world, this is where these people want to try and get relief.

As of legalization day, she estimates about 30 users, between the ages of 18 and 92, visit her on a regular basis, just to drop by and smoke a joint or learn how to cook their cannabis into something theyre comfortable with.

Read more:

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What its like going behind the scenes at a cannabis production facility

Will retail access to cannabis kill the demand for medical pot prescriptions?

But now that recreational weed can be purchased legally in Alberta, whether online through the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission website, or at one of the six stores currently operating in Edmonton, shes opened the cottage to anyone with legal product, and expects to have more knocking on her door in the coming months.

In January, the Canadian Medical Association submitted a proposal to Health Canada arguing that there is no need for both recreational and medicinal systems to give Canadians access to cannabis.

With retail outlets, the association suggested that doctors no longer need to authorize cannabis use once it is legalized because the substance will be available to those who wish to use it  without a prescription.

But for the time being, Health Canada says it intends to keep the medical route open. Even with the Cannabis Act in effect, patients authorized by health-care providers can still access medical marijuana by buying from federally licensed sellers, and register with the federal agency to produce cannabis for themselves or designate someone else to produce it for them.

The Government of Canada has committed to keeping a distinct system for patients and ensuring that individuals who require cannabis for medical purposes have reasonable access to legal and quality-controlled product, a spokesperson from Health Canada said.

In 2001, the agency created regulations allowing doctors to prescribe cannabis for medical purposes. From April 2017 to June 2018, the total number of medical marijuana clients across the country climbed from 174,503 to 330,758.

Joi Dunn, 47, who first met Northcott about five years ago, has become a familiar face at the cottage. A cannabis user of 15 years, she uses it medicinally to manage her glaucoma, and for meditative purposes, to help her relax and cope with stress.

Like many who visited Northcott on Wednesday to celebrate legalization, she considers herself a private smoker, and sees the cottage as a haven, where like-minded people can smoke and consume without scrutiny.

But its also more than that.

Its not just a safe place, said Dunn, 47. Its like an educational institute.

With the new laws governing cannabis in the country, shes thrilled that theres greater access to the drug, but that doesnt mean shes going to change how she gets her own, seeing herself as a medical user first and foremost.

People use marijuana for different reasons, different purposes, Dunn said. Im an open person and I like to be adventurous, so of course Im going to pop in a store and see whats up, (but) Im still going to have my prescription and Im gonna do what Im doing.

And there are benefits to taking the medical access route. Sun Life Financial, for example, offers extended health-care coverage for medical marijuana users, but only for a handful of conditions and symptoms, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, and patients needing palliative care.

Benefits aside, for Dunn, opening the gate to recreational cannabis isnt a redundancy so much as an enhancement to a substance that improves her quality of life.

Im glad that Im alive to see this happen, because its all about freedom. Dunn said. I was free a long time ago. Now, Im extra free.

Read more about:The great Canadian cannabis rollout Oct. 17 produced huge numbers of buyers, surprisingly low prices and significant discrepancies in available products from province to province, a new survey shows.

As well, the loose flower products of Cheech & Chong vintage proved far more popular than the oils, pills, capsules and prerolled joints that were also available, the report by Headset, a Seattle-based cannabis industry analyst, showed.

Where markets opened up with sticker shock prices in many of the nine U.S. states  plus Washington, D.C.  that have legalized recreational cannabis use since 2012, Canadian prices were remarkably low, says Headset analyst Cooper Ashley, the companys catalogue manager.

In many states, the prices started very high  at prices people balked at  and then came down fairly quickly, Ashley says.

But in Canada it didnt feel that way to me. When I was going through all the e-commerce sites there were definitely some very affordable options that would be competitive prices in any of the established U.S. markets.

Across Canada, loose flower products ranged from an average high of $11.53 per gram in Alberta to a low of $8 in Quebec.

Prerolled offerings went off at a high of $15.52 per joint in B.C. and a low of $10.02 in Quebec.

People who bought in bulk also paid lower prices with one gram packages of flower products costing an average $11.45, while 15-gram containers went for $8.75 per gram.

In Ontario, there were about 100,000 orders placed through the online Ontario Cannabis Store in the 24 hours following legalization. Some 12,000 of those came in the first hour after the stores 12:01 a.m. opening.

And Ashley says similar, opening-day rushes were seen across the country, and in the legalized U.S. states.

In Washington, it was definitely a similar deal, he says.

I think on day one only two stores opened up in the entire states and they had lines down the street and sold out in the first few hours.

Ashley says product shortages and delivery delays seen in this province should have come as little surprise, despite the long lead-in time producers enjoyed.

As markets open up it seems constantly difficult to predict the demand and manage to supply to account for that demand, he says.

And also I think its just a whole new world that everyone is getting used to and its a pattern that weve seen before.

The Headset survey, compiled from data provided on the websites of each provincial cannabis marketer, also showed some Canadians had more varieties of pot to choose from than others.

There was a lot of product variability across the country, thats definitely what we saw, Ashley says.

For example, where B.C. boasted 37 licensed producers offering 293 brands, the Quebec market was served by only 11 producers who put 122 brands up for sale.

In Ontario, only 27 of the 32 producers allowed to sell in the province had products for sale here on day one  with 98 products in total.

Ashley says he was surprised that five producers failed to show as the OCS threw open its electronic doors here.

If I were making products and had an agreement with the government and didnt have my products available to consumers on one of the highest attention days for years to come I would not be pleased, he says.

But he says that many more products will surely become available as the Canadian market matures.

In every (U.S.) market weve seen an expansion of the number of products over time.

Ashley says the predominance of loose flower products was extraordinary with 75 to 90 per cent of store and online offerings being the joint-stuffing bud.

But he says this flower predominance  also approached in fledgling U.S. state markets over the years  is unlikely to last.

In every market weve seen its popularity decrease over time as other consumption options becomes more popular, Ashley says.

He says the introduction of edible products across Canada next October will severely cut into flower sales.

And Id definitely watch out for vapour pens as well, those are incredibly popular.

Ashely says there was a healthy spread in the levels of the active cannabis ingredients THC and CBD available in the available products.

But he noted that products with high levels of the medicinal CBD component were available in greater numbers than he would have suspected.

He speculated that this was due to in part to prolonged  and many say unwarranted  media coverage touting its diverse medicinal qualities that its received over the past several years.

Im not surprised to see Canadian (producers) key into that because consumers are more aware of CBD as a thing to look for in general.A 3-week-old infant has died in the hospital Sunday evening after an alleged assault, Toronto police say.

Toronto police responded to a call on Thursday morning at around 10:50 a.m. at 263 Pharmacy Ave. When they arrived, paramedics were treating the 3-week-old infant who suffered from signs of trauma. She was rushed to the hospital and put on life support. She was pronounced dead Sunday evening.

The police arrested 29-year-old Matthew Bouffard, of Toronto, on Thursday and charged him with aggravated assault.

He appeared in court on Friday. His charges will be re-evaluated when the results of the post-mortem examination is complete which will be held on Monday.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-7400 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477).

Marjan Asadullah is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @marjanasadullahToronto police are asking the public for help in locating a man in connection to sexually assaulting two women on the street in separate incidents.

Police responded to a call on Friday around 1 p.m., about a woman reporting she was sexually assaulted. It is alleged that the woman, 26, was walking in the Dufferin St. and Queen St. W. area when a man rode up to her on a bicycle, sexually assaulted her and tried to flee. He was wrestled to the ground by witnesses but managed to escape.

The next day, police responded to a call at around 5 p.m., about another incident, this time in the Bay St. and St. Mary St. area.

It is alleged that a woman, 32, was walking down the street when a man approached her from behind, grabbed her around her upper body, sexually assaulted her, then fled north of Bay St.

Police believe the same man also committed another sexual assault attack at around 5:15 p.m, in the Bay St. and Charles St. area on Saturday. Police are investigating this assault and wish to speak to the men that tried to capture him or any witnesses that saw the alleged third attack.

Markus Stansbury, 31, of Toronto, is now wanted for two counts of sexual assault. He is described as white and six feet tall, with a thin build and short strawberry-blond or red hair. He was last seen wearing a black hoodie, black track pants and black sunglasses.

He is believed to be violent and dangerous, and if spotted, contact police at 416-808-1400 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477).Alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, accused of first-degree murder in the deaths of eight men, has waived his right to a preliminary hearing.

Clean-shaven and wearing a black V-neck sweater over a light blue shirt and jeans, McArthur appeared in person before a judge, the first time hed been present in court in months. He didnt speak a word during the brief appearance, his eyes never glancing over at the victims families, who sat in the first two rows of the courtroom.

McArthur, 67, is facing eight counts of first-degree murder in homicides alleged to have occurred between 2010 and 2017. All of the alleged victims had ties to Torontos Church and Wellesley area, the Gay Village.

The move to bypass a preliminary hearing speeds up the court process, eliminating a pre-trial court procedure that would have required the presentation of evidence, including witness testimony.

Speaking to reporters after McArthurs appearance, Toronto police Det. David Dickinson, one of the homicide investigators on the case, said he was happy the process has been sped up for the witnesses and the victims families.

Were going to focus on moving forward, he said.

Dickinson said a team of six officers is continuing to probe McArthurs background, and any possible links to cold cases, though none have been established to date.

Read more:

A timeline of the Bruce McArthur case and the police investigation into the Gay Village killings

Family honours Selim Esen at memorial service

James Miglin, the lawyer representing McArthur in court, declined to comment Monday.

Haran Vijayanathan, executive director of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP), a group that has been advocating on behalf of victims and families in the case, said he was relieved the court process wasnt being drawn out.

I think the sooner that we can put this to rest and the families have answers, the better it is for folks, he said.

People who are accused of a crime waive the preliminary hearing for a variety of reasons, including because they intend to resolve the charges and plead guilty, said Michael Lacy, president of the Criminal Lawyers Association and who is not connected to the McArthur case.

By waiving the preliminary inquiry, the matter gets transferred to the Superior Court, where they can have a meeting with the judge and discuss resolution of the charges, Lacy said, speaking generally about the court process.

Dickinson would not comment on the possibility of a plea when asked by reporters Monday.

McArthur, a self-employed landscaper, was arrested at his Thorncliffe Park Dr. apartment in January. He is charged in the deaths of Andrew Kinsman, 49; Selim Esen, 44; Majeed Kayhan, 58; Soroush Mahmudi, 50; Dean Lisowick, 47; Skandaraj Skanda Navaratnam, 40, Abdulbasir Faizi, 42, and Kirushnakumar Kanagaratnam, 37.

The remains of the eight men were found at a home on Mallory Cres. where McArthur worked as a landscaper. The dismembered remains of seven of the men were found buried inside large planters; remains later linked to Kayhan were located this summer, during an exhaustive excavation of a forested ravine behind the Leaside home.

Police have said McArthur was first identified as a person of interest in connection to Kinsmans June 2017 disappearance. Recently unsealed court documents  released following an application by the Star and other media  revealed police were watching McArthur for weeks before his arrest, after uncovering evidence Kinsman had been killed and that McArthur was a suspect.

In the fall of 2017, police began tracking McArthurs vehicle and following him around Toronto and Mississauga, watching as he travelled to various landscaping gigs and fast-food restaurants. They also obtained a log of the use of his key fob, which enabled police to see his comings and goings from the building, and later obtained a tracking warrant for cellphone, the documents state.

In December, more than a month before his arrest, police surreptitiously entered McArthurs apartment to access the digital files on his computer, the documents show. Days later, police installed a covert video camera on public property near 53 Mallory Cres., capturing the homes garage door.

McArthur is due back in court Nov. 5.

With files from Rosie DiMannoToronto police have made an arrest in the death of a Toronto woman more than 25 years after her murder, police announced Monday.

Barbara Brodkin was found dead in her apartment on March 19, 1993, after her six-year-old son called 911 when he found her body. She died of a stab wound to the chest.

Toronto resident Charles Mustard, 63, was arrested on Friday and charged with first-degree murder.

Police initially believed Brodkin might have been the victim of a robbery, as some cash and cannabis was missing from her home after she was killed.

An extensive investigation took place, Det. Sgt. Stacy Gallant told reporters Monday morning, including canvasses for witnesses, examination of evidence, photos, polygraph tests, banking and phone records, and over 100 interviews  but Brodkins killer was never found and the case went cold.

After 24 years, the case was reviewed in August and Gallant said new DNA examinations revealed a connection to Mustard.

The two were not strangers, Gallant said.

Now, 25 years later, the boy who found his mother murdered in their apartment can have some answers, Gallant said. Although there will be a process for this case to work its way through the justice system, at the very least he can know that we never gave up.

Mustard was previously known to police, Gallant said.

TOP STORIES. IN YOUR INBOX: For the days top news from the Stars award-winning journalists, sign up for our daily headlines newsletter.

Gallant asked those who knew Mustard and Brodkin to call the police if they have not yet been in contact  specifically, two people named Dirk and Linda.

Brodkins first cousin, Herb, also spoke at the press conference, thanking the homicide team for their persistence.

I was so impressed by the diligence that went into this effort to now bring this matter before our courts, he said. Up until recently, I thought cold cases was just something that happened in a TV series in the States.

Mustard will appear in court on Wednesday.CIUDAD HIDALGO, MEXICOA growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border in southern Mexico on Sunday, overwhelming Mexican government attempts to stop them at the border.

Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately 1.5 km.

Several hundred more already had applied for refugee status in Mexico and an estimated 1,500 were still on the Guatemalan side of the Suchiate River, hoping to enter legally.

Migrants cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the worlds deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reasons for leaving their home country.

It was not immediately clear where the additional travellers had materialized from since about 2,000 had been gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. But people have been joining and leaving the caravan daily, some moving at their own pace and strung out in a series of columns as they moved across Guatemala.

They marched on through Mexico like a ragtag army of the poor, shouting triumphantly slogans like Si se pudo! or Yes, we could!

As they passed through Mexican villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, they drew applause, cheers and donations of food and clothing from Mexicans.

Maria Teresa Orellana, a resident of the neighbourhood of Lorenzo handed out free sandals to the migrants as they passed. Its solidarity, she said. Theyre our brothers.

In the tropical heat, Besi Jaqueline Lopez of San Pedro Sula carried an improbable stuffed polar bear with a winter cap, the favourite  and only  toy of her two daughters, Victoria 4 and Elisabeth, 3, as they trudged beside her, all covered in sweat.

A business administration graduate, Lopez said she couldnt find work in Honduras. She wants to reach the U.S.A. but would stay in Mexico if she could find work here. My goal is to find work for a better future for my daughters, she said. Her husband, David Martinez, said they were tired, but had to push on to reach their goal.

Olivin Castellanos, 58, a truck driver and mason from Villanueva, Honduras, said he took a raft across the river after Mexico blocked the bridge. No one will stop us, only God, he said. We knocked down the door and we continue walking. He wants to reach the U.S. to work. I can do this, he said, pointing to the asphalt under his feet. Ive made highways.

The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow and most want to continue to the U.S., gathered Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to come join them.

The decision to re-form the migrant caravan capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some. Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.

But many became impatient and circumventing the border gate, crossing the river on rafts, by swimming or by wading in full view of the hundreds of Mexican police manning the blockade on the bridge. Some paid locals the equivalent of $1.25 to ferry them across the muddy waters. They were not detained on reaching the Mexican bank.

Sairy Bueso, a 24-year old Honduran mother of two, was another migrant who abandoned the bridge and crossed into Mexico via the river. She clutched her 2-year-old daughter Dayani, who had recently had a heart operation, as she got off a raft.

The girl suffered greatly because of all the people crowded on the bridge, Bueso said. There are risks that we must take for the good of our children.

In addition to those who crossed the river, immigration agents processed migrants in small groups and then bused them to an open-air, metal-roof fairground in Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.

Mexicos Interior Department said it had received 640 refugee requests by Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.

On Sunday, federal police monitored the caravans progress from a helicopter and had a few units escorting it. Outside Tapachula about 500 federal police briefly gathered along the highway on buses and in patrol units, but officers said their instructions were to maintain traffic on the highway, not stop the caravan. They moved on toward Tapachula before the caravan reached them.

Juan Carlos Mercado, 20, from Santa Barbara, Honduras, says corruption and a lack of jobs in Honduras has stymied him. We just want to move ahead with our lives, he said Sunday. He said hed do any kind of work.

The caravan elicited a series of angry tweets and warnings from Trump early in the week, but Mexicos initial handling of the migrants at its southern border seemed to have satisfied him more recently.

So as of this moment, I thank Mexico, Trump said Friday at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona. I hope they continue. But as of this moment, I thank Mexico. If that doesnt work out, were calling up the military  not the Guard.

Theyre not coming into this country, Trump added.

The Mexican Government is fully engaged in finding a solution that encourages safe, secure, and orderly migration, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday, and both the United States and Mexico continue to work with Central American governments to address the economic, security, and governance drivers of illegal immigration.

After an emergency meeting in Guatemala, presidents Hernandez of Honduras and Jimmy Morales of Guatemala said an estimated 5,400 migrants had entered Guatemala since the caravan was announced a week ago, and about 2,000 Hondurans have returned voluntarily.

Morales said a Honduran migrant died in the town of Villa Nueva, 30 km from Guatemala City, when he fell from a truck.SYDNEY, AUSTRALIAPrime Minister Scott Morrison delivered a formal apology on Monday to Australias victims of child sex abuse, saying the nation must acknowledge their long, painful journey and say sorry.

His emotional speech delivered in Parliament before hundreds of survivors followed the conclusions of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the nations highest level of inquiry.

Today as a nation we confront our failure to listen, to believe, and to provide justice, he said, adding: We say sorry.

The four-year inquest that delivered its final report in December revealed shocking evidence from more than 17,000 survivors and heard allegations against government, church and private institutions, as well as prominent individuals. It also heard evidence from leaders such as Vatican Cardinal George Pell, who is charged with committing historical sex abuses himself and was accused of failing to protect children.

Morrison said it was time for Australia to confront key questions.

Why werent the children of our nation loved, nurtured and protected? Why was their trust betrayed? he said.

Why did those who know cover it up? Why were the cries of children and parents ignored? Why was our system of justice blind to injustice? Why has it taken so long to act? Why were other things more important than this, the care of innocent children? Why didnt we believe?

Morrison said nothing could be done to right the wrongs inflicted on children.

Even after a comprehensive royal commission, which finally enabled the voices to be heard and the silence to be broken, we will all continue to struggle, he said.

So today, we gather in this chamber in humility, not just as representatives of the people of this country, but as fathers, as mothers, as siblings, friends, workmates and, in some cases, indeed, as victims and survivors.

The lawmakers stood for a minutes silence following the apology, which came with the announcement of government plans to create a museum and research centre to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse, and to ensure the nation does not forget the horrors victims have suffered.

The research centre will also assist those seeking help, and guide best practice for training and other services.

The government will also commit to reporting every year for the next five years on the progress of the royal commissions recommendations.

It has already accepted 104 of the commissions 122 recommendations, including a redress payments program, with the other 18 still under examination.

The government has also established a new office of child safety, to report to the prime minister.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten joined the apology, saying Australia had failed tens of thousands of children, across generations.

Our nation let you down. Today, we offer you our nations apology, with humility, with honesty, with hope for healing now, and with a fire in our belly to ensure that our children will grow up safe in the future, Shorten said.

While many survivors and campaigners went to Canberra to hear the apology, many are still calling for far more work to be done to address the history of abuse.

Care Leavers Australia Network chief executive Leonie Sheedy called on the government to remove a charity tax exemption from institutions that are still deciding whether to opt in to the national redress scheme for victims.

She says shes never healed from being abused.

You can learn to live with it, but it never goes away. It will be with me and all care leavers until the day that they put the lid on the coffin, Sheedy told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday.

Hetty Johnson, founder of the Bravehearts support group for victims, said survivors had made it clear they wanted all the royal commissions recommendations fully implemented.

There is a lot of anger in the community, she told Sky News.

Theyve made it very clear they want these recommendations implemented as they were intended and its yet to see whether the government will actually do that.YAOUNDE, CAMEROONAfricas oldest president, Cameroons Paul Biya, easily won a seventh term on Monday after a constitutional Council that he appointed rejected all legal challenges to the election. The United States noted irregularities that may not have affected the outcome but created an impression that the election was not credible or genuinely free and fair.

Now analysts say the country threatened by separatists faces further turmoil if Biya, who will be 92 when the new term ends, doesnt start preparing Cameroon for life without him after decades in power.

Major cities saw heavy troop deployment ahead of the election announcement as the government banned rallies by the opposition, which had alleged fraud. Biya received more than 71 per cent of the vote, far ahead of Maurice Kamtos 14 per cent.

The Oct. 7 election saw few voters in English-speaking regions after nearly a quarter-million people fled unrest by Anglophone separatists. The turnout in the Southwest was 15 per cent and 5 per cent in the Northwest while Biya won in both regions with more than 77 per cent of the vote. Overall election turnout was 53 per cent.

Fighting between the separatists ragtag bands and security forces accused by rights groups of abuses has killed hundreds and posed a serious challenge for Cameroon, a close U.S. security ally against extremism and a new member of the UN Human Rights Council.

The U.S. statement did not give details on the irregularities. But the fraud allegations and low turnout mean a weaker mandate for the 85-year-old Biya, who has led since 1982. The government did away with presidential term limits several years ago, part of a trend in Central Africa that has dismayed many.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took note of the official announcement of results and called for all disputes to be handled through established legal channels, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said. He added that Guterres said dialogue is the best path to unity.

What I can tell you is that Cameroon will never be the same again, human rights lawyer Felix Nkongho Agbor Balla told The Associated Press. While legal options for challenging election results have been exhausted, Cameroonians are more aware of their rights after watching the constitutional Councils hearings, he said.

The fractured opposition brought well over a dozen legal challenges, but all were rejected by the council, a collection of high-ranking magistrates and members of Biyas administration. The election occurred largely without Western election monitors.

The council called the election free and fair despite security challenges. A close Biya aide, Dion Ngute, said he wasnt surprised by the win because the president is very persevering  who tells Cameroonians what can be done and what is not possible to be done.

Opposition candidate Joshua Osih, who has compared the inability of English-speaking voters to reach the polls to South Africas former system of apartheid, accused Biya of using the machinery of the state to ensure another term.

Mondays troop deployment was intended to punish the majority of Cameroonians who are disgruntled with Biyas long stay in power and want him out, Osih said.

Troops were seen at the homes of opposition candidates Kanto and Cabral Libii, who had urged Cameroonians to defend their rights if they feel cheated.

The minister of territorial administration, Paul Atanga Nji, said the troops were not meant to intimidate people, but rather to protect them from politicians who are pushing naive youth to the streets.

Dissatisfaction has been high in the English-speaking Southwest and Northwest, where analyst Hans De Marie Heungoup with the International Crisis Group said only a few counties polling stations opened. Biya didnt campaign there.

Normally the head of state should be worried to be elected when two of the 10 regions of the country almost have not participated, Heungoup told the AP. But in the reality of Cameroon, the president doesnt care.

The Anglophone unrest began after lawyers and teachers in the English-speaking regions peacefully protested what they called creeping marginalization by Cameroons French-speaking majority. English-speakers make up about 20 per cent of the population.

After the government cracked down, armed separatists emerged and declared an independent state of Ambazonia. Civilians caught in the fighting have pleaded for peace.

Now everything depends on how Biya interprets his new mandate, Simon Munzu, a former UN diplomat and co-ordinator of next months Anglophone General Conference, told the AP. The conference organized by religious leaders focuses on a possible national dialogue.

If the president sees this as a chance to address Anglophone grievances we should be optimistic, Munzu said. But if Biya, influenced by hardliners, sees the vote as approval of the status quo, it will be a disaster. It will mean he adopts a high-handed attitude, not wanting to talk to anybody  preferring to pursue the military approach.

Biya, whom observers describe as a distant figure even to ambassadors and some of his ministers, will be invited to the Anglophone conference, Munzu said.

Munzu and Heungoup warned that Cameroon faces disaster if Biya suddenly leaves power without preparing for a transition even within the ruling party, with its own tensions along generational and ethnic lines.

I can only hope he is thinking about the interests of the nation, Munzu said. Cameroonians are hungry for a proper democracy, he added, noting the countrys colonial past and legacy of autocratic rule: They didnt think it would last this long.MOSCOWThe Kremlin says it is concerned about U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to withdraw from a landmark nuclear weapons treaty.

Trump announced on Saturday that the United States would walk away from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed in 1987 in a major step to ease Cold War tensions.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Monday that Putin is denying Trumps allegations that Russia has violated terms of the treaty. Peskov says the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would make the world a more dangerous place.

The Kremlins comments came as U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton began his visit to Russia on Monday. Peskov said Russian officials are anxious to hear Boltons explanations for Trumps decision.

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Read more about:The Norwegian saboteurs skied across the Telemark pine forest in winter whites, phantom apparitions gliding over moonlit snow. They halted at a steep river gorge and gazed down at a humming hydroelectric power plant where Nazi scientists had developed a mysterious, top-secret project.

Lt. Joachim Ronneberg, the 23-year-old resistance fighter in command, and his eight comrades  all carrying cyanide capsules to swallow if captured  had been told by British intelligence only that the plant was distilling something called heavy water, and that it was vital to Hitlers war effort.

Hours later, in one of the most celebrated commando raids of the Second World War, Ronneberg and his demolition team sneaked past guards and a barracks full of German troops, stole into the plant, set explosive charges and blew up Hitlers hopes for a critical ingredient to create the first atomic bomb.

Ronneberg, the last surviving member of the 1943 raid and one of the most decorated war heroes of a nation renowned for valorous resistance to the 1940-45 German Occupation, died in Alesund, Norway, on Sunday at age 99, his daughter, Birte Ronneberg, said.

A retired journalist and administrator for NRK, Norways public television and radio broadcasting company, Ronneberg and his saboteurs were showered with international honours after the war for what they had regarded as a suicide mission. It was celebrated in books, documentaries and films, notably Anthony Manns 1965 production, The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas in what critics called a fact-flawed version of what had happened.

It was not until the wars end in 1945 that Ronneberg learned the significance of the raid. The first time I heard about atomic bombs and heavy water was after Americans dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he told The New York Times in 2015. Had the raid failed, he concluded, London would have ended up looking like Hiroshima.

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Ronneberg led other raids, attacking German supply lines and destroying a railway bridge with plastic explosives. He received Norways highest decoration for military gallantry, the War Cross with Sword, from King Haakon VII; the Distinguished Service Order from Britain; the Legion of Honour and Croix de Guerre from France; and the American Presidential Medal of Freedom With Silver Palm. (The latter was established by Harry Truman to honour civilians who aided the war effort; it was replaced in 1963 by the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)

Joachim Holmboe Ronneberg was born in Alesund, Norway, on Aug. 30, 1919, one of two sons of Alf Ronneberg and the former Anna Krag Sandberg. Joachim and his brother, Erling, who also became a wartime resistance fighter, attended schools in Alesund, on Norways northwest coast. At 21, he escaped to England. He was a good skier and enlisted in the Kompani Linge, the Norwegian-exile special forces.

Ronneberg and his saboteurs were showered with international honours after the war for their mission. It was celebrated in books, documentaries and films, notably Anthony Manns 1965 production, The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas.

In 1948, Ronneberg joined the NRK public broadcasting network in Norway. He became a journalist and program director and retired in 1988.

He married Liv Foldal, a crafts teacher, in 1949, and had three children: Jostein, Asa and Birte.

For years, Ronneberg lectured widely about Norways history and his wartime experiences. While The Heroes of Telemark was filmed on locations in Norway, he often scoffed at the liberties taken with the facts. They took a true story and spun their own idea around it, he told The Daily Telegraph of London in 2010. It should never have been allowed.

While long celebrated abroad, the exploits of Ronneberg and nine other Norwegians involved in thwarting the Nazi nuclear project became widely known in Norway only in 2015 when NRK, the state broadcaster, ran The Heavy Water War, a six-episode miniseries that became a national sensation. The statue of Ronneberg in front of City Hall in Alesund, the town where he lived, was put up later that year to observe his 95th birthday.

Ronneberg applauded the television series for introducing younger Norwegians to wartime history they knew little about, but he expressed annoyance that it had altered the names of the directors of Norsk Hydro, the company that ran the plant he blew up, who had collaborated with the Nazis. He told The Times that it was quite incredible that their real identities had been concealed and that painful memories of collaboration with the Nazis by Norways wartime leader Vidkun Quisling still hampered a clear and full historical reckoning.

There is a lot of talk about never again, but this is impossible if we dont remember what happened back then, Ronneberg said.

During preparations in England for the raid, the saboteurs had been promised a place in history by the mastermind of the operation, Leif Tronstad. But none of the men were there for history, Neal Bascomb said in perhaps the most definitive book on the raid, The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitlers Atomic Bomb (2016).

If you went to the heart of the question, none of them were there for heavy water, or for London, Bascomb wrote. They had seen their country invaded by the Germans, their friends killed and humiliated, their families starved, their rights curtailed. They were there for Norway, for the freedom of its lands and people from Nazi rule.WASHINGTONThe midterm elections could bring sweeping changes to Medicaid, from possible eligibility expansions to new rules requiring low-income people to work, depending on voters choices for governors offices and state legislatures across the country.

Medicaid covers more people than any other federally funded health program.

Medicaid expansion advocates are optimistic that voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah will pass ballot initiatives to broaden coverage, buoyed by strong polling numbers and the fact that petitions in those states to force ballot votes garnered tens of thousands of more signatures than needed. Experts say other states, such as Kansas and Georgia, could expand eligibility, depending on the electoral outcomes, especially if conservative priorities such as work requirements are added.

Uncertainty around the future of Medicaid expansion emerged in recent years because of court challenges and Republican efforts to repeal the 2010 health care law, but states that put their expansion discussions on hold are now revisiting their thinking, said Ben Sommers, associate professor of health policy and economics at Harvard University.

States are going to be back in this game, and we may see the steady trickle (of expansions) resume, Sommers said.

If approved by voters, expansions in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah would extend health insurance to more than 300,000 low-income people. Meanwhile, in Montana, another ballot initiative, if approved, would renew the states existing expansion, which covers nearly 100,000 people though it expires next year.

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Its possible that Florida and Missouri could hold expansion ballot initiatives in 2020, said Kelly Hall, director of health policy and partnerships at The Fairness Project, a group promoting ballot initiatives.

But experts note that a vote for expansion by ballot initiative doesnt necessarily mean an easy path forward if state officials balk. Take the case of Maine, where Republican Gov. Paul R. LePage refused to implement expansion after nearly 60 per cent of voters passed an expansion ballot initiative in 2017. The state Supreme Court ordered him this summer to move forward, but even now, the state is slow-walking the process with implementation likely to wait until next year at the earliest when LePages term ends.

Gubernatorial candidates competing to replace LePage are in favour of Medicaid expansion  Democrat Janet Mills and independents Terry Hayes and Alan Caron all support expansion. Republican Shawn Moody, while initially indicating that he would follow LePages lead in opposing it, recently said he will follow the law and expand as long as funding is available.

Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services appointed former Maine health commissioner and staunch Medicaid expansion opponent Mary Mayhew as deputy administrator and director of Medicaid and the Childrens Health Insurance Program, the top federal official overseeing the program. The agency said Mayhew will recuse herself from decisions related to Maine.

Experts say it would be politically dicey if governors in any states that pass expansion this year ignore their constituents will.

In Nebraska, advocates are confident a Maine-like situation wont arise if voters approve expansion.

The ballot language that voters will be deciding on was carefully crafted to avoid the exact issue that Mainers have run into with Gov. LePage, said Meg Mandy, campaign manager for expansion advocacy group Insure the Good Life.

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, who is up for re-election in the Cornhusker State, opposes expansion but said he will let voters decide. But a former state lawmaker and current state senator who unsuccessfully sued to prevent the question from being on the ballot suggested further legal action could be taken if voters approve it.

The November elections could also affect expansion in other red states.

Kansas state lawmakers passed expansion legislation last year only to have it vetoed by then-Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican. His successor, Jeff Colyer, also opposed the idea. But a close race for the governors seat this year could upend that.

Democratic candidate Laura Kelly and independent Greg Orman both favour expansion, while Republican Kris Kobach is opposed.

Health care experts are also monitoring Georgia and Florida, where expansion is a hot topic.

Democrats might not need a legislative majority to move on expansion in some states, said David Jones, an assistant professor at Boston Universitys School of Public Health. They just need enough seats to pressure moderates who could help them cobble together a coalition, he said.

That occurred earlier this year, when Virginia lawmakers voted to extend Medicaid coverage to roughly 400,000 low-income adults, following a 2017 electoral upset that gave Democrats 15 more seats in the House of Delegates. The shift left Republicans with razor-thin margins in both chambers.

After that, moderates were more willing to accept expansion, Democratic Gov. Ralph S. Northam said Thursday at a national conference in Washington. The lingering effects of the recession, struggling rural hospitals calls for expansion and the opioid crisis also fuelled support for broadening Medicaid, Northam said.

Experts say similar changes in state legislatures could ultimately propel holdout states closer to expansion. Seventeen states have not adopted expansion, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Florida in some ways is the Holy Grail of Medicaid expansion, said Jones of Boston University. If that were to flip, I think it would be a huge moment for Medicaid.

The chances of that are remote, however, even if a Democrat becomes governor, because Republicans still have the upper hand in the state legislature. Democrats are unlikely to take the Florida House but might pick up Senate seats, Jones said.

Incoming Florida Senate President Bill Galvano told the Miami Herald last month that he does not believe there is support in the legislature for the expansion of Medicaid contemplated in the Affordable Care Act.

Georgia is another red state where the forecast is iffy.

Expansion became a focus of the states gubernatorial race with Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former leader in the legislature, ardently supportive and Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp staunchly opposed.

Even with an Abrams win, expansion advocates would face an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled legislature. However, some conservatives  particularly those from rural regions where hospitals are struggling  expressed tentative support in the past.

Georgia is analogous to Virginia in the level of voter support for expansion, said Patricia Boozang, a health care expert with consulting firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. The rural health issue is a big factor.

Boozang added that if some red states do expand, they may add conservative-friendly elements, such as work requirements, like Virginia did.

The November elections could also spur changes in how states run their existing programs.

A Democratic gubernatorial win in a state such as Michigan might lead the state to reconsider its proposal to add work requirements to Medicaid, Boozang said.

But in more conservative states, elected Republicans could push for more work requirements and other changes, Jones said. Kentucky is one example of how new leadership led to rollbacks, he said.

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin asked federal officials to operate Kentuckys state-run insurance exchange and threatened to end Medicaid expansion. While he ultimately didnt eliminate expansion, Bevin did pursue significant changes, including work requirements.

Governors and legislators in states seeking work requirements, such as Arizona, Michigan and Ohio, play important roles in shaping those rules, Jones said. While work rules share similarities, they vary on key issues such as the number of hours people must work or whether individuals who fail to meet the requirements are locked out of coverage.

Full-on repeals of expansion are politically unpalatable since Medicaid is popular among voters, Sommers said. But a newly elected Republican governor could push for work requirements, which are also popular even among some Democrats, he said.

It has much less public outcry, he said. Its a much less contentious stand to take.TAPACHULA, MEXICOThousands of Central American migrants resumed an arduous trek toward the U.S. border Monday, with many bristling at suggestions there could be terrorists among them and saying the caravan is being used for political ends by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The caravans numbers have continued to grow as they walk and hitch rides through hot and humid weather, and the United Nations estimated that it currently comprises some 7,200 people, many of whom intend to continue the march north.

However, they were still at least 1,140 miles (1,830 kilometres) from the nearest border crossing  McAllen, Texas  and the length of their journey could more than double if they go to Tijuana-San Diego, the destination of another caravan earlier this year. That one shrank significantly as it moved through Mexico, and only a tiny fraction  about 200 of the 1,200 in the group  reached the California border.

The same could well happen this time around as some turn back, splinter off on their own or decide to take their chances on asylum in Mexico  as 1,128 have done so far, according to the countrys Interior Department.

While such caravans have occurred semiregularly over the years, this one has become a particularly hot topic ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections in the U.S., and an immigrant rights activist travelling with the group accused Trump of using it to stir up his Republican base.

It is a shame that a president so powerful uses this caravan for political ends, said Irineo Mujica of the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras  People Without Borders  which works to provide humanitarian aid to migrants.

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Some have questioned the timing so close to the vote and whether some political force was behind it, though by all appearances it began as a group of about 160 who decided to band together in Honduras for protection and snowballed as they moved north.

No one is capable of organizing this many people, Mujica said, adding that there are only two forces driving them: hunger and death.

Earlier in the day Trump renewed threats against Central American governments and blasted Democrats via Twitter for what he called pathetic immigration laws.

In another tweet, he blamed Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for not stopping people from leaving their countries. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them, he wrote.

A team of AP journalists travelling with the caravan for more than a week has spoken with Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans, but has not met any Middle Easterners, who Trump suggested were mixed in with the Central American migrants.

It was clear, though, that more migrants were continuing to join the caravan.

Ana Luisa Espana, a laundry worker from Chiquimula, Guatemala, joined the caravan as she saw it pass through her country.

Even though the goal is to reach the U.S. border, she said: We only want to work and if a job turns up in Mexico, I would do it. We would do anything, except bad things.

Denis Omar Contreras, a Honduran-born caravan leader also with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said accusations that the caravan is harbouring terrorists should stop.

There isnt a single terrorist here, Contreras said. We are all people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. And as far as I know there are no terrorists in these four countries, at least beyond the corrupt governments.

The migrants, many of them with blistered and bandaged feet, left the southern city of Tapachula in the early afternoon Monday under a burning sun bound for Huixtla, about 25 miles (40 kilometres) away.

In interviews along the journey, migrants have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption. The caravan is unlike previous mass migrations for its unprecedented large numbers and because it largely sprang up spontaneously through word of mouth.

Carlos Leonidas Garcia Urbina, a 28-year-old from Tocoa, Honduras, said he was cutting the grass in his fathers yard when he heard about the caravan, dropped the shears on the ground and ran to join with just 500 lempiras ($20 U.S.) in his pocket.

We are going to the promised land, Garcia said, motioning to his fellow travellers.

Motorists in pickups and other vehicles have been offering the migrants rides, often in overloaded truck beds, and a male migrant fell from the back of one Monday and died.

It is the responsibility of the driver, but it is very dangerous, and there you have the consequences, Mexican federal police officer Miguel Angel Dominguez said, pointing to a puddle of blood around the mans head.

Police started stopping crowded trucks and forcing people to get off.

Caravan leaders have not defined the precise route or decided where on the U.S. border they want to arrive, but in recent years most Central American migrants travelling on their own have opted for the most direct route, which takes them to Reynosa, across from McAllen.

Late Sunday, authorities in Guatemala said another group of about 1,000 migrants had entered that country from Honduras.

Red Cross official Ulises Garcia said some injured people refused to be taken to clinics or hospitals.

We have had people who have ankle or shoulder injuries, from falls during the trip, and even though we have offered to take them somewhere where they can get better care, they have refused, because they fear theyll be detained and deported, Garcia said.

Roberto Lorenzana, a spokesman for El Salvadors presidency, said his government hopes tensions over the caravan decrease after the U.S. elections.

We have confidence in the maturity of United States authorities to continue strengthening a positive relationship with our country, Lorenzana said.

Asked if he thinks Trump will follow through on his threat to cut aid to El Salvador, he said, I dont know. Of course the president has a lot of power, but they will have to explain it there to the different government structures.

Lorenzana added that El Salvador has significantly reduced violence, a key driver of migration, and that the flow of Salvadoran migrants has dropped 60 per cent in two years.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said large numbers of migrants were still arriving in Mexico and were likely to remain in the country for an extended period.

The first waves of migrants began arriving in the southern town of Huixtla after an exhausting eight-hour trek and quickly staked out grassy spots in the town square to bed down overnight.

Marlon Anibal Castellanos, a 27-year-old former bus driver from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, roped a bit of plastic tarp to a tree to shelter his wife, six-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.

Castellanos said the family walked for six hours until they could go no farther. They saw the dead man who fell from the truck, and the danger of being on the road was troublesome, out in the middle of the countryside far from an ambulance or medical care should the kids to pass out in the heat.

Its hard to travel with children, Castellanos said.

Read more about:The Trudeau government deserves only half a cheer for promising to make it easier for people convicted of minor cannabis-related offences to obtain pardons.

Now that cannabis has been legalized in this country, its the very least the government could do to redress the injustice for the estimated 500,000 Canadians who have a criminal record for possessing pot.

But we wont offer a truly enthusiastic round of applause because the pardon measures announced last week by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale dont go nearly far enough.

It is disappointing, to begin with, that the government could offer only a sketchy outline of what it intends to do to right this injustice.

The government has been working on legalizing pot ever since it was elected three years ago, and the date that would come into effect had been known for months. Yet it was not ready with legislation on the much-discussed issue of pardons. All Goodale could do was promise that a bill to put this into effect will be introduced by the end of the year.

That keeps many thousands of Canadians waiting months longer to have the shadow of a cannabis conviction lifted from them. As has been well documented, that can have profoundly negative effects on their ability to get housing, obtain a job, volunteer or enter another country.

Goodale did spell out some important and positive steps last week. He said the normal application fee of $631 will be waived, and the standard waiting periods (five or 10 years, depending on the type of conviction) will be eliminated. Thats all to the good.

However, he made it clear that what the government has in mind amounts to what is known as a record suspension. That would not erase a past offence; rather, it would set the conviction aside and keep any record of it out of the main national police database. Anyone asked on a form whether they have been convicted of a criminal offence would still have to answer yes.

The governments plan falls well short of eliminating all records of a past offence, known as expungement. Thats what many defence lawyers, advocates for those with cannabis convictions and the federal New Democrats are calling for, and theres a strong argument for going in that direction.

By legalizing cannabis, the government is effectively conceding that nearly a century of prohibition of the drug in this country has been at best wrong-headed, and at worst a grave injustice perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of people. Yet from what we know now, its intended remedy will be a half-measure that will put the onus on those convicted to seek a pardon and still leave them vulnerable to potential negative consequences.

One argument against going all the way to full expungement of past convictions is that it wont erase records held by U.S. authorities and so those with past convictions may still find themselves prevented from crossing the border. But the Americans have already made it clear that the pardon policy wont cut the ice with them anyway, and their policy is that its business as usual at the border.

Beyond that, the government argues that expungement should be reserved for crimes that amounted to an historical injustice. It has gone that route with Bill C-66, a law passed in June that automatically expunged the records for some past offences related to same-sex relationships. For those affected, its as if the conviction never happened.

Theres a good argument, however, to treat cannabis convictions in much the same way. Considerable research has shown the law was applied unevenly, that Indigenous, Black and poor people were penalized much more severely because police and prosecutors chose to use the pot laws as a weapon against them. They disproportionately suffered the effects of a criminal conviction in the past and continue to live with that stigma today.

There may be technical or logistical reasons why past pot convictions cant all be erased immediately. But in principle the government should do all it can to right this injustice as quickly as possible and as fully as possible.The Stars Washington reporter, Daniel Dale, has invented an art form. I dont mean the one where he lists Trumps lies  thats informational math and its a grim business  but the tweets he threads as he covers Trumps manic Republican rallies across the U.S.

The writer David Sedaris notes conversations overheard on streets and in airports, and weird debates with Americans, his readers, his dentist, a strange torqued reality. You have what we in France call good time teeth, Dr. Barras says. Why would you want to change them? Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe? And from there, an itemized conversation builds.

Dale does a version of this, but with everything that vents from Trumps white lips extended in a sea of orange skin. He has covered so many rallies  Trump, hooked on veneration and an arena of MAGA hats, needs them badly  that his writerly style has evolved. He collects remarks like Trumps greatest hits, like a cockle-picker collecting bivalves. Only the best will do.

Dale narrated Trumps rally in Missoula, Mont. last Thursday, but safely from Washington, which is a relief. The thread is always surreal.

Trump on hangars: I love these hangars. I love a hangar. Theres nothing like a hangar, Trump begins. He is in a hangar.

Trump on military planes: You have F-35s, you have the F-18s, the Super-Dupers  the Hornets. We have them all. (I checked this one. There are no planes called Super Dupers).

Dale on the number of men who spontaneously weep while grovelling before Trump. The crying characters in Trumps stories tend to share three characteristics: they are male, they are tough or strong, and they do not have names.

Dales special Combo Tears Alert and Sir Alert: Trump says that when he was walking in, a big strong guy grabbed me, and he was almost crying, and it happens every time, and many times. And he said: Sir, Mr. President, thank you so much for saving our country.

Trump after a woman shouts I Love You: Its finally a woman! You know I get it from the men all the time.

Trump on hair: Well, the one thing that has been really great about this whole endeavour is they used to say he wears a hairpiece, he wears a hairpiece. They dont say that anymore.

Dale interjects. This is one of the very weirdest speeches Ive ever heard Trump give.

Trump on Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017: Any guy that can do a body slam, hes my kind of  crowd cheers  hes my guy. I shouldnt say this.

Dale on assaulting reporters. This is truly horrible. The president is gleefully applauding violence against a journalist amid an international controversy over the apparent murder of another journalist who lived in the U.S.

Dale sums up. Trump has concluded. That was comprehensively bonkers. By far the most significant part was his praise for a congressmans assault on a journalist.

This is the kind of reporting American journalists dont know how to do. They report straightforwardly without context or comment or colour, a dull-checked thing a journalism robot might produce in the future.

But Dale makes himself what is known in literature as a reliable narrator, the sane one, which is perhaps the only way to report successfully on a madman orchestrating more violent threats by the day.

Trump increasingly rouses crowds to violent chants against reporters, women, migrant families, you name it. And one day, in the most gun-loving nation on the planet, one of Trumps overstimulated unwell fans is going to shoot someone, probably a journalist.

The U.S. tortures prisoners, moral line crossed. But the seizure, torture and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi killers in a foreign embassy was another line. Im pleased to see that Americans are still shocked by imagining a man on a table, his fingers falling serially to the floor.

But not Trump or his people. Will it be a bullet, a knife, or a bomb that kills a journalist? Will there be another newsroom massacre? When will Trump do a Putin? Will the Russian journalist Masha Gessen be poisoned in New York?

Something is coming.

Read more about:EDWARDSVILLE  Step into the darkness of the 1820 Col. Benjamin Stephenson Houses candlelit parlor on Oct. 28 to ponder the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Anne Williams, a historic interpreter certified with the National Association of Interpreters, will perform a selection of Poes famous poems and short stories as dramatic recitations. The recitations are framed in the context of the authors life, interspersed with excerpts from newspapers, letters, and observations by contemporaries.

Selections will include several (not all) of the following: The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Oval Portrait, The Cask of Amontillado, Morella, The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Bells, For Annie, A Dream Within A Dream,  El Dorado, The Haunted Palace, The Fall of the House of Usher (abridged), or excerpt from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

With experience in first-person interpretation, Anne Williams integrates her passion for history, literature, and drama to perform literature in the context of the authors life. Anne has been a volunteer with the historic Daniel Boone Home near Defiance, Missouri since 1996.

In 2007, she became a volunteer with the National Park Service at the Old Courthouse and the Grant Home in St. Louis. Recently, Anne worked with 25 historic sites and one museum to establish Historic Saint Louis, which links all these sites together through a story board.

Anne performs the Poe program annually at the historic Lemp Mansion in St. Louis. Anne has performed at the Poe Visitor Center in Fordham (Bronx); the Poe Museum in Richmond (including at the wine reception hosted by Vincent Prices daughter, Victoria); the Free Library of Philadelphia; the Poe home in Philadelphia; the Lyndhurst Castle in Tarrytown; the Daniel Boone Home in Defiance, Missouri; the Chatillon-DeMensil Mansion; Faust Park; and various other Missouri venues.

New to Annes list of historic sites this year is the Benjamin Stephenson House. The special Mourning Exhibit sets the mood for Annes selected readings in the parlor, which displays the 1822 funeral for Col. Stephenson.

Seating is limited for this program and tickets must be purchased in advance. Three performances are available for this popular program on Oct. 28: 4-5:30 p.m., 6-7:30 p.m., and 8-9:30 p.m. Tickets are $16 and can be purchased online at www.stephensonhouse.org or by calling the historic site at 618-692-1818.

The 1820 Col. Benjamin Stephenson House is located at 409 S. Buchanan, Edwardsville. Please note, this event is for persons 17 years or older.For the Intelligencer

Edwardsville-based law firm, Gori Julian & Associates, P.C. partnered with Global Brew Tap House once again to co-host Oktoberfest in Edwardsville City Park. On Monday, they announced that the event raised $20,000 for Mesothelioma research. Proceeds from this event will be donated to the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF). $1,500 of the total money raised was donated by Global Brew from beer sales at Oktoberfest. The remaining funds were raised from sponsorships, a raffle for a trip to Germany and various other activities at the event that took place on Sept. 29.

MARF is a non-profit, charity organization dedicated to supporting families and victims of Mesothelioma through education, advocacy and research. Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that affects mesothelial cells, a smooth membrane lining the chest, heart, lungs and abdomen. The most common cause of Mesothelioma in the United States is asbestos.ALTON  Forget your love life, fame and fortune, or speaking with dead relatives, theres one thing people really want to know about the future.

I think the election is going to surprise a lot of people, said Micheal Pederson of OFallon, an intuitive Tarot card reader. But thats not intuition, thats what I got just watching the news.

Pederson was among dozens of vendors at the Autumn Psychic and Crystal Fair held Saturday and Sunday in Altons Mineral Springs Hotel. He wasnt expecting the election question from a nosy reporter, but he did get a lot of people interested in their own personal futures, a subject Pederson said hes uniquely qualified to handle.

About ten years ago I started seeing the interconnections between the cards and was able to make a better reading because Im not telling you just what all the cards mean, but what they say as a whole, Pederson said. Rather than just giving you individual little pieces of information, I can paint a whole picture for you.

And just how accurate are these intuitive Tarot card readings?

It really varies on the reading and it varies on what the cards are. Some times Ive told people specific things that are going to happen and other times its just kind of vague, like look for something along these lines to happen, Pederson said. I have had some exact hits on dates, which surprised me as much as the person I did the reading for.

There was a lot of reading going on at the Psychic and Crystal Fair, and patrons filled chairs and tables waiting patiently for the opportunity to have their cards, tea leaves or palms read for a fee. Some vendors, like Afro-Cuban tradition medium and seer Hezekiah Williams of St Louis, offered to make a direct connection to the beyond for customers.

I deliver messages from the spirits of ancestors who are trying to talk to people, or identify the problems in peoples lives, Williams said. We can foretell the future of great blessings, or of disasters that might come into your life and see if we can put an end to that before it happens.

Most people are going to leave knowing that their grandmother or someone has been watching them and they need to pay attention to some things, Williams said. Everybody has that little voice in their head that they listen to about things going on, and nine times out of ten, those are your ancestors or spirits giving you little messages.

When asked what the Alton city ancestors saw in the communitys future, Williams offered an optimistic assessment.

I think in Alton we will come into a better perspective of light, a better light is going to be shining, Williams said. If Alton continues to do what theyre doing I think a lot of people are going to start moving here and start a family.

Lisa Arenas came from Vandalia to visit the Psychic and Crystal Fair and she was pleased with the Tarot card reading she had.

Its a very personal, touching, wonderful experience, Arenas said. It really makes you gain a lot more insight into yourself and your life. It gives you a different perspective.

Arenas encouraged others to try a reading.

Have an open mind, give it a shot, Arenas said. You never know what youre going to get out of it. It stays with you.

Joyce Payer of Winfield, Missouri had tea leaf reading.

Ive never had my tea leaves read before, but she was pretty much right on, Payer said. I came looking for answers and she gave me the answers I wanted.

Psychics werent the only attraction on Saturday and Sunday. The Mineral Springs Hotel featured a number of new age and metaphysical products and activities. There were sound healers, masseuses, crafts people and dancers. There was also an entire room full of crystal and mineral products of every type, shape and color, including what looked to an uninformed inquisitor like a pile of coal.

The inquisitor was politely corrected. The coal-looking stuff was actually shungite, a mineral only available in a certain region of Russia.

The shungite blocks the electromagnetic fields in the body, said Carolyn Voss of Highland, who was selling shungite pendants and talismans. So we need to shungite everybody because we have children who are on wi-fi, they are on pads, cell phones and everything else.

We are seeing all kinds of health effects, insomnia, anxiety, depression, cancer, auto-immune diseases from electromagnetic fields, Voss said. You put shungite on your router and it eliminates some of the electromagnetic fields moving through your home, and it doesnt interfere with your wi-fi reception at all.

So will good little boys and girls get a lump of shungite in their Christmas stockings this year? The cards were unclear about that possibility.GODFREY  Allowing the village attorney to draw up an ordinance allowing solar farms in Godfrey village limits will be among a number of items considered at a special meeting Tuesday, Oct. 23.

The meeting was called after last weeks regular meeting was cancelled after the murder of Trustee Eldon Twirp Williams in Alton. His funeral was held Monday. The meeting is set for 6 p.m. at Village Hall.

Among items on the agenda is Consideration and to Give Authorization to the Village Attorney to draft an Ordinance to Allow Solar Farms within the Village of Godfrey.

There has been interest in a number of solar farm projects recently in Madison County. Part of the reason is the passage of the Illinois Future Energy Jobs Act in 2016.

Within the past few months special use permits have been approved for two solar farm projects in Madison County, and other projects are being proposed or considered in local municipalities.

The board will also consider an ordinance allowing the sale of the villages wastewater sewer and treatment system to the Illinois American Water Co. The board approved the sale earlier this month, but need an ordinance to make it official.

The village will receive $13.25 million for the system, with $5 million of that going into a special fund to abate future rate increases. The remaining money can be spent at the discretion of the village board, with the approval of two-thirds of the members.

Once the ordinance is approved it will take approximately 10 months for the sale to be finalized, including approval by the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6477.ALTON  Some boasted a secret ingredient, others the simple basics. But whatever their recipe almost two dozen teams battled each other and high winds to bring chili to a very large crowd at Alton Main Streets annual Downtown Alton Chili Cook-Off.

Winning the Peoples Choice award and the coveted silver ladle was The Fountains of Godfrey. Other winners were: Individual  Mike Ramsey; Organization  Friends for Monica Bristow; Business  The Fountains of Godfrey; Restaurant  The Schoolhouse Grill at Senior Services Plus; and Best Decorated  Parrot Heads of the Riverbend.

Weve got 23 teams this year, Sara McGibany, executive director of Alton Main Street said. Its a little bit bigger than average. It was not even hard to find teams this year, they came to us.

She described the competition as very heated.

Its a great civic event just to bring people together to help spread the word about their organization or their business or their restaurant, she said. But it also serves as one of our biggest fundraisers of the year.

The cook-off was held in the valet parking lot of the Argosy casino.

Teams started setting up a few hours before the event started at noon, and crowds quickly formed once serving began. Nathan Speckhart came from Springfield to taste the various chilis.

I love chili and my fiance lives in the area, he said, noting that he had tried almost all of them. Delicious. I really liked the Army chili, it was tasty good.

His fiance, Katy Pugh, of West Alton, said she was also a chili fan.

I love chili, its just part of the fall season, she said. It makes it perfect.

Paul Stover, of Alton, competed in the individual category. He had competed in previous years as part of a business.

No one wanted to help me this year, so I just did it as an individual, he said. Its just fun, and people enjoying your food.

Stover said what sat his chili apart this year was he grew all of the vegetables.

And I use local honey, he said.

Matthew Cooper, head chef of Old Bakery Beer Co., said he was sticking to a basic recipe.

I like to keep things simple, he said. Tomato sauce, beans, meat. I like to put a little beer in it.

At the other end of the event Stacy Harmon, catering manager for Lewis and Clark Community College, was dishing up their chili, which had a river theme.

Were by the Mississippi, we have a Mississippi chili today, she said. Black beans, crawfish, and its topped with fresh scallions and more crawfish.

Like many of the business and restaurant contestants, she said part of the reason for participating is promoting their business, but also to be part of the community.

That was one of the reasons U.S. Army recruiters were manning a booth.

Were doing pretty good, said Sgt. First Class Michael Thompson. Weve had plenty of complements from everybody thats come by. Its an opportunity for us to come out and do things for the community.

Across the way, the Olive Oil Marketplace was also dishing out chili.

Were down here promoting our store, said Mike Meeks. We have our seasoning packets we made. We cant give you the secret details.

He said the response has been really good.

Part of his job was also holding on to the canopy. High winds coming off the river were creating some problems for a few participants.

A little bit of wind, weve got to keep it down, he said.

Others were using kettle balls attached to the poles, or tying them down to large rocks.

Despite the wind, people kept moving up and down the stalls.

Theyre fantastic, said Raquel Vinluan, of Creve Coeur. A little spicy, a little chicken, a little brisket. The chili brisket has been my favorite.

She came with a friend, Terry Bratton, of Alton.

I think its great for the community, he said. A great event.

Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447.Smart ApplicationsInternational (Uganda) Ltd is a leading ICT solutions provider delivering awide variety of world class technological business solutions; through ourflagship automated medical scheme management system that uses biometricallycontrolled Smart card technology. Smart was founded to provide innovations forsecure, high tech solutions in Africa and beyond. We stay ahead throughconstant research and innovation that validates our 12 years experience. Withan impressive portfolio covering over 2,700 corporate clients supported by over2,900 service providers across the East African Region.The UN World FoodProgramme (WFP) is the United Nations frontline agency against world hunger. Itis the largest and longest serving humanitarian agency in Uganda. Currently WFPfocuses on three priority areas: Saving lives in Emergencies; BuildingResilience through Predictable Safety Nets; Improving Nutrition &Mother-and Child Health; and Supporting Small Holder Farmers to Access Markets.WFP has operations in various parts of the Country.Karlie Kloss and Josh Kushner at 2018 US Open on September 6, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Jackson Lee/GC Images)

Joshua Kushner has shared a stunning shot of his beautiful bride Karlie Kloss on the day of their wedding, giving fashion fans another look at the bride's Meghan Markle - inspired wedding dress.

The couple tied the knot in an intimate wedding ceremony on front of close friends and family in New York, with the bride looking breathtaking in a regal-inspired Dior dress.

Both Kushner and Kloss announced their nuptials by sharing just a single photo of their day with the caption "10.18.2018" however it seems the besotted groom is eager to share an insight into behind-the-scenes with his beautiful bride for her fans.

"I married my best friend" the newlywed captions a sweet photo of him taking a snap of supermodel Karlie clutching her hand-tied bouquet.

There were reportedly less than 80 people in attendance at the couple's Jewish ceremony earlier this month, however they are expected to have a larger event for friends and family next year.

"The wedding was intimate and moving," a guest told People at the time, "the couple were beaming with happiness."

The former Victoria's Secret Angel and the entrepreneur - who met at a dinner party in 2012 - announced their engagement in July, weeks after Joshua had popped the question in the Big Apple.

Karlie recently admitted she took inspiration from the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle when picking out her wedding gown.

She said: "She looked gorgeous on her wedding day. I feel it's a day what you want to just feel happy, beautiful, and not stressed. I think what makes someone most beautiful, especially on their wedding day, is when that glow comes from the inside.The adage that failures can teach many lessons seems quite...With the dates for filing nominations for Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh approaching, the fight among top Congress leaders is turning ugly. Faced with the eternal question of who will be the next chief minister, the Congress party leaders are currently locked up in a battle for ensuring maximum number of party nominations for their supporters.

The Congress's central election committee, the topmost body responsible for distributing tickets for party candidates, has to be reconstituted in order to accommodate the demands of various factions. Originally the committee included PCC chief Kamal Nath, leader of opposition Ajay Singh, AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry and two others. The state election campaign committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia also got himself included in the committee. Later, to strike a balance between other factions, party chief Kamal Nath included former chief minister Digvijay Singh as a special invitee.

The process to select candidates for 230 seats began early this month with four rounds of meeting already over. The party could so far decide on just 70 seats of which over 40 are sitting MLAs. The delay in the process and several rounds of meetings are being attributed to the differences among leaders over the names of the candidates. The nominations for the polls begin on November 2.

According to party insiders the entire leadership got divided into two camps with Jyotiraditya Scindia on one side and others led by the Kamal Nath-Digvijay Singh duo on the other. The initial two rounds of meeting to finalise the tickets were conducted among these four leaders which made other factions of the party in the state unhappy.

Former state party president Arun Yadav took strong exception to the ticket distribution process alleging that his supporters were grossly overlooked. He made a representation before party president Rahul Gandhi and senior leader Sonia Gandhi. After his meeting with the party high command, the central election committee was again reconstituted. Yadav was included in the committee by the virtue of being former PCC chief.

While all the senior Congress leaders from Madhya Pradesh are away in Delhi discussing the probable candidates, thousands of party ticket aspirants are also camping in the national capital. The situation has suddenly created a void in Madhya Pradesh from the Congress's side which is challenging 15 years of BJP rule.

According to party sources, the AICC has conducted a survey of probable candidates along with a separate private survey done by Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath. Apart from these service by professional agencies, the AICC had also sent their secretaries to various districts to look for candidates who could win elections. However, all these exercises seem to be in vain as senior leaders are fighting among themselves to ensure tickets to their supporters.

Madhya Pradesh Congress is a seriously divided lot among Digvijay Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath. With the elections fast approaching, each leader is flexing muscles to get party ticket to maximum number of supporters.

Though initially it seemed that former Chief Minister Digvijay Singh was being side-lined, his last minute statement that he was not campaigning because the party felt that his "speeches were causing harm to the Congress" made him comeback to the mainstream. Prior to this, the former chief minister was lying low for the last six months ever since Digvijay was dropped as the general secretary of Rahul Gandhi's new team. He was heading the coordination committee of the Madhya Pradesh Congress with the job of bringing together the warring factions at district-levels.

Meanwhile, another senior leader Scindia also went into sulking after many of his supporters in the Gwalior-Chambal region were left out in the initial list of shortlisted candidates. Later, Scindias demands were accommodated at the behest of Rahul Gandhi.In a bizarre incident, the younger son of Ramesh Yadav, chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, was found murdered at his home in a high-security zone of Lucknow on Sunday and the needle of suspicion is moving to his own mother.

Abhijeet Yadav (23), alias Vivek, was found dead in his bed at his Darul Shafa residence on Sunday morning. The 'high-profile' murder shocked Lucknow as Darul Shafa is a high-security zone where many MLAs and MLCs reside.

According to Assistant Superintendent of Police-East, Survesh Mishra, as per circumstantial evidence, the needle of suspicion is moving towards Abhijeet's mother, Meera Yadav. Mishra said Abhijeet had a habit of heavy drinking and this had greatly exasperated his mother. Police said, on Saturday night, Abhijeet had returned home excessively drunk and an altercation took place between mother and son.

Meanwhile, Abhijeet's elder brother, Abhishek, had lodged a complaint in Hazratganj police station against some unidentified persons for killing Abhijeet.

During interrogation, according to police, the family of Ramesh Yadav kept changing its statement frequently, which made the police suspect Meera. At the time of the incident, Meera and Abhishek were at home and the house was locked from inside. The family of Ramesh Yadav also showed undue haste in attempting to perform Abhijeet's last rites. However, when the police got information about the incident, it stopped the family and took Abhijeet's body for postmortem.

According to Additional Director General of Police, law and order, Anand Kumar, the postmortem revealed that Abhijeet had an injury on his head and had been strangled.

The family of Ramesh Yadav originally hailed from the western Uttar Pradesh district of Etah. Meera is the second wife of Ramesh Yadav, who had been staying in Darul Shafa with two sons, Abhishek and Abhijeet. Meera had been working with the Uttar Pradesh Tourism Department and had quit her job a few weeks back.The India-Japan bromance is very much alive and kicking. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Japan next week to meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, closer defence ties are likely to be on the table. The two prime ministers, who have always had a shared chemistry, are likely to go beyond just robust economic relations.



We expect to sign an agreement, between the Japanese and Indian naval defence forces, with regard to maritime domain awareness and security issues, said ambassador Kenji Hiramatsu at a Brookings India talk on Monday. We would like to have more cooperation in this domain too.

Also on the cards is the start of a kind a formal negotiation process, possibly of a mutual logistics support agreement. This would mean that India and Japan can use each others military bases, as well as provide logistical support. This agreement, if signed, will certainly signal a new high between India and Japan. This is not the first time that such a possibility is coming up. Closer defence ties were hinted at a meeting when the Japanese defence minister Itsunori Onodera came calling in August.

While India has struck just such a deal with France and America, signing up with Japan is certainly a move that will be closely watched by China.

Interestingly, Abe will embark on a two-day visit to China just before he reaches back home to welcome Modi. For India, which has been inching closer to Japan, this deal, or at least talking about it, will certainly be a significant step forward. Like the nuclear deal that Japan signed with India two years agonegotiations, which, by the admission of the Japanese ambassador, were not easythis too, will mark an added commitment to Indo-Japanese relations. This cementing of the relationshipnow an important plank in Indias foreign policycan really be credited to PM Modi. Trade ties and closer economic relations have defined the relationship so far. India and Japan coming closer in military matters, however, will add a different aspect to the relationship. Love is certainly in the air.The Indian Army has asked the Pakistan military to take back bodies of two "intruders" from that country who were killed in a gunfight along the Line of Control in Sunderbani sector of Jammu on Sunday, official sources said.

Two heavily armed Pakistani intruders and three soldiers were killed on Sunday in the gunfight after the Indian Army foiled an infiltration bid along the LoC.

The intruders were believed to be members of a border action team (BAT) comprising Pakistan Army jawans and trained militants, an Indian Army officer said on condition of anonymity on Sunday.

The sources said the Pakistan Army has been informed through established communication channels to take the bodies of its nationals, who were wearing combat uniforms.

Indian Army sources said a stern warning has been conveyed to the Pakistan Army to restrain terrorists operating from its soil.

The incident on Sunday took place around 1:20pm.

The sources said five to six Pakistani intruders crossed the LoC and fired on an Indian Army patrol in the Sunderbani sector.

They said since the talks between DGMOs of the two countries on May 29, the Indian Army has been exercising "utmost restraint" to uphold the ceasefire pact along the LoC despite regular provocative actions from across the border.

However, the Pakistan Army has been vigorously attempting to send terrorists across the LoC and seven infiltration bids have been foiled by the Indian Army since May 30, in which 23 terrorists have been killed.

Reports suggest concentration of a large number of terrorists in launchpads across the border and they are desperate to infiltrate into India before the onset of winter.President Abdulla Yameen's controversial bid to annul last month's election results was rejected by Maldives' top court on Sunday.

This ends weeks of uncertainty as Yameen's landslide defeat to an opposition candidate was upheld.

The five-judge Supreme Court bench ruled, unanimously, that Yameen failed to prove his claim that the election was rigged and a fresh poll was necessary.

Ibrahim Mohammed Solih had emerged winner in the September 23 poll and Yameen was forced to concede defeat. He had agreed to vacate the position on November 17 when his term ends.

But out of the blue, Yameen filed an appeal in the court asking it to throw away the result of the just ended election.

The move had attracted warnings from the United States and regional superpower India to respect the outcome.

As the decision was read out opposition activists celebrated outside the Supreme Court in the capital Male.

Opposition legislator Mariya Didi said Yameenwho lobbied the Supreme Court in 2013 to nullify election results in his favourshould now allow a smooth transition of power.

"We are pleased that the court ruled unanimously to uphold the will of the people," Didi said on Twitter.

"The case was based on conjecture and conspiracy theories." Yameen claimed magic ink had been used to rig the election and that votes marked for him disappeared inside ballot boxes.

The country's independent Elections Commission, through its lawyers, had argued his petition was based on false allegations and should be dismissed.

The Supreme Court bench last week refused to accept the testimony of three unnamed witnesses that Yameen's lawyers said would prove the election was fixed.

The next day Yameen went on national television to concede defeat a second time, making no reference to his controversial legal bid.

"This is my final address to the nation before I leave," said the 59-year-old.

"During my tenure, the most difficult thing for me was my failure to learn about the people. I just couldn't find out what shapes their wishes."

Ahead of court hearings in the capital Male last week, the United States warned "appropriate measures" would be taken if the will of the Maldivian people was undermined.

Europe and India have also issued similar warnings in the past.

The situation was similar to 2013, when Yameen convinced the Supreme Court to nullify the first round of voting, which he was trailing to opposition candidate Mohamed Nasheed.

A subsequent vote was then twice delayed, allowing Yameen time to forge alliances that helped him narrowly win a contested run-off. He has ruled with an iron fist ever since, crushing dissent and jailing or exiling all his major opponents.

In February, Yameen jailed the chief justice and another Supreme Court judge after accusing them of trying to topple him.

Yameen had initially suspended the court, parliament and the constitution and declared a state of emergency when legislators were about to impeach him.

Since his election defeat, several high-profile political prisoners including his estranged half-brother Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the Maldives for 30 years until 2008, have been released from

jail.

The US and its allies have been concerned by growing Chinese influence in the strategically positioned Indian Ocean archipelago, especially under Yameen's authoritarian rule.New Delhi, Oct 22 (PTI) Petrol pumps across the national capital were shut on Monday in protest against the Delhi government's refusal to cut sales tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel.

But for a dozen company-owned-company-operated petrol pumps in the city, all pumps refused fuel, sending motorists running low on fuel and scrambling for alternate refuels.

"All 400 petrol pumps and linked CNG pumps shut operations from 6.00 am Monday and will remain closed till 5 am tomorrow (Tuesday)," said Delhi Petrol Dealers Association (DPDA) President Nishcal Singhania.

Pump operators, however, refuelled emergency service vehicles like ambulances and government vehicles so as to ensure essential services are not hit, he said.

Long queues were witnessed at COCO outlets that were the only lifeline for motorists in the national capital.

DPDA said the Union government with effect from October 5 slashed prices of petrol and diesel by Rs 2.50 by way of a cut in excise duty and asking state-owned oil firms to bear subsidy. This was matched by several states by reducing value-added tax (VAT).

Haryana and Uttar Pradesh (UP), which border the national capital, have reduced VAT, he said. "But Delhi government refused to reduce VAT on petrol and diesel, resulting in fuels becoming more expensive than bordering Haryana and UP."

Petrol in Delhi Monday was priced at Rs 81.44 per litre after a 30 paise cut in rates. Diesel is being sold at Rs 74.92 a litre, down 27 paise over the previous day.

Petrol is priced at Rs 80.14 a litre in Gurugram, Rs 79.02 in Noida, Rs 78.87 in Ghaziabad and Rs 80.39 in Faridabad - the cities which share borders with the national capital.

Diesel in Gurugram is priced at Rs 73.78 per litre, at Rs 73.02 in Noida, Rs 72.88 in Ghaziabad and Rs 74.01 in Faridabad.

Cheaper petrol and diesel in UP and Haryana has resulted in motorists, particularly truckers, refuelling in these states rather than in the national capital.

"Because of the high price in Delhi and low prices in states like UP and Haryana, customers are deserting the petrol pumps in Delhi, leading to a huge drop in sales," he said.

Singhania said the purpose of the day-long strike was to invite the attention of the Delhi government towards the issue and the Association will decide on the next course of action depending on the response of the government.

Following the October 5 price cut, Haryana and UP were among various other states that reduced VAT on petrol and diesel.

DPDA asked the Delhi government to immediately follow leads of other states and reduce VAT on petrol and diesel to encourage commuters to buy Euro-VI grade fuel.

After the Centre cut excise duty by Rs 1.50 per litre and asked PSU oil firms to subsidise fuel by Re 1, Maharashtra and Gujarat governments were among the first to announce a matching Rs 2.50 cut.

They were later joined by Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Tripura, UP, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Assam, Uttarakhand, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and Bihar with similar moves. Jammu and Kashmir, which is under the governor's rule, too reduced the tax on the two fuels.

Maharashtra, however, reduced VAT only on petrol and not on diesel.

Even before the excise duty cut, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh last month reduced VAT to cushion consumers for a spate of price hikes.

Delhi government has however till date not cut VAT on either of the fuels. PTI ANZ ANZ ANU

ANUWashington, Oct 22 (AFP) President Donald Trump on Monday called the migrant caravan heading toward the US-Mexico border a national emergency, saying he has alerted the US border patrol and military.

"Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in," he said on Twitter.

"I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy (sic). Must change laws!" (AFP) SCY

SCYMoscow, Oct 22 (AFP) White House national security advisor John Bolton on Monday began two days of meetings with senior Russian officials following Washington's weekend announcement of its withdrawal from a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty.

The Moscow visit by Bolton was planned before the Saturday announcement by President Donald Trump that the US was ditching the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the INF, a move Moscow has already denounced as "dangerous."

The treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles was signed in 1987 by then US president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who on Sunday said that "dropping these agreements... shows a lack of wisdom" and was a "mistake".

Bolton arrived in Russia Sunday and is set to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

On Monday morning he met his Russian counterpart, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.

On Tuesday he may also speak about the treaty with President Vladimir Putin, according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said the Russian leader was looking for "clarifications" about US intentions.

Peskov told journalists Monday that ditching the treaty "will make the world more dangerous" and rejected US claims Moscow has violated the pact, instead accusing Washington of doing so.

"It is the United States that is eroding the foundations and main elements of this pact" with its missile defense capabilities and drones, he said.

But Trump on Saturday claimed Russia had long violated the treaty.

"We're the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we've honoured the agreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement, so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out," he told reporters.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years," he said.

"And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons (while) we're not allowed to."

The row comes ahead of what is expected to be a second summit between Trump and Putin this year.

The Trump administration has complained of Moscow's deployment of Novator 9M729 missiles, which Washington says fall under the treaty's ban on missiles that can travel distances of between 310 and 3,400 miles (500 and 5,500 kilometres).

The INF resolved a crisis over Soviet nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles targeting Western capitals.

The latest rift could have "the most lamentable consequences", political analyst Alexei Arbatov told Interfax news agency, dragging Russia into a "new cycle of the arms race".

A Russian foreign ministry official earlier accused Washington of implementing policy "toward dismantling the nuclear deal".

For many years, Washington has been "deliberately and step by step destroying the basis for the agreement," said the unnamed official quoted by state news agencies.

The official accused the United States of backing out of international agreements that put it on an equal footing with other countries because it wanted to protect American "exceptionalism".

Bolton himself is pressuring Trump to leave the INF and has blocked talks to extend the New Start treaty on strategic missiles set to expire in 2021, according to Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

The US plan to withdraw from the INF is also targeting China. As a non-signatory, Beijing can develop intermediate-range nuclear weapons without constraints.

US-Russia ties are under deep strain over accusations Moscow meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The two countries are also at odds over Russian support for the Syrian government in the country's civil war, and the conflict in Ukraine.

On Friday, the US Justice Department indicted the finance chief of Russia's leading internet troll farm for allegedly interfering with US congressional elections to be held in November.

Russia accused the United States of fabricating the charges.

While no new summit between Trump and Putin has yet been announced, one is expected in the near future.

The two leaders will be in Paris on November 11 to attend commemorations marking 100 years since the end of World War I. (AFP) SMJ

SMJWashington, Oct 22 (AFP) A US army general was among those injured in a Taliban attack on top US and Afghan security chiefs inside a highly secure compound last week in Kandahar province, a military spokesman confirmed.

US Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley, in charge of NATO's military advisory mission in Afghanistan, suffered at least one gunshot wound in Thursday's attack, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

A gunman wearing an Afghan security forces uniform opened fire on a group including General Scott Miller -- the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan -- and powerful Afghan police chief General Abdul Raziq as they ended a meeting in the southern city of Kandahar.

Raziq, an anti-Taliban strongman and key US ally who was credited with keeping a lid on the insurgency in the south, was killed along with Kandahar's provincial intelligence chief and an Afghan journalist.

Colonel David Butler, spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, initially confirmed on Twitter that three unidentified people were injured: one US service member, one US civilian and a coalition contractor.

Later, in tweets discussing US media reports that named Smiley, he confirmed he was wounded.

That the Taliban could mount a deadly insider assault in such a secure location rattled Afghanistan, a country long used to high-profile targeted killings and violence.

It was also an unusual incident for the US military, whose generals seldom face attack and are rarely wounded.(AFP)

RUP

RUPWashington, Oct 23 (AFP) US President Donald Trump has said he was "not satisfied" with Riyadh's explanation of how journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, died inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Asked if he believed the Saudis were telling the truth about the circumstances surrounding the 59-year-old's death three weeks ago, Trump told reporters on Monday at the White House: "We will know very soon." "I am going to know very shortly because I have a great group of people in Turkey right now and a great group of people in Saudi Arabia," Trump said.

"They are coming back tonight and tomorrow and I will know very soon." "And I am not satisfied with what I have heard." Saudi officials originally said Khashoggi, who entered the diplomatic mission on October 2, had left unharmed, before announcing Friday he was killed inside the building in what they described as an altercation.

The case has shone the spotlight on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has spearheaded a reform drive for the kingdom but now faces a stream of allegations -- denied by Riyadh -- that he ordered Khashoggi's killing. (AFP) ANB

ANBIstanbul, Oct 23 (AFP) Turkey said Monday the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was "savagely planned" as evidence emerged of a body double leaving the building in the murdered journalist's clothes.

US President Donald Trump said he was "not satisfied" with Riyadh's explanation of the Washington Post contributor's demise, as Turkish investigators hunted clues in a case that has tarnished the image of powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Upping the pressure on Riyadh, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to reveal Tuesday the "naked truth" about the death of Khashoggi, 59.

A harsh critic of the Saudi Crown Prince, Khashoggi disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to collect a document for his upcoming marriage.

A few days later, a Turkish government source said police believed he was murdered by a team sent to Istanbul, and on October 17, a Turkish newspaper said he was tortured and decapitated inside the consulate.

After more than two weeks of near silence, Saudi Arabia admitted on Saturday that Khashoggi was killed in an altercation at the consular office -- an explanation rejected by friends and foes alike.

Trump, who had said he found Riyadh's initial explanations credible, told reporters at the White House Monday: "I am not satisfied with what I have heard" since then, and expected to know more "very soon." US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met the Crown Prince behind closed doors in Riyadh Monday for talks the official Saudi Press Agency said stressed "the importance of the Saudi-US strategic partnership".

White House advisor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner said he had urged Prince Mohammed to be "fully transparent" as "the world is watching." The case has shone the spotlight on the Crown Prince, who was credited with spearheading a reform drive but is now accused of having ordered Khashoggi's murder -- a claim which Riyadh denies.

CNN International broadcast images showing a Saudi official playing a body double for Khashoggi, wearing the journalist's clothes to stage his exit, alive, from the consulate.

Omer Celik, spokesman of Erdogan's ruling party, said the killing "was planned in an extremely savage manner," and that "there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this." An Erdogan adviser, Yasin Aktay, wrote in the Yeni Safak daily that Riyadh's version of events "feels like our intelligence is being mocked".

The security official heading a team of 15 Saudis allegedly sent to Istanbul, called the head of Prince Mohammed's office, Bader al-Asaker, "four times after the murder", the adviser added.

Abdulkadir Selvi, whose Hurriyet newspaper columns are closely watched for indications of Erdogan's thinking, wrote that Khashoggi was slowly strangled to death before a Saudi forensic specialist cut his body into 15 pieces while listening to music.

"We cannot close this file until the crown prince is brought to account and removed from his post," said Selvi.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, a smooth former envoy to Washington, appeared on Fox News Sunday to blame a "rogue operation" by individuals who "exceeded their responsibilities" and then "tried to cover up for it".

With Khashoggi's remains still missing, Turkish police have found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate in an underground car park in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, state media said.

Erdogan has stopped short of directly pointing the finger at Riyadh. Analysts say he preferred to authorise the leak of incriminating information to pro-government media to put pressure on the kingdom.

He has twice held telephone talks with King Salman on the crisis, interpreted by some as sidelining the ageing monarch's son Prince Mohammed.

The timing of the controversy could not be worse for the crown prince as he prepares to host a key investment summit Tuesday, overshadowed by big name cancellations.

Dozens of executives from bankers Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to ride-hailing app Uber to Western leaders like International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde have pulled out of the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII), dubbed "Davos in the desert".

The chief executive of German industrial conglomerate Siemens Joe Kaeser was the latest to cancel, saying "for now, the truth must be found and justice must be served." Petrol giant Total's head Patric Pouyanne, however, said he will attend the meeting as "empty chair politics" do not advance human rights.

Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would not export arms to Riyadh "in the current situation," despite Germany's approval last month of 416 million euros ($480 million) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018.

Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, whose country is also a key arms supplier to Riyadh, told parliament: "We must get to the truth of what happened." (AFP) ANB

ANBLondon, Oct 22 (AFP) British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday called for the "truth" over the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

"I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms. We must get to the truth of what happened," May told parliament.

May was the first European leader to address the issue after Saudi Arabia on Saturday admitted that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate in what it said was a "brawl".

She was speaking the day before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to address ruling party lawmakers in an address he has vowed will reveal the "naked truth" about the case.

Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate on October 2 and Riyadh initially said that he had left and was missing. Saudi authorities later admitted he was killed in the building and 18 Saudi nationals had been detained.

In a joint statement, Britain, France and Germany on Sunday said Riyadh must clarify how Khashoggi died and its account must "be backed by facts to be considered credible". (AFP) MRJ

MRJ

MRJNashik, Oct 22 (PTI) Jainism emphasises the importance of non-violence for human welfare and compassion, President Ram Nath Kovind said Monday.

The President was speaking after inaugurating the 'Vishwashanti Ahimsa Sammelan' (world peace and non-violence conference) at Mangi Tungi in Nashik district.

The event was organised by the Bhagwan Shri Rishabhdev 108-feet Vishalkai Digambar Jain Murti Nirman Committee.

The President said in the Jain tradition, the principle of 'Ahimsa Paramodharma' (non-violence is the highest religious principle) is aimed at human welfare and compassion and not just shunning physical violence.

He said Bhagwan Mahavir gave special importance to 'Apirigraha'-- not taking more than what is essential to survive.

"Humankind is exploiting nature indiscriminately. Ruthless consumption and accumulation of resources is increasing. Due to this, phenomena like climate change is emerging as a challenge. Following the Jain tradition shows us the way out," Kovind said.

Jainism teaches people to live and let live, Kovind added.

At the event, the President presented the first Bhagwan Rishabhdev International Award, comprising Rs 11 lakh and a citation to the Teerthanker Mahaveer University at Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh. The university chancellor Suresh Jain accepted the award.

Speaking on the occasion, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis assured adequate funding for the development of the Jain religious place Mangi Tungi.

During his two-day Maharashtra visit, the President will Tuesday attend the convocation ceremony of the Symbiosis International University in Pune. PTI COR VT RHLNew Delhi, Oct 22 (PTI) The NHRC on Monday issued notices to the Railways and the Punjab government over the Amritsar accident in which nearly 60 Dussehra revellers were killed when they were run over by a train while watching the festivities.

Issuing the notices, the Commission observed that it cannot be said to be a "sane act" by people to sit on railway tracks, but at the same time, the "negligence on the part of the district authorities is apparent" behind this "bizarre and horrific incident".

The National Human Rights Commission issued notices to the state's chief secretary and the chairman of the Railway Board seeking detailed reports in the matter in four weeks, an NHRC spokesperson said.

The NHRC has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports that many people died on the spot and several others got seriously injured in Amritsar district of Punjab, where several people watching Dussehra celebrations from the railway tracks were mowed down by a passenger train on October 19.

"It seems that the local authorities and the organizers did not properly manage the crowd, gathered to watch the Dussehra celebrations. It was the responsibility of the State to provide proper safety and protection to the citizens during the event.

"If it is true, as reported in some sections of the media, that the railway authorities were not informed about the event, it indicates towards highly negligent and reckless attitude of the authorities responsible. This is a case of serious violation of human rights of the victims," the NHRC said in a statement.

The state government is expected to provide all details to the NHRC regarding disbursement of relief and rehabilitation to the aggrieved families as well as information on the status of the treatment being provided to the injured in different hospitals of Amritsar, it said.

The railway authorities have stated that they cannot be blamed, as they were not informed about the event. PTI KND RT

RTNew Delhi, Oct 22 (PTI) Strengthening of ties in key areas of defence, trade and infrastructure will top the agenda when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Japan next week, the country's envoy Kenji Hiramatsu said Monday.

At an interaction at the Brookings India think tank, Kenji said talks are on between the two sides on strengthening maritime cooperation, including the signing of the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement.

"We are also expecting to sign agreement between Indian Navy and Japan's Naval Defence Force with regard to maritime domain awareness and security issues. We would like more cooperation in this domain too," he said.

Kenji said the two sides are hoping to start a formal negotiation process on the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement.

"Also defence equipment and technology cooperation, we have agreed to have joint research activities with regard to unmanned vehicles and robotics," he said.

The envoy, however, added that he cannot "predict what will happen" during the visit and anything concrete can come out only after discussions between the two prime ministers.

The defence forces of the two countries share a robust security cooperation with the two sides participating in bilateral and trilateral drills.

He said for the first time the armies of the two countries will participate in a joint military drill in Mizoram next month, while Japan will be an observer in 'Cope India' -- an Air Force drill between India and the US.

Modi will be in Japan on October 28 and 29 for the annual summit between the prime ministers of the two countries. It will be the fifth annual summit between Modi and Abe and their 12th meeting overall since 2014.

"Under the framework of the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan, the two leaders will have wide-ranging discussions over two days on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest," the Ministry of External Affairs said on the visit last week.

Responding to a question on India wanting to procure the Soryu-class submarine from Japan, Kenji said, "We are in the process of discussing (the matter) between the Japanese government and private sector," he said, adding that there is no final decision on collaborating with India for the project yet.

With regard to US-2 amphibious aircraft, he said discussion is on with the Indian side on the project and some progress will be made in due course.

India and Japan are collaborating on high-speed railway, which has been planned between Mumbai and Ahemdabad. The project has been facing resistance over acquisition of land.

Japan is also funding the project and Kenji said the first tranche of loan has been transferred.

Responding to a question on the topic, he said the initiative is "very symbolic" between the two countries, and Modi and Abe had decided to go ahead with "this very important project".

He exuded confidence it "will be completed on time as scheduled".

Land acquisition, he noted, is a very important aspect of the project and the Japanese and Indian team is working very closely.

Kenji said he has "100 per cent trust" on the Indian team dealing with high-speed railway and hoped that the Centre and the state government will find way to ensure the project is completed.

He said that to boost connectivity, India has identified several infrastructure projects in the northeastern states that would eventually help in connecting India with neighbouring countries.

Kenji noted that Japan was the biggest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to India and will continue to do so.

Asked about the Asia-Africa growth corridor, a joint initiative of India and Japan, he said the two countries and their private companies are trying to identify concrete projects and collaboration prospects.

Speaking on Quad, a grouping of India, Australia, Japan and the US to promote the shared vision on Indo-Pacific, he said the process is steadily growing.

He added that there are other formats such as Japan-India-USA trilateral dialogue and Japan-India-Australia trilateral dialogue and many avenues to achieve common goal.

"Quad is not sole mechanism to promote this," Kenji said.

Both countries have "convergence" of views on Indo-Pacific, he said. The Indo-Pacific region has been witnessing growing assertiveness of China.

Kenji said maritime cooperation was very important in the region and India and Japan are looking at ASEAN countries, including Indonesia and Vietnam, for a trilateral cooperation. He, however, added that there was nothing concrete to elaborate further on the matter.

On the progress made after the signing of India-Japan nuclear deal, he said Japanese firms are interested in providing high-technology equipment to India and discussions have begun on this.

When asked on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), he said ministers and negotiators are working very hard for this. At the bilateral level, he said, there have been lots of discussion to address each other's concerns.

The RCEP is an ambitious proposal which intends to bring in the three largest economies of Asia -- China, India and Japan -- into a regional trading bloc, along with ASEAN member-countries Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. PTI PR SMNPhagwara (Pb), Oct 22 (PTI) Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu Monday said the country's education system needed a "complete overhaul" as it was producing students with degrees instead of individuals with critical minds and employable skills.

Emphasising on restoring India as the prime destination of quality higher education, Naidu said the number of educational institutions must increase to cater to the growing demand of students who want to pursue higher education.

Naidu also asked private universities to earmark certain percentage of seats for students belonging to the poor section as quality private sector education has become out of bounds for marginalised sections.

"Majority of our colleges have become mere breeding centres for producing students with degree certificates rather than individuals with critical analytical skills and innovative thinking," Naidu said while addressing the convocation of Lovely Professional University here.

"Most of the times, students passing out of colleges do not possess employable skills. It is a matter of concern that we are turning out lakhs of students each year from the portals of our colleges with emphasis only on theoretical knowledge. We are merely adding numbers and not individuals with critical minds,," he added.

There is a need to completely overhaul our education system. We cannot allow the status quo to continue. We need to change the system and the change has to be for good, he said further.

The Vice-President said the time had come for universities to forge organic links with industries and impart skills to the students in accordance with the requirements of the industry.

Although, some universities are acting in this direction, it is not enough and there is a need for a paradigm shift in teaching and learning methodologies of our universities to enable the students face global competition effectively and with confidence," he said.

Naidu emphasised that the Indian education system faces many challenges and that there was a need to increase the number of institutions and universities to meet the growing demand of students seeking higher education.

"But simply an increase in numbers without ensuring quality would be detrimental to national interests. We need to restore India's ancient glory as a prime destination of quality higher education, he said.

He said private sector will also have to play a vital role in meeting the demands of higher education.

The private sector must find ways to cross subsidise the education for the poor and the needy. Unfortunately, quality private sector education has become out of bounds for the poor and marginalised sections," he said.

"Why should not private universities earmark certain percentage of seats for the students belonging to poorer sections and subsidise their education? Our challenge is to ensure the spread of knowledge to every section and every corner of our country, he added.

Naidu also said the regulatory mechanism should facilitate educational institutions to improve quality and ensure minimum standards for excellence in higher education.

To take Indian education to the next level, the regulatory bodies need to be open to new ideas and systems, he said. PTI COR CHS VSD RHLJaipur, Oct 22 (PTI) The BJP is likely to release the first list of its candidates for the upcoming Rajasthan assembly elections in the first week of November, state's Parliamentary Affair Minister Rajendra Rathore said Monday.

The list would be released after a decision on the matter by the party's central election committee, he said.

"The BJP believes in internal democracy. The party has taken suggestions of its workers. The decision on the candidates would be taken after considering all the suggestions," Rathore said on the concluding day of a 'Rai Shumari' (consultation) meet here on Monday.

He said the feedbacks from the workers of 27 assembly seats of Jaipur and Jaipur dehat were taken on the third day of the meeting.

He added that their suggestions would be sent to the party's central election committee for its consideration.

The party had earlier taken feedbacks for 102 assembly seats at a consultation meet at Ranakpur in Pali district.

The state assembly polls are due on December 7. PTI AG RAX

RAXNew Delhi, Oct 22 (PTI) The Supreme Court Monday asked the self-styled preacher Daati Maharaj, accused in a sexual assault case, to move Delhi High Court with his grievances over the alleged concealment of information from that court by the victim.

The top court, however, granted liberty to Maharaj to approach it after the matter is finally adjudicated by the High Court.

A bench of Justices N V Ramana and M M Shantangoudar asked senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Daati Maharaj to move the high court which had ordered CBI probe into the sexual assault case against him.

Rohatgi said that the petitioner before the high court on whose plea the CBI probe was ordered had concealed the information that a criminal writ filed by the same set of lawyers was dismissed by the high court, and even a petition was withdrawn from the Supreme Court.

"They committed a criminal contempt by playing fraud upon the court. They have not disclosed that a petition for CBI probe was already dismissed by the high court and a similar plea was withdrawn from the apex court," he said.

The bench said that Daati Maharaj can raise his grievances before the high court which is seized of the matter.

Rohatgi then sought permission to withdraw his petition and said that liberty should be granted to approach the apex court after high court finally adjudicate the matter.

The bench said that the petition is dismissed as withdrawn and granted him liberty to approach against the final order of the high court.

Maharaj had challenged the Delhi High Court's order transferring the matter to the CBI.

Rohatgi said during the arguments today that the first petition was dismissed by the high court in July and the petitioners then moved the apex court seeking CBI probe. However, that plea was withdrawn in September.

He further said that the petitioner, who claims to be victim, then moved the high court in second round by filing a fresh petition on the civil side, in which the court had now ordered CBI probe in the case.

"This information was concealed by the petitioner woman to the high court and the court ordered CBI probe in the case," he said.

The high court had on October 3 pulled up the Delhi Police for not arresting Daati Maharaj in the case and had transferred the matter to the CBI.

A complaint was filed against Daati Madan Lal alias Daati Maharaj on June 7 and an FIR was registered on June 11.

On June 22, police had questioned the accused, who has been charged with alleged rape of a disciple at his ashrams in Delhi and Rajasthan.

The accused has claimed he was being framed in the case.

The complainant has filed the case against the preacher, his three brothers and a woman at the Fatehpur Beri police station in South Delhi.

The case was later transferred to the Delhi Police's Crime Branch.

The high court, while transferring the case to the CBI, had said the manner in which police had carried out the probe "casts a shadow on the investigation".

The high court had said police did not arrest the accused in the case even after recording of the complainant's statement before a magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

The police had claimed before the high court that arrests were not made in the case as there were discrepancies and contradictions in the woman's statement.

It had also alleged that other women, who according to the complainant were also assaulted by the accused, have denied such allegations when they were questioned.

A trial court had earlier taken strong exception to the manner in which probe was being conducted in the case, saying the investigating officer had not been able to explain the efforts made to ensure that the accused does not abscond during the investigation.

It had directed the deputy commissioner of police (Crime Branch) to monitor the probe and ensure that a status report is filed before the court every week. PTI MNL ABA SJK RKS SASabarimala doors shut, SC order makes no difference to women's

right to pray

(Eds: Updates closure of temple, clubs related stories)

Sabarimala, Oct 22 (PTI) The doors to Sabarimala

temple closed Monday night, six days after opening for the

first time since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on entry of

women of menstruating age, but climbing the 18 "sacred steps"

leading to the sanctum sanctorum proved a tall order for them.

Valiant attempts by around a dozen women, including

activists and journalists in the 10-50 years age group to

script history came to nought as frenzied devotees of Lord

Ayyappa, the eternally celibate deity, heckled and hassled

them and forced them to retreat.

Yet another woman in the "barred" age group made a

futile attempt Monday to reach Sabarimala but was turned back

by agitated protesters.

Bindu, a Dalit activist, who was proceeding to Pamba

at the foothills of Sabarimala temple from where devotees

undertake an arduous 5 km trek to the shrine, was given police

protection at her request, officials said.

However, when the Kerala State Road Transport

Corporation bus she was travelling on with police personnel

was about to reach Pamba, a group of BJP workers and those

opposing the entry of girls and women aged between 10 and 50

years into the temple, blocked the road and forced her to

alight.

She was then escorted to safety in a police jeep,

officials said.

'Melsanti' or the head priest and other priests stood

on both sides of the idol of Lord Ayyappa and recited divine

song "Harivarasanam" and began putting off the lamps in the

sanctum sanctorum halfway down the rendition.

As the last line was sung, the doors were closed and

locked, shutting out, at least for the time being, spirited

women of menstruating age from offering prayers to the deity.

The iron gates to the shrine were opened on Wednesday

and every day since then women of the "barred" age group made

brave but futile attempts to enter the shrine. Six women were

prevented from entering the temple Sunday alone.

Kerala women's rights activist Rehana Fathima and

Hyderabad journalist Kavitha Jakkal, wearing helmets and

khaki, and surrounded by a police contingent, could manage to

go up to Valiya Nadappandhal, the queue complex located a few

metres away from the holy 'pathinettam padi', the 18 sacred

steps, but not beyond.

Several people, including journalists, were injured on

Wednesday as police cracked down on protesters who were up in

arms against Kerala's Left Front government for its decision

to enforce the Supreme Court order.

Hindu fringe groups called a strike the next day and

both the Congress, the main opposition party in Kerala, and

the BJP, which is desperately seeking to expand its footprint

in the state, lent support to the agitation.

Meanwhile, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which

manages Sabarimala temple, is meeting on Tuesday to discuss

how to make an intervention in the Supreme Court while

protecting the "interest of devotees".

"The TDB has the legal responsibility to protect the

interest of devotees. We also have to look at the rituals and

customs of the temple. The board will make its intervention in

Supreme Court without harming this," its chief A Padmakumar

told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

He said the meeting would decide the "nature" of the

report to be submitted to the apex court.

The Supreme Court Monday said it would decide tomorrow

as to when the petitions seeking a review of its Sabarimala

verdict will be listed for hearing. In all, 19 review

petitions are pending before it for hearing.

The state's Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran

welcomed the TDB's decision to approach the Supreme Court with

a comprehensive report about the recent developments in

Sabarimala.

"It's a good decision...the TDB's move is to bring to

the notice of the Supreme Court the difficulties faced by the

real devotees," Surendran said.

He conceded that the LDF government was caught between

the "devil and the deep sea" while executing the apex court

order.

The Congress-led UDF has decided to hold a series of

foot marches, vehicle rallies and meetings across the state to

explain to people its stand on the issue and "expose" the

ruling CPI(M) and BJP's "hidden agenda".

The temple will open briefly on November 5 evening for

the next day's 'Chithira Attavisesham' to celebrate the birth

anniversary of Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the last king

of Travancore.

The doors of the shrine will open on November 17 for

the three-month-long Mandalam Makaravilakku celebrations when

lakhs of devotees from the country and abroad visit the place

every year.

If the Supreme Court does not stay or overturn its own

verdict by then, enforcing its historic order may prove to be

a daunting task for the Kerala government. PTI TGB LGK JRK UD

SK

VS VSLuck runs out for superstitious thief, lands in police net

Hyderabad, Oct 22 (PTI) A superstitious burglar, who

used to strike only on Tuesdays and during the day because of

his poor vision, has run out of luck as he along with his

associate landed in the police net Monday.

Mohammed Sameer Khan and his accomplice Mohammed

Shoaib were involved in a spate of robberies in Telangana,

Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, police said.

Gold weighing about 700 gm, worth about Rs 21 lakh, was

recovered from the two, commissioner of police, Hyderabad,

Anjani Kumar told reporters here.

"Mohammed Sameer Khan, whose ancestors belong to

Afghanistan, has poor eyesight. Hence, he committed the thefts

only during the day.

Besides, he believed he will be successful if he

struck only on Tuesdays and committed the crime along with his

aide, who belongs to the city, every Tuesday ," the police

official said.

The two would go around on a motorcycle and target

locked houses. One would wait outside a house while the other

would break in and get whatever he could within a span of five

to 10 minutes, the official said.

The duo has been involved in over 30 cases in

Telangana and in Bengaluru, he said.

They first met each other at a jail here, according to

police. PTI VVK NVG BN

RBS RBSOne of the ideas being bandied around by Jeremy Corbyn's Labour if they win the next election is to force large companies to hand over a third of the places on their boards to workers.

The very thought of being coerced by a Socialist government into ceding so many chairs round the mahogany table to a bunch of trade unionists modelling themselves on Citizen Smith will fill most shareholders with horror.

Labour's remedies would be disastrous but it is hard to argue with their analysis that there is a dysfunctional and incestuous culture at the top of UK plc.

Criticism: Jeremy Corbyn's Labour have been critical of the culture at the top of UK plc

The list of FTSE 100 chairmen is a roll-call of the British business establishment.

A Daily Mail investigation found that more than nine out of ten in 2017 were men, and that there were a dozen knights plus a solitary Dame.

The vast majority of chairmen are former senior executives, top accountants or civil service mandarins. Their average pay came in around 475,000, but can be much higher: 800,000 and above is the going rate for chairing a bank.

It's hard, then, to dismiss the implicit criticism from Labour that these people are not the best-placed to challenge a faulty status quo, and that appointments need to be made from a broader pool.

The FTSE 100 is meant to be an elite index  so every company in it ought to be a beacon of best boardroom practice. It's not always the case. At corporate raider Melrose, which shot into the FTSE this year when it took over GKN, the chairman is Christopher Miller, one of the entrepreneurs who set up the business.

He received more than 42million last year alongside his three co-founders. Now Miller may well deserve his multi-million pound windfall for the growth delivered to shareholders, but a payment of that scale is at odds with his responsibilities as chairman. Bluntly, with that much money at stake, it's hard for anyone to be independent.

'Mr 131m': Jeff Fairburn, chief executive of housebuilder Persimmon

The company itself has acknowledged as much in a boardroom overhaul and Miller is stepping aside as chairman next year.

And why have one FTSE 100 chairmanship when you can have two? This is the case for several chairmen, including Roberto Quarta, who presides at WPP  where there was an imbroglio over former boss Sir Martin Sorrell  and at medical devices group Smith & Nephew.

There is no express prohibition against this, but it's ridiculous. People will be caught short if there are crises at both firms at once  as Peter Long found out when trouble hit Royal Mail and Countrywide  and it increases the risk of mono-think.

Despite their high rewards, chairmen do not always fulfil their responsibilities with distinction. The chair of Unilever, Marijn Dekkers, who received more than 650,000 last year, could surely have managed its plans to move its HQ to Rotterdam rather better. And why have two successive chairmen of Persimmon allowed Jeff 'Mr 131m' Fairburn to stay in his job?

As for the chairs of pay committees, their average going rate on the FTSE 100 was 127,000 last year. That soon adds up if you have several of these part-time roles, like Orna Ni-Chionna, who presides over the pay committee at Royal Mail, where 70 per cent of investors voted against its pay report. She receives almost 300,000 a year from a variety of non-executive directorships.

You don't have to be a rabid socialist to conclude that too many of Britain's boardrooms remain blinkered and self-satisfied. They risk having themselves to blame if the Corbynite nightmare becomes a reality.Make up and skincare fanatics splashed out 25billion on beauty products last year as the sector defied the High Street slump.

Demand for treatments, spa visits and products such as eyebrow pencils and highlighters has boosted the industry with sales forecast to hit nearly 27billion by 2020, a report by industry body Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW) reveals.

While a third now shop online for beauty products, sales at specialist retails such as Boots and Superdrug jumped 9 per cent to 3.7billion between 2015 and 2017, according to the report.

Beauty boost: The industry is enjoying more resilience than other sectors on the High Street

During the same period, sales across department stores climbed 18 per cent to 2billion, boosting the coffers of struggling retailers.

Caroline Neville, president of CEW, said the beauty industry was enjoying more resilience than other sectors on the High Street such as fashion and homeware.

Bricks and mortar retailing is still crucial to beauty and the primary medium for consumers to interact and purchase brands, she said.

The beauty sectors continual success lies in an ability to innovate, stay relevant and be exciting. This is reflected in our performance in what is one of the toughest trading periods in decades for the High Street.

John Lewis (pictured) and Debenhams have invested heavily in their beauty departments

Department stores including House of Fraser, Debenhams and John Lewis, have been battling to attract customers amid demand for online shopping.

Debenhams is expected to reveal a 65 per cent plunge in annual profits to around 33million this week, while John Lewis has seen half-year profits slump 99 per cent to close to zero.

The two retailers have invested heavily in their beauty departments in a bid to attract younger make-up obsessed shoppers and customers looking to treat themselves to a massage or haircut.

John Lewis has installed salons in its stores where customers can get a haircut or full spa experience at the same time as buying a new sofa or television. And Debenhams has introduced a customer scheme called the Beauty Club for shoppers who want to get tips and advice on products while earning rewards to spend on make-up and skincare.

Services such as tanning, hair removal and manicures have provided a boost to the sector

Despite lagging behind fashions contribution of 32billion to UK GDP, more than one million people are employed by the beauty sector compared with 890,000 working in fashion.

Services, such as tanning, hair removal and manicures, have provided a major boost to the sector, with spa, salon, beauty treatments and hairdressing accounting for three fifths of overall spend.

Jane Henderson, global president of beauty and personal care at Mintel, which carried out the research on behalf of CEW, said: The UK beauty and personal care industry has quickly taken advantage of advancements in digital technology and the consumer thirst for new products.

Countless men and women have set up their own beauty businesses - increasingly penetrating new markets.Ryanair raked in an astonishing 1.1billion in six months in charges for extras, such as baggage, priority boarding and choosing seats, it revealed today.

But despite a 27 per cent rise in so-called ancillary revenues from extra fees, the airline blamed a combination of rising oil prices and strike action for a dip in profits between April and September.

Ryanair said its airfares fell by 3 per cent in the six months and are expected to fall by another 2 per cent in the second half of its financial year, pulling down the cost of air travel this winter.

Air traffic control strikes: A summer of strikes has hit customer confidence in the Ryanair, with passengers making fewer forward bookings

The low-cost carrier, which had already warned over profits at the start of the month, reported a 7 per cent decline in pre-tax profits to 1.2billion (1.06billion) in the six key months between April and September.

It put this down due to a mix of excess capacity in Europe, an earlier Easter and cancellations of higher fare flights following repeated air control strikes and staff shortages.

However, revenues still grew by 8 per cent to 4.79billion, helped by strong growth in so-called ancillary revenues - that comprise charges from extras, which climbed 27 per cent to 1.3billion.

The drop in profits comes as little surprise, since Ryanair had already lowered its full-year profit expectations from 1.25bn-1.35bn to 1.1bn-1.2bn earlier this month.

Ryanair's extra charges Ryanair has a menu of extra charges that can substantially bump up the cost of flying. If booked online, these include: Extra legroom seats - 15 Front seats - 15 Standard seats - 4 Mandatory family seat - 6 Infant fee - 25 Priority and 2 cabin bags - 6 10kg check-in bag - 8 20kg check-in bag - 25 Ski equipment - 45 Golf clubs - 35 Sports equipment - 35 At the airport fees can be higher and those who do not check-in online or need boarding cards re-issued face these costs: Airport check-in - 55 Boarding card re-issue - 20

The airline has been fighting strikes on two fronts  its own cabin crews and pilots as well as air traffic control strikes, which have also affected other airlines.

Last December, it bowed to pressure to recognise trade unions for the first time. Today, it said it hoped to finalise more union agreements in the coming months but could not rule out further industrial action.

Despite ongoing disruption to its flights, traffic grew by 6 per cent in the period, which is a bit lower than it previously expected.

However, it did hit customer confidence in the company, with passengers making fewer forward bookings into the third quarter including for the October school half-term and Christmas.

Ryanair faced higher costs, including a 20 per cent pay increase for pilots and EU261 compensations costs, while its fuel bill is expected to come in about 460million higher year-on-year.

Boss Michael O'Leary said full year guidance remained 'heavily dependent' on air fares not declining further, the impact of 'significantly higher' oil prices , the absence of unforeseen security events, ATC and other strikes and the impact of negative Brexit developments.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said full year guidance remained 'heavily dependent' on air fares not declining further

'We cannot rule out further base closures or capacity cuts this winter if oil prices rise or air fares fall further. Winter trading may be positively impacted by the rate and timing of other airline failures which is already creating a ready supply of well trained pilots and cabin crew for S.19 growth,' he added.

Shares in Ryanair closed on Friday at 11.51, down 20 per cent compared to three months ago. This morning, shares were 4.4 per cent higher at 11.96.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said investors breathed a sigh of relief that full year earnings guidance was not downgraded again.

There had been some concern that ongoing disruption to its flights would put more people off from flying. Many travellers would prefer paying a bit more money for a ticket with an airline which hasnt developed a reputation for flights being cancelled because of strikes or staff shortages, rather than chance their luck with Ryanair just to save a few quid.

Nevertheless, Ryanair is still treading a thin line given its warning that full year guidance is heavily dependent on air fares not falling further, plus other factors like the oil price and the impact of Brexit developments.

Ryanair has been fighting strikes on two fronts  its own cabin crews and pilots as well as air traffic control strikes

If you drill down into the latest numbers, it is the little things that count. For example, there has been an improved uptake of reserved seating and priority boarding.

'Ryanair has always been very good at driving up so-called ancillary revenues and shareholders will be pleased this trend remains intact. These little positives are welcome, yet it is worth noting that Ryanairs profits arent expected to start growing again until the financial year ending March 2020.

Neil Wilson, analyst at Markets.com, said the real problem for Ryanair is ATC strikes as they could put off more passengers from making bookings with the airline.

As argued previously, the risk to the low-cost, high-margin model from unionisation was clear from the off. Unionisation will result in higher labour costs and lower margins, as we are seeing. Those factors are manageable, he said.

The real problem is the strikes  they add in another element in terms of not only higher costs from disruptions, but also the worrying effect on customer confidence.

Strikes are sapping confidence in Ryanair, as evidenced by the weak forward bookings. Progress has been made on securing deals with unions but there is a lot of work to do still.Frank Timis, director of International Petroleum

A company director twice convicted of heroin possession was behind the sacking of a whistleblower at his oil exploration business.

The Court of Appeal found Frank Timis, director of International Petroleum, advised chairman Antony Sage to sack chief executive Alexander Osipov for whistleblowing over allegations of corruption at the firm's assets in Niger.

Judges upheld a record-breaking 2 million award to Osipov, who was dismissed in October 2014 just months after taking the job.

The court ruled that Timis  who was convicted of possession of heroin with intent to supply in 1990 and 1994 in Australia  and Sage were individually liable for the unfair dismissal.

It is the first time that individual directors have been found culpable for an employee's unjust sacking. Until now companies have been held liable.

Timis, 55, accidentally sent an email to Osipov alerting him to his dismissal, which read: 'Release Alex from his job and appoint Anya to manage any future deals.'

Gareth Brahams, of BDBF, which represented Osipov, said: 'We believe this will encourage decision-makers to think more carefully before giving instructions to dismiss an employee for whistleblowing.'DArr Aktiengesellschaft, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a mechanical and plant engineering company worldwide. The company's Paint and Final Assembly Systems segment plans, builds, and modernizes paint shops and final assembly lines for the automotive industry; and supplies products and processes for various process stages in paint shop technology. It also provides supply control and conveyor systems, as well as air supply and exhaust-air systems; consulting services; and assembly and test systems for medical devices. The company's Application Technology segment offers technologies for the automated spray application of primers, and base and clear coats; and systems used for paint supply, quality assurance, and process control and evaluation. It also provides sealing technology for sealing seams, underbody protection, and injecting insulating materials in cars; glueing technology for fitting windows, glass roofs, cockpits, and tanks; and technology for paint application products. The company's Clean Technology Systems segment offers exhaust-air purification for the chemical, pharmaceutical, carbon fiber production, printing/coating, woodworking, mining, energy, oil and gas, and packaging industries, as well as to vehicle and lithium-ion battery manufacturers, automotive suppliers, and decentralized power plant operators. Its Measuring and Process Systems segment provides balancing and diagnostic systems; and systems for the automated filling of refrigerators, air-conditioning systems, and heat pumps with refrigerants. The company's Woodworking Machinery and Systems segment offers woodworking machinery and systems, such as panel cutting systems, through-feed saws and drilling machines, sanders, edge-banding machines, CNC processing centers, and handling and storage systems for use in furniture industry and woodworking trade, and timber house construction. DArr Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1895 and is headquartered in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany.

Read MoreEverest Re Group Ltd. is a holding company, which engages in the provision of reinsurance and insurance services. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Reinsurance, International, Bermuda, and Insurance. The U.S. Reinsurance segment writes property and casualty reinsurance and specialty lines of business, including marine, aviation, surety, and accident and health business, on both a treaty and facultative basis, through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies primarily within the U.S. The International segment offers foreign property and casualty reinsurance through Everest Re's branches in Canada and Singapore and through offices in Brazil, Miami, and New Jersey. The Bermuda segment comprises reinsurance and insurance to worldwide property and casualty markets through brokers and directly with ceding companies from its Bermuda office and reinsurance to the United Kingdom and European markets through its UK branch and Ireland Re. The Insurance segment writes property and casualty insurance directly and through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents within the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartere

Read MoreStop me, if youve heard this one before.

Trump was not my guy but 

And you can fill in the rest of the sentence with any one of a number of excuses for voting patterns in the 2016 election.

I was worried about the Supreme Court.

I was voting for anyone but Hillary.

We needed a change from the typical Washington politics.

Ever since that historic day in November of 2016  when all of the pundits were proved wrong  they have been trying to explain the phenomenon associated with Donald Trump.

He is the most un-presidential of all presidents. Yet, in less than two years, he is the most accomplished of all presidents. People may not like some of the things he is getting done  but he is getting them done.

And now he roars into what many are calling the most crucial mid-term elections in quite some time. Depending on which experts you follow  the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives, the Republicans will increase their control of the Senate, the first step will be taken in the process of impeaching President Trump, or the voters will confirm their approval of the job President Trump is doing.

No middle ground. That is the norm for this most volatile of times in America.

Watching the news on television, listening to the talk shows on radio, and reading the editorials in the newspapers just compounds the confusion. If ever a clear beacon of reason was needed, it is now  two weeks away from Election Day.

Well, maybe that clear beacon came recently from an unexpected source. From someone with an extremely grounded viewpoint. Call it a practical approach.

Below is a missive written by Karen Vaughn, mother of Aaron Vaughn, a Navy Seal who died when his helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. She is an accomplished author  as evidenced by this passionate essay she posted recently.

Sometimes God uses the no-nonsense, salty sailor to get the job done. Appreciating what the man is doing doesnt mean we worship the salty sailor or even desire to be like the salty sailor. It doesnt even mean God admires the salty sailor. Maybe He just knows hes necessary for such a time as this.

I believe with all my heart that God placed that salty sailor in the White House to give this nation one more chance in November 2016. Donald Trump is what he is  and he is still the man he was before the election  and without guilt. I very much admire what that salty sailor is accomplishing.

Hes not like me. Thats okay with me. I dont want to be like him. I will never behave like him. I know weve NEVER had a man like him lead our nation before.

Its crazy and a little mind blowing at times. But I cant help admire the stamina and ability he has  acting with his heart rather than a calculated, PC, think tank-screened, carefully edited script. I still believe that is WHY he became our President and WHY hes been able to handle a landslide of adversity and STILL pass unprecedented amounts of good legislation for our country AND do great works for MANY other nations, including Israel.

Im THRILLED with what hes doing for my nation, for the cause of Christ (whether intentional or unintentional, doesnt matter to me), and for the concept of rebuilding America and putting her FIRST. I will not be ashamed of my position because others dont see him through the same lens.

Should it matter to me if a fireman drops an f-bomb while hes pulling me from a burning building? Would I really care about what came out of his mouth in those moments? Heck no! Id CARE about what he was DOING. He wasnt sent there to save my soul and Im not looking to him for spiritual guidance. All Im thinking in those moments is, Thank you, GOD, for sending the fireman. AND DONALD TRUMP IS OUR FIREMAN.

Ill soon post this article again for those who still might not understand me. This man is crass.

Okay.

Hes not careful with what he says.

Okay.

You feel offended that hes not a typical statesman.

Okay.

But he is DOING THE JOB of rebuilding the nation my son died for  the nation I feared was on a fast track to becoming a hopeless cause.

Forgive me if Im smiling.

With those words  reprinted exactly as she posted them, using ALL CAPS for extra emphasis  Karen Vaughn has done a better job of explaining Donald Trump than anyone. Better than the political pundits. Better than the media. And, most certainly, better than all of the haters and Never-Trumpers.

For those people in the final categories, her impassioned words will do nothing to change their minds.

And for those who swell the ranks of Trumps many rallies, wear the red hats and cheer his bold statements wildly  well, they didnt need any explaining.

But for those Americans in the middle of the political spectrum  those who have been scratching their heads ever since that startling day in history when Trump announced his candidacy  this essay may present some answers.

No excuses. No apologies. Just an explanation of why so many people looked to this most unlikely candidate and entrusted him with the most important job in the world.

The rational and brilliant syndicated radio talk show host Dennis Prager often proclaims, Its not who he is, that is important. Its what he stands for.

In other words, it does not matter if the person is a braggart, is obnoxious, or is overbearing. What matters are the issues he unwaveringly defends.

Substance over style.

For too long, Americans have been led  and conned  by people who stand for the opposing philosophy.ALBANY  Less than 48 hours after U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand dropped out of a planned Sunday debate with her Republican opponent Chele Farley, a new but shortened face-to-face has been scheduled.

In what could likely be their one and only encounter before Election Day on Nov. 6, the candidates will debate for a half-hour at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in the WABC studios in Manhattan. It will be streamed live on abc7NY.com as well as on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the station said Sunday.If you're a regular Times Union blog reader, you're likely to know the name Goose.

The son of a retired Air Force police officer is one of the original commenters on the Times Union blogs. He's known for having excellent comedic timing and being quick-witted with keen observational skills. These attributes make him a favorite in the blog community and on social media. Readers often say they check back just to see what Goose has added to the conversation.Q: There has been so much coverage of that heartbreaking crash in Schoharie, but I haven't heard much about what is being done to prevent a tragedy like that in the future.

Is there any legislation on the table to keep questionable vehicles like the stretch limo that killed 20 people off the roads?

 Andi Hall, Colonie

A: The topic of a push for more regulation is addressed in a front-page story in today's Times Union: Three U.S. senators are calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to implement new federal safety regulations for stretch limousines.

Twenty people died on Oct. 6 in the horrific wreck at the intersection of state routes 30 and 30A in the town of Schoharie, when a stretch limo packed with 18 people drove through a stop sign and fatally struck two people in the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Country Store & Cafe before slamming into an earthen embankment and killing all of the oversized vehicle's occupants.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) last week urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to quickly implement any safety recommendations produced by the National Transportation Safety Board (which is investigating the crash) and evaluate other regulatory changes to improve the safety of stretch limousines.

"The limousine crash in Schoharie County made it painfully clear that there are tragic consequences when we don't have adequate safety regulations," Gillibrand said. "This was our nation's worst transportation disaster in nearly a decade, and now the federal government has an urgent responsibility to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. ... My heart goes out to the families and friends of the 20 New Yorkers who lost their lives in this terrible accident."

The senators called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to do the following: Evaluate the construction of stretch limousines; address the safety gaps and identify how federal safety standards could be improved; conduct a study on improving passenger protections; develop specific requirements to inspect for structural safety once a stretch limo is constructed; and review whether limousines should be classified as commercial vehicles, requiring drivers to carry a commercial license and undergo more extensive training.

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For information about making a donation to the victims' families, go to gofundme.com/cause/schoharie-crash.

Do you have a question about transportation? Email gettingthere@timesunion.com. Please include your name, town and telephone number.Navy Chief Special Warfare Operator Aaron Carson Vaughn of Stuart, Fla. and his mother, Karen Vaughn, will be honorees as the Veterans Miracle Center sponsors its annual "Celebrating Our Heroes and Gold Star Mothers" during a Veterans Day dinner on Sunday, Nov. 11 in Albany.

Aaron Vaughn will be honored posthumously. He was killed along with 29 other Special Operations Navy SEALs when their helicopter was shot down on Aug. 6, 2011, in the Afghanistan war.

Karen Vaughn is author of the best-selling book "World Changer: A Mother's Story"  on the Unbreakable Spirit of U.S. Navy SEAL Aaron Carson Vaughn.

Hors d'oeuvres and silent auction will start at 4 p.m. at the Albany City Center, 55 Eagle St., Albany. The dinner and celebration will be from 5:30 to 7:45 p.m.

For ticket information and to make reservations by Nov. 2 visit http://vmcalbany.org/register; or mail check payable to Veterans Miracle Center, 10 Interstate Ave., Albany, NY 12205; or contact Melody Burns, VMC director, at 518-486-8398, or Jim Pratt at 518-438-4370.

Proceeds will benefit the Veterans Miracle Center, where needy veterans and military personnel and families can go for life necessities such as clothing, furniture and household goods.

Vaughn was killed while serving with Seal Team Six in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his CH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down.

Vaughn enlisted in 2002 and qualified for the SEALs straight out of Navy boot camp. He served in a West Coast-based special warfare unit from 2004 to 2008, then moved to the East Coast-based SEAL Team Six in 2008.

He earned a Purple Heart, a Defense Meritorious Service Medal Joint Service Commendation Medal with V device for valor; two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, and one with V for valor; a Presidential Unit Citation; and two Navy Good Conduct Medals.

Karen Vaughn, a Gold Star Mother, is a spokeswoman for our defenders still fighting on foreign soil and securing peace across the globe, and also an advocate for a better, stronger, more resilient America.

Soldiers promoted

Robert Malizia of Albany advanced to major while on duty with New York Army National Guard's Headquarters and Support Company, 42nd Infantry Division.

Devis Ceci of Schenectady has been promoted to captain while serving with the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 42nd Combat Aviation Brigade.

Amanda Chen of Schenectady advanced to captain while on duty with the Joint Force Headquarters.

Steve Vanderpool of Albany was commissioned as a second lieutenant while serving with Operations Company, 42nd Infantry Division.

Edward Coons of Valatie was promoted to sergeant first class while assigned to the Joint Force Headquarters.

Melanie Groff of Rotterdam advanced to sergeant first class while serving with Intelligence and Sustainment Company, 42nd Infantry Division.

Brian Tangorre of Glenmont was promoted to sergeant first class while serving with Operations Company, 42nd Infantry Division.

Adam Sisson of Ballston Spa was promoted to staff sergeant while assigned to the Company C, 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry.

Kris Surprenant of Valley Falls was promoted to staff sergeant while on duty with Company D, 3rd Battalion, 142nd Aviation.

Steven Waite of Glens Falls was promoted to staff sergeant while on duty with Joint Force Headquarters.

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Thomas Wickham of Niskayuna advanced to staff sergeant while assigned to Joint Force Headquarters.

Other soldiers promoted include:

Sergeant: Michael Bryant, Altamont, Company G (Forward Support Company Infantry), 427th Brigade Support Battalion; Alex Gagnon, Schenectady, 10th Mountain Division (Mobile Command Post Operations Detachment); and Ryan McCrum, Schenectady, Company A, Combat Engineer, 152nd Brigade Engineer Battalion.

Specialist: Robert Cummings, Albany, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 42nd Combat Aviation Brigade.

Veterans Ball

The third annual Veterans Balls will be held by the Veterans and Community Housing Coalition from 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4, at the Hall of Springs, 108 Avenue of the Pines, Saratoga Springs.

Commander Gene Ratigliano of New York State Veterans of Foreign Wars, Commander Jore Prennell of New York State Disabled American Veterans, Dave Lockhart, vice president of the American Legion Press Association, Bob Dyer of American Legion Post 1450, David Kieserman of Jewish War Veterans and Heather Martin of the Air Force will be honored.

Fallen hero Army Staff Sgt. Derick Farley will be commemorated.

A special tribute to World War II veterans is planned.

The Joey Thomas Big Band will entertain.

Tickets cost $100. For tickets, call 518-885-0091, Ext. 101.

News of your troops and units can be sent to Duty Calls, Terry Brown, Times Union, Box 15000, Albany, NY 12212 or brownt@timesunion.com.ALBANY  New Yorkers will get to see at least one televised debate this fall with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, has agreed to a one-on-one debate with the two-term Democratic incumbent that will take place Tuesday. The one-hour debate will be broadcast on television at 7 p.m. in the Capital Region on Spectrum cable channel WCWN (CW-15), and also air on WGY (810 AM and 103.1 FM).

The agreement, which excludes the three third-party candidates, comes after more than a month of ambiguity about whether the two major-party candidates would share a stage together before Election Day. Molinaro has consistently called for multiple televised debates, while Cuomo had demurred on the topic.

On Friday, when pressed during a radio interview, Cuomo agreed to a radio-only debate 24 hours later. The governor's last-minute offer came after the New York Post repeatedly featured him on its cover in a chicken suit for refusing to debate his GOP opponent.

The governor's challenge was declined by Molinaro, who advocated for a televised forum and more public notice.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Molinaro also called for debates in Buffalo and the Southern Tier. The Democratic gubernatorial primary debate in September was faulted for not addressing upstate issues.

Stephanie Miner, the Serve America Movement candidate for governor, said a debate without the entire field of candidates "hurts democracy."

"A single debate in New York City ignores the interests of Upstate voters," she said in a statement. "A single debate won't provide enough opportunity to examine Andrew Cuomo's record or anyone's vision for the state's future."

Cuomo is considered the prohibitive favorite to win a third term in office, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, a data-driven website that aggregates polling information. The governor has consistently led in the polls, has a large fundraising advantage and benefits from a two-to-one Democratic enrollment in the state.

With polls predicting Cuomo will cruise to a third term, political observers have said Cuomo has little to gain from a debate, and opens himself up to the possibility of losing ground with the shared spotlight.

The three third-party candidates and Molinaro have also agreed to a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of New York at The College of Saint Rose in Albany on Nov. 1 at 6 p.m. But the governor has yet to accept the invitation. Cuomo's campaign did not immediately respond Monday to questions about the league's forum.

"Although we are pleased to see the governor agree to debate, we feel that including only two of the five gubernatorial candidates is a disservice to voters," said Jennifer Wilson, the league's legislative director.

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"New York voters will be presented with five gubernatorial candidates on their ballot, not two," she added. "We thank the four candidates who have announced their participation in our debate in Albany during the final week of October and we strongly urge the governor to agree to our debate."

A candidate forum hosted by the New York Conference of Mayors and the New York Association of Towns slated for Tuesday afternoon which had confirmations from all minor party candidates and Molinaro  was cancelled abruptly on Sunday.

Molinaro spokeswoman Katy Delgado said that the Republican candidate withdrew his confirmation to the forum when the televised gubernatorial debate began to take shape.

Gubernatorial Debates A one-on-one debate between the two-term Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee will broadcast on television at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in the Capital Region on Spectrum cable channel WCWN (CW-15), and also air on WGY (810 AM and 103.1 FM). The College of Saint Rose is hosting a multi-candidate debate on Nov. 1 at 6 p.m. in Albany, but only the third-party candidates and Molinaro have agreed to attend. The forum, which is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of New York, will be streamed on the league's Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts. See More Collapse

The governor hasn't participated in a one-on-one, general-election debate since 2006, when he was running for state attorney general. In 2010 and 2014, the lone televised gubernatorial debates included the third-party candidates.

Cuomo didn't agree to debate his Democratic primary opponent, Cynthia Nixon, until the final stretch of the campaign, and refused to debate in the 2014 primary campaign.

David.Lombardo@timesunion.com - 518.454.5427 - @poozer87ALBANY - The congressional race between freshman Republican John Faso and Democrat Antonio Delgado is virtually tied, according to a new Siena Research Institute poll.

The hotly contested race is separated by 1 point, with Faso getting 44 percent of likely voters to Delgado's 43 percent. Independent candidate Diane Neal is at 5 percent and Green Party candidate Steve Greenfield is at 1 percent, with 7 percent of voters still undecided.

Monday's poll results continue the trend of a narrowly divided electorate in the 19th Congressional District, which includes parts of the Capital Region and stretches into the Hudson Valley. In late August, Faso led by 5 points in a Siena poll, and Delgado had a 3-point edge in a mid-September Monmouth poll, both within the respective margins of error.

"This race is going right down to the wire," Siena pollster Steve Greenberg said in a statement.

"In a district that has virtually the same number of Republicans and Democrats and a race that has voters nearly evenly divided, the key will be which campaign does a better job of getting its voters to the polls," he said. "Answer that question and predicting the winner of this race is easy."

Independent voters are split, but Democratic and Republican voters are largely unified behind their party's candidate. There is a stark gender divide in the race, with Faso up 19 points among men and Delgado winning women by 17 points. Voters with at least a bachelor's degree break for Delgado by 20 points, and those with less than a bachelor's degree favor Faso by 19 points.

Greenberg said they're anticipating higher turnout than the last midterm election four years ago, but he predicts the partisan breakdown will be similar. So despite Democrats narrowly outnumbering Republicans in the district, the GOP voters have a 6-point edge in the poll's turnout model.

President Donald J. Trump remains a divisive figure in the district, where 49 percent of voters disapprove of the job he's doing and 46 percent approve. The district is also split on which party it wants to control Congress, with Republicans holding a 3-point lead over Democrats.

The race between Faso and Delgado is regarded as a "toss up," by the FiveThirtyEight forecasting model and Cook Political Report.

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The tight race has attracted millions of dollars in campaign contributions and spending from outside groups hoping to influence control of the House of Representatives for the next two years. Delgado has raised about twice as much money as Faso, including reporting a massive fundraising edge last week for the third quarter of this year, which was representative of Democratic challengers across the state for the same period.

Faso and Delgado squared off on Friday in a testy debate co-hosted by the Times Union, which focused largely on taxes and health care.

The poll, which was conducted between Oct. 12 and 16, has a margin of error of 4.6 points.

David.Lombardo@timesunion.com - 518.454.5427 - @poozer87U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is calling on the federal government to increase regulations on stretch limousines in the wake of the deadly Oct. 6 crash in Schoharie that killed 20.

Its almost the exact same push for action he made in 2015 when a stretch limousine in Suffolk County was hit by a pick-up truck, killing four women inside.

Last week Schumer, along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, sent a letter asking the National Transportation Safety Board to implement new federal safety regulations for stretch limousines.

The heartbreaking stretch limousine accident in Schoharie painfully reminded the federal authorities who create safety standards through rule-making and enforcement that  in terms of safety for passengers, drivers, and pedestrians  stretch limousines are woefully under-regulated; they fall into a gap between cars and buses, both of which have well-developed safety rules," Schumer said in a statement.

The senators asked the NTSB to evaluate how stretch limousines are built, identify any potential safety gaps in federal standards and conduct a study on improving passenger protections. Those requests are nearly identical to the requests Schumer made in 2015.

They also asked the federal agency to review whether limousines should be classified as commercial vehicles. That would require drivers to carry a commercial drivers license and undergo more training. The driver in the Schoharie crash, Scott Lisinicchia, did have a CDL but lacked the proper license classification to drive a limousine with that many passengers, according to the New York State Police.

The crash was the deadliest transportation incident in the country since a 2009 plane crash in Buffalo that killed 49 people.

After the 2015 limousine crash on Long Island, the board agreed to investigate limo crashes on a case-by-case basis but Schumer said that the board has not done so, according to the Associated Press.

In that crash, a modified town car limousine with eight passengers was leaving a winery and was attempting to make a U-turn when it was struck by another vehicle.

Factory-built limousines must meet stringent federal safety regulations. But cars converted into limos, like the one in Schoharie, often lack such safety components as side-impact air bags, reinforced rollover protection bars and accessible emergency exits.

Few federal regulations govern limos modified after leaving the factory, and regulations can vary by state.

In the Schoharie case, the New York state Department of Transportation noted on a September inspection report of the Ford Excursion limo that it did not have the appropriate federal seal certifying that it had been safely modified to be a stretch vehicle. And the modification dated back to almost the day it left the factory in 2001.

State inspections of the Schoharie crash limo in March and September also revealed serious violations, which included the vehicle not only having inadequate brakes, but that company Prestige Limousine had not yet received the operating authority to do business in New York state.

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In their letter last week, the senators also asked for the administration to accept any recommendations from the NTSB, which is investigating the crash.

The boards investigators did not have access to the limo wreckage until Friday due to the parallel criminal investigation by the New York State Police, who have not revealed a cause yet for the crash. Prestige's operator, Nauman Hussain, has been charged with one count of criminally negligent homicide by State Police.

The federal board is expected to issue a preliminary report within the next few weeks but a full investigation may take a year or more.

The State Police announced Friday that all 20 victims  17 passengers celebrating a 30th birthday, the limousine driver, and two pedestrians outside the Apple Barrel store where the vehicle crashed  died of multiple severe traumatic blunt force injuries.

The group was headed to Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown when the limousine ran through a stop sign, across a parking area adjacent to the Apple Barrel's parking lot and crashed into a ravine near the intersection of Route 30 and 30A.

Hussain, 28, is due back in Cobleskill town court on Tuesday.Tapachula, Mexico

A ragged army of Honduran migrants streamed through southern Mexico on Sunday heading toward the United States, after making an end-run around Mexican agents who briefly blocked them at the Guatemalan border.

They received help at every turn from sympathetic Mexicans who offered food, water and clothing. Hundreds of locals driving pickups, vans and cargo trucks stopped to let them clamber aboard.

Besi Jaqueline Lopez of the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula carried a stuffed polar bear in a winter cap that seemed out of place in the tropical heat. It's the favorite  and only  toy of her two daughters, 4-year-old Victoria and 3-year-old Elisabeth, who trudged beside her gleaming with sweat.

A business administration graduate, Lopez said she couldn't find work back home and hopes to reach the United States, but would stay in Mexico if she could find employment here.

"My goal is to find work for a better future for my daughters," she said.

In dozens of interviews along the journey, they have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption in Honduras.

Guatemala's migration agency confirmed that another group of about 1,000 migrants crossed into the country from Honduras on Sunday.

After praising Mexico for its no-nonsense response when police at a southern border bridge pushed the migrants back with riot shields and pepper spray, U.S. President Donald Trump again hammered Democratic Party opponents over what he apparently sees as a winning issue for Republicans a little over two weeks ahead of midterm elections.

After blaming the Democrats for "weak laws" on immigration a few days earlier, Trump said via Twitter: "The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat party. Change the immigration laws NOW!"

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther (sic) Border," he said in another tweet. "People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!"

Hundreds of migrants from the caravan did just that  applied for refugee status in Mexico in the southern city of Ciudad Hidalgo.

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But a far bigger group forded the Suchiate River from Guatemala to the Mexican side individually and dozens at a time, and resumed the trek at first light, marching 10 abreast on the highway.

"Si se pudo!" they chanted in Spanish  "Yes, we did!"

Migrants marching north Sunday said they gave up on Mexico because the application process was too slow, and most wanted to continue to the United States anyway.

"We're warriors, we got to get to the place we got to get to. We're gonna keep on going and we're not gonna stop," Luis Puerto, 39, of Colon, Honduras, said in English.

For Puerto, that place is North Carolina, where he has a wife and two daughters. He said he was recently deported from the United States after a brush with the law that he did not specify.

"We are going to get to the border of the U.S.," he said. "I am not going to stop. I don't care if I die."BRUNSWICK  State Police are seeking witnesses or information to assist in the investigation of the death of a 86-year-old woman who was killed Friday night after she was struck by one or more vehicles on Hoosick Street, Route 7, in front of the Center Brunswick Fire Station.

The identity of the driver or drivers is not yet known.

Petra Gabriel of Troy died after she was struck in the eastbound lane shortly before 8 p.m., according to State Police. The victim had reportedly been walking along the side of the busy highway and may have tripped. Brunswick Town Supervisor Phil Herrington said officials were hoping to examine traffic cameras from the firehouse.

It is not clear yet why Gabriel was walking along the road, across from a construction site and Brunswick Town Court, in the dark.

The location is a 15-minute drive from Gabriel's last registered address in Troy.

Gabriel's daughter, who neighbors said Gabriel was living with before her death, declined to talk.

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Neighbors Julian Lopez and his mother Martiza Berrios have rented an apartment from Gabriel's daughter for 11 years on the second floor of their Troy townhouse. They remembered Gabriel as a small woman who always wore a scarf. They estimated she had moved in about two years ago, but they hadn't seen her since Oct. 3.

Police are asking anyone who may have witnessed the incident, or who has information, to contact State Police at 518-477-9333 or email: crimetip@troopers.ny.gov.New York City's Metropolitan Republican Club goes back to 1902 and claims as members Teddy Roosevelt, Jacob Javits and John Lindsay, among other luminaries. Mike Bloomberg used it as his headquarters. After a recent drift into oblivion, it's back into the news. Big time.

Its current leadership made one of those idiotic mistakes that make you shake your head in disbelief. They invited Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys to the club. The Proud Boys are a far right-wing street presence devoted to fighting the culture wars on behalf of whiteness, maleness and their version of Americanism.

A riot broke out, as the Proud Boys clashed with Antifa, a self-proclaimed opponent of burgeoning fascism in the United States. Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed President Donald Trump. Ed Cox, the Republican state chairman, called Cuomo a "liar." Sean Hannity blamed Antifa and claimed he never heard of the Proud Boys, although McInness has been on the show over 20 times. The club doesn't want to talk about it.

About normal for our current political discourse.

Did the club have a right to invite the Proud Boys? Absolutely, so long as the First Amendment survives. Do most of us have the right to condemn the invitation? You betcha. The Proud Boys promote a kind of casual viciousness toward women and non-whites that needs public rejection by left and right alike.

What remains incomprehensible is the practical political thinking of club and state Republican leaders. Was the appearance of the Proud Boys viewed as a way to persuade voters to pull the Republican lever? What else could it be?

The Proud Boys' incident will do further damage to a Republican brand that has turned the New York GOP into an irrelevant fringe party with no practical ability to win statewide elections. It's bad enough that their candidates have to confront voters carrying Trump on their backs. The Proud Boys too? Really?

What drives otherwise sensible politicians to do something like this? In the end we have created this new idiocy by our tolerance of dog whistles, insults and yelling as the vehicles for political discourse. We've drifted into an acceptance of things that are obvious political mistakes.

Most of the blame goes to Trump, who has used the presidency to normalize insults and lies. Some on the left aren't far behind when they scream at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a restaurant. Hillary Clinton doesn't help by trashing civility until Democrats "win back the Senate or the House."

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Abandoning civility is actually abandoning faith in the commitment of the American people to democratic norms. Civility isn't weakness. It is an essential attribute of a functioning democracy. Or rather, its absence is a precondition for authoritarianism.

The consequence of its loss is not just the shenanigans of the leadership class. It is felt when regular, well-meaning folks, like the leadership of the Metropolitan Republican Club, can't grasp the difference between the Proud Boys and conservatism. Voters know and will punish Republicans come Election Day.

I've lost any hope that Trump will understand how urgent it is to reclaim the public discourse from his lies and insults. Hillary has lost her way. How about you and me?

Richard Brodsky is a former state Assembly member.THE ISSUE:

A grim U.N. report gives humans just 12 years to act on global warming.

THE STAKES:

Will the federal government end its denialism in time to make a difference?

Even after a United Nations report's grim warning that the world is approaching a point of no return on dire consequences from a warming planet, the Trump administration insists it knows better.

President Donald Trump at least concedes that climate change isn't the hoax he once said it was, but continues to scoff at the broad scientific consensus that human activity is responsible. In a recent 60 Minutes interview, he even put forth his theory that a period of global cooling is coming and will solve everything.

"Something's changing and it will change back again," the president said, predicting that the adverse changes to the environment "could very well go back."

The comments might be laughable if not for the grave consequences of basing national policy on such willful ignorance. The 800-page report issued Oct. 6 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the U.N. to guide world leaders, warned of coming droughts, famine, mass migration, political instability and even war  all the result of global warming.

The report said dramatic steps to reduce greenhouse gases must be taken within the next 12 years to prevent average temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius and avert severe problems. By 2040, the report says, the effects could be irreversible.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's reaction had all the hallmarks of denialism. Asked about the report by The Daily Beast, a spokesperson from the EPA's New York headquarters responded, "What report? I haven't heard of it." And EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in the same breath said the agency takes the report "very seriously" but doesn't endorse its findings.

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This, even as seasonal storms are becoming more frequent and severe. Large areas of Florida's Gulf Coast were slammed from Hurricane Michael only weeks after another storm, Florence, slammed the Carolinas, all while Puerto Rico still struggles from a devastating hurricane last year.

Like the catastrophic impact of global warning, the EPA's and President Trump's responses were unfortunately predictable. The administration is on a collision course with the clean air policies of many previous Democratic and Republican administrations. Last year, it pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, which has been signed by more than 190 nations.

Fortunately, some individual states are not taking their lead from President Trump and have joined more than 40 governments around the globe in adopting more rigid carbon emission controls. Thirteen states, including New York and the District of Columbia, have implemented California's stricter emissions standards and many also follow California's zero-emission vehicle mandate.

As for an intelligent national policy, however, it appears we'll have to wait either for sanity to return to Washington, or for the alternative reality Mr. Trump imagines to freeze over.[October 21, 2018] Visa Readies B2B Connect for Market

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) today announced new product details surrounding digital identity in preparation for a first quarter 2019 launch of Visa B2B Connect. This one-of-a-kind distributed ledger-based platform is designed to give financial institutions a simple, fast and secure way to process cross border business-to-business payments globally. "With B2B Connect, we're developing a new way for businesses to make cross border, high value payments - fixing broken processes and breaking down geographic barriers along the way," said Kevin Phalen, global head, Visa Business Solutions, Visa. "B2B Connect will facilitate payments for financial institutions for a variety of industry verticals, including supply chain, trade, institutional banking and more." B2B Connect's digital identity feature tokenizes an organization's sensitive business information, such as banking details and account numbers, giving them a unique identifier that can be used to facilitate transactions on the platform. Encompassing safety, security and governance all in one solution, B2B Connect's digital identity feature will transform the way information is exchanged in business-to-business cross-border transactions. "B2B Connect's digital identity greatly reduces the opportunity for fraud that might otherwise exist with checks, ACH and wire transfers today, while also helping companies remain compliant as part of the regulated financial ecosystem," continues Phalen. Expanding Partnerships In preparation for the commercial launch next year, Visa is expanding partnerships to add additional functionality to the B2B Connect platform. As part of the B2B Connect platform, Visa is integrating open source Hyperledger Fabric framework from the Linux Foundation (News - Alert) with Visa's core assets. This will help provide an improved process to facilitate financial transactions on a scalable, permissioned network. The work between Visa and IBM (News - Alert) will enable our mutual financial institutional clients and ecosystem to maximize the network. Building on a 40-year relationsip between Visa and IBM, this is a natural progression that highlights both companies' commitment to ensuring a frictionless cross-border payment experience with the utmost security, trust and transparency.



"When industry leaders in payments and in financial services technology work together using open source technology, the entire business landscape stands to benefit," said Jason Kelley, general manager, IBM Blockchain Services. "IBM Blockchain Platform and Hyperledger technology are delivering real business value today and B2B Connect is one of the most powerful examples to date of how blockchain is transforming payments." Bottomline Technologies (News - Alert) , a leading provider of financial technology that helps make complex business payments simple, smart and secure, is working with Visa to be the first partner to integrate its solution with B2B Connect.

With the integration, Bottomline's financial institutions who participate in B2B Connect can gain easy access to the B2B Connect platform, without requiring complex technology updates. "Bottomline serves 1,200 financial institutions globally, and they are always looking to us to provide them with value-add innovations that simplify processes and increase efficiencies," said Rob Eberle, President & CEO, Bottomline Technologies. "We're thrilled to work with Visa on this integration to enable our mutual financial institution clients to easily access the B2B Connect platform." About Visa B2B Connect With security, interoperability and governance at the core of every B2B Connect transaction, Visa aims to remove friction and time spent on cross-border corporate transactions by sending these transactions through B2B Connect from the bank of origin directly to the beneficiary bank. To learn more about B2B Connect, please contact the team at VisaB2BConnect@visa.com. About Visa Inc. Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is the world's leader in digital payments. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure payment network - enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company's relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of connected commerce on any device, and a driving force behind the dream of a cashless future for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce. For more information, visit About Visa, https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog.html and @VisaNews. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181021005039/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 21, 2018] CGI and National Bank of Canada pilot a blockchain guarantee and standby negotiation platform

MONTREAL, Oct. 21 2018 /CNW Telbec/ - CGI (NYSE: GIB) (TSX: GIB.A) announced the successful collaboration with National Bank of Canada and Skuchain on a pilot program that will improve and streamline the process for negotiating standby letters of credit and guarantees, the complex conditional agreements used by banks for securing financial transactions. These agreements, used across many industries to secure contracts, are currently conducted via email, making them prone to errors and delays in a process that lacks transparency for beneficiaries regarding terms and approval status. For National Bank of Canada, CGI integrated the CGI Trade360 trade finance platform with Skuchain's Contract Builder, an application built on the blockchain startup's Brackets platform for smart contracts on a blockchain. The integration enables National Bank of Canada to provide trade finance services digitally to customers conducting business on a blockchain B2B solution. In particular, customers will be able to initiate, conduct and conclude negotiations of standby letters of credit and guarantees entirely on smart contracts that can intelligently construct agreements and securely communicate any changes in terms to relevant parties. The result is a blockchain-based contract negotiation tool that is enormously effective in the standby letter of credit and guarantee process. National Bank of Canada's end-to-end, blockchain-enabled process will improve processing times, reduce risks and help strengthen the bank's customer relationships. By leveraging templates pre-approved by banks and negotiations on a distribued ledger, the integrated platform automates the coordination necessary to issue a standby letter of credit or guarantee. The newly streamlined process offers visibility across the lifecycle, lower costs for all parties, increased security and more effective collaboration.



"This pilot project is a great opportunity to leverage blockchain technology to simplify the process for negotiating standby letters of credit and guarantees while making it more transparent and secure. This will enable us to offer a simple, fast and efficient experience to our commercial clients which facilitates managing their business," said Patrice Roy, Vice President, Payments, Cash Management and International Solutions at National Bank of Canada. "This standby letter of credit contract builder is the first live implementation of the emerging DLPC standard" said Srinivasan Sriram, CEO at Skuchain. "This standard is the result of more than two years of work by the Distributed Ledger Payment Commitment (DLPC) Working Group at the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (BAFT) which our VP of Technology Ranganathan Krishnan has been captaining."

"The use of blockchain offers a shared ledger that serves as the single source of truth during pre-issuance negotiation and through issuance and re-issuance processes," said Frank Tezzi, Vice-President of Trade and Supply Chain Solutions at CGI. "This example provides certainty and transparency for beneficiaries regarding the guarantee process as they enter into a financial transaction." About Skuchain

Skuchain is a blockchain technology company that provides transparency, security and efficiency to the supply chain. In the same way the Internet gave birth to e-commerce, blockchain provides the foundation for collaborative commerce, in which enterprises are uniquely able to work together to unlock gains while also expanding their control across the global value chain. Based on this vision, Skuchain's Empowered Collaborative Commerce Cloud (EC3) Platform has been adopted across aerospace, food and agriculture, electronics, energy, auto, finance and other industries in East Asia, Europe, the US and Africa. Learn more at www.skuchain.com . About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world. With 74,000 professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from IT and business consulting to systems integration, outsourcing services and intellectual property solutions. CGI works with clients through a local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network that helps clients digitally transform their organizations and accelerate results. With annual revenue of C$10.8 billion, CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Learn more at cgi.com . View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cgi-and-national-bank-of-canada-pilot-a-blockchain-guarantee-and-standby-negotiation-platform-300734615.html SOURCE CGI Group Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 21, 2018] NEVRO 24 HOUR DEADLINE ALERT: Approximately 24 Hours Remain; ClaimsFiler Reminds Investors with Losses in Excess of $100,000 of Deadline in Class Action Lawsuit against Nevro Corp. - NVRO

ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have only until October 22, 2018 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Nevro Corp. (NYSE: NVRO). Investor losses must relate to purchases of the Company's shares between January 8, 2018 and July 12, 2018. This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Get Help Nevro investors should visit us at https://www.claimsfiler.com/cases/view-nevro-corporation-securities-litigation or call toll-free (844) 367-9658. Lawyers at Kahn Swic & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options.



About the Lawsuit On July 10, 2018, analysts reported that a tentative court ruling in patent litigation involving Nevro nullified at least five patents related to the Company's "proprietary" HF10 therapy and Senza delivery systems, which resulted in some analysts downgrading the Company. Then, on July 13, 2018, Nevro disclosed that it had terminated the employment of James Alecxih, Vice President, Worldwide Sales. News of both events caused the price of Nevro's shares to plummet, wiping out over $650 million in market capitalization.

About ClaimsFiler ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations. To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181021005020/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Bfound Aims to Put Every Business in UAE Online

DUBAI, UAE, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The UAE's biggest digital marketing solutions provider for small & medium businesses - bfound - has brought to the region a new unique service "Listings Management" to help businesses in UAE claim and manage their business listings on sites like Google Maps - giving them the ability to view and respond to customer reviews, set the accurate pin drop on the map, upload images, update business hours, manage duplicate listings, and let customers call up the business directly, all through one zero-hassle platform. At this time, Google Maps requires Google to send businesses a verification post card, delivered to their business location. The business is then required to enter the code into their Google My Business account to verify it. Businesses in the UAE often have to wait for weeks if not months to receive the postcard. To make matters worse, a significant share of businesses fails to receive the postcard due to miscellaneous mail-related complications. With bfound's new "Listings Management" service, local businesses will be able to instantly claim, verify and manage their business listings on Google maps, Facebook Maps, Uber, Waze, Apple Maps, Foursquare and more, all in one centralized platform. This comes at a time when the UAE's digital penetration is at an all-time high and over 80% of the UAE uses the internet daily while 96% prfer to do it through their smartphones. Annual sales linked to digital maps in the UAE are estimated to be around AED 114 Billion.



According to Erik Bjerlestam, CEO at bfound "Claiming and maintaining your local business listing on Google and other maps is the first step to digital success". Based on research, bfound estimates around 70% of local businesses in UAE don't have an online presence. In addition, Google confirms that businesses with claimed listings are 5% more likely to generate leads than those with incomplete or inaccurate listings. In these times, a well-maintained business listing gives small and medium businesses (and those with limited resources) almost the same opportunity to be found that large multi-national businesses enjoy. With bfound's new service, business owners can give potential customers all the important information that they need, right from the search engine results page. This information includes the business phone number, business category, website, location, opening hours and reviews as well as internal and external location images.

A portion of businesses in the region are already listed on Google maps (thanks to Google's advanced data collection system). However, a staggering majority of these listings is not claimed by the businesses themselves, meaning any user can change information on the listing. It is because of this scenario that The Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry and Google kicked off 2018 with the launch of their "Get Dubai Businesses Online" campaign.



It is important to know that anybody can contribute to the information on a Google maps listing, and it is the business's responsibility to claim, verify and correct the listed information. The UAE has over 300,000 small and medium businesses but over 70% of them do not have a strong digital presence. Bfound currently has served over 1,000 small & medium businesses in UAE across more than 30 verticals, and aims to bring this unique service to thousands of local businesses in UAE. About bfound bfound helps small and medium businesses grow their online presence and reach their target customers. Having started in 2015, they've helped hundreds of local businesses in UAE maximize their online engagement and get new customers. They offer a tailored mix of digital marketing solutions including: Business Listings Management on Google Maps, Apple Maps, Foursquare and more. Digital advertising campaigns such as Google Ads, Instagram Ads, and Youtube Ads. Building websites and landing pages. Call tracking solution which helps businesses track all incoming calls from different marketing channels. To learn more, visit business.bfound.io SOURCE Bfound

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] IGEM 2018 Ends on a High Note

Partnerships in Business, Technology and Innovation Forged KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The 9th International Greentech & Eco Products Exhibition & Conference Malaysia (IGEM 2018) organised by the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment & Climate Change (MESTECC) and Malaysian Green Technology Corporation (MGTC), ended on a celebratory note as several partnerships were forged in terms of business leads, technology transfer and innovation, reinforcing IGEM's position as the regional hub for green technology. Over the course of four days, IGEM 2018 attracted more than 30,000 visitors and featured 250 booths from over 30 countries. There were also over 10 memorandums of understanding (MoU) signed by various international and local organisations. The participating exhibitors and visitors were enthused with the plethora of networking and business opportunities at the event. Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment & Climate Change, YB Puan Yeo Bee Yin expressed her gratitude while highlighting the importance of partnerships in IGEM's continued success. "IGEM 2018 set out to reaffirm Malaysia's position as a key driver in growing the region's green economy and I must say, we have set this foundation very strongly over the past three days. Having walked the exhibition halls every day, chared the townhalls and spoken with thought leaders, one thing that really stands out is that partnerships can really make the impossible, possible," YB Puan Yeo Bee Yin said.



"I am pleased to note that several members from various governments, regulators, embassies, city councils, industry associations, financiers participated in IGEM 2018, united in our collective efforts to raise awareness, promote and grow the global green economy in our respective capacity and in our respective part of the world," she added. IGEM 2018 also marked the unveiling of Malaysia's "Roadmap Towards Zero Single Use Plastic", which outlines the country's single strategy to holistically phase-out single use plastic through the adoption of a phased approach. The Roadmap indicates the need for partnerships between the state and local councils together with the general public to increasingly adapt to more environmentally friendly options via economic instruments, education and awareness programmes.

As part of the government's emphasis on growing the renewable energy segment by 20% by 2030, the Sustainable Energy Development Authority announced over 114MW of new quota for the feed-in tariff programme, comprising 74.5 MW for small hydro, 10MW for biomass and 30 MW of biogas -- to be awarded by e-bidding. Additionally, the Large Scale Solar 3 programme which targets to expand renewable energy generating capacity by up to 500MW, was launched calling for requests for proposals for development of solar projects to be submitted up to January 2019, enhancement to the Net Energy Metering programme amongst other. IGEM 2018 also partnered with several international organisations including the EU-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry, The British High Commission and The Embassy of The Republic of South Korea to bring informative and insightful discussions to policy makers, corporate leaders, investors, researchers and academicians. Continuing the theme of partnerships, the first-ever World Energy Cities Partnership -- Mayors' Congress, organised by Datuk Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur was held at IGEM. This landmark event saw 4 Mayors, 2 Deputy Mayors and delegates from 11 cities in discourse over problems common and unique to each city, as well as solutions adopted as part of an initiative to promote global cooperation in mitigating climate change. In fostering closer partnerships with the public and private sector, IGEM 2018 hosted the inaugural National Energy Awards (NEA) gala dinner to reward pioneering organisations for implementing sustainable measures in their operations. YB Puan Yeo Bee Yin said, "Through NEA we aim to promote the use of holistic and encompassing sustainability measures that are applicable at every step of an organisation's operations, from initial concept to maintenance, as well as creating greater public awareness." This follows the understanding that in addition to the impressive figures generated every year from a business perspective, IGEM has always been an important opportunity to build green awareness with the public as according to YB Puan Yeo Bee Yin, it is ultimately down to an individual's choice to make their homes and workplaces a more sustainable place. IGEM 2018 placed special emphasis towards instilling green awareness in the younger generation, with a large number of youth attending displaying a keen interest at the technological solutions presented. On reaching out to the youth through IGEM, YB Puan Yeo Bee Yin said, "They are the future, the inheritors of the green economy. IGEM helps to not just instil a fascination with green technology but encourages them to be green leaders, who can shape the mindset of their peers and form more partnerships through their digital power." Backed by this success, YB Puan Yeo Bee Yin announced that next year IGEM 2019 would be organised between 9th and 11th October, at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, marking the event's landmark 10th anniversary. For more details on the announcements about next year's show and to view the highlights of IGEM 2018, please visit www.igem.my. About IGEM 2018 Initiated in 2010, the International Greentech & Eco Products Exhibition & Conference Malaysia, IGEM, is one of the region's most successful green technology business and innovation platforms. IGEM 2018, themed 'Green Economy and Industry 4.0: Achieving Sustainable Development Goals' is set to position Malaysia at the centre of the region's thriving green economy. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181022/2274691-1 SOURCE Malaysian Green Technology Corporation (GreenTech Malaysia)

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Sogou to Report Third Quarter 2018 Financial Results on November 5, 2018

BEIJING, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sogou, an innovator in search and a leader in China's internet industry, today announced that it will report its third quarter 2018 unaudited financial results on Monday, November 5, 2018, before U.S. market hours. Sogou's management team will host a conference call at 7:30am U.S. Eastern Time, (8:30pm Beijing/Hong Kong time) on November 5, 2018, following the quarterly results announcement. The dial-in details for the live conference call are:







U.S. Toll Free: +1-888-317-6003 Mainland China: 4001-206115 (Toll Free) Hong Kong: 800-963976 (Toll Free); +852-580-81995 (Local Toll) International: +1-412-317-6061 Passcode: 7311232

Please dial in 10 minutes before the call is scheduled to begin. When prompted, ask to be connected to the Sogou Inc. call and provide the passcode. A replay of the conference call may be accessed by phone at the following number until November 12, 2018: International: +1-412-317-0088 Passcode: 10125635 A live webcast and archive of the conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of Sogou's website at http://ir.sogou.com. About Sogou Sogou Inc. (NYSE: SOGO) is an innovator in search and a leader in China's internet industry. With a mission to make it easy to communicate and get information, Sogou has grown to become the second largest search engine by mobile queries and the fourth largest internet company by MAU in China. Sogou has a wide range of innovative products and services, including the Sogou Input Method, which is the largest Chinese language input software for both mobile and PC. Sogou is also at the forefront of AI development and has made significant breakthroughs in voice and image technologies, machine translation, and Q&A, which have been successfully integrated into our products and services. For investor enquiries, please contact: Jessie Zheng

Sogou Investor Relations

Tel: +86-10-5689-8068

Email: zhengyan@sogou-inc.com For media enquiries, please contact: Rachael Layfield

Brunswick Group

Tel: +86 10 5960-8600

Email: sogou@brunswickgroup.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sogou-to-report-third-quarter-2018-financial-results-on-november-5-2018-300734929.html SOURCE Sogou Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] NTT DOCOMO Launches IoT-driven Temperature-monitoring Service in USA

NTT (News - Alert) DOCOMO, INC. and NTT DOCOMO USA, Inc. announced today the immediate launch of an IoT-driven temperature- and humidity-monitoring service for industrial refrigerators and freezers in the United States. Customers can use smartphones or PCs to monitor the temperature and humidity of their equipment, get alerts in the event of any abnormality, receive monthly reports on temperature and humidity trends, and change settings based on such reports. The subscription service is available from $99 per month in the United States. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181021005057/en/ Service Scheme (Graphic: Business Wire) DOCOMO developed the service in collaboration with myDevices (News - Alert) , an IoT solutions company based in Los Angeles, California that provides IoT technology based on LoRa, a wireless data communication technology for low-power, extra-long-range transmissions. Temperature and humidity data collected at grocery stores and restaurants are available in the cloud in real time for reliable temperature management, including efficient automation of processes such as visual confirmations by employees, and reduced food wastage. The system uses the LoRaWANTM specification, a lw-power, wide area networking protocol introduced by the LoRa AllianceTM, which enables sensors to run for more than five years without replacement.



Refrigeration temperature management is an important issue for grocery stores and restaurants, because equipment breakdowns can lead directly to food spoilage. Despite the high demand for industrial refrigerators with remote monitoring functionality, such equipment is expensive and replacement cycles can be long, so many refrigerators without such functionality are operating in the U.S. market. The new service has been launched under DOCOMO's "GlobiotTM" global IoT initiative, which was introduced on July 2 to provide global connectivity and operational support and consulting to Japanese enterprises that have global IoT operations. Going forward, DOCOMO and DOCOMO USA expect to continue collaborating with cutting-edge U.S. companies to introduce additional IoT solutions that help customers raise their productivity and create new value.

"LoRa", "LoRaWAN" and "LoRa Alliance" are trademarks or registered trademarks of Semtech Corporation (News - Alert) .

"Globiot" is a trademark of NTT DOCOMO, INC. About NTT DOCOMO

NTT DOCOMO, Japan's leading mobile operator with over 76 million subscriptions, is one of the world's foremost contributors to 3G, 4G and 5G mobile network technologies. Beyond core communications services, DOCOMO is challenging new frontiers in collaboration with a growing number of entities ("+d" partners), creating exciting and convenient value-added services that change the way people live and work. Under a medium-term plan toward 2020 and beyond, DOCOMO is pioneering a leading-edge 5G network to facilitate innovative services that will amaze and inspire customers beyond their expectations. DOCOMO is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (9437). www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english. About NTT DOCOMO USA

NTT DOCOMO USA is the U.S. subsidiary of NTT DOCOMO. We are now developing a communications business beginning with mobile solutions in the United States, primarily enterprise-facing solutions. By utilizing the vast global experience of the NTT Group and collaborating with our partner companies in a variety of different fields, we aim to deliver the highest quality services to our customers.

https://www.docomo-usa.com/index_en.html View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181021005057/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] KBC Establishes Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot Hub in Singapore to Reduce Energy Intensity and Carbon Emissions in the Energy and Chemical Industry

SINGAPORE, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The hub will reduce energy costs and emissions of Singapore-based companies by 10 per cent through delivery of energy management and optimization solutions and next generation analytics via the Cloud KBC (A Yokogawa Company) today announced the launch of a new Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot hub in Singapore to address the Singapore government's environmental sustainability initiatives. The new Singapore-based Co-Pilot hub and team will build and adapt energy management and optimization systems, conduct research and development to create the next generation of energy analytics applications, and deliver KBC's cloud-based solutions. The first solution to come from the Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot hub is KBC's Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot service. Co-Pilot securely connects KBC's energy and carbon emissions management software to data sources in an industrial plant creating its 'digital twin'. Through a combination of rigorous analytical technology and human expertise it determines how to help the plant reduce energy usage and emissions without affecting production goals. Because Co-Pilot is delivered as a cloud service it makes adoption and compliance with regulation very simple, and it can be implemented and maintained with minimal impact on operating personnel and the plant. Oversight by KBC experts ensures that advice and recommendations are impleented, and capability is transferred to the sites over time. The solution works in real-time, continually monitoring and adjusting to changes in plant performance and external economics to help the plant achieve its full potential savings.



Co-Pilot is available immediately and will enable a plant to simultaneously optimize the supply, demand and re-use of energy. It has a modest set-up cost and a monthly subscription, which results in a risk-free cashflow positive program for customers. It will reduce site energy use and carbon emissions by around 10 per cent leading to significant economic returns of between 5 and 10 times the investment, driven primarily by lower operating costs. "KBC is bringing new technologies, services and business models to Singapore, leveraging robust and secure cloud services at the high standard demanded by the Energy and Chemical industry. It will not only help Singapore's Energy and Chemical industry to achieve world leading levels of efficiency, but in turn will result in KBC expanding its team of experts already in Singapore," explains Andy Howell, CEO of KBC.

The impetus behind the Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot hub is to enable Energy and Chemical companies in Singapore to comply with legislative requirements around energy and carbon emission reduction. KBC's parent company, Yokogawa, has a long history of co-innovation with industry in Singapore and a strong commitment to supporting achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and providing solutions to improve the energy and environmental performance of the industries it serves. Yokogawa director and executive vice president, Satoru Kurosu declares, "I am confident that this initiative increases Yokogawa's ability to support our customers in Singapore in achieving their full potential in terms of energy savings and carbon emissions minimization. We intend to expand the use of the KBC Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot hub to serve our customers in the nearby south-east Asia region and eventually further afield throughout the Asia-Pacific region." The Singapore Government has a strong philosophy of environmental sustainability. "Singapore is accelerating efforts to reduce carbon emissions and encourage energy efficiency across industries, as part of our commitment towards climate change. KBC's new Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot hub will complement our sustainability goals, combining the latest digital technologies and their operational know-how to partner businesses along this journey," said Mr Lim Kok Kiang, assistant managing director, Singapore Economic Development Board. Interested parties may contact KBC directly or channel enquiries through Yokogawa Engineering Asia. For more information, please visit http://www.kbc.global/co-pilot.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Nestle Waters North America Signs Renewable Energy Agreement with ENGIE Resources

HOUSTON, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Nestle Waters North America (NWNA), together with ENGIE Resources, today announced they have signed a renewable energy agreement through which ENGIE will supply over 50 percent of the energy needed for NWNA's manufacturing and distribution facilities in Texas. With this agreement, NWNA operations in Travis, McLennan, Dallas, and Harris counties will be supplied by renewable wind energy from the Midway Wind Farm in San Patricio County, Texas, supporting Nestle's global goal to transition to 100 percent renewable energy use in its operations. NWNA will use clean, renewable energy to produce sustainably sourced beverage options for Texans, including the company's Ozarka Brand Natural Spring Water and Nestle Pure Life Purified Water. The agreement will include up to 70,500 renewable energy certificates (RECs) per year from Midway Wind, LLC. Based on current electrical usage, by transitioning its electrical power needs to renewable sources, the carbon footprint from the company's Texas factories will be reduced by more than 44,000 metric tons of CO 2 equivalent per year. This is the equivalent of taking 9,500 vehicles off the road for one year. "At Nestle Waters North America, we are committed to enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future for individuals and families, communities and the planet. Transitioning our factories to clean, renewable energy is one important way we can achieve this goal," said Alexander Gregorian, Vice President, Head of Technical and Production at Nestle Waters North America. "We are proud to partner with ENGIE and Midway Wind, LLC here in Texas, as we continue our journey toward achieving 100 percent renewable energy use in our operations." "We're pleased to offer a suite of sustainability solutions that make it easy to be green," said Graham Leith, Senior Vice President of ENGIE Resources. "In this case, NWNA took advantage of ENGIE's easyRE product, which allows our customers to take service directly from an existing renewable energy source. easyRE differs from traditional PPAs via competitive pricing, shorter contract terms, and right-sized volumes." Earlier this year, Nestle Waters North America transitioned its facility in Sacramento, California to 100 percent renewable energy, and announced, along with its parent company, a 15-year power purchase agreement with ENGIE Resources that will provide approximately 80 percent of the electrical load for five Nestle facilities in southeastern Pennsylvania. As a result of these recent milestones, by 2019, over 20 percent of the electricity Nestle uses in the U.S. will be from renewable sources.



About Nestle Waters

Nestle Waters North America offers an unrivaled portfolio of bottled waters for healthy hydration, including Ozarka Brand Natural Spring Water, Nestle Pure Life, Perrier and S. Pellegrino. The company also owns and operates ReadyRefresh? by Nestle, a customizable water and beverage delivery service. Just Click and Quench Based in Stamford, Connecticut with some 8,500 associates, we are committed to reducing our environmental footprint across our operations. As a natural resource company, we sustainably manage 47 spring sources and conserve nearly 21,000 acres of natural watershed area. We are also committed to creating shared value and being a good neighbor in the 140 communities where we operate in the U.S. In Texas, Nestle Waters North America conserves more than 7,500 acres of land and operates four bottling facilities that employ more than 700 people. For more information, visit us at www.nestle-watersna.com/en and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

About ENGIE Resources LLC

ENGIE Resources is a subsidiary of ENGIE North America and part of the international energy group ENGIE. As the fourth-largest electricity supplier to non-residential consumers in the United States, we deliver a combination of products and services, highly rated customer service, and financial strength that provides unique and compelling value to our customers. Now offering solar and other renewable energy options, demand response, and on-bill financing, we assure our customers that they can count on us to create effective, customized plans for them. Our in-house energy experts work with customers to understand their operations, tailoring products and services specific to their business and budget. For more about ENGIE Resources, visit www.engieresources.com or call 1-866-999-8374. Follow ENGIE Resources on LinkedIn, Twitter , and Facebook. About ENGIE North America Inc.

ENGIE North America manages a range of energy businesses in the United States and Canada, including clean power generation, cogeneration, and energy storage; retail energy sales; and comprehensive services to help customers run their facilities more efficiently and optimize energy and other resource use and expense. Nearly 100 percent of the company's power generation portfolio is low carbon or renewable. Globally, ENGIE is the largest independent power producer and energy efficiency services provider in the world, with operations in 70 countries employing 150,000 people, including 1,000 researchers in 11 R&D centers. For more information, please visit http://www.engie-na.com/, @ENGIENorthAm, and www.engie.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nestle-waters-north-america-signs-renewable-energy-agreement-with-engie-resources-300734353.html SOURCE ENGIE Resources

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] ILIFE Launches All-New Floor Washing Robot W400

SHENZHEN, China, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ILIFE, world renowned robot vacuum brand, unveils its first floor washing robot "ILIFE W400" today. Powered by the cutting-edge TidalPower Cleaning System and Clean/Dirty Water Separation Technology, W400 floor washing robot offers all-new, immaculate robotic cleaning solution. It tackles thick household stains, including sauce, paint and footprints, and scrapes away water from the kitchen and bathroom floors to avoid wet floor slips and falls. Cleaning more thoroughly than mopping robots, ILIFE W400 washes the floor repeatedly and thoroughly in 4 steps: moistening stains, scrubbing the floor, suctioning waste water and scraping residue off the floor. Unlike most mopping robots that scatter dirt on the floor, W400 extracts stains in the same spot with a microfiber roller brush and takes care of dirt and waste water with strong suction to avoid secondary pollution. The scraper removes residue so the floor is dry as soon as cleaning completes. "Our robot vacuum technological achievements have brought us wide recognition from the industry and consumers in the past few years. These achievements are applied to our A series carpet cleaning specialist robots and V series vacuum/mopping robots. They have also enabled us to expand our global presence in Europe, North America and Asia," says Chen Guanliang, VP of R&D of ILIFE. "Our latest cleaning solution ILIFE W400 is designed to satisfy different cleaning needs in different environments. We'll continue to explore potential applications of robotic technology to our daily life." TidalPower Cleaning System/p>



Moisten Six tiny nozzles let out water to dampen the floor and soften stains.

Scrub Ultra-fine fiber brush rotates at a high frequency, gently scrubbing and deep cleaning the floor. Suction Powered by a built-in brushless motor, strong suction removes waste water to avoid secondary pollution. Scrape The scraper removes residual stains and water marks, leaving the floor completely spotless. Clean/Dirty Water Separation The new clean and dirty water separation technology is a key feature that differentiates ILIFE W400 from other mopping robots. While most sweeping robots mop with cleaning cloth, W400's water separation technology greatly improves cleaning efficiency by spraying clean water and suctioning waste water. This innovative wet cleaning solution avoids secondary pollution and provides better protection for the floor. Availability ILIFE W400 will be released during AliExpress 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. Before that, the Early-bird offer is available for pre-order on ILIFE's Official Store and Spain Store on AliExpress.com (Please visit: http://bit.ly/2q2bM0g), and will land on other platforms soon. About ILIFE Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Shenzhen, China, ILIFE Innovation Ltd is a high-tech company specializing in robotic cleaning technology. Having successfully penetrated into the global market, ILIFE's sales network reaches over 30 countries and regions, offering technologically advanced, high-quality and cost-effective automated products to the consumers around the world. "ILIFE" is a combination of the capital letter "I" and the word "LIFE", denoting everyone's pursuit of a better life. Over the past two decades, robot cleaners have helped millions of people around the world to create a clean living environment. As the world's leading robot vacuum manufacturer, ILIFE is dedicated to introducing and promoting a smart home ecosystem which allows families and individuals to experience the extraordinary convenience brought by artificial intelligence. For more information: www.iliferobot.com

For media enquiry: media@iliferobot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iliferobotics

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/iliferobotics

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/iliferobot SOURCE ILIFE

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Majestic Eye Tattoo Company Provides Superior Laser Tattoo Removal and Fading for Cover-Ups with Astanza Duality Laser in Riverview, Florida

RIVERVIEW, Fla., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Majestic Eye Tattoo Company has expanded their list of services to include laser tattoo removal with the addition of the Astanza Duality. The Award Winning Tattoo Shop provides complete tattoo removal, tattoo lightening for cover-up tattoos, and selective removal of unwanted ink. "Majestic Eye Tattoo Company is unlike any other tattoo shop. Just like the many tattooed individuals and their ink, our studio is unique," said Dr. Roy Marrero, owner. "We deliver high-quality art and skin services throughout the greater Riverview area and are always looking for ways to improve our craft. Laser tattoo removal helps us transform skin by removing unwanted ink and making room for new art." The Astanza Duality featured at Majestic Eye Tattoo Company is a powerhouse laser that safely removes ink from all skin tones. The Duality's 1064 nm and 532 nm wavelength penetrate the skin without harming any surrounding skin tissue. The Duality is engineered to eliminate more ink with each session, allowing Majestic Eye Tattoo Company to provide effective tattoo removal in the fewest amount of treatments.



"Dr. Marrero and the Majestic Eye team are a hard-working, passionate team of individuals that love and understand the interaction between skin and ink," said Opal Taskila, Astanza Sales Representative. "Their addition of the Duality and laser tattoo removal treatments makes them the leading full-service tattoo studio in the metropolitan area." Majestic Eye Tattoo Company is currently offering $50 off laser tattoo removal treatments for patients that schedule a complimentary consultation now through October 31, 2018.

About Majestic Eye Tattoo Company Majestic Eye Tattoo Company is an award-winning tattoo shop located in Riverview, Florida. They specialize in realistic color tattoos, portrait tattoos, cover-ups, piercings, laser tattoo removal, and more. All laser technicians at Majestic Eye Tattoo Company are Certified Laser Specialists, Laser Safety Officers, and are skilled in operating Advanced Q-switched Laser Technology. Majestic Eye Tattoo Company offers free consultations for all patients. To schedule an appointment, call (813) 563-0903 or visit http://www.majesticeyetat.com. Majestic Eye Tattoo Company is located at 6417 South HWY 301, Riverview, FL 33578. About Astanza Laser Astanza is the leader in lasers for tattoo removal, hair removal, and additional aesthetic procedures. In addition to developing cutting-edge medical laser devices such as the Duality, Trinity, and ReSmooth systems, Astanza offers its customers a complete range of training, marketing, and business consulting services specific to achieving success in this growing field. Astanza Laser is headquartered in Dallas, TX with customers throughout North America and Europe. For product, investor, or press information, call (800) 364-9010, or visit http://www.astanzalaser.com/. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/majestic-eye-tattoo-company-provides-superior-laser-tattoo-removal-and-fading-for-cover-ups-with-astanza-duality-laser-in-riverview-florida-300734879.html SOURCE Astanza Laser

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Hemispherx Outlines Ampligen Combination Therapy Clinical Study Strategy for the Treatment of Multiple Cancers in Letter to Stockholders

ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hemispherx Biopharma, Inc. (NYSE American: HEB) announces that Thomas K. Equels, President and Chief Executive Officer, has issued a Letter to Stockholders providing a business update. The full text of the Letter, which has also been posted to the Company's website, is as follows.

To Our Stockholders, The primary focus of todays Letter is to update you on the great strides we have made in our oncology programs with Ampligen. In recent months Hemispherx has made significant advancements with our Ampligen oncology program and Ampligens potential use as an immuno-oncology agent for the treatment of multiple types of cancer. This has been a priority for our Company, and me personally, since I became CEO in 2016. We have remained focused on fulfilling our promises to advance these important clinical goals. I am pleased to announce that we are supporting six separate clinical studies in eight solid tumors at major research institutions. In parallel, we continue to pursue Ampligen for the treatment of severe myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Ampligen is approved for this indication in Argentina (the first and only meaningful therapy approved anywhere in the world for ME/CFS) and is available through an U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized expanded access program (EAP), AMP-511, a program where the FDA has approved the reimbursement rate of $200 per vial for the direct costs and where we are expanding participation at clinics in Nevada and North Carolina. Ampligen and Oncology In collaboration with major cancer research centers in the U.S. and around the world, we have been making tremendous progress and strongly believe in the future of our cancer-fighting efforts. We believe the true value of Ampligen is not yet well-understood by the pharma industry, many clinicians or investors. Therefore, I believe it is important that you, our stockholders, understand not only what we are doing in this field, but also why we are doing it. It is also important that you have the opportunity to see what these top experts in immuno-oncology have to say about their recent successes with Ampligen and its importance as a promising agent for advances in oncology. Progress in oncology provides a clear opportunity for commercial success for Hemispherx. We are working closely with and have initiated the steps to proceed with important clinical studies at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Roswell Park). We expect that the Institutions will conduct and complete these clinical trials on an expedited basis. The goal of these various studies will be to conclusively test the hypothesis that the combination of Ampligen with checkpoint blockade therapies will improve clinical tumor responses, time to progression and survival in humans. Checkpoint inhibitors have provided dramatic responses for a number of advanced end stage cancers by enabling the patients immune system to attack the cancer. Although a minority of patients respond dramatically to the checkpoint inhibitors, we believe that use of combinational immune therapy to enhance immune killing of tumor cells provides a rational mechanism for expanding the clinical response rate for checkpoint inhibitor therapy. In early October, Hemispherx signed a Clinical Trial Agreement with Roswell Park in Buffalo, N.Y. to conduct clinical studies of Ampligen in combination with checkpoint inhibitors in three solid tumors, namely urothelial carcinoma (bladder and associated structures), renal cell carcinoma and melanoma. Additional clinical studies of Ampligen plus checkpoint blockade therapies in five other solid tumors  triple-negative breast, colorectal, ovarian, non-small cell lung and pancreatic carcinomas  are at various stages of development, from early protocol drafts to having secured FDA authorization to proceed with human subjects. These five other clinical trials will be conducted at Roswell Park, UPMC or UNMC beginning in the near future. In summary, Hemispherx is currently collaborating on the start of clinical trials with three U.S.-based world-class cancer research centers to study Ampligen in combination with checkpoint inhibitors that are already approved by the FDA. Checkpoint inhibitors are powerful immuno-therapy drugs that block proteins that restrain the bodys immune system from fighting cancer, and they are used in a number of advanced solid tumor malgnancies. The object of these combination clinical trials is to measure improvements in therapeutic outcomes. The need stems from the fact that checkpoint blockade therapies work poorly with so-called cold tumors. Clinical proof-of-concept findings using an Ampligen cocktail in colorectal carcinoma demonstrated a more favorable ratio of killer T-cells to regulatory T-cells in the tumor microenvironment. Killer T-cells attack cancer cells, and their presence in the tumor microenvironment can be inhibited by regulatory (suppressor) T-cells in the tumor microenvironment. The suppressor cells thereby reduce a patients immune response to cancer. Increases in killer T-cells, without a corresponding increase in suppressor T-cells, therefore, is an indicator of the bodys increased ability to mount a potentially effective immune response, supporting strong pre-clinical evidence of Ampligens activity in converting cold tumors into hot tumors.



In a head-to-head study in explant culture models, Ampligen activated the TLR3 pathway and promoted an accumulation of killer T-cells, but unlike two other TLR3 agonists, it did so without causing regulatory T-cell (Treg) attraction. These findings, published in the journal Cancer Research (http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2018/05/31/0008-5472.CAN-17-3985), are important because they show that Ampligen selectively reprograms the tumor microenvironment by inducing the beneficial aspects of tumor inflammation (attracting killer T-cells), without amplifying immune-suppressive elements such as regulatory, suppressor, T-cells. The anti-tumor activity of Ampligen has been recognized by oncology investigators in a multiplicity of peer reviewed scientific publications. The ability to reprogram the tumor microenvironment favoring enhanced anti-cancer activity of the checkpoint inhibitors has provided the rationale for initiating clinical proof of concept studies in a variety of advanced (lethal) cancers. "Ampligen has the potential to be clinically significant because a robust killer T-cell population in the tumor microenvironment without attracting Treg cells is important to help optimize checkpoint blockade induced tumor shrinkage," said Robert P. Edwards, MD, chair of gynecologic services at Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC), Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Services at UPMC, a world-class expert in ovarian cancer and a pioneer in Ampligen research.

His views are vigorously reiterated by another world renowned expert and Ampligen pioneer, Pawel Kalinski, MD, PhD, Rustum Family Professor for Molecular Therapeutics and Translational Research, Vice Chair for Translational Research and Director of Cancer Vaccine and Dendritic Cell Therapies at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, who states, There is significant and pressing need for new therapy options that can extend the benefits of checkpoint inhibition to the patients who currently do not respond to these treatments. Were excited about initiating our planned basket trial incorporating Ampligen to see whether these combination approaches can successfully convert cold tumors into hot ones that will respond to these therapies. Our preclinical findings indicate that this is a worthwhile strategy to pursue. One of the solid tumors that we are targeting at UNMC in our combination therapy clinical studies with Ampligen is pancreatic cancer, which is a prime example of the unmet medical needs we are striving to meet. We also have an ongoing Dutch-approved standalone Ampligen EAP in pancreatic cancer at Erasmus M.C. that is more than a year old. Statistically, only 6-7% of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are alive five years after diagnosis, and more than 100,000 people will die this year in the U.S. and Europe from this dreaded malignancy. Today, a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is a virtual death sentence. Hemispherx, working with Erasmus and UNMC, intends to change that. We have every hope that the upcoming clinical trial at UNMC will pave the way for progress in pancreatic cancer. We at Hemispherx strongly believe that this work is important, will make a difference and ultimately will save lives. As one of the worlds top pancreatic cancer researchers, Michael A. (Tony) Hollingsworth, PhD, head of pancreatic cancer research at UNMCs Buffett Cancer Center states, We are working hard to discover better treatments for pancreatic cancer. We believe Ampligen is an agent that holds tremendous promise  not only for pancreatic cancer, but also for a variety of other cancers. I hope that if, as stockholders, you understand this program, you may better appreciate why we are moving so aggressively on this clinical path. I believe success in oncology will lead to lasting commercial success for our company. Over the past two years we have aggressively and successfully pursued meaningful relationships with top cancer research centers in the U.S. We then, at these same institutions, aggressively and successfully pursued pre-clinical animal studies to show our hypothesis has great merit. Initial proof of concept clinical work was similarly successful. Now we are commencing at these same top institutions, led by top experts in their fields, clinical studies in a variety of solid tumors which we have every expectation will establish Ampligen as an important agent in immuno-oncology. Fighting Cancer and Beyond We have two pipeline drugs that show tremendous progress in fighting debilitating conditions for countless people with unmet medical needs, Ampligen, and our FDA approved product, Alferon N Injection. We have our own manufacturing site and a proven ability to produce our pipeline products. We have an active EAP in the Netherlands in pancreatic cancer, and are in midst of expanding our EAP for ME/CFS in the U.S. We have the first ever commercial approval in severe ME/CFS from Argentina. Whats more, over the past two years, we have successfully collaborated with Erasmus M.C., the Hillman Cancer Center at UPMC, the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center at UNMC and Roswell Park. These are all highly respected research centers in the field of cancer treatment. We strongly believe that successes in our six independent immuno-oncology clinical studies targeting eight types of solid tumors will create significant long-term value for our stockholders. In addition to the above detailed clinical work: We can manufacture our product Two commercial sized lots totaling over 16,000 vials have been filled, finished and released for use. We announced in August that the new Ampligen batch manufactured earlier this year was released for patient use in the pancreatic cancer EAP in the Netherlands. This was the initial shipment (500 vials) of a previously announced 2,100 vial standing stock order issued by myTomorrows, our EAP provider in Europe. We are making a difference in the U.S. and Globally We are working to expand the U.S.-based EAP, known as AMP-511, an FDA-authorized open-label program for severe ME/CFS.

We announced in September that our regulatory inspection and clearance for distribution of our second commercial scale lot of Ampligen, slated for multiple uses including product launch in Argentina for the treatment of ME/CFS, our ME/CFS EAP in the U.S. and Europe and the pancreatic cancer EAP in the Netherlands. Hemispherx is a small company, but holds great promise. Our pledge to stockholders is that we will continue to pursue all available opportunities to advance our pipeline, with the goals of offering therapeutics that will truly make a difference in the lives of patients and, at the same time, build stockholder value. We will continue to keep you apprised of our progress in these efforts as we go forward. Thank you for your continued support of Hemispherx Biopharma. Sincerely,

Thomas K. Equels

President and Chief Executive Officer

October 22, 2018 Contact

Hemispherx Biopharma, Inc.

Phone: 800-778-4042

Email: IR@hemispherx.net Or LHA Investor Relations

Miriam Weber Miller

Phone: 212-838-3777

Email: mmiller@lhai.com

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Ficanex Partners With Mobetize to Launch Sendglobal International Money Remittance Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mobetize Corp. (OTCQB:MPAY), a provider of mobile financial services for the multi-billion dollar business to business segment of the fintech sector is pleased to announce that it has entered into an International Money Remitance Service Agreement with FICANEX for its smartRemit solution integral to the launch of tunl., a fintech integration platform for FICANEXs premier service SendGlobal. Mobetizes smartRemit is a proprietary white-label payments solution that enables international money transfer capabilities globally. smartRemit is fully integrated and provides convenient, efficient, scalable, and inexpensive global money transfers for senders and recipients using a mobile device. Users can initiate international money transfers through their financial institution via a downloadable native application available from Apple iOs marketplace and on Google Play. smartRemit provides financial instutions with secure, compliant, and simple mobile money transfer capabilities with payout channels in over 165 countries at more than 175,000 payout locations. The tunl. platform integrates smartRemit with FICANEXs EXCHANGE Networks technology infrastructure to provide easy, cost effective and secure delivery of money through next-generation digital services. The first service to be offered on the tunl. platform is SendGlobal, a fully digital international money transfer service that provides a convenient and secure way for Canadians to send money around the world. Canadians send over $20 billion each year to recipients in foreign countries. SendGlobal enables financial institutions to satisfy their customers' growing demand for mobility in financial services while opening a new revenue opportunity for credit unions and banks. SendGlobal is the result of collaboration by some of the best payment technologies in Canada that connects one of the largest financial institution networks in Canada with one of the largest international money transfer networks in the world, said Andre Obee, President & CEO of FICANEX. Its the first of its kind globally, and we are proud to have partnered with Mobetize Corp. to bring it to fruition. Mr. Obee, further commented that our agreement with Mobetize, enables FICANEX to offer our 170+ member financial institutions a competitive solution for digital international money transfers for their 5.5 million+ cardholders. We can now offer a truly differentiated service that would be difficult and challenging for individual financial institutions to develop.



We are thrilled to be an integral part of this collaboration with FICANEX and their partners. Mobetizes relationship with FICANEX validates its business model for partnering with financial institutions to deliver trusted fintech solutions. smartRemit provides distinct advantages for financial institutions to set their own fees, FOREX spreads, access a global cash payout network and connect with bank accounts in compliance with cross border regulation of person to person payments. Mobetize is excited to be a key stakeholder in this collaboration as it is the first cross border remittance solution of its kind, said Ajay Hans, President & CEO of Mobetize. About FICANEX

FICANEX owns and operates THE EXCHANGE Network; Canadas largest surcharge-free ATM network and the tunl. technology platform that provides next-generation digital services for financial institutions across Canada. For more information please visit:

www.Ficanex.ca

Contact Information:

Andrew Obee, President & CEO

(289)-242-1472 About Mobetize Corp. Mobetize is a mobile business to business fintech that is transforming the way money is managed. We provide digitized payments and lending solutions to financial institutions, money service businesses, and telecommunications organizations. For more information please visit: http://www.mobetize.com Contact Information:

Ajay Hans, President & CEO

(778) 588-5563 Forward Looking Statements This press release includes statements that are not historical in nature and may be characterized as "forward-looking statements," including those related to future financial and operating results, benefits, statements concerning Mobetize's outlook, pricing trends, and forces within the industry, expected sales growth, cost reduction strategies, and their results, long-term goals of Mobetize and other statements of expectations, beliefs, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends, and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. All predictions as to future results contain a measure of uncertainty and, accordingly, actual results could differ materially. Among the factors which could cause a difference are: changes in the general economy; changes in demand for Mobetize's products or in supplier costs; the actions of competitors; the success of customers; technological change; changes in employee relations; government regulations; litigation, including its inherent uncertainty; and other unforeseen circumstances. A number of these factors are discussed in Mobetize's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mobetize disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] ImageWare Systems Sets 2018 Third Quarter and Nine-Month Financial Results and Investor Update Conference Call

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ImageWare Systems, Inc. ( OTCQB: IWSY ), a leader in mobile and cloud-based two-factor, multi-factor, and biometric multi-modal authentication and identity management solutions, today announced that on November 8, 2018 the Company will file its Form 10-Q shortly after the close of the stock market and will host an investor update conference call the same day at 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET) to review third quarter and nine-month results.

Managements discussion will include a progress report on the Companys direct sales efforts as well as partner sales efforts. Third Quarter and Nine-Month Results Investor Update Call

The Company will host an investor update call on Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET).The Participant Dial-In Number for the conference call is 1-631-891-4304 (domestic/international). Participants should dial in to the call at least five minutes before 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET) on November 8, 2018. The call can also be accessed live online at http://public.viavid.com/index.php?id=131433 . A replay of the recorded call will be available for 90 days on the Companys website ( https://iwsinc.com/about/investors/ ). You can also listen to a replay of the call by dialing toll-free 1-844-512-2921 (international only - 1-412-317-6671) starting November 8, 2018, at 7:30pm ET through November 15, 2018 at 11:59 pm ET. Pleae use PIN Number 10005536.



About ImageWare Systems, Inc.

ImageWare Systems, Inc. is a leading developer of mobile and cloud-based identity management solutions, providing two-factor, biometric and multi-factor authentication solutions for the enterprise. The company delivers next-generation biometrics as an interactive and scalable cloud-based solution. ImageWare brings together cloud and mobile technology to offer two-factor, biometric, and multi-factor authentication for smartphone users, for the enterprise, and across industries. ImageWares products support multi-modal biometric authentication including, but not limited to, face, voice, fingerprint, iris, palm, and more. All the biometrics can be combined with or used as replacements for authentication and access control tools, including tokens, digital certificates, passwords, and PINS, to provide the ultimate level of assurance, accountability, and ease of use for corporate networks, web applications, mobile devices, and PC desktop environments.

ImageWare is headquartered in San Diego, Calif., with offices in Portland, Oregon; Ottawa, Ontario; Tokyo, Japan; and Mexico City, Mexico. To learn more about ImageWare, visit https://iwsinc.com/ and follow us on Twitter , LinkedIn , YouTube and Facebook . Forward-Looking Statements

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, forecast, intend, may, plan, project, predict, if, should and will and similar expressions as they relate to ImageWare Systems, Inc. are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. ImageWare may from time to time update publicly announced projections, but it is not obligated to do so. Any projections of future results of operations should not be construed in any manner as a guarantee that such results will in fact occur. These projections are subject to change and could differ materially from final reported results. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, see Risk Factors in ImageWares Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017 and its other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates on which they are made. Investor Relations Contact

Harvey Bibicoff, CEO

Bibicoff + MacInnis, Inc.

818.379.8500 harvey@bibimac.com



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Mist Delivers First Cloud-based OpenConfig Implementation for Wireless Networking

CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mist , a pioneer in self-learning networks powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), announced support today for OpenConfig, a common API standard for configuring and monitoring networking equipment. By supporting the OpenConfig standard, Mist is leading the industry towards open and programmable Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) that are easy to deploy and operate and are interoperable with other networking equipment for automation and insight across the IT stack.

While incumbent vendors are attempting to implement OpenConfig directly on WLAN hardware, such as controllers and Access Points, Mist is the first to implement this standard in the cloud, said Sudheer Matta, vice president of product at Mist. This unique approach to OpenConfig enables IT personnel to manage large networks as a single instance instead of many distributed devices, which reduces errors, lowers operational costs, and delivers unparalleled scale. Benefits of OpenConfig include: Efficient monitoring of large networks . OpenConfig provides a means by which IT departments can easily subscribe to configuration and stats channels and send/receive push-driven events and updates.

. OpenConfig provides a means by which IT departments can easily subscribe to configuration and stats channels and send/receive push-driven events and updates. Support for multi-vendor environments . OpenConfig allows for interchangeable Wi-Fi networking equipment based on industry standards and a common set of configuration/monitoring paradigms across different vendors solutions.

. OpenConfig allows for interchangeable Wi-Fi networking equipment based on industry standards and a common set of configuration/monitoring paradigms across different vendors solutions. Standards-based integration across the IT stack. As a leader in A for IT, Mist has been working with leading vendors like Juniper, Palo Alto Networks, and VMware VeloCloud to extend Mists wireless insight and AI-driven automation with complimentary LAN, WAN and security solutions. With OpenConfig, there is a standards-based approach for achieving similar types of integration across the IT industry.



Availability

Mist has completed Phase I and II of OpenConfig testing and plans to move to pilot deployments in November. Final support of the standard will be generally available shortly after. Helpful Links:

Mist Website

Mist Platform

Mist Services

Mist LinkedIn

Mist Twitter About Mist

Mist built the first AI-driven wireless platform with the worlds first virtual IT assistant. The Mist Learning Wireless LAN makes Wi-Fi predictable, reliable and measurable by providing unprecedented visibility into the user experience and by replacing time consuming manual IT tasks with proactive automation. In addition, Mist is the first vendor to bring enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, BLE and IoT together to deliver personalized, location-based wireless services without requiring battery-powered beacons. All operations are managed via Mists modern cloud architecture for maximum scalability, agility and performance. The Mist team consists of leading experts in wireless, data science and cloud, who are responsible for building the largest and most advanced networks in the world. Founded in 2014, the company is based in Cupertino, CA and funded by top investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Kleiner Perkins. For more information, visit www.mist.com . About OpenConfig Working Group

OpenConfig is an informal working group of network operators and vendors sharing the goal of moving our networks toward a more dynamic, programmable infrastructure by adopting software-defined networking principles such as declarative configuration and model-driven management and operations. For more information, visit www.openconfig.net . Media Contact

Marta Debski

Offleash for Mist

(810) 956-4501

olmist@offleashpr.com

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Auth0 Supports Global Growth with Office Expansions in US and UK

New offices accommodate rapid employee growth and reinforce customer commitment BELLEVUE, Wash. and LONDON, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Auth0 , a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS), today announced it has moved into larger offices in Bellevue, WA, and London, UK, to accommodate current and future growth. The companys headquarters in Bellevue has experienced an upsurge in employees over the past year, signalling its continued growth trajectory in the region. Recently named a Gold winner in the Seattle Business Tech Impact awards, along with additional industry recognition as a great place to work, Auth0 is attracting top talent in the area. The new office occupies the entire 6th floor of the U.S. Bank Plaza, located at 10800 NE 8th St. The new London office at 182-194 Union St. is a former Victorian-style warehouse, located in the South Bank district. This opening also launches the new Auth0 Identity Centre, a 50-seat event space where the company will host customers, industry speakers, meetups, and social gatherings. Each office reflects the companys brand, with airy, open-structure ceilings, wood elements, and a large, neon sign with the Auth logo.



Additional features of the offices include: Open, collaborative workspaces

Varied meeting spaces, including geometric meeting pods

Auth0 T-shirt Wall of Fame

In Bellevue, an impressive view of Mount Rainier

In London, an excellent view of The Shard The exponential growth of our team signals a very exciting time in our company, and one that we want to recognize with beautiful office spaces that not only encourage collaboration, but also are large enough to accommodate customer meetings, developer meetups, and industry events, said Eugenio Pace, CEO and Co-founder. Our culture is a hallmark of our company and brings us the best talent in the world. We created and invested in environments that reflect our culture and values, and show our commitment to our growing team.

Auth0 employs more than 400 people globally and has offices in Bellevue, Buenos Aires, London, Sydney, and Tokyo. The company is also remote-friendly, with a workforce that spans 32 countries. The office expansions support Auth0s continued global growth which includes doubling the EMEA team ; and tripling the team in Sydney, Australia. About Auth0

Auth0, a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS), provides thousands of customers in every market sector with the only identity solution they need for their web, mobile, IoT, and internal applications. Its extensible platform seamlessly authenticates and secures more than 1.5B logins per month, making it loved by developers and trusted by global enterprises. The company's U.S. headquarters in Bellevue, WA, and additional offices in Buenos Aires, London, Tokyo, and Sydney, support its customers that are located in 70+ countries. For more information, visit https://auth0.com or follow @auth0 on Twitter. Media Contacts:

Kasia Hall

Matter for Auth0, US

khall@matternow.com

971-246-7898 Nana Rodaki

Racepoint Global for Auth0, EMEA

nana.rodaki@racepointglobal.com

+44 (0) 20 8811 2132

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]China Aviation Daily | Oct. 22, 2018

The number of air passengers has continued to grow as expected. According to Finavia's statistics, 18.6 million (+11%) passengers travelled through Finavia's 21 airports between January and September. A record-breaking 15.8 million air passengers travelled through Helsinki Airport between January and September. The 20 million passenger milestone is expected to break at Helsinki Airport later in 2018.

There has been 11.0 per cent more air passengers between January and February this year compared to the same period last year. The growth in air travel reflects what has been a good year for air traffic, the attractiveness of Finland as a destination and the increasing importance of Helsinki Airport as a hub between Europe and Asia.

-The excellent growth in traffic is in accordance with our expectations. Passenger numbers are now growing at the same rate at Helsinki and the main regional airports, such as Oulu, Turku, Kittila and Vaasa. Besides growth, responsibility in operations and the sustainable development of airports are at the core of Finavia's business. This means that we bear the responsibility for the impact of our operations on people, the environment and society -- working carefully and conscientiously. Helsinki Airport is already completely carbon neutral, as will be all the network airports by 2020, says Joni Sundelin, Executive Director of Helsinki Airport and Airline Sales & Accounts

Finavia works hard all year round to get new routes and new airlines for the airports. Finnair's new connections are visible in the statistics - passenger numbers are growing on Asian routes. For example, Finnair and Norwegian have both increased the number of their routes. A new airline, FlyDubai, started daily scheduled flights to Helsinki and SAS started a direct route from Tampere to Malaga. At the end of October, EasyJet will start flying from London Gatwick to Rovaniemi, which is expected to bring more British travellers directly to Lapland.

The Number of International Transit Passengers at Helsinki Airport Has Grown by 26.2 Per Cent from January

The growth demonstrates how significant Helsinki Airport is as a hub between Europe and Asia. The number of international transit passengers has grown by 26.2 per cent. Most of the transit passengers come from Japan, China, Sweden and Germany. The traffic growth at Helsinki Airport has continued to be stronger than at other Nordic main airport hubs.

At Finavia's other airports, the number of passengers grew by around 10.0 per cent. Three weeks of runway repairs caused only a temporary decrease at Tampere Airport. At the regional airports there has been an increase of 8.6 per cent in domestic passengers and 14.0 per cent in international passengers.

-The number of charter flights to Europe grew during the summer holiday season in particular. Holiday flights to Greece have clearly grown in popularity as a result of a higher number of scheduled flights. We also expect next winter to be busy at Lapland's airports, says Sundelin.

The 20 Million Passenger Milestone Will Break at Helsinki Airport This Year

The robust growth of Helsinki Airport is explained not only by more frequent flights, but also by the fact that more and more airlines use large wide-bodied aircraft.

Sweden, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom continue to be the most popular flight destinations. The rise in the number of passengers on international scheduled routes has grown by 11.6 per cent. The most popular long haul destinations January-September were Japan, China and Thailand. Qatar's growth continues: in September the number of passengers grew 73.5 per cent.

-The 10 million passenger milestone was reached already in June at Helsinki Airport. In the period of January-September, there have been 15.8 million passengers. By the end of the year, we will have reached the magical 20 million passenger milestone at Helsinki, and we will in fact be closer to 21 million, Sundelin says.

During January-September, 86.0 per cent of the passengers at Helsinki Airport travelled internationally and 14.0 per cent on the domestic routes. The biggest growth was in the volume of transit passengers (+23.9%).

Finavia's Airports Are Growing and Developing

Finavia invests hundreds of millions of euros in developing its airports. At the moment, extension work is ongoing at Helsinki and Lapland airports. The Tampere-Pirkkala extension was completed on August 2018.

Currently, Helsinki Airport is going through the biggest development programme in Finavia's history, which will extend the capacity to serve 30 million passengers annually.

Contributed by Finavia[October 22, 2018] Ping An Technology showcases cloud computing power of Chinese businesses at 2018 Cloud Expo Asia

SINGAPORE, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The development of cloud computing has dramatically expanded the development space and imagination of the network technology. An increasing number of businesses in China are willing to tell the world China's cloud computing strategy. The 2018 Cloud Expo Asia was held in Singapore on October 10-11, with the top management of more than 350 leading cloud computing providers, including Ping An Technology CEO Ericson Chan and CTO Guowei Fang. Chan and Fang both gave speeches about cloud computing's unique value under the trend of digitalizing. Cloud Expo Asia, the largest and most prestigious cloud computing event in Asia, is committed to providing the latest technology and business solutions for the digital transformation of the enterprise. Attendees this year included international giants, among them, Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, Citrix, Singtel, Huawei, JD.com, Fujitsu and NEC as well as many innovative startups. "Cloud computing is giving new value to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain," Mr. Chan said during his speech. "What Ping An Technology is doing is democratizing technologies and working to build a better world." The technologies developed by Ping An Technology have become a part of daily life that people rely on, ranging from payment and asset management to health management. For example, he said, in the field of intelligent cognition, Ping An Technology has formed three technological matrices. Intelligent cognition technologies represented by facial recognition, voiceprint recognition and micro-expression have been applied in more than 200 scenarios, including community security, educational testing, social services, financial risk control, agriculture and livestock farming, and healthcare. In workplace scenarios, Ping An Technology uses facial recognition technology to help verify the identities of visitors to office buildings, promoting digital building management in communities as well as in the educational and building management sectors. Recently, based on the advanced original facial recognition technology, Ping An Technology achieved another breakthrough in its algorithms, by upping and reallocating computing power to upgrade the Ping An p intelligent door access system,that established the technology's dominant position in the market.



In the field of medical technology, Ping An Technology has been on a fast development track. The application of disease prediction systems based on artificial intelligence and big data in Shenzhen for flu monitoring can predict the anticipated progress of the disease one week in advance, with the accuracy rate at the peak of the outbreak surpassing 90%. At present, the research and development of the model has been gradually evolving from the prediction of the spread of an illness within a group to accurate prediction for individuals. To cite an example, the model can collect data as about an individual's living habits and medical records, and, within five minutes, deliver the prediction results for five types of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease.

Regarding building smart cities, Ping An Technology has entered into a collaboration with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to enable real-time exchanges of trade and financing information through the blockchain. By doing so, both parties can gradually build and access applications around supply chain finance, credit tokenization and online payment, with the goal of ultimately jointly building an open cross-border trade financing platform. Mr. Chan noted that Ping An Technology now focuses on the construction of an ecosystem that brings together three scenarios: finance, healthcare and the smart city. The ecosystem, with applications for China's domestic market as the core element, will gradually cover the whole of Asia. Currently, Ping An Cloud has more than 500 million online users. All these scenarios are based on a reliable and stable Ping An Cloud. Today, Ping An Cloud has obtained nine Chinese and foreign security certifications, and is among the cloud providers with the highest security level in the financial sector. With the implementation of its cloud-oriented strategy for products and services, Ping An Technology will continue to open up more technologies and services to the outside world, and, benefiting from its own thought leadership that it has named "All in the Cloud", focus on building an open ecology of technology and business capacities with Ping An Cloud as the core. Mr. Fang, the company CTO and chief architect, said in his speech that cloud computing is the underlying infrastructure that Internet businesses rely on for survival and development, and that the battle for dominance in cloud computing is expected to become one of the principle areas of competition between the world's leaders in the Internet sector. In keeping up with the latest trends, Ping An Technology has always been one step ahead. In terms of the deployment of Ping An Cloud, Ping An Technology has taken its first step, forming what it refers to as the "3+1" model covering internal, public, proprietary and private cloud solutions, and creating a beachhead in terms of applications in security compliance, autonomous control, elastic computing, virtualization and other technological areas. He noted that Ping An Cloud will, based on already established advantages and by integrating existing products and services, create a one-stop platform for availability and delivery of its products and services, with five key capabilities and the finance, healthcare and the smart city as the core target markets. Mr. Fang described the process as "a unique journey to unlock the value of the cloud". With cloud computing as a modus operandi sweeping across the globe, it has become the common destiny of many companies all over the world to embrace and cater to the trend. What Ping An Technology has set out to do is to be the leader and not the follower, and to unlock the huge power that cloud computing gives enterprises as the global economy reaches the next inflection point. About Ping An Technology Ping An Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ping An Group, is committed to using AI, intelligent cognition, blockchain, cloud and other cutting-edge technologies to create a new cloud-based life for people. As a subsidiary, Ping An Technology is the high-tech core and tech business incubator within Ping An Group, and is responsible for the development and operation of the critical platforms and services for the group. As an independent entity, Ping An Technology strategizes with smart technology and manufacturing to focus on healthcare, finance, and smart city areas. Ping An Technology is dedicated to implementing the corporate philosophy of "technology changes life" by applying the international certificated technological capabilities to actual business scenarios. More than 10,000 IT professionals and management experts form a high-level R&D force that provide expert-level technical support for the stable and reliable operation of the platform. The established cloud ecosystem has already been accessed by over 500 million internet users, and has been expanded into overseas markets, including the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong as well as other countries and regions. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ping-an-technology-showcases-cloud-computing-power-of-chinese-businesses-at-2018-cloud-expo-asia-300735040.html SOURCE Ping An Technology

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Lightbend Launches Reactive Architect Certification Program

Training program and certification process recognizes architects, developers, operators with the skills to build cloud-native systems that are responsive, resilient, elastic and message-driven

MONTREAL, Reactive Summit, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lightbend today announced the launch of a certification program to recognize industry professionals who have mastered the fundamentals of Reactive architecture. The Reactive Architect Certification will make it easier for enterprises to locate Reactive experts for their application modernization efforts, including cloud-native, microservices, and streaming data initiatives. The announcement was made at Reactive Summit , where Reactive adopters like Capital One, Google, PayPal, and Facebook are speaking this week. "There is an intense demand for Reactive experts, as enterprises in every major market around the world have embraced the principles of Reactive to build and deploy production systems that deliver industry-disruptive benefits for competitive business advantage, said Mike Kelland, VP of Global Services at Lightbend. As enterprises are in a mass modernization effort away from monolithic development and seeking experts with an understanding of Reactive principles, the Reactive Architect Certification process will help connect the individual with these skills with the organizations seeking them in their architecture planning and hiring processes. Lightbend Reactive Architecture Training - Reactive is the popular distributed computing movement that tandardizes essential requirements of responsiveness, resilience and elasticity of cloud-native applications. As the pioneer of the movement and the author of the Reactive Manifesto , Lightbend has now released a certification program, based on six courses:



Introduction to Reactive Principles Domain Driven Design Reactive Microservices Consistency and Availability Messaging and Coordination CQRS and Event Sourcing The Lightbend Reactive Architecture course teaches teams - from development managers to architects to software developers - how to think about and leverage Reactive architectures from design through to production operations. The course presents a series of architectural exercises. Students work in groups to address problems and design solutions. The exercises are completed without the use of code. This allows the course to appeal to a broad audience. In addition to instructor-led, on-site courses, Lightbend Reactive Architecture is available online for free, on IBMs Cognitive Class . IBMs Cognitive Class bundles the instructor-led course into a series of self-paced, mini-study programs.

Reactive Architect Certification - The new Reactive Architect Certification helps architects, developers, and operators set themselves apart when looking for a job or upgrading their current role. Independent of any vendor-specific technologies, the Reactive Architect Certification is the guaranteed way to demonstrate a solid understanding of the Reactive principles required for designing, building and operating cloud-native systems. Exam length is 90 minutes and closed-book

Exams are online at Mettl.com, proctored by humans, and available in any timezone

Exam fee of $250 includes two (2) additional retries

Certifications are valid for three (3) years to ensure relevance Additional Materials Learn More About the Reactive Architect Certification

Learn More About the Lightbend Reactive Architecture Course

Learn More About IBMs Cognitive Class on Reactive Architecture About Lightbend

Lightbend (Twitter: @Lightbend) provides the leading Reactive application development platform for building distributed applications. Using microservices and streaming data on a message-driven runtime, enterprise applications scale effortlessly on cloud computing architectures. Many of the most admired brands around the globe are transforming their businesses with our platform, engaging billions of users every day through software that is changing the world. Editorial Contact

Lonn Johnston

+1 650.219.7764

lonn@flak42.com

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Tableau Kicks Off 11th Annual Global Customer Conference with more than 17,000 Customers and Partners

NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA), the leading analytics platform, is bringing together a global network of customers, partners, and data enthusiasts for its 11th annual conference, held for the first time in New Orleans. More than 17,000 data professionals from organizations of all sizes, from small non-profits and startups, to government agencies and established global enterprise organizations, will mark the company's largest conference to date as they converge to learn first-hand about Tableau's innovative product roadmap, share best practices, and collaborate to solve some of the most exciting and challenging data-centric problems facing their organizations. Data enthusiasts across the globe can enjoy a full digital experience with livestream content throughout each day, including keynote presentations and customer interviews. Tableau invites everyone to participate in its conference via live-streaming by signing up at http://tclive.tableau.com/ . In addition to live-streaming, people can follow the conference proceedings by following the Twitter hashtag #TC18. TC18 will feature keynote presentations throughout the week, including one from Tableau CEO, Adam Selipsky, the popular Devs on Stage product demonstration, as well as bestselling author and Wharton school professor, Adam Grant. More than 130 Tableau customers, including Chick-fil-A, ExxonMobil, JLL, Johnson & Johnson, and Expedia, will be leading sessions around Tableau best practices, collaborating on ideas, and making the most of their Tableau success. All in all, attendees will have access to more than 600 hours of valuable learning from hands-on training, case studies, and meet ups. "2018 has been a landmark year for Tableau and our customers. We've been buoyed by the incredible enthusiasm that the Tableau Community has shown in their adoption of the latest analytics innovations, including Hyper - our new database engine - and Tableau Prep, our new data preparation product," said Elissa Fink, Chief Marketing Officer at Tableau. "As we join te rest of our community for the 11th year of the conference, we continue to be inspired by the incredible results that our customers are realizing with the Tableau platform. We can't wait to feel their energy in the Big Easy!"



Attendees will also be able to enjoy multiple diversity and inclusion events including the ever-popular Data + Women meet up. Along with numerous networking opportunities, attendees will be able to seek one-on-one advice via "Tableau Doctor" appointments with product experts, attend the Partner Summit to learn about new product integrations, or take in one of the dozens of bootcamps and group training opportunities hosted by Tableau's own experts. Throughout the week, attendees are encouraged to kick back and relax in Data Village, the heart of Tableau Conference, and a place to make new connections and discover powerful solutions. There's something for everyone in the Data Village: over 100 of exhibitors and partners, Tableau Labs demo stations, and authentic New Orleans cuisine. Wednesday afternoon, fan favorite Iron Viz will be in full force as Corey Jones of Johnson & Johnson, Ludovic Tavernier of VALOWAY, and Timothy Vermeiren of Biztory battle it out in the ultimate global showcase of Tableau skills. Live on stage, they'll build compelling data stories with four million rows of data featuring three years of historical weather conditions for cities worldwide. "The number one reason I'm excited for Tableau Conference 2018 is to see my data family  I have made some of the most amazing friends in the Tableau community, and even though you may see each other in person only once a year, it feels like you just spoke with them yesterday," said Curtis Harris, Head of Analytics Engineering at Pluralsight. "I feel lucky that I get to go every year and see all of you, meet new friends, see new faces and make new connections. Each year, Tableau Conference provides me with new inspirations to come back to my job and do my best work."

Additionally, more than 100 Tableau Foundation partners, including Splash , Equal Opportunity Schools , Community Solutions , and PATH will be on hand to learn from each other and share best practices for using data to make a meaningful difference in the world. Their day-long workshop will feature case studies, interactive sessions, and a chance to learn from some of the world's leading data changemakers to help solve problems from clean water and sanitation issues to homelessness and equal opportunity for high school students across America. New for 2018, students from New Orleans-area universities have been invited to attend an exclusive Data Skills Panel, where they will hear from Tableau representatives, recent graduates in the data science field, and LinkedIn about the importance of data skills in higher education. Tableau customers and recruiters will be on hand to answer questions about how students can boost their hireability through data skills. For more information and to register for the exclusive event, visit online at https://www.tableau.com/community/events/tc18-student-panel . About Tableau Software

Tableau (NYSE: DATA) helps people see and understand data. Tableau helps anyone quickly analyze, visualize and share information. More than 78,000 customer accounts get rapid results with Tableau in the office and on-the-go. Hundreds of thousands of people have used Tableau Public to share data in their blogs and websites. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableau.com/trial . Tableau and Tableau Software are trademarks of Tableau Software, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tableau-kicks-off-11th-annual-global-customer-conference-with-more-than-17-000-customers-and-partners-300734903.html SOURCE Tableau Software

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Hitachi Consulting and Oracle Team Up to Present "IoT, AI, and Blockchain Power Business Growth, Efficiency, and Productivity" at Oracle OpenWorld 2018

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ORACLE OPENWORLD  Hitachi Consulting Corporation, a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501) and an Oracle Platinum Cloud Elite Partner level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced it will be participating in Oracle OpenWorld, the annual Oracle conference for business decision-makers, IT management and end users. Oracle OpenWorld will take place October 22-25 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Hitachi Consulting will join Oracle to present a product keynote on October 23, "IoT, AI, and Blockchain Power Business Growth, Efficiency, and Productivity," to highlight how Oracle and Hitachi solutions help businesses utilize technology, improve core processes and realize higher levels of return on their investments. The product keynote features Beverly Rider, senior vice president and chief commercial officer, Hitachi; John Hallin, vice president, Hitachi Consulting; Viktor Sahakian, vice president, Oracle Technology, Hitachi Consulting; Rick Jewell, senior vice president, Applications Development, Oracle; Bhagat Nainani, group vice president, Oracle; Jasper Potts, UI architect, Blockchain and Internet of Things, Oracle. In addition, an executive solution session, "Hitachi Social Innovation: Outcomes Through Co-Creation with Customers and Oracle," features Phil Townsend, senior vice president, Hitachi Consulting, and Ellen Dowd, senior vice president, Hitachi Global Solution Innovation Business. "At Hitachi Consulting, we are committed to expanding our engagement with Oracle by collaborating on initiatives that support our joint customers in their cloud transformation and digital innovation journeys. Hitachi's track record in both operational technology and IT positions us to provide industry-leading tools for innovation and intelligent solutions that drive measurable and sustainable business outcomes for our customers," said Hicham Abdessamad, President and CEO, Hitachi Consulting. Hitachi has been working with operational technologies for more than a century, has more than 50 years of experience in IT solutions, and is an early pioneer of IoT innovation. Its history and expertise uniquely qualify Hitachi Consulting to partner with Oracle in delivering technology solutions to customers. "Hitachi's expertise in business requirements across industries combined with Oracle's cutting-edge technology solutions create a powerful force for solving customers' problems," said Camillo Speroni, vice president, WorldWide Strategic Alliances, Oracle. Emerging technologies, such as IoT, AI and blockchain, are critical assets for companies that want to achieve greatr efficiency, improved productivity, stronger resilience and long-term sustainable growth. Keynote session attendees will learn how to apply these technologies to eliminate siloed business operations and create modern, interconnected digital workflows that have real-time visibility and responsiveness. The keynote session will showcase the collaboration by these two industry leaders and demonstrate how Hitachi's insightful business know-how complements Oracle's technology capabilities to bring Oracle solutions to life to solve real-world problems.



"To many customers, the 'why' of integrating IoT, AI and blockchain into their business is a compelling strategic imperative, yet the 'how' is hard to envision," said Beverly Rider, Senior Vice President and CCO at Hitachi. "Attendees will have the opportunity to see in very tangible ways how Hitachi Consulting and Oracle put these solutions to work to make businesses more efficient, productive and profitable." As an Oracle Cloud Elite member, Hitachi Consulting has demonstrated its full commitment to providing the depth and breadth of Oracle Cloud solutions through a number of successful implementations, as measured by customer advocacy. By working with the Hitachi Consulting and Oracle alliance, manufacturing and other industrial clients can increase the speed of digital capability adoption to help them become leaders in their industry. The alliance also provides clients with visibility into the ways technology can address business challenges, such as how to increase productivity, improve margin and understand equipment failures.

Oracle OpenWorld visitors are invited to attend the joint session in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Attendees are also invited to visit Hitachi Consulting at Booth #1913 in the Moscone South Hall to see real-world technology applications, experience hands-on demos at the various kiosks, view theater-style presentations and gain a deeper understanding of how emerging technologies can address their specific business needs. At the booth, Hitachi Consulting and Oracle representatives will be jointly presenting on a number of topics, including: Smart manufacturing

Predictive maintenance

Workloads moving to cloud

Smart cloud accelerators For more information, visit: https://www.hitachiconsulting.com/alliances/oracle.html About Hitachi Consulting Corporation

The 20-year alliance between Hitachi Consulting and Oracle offers enterprises an opportunity to work with two of the world's most innovative and respected technology companies. With global reach and powerful solution portfolios, Hitachi Consulting delivers Oracle solution experience backed by the reliability of the Hitachi brand. An Oracle Cloud Elite Partner with more than 700 Oracle consultants worldwide, Hitachi Consulting helps companies enhance the value of their Oracle Cloud and IoT Cloud applications. Hitachi Consulting brings the power of the Hitachi ecosystem to global engagements, including companies across 70 countries and more than US$3 billion in annual R&D. Learn more: www.hitachiconsulting.com About Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) is Oracle's partner program that provides partners with a differentiated advantage to develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle's products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to be recognized and rewarded for their investment in Oracle Cloud. Partners engaging with Oracle will be able to differentiate their Oracle Cloud expertise and success with customers through the OPN Cloud program  an innovative program that complements existing OPN program levels with tiers of recognition and progressive benefits for partners working with Oracle Cloud. To find out more visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners. About Oracle OpenWorld

Oracle OpenWorld, the industry's most important business and technology conference for the past 20 years, hosts tens of thousands of in-person attendees as well as millions online. Dedicated to helping businesses leverage Oracle Cloud for their innovation and growth, the conference delivers deep insight into industry trends and breakthroughs driven by technology. With hundreds of demos and hands-on labs, plus exhibitions from more than 400 partners and customers from around the world, Oracle OpenWorld has become a showcase for leading cloud technologies, from cloud applications to cloud platform and infrastructure. For more information; to register; or to watch Oracle OpenWorld keynotes, sessions, and more, visit www.oracle.com/openworld. Join the Oracle OpenWorld discussion on Twitter. Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hitachi-consulting-and-oracle-team-up-to-present-iot-ai-and-blockchain-power-business-growth-efficiency-and-productivity-at-oracle-openworld-2018-300734857.html SOURCE Hitachi Consulting

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Haeggquist & Eck, LLP Investigates Molina Healthcare Directors and Officers for Breach of Fiduciary Duty Regarding Misrepresentations Concerning Molina's Administrative Infrastructure

Haeggquist & Eck, LLP, a leading shareholder rights litigation firm, is investigating whether certain directors and officers of Molina Healthcare, Inc. ("Molina" or the "Company") (NYSE: MOH) breached their fiduciary duties to Molina and its shareholders. If you are a Molina shareholder, you are encouraged to contact Amber Eck at (619) 342-8000 or ambere@haelaw.com for additional information. Haeggquist & Eck is investigating whether certain members of the board of directors (the "Board") made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Molina's administrative infrastructure was never designed to handle the sze and complexity of Molina's rapid growth strategy; (2) Molina failed to remediate systemic issues and costly disruptions with critical administrative infrastructure functions, including provider payment and utilization management; and (3) as a result, Molina common stock traded at artificially inflated prices during the Class Period.



On August 2, 2017, the Company withdrew its 2017 earnings outlook and announced that it will eliminate 1,500 jobs and exit certain Obamacare markets after posting a steep second quarter loss. On this news, Molina shares fell nearly 6%, or $3.92 per share, to close at $62.32 per share on August 3, 2017. The Company's shares continued to fall on the following trading day, closing down $2.52 per share, or over 4%, to close at $59.80 per share on August 4, 2017. Our investigation concerns whether the Company's Board has breached its fiduciary duties to shareholders, grossly mismanaged the Company, and/or committed abuses of control in connection with the foregoing.

What You Can Do If you are a Molina shareholder, you may have claims against the Company's directors and officers. If you wish to discuss this notice or if you have questions about this notice or your legal rights, please contact Amber Eck at 619-342-8000 or e-mail her at ambere@haelaw.com. There is no cost or obligation to you. Haeggquist & Eck, LLP is a nationally recognized leader in shareholder rights law. The firm represents individual investors in shareholder derivative lawsuits, and members of the firm have helped shareholders recover more than $1 billion of value for themselves and the companies in which they have invested. This release constitutes attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005188/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] MoneyLion Announces America's Most Powerful and Rewarding Financial Membership

MoneyLion, the innovative financial platform offering consumers a better way to borrow, save, earn and invest, today officially launched America's most powerful and rewarding financial membership to help people take control of their finances and achieve their dreams. In support of the most powerful financial membership, MoneyLion will be launching the Financial Heartbeat as well as a comprehensive suite of premium banking products to help everyday Americans better understand and engage with their finances. "Over the last year, our team has been hard at work building America's most powerful financial membership and starting today, we're giving Americans a revolutionary new way to get ahead, " said Dee Choubey, CEO and Founder at MoneyLion. "With the new MoneyLion Financial Heartbeat and access to the industry's most valuable checking and investing capabilities, Americans can finally feel like they have a path to a more successful financial future." At a time when the majority of people have less than $2,000 in their savings account, everyday Americans are suffering. A study from AEI reported 31 percent of Americans had hardly any confidence in their financial institutions and its leaders. MoneyLion's Financial Heartbeat addresses this challenge by eliminating the hassles of traditional finances with a glanceable financial tracker, which encourages users to feel financially empowered and become more in sync with their money. By providing feedback and reinforcement, the Financial Heartbeat is a reflection of the hard work users put in to improve one's financial health. The Financial Heartbeat focuses on five key pillars of financial health - Save, Spend, Shield and Score - and celebrates people's progress with Strive as they achieve their long and short-term wealth goals.



Additionally, MoneyLion is introducing a suite of banking tools to further extend its membership services and to alleviate the high fees typically associated with traditional banks. Users will benefit from zero-fee checking accounts, a debit card with more rewards, and access to over 55,000 fee-free ATMs across the US. MoneyLion is also offering members instant cash advances with 0% APR. These cash advances, up to $250, will provide users with immediate resources to address their financial needs, with no fees attached. "With the Financial Heartbeat and newly launched MoneyLion debit card, our members now have both the GPS to navigate their financial picture as well as the banking products to avoid potholes and other costly detours," said Tim Hong, Chief Product Officer at MoneyLion. "Together, our more than 3 million members can get the guidance they need, as well as unlock a fee-free financial future to help them focus on what matters most."

By adding the Financial Heartbeat and suite of premium banking products, MoneyLion is providing users with the freedom from financial stress and the opportunity to better achieve their goals. This marks MoneyLion's continued commitment to building America's most powerful financial membership. The Financial Heartbeat will be available for customers in December and the suite of banking tools will be available starting today. About MoneyLion MoneyLion is America's most powerful and rewarding financial membership, empowering people to take control of their finances to achieve their dreams. Since its launch in 2013, MoneyLion has amassed more than 3 million members and has earned its customers trust with new banking and investments capabilities that offer a one-of-a-kind rewards program, no-fee checking account, overdraft protection, and loans funded in 15 seconds. From a single app, users can get a 360-degree snapshot of their financial lives while having access to personalized tips and tools to improve their credit and achieve everyday savings. With the notion that good habits are formed over time, MoneyLion rewards users for each decision that moves them closer towards their financial goals. The success of MoneyLion relies on finding ways to make the members' money work as hard as they do. MoneyLion is headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For more information, visit www.moneylion.com or download the app here. Disclosure MoneyLion's affiliate, ML Wealth LLC, is a Registered Investment Advisor with the SEC (News - Alert) . MoneyLion Plus members' investments are protected by the SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation) for up to $500,000. Brokerage services provided to clients of ML Wealth by Drive Wealth LLC, a member of FINRA/SIPC. Other services provided by our affiliates including ML Plus, LLC. This communication and all data are for informational purposes only and do not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell securities. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Keep in mind investing involves risk. The value of your investment will fluctuate over time and you may gain or lose money. Nothing in this communication should be construed as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005516/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Fortune 1000 C-Suite Survey: 96% See Their Marketing & PR Teams as "Unwilling or Unable" to Prove ROI; Increasingly, Top Companies Are Turning to Finance, Procurement to Lead the Effort

All but one of the 400+ C-suite respondents said they believe in the power of great marketing and communications to create business value

Most leaders said that their marketing team had failed to provide reliable indicators of quantifiable business value, despite multiple requests over recent years

B2B company respondents said that martech had proved insufficient in delivering proof of marketing and communications impact, ROI

Large majority of respondents no longer believe their marketing team can answer the ROI question without significant participation from finance, operations, procurement

New trend: finance departments are being asked to assume control over marketing performance measurement and analytics CHICAGO, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CONNECT CFO LEADERSHIP SUMMIT  Multiple Proof Analytics surveys of more than 400 senior business leaders in 160 key Fortune 1000 C-suites reveal that most top executives see their marketing and communications teams  and by extension their agency partners  as either unwilling or unable prove the ROI of their investments, prompting companies to evaluate new ways to break the impasse, including asking their finance teams to take the lead. "When you don't give him a straight answer about ROI, it triggers his trust issues."



One of the approaches most commonly mentioned in the surveys were the proposals or recent decisions to transfer responsibility for marketing measurement and analytics to the finance department as well as to procurement, particularly with regard to agency contracts. Crucially, many of the C-suite respondents went out of their way to say that their frustration did not stem from a lack of belief in marketings impact, but rather the failure of their marketing teams to embrace full accountability for ROI and business value. The Proof survey is a giant wake-up call for marketing and PR teams, and their agencies too, said Michelle Killebrew , head of global performance marketing at CA Technologies and the companys western regional marketing leader. This survey places a white-hot spotlight on the difference between marketing and PR as service providers, and marketing and PR as proven value creators and ROI generators. Business leaders want to know that every marketing and PR dollar is helping their sales teams sell more product to more customers, faster and more profitably than sales could do if marketing was not there. If thats not happening, why is that and what can we do differently? And if it is, can we spend more on marketing to get even more value? Proof answers those questions and many others with precision and speed. Crucially, every business leader that participated in the Proof surveys said they believed that marketing and PR played an important or very important role in the growth, health and prosperity of their business. However, 94 percent reported that they had little or no reliable understanding of the quantifiable business value actually delivered by marketing. 97 percent said they have little or no idea how much money they should be investing in marketing and PR. A very large majority  more than 90 percent  of respondents indicated that they oscillate between frustration at the failure of marketing and communications teams to offer credible proof of their business value and fear that their tendency to cut marketing spend is harming a very valuable business driver. Nevertheless, 72 percent of respondents said that they predicted that 2019 marketing budgets would be cut by 10 percent or more  a sentiment echoed by many top analyst firms. Tom Schodorf , board member for high-growth technology companies such as Rapid7 , has been outspoken about the ned to substantiate marketings value and ROI. Marketing and communications have a very privileged place in most companies. It is often one of the most expensive investments many companies make, and it is one of the most important parts of a successful companys growth, profitability and acceleration. But while great marketing with proven business impact is a major contributor to a companys income statement, unproven marketing is essentially an opportunity cost tax on growth, profitability and shareholder value. More and more business leaders and board members believe it is time to address the marketing value question head-on.



Business leaders also said they see the disconnect between marketing and the business in deeper, more structural terms. 95 percent said they doubted whether marketing leaders have the same understanding of value creation as business leaders, with many marketing and PR teams defining value in non-financial terms. 92 percent of respondents said that they were not sure that marketing leaders understood the range of business problems that need to be solved, or had a framework that connected marketing and PR to specific business issues. More than half the respondents said they felt marketing teams ignored the question of ROI, seeing it as a point of vulnerability or a ploy by sales or finance leaders to justify cuts to marketing budgets. Bob Beauchamp , an experienced technology CEO and board member for public companies like Raytheon, was not one of the leaders surveyed. But he penned an op-ed on the subject last year that clearly presents his views. He wrote: Boards, CEOs and CFOs often see a budget request as an investment deal: in return for X dollars, the business unit or functional team usually promises to deliver more revenue, better margins, accelerating cash flows, and brand accretion. We cant fund everything, so its a big part of our job to rank every one of these investments. But heres the problem: Determining that stack rank is very tough if we cant connect investment to incremental value.

Later in the same editorial, Beauchamp wrote: Marketing and PR professionals clearly believe they create a lot of business value. But business leaders need a lot more than belief. We need CMOs and CCOs who believe so strongly in their financial impact that they will tie their compensation to it, just like any sales leader. The same is true for advertising and PR agencies and marketing consultancies. Its time to say clearly that hourly billings have no connection to value creation. Modern CMOs and CCOs should compensate their agencies and consultancies based on the incremental value they create. This significantly improves economic alignment between the agency and the company, all while reinforcing the importance of value creation v. spending on activities. Full Article: Why the 'Proof Gap' is an Existential Threat to CMOs and CCOs, by Bob Beauchamp This move towards the establishment of durable economic alignment between marketing and the business is picking up a lot of steam. 87 percent of executives responding to the Proof surveys indicated that determining marketings impact and ROI is now a major C-level or board discussion inside their companies. Yet 96 percent of respondents said they had no or low confidence that their marketing and PR teams had the willingness, capability or capacity to do what is necessary to demonstrate their value. The result? Top analyst firms believe that marketing budgets will fall again in 2019 after being cut more than 10 percent year-over-year between 2017 and 2018. And there is mounting evidence that the surveyed leaders have begun to look at new ways to increase the alignment between marketing investments and the business impact and financial value resulting from those investments. For example, 64 percent indicated that they were looking at new value-based approaches to establishing advertising, digital and PR agency compensation. I report to our CFO, who is very concerned about expense, said one senior finance leader. Our annual marketing and PR spend is very large, so it is very much on our radar. Our marketing teams inability to connect any part of our marketing investment to unique attributed value is very, very concerning to us. Some of it is very likely creating a lot of value, but we dont have any way to know. That means the risk attached to our marketing spend is potentially really high. If there are more effective ways to invest that marketing spend, we need to know that, given the size of the investment were making in the function. One senior operations executive summed up the general sentiment captured in the Proof surveys: Marketings value has been the blackest of black boxes. To counter this, weve begun to specify the marketing KPIs we need in order to get to clarity and transparency. Thats the only way we can make the best business decisions. The CMO Council , the largest CMO organization in the world, began to advocate two years ago for what the organization calls Financial Impact Analytics for marketing and communications. The message from business leaders is exceptionally clear: theres nothing more necessary to CMO success than having the proof of how marketing is driving the business forward in a multiplicity of unique and powerful ways, said CMO Council founder Donovan Neale-May . One of the core elements of the surveys was to determine the specific business impact and financial value questions that business leaders most wanted marketing and PR leaders to be able to answer, in effect to define the target that marketing and PR leaders need to hit. The survey respondents consistently prioritized answering the following questions:

Are we spending the right amount on marketing, advertising and communications? Should we be spending less, or more? If we increase or decrease marketing spend, what are the short-, medium-, and long-term business impacts of those decisions? Are we past the point of diminishing returns on marketing and PR investment, or do we still have headroom to create substantial additional value? How long does it take for our marketing and PR investments to deliver impact and value? Whats marketings time-to-value in our business? How do we know that our marketing and PR is creating the desired audience effect? How do we know that audience belief is translating into more deals, bigger deals and faster deal velocity? With regard to opportunity cost, where should we spend our next marketing dollar (or other currency) most effectively? At what point do I get more value from investing more in marketing and communications than in hiring more sales people? Or vice versa? Should we be insourcing or outsourcing more of our marketing and communications support? Why? Who creates the most value the fastest? These are the sort of normal, routine questions that business leaders always ask of everyone asking for investment. Its not just about marketing and communications, but for every part of any business, said Kyle Brantley , co-founder and head of product management at Proof. The good news is that the analytics show that many marketing and PR teams are generating tremendous impact and value for the money they spend. The bad news is that most business leaders still cant see that impact and value clearly. CEOs and CFOs have been concerned about this for a long time. Whats changed is that many business leaders are starting to take decisive action, a trend that will continue to escalate in 2019. The Proof surveys included very senior business, finance, administration, procurement, sales, and operations leaders. The surveys were completed over the past 16 months. The most recent survey was this past summer. Absolute anonymity was provided in order to obtain the highest number of respondents and the clearest possible responses. About Proof Proof leads the market in delivering ROI governance and compliance. The software platform quickly bridges the proof gap that exists between business leaders and marketing and communications teams. Championed by finance teams as well as progressive CMOs and agencies, Proof calculates the performance of marketing and communications investments, including audience impact, business value creation, time to value, materiality and risk, ROI and opportunity cost. www.proofanalytics.ai Contact:

Diane Kegley (Pacific Time)

Mobile: 925-786-8600

diane.kegley@proofanalytics.ai A photo accompanying this announcement is available at //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/750cda8f-250f-4452-843f-5b7029f338ee

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] John Coyne Named Chairman of Spouting Rock Asset Management

Spouting Rock Financial Partners, a diversified financial services firm, today announced that investment industry veteran, John Coyne, has been named Chairman of its asset management group effective immediately. This is a new role for the firm which last month announced the launch of its asset management arm. Coyne was formerly Vice Chairman of Brinker Capital, a position which capped a 30-year career with the firm he co-founded. Spouting Rock Asset Management offers a niche allocation suite of strategies that seek to capitalize on market inefficiencies. In his new role, Coyne, a 2011 Money Management Institute Pioneer Award* winner, has primary oversight for Spouting Rock Asset Management's distribution platform. He will specifically focus his efforts on distribution to RIAs. "I can think of no one better suited to this role than John," said Andrew Smith, Spouting Rock Asset Management's chief executive. "He has significant experience as an investment management leader, and my colleagues and I greatly value his expertise and insight. His industry peers hold John in the highest regard, both for his reputation and his innate understanding of the complexities of the RIA channel. He'll make an enormous difference to our distribution efforts and the growth of our entire franchise. We're thrilled to have him aboard." Said John Coyne, "I've known Spouting Rock Financial Partners since its founding back in 2006 and have followed the firm's success as it grew from a famiy office to a family office services provider, to a merchant bank, and now a fully-integrated asset management firm. We have something really special here, both in terms of people and products. If I have to identify one component of this business that most attracted me, it's that we've been able to identify market inefficiencies and in response have created a suite of smart, differentiated strategies to provide financial advisors with the solutions they need for today, tomorrow and beyond. I'm looking forward to playing an integral role in the firm's growth and market prominence."



Coyne noted Spouting Rock Asset Management currently offers six strategies, all of which are available to financial advisors and institutions for investment purposes, and that their product suite will expand over the coming months to include new funds and strategies. Concurrent with Coyne's appointment, Spouting Rock Asset Management announced the hire of John Dodd as Head of Institutional Distribution.

Immediately before joining Spouting Rock Asset Management, Dodd spent seven years as institutional marketing head at Levin Capital Strategies, an $8.5 billion investment management firm. Previously, he was Managing Director - Institutional Sales and New Business Development at Security Global Investors, and Head of Institutional Sales at US Trust Asset Management. He also held senior-level positions at Friess Associates and The Boston Company. Dodd started his career in institutional sales at Goldman Sachs. Dodd holds an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Columbia Business School. "John Coyne and John Dodd are two of the most knowledgeable, forward-thinking investment management professionals in the industry," said Blakely Page, Spouting Rock Financial Partners' Founder and President. "Having them part of the Spouting Rock Asset Management ecosystem will help ensure our investment vehicles are considered for portfolio inclusion by our advisor and institutional audiences. Each has distinguished himself as an industry standout in their own right, and each brings with them a depth of experience that's nothing short of highly impressive. We look forward to the many contributions they'll make to Spouting Rock Asset Management." For more information on Spouting Rock Asset Management, visit http://spoutingrock.us/. *Each year, MMI honors one or more individuals with its prestigious Pioneer Award at the Industry Leadership Awards dinner during the Annual Conference. The Pioneer Award, first awarded in 1998, honors individuals who embody MMI's mission to serve as an advocate and catalyst for the growth of the advisory solutions and wealth management industry. As its name suggests, the award is bestowed on trailblazers who exemplify the pioneer spirit and are leading the industry forward in new and transformative directions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005549/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Tidal Workload Automation Is an Oracle PartnerNetwork Gold Level Member with Powered by Oracle Cloud Status

CHICAGO, Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- News Facts

Tidal Workload Automation , a world leading enterprise-class workload automation solution for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, today announced that it has become an Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Gold level member. Tidal is also recognized as achieving Powered by Oracle Cloud status. As a Gold Level partner, Tidal is delivering Oracle customers with new opportunities to embrace and leverage the power of the Oracle Cloud and their continued investment in Oracle. Enterprises can now use Tidal Workload Automation to automate and orchestrate their mission-critical workloads running in Oracle Cloud and hybrid environments  providing a higher level of performance, security, scalability, and rapid time-to-market for the critical business processes vital to success. "Tidal is changing the landscape for Oracle customers seeking to run and optimize their critical business workflows in the Oracle Cloud and hybrid environments," says Rick McNees, CEO of Tidal. "We manage the complex interconnections and interdependencies between applications, systems, and platforms  regardless of where those assets are running. The entire job scheduling and workflow automation process is managed as a seamless whole, delivering precise orchestration and flawless execution of business workloads. Tidal is an easy-to-use, single-pane-of-glass solution  point-and-click, no scripting required. This combination of performance and ease-of-use is where Tidal excels." More than 300 enterprises around the world currently rely on Tidal to automate business processes involving Oracle Applications. Says Mr. McNees, "We look forward to helping these Oracle customers in the transition to Oracle Cloud and hybrid environments. Our participation in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace extends our commitment to the Oracle ommunity and enables customers to easily reap the benefits of Tidal. We look forward to helping Oracle customers around the world achieve their business goals."



"Tidal and Oracle share a rich legacy of helping customers drive value from their enterprise IT, and this mutual customer-centric focus has now been extended into the Oracle Cloud," says David Hicks, VP Worldwide ISV Business Development, Oracle. "Achieving Powered by Oracle Cloud status allows Tidal customers to unleash the power of the Oracle Cloud and optimize their business results, time-to-market for new processes, and operational efficiency." As a Gold level member, Tidal Workload Automation receives the benefit of being able to start developing specializations that will allow them to grow their business, increase their expertise, reach higher levels of customer retention, and create differentiation in the marketplace. Gold level members also become eligible to resell all Oracle Technology products and can apply to resell Oracle Applications and Industry Solutions. In addition, they receive access to My-Oracle Support to support development, demonstration, and integration licenses only, discounts on training, limited free assessment/exam vouchers, reduced rates on the purchase of Oracle licenses for internal use, discounts on customer services, and more. For more information about the benefits of becoming an OPN Gold level partner, please visit: http://www.oracle.com/us/partnerships/index.htm.

Tidal at Oracle OpenWorld, October 22-26, Moscone Center, San Francisco  Visit Tidal at Oracle OpenWorld. Stop by at Kiosk P-8 in the ERP Exhibition Area, Section 101, for a hands-on demo, and attend our theatre session, "Improving Your Business Outcomes with Workload Automation," on Tuesday, October 23, 11:30 am, at The Exchange@Moscone South-Theatre 2. About Tidal Workload Automation

Tidal is a world leading workload automation platform for hybrid, multi-cloud environments. It's an enterprise-class single-pane-of-glass solution to help manage, automate, and orchestrate business processes, applications, data, middleware, and infrastructure. With more than 35 years of experience  and more than 600 enterprise customers across the globe  Tidal delivers unparalleled value and results in digital automation. Tidal is an affiliated business of the Dillon Kane Group / STA Group, a Chicago-based provider of innovative technologies for diverse industries since 2002. More than 250 Dillon Kane technologists, strategists, and subject matter experts are currently developing tomorrow's digital automation solutions, including the orchestration of cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. About Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) is Oracle's partner program that provides partners with a differentiated advantage to develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle's products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base, and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to be recognized and rewarded for their investment in Oracle Cloud. Partners engaging with Oracle will be able to differentiate their Oracle Cloud expertise and success with customers through the OPN Cloud program  an innovative program that complements existing OPN program levels with tiers of recognition and progressive benefits for partners working with Oracle Cloud. To find out more visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners. Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Tidal Contact Information:

William Bloomstein

williamb@dillonkane.com

(617) 721-9445 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tidal-workload-automation-is-an-oracle-partnernetwork-gold-level-member-with-powered-by-oracle-cloud-status-300734884.html SOURCE Tidal Workload Automation

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Server Virtualization Software Market: Lucrative Opportunities in various Industry

?Server virtualization is a process of masking the server resources such as processors, physical servers, and operating systems. With virtualization, a server can run multiple virtual machines or guests, in such a way that each guest is unaware and unaffected by the working of other guests and work as an individual and dedicated system. The software application is used by a server administrator which creates multiple isolated virtual environments by dividing one physical server. These virtual environments are called as virtual private servers, containers, guests, instances, or emulations. The software used for server virtualization plays a vital role in resource management and co-ordination.







One of the major factors responsible for the growth of the server virtualization software market is the increasing number of servers in IT and BFSI industry. As a result of increased complexity of the enterprise network that connects all the computers and associated devices of the organization at different locations, the associated servers are also increasing. Additionally, to achieve greater organizational efficiencies, organizations are adopting technologies such as Big Data analytics, as a result of which, enterprise data is increasing rapidly thereby increasing the number of servers associated for data handling. With an increase in number of servers, the operating and maintenance costs is rising at a rapid pace due to multiple factors, including the purchase and set up of new hardware devices, daily monitoring, power and cooling requirements and maintenance. Wherein, server virtualization software can help in reducing the dependency on physical server by utilizing an individual server with optimum capabilities. Moreover, with server virtualization software, the problems associated with physical server management such as application disruption during up-gradation process, and failure of applications due to server inactivity, is eliminated from the process cycle or process loop. As a result of these factors, the server virtualization software market is growing at a decent pace and is expected to grow more significantly during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025.



The global server virtualization software market is segmented on the basis of software type, enterprise, industry vertical, and geography. Based on software type, the global server virtualization software market is further segmented into Guest OS/Virtual Machine, Hypervisor, Para Virtualization, and Full Virtualization. On the basis of enterprise the global server virtualization software market is segmented as large enterprise and small & medium enterprise. The enterprise size is defined on the basis of number of employee and geographic presence of an enterprise. The industry vertical segment is bifurcated into educational, forensic and public safety, IT and telecommunication, BFSI, and others.





Request Sample @ : https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=30041 Geographically, the global server virtualization software market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and South America. The server virtualization software market is expected to grow at a decent rate in the developed regions such as North America and Europe owing to the presence of several multinational information technology and telecommunication companies such as IBM Corporation, VMware, Cisco Systems, Inc. and many others. North America and Europe are expected to be the major contributor towards the global server virtualization software market in terms of revenue. The major countries contributing towards the growth of server virtualization software market in these regions are expected to be the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Germany, and France. Moreover, in the developing regions such as Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa, the server virtualization software market is expected to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025. The Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa are expected to be the most promising markets for the server virtualization software market owing to significant investments and developments in the BFSI, and IT and telecommunication industry.



Some of the significant players involved in the global server virtualization software market includes VMware, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Citrix Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Red Hat, Inc., and Oracle Corporation.



The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.



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[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]By Haze Fan, Dong Lyu, Benjamin D Katz, Julie Johnsson, Kyunghee Park, Bloomberg News | Oct. 19, 2018

A Chinese airline that's been an exclusive operator of Boeing Co. jets for more than 30 years is in talks with Airbus SE on a potential plane purchase, amid growing trade tensions between Beijing and the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.

Executives at Xiamen Airlines, which is majority owned by the state-run China Southern Airlines Co., met with a high-powered Airbus delegation visiting China from Europe last month to advance the negotiations, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process isn't public. Xiamen is predominantly interested in the longer-range version of Airbus' A321 narrow-body planes, they said, though the talks are still at an early stage and the size of a potential order hasn't been set.

Xiamen, based in China's southeast, currently doesn't have plans to buy Airbus planes, a spokeswoman said in response to Bloomberg News.

Should it come off, an Airbus purchase would be a blow to Boeing, which secured Xiamen last year as a launch customer for the latest variant of its best-selling 737 Max plane, a direct competitor to the longest range A320. It also highlights the risks of U.S. President Donald Trump's high-stakes effort to curtail China's rise as a global economic rival. Chicago-based Boeing has sought to avoid becoming entangled in the growing rift between the U.S. and China, after initially being tagged as a possible target for higher tariffs.

Boeing fell 0.3 percent to US$358.34 at 10:05 a.m. in New York. Airbus slipped by 0.5 percent to 98.83 euros in Paris.

Airbus Visit

Talks between Xiamen and Airbus began informally around May, as the trade tensions heated up, according to the people. The discussions gained intensity in September, when senior Airbus executives including Chief Executive Officer Tom Enders and incoming CEO Guillaume Faury visited China, they said.

During the trip, Airbus executives also met with Chinese customers to revive prospects for a potential US$18 billion deal, Bloomberg reported at the time, citing people familiar with the visit. While a final agreement for that transaction might not be reached in time, China is eager to parade an order at an inaugural import-export fair in November, where the government is expected to unveil a series of agreements to demonstrate the nation's spending power and weight in global trade.

The Xiamen talks are separate to this, the people said. While the airline had been in touch with Airbus in the past, it only began to seriously consider the European planemaker as the trade war heated up, they said. The airline has been reluctant to lose the cost advantage of operating a fleet of aircraft from a single manufacturer, and it may ask leasing companies to assist with a purchase, depending on the number of aircraft involved.

Boeing Order

A spokesman for Airbus declined to comment on whether talks with Xiamen were underway. China's National Development and Reform Commission, the body that would have to sign off on any plane order, didn't immediately respond to Bloomberg's faxed request for comment.

Xiamen "have been and are a great customer" for Boeing, Vice President for Marketing Randy Tinseth said in an interview on the sidelines of an Association of Asia Pacific Airlines meeting in Jeju, South Korea on Friday.

Xiamen has utilized Boeing aircraft since it started out as a regional carrier within mainland China in the 1980s. It operated 737s before expanding into longer-haul routes with the 787 Dreamliner in 2015. The carrier currently has more than 170 Boeing jets.

At the Paris Air Show last year, Xiamen ordered Boeing's 737 Max 10 and said it aimed to lift its total fleet to 280 by the end of the decade.

China has become a battleground for the two aircraft titans as they seek to rule an aviation market expected to become the world's biggest early next decade. The government, which negotiates its aircraft deals via a central purchasing group, typically splits orders between the planemakers to meet its rapid expansion goals.

But the trade war brings an added dimension. China's leverage when it comes to tariffs is limited because it doesn't import as much from the U.S. as it sells. The world's second-biggest economy has other levers it can pull, however, from ramping up regulatory hurdles for American companies in China to throwing up roadblocks to U.S. foreign policy goals.[October 22, 2018] Gainsight Acquires Aptrinsic to Enable Product Growth for Subscription Businesses

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Customer Success and Product Teams are the New Sales and Marketing in the Age of the Customer Gainsight, the Customer Success company , announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aptrinsic , a privately held company based in San Mateo, California and Tel Aviv, Israel. Aptrinsic is a product-led growth solution that delivers powerful analytics and in-product engagements used to increase adoption, retention and expansion in B2B companies. The acquisition strengthens Gainsights ability to help subscription businesses maximize growth in the age of the customer by unifying the efforts of the Customer Success and Product Management teams. Over the past six years, Gainsight has been on a mission to establish Customer Success as the primary driver of sustainable growth for subscription businesses. However, given the connected nature of SaaS solutions and the opportunities that presents to better understand and engage with customers, the biggest strategic ask of our clients has been stronger alignment with the Product team said Nick Mehta, Chief Executive Officer at Gainsight. This acquisition will enable us to deliver a single platform for Customer Success and Product teams to collaboratively build and deploy products that not only enjoy healthy adoption and retention, but also deliver the business outcomes their customers desire. As companies mature, they have an opportunity to fundamentally change how software is created and delivered, said Mickey Alon, Chief Executive Officer of Aptrinsic. Product leaders require tools to construct, segment and run experiments for their applications by engaging their users, but they also need to align with Customer Success to have full context and visibility into the outcomes that customers are achieving, as well as deliver their own insights to those on the front lines. We are thrilled to join Gainsight to fully achieve our vision of helping our customers drive rapid growth for their businesses. Customer Success and Product: A New Era for Subscription Growth In legacy business models, growth was all about customer acquisition and the Sales and Marketing teams were the drivers. Given that B2B buyers are typically 57% of the way to a buying decision before actively engaging with Sales (Gartner), and 67% of the buyers journey is no done digitally (Sirius Decisions), it was inevitable that Sales and Marketing platforms would come together to optimize growth through acquisition. Sales teams wanted to understand prospect behavior, scale their engagements via marketing-driven nurture campaigns and influence marketing priorities. Marketing was interested in driving lead volume, learning from prospects and iterating on campaigns quickly.



However, subscription business models and digital transformation have ushered in the "Age of the Customer," where customers have more power, and delivering value over the course of the entire customer lifecycle becomes an imperative. In this new era, a powerful lever for growth has come from Customer Success teams, who use sophisticated technology to proactively address customer risks and opportunities in order to drive customer retention and expansion. However, with digital products, customer insights and personalized engagements happen within the product itself, transforming the product into a critical channel to reach customers. Therefore, like the traditional Sales and Marketing relationship, Customer Success and Product teams must now work together to deliver the experiences and outcomes necessary to drive customer growth. While Sales and Marketing platforms have been consolidated, the same hasnt happened with Customer Success and Product technologyuntil now. With the acquisition of Aptrinsic, Gainsight is ushering in a new era of growth for subscription businesses with Customer Success and Product teams at the heart.

New Capabilities Added to the Gainsight Customer Success Platform In order to enable Customer Success and Product teams to work more closely together, as well as rally the rest of the company around the mission of driving Customer Success, a new type of solution is needed. With the addition of Aptrinsic, Gainsight has expanded its capability set to help companies retain and grow their customers.

New capabilities include: Product Analytics: Companies can now analyze feature usage trends from every angle and discover which features drive retention and growth using cohort retention, funnels, feature performance and journey analysis.

Companies can now analyze feature usage trends from every angle and discover which features drive retention and growth using cohort retention, funnels, feature performance and journey analysis. Personalized In-App Engagements: Companies can now translate product insight into action with personalized in-app engagements to drive users to a-ha product moments.

Companies can now translate product insight into action with personalized in-app engagements to drive users to a-ha product moments. In-App Feedback: Companies can now present surveys to users directly within the product to understand what they value and what they dont. Customer Success executives want better visibility into product adoption to influence the product roadmap and scale and automate C.S. within the product. At the same time, Product teams want to ensure the features they develop are actually being used, that theyre gathering enough data to prioritize the roadmap and that theyre making an impact, said Allison Pickens, Chief Operating Officer at Gainsight. Gainsight has a unique opportunity to bring these two worlds together. We are thrilled to welcome Aptrinsic to the Gainsight family. As a part of Gainsights continuous commitment to developing an extensive partner ecosystem of solutions, the company will continue to integrate with analytics and engagements solutions, such as Google Analytics, MixPanel, Segment, Pendo, WalkMe, UserIQ and more. For more information about Gainsights acquisition, read this blog post by Gainsights CEO, Nick Mehta. For more information about Aptrinsic, click here to start a free trial. About Gainsight: Gainsight is the Customer Success platform helping businesses retain and grow customers. The industry-leading solution provides valuable customer insights and analytics through a centralized view of customer health, builds outcomes-driven customer journeys and helps prove the impact of Customer Success organizations in business. Companies that use Gainsight grow net retention by up to 33 percent. Learn how leading companies like Adobe, Box, GE Digital and Workday use Gainsight to increase retention, expansion, and advocacy at www.gainsight.com . Connect with Gainsight:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/GainsightHQ

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/gainsight/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Gainsight

Instagram: www.instagram.com/gainsight Contacts:

press@gainsight.com

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Esri Announces Student Poster Competition with ISI World Statistics Congress

Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, today announced it will donate free software to students who qualify to compete in the 2018-2019 International Statistical Institute ( ISI (News - Alert) )/Esri Student Poster Competition. The competition aims to promote the integration of statistical and geospatial data, encourage location-based thinking, and inspire curiosity around geographic patterns and relationships. Applicants of the contest must be enrolled as full-time students at a university. Teams can propose an abstract for a poster that displays the ways that statistical data and location intelligence can demonstrate issues involving the economy, the environment, crime, transportation, climate, urban planning, land use or cover, sustainable development, health, and disasters. Licenses of Esri's ArcGIS software will be donated to student groups selected to use in the competition for its duration. "Esri is happy to join with ISI to foster the development of spatial thinking and methods among our future leaders," said Linda Peters, Esri global business development manager. "Providing students with the tools to be able to better understand geographic relationships that make sense of global statistics gives us an opportunity to inspire the next generation to change the world for the better." An international panel will judge teams based on their entries, and final judging of the selected teams will take place during the ISI World Statistics Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, August 18-23, 2019. First-, second-, and third-place cash prizes of up to $2,500 will be awarded, along with a one-year ArcGIS student license to each student in the winning groups. "Spatial data, modeling, analysis, and visualization have long been of importance in statistics but are rapidly of increasing significance in real contexts across all disciplines, in government, and in empowering communities and citizen," said Helen MacGillivray, ISI president. "ISI is pleased to collaborate with Esri in this new competition to engage university students in exploring these important areas of statistics."



ISI is one of the oldest scientific associations still active throughout the world today and supports statisticians and statistical organizations worldwide. The institute covers a wide range of statistical areas, interests, and applications and develops partnerships with national and international organizations to lead, support, and promote the understanding, development, and good practice of statistics. The application deadline for the 2018-2019 ISI/Esri Student Poster Competition is November 30, 2018. For more details about the competition and to submit your poster, visit go.esri.com/isi_student_competition.

About Esri Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, offers the most powerful mapping and spatial analytics technology available. Since 1969, Esri has helped customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Today, Esri software is deployed in more than 350,000 organizations including the world's largest cities, most national governments, 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri engineers the most advanced solutions for digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and location analytics to inform the most authoritative maps in the world. Visit us at esri.com. Copyright  2018 Esri. All rights reserved. Esri, the Esri globe logo, ArcGIS, The Science of Where, esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, service marks, or registered marks of Esri in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products or services mentioned herein may be trademarks, service marks, or registered marks of their respective mark owners. About ISI The International Statistical Institute (ISI, http:/www.isi-web.org/) is an international society whose mission is to lead, support and promote the understanding, development and good practice of statistics worldwide, by providing the core global network for statistics. This is reflected in its slogan 'Statistical Science for a Better World'. The ISI was established in 1885 and is one of the oldest scientific associations still active throughout the world today. ISI, including its seven Associations, has over 4,000 individual members and more than 140 statistical agencies, central banks, universities, societies and research institutes as organisational members. It supports statisticians and statistical organisations worldwide, organises congresses, conferences and workshops, and issues extensive publications, including a variety of journals. It also manages a range of Awards and Prizes and funding schemes. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005659/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Wells Fargo Issues Statement Regarding Agreement with the New York Attorney General

Wells Fargo (News - Alert) & Company (NYSE: WFC) today issued the following statement regarding an agreement with the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York to resolve claims alleging certain misstatements and omissions in the Company's disclosures related to sales practices matters. "We are pleased to reach this agreement. Wells Fargo did not admit liability, and we believe that putting this matter behind us is in the best interest of all of our stakeholders, including customers. The settlement costs have been previously accrued. We are making strong progress in our work to rebuild trust, and this represents another step forward. Over the past two years, we have made fundamental changes to retail sales practices, and the claims in this settlement relate to past product sales goals that were eliminated in 2016. We remain focused on ransforming Wells Fargo into a better company for our customers and other stakeholders."



About Wells Fargo Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.9 trillion in assets. Wells Fargo's vision is to satisfy our customers' financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, through 7,950 locations, 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 37 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 262,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 26 on Fortune's 2018 rankings of America's largest corporations. News, insights and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005783/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] CellCube Energy Storage Provides Independent Report on the Surge in Vanadium Prices

TORONTO, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CellCube Energy Storage Systems Inc. ("CellCube" or the "Company") (CSE: CUBE) (OTCQB: CECBF) (Frankfurt 01X) is pleased to report the following independent article that has been prepared by Mining.com - a leading digital publication covering the global mining sector. CellCube owns a 100% interest in the Bisoni Mackay and Bisoni Rio vanadium properties, located in Nye and Eureka Counties, Nevada. The properties are set to spin out November 30, 2018 to a newly formed company V23 Resource Corp. (see news release dated June 28, 2018). The properties consist of 201 contiguous lode mining claims (approximately 1,680 hectares). With Only 12 per cent of the Bisoni McKay area has been adequately drilled tested to date, and none of the Bisoni Rio. This has already resulted in the estimation of a National Instrument 43-101 indicated resource of 11.9 million tons at an average grade of 0.39 per cent vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), and an inferred resource of 7.0 million tons at an average grade of 0.42 per cent V2O5 (see Company news release dated September 13, 2016). The effective date of the Mineral Resource estimate is August 29, 2016. The estimates were based on data from 15 reverse circulation drill holes and 3 diamond drill holes. A cut-off grade of 0.20% V2O5 was applied. Using Vulcan software, block grades were estimated using the inverse distance squared method applied to 100x100x100 ft blocks, with 10x10x10m sub-blocks. A density factor of 0.077 tons/ft3 was used. There are no known legal, political, environmental, or other risks that could materially affect the potential development of the mineral resources. The indicated resource is contained in a zone approximately 300 metres in strike length, while the inferred resource covers approximately an additional 200 m of strike length extending to the south. The mineralized zone appears to be open at depth, as well as along strike, and is interpreted to extend to the north into the Bisoni-Rio property. In 2017, CellCube staked 162 claims on the Bisoni-Rio property from the Bisoni McKay right up to and abutting the Gibellini vanadium property. (see Company news release dated June 28, 2018). "CellCube's Bisoni McKay and Bisoni-Rio project is a significant pure play vanadium project totaling 4,115 acres and contiguous to the Gibellini deposit held by Prophecy Development Corp." says Mike Neylan, CEO of CellCube. "CellCube shareholders of record will be able to participate in the newly formed V23 company during a very strong vanadium market." Chris M. Healey, P. Geo, geological consultant to CellCube, is the independent Qualified Person who has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical contents of this press release. Vanadium price leaps to near-record high

Frik Els Oct 15,18

While not as exciting as the transformation in the auto market with the shift to electric vehicles, demand growth from batteries used for renewable energy storage has the potential to have a bigger impact on mining. One of the prime technologies that could grab market share from lithium ion for large scale storage systems is so-called vanadium redox flow cells. The rally in vanadium prices is only accelerating with vanadium pentoxide (V 2 O 5 ) flake used in energy storage systes leaping to $27.50 a pound in China putting it within shouting distance of the all-time high reached in 2005. V 2 O 5 is up more than 550% since September 2016.



Vanadium pentoxide is only a fraction of the overall market and the raw material is primarily used to strengthen steel (today it makes up more than 90% of the market). Ferro vanadium prices jumped 10% just over the past week also hitting a 13-year high to $118 a tonne in Europe. In 2005 vanadium prices briefly peaked at $120 a tonne. While the long term story for vanadium may be the battery sector, China's introduction of new rebar standards next month is creating tightness in the market right now.

In a research note BMO Capital Markets, an investment bank, says it anticipates that that Chinese ferrovanadium exports will dwindle over the coming year as domestic demand for the rebar industry continues to rise: Undoubtedly, current pricing will generate a response from marginal supply and through some substitution with niobium, and is thus a spike price, but we anticipate pricing trading at strong levels compared to recent history over the coming years. Going with the flow

Vanadium flow batteries have lifespans of over 20 years without capacity loss and are non-flammable. Another advantage over lithium ion is that this type of battery can be charged and discharged simultaneously making it highly suitable for large-scale storage from renewable sources such as solar and wind when connected to an electricity grid. The amount of V 2 O 5 in a single MWh is just under 10 tonnes. South Africa, China and Russia produce more than 80% of the world's vanadium, mostly as a byproduct of magnetite mining. Only around 80,000 tonnes of vanadium was produced last year. Glencore, South Africa's Bushveld Minerals and Canada's Largo Resources are major listed producers. Denver-based uranium producer Energy Fuels recently announced plans to restart its vanadium processing facility (from pond solutions) and is commencing limited conventional vanadium production at its Utah mines. The company's White Mesa Mill is expected to go into production in November and Energy Fuels estimates the ponds contain roughly 4 million pounds of recoverable V 2 O 5 ." Source: http://www.mining.com/vanadium-price-leaps-near-record-high/ Resignation of Director

CellCube also announces the resignation of Mr. Brian Murray from the Board of Directors. The Board wishes to extend their sincere appreciation for Mr. Murray's efforts and support for the company. About CellCube Energy Storage Systems Inc.

CellCube is a Canadian public company listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange (symbol CUBE), the OTCBB (symbol CECBF), and the Frankfurt Exchange (Symbol 01X) focused on the fast-growing energy storage industry which is driven by the large increase in demand for renewable energy. CellCube supplies vertically integrated energy storage systems to the power industry and recently acquired the assets of Gildemeister Energy Storage GmbH, now Enerox GmbH the developer and manufacturer of CellCube energy storage systems. CellCube recently acquired EnerCube Switchgear Systems (formerly Jet Power and Controls Ltd.) and Power Haz Energy Mobile Solutions Inc. (formerly HillCroft Consulting Ltd.) and has also invested in an online renewable energy financing platform, Braggawatt Energy Inc. CellCube develops, manufactures, and markets energy storage systems on the basis of vanadium redox flow technology and has over 130 project installations and a 10 year operational track record. Its highly integrated energy storage System solutions features 99% residual energy capacity after 11,000 cycles with the focus on larger scale containerized modules. Basic building blocks consist of a 250kW unit family with 4, 6 and 8 hours variation in energy capacity. This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts which address events, results, outcomes or developments that the Company expects to occur; they are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "aims", "potential", "goal", "objective", "prospective", and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "can", "could" or "should" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made and they involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Certain material assumptions regarding such forward-looking statements are discussed in this news release and the Company's annual and quarterly management's discussion and analysis filed at http://www.sedar.com. Except as required by the securities disclosure laws and regulations applicable to the Company, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CellCube Energy Storage Systems Inc.

Ste 10 - 8331 River Road

Richmond, BC V6X 1Y1

65 Queen St West, Suite 520

Toronto, ON M5H 2M5

+1-800-882-3213

CSE CUBE: 12g3-2(b): 82-2062

OTCQB: CECBF Frankfurt: 01X

http://www.cellcubeenergystorage.com On Behalf of CellCube Energy Storage Systems Inc.,

Mike Neylan, CEO, Director

Glenda Kelly, Investor Communications

Lorne Booth

Telephone: +1-647-344-8090

Email: info@cellcubeenergystorage.com

http://www.cellcubeenergystorage.com

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018]

Statement - Minister Bains comments on public hearing into alleged improper and/or misleading telecom sales practices

OTTAWA, Oct. 22, 2018 /CNW/ - The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, made the following statement:

"Like many Canadians, we are very concerned by allegations of inappropriate sales practices by telecom carriers.

"Our government strongly believes that no Canadian should ever be misled or treated unfairly by a telecom corporation, especially those Canadians who are most vulnerable.







"We are pleased that the CRTC is holding a public hearing as the latest phase of the inquiry and that many Canadians have participated to date."

Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on Twitter: @ISED_CA

SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada[October 22, 2018] Ledyard Financial Group Reports Record Quarterly Earnings

Ledyard Financial Group, Inc. (ticker symbol LFGP), the holding company for Ledyard National Bank, today reported record quarterly earnings for the third consecutive quarter. Net income for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, was $1,382,986 or $0.44 per share compared to $1,124,246 or $0.36 per share for the same period in 2017, an increase of $258,740 or 23%. Net income for the nine months ended September 30, 2018, was $3,932,184 or $1.27 per share compared to $3,252,706 or $1.07 per share for the same period in 2017, an increase of $679,478 or 21%. Revenue growth and the effects from tax reform continue to contribute positively to the Company's results. Total revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, was $6,929,825 compared to $6,385,594 for the same period in 2017, for an increase of $544,231 or 10.4%. Total revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2018, was $20,516,345 compared to $18,754,501 for the same period in 2017, for an increase of $1,761,844 or 9.4%. Net interest income for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, was $3,922,896 compared to $3,661,160 for the same period in 2017, for an increase of $261,737 or 7.2%. Net interest income for the nine months ended September 30, 2018, was $11,465,499 compared to $10,783,911 for the same period in 2017, for an increase of $681,587 or 6.3%. No funds were added to the Allowance for the first nine months of 2018 or 2017. The total Allowance was $5.2 million at September 30, 2018, compared to $5.5 million for the same period in 2017. Total non-performing assets were $3.6 million at September 30, 2018, compared to $1.7 million for the same period in 2017. The increase in non-performing assets is due to a single loan relationship. The loans are secured by all business assets and real estate of the customer. Ledyard Financial Advisors, a division of Ledyard National Bank, reported revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, of $2,634,689 compared to $2,387,770 for the same period in 2017, an increase of $246,919 or 11%. Revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2018, was $7,888,231 compared to $6,936,220 for the same period in 2017, an increase of $952,011 or 14%. Assets under management and custody at Ledyard Financial Advisors totaled approximately $1.58 billion as of quarter end September 30, 2018, and $1.46 billion for the same period in 2017. Non-interest expense for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, was $5,318,511 compared to $5,025,872 for the same period in 2017, an increase of $292,639 or 5.8%. Non-interest expense for the nine months ended September 30, 2018, was $15,984,273 compared to $14,825,449 for the same period in 2017, an increase of $1,158,824 or 7.8%. At September 30, 2018, the Company's shareholders' equity stood at $47.1 million compared to $46.9 million for the same period in 2017. All of the Company's capital ratios are well in excess of the amount required by the Federal Reserve for a bank holding company to be considered "well capitalized." At September 30, 2018, the Company's book value per share stood at $14.62 compared to $14.75 for the same period in 2017. Loans, net of the allowance for loan losses at September 30, 2018, were $306.9 million compared to $286.7 million for the same period last year, an increase of 7.1%. Total deposits at September 30, 2018, were $412.9 million compared to $405.1 million, an increase of $7.8 million or 1.9% from the same period last year. Total assets of the Company were $493.8 million at September 30, 2018, an increase of $12.1 million over the prior year. On September 4, 2018 the Company paid a dividend of $0.18 per share, which represented a $0.01 increase in the regular quarterly dividend. Ledyard Financial Group, Inc., headquartered in Hanover, New Hampshire, is the holding company for Ledyard National Bank. Ledyard National Bank, founded in 1991, is a full service community bank offering a broad range of banking, investment, tax and wealth management services. Stock activity information can be found in the "Investor Relations" section of Ledyard's website, which includes a wealth of other information that Ledyard shareholders and prospective shareholders may find of interest. Ledyard Financial Group, Inc. shares can be bought and sold through the NASD sanctioned "OTC Markets" under the trading symbol LFGP. Shares may be traded through an individual's broker. For more information, please refer to the "Investor Relations" section of the bank's website at www.ledyardbank.com or contact the Company's EVP, COO and CFO, Gregory D. Steverson.







Ledyard Financial Group, Inc. Selected Financial Highlights (Unaudited) For the Three Months Ended For the Nine Months Ended 9/30/2018 9/30/2017 9/30/2018 9/30/2017 Total Interest Income $ 4,300,255 $ 3,977,160 $ 12,391,519 $ 11,753,072 Total Interest Expense 377,359 316,001 926,020 969,161 Net Interest Income 3,922,896 3,661,160 11,465,499 10,783,911 Provision for Loan Losses 0 0 0 0 Non-interest Income 3,006,929 2,724,435 9,050,846 7,970,590 Non-interest Expense 5,318,511 5,025,872 15,984,273 14,825,449 Pre-tax Income 1,611,314 1,359,722 4,532,071 3,929,051 Income Tax Expense 228,329 235,477 599,888 676,346 Net Income 1,382,986 1,124,246 3,932,184 3,252,706 Earnings Per Common Share, basic $ 0.44 $ 0.36 $ 1.27 $ 1.07 Earnings Per Common Share, diluted $ 0.44 $ 0.36 $ 1.25 $ 1.04 Dividends Per Common Share $ 0.18 $ 0.16 $ 0.52 $ 0.48 Total Assets $ 493,797,042 $ 481,648,227 Investments 152,629,163 157,772,254 Loans Receivable, net 306,984,035 286,723,198 Total Deposits 412,949,960 405,148,685 Borrowings & Other Liabilities 33,739,316 29,574,601 Stockholder's Equity 47,107,767 46,924,942 Common Stock Outstanding 3,352,842 3,318,922 Treasury Shares 129,922 136,509 Tangible Book Value per Share $ 14.62 $ 14.75 Total Risk Based Capital Ratio 17.14% 16.62% Non-performing Assets $ 3,629,777 $ 1,730,041 Allowance as a % of Total Loans 1.67% 1.89% Return on Assets 1.08% 0.88% Return on Equity 11.03% 9.55%

Forward-Looking Statements: Statements concerning future performance, developments or events, expectations for growth and income forecasts, and any other guidance on future periods constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from stated expectations. Specific factors include, but are not limited to, loan production, competitive pressure in the banking industry, balance sheet management, net interest margin variations, the effect of changes in equity prices on assets under management, the ability to control costs and expenses, changes in the interest rate environment, financial policies of the United States government, and general economic conditions. The Company disclaims any obligation to update any such factors. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005827/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] LearnLaunch Institute Announces Agenda for 7th Annual Across Boundaries Conference

Early Bird Registration Open Until December 18th

BOSTON, Oct. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LearnLaunch Institute and MIT Open Learning unveiled today the agenda for the 7th annual Across Boundaries Conference , January 31-February 1, 2019 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

The Across Boundaries Conference explores the thriving education innovation sector from the viewpoint of one of its global hubs, Boston. Across Boundaries brings together educators, entrepreneurs, investors, and education professionals from across the ecosystem, early childhood through K-12, higher education, and workforce development, to discuss the challenges and opportunities around technology in education. Keynotes

We are pleased to announce the first three confirmed keynotes for the 2019 Across Boundaries Conference: Ryan Craig is Co-Founder and Managing Director of University Ventures and the author of A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College (Ben Bella, 2018), which describes the critical importance of last-mile training and the emergence of bootcamps, income share programs, staffing and apprenticeship models as preferred pathways to good first digital jobs. Debbie Cavalier will detail how she and her small team began Berklee Online in 2002 with an experimental approach to teaching music online and turned it into an organization that serves more than 11,000 formal students per year, as well as the millions of additional students who learn from Berklee Online with free massive open online courses. Shell delve into what the social dimension of learning looks like online, address how she and her team work to dissolve the distance between instructors and students, and provide helpful advice for higher ed innovators and entrepreneurs who are looking to increase access and outcomes for learners. Melina Uncapher champions learning engineering, a new discipline at the interface between research and practice. She will mix stories of her work with schools with insights from neuroscience. Uncapher is a neuroscientist and director of education for Neurosape , a translational neuroscience center at the University of California, San Francisco. Uncapher, whose work has focused on how attention affects learning and memory, will speak to leading trends in neuroscience learning and memory research, and their applications for solving real-world problems in education and technology.



Sessions

The 44 concurrent sessions at Across Boundaries will cover innovations in early education, K-12, higher education, and workforce education; updates on the business of education from practitioners, analysts, and investors; and educational applications of cutting edge technology like machine learning, AR/VR, and blockchain. Confirmed session topics include:

Personalizing learning for teachers as a workforce education issue

Artificial intelligence for writing and grading

KnowledgeWorks newest Future of Learning report

Investors on trends in education markets

How educators evaluate edtech products

The tech behind experiential and workplace learning

Higher ed mega-trends

Companies leading the way on workforce education

Alexa for learning

Disrupting high school Get Involved

The Learning Innovation Showcase features 24 teacher and student highlighting innovations that are taking place, today, in our classrooms. Are you a teacher or student with something to share? Apply by Friday, November 9th, for consideration. The Across Boundaries Pitch Competition gives high-potential early stage startups a platform to present their latest innovations. Applications are due in October and November and available here . Sponsors receive valuable exposure throughout the pre-conference and event timeline. Confirmed 2019 sponsors include Cengage, Curriculum Associates, Jenzabar, and Parthenon-EY. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities, contact Eileen Rudden . The International Cafe offers a location for consulates, embassies, and economic development agencies to spotlight education technology companies from their countries. A limited number of spaces are available for both the IC and for a pre-conference bootcamp on entering the US market managed by the LearnLaunch Accelerator. Contact Nat Seelen for more information. Register for the conference today to experience 5 keynotes, 44 concurrent sessions and 8 workshops covering early ed-through-workforce education, the Across Boundaries Pitch Competition, students and teachers presenting their work in the Learning Innovation Showcase, and the LearnLaunch Accelerator Demo Day. Education innovation is on the move at the 2019 LearnLaunch Across Boundaries Conference, January 31-February 1, 2019, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. About LearnLaunch Institute

Launch Institute catalyzes a community that drives innovation to transform learning and increase achievement. Our education innovation ecosystem mobilizes educators, entrepreneurs, learners, investors, and industry affiliates. As a nonprofit, the Institute offers learning opportunities, support services, and a school pilot network. We believe in expanding access to learning that is engaging, personalized, and effective. Edtech is a critical component of achieving this vision at scale. LearnLaunch Institute is the host of the Massachusetts Personalized Learning Edtech (MAPLE) Consortium, a public-private partnership of LearnLaunch Institute with the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, now includes 41 districts representing 23% of the students in Massachusetts. LearnLaunch Institute hosts more than 30 events yearly for 3000 educators and innovators. Read our research on our MassNET work in Boston Public Schools. For more information, visit www.learnlaunch.org . LearnLaunch Institute is part of the LearnLaunch Ed innovation hub, including LearnLaunch Campus, Bostons edtech coworking space, and LearnLaunch Accelerator, the leading global edtech accelerator. @LearnLaunch #LearnLaunch2019 Jim McManus

jim@sloweymcmanus.com

617.523.0038

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]Imperial to hold 2018 Investor Day on November 7 in Toronto

Rich M. Kruger, chairman, president and chief executive officer, and Dave Hughes (News - Alert) , investor relations manager, Imperial Oil Limited, will host the company's 2018 Investor Day on Wednesday, November 7 in Toronto. The event begins at 9 a.m. ET and will be accessible by webcast.

At Investor Day, Imperial's management will provide an update on its business strategy, operations and major projects followed by a question and answer session. In addition to Mr. Kruger, Imperial's senior vice-president, upstream, John Whelan, senior vice-president, finance and administration, Dan Lyons and senior vice-president, commercial and corporate development, Theresa Redburn will be in attendance.

Please click here to register for the live webcast of Imperial's 2018 Investor Day. The webcast will be available for one year on the company's website at www.imperialoil.ca/en-ca/company/investors.







After more than a century, Imperial continues to be an industry leader in applying technology and innovation to responsibly develop Canada's energy resources. As Canada's largest petroleum refiner, a major producer of crude oil, a key petrochemical producer and a leading fuels marketer from coast to coast, our company remains committed to high standards across all areas of our business.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181022005863/en/[October 22, 2018] Achievers Recognizes 'Elite 8' Companies with Exceptional Employee Engagement

Stand-out Companies on Achievers 50 Most Engaged Workplaces Awards List Recognized at Annual ACE Conference SAN FRANCISCO and TORONTO, Oct. 22, 2018 /CNW/ -- Achievers, an industry-leading provider of employee recognition and engagement solutions, announced the "Elite 8" companies within its 2018 Achievers 50 Most Engaged Workplaces Awards, which celebrate the top 50 employers in North America that make engagement, alignment and recognition central to the employee experience. The coveted Elite 8 recognition is given to the companies that most exemplify one of Achievers' Eight Elements of Employee Engagement used to evaluate the most engaged workplaces: values, communication, rewards & recognition, leadership, accountability & performance, personal & professional growth, corporate social responsibility and culture. The 2018 Elite 8 winners are: Rogers for vision & values

Bank of Montreal (BMO) for communication

(BMO) for communication Mission Health for rewards & recognition

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) for leadership

Discover for accountability & performance

Protiviti for personal & professional growth

Protiviti for personal & professional growth Medxcel for corporate social responsibility

Herbalife Nutrition for culture



Aris Zakinthinos , general manager and chief technology officer at Achievers. "Standing out among hundreds of other companies that were nominated for the Achievers 50 Most Engaged Workplaces Awards is no easy feat, so we send our biggest congratulations to these Elite 8 companies as well as the rest of the winners recognized this year at ACE." The Elite 8 and 50 Most Engaged Workplaces Award winners were officially recognized during the annual awards gala on Monday, October 22 at the Art Gallery of Toronto. The gala precedes the 9th Annual Achievers Customer Experience (ACE) conference taking place October 23?24 in Toronto.

About Achievers

The Achievers Employee Engagement Platform combines an award-winning employee recognition and rewards solution with an active listening interface to accelerate employee engagement. Designed for today's workplace, Achievers' innovative cloud-based platform can increase and align employee engagement to business objectives and success. It empowers employees to recognize and reward each other in real time and aligns employees with company values and goals. Achievers connects with employees directly. It's an always-on, open channel to hear and understand what matters to the individual, and then it closes the loop, delivering bite-sized, personalized actions for both employees and managers, so everyone is empowered to impact engagement right away. The Achievers platform inspires employee loyalty, engagement, and performance. To learn more about Achievers, visit us at www.achievers.com. Achievers is a subsidiary of Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc. About Blackhawk Network

Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc. is a global financial technology company and a leader in connecting brands and people through branded value solutions. Blackhawk platforms and solutions enable the management of stored value products, promotions and rewards programs in retail, ecommerce, financial services and mobile wallets. Blackhawk's Hawk Commerce division offers technology solutions to businesses and direct to consumers. The Hawk Incentives division offers enterprise, SMB and reseller partners an array of platforms and branded value products to incent and reward consumers, employees and sales channels. Headquartered in Pleasanton, Calif., Blackhawk operates in 26 countries. For more information, please visit BlackhawkNetwork.com, CashStar.com, HawkCommerce.com, HawkIncentives.com or our product websites GiftCards.com, GiftCardMall.com, Cardpool.com, GiftCardLab.com and OmniCard.com. Media Contact

Press@achievers.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/achievers-recognizes-elite-8-companies-with-exceptional-employee-engagement-300735582.html SOURCE Achievers

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Award-Winning Accountancy Firm Kingston Smith Joins Expatland's London E-Team

LONDON, October 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Top 20 accountancy firm Kingston Smith LLP has joined Expatland's London E-Team. The firm will provide tax and accountancy services to the London E-Team's clients. Kingston Smith is a founding member of Morison KSi. This international association provides consultancy in cross-border accounting, auditing and tax from over 85 partner offices. With deep insight into the issues facing expats, Kingston Smith is a name that inspires confidence. The Expatland Global Network is assembling E-Teams in major expat destinations. Each team brings together vetted professionals who offer essential services to expats. Through one point of contact, they can access expert advice and local insight on all aspects of moving to, and living in, a location. John Marcarian, founder of the Expatland Global Network, says, "Kingston Smith has shown unfaltering confidence in the E-Team concept. As a renownd accountancy firm with global outreach, it will be a great asset to our fast-growing London E-Team."



Mike Scoltock, partner at Kingston Smith, comments, "This is an excellent opportunity for us and represents a natural fit for our highly experienced team of advisers. Expatland is building a reputation as a trusted community of expat service providers. We are looking forward to supporting E-Team's clients through our dedicated range of tax, accountancy and advisory services. We are also eager to begin working with partners, to provide holistic expat support." Richard Feakins, Expatland London E-Team leader, says, "Bringing Kingston Smith onboard is a reflection of the quality of the Expatland offering. We are delighted to welcome Mike and his team and look forward to working together to assist expats moving to London."

'Expatland' origins

Expatland began as a best-selling book by John Marcarian, written in 2015. Expanding on this idea, John launched the Expatland Global Network in 2018. His aim was to support people all over the world who are looking to join the vast, dynamic expat community. E-Teams in major expat destinations will deliver vital expat services, alongside destination-specific insight. E-Team members are non-competitive and share leads, fostering business growth. Each member contributes to city-specific editions of the Expatland book. These are free-to-download and packed with locally-focused advice, tips and case studies. The Expatland Global Network is expanding rapidly. There are now E-Teams in Sydney, Melbourne, LA, Singapore, Auckland and London. Businesses interested in joining an E-Team in their city can get in touch with Expatland: http://www.expatland.com/contact/ Contact:

Lloyd Gofton

lloyd@liberatemedia.com

+44-(0)7919-353-484

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ][October 22, 2018] Muhlenberg College Notice of Data Event

ALLENTOWN, Pa., Oct. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 1, 2018, Muhlenberg College was notified of a suspicious IP address accessing 11 employee accounts. The College immediately restricted access to the accounts and launched an investigation, which included working with third-party forensic investigators, to determine the full nature and scope of the incident. Upon notification, the College immediately secured all impacted accounts. The investigation confirmed that some personal information of a small number of individuals was potentially accessible. There is no evidence that any information contained in the email accounts was subject to actual or attempted misuse and the ollege has not received any reports of misuse as a result of this incident.



Muhlenberg College takes the security of personal information in our care very seriously. Security measures have been in place to protect data and we are taking additional steps to enhance account and data security protections to protect against similar incidents in the future. We are notifying potentially affected individuals and offering 12 months of free identity protection services, as well as providing additional information on steps to protect their identity. As required by law, we have notified state regulators. Additional information can be found on the College's website, (www.muhlenberg.edu/).

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/muhlenberg-college-notice-of-data-event-300735434.html SOURCE Muhlenberg College

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]According to The Information this week, Facebook is looking to buy a security company. The report follows the social media platform's recent data breach in which the data of 30 million people was stolen.

Facebook Needs More Security

The Information said Facebook has been approaching several security companies about a possible acquisition, and a deal with one could be announced by the end of the year. Facebook has not released an official statement on the matter.

In September, Facebook disclosed it had suffered a major hack, in which the data of 30 million users was stolen. The company appears to have been struggling with its security ever since it lost its Chief Security Officer (CSO), Alex Stamos, earlier this year. Stamos seemed to have been unhappy with how Facebook was handling platform manipulations by nation states, such as Russia.

The company didnt replace Stamos and also disbanded his security team and relocated its members to other jobs. At the time in August, Facebook said, We expect to be judged on what we do to protect peoples security, not whether we have someone with a certain title.

Facebook's Recent Data Breach

Last month, a New York Times report revealed that an attack against the Facebook network breached up to 50 million user accounts. The attackers used an exploit that allowed them to take over users accounts. To mitigate the issue, Facebook logged out 90 million users in order to reset their security tokens.

Facebook eventually blamed the attack on spammers, who apparently were selling their services as a digital marketing company. It also then claimed that only 30 million accounts were affected.

People familiar with the investigation said Facebook was aware of these spammers from before they hacked its servers. Facebook declined to confirm or deny this claim. The vulnerability that enabled the breach had existed from July 2017 to September 2018.

This attack was the largest data breach in Facebooks history, and unless Facebook rethinks how its security teams handle operations inside the company, it may not be the last either. It remains to be seen if Facebook purchasing an entire cybersecurity-focused company will be the right solution.(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung arrived late to the Windows Mixed Reality (MR) lineup. Microsoft's attempt to make VR accessible to as many Windows users as possible was initially dominated by so-so headsets that couldn't really compete with the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and other premium VR devices. That changed with the release of the Samsung HMD Odyssey in March. Less than a year after the headset's debut, Samsung is back at it with a refined headset in the Samsung HMD Odyssey+ announced today.

We praised the original HMD Odyssey in our review for offering a far better experience than competitive Windows MR headsets. The offering cost a lot more than its competition--competitors were available for roughly $200-$250, and the HMD Odyssey was $500--but it justified those prices with far better hardware. That didn't mean it was perfect though, and the HMD Odyssey+ packs numerous upgrades.

Samsung HMD Odyssey and Odyssey+ Specs Comparison

Name Samsung HMD Odyssey Samsung HMD Odyssey+ Display Type AMOLED AMOLED Display Size Dual 3.5 inches Dual 3.5 inches PPI 615 1,233 "perceived" with Anti-Screen Door Effect tech Per-Eye Resolution 1440 x 1600 1440 x 1600 Refresh Rate 60Hz (integrated GPU) 90Hz (discrete GPU) 60Hz (integrated GPU) 90Hz (discrete GPU) FOV (HxV) 110 x ??? 110 x ??? Lens Type Fresnel Unknown Lens Adjustment 60-72mm mechanical IPD adjustment Mechanical IPD adjustment Sensors Accelerometer,Gyro sensor,Magnetometer,Proximity 2 Windows MR cameras,IPD Sensor,G-Sensor, Gyroscope, Proximity Tracking Technology 6 DOF inside-out BW camera-based spatial tracking (stereo BW cameras) 6 DOF inside-out Integrated Camera Stereo-tracking cameras: no video passthrough Unknown Audio Integrated headphones with AKG spatial audio, 2x array microphones Integrated headphones with AKG spatial audio, 2x array microphones Wireless? No Unknown HMD Ports 1x proprietary cable (HDMI/USB 3.0) 1x proprietary cable (HDMI/USB 3.0) HMD Cable Length 13.1ft (4m) Unknown Dimensions 7.9 x 5.2 x 4.4 inches (201.9  131.6 x 111mm) Unknown Weight 1.4lbs (644g) 1.3lbs (590g)

The HMD Odyssey+ features dual 3.5-inch AMOLED displays with a combined resolution of 2880 x 1600. That's the same as its predecessor, but the new headset's displays are equipped with Anti-Screen Door Effect (Anti-SDE) technology. The so-called Screen Door Effect occurs when people can see the spaces between pixels in a headset's displays; Samsung claims Anti-SDE solves that problem "by applying a grid that diffuses light coming from each pixel and replicating the picture to areas around each pixel."

"This makes the spaces between pixels near impossible to see. As a result, your eyes perceive the diffused light as part of the visual content, with a perceived PPI of 1,233PPI, double that of the already high 616PPI of the previous generation Samsung HMD Odyssey+," Samsung said in its announcement.

Samsung also worked to make the VR headset's hardware more comfortable. It's down to weighing 590g from the original's 644g, and Samsung says that now "everything, from the headband to the display position, to the Inter-Pupillary Distance (IPD) wheel, is easily adjustable so that anyone can find that perfect fit." That should help people who, say, want to wear their glasses while they use the headset.

Full specs for the HMD Odyssey+ aren't yet available; neither is pricing information. Samsung said it will be available starting today from its online store and the Microsoft store in the U.S., with releases in Korea, China, Hong Kong and Brazil to follow.The Shawnee Mission School District has identified the victim killed in Sunday's crash along I-435 as a Shawnee Mission South High School senior. The district said Chandan Rajanna was killed when the Mitsubishi Lancer he was driving was rear-ended by an off-duty Kansas City police officer in a Ford E350 van.For Melissa Rooker and other moderate Republican candidates in Kansas, the center cannot hold The citizen who answered Melissa Rooker's knock at his door only wanted to know one thing. Which political party was she with? Rooker, who is campaigning for a fourth term in the Kansas Legislature, told him she was a Republican. He handed her back her campaign material.

Okay, our blog community headline and our discussion on the topic will be more interesting that this mostly overlooked article.. . .Babs offers this treatise in order to posit a "blue wave" in Kansas . . .Any deviation is so statistically insignificant that it doesn't count and only serves to confuse and manipulate the American voting public.In any event, here's a lady GOP crisis of conscience that, as usual, only exists in her mind . . . Read more:Johnson County voters can start voting in person on Monday, Oct. 22. That could be the best way to avoid lines for what is expected to be a high turnout election on Nov. 6. Here are seven things to know about the new machines that many residents will see for the first time, either when they vote in advance or on Election Day: 1.London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) has announced that its latest TX eCity taxi will launch in Paris, France. Although the date yet to be set, it will be launched sometime in the first half of next year. The vehicle comes at the perfect time as Paris ramps up its fight on air pollution.

The features may be overkill for a taxi, as is the price.

LECVCs TX eCity Taxi Should Launch in Mid-2019

The TX eCitys launch date will be announced at a later time as negotiations between London Electric Vehicle Company and its chosen importer have yet to conclude, but its scheduled to happen sometime in the first half of next year.

Nevertheless, its just a formality as the TX eCity taxi has already been approved by local authorities to be used throughout the city as a working taxi.

This vehicle will certainly contribute to Paris push for air quality improvement.

LEVC TX eCity Battery and Performance

Talking about the car, the TX eCity has an electric motor that produces 148 horses and 188 pound-feet of torque. Its powered by a 31-kWh Lithium-Ion battery thats good for an electric range of up to 80 miles alone. Complementing this, and acting as a range-extender, is a 1.5-liter, three-cylinder engine that is connected to the battery.

This enables the car to deliver an overall range of up to 400 miles.

What They had To Say

London Electric Vehicle Companys CEO, Chris Gubbey said, Given the air pollution difficulties facing French cities, we are very much looking forward to giving both drivers and passengers new options in Paris following a very positive reception on the streets. This truly bolsters out European position, and we look forward to serving the cities of France, alongside those in Norway, the Netherlands, and Germany.

More About the TX eCity

In terms of creature comforts, the TX eCity comes with a 9-inch infotainment system, panoramic glass roof, Wi-Fi connectivity, intercom, and a host of other driving assistance systems that includes autonomous emergency braking as well.

The base trim of the TX eCity starts from 55,599 (~$73,000), in the U.K. with the plug-in taxi grant.

Our Take

The car definitely seems potent, but given its application, the taxi could have compromised with a few features. That would have reduced the cost considerably, and pushed taxi operators to invest in a larger fleet. In my opinion, taxis should be function over form, rather than having it the other way around. What are your thoughts on the new LEVC TX eCity? Let us know in the comments section below.

Further reading

Read more electric car news.The 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show is just a little over a month away now, and the early debuts are already starting to trickle in. One of the first out the gates comes from Nissan , which just debuted its latest Maxima four-door. Details on the updated flagship sedan are still forthcoming, but that doesnt mean we cant speculate a little bit

What Will It Look Like?

Right off the bat, this latest teaser reveals the Maxima will make its splashdown with a fresh exterior aesthetic.

Most noticeable is the new front end, which looks to incorporate sharp headlight housings pulled into the fenders and equipped with LED lighting accents. Between the lights, Nissans characteristic Vmotion grille is in full effect, while a new lower bumper treatment adds extra crispness.

We have yet to see the tail, but were expecting a similar upgrade back there as well, including new taillight housings taken after the latest Altima. A set of quad exhaust tips in the rear will finish it off, while the corners will get a range of new designs to boot.

Finally, look for a fresh interior treatment that takes cues from the latest model year of the Nissan Altima.

What About The Tech Stuff?

Note: 2019 Nissan Altima pictured here.

Inside the cabin, the 2019 Nissan Maxima will come with the option for Nissans Safety Shield 360 driver assists suite.

As such, itll come with six advanced safety and driver-assist technologies. Nissan declined to give exact details on what these technologies were exactly, but if we were to guess, it likely tosses in standards like automatic emergency braking, automatic high beams, blind-spot monitoring, and the like.

Whats Under The Hood?

Note: current Nissan Maxima pictured here.

Its likely the Maximas engine specs will go unchanged heading into the 2019 model year.

That means itll once again utilize a front-mounted 3.5-liter V-6 routing power to the front wheels by way of a continuously variable transmission. Its also possible Nissan will decide to offer the option for an AWD drivetrain, which would help immensely in terms of perceived sporting intentions.

When Should We Expect Full Details?

Nissan says the 2019 Maxima will hit dealers sometime in December. Look for our complete coverage at the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show at the end of November.

Further Reading

Read our full driven review on the 2018 Nissan Maxima.

Read our full review on the 2018 Nissan Maxima.

Read our full review on the 2019 Nissan Altima.The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has launched a report that seeks to identify cross-cutting constraints to growth, possible solutions, and sector-specific interventions to unlock the manufacturing sectors growth potential.

The report, which features 14 of the key manufacturing sub-sectors that constitute the industry, provides a critical submission in the development of policy and strategy for the revival of the manufacturing sector under the Big Four Agenda.

Speaking during the launch, KAM Chairman Mr Sachen Gudka highlighted that the report is designed to assist Government in its quest to revamp the manufacturing sector. Adding that, the report whose information was sort from KAM members, shall form a baseline for reference in the industry.

The low and declining shares in manufacturing, industrial and exporting sectors in GDP constitute a major challenge to economic growth, as stated in the Medium-Term Plan 3 Concept Note. Our engagements in the development of the Sector Deep Dive Report revealed that there is a very high possibility of value chain integration, if some sector specific proposals are considered.

Value addition promotes the growth of backward and forward linkages, and in the process creates the much-needed productive jobs for the youth, and equally, increases the purchasing power of citizens, said Mr Gudka.

Also at the launch, KAM Ag. CEO and Head of Membership Development, Mr Tobias Alando reiterate the pivotal role of industry in stimulating economic growth and wealth generation in the world. He further stated that the declaration of manufacturing as a top priority investment area for the country to drive economic growth has seen manufacturers and the government engage more towards this goal.

KAM remains a key partner to the National Government as it sets out to promote the growth and competitiveness of industry. It is also important that we continue to promote exports. Export is key for job creation and the growth of any countrys economy. In order to push our exports, Kenya needs to undertake coordinated action to promote exports and to secure market access for our locally produced goods and services, concluded Mr Alando.

Through a direct, industry-led research process, this report aggregates the expert opinions inherent in KAMs member base and places it within the context of wider studies on manufacturing in Kenya to provide a critical submission in the development of policy and strategy for the revival of the manufacturing sector under the Big 4 Agenda.

The manufacturing sub sectors discussed in the report include: Food & Beverage, Agricultural and Fresh Produce, Paper and Board, Timber and Furniture, Building, Mining and Construction, Textiles and Apparels, Leather and Footware, Chemical and Allied, Pharmaceuticals and Medical Equipment, Energy, Electricals and Electronics, Metal & Allied, Plastics and Rubber, Automotive and SMEs.

The Manufacturing in Kenya Under the Big 4 Agenda: A Sector Deep-dive Report is published by the Kenya Association of Manufacturers and Kenya Business Guide.Reset your password

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Lewis Redmond  moonshiner, murderer, notorious outlaw or folk hero? In King of the Moonshiners: Lewis R. Redmond in Fact and Fiction historian Bruce Stewart brings together Redmonds family history, a sympathetic newspaper interview, a dime novel depicting Redmond as a hero, the arresting deputys report and an array of articles to unravel the true story.

Lewis Redmond was raised in Transylvania County during the Reconstruction Period when the political climate was highly charged. A moonshiner by trade, Redmonds real trouble began on March 1, 1876, when he killed U.S. Depu...(On Oct. 6, 2018, I accompanied 92 Vietnam veterans to Washington, D.C., as a guardian on a Blue Ridge Honor Flight. Among the veterans was David Crandal of Brevard. The following article chronicles both Crandal's Vietnam war experience and the Oct. 7 Blue Ridge Honor Flight.)

In 1961, President Kennedy described the counterinsurgency in Vietnam as "another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin... requiring a wholly different kind of military training."

At that time, travelling from the Philippines to the Bay of Siam (now the Bay of Thailand), 20-year-old Marine Cpl. D...Its that time of year again. With the holiday season quickly approaching, The Salvation Army is asking for volunteers and sponsors for its Red Kettle Drive.

The Bell Ringing starts on Nov. 16 and ends on Dec. 24. Paid positions are available, but volunteering is encouraged. Every hour that a volunteer works instead of our having to hire someone is money that we can use to help people in need, says Major Brian Gilliam.

Arrangements can be made for volunteers to work at the location, dates and times that work best for their schedule. The Salvation Army encourages this as a great o...Western Carolina Community Action (WCCA) has announced that Linda W. Carter has joined their team in the role of Children's Services director.

Carter has a master's in business administration and 16 years of nonprofit experience, including program development, evaluation and administration, strategic planning, grant writing and budgeting. She is a long-time Henderson County community volunteer, serving on boards, advisory councils, a variety of committees and is a Hendersonville Civitan member.

Western Carolina Community Action assists low-income and underserved populations of western...About a year ago, the corporate world, government and the movie industry (especially in the United States) were caught off guard and stunned by revelation after revelation of sexual misconduct by well-known figures. The world today is more aware now about improper behaviour by men, particularly by those in positions of authority or power, and many courageous women are to thank for vocalising their experiences through the #metoo movement.



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED KINGDOM - October 20th, 2018 - About a year ago, the corporate world, government and the movie industry (especially in the United States) were caught off guard and stunned by revelation after revelation of sexual misconduct by well-known figures. The world today is more aware now about improper behaviour by men, particularly by those in positions of authority or power, and many courageous women are to thank for vocalising their experiences through the #metoo movement.

Now, were not getting political in todays AP Voice, but it is timely to think about the needs of the female business travellers (some of which relate to safety) and how independent hotels can meet the needs of this rising demographic.

Background

In the last decade, Scandinavian countries have led the way in promoting the rise of women to the boardroom. In the UK, the number of women on boards of FTSE 100 companies has increased from 11% to 28% and data shows that many of the UKs most successful companies usually have a large percentage of females in senior management roles.

Research by Forbes found that the majority (80%) of all decisions around travel, including booking flights, restaurant reservations and hotel choices are made by women.

Back in 2014, Skift reported that female business travellers make up a large share of the US business travel market, with 47% of women who travel travelling for business. They control 60% of U.S. wealth and influence 85% purchasing decisions. Women are high-tech, connected, and social and represent 58% of online sales.

What are female business travellers looking for?

With this background and in the post-metoo era, independent hotels can differentiate themselves from their chain competitors by providing services that address the needs and wants of women business travellers.

Wanup surveyed 6,000 frequent business travellers throughout Europe between the ages of 25 and 55, and about 38% of these were women. All had travelled for business at least six times and stayed in a hotel for business three or more times over the last year.

 Women prefer independent or boutique hotels: While more than 50% of men prefer to stay in chain hotels, women are less likely to do so when travelling for business. 54% of women prefer independent hotels, boutique properties or apartments when travelling.

 Women dont stick to loyalty programmes: 35% of women surveyed also said they wanted a better selection of hotels from their loyalty club. On top of that, 41% of women who arent in a hotel loyalty club say that their reason for not using one is that they want more variety.

 Women love technology: Women are more likely to use apps to plan their business travel. 68% of women are likely to share their experiences on social media while traveling for business.

But thats not all. Maiden Voyages Women in Business Travel Survey (conducted in 2016 before #metoo) revealed that 70% of respondents believe that travel suppliers should try harder to address the needs of female business travellers.

Women are in particular looking for safety and customised service.

1. Safety: Almost one in three women have experienced sexual harassment while travelling for business. Sexual harassment accounts for over half (51%) of all incidents encountered by female business travellers. 64% of female business travellers say there are destinations they would not travel to that they would probably travel to as a man, such as the Middle East (UAE, Saudi Arabia), Africa (Nigeria), South America (Brazil) and even Japan. Its not about treating women travellers different, but it is about understanding that they have different needs. It would behoove hotels to have members of staff trained on the concerns of women business travellers. Other measures that hotels can take include: providing an escort to hotel rooms, especially in the evenings; providing rooms close to lifts; the option for a discreet check-in, with unnumbered room keys; and peep holes on hotel doors.

2. Customised Service: A large percentage of women interviewed by Maiden Voyage reported that they appreciated a great customised service. 43% of women said they were very likely to use hotel providers that pay special attention to their needs. For example, research conducted by National Sleep Foundation and Hilton Hotels found that women are 20% more likely to be concerned with their quality of sleep than male colleagues. They expect decent pillows, a quiet and relaxing room and a comfortable mattress. Studies also show that women will check a hotels dining options before booking and are often looking for the wide menu (restaurant and room service), with clean eating options. Some also state that they prefer a discreet dining area for lone travellers.

Are you looking for more advice on how to ensure that women business travellers are catered for at your hotel? Amistad Partners sales team is happy to speak with you about this so please do get in touch.

Source : ow.ly/WxNI30maLqQ

###There is a special service PASSCITY in Moscow, which lets you visit museums, restaurants, sport centers and use the public transport for free.



(TRAVPR.COM) SINGAPORE - October 21st, 2018 - On October 18 a press conference on the topic Cooperation between Moscow and Singapore. New tourists opportunities was held within the framework of global travel event ATB Asia 2018. The speech about the potential of tourism in Moscow was given by representative person of Moscow city tourism committee

Every year the number of tourists visiting Moscow grows significantly. In 2017 21.6 millions of tourists visited Moscow, by the end of 2018 we expect the growth of the tourist flow by at least 10%. Modern infrastructure was created in Moscow so that the guests of the capital could feel comfortable and safe here.

Moscow is the biggest cultural center of the world. Every year more than 500 recreational and cultural events take place here. There are more than 270 functioning museums and 170 functioning theaters in the city. One third of the Moscow territory is covered by park areas. In 2017 a new park Zaradye was opened in the very center of the capital, it was included by the Times magazine in the list of the best places in the world 2018.

Today there are 1586 classified accommodation facilities in Moscow: hotels, hostels. The room prices start from $15. The transport infrastructure is widely developed  a tourist can choose the way of transportation convenient for him. There is Wi-Fi in the public places. The city pays considerable attention to the safety measures  there are more than 184 000 surveillance cameras around the city

There is a special service PASSCITY in Moscow, which lets you visit museums, restaurants, sport centers and use the public transport for free.

###After recently winning the celebrated TTG Travel Hall of Fame Award for the 12th year and the prestigious Asia Today CEO award, Royal Cliff Hotels Group achieved another milestone this year at the recent Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards 2018 (APEA 2018) as it won its first Entrepreneurship Award under the Corporate Excellence category. Joining the creme de la creme among entrepreneurs in Asia and the Pacific, it has been recognized as a key player in driving the region forward.



(TRAVPR.COM) THAILAND - October 22nd, 2018 - Pattaya, Thailand  After recently winning the celebrated TTG Travel Hall of Fame Award for the 12th year and the prestigious Asia Today CEO award, Royal Cliff Hotels Group achieved another milestone this year at the recent Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards 2018 (APEA 2018) as it won its first Entrepreneurship Award under the Corporate Excellence category. Joining the creme de la creme among entrepreneurs in Asia and the Pacific, it has been recognized as a key player in driving the region forward.

Excellence and sophistication set the tone for the official Awards Ceremony held in Bangkok, as the glamorous event was crafted to recognize the achievements of successful industrial players and was graced by successful entrepreneurs, highly respected VIP guests along with the attendance of Thailands Deputy Minister of Commerce, Honorable Chutima Bunyapraphasar and the Chairman of Enterprise Asia, Mr. Tan Sri Dr Fong Chang Onn.

APEA is a regional award recognition program in Asia, which celebrates entrepreneurial excellence organized by Enterprise Asia, a non-governmental organization for entrepreneurship. Designed to honor business leaders and entrepreneurs that have shown outstanding performances in developing successful businesses, it aims to band leading entrepreneurs and organizations across the Asia Pacific region to spur greater innovation, fair practices and growth in entrepreneurship. Supported by local governments and businesses, the event brought together and recognized leading entrepreneurs who help drive the economies forward to a bigger and better Asia.

It is an honor for Royal Cliff Hotels Group to be recognized for this award. Mr. Vitanart Vathanakul, the CEO of Royal Cliff Hotels Group said. Personally, this inspires me to continually strive for excellence every day. To be selected as a winner from a group of businesses that have demonstrated extraordinary entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership, is a great achievement for all of us. Behind every award or every project, there is great teamwork. As a company, we strongly believe in making a meaningful impact in the hospitality industry and this award is a wonderful reflection of all the hard work we do in seeing the companys vision through. 

In winning its first Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award, the Royal Cliff Hotels Group has once again proven its capability to exceed expectations, gain international recognition for its exceptional services and facilities as well as cement its status as a signature icon in the industry.

Situated on a 64-acre private parkland estate overlooking the stunning Gulf of Thailand, the Royal Cliff Hotels Group operates four award-winning hotels providing guests from home and abroad with the ultimate experience. Book your stay directly with Royal Cliff and get the best price guaranteed together with value-added optional extras for an enhanced hotel experience you deserve by visiting www.royalcliff.com, contacting Reservations at (+66) 38 250 421 ext: 2732 or emailing reservations@royalcliff.com.

For more information on the Royal Cliff Hotels Group, please visit www.royalcliff.com.

###Is sainthood still subject to a challenge by an advocatis diablo, a devils advocate?

In the case of Anita Hill, its probably too late. It looks like shes already been issued a saintly nimbus, a divine disc of light to go around her head.

And as for Christine Blasey Ford, it looks like her head is now being tape-measured for her own glowing nimbus as an indicator of saintliness.

Still, at the risk of profaning the sacred, lets dare to take a second look at how these two now-famous ladies attained canonization status.

St. Anita came out of obscurity in 1991 as the character assassin designated at the eleventh hour to keep Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court. Thomas was a guy whod weathered abject poverty in the Jim Crow South to make it into and through Yale Law.

The unmentionable truth at the time was that one of the arguments for Thomas nomination was his skin color, namely, black. Alas, in certain circles, it was the wrong shade of black.

In some circles it was thought he took too fundamentalist a view of the Constitutions provisions. He seemed disinclined to read between the documents lines. He seemed overly wary of governments tendency to exceed its constitutionally allotted authority. And he seemed too much inclined to doubt governments capability to take on the role of all-purpose miracle worker.

Throughout the Swamp, he was deemed ideologically unsuited for the Supreme Court seat once held by the venerated Thurgood Marshall. So up popped Anita Hill with an 11th-hour story of how Thomas, when she worked for him at the U.S. Department of Education many years ago, had subjected her to smutty talk.

Smutty talk! In light of the later, fellatio-cadging, workplace lechery of Bill Clinton, the charge now seems almost prudishly Victorian. But at the time, the allegation against Thomas was sufficient to make jaws drop with a reverberating crash, especially liberal jaws.

Hill, however, was unable to offer any proof of her allegation, and Thomas went on to win a seat on the high court, in a close vote.

Today, all these years later, it remains an article of unshakable faith among those seated in the progressive pews that Justice Thomas is a proven, obscene creep  not an upstanding advocate of distaff dignity like, say, uh, Bill Clinton or the late Ted Kennedy.

Worse yet, in the view of progressives, Thomas is an intellectual inferior  and never mind the thoughtful and provocative jurisprudence he has consistently championed on the high court.

Thomas is one black man you may pillory in the most insulting, Bull Connors-like terms you can summon, without any fear of being upbraided by those public scolds who are always beating the bushes for hate speech.

When you scour the Internet today, you come across few articles portraying Thomas in a positive light, and endless ones portraying Anita Hill in effusively laudatory terms.

Shes widely depicted as a lady of extraordinary courage who brought out the truth about Thomas, at tremendous cost to herself, although in fact her career as a legal academic, not to mention as a guest speaker, flourished after she slimed Thomas.

There was never any evidence, not a shred, corroborating Hills story. Beyond that fact, there were other grounds for regarding her account with more than a little skepticism.

Why had she waited 10 years to share her explosive story? Why had she not spoken up previously, even when Thomas was nominated to the upper-level U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, a stepping stone to the Supreme Court?

If Thomas was indeed a lewd character, why had no other women under his supervision ever lodged such accusations as Hills? (A dozen women who worked for Thomas gave testimony attesting to his good character.)

There was a yet more troubling issue regarding her credibility. When Thomas left that Department of Education for an appointment as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Hill voluntarily made the move with him. This despite the alleged sexual harassment she said shed been subjected to by Thomas at the Department of Education.

She delivered her story on Capitol Hill in a mousy manner suggesting she was lowly, vulnerable secretarial help, not the professional woman, the lawyer, she actually was.

She insisted she had followed Thomas, her alleged tormentor, to the EEOC out of fear she would lose her job under a new boss at the Department of Education. But the incoming bosss testimony was that he had asked her to stay on.

Casting further doubt on her account was the fact she held Class A status in the federal civil service, iron-clad job protection meaning she could have been removed from her Department of Education position only for cause.

The under-qualified Hill later secured a position as a professor at the Oklahoma U. School of Law. When questioned during the Thomas confirmation hearings, she insisted that she had had no further contact with Thomas after leaving Washington.

But phone records revealed that testimony to have been, uh, well, lets say not strictly in accordance with truth. The phone records showed she had continued to contact Thomas, on numerous occasions. One friendly Hill phone message taken by Thomas secretary said: (Anita Hill) just called to say hello. Sorry she didnt get to see you last week.

Was it really any surprise, when Bill Clinton later found himself in a mine field of bimbo eruptions, that Hill was one of those vocal feminists who rushed to his defense?

There are similar, glaring problem spots in the story of Justice Brett Kavanaughs designated character assassin.

She, Christine Blasey Ford  Doctor Ford, as the media reverently insist she be addressed in recognition of her psychology Ph.D  likewise had no corroborating evidence to support her accusation.

She too held her silence even when Kavanaugh was nominated, as Thomas had been, to the Supreme Court stepping-stone Court of Appeals in Washington. While Hill delayed her accusations for 10 years, Ford delayed hers even longer: 36 years.

At least Hill offered vivid, though uncorroborated, details about Justice Thomas alleged lewd banter. Ford has no recollection of key details surrounding her supposed attempted rape at a party by Kavanaugh when the two were teenagers.

Oddly, she can recollect only the traumatic details of the alleged attempted rape itself, not other key details such as time and place. Regarding time, she has variously said the incident occurred in the mid-1980s, the early 80s, when she was in her late teens and when she was 15.

She cannot recollect who drove her to the party at which the attack allegedly occurred. Or who drove her home. She told no one about the supposed incident at the time and for decades later.

All of the potential witnesses she cited as possibly corroborating her allegation  all  failed to do so. Including a lifelong friend. This friends testimony was that she has no recollection whatsoever of events such as Ford, er, Dr. Ford, alleges.

Ford has implied, but again has been vague when it comes to details, that psychotherapy had some role in the emergence of her long-delayed account. She was likewise fuzzy on the details of activist attorneys who latched onto her case. She testified that she was unaware of the arrangements for covering the fees of the lawyer team that accompanied her to Washington for the Kavanaugh hearing.

Those attorneys, it turned out, were arranged by Sen. Diane Feinstein, orchestrator of Fords anti-Kavanaugh revelations.

The attorneys stated theyre representing Ford free of charge, a disclosure that seemed to come as news to Ford. All of this gives off a pungent whiff of partisan political connivance.

As with Clarence Thomas, many women who had worked for Brett Kavanaugh testified to his good character.

In both cases, Hills and Fords, even the strident shrews of the militant feminist left oddly insist that the two accusers should be believed owing solely to the quavering, little-damsels-in-distress manner in which they presented their stories.

Its not as if, in either Hills or Fords case, there was an immediate police report or real physical evidence, such as  ahem  was recently swept under the rug by the political cronies of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, in a rape accusation against a party hack in the governors circle of overpaid Trenton bureaucrats.

This case, still developing, involves allegations more serious than smutty talk or even aggressive teen behavior. It involves actual alleged rape-rape, to borrow a term from Whoopi Goldberg of The View.

Rape-rape is the term she uses to distinguish real rape from mere statutory rape  the kind, for example, that underage girls accused Sen. Robert Menendez of in unproven accusations. Luckily for him and unluckily for them, these accusers, being of meager social status and lacking doctoral or law degrees, were never favored with the designation survivors.

It may be too late to contest sainthood for Hill and Ford. But any factual assessment of their allegations entails  at a bare, minimum level of fairness and decency  that we all refrain from joining in their character assassinations. And all the more so given the highly politicized context of their uncorroborated accusations and their glaring inconsistencies.vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 22

An 18-year-old youth, studying in Class IX and resident of Mani Majra, was stabbed to death near his house this afternoon.

The victim was rushed to Government Multi-Specialty Hospital (GMSH), Sector 16, where he succumbed to his injuries. The victim was a student of a government school.

According to the police, information about the stabbing incident was received around 3.30 pm following which a police team was sent to the spot.

The police said the victim, Rajesh, a resident of New Indira Colony, Mani Majra, was allegedly stabbed by Shivam, alias Lefty, who escaped from the spot after the incident.

The victim was stabbed on the chest and stomach. A PCR team lifted the victim and took him to the hospital, where he later died.

The police said the victim had a fight with the suspect at a wedding on October 13 and the incident was a fallout of the fight.

The suspect was waiting for the victim near his house and as soon as he left home, Shivam attacked him, said a police official.

The police have registered a murder case against the suspect at the IT park police station. The victim is survived by his parents and two sisters. Sources said the victims father, Vishvakarma, was a rickshaw-puller.vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 22

The UT Directorate of Higher Education has opened parking spaces of as many as 27 schools and colleges to the public for the festival season till November 9.

An order issued in this regard stated that the Education Department would not be responsible for any loss/damage to the parked vehicles and the public should not use playgrounds of these educational institutions for parking.

The order further stated that the SP (Traffic & Security), UT, would have to provide security in each school/college to be used for parking.

SSP (Traffic) Shashank Anand said, The list of schools was received today. On the basis of the list, we will make arrangements till the festival season in these areas.

The institutions where parking will be allowed include the GMSSS, Sector 8-B, GMSSS, Sector 15-C, GMSSS, Sector 22-A, GMHS, Sector 22-C, the small park in front of the government school at Sector 22-A, GGMSSS, Sector 18-D, GHS, Sector 19-D, GMSSS, Sector 19-C, GGMSSS, Sector 20-B, GMSSS, Sector 20-D, GMHS, Sector 20-D, GMSSS, Mani Majra, GMHS (near the bus stand) and GMHS, Mani Majra, GMSSS, Sector 32-C, GMHS, Sector 34-C, the open space near Sanjay Public School, Sector 44, GMSSS, Sector 44, PGGC, Sector 46, GMSSS, Sector 46-D, GMSSS, Sector 35-D, GMHS, Sector 35-C, GMHS, Sector 37-C, GMHS, Sector 38-D, GMHS, Sector 40-A, GMHS, Sector 40-B, and the GMHS, Sector 41-D.Vikash Narain Rai

Vikash Narain Rai

Former Director, National Police Academy, Hyderabad

TWO recent police killings during public contact situation have shaken the trust of public in policing and further compromised the downward legitimacy graph of the law and order machinery. In Lucknow, senior company executive Vivek Tiwari was shot by a two-member stop and search team of the local police; whereas in Gurugram, the lone PSO attached to a judicial officer shot at his wife (who succumbed to injuries) and son while escorting them at a shopping centre. The attackers remained defiant after committing crime in both episodes.

Prima facie, they appear to be acts of violence committed under a fit of aggression. In a classic pattern of similar violence committed under a spell of depression, the attacker would have attempted to harm himself as well at the end of the shooting sequence. Both incidents indicate serious procedural shortcomings on part of the respective police departments. From a policy perspective, lack of normative commitment to constitutional values is evident.

The attackers were assigned to defend the victims from the kind of perpetrators they themselves turned out to be. Their gun skill was controlled by their authoritative notion of self-righteousness, which they perceived was challenged by the victims. Human resource, the biggest professional resource of the police, needs tough ethics. The equation between power and police, however, entrusts this very human resource to the manipulation of compromised managers.

There are immunising precedents, too. In UP, since Yogis ascendency, almost hundred killings have been reported in the name of crime control at the hands of the police, without even one being probed by an independent agency. Similarly, since the present BJP government took over in Haryana, the state has seen two extremely inept handling of law and order situations, which had to be compensated by reckless military firings resulting in over three dozen deaths of civilians in each phase. There were inquiries but no lessons.

Nothing concrete has come out of the two police homicides. In UP, the present DGP was imported from the CISF and is required to match Yogis tough crime control profile with enough encounters, while in Haryana, the incumbent is serving on extended contract.

The Haryana Police has not come out with any comprehensive statement on the shameful Gurugram tragedy as it did not rattle its political bosses. It would like to pass it off as an individual members loss of momentary control. Neither has the UP Police. However, since the Lucknow incident rattled the political bosses, the DGP did circulate the following note of regret, explaining the killing as an act of aberration: No amount of apology will suffice for the loss of a precious life, heal the wounds of the devastated family. My heart goes out for the little daughters, wife & family members of late Vivek Tiwari and I share my grief with them. Such deviant, criminal behaviour is reprehensible and deserves the strictest punishment. We are determined to punish & wean out such rogues in uniform who hang our heads in shame, at the same time we have also embarked on systemic reforms through behavioural training & humanisation of the force. Its an arduous task & neglected for long but it is now on our foremost agenda....

Here is my take on this farce: if you are just an authority serving powerful masters well, these are brave and timely words indeed! Grossly inadequate and hollow, however, because you are not a just authority upholding rule of law as envisaged under the Constitution. Under the present political leadership, the UP Police represents an uncontrolled army of vigilante. The IPS leadership is part of this self-destructive bravado. Stop immediately the ongoing drive of moral policing society, under the guise of controlling anti-social elements. The polices cause will be best served when its working protocols strengthen society by winning its trust and cooperation.

Criminalisation of policing is a shared political legacy in UP. To be fair to him, CM Yogi inherited plenty of broken windows in the popular sense of lawlessness, but in mending them in accordance with his Hindutva agenda, he has unleashed a feudal police regimen amid unprecedented communal and casteist cacophony.

It has never helped police leaders to ignore a crucial factor that it is the normative commitment to their lawful protocols that matters in winning the trust of people and not the loyal display of end justifies the means initiative. When your professional orientations are flawed, any number of moral overtones will have little impact on the outcome.

To start with, blatant authorisation of stop and check, questioning and arresting by the police without quantifiably legitimate basis needs to go. A shift from the personal security regimen to a community security regimen is overdue. In spite of the politicians yoke on its aching shoulders, the police can adapt to this absolute minimum standard of public accountability. It needs serious training in constitutional conditioning and legitimate policing.

These two tragic episodes have the potential of challenging the prevailing statistical vision of policing. Ironically, in the land of our erstwhile colonial masters they are moving in the direction of policing by consent whereas we are still busy cementing the old framework of policing by authority. Instrumental effectiveness, and not fair policing being the central theme, police modernisation schemes are in essence schemes of militarisation and, consequently, the police regulations are strengthening regimentation of policing rather than democratisation. The real challenge is the absence of public trust. Till there are signs of a just authority in sight, any review works only as an awkward stroke of gamesmanship.laxmi@tribune.com

IT is unfortunate that Indias premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is mired in controversy. Allegations of corruption have been made against its top official and his immediate junior. The CBI has booked Special Director Rakesh Asthana over allegedly receiving a bribe from an accused probed by him. Apparently, the FIR was filed against Asthana almost two months after he had shot off a letter to the Cabinet Secretary, accusing his boss, CBI Director Alok Kumar Verma, of indulging in a series of corruption acts. The allegations and counter-allegations are of a very serious nature. It is expected that the Central Vigilance Commission, the statutory body that exercises superintendence over the functioning of the CBI for investigation of offences related to the prevention of corruption, will probe them thoroughly. Meanwhile, the agencys other supervisor  Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT)  must take the necessary steps to purge the system, which is possible as the Prime Minister is the head of the DoPT.

Every government says that the CBI enjoys full autonomy. It is, however, difficult for the agency officials to completely sanitise itself from the countrys overwhelming political system. That could be the reason why the Supreme Court criticised the agency as a caged parrot and its masters voice in 2013. Ever since, the credibility of the CBI has been on the decline. Today, it has reached its nadir. This is the time for CBI officials to remember the founding director, DP Kohli  The public expects the highest standard from you, both in efficiency and integrity. That faith has to be sustained. Its glory must be restored.

This is not possible without flushing out rogue officials and creating a firewall to prevent political interference. The Manmohan Singh government did take an initiative about five years ago by forming a Group of Ministers to suggest ways to ensure the independence of the CBI and its functional autonomy. The task remained incomplete due to the lack of political will. The Modi government has the opportunity to take it to its logical conclusion.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 22

The Punjab and Haryana High Court was on Monday told that HUDA was not competent to frame policy for compounding multiple plot allotment offence.

A Bench hearing the multiple plots allotment case was also told that the HUDA Act did not postulate the charging of amount on the basis of todays market value.

As the case came up for resumed hearing before Justice Daya Chaudharys Bench, counsel for petitioner-accused Harmanjit Singh Sethi submitted that the policy was not sustainable in the eyes of the law. The draft policy, among other things, said 15 per cent of todays market value of the plot could be charged in case of two plots, 20 per cent for three, 25 per cent for four and 35 per cent for five and above.

Sethi went on to add that the allotment letter was sacrosanct. The letter made it clear that allotment could be cancelled and 10 per cent of the earnest money forfeited if affidavit, information or certificate was found to be false. The allotments were not cancelled or recalled; and HUDA could at best charge 10 per cent the amount. The case will now come up for further hearing on November 25.

The development took place more than two years after the alleged pick-and-choose policy adopted in HUDA multiple-plot allotment case was brought to the High Courts notice. Justice Chaudhary, on the previous date of hearing, had ordered the registration of FIRs against all persons facing allegation of double allotment. Justice Chaudhary had also directed the registration of FIRs in cases where allotments were made contrary to the policy.gspannu7@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

Karnal, October 22

BJP Nilokheri mandal vice president Tajinder Singh Bagga (45) was shot dead by two bike-borne assailants in Gol market on Monday evening.

He was the president of the Jewellers Association, Nilokheri.

As per information, Bagga went to a Gol market for some work on a scooter.

Meanwhile, two youths wearing masks shot at him. He was rushed to a hospital where he was declared brought dead.

Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh Bhoria said the preliminary investigation reveals old enmity behind the murder.

He said that a team comprising SHO Butana and CIA staff members was out to nab the assailants.

Jagmohan Anand, BJP district president, confirmed he was vice president of the BJP Nilokheri mandal and he has spoken to the SP for speedy arrest of the accused.

The sources said that Bagga was involved in a dispute with someone of the town and he had received a call from abroad recently regarding the issue.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 22

With the deadlock persisting between Haryana Roadways employees and the state government, the striking staff on Monday extended the strike by three days.

The strike entered the seventh day, leaving thousands of commuters high and dry. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar again ruled out the possibility of rollback of the governments decision to hire 700 private buses.

Talks between the government and striking roadways employees on Sunday failed, with protesters sticking to their demand on the issue of 700 private buses.

The coordination committee has decided to extend the strike till October 25. The government is not serious about our demand and is bent on privatising Haryana Roadways. Talks broke down on Sunday because of the governments rigid approach, said Balwan Singh, a member of the coordination committee.

The employees had been on strike since October 16 against the state governments decision to hire 700 private buses. They claimed that the move was a step towards privatisation of the Transport Department. They alleged that the state government was trying to benefit a private transporter by hiring private buses.

Khattar refuted the charge of opposition parties and roadways union leaders that the governments decision on 700 buses was a move to benefit anyone or serve anyones personal interest. He said roadways union leaders should raise issues pertaining to employees and not interfere in policy matters of the government.

We have already said that these 700 buses will be under the control of Haryana Roadways and will be a part of its fleet. We are not giving permits to private players, he said. He claimed that the addition of private buses, which would be plied on km basis, would not affect roadways employees in any manner.

Under the kilometre scheme, buses would be owned by private operators, who would pay salary to drivers and bear diesel and maintenance costs, Khattar said. Conductors would be appointed by the government and revenue generated from tickets deposited in the state exchequer, he said.

He said the categories entitled to free or concessional travel would continue to avail it in private buses.

Official sources said 1,112 buses ran on different routes on Monday compared to 509 on Sunday. Meanwhile, 42 drivers and conductors who were on probation and took part in the strike were dismissed.shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Washington DC

According to a new study, heart patients can prolong their life if they interrupt their sedentary lifestyle and move around every 20 minutes.

The study was presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress (CCC) 2018. Visiting experts from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) also participated in joint scientific sessions with the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) as part of the ESC Global Activities programme.

Heart patients spend most of their waking hours sitting, lying down, and watching television. Previous research has shown that being sedentary for long periods could shorten life but taking breaks to move around may counteract the risk, particularly if it means burning more than 770 kcal a day.

This study investigated how many breaks should be taken, and for what duration, if one needs to expend 770 kcal.

"Our study shows that heart patients should interrupt sedentary time every 20 minutes with a 7-minute bout of light physical activity. Simple activities such as standing up and walking at a casual pace will expend more than 770 kcal in a day if done with this frequency and duration," said study author Dr. Ailar Ramadi.

The study enrolled 132 patients with coronary artery disease. The average age was 63 years and 77% were males. Participants wore an armband activity monitor for an average of 22 hours a day for five days. The activity monitor recorded the amount of energy spent during breaks from inactivity, the amount of inactive time, and the number and duration of breaks during each sedentary hour.

"There is a lot of evidence now that sitting for long periods is bad for health. Our study suggests that during each hour of sitting time, heart patients should take three breaks which add up to 21 minutes of light physical activity. This will expend 770 kcal a day, an amount associated with a lower risk of premature death," added Dr. Ramadi.

Regarding limitations of the research, Professor Joep Perk, ESC Prevention Spokesperson, noted that this was a small, observational study with no control group.

"A randomised controlled trial is needed before this can become a firm recommendation. Nevertheless, regular physical activity is key to achieving a healthy life, whether you are a cardiac patient or not," he said.  ANI.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, October 22

Jos Lewis (40), a Spanish paraglider who went missing yesterday, has been spotted on a hill between the Thumsar Pass and Bara Bhangal village.

SDM, Baijnath, Vikas Shukla said the paraglider had lost control due to strong winds. He had been swept across Thumsar by winds. Fortunately, he landed safely between Bara Bhangal and the pass. Contact had been established with the trapped paraglider and he had said he was safe and suffered injuries in his feet while landing.

A paramotor had been sent to drop food and water to the trapped paraglider. He would be rescued with the help of a helicopter tomorrow, the SDM said.

The Spanish and two paragliders from Russia and Latvia met with an accident due to strong winds and had sustained injuries while paragliding in Bir. The Spanish paraglider had taken off from Billing but had gone missing.

The administration had carried out a search for missing him in the Bandla forest area near Palampur.

The Russian paraglider got stuck in a tree in Jatingri. He was spotted by an Australian paraglider and he informed the authorities who rescued him. The Russian received minor injuries and suffered sprain in the spine.

Latvian Pakulus Mormund lost control of his glider and fell in Jogindernagar. He was admitted to the Baijnath Civil Hospital and later shifted to the Tanda medical college.monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, October 22

Another civilian, who was injured in a blast at an encounter site in Laroo village of south Kashmirs Kulgam district on Sunday, died at a hospital here, taking the toll to seven.

Three militants and six civilians were killed on Sunday  the former in a gunbattle and the latter in a blast at the unsanitised encounter site.

Also, 20 persons were injured, a few sustaining bullet and many pellet injuries as the security forces tried to disperse the protesters.

The civilian, identified as Javed Ahmad Lone of Havoora, succumbed to his injuries at a Srinagar hospital on Sunday night.

His funeral was held on Monday morning in Havoora, following which clashes erupted in Khodweni and Qaimoh. Authorities have imposed restrictions in the main town of Kulgam.editorial@tribune.com

Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, October 21

Three militants and six civilians were killed in Laroo village of south Kashmirs Kulgam district on Sunday  the former in a gunbattle and the latter in a blast at the unsanitised encounter site. Also, more than 20 persons were injured, a few

sustaining bullet and many pellet injuries as the security forces tried to disperse the protesters.

The dead civilians were identified as Irshad Ahmad Padder, Zubair Ahmad Lone, Talib Maqbool Laway, Uzair Ahmad Dar, Aqib Ahmad Sheikh and Mansoor Ahmad Dar, all residents of villages in Kulgam district.

The militants who were gunned down, all members of Jaish-e-Muhammad, are Shahid-ul-Islam Tantray of Shopian, Yazil Makroo of Anantnag and Zubair Lone of Kulgam.

Police sources said a cordon and search operation was launched in Laroo village on the outskirts of Kulgam at about 2 am. While searches were on, the militants at 3.30 am opened fire. The forces retaliated and a gunfight ensued that lasted till about 10 am. All three militants were neutralised.

As the forces began to evacuate the area after the encounter, hundreds of residents marched to the site. A fire caused by explosives was still to be put off and the site yet to be sanitised, a source said.

An eyewitness claimed people were standing on the rubble of the house razed during the encounter when a deafening explosion took place, injuring seven. They were rushed to the Kulgam district hospital where three of them were declared dead, a health official said. Two more succumbed at the SMHS Hospital in Srinagar and another at the SKIMS in Soura.

The locals blamed the security forces for the tragedy. A police source said the forces had to leave in a hurry because of incessant stone-pelting and, therefore, could not sanitise the site.

Inspector General of Police (IGP) SP Pani said the people had been warned to keep off, but paid no heed. Despite the authorities snapping mobile and Internet services, intense clashes erupted at the site and the forces fired pellets and bullets to disperse the protesters, leaving more than 20 injured.

Adviser to the Governor K Vijay Kumar and DGP Dilbag Singh expressed regret over the loss of lives and sent condolences to the bereaved families.

How events unfolded

2 am: Cordon and Search Operation launched by forces following inputs on militants presence

3:25 am: Militants open indiscriminate fire on the forces from a house they were hiding in

4 am: Amid the gunfight, mobile and Internet services terminated in Kulgam district as a precaution

7 am: Locals assemble at the encounter site in large numbers, throw stones at forces, fired upon

9 am: Several blasts at the site as the security personnel try to flush out the holed-up militants

10 am: Militants are killed and 30 minutes later, the forces leave the site with the bodies and arms

10:50 am: A blast pierces through the area, leaving seven injured, six of whom succumb later

Shutdown today

Separatists in Kashmir valley have called for a strike on Monday over the death of civilians in a blast in Kulgam district. The strike has been called by the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL).editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, October 22

A day after seven civilians were killed in an explosion after a gunfight in Kulgam, life came to a grinding halt in the Kashmir valley in protest against the incident on Monday.

In Srinagar, all shops, business establishments, educational institutions and fuel stations remained closed. While the public transport was off the roads, a few private vehicles were seen plying in some parts of the city.

A large number of security forces personnel were deployed in the city to foil the protests over the deaths. There were, however, reports of clashes in some parts of the Valley, including Srinagar city, which left half a dozen protesters injured.

The strike also impacted the attendance in government offices and banks,an official said. The residents preferred remaining indoors. The train services from Baramulla to Banihal were also suspended due to the shutdown.

Every family is mourning the killing of seven young men in the Kulgam tragedy and that is the reason for the unprecedented shutdown today, said a Rajbagh resident, Aijaz Ahmed.

The call for the shutdown was given by the joint resistance leadership  Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik. Seven civilians were killed on Sunday in an explosion at the encounter site in south Kashmirs Kulgam. The civilian deaths triggered fresh tension in the Valley. The separatists have also called for a Lal Chowk march on Tuesday.

J&K Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), law and order, Munir Khan said the situation remained peaceful in Kashmir.

In Kulgam town, restrictions under Section 144 of the CrPC remained in place and the situation in adjoining districts was reported to be tense.

Meanwhile, north Kashmir also observed a complete shutdown, which hit the normal life.

Protests were also held by the students of the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Jammu on the Sopore campus.

Doda, Kishtwar show solidarity

Doda, october 22

Showing solidarity with the Valley, Doda and Kishtwar on Monday observed a complete shutdown over the death of seven civilians in Kulgam on Sunday.

The shutdown affected normal life as most of the shops and business establishments remained closed in the twin districts. However, educational institutions and government offices were open in the area.

The majority community in Doda took out a protest march in the town.

Anjuman Islamia, Bhaderwah, chief, Parveez Sheikh, said, The majority community observed a complete shutdown in Bhaderwah, Doda, and Kishtwar over the civilian killings in Kashmir. We want the Centre to shun this muscular policy in Kashmir and initiate a dialogue process.

Mehboob Tak, a civil society member in Doda, said, We want a peaceful atmosphere for our children as the development of our country is being hampered due to continuous disturbance in Kashmir. Our soldiers are being martyred on the borders regularly and innocent civilians are losing lives in Kashmir. This must be stopped. We want the government should initiate talks with Pakistan to resolve the differences, he added.  OC

PDP demands probe

Srinagar: A day after the death of seven civilians in a blast in Kulgam, the demand for ending bloodshed in Kashmir is growing. Condemning the deaths, PDP vice-president Abdul Rehman Veeri demanded an impartial probe into the incident. In a statement, he urged the Centre to initiate a dialogue so that further loss of lives could be stopped and peaceful atmosphere could be created. Leading a protest demonstration in north Kashmirs Handwara town on Monday, Independent MLA and Awami Ittehad Party leader Engineer Rasheed said the bloodshed in the region must end. It is shameful that rather than taking permanent steps to resolve the Kashmir dispute, New Delhi and its proxies are busy in distorting the facts and accusing Kashmiris, he said.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, October 22

Shaleen Kabra, chief electoral officer, J&K, said on Monday that adequate security arrangements were being made for the upcoming panchayat polls in the Valley.

At a press conference here, Kabra said there was an atmosphere of fear in Kashmir, which was clear from a low turnout in the civic polls.

There will be 316 blocks, 4,483 panchayat halqas, 35,029 panch constituencies. The total number of voters registered for the elections in J&K is 58.54 lakh, said Kabra.

He said to ensure free and fair elections, the model code of conduct was already in effect for the past two months, which would continue till the elections were over.

He said the first notification for the nine-phased election would be issued on Tuesday.

The last date for filing the nominations for the first phase is October 30 and the date of withdrawal is November 2. The election for the first phase will be held on November 17, the official said.

The second and third phases would be held on November 20 and November 24.

There will be a gap of two-three days between the phases. The elections will conclude on December 11, the official said.

Candidates in the Valley have been facing threats from militants, which resulted in low turnout in the municipal elections.

The first panchayats elections in the state were held in 1974. Although polls were held in some panchayats in 2000, it was the NC-Congress alliance that finally conducted full-fledged local bodies polls in 2011.editorial@tribune.com

mmu, October 22

Panellists at a seminar titled 22nd October 1947  Pakistan invasion not a tribal raid, organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Unity Foundation (JKUF), on Monday expressed a unanimous view that the war started by Pakistan on October 22, 1947, continued in new forms.

The panellists said the war from inside the state had to be defeated in order to beat the possibility of war by Pakistan.

They said the radical indoctrination of youth, particularly in Kashmir, had been going on and the infrastructure of indoctrination was flourishing in the state.

The seminar was organised by the J&K Unity Foundation to remember the first invasion of the Indian territories in Jammu and Kashmir by the Pakistani Army on October 22, 1947. The day is observed as the black day by the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Yuvraj Gupta, a Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) refugee leader; Ajay Chrungoo, chairman, Panun Kashmir; Mohd Tariq, president, Jiyo Aur Jeene Do; Ankur Sharma, advocate; Ghulam Ali Khatana, prominent Gujjar leader and senior BJP leader; Hari Om, president, Jammu for India; and Ajaat Jamwal, president, J&K Unity Foundation, spoke on occasion.

The participants resolved to stand up as one to defeat Pakistans subversive religious war in Jammu and Kashmir.

Jamwal said Pakistan continued its asymmetric war by injecting terrorists into the Indian territory and by luring the youth of Kashmir to take up arms against the state.

Gupta narrated his personal experiences in Kotli (now in POJK) during the fateful days of siege of Kotli by the Pakistani forces and the glorious resistance offered by people to prevent the areas from falling into the hands of Pakistan. Chrungoo said in J&K, Pakistan was closely conducting its operations, with pan-Islamist forces seeking to capture not only Kashmir, but whole of India. He said India needed to defeat jihad in case it had to survive as a nation.  TNSeditorial@tribune.com

Amir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Jammu, October 21

Three soldiers were killed and one was critically injured in an encounter with militants near the Line of Control (LoC) in Sunderbani sector of Rajouri district on Sunday. Two intruders were shot dead.

The intruders fired on a patrol party. In the retaliatory fire, two heavily armed militants were killed. It was a kind of a Border Action Team (BAT) operation, a source told The Tribune.

Jammu-based defence spokesperson Lt Col Devender Anand said the encounter took place at 1.45 pm and that the injured soldier, Rifleman Rakesh Kumar of Samba distict, had been airlifted to the Army Command Hospital in Udhampur.

The Army found warlike stores, including two AK-47 rifles, he added. The deceased soldiers are Havildar Kaushal Kumar of Deeng village in Nowshera, Rajouri district; Lance Naik Ranjeet Singh of Gam village in Doda district and Rifleman Rajat Kumar Basant of Pallanwala in Jammu  all of Jak li.

Havildar Kaushal Kumar is survived by his wife Naresh Kumari, Lance Naik Ranjeet Singh by his wife Shimu Devi and Rifleman Rajat Kumar by his father Ratan Lal.

Sources said the intruders may have infiltrated through the Ikhni Nullah near Battal village  the route used by four heavily armed infiltrators in March this year. They were later eliminated.

A report from Jaipur, meanwhile, said a suspected Pakistani intruder was gunned down by the BSF while trying to cross the International Border in Sriganganagar district.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Jammu, October 22

Two of the three soldiers killed in an encounter near the Line of Control (LoC) in the Sunderbani sector of Rajouri district on Sunday were cremated with full military honours in their native villages on Monday.

As news about their killing spread on Sunday evening, a pall of gloom descended on the families.

The slain soldiers  Havildar Kaushal Kumar of Nowhsera in Rajouri district, Lance Naik Ranjeet Singh of Ramban district and Rifleman Rajat Kumar of the Pallanwala area in Jammu district  all belonged to the 8 Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry Regiment.

In the encounter, two intruders were also shot dead by the Army.

Hundreds of people visited Havildar Kaushal Kumars house to express condolences with the family. He was the lone breadwinner in the family. His is survived by his wife and two children who were inconsolable.

There was palpable anger against Pakistan and militants among the family members. Once I grow up, I want to join the Army and take revenge for my fathers death by crushing Pakistan, Amit Kumar, Havildars Kaushal Kumars son, told mediapersons.

In Pallanwala, slain Rifleman Rajat Kumars family and relatives mourned his killing. His father Ratan Lal could not hold back his tears.

It is a matter of pride that my son has sacrificed his life for the nation but I have lost my sole breadwinner. I used to think that he would look after me in my old age but he is gone now, said Rattan Lal.

The two soldiers were cremated with full military honours in their respective villages. Soldiers from nearby Army units had come to pay their last respects.

Lance Naik Ranjeet Singh, a resident of Suligam village in Ramban district, was expected to come home as his wife is due to give birth to their first child in two months, but the happiness of the family has been shattered by his death.

At the wreath-lying ceremony in Chanderkot on Monday, the General Officer Commanding of the Delta Force, senior police and civil administration officers paid tribute to Lance Naik Ranjeet Singh.

SSP, Ramban, Anita Sharma said: After the wreath-lying ceremony in Chanderkot on Monday, the martyrs body was taken to his village which is a 3-km journey on foot. His cremation will be held on Tuesday on the banks of the Chenab.

MLA, Ramban, Neelam Lingeh said: I visited the martyrs family and met his father. The martyr was expecting his first child, but unfortunately he left for heavenly abode without meeting his child.Rajiv Sharma

Rajiv Sharma

MY entire childhood was spent around the site of the Amritsar train tragedy, Joda Fatak, named so because of two parallel level crossings. It seems my playground has been stabbed and mutilated. Our ancestral house was barely 200 yards from the track. I still remember the days when we would stand on the roof of our house for hours to catch a glimpse of the moving train. Those were the days when Amritsar was not thickly populated. The whole area around Joda Fatak had large orchards of guava and pear.

But now, with the huge influx of migrant labour, the city is bursting at the seams. Whatever little progress the city makes in terms of civic amenities is superseded by a mile by the ever-growing population.

The administration is in a state of deep slumber. We have become a country of reactive administration, which wakes up only when something untoward happens, only to go back to deep stupor again, and await the next tragedy. Since we are a densely populated country, we need to have proactive plans and policies to ensure the safety of people while celebrating various festivals in the open.

Allegations and counter-allegations will be made, and inquiries will be ordered. Politicians will not leave any stone unturned to garner sympathy and votes of the remaining hapless residents. But will something fruitful come out of this heart-wrenching tragedy, or will this incident too enter the annals of Indian railway history as a mere statistic?

People have lost faith in the system, which has meekly surrendered to the politicians, who, in turn, dance to the whims of mohalla leaders, who are the right hand of the men in power. Local leaders insist on organising multiple celebrations to please their masters and show them the power they wield over the voters. What was the need of celebrating Dasehra at six places in a single legislative constituency, when air pollution is already a huge problem in the country? Why was the area not cordoned? Why is the track passing through densely populated areas not barricaded?

No amount of compensation can bring back the smiles on the faces of mothers who have lost their young children and the wives who lost their husbands and bread-winners? I shudder to think about the fate of the families who travelled hundreds of miles to this end of the country in search of greener pastures, unmindful of what destiny had in store for them.

This is no time to play politics on the corpses of the innocent, it is time for introspection. What can we say to assuage the feeling of the families who have lost their kin? What can we do to prevent such incidents from recurring? This can be the only obituary we can offer to the departed souls.shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Palghar (Maharashtra), October 22

A shocking incident of two Rajasthani women having been allegedly "sold off to recover dowry" has come to light, on Monday in Virar town here, officials said.

Following sustained efforts by social activists, Virar Police on October 9 booked a dozen persons including a chartered accountant and a businessman, besides their family members and other associates, in the case, Investigating Officer Lakshmi Borkar told IANS.

According to the complaint, the two women  both sisters in their 20s, hailing from Rajasthan  were married on March 10, 2015 with two brothers, businessman Sanjay Raval and Varun Rawal, a CA  both based in Virar, around 60 km from Mumbai.

Six months after their wedding, the Ravals and their family members started harassing the sisters for dowry as the Sanjay and Varun wanted to buy a shop to launch a new business.

Somehow the victims' family managed to raise Rs 5,00,000 and handed it over to the Ravals, but later they demanded another Rs 4,00,000.

The two daughters-in-law said it was not possible for their middle-class parents to raise such a huge amount again, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

The sisters were subjected to physical torture and mental trauma by their husbands and members of the Raval family.

On August 30, the Raval family took the two women to a village in Rajasthan's Pindwara town of Sirohi distict and kept them in captivity.

For 10 days, several men including some relatives came and physically abused the two sisters and then ordered them to go back to the Raval family in Virar.

They sent an unknown person to accompany the two sisters to Virar, but when the train stopped at Vasai, their escort seized their bags and barred them from getting off.

This led to an altercation in full view of the co-passengers inside the train and the escort said they could not get off at Vasai but at Mira Road, in adjoining Thane district.

The escort was also heard shouting that he had "paid Rs 1,50,000 for the two women and now he would recover that amount fully before freeing them".

Fortunately for the distraught sisters, some co-passengers intervened and allowed them to deboard at Vasai before the train departed.

The sisters went back to their home in Suman Complex and narrated their sad plight to the neighbours.

A few neighbours accompanied the sisters to the police to lodge a complaint against the Raval family, but for nearly a month, the police reportedly dodged the issue.

It was only after the neighbours and some local social activists approached the higher police authorities that the complaint was finally registered on October 9 naming 12 accused in the case.

They include: the victims' husbands, Sanjay and Varun Raval, their father-in-law Mohanlal Raval, mother-in-law Leeladevi Raval, some uncles, aunts, a few relatives and other outsiders.

Borkar said an investigation was underway and no arrests have been made.

Independent sources revealed that the two prime accused Raval brothers  Sanjay and Varun  have reportedly gone underground.

The police have slapped serious charges against them under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) pertaining to dowry demand, mental and physical torture, kidnapping, Borkar added.  IANS.rchopra@tribunemail.com

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

Having killed armed intruders from Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC) in Sunderbani sector of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, the Army has issued a stern warning to the Pakistan Army asking it to restrain terrorists from operating from its soil.

Sources in New Delhi said since the Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMO) of both sides had spoken in May and agreed to uphold the November 2003 ceasefire, there had been seven infiltration bids foiled by the Army in which 23 terrorists had been killed.

The Army has been maintaining utmost restraint to uphold the ceasefire at the LoC despite regular provocative actions from across the border, authorities here claimed.

The Pakistan Army is trying to send terrorists across the border. Army sources cited internal reports to suggest that a large number of terrorists were waiting at launch pads in the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) desperate to infiltrate before the onset of snow.

Also, the Pakistan Army has been informed through established communication channels to take the bodies of the hostile Pakistani nationals killed at the LoC on Sunday, sources said.

Two of the intruders were wearing combat fatigues. Established communication channels is a military term for existing telephonic contacts that connect military commanders on either side.

Around 1.30 pm on Sunday, five to six Pakistani armed intruders crossed the LoC and fired at an Army patrol in the Sunderbani sector of Jammu region. Three Army jawans were killed and another was injured in the unprovoked cross-border action by Pakistan. During the ensuing crossfire two intruders were killed. Their identity could not be ascertained, sources in the Army said.rchopra@tribunemail.com

New Delhi, October 22

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday alleged that the CBI was being used as a weapon of political vendetta under the Modi government and that the premier investigation agency was on a terminal decline and at war with itself.

Taking to Twitter, he cited a media report where the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) second-in-command Rakesh Asthana has been named as an accused in a bribery case.

The PMs blue-eyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer, of Godra SIT fame, infiltrated as No. 2 into the CBI, has now been caught taking bribes, Gandhi tweeted.

Under this PM, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta. An institution in terminal decline thats at war with itself, he said.

The Congress chief and his party have been attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the appointment of Asthana as CBI special director.

In an unprecedented move, the agency has booked its special director for allegedly receiving bribes from middlemen to give relief to a businessman being probed by him in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, officials had said on Sunday. PTIeditorial@tribune.com

New Delhi, October 22

Downgrading from the senior secondary level to the secondary level, restricting the number of sections and debarring school from sponsoring students to board examinations are among the penalties prescribed by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) if any school is found guilty of irregularities in financial, administrative, examination and academic matters.

According to the new affiliation bylaws of the CBSE, the board can take various actions against erring schools, including issuing written warning, levying fine up to Rs 5 lakh, suspending affiliation for a definite period, debarring school from applying for affiliation and withdrawing affiliation.

The board may impose all or any of the penalties in case of gross malpractices in examination, academic, administrative and financial matters and established violation or non-compliance of court or government orders, the bylaws read.

Other grounds for penalty pointed out by the CBSE include shortcomings in affiliation requirements detected at any stage, withdrawal of no-objection certificate or recognition by state government and poor academic performance of school for the consecutive three years.

Not sending teachers or principal for training as per the requirement of bylaws and not nominating and relieving staff for evaluation of answer scripts of the boards examination will also be treated as a ground for penalty.

In case of any complaint or taking suo motu cognisance, the board may seek report or clarifications from the school, conduct a surprise inspection of the school or take any other action that may be deemed fit to verify the facts. After verification of facts, the board shall serve a show-cause notice on school setting out reasons for the proposed action and the school will be required to reply in 30 days, the bylaws read.  PTI

The Board prescribes

If any CBSE school is found guilty of irregularities in financial, administrative, examination and academic matters, it will face tough action

Grounds for action

Poor academic performance for consecutive 3 years

Violation or non-compliance of court or government orders

Shortcomings in affiliation requirements

Withdrawal of no-objection certificate by state

The guilty to faceeditorial@tribune.com

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

Foreigners applying for Indian visa will now have to declare their criminal records as part of the new visa format to check child sexual abuse and a range of other crimes by travellers.

The move follows a specific request Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi made to Sushma Swaraj, her counterpart in the MEA, last June to ensure mechanisms to prevent travelling child sex offenders from entering India.

There have been several instances where foreigners convicted for child abuse at home have travelled to India to run child sex rackets due to lenient visa rules.

Australian Paul Dean was recently convicted for abusing differently abled poor children from Vishakapatnam and Puri during his three-decade stay in India in which he wore different hats from a priests to a charity workers. US citizen John Jones was recently arrested by the Hyderabad police for circulating child sex abuse literature online.

Past cases have seen worse forms of child abuse being perpetrated by travelling foreigners who were hitherto not required to tell the Indian visa and passport authorities whether they had any criminal records whatsoever back home.

For instance, Raymond Varley, convicted in Britain for child sexual abuse in the 1970s hopped from country to country after his release ultimately making India his home. Here he ran a child sex abuse racket dating back to 1989 at a Goa orphanage. Varley fled India and continues to escape the domestic law.

It has now been decided that an appropriate questionnaire and a declaration will be incorporated in the visa application form which will have to be filled up by visa applicants and foreign nationals,, Maneka Gandhi said today.

New rules require

Foreigners applying for Indian visa to declare all criminal records, including for child sex abuse and crimes against women, involvement in drug or human trafficking, espionage, political killings, genocide, cyber crimes, terrorist acts, etcshriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Azamgarh (UP), October 22

Four Nepalese nationals were killed and three others were injured when their car was hit by an unidentified vehicle on the Azamragh-Gorakhpur road on Monday, police said.

The accident took place near Rajadepur village when a Nepalese family was going to Varanasi from Gorakhpur, police said.

Those killed have been identified as Navin Shreshta (41), his wife Kanjali (38), father Gorakh Shreshta (65) and brother Upendra (36), police said, adding three of the injured, including two women of the family and the car driver, have been admitted to a district hospital.

The deceased hailed from Sindhuli district of Nepal, police added.  PTI.amansharma@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

India and Myanmar held fresh round of discussions on bilateral issues, including development in Rakhine state, the seat of the forced exodus of Rohingya minority.

Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale during an official visit to Myanmar today called on the State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Talks focussed on enhancing cooperation in areas of connectivity, security, people to people relation , economics and commerce.

The scheduled visit comes just days after United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres during his Delhi visit urged India to play a larger role in providing assistance to millions of Rohingya refugees camped in Bangladesh and to leverage pressure on Myanmar for their early and safe repatriation.

Gokhale also discussed connectivity and India assisted transport infrastructure being developed with U Thant Sin Maung, Myanmarese Minister of Transport and Communications. The two sides later inked an MoU for the appointment of a private Port Operator for the Operation and Maintenance of Sittwe Port, Paletwa Inland Water Terminal and associated facilities that are part of the Kaladan Multi Model Transit Transport Project.

"This is a significant step in the implementation of India's Act East Policy as its signing will enhance Myanmar's connectivity, including with India, and add to the development of the whole region, particularly in the Rakhine and Chin States of Myanmar. It would also add to local infrastructure capacity and help in creating more job opportunities for the local people," said the Ministry fo External Affairs in its statement.

During the visit, Gokhale also held discussions with Commander in Chief of Myanmar Defence Services, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

"All matters relating to border security, bilateral cooperation, Myanmar's peace process as well as the situation in Northern Rakhine State were discussed during the meeting," added the MEA statement.amansharma@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

India on Monday criticised Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan for his tweet related to the ground situation in Kashmir. Imran Khan has condemned the latest cycle of violence and deaths in Kashmir.

In a tweet he wrote, It is time India realised it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the UN SC (Security Council) resolutions & the wishes of the Kashmiri people. A statement from the Islamabad foreign ministry also called for swift international action on Kashmir situation.

New Delhi this evening responded to Imran Khans tweet calling it deeply regrettable and interference in Indias internal affairs. Instead of making comments on Indias internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues.

Further lashing at Pakistan for its duplicity on terror, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours. Pakistan's deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world.

Blaming Islamabad for bloodshed in Kashmir and killing of SPOs, India had cancelled the talks between the two foreign ministers along sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September in New York, within 24 hours of having accepted the Pakistani offer of talks. Since then the two sides have engaged in heated verbal exchanges even as bloodshed and violence continues along the Line of Control and International Border.editorial@tribune.com

New Delhi, October 22

A memorial commemorating the contribution of Indian armed forces in World War I is being built in France and will be inaugurated by an Indian dignitary next month, an ex-serviceman overseeing the project said Monday.

Squadron Leader Rana Chhina, secretary of the United Services Institution of Indias Centre for Armed Forces Research, said the memorial was being built in Villers-Guislain, a village in northern France.

It will be inaugurated on November 10, which also marks the centenary of the armistice announced during the World War I.

This will be first battlefield memorial to be built by the Indian armed forces, which will be dedicated to the Indian soldiers who lost their lives in France during World War I, Chhina said.

There is another war memorial in Nueve Chappelle, but it was built by Commonwealth War Graves Commission in honour of the Indian soldiers who died in France and Belgium.

The memorial is likely to be inaugurated either by President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

The location is also the place where the Battle of Cambrai took place between the German and the British forces. Land measuring

500 square metres was given for 1 Euro by Villers-Guislain to build the memorial, Chhina added.

The memorial is being built by noted sculptor Ram Sutar and has an Ashoka Chakra over it, he said.

From November 9-11, there is also an elaborate programme scheduled to commemorate the centenary of the war.  PTI

Commemorative events plannedrchopra@tribunemail.com

Thane, October 22

A 41-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly killing another man at a lodge in Kalyan town of the district, police said on Monday.

The accused was identified as Sandeep Baddhe.

According to police, Baddhe had checked into the lodge on Sunday morning.

A man in his early 40s arrived at the lodge in the afternoon and said he wanted to meet Baddhe.

The lodge staff directed him to Baddhes room. A little while later, the staff heard commotion, and then the accused emerged from the room with his clothes stained with blood.

He allegedly shouted, Anil Sanap has not repaid my money and, therefore, I have done his game (killed him) and nobody should inform police.

As Baddhe left the lodge, the staff entered the room to find the visitor lying in a pool of blood. A sickle was found nearby.

He was soon arrested, said inspector PR Londhe of MFC police station.

The victim was identified as Anil Kondaji Sanap.

Baddhe is suspected to have killed him over a monetary dispute, the police officer said, adding that further probe was on. PTIgspannu7@gmail.com

New Delhi, October 22

Greeting BJP president Amit Shah on his birthday on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his rigour and hard work were great assets for the party.

Shah, who turned 54, said in his reply that every Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker is working tirelessly under Modis inspiring leadership to realise his dream of a new India.

Under Amit bhais leadership, the party has expanded significantly across India. His rigour and hard work are great assets for the party, Modi tweeted, wishing him a long and healthy life.

Thank you Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for your kind wishes. I assure you that every BJP karyakarta, under your inspiring leadership, is working tirelessly to realise the dream of a #NewIndia, Shah said.

Several leaders of the BJP and its allies took to Twitter to wish the party president on his birthday and hailed his leadership.

Home Minister and former BJP president Rajnath Singh said the party has risen to new heights under Shah who, he added, is known for his hard work and amazing orginising skills.  PTIamansharma@tribunemail.com

Beijing, October 22

China on Monday said the flood situation in Yarlung Tsangpo river has returned to normal, which had arisen due to the formation of an artificial lake created by a landslide and blocking its main stream in Tibet, posing a threat to India's northeastern states.

China also said it will continue to share the flood data with India.

People living along the banks of Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh were moved to safer places after China informed India about the landslide, which occurred on October 17, blocking Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet leading to the formation of the artificial lake.

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Saturday had also directed authorities in districts bordering Arunachal Pradesh to "remain alert" for possible flash flood and take all possible steps to prevent any major catastrophe.

The Yarlung Tsangpo river is known as the Siang after it enters India at Arunachal Pradesh from the Tibetan region and is called the Brahmaputra once it reaches Assam.

"By October 20, the river section of the barrier lake has returned to normal. We will keep close monitoring of the landslide situation and maintain close communication and cooperation with the Indian side through the existing channels," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing here.

She said the Chinese hydrological department had informed India about the situation immediately after the landslide and also launched the emergency reporting mechanism.

"Up to October 22, we have provided seven bits of hydrological information and 110 bits of statistics. We also reported the Indian side of the flow of barrier lake," Hua said.

China has resumed sharing of hydrological data on the Brahmaputra from May 15 after a gap of one year. It had stopped sharing the data with India last year soon after the Doklam stand-off, stating that its hydrological stations in Tibet were being upgraded and that the data couldn't be shared.

The data is important for predicting floods in basins of the rivers. Brahmaputra gets severely flooded during monsoon months affecting Northeast India and Bangladesh.

India and China have established Expert Level Mechanism (ELM) in 2006 to discuss various issues related to trans-border rivers.

Under the existing bilateral agreements, China provides hydrological information of Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) and Sutlej (Langqen Zangbo) to India during the flood seasons.

As per the arrangement, China provides data of the Brahmaputra river between May 15 and October 15 every year. This year the data sharing was extended due to the barrier lake in the river.

China has been building major dams on the Brahmaputra river to generate electricity. While the dams raised concerns of water shortages in India and Bangladesh, China maintains that its dams were aimed at generating power and not storing water. - PTIrchopra@tribunemail.com

Pamba (Kerala), October 22

Yet another woman in the barred age group made a futile attempt on Monday to reach Sabarimala but was forced to retreat by agitated protesters, while security was tightened at the shrine amid reports that more women of menstruating age could try to visit the temple before its doors close tonight.

Bindu, a Dalit activist, who was proceeding to Pamba at the foothills of Sabarimala temple from where devotees undertake an arduous 5-km trek to the shrine, was given police protection at her request, officials said.

However, when the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus she was travelling on with police personnel was about to reach Pamba, a group of BJP workers and those opposing the entry of girls and women aged between 10 and 50 years into the temple, blocked the road and forced her to alight.

She was then escorted to safety in a police jeep, officials said.

Nearly a dozen women have been turned back by angry protesters while attempting to visit the shrine of Lord Ayyappa, the presiding deity of Sabarimala temple considered naishtika brahmachari (eternally celibate), since its door opened for a five-day pooja on October 17.

No pooja was performed on the first day of the opening of the temple. The doors to the shrine will close at 10 pm Monday.

Hundreds of devotees are camping at the Sabarimala Sannidhanam temple complex to prevent women of menstruating age group from reaching the shrine situated in a dense forest.

Despite clamping of section 144 CrPC at Sabarimala Sannidhanam, Pamba, Nilackal and Elavumkal, hundreds of Ayyappa devotees have prevented women of the barred age group from visiting the shrine.

Police have tightened the security at Sannidhanam and other areas following reports that some women could try to visit the temple.

Inspector General of Police S Sreejith, deputed to ensure security of women devotees, offered prayers at the temple Monday morning.

Visuals of the officer offering prayers with tearful eyes before the deity were telecast by the local media.

Sreejith had faced the ire of the devotees for taking activist Rehana Fathima to the temple under police security.

However, police could not facilitate her entry into the main temple because of strong protests by Ayyappa devotees.

Six women were prevented from entering the Sabarimala temple Sunday alone.

Amid high drama, the devotees, up in arms against the Kerala governments decision to enforce the Supreme Court order lifting the ban on the entry of women in the 10-50 age group blocked the sixall Telugu-speaking womenfrom reaching the famed shrine. PTIeditorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

The Supreme Court on Monday asked media regulators to explain why they did not inform the police about media organisations and journalists revealing the names of victims of sexual offences.

A Bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta wondered why Press Council of India (PCI), News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA), Editors Guild of India and the Indian Broadcasting Federation (IBF) did not initiate prosecution against erring journalists and organisations.

The media regulators were bound to inform police about the violations committed during reportage of sexual crimes, the Bench noted.

This is like a velvet fist in a velvet glove Its of no use, said Justice Lokur directing these organizations to respond in three weeks. After perusing NBSA affidavit, the Bench said the organization had not initiated any prosecution against a single offender who revealed the identity of victims of sexual offences.

The NBSA counsel said it dealt with complaints in a robust manner there was a two-tier process for dealing with complaints filed before it.

If you dont prosecute when a crime has happened, you cant claim to be robust You may as well close down, the Bench commented.

The Bench  which had on August 2 taken suo motu cognizance of the issue  had on September 20 lifted the blanket ban on media reporting of Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual abuse case imposed by the Patna High Court but had asked journalists to do responsible reporting and not to sensationalise such cases.

It had restrained the electronic media from telecasting or showing the victims of sexual abuse and violence, even in a morphed or blurred form, saying this would be in the interest of such victims.

Sabarimala pleas

The Supreme Court will on Tuesday decide when to take up petitions seeking review of its Constitution Bench verdict allowing entry of women of all age groups into Sabarimala Temple, which has resulted in massive protests.editorial@tribune.com

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

Worried over huge vacancies in subordinate courts across India, the Supreme Court on Monday took suo motu cognizance of the problem and asked High Courts to submit reports by October 31 on recruitment processes undertaken by them, the schedule followed, measures needed to expedite it and infrastructural requirements.

According to official figures, 5,133 of the 22,036 posts of subordinate court judge were vacant and information collected by the Supreme Court Registry from different High Courts indicated that recruitment process to fill 4,180 posts was underway.

But 1,324 of the 5,133 vacancies were yet to be subjected to any recruitment process, indicating an obvious mismatch of the data received from High Courts  which was also being looked into by the top courts Registry.

The existence of vacancies to the extent indicated is wholly unacceptable. The Registry of this court is, therefore, directed to register a suo motu writ petition, a Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and SK Kaul ordered.

This is the second PIL the top court is entertaining on the issue. Earlier, the top court had on May 9, 2017, converted a letter by Union Justice Secretary to Supreme Court Secretary General Ravindra Maithani highlighting the problem of unfilled judicial vacancies in subordinate courts into a PIL in order to find a solution to the problem.

Last year, a centralised system of examination for selection of subordinate court judges was proposed, under which a candidate would be able to apply for more than one state if he/she fulfilled the eligibility requirements of the states he/she wanted to be considered for.

But that was vehemently opposed by TMC-ruled West Bengal. BJP governments of Madhya Pradesh and Assam had taken diametrically opposite stands on the proposed centralised mechanism for appointment of subordinate court judges across India.

On Monday, the top court also appointed four advocates as amicus curiae to assist it in the matter. Senior counsel Shyam Divan will assist the court in dealing with judicial vacancies in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and the North-East, while senior advocate KV Vishwanathan will do the same for Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Kerala.

Similarly, senior counsel Vijay Hansaria will assist the court as amicus curiae on Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar and Punjab and Haryana, while advocate Gaurav Agrawal has been asked to assist it in dealing with judicial vacancies in Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura and Uttarakhand.

The Bench posted the matter for hearing on November 1 along with a 12-year-old matter on filling vacancies.

Figure mismatchshriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

New Delhi, October 22

A 21-year-old female student, who was pursuing her post-graduation from the University of Delhi, committed suicide at her house here on Monday, police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Nupur Prasad, said the victim was in a relationship with a boy living in her locality in Burari area but her family was against it.

"Last night (Sunday), her family had a fight with the boy's family and the police was informed. The girl received a minor injury. Her MLC (medico legal case) showed assault by known person.

"They were going to lodge a complaint in the morning," said Prasad.

The officer said that a call reporting the incident was received at 9.35 a.m.

"The victim's sister found her hanging from a ceiling fan from a saree," the officer said.

She was studying in Shyam Lal Anand College.  IANS.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, October 22

Meera Yadav, second wife of Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Parishad Chairperson Ramesh Yadav, was arrested today and remanded in 14-day judicial custody after she confessed to having murdered her 22-year-old son Abhijeet Yadav, alias Vicky, on Sunday.

After misleading the police for a day, Meera finally broke down and admitted that she had killed her younger son as she was tired of his drunkenness. She said he tried to attack her in that state on Saturday night. In the ensuing tussle, she strangulated him with her dupatta.

However, when she was being taken to the court, she said she had been wrongly implicated in the case and that her son had commit suicide.

Reports had gone viral on social media about the mysterious death of Ramesh Yadavs son who is also the Samajwadi Party MLC from Etah. Neighbours found it difficult to believe that a 22-year-old could die of heart attack, as was being claimed by the family.

Undue haste by the family to cremate the body even before the arrival of Ramesh Yadav from Etah raised suspicion. The body was seized and sent for a post-mortem examination that revealed the 22-year-old had died of asphyxia caused by strangulation. Injury marks were also found on his head.

Deceaseds elder brother lodged a case of murder against unidentified persons at the Hazratganj police station. The body was cremated late on Sunday.

Meera Yadav tried to prevent the police from conducting a search in the apartment. She also tried to hide the bedcover that had blood stains on it. After repeatedly changing her statement, she finally admitted that she had strangulated her son. Meera Yadav was an officer in the states Tourism Department and had resigned recently.amansharma@tribunemail.com

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

The Supreme Court on Monday asked media regulators to explain why they did not inform the police about media organisations and journalists revealing the names of victims of sexual offences.

A Bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta wondered why Press Council of India (PCI), News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA), Editors Guild of India and the Indian Broadcasting Federation (IBF) did not initiate prosecution against erring journalists and their organisations.

The media regulators were bound to inform police about the violations committed during reportage of sexual crimes, the Bench noted.

"This is like a velvet fist in a velvet glove It's of no use," said Justice Lokur directing these organisations to respond in three weeks.

After perusing NBSA affidavit, the Bench said the organisation had not initiated any prosecution against a single offender who revealed the identity of victims of sexual offences.

The NBSA counsel said it dealt with complaints in a robust manner there was a two-tier process for dealing with complaints filed before it.

He said NBSA passed effective orders but sometimes, the complainants were satisfied with an apology.

"If you don't prosecute when a crime has happened, you can't claim to be robust You may as well close down," the Bench commented.

The Bench - which had on August 2 taken suo motu cognisance of the issue - had on September 20 lifted the blanket ban on media reporting of Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual abuse case imposed by the Patna High Court but had asked journalists to do responsible reporting and not to sensationalise such cases.

It had restrained the electronic media from telecasting or showing the victims of sexual abuse and violence, even in a morphed or blurred form, saying this would be in the interest of such victims.

"We request the media not to interview the victims. The news of the event may of course be disseminated," the bench had said, adding "we also request the electronic and print media not to sensationalise such events".

The top court had also issued notice to the Press Council of India, News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA), the Editor's Guild and the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) seeking their assistance in the matter. They have been asked to respond in two weeks.

The direction had come after senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, representing a Patna-based journalist, requested the Bench to lift the blanket ban on media reporting of the matter pointing out that certain aspects of the case came to light due to media. "The problem begins when there is a media trial," he had said.

Nafade had said there were guidelines, including on journalistic ethics, and statutory provisions, but these were being violated as the media was conducting "parallel investigations" and trial.

The Bench had said, "It appears that there is no mechanism for enforcement and implementation of the statutory provisions and guidelines. In the absence of any mechanism, it is possible that there could be some misreporting and some persons who are not involved in an offence may be mistakenly taken as accused of an offence by the media.

"The entire issue needs to be balanced and looked at in the broader view of criminal justice and freedom of the Press," it had said.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, October 22

A day after DGP Suresh Arora stated that a parallel probe would be conducted by ADGP (Government Railway Police) IPS Sahota in the Amritsar train tragedy, the latter along with local police officials visited the spot on Monday.

He said a special investigating team (SIT) had been formed, which would be headed by Assistant Inspector General (GRP) Daljit Singh Rana, while he would supervise the probe for its completion in three months. DSP Surinder Kumar, Inspector Nirmal Singh and SHO GRP Balvir Singh Ghuman will be SIT members. The team would be stationed at Amritsar and start working in a day or two.

Sahota said every aspect of the tragic mishap, including the role of Railways employees, would be looked into by the SIT. We will talk to the railway officials to see where the lapses were and check if the requisite permissions were given or not, he said.

Sahota said there was no information about the presence of huge number of people at the railway line to the GRP here. Otherwise, official would have been deputed to clear the area, he said.

The GRP have registered a case against unknown persons on the charges of culpable homicide, causing death by negligence and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Div commissioner initiates inquiry

Amritsar: Divisional Commissioner, Jalandhar, B Purushartha, who has been assigned the magisterial inquiry into the Amritsar railway tragedy by the state government, started the probe here on Monday. On the first day, he met with senior officials of the police and civil administration. While addressing a press conference, Purushartha assured that he would examine the case from all angles and it would be fare and transparent. The role of all the government agencies and individuals concerned would be examined and the probe would fix the responsibility accordingly, the Divisional Commissioner said. The report of the probe would also suggest remedial measures to assure that such incidents did not occur again. I have made preliminary discussion with four agencies  the police, Municipal Corporation, Railways and the district administration, he said. TNSamansharma@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

Holding the state responsible for providing for safety of people during public functions such as Dasehra, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Monday issued notices to Chief Secretary, Punjab government, and Chairman, Railway Board, on the Dasehra day tragedy at Amritsar.

It asked for a report within four weeks.

Taking suo moto cognisance of media reports, the NHRC asked for detailed report within four weeks observing that it was the responsibility of the state to provide proper safety and protection to the citizens during the event.

In a release, the NHRC said if it is true, as reported in some sections of the media, that the railway authorities were not informed about the event, it indicates towards "highly negligent and reckless attitude of the authorities responsible. This is a case of serious violation of human rights of the victims".

Issuing the notices, the Commission observed "it cannot be said to be a sane act by people to sit on the railway tracks, at the same time, the negligence on the part of the district authorities is apparent behind this bizarre and horrific incident. It seems that the local authorities and the organisers did not properly managed the crowd, gathered to watch the Dasehra celebrations".

The state government is expected to provide all the details regarding disbursement of relief and rehabilitation to the aggrieved families as well as the information on the status of the treatment being provided to the injured in different hospitals of Amritsar.gspannu7@gmail.com

Manmeet Singh Gill

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, October 22

Ignoring all lapses on part of Municipal Corporation, police and civil administration and especially organisers of the ill-fated Dussehra event which left 58 dead, the Congress leaders are unequivocally putting the blame on the driver of the DMU and the Railways.

Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said, The land (track on which people were standing), the engine, the driver, the guards and the police (GRP) all belong to the Railways.

Sidhu was responding to a question if he felt that main organiser of the event Mithu Madan was guilty or not.

Sidhu went on to say that GRP patrol failed to detect the tall effigy which had been erected on the place a day prior to the event.

The police permission was for the walled ground. He said that track around 60 feet away from the outer wall is the property of Railways.

He said that DMU in local parlance is called ladooan wali gaddi because of its slow speed and questioned that why it was running at such a high speed on the day of the accident.

He also questioned why the guard at the railway crossing which is just 200 metres away from the accident site could not see that people were standing on the track.

Sidhu along with PPCC president Sunil Jakhar was at Government Medical College to meet the injured of the train mishap.

Jakhar said, Even after minor railway accidents, the enquiry by commissioner of railway safety is must. It was perhaps the first instance in which the enquiry was not marked which raises many questions.

The Congress leader said that the way Railways had given clean chit to itself instantly is wrong.

He added that people saw the train speed was too high. He added that all the investigation being carried out would identify all those responsible for the mishap.

The main organiser of the event, Saurabh aka Mithu Madan, is the son of a Congress councillor and considered a blue-eyed boy of the Sidhus.

The local body ministers wife Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu was a chief guest at the event.

Mithu earlier had been in the eye of the storm recently after he had got a public servant conducting an anti-encroachment drive transferred using his clout with the local bodies minister.

Later his name was also rumoured to be behind attack on a veteran Congress councillor.editorial@tribune.com

Vikramdeep Johal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 21

Gen Reginald Dyer, Sir Michael ODwyer, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Dr Satya Pal, Mahatma Gandhi  the Jallianwala Bagh narrative has always revolved around the big names. The epic scale of the tragedy  and the impetus it gave to the freedom movement  has dwarfed stories of the commoners who bore the brunt of the mayhem.

Author-columnist Kishwar Desais upcoming book, Jallianwala Bagh, 1919: The Real Story, endeavours to set the record straight. It carries heart-rending accounts of Amritsar residents who frantically searched for their loved ones, hoping against hope that they had survived the carnage. Amid the reign of terror unleashed by Dyer and Co, even the seriously injured didnt come forward for treatment or compensation.

According to the book, the survivors largely kept away from the Civil Hospital as they feared reprisal by the Civil Surgeon, Lt Colonel Henry Smith, who was a notorious advocate of brutal repression. Most of the wounded had been shot in the back or the back of their legs or arms, or even the soles of their feet. Dr Kidar Nath Bhandari, Senior Assistant Surgeon, who had treated the wounded on April 10, did so again on April 13. He visited some of them at home. Had it not been for individual doctors who took the risk of being arrested or accused of sedition, it is possible the overall casualty list would have been much, much higher, reads a passage from Chapter 3 (Counting the Corpses).

The author, whose debut novel Witness the Night won UKs Costa Book Award in 2011, is the Chairperson of The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust (TAACHT), which established the Partition Museum in Amritsar. She has dedicated her latest work particularly to her grandmother, Leelavati Lily Khanna, a young girl in April 1919, who lived at Dhab Khatikan, just a few lanes away from Jallianwala Bagh, close enough to hear the bullets being fired and the cries of the wounded and dying. Published by Context, an imprint of Westland Publications, the book will be released on October 31.

Desai tells The Tribune, I wanted to shift the focus of the story to the ordinary people  their suffering and their bravery in the face of the military might of the Empire. This is my homage to those who suffered in those terrible few months in Punjab  to the men, women and children who were humiliated and tortured  but who kept on fighting, in Amritsar and elsewhere.

After the bloodbatheditorial@tribune.com

Even as a magisterial probe by Jalandhar Divisional Commissioner and an inquiry by ADGP (Government Railway Police) are in progress, lapses on the part of various authorities have come to light. These collectively led to the Amritsar rail mishap. PK Jaiswar and Charanjit Singh Teja report

Where police went wrong

On behalf of the Amritsar East Dasehra Committee, Congress leader Saurav Madan Mithu sought permission and security for holding a function from the Deputy Commissioner of Police (law and order) on October 15, besides seeking separate approval from the community police service centre for installing loudspeakers at the venue. The application was forwarded to the Mohkampura police.

The Mohkampura SHO issued an NOC on October 17, with the rider that the organisers would follow guidelines of SC and High Court for playing loudspeakers at the venue (Dhobi Ghat). It also included the condition that organisers would ensure there were no traffic obstacles.

Even though Mithu mentioned in his application that about 20,000 people would gather at the venue, the police did not carry out an inspection to check whether it could accommodate such a huge crowd. Barely 75 cops were deployed, including SHO Sukhminder Singh. The cops on duty overlooked the presence of people in large numbers on the railway track.

The police told Mithu to take approval from the MC, but did not do a follow-up to ensure that its direction was complied with.

Municipal body erred too

According to the norms, it is mandatory to take permission from the Municipal Corporations Estate Office for using its land for a public event. There are 17 conditions that have to be fulfilled, including a no-objection certificate from the police and permission from the district administration. In case of violation of norms, the MC authorities can act under the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, besides filing an FIR in case a complaint is received.

The organisers  councillor Vijay Madan and her son Saurav Madan Mithu  did not take permission from the MC. The MC failed to take action even though the organisers installed a huge effigy (over 50 ft) of Ravana on its land in Dhobi Ghat without its nod and also put up hoardings and posters in the city.

Rules for public events

For organising a public gathering, the district administrations nod is a must after taking an NoC from the police and getting approval of land use from the owner (in this case, MC). If a stage is to be erected, a certificate from the Public Works Department (PWD) is required, besides intimating the fire brigade and the Health Department to depute a team for any medical emergency. Its the duty of the organisers to make arrangements for potable water, toilets, parking etc.

PWD officials say they conduct physical verification (and grant NoC) only for events organised by the government, where the chief guest is the Chief Minister or other VVIPs. In this particular case, the organisers are responsible for the arrangements, said JS Sodhi, Executive Engineer, PWD.

Organisers flouted norms

The Dasehra Committee (East) did not apply for permission from the district administration. Nobody approached us for hosting this event, said Vikas Heera, SDMII. Civil Surgeon Dr HS Ghai said the Health Department was not informed too.

Organiser Saurav Madan is considered close to Cabinet Minister Navjot Sidhu and his wife, Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu. Dr Sidhu was the chief guest, but the couple claims that she didnt know whether all requisite permissions had been taken for the event.

Railways role

According to the Codes and Manuals of the Railways, security patrolling on special occasions should be carried out according to instructions issued by the administration. However, the railway authorities pointed out that they were not intimated by the administration about the Dhobi Ghat event. We conduct patrolling on the tracks only to check their condition, said Amrit Singh, officiating station director, Amritsar. Surprisingly, the patrolling party did not take cognisance of the crowd on the tracks.editorial@tribune.com

Sanjeev Singh Bariana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 22

The Amritsar train tragedy has raised several questions: What should be the size of Ravanas effigy and the number of firecrackers stuffed in it? How much space should be earmarked for the crowd to be at a safe distance from the effigies?

No rules have been framed in this regard, Joint Chief Controller of Explosives (North Circle) RN Meena told The Tribune on Monday.

Deputy Commissioners allow bursting of fireworks in effigies according to the financial capability of event organisers. The DCs are expected to assess the ground situation in terms of the expected size of the crowd and number of fireworks before granting permission. Unfortunately, there is no consistency in granting approvals, he said.

With Diwali approaching, the districts administrations have another concern. Deputy Commissioners say rules are clear on the storage and sale of firecrackers, but hardly anyone follows them.

A Zirakpur-based supplier of crackers said, On paper, cracker-sellers and even organisers of Dasehra events take permission from the district administration, promising adhering to security norms. But except for a rare visit by officials, the sale of crackers goes unchecked and so do festival-related events.

A Patiala-based cracker depot owner said, Senior officers are never a part of the regulation exercise of crackers. Tehsildars or junior police officers are assigned such duties. Seniors need to be made accountable.

A feedback from different quarters revealed presence of big and noisy crackers some of which does not comply with the requirements.

Pathankot DC Ramvir admitted to loose ends in public safety. The administration is aware of the sale of banned crackers, especially the ones from China, he said.

TL Verma, a former fire consultant to the Punjab and Haryana Governments, said: It is well known that several persons sell crackers in streets without permission. Children burst crackers in narrow lanes and other crowded places. Only a few sellers keep the firefighting equipment ready.

In the wake of the train tragedy, the government needs to review the permission and regulation process. At least, places for bursting crackers need to be earmarked, preferably far from residential areas, as is the practice in foreign countries, he added.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, October 22

Three days after the Amritsar train tragedy, youth Congress leader and key organiser of the Dasehra event at Dhobi Ghat Saurav Madan Mithu on Monday claimed that all permissions and safety measures were taken and he was being framed by a few people who had personal enmity against him.

In a one-and-a-half-minute video, which went viral on the social media today, Mithu, who went into hiding after kin of the victims blamed him, said there were no lapses from his side.

Mithu said, I am in deep sorrow after the incident. I had organised the event to get everyone together. We got all permissions. Almost 20-ft area around the effigy was kept reserved taking safety into account. We made our best efforts. More than 50 cops were deployed there. The MC provided water tanker and fire tender.

The programme was held within the boundary of the Dhobi ghat ground not on the railway lines... we hadnt put chairs on the railways lines. There was a 10-ft wall around the ground. People were standing on the track. It was a natural calamity. No one is responsible for it. A few mischievous persons are targeting me to settle their personal scores. We made announcements asking people to stay away from rail tracks, Mithu said in Punjabi in the video. He added that he and his family were disturbed.

On being asked about Mithu, Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said, I dont know where is he and why is he absconding. He did not approach me after the incident. He knows me like thousands of others.rchopra@tribunemail.com

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Dasuya (Hoshiarpur), October 22

Father Kuriakose Kattuthara (62), who two months ago had deposed against Bishop Franco Mulakkal in the alleged rape case of a nun, was on Monday found dead at his residence on the precincts of St Pauls Convent School, Dasuya. His family in Kerala alleged foul play.

A confidant of former Bishop Symphorian Keeprath, Father Kuriakose held the Sunday Mass in the school hall, reportedly partook of community meal and retired to his room before 3 pm. He was found dead the following morning. Madan, his cook who lives in an adjoining room, said: I did not cook lunch for him on Sunday. I dont think he ate langar either. I waited for him to come out of his room till 9 am after which I contacted the nuns, who called Father Libin Kolencherry from a church in Mukerian. He broke open the door. Father Kuriakose was lying dead. There were signs he had vomited.

Asked why he had not been woken up for dinner, Madan replied: Father did not like being disturbed. Often, he was content with a single meal.

The cause and time of the death will be known after the postmortem at the Dasuya Civil Hospital on Tuesday on the arrival of his brother Jose from Kerala. Talking to The Tribune over the phone, Jose claimed: My brother was under constant threat for having supported the complainant nun. Jalandhar-based Rena, the wife of the deceased priests cousin, too alleged foul play.

When contacted, Kottayam police chief Hari Sankar said: Father Kuriakose was our witness. He had given a statement against Bishop Mulakkal. His family has lodged a complaint which will be handed over to the Jalandhar police. The deceased was from Pallippuram in Alappuzha.

According to sources, Father Kuriakose was divested of his parish duties at Bhogpur (Jalandhar) in April and shifted to Dasuya on the orders of the Bishop. Since then, he had been assisting Father James Chacko, Youth Director of the Diocese.

Father Sebastian Pallasery, a cousin of the complainant nun, claimed he had often talked of mental pressure.

We last spoke two weeks ago. I was told he was upset at the reception given to Bishop Franco on his return on bail. He was certainly under stress these last few months.

Sister Anupama, an aide of the complainant nun, said the circumstances leading to Father Kuriakoses death were suspicious. But Sister Vianney, who resides in the convent on the school premises, said it looked like a natural death, perhaps caused by a heart attack as he suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes.

The Hoshiarpur SSP, J Elanchezhian, too said the death appeared natural.rchopra@tribunemail.com

Tel Aviv, October 22

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has arrived in Israel on a five-day visit to strengthen cooperation with the Jewish nation in sectors such as agriculture, horticulture and dairy.

Singh, accompanied by a delegation of officials, reached Israel on Sunday evening.

He will be visiting several facilities and institutions working in sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, dairy and waste water management to tap opportunities that can address Punjabs requirements, and boost the states internal security apparatus.

Ahead of his visit, the Punjab CM had said that his government was keen to tap technological advancements on offer by the country.

On Tuesday, a seminar, Investment Opportunities in Punjab has been organised to attract investments in the state from Israel.

Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) will be signing MoUs with Tel Aviv University and the Galilee Institute for cooperation in the field of agriculture.

Another MoU will be signed in the field of water conservation by the visiting delegation.

Singh has emphasised that farmers in Punjab should diversify their crop pattern and get out of the paddy-wheat cycle, replicating the latest practices of drip irrigation and hydroponics in view of the depleting water table in the state.

During a meeting with an Israeli delegation ahead of his visit, he had evinced interest in adopting Israeli know-how to boost the dairy sector.

He had also expressed interest in visiting Israeli orchards and nurseries to secure first-hand knowledge of the technological advancements in hybrid production of plants.

Punjab is also seeking Israeli assistance in improving the quality of citrus fruits as the state is a leading producer of kinnow and wants to go for mass plantation of sweet oranges, which finds a remunerative market.

The Singh-led delegation will also be given a presentation on Israeli expertise in the homeland security sector and will visit the academy of a leading Israeli security company during the trip.

Security officials from the state are said to have made trips earlier to Israel to tap state-of-the-art technology and gain expertise in intelligence and homeland security to boost Punjabs security apparatus.

Singh is scheduled to call upon Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel and Minister of Energy and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz during his trip.

He will also be visiting the cemetery of Indian soldiers who had laid their lives during the War of Liberation of Haifa in 1918.

Haifa celebrated the centenary year of its liberation by Indian cavalry units in September paying warm tributes to the courage shown by them in what is considered by most of the war historians as the last great cavalry campaign in history. PTIgspannu7@gmail.com

Chandigarh, October 22

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who is on a five-day official visit to Israel, on Monday held a series of interactions with Israeli business leaders to seek investments in the state and assess potential for collaboration in infrastructural, agricultural and water management sectors.

The meetings laid the ground for strong collaborations between the two sides in some of Punjabs most vital areas of development, and gave a boost to the close economic and historical ties between Punjab and Israel, as per government release issued here.

At a meeting with officials of Tyros International Group Ltd, the chief minister discussed possibilities of investment by the Group in the areas of energy, water, affordable housing, construction of schools and hospitals.

The officials briefed the Punjab delegation led by the chief minister on the work being done by the Group, which specialises in impact investments and projects, in India, where it has decided to open an FDI fund dedicated for impact assessments as part of its future plans.

Amarinder discussed with the officials the investment that the Group could make in Punjab, which now offers immense potential for global investment and capital fund companies, given his governments strong focus on industrial and infrastructure development.

During his tour of NaanDan Jain Irrigation farms, the chief minister lauded the work being done by the 80-year-old company which was recently acquired by a leading micro-irrigation-based Indian company, in the field of precision agriculture and horticulture, in order to boost productivity.

The chief minister studied the latest technologies being used by the company on its farms to improve the quality and yield of various vegetables and fruits, including brinjal/eggplant avocado and citrus varieties.

NaanDan Jain has been present in Punjab since 1993 through various completed and ongoing projects, including a Crop Diversification Farmfresh (Farm to Home) project for food and spice processing industries, as well as a Water Conservation Resource to Roots) project.

During the first day of his Israel trip, the chief minister also visited The Dan Region Wastewater Treatment Plant (Shafdan) and met officials of Mekorot, Israels National Water Company.

The Shafdan is a complex inter-regional system that collects, treats and reclaims municipal wastewater in high density urban areas and industrial zones, and is the largest wastewater treatment plant in Israel.  PTIeditorial@tribune.com

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 22

Twenty-four hours prior to the Amritsar train accident, the Amritsar Commissionerate of Police had sent out a Security Programme for the function at Golden Avenue, ordering the deployment of 75 policemen for an expected crowd of 15,000-20,000. Despite training in crowd control, the police failed to prevent the tragedy.

The three-page circular was marked to the district administration, the MC, the area SHO and the traffic wing. Despite the venue being adjacent to a rail track, it was not sent to the Railways. This was confirmed by Inder Preet Singh Sahota, ADGP-Railways, who began a probe into the accident on Monday. In fact, security plans were made for 20 key Dasehra venues in Amritsar and duties clearly marked.

Commissioner of Police SS Srivastava maintained that rail tracks did not come under the jurisdiction of the district police. He declined to say anything further.

Contrary to allegations that proper permission had not been taken, the police circular shows the local authorities were aware of it and had made elaborate bandobast. The tragedy occurred despite the Security Programme, a mandatory document with details regarding the security arrangements at a venue where a VIP or a large gathering is expected.

Case filed against Navjot Kaur in Bihar

Patna: A case was lodged at a court in Muzaffarpur on Monday against Navjot Kaur Sidhu in connection with the train tragedy. It was alleged that her presence at the Dasehra event led to the crowd being pulled back to the tracks and mowed down. The court has fixed November 3 as the date of hearing. TNS

NHRC issues notices to punjab govt, railways

New Delhi: The National Human Rights Commission has issued notices to the Railways and the Punjab government over the Amritsar accident. The panel observed that it cannot be said to be a sane act by people to sit on railway tracks, but at the same time, the negligence on the part of the district authorities is apparent behind this bizarre and horrific incident. PTI

Punjab Human Rights panel asks for report

Chandigarh: Taking suo motu cognisance of the mishap, the Punjab Human Rights Commission has called for a report on the matter from the state government through the DGP and the Chief Secretary by November 8. The notice has been issued by the Bench comprising chairperson Justice Iqbal A Ansari and members Justice Ashutosh Mohunta and Avinash Kaur. TNSeditorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 22

Akali Dal president Sukhbir Badal on Monday alleged unfair action by the state government and the police in the recent train tragedy in Amritsar.

On the one side, persons seeking justice for the victims were booked under IPC Section 307 (attempt to murder), which attracts a maximum punishment of life imprisonment and, on the other, unidentified persons were booked under a non-consequential Section 304-A (causing death by negligence) for the train tragedy, he told the media here.

State BJP president Shwait Malik was also present at the press meet, which was organised after a meeting of the coordination committee of the alliance. He said, Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha and Punjab Governor VP Singh Badnore reached the accident site within hours of the incident, but the CMtook 18 hours to reach Amritsar. And now, he has gone to Israel.

Both condemned the statement of dissident AAP leader Sukhpal Khaira for terming the tragedy as a chhota hadsa (small tragedy). They said it was clear Khaira was part of the Congress cover-up exercise.shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Yokosuka (Japan), October 22

Unclaimed urns containing ashes of the dead are piling up by the thousands across Japan, creating storage headaches and reflecting fraying family ties and economic pressures in a rapidly ageing nation.

The identities of the dead, cremated at public expense, are usually known. But in most cases, relatives either refuse or dont respond to requests to collect their remains. Burials can be costly and time-consuming, a burden on family members who may hardly know the deceased relative.

When I die, though I have only 1,50,000 yen ($1,340), will you cremate me and put me in a paupers grave? I have no one to collect my remains, said a note left by a man in his 70s in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, who died in 2015 and whose urn was later buried at a local temple.

The abandoned remains highlight social, economic and demographic changes in Japan, where more elderly live on welfare and families are more scattered, weakening traditional family bonds and obligations.

It is a problem that is likely to grow, experts say; deaths in Japan are projected to rise from 1.33 million a year to 1.67 million by 2040, even as the overall population drops.

Yokosuka was so overwhelmed with unclaimed urns that it ran out of space in a 300-year-old charnel house that was about to collapse. It combined ashes of different people into a much smaller number of urns that it now stores in a hillside cave, with about 50 newer urns accumulating at the city office.

Space to store them is running out, said Hitomi Nakamura, an official in Saitama city, north of Tokyo, where the number of unclaimed urns has grown sharply the last few years to more than 1,700.

Many elderly people are living on welfare, he added, and many of them may be estranged from their families. With Japanese wages barely growing, and many children of the elderly living on pensions themselves, managing death costs, including arranging for their burial, can be a burden.

A traditional funeral, including food, drinks and gifts for guests, and hiring a Buddhist monk to chant sutras, can cost 2 million yen ($17,800) or more, industry sources say.

New businesses have sprung up offering no-frills funerals for $2,000 to $4,000, but other costs can add up, including the hundreds of dollars it may cost to bury the urn at a temple or cemetery.

Poor elderly

There are more elderly poor than in years past, some of whom cannot afford their own funerals. Nearly 3 percent of elderly were on welfare in 2015, almost double the rate two decades earlier, government statistics show. Just over half of all Japanese on welfare are 65 or older.

There are more people who die alone, with no one to look after cremated remains because of weaker family relationships, said Hisako Makimura, a visiting professor of sociology at Kansai University.

In decades past, it was not uncommon for three generations of family to live together. But experts say that as Japans economy has changed, couples have fewer children, and people tend to move farther from home for work, among other factors.

Nearly 6,000 urns have accumulated in the southern city of Fukuoka, while Osaka, in western Japan, buried the remains of 2,366 people in a communal grave this year after no one claimed them after one or two years.

The number of Japanese age 65 and older will swell from 28 percent of the population to 36 percent by 2040, according to the government-backed National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

Families and communities used to play roles of taking care of deceased people, Makimura said. But the burden on local governments will likely grow as their involvement in dealing with the dead increases.

So relieved

In Yokosuka, more elderly are dying without leaving funeral instructions or information about relatives.

City officials comb through their homes and census registries, and try to contact family members through the mail, often to no avail.

The dead are ordinary citizens. It could happen to anyone, said Kazuyuki Kitami, a city official. These bones are warning those of us who are alive that we are poorly prepared. Noticing that many unclaimed remains were from poor elderly people, Yokosuka in 2015 started an ending plan support service for low-income residents with no immediate family members.

Individuals pay at least a fifth of the 250,000 yen cremation and burial costs, with the government covering the rest. Dozens have signed up, and in May the city made similar services available to anyone.

I feel so relieved, said Sumitaka Horiguchi, 80, after signing up for the service and ensuring he will be buried at a local temple.

Horiguchi never married and hasnt seen his three step-siblings in many years, so he worried what would happen to his remains when he died.

My days have changed, he said from his nursing home. I feel calm.  Reuters.pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Moscow, October 22

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has questioned the intelligence behind US President Donald Trumps plan to withdraw from a key Cold War nuclear weapons treaty.

Gorbachev, who signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said on Sunday that Trumps move is a reversal of efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament, the BBC reported.

Trump said Russia had been violating (the INF) for many years. He said the US would not let Russia go out and do weapons (while) were not allowed to.

The US insists the Russians have, in breach of the deal, developed a new medium-range missile called the Novator 9M729 -- known to Nato as the SSC-8, the BBC said.

It would enable Russia to launch a nuclear strike on Nato countries at very short notice.

Russia has denied the accusation and condemned the plans. It even threatened to retaliate.

I dont know why President (Barack) Obama didnt negotiate or pull out, Trump said earlier in a campaign rally in Nevada last week. In 2014, Obama had accused Russia of breaching the INF after it allegedly tested a ground-launched cruise missile.

The New York Times reported on Friday the US was considering withdrawing from the treaty in a bid to counter Chinas expanding military presence in the western Pacific.

However, he chose not to withdraw from the treaty under pressure from European leaders, who said such a move could restart an arms race.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin would be seeking an explanation from visiting US National Security Adviser John Bolton, the BBC reported.

This would be a very dangerous step that, Im sure, not only will not be comprehended by the international community but will provoke serious condemnation, Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

He also told the news agency RIA Novosti that if the US continued to behave clumsily and crudely and backed out of international agreements, then we will have no choice but to undertake retaliatory measures, including involving military technology. But we would not want to get to this stage, he added.

Analysts told the BBC Russia sees the Novator 9M729 as a cheaper alternative to conventional forces.

The last time the US withdrew from a major arms treaty was in 2002, when President George W. Bush pulled the US out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Germany was the first US ally to criticise Trumps latest move, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urging Washington to consider the consequences both for Europe and for future disarmament efforts.

The INF had banned ground-launched medium-range missiles, with a range of between 500 and 5,500km.

It was signed near the end of the Cold Wara period between 1945 and 1989 marked by intense international tension due to the quality of relations shared between the two super powersthe US and USSRand overshadowed by the threat of nuclear conflict.

In the past five decades the US and Russia have signed a range of joint agreements to limit and reduce their substantial nuclear arsenals, the BBC report said.

Gorbachev was the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union who was appointed in 1985. His domestic reforms and nuclear disarmament deals helped end the Cold War. He resigned as Soviet president in 1991 after Soviet republics declared independence.  IANSpardeepdhull@gmail.com

Ankara, October 22

A man appearing to wear Jamal Khashoggis clothes left the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul following his killing there, according to a surveillance video, while a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans entourage made four calls to the royals office around the same time, reports said Monday.

The reports by CNN and a pro-government Turkish newspaper came just a day before Prince Mohammeds high-profile investment summit is to begin in Riyadh and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised that details of Khashoggis killing will be revealed in all its nakedness. That yet again adds to the pressure Saudi Arabia faces over the slaying of the Washington Post columnist. The kingdoms claim on Saturday that Khashoggi died in a fistfight met international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.

Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on October 2, knowing Khashoggi would arrive for a document he needed to get married.

Once he was inside the diplomatic mission, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

CNN aired surveillance footage on Monday showing the man in Khashoggis dress shirt, suit jacket and pants.

It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a body double and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The man is seen in the footage walking out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then taking a taxi to Istanbuls famed Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where he went into a public bathroom, changed back out of the clothes and left.

The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate building was seen leaving the building in Khashoggis clothes.

In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said that he had left the consulate, implying premeditation on the part of the Saudi team.

After Turkish authorities and the media were allowed to inspect the consulate building in its entirety, the accusations changed to the outrageous claim that he was murdered, in the consulate, during business hours, and with dozens of staff and visitors in the building, Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote on October 8.

I dont know who is behind these claims, or their intentions, nor do I care frankly.

A separate report by newspaper Yeni Safak said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammeds office. It said another call went to the United States.

Yeni Safak cited no source for the information. However, pro-government newspapers have been leaking information about Khashoggis killing, apparently with the help of Turkish security forces. Yeni Safak reported last week that Saudi officials cut off Khashoggis fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate as his fiancee waited outside.

Officials in Saudi Arabia have not answered repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press in recent days, including on Monday. Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutrebs presence in Istanbulnor that a forensics and autopsy expert was also on hand for Khashoggis arrival at the consulate.

Last week, a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage showed Mutreb at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggis arrival. Mutrebs name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, Saudi state media reported that both Prince Mohammed and King Salman made calls to Khashoggis son, Salah, early on Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both the king and the crown prince expressed their condolences for Khashoggis death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told the AP that Salah Khashoggi had been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his fathers criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion.

The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

Five Turkish employees of the consulate also gave testimonies to prosecutors on Monday, Turkish media reported.

Istanbuls chief prosecutor had summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony. Some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday told Fox News that Khashoggis killing was a rogue operation and that we dont know where the body is. The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority, he said. There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government. However, leading Republicans and Democrats in Congress are saying Saudi Arabia should face punishment over Khashoggis killing.  APgspannu7@gmail.com

Paris, October 22

Leading Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, charged with raping two women in France, claimed on Monday that he had consensual sex with both of them after previously denying any physical contact.

Ramadan, a well-known TV commentator, has strongly denied accusations that he raped the women in hotel rooms as an attempted smear by his opponents.

His lawyer Emmanuel Marsigny said the Swiss academic had changed his account of what happened on the basis of text messages that have emerged between him and his two accusers.

The messages show that the plaintiffs lied and that the sexual encounters were wanted, consensual and even sought again afterwards, Marsigny said.

The unearthing of these messages has allowed him to acknowledge that he had sexual relations with the women, Marsigny said.

Ramadan, accused of raping the women in 2009 and 2012, has been in custody since February 2.

He previously insisted he had no sexual contact with his two accusers, feminist activist Henda Ayari and a disabled woman known in media reports as Christelle.

Ramadan was a professor at Oxford University until he was forced to take leave when the rape allegations surfaced at the height of the Me Too movement late last year.

The married father of four, whose grandfather founded Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, has repeatedly sought bail arguing that being in prison is making it difficult to treat his multiple sclerosis.

The courts have so far rejected his requests, ruling that he can receive adequate treatment in the prison hospital at Fresnes in the southern Paris suburbs.

Last month a computer expert working on the investigation retrieved 399 text messages between Ramadan and Christelle, whom he is accused of raping in a Lyon hotel room in 2009.

The text messages detailed his violent sexual fantasies ahead of the alleged attack.

Afterwards, the records show that he wrote to her: I sensed your unease... apologies for my violence. Ramadan previously claimed he was involved in a game of seduction with Christelle, online and on the telephone.

But he said their only face-to-face contact was a drink in the hotel bar, describing her as a compulsive liar.

Ramadans lawyers have also provided details of his exchanges with Ayari, whom he is accused of raping in a Paris hotel in 2012.  AFPROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Istanbul, October 22

Turkey on Monday said that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was savagely planned as pro-government media published new claims targeting powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing.

Upping the pressure on Riyadh, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to reveal the naked truth on Tuesday about the Khashoggi case. The Washington Post contributor, 59, was murdered almost three weeks ago after stepping inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

After over two weeks of near silence, Saudi Arabia finally admitted Khashoggi was killed in the consulate but the kingdoms explanations are seen by friends and foes alike as contradictory and evasive. The case has shone the spotlight on Crown Prince Mohammed. He has spearheaded a reform drive for the kingdom but now faces a stream of allegations-denied by Riyadh-that he ordered the killing of Khashoggi. CNN International broadcast images it said showed a Saudi official playing the role of a body double for Khashoggi, wearing his clothes while leaving the consulate in an apparent bid to falsely show the journalist had left safely.

US President Donald Trump, who has resisted pressure to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia, initially said Riyadhs version of events was credible but then accused the kingdom of lying. The spokesman of Erdogans ruling party Omer Celik said the killing was planned in an extremely savage manner.

It was the first official indication that Ankara believes a murder plan was coordinated in advance. We are faced with a situation where there has been a lot of effort to whitewash this, he complained.

One of Erdogans advisors, Yasin Aktay, wrote in the Yeni Safak daily that the Saudi version given so far feels like our intelligence is being mocked.

Turkish pro-government media kept up a steady stream of allegations, which analysts see as a tactic to increase the pressure on Riyadh by showing the evidence Turkey possesses.

Meanwhile with Khashoggis remains still missing, Turkish police found an abandoned car belonging to the Saudi consulate in an underground car park in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, state media said.  AFP

CNN shows body double after killingshriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Fraser Island, October 22

Meghan, the pregnant wife of Britain's Prince Harry, emerged from her break from official duties Monday to greet excited fans on the stunning World Heritage-listed Fraser Island during the royal couple's Australian tour.

The Duchess of Sussex skipped most of the day's events on the island off Queensland state, after a packed tour that has seen the pair travel to Sydney, Melbourne and the regional town of Dubbo since touching down in Australia last Monday.

But she appeared in the late afternoon for a public meet-and-greet with her husband, delighting the large crowd at Kingfisher Bay.

Wearing a striped linen maxi dress with a thigh-high split, reportedly by sustainable LA brand Reformation, the pair walked down the jetty and received more baby gifts  including quilts and stuffed toys  from the locals.

One 16-year-old boy, who was carrying the sign "Meghan Markle you make my world sparkle" was so excited that he had met the Duchess that he forgot what she said to him.

"She was just really thankful," he told news.com.au.

Earlier, the loved-up couple arrived in Queensland by plane before travelling to the island separately.

Harry boarded a barge, a route used by tourists to travel to the island, while the Duchess of Sussex took a different vessel and then retreated to a private residence.

Her choice of dress for the boat, a maroon number with white polka dots, sparked excitement in Queensland, as the deep brownish-red happens to also been the official colour of the state.

The Duke of Sussex then headed to the peaceful shores of Lake McKenzie, where he was greeted with a traditional Aboriginal ceremony from the local Butchulla people.

He later walked barefoot on the soft white sands of the lake, a source of drinking water for the Butchulla people, and splashed water on his face.

Fraser is the world's largest sand island and the prince unveiled a plaque to dedicate the holiday site's acres of rainforests to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy project.

It is the second time the plaque has been unveiled.

"The first time was by my father  The Prince of Wales  in Bundaberg earlier this year when he was visiting," the Duke of Sussex said in a speech at the unveiling.

"I now have the privilege of unveiling it in situ... Luckily we are both highly skilled when it comes to unveiling plaques." The prince also received an unexpected compliment from one member of the crowd who yelled "he's better looking in person!" according to news.com.au.

Taking a strong environmental interest, a cause close to his father's heart, he met with park rangers to learn more about the island's plants and animals.

He was also due to meet with two Hervey Bay paramedics, who are being recognised for granting a dying woman's final wish by taking her to the beach.

A photo of a paramedic beside a stretcher facing the ocean was posted on Facebook last year and went viral around the world.

The pair are due to visit Fiji and Tonga after Fraser Island.  AFP.pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Istanbul, October 22

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to reveal within days the naked truth over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as Riyadh said it did not know the whereabouts of his body and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been unaware of any operation to murder him.

The Turkish leaders statement came the day after Saudi authorities conceded Khashoggi had been killed inside their diplomatic compound in Istanbul. We are looking for justice here and this will be revealed in all its naked truth, not through some ordinary steps but in all its naked truth, Erdogan told a rally in Istanbul.

In his strongest comments to date on the affair, President Donald Trump accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who fell out of favour with the ultraconservative kingdom, as pressure built on the US administration to strike a tougher line.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday described the killing as a tremendous mistake and said it had been a rogue operation by individuals who exceeded their responsibilities and then tried to cover up for it.

Jubeir insisted in an interview with Fox News that the operation was not ordered by the crown prince known by his initials MBS, also adding that we dont know where the body is.

Erdogan, who has not yet directly blamed Saudi Arabia, held a telephone call with Trump on Sunday where the two leaders agreed the Khashoggi case needed to be clarified in all its aspects, a Turkish presidential source said.

Erdogan is expected to make a full statement to his partys MPs in parliament at around 0800 GMT on Tuesday.

Turkish officials have said they believe that 15 Saudi men who arrived in Istanbul on two flights on October 2 were connected to Khashoggis death.

Riyadh reacted by claiming one of the 15 had died in a car accident years ago.

Saudi officials originally said Khashoggi, who stepped inside the doors of the diplomatic mission on October 2, had left unharmed, before announcing he was killed inside the building in what they described as an altercation.

The kingdom has since admitted Khashoggi died in a brawl inside the consulate and said it has fired five top officials and arrested 18 others in an investigation into the killing.

Khashoggi, who would have been 60 this month, sought refuge in the United States after fleeing his native Saudi Arabia after the 2017 appointment of strongman Mohammed bin Salman as heir to the throne.

The journalist, who had espoused both Islamist and liberal views throughout his decades-long career in the press, was engaged to a Turkish woman.

His killing has further soured relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, already at loggerheads over Qatar, with which Riyadh cut ties in 2017 and to which Ankara has deployed aid and troops.

Turkish officials now believe Riyadh carried out a state-sponsored killing and dismembered the body, with pro-government media in Turkey reporting the existence of video and audio evidence to back those claims.

As the Turkish leader is expected to reveal all details into the journalists killing, Trump has stepped back from his stance that Saudi Arabias latest explanation over the death was credible amid mounting pressure at home.

Obviously theres been deception and theres been lies, he said of the shifting accounts of Khashoggis death offered by Riyadh.

Their stories are all over the place.

Several senior members of Trumps Republican Party said they believed Prince Mohammed, the kingdoms de facto ruler, was linked to the killing, and one called for a collective Western response if a link is proved.

Trump has stopped far short of calling for the prince to be replaced, emphasising as he has before how important the US-Saudi relationship is to Washingtons regional strategic goals.

He described the 33-year-old prince as a strong person; he has very good control. Hes seen as a person who can keep things under check, added Trump. The controversy has put the kingdomfor decades a key ally in Western efforts to contain Iranunder unprecedented pressure.

It has also blown up into a major crisis for Prince Mohammed whose image as a modernising Arab reformer has been gravely undermined.

Britain, France and Germany have shown a united front, demanding Saudi Arabia clarify how the journalist died inside its Istanbul consulate backed by credible facts.

Late Sunday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the circumstances around Khashoggis tragic death in a phone call, without offering further details.

Australia, Canada, the UN and the EU have also demanded greater clarity around Khashoggis death.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel added that Berlin would not export arms to Saudi Arabia in the current situation.

Germany last month approved 416 million euros (USD 480 million) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018.

In the past, military exports by Berlin to Saudi have mostly consisted of patrol boats.  AFPROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Tapachula (Mexico), Oct 22

President Donald Trump said Monday the US will start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolled on regardless toward the US border.

Trump kept up his almost-daily Twitter attacks on the approaching caravan, calling it a national emergency and said he had alerted the US border patrol and military. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid that the US provides to the three Central American countries, he said.

Mexican authorities had managed to block the caravan of migrants on a border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also warned that the migrants may be victimised by human smugglers or others who would exploit them.  AFPSponsored: Ministry of Planning

In previous articles weve covered a few of the most significant issues facing the environment today and how our Government is addressing these. A large part of our, and indeed many other countries, strategy to do this involves being part of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and a crucial factor for the successful implementation of MEAs is our youth.

More hereHi all, I am looking out travel to Australia and I live in New England in the U.S. The task is seriously daunting on where to go. When I plan trips I often will try to do cities closest together to save time and money assuming that Ill be back one day if I really want to. However, Im going into Australia planning knowing that I wont be back one day because its just so far, so I really want to get the most out of my trip. In an ideal world I would love to see Australia (specifically Sydney as well as kangaroos and koalas) New Zealand (specifically Lord of the Rings scenery and glow worms cave) and then Tasmania and Fiji would be a big bonus. Any help at all on how to even go about planning this would be great. Is there a specific tour company that would let me hit those highlights. I want to see more in Australia than just Sydney but Im very open to which places. I am not a great hiker so the Outback doesnt have great appeal to me nor am I a swimmer so Im willing to skip the Great Barrier Reef. I like more of a chill vacation walking through the towns, museums, historical sites, beautiful landscapes etc.

What are my options here? Im assuming Ill have to leave from Cali and then I dont really know a good route to hit those places. Group tour, cruise, flights? HELP! This is such a daunting task. Also open to times of year and length of stay capping at around 15 days. I am willing to Ive us Tasmania and Fiji if necessary unless theres a way to just do a day there I would like to spend majority in Australia and then New Zealand. Thank you for any and all help!A traveller whom is doing their research - well done. As others have said local ABC radio is an excellent resource especially if in vicinity as you may not have access to internet if communications are cut or in a non-service area. If you do have internet access a good resource in South Australia is the CFS site (Country Fire Service)

Also the bureau of meteorology will give fire ban warnings which can help you predict as what days the risk will be higher (in South Australia it is mainly hot days with North/North Easterly winds). March will be at high risk as everything will be really dry after months of heat.

Have good maps - don't rely in internet as others have said too The most dangerous roads are the ones through hills and passes with only one entrance in and out. Know where other side roads are etc if you should have to change course. Locals will be very knowledgeable if in a vicinity of a fire and many towns will have a CFS and if you should have to find shelter AFL footy ovals are usually town evacuation points. Always travel with lots of water too.

Obey any signage saying National Parks closed etc on fire band days etc. This is for your safety as there is high amounts of combustible fuel (bushland) and usually restricted access in and out. particularly be aware if on foot. You can't out run a fire so do not hike on high risk days and take lots of water with you on others due to heat.

The chances of you encountering one are remote but again well done for being prepared and informed.

Australians are a lot wiser now after several major high fatality fires so locals are much better prepared.19 Oct 2018, 18:31

Hi

I hope you can advise us, three older UK travellers 60+

We are on a trip over 8 weeks starting in

Phuket 1 week, (Thailand)? Staying in Thalang area?

Flight to Bangkok 3 Days (Thailand)?

Flight to Siemreap 4 Days (Cambodia)?

Flight to Phnom Penh 3 Days (Cambodia)?

Traveling along Mekong Delta 5 Days (Vietnam)?

Ho Chi Minh City 3 Days (Vietnam)?

Traveling to Hoi An 3 Days (Vietnam)?

Hoi An 7 Days (Vietnam)?

Flight to ? Thailand 21 Days (Thailand)

It appears we can get VOA in Thailand and Cambodia though when we travel from Phnom Penh via land / Boat we will pass into Vietnam en route to HCMC? Do i have to get the Vietnam visa here in uk before leaving or can i get it in Phnom Penh?

What is the Malaria situation for a trip like this? Ive been suggested to use Malarone tablets as they do not make you as ill? Web research seems to simply recommend bite avoidance saying tablets are not necessary in these areas?

For the travel section around Mekong Delta to HCMC what would be a good travel option ? We were thinking by boats to see the local area? No acc booked for this part?

With three days to get from HCMC to Hoi An what would be best option? No acc booked for this part?

The last three weeks we have no acc booked in Thailand suggestions of good interesting areas with a mix of beach sights and local culture (Some Scuba diving) welcomed?

Thanks for taking the time to read this

DavidDear experts, we are a family of 8 who are arriving into Osaka airport then taking a train direct to Kyoto. After kyoto, we head to Kanazawa, then Takayama and finally back to Osaka to fly back to Singapore.

Should I buy JR pass? Do I need to reserve seats in advance if I am coming Kyoto from Osaka on 15 Dec? My takayama to Osaka train will be on 22nd dec and I am not sure whether it be too full by then. I havent book anything because I am not very good with how trains work in Japan. We have 6 adults and two small children. Thank you very much for your replies!How do I get from the airport (JFK, LGA, or EWR) to Manhattan?

What To Do During Layovers?

Vacation Apartment Rentals Violate NYC Laws

Hotels: Kitchenettes and kitchens in 100+ Manhattan Hotels

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Public restrooms/toilets. Where do you go when you GOTTA GO?

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How do I find Discount Tickets for Broadway Shows?

What are the NYC Halloween events for 2021?

Thanksgiving 2021 in NYC: What to Do & Where to Eat

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Where is the Old FAQ?

Trip Reports: Families with Young Kids - Add yours!

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Trip Reports: Families of Adults - Add yours!Nyali Member of Parliament (MP) Mohammed Ali has been turned into a punching bag after releasing two episodes of Jicho Pevu, which social media users have since termed shallow journalism.

The first episode, branded Dunia Gunia 1, according to Ali, was aimed at unearthing the extrajudicial killings in the country and sequence of horror events that rocked the country after the August 2017 General Election.

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READ ALSO: Jacque Maribe amtaja Mike Sonko katika kesi ya mauaji ya Monica Kimani

Social media users who responded to his second investigative item claimed the documentary left more questions than answers. Photo: Mohammed Ali's Twitter.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: MPs tell Raila to bow out of politics, concentrate on plum AU job

In the second episode, the legislator laboured to expose how late Independent Electoral and Bounders Commission (IEBC) ICT boss Chris Msando was murdered.

Those who reacted to his first episode, claimed the legislator used the piece to validate his public image that some claimed was getting tainted.

READ ALSO: Jacque Maribe was in the company of Mike Sonko the night Monica Kimani was murdered

Social media users who responded to his second investigative item claimed the documentary left more questions than answers.

In the second episode, the legislator laboured to expose how late Independent Electoral and Bounders Commission (IEBC) ICT boss Chris Msando was murdered. Photo: Mohammed Ali's Twitter

Source: Facebook

Some said the MP had wasted their time and also resources after they watched the episode which at the end, did not bring to the fore killers of Msando or let alone their motive.

"Over the bar, total nonsense, you made me waste my bundles for this, only for you to try to redeem yourself at end, that you care for your constituent, you don't need this drama just stay close to those who elected you, you made people who were healing start mourning again," wrote a user identified as By this I Know!.

Responding to the video, Mr Possible faulted the MP for beating around the bush and just republished what mainstream media had earlier aired.

"Moha hapa unatucheza haki...I expected you to hit nail at the head, sa unatuonyesha chenye tuliona...ama uliskia hatukua na televisions that time," tweeted Mr Possible.

READ ALSO: Boni Khalwale heavily criticised after claiming Mashujaa Day celebrations demeaned Luhya leaders

Mahabub Sheikh Barre claimed Ali was among the best investigative journalists he had known but his latest production signaled that he needed to sharpen his skills.

Barre alleged the law maker used the shallow expose to settle and propagate his political ambitions.

"You were once the best investigator ever I meet in Kenya but it now appears you are using a fame of Jicho Pevu to propagate and to settle your personal scores with some ODM politicians , it is always quite illogical the dark period of Election turmoil , violence and death," shared Barre.

Away from the blistering social media attack, a tweep identified as Cege K. Maina, hailed the legislator for his latest exposure.

Maina stated that the two pieces will go along way in educating future generations that at one time, the country was tossed in political impunity which yielded blood shed.

"Good job, the children will now know what happened in 2017 in Kenya, many would like that we forget and let it pass under the carpet but you've done it Moha for generations to come," shared Maina.

READ ALSO: Churchill Show's MCA Tricky lands lucrative radio job

By evening of Sunday, October 21, the first episode of Dunia Gunia had accrued 66,113 YouTube views, while the second one had garnered 36,068 views.

Both pieces were published on Friday, October 19.

Here are other comments from social media users who reacted to the MP's latest investigative production:

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.

Kenyans React to Rafiki, First Ever Lesbian Movie Produced in Kenya | Tuko TV.

Source: Tuko.co.ke- Atwoli said Luhya leaders were not treated fairly during the Mashujaa Day celebrations

- He said it was not proper for the Western Kenya leaders to be denied a chance to speak to Kenyans

- Atwoli joined other Luhya leaders, among them Boni Khalwale, who had also expressed disappointment on how Mashujaa Day was conducted

Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) Secretary General, Francis Atwoli, has angrily protested the manner in which Western Kenya leaders were treated during the Mashujaa Day celebrations.

Atwoli claimed prominent leaders from the Mulembe nation were ignored during the crucial national heroes' day celebrations despite there presence at the event, which was held in Kakamega County.

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COTU boss Francis Atwoli claimed prominent leaders from Western Kenya were ignored during the crucial national heroes day despite there presence at the colourful event.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Family of Luhya pre-independence activist ask government to uplift their living standard

Commenting on the Mashujaa Day events on Sunday, October 21, Atwoli said Luhya leaders should have been given opportunity to address the public during the ceremony, especially because it was held in Western Kenya.

"Kwa jili waluhya ni waoga, hakuna mluya yeyote alidemand ya kwamba sherehe isikwishe kabla their political leaders hawajapatiwa nafasi ya kusalimia mtu (sic)...Mtu kama Musalia Mudavadi alitoka bila kuongea...(Because Luhyas are cowards, there was no Luhya who stood up to demand that their political leaders be given a chance to speak before the celebrations end...People like Musalia Mudavadi left without speaking to the people)," Atwoli said.

READ ALSO: Boni Khalwale heavily criticised after claiming Mashujaa Day celebrations demeaned Luhya leaders

The COTU boss echoed the sentiments of other Luhya leaders like former Kakamega senator Boni Khalwake who was also not happy with the fact that no Luhya politician was recognised during the Mashujaa Day celebrations.

Khalwale took to his Twitter page to protest what he termed as a breach of state protocol and mockery of Luhya people and their leaders during the heroes' day celebrations.

"Todays was a national function in Kakamega. We know! But blocking all of us from speaking after state protocol was breached has left us and our people seriously demeaned. But we are there," the former senator tweeted.

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.

When Uhuru, Ruto and Raila Met at State House - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko- The students did not make it too far after sneaking out of school

- A sugarcane plantation owner noticed the students and descended on them alongside angry villagers

- Several students were rushed to hospital with serious injuries days before the start of KCSE exams

Six Form Four students will sit their KCSE examinations with injuries after suffering a vicious attack by villagers in Nyamira county.

The students who hail from Kebirichi SDA Mixed Secondary School were descended upon by angry villagers after it emerged they had sneaked out of school premises.

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The students were busted in a sugarcane plantation by the owner

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Kenyans left disappointed over the underwhelming Moha Jicho Pevu's Dunia Gunia expose

According to Citizen, they managed to sneak out of school at night although they made a stoppage at a sugarcane plantation where they were cornered by owners after alarm was raised.

Confirming the incident, area chief Thomas Ondieki divulged the students suffered a vicious assault courtesy of the villagers.

READ ALSO: MPs tell Raila to bow out of politics, concentrate on plum AU job

One student broke his arm in the incident with the others sustaining serious injuries.

The drama did not end there as several parents stormed the school on Sunday, October 21, accusing the school administration of laxity.

Parents were particularly concerned at how easily students sneaked out of school without detection.

With the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) drawing nearer, schools have been known to take it easy on students particularly because the final term is coming to an end.

Nyamira students attacked by villagers after sneaking out of school

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Jacque Maribe was in the company of Mike Sonko the night Monica Kimani was murdered

Cases of indiscipline and ill-conduct from students are usually on the high, particularly among senior students who look to take advantage of the twilight days of their high school life.

President Uhuru Kenyatta however already sounded a dire warning against examination malpractices, promising serious consequences on culpable students, teachers and parents if found engaging in irregularities.

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Kenya's Former Gangsters Now Cleaning Nairobi City - Kenya Untold Stories | Tuko TV:

Source: Tuko.co.ke- Uhuru reportedly held a meeting with a few leaders from western Kenya a day to the Mashujaa Day celebrations

- Those who were not invited to the closed door meeting held in Kakamega angrily protested their exclusion

- Others blamed organisers of the public holiday for sidelining prominent Luhya leaders in the event's programme

A war of words has erupted among western Kenya politicians over claims that some of the senior Luhya leaders were blocked from meeting President Uhuru Kenyatta a day to the Mashujaa Day celebrations.

A section of the leaders channeled their anger to the organisers of the national holiday accusing them of sidelining prominent Luhya leaders during the event which was held at Bukhungu Stadium in Kakamega County on Saturday, October 20.

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Western Kenya politicians , among them Amani National Congress party leader Musalia Mudavadi and Ford Kenya leader Moses Wetangula in a meeting.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Boni Khalwale heavily criticised after claiming Mashujaa Day celebrations demeaned Luhya leaders

TUKO.co.ke on Monday, October 22, learnt Uhuru's meeting with all the western Kenya politicians was called off at the last minute and that the president only met a few governors from the region, prompting a backlash from those who were left out of the said meeting.

According to Kakamega County governor, Wyckliffe Oparanya, who was the host of the Mashujaa Day celebrations, the president wanted to meet specific leaders from the western Kenya bloc.

READ ALSO: Raila leaves for US just hours after landing top AU job

Oparanya, Daily Nation reported, told off those who were quarreling because they were not invited to the meeting at the Kakamega State Lodge on Friday, October 19, saying it was the president's decision not to meet all leaders from he region.

The political intrigues that played out on Friday continued even during the Mashujaa Day celebrations and days after, with some leaders and political pundits openly expressing their disappointment in the manner in which the whole event was conducted.

"On this Mashujaa Day, it is a breach of protocol and total disrespect for the people and leadership of the Mulembe nation for DP Ruto to invite Hon Raila Odinga to speak on behalf of the Mulembe nation. Would Musalia, Wamalwa, Weta speak on behalf of the Luo nation in Kisumu?" posed political analyst Edward Kisiang'ani.

READ ALSO: Raila leaves for US just hours after landing top AU job

Former Kakamega senator Boni Khalwale on his part claimed the Mashujaa Day fete left Luhya leaders seriously demeaned.

"Todays was a national function in Kakamega. We know! But blocking all of us from speaking after state protocol was breached has left us and our people seriously demeaned. But we are there," he tweeted.

READ ALSO: Ruto congratulates Raila on his new appointment after mocking his journey to Canaan

The Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) Secretary General, Francis Atwoli, was also not happy with the way the event was conducted.

Because Luhyas are cowards, there was no Luhya who stood up to demand that their political leaders be given a chance to speak before the celebrations ended...People like Musalia Mudavadi left without speaking to the people," Atwoli said.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

When Uhuru, Ruto and Raila Met at State House - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko- Orengo said Raila's new role at AU will not take away his current political status in Kenya

- He argued the new job will only enhance the ODM party leader's efforts in trying to bring peace and rule of law in the continent

- A section of Jubilee politicians had suggested that Raila retires from active politics following his new appointment

- The politicians allied to DP Ruto argued the Opposition leader would not have time for local politics and therefore should exit the scene

Siaya senator James Orengo has fired back at Jubilee party leaders calling on Opposition leader Raila Odinga to exit local politics because of his appointment to the African Union (AU).

Orengo clarified the appointment of his party leader as a special envoy to the continental union would not interfere in any way with his present position in local politics.

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Siaya Senator James Orengo has dismissed Jubilee party leaders calling on his party boss Raila Odinga to retire from active politics after his appointment as special envoy to the African Union.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Raila Odinga lands plum AU job on Mashujaa Day, accepts appointment

Reacting to the calls by the Jubilee party leaders, most of them allied to the Deputy President William Ruto, the senator said Raila's new job will not take away his leadership role in Kenya.

"The appointment has nothing to do with Raila's leadership in NASA and ODM party. It enhances his role to try and build bridges and bring peace and respect for human rights and rule of law in the continent. It does not take away his current political status in Kenya and in the rest of the world," he said on Sunday, October 21.

READ ALSO: Ruto congratulates Raila on his new appointment after mocking his journey to Canaan

As was earlier reported, a number of Jubilee party MPs had challenged the former prime minister to relinquish his position in the local politics and instead concentrate in his new assignment as the High Representative for Infrastructure Development in Africa.

Speaking during a fund-raising exercise in Kesses Constituency, Uasin Gishu County, the leaders, led by Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro, told Raila to leave local politics to the small fish because his AU position would take up most of his time.

Because he has a bigger job in the whole of Africa, he should now leave local politics to us," Nyoro said.

READ ALSO: Family of Luhya pre-independence activist ask government to uplift their living standard

Raila's appointment came at a time he is pushing for a fresh referendum to amend the Constitution, a position that a section of Jubilee party politicians, led by Ruto, are evidently not comfortable with.

Those against the plebiscite argued it was only being pushed so as to create new positions in government to accommodate the Opposition figure.

It is, however, not yet clear whether the ODM party leader would continue with his quest for Constitutional change in Kenya after landing the job at the AU.

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Kenya News: Raila Odinga - Kenya's Fuel Crisis Will Not Occur - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko- Gordon Kihalangwa said the passengers in question were on transit to Entebbe, Uganda

- The passengers were required to give reason for their visit and produce travel documents

- They neither had return tickets back to Mongadishu nor convincing reasons to visit Entebbe

- Consequently, the transit was declined and the passengers flown back to Mongadishu

- Kihalangwa said Thika MP Wainaina arrived from Dubai when the foreigners were being processed for departure

- The MP overheard one of the Somalis arguing with an immigration officer at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport

- Wainaina had alleged the passengers entered Kenya without proper documentation and were left roaming around JKIA freely

Immigration principal secretary, Gordon Kihalangwa, has denied reports that 17 passengers of Somali origin were allowed to enter Kenya without proper travel documents and left to roam Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) freely.

Kihalangwa also rubbished claims that the foreign passengers were scheduled for deportation after they failed to produce the necessary documents and reason as to why they wanted to visit Uganda.

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READ ALSO: Jacque Maribe amtaja Mike Sonko katika kesi ya mauaji ya Monica Kimani

Immigration PS Gordon Kihalangwa (L) rubbished claims bby Thika MP Patrick Wainaina (R) that 17 passengers of Somali origin were allowed to enter Kenya without proper travel documents.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Kisumu police kill one thug, in hot pursuit for two others

In a statement seen by TUKO.co.ke on Monday, October 22, the Immigration PS clarified the 17 Somalis in question landed in Kenya from Mogadishu, Somalia, and were on their way to Entebbe, Uganda.

"An aircraft, XU 528, landed at JKIA at 1300 HRS from Mogadishu with a number of passengers. Seventeen of them were meant to transit at JKIA to Entebbe, Uganda. In line with the normal security procedures, transiting passengers are required to give the reason(s) for your transiting, where they are going to stay, and produce their return ticket to their country. Whenever there exist doubts, JKIA has a multi-agency team that handles such cases. Apparently, this is the normal routine at all times," Kihalangwa explained.

READ ALSO: Authorities probing how Somali president's ex-Chief of Staff acquired Kenyan ID and passports

The 17 passengers, the PS disclosed, neither had return tickets back to Mongadishu nor convincing reasons to visit Uganda.

"Subsequently, their transit was declined and were to be flown back on the same aircraft. Their documents were secured until the next day when they were to board. The aircraft that brought them was indemfied and informed accordingly," Kihalangwa said.

READ ALSO: 3,000 illegal foreign workers risk deportation as government clears 26,000 others

According to the PS, the process of departure of the 17 passengers coincided with the arrival of Thika MP Patrick Wainaina, who was just landing from Dubai.

"It happened that one of the Somali nationals was arguing loudly, and Hon. Wainaina approached one of the immigration officers who explained to him the situation of the 17 passengers. However, he didn't seem satisfied and demanded to go to T1 upon which he was facilitated accordingly. By the time he was getting to Terminal 1, the 17 Somali nationals had left on the scheduled take-off time using the same aircraft, XU 527, back to Mogadishu," Kihalangwa explained.

READ ALSO: Crackdown on foreigners working in Kenya illegally begins after Matiang'i's 60 day ultimatum

Wainaina had accused the Immigration department of laxity claiming the 17 Somalia nationals were granted entry into Kenya and left to roam around the airport.

"We are having a serious problem in this country. I was arriving from Dubai this Sunday morning, October 21, 2018, aboard KQ via terminal 1A Kenya Airways arrival. While queuing at passport control, I see three young guys of Somali origin arguing with an immigration officer. They were persuading her to stamp their passports but what was worrying is that they were coming from the "arrived" side of the counter; meaning they were technically in Kenya without entry stamp. In fact, one of the young men confessed they were seventeen of them, roaming the airport freely," he claimed.

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Jacque Maribe, Joseph Irungu to Return to Court on October 24th - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Breaking News- The document originated from the ERC but was in KPLC's custody

- It is said to be containing details linking the accused to the case

- The prosecution team, however, said it had the document's photocopies

- Its disappearance has caused the case to stall but the court will issue directions

The commencement of a fraud case involving former Kenya Power boss Ben Chumo and other senior officials at the power distributor hit a snag following the mysterious disappearance of a crucial prosecution document.

A Nairobi court was on Monday, October 22, told that an original document with details of alleged procurement of faulty transformers was missing and only photocopies were available.

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READ ALSO: Kenyans erupt as MPs vet graft-ridden ex-Kenya Power boss Ben Chumo for plum job

Ben Chumo (r) suspended director Ken Tarus (l) are among 17 officials accused of defrauding over KSh 4.6 billion for the purchase of the faulty transformers. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Kenyans question Uhuru's decision following arrest of Ben Chumo who was appointed new SRC boss

Alex Muteti from the prosecution told the court the case was highly dependent on the document from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

The disappearance of the document, which is said to have been in Kenya Power's custody, caused the case to stall.

READ ALSO: Former Kenya Kenya Power CEO Ben Chumo facing corruption charges says he is a role model

The court will, however, issue directives on the case later in the day.

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Noordin Haji has since issued a directive for a probe to be launched in a move to establish circumstances under which the document went missing.

Chumo and his suspended successor Ken Tarus are among 17 public servants accused of defrauding the taxpayers over KSh 4.6 billion for the purchase of power transformers which turned out to be faulty.

Others linked to the case are directors of Muwa Trading company alleged to have conspired to purchase the substandard equipment.

READ ALSO: Former Kenya Power CEO Ben Chumo, two managers arrested over economic crimes

Earlier, Chumo had distanced himself from the claims leveled against him stating the ills happened long after he ceased being an employee of the power distributor.

The court had released the accused persons on a KSh 1 million cash bail, or a KSh 2 million bond and a surety of similar amount awaiting trial.

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Shosh Cecilia: Ladies Stop Dating Sponsors | Tuko TV.

Source: Tuko- The president said he will keep his pre-election pledge to Ruto

- He refuted claims the March 9 handshake with Raila had affected his relationship with the DP

- Uhuru reportedly lobbied for Raila to be appointed a special envoy to AU

- It is understood the ODM party leader poses the greatest threat to Ruto's presidential ambition in 2022

- Jubilee MPs renewed push for Raila to retire from politics following his new appointment

President Uhuru Kenyatta has reaffirmed his pledge to support Deputy President William Ruto as his successor in 2022.

The president rubbished media reports that the March 2018 peace pact he signed with Opposition leader Raila Odinga had taken a toll on his relationship with the DP.

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READ ALSO: Uhuru confirms backing Ruto in 2022

President Uhuru Kenyatta reassured Nandi people and the Rift Valley voters that he would not abandon their son in 2022 as some had alleged. Photo: Tuko.

Source: Original

READ ALSO: Opposition MPs promise to support Rutos 2022 presidential ambition

Addressing the residents of Nandi County on Sunday, October 21, the president indicated he had not changed his mind about supporting the DP and accused the media of misleading Kenyans.

"What I told you here last time (2017) is still the same. Newspapers will write things, but I do not really care what they say. What is important is your lives," he said during a fund-raising for construction of a commercial building for the Anglican Church.

READ ALSO: Jubilee will support Ruto in 2022 despite Uhuru, Raila handshake - Duale

TUKO.co.ke understands the president's assurance that he would stick to the Jubilee party's original plan which was for him to hand over power to Ruto after serving his 10 years, removed any doubts that may have been created by the handshake.

There had been concerns that Raila's renewed friendship with the president could jeopardise Ruto's 2022 presidential bid, with some Jubilee politicians allied to the DP warning Mount Kenya voters against betraying the DP.

READ ALSO: Uhuru ally stirs storm in Mt Kenya after launching veiled attack on Rutos 2022 bid

The president had been avoiding the 2022 succession talks since his swearing in for a second term on November 2017 and only touched on the thorny subject following the appointment of his bitter political rival turned friend, Raila, as a special envoy to the African Union (AU).

He and his DP reportedly lobbied for the ODM leader to take up the AU job, a move that left a section of Kenyans wondering if it was a strategy to push the former prime minister to retire from local politics.

The high profile appointment was indeed followed by renewed calls for Raila to retire from active local politics and concentrate on his new job.

Some political pundits believe the Opposition leader poses the greatest threat to Ruto's rise to power in 2022 and getting him out of the local political scene could work to the DP's advantage.

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When Uhuru, Ruto and Raila Met at State House - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko- The deal to appoint Raila Odinga to the AU top job was struck in April 2018

- The Foreign Affairs CS said Raila was appointed and endorsed by President Uhuru Kenyatta

- The ODM leader will be the first holder of the new office established to promote integration in Africa

- His political opponents have called on him to quit local politics

Foreign Affairs CS Monica Juma has revealed President Uhuru Kenyatta's key role in Opposition leader Raila Odinga's recent appointment to the African Union.

Officials behind the appointment and lobbying at the AU indicated the deal to appoint Raila was struck over six months ago.

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READ ALSO: Residents scramble for bags of rice after truck overturns in Mbale, Vihiga County

Process for appointment of Raila into the AU Commission began a month after the handshake. Photo: UGC

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Senator James Orengo tells off Jubilee MPs asking Raila to retire from politics because of AU job

In a report by the Standard, Juma said the agreement for appointment of the ODM leader was made in April 2018 when the chairman of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, visited Uhuru.

Appointment of Raila by Mahamat and the Presidents endorsement was made in pursuit of Africas integration agenda, said Juma.

Mahamat, a former prime minister of Chad, visited Kenya in April 2018, barely a month after Uhuru and Raila shook hands and pledged to work together.

READ ALSO: Crucial document in corruption case against ex Kenya Power boss goes missing

Raila was appointed High Representative of Infrastructure and Development in Africa days after meeting with the Mahamat at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa on Wednesday, October 19, where they discussed issues around Africa's 2063 agenda.

Raila will be the first holder of the new office established to promote integration, cross-border trade and regional projects, including railways and roads as well as in the energy sector.

READ ALSO: Immigration principal secretary denies claims 17 Somalis entered Kenya without travel documents

"The High Representative will work to support and strengthen the efforts of the commissions relevant departments and those of the Planning and Coordinating Agency of the New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD), within the framework of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), which was endorsed by the Assembly of the Union in January 2012," AU noted in a statement.

His political opponents welcomed and congratulated him for the appointment while others asked him to quit local politics and concentrate on developing Africa.

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

Kenya's Former Gangsters Now Cleaning Nairobi City - Kenya Untold Stories | Tuko TV

Source: Tuko NewsPrivacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.- The president told the youths to learn from the elders on better leadership

- He said youth performance in leadership positions has not shown any development

- Report by KNBS put Kenya's unemployment rate at 7.4% with a majority of youth jobless

- The president indicated improving the manufacturing sector could help create more jobs

- Youth unemployment has been linked to several social evils including drug abuse and crime

President Uhuru Kenyatta has harshly castigated the youth for misusing leadership positions and under performing when given opportunities to lead.

The president also called on the young people to learn from elderly leaders instead of crying to be appointed to positions that they end up mismanaging.

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READ ALSO: Uhuru reaffirms his support for DP Ruto in 2022 days after Raila's appointment to AU

President Uhuru Kenyatta noted the old people were performing better than the youths. Photo: UGC

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Immigration principal secretary denies claims 17 Somalis entered Kenya without travel documents

Speaking on Monday, October 22, during commissioning of modernised new Kenya Cooperative Creameries (KCC) in Sotik, Bomet County, Uhuru noted there was more development in areas led by elders than those led by youths.

"Our youths should also learn, they keep on crying every day they have no jobs saying the old people should leave positions for them to get jobs. But when we compare areas led by youths we see problems, but where the old are leading, there is development," said the Head of State.

A report by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) released on Thursday, March 22, 2018, indicated over seven million Kenyans were unemployed, setting the rate at 7.4 %.

READ ALSO: Jacque Maribe was in the company of Mike Sonko the night Monica Kimani was murdered

Out of the unemployed, over 1.4 million were desperately looking for work while others have given up job hunting with some going for further studies.

The survey painted a grim picture of growing youth unemployment, with a huge chunk of the population aged between 20 and 24 years not engaged in any work or business.

Youth unemployment has more often been described as a ticking time bomb, with young frustrated men and women resorting to crime, prostitution and others being lured into terrorism.

Jobless Kenyan youths line up to submit their job applications at a past event. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Residents scramble for bags of rice after truck overturns in Mbale, Vihiga County

When Uhuru assumed office for the second term, he rolled out the Big Four Agenda with one of the focus being manufacturing, to help create more jobs to bridge the unemployment gap in the country.

Kenyans are yet to realise the benefits of the heavily hyped manufacturing agenda as a majority are still jobless.

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

THE SAD LIFE OF DEDAN KIMATHI'S FORGOTTEN FAMILY| Tuko TV

Source: Tuko- In the surprise out of court deal, consumers were give 30 days to raise any billing queries they may have

- Kenya Power also agreed not to disconnect electricity for the consumers with billing queries during the period is over

- The utility firm further agreed to settle costs incurred by Mboya and the Electricity Consumers Society of Kenya in filing the suit

Former Law Society of Kenya CEO Apollo Mboya has opted for an out of court deal with Kenya Power in the inflated electricity bills case he and the Electricity Consumers Society of Kenya filed against the public utility firm.

Kenya Power agreed not to disconnect power supply to customers for 30 days during which those with billing queries will have an opportunity to raise them.

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READ ALSO: Kenya Power tells off city lawyer in ugly spat over backdated, inflated electricity bills

The current fight between Kenya Power and consumers, who were being represented by Apollo Mboya dates back to 2017 when the consumers started experiencing unexplained delays in token processing.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: City lawyer Apollo Mboya under fire for fighting Kenya Power

In the out of court agreement seen by TUKO.co.ke on Monday, October 22, KPLC also agreed to stick to the power tariffs approved by the regulator, Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), and set up billing query centres across the country.

According to the deal, costumers of post-paid services will have the right to have their actual metre readings weighed against KPLC's estimates to determine amount owed to the electricity supplier.

READ ALSO: Kenya Power tells off city lawyer in ugly spat over backdated, inflated electricity bills

The settlement has, however, sparked mixed reactions from Kenyans, with majority feeling shortchanged in their quest for justice against the giant power company.

Below were some of the reactions:

READ ALSO: Kenya Power opens hotline after complaints over electricity bills

The ongoing quarrel between KPLC and its consumers, who were being represented by Mboya, erupted back in 2017 when consumers started experiencing unexplained delays in token processing.

Some allegedly paid for tokens that were never generated. Others had to wait up to 15 hours before they could get back power after paying for token (a 20-digit figure that is loaded into the meter to receive electricity) through M-Pesa paybill number 888880.

Then there were those who could not understand why their power bills significantly varied from one month to another and extremely high in certain cases.

The cost of electricity was simply becoming too much to bear, so Kenyans took to social media to rant and vent their anger, forcing Kenya Power to come clean.

The company admitted there was a problem.

READ ALSO: Power blackout strikes most parts of Kenya and Uganda

It said some of the bills were estimated because it was not practically possible to read each and every post-paid meters across the country.

The power supplier also said it used third party vendors to help sell electricity tokens to customers.

The argument put forward was that the vendors helped eased pressure on the company's payment channels, which TUKO.co.ke understands handled about 200,000 transactions per day.

The public rage which was already boiling up over hiked electricity bills reached a crescendo in January 2018 when a damning report emerged indicating Kenya Power was backdating bills in attempts to recover KSh 10.1 billion loss reflected in the Annual Report for the year ending June 30, 2017.

READ ALSO: Public outrage after fresh probe unearths KSh 10.5 billion heist at National Youth Service

It was during this time that lawyer Mboya and the Electricity Consumer Society of Kenya (ECSK) also moved to court to file a class action suit against KPLC, mentioned as the first respondent, and Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) as the second respondent.

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.

Kenyans call on government to end Kenya Power's monopoly - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko.co.ke- The MP said he would seek support of Kenyans for his 2022 presidency bid

- He said he was confident he would win the seat because he has never lost in any election

- Kuria dismissed claims he was a tribalist saying such claims were only meant to taint his name

- The MP is likely to be a source of a political headache for Deputy President William Ruto

Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria has become the latest politician to declare his interest in the country's top seat ahead of the 2022 General Election.

The second time MP said he was ready to work for all Kenyans regardless of their tribal and political affiliations for better development of the country.

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READ ALSO: 17 latest photos of Zari and 5 kids which prove she's flourishing without a man by her side

Moses Kuria says he will work for all Kenyans regardless of their tribe for better development of Kenya. Photo: UGC

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Foreign Affairs CS reveals how Uhuru lobbied for Railas African Union job

Speaking on Monday, October 22, during an interview with Capital FM, the vocal politician vowed to ensure Kenyans receive better services when elected president.

"I will support myself for the presidency. Campaign for me, my symbol will be a spanner. I just want to speak my mind," said Kuria.

The controversial law maker expressed confidence in winning the country's top seat given his outstanding ability to beat six contestants to become Gatundu South MP in the 2017 elections.

READ ALSO: Uhuru Kenyatta blasts youth leadership, says older people performing better

"I had six opponents against me and I won by 93%. I know my stuff and I do not believe in losing. I am very poor at that," he stated.

The MP further revealed his political prowess saying at a very tender age he was one of the key advisors of Opposition leader Raila Odinga during the 1997 elections.

It will shock you that at 1997, I was a 26-year-old and Raila was going for the presidency for the first time. And he wanted to know particularly how the Mt Kenya region would vote and if they would support him. He commissioned two young men to give him advice and I was one of them, he recalled.

The Moses Kuria is likely to be a source of political headache to Deputy President William Ruto who has already declared he will contest for Presidency in 2022. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Crucial document in corruption case against ex Kenya Power boss goes missing

The MP dismissed those who have been associating him with tribalism saying their claims were misguided.

"The problem with the people I speak against is that they describe me as a tribalist, thief and corrupt. These people, I think their symbol is a brush, if you join them they paint you white, and when you leave them they paint you black. I am not a tribalist," he added.

The Jubilee MP is likely to be a source of a political headache to Deputy President William Ruto who has already declared to contest for presidency.

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

THE SAD LIFE OF DEDAN KIMATHI'S FORGOTTEN FAMILY| Tuko TV

Source: Tuko- The legislators walked out after their governor failed to give them a chance to address the public

- They said they had issues of concern they wanted addressed by the president

- They accused Governor Joyce Laboso of nepotism in awarding contracts for construction of Bomet University

A section of lawmakers from Bomet County walked out of President Uhuru Kenyatta's meeting in protest accusing their governor, Joyce Laboso, of undermining them after she failed to give them a chance to address the public.

Led by their senator, Christopher Langat, and Woman Rep Joyce Korir, the leaders said they had issues of concern to the locals they wanted addressed by the president.

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READ ALSO: Picha za jumba la kifahari la seneta wa Kakamega linalodaiwa kujengwa na Ruto

Bomet County legislators walk out of Uhuru's meeting accusing their governor of failing to give them a chance to address the public. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Uhuru urges KCSE,KCPE candidates to accept their national exam grades

The dramatic event unfolded on Monday, October 22, after Uhuru visited Bomet University College for official opening of the institution's Green Tuition Block.

Other legislators include nominated senator Alice Milgo, MPs Ronald Tanui (Bomet Central), Beatrice Kones (Bomet East), Brighton Yegon (Konoin), and Gideon Koskei (Chepalungu).

The legislators accused their governor of nepotism in awarding contracts for the construction of the university saying most workers at the institution were from one community.

READ ALSO: Kenyans angered by lawyer who sued Kenya Power for inflated bills after opting to settle matter out of court

After the exit from the meeting, the lawmakers went ahead to address the press as the president proceeded to officially open the Lake Region Economic Block conference.

In their address to the press, one of the issues the leaders said they wanted the president to deal with was the Mau forest evictions and the poor state of roads in the county.

On Sunday, October 21, Luhya leaders also raised a complaint after their local leaders were not given a chance to address the public during the Mashujaa Day celebrations which were held at Bukhungu Stadium in Kakamega County.

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THE SAD LIFE OF DEDAN KIMATHI'S FORGOTTEN FAMILY| Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Breaking News LatestUkraine is very interested in the greatest possible attraction of Canadian investments in various sectors of the economy.

I and Minister of International Trade Diversification of Canada, Jim Carr discussed the investments that expand the possibilities of American, Canadian and European technologies in the Ukrainian market in view of continuation of reforms in the social, pension, educational, medical fields, including the combating corruption and cooperation in manufacturing of Antonov middle-class aircraft which can be used in the Canadian market," First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Stepan Kubiv said in a commentary to an Ukrinform correspondent during his visit to Canada.

As noted, the parties also discussed "processing industry of agribusiness (both modernization and processing) and the formation of value chains."

Kubiv recalled that Canadian companies had invested "several hundred million dollars" in Ukraines agriculture and IT sector over the past two years. They showed the capacities and competitiveness of the goods as well as the effectiveness of continuation of investments, the First Vice Prime Minister said.

olUkrainian President Petro Poroshenko has tasked the government with expanding the program of subsidies and increasing funding for this program to protect the most vulnerable groups of the population.

He said this at a meeting on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the establishment of the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine, the press service of the head of state reported.

"As president, I have set a very tough demand to the government - we have to protect people, expand the subsidy program, increase the funds for the implementation of this program, so that the least protected sections of the population, as well as anyone to whom this increase is critical, are not affected by increased tariffs," Poroshenko said, commenting on the government's decision to raise natural gas prices.

The president recalled the situation with the previous increase in gas prices, when, according to him, thanks to the introduction of subsidies it was possible to compensate for the expenses for the most vulnerable groups of the population and "remove fears" regarding this decision.

"We emphasize that not a single person, not a single poor person, not a single unprotected family should feel an increase in tariffs on their own budget," the president said.

The Ukrainian government at an extraordinary meeting on October 19 supported the increase in natural gas prices for households by 23.5% from November 1. The International Monetary Fund then issued a statement that the IMF and the Government of Ukraine have agreed to introduce a new Stand-By Arrangement for the Ukrainian economy instead of the Extended Fund Facility program, which is due to expire next March.

opCanada sees the needs of Donbas as a priority of its international technical assistance to Ukraine, First Deputy Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv has told an Ukrinform correspondent during his visit to Canada.

"Minister of International Development of Canada Marie-Claude Bibeau said that the priority of her country's technical assistance is the east of Ukraine, temporarily displaced persons. We talked about women and children, as well as about opportunities for development of small and medium-sized businesses in the east, which she personally visited, and I thanked her for that," Kubiv said.

According to him, evidence of this is the funds already allocated by Canada for the development of small and medium enterprises in Ukraine.

As reported, Bibeau visited Ukraine in July. In addition to Kyiv, she traveled to a number of other regions of Ukraine, in particular, Donbas, where she saw with her own eyes the violation of the ceasefire by Russian occupation forces. During the visit, she announced the launch of a new Ukraine support project entitled "Growth that Works for Everyone: Inclusive and Shared Prosperity in Ukraine."

opDeepening the political dialogue between Australia and Ukraine will contribute to the formation of an international coalition of like-minded people.

"Like-minded people who are united by common values, belief in the strength and inviolability of international law should stand together. Ukraine is interested in deepening the political dialogue between our states. This will primarily contribute to the formation of an international coalition of like-minded people, those who support us in Europe and around the world," Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze said at the meeting with former Australias Foreign Minister Julie Bishop during a working visit to Australia, the Government portal reports.

In turn, Julie Bishop noted that Australia would continue to support the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and would do everything possible to bring perpetrators of MH17 crash to justice.

Vice PM Klympush-Tsintsadze assured that Ukraine would make every effort for this and expressed conviction that the results and conclusions of an objective international investigation would appear in the near future.

olUkrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that the dynamic development of the food industry is a guarantee of the implementation of the investment potential of the industry.

This is stated in his greeting on the occasion of the Day of Food Industry Workers, which was marked on Sunday, October 21, according to the head of state's website.

"The dynamic development of the food industry is a key to improving the quality and expanding the range of domestic goods, increasing the share of products with high added value in the structure of exports, and implementing the investment potential of the industry," Poroshenko said.

He expressed confidence that the food industry would continue to contribute to the successful implementation of innovative technologies to meet the growing needs of consumers and ensure the country's food security.

The Day of Food Industry Workers is marked annually in Ukraine on the third Sunday of October.

The holiday was established in accordance with a decree of the Ukrainian president of August 8, 1995, No. 714/95, "in support of the initiative of food industry workers, as well as trade unions."

opPrime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said that the brand "Ukraine NOW" has already begun to yield results - people all over the world find out more information about Ukraine.

"The brand Ukraine NOW has already begun to live its life, it has begun to develop and promote Ukraine, Groysman said at the forum of young leaders, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

According to him, this brand not only receives rewards, but also actively promotes the positive image of Ukraine in the world.

As reported, on May 10, 2018, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the brand of Ukraine, Ukraine Now, which was created by Ukraines Banda Agency as part of the work of the Information Policy Ministrys commission on the issues of promoting Ukraine.

iyThe overwhelming majority (69%) of Ukrainians believe that Crimea should remain part of Ukraine and they are not ready to exchange it for Donbas, according to a nationwide poll conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation.

"Starting from 2016, Ukrainians have consistently expressed an opinion that Crimea should remain part of Ukraine and the share of citizens who say so is 69% of the population of Ukraine. Over 80% of respondents in the country's western and central regions share the conviction that Crimea belongs to Ukraine, in the south - 56%, and in the east - 45%," the foundation's analyst, Serhiy Shapovalov, said at a round table meeting at Ukrinform, while presenting the results of the survey.

At the same time, an absolute minority in the south and the east supports Crimea's belonging to Russia - 3% and 10% respectively. Instead, a certain part of the population of these regions believes that Crimea should be independent (24% in the south and 18% in the east).

"Despite the great complex of problems that Ukraine has today, most Ukrainians (66%) consider it unacceptable to accept the proposal to 'swap' Crimea for Donbas, that is, to recognize the annexed Crimea as Russian 'in exchange' for Russia's withdrawal from the occupied territories of the Donbas (such 'exchange' is supported by 16%)," Shapovalov said.

A nationwide population survey in Ukraine was conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the Razumkov Center Sociological Service from August 16 to August 22, 2018 in all regions of Ukraine, except for Crimea and the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Some 2,019 respondents aged 18 years and over were interviewed. The poll's margin of error does not exceed 2.3%.

opEugene Czolij and Dalia Henke signed the memorandum of understanding between the Ukrainian World Congress and the Lithuanian World Community in Berlin on Monday.

The ceremony was held at the Embassy of Ukraine in Germany, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The highest coordinating bodies of the diasporas of the two countries agreed to establish long-term cooperation on the issues of mutual interest for the relevant communities around the world as well as to support development in Ukraine and Lithuania.

This memorandum supports the cooperation that already happens at the state level. Now it will be reflected formally in the public sector, Czolij said in a commentary to the agencys correspondent.

He is convinced it is extremely important that not only the governments, but also the people want to cooperate in the areas covered in the memorandum, primarily in provision of assistance to Ukraine in protecting its territorial integrity and in its Euro-Atlantic integration in order to counteract hybrid threats, including cyber threats and misinformation, together. The parties are ready to promote reforms in both countries, strengthen democracy as well as to cooperate on the issues that are important to the communities around the world.

Dalia Henke called the memorandum a new path towards cooperation. She believes it is very useful for the diasporas of the two countries to share experience and best practices. We will fill the document with many ideas, the head of the Lithuanian World Community assured.

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Published October 22, 2018

There is more to flying a drone than maneuvering it through backyard trees, especially when it is being used for commercially.

They are known as drones and also referred to as Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). A UAS has commercial and practical applications which are growing in demand. To meet that demand, the Delta Regional Authority created the program, Workforce Development: Training the Trainer Using Unmanned Aerial Systems.





The University of Louisiana Monroes Dr. Sean Chenoweth, Associate Professor of Geosciences, was just awarded a $90,000 grant from the DRA for "Training the Trainer" to teach people in northeast Louisiana how to operate a UAS. Once they are trained UAS operators, they can go out and train others.



Chenoweth states in the grant application, UAS operations have a broad range of applications, such as precision agriculture, infrastructure inspection, conservation, search and rescue missions. There is a need to train groups of UAS users across several industries with a limited amount of resources. The University of Louisiana Monroes Dr. Sean Chenoweth, Associate Professor of Geosciences, was just awarded a $90,000 grant from the DRA for "Training the Trainer" to teach people in northeast Louisiana how to operate a UAS. Once they are trained UAS operators, they can go out and train others.Chenoweth states in the grant application, UAS operations have a broad range of applications, such as precision agriculture, infrastructure inspection, conservation, search and rescue missions. There is a need to train groups of UAS users across several industries with a limited amount of resources.

There is incredible potential in this technology and applications for use in many businesses and industries. By moving forward with this project, we are keeping up with the technology, instead of chasing it. Dr. Sean ChenowethThe experts note multiple inconsistencies in reports, including the fact that the alleged attacker, who "committed suicide" at the scene, could not have gunned down so many victims without assistance, the experts say, explaining their point in the report.

The chain of Putins crimes committed for the sake of PR continues: the bombings of residential blocks in Moscow in 1999 and fortunately foiled explosions in Ryazan, the killing of schoolchildren in Beslan in 2004  and now, in 2018, the mass murder in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian Crimea's Kerch, where once again many children were killed.

Russian occupation forces had long and seriously trained the alleged attacker, a local student Vladislav Roslyakov, to handle firearms, according to the Information Resistance OSINT community.

He completed the latest training cycle a week before the Kerch tragedy, during the patriotic education classes in the famous Artek camp. The standard training program of the Russian patriot included live fire exercises as well as classes on mining and explosives.

However, Roslyakov arrived at Artek, having been already sufficiently prepared and trained. Such training routine was not something exceptional, invented exclusively for Roslyakov. The militarization of youths in the occupied Crimea has become massive and mandatory.

But even after such training, that young man could not have become a phenomenally skilled "special operations" expert. Killing people in practice is quite difficult, and its not just about moral aspects. There are practical difficulties, too. People being shot at from a shotgun usually flee the scene, trying to hide and stay low. Moreover, in a closed space, a building full of turns, they might as well try to attack the shooter if he acts alone.

Besides, shooting about a hundred rounds and reloading the shotgun on the move, is quite a difficult physical task, too. Also, a shotgun is not an automatic weapon and neither is it designed to be fired a hundred times in a row without proper disassembly and cleaning. The fact that Roslyakov did not see a twisted cartridge after 40-50 shots in a row is simply computer game-type fiction.

Read alsoAll victims of Crimea shooting rampage identified  media

Finally, a hundred rounds and two IEDs weigh quite a lot. In order to actively move around with this load across the building, while simultaneously firing a shotgun, being efficient enough to kill two dozen people and injuring 50 more, even assuming that half of the victims were bombed in the cafetiria, the gunman would require outstanding physique. Roslyakov did not look prepared enough for such feats at all. Meanwhile, according to the official version, he was shooting effectively and moving quickly! Besides, the question remains, how much time he actually had at his disposal to go on with that massacre.

Another question is how, living in Crimea under Russian occupation laws harshly restricting firearm possession, could that young man so easily purchase and receive permission for such a powerful weapon? Besides, the official investigation remains silent on where the alleged attacker got the explosives.

The CCTV video recently aired by Russian TV channels allegedly showing the gunman going on a rampage across the college premises was quickly deleted from the internet. Too obvious were the edits and the staging. Kerch locals who watched the video and are familiar with the attacked college premises noted that part of the scenes was filmed in another college building, unaffected by the incident, according to the official version. The falsification was spotted when people saw railings painted differently.

In the video, Roslyakov is seen sporting a clean white T-shirt. The shirt remained clean even when his body was discovered. That sounds impossible after hundreds of shots fired indoors from a 12mm shotgun. The version that he shot himself in the chin from his shotgun does not correspond to his body position and the wound inflicted. F

Read alsoPoroshenko: Crimea's PGO initiates criminal proceedings following terrorist attack in Kerch

Finally, there is no reliable information about the actions of Russian security officials who reported to the scene. And since some students in the first hours after the attack mentioned on camera that there had been automatic gunfire, later this piece of eyewitness testimonies disappeared from the media. It is also likely that most of the victims were killed by the security forces while Roslyakov was given the role of a maniac killer.

The OSINT group in its conclusion suggests that the whole incident was staged and planned thoroughly. It all boils down to the idea that Roslyakov and several teachers could be invited to participate in "counter-terrorism exercises," which allegedly were supposed to check readiness of college students to act amid a real terrorist attack, and help protect them in case of such attacks. Confused and used  most likely, on the pretext that the Ukrainian side was plotting the attacks  these people were terminated. And that was the real plan.

In the Kerch case, Russia does not yet exploit the Ukrainian or the Crimean Tatar" trace version, and this is indeed surprising. It would seem that this would fit occupation forces the most. All Moscow propaganda talking heads were ready to promote the version, with some even trying to take the initiative, putting forward assumptions and waiting for the go-ahead  but the green light never came. However, there was a short report claiming that shortly before the attack, Roslyakov had allegedly traveled to mainland Ukraine "for unknown purposes"  but this storyline has not yet developed. It is clearly being reserved for later, in case too many inconsistencies come out and a loud scandal is needed to cover up the exposed lies. Incidentally, for such trips to mainland Ukraine, Roslyakov would have to hold a valid Ukrainian passport  that's one thing. Secondly, Ukrainian border guards have not confirmed his trips.

But, obviously, the Russians could not immediately play this trump card. Direct accusations against Ukraine made at the first stage of the investigation would be ineffective. They would probably have been seen as a fact in Russia but beyond its borders they would only have boosted suspicions of Kremlin involvement, prompting the already mentioned associations along the Moscow-Ryazan-Beslan line.

Read alsoPowerful blast rocks city college in occupied Crimea's Kerch (Photo)

On the other hand, an irrational terror act with motives that are not fully explained amid ominous silence of the officials allows manipulating rumors and sowing fears among those who allegedly seek to invade the "Crimean Russian world." The invaders could also draw the attacker's connection with Ukraine indirectly, for example, through Jehovahs Witnesses (Roslyakov's mother is a member of the organization, which also flashed in Russian news), thus claiming that "these people are not of our kind  some Americans, maybe.

The general direction of Moscow's moves is quite obvious: it's further militarization of the occupied peninsula, including flooding Crimea with arms, handed out to those who have been sufficiently processed by propaganda, first of all the youths, in order to turn as many locals as possible into accomplices of the invaders. This indicates that one of the scenarios developed in the Kremlin could be an attempt to surrender Crimea to Ukraine  and an ensuing terrorist war waged by youngsters like Roslyakov. Then, the surrender will be forcedly canceled, which, according to Russians, will either lead to the recognition of Crimea as Russian territory (Russia tried to return it, but this caused local riots) or a major war against Ukraine, under the pretext of protection of Russian Crimeans, the IR group says.The more time passes since the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the more our international partners, demonstrating in words their support for Kyiv, are trying to flirt with Moscow. Each EU country has its own reasons. But these personal ambitions can play a cruel joke on them, and on us.

One of the illustrative stories in this context is the debate that unfolded in early October to return Russia to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). On October 9, PACE delegates took up a number of changes in the rules and procedures of the Assembly, which could complicate the procedure for retaining anti-Russian sanctions from January 2019. With a positive decision of the PACE deputies, Russia would again have the right to vote, and its delegates would again be able to occupy significant positions in the governing bodies of the Assembly. And, despite the fact that, as a result, the debates were crowned with success for Ukraine (the decision was not positive for Russia), this can only be considered an intermediate victory.

The thing is that, firstly, the chances for the return of the Russian Federation from oblivion were quite high, since groups of conservatives and liberals were in favor of lifting sanctions [the third and fourth groups of deputies in PACE].

Secondly, the final decision was not rejected, only postponed. Therefore, there are no absolute guarantees that at the next session of PACE they will not return to the issue again. The statements by a number of high-ranking PACE officials also support this opinion. For example, Assembly President Lilian Maury-Pasquier noted that the issue of sanctions against the Russian Federation requires a dialogue.

According to the senior researcher at the Institute of World History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Maksym Yali, today the situation in European institutions in the matter of supporting Ukraine is very different from that in 2014, when Russia actually became an outcast. The very fact that the issue was again brought up demonstrates that support for Ukraine is not as clear as in 2014. And also, the fact that the Russian Federation, through political corruption, still achieves its goals of pressure on Ukraine, he said.

In turn, the Ukrainian diplomat, head of the Maidan of Foreign Affairs Foundation, Bohdan Yaremenko, notes that in the EU everything is decided by consensus and there is not a single government that would stand against Russia sanctions. There is the idea that in fact, in various parliaments they are constantly trying to reconsider the policy of sanctions against the Russian Federation. But at the moment this is not implemented in something that would not suit Ukraine. In the EU, dialogue is the main policy tool. And there are many who believe that the exclusion of the Russian Federation from PACE is unacceptable (although now this opinion is being revised). To punish the Russian Federation and to achieve its exclusion from PACE is not the same thing for the European parliaments. For any of them except the Ukrainian one, says Yaremenko.

Flirting with Russia  a sign of weakness or cold calculation?

The Europeans have more than pragmatic reasons for seeking a compromise with the Russian Federation.

First, Russia in many countries of the European Union almost openly sponsors various right-wing political forces.

For example, in France, Marine Le Pen, who lost the election to the current president, Emmanuel Macron, along with her party, the National Front, has never concealed that she is close with Vladimir Putin. And in 2017, a number of international experts and diplomats even voiced concerns about a possible change in the political vector of France in favor of the Russian Federation.

The current Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who represents the right-wing nationalist forces, also adheres to pro-Russian views. In this regard, the scale is not surprising of the various scandals associated with the actions of Ukraine in its own territory in Zakarpattia, where most Ukrainian Hungarians live. To the extent that Hungary officially declares its intention to block all international initiatives within the EU and NATO.

In this regard, according to the expert of the International Center for Advanced Studies, Mykola Kapitonenko, if the European political parties participating in the elections can explain to their voters that the deterioration or, conversely, improvement of their well-being is somehow connected with cooperation with Russia, then there is a possibility that the pro-Russian parties will lose their positions or, accordingly, win the election.

Secondly, despite the effect of anti-Russian sanctions, many EU countries have not curtailed their business projects with Russia. One of the clearest examples of business as usual is the recent construction of a gas pipeline bypassing Ukraine, Nord Stream 2. Despite the fact that German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticizes the actions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine and supports anti-Russian sanctions with enviable regularity, Germany plans to finish construction work on Nord Stream 2 by the end of this year.

Nord Stream is one of the episodes. In Germany, they talked a lot about the fact that German companies pay too much a price for the introduction of sanctions against Russia  in simple words, they lose profits, Mykola Kapitonenko reminds.

However, according to him, if we exclude the energy sector, Russia plays a not-so-major role in the European economy.

Pavlo Rudyakov, an expert on international issues, director of the Information and Political Center Perspective, has a different opinion. According to him, after the exclusion of Russia from Europe, which took place after its actions in Ukraine in 2014, the processes of a pragmatic approach to Russia are underway in Europe. Now everything leads to the fact that many countries regard Russia as a partner in a pragmatic sense, but without an accent on deterring condemnation. The same vector can be traced in foreign policies, he says.

Thirdly, some EU countries, like Poland, for example, exploit disagreements with Ukraine on some issues to solve their own problems with the EU, try to make European mastodons take into account their opinion, thus playing up to the Russian Federation. One of the clearest examples is migration policy. In order not to accept Muslim migrants, Poland popularizes the topic of Ukrainian migrants in their own country. At the same time, they are modestly silent about the fact that this is often labor migration, which helps Poland remain sustainable at a time when the Poles massively travel abroad to make money to Germany and the UK.

Another example is historical disagreements with Ukraine, in particular, over the role of Stepan Bandera in the history of the two states. On the one hand, this serves as a pretext for Poland to block Ukraines intentions to join the EU. On the other hand, this is playing along with the Russian Federation, which doesn't even consider the idea of Ukraine's possible European integration.

What can we say, if even in a friendly Lithuania, there are initiatives to search for a dialogue and restore friendship with Russia. Thus, the former Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Vigaudas Usackas, known for his pro-Russian views, initiated a large international conference in October this year, where the main topic is a dialogue with Russia.

The main argument of the organizers of this action is that in 2018 a new geopolitical reality surfaced, where the EU and the Russian Federation have different views on a number of global developments, as the Ukraine conflict suggests. But some 20 years ago, Lithuania and Russia started regional cooperation, which helped build trust and human contacts across borders. Therefore, it was proposed at the conference to look for points of contact with the Russian Federation on a number of issues  from the topic of civic efforts to the paths of economic development...

Its a shame though that the organizers forgot the indisputable truth  attempts to be friends with the Russian bear and play up to it often end up bad. That's because the proposals to listen to the other side, that is, Russia, as a rule, are perceived by the Kremlin solely as weakness and willingness to surrender.

Solution is not to complain but to offer alternatives

All of the above testifies one way or another to the fact that Ukraines support in international organizations is at risk of disappearing over time. This is facilitated by the pragmatic approach of Europeans to both international politics and international business. And also there is the fact that in the EU, with each new election campaign, pro-Russian forces are gaining more political weight. For example, this happened in Latvia, which quite recently could be safely perceived as one of Ukraine's advocates in the EU. At the beginning of October, the pro-Russian Consent party won the elections to the Sejm.

Of course, this does not mean that Europe will suddenly start to curtail sanctions against Russia. But the trend is not that pretty. The fact is that, for example, PACE consists of delegates of parliaments of EU member states, and each delegation is obliged to include representatives of all factions. And therefore, if in any of the countries parties such as Consent in Latvia, Fidesz in Hungary or the National Front in France passes to the parliament, such parties will get their seats in PACE. Thus, the majority in PACE can very soon become pro-Russian.

Every year elections are held in several countries, the composition of parliaments changes, and we must be prepared for the fact that if not this year, then next year, the composition of political forces, including in PACE, may change, says Kapitonenko.

However, the preservation of the anti-Russian majority both in PACE and in other international organizations will largely depend on the moves of Ukrainian diplomats. A coalition of Europeans speaking in our defense is all about political slogans. Today, Ukrainian legislators have convinced their colleagues that it is better to retain sanctions against Russia in PACE. But the thing is that this coalition is not long-term, as well as on other platforms. If we fail to answer the simple question: 'Why stick to the Ukrainian agenda, support the Ukrainian principles?' the support will sooner or later fade out. If Ukraine tries to pursue a more pro-active policy in order to answer our partners' question on why they need Ukraine, we have chances for support. If we use the thesis that 'you just keep supporting us because we are at war and we implement reforms...' sooner or later such support will evaporate like morning dew, states the expert on domestic and foreign policy at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, Igar Tyshkevich.

Therefore, to protect its interests in the global arena, Ukraine needs to become more pro-active  not only to complain, but also to offer alternatives, to gain interest on the part of international partners in quality cooperation with us. Otherwise, very soon we will be forced to accept the position of losers.

Anastasia Zaremba, Iryna Shevchenko

If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+EnterUnder greatest threat in the "LPR/DPR" are "those bright characters who don't fully comply with the Kremlin's line," according to Petrenko.

Deputy Director of the Ukrainian Institute of Research of Extremism Bohdan Petrenko has said the elimination of the self-styled leaders of the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" allowed the Kremlin to create a "Pantheon of Donbas heroes" from among the eliminated terrorists.

"Those who studied Soviet history would not be surprised at how the heroes of the Civil War actually died. Most of the 'heroes' were the simply gangsters, but then myths were created around them. Kotovsky and others socialized, having come from a criminal environment, to become revolutionaries," the expert said, commenting on the anniversary of the Donetsk murder of "DPR" terrorist Arseniy Pavlov aka "Motorola," according to the Obozrevatel media outlet.

Read also"DPR" chief Zakharchenko killed in Donetsk explosion (Photo)

"They died because it's much easier to make a hero out of a dead man than from a living person. The dead will not go rape women in some village and spoil the image imposed on him. On the one hand, they eliminate the possibility of further negativization of this 'hero,' but on the other hand, they create the possibility of their glorification, as if they were terminated allegedly by the Ukrainian sabotage groups and now he is a hero  let's erect a monument to Givi, Motorola, Zakharchenko and pray to these three gods," Petrenko said.

Under greatest threat in the "LPR/DPR" are "those bright characters who don't fully comply with the Kremlin's line," according to Petrenko.

"If they are not ready, like Igor Plotnitsky, to leave their post and flee for some place beyond the Urals, they will become another hero of the Pantheon next to Zakharchenko," the expert added.The regional state administration reported that the ads were put up by unknown individuals and without relevant permits.

The police have opened criminal proceedings into the illegal placement of "Let's stop the separatists" billboards in several villages of Ukraine's Zakarpattia region.

"It was established that unknown individuals put up billboards with provocative content in several villages overnight October 20. Persons complicit in the crime are being searched for. Further pre-trial investigation is underway," the press service of the Prosecutor's Office in Zakarpattia region reported on October 21.

A criminal case was opened under Part 1 of Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine "Violation of citizen equality on the grounds of their race, nationality or religious beliefs."

The charge entails a fine of 50 tax-free minimum individual incomes or correctional labor for up to two years, or imprisonment for a term of up to five years, with deprivation of the right to occupy certain positions or engage in certain activities for up to three years or without such.

Read alsoProvocative billboards spotted in Zakarpattia amid row with Hungary

As was earlier reported, on Saturday, a number of billboards calling to "stop the separatists" were put up in Ukraine's Zakarpattia region with photos of the three leaders of the Hungarian community and anti-Hungarian calls.

The regional state administration reported that the ads were placed by unknown individuals and without relevant permits.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin commented on the incident on Twitter: "As soon as I just said about the expected provocations in Zakarpattia, those billboards mysteriously emerged there almost immediately, condemning alleged Hungarian separatism. It is important not only to condemn [the provocation], but also to find out who stands behind this."

Chairman of the Zakarpattia Regional State Administration, Hennady Moskal, called the emergence of billboards a primitive provocation of Russian special services, adding that law enforcement officials are searching for culprits who had placed them.

Hungarian organizations of Zakarpattia claimed that the incident was another evidence of an "anti-Hungarian campaign" in Ukraine.Ukrainians believe that Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and that Russia will not halt its aggression against their country anyway.

Most of Ukrainian citizens (65.8%) spoke out against the exchange of Crimea for the termination of war Russia has been waging in Donbas, that's according to a nationwide survey by Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Oleksandr Razumkov Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies on August 16-22, 2018.

In particular, respondents were asked whether it was worth "swapping" Crimea for Donbas to end the war and secure peace in the area  that is to recognize the occupied Crimea Russian territory in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian forces from the occupied Donbas and the halt of Russia's support for the so-called "Luhansk People's Republic" ("LPR") and "Donetsk People's Republic" ("DPR").

As reported, 52.7% of Ukrainians answered negatively, stressing Crimea is a Ukrainian territory. Another 13.1% of respondents also said "no" because they say Russia will continue aggressive policy against Ukraine anyway. Some 10.8% of Ukrainians consider that it is necessary to agree on any proposals that will lead to peace, even the Crimea exchange. A mere 5.2% of respondents consider this is possible if Russia pays compensation for the property Ukraine lost in Crimea. At the same time, 0.3% of Ukrainians consider other options, while 17.9% of respondents have found it difficult to answer the question.

Moreover, Ukrainians were asked if they were ready to support the renewal of financial subsidies for Crimea from the national budget in case of its return to Ukraine.

Read alsoSome 42.3% of Ukrainians believe Russian-occupied Crimea to return to Ukraine  survey

Thus, 34.1% of Ukrainians believe they are not, because Crimea should independently settle its financial issues. At the same time, 24.6% of respondents answered "probably yes", 14.2% -- "probably no," 9.8% "definitely yes," while another 17.3% have found it difficult to answer the question.

The survey was conducted across Ukraine excluding Crimea and the occupied areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. A total of 2,019 respondents aged 18 and older were interviewed. The margin of error does not exceed 2.3%.

As UNIAN reported, less than half of Ukrainians (42.3%) believe that Crimea will return to Ukraine.According to the investigation, Nahorniy's political force was supposed to take part in the election and promote Russian narratives.

The SBU Security Service of Ukraine says Ukrainian businessman and public figure Tymofiy Nahorniy was tasked by Russian security officials to create a political party in Ukraine to lobby Russia's interests.

"On the instructions of his curators from the FSB, the public figure had to create and develop a political party as a tool for promoting Russia's foreign policy interests and an element of destabilization in Ukraine," head of the SBU in Kyiv and Kyiv region Oleh Valendiuk told a briefing Monday.

According to investigators, Nahorniy's political force was to take part in the elections.

Its lobbying for Russia's interests was supposed to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU and NATO, raising the question of granting Russian language the official state status.

Ukrainian law enforcement officers showed videotapes where a businessman allegedly elaborates on how he was detained and recruited in Moscow. He has been in contact with Russian intelligence since 2013.

Read alsoAide of Ukrainian prime minister goes on trial as alleged Russian spy  media

The SBU also revealed how Nahorniy got into the investigation's spotlight.

A Russian businessman turned to the Ukrainian security forces, who was offered to have criminal cases against him and his parents closed in Russia for a bribe. Nahorniy wa allegedly among intermediaries in the dealing.

"They offered the Russian businessman, who is now on the territory of Ukraine, to fraudulently resolve the issue with the Russian law enforcement agencies by handing them significant funds. In this case, it's about EUR 500,000 and EUR 1 million," a representative of the SBU said.

Russian Prosecutor General Yuriy Chaika and the son of former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka were allegedly set to be complicit in the scheme.

The two Russians were detained at a Kyiv meeting as the money was being handed over on October 2 and October 3.

They were charged with capital fraud and arrested, with a bail set at UAH 2.5 million and UAH 15 million, respectively.

Read alsoRussian sabotage major version in ammo depot fire probe

At the same time, one of the Russian nationals was charged with spying for Russian foreign intelligence. He was arrested without being able to be bailed out.

According to Ukrainian law enforcement officers, two Russian citizens detained in Ukraine are holders of valid certificates of Russian lawyers.

Tymofiy Nahorniy is a Ukrainian businessman, philanthropist, public figure, producer, president of the Fund of Volunteers of Ukraine, CEO at the Sport-Service international company. From 2004 to 2009 he was married to a 1996 Olympic gymnastics champion Lilia Podkopayeva.

On October 4, Nahorniy was arrested to be bailed out for UAH 528,600 on October 11.

The SBU opened cases against the businessman under two articles of the Criminal Code: Article 111 (high treason) and Article 190 (fraud).

According to Nahorniy himself, he is being suspected of treason since in September 2014, he was allegedly recruited by the FSB following the Peace March rally in Moscow in which which he took part.Russian media continuously publish fake stories about Ukraines military.

NATO-equipped Polish mercenaries deployed to Donbas  this headline was emblazoned across several separatist websites last week, (Regnum, Novorossia, Luganskyi Informacionnyi Centr, News Front).

These publications cite lieutenant colonel Andrey Marochko, the representative of the so-called Peoples Police of the self-proclaimed Luhansk Peoples Republic, who during his latest briefing, announced that Ukraines military was supplementing its 53rd mechanized brigade deployed around the village of Triokhizbenka in the eastern Ukrainian Luhansk region with 30 fighters armed with NATO grade weapons who arrived on the scene speaking Polish, according to the Stop Fake initiative tackling Russian propaganda.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces press office responded to StopFakes inquiry about Marochkos claim, stating there are no foreigners in the war zone in eastern Ukraine as exclusively Ukrainian military are deployed there.

Read alsoInfowars: Russian TV channels shooting staged scenes with "Ukrainian Army weapons" near Debaltseve, intelligence says

During the same briefing Marochko went further, claiming that Ukraines military were infighting and one soldier was killed and three wounded by a grenade as a result of some latest altercation. Low morale among Ukrainian servicemen is leading to these non-combat losses, Marochko claimed.

A representative of the Ukrainian Armed Forces told StopFake that this claim is yet another complete fake. We work with all segments of our military and receive information from all units. There has been no such incident anywhere. This is an obvious fake in their (Russian) information war the press officer said.

Russian media continuously publish fake stories about Ukraines military. Recently StopFake debunked one of those fakes claiming that Ukraines army had killed a former separatist defector.Eight enemy troops were killed and another two were wounded, intelligence reports say.

Russia's hybrid military forces mounted 19 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas in the past 24 hours, with three Ukrainian soldiers reported as wounded in action (WIA).

"Three Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the past day. According to intelligence reports, eight occupiers were killed and another two were wounded," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation (JFO) said in an update published on Facebook as of 07:00 Kyiv time on October 22, 2018.

Russian occupation forces opened aimed fire from 120mm and 82mm mortars, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, and small arms to attack the defenders of the towns of Schastia, Popasna, Maryinka and Krasnohorivka, and the villages of Krymske, Shumy, Pisky, Taramchuk, Pavlopil, Vodiane, Hnutove, Lebedynske, and Shyrokyne.

Read alsoDonbas update: Militants open fire toward Mayorsky crossing checkpoint

"A fortified position of our troops near Vodiane came under fire from 120mm mortars, grenade launchers and small arms, while the positions near Krymske and Shyrokyne were attacked with the use of 82mm mortars. Moreover, the defenders of Schastia came under sniper fire," the report says.

"Since Monday midnight, Russian-led forces have attacked the Ukrainian positions near the village of Novotroyitske, using grenade launchers of various systems, heavy machine guns and small arms," reads the report.Upward of 40,000 Ukrainians are estimated to cross the front lines each day.

The outgoing deputy head of the monitoring mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) says newly compiled statistics prove that lack of political will is the only thing allowing near-daily outbreaks of violence to continue claiming lives in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

Alexander Hug, whose 10-year OSCE appointment expires this month, also said the very people empowered to halt the conflict  those who signed the Minsk agreement  could make it happen within a matter of hours, the Voice of America reported.

"Fourteen times now, both sides have agreed to recommit to the cease-fire, and every time this happens, daily cease-fire violations plummet from four digits to fewer than 10, and that's within a single day," Hug told VOA's Ukrainian service. "So, the military-technical part of this conflict can end within hours. Overnight. And this isn't speculation. We have evidenced it with our statistics based on observations made in the aftermath of recommitments."

Although OSCE reports typically reveal which side has instigated a given episode of violence, Hug said the data also show that assigning blame is futile.

"In black and white, our reports show where and by whom these violations take place," he said. "When we see heavy weapons in areas where they shouldn't be  and we've seen thousands this year alone, 45 percent in [Ukrainian]-government-controlled areas and 55 percent in [Russian-backed-separatist-controlled] areas  it's clear beyond any doubt who is responsible for the tanks, the mortars, these multiple rocket launch systems, because we see it and describe it in our reports, and yet the hardware doesn't move."

The data also show that pointing the finger in the aftermath of violence is counterproductive, and that amplifying the voices of people most vulnerable to conflict  civilians in proximity to the front lines  has been the most effective way to reduce violence and facilitate a constructive dialogue.

Read alsoOSCE spots tanks, mortars and howitzers in Russian-occupied Donbas

"We have been outlining in sometimes gruesome detail the misery and suffering of civilians along the contact line, and I'm convinced  as are many of my colleagues, if I can speak on their behalf  that only dialogue" between people along the front lines and signatories to the Minsk agreement itself "will bring about a solution to this conflict," said Hug.

"It's for the sake of civilians that this conflict must end, specifically because it is civilians that do not believe in this conflict," he said. "We talk to them, and they tell us it's not their conflict; they don't understand why it continues, and all they want is for it to end."

Upward of 40,000 Ukrainians are estimated to cross the front lines each day, Hug said, indicating that most civilians aren't heavily invested in the idea of a territorially divided country, which is how the conflict is often framed by international media outlets.

"People on the ground don't believe in the contact line," he said. "It is a line that is a harsh reality every day when they have to cross it, but in their minds it doesn't exist. There are no firm lines of division.

"And with only very few exceptions have I ever seen any hatred developing on either side of the contact line," he said, adding that that observation includes neighboring communities that have been shelled and shot at daily for years. "When you think of this fact, it's quite amazing."

David Kramer, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said even if Hug's data supporting an immediate cease-fire were sound, it wouldn't be sustainable unless the Kremlin saw that it had nothing more to gain from remaining in Ukraine.

"To be clear, the responsibility for stopping the conflict lies in Moscow," he said. "It lies with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who to this day refuses to recognize that there are Russian forces in eastern Ukraine."

Kramer, who is currently senior director for human rights and democracy at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a Washington think tank, also said increased sanctions would be vital to progress.

"Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine didn't invade Russia," he said. "So, I do think we need to see a stronger effort from the West to apply more pressure on the Kremlin and its cronies because, absent that pressure, we're not going to see Putin move.

"Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see any movement until after both the presidential and parliamentary elections [in Ukraine]," he added.Plans to increase the U.S. military contingent near the borders of Russia and Belarus do not contribute to the security of neighboring countries, according to the ambassador.

Moscow will regard any military attack on Belarus as an attack on Russia, the Russian ambassador to Belarus, Mikhail Babich, said in an interview with the Belarus 1 television channel Sunday.

The ambassador commented on the possibility of the United States setting up a permanent military base in Poland, which was discussed by U.S. President Donald Trump and his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Washington back in September, TASS reports.

Of course, this is an alarming factor, and they should not be neglected, said Babich.

Read also"Brotherly help": Do Russians want to intervene in nearby countries?

And I think here is a very important point both for our Belarusian partners and, most importantly, for all who are up to something: a military attack on Belarus will be regarded as an attack on Russia with all the ensuing consequences, he stressed.

He also noted that Russia and Belarus have "absolute mutual understanding" on the issue. "We have a regional grouping of troops and forces, and today all the components that are necessary for both defense and retaliation are in place," said the ambassador.

"Plans to increase the U.S. military contingent near the borders of Russia and Belarus do not contribute to the security of neighboring countries because neither for Poland nor for the neighboring states, where these bases are being deployed, such a confrontation will do nothing good, he stressed.

As UNIAN reported earlier, in the summer of 2016, Mikhail Babich was one of the candidates to become Russian ambassador to Ukraine. However, Kyiv refused to accept the diplomat.Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was allegedly not aware of the operation beforehand, according to the top diplomat.

Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News that the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a "tremendous mistake" and part of a rogue operation, adding that his government would punish those responsible for his "murder."

"The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority," he said on Sunday, according to CNN. "There obviously was a tremendous mistake made, and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable in any government."

Al-Jubeir said that Saudi Arabia was taking action to investigate how Khashoggi died and hold those responsible accountable.

"We are determined to uncover every stone. We are determined to find out all the facts. And we are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder," he said.

Al-Jubeir told Fox that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was not aware of the operation beforehand. "Even the senior leadership over intelligence service was not aware of this," al-Jubeir said.

Read alsoSaudi Arabia admits Jamal Khashoggi killed in Istanbul consulate

The official also said that Prince Salman was not closely tied to the people involved in the operation. Al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia did not know what happened to Khashoggi's body and has not heard any audio from inside the consulate.

He cautioned against reaching quick conclusions and told Fox to look up the timeline surrounding the U.S. role at Abu Ghraib prison, the detention center where U.S. soldiers were revealed to have beaten and tortured captured Iraqis during the Iraq War.

"These things take time," al-Jubeir said.

Finally, he offered his condolences to Khashoggi's family.

"We feel their pain. And I wish this didn't happen and I wish that this could've been avoided. Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made. And I assure them, that those responsible will be held accountable for this," he said.The Crimea occupation changed the perception of Russia both in the Baltic states, Brussels, and Washington.

Without participation in such major international unions as the EU and NATO, it would be very difficult for Latvia to retain its independence in the current geopolitical situation, according to the country's ambassador to Ukraine Juris Poikans.

He clarified that the annexation by the Russian Federation of the Ukrainian Crimea only confirmed the fact that Riga had taken a right decision to join the Alliance, Obozrevatel reports.

"In this regard, joining NATO was very, very important for us. And the EU, too. The European Union is often seen as an economic organization, but there is a very strong security component, Poikans emphasized.

Read alsoMoscow will regard military attack on Belarus as attack on Russia - Envoy

The diplomat believes that the situation with Crimea has changed the perception of Russia both in the Baltic States, Brussels, and Washington, leading them to the conclusion that to strengthen security psychologically, a certain contingent of troops is needed, which today has been deployed in the Baltics.

Again, its relatively small. But its more of a factor that NATO is serious about protecting its Allies. And its clear that this is also very important for the people of Latvia  a sense of stability, the ambassador concluded.The Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is small and is actually in an underground position in Belarus.

Press secretary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya) says the Belarusian Autocephalous Church has announced it also seeks to fight for a real, confirmed autocephaly, but it is unlikely to see success in this endeavor.

"The Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is small and actually remains underground in Belarus. Therefore, now it's difficult to speak about any recognition of this church on the part of the state. And without recognition by the state, recognition by the Ecumenical Patriarch could hardly be expected," the cleric said, according to the Ukrainian news outlet Glavred.

"As we see on Ukraine's example, it is important for the Ecumenical Patriarch to have a certified support for ideas of autocephaly not only from church hierarchs, but also from the state power," he added.The projected $500 million investment for the ships includes surface-to-surface missiles, torpedoes, ship guns and sea mines.

The increasingly strategic value of the Baltic Sea as a potential theater of military conflict between Russia and NATO is triggering fresh steps by Finland to modernize its naval forces.

Strengthening its presence in the Baltic Sea and protecting its 838-mile-long border with Russia remain two of the core pillars of Finlands national defense strategy, according to Defense News.

The countrys new vision for naval power aims to bolster Finlands open sea surface warfare and anti-submarine capability in its primary territorial Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia areas.

The reinforcement of Finlands naval strength in the Baltic Sea is being carried out under the $1.5 billion Squadron 2020 Program. Central to the project is the acquisition of four multirole, ice-breaking submarine-hunter corvettes with requisite weapons and control systems.

Its critical that Finland has a modern navy that is fit for purpose. The Baltic Sea has become a possible focal point for tension between East and West. We are dealing with a more unpredictable Russia. Increased military cooperation with partners will also see the Navy more engaged in joint international exercises in the region, especially with our Nordic neighbors and NATO forces, said Jussi Niinisto, Finlands defense minister.

The projected $500 million investment for the ships includes surface-to-surface missiles, torpedoes, ship guns and sea mines. The Navy has already issued contracts to acquire the Israeli Gabriel missile system. The delivery of torpedoes is covered under a separate order placed with Saab.

Read alsoU.S. eyes giving Ukraine Oliver Hazard Perry frigates to boost defenses in Black, Azov Seas

The contract for the Gabriel weapons was secured with competing bids from MBDA (EXOCET), Kongsberg (NSM), Boeing (Harpoon) and Saab (RBS15). Manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries will make deliveries on the agreement between 2019 and 2025.

Saab will supply its new lightweight torpedo to the Finnish Navys midlife upgrade program for Hamina-class fast-attack craft. The on-ship system integration of the torpedoes is being carried out together with Patria, which is the lead contractor on the project.

In July, the MoD authorized the FDFC to purchase the Surface-to-Surface Missile System 2020 (SSM2020). The new system will replace the navys current anti-ship missile system MTO85M, which is set to reach the end of its lifecycle by mid-2020.

The Navy plans to install the new SSM2020 Missile System on both the new Squadron 2020 class corvettes and its Hamina-class missile vessels.

Read alsoNATO prepared for 'growing Russian threat'  media

The four multirole corvettes, which are to be constructed in Finland, will replace the Finnish Navys ageing Rauma-class fast-attack missile boats and Hameenmaa-class minelayers. Both the Rauma-class and Hameenmaa-class vessels are slated to be decommissioned after 2020.

The full impact of the Squadron 2020 Program will give the Finnish navy a more solid maritime defense backbone after 2025. The new fleet is set to include the new multirole corvettes, an upgraded Hamina-class, fast-attack missile vessel fleet, as well as upgrades to the Navys Pansio-class mine-layers and Katanpaa-class mine countermeasure vessels.

The FDFC also plans to modernize surface-to-surface missile batteries and coastal units in support of the Squadron 2020 Program. The Navy expects to finalize all elements of the Squadron 2020 modernization program by 2027. This will include the delivery of all four corvettes and the completion of upgrades to existing surface vessels.The U.S. Administration identifies both Russia and China as "revisionist powers."

U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Monday that the United States intended to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons to pressure Russia and China.

Speaking to reporters, Trump repeated his contention that Russia was not abiding by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which he has threatened to abandon, Reuters said.

The Trump Administration identifies both Russia and China as "revisionist powers" and "strategic competitors" of the United States, the New York Times said.

Read alsoTrump vows to pull out of nuke treaty with Russia

"But when it comes to countering their nuclear advances and their increasingly innovative use of cyberconflict to outmaneuver their adversaries, Mr. Trump's long-term strategy remains a mystery  beyond promises to match every military buildup, and strike back hard," it said.

"Whether it was real or a negotiating ploy, Mr. Trump's declaration on Saturday that he was ready, if necessary, to plunge the world back into a 1950's-style arms race is bound to cause yet another rift between Washington and its European allies  exactly the kind of fracture inside NATO that [Russian President Vladimir] Mr. Putin has tried to create," it said.Director Health Punjab Muhammad Younis visited city to review preparation and measures against seasonal influenza, here on Monday.

MULTAN, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :Director Health Punjab Muhammad Younis visited city to review preparation and measures against seasonal influenza, here on Monday.

Chief Executive Officer Dr Munawar Abbass briefed different steps taken by the district administration during a meeting here.

It was informed that influenza filter clinic and counters had been introduced. Similarly, medicines have also been provided to the hospitals across the district. Senior doctors would be available at these counters round the clock for check up of the patients.

The Director Muhammad Younis appreciated the steps taken by health authorities. On this occasion, Vice Chancellor Nishtar Medical College Dr Mustufa Kamal Pasha and Dr Ata Ur Rehman were also present.(@FahadShabbir)

Dr. Irakli Kobakhidze, Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia, and Issa Abdullah Al Nuaimi, UAE Ambassador to Georgia, have discussed ways to further develop friendship relations between the two countries, especially at the parliamentary level.

TBILISI, Georgia, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 22nd Oct, 2018) Dr. Irakli Kobakhidze, Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia, and Issa Abdullah Al Nuaimi, UAE Ambassador to Georgia, have discussed ways to further develop friendship relations between the two countries, especially at the parliamentary level.

During the meeting, held at the Georgian parliament, Al Nuaimi conveyed the greetings of Dr. Amal Abdullah Al Qubaisi, Speaker of Federal National Council (FNC), to Dr. Kobakhidze.

For his part, the Chairman of the Georgian Parliament commended the decision of opening a UAE Embassy in Georgia, noting the importance of economic relations between the two countries. He also praised the services provided by UAE national carriers and their role in boosting tourism between the two countries.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Unknown assailants riding a motorcycle here Monday shot dead a constable and fled from the scene.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :Unknown assailants riding a motorcycle here Monday shot dead a constable and fled from the scene.

Police said, Constable Muhammad Nadeem was on way to his duty when unknown assailants ambushed him near Zafarabad Colony and fired at him.

Constable Nadeem received critical bullet wounds and was rushed to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. Police said the assailants managed to flee from the scene.

Constable Nadeem was working as a Naib Court and was a resident of Zafarabad Colony.Human Rights Minister Dr Shireen M Mazari here Monday met British High Commissioner to Pakistan Thomas Drew along with Second Secretary Political Richard Yates and discussed a number of issues of concern.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :Human Rights Minister Dr Shireen M Mazari here Monday met British High Commissioner to Pakistan Thomas Drew along with Second Secretary Political Richard Yates and discussed a number of issues of concern.

During the meeting Dr Mazari expressed her regret at not having the United Kingdom in the future as part of GSP Plus talks.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) on Monday reviewed security plan for the Majalis and mourning processions to be taken out in connection with Chehlum of Hazrat Imam Hussain (R.A) in the metropolis.

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :The Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) on Monday reviewed security plan for the Majalis and mourning processions to be taken out in connection with Chehlum of Hazrat Imam Hussain (R.A) in the metropolis.

In a meeting chaired by Director General Pakistan Rangers Sindh Major General Muhammad Saeed held at Headquarters Pakistan Rangers Sindh, it was decided to ensure the strict security of sensitive points besides mourning processions and majalis, said a press release here.

It was also decided that strict implementation of the code of conduct issued by the Sindh Government will also be ensured during the observance of Chehlum.

The meeting, attended by Inspector General of Police (IGP) Sindh, Commissioner Karachi, Additional IGP Karachi, senior officers from Rangers and other Law Enforcement Agencies, also reviewed strategy adopted for the maintenance of law and order and elimination of street crimes from the city.

The general public has been advised to cooperate with the LEAs and inform them about any unlawful, suspicious or terrorist activity, if any on Rangers Helpline 1101 and Rangers Madadgar Whatsapp No. 03162369996.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Ambassador of United States of America to Pakistan Paul Jones Monday called on Minister of State for Interior Shehryar Afridi and discussed issues pertaining to bilateral relations.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :Ambassador of United States of America to Pakistan Paul Jones Monday called on Minister of State for Interior Shehryar Afridi and discussed issues pertaining to bilateral relations.

The minister said that Pak-US relations had historical importance and Pakistan would continue its efforts for maintaining peace in the world.

He apprised the US envoy about the sacrifices of Pakistan in war against terrorism. The ambassador said that the United States regarded Pakistan's efforts against terrorism.

The minister said Pakistan's ultimate objective as a responsible nation was to serve the humanity.

The overseas Pakistanis, he said, were playing an effective role in different parts of the world.

The minister said that minorities were enjoying their rights in the country.Madagascar seeks to sign an agreement on cooperation in tourism with Russia, and launch direct flights connecting the capitals of the two countries, Malagasy Foreign Minister Maxime Dovo told Sputnik on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Madagascar seeks to sign an agreement on cooperation in tourism with Russia, and launch direct flights connecting the capitals of the two countries, Malagasy Foreign Minister Maxime Dovo told Sputnik on Monday.

"Now, I think, I will sign no agreements. It is just a talk. We are preparing for the signing of new agreements after: [in] the field of tourism, in order to open the link between Moscow and [the capital of Madagascar] Antananarivo, [to launch] direct flights. We know that a lot of tourists from Russia are traveling all over the world. We want to open this flight [connection] because tourism is a key sector for Madagascar," Dovo said on the sidelines of the Russian-African Social Forum.

Madagascar could also learn from Russia's experience in tourism and other sectors, especially given the fact that Russia's current policy is aimed at developing ties with African countries, Dovo noted.

"There are key sectors in Madagascar: tourism, mining, agriculture, infrastructure. In all of those [spheres] we have to work with Russia, which has an experience in those fields ... I know that Russia has a policy now to come back to Africa, so we use this opportunity to strengthen our relationship with Russia," the minister said.

Dovo added that he intended to have a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to discuss further development of bilateral relations.

"The bilateral relations with Madagascar are very good now, so I'm here to speak with Mr Lavrov [about the ways] to strengthen these excellent relations with Madagascar," the diplomat said.

During their meeting, the two foreign ministers will address cooperation in a number of fields, including social sector, education and security, Dovo added.

"We will speak about cooperation. In this cooperation there is economic cooperation, there will be the social, in the framework of education and health care, and we will speak about security in Africa, we will speak about security in the world and multilateral questions .

.. We will speak about reform of the United Nations, a lot of things," the foreign minister said.

According to Dovo, Africa seeks to build partnerships with countries like Russia that are providing enormous aid to the development of African countries.

"Many years of friendship between Russia and Africa include also the participation of the Russian military in Africa, which assisted enormously in trade, economic aspects. Africa needs partners who have assisted its development. We are really happy to see the long-dated friendship, which must be effectuated through the assistance of Russia," he said.

The first Russian-African Social Forum takes place in the Russian capital on Monday. The aim of the forum is to develop cooperation between Russia and African countries in such areas as investment, health care, education and ecology.

The diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 1972. As of now, there are no direct flights between Moscow and Antananarivo.

In 2015, the Russian Foreign Ministry said following talks between the two countries' foreign ministers, that Russia and Madagascar had reaffirmed their intention to cooperate in the sectors of tourism, banking, and geological exploration and defense.

In May, Russia's company Zarubezhgeologia and Madagascar's Ministry of Mining and Oil Industry signed a memorandum of understanding providing for a long-term cooperation in geological studies and exploration of mineral deposits on the island.

In recent years, Russia has been providing significant aid to developing countries, while also expanding its military cooperation with Africa. In 2010, Moscow allocated over $472 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries, while in 2017 the aid volume surged to over $1 billion, according the official statistics of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).Africa calls on the Russian government to encourage the country's private investment into the continent, Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, the ambassador of Rwanda to Russia, said on Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Africa calls on the Russian government to encourage the country's private investment into the continent, Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, the ambassador of Rwanda to Russia, said on Monday.

"We urge the government of the Russian Federation, our host, to take another step further and encourage the Russian private sector to go to Africa as the continent of investment, as the continent of our future, because the future belongs to Africa, but the future belongs to Africa with the Russian Federation," Mujawamariya said during a panel session at the Russian-African Social Forum in Moscow.

She added that Africa was taking measures to demonstrate it was genuine in its strive for partnership, and to prepare grounds for the investment.

"We are making our Africa open for investment and I want to inform our friends that if you are making friendship with Africa, you are sure that there is no hidden agenda in your friendship with Africa. So let us have a friendship between Africa and the Russian Federation without worrying," Mujawamariya said.

The ambassador also noted that Russia could help African countries through educating the continent's students in technical and polytechnic institutes.

"We need Russian universities to continue to help us by accepting our students. We need Russian universities to train hands-on skilled citizens of Africa. We wish to see another step in our relations for what is concerning education. We need the Russian Federation to open technical schools and polytechnic institutions for African students," Mujawamariya said.

She explained that African universities were preparing engineers but they needed technicians as well.

"The partnership between Russia and Africa is a partnership that shall benefit both ...We will continue a win-win partnership built on a solid foundation, and we will build a joint future of prosperity and peace on the African continent," Mujawamariya said.

The first Russian-African Social Forum takes place in the Russian capital on Monday. The aim of the forum is to develop cooperation between Russia and African countries in such areas as investment, health care, education and ecology.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

MINSK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Moscow will regard any foreign aggression against Belarus as an attack on Russia, Russian Ambassador to Belarus Mikhail Babich said.

In September, US President Donald Trump said after the talks with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda that Washington was considering setting up a permanent military base in Poland. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov characterized the announced plans as a direct breach of the NATO-Russia Founding Act.

"Any military attack on Belarus will be regarded as an attack on Russia with all the relevant consequences," Babich told the Belarus 1 broadcaster on Sunday commenting on the NATO plans to deploy a military base near Belarus.

The ambassador called the NATO plans to boost its military presence near the Russian and Belarusian borders alarming.

"We have full mutual understanding with our Belarusian partners on this issue. We have an operating regional grouping of troops and forces. All the components, needed for defense as well as counteroffensive, are ready," Babich said.

The ambassador added that the confrontation between Russia and NATO would not have any positive consequences.

Since 2014, NATO has been building up its military presence in Europe, particularly in Eastern European countries bordering Russia, using Moscow's alleged interference in Ukraine as a pretext.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2018) As many as six people were killed and 40 others injured in a blast in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, which occurred after local residents ventured into the area where the security forces carried out an anti-terrorist operation, police said on Sunday.

"Six people have been killed. We are trying to find out how it happened and what kind of explosive it was," Swayam Prakash Pani, the police inspector general, said as quoted by the NDTV broadcaster.

The Jammu and Kashmir region has been disputed between India, Pakistan and China since 1947. The state is currently divided between the three sides, with the so-called Line of Control serving as a de facto border between the Indian and the Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir.

The Indian government has been struggling with insurgency in the region since the late 1980s. New Delhi has repeatedly accused Pakistan of supporting the insurgents demanding the region's secession from India.Concurs de granturi adresat COMUNITATILOR (APL) pentru sporirea rezilientei lor la schimbarile climatice si FEMEILOR ANTREPRENOARE in vederea dezvoltarii unor afaceri prietenoase mediului(@rukhshanmir)

A group of human traffickers involved in sexual exploitation of women was detained in the Syrian capital, the Interior Ministry said in a press release on Monday.

DAMASCUS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd October, 2018) A group of human traffickers involved in sexual exploitation of women was detained in the Syrian capital, the Interior Ministry said in a press release on Monday.

Syria's anti-slavery department received information about a group of human traffickers working in a rented apartment in Damascus, according to the ministry.

"We were informed that this group was exploiting several women forcing them into prostitution," the press release read.

Police raided the apartment and detained four women and a man. Women confessed they were involved in prostitution.Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Hala Zawati, and Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, on Sunday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) here to boost cooperation in training personnel and exchanging expertise in the field of gas production.

AMMAN, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Hala Zawati, and Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, on Sunday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) here to boost cooperation in training personnel and exchanging expertise in the field of gas production.

During the signing ceremony, Zawati stressed the importance of the agreement to benefit from Egypt's "accumulated" expertise in the production of oil and natural gas, and highlighted the Kingdom's willingness to share its own expertise in the field of renewable energy.

Under the MoU, Egyptian skilled workers will arrive to Jordan to train cadres in the oil and gas fields, who will also benefit from the training centers of Egyptian petroleum companies, she added.

For his part, El Molla expressed her country's willingness to further expand the joint partnership in the field of natural gas, and to offer services by various Egyptian companies in this field to Jordanian manpower.

The two sides also discussed ways to benefit from the Egyptian expertise in supplying natural gas to industries and to follow up implementation of the previous agreements between the two countries,and affirmed resumption of pumping Egyptian gas to Jordan early 2019.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Madagascar seeks to sign an agreement on cooperation in tourism with Russia, and launch direct flights connecting the capitals of the two countries, Malagasy Foreign Minister Maxime Dovo told Sputnik on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Madagascar seeks to sign an agreement on cooperation in tourism with Russia, and launch direct flights connecting the capitals of the two countries, Malagasy Foreign Minister Maxime Dovo told Sputnik on Monday.

"Now, I think, I will sign no agreements. It is just a talk. We are preparing for the signing of new agreements after: [in] the field of tourism, in order to open the link between Moscow and [the capital of Madagascar] Antananarivo, [to launch] direct flights. We know that a lot of tourists from Russia are traveling all over the world. We want to open this flight [connection] because tourism is a key sector for Madagascar," Dovo said on the sidelines of the Russian-African Social Forum.

Madagascar could also learn from Russia's experience in tourism and other sectors, especially given the fact that Russia's current policy is aimed at developing ties with African countries, Dovo noted.

"There are key sectors in Madagascar: tourism, mining, agriculture, infrastructure. In all of those [spheres] we have to work with Russia, which has an experience in those fields ... I know that Russia has a policy now to come back to Africa, so we use this opportunity to strengthen our relationship with Russia," the minister said.

Dovo added that he intended to have a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to discuss further development of bilateral relations.

"The bilateral relations with Madagascar are very good now, so I'm here to speak with Mr Lavrov [about the ways] to strengthen these excellent relations with Madagascar," the diplomat said.

During their meeting, the two foreign ministers will address cooperation in a number of fields, including social sector, education and security, Dovo added.

"We will speak about cooperation. In this cooperation there is economic cooperation, there will be the social, in the framework of education and health care, and we will speak about security in Africa, we will speak about security in the world and multilateral questions ... We will speak about reform of the United Nations, a lot of things," the foreign minister said.

The first Russian-African Social Forum takes place in the Russian capital on Monday. The aim of the forum is to develop cooperation between Russia and African countries in such areas as investment, health care, education and ecology.

The diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 1972. As of now, there are no direct flights between Moscow and Antananarivo.

In 2015, the Russian Foreign Ministry said following talks between the two countries' foreign ministers, that Russia and Madagascar had reaffirmed their intention to cooperate in the sectors of tourism, banking, and geological exploration and defense.

In May, Russia's company Zarubezhgeologia and Madagascar's Ministry of Mining and Oil Industry signed a memorandum of understanding providing for a long-term cooperation in geological studies and exploration of mineral deposits on the island.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

NATO, the European Union and the US on Saturday hailed a Macedonian parliament vote as another step toward ending a decades-long name row with Greece that takes the small country closer to joining their Western clubs.

Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Oct, 2018 ) :NATO, the European Union and the US on Saturday hailed a Macedonian parliament vote as another step toward ending a decades-long name row with Greece that takes the small country closer to joining their Western clubs.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini welcomed the close vote late Friday to start the process of renaming the country North Macedonia -- a move that EU and NATO member Greece also hailed.

"It's up to the government & political leaders to complete national procedures on the name agreement & seize this historic opportunity to bring the country into #NATO," Stoltenberg tweeted after the vote.

"We now expect the national procedures for the implementation of the agreement to continue without any delays, towards the adoption of the constitutional changes," Mogherini and fellow EU official Johannes Hahn said in a statement.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert welcomed the decision by Macedonia's parliament "to initiate the constitutional changes needed to implement" the agreement with Greece.

She called it an "historic opportunity to advance stability, security and prosperity throughout the region.

" Amendments will now be drafted in the capital Skopje to incorporate the new name into the constitution, after which another parliamentary vote will be required to enshrine the changes.

Under the accord, which Prime Minister Zoran Zaev struck with his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras in June, the Balkan state would rename itself North Macedonia. In exchange, Athens has promised to stop blocking its entry into NATO and the EU.

Greece has stood in Macedonia's way for 27 years in protest at the country's name, which it argues is an encroachment on its own province called Macedonia.

Mogherini and Hahn, the European commissioner who oversees talks to bring new members into the 28-nation bloc, said the vote underscored the determination and courage of both sides to resolve their long dispute.

"This is a truly unique opportunity for decisively moving the country forward on its European Union path as well as for reconciliation in the region," Mogherini and Hahn said.

"The European Union will continue to fully support and accompany the country, all its citizens and its institutions."A Peruvian court postponed Sunday a ruling on a prosecutor's demand to put opposition leader Keiko Fujimori in preventive detention for 36 months, which she called a conspiracy to "bury" her presidential hopes

Lima, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :A Peruvian court postponed Sunday a ruling on a prosecutor's demand to put opposition leader Keiko Fujimori in preventive detention for 36 months, which she called a conspiracy to "bury" her presidential hopes.

Anti-corruption prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez had asked the court to hold Fujimori and 11 others for the lengthy period as his team investigates who benefited from millions of Dollars in campaign bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

However, Sunday's hearing was adjourned by Judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho after defense lawyers said the prosecution had failed to hand over requested documents, and would need more time to make their case.

The judge said he would give "24 hours to the prosecution to comply with the request" and then call a new hearing.

Fujimori, leader of the opposition Popular Force party, left the courthouse smiling and waving to photographers beside her husband, Mark Vito.

"Prison is for the guilty, not for the accused," she told a press conference Sunday night.

"How do they expect us to defend ourselves if we still do not know what we are accused of?" Fujimori added.

The judge, however, rejected her lawyer's demand that he recuse himself so the case could be transferred to another court.

He is the same judge that earlier this month allowed Lopez's request to hold Fujimori in preventive detention for 10 days.

- Case an effort 'to bury me' - Peru's constitution allows for suspects to be held without trial for up to 36 months in complex cases such as the Odebrecht investigation, which involves tracing millions of dollars in illicit payments.

It also ensures that suspects cannot interfere with evidence or witnesses in an ongoing investigation.

Acceding to the prosecutor's request would all but end Fujimori's 2021 presidential chances, after she lost runoffs in 2011 and 2016.

Fujimori said the prosecutor and the judge were conspiring against her. Both have gained notoriety in Peru for a string of anti-corruption prosecutions against top politicians.

"I feel there is a conspiracy between prosecutor Perez, representing the Prosecutor's Office, and Judge Concepcion Carhuancho," she told the Peru21 newspaper.

"Every minute, there is fake news, a lie about our party and my person.

"They are trying to get me out of politics, bury me," she said.

The 43-year-old daughter and political heir to disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori, Keiko has increasingly come under the spotlight as prosecutors investigate millions of dollars in illicit campaign contributions to several former presidents.

"As a father, I only ask for a fair trial for my daughter, nothing more," said the 80-year-old former president, whose humanitarian pardon for crimes against humanity was revoked by a court last month and who is once again in hospital.British-Pakistani Chief Executive Officer (CEO)/president of PETRA Global Energy Group (United Kingdom,), Sheikh Rehman has called for exploiting rich potential of renewable energy resources of Pakistan to overcome growing energy shortages in the country.

LONDON, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Oct, 2018 ) :British-Pakistani Chief Executive Officer (CEO)/president of PETRA Global Energy Group (United Kingdom,), Sheikh Rehman has called for exploiting rich potential of renewable energy resources of Pakistan to overcome growing energy shortages in the country.

Talking to APP, here on Monday, he said that Pakistan could attract huge investments in energy sector including the alternative and renewable energy resources by further creating conducive investment environment to the investors for the socio-economic development of Pakistan.

Foreign investors were keen to invest in various sectors of economy including energy sector in Pakistan provided them conducive business environment and facilities, he remarked.

He said that Pakistan could overcome its existing power shortage by exploiting its rich energy resources including hydel, solar, waste-to-energy wind and other resources.

Highlighting the technology of waste-to-energy from the waste was the process through which, he said that it was the heat generated from the Primary treatment of waste or processing of waste into a fuel source.

Sheikh Rehman urged the overseas Pakistanis and other foreign investors to take benefit from the solar, waste-to-energy and hydro generation projects being offered in Pakistan.

He said that waste-to-energy generation has great potential in the world including Pakistan.

He said that his PETRA Energy group has planned to install a 120MW waste-to-energy project in Ghana, while it could also wanted to make investment in this filed in Pakistan too.

He lauded the services of Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB) of Pakistan for attracting foreign investments in the renewable energy resources and emphasized for further activating/accelerating the role of the board for the benefit of the country.

He also commended the services of Dr Basharat, former CEO of AEDB, a foreign expert in energy sector, and demanded that he should be re-appointed as its CEO for the benefit of the country.

It may be mentioned here that Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) was the sole representing agency of the Federal Government that was established in May 2003 with the main objective to facilitate, promote and encourage development of Renewable Energy in Pakistan and with a mission to introduce Alternative and Renewable Energies (AREs) at an accelerated rate.

The administrative control of AEDB was transferred to Ministry of Water and Power in 2006. The Government of Pakistan has inter alia mandated AEDB to:- --Implement policies, programs and projects through private sector in the field of ARE -- Assist and facilitate development and generation of ARE to achieve sustainable economic growth, --Encourage transfer of technology and develop indigenous manufacturing base for ARE Technology, --Promote provision of energy services that are based on ARE resources, --Undertake ARE projects on commercial scale (AEDB Act 2010).

The Federal Government established AEDB as a statutory organization by announcing and promulgating the AEDB Act in May 2010. The Act bestowed upon AEDB the authorities and the responsibilities for the promotion and development of AREs.(@FahadShabbir)

Moscow is planning to continue helping the Central African Republic in rebuilding its national armed forces by sending 60 more military advisers and a second batch of military supplies to the African country, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Moscow is planning to continue helping the Central African Republic in rebuilding its national armed forces by sending 60 more military advisers and a second batch of military supplies to the African country, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.

"Based on traditional friendship and cooperation between Moscow and Bangui, Russia has decided to provide free-of-charge military-technical assistance to the partners, which is carried out in strict compliance with the requirements of the UN Security Council sanctions regime," the ministry said in a statement.

According to the statement, Moscow supplied the car army in the beginning 2018 with a batch of small arms and ammunition while sending 175 military advisers to train CAR servicemen. Up to 1,000 CAR military personnel has received the necessary training by Russian instructors so far.

"We intend to continue to provide Bangui with the necessary assistance in rebuilding national armed forces. With the approval of the relevant UN Security Council Committee we are planning sent 60 additional Russian advisers and the second batch of military equipment to the CAR," the statement said.The Russian Orthodox Church calls on Constantinople to apologize for the damage that its decision to grant independence to the Ukrainian non-canonical church has inflicted on the orthodoxy of Ukraine and the whole world, the spokesman for Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) The Russian Orthodox Church calls on Constantinople to apologize for the damage that its decision to grant independence to the Ukrainian non-canonical church has inflicted on the orthodoxy of Ukraine and the whole world, the spokesman for Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill.

On October 8, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to completely "break the Eucharistic communion" with the Patriarchate of Constantinople after the latter launched preparations for granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

"This path can be abandoned very quickly by dialogue. There is only one factor Constantinople's realization of the fallaciousness of its actions and decisions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and its Synod and apologies for those actions that have already caused significant damage to the orthodoxy of the world and the future of the orthodoxy in Ukraine," Alexander Volkov said.BELGRADE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Russia has not changed its position on the constitutional name of Macedonia, the Russian embassy in Macedonia said.

On Friday, the Macedonian parliament passed amendments to the country's constitution that allow the state to change its name to the Republic of North Macedonia. A total of 80 lawmakers out of 120 voted in favor of the name change securing the majority required to pass the bill.

"Russia recognized the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name more than 26 years ago and is not changing its position [on the issue]," the embassy wrote on its Twitter page on Sunday.

The new name will allow the Balkan state to join NATO and the European Union, the process that Greece has been blocking over fears that the former Yugoslav republic might try to claim its region under the same name.

The agreement on changing Macedonia's name was signed by Athens and Skopje in June.Africa calls on the Russian government to encourage the country's private investment into the continent, Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, the ambassador of Rwanda to Russia, said on Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Africa calls on the Russian government to encourage the country's private investment into the continent, Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, the ambassador of Rwanda to Russia, said on Monday.

"We urge the government of the Russian Federation, our host, to take another step further and encourage the Russian private sector to go to Africa as the continent of investment, as the continent of our future, because the future belongs to Africa, but the future belongs to Africa with the Russian Federation," Mujawamariya said during a panel session at the Russian-African Social Forum in Moscow.

She added that Africa was taking measures to ensure it was genuine in its strive for partnership.

"We are making our Africa open for investment and I want to inform our friends that if you are making friendship with Africa, you are sure that there is no hidden agenda in your friendship with Africa. So let us have a friendship between Africa and the Russian Federation without worrying," Mujawamariya said.

The first Russian-African Social Forum takes place in the Russian capital on Monday. The aim of the forum is to develop cooperation between Russia and African countries in such areas as investment, health care, education and ecology.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic (CAR) has conducted its first meeting, deputy spokesperson for UN Secretary-General, Farhan Haq, said on Monday.

UNITED NATIONS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd October, 2018) The Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic (car) has conducted its first meeting, deputy spokesperson for UN Secretary-General, Farhan Haq, said on Monday.

"Our colleagues in the UN Mission in the Central African Republic, MINUSCA, report that the Special Criminal Court of the Central African Republic held its inaugural session today in Bangui," Haq said at a briefing.

The institution is a national court, though a number of international magistrates and court personnel are included in its composition, the spokesperson noted.

"The court is expected to play a leading role in ending a prevailing culture of impunity in the country for serious international crimes, in particular those committed against civilians," he concluded.

In early October, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Rule of Law and Security Institutions in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations Alexander Zuev told Sputnik in an interview the Central African Republic had approved the law creating the court earlier in the year. According to Zuev, exclusiveness of this court lies in the fact that it is subject not only to local laws, but to international laws as well, as it has been established under the UN Security Council's resolution and receives funding from the UN budget.

The Central African Republic has been destabilized by a conflict between the Muslim armed group Seleka, Christian militias and the government since 2013, when the country's then president Francois Bozize was overthrown.The majority of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's clergy will remain faithful to the canonical church, though there might be few isolated cases of joining the Ukrainian non-canonical church, Alexander Volkov, the spokesman for Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, said on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) The majority of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's clergy will remain faithful to the canonical church, though there might be few isolated cases of joining the Ukrainian non-canonical church, Alexander Volkov, the spokesman for Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, said on Monday.

"The absolute majority of the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church supported, support and will support their Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is their maternal church that gave them birth, cheirotonia [the laying on of hands].

I am convinced that any treachery of the clergy is out of question, and if, God forbid, we hear about some single, isolated cases of this kind, it will certainly cause deepest regret and sorrow," Volkov told a press conference at the International Information Agency Rossiya Segodnya.

The clergyman noted that he was ready to express "the strongest belief that the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's clergy will remain faithful to the canonic Orthodox church."UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is discussing the appointment of a new UN special envoy for Syria with Damascus, Russian Deputy Foreign Mini

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is discussing the appointment of a new UN special envoy for Syria with Damascus, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Monday.

Incumbent UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura announced on Wednesday he would quit his post in the last week of November for personal reasons.

The diplomat has been working as the special envoy for the crisis-torn country since 2014.

"The general-secretary is addressing the issue in coordination with the Syrian government," Bogdanov told reporters.

When asked whether there were any candidates considered for the position, the deputy minister noted that "there are different Names."The United States is concerned over the caravan of illegal migrants heading from Central America toward the US border through Mexico, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday, stressing that Washington would not allow them to enter the country.<

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) The United States is concerned over the caravan of illegal migrants heading from Central America toward the US border through Mexico, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday, stressing that Washington would not allow them to enter the country.

Late on Sunday, US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that the United States would turn away the migrants who managed to cross the Mexico-Guatemala border if they fail to get asylum in Mexico first, adding that efforts were being made to prevent the illegal migrants from crossing the US border.

"Many migrants are attempting to transit these countries and in the process are violating their sovereignty, their laws, and their procedures. As President Trump has stated, consistent with U.S. law, the United States will not allow illegal immigrants to enter or remain in the United States," Pompeo said in a statement published by the US Department of State.

The official added that the United States was also concerned over the fact that the migrants could be exploited by human traffickers, as well as over the acts of violence provoked by some of the asylum seekers.

"We are concerned that these migrants may be victimized by human smugglers or others who would exploit them.

We also are deeply concerned by the violence provoked by some members of the group, as well as the apparent political motivation of some organizers of the caravan," he said.

Pompeo also said that the United States was prepared to help Mexico in dealing with migrants arriving in the country, in cooperation with the United Nations.

"We welcome the Government of Mexico's collaboration with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to address refugee and migration issues in the region, including the influx of people arriving in Mexico. The United States stands ready to assist the Government of Mexico in this effort," Pompeo said.

On Thursday, Trump already threatened to close the US southern border with Mexico and deploy the US military to prevent the caravan from entering the United States.

According to media reports, the caravan of migrants from Honduras started moving toward the United States, where they hope to get asylum, through Guatemala and Mexico earlier in October. Around 3,000 migrants tried to illegally cross the Guatemala-Mexico border on Friday, some of whom eventually managed to get into Mexico and apply for asylum there. Media reported on Sunday, that some of the migrants started marching north of the Mexican border with Guatemala.US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will arrive for an official visit in Uzbekistan on Monday, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry told Sputnik.

TASHKENT (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will arrive for an official visit in Uzbekistan on Monday, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry told Sputnik.

"US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross arrives for a visit in Tashkent on October 22," the ministry's spokesperson said.

The US delegation is going to be received by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

During the visit Ross will take part in the US-Uzbek business forum and hold talks with Uzbek officials in Tashkent, according to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry.Primary  Any dominant Gleason pattern 4 and/or 6 mm or more of any cancer Secondary 1  Any secondary Gleason pattern 4 and/or 4 mm or more of any cancer Secondary 2  Any Gleason pattern 4

Munich, Germany (UroToday.com) Dr. Mark Emberton, gave a discussion on the diagnosis and treatment of localized prostate cancer. According to Dr. Emberton, a renowned urologist, based in London, UK, the most important event in localized prostate cancer in the last decade, in terms of early disease risk stratification, is the introduction of imaging into the diagnostic pathway to confer location. The incorporation of imaging in the diagnostic process has provided us with a vast amount of information that we did not have before. This includes location, volume, multiplicity, and probability.The first attempt at prostate MRI had occurred more than 30 years ago in 1982, but the resolution of MRI at that time was not able to provide accurate and user-friendly information. With the improvement of technology, the resolution of MRI used today is quite exceptional, providing us with accurate and usable imaging. Correlating the results of prostate MRI with the pathologic results of radical prostatectomy has enabled us to learn the attributes of prostate MRI, demonstrating a sensitivity of 90%, specificity of 88%, pa positive predictive value of 77%, and negative predictive value of 95% for a tumor measuring 0.5 cc on prostate MRI.In 2013 a multidisciplinary team met and formed the START consortium, creating the standards for reporting MRI targeted biopsy, and formulating a new language for reporting prostate MRI results. There have been many studies attempting to explore the role of prostate MRI before a prostate biopsy, with a large proportion of them demonstrating positive results (Figure 1). In 2016 the first prospective study was published comparing MRI imaging vs. standard transrectal ultrasound-guided (TRUS) biopsy.In this study, all patients were biopsy naive, with a PSA of less than 15 ng/dl, with a normal digital rectal examination. Patients were randomized to either a regular TRUS biopsy or to a prostate MRI first. A total of 223 patients were randomized. The results demonstrated that the overall and clinically significant cancer detection rates were 51% and 44% vs. 30% and 18% in the MRI and standard TRUS arms, respectively.In the PROMIS study, the diagnostic accuracy of multiparametric MRI and TRUS were compared, using a transperineal template biopsy for confirmation.Three definitions of the clinically meaningful endpoints within PROMIS include:The results in PROMIS demonstrated that any cancer was found in 71% of patients, while clinically significant cancer was diagnosed in 40% of patients. The study showed that MRI had 93% sensitivity. Standard TRUS biopsy misses all Gleason patterns of cancer in an equal manner, while MRI misses mainly Gleason 3 pattern. The association of PIRADS score and cancer status in the MRI arm of the PRECISION trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018, is shown in figure 2. This trial prospectively randomized patients and compared standard TRUS biopsy to MRI targeted biopsy, only if the MRI was positive.Figure 1  Prostate MRI studies:Figure 2  Association between PIRADS score and cancer status in the MRI arm of the PRECISION trialAccording to the PRECISION study, an MRI targeted biopsy strategy resulted in fewer men undergoing biopsy, fewer needle deployments, more clinically significant cancer diagnosed (38% vs. 26%), less clinically insignificant cancer detected (9% vs. 22%), and fewer 30-day patient-reported complications. The PRECISION trial demonstrated that in biopsy naive men, with a clinical suspicion of prostate cancer, prebiopsy MRI and MRI targeted biopsy in a sub group of men appeared to be a superior strategy when compared to the existing standard of care.Imaging has also helped us plan treatment with radiotherapy in a more accurate way. Moreover, it enables to pinpoint the required dissection in radical prostatectomy and understand where a higher risk of extraprostatic disease might exist and to deal with it appropriately. Furthermore, MRI imaging is allowing focal therapy for prostate cancer to be more accurate and has improved its outcomes.Dr. Emberton concluded his talk, providing some information on focal therapy of prostate cancer. In a multicenter study of 5-years outcomes following focal therapy in treating clinically significant localized prostate cancer, that was recently published, the results seemed very encouraging. In this study, 72% of the patients had Gleason 3+4 disease, and 87% of the patients were either intermediate or high-risk patients according to the DAmico risk classification. Although the follow-up for prostate cancer was relatively short, the 5-year failure-free survival rates were 88% for intermediate-risk disease and 87% for Gleason 7 disease. The greatest advantage of focal therapy according to Dr. Emberton, is the low percentage of adverse events, compared to that encountered in definitive radical treatment.Presented by: Mark Emberton, Professor of Interventional Oncology, Division of Surgery and Interventional ScienceUniversity College Hospital, London, Great Britain, UCLReferences:1. Stein and SMITH BJUI 19822. Villers A et al. J Urol 2006 3. Porpiglia F et al. Eur Urol 2016 4. Ahmed et al. LANCET 2017 5. Kasivisvanathan V et al. NEJM 2018 6. Guillaumier S et al. Eur Urol 2018 Written by: Hanan Goldberg, MD, Urologic Oncology Fellow (SUO), University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre @GoldbergHanan at the 2018 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress (#ESMO18), October 19-23, 2018, Munich GermanyMunich, Germany (UroToday.com) The oligometastatic disease has a variety of definitions, with some supporting the definition of up to five extra-pelvic metastatic lesions. The oligometastatic disease state is presumed to be an intermediate stage between localized disease and widespread metastases. Nowadays, there are improved diagnostic methods that enable us to increase the diagnostic accuracy of oligometastatic disease. There have been several retrospective studies analyzing the impact of various interventions for this disease state, including local or metastases directed radiotherapy and radical prostatectomy.



The oligometastatic disease can be divided into to subtypes:





Synchronous up front/denovo oligometastatic disease Metachronous oligometastatic prostate cancer

The older standard imaging techniques that were used in the past were most probably not specific or sensitive enough to diagnose these oligometastatic lesions accurately enough. The newer advanced imaging techniques, such as PET-PSMA scans, will help us to identify better and quantify the number of lesions.



Dr. Bossi moved on to discuss the logic and implications of treating the primary tumor in patients with synchronous up from denovo oligometastatic disease. The logic behind the treatment stems from various reasons, including analogy with other cancers, where cytoreductive treatment is standard of care, the thought that the primary tumor causes seeding of tumor cells, possible intra-tumoral synthesis of testosterone, and the resulting reduction of circulating tumor cells if the primary tumor is treated. In a large retrospective population-based study, treatment of the primary tumor resulted in improved overall survival (Figure 1)1. However, in a case-control prospective study, no benefit was witnessed from cytoreductive prostatectomy in patients with low-volume bone metastases2.



In the prospective HORRAD trial, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) with concurrent radiotherapy was compared to ADT alone in patients with primary bone metastases3. This trial demonstrated no difference in the median survival, with 45 months in the radiotherapy group vs. 43 months in the control group, with a hazard ratio of 0.90, p =0.356. In a subgroup analysis of patients with PSA less than the median of 142 ng/mL, Gleason score <= 8, and less than five osseous metastases  no difference was shown in the overall survival. However, there was a separation of the Kaplan Meyer curves at two years follow-up, suggesting that with longer follow-up, a significant difference could be apparent. The limitations of this study include the fact that all patients had a high metastatic burden. Therefore, they were not exactly representative of the ideal oligometastatic patients. Furthermore, the selection of these patients was based solely on a bone scan  and there is no data on the status of the lymph nodes or visceral metastasis.







Figure 1  Improvement in overall survival resulting from treatment of the primary tumor in oligometastatic disease:



The PEACE-1 GETUG EROTC European phase 3 trial of abiraterone +/- docetaxel and local radiotherapy in patients with denovo metastatic prostate cancer, is an ongoing study with multiple arms, as seen in figure 2. The primary endpoints include overall survival and progression-free survival. Hopefully, this study will be able to give us more data on the effect of treatment of the primary tumor in oligometastatic patients.







Figure 2  PEACE 1 study design:



There has been some concern that radical prostatectomy in oligometastatic patients might confer worse adverse event profile. A multicenter retrospective study analyzed the perioperative outcomes of 106 patients in six high-volume centers, who underwent radical prostatectomy for distant metastatic prostate cancer at presentation4. The results demonstrated that 79.2% of patients did not suffer any complications; but the positive-margins rate was present in 53.8% of the patients, lymphocele was present in 8.5% of patients, and wound infections were in 4.7% of patients. These percentages were significantly higher than those reported in surgeries performed for standard indications for localized disease.



Next, Dr. Bossi moved on to discuss the metastases directed treatment of patients with metachronous metastatic prostate cancer. Despite advancements in the field of imaging, the biggest problem we have in oligometastatic patients is the underestimation of the number and volume of metastatic lesions with currently available imaging modalities5. Even when using the advanced PET-PSMA imaging, the positivity rate of diagnosis ranges from 11.3%-58.3% and 11%-61.5% in PSA less than 0.2 ng/ml, and PSA less than 0.5 ng/ml, respectively, as seen in figure 3.







Figure 3  Positivity rate of diagnosing metastatic lesion using PET-PSMA scans:





The STOMP trial6, which was a multicenter, randomized, phase II study, analyzed patients with asymptomatic prostate cancer with biochemical recurrence after primary treatment with curative intent, and three or fewer extracranial metastatic lesions on choline positron emission tomography. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to either surveillance or MDT of all detected lesions (surgery or stereotactic body radiotherapy). A total of 62 patients were enrolled. At a median follow-up time of 3 years, the median ADT-free survival was 13 months for the surveillance group and 21 months for the MDT group (hazard ratio, 0.55, p = 0.08). The authors concluded that ADT-free survival was longer with MDT than with surveillance alone for patients with oligo-recurrent prostate cancer.



Dr. Bossi concluded his talk, stating that we still lack meaningful level one evidence and cannot accurately answer the question of whether treatment of patients in the oligometastatic disease is prudent. As a prospective level one evidence continues to flow soon, more data will be available to formulate proper treatment strategies.





Presented By: Alberto Bossi, M.D., Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute, Villejuif, France



References:

1. Culp SH et al. Eur Urol 2014

2. Steruber Eur Urol Focus 2017

3. Boeve LMS et al. Eur Urol 2018, in press

4. Sooriakumaran et al. Eur Urol 2016

5. Fossati et al. AUA 2018Shortwave Frequency Changes for the English Africa Service starting on 28 October 2018 to March/April 2019

Daylight saving time in Rome

We wish to inform listeners that with the end of Daylight Saving Time in Rome on Sunday 28th October, there will be changes in the time and broadcast frequencies of the English Africa Service.

The programme will be going on air one hour earlier at 16.30 UTC (GMT) on the following shortwave frequencies: 11625 kHz (25mb) and 13830 kHz (21mb)

It will be repeated at 20.00 hours UTC on 6010 kHz (49mb) and the 7365 kHz (40 mb).

Listeners in Rome

For listeners in Rome and the Vatican who have a digital radio receiver, the English Africa Programme can be heard on Vatican News World Channel on digital radio DAB+ at 17.30 Rome time and the repeat broadcast at 21.00 hours Rome time.

Listen to and download our daily Podcast from anywhere in the world

To listen to the Podcast of our programme throughout the day, just log on to our websitewww.vaticannews.va, click on English and then from right hand side of the page; click on listen to our podcasts and choose English for Africa.

Catholic Radio Stations in Africa retransmit our daily programme

On the continent, the main outlet for our daily English Africa programmes will continue to be through the re-transmission of our daily broadcasts by several Catholic radio stations.

Most of these radio stations are owned by various African Catholic dioceses, parishes, religious congregations and some by the Radio Maria network.

We thank you all for this important collaboration.

For further information kindly contact the English Africa Service through email: engafrica@spc.va or by phone: (+39) 06 69883892.The Bishops of England and Wales have issued a report calling on the British government to make a series of changes to the judicial system that pertains to the sentencing and conviction of prisoners.

By John Waters

The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have published a paper calling for a change to the system for sentencing convicted prisoners. The paper entitled Journey in Hope - A Catholic approach to sentencing reform calls for a variety of improvements in Sentencing, as well as greater involvement of faith communities in rehabilitating prisoners.

Increase in prison population

The report highlights the fact that the prison population has increased by 77% over the last 30 years. This is despite a notable fall in reported crime over the last decade. The report goes on to highlight the unsustainable nature of the present system of sentencing prisoners , with the length of custodial sentences increasing whilst prison funding has been reduced over the last decade.

Call for reform

The report calls for a reform of the manner in which sentencing is carried out, with the change beginning in Parliament. One passage states The view often expressed by the Government is that sentencing is wholly a matter for the Courts and the Sentencing Council. However, without political initiative there will be no consistent change in approach towards sentencing. Parliament has a decisive role in determining sentencing practice through the changes it makes to the law. Greater consideration should be made during the passage of legislation on the impact to the prison population of introducing new offences or revising sentence lengths for existing ones. It goes on to note that, with a more high profile parliamentary involvement, there will be a greater public awareness of bodies such as a the sentencing council, leading to more resources being diverted to such groups. The Bishops also observe that such reforms must be carefully thought out and planned, rather than used as vehicle to quickly increase a governments popularity.

Training Judges

A call for more training for judges is one key point of the report, suggesting that by looking into an offenders background and motivation for committing the crime, the judge might use a different sentence rather than sending the offender to prison. Greater use of American style Problem solving courts is suggested, as well as rediscovering the idea of Restorative justice. This is a concept which focuses on questions such as who has been impacted by the crime and how were they affected?, rather than simply Which laws were broken and what is the punishment?

Women

One of the final chapters of the report notes that, while on 5% of prisoners are women, 46% of those women have themselves been victims of crimes which, often, were far more serious than the crime for which they themselves were sentenced. Greater use of Womens centres is called for, pointing to the fact that many women who use these centres do not go on to reoffend.

More resources for managing prisoners with mental health problems are also called for.

The English and Welsh Bishops hope that their paper may serve to widen and inform the debate on prison reform and allow for the personal development and growth of those in prison, something often called for by Pope Francis.Some 60 were killed and many others injured when a train ploughed through a large crowd gathered on the railway tracks during the Dussehra festival near the northern Indian city of Amritsar on October 26.

Indias Catholic Bishops have expressed shock and sadness at a tragic train accident Friday night near Amritsar city in the northern Punjab state, that killed at least 60 and injured many others.

A large crowd had gathered on the railway tracks to watch the celebrations of the popular Hindu festival of Dussehra, which involved the burning of a firecracker-filled effigy of demon king Ravana and a fireworks display.

Amidst the din of fireworks, a train running from Jalandhar to Amritsar ploughed through the crowd.

Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, Secretary General of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) issued a condolence statement expressing the Indian Churchs sorrow at the men, women and children who died while celebrating their religious festival.

Pope Francis on Sunday also expressed his heartfelt solidarity for the victims. Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin sent a message on the Popes behalf to the CBCI expressing the Holy Fathers sadness at the accident, assuring his prayers for the deceased and those who mourn their loss.

While praying for the eternal rest of the souls of those who perished, the Indian bishops expressed their closeness to the bereaved families. We participate in their sorrow and pray to the Almighty for comfort and consolation. May God grant complete healing to those injured in the accident, the CBCI statement said.

They offered their prayers and support to all who are engaged in providing relief and succour to the victims and their families, and questioned the frequent numbers of accidents in the country.

Data from parliament in July showed that 49,790 people were killed by trains in India between 2015 and 2017.

This tragedy once again underlines the need to enhance railway and road safety as well as enforcement of safety norms in the organization of celebrations as every life is precious and should be protected and safeguarded in every way, the Indian bishops wrote.Colombian President Ivan Duque and his wife flanking Pope Francis during a visit to the Vatican on October 22, 2018. (ANSA)

President Ivan Duque Marquez of Colombia was received in a private visit by Pope Francis in the Vatican on October 22.

Pope Francis received President Ivan Duque Marquez of Colombia in a private visit in the Vatican on Monday. Duque then held a meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Vatican Under-Secretary for Relations with States, Monsignor Antoine Camilleri.

A statement by the Holy Sees Press Office said that during the discussions, which took place in a cordial atmosphere, satisfaction was expressed for the good bilateral relations.

The Vatican said that during the talks, the contribution of the Holy See and the local Church in the peace process and in favour of the reconciliation of the Colombian people was evoked.

The importance of constant dialogue between the Church and the State to face current social challenges was underlined during the discussions, with special reference to matters of mutual interest such as the protection of life, the fight against corruption and drug trafficking, the promotion of legality and care for the environment.

The Holy See and Colombia also touched upon a fruitful exchange of views on the political and social situation of the region, with special attention to migrations.

Pope Francis visited the South American nation last year, 6-11 September.Competitiveness is improving annually, transforming Vietnam into an investment magnet, Photo: Le Toan

The World Economic Forum (WEF) last week issued its Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) 4.0, showing that Vietnams economic competitiveness has once again improved over the year.

Specifically, Vietnam is ranked 77th out of 140 economies, with a score of 58.1. 100 is the highest score.

The GCI 4.0 is a new composite indicator that assesses the microeconomic and macroeconomic foundations of national competitiveness through a set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country.

Under the GCI 4.0, Vietnam has improved many of its indexes, scoring higher in ICT adoption (43.3 points), macroeconomic stability (75 points), health (81 points), labour market (55.6 points), and market size (70.9 points).

In the WEFs 2017 edition of the GCI, the country ranked 74th out of 135 economies, with a score of 57.9.

Under the WEFs Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) 2016-2017, Vietnam ranked 60th out of 138 countries, while in the 2015-2016 list, the country was placed 56th out of 140 countries.

At the recent WEF on ASEAN 2018 in Hanoi, founder and executive chairman of the WEF Professor Klaus Schwab told the

Vietnamese government, Vietnams economic competitiveness has been strongly improving, making the country a magnet to the world. Vietnam is now becoming an attractive destination for direct foreign investment (FDI).

Today, Vietnam is one of the stars of the emerging market universe. Its economic growth of 6-7 per cent rivals China, and its exports are worth as much as the total value of its GDP, said the WEF on its website. Anything from Nike sportswear to Samsung smartphones are manufactured in this ASEAN nation.

Armed with the necessary infrastructure and market-friendly policies, Vietnam has become a hub for foreign investment and manufacturing in Southeast Asia. Japanese and South Korean electronics companies like Samsung, LG, Olympus, and Pioneer, as well as countless European and American apparel makers have set up shop in the country.

As of September 20, Vietnam had 26,646 valid foreign-invested projects, registered at over $334 billion. In the first nine months of this year, the total disbursed FDI reached $13.25 billion, up 6 per cent on-year, the Ministry of Planning and Investment reported.

So how did this growth miracle happen? According to analysts from the World Bank and think tank Brookings, Vietnams economic rise can be explained by three main factors: First, it has embraced trade liberalisation with gusto. Second, it has complemented external liberalisation with domestic reforms through deregulation and lowering the cost of doing business. Finally, Vietnam has invested heavily in human and physical capital, predominantly through public investments.

According to the WEF, economic growth followed suit. Since 2010, the countrys GDP growth has been at least 5 per cent per year, and in 2017 it peaked at 6.8 per cent, and is expected to reach about 6.9 per cent this year. With such rapid economic growth, Vietnam has grown from one of the poorest countries in the world to a comfortable middle-income one. Whereas its GDP per capita was barely $230 in 1985, it was more than 10 times that in 2017 ($2,343). Corrected for purchasing power, it stands even higher, at over $6,000.

Vietnams efforts did not go unnoticed in international rankings. In the World Banks Ease of Doing Business rankings, Vietnam rose from the 104th in 2007 to 68th place in 2017. Last year, the bank said, Vietnam made progress in everything, from enforcing contracts, increasing access to credit and electricity, paying taxes, and trading across borders.

However, currently, Vietnams GDP currently accounts for only 0.51 per cent of the worlds total GDP.Khanh, second from left, stands with other medal-winners at Miss Earth 2018.

Khanh also won gold for Asia & Oceania region in the national costume round on October 11.

Miss Earth is being held in the Philippines with the participation of 94 contestants from around the world. In the bikini sub-contest, they competed in three groups called Fire, Air and Water.

Khanh was a member of the Water Group, which consisted of 28 contestants. The gold and bronze medals went to Miss Mexico and Miss Bosni and Herzegovina.

Born in the southern province of Ben Tre, 23-year-old Khanh was the second runner-up at the Miss Sea Vietnam Global Beauty Pageant 2018 held on Phu Quoc Island in April.

Khanh is currently a student at the Curtin University Singapore, majoring in marketing, and will graduate early next year.

She is currently standing in second place overall behind Miss Portugal Telma Madeira.

It is the first time Vietnam has entered the top swimsuit round of Miss Earth, said Ngoc Tinh, the representative of the Leading Stars Project, the organisation introducing and accompanying Khanh at Miss Earth, In these beauty pageants, the contestants advantages in the swimsuit and national costume competitions are important, offering them opportunities to enter the final rounds.

We expected Khanh to achieve something at Miss Earth 2018. She has performed very well and made great efforts so far, he added.

The contest will continue until November 3.At the opening ceremony of the session, National Assembly (NA) Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan stated that during the session, which will last from October 22 to November 21, will pass nine laws (see box for details), while debating six drafts.

The National Assembly will vote on nine laws and discuss six drafts

These laws and resolutions are very important and they have drawn great attention from the public and society. They have been carefully prepared, Ngan said. They are also important for implementing regulations on the market economy, boosting the economic restructuring, and improving the national business environment, Ngan said.

Notably, in the afternoon of Tuesday (October 23), the NA will elect by ballot Vietnams new state president. After being elected, the new state president will be sworn in before the NA. It is expected that Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong will be elected the new State President.

Since the sudden passing of State President Tran Dai Quang on September 21, 2018, Vice State President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh has been assigned as the acting state president under the countrys Constitution and Law on the Organisation of the National Assembly until a new state president is officially elected by the NA.

The Vietnamese NA elects and approves the positions of 50 officials, including the state president and vice president, the National Assembly chairman and his four deputies, the chairman of the Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee, the chairmen of the National Assemblys specialist committees, members of the National Assembly Standing Committee, the prime minister and his five deputies, 21 ministers and other government members, the judges of the Peoples Supreme Court, the head of the People's Supreme Procuracy, and the head of the State Audit of Vietnam.

Also during this NA session, a vote of confidence will take place for officials whose positions were either elected or approved by the National Assembly. Since 2013, the NA has been holding confidence votes annually from the second year of an officials term of office.

However, at this session, the new state president and the newly-appointed Minister of Information and Communications (MIC) will not face such a voting. The minister, expected to be Nguyen Manh Hung, who is now acting minister, will be officially elected in the morning of Wednesday (October 24).

Particularly, the NA will also discuss and adopt a resolution on approving the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and related documents.

This is an important agreement which will have significant impacts on almost all sectors of politics, economy, society, and diplomacy, especially the sectors of agriculture and employees rights, said a NA document on the programme of the sixth session.

Besides, one of the biggest highlights of the NA session is that the legislature will spend three days organising question and answer (Q&A) activities, focusing on issues drawing the special attention of the public, such as the appointment of officials, their asset declaration, public investment, and also cases involving officials who committed violations and received Party-related disciplinary measures.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc reported to the NA that that the local economy has been witnessing quite positive and comprehensive developments, with the investment and business climate significantly improved, and peoples lives continuing to improve, and the countrys global position and prestige continuously being enhanced.

It is expected that GDP growth will be higher in 2018 than the initial target of 6.7 per cent. The economy grew by 5.98 per cent in 2014, 6.68 per cent in 2015, 6.21 per cent in 2016, and 6.81 per cent last year.

One of the most eminent points that the government has affirmed was that the quality of economic growth has significantly improved, with the contribution of the total-factor productivity (TFP) being on the rise.

Specifically, the TFP ratio in the economy sat at 33.58 per cent in 2011-2015 and 45.47 per cent last year. TFP is a measure of the efficiency of all inputs to a production process. Increases in TFP result usually from technological innovations or improvements.

Meanwhile, the economys labour productivity has increased by 6 per cent last year against the average annual 4.3 per cent in 2011-2015.

The economy grew by 7.06 per cent in this years first nine months, following a rise of 7.45 per cent in the first quarter and 7.08 per cent in the years first half, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Notably, according to the government, the processing and manufacturing sector, which contributes 80 per cent of the economys industrial growth, continues its strong uptrend, at 11.9 per cent in 2016, 14.5 per cent last year, and 12.9 per cent in this years first nine months. The rate is expected to grow to 13.6 per cent this year.CMC Corporation from Vietnam signed a strategic agreement with a Danish partner in the presence of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Accordingly, Approxima will be responsible for expanding CMCs business in European markets such as Scandinavia, Denmark, Germany and Russia which are areas where Ciber-CMC (a member company of CMC Corporation) is aiming for the top position as a SAP (total enterprise solutions for 25 vertical industries inclusive of government, banking, automotive, oil and gas,...) provider.

Approxima is expected to tap into the digital convergence market for businesses with a market size of hundreds of millions of euros, aiming at earning 100 million euros from the European market in 2023. In addition, Approxima will also share its methods and experience to promote Ciber-CMCs growth, supporting Ciber-CMC to meet international capacity requirements in service delivery.

This also matches CMCs "Go Global" strategy with the goal of exporting software, ICT services and products to the global market.

Director of Approxima, Lars Damgaard, said the reason they chose Ciber-CMC to deploy SAP solutions in the Nordic market as well as throughout Europe is that they want to increase the power of Approxima to meet the ever-increasing demand for SAP solutions.

"With abundant human resources and the goal of delivering the SAP solutions on the cloud computing platform of Ciber-CMC, we completely believe in the success of the strategic partnership between CMC and Approxima," he said.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc congratulates CMC Chairman Nguyen Trung Chinh. Photo courtesy of the CMC Corporation

For his part, Nguyen Trung Chinh, chairman/CEO of CMC Corporation also expressed optimism in the agreement.

"CMC Corporation has a strategic goal of reaching out to the global market with the best IT and telecommunications products to meet world standards. In fact, we have been present in 21 countries, including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and we are expanding to international markets including the US and Europe. Through this cooperation with Approxima, we are confident that CMC will make a strong move in the European market."

With 25 years of development, CMC has been providing ICT products and services for major partners from multinational corporations in 21 countries such as Japan, Korea, the US and Singapore. CMC has consulted and implemented SAP ERP system for Honda Vietnam, AEON IBS, provided telecommunications services for NTT Communications, Samsung, and AT&T.

Ciber-CMC is a leading consulting company delivering professional implementation services in SAPs enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution and Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

Approxima is a leading SAP consultant in Denmark with many years of experience in consulting and deploying SAP solutions for medium and large organizations.Omar Ishrak

On October 18, Omar Ishrak, CEO of Medtronic, made his first visit to Vietnam where he met with key government and healthcare stakeholders, in order to further understand the market and explore partnership opportunities.

The trip is part of the companys long-term commitment to work with Vietnamese healthcare providers to improve quality of health, patient access, and health delivery across the country.

Medtronic now views Vietnam as one of the most important emerging markets in the Asia Pacific region thanks to its investment attractiveness, economic growth and clear strategy for healthcare improvements.

The firm is making future plans for a country where locals spend around $2-3 billion on healthcare services abroad. In particular, it aims to train and work with local establishments.

We also intend to launch specific programmes in which we will invest to improve overall healthcare in Vietnam, Ishrak told VIR. One such programme is STEMI, which is the method that helps save the lives of people suffering from heart attacks, in the proper manner.

At present, Medtronic is cooperating with the Vietnam National Heart Institute to pilot the STEMI programme in Nghe An, and to train local doctors there.

The firm now holds a formal partnership with four hospitals and is due to sign a similar partnership agreement with Hue Hospital in the near future.

Medtronic is also exploring the manufacturing sector. At present, it owns a facility in Ho Chi Minh City which produces unique equipment such as camera capsules, which are used to record images of the digestive system.

We are also exploring products we can make that would tap into the governments supporting policies, availability of skilled manpower and good trade agreements, Ishrak added.

Launching in Vietnam in 2012, Medtronic has been contributing to the local community in a mission to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. The company now offers a broad range of therapies across four areas, from cardiac and vascular solutions, minimally-invasive therapies, restorative therapies, and diabetes care.

Spending over $2 billion on research and development activities annually, Medtronic is well-known for unique products, continuous innovation, and creating brand new markets.

Looking ahead, Medtronic aims to focus on technology that is required to enter the body. Our business is to use data to cure people, ensuring our data is relevant to all, Ishrak noted. The platforms that use robots during surgery are also something we are very interested in.Pham Thai Lai

How can we achieve a balance between the increasing demand for energy supply and the utmost need for reduction of CO2 emissions?

Energy is one of the basic foundations for economic growth and social progress. Our prosperity is based on energy, as are the possibilities for advancing the wellbeing of humankind. However, today more than one billion people worldwide still have no or insufficient access to electricity.

This means that global energy supplies have to be developed and secured. But it also means that reliable energy supplies cant be provided at the cost of our environment. Today, power generation accounts for 25 per cent of the CO2 emissions worldwide. As a consequence, in order to reach the Paris climate goal target, more electricity must not mean a further increase in CO2.

In Vietnam, the demand for energy increases around 10 per cent per annum in average, while emissions have been rising at a robust rate over the last decade. According to the International Energy Agency, between 2006 and 2015, Vietnams energy-related CO2 emission has risen by an annual average of 10 per cent due to rapid growth in its economy and in energy consumption. It is challenging for Vietnam to reduce CO2 emissions while simultaneously meeting robust energy demands in order to further secure economic growth to become industrialised nation in the near future. But, this is achievable with the use of green and efficient energy generation and smart transmission technologies.

Cleaner energy generation is possible today via highly-efficient gas-fired power plants - in particular, combined cycle power plants and renewable technologies such as wind and solar power.

Talking about solar power in particular, what do you see as opportunities for the country? Are recent incentives by the Vietnamese government attractive enough to foreign investors?

The potential for development of solar energy in Vietnam is huge. The Vietnamese government has recognised this potential and aims to significantly increase the share of solar power from around seven megawatts (MW) by mid-2016 to 850MW by 2020, 4,000MW by 2025, and 12,000MW by 2030.

And in order to attract solar power investors the government has issued Decree No.11/2017/QD-TTg on mechanisms for encouraging the development of solar power in the country, offering a feed-in-tariff for utility solar power plants of 9.35 US cents per kilowatt hour for a period of 20 years.

Thanks to this decree we already see a positive impact on the solar power market, especially a significant pool of investments over the last 14 months. However, there are a number of further measures that need to be addressed, such as the relatively low electricity price, lack of photovoltaic knowledge and experience, lack of financing, as well as the inadequacy of existing smart grid infrastructure able to handle fluctuating power generation.

So how can Siemens support the development of the solar power industry in Vietnam?

In order to enable solar panels to be efficiently connected to the power grid and to reliably produce energy under rough climate conditions, Siemens is supporting solar power producers with our Photovoltaic electrical Balance of Plant solution.

This new solution for photovoltaic installations enables solar power to be intelligently integrated into the grid. It includes all necessary electro technical equipment for photovoltaic systems and even complete microgrids, along with comprehensive offerings for complete end-to-end planning, engineering, and financing, all the way to commissioning and service.

Currently, we are working with a number of solar power developers to realise a number of projects in the central part of Vietnam, and the biggest project is the one with Trung Nam Group. Being inked in July, the project is record-breaking, not only because Trung Nam will be the largest solar farm in Vietnam, but because it marks the first photovoltaic project for Siemens in Southeast Asia. The farm has a capacity of 204MW peak and will deliver up to 425 gigawatt hours per year. This is enough to supply approximately 200,000 households with electricity and saves around 250,000 tonnes of CO2. We are pleased to partner with Trung Nam Group for this truly remarkable benchmark project, and we are highly committed to boosting the solar power industry for a clean and environmentally-friendly Vietnam.China has warned that if Donald Trump pulls out of an arms control treaty with Russia it will have "a multitide of negative effects" AFP/NICHOLAS KAMM

US President Donald Trump announced over the weekend his plan to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometres (300 to 3,500 miles).

But Trump said the Russians had been violating it "for many years" and that China, not a signatory, remained free to develop such weapons.

Two top Republican lawmakers backed Trump's worries about China on Sunday, saying there are concerns the treaty is holding the US back while allowing China to move forward with its own developments.

"It needs to be emphasised that it is completely wrong to bring up China when talking about withdrawal from the treaty," said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying Monday.

The treaty has played an important role in advancing the disarmament process and maintaining a strategic balance and global stability, Hua said.

"Unilateral withdrawal will have a multitude of negative effects," she told a regular news briefing.

Hua said China hoped the relevant parties can "think twice about the issue of withdrawing," in a reference to the US.

On Sunday Republican Senator Lindsey Graham backed Trump's plan to withdraw from the nuclear accord, saying the US needed to be free to respond to a Chinese nuclear build-up.

Washington has complained for nearly two years that a ground-launched missile system deployed by Russia breaches the treaty.

Another senior Republican, Senator Bob Corker, said on CNN that he hoped Trump's stance was designed merely to pressure Russia to return into compliance.

The landmark treaty was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated.

It put an end to a mini-arms race in the 1980s triggered by the Soviet Union's deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles targeting Western European capitals.V Home won the Best Overseas Property Agency Vietnam in Hong Kong

Established on June 2017, V Home has headquarters at 27B Nguyen Huu Huan Street, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi. The company has extended its reach to foreign markets with strong presence in Hong Kong. After one year of operation, V Home has increased the number of its branch offices to five, three of which are located in Hong Kongs major administrative centres like Central, Sheung Wan, and Kowloon. V Home is providing mid- and high-end real estate projects to the markets.

According to the representative of V Home, the company was set up to seize opportunities in Vietnams fast-growing real estate market, which is opening the doors for foreign investors and buyers. The real estate market is also stimulated by new infrastructure projects and rapid urbanization, while housing prices in Vietnam are only one-tenth of those in Hong Kong.

Furthermore, rates of return in Vietnam are higher than in neighbouring counties like Thailand and Cambodia. Therefore, most of V Home's projects have achieved a healthy take-up with impressive sales performance. V Home has so far supplied five quality developments in Hanoi to investors and homebuyers in Hong Kong. These projects include D'. Capitale, D.' El Dorado II Phu Thanh, My Dinh Pearl, Vinhome West Point, and Vinhome GreenBay.

Most recently, V Home has unveiled its second office in Hanoi at 140 Trung Hoa Street in September. At the event, V Home has organised a contract signing ceremony with foreign buyers of D'. El Dorado II Phu Thanh. The project, developed by Tan Hoang Minh Group, is highly popular among customers due to its prime location within five minutes walk from West Lake. The event saw the participation of the representative of the Vietnamese Consulate in Hong Kong, the developer, and many potential buyers.

V Home has delivered five quality projects in Hanoi to foreign buyers in Hong Kong

With these achievements, V Home was invited to speak at numerous conferences and television shows. Hong Kong's famous television station Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) Hong Kong has visited Vietnam to film a documentary on the development of Hanoi's property market. Furthermore, V Home has organised seminars on every weekend to update information and provide consultancy for buyers.

Most of the projects V Home has brought to the markets are sure-fire investments for both homebuyers and investors as they boast a prime location, prestigious developer, and best-in-class amenities like four-season swimming pools. On top of that, these projects are expected to become ideal homes for the expatriate community in Vietnam, with convenient access to foreign organisations, shopping malls, international schools, and restaurants.

V Home aims to deliver high-quality projects that cater to the most sophisticated local and foreign buyers with a full range of amenities and a top-notch living experience. The projects are well-endowed with amenities, landscaping, and security to ensure the best living standards in the country. V Home currently targets foreign buyers and investors, who account for 95 per cent of its customer portfolio.

As the first Vietnamese real estate company with three offices in Hong Kong, V Home was honoured to pick up the Best Overseas Property Agency Vietnam in Hong Kong title for its achievements at the Best of The Best Awards 2018. The award recognises individuals and organisations that have made a significant contribution to Hong Kongs real estate industry. Winning this award is a testament to V Homes efforts to offer the best and most attractive projects. It also reflects V Homes reputation and responsibility to customers.

Moving forward, V Home plans to open more branches in large cities and provinces across Vietnam. In addition to residential developments, V Home is accelerating its efforts to deliver hospitality projects to meet the rising demand of foreign buyers. The company is committed to providing the most attractive developments with the best services to foreign buyers so that they can enjoy the best of cosmopolitan life in Vietnam.

V Home delivers the best properties Vietnam has to offer to Hong KongVinasun alleges that Grabs operations have caused them to lose around VND42 billion ($1.82 million) in 2016 and 2017

During the trial at the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Court, Vinasun accused Grab of participating in predatory pricing and violating the Ministry of Transport (MoT)s Decision 24 on the implementation of the pilot project on contracted passenger transportation.

Vinasun alleged that Grab claims to be a tech firm but is indeed a taxi transport company, hiring a large number of drivers and causing economic damage to Vinasun. The companys deputy director general Truong Dinh Quy said, Transport co-operatives are a camouflage for Grab to operate as a taxi firm. This, coupled with its price support to attract a large number of driver-partners, has severely affected Vinasuns operations.

He claimed the alleged illegal operations of Grab in the country have caused Vinasun to lose around VND42 billion ($1.82 million) in revenue in 2016 and 2017. Vinasun has subsequently requested lump sum compensation.

Lawyer Nguyen Van Duc for Vinasun also questioned how Grab receives operating expenses given that the ride-hailing app firm reported losses of VND1.7 trillion ($73.9 million) between 2014 and 2017 and charter capital of only VND20 billion ($869,565).

However, the representative of Grab Vietnam refused to answer, claiming it as a legitimate business secret. The ride-hailing firm also stated that its operations in Vietnam have always been compliant with rules and regulations, including Decision 24.

Speaking at the court, country head of Grab Vietnam, Jerry Lim, said that the MoTs Decision 24 opens up opportunities for tech firms to match drivers with commuters, as Grab does. Therefore, it is not reasonable for Vinasun to request Grab to pay VND42 billion ($1.82 million) in compensation given that Grab does not violate local laws.

Indeed, Vinasun also participated in the same pilot programme with its own e-hailing app. This means the two companies were competing on equal grounds, he stressed.

Grab also pointed out that customers no longer prefer Vinasuns services because it charges higher fares than ride-hailing app firms. Around 70 per cent of customers surveyed said Vinasuns fares are more expensive than other brands. Meanwhile, over 30 per cent found Vinasuns services inconvenient and its drivers unfriendly.

However, in response, the representative of Vinasun said that these are not the main reasons for Vinasuns losses. Results indicate that 99 per cent of customers have left Vinasun for Grab, with 86 per cent of Vinasun customers switching to Grab due to lower fares.

Vinasuns Quy said that Grab is subject to the tariff rate of a tech firm, and so the app can offer lower fares to customers than Vinasun. Grab also recorded losses of VND1.7 trillion ($73.9 million) to boost promotions and subsidies, which had a disastrous effect on the local taxi industry.

Refuting the allegation, the representative of Grab Vietnam said that the company has generated 170,000 jobs for locals and offered hourly incomes to Vietnamese driver-partners that are 55 per cent higher than the national average. Grab has reduced the travelling time of Vietnamese commuters as they only require around 2.5 minutes to locate a vehicle nearby.

Grab asked for an adjournment because Cuu Long Inspection Valuation Company, which had been in charge of calculating the damages suffered by Vinasun, was not represented in court. It also claimed that there are some issues related to the damage calculation method by Cuu Long.

Specifically, Cuu Long defined Vinasuns losses based on its shrinking market capitalisation and expenses incurred due to idle cars. Still, Grab said that the decline of Vinasuns market capitalisation, which is the total value of all outstanding shares owned by the companys shareholders, cannot be an indicator of the damages incurred by a company.

Intriguingly, the calculation of the decline was based on the difference between Vinasuns book value and market capitalisation on June 30, 2017 and not over the entire review period. The market capitalisation of a company stock fluctuates continuously on a daily basis, influenced by various macro- and micro-economic factors, including the quality of the stock market and investors expectations. Grab believes it is unfair to be at fault for volatile market conditions that all listed companies, including Vinasun, are experiencing over time.

Cuu Longs report assumed that the e-hailing business is the sole cause of Vinasun taxis lying idle, according to Grab Vietnam. Grab said this is unreasonable, as the assessment did not take into account many other factors, such as old cars waiting for repair, maintenance or replacement, drivers taking personal leave, and the impact of Vinasun changing its business model to car franchising, where instead of hiring drivers as employees, they are franchising vehicles to them.Afghan voters get another chance to cast ballots. Australia feels a political shift. An imprisoned Vietnamese blogger finds freedom in the United States. Women carve new careers in Pakistan. Slowing illegal animal trade, and carbon hungry plants.Thousands of migrants, mostly from Honduras, have amassed at Guatemala's border with Mexico seeking passage through its territory on their way to the United States. But many have returned to Honduras after facing hardship on the way, or running into obstacles on the Mexican border. U.S. President Donald Trump has warned Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico of repercussions if they do not stop the caravan. VOA's Zlatica Hoke reports some migrants are determined to reach the United States at any cost.Sunday was the second of the two days that voters in most of Afghanistan had the opportunity to cast their ballots in parliamentary elections.

Election officials say four million of the nearly nine million registered voters turned came out to the polls Saturday and Sunday, despite the challenges that included polling stations that never opened and technical problems with voting equipment.

The voting was marred by violence.

The French news agency AFP says its tally of casualty figures of civilians and security forces killed or wounded in polling-related violence on Saturday was nearly 300, a figure the agency says is more than four times higher than the latest figures released by the interior ministry.

The Taliban had issued repeated warnings that they would attack polling stations and all election-related activity.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani thanked the voters Sunday in a televised address. "Afghans did not only show their enemies that they would not surrender to any threats or warning, but that they also have the power and will to defeat their enemies," the president said.

The final results will not be known for weeks.

Voting in the southern province of Kandahar has been postponed until October 27, after the assassination Thursday of influential commander General Abdul Raziq that was claimed by the Taliban.

Elections in Ghazni were postponed until next year due to political disputes among the local population.

The last few months in Afghanistan have been wracked by election-related violence. Ten candidates have died in various attacks across the country, along with dozens of their supporters, since the beginning of the nomination period in late May.

The government responded to the security concerns by deploying 70,000 security personnel around the country to safeguard 5,100 polling stations. The original plan was to operate more than 7,000 polling stations, but was changed due to security concerns and high threat alerts in several areas.

About 132 observers from various countries and the European Union joined close to a half-million local observers. Many of them were agents of candidates or political parties, civil society activists, and other groups monitoring the elections.

More than 2,500 candidates were competing for the 249 seats in the next parliament. Some 400 female candidates competed for 68 seats reserved for women.

The parliamentary elections are the first elections, since the fall of the Taliban, that have been primarily managed by the Afghan government.The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul is unlikely to halt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans rise to power, but could cause irreparable harm to relations with Western governments and businesses, potentially endangering his ambitious reform plans.

International outrage over Khashoggis Oct. 2 slaying at the hands of Saudi officials, under still-disputed circumstances, has marked the greatest crisis in the 33-year-olds rapid rise, already tarnished by a catastrophic war in Yemen and a sweeping roundup of Saudi businessmen and activists.

The prince had hoped to galvanize world support for his efforts to revamp the countrys oil-dependent economy, but now the monarchy faces possible sanctions over the killing. Saudi Arabia has threatened to retaliate against any punitive action, but analysts say that wielding its main weapon  oil production  could backfire, putting the princes economic goals even further out of reach.

The issue now is how Western governments coordinate a response and to what extent they wish to escalate this in a coordinated fashion, said Michael Stephens, a senior research fellow who focuses on the Mideast at Londons Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies.

Would financial sanctions be considered sufficient as to have sent a message to Saudi Arabia that this will never happen again? Stephens added. Some may feel this is inadequate, while others, like the Americans, may feel this is going too far.

Senior aides close to the prince have been fired over Khashoggis killing, and 18 suspects have been arrested. But the prince himself, protected by his 82-year-old father, King Salman, has been tapped to lead a panel to reform the kingdoms intelligence services, a sign he will remain next in line to the throne.

The king has the authority to change the line of succession  as he did when he appointed his son crown prince in the first place, upending the previous royal consensus.

But any direct challenge to Prince Mohammeds succession may be destabilizing for the kingdom as a whole, said Cinzia Bianco, a London-based analyst for Gulf State Analytics. Being young and being so close to his father, there is a chance that his behavior can be constrained with the influence of his father and other actors around the world, Bianco said.

That only holds as long as King Salman remains in power. If Prince Mohammed ascends the throne, he could be in power for decades, longer than any other royal since the countrys founding in 1932, including its first monarch, King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.

The firing and arrests announced by the kingdom appear to be at least an acknowledgement by the royal family of how serious the crisis has become.

While it might be too early to evaluate the reaction of the international community, these moves might be read as a serious initial signal that the Saudi leadership is course correcting, wrote Ayham Kamel, the head of Mideast and North Africa research at the Eurasia Group.

Despite speculation that the crisis spells the end of Mohammad bin Salman, the recent announcements prove that the king still believes that the current line of succession is suitable.

The Saudis greatest concern is the United States, a crucial military ally against archrival Iran and a key source of the kind of foreign investment they will need to reform the economy. A strong American response could encourage other Western countries to follow suit, further amplifying the crisis.

President Donald Trump has thus far sent mixed signals, vowing severe punishment over the death of the Washington Post columnist but saying he doesnt want to imperil American arms sales to the kingdom.

Trump chose Saudi Arabia as his first overseas trip as president, and his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has developed close ties with Prince Mohammed, apparently seeing him as an ally in advancing his yet-to-be-released peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians.

But even if the Saudis keep Trump on their side, they could face a reckoning from the U.S. Congress, where Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed outrage over the killing. Some have suggested using the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act, which makes it possible to impose entry bans and targeted sanctions on individuals for committing human rights violations or acts of significant corruption.

Saudi Arabia last week threatened greater action if faced with sanctions. While no official has explained what that would entail, the general manager of a Saudi-owned satellite news channel suggested it could include weaponizing the kingdoms oil production.

Forty-five years ago, Saudi Arabia joined other OPEC nations in an oil embargo over the 1973 Mideast war in retaliation for American military support for Israel. Gas prices soared, straining the U.S. economy.

But its unclear whether such a move would work in todays economy. Saudi Arabia has been trying to claw back global market share, especially as Iran faces new U.S. oil sanctions beginning in November. Slashing oil exports would drain revenues needed for Prince Mohammeds plans to diversify the economy, while a spike in oil prices could revive the U.S. shale industry and lead other countries to boost production.

The Saudis have been very helpful by accelerating oil production, especially as sanctions on Iran ramp up, said Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. It would be very foolish of Saudi Arabia to forfeit the trust of the oil market earned over decades by injecting politics into their oil policy.President Donald Trump inflated the projected benefits of an arms deal with the Saudis as he defended his wait-and-see attitude about Saudi complicity in the disappearance of a journalist whose apparent murder has sparked world outrage.

On immigration enforcement, the president made the unsubstantiated claim that migrants are being paid to mass at the border and somehow disrupt the Nov. 6 elections in the United States. Trump also stretched credulity when boasting about his performance with Hispanic voters at a rally and distorted facts concerning climate change and the Russia investigation in a recent interview with The Associated Press.



A look at some of his words over the past week:



HISPANIC VOTE



TRUMP: "We're doing very well with Hispanic Americans. We're doing very well. Because you know what? They want safety at the border. They want great jobs. Remember, the last election, well, 'he won't do too well with the Hispanic vote.' Did we do well or what?"  Arizona rally Friday.



THE FACTS: More "what"' than "well.''



Among Hispanics, Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Trump handily in 2016, 66 percent to 28 percent, according to exit polls. That level of Hispanic support for a Democratic candidate was similar to 2008, when Barack Obama gained 67 percent of the Hispanic vote to Republican John McCain's 31 percent.



At the same time, Clinton's performance among Hispanics lagged their support for Obama in 2012, when he won 71 percent to Republican Mitt Romney's 27 percent.



Trump in 2016 had campaigned heavily on a platform of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, calling for mass deportations and referring to some Mexicans as rapists. Given that record, it's fair to claim he outperformed expectations with Hispanic voters, but he did worse or at least no better than McCain in 2008.



MIGRANTS



TRUMP, on a caravan of Central American migrants trying to reach the U.S.: "A lot of money's been passing through people to come up and try to get to the border by Election Day because they think that's a negative for us.''  Montana rally Thursday.



TRUMP on the caravan: "Can you believe this, and what Democrats are allowing to be done to our Country?''  tweet Thursday.



THE FACTS: Trump was riffing off of an unsupported allegation by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that people were being paid in Honduras to join the caravan and "storm the border [at] election time,'' as Gaetz tweeted.



Gaetz tweeted a video on Wednesday of men handing out money to people standing in a line, without evidence that it illustrated his claim. Questioned about the video's origin, Gaetz posted a correction on Twitter, saying, "This video was provided to me by a Honduran government official. Thus, I believed it to be from Honduras."



Neither man has produced evidence that the migrants are being paid to come to the border.



Mexico's government says migrants with proper documents can enter Mexico and those who don't either have to apply for refugee status or face deportation.



SAUDI ARMS DEAL



TRUMP: "Frankly they have a tremendous order  $110 billion. Every country in the world wanted a piece of that order. We got all of it. And what are we going to do? Again, I've had some senators come up and some congressmen that said, 'Well, you know, sir, I think what we should do is we should not take that order.' I said, 'Who are we hurting? It's 500,000 jobs.'"  interview Wednesday with Fox Business News.

TRUMP, on possible action against Saudi Arabia: "I'll be working on this with Congress. ... But I would prefer that we don't use as retribution canceling $110 billion worth of work, which means 600,000 jobs. ... I went there to get that order.''  remarks Friday at a defense event in Arizona.



THE FACTS: Trump's wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed. His State Department has also estimated much fewer U.S. jobs than Trump's figure of 500,000 to 600,000, projecting "potentially tens of thousands.''



Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much.



The Congressional Research Service described the package as a combination of sales proposed by Obama and discussed with Congress and new sales still being developed.



The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed "letters of offer and acceptance" for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms.



Regarding economic impact, Trump's claim of about 500,000 jobs involved  he later upped that figure to 600,000  is questionable given the tenuous nature of the orders. A May 20, 2017, State Department fact sheet on the proposed $110 billion deal estimated it could end up "potentially supporting tens of thousands of new jobs in the United States."



Trump's repeated claims that he's signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are "just not true,'' said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official. "Very little has changed hands.''



Trump has pledged unspecified "severe punishment'' should the U.S. determine Saudi involvement in the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had written columns critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But Trump has said he does not want to halt the arms sale to Saudi Arabia because it would harm U.S. manufacturers. Saudi Arabia is indeed a major U.S. ally and arms customer.

Trump on Friday called Saudi Arabia's announcement that suspects in Khashoggi's death are in custody a "good first step.'' Saudi Arabia has claimed that Khashoggi was killed in a "fistfight'' at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.



Trump said that before he decided what to do next, he wanted to talk to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman



MONTANA SENATE RACE



TRUMP, speaking about the failed nomination of White House doctor Ronny Jackson to be Veterans Affairs secretary: "Ever since his vicious and totally false statements about Admiral Ron Jackson, the highly respected White House Doctor for Obama, Bush & me, Senator John Tester looks to be in big trouble in the Great State of Montana! He behaved worse than the Democrat Mob did with Justice K!''  tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump misleads by seeking to place the blame for Jackson's failed nomination entirely on Tester, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. It also remains unclear whether the late-surfacing allegations against Jackson are "totally false'' because the Pentagon inspector general is continuing to review some of them.



Jackson, a Navy rear admiral, withdrew his nomination in April after Tester released results of committee interviews he conducted with military personnel who raised questions about Jackson's prescribing practices and leadership ability. The interviews were done with the knowledge and support of Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the committee considering Jackson's nomination.



The time period covered Jackson's tenure as a White House physician dating to 2006 and involved his current and former colleagues who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.



Jackson, who broadly denied allegations of bad behavior, had already faced tough questions from several committee Republicans about whether he had the experience to manage the massive VA.



The allegations were referred to the Pentagon's inspector general for evaluation. After an initial assessment and review, the inspector general's office in June decided a formal investigation was warranted. That probe is continuing, according to the office.



CLEANEST AIR



TRUMP: "I want the cleanest air on the planet and our air now is cleaner than it's ever been."  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: He's wrong about the air being the cleanest ever, according to his own administration. While the air generally has been getting cleaner since the 1970s, the downward trend in pollution has made a bit of a U-turn since Trump took office.



His Environmental Protection Agency released data that showed traditional air pollution  soot and smog  increased in 2017 and that the air is not the cleanest it has ever been.



The days with an unhealthy number of small pollution particles, often called soot and linked to heart and lung problems and deaths, jumped from 2016 to 2017 in 35 major metropolitan areas. In 2017, there were 179 unhealthy soot days, up 85 percent from 97 in 2016. Last year had the most unhealthy soot days since 2011.



The number of days with unhealthy smog levels was down from 2016, but higher than 2015, 2014 and 2013.



The number of days when the air quality index was unhealthy was 729 in 2017. The number of days is higher than a year because it counts each city's unhealthy reading on a certain day as one and there are numerous cities involved. Last year's level was the highest since 2012 and a 21 percent increase over the cleanest air in 2014.



CLIMATE CHANGE



TRUMP, when asked about a dire U.N. report this month on climate change that said dangerous warming has already happened and that with each degree, the many harms to Earth will get even more treacherous: "No, no. Some say that and some say differently, I mean you have scientists on both sides of it.''  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: He's wrong to suggest the scientific community is substantially split. Scientists from around the world wrote the recent report, and it was unanimously accepted by government representatives around the world, including in the United States, said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, a lead author of the report.



The Trump administration last year also released the National Climate Assessment, which painted a similar picture.



University of Illinois climate scientist Donald Wuebbles, a lead author of that national report, emailed that "there is no debate AT ALL going on about this within the scientific community.''



"Trump might as well be saying that there are scientists on `both sides of the gravity debate,''' Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said in an email. "Dangerous climate change impacts are already apparent. Of course there are uncertainties. There always are. There are uncertainties in the science of gravity [we have never measured a graviton, the fundamental unit of gravity]. That doesn't make it safe to jump off a cliff.''



IMMIGRATION



TRUMP: "We have the worst laws in the history of the world on immigration and we're getting them changed one by one. We've made a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks even, but we're getting them changed one by one.''  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: He's actually failed to achieve changes in immigration laws. All the immigration-related changes pushed by his administration were done by executive order, not legislation, or through policy shifts such as the zero tolerance policy that criminally prosecuted anyone caught crossing illegally and gave rise to family separations. The administration also has used regulations to tighten the rules on how immigrants can receive public benefits. Immigration legislation has failed despite Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress.



TRUMP, on the separation of children from their parents at the border: "Now President Obama had the same law. He did the same thing.''  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: Obama did not do the same thing as a matter of policy. It's true the underlying laws were the same. But the Trump administration mandated anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted. The policy meant adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings, and their children were separated and sent into the care of the Health and Human Services Department, which is tasked with caring for unaccompanied migrant children. The zero tolerance policy remains in effect, but Trump signed an executive order June 20 that stopped separations.



Jeh Johnson, Obama's homeland security secretary, told NPR there may have been unusual or emergency circumstances when children were taken from parents but there was no such policy.



TRUMP: "And in fact the picture of children living in cages that was taken in 2014 was a picture of President Obama's administration and the way they handled children. They had the kids living in cages. They thought it was our administration and they used it, and then unbeknownst to them and the fake news they found out, 'Oh my God, this is a terrible situation.' This was during the Obama administration."  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: He's right. Images that circulated online during the height of Trump's family separations controversy were actually from 2014 under the Obama administration. But circumstances for some children have not changed. In June, an Associated Press reporter was part of a group that visited a U.S. Border Patrol holding facility, where hundreds of children were waiting in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside, scattered around were bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. The cages in each wing opened out into common areas to use portable restrooms.



The children both in 2014 and 2018 were separated temporarily from their parents in the facilities, placed in areas by age and sex for safety reasons.



RUSSIA INVESTIGATION



TRUMP, about special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation: "It's a tremendous waste of time for the president of the United States. To think that I would be even thinking about using Russia to help me win Idaho, we're using Russia to help me win the great state of Iowa or anywhere else is the most preposterous, embarrassing thing.''  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: Trump may be right that he did not need a boost in Idaho and Iowa, states he won in 2016 with comfortable margins of 31 percentage points and 9 percentage points, respectively. But the notion of Russia-backed activities on his behalf "anywhere else'' in the U.S. is not far-fetched, according to an indictment in February by Mueller.



The indictment accuses 13 Russians and three Russian entities of seeking to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by running a hidden social media trolling campaign and seeking to mobilize Trump supporters at rallies while posing as American political activists in "purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida." According to the indictment, the surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm financed by companies controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with ties to President Vladimir Putin.



The indictment says the defendants commonly referred to targeting more closely divided "purple states'' after being advised by a Texas-based grass-roots organization in June 2016 to focus efforts there.



The indictment details contacts targeting three unidentified officials in the Trump campaign's Florida operation. In each instance, the Russians used false U.S. personas to contact the officials. The indictment doesn't say if any of them responded.



Trump lost by nearly 2.9 million votes in the popular vote to Clinton, but captured the needed Electoral College votes to win the presidency after prevailing in politically divided states including Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.



TRUMP, on his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen: "By the way, he was in trouble not for what he did for me; he was in trouble for what he did for himself. You do know that? Having to do with loans, mortgages, taxicabs and various other things, if you read the paper.''  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: Cohen was definitely in trouble for what he did for Trump. He stated in open court that Trump directed him to arrange payments of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to fend off damage to Trump's White House bid.



Cohen said one payment was made "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,'' and the other was made "under direction of the same candidate.''



It is true that Cohen did not identify Trump, but there was no ambiguity in court documents or in his statement.



Cohen's extraordinary statement at his August plea hearing marked the first time any Trump associate, in open court, has implicated the president himself in a crime.



Trump is, however, correct that other charges which Cohen admitted to didn't involve the candidate or the campaign and were for tax deception.



TRUMP: "Do you know these Russian hackers you're talking about from Moscow? They have nothing to do with me. ... They were hackers from Moscow. Some of them supported Hillary Clinton.''  AP interview Tuesday.



THE FACTS: The Mueller indictment offers no evidence or reason to believe that the Russian effort was intended to help elect Clinton  quite the opposite. Some anti-Trump messaging tied to Russians was indeed disseminated online, but investigators believe the motive was to spread confusion and discord in the campaign, not to elect her.



The pro-Trump efforts identified in the indictment were strategic, on the ground in key states as well as online, and included attempts to make contact with Trump campaign officials. Russian President Vladimir Putin, while denying any involvement in Russian interference, has said he wanted Trump to win.U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton met Monday with top Russian officials about President Donald Trump's announced intention to pull out of a key Cold War arms deal with Moscow.

Bolton discussed the fate of the three-decade-old treaty in Moscow with Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev ahead of a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Bolton is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the U.S. decision "will make the world more dangerous." He rebuffed the U.S. claim that Russia had violated terms of the agreement that bans the U.S. and Russia from building, testing, and stockpiling ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range from 500 to 5,000 kilometers.

"It is the United States that is eroding the foundations and main elements of this pact" with its missile defense systems and use of drones," Peskov said.

The Kremlin spokesman said that if the United States goes on to develop new missiles, then Russia would be forced to respond in kind. He said Russian officials want to get more information about the U.S. plans regarding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in their talks with Bolton.

Trump has accused Russia of building and testing missiles that violate the 1987 treaty.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the deal with the late U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, at the White House in 1987.

"Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?" Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying. "Washington's desire to turn back politics cannot be supported. Not only Russia, but all those who cherish the world, especially a world without nuclear weapons, must declare this."

Without specifying how Russia violated the treaty, Trump Saturday appeared to say Moscow will not get away with it.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years. And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we are not allowed to," he said.

U.S. officials going back to the Obama administration have accused Russia of deliberately deploying a land-based cruise missile to pose a threat to NATO.

Russia has denied violating the INF agreement and says U.S. missile defense systems are a violation.

Defense advocates in Washington say the INF treaty keeps the U.S. from developing a new generation of weapons in a world that faces new global security challenges.

Trump said, Well have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say lets really get smart and lets none of us develop those weapons, but if Russias doing it and if Chinas doing it, and were adhering to the agreement, thats unacceptable.

China is not part of the INF agreement.

Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons  the coalition that won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize  said, "By declaring he will leave the INF Treaty, President Trump has shown himself to be a demolition man who has no ability to build real security. Instead, by blowing up nuclear treaties, he is taking the U.S. down a trillion-dollar road to a new nuclear arms race."

Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent Russian political analyst, told the Associated Press, "We are slowly slipping back to the situation of Cold War, as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, with quite similar consequences, but now it could be worse because Putin belongs to a generation that had no war under its belt. These people aren't as much fearful of a war as people of [former Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev's epoch. They think if they threaten the West properly, it gets scared."Theresa Mays political obituary has been written many times during her time as Britains prime minister, but her hold on the ruling Conservative Party looks shakier by the day.

This week, the week before the unveiling of the countrys annual budget, she may face her biggest challenge with all wings of her fractious party in open revolt and baying for her blood.

She is due to face "backbench" lawmakers of her party in what could turn out to be a make-or-break encounter. A challenge to her party leadership would automatically be triggered if 48 lawmakers deliver letters calling for a leadership vote to the chairman of the party, and 46 have done so, say Conservative insiders.

She had better bring her own noose, one Conservative lawmaker told the British media. Others have spoken of the possibility of the meeting turning into a show trial.

The immediate cause for Mays predicament is Brexit and how she has conducted negotiations with the European Union in tortuous talks with Brussels. Both hardcore Brexiters, who want a sharp break with the bloc, and so-called Remainers, who want to maintain close ties amounting to backdoor membership, are disappointed with the course of the talks and want to kill any deal with the European Union they dont like.

Under pressure



Brexiters argue May is not sufficiently tough with Brussels and is being hoodwinked by European negotiators to tie Britain too closely to the bloc after it exits next March by agreeing to remain in a customs union during a transition period when a new trading relationship with its largest market is negotiated.

Last week, May said she was ready to agree to a temporary customs union to avoid the reimposition of customs checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Border checks would upend the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to decades of strife in Northern Ireland.

Second referendum?

As more Conservative lawmakers call for May to stand aside, British officials are war-gaming the political consequences for a possible second Brexit referendum. On Saturday as many as 700,000 people attended a rally in London to call for a referendum on the final Brexit deal. The protest was also supported by a number of lawmakers who want a fresh vote, something that has been ruled out by May.

May has faced revolts before, notably after the resignations of Boris Johnson as foreign minister and David Davis as Brexit minister earlier this year. Tight management of the partys annual conference this month headed off any serious clashes.

May appears to thrive under extreme pressure. No one is counting her out.

Speaking Sunday to the BBC, Grant Shapps, a former Conservative Party chairman, who once tried to organize a coup against her, said he thought the week ahead was highly dangerous. Its fairly high on the scale, but she operates at the upper end of that scale almost every day of her life and, remarkably, walks out at the other end, he said.

Britains ruling Conservatives hold office thanks to support from a quirky right-wing Northern Irish party, the Democratic Unionist Party. Conservative revolts against May have petered out in the past with the conspirators fearing it would collapse the government and trigger a snap general election the opposition Labor Party is in a strong position to win.

Other issues



Aside from the Brexit negotiations, Mays government has encountered several unexpected and mishandled events, knocking public confidence in her leadership. Her government was widely criticized for its managing of the aftermath of the fire that consumed the Grenfell Tower residential block last year in London.

Earlier this year, May and her ministers had to scramble to shed allegations of immigration racism in their treatment of Britain's so-called Windrush Generation, the name given to an influx of at least 50,000 migrants from a dozen Caribbean countries from 1948 to 1971. Many of the elderly migrants faced deportation threats, despite a law passed in 1971 granting them the right to live and work in Britain indefinitely.

But Brexit has been a deadly pill for May. She has made various efforts to define what the terms of exit the government wants and what kind of future relationship Britain should have with the European Union, only to be undermined by her warring Cabinet and party or by EU officials.

On Sunday, May held an unscheduled conference call with her Cabinet ministers. Three ministers voiced grave doubts about her current Brexit plan, according to Conservative insiders.

In the House of Commons Monday, May sought to rally Conservative lawmakers to get behind her, insisting 95 percent of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled.

Mays supporters are warning to oust her now would wreck the incomplete negotiations and possibly turn everything back while the party spends months electing a successor. This is really a moment for calm, level heads. We have got to get through the last bit of negotiation, said Chris Grayling, Britain's transport minister.Cameroon's longtime leader Paul Biya has been declared the winner of the country's October 7 presidential poll. Opposition parties are rejecting the results, but the Constitutional Council has already thrown out petitions to nullify the election.

This is the voice of Clement Atangana, president of Cameroon's constitutional council, reading election results on Monday.

According to the results, incumbent President Paul Biya won a landslide victory with 71 percent of the vote. His strongest challenger, Maurice Kamto, was a distant second with 14 percent. Seven other candidates scored vote percentages in the single digits.

Voter turnout was 53 percent nationwide but much lower in the volatile northwest and southwest regions, where government forces have been fighting separatist movements. Biya won more than 80 percent of the votes cast in those regions.

Dion Ngute, Biya's close aide and minister in charge of special duties, said he is not surprised at the president's victory. He said Cameroonians are aware that Biya has done much for them, and is ready to do more for the country's development.

"Paul Biya, we know the man who is very persevering, the person who is very patient, the one who is very honest and who is candid and who tells Cameroonians what can be done and what is not possible to be done. The man who is peace-loving, and the one who wants good for Cameroon," he said.

Angry protesters came out singing that Biya had stolen Maurica Kamto's victory but were quickly dispersed by heavily armed troops.

Augusta Bate supports Kamto.

"We want justice. We should not only preach democracy, we should practice it, as well. The presidential elections, even Biya knows Kamto won this presidential election, so he should just let him take over power," said Bate.

Joshua Osih of the main opposition Social Democratic Front, who finished fourth in the election, said he does not recognize the election results.

"History holds it that one head of state is using the entire government, army police and state resources to maintain himself in power. History holds it that what happened on the 7th of October 2018 was worse than anything witnessed before. It was everything except an election," he said.

Last week, Cameroon's Constitutional Council threw out 18 petitions filed by Kamto, Osih and others demanding the election be nullified.

The opposition parties allege widespread irregularities, insecurity and low turnout, especially in the restive Anglophone regions, but the court ruled there was not enough evidence to throw out the results.

Biya has been in power for over 40 years in Cameroon, seven as prime minister, 36 as president. In 2008, he removed term limits from the constitution, allowing him to serve indefinitely.

He is now the second oldest president in sub-Saharan Africa. When his new term is finished, he will be 93 years old.Several possessions of the late physicist's Stephen Hawking will be included in an upcoming auction at Christie's, the famed auction house.

Included among the items belonging to the iconic scientist will be one of his wheelchairs, one of five copies of his Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis "Properties of Expanding Universes," and a script from one of his appearances on the television show "The Simpsons."

At age 22, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, just as he was beginning his doctoral work at Cambridge.

Thomas Venning, head of books and manuscripts at Christie's, said Hawking was so despondent over the diagnosis that he "gave up his studies for a time."

Hawking, however, returned to school, Venning said, and his thesis "was the fruit of his reapplying himself to his scientific work." Hawking kept his thesis beside him for the rest of his life, according to Venning.

Hawking was one of the few scientists who have reached celebrity status. He is probably best known for his best-selling book "A Brief History of Time" and for his appearances on "The Simpsons."

His daughter Lucy said the auction gives "admirers of his work the chance to acquire a memento of our father's extraordinary life in the shape of a small selection of evocative and fascinating items."

The physicist's children hope to preserve his scientific archive.

The Associated Press reports that Christie's is handling negotiations to hand over the archive to British authorities in lieu of inheritance tax.

Hawking's items will be featured in a science sale that also includes papers by Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.

Hawking's items will be on display for several days in London, beginning October 30.

Hawking died in March at age 76.The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group has targeted a second mosque in eastern Syria in less than a week, saying the normally protected religious building was used as an insurgent command and control center.



Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Sean Robertson told VOA the strike Monday killed Islamic State fighters who "were actively firing on coalition partner forces from the mosque" in as-Sousa, near the border with Iraq.



He said IS's use of protected buildings to shield their fighters from coalition strikes was an "ongoing pattern" seen in recent weeks. The mosque targeted Monday was 2.5 kilometers away from a mosque struck last week.



The law of land warfare protects mosques, but the use of these buildings as a headquarters by IS caused them to lose that protected status, Pentagon spokesman Army Colonel Robert Manning said Monday.



"They are nasty, they are brutal, they are unethical, and they certainly have no problem at all putting civilians at risk," Manning said of the terror group.



A coalition press release Monday said the mosque was deliberately struck during an attack on several buildings controlled by IS. It called the use of a mosque an act of "desperation."



The U.S. military said it had closely monitored the buildings targeted Monday and struck "when only their [IS] fighters were present."



It is unclear whether any civilians were killed in the attack. Manning said the U.S. military would investigate any credible claims of civilian casualties.



Syrian state media and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes in as-Sousa last week killed and wounded dozens, including civilians and IS fighters.



As-Sousa is in the last IS-held area of Syria, where coalition-backed forces have been fighting extremists for weeks.North Korea, South Korea, and the United Nations Command (UNC) met Monday to further discuss plans to disarm the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). It follows a meeting last week where the three parties discussed ways of implementing a comprehensive military agreement signed during the third inter-Korean summit to achieve that goal.

United Nations Command deputy commander Lt. General Wayne Eyre said the UNC will adapt its mission to support current diplomatic efforts, and experts called for the organization to play an active role as the Koreas move toward reshaping the heavily fortified border into a peace zone.

Pyeongtaek University Professor Yun Jiwon tells VOA demilitarization has been an ongoing topic since the early 1990s between the Koreas, but until now, the right conditions to do so havent been present.

The meeting Monday was aimed at checking and evaluating the status of demining operations at the JSA and consulting over schedules for withdrawing firearms and guard posts and adjusting guard personnel, as well as future plans for mutual verifications," Seouls defense ministry said in a statement.

As with the October 16 meeting, it was facilitated by North and South Korean colonel-level military officials and a member from the United Nations Command.

Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, Commander of United Nations Command said in a statement the talks last week joined the existing Armistice mechanisms used by the Korean People's Army and the United Nations Command, with the more recent Korean People's Army and Republic of Korea military dialogue to further advance implementation of the CMA (Comprehensive Military Agreement)."

A pathway to peace

During the September Pyongyang summit, the two Koreas agreed to remove 11 guard posts within a 1 kilometer radius of the Military Demarcation Line by the end of this year.

Following last weeks meeting, Seoul's defense ministry said both sides will scale down personnel stationed there to 35 on each side in line with the armistice agreement, and share information related to their surveillance equipment. Furthermore, tourists from both sides and overseas will be allowed to freely come and go within the JSA. South Korean officials said they hope to begin rolling out the measure in about a month.

Yang Uk, Senior Fellow at the Korea Defense Forum urged caution. A genuine detente is needed and [the government] should not make any decisions in a hurry, he said.

In the end, the plan should be guided by the UNC. They should be managing it [the process] should be under the UNCs order, said Yang.

Joseph Yun, former U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy, said it is the little steps along the way that lead toward the final goal of denuclearization. His concern about the current, rapid pace of North-South dialogue is that the leaders are out in front and may not be giving sufficient time for working-level talks to set the necessary foundation for meaningful progress.

Demilitarization of the border region is an agreement between North and South Korea, and necessary to foster increased cooperation in the future said Yun, but its not possible without consulting with the UNC.

The DMZ is under the UNCs management; therefore, its necessary to have the UNC in this process, said Yun.

At the October 16 meeting, it was also agreed to withdraw all firearms from the JSA.

Yang said thats important, recalling an incident in February when North Korean troops fired machine guns at a defecting soldier.

Lt. General Wayne Eyre said the UNC is committed to enabling the current diplomatic efforts and these included, The successful implementation of the comprehensive military agreement.

Eyre added, that despite the challenges ahead, The UNC will continue to fulfill his responsibilities in the ongoing, potentially decisively events that are playing out.

Current events give hope that the process of moving towards a lasting peace, along with denuclearization, is really making progress, said Eyre.

Through a written statement, the UNC said it is the home for international commitments with a mandate to restore peace and security in defense of the Republic of Korea. UNC coordinates multilateral engagement and provides a standing multinational framework for the integration of UN Forces into the command.

More talks scheduled

Both Koreas will hold an additional round of talks Friday, October 26. Participants will hold the rank of general and are expected to further discuss the implementation of a military agreement reached when the two sides met at Tongilgak, a building on the North Korean side of Panmunjom.

The defense ministry said discussions will focus on how to form and run a joint military committee, whose responsibility it will be to enforce the agreement, and how best to form a joint research team for an area of the Han River thats been closed off to civilians due to escalating tensions.

Lee Ju-Hyun contributed to this report.Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for a "transparent and thorough" investigation of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a meeting on Monday with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, the foreign minister of the Asian nation said.

Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, maintains close ties with Saudi Arabia and has "expressed concern" over the killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which the kingdom initially denied for weeks.

Khashoggi's killing has drawn international criticism, prompting the kingdom on Sunday to describe it as a "huge and grave mistake", while adding that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware of the case.

"Indonesia hopes the investigation being carried out is transparent and thorough," Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters after Widodo's meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, which she attended.

The two met at the presidential palace on the outskirts of Jakarta, the capital, to discuss several subjects, including the Khashoggi case.

Marsudi said al-Jubeir had conveyed a "statement and explanation" to Widodo about the case, but she declined to elaborate. She is scheduled to hold talks with al-Jubeir in Jakarta on Tuesday.

In 2017, King Salman became the first Saudi monarch to visit the Southeast Asian nation in nearly five decades, and signed a range of cooperation pacts.U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton says he told Russian officials that its meddling in the 2016 election did not affect the outcome but instead created distrust.

"The important thing is that the desire for interfering in our affairs itself arouses distrust in Russian people, in Russia. And I think it should not be tolerated. It should not be acceptable," Bolton said Monday on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Bolton is in Moscow for talks with Russian leaders on President Donald Trump's intention to pull the United States out of a 1987 arms control agreement.

Before joining the White House, Bolton called Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election an "act of war."

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian election interference and allegations of collusion with the Trump campaign  allegations both Trump and Russia deny.

The U.S. has charged a number of Russian citizens and agents with election meddling.

Last week, the Justice Department charged a Russian woman with "information warfare" for managing the finances of an internet company looking to interfere in next month's midterm elections.

The company is owned by a business executive with alleged ties to President Vladimir Putin.

The woman, Elena Khusyaynova, said Monday she is "shocked" by the charges against her. She calls herself a "simple Russian woman" who does not speak English.While domestic concerns dominate much of the political debate ahead of next months U.S. midterm elections, Democratic lawmakers say they are eager to assert themselves on foreign affairs and, when necessary, provide a check on the Trump administration if they win control of at least one chamber of Congress in November.

From trade to refugee quotas to regional concerns spanning the globe, a newly empowered Democratic majority would work energetically to hold the administration to account on its policies and potentially wield the power of the purse in areas of disagreement.

Republicans, who played a similar role for much of the previous Obama administration, are warning of a potential uptick in partisan discord on foreign policy, a realm that in past eras, such as the Cold War, often saw broad bipartisan consensus.

The results of the election can create an opportunity to press issues in a way that, right now, cant be done with Republican control of both the House and the Senate, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA.

For example, our role in the world on refugees -- this administration has dramatically cut back on refugees, Menendez added. And standing up for human rights and democracy -- it doesn't seem to be a significant priority, as it has been in other administrations, with the Trump administration.

We [members of Congress] are the appropriators, Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said. So when the White House sends a budget up every year and they propose dramatically reduced funding for USAID [foreign assistance] or diplomacy, we will be able to continue to robustly fund those priorities.

Power of the majority

Republicans dont dispute that a new Democratic majority in either house of Congress would flex its muscles.

The primary role of Congress is to fund the government, including the Department of Defense, and Democrats could have a direct impact, the Senates No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, said.

The Democrats could do a great deal with power in Congress, said Michael OHanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The president, by the Constitution, is granted diplomatic power. Hes also the commander-in-chief of the military, but only Congress can declare war. And also on many other issues, such as applying sanctions, Congress passes the laws.

You dont need to worry about a dull period, said national security expert Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I dont know that control of both houses [of Congress] is the issue. I think it might well be the partisanship of both houses and how hard it may be to agree on anything, move things forward, and avoid turning every foreign policy issue into a partisan issue.

Current polling suggests that Democrats are more likely to win a majority in the House of Representatives than the Senate.

Recent months provide examples of House bipartisanship on international matters as well as partisan divergence.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, a California Republican, and the panels top Democrat, Eliot Engel of New York, recently wrote a joint letter to President Donald Trump demanding swift action regarding the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Last month, however, Democrats took center stage in opposing the administrations plan to provide $20 million to help Mexico deport Central American migrants passing through the country to reach the United States. In a statement, Engel labeled the plan senseless and an attempt to use the State Department to force his [Trumps] deportation crusade on other countries.

Oversight role

A majority in either chamber of Congress would give Democrats broad power to scrutinize and draw attention to the administrations decisions and initiatives on matters large and small.

There are things Id like to see done at the [Foreign Relations] committee that the Republican majority doesn't have an interest in, Menendez said. For example, I get concerned about the allegations of political firings at the State Department. That is something I would press if we had a Democratic majority. I have a more robust view of oversight  we really dont know, for the most part, whats been happening in our engagement with North Korea.

A lot of Democrats are critical of President Trump on North Korea policy, OHanlon said. Certainly many Democrats think hes been too friendly to Kim Jong Un or too unpredictable in his bluster and his tweets.

OHanlon noted that Trump is constitutionally empowered to try to forge a nuclear treaty with North Korea, just as his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, pushed for an international nuclear accord with Iran. Ratification is another matter.

Only the Senate can ratify treaties. Congress cannot write the treaty itself, only the executive can do that. But then the Congress has the power to say yea or nay, OHanlon explained. Ultimately it would be a question of whether Congress would bless any possible [North Korean nuclear] deal that required U.S. money or funds or a peace treaty.

Obviously the Democrats are going to pick at every possible weakness, Cordesman said. If the president is successful in dismantling the North Korean nuclear program, you might have some very loud Republican voices and some very silent Democratic ones. Its going to depend on how people perceive the opportunity.

A Democratic majority in either the House or the Senate could launch or reinvigorate investigations of the Trump administration, including its ties to Russia, an issue that is already the focus of a special counsel probe as well as bipartisan investigations by multiple committees on Capitol Hill. Republican and Democratic lawmakers also have joined forces to slap sanctions on Moscow for a variety of misdeeds.

Asked if a Democratic legislative majority would take an even tougher line with Russia, Kaine paused before answering.

Certainly greater scrutiny, the Virginia Democrat said. You wont see Congress turning a blind eye.

Russia is a place where its Donald Trump against the rest of the American foreign policy community, rather than President Trump against the Democrats, OHanlon said. Congress has been pretty adamant, both Democratic and Republican caucuses, against Russian behavior and anxious to apply punishment.

Republican view

Regardless of the outcome of the elections, Republicans say lawmakers of both parties should work cooperatively with the administration on foreign affairs.

Theres a lot going on in the world, so we need to try to be as unified as we can in working with the administration, rather than just joining the resistance, Cornyn said. Theres a lot of stake. I have not been encouraged by what weve seen of late. They [Democrats] seem more of the sand-in-the-gears mindset. This is a different political environment than any Ive encountered during my adult life.

Another Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, scoffed when asked about Democrats asserting themselves on global affairs.

I dont know what their foreign policy is, Graham said. I know what Trumps is. But what is the Democratic view of foreign policy? I dont think they have one. They dont like Trump, but what are they for? Should we stay in Syria? Should we stay in Afghanistan? What should we do with Iran? These are things they never talk about.

Military engagements

Kaine has long urged Congress to pass a new authorization for the use of military force in the war on terror, updating a law passed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

I hope, on matters like trade and declaration of war, Congress will haul back some of its [constitutional] power, the senator said.

Cordesman said the next Congress will confront multiple questions about ongoing U.S. military engagements at a time when Americas fiscal situation is worsening.

On defense policy, in terms of basic spending levels, things are now relatively non-partisan, Cordesman said. If it came to a major new commitment in Afghanistan, any dramatic action in Iraq or Syria, or humanitarian aid, a lot would be debated there. Government spending and money may be a much more sensitive issue. Republicans may favor defense spending, Democrats may have more support for foreign aid. But exactly whats going to happen is pretty hard to tell.

My expectation is that in most foreign policy issues we would not see a Democratic House, even a Democratic Senate, making huge changes in U.S. foreign policy because, in some ways, they lack the means, OHanlon said. But even more importantly, as much as they complain about Mr. Trumps style and worry about his overall steadiness, its not clear how many of his policies they fundamentally disagree with in a way that would create a consensus they could write into law and change the nations basic foreign policy course.A court in the Maldives has freed an opposition leader, setting aside a lower court's conviction for bribery.



The High Court, in hearing an appeal by Qasim Ibrahim, said Monday that there were procedural violations by the Criminal Court in convicting him.



Ibrahim, a political party leader and businessman owning a chain of tourist resorts, was sentenced to more than three years in prison last year after he joined forces with the opposition in trying to unseat President Yameen Abdul Gayoom. He was accused of offering to fund re-election campaigns of government lawmakers in return for voting for an opposition-sponsored no-faith motion against the parliamentary speaker.



Ibrahim was exiled in Germany following heart surgery in Singapore and only returned home earlier this month after Yameen's presidential election defeat.NATO says one of its service members was killed and two others wounded in in attack in Herat province.

"Initial reports indicate the attack was committed by a member of the Afghan security forces," the NATO-led Resolute Support mission said in a statement.

The Taliban claimed the assailant was one of its infiltrators in the ranks of Afghan security forces.

Meanwhile, the U.S. army has confirmed that a brigadier general was one of two Americans wounded in an attack last week in Afghanistan that fatally wounded a powerful Afghan police chief.

U.S. Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley, in charge of NATO's military advisory mission in Afghanistan, was shot when a gunman wearing an Afghan security forces uniform opened fire on a group of officials leaving a meeting with the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller.

Miller escaped injury, but a U.S. civilian was also shot.

General Abdul Raziq, an anti-Taliban strongman, was mortally wounded, along with the local head of the NDS intelligence service General Abdul Momim.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack inside the highly secured compound, dealing a severe blow to the Afghan government in one of its most strategically important provinces. The incident demonstrated the insurgents' ability to strike top leaders.

Ayaz Gul contributed to this report.The outgoing deputy head of the monitoring mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says newly compiled statistics prove that lack of political will is the only thing allowing near-daily outbreaks of violence to continue claiming lives in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

Alexander Hug, whose 10-year OSCE appointment expires this month, also said the very people empowered to halt the conflict  those who signed the Minsk agreement  could make it happen within a matter of hours.

"Fourteen times now, both sides have agreed to recommit to the cease-fire, and every time this happens, daily cease-fire violations plummet from four digits to fewer than 10, and that's within a single day," Hug told VOA's Ukrainian service. "So, the military-technical part of this conflict can end within hours. Overnight. And this isn't speculation. We have evidenced it with our statistics based on observations made in the aftermath of recommitments."

Although OSCE reports typically reveal which side has instigated a given episode of violence, Hug said the data also show that assigning blame is futile.

"In black and white, our reports show where and by whom these violations take place," he said. "When we see heavy weapons in areas where they shouldn't be  and we've seen thousands this year alone, 45 percent in [Ukrainian]-government-controlled areas and 55 percent in [Russian-backed-separatist-controlled] areas  it's clear beyond any doubt who is responsible for the tanks, the mortars, these multiple rocket launch systems, because we see it and describe it in our reports, and yet the hardware doesn't move."

The data also show that pointing the finger in the aftermath of violence is counterproductive, and that amplifying the voices of people most vulnerable to conflict  civilians in proximity to the front lines  has been the most effective way to reduce violence and facilitate a constructive dialogue.

"We have been outlining in sometimes gruesome detail the misery and suffering of civilians along the contact line, and I'm convinced  as are many of my colleagues, if I can speak on their behalf  that only dialogue" between people along the front lines and signatories to the Minsk agreement itself "will bring about a solution to this conflict," said Hug.

"It's for the sake of civilians that this conflict must end, specifically because it is civilians that do not believe in this conflict," he said. "We talk to them, and they tell us it's not their conflict; they don't understand why it continues, and all they want is for it to end."

Phantom divisions

Upward of 40,000 Ukrainians are estimated to cross the front lines each day, Hug said, indicating that most civilians aren't heavily invested in the idea of a territorially divided country, which is how the conflict is often framed by international media outlets.

"People on the ground don't believe in the contact line," he said. "It is a line that is a harsh reality every day when they have to cross it, but in their minds it doesn't exist. There are no firm lines of division.

"And with only very few exceptions have I ever seen any hatred developing on either side of the contact line," he said, adding that that observation includes neighboring communities that have been shelled and shot at daily for years. "When you think of this fact, it's quite amazing."

Onus on Kremlin

David Kramer, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said even if Hug's data supporting an immediate cease-fire were sound, it wouldn't be sustainable unless the Kremlin saw that it had nothing more to gain from remaining in Ukraine.

"To be clear, the responsibility for stopping the conflict lies in Moscow," he said. "It lies with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who to this day refuses to recognize that there are Russian forces in eastern Ukraine."

Kramer, who is currently senior director for human rights and democracy at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a Washington think tank, also said increased sanctions would be vital to progress.

"Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine didn't invade Russia," he said. "So, I do think we need to see a stronger effort from the West to apply more pressure on the Kremlin and its cronies because, absent that pressure, we're not going to see Putin move.

"Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see any movement until after both the presidential and parliamentary elections [in Ukraine]," he added.

Waiting game

Earlier on Thursday, Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, told an Atlantic Council gathering the same thing.

"I think that Russia has essentially decided to wait out the Ukrainian election, see what happens," he said. "Maybe there'll be new opportunities that arise to get a more favorable position for Russia. So I think they intend to just play it out."

Volker's remarks came shortly after Putin told the Valdai Club in Sochi that he hoped a government more friendly to Russia would emerge from the Ukrainian presidential election, set for March 31.

"We need to wait until the internal political cycles are finished, and I really expect that we will be able to build at least some kind of relations and reach some kind of agreement with a new leadership of the country. We're ready for that, we want that," Putin told the gathering of Russian and Western foreign policy experts.

Putin charged that the current government in Kyiv led by President Petro Poroshenko has made its mark by "selling Russophobia and anti-Russian sentiments" to the West.

Volker said Russia appeared more determined than ever to continue backing separatists fighting the government in eastern Ukraine despite extensive efforts by the United States and Western Europe to pressure Russia over its aggression in Ukraine.

Coordinated sanctions critical

The best strategy for the West, Volker said, is to maintain pressure on Moscow through the economic sanctions, which were first imposed on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

"We will see whether President [Donald] Trump agrees with what Ambassador Volker has to say, but I agree that we need to put more pressure on Russia," said Alexander Vershbow, a former NATO deputy secretary-general and distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

"The only way to bring about a solution in conformity with the Minsk agreement is if there more pressure on Russia, because clearly they're comfortable with the status quo," he added. "That being said, sanctions can be an overused weapon, so I think what's more important is to maintain solidarity with the Europeans and find a way to increase sanctions in a coordinated way together. Then the Russians will pay more attention."



Bogdan Tsioupine of VOA's Ukrainian service reported from London. Danila Galperovich of VOA's Russian service contributed reporting from Washington. Some information for this report came from RFE.Pakistan and Russia have begun annual joint military drills to boost counterterrorism cooperation to tackle the growing threat of Islamic State stemming from neighboring Afghanistan.

Officials said the "Druzhba-III" (Friendship-III) drills went into action Monday at the National Counter-Terrorist Center in the mountain town of Pabbi, where the Pakistan army's commando unit, the Special Services Group, is headquartered.

Chief army spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor said this is the third exercise of the Pakistan-Russia bilateral training cooperation.

Russian military officials said during the two week exercises more than 70 Russian commando troops and their Pakistani counterparts will undertake joint tasks at an altitude of 1,400 meters.

Moscow and Islamabad launched the joint drills in 2016, a year after the local branch of Islamic State, known as Khorasan Province or ISK-P, unleashed its regional terrorist operations from bases in "ungoverned" border districts of Afghanistan.

ISK-P has carried out some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan in recent months.

Russia maintains the Middle Eastern-based terrorist group is trying to use volatile Afghan regions next to the border with Central Asian countries to threaten Russian regional security interests.

Pakistan blames ISK-P for plotting terrorist attacks in the country from its Afghan bases.

The Islamabad-Moscow security partnership has strengthened and expanded since late 2014, when the two former rivals signed their defense cooperation agreement.

In August, Moscow concluded an unprecedented contract with Islamabad, opening doors,for the first time,for Russian military training of Pakistani army officers.

The deal came amid Islamabad's deteriorating relations with Washington, which has resulted in the halt of all military exchange programs with Pakistan and left a void that Moscow has stepped in to fill.

Moscow and Islamabad have been pushing for starting peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban insurgency for ending the war and preventing Islamic State from using the turmoil-hit country as a sanctuary.

Russia acknowledges its contacts with the Taliban, while Islamabad is accused of covertly supporting the insurgents to sustain and expand the 17-year-old Afghan war.

The United States is critical of Russia's growing contacts with the Taliban, alleging Moscow is trying to undermine international efforts aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan. Washington has also cut defense ties with Islamabad for not doing enough to prevent Taliban insurgents from allegedly using Pakistani soil for deadly cross-border attacks.

Russian and Pakistani officials deny they are providing any military assistance or shelter to the Taliban and insist their ties with insurgents are meant to influence them to engage in an Afghan peace process.Russia signaled Monday it is willing to consider mutual complaints the United States and it have about their continued implementation of the 1987 nuclear weapons treaty between the two world powers.

Russian Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev expressed Moscow's "readiness for joint work" on the pact as he met in the Russian capital with his U.S. counterpart, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.

For his part, Bolton said that the U.S. had not made any decision to deploy missiles in Europe targeting Russia if the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is scrapped.

Their talks came two days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to pull out of the agreement that bans the United States and Russia from building, testing, and stockpiling ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range from 500 to 5,000 kilometers (310-3,400 miles). The U.S. leader accused Russia of building and testing missiles that violate the accord.

Since Trump's declaration, Moscow has defended the treaty, with Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, saying the U.S. decision "will make the world more dangerous." He rebuffed the U.S. claim that Russia had violated the terms of the pact.

The Russian Security Council said Patrushev had told Bolton that the treaty's "abrogation would deal a serious blow to the entire international system of nuclear non-proliferation and arms control."

The two security officials, according to the Russian statement, also discussed a possible five-year extension of another arms control agreement, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that took effect in 2011 and is set to expire in 2021.

Bolton also held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and is set to meet Tuesday with Putin.

Before the Patrushev-Bolton talks, Putin spokesman Peskov contended that "it is the United States that is eroding the foundations and main elements" of the three-decade-old nuclear agreement with its missile defense systems and use of drones.

Russia to respond in kind

The Kremlin spokesman said that if the United States goes on to develop new missiles, then Russia would be forced to respond in kind. He said Russian officials want to get more information about the U.S. plans regarding the treaty in their talks with Bolton.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the deal with the late U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, at the White House in 1987.

"Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?" Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying. "Washington's desire to turn back politics cannot be supported. Not only Russia, but all those who cherish the world, especially a world without nuclear weapons, must declare this."

Without specifying how Russia violated the treaty, Trump on Saturday appeared to say Moscow will not get away with it.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years. And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we are not allowed to," he said.

U.S. officials going back to the Obama administration have accused Russia of deliberately deploying a land-based cruise missile to pose a threat to NATO.

Russia has denied violating the INF agreement and says U.S. missile defense systems are a violation.

Defense advocates in Washington say the INF treaty keeps the U.S. from developing a new generation of weapons in a world that faces new global security challenges.

Trump said, "We'll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let's really get smart and let's none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia's doing it and if China's doing it, and we're adhering to the agreement, that's unacceptable."

China is not part of the INF agreement.

Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons  the coalition that won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize  said, "By declaring he will leave the INF Treaty, President Trump has shown himself to be a demolition man who has no ability to build real security. Instead, by blowing up nuclear treaties, he is taking the U.S. down a trillion-dollar road to a new nuclear arms race."

Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent Russian political analyst, told the Associated Press, "We are slowly slipping back to the situation of Cold War, as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, with quite similar consequences, but now it could be worse because Putin belongs to a generation that had no war under its belt. These people aren't as much fearful of a war as people of (former Soviet leader Leonid) Brezhnev's epoch. They think if they threaten the West properly, it gets scared."As China moves to complete the creation of military outposts in the South China Sea, Beijings negotiation with southeastern Asian nations over a binding code of conduct is gaining momentum.



But U.S. officials and experts warn Chinas insertions in the draft South China Sea code of conduct may put Washington and Beijing on a collision course. The text of the draft also shows that deep divisions remain among claimants.



One of the Chinese provisions in the text states, The Parties shall not hold joint military exercises with countries from outside the region, unless the parties concerned are notified beforehand and express no objection.



China also proposed cooperation on the marine economy shall not be conducted in cooperation with companies from countries outside the region.



A State Department spokesperson told VOA the United States is concerned by reports China has been pressing members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in the closed-door talks, to accept restrictions on their ability to conduct exercises with security partners, and to agree not to conduct oil and gas exploration in their claimed waters with energy firms based in countries which are not part of the ongoing negotiations.



These proposals, if accepted, would limit the ability of ASEAN nations to conduct sovereign, independent foreign and economic policies and would directly harm the interests of the broader international community, added the State Department spokesperson.

Competing for influence



For China, the benefits are apparent. The United States and China are competing for influence in the Indo-Pacific region.



China and Southeast Asian navies are heading to their first joint exercises from October 22 to 28. An inaugural ASEAN-U.S. maritime exercise will be held next year.



In other words, China would like a veto over all the military exercises held by ASEAN countries with other nations. I think this really provides some evidence that China indeed is trying to limit American influence in the region, one might go so far as to say to push American military presence out of the region eventually, but certainly in the area of the South China Sea, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.



While the United States is not a claimant to the sovereignty of disputed islands in the South China Sea, Washington has said China's efforts to militarize outposts in the contested waters endanger the free flow of trade and undermine regional stability, a claim Beijing rebuts.



The United States is also calling for ongoing discussions on the South China Sea code of conduct to be transparent and consultative with the rest of the international community. U.S. officials said the international community has direct stakes in the outcome.

Code of conduct draft

In August, Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan announced China and ASEANs 10 member countries had reached a draft agreement. (Single Draft South China Sea Code of Conduct Negotiating Text or SDNT). ASEAN leaders are to meet next month in Singapore.



Highlighting the importance of such a draft, a Center for Strategic and International Studies report said for the first time in many years, an effective diplomatic process to manage South China Sea disputes seems possible.



ASEAN and China have been discussing a potential code of conduct (COC) to manage the South China Sea maritime and territorial disputes for more than two decades.



Leaked details of the draft state the code of conduct is not an instrument to settle territorial disputes or maritime delimitation issues.

Managing disputes



The draft shows deep divisions among South China Sea claimants over many issues, according to experts, especially over the most sensitive issues like the agreements geographic scope, potential dispute settlement mechanisms, and details of resource exploration.



What the code of conduct is intended to do is to manage the disputes to prevent them from escalating, and basically to allow the freezing of the thorny territorial questions, while states can manage the resources and manage tensions in the near to medium term, said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).



In August a trilateral statement from Japan, Australia and the United States called for the Code of Conduct to not prejudice the interests of third parties or the rights of all states under international law; to reinforce existing regional architecture; and to strengthen parties commitments to cease actions that would complicate or escalate disputes.



Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia Amy Searight said Washingtons concrete position on no prejudice against third parties is to really criticize China's attempt to marginalize U.S. influences in the region.Rebels of the Federal Democratic Party (FDP) are accusing forces loyal to Riek Machars Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM IO) of attacking FDP forces in Kotkea near Nasir town in Upper Nile State.

Spokesman Changkouth Bichiock Reth for the umbrella group of opposition parties known as South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA), said FDP commanders Major General Riek Gach Gatluak and Brigadier Ochan Nyuot were captured by opposition forces during the fight over the control of Kotkea.

SPLM IO reaction

SPLM IO Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Stephen Par told VOAs South Sudan In Focus that rebels of the FDP have no military posts in Upper Nile.

What is happening in Upper Nile, I dont think the party [FDP] of Gabriel Changson has forces in Nasir. We are not aware of this, Par said.

However, he admitted his group arrested one person in Nasir for what he called "suspicious activities.

Reth says the attack by SPLM IO and the arrest of FDP senior military officer Major General Jany Kaway Yoakhor a few weeks is a flagrant breach of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement signed in December 2017 and a violation of the permanent ceasefire agreed to in Khartoum in June 2018.

Looming attacks

Suba Samuel Manase, the spokesman of the rebel National Salvation (NAS), released a statement Saturday accusing the SPLM IO of mobilizing its forces to attack NAS forces in Yei River state.

Manase alleges that NAS intelligence confirmed reports of two groups of SPLM/A IO forces moving from the village of Panyume in Morobo County to Kajo-Keji, Lanya, and Loka to attack NAS forces stationed in this area.

This information is credible because we have forces on the ground and we monitor the movement of the SPLM IO, and for that matter the information is, indeed, credible. Manase told VOA.

Reth said urged the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the U.S, Norway and the United Kingdom to put pressure on SPLM/A-IO to respect the September 12 peace agreement, release the captured FDP officers, and withdraw from Kotkea.

VOA could not independently verify the accusations by the three rebel groups.

Cease-Fire Monitors

The Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring Mechanism (CTSAMM), a body formed by IGAD to monitoring cease-fire violations, has not issued any statement on the latest reports.

Chris Trott, Britain's special representative for Sudan and South Sudan told VOA last month that the parties involved in the conflict in South Sudan have a chance to show their commitment to peace by implementing the revitalized agreement.

Just days after the signing of the agreement, reports of fighting had surfaced in several parts of South Sudan, according to Jean-Pierre Lacroix, U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations.

In an interview with VOA in September, Angelina Teny, a senior member of the rebels of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO), blamed government forces for allegedly attacking rebel strongholds in Central Equatoria and the former Unity state.U.S. media reports say CIA director Gina Haspel is traveling to Istanbul to meet with Turkish officials who are investigating the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Sources told news outlets that Haspel departed Monday for Turkey to work on the investigation into Khashoggi's death.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he has "top intelligence people in Turkey," but did not give further details. Trump said he is still not satisfied with the explanation he has heard about Khashoggi's death, but said "we're going to get to the bottom of it."

The president said he had spoken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman  Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler  since Khashoggi's death. He said he will know more about the death once U.S. teams investigating the killing return to Washington from Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

In another development Monday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met Saudi Arabia's embattled crown prince in Riyadh. The Saudi Foreign Ministry posted a photograph of the meeting on its Twitter account.

Mnuchin canceled his plans to attend a three-day investment conference hosted by Saudi Arabia beginning Tuesday, but said he would meet the Saudi crown prince to discuss counterterrorism efforts.

New surveillance video released Monday from Istanbul appears to show a Saudi agent wearing Khashoggi's clothing and leaving Riyadh's consulate on Oct. 2, an apparent attempt to cover up his killing by showing he had left the diplomatic outpost alive.

The video was taken by Turkish law enforcement and shown Monday on CNN, suggesting Saudi agents used a body double in an effort to conceal the killing.

The video surfaced as Saudi officials offered yet another explanation for the death of the 59-year-old Saudi journalist who had been living in the U.S. in self-imposed exile while he wrote columns for The Washington Post that were critical of the Saudi crown prince and Riyadh's involvement in the conflict in Yemen.

The Saudis at first said Khashoggi had left the consulate and that they did not know his whereabouts. Later, they said he died in a fistfight after an argument inside the consulate. Now, the Saudis are saying Khashoggi died in a chokehold to prevent him from leaving the consulate to call for help.

It is not known what happened to Khashoggi's remains, although Turkish officials say he was tortured, decapitated and then dismembered. One Saudi official told ABC News that Khashoggi's body was given to a "local cooperator" in Istanbul for disposal, but Saudi officials have said they do not know what happened to his remains.

In Washington, White House adviser Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, told CNN the U.S. is still in a "fact-finding" phase in trying to determine exactly what happened to Khashoggi.

"We're getting facts in from multiple places," Kushner said. He said that Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will then decide how to respond to Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is vowing to reveal details about the case in a Tuesday speech to his parliament.President Donald Trump says the U.S. "will now begin cutting off or substantially reducing" the amount of foreign aid given to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, saying they were "not able to do the job" of stopping migrants from leaving their countries and "coming illegally" to the U.S.

His Twitter comments Monday came as a group of several thousand migrants, mostly from Honduras, spent Sunday night in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula as they continued their trek toward the United States and away from what they say is untenable violence and poverty at home.

Trump said, "Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy (sic). Must change laws!"

Two weeks ahead of nationwide congressional elections in the U.S., the U.S. leader, a Republican, laid the blame for the latest mass migration toward the southern U.S. border on opposition Democrats.

"Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally," Trump said, "think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally."

The United Nations refugee agency has 32 workers in Mexico to provide humanitarian assistance and legal advice to the migrants, with its local partners offering asylum information to those who want to stay. The International Organization for Migration said large numbers of migrants arrived in Mexico on Monday, with many likely to remain for an extended period. IOM estimates that more than 7,200 people are in the caravan, with many of them planning to continue their march northward.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration is closely following the progress of the caravan and accused the migrants of violating the sovereignty, laws and procedures of the countries they are traveling through.

Pompeo said the United States is concerned about violence provoked by some members of the caravan and "the apparent political motivation of some organizers" without giving specifics about either.

He also pledged U.S. support for Mexican government efforts to address refugee and migration issues.

Authorities in southern Mexico largely left the migrants alone Sunday as they walked toward the day's destination in Chiapas state.

The Mexican government has pledged to process asylum requests for migrants who apply. The country's interior ministry reported that on Friday, Saturday and Sunday a total 1,028 people had requested refugee status.

Mexico's National Migration Institute said it reiterates its duty to safeguard the human rights of migrants who enter its territory.

Trump has threatened to deploy the U.S. military to stop what he calls an "assault on our country at the Southern Border," and portrayed the migrant group as containing "many criminals."

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Southern Border," he tweeted Sunday. "People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!"

Trump blames the opposition Democrats for what he says are immigration laws and border policies that are not strong enough to protect the United States.

"The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!" he tweeted.

Watch: Migrant Caravan

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an organization that helps the migrant caravans in Central America, says governments in the region have adopted "a policy of fear and racism imposed by the United States" and are not considering the reasons why people are seeking somewhere new to go.

"They are walking in mass exodus because they cannot live in their country anymore due to extreme violence, lack of opportunity, and the corruption and impunity that has expelled them from their homes," the group said in a statement Sunday.

Mexico's incoming president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told supporters at a rally Sunday in Chiapas that he would be sending a letter to Trump proposing Mexico, the United States and Canada work together to invest in development in Central America to address poverty.

Lopez Obrador, who takes office December 1, said people who leave their home do so not because they want to, but out of necessity.

He has pledged to offer migrants work visas, and said Sunday that Mexico has to guarantee human rights and that above all, the migrant families, women and children will have protection.

"Nothing bad will happen to the Central American migrants," Lopez Obrador said.

Aid group Save the Children expressed concern Sunday about children who were sleeping outside in Tapachula and Suchiate either because places were full or the children feared they would be detained once inside.

The group estimates one in four members of the caravan are children.

The Red Cross said Saturday that many of the people it is helping along the caravan route, a majority of them women and children, "are suffering from dehydration, stomach infections, and foot injuries as they walk the long journey."

Walter Cotte, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies regional director for the Americas, said in a statement: "It is imperative that the dignity and security of families are safeguarded and they are kept together."President Donald Trump says the United States "will now begin cutting off or substantially reducing" the amount of foreign aid given to three Central American countries, saying they were "not able to do the job" of stopping migrants from leaving their countries and "coming illegally" to the U.S.



"Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador  they're paid a lot of money," Trump told reporters Monday afternoon. "Every year, we give them foreign aid. And they did nothing for us. Nothing. They did nothing for us. So, we give them tremendous amounts of money. You know what it is, you cover it all the time  hundreds of millions of dollars. They, like a lot of others, do nothing for our country."



The president's comments came as a group of several thousand migrants, mostly from Honduras, spent Sunday night in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula as they continued their trek toward the United States and away from what they say is unbearable violence and poverty at home.

Trump, in a tweet earlier in the day, claimed "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in" the caravan.

Reporters traveling with the caravan say they have spotted no people from the Middle East in the group.



Asked by a reporter on the White House south lawn what evidence he had of Middle Easterners in the caravan, Trump replied, "I had reports, and they have a lot of everybody in the group. It's a horrible thing, and it's a lot bigger than 5,000 people, and we got to stop 'em at the border. And unfortunately, you look at the countries, they have not done their job."



When pressed further about his assertion, Trump told journalists if they take their cameras into the caravan, "You're going to find MS-13. You're going to find Middle Eastern. You're going to find everything. And guess what, we're not allowing them in our country. We want safety."



Two weeks ahead of U.S. congressional elections, Trump, a Republican, again laid the blame for the latest mass migration toward the southern U.S. border on opposition Democrats.

The United Nations refugee agency said it has 32 workers in Mexico to provide humanitarian assistance to the migrants and legal advice, with its local partners offering asylum information to those who want to stay.



The International Organization for Migration announced on Monday that large numbers of migrants arrived in Mexico, with many likely to remain for an extended period.

IOM estimates that more than 7,200 people are in the caravan, with many of them planning to continue their march northward.



Authorities in southern Mexico largely left the migrants alone Sunday as they walked toward the day's destination in Chiapas state.



The Mexican government has pledged to process asylum requests for migrants who apply. The country's interior ministry reported that on Friday, Saturday and Sunday a total 1,028 people had requested refugee status.



Mexico's National Migration Institute said it reiterates its duty to safeguard the human rights of migrants who enter its territory.



Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an organization that helps the migrant caravans in Central America, said governments in the region have adopted "a policy of fear and racism imposed by the United States" and are not considering the reasons why people are seeking somewhere new to go.

"They are walking in mass exodus because they cannot live in their country anymore due to extreme violence, lack of opportunity, and the corruption and impunity that has expelled them from their homes," the group said in a statement Sunday.



Mexico's incoming president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told supporters at a rally Sunday in Chiapas he would be sending a letter to Trump proposing Mexico, the United States and Canada work together to invest in development in Central America to address poverty.



Lopez Obrador, who takes office December 1, said people who leave their home do so not because they want to, but out of necessity. He has pledged to offer migrants work visas, and said Sunday that Mexico has to guarantee human rights and that above all, the migrant families, women and children will have protection.



"Nothing bad will happen to the Central American migrants," Lopez Obrador said.



Aid group Save the Children expressed concern Sunday about children who were sleeping outside in Tapachula and Suchiate either because places were full, or the children feared they would be detained once inside.



The group estimates one in four members of the caravan are children.Turkey's coast guard says two people died Monday after a boat carrying migrants sank just 50 meters off Turkey's western coast near Bodrum.

Seventeen people were rescued from the boat, according to the coast guard.

Three people were able to swim ashore, but two of them died later at a hospital, a coast guard statement said.

The coast guard said it is continuing search and rescue efforts for possible survivors.

There were no immediate details about the nationalities of the migrants.

Turkey is one of the transit countries used by migrants fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa in their quest to seek a better life in Europe.Turkish investigators are stepping up pressure on Riyadh over the killing of Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan prepares to reveal key details about the case.



On Monday, CNN showed footage, leaked by Turkish investigators, of a man purported to be a double of Khashoggi wearing the journalist's clothes leaving from a backdoor in the Saudi Istanbul consulate a few hours after Khashoggi entered the building on October 2.

Sources close to the investigation claim the double was part of a 15 member Saudi hit team that arrived and left the same day as Khashoggi's killing.



Initially, Riyadh insisted Khashoggi left the consulate. On Friday that story changed with the Saudi government admitting he was accidentally killed in the consulate following a fight. Sunday, Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said Khashoggi was murdered.



"By drip-feeding, the gory press details of Khashoggi's murder, Turkey managed to keep interest alive and prevented a deal between Trump's team and Mohammed bin Salman to hush the affair with little damage," said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.



A Western diplomat speaking anonymously suggested Turkey's Intelligence chief Hakan Fidan is orchestrating the leaks to the media, thereby dictating the narrative and direction of the unfolding crisis to Turkey's advantage.



"President Erdogan will make a profit again, making points both nationally and internationally," said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara's Middle East Technical University.



Milking the crisis

Observers say Erdogan has been uncharacteristically restrained during the crisis, making few comments and not directly attacking Riyadh. That stance is set to change Tuesday, with the Turkish president promising to reveal what he calls the "naked truth" of the investigation.



"He is a political animal; he knows when to act instinctively," Bagci said, "so he probably senses this is the right time to act."



Ankara is starting to face growing international pressure to reveal its findings, especially numerous reports by anonymous sources of secret recordings of the last minutes of Khashoggi's life.



Turkey's Yeni Safak newspaper, which has close ties to the government, reported the recording of the torture, killing and dismembering of the body. Until now Erdogan has not commented on the existence of the recordings. But last week U.S. President Donald Trump called for the tapes.



Analysts suggest what Erdogan says Tuesday is likely to be dictated by the outcome of ongoing diplomatic talks.



"I don't expect he [Erdogan] will break up his relations with Saudi Arabia. He will at the end have the same policy as Donald Trump," Bagci said.



"Of course Saudi Arabia will have to pay" he added, "but I don't know what. But Erdogan will use this situation for economic and political advantages for Turkey. They [Saudi Arabia Turkey] probably haven't still agreed; they are still talking. I don't know how the Saudi government can satisfy Turkish expectations  the president's expectations."



Turkey's economy is facing recession after its currency collapsed this year.



Analysts warn the outcome of the talks could have far-reaching consequences.

"Riyadh will owe Turkey a favor, which shall be cashed in, in terms of investments, loans or probably a more pro-Turkey stance in Syria," analyst Yesilada said.



"If Ankara wishes to shame Riyadh by releasing the evidence it claims to have, namely the grisly details of the journalist's murder in the hands of a Saudi hit squad in the presence of the charge d'affaires to Istanbul, this affair could still spin out of control," he said.



In a possible move to control the volatile diplomatic situation, Trump telephoned Erdogan on Monday.

"Erdogan and Trump agreed the Khashoggi case needs to be cleared up with all aspects." wrote Turkey's State Anadolu news agency.



Resetting US ties



"What we do not know yet is how Trump is planning to thank Erdogan for not escalating the Khashoggi crisis further," wrote columnist Cansu Camlibel of Hurriyet Daily News.

"Whether or not Ankara will be granted generous waivers from the upcoming U.S. sanctions on Iran, which aims to cut oil and gas imports from Tehran, is definitely a crucial part of the negotiations."



Washington is set to impose tough financial and economic sanctions on November 4 over Tehran's nuclear energy program. Turkey relies heavily on oil and gas from its neighbor and is lobbying for dispensation from the sanctions, which previous Washington administrations granted when targeting Iran.



U.S. Turkish relations are strained for several reasons, which resulted in Washington hitting Ankara with economic sanctions in August, triggering a collapse in the currency. However, this month's release of American pastor Andrew Brunson by a Turkish court, a key Trump demand, has improved relations.



Analysts suggest Erdogan's goal of resetting U.S .relations could eventually facilitate a diplomatic way out for Riyadh.

"Turkey is trying to improve relations with America," said Bagci, "Turkey has had enough of economic and diplomatic crisis with America."The U.S. army has confirmed that a brigadier general was one of two Americans wounded in an attack last week in Afghanistan that fatally wounded a powerful Afghan police chief.

U.S. Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley, in charge of NATO's military advisory mission in Afghanistan, was shot when a gunman wearing an Afghan security forces uniform opened fire on a group of officials leaving a meeting with the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller.

Miller escaped injury, but a U.S. civilian was also shot.

General Abdul Raziq, an anti-Taliban strong man, was mortally wounded, along with the local head of the NDS intelligence service General Abdul Momim.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack inside the highly secured compound, dealing a severe blow to the Afghan government in one of its most strategically important provinces. The incident demonstrated the insurgents' ability to strike top leaders.The Pentagon confirmed Sunday that a U.S. general was wounded in last week's terrorist attack on a security conference in Afghanistan.

Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley is recovering from at least one gunshot wound. Officials did not reveal how seriously he was hurt.

Smiley is in charge of NATO's military advisory mission in southern Afghanistan.

He was wounded during last Thursday's insider attack on a security conference in the governor's compound in Kandahar province.

The Taliban says it was behind the attack that killed Kandahar's police chief and intelligence chief.

The head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller, was one of the apparent targets of the attack.U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to pull out of a key Cold War arms deal with Russia, accusing Moscow of violating it.Here is some key information about the treaty.



What is the INF?

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which was signed in December 1987 by then U.S. President Ronald Reagan and then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, committed the two sides to eliminate all their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, along with missile launchers.



By the mid-1970s, the Soviet Union had deployed newly-developed SS-20 intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe. The United States and its NATO allies responded with a "dual-track" policy of deploying intermediate-range, nuclear-armed U.S. ground-launched cruise and Pershing II missiles, while at the same time seeking an arms control agreement with the Soviet side. Negotiations began to bear fruit once Gorbachev became Soviet leader in March 1985.



The INF Treaty, which entered into force on June 1, 1988, originally applied only to U.S. and Soviet missiles. However, in 1991, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the treaty was extended to cover former Soviet states, including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Other European countries, including Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Czech, Slovakia and Bulgaria, eventually also eliminated their stocks of intermediate-range missiles.



Why do some US and Russian officials oppose the treaty?



Russian officials have complained the INF Treaty was unfairly preventing it from having weapons that neighbors like China possess, and raised the possibility Russia could withdraw from the agreement.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have accused Russia of developing and deploying a new ground-launched cruise missiles that violate the treaty.

Similarly, John Bolton, who is now President Donald Trump's national security adviser, co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed published in August 2011 that cited China's "rapidly increasing" cruise and ballistic missile arsenals, as well as the potential missile threat from Iran and North Korea, as evidence the INF Treaty had "outlived its usefulness in its current form."



"Despite the Kremlin's growing propensity for international troublemaking, both Moscow and Washington have a common interest in not having their hands tied by a treaty that binds them alone." the op-ed stated.



Why do proponents say the treaty is worth keeping?



IMF Treaty supporters argue, among other things, that withdrawing from it strategically benefits Russia, since its geography is better suited for using such intermediate range missiles. They say there is no chance the U.S. will be able to redeploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe, nor in South Korea and Japan, where they would be most effective against American adversaries like North Korea.



They say withdrawing from the treaty essentially carries little to no strategic U.S. benefit, while giving Moscow a propaganda victory.White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, said on Monday the United States is still in a fact-finding phase on the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and has its

"eyes wide open."



Kushner, who has a close relationship with powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, deflected questions in a CNN interview about whether he trusted the Saudis to investigate themselves.



Saudi Arabia has given shifting explanations about what happened to Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and strong critic of the crown prince, after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Riyadh confirmed on Saturday he was dead and said he was killed in a fight in the building.



"We're getting facts in from multiple places and once those facts come in, the secretary of state will work with our national security team to help us determine what we want to believe, and what we think is credible and what we think is not

credible," Kushner said.



Turkey's ruling party said on Monday that Khashoggi was the victim of a "monstrously planned" murder, as Western incredulity deepened over varying Saudi accounts of the journalist's disappearance.



Asked whether he thought the Saudis had been deceptive, Kushner said he sees deceptive things every day.



"We have our eyes wide open. The president's focused on what's good for America, what are our strategic interests, where do we share interests with other countries let's work towards those," Kushner said.



Kushner stressed that Saudi Arabia was an important ally of the United States, especially in countering Iran's influence in the Middle East.



Kushner also said he had advised the crown prince: "Just to be transparent, to be fully transparent. The world is watching. This is a very, very serious accusation and a very serious situation."



Asked how the prince responded to that, Kushner said, "We'll see."Congolese rebels killed 15 civilians and abducted a dozen children in an attack at the center of the latest deadly Ebola outbreak, Congos military said Sunday, as the violence again forced the suspension of crucial virus containment efforts.

We condemn this attack, said the World Health Organizations director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while a WHO regional official said it was difficult to say how long work would be affected.

Allied Democratic Forces rebels attacked Congolese army positions and several neighborhoods of Beni on Saturday and into Sunday, Capt. Mak Hazukay Mongha told The Associated Press. The U.N. peacekeeping mission said its troops exchanged fire with rebels in Benis Mayangose area.

Angry over the killings, residents carried four of the bodies to the town hall, where police dispersed them with tear gas. Vehicles of aid organizations and the peacekeeping mission were pelted with stones, the U.N.-backed Radio Okapi reported.

The ADF rebels have killed hundreds of civilians in recent years and are just one of several militias active in Congos far northeast.

Last month, Ebola containment efforts were suspended for days in Beni after a deadly attack, complicating work to track suspected contacts of infected people. Since then, many of the new confirmed Ebola cases have been reported in Beni and the rate of new cases overall has more than doubled, alarming aid groups.

Health efforts in recent weeks had been starting to show results, and this new attack will bring us back, Dr. Michel Yao, the WHO incident manager for Ebola in North Kivu province, told the AP. Colleagues work in Beni was suspended on Sunday as residents protested and a few of our cars were broken, he said.

Tomorrow, we dont know yet, Yao said, noting that the day after an attack is usually for burials and can be very tense. We understand. We are sympathetic. Its not easy to lose relatives. At the same time, it could affect the (outbreak) response.

The overnight attack came after two medical agents with the Congolese army were shot dead by another rebel group  the first time health workers have been killed in this outbreak.

It is a dark day for everyone fighting Ebola, Congos health minister said.

Mai Mai rebels surged from the forest and opened fire on the unarmed agents with the armys rapid intervention medical unit outside Butembo city, the ministry said.

The daytime attack appeared premeditated, with civilians left unharmed, the statement said. The medical agents had been placed in dangerous zones to assist national border health officials.

Confirmed Ebola cases have now reached 200, including 117 deaths.

Health workers in this outbreak, declared on Aug. 1, have described hearing gunshots daily, operating under the armed escort of U.N. peacekeepers or Congolese security forces and ending work by sundown to lower the risk of attack.

Community resistance is also a problem, and Congos health ministry has reported numerous aggressions against health workers. Early this month two Red Cross volunteers were severely injured in a confrontation with wary residents in a region traumatized by decades of fighting and facing an Ebola outbreak for the first time.

Health agents are not a target for armed groups, Health Minister Oly Ilunga said. Our agents will continue to go into the field each day to fulfill the mission entrusted to them. They are true heroes and we will continue to take all necessary measures so that they can do their job safely.

On Wednesday, WHO said it was deeply concerned by the outbreak but announced it does not yet warrant being declared a global emergency. An outbreak must be an extraordinary event that might cross borders, requiring a coordinated response. Confirmed cases have been found near the heavily traveled border with Uganda.

In the latest example of the rumors that pose another serious challenge to containing the virus, the health ministry said 22 youth in Butembo dug up the body of an Ebola victim and opened the body bag, wanting to verify that no organs had been taken from the body by health workers.

They ended up touching highly infectious bodily fluids, the ministry said. The next day, they agreed to be vaccinated, joining the more than 20,000 people who have received vaccinations so far.Saudi Arabia says it made "a huge and grave mistake" in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi inside its Istanbul consulate and vowed those responsible for it would be held accountable.



Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News on Sunday that Saudi agents "did this out of the scope of their authority," calling it "a rogue operation."

The country's top diplomat offered his condolences to Khashoggi's family, but disclosed no new information about how the writer was killed, where his body is or if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler, was involved.



"There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up," al-Jubeir said. "That is unacceptable in any government."



Saudi Arabia said Saturday the 59-year-old Khashoggi was killed October 2 after an argument leading to a fist fight, an explanation that has drawn widespread international scorn and skepticism, including from U.S. President Donald Trump. The U.S. leader said Saturday, "Obviously there has been deception, and there has been lies."

Al-Jubeir said in the television interview, "This is an aberration. This is a mistake and those responsible will be punished for it. We want to make sure that we know what happened and we want to make sure that those responsible be held to account." Saudi Arabia says it has fired five key officials linked to the death and arrested 18 others.

Critics are questioning how a team of 15 Saudi agents could fly to Istanbul to meet Khashoggi and eventually kill him without the crown prince's knowledge and consent. But al-Jubeir said, "There were not people closely tied to him," although news accounts have said that several Saudi security officials close to Mohammed were involved.



Khashoggi was living in the U.S. in self-imposed exile, writing columns for The Washington Post that were critical of Mohammed and Saudi Arabia's intervention in the conflict in Yemen.



Trump told the newspaper that Saudi Arabia has been an "incredible ally" of the United States for decades and it is possible the crown prince did not order Saudi agents to kill Khashoggi.

"Nobody has told me he is responsible. Nobody has told me he is not responsible," the U.S. leader said. "We have not reached that point ... I would love if he was not responsible.

After the Saudis' explanation Saturday for Khashoggi's death, Trump at first said it was credible. But numerous U.S. lawmakers, including Trump's Republican colleagues, are calling for sanctions against Riyadh. Turkish investigators say Saudi agents tortured Khashoggi, decapitated him and then dismembered his body.

Trump told the Post that "something will take place" in response to Khashoggi's death, but said the United States should not let the incident disrupt a possible $110 billion weapons sale to Riyadh he announced last year.

Its the largest order in history, Trump said. To give that up would hurt us far more than it hurts them . Then all theyll do is go to Russia or go to China. All thats doing is hurting us.

But one Trump supporter, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, told Fox News on Sunday, "I dont think arms should ever be seen as a jobs program."

Other U.S. lawmakers voiced skepticism of the Saudi explanation for Khashoggi's death.

Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN he believes Mohammed bin Salman was responsible, saying, "Yes, I think he did it."

A Trump critic, California Congressman Adam Schiff, told ABC News, "This ought to be a relationship-altering event for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, that we ought to suspend military sales, we ought to suspend certain security assistance."

U.S. officials are faced with reconciling the Saudi explanation for Khashoggi's death and Turkey's claim an audio recording exists of Khashoggi's torture and death. Trump denies U.S. officials have heard the audio or read transcripts of it, but the Post quoted sources saying that Central Intelligence Agency officials have listened to the audio. Verification of it would make it difficult to accept the Saudi explanation for Khashoggi's death.

European leaders and the human rights group Amnesty International expressed skepticism about the Saudi explanation.

Britain, Germany and France issued a joint statement condemning the killing of Khashoggi and said there is an "urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened." They said the Saudi explanation for the journalist's death needs to be supported by facts in order to be credible.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he will announce details of his country's investigation on Tuesday.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the circumstances around Khashoggi's death are deeply troubling, and called for a thorough, credible and transparent investigation.

Amnesty International called on Saudi Arabia to "immediately produce" Khashoggi's body so an autopsy can be performed.

Amnesty's director of campaigns for the Middle East, Samah Hadid, said a United Nations investigation would be necessary to avoid a "Saudi whitewash" of the circumstances surrounding Khashoggi's death. Hadid said such a cover-up may have been done to preserve Saudi Arabia's international business ties.The URL has been copied to your clipboard

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In Tanzania, protecting endangered animals has become easier thanks to Earth Ranger. Earth Ranger is not a superhero, it's a technology platform, developed by Vulcan Inc., a company co-founded by U.S. philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.Over 50 years ago, Josie Robinson Johnson led the Minnesota delegation to the March on Washington, D.C., knowing that they would be part of history and aware of the great personal risk they were taking. Johnson has spent her career as a risk taker, a trailblazer, a champion for equality, and, importantly, a role model for public policy students as they seek to follow in her formidable footsteps.

This week, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs solidified her lifes work as an ongoing model for generations of students by dedicating a community room at the school in her honor and establishing a fellowship in her name.

Johnsons legacy as a leader in the civil rights movement began as a teenager when she and her father gathered signatures on an anti-poll-tax petition in Houston, Texas.

Living in Minnesota since the 1950s, Johnson, Ed.D., has launched numerous mentorship programs for young people of color, developed fair housing and employment programs, led community development and revitalization efforts, and counseled countless leaders across the community, including mayors, governors and university presidents. Johnson has served as the acting director of the Minneapolis Urban League, and is the first African-American appointed to the University of Minnesotas Board of Regents. She also led the U of Ms minority affairs and diversity efforts. In 1998, the university established the Annual Josie Robinson Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award in her honor.

During our celebration of Johnson, another civil rights icon, Vernon Jordan, delivered the keynote, calling her [T]he Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman of our time. He added that, We live in perilous times, when the progress we have seen in our lifetime is under threat. While many things happening in our country are not normal, they also are not new. Our present is an extension of our history, of that ancestral struggle for freedom. And because we have been here before, we know what we need: more Josie Johnsons.

Without a doubt, Johnson has made an indelible imprint on our nation, and I am proud that the Humphrey School is commemorating her contributions. To see her interact with Humphrey School students, to watch as a simple, sincere handshake from this living legend can spark action, is truly a sight to behold. Heres what students who have spent time with Johnson tell us: Every interaction with her is memorable. Her words cut through cynicism and negativity, taking root in ones imagination, and igniting a passion to change the world.

Our schools namesake, Hubert Humphrey, once said, Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate. My dream is for the Josie R. Johnson Community Room to become a public gathering place where those difficult conversations happen. This soon-to-be-remodeled gathering space will become a spacious and welcoming forum for advancing Johnsons work advocating for human rights and social justice.

Similarly, the Humphrey Schools new Josie Robinson Johnson Fellowship will provide support to outstanding full-time graduate students who have a specific interest in addressing racial inequities and injustices. Josie Robinson Johnson Fellows will be encouraged and empowered to innovate; to take bold risks to create, test, and promote new approaches to seemingly intractable racial problems.

The imperative to stand up for equality is never over. When we care to look, every day we will see instances of inequity taking place across our great nation  a sad reminder that while we have come a long way, there remains much more work to do. I can only hope that these Fellows will fully embrace the opportunity to build upon Johnsons legacy and continue her work addressing inequality, eliminating barriers to opportunity and ensuring everyone has the chance to succeed.

Laura Bloomberg is dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.In an unusual behind-the-scenes glimpse at corporate decision-making, Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser detailed why he pulled out of this week's Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia.

Kaeser's LinkedIn post on Monday offers a rare look into how a business leader grapples with a controversial issue.

Companies Siemens Continents and regions Middle East Middle East and North Africa Saudi Arabia Jamal Khashoggi Misc people

Dozens of business leaders have pulled out of the "Davos in the Desert" conference following the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2. Most just issued a one-line statement and declined to comment further.

Kaeser said he received "hundreds, if not thousands, of e-mails" urging him not to attend the conference and he attempted to strike the "right balance between values, interests and timing."

"As soon as I heard of his death, it was clear to me that we couldn't simply move on and do business as usual," Kaeser said. "We in Germany should know from our history what it can lead to if people stay out of trouble and don't speak up till it is too late."

Siemens, a powerhouse German industrial conglomerate with operations across the world, has 2,000 employees in Saudi Arabia. Siemens is under contract to provide gas turbines for a Saudi Aramco plant in Fadhili and a $1.7 billion driverless subway system in Riyadh. It is a major partner for Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 plan.

Kaeser noted that his customers and partners were not guilty of the crime and need powerful, deep-pocketed allies like Siemens to fight for transparency. But Kaeser said he struggled to determine the best way to do that.

In the end, he decided between three options: Refusing to go and "hiding among the 'mainstream,' like most," sending a company representative, or going to the conference and speaking up about Khashoggi's death.

"What should the response of the CEO of a global company be?" Kaeser asked. "We are the ones who need to fix the issues. ... We are the ones who have the responsibility to show our people the way and find a win-win solution."

Kaeser took his time with the decision to weigh the company's reputation, its business dealings with the Saudis, a business opportunity up to $30 billion by 2030, and Siemens' thousands of jobs in the country.

"In the end, I chose option 1. I will not attend the FII 2018. It's the cleanest decision but not the most courageous one," he admitted.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, media organizations, and Wall Street leaders dropped out after uproar over Khashoggi's disappearance. Saudi Arabia confirmed Khashoggi's death on Friday.The capital murder conviction of an Albertville man who killed his pregnant wife and unborn child was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court.

Back in 2009, Jessie Livell Phillips, 38, shot and killed Erica Droze Phillips, 23, at a car wash in Guntersville. He was convicted for their deaths in 2012 and sentenced to death.

Phillips, Erica, their two kids and Ericas brother, Billy, had lunch at a Hampton Cove restaurant before they headed to the carwash where Erica and Billys brother, Lance worked.

According to the Attorney Generals Office, Phillips and Erica separated from Ericas brothers and were in one of the wash bays. Billy passed by and saw Phillips fiddling with a gun.

Billy testified in court that as he passed the car, he heard Erica yell Help me, Bill and that he got there just in time to see [Phillips] kill her.

Phillips fled the scene and Lance called the police. Erica was transported to Huntsville Hospital where she died the following morning.

Albertville Police found and arrested Phillips at which point he said, I did it. I dont want no trouble.

In a statement, Attorney General Steve Marshall said:

This was a tragic case in which a young mother and her unborn child were brutally murdered with her minor age children nearby. There is no more appropriate case to warrant a death sentence and I am glad to have been given the opportunity as Attorney General to see this case to its rightful conclusion for the victims family.

Marshall originally prosecuted the case in 2012 while he was the district attorney of Marshall County.

The murder conviction was upheld in 2015 after it was appealed at the Court of Criminal Appeals. The case was argued in front of the Alabama Supreme Court in November 2017.A Gadsden man is in custody on sexual abuse charges of a minor, according to the Etowah County Sheriff's Office.

Carlos De Jesus, 33, was arrested on October 12. He is facing charges for one count of 1st degree rape, two counts of 1st degree sodomy, one count of sex abuse of a child less than twelve and incest, which are all felonies.

The sheriff's office said De Jesus is accused of raping a 13-year-old many times, beginning when the child was 7-years-old. A school employee reported the abuse on October 2.

De Jesus is being held in the Etowah County Detention Center with a $300,000 bond. He is a citizen of Mexico, and as a condition of his bond, he may not contact the victim or the victim's family, and he is not allowed to have unsupervised contact with minors.A Leighton man is in custody after a standoff and string of crimes early Sunday morning in Limestone County.

Tyler Parker is charged with five counts of attempted murder, two counts of first-degree kidnapping, first-degree arson, first-degree theft and shooting into an occupied vehicle. His bond is set at $682,500.

Limestone county investigators said Parker shot at deputies after they chased him for allegedly stealing a vehicle off Piney Chapel Road. Deputies said they exchanged gunfire with Parker. The vehicle was later found in a wooded area off Highway 127 north of Athens.

Parker then forced himself inside a mobile home on Sewell Road with his girlfriend. A couple was inside the home sleeping. Limestone county deputies said Parker told the couple, Judy and Tim Siniard, that he was cold and needed to use the telephone.

While Judy talked to Parker, Tim went to flag down a deputy outside. Judy said Parker didn't threaten her, but he made them push everything in front of the door so deputies could not get inside.

Deputies negotiated and were able to remove Judy from the house, but they failed to get Parker and his girlfriend out. Parker then set the home on fire, causing it to be a total loss. Deputies and fire fighters pulled Parker and his girlfriend out from the house through the back window.

The Red Cross showed up at the mobile home to help Judy and Tim Siniard. According to deputies, Parker was high on meth at the time of the incident.Click here for updates on this story

Kansas City, MO (KSHB) -- A naturalized citizen from Nigeria is facing federal charges of wire fraud in connection to a scheme that defrauded nearly $900,000 from victims met on online dating sites.

Federal prosecutors Friday charged Ronayerin Ogolor, 49, with the crime, alleging Ogolor would cultivate relationships on Facebook, Hangout.com or ChristianMingle.com and then get those he had developed a relationship with to send him money.

Federal agents arrested Ogolor Friday at Kansas City International Airport as he prepared to travel to Frankfurt, Germany.

Court documents indicate one of Ogolors victims was a widow in Indiana. That victim sent $450,000 to Ogolor. A victim from Texas sent $300,000 to Ogolor.

At least seven other victims were identified in the United States, with an eighth victim reportedly living in Italy.

Ogolor remained in federal custody Monday pending a detention hearing.ST. JOSEPH, Tenn. - Police are investigating after a young boy accidentally shot his twin sister in Lawrence County, Tennessee. According to Sheriff John Myers, the twins were in a truck outside a Dollar General on Highway 43 in St. Joseph when the 10-year-old boy accidentally shot his sister in the head.

Sheriff Myers said the accidental shooting happened around 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon. The sheriff said the gun was in the truck and the boy found it.

Medics flew the girl by air ambulance to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. She reportedly had a heartbeat, but her condition is unknown.

Police are investigating whether another adult was in the car. No charges have been filed.

Space News space history and artifacts articles Messages space history discussion forums Sightings worldwide astronaut appearances Resources selected space history documents





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Mercury capsule exhibit to preview Cosmosphere satellite location



October 22, 2018  The historic capsule that carried the second American to fly into space is set to land in the second most populous city in Kansas in early 2019.



"Liberty Bell 7," the Mercury spacecraft that was piloted by NASA astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom on a 1961 suborbital spaceflight, will be the early centerpiece of a new exhibit by Cosmosphere Innovation Space at Bluhawk in Overland Park. The Innovation Space is the planned satellite facility for the Cosmosphere International SciEd Center and Space Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas, which hosts the largest combined collection of U.S. and Russian space artifacts in the world.



Update for Jan. 29, 2019: The Cosmosphere is no longer considering a satellite location at Bluhawk. The Liberty Bell 7 exhibit will not take place.



"We are actively seeking opportunities for an exhibit featuring Liberty Bell 7. We will also continue to seek opportunities for a satellite location," said Cosmosphere president and CEO Jim Remar in a statement issued Jan. 29, 2019.



The original article continues below.



Bluhawk is a $750 million, 277-acre mixed-use development that in addition to the Cosmosphere will feature an indoor multi-sport complex, hotel and restaurant and retail marketplace.



"We have an exceptional plan that meets the needs of Cosmosphere, Bluhawk and the public, which is eager to see tremendous exhibits like Liberty Bell 7 as soon as possible," said Jim Remar, president and CEO of the Cosmosphere, in a statement. "Opening a temporary Cosmosphere location in early 2019 is a big win for all parties as we continue forward with the plans for our satellite location."



Since June 2016, Liberty Bell 7 has been on display at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, where it has been a part of the "Beyond Spaceship Earth" exhibit. Before that, the Cosmosphere shipped the space capsule overseas for an exhibit at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn.



Launched on July 21, 1961 on Grissom's 15-minute Mercury-Redstone 4 mission, Liberty Bell 7 sank due to a premature hatch jettison soon after splashing down. It remained on the ocean floor for 38 years until July 1999, when it was recovered by a private expedition organized by Discovery Channel and the Cosmosphere. The museum's SpaceWorks division restored the spacecraft before sending it on a six-year nationwide tour.



Liberty Bell 7 is slated to return from Indiana to the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson in mid-December.



The capsule's new temporary exhibition will give visitors to Bluhawk the chance to learn more about space history and the role the Mercury spaceflights played in the United States winning the space race with the former Soviet Union.



"We are very pleased that Overland Park residents and visitors will have an early look at this historic exhibit and others," said Doug Price, president of Price Brothers, the developer of Bluhawk. "This new exhibition is a great venue for the Cosmosphere to test new ideas while we are developing extensive plans for its new satellite location."



The Liberty Bell 7 exhibit at Bluhawk is scheduled to open in February 2019. It will be followed a few months later by an exhibit devoted to Mission Control, featuring consoles restored by the Cosmosphere and used in the filming of the movie "First Man." Other displays are anticipated to rotate on a regular basis.



Cosmosphere Innovation Space is planned as a 60,000 square foot facility located at 159th Street and U.S. Highway 69 in Overland Park. The Bluhawk site is not intended as a substitute for the Hutchinson museum, but will expose more people to the Cosmosphere brand, allow them to experience the SciEd Center's approach to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and see artifacts currently not on display due to space limitations.



Cosmosphere Innovation Space is part of the first phase of Bluhawk, scheduled to break ground in 2019 and open the following year.



The Mercury spacecraft "Liberty Bell 7," seen here on exhibit at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas, will be the early centerpiece of a new exhibit at the museum's satellite location in Overland Park opening in February 2019. (Cosmosphere)





An artist's concept of Cosmosphere Innovation Space at Bluhawk in Overland Park, Kansas. (Bluhawk)





A conceptual aerial view of the Bluhawk development in Overland Park, Kansas, including Cosmosphere Innovation Space. (Bluhawk)



 2021 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved.American director to receive Lifetime Achievement Award in Rome.

The 13th Rome Film Fest pays homage to veteran movie director Martin Scorsese who will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at 19.00 on Monday 22 October at the Auditorium Parco della Musica.

Scorsese will engage with the public via a Close Encounter talk during which he will look back over his career and his cinematic masterpieces such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence.

The Close Encounter event will see Scorsese speak about a series of film sequences selected from the Italian movies that have had the greatest influence on his life and work.

In light of the extraordinary demand, the Rome Film Fest has arranged a second public event with Martin Scorsese, who will introduce the screening of San Michele aveva un gallo at 16.00 on Wednesday 24 October 24 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica.

For full programme of premieres, screenings and encounters until 28 October, see Rome Film Fest website.

Photo Il MessaggeroWhile the corporate reduction is permanent, the cuts for individuals and families would expire after seven years. Republicans drafted the law that way to limit its projected additions to the deficit, and they have said a future Congress will extend the individual cuts. House Republicans have approved a bill that would make those tax cuts permanent, but the Senate has not taken up the measure.Todays Headlines

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By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy PolicyYoud think the magnitude of exposition required to flesh out 22 lives might trip up the dramatist or bog down the narrative. But the marvelous achievement here is that The Ferryman becomes ever more compelling, the more that swatches of patchwork are laid in place. The memory of its ominous opening scene, the only one that doesnt occur in the warmly rendered farm kitchen and living room of Rob Howells set, lingers all through the plays three acts. With each entrance of the weak-willed priest (Charles Dale), who serves as the reluctant water-carrier for the local IRA leader (Stuart Graham), grows the feeling of foreboding. Rather than the word of God, Father Horrigan brings to the Carneys the intimation of Chaos.American Crown Range, now out of business, had a factory in Cicero, Ill., and later in Nashville, according to historical notes on the website Applianceadvisor.com. In the mid-1980s, snowpack caused the roof of the Tennessee factory to collapse, and the company never recovered. But the companys national service manager, Loren Huck, continued to sell replacement parts. Before he died, in 2012, he passed along a lot of what he knew to Carlita Belgrove, whose father owned a Yonkers appliance store that operated under the family name. After he died, she took over Belgrove Appliance and started the Famous Stove Lady. Focused on repairing and selling vintage ranges, her company was the only one with that specialty in New York and seven surrounding states, she said.As the Kavanaugh spectacle unfolded, Sacks was in the midst of recording Passable in Pink, an audiobook prom-com that satirizes the work of John Hughes  whose movies, including Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, were classic depictions of 1980s teenage life. (Hughes references have also been a recurring theme in Kavanaugh-related commentary.) Sacks had gotten the idea for it months earlier, after he tried playing Sixteen Candles for his 9-year-old daughter, Daphne. She watched for a few minutes before wandering off to read Harry Potter. Sacks, who hadnt seen it in years, kept watching. But he couldnt enjoy it. There are elements in some Hughes films that bring to mind a world that doesnt exist anymore and shouldnt, he said in an email the day after the Kavanaugh hearing. When the Geek sleeps with Jakes girlfriend. Shes handed over as if shes some sort of discarded object and is, essentially, raped. Not funny.  A lot of the humor just doesnt hold up. So he set out to write what he calls a more realistic version.That does not preclude withdrawing from their company if that is what is needed at the time. But by simply shutting off all contact, you eventually convinced them that they were intruding, and you should not have expected them to barge through anyway. Those calls, had you taken them, would have been to ask your permission to visit, maybe just to sit with you. By the time of your birthday, you had made it clear that they were not wanted.But the nations capital is where the corrupt play moral in the light of day, and a night mayor has to be able to wrestle with the ethics of a daytime saints nocturnal misdeeds. Like Trey Radel, the Florida congressman who urged drug testing of welfare recipients before he was arrested for buying cocaine (yayo) in the District. That man needed to be dragged to the police car by his ear. I could totally do that.The hotline number is 202-252-7008. The email address is USADC.ReportClergyAbuse@usdoj.gov. All reports will be reviewed, and a team of criminal investigators, prosecutors and victim advocates . . . will determine whether any criminal charges can be brought or victim services provided, according to a news release.And so, in what he later described as a spiritual gesture to his late mother, June, Todd Bol set to work one day in 2009. Repurposing wood from his garage, he built a dollhouse-size library in the shape of a one-room schoolhouse, decorating the structure with a steeple and a tinny toy bell. He painted the library red, using bright white paint for its wood-shingled roof, and crafted a glass door to secure a few of his parents favorite books, including Tom Brokaws The Greatest Generation.Police said the assault took place about 6:45 a.m. in the 700 block of Longfellow Street NW, in the Brightwood Park neighborhood. According to police, the man approached the woman on Longfellow, about a quarter mile east of Georgia Avenue NW  and forced her into the alley, where he sexually assaulted her.Brannan also hacked into the account of his sister-in-law, who was a minor at the time, as well as current and former teachers and students at Lee-Davis High School, where he taught special education until 2015, according to court records.Defense attorneys said Wints two brothers communicated often by phone but did not call or text each other around the time of the crimes  evidence that the attorneys say suggests they were together. Attorneys also argued that it was Steffons hair that was found in the bedding in one of the rooms where the adult victims were found.The intruder then entered a small vestibule and began kicking a second door opening to the lobby, the surveillance video shows. After five kicks, he was able to pull down the plexiglass from the second door. He then climbed through the door and into the lobby of the longtime WTTG offices at 5151 Wisconsin Ave. NW.Students at Walter Johnson HS brought it to the attention of the principal who then contacted police, the court records state. The Crisis Center evaluated Cabrera and deemed that he was not a threat at this time and referred him to alcohol counseling. The Crisis Center discovered that the school had disciplined Cabrera and informed him he would not be graduating because he had missed too much school. They believed these incidents had triggered his outburst on social media.The postings were spotted by students at the high school, and they reported what they saw to administrators and to a police officer assigned to the school. At one point, several students told police about photos showing Cabrera holding a rifle and the accompanying statements I hate WJ and Ha, ha, Im going to shoot up the school, according to Montgomery County police.It changes your perception of the world when you start understanding the way a robot car sees the world  and then how you would translate the human world to a world that the car could understand, Gray said. Definitely my wife hates me now, because all I do is point out weird traffic lights and interesting lane geometries. Shes just like, I dont care about that. Then-Professor Brat was clearly offering a critique of another academic work by Ben Bernanke, she said. He stated this at the outset of the piece, and he referred back to the work he was reviewing with notes repeatedly throughout the piece . . . There were 17 footnotes and 17 references clearly leading the reader to every piece of the work he was replicating. And, Professor Brats analysis was his own: that the work he was critiquing left out institutions, particularly religious institutions, from their analysis. When a liberal academic takes issue with the citation quality of a 13-year-old critique two weeks before an election, then we should see it for what it is  an attempted political hit.The question comes up when recruits sign and get notarized a form that allows the police department to conduct a background check to determine suitability. The form authorizes, for example, the release of education transcripts, credit history and local criminal history information, including if I have been a victim of sexual assault.There were some problems. Two of the women Broaddrick said knew of the incident were suspected of anti-Clinton bias. Another problem was that Broaddrick had once  under oath  denied that Clinton had raped her. (She just wanted the whole thing to go away, she said.) But the main problem, as far as Starr and the House impeachers were concerned, was that an alleged rape was outside their purview  perjury, yes, obstruction of justice, yes. But rape? No. So they relegated the allegation to an asterisk in their report, referring to Broaddrick as Jane Doe No. 5. By the time Broaddricks story finally went public, history had moved on. Clinton, impeached by the House, was acquitted by the Senate.President Trumps idea of appealing to black voters was having music superstar Kanye West come to the Oval Office and rant about how Hillary Clintons campaign didnt have enough male energy to suit his taste. Going out on a limb here, Im going to predict that that wont work. I know a lot of black women who might want to give West a hug and get him some help but none who would take his political advice.These should be viewed as part of a continuum, not isolated incidents. We know from congressional investigations, such as the one conducted by Sen. Frank Church in 1975, the type of domestic political policing the FBI engaged in before the 1970s. And we know from a late-1980s Senate Intelligence Committee investigation that just a few years after the reforms of the 1970s, the FBI was spying on opponents of U.S. policy on Central America. Thanks to a Justice Department inspector general report, public-records requests and reports from activists themselves, we know that throughout the George W. Bush and Obama years, the FBI monitored activists from environmentalists to peace campaigners, often under the guise of counterterrorism. Taken together, this amounts to a decades-long pattern of politically motivated surveillance that runs counter to democratic norms.I recall the very start of the war in early October 2001. Sitting at the presidents desk in his cabin at Camp David. Trying to focus on writing the announcement of military operations. President George W. Bush near me on the phone, giving military commands and informing congressional leaders of imminent hostilities. At one point, Bush put his hand over the receiver and asked me, Are you cleared for any of this? I replied that I didnt think so. You are now, he said.So I pretended to be sick to get out of going to school. I was convincing enough that my mother kept me home for a couple of days, and then my father somehow figured out that I was faking. He came into my room, sat down beside me and asked what was going on. I remember crying and telling him about my nemesis and the relentless bullying. He said: Im going to give you a way to make him stop. Youre going to ignore him. Ill show you. He turned away from me, told me to try to talk to him, and when I did, he acted as if I were invisible. I became more and more upset that he was acting as if I wasnt even there. The next day I got on the school bus and followed that exact script. It worked. The boy finally left me alone.Whats this all about? We know Trump has little evident interest in babies, including his own. Asked in a 2005 radio interview, when Melania Trump was pregnant with his fifth child, whether he would actually change diapers, Trump was quick to disavow such activities. Thats not my thing, he said. Im really, like, a great father, but certain things you do and certain things you dont. Its just not for me.Once those facts come in, the secretary of state will work with our national security team to help us determine what we want to believe and what we think is credible and what we think is not credible, he said.For more than a year, congressional panels investigating Russian interference have wanted to speak with Papadopoulos about his outreach to two Russian nationals during the campaign, as well as his interactions with a London-based professor, Joseph Mifsud, who told him in April 2016 that the Russians had dirt on then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of her emails.The special counsel pokes into every aspect of my social, family, personal, business and political life, seeking something  anything  he can use to pressure me, to silence me and to try to induce me to testify against my friend Donald Trump, Stone said in a recent videotaped fundraising appeal. This I will not do. When I say I wont roll on the president, what I mean is I will not be forced to make up lies to bring him down.Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S., Trump said in one of a string of morning tweets on the subject. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.In Trumps America, weve been led to believe that weve got to step on our neighbors shoulder, in their face, in their backs in order to get ahead. Well, I reject that, Gillum said near the close of the hour-long debate, which was broadcast live by CNN from Tampa.Japan is also concerned about becoming collateral damage in the trade war. We dont want to see this U.S.-China trade issue damage the international supply chain, the Japanese official said. Japanese companies also have stakes and could be negatively affected. We hope that dialogue between the U.S. and China will lead to a diplomatic resolution of these issues.The head of the countrys intelligence service, Masoom Stanakzai, also rejected the allegations. Speaking to journalists in Kandahar, he gave a detailed account of the attack. He said the lone shooter, who was killed in the encounter, gave a false name when he enrolled recently in the provincial security service. He added that 15 other people have been arrested in the plot.As for why Khashoggis killing has resonated to such a strong degree in Europe, Heisbourg said that one possible explanation was the memory of the Hariri case. In November 2017, Lebanons Saudi-born Prime Minister Saad Hariri was detained in Riyadh, where he announced on Saudi state television his intent to resign. Hariri, a French citizen, was permitted to leave the country only after the intervention of French President Emmanuel Macron. Once outside Saudi Arabia, Hariri withdrew his earlier statement on a pending resignation.But in recent weeks, a pall has been cast over the vibrant Arab diaspora that has called Istanbul home for years. The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has not only deprived the community of one of its celebrated members. It has also prompted fear among the exiles that if a regime is determined enough, it can get to them anywhere.There was a massive international outcry after he received the first 50 lashes in a public square outside a mosque in the city of Jiddah in January 2015. Haidar, his wife, said he has received no more. He remains in prison and is allowed to call his family in Canada once a week for five minutes, Haidar said.Madani is shown departing the consulate about four hours later apparently wearing Khashoggis clothing  except for his shoes. He is accompanied by another man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and carrying a white plastic bag. The two take a taxi to Istanbuls Sultanahmet district, where they enter a bathroom, the images show. Madani emerges from the bathroom wearing the same plaid shirt he had on when he arrived at the consulate, and the two men dispose of the plastic bag, which Turkish officials believe contained Khashoggis clothes, CNN reported.The caravan risks a wider confrontation with Washington if Trump threatens to cut off aid to Mexico, as he has threatened to do in Central America, or attempts to seal the border with the U.S. military. Every day, billions of dollars in trade crosses the U.S.-Mexico border, and any attempt to block those flows could inflict serious economic harm on Mexico. The newly renegotiated North American trade agreement hangs in the balance as it has yet to be ratified by lawmakers."It also speaks to something that I'm quite passionate about in storytelling generally, but in film specifically, is that film can be quite a literal medium," the Australian said, in comments quoted by the Hollywood Reporter .

Blanchett, appearing at the Rome Film Festival, was in discussion with festival artistic director Antonio Monda when questions turned to her appearance as a lesbian character in Todd Haynes' film Carol in 2015.

Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett has defended the right of straight actors to play LGBT characters.

"And I will fight to the death for the right to suspend disbelief and play roles beyond my experience.

"I think reality television and all that that entails had an extraordinary impact, a profound impact on the way we view the creation of character," she added.

"I think it provides a lot of opportunity, but the downside of it is that we now, particularly in America, I think, we expect and only expect people to make a profound connection to a character when it's close to their experience," she said.

Hollywood has been heavily-criticised in recent years for casting straight actors in its limited gay roles.

In August, Disney faced backlash for casting British actor Jack Whitehall in what's been described as the iconic company's "first ever openly gay character" in the upcoming adventure film Jungle Cruise.It's also our first sign that Wanderlust's creator, British playwright Nick Payne, has a real emotional perceptiveness, and we're soon seeing that directors Luke Snellin and Lucy Tcherniak are keen to give awkward, elliptical conversations all the time they need to play themselves out (they'll certainly never be accused of rushing anything here). Joy and Alan are soon simultaneously cheating on each other: Joy with policeman Marvin (William Ash) and Alan - rather startlingly - with spirited young teacher Clare (Zawe Ashton). Their subsequent pact to keep things going will affect their children, who include a dorky teenage son (Joe Hurst) who's about to fall for his best friend (delightful youngster Isis Hainsworth), and a worldy gay daughter (Emma D'Arcy) who strikes up a somewhat charged friendship with a lonely older neighbour (Anastasia Hille). Toni Collette shines in her role. What follows involves a kind of tonal motley, as a slowly expanding cast of characters experience delights and setbacks, keep second-guessing themselves and generally fumble their way towards the end credits.

The female-dominated indie soundtrack gives things a suitably spiky female energy at times, but the series will be most remembered for Collette's magnetic, versatile performance - and for a palpable human sympathy. Making a Murderer is back. Making a Murderer: Part 2

Netflix, from Friday, October 19 When the documentary series Making a Murderer hit Netflix in 2015 it became an instant phenomenon. Viewers around the world were outraged by the case of Wisconsin man Steven Avery and his teenage nephew Brendan Dassey, who were both convicted of the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. Over the course of that series - which was 10 years in the making - directors Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos painted a shocking picture of what seemed to be the deliberate framing of the pair using planted evidence.

Viewers who haven't kept up with the case might have assumed that Avery and Dassey have since been released. But they both remain in prison - with various avenues of appeal recently exhausted. This second 10-part series picks up where the first one left off. The publicity surrounding the first series attracts high-powered Chicago attorney Kathleen Zellner - a specialist in wrongful conviction cases - and she begins carefully revisiting the prosecution's forensic evidence, with startling results. Once again, it's compelling viewing from the start, but justice seems further away than ever. Catch Insomnia on Stan now. Insomnia

Stan

We really need to start locking our doors and windows lest we all get dragged off to one of these countless underground death races in which the evil rich watch us normal sorts tear each other to shreds for their own decadent jollies. In Insomnia the action takes place in Moscow, though most of the unwilling participants seem to be American. In real life you'd put your money on the instantly recognisable Pasha Lychnikoff, who has been a go-to Russian tough guy as far back as Deadwood. Watch season two of Lore on Amazon Prime Video. Lore

Amazon Prime Video The first season of Lore, based on the popular true-horror podcast of American writer Aaron Mahnke, was a wonderfully unusual beast.

Each episode used a high-quality dramatisation of a shocking true story as its spine, but it would branch out from there, using eerie animation, archival film and photographs to establish historical context and reveal strange facts and legends related to the main story. Sadly, this second season is dramatisation-only, which renders it an unconvincing horror anthology devoid of real factual interest. Pictured: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. Credit:Alamy Australia's Science Channel: Astronomy Shorts

australiascience.tv; ABC iView Australia's Science Channel is fascinating website on which Australian universities and institutions publish stories and videos about everything from dinosaurs to Mexican fishing bats. ABC iView is currently hosting a selection of its snack-sized, space related videos.

Highlights include Australia's International Space Station flight controller Andrea Boyd explaining what astronauts eat in space (salt and pepper comes in liquid form so you don't have grains floating off everywhere), and CSIRO astrophysicist Lisa Harvey-Smith answering questions about space. Kate Bosworth and Sam Riley star in this World War II drama. SS-GB

Stan The third season of The Man in the High Castle has landed on Amazon Prime Video, but if you're unsure of how much Nazis-won-the-war alternative-history drama you can handle you can start with this gripping BBC miniseries. In the Nazi-occupied London of 1941, as imagined by Len Deighton, Scotland Yard detective Douglas Archer (Sam Riley) finds himself involved with an American journalist (Kate Bosworth) and a frighteningly well-informed SS officer (Lars Eidinger) in an underworld of opaque loyalties where any slip could mean death.Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size In his lounge room, Geoff Steele has a framed black-and-white photograph of the old Melbourne Orphanage in Brighton. It shows a grand, two-storey bluestone building, its windows embellished in white. Dark cypress trees stand sentry at the entrance. And oh, how Geoff hates it. The reason I have it is to look at it all the time, and drive me forward to get justice. Some people just dont understand what it was like to be incarcerated in those places as a child. You had a number, no rights, no love or compassion, says the 71-year-old. Imagine Geoff as young boy. Hes shy, with a big blond mop of hair. But hes also a happy little fella. Animals and steam trains enchant him and under his arm he often carries his favourite soft toys; Donald Duck and a well-loved monkey. When he is nine, Geoffs mother lands a job in the baby section of the Melbourne Orphanage, in the genteel bayside suburb of Brighton. And her son is separated from her, forced to live in a dormitory with 50 boys in another part of the orphanage. He does not see his mum once in 18 months, even though she works near his dorm. So he doesnt know that a few months into the job she has a nervous breakdown, is admitted to the Larundel Mental Asylum and lobotomised, with the permission of the chief executive officer of the orphanage. She never really recovers and remains a sick and damaged lady throughout her life. But he does know something grim and terrifying happens to him one night in the orphanage laundry. This experience leaves him traumatised, and colours the rest of his life. And it takes him 51 years to write the words I was raped at nine years old, almost subconsciously, in a letter one morning to his solicitor.

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Along with about 8000 other child sexual abuse survivors Geoff, who lives in Albury in NSW, told his painful story to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Finally, he was believed and it lifted some of the burden he was carrying inside. Being listened to, being believed helped ease Geoff Steele's pain. Credit:Mark Jesser The royal commission delivered its exhaustive and powerful 17-volume report almost a year ago. Commissioners found the innocence and future of thousands of children, over generations, had been wrested from them by sexual predators at the very institutions where they should have been safe. This child sexual abuse was a national disgrace, and the nature of that abuse so heinous it was difficult to comprehend, they wrote. At 11am on Monday Prime Minister Scott Morrison will deliver a national, apology to child sexual abuse victims and survivors at Parliament House. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will also speak. Their apologies will be heard by 800 people gathered in the Great Hall of Parliament House, who were allocated tickets in a ballot. Still more will gather on the lawns outside, and around the country the televised apology will be watched at local stadiums and community halls. There are an estimated 60,000 victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse in Australia. Many will find the day intensely painful, says Craig Hughes-Cashmore, the co-founder and chief exective of the Survivors & Mates Support Network, which has a number of members going to Canberra for the apology. Its going to be a bloody big day for a lot of people, he says. There are a lot of people who have never disclosed their abuse and they will be greatly affected. Hughes-Cashmore is also a member of the apology reference committee, which travelled the country to ask survivors how to create an apology that would resonate for them.

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Some told him theyd organised to take the day off work, even the whole week, apprehensive about how theyd react. And while it might bring great comfort to some, others remain bitterly suspicious of governments and official gestures. Whatever the wording of the apology, it must be heartfelt, genuine and sincere, people told the reference group, and it must be matched with action. In their findings, the commissioners noted survivors were remarkable people with a common concern to do what they could to ensure that other children are not abused: They deserve our nations thanks. Five years ago, Julia Gillards moving parliamentary apology to the mothers and families affected by forced adoptions unfortunately became only a media footnote in a week where a clumsy (and ultimately uncontested) leadership spill saw her reconfirmed as PM. Now there are fears the political wash-up from the Wentworth byelection on Saturday could distract from this apology. I am concerned politicians will head back into parliament on Monday and start squabbling after such a solemn event, says Hughes-Cashmore. This is a day for child survivors and their supporters. Not to start fighting over the spoils of Wentworth. Alan Bowles and his sister Lyn Langanke were abused by the same man. Credit:Jason South Melbourne woman Lyn Langanke, 62, and her brother Alan Bowles, 64, wont be dwelling on political intrigue when they arrive in Canberra. Instead theyll remember their mother and how societal disregard  even disdain  for women in her situation tore families such as theirs apart. Their teenage mother fled her violent husband and left her Victorian country town for Melbourne. Struggling to cope with her sons behaviour  Alan was bullied and often fled from school  she turned for help to the welfare department. But instead of supporting her, the department took 12-year-old Alan and put him in the Turana Childrens Home and later the notorious, Salvation Army-run Box Hill Boys Home.

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His mother wrote letters pleading for his return but Alan was never told she had and grew up blaming her for his predicament. The only way she could get her son back, the department told her, was to stop working, stay home and pursue her husband  who had threatened to kill his family  for maintenance. Eventually Alan and Lyn's mother entered hospital with a nervous breakdown. Lyn had to couch surf with school friends for two years and spent time at Allambie Childrens home where she remembers being shut in a cupboard as a punishment. I get so angry when I look at the records, Lyn says. I feel like saying to my mum it wasnt your fault. You fled domestic violence, you were in and out of hospital. And the department did nothing. Alan endured life at Box Hill, a cold and often sadistic place where staff relished dishing out discipline to children. Speak when youre spoken to. Prayers before every meal. As a teenager, Alan was groomed and sexually abused by one of the people involved in the scout group and musical theatre at the home. On his record it notes suspected sexual abuse, which was never investigated. This man was allowed to take his victim out of Box Hill by posing as a family member, with no oversight from staff. He took Alan to visit his sister, and sexually abused Lyn on two occasions. The brother and sister have only spoken about it in recent months. We never talked about it but I knew something really bad had happened to Alan, says Lyn. After hitting the drugs when he left Box Hill, Alans talent for music was a lifeline and he made a name for himself as a harmonica-playing session musician. But the emotional wounds from his early years damaged his relationship with his wife and children.

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I didnt grow up in an environment of love, he says. I concentrated on working, and trying to make a living, but couldnt offer emotional guidance and real practical things that a more balanced person would have taught them. Through her work as a community educator at Open Place, a support service for Forgotten Australians, Lyn has seen many of her clients die young  some through suicide  or suffer early-onset ageing as a physical impact of trauma. Her own husband Doug, a fellow abuse survivor, died two years ago at 63 after a long illness. Shell hold his memory in her heart on Monday. Ill be thinking about all the people who arent able to be there, she says. Peter Daverington, left, and Robert House admire The Raft of the CLAN'. Credit:Joe Armao The royal commission warned against assuming that institutional child sexual abuse was a historical artefact or the product of a few bad apples. In fact, it was endemic. The greatest number of alleged perpetrators were in Catholic institutions, but sexual abuse happened in every place where adults (about 94 per cent of survivors said they were abused by a man) came into contact with children  schools, orphanages, surf clubs, scout groups, churches and synagogues. And its still happening. More than 250 survivors, some as young as seven, told commissioners in private sessions that they had been sexually abused in contemporary settings (post-1990), two-thirds with foster or kinship carers.

AdvertisementA world-first surveillance program that tracks adverse reactions to vaccinations will soon monitor every vaccine on the national immunisation program (NIP).

SmartVax was created in response to the 2010 Fluvax disaster, when a spike in convulsions and fever prompted Australias chief medical officer to suspend the flu vaccine program for children under five.

SmartVax will soon monitor adverse reactions for every vaccine on the National Immunisation Program Credit:Wayne Taylor

"We needed to develop a better way to detect vaccine safety signals [a link between a vaccine and severe side effects] that could mobilise an effective response in a timely fashion, said co-developer and Perth GP Alan Leeb.

"Especially for new vaccines and influenza vaccines, which change formulation every year.""Invitation for public comment: Sand mining on Lots 53 and 1320 Banksia Road, Wellard, Western Australia," the July 27 newspaper notice read. The public notice. "Hanson Construction Materials Pty Ltd proposes to clear [16.25ha] of vegetation ... for a sand mining operation. A Banksia woodland will be restored onto the site at the conclusion of mining." A neighbour spotted the notice. "He sits and goes through the newspaper, and sometimes he tells people what he sees and sometimes he doesn't," Steve said.

"This particular morning, he did and I got a phone call to let me know." The community had exactly 12 days to read through the extensive paperwork submitted by Hanson Construction, the environmental reports, contact more than 40 residences set to be affected, and create submissions to hand over to the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety. It was a whirlwind, and for Steve, it was a sick feeling of deja vu. In 2013, he and his neighbours had unsuccessfully tried to stop the same company clearing nearby lush bushland for the Boomerang Road sand mine. The Boomerang Road mine site has a clearing license until August 2034.

The process fighting the mine had been exhausting, trying and required significant resources, and residents were devastated when the ruling was handed down. And with the Banksia Road notice, it was about to start all over again. The road to Banksia A mining tenement was granted for the Banksia Road site back in 1995, but it was met with significant push-back when mining company Urban Resources first flagged its intention to begin digging through a proposal in 2008. The Environmental Protection Authority made the decision not to undertake a formal assessment of the site, saying it "didn't have a big enough ... impact".

Residents disagreed, and an appeal was lodged against the decision by Steve's progress association. In a ministerial briefing note obtained by the progress association under the freedom of information act, it was also clear the City of Kwinana remained unconvinced about the proposal. The Banksia Road site. The council said the mining company had not addressed environmental concerns and like the Boomerang Road site, the area had become home to many more residents than was previously anticipated when the tenement was granted in 1995. Nevertheless, then-WA environment minister Donna Faragher dismissed the appeal and instead passed on the environmental approval process to the in-house Department of Mines team.

As the push-back continued, Hanson Construction stepped in and officially took over the lease in 2013. But all of this information was unknown until Steve found out about the approval on July 27. "That was a really big shock," he said. "I think after the time that I spent trying to fight the Boomerang Road one, which went for nearly two years, I was pretty spent." "I seriously considered moving  in fact, we did start looking. "[And] of course once this sort of thing happens, you can't move. You can't leave. I would never have wanted to keep it quiet and to have just sold up and leave somebody else to it. I don't believe I can leave until the thing is resolved."

The area to be affected by the development. "But we really weren't ready to leave because the place at the moment, it's paradise. "To get the phone call on Friday July 27, that it was starting all over again ... it was pretty grim." "The council was as surprised as us ... the whole system is designed for us not to know," he said. "You have to physically check the newspaper every day of the week, and every month, every year in order to protect yourself.

"The system's wrong. It has to be changed. Steve called an emergency meeting of the progress association on July 29 - two days after the public notice was published. For an entire evening, the community locked itself in a council hall coming up with submission after submission to have ready for the department by August 10. The City of Kwinana wrote a letter to WA Environment Minister Stephen Dawson. Mayor Carol Adams was scathing; in her view there had been no community consultation on the amended proposal submitted by Hanson, no agreement in place committing to vegetation rehabilitation, the proposal had contradictions over transport routes and no commitment to helping maintain the roads.

As a result, the Stop Banksia Sand Mine campaign kicked off with the full backing and support from the City of Kwinana  an unusual display of unity between a council and residential association. Another sand mine close to the Wellard site. Credit:Hannah Barry Several companies have repeatedly attempted to create a sand mine at this site, for over 20 years, and council has repeatedly advised against its construction, Ms Adams said. "The city is strongly opposed to this mine because it will have a significantly negative impact on our residents as well as the loss of valuable Banksia woodlands." What now?

With the backing of the local government, the campaign has gained steam. Campaign material highlights issues with the project including apparent air pollution, destruction of bushland, traffic hazards, lack of compensation, the approval process and claimed lack of consultation. Residents are prepared to fight to the finish. Credit:Hannah Barry However Hanson Construction refutes a number of the claims made by the community, saying local representatives will play a "key role" in monitoring the operation. "Hanson Construction Materials has reaffirmed the companys commitment to a comprehensive community consultation program for proposed sand project at Wellard," a company spokeswoman said.Kerryn Phelps says she is not entering Parliament as a wrecker of a minority Morrison government, telling the ABCs Q&A on Monday night that a no-confidence motion or other moves to force the government to an early election are not on her agenda if there is action on climate change and asylum seekers.

Phelps was asked by host Tony Jones if there was a subtle threat behind her comments that the government had to be given a chance to respond to the message from Wentworth voters on getting asylum seekers off Nauru.

The likely independent victor in the weekend byelection said: I'd rather work by encouragement. I think the government will be encouraged to take action, as they have done today. With an election looming in May of next year, the government will be judged on its response to this. I don't think it will take a motion of no-confidence to have them act on this. I think the writing is on the wall with this particular issue.

When the question turned to action on climate change - identified in exit polls as a key issue for Wentworth voters - Phelps said she was inclined to let parliaments run their full term.Perth is being held back by a "crisis of complacency" in which political and business leaders have failed to set out a long-term economic strategy for the city, according to a landmark report by the Committee for Perth.

In a damning 125-page report, which was the culmination of a massive two-year research project, the Committee for Perth took to task policy makers for their "politics as usual" approach to the city.

Perth has been lagging behind other cities around the world when it comes to economy and investment, infrastructure, innovation, technology, engagement and branding, Committee for Perth chairman John Langoulant said.

The Committee for Perth is calling for action Perth and Peel economic development. Credit:Erin Jonasson

He said Perth needed to do more than just sit back and wait for the next boom to save us.Crisis Phone Numberspecial noticeIf you are a veteran in emotional crisis and need help RIGHT NOW, call this toll-free number 1-800-273-8255, available 24/7, and tell them you are a veteran. All calls are confidential.1-888-899-9377A Crisis Intervention Hotline has been established by the VA Heartland Network to assist veterans who may be dealing with a mental health crisis or difficult issue in their lives. The hotline will also aid family members or friends of veterans who need help in assisting a veteran in crisis.(This article was previously published at www.ImmigrationReform.com. Published here with permission.) If the Biden administration carries out threats to fire ...

As of November 2021, a majority of developing countries have vaccinated less than a quarter of their populations. The Biden...St. James council candidate Kurt Morton, sitting at a playground at Marjorie Park on Marjorie Street, says recreation infrastructure hasn't been a city priority for years.FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIAManitobans will soon learn how a federal carbon tax will affect them, now that the Progressive Conservative government has abandoned its own levy.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobans will soon learn how a federal carbon tax will affect them, now that the Progressive Conservative government has abandoned its own levy.

Ottawa will announce on Tuesday how Canadians will be compensated for the upcoming tax.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna will reveal details in Toronto, while Jim Carr, minister of International Trade Diversification, will brief Manitobans at a news conference at the University of Winnipeg.

Earlier this month, Premier Brian Pallister surprised observers when he announced he was abandoning the province's year-old plan to institute a $25-a-tonne flat carbon tax, which would have taken effect Dec. 1. He said the decision came after he realized the federal government would force Manitoba to impose a higher tax in subsequent years.

Trudeau and his ministers are expected Tuesday to make announcements in all provinces that lack a plan to put a price on carbon.

It's anticipated that Manitobans will face a $20 a tonne levy beginning Jan. 1. Ottawa is also expected to announce a rebate plan, which could involve the federal government cutting cheques to individual Manitobans. Ottawa has promised that all carbon taxes collected in any province will be returned to that province.

By abandoning its carbon tax, the Pallister government appears to have given up control over how the rebates will roll out. The province had said it would use the money to lower Manitobans' provincial income taxes, beginning in the new year, and to help pay for a long-promised PST cut. The income tax cut has been postponed, while the PST promise remains on the table, Pallister has said.

On Monday, the premier said he remains concerned that Ottawa plans to increase the carbon tax to $50 a tonne in the next several years. He said he believes that Manitobans are best positioned to decide how to spend carbon tax revenues.

He also reiterated that Manitoba is considering taking the feds to court over its carbon tax. Saskatchewan and Ontario have already vowed court action.

"I feel that we have the best case to make if this ultimately has to go to court -- of any of the Canadian provinces -- because of the plan we have outlined," he said. "We've set up the best defence against the federal government taking these actions of any province."

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said by abandoning his proposed provincial carbon tax, Pallister "took his hands off the wheel," and lost control over how rebates will be paid to Manitoba.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said he hoped that lower- and average-income Manitobans would come out ahead on the carbon tax, while major polluters paid the price for high emissions. He said he also hoped there would be incentive programs for Manitobans to reduce their carbon emissions, be it help for acquiring a low-emission vehicle, adopting geothermal heating or some other initiative.

-- with files from The Canadian Press

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.caTwo men pleaded guilty Monday in connection with the death of the former leader of the Manitoba Ku Klux Klan, who died after being stabbed in the chest with a machete.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two men pleaded guilty Monday in connection with the death of the former leader of the Manitoba Ku Klux Klan, who died after being stabbed in the chest with a machete.

Bill Harcus, 45, who had legally changed his name to James Edsel Tucker, died June 23, 2016, in an apartment on Furby Street.

Bill Harcus, former head of the Manitoba KKK, pictured in 1995.

Joshua Evans, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and Martin Archie Flett, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, will be back in Court of Queen's Bench for their sentencing hearing Nov. 5.

Evans' lawyer, Mike Cook, said the killing had nothing to do with the victim's white supremacist past. Drugs -- including crystal methamphetamine -- and "personal issues" Flett had with Tucker were motivating factors in the killing, said Cook.

In 1992, Tucker, then 21, and two other members of the KKK were charged with hate crimes. Tucker had pleaded not guilty to distributing flyers promoting hatred of black people, of helping distribute pamphlets entitled "The Death of the White Race," and was also charged with mischief for allegedly erasing and replacing a recording on a Coalition Against Homophobic Violence answering machine.

Tucker was represented at the trial by lawyer Doug Christie, who gained notoriety for defending others charged with hate crimes, including Alberta school teacher Jim Keegstra and Toronto publisher Ernst Zundel.

The charges against the three accused were stayed, after a Winnipeg police officer admitted she perjured herself by not admitting at first she used surveillance tapes instead of just her memory to help her in writing her notes.

Tucker legally changed his name within a couple of years of the trial and reportedly never re-entered the hate movement. Nearly a quarter-century later, he ended up being killed by two Indigenous men.

An agreed statement of facts said Evans, then 24, and Flett, then 22, went to an apartment block on Furby Street with a handgun, sawed-off rifle and two-foot-long machete. They had a confrontation with a tenant, assaulted him with brass knuckles and a handgun.

After being beaten for more than two hours, the tenant relented, taking the pair up to the apartment suite he shared with Tucker.

Tucker was ordered to the ground at gunpoint and kicked in the face. When he tried to resist, he was stabbed in the chest with a machete and died of extensive blood loss.

Rather than go to trial as expected, Justice Richard Saull accepted the second-degree murder plea Monday from Evans, and a lesser plea of manslaughter for Flett.

"My fellow had the sword at the time the deceased was attacked," Cook said of his client, who faces a life sentence in prison.

Cook hasn't asked for a full Gladue report looking into background factors, including the low incomes, high unemployment, lack or irrelevance of education, substance abuse, and community fragmentation that lead to a higher incidence of crime and incarceration among Aboriginal people. However, but Cook said he will present a number of "relevant Gladue factors" for Saull to consider when sentencing Evans.

Cook said he expects Flett's lawyer will do likewise.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.caI have always maintained that if you want something done right, you should get other people to do it for you, hopefully for free.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

I have always maintained that if you want something done right, you should get other people to do it for you, hopefully for free.

This is especially true of the distasteful task of housecleaning, which, on my list of things to avoid doing at all costs, rates just ahead of yard work, and just behind poking a wasp nest with a short stick.

House cleaning is one of those tasks best left to professionals, Speirs argues. JOHN KUNTZ / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES

You probably think it is not possible to have your house cleaned for free, but then again, it is entirely possible that you are an idiot.

The truth is, I felt the same way until I stumbled on an uplifting story  one that is making headlines around the world  about a homeowner in Halifax whose domicile was cleaned up in a manner that I found deeply inspiring.

According to dozens of news reports, it all started when two women hired to clean up a Halifax home arrived at an address with a vacuum cleaner and a mop in tow.

Finding the door unlocked, the women went inside and got to work, tidying the home from top to bottom.

Which is when a suspicious neighbour spotted the women, became deeply concerned, and called the homeowner, who had left the house unlocked so the neighbour could walk the owners dog while he was away.

So the owner called the RCMP, who went to the now spick-and-span house and discovered that it had been cleaned up as opposed to being cleaned out.

What had happened was arguably the first drive-by housecleaning in which two professional cleaners had simply done their jobs without realizing they had gone to the (oops!) wrong address.

"These ladies showed up, cleaned up, and left without knowing it was the wrong house," Cpl. Dal Hutchinson of Halifax district RCMP told the media. "Nothing was taken. Nothing was disturbed. Just the house was cleaned up.

"They were very apologetic that they got the wrong house, so the matter has been solved and everyones happy. Although the house was cleaned for free, RCMP would like to take this opportunity to remind homeowners to ensure their doors are locked at all times."

I understand the RCMP are being extremely cautious, but I have to tell you the very last thing I would do if I spotted people armed with vacuum cleaners and mops mistakenly entering my house is call the police.

Call me a genius if you must, but I would just let them knock themselves out in terms of tidying up in an illegal manner, then I would call Sweden and demand to receive at least two Nobel Prizes for figuring out a way to clean my house without ever lifting a finger.

Out of journalistic fairness, I will acknowledge there are pros and cons to consider when it comes to undertaking the cleaning of ones own spacious abode.

On the upside, there is the remote possibility that you could become a millionaire. Consider the case of Gregorio De Santis, a Montreal man who cleaned up his house after his sister told him it was time to go through his closets and donate his old clothes.

Which is how, in the lining of an old jacket, he discovered a winning Lotto 6/49 ticket worth $1.75 million dating from last Dec. 6, according to the Montreal Gazette.

"When he went to validate his ticket, De Santis thought he had won $1,750. When he realized his win was 1,000 times greater than that, he said his heart almost stopped," the story said.

"I would never have looked in that closet without her!" De Santis said of his clean-minded sister.

On the downside, the urge to come clean could also result in you being shot at by your otherwise loving spouse, as we see from an incident that occurred in Lakeland, Tenn., last week.

According to news reports, a local mom was taken into custody after deputies said she pulled a gun on her husband during a heated argument over  brace yourselves for a major shock  housecleaning.

It seems the couples kids were coming into town for fall break and, while cleaning the house, chaos erupted and a drink can was thrown at the husband, who flung it back at his spouse.

Chirped one report: "Thats when deputies said she went to the dresser and grabbed the familys gun. Her husband ran for the door and had just closed it when a shot was reportedly fired."

The point I am making is, housecleaning can be extremely stressful and lead to potentially lethal disputes, which is why I do everything I can to avoid it.

The system I use involves pretending to be completely incompetent whenever my spouse, She Who Must Not Be Named, asks me to get off the couch and clean something located in our home.

Not long ago, after being asked to vacuum the den, I waited for a few minutes, then hollered to my wife: "Honey, how do I get the dogs tail out of the vacuum nozzle?"

Which is when my wife marched in, rolled her eyes to convey the concept that I had the same IQ as a house plant, and ripped the vacuum out of my sweaty hands.

Im not suggesting you try that trick, but you might want to consider leaving your door unlocked and praying that professional cleaners with a poor sense of direction happen to wander into your neighbourhood.

The odds of that happening are probably a lot better than the chances of finding a lottery ticket worth millions tucked in the lining of that old parka hanging in the closet.

Heres one last tidying-up tip: if the bullets start flying, try not to trip over the vacuum cleaner on your way out the door.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.caLike any other artist at a public art exhibition and show, Melanie Halprin had dozens of pieces of her art recently framed on the walls for sale along with her fused glass work sitting on tables.

SUPPLIED Melanie Halprin is an artist who lives with special needs. Her artwork consists of words written with coloured markers on paper and framed, as well as fused glass showing flowers or geometric shapes. Recently Halprin had an art show of her work held at the offices of Pulford Community Living Services. In photo with father Phil Halprin, mother Brenda and brother Kerry.

But while the 25-year-old Halprin's art speaks volumes about her talent and ability, there is something about her that the people admiring her works - and purchasing them - would not know just by seeing her as she sat at a table in the corner creating more pictures.

Halprin lives with special needs. She was diagnosed with autism and obsessive compulsive disorder when she was a child and she is actually considered to be non-verbal, except when she surprises - and at times embarrasses her parents.

"We were at a photo studio to get her picture taken when she was a child and I told the photographer that she was non-verbal," her mother, Brenda, said recently.

"The photographer handed her a paper flower and she suddenly said 'that's the prettiest flower I've ever seen'. The photographer gave me a look, but Melanie will do that at times - and never say the same thing again."

More than 80 people recently milled around the hallways and meeting room at the offices of Pulford Community Living Services - which offers day programs and residential accommodation for adults living with special needs - to see Halprin's artwork.

The framed art on paper consists of words Halprin has written. She uses different coloured markers and the words are different sizes. The pieces are jampacked with words.

Pulford's Andy Russo says "Melanie's art is truly inspiring and it showcases how communication can come in all forms.

Her mom said her daughter began putting the words on paper when she was 10 years old and she has never stopped.

"There were 80 word pictures up that night, but we know she has done thousands - we just couldn't keep them all."

It wasn't the first art show Halprin's art was at.

About four years ago one of the art cards that Halprin's parents produced of her work fell into the hands of a Dutch artist who was studying at the renowned Rijksakademie Art Institute in Amsterdam, which is also known as the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

The artist requested the family send two of her works to him and he put them up at an art show at the institute and about 7,000 people saw them.

"They move me the way one can wonder about the endless formations of clouds, the way someone is lost in thought for no apparent reason, the way things grow, the way things go," the artist, Justin Gosker, said at the time.

"Things are going all the time. Melanie's drawings give me joy in realizing this."

Halprin also has painted simple flowers through the years, but in recent years she has begun doing something different with her flower art.

For Halprin's parents, the show was not just a great experience for their daughter, but also an overview of their daughter and a window into a world they only see bits and pieces of every so often.

"For Phil and I to see that much art at once, it was just so interesting to see what is going on in her mind," her mom said.

- Kevin RollasonA man who makes Donald Trump look like a bleeding heart liberal will almost certainly be Brazils next president. Jair Bolsonaro won 46 per cent of the vote in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election on Oct. 8, with 12 other candidates running. Fernando Haddad, who will face him alone in the runoff this weekend, got only 29 per cent.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

A man who makes Donald Trump look like a bleeding heart liberal will almost certainly be Brazils next president. Jair Bolsonaro won 46 per cent of the vote in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election on Oct. 8, with 12 other candidates running. Fernando Haddad, who will face him alone in the runoff this weekend, got only 29 per cent.

Haddad, who leads the socialist Workers Party, will pick up most of the voters whose first-choice candidates have fallen by the wayside, but Bolsonaro needs only one in six of those votes to win the second round. Game over, in more ways than one.

Trump and Bolsonaro are populists cut from the same cloth. They both depend heavily on social media and on the support of evangelical Christians. They both oppose same-sex marriage, abortion, affirmative action for minorities and drug liberalization. But Trumps views shift when it is to his political advantage  he once supported most of those policies  whereas Bolsonaro has always belonged to the hard right.

Trump is an instinctive authoritarian who chafes at the restrictions of the U.S. constitution, but does not attack it directly. Bolsonaro praises the "glorious" period of the military dictatorship (1964-85), during which he served as an army officer, and claims that its only error was that "it tortured, but did not kill." (It did, actually; at least 434 leftists were killed after being tortured.)

Trump is a racist, but he talks to his overwhelmingly white "base" in dog-whistle code. Last year, Bolsonaro said that the members of black rural settlements founded by the descendants of slaves "dont do anything. I dont think theyre even good for procreation any more." No dog whistle there.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the climate change treaty, and Bolsonaro wants Brazil to do the same. But Bolsonaro also wants to privatize and "develop" the entire Amazon: "Not one centimetre will be demarcated for Indigenous reserves."

Trump, like Bolsonaro, backs loose gun ownership laws. Both men want to bring the death penalty back (it never went away in some U.S. states). Both men consider torture to be, as Bolsonaro puts it, a "legitimate practice." But Bolsonaro also says that "a policeman who doesnt kill isnt a policeman."

Leo Correa / The Associated Press Hard-right Social Liberal Party leader Jair Bolsonaro is almost certain to win Brazil's presidential runoff on Oct. 28.

Trump is a sexist who was once caught boasting on tape about physically violating women, but mostly avoids such blunt language in public. Bolsonaro told a female member of Congress that "Im not going to rape you, because youre very ugly." He believes that women should not get the same salaries as men because they get pregnant, and said that he had a daughter in "a moment of weakness" after fathering four sons.

Trump is an undisciplined narcissist who claims to be a tough negotiator, but will generally roll over if you throw him a few concessions and let him declare a "victory." (Consider the new North American free trade agreement, for example.) His famously short attention span disqualifies him as an aspiring dictator, even if he were that way inclined.

Bolsonaro, however, is a serious man. He has made a former general, Hamilton Mourao, his running mate, and promises to fill his cabinet with other generals. In a recent video produced by Haddad, he can be seen arguing, "You wont change anything in this country through voting... Youll only change things by having a civil war and doing the work the military regime didnt do. Killing 30,000... If a few innocent people die, thats all right."

Bolsonaro doesnt talk like that now, for obvious reasons, but there is no reason to believe he has changed his mind. Brazils 200 million people may be in for some nasty surprises  and beyond the countrys borders, Bolsonaros presidency will encourage neo-fascists and would-be military dictators in other Latin American countries.

Thats the real concern, and it extends to other continents, too. The wave of non-violent revolutions that spread democracy to every part of the world (including Brazil) in the past few decades seems to have gone into reverse.

In some countries, such as Thailand and Egypt, the generals are openly back in power. In others, such as Turkey, Hungary and the Philippines, "illiberal democracies" run by strongmen have replaced the genuine article. Even in long established democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy, the nationalists and populists dominate the political scene.

There are some counter-currents, of course. Mexico, the other Latin American giant, is getting its first ever left-wing government this year. Hard right challenges to the established democratic order have been fended off in France, Germany and the Netherlands. But the tide is running strongly in the other direction.

How bad will it get, and how long will it stay bad? Quite bad and for quite a while, one suspects. The world is not yet heading back toward big great-power war, but we are entering the last critical decade before climate change overwhelms us with a growing number of governments that are not only potentially violent but militantly ignorant.

Gwynne Dyers new book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work).You can rest assured that with the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 6, U.S. President Donald Trump and his staff are busy preparing their long list of false and ludicrous excuses to explain away the Democratic partys predicted retaking of control of the House of Representatives and perhaps gaining enough seats in the Senate to replace the Republicans as the majority party. (In a midterm election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are contested for a two-year term, as well as 33, or one-third, of the Senate seats for a six-year term.)

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

You can rest assured that with the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 6, U.S. President Donald Trump and his staff are busy preparing their long list of false and ludicrous excuses to explain away the Democratic partys predicted retaking of control of the House of Representatives and perhaps gaining enough seats in the Senate to replace the Republicans as the majority party. (In a midterm election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are contested for a two-year term, as well as 33, or one-third, of the Senate seats for a six-year term.)

The last time the Democrats had full control of both houses was following the 2008 election and the start of Barack Obamas presidency. But that dominance had been established two years earlier in the midterms of 2006, when a voter backlash against Republican president George W. Bush and the U.S. invasion of Iraq had first given the Democrats a sweeping victory in both houses.

Trump will no doubt point to left-wing conspiracies, rigged elections, Chinese interference, voting by illegal immigrants, etc. About the only factors he will not offer are the two main ones: his own outrageous bullying behaviour, serial lying and objectionable policies, and the actions of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and nearly all of the other Republican senators and congressmen and the dereliction of their constitutional duty to "check" the power of the president.

Blinded by extreme partisanship, hungry for power and obsessed with tax cuts and environmental and financial deregulation, the Republicans have permitted Trump to recklessly exercise executive power  such as instituting tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum under the bogus guise of protecting U.S. national security  contrary to their own partys policies and the interests of the citizens they represent. They have taken greater comfort in the appointment of two conservative judges in the past 18 months, Neil Gorsuch and the controversial Brett Kavanaugh, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A reckoning of sorts is coming for the Republicans. There is a built-in "counter-tendency inherent in midterm elections," according to the late U.S. political scientist Barbara Hinckley, and they provide "yet another check on the president."

Since 1894, there have been 31 midterm elections. In that period, the party of the president has lost control in the House of Representatives eight times  most recently in 2010, two years after Barack Obamas presidential election, when the Democrats lost 63 seats to the Republicans  and seven times in the Senate, the last time being when the Democrats gave up control in the midterm elections of 2014.

Most often, the power transfer has been in midterms that take place during a presidents second term, when voter apathy with the president and his party tends to surface. This occurred, for example, in 1938 during Franklin Roosevelts second term, when dissatisfaction with FDRs Depression-era policies was high in certain parts of the country.

Though Roosevelt went on to win a third term in 1940 and then a fourth in 1944  when it was still possible for a president to run for more than two terms  in the 1938 midterms, the Republicans gained 72 seats in the House of Representatives. This was not enough at the time to supplant Democratic control, but the GOP built on its success and finally did become the majority power in the 1946 midterms.

Midterms held during a presidents first term, such as the one this year, also can be decisive. In 1992, after more than a decade of presidential Republican rule, Democratic contender Bill Clinton soundly defeated the Republican incumbent, George H.W. Bush. Democrats also controlled both the House and the Senate, but their hold on power was short-lived: two years later in the midterms, owing mainly to the rise of the conservative wing of the GOP under Newt Gingrich and its "Contract with America," the Republicans recaptured both houses of Congress.

In general, the average number of seats lost in the House of Representatives by the presidents party in midterms since 1910 has been about 30; in 1994, the Democrats lost 54 seats. Nothing, however, is written in stone in American politics: in the 1998 midterms, the Republicans maintained control of both houses, but lost seats to the Democrats in the House of Representatives despite questions about Clintons moral and ethical conduct.

The 2018 midterms will also be a referendum on the presidents conduct. To reclaim control of the House of Representatives, the Democrats need to hold all of their seats plus win 23 more, which is definitely possible. In the Senate, only a few seats separate the two parties, yet because of the seats being contested, the chances of a Democratic majority is slim, according to the most recent polls.

Overall, Democrats have a greater percentage of the popular vote in the Senate, but hold fewer seats since Republicans control states with small populations. It should also be kept in mind that Republicans in many states have rejigged, or "gerrymandered," electoral districts and instituted voter suppression laws to their advantage. And a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives has and will continue to uphold such manipulations.

Nonetheless, should the midterm results unfold as expected, Democratic control of one house will certainly alter the way things work in Trump World, and the "check" in the "check and balance" system that defines the U.S. government will actually mean something once again.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context. His most recent book, Seeking the Fabled City: The Canadian Jewish Experience, will be published on Oct. 30.In the face of obvious signs of progress, why would people be so skeptical?

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

In the face of obvious signs of progress, why would people be so skeptical?

A recent Free Press-Probe Research poll, which is part of a series of polls on civic election issues, showed that 40 per cent of Winnipeggers believe they are less safe on or around city roads than they were 10 years ago. In contrast, only 14 per cent of respondents said they feel safer.

Pedestrian fatalities in traffic collisions on city roads are down considerably, though a recent poll suggests many feel they're no safer. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES

Its a remarkable result, considering that by all reasonable measurements, weve never been safer.

On average, five Winnipeg pedestrians die each year in traffic collisions and another 14 die behind the wheel of their cars. Losing nearly 20 lives every year is still worrisome, although both are down considerably from previous decades.

Its part of a national trend. In 1997, Transport Canada figures show that 2,660 people died in traffic collisions; by 2016, that number had fallen to 1,717. Again, a horrible loss of life, but a glimmer of hope in terms of the trend line.

It all adds up to progress. Why, you might ask yourself, would people feel less safe? Thats really hard to tell.

In the final analysis, its an age-old triumph of intuition over hard numbers.

Psychologically, we somehow cant connect the dots between advances in automobile safety technology (airbags, lane departure and collision warning systems) and improvements in infrastructure and planning (breakaway light poles, improved safety curbs, active transportation and dedicated bike lanes, school-zone speed limits) and overall traffic safety.

Reduced school zone speed limit sign on Grosvernor Avenue near Wilton Street. TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES

It doesnt mean our roads are safe, per se. But were moving in the right direction. That having been said, more could be done.

Traffic-safety advocates have pointed out that the city needs to be more aggressive in pursuing improvements through the Vision Zero initiative. This Swedish-made, now-international advocacy campaign is aimed at convincing elected officials at all levels to adopt leading-edge road-safety innovations.

Local advocates for Vision Zero (referred to as Toward Zero in Winnipeg) believe there has been progress, but would like to see the city move more quickly to implement changes. Resources for those changes, however, remain a challenge.

The former NDP government did toy with the idea of using money from MPI for road-safety infrastructure. The theory was that fixing dangerous stretches of roadway or intersections would prevent collisions and reduce insurance rates. Its a strategy that private insurers have used for decades.

In the end, however, the NDP caved to political pressure and shelved the idea. They found out what city councillors already knew: voters would prefer to see their tax money spent paving roads than fixing dangerous intersections.

And therein lies the problem for the elected officials who are supposed to make progress on an issue such as road safety.

Citizens feel less safe on our roads, despite evidence to the contrary. But when you introduce an initiative that could save lives, those same citizens rail against it and force you to back down.

Politicians rarely get any sympathy from voters. But for a moment, couldnt we all feel sorry for them for this damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-dont dilemma?

You can be sure that the dozens of people vying to fill a seat on Winnipeg city council have already figured out that on many issues such as road safety, you just cant win.

Road safety has not been a high-profile issue in the civic election campaign, and perhaps it should have been. However, there is almost no benefit for an incumbent to raise the issue.

Anyone running for re-election knows that confronting road safety would force them to spout meaningless statistics about the slow decline in fatalities or highlight unconvincing improvements to infrastructure and traffic design, exactly the kind of things that do not give voters any comfort in the face of their intuitive, but unfounded, fears.

Mayor Brian Bowman said as much last weekend in a story on road safety. In his bid for re-election, Bowman admitted he hasnt been motivated to raise road safety because he supports Toward Zero and nothing has changed his commitment.

Why wouldnt Bowman trumpet his support for Toward Zero and pledge to do more? Although he did not have the Free Press poll results in hand, it seems he had already figured out that voters feel the roads are less safe and no amount of fact is going to change that.

The poll results do, however, show that challengers may have missed a glorious opportunity to attack Bowman and incumbent councillors. They certainly use that strategy on just about every other issue.

Challengers in civic elections are constantly telling voters to forget the numbers and what they show us about the citys finances (which have steadily improved) or the infrastructure deficit (down $3 billion in the last term), or the state of the citys population and economy (both growing above national averages). Challengers want you to give in to your deepest-held preconceptions about civic government, which is that it is bad at everything.

There are lots of things that need improving at city hall. But there are also a good number of things that have improved. Its the same story for every level of government.

In case you were wondering, this is not the kind of scenario that ensures we are getting the best people elected. Our own refusal to take comfort in facts leaves us open to being manipulated by negative hyperbole. Its also what discourages so many citizens from voting.

This is a situation that will never improve until voters leave their guts out of the equation, and begin to base their decisions about who to vote for, and whether to vote at all, on hard facts.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.caWhen Health Canada eased restrictions on Mifegymiso two years ago, many health advocates thought Canada was sitting on the precipice of a reproductive-care revolution.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/10/2018 (1123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Editorial

When Health Canada eased restrictions on Mifegymiso two years ago, many health advocates thought Canada was sitting on the precipice of a reproductive-care revolution.

A pill that could safely terminate a pregnancy, be prescribed by a family doctor and be taken at home would bridge significant gaps in access. Women, especially those who live in rural and remote locations, would no longer have to travel to major centres to obtain surgical abortions.

But two years later, Canadian women are still travelling, waiting and paying out of pocket. The Globe and Mail recently compared access to the abortion pill across the country, citing data from a pharmaceutical analytics firm. The report showed that Manitoba women are among those still facing challenges when it comes to access to a medical abortion (one that is induced by medication)  unsurprising, considering the provinces spotty record in dealing with this file.

First, the province dragged its feet on adding the pill to its pharmacare program, announcing in 2017 that it would be free of charge  but only if it was distributed at clinics that already provide surgical abortions.

Then, last January, the province promised a review of Mifegymisos rollout. In May, the Free Press reported that the review had unceremoniously ended with no changes to how people can access the drug.

Currently, medical and surgical abortions are available for free at three locations in Manitoba: Health Sciences Centre and the Womens Health Clinic (WHC) in Winnipeg, and Brandon Regional Health Centre. At the WHC, the wait time for an abortion using Mifegymiso is two weeks. For a surgical abortion, the wait is three weeks.

Doctors at other locations can prescribe the pill, but fewer than two dozen Manitoba physicians have been trained to do so. Mifegymiso costs about $350 if it is not prescribed at one of the approved locations; the drug is covered for women on Employment and Income Assistance and women who meet their pharmacare deductible, which is calculated based on income. The minimum deductible is $100.

As procedures go, abortions are uniquely time-sensitive. Mifegymiso can only be prescribed within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. The WHC provides surgical abortions up to 16 weeks, while Health Sciences Centre provides them up to 19.6 weeks.

Delays in access could mean the difference between requiring a medical abortion and a surgical one. Delays also mean women are forced to remain pregnant longer than they want to be, which can affect both their physical and mental health.

The advent of Mifegymiso was supposed to eliminate barriers, not be used to enforce them. Making medical abortions difficult to obtain while, at the same time, not improving access to surgical abortions puts Manitoba women at an even greater disadvantage.

Nadine Sookermany, executive director of WHC, told the Free Press last week the clinic has made the case to government for greater funding to improve access to abortion in Manitoba.

"Unfortunately, it hasnt been entertained," she said.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure in Canada. It is also a critical piece of the family-planning puzzle.

The reasons for seeking an abortion are myriad and personal; there is no standard profile of a person who wants an abortion.

When access to reproductive health care is improved, so too are womens lives. That is not something that should be merely entertained by the provinical government; it should be a priority.There is not enough analysis data for BlackRock Health Sciences Trust.

4.4 Community Rank

Outperform Votes BlackRock Health Sciences Trust has received 157 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes BlackRock Health Sciences Trust has received 84 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment BlackRock Health Sciences Trust has received 65.15% outperform votes from our community.

MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about BlackRock Health Sciences Trust and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe BME will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe BME will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days.

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NextSunTrust Banks, Inc. operates as the holding company for SunTrust Bank that provides various financial services for consumers, businesses, corporations, institutions, and not-for-profit entities in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer and Wholesale. The Consumer segment provides deposits and payments; home equity and personal credit lines; auto, student, and other lending products; credit cards; discount/online and full-service brokerage products; professional investment advisory products and services; and trust services, as well as family office solutions. This segment also offers residential mortgage products in the secondary market. The Wholesale segment provides capital markets solutions, including advisory, capital raising, and financial risk management; asset-based financing solutions, such as securitizations, asset-based lending, equipment financing, and structured real estate arrangements; cash management services and auto dealer financing solutions; investment banking solutions; and credit and deposit, fee-based product offering, multi-family agency lending, advisory, commercial mortgage brokerage, and tailored financing and equity investment solutions. This segment also offers treasury and payment solutions, such as operating various electronic and paper payment types, which comprise card, wire transfer, automated clearing house, check, and cash; and provides services clients to manage their accounts online. The company offers its products and services through a network of traditional and in-store branches, automated teller machines, Internet, mobile, and telephone banking channels. As of December 31, 2018, it operated 1,218 full-service banking offices located in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. SunTrust Banks, Inc. was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Read MoreOasis Petroleum Inc., an independent exploration and production company, focuses on the acquisition and development of onshore unconventional oil and natural gas resources in the United States. It operates through Exploration and Production(E&P), and Midstream segments. The E&P segment engages in the acquisition and development of oil and gas properties. The Midstream segment offers midstream services, such as natural gas gathering, compression, processing and, gas lift supply; crude oil gathering, terminaling, and transportation; produced and flowback water gathering, and disposal; and water distribution. As of December 31, 2020, the company had 401,766 net leasehold acres in the Williston Basin; and 24,396 net leasehold acres in the Permian Basin, as well as approximately 152.2 million barrels of oil equivalent of estimated net proved reserves. The company sells its crude oil and natural gas to refiners, marketers, and other purchasers that have access to pipeline and rail facilities. Oasis Petroleum Inc. was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

Read MoreBrookfield Asset Management, Inc. engages in the management of public and private investment products and services for institutional and retail clients. It operates through the following segments: Asset Management, Real Estate, Renewable Power, Infrastructure, Private Equity, Residential Development, and Corporate Activities. The Asset Management segment includes the management of its listed partnerships, private funds and public securities. The Real Estate segment is comprised of the ownership, operation and development of core office, core retail, LP investments and other properties. The Renewable Power segment encompasses the ownership, operation and development of hydroelectric, wind, solar, storage and other power generating facilities. The Infrastructure segment consists of the ownership, operation and development of utilities, transport, energy, data infrastructure and sustainable resource assets. The Private Equity segment refers to the broad range of industries, and is mostly focused on business services, infrastructure services and industrials. The Residential Development segment represents homebuilding, condominium development and land development. The Corporate Activiti

Read MoreBunzl plc operates as a distribution and services company in the North America, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and internationally. The company offers food packaging, films, labels, counter-service packaging, foodservice disposables, take-out food packaging, first aid products, point of purchase displays, stationery, bags, and cleaning and hygiene supplies to grocery stores, supermarkets, retail chains, convenience stores, food wholesalers, ethnic grocers, and organic food outlets. It also provides food packaging, napkins, disposable tableware, food service disposables, guest amenities, light and heavy catering equipment, cleaning and hygiene products, and safety items to hotels, restaurants, caterers, the leisure sector, and food processors and packers; and footwear, gloves, safety helmets, workwear, harness equipment, tools, safety signs, traffic management, and ancillary site equipment, as well as ear, eye, respiratory, and face protection products to customers in the industrial and construction markets. In addition, the company offers cleaning systems, floorcare items, hand cleansing products, hygiene paper, janitorial products, cleaning machines, mops, polishes, and protective clothing and washroom chemicals to facilities management companies, contract cleaners, and other industrial and healthcare customers; and counter service packaging, point of purchase display items, stationery, and cleaning and hygiene products to department stores, boutiques, office supply companies, retail chains, and home improvement chains. Further, it provides gloves, aprons, bandages, facemasks, gowns, headwear, mattress covers, overshoes, procedure packs, tapes, wipes, incontinence products, and swabs to the healthcare sector, including hospitals, retirement and nursing homes, and doctors' surgeries and clinics; and various products to government and education establishments. Bunzl plc was founded in 1854 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

Read MoreGlobal X MSCI Pakistan ETF shares reverse split before market open on Tuesday, April 28th 2020. The 1-4 reverse split was announced on Monday, April 13th 2020. The number of shares owned by shareholders was adjusted after the market closes on Monday, April 27th 2020. An investor that had 100 shares of Global X MSCI Pakistan ETF stock prior to the reverse split would have 25 shares after the split.There is not enough analysis data for Sundance Energy Australia.

4.5 Community Rank

Outperform Votes Sundance Energy Australia has received 118 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

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Community Sentiment Sundance Energy Australia has received 67.05% outperform votes from our community.

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NextKapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation produces and sells a range of containerboards, corrugated products, and specialty paper products in the United States and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Paper and Packaging, and Distribution. The Paper and Packaging segment offers containerboards consisting of linerboard and corrugated medium to manufacture corrugated containers for packaging products; and corrugated products. It also offers specialty paper products, including kraft paper, such as multiwall paper used to produce bags for agricultural products, pet food, baking products, cement and chemicals; specialty products comprising shingle wraps, end caps, roll wraps, and dunnage bags; and lightweight paper. In addition, this segment provides saturating kraft paper under the Durasorb trade name for use in construction, electronics manufacturing, and furniture manufacturing industries; and unbleached folding carton board under the Kraftpak trade name to integrated and independent converters in the folding carton industry. The Distribution segment distributes corrugated and other specialty packaging products consisting of stretch films, void fills, carton sealing tapes, and other specialty tapes. KapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Marsh & McLennan Companies: 8WORKS INC., 8WORKS LTD, A. Constantinidi & CIA. S.C., A.C.N. 000 951 146 Pty Limited, A.C.N. 001 572 961 Pty Limited, A.C.N. 076 935 683 Pty Limited, A.C.N. 102 322 574 Pty Limited, ACE Insurance Agents Limited, ACE Insurance Consultants Limited, ACE Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers Limited, AD Corretora de Seguros, AFCO Premium Acceptance Inc., AFCO Premium Credit LLC, Access Equity Enhanced Fund GP LLC, Admiral Holdings Limited, Agnew Higgins Pickering & Co. (Bermuda) Ltd, Aldgate Investments Limited, Aldgate Trustees Ltd, Alexander Forbes Group Holdings Limited, Alpha Consultants Limited, Alta SA, Altius Real Assets (GP) LLC, Amal Insurance Brokers Limited (in liquidation), Anda Insurance Agencies Pte Ltd, AssetVal Pty Ltd, Assur Conseils Marsh S.A., Assurance Capital Corporation, Assurance Services Corporation, Australian Insurance Brokers Pty Ltd, Australian World Underwriters Pty Ltd., BBPS Limited, Barney & Barney Orange County LLC, Beaumonts (Leeds) Limited (in liquidation), Beaumonts Insurance Brokers Limited (in liquidation), Beaumonts Insurance Services Limited, Beneficios Integrales Oportunos SA, Benefitfocus Inc., Blue Marble Micro Limited, Blue Marble Microinsurance Inc., Bluefin, Bluefin Insurance Group Limited, Bluefin Insurance Services Limited, Boulder Claims LLC, Bowring (Bermuda) Investments Ltd., Bowring Marine Limited, Bowring Marsh (Bermuda) Ltd., Bowring Marsh (Hong Kong) Limited, Bowring Marsh Asia Pte. Ltd., Bowring Marsh Corretora de Resseguros Ltda., Bowring Marsh Limited, Broderick Piller Pty Ltd, Broker 2 Broker Limited, BuildPay LLC, Burke Ford Trustees (Leicester) Limited, C.T. Bowring Limited, CMC-Belgibo NV, CPRM Limited, CPSG Partners LLC, Carpenter Marsh Fac Chile Corredores de Reaseguros Limitada, Carpenter Marsh Fac Colombia Corredores de Reaseguros S.A., Carpenter Marsh Fac Peru Corredores de Reaseguros S.A.C., Carpenter Marsh Fac Re LLC, Carpenter Turner Cyprus Ltd, Carpenter Turner S.A., Cascade International Holdings C.V., Cascade Regional Holdings Limited, Central Insurance Services Limited, Charter Risk Management Services LLC, Chartwell Healthcare Limited, Chronos Insurance Brokers Pty Limited, Claims and Recovery Management (Australia) Pty Limited, Clark Thomson Insurance Brokers Limited, Client Provide Limited, Colombian Insurance Broking Wholesale Limited, Consultores 2020 C.A., Cronin & Co Insurance Services Limited, DVA - Deutsche Verkehrs-Assekuranz-Vermittlungs GmbH, Dawson Insurance, DeLima Marsh S.A. - Los Corredores de Seguros S.A., Dovetail Insurance Corp., Dovetail Insurance Corp., Dovetail Managing General Agency Corporation, Dovetail Technology Service India Private Limited, Draw Connect Limited, Draw Create Limited, Draw Group London Limited, Eagle & Crown Limited, Echelon Australia Pty Limited, Echelon Claims Consultants Sdn Bhd, Echelon New Zealand Limited, EnBW Versicherungs Vermittlung GmbH, Encompass Insurance Agency Pty Ltd., English Pension Trustees Limited, Epsilon (US) Insurance Company, Epsilon Insurance Company Ltd., Eustis Insurance & Benefits, Evolution Management Ltd, Exchange Insurance Services Limited (in liquidation), Exmoor Management Company Limited, Faulkner & Flynn LLC, Freedom Trust Services Limited, GC Genesis LLC, GCube Insurance Services Inc, GCube Underwriting Limited, Gama Consultores Associados Ltda., Gem Insurance Company Limited, Global Premium Finance Company, GrECo International Holding AG, Gracechurch Trustees Limited, Gresham Pension Trustees Limited, Group Promoters Pty Limited, Guy Carpenter & Cia (Mexico) S.A. de C.V., Guy Carpenter & Cia. S.A., Guy Carpenter & Co. Labuan Ltd., Guy Carpenter & Company AB, Guy Carpenter & Company Corredores de Reaseguros Limitada, Guy Carpenter & Company Corretora de Resseguros Ltda., Guy Carpenter & Company GmbH, Guy Carpenter & Company LLC, Guy Carpenter & Company Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Ltd./Guy Carpenter & Compagnie Ltee, Guy Carpenter & Company Participacoes Ltda., Guy Carpenter & Company Peru Corredores de Reaseguros S.A., Guy Carpenter & Company Private Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Proprietary Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Pty. Ltd., Guy Carpenter & Company S.A., Guy Carpenter & Company S.A. (Uruguay), Guy Carpenter & Company S.A.S., Guy Carpenter & Company S.r.l., Guy Carpenter (Middle East) Limited, Guy Carpenter Bermuda Ltd., Guy Carpenter Broking Inc., Guy Carpenter Colombia Corredores de Reaseguros Ltda., Guy Carpenter Insurance Brokers (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Guy Carpenter Japan Inc., Guy Carpenter Mexico Intermediario de Reaseguro S.A. de C.V., Guy Carpenter Reasurans Brokerligi Anonim Sirketi, HAPIP GP 2009 LLC, HAPIP GP LLC, HSBC Insurance Brokers International (Abu Dhabi) LLC (in liquidation), Hamilton Bond Limited, Hansen International Limited, Hayward Aviation Limited, INSIA Europe SE, INSIA SK s.r.o., INSIA a.s., INSURANCE BROKERS OF NIGERIA LIMITED, IRC Asia Insurance Brokers Limited, InSolutions Limited, Industrial Risks Protection Consultants, Ingeseg S. A., Ingeseg S.A., Insbrokers Ltda., InsurTech Alliance LLC, Insure Direct (Brokers) LLC, Insure Direct (Brokers) LLC [BAHRAIN BRANCH], Insure Direct - Jardine Lloyd Thompson Limited, International Catastrophe Insurance Managers LLC, International Loss Control Services Limited, International Risk Consultants (Asia) Limited, Invercol Limited, Irish Pensions Trust Limited, Isosceles Insurance (Barbados) Limited, Isosceles Insurance Company Limited, Isosceles Insurance Ltd, Isosceles PCC Limited, J&H Marsh & McLennan Limited, J.W. Terrill Benefit Administrators Inc., JI Holdings Limited, JIB Group Holdings Limited, JIB Group Limited, JIB Holdings (Pacific) Limited, JIB Overseas Holdings Limited, JIB UK Holdings Limited, JL Marine Insurance-Brokers GmbH & Co. KG, JLM Verwaltungs GmbH, JLT (Insurance Brokers) Limited, JLT Actuaries and Consultants Limited, JLT Advisory Limited, JLT Affinity Colombia Solutions SAS, JLT Agencies Limited, JLT Asesorias Ltda, JLT Asia Holdings BV, JLT Asia Shared Services Sdn Bhd, JLT Belgibo, JLT Benefit Consultants Limited, JLT Benefit Solutions Limited, JLT Benefit Solutions SA (Pty) Ltd, JLT Bermuda Ltd, JLT Brasil Holdings Participacoes Ltd, JLT Chile Holdings SpA, JLT Colombia Retail Limited, JLT Colombia Wholesale Limited, JLT Consultants & Actuaries Limited, JLT EB Holdings Limited, JLT EB Services Limited, JLT Employee Benefits Holding Company (PTY) LTD, JLT Employee Benefits SA (Pty) Ltd, JLT Financial Planning Limited, JLT France Holdings, JLT Group Services Pty Limited, JLT Holdings (Barbados) Ltd, JLT Holdings (NZ) Limited, JLT Independent Insurance Brokers Private Limited, JLT Insurance Agencies Limited, JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited, JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited ( Shanghai Branch), JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited (Beijing Branch), JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited (Guangzhou Branch), JLT Insurance Brokers Ireland Limited, JLT Insurance Brokers SA, JLT Insurance Group Holdings Ltd, JLT Insurance Management Malta Limited, JLT Intellectual Property Limited, JLT Intellectual Property [UK Branch], JLT Interactive Pte. Ltd., JLT Investment Management Limited, JLT LATAM (Southern Cone) Wholesale Limited, JLT Latin American Holdings Limited, JLT Life Assurance Brokers Limited, JLT Management Services Limited, JLT Marine (Pty) Ltd, JLT Mexico Holdings Limited, JLT Mexico Intermediario de Reaseguro S.A. de C.V., JLT Netherlands BV, JLT Norway AS, JLT PLA, JLT Pension Trustees Limited, JLT Pensions Administration Holdings Limited, JLT Pensions Administration Limited, JLT Peru Reinsurance Solutions Limited, JLT Peru Retail Limited, JLT Peru Wholesale Limited, JLT QFM Services Limited, JLT RE Brasil Administracao e Corretagem de Resseguros Ltda, JLT Re (French Branch), JLT Re (Northern Europe) AB, JLT Re Argentina Corredores de Reaseguros S.A.U., JLT Re Labuan Limited, JLT Re Limited, JLT Re Pty Ltd, JLT Reinsurance Brokers GmbH, JLT Reinsurance Brokers Limited, JLT Reinsurance Brokers Limited [French Branch], JLT Risk Management Limited, JLT Risk Solutions AB, JLT Risk Solutions AB Branch - Germany, JLT SA IB Holdings Company (Pty) Limited, JLT SCK Affinity Administracao e Corretora de Seguros Ltda., JLT SCK Corretora e Administradora de Seguros, JLT Secretaries Limited, JLT Sigorta ve Reasurans Brokerlii A.., JLT Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd., JLT Specialty France, JLT Specialty Insurance Broker A/S, JLT Specialty Limited, JLT Specialty Limited [DUBAI BRANCH], JLT Specialty Pte. Ltd., JLT Towner Insurance Management (Anguilla) Limited, JLT Trust Services (Barbados) Ltd, JLT Trustees (Southern) Limited, JLT Trustees Limited, JLT UK Investment Holdings Limited, JLT Vantage Risk and Benefit Consulting Private Limited, JLT Wealth Management Limited, JLT do Brasil Corretagem de Seguros Ltda, JLTPCS Holdings Pte. Ltd., JMIB Holdings BV, JSL Securities Inc., Japan Affinity Marketing Inc., Jardine IBR Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson (Proprietary) Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Asia Pte Ltd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Australia Pty Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Canada Inc, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group Ltd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc, Jardine Lloyd Thompson India Private Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson India Private Limited (UK Branch Office), Jardine Lloyd Thompson Insurance Consultants Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers Inc., Jardine Lloyd Thompson Ireland Holdings Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Ireland Unlimited Company, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Korea Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Limited [Macao Branch], Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS (Dubai) Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS Pte Ltd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS SA, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Private Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Pty Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Sdn Bhd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Valencia y Iragorri Corredores de Seguros SA, Jardine Pension Trustees Ireland Limited, Jardine Risk Consulting Co. Limited, Jardine ShunTak Insurance Brokers Limited, Jardine ShunTak Insurance Brokers Limited [Macao Branch], Jardines PF- Consultoria Em Gestao De Risco Limitada, Jelf, Jelf Commercial Finance Limited, Jelf Financial Planning Limited, Jelf Insurance Brokers Limited, Jelf Limited, Jelf Risk Management Limited, Jelf Wellbeing Limited, John Lampier & Son Ltd, Johnson & Higgins (Bermuda) Limited, Johnson & Higgins Limited, KESSLER & CO AG, Kepler Associates Limited, Kessler & Co Inc., Kessler Consulting Inc., Kessler Prevoyance Inc., Key Underwriting Pty Limited, Kroll, Lambert Brothers Holdings Limited, Lambert Brothers Insurance Brokers (Employee Benefits) Limited, Lambert Brothers Insurance Brokers (Hong Kong) Ltd, Laterlife.com Limited (in liquidation), Lavaretus Underwriting AB, Lavaretus Underwriting AB (BRANCH - Denmark), Libra Insurance Services Limited (in liquidation), Lloyd & Partners Limited, Local Government Insurance Brokers Pty Limited, Lomond Macdonald Limited, Lynch Insurance Brokers Limited, M&M Vehicle L.P., M.P. Bolshaw and Company Limited, MAG JLT SpA, MERCER ALTERNATIVES LIMITED, MM Risk Services Pty Ltd (for dissolution), MMA Mid-Atlantic Employee LLC, MMA Securities LLC, MMB Consultores S.A., MMC (Singapore) Holdings Pte. Ltd., MMC 28 State Street Holdings Inc., MMC Borrower LLC, MMC Brazilian Holdings B.V., MMC Capital Inc., MMC Cascade Regional Holdings LLC, MMC FINANCE (EUROPE) LIMITED, MMC FINANCE HOLDINGS LTD, MMC Finance (Australia) Limited, MMC Finance (Singapore) Limited, MMC France Holdings (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., MMC GP III Inc., MMC Group Services sp. z o.o., MMC Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, MMC Holdings (New Zealand) ULC, MMC Holdings (UK) Limited, MMC International Finance (Barbados) SRL, MMC International Holdings LLC, MMC International Limited, MMC International Treasury Centre Limited, MMC Middle East Holdings Limited, MMC Poland Holdings B.V., MMC Realty Inc., MMC Regional Asia Holdings B.V., MMC Regional Caribbean Holdings Ltd., MMC Regional Europe Holdings B.V., MMC Regional LATAM Holdings B.V., MMC Securities (Europe) Limited, MMC Securities LLC, MMC Treasury Holdings (UK) Limited, MMC UK Group Limited, MMC UK Pension Fund Trustee Limited, MMOW Limited, MMRC LLC, MOW Holding LLC, MPIP III GP LLC, MPIP IV GP LLC, MPIP V GP LLC, MPIP VI GP LLC, Mangrove Insurance Europe PCC Limited, Mangrove Insurance Solutions PCC, Mangrove Insurance Solutions PCC Limited, Manoel Management Services Ltd, Marchant McKechnie Insurance Brokers Limited, Marine Aviation & General (London) Limited, Marsh & McLennan (PNG) Limited, Marsh & McLennan Agencies AS, Marsh & McLennan Agencies Limited, Marsh & McLennan Agency A/S, Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC, Marsh & McLennan Agency Limited, Marsh & McLennan Agency Pty Ltd., Marsh & McLennan Argentina SA Corredores de Reaseguros, Marsh & McLennan Colombia S.A., Marsh & McLennan Companies Acquisition Funding Limited, Marsh & McLennan Companies Acquisition Limited, Marsh & McLennan Companies Asia Pacific Treasury Center Limited, Marsh & McLennan Companies BVBA/SPRL, Marsh & McLennan Companies Finance Center (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Companies France S.A.S., Marsh & McLennan Companies Holdings (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc., Marsh & McLennan Companies Regional Holdings S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Companies Services B.V., Marsh & McLennan Companies UK Limited, Marsh & McLennan Europe S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan GP I Inc., Marsh & McLennan Global Broking (Bermuda) Ltd., Marsh & McLennan Holding GmbH, Marsh & McLennan Holdings (Canada) ULC, Marsh & McLennan Holdings Inc., Marsh & McLennan Incorporated (for dissolution), Marsh & McLennan Innovation Centre Holdings II, Marsh & McLennan Innovation Centre Holdings S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Innovation Centre Limited, Marsh & McLennan Insurance Services Limited, Marsh & McLennan Ireland Limited, Marsh & McLennan Management Services (Bermuda) Limited, Marsh & McLennan Risk Capital Holdings Ltd., Marsh & McLennan Servicios S.A. De C.V., Marsh & McLennan Shared Services Canada Limited, Marsh & McLennan Shared Services Corporation, Marsh (Bahrain) Company SPC, Marsh (Beijing) Risk Management Consulting Co. Ltd., Marsh (China) Insurance Brokers Co. Ltd., Marsh (Hong Kong) Limited, Marsh (Insurance Brokers) LLP, Marsh (Insurance Services) Limited, Marsh (Malawi) Limited, Marsh (Middle East) Limited, Marsh (Namibia) (Proprietary) Limited, Marsh (Pty) Ltd, Marsh (Risk Consulting) LLP, Marsh (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Marsh A/S, Marsh AB, Marsh AG, Marsh AS, Marsh Advantage Insurance Holdings Pty Ltd, Marsh Advantage Insurance Pty Ltd., Marsh Africa (Pty) Ltd, Marsh Argentina S.R.L., Marsh Associates (Pty) Ltd, Marsh Austria G.m.b.H., Marsh Aviation Insurance Broking Pty Ltd (for dissolution), Marsh B.V., Marsh Botswana (Proprietary) Limited, Marsh Brockman y Schuh Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas S.A. de C.V., Marsh Broker Japan Inc., Marsh Broker de Asigurare-Reasigurare S.R.L., Marsh Brokers (Hong Kong) Limited, Marsh Brokers Limited, Marsh Canada Limited/Marsh Canada Limitee, Marsh Company Management Services Cayman Ltd., Marsh Compensation Technologies Administration (Pty) Ltd, Marsh Corporate Services (Barbados) Limited, Marsh Corporate Services Isle of Man Ltd, Marsh Corporate Services Limited, Marsh Corporate Services Malta Limited, Marsh Corretora de Seguros Ltda., Marsh EOOD, Marsh Egypt LLC, Marsh Emirates Consultancy LLC, Marsh Emirates Insurance Brokerage LLC, Marsh Employee Benefits Limited, Marsh Employee Benefits Zimbabwe (Private) Ltd, Marsh Eurofinance B.V., Marsh Europe S.A., Marsh FJC International Insurance Brokers Limited, Marsh For Insurance Services S.A.E., Marsh Franco Acra S.A., Marsh GSC Servicos e Administracao de Seguros Ltda., Marsh GmbH, Marsh Holding AB, Marsh Holdings (Pty) Ltd, Marsh India Insurance Brokers Private Limited, Marsh Insurance & Investments LLC, Marsh Insurance Brokers, Marsh Insurance Brokers (Macao) Limited, Marsh Insurance Brokers (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Marsh Insurance Brokers (Private) Limited, Marsh Insurance Brokers AO, Marsh Insurance Brokers Limited, Marsh Insurance Consulting Saudi Arabia (in liquidation), Marsh Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers LLC, Marsh Intermediaries Inc., Marsh International Broking Holdings Limited, Marsh International Holdings II Inc., Marsh International Holdings Inc., Marsh Investment B.V., Marsh Ireland Brokers Limited, Marsh Ireland Brokers Limited (UK Branch), Marsh Ireland Holdings Limited, Marsh Israel (1999) Ltd., Marsh Israel (Holdings) Ltd., Marsh Israel Consultants Ltd., Marsh Israel Insurance Agency Ltd., Marsh Israel International Brokers Ltd. (in liquidation), Marsh JCS Inc., Marsh Japan Inc., Marsh Kft., Marsh Kindlustusmaakler AS, Marsh Korea Inc., Marsh LLC, Marsh LLC Insurance Brokers, Marsh LLC [Ukraine], Marsh Lda., Marsh Limited, Marsh Limited [Fiji], Marsh Limited [New Zealand], Marsh Limited [PNG], Marsh Ltd. [Wisconsin], Marsh Management Services (Bahamas) Ltd., Marsh Management Services (Barbados) Limited, Marsh Management Services (Bermuda) Ltd., Marsh Management Services (Dublin) Limited, Marsh Management Services (Labuan) Limited, Marsh Management Services (MENA) Limited, Marsh Management Services (USVI) Ltd., Marsh Management Services Cayman Ltd., Marsh Management Services Guernsey Limited, Marsh Management Services Inc., Marsh Management Services Isle of Man Limited, Marsh Management Services Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Marsh Management Services Malta Limited, Marsh Management Services Singapore Pte. Ltd., Marsh Management Services Sweden AB, Marsh Marine & Energy AB, Marsh Marine Nederland B.V., Marsh Medical Consulting GmbH, Marsh Mercer Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, Marsh Nest Inc., Marsh Oman LLC, Marsh Oy, Marsh PB Co. Ltd., Marsh Philippines Inc., Marsh Privat A.I.E., Marsh Private Client Life Insurance Services, Marsh Pty. Ltd., Marsh Qatar LLC, Marsh RE S.A.C. Corredores de Reaseguros, Marsh Rehder Consultoria S.A. (MRC), Marsh Rehder S.A. Corredores de Seguros, Marsh Resolutions Pty Limited, Marsh Risk Consulting B.V., Marsh Risk Consulting Limitada, Marsh Risk Consulting Ltda., Marsh Risk Consulting S.L., Marsh Risk Consulting Services S.r.L., Marsh Risk and Consulting Services (Pty) Ltd, Marsh S.A. Corredores De Seguros, Marsh S.A. Mediadores de Seguros, Marsh S.A.S., Marsh S.p.A., Marsh SA [Argentina], Marsh SA [Belgium], Marsh SA [Luxembourg], Marsh SA [Uruguay], Marsh SIA, Marsh Saldana Inc., Marsh Saudi Arabia Insurance & Reinsurance Brokers, Marsh Secretarial Services Limited, Marsh Semusa S.A., Marsh Services Limited, Marsh Services Spolka z.o.o., Marsh Sigorta ve Reasurans Brokerligi Anonim Sirketi, Marsh Spolka z.o.o., Marsh Szolgaltato Kft., Marsh Takaful Brokers (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Marsh Treasury Services (Dublin) Limited (in liquidation), Marsh Treasury Services Limited, Marsh Tunisia S.a.r.l., Marsh UK Limited, Marsh USA (India) Inc., Marsh USA Borrower LLC, Marsh USA Inc., Marsh Uganda Limited, Marsh Venezuela C.A. Sociedad de Corretaje de Seguros, Marsh Vietnam Insurance Broking Company Ltd, Marsh Zambia Limited, Marsh Zimbabwe Holdings (Private) Limited, Marsh d.o.o. Beograd, Marsh d.o.o. za posredovanje u osiguranju, Marsh for Insurance Services - Jordan, Marsh i-Connect (Pty) Ltd, Marsh s.r.o., Matthiessen Assurans AB, Mercer (Argentina) S.A., Mercer (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer (Austria) GmbH, Mercer (Belgium) SA-NV, Mercer (Canada) Limited/Mercer (Canada) Limitee, Mercer (China) Limited, Mercer (Colombia) Ltda., Mercer (Danmark) A/S, Mercer (Finland) OY, Mercer (France) SAS, Mercer (Hong Kong) Limited, Mercer (Ireland) Limited, Mercer (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Mercer (N.Z.) Limited, Mercer (Nederland) B.V., Mercer (Norge) AS, Mercer (Polska) Sp.z o.o., Mercer (Portugal) Lda, Mercer (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Mercer (Sweden) AB, Mercer (Taiwan) Ltd., Mercer (Thailand) Ltd., Mercer (US) Inc., Mercer Administration Services (Australia) Pty Limited, Mercer Africa Limited, Mercer Agente de Seguros S.A. de C.V., Mercer Asesores de Seguros S.A., Mercer Asesores es Inversion Independientes S.A. de C.V., Mercer Broking Ltd., Mercer Career Unipessoal Lda, Mercer Consultation (Quebec) Ltee., Mercer Consulting (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer Consulting (Chile) Limitada, Mercer Consulting (France) SAS, Mercer Consulting (India) Private Limited, Mercer Consulting B.V., Mercer Consulting Group Inc., Mercer Consulting Holdings Sdn. Bhd., Mercer Consulting Limited, Mercer Consulting Middle East Limited, Mercer Consulting S.L.U., Mercer Consulting Venezuela C.A., Mercer Corredores de Seguros Limitada, Mercer Corretora de Seguros Ltda, Mercer Danismanlik Anonim Sirketi, Mercer Deutschland GmbH, Mercer Employee Benefits - Medicacao de Seguros Unipessoal Lda., Mercer Employee Benefits Limited, Mercer Financial Advice (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer Financial Services Limited, Mercer Financial Services Limited liability company, Mercer Financial Services Middle East Limited, Mercer Global Investments Europe Limited, Mercer Global Investments Management Limited, Mercer HR Consulting Borrower LLC, Mercer HR Services LLC, Mercer Health & Benefits (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Mercer Health & Benefits Administration LLC, Mercer Health & Benefits LLC, Mercer Holdings Inc., Mercer Holdings Inc. [Philippines], Mercer Human Resource Consulting Ltda, Mercer Human Resource Consulting S.A. de C.V., Mercer ICC Limited, Mercer Investment Consulting Limited, Mercer Investment Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Mercer Investment Solutions (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Mercer Investments (Australia) Limited, Mercer Investments (Hong Kong) Limited, Mercer Investments (Japan) Ltd, Mercer Investments (New Zealand) Limited, Mercer Investments LLC, Mercer Ireland Holdings Limited, Mercer Italia Srl Socio Unico, Mercer Japan Ltd., Mercer Korea Co. Ltd., Mercer LLC, Mercer Limited, Mercer MC Consulting Borrower LLC, Mercer Master Trustees Limited, Mercer Mauritius Ltd., Mercer Oliver Wyman Holding B.V., Mercer Outsourcing (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer Outsourcing S.L.U., Mercer Pensionsfonds AG, Mercer Pensionsraadgivning A/S, Mercer Philippines Inc., Mercer Private Investment Partners IV General Partner S.a.r.l., Mercer Private Markets AG, Mercer Private Markets Advisers (US) AG, Mercer Services Poland Sp. z.o.o., Mercer Sigorta Brokerligi Anonim Sirketi, Mercer South Africa (Pty) Limited, Mercer Superannuation (Australia) Limited, Mercer Switzerland Inc., Mercer System Services LLC, Mercer Technology Acquisitions Limited, Mercer Treuhand GmbH, Mercer Trust Company LLC, Mercer Trustees Limited, Mercer WorkforcePro LLC, Mercury Insurance Services Pty Ltd, Moola Systems Limited, Mountlodge Limited, Muir Beddal (Zimbabwe) Limited, NERA Australia Pty. Ltd., NERA Economic Consulting GmbH, NERA Economic Consulting Limited, NERA S.R.L., NERA SAS, NERA UK Limited, NERA do Brasil Ltda. (for dissolution), National Economic Research Associates Inc., NetComp Insurance Corp., Neuburger Noble Lowndes GmbH, Normandy Reinsurance Company Limited, Northern Alliance Brokers Limited (in liquidation), OWL Marine Insurance-Brokers GmbH & Co.KG, OWL Marine Verwaltungs GmbH, Oliver Wyman (Bermuda) Limited, Oliver Wyman (Hong Kong) Limited, Oliver Wyman AB, Oliver Wyman AG, Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting Inc., Oliver Wyman B.V., Oliver Wyman Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Oliver Wyman Consultoria em Estrategia de Negocios Ltda., Oliver Wyman Energy Consulting Limited, Oliver Wyman FZ-LLC, Oliver Wyman Group KK, Oliver Wyman Inc., Oliver Wyman LLC, Oliver Wyman Limited, Oliver Wyman Limited Liability Company, Oliver Wyman Limited/Oliver Wyman limitee, Oliver Wyman Ltd., Oliver Wyman Pte. Ltd., Oliver Wyman Pty. Ltd., Oliver Wyman S. de R.L. de C.V., Oliver Wyman S.A.S., Oliver Wyman S.L., Oliver Wyman S.r.l., Oliver Wyman SNC, Oliver Wyman SPRL/BVBA, Oliver Wyman Sdn. Bhd., Oliver Wyman Services Limited, Oliver Wyman Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Oliver Wyman sp. z o.o., Omega Indemnity (Bermuda) Limited, Organizacion Brockman y Schuh S.A. de C.V., Osbornes Insurances Oxford Limited (in liquidation), PFT Limited, PI Indemnity Company Designated Activity Company, PT JLT Reinsurance Brokers, PT Jardine Lloyd Thompson, PT Marsh Indonesia, PT Marsh Reinsurance Brokers Indonesia, PT Mercer Indonesia, PT Nexus Asia Pacific, PT Oliver Wyman Indonesia, PT Quantum Computing Services, PT Quantum Investments, PT Quantum Support Services, Pallas Marsh Servicos Ltda., Pavilion Alternatives Group (Singapore) PTE. Ltd, Pavilion Financial Corporation Holdings UK Limited, Pavilion U.S. Investments Holdco LLC, Pension Trustees Limited, Pensionsservice Benefit Network Sverige AB, Perils AG, Personal Pension Trustees Limited, Pet Animal Welfare Scheme Limited, Portsoken Trustees (No. 2) Limited, Portsoken Trustees Limited, Potomac Insurance Managers Inc., Premier Pension Trustees Limited, Premium Services Australia Pty Limited, Professional Claims Handling Limited (in liquidation), Profund Solutions Limited, Promerit AG, Promerit Hungary Kft, Promerit Schweiz AG, Pymetrics Inc., R G Ford Brokers Limited, R R B Beratungsgesellschaft fuer Altersversorgung mbh, R. Mees & Zoonen Holdings B.V., Renewable Energy Loss Adjusters LLC, Renewable Energy Loss Adjusters Limited, Resource Benefit Associates, Rightpath Reinsurance SPC Ltd., Risk Management Australia Pty Limited, Rivers Group Limited, Rockefeller Risk Advisors Inc., Rutherfoord International Inc., SAFCAR-Marsh, SBJ Holdings Limited, SCIB (Bermuda) Limited, SCM Global Real Estate Select GP LLC, SCM Infrastructure General Partner S.a r.l., SCM International Private Equity Select III GP LLC, SCM LT General Partner S.a.r.l., SCM PE General Partner S.a.r.l., SCM PE II GP Ltd., SCM PE II Scotland GP Ltd, SCM Strategic Capital Management (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., SICAR Marsh S.a.r.l., SME Insurance Services Limited, Sail Insurance Company Limited, Scalene Re Ltd, Seabury & Smith Borrower LLC, Seabury & Smith LLC, Secure Limited, Sedgwick (Holdings) Pty. Limited, Sedgwick Consulting Group Limited, Sedgwick Dineen Group Limited, Sedgwick Financial Services Limited, Sedgwick Forbes Middle East Limited, Sedgwick Group, Sedgwick Group (Australia) Pty. Limited, Sedgwick Group (Bermuda) Limited, Sedgwick Group (Zimbabwe) Limited, Sedgwick Group Limited, Sedgwick Internationaal B.V., Sedgwick Limited, Sedgwick Management Services (Barbados) Limited, Sedgwick Management Services (Singapore) Pte Limited, Sedgwick Noble Lowndes (UK) Limited, Sedgwick Noble Lowndes Group Limited, Sedgwick Noble Lowndes Limited, Sedgwick Overseas Investments Limited, Sedgwick Private Limited, Sedgwick Re Asia Pacific (Consultants) Pte Ltd (for dissolution), Sedgwick Trustees Limited, Sedgwick UK Risk Services Limited, Sedgwick Ulster Pension Trustees Limited, Settlement Trustees Limited, Shanghai Mercer Insurance Brokers Company Ltd., Shorewest Insurance Associates LLC, Sirota Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Sirota Consulting UK Limited, Smith Long Term Disability Management Group Inc., Societe d'Assurances et de Participation Guian SA, Software Underwriting Systems Limited (in liquidation), Southern Marine & Aviation Inc., Southern Marine & Aviation Underwriters Inc., Sudzucker Versicherungs-Vermittlungs GmbH, Sumitomo Life Insurance Agency America Inc., Sylvite Financial Services, TBX Solutions Limited, Talent Tech Labs LLC, The Benefit Express Holdings Limited, The Benefit Express Limited, The Carpenter Management Corporation, The Insurance Partnership Holdings Limited, The Insurance Partnership Services Limited, The Positive Ageing Company Limited, The Purple Partnership Limited, The Recovre Group Pty Ltd, Thomsons Online Benefits (HK) Ltd., Thomsons Online Benefits Inc., Thomsons Online Benefits Limited, Thomsons Online Benefits Pte Ltd., Thomsons Online Benefits S.R.L, Torrent Government Contracting Services LLC, Torrent Insurance Services LLC, Torrent Technologies, Torrent Technologies Inc., Tower Hill Limited, Tower Place Developments (West) Limited, Tower Place Developments Limited, U.T.E. AMG, U.T.E. Marsh - Caja Castilla La Mancha Junta de Comunidades, U.T.E. Marsh - Salvado Reus (in liquidation), U.T.E. Marsh - Salvado Reus 2012, U.T.E. Marsh - Salvado Vila-Seca 2010, UAD BB Marsh Lietuva, Vezina & Associes Inc., Vezina Assurances Inc., Victor Insurance Europe B.V., Victor Insurance Holdings Inc., Victor Insurance Italia S.r.l., Victor Insurance Managers Inc., Victor Insurance Managers Inc./Gestionnaires d'assurance Victor inc., Victor O. Schinnerer & Co. (Bermuda) Ltd., Victor O. Schinnerer & Company Limited, Victoria Hall Company Limited, Wellnz Limited, William M. Mercer (Canada) Limited/William M. Mercer (Canada) Limitee, William M. Mercer AB, William M. Mercer Comercio Consultoria e Servicos Ltda., Wortham Insurance & Risk Management, everBe SAS, and realright GmbH.The following companies are subsidiares of Mohawk Industries: A&S Energie NV, A&U Energie NV, Aladdin Manufacturing Corporation, Aladdin Manufacturing Of New York LLC, Aladdin Manufacturing of Alabama LLC, Alsace Logistique S.A., Avelgem Green Power CVBA, Avon Pacific Holdings Ltd, B&M NV, BGE Mexico S. de R. L. de C.V., Berghoef GmbH, Berghoef-Hout B.V., Bienes Raices y Materiales del Centro S. de R.L. de C.V., C.F. Marazzi S.A., Canterbury Spinners Ltd, Carpet Foundation Ltd, Cevotrans BV, Ceramus Bahia S/A  Produtos Ceramicos, DT Mex Holdings LLC, DTM/CM Holdings LLC, Dal Italia LLC, Dal-Elit LLC, Dal-Tile Chile Comercial Limitada, Dal-Tile Colombia S.A.S., Dal-Tile Distribution Inc., Dal-Tile Group Inc., Dal-Tile I LLC, Dal-Tile Industrias S. de R.L. de C.V., Dal-Tile International Inc., Dal-Tile Mexico Comercial S. de R.L. de C.V., Dal-Tile Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Dal-Tile Operaciones Mexico S. De R.L. De C.V., Dal-Tile Peru SRL, Dal-Tile Puerto Rico Inc., Dal-Tile Services Inc., Dal-Tile Shared Services Inc., Dal-Tile Tennessee LLC, Dal-Tile of Canada ULC, Daltile, Daltile, Dekaply NV, Durkan, Dynea NV, Eliane Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Eliane S/A - Revestimentos Ceramicos, Emilceramica India Pvt Ltd., Emilceramica S.r.l, Emilgermany GmbH, Emilgroup Asia Ltd, Explorer S.r.l., F.I.L.S. Investments Unlimited Company, Feltex Carpets Ltd, Feltex Carpets Pty Ltd, Feltex New Zealand Ltd, Fibremakers Australia Pty Ltd, Flooring Foundation Ltd, Flooring Industries Limited S.a r.l., Flooring XL B.V., Floorscape Limited, Godfrey Hirst & Co Pty Ltd, Godfrey Hirst (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Godfrey Hirst Australia Pty Ltd, Godfrey Hirst Group, Godfrey Hirst NZ Ltd, Hytherm (Ireland) Limited, IVC BVBA, IVC Far-East Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., IVC France S.a r.l., IVC GROUP LIMITED, IVC Green Power NV, IVC Group, IVC Group GmbH, IVC Luxembourg S.a r.l., IVC Rus OOO, IVC US Inc., International Flooring Systems S.a r.l., International Vinyl Company - Vostok OOO, KAI Group, KAI Keramica Ltd, KAI Mining EOOD, KERAMA CENTER OOO, Kerama Baltics OOO, Kerama Export OOO, Kerama Marazzi OOO, Kerampromservis (LLC), Khan Asparuh - Transport EOOD, Khan Asparuh AD, Khan Omurtag AD, Koninklijke Peitsman B.V., Kraj Kerama OOO, MG China Trading Ltd., MI Finance SRL, MUD (Holding) Brazil Ltda., Management Co EAD, Marazzi Acquisition S.r.l., Marazzi Deutschland G.m.b.H., Marazzi France Trading S.A.S., Marazzi Group, Marazzi Group F.Z.E., Marazzi Group S.r.l., Marazzi Group Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Marazzi Iberia S.L.U., Marazzi Japan Co. Ltd., Marazzi Middle East FZ LLC, Marazzi Schweiz S.A.G.L., Marazzi UK Ltd., Mohawk Assurance Services Inc., Mohawk Australia Pty Ltd, Mohawk Canada Corporation, Mohawk Capital Finance S.A., Mohawk Capital Luxembourg SA, Mohawk Carpet Distribution Inc., Mohawk Carpet Foundation Inc., Mohawk Carpet LLC, Mohawk Carpet Transportation Of Georgia LLC, Mohawk Commercial Inc., Mohawk ESV Inc., Mohawk Europe BVBA, Mohawk Factoring II Inc., Mohawk Factoring LLC, Mohawk Finance S.a r.l., Mohawk Foreign Acquisitions S.a r.l., Mohawk Foreign Funding S.a.r.l, Mohawk Foreign Holdings S.a r.l., Mohawk Foreign Investments Inc., Mohawk Global Investments S.a r.l., Mohawk Holdings International B.V., Mohawk Industries Inc., Mohawk International (Europe) S.a r.l., Mohawk International (Hong Kong) Limited, Mohawk International Capital N.V., Mohawk International Financing S.a.r.l, Mohawk International Holdings (DE) LLC, Mohawk International Holdings S.a r.l., Mohawk International Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk International Netherlands B.V., Mohawk International Services BVBA, Mohawk KAI Luxembourg Holding S.a r.l., Mohawk KAI Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Capital S.A., Mohawk Luxembourg Financing S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Investments S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Pacific S.a r.l., Mohawk Marazzi International BV, Mohawk Marazzi Russia BV, Mohawk New Zealand Limited, Mohawk Operaciones Mexicali S. de R.L. de C.V., Mohawk Operations Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk Pacific Investments S.a r.l., Mohawk Resources LLC, Mohawk Servicing LLC, Mohawk Singapore Private Limited, Mohawk Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Mohawk Unilin Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk United Finance B.V., Mohawk United International B.V., Mohawk Vinyl Financing S.a r.l., Molber Beheer B.V., Monarch Ceramic Tile Inc., P.F. Onroerend Goed B.V., PF Beheer B.V., Pergo, Pergo (Europe) AB, Pergo Holding BV, Pergo India Pvt Ltd, Polcolorit S.A., Premium Floors Australia Pty Limited, RR Apex LLC, Rata International Pty Ltd, Recubrimientos Interceramica S. de R.L. de C.V., Riverside Textiles Pty Ltd, S.C. KAI Ceramics SRL, Sibir Kerama OOO, SimpleSolutions USA LLC, Soft Step (Australia) Pty Ltd, Spano Group, Spano Invest BVBA, Spano NV, Stroyagromekhzapchast ChaO, Stroytrans OAO Orelstroy, Summit Wool Spinners Ltd, The Flooring Federation Ltd, Tiles Co OOD, Unilin (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Unilin ApS, Unilin Arauco Pisos Ltda., Unilin BVBA, Unilin Beheer BV, Unilin Distribution Ltd., Unilin Distribution Ukraine LLC, Unilin Finland OY, Unilin Flooring India Private Limited, Unilin Flooring SAS, Unilin GmbH, Unilin Holding BVBA, Unilin Insulation BV, Unilin Insulation SAS, Unilin Insulation Sury SAS, Unilin Italia S.R.L., Unilin North America LLC, Unilin Norway AS, Unilin OOO, Unilin Panels SAS, Unilin Poland Sp.Z.o.o., Unilin SAS, Unilin Spain SL, Unilin Swiss GmbH, Unilin s.r.o., World International Inc., Xtratherm, Xtratherm Limited, Xtratherm S.A., and Xtratherm UK Limited.Worldpay, Inc., through its subsidiary, Worldpay Holding, LLC, provides electronic payment processing services in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australasia. It operates in two segments, Technology Solutions, Merchant Solutions, and Issuer Solutions. The company offers merchant acquiring and payment processing services, such as authorization and settlement, customer service, chargeback and retrieval processing, and interchange management. It also provides value-added services, such data analytics and information management solutions, foreign currency management, and various funding options; and security solutions, including point-to-point encryption and tokenization at the point of sale and for e-commerce transactions. In addition, the company offers card issuer processing, payment network processing, fraud protection, card production, prepaid program management, automated teller machine driving, portfolio optimization, data analytics, and card program marketing, as well as network gateway and switching services. Further, it provides card and statement production, and collections and inbound/outbound call centers. The company serves merchants and financial institutions comprising regional banks, community banks, credit unions, and regional personal identification number networks through direct sales forces and referral partners. The company was formerly known as Vantiv, Inc. and changed its name to Worldpay, Inc. in January 2018. Worldpay, Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of InterContinental Hotels Group: 2250 Blake Street Hotel LLC, 24th Street Operator Sub LLC, 36th Street IHG Sub LLC, 426 Main Ave LLC, 46 Nevins Street Associates LLC, Allegro Management LLC, Alpha Kimball Hotel LLC, American Commonwealth Assurance Co. Ltd., Asia Pacific Holdings Limited, BHMC Canada Inc., BHR Holdings B.V., BHR Luxembourg SARL, BHR Pacific Holdings Inc., BHTC Canada Inc., BOC Barclay Sub LLC, Barclay Operating Corp., Bristol Oakbrook Tenant Company, Cafe Biarritz, Cambridge Lodging LLC, Capital Lodging LLC, Compania Inter-Continental De Hoteles El Salvador SA, Crowne Plaza Amsterdam (Management) B.V., Crowne Plaza LLC, Cumberland Akers Hotel LLC, Dunwoody Operations Inc., EVEN Real Estate Holding LLC, Edinburgh IC Limited, General Innkeeping Acceptance Corporation, Guangzhou SC Hotels Services Ltd., H.I. (Ireland) Limited, H.I. Soaltee Management Company Ltd, HC International Holdings Inc., HH France Holdings SAS, HH Hotels (EMEA) B.V., HH Hotels (Romania) SRL, HI Sugarloaf LLC, HIM (Aruba) NV, Hale International Ltd., Hoft Properties LLC, Holiday Hospitality Franchising LLC, Holiday Inn Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Holiday Inns (China) Ltd, Holiday Inns (Chongqing) Inc., Holiday Inns (Courtalin) Holdings SAS, Holiday Inns (Courtalin) SAS, Holiday Inns (England) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Germany) LLC, Holiday Inns (Guangzhou) Inc., Holiday Inns (Jamaica) Inc., Holiday Inns (Malaysia) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Middle East) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Philippines) Inc., Holiday Inns (Saudi Arabia) Inc., Holiday Inns (South East Asia) Inc., Holiday Inns (Thailand) Ltd., Holiday Inns (UK) Inc., Holiday Inns Crowne Plaza (Hong Kong) Inc., Holiday Inns Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, Holiday Inns Inc., Holiday Inns Investment (Nepal) Ltd., Holiday Inns of America (UK) Ltd., Holiday Inns of Belgium N.V., Holiday Pacific Equity Corporation, Holiday Pacific LLC, Holiday Pacific Partners LP, Hotel Inter-Continental London Limited, Hotel InterContinental London (Holdings) Limited, Hoteles Y Turismo HIH SRL, IC Hotelbetriebsfuhrungs GmbH, IC Hotels Management (Portugal) Unipessoal Lda, IC International Hotels Limited Liability Company, IHC (Thailand) Limited, IHC Buckhead LLC, IHC Edinburgh (Holdings), IHC Hopkins (Holdings) Corp., IHC Hotel Limited, IHC Inter-Continental (Holdings) Corp., IHC London (Holdings), IHC M-H (Holdings) Corp., IHC May Fair (Holdings) Limited, IHC May Fair Hotel Limited, IHC Overseas (U.K.) Limited, IHC UK (Holdings) Limited, IHC United States (Holdings) Corp., IHC Willard (Holdings) Corp., IHG (Australasia) Limited, IHG (Marseille) SAS, IHG (Thailand) Limited, IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan LLC, IHG ANA Hotels Holdings Co. Ltd., IHG Bangkok Ltd, IHG Brasil Administracao de Hoteis e Servicos Ltda, IHG Commission Services SRL, IHG Community Development LLC, IHG Cyprus Limited, IHG ECS (Barbados) SRL, IHG Franchising Brasil Ltda, IHG Franchising DR Corporation, IHG Franchising LLC, IHG Hotels (New Zealand) Limited, IHG Hotels Limited, IHG Hotels Management (Australia) Pty Limited, IHG Hotels Nigeria Limited, IHG Hotels South Africa (Pty) Ltd, IHG International Partnership, IHG Istanbul Otel Yonetim Limited Sirketi, IHG Japan (Management) LLC, IHG Japan (Osaka) LLC, IHG Management (Maryland) LLC, IHG Management (Netherlands) B.V., IHG Management MD Barclay Sub LLC, IHG Management SL d.o.o, IHG Management d.o.o. Beograd, IHG Orchard Street Member LLC, IHG PS Nominees Limited, IHG Systems Pty Ltd, IHG Szalloda Budapest Szolgaltato Kft., IHG de Argentina SA, IND East Village SD Holdings LLC, Inter-Continental D.C. Operating Corp., Inter-Continental Florida Investment Corp., Inter-Continental Florida Partner Corp., Inter-Continental Hospitality Corporation, Inter-Continental Hoteleira Limitada, Inter-Continental Hotels (Montreal) Operating Corp., Inter-Continental Hotels (Montreal) Owning Corp., Inter-Continental Hotels (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation, Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation de Venezuela C.A., Inter-Continental Hotels of San Francisco Inc., Inter-Continental IOHC (Mauritius) Limited, Inter-Continental Management (Australia) Pty Limited, InterContinental (Branston) 1 Limited, InterContinental (PB) 1, InterContinental (PB) 2, InterContinental (PB) 3 Limited, InterContinental Berlin Service Company GmbH, InterContinental Brasil Administracao de Hoteis Ltda, InterContinental Gestion Hotelera S.L., InterContinental Hotel Berlin GmbH, InterContinental Hotel Dusseldorf GmbH (Germany), InterContinental Hotels (Puerto Rico) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd, InterContinental Hotels Group (Australia) Pty Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (Canada) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (Espana) SA, InterContinental Hotels Group (Greater China) Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (India) Pvt. Ltd, InterContinental Hotels Group (Japan) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (New Zealand) Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (Shanghai) Ltd., InterContinental Hotels Group Customer Services Ltd., InterContinental Hotels Group Healthcare Trustee Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group Operating Corp., InterContinental Hotels Group Resources Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group Services Company, InterContinental Hotels Group do Brasil Limitada, InterContinental Hotels Italia S.r.L., InterContinental Hotels Limited, InterContinental Hotels Management GmbH, InterContinental Hotels Nevada Corporation, InterContinental Management AM LLC, InterContinental Management Bulgaria EOOD, InterContinental Management France SAS, InterContinental Management Poland sp. z.o.o, InterContinental Overseas Holding Corporation, Intercontinental Hotels Corporation Limited, KG Benefits LLC, KG Gift Card Inc., KG Liability LLC, KG Technology LLC, KHP Washington Operator LLC, KHRG 11th Avenue Hotel LLC, KHRG 851 LLC, KHRG Aertson LLC, KHRG Alexandria LLC, KHRG Alexis LLC, KHRG Allegro LLC, KHRG Argyle LLC, KHRG Austin Beverage Company LLC, KHRG Baltimore LLC, KHRG Born LLC, KHRG Boston Hotel LLC, KHRG Canary LLC, KHRG Cayman Employer Ltd., KHRG Cayman LLC, KHRG DC 1731 LLC, KHRG DC 2505 LLC, KHRG Donovan LLC, KHRG Employer LLC, KHRG Goleta LLC, KHRG Gray LLC, KHRG Gray U2 LLC, KHRG Hillcrest LLC, KHRG Huntington Beach LLC, KHRG King Street LLC, KHRG La Peer LLC, KHRG Miami Beach LLC, KHRG Muse LLC, KHRG NPC LLC, KHRG Onyx LLC, KHRG Palladian LLC, KHRG Palomar Phoenix LLC, KHRG Philly Monaco LLC, KHRG Pittsburgh LLC, KHRG Reynolds LLC, KHRG Riverplace LLC, KHRG SFD LLC, KHRG Sacramento LLC, KHRG Savannah LLC, KHRG Schofield LLC, KHRG Sedona LLC, KHRG State Street LLC, KHRG Sutter LLC, KHRG Sutter Union LLC, KHRG Taconic LLC, KHRG Tariff LLC, KHRG Texas Hospitality LLC, KHRG Texas Operations LLC, KHRG Tryon LLC, KHRG VZ Austin LLC, KHRG Vero Beach LLC, KHRG Vintage Park LLC, KHRG WPB LLC, KHRG Wabash LLC, KHRG Westwood LLC, KHRG Wilshire LLC, KHRG Zamora LLC, Kimpton Hollywood Licenses LLC, Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC, Kimpton Phoenix Licenses Holdings LLC, Kimpton Sedona Licenses LLC, Louisiana Acquisitions Corp., MH Lodging LLC, Mercer Fairview Holdings LLC, PML Services LLC, PT SC Hotels & Resorts Indonesia, Pollstrong Limited, Powell Pine Inc., Priscilla Holiday of Texas Inc., RM Lodging LLC, Regent Hotels and Resorts, Resort Services International (Cayo Largo) L.P., SBS Maryland Beverage Company LLC, SC Cellars Limited, SC Hotels International Services Inc., SC Leisure Group Limited, SC NAS 2 Limited, SC Quest Limited, SC Reservations (Philippines) Inc., SCH Insurance Company, SCIH Branston 3, SF MH Acquisition LLC, SPHC Group Pty Ltd., SPHC Management Ltd., Semiramis for training of Hotel Personnel and Hotel Management SAE, Six Continents Corporate Services, Six Continents Holdings Limited, Six Continents Hotels Inc., Six Continents Hotels International Limited, Six Continents Hotels de Colombia SA, Six Continents International Holdings B.V., Six Continents Investments Limited, Six Continents Limited, Six Continents Overseas Holdings Limited, Six Continents Restaurants Limited, SixCo North America Inc., Solamar Lodging LLC, Southern Pacific Hotel Corporation (BVI) Ltd., Southern Pacific Hotels Properties Limited, Universal de Hoteles SA, White Shield Insurance Company Limited, and World Trade Centre Montreal Hotel Corporation.The following companies are subsidiares of Global Payments: ACTIVE Network - Communities and Sports, Active Network (HK) Limited, Active Network IPICO (CA) Inc., Active Network IPICO (US) Inc., Active Network IPICO Holdings (US) LLC, Active Network IPICO Holdings (US) LLC, Active Network IPICO Innovation Inc., Active Networks LLC, AdvancedMD, Athlaction Intermediate LLC, Athlaction Topco LLC, AuctionPay, Comercia Global Payments Entidad de Pago S.L., DEBITEK INC, Digital Dining LLC, Dinerware LLC, DolEx Europe S.L., Educational Computer Systems Inc., Ematters Australia Pty Ltd., Equifax Credit Services LLC, Ezi Holdings Pty. Ltd., Ezi Management Pty Ltd., Ezidebit, Ezidebit (NZ) Limited, Ezidebit HK Ltd., Ezidebit Pty Ltd., GP Finance LLC, GPC Financial Corporation, GPS Holding Limited Partnership, GPUK LLP, Global Payment Holding Company, Global Payment Systems Asia-Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd., Global Payment Systems LLC, Global Payment Systems of Canada Ltd., Global Payments - Caixa Acquisition Corporation S.a.r.l., Global Payments - Realex Payments Holding Limited, Global Payments - Servicos de Pagamentos S.A., Global Payments Acquisition Corp. 1 B.V., Global Payments Acquisition Corp. 2 B.V., Global Payments Acquisition Corp. 3 B.V., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 2 LLC, Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 2 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 3 LLC, Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 3 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 4 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 6 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 7 LLC, Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 7 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation HK Holding Limited, Global Payments Acquisition PS 1 C.V., Global Payments Acquisition PS 2 C.V., Global Payments Acquisition PS 3 C. V., Global Payments Acquisition PS1-Global Payments Direct S.e.n.c., Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong Holding) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (India) Private Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Shanghai) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Singapore Holding) Ltd., Global Payments Asia-Pacific Lanka (Private) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Macau Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Maldives Private Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Philippines Incorporated, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Processing Company Limited, Global Payments Australia Pty 1 Ltd., Global Payments Australia Pty 2 Ltd., Global Payments Canada GP, Global Payments Canada Inc., Global Payments Card Processing Malaysia Sdn. Bhd, Global Payments Check Recovery Services Inc., Global Payments Check Services Inc., Global Payments Direct Inc., Global Payments Europe d.o.o. Sarajevo, Global Payments Europe s.r.o., Global Payments Gaming Canada Inc., Global Payments Gaming International Inc., Global Payments Gaming Services Inc., Global Payments Integrated, Global Payments Limited, Global Payments Process Centre Inc., Global Payments South America Brasil-Servicos de Pagamentos S.A., Global Payments UK 2 Ltd., Global Payments UK Ltd., Global Payments s.r.o., Greater Giving Inc., Heartland Acquisition LLC, Heartland Payment Solutions Inc., Heartland Payment Systems, Heartland Payment Systems LLC, Heartland Payroll Solutions Inc., IPICO South Africa (Pty) Ltd., JumpForward LLC, Maximum Solutions LLC, Merchant Services U.S.A. Inc., Modular Data Inc., NDC Holdings (UK) Ltd., NDPS Holdings Inc., PCAmerica LLC, Pay and Shop Limited, PayPros LLC, Payment Processing, Payroll 1 Inc., Realex Payments, SICOM Systems, Sabrir Invest S.L., Sentral Education, Spolecnost pro informacni database a.s., Storman Holdings Pty Ltd., Storman Software Inc., Storman Software Limited, Storman Software Ltd., Storman Software Pty Ltd., TeamPages Inc., The Active Network (Asia) Pte. Ltd, The Active Network (Aus-NZ) Pty. Ltd., The Active Network (EU) Ltd., The Active Network Ltd., The Active Network Ltd. (Chengdu), The Active Network Ltd. (Xian), Total System Services, TouchNet Information Systems Inc., UCS Terminal Joint Stock Company, United Card Service Joint Stock Company, VEPF III AIV VI-C Corp., VEPF IV AIV VII-C Corp., VFF I AIV IV-C Corp., Web Active Corporation Pty Ltd., Xenial, Xpient LLC, eWAY, eWay Europe Limited, eWay Payments Asia Pte Ltd., eWay Payments Inc., eWay Payments New Zealand Limited, eWay Payments North America Inc., and eWay Payments Pty Ltd..Rogers Communications Inc. operates as a communications and media company in Canada. It operates through three segments: Wireless, Cable, and Media. The company offers mobile Internet access, wireless voice and enhanced voice, device and accessory financing, wireless home phone, device protection, text messaging, e-mail, global voice and data roaming, bridging landline, machine-to-machine and Internet of Things solutions, and advanced wireless solutions for businesses, as well as device delivery services; and postpaid and prepaid services under the Rogers, Fido, and chatr brands to approximately 10.9 million subscribers. It also provides Internet and WiFi services; smart home monitoring services, such as monitoring, security, automation, energy efficiency, and smart control through a smartphone app. In addition, the company offers local and network TV; on-demand television; cloud-based digital video recorders; voice-activated remote controls, and integrated apps; personal video recorders; linear and time-shifted programming; digital specialty channels; 4K television programming; and televised content on smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, as well as operates Ignite TV and Ignite TV app. Further, it provides residential and small business local telephony services; calling features, such as voicemail, call waiting, and long distance; voice, data networking, Internet protocol, and Ethernet services; private networking, Internet, IP voice, and cloud solutions; optical wave and multi-protocol label switching services; IT and network technologies; and cable access network services. The company also owns Toronto Blue Jays and the Rogers Centre event venue; and operates Sportsnet ONE, Sportsnet 360, Sportsnet World, Citytv, OMNI, FX (Canada), FXX (Canada), and OLN television networks, as well as 55 AM and FM radio stations. Rogers Communications Inc. was founded in 1960 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

Read MoreUniCredit S.p.A. operates as a commercial bank. The company operates through Commercial Banking Italy, Commercial Banking Germany, Commercial Banking Austria, Corporate & Investment Banking, and Central Eastern Europe segments. It offers retail, corporate, and private banking services; investment services; leasing and factoring services; transactional, investment, and credit products and services; insurance solutions; and structured financing, hedging, and treasury solutions. The company also provides equity and debt capital market, corporate finance and advisory, syndication, and leverage buy-out services; and project and commodity, real estate, structured trade and export, and acquisition finance services, as well as wealth management services. In addition, it is involved in the structuring of products, such as FX, rates, equities, and credit products; and provision of cash management, e-banking, supply chain finance, global securities, and mobile banking services, as well as trade finance products. The company operates in Italy, Other European countries, America, Asia, and internationally. The company was formerly known as Unicredito Italiano S.p.A and changed its name to UniCredit S.p.A. UniCredit S.p.A. was founded in 1870 and is headquartered in Milan, Italy.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Sealed Air: A.P.S. (Holdings) Limited, AFP Trading (China) Co. Ltd., AFPTOH LTD, APS Automated Packaging Systems GmbH & Co. KG, APS Verwaltungs-GmbH, Air Ride Pallets Hong Kong Limited, Austin Foam Plastics Inc. (dba AFP Inc.), Automated Packaging Systems, Automated Packaging Systems Asia Holding Company Limited, Automated Packaging Systems Comerciale Importacao do Brasil Ltda., Automated Packaging Systems Europe, Automated Packaging Systems LLC, Automated Packaging Systems Limited, Automated Packaging Systems Southeast Asia Co. Ltd., B+ Equipment, B+ Equipment SAS, Beacon Holdings LLC, Biosphere Industries, BluPack (New Zealand), Blue Dot Packaging Pty Ltd., Cactus (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Cryovac (Malaysia) SDN. BHD, Cryovac Brasil Ltda., Cryovac Holdings II LLC, Cryovac International Holdings Inc., Cryovac LLC*, Cryovac Leasing Corporation, Cryovac Londrina Ltda., Cryovac Packaging Portugal  Embalagens Ltda., Cryovac-Sealed Air de Costa Rica S.R.L., DELTAPLAM Embalagens Industria e Comercio, Diversey, Diversey J Trustee Limited, Diversey Trustee Limited, Entapack Pty. Ltd., Fagerdala (Chengdu) Packaging Co. Ltd, Fagerdala (Shanghai) Foams Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Shanghai) Polymer Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Suzhou) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Thailand) Limited, Fagerdala (Xiamen) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Leamchabung Limited, Fagerdala Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Fagerdala Mexico S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Mexico Supply Chain S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Packaging Inc. (Indiana), Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd, Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Ltd., Getpacking.com GmbH, Invertol S. de R.L. de C.V., JSC Sealed Air Kaustik, KRIS Automated Packaging Systems Holding Company, Kevothermal LLC, Kevothermal Limited, Nelipak Holdings, Pack-Tiger GmbH, Polyrol Limited, Polyrol Packaging Systems LLC, ProAseptic Technologies S.L., Producembal- Producao de Embalagens LTDA, Reflectix Inc., SLD Air Packaging Paketleme Malzemeleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Saddle Brook Insurance Company, Sealed Air (Asia) Holdings BV, 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) 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 (Ukraine) 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. Limited, Sealed Air Australia Real Estate Pty Ltd, Sealed Air B.V., Sealed Air Belgium N.V., Sealed Air Central America S.A., Sealed Air Chile SpA, Sealed Air Colombia Ltda., Sealed Air Corporation (US), Sealed Air Cyprus Ltd., Sealed Air Denmark A/S, Sealed Air Finance B.V., Sealed Air Finance II LLC, Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Funding LLC, Sealed Air General Trading LLC, Sealed Air GmbH (Germany), Sealed Air GmbH (Switzerland), Sealed Air Hellas SA, Sealed Air Holding France SAS, Sealed Air Holdings (New Zealand) Pty. Ltd., Sealed Air Holdings South Africa Proprietary Limited, Sealed Air Holdings UK I Limited, Sealed Air Holdings UK Limited, Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited, Sealed Air Hungary Ltd., Sealed Air Investment and Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Japan G.K., Sealed Air LLC, Sealed Air Limited (Ireland), Sealed Air Limited (UK), 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 V B.V., 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 S.L.U., Sealed Air Peru S.A.C., Sealed Air Polska Sp. Zoo, Sealed Air Pty Limited, 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 UK Limited Partnership, Sealed Air US Holdings (Thailand) LLC, Sealed Air Uruguay S.A., Sealed Air Verpackungen GmbH, Sealed Air de Mexico Operations S. de RL. de C.V., Sealed Air de Venezuela S.A., Sealed Air s.r.o., Shanklin Corp, Shanklin Corporation, TTS-Ciptec, TXAFP Asia Pacific Ltd., TXAFP GP LLC, and Trigon Industries.Mark Makela/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Former President Barack Obama is back on the campaign trail two weeks before the midterm elections, appearing Monday at a rally at the University of Nevada Las Vegas campus to boost Democrats up and down the ballot.



I want this to be the capital of voting," Obama told the crowd. "Im here just to get one thing from you -- and this is for you to vote," he said. This Novembers elections are more important than any in my lifetime and that includes when I was on the ballot.



The consequences of you staying home would be profoundly dangerous for our country, for this democracy, Obama said.



He's particularly focused on Nevada's Senate race, one of the tightest in the country. Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen is challenging Republican incumbent Dean Heller, the only Republican senator up for re-election in a state that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.



Heller has been endorsed by President Trump, who just on Saturday stumped for him in Elko, Nevada, on the same night that Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, campaigned in the state for Rosen.



Obama held nothing back in his disdain for the policies of President Trump and congressional Republicans.



"There is only one real check on abuses of power, one real check on bad policy, it's you and your vote," Obama said to a crowd of 2,000 supporters. Speakers hit hard on the need for high voter turnout throughout the day and advertised that early voting was underway in Nevada. Nevada Democratic Party chair William McCurdy started a chant saying "You vote, we win."



Obama made the case that his administration had put the country on a track that's led to the powerful economy that President Trump takes credit for. He touted the ongoing longest streak of job growth on record, providing health care for millions of Americans, and cutting deficits during his administration.



"When you hear all this talk about economic miracles, remember who started it," Obama said. "I hope people realize there's a pattern that every time [Republicans] run things into the ground and we've got to clean it up."



Obama picked apart a number of current Republican positions including claims by Republican congressional candidates that people with pre-existing conditions would not lose their health insurance. "I know you can bet on anything here in Vegas, but you don't want to bet that Republicans are going to protect your healthcare."



Without mentioning him by name, Obama took a thinly-veiled swipe at President Trump. "Unlike some, I actually try to state factsI believe in facts- I believe in a fact-based reality, a fact-based politics," he said. "I dont believe in just making stuff up. I think you should say whats true."



In her Senate campaign, Rosen has made health care the primary issue of her campaign -- an issue that was also central to Obama's presidency.



One of her supporters, Malerie Stanley, who arrived more than three hours before the rally to ensure she would get inside, said women's rights was the key issue for her in the midterms.



What has happened in our country recently with Kavanaugh is disgusting. Its a disgrace, Stanley said. People need to be heard and were not going to stop fighting until were heard.



Another issue at the top of voters minds was health care. Randi Ghrist, a mother of three, worries that her children will be able to get healthcare.



I cant just turn a blind eye to whats happening all around me. My children are on my insurance for now, what happens in a few years?



Many voters said above any individual issue, ensuring a check on President Trump was what would drive them to the polls.



I think the most important issue in this election is to put the president in check, said Mike Blair, a Las Vegas resident. He has such a rubber stamp in Congress, we need someone who will be a rubber stamp on him.



Obama is the latest in a string of national surrogates who have visited Nevada in the 2018 midterm cycle and Democrats are hoping some Hollywood star power will invigorate their base. Obama was joined at the rally by "Ugly Betty" actress America Ferrera, and the hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa.



Steve Sisolak, the Democratic candidate for governor, also appeared at the rally. Sisolak, who's currently the Commission Chairman of Clark County, the county that encompasses Las Vegas, faces Republican candidate Adam Laxalt, the state's attorney general.



It's an open seat race for the seat currently held by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, who has reached the end of his term.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF's stock was trading at $62.31 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, IJR stock has increased by 90.3% and is now trading at $118.55.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.TCF Financial Corporation operates as the financial holding company for TCF National Bank that provides various financial products and services in the United States and Canada. It operates through Consumer Banking, Commercial Banking, and Enterprise Services segments. The company offers checking, savings, and money market accounts; certificates of deposit; individual retirement accounts; debit and credit cards; and check cashing and remittance services. It also provides investment management and custodial services, trust services, financial and estate planning, and retirement planning and employee benefit programs; residential, consumer, and small business lending products; and consumer real estate secured lending, consumer loans, loans secured by personal property, and unsecured personal loans. In addition, the company offers loans and lines of credit, deposits, cash management, capital market products, international trade finance, letters of credit, foreign exchange management services, and loan syndication services. Further, it provides commercial and industrial, commercial real estate banking, and lease financing; and treasury services comprising investment and borrowing portfolios, as well as manages capital, debt, and market risks. As of December 31, 2020, the company operated 478 branches, including 373 traditional branches, 102 supermarket branches, and three campus branches located in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and South Dakota; and 1,062 ATMs. TCF Financial Corporation was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Detroit, Michigan.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of 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..Medtronic Plc is a medical technology company, which engages in the development, manufacture, distribution, and sale of device-based medical therapies and services. It operates through the following segments: Cardiac and Vascular Group; Minimally Invasive Technologies Group; Restorative Therapies Group; and Diabetes Group. The Cardiac and Vascular Group segment consists of products for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of cardiac rhythm disorders and cardiovascular disease. The Minimally Invasive Technologies Group segment focuses on respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract, renal system, lungs, pelvic region, kidneys, and obesity diseases. The Restorative Therapies Group segment comprises of neurostimulation therapies and drug delivery systems for the treatment of chronic pain, as well as areas of the spine and brain, along with pelvic health and conditions of the ear, nose, and throat. The Diabetes Group segment offers insulin pumps, coninuous glucose monitoring systems, and insulin pump consumables. The company was founded in 1949 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

Read MoreSensible people know there are no such things as haunted houses. But there are seemingly innocent places that will provide visitors with more willies per square inch than any ghost-infested mansion. Supernatural scares can't even hope to compare with what living human beings are capable of. Just look at how ...

5 You Can Get Married In A Plantation That Had A Road Lined With The Heads Of Murdered Slaves

Magisterial plantations are popular tourist destinations across the South, because while they were built on the backs of slaves, they also serve delicious mint juleps at destination weddings. But it's easy to shove the horrors of the past to the back of your mind, especially when plantations like Destrehan in Louisiana go out of their way to gloss over them.

The Destrehan Plantation is a bit north of New Orleans, and was home to the start of the largest slave uprising you've never heard of (because it was intentionally spun as being conducted by a band of brigands interested only in plunder). In 1811, 500 slaves marched from Destrehan to New Orleans while chanting "freedom or death." They burned plantations and killed two planters before eventually receiving the latter of their demands.

The retribution by the white elite was brutal even by 19th-century slaveholder standards. One of the revolt's leaders, Charles Deslondes, was shot in the legs, then had his hands chopped off before being set on fire. Other slaves were killed in a brief battle with militia and federal troops, or rounded up and had their heads hacked off to be delivered to their owners. Later, groups of captured slaves were put on trial, and shockingly, most were found guilty, leading to public executions by firing squad and hanging. A few were able to escape to freedom in the swamps.FedEx Corp. is a holding company, which engages in the provision of a portfolio of transportation, e-commerce, and business services. It operates through the following segments: FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, FedEx Services, and Corporate, Other & Eliminations. The FedEx Express segment consists of domestic and international shipping services for delivery of packages and freight. The FedEx Ground segment focuses on small-package ground delivery services. The FedEx Freight segment offers less-than-truckload freight services across all lengths of haul. The FedEx Services segment provides sales, marketing, information technology, communications, customer service, technical support, billing and collection services, and certain back-office functions. The Corporate, Other & Eliminations segment includes corporate headquarters costs for executive officers and certain legal and finance functions, as well as certain other costs and credits not attributed to the firm's core business. The company was founded by Frederick Wallace Smith on June 18, 1971 and is headquartered in Memphis, TN.

Read More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 American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved.

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 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research.UPDATE: The boil water advisory for residents in the Sauquoit Water District has been lifted, but residents should continue to conserve water.

______________________________

Officials with the Sauquoit Water District are asking residents in the district to boil their water before using it, and theyre also asking water customers to conserve water as well.

Officials say there is a well failure and the company that installed it is on its way to make repairs.

Once the well is fixed, they will send out water samples to be tested. The boil water advisory will be in effect until further notice.An Edmeston man is facing more than a dozen charges after he allegedly raped a minor, according to New York State Police.

William Bateman, 46, was arrested Jan. 5 and charged with seven counts of felony second-degree rape, six counts of felony second-degree criminal sexual act, and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child.

Troopers were notified of an incident that allegedly occurred in Otsego County, and they say an investigation found that Bateman had sexual contact with a child less than 15 years old.

Bateman was arraigned in the Town of Otsego Court and released on his own recognizance. Hes scheduled to return to court on Jan. 17.

Police say an order of protection was issued against him on behalf of the victim.Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Kind of standard murdery robot stuff so far, right? Well, between the events of Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, three of the four are killed by Boba Fett. The remaining IG-88 changes tactics -- and bodies -- uploading his consciousness into a sci-fi USB stick. That stick is then plugged into ... the second Death Star! IG-88 literally becomes the Death Star! It's at this point that the story goes from "bizarrely silly action-adventure" to "I must have misheard you, did you say, 'PCHU-PCHU, my guy is the Death Star now'?"

The Imperials somehow don't figure out their planet-destroying superweapon is now completely under the control of some random droid. And then, as we all would, IG-88 uses this unfathomable power to ... play pranks on Emperor Palpatine. Here, we'll let the book explain it:

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

As the Emperor approached the sliding doorway, however -- just for fun -- IG-88 triggered the hydraulic systems to slam the doors in front of Palpatine's face.

IG-88 found it most entertaining to watch the powerful Emperor and his bodyguards unable to perform a task as simple as opening a door. Finally, IG-88 let the doors pop open. The Emperor and the Imperial guard looked around in confusion. Palpatine stared up at the ceiling as if trying to sense something, but he did not understand what had happened.

Ignoring the elegant and riveting writing style, let's look at what is happening here. IG-88 is the greatest killer robot in the Galaxy inside the greatest weapon in the Galaxy, and he's slamming doors on people to see their confused looks? All this power, and he's producing a prank show for an audience of one? There's even an extra ridiculous part where the Emperor tries to open the doors with the Force and IG-88 manages to keep them closed. So he not only has control of a laser that kills planets, but he can also wrestle a door harder than a Sith Lord's mighty powers. It's sort of impressive, but so stupid and pointless that no one should have ever written it down.EDMESTON  An Edmeston man is facing charges after 27 dead cows were found at a dairy farm, according to New York State Police.

James Mumbulo, 45, is charged with 27 misdemeanor counts of the state Agriculture and Markets law of overdriving, torturing and injuring animals.

Police say they were dispatched to a rented dairy farm on County Route 20 in Edmeston to check the welfare of several animals. When troopers inspected the barn, they found 27 dead cow carcasses and several inches of manure, according to police. They also found that there was no food or water in the barn.

Mumbulo was arrested Sunday after police consulted with a veterinarian and the District Attorneys Office. He was then released on appearance tickets for the Town of Edmeston Court on Nov. 19.UTICA -- With just over two weeks until the midterm election, gubernatorial candidate Larry Sharpe (L) made a visit to Utica Sunday for a rally at Breeze's.

The main topic at the rally was change for New York State. Some of those changes include a push to legalize marijuana and eliminate the state income tax.

The event was packed with people showing their support for the candidate.

Sharpe also discussed how he could benefit the local area if he were to win the race for governor. He said:

"Making sure we understand that eminent domain is theft and we want to make sure we support local businesses," Sharpe said. "Small business is everything. If you want a resilient economy, you have to have a strong entrpreneurial class, and that means supporting small businesses."

Sharpe will face four other candidates in the race for governor which include incumbent Andrew Cuomo (D), Marc molinaro (R),

Howie Hawkins (G), and Stephanie miner (S).A New York Mills student is facing charges in connection to a reported threat from last week, according to the Oneida County Sheriffs Office.

Last Thursday, the Sheriffs Office said they were conducting an investigation at New York Mills High School regarding what appeared to be a non-credible threat made by a student. Deputies said at that time there was no immediate threat to any of the students or the general public, and they were in the process of interviewing a juvenile of interest.

Now, deputies say a minor has been charged with misdemeanor third-degree falsely reporting an incident and the violation of disorderly conduct. Because of the minors age, no further information will be released.

New York Mills Union Free School District Superintendent Joanne Shelmidine sent a notice to parents on Monday informing them that a student had been charged. A portion of the notice stated:

The NY Mills Union Free School District is continuing to work with the Sheriffs Department and has cooperated fully with the investigation; the District is also following our Student Code of Conduct as it relates to the student involved. The safety of the students and staff remains a top priority of this district. We continue to encourage our students to report any incident that concerns them so that it can be addressed as quickly as possible.

Deputies say the minor is scheduled to appear before Oneida County Juvenile Probation at a later date.Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the U.S. President Donald Trump have held a phone conversation on slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkey's presidential press office said early Monday.

According to a statement by the presidential press office, Erdogan and Trump agreed on the Khashoggi case need to be cleared up with all aspects.

Khashoggi was last seen on Oct. 2 when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

After days of denying to know his whereabouts, Saudi Arabia on Saturday claimed Khashoggi died during a fight inside the consulate.

On the day of Khashoggis disappearance, 15 other Saudis, including several officials, arrived in Istanbul on two planes and visited the consulate while he was still inside, according to Turkish police sources. All of the identified individuals have since left Turkey.

A joint Turkish-Saudi team completed an investigation into the case on Thursday after searching the residence of the consul general as well as the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

President Erdogan earlier on Sunday said that he will make a statement on the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Tuesday during his party's group meeting at the parliament.

The sources also said that two leaders' phone conversation included pastor Andrew Brunson, cooperation in fight against terrorism and the roadmap on Syria's Manbij.Germany has called on its EU partners on Monday to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia amid doubts over Riyadhs explanation on the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier told ZDF television that the German government would not approve any new arms sales to Saudi Arabia and would urge other EU member states to follow this example.

I believe that it is important to adopt a common European stance, Altmaier stressed.

Because only if all European states are united, it would make an influence on the government in Riyadh, he added.

Altmaier warned that Germanys decision to stop selling weapons would not have any positive impact if the other countries continued to sell them to Saudi Arabia.

He underlined that Riyadhs explanations so far on the killing of journalist Khashoggi were insufficient, and international community wanted to know the whole truth about what happened to him.

Khashoggi was last seen on Oct. 2 when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

After days of denying to know his whereabouts, Saudi Arabia on Saturday claimed Khashoggi died during a fight inside the consulate.

On the day of Khashoggis disappearance, 15 other Saudis, including several officials, arrived in Istanbul on two planes and visited the consulate while he was still inside, according to Turkish police sources. All of the identified individuals have since left Turkey.

A joint Turkish-Saudi team completed an investigation into the case on Thursday after searching the residence of the consul general as well as the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.Women Empowerment in Pakistan Dear Members I have tried to compile material related to "Women Empowerment" from different sources (i.e Dawn newspaper, Reflection Essays, Jahangir world times etc) so as to share the relevant data about this topic which is going to help you prepare for Examination.



Regards!



Women Empowerment in Pakistan

Outline

1. Introduction

2. Women Empowerment and Pakistan

3. Women Empowerment at global level

4. Causes of anti-women practices in Pakistan

a. Male dominance and discrimination on the basis of gender

b. Pseudo-religious scholars misinterpretation of scriptures

c. Feudalistic, Political, Economic and Socialistic system of government

5. Effects of Anti-women practices

a. Abysmal state of women

b. Honor killings, marriages with Quran, denial of inheritance, Watta Satta

c. Women as bargaining chips in customs like Vani and Swara

d. Harassment of women at workplaces and Trafficking

6. Pro-women legislation done so far by different governments

a. Domestic Violence(Prevention and Protection) Act 2012

b. Prevention of the Anti-women practices Bill, Act 2011

c. The protection of women at workplace, Act 2010

d. Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, 2008

e. Women protection Bill, 2006

7. Anti-women Legislation

a. Hudood Ordinance 1979

8. Need of Empowering women in Pakistan

a. Economic aspect

b. Social aspect

c. Religious aspect

d. Political aspect

e. Legal aspect

9. Conclusion





It is beyond any doubt that women play a significant role in development of society. History bears the testimony to the greatness of women as vibrant members of society. Even in the current scenario women have stood shoulder to shoulder with men for the general cause of humanity. But, it is unfortunate that their efforts have not been given due recognition in society. In the name of various customs, rituals and practices, women are being deprived of the legitimate rights. Consequently, women are found in the abysmal state. The need of hour is to give women workplaces and business environments that support and welcome them to improve society at a large; a mass movement that Pakistan desperately needs to help push it out of Economic and Social quagmire in which it finds itself today.

No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you; we are victims of evil customs. It is crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of house as prisoners.

(Quad-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 1944)

The Pakistani society is one of the different kinds, where on one side it places women as the centre of attention and life; it then on the other hand considers them no more than a secondary citizen. For years the role that a women played as a citizen, a member of family or a home-maker has been highly undermined and today it has turned into a tradition to degrade womens ability. However, over the years this scenario has changed, and the awareness of her abilities, her rights and her status has reached almost all parts of Pakistan. This country was formed on the basis of Two-Nation Theory, which emphasized Islamic teachings and values, and is therefore called as Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Islam gives the best and most balanced code of life, but Pseudo-fundamentalists converted the teachings of Islam to read in the best interests of men and highly unjust towards women. Despite this the women of Pakistan has come a long way in proving herself. The lives of Pakistani women have changed during the past thirty years and they are more powered and emancipated then they were ever before. More and more women are entering the workforce today as their predecessors, who made the first time at the workplace and also made life easier for women, lent them the encouragement to do so.

The U.N Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women defines Empowerment as:

Empowerment means that people-both women and men can take control of their lives; set their own agendas, gain skills (or have their own skills and knowledge recognized) increase self confidence, solve problems and develop self reliance. It is both a process and outcome

By empowering women it is meant that women should be allowed to participate fully in economic life across all sectors and throughout all levels of economic activity. With the tagline of Equality means Business the U.N has put together seven Womens Empowerment Principles designed to bring about a gender-equal environment in workplace and business. They include:

 Establishing high level corporate leadership for gender equality

 Treating all women and men fairly at work, respecting and supporting human rights and non-discrimination

 Ensuring the health, safety and well being of all women and men workers

 Promoting education, training and professional development for women

 Implementing enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practice that empower women

 Promoting equality through community initiatives and advocacy

 Measuring and publicly reporting on progress to achieve gender equality

With the passage of time and economic development women have attained high level of liberty in the developed countries. Women in said countries are enjoying almost equal rights in accordance to men. They have acquired such status due to high literacy rate, better infrastructure, enlightenment and sincerity of the ruling class.

Unfortunately, man has woefully militated against Gods commandments in Pakistan. He has brought down womens social status to the level of a third rate citizen. Three main factors have encouraged man to do so.

Firstly, it is the physical strength and a false sense of superiority as against womens physical weakness that makes her vulnerable to oppression. Man has enforced the law of Jungle where the weaker leads life at the mercy of stronger.

Secondly, it is the so-called religious scholar i.e. the ill-educated pseudo-scholar who interprets the Holy Quran in the light of his own gender prejudices against the women folk. Himself being man he preaches absolute property rights of men over women.

Thirdly, it is the feudalistic, political, economic and socialistic system of government that has taken charge of national affairs ever since independence. In the political field, this autocratic order has denied advent of democracy in the country. In some parts of the society, she is not allowed to exercise her right to vote. Restoration of right to vote has not much difference because she is not free to vote as per the voice of her conscience. In the economic sphere teeming millions are leading lives of serfdom. Denied opportunities to improve her economic lot she has been the worst sufferer. Dependent on man for every bit of her needs she virtually leads slaves life. Feudalistic order has kept major part of nation illiterate but women have been left far behind literacy, knowledge, awareness and education. In some quarters even education is a factor that tends to indulge in sinful activities. It has therefore preferred to keep them illiterate and pious. In social matters man has successfully managed to keep her ignorant of her human rights. He has introduced devilish customs that victimize woman to accord her the status of domestic animals. The practice of Vani, Swara, honor killing, marriage of daughters with the Holy Quran, commitment of gang rape under orders of jirga etc are some of the examples of mans inhuman treatment of woman. Target of all these social evils has always been woman.

Anti-women practices have adversely affected the status of women in Pakistan. The inequality and depression of women have negative impacts on society. The implications of anti-women practices on society are as follows:

Firstly, women are found in an abysmal state in Pakistan. When father is not a father and brother is not a brother, man has taken undue advantage of vulnerability of the weaker sex. That is the mark of his cowardice. When it comes to address womens problems, father is not a father but only a MAN. He would hand over his child girl in marriage to an eighty year old man just to get out of a difficult situation in which circumstances have placed him by chance.

Secondly, the brutal customs of honor killing (called as Karo-Kari in Sindh), Watta Satta marriages, marriage with Holy Quran and denial of inheritance are prevailing in society. A real brother is not a brother but only a MAN who would kill his sister mercilessly just because in his view, she has disgraced him and his family. To deny inheritance, the father in collusion with sons, would marry his daughter to the Holy Quran. To get rid of an unwanted daughter or to get a daughter in law of his choice, he would give her away in forcible marriage exchange. This practice is called as Watta Satta which often ends in miseries and eventual breakup marriage; on both sides. Husband is not a husband but only a MAN who utters the word of divorce thrice in one breath and sends the woman home. Man makes her work like an animal and beats her up whenever he feels the urge to do so. Domestic violence in the form of physical thrashing and mental torture with which woman is treated is considered to be the birth right of man. Man who is ordained to protect women by the Almighty God as per teachings of Holy Quran and Sunnah, leaves her exposed to every kind of threat, fear, misery, misfortune, indignity, uncertainty, unhappiness that one can imagine in this life.

Thirdly, women have been used as bargaining chips to resolve disputes in disgraceful customs of Swara and Vani. Swara is a custom usually practiced in tribal areas, in which woman is used as a commodity to resolve feud between two clans. Similarly, in Southern Punjab Vani is a custom practiced in order to settle blood feuds. Vani could be avoided if the clan of the girl agrees to pay money called as Deet. Otherwise, the young bride may spend her life paying for the crimes of her male relatives.

Fourthly, women face harassment in society, especially at their workplaces. The bosses particularly harass them. Trafficking is a worldwide phenomenon. It is the smuggling of women for the purpose of prostitution. Many women are abducted or blackmailed from Pakistan to other parts of the world and intra country also.

To correct the despicable scenario, the law men sitting in the Assemblies have off and on enacted various laws to wipe the rampant social vices and customary practices that distort the fair image of women.

The passage of Domestic Violence (Prevention and protection), Act 2012 and establishment of Women Rights Commission with financial and administrative powers aimed at promoting social, social, economic, political and legal rights of women in Pakistan, who constitute half of its population is laudable. But, our history bears the testimony that commissions to uplift the status of women was made and they were not successful because they were not independent. It has remained a custom to put good laws on paper but a little effort in history has been made to implement them.

The Prevention of Anti-women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Act 2011 is a milestone to empower and enlighten women. The struggle of women for emancipation and against discrimination has a long history throughout the world. Even in Pakistan, it is the high time to introduce a legal redress to ensure basic rights of women in society and to protect them against discriminatory traditions. The aim of this bill is to reduce injustice against women by discouraging several practices and customs in vogue in the country which are not only against human dignity, but also in contrast to Islamic injunctions. It is therefore, necessary that such inhumane practices and customs are done away forthwith and those who are found guilty should be dealt severely by providing penal and financial liabilities.

The Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace, Act 2010 is also an important legislation done to protect women against harassment at workplaces. The objective of this Act was to create a safe working environment for women, which is free from harassment, abuse and intimidation with a view to fulfilling their right to work with dignity. Harassment is one of the biggest hurdles faced by the working women preventing others who want to bring themselves and their families out of poverty. This Act builds on the principles of equal opportunity to women and their right to earn livelihood without any fear of discrimination as stipulated in the constitution. This Act complies with the governments commitment to high international labor standards and empowerment of women. It also adheres to Human Rights Declaration, the United Nations Convention for Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women and ILOs Convention 100 and 111 on workers rights. It adheres to the principles of Islam and all other religions which assure womens dignity. This Act requires all public and private organizations to adopt an internal code of conduct and complain/appeals mechanism aimed at establishing a safe working environment for all working women.

The Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, 2008 was passed unanimously by the National Assembly, but, the bill lapsed after the Senate failed to pass it within three months period required under the constitution. The domestic violence bill seeks to prevent violence against women and children with a network of protection committees and protection officers and prompt trials of suspected abusers. The bill includes protection in public places such as markets, public transport, streets or parks and more private places such as workplaces, private gatherings and homes.

The Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendments) Act 2006 was enacted to provide relief and protection against misuse and abuse of law and to prevent their exploitation. This Act provided Thirty Important Amendments in Offense of Zina and Qazaf (Enforcement of Hudood Ordinance 1979). This Bill allowed rape to be prosecutable under civil law.

Apart from this empowering and enlightening pro-women legislation, there has also been anti-women legislation in Pakistan in the form of Hudood Ordinance 1979. It was a step to downgrade the status of women in the name of Islam. The Hudood Law was intended to implement Sharia Law, by enforcing punishments mentioned in Holy Quran and Sunnah for Zina, Qazaf offence against property and drinking. As for Zina, a woman alleging rape is required to provide four adult male eye witnesses. The Ordinance has been criticized as leading to hundred incidents where a woman subjected to rape, or even gang rape, was eventually accused of Zina and imprisoned becoming a victim of extremely unjust propaganda. This Ordinance gave woman the symbol of dirt, filth and mainspring under the sun has been heaped upon the poor hapless women. This was the abysmal depth where woman lay almost half dead some decades ago. But the amendment in Bill in 2006 had removed the major road block that stood in the way of womens empowerment. Her rights received recognition and her status was restored as an honorable member of society.

Equal treatment of women and men is not just the right thing to do but it is also good for business. By accepting Gender stereotype and keeping the workplaces and business as no-go area for women, is an act which is weakening Pakistans economy. The need of hour hour is to rob both Pakistani men and women of the chance to improve their lives and perpetuate an unbalanced and unequal society. Following are some recommendations for the empowerment of women.

Economically, it is essential to identify causes that keep women subservient to men. One of the most critical power that men wields to keep women under his thumb. This power should be shared between the two. Joint ownership of agricultural land and all other moveable and immoveable assets should be made mandatory for a house-wife in particular. Income and wealth created by women should be her role ownership. Man should have no claim over it. Secondly, daughters share in inheritance along with brothers should be legally ensured in accordance with the mandate of the Holy Quran and its denial should be strictly protected from being usurped by her husband or the in-laws. Thirdly, the orientation of all public sector policies, programs and projects should be equally favorable to both men and women. There should be no discrimination.

Sociologically, the deadly customs of society will continue to have their sway so long as the inhuman system of Feudalism is not buried deep down from where it should never be able to pop up its ugly head. Feudalism is too firmly entrenched in this system. It will be eliminated only in the wake of a revolution. Until then it is the responsibility of NGOs that should spring up like mushrooms throughout the country and to come to the help of women. Highly educated, economically independent and politically emancipated women will partly be able to look after her rights. Feudalism has to be side-tracked to empower the women so that it refuses to be exploited by man, may he be a husband, a father or a brother.

Religiously, the importance of women and their success as human beings is measured with completely different criteria in Islam, their fear of Allah and obedience to Him and fulfillment of the duties, he has entrusted them with, particularly that of bearing, rearing and teaching children. Nevertheless, Islam is a practical religion and responds to human needs and life situations. Many women need, or wish to work for various reasons. Islam does not prohibit women working outside her home, it does stipulate that the following restrictions be followed to protect the dignity and honor of women and the purity and stability of Islamic society, the conduct of women, after all is the backbone of any society. Outside employment should not come before, or seriously interfere with her responsibilities as wife and mother. Her work should not be a source of friction within family, and the husbands consent is required to avoid later disagreements. If she is not married, she must have her guardians consent. Her appearance, manner and tone of speech and overall behavior should follow Islamic guidelines. Her job should not be one which causes moral corruption in society, or involve any prohibited trade or activity, affect her religion, morals, dignity and good behavior, or subject her to temptations. These guidelines clearly show that a woman is not prohibited to go out of her home for the purpose of a job, if she has the right intentions.

Politically, the representation of Pakistani women in Politics is higher than India, Sri Lanka and Iran. Pakistan is listed as 45th in the Inter-Parliamentary Unions list of women in national parliaments and stood ahead of several developed democracies including Canada, UK and the US. The only positive development thus far remained the relatively large representation of women in National Assembly, the Senate and Provincial Assemblies in comparison to other countries. Increased number of seats in Union, District, Provincial and Federal assemblies has partially given her reason to live meaningfully and lead an honorable life. This trend should grow to enable her participate in shaping the destiny of the nation in a big way.

Legally, the pro-women bills have been passed in recent past but the need of hour is to implement those laws to empower women. There is much weight in calls by womens groups to set up an implementation mechanism because it is quite common to put laws on paper but there is little government will or sturdy mechanism to get them enforced, the creation of an implementation mechanism may be spur required to put these laws into practice and strengthen the struggle to eradicate the appalling customs of society. It goes without saying that the framing of laws and their implementation is only the first step towards reforming society and ridding it of Anti-women practices. A continuous effort from all segments of society, including public condemnation of destructive traditions is needed to create awareness. The challenge is considerable, but it is commendable that laws have been made to strengthen women.

In the nutshell it can be said that God in his infinite wisdom created women to play her role in the advancement of human affairs in her own way, and man was ordained to provide her protection so that she may perform her assigned duties with honor and respect. But man has subjected women to all kinds of exploitations i.e. social, economic and political. She became the worst victim of gender discrimination. The result is that half of the population that women constituted is put aside as good for nothing. The religious prejudices further made her life miserable. To be in her true self contributing to the advancement of the society in her assigned manner, she needs to be empowered in every walk of life. It is a globally accepted fact that when women have full agency and participation in business, economies are strengthened, societies become more stable and just, internationally agreed goals for development, sustainability and human rights are achieved, the quality of life improves not just for women, but for men, families and communities, the entire businesses operations and goals are pushed forward to success.A local Wisconsin Rapids family is using Halloween as a chance to help give back to the community.

"This is our 10th annual Halloween aid Fright for Life Benefit. Our goal when we started out was to do it for 10 years and give away $100,000," said Bonita Wolosek the fundraisers organizer.

Nine years later, they surpassed that initial goal by $8,000. A decade later, the Wolosek family is thankful to the community for the years of success.

"Everyone has been totally supporting of it. It's kind of like the Wisconsin Rapids Halloween, Bonita Wolosek the fundraisers organizer said.

Every year the Wolosek's choose to raise funds for a recipient in need.

"We're doing it for a little boy his name is Jase Wisinski. He was born with Apert''s Syndrome," Wolosek added.

"Apert's syndrome they're known to have fused skull, hands, and feet. They can have other defects or other things going on," said Brittney and Jeremy Wisinski the parents of Jase.

Through his life Jase Wisinski will need to undergo multiple surgeries, therapies, and treatments. With insurance not covering all of his needs costs can start to add up quickly.

"Not all of it's covered by insurance so it means a lot that everyone's coming together to help put it on for him. To help him down the road with any costs or anything that we don't have to worry about to make sure he gets the best care," Brittney Wisinski added.

The fundraiser runs from 5-9 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 29th. The event will feature fun events for children, and even some scarier attractions for the braver folks.

"It's just a big community family oriented event. You could be three years old or 103 years old and there's something for you to do here," Wolosek said.On October 12, a Bangladesh special tribunal sentenced 19 people connected to the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) to death over a 2004 grenade attack at a political rally held by current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was then the leader of the opposition.

The verdict, delivered 14 years after the attack, comes amid mounting conflicts within the political establishment. Hasinas Awami League-led government is seeking to cripple the opposition BNP and intimidate any opposition to its rule.

The grenade attack killed two dozen people and wounded around 300, including Hasina. In his sentencing remarks, Judge Shahed Nuruddin said the attack was intended to kill the Awami Leagues leadership.

The convicted include former Home Affairs Minister Lutfuzzaman Babar and a deputy minister of industry, Abus Salam, both of the previous BNP government. Tarique Rahman, the son of the main opposition leader Khaleda Zia, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Rahman, who is in exile, was tried in absentia.

Others who face the death penalty include alleged members of Jarkat-ul-Jihad, a banned Islamic fundamentalist group. Seventeen others received life imprisonment. Another eleven received sentences of between six months and two years.

The ruling Awami League welcomed the decision, but those convicted protested their innocence. Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the BNPs general secretary, claimed the verdict and sentencing was a naked manifestation of political vengeance orchestrated by the Awami League.

The BNP is known for brutal attacks against political opponents and may well have been behind the crime. However, the harsh sentences dovetail with the attempts of the Awami League to eliminate opposition to its rule, in the lead up to a general election slated to be held later this year or early 2019.

Khaleda Zia was sentenced to five years imprisonment last February, on trumped-up corruption charges. She is now in a state-run hospital, afflicted by multiple medical problems. Khaleda and her son Rahman, the BNPs most prominent figures, cannot contest the election because of their convictions.

The infighting within the ruling elite comes amid a turn toward increasingly autocratic forms of rule by the Hasina government. Amid mounting social tensions, it has taken steps to muzzle the media and attack protesting workers and youth.

The administration is preparing to enact a new digital security law that will further erode press freedom and curtail dissenting voices online. The Digital Security Act was approved by the countrys president, Abdul Hamid, on October 8. It combines the draconian colonial-era Official Secrets Act with new repressive measures.

Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu claimed that the law was necessary to safeguard the digital space and society. He stated: It is not a law against mass media or democracy.

Journalists and human rights groups rejected these assertions. Amnesty International warned that the legislation could be used to limit online political discussion and crack down on dissent, labelling it a dangerous restriction on freedom of expression.

Dr. Asia Nazrul, a professor of law at Dhaka University, told Prothom Alo, a Bangladesh newspaper, the laws were one expression of the darkest period in the name of Bangladeshs democracy.

Under Section 25(a) of the legislation, individuals can be sentenced to up to three years in prison for publishing information that is aggressive or frightening. Section 31 provides for sentences of up to 10 years imprisonment for posting information that ruins communal harmony or creates instability or disorder or disturbs, or is about to disturb, the law or order situation.

Media organisations are already under attack. Bangladesh ranks 146 on Reporters Without Borders world press freedom index, behind Burma, Cambodia and South Sudan. Its ranking was 118 in 2002, when the index began.

There are also reports of opposition leaders, students and activists disappearing under suspicious circumstances. The Dhaka-based human rights group Odihikar commented: The fear that opposition leaders and activists could be subjected to enforced disappearance ahead of upcoming elections is now taking place in reality.

A report released by Odhikar this month said 30 people were picked up by law enforcement agencies in September alone for political reasons, a sharp increase from a total of 28 in the first eight months of the year. Three of the latest victims were found dead and one remains missing, while 26 were belatedly confirmed to have been arrested. Meetings and protests of the opposition also have been obstructed.

On August 5, Shahidul Alam, a prominent photo-journalist, was arrested for giving an interview to Al Jazeera, in which he accused the government of clinging to power by brute force. Despite 25 human rights organisations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International, issuing a statement calling for his release, Shahidul remains behind bars.

The Awami League government fears that the growing discontent among ordinary people will trigger a social explosion. In July, the government brutally suppressed protests by university students and unemployed graduates who were seeking changes to quotas for entry into government jobs.

Anger among the countrys 40 million garment workers, over poor working conditions and poverty wages, is also growing. Hundreds of workers demonstrated in Dhaka last month for a minimum monthly wage of 16,000 Taka ($US189.63).

The government and the major employers rejected the demands, seeking to ensure that the industry remains globally competitive, on the basis of super-exploitation.

The increasingly autocratic measures of the government are a further warning that it is preparing to unleash the full force of the state against the emerging struggles of the working class.

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Bangladesh garment workers denounce minimum wage offer

[20 September 2018]

Bangladesh: Police and government thugs attack protesting students and teachers

[3 August 2018]The caravan of more than 7,200 refugees escaping desperate poverty and rampant violence in Central America has successfully crossed into Mexico on its way to the United States. The caravan, which has taken on the character of a mass political demonstration, is mostly composed of Hondurans and includes about 2,300 children and 2,200 women.

With hundreds of miles behind them and hundreds of miles ahead, the migrants marched on Sunday toward the Mexican city of Tapachula in the state of Chiapas.

In spite of the scorching sun and military helicopters hovering overhead, the spirited caravan chanted, Migrants are not criminals, we are international workers! and Why kill us? We are the hope!

The 3.5-mile-long caravan, which departed as a group of about two thousand Hondurans from San Pedro Sula ten days ago, reached the Guatemala-Mexico border Friday. After they easily overran a fence set up by the Guatemalan authorities, they made their way across the Rodolfo Robles bridge and the port of entry into Mexico. However, they were tackled and attacked with tear gas by 400 Mexican riot police.

After the violent assault and as only a miniscule stream of migrants were being allowed in to begin applying for asylum, the caravan held discussions Friday night about the days or weeks they would have to wait and the high likelihood of being deported. Thus, the decision was taken to join the hundreds of others who had already risked crossing the Suchiate river into Mexico and to re-group at the central plaza in Ciudad Hidalgo, state of Chiapas.

Throughout Saturday, they crossed en masse. After being welcomed similarly by the Guatemalans, the migrants were received by hundreds of Chiapas residents chiapanecos with food, clothes, other supplies and cheers.

On Sunday, the caravan re-assembled to continue their trip north in the form of a massive column that thanked, greeted, and invited locals with the chant: Mexico, Mexico! Appeals aimed at American workers and youth for help are already being reported. The caravans journey is fraught with danger. Yesterday, six Guatemalan immigrants died in a crash as they were being driven in a truck full of 40 people outside of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.

Donald Trump pledged to bar all caravan members from entering the US. He tweeted Sunday: Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther Border [sic]. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the US will turn them away. This statement is a clear violation of international law.

The mass support for the immigrant caravan across Latin America testifies to growing consciousness of the international character of the working class.

Workers in the US and Canada must understand that the migrants traveling to the US are their allies, not their enemies, as President Trump and his corporate allies in the Republican and Democratic Parties would have them believe. US workers in California and the Midwest would do well to remember the prejudice their Okie grandparents faced when migrating from Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas to the West Coast during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Their Chinese, Japanese, Irish and Italian predecessors faced brutal racism and discrimination upon arrival in the US, almost always without papers or documentation.

The ruling class has always sought to pit workers against each other based on race and nationality to escalate its social attacks against the entire international working class and to prepare the population for wars abroad. The US government and its puppet regimes in Mexico and Central America are opposing the caravan as a major threat in part to serve their own immediate political interests, but also because they view as a threat the movement that is becoming increasingly a symbol of proletarian internationalism.

The Central American caravan is a working class demonstration of people desperate to find a safer environment to escape the imminent threat of death. For millions, jobs, health care and education are simply not an option in neighborhoods (barrios) devastated by a long history of brutal repression and civil-war levels of violence involving gangs and state forces.

At its root, the poverty, inequality, violence and social crisis across Central America is the product of 100 years of American imperialist exploitation implemented via CIA-backed coups, death squads and dictatorships. Fundamentally, the victims of this legacy face the same objective enemies as workers in Mexico, the United States and everywhere: the financial oligarchy and the capitalist system.

In this way, the caravan is casting a new light upon the existing objective links that unite workers internationally, while exposing the absurd and imaginary boundaries that divide it.

As the caravan participants move north, they face deadly environmental conditions and dangerous roads, along with constant threats from the Mexican navy, federal and state police, and immigration officials aiming to disperse the caravan to begin round-ups and mass deportations. The Mexican federal police set up lines of riot police near intersections between Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula on Sunday but has not dared to use them for fear of provoking massive opposition in Mexico and internationally. Instead, officials sought to lure migrants into trucks supposedly to take them to a shelter. According to El Universal, the migrants refused this trick.

With mass support by Mexican workers and youth and by the power of its size and class-based unity and appeals, the caravan could continue to advance and grow and cross the 1,100 miles until it reaches the US port of entry in Brownsville, Texas.

Donald Trump has sought to exploit the caravan to mobilize his base less than three weeks ahead of the November 6 mid-term elections, calling the workers and peasants in the caravan hardened criminals and threatening to deploy the military, not the [national] guard to the US-Mexico border.

In response to such threats, the Democratic Party has turned their backs on the immigrants, rejecting any consideration of them, with Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the House Democrats, and Charles Schumer, leader of the Senate Democrats, issuing a statement Saturday claiming Trump is desperate to change the subject from healthcare to immigration and refusing to respond to Trumps fascist attacks of physical violence.

The Mexican president, Enrique Pena Nieto, has denounced the caravan as unprecedented and irregular and violent. Meanwhile, the president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, speaking Friday in Chiapas on the caravan, declared: We want to keep this friendly relation [with the Trump administration], and I think we will look for options and alternatives. We do not want to fight.

These statements show that regardless of political party, the US and Mexican ruling elites are joined in their attempt at dividing and trapping the caravan within the web of the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM), which now serves as the southern extension of La Migra, a.k.a. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Under the stinging headline Trump tweets, Mexico obeys, the Mexican El Proceso noted Sunday, the [Mexican] procedure to obtain asylum is long, tough and often involves spending several months in migration detention centers, without being able to obtain a job. And, if that wasnt enough, the application generally gets rejected.

El Proceso cites data from the national refugee agency: Mexico received 14,596 asylum applications in 2017, processed 6,877 of these by the end of the year and granted asylum to only 1,907 refugees. Out of the total of Honduran applicants, only 9 percent were granted asylum, and 7.8 percent of Honduran minors.

Responding to the absurd conspiracy theories advanced by all governments that the march was organized as a publicity stunt by the opposition parties, whether by the Honduran bourgeois opposition or the Democratic Party in the US, a Honduran migrant responded: How do you organize such a caravan? How do you organize such need?

Refugees and migrants from Central America say they would prefer to die than go back to their impoverished and violence-ridden home countries. For many migrants, deportation from the US or Mexico actually constitutes a death sentence, as they are escaping from widespread violence and even direct persecution by gangs and the murderous state.

Under enormous pressure from Washington, with Trump threatening to immediately cut aid unless it stopped the caravan, the Honduran government has escalated its assault on the migrants, harassing them as they march toward the border. On Saturday, the Guatemalan and Honduran presidents, Jimmy Morales and Juan Orlando Hernandez, discussed the issue, denounced the caravan, and announced joint efforts for a peaceful and safe return of the migrants.

Nothing of the sort can be expected. The police-state dictatorship in Tegucigalpa, installed through a military coup overseen by the Obama administration in 2009 and kept in power through fraudulent elections backed by Washington, enforces social conditions that maximize the extraction of profits and resources by US and other transnationals, suppresses social opposition by employing its military and death squads, and enjoys close ties with drug cartels and the US military, with hundreds of troops stationed in the country.Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders took part in a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan Friday to support Democratic Party candidate for governor, Gretchen Whitmer. The event was part of his current nine-state tour to promote both nominally progressive members of the Democratic Party as well as thoroughly establishment figures like Whitmer in the November midterm elections.

Sanders tour is part of a systematic effort to use the broad support Sanders gained in 2016 as a presidential candidate to prop up the militarist and right-wing policies of the Democratic Party.

The event in Ann Arbor on Friday was notable for what it revealed about Sanders call for a supposed political revolution against the billionaire class two years ago.

First, the candidates Sanders chose to promote in Michigan on Friday were of the most thoroughly conformist character, almost entirely oriented to the interests of the rich and the upper-middle class.

One of the speakers was current Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. The multimillionaire Dingell is the financial heiress to the Fisher Body auto fortune and political heiress to the 85-year-old Dingell dynasty in the 12th District congressional seat. A former GM auto executive, Dingell, along with her husband John Dingell, has been a staunch ally of the Big Three auto companies and the UAW, which have collectively driven down wages and created miserable working conditions for hundreds of thousands of autoworkers in the area. She is also a fervent proponent of trade war and the right-wing Russian interference campaign.

Also speaking were the two US Senators from Michigan, Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow. Peters made his career in the stock market as an officer at Merrill Lynch and vice president of investments for UBS PaineWebber, while Stabenow has given key votes to help with banking deregulation and bills attacking immigrant sanctuary cities. Both have been reliable supporters of military funding and the financial interests of Wall Street, including the federal budget that increased military spending by $60 billion last month.

Whitmers choice for lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist, spoke as well. Gilchrist is currently the Executive Director for the Center for Social Media Responsibility (CSMR) at the University of Michigan. The CSMR research program, as the WSWS pointed out earlier this year, is being developed to aid and abet the campaign to carry out Internet censorship and is seeking a leading role in shaping the policies that will restrict access to information on the internet for tens of millions.

And then there was Whitmer, who spoke only briefly and made very vague statements about fighting for clean water, affordable degrees, workers rights and civil rights. She is currently being promoted by the New York Times as one of the partys breakout sensations because she is targeting the union vote and pledges to fix the damn roads.

Whitmer, like every other candidate at the rally, studiously avoided any concrete policy proposals and invoked only the most toothless of slogans. The daughter of a former CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and longtime fixture in the state party apparatus, Whitmer did not even try to invoke some of the evenings vague calls.

After two hours, Sanders finally took the stage. Sanders spoke in favor the woefully inadequate fight for the $15 an hour wage and the vague slogan of Medicare for All, which has been taken up by the Democratic Party establishment. He carefully avoided speaking about anything related to billionaire class. One brief reference to the criminals on Wall Street got the loudest applause of the night, but Sanders quickly moved on to other subjects.

At one point in his speech, Sanders spoke about the significance of his upset presidential primary victory in Michigan in 2016: That victory, and in 21 other states, told the entire world we are not satisfied with status quo politics. Many ideas which I talked about were considered radical, but you know whats happened in the past three years? Those ideas are now supported by millions!

Sanders neglected to remind his audience that he immediately threw his support behind the epitome of status quo politics, the militarist and right-wing candidate Hillary Clinton, within a month after winning Michigan. Nor did he mention that he has now become a leading figure in this right-wing political party, which has shifted even further to the right since 2016.

The other revealing aspect of the evening was the marked decline in enthusiasm. In February 2016, just ten miles down the road, Sanders drew an overflow crowd of 10,000 people to his rally at Eastern Michigan University. In contrast, the 1,000-person capacity auditorium on Friday was about 90 percent full. The audience was dominated by professionals and party-connected young people, with very few workers.

Also notable was what did not come up even once all night: any opposition to or even mention of the unending wars being waged by US imperialism around the world. After over a dozen speeches from leading Democrats in the state and Sanders, one would have no idea that over 80 percent of the most recent federal budget bill was earmarked for military spending, or that the US is threatening was against Russia and China, with incalculable consequences.

Barely mentioned was anything related to the ongoing and deepening attack on millions of immigrantsincluding 12,000 detained childrenas well as the growing crisis facing young people through drugs and deaths of despair. Needless to say, there was no mention of socialism, despite Sanders false association with the term.

The only person warning those who attended of the political trap Sanders was setting for millions of workers and youth was Niles Niemuth, the Socialist Equality Party congressional candidate. Niles, who is opposing Dingell in the 12th District, and a team of campaigners distributed hundreds of statements to those in line contrasting Sanders fraudulent progressive politics of the Democratic Party to that of the genuine socialist party, the Socialist Equality Party.

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Genuine socialism vs. the Democratic Party politics of Bernie Sanders [19 October 21]25 years ago: Massacres begin in Burundi after assassination of president

Melchior Ndadaye

In the week following the assassination of Burundis first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, in an unsuccessful coup by the Tutsi-dominated military, tens of thousands of Tutsis and Hutus were slaughtered. Ndadaye had been elected in June 1993 by an overwhelming margin of 65 percent to 32 percent, reflecting the large Hutu majority in the population, more than 85 percent. He defeated the incumbent president, Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi.

Burundi and neighboring Rwanda, two small and densely populated countries in east-central Africa, had similar ethnic divisions between the ruling minority of Tutsis, who owned most of the agricultural land and dominated the military and government, and the Hutu majority, who constituted the bulk of the agrarian work force.

The Belgian colonial authorities manipulated and exacerbated these longstanding ethnic and cultural differences, maintaining the Tutsi monarchy that ruled the country, which was then displaced by a series of Tutsi military leaders, culminating in the dictatorship of Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, who was ousted by Buyoya in 1987. Buyoya implemented limited reforms, including appointing some Hutus to positions in his government, and permitting Hutu-based parties to compete in the countrys first-ever free elections.

Ndadayes electoral victory in June 1993, as the leader of the Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU), made him the first Hutu head of state. He appointed a Tutsi prime minister, Sylvie Kinigi, but a majority of his cabinet was Hutu. He allowed exiled former dictator Bagaza to come back to Burundi, and opened the countrys borders for the return of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees who had fled repression and land theft by the Tutsi military, a major driving force of the Tutsi coup against him.

When the coup began on October 21, 1993, Ndadaye, then 40 years old, Pontien Karibwami, the president of the National Assembly and Gilles Bimazubute, the vice-president of the National Assembly, were taken to an army barracks, where they were executed by bayonet, along with a number of other officials and cabinet ministers. The coup collapsed, however, and Prime Minister Kinigi, who had gone into hiding in the French embassy, was placed in power.

Fighting broke out across the country, with Hutus and Tutsis both carrying out and falling victim to massacres, depending on the circumstances. Observers described, Rivers clogged by bodies with their hands bound, locked rooms crowded with the charred corpses of school-boys, homes left eerily empty. These are some of the nightmarish images of life in Burundi since the assassination of Ndadaye. The violence exploded into a decade-long civil war, exacerbated by the anti-Tutsi genocide in neighboring Rwanda 18 months later.

50 years ago: Nixon orders aides to block Vietnam peace deal before US election

Nixon in 1968

On October 22, 1968, in an action that was not made public for many decades, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon ordered his top aide, H. R. Haldeman, to conduct secret contacts with the government of South Vietnam to insure that there was no peace deal worked out in the two weeks which remained before the US presidential election.

Nixons poll lead had been narrowing, from 15 percentage points after the debacle of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, to only a single-digit margin over the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Both candidates had well below a majority of the vote, because of the substantial support for the racist third-party campaign of Alabama Governor George Wallace, a Democrat who launched a nationwide campaign as an independent candidate defending racial segregation in the South.

Wallace made inroads in the north as well on the basis of right-wing populism, appealing to the disgust among the middle class and sections of the working class with both big business parties. The anti-labor character of the Democrats was demonstrated in the midst of the election campaign when President Johnson ordered east coast longshoremen back to work, using a strikebreaking Taft-Hartley injunction. Seventy-five thousand members of the International Longshoremens Association had struck at the expiration of their contract.

In an attempt to court Democratic Party liberals, Humphrey tried to distance himself somewhat from the policies of Johnson. In a nationally televised speech in late September, Humphrey said he would stop the bombing of North Vietnam if elected. Discussions in Paris meanwhile continued between the US and North Vietnam over a US proposal to halt the bombing of the North in exchange for concessions from Hanoi. In particular, US imperialism insisted that the Paris negotiations be expanded to include the puppet regime in South Vietnam.

In 2016, after the Nixon presidential library made notes from Nixons chief aide H. R. Haldeman public, it was revealed that Nixon had ordered Haldeman to persuade South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to walk away from the Paris talks. The new information provides further evidence that the Nixon campaign maintained a channel with the South Vietnam leadership through which they promised better post-war concessions if they held off making peace until after Nixons election. After the 1968 talks stalled, the war in Vietnam continued for another five years.

75 years ago: Red Army offensive pushes Germans back across Dnieper River

Red Army troops crossing the Dnieper

On October 25, 1943, the Soviet Red Army forces crossed the Dnieper River and captured the city of Dnepropetrovsk in Ukraine. Six days later in the south the Red Army captured Chaplinka, trapping German armies in the Crimean Peninsula. To the north, the Red Army launched the heaviest artillery bombardment of the war against German forces around the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and later occupied the city after heavy street fighting. Moving west from Kiev, the Red Army captured Zhitomir and Korosten which resulted in the severing of rail links between German armies in the north and south.

German military spokesmen had publicly announced before the Red Army offensive that the Dnieper River would serve as the winter line where the German army would halt the Soviet advance. But the Red Army put into the battlefield greater numbers of troops and provided arms and equipment quantitatively greater and qualitatively better than that of Germany.

Two-thirds of the vast territory of the Soviet Union occupied by Germany during 1941-42 had now been recaptured since the German surrender at Stalingrad in February. This rapid advance erased all doubt that Soviet forces would sooner, rather than later, make their advance into Eastern Europe and caused consternation within sections of Allied imperialism.

As the New York World-Telegram commented: Before the Red Armys rapid advance, the fact that Stalin frowned on an Anglo-American Balkan campaign and demanded an immediate western front could not move Churchill and Roosevelt. But now Washington and London are faced with the abrupt political question of whether they can afford to let the Red Army penetrate Poland and Romania, much less reach Germany, before Anglo-American forces approach the Rhine.

100 years ago: Czechoslovakia declares its independence from Austria-Hungary

Tomas Masaryk

On October 28, 1918, the Czechoslovak National Council in Prague declared the formation of a new state, dominated by speakers of Czech and Slovak, from the northernmost territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Austria-Hungary. This state ruled by the Hapsburg Monarchy was the second largest polity in Europe after Russia. It was comprised of peoples speaking at least ten languages, most with national aspirations, and dominated by the Austrian (German-speaking) and Hungarian ethnicities. The Hapsburg Empire was one of the Central Powers that included Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey, fighting the Allies in the first imperialist war. The new Czechoslovak state, a capitalist republic, had been created with the acquiescence of France, Britain and the United States.

Under the impact of the Russian Revolution, both the Allies and the Czech and Slovak bourgeoisie were seeking any means to head off a revolutionary struggle by the working class. Returning prisoners of war from Russia had already been infected with revolutionary sentiments. A revolt of Czech units in May had been brutally suppressed by the military command, but by October, the Austro-Hungarian army, which was still in the field facing the Italians, was beginning to disintegrate along national lines.

The leader of the Czechoslovak National Council, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, had been visiting the Czech Legion in Russia, a unit made up of Czech and some Slovak prisoners of war organized into a unit by the Tsarist Regime, in November 1917. When the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew the bourgeois government of Alexander Kerensky that month, Masaryk quickly left the country by way of the Pacific port of Vladivostok and traveled to the United States, where his association with the Czech Legion, one of the linchpins of the anti-Soviet counterrevolution in the coming months, convinced the Allied imperialists of his reliability in maintaining capitalist rule in central Europe after the war. On October 18, 1918, Robert Lansing, the United States Secretary of State, sent a note to the Austro-Hungarian government in Vienna that the Allies were committed to the national interests of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs.

The Czechoslovak secession was the beginning of the disintegration of the Hapsburg Empire, even before it had formally surrendered, or its last emperor, Charles I, had abdicated. Soon, Hungary declared itself an independent republic under the leadership of the Hungarian National Council of Count Mihaly Karolyi. The Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians formed Yugoslavia.

None of the new polities alleviated the crisis of the national state in central Europe in the postwar period. Each had ethnic minorities who faced language discrimination and other oppressive measures from the new ethnic majoritiesHungarians, Germans and Ukrainians in Czechoslovakia, for example. In absence of working-class revolutions, the new array of small bourgeois states continued to be manipulated by imperialist great-power interests, with disastrous consequences in the Second World War.The federal Liberal-National Coalition government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison suffered a major defeat in the October 20 by-election for the seat of Wentworth in Sydneys wealthy eastern suburbs. Barring a last minute reversal, its candidate Dave Sharma, lost to Kerryn Phelps, an independent.

The defeat means that the Coalition will lose its one seat majority in the House of Representatives. This imperils the deeply-divided government and means that it will be dependent on support from cross-bench MPs to pass legislation in the lower house. The government must already seek the support of unpredictable right-wing populists and independents to enact its policies in the Senate.

The by-election was triggered by the resignation of the seats sitting member of parliamentformer prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull left parliament after he was ousted as prime minister in a party-room coup on August 24.

With several thousand postal votes still to be counted, Phelps appears to have an unassailable preference vote tally of more than 51 percent, compared with Sharma, at just below 49 percent.

The swing away from Sharmaof roughly 19 percent compared with the Liberal result in the 2016 federal electionis the largest ever against a government candidate in a by-election. The Liberals and its conservative predecessors have held the federal seat of Wentworth since it was established in 1901.

The historic loss is the latest expression of an unprecedented crisis of the entire parliamentary establishment, spurred by deep popular hostility towards the major parties. Successive Labor Party and Liberal-National Coalition governments have imposed sweeping cuts to healthcare, education and welfare, attacked fundamental democratic rights and stepped up Australian involvement in US-led wars and military preparations for conflict with China.

In every election over the past decade voters have sought to punish the incumbents and register their opposition to the major parties, including by voting for independents and representatives of the minor parties. Phelps is the latest in a series of independent candidates who have won federal electorates that were previously considered safe-seats for one of the major parties.

Making clear that the vote in Wentworth was a repudiation not only of the Coalition but of the parliamentary establishment as a whole, the candidates for Labor and the Greens also suffered declines in their primary vote of over 6 percent.

During the campaign, Phelps made tepid appeals to oppositional sentiment, denouncing the dysfunction of the major parties and declaring that they were out of touch with ordinary people. Phelps stated that she would attempt to bring to Australia refugee children incarcerated in Australian-operated detention centres on the Pacific Island of Nauru, and denounced the governments climate change policies as inadequate to confront the global environmental crisis.

The swings to Phelps were largest in the inner-city and beachside areas of Wentworth, which are traditionally the less affluent sections of the upper middle-class electorate. All 12 of the 35 voting booths won by Sharma were in the wealthiest harbor-side sections of the seat. Sharma also appears to have won a majority of postal and pre-poll votes.

Exit polling indicates that many of those who voted for Phelps were hostile to the ouster of Turnbull.

The result has further underscored that the coup against Turnbull, and the installation of Scott Morrison as prime minister, was not primarily motivated by electoral considerations. Rather, it was an attempt by the most right-wing section of the Liberals, including former prime minister Tony Abbott and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, to install a government even more committed to the US alliance and to attacking the social and democratic rights of ordinary people.

The Abbott-Dutton wing of the party, with Morrisons full support, is seeking to cultivate an extreme right-wing movement based on anti-immigrant xenophobia, a racist campaign over a supposed African gangs crime wave in Melbourne, and anti-Chinese rhetoric.

This is aimed at diverting widespread anger over a deepening social crisis in reactionary directions, and cultivating a social base that can be mobilised against the emerging social and political struggles of the working class.

The removal of Turnbull was also prompted by concerns within Washington, and among members of the Coalition with close ties to the American political and intelligence establishment, that his government was not sufficiently committed to the US confrontation with China.

Turnbull had repeatedly signalled his complete support for the US alliance, and had passed anti-democratic foreign interference laws aimed against China, which have been hailed in Washington as a model to be emulated internationally.

Turnbull had, however, resisted direct Australian participation in US-led freedom of navigation provocations in Chinese-claimed waters in the South China Sea, and had expressed concern over the bellicose America First policies of Donald Trump. Before becoming prime minister, Turnbull was associated with a section of the Australian ruling elite that had voiced fears that Washingtons confrontation with Beijing would endanger the lucrative trade relationship with China.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the Morrison government demonstrated that it was seeking to shift official politics even further to the right.

On October 15, government senators voted in favour of a motion by the xenophobic Pauline Hanson One Nation Party, deploring the rise of anti-white racism and declaring that its OK to be white. The latter slogan has been championed by open white supremacists, including the American Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups.

While the government later claimed that its ministers had voted in favour as a result of an administrative error, their position was a clear signal to this extreme right-wing constituency.

Days earlier, Morrison had flagged moving Australias embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in line with the provocative actions of the Trump administration. He also declared that the government would review its attitude to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, in a sign of support for Trumps scuttling of the agreement earlier this year.

Media commentators and the Labor opposition asserted that Morrisons statements were aimed only at garnering votes from the large Jewish community within the Wentworth electorate. In fact, they were designed to demonstrate that the Morrison government is unequivocally committed to every US-led war and military provocation, including its backing for Israels persecution of the Palestinians and its moves towards a regime-change against Iran.

Significantly, Morrison used his concession speech on the night of Saturdays election loss to make clear that his government will maintain its far-right agenda. The prime minister denounced welfare recipients and touted the dignity of work.

The Wentworth result will undoubtedly deepen the civil war raging within the government. Senior figures in the Coalition, including prominent National Party MP Barnaby Joyce, have publicly denounced Turnbull for failing to endorse Sharma. Throughout the campaign, the former prime ministers son, Alex Turnbull, was campaigning for a Liberal defeat in the electorate.

Turnbull supporters within the Liberal Party and the media have responded by declaring that the by-election result demonstrates that the installation of Morrison was a mistake.

Representatives of the Labor Party opposition have issued calls for a federal election, which must take place before May, 2019, to be held immediately.

Labor is positioning itself as a party of parliamentary stability, capable of governing in the national interest, i.e., the interests of the corporate and financial elite. Senior Labor figures have said that they will not seek to bring down the minority government on the floor of parliament, and have declared that Labor can offer an alternative to the chaos and division of the Coalition.

Whatever the immediate developments, the Wentworth outcome will deepen the crisis of the entire parliamentary establishment. It portends a federal election campaign dominated by anti-immigrant racism, xenophobia and unbridled support for US militarism by Labor and the Coalition.VERMILLION COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - A hostage situation has ended peacefully in Vermillion County.

That's according to Vermillion County Sheriff's Deputy, Chad Hennis.

Law enforcement on the scene of a hostage situation in Vermillion County. (WTHI Photo, Richard Solomon) Law enforcement on the scene of a hostage situation in Vermillion County. (WTHI Photo, Richard Solomon)

It happened Sunday morning on Universal Avenue in Clinton.

Hennis says the arrested suspect is Robert Bealmear.

The Deputy told News 10 Bealmear was holding two of his grandparents hostage. He adds that Bealmear fired off two shots in a home. The Deputy says the hostages asked Bealmear for a drink in the kitchen, and that's how they were able to sneak out of the home.

Hennis says Bealmear went to smoke outside the home, and that's where he was taken into custody by law enforcement.

Deputy Hennis says Bealmear didn't fire any shots at police. He adds that Bealmear surrendered quietly.

Hennis says at this point, Bealmear faces preliminary charges of criminal recklessness, criminal confinement, and breaking and entering.

Indiana State Police and Clinton City Police were also called to the scene.

News 10 will continue to follow this story.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will participate in a meeting to combat terrorism financing with government officials from Saudi Arabia and other Middle East partners in Riyadh this week.

Mnuchin confirmed in remarks Sunday during a stop in Israel that he would make the long-planned stop, despite pulling out of a high-profile investor conference, also in Riyadh, amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the death of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

Business figures Continents and regions Counterterrorism Donald Trump International relations and national security Jamal Khashoggi Middle East Middle East and North Africa Misc people National security Political Figures - US Saudi Arabia Steven Mnuchin Terrorism Terrorism and counter-terrorism Unrest, conflicts and war North America The Americas United States

"I did not think it was appropriate to go and speak at this conference but we continue to have important issues with Saudi and that is why I am going there," Mnuchin said, according to Reuters.

Mnuchin will be in Saudi Arabia on Monday and Tuesday, a source tells CNN.

Mnuchin is on a week-long, multi-country trip to the region, which includes stops in Jordan and Qatar as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In the wake of growing outrage over Khashoggi's death, the secretary remained undecided on whether he would stick to his plan to attend a meeting at the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, a senior administration official told CNN on Thursday.

The US government opened the center in Saudi Arabia last year to share information about terrorism financing, which the secretary pledged to visit annually. The governments of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates are also involved.

Mnuchin's travel plans have been widely seen as a benchmark of the administration response to the Saudi crisis. After days of taking a wait-and-see position, Mnuchin announced on Thursday his decision to withdraw from a separate high-profile investor conference in Riyadh hosted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a favorite of Trump and his son-in-law adviser Jared Kushner as well as of the international business community.

Top executives from the world's largest banks, including JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Societe Generale and Standard Chartered rescinded their plans to attend amid growing international outcry over the fate of Khashoggi, who was also a columnist for The Washington Post. They joined executives from Uber, Blackrock, and Ford who also pulled out of the summit.

Saudi Arabia confirmed on Friday that Khashoggi is dead. The government claims he died after an argument in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul escalated into a violent fist fight and physical altercation, according to an announcement on Saudi State TV. After the Saudis released their official statement, a source with close connections to the Royal Palace told CNN that the cause of death was a chokehold or strangulation during the altercation.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said it's important to maintain the US relationship with Saudi despite the Khashoggi episode.

"Obviously there's been deception and there's been lies," the President said late Saturday in a Washington Post interview, his strongest comments yet on the case.

But he added that the US-Saudi alliance is a key counterweight to Iran's influence in the region, and reiterated his stance that canceling a US-Saudi arms sales deal signed last year would only give other countries, specifically Russia and China, a chance to gain influence with the kingdom.

"I think it's a very important ally for us," Trump told the Post.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey both continue to investigate.Crowds of migrants resumed their long journey north on Sunday from the Mexican border city of Ciudad Hidalgo, according to Mexican federal police officers.

The caravan was headed for Tapachula, a city about 37 kilometers (23 miles) north of the Mexico-Guatemala border, the officers told CNN.

Continents and regions Immigration Immigration, citizenship and displacement International relations and national security Latin America Mexico North America The Americas International relations Territorial and national borders Central America Guatemala Border control Donald Trump National security Political Figures - US United States Mike Pompeo Government and public administration Government bodies and offices Undocumented immigrants US federal government White House Honduras

There were about 10 buses awaiting migrants along the highway between Tapachula and Ciudad Hidalgo and the drivers had been instructed to carry the migrants to shelters in Tapachula, the officers said. It was unclear how many of the group were from the migrant caravan and how many were Mexicans who joined the march.

One migrant, a 20-year-old Honduran named William, told CNN he crossed into Mexico via a float that carried him across the muddy Suchiate River on Saturday.

He left home looking for work, he said, and was ultimately bound for either Mexico or the United States, wherever he could land a job.

"There is no work back home," he said. "No future."

From Friday to Sunday, 1,028 people requested asylum in Mexico, Mexican authorities said Sunday. The government said 346 migrants in "vulnerable" conditions had been transferred to a shelter in the state of Chiapas.

In earlier statements, the government said authorities had given "priority attention" to elders, children and women -- some of whom were pregnant. It said there were 2,200 migrants remaining on the bridge connecting Guatemala and Mexico, and about 900 tried to cross into Mexico illegally.

The Honduran Foreign Ministry previously said 2,000 people in the caravan had turned around and headed home.

Thousands of Central American migrants fleeing poverty and violence were initially prevented from crossing the bridge.

On Friday, Mexican authorities began allowing a trickle of migrants, starting with women and children, to pass through the gates and board buses bound for refugee camps.

Others pushed through or climbed over a steel gate before riot police stopped them with tear gas and smoke canisters. Some migrants collapsed, coughing or weeping, according to video from the scene.

It's unclear exactly how many migrants were allowed to legally cross the border into Mexico, where they were taken to shelters to rest. On Saturday, with the punishing heat bearing down on them, some migrants took matters into their own hands, and crossed into Mexico on rafts that ferried them across the river.

One of the migrants marching to Ciudad Hidalgo, Luis Miguel Martinez, 30, also said his goal was to find work in the United States so he could feed his family, including two daughters he left behind in Honduras.

He was carrying a pink backpack and a blanket for a woman who also had a small child. But he was happy to help.

"We are one group," he said. "One people."

The crowd stretched all the way to the horizon. Some carried a Honduran flag, chanting "Mexico. Others hitched a ride, hanging off a tractor trailer headed for Tapachula.

What happens next?

It's unclear whether the caravan will be allowed to reach the US border. Mexican authorities previously outlined their plan to respond to the caravan once it arrived at the Mexican border.

 Anyone with a valid visa will be able to enter and move freely.

 Anyone who wants to be recognized as a refugee or as a beneficiary of "complementary protection measures" must do so individually. Those who do so will be held "at a migratory station" for as many as 45 business days.

 Anyone who enters "in an irregular manner" will be "rescued and subject to an administrative procedure and, where appropriate, will be returned to their country of origin in a safe and orderly manner."

Mexican authorities also have said they're asking for help from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to process migrants seeking refugee status.

President tweets about caravan

The caravan formed October 13 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and arrived in Guatemala on Monday.

Its slow procession north has prompted US President Donald Trump to threaten to cut aid to Central American nations and to send troops to the US border if Mexico fails to stop the surge.

"Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our (southern) Border," Trump tweeted Sunday. "People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the US will turn them away. The courts are asking the US to do things that are not doable!"

He followed that tweet with another: "The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!"

The caravan formed just weeks before the US midterm elections. And many Republican candidates have echoed Trump's rhetoric about boosting border security and cracking down on illegal immigration.

The US President has pointed to the caravan as a key issue in the upcoming elections, and has used it to attack Democrats, saying -- without evidence -- they wanted the caravan to arrive before Election Day so the migrants would vote for Democrats.

But as asylum-seekers, the migrants would not be citizens and would not be allowed to vote.

US warning over exploitation

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated that the United States would not allow illegal immigrants entry and said the the government was closely watching the caravan.

In a statement Sunday evening, Pompeo warned that "we are concerned that these migrants may be victimized by human smugglers or others who would exploit them. We also are deeply concerned by the violence provoked by some members of the group, as well as the apparent political motivation of some organizers of the caravan."

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen earlier issued a separate statement saying "we must remain mindful" of criminals who try to prey on those participating as the caravan makes its way to Mexico. She said the United States will work with its partners to investigate and prosecute those who try to profit from it.CLEVELAND, Miss. (AP)  A cousin of Emmett Till is returning to Mississippi to speak about the 1955 abduction and killing of the black teenager, which helped galvanize the civil rights movement.

The Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. is speaking at 7 p.m. Monday at Delta State University.

Parker and Till traveled together from Chicago to Mississippi. Parker says he heard Till whistle at a white woman working at a rural Mississippi grocery store and later saw kidnappers take Till from a family home at night.

Till was beaten and shot, and his body was found weighted down with a cotton gin fan in the Tallahatchie River. His mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago so people could see the mutilated corpse.

An all-white jury in Mississippi acquitted two white men in the crime.FULTON, Miss. (WTVA) -- A Nettleton man sits behind bars charged in connection with the disappearance of a teenager last week who was later found safe in Tupelo.

Sheriff Chris Dickinson says Billy Ray Bailey, Jr, 25, is charged with kidnapping, statutory rape and directing a minor to commit a felony charges.

The arrest comes after deputies were trying to locate Paige Coleman, 15, of Mantachie.

Coleman was reported missing from school last Thursday.

She was found safe Saturday in Tupelo and Bailey was taken into custody.

He was formally charged this morning and is being held on a $200,000 bond.

The Mississippi Department of Corrections also placed a hold on him for a parole violation.Update 10/22/18 1:19 p.m.

Law enforcement captured the two MDOC escapees from Noxubee County in Marshall County.

They received a tip the two were at a home off of Highway 321. The escapees are being housed at the Marshall County Correctional Facility until MDOC decides where to house them.

Marshall County sheriffs deputies, along with other state agencies, assisted with the arrest.

See the original article is below.

MACON, Miss. (WTVA) - The search continues for two men wanted for escaping custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections facility in Noxubee County.

Christopher Parmenter (L) and Andrew Carter (R) were reported missing Sunday night from the transitional facility in Macon.

Parmenter is on house arrest from Marshall County and Carter is on parole from Union County.

Both men were convicted of burglary charges.

The Macon Beacon says local authorities tell them the men may be traveling in a white Ford Explorer with a Noxubee County licence plate on the back and a Montana plate on the front.

The men were last seen heading north from the city.

Contact MDOC at 662-745-6611 or your nearest local enforcement agency, if you see these two men or know of their whereabouts.STARKVILLE, Miss. (WTVA) -- Mississippi State University says it is assisting students affected by a fire in Oak Hall Sunday night.

A university news release says the fire was reported around 9:55 p.m. on the third floor of the building.

They say the fire was confined to one room, but other rooms suffered water damage when the fire suppression system activated.

School officials say 60 students met with the university's president Dr. Mark Keenum last night.

They have been provided temporary housing, including some staying at a local hotel.

As for the cause of the fire, school officials say it looks like an electrical fire sparked bed linens in the room.

The fire remains under investigation.The Wyoming Secretary of States office released numbers this week announcing that more than 12,000 people changed their party affiliation this year from July 6 and Sept. 20.

The Wyoming Secretary of States office released numbers this week announcing that more than 12,000 people changed their party affiliation this year from July 6 and Sept. 20.

After the primary election on Aug. 21, governor candidate Foster Friess said the state needed to repeal its law that allows voters to change party affiliation. He said this because of a group that lobbied for Democrats t...On Sundays Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, the host visited the border towns of west Texas for one of his final episodes. During a stop in Marfa, an eclectic town of about 18,00 people, Bourdain talked to local saloon owner Ty Mitchell about Donald Trumps proposed border wall.

My ranch is on the river, its on the border. You cant survive without the river, Mitchell said. And we cant survive without the people on that side of the river. They cant survive without us.  And theyre our friends, for Gods sake.

Those sentiments were echoed throughout the towns Bourdain visited. They have become so intertwined with their neighboring cities in Mexico that the people in them speak each others language  a sign of mutual respect, Mitchell said.

And when youre talking about a border wall, obviously people are going to react on Twitter, with one person replying directly to a Trump tweet about immigration.

Anthony Bourdain final episodes shows texans love the openness. No wall necessary.  sprinkles (@bopen2) October 22, 2018

Watch Anthony Bourdains Parts Unknown West Texas episode and youll learn more about the TX border than anyone in Washington, DC knows. Youll also learn why a 3,000 mile border wall is a stupid idea. https://t.co/rn8wouJUcG  AMW1965 (@amser409) October 22, 2018

Bourdain, who said his travels had taken him to places with border walls, shared some thoughts.

Few things are uglier in the entire world of all the places that Ive seen, the now-deceased host said while sitting on the river between the United States and Mexico. Few things have been more of an indication of an utter failure of otherwise smart people to figure shit out.

Story continues

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on CNN.

Check out what Anthony Bourdain eerily had to say about his own death and funeral on one of his last episodes of Parts Unknown:

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Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Kylie Mar, on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.The race to become the next governor of Florida is among the most heated contests of the upcoming midterms. It may also be the most emblematic of the national political climate in 2018. Democrat Andrew Gillum is an unabashed progressive, supporting universal healthcare, higher corporate taxes and abolishing ICE in its current form. Republican Ron DeSantis has built his entire campaign around his allegiance to President Trump, right down to the xenophobia. On Sunday night, they debated for the first time, and as expected, it was pretty contentious. Gillum, the current mayor of Tallahassee, and DeSantis, a former three-term congressman, sparred over everything from climate change to gun control to how the presidents rhetoric is affecting children. Trump deemed DeSantis the winner shortly after the debate concluded.

Ron @RonDeSantisFL DeSantis had a great debate victory tonight against Andrew Gillum, a mayor who presides over one of the worst run, and most corrupt, cities in Florida. Ron will build on the great job done by Governor Rick Scott. Gillum will make Florida the next Venezuela!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Trumps tweet followed the proud tradition of being literally the opposite of truthful. From beginning to end, Gillum was calm, collected and specific in his responses while DeSantis was as fidgety, evasive and generally unsure of how to present himself, both physically behind the podium and in his responses.

A telling moment came when DeSantis was asked whether he believes Trump is a good role model for Americas youth. The question was in response to a bizarre campaign ad in which DeSantis attempts to prove his loyalty to the president by essentially brainwashing his young children with a pro-Trump propaganda. DeSantis responded to the question by touting Trumps decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Story continues

Im confused by the question, Gillum said after DeSantis finished. Moderator Jake Tapper clarified that the question was about whether or not he thinks President Trump is a good role model for the children of Florida.

Thats what I thought, Gillum replied, to laughter, before answering the question himself. No, hes not, he said. Donald Trump is weak, and he performs as all weak people do. They become bullies. Mr. DeSantis is his acolyte. Hes trying out to be the Trump apprentice. At every turn hes tweeting him.

This was the moment of the debate for me: @AndrewGillum gives the PERFECT reaction to DeSantis' weird answer about Trump being a role model for kids. Perfect. And hilarious. #FLGovDebate pic.twitter.com/wP608iIxIA  Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) October 22, 2018

Race has played an overlarge factor in the battle to become Floridas next governor, and the issue was raised Sunday night by Tapper. The day after Gillum, who is black, won the Democratic primary, DeSantis called him articulate and charismatic while imploring Floridians not to monkey this up by voting for him. DeSantis denied the comment was racially motivated, but its been hard to ignore the role xenophobia has played in his campaign. Hes spoken at multiple conferences organized by a far-right activist who has promoted racist views and, as Tapper pointed out, he accepted campaign money from someone who called President Obama the N-word. When asked to address concerns voters may have over his record, DeSantis brought up Israel (again), touted his military service and argued that his questionable conference appearances were justified because a Medal of Honor recipient was also present.

Gillum wasnt having it. The congressman let us know exactly where he was going to take this race the day after he won the nomination, he said. The monkey up comment said it all. He has only continued through the course of his campaign to draw all the attention he can to the color of my skin. The truth is that I am black. I have been black all my life. So far as I know, I will die black.

He "let us know exactly where he was going to take this race the day after he won the nomination, the 'monkey up' comment said it all." Andrew Gillum attacks his opponent, Ron DeSantis, for his "monkey" comment, saying he's drawn attention to the "color of my skin." #FLGovDebate pic.twitter.com/JwUvGJx6gA  The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) October 22, 2018

The only color the people of the state of Florida care about is the blue-green algae flowing out of the east and west side of this state, Gillum continued. They deserve a governor who is going to protect the environment after 20 years of environmental degradation.

When Tapper pressed the candidates on climate change, DeSantis said he doesnt want to be an alarmist while criticizing Gillum for wanting to implement a California-style energy policy. Once again, Gillum took DeSantis to task. Im not sure what is so California about believing the state of Florida ought to lead in solar energy, he said. Were known as the Sunshine State. At the very least, what we can do is be a global leader here. We got to teach the other 49 states what to do and what it means to have a state that leans into the challenges of the green economy and builds one, and at the same time builds an economy that lasts. Im proud that the same week that Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Accord, I broke ground in my city on a 120-acre solar farm, tripling the amount of solar energy we produce. We are prepared to lead, have done so in my city and will do so for the state.

As Gillum spoke, DeSantis stared at the camera awkwardly while trying to intimate a smile.

Democrat Andrew Gillum on climate change: What Florida voters need to know is that when they elect me governor they are going to have a governor who believes in science, which we haven't had for quite some time in this state. #FLGovDebate https://t.co/2k8aILlYfk pic.twitter.com/cHGLYyVYYl  CNN (@CNN) October 22, 2018

Gillum was similarly unapologetic about gun control, which, like climate change, is an issue of particular importance to voters following the shooting at Parkland, Floridas, Stoneman Douglas High School earlier this year. Were prepared to stand up to the NRA, Gillum said on Sunday. They sued me. They drug me through court for two years, all because we said we would not allow guns to be shot in a city park. Radical. That you cannot shoot guns in a city park where our kids play and our families picnic. Thats why people are so incensed by this, because common sense and decency seem not to be able to prevail in this conversation.

Advocating for gun control as strongly as Gillum has in a state as purple as Florida may seem like a political risk. Conventional wisdom holds that candidates should move to the center to win over moderates, but Gillum has remained entrenched in his progressive values, as have an increasing number of Democratic candidates running for office around the country. Rep. Beto ORourke (D-TX) has used a similar strategy in Texas to make his Senate race against Ted Cruz closer than anyone could have imagined. Trump has recently accused both Democrats of trying to turn their states into Venezuela. Though its unclear if ORourkes national popularity will be enough to unseat a Republican in Texas, Gillum appears poised to turn the Florida Governors Mansion blue. A CNN poll released Sunday has him leading DeSantis by 12 percentage points, a gap that would have shocked those who months ago believed Gillum was too far left to win the Democratic primary.

NEW CNN Florida gov numbers: Gillum 54%

DeSantis 42%https://t.co/SJMhaDPvra  Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) October 21, 2018

Judging by their debate performances on Sunday night, it wasnt hard to understand why Floridians seem to prefer Gillum.Selma Blair has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the actress revealed in an Instagram post on Saturday. Blair, 46, wrote that she received her official diagnosis in August, though she believes she has had the disease for much longer and was never taken seriously by medical professionals.

I have probably had this incurable disease for 15 years at least. And I am relieved to at least know. And share, the actress wrote.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease that affects the central nervous system, causing interruptions in the transmission of nerve signals between the brain, spinal cord, and rest of the body, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. This can cause tremors, dizziness, fatigue, and numbness or weakness in the limbs. Though MS affects over 2.3 million people worldwide, it affects two to three times as many women as men.

It is also commonly misdiagnosed. According to a 2017 Health Union survey of over 5,000 Americans living with MS, 42% of respondents said they were initially diagnosed with another condition including depression, migraine, and fibromyalgia.

Blair thanked the producers, actors, and crew on her upcoming Netflix series Another Life for providing a supportive workplace environment as she navigates her life with MS, particularly costume designer Allisa Swanson. Blair wrote that Swanson carefully gets my legs in my pants, pulls my tops over my head, buttons my coats and offers her shoulder to steady myself.

Blair was frank about the symptoms she has experienced as a result of MS.

I am disabled. I fall sometimes. I drop things, Blair wrote. My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken gps. But we are doing it. And I laugh and I dont know exactly what I will do precisely but I will do my best.

MS does not yet have a cure, but treatments such as physical therapy and medication can slow the progression of the disease.

I have MS and I am ok, Blair wrote. But if you see me, dropping crap all over the street, feel free to help me pick it up. It takes a whole day for me alone. Thank you and may we all know good days amongst the challenges.

Story continues

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If the past month is any indication, Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) just doesnt get it. He's supported men who are accused of sexual assault (fighting furiously to move forward the confirmation of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh), and waved his subscription to the Old Boys Club in our faces with his contempt for women, and on top of all that, I believe he just proved he is a racist bigot in the most casual of ways.

On Tuesday, Graham made an appearance on Fox & Friends to discuss Senator Elizabeth Warrens (DMass.) recent DNA tests proving she has Native American ancestryan already racially sensitive topic due to the tokenization of indigenous people for political gain. In banter back and forth with the hosts about his plan to also take a DNA test, Graham said it would be like, terrible if the results showed he had Iranian heritage.

The senator said these words on live television, encouraging the already conservative audience to go forth with their biases and micro-aggressions against eye-rain-ians. While many instances of bias usually need to be decoded, this one was pretty straightforward.

When Graham says being Iranian is, like, terrible," it sounds to me like he's saying he is better because he is white. Its a loud and clear reminder that no matter how successful and accomplished Ian Iranian American womanbecome, how American I may feel, I am still considered a minority in this country. And now, because my parents are also Iranian, Im terrible.

Not that there is much to be expected from a white South Carolinian man whose comments in the past have highlighted white male anxiety and privilege. (In a speech, he once said that white men in male-only spaces would do great under a Graham presidency.) But it must be said that this insult stands to retraumatize Iranian-Americans and even those who follow Islam. Graham's comment was a play on the same Islamophobia the President dabbles in, and in the larger scheme, the kind that demonized anyone from the Middle East after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

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For me, that phobia hit home. I remember it very clearly. I went to the same predominantly white, Southern school from kindergarten until I graduated high schoolthe one Iranian American Muslim student. With my dark curls and impossible-to-pronounce name, I never felt I belonged. I got picked on for my thick brows and the homemade lunches my mom lovingly packed. And after 9/11, I was constantly asked if I was a terrorist. I was only 11 years old.

Like most middle schoolers, I just wanted to fit in. I made it a mission to whitewash myself by straightening my hair until it was damaged and dressing in the same preppy clothes my classmates owned. It still wasnt enough. I remember begging my parents to give me an American name, one that my teachers wouldnt butcher after awkwardly pausing on the roster. They would answer, You have the most beautiful name; it means liberty, freedom. You are free. I didnt feel free. There was this deeply rooted anxiety I felt every single morning I walked into school. By the end of high school, I was tired of minimizing myself. Realizing I wouldnt have to see these people who had traumatized me for years, I stopped trying to hide who I was and slowly reconnected with my roots. I eventually made it to New York and pursued my masters degree in journalism at Columbia University. The first line to my admissions essay was from the late travel writer, producer, and chef Anthony Bourdain: "I am so confused. It wasnt supposed to be like this. Of all the places, of all the countries, all the years of traveling, its here in Iran that I am greeted most warmly by total strangers."

I have been able to stay focused and compartmentalize how I react to news that personally affects methe Muslim travel ban, controversial Supreme Court nominations, the disregard of climate change, and of course, threats to silence the free press. But it wasnt until I saw Grahams comments on my Twitter timeline that something triggered inside me. That same anxious feeling that haunted me in the school halls crept back. I cried as I listened to those words, and I cry as I write this now. In an instant, I felt so belittled and powerless. These are the same comments I heard for years, in the same accent no less, from my classmates. I felt even sadder thinking about all the other Azadehs out there who are hiding from their roots because theyre ostracized for something they cant control. For being an American who looks different from Graham.

I actually agree with Graham: It would be terrible for someone on his level of ignorant bigotry and racism to be Iranian. But on the bright side, his time is running out. He makes these comments out of ignorance and fear that an intolerant America will not endure. And hes right. There is a new generation of young voters coming in and an outstanding number of fearless women whose votes next month are going to help right the currently failing course of history this great nation is straying on.

Senator Graham, I hope someday soon you decide to take a step forward and get to know one of the undoubtedly incredible Iranian Americans you cross paths with. I hope you realize its an honor to come from a rich heritage and become enlightened by our hospitality. Most of all, I hope you realize that any bad leadership you may be referencing in Iran does not speak for us or our valuesjust as our current administration here doesn't speak for the majority of great Americans in this country.

You shouldn't throw stones if you live in a glass house.

Azadeh Valanejad is a writer and video producer at Glamour. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter @azaxdeh.

MORE: Kelly Marie Tran Wrote a Powerful Essay About the Racism She Experienced After Star WarsMiami Herald

She waited five years to confront Tom Privett, her former high school teacher, the man who groomed and manipulated her on campus. The man who raped her over and over inside his classroom.Ottawa (AFP) - A Canadian accused of serial killings of eight men appeared in court Monday, opting to stand trial by judge rather than a jury in a case that has rocked Toronto's gay community.

Bruce McArthur, a 67-year-old self-employed landscaper, was charged with premeditated murder in January after coming under suspicion in a probe into missing persons from Toronto's Gay Village.

Body parts of seven of the victims were found hidden inside planters that belonged to McArthur.

In a brief appearance before a packed courtroom, McArthur waived his right to a preliminary hearing, which would determine whether there is sufficient evidence to go to trial.

A trial date will be set at his next appearance on November 5.

Detective Sergeant Hank Idsinga, the lead investigator, said the forensic probe into the killings was Toronto's largest ever.

Excavations or searches were carried out at more than 75 properties in the Toronto area where McArthur had done landscaping work.

Police also looked at 15 cold cases dating back to 1975 for possible links to the accused, but Idsinga said he does not believe more victims will be uncovered.Johannesburg (AFP) - An apartheid-era policeman accused of killing a South African activist 47-years ago argued on Monday that the alleged crimes happened too long ago for him to stand trial.

Joao Rodrigues, 80, who was in the country's infamous security branch, is accused of murdering anti-apartheid campaigner Ahmed Timol in detention in 1971 but is now seeking to suspend the prosecution.

The Timol trial is seen as a test case for the families of other apartheid victims whose killers have not been brought to justice since the transition to democracy in South Africa in 1994.

Rodrigues briefly appeared in a Johannesburg High Court on Monday where Judge Ramarumo Monama, who did not consider the application lodged by Rodrigues' legal team, set the trial date for January 28.

Rodrigues claimed in court documents he is "seriously prejudiced by the fact that these proceedings are now instituted against me some 47 years later".

In the application to suspend his prosecution, which was partly published by local media, Rodrigues reiterated he only participated "in the cover-up to conceal the crime of murder as an accessory after the fact".

His application will be heard before the trial date but prosecutors have vowed to oppose it.

"It does not matter how far back the incident happened. Age and the duration argument cannot hold water" National Prosecuting Authority spokeswoman Phindi Mjonondwane told journalists.

Timol's nephew Imtiaz Cajee, welcomed the court's decision to finally set a trial date.

"We have reached a watershed moment," he told reporters, adding that the judge's remarks that "justice delayed is justice denied, sums up the feelings of not just the Timol family but many other victims' families throughout the country".

The decision to charge Rodrigues nearly five decades after Timol fell to his death from the 10th-floor of Johannesburg's police headquarters followed a review of the inquest that initially ruled his death a suicide.

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Timol, 29, was arrested in Johannesburg in October 1971 and died five days later.

Officers said at the time he took his own life -- a verdict that was endorsed by an inquest in 1972 but finally overturned by a court in October after a decades-long campaign by his family.

Rodrigues also faces a charge of perjury and is on bail of 2,000 rand ($140).By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Alaska Governor Bill Walker, a political independent, halted his re-election campaign on Friday and endorsed his Democratic challenger, ending a three-way contest in which neither had appeared capable of defeating the Republican front-runner.

With just 18 days left before the Nov. 6 election, Walker said he concluded that he could not win a second term in a race against both former U.S. Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, and former state Senator Mike Dunleavy, a Republican.

Walker, 67, said his decision to bow out was based entirely on what he felt was "best for Alaska" and involved no deal with the Democrat or any promise of a role in a Begich administration should he win.

Walker's withdrawal came three days after his former running mate, Byron Mallott, a Democrat and the first Alaska Native elected to statewide office, abruptly resigned as lieutenant governor over admitted but unspecified "inappropriate comments" in a scandal that threw the governor's campaign into disarray.

But public opinion surveys were already showing Dunleavy, 57, running well ahead of the two other men and indicated Begich, 56, had greater support than the incumbent governor.

After consulting for days on whether Walker or Begich had a better shot at running a competitive race against Dunleavy, the determination was made that "Begich has the better odds," the governor said in a statement posted on his campaign's website.

Walker also said Begich's positions on various key issues "more closely align with my priorities for Alaska," including their support for Medicaid expansion in Alaska and state action on climate change. Dunleavy opposes both.

"Todays developments leave Alaska voters with a clear choice," Dunleavy's campaign said after learning Walker halted his re-election campaign.

A former teacher and outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, Dunleavy had focused his campaign on criticizing Walker for reducing the annual oil-fund dividends all Alaska residents receive.

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Walker has said limiting the payout was necessary to address big budget deficits. Dunleavy has advocated deeper spending cuts and more oil and mining development.

The latest announcement came at the annual convention of the Alaska Federation of Natives, a powerful constituency in the state, just before Walker, Begich and Dunleavy were all scheduled to participate in a gubernatorial debate.

Begich and Walker, whose name will remain on the ballot despite his withdrawal, were widely seen as likely to take votes away from each other in a three-way race. Begich, a one-time Anchorage mayor who served six years as a U.S. senator from Alaska ending in 2015, called Walker's move "unbelievably gracious."

Walker changed his party affiliation from Republican to independent before launching his successful 2014 campaign for governor on a "unity" ticket with Mallot as his running mate.

In that election, Walker unseated the Republican incumbent, Sean Parnell, who had been lieutenant governor under Sarah Palin, the one-time Republican U.S. vice presidential nominee, and he became governor in 2009 when she quit.

Walker's campaign spokesman previously acknowledged that the governor and Begich had been in talks for days to discuss a "path forward that's best for Alaska." Begich told reporters Friday night he did not know of Walker's decision until just before it was announced.

(This version of the story in paragraph 9, removes incorrect description of Dunleavy as "retired Air Force lieutenant colonel", clarifies he was a former teacher)

(Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sam Holmes and Jane Merriman)To teenage shoppers, there is nothing quite like Amazon (AMZN).

Nearly half of 8,500 teens (47%) surveyed by Piper Jaffray named Amazon their favorite shopping website. The share is up three percentage points from 44% this spring and leads other competitors by a wide margin. The second most preferred shopping website is Nike.com at 5%.

Amazon is luring the next generation of consumers. (Getty Images)

More teenagers are using Prime membership, too, according to the survey. Prime adoption is at 74%, up from 66% last year. This is in line with the rise of Prime membership penetration across American households. Piper Jaffray estimates that a little over 80 million households are Prime users, up from a high of 70 million in the spring. Another research firm, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, has estimated that Amazon Prime reached 97 million U.S. members in September.

Piper Jaffrays report also broke down the popularity of Amazon based on household income. It found that the Seattle retail giant is the favorite among teens from upper-income families (with an average income of $101,900), it also saw strong growth in the $41,000-$68,000 household income bracket. Piper Jaffray says this may be a sign that Amazons efforts to convert lower-income consumers is working.

How Amazon is drawing the next generation

Teens favorite shopping websites in Fall 2018 (Screenshot/Piper Jaffray)

Amazon has good incentives to lure the young Gen Z group, who are native digital shoppers and will make up the majority of the consumer market by 2030. Savvy about its users life cycles, Amazon offers Prime programs dedicated to teens, college students and new parents.

Amazon has made significant efforts to attract future consumers. The Prime Student program, launched in 2010, offers free shipping and access to streaming video at a discounted rate.

To facilitate shopping on its site, Amazon Prime allows teens to set up their own logins independent of their parents accounts and parents can choose to review their items before allowing the purchase. Teens can send purchase requests to parents, including messages like Everyone in my school has this.

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It has also partnered with popular brands among teens. Nike, for example, became a partner seller on Amazon last summer. Snapchat users can shop on Amazon easily, too. As of last month, some Snapchat users are able to point its camera at an item or barcode and buy it from Amazon. Snapchat is the second-most used social media among teens after Instagram, according to the Piper Jaffray survey.

Amazon is scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings aftermarket on Oct. 25.

Krystal Hu covers e-commerce for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

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One of Canadas largest marijuana producers has launched today on the New York Stock Exchange.

Edmonton-based Aurora Cannabis is the third major Canadian cannabis company to go public in the U.S., where marijuana is still an illegal substance in most states.

The stock saw an initial bump at open, but at the time of writing, is trading well below its open price of $7.51.

Aurora Cannabis stock performance two hours after debuting on the NYSE. (Yahoo Finance)

Aurora follows in the steps of Tilray, which became the first U.S. marijuana IPO in July, and Canopy Growth, which debuted in the U.S. markets in May.

The move is in line with the international strategy Aurora has been pushing for months now.

Thats what were in the business of doing: were inventing the industry not just in Canada but around the world, Cam Battley, CCO of Aurora Cannabis told Yahoo Canada Finance in May in response to the cannabis companys merger with MedReleaf. We know theres a window of opportunity thats open right now, and we dont know when that window is going to shut.

At some point we anticipate the U.S. will change its regulation and make cannabis federally legal, and when that happens, we want to have an insurmountable lead already established.

Further to the companys global expansion plans, its rumoured to be in talks with Coca-Cola to expand into the cannabis beverage market. While no plans have been announced yet, there are further rumours that Coca-Cola is developing a cannabis beverage group, which makes a partnership with a producer like Aurora extremely plausible.

Auroras Canadian stock also took a dive on Monday. While it had recovered from the dip it took on Oct. 17, the day of recreational marijuana legalization in Canada, it has since plunged further, and at the time of publishing, was down more than 16 per cent.

Aurora Cannabis stock performance on the TSX as of Oct. 22, 2018, 2:10 p.m. ET.

The company trades on the NYSE under the symbol ACB, the same ticker it uses on the TSX.

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.Sulaimaniyah (Iraq) (AFP) - A year after a disastrous independence vote he had championed in Iraqi Kurdistan, veteran leader Massud Barzani has made a strong comeback both on the home front and in Baghdad.

While Iraq's presidency, a ceremonial post, has gone to Barham Saleh of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) was on Sunday declared the clear winner of the September 30 parliamentary elections in the autonomous region of northern Iraq.

In the political manoeuvring for ministerial posts in Baghdad, meanwhile, the KDP can also even boast it is the largest single party in Iraq. The party garnered 25 seats in Iraq's legislative elections in May, contested mainly against party lists.

With 45 seats won in the 111-member Iraqi Kurdish parliament, Barzani's party can form a majority without the PUK.

It can, in theory, rely solely on the 11-seat allocation reserved for the region's minority Turkmen, Christian and Armenian communities.

"Now that he is the great heavyweight of Kurdish politics, no-one can do without him in Baghdad," said Adel Bakawan, a research associate at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris (EHESS).

He predicted Barzani would seek the deputy premier, foreign and finance minister posts for the KDP in the federal government that is to be formed by November.

"He lost the gamble of the referendum, but the legislative (polls) in May were a tremendous moment of grace; he was courted by the Americans and the Iranians," the two key powerbrokers in Iraq, he said.

- New opposition movement -

Barzani looked down and out after the Kurdistan independence vote, which was ruled illegal by Iraq's central government and resulted in Baghdad imposing economic penalties and retaking disputed territory.

The Iraqi Kurdish presidency has been left vacant since Barzani stepped down following the fiasco.

The appointment of a new president has been on hold, pending the drafting of a new Kurdish constitution for which no timetable has been set.

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The leaders of the region's top two political parties also took their rivalry to Baghdad, contesting the role of Iraqi president.

The PUK's candidate Saleh won that race, maintaining a tacit accord between the two parties which sees the PUK take the federal presidency while the KDP holds the Kurdistan presidency.

Kurdistan is split politically and geographically between the KDP and the PUK, which won 21 seats in the region's election, but unlike in the past they no longer have to work together to form a government.

According to political scientist Wathiq al-Hashemi, the region could "see the return of two leaderships" but "regional pressures" from neighbouring states are likely to rule out a return to the deadly clashes of 1994-2006 when the Kurds had rival governments.

Kurdistan's parliamentary vote also saw the emergence of the New Generation movement, which was founded this year to channel public anger at the region's elite.

The movement picked up eight seats in the vote, while the main opposition Goran (Change) party lost half of its seats and was left with 12 lawmakers.

Analysts put Goran's losses down to the arrival of New Generation, whose candidates stood in opposition to the KDP and PUK.By Philip Blenkinsop and Andrea Shalal

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Belgium has chosen Lockheed Martin's <LMT.N> F-35 stealth jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon to replace its aging F-16s, news agency Belga cited government sources as saying, in a move that would cement the U.S.-made war plane's position in Europe.

The country has been deliberating for months over a multibillion-dollar purchase of 34 new fighter jets, with the latest deadline for a decision being Oct. 29.

A defense ministry spokeswoman declined to comment on the government's decision and did not confirm the end-October deadline.

Lockheed spokeswoman Carolyn Nelson did not confirm that a decision had been made but said the company remains confident that the F-35 is the right choice for Belgium.

"The F-35 offers transformational capability for the Belgian Air Force and, if selected, will align them with a global coalition operating the world's most advanced aircraft."

If confirmed, the decision will make Belgium the 12th country to buy the radar-evading F-35 jets and could help to strengthen the U.S. aerospace company's position in forthcoming tenders in Switzerland, Finland and Germany.

The decision, the likely outcome of which was reported by Reuters last Friday, had been expected in July before the NATO summit in Brussels. The order for jets due for delivery from 2023 is estimated to be worth 3.6 billion euros ($4.14 billion). [nL2N1WV11Y]

Washington has extended the terms of the F-35 bid to Oct. 31 at Brussels' request, U.S. sources said, adding that any further delay would trigger changes in pricing.

Lockheed has said its bid will give Belgian companies significant opportunities to contribute to the global F-35 enterprise.

EUROFIGHTER BLOW

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has previously said he would like to make the decision on the F-16 replacements before a national election in May and Defence Minister Steven Vandeput has said he hoped to settle the matter before he steps down at the end of the year.

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A win for Lockheed would mark a setback for Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain, the four countries behind the Eurofighter program, who had mounted a strong lobbying campaign for the European war plane.

It is also likely to anger France, which did not submit a formal bid for the Rafale fighter built by Dassault Aviation <AVMD.PA> but had offered Belgium close defense cooperation to prevent a further spread of the F-35 in Europe.

Other European buyers of the F-35 include Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Turkey and Norway.

The Eurofighter is flown by Germany, Britain, Austria, Italy and Spain.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels and Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and David Goodman)Beto ORourke has said bringing back the Lyin Ted moniker for Senator Ted Cruz may not have been "the best phrase for me to use."

Mr ORourke, the Democratic candidate, and Republican incumbent Mr Cruz are facing off in a hotly contested election for the US Senate seat in Texas.

"Senator Cruz isnt going to be honest. Hes dishonest. Thats why [Trump's] nickname [Lyin' Ted] stuck  because its true, Mr ORourke said during the CNN town hall and debate last week.

Donald Trump had coined the nickname for then-opponent Mr Cruz during the 2016 presidential election.

Mr ORourke admitted after the debate he may have taken it a step too far with bringing up the nickname.

He said it was the heat of the moment as Mr Cruz went on the offensive right out of the gate, attacking the upstart Democrat who has surprised even experienced politicos.

Mr ORourke is widely considered an insurgent and energetic opponent.

The Texas Tribune reported Mr ORourkes campaign team has raised $23.6m (18m) to Mr Cruzs $15.6m (12) between January 2017 and 31 July 2018. The US House member who was a virtual unknown outside of the state until just a few months ago raised a total of $38m in the last quarter.

In other words, Mr ORourke has raised more money than any other Democratic candidate in the 2018 midterms election.

Though Mr Trump and Mr Cruz were seemingly bitter rivals - the president hit out at Mr Cruzs wife Heidi and her appearance - the president came to his fellow party members aid as Republicans fight to retain control of the US Senate in races around the country.

Mr Trump called Mr ORourke a lightweight and a flake.

The El Paso native said he would not respond directly to the presidents comments on the campaign trail.

"The bitterness, name-calling, partisanship  you can add more to it or you can stay focused on the future and why you did this in the first place," he told ABCs This Week programme.

A few weeks ago, the Cook Political Report, a newsletter which analyses elections, campaigns, and polling data, said the race was a toss up after previously labelling the race as leans Republican.Inside the Georgian mansion in Mayfair that houses Saudi Arabias embassy in London, two offices of Saudi intelligence operatives are busy at work.

The first office belongs to the General Intelligence Presidency, Saudi Arabias foreign intelligence agency. Its staff are engaged in the normal work of spies, meeting with MI6 to discuss Britain and Saudi Arabias shared fight against al-Qaeda or to swap secrets on Iran.

The second office has a darker purpose. There the staff of the Mabahith, Saudi Arabias secret police, are tracking people of interest inside the UK.

Its operatives are watching obvious targets like Saudi dissidents who have gone into exile in Britain, or London-based Islamists whose ideology is seen as a threat to Saudi Arabias absolute monarchy.

But they are also keeping tabs on Arab businessmen and the decadent lives of Gulf royals living the UK. The Mabahiths spies are especially interested in compromising material they can use as blackmail to further Riyadhs interests.

These guys gather the dirt and they hold it until directed, said a former Saudi embassy employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They want to know who is sleeping with who, who is drinking and doing drugs, who is spending money they dont have.

Saudi spies and secret police work out of the kingdom's embassy in London Credit: Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images

The set-up in the London embassy is replicated at Saudi diplomatic posts around the world, forming a vast web of spies watching the kingdoms enemies and surveilling its own people.

While this apparatus has existed for years, it has become more aggressive and more violent under Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, who controls the Saudi security services.

His ambition to silence critics abroad and stomp out political rivals at home has depended on a new ferocity in the intelligence agencies. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi is just the most extreme example.

Story continues

For many decades Saudi Arabia had a system in which the king sought to develop a policy consensus within the royal family, the clerical establishment, and the entrepreneur elite, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who now heads the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institute.

That has changed profoundly in the last few years. Instead of a consensual system they have moved to a very autocratic system, which relies much more on the intelligence services hounding out dissent at home and abroad.

Maher Mutreb, a Saudi intelligence officer, was allegedly part of the squad that killed Mr Khashoggi Credit: Sabah via AP

Mr Khashoggi was no stranger to the craft of the secret police or how its methods changed over time. In the mid-2000s he worked at the Saudi embassy in London as an advisor to the ambassador, Prince Turki bin Faisal. The prince was Saudi Arabias spy chief before moving to the UK.

One of Mr Khashoggis embassy colleagues was Maher Mutreb, a Saudi intelligence officer stationed in London. Mr Mutreb is now under arrest in Saudi Arabia as part of the 15-man squad accused of Mr Khashoggis murder.

In his Washington Post column, Mr Khashoggi noted the aggression of Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed who was sacked over the weekend amid the fallout out of the killing. The princes aide made no secret of his hatred for dissidents and once asked his 1.35 million Twitter followers to give him names for a blacklist.

Mr Khashoggi pointed to the tweet as an example of how unrestrained Saudi repression had become in the last two years. Writers like me, whose criticism is offered respectfully, seem to be considered more dangerous than the more strident Saudi opposition based in London.

Saudi Arabias spies have always focused on the UK, which has given safe harbour to many Saudi dissidents as well as Islamists and anti-monarchists from across the Middle East.

One of their targets has been Saad al-Faqih, the leader of Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a UK-based Saudi opposition group that campaigns to replace with the royal family with an Islamic government.

Saad al-Faqih, a Saudi dissident based in London, has been a target for Saudi intelligence Credit: AP Photo/Richard Lewis

Dr Faqih was attacked at his home in Willesden Green, northwest London, in June 2003 by two men who he said claimed to be plumbers. They tried to spray chemicals in his face and then attacked him with a spanner but he was able to fight them off.

He believes the two white men were British gangsters hired by Saudi Arabia to kidnap him, a claim that the kingdom has always denied.

Dr Faqih has not faced any more physical attacks since 2003. But he has felt a heightened threat since Crown Prince Mohammed began to gather power three years ago and he started taking new security precautions. We feel extra danger because we know that this boy is reckless and impulsive, he said.

Saudi dissidents were rattled by an incident in August this year on the pavement outside Harrods in central London. Ghanem al-Masarir, a popular Saudi political satirist who often mocks Crown Prince Mohammed, was confronted and attacked by two Saudi men.

      

   ..    



    (  )

    #___@GhanemAlmasarirpic.twitter.com/axejGsqNAt

    .. (@Be3_600) September 9, 2018

They were shouting about the king and Mohammed bin Salman and they said: how dare you insult al-Saud? Mr Dosari said. He is convinced that the men were put up to the attack by Saudi intelligence.

I dont think they were trying to kill me or kidnap me but they wanted to insult me and to send a message that I was not safe where I was, he said. Video footage of the attack was widely shared by pro-Saudi Twitter accounts under a hashtag celebrating the attack.

The Saudi embassy in London did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Saudi Arabia insists that Mr Khashoggi's death was the result of "a rogue operation" which was not ordered by the government.

Before the killing in Istanbul made global headlines, the starkest example of the Saudi intelligence's new aggression was an apparent campaign to kidnap rebel princes in Europe and bring them back to Saudi Arabia.

According to the BBC, three princes who had fallen out with the royal family have been captured since 2015. One, Prince Sultan bin Turki, a grandson of King Abdulaziz, accepted a flight on a Saudi government private jet from Paris to Cairo in January 2016.

The prince went to sleep on the flight and when he awoke he realised the jet was in fact heading Saudi Arabia. He was dragged off the plane by Saudi agents and is believed to be under house arrest to this day.

Saudi dissidents joke darkly that Mr Khashoggis death probably means they are safer now than they have been in years because Riyadh will be unwilling to risk another international scandal. But none believe the danger has fully passed.

Over the weekend, King Salman ordered his ministers to prepare reforms of the Saudi intelligence services to prevent another incident like Mr Khashoggis death. No one should expect sweeping changes: the head of the reform committee is none other Crown Prince Mohammed himself.Charles Venn and Karen Clifton (Credit: BBC)

It might have scored them all nines, received a standing ovation from the judges and saved Charles Venn and Karen Clifton from Strictly jeopardy, but theres seemingly one person who didnt approve of the pairs street dance at the weekend.

Former pro-dancer Brendan Cole, who was axed from the show earlier this year, has said that the style doesnt have a place in the competition, and called it a disappointment.

Casualty star Charles and veteran Strictly dancer Karen had found themselves in the bottom two for two weeks in a row, narrowly avoiding being kicked off the show in the dance-offs.

But they stunned the judges and viewers with a routine to James Browns Get Up Offa That Thing, as part of the new couples choice category, in which contestants can choose new dance styles to perform.

In a column in Hello! magazine, Cole wrote: The other disappointment to me (and call me old fashioned) is the major change in the show by introducing the new dance styles!

Brendan Cole (Credit: PA)

Dont get me wrong, change is inevitable and in most cases can be a good thing but Strictly is magic because of the two people creating a story together within Ballroom and Latin dance and if you step too far away from this magic (two people hand in hand creating a story with one another), then you change what makes the show special.

Charles and Karen were one couple introducing a new element to the show last night with Street Commercial. Now they danced it superbly and it was one of the best of the night! He matched her throughout and for the first time he looked like he belonged on the dance floor and at the top of this competition instead of fighting to stay in it.

I loved his energy, the choreography was great, the look was great but tell me where this sits within a Ballroom dancing competition? Its too far removed from the heart of the show which to me is Ballroom and Latin or a variant of! Ok yes, Im old fashioned!

The judges clearly thought differently, with each giving a nine for the performance, while guest judge, Fresh Prince star Alfonso Ribeiro adding that Charles could now be a contender to win the series.

Story continues

Cole was axed from the show after 15 seasons, after reportedly clashing with head judge Shirley Ballas. He also was said to have broken protocol by dancing with the Duchess of Cornwall during a Strictly event at Buckingham Palace.

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Robbie Williams in One Direction dig



How would you like to have the mind, body, and spirit of someone half your age, and add more years to your life? Or have people stare in disbelief when they discover how old you really are? How would you like to becomeageless?

Sounds like the promo for just another mind/body, self-help book, right? It sure is. But the rub here is that the book was written by the new interim chairman of the board of CBS, Strauss Zelnick.

Zelnick, a buff, driven media exec wrote Becoming Ageless: The Four Secrets to Looking and Feeling Younger than ever, (along with Zack Zeigler.) The book was published in September and Zelnick made the usual publicity rounds on the Today Show and CNN.

In his new role, Zelnicks replacing former Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons, who had to step down as CBS Board chair citing health problems. Zelnick who joined the CBS board in September, (a busy month for him), was brought on by Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS.

Before we get into more on Zelnick heres a review of Becoming Ageless on Amazon:

I have had the good fortune of meeting the author and I can attest that he is indeed proof of the power of the secrets contained within this book. He lives it every day, mind and body, and it shows  in his physique, his mantra, his success and his generosity. For anyone who needs motivation to get going or for anyone who simply wants an extra trick or two in their daily routine, I cannot recommend this book more.

One hopes Zelnick does indeed follow his own regimen. Hes going to need all the fortitude he can muster in his new jobmore on that in a second. Fortunately for him, he does have a bit of a media pedigree. Zelnicks CEO of Take-Two Interactive (the hot gaming company that has properties like Grand Theft Auto.) Previously, he was CEO of music giant BMG and before that president and COO of 20th Century Fox, where he ran Foxs movie businesses.

Zelnick also worked with Tim Collins of the private equity firm Ripplewood, which bankrolled a record company deal with Zelnick in Japan, though a source says that relationship ended on a sour note. Zelnick also has an MBA and JD from Harvard.

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Strauss Zelnick (Galvanized Media / Simon & Schuster)

He also seems to have had an entrepreneurial streak. One media exec recalls that back in the 1990s, [Zelnick] used to give gift bottles every year of his allegedly homemade BBQ sauce Strauss in the House. New York Magazine reported that he would give twelve-packs to his friends including Sean Puffy Combs [and] Carly Simon The label of Strauss in the House displays a head shot of the mogul, and the bottle is probably the only one in the sauce biz with the address of a record companys corporate headquarters on the back.

So, ok, you get the picture, a Type Triple A guy. Which is all well and good. But heres the thing. CBS is both an uptight, snobbish kind of place and paradoxically a fetid snake pit. Coupled with the Tiffany Networks high holy of CBS Newsnever friendly to upstart newcomers to begin with (and from a video game company no less)is a company wracked by blockbuster allegations of serial sexual abuse and deeply engrained sexism against former CEO Les Moonves, its former marquee male anchor Charlie Rose, and its signature 60 Minutes program. Besides the multiple investigations, one being led by outside counsel and former SEC Commission Mary Jo White, factions and infighting abound.

Indeed, washboard abs may come in handy here.

Even though Edward R. Murrow may be roiling over in his grave, Strauss Zelnick may be just what CBS needs. A 61-year-old Dorian Gray-like, self-help book writing, barbecue sauce shilling, former record company executive.

And who knows, I wouldnt even be surprised if Strauss Zelnick ends up becoming CEO.

With everything thats gone wrong at CBS, what the ageless Strauss Zelnick brings, may be better than what the company had before.



Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @serwer

Read more:Ottawa (AFP) - Canada Post workers went on a rotating strike Monday, affecting mail deliveries in four cities after nearly one year of stalled contract negotiations.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) said the cities of Victoria, Edmonton, Windsor and Halifax would be impacted in the first round of disruptions.

"Our goal has always been a negotiated settlement but we will not agree to anything that doesn't address health and safety, gender equality and good, full-time middle-class jobs," union president Mike Palecek said in a statement.

Its key demands include hiring of more staff to meet a 30 percent increase in parcel deliveries -- expected to rise further with online cannabis orders -- as well as an end to forced overtime and pay equity for rural carriers.

The post office did not immediately comment, but Labour Minister Patty Hajdu urged both sides to return to the collective bargaining process.The victim of racist abuse from a fellow passenger on a Ryanair flight has spoken out

Victim of racist Ryanair passenger speaks out

An elderly black woman subjected to a tirade of racist abuse on board a Ryanair flight has said the experience left her unable to eat or sleep.

Delsie Gayle, who is disabled and in her 70s, was called an ugly black b****** by a white man on a flight from Barcelona to London.

Ryanair sparked outrage after failing to remove the man from the plane or move him to another seat.

Man admits murdering midwife Samantha Eastwood

A man has admitted murdering midwife Samantha Eastwood after a long-standing affair.

Michael Stirling, the brother-in-law of Miss Eastwoods ex-fiance, left her body in a shallow grave in Staffordshire wrapped in a duvet and with tape covering her eyes and mouth.

He killed her during a bout of intense rage, the court heard.

Saudi agent filmed wearing murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggis clothes

Video has emerged of a Saudi operative wearing the clothing of Jamal Khashoggi along with a fake beard and glasses as he left the building where the journalist was murdered.

Footage shows a member of the reported 15-man Saudi hit squad leaving the consulate building in Turkey by the back door, as an apparent decoy.

International accusations of a cover-up continue to intensify after the Washington Post columnist was killed and dismembered, with Turkey insisting the Saudi regime was responsible.

Headless chicken monster filmed in Southern Ocean for the first time

A deep-sea creature dubbed the headless chicken monster has been filmed in the Southern Ocean off east Antarctica for the first time.

The unusual species of sea cucumber was captured on camera by Australian researchers using new underwater equipment.Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site.

Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site.

Costco recently added produce, meats, fish, dairy and other fresh groceriesincluding its popular rotisserie chickento the roster of items available for same-day delivery.

If you're a member and order at least $35 worth of groceries, there is no additional chargeunless you opt to tip the delivery person. Non-members can enjoy this service, too, by ordering Costco items through Instacart, the grocery delivery company.

Costco scored highly for value in our most recent ratings of grocery stores. But does that same value extend to its delivery customers? And how does it stack up against other chains that offer grocery delivery?

To find out, we went shopping over a period of several weeks this fall in a Costco Warehouse near our Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters, and we also shopped online. We chose a market basket of nine popular Costco fresh food itemsincluding that rotisserie chickenand we opted for same-day delivery.

What We Found

For our particular market basket of fresh food, we found:

 Costco's member pricing for delivery was 31 percent higher, on average, than what it charged members in its warehouse (see chart below). Costco says those higher prices reflect the cost of service and delivery; unlike with other delivery services, you pay no additional fees beyond the price of the food, assuming an order of at least $35.

 Costco non-members who subscribe to Instacart Express would pay slightly less than Costco members for this particular basket of food. But Instacart's additional, per-delivery service fee$5 in most placesmakes delivery to non-members more costly. If your main reason for using Instacart Express was for its Costco deliveries, you'd be better off paying $60 for Costco's basic, Gold Star membership.

 Compared with AmazonFresh, which also delivers fresh groceries in many markets, Costco fresh food delivery was a pretty good deal. Costco's delivered parcel of food was less expensive than a comparable basket of items from AmazonFreshwhich didn't offer us same-day delivery, as Costco did.

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Weighing the Benefits of Membership

How you place a same-day delivery order for Costco fresh food depends on whether you're a member or not. Costco members order through Costco's website or app. Non-members can do it by using the website or an app from Instacart. Either way, the food is gathered and delivered by Instacart shoppers. Either way, the minimum order is $35.

For Costco members, service and delivery fees are baked into the food prices they pay. They don't pay extra unless they opt to tip the driver.

Non-members, on the other hand, pay Instacart a $5.99-per-order delivery fee and a per-order service fee of $5 in most places ($7.50 in New York City). Again, tipping is optional.

To save money on deliveries, Costco non-members can join Instacart Express, which costs $149 a year. As an Instacart Express member, you pay no additional delivery fees on orders of $35 or more. Instacart charges no delivery or service fees on orders made in the first two weeks of your membership. After those two weeks, however, you must pay the service fee.

We shopped the same market basket of food periodically over several weeks this fall for Costco members and non-members. To determine which was the better deal, we factored in the Instacart Express membership (including a one-time $15 promotion) and the Costco Gold Star membership.

We found that the price of the food itself was slightly more expensive for Costco members than for Costco non-members. A Costco spokesperson, presented with those findings, explained that was because delivery and service fees are built in to member pricing.

But once that pesky $5 Instacart service fee was added in, the scales tipped decisively in favor of Costco members.

An Instacart spokesperson confirmed the Instacart fees but declined to comment further.

Keep in mind that membership with both Instacart Express and Costco offers other benefits. With Instacart Express, you can order same-day deliveries from dozens of affiliated grocers. Costco membership includes numerous perksvacation and rental-car deals through Costco Travel, to name just two.

Delivered Price Higher Than In-Store Cost

Our shopping test revealed that Costco fresh food prices purchased through the Costco website for same-day delivery were 24 percent to 46 percent higher than the same foods sold in the Costco warehouse. In total, the delivered market basket cost 31 percent more overall for Costco members.

A Costco spokesperson said those higher prices reflected the cost of service and delivery.

(Turn your smart phone sideways for a best view of our comparison chart, which is a snapshot from one day's pricing.)

Product Costco Non-Member Price (Delivered by Instacart) Costco Member Price (Delivered by Instacart) Costco In-Store Price (Members Only) Hass Avocados (bag of 6)

$5.39 $5.49 $4.39 Whole Milk (1 Gallon) $3.19 $3.29 $2.59 Organic Eggs (24 Large Brown) $7.39 $7.49 $5.99 Blueberries (18-Oz. Container) $6.69 $6.89 $4.99 Salmon (Atlantic Farm-Raised, No Antibiotics, Skin Removed) $12.19 per lb. x 2.67 lb. = $32.55 $12.39 per lb. x 2.67 lb. = $33.08 $8.49 per lb. x 2.67 lb. = $22.67 Chobani Yogurt (20-Pack, Assorted Flavors, 5.3 Oz. Each) $17.09 $17.39 $13.99 Spring Mix Salad (1-Lb. Container) $4.59 $4.59

$3.69 Skinless, Boneless Chicken Breasts (Approximately 8 Lb.) $3.49 per lb. x 8 lb. = $27.92 $3.49 per lb. x 8 lb. = $27.92 $2.79 per lb. x 8 lb. = $22.32 Rotisserie Chicken $6.09 $6.19 $4.99 Total $110.90 $112.33 $85.62 Fees $5.99 per min. order of $35 or higher OR $149/yr. for Instacart Express (after 2 weeks free) Gold Star membership fee: $60/yr. Free delivery per minimum order of $35 or higher Gold Star membership fee: $60/yr. Cost of This Market Basket per Week $113.38 with Instacart Express 1 $113.48 with Gold Star membership 2 $86.77 with Gold Star membership3

When the Price Premium Is Worth It

For many people, paying 31 percent more for delivered food is a costly deterrent to choosing delivery. But if you're time-starvedor would simply rather avoid the drive to and from the warehouse, the search for parking, the wait in line, and the cost of gas and wear-and-tear on your carthat extra expense might be worth it. You'll also avoid the inevitable impulse buying that happens when you pass by certain food displays, say, or see a deal on a smart TV.

There's also the time-is-money consideration. In the chart above, which represents one day's shopping, our online market basket cost $113.48 without tax, versus $86.77 for the in-store haul, a savings of $26.71. Our Costco shopping trip took about an hour from the time we left home to the time we returned. In this case, a shopper whose time is worth more than $26.71 an hour might be better off ordering this particular market basket from home.

Good Value vs. Other Grocers That Deliver

If you're already convinced of the value of using online grocers, you may want to know how Costco's delivered prices compare with AmazonFresh, which delivers fresh Whole Foods groceries to many parts of the country. In our limited test, Costco was nearly always less pricey, by a couple of dollars.

A comparable market basket was $116.49more than the Costco order but minus the unavailable rotisserie chicken. AmazonFresh also didn't give us the option of same-day delivery. AmazonFresh costs $14.99 a month on top of an Amazon Prime membership of $12.99; orders under $50 are charged $9.99.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the pricing, but pointed out that the service's pricing was less costly than Instacart's.

On a per-week basis, AmazonFresh's delivery fee for our market basketincluding the one-month free trialwould be $3.17 per order, lower than the price of Instacart Express ($7.37), but higher than the Costco membership ($1.15). Adding on the Amazon Prime membership would bring the weekly delivery price to $6.17 per orderthough to be sure, you can use that Prime membership for many other services, including free delivery of other items.





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Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright  2018, Consumer Reports, Inc.Daily Digit is the story behind the numbers that make our world work. Today were looking at sexual education. According to a new study, only 24 states, and the District of Columbia, require public schools to provide sex education classes. And just 10, along with D.C., address sexual consent, sexual assault, or healthy relationships. While some states set standards on how to address sexual health, most do not. States like Montana and Tennessee stress abstinence only and STD education. But the study urges instruction on healthy relationships, prevention of sexual assault, and consent to equip young people with information to help them be safer and healthier.The two met on Sunday evening for their first debate: REUTERS

Florida gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis have sparred in a heated debate that touched on issues ranging from the environment to race, as voters consider who would best serve them in the statehouse.

Just hours after a new poll showed that Mr DeSantis, a former congressman. trailed Mr Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, by double digits, the onetime US representative leapt at the chance to attack his opponent by calling him a failed mayor and saying he is involved in corruption.

Andrew is a failed mayor, Mr DeSantis, the Republican in the race, said before Mr Gillum even spoke a word on Sunday. Hes presided over a crime-ridden city. Hes involved in corruption. Hes not the guy to lead our state.

Mr Gillum, who appeared somewhat taken aback by how quickly his opponent attacked, responded with a deadpan: Well, that was a mouthful."

The brawl between the two candidates touched on a range of issues including health care policy, climate change, and, of course, President Donald Trump. While the governorship has zero direct impact on congress and the presidents ability to enact legislation, the race has come to be seen as a proxy for the larger national political debate.

With Mr Gillum calling for Mr Trumps impeachment while Mr DeSantis remains a fierce advocate on the presidents behalf, the race has come to be seen as a referendum on the work being done in the White House.

The hour-long debate was kicked off by CNN moderator Jake Tapper, who asked the candidates about climate change  a question that came just after yet another hurricane battered the state and levelled homes.

I don't want to be an alarmist. I want to look at this and do what makes sense for Florida, said Mr DeSantis, who denied claims that he had questioned the science behind climate change.

Mr Gillum shot back, calling his opponent an election year environmentalist.

What Florida voters need to know is that when they elect me governor, they are going to have a governor who believes in science, Mr Gillum said. "Which we haven't had for quite some time in this state."

Story continues

The two also sparred over race, with Mr Gillum  a black man  claiming that his opponent had sought to cast the entire election around race, after Mr DeSantis went on Fox News and warned Floridians against monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda. Mr DeSantis sought to minimise those concerns, saying Floridians can know that I'll be a governor for all Floridians.

Mr Gillum responded: He has only continued in the course of his campaign to draw all the attention he can to the colour of my skin. The truth is, I've been black all of my life. So far as I know, I will die black."

Mr Gillum would be the first African American governor of Florida.Diana Sowle in Willy Wonka, and pictured in 2014 (Getty)

Diana Sowle, the actress best known for playing Mrs. Bucket in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, has died aged 88.

Sowle passed away on Friday, her agent confirmed in a statement released to press.

It is with deep sadness that we announce the loss of beloved friend, family member and actress Diana Sowle at the age of 88.

Diana passed away in the early morning hours of Friday, October 19, with family by her side. She was a loving wife, mother, grandmother and friend, and will be dearly missed.

Cast of Willy Wonka (L-R) Michael Bollner, Denis Nickerson, Peter Ostrum, Diana Sowle, and Paris Themmen Poses at The Hollywood Show on July 20, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage)

The Californian actress made her film debut in the 1971 Roald Dahl adaptation playing Hellen Bucket, the mother of the Golden Ticket-winning Charlie, where she sang Cheer Up Charlie, although the song was later dubbed by Diana Lee.

According to her IMDB page, she also featured in 1994s Clear and Present Danger and Guarding Tess, and she voiced a character in 2008s Fallout 3, a dystopian RPG video game.

The statement from her agent added that for 23 years Sowle ran a free tutoring programme for underprivileged children in Washington DC, where she lived.

In 2010, Sowle revealed how she landed the role of Mrs. Bucket.

Well I basically auditioned for it. My husband and I were living in Germany at the time. My husband worked for the government, she told Media Mikes. I have been producing plays and we toured in what were known as the America houses. They are like cultural centres. They were just finding out who was around in Germany. One day, I got a call-in to audition for it and that was it.

She added that poor critical notices for the film, which also starred Gene Wilder in the title role, didnt help her career, and that the film only began to gain a cult following when it started to show on television.

The film was finished in 1970. We gave back to the States in 1971 and that is actually when I first saw the movie. I saw it at a local theatre, she shared. It didnt really get good reviews was it was released. Back then, I thought too bad this would have been a nice opportunity. I sort of closed the window on it at that point. I thought Oh well, you do things and they dont always turn out. Then we went back to Germany in 1975 until 1980. When we came back to the States, I think that is when they started showing the movie on the TV. I think when that happened there was suddenly much more interest in it.

Diana Sowle 1930-2018.

Read more

Stroke leaves Violet Beauregarde actress in ICU

Donald Glover linked with Willy Wonka role

Disturbing scenes in family filmsStacey Atkinson was given a suspended prison sentence (Picture: Facebook)

A drunk mother whose seven-week-old baby daughter died when she fell asleep holding her on a sofa has avoided jail.

Stacey Atkinson, 30, admitted wilfully neglecting Chloe Atkinson Wilkie, causing unnecessary suffering or injury to health.

At Liverpool Crown Court on Friday, Judge Andrew Menary QC said society demanded a prison sentence, but it would be suspended.

Atkinson, from St Helens, Merseyside, who has since given birth to another daughter, was given a 12-month sentence that is suspended for 12 months.

Judge Menary told her: You have suffered a terrible punishment with the reality of what you did.

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Man on nudist beach survives shark attack by punching it in the head

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Saudi Arabia claims journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in rogue operation

Lioness kills father of her three cubs in their enclosure at Indianapolis Zoo

Ryanair passenger may get away with racist tirade because airline wanted to take off, says MP

I have no doubt youre truly remorseful for what you have done and have learned from this bitter experience.

The authorities have investigated this matter and are perfectly satisfied you and your partner in all other respects are loving, caring and perfectly capable parents.

The court heard Atkinson, who has two other daughters, aged 10 and 13, found that Chloe wasnt responsive after she woke three hours after falling asleep on the sofa of her home, after having drank half a bottle of vodka.

Her lawyer, Laura Tipping, told the court: She will carry the guilt for the rest of her life that Chloe trusted her and she let her down.

Atkinson called the emergency services and tried to resuscitate her child while waiting for them to arrive on November 17, 2016. However, Chloe was pronounced dead a short time later.

A post-mortem examination found Atkinson had fallen asleep and rolled on top of the baby who became trapped underneath her, possibly facing the cushion on the sofa.- 2018 Getty Images

The Duchess of Sussex joined her husband for a walkabout on Fraser Island, having spent the morning resting as her pregnancy "takes its toll".

Meghan, wearing a striped dress by Reformation and brown leather lace-up sandals, clutched her baby bump for part of the walk under blue skies in Queensland.

The Duke had attended three of the day's engagements on his own, including an unveiling of the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy, where he joked about plaque-unveiling running "in the family".

He had told his pregnant wife to take it easy as the couple carry out a 16-day tour across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga, telling Invictus Games athletes on Sunday: "Being pregnant takes its toll".

It is understood that the Duchess of Sussex is to resume her full royal tour programme as of now and will undertake the full schedule in Fiji and Tonga unless circumstances change again.

The Duchess of Sussex clutched her baby bump for part of a walk along a jetty in Kingfisher Bay with her husband Credit: DARREN ENGLAND /AFP

The Duchess was glowing as she arrived by car to meet her husband, having spent the morning at their hotel recuperating from the heavy schedule of the first week of their tour.

A royal aide said: "She isn't sick, she just had a tiring few days and we were concerned about the roads on the island which are incredibly bumpy and uncomfortable for anyone, let alone a pregnant woman.

"But the Duchess was very keen to re-join the duke at the last engagement of the day to greet the people of the island."

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex meet wellwishers along a Kingfisher Bay walkabout Credit: Chris Hyde /Getty

The Duchess, who has modified her programme to take into account her pregnancy, was absent from engagements most of the day, which required a bumpy four wheel drive journey across sandy roads.

The couple flew into Hervey Bay on Monday morning, before boarding separate boats for their different days out.

After a day of learning about the island's natural beauty, the Duke travelled to Kingfisher Bay by boat, where he was joined by the Duchess for a walk along the jetty.

The Duke and Duchess walk hand-in-hand along the jetty Credit: PHIL NOBLE /Reuters

The parents-to-be were given gifts including flowers and bears during the walkabout and the Duke was taken by a sign reading "Rangas rule", an Australian slang reference to his ginger hair.

Story continues

Jada Quinn, nine, said: "My dad is a ranga and I'm a little bit a ranga and he appreciated the sign."

Her sister, Ella, 12, said: "It was a bit overwhelming, I started to cry a little bit. She was so kind and she shook my hand."

The Duchess of Sussex arrives at Kingfisher jetty by boat Credit: Catherine Lyn Finch /Getty

Julianne, Ebony and and Lily Reid gave Meghan a home-made baby changing mat, with Harry asking if it had koalas on.

The Duchess also bent down to speak to Noeline Walk, 85, Fraser Island's oldest and longest-living resident at 45 years.

Mrs Walk said: "She asked me since I was local what i would suggest she have for tea," Mrs Walk said. "'Seafood, of course!' I told her. 'Oh, I'll have to give it a try', she said."

Unveiling plaques 'runs in the family', jokes Harry

The Duke of Sussex joked that being skilled at unveiling plaques "runs in the family" as he took part in a dedication ceremony on Fraser Island in Queensland on Monday.

Harry was greeted by the Butchulla People and took part in a traditional Welcome to Country smoking ceremony on Fraser Island.

He spoke under the island's satinay trees in Pile Valley, some up to 1,000 years old and used to build the London docks in the 1930s.

Before Harry began speaking, local Marilyn Clarke called out: "You are better looking in person!" - to which he replied: "I will take that as a compliment."

The Duke of Sussex unveils a plaque, joking that the technique 'runs in the family' Credit: Chris Jackson /Getty

Dedicating the Forests of K'Gari to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy, the Duke said the initiative was "established in honour of my grandmother, the Queen's lifetime of service to the Commonwealth".

"This is actually the second time this plaque has been unveiled which I know is highly unusual," he said. "The first time was by my father the Prince of Wales in Bundaberg earlier this year when he was visiting.

"I now have the privilege of unveiling it in situ. I know that my father came to K'Gari in 1994 for a day off during a royal tour so he has an appreciation of the importance of this place.

"Luckily we are both highly skilled when it comes to unveiling plaques... It runs in the family."

Duke meets local elders to learn about island's history

The Duke visited one of Fraser Islands lakes to meet local elders and national park rangers to learn about the Islands natural beauty, biodiversity and cultural significance.

He also heard about the history of the Islands logging trade, as well as its use as a training base for the Australian Z Special Unit during World War II.

The Duke of Sussex poses for a photo with the Butchulla People Credit: Phil Noble /AP

The Duke meets locals in the forests of K'gari Credit: PHIL NOBLE /Reuters

The Duke of Sussex watches a traditional dance by the Butchulla People Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth /AP

The island is still open to members of the public on Monday, although the network of winding bumpy sand roads have been closed to all but the royal household and accredited media.

Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, and has a total of 206,970 acres of protected forest.

Duke urges public to protect Queensland rainforest

The Duke of Sussex has urged the public to protect the Queensland rainforest for our children and our childrens children, as he embarked on a morning out without his wife.

Harry was welcomed to Pile Valley on Fraser Island with a traditional smoking ceremony to ward off evil spirits by members of the Butchulla People, the traditional owners of the land, which they call Kgari - meaning paradise.

Aaron Henderson and Darren Blake wafted smoke from a bucket of burning Paper Bark and Blue Gum leaves towards him, while songman Fred Bulanyu Leone called out to their ancestors and tapped out a rhythm with a pair of bar gan - killer boomerangs - traditionally used for hunting.

The Duke was there to mark the forests dedication to the Queens Commonwealth Canopy initiative, a growing area of protected forests across the organisations 53 member states.

He gazed up in awe at the 1,000 year old Satinay trees as they led him into the forest to a clearing around a sacred Spirit Tree.

Keep up to date with all that's happening in the Royal family with our weekly, newsletter, Your Royal Appointment. Sign up here.Guy Verhofstadt arrives at Downing Stree for talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May in September (Getty)

European Parliament Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt has rejected Theresa Mays proposals to get a Brexit deal over the line, saying they breach her commitments over the Irish border.

The prime minister set out a four point plan in Parliament on Monday designed to break the impasse in negotiations caused by a disagreement over the backstop solution to avoiding a hard border in Ireland.

She told MPs that a UK-wide customs union with the EU or an extension of the implementation period would be acceptable  but only if the UK could not be kept in either arrangement indefinitely.

That was immediately rejected by Verhofstadt, who restated the EUs long standing position that any backstop must function unless and until a permanent solution is in place.

And, speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, he suggested that UK is now rowing back on the commitment to the backstop made by May in December.

Everybody thought, and we thought, that there was a previous commitment to have such a backstop.

[Now] our British counterparts have said that there has to be time limited. But we all know that a time limited backstop is not a backstop. That is not the definition of a backstop is that its not time limited.

May told MPs that the Withdrawal Agreement was 95% complete and said the difficulties over the backstop should not be allowed to scupper a deal.

Let us remember that all of these steps are about insurance policies that no-one in the UK or the EU wants or expects to use, she said.

So we cannot let this become the barrier to reaching the future partnership we all want to see.

Verhofstadt, who said he believes a deal is actually 90% complete, agreed a lot has been achieved in recent weeks, citing resolutions to issues over Gibraltar and Cyprus.

MORE: Barnier warns Brexit deal could still be sunk by Irish border issue

But he insisted that the EU wont blink over the backstop at the final moment.

The European Parliament and the EU 27 have been clear on this from the start: without a real backstop for us we dont see a possibility to have a withdrawal agreement, he told a meeting of the parliaments constitutional affairs committee.

Story continues

And the fact that we are very close to a deal doesnt actually change anything in this regard

90% is fantastic. I never got 90% at school, I have to tell you. But its clear that for us there is only a viable Withdrawal Agreement if theres 100% and what is still missing is this important issue on the backstop.

Despite the disagreement, the coordinator of the European Parliaments Brexit steering group said he remained optimistic.

Verhofstadt told MEPs: The chief negotiator of the EU, Michel barrier, nevertheless remains confident we can make progress in the coming weeks and that there is also more time needed to do so

Im personally still of the opinion that its possible to find this agreement as it is I think not in the interest of the EU and certainly not of the UK to fall into a no deal scenario.

The Belgian liberal MEP, who is meeting Home Secretary Sajid Javid regularly, said he is also pushing for improvements on citizens rights after Brexit and may bring forward a resolution on the issue in the coming weeks.

He declared himself unhappy with an expectation that EU citizens who were living in the UK before Brexit will have to pay to gain settled status.

Its not their choice that there is a Brexit so we dont see how this is justified how these citizens should be charged, he said.

On UK citizens living in the EU, he said he wanted to ensure they would be able to move to other EU27 countries after Brexit.



PARIS (Reuters) - The European Commission does not want any crisis with Italy over its budget plans, but it expects answers to its concerns, European Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said on Monday. An Italian government source said that Rome was expecting the EU executive to take the unprecedented step to ask it to revise its 2019 draft budget, which includes lifting the deficit to 2.4 percent of GDP from 1.8 percent in 2018. "The European Commission does not want a crisis between Brussels and Rome," Moscovici told France Inter radio. "My state of mind is that of constructive dialogue." Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Monday that the Italian government was ready to discuss its budget targets with European Union authorities. The Italian government is expected to send a letter on its budget to the Commission by noon. Moscovici said the European Commission would meet on Tuesday to discuss the response, adding that he could not say when it would take a decision. "When you are an EU member and a member of the single currency, of the euro zone, you must respect a number of joint rules," Moscovici said, reaffirming the concerns the EU executive has expressed over the past weeks on Italy's budget plans. Italy's structural deficit is way too high, he said. Moscovici, a French Socialist, said he was making a difference between Salvini's political ideas, which he disagrees with, and the Italian government, which he says he respects. "I can fight Mr Salvini as party chief; I can fight his ideas; I can consider that, he also belongs to the illiberal democracy space. After all he is Mrs Le Pen's friend, let's not forget this," he said, referring to the French far-right leader. "I fight the National Front and I fight the League on a political level, but I respect the Italian government. And it must also respect EU rules," he said. "It is mutual respect that allows us to move forward in this diverse Europe." (Reporting by Ingrid Melander, editing by Larry King)Ron DeSantis and Andre Gillum shake hands Sunday at the first debate in the Florida governor's race. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

TAMPA, Fla.  The All-Donald Trump primary election strategy of Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for Florida governor, came home to roost Sunday in his first debate against Democrat Andrew Gillum, when the former congressman was asked whether the president was a good role model for children.

In his reply, DeSantis wound through a circuitous story about Trumps decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

Gillum acted perplexed and laughingly asked moderator Jake Tapper to repeat the question before answering: No, hes not. Donald Trump  Donald Trump is weak. And he performs as all weak people do: They become bullies, and Mr. DeSantis is his acolyte. Hes trying out to be the Trump apprentice at every turn.

A few minutes later, Gillum called DeSantis Trumps stooge who wanted to worship at the feet of Donald Trump.

Trump, whom Gillum has said should be impeached for obstruction of justice, was just one of several flash points between the candidates. DeSantis has based his campaign on attacking the Tallahassee mayor, and he continued that approach during CNNs nationally televised debate.

Look, Andrews a failed mayor, DeSantis said in his opening statement. Hes presided over a crime-ridden city. Hes involved in corruption. Hes not the guy to lead our state.

He later elaborated on the corruption charge, pointing to the active FBI investigation into interactions between the Tallahassee city government and a lobbyist who is a longtime friend of Gillum. Gillum said he is not a target of the probe. He demanded that DeSantis release records detailing $145,000 worth of congressional travel, much of which a Florida newspaper reported had gone toward taking DeSantis to New York and back so he could appear on Fox News.

Gillum also accused DeSantis of making openly racist attacks, particularly when he said Gillum would monkey-up the economic success Florida enjoyed under Gov. Rick Scott (R).

The monkey-up comment said it all, Gillum said, adding that DeSantis had taken every opportunity to point out Gillums skin color.

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You know what? Im black, he said. Ive been black all my life. So far as I know, I will die black.

The 60-minute debate was the first showdown between the two men  they had never met before Sunday night  since winning their respective primaries in late August. An earlier debate was cancelled because of Hurricane Michael, which struck the Panhandle near Tallahassee on Oct. 10 and kept Gillum off the campaign trail for 10 days.

The evening also provided a dramatic example of how gun politics have changed in the state since a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland earlier this year. The massacre led to restrictions on gun purchases that passed a Republican state legislature and were signed into law by Scott.

When asked why he had opposed that legislation, DeSantis said the shooting had deeply affected him. Were going to fix it when it comes to school security, he said.

Gillum responded sharply: The congressman was against the piece of legislation because he is wholly owned by the NRA, he said, blaming that connection for the attack ads the National Rifle Association is running against him.

They want the man that they bought, Gillum said.

Democratic candidates for statewide office in previous elections have believed that they could not win if they crossed the NRA, one of the most powerful interest groups in Tallahassee. Yet every Democrat running during the primary campaign hammered the NRA and called for tighter gun regulations, with polling suggesting that Florida as a whole may be receptive to such laws.

Neither Gillum nor DeSantis has held statewide office before, and neither had much name recognition in the state outside their respective communities.

Gillum, though, had the support of national progressive groups that coalesced around him and helped him turn out liberal voters all over the state. As the first African-American major-party gubernatorial nominee in Florida, Gillum also had the support of a majority of black voters, who make up one-third of the states Democratic primary electorate.

DeSantis, meanwhile, has regularly defended Trump on Fox News in recent years  something he was able to parlay into an endorsement before he even officially entered the race.

Neither the activist base of the states Democratic Party nor Trump-supporting Republicans, however, are numerous enough to win the governors race. That could put the election in the hands of the nearly one-third of the states voters who are not registered with a party, as well as with less-engaged Democrats and Republicans who typically do not vote in primaries and often not in midterms.

Early voting in Florida starts Monday. Gillum will be appearing with former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson at rallies in Tampa and Jacksonville on Monday and Orlando on Tuesday to mark the event. Nelson is seeking a fourth term, but is facing a tough challenge from Scott, who must leave the governors mansion because of term limits.

Related Coverage

Ron DeSantis Tells Florida Not To 'Monkey This Up' By Electing Andrew Gillum

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Ron DeSantis Rose By Trafficking In Racist, Islamophobic Conspiracy Theories

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.Four Americans have been killed in a rafting accident while on a stag party in Costa Rica.

Three rafts flipped over on the Naranjo River near the city of Liverpool de Quepos, killing the four men from Miami, Florida, and their tour guide, according to the Red Cross.

In total there were 14 tourists on board of the rafts, in addition to five tour guides.

"What was meant to be a weekend to remember for 14 friends turned into a living nightmare, survivors wrote on a crowdfunding page set up for the victims families.

The friends have been identified as Ernesto Sierra, Jorge Caso, Sergio Lorenzo and Andres Dennis, all between the ages of 25 and 35.

Kevin Thompson Reid was their local tour guide and colleagues indicated he was vastly experienced.

The friends had arrived in Costa Rica on 18 October to celebrate the pending nuptials of Luis Beltran, whose brother was one of the victims, Mr Lorenzo.

Wind and rain had initially delayed the trip and the survivors wrote: "Within five minutes of being out on the river, all three rafts capsized, and everyone ended up in the water.

"Everyone struggled to get back on the rafts, with some efforts being successful, but ultimately the rafts continued to capsize due to the immense current. Within minutes, all of us were careening down the river with life jackets and helmets just trying to stabilise and find something to hold on to, the survivors wrote.

The group has raised approximately $8,000 for the victims families, with a goal of $50,000.

Luis Guzman, National Deputy spokesman for Costa Ricas Red Cross, told NBC News they were able to rescue the survivors who were all relatively unharmed but the five victims were found later further down the river.

Mr Guzman said the tourists were not in a national park area, but white water rafting in an area full of nature.

The river was swollen with rain and there was even a flood warning issued by the National Emergency Commission.

US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert tweeted a statement: We are saddened by news of rafting accident in #CostaRica. We extend our deepest condolences to their families and loved ones, and extend our gratitude to Government of Costa Rica for their support in this tragedy.Germany announced plans to stop exporting arms to Saudi Arabia in the wake of the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Agence France-Presse reports.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Sunday, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the arms freeze and said she will continue working with international allies to coordinate their response to Khashoggis murder inside a Saudi consulate.

I agree with all those who say when it comes to our already limited arms exports [to Saudi Arabia] that they cannot take place in the current situation, Merkel said, according to AFP.

Germany last month approved 416 million euros ($479 million) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018. Berlins previous military exports to the kingdom primarily consisted of patrol boats, AFP reports.

After repeating her earlier condemnation of Khashoggis killing, Merkel said there is an urgent need to clear up what happened to the prominent commentator on Saudi affairs.

Khashoggi went missing after he entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to retrieve marriage documents. After weeks of denying knowledge of Khashoggis whereabouts, Riyadh admitted that he had been killed in the consulate. But the Saudis claim that the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist died in a fistfight contradicted Turkeys accounts that he was tortured, killed and dismembered by members of the crown princes entourage.

We are far from seeing everything on the table and the perpetrators being brought to justice, Merkel said.

While Khashoggi was a U.S. resident, President Donald Trump has implied that the White House has little obligation to investigate the incident, emphasizing that the journalist was not a U.S. citizen. Trump has also insisted that killing not interfere with U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, citing a $110 billion deal with Riyadh he announced last year.BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany wants other European Union member states to follow its example in stopping arms exports to Saudi Arabia as long as uncertainty remains over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said on Monday. Riyadh has given multiple and conflicting accounts on what led to Khashoggi's death on Oct. 2 at its consulate in Istanbul. On Sunday, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called the killing a "huge and grave mistake" but sought to shield Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince. Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday that Germany would stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia as long as the uncertainty around Khashoggi's death persisted. Altmaier, a close ally of Merkel, said Riyadh's explanations on the case so far had not been satisfactory. "The government is in agreement that we will not approve further arms exports for the moment because we want to know what happened," Altmaier told ZDF broadcaster. So far this year the German government had approved weapons exports worth more than 400 million euros ($462 million) to Saudi Arabia, making it the second-biggest recipient of German arms after Algeria. Asked whether Germany would roll back previously agreed arms deals with Saudi, he said a decision would be made "very soon". Altmaier said other EU states should stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia in order to increase pressure on Riyadh over the Khashoggi case. "For me it would be important that we come to a joint European stance," Altmaier said. "Because only if all European countries are in agreement, it will make an impression on the government in Riyadh. It will not have any positive consequences if we halt arms exports but other countries at the same time fill the gap." Senior German politicians have also urged Siemens [SIEGn.DE] CEO Joe Kaeser over the weekend to pull out of an investment conference in Saudi Arabia later this week. ($1 = 0.8663 euros) (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Writing Michael Nienaber; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said he thinks Donald Trump is making a mistake by leaving its nuclear weapons treaty with Russia.

Mr Gorbachev was one of the original signatories to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed originally in 1987 with then-US President Ronald Reagan.

Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements. ... Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?, Mr Gorbachev said to Interfax news agency.

Mr Trump had announced the move after a political rally in the US state of Nevada just a few weeks before the 2018 midterm elections.

"Russia has not, unfortunately, honoured the agreement so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out," he told journalists.

He did not provide evidence of what Moscow had done to prompt the decision to withdraw from the treaty which prohibits both countries from holding or testing ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 300 and 3,400 miles (500 and 5,500 km).

US authorities have said Russia has developed a ground-launched system in violation of the treaty but Moscow has denied the accusation.

Were not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and were not allowed to, Mr Trump said.

Well have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say lets really get smart and lets none of us develop[s] those weapons, but if Russias doing it and if Chinas doing it, and were adhering to the agreement, thats unacceptable," he said, echoing his statements about several bilateral and multilateral treaties of which the US was part.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin would seek answers about the planned withdrawal when he meets US National Security Advisor John Bolton who is scheduled to travel to Moscow this week.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov echoed Mr Gorbachev's comments as well, calling Mr Trump's announcement "very dangerous".

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According to news agency RIA, he also warned there may some sort of "military-technical" retaliation though did not specify what that could be.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that for 30 years the INF treaty had been a pillar of Europe's security architecture. He said in a statement: "We now urge the United States to consider the possible consequences," of quitting the pact.

Not everyone thought Mr Trump's decision to withdraw from yet another nuclear treaty - the last was the historic 2015 deal with Iran which had provided some sanctions relief to Tehran in exchange for stopping development of its weapons system.

UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who is in the US as the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Elizabeth visits New York, said: Our close and long-term ally of course is the United States and we will be absolutely resolute with the United States in hammering home a clear message that Russia needs to respect the treaty obligation that it signed".

He accused Russia of "making a mockery" of the INF treaty and advised Moscow to get its house in order.

Mr Williamson said: We of course want to see this treaty continue to stand but it does require two parties to be committed to it and at the moment you have one party that is ignoring it.

On 4 October, US Defence Secretary James Mattis had set the stage for the withdrawal during a meeting at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) in Brussels, the 29-member body set up for mutual defence against attacks.

Mr Trump caused shock waves among members last year when he suggested a membership be extended to Russia.

Moscow's continued deployment of nuclear-capable missiles is "untenable" and will require one of several options of response from the US and other countries.

Russia must return to compliance with the [1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty] or the US will need to match its capabilities to protect US and NATO interests," Mr Mattis said.

The US Ambassador to Nato, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, had earlier said if Moscow continues to be in non-compliance of the treaty then the US would need to look to ways to "take out" the weapons system.

Ms Hutchinson said the US does not itself want to violate the INF treaty, but indicated Russia could somehow compel it to do so.California Sen. Kamala Harris speaks to reporters outside St. John Baptist Church and Holistic Wellness Center in Hopkins, S.C., on Oct. 19, 2018. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

HOPKINS, S.C.  Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, both considered top potential 2020 presidential candidates, were only in South Carolina at the same time for about two hours last Friday morning, but their individual visits offered a preview of a potentially historic presidential primary featuring two leading African-American candidates.

If they do decide to enter the race, they are likely to spend even more time in South Carolina, whose Democratic primary is traditionally one of the first on the calendar. It is also a state where African-American voters have been a decisive factor in elections.

So far, however, Booker and Harris insisted that their visit to South Carolina was all about the midterm elections next month, and both batted away questions about whether they are thinking about running against each other anytime soon.

I dont see it as facing off. Shes my sister. Were on the same team. Were all trying to help Democrats here to win, Booker told Yahoo News at an event in Orangeburg last Thursday night.

Booker, of New Jersey, and Harris, of California, sit together on the Judiciary Committee, and they have become close during their time in the Senate.

We are friends. We are friends actually, said Harris the following evening in Hopkins. He and I are with the same purpose, and thats to get people out to vote for the 2018 election cycle, and we are joined at the hip in that purpose.

Despite their protestations, both Booker and Harris are acting like clear presidential contenders. In their time in South Carolina both held private meetings with key local leaders who could prove to be valuable allies in a campaign. Both are also making trips to other key primary states, and Booker in particular has already started laying concrete groundwork for a White House bid.

In the midterms, the black vote is also a decisive variable. Nationally, Democrats are projected to take back the House by an overwhelming margin if turnout is high. Thats particularly true when it comes to young people and minorities, two groups that generally vote for Democrats and historically turn out in low numbers. The African-American vote is even more crucial in South Carolina, where about 65 percent of Democratic primary voters in the 2016 election were black, according to exit polls. Overall, about 27 percent of the states population is African-American.

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Booker held three public events across South Carolina on Thursday and one more the following day. During his first appearance on Thursday at Allen University, a historically black school in Columbia, several of the local leaders who spoke discussed the importance of the black vote in very stark terms.

Simple and plain, the numbers show that, in South Carolina, the African-American community alone can win this election, Rosalyn Glenn, a candidate for state treasurer said. Go vote. It is your privilege; it is your right; it is your responsibility to do that.

Melvin Whittenburg, who is running for secretary of state, broke down the numbers. We have over 900,000 registered African-American voters. Thats not our problem. Our problem is we dont show up at the polls. We havent showed up at the polls since President Obama. We need to change that, he said.

For their part, both Booker and Harris made more generalized appeals to get out the vote. At Allen University on Thursday, Booker asked the audience to swear an oath that they would turn out and vote.

On Nov. 6, Im not just going to the polls, Im going to bring some folk with m. Im going to lift some folk up. Im going to get some folk woke, Booker said.

The following day, at a church in Greenville, Harris similarly issued a call to action. At some point, this moment will pass, and years from now our children, our grandchildren  theyre going to ask us where were you at that inflection point, Harris said.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker speaking at a Democratic Party cookout in Orangeburg, S.C., on Oct. 18, 2018. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

Local leaders are optimistic that black turnout will be high in both the midterms and the 2020 election. They pointed to Alabama, where Doug Jones became that states first Democratic senator in over two decades last December, thanks largely to black voters who turned out in even greater numbers than they did for President Obamas reelection in 2012.

Jaime Harrison, a former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party who appeared with Booker at multiple events on Thursday, cited Jones as an example of a contest that brought out the black vote. I really do believe that African-American turnout is going to be significant, and I think its going to be a game-changer, as it has been in other elections, he said.

Harrison also pointed out that it would be incorrect to reduce Booker and Harriss candidacies to the issue of race.

I think the African-American candidates who are running are not just black candidates. Sen. Booker and Kamala Harris have won in states that are extremely diverse where they have had a lot of support, Harrison said. I think, not only will they be able to have some traction  in the African-American community, I think theyll be viable in other communities as well.

Still, the black vote looms large in South Carolina. In the past two competitive Democratic primaries, black voters largely came to the polls as a bloc. And in both cases, that bloc picked the winner. In 2008, exit polls showed over 75 percent of black voters in South Carolina backed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. With their support, Obama won, and the states primary was crucial for his eventual nomination. Similarly, in 2016, exit polls showed over 85 percent of African American voters in South Carolina chose Clinton over Bernie Sanders, a major factor that propelled her toward the partys nomination.

The next presidential race is shaping up to have an extremely crowded field, and Booker and Harris arent the only potential contenders with their eyes on South Carolina. Both New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sanders spent time in the state last week too.

With the potential for a large number of contenders in 2020, including two black presidential candidates, it remains to be seen whether anyone can emerge as the clear choice of South Carolinas African-American community. If not, the states next winner will have a far different path to victory than past victors. Trav Robertson, the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, who appeared with both Booker and Harris last week, said all the potential hopefuls who have visited there have generated enthusiasm.

I think all of the individuals whove come to South Carolina have gotten a great reception, whether its [Los Angeles Mayor Eric] Garcetti, Michael Bloomberg, or Michael Avenatti, Robertson explained.

Booker and Harriss visit to South Carolina showed flashes of their differing styles. While Booker typically lingered long after each of his speeches to take selfies with audience members, Harris quickly departed after speaking in Greenville. And while Booker spent Thursday speaking to audiences that were almost entirely African-American, Harriss event in Greenville attracted a more diverse crowd, with a large contingent of white women.

South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn speaks at a Democratic Party event in Orangeburg, S.C., on Oct. 19, 2018. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

Harris and Bookers appearances also may have offered previews of potential allies in the state. Rep. James Clyburn, the states most powerful Democrat, has long held a reputation as a political kingmaker in South Carolina, and his endorsement is widely seen as a major factor. On Thursday, Clyburn appeared alongside Booker at multiple events, but he told Yahoo News that his presence shouldnt be taken as a sign that his mind was made up.

Ive been with Bloomberg today as well. Ill be with Kamala Harris tomorrow. I was with [Ohio Congressman] Tim Ryan yesterday. So, Im helping everybody, Clyburn said.

Clyburn didnt end up making it to any of Harriss events on Friday, but his daughter did join her.

Of course, for now, both Booker and Harris insist they are solely campaigning for local and congressional candidates.

Shes not a declared candidate; I am not a declared candidate. We are both focused on right now, Nov. 6, Booker told Yahoo News.

At Allen University, Booker said he would think about what the next steps are for me in the days following the Nov. 6 midterm races.

Harris was even more coy when Yahoo News asked when she would make her big decision.

Which decision are you speaking of? The 2018 election cycle? . Voters are going to vote for governor  and treasurer  and secretary of state, Harris said, wrapping her arm around Rosalyn Glenn, the candidate for treasurer. Its really easy to figure that one out.

(Cover thumbnail photos: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images, Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

_____

Read more Yahoo News midterms coverage:Mexico City (AFP) - Hurricane Willa was upgraded to a "potentially catastrophic" Category 5 storm Monday off Mexico's Pacific coast, where it was expected to produce life-threatening wind and flooding, the US National Hurricane Center said.

The powerful hurricane was on course to slam into Mexico somewhere around the resort town of Mazatlan on Tuesday afternoon or evening, the NHC said in its 1500 GMT advisory.

It now has maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometers (160 miles) per hour, making it a maximum Category 5 hurricane, it said.

"Slight weakening is forecast to begin on Tuesday, but Willa is expected to be an extremely dangerous major hurricane when it reaches the coast of Mexico," it said.

Willa is expected to dump 15 to 30 centimeters (six to 12 inches) of rain on parts of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa states, with some areas getting up to 45 centimeters (18 inches), it said.

"This rainfall will cause life-threatening flash flooding and landslides," it warned.

Large storm swells off the coast are also "likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions," it said.

The storm was located about 215 kilometers (135 miles) southwest of Cabo Corrientes, churning north at 11 kilometers (seven miles) per hour.

Mexico's government has put various parts of the coast on alert.

Elsewhere, Tropical Storm Vicente -- with maximum sustained winds of 75 kilometers per hour -- was expected to bring "heavy rainfall and flooding" over Mexico's south and southwest.

Mexico's Pacific coast has already been hit by deadly storms and rains this hurricane season.

In September, at least 15 people were killed when flash floods hit the states of Sinaloa and Michoacan, and last week 11 more died in Oaxaca, including seven children.Ottawa (AFP) - Mexico's future foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard vowed Monday to try to stem Central America's huge outflow of migrants by boosting investment in their home countries.

The comments during a visit to Ottawa followed US President Donald Trump's almost-daily Twitter attacks on a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolling toward the US border.

"The tweets we've been seeing lately do not surprise me, they do not surprise the government. It's very close to the (midterm) elections in the United States," Ebrard said.

Speaking through an interpreter, he did not address the caravan itself.

However, he promised "substantial changes" to Mexico's migrant policy when president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is sworn in on December 1.

"There are going to be many more work visas," Ebrard said.

"We're going to invest in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. We are working closely on that. And we're going to invest significantly in the south of Mexico."

"We're going to make a very significant investment so there will be work opportunities and we believe that on all of this we can base a new Mexican immigration policy."

Mexican authorities had managed to block the caravan of migrants on a border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala, but many later crossed the river below in makeshift rafts before marching north.

The United Nations said more than 7,000 people were now heading toward the United States, as more migrants joined the original group, including some Central Americans who were already in Mexico.

Trump responded by threatening to cut off or reduce aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, while alerting the US border patrol and military.

Activists say the journey through Mexico to the US border could take a month.By Agustinus Beo Da Costa BOGOR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for a "transparent and thorough" investigation of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a meeting on Monday with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, the foreign minister of the Asian nation said. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, maintains close ties with Saudi Arabia and has "expressed concern" over the killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which the kingdom initially denied for weeks. Khashoggi's killing has drawn international criticism, prompting the kingdom on Sunday to describe it as a "huge and grave mistake", while adding that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware of the case. "Indonesia hopes the investigation being carried out is transparent and thorough," Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters after Widodo's meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, which she attended. The two met at the presidential palace on the outskirts of Jakarta, the capital, to discuss several subjects, including the Khashoggi case. Marsudi said al-Jubeir had conveyed a "statement and explanation" to Widodo about the case, but she declined to elaborate. She is scheduled to hold talks with al-Jubeir in Jakarta on Tuesday. In 2017, King Salman became the first Saudi monarch to visit the Southeast Asian nation in nearly five decades, and signed a range of cooperation pacts. (Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)Tehran (AFP) - Iran's judiciary chief on Monday slammed Saudi Arabia over the "heinous murder" of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and blasted Western countries for "double standards".

After more than two weeks of denials, Saudi Arabia admitted over the weekend that Khashoggi was murdered in its Istanbul consulate but Riyadh's explanations have been seen by friends and foes alike as contradictory and evasive.

Saudi Arabia is a major regional adversary for Iran and the rivalry between the two powers has intensified as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has stamped his authority over the kingdom.

"This heinous murder further revealed the nature of Saudis, their kingdom and that young man who is seeking fame and murdering innocent people," Sadegh Amoli Larijani was quoted as saying by the judiciary's news agency Mizan Online, apparently referring to the crown prince.

"We can see the West's double standards on issues regarding human rights... (they) became sensitive over the killing of this journalist and are seemingly following up, but they are silent on the crimes being committed in Yemen," the judiciary chief added.

Saudi Arabia is involved in a war in Yemen as the head of a military coalition supporting the government against Shiite Huthi rebels.

The coalition has drawn heavy UN criticism for the high civilian death toll from its bombing campaign in Yemen.

Iran says it politically supports the rebels, but has denied allegations it is arming them.

Iran had so far stayed quiet on the Khashoggi case, with Larijani's remarks being the first official reaction as Tehran has watched the furore over the Saudi journalist's fate plunge its rival into crisis.

"Saudi Arabia at first set out to cover up this crime with the help of the West and recently when it was forced to acknowledge it, it claimed that some rogue elements committed this crime to whitewash its corrupt system", Larijani said.

Story continues

He called on the world to grasp the gravity of "Saudi state terrorism".

On Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in an interview with Fox News that "individuals... (acting) outside the scope of their authority" were responsible for the "murder", and denied Prince Mohammed was behind it.

Britain, France and Germany have urged Riyadh to clarify how Khashoggi died, while US President Donald Trump accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing, saying in an interview "their stories are all over the place".Tokyo (AFP) - Two major construction companies were Monday ordered to pay fines totalling more than $3 million for colluding to win contracts on Japan's multi-billion-dollar maglev project.

The state-of-the-art maglev -- magnetic levitation -- trains are scheduled to begin commercial service between Tokyo and Nagoya in central Japan in 2027, later extending to the western hub of Osaka.

The giant project, estimated to cost nine trillion yen ($86 billion) in total, has seen a host of firms compete for contracts ranging from tunnelling work to building stations.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission brought charges against four companies in March for suspected anti-trust violations, accusing them of sharing estimated costs for construction work.

On Monday, the Tokyo district court ordered one of those companies, Obayashi, to pay 200 million yen ($1.77 million) and a second, Shimizu, to pay 180 million yen.

The case against the two other companies is still ongoing.

Presiding judge Takumi Suzuki said the collusion had "prevented fair and free competition", local media reported.

"We accept the ruling and we will do our best to take preventive measures and other additional steps to regain trust promptly," Obayashi said in a statement.

Shimizu described the collusion as "regrettable".

Maglev trains will run at 500 kilometres per hour (310 miles per hour), roughly twice as fast as the current bullet trains in Japan.

A maglev train clocked a new world speed record in a 2015 test run near Mount Fuji, smashing through the 600 kilometres per hour mark.Jared Kushner, President Donald Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, on Monday sidestepped questions about the apparent murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, responding to a question about whether he believes the Saudi governments denial that it ordered Khashoggis killing by saying the White House is more in the fact-finding phase.

Kushner said during a rare public appearance that the administration wants to determine which facts are credible. He dodged several questions about whether he trusts the Saudi governments changing explanations about Khashoggis death and whether the U.S. would take action against the government.

Were getting facts in from multiple places, Kushner told moderator Van Jones at the Citizen by CNN event.

CNN's Van Jones: Do you trust the Saudis to investigate themselves?



Jared Kushner: Were getting facts in from multiple places. Once those facts come in, the Secretary of State will work with our national security team to help us determine what we want to believe #CITIZENCNN pic.twitter.com/JW8MDkHl3J  CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 22, 2018

Kushner, who speaks regularly to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said he told the leader just to be transparent, to be fully transparent, but that well see if he follows that advice.

On Friday, officials claimed that Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight. Trump has continually taken the Saudi governments denials at face value.

The Trump administration has faced condemnation for not responding forcefully to Khashoggis disappearance and eventual death, despite growing evidence that Saudi officials ordered the killing of The Washington Post contributor, who had long been critical of the Saudi government.

Story continues

Kushner, whose wide White House portfolio includes being tasked with brokering peace with the Middle East, insisted that Saudi Arabia remains a very strong ally and that weve made a lot of progress.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan said on Sunday it would not extend the 25-year deal that allows Israel to use two tracts of territory along its border just as Israel said it was still planning to negotiate an extension. Much of the land in Baquora in the northwestern part of the kingdom and Ghumar in the south is used by Israeli farmers, some of whom were given private land ownership rights and special travel rights under a 1994 peace treaty between the two countries. The agreement will expire next year. King Abdullah has been under increasing public pressure to end the arrangements with Israel. He told senior Jordanian politicians the kingdom wanted to exercise its "full sovereignty" over the two areas, Petra state news agency said. "These are Jordanian lands and they will remain.." the monarch said. In an "era of regional turmoil" his kingdom -sandwiched between Syria to the north, Iraq to the east and Israel to its west - Jordan wanted to protect its "national interests," Abdullah said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking after Abdullah's comments on Sunday, acknowledged that Jordan wanted to exercise its option to end the arrangement. But he said Israel "will enter negotiations with it on the possibility of extending the current arrangement". Under the terms of peace treaty, the lease would be automatically renewed unless either of the parties notified the other a year before expiry that it wished to terminate the agreement, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday. Negotiations over ending the "special regime" of the two areas would be tough with Jordan facing thorny legal issues to reclaim the land where Israeli laws now apply, officials said. Jordan is one of only two Arab states that has a peace treaty with Israel and the two countries have a long history of close security ties. They have also been expanding economic ties in the last year including a major deal to export billions of dollars of Israeli gas to the kingdom through a pipeline that crosses their northern borders. But the peace treaty with Israel is unpopular and pro-Palestinian sentiment widespread in Jordan. Activists and politicians have been vocal against a renewal they say was humiliating and perpetuates Israeli "occupation" of Jordanian territory. Political ties have also become strained over the Middle East peace process. An incident last year in which an Israeli security guard killed two Jordanian citizens within the Israeli embassy compound added to the tension. Under an annex to the peace agreement, Israel uses about 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of agricultural land in the southern sector of its border with Jordan in the Wadi Araba desert where cash crops are exported to European and U.S. markets. In the Baquora area, known in Hebrew as Naharayim, Israeli citizens ownership rights date back to 1920's, when Russian Jewish engineer, Pinhas Rutenberg, obtained a concession in British mandated Palestine to build a power plant. In the 1994 peace treaty, Jordanian sovereignty over the area was confirmed but Israelis retained private land ownership and special provisions that allow free Israeli travel. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; editing by John Stonestreet, Adrian Croft, Anna Willard)SHANGHAI (AP)  Danielle Kang shot a 3-under 69 on Sunday to win the LPGA Shanghai by two strokes for her second career title.

Kang, who started the final round one stroke off the lead, offset a lone bogey on the par-5 fourth hole with four birdies after the turn to finish at 13-under 275 and hold off a late charge by Lydia Ko, who had the day's lowest score of 66.

"I hope I win more," Kang said. "I did the best I can. I'm going to keep working hard and keep giving myself chances and keep putting myself in contention. I'll win more. I'll play better."

Kang becomes the seventh player from the United States to win on the LPGA tour in 2018.

Ko, who had seven birdies and a lone bogey, tied for second at 11 under with a group of seven players that included Brittany Altomare (71), Ariya Jutanugarn (71) and overnight co-leader Sei Young Kim (72).

I played really solid," Ko said. I gave myself a lot of opportunities for birdies, and there was a

string there that I felt like I should have made birdies that I didn't."

Carlota Ciganda, who also held a share of the lead after the third round, shot a 73 to fall into a tie for ninth with Bronte Law and local favorite Lu Liu.

Paula Creamer carded three birdies against a pair of bogeys for a 71 to finish in sole possession of 12th place.

The tournament is the second of five being played in South Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan in the LPGA's annual Asian swing.The once-beloved American retailer Sears Holdings filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, and while many consumers were disappointed, thousands of Sears employees were devastated. One heartbroken Kmart store manager in McMurray, Pennsylvania fought back tears to make his final announcement before the location permanently closed last week -- and the video capturing the emotional moment has since gone viral.

"Attention Kmart shoppers, attention Kmart shoppers," Joshua Englert began the last announcement he would make.

"I wanted to take this opportunity not to sell you 40 cent plaid skirts or 5 cent panties, but instead to thank you for supporting a lifetime of memories," he continued. "A sincere thank-you to the people who have made this store their second home. Im the man I am today because of the people Ive met here at Kmart."

Englert, who has worked at Kmart for 18 years, used the opportunity to share some memories and concluded to a round of applause.

"I started when I was 16 as a cashier and worked my way up to store manager by the time I was 23," he told Yahoo Lifestyle.

Englert posted the video to his Facebook page and has since been viewed over 277,000 times and has been shared over 2,250 times.

RELATED: 46 Sears and Kmart locations closing

ERBIL, Iraq (AP)  The Iraqi Kurdish party behind last year's ill-fated independence referendum has won the most seats in parliamentary elections held in the autonomous Kurdish region, authorities said Sunday.

The elections commission says the Kurdistan Democratic Party won 45 seats, 12 short of an outright majority in the 111-seat body.

Kurdish voters endorsed independence in a referendum last year that was marked by low turnout. Iraq's central government refused to accept the results, and responded by seizing control of the mixed, multi-ethnic oil-city of Kirkuk and other territories.

The elections commission announced the results of the September 30 vote on Sunday.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan came in second, with 21 seats.

The Gorran party came in third. It accused the PUK and KDP of vote-rigging and fraud.

"We believe that over 200,000 IDs were faked for the benefit of the two main political parties," said Fakir Mohammed, the head of public relations for Gorran.

The Kurdish region's electoral commission was divided over whether to ratify the results. Four commissioners  two from Gorran, one from the party Komal and one from the Kurdistan Islamic Union  said they voted against endorsing the outcome, alleging ballot box tampering and the use of intimidation tactics against observers on polling day. They said they did not accept the results, in a statement carried in the semi-official media outlet Rudaw.

But the commission proceeded to ratify the vote, with the other five commissioners, each from the KDP and PUK, voting in favor.

Mohammed said Gorran was considering whether to boycott parliament. The party lost half its seats in the body, to hold just 12.

Mohammed added that his party was weakened by the passing of its charismatic founder, Nawshirwan Mustafa. He died in May 2017.TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP)  The latest on the caravan of Central Americans trying to reach the United States (all times local):

6:30 p.m.

The first waves of Central Americans in a huge migrant caravan have begun arriving in the southern Mexico town of Huixtla after an exhausting eight-hour walk.

The first to arrive are quickly staking out grassy spots in the town square where they will sleep Monday night.

Marlon Anibal Castellanos is a 27-year-old former bus driver from San Pedro Sula in Honduras. He roped a bit of plastic tarp to a tree to shelter his wife, 6-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter.

Castellanos says the family walked for six hours until they could go no farther and then paid a passing van 25 pesos ($12) to take them the rest of the way.

He says there are no ambulances if the kids should pass out in the heat and no medical care to speak of in the middle of the countryside.

In his words: "It's hard to travel with children."

___

2 p.m.

A spokesman for El Salvador's president says the government hopes that tensions over a migrant caravan advancing through Mexico with a goal of reaching the U.S. border decrease after the U.S. midterm elections Nov. 6.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday via Twitter that El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala had failed to stop people from leaving their countries. He added: "We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them."

Roberto Lorenzana said that El Salvador did what it could, but the caravan did not cross through its territory.

Lorenzana expressed "confidence in the maturity of United States authorities to continue strengthening a positive relationship with our country."

He said El Salvador has significantly reduced violence, which was driving migrants, and that the flow of Salvadoran migrants has dropped 60 percent in two years.

___

1:55 p.m.

The United Nations is estimating that the caravan of Central American migrants making their way through southern Mexico currently comprises more than 7,200 people.

Story continues

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq gave the estimate to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York Monday. He said the International Organization for Migration reported that large numbers of people were still arriving in Mexico and "are likely to remain in the country for an extended period."

Haq said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed to leaders in the region over the weekend that they need to work with IOM and the U.N. refugee agency, which are both assisting different countries right now.

Haq said UNHCR dispatched an emergency team and now has 32 people in the Mexican towns of Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula near the Guatemala border.

He said that number will increase to ensure that members of the caravan have information on Mexico's asylum system, as well as legal advice and humanitarian assistance for those who seek asylum.

___

1:45 p.m.

Thousands of Central American migrants have resumed their march north through Mexico toward the United States, though they're still a long way away.

The migrants began to leave the southern city of Tapachula under a burning sun Monday afternoon, bound for Huixtla about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away.

Twenty-eight-year-old Carlos Leonidas Garcia Urbina from Tocoa, Honduras, says he was cutting the grass in his father's yard when he heard about the caravan.

He says he dropped the shears right there and ran to join it with just 500 lempiras ($20) in his pocket.

Motioning to his fellow travelers in the caravan, he said: "We are going to the promised land."

___

12:35 p.m.

An immigrant rights activist traveling with the caravan of Central American migrants is accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of using the group of thousands to stir up his base before the U.S. midterm elections.

Irineo Mujica of the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras says "It is a shame that a president so powerful uses this caravan for political ends."

He says there are two things responsible for the migration: "hunger and death."

He says "no one is capable of organizing this many people. Nobody. It's an exodus."

Pueblo Sin Fronteras is a group that tries to provide humanitarian aid to migrants.

___

10:20 a.m.

A Honduran-born leader of the migrant caravan trying to make its way through Mexico says U.S. President Donald Trump should stop accusing the caravan of harboring terrorists.

Denis Omar Contreras says, "There isn't a single terrorist here."

He said Monday all of those involved are from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. And he adds, "As far as I know there are no terrorists in these four countries, at least beyond the corrupt governments."

___

8:20 a.m.

U.S. President Donald Trump says the U.S. will begin "cutting off, or substantially reducing" aid to three Central American nations over a migrant caravan heading to the U.S. southern border.

Trump tweets: "Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S."

The three countries combined received more than $500 million in funding from the U.S. in fiscal year 2017.

Trump has raised alarm over a group of thousands of migrants traveling through Mexico to the U.S., saying, "Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan."

He adds: "I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy." White House officials could not immediately provide details.

___

5 a.m.

Thousands of Honduran migrants hoping to reach the U.S. have stretched out on rain-soaked sidewalks, benches and public plazas in the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, worn down by another day's march under a blazing sun.

They've been keeping together for strength and safety in numbers.

Some huddled under a metal roof in the city's main plaza Sunday night. Others lay exhausted in the open air, with only thin sheets of plastic to protect them from ground soggy from an intense evening shower. Some didn't even have a bit of plastic yet.

The group's advance has drawn strong criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, who lashed out again Sunday at the Democratic Party over what he apparently sees as a winning issue for Republicans a little over two weeks ahead of midterm elections.Dozens of students were taken to hospital after a floor collapsed at a Clemson University fraternity party in South Carolina on Saturday night.

At least 30 people were injured when the centre of the dance floor caved in and party-goers dropped into the basement below.

Police said none of the injuries sustained by the students were life-threatening, but several of the victims suffered broken bones.

Some witnesses lucky enough to be standing on the space around the centre of the floor filmed the collapse on their phones.

The beat was about to drop and literally the whole floor collapsed, sophomore student Larissa Stone told The Anderson Independent-Mail.

It happened so quickly. I stood up, and everyone was trying to climb out. People are under other people. People are hurt. People are bleeding. I had blood on my sneakers. It was really bad.

Leroy Pearson told CBS affiliate WSPA-TV: Im jumping, I had my hands in the air and I can feel myself falling. Then I wake up, because I blacked out, and there [were] girls everywhere with blood all over their face.

The Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity held its annual homecoming party on Saturday night at an event space inside the Woodlands of Clemson apartment complex near the university campus.

Property manager Tal Slann said he could not comment on whether there was a limit on the number of people supposed to use the event space at one time.

Clemson police said they would be investigating the cause of the floor collapse.

I'm monitoring the situation, and my thoughts and prayers are with all who were injured. Our entire student support system will be available for any student impacted. https://t.co/QnSUdbP1GA  Jim Clements (@ClemsonPrez) October 21, 2018

University president Jim Clements tweeted: Im monitoring the situation, and my thoughts and prayers are with all who were injured. Our entire student support system will be available for any student impacted.Lenny Dykstra was back in court Monday where his lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Dykstra, who won the 1986 World Series with the New York Mets, was indicted two weeks ago on two drug charges and one terroristic threat charge.

The charges date back to an incident with an Uber driver in New Jersey in May. The case is being handled by the Union County Superior Court in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Dykstra, a three-time All-Star with the Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, is set to return to court Dec. 3.

Dykstra, lawyer talk briefly to reporters

Dykstra did not speak at the court hearing, instead allowing his new attorney, David S. Bahuriak, to enter the plea.

When the two left the courthouse followed by a group of reporters, they each had a few things to say according to the Bridgewater Courier News.

Dykstra said he is a man of the people and that theyll let the process handle itself and the truth will come out.

Bahuriak added that the former player is a big personality.

Anyone who knows him, knows that, he said. Lenny is a wild guy. Lenny is a man of the people, but Lennys not a bad guy, hes not a violent guy and the evidence in this case is going to show that.

Lenny Dykstra pleaded not guilty to drug and terroristic threat charges. (AP)

Bahuriak said there are accusations that arent based in fact and the court hearing will clear those up.

This has been an overblown incident from the very beginning, Bahuriak said. He is not guilty, he did not commit a crime and the evidence is going to show that.

Dykstra arrested in May

Dykstra was arraigned on charges of cocaine possession, meth possession and terroristic threats.

He was arrested in May after allegedly threatening an Uber driver with a gun after changing his requested destination upon pick-up. According to the police report, he held a black pill bag with an object in it to the back of the drivers head. The driver believed it to be a gun.

The driver drove to the police station, instead of to Dykstras requested destination, and filed charges. Police then found drugs on Dykstra, but no gun.

Story continues

Dykstra alleges that he was kidnapped, that the driver was going to kill him and that he did not have a gun.

He could face up to 10 years in prison, according to the Courier News, in part because of prior convictions. He served time previously for grand theft auto and filing a false financial statement.

More from Yahoo Sports:

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LGBTQ rights activist and YouTuber Jazz Jennings is speaking up against the Trump administrations reported plan to redefine gender as the one given at birth, declaring, That is not happening.

We have been declaring our existence for so many years and were not going to let this administration erase that, Jennings told fans Monday in a YouTube video titled #WontBeErased.

Her resistance comes a day after The New York Times reported that the White House is considering defining gender as unchangeable, given by birth genitalia  male or female  rather than a choice. The move could remove recognition and protections for transgender people under federal civil rights law.

Jennings, who is female but was assigned male at birth, said shes not worried about the proposal, but will nevertheless speak against it.

Its not fair. Its not fair that we keep saying that this is who we are and we are not hurting anyone and yet people try to take away our rights, she said. So, its not going to happen and Im not worried about it because we have been fighting this fight forever, and nothing is going to change that.

I am not afraid. Us transgender and gender non-conforming people have been declaring our existence for so long and have only continued to grow stronger in our voices. If we were ever going to be eradicated, it wouldve happened long ago. Love all https://t.co/zoSw9CgR0L  Jazz Jennings (@JazzJennings__) October 22, 2018

Actress Laverne Cox also condemned the reported Trump proposal in a series of tweets on Sunday that called for action.

Trans people have been under attack by this administration from day 1 and in state legislatures for years now, said Cox, a transgender woman. Lets join together American and assert #TransRightsAreHumanRights.

LGBTQ advocacy groups, including the Transgender Law Center, also blasted the idea.

Story continues

Weve always known this administration intends nothing short of the destruction of our communities. Here, written out plain, is their attempt to erase our very existence as transgender people, the law center tweeted.

The National Center for Transgender Equality labeled the proposal an attack on transgender people and vowed to fight.

Were here. You cant define us out of existence, the group tweeted.

Related...

Meet Jazz Jennings, The Transgender Teen Who Is Changing The World

Jazz Jennings Has Classy Response To Duggar Family Member's Transphobia

Teen Reality Star Jazz Jennings 'Doing Great' After Gender Confirmation Surgery

Laverne Cox Responds To Possible Trump Anti-Transgender Move: 'I Choose Love Not Fear'

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.Thomas Markle, Meghan Markles father, said he found out his daughter and Prince Harrys baby news like everyone else: from the media.

Markle, a former Hollywood lighting director who lives in Mexico, told The Mail on Sunday that he was sitting in line waiting to cross the border when I heard the baby announcement on the car radio.

The first thing I thought about was holding Meghan in my arms as a newborn 37 years ago, said Markle, who reportedly hasnt spoken with his daughter since the day after her royal wedding in May. I thought, My baby is having a baby. It was a very proud moment.

He added: I was filled with love, joy and happiness for both my beautiful daughter and my son-in-law. A new baby is a blessing and I look forward to seeing a little Meghan or a little Harry.

Thomas Markle during an interview with "Good Morning Britain" earlier this year. (Photo: ITVs Good Morning Britain)

Kensington Palace announced last week that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expecting their first child in the spring of 2019.

Their Royal Highnesses have appreciated all of the support they have received from people around the world since their wedding in May and are delighted to be able to share this happy news with the public, the palace said.

While Thomas Markle sounded excited about the news, Meghans half-sister, Samantha Grant, was upset that their father was not included in an official palace statement about the baby.

I would hope that  for the sake of the baby, the family, the world and my dad  that leaving him out of the statement was not intentional, Grant said in an interview with The Sun last week.

The palace has only issued a statement from Meghans mother, Doria Ragland, since the pregnancy was announced. Ragland is very happy about this lovely news and is looking forward to welcoming her first grandchild, a palace spokeswoman said.

HuffPost has reached out to Kensington Palace for comment.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are currently on a 16-day royal tour that includes stops in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit Kingfisher Bay Resort on October 22, 2018 in Fraser Island, Australia. (Photo: Pool/Samir Hussein via Getty Images)

Meghan spoke about her pregnancy during the trip last week, telling a royals fan it was like having jet lag.

Story continues

She said she was up at 4:30 a.m. this morning doing yoga in her room as she couldnt sleep, the fan, named Charlotte Waverley, told Sky News.

The palace said the former Suits actress was temporarily reducing her schedule on the tour.

After a busy program, the Duke and Duchess have decided to cut back the Duchesss schedule slightly for the next couple of days, ahead of the final week-and-a-half of their tour, the palace told The Sydney Morning Herald.

The two will need all the rest they can get before the baby comes!

Royal news doesnt stop at the wedding. Subscribe to HuffPosts Watching the Royals newsletter for all things Windsor (and beyond).

Related...

Meghan Markle's Half Sister Breaks Silence On Royal Baby News

Meghan Markle Opens Up About Her Pregnancy During Royal Tour

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Also on HuffPost

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.MUNICH (Reuters) - German drugmaker Merck KGaA might agree partnership deals to jointly develop two of its most promising experimental medicines with a rival as early as this year, but more likely in 2019, its drug research and development chief said on Sunday. "It's possible even as early as the end of the year but that's really a stretch - or sometime in 2019," Luciano Rossetti told Reuters at the annual congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Munich on Sunday. Merck has a promising drug pipeline for the first time in several years but a decline in operating profit at its high-tech chemicals division has forced it to look into new ways to finance pharmaceutical development. It is looking to take a collaborative approach for cancer drug M7824 and autoimmune disease treatment evobrutinib, in particular. Among updates on a range of phase I trial data on M7824 in various cancer types released at ESMO, the drug was shown to delay the progression of a certain type of lung cancer for at least 9.5 months in half of the trial participants. Merck has already started a phase II trial in non-small cell lung cancer, comparing M7824 directly with Keytruda by U.S. rival Merck & Co, currently seen as the most promising cancer immunotherapy on the market with about $8 billion in sales expected this year. Although they share historic routes, the two companies have no ownership ties. M7824, a bifunctional fusion protein, combines the immunotherapy mechanism of Merck's approved cancer drug Bavencio with a second immune trigger known as TGF-beta trap. Drugs typically go through three phases of testing before a market launch, but in cancer trials this can be cut to two when regulators see sufficient promise. "The market is almost myopically focused on whether or not Merck will be successful in partnering its emerging pipeline assets," such as M7824 in oncology, a Barclays analyst said in August. The family-controlled company released some initial data from early- and mid-stage trials late in May, bolstering the share price. Evobrutinib, a so-called BTK inhibitor designed to block white blood cells from launching an immune response at healthy cells, is in the second phase of testing. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)Thousands of Honduran migrants cross the border into Mexico, pressing on in their march towards the United States. The caravan has defied Mexico's warning that it will deport anyone without the proper paperwork, and U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to use the military to shut down the border. Eve Johnson reports.President Donald Trump says the United States will start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolls on regardless toward the US border. The United Nations says more than 7,000 people were now heading toward the United States, as more migrants joined the original group, including some Central Americans who were already in Mexico.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan negotiated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which paved the way for arms reductions - HULTON ARCHIVE

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, on Sunday warned Donald Trump against leaving a Cold War-era weapons treaty, saying the move could have unintended consequences.

The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was negotiated by Mr Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan to eliminate all land-based nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges between 310 and 3400 miles.

However, the US has repeatedly accused Russia of violating its terms.

Both sides have hinted at military retaliation in a dispute that threatens a return to the darkest days of the Cold War.

Mr Gorbachev said Mr Trumps announcement at the weekend that he was abandoning the deal was a mistake.

"Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements. ... Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?" he said, according to Interfax News Agency.

"Quitting the INF is a mistake."

The US accuses Russia of breaching the terms of the deal Credit: US Air Force via AP

A Kremlin spokesman said Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, would seek answers from the US about the planned withdrawal when he meets John Bolton, Mr Trump's national security adviser, who was due in Moscow for two days of what are expected to be tense talks.

The talks are believed to be laying the ground work for a second Trump-Putin summit.

American officials believe Moscow has deployed a ground system that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

The US fears the treaty also leaves it at a disadvantage against China, which is not a party to the deal.

Gavin Williamson, UK Defence Secretary, backed Mr Trump, saying Russia was making a mockery of the agreement.

Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth in New York harbour Credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP

Our close and long-term ally of course is the US and we will be absolutely resolute with the US in hammering home a clear message that Russia needs to respect the treaty obligation that it signed, he said during a visit to New York.

But Sergei Ryabkov, Russian deputy foreign minister, said that a unilateral US withdrawal would be very dangerous and lead to a military-technical retaliation.

Story continues

It would cause the most serious condemnation from all members of the international community who are committed to security and stability, he was quoted as saying by the state news agency Tass.

Last week, Kay Bailey Hutchison, US ambassador to Nato, threatened military action against any missiles that contravened the deal.

The countermeasures would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty, she said.PAMPLONA, Colombia (AP)  As night approached, Sandra Cadiz wrapped her shivering 10-year-old daughter in a blanket and prayed for a ride up the frigid Colombian mountaintop known as "the icebox."

Two days before, the mother and daughter had fled Venezuela on foot for a 2,700-mile trek through four countries to Peru, joining more than 650 migrants who walk out each day because they cannot afford a plane or bus ticket. Cadiz knew not everyone survived the dangerous trek, but she feared staying in Venezuela would mean her already malnourished daughter going hungry.

Now, after five hours of waiting, Cadiz braced herself for a long, cold night sleeping on the ground outside a gas station.

"I am doing this for her," Cadiz, 51, said of her daughter Angelis.

In one of the biggest migrations in the world today, more than 1.9 million people have fled poverty, hunger and crime in Venezuela since 2015  rivaling the flow of Middle Eastern and African refugees to Europe. Although the toll of this migration is largely invisible, data collected by AP from various agencies found that deaths and disappearances could reach a few thousand, depending on how they are counted.

At least 235 Venezuelans were reported missing in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador over the last two years. Some 334 in Colombia were killed in homicides and accidents, and an unknown number drowned aboard shoddy boats in the Caribbean. Another 2,841 died in Colombia from illnesses like malaria and malnutrition; though it's difficult to know exactly what role migration played, many arrive weakened by the exodus.

"They can't withstand a trip that hard, because the journey is very long," said Carlos Valdes, the head of Colombia's forensic services office. "They don't eat and they die."

The daughter of a housewife and a cemetery worker, Cadiz got pregnant at 15 and dropped out of school. One husband was killed in a robbery, another in a motorcycle accident. Her oldest child died at 25 in a hail of 20 bullets by an unknown killer.

Story continues

As food became harder to find, Cadiz and her daughter frequently slept outside supermarkets to grab whatever was available when doors opened. Over the summer, her son, his wife and their baby fled on foot to Peru.

When the government announced a bonus to help Venezuelans transition to a new currency with five fewer zeroes, Cadiz saw her chance to buy two bus tickets to the border with Colombia. That night she told Angelis they could spend the money on new shoes, or they could reunite with her brother in Peru.

"Let's go, mama," Angelis told her. "I'll walk in my broken shoes."

The trek through Colombia often starts on illegal dirt trails across the border ruled by armed men. Three days before Cadiz and Angelis left, police found the corpse of a 44-year-old father shot five times.

In Cucuta alone, officials have 37 unidentified bodies believed to belong to Venezuelans.

"They die and we don't know who they are," Valdes said.

Cadiz boarded a bus to the Colombian border with her passport  Angelis didn't have one  and a handwritten death certificate for Angelis' father. At the border, they got separated amid a swarm of migrants. A frantic Cadiz finally spotted her daughter on the other side; she had slipped through without being asked to show a passport.

The next day they set off walking toward the Colombian mountain highland known as the Berlin paramo, where temperatures can dip to 10 degrees below freezing. Anny Uribe, who runs a refuge for migrant walkers, said she has heard direct witness accounts of at least 17 people dying in the paramo. Officials could not confirm any deaths but concede they may never have been reported.

Migrant Isaia Alberto Munoz, 34, said he saw a family digging a hole and crying along the side of the road, as they buried someone wrapped in a white blanket with red flowers. His group decided they could not stop to help.

"We couldn't withstand the cold," he said.

Cadiz was terrified she and her daughter would get stranded and die. But after spending the night at the gas station in the freezing cold, they decided to take their chances and walk.

Over five hours later, Alba Camacho and a friend spotted them. The 27-year-old teacher stopped, wrapped Angelis in her own thick blue coat and took the pair to her friend's home for the night, where Cadiz heard Angelis talking in her sleep.

"I don't want to walk anymore!" she cried out.

Early the next morning they set off on foot again, walking and hitching rides, but the progress was agonizingly slow. By the following evening, they were barely a quarter of the way from Venezuela to Peru. They found themselves stranded at a gas station in a remote area known only as "Kilometer 17."

"We're trapped," Cadiz told her son in a WhatsApp voice message. But she had no cell signal, so the cry for help didn't go through.

They spent that night on the floor beneath a mechanic's tin roof. Exhausted, mother and daughter wept.

The next day, Cadiz decided to switch her strategy: She had collected 250,000 pesos - about $82-- from generous Colombians and would use the money to bargain for seats on buses. That day they finally made their way to Cali and then bought two bus tickets to Ecuador.

At the border, a man told Cadiz he'd buy any Venezuelan bolivars she might have. Cadiz took out all that was left of her life savings.

The man offered her fifty cents.

After more than four hours in lines, Cadiz finally reached a migration agent. She stared at Angelis' national identification card and let them through. Cadiz's relief was visible as she smiled for a photo beneath a "Thanks for Visiting Ecuador" sign.

Once across the border, they got on a bus to Peru - provided for free by the Ecuadorean government. Twenty hours later, they emerged hungry and suffering from nausea and indigestion.

Eight days after fleeing Caracas, Angelis and her mother had reached their final border. The next day, Cadiz pulled her documents out of a crinkled Hello Kitty folder one last time. After reviewing them carefully, a migration agent asked Angelis to step in front of a camera. She grinned ear to ear.

"Calm down," the agent told her coldly. "Don't smile."

By the time they reached Lima, they didn't have a cent in their pockets. But they had made it.

"I arrived by a miracle," Cadiz said.TOKYO (Reuters) - The CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group's banking arm will not attend the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, the group said on Sunday, joining a growing list of business executives to withdraw over concern about the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A spokesman for the Japanese company said that MUFG Bank Deputy President Eiichi Yoshikawa will attend the Saudi event in place of CEO Kanetsugu Mike. MUFG said the decision was made after "evaluating factors in a comprehensive manner". Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist critical of Riyadh's policies, disappeared on Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia on Saturday said he had died in a fight there. Two Saudi officials have since attributed the death to a chokehold. More than two dozen top officials and executives from the United States and Europe, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the chief executives of JP Morgan Chase and HSBC, have canceled plans to attend the Future Investment Initiative. (Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by David Goodman)Leslie Nielsen starred in three Naked Gun movies. (Paramount)

There could be a fourth Naked Gun film on the way, if series co-creator David Zucker gets his way.

The director and co-creator of the series told Little White Lies that hes planning a new Naked Gun film centred on Frank Drebin Jr., and he hopes to cast Bill Hader as the son of Leslie Nielsens bungling detective.

Zucker, one third of comedy team Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker (ZAZ) who were responsible for Airplane! and the 1982 Police Squad TV series that spawned the Naked Gun films, confirmed a script was in the works and that the fourth film would be a spoof of The Bourne Identity, Mission: Impossible and James Bond.

Were doing a fourth one now, Zucker told LWL ahead of the 30 anniversary of 1988s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!.

So many years have passed since the last Naked Gun, but I think that sense of humour is very much still alive. People still laugh at these kind of slapstick jokes and characters taking it all seriously. It just hasnt been done in 10 years.





The comedy spoof, which also starred OJ Simpson, spawned two sequels: The Naked Gun 2: The Smell of Fear in 1991, and Naked Gun 33: The Final Insult in 1994. Leslie Nielsen, who played Detective Frank Drebin in all three films sadly passed away in 2010, but the new film will focus on his son whos out of the solve the mystery of his fathers demise.

Now its the son of Frank Drebin, Zucker says. Theres an evil Russian crime lord who killed Frank Drebin and swore to kill every Drebin he could find in the phone book so he and his mother Jane (Priscilla Presley) are in witness protection.

Drebins son is recruited by the CIA to be a decoy and try to take down the Russian crime lord. He flies to Europe and it becomes a spoof on The Bourne Identity, Mission: Impossible, and James Bond.

Zucker says hes working on a second draft of a script with Pat Proft (Police Academy, Scary Movie 3) and another writer called Mike McManus.

The Hangover star Ed Helms had been previously linked with the role of Drebin, but he told Yahoo in 2015 that the film was stuck in development hell.

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It sounds like Helms has dropped out of the project now, with Zucker touting SNL star Bill Hader for the lead role.

We have the advantage of being able to get a comedian this time. It doesnt have to be another straight man actor like Leslie, Zucker explains when asked about replacing Nielsen.

We were thinking of perhaps Bill Hader. I think hes marvellous. Hes able to be a leading man and a comedian at the same time so hes one possibility. It can definitely work again.

Read more

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Rare posters coming to auction

The best end-credit gagsRep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) is hoping to take Dean Heller's Senate seat. (Photo: Ethan Miller via Getty Images)

LAS VEGAS  It seemed like there was every indication Dean Heller was toast this year. Hes the only GOP senator up for re-election in a state that Democrat Hillary Clinton won in 2016. He aligned himself with Donald Trump, a figure reviled by many communities here, after once saying he vehemently opposed him. He voted to repeal Obamacare, a risky move that opened him up to blistering attacks over health care.

Yet polls are showing Heller in a dead heat with his opponent, Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), just weeks out from the midterm election. Democrats say theyre optimistic that a blue wave will help them oust Heller, a win they need in order to retake the Senate. But worrying signs about lagging Latino engagement across the country and Trumps rising popularity in Nevada could hand them an unexpected setback in November.

Theres a basic reality that Republicans tend to do better in midterms, said Doug Heye, a former communications director at the Republican National Committee. [Heller] has done everything right that he could in a difficult environment. ... This race is not going to be decided by thousands and thousands of votes, but by hundreds of votes.

Heller could squeak by to his second term if turnout mirrors low levels seen in past midterm elections. Nevada Latinos cast just 10 percent of the votes in 2014  a number Democrats need to beat if they want to send Rosen to Washington. And although Republicans havent done as well in Nevada recently, its still a purple state. Clinton won it by just 27,000 votes in the 2016 election, a much smaller margin than in previous presidential contests.

To win re-election, Heller needs to outperform with white voters in rural parts of the state. Thats why the White House dispatched Trump to a rally with the senator in the remote northern town of Elko on Saturday. Increasing the rural share of the vote there would help offset more urban areas of the state.

I think that blue wave is being rapidly shattered, Trump said at the event. You know, all the Democrats want is power, and theyve got this blue wave deal going. Not looking like a blue wave.

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Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) steps off Air Force One with President Donald Trump ahead of a rally in Elko, Nevada, on Saturday. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the south, Democrats answered by bringing in their own heavy hitters  former Vice President Joe Biden showed up on Saturday, and former President Barack Obama is scheduled to make an appearance Monday  to help galvanize their base as early voting started in the state. Both men are viewed as a liability in pure red states where Trump is overwhelmingly popular, but they could help Democrats close the gap with young and Latino voters in a purple state like Nevada.

Folks, its time to get up! Lift our heads up! Biden thundered at a labor event in downtown Las Vegas on Saturday, urging people to cast their vote for Rosen. Remember who the hell we are. Take back the Senate and change the world as we know it.

Its a no-holds-barred fight to get out the vote just days away from Nov. 6  one with huge implications for this year and beyond.

Will Latinos Show Up?

Democrats may be facing a big problem with Latino voters, who dont seem to be as enthusiastic about voting as they were when then-candidate Trump drove minorities to the polls in 2016 with his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In several majority-Latino districts across the country, for example, Democrats are currently underperforming Clintons numbers from two years ago. If these voters fail to show up on Election Day, it could seriously hamper Democratic chances of regaining control of Congress.

Latinos have been asked to play defense over and over again and over again. Vote against this, vote against that. What we havent had in a very long time is something to vote for, David Garcia, a Democratic candidate for governor in Arizona, said a recent MSNBC interview.

A similar trend may also be taking place in Nevada, a state whose population is made up of about 28 percent Latinos and growing.

Heller has shown surprising strength with Latino voters. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows he has the support of 38 percent of Latino voters in Nevada  a significant amount for a Republican. His campaign has directed outreach groups to engage Latino and Asian-American voters in Nevada, especially those who are in the business community, in hopes of siphoning away votes from Democrats.

We are firmly committed to earning every vote, and that includes Hispanics and every other group in Nevada, said Heller campaign spokesman Keith Shipper.

In another concerning sign for Democrats, the Cook Political Report recently downgraded an open House seat in the Las Vegas area that is 54 percent nonwhite from Likely Democratic to Lean Democratic.

Its a sharp contrast to the 2016 election, when Latino voters across the country and in Nevada stood in line for hours to cast their ballots against Trump. The uptick in Latino participation in that election helped Clinton carry the state and paved the way for Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto to become the first Latina senator in U.S. history.

"I'm not leaving without a taco," Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) remarked to an aide at a Saturday campaign stop before loading up on some late lunch. (Photo: Igor Bobic / HuffPost)

Rosen is not a member of the Latino community and doesnt speak Spanish. But she has made a huge play for minority communities, including Latinos.

She has flooded the state with Spanish-language TV ads focusing on key issues like health care, education and immigration. She also supports passing a clean Dream Act to protect young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Everybodys fired up, they know whats at stake. I feel really good about it, Rosen told HuffPost after greeting supporters at an early vote kick-off party in East Las Vegas on Saturday that featured a mariachi band and taco stands.

Yet the first-term congresswoman who once worked as a computer programmer isnt as well-known as other Democrats who succeeded in winning statewide here.

Cortez Masto, for example, had history on her side, and former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) played kingmaker with a prominent post in the Senate. Republican super PACs, meanwhile, have spent millions of dollars on television ads in efforts to define Rosen as an extreme liberal who supports sanctuary cities and hasnt done enough to stop illegal immigration or gangs like MS-13. Trump even gave her a derisive nickname: Wacky Jacky.

Still, theres evidence of strong interest in Rosens bid for Senate. Her campaign announced this week that it had out-raised Heller by a 3-to-1 margin, hauling in $7.1 million in contributions since August. And in even more eye-popping news, she raised an additional $5 million in the period from Oct. 1 through Oct. 17, her campaign said Friday.

Theres good energy. Fundraising been going extremely well for her, if thats any indicator of the intensity, said Teresa Benitez-Thompson, a Democrat and the majority floor leader of the Nevada State Assembly.

The Reid Machine Revs Up

In addition to bringing in big names like Obama and Biden, Democrats are relying on the fabled Reid machine, named after the former Senate majority leader, to help turn the tide in Nevada. Its an institutional advantage Republicans lack, and its kicking into high gear this weekend as thousands of state Democratic Party officials and volunteers begin making calls, knocking on doors and registering new voters.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

Former Vice President Joe Biden rallies Democrats at an early vote rally in Las Vegas. (Photo: Ethan Miller via Getty Images)

One of the organizations playing a key part in the effort is the powerful Culinary Workers Union, which represents 57,000 workers at the majority of casinos and hotels on the Las Vegas strip. Its headquarters in the state is a major stop for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. Biden appeared with Rosen and other Democratic candidates a rally there Saturday, where he urged people to vote.

My name is Joe Biden. I work for Harry Reid! he yelled, kicking off a rally of about 500 supporters and union members by invoking the name of the de facto boss of the Nevada Democratic Party.

But the Reid machine is missing its namesake this year. The retired 78-year-old senator underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in May, and he has largely stayed off the radar while recovering. The November election will test whether the vaunted operation can still deliver for Democrats as it has before.

In-person early voting in Nevada runs through Nov. 2, but well probably get a good idea of where the electorate stands by the time votes start coming in on Monday. A significant number of Nevadans cast their ballots prior to Election Day thanks to state laws that have lowered barriers to vote, especially when compared to that of other states.

People can vote this voting day anywhere, not just in their precinct, Benitez-Thompson said. Its going to be easier to vote in the state of Nevada this go-around than ever before.

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Also on HuffPost

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.Lagos (AFP) - A leading opposition politician and critic of Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari appeared in court on Monday on corruption charges, less than a week after he stepped down as state governor.

Peter Ayodele Fayose pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of criminal breach of trust and theft totalling nearly $18 million (15.5 million euros).

The Federal High Court in Lagos was told that Fayose, 57, and his company, Spotless Limited, took the cash to fund his 2014 campaign to become governor of the southwestern state of Ekiti.

The case was adjourned until Wednesday and Fayose was remanded into the custody of Nigeria's main anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Fayose is one of the most prominent members of Nigeria's main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and tried to secure the ticket to run against Buhari at elections next year.

He stepped down as governor on October 16 after a controversial election for his successor that was mired in claims of vote-buying by the PDP and the ruling All Progressives Congress.

As governor, he had immunity from prosecution.

He has been held and questioned since last Tuesday, when he voluntarily turned up at the EFCC's offices in Abuja with a crowd of supporters, wearing a T-shirt saying: "EFCC I'm here."

The latest prosecution is part of Buhari's pledge to root out corruption in Nigerian politics, which has led to PDP claims of a witch-hunt as most of those charged are its members.

Before the 2015 election, Fayose claimed Buhari was terminally ill with prostate cancer, was too old to be president and would die in office.

He more recently called for the 75-year-old head of state to resign and criticised his decision to be treated abroad for an undisclosed illness that kept him out of Nigeria for months.Kim Kardashian sat down on The Alec Baldwin Show, where the reality star admitted that she thinks Alice Marie Johnson would still be in prison today if her husband Kanye West wasnt a Trump supporter. I do believe she would still be in prison, Kardashian told Alec Baldwin. Alice and I spoke about this. We spoke on the phone yesterday, and we've spoke about this a few times. She always says, Alice always says, If it wasn't for Kanye speaking up in support of Trump, then she would still be in jail. Earlier this year, Kardashian met with Donald Trump at the White House, where she successfully persuaded the President to grant a pardon for Johnson, who was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole, after playing a small part in one drug deal. She was the phone mule, Kardashian explained to Baldwin. She didn't know who, she didn't know how much, what kind of drugs. She didn't know anything. She had to say one sentence. Some weird sentence, and that was it. Kim also admitted that it was in the wake of her Paris robbery, which took place two years ago, that she began to take interest in prison reform, and that Johnson was just the beginning for her.

I think I just want to continue doing what I'm doing. I feel like I have a voice. They're listening. We're making, you know, positive things happen. I'm very focused, Kardashian told Baldwin, who then asked what her next move is. Kardashian responded, The bigger goal is to get these bills passed that really change the laws to, you know, make the distinction, between, you know, crack and cocaine completely separate and just start getting people out. Kardashian also shared that she is currently putting up her own money to fund cases that shes passionate about,and that she reads letters and stories from people in prison all the time. However, she wont just take on any case. I felt like Alice Johnson found me. You know? Like, I connected with her, so I really do have to connect, said Kardashian. While Kardashian has become an advocate for criminal justice reform, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star still maintains that shes not so into politics and, unlike her husband, she knows where to draw the line. I wasn't really into politics as much until, I think, more recently. And even so, I'm not so into politics. I'll find something that I believe in, and I figured out how to use my voice in that area, but as far as when it does come to my business, to me, it's all very separate.Lima (AFP) - A Peruvian court postponed Sunday a ruling on a prosecutor's demand to put opposition leader Keiko Fujimori in preventive detention for 36 months, which she called a conspiracy to "bury" her presidential hopes.

Anti-corruption prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez had asked the court to hold Fujimori and 11 others for the lengthy period as his team investigates who benefited from millions of dollars in campaign bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

However, Sunday's hearing was adjourned by Judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho after defense lawyers said the prosecution had failed to hand over requested documents, and would need more time to make their case.

The judge said he would give "24 hours to the prosecution to comply with the request" and then call a new hearing.

Fujimori, leader of the opposition Popular Force party, left the courthouse smiling and waving to photographers beside her husband, Mark Vito.

"Prison is for the guilty, not for the accused," she told a press conference Sunday night.

"How do they expect us to defend ourselves if we still do not know what we are accused of?" Fujimori added.

The judge, however, rejected her lawyer's demand that he recuse himself so the case could be transferred to another court.

He is the same judge that earlier this month allowed Lopez's request to hold Fujimori in preventive detention for 10 days.

- Case an effort 'to bury me' -

Peru's constitution allows for suspects to be held without trial for up to 36 months in complex cases such as the Odebrecht investigation, which involves tracing millions of dollars in illicit payments.

It also ensures that suspects cannot interfere with evidence or witnesses in an ongoing investigation.

Acceding to the prosecutor's request would all but end Fujimori's 2021 presidential chances, after she lost runoffs in 2011 and 2016.

Fujimori said the prosecutor and the judge were conspiring against her. Both have gained notoriety in Peru for a string of anti-corruption prosecutions against top politicians.

Story continues

"I feel there is a conspiracy between prosecutor Perez, representing the Prosecutor's Office, and Judge Concepcion Carhuancho," she told the Peru21 newspaper.

"Every minute, there is fake news, a lie about our party and my person.

"They are trying to get me out of politics, bury me," she said.

The 43-year-old daughter and political heir to disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori, Keiko has increasingly come under the spotlight as prosecutors investigate millions of dollars in illicit campaign contributions to several former presidents.

"As a father, I only ask for a fair trial for my daughter, nothing more," said the 80-year-old former president, whose humanitarian pardon for crimes against humanity was revoked by a court last month and who is once again in hospital.MANILA, Philippines (AP)  A Philippine court on Monday rejected a petition by President Rodrigo Duterte's administration to have his fiercest critic in the Senate arrested, in a legal setback for Duterte that the senator called a victory for democracy.

Regional Trial Court Judge Andres Bartolome Soriano denied the government's petition to have opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV arrested after Duterte voided his 2011 amnesty for his role in past mutinies as a former navy officer. Soriano debunked Duterte's premise that Trillanes never formally applied for amnesty and acknowledged guilt for his role in the failed coup attempts.

"The rule of law won and democracy won," a beaming Trillanes told a news conference at the Senate, adding that he was prepared to be arrested.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, however, suggested the government would appeal and added that Soriano did not declare Duterte's signed order that voided Trillanes' amnesty unconstitutional.

"Nobody has to claim total victory," Guevarra said. "This is not the end of it."

Last month, another court upheld Duterte's petition and ordered Trillanes arrested for a similar rebellion charge on which he was allowed to post bail. That contradicted the ruling by Soriano, who handled a separate, nonbailable coup charge against Trillanes.

Known for expletives-laced outbursts against his critics and political rivals, Duterte has long expressed anger against Trillanes, who has accused him of large-scale corruption, involvement in illegal drugs and extrajudicial killings in an anti-drug crackdown that has left nearly 5,000 suspects dead since he took office in 2016. Duterte has denied the allegations.

Trillanes, 47, was jailed for more than seven years for involvement in at least three military uprisings, including a 2003 mutiny against then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo when he and other young officers rigged part of a shopping center in the Makati financial district with bombs and took over an upscale residential building.

Story continues

After being amnestied under Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, Trillanes successfully petitioned the two Philippine courts to dismiss rebellion and coup cases, allowing him to later run for a Senate seat. Critics say Duterte's move violates the constitutional guarantee against "double jeopardy," or holding a person to answer twice for the same offense.

Duterte said he voided Trillanes' amnesty because the senator had failed to file a formal amnesty request and acknowledge guilt. Trillanes strongly denied the president's claims and provided news reports and defense department documents to counter them.

The Department of Justice has asked two courts to issue warrants for Trillanes' arrest and resume criminal proceedings against him. One of the courts backed Duterte's bid last month and issued the arrest warrant for a bailable rebellion charge. Soriano, however, ruled differently, saying in his 33-page decision, "Well established is the doctrine that a final and executory judgment shall be immutable."

Aside from the rebellion and coup-related charges in the two courts, Duterte has also ordered the military to resume a separate inquiry into the senator's role in past mutinies.

It was not immediately clear what the military would do with Duterte's order, but early this month, the military chief, Gen. Carlito Galvez, told a defense budget hearing at the Senate that Trillanes formally applied for amnesty based on an amnesty officer's account, contradicting the reason given by Duterte for revoking the senator's amnesty.

Human Rights Watch has said the attempt to jail Trillanes "is part of the persecution of critics of the Duterte administration, the latest in the relentless campaign to silence those who dared to challenge the president's murderous 'drug war.'"

Under Duterte, another opposition senator has been jailed on illegal drug charges, a Supreme Court chief justice has been ousted by fellow judges and foreign critics, including an Australian nun, have been barred from entering the Philippines or threatened with deportation.President Trump called out the Democratic Party in relation to the migrant caravan making its way through Central America on Twitter on Sunday.

The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW! the President tweeted.

The President seemed to draw a connection between the Democratic Party and the group of an estimated 5,000 migrants in terms of immigration policy. The GOP currently controls the presidency and both houses of Congress.

The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2018

The caravan of mostly Hondurans had been making its way through Guatemala, crossing over into Mexico last night, heading for the United States. About 640 migrants have requested asylum in Mexico and 2,200 remain camped on a bridge connecting Guatemala and Mexico, according to statements by the Mexican Government.

In a separate tweet Sunday, President Trump also alluded to an unspecified court that he claimed had asked the United States to do things that were not possible in relation to the migrants.

People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away, the President tweeted. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!

Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther Border. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2018

Sundays tweets were the Presidents latest attacks on Democrats blaming them for illegal immigration. In the lead up to the 2016 election, the then-candidate had also made the threat of illegal immigration one of the central issues of his campaign.

The President has referred to the caravan more frequently over the last week, possibly looking to draw attention to the approaching migrants as an issue to turn out voters for Nov. 6s midterm elections.Clocks in the UK could undergo a big change after Brexit (Picture: PA)

A proposed EU ban on changing the clocks twice a year could leave the UK in a time limbo in the event of a no-deal Brexit, peers have warned.

The House of Lords said clocks in Northern Ireland face being one hour out from either London or Dublin if Brexit negotiations fail.

Brussels is planning to end the practice of changing the clocks twice a year after research found it was unpopular.

It would mean EU countries had to choose to adopt permanent summer or winter time, leaving Belfast potentially having to decide whether to align itself with clocks in the Republic or the rest of the UK, peers warned.

They said failing to secure an exit agreement would mean rules on the matter in relation to Northern Ireland would fall away.

A report by a Lords committee said: If the UK then decided to maintain summertime arrangements, Northern Ireland (assuming the devolved institutions have been re-established) would have to choose between having a one-hour time difference for half the year either with the Republic of Ireland or with the rest of the UK.

Although the changes are not due to come in until after the UK leaves on March 29 next year, the UK would have to adopt the measures during any transition period, peers said.

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Current rules mean every state has to switch to summer time on the last Sunday of March and switch back to winter time on the last Sunday of October, but the European Commission proposals would stop the practice.

EU countries fall into three timezones  Greenwich Mean Time, Central European Time and Eastern European Time.

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The move would not affect the choice of time zone and it would ultimately remain each member states decision whether to go for permanent summer or wintertime (or a different time), the proposals state.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said millions believe that in future, summer time should be year-round, and thats what will happen.

The longer evenings will disappear later this month (Picture: PA)

The move needs the support of all EU countries and backing from MEPs to become law.

In its report, peers on the EU Internal Market sub-committee, recommended the House of Lords issued a reasoned opinion, a mechanism that allows parliaments to register concerns about proposals.

They said the decision to end daylight saving clock changes should not be made by the EU.

The recommendation will be debated on Wednesday.

Committee chairman Lord Whitty said: The European Commissions proposal to end seasonal time changes goes beyond its remit and is not in compliance with the principle of subsidiarity.

We are therefore recommending that the House of Lords issues a reasoned opinion.

DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME GOOD OR BAD IDEA?

GOOD

There are longer evenings as the sun sets a later time by the clock.

There is less artificial light.

Studies have shown that more light means safer roads and fewer robberies.

BAD

It can make us ill  changing the clocks by one hour upsets our body clocks.

We lose sleep vital sleep when the clocks go forward.

Because of tiredness, people are more likely to have car accidents and workplace injuries.

When the clocks go back, the early darkness has been linked to depression.



In 2001, Rae Carruth went to prison, convicted for conspiracy to murder his pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams.

Monday he walked free, having completed his sentence. At 8:02 a.m. ET, Carruth, the former Carolina Panthers wide receiver, walked out of Sampson Correctional Institution, got in a white Chevy Tahoe and drove away without speaking to an assembly of reporters outside the facility.

Im excited about just being out of here. Im nervous just about how Ill be received by the public, Carruth said in a phone interview with WSOC-TV on Sunday. I still have to work. I still have to live. I have to exist out there and it just seems like there is so much hate and negativity toward me. Im actually somewhat frightened.

Whether he will seek a relationship with his son, who was born with brain damage after being removed from his dying mothers womb, is unclear.

Former NFL wide receiver Rae Carruth has been released from prison after serving 19 years for conspiring to murder the mother of his unborn child. (AP)

Carruths son born with cerebral palsy

Chancellor Lee Adams, now 18, was born with cerebral palsy after Carruths accomplices shot his 24-year-old mother in her BMW while she was eight months pregnant in Charlotte, North Carolina. He requires a caregiver.

Adams said in a Nov. 16, 1999, 911 call that Carruth, then a third-year wide receiver with the Carolina Panthers, stopped his car in front of her as she was following him from a movie date. Thats when three accomplices of Carruths pulled up and shot her through the drivers side window of her car, according to her account.

Adams survived long enough to have a C-section to save her son, but died four weeks later from her injuries. She was 24.

Rae Carruth, center, walks away from the Mecklenburg County Jail after making bond on Dec. 6, 1999, in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Getty)

Carruth jumped bail, hid trunk of a car

Carruth was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder after the shooting. When Adams died, he jumped bail and fled. FBI agents found him hiding in the trunk of a car in the parking lot of a Tennessee Best Western motel.

Carruth was eventually convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, shooting into an occupied dwelling and using an instrument to destroy an unborn child. He was sentenced to 18-to-24 years in prison. He escaped a first-degree murder conviction, which could have carried the death penalty.

Story continues

Now 44, Carruth is a free man.

Carruth wanted custody of his son after prison release

Carruth reached out publicly during his final months in prison, wavering on his desire to have a relationship with his son and confronting Chancellors caretaker Saundra Adams, Chericas mother.

He broke a 17-year silence in February in an interview with Charlottes WBTV in a letter to Saundra Adams he gave to the TV station. He didnt detail the specifics of the night of Chericas murder, but he did apologize, though hes never done so directly for conspiring to murder Adams.

Im apologizing for the loss of her daughter, Carruth told WBTV of Saundra. Im apologizing for the impairment of my son. I feel responsible for everything that happened. And I just want her to know that truly I am sorry for everything. If I could change anything, Id change the whole situation. His mother would still be here and I wouldnt be where Im at. So thats what Id want to change. I want the incident to never have happened at all.

His outreach wasnt all conciliatory. Carruths letter lashed out at Saundra and declared his desire to debunk the lies that Ms. Adams continues to tell about me.

Saundra Adams, left, has taken care of Chancellor Lee Adams since his mother died. (Getty)

Carruth hasnt seen son since he was a baby

Carruth met his son twice in the early years of his life  once on the night of his birth and another during a court-ordered visitation when Chancellor was around 1 year old. Carruth hasnt seen him since, according to The Observer. But he has watched from afar via news reports and developed an attachment to his now-grown son.

He made a plea, via WBTV, for custody of the son he almost killed in the womb.

I let him down as he came into this world, and the only way that I can make that right, and the only way I can work out my relationship with my son is to be there for him, Carruth said. I should be raising my son. His mother should be raising her son. Ms. Adams should not be doing this, and I want that responsibility back. I feel like he might not ever have his mother in his life, but he could still have me, and I could still make a difference, and I dont think thats anyones responsibility when Im still here.

His letter echoed that plea.

I mean come on, Ms. Adams, the reality is you arent going to be around forever, Carruth wrote. At some point, someone else will have to be responsible for Chancellors care.  I would like to be in a position to be seriously considered as a viable option.

Saundra Adams: Carruth wont get custody

Saundra, 60, told The Observer that she had forgiven Carruth and was open to him seeing his son.

She has watched Chancellor as he defied doctors expectations that he would never walk, graduating to a walker and eventually able to take steps on his own. She has family that she says will take over Chancellors care when shes not able.

Custody for Carruth is not on the table.

Ive forgiven Rae already, but to have any type of relationship with him, there does have to be some repentance, Adams said. And I think this opens the door. But I can say definitively hes not ever going to have custody of Chancellor. Chancellor will be raised either by me or, after Im gone, by someone else who loves him and who knows him. He will never be raised by a stranger  someone he doesnt know and who tried to kill him.

Carruths accomplice not so forgiving

Saundra isnt the only person not ready to give Carruth the benefit of the doubt. Carruths accomplices all received prison sentences for Chericas murder. While two of them  Michael Kennedy and Stanley Abraham  have been released, the third remains behind bars.

Van Brett Watkins admitted to firing five shots into Chericas car the night she was killed. Hes not scheduled to be released from prison until 2046 on a second-degree murder conviction. He sounded vindictive in a letter sent to The Observer.

I believe the public should see what Rae Carruth PAID me to do, Watkins wrote. Unlike Mrs. S. Adams  I dont forgive Carruth. He owes me.

Carruth has change of heart

In March, Carruth wrote another letter to Adams, this time shared with Observer columnist Scott Fowler. Hed experienced a change of heart on his desire to connect with his son.

For all involved or invested in this ordeal, please calm down, Carruth wrote. I will no longer be pursuing a relationship with Chancellor and Ms. Adams. I promise to leave them be, which I now see is in everyones best interest. I now understand that any notions of me one day being welcome to Sunday dinner is totally out of the question. And lastly, I didnt foresee the media and general public being unanimous in its belief that I shouldnt be allowed to ever have anything to do with Chancellor.

Whats next for Carruth is a mystery. Hes walking into a world he wont recognize, thats seen more than 17 years of rapid social and technological change.

However he deals with the transition, it seems unfathomable that he would be allowed to have a relationship with Chancellor, a son he didnt want and tried to have killed. Thats a conclusion he appears to have reached in March.

Whether he still feels that upon release and if he plans to approach his son are unknown.

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Rashida Tlaib is set to enter Congress and - because of her faith - the record books - AP

Barring a freak result, Rashida Tlaib is set to be the first Muslim woman in Congress, and for this she has to thank the unlikely figure of Donald Trump.

"Trump was a bit of a Bat-Signal for women in general of being engaged," she says, talking while out on the campaign trail in Detroit.

Congress as it stands is far from diverse - over 90 per cent of members are Christian, 5.6 per cent are Jewish and the Muslim members (both of them) are heavily outflanked by Mormons, of whom there are 13.

Despite the fact there are more women in the Senate and House of Representatives than at any other point since 1789, they still only make up 20 per cent of its membership.

Looking across the country, Ms Tlaib believes there is a "sense of urgency" driving Left-wing and female voters in the midterm elections, which will see seats in the Senate, House and state-wide positions up for grabs.

A police officer arresting Rashida Tlaib following a protest calling for higher pay Credit: AP

"I remember when people came to vote for Barack Obama and there was kind of a waltz to it, it was like this confidence and people were excited to vote, she says.

"This time, people are marching. Its like, 'move out the way Ive got to do this.'"

Ms Tlaib's ascent came after five years in local politics, when a wave of grassroots support saw her win the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in her home district in Detroit, Michigan.

A surge in first-time voters was credited with giving her the win. Now, since there is no Republican opponent standing in the deeply blue district, she is all but sure to win a seat in Congress on November 6.

Ms Tlaib is just one of a number of 'firsts' that could come this year - the first Native American congresswoman, the first transgender governor and the first black female governor could all be elected at the midterms on November 6.

Change is afoot, not just when it comes to gender. Around 90 Muslim candidates are running for elected office this year  the highest number at any point since the September 11 attack in 2001, according to political advocacy group JetPac.

Story continues

Born to Palestinian immigrants and the eldest of 14 children, Ms Tlaib first garnered national attention two years ago when she was arrested for heckling Mr Trump during a speech in Detroit.

Ms Tlaib is not a particularly conservative Muslim but her faith is an important part of her life.

The gruelling campaign schedule did not stop her from fasting for Ramadan this June, ahead of the Democratic primary vote.

"It's not about just being out there and flaunting your faith," she told CNN earlier this year. "I always tell people that I'm exposing Islam in such a pivotal way, an impactful way, through public service."

Her political rise has not been without fractious moments. Once, as a state legislature, she says the chair of a committee jokingly asked for her birth certificate.

He thought it was very funny, she says. I was very much seen by some of my colleagues as nothing but a Muslim and in their eyes that meant I was less than them Im sure."

The incident mirrored Mr Trump's repeated demands that Barack Obama reveal his birth certificate during his time as president, in a stunt that riled the Republican base.

But Ms Tlaib says her experience of prejudice was largely a one-off. "The majority of my colleagues treated me very well," she says

Her election success is part of a wider trend  a swell of women, people of colour and first-time candidates have won Democratic primaries.

She points to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her friend and fellow member of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, who at 29 is set to become the youngest ever congresswoman.

Rashida Tlaib celebrates at her campaign headquarters in Detroit after winning the Democratic primary race Credit: NYTNS / Redux / eyevine

The group have been campaigning on a promise to shake up Congress with vows to abolish America's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known by its acronym ICE, refusing to take donations from corporations.

Ms Tlaib believes a deeper momentum has been building for years, but she credits part of the surge to the Trump presidency. I think he pushed us over the cliff, she says.

I feel like we go through stages in the United States with all parties where a new group or generation - in this case a generation of women - who are running for office because they see injustice and they feel a sense of need to speak up and not be silenced.

She accepts that there is still Islamophobia, but she draws hope from the Muslim candidates now becoming politicians.

Muslims are now saying: Okay were not going to be still," she says.By Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison should transfer child refugees off a remote Pacific detention center, two independent lawmakers said on Monday in return for supporting his shaky government, a move that would be a major policy shift. The Australian government has steadfastly refused to allow any refugees arriving by boat to enter the country. Morrison is poised to lose his one-seat parliamentary majority after voters in a blue-ribbon Sydney electorate of Wentworth on Saturday shunned the ruling Liberal Party in a by-election amid anger at the recent ousting of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Although counting continues, Morrison is likely to have to rely on the support of five independents to prevent a no confidence motion that could trigger an election. The next poll is due by May 2019. Kerryn Phelps, who is on course to win the Wentworth by-election, said Morrison should heed advice from the United Nations and immediately relocate child refugees held indefinitely on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru. "The first order of business is to get kids off Nauru," Phelps told Sky News Australia, echoing a similar demand from another independent lawmaker, Cathy McGowan. Australia has been widely criticized by the United Nations and rights groups for detaining asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat, even if they are found to be refugees, and keeping them on offshore processing centers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Recent attention has focused on child refugees on Nauru, who suffer mental heath issues which has led to cases of self harm, the doctors' group Medecins Sans Frontieres said. The offshore detention has been a cornerstone policy of the conservative government and helped it to win several elections. Phelps and McGowan made their demands as Morrison seeks a meeting with the independents. "Ideally, I'd like the government to go full term, but we, the crossbenchers, will have those discussions today with the prime minister, the treasurer and various other ministers," McGowan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Another two independents have ruled out supporting Morrison, and a third, Bob Katter, has made demands regarding loans for drought-affected farmers and other agriculture related policies. Analysts said the Wentworth result could accelerate the timetable for the next general election. Australia's Electoral Commission on Monday said Phelps was leading Morrison's Liberal candidate by nearly 1,700 votes, with 3000 postal votes yet to be counted. The ballot was propelled into international prominence after Morrison sought to garner support from Jewish voters, who account for 13 percent of Wentworth's electorate, by suggesting Australia could recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move its embassy there from Tel Aviv. (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Darren Schuettler)Abuja (AFP) - Missing pro-Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu gave a radio broadcast on Sunday saying he was in Israel, suggesting he owed his survival to the Jewish state.

Kanu, a former London estate agent, heads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement and the outlawed pirate radio station Radio Biafra but has not been seen in public since September last year.

He maintains the Igbo people, who are in the majority in southeast Nigeria, are a lost tribe of Israel and it is his mission to lead them to the promised land of Biafra.

There had been fevered speculation that Kanu was in Israel after a video live-streamed on Friday via the Facebook accounts of his known associates appeared to show him praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, sparking questions over how he had managed to leave Nigeria.

Kanu is facing treason charges in his homeland and had been on bail at the time troops were deployed to his home city of Umuahia in Abia state, southeast Nigeria, in September 2017.

He then failed to show at his trial in the capital, Abuja, sparking speculation as to his whereabouts.

In Sunday's broadcast on Radio Biafra, Kanu declared: "I'm in Israel".

"I owe my survival to the State of Israel," he added, referencing the country's Mossad spy agency but without specifying what kind of support Israeli authorities may have given him.

But he vowed to return to his homeland and called on his followers to boycott upcoming elections in Nigeria.

"I will be back soon in the land of Biafra and I will bring hell with me," he said.

"IPOB will liberate Biafra and we will not take part in any elections until we get a referendum, it is not negotiable, we will do it by any means," he added.

A previous unilateral declaration of independence by the Igbo people in 1967 sparked a brutal 30-month civil war that left more than one million dead.

Questions have been raised about how Kanu was able to get to Israel, as he had to surrender his Nigerian and British passports after his arrest.

In Friday's video the man at the Western Wall bore a clear resemblance to Kanu and was dressed in sandals, white trousers, a white Jewish prayer shawl and skull cap.

Kanu's younger brother, Prince Emmanuel Kanu, told AFP the footage was of his brother and was shot on Friday. He also spoke to him directly and said he was "fine".Ottawa (AFP) - Russia on Monday denounced Canada's cannabis legalization, which took effect last week, calling it "unacceptable" and contrary to international laws, and saying it will lead to increased trafficking abroad.

"We are convinced that this legislation goes against international law on drug control," the Russian embassy in Ottawa said in a statement.

According to Moscow, Canada is violating major drug control treaties including the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

"By consciously torpedoing the international drug control regime, the Canadian government is creating the world's largest drug market, which, despite all the claims and measures being contemplated to prevent the export of cannabis across national borders, will certainly result in a considerable increase in its trafficking to other states," said the Russians.

The embassy said "Russia and other countries will probably have to take additional measures to prevent possible attempts to smuggle cannabis and its derivatives from Canada."

On October 17, Canada became the first major economy to legalize cannabis -- fulfilling a 2015 campaign promise by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which he has defended as intended to protect young people and to shut down the black market.

Richard Walker, a spokesman for its foreign ministry, told AFP that Canada remains "a strong supporter of the international drug control framework" and will continue to "combat drug trafficking."

"The legalization of cannabis does not change our commitment to meeting the overarching goals of the UN drug conventions -- protecting the health and safety or our citizens -- and Canada will continue to work with its international partners to advance these objectives," he said.An elderly black woman who was subjected to a tirade of racist abuse on board a Ryanair flight has said the attack has left her unable to eat or sleep due to shock.

Delsie Gayle, who is disabled and in her 70s, spoke to ITV News after a video of a man calling her an ugly black b****** went viral.

She said: I was shocked, nobody ever said those words to me.

I travel a lot, I go to Canada, and no-one has every said those words to me.

I feel very low. He paid a fare a to go on holiday, Ive paid mine so why does he abuse me for that due to the colour of my skin?

He do it with me and he gets away, hell do it to somebody else.

The man was caught on camera launching a racist tirade at a fellow passenger (Picture; PA)

Ryanair sparked outrage after apparently failing to remove the man after shouting: Dont talk to me in a foreign language you stupid ugly cow.

The airline has failed to contact Ms Gayle in the three days following the shocking outburst.

It emerged this morning that the passenger in question may get away with it due to the airline wanting to get the plane off the ground, a shadow transport minister said.

Labour MP for East Hull Karl Turner said the airline failed spectacularly.

The footage was recorded on October 19 on Ryanair flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted by Kent resident David Lawrence, who uploaded it on to social media.

Mr Turner, who is a qualified barrister and was once Labours shadow attorney general, tweeted: Suspect the pressure to turn this aircraft around quickly and get it airborne meant that they have allowed this alleged offender to remain on the aircraft. He may now get away with it.

@Ryanair failure to deplane the alleged racist offender, handing him over to the Spanish authorities probably means that he isnt now prosecuted.

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Story continues

Unfortunately because @Ryanair is registered in Dublin not in the UK the alleged offence could only be tried by UK authorities if it was in flight to the UK. Section 92(1) Civil Aviation Act s.92(4) defines in flight.

If this incident had have happened on an alternative airline under British Control or it was already in flight to the UK the prosecuting authorities could have prosecuted.

#1 @Ryanair failure to deplane the alleged racist offender, handing him over to the Spanish authorities probably means that he isnt now prosecuted. https://t.co/kRanokMwJJ  Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) October 21, 2018

Responding to criticism that he add stood by while the woman was abused, Mr Lawrence told the BBC that, in the age of social media, visual is important and now the world knows what happened.

I had to make a difficult decision at that time because if I had stepped in I dont think you would have seen the footage that I captured, he said.

Footage shows the man shouting at the woman to move seats while her daughter tries to stand up to him, telling him her mother is disabled.

He replies: I dont care whether shes f****** disabled or not  if I tell her to get out she gets out.

The man then calls her an ugly f****** c*** and tells staff to move the woman to another seat, adding: If you dont go to another seat Ill push you to another seat.

Staff on the flight seemed to do little to silence the man during the footage, leaving a passenger in the row behind to try and deal with the situation.

The cabin crew can be heard to say: Dont be so rude, you have to calm down while other passengers call for the man to be thrown off the flight.

The victim can be heard telling the man he stinks and needs a wash, before asking to be moved so she can sit next to her daughter.

The daughter of the woman who was targeted said she believed if a black person had behaved in the same way they would have been thrown off the flight immediately.

The woman, 53, told the Huffington Post the row had started because her 77-year-old mothers arthritis meant it took her some time to move out of the way so the man could reach the window seat.

The daughter said she had taken her mother, who is a Windrush Generation migrant who came to the UK from Jamaica in the 1960s, on holiday to mark one year since the death of her father.

Ryanair said it had reported the incident to UK police (Picture: PA)

My parents were married over 50 years. Shes been feeling really down and depressed, so I thought the trip would raise her spirits.

She continued: I know that if I was behaving like he was or any other black person for that matter, police would have been called and we would have been kicked off the flight.

The woman said that when she had complained to cabin crew they denied hearing any racial slurs and they told her to ring customer services on Monday.

The budget airline tweeted on Sunday that it had seen the footage and reported the incident to Essex police.

It added: As this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further.

A spokeswoman for Essex police said: This incident, which we were made aware of this morning, is believed to have taken place on a plane at Barcelona Airport.

Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.

We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation.After millions viewed a video of a man hurling racial slurs at a black woman on a Ryanair flight, the airline appears to be taking action. According to the BBC, the discount European airline said it will ban passengers who behave as he did.(ISTANBUL)  Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the son of Jamal Khashoggi, the kingdom announced early Monday, to express condolences for the death of the journalist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by officials that allegedly included a member of the royals entourage.

King Salman similarly made a condolence call as international pressure on the kingdom continues to rise, even after it acknowledged on Saturday that the Washington Post journalist was killed Oct. 2 at the consulate under still-disputed circumstances.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that details of Khashoggis killing will be revealed in all its nakedness in a speech in parliament on Tuesday, the same day a glitzy investment forum in Riyadh spearheaded by Prince Mohammed is to take place.

Saudi Arabias explanation that Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight and 18 Saudis have been detained has been met with international skepticism and allegations of a cover-up designed to absolve Prince Mohammed of direct responsibility. Turkish media reports and officials say a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul, laid in wait for Khashoggi at the consulate and then cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-year-old writer.

Why did these 15 people come here? Why were 18 people arrested? All of this needs to be explained in all its details, Erdogan said.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the calls to Khashoggis son, Salah, early Monday morning. Statements from the agency said both King Salman and Prince Mohammed express their condolences for his fathers death.

A Saudi friend of Khashoggi who was in frequent touch with him before his death told The Associated Press that Khashoggis son, Salah, has been under a travel ban and barred from leaving the kingdom since last year as a result of his fathers criticism of the government. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion. The Saudi statements did not acknowledge the ban.

Story continues

The calls comes after a leaked photograph apparently taken from surveillance footage shows Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage on trips to the United States, France and Spain this year, at the consulate, just ahead of Khashoggis arrival. Mutrebs name also matches that of a first secretary who once served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in London, according to a 2007 list compiled by the British Foreign Office.

Saudi Arabia so far has not acknowledged or explained Mutrebs presence in Istanbul  nor that of a forensics and autopsy expert, also on hand for Khashoggis arrival at the consulate.

Istanbuls chief prosecutor summoned 28 more staff members of the Saudi Consulate, including Turkish citizens and foreign nationals, to give testimony on Monday, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported. Prosecutors have previously questioned consulate staff; some Turkish employees reportedly said they were instructed not to go to work around the time that Khashoggi disappeared.

Turkish news agency Anadolu Agency reported Sunday that Khashoggis fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has been given 24-hour police protection.

Also Sunday, images that were obtained by TRT World, a Turkish news channel that broadcasts in English, showed Khashoggi as he arrived at a police barrier before entering the consulate on Oct. 2. The images, taken from security camera video, show the writer being searched before continuing toward the building.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Fox News that Khashoggis killing was a rogue operation and that we dont know where the body is.'

The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority, he said. There obviously was a tremendous mistake made and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable to the government.

However, a leading U.S. Senate Republican said the Saudi explanation, which followed initial denials from the kingdom that it knew anything about Khashoggis fate, wasnt credible.

Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday on CNNs State of the Union that he believed Prince Mohammed, the heir-apparent of the worlds largest oil exporter, was behind the killing.

The crown prince has now crossed a line and there has to be a punishment and a price paid for that, Corker said. He also urged Turkey to turn over purported audio recordings of Khashoggis killing inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The existence of such evidence has been reported in Turkish media in a series of leaks, though Turkish officials have yet to confirm they have recordings.

The Turks have been talking more to the media than they have (to) us, Corker said of the NATO ally.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said on ABCs This Week that the killing should be a relationship-altering event for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which has said it will retaliate against any economic sanctions or other moves against it.

We ought to suspend military sales, we ought to suspend certain security assistance and we ought to impose sanctions on any of those that were directly involved in this murder, Schiff said.

President Donald Trump had also talked about possible punishment but said he didnt want to halt a proposed $110 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia because, he maintained, it would harm U.S. manufacturers. He initially said he believed the Saudi account. Speaking late Saturday after a campaign rally in Nevada, Trump said he needs to learn more about the killing and will be working with Congress on the U.S. response. He also said he will talk soon to Prince Mohammed.

Britain, Germany and France issued a joint statement condemning the killing of Khashoggi, saying there is an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened.

In a statement Sunday, the governments said attacks on journalists are unacceptable and of utmost concern to our three nations. They said the hypotheses proposed so far in the Saudi investigation need to be backed by facts to be considered credible.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that she supports a freeze on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier underlined that point Monday, calling for a joint European position as Germany wont at this point approve any further arms exports because we want to know what happened.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.By Doina Chiacu and Kylie MacLellan WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Sunday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate a "huge and grave mistake," but sought to shield its powerful crown prince from the widening crisis, saying Mohammed bin Salman had not been aware. The comments from Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir were some of the most direct yet from Riyadh, which has given multiple and conflicting accounts about Khashoggi's killing on Oct. 2, first denying his death and later admitting it amid an international outcry. "This was an operation that was a rogue operation. This was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had," Jubeir said on the U.S. broadcaster Fox. "They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it," he said. The weeks of denial and lack of credible evidence in the face of allegations from Turkish officials that Khashoggi had been killed have shaken global confidence in ties with the world's top oil exporter. U.S. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said Saudi Arabia's admission that the Washington Post columnist was killed in a fistfight was a "good first step but not enough," though he added it was premature to discuss sanctions against Riyadh. Three European powers - Germany, Britain and France - pressed Riyadh to provide facts, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would not export arms to Saudi Arabia while uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persisted. Late on Sunday, the Saudi Press Agency said both Saudi King Salman and Prince Mohammed had called Khashoggi's son, Salah, to express condolences. Jubeir had extended condolences to Khashoggi's family earlier on Sunday. "Unfortunately, a huge and grave mistake was made and I assure them that those responsible will be held accountable for this," he told Fox. Jubeir said the Saudis did not know how Khashoggi, a Saudi national and U.S. resident, had been killed or where his body was. He also said Prince Mohammed was not responsible. Khashoggi vanished after entering the consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. After two weeks denying any involvement in the 59-year-old's disappearance, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, died during a fight in the building. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold. "Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Germany, Britain and France said in their joint statement. "There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened ... beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible." The White House said late on Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump had spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron and the two had discussed a range of issues including circumstances surrounding Khashoggi's death. Reflecting international scepticism over its account, a senior Saudi government official laid out a new version that contradicts previous explanations. The latest account includes details on how 15 Saudis sent to confront Khashoggi had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and killed him in a chokehold when he resisted. A member of the team dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate. ERDOGAN TO SPEAK Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate by the Saudi agents and his body cut up. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting Khashoggi's murder. In a speech on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to suggest he was getting ready to release some information about the Turkish investigation, and would do so at his weekly speech on Tuesday to members of his ruling AK Party. Erdogan has remained largely silent on the case, although Turkey's pro-government newspapers have released information about events at the consulate. Turkey's Anadolu agency said early on Monday that Erdogan and Trump had spoken on the telephone and agreed that "all aspects" of the case needed to be cleared up. For Saudi Arabia's allies - particularly in the West - the question will be whether they believe that the prince, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability. King Salman, 82, has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to him. "I am not satisfied until we find the answer. But it was a big first step, it was a good first step. But I want to get to the answer," Trump told reporters this weekend, when asked about the Saudi investigation and Riyadh's firing of officials. In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said that "obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies." He had suggested last week that "rogue killers" might have been responsible for Khashoggi's death, a comment critics called an effort to play down the crisis. A leading Republican U.S. senator said he believed the crown prince was behind the killing, adding that the Saudis had lost credibility in their explanations of his death. "Yes, I think he did it," Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN, referring to the crown prince. King Salman ordered the dismissal of five officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court adviser seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohammed, and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed Asiri, Saudi state media reported on Saturday. The king also ordered a restructuring of the intelligence service, to be led by Prince Mohammed, suggesting the prince still retained wide-ranging authority. Some governments and prominent executives have said they would pull out of a forthcoming investment conference in Saudi Arabia. According to the senior Saudi official, the Saudi team rolled up Khashoggi's body in a rug, took it out in a consular vehicle and handed it to a "local cooperator" for disposal. (Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Kylie MacLellan in London, Laurence Frost in Paris, Taiga Uranaka in Tokyo, Praveen Menon in Wellington, Omer Berberoglu and Yesim Dikmen in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Sandra Maler)German Ambassador Jorn Rohde said yesterday the elections should be held in any democracy when they are due, and not be delayed.

He said the elections were a feature of democracy and they should be held in due time except under extraordinary circumstances. He made these remarks in response to a question about the delay in conducting some elections in Sri Lanka at the moment.

The Ambassador said he asserted this position in the Maldives.

It applies to my country, Sri Lanka etc, he said.

He said everybody should abide by the law, and the elections should be conducted especially when they are overdue.

Ambassador Rohde said he asserted the same position a few months ago.(Kelum Bandara)Washington (AFP) - The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has sent a chill through exiled dissidents, with many revealing discreet government attempts to lure them to their embassies as an apparent "trap" to return them to the kingdom.

Khashoggi, a critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in what sources close to the government have said was likely an authorised rendition that went wrong.

Saudi exiles in three different countries have recounted what appeared to be official attempts to bait them into the kingdom's diplomatic missions, exposing them to potentially the same fate as Khashoggi.

Omar Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Saudi activist exiled in Canada, said he was approached earlier this year by Saudi officials who urged him to visit their embassy with them to collect a new passport.

"They were saying 'it will only take one hour, just come with us to the embassy'," Abdulaziz, who rankled authorities with a YouTube show that satirized the Saudi leadership, said in a video posted on Twitter.

He refused to go, fearing a trap, and two of his brothers and a handful of his friends were arrested in the kingdom, he said, thus validating his suspicions.

The Washington Post said it received hours-long tapes from Abdulaziz of his conversations with those officials, which he secretly recorded.

Abdullah Alaoudh, a Saudi scholar at Georgetown, said he was subjected to a similar "plot" in Washington.

Last year, when Alaoudh, son of prominent cleric Salman al-Awda who is jailed and faces trial in the kingdom, applied to renew his passport at the Saudi embassy in Washington, he says he was told to return to the kingdom to complete what appeared to be basic formalities.

"They offered me a 'temporary pass' that would allow me to return to Saudi Arabia," Alaoudh told AFP.

"I knew it was a trap and just left with my expired passport."

Story continues

- 'Cover up' -

The testimonies suggest what appear to be growing Saudi efforts to snare overseas critics of the government or entice them to return since Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS, became crown prince last year.

The Saudi information ministry did not respond to requests for comment, but sources close to the regime have also hinted at a broader program to bring dissidents back to the kingdom.

"MBS probably authorized a rendition (of Khashoggi), which, if so, was ill-advised, but leaders and governments make mistakes, sometimes horrible ones," tweeted Ali Shihabi, head of pro-Saudi think tank Arabia Foundation said to be close to the government.

"The cover-up was ill-advised and incompetent."

Khashoggi, who went into exile in Virginia last year and openly criticised Prince Mohammed's growing crackdown on dissent, disappeared after entering the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul where he sought documents related to his planned wedding to his Turkish fiancee.

After an uproar globally, Saudi Arabia admitted on Saturday what it vigorously denied for two weeks -- Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate.

"The strongest and most chilling message here was that no one is safe from Saudi Arabia's brutal reach," Sherif Mansour, from the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote for the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Before his murder, a Saudi aide to the crown prince had contacted Khashoggi in recent months to offer him a senior job in the government if he returned to Saudi Arabia, a friend of the Washington Post columnist told AFP.

Khashoggi declined, fearing it was a ruse, the friend added.

- 'State of shock' -

Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi woman activist exiled in Australia, said she narrowly escaped the kingdom's dragnet in September last year when Saud al-Qahtani sought to lure her to a Saudi embassy.

"If it weren't for the kindness of God I would have been (another) victim," Sharif tweeted, posting a screenshot of private messages with Qahtani, a media advisor in the royal court who was sacked in the fallout over Khashoggi's killing.

The number of asylum seekers from Saudi Arabia globally has more than doubled since Prince Mohammed's ascendance to power -- from 575 cases in 2015 to 1,256 in 2017 -- according to the United Nations' refugee agency.

Khashoggi's death has caused such a wave of fear among exiles that some are now cautious of even visiting their country's overseas missions.

"The horrid story of Jamal Khashoggi has sent many activists into a state of shock," said Amani al-Ahmadi, a 27-year-old Saudi exile in Seattle.

"Many activists abroad don't speak up, fearful of bringing harm to their families back home, losing their scholarships or worse abduction and arrest."

Many also fear an online army of trolls loyal to the regime, known to harass critics such as Khashoggi, in a program the New York Times said was crafted by Qahtani.

McKinsey this week said it was "horrified" after the newspaper claimed a report prepared by the consulting firm to measure public perception of Saudi Arabia's policies may have been used to silence dissidents.

But many exiles point out the irony that in silencing Khashoggi, the kingdom has spread his message wider than ever before.

"The perpetrators of the horrific act against Khashoggi were sending a message that anyone who expresses the slightest disagreement with the rulers will be targeted," said Alaoudh.

"Did this reckless action work in silencing dissenting voices? Jamal's voice is louder than ever before."

burs/rscBERLIN (Reuters) - Siemens's chief executive said on Monday he would not attend a three-day Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia after the country admitted that journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been killed in its consulate in Istanbul. The German engineering giant was one of the last companies to decide against sending its top executive to the conference after Riyadh sought to cover up Khashoggi's Oct. 2 death before admitting to a "grave mistake". "Siemens is a reliable and committed partner of the kingdom and its VISION 2030. But for now, truth needs to be found out and justice applied," Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser said in a statement posted on his LinkedIn account outlining his motivation not to travel to the conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh. "Time will tell how things will develop. And I do hope there will be clarity, transparency, and justice sooner rather than later," he said. Khashoggi's killing in Istanbul had been "monstrously planned", a spokesman for Turkey's ruling AK party said on Monday. An adviser to Turkey's president rejected Riyadh's assertion that Khashoggi died in a fight, suggesting this "mocked" international opinion. Germany, Britain and France have pressed Saudi Arabia to present all the facts in the killing, and Economy Minister Peter Altmaier urged other European Union states to join Germany in halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia as long as uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persists. Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert on Monday said officials would review what to do about arms sales that had been approved but not exported. The head of the BDSV arms makers trade group told the Handelsblatt daily that German companies needed clear answers soon about equipment already being built. Germany's foreign ministry on Monday also said it had asked the Saudi ambassador to come to a meeting at the ministry to discuss fallout from Khashoggi's killing. Last week ABB Chief Executive Ulrich Spiesshofer said he would skip the meeting, following the lead of Airbus defense chief Dirk Hoke, Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing and others.. Senior finance and trade officials from various Western governments including the United States will also shun the forthcoming conference because of Khashoggi's killing. Kaeser said his decision to skip the event was no condemnation of the Saudi population or a value judgment on Siemens's 2,000 local employees in Saudi Arabia and partners like Saudi Aramco, SABIC, SEC and the Abunayyan group. Kaeser said he wanted to consider the interests of all stakeholders, taking into account a business opportunity worth up to $30 billion by 2030 as well as the company's reputation, before taking a decision. "But sometimes, situations develop in such a way that no one can win, where every option is wrong. The so-called Khashoggi crisis, the death of Jamal Khashoggi, is such a situation." (Reporting by Tassilo Hummel and Edward Taylor; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Richard Balmforth)Madrid (AFP) - Spain sent 55 migrants back to Morocco on Monday a day after they forced their way into the Spanish territory of Melilla during an assault on the border in which two migrants died and 19 were injured.

A total of 208 migrants entered Melilla on Sunday after climbing over two barbed wire fences which separate the tiny territory from northern Morocco.

Madrid has "readmitted 55 people" who entered Melilla to Morocco, the Spanish central government's representative in the territory said in a statement.

Another 140 migrants have requested asylum, 10 are recovering from their injuries and three are minors, it said.

Spain has become the main entry point for migrants and asylum-seekers looking for a better life in Europe as other EU countries tighten up controls at their borders. A smuggling route through Libya to Italy has also been complicated by conflict and violence there.

One man who took part in the mass storming of the border died shortly after he entered Melilla of a suspected heart attack.

"The preliminary results of the autopsy indicate there is no external injury which caused his death," the statement said.

Another migrant died on the Moroccan side of the border in the attempt to cross over to Melilla.

Moroccan authorities arrested 141 people as they tried to cross.

Several Spanish Catholic associations which aid migrants issued a joint statement condemning the quick expulsion of the migrants from Melilla.

"Speed is not always a symptom of efficiency when what is at stake is people's lives and future," it said.

Melilla, together with a second Spanish enclave, Ceuta, have the European Union's only land borders with Africa.

Over 47,000 migrants have made it north to Spain since the start of the year, including about 5,000 by land, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

An increasing number of Moroccans are attempting to reach Europe, either by taking the perilous sea route or via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, which border Morocco.

Morocco, which many Africans can visit without visas, has become a major gateway for sub-Saharan migrants into Europe.

Moroccan authorities say they have stopped some 54,000 attempts by migrants to cross into Spain this year.By James Oliphant PHOENIX, Ariz. (Reuters) - For most of this year, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has run what has been viewed widely as one of the best races in the nation. But with less than a month to go to Election Day, there are doubts whether she can make it across the finish line. Her matchup with Republican Martha McSally appears to be tightening at the same time that some voters are casting their ballots with the start of early voting in the state. That is unwelcome news for Democrats, who just weeks ago believed they had a chance to gain more than the two seats they need to take control of the Senate. Since the furious battle over the Oct. 6 confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the national picture seems to have shifted. Republicans have taken an upper hand in states such as Tennessee and Texas  and have stayed competitive in places like Florida and Indiana. That makes Arizona and neighboring Nevada the best hopes for Democrats to flip seats held by Republicans. Democrats have a better chance to assume control of the House of Representatives, where they need 23 seats to become the majority. Should they take either chamber, much of Trumps agenda would be thwarted and his administration would be subject to greater oversight. The odds, however, have always been against Sinema, a member of the House who is seeking to replace retiring Republican Jeff Flake. Arizona has long been a right-leaning state, one that has come, in a sense, to embody the divisive politics of President Donald Trump. This is the build that wall state. The state of anti-immigrant former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, where Flake was basically driven from office because of his criticism of Trump. It has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in 30 years. But Sinema surprised observers by building an early advantage in the race. She had little competition for her partys nomination and built a steady edge over McSally, also a member of the House, who had to stave off two challengers, including Arpaio. CENTER LINE Sinema has billed herself as an independent voice while courting the moderates she needs to win, even as some left-wing progressives have groused that she has been too cautious. She stayed quiet for much of the Kavanaugh fight, only opposing his confirmation at the very end. She has backed the efforts of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, amid calls from some in her party for its abolishment. Asked last week about supporting Medicare For All, a universal healthcare policy favored by many Democrats this election season, she said she wants more practical solutions. Much was made locally about Sinemas choice to not endorse the Democratic candidate for Arizona governor, David Garcia, a progressive. She has not appeared at events with Garcia and other members of the Arizona congressional delegation. Her centrist approach, however, won over Steve Jensen, 63, a disabled veteran and longtime Republican who attended a Sinema event in central Phoenix last week. Jensen said he had come to disdain the politics by fear on the Republican side and did not like that McSally increasingly seemed to be aligning herself with the president. Most of McSallys votes to me seem to be going along with Trump, Jensen said. Sinemas candidacy stands in marked contrast to that of Representative Beto ORourke in conservative Texas, the Democrat who is running against incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz unabashedly as a left-wing progressive. "STILL A LIBERAL" Sinema seems now to be in a better position than ORourke to win her race while receiving much less national attention. She has run the best Democratic campaign that I have seen here for a long time, said Chad Campbell, a Phoenix-based Democratic strategist. That has made her a top target of well-funded conservative advocacy groups who have bombarded the airwaves in an attempt to stop Sinema and boost McSally. Campbell conceded that the ads have chipped away at her lead. Many of the ads have a common theme: Sinema has misrepresented herself; she is a stealth liberal disguising herself as a moderate. Sinema began her political career in Arizona as a member of the Green Party, but joined a moderate Democratic caucus when elected to the House in 2012. Shes trying to go right, right, right, former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, told a Phoenix radio station last week. Shes still a liberal. McSally, a former Air Force fighter pilot, has run multiple ads showing Sinema protesting the Iraq War while dressed in a pink tutu. One conservative group, Defend Arizona, sent out an anti-Sinema mailer last week that depicted a mushroom cloud over Phoenix. Its clear shes engaged in desperate and ugly behavior, Sinema said after a campaign event last week. A national Republican source told Reuters that the party believes the attacks on Sinemas image are effective and will persist through the rest of the campaign. McSallys campaign has turned to high-powered surrogates for help. On Friday, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Senate from Utah, appeared with her at a rally in the town of Gilbert. Trump will hold a campaign event this Friday for McSally in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb. We are literally in a dead heat right now for this Senate seat and this Senate majority, McSally told the crowd while blasting Sinema as unpatriotic. Tim Bushnell, 60, of Fountain Hills, Arizona, who attended the rally, said he could not vote for Sinema. Her history is pretty radical-left, he said. Sinemas campaign believes she can weather the attacks because she spent money early in the race on ads defining herself to voters while Republicans were still fighting among themselves. She is still raising money, taking in $7 million in the third quarter. If Sinema prevails, she will be able to argue that her moderate strategy may be the best way for Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. If she loses, any hope her party has of taking the Senate likely will fade with her. (State of Play is a weekly examination by Reuters political correspondent James Oliphant on the key races, players and issues in the run-up to U.S. congressional elections in November that will determine which party controls Congress) (Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Jason Szep and Leslie Adler)Gwinnett County Police Department

A teenager suspected in the shooting of a Georgia policeman, was himself shot and killed after being pursued by officers.

Tafahree Maynard, 18, one of two men charged over the shooting on Saturday of Gwinnett County police Officer Antwan Toney, was followed to a shed close to the town of Snellville, 30 miles east of Atlanta.

Police Chief Butch Ayers said the teenager had failed to comply with verbal commands after being confronted by officers in the early hours of Monday. Speaking at a press conference, Mr Ayers said Maynard initially had his hand behind his back and when he showed his hand, he was holding an edged weapon - believed to be a lawnmower blade.

Police Chief Butch Ayers has confirmed that suspect Tafahree Maynard was shot and killed while GCPD officers tried to apprehend him. Details will follow. pic.twitter.com/bgDyWj1OR7  Gwinnett Police Dept (@GwinnettPd) October 22, 2018

He said one officer fired a stun gun at Maynard and the other fatally shot him from about five or six feet. I would like to say that the danger to the community is over, said Mr Ayers.

Mr Toney was killed after responding to a call around 2.30pm on Saturday about a suspicious vehicle near Shiloh Middle School in the Snellville area. When the officers approached, someone in the vehicle opened fire and Mr Toney was hit, police said. The vehicle then sped off.

The Associated Press said Mr Toney, 30, who was originally from southern California, died at a hospital from his wounds. The people that worked with Officer Toney on a daily basis recalled a very jovial person who was dedicated to his job and dedicated to his community, said Mr Ayers said.

A second suspect, 19-year-old Isaiah Pretlow, was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a gun at an officer during the pursuit after Mr Toneys fatal shooting, police said

Story continues

The AP said Mr Pretlow drove the vehicle away after the shooting, crashed a short distance away and fled along with other occupants. An officer searching the area later encountered Mr Pretlow around 3pm. Mr Pretlow pointed a gun at the officer, who fired shots, according to police.

What prompted Mr Maynard, the suspect, to fire, Im not sure well ever know, but the fact of the matter is Officer Toney never had the chance to verbally engage with the suspects or the occupants of the car, and the deadly shots were fired from inside through a closed window, said Mr Ayers.

Mr Pretlow was not hit and fled into some woods. He was subsequently taken into custody around 11.30pm. It is not clear if Mr Pretlow has yet been assigned a lawyer or entered a plea.HOUSTON  Hours before President Trump was set to arrive in town to campaign for Republican Ted Cruz in Texass closely watched Senate race, Democrat Beto ORourke was bounding through the parking lot of a shopping center here, mobbed by hundreds of supporters as he made a predawn visit to a polling place on the first day of early voting in the state.

It was the first of eight scheduled pop-up rallies, as ORourke referred to them, in and around Houston on Monday in what will be an all-out ground war until Election Day as the El Paso congressman vies to become the first Democrat elected to statewide office since 1994.

Its finally here! ORourke exclaimed, as he made his way through a mob of people pushing their way toward the congressman, whose celebrity candidacy has attracted enormous crowds and intense media attention. This is the largest grassroots campaign in this state, perhaps this country, and it is starting right here.

Texas Democratic Senate hopeful Beto ORourke campaigns near a polling site as early voting kicked off Monday in Houston. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

ORourkes first stop was about 10 miles from downtown Houston, where Trump and Cruz will appear together on Monday night. But in an interview, the Democratic hopeful insisted his schedule in Houston was not an attempt at counterprogramming. Campaign officials said he had planned to be here long before the presidents visit was announced. Just a happy coincidence, ORourke said with a sly smile.

Standing on a chair and speaking through a bullhorn, ORourke delivered an abbreviated version of his usual stump speech, appealing to Texans from both parties to rise above partisanship and division and to vote for a candidate focused on big, ambitious goals that defy party orthodoxy  like him.

Everything we care about  is on the line, ORourke declared. Well be defined by the people of 2018. This is our moment. This is our chance. This is our message for the people of the future while we can still get it right.

What ORourke did not talk about Monday or in rallies over the weekend was Cruz or Trump  an omission that was notable after several days in which the congressman went on the attack against his GOP opponent, a tactic that conflicted with his pledge to run a positive campaign.

Story continues

A woman holds up a portrait of Barack Obama at an ORourke rally in Houston. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

While ORourke insisted his new approach was an attempt to offer a stronger contrast between his record and Cruzs  and I dont think theres anything negative about [that]  he said he believed most voters wanted him to stick with the hopeful message hes championed on the trail for the last year and a half.

They dont want to hear me talk about another party, another person, he said. They want to hear me talk about the future, their future, their kids future, and thats what were going to stay focused on.

Before heading to the next stop, ORourke led his army of supporters across the street to the polling station, where dozens of people had been lined up for hours to vote  including a group of college kids who had pitched a tent the night before so they could be first in line to cast their ballots.

At one point, the lanky 64 congressman dove into the small blue tent, which was decorated with Beto for Texas stickers and signs. Its the support from people like you that keep me going, he told them, as a mob of media and supporters trying to catch a glimpse of the candidate inside nearly collapsed the tent.

Supporters of ORourke camp outside a polling site ahead of early voting. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

Everybody has to go vote, ORourke told his supporters. When we reach out to our classmates, our colleagues, our neighbors and our family members, remind them that this is the election of our lifetime.

But first, ORourke said, he urged those around him to look up at the sky, which through the wispy clouds was a perfect shade of azure blue as the sun began to rise. It had been raining for days here, and the forecast said it would begin raining again later Monday, in a washout that would last through the week. But right now, ORourke said, staring up, it was perfect.

_____

Read more Yahoo News midterms coverage:The Trump administration seeks to further roll-back transgender rights in a new memo from the Department of Health and Human Services: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump administration is considering revoking civil rights protections for transgender people and requiring Americans to identify as the gender listed on their birth certificates.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) outlined the proposed policy in a memo which stated gender would be determined by a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective, and administrable.

It is a potential reversal from the series of policies instituted by the administration of Barack Obama which essentially allowed gender to be the choice of individuals, particularly important for education and health programmes run by the federal government.

The memo stated, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times, that the sex of an individual as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of that persons gender in a change affecting approximately 1.4m people in the US who identify as transgender, a different gender from the one at birth, and/or gender non-conforming.

The newspaper reported it would eradicate federal recognition of transgender individuals and would require any dispute about ones sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

Sex means a persons status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth, the memo, which has been making the agency rounds since 2017, stated.

The proposal would apply across all federal agencies, opening the door for states to apply the same policy standard.

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Departments Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration, told the New York Times the memo flies in the face of what the medical community has already established as fact.

This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients  what people understand about themselves  is irrelevant because the government disagrees, she said.

While it appears this memo is one of the clearest and widespread retractions of transgender rights by the administration, it is not the first.

Story continues

The agency had eliminated two questions about gender identity and sexual orientation from a demographic survey of elderly Americans back in March 2017.

The survey results are published in a very large and important statistical report that helps the government identify the particular challenges older Americans are facing when it comes to employment, healthcare, housing, and other issues, David Stacy, HRCs Government Affairs Director told The Independent at the time.

The HHS under the Trump administration said in the Federal Register that no changes had been made to the survey, said Mr Stacy.

The agency website was also scrubbed of information about how LGBTQ Americans can adopt children or where to seek help if they are victims of sex trafficking.

The Department of Commerce also had to correct a provision in its equal employment policy so that it once again protects the LGBTQ community in June 2017.

The website with the statement was updated to include the phrases sexual orientation and gender identity, though this change did not occur until Buzzfeed reported on the change.

The Department of Commerce had not made a formal announcement or press release about the change but added it to the Federal Register, the official journal of the US government which includes agency rules, changes, and public notices.

The earlier 2017 statement, signed by the head of Commerce Wilbur Ross had read: "The Department of Commerce does not tolerate behaviour, harassment, discrimination or prejudice based on race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability...We will also provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities."

The Trump administration has also waded into the debate about school bathrooms, rejecting in February 2017 an Obama-era ruling which stated public schools were required to follow laws against gender discrimination and allow students to use bathrooms based on their chosen gender not necessarily biological one.

In March 2018, the administration announced the US Bureau of Prisons began to use an inmates biological gender to determine where they would be housed and which bathroom they could use.

The administration had also attempted to ban transgender individuals from serving in the US military, but was blocked by several federal judges and opposition from military leaders.

HHS is set to present the latest policy to the US Department of Justice by the end of 2018.Houston (AFP) - Donald Trump on Monday stumped for his former rival Ted Cruz, a pair that had long exchanged barbs but now share a Texas rally stage just two weeks before the congressional midterms.

The political equation is simple: Trump needs Cruz to maintain Republican control of the US Senate, while Cruz is all too aware that a presidential seal of approval could help him in his face-off with rising Democrat star Beto O'Rourke.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump infamously insulted the looks of Cruz's wife Heidi, vaguely suggested Cruz's father had played a role in John F. Kennedy's assassination and tagged him with the nickname "Lyin' Ted."

The 47-year-old junior senator from Texas fired off insults of his own, calling Trump a "pathological liar" and "utterly amoral."

But sporting black cowboy boots, Cruz welcomed the president to the Lone Star State on the tarmac as he descended from Air Force One.

"He's not Lyin' Ted anymore,'" Trump told reporters before leaving for Texas, bestowing Cruz with two new nicknames: "Beautiful Ted" and "Texas Ted."

"He defended your jobs. He defended your borders," Trump said later at the rally. "He defends your families and your faith."

"We are defending together with other great Republicans your freedom," he said, encouraging Texans to "get out there and vote."

Thousands of Trump supporters arrived hours in advance of the rally -- swarming streets around Houston's Toyota Center stadium in a festival-like atmosphere that was to include live music and food trucks.

Some had camped overnight, bundled up against the frigid temperatures, according to local media.

Trump focused particularly on immigration, a tender point in the border state of Texas.

The rally is timed with the beginning of early voting in the state. Local media reported unexpectedly heavy traffic at polling stations, where some also camped overnight in order to cast their ballots.

Story continues

With national attention on Houston, O'Rourke campaigned in various spots around the city to boost supporters and encourage them to vote early.

"We are here for everyone," O'Rourke told a crowd in Pasadena, a Houston suburb, "Republicans, Democrats, independents alike."

- Far from a cake-walk -

Opinion polls still have the ultra-conservative Cruz in the driver's seat, but he is far from the cake-walk win he and the party initially predicted.

"Beto," as supporters of the 46-year-old O'Rourke call him, is making life difficult for Cruz.

While positioning himself firmly on the left, O'Rourke has eschewed the anti-Trump rhetoric systematically rolled out by most of his party -- a move that has won over voters.

Some even say O'Rourke could be the party's savior in the next presidential election in 2020.

Trump has called O'Rourke a "total lightweight" but the Democrat has opted not to trade insults with the president on Twitter.

"I don't know that it makes any sense to respond," O'Rourke told ABC News.

"The kind of bitterness and the name-calling and partisanship that has unfortunately defined so much of the national conversation, you can add more to it or you can stay focused on the future."

- Trump and Cruz: a study in insults -

Though Trump sang the praises of Cruz Monday night, two years ago the pair were hardly friends.

Cruz was the last man standing against Trump in the primary -- and the campaign got ugly.

Trump gave vague credence to a report from The National Enquirer tabloid that Cruz's Cuban-born father Rafael had been friends with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Cruz in turn accused the Manhattan real estate mogul of being the source of another Enquirer article that alleged the senator had been unfaithful to his wife.

After the primaries, Cruz took a long time to formally endorse Trump, even going so far as to accept a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 -- and withhold his support.

Instead, Cruz urged Republicans to "vote your conscience." Only in September 2016 did Cruz eventually say in a Facebook post that he was voting for Trump.

As is often the case, Trump's tweets on Cruz tell the story about the evolution of their relationship.

In February 2016, Trump said: "Why would the people of Texas support Ted Cruz when he has accomplished absolutely nothing for them. He is another all talk, no action pol!"

In August this year, Trump tweeted: "As you know, Ted has my complete and total Endorsement. His opponent is a disaster for Texas."A 44-year-old employee of the Pasgoda Divisional Secretariat was shot dead by unidentified gunmen arrived on a motorcycle at Hulankanda in Urubokka this morning, Police said.

They said the victim, a resident of Walasmulla, was travelling on a motorcycle when he was shot at.

He died on admission to the Heegoda Hospital.

Video by Sujeewa SamarakkodiDonald Trumps administration is pushing the world towards another Cuban missile crisis by withdrawing from a major Cold-War era nuclear treaty, a Russian MP has said.

The US president announced Washington would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated short- and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles, after accusing Russia of violating the pact.

Russia has not, unfortunately, honoured the agreement so were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out, Mr Trump told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Nevada.

Alexei Pushkov, a Russian MP in the upper parliament house, said we will find ourselves at ground zero after pulling out of the agreement, at a point that led to the Cuban missile crisis.

He told the Russian news agency TASS: The danger is that the United States is pushing the world to another Cuban missile crisis.

Back then we were lucky to avoid an exchange of nuclear strikes, and only God knows what all this may end up in now.

Russias deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said a unilateral withdrawal by the United States would be very dangerous and lead to a military-technical retaliation.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union who negotiated the treaty with Ronald Reagan in 1987, said it would be a mistake for Washington to pull out of the treaty.

Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to? Mr Gorbachev, now 87, said, according to the Interfax news agency.

US authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty which could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

Mr Trump said the US will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to halt development. China is not a party to the treaty.

Britains secretary of state for defence said the UK stands absolutely resolute with the US.

Story continues

Gavin Williamson blamed Russia for endangering the treaty and said Moscow had made a mockery of the agreement.

Our close and long-term ally of course is the United States, and we will be absolutely resolute with the United States in hammering home a clear message that Russia needs to respect the treaty obligation that it signed, he told the Financial Times.

We of course want to see this treaty continue to stand but it does require two parties to be committed to it and at the moment you have one party that is ignoring it, Mr Williamson added.

It is Russia that is in breach and it is Russia that needs to get its house in order.Pentagon say it has received no new orders as president vows to cut aid to Central America

Thousands of mostly Honduran migrants crowded into the Mexican border city of Tapachula over the weekend after trekking on foot from the Guatemalan border. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump has said that he has alerted the military and federal border authorities that a US-bound migrant caravan from Central America was a national emergency, and warned that the United States would begin curtailing aid to the region.

A Pentagon spokesman, however, said the Pentagon had received no new orders to provide troops for border security.

According to the United Nations, more than a week after 160 migrants set out from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, the caravan has gradually grown to more than 7,200 people.

Members of the caravan, currently moving slowly through southern Mexico have said that they are fleeing abject poverty and the violence that has turned the region into one of the most dangerous in the world.

Trump, in a series of posts on Twitter, gave no other details about his administrations actions.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States, Trump wrote in a tweet.

Sadly, it looks like Mexicos Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them, Trump wrote.

US administrations long have seen aid programs as an essential part of efforts to stabilize the countries of Central America and stem the flow of migrants leaving. Cutting the aid could lead to further migration north.

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The US president also made an apparently baseless claim that criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in with the migrants; journalists traveling with the caravan say that it is composed of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans.

This is the caravan of Hondurans with broken dreams, said Berlin Sanchez, 22, who fled his home country with his wife, Melida Nunez, 24, to escape extortion by gang members.

If we cant enter the US, well stay in Mexico. We cant return to Honduras. The day I get back, I become another crime statistic, he said.

The couple were among the thousands of migrants slowly heading north from the Mexican border city of Tapachula on Monday, hoping to make it 40km (25 miles) up the road to the town of Huixtla.

Sanchez said that the couple had eked out a living from a small food stand, but had to flee after tattooed gangsters demanded a payment of 50,000 lempiras ($2,000)  more than twice what they earned in a month. The gang members told them to pay up within a week on pain of death. You cant deal with them, Sanchez said.



One of the caravans organisers, Denis Omar Contreras, from the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders) said Trump should stop accusing the caravan of harbouring terrorists.

There isnt a single terrorist here, he said. We are all people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. And as far as I know there are no terrorists in these four countries, at least beyond the corrupt governments.

Thousands of mostly migrants crowded into the Mexican border city of Tapachula over the weekend after trekking on foot from the Guatemalan border, defying threats by Trump that he would close the US-Mexico border if they advanced, as well as warnings from the Mexican government.

Mexican police in riot gear shadowed the caravans arrival along a southern highway but did not impede the migrants journey.

Trump, who has made immigration a central part of his platform, earlier threatened to halt aid to the region, and potentially close the US border with Mexico with the help of the military if the migrants march is not stopped.

He and his fellow Republicans have sought to elevate the caravan as a campaign issue before the midterm elections that will determine whether the party can maintain its hold of the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Trump travels to Texas, a key border state, later on Monday to campaign for the Republican US senator Ted Cruz. Cruz, who challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and who is seeking re-election.Experts warn of most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s as Trump confirms US will leave INF agreement

Donald Trump in Nevada on Saturday. He said: Were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades.

Well have to develop those weapons, the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. Were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out.

Trump was referring to the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km. Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.

The Guardian reported on Friday that Trumps third national security adviser, John Bolton, a longstanding opponent of arms control treaties, was pushing for US withdrawal. The US says Russia has been violating the INF agreement with the development and deployment of a new cruise missile. Under the terms of the treaty, it would take six months for US withdrawal to take effect.

US hawks have also argued that the INF treaty ties the countrys hands in its strategic rivalry with China in the Pacific, with no response to Chinese medium-range missiles that could threaten US bases, allies and shipping.

Bolton and the top arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison, are also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the 2010 New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia, is due to expire in 2021.

This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s Malcolm Chalmers, Royal United Services Institute

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This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s, said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute. If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972.

Speaking to reporters in Nevada, Trump said: Russia has violated the agreement. Theyve been violating it for many years and I dont know why President Obama didnt negotiate or pull out.

Were not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and were not allowed to. Were the ones that have stayed in the agreement and weve honoured the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement so were going to terminate the agreement, were going to pull out.

Asked to clarify, the president said: Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, Lets all of us get smart and lets none of us develop those weapons, but if Russias doing it and if Chinas doing it and were adhering to the agreement, thats unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military.

Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said: This is a colossal mistake. Russia gets to violate the treaty and Trump takes the blame.

I doubt very much that the US will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.

John Bolton addresses a press conference following a meeting with his Russian counterpart in Geneva. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Russian state news agencies on Saturday cited a foreign ministry source as saying Washingtons move to pull out of the treaty is motivated by a dream of a single global superpower.

The main motive is a dream of a unipolar world. Will it come true? No, a foreign ministry source told Ria Novosti state news agency.

The official said that Russia has many times publicly denounced the US policy course towards dismantling the nuclear deal.

Washington has approached this step over the course of many years by deliberately and step-by-step destroying the basis for the agreement, the official said, quoted by Russias three main news agencies.

This decision is part of the US policy course to withdraw from those international legal agreements that place equal responsibilities on it and its partners and make vulnerable its concept of its own exceptionalism.

Russian senator Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter that the move was the second powerful blow against the whole system of strategic stability in the world, with the first being Washingtons 2001 withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty.

And again the initiator of the dissolution of the agreement is the US, Pushkov wrote.

The Pentagon has been generally supportive of the INF treaty but defense secretary James Mattis warned other Nato ministers earlier this month it would no longer be tenable if Russia did not withdraw its Novator ground-based missile, which the US has argued for nearly four years violates the INF range restrictions.

Nato ministers issued a joint statement saying the INF agreement has been crucial to Euro-Atlantic security and we remain fully committed to the preservation of this landmark arms control treaty. But they urged Russia to come clean about the capabilities of its new missile.

This president who is constantly telling us he is deal-maker has failed utterly to save Reagans nuclear legacy Alexandra Bell, Centre for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation

The Chinese arsenal has also been a source of concern for the US Pacific Command. Its former commander, Adm Harry Harris, told the Senate in March: We have no ground-based capability that can threaten China because of, among other things, our rigid adherence, and rightfully so, to the treaty that we sign on to, the INF treaty.

Lewis disagreed that the INF leaves the US at a significant disadvantage in the Pacific.

The China stuff is nonsense, he said. INF does not prohibit sea- and air-based systems, not does it prohibit South Korea and Japan from developing long-range missiles. If China were a real problem, the US and its allies could have acted long ago.

Alexandra Bell, a former senior state department official and now senior policy director at the Centre for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, said: When problems arise in arms control, you work and fix them.

What shocks me is that this president who is constantly telling us he is deal-maker has failed utterly to save Reagans nuclear legacy. He did nothing with his relationship with Putin. There were trades to be made to fix this treaty and he couldnt pull it off.

She added: Why would the North Koreans have any reason to believe in any deal made with this president, with Bolton whispering in his ear.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this reportWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump warned on Monday that the United States intended to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons to pressure Russia and China. Speaking to reporters, Trump repeated his contention that Russia was not abiding by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which he has threatened to abandon. (Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump said Monday the United States will begin cutting aid to three Central American nations because of their governments' failure to stop a migrant caravan headed for the US border.

In a series of tweets, Trump called the caravan's approach a national emergency and said he has alerted the US border patrol and military, setting the stage for a confrontation when the swelling mass of migrants reach the border.

"We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid" that the United States provides to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, he said.

"Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in," he said on Twitter.

"I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy (sic). Must change laws!"

It was unclear what formal action, if any, Trump had taken to activate the military or the border patrol.

Thousands of people seeking to escape poverty and violence in their homelands have pushed into Mexico despite efforts to hold back the migrant caravan at a bridge on the Guatemala-Mexico border.

Around 3,000 migrants reached the city of Tapachula in the Mexican state of Chiapas on Sunday after a seven hour trek from the Guatemalan border.

Trump has used the crisis, which comes two weeks before US midterm elections, as a cudgel against Democrats, reviving the immigrant-bashing rhetoric that helped get him elected in 2016.

"Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms!" he tweeted.By Jeff Mason and David Dolan WASHINGTON/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was still not satisfied with what he has heard from Saudi Arabia about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, but did not want to lose investment from Riyadh. Trump spoke with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the world's top oil exporter, on Sunday. He told reporters on Monday that he has teams in Saudi Arabia and Turkey working on the case and would know more about it after they returned to Washington on Monday night or Tuesday. CIA Director Gina Haspel was traveling to Turkey on Monday to work on the Khashoggi investigation, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. "I am not satisfied with what I've heard," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I don't want to lose all that investment that's been made in our country. But we're going to get to the bottom of it." He later told USA Today that he believed the death was a "plot gone awry." Trump has expressed reluctance to punish the Saudis economically, citing the kingdom's multibillion-dollar purchases of U.S. military equipment and investments in U.S. companies. Prince Mohammed met in Riyadh with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and discussed "the importance of the Saudi-U.S. strategic partnership," Saudi state media said. Mnuchin's spokesman said on Twitter the two discussed the Khashoggi investigation as well as Iran sanctions and Saudi economic issues. Mnuchin canceled his speaking engagement at a high-profile Saudi investment conference on Tuesday, as did two dozen other top speakers. Hundreds of bankers and company executives were still expected to attend the Future Investment Initiative, which aims to help the country curb its economic dependence on oil exports. But Khashoggi's killing has tarnished an event that last year attracted global business elites and won the moniker "Davos in the Desert." Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Prince Mohammed who lived in the United States, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. Saudi Arabia initially denied knowledge of his fate before saying he had been killed in a fight in the consulate, an explanation that drew skepticism from several Western governments. Following the global outrage prompted by the journalist's disappearance, Trump's comments have varied from playing down Riyadh's role to warning of possible economic sanctions. He has repeatedly highlighted the kingdom's importance as a U.S. ally and said Prince Mohammed was a strong and passionate leader. For Saudi Arabia's allies, the question will be whether they believe that Prince Mohammed, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability. King Salman, 82, has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to the 33-year-old prince. 'WORLD IS WATCHING' Turkish officials suspect Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the consulate by Saudi agents. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting the killing of the 59-year-old. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said he will release information about the investigation in a speech on Tuesday. Earlier on Monday, Trump's son-in-law, White House adviser Jared Kushner, said in an interview on CNN that he had urged the crown prince to be transparent about Khashoggi and told him "the world is watching" Riyadh's account of the journalist's disappearance. Kushner has cultivated a personal relationship with Prince Mohammed and urged Trump to act with caution to avoid upsetting a critical strategic and economic relationship, a senior administration official said. Several countries, including Germany, Britain, France and Turkey, have pressed Saudi Arabia to provide all the facts. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would not export arms to the kingdom while uncertainty over Khashoggi's fate persisted. Omer Celik, the spokesman for Erdogan's AK Party, said that the truth of the case would eventually come out. "We are facing a situation that has been monstrously planned and later tried to be covered up," he told reporters. "It is a complicated murder." SHIFTING STORIES On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said Khashoggi had died in a rogue operation. But some of his comments did not match previous statements from Riyadh, marking yet another shift in the official story. Jubeir said the Saudis did not know how Khashoggi had died. That contradicted the public prosecutor's statement a day earlier that Khashoggi died after a fistfight with people who met him inside the consulate. It also contradicted two Saudi officials' comments to Reuters that it was a chokehold that killed him. A Saudi official has said that a member of the team dressed in Khashoggi's clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate. Support for that strand of the account appeared to come from footage aired by CNN showing a man dressed as Khashoggi walking around Istanbul. CNN described the images as law enforcement surveillance footage. On Saturday, Saudi state media said King Salman had fired five officials over the killing carried out by a 15-man hit team, including Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide who ran social media for Prince Mohammed. According to two intelligence sources, Qahtani ran Khashoggi's killing by giving orders over Skype. In Moscow, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said talks were continuing with the Saudis about the incident. "We want to get the truth, and not just talk. First of all, we need to know why he died. Who killed him? We want to get the full lowdown," Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy quoted Bolton as saying during a visit to Moscow. (Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Doina Chiacu, and Susan Heavey in Washington; Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Daren Butler in Istanbul; Maxim Rodionov in Moscow; and Maher Chmaytelli in Dubai; Editing by Alistair Bell, Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O'Brien)ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities have put the fiancee of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi under 24-hour police protection, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Sunday. Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, disappeared on Oct. 2 after he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage to Hatice Cengiz. For weeks Saudi Arabia denied knowledge of what happened to him, initially claiming Khashoggi had left the building. On Saturday Riyadh said he was killed in a fistfight in the consulate. The Saudi foreign minister has since called his death a "huge and grave mistake". The Istanbul governor's office has put Cengiz, a Turkish national, under 24-hour police protection, Anadolu said. Authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what prompted the decision to give her a security detail. On the day Khashoggi disappeared, Cengiz waited for hours outside the consulate for him and, when he did not return, got in touch with authorities as he had instructed her to do, she later said. After Saudi Arabia confirmed his death, she wrote on Twitter in Arabic: "They have taken your body from this world, but your beautiful smile will stay in my world forever." (Reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Yesim Dikmen; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)UK, (Daily Mail), 20 October 2018 - More than half a million anti-Brexit campaigners gathered for a protest dubbed The Peoples Vote March in central London today calling for a second referendum.



Organisers, who originally expected around 100,000 to attend, said 670,000 demonstrators marched from Park Lane to a rally in Parliament Square.



If true, todays demonstration would be the biggest since 2003 when an estimated one million people protested against the Iraq War in the streets of London.



About 150 buses ferried thousands of activists from across the country to the capital this afternoon while thousands dressed in royal blue clothing emblazoned with gold stars, brandishing signs which read bin Brexit now and I want a say on Brexit.



London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Saturdays event was a march for the future for young Britons, including those who were too young to vote in Britains 2016 EU membership referendum.LONDON (Reuters) - British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said on Monday it was not credible for Saudi authorities to claim that journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a fight. "The claim that Mr Khashoggi died in a fight does not amount to a credible explanation," Hunt told parliament. He also said any British response to the case would need to wait for the outcome of an investigation. (Reporting by William Schomberg, writing by William James)LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia needs to provide facts for its explanation of what happened to journalist Jamal Khashoggi to be considered credible, Britain, France and Germany said in a joint statement on Sunday. After denying any involvement in the disappearance of Khashoggi, for two weeks, Saudi Arabia on Saturday said the journalist died in a fistfight at the consulate. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold. "Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms," the joint statement said. "There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened ... beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible." The countries stressed that more effort was needed and expected to establish the truth and ensure proper accountability for any crimes committed. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Richard Balmforth)London (AFP) - Britain's beleaguered Prime minister appealed to her increasingly mutinous party on Monday to back her Brexit strategy in the face of deep divisions at home and a tough negotiating stance from the EU.

Theresa May told a raucous sessions of parliament she was not afraid of strong criticism while negotiating more agreeable terms for Britain's exit from the European Union in March.

"If doing those things means I get difficult days in Brussels, then so be it," she said over the din of jeers from the opposition as well as some members of her own party.

"The Brexit talks are not about my interests. They are about the national interest a- and the interests of the whole of our United Kingdom."

May has come under unrelenting attack in the closing stages of Brexit talks that still cannot find a suitable way to keep the border open between EU member Ireland and North Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

She returned from an unproductive summit in Brussels last week to a new and more intense round of rumours about an imminent leadership challenge from within her party's most staunch pro-Brexit wing.

One newspaper quoted an unnamed MP saying May was entering "the killing zone".

Another said: "The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted."

May's appearance in parliament thus turned into a nationally televised test of her resolve.

She measured her words carefully and never lost her cool as she tried to paint herself as a leader who stood above politics and looked after the nation's interests first.

"I do think that it is important that we all consider the language that we use, those of us in public life," May said.

- 'Misogynistic language' -

The graphic nature of the media attacks appeared to unsettle even some of May's biggest critics.

Yvette Cooper of the opposition Labour Party denounced the "violent, dehumanising and frankly misogynistic language".

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But nearly every MP's disapproval of the quotes was followed by condemnation of May's handling of the negotiations.

"This government is terminally incompetent and hamstrung by its own divisions," Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said.

MPs in her own party criticised her for being open to the idea of extending until 2021 the post-Brexit transition period in which the details of future trade terms are to be ironed out.

Some in Labour said May should choose much closer permanent relations with the bloc.

And still others in Labour urged her to respect the wishes of hundreds of thousands of people who turned out in London on Saturday demanding a second Brexit referendum.

- No compromise on Ireland -

The gulf in the positions defended by May on Monday and Brussels is wide.

May's terms for extending the post-Brexit transition period are not acceptable to the EU.

Brussels further wants to keep Northern Ireland aligned with EU customs rules and regulations for the duration of continued talks on a permanent solution.

May flatly rejected this in a rare article published in the mass-selling The Sun tabloid.

European Parliament's Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said a deal could still be prepared for a new summit in mid-December because a no-deal Brexit was "not in the (interest of the) EU and certainly not of the UK".

Only a few weeks ago negotiators had been hoping to finish things by November.

The stakes for May are rising quickly at home.

Her Northern Irish allies in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are threatening to vote against next week's budget if the deal results in any special status for the province.

A group of eurosceptics said up to 41 Conservative MPs could this week also back an attempt to enshrine enshrine a pledge not to put "trade or regulatory barriers" for trade between Northern Ireland and the mainland Britain into law.United Nations (United States) (AFP) - A special envoy urged the UN Security Council on Monday to consider "stern action" against rebel chief Abdul Wahid Nur for resisting efforts to bring peace to Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

Jeremiah Kingsley Mamabolo, the special representative of the United Nations and African Union in Darfur, noted that there were still confrontations between rebels and government forces in the mountainous Jebel Marra region despite a "relatively calm and peaceful" security situation elsewhere.

He said he informed the Security Council that "all efforts to bring the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), Abdul Wahid Nur, into the peace process have so far failed."

"I urged the council to consider stern action against the SLA leader because from all accounts, he prefers belligerence and armed struggle to cessation of hostilities and a political process. It is highly unlikely that he would change this position any time soon," Mamabolo said.

A diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity after a close door consultations of the 15-member Security Council, said several countries had spoken of the need to impose sanctions on Nur.

Nur, who was born in the Jebel Marra but has long lived in exile in Paris, heads the Sudan Liberation Movement that has been battling President Omar al-Bashir's regime since 2003.

An insurgency began in Darfur in 2003, as ethnic rebels rose up against Sudan's government, accusing it of marginalizing them.

Khartoum responded by using militias to crack down on rebels and since then, insurgent groups have fragmented, with fighting punctuated by periods of relative calm.

The United Nations says that over the years the conflict has killed about 300,000 people and displaced more than 2.5 million, with many having set up home over the last decade and half in sprawling semi-permanent camps.

With the overall fall in violence in Darfur, a joint peacekeeping mission between the UN and the African Union, known as UNAMID, has been reducing its troops, which currently stand at about 8,700.

Plans are to cut them to 4,050 by June 2019, with mission itself terminated by the end of 2020, under pressure from the United States to cut back on expenses.Kabul (AFP) - A NATO soldier was killed and two others wounded in a Taliban-claimed attack in Afghanistan on Monday, days after a US general was wounded in a shooting on a high-level security meeting.

NATO's Resolute Support mission did not immediately release the nationalities of the three soldiers involved in the assault in the western province of Herat, but it is understood they are not American.

"Initial reports indicate the attack was committed by a member of the Afghan security forces," Resolute Support said in a statement.

The apparent so-called "green-on-blue" attack was the latest in a series of such incidents in which Afghan forces have turned their weapons on international troops with whom they are working.

It comes four days after a gunman wearing an Afghan security forces uniform opened fire on a gathering of security chiefs that included General Scott Miller -- the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan -- in the southern city of Kandahar.

Miller was unhurt in the shooting inside the heavily fortified Kandahar provincial governor's compound that killed three people, including powerful police chief and anti-Taliban strongman General Abdul Raziq.

Resolute Support confirmed Monday that US Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley was among 13 wounded in the Taliban-claimed shooting.

Smiley suffered non-life threatening gunshot wounds and was "in Germany receiving further treatment", the statement said.

The Taliban said the attack had targeted Miller and Raziq, but US officials and Resolute Support said it was an "Afghan-on-Afghan incident" that had not targeted the American general.

In the incident's wake Tadeen Khan -- a brother of Raziq and a member of the Afghan security forces -- has been appointed acting provincial police chief, interior ministry deputy spokesman Nasrat Rahimi told AFP.

Rumours on Afghan social media networks that Resolute Support carried out the attack on Raziq were dismissed by Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah on Monday, who blamed "the enemies of the Afghan people and their regional supporters" for the gossip.

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"Such rumours are justifying the enemies' atrocities," Abdullah -- Afghanistan's equivalent of prime minister -- said in comments at a regular ministerial meeting that were broadcast on Afghan television.

- 15 arrested -

That the Taliban could mount a deadly insider assault in such a secure location has rattled Afghanistan, a country long used to high-profile targeted killings and violence.

It was also an unusual incident for the US military, whose generals seldom face attack and are rarely wounded.

Parliamentary elections held across Afghanistan over the weekend were postponed in Kandahar for at least a week as the government scrambles to secure the province.

Fifteen suspects have been arrested over the shooting so far, national intelligence chief Masoom Estanekzai told reporters in Kandahar on Monday.

The shooter, who was from the southeastern province of Ghazni, had trained in Taliban camps in Pakistan and used a fake national identification document to get a job on the governor's security team, Estanekzai said.

The attack was seen as a major coup for the insurgents and threatens to torpedo peace talks and destabilise the south, which is the Taliban's birthplace.

The Taliban, which controls or contests swathes of the war-torn country, has made significant territorial gains and threatened provincial capitals in recent months.

The increased aggression had been seen as an attempt by the group to strengthen its negotiating position in talks with the United States to end the 17-year war.

Taliban representatives have met with US officials at least twice in Qatar in recent months, most recently on October 12 with newly appointed US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, raising hopes for peace.

But analysts said Thursday's attack may have jeopardised those tentative efforts.Washington (AFP) - The administration of US President Donald Trump is considering a proposal to narrowly define gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by birth genitalia, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

According to a memo obtained by The Times, the Department of Health and Human Services is leading the effort to establish a legal definition of sex under federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in government-funded education programs.

It is the latest effort by President Donald Trump's administration to chip away at protections for the LGBTQ community.

The department's proposed definition of gender would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times.

"Sex means a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth," the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring, The Times said.

"The sex listed on a person's birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person's sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence."

Health and Human Services has called on its own department, as well as Education, Justice and Labor, to adopt its definition in regulations that will establish uniformity in the government and increase the chance that courts will accept it, The Times said.

Trump has called for the ejection of transgender people from the military, backed away from anti-discrimination laws that protect gay workers and supported the right of businesses to cite religious principles in not serving gay couples.

The State Department under Trump has not filled a position created by former secretary of state John Kerry of a special envoy advocating LGBTQ rights around the world.

Official moves away from LGBTQ protection come as transgender people take on a higher national prominence.

Last year a transgender Democratic Party member was lauded as a pioneer when she won a seat in the Virginia state legislature. In next month's midterm elections, Christine Hallquist hopes to become America's first transgender governor, in Vermont.Beijing (AFP) - China on Monday called on the United States to "think twice" about its decision to ditch a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty with Russia.

US President Donald Trump announced over the weekend his plan to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometres (300 to 3,500 miles).

But Trump said the Russians had been violating it "for many years" and that China, not a signatory, remained free to develop such weapons.

Two top Republican lawmakers backed Trump's worries about China on Sunday, saying there are concerns the treaty is holding the US back while allowing China to move forward with its own developments.

"It needs to be emphasised that it is completely wrong to bring up China when talking about withdrawal from the treaty," said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying Monday.

The treaty has played an important role in advancing the disarmament process and maintaining a strategic balance and global stability, Hua said.

"Unilateral withdrawal will have a multitude of negative effects," she told a regular news briefing.

Hua said China hoped the relevant parties can "think twice about the issue of withdrawing," in a reference to the US.

On Sunday Republican Senator Lindsey Graham backed Trump's plan to withdraw from the nuclear accord, saying the US needed to be free to respond to a Chinese nuclear build-up.

Washington has complained for nearly two years that a ground-launched missile system deployed by Russia breaches the treaty.

Another senior Republican, Senator Bob Corker, said on CNN that he hoped Trump's stance was designed merely to pressure Russia to return into compliance.

The landmark treaty was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated.

It put an end to a mini-arms race in the 1980s triggered by the Soviet Union's deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles targeting Western European capitals.Washington (AFP) - By announcing its intent to withdraw from a decades-old nuclear weapons treaty, the United States is targeting Russia, which it says violated the bilateral deal -- but also China, which is developing arms that are banned under it.

Beijing is not a signatory to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), so it's Russia that has been singled out for violating the accord, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

At issue is Moscow's new 9M729 ground-based missile system, which Washington says has a reach that exceeds 500 kilometers (300 miles) -- a claim the Kremlin denies.

"Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement, so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out," US President Donald Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Nevada.

Trump did not say whether a new treaty could be negotiated, but he has repeatedly in recent days pointed the finger of blame at both Moscow and Beijing, saying the US would develop its own weapons until they stop.

"Until people come to their senses, we will build it up," Trump told reporters Monday at the White House, referring to the US arsenal.

"It's a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China and it includes Russia and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game."

- 'Pressing' situation -

For several years, Washington has accused Russia of violating the INF Treaty, which banned an entire class of nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310-3,400 miles).

The accord helped end a crisis begun in the 1980s with the deployment of Soviet SS-20 nuclear warheads targeting Western capitals.

US National Security Advisor John Bolton was dispatched to Moscow for emergency talks, where he said there would be wider consultations with "other" participants.

He told Moscow's Echo radio that "friends" in Europe and Asia could be involved.

Story continues

For John Lee, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank who specializes in defense strategy, "the situation vis-a-vis China, uninhibited by any agreement, is very different and far more pressing" than that of Russia.

- Mattis 'completely' in line with Trump -

In recent years, China has developed "land-based intermediate missiles (capable of carrying conventional and nuclear payloads)," Lee said in a column published Monday on CNN's website.

About 95 percent of the missiles available to the Chinese People's Liberation Army Rocket Force would violate the INF Treaty if Beijing were a signatory, Lee charges.

On the issue, the White House and the Pentagon are on the same wavelength.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis "is completely aligned with the president and he's in close contact with the president on this," said Pentagon spokesman Colonel Rob Manning.

In its latest Nuclear Posture Review published in February 2018, the Pentagon said: "In the nuclear context, the most significant Russian violation involves a system banned" by the INF Treaty.

But the document also refers to missiles developed by China, which has in recent years sought to assert its military supremacy in Asia.

At the start of October, Mattis put Russia on notice that its continued alleged violation of the arms treaty would not be ignored.

"Russia must return to compliance with the INF Treaty or the US will need to respond to its cavalier disregard for the treaty's specific limits," Mattis said after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

"Make no mistake -- the current situation with Russia in blatant violation of this treaty is untenable."

In a sign that the Pentagon was preparing for an INF withdrawal for months, the new Missile Defense Review -- US policy on ballistic missiles -- has not yet been published, despite its expected arrival in early 2018.

For months, the Defense Department has repeatedly said the policy document will be available "in a few weeks."

When asked about the MDR, Manning said he had no precise publication date to announced, but he highlighted that "all factors will be taken into account before the Missile Defense Review is released."Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima (Credit: BBC)

Vick Hope has fuelled talk of a fix on Strictly Come Dancing, claiming that producers of the show had a conference with judges prior to their decision on last nights dance off.

Radio presenter Hope and her partner Graziano Di Prima were voted off the show last night, following a head-to-head with Seann Walsh and Katya Jones.

Many thought that Hope and Di Primas dance bettered that of Walsh and Jones, the latter couple having scarcely been out of the headlines since they were caught kissing after a boozy night out in London.

But speaking on Capital Breakfast this morning, Hopes co-hosts Roman Kemp joked its not the best kisser that should go through to the next round.

Hope replied: We had to have a dance off as well  it was very strange  so after the dance off, then the judges have to give their decisions but there was a bit of a conflab with some producers and then they gave their decisions, and it was just stunned silence in the studio, it was a really weird atmosphere.

Seann Walsh and Katya Jones (Credit: BBC)

King also asked Hope about her seemingly frosty relationship between head judge Shirley Ballas.

Shirley Ballas, one of the judges on Strictly my mum called me saying why does Shirley Ballas hate Vick Hope? he asked.

I wish I knew, replied Hope. I think Ive gotta be careful what I say here, because you never know what someones thinking. And it was from week one that people were suggesting there was something there, I dont know.

Its been consistent and Saturday night I really felt it was just weird, wasnt it? Id never really been spoken to like that. She really relished in it.

Hope did laud praise on judge Craig Revel Horwood, however, who voted in her favour in the dance off.

You know what, after the show he was the only judge who came up to me, he hugged me, we chatted for ages, we had a drink together, he said he was really sad to see me go, she said.

Hes really nice. Hes like a puppy dog, he just puts on the whole act.

Read more

Strictly fans anger as Seann and Katya survive

Charlie Sloth to leave Radio 1 immediately

Robbie Williams in One Direction dig



The family of the Indian arrested in Sri Lanka in connection with the alleged plot to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena, says he should be released immediately as he is a victim of the political insecurity in Sri Lanka.

This is a fabricated case. My elder brother is a victim of political insecurity in Sri Lanka, the 52-year-old brother of the man who was identified as M. Thomas, told Indian Express.

The brother said anyone who interacted with Thomas would know that he is not of sound mind and has a physical disability.

The brother, a retired civil engineer, said he was in touch with Sri Lankan and Indian authorities to find out more about his brothers present condition.

He said he wasnt in regular contact with Thomas and that they last spoke a week before his arrest. Thomas then said his life was in danger and that he was surrounded by enemies, he said.

He said that on September 25, Indian officials visited him and told him that Thomas had been arrested in Sri Lanka for overstaying his tourist visa. He said the Indian officials wanted to see Thomass Aadhaar card.

The brother said Thomas, who had exhibited severe symptoms of mental illness since an accident in 1997 in which he sustained a head injury, needs treatment, not jail.

He said that Thomas worked as an office assistant-cum-accountant for several years in the Mumbai office of the Airports Authority of India and used to live in Andheri. In 1992, he shifted to an AAI office in Kerala.

For reasons the brother said were unclear to him, the AAI gave his job to Thomass wife. The husband and wife have been divorced for several years and have a son.

The brother said he last saw Thomas in 2016, after nearly a decade. In 2007, the brother, who was then working in the Middle East, got him a job there, but he quit after a few months.

After that, he met Thomas only in 2016, when he showed up at his Mumbai house and lived there for a few months. He had a property matter in the south.

He owned a seven-room bungalow there and feared that his wife would take the property away. We travelled together to Kerala to clear his property tax, the brother said.

Thomas, the brother said, disappeared soon after, and the next he heard from him was in the beginning of 2017, when he called to say he was in Sri Lanka.

He sounded happy. He asked me to come to Colombo, said his younger brother, adding that he never asked him how he was supporting himself, where he lived or what he did.

In the months that followed, the two kept in touch through missed calls.

I knew he had no money, so sometimes I would call him back when I got a missed call from him. When I spoke to him last, in the third week of September, he said he had a lot of enemies. I told him to come back, or to report to the police or the Indian embassy there. As usual, our conversation ended abruptly, the brother said.

The brother said he was in touch with Indian and Sri Lankan officials. But I havent had a chance to speak to my brother yet. Indian officials were also not allowed to meet him. They asked me to visit Colombo but I am unwell. I request them to take his illness into consideration and drop all false charges against him. If they cannot release him immediately, I hope they will make sure that he gets mental health treatment, the brother said.

He said he had asked the Sri Lankan authorities to send a photograph of Thomas so that he can be sure that it is his brother they have arrested, as his passport was stolen a few years ago, and he got a new one made only two years ago.Climate change continues to increasingly become a subject of debate in the United States, following another year of catastrophic wildfires burning in the West and devastating hurricanes in the East.

President Donald Trump removed the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement in June 2017, sparking a national debate and further dividing party lines. Meanwhile, scientists have been increasingly sounding the alarm about the dangers of a warming planet.

As the upcoming midterm elections get closer, the issue of climate change is not being heavily discussed among both Democrats and Republicans who are running for seats in the House and Senate. The vast majority of both Democratic and Republican candidates do not mention global warming in digital or TV ads, in their campaign literature or on social media.



climate protest US 6-1-2017

Protesters gather outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, June 1, 2017, to protest President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the Unites States from the Paris climate change accord. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The absence of climate change in the midterm election campaigns reflects the highly polarizing nature of the issue. A new Pew Research Center survey shows that 72 percent of registered voters backing Democrats in the upcoming elections view climate change as a "very big" problem, compared to just 11 percent of Republican supporters.

This 61-point gap is tied for the largest among 18 topics Pew asked about in the survey that also addressed the justice system, economy, education, immigration and many other areas.

Dr. Mike Binder, Public Opinion Research Lab faculty director at the University of North Florida, explains why both Democratic and Republican candidates may avoid the subject when running for office this year.

"Republicans are not going to be talking about this because there's a large segment of the party that doesn't believe, thinks it's not a man-made issue, isn't concerned about it or those types of things," Binder said.

Story continues

Republicans are not likely to talk about it with very few exceptions, whereas Democrats may bring up the issue with hesitation.

During this election cycle, Democrats are trying to take some of those toss-up districts, with some districts leaning Republican and many that voted for Trump. Therefore, climate change is not a winning issue in those districts.

"Climate change was talked about a great deal in the Democratic primaries and ironically, most people in the crowd in the primaries are all on board and fully supportive," Binder said.

For example, Tallahassee Mayor and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum talked about climate change more in the primaries than in his current campaign. This trend is common among many Democrats.

The issue doesn't play well in the general election because it's divisive. Therefore, Democrats are typically staying away from the subject.



Florida governor race- Andrew Gillum 2018

Tallahassee Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum speaks during a briefing on Hurricane Michael in Tallahassee on Wednesday Oct. 10. Gillum sounded much like the man he wants to replace, Gov. Rick Scott, who constantly urged residents to seek shelter and take the massive storm seriously. (AP Photo/Gary Fineout)

Climate change is also not discussed because it is not viewed as an immediate issue. While there have been stronger storms, it is hard to definitively associate one particular storm with climate change, according to Binder.

Therefore, the average voter might not care that much about climate change, as many voters might not view it as the most important problem facing the country.

While it is a higher priority on the left side of the electorate than the right side, it is still not a top priority.

If you're a Democrat trying to win a district traditionally won by Republicans, the last thing you want to do is talk about an issue that many of the voters don't think is a problem, Binder said.

Therefore, Democratic candidates will be speaking about healthcare, education or other issues that are more clear to the voters' everyday lives.

Some districts are unique in their approach to climate change. In districts experiencing impacts associated with climate change, candidates are more likely to speak of the issue.

For example, red tide is a growing problem in western Florida. Therefore, congressional candidates David Shapiro and Vern Buchanan in District 16 have addressed aspects of climate change in their campaign, such as the warming waters in the Gulf contributing to the algae blooms.

In cities like Miami that have been affected by rising sea levels, congressional candidates from those areas are more likely to speak more about climate change in their campaign, according to Binder.We are strategic, we are focused, and we are a threat to Trumps grip on power. We are taking back what Republicans have stolen

Women gather for a rally and march at Grant Park on 13 October in Chicago, Illinois to inspire voter turnout ahead of midterm elections. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty Images

At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.  Rosa Parks, Montgomery, Alabama, 1955.

There is nothing more threatening to a man than a woman who knows her own power and will not back down from a fight.

Over the last few weeks weve seen the sweeping outrage of women across the nation in response to the nomination  and confirmation  of Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. Kavanagh was accused of sexual assault by a girl he knew in high school  more than 30 years ago  and he was ultimately confirmed.

Though the Senate paid lip service to the assault claims by requesting a brief FBI investigation before the vote, multiple witnesses were not interviewed by the FBI during what many lawmakers called a sham FBI investigation.

Women are very angry  for good reason. The upsurge in support for womens rights has terrified the Trump administration, and theyve been working furiously to push a dishonest narrative to invalidate and down-splain our powerful demonstrations.

Every lawmaker who continues to advance policies that harm women, workers, the environment, and our democracy will pay the price at the ballot box

Every lawmaker who continues to do this, or to advance policies that harm women, workers, the environment, and our democracy will pay the price at the ballot box. Because women are outraged, and they will turn out to vote in force to replace them in Congress and throughout the federal government. A recent CNN poll shows women are breaking 2:1 for Democrats. 63% of women are now planning to vote for Democrats  setting us up to possibly smash the previous record of 58% in 1982.

In typical fashion, the White House and rightwing commentators have misconstrued these democratic actions, accusing the women and men who engaged in civil disobedience over the last few weeks in DC as being members of a mob that threatens public safety. Nothing could be further from the truth. Direct action is what democracy looks like  even when we bring it to the US Capitol and the supreme court.

Story continues

You cant stay at home when something like this is going on, said Angela Trzepkowski, who travelled from Delaware to participate in the protest. Women are feeling empowered and stronger, and its no longer going to be the good ol white boys club. It cant be any more.

Weve sat with these women freedom fighters, eaten with them, and cried with them. There is no mob. There is only a movement of millions of people who believe in justice, equality and democracy  and we are following in the footsteps of those who practiced nonviolent political protest: Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Fanny Lou Hamer, Congressman John Lewis and Dolores Huerta.

Over the last five weeks, tens of thousands of people traveled to DC to demonstrate against Trump, and more than 3,500 people were trained by Womens March and our partners in nonviolent civil disobedience. We held rallies and press conferences. Police arrested hundreds of activists: 1,259 to be precise. During this process, tens of thousands of women found their voice and confidence to publicly share their own stories of survival.

Womens March activists have a clear message: we are strategic, we are focused, and we are a threat to your grip on power. We are taking back what you have stolen.

Our activism is having an impact leading up to the midterms. According to a recent CNN poll, 63% of women say they will vote for a Democratic candidate. Republicans are likely going to lose more than a dozen house seats to Democrats this November. This data shows what we already know to be true.

According to a recent CNN poll, 63% of women say they will vote for a Democratic candidate

Women are outraged and they will turn out to vote in force. Every lawmaker who continues to advance policies that harm women, workers, the environment and our democracy will pay the price at the ballot box.

As disgraceful as the current attempts by the White House and Republican garbage-pundits to paint us as screamers and paid protesters and the mob are, in truth they indicate a deep underlying fear  fear of women leaders who cannot be stopped. We see them and were going to replace them in Congress and throughout the federal government.

We are a national grassroots movement, led by women, not beholden to institutional or corporate interests. We have more than 50 state chapters and 170 youth chapters. We have more than 1.5 million members  women and our allies  and we are more organized than weve ever been.

The #WomensWave is coming, and were sweeping the world forward with us. Go here to find a march near you.Following the reported killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the slaying of Bulgarian reporter Viktoria Marinova, many are questioning the international treatment of the media.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 63 journalists have been killed in 2018 so far. Out of those, 27 are motive-confirmed murders.

President Trump has often criticized news organizations. He recently praised Rep. Greg Gianforte for assaulting a reporter during his campaign in May.

Any guy that could do a body slam, hes my kind of Hes my guy, Trump said.

The president has also frequently used nicknames like the failing New York Times, has referred to CNN as the Clinton News Network, and has even called media the enemy of the American people.

Last June, a shooter stormed into a local newspaper in Annapolis, Md., and killed five staff members. The gunman had a long-standing conflict with the Capital Gazette and had even sued journalists for defamation and waged a social media campaign against them.

In Afghanistan, the press is sometimes deliberately targeted by suicide bombers. Back in April, a bomber disguised himself as a media worker and then detonated his bomb while surrounded by reporters.

Meanwhile, Russia, North Korea, and Mexico continue to persecute journalists who speak out. Russia imprisoned five journalists last year for being critical of Putin.

According to a recent Gallup web survey, more than 60 percent of Americans think the news is biased, while 44 percent think its inaccurate.

It seems like the only thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that the spread of inaccurate information on the internet is a problem, as another Gallup poll reported.

Fake news was rampant on social media during the 2016 presidential election. With midterms looming, Facebook has set up a war room within its Silicon Valley headquarters. There, employees huddle trying to combat fake accounts and hoax news stories that could affect the upcoming election.

Story continues

Despite everything, a Gallup poll earlier this year indicated that 84 percent of Americans still believe the media is either critical or very important to our democracy.



_____

Read more from Yahoo News:YAKIMA, Wash. -- She left her home sometime in 1987 and never returned. She was petite  around 5 feet tall  and likely wore a long-sleeved blouse, lavender pants and brown bowling shoes when she disappeared.

A horseback rider found that clothing and her skeletal remains on Feb. 16, 1988. She lay close to a dirt road running parallel to the Yakima River near the Parker Dam and the unincorporated community of Parker.

No one in the years since has identified this 30- to 40-year-old Native woman who law enforcement believe was murdered. Someone has been and likely still is looking for her, hoping for justice and resolution.

Much has changed in the decades since Yakima County Sheriffs Office detectives took her skull to the department of anthropology at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where faculty and students recreated her face with clay. It was the first time the sheriffs office used such a visual device to further a criminal investigation, noted a story in the Yakima Herald-Republic on Dec. 20, 1988.

Now, with renewed attention in Washington on missing Native women as a result of state legislation passed this year, her story  and those of the many other Native women and girls who went missing, were murdered or died mysteriously on or near the Yakama Reservation  are getting another look by those seeking solutions to this national and international epidemic of violence.

House Bill 2951 requires the Washington State Patrol to work with the Governors Office of Indian Affairs, federally recognized tribes, tribal and other law enforcement and tribal leaders to determine how to increase reporting and investigation of missing Native American women.

As part of that, public meetings hosted by the State Patrol and Indian Affairs office are taking place around Washington. One is set for 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 29 in the event center of Legends Casino, 580 Fort Road, Toppenish.

Unidentified woman

Capt. Dave Johnson of the Toppenish Police Department, who retired from the Yakima County Sheriffs Office in December 2015 and joined the Toppenish department about a year ago, worked the case of the woman whose remains were found in 1988. He had the skull taken to Central, where Catherine Sands oversaw the reconstruction, he said.

Central experts, with the help of the King County Medical Examiners Office, were able to determine that the victim appeared to be Native, the December 1988 YHR story said. It noted that authorities said the victims high cheekbones were consistent with the bone structure of a Native woman, but they also said they didnt believe she was a citizen of the Yakama Nation.

During the press conference, sheriffs detectives said they believed she died two to 10 months before her body was found on Feb. 16, 1988  and that she was murdered.

An autopsy by the King County Medical Examiners Office failed to determine the cause of her death. Because of the location of the remains, detectives investigated the case as a homicide.

There are still no leads in the case as far as Johnson knows, he said. It remains open with the sheriffs office, case number 88-1113.

We had the normal, Were missing somebody, but it doesnt look like her, but she was missing about that time, he said. We did have several females during (that period of time) that were missing, but none of them matched the characteristics. Those leads didnt go anywhere.

Other cases

Two other women were found stabbed to death near Parker during that time frame.

Serial rapist John Bill Fletcher Jr. was resentenced in 2011 for killing Theresa Branscomb, 20; and Bertha Cantu, 26. Their bodies were found near Parker and both were stabbed to death in 1987, Branscomb in February and Cantu in late June.

Fletcher, 62, remains at the Monroe Correctional Complex in Monroe. According to information from the Washington State Department of Corrections, September 2032 is the earliest he could be released.

Johnson said he didnt remember anything being connected to Fletcher in this case.

We just didnt have anything to go on, he said. But like the Green River Killer, almost any bodies turning up around a certain period of time are connected to a certain person or people, he said.

DNA clues?

Det. Sgt. Jerrold Towell of the sheriffs office said human hair and fingernail trimmings  which could be tested for DNA  are among the evidence collected in the unidentified womans case.

Its not a lot of evidence. Some of it is soil samples from around the body. The thing that may be the most interesting  its hair they collected at the scene, he said, stressing that he wasnt there so didnt know how it was collected or where exactly it came from.

Is it the subjects hair? You dont know, especially on skeletal remains. You never make assumptions. You just collect it.

The sheriffs office does not have the skeletal remains and any clothing found on them, he said.

From my understanding the skeletal remains were transferred to the coroners office, Towell said.

Yakima County Coroner Jack Hawkins is checking on the remains location. Because the King County Medical Examiners Office performed the autopsy, they may be there, he said.

Usually when theyre done, theyll ship them back, Hawkins said. Sometimes theyre kept at King County.

With advances in DNA technology and the rise of the internet and social media since 1988, sharing the womans story again could lead to someone thinking of something that could make a difference.

Its always good to bring those things back into the public eye, Johnson said.Ashraff himself did not contest but actively campaigned during the 1977 general elections

The Kalmunai-Karaitheevu Tamil-Muslim violence of 1985 affected him directly

He was disgusted with the politics of Muslim leaders in the UNP and SLFP

M.H.M. Ashraffs SLMC played a constructive Queen makerrole to install Chandrika Kumaratunga government

By

D.B.S. Jeyaraj

October 23 is the 70th Birth anniversary of legendary Muslim Congress leader M.H.M. Ashraff. A dynamic lawyer  politician hailing from Eastern Sri Lanka would have completed the Biblical life span of three score years and ten if he were among the living today. Alas! This was not to be as Ashraff passed away in a helicopter crash on September 16, 2000, just five weeks ahead of his 52nd Birthday. His untimely demise created a vacuum in the Islands Muslim politics that is yet to be filled. This article however is to commemorate Ashraffs 70th Birthday and celebrate his life.



Muhammed Hussain Mohammed Ashraff was a pioneering leader of Sri Lankan Muslims in particular and the country in general. He was ahead of his times in more ways than one. He realised the vast untapped political potential of his community and strove to charter a course that would have enabled his people to have their grievances redressed and aspirations fulfilled.



At a time when the conflict within the island was perceived in simplistic terms as a Sinhala versus Tamil issue, the efforts of Ashraff brought to the fore the problems faced by Muslims. The eloquent and effective advocacy of the Muslim cause by Ashraff led to a general awareness that the seemingly intractable ethnic crisis was not merely a Sinhala-Tamil bilateral issue but a trilateral one involving Muslims too.



The Muslims of Sri Lanka, also known as Moors, have a unique ethnic identity. Constituting nearly 10% of the islands population, they are distributed somewhat evenly with about two-thirds of them in the seven predominantly Sinhala provinces and the rest in the Tamil majority North and East. The bulk of the community, including sections living amidst the Sinhala population speaks Tamil at home and are classified as Tamil-speaking. The medium of instruction in schools is chiefly Tamil. The community has also thrown up a number of Tamil scholars, writers, poets, journalists and artists who have reached eminent positions. In spite of this, the community does not perceive itself as being Tamil but Muslim. The Muslim self-perception is based on ethno-religious and not ethno-linguistic lines. This socio-cultural reality has acquired sharp political dimensions in recent times.



Eastern Province Muslims



Although they are a scattered population, Sri Lankan Muslims have their single largest concentration in the Eastern Province where they form 35 % of the population. The enclave factor has helped the Eastern Province Muslims to elect at least five parliamentarians from the Province at each election. The Eastern bloc has at times constituted almost 50% of the total Muslim representation in Parliament. Despite this numerical advantage, the overall leadership of the community was not in the hands of the Eastern Muslim. The comparatively advanced Muslim leaders of earlier vintage from the Central, Western and Southern provinces were in charge, lording it over the Muslims from the Eastern backwaters. All this, however, changed with the arrival of Ashraff.

The comparatively advanced Muslim leaders of earlier vintage from the Central, Western and Southern provinces were in charge, lording it over the Muslims from the Eastern backwaters. All this, however, changed with the arrival of Ashraff



Ashraff was born on October 23, 1948 in the Muslim village of Sammanthurai in Amparai District. He grew up in the town of Kalmunai, in the same region. After schooling at Wesley High School in Kalmunai, Ashraff entered Law College where he passed the examination with first class honours. Ashraff went on to acquire a bachelors and later a Masters degree in Law from Colombo University. The latter feat was achieved in 1995 when he was a Cabinet Minister. He took silk in 1997 as Presidents Counsel.



Ashraff began his political career like many an Eastern Muslim leader as an admirer of the Tamil father figure S.J.V. Chelvanayagam, the founder leader of the Ilankai Thamil Arasuk Katchi / Federal Party. He spoke on F.P. platforms and in 1976 attended the historic Vaddukkoddai Conference where the newly formed Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) unanimously adopted the demand for a separate state of Tamil Eelam. In 1977, Ashraff was the driving force behind the newly set up Muslim United Front (MUF).



I first met Ashraff in 1977 when he was campaigning ardently for Tamil Eelam on the TULF platform. He had formed the MUF and signed an agreement with Appapillai Amirthalingam. Muslim candidates were fielded on the TULF Sun symbol in Kalmunai, Sammanthurai, Puttalam and Mutur. Another assigned to contest Seruwila failed to submit nomination papers at the last minute.



Ashraff himself did not contest but actively campaigned in 1977.This was the time when he stated publicly that even if elder brother Amirthalingam could not deliver Tamil Eelam younger brother Ashraff would do so. The highlight of his speeches then was this bombastic pronouncement that even if Amirthalingam himself abandoned the goal of Eelam, Ashraff would continue to strive for it.



Muslim United Front (MUF)



In spite of this affinity towards Tamil Eelam on the part of Ashraff, the Eastern Muslim voters had different ideas and rejected the MUF candidates on the TULF ticket. This was an eyeopener to Ashraff. The electoral results showed that despite Ashraffs desire to share a Tamil-Muslim political vision, Eastern Muslims had other ideas. While the Tamil candidates of the TULF swept the 1977 polls, no Muslim from the party won a seat.



Ashraffs relations with the TULF became strained gradually. The 1981 District Development Council elections saw the TULF going to polls on a Tamil slate of candidates. Ashraff wanted Muslims to be included in Mannar and the three Eastern districts. He was rebuffed. This led to an already estranged Ashraff parting ways with the TULF completely.



However this did not result in him joining a Sinhala dominatednational party like other Muslim leaders of old who cut their political teeth in the FP and then merrily crossed over. Ashraff realised that the Muslims needed to charter a separate course independent of Tamil and Sinhala politics. This led to his aligning with Ahamed Lebbe of Kattankudi and co-founding the Muslim Congress. After Ashraff parted ways with the TULF the MUF had entered a state of decay. The SLMC was inaugurated on September 21, 1981. At that point, the SLMC was more or less an Eastern outfit concerned more with socio-cultural than political issues.

The July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom and the consequent escalation of armed Tamil militancy led to a situation where Muslims became increasingly insecure and apprehensive of their future in a Tamil state. On the other hand, the contemptuous manner in which the J.R. Jayewardene regime dismissed the Muslim opposition to the resumption of diplomatic relations with Israel touched a raw nerve in the community.



Ashraff was instrumental in organising protest demonstrations over the issue. However, Sri Lankan Muslims at that time were immune from the global trend of growing Islamic consciousness and radicalism. The Muslim community in the East also produced a new generation of educated and ambitious youth. All this created a suitable climate for himand his brand of politics to arrive on the national scene. The rise of Tamil armed militancy instilled a sense of political insecurity and urgency into Muslim politics.



Tamil-Muslim Violence



The catalyst was the outbreak of violence between Tamils and Muslims in the Kalmunai-Kaaraitheevu areas in 1985 which was aided and abetted by agents of the state and Tamil militant groups. The Kalmunai-Karaitheevu Tamil-Muslim violence of 1985 affected Ashraff directly. Threatened by and fearing harm at the hands of Tamil militants, Ashraff was forced to flee to Colombo.

I was in close contact with him during the 1986-88 period. It was then that I saw him at close quarters forging a new vision and mission for his people. Some of his ideals seemed impossible to achieve then. Ashraff wanted the Muslims to be recognized as a separate and equal entity on par with the Sinhala and Tamil people



Ashraff moving to Colombo as a political refugee was a significant milestone in his life. In the nations capital, his political horizons began to extend beyond the East. He recognized the widespread disappointment prevalent among the Muslim masses with their elitist leaders. Ashraff identified the need and yearning of the community to assert boldly and articulate their identity.



Ashraff was disgusted with the politics of Muslim leaders in the UNP and SLFP. He felt that these people were nothing but minions serving respective Governments without evincing real concern for the Muslim plight. One reason for this Ashraff felt, was the lure of power and the attraction posed by the spoils of office. An Independent voice was necessary. For this concrete Muslim unity was needed.



Establishing himself firmly in Colombo, Ashraff revived and restructured the Muslim Congress. In 1986 he convened an Island-wide convention in Punchi Borella and formally took over party leadership after gently easing out Ahamed Lebbe. I was a witness to this eventful moment in the history of the Muslim Congress. I attended the convention in a journalistic capacity along with my departed friend and colleague M.P.M.Azhar of a popular Tamil daily newspaperwho later edited another Tamil language Muslim weekly. There was magic in the air as the Muslim delegates took their decisive step on a long journey that continues to date.



I was in close contact with him during the 1986-88 period. It was then that I saw him at close quarters forging a new vision and mission for his people. Some of his ideals seemed impossible to achieve then. Ashraff wanted the Muslims to be recognized as a separate and equal entity on par with the Sinhala and Tamil people.The Muslim people in all parts of the Country needed their own independent political party. The SLMC was to fulfill that role. The party was to remain independent of Sinhala and Tamil political over-lordship. The Eastern Province Muslims were to play a greater role in this project. By doing so, this historically neglected people were to achieve their rightful place under the Lankan sun.



Muslim Majority Council



Ashraff also introduced the demand for a territorially non-contiguous North-Eastern Council for the Muslims on the Pondicherry model of India. His aim then was to create a Muslim majority council linking up all Muslim majority AGA divisions in the North-East. Ashraff gradually redefined the objectives and redrafted the constitution of the Muslim Congress to make it an all-island party. It was formally accredited by the Election Commissioner and allocated the symbol of the tree on February 11, 1988. The new SLMC under Ashraff contested the Provincial Councils in 1988. It won 17 seats in the North-Eastern council and 12 in the Western, North-Western, Central and Southern Provincial councils. The proportionate representation system helped the fledgling party to record an impressive showing in the provincial council elections. The Muslim Congress had come of age.

The new SLMC under Ashraff contested the Provincial Councils in 1988. It won 17 seats in the North-Eastern council and 12 in the Western, North-Western, Central and Southern Provincial councils. The proportionate representation system helped the fledgling party to record an impressive showing in the provincial council elections



The SLMC also supported Ranasinghe Premadasa in the 1988 presidential elections. In 1989 the Muslim Congress contested the parliamentary polls and won four seats. Ashraff himself was returned with a massive number of preference votes.



The SLMC discovered that in spite of its all-island appeal the parliamentary seats it was able to garner came from the North-East alone. Ashraff realised that if the party was to maximize its representation, tactical compromises would have to be made and strategic alliances with major parties formed. In 1994, he did just that in the accord with Chandrika Kumaratungas Peoples Alliance. The SLMC contested under its own symbol in the North-East and on the PA ticket in the other provinces. The party won six seats and got another three on the national list.



The SLMC played a constructive Queen makerrole to install the Chandrika Kumaratunga government in a hung Parliament. Ashraff became Minister for Ports, Shipping and Rehabilitation. Later he lost shipping in a reshuffle. Two other SLMC members, Hizbullah and Aboobakr, became Deputy Ministers. Then SLMC general secretary and current Muslim Congress leader Rauff Hakeem became Chairman of Committees.



Ashraffs ministerial tenure was eventful and controversial. He was accused of providing Muslims jobs on a massive scale in the various harbours coming under his purview. Likewise he was faulted for giving priority to Muslim areas in the matter of rehabilitation projects. A tempestuous feud between Ashraff and another Muslim Minister from the SLFP, AHM Fowzie, saw sparks fly at regular intervals. This led to Ashraff throwing political tantrums at every turn and threatening to resign.



Supreme Thalaiver (Leader)



Ashraff was also autocratic in his handling of party affairs. He was the supreme Thalaiver (leader) and brooked no nonsense from within. At the time of his death, he had suspended the party membership of three MPs and sent a show-cause notice to another.



Apart from the charismatic sway Ashraff had over the Muslim masses, his strength was his adaptive flexibility . The SLMCs fundamental demand had been for the creation of a territorially non-contiguous Muslim majority council consisting of the Muslim divisions in the North and East. Ashraffs rationale in this issue was to preserve for the Eastern Province Muslims their 33% representation as far as possible in a proposed merger situation where it would have dwindled to 17%.

The inspiration for the territorial non-contiguity principle was the Indian model for the Union Territory of Pondichery, Karaikal, Yanam and Mahe where areas far apart came under a single administrative system. When he found the demand unachievable, he substituted it for the South Eastern Provincial Council comprising the electoral divisions of Sammanthurai, Pottuvil and Kalmunai.

He gave up that too when it became necessary and opted for a merged North-East with adequate safeguards for Muslims including a de-merger proviso by referendum in 10 years time.



Ashraff also wanted to carve out a distinctly Muslim-majority coastal district known as Kalmunai out of the existing Amparai District. He was however hesitant in some respects because he feared the contemplated littoral district could be deprived of adequate land and water resources. While the interests of his own community were paramount for him, Ashraff was also extremely sympathetic to the Tamil problems and grievances. Except where the interests of Tamils and Muslims clashed directly, he tried to help realise the legitimate aspirations of Tamils. He also arrived at an understanding to achieve a working relationship with the Ceylon Workers Congress representing Tamils of Indian origin.



National Unity Alliance



Ashraffs greatest virtue was perhaps his metamorphosis from a sectarian leader to a national one. By 2000 his horizons broadened and Ashraff formed the National Unity Alliance (NUA). He was now prepared to look beyond Muslim ethnicity and reach out to other communities. He had a blueprint for achieving lasting peace by 2012.



The NUAs birth indicated that the one-time Tamil Eelamist supporter who pioneered an exclusive party for Muslims had reached an evolutionary stage where his outlook was blossoming into a broader Sri Lankan nationalist perspective. While the SLMC was to be the flagship of the Muslims, the NUA was to be wider and inclusive representing all communities.

On September 16, 2000, Ashraff flew aboard an MI-17 helicopter of the Sri Lanka Air Force above the Urakanda mountain range in the Aranayaka area in Kegalle district of Sabaragamuwa province. The copter crashed resulting in the death of this dynamic political leader



One does not know what the future may have been of the SLMC and NUA, had Ashraff lived to implement his vision. Sadly, hedied a few weeks before the scheduled poll on October 10, 2000. Ashraffs life being snuffed out was a setback to the limitless possibilities offered by the grand alliance at that juncture.



On September 16, 2000, Ashraff flew aboard an MI-17 helicopter of the Sri Lanka Air Force above the Urakanda mountain range in the Aranayaka area in Kegalle district of Sabaragamuwa province. The copter crashed resulting in the death of this dynamic political leader. Along with Ashraff, 14 others, including crew members, security personnel, personal staff and political supporters had lost their lives in that tragic crash.



Ashraffs loss was keenly felt by country and community. The sense of loss was compounded further by the sorry state of post-Ashraff Muslim politics. The party he breathed new life into underwent dissension. His widow and erstwhile deputies fought for his mantle. His political legacy got fragmented with the SLMC undergoing a number of splits at different points of time. Thus we see Ashraffs lofty goal of uniting Muslims under one banner lying in tatters with his party being atomized again and again after each parliamentary poll.



Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC)



His ideal of Muslims retaining their independence and maintaining an equidistance between Sinhala and Tamil politics too has suffered badly. The perks and privileges offered by successive Governments have led to most ex-SLMC leaders abandoning their independence. The ministerial, deputy ministerial posts, corporation chairperson, director posts, ambassadorial assignments etc have overwhelmed most of these politicos nurtured in the nursery of the SLMC. The interests and welfare of the Muslim voters who elected them are have been callously and cynically abandoned by those elected seeking power and perks. Principled politics is

conspicuously absent.



Against this dismal backdrop, Ashraffs vision for his people of an oasis in the bleak desert is turning into a mirage. In such a situation, party loyalists and those concerned about the welfare of the Muslim community continue to focus on MHM Ashraffs memory for some consolation at least. Ashraff may be no more but his spirit pervades Muslim political consciousness still. In life he was the single most popular mass figure in Eastern Muslim politics. Even after death the magical hold he retained over Muslim masses lingers on even after 18 years.



D.B.S.Jeyaraj can be reached at dbsjeyaraj@yahoo.comA terrorist stabbed Monday a man in Hebron, near the Tomb of the Patriarchs. As a result, the victim was lightly wounded, and the terrorist was shot and neutralized.IDF shot Monday a terrorist who lightly wounded a soldier by stabbing him with scissors near the Tomb of the Patriarchs. According to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, the soldier and another force responded with fire and neutralized the terrorist.

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The terrorist lay neutralized on the ground, and the young victim was evacuated to a nearby hospital while conscious and standing on his feet.

The scene of the attack (Photo: TPS)

This is the third consecutive week in which an attack takes place in the area.

On Saturday, police arrested a 20-year-old Palestinian man armed with a knife in the West Bank settlement of Har Adar. After a preliminary investigation carried out by Border Police, investigators suspect the man intended to carry out a terror attack. The suspect, who entered the settlement by crossing through the fence in a nearby Palestinian village, was taken in for further questioning

In addition, last week, a Palestinian terrorist tried to stab a soldier standing at a bus stop at the Gitai Avishar Junction on Highway 5 in the northern West Bank.

Terror attack in Gitai Avishar Junction (:   )

Fighters of the Artillery Corps' 55th Battalion, who were at the scene, shot and killed the terrorist. No injuries were reported among the soldiers.

The terrorist, Elias Saleh Yassin, 22, left the village of Biddya, the hometown of Ashraf Na'alwa, who carried out the attack in the Barkan industrial area.The sight of the entrance to Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin village in the West Bank slated for demolition, reflected the mood of its residents. On one hand, residents sit at leisure and smoke hookahs, and on the other, huge piles of tires, to be scorched at evacuation day, symbolize the resident's disquiet.

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"I'm not happy," said resident Ahmed Abu Dahuk, who was sitting at the entrance of the central protest tent. "The decision was postponed only for a short period of time and that does not make me feel at ease."

Khan al-Ahmar (Photo: Reuters)

The decision he is referring to is the Security Cabinet's decision to postpone the demolition of the Palestinian-Bedouin village by "several weeks" in an effort to reach an agreement with the residents to willingly relocate to Anata, a Palestinian village located 600 meters away.

The Palestinian Authority makes sure that its representatives stay in the village at all time, and almost every evening the Palestinian head of the Wall and Settlements Resistance Committee, Walid Assaf, arrives at the site. When we arrived to the village, Qassem Awad was on duty.

Awad, a resident of Ramallah and an activist in the Wall and Settlements Resistance Committee, admitted that this morning he heard a sigh of relief all over the village, but added that the struggle was not over. "The Israeli decision to postpone the evacuation stemmed from the pressure of the international community which argued that evacuating the village would be a war crime. We have one thing to say to Israelyou are bound to international law. That is all."

Inside the protest tent sits the village's mukhtar with a map of the area. He was on the phone, bent over the big map, and seemed preoccupied with trying to understand the proposed compromise.

"We do not want to relocate to 600 meters away, we have no problem moving 100-200 meters off the road, and you know what? Even 400 meters away, but on one condition: that we relocate to a Khan al-Ahmar territory and nowhere else," Abu Dahuk added.







"We do not want stone houses or permanent structures, like those offered to us near Abu Dis, we just want to continue living our life the same way we have been living since birthlike this. We know that in Israel there are those who support us and those who oppose us; we just do not know which of those will decide our fate," he concluded.An IDF officer was lightly injured Monday following an attack by dozens of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators in Jerusalem.

At some point, after feeling his life were at risk, the officer fired into the air to keep the demonstrators away.Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Monday that he does not believe in a deal with Hamas.

"I do not believe in any arrangement with Hamas, it did not work, it does not work and will not work in the future. We have reached the point where we have to make decisions, we have exhausted all our options," he said.An IDF officer serving in the Caracal Battalion was attacked Sunday in Jerusalem by dozens of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators and was lightly wounded as a result. According to the officer, he fired into the air to keep the attackers away, but police said Monday that no shots had been fired.

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After the police dispersed the demonstrators, the officer did not need medical care.

Ultra-Orthodox demonstrators

"We emphasize that following police investigation, it appears that while the officer passed through the Jerusalem neighborhood, a number of ultra-Orthodox residents gathered around him, but no shots were fired," a police statement read.

The officer was transferred to The Military Police for questioning.

Dozens of ultra-Orthodox members demonstrated in Jerusalem Sunday night in protest of the arrest of three female IDF deserters. The demonstrators blocked the capital's Straus Street, Hanevi'im Street (Prophets Street) and Kikar HaShabba (Sabbath Square).

According to the protestors, three young women were held in military detention for refusing to enlist in the IDF. The news quickly spread like wildfire around the community, through voice messages recordings on mobile devices, and within minutesdemonstrators started to gather in the streets.

Some groups took advantage of the demonstration to remove municipal elections campaign posters showcasing women.



Hezbollah continues to deepen its presence along the Israel-Lebanon border: IDF recently uncovered another Hezbollah observation post, the sixth in number in the past couple of years, a senior Northern Command official said Monday.

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The organization uses these posts for military purposes. According to the IDF, Hezbollah members move along the fence, patrol Israel and form military infrastructureall this in the guise of a fictitious green organization.

Hezbollah's observation post (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

Similar to the five observation posts IDF uncovered last year, this postlocated in Al-Adisa village opposite Kibbutz Misgav Amtoo is apparently used for intelligence gathering through observing and capturing IDF activity in the region.

Hezbollah has set up this network of observation posts under the guise of a civilian organization called Green Without Borders, a Hezbollah-funded organization's that promotes agriculture and environmental protection. In addition, the organization is establishing its military capabilities in Shiite villages located in southern Lebanon.

Green Without Borders logo

The IDF clarified that revealing this position disrupts and hinders the organization's activity in the area.

"We voiced our concern over these posts to the UN, but Hezbollah made it difficult for UN inspectors to do their job and examine the posts, claiming it is a private area. This is a blatant, daily violation of the UN Security Council resolutions 1701, which prohibits any armed military presence south of the Litani river except for the Lebanese army and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). These are not forest keepers or ornithologists. The organization continues to deploy forces near the border and thinks that Israel is oblivious to this activity," the IDF Spokesperson's Unit explained.





(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

Hezbollah's post was exposed on the backdrop of Lebanese claims last year that Israel infiltrated Lebanese territory during IDF work on the border fence. The IDF strongly denied these allegations and even invited foreign and Israeli journalists, two months ago, to a location on the border near Rosh Hanikra, where construction work is being done.

(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

"The IDF regularly monitors Hezbollah's activity, as shown recently, and is aware of this operation and of other activities as well," the army stressed.

In the context of these discrepancies, a deliberate or spontaneous clash between the parties, the organization's activities near the border fence and the various locations still in disputecould trigger a wider military confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel, 12 years after the Second Lebanon War.



AFP, 21st OCTOBER, 2018-Bollywood superstars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh announced Sunday that they are tying the knot, ending months of speculation about their relationship.



The pair confirmed they will be married next month in a statement posted on their official Twitter accounts in Hindi and English.



With the blessings of our families, gives us immense joy in sharing that our wedding is set to take place on the 14th and 15th of November, 2018, it stated.



Padukone, 33, and Singh 32, reportedly started dating in 2013 but had kept details of their relationship largely out of the public eye.

Padukone is one of Bollywoods highest-paid stars and one to break into Hollywood, starring in xXx: Return of Xander Cage opposite Vin Diesel.

The soon-to-be-weds have also shared the silver screen together, including a controversial Bollywood epic earlier this year that sparked violent protests in northern India.



Padukone played a legendary Hindu queen and Singh a medieval Muslim ruler in the flick, which angered hardliners, some of whom burned down cinemas and made threats towards the two stars.President Donald Trump says the US will begin "cutting off, or substantially reducing" aid to three Central American nations over a migrant caravan heading to the US southern border.

Trump tweets: "Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the US."

The three countries received a combined more than $500 million in funding from the US in fiscal year 2017.Hamas authorities have been burning piles of narcotics and cannabis in a yearly sweep against drugs in the Gaza Strip.

Officers in military fatigues on Monday poured gasoline and set alight more than 1 million tablets of opioid painkiller tramadol, about 1,500 slabs of hashish and 900 grams of opium.

Last year, Hamas legislators endorsed the death penalty to curb drugs.Israeli farmers are voicing concern over Jordan's intention not to renew parts of its landmark peace treaty with Israel that leased out two small border areas for agricultural work.

Eran Baron says Monday that farmers like him have invested lots of resources and infrastructure into the area along the southern border near Arava, and that he would be in ruins if denied access to his crops. He says he's yet to hear of any change in the current arrangement. If it happens, he says "we will not be able to survive here."

Jordan's King Abdullah II says he plans to pull out of annexes from the 1994 peace agreement that allow Israel to lease the land for 25 years. The leases expire next year.Spying is getting harder because the same technologies that catch terrorists can sometimes uncover foreign intelligence operations, the director of Mossad said on Monday.

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Yossi Cohen delivered rare public remarks at a budget conference held by Finance Ministry. That suggested he may have emerged from the shadows to safeguard the funds and personnel allotment that, according to Haaretz, have made Mossad "the second largest spy organisation in the West" after the US Central Intelligence Agency.

Cohen described Mossad as the tip of Israel's spear against threats like Iranian nuclear and missile projects and Iranian backing for Hamas militants.

Yossi Cohen (Photo: GPO)

But, outlining challenges to covert Mossad officers such as facial recognition technology and digitally enhanced identification documents, he said: "Everywhere we go, we have to take into account the fact that security services are getting stronger.

"For normal people, this (technology) is good. For people who don't want it so much, the matter is of course a challenge of a different order."

"You can imagine that a large part of the agency's problems or challenges speak to the fact that your passport is, essentially, in your fingerprint, in your retina, or in your face," Cohen said, describing such measures as often designed primarily for counter-terrorism rather than counter-espionage.

"This arena, which very much affects us, has changed beyond recognition and is ballooning."

In 2010, the United Arab Emirates accused Mossad of killing a Hamas arms procurer in Dubai and published CCTV video of the fugitive hit team as well as their forged Western passportsan embarrassment for Israel, although it declined comment.

Since Cohen took over in 2016, Mossad is widely believed to have assassinated Hamas men in Malaysia and Tunisia. In neither incident was Dubai-like footage made publican indication that the killers eluded surveillance.

President Trump (Photo: MCT)

Cohen praised US President Donald Trump, who has withdrawn from the international nuclear deal with Iran and recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capitalmoves that, respectively, dismayed Washington's major European allies and angered Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a state they seek.

Cohen said various powers' handling of Middle East hotspots like Syria "is, of course, very much affected by the change in approach since President Trump took office, which, I think, is very pleasant for us, as the State of Israel.

"There is a kind of feelingincluding in methat there is a differentiation, between the good guys and the bad guys, being done in a more dichotomous, simpler and clearer manner."Ministerial Committee for Legislation announced Monday that next week it will hold a discussion on a bill, promoted by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, which seeks to solve a dispute over the expulsion of African asylum seekers by sidestepping the High Court of Justice (HCJ).

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The bill is expected to have a special safe passage provision that would allow the legislators to formulate an outline that would be impossible for the HCJ to dismiss, as has already happened in the past.

MK Shuli Mualem from Bayit Yehudi, who also promoted the bill, presented it with Shakeds support, after Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who had previously opposed similar legislations, announced that he would agree to the provision.

Ayelet Shaked (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Justice Minister Shaked addressed the Ministerial Committees announcement.

"The safe passage provision will restore the proper balance between the three government branches. The most appropriate thing would have been to adapt a similar legislation as part of the broader Basic Law: Legislation, which would have enabled the Knesset to pass a law that that has been rejected by the Supreme Court, the justice minister stressed.

Unfortunately, Shaked continued, Minister Kahlon has rejected that proposal  but his party promised to support the safe passage provision and I hope he will keep their promise to the residents of southern Tel Aviv."

MK Mualem (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

MK Mualem reiterated the justice ministers statement by also mentioning the residents of southern Tel Aviv.

"This is a test Minister Kahlon, who has for months been preventing the enactment of the broader legislation on the issue  the bill formulated now is exactly the kind of bill Kahlon claimed he would support. I expect him to keep his promises to the residents of southern Tel Aviv," she vented.China's vice president has kicked off a trip to Israel, in a signal of the warming ties between the two countries.

Wang Qishan arrived on Monday for a three-day trip, highlighted by his participation in a joint summit of innovation cooperation that he will co-host with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Monday that Jordan had not received an official request from Israel to renegotiate parts of the peace treaty that leased out two border areas for agricultural work.

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In an interview with a local television channel, the minister added that even if Israel was to submit a request, Jordan is determined to pull out of annexes from the 1994 agreement, and the areas of the Island of Peace in Naharayim and the Tzofar enclave in the Aravawhich Israel has been leasing for the past 25 years, will be under Jordanian sovereignty in one years time.

Jordan's King Abdullah, who has been facing pressure for some time to cancel the agreement with Israel, announced the decision to reclaim the territories on Sunday.

King Abdullah and Prime Minister Netanyahu (Photo: EPA)

"We are practicing our full sovereignty on our land," Abdullah said. "Our priority in these regional circumstances is to protect our interests and do whatever is required for Jordan and the Jordanians."

In response to Jordan leaders announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country will renegotiate two annexes to its peace treaty in an effort to maintain control over the areas.

Israeli farmers have cultivated the land for many years, but the terms of the agreement state that 25 years after the initial signing, each party will be able to discontinue the lease of the land on one conditionit should be done one year in advance, and this Sunday marked 24 years since the treaty was signed.

Naharayim (Photo: Reuters)

"Jordan has reserved the option to reclaim the area in Naharayim near the Jordan River and the Tzofar enclave in the Arava. We were told today that it seeks to exercise this option in the 25th year," the prime minister said. "We will go into negotiations with them on the option of extending the existing agreement."

Nevertheless, Netanyahu stressed, "There's no doubt that in a general outlook, the entire treaty is a valuable asset, important to both countries."

The peace treaty with Jordan, alongside the one signed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin with Egypt, "are main anchors of regional stability," the prime minister added.Arizona News

Phoenix, Arizona - Attorney General Mark Brnovich is warning consumers about a scam involving the purchase of vehicle history reports through suspicious websites.

The scam starts when you post your car for sale online. The scammer, posing as an interested buyer, calls you and then quickly hangs up. Later, they send you a text message saying the call was disconnected, but they want to see a vehicle history report on the cars vehicle identification number (VIN). They tell you to get the report from a specific website and provide the link to the site. Once you click on the link, youre asked to put in your credit card information and other personal information that could expose you to identity theft. After you pay the fee, the scammer says they changed their mind and is no longer interested in buying the car.

Just like weve seen in other cases, scammers can quickly set up new websites under different names, said Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Consumers need to do their homework before paying for a vehicle history report.

General Brnovich offers the following consumer tips:

Visit the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVTIS) website to get a list of government-approved providers of vehicle history reports.

Be cautious if a potential buyer asks you to buy something from a specific website as a condition for a sale.

Keep your guard up when talking to a person, even a potential buyer, from an unknown phone number. Look for red flags.

Ask your telephone service provider what they can do to block or label likely spam calls.

If you believe you are a victim of consumer fraud, you can file a complaint online at the Arizona Attorney Generals website. You can also contact the Consumer Information and Complaints Unit in Phoenix at (602) 542-5763, in Tucson at (520) 628-6648, and outside of the metro areas at (800) 352-8431.Living Section

Wellton, Arizona - Do you love D.I.Y.? The Wellton Library offers crafts for adults every month! Try new projects and make new friends.

There is no charge to attend.



Thursday, November 1st @ 10:30 a.m.

Poured Paint Ornaments

Create a unique marbled design inside clear bulbs to keep or give as gifts.



Tuesday, November 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th @ 11:00 a.m.

Beaders

Beading enthusiasts meet every week to work on their projects in the company of other beaders. All are welcome to attend. Please bring your own beads and supplies.



Friday, November 30th @ 1:00 p.m.

National Mason Jar Day Craft

Learn some easy and creative crafts to make using Mason jars.



The Wellton Library is located at 28790 San Jose Avenue in Wellton, AZ. For more information, call (928) 785-9575.Living Section

Wellton, Arizona - Share your love of books and reading! The Wellton Library Book Club will meet Friday, November 2nd and 16th, at 10:00 a.m.

All are welcome to attend.



Friday, November 2nd @ 10:00 a.m.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah



Friday, November 16th @ 10:00 a.m.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance



Books are available for checkout at the service desk at the Wellton Library, located at 28790 San Jose Avenue in Wellton, AZ. For more information, call (928) 785-9575.Says withdrawal of income tax concession for exporters discouraging exports

Wants govt. to bring down high energy prices of furnace oil and LPG

Sri Lanka doesnt have capacity to implement FTAs, says Lanka Tiles MD



By Nishel Fernando

The apex body of Sri Lankas ceramic and glass industry recently urged the government to re-evaluate its trade liberalisation agenda, tax structure and energy prices to boost exports and to control the low grade ceramic products being dumped into the country.



Addressing Sri Lanka Ceramic and Glass Council (SLCGC) Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Colombo, last week, its President and Piramal Glass Ceylon PC CEO, Sanjay Tiwari highlighted that lower export margins due to the withdrawal of tax concessions and higher energy prices that dont reflect world market prices are disincentivizing local firms to export. Responding to a query by Mirror Business on the impact of the tax concession withdrawal for exporters, Tiwari said: It is one of the biggest barriers. There has to be some incentive for exporters. We are in competition with giants like China and India. Our margins on exports are lower than domestic ones. Hence the concessionary tax was the only benefit. The governments decision will not only bring down exports but will discourage manufacturers thinking of exports.



According to the new Inland Revenue Act, those who get over 80 percent of their revenue from exports will only qualify for 14 percent concessionary income tax, while others are liable for 28 percent income tax. Speaking of energy costs, which constitute to almost 40 percent of the production costs in glass and ceramic industries, Tiwari noted that the furnace oil price in comparison to other regional countries should be in the range of Rs.85 per litre.



However, he noted that the price of furnace oil has been increased arbitrary to Rs. 92 from Rs. 80 per litre. The government says CPC has to make some profits to recover its losses, he said.



The SLCGC pleaded the Export Development Board (EDB) to intervene to introduce global criteria of fixing the fuel prices based on a formula that is linked to world crude oil prices and to bring in more transparency and a level-playing field in the industry.



The SLCGC is also planning to push the government to remove the Port and Airport Development Levy (PAL) on the importation of LPG mainly by exporters, as the lobbying of individual firms has become ineffective. This will help the two suppliers to offer reduced prices to the industry. We would also request the EDB too to intervene and support us in the matter, Tiwari said.



Due to high energy costs, SLCGC is also contemplating to explore the possibility of using coal for gasification to maximise solar power usage. Meanwhile, SLCGC, past President and Lanka Tiles Managing Director Mahendra Jayasekara expressed concerns over the governments trade liberalisation agenda, which includes the removal of para-tariffs and entering into Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).

He pointed out that Sri Lanka could get flooded with low grade ceramic and glass products. Jayasekara stressed that the SLCGC does not oppose entering into FTAs since the government doesnt have the capacity to implement FTAs and therefore the FTA benefits wouldnt be reciprocal.



He also called the government to reinstate the cess on sanitaryware imports to curtail cheap imports coming into the country, while noting that despite anti dumping laws being enacted over six months ago, the government has failed to put a mechanism in place to implement the law. We all know that there is importation of cheap tiles, sanitaryware, glass and tableware from China, India, Indonesia and other Asian suppliers, whcih still remain a significant threat to the local industry, Jayasekera emphasized.



He revealed that almost 60 percent of the local demand for floor and roof tiles is serviced through imports into the country.



He pointed out that due to the current restrictions and limitation on clay and silica mining, the industry is unable to invest in capacity expansion, and called the authorities to simplify the existing system to obtain raw material and resolve transport related issues.



SLCGC is planning to utilise large deposits of red clay and sand available in Yann Oya area for the ceramic and red clay industry.



Despite the challenges, Tiwari noted that top firms in the ceramic and glass industry have increased their export ratio. According to him, contribution of exports to the revenue of Noritake Lanka Porcelain, Dankotuwa Porcelain, Piramal Glass, Lanka Tiles and Midaya Ceramic stands at 75 percent, 55 percent, 40 percent, 15 percent and 80 percent respectively. Tiwari revealed that the ceramic and glass industry is eyeing niche markets in Canada, USA and Australia to offer personalised products to boost export earnings.



He also noted that firms are investing around 3-5 percent of their turnover in Research and Development (R&D) on average to support the growth of the industry, which grows around 5-6 percent annually. SLCGC has taken several measures to raise the standards of the industry, including a joint project with the Industrial Technology Institution (ITI) and Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI) to revise and implement the 44-year old red clay roof tile standard and SLS certification programme.



In addition, the SLCGC has also partnered with Uva Wellassa and Sri Jayawardanapura Universities to develop methods to recycle CRT glass waste in ceramic and red clay industries and several other R&D activities.

EDB chief calls to increase contribution to 1% of merchandise exports

Export Development Board (EDB) Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer Indira Malwatte urged the Sri Lanka Ceramic and Glass Council (SLCGC) to set a target to double the exports from 0.5 percent to 1 percent of merchandise exports within a period five years.



She requested SLCGC members to work on target to double the industrys composition of merchandise exports to 1 percent in five years, while focusing on advanced products such as dental implants, paints, medicinal pills and tablets, food colouring etc.



She pointed out that the government has set a target to double the exports by 2023 to US $30.7 billion, and noted that Sri Lanka is on route to achieve the US $17.4 billion export target this year as 60 percent of it has been already achieved by end of August.



Malwatte, who graced the SLCGC Annual General Meeting as the guest of honour, stressed that differentiating products utilising technology is crucial for Sri Lankan exporters in order to become competitive in global markets.

She also urged the firms to reap the benefits of EDB offered programmes , particularly the Market Access programme, which provides grants to exporters to strengthen their market presence, to invest in R&D and to receive necessary international certification for their products. Responding to the lack of a mechanism to implement anti-dumping laws, Malwatte said that the different State agencies are working on setting up a structure to implement the anti-dumping laws and in the meantime the Department of Commerce will carry out antidumping and countervailing duty investigations based on complaints received from the private sector.



She noted that EDB has initiated several programmes targeting the ceramic sector such as a project to develop new eco-friendly red clay roof tiles for international markets and a product development programne for body preparation of red clay products.Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business.Clearway Energy, Inc. (NYSE:NYLD) posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November, 2nd. The utilities provider reported $0.27 EPS for the quarter, missing the Zacks' consensus estimate of $0.58 by $0.31. The utilities provider earned $265 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $311.81 million. The company's quarterly revenue was down 2.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $0.30 earnings per share.

View Clearway Energy's earnings history.Happy birthday songs have a way of bring a cheerful mood into birthday celebrations. You can only mark your birthday in style if you incorporate a few unique birthday songs that will get people dancing and celebrating. There are so many birthday songs out there. Picking the right one based on the crowd that you will invite is important. Choose the best songs that will keep your crowd excited. This article brings a few of these songs. Choose the most appropriate one for you.

Happy birthday songs are sung during birthday parties. The song are sung just before you blow out the candle. There are so many happy birthday songs around the world; however, we look at the happy birthday songs for kids go for this songs when preparing a birthday party for your kid,' and happy birthday songs for lovers. Well, when love is in the air, everyone can smell. Bring that out by correctly infusing right songs.

READ ALSO: Best Church of Pentecost songs

Happy birthday songs

Let us has looked at some of the general happy birthday songs. These songs can be sung at any birthday party. Whether, the birthday you are attending is for a friend, lover, parent, sister, kid name them. Exercise no restriction when singing them. Here are such songs.

Birthday special

In this song was sang by Van Der Graaf Generator frontman Peter Hammill. In this song, Peter waxes randomly about a parrot in the pantry, Hansel and Gretel and ice in the cauldron. The song leaves us not so sure about what we would like to be at the end of this birthday special.

Birthday morning

Birthday morning song is an ancient song. Sang in 1968, the song like the rest of flower power anthems of the period gently wafts down the ages. With it, is the kaleidoscopic snapshot of those magical times. The song brings out love, innocent dreams, and power of positive thinking.

At your birthday

This is a 1969 song by the 60's acid rockers, Steppenwolf. The song is inviting and will turn the birthday party into an excellent one. The song is creepy and from the third album of the group. If this song does not elevate the mood of your quest, let them it the cake and leave. You have done your best.

The birthday

The birthday is an English psychedelia at its peak. The song was released on the wake of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.' The song was sung by Jeff Lynne who sang alongside Roy Wood, in the Move. The song was a debut from the first major group The Idle race.

Too bad n your birthday

This is a little birthday ditty from Ram Jams cult eponymous debut. The song is built around Get it on by T. Rex. The song is a catchy one especially after being dusted off by Joan Jett.

Lather

The song is from the crown of creation. It is an evocative song from the fourth album of Jefferson Airplane. This song carries an important message. It tells us that as much as the years keep piling up, we need to remain steady and not age in brain.

Birthday

Though despised by the composers The Beetles in about 1968, the song is like by many birthday party organizers. Well, you might wonder how a song can be favorite among the listeners and yet not among members of the band. Have a listen to it and judge. We are not going to do that for you.

Birthday dethday

As the saying goes, it is my birthday, and I will die if I want to' this song. This song brings in an excellent insight of any birthday, it merely says it is your birthday, you are free to do what you want. It is undoubtedly one song you do not wish to leave out on your birthday list of songs.

Happy birthday songs in English

Well, not all happy birthday songs are in English. Interestingly, a sizeable fraction of the worlds population speaks other languages and not English. Among this populace, are birthday celebrations. Birthday songs are available in native languages too. That said, we single out happy birthday songs in English. You never know who your friend will show up with so instead of only having birthday songs in vernacular language have happy birthday songs in English also.

Here is a list of the best birthday songs in English.

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Happy birthday - Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder recorded this song as a push to have Martin Luther King Jr's birthday celebrated as a national holiday. As much as this may insinuate politics, the song has gained momentum as one of the best happy birthday songs across the birthday. It was once sung at the diamond jubilee to honor Queen Elizabeth IIs diamond jubilee.

Happy birthday - Alter Images

This is one of the best songs in the United Kingdom. As much as the group broke up 2 years after producing the hit, the song was their greatest ever hit. It was composed in 1981.

16 candles - The Crest

Now, this is a good one for your teenage friend, child or sibling. During their 16th birthday party crown the day by using the song.

Unhappy birthday- The Smiths

Happy birthdays are meant to be jovial days. Full of vibrancy and happiness. However, some birthdays rekindle painful memories. Suppose, you are celebrating your deceased parent, sibling lover or friends birthday, this is a song you can sing along.

Happy birthday sweet 16- Neil Sedaka

This is a song composed in 1961. It is an up-tempo choice for those celebrating their 16th year.

Happy birthday blues - Kathy Young with the innocent

This is a soothing song that celebrates your birthday in style. If you loved old school then this will make your birthday unique.

READ ALSO: Best foreign gospel songs in Ghana

Happy birthday songs for kids

Kids value every special event in their life. No wonder, as early as the beginning of the year, they will be on your neck reminding you of their birthday. As much as this could be confused with being pestiferous, allow me to give you an alternative point of approach. How about we look at it as the child reminding us to prepare us? They believe that if you plan it earlier, then there are chances that, they are likely to get their taste of a birthday party.

Well, start right here. Find beautiful happy birthday songs for them that day, then get the cakes, gifts and any other mixture of things to make them happy. Here are happy birthday song for kids.

Birthday - Destinys Child

The song lets you know that this is your birthday. You do not need to do anything but lie back and enjoy the day.

Forever young - Rod Stewart

This song encourages and expresses support for the kid. You show the love through this song. Also in the same song, you wish the happiness and sunshine, wisdom, fortune, sincere and dignified presence, without forgetting unconditional love.

As good as I was once - Toby Keith

A 2005 country music still has a taste of time. In the song, Toby Keith recounts that, while he is not good as he once was, he still throws a few backs, talk a little. It is a tribute to those growing up but refuse to grow old. It's quite a good piece for kids.

Happy Birthday songs for lover

Happy birthdays for loved ones are used to express love for one another. During this auspicious moment, your partner expects the best out of their loved ones. Understanding the weight of preparing yourself for a birthday of your loved one, we present you happy birthday songs for lover. It is a good starting point if you want to make his or her day.

Wait, the songs are only the starting point. You will need a gift too, but that is not our business here. We suggest to you the best happy birthday songs for lover that you could use during that day. Let us look at the best happy birthday songs for lover.

Your song- Elton John

Elton sings powerfully as a reminder of the things that as a lover, you would do for the person you love. This song gives you hope that there is so much to look forward to as you turn a new year.

Happy, happy birthday baby - Tune Weavers

In this song, a lady phones her ex-boyfriend. She reminds her of the good time to pair spend together. As much as this would be a little bit difficult today? But if you ex-lover is your friend, make he or her day be the day to remember the good day with you.

Having a party - Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart remade a 1962 classic hit. Though not a birthday song as such, it meets the mood required for the occasion. The song celebrated good clean fun, and togetherness.

Happy birthday darlin - Conway Twitty

Well, if you are having trust issues, listen to this joyful birthday dedication. In this song, a man wants to gift his wife by taking away the trust issue. In the song, the man wants to replace the lonely moments, suspicion and doubt with love and faith.

Raise your glass - Pink

This song comes in, those moments you want to propose a toast to that particular birthday person. In this song, Pink celebrates the guests in the room and asks them to raise their glass. It such a fantastic track for your happy birthday songs.

Sixteen candles - Franki Valli and the Four Seasons

In this song, a young love stricken man sing the song to his girlfriend who is turning 16 years old. The young man describes her as his teenage queen. This is a song to dedicate to your loved one. Remembering where she was at her 16th birthday would arouse emotions.

READ ALSO: Cute love images for her

Happy birthday songs karaoke

Let us look at happy birthday songs karaoke.

The great discovery

The song is by Elton John. Elton is, without doubt, one of the best song composure the world has. In this song, the selfish birthday talk of me, me!' take a 180-degree shift to portray a young child wonder of the new child arrival. This is a beautiful song to welcome a newborn child.

Magicians birthday - Uriah Heep

This is one song you don't want to omit on your list of happy birthday songs. The song was sung by Uriah Heep and lasts for about 11 minutes in length. This is one song the quests will sing along.

Traditional style happy birthday

This is the most common birthday tune all over the world. It fits all ages and nationalities. It has been modified in different ways but still maintains it unique traditional birthday celebratory tune. It is the song you can never go wrong with.

Sweet a baby James -James Taylor

Cute birthday song for baby James. It is excellent for parents that love country music.

For he is jolly good fellow

This is another common birthday song that is sang all over the world. It is perfect for kids birthdays.

Happy birthday my darling - Pauline Sevilla

This is a soothing and romantic birthday song for two people that want to mark a birthday celebration in a romantic way. It is perfect for a man or woman that wants to surprise their lover

There are so many songs you can use to make your birthday a success. This article has looked at the different happy birthday songs under different categories. The categories mentioned are Karaoke happy birthday songs, birthday songs for kids and lovers and the general type of songs you could use in any birthday party. Apart from the food for the stomach, add to the menu food for the soul too, and that is without doubt music.

READ ALSO:

Source: YenThere is a popular saying that 'good people die young'. But it is not always the case as some very 'good people' have lived long and well into their old ages.

One such person to defy this popular saying is Dr Emmanuel Evans-Anfom, a Ghanaian physician, scholar, university administrator and public servant.

Dr Evans-Anfom, the second Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has lived to a very ripe age and he is only a year away from clocking a three-digit age.

Dr Emmanuel Evans-Anfom at his 99th birthday party Photo: Kofi Adu Labi

Source: Facebook

Born October 7, 1919, Dr Evans-Anfom, a medical doctor by profession, celebrated his 99th birthday at a party about two weeks ago.

READ ALSO: List of Stonebwoy's expensive cars pops up after Shatta Wale's 'Advice' Benz (Photo)

Interestingly, the day also marked the 55th birthday of the vice president, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, who graced the occasion.

Dr Bawumia delivering a speech at Dr Evans-Anfom's birthday party Photo: Kofi Adu Labi

Source: Facebook

Joining Dr Bawumia to celebrate the colossus called Dr Evans-Anfom was the first lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo and the Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo.

Dr Evans-Anfom (in spectacles) sitting with dignitaries at the party Photo: Kofi Adu Labi

Source: Facebook

Also in attendance was former President J.J. Rawlings under who Dr Evans-Anfom served as Commissioner for Education during one of his military regimes.

READ ALSO: Landlord's 'strict' rules and regulations for living in his house causes stir on social media

A product of the Achimota School, Dr Evans-Anfom got trained as a medical doctor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland after winning a government scholarship.

After graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 1947, Dr Evans-Anfom returned home and worked in various hospitals including Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Dunkwa-On-Offin Government Hospital, Tarkwa Government Hospital, the Kumasi Central Hospital, Tamale Government Hospital and Effia Nkwanta Hospital in Sekondi.

In 1963, he accepted to teach the then newly established University of Ghana Medical School (UGMS) after being approached by the first Ghanaian surgeon, Charles Odamtten Easmon.

Having spent some time at UGMS, Dr Evans-Anfom left after being appointed the second ever Vice Chancellor of KNUST where he served from 1967-1973.

Apart from his professional career, Dr Evans-Anfom also had stints in politics serving as a commissioner (minister) , and a member of the Council of State.

By all accounts, Dr Evans-Anfom is one person who is worth celebrating. YEN.com.gh wishes him all the best.

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Source: Yen-This week on faces of Ghana, YEN.com.gh TV features a Ghanaian teacher who has her own way of making education attractive.

-She does this by teaching each of her pupils a unique greeting move.

-She caught the attention of many Ghanaians when a video of her exchanging the special handshake with her kids went viral on social media.

Madina Adutwumwaa Asare, affectionately called Teacher Ama by her pupils is a sandwich student of the University of Education, Winneba.

The 22 year old says teaching has always been her passion and she loves children.

YEN.com.gh earlier reported of how she won the admiration of many Ghanaians through a video which went viral on social media.

READ ALSO: Faces of Ghana: The guy who turns garbage into cash

In the video, she was seen exchanging her special greeting moves with her students.

Speaking on Faces of Ghana, she intimated that she got the idea from a white lady in a video the Headteacher of her school showed her.

She studies the white lady's moves and modified it by adding on which she eventually taught her kids.

Faces of Ghana: The teacher who is revolutionizing education in Ghana

Source: Original

READ ALSO: Breaking news: KNUST students 'defy' VC and embark on 'chaotic' demo as photos pop up

She hinted that it took three days to teach the kids numbering about 31 the moves.

What has marveled many is how she manages to recall each and every student's moves.

Her practice comes at a time where there are several interventions across the globe to promote equal access to education by all.

READ ALSO: Funny Face finally replies Counselor Lutterodt over "two-minute man" comment

Teacher Ama's advice to her kids is that they should always uphold the values of society.

Her school, Diamond State Academy is situated at Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional Capital of Ghana.

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YEN's official Facebook or Instagram page

Source: Yen GhanaThe Sri Lankan Government had highlighted the British Government the importance of implementing its Terrorism Laws and taking stern action against the four individuals who were arrested for displaying the LTTE flags.

Megapolis and Western Development Minister Patali Champika Ranwaka, who was in the UK, had expressed these views when he met with Mark Field, Minister for Asia and Pacific at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

The minister was referring to the recent incident where Thames Valley Police arrested four activists of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam for exhibiting LTTE flags and other insignia.

He said he hoped that British law enforcement authorities would ensure that UKs own Terrorism Laws were correctly observed and that stern action would be taken against appropriate individuals, as these acts by extremists go directly against the reconciliation processes being encouraged in Sri Lanka by the British government.

Sri Lankas UNHRC Resolution, which was co-sponsored with other nations including UK, was also discussed and Minister Ranawaka had reassured that the Sri Lankan government was maintaining its commitment to ensure that all communities enjoyed lasting peace and reconciliation.

At a separate meeting in the House of Lords, Lord Naseby, President of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Sri Lanka was also briefed by Minister Ranawaka on the preparations being discussed in Cabinet for the next UNHRC Geneva Sessions in March 2019.

Lord Naseby had stressed that Sri Lankas Govt should adopt a firm stance and mentioned the importance of repealing the current Prevention of Terrorism Act and introducing fresh Counter Terrorism legislation as soon as possible.

The highlight of Minister Ranawakas visit was a London Investment forum that attracted a host of British and international companies and institutions to present the considerable business opportunities in Sri Lanka being offered through the implementation of the various Megapolis projects and especially the current development of Port City Colombo.A German national currently finds himself in serious trouble with the police after allegedly stabbing a man who tried to steal from him.

The incident is reported to have happened on Friday during a street carnival at Akropong in the Eastern Region.

The German is believed to be student who is in Ghana with some other foreign nationals for voluntary service.

READ ALSO: Sarkodie and Supa on stage at Glo Mega Music show 2018

According to a report by Accra-based Starr FM, the suspect, accompanied by three female German colleagues and two Ghanaians, went for merrymaking at the Akropong Odwira street festival on Friday.

However, his group was allegedly confronted by a gang, who tried to rob them at the street carnival.

This led to a serious scuffle, during which one of the alleged robbers was stabbed in the process.

The victim, identified as Adam Yakubu, was later pronounced dead upon arrival at the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital.

Reports suggest that the incident angered the other gang members of the deceased who mobilised themselves to lynch the suspect and his friends.

The group reportedly pulled out knives, sticks and clubs in an attempt to lynch the suspect and his friends, however, the police were on hand to rescue the situation.

READ ALSO: NGO defrauds over 1000 people living with disabilities

The German national and his friends were then escorted to the police station for investigations to begin on the matter.

Ghana News Today: President Akufo-Addo Commissions NaBCo Graduates | Yen.com.gh

READ ALSO: Landlord spells out rules and regulations for living in his house

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YenAggrieved students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) are set to demonstrate over the recent brutality meted out on students by security personnel at the university.

The student body has decided to boycott classes on Monday, October 22, 2018 as a way of registering their displeasure with happenings on campus.

There have been a lot of tension in the school following the university's decision to convert all the unisex halls into mixed halls.

KNUST SRC declares demo over brutality on students today. Source: Facebook.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: German student stabs Ghanaian to death at Akropong

Since the decision was taken, some students and alumnus have constantly kicked against it and have clearly stated their reluctance to support such an idea.

On Friday, the issue took another twist after 11 students including an alumnus of the university were arrested and put behind bars at the KNUST police station.

The students were reportedly beaten and brutalised by the Universitys security personnel before being handed to the Police for holding a vigil without permission.

This subsequently led to some parents storming the police station to demand the release of their wards after they were detained.

This comes after a similar incident happened last month, where some students were assaulted for holding a vigil on campus.

However, the executive council of the KNUST SRC has now decided to take action by declaring a demonstration on Monday (October 22).

READ ALSO: Young students create solar oven

In a statement titled Action now, enough is enough, the SRC called on the entire student body to join as they demonstrate against the brutalities on students by boycotting classes.

"..we are embarking on a demonstration tomorrow 22 October, 2018. No lectures tomorrow (Monday), sections of the statement read.

The students hope to catch the attention of university's chancellor, the Asantehene, the president and the minister of education after the demonstration.

Ghana News Today: Shata Wale Rocks Fans at Reign Album Launch | Yen.com.gh

READ ALSO: Dr Evans-Anfom, 2nd ever KNUST Vice-Chancellor, is 99; celebrates with Bawumia, Rawlings (Photos)

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: Yen News- Vice-Chancellor of KNUST has called on students of the university to attend lectures

- The SRC has planned a 'No lecture' demonstration to register their displeasure over unfair treatment

Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Professor Obiri Danso, has waded into a decision of the student community to boycott lectures today, October 22 following some grievances.

The VC, in a text message sent to all students, advised them to rescind their decision not to attend lectures and announced that lecturers would be in class today to teach.

The attention of the VC has been drawn to a boycott of lectures by students on Monday 22nd Oct. 2018. Youre reminded that attendance at lectures is compulsory and the decision to attend lectures or not remains an individual affair. Lecturers will be at lectures as usual and you are entreated to disregard any contrary information, the message read.

KNUST Vice Chancellor's message. Credit: Mynewsgh.com

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: German student stabs Ghanaian to death at Akropong

It follows calls from the Student Representative Council of the school informing student not to attend lectures in a move to register their displeasure over recent happenings in the school which include brutality among other things.

The letter signed on October 21, 2018, by an executive of the SRC had "No Lectures tomorrow" written in capital letters.

However, VC of the school, Professor Danso, has stepped into the matter to urge students to disregard information about boycotting lectures.

YEN.com.gh earlier reported that aggrieved students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) were set to demonstrate over the recent brutality meted out on students by security personnel at the University.

There has been a lot of tension in the school following the university's decision to convert all the unisex halls into mixed halls.

READ ALSO: NGO defrauds over 1000 people living with disabilities

Since the decision was taken, some students and past students have kicked against it and have clearly stated their reluctance to support such an idea.

On Friday, the issue took another twist after eleven students including an old student of the university were arrested and put behind bars at the KNUST police station.

The students were reportedly beaten and brutalised by the Universitys security personnel before being handed to the Police for holding a vigil without permission.

This subsequently led to some parents storming the police station to demand the release of their wards after they were detained.

READ ALSO: Dr Evans-Anfom, 2nd ever KNUST Vice-Chancellor, is 99; celebrates with Bawumia, Rawlings (Photos)

Watch: hana News Today: Shatta Wale's Reign Album Launched Big | Yen.com.gh

Have national and human interest issues to discuss?

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YenGhanaian comedian, Nana Yaw Oduro Boateng, known in showbiz as Funny Face has finally replied controversial counselor, George Lutterodt, after the latter described him as a stupid boy.

Counselor Lutterodt took a swipe at Funny Face after divorcing his wife in 2016, two years after they got married.

In explaining the reason behind the divorce, Funny Face blamed himself for the outcome of the marriage, alleging his wife slept with some of his best friends.

READ ALSO: Moesha Boduong's latest photo causes stir on social media

According to Funny Face, he rushed into the marriage, saying he didnt do my homework well" before marrying her.

His ex-wife Adjoa Ntim, in a rebutal, reportedly said the comedian could not satisfy her in bed..

But commenting on the issue in an interview on Kofi TV, Counselor George Lutterodt said Funny Face was not matured for marriage and that he is stupid.

READ ALSO: Princess Shyngle sets social media on 'fire' with a throwback photo

The wife is not a bad person; Funny Face is the bad one because he was not prepared and trained to be a husband, he said.

Insult all men never abuse any woman. Why go for a woman with big butt when you are a two-minute man."

Counselor Lutterodt said he could not fathom why Funny Face would make a big deal if his wife cheated, saying, cheating is part of marriage so nobody is surprised if our wife is cheating."

YENREAD ALSO: University student jailed for stealing female pants

But after several months Funny Face has replied. In an interview with Abeiku Santana, he said Counselor Lutterodt is not a serious person."

That man I know him very well. I was not pained. When someone insults you, look at the person. When you look at the person and you think he deserves a reply fine. I looked at him and I said he doesnt deserve a reply.

Funny Face was recently in the news after he was surprised on his birthday by Togolese international Emmanuel Adebayor.

The former Real Madrid striker offered Funny Face a blank cheque to withdraw any amount he wishes from his Access Bank account.

He also asked Funny Face to pick up any item of his choice from electronics company Hisense Ghana.

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Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YEN's official Facebook page.

Source: YenThe Ghanaian film industry has been the recent talk of the town due to criticisms that their contents were inadequate on quality. Much has been said for and against that topic and all arguments could be valid.

However, what cannot be argued is that there are real acting talents in the industry who would excel before any camera. This is in spite of the challenges that rock the Ghana film industry.

YEN.com.gh is making a bold call and listing six Ghanaian stars who could easily hold their own even in Hollywood.

READ ALSO: Funny Face finally replies counselor Lutterodt

1. Chris Attoh

When it comes to the looks, Chris Attoh has got it. And more often than not, it is the first reason most producers would take a second look at you.

He is also an astute actor, having improved on his craft over the years. He now has acclaimed awards to show for it.

2. Lydia Forson

Forget that she is currently the most controversial actress in the country. Ghanaian society has for a long time found opinionated women problematic.

Lydia Forson is a African Movie Awards winner. And if that is not enough, she has starred in big continental productions to add to her confidence.

3. Adjetey Anang

Things We Do For Love now seems like a long time ago since Pusher wowed us with his confidence on screen.

Adjetey Annang is now a more accomplished actor, taking on dramatic roles. He already has the poise for comedy.

4. Nana Ama McBrown

Nana Ama McBrown is so comfortable in multiple and diverse roles that her underrating is probably one of the biggest problems in the Ghanaian industry.

From comedy to drama to suspense and thriller, McBrown has excelled in all. She even stands out in low quality flicks.

5. Majid Michel

Majid Michel is a better dramatic actor than any man on this list. It may seem like his an actor with one-way roles but when you can only do one thing but you are great at it, why change?

He has the awards to show for his captivating performances as well.

READ ALSO: Dr Evans-Anfom, 2nd ever KNUST Vice-Chancellor, is 99; celebrates with Bawumia, Rawlings (Photos)

6. Nadia Buari

Nadia Buari is the last on our list and she emerges from a generation of pretty face actresses who took over the industry in the early 2000s.

Buari is simply better than her colleagues because she has more talent to go with her looks.

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Source: Yen GhanaA circuit court in Cape Coast has remanded two siblings who have been engaging in sexual escapades for years.

The two, identified as John Arthur, aka Ekow Ayiku, and his elder sister, Mary Arthur, alias Maame Adwoa, have been practicing incest.

Mary is reportedly 25-years-old, while her brother, John, is reportedly two years younger.

READ ALSO: KNUST SRC declares demo over brutality on students today

The two siblings have been living together and having sexual escapades for years, prosecuting detective, Inspector John Asare Bediako, told the court.

He disclosed that the siblings have even produced two children out of their abominable acts.

The prosecution said the accused persons reside at Bronyibima, a suburb of Elmina in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) Municipality of the Central Region.

The case was reported to the police after Maame Adwoa refused to disclose the father of her children despite all efforts by her family.

However, the accused later confessed after the chief and elders of the community got involved in uncovering who the father of her children were.

Accra-based Joy FM reports that the two siblings were on Tuesday, October 16, 2018, paraded through the Bronyibima town, as part of rituals to pacify the gods to avert any curse on the community.

READ ALSO: German student stabs Ghanaian to death at Akropong

In spite of this, some family members still decided to report the matter to the police who arrested the accused persons at the scene.

They were later handed over to the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) in Cape Coast.

Meanwhile, the Court presided over by Kofi Ametewee charged them after they both confessed to the crime of incest.

Ghana News Today: President Akufo-Addo Commissions NaBCo Graduates | Yen.com.gh

READ ALSO: KNUST students 'defy' VC's warning; embark on demo and cause mayhem

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: Yen- Akufo-Addo has opened up on earlier rumours that he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital

- The president, however, revealed that he went to visit a relation who had undergone a surgery

- He went on to tell those making news out of the rumour that his life was in God's hands

President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has stated that those whose political fortunes depend on his ill health should know that his life is in the hands of God.

According to a report sighted by YEN.com.gh on Graphic.com.gh, the president made the comment at the launch of this year's cyber security awareness week at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra.

President Akufo-Addo. Credit: Facebook/Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo

Source: Facebook

President Nana Addo was reacting to speculation on social media that he had collapsed and had been taken to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra at the weekend and that he was to be flown to the United Kingdom (UK) for treatment.

READ ALSO: KNUST SRC declares demo over brutality on students today

The introductory comment before his address at the launch of the cyber security awareness week, on Monday morning, captured President Akufo-Addo reaction as he went to the hospital to visit an in-law.

He said the in-law had a hip operation and so he went there for a visit only for the news to spread that he had collapsed and taken to the hospital.

My presence at the Military Hospital to visit my brother-in-law, the famous pilot, Captain Pius Mensah, who is unfortunately there for a hip operation, has been translated into my collapse on social media.

READ ALSO: Chris Oyakhilome's daughter shares new photos of wedding & honeymoon with Philip Frimpong

"All I can say is that those whose political fortunes depend on my ill health and my degeneration, all I can say is that we are all in the hands of God, Amen, he said.

It was alleged that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, had collapsed last week and had been rushed to the 37 Military Hospital.

The rumour had it that the president was to be rushed to UK after receiving preliminary treatment from 37 Hospital.

READ ALSO: Photo: Landlord spells out rules and regulations for living in his house

Watch: Madam Ama Story: I am Revolutionizing Ghanaian Education - Faces of Ghana | Yen.com.gh

Have national and human interest issues to discuss?

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YenThe Nation Builders' Corps (NABCO) programme is supposed to be a mass employment initiative to help tone down the issue of unemployment. And although it might be a good idea, it is layered with problems that the government need to address.

President Akufo-Addo is counting on NABCO to be a lasting legacy to his presidency. His hope may however not be realised if his government does not look to address some structural and procedural problems.

YEN.com.gh enumerates some of the most challenging issues that NABCO is facing .

READ ALSO: Dr Evans-Anfom, 2nd ever KNUST Vice-Chancellor, is 99; celebrates with Bawumia, Rawlings (Photos)

1. NABCO and teachers

The Ministry of Education is looking to make it compulsory for basic and secondary school teachers to have licenses to teach. That in itself might not be a bad idea.

NABCO recruits in a ceremony at the Independence Square. Photo credit: Government of Ghana

Source: Facebook

However, we are told NABCO members will be posted to teach at those same levels and they will not need licenses.

This will not make the professional teachers associations happy.

2. NABCO is not part of an industrialisation drive

Nana Akufo-Addo is perhaps the only Ghanaian president in the last 25 or so years who has been extremely vocal about industrialisation. Now, he has the chance to work.

However good NABCO may be, the fact that it is not tied into remaking the Ghanaian industrial sector makes the initiative a bit shallow.

3. No exit strategy

The NABCO initiative is supposed to temporarily keep individuals out of unemployment while giving them skills and experiences necessary for a more permanent job.

The intention is great. But there is no clear cut exit strategy for people when they leave the NABCO programme.

Perhaps, government needs to clarify this immediately.

4. It is looking like a disposable government programme

Youth unemployment has been an agenda for Ghanaian governments since independence. But it has become so difficult to solve because of partisanship.

Cabinet ministers at the launch of NABCO. Photo credit: Government of Ghana

Source: Facebook

NABCO may do well but there is nothing stopping the next political party to come in and throw it aside. We have seen things like that before.

READ ALSO: Six top Ghanaian actors who can make it in Hollywood

It is hoped the Akufo-Addos government will find a way to make it a fixed government programme.

Ghana News Today: Shatta Wale Rocks Fans at Reign Album Launch | Yen.com.gh:

Do you have a story to share with us? Inbox us on our Facebook page and we could feature your story.

Source: Yen.com.ghOn Sunday, October 21, YEN.com.gh reported a story of a third-year student affiliated to the University Hall of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) who is currently battling for his life at the Universitys Hospital in Kumasi after he was brutalised by the schools security on Friday night.

However, Ghanaian actress, Joselyn Dumas, has slammed the security officials of the school for brutalizing the students.

According to her, no one has the right take the law into their hands and manhandle a student to the point of blood oozing out of his body.

READ ALSO: Dr Evans-Anfom, 2nd ever KNUST Vice-Chancellor, is 99; celebrates with Bawumia, Rawlings (Photos)

On Monday, October 22 2018, the students led by the SRC marched against what they described as oppression from school authorities and unfair treatment as a result of unwarranted assault on their colleagues by some security officers.

The students as part of the riots burnt car tyres, destroyed windows and doors of some buildings and blocked some roads on campus to prevent cars from moving.

With respect to the current situation, Joselyn Dumas in series of tweets has reacted to the riots currently ongoing.

READ ALSO: 7 Ghanaian Senior High Schools that have the most beautifully designed uniforms

She said the actions of the security officials was shameful and called on the university authorities and the SRC to curb the ongoing menace.

Shame on the security officials of KNUST. Under no circumstance should anyone take the law into his hands & manhandle a student to the point of blood oozing out of his body. This is highly unacceptable. I entreat the school authorities & the SRC to curb the ongoing menace asap, she tweeted.

She further advised the students against violence saying: It is not the best way to vent your anger."

READ ALSO: Student of Akwatia Technical Institute stabs teacher with scissors

My dear KNUST students, violence is not the best way to vent your anger. I understand your frustrations but please cease the destruction of properties and allow the police and the authorities in charge to handle the issue and restore calm.

In other news:

Funny Face has finally replied Counselor George Lutterodt for describing him as a stupid boy after divorcing his wife two years ago.

According to the comedian, the controversial man of God is a non-serious character.

Ghana News Today: President Akufo-Addo Commissions NaBCo Graduates | Yen.com.gh

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YEN's official Facebook page.

Source: YenAgriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera claimed that four Cabinet Ministers, having links with RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), had leaked information related to President Maithripala Sirisenas remarks purportedly critical of India and China to Indian journalists.

Minister Amaraweera said this at a public gathering in Beliatta, Hambantota.

He said, There were media reports that the President made remarks critical of India and China. These claims are utterly false. The Indian journalist concerned had said that she had spoken to 4 ministers to get the information for her story. We have to find out who those ministers are. Once I get it confirmed, I will expose them. It is wrong to discuss what transpired at a Cabinet meeting with outsiders. It is even wrong to discuss such matters with the media. We are all collectively bound to uphold Cabinet secrets. If there is anyone breaching this trust, we have the right to take them to task,Amaraweera said. (Aneesha Manage)

Video by Anisha MannageGovernment should go one direction without going on two directions, State Minister Wasantha Senanayake said over the week end.

Mr. Senanayake who was speaking to journalists after the launch of the book F. R. Senanayake, an illustrious son of Sri Lanka on Saturday at the Sri Lanka Foundation (SLF) said the government should go on in one direction. Government seemed to be going on in one direction at the moment and it is better for the country if it goes on in one single direction, Mr. Senanayake said.

I am not satisfied with the progress of the government but the government is not the cause of some issues, he added.

Referring to the current political situation he said some reports may be false but highlighted that there could be crossover to either sides when elections draws near.

Making the welcoming speech at the book launch, the State Minister said the political leaders of the present time are polls apart when compared with the political leaders of yesteryear such as late Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake and F. R. Senanayake.

Corruption had crept in so much in politics today that it is hard to find an MP in Parliament who does not have corruption charges, he said.(Yohan Perera)Cow and beef imports rise in Vietnam

Vietnam is becoming a major cow and beef importer due to increasing demand for high-quality meat.







Beef sold at supermarketsICRA Lanka has revised down the outlook of Pradeshiya Sanwardena Bank to Negative form Stable while affirming the issuer rating at A.



The rating agency has also revised the rating outlook on the banks Rs.2.5 billion listed, subordinated, unsecured, redeemable debenture and Rs.2 billion subordinated, unsecured, redeemable debenture to Negative from Stable.



The ratings on the debenture issues have been reaffirmed at A-.



The bank said it has been experiencing some portfolio quality issues from the beginning of the year 2018, mainly due to weather conditions.

This situation has been considered by ICRA Lanka Limited as significant and reaffirmed the issuer rating of A- on the Rs.2.5 billion listed, subordinated, unsecured, redeemable debenture while revising the outlook of the rating to Negative from Stable.



However, the bank said it remains optimistic as the situation would be back to normal towards the end of the year and said it expects to make an application for a fresh rating review.Somewhere in my teenage years, I fell in love with the Sinhala song. Not songs per se, but the idea of the Sinhala geethaya. It was, I thought, unique and utterly different to the tunes I used to listen to over the radio, English, Hindi, or Tamil. And yet, like the meaning of love, it was difficult to put a finger on why, and how, it was so unique and different. Was it because of the composer? Couldnt be. The vocalist? Surely not. The lyricist? Perhaps, but even there, I had my doubts.



What made it more difficult for me to ascertain this was the fact that modern local songs had next to nothing that could distinguish them from the tunes that invaded our airwaves. Over the years, the Sinhala geethaya had become democratised; we have gone from obe neth dutu to oyage lassana as deka dakka.



It was then that I understood that, more than anyone else, it was the lyricist who made the Sinhala geethaya so unique. The uniqueness of the Sinhala lyricist had to do with the distinction, drawn in South Asia, between poetry and song, a distinction between an aesthetic based on the sounds in a language (shabda dhvaniya, for a song) and an aesthetic based on the meanings in a language (artha dhvaniya, for a poem). In both cases, it was language that preceded everything else.



It was not just aesthetic. It was also a rule, which served to discipline the poet and the songwriter in their fields. The latter, moreover, bore a bigger burden; he not only had to convey a feeling or sentiment through words, he also had to ensure that those feelings intermingled with the music. Not an easy task, you must admit.

So I retuned to those lyricists. The songs they had written. The lines that had enthralled me. Some names kept coming back. Mahagama Sekara. Karunaratne Abeysekara. Ajantha Ranasinghe. Premakeerthi de Alwis. Of them, Premakeerthi had written so many songs. It was hard to escape the mans lyrics. Harder to not grow to love them. Even harder to not keep on returning to them.



Lklyrics.com lists down around 80 songs written by him. A poor count. 1,000 would be a more exact figure, though even that can be contested. Whats more important than quantity, however, are the themes he returned to. To get to those themes, it is important to revisit the mans life.



He was born Samaraweera Mudalige Don Premakeerthi de Alwis on June 1947 in Colombo. He was not born to an affluent family. His father was a railway employee. Educated initially at Maligakanda Maha Vidyalaya, he was sent to Ananda College, where he was engaged with the school magazine and other aesthetic activities that in turn got him to guide an entire generation of Anandians who would make their mark in arts, including Kularatne Ariyawansa.



Formative years



It was during these formative years that he encountered Karunaratne Abeysekara, aboard Lama Pitiya and Lama Mandapaya. More than his poetic skills, it was his voice that would win him audiences. With that voice came a yearning to join Radio Ceylon. He began working there from the latter half of the sixties, after a brief stint at the Dawasa Group (where he wrote feature articles). He became a full time announcer (he had been freelancing) in 1971, and was soon promoted as a programme producer.



When the radio gave way to the television in the eighties, he was eager to shift to the new medium, but found it a difficult route to tread, given that administrators were of the opinion that he did not possess the appropriate looks (especially with his less than awe-inspiring frontal teeth). But these misconceptions gave way, and he soon found himself presenting an array of programmes. A friend of mine recently tried to sum up his career in radio and television for me: I have never heard a more perfect baritone Sinhala voice. Wasantha Rohana, he suggested, came close. But only so close.



That was Premakeerthi the announcer. What of Premakeerthi the versifier?



Here are the opening lines to his first song, Hada Pura Asune (composed by Sanath Nandasiri, and performed by his wife Malkanthi and Rupa Indumathi).

  

 

   

    

     

Gunadasa Amarasekara wrote somewhere that the problem with the Colombo poets was their inability to go beyond certain cliches. In Mimana Premathilakes poetry, which represents both rebellion against and affirmation of the kind of sentimentalised Victorian verses his contemporaries had swallowed, there is a blend of the risque and the didactic, rampant with these same cliches, that outraged readers.



Over the years, after the debate over his verses had (almost) died down, a generation of versifiers imbibed the kind of language he resorted to, filled with the rhetoric of love, loneliness, and idealisation of the female figure. To me, the words hada puda asune and jeewana mee bindu represents that language, which Premakeerthi soon embraced and wielded. It was not the language of Sekara or even Ratnayake, of those versifiers who had started out as poets. To be sure, there had been versifiers who had transformed the rhetoric of love into a musical idiom. But it was Premarakeerthi who returned to the Colombo poets for this endeavour, and turned the undercurrents of torment and sorrow in their work into the popular song lyric.



At the same time, Premakeerthi (Prem to his colleagues) was not alone in what he was doing. Karunaratne Abeysekara, Ajantha Ranasinghe, and Sunanda Mahendra before him, and Kularatne Ariyawansa, Sunil Ariyaratne, and Ratna Sri Wijesinghe after him would idealise, if not romanticise, the village and make it more palatable to the dwellers of the city, in verse after verse. Almost all of them had come or would come from the press, as writers and journalists. Contemporary to a fault, they could not quite escape the fusion of the quatrain (sivpadaya) and free verse (nisadas) which even Mahagama Sekara had been entranced by. They were of the village, yes, but they had flirted with the city too, and its mosaic of art forms.



Creating own identity



What was unique about Premakeerthi was that, while he grew up in the company of these men, he carved his own identity. It was the poetry of love these lyricists resorted to, frequently. Premakeerthi resorted to that poetry too. But there was a difference.



Intensely personal, insanely poignant, his lyrics are, to me, the ruminations of a soul less concerned with the fact of love than its memory. If Ajantha Ranasinghe, whom I rate very high, wrote of loneliness tempered by the possibility of a brief encounter (Paloswaka Sanda, Mage Lowata, Kunda Saman Mal, and Degoda Thala), and if Kularatne Ariyawansa wrote of the possibility of a love that is requited after being rejected (Aradhana, Seetha Arane, Sudu Muthu Rala Pela, and his debut, Pinibara Malak), Premakeerthi, who followed the one and preceded the other, dwelt on neither acceptance nor rejection, but on the past.

For Ranasinghe, the past was the antidote that kept the hope of love alive. For Ariyawansa, it was a reminder of the ever omniscient possibility of rejection. For Premakeerthi, on the other hand, it was just what it was: the past, a repository of memories that was and is neither painful nor filled with happiness.

 

 

  

 



 

Even at his most joyful, there is an undercurrent of sobriety, a reminder that the past is outside the reach of the lover who has lost and the lover who has reclaimed what he has lost. The future, and with it the possibility of reconciliation are what one can look forward to; they exist outside the periphery of the past. It is the now, and not the hitherto, in other words, that the versifier was concerned with.

 

 

  

 

 

When he let abandoned the rhetoric of love and, with Freddie Silva, took on society in the most didactic way he could, he retained this quality. The didacticism of a song like Boru Kakul Karaya and Handa Mama is firmly rooted in the present; the poet is less worried about past omissions than the situation his characters are in.

   

   

When Premakeerthi did resort to the past, it was to evoke memory, something which could never resurrect the present, so much so that we could only look back and say, We can never reclaim it, but only regret it. Consolation, for him, seemed to come from the present, the moment, and it compensated for everything else.

 

 

  

 

Our first real lyricists went to the wellsprings of our way of life, to evoke, and idealise, a rural arcadia which modernity would do away with. After them, we saw Mahagama Sekara, who, after wrestling with the present, and idealising the past, learnt (as Maknisada Yath showed) to accept that present.



The lyricists who followed these men were, for obvious reasons, caught up in an encounter between the hitherto and hereafter, and they found ways of tackling it. Memory, that most potent symbol of the past, figured in their verses. Premakeerthi had his own way of battling it: not by idealising it, nor by forgetting it, but by depicting it for what it was: a repository of the past.Minister of City Planning and Water Supply Rauff Hakeem during an interview with the Daily mirror spoke about the present political situation in the island. Mr. Hakeem who is the Leader of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) also spelt out his aspirations with regard to the next Presidential Elections. Excerpts:



QToday, we read reports about a feud between the President and the Prime Minister. There is indecision within the Government. How do you see them?



As a National Government comprising two parties with different ideologies, it is bound to be hit by convulsions occasionally. On political issues, there can be some divergence. What is important is not to have a conflict when it comes to the economic and financial management of the state. The President and the Prime Minister are answerable to their party men. It is inevitable that disagreements occur when it comes to issues regarding infrastructure development and so on. That is in sharing the credit. We had the same experience when we had the Cohabitation Government under former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga between 2002 and 2004. That was quite different. The United National Party (UNP) managed to have the majority in Parliament.



For this Government, after the setback at the Local Government Elections, there appears to be a new tendency. There are many fathers connected to the victory, but the loss is an orphan. Politicians try to distance themselves from the electoral setback. All these have compounded the present crisis. We need a more mature approach to governance.



Q Actually, the Tamil and Muslim parties worked hard to unseat the previous rule. In retrospect, what do you feel about your action as a leader of a Muslim party?



In one aspect, we feel vindicated. That is the aspect related to our security. True enough, the incidents in Ampara and Digana dented that feeling about security. That was of course a colossal failure of the law and order machinery. It was a failure of our intelligence agencies to take timely action. As for the past regime, it was a deliberate disregard. That is what angered the minorities more during that period. In the afterglow of war victory, the former establishment went on to create a feeling of insecurity among the majority by bringing in unfounded fear on various issues. Then, the minorities felt that there were continual threats to the places of religious worship. There were sustained attacks on the places of religious worship, orchestrated by xenophobic forces.



Q Does it mean that the present Government, albeit its shortcomings, is still better than the former regime?



Yes, of course. You cannot deny that. At least we have a say. When we raise something, the leaders at least listen to us. They want swift action. True enough, it is somewhat late. The law enforcement is more vigorous. They are fearlessly implementing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and containing hate speech. Hate crime and hate speech did not have that kind of response in the past. The state machinery has to be more robust in handling hate crimes. If you try to handle it with velvet gloves, it will not do. The former Government handled it with velvet gloves. That was the fault in

their approach.



Q But, you warned about the present Government at a party meeting. If you are happy with the Government, why are you issuing warnings against it?



I was critical of the issues regarding minority interests being taken for granted in matters like electoral reforms. My attack on the Government came about because of the mixed electoral reforms being forced on us. After the results of the February 10 elections, everybody realised that the mixed model has complicated the entire system. Still, a section of the Government insists that they must retain the new system. The UNP and the Joint Opposition want to return to the old system. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) is insisting that they must retain the new system. Such issues have disappointed us. We have been talking about it quite openly.



Q In case the Government does not listen to you, what would be your next move?



I have not got the feeling that the Government would not listen to me. I am pretty certain that everybody realises that the new electoral system is fraught with so many contradictions and that they cannot sustain this. Motivation is not to retain the system. There is a lack of confidence at the moment in going for elections. That is a foolhardy thing in my opinion.



QThere are talks about an Interim Government. Do you fear that the current Government will be toppled?



Not at all. From the outset I felt that it was not a move which would succeed. I was privy to certain sections in the Joint Opposition not wanting to rock the boat. We were quite certain that it was not going to happen. They wanted to create certain convulsions. They wanted to expose some people who were sitting on the fence. That was a gain for them.



Nobody should be in a haste or hurry. Even former Minister Basil Rajapaksa said that he was not in favour of forming a Government merely through the manoeuvre of the MPs from one side to another. It is easier to form Governments through defections. It is more prudent to go for a popular movement to topple the Government. There is a sharp difference of opinion within the opposition ranks.



Q You are seen as a political leader who senses the direction of political winds. What direction is the political wind blowing in at the moment?



(Laughs) You need not be a prophet to forecast issues in the country. What is more important is to try and market what you have done for the people. The failure to market what you are doing sufficiently has caused most of the setbacks for this Government. We have failed in this aspect. At the same time, we are criticising each other.



QWhat are the things you have done, but failed to market properly?



In my Ministry alone, we have now implemented a large number of projects. They are not getting the due publicity. People prefer sensational news. The media too is looking for sensationalism. When they see some infighting and bickering, they put a spin and blow it out of proportion.



For instance, look at the amount of legislations we have made in favour of good governance or the way the power of executive presidency is pruned. It is good for governance.

Present Govt. is better than former rule as far as security is concerned

UNP should revive itself

Of course, Gotabaya is a popular candidate

The state machinery has to be more robust in handling hate crimes

You need not be a prophet to forecast issues in the country



Q What direction is the political wind blowing in?



The Government still has time for course correction. We need to do some tangible work at the grassroots level. The programmes such as Gamperaliya, Enterprise Sri Lanka and Grama Sakthi are trying to take development to the grassroots level. It is the right way to go. It is a bottom up approach. Job creation in the state sector is not the answer for unemployment. It is my observation that the UNP-led Governments are always wary of this matter. It was quite different during the former rule, though. They were doling out state sector employments. Rural people sometimes see it as the strength of the Government. We need to increase the efficiency of the state sector. This Government has to resort to certain unpopular measures. Initially, they tried to reform the pension scheme. They have put it on hold due to resistance. You ambitiously start something and withdraw from it suddenly. If you need to improve efficiency, certain reforms should be done. You cannot be fidgeting with reforms. You need to have strong political will to go through it. Though it is a National Government, there is uneasy cohabitation. It fails to live up to the expectations of a National Government.



Q Whats your opinion of the next presidential election?



Some have already thrown their hats into the ring. But, there is so much uncertainty. Everybody expected that the constitutional reform process would become a reality. They thought that the Executive Presidency would be replaced with the Westminster model. Constitutional reforms cannot be a piecemeal exercise. We have done it once.



The 19th Amendment is a limited exercise. It has been an achievement. We who represent the minority communities expect an overhaul change of

the Constitution.



Q Is the Constitution making process realistic?



If any constitution making process is not completed within six months or one year, it will get embroiled in a crisis.



Q Some say that the parties and the political forces that were together during the last election in 2015 should continue to be under one umbrella. Do you agree with this view?



We too are of the same opinion. We should be able to achieve our objectives. We should have a clear direction. We should not change focus just because some of the moves are being opposed by the so called nationalist forces. We need to have substantial political reforms in order to address grievances. We should not live with the false hope that development will make people forget their rights issues. Rights issues are very potent.



Q If the Presidential Elections are held, whom would you support?



We believe the same forces should be there. The President and the Prime Minister must find a way to stay together if we are to remain relevant in the present day politics. The UNP, with a strong candidacy, can challenge anyone at any time. It may be a little too early for us to make a prediction. At a nation-wide election, you need to instill enthusiasm among your rank and file. The UNP should revive itself.



Q What do you think of the possible candidacy of Gotabaya Rajapaksa representing the other side?



Gotabaya is a poplar candidate. There is no doubt about it. But, he is not as popular as Mahinda Rajapaksa. Of course, he carries some baggage.



We have to see whether he is genuinely prepared to shed this baggage.The UN's request to repatriate Kalana Amunupura, the Commander of the Sri Lankan contingent in the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali will have serious repercussions on the entire army, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) said today

SLPP Chairman G.L. Peiris said serious allegations, such as those of shelling UN sites and hospitals in Puthukuduirippu and Puthumathalan and torturing and killing LTTE surrendees have been levelled against him merely on the words of Yasmin Sooka, a panelist in the experts panel appointed by the UN Secretary General to compile a report on Sri Lanka.

He said Ms. Sooka levelled these allegations without any evidence or inquiry.

It will have serious repercussions not only on the 58th Division but on the entire Sri Lankan Army, Prof. Peiris said and added that the government had again displayed its inability to handle foreign relations.

If it were our government, we would have asked for the basis of such allegations, he said and added that the UNHRC resolution 30/1 of October 1, 2015 committed Sri Lanka to an international tribunal comprising commonwealth and foreign judges and therefore such allegations against the military would be serious.

Video by SanjeewaPresident Maithripala Sirisena today said he, as the common candidate in November 2014, assumed he was allaying with the UNP founded by the late D.S.-Dudley Senanayakes but later on realised that he had not allied with such a UNP.

President Sirisena said this during a ceremony held at the BMICH to commemorate four Senanayakes namely D S, Dudley, R G and FR who had played great roles in securing independence.

The late D. S. Senanayake, did not engage in corruption, did not waste public funds. He was patriotic and adopted home grown agricultural policies. This is why the UNP became a great party. The UNP was built upon the visions of these great men. I hope the UNP would find greatness again and become the real party which was founded by these leaders, he said.

He recalled that there were two dansalas in Polonnaruwa for Poson for many years.

One was named Bandaranaike Dansala and the other Senanayake Dansala. Bandaranaike Dansala was organized by the SLFPers and Senanayake Dansala was organized by the UNPers. However UNPers could not organize it since 2007. Then I decided to rename the Dansala organized by the SLFPers as Bandaranaike and Senanayake Dansala since I thought we should be grateful to these great UNP leaders, he added.

While stating that his father was among those who were settled by the late D. S Senanayake, the President stated that he was a mixture of Senanayakes and Bandaranaikes.

Joint Opposition MP Vasudeva Nanayakkara said time had come once again to launch a struggle against imperialists just as late F. R Senanayake did as US led imperialism had come up again today with the leadership of Donald Trump. USA is trying to rule all countries in the world, he said.

Former Minister Imitiyaz Bakeer Markar who revived memories on late Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake said the late leader always stressed that the issues faced by the Tamils in the North and the East and issues of estate communities were two things which has to be resolved going beyond party politics. He said the late Mr. Senanayake said this in Parliament when a motion was brought to abolish the Tamil Language Act.

Western Province Governor Hemakumara Nanayakkara who paid tribute to the late R G Senanayake said he was a true Buddhist who always held that true Buddhists should respect all religious and ethnic groups.  Late R G Senanayake always strived to look after the interests of all people while trying to win real freedom for the country, he said. (Yohan Perera)President Donald Trump said on Saturday the United States will exit the Cold-War era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that eliminated a class of nuclear weapons, in a move that is likely to upset Russia.



The INF treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1988, required elimination of short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.



Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement so were going to terminate the agreement and were going to pull out, Trump told reporters after a rally in Nevada.



Washington believes Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow Moscow to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.



Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development.



China is not a party to the treaty and has invested heavily in conventional missiles as part of an anti-access/area denial strategy, while the INF has banned U.S possession of ground- launched ballistic missiles or cruise missiles of ranges between 500 and 5,500 km (311 and 3,418 miles).



Trumps national security adviser, John Bolton, will visit Moscow next week.

ELKO REUTERS Oct 20THE HINDU, 21st OCTOBER, 2018-The Maldives top court on Sunday ended weeks of uncertainty by rejecting President Abdulla Yameens controversial bid to annul last months election results, upholding his landslide defeat to an opposition candidate.



The five-judge Supreme Court bench unanimously ruled that Mr. Yameen had failed to prove his claim that the election was rigged and a fresh poll was necessary in the Indian Ocean archipelago.



Under international pressure, Mr. Yameen initially conceded defeat after Ibrahim Mohamed Solih emerged the winner in the September 23 poll.

But the strongman ruler then filed an appeal this month, throwing the island nation into turmoil and attracting warnings from the United States and regional superpower India to respect the outcome.



Opposition activists celebrated outside the Supreme Court in the capital Male after the decision was read out, effectively drawing a line under Mr Yameens five years of iron-fisted rule.



Opposition legislator Mariya Didi said Mr. Yameen  who lobbied the Supreme Court in 2013 to nullify election results in his favour  should now allow a smooth transition of power.



We are pleased that the court ruled unanimously to uphold the will of the people, Didi said on Twitter.



The case was based on conjecture and conspiracy theories.The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) must hold public hearings to enable effective public participation in and consensus on the Tilenga oil project, over 10 civil society organisations (CSOs) working to prevent the impacts of oil on biodiversity in the Albertine Graben have said.

The Tilenga oil project is being developed by Total E&P Uganda B.V. in one of the most biodiverse areas in Africa in Nwoya and Bullisa districts. River Nile, Lake Albert, Murchison Falls National Park and Budongo in addition to Bugoma forests are key national and trans-boundary ecosystems that are going to be affected and are within the Tilenga project area of influence.

Bungugu and Karuma wildlife reserves in addition to the Murchison Falls-Albert Delta Wetland System which is a Ramsar Site are also within the projects area of influence. On Tuesday October 16, 2018, NEMA published a public notice in the media calling for public comments on the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) study undertaken for the Tilenga project.

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In the public notice, NEMA did not indicate that it has an obligation to call for a public hearing on the Tilenga ESIA. Under the Environmental Impact Assessment [EIA] regulations of 1998, the Executive Director of NEMA is mandated to call for a public hearing where there is controversy or where the project may have trans boundary impacts as the Tilenga project will.

The fact that NEMA did not indicate the date for the public hearing which the law says must be held for projects such as the Tilenga one is a fundamental gap and it concerns us as much as it should concern all Ugandans and our partners, Mr Dickens Kamugisha, the CEO of Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), says.

Kamugisha says the Tilenga project is located in one of the most biodiverse areas in Africa and is going to affect key forests, rivers and conservation areas which support the most pre-dominant economic 2 activity in the country, agriculture, and on which Ugandans rely to make an income from tourism, fishing, transport and other economic uses.

The fate of the above ecosystems, which serve millions of Ugandan, DRC, South Sudanese, Sudanese and Egyptian citizens to mention but a few, cannot be decided by NEMA without a public hearing as is mandated under Regulation 21(2) of the 1998 EIA regulations, Mr Kamugisha, who is also a lawyer, says.

Trans boundary impacts of Tilenga project

Moreover, Mr Yoram Banyezanki, whose organisation Guild Presidents Forum on Oil Governance (GPFOG) works with partner CSOs from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the sustainable use of trans boundary resources, says that oil activities on Lake Albert have already caused conflicts.

Oil activities on Lake Albert and use of resources such as fisheries from the same lake have caused conflict between Uganda and the DRC. Just this July [2018], the Ugandan and Congolese navies were involved in fighting on the lake and several lives were lost, he says adding that the Tilenga oil project, whose activities will include drawing of water from Lake Albert, is bound to increase pressures between the two countries over use of the lake.

He says if the Tilenga project is not well handled, it may worsen conflicts and loss of lives as well as environmental destruction in Uganda and the DRC. Mr Banyenzaki notes that the boundaries which define the Ugandan and DRC sides on Lake Albert remain a challenge.

Efforts such as signing of agreements including the Uganda-Zaire1990 Agreement, the 2007 Uganda-DRC Ngurdoto Agreement and others have failed to achieve lasting results. Ugandan citizens including those in the Uganda-DRC border areas must therefore participate in the decision on whether to issue an environmental certificate for the Tilenga project through public hearings because the decision made on the project will affect them. Stakeholders across the borders who are likely to be affected by the Tilenga project must also be consulted, Mr Banyenzaki says.

On his part, Mr Christopher Opio of the Oil Refinery Residents Association (ORRA) underscores the need for public hearings for local communities and other citizens: Public hearings are important to enable poor, local, illiterate, isolated and other vulnerable host communities to participate in decisions that affect their well-being.

Fund NEMA, complete environmental laws

The CSOs also want government to adequately fund NEMA so that it can carry out its mandate including supervising ESIAs and facilitating processes of organising public hearings.

It is no secret that NEMA is under-funded. An under-funded NEMA cannot effectively play its role and can be ignored or bullied as happened with the kaveera [plastic bags] ban so that it fails to implement efforts aimed at ensuring environmental conservation. Every Ugandan must therefore demand that NEMAs independence is protected through providing it with adequate funding among other measures, Kamugisha says.

The CSOs are also calling on parliament and government to complete and enact the National Environment Bill of 2017, the draft EIA and Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) regulations of 2017, the Uganda Wildlife Bill and others. The process of developing and enacting the National Environment Bill has taken over four years yet oil activities are ongoing based on old laws that government recognises cannot protect the environment from oil threats.

Without relevant laws to improve NEMAs independence, funding, penalties for environmental offenders and others, the ongoing oil production activities and other threats will worsen environmental degradation in Uganda, Kamugisha says.

The CSOs reiterate their calls to NEMA to organise public hearings at national and local level with hearings being held in all the Tilenga project host sub-counties of Bullisa and Nwoya and others in Hoima, Masindi and Kampala because the Tilenga project has national, trans-boundary and international impacts.

The CSOs are also committed to continue engaging with oil companies such as Total E&P and others in Uganda to avoid oil activities in critical biodiversity areas.

Infrastructure including 34 well pads with ten in Murchison Falls National Park, pipelines approximately 180km in length (with three pipelines under River Nile) and a central processing facility (CPF) will be developed under the Tilenga project. An airstrip, a ferry crossing on River Nile, a water abstraction system on Lake Albert and others will also be developed.

Some of the CSOs calling for the public hearing are: AFIEGO, National Association of Professional Environmentalist (NAPE), Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda (ECOTRUST), Guild Presidents Forum on Oil Governance (GPFOG), Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG), South Western Center for Policy and Advocacy (SOWIPA) and World Voices Uganda (WVU). Others are Citizens Concern Africa (CICOA), Community Transformation Foundation Network (COTFONE) Greater Masaka, Green Organisation Africa (GOA)-Masindi, Oil Refinery Residents Association (ORRA)-Hoima, Kakindo Orphans Care-Bullisa, and Girl Power Foundation-Kasese  Friends of Nature-KaseseEnterprises in Southern East Africa and Mauritius are rapidly stepping up their efforts to boost customer experience, reports customer experience specialist channel-Genesys.

Genesys says enterprises in African development hubs are experiencing strong growth and are fast catching up with their international counterparts in terms of next-generation in customer service, sales and marketing.

Businesses across major verticals including financial services, healthcare, insurance, hospitality and travel are moving to modernise their contact centre infrastructure, customer experience, customer service, sales and marketing channels are key focus areas, says Adriaan van Staden, Senior Sales Manager  Southern East Africa at Genesys, adding that this is driven by customer demand and growing competition in these sectors.

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In many cases, businesses in the region are investing in contact centres and customer experience suites for the first time or are moving from very limited capabilities, and are leapfrogging directly to cloud-based all-in-one solutions, he says. Van Staden notes that there is particularly keen interest in cloud-based solutions that allow for in-depth analysis of customer sentiment and market trends, and that support proactive customer service.

Depending on local conditions, companies in the region are looking to either consider private cloud or a Cloud solution such as our PureCloud offering. We see particularly strong demand for cloud / hosted solutions into Africa, where there are skills shortages, rapid time to value is a key and a critical priority. Companies in Africa are looking for innovative solutions with a compelling total cost of ownership and a proven ROI model, says Van Staden.

Van Staden notes that as they adopt next-generation customer experience solutions, African enterprises are fast becoming innovation leaders in terms of how they deploy and use these solutions: Globally, we find many customers setting up channels based on simplistic business rules for routing decisions across different interactions, he says.

He says that whereas across Africa, enterprises are harnessing workforce management along with intelligent routing to direct calls to agents based on agents skills levels, their ability to resolve the query, sale or service with context from previous interactions across their channel of choice and even whether the agents are currently available to handle the interactions.

These moves to innovate and drive growth by harnessing next-generation solutions are encouraging signs of overall economic development across the region, he says.

This increased investment is evidenced by our own outstanding performance in the region  in the financial year to date, our SEA Region is currently ranked 5th worldwide out of 26 sub regions globally. In fact, our SEA Regions growth year on year was 74% in Q1, 110% in Q2, 28% in Q3 and is forecasted to top 87% in Q4.

Demand for world class solutions in this space is so high in the region that Genesys is actively growing its presence across SEA. Our current partner network consists of nine value added resellers, each strategically focused on unique Genesys offerings and solutions, and weve also added an additional three strategic resellers to meet demand from customers into Africa as well as Mauritius, says van Staden.

Southern and East Africa are clearly entering a rapid growth phase and we are excited to be helping drive this new phase in enterprise transformation and development on the continent, says van Staden.This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.Note that this is a very large file to download. Instead, you may view each individual article as listed below.Chinas AG600 Flying Boat Completes First Water Takeoff



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A developer who plans to build a controversial five-star resort in coastal Del Mar vowed Oct. 17 to listen to concerns expressed by residents and board members at a joint workshop of the Del Mar Planning Commission and Design Review Board.

Chris Beucler, CEO of Encinitas-based Zephyr Partners  which is proposing to build a multi-use resort on 16.5 acres at Camino Del Mar and Border Avenue in Del Mar  said his group understands that certain residents views will be impacted if the project is constructed as proposed and plans to address view impact concerns. Zephyr, a mixed-use developer, is teaming with The Robert Green Co., a hotel developer, to craft the project.

As part of a commitment to residents, Beucler announced at the meeting that his group had planned to remove the controversial story poles  which preview possible building heights  on the project site within the next few days.

We want to create a special place on a special piece of property for the residents of Del Mar and Solana Beach, Beucler said in an opening statement at the meeting at Del Mar City Hall.

As currently proposed, the Del Mar Resort would rezone the land and place 251 hotel rooms, retail shops, restaurants, event space, 76 residential units and 15 affordable rental units on the property. Currently, the site is zoned for two-story estates at a maximum of 26-feet tall. About one-third of the property is vacant and undeveloped. If approved as currently drafted, the land would be rezoned to accommodate buildings 46-feet in height.

Planning Commission Chair Ted Bakker expressed concerns about the height, noting there were no similar buildings of that size in Del Mar. Others questioned if elevator shafts and other elements could exceed the limit.

Its like youre going to the extreme in height here, Bakker said. Theres nothing at 46 feet that we allow at all... Im concerned about that and how it would apply to the community plan.

More than 80 speakers from Solana Beach and Del Mar signed up to discuss pros and cons of the project as proposed.

Many Solana Beach residents contested that their coastal views would be impacted as a result of the project and, ultimately, their properties would be devalued. They also rejected the idea of rezoning.

The only reason to rezone the building is to make a boatload of money, said Solana Beach resident Tracy Weiss. I see now, standing in this beautiful new building, that you could use the [transient occupancy] tax.

The Solana Beach City Council unanimously agreed Oct. 10 to express its opposition to Del Mar for the project negatively impacting its residents. However, that council does not have authority over decisions about the project because the resort would be located in Del Mar.

Supporters of the project on Oct. 17 considered the resort a rare gift that could bring in tons of revenue for the city and for local businesses.

When you look at the demographics and the affluent people that will visit this resort, theres no doubt in my mind that businesses will benefit from this, said Bob Fleet, Solana Beach resident and owner of Del Mar Pizza.

Beucler said, based on a preliminary analysis, the resort could bring in nearly $8-million in tax revenue annually. He added Zephyr has also committed to a revenue share program with the City of Del Mar for sand replenishment, which will be given in perpetuity, along with the transient occupancy taxes.

Others also said amenities such as public restrooms and job opportunities are positive elements of the project.

Zephyr representatives have also claimed they will re-open access to nearby trails but opponents argued access has not been closed off and that was a tactic Zephyr used to gain supporters.

They also expressed concerns that the water rates could go up for all customers, including homeowners, if the resort receives its supply from the Santa Fe Irrigation District. While that option had been considered, McMenamin said, Zephyr is now pursuing water and sewage service from the City of Del Mar.

Naysayers also warned traffic in the area would worsen, especially on Border and South Cedros Avenues in Solana Beach.

Beucler said Zephyr will continue to study traffic impacts and mitigate to pre-project levels. At a recent Solana Beach City Council meeting he said that the additional traffic from the resort will be more on the scale of smaller events, such as the Del Mar Mud Run or the San Diego Cat Show, rather than KAABOO or the county fair, which attract more visitors.

Terry Gaasterland, a design review board member, questioned how the resort would enforce parking.

McMenamin said said a current parking analysis indicates that about 27 spots will be eliminated along the south side of Border Avenue to add an additional southbound lane on that street. He said to help offset that loss, Zephyr plans to include more than 700 parking spaces in the project, some of which will be dedicated for public and staff use. The group will also encourage workers to use alternate modes of transportation, such as a shuttle system and the train, McMenamin said. A shuttle system and free electric bicycles would also be available to resort guests, he added.

But Planning Commissioner Philip Posner argued public transportation isnt largely used in the area and questioned how much that option would actually be utilized by resort employees and guests.

Gaasterland said she believes the project as proposed does not fit with the community plan due to the height, effects on green open spaces on the north boundary and other reasons. She also said Del Mar should be a good neighbor to Solana Beach and consider the impacted residents there.

It would effectively be a very large spot zoning, she said. I hope you will take to heart all that youve heard today and really rework this.

Nate McCay, planning commission vice chair, considered step one as mitigating the zoning changes from light residential to mixed-use commercial. He said he intended to focus on land use issues at this stage of the process.

Its always difficult when a property is vacant and people have been living with the fact that its been vacant for a long time, he said. Any construction will impact views, whether its just houses or a resort.

Because the meeting was a workshop, no formal decisions were made. The Del Mar City Council is set to review and provide direction on the project in November, according to city staff.Subscriber content preview

QUINCY, Grant County (AP)  A Grant County vegetable-packing house will pay $525,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging a supervisor groped, propositioned and retaliated against female workers.

The Seattle Times reports State Attorney General Bob Ferguson says the settlement announced Thursday with Quincy-based Horning Brothers is believed to be the largest civil-rights resolution for the state in Washington history.





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By Boston , Oct. 21, 2018





WASHINGTON (AP)  House Democrats are expected to re-open the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election if they win the majority in November. But they would have to be selective in what they investigate.





California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, has said his party would have to ruthlessly prioritize the most important matters first.

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Migrant boat sank off Turkey's Bodrum

Two people died after a boat carrying migrants sank just 50 meters off Turkey's western Mugla province near Bodrum early Monday, the coast guard said.

At least two people died after a boat carrying some 30 irregular migrants sank early Monday in the Aegean Sea off Turkeys Mugla coast, Turkish Coast Guard said.

The incident occurred off Bodrum district as a six-meter boat Ela sank at 5.47 a.m. local time, Coast Guard Command said in a statement. Seventeen people on the boat were rescued and three made it to shore by themselves. Two of those people were reported dead at a hospital in Bodrum.

The police officer watched the first aid treatments in tears WATCH

HERO POLICE OFFICER

A Turkish police officer took a 7-year-old migrant child who wasnt able to breathe on his lap and quickly brought her to the emergency staff. The officer watched the immediate treatment in tears. The child was later taken to the hospital.

THE LITTLE GIRL LOST HER LIFE

It's been reported that despite of all the efforts of the officer, the little girl has lost her life.

Turkey has been the main route for irregular migrants trying to cross into Europe, especially since 2011 when the Syrian civil war began.How Al Gore built the global warming fraud By Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

Although his science is often seriously wrong, no one can deny that Al Gore has a flare for the dramatic. Speaking about climate change in an October 12 PBS interview, the former vice-president proclaimed, We have a global emergency. Referring to the most recent UN climate report, Gore claimed it showed that current global warming could actually extend to an existential threat to human civilization on this planet as we know it. Al Gores overblown rhetoric makes no sense, of course. Yet his hyperbolic claims beg the question: How did this all start? Back in the 1970s, media articles warning of imminent climate change problems began to appear regularly. TIME and Newsweek ran multiple cover stories asserting that oil companies and Americas capitalist life style were causing catastrophic damage to Earths climate. They claimed scientists were almost unanimous in their opinion that manmade climate change would reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. The April 28, 1975 Newsweek proposed solutions that even included outlawing internal combustion engines. This sounds very similar to today's climate change debate  except, in the 70s, the fear was manmade global cooling, not warming. TIME magazines January 31, 1977 cover featured a story, How to Survive The Coming Ice Age. It included facts such as scientists predicting that Earths so-called average temperature could drop by 20 degrees Fahrenheit due to manmade global cooling. Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned readers that the drop in temperature between 1945 and 1968 had taken us one sixth of the way to the next Ice Age temperature. Global cooling gained considerable traction with the general public. But then, instead of cooling as long predicted by manmade climate change advocates, the planet started warming again. Something had to be done to rescue the climate change agenda from utter disaster. Enter Al Gore. Al Gore Sr., a powerful Senator from Tennessee, saw to it that his son was elected to the House of Representatives, serving from 1977 to 1985, then going on to the Senate from 1985 to 1993. Gore Juniors primary issue was his conviction that the Earth would perish if we did not eliminate fossil fuels. Gore advanced to Vice President under President Bill Clinton, where he was able to enact policies and direct funding to ensure that the climate change agenda became a top priority of the United States Government. Gores mission was boosted when Clinton gave him authority over the newly created Presidents Council on Sustainable Development. It will come as no surprise then that, when the Councils Charter was revised on April 25, 1997, the Scope of Activities included the following direction to the Council: Advise the President on domestic implementation of policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Council should not debate the science of global warming [emphasis added], but should instead focus on the implementation of national and local greenhouse gas reduction policies and activities, and adaptations in the U.S. economy and society that maximize environmental and social benefits, minimize economic impacts, and are consistent with U.S. international agreements. The Council should, at a minimum, identify and encourage potentially replicable examples of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across diverse sectors and levels of society. Considering that the Council was tasked with advising the President on matters involving sustainable development, and alternative points of view on the science of climate change were effectively excluded, it was a foregone conclusion that the Clinton administration would go in the direction Gore wanted. Indeed, in their cover letter to the President accompanying their 1999 report, Advancing Prosperity, Opportunity and a Healthy Environment for the 21st Century, the Council stated: Our report presents consensus recommendations on how America can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take other steps to protect the climate. A cornerstone of Gores strategy was to ensure that all high-ranking government officials who had any involvement with funding policies relating to climate change were in line with his vision. These agencies included the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, Department of Education, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. An example of his power was shown when physicist Dr. William Happer, then Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, testified before Congress in 1993 that scientific data did not support the hypothesis of manmade global warming. Gore saw to it that Happer was immediately fired. Fifteen years later, Happer quipped, I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly. Al Gore was also able to leverage his high visibility, his movie awards, his Nobel Prize, and his involvement in various carbon trading and other schemes into a personal fortune. When he ended his tenure as Vice President in 2001, his net worth was $2 million. By 2013, it exceeded $300 million. Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, provided a series of graphic images showing the apocalyptic consequences that some had predicted if fossil fuels were allowed to continue warming the planet. Images included melting glaciers, dying polar bears, spreading diseases, coastal cities inundated by massive floods, cities wiped out by hurricanes and tornadoes, and food supplies exterminated by droughts. This compelling propaganda played a major role in frightening an entire generation about the future, causing young people and many parents to feel guilty about the role that they and their country were supposedly having in destroying our beautiful planet. Since then, Americans have been told constantly that they should feel irresponsible if they drive cars or use fossil fuel energy to heat their homes or power their businesses. A rapid, massive conversion away from coal, oil and natural gas to renewable energy sources such and wind and solar, we are told, is the only hope for saving the planet. Now children are increasingly depressed about their future, thanks to the constant barrage of global warming propaganda that they receive at school. Indeed, they have become so brainwashed and cowed by their peers that they no longer dare to question any statement made about catastrophic climate change. Yet, essentially everything in Gore's climate change agenda is either wrong or highly misrepresented. Now that he is President Donald Trumps Senior Scientist for the National Security Council, Dr. Happer needs to show there is no scientific consensus on these issues, rekindle informed debate on climate and energy issues, and help bring hope, common sense and real science back into the discourse  to help end the dangerous mythology of dangerous manmade global warming. Dr. Jay Lehr is the Science Director of The Heartland Institute of Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition. Portions of this article were excerpted with permission of the publisher and author of the 2018 book The Mythology of Global Warming, by Bruce Bunker, PhD, published by Moonshine Cove. HomeThe Internet -- assessing its main social, political, and cultural impacts in America (Part Four) By Mark Wegierski

This series is based on a draft of a paper read at the Media in America/America in Media Conference (Lublin, Poland: Maria Curie-Sklodowska University), May 25-26, 2017. It is an open question whether the provision of good ideas through the Internet will be sufficient to challenge todays informational and cultural monopoly. It is possible that the Internet simply does not (and perhaps cannot, for the foreseeable future) provide enough authority and financial, administrative, and infrastructural weight to dissenting ideas. One may indeed note in todays society the virtual disappearance of middle-level commentators. There appears to have emerged a situation with a division between a tiny handful of very comfortably-funded, mostly court academics, intellectuals, media-people, and commentators  and a broad mass of powerless wannabe pundits, usually with little financial resources, who appear mostly in various eclectic small publications and comparatively little-known websites. They can all too often be simply written off by the establishment media as extremists or whackos  regardless of the possible perceptiveness and clarity of their views. Indeed, it is entirely in the interests of the media elite to permit the promulgation of the wildest conspiracy-theories and vitriol on the Web  since it tends to discredit those who try to make their way as serious critics and commentators there. Those among the masses with little intellectual curiosity and engagement (whom the media-elite probably privately consider little better than cattle or sheeple) are given what George Orwell characterized as prole-feed in his famous dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Today, this consists mostly of endless, stupefying, consumption-driving advertising, reality-shows, and celebrity-gossip news  combined with rock- and rap-music, the fashion-industry, the massive excitement of sports, the titillation of various kinds of porn, the sneering cynicism of todays comedy (especially stand-up comedy), and the extra jolt of horror and violence. Most of these kinds of emotional engagements are also delivered frequently enough through the regular evening news. Today, one can usually have ones opinions appear somewhere on the Internet if one is committed enough to setting them down, but the media elite make absolutely sure that one wont be able to make any kind of living on the basis of ones writing endeavors. So, ones social and cultural commentary and criticism becomes for most a purely existential endeavor. Nevertheless, for most persons with dissenting views, having ones ideas appear somewhere on the Internet offers a great deal of comfort and reassurance, and a stabilizing sense of community, that, among other results, definitively turns one away from pursuing violence. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. HomeBeyond the tragedy By Daniel M. Ryan

Last week saw a striking U-turn, as well as a test of common sense. On Monday, Elizabeth Warren released a DNA test which showed that one of her ancestors six to ten generations ago was some kind of Native American. The fine print in the test said that Native American? corresponded to the DNA of folks in that category from Peru, Mexico and Columbia; none were from North America. The tester explained that the DNA samples from North American tribes, like the Cherokee, were too sparse to make for a reliable baseline. So, the test showed no direct connection between Warren and North American natives. But that didnt stop the liberal media from crowing that she had proved her claim. This spin rested on two points of vagueness. First of all, proved? fuzzied up the fact that 1/64 to 1/1024 is minuscule. Its way below the criterion that the Cherokee Nation uses to evaluate claimants who, like Elizabeth Warren, say theyre Cherokee. Secondly, it counted on the target audience being unable or unwilling to grasp that Native American? didnt even refer to North Americans. Its these two points that made for the common-sense test. And lots of people passed! It didnt take long for the MSM campaign to be met with jokes on Twitter. After Warren unveiled the results with a demand for a million dollars from President Trump to a charity she chose, with the same flourish of a student who waves around an A+ after marking his own paper, lots of Twitter wags said that Trump should pay 1/1024 million. Trump did in fact make a million-dollar bet with her, but he made it clear that 1/64 to 1/1024 didnt make the bar. So did everyone else who wasnt befuddled or in the tank for Warren. Then, the plot twisted. Only two days later, the same media was retreating from their Monday blitz. Not because they had snapped out of spin mode, no. Several tribal organizations, including the Cherokee Nation, objected strenuously to the claim that she was Native American. The Cherokees said that she did not qualify, period. Others objected to the notion that DNA testing can trump tribal law. Its these protests which prompted the scramble-back lovingly detailed by John Nolte. This scramble-back is unusual for media distortion; its more common for fake news to remain uncorrected. In the 1930s, pro-Communist reporter Walter Duranty covered up the Holodomor planned famines. The New York Times still displays his Pulitzer Prize for that reporting. After the horrific mass suicide of the Jim Jones cult, the MSM covered up his left-wing past  so much so that a heavily-documented disclosure of it constitutes revisionist history. The new book Cult City shows very clearly that Jones was buddy-buddies with a long list of San Francisco lefties, including Harvey Milk, Willie Brown, Angela Davis, Huey Newton and, yes, Jane Fonda. They and more heaped fulsome praise on his head. Not because of any bewitching personal magnetism, but because of his openly left-wing ideology and People-Temple programs purporting to help the poor and marginalized. As Daniel J. Flynn explains: The supposed religious fanatics of Jonestown had hosted a Soviet delegation, taught Russian to residents in preparation for a mass pilgrimage to the place Jim Jones dubbed the groups spiritual motherland,? and willed millions of dollars to the Soviet Union. Peoples Temple goons confiscated Bibles reaching Jonestown from the United States. Jonestown celebrated December 25 as Revolution Day.... If anything,? Julia Scheeres maintains in 2011s A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown, the people who moved to Jonestown should be remembered as noble idealists. They wanted to create a better, more equitable, society. They wanted their kids to be free of violence and racism. They rejected sexist gender roles. They believed in a dream.? And yet: A New York Timesarticle alleged that Mr. Jones had preached a blend of fundamentalist Christianity and social activism.? The Associated Press called the people of Peoples Temple religious zealots.? Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, described Jim Jones as a power-hungry fascist.? Comedian Mort Sahl explained on his radio show days after the massacre, The exercise in Guyana was a fascist exercise, no matter what the label on the can. Socialists dont do that.?... Theres more to this than a bunch of progs covering up for their buddies. As shown by James Burnham in his Suicide of the West, managerial liberals have a deep emotional need to believe that no harm can be done by the Left. When yet another left-wing horror erupts, they have to distort reality to see it as horrific. There were lots of Cold War liberals who saw Communism as evil, with sincerity from the gut. But their ideology impelled them to redefine Communism as somehow of the Right, as did Mort Sahl with Jim Jones. Thats why liberal anti-Communism didnt last long. The third example is revealing in a different way. Have you heard of the Bystander Effect? It was inspired by a 1964 write-up on the murder of Kitty Genovese by A.N. Rosenthal in the New York Times. It claimed that 37 [later 38] eyewitnesses saw or heard Miss Genovese being murdered but did nothing about it. This story was galvanizing, and pleasing to the progs who believed that the masses were too passive for those old-fashioned ideals of self-governance. It appealed most to the folks who loved those 1970s-ish disaster movies in which ordinary folks inevitably panic and make things worse. That story was also fake news. As with Jim Jones, it took decades for revisionist history to correct the record. The so-called witnesses had not seen the crime and what they heard was too ambiguous to make a reasonably sure judgment. The I dont want to get involved? narrative was fake, just as fake as the panic? narrative. As weve seen from real disasters, ordinary folks tend to pitch in and help. The Cajun Navy is one famous example, but this public-spiritedness is in no way confined to them. The Times did correct the record, but only in 2016. With all three examples, we see fake news lasting decades  so much so that the Elizabeth Warren retreat is unusual. Tragedy and Commons Except in one area: financial journalism. In 1984, a scandal erupted in the Wall Street Journal. R. Foster Winans, the fellow then writing the Heard On The Street? column, has been slipping the names of the stocks he was puffing to a Kidder, Peabody stockbroker named Peter N. Brant  doing so before his column was published. Not being quite like Walter Duranty, whose cumshaw came in the form of a nice apartment and access to Stalin, Winans scarfed $31,000. When the scandal broke, the Journal unceremoniously fired him and handed him off to Rudy Giuliani. It didnt end there. In finance, the Man of the 80s was junk-bond maven Michael Milken. Lionized as the liberator of corporate America from postwar managerial corpocracy, he had lots of detractors who insisted that he was a crook. One of his most strident detractors was James B. Stewart of the Wall Street Journal. Stewart had come to fame for excoriating  you guessed it  the rise of insider trading. What a contrast from the liberal media! Not only did WSJ management fire the miscreant but it also bent over backwards to state that the miscreacy was a plague all over Wall Street. How Bizarro would the World have to be for the New York Times to have fired Duranty or Rosenthal and then pivot to a campaign against fake news? Back when the Swedes had common sense, a Swedish law mandated that a factory beside a river that used the river water had to locate its intake pipe downstream from its outflow pipe. If the factory were fouling the nest, theyd find out quickly: theyd find that they were fouling their own nest. It was an ingenious solution to the tragedy of the commons problem. The Wall Street Journal acted like that Swedish factory, and its easy too see why. It was a tool used by people deploying capital, including people investing their lives savings. If they see corrupted journalism, theyll react swiftly. What other shenanigans are there?? What else are they distorting?? How much money am I going to lose if I trust these clowns?? No wonder that WSJmanagement saw the scandal as a code-red injury to their brand. That feedback, plus the people who were just plain angry as seeing their trust betrayed, meant that WSJ management got a hard taste of their own polluted water. Even those who had philosophical doubts about insider-trading laws were very glad that Winans was charged and convicted. In stark contrast to the progs in the MSM who flipped off Jim Jones, the WSJ took firm steps to make sure it never happened again. They not only washed their hands of the fellow, they held themselves accountable and mended their ways. There hasnt been a corruption scandal since. The liberal media, on the other hand, is like the stereotypical factory-on-a-river managers. You can almost hear the excuses: Dont worry, its diluted.? Think of all the good we do.? What difference, at this point, does it make?? Bulge of Blowback Given the tragedy-of-the-commons dynamic for non-financial news, it is exciting to see the MSM reverse itself in only two days. Although the impelling blowback came from groups that the prog ideology deems good guys  the MSM did not backtrack due to blowback from Normals  it was still energizing to see a possibly-colluded press campaign blow up in their faces. Given that the First Amendment flatly rules out one proffered solution to tragedies of the commons, its encouraging to see that Normals werent buying it even before the Wednesday U-turn. Flat on the heels of the Kavanaugh futility, and foreshadowing the fizzling campaign for Jamal Khashoggi, it made the MSM look like Buster Keaton or Sideshow Bob in a slapstick scene. Its common to think that the upcoming election is like the Battle of Britain, but this election looks different. Consider this video from Tim Pool, a self-described social liberal who has his ear to the ground as well as his feet on the ground. The aggressively hysterical partisanship of the SJW types is covering up a field in which Liberals Are Passive, Exhausted, and Not Politically Active.? Although its well worth watching in full, its two takeaways are: a) strident progs are only a small minority of mostly-affluent folks who are as overwhelmingly white as Elizabeth Warren; b) traditional liberals, passive liberals,and...the politically disengaged? are worn down. As the pollsters are slowly recognizing, the midterm is not like the Battle of Britain  its more like the Battle of the Bulge. The strident wave of attack is covering up the fact that the progs have lost a lot of ground. The Elizabeth Warren rout shows with clarity that common sense wins: living in a gated-community-multiculturalist bubble is politically fatal. Real historians are dismantling bygone fake news. Twitter, hobbled by corporate censorship though it is, still allows the Normals to prevail in the public square. Street liberals like Tim Pool is becoming more and more alienated from the prog-media bubble. The Normals are winning. Daniel M. Ryan, as Nxtblg, is spinning his wheels at Steemit. HomeAN INDEPENDENT review into the safety of glyphosate is not necessary but would hold no fears for the farming sector, according to Grain- Growers chief executive David McKeon.

Speaking following calls from the Cancer Council of Australia to conduct a review into glyphosates safety, Mr McKeon said he was comfortable with the findings of a 2016 Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) reconsideration report on the herbicide, but said a new review would reinforce the message that the product was safe.

Mr McKeon said he did not want another review into glyphosate as it would take APVMA resources away from other chemistries it was researching, but acknowledged a full review may be of benefit in terms of consumer acceptance of the product.

The more time we tie up with going over old products that are not in need of review, the more we fall behind in finding safe and new chemistry, but it would underscore the point glyphosate is safe, Mr McKeon said.

CropLife Australia, the nations peak body for the plant science sector, said a new review was not necessary following the APVMA research in 2016, which followed the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report which found glyphosate was a probable carcinogen.

The community can remain confident in the APVMAs comprehensive reconsideration nomination assessment of glyphosate in 2016 following the IARC report, said CropLife Australia chief executive Matthew Cossey.

Their assessment found no grounds for glyphosate to be reconsidered.

Mr McKeon said the body of evidence for glyphosates safety exceeded that of many other chemicals.

There has been a lot of time and energy put into researching glyphosate over the years and it all comes back showing the product is safe, he said.

He said IARCs finding regarding its cancer causing properties needed to be taken in context.

There is a risk, but other substances on that list, such as tea and coffee and salt, are household items, he said.

Meanwhile the Federal opposition is calling for a Senate inquiry into Australias chemical regulatory process following a report by the ABCs Four Corners program that highlighted the APVMA receives funding from the chemical companies whose products it is in charge of regulating.

Federal Labor Agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon said the inquiry would consider the funding arrangements for the APVMA and any impact it has on its independent, evidence-based decision making.

However, Mr Littleproud said the APVMA funding model was in line with those used for regulatory bodies in other sectors.

A cost recovery model funds independent regulators across multiple industries and this is appropriate, Mr Littleproud said.

He said decisions on chemical safety needed to be left to scientists.

Politicians dont make decisions on which chemicals are safe or how they should be used; the scientists do  as they should, Mr Littleproud said.

I back the APVMA and I am confident the APVMA is competent and independent.

The Greens have supported Mr Fitzgibbons call.

Greens Agriculture spokeswoman, senator Janet Rice called on the coalition government to immediately instigate an independent and transparent review into the chemicals impact on peoples health.

The concerns over the safety of the chemical glyphosate raised by the World Health Organisation and now Cancer Council Australia are very serious, Ms Rice said.

It is imperative that the coalition government immediately instigate an independent and transparent review into the health effects of the chemical.

WAFarmers grains group president Duncan Young said recent news about glyphosate, such as a Californian jury ruling that glyphosate caused a Californian mans cancer, had led to public panic about what was a safe product.

The public need to understand the Australian regulatory system is supported by highly-qualified and globally respected medical and toxicological scientists who have decades of experience and knowledge on agricultural chemicals, Mr Young said.

It is crucial that any debate on farming is informed and based on scientific evidence and not on rhetoric driven by emotion.

Faced with the backlash of the Four Corners report, the National Farmers Federation has launched an online campaign seeking to engage with consumers and present them with clearly explained information on how the herbicide works.WELLARD has announced that its MV Ocean Kelpie has had its construction contract terminated by Croatian shipbuilders Uljanik.

Wellards Singaporean subsidiary, Wellard Ships Pte Ltd, received the notification late last week.

The company had written off $13.8 million in its June 30, 2018 figures, reflecting advance payments made under the Uljanik contract, according to Wellards Annual Report.

The MV Ocean Kelpie was specified as a bespoke livestock carrier of approximately 12,500m2 net pen area, originally commissioned by contract with Uljanik in March 2015.

The company had previously announced in its August 20, 2018, Annual Report that it was commencing negotiations to either exit or delay the build contract while it turned its financial position around, although in doing that it was possible Wellard may breach commitments under the contract.

The Kelpie was initially expected to be in operation at the end of 2017, although according to Wellard, not much had been done on the vessel.

Wellard said it would immediately assess its response to Uljanik in order to protect its rights under the contract.

Uljanik, which is partly State-owned, had previously constructed Wellards flagship the MV Ocean Drover  which is currently listed for sale.

It is the biggest shipbuilding group in Croatia and has been suffering from financial woes the past few years after being impacted by the global financial crisis, and the subsequent downturn in shipbuilding.

Asian shipbuilders have also been competing on price.

Earlier this year the European Commission cleared Croatia to buoy up the shipbuilders by AU$159m, although some financial analysts predict it will need about one per cent of Croatias GDP to get back on the water.

After losing a few contracts to European companies, because of its failure to deliver ships on time, Uljanik had its bank accounts frozen a couple of times.

In August Uljanik saw its 4500 workers strike for 10 days, until they were paid, while calling for new management, which resulted in its chairman stepping down.

With the Kelpie now scuttled before it even left the docks, Wellard may have one less problem on its hands as it pursues financial profitability for the future.

When the Kelpie was announced in 2015 Wellard chief executive Mauro Balzarini said the vessel would be mid-sized and could carry 10,000 cattle or 40,000 sheep, or a combination of both.

It had been optimised to deliver maximum livestock transport efficiency in the China and South East Asian markets, but will be suitable for any market globally.

Two standout features of the MV Ocean Kelpie were its fuel efficiency and low emissions, as well as its combination of cargo and fodder capacity that would have allowed Wellard flexibility, cost efficiencies and livestock safety when it was scheduling voyages.

Mr Balzarini said the MV Ocean Kelpie would have raised the bar in livestock vessel design and animal welfare.

Wellard will provide further details as the matter progresses.

Kuwaiti Livestock Trading and Transport (KLTT) which is heavily invested in the Australian live sheep trade with its Rural Export and Trading WA operation based in Perth, also has its new state-of-the-art vessel being built by Uljanik  which is expected to be delivered next year.Officially called vehicle frontal protection systems or VFPS, the Prado 150 SmartBar is made for models from October 2017 onwards, while the new Hilux StealthBar will fit 2015 models and beyond.

The company said the increasing popularity of the SmartBar range was driven in part due to the use of an advanced polymer material which allowed impact absorption, temporarily deforming the bar before returning to its original shape.

The light weight properties of the polymer and the hollow construction minimises the weight added to the vehicle when fitted, it said.

SmartBar industrial designer Mark Reina said the new Prado SmartBar was designed from scratch.

I started off with some pretty unique concepts for the Toyota Prado, Mr Reina said.

But I think weve come up with a great looking SmartBar that really complements the vehicle while maintaining the design language or DNA of previous SmartBars.

I believe the new Toyota Prado bar has strong details, building on the design DNA from some of my favourite SmartBars such as the Hilux and 200 Series Landcruiser.

Another great feature is that it will fit a huge range of after-market accessories.

Theres plenty of space to fit big winches like the Warn Xeon and to mount big spotties like the ARB AR32 Intensity.

Our new bars also feature a five-function insert light and a removable high lift jack point.

SmartBar industrial designer James Morton said the new Hilux StealthBar was the first VFPS to comply with the European regulations for pedestrian safety.

The advantage of this Toyota Hilux StealthBar is the ability to sell to Europe, due to the bar being a bumper replacement with no top hoops, Mr Morton said.

The new winch frame design now incorporates a removable high-lift jack point, this gives the user the ability to use a high-lift jack on both the right-hand and left-hand side of the vehicle.